#bloodcest

[aquaumbreonx]

Still drawin bloodcest...

[slutshut]

your body is so beautiful and perfect omg

oh my god thank you so much, this is such a pick me up ahhh, from the selfies youve uploaded, you’re absolutely beautiful!

[imtasteless]

happy birthday!!! i hope you have a great day xxx

Thank you!! xx

[savageleeinactive]

Thistles

Summary: Promises. Every new day brings promises. Tarrlok wonders what he should do to celebrate each and every one Noatak breaks.

Rating: M—INCEST. I am being serious. INCEST. A man sticks his brother's genitalia inside of his mouth. If the previous sentence just offended you, please do not continue further.

Pairing: Noalok/Bloodcest. For all of you who read “His Greatest Fantasies” and expected this and were left disappointed, here you go.

Word count: 1,553

----

Tarrlok spends most of his days of recuperation begging for the surrounding healers to let him die. They peruse the bookshelves, the floor, their herbal supplies, anything but him after they've done everything they can. He refuses to speak to his brother. They've betrayed each other too many times.

Refuses, yes, but Noatak has never cared for his wishes. "Brother, I'll never leave you again."

"Pity," Tarrlok says with a sneer, the sheets of his bed stained with blood. "Is that supposed to be an incentive for me to keep living?" Tarrlok is covered in bandages; he knots the sheets around his fingers.

Everything hurts. Noatak can sometimes hardly walk in the mornings. The pain bubbles through his muscles as if he has magma coursing through them, like there are fleshy sacks of it bursting at uneven intervals in his lungs. Corrosive, melting his insides.

Noatak's expression stretches the scar tissue that dapples the contour of his cheek. He can't complain. It's a mark of fate. A reminder.

----

The brothers' new home suits them. It's a place by the sea, a world of storms. Rain and thunder. The village is on the bleary edge of a set of untamed woods. The residents have foggy faces like dough. Unsculpted, dim.

They sleep in separate beds. Tarrlok's is made for two. When they were boys and a snowstorm ravaged the landscape, he would run to Noatak and climb into bed with him, sneaking so that Yakone wouldn't hear him. It was innocuous. They'd been brothers then, bound by more than blood. They are strangers now. They can feel each other's presence, even when Tarrlok's gift has been yanked from him.

Promises. Every new day brings promises. Tarrlok wonders what he should do to celebrate each and every one Noatak breaks.

During the morning, when the grayness of the half-formed day sifts through the mildewed kitchen curtains, they stand to face each other. Noatak lifts his hands and rests them on Tarrlok's cheeks. His brother flinches, and rare tears almost fill Noatak's eyes as he presses the ruined flesh of the right side. 

"So, was the slander true?” Tarrlok says accusingly. “Do you want to skewer your own brother like you did your second-in-command?"

His brother replies gruffly, a smile suddenly gracing his features, "I've always been a man of equal opportunity."

His nose on Tarrlok's in a Water Tribe kiss, he inhales sharply. He's so close and alive. After all of the death and despair, they're here. Not seas apart, not severed through political ties. They've survived. They've thwarted their father, the red string of destiny seeking to choke them.

"You are disturbed. When I stated that you are a pain in my rear, that is most certainly not what I had in mind." Pulling away as if bitten, Tarrlok regards his brother without emotion, though his pulse had raced underneath Noatak's thumb, the blood reaching out frantically to crawl out of his twisted skin. "You're deranged. Mad."

"And disturbed. Yes, we've covered that, my darling brother."

----

Indeed, when Tarrlok would get frightened as a child, he'd run to Noatak. Tonight, things are different. There is no predatory gleam in his eyes as Noatak looms in the doorway. The floor creaks beneath him as he goes to the bed, and Tarrlok startles awake. Wind rattles the shutters.

Splendid.

The bed dips. Noatak's breathing is steady, and he merely gazes at his brother's visage. What must he see? Evidence of triumph—now that he has broken his baby brother again? Whenever Tarrlok grooms himself, his heart always stops a moment before he looks into the mirror.

Good. Anything else, and the despair will consume him.

No doubt Noatak has no such troubles. He suffers quite badly as well, yet he utters nothing about his scars. Doesn't even grimace.

Noatak leans above him, one knee over Tarrlok's leg, the one on the side of his body where Tarrlok doesn't need to struggle for control because the nerves haven't been fried. Their foreheads touch. Tarrlok inhales his brother's scent. It's medicinal herbs and dew. There's no light except for the little beams trickling from the moon.

“You've ruined me,” Tarrlok says curtly. “You've ruined everything I worked for.”

The scant air between them doesn't melt into poison. Tarrlok is almost nude under the sheets. The fabric of his brother's shirt scratches lightly against his collarbone. “I know,” Noatak says, his voice holding no ire. Tarrlok can't tell if his brother feels remorse or merely pretends to act regretful so his brother won't abandon him.

Like Tarrlok could ever leave him.

Noatak lifts his head. His lips graze Tarrlok's temple, and—augh, no. There should be none of that. They are brothers. Months ago, he was a man of prestige. The man before him—above him—is no such thing. He's a criminal. A deceptive, uneducated criminal. They're tied by blood, and yet there's this unspoken tension between them. It's more than indignation, and it's sick, sick, sick.

Tarrlok says, “You've hurt everyone who has ever believed in you.”

Yet who will ever know? Tarrlok is accustomed to hiding his skeletons, but the figurative closet door has been torn from its hinges, all of the secrets split at the head.

“I know.” His brother's voice is muffled in Tarrlok's hair, the little bit that had not been singed away in the explosion. They've never openly discussed that incident.

“I can't even die to get away from you.” Apparently, their blood tie does not only transcend comfort boundaries and societal norms, but a fitful sleep as well.

Sorrowfully, Noatak says, “I know.” Tarrlok wants to crawl out of his skin. Not out of monumental disgust, but shock at how he isn't willing to push Noatak off and move away. 

They've been so alone, and they can never share their connection with another soul. They will be intertwined with their lies and secrets, and that knowledge is a bond forged in dirt and fire, but it's the closest thing each of them will ever have to true understanding. Images only they can conjure. Shared trauma.

Yes, yes, how moving it all is. He says nothing as Noatak hands roam along his skin, pushing the covers back. 

“Fate has been good to us, can't you see that?”

“How?" Tarrlok snaps. "I'm in no mood for your manipulations.”

Noatak grimaces against his neck. “We could've died--”

“I don't want to hear it.”

“--but I can make it all up to you.” There's that undertone again, and Tarrlok knows that he should resist, but this may be the only true, honest point of their brothership, and that's far more bluntness than he's allowed in any past commitments.

“No, Noatak. There's nothing you can do.” Tarrlok tries to control his breathing as Noatak travels lower, his insistent clutching and grasping becoming more invasive.

And soon it's anything but innocuous. Perhaps it's still two lost souls coping with the warmth of one another. Tarrlok presses his hand into the sheets as Noatak hair settles on his belly, as he soon teases Tarrlok with hands and lips. His wet, insistent caresses are gentle.

Desire colliding within his mind and shattering it at the behest of Noatak's ministrations, he can no longer dwell on his shame. It'll stay with him for the rest of his life, so why not have a reprieve?

----

When the next winter comes, Noatak grows ill. Tarrlok isn't quite used to being a caretaker. Both of them have led solitary lives. He feeds Noatak broth, washes the vomit out of his hair, which has grown out, and learns how to cope with only one hand and a leg mangled.

They don't discuss labels. Brothers, lovers, it doesn't matter. They are Tarrlok and Noatak. Disgraced, blank shells, crushed into the sand and sifting through it listlessly. One day, perhaps the sand will erode and reveal something marvelous.

“Don't look at me,” Tarrlok says coarsely, wiping the sweat off of Noatak's forehead with a cloth. That night sticks with him like a grotesque parasite that thrives on his misery and humiliation. A very thick leech-maggot, that one. He's repulsed at Noatak for doing such a thing and nonchalantly continuing on.

And so Noatak closes his eyes. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

“Yes,” Tarrlok replies coldly, “I know.”

[beneath-a-red-moon]

The Olive Branch

<< "Love is not consolation. It is light." - Friedrich Nietzsche 

Tarrlok was a shrewd politician with years of machinations... Noatak knew because he'd watched them take shape. Even still, it was hard to remember now, with his brother so consistently distant. So separate. The reminder sneaks up on him and he's not so sure he minds.

Part of a series. >>

"Here."

Noatak looked up in time to have a crisp piece of paper shoved straight into his face. A cursory glance over the careful kerning, the stiffness of the paper and the colored imprint at the bottom was enough to tell him it was some sort of official documentation, but, at the current distance to his face, rather difficult to focus on actually reading the text. "What is it?" he asked while setting aside his current project - some mix of herbs and what not he'd offered to help with in an attempt to work off the medical care - to carefully pluck the paper out of his brother's hand and bring it to a range at which it could be read. 

"A will," Tarrlok said with all the care he'd given routine sewer maintenance reports.

An eyebrow rose and Noatak turned his attention to skimming the contents of the decidedly short document. "… Your will," he softly corrected, tone markedly neutral as he stewed in the implications of that.

"You can get it to Republic City, can't you?" his brother immediately returned, though it seemed much more a statement than a question.

Noatak frowned. "… I can…" The slow, contemplative drawl dipped into a sigh at the end, a hand raising to press over his eyes. 

"… Then have it sent to someone who could make real use of it," Noatak argued on a low exhale as he lifted the hand from his eyes.

"Like the people who run this clinic?" the younger dryly inquired and sat himself down across from his brother, leaning forward slightly to catch his full attention. "If you want to do this, we will need money. I already made some arrangements before-" A low exhale. 

Noatak's lips pressed into a line, unable to debate the clear logic of the matter, but disliking the solution all the same. "'Already made arrangements'?" he pressed instead.

A small, sardonic smirk tugged at the mending flesh along the right of Tarrlok's face. "The longer it took to deal with you, the more sense it made to have all of my affairs in order." He set his elbow to a knee and leaned to the side as he held his hand out for the paper his brother still held. "And when that mess with the Avatar happened, well, it seemed like a better idea to have a backup plan-"

"You made arrangements in case you needed to fake your own death?" Noatak summarized with a noted tone of surprise as he passed the paper back and straightened where he sat. That couldn't have been right. He'd kept tabs on his brother since the moment he'd had the spare man power for it. He knew every step he took. Every person he met with. Every pressure tactic. Every backdoor deal. Every dull detail… Slowly, an all too amused smirk drew over his features - and perhaps a hint of pride. They were brothers, after all. "No, just in case you needed to disappear. And without going around the law."

For the first time in a long while, Tarrlok could revel in the success of a plan long since set to motion. He spun the paper around in his hand so he could hold it from the top as it faced his brother, a full smile gracing his lips for once since they'd first reunited. "So long as we're within the first couple of months, my assets will still be under government lockdown with everything that's happened. Once a will is found, however…" A light shrug. "Well, legally they're bound to it. And I doubt they've appointed anyone other than Tenzin by now, so the law will be followed. So get it to the city, and let him push it through properly… I'm sure Avatar Korra has given him the story by now… he'll be eager to see 'some good' done with the money," he wrote off with a faint scoff, pushing the paper back to his brother again. "And we can collect a little at a time when we reach civilization again."

Noatak could think of plenty of other things that fell into the category "some good" far more than using his brother's machinations in his old life to fund their transition into this new one, but couldn't bring any to bear just then. Tarrlok's sense of accomplishment was infectious. Not that he'd ever had trouble understanding why and how his brother could convince so many people of so many things over his years as a councilman and otherwise. Curses weren't the only the only thing shared by their blood, it seemed. 

He took the document again, crisply folding it into thirds for travel. "I'll take care of it."

[beneath-a-red-moon]

The Overflow

<< Tarrlok had the time to revisit and rejudge his choices and mistakes. Noatak didn't. And now even a simple practice form can bring out far more than either of them anticipated. 

Love and Hate aren't mutually exclusive.

Part of a series. >>

No matter how he tried or wished it, the mist wouldn't move. It felt lifeless even as it clung to him; the fog low and making everything around him hazy. He moved forward - one careful step in front of the other - and reached a hand out  to feel for terrain that was ultimately empty before him. The air felt thick and heavy with the weight of the water hanging in it, making each breath a fight to work in and out of his body. A strain that slowly seeped into his limbs as he moved. Had to move. Always forward - or whatever felt like forward.

A dark spot emerged amidst the blurry white haze of everything else surrounding him and he turned; instinctively moving towards that which was different around him. Minutes passed and the shadow grew as he closed in on it. It took shape. Slimming. Shrinking. Details slowly emerged until the shadow did as well and he saw before him a woman obscured by the hood of her thick furs and dark hair. Blue eyes the only thing easy to see in the blurred ambience. She wasn't more than his shoulder in height, couldn't have been more than half his age, but when she looked at him, there was a weight in her gaze. 

He opened his mouth to say something - he wasn't sure what, perhaps ask her who she was, where he was - but was stopped by a small smile somehow visible on her face in the blur of his vision. She reached out to him, fingers soft and strong as they curled over his shoulder.

"Are you sure you should be moving that much?"

Tarrlok spared a glance over his shoulder before returning to the slow pace of his form, allowing the gentle movements to draw out the aches of his body: draining them out into the energy around him. "Weren't you the one telling me to move more often?" he lowly returned without bothering to direct the quiet words. 

"Moving one arm is not…" Hesitation wasn't something normal for Noatak, either with his brother or in his old life. He was decisive, driven, self-assured. Always. He strategized. Calculated. Planned. 

"Not a water-bending form?" his brother lowly supplied, turning on one heel as he swept his arms across his body and into a guard towards the far end of the small copse.

Noatak inclined his head in acknowledgement, not merely to the words, but all the reasons he hadn't said them. 

"If I stay in that room much longer, I swear it won't be me you'll be worrying after," Tarrlok flatly related, ending the statement on a short huff.

Amusement quirked a short smirk into Noatak's expression and he stepped further into the copse, unable not to critically assess the form as his brother finished it. The man's execution was a little sharp for the sweeping movements, but to his eye it was less a matter of skill and more a matter of style. He supposed Tarrlok always had favored ice to water. "You should try something more useful if you insist on aggravating all of their hard work."

An eyebrow rose. "Oh? You've stopped using me as a test subject, then?" the haughty retort, though the younger man seemed more exasperatedly amused than actually irritated with his admittedly haphazard healing methods. 

"Don't tell me you aren't relieved." Noatak turned as he answered, settling almost casually into an easy stance that had so quickly sent pure terror into the very man now lingering at his side once more. 

"… I won't," was the only answer he was given as his brother settled across from him - a stiff tension lingering in sore muscles even as he tried to ease it out of his body. A memory of pain that would not be so easily given over to calm. 

Neither offered a bow to begin. A shift of weight and the slight twist of his forward leg preceded Noatak's initial press: the movement mightily slower than either would deal in an actual fight - practice or otherwise - and the punch easily drawn by a partially bound hand into the other's stronger hold. Decades of distance did nothing to loosen them from habit and memory. It seemed almost too easy how their bodies fell into the form of their youth; one advancing as the other deflected, stepped back,, redirected, pressed forward in turn. They adjusted in silence, at first to deafened senses, then again to the reduced motion of burned limbs, then again to well hidden wounds exposed by the stiffness of movement in the grander sweeps as they flowed through the copse. Back and forth. Push and pull. Trancelike. 

"You would be good at chi-blocking," Noatak began again, seemingly out of the blue after long minutes of silence. He caught his brother's uninjured wrist as he spoke, tugging up and back towards himself to offset his companion's center of gravity. 

"Of course I would," Tarrlok shortly huffed, allowing himself to be pulled forward so that his words ended just as he entered his brother's personal space. "That is your idea-" He drew up out of his stance, straightening as he kept their faces close; two sharp gazes tracking the other in unblinking precision. "-of 'more useful'?" 

A moment of silence bloomed as the elder found himself, for once, struggling to read the younger. Pale eyes narrowed and he firmed his hold on the wrist still in hand. It did nothing to alter the sudden loss of his balance to kicked out feet from Tarrlok's sudden movement, but didn't matter either way. Instinct, as always, kicked in and his sudden drop was replaced with a less than graceful backward roll that spun him back to his feet in time to catch the punch swung in from the side less than an inch from his head. The same hand twisted to grasp the injured wrist in a sharp hold he used to turn the burned arm up and around, curling his brother's advancement into a pained spin that dragged out a sharp, wavering, watery gasp and sank him quickly to his knees in mimicry of their previous fight. 

Tarrlok tipped his head back, his penetrating blue gaze clear and directed in spite of the stabbing pain shooting through his twisted and bent arm that made his whole body tremble against the strain of it and tears prick at the edges of his eyes. "I hate you," he said. It was hoarse, and probably quieter than the man had hoped for - weaker - but still out in the cold and bitterness lingering between them. Noatak dropped the arm as if stung, half a step back before he caught up with his actions and then simply fell to silence. A short, empty, breathless laugh escaped his brother as the younger man dragged his damaged limb close once more, bending over around it as if cradling the injury. "… You have no idea… how strongly I wish we'd both left this world in that boat," the raw, barely heard rasp that followed the start of a short rocking motion. 

Noatak raised a hand slowly, hesitantly, towards the curled up form not a foot away, staring at the broken, burnt, damaged man that was supposed to be his hopeful, gentle, weak little brother. No, not weak. Too tender, perhaps, but the jagged edge was something he'd done, wasn't it? "I-"

"You left." The scathing declaration was given with only a slight rise in Tarrlok's head and bent away from as he was, Noatak could only wish to see the expression now etched into it.

"I had to." Somehow, the words slid out far more easily than anticipated. He wasn't sure how, but was for the moment merely grateful they did. "You saw what it was doing to me - to us - that's why I wanted you with me. I wanted-"

"I know what our father did to us, Noatak, not our bending," Tarrlok coldly interrupted, gaze resting now distantly on a far tree rather than dare look back to his brother so close behind him who felt now so far away. "I saw that man whither to nothing and nearly take our mother with him after you left. I'm actually thankful she died before she could find out the truth about you - about either of us."

"You shouldn't have seen either of it," Noatak quickly cut in before his voice could be filled once more by all that flowed into him from the mere utterance of his name spoken out loud after so long. "Everything that happened to us, that twisted us away from each other, was because of the curse I was finally able to rid you of-"

A short bark of a laugh stilled his tongue.

"Spare me the rhetoric," Tarrlok breathed, only then moving to turn himself back towards his brother; his healing scar wholly visible then even under the haphazard fall of hair around and over his face. Their gazes met again in another, brief moment of silence, both weighing and searching; both wanting so desperately to see what they needed in the other. "I hate you," he repeated and found himself gratified to see a grimace catch his older brother's expression before it could be suppressed. It spurred him to add, "but I cannot bear another lifetime of thinking you dead to me." 

Noatak was careful, then, to remember his brother's wounds as he knelt to draw the man into a close embrace. "Then hate me," he lowly conceded, allowing his eyes to fall shut and shifting his hold to tighten it without causing too much more pain.