#gloucester bros

[harry-leroy]

“I’m on your side” for some Gloucester boys content?

Omg thank you for waiting so long you know it takes me 5 million years to answer asks so thank you!! I will always and forever enjoy writing about my boys ❤️ (Hope you’re doing well!)

“I’m on your side!” Edmund ran after his brother, who decided to turn upstairs after he had grown exhausted from conversation. “Please, Edgar. Can we just talk about this?”

Edgar turned around. He was pale again and looked as if he were about to be ill.

“We’ve already talked about it,” he said, then almost to himself. “I can’t go back there. To the...with Lear... I can’t... I... can’t,”

“I know,” Edmund finally caught up, halfway up the flight of stairs. He was out of breath, though he wasn’t sure why. “I know and you don’t have to go back,”

“Then what do you suggest I do?” Edgar crossed his arms. “Dad will barely look at me. I can’t stay here,”

“Go with Albany,”

“What?”

“Go with Albany,”

“And beg him for a place to sleep? Forget it,” Edgar turned back away, though Edmund noticed some color back in his face. He started walking back towards his room, which he barely left as is. Edmund had to begin following again.

“He won’t say no,” Edmund finally said before his brother turned the door handle. Edgar stopped.

“How do you know that?” Edgar asked, cynicism creeping into his voice. It was one of the only times Edmund heard his brother sound so bitter.

“Because he’s a friend,” Edmund said. “He cares about you, Edgar,”

There was a pause. Edgar became pale again and he turned around, his eyes disinterested, drained.

“Can we talk about this later?” Edgar asked, his voice strained. “I’m tired,”

Edmund stepped back a little on the stair, exhaling, about to retort though the sickly visage his brother wore cut him short. He was on Edgar’s side now; he needed to act like it.

“Yeah, okay,” he said. “Whatever you need,”

Another pause. It would be days before he would see Edgar again, he knew. He would send someone up tomorrow to make sure that his brother was okay, still breathing, still functional. Their father wouldn’t do it. Edgar was dead weight to him now.

“Thanks, Edmund,” Edgar said, and paused before adding, almost under his breath. “I’ll think about it. About Albany,”

Edmund then smiled a little, so did Edgar. Just like they did when they were young. All to quickly, Edgar turned around, looking nearly about to faint, and closed the door behind him.

[harry-leroy]

On whose foolish honesty my practices ride easy... 

@suits-of-woe @princess-of-france

[harry-leroy]

👀

Thank you for this! It’s Gloucester boys time hehehe. Tagging @princess-of-france because the more I read about Edmund and Cordelia the more I need it in my life. Both of y’all’s headcanons for these characters are so great, and needless to say, they’ve inspired my understanding of how they live and breathe. Sending love to the both of you!!

//

Edmund shuffled on his feet, downing the rest of his champagne in the futile effort to make himself if only the slightest bit tipsy. The glass hadn’t even been his; it was Edgar’s before he had given it to Edmund to drink. His brother had only taken it in the first place in order to be polite, but everyone who knew Edgar knew that he had never touched a drop of alcohol in his entire life. Everyone also knew that Edgar was a saint, something that, knowing full well to the contrary, annoyed Edmund. It was one more thing pushing against his frustratingly sober state of mind.

Perhaps it had been the music. Vivaldi string music was a contrast from the normal party Edmund had been to, and there was something slightly refreshing about not having to risk his ears to deafness against the rage of the bass in the synth music. At the same time, the lag in pace grated against his ever waning temper.

From his corner of the ballroom, he saw his brother dancing with Cordelia. It was clumsy, stiff kind of dancing full of courtship. Edmund couldn’t help but roll his eyes as he saw her laugh at one of his awkward movements. He also felt a strange sense of pity for her, only dancing with Edgar to be kind. It seemed, the more Edmund watched, that Edgar was the only person in this entire societal echelon that could enjoy life sober.

“Wishing that could be you, huh?” Goneril leaned back against the wall as she sipped her champagne. Before Edmund could carelessly deny it, she continued. “Everyone wishes they could be with Cordelia,”

“Oh yeah?” Edmund asked, still watching the girl from across the room.

There was a slight pause.

“He lost his mind, didn’t he?” she asked, still looking at the pair on the ballroom floor, rather than at him.

The question caught Edmund slightly off-guard, but perhaps he was finally feeling remotely drunk, or perhaps it was jealousy; he couldn’t quite tell. His head swam all the same, blocking any smarter intuition to negate her.

“Yeah,” he said, with an air of casualty that in the presence of his brother would have been appalling. He blinked, realizing something of a mistake. “But he’s getting better now,”

“Not quite fully there yet though?” she continued, the response almost too quick.

Edmund thought this time before responding, taking a moment to study the woman he had been conversing with. There was something rigid about her stance, even as she leaned against the wall. Her dress was rather modest in comparison to her sisters, despite the extravagance of all three gowns. Then his eyes met hers.

“Are any of us?” Edmund didn’t break her gaze.

She laughed a little, sighed.

“I suppose you have a point,” she said, looking back at her youngest sister, envy striking her irises. It was a look Edmund had recognized in his own reflection when he thought about the same girl, dancing with his brother. One could live without having earned a cent being the favorite child. They got everything without a second thought.

“So what’s your wild secret?” Goneril’s voice caught hold of him again. He banished his train of thought, reminding himself of the days when his brother couldn’t get out of bed, when he looked like a hollow shell with dead eyes, when he heard people who weren’t there. Instead, he laughed a little.

“Oh,” Edmund shrugged. “You know... drugs... sex...” a little quieter, almost embarrassed, “lots of sex...”

“Trust me, you’re not the only one,” Goneril nearly cut him off, swirling the small amount of liquid left in her glass around as if she were bored. “No rock and roll?”

“Well, I -“ he stuttered, off of his usual game.

“It’s a joke,” she finished with a short breath before looking back at the couple on the dance floor. Edmund felt as though her eyes were now on Edgar. “What about him?”

“Who, Edgar?” Edmund tilted his head back a little, as if his body were surprised by the question, though the conversation had perhaps prompted it well enough. “He doesn’t have any,”

“None?” Goneril didn’t seem surprised, despite the response.

“No,” Edmund said, dismissive. “No, he’s got nothing. He’s got nothing while the rest of us have got something. I guess that’s why he um... lost it,”

It was a lie. A terrible, almost amusing lie.

“Shame,” Goneril’s voice echoed in his head, though he couldn’t take his eyes off of Cordelia, even as she parted with Edgar on the floor.

[harry-leroy]

3 hcs for the Gloucester boys? (I’m working on mine for you now :))

Ooh thank you for this! You know I love these boys (maybe a little too much, but it’s fine), so I’m gonna go full motherboard on these :’). (On that note, these’ll probably give me some TEP inspiration - I’ve been kinda neglecting it because Selby Roses is my life right now hehehe.) But anyway, enjoy! Can’t wait to hear yours! (Also might add a cut to these later because angst and my obnoxious analysis - but my tumblr on desktop isn’t working too well right now and I can’t add cuts on mobile for some reason - so here we are).

1) I feel like I need a staging of King Lear where Edgar is portrayed as having a mental illness, and I say that having looked at this play for almost a year now and trying to figure this boy out. (And obviously it would need to be done tastefully and respectfully, anything else would be terrible). But I suppose when I look at these two brothers, Edmund to me has a very clear, very straightforward way of thinking. He’s clear. Sure, he might get distracted with the idea of the sisters, and his indecisiveness between the two of them says that he’s lonely and he needs that connection with someone. But then again, there’s something politically advantageous about those affairs. He might be touch starved, but if he’s going to be touched, it’s going to be by the people who can also get him ahead. Edmund’s never had anything handed to him. He’s always had to play his cards right (as have the sisters - Edgar’s the only male character in the play set to inherit something one day, which I think is an interesting image). Therefore, Edmund’s motive and his direction in this play are extraordinarily clear: climb the ranks through force because I’ve been barred from inheriting honestly. Dog eats dog. That’s the way the England of King Lear works. Edgar, on the other hand, is somewhat of a surprise at every turn. He gets a problem thrust on him, so he responds with a motion towards self-preservation. (Henry VI also has this motivation as well - which might say something about entitled young men) Though, it reads like there was the thought in his head of the opposite. His method of self-preservation is highly creative, and would go to suggest that he doesn’t think himself to be mad or crazy, though I think Gloucester thinks of him in the storm because he’s exhibited behavior like that before. None of the other characters think of Edgar, except Gloucester - which suggests that this illness is kept behind closed doors. Going back to the beginning: Edgar’s not gullible. He’s paranoid. It might be something like persecutory delusions, and I feel like Edmund knows it (so he knows exactly where to strike). He’s not there at the division of the kingdom ceremony. He’s the only character who isn’t there. Yet, there’s no follow up as to why this is. I’ve seen it where Edgar was out with some girl, or he was reading a book or studying, but I’ve never seen it where it might suggest that he’s too afraid to leave his room to go or something to that effect, and I think (if done well) that could be a really strong choice. There’s also a line at the end that I keep thinking about, where Edgar’s telling Albany about when he encountered a man who told Gloucester about everything that had happened, he keeps rambling on without a name. Albany has to stop him: “but who is this?”, almost as if to keep him from hyperventilating - almost as if to say: “Edgar, what are you talking about? Who are you talking about?”. “Kent, sir, the banished Kent”, Edgar replies, as if Albany should have been keeping track this whole time. Anyway, I could go on about how I’d love to see this interpretation of his character, but this is getting long! :’) I hope at least some of that made sense ?

2) Okay, I’m thinking - since we’re going with the *amazing and incredibly angsty* headcanon that Edmund’s got some kind of sex addiction, I’m thinking it’s likely that he’s gotten some girl pregnant at some point. Whether he knows about it, I have no idea - I haven’t thought that far into it, but that could be really interesting to toy around with because of what happened with his birth and conception.

3) I still cannot get over the fact that Albany decided to stay with Edmund’s army not because he thought it was right, but it was because he hates the French. There’s a whole exchange in TEP about it - about how Edgar and Albany were on different sides in that horribly decisive battle, and now they have to unite a kingdom. It definitely knocks Albany’s image down a few pegs. Also, going with the fact that I kind of shipped Cordelia and Edgar in TEP (it was probably going to be a marriage of convenience for the both of them - they love one another, but probably not so much in that way), Edgar came back to civilization as himself to join Cordelia’s army. He didn’t have to do anything - so far as everyone else was concerned, he was off the map, but he came back to fight with her, to fight alongside her when she needed it most. And Albany was on the other side. Ahhh it wrecks me to no end.

[harry-leroy]

So because @suits-of-woe has sent me some fic prompts that I have taken 5ever to get to, and because we love our Gloucester boys, here’s a fic I wrote for the earlier prompt you send me. - I lost the ask, so here we are!

Going to leave it under a cut because it’s long and angsty :’) Hope this is alright- I explored some of the headcanons you were talking about with Edmund because I love them so much.

“Edmund...” Edgar’s voice trailed off as his younger brother made an attempt to rush upstairs without being seen. He had been sitting in the dark, the firelight the only thing that could distinguish that it was him sitting there on the floor and not someone else.

Despite wishing to be unseen, the voice of his brother made Edmund stop and notice him, sitting on the floor with his knees to his chest, staring blankly into the fire. He should have been in bed; they both should have been in bed hours ago.

“Where have you been?” Edgar asked softly, still looking into the fire.

A moment of hesitation.

“I was out,” Edmund replied, even softer still.

“Where?” The boy by the fire asked. He appeared to be nothing more than a boy, despite being nineteen years of age. The pants of his pyjamas were slightly too short for his legs. His hair looked as if it hadn’t been brushed in days. His voice was flat, though there was a flicker of timorousness to it.

“Nowhere,” Edmund said, hesitation in his answer. His head was pounding. There was a soreness in his neck. He could still feel her lips on his skin and it gave him a momentary rush of being somewhere completely different. A loud nightclub maybe, or perhaps the back seat of a car they had broken into, stumbling as they kissed one another wherever they could, trying desperately to drink the other in. He couldn’t even remember her name. It didn’t matter much.

There was a moment between the brothers now. Edmund began to study his brother more closely, stepping cautiously away from the stairs and towards the completely still figure hugging his knees. Edgar hadn’t taken his eyes away from the flames. He couldn’t.

“You okay?” Edmund asked, almost out of social obligation rather than a genuine care. He was too tired to care, too drunk, too stubborn. It was the one thing he had inherited from his father, or perhaps had learned from his father: lack of empathy. It was the only way to survive. Dog eats dog.

“Can’t sleep,” Edgar mumbled. Empathy was the kind of thing that was eating him alive. The closer Edmund got, he realized that Edgar was not still at all. He couldn’t remember the last time his brother had been still.

“Oh,” Edmund said, unsure of what else to say. He knew that it was not the first night this had happened this week, but it was the first time he had seen Edgar like this. Not older than him, but childlike, almost as if Edgar were years younger than him instead of it always being a close call. It was the first time Edmund saw his brother, not as weak, but as fragile. He swallowed, nausea hitting him, though he forced it down.

“You’re drunk, aren’t you?” Edgar asked, his voice clear now, louder than before.

Edmund said nothing, knowing that whatever he said would hurt his brother’s feelings.

“Where were you?” Edgar asked again, his voice quieter now, the hesitation returning.

“I said I was out,” Edmund said finally. He sighed. “Why are you so worried about me?”

There was another moment of silence. Edgar’s eyes had gone blank. It was as if his entire brain had been shrouded in a thick, though unsettled mist.

“Edgar?” Edmund called, trying to reach him without touching him, lest he break.

Edgar finally blinked a few times, and for the first time turned his head to his brother.

“What?” He asked, his voice small and quiet. It was as though he had forgotten the entire conversation.

“Let’s go to bed now,” Edmund said, trying to help his brother up to his feet and away from where their father could hear them. “You need to sleep,”

Edgar took a sharp breath, shakily exhaling as he tried to fight Edmund off, though to no avail. Instead, Edmund swung him around to face him, holding onto his upper arms to keep him from running away. Even drunk, Edmund had the upper hand.

“Don’t touch me,” Edgar’s voice was loud now, threatened. “Get your hands off of me, you animal!”

“What’s happened to you, Edgar?” Edmund asked, still able to keep his brother in place despite the near-frenzied movements against him. “What’s wrong? Come on, talk to me. Please, just talk to me,”

“Let go of me!” Edgar shouted. Edmund released him upon hearing the sharp contrast of the decibel level, worried that their father might hear them from down the long corridor. “Let go of me, or I swear to God-“

“Done!” Edmund cried, not that God had done anything make him fearful. “Done! Edgar, no one’s touching you, now will you please calm down?”

Edgar instead began to cry, nearly falling into his brother’s arms. Edmund caught him, though his own world started spinning, a consequence of the drink no doubt. Awkwardly, he tried to shush him, his brother’s head buried in an odd angle against his chest.

“I don’t know what anything is anymore,” Edgar said, his voice weak again. “None of it makes any sense, and it’s all falling apart, and I don’t know what to do... what is anything?”

Edmund pulled him closer, as if to muffle his sobs so they would be quieter. He was surprised that their father had not heard them by now. It had been a moderate fear of his, getting caught. It had been months ago, but Edmund still remembered it vividly.

It had been the morning after he had stumbled in from a club and their father had found drugs in his pocket. At the breakfast table, none of them had spoken. Edmund took a hand to cover up a bruise he felt forming on his neck while he shoveled cereal into his mouth with the other hand, chewing quickly and not caring much for manners. Edgar sat across from him, eyes blank and bloodshot. One hand was holding onto the spoon, though it appeared without any conviction, as if he might let go at any second. The other hand was at his side, as if he were molded to the manners he had learned despite looking dead on his feet. He didn’t eat, but instead watched his cereal get soggy without much interest in any of it. Edmund only looked him over briefly, sure he would snap out of it eventually.

Their father sat at the head of the table, a row of seats between them, reading a newspaper. Suddenly, Edmund had knocked over his bowl with his elbow, spilling some of the milk before he recovered it. The noise caused the newspaper to be flung down. Edmund shrunk back into himself like he did when he was little. Edgar didn’t seem to notice.

“Edmund!” Their father snapped. “Have some damn manners, why don’t you? Edgar, eat,”

Edgar did nothing, but looked as if he were about to fall out of the chair. Edmund went back to eating quickly, wanting to leave the table as soon as he could.

“Edmund!” Their father barked again, causing him to briefly stop. He sighed. “For God’s sake, look at you both! My sons of eighteen and nineteen years. Proper young men you should be! Instead you’re going out and spending your allowance on drugs and women, and you’re not spending any of yours because you don’t leave the bloody house,”

He sighed again. Somewhere in that speech, Edgar flinched, though it was delayed. He dropped his spoon, hand dangling over it.

“You’re too young to hate the world. The pair of you. I’m going to enroll you both in the military. That’ll teach you something about what it’s really like to live!” Their father growled, taking the newspaper back up. Edmund quickly got up and left, leaving his deadened brother at the table, though he didn’t seem to notice him leaving.

Edmund blinked the memory away. If they hated the world then, they hated it even more now. Both of them had lived in a state of anxiety, Edmund in a state of addiction, Edgar in apathy.

“Let’s go, Edgar,” Edmund said cautiously, aware now that his brother was not only fragile, but unstable. Any sudden movement might throw him down a course with no reparation. “We’ll go to bed. You can sleep with me if you‘d like,”

It was something they used to do as boys. Although then, it was Edmund who would crawl into Edgar’s bed after a nightmare. Now it was the least Edmund thought he could do to return the favor.

“Okay,” was the muffled response into his shirt.

They walked up the stairs, holding onto one another, just as they had always done, and would do so long as they could be brothers.