selfsame
characters: eris vanserra, lucien vanserra, minor tamlin
pairing: eris/lucien
rating: explicit
word count: 2.6k
tags: brother/brother incest, oral sex, bathing/washing, devotion, dd;dne
summary: in the aftermath of jesminda, eris at last makes lucien his.
a/n: vancest (luris ??) is hitting the third tower baby!!! inspired directly by s3e10 of the borgias. all glory to ceslu. just a snippet for tunglr dot hell but you can find the full on ao3 if ! ur nasty
It is as Eris wets the fourth rag that Lucien finally opens his eyes. They shine as he tilts his head back, the barest smile at his mouth, unsullied.
It is his mother he expects, or his lost lover, the only tender hands he has known in truth—but it is neither he sees standing before him.
That simply, Lucien's smile becomes only a trick of the mind. He stiffens over again. A tear crests his lash line and spills down Eris's wrist.
It stings.
Harshly, Eris thumbs out along his brother's jaw. This returns him to his ease, but it does naught to return him to his oblivion.
Still raw from the screaming, he eventually rasps, “I will never wash this blood away."
The tending slows, then stops. He is pressed still against the skin he has made bare and new.
He did not think he would ever have Lucien cupped in his palm again. Some brothers, he will never have the chance.
Eris feels the freshness of grief swell, and he allows his rage to turn it to something bearable.
Fools, all of them. Each one strayed so far from the path he has herded them towards, snarling, snapping at their many heels. But none more than Lucien.
Warm Lucien. Radiant Lucien. Easeful Lucien.
Favored of all.
If he had only listened, if he had only obeyed—
—but he had not, and the bloodprice was a threefold stain on their shared flesh.
There is no use in entertaining what might have come to pass, if. There is only what Eris can do in the new now.
“Then I must,” he replies, sweeping the rag down the curve of Lucien's throat.
It has been a long while since his youngest brother looked up at him this way—open and searching, desperate for his guidance, willing of his deliverance. The last had been the fault of his father, too.
Why? Lucien had asked of him, voice pitched high with hurt and youth akin. Why does he treat me this way?
Because you are not his, Eris had thought, viciously. His back still stung from punishment accepted in his tearful brother's stead, split deep along the length of his spine as it had not been in years. And though I am now to spare you of him, you are not mine.
Aloud, Eris had muttered: Ask mother. Perhaps she has insight to spare.
Consternation had closed Lucien’s expression to him as he turned away. Hurt, yes, and young, but old enough to discern.
That eve, his lady mother had availed his chambers and lashed him with her level tongue until his ears rang with cuff. Both had kept their distance after that, as much as they could with the necessity of his body between theirs and Beron's.
Here, now, with his thumb pressed firm against Lucien's pulse and his youthful countenance once more open to him, Eris seizes his opportunity. “You will be naked,” he says, “and clean and bloodless again."
A sparkle in the gaze turned up on him—a brother, heeding the will of his elder; an acolyte, hanging on the words of his god. Benevolent and shepherding, both.
Eris draws his brother forth by the jaw, a gentle urging despite the ferocity of his grip. The weight is as insubstantial as sunlight cupped in his palm.
Lowly, loud enough only to drown out the thud of his heart, Eris exacts: “And mine.”
