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Language:
English
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Published:
2022-08-30
Words:
420
Chapters:
1/1
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5
Kudos:
43
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À la Orestes et Pylades

Summary:

They often lie awake in the early morning, together.
That's when the words tend to slip out. Ones usually protected by the sensibility afforded by well-restedness.
This night they wake again and let slip.

Notes:

very short noalok drabble based on pylades and orestes' famous dialogue from euripides' "orestes"

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

 

They lay under cover of the bedsheet, sheltered from the cool early morning air that nips at exposed shoulders and wafts under gaps in the fabric folded around their resting forms.

"I feel like I'm losing it more and more by the day, Noa. Or maybe I've always been this way, deep down. But it's like I've forgotten how to cope with it, how to keep myself together." His words spiral, a certain building hurriedness to them.

"Then I'll take care of you." Noatak states, as if it's plainest thing he's ever said.

"Hah. It's rotten work, really." Tarrlok scoffs back.

"Not to me. Not if it's you."

Noatak's gaze is unmoving, unblinking, entirely fixated upon Tarrlok, and in its solidity Tarrlok feels the weight of his brothers words hit him in the chest. An embracing ache that makes him feel a pang of guilt at the dismissive flippancy of his own response.
Tarrlok stares back at Noatak in turn. In the dim light, his pupils swallow the pale blue-grey of his irises. Tarrlok thinks they could swallow him too, if he stared too long. 

"Careful that in doing so, you don't come apart yourself." Tarrlok adds, feeling himself smug and witty.

"Come now, Tarrlok." Noatak's eyes twitch in a passing moment and that same pang hits Tarrlok between his ribs, harder this time. He always knows he has hurt Noatak when he calls him by name. When he avoids that word that is ever-present on both their minds, when one of them certainly wishes it not to be.

"...You're serious about this? You won't... shrink back?" Tarrlok questions, a whiff of sincerity in his tone: the rarest of all the perfumes of his words. 

"You won't leave?" He adds by necessity, his brain not allowing him the freedom to keep it unspoken, not this time.

Glimmers of reflected light gloss down those darkened eyes as they blink for the first time, like faintly glowing tears, falling.

"A brother does not shrink back. He does not leave." There is yet so much more left unspoken by his brother, in this moment, but Tarrlok hears all of it. In those few words, and that one, long look.

"Then," Tarrlok begins, and decides he has had enough words for one night. Words cannot speak all the things they each have to say to one another - long to say to one another. So Tarrlok leans in with closed eyes and presses his lips upon Noatak's.

And after a moment, those lips press back.

Notes:

fun fact: I found out pylades and orestes are cousins whilst writing this so bonus points I guess