oooh for the ship development ask meme, could I ask for 7,8, & 25 for Asbel and Hubert tbh (if you're not in the mood for it then any ship you vibing with a lot rn)
thank you!!
7: which character confessed their feelings first?
generally i say hubert because asbel is casually confessing his love to everyone all the time lol. hubert finds this deplorable. also this is deeply complicated by the fact that you know. a declaration of undying love to your brother doesn't necessarily mean anything, right?? asbel thinks they're dating and hubert's still like "he's just doing this because he's my brother and he loves me, feeling that his kisses have romantic intent is evidence of the sickness within me. for feeling this way about my brother." lmao.
8: what was their first date like?
god. messy. hubert wouldn't take asbel out romantically unless asbel was disguised as a woman i think. he's almost got more problems with the gay part than the related part. makes me think of the catfishing date nina and i wrote last year lol
25: try and think of either 3 silly or angsty headcanons for them as a couple?
ohh this one is. hard. they are not on my mind much these days lol. i guess borrowing from the last one, a silly headcanon is that if they ever go out on dates, it's with asbel dressed up as someone else lol. and hubert thinks their relationship is a secret but literally everyone knows. and asbel is a bad liar anyway so he's spilled the beans to everyone. another even stupider headcanon is that kerri is actually supportive of them dating because if hubert marries asbel, then he will be a lhant again and legally her son once more <3 marrying (back) into the family
Summary: Brothers don’t kiss their brothers, your father tells you.
Or: the real reason Hubert was sent to Strahta.
---> ao3
You fidget in your seat.
“Hubert, what have I told you?” your father says.
“Right. Sorry.” You stuff your hands underneath your calves. It makes them go to sleep, but at least you don't bite your nails, or crack your knuckles, or tease the hem of your shorts loose again: bad habits that start to come out when you're feeling nervous.
Not that you're entirely sure why you're nervous. But you're sat in the chair in front of Aston's imposing desk-- normally, your troublemaker brother's favourite spot-- and you can't shift the heavy feeling laid in your stomach that you've done something wrong.
“I've already spoken to Asbel about this. But I know I can trust you to tell the truth, Hubert.”
Your stomach twists. You hate it when your father plays this card. When you tell the truth, Asbel gets mad. When you lie, your chest tangles into knots.
Plus, you're really, really bad at it.
“I mean, you can't look anyone in the eye when you do it,” Cheria had told him, before patting him on the back. “That's a good thing. You ought to stop letting Asbel drag you into trouble with him.”
Was it the marbles you'd forgotten to put away? Or the pigeon Asbel had touched, since you weren't supposed to touch wild birds, or--
“I wondered if there was anything you wanted to tell me, Hubert,” your father says.
“Um.” You hazard a guess. “I'm sorry... I left my books in the kitchen?”
Aston shakes his head. Bzzt. Wrong answer. The disappointment radiating from him crumples your insides like paper in a bonfire, blacking and curling in on itself.
“Frederic said he saw you and Asbel in the garden this afternoon. I wonder if you could explain.”
This afternoon?
Asbel had dragged you away from the homework your tutor set you to play knights in the garden, except that once again, you got stuck playing the princess. Which mostly involved a lot of sitting around while Asbel vanquished dragons and hacked at bushes (to be honest, you're unsure of the appeal Cheria has for the thing, really).
Mostly, you stick it out for the end.
Asbel emerges, victorious, Aston's sword in hand and sticks in his hair, the landscaping rather worse for wear after the dragon attack.
The dragons are all vanquished, your Highness Princess Huberta, he tells you, which makes you glad your other friends aren't around. They tease you enough for not being enough of a boy, which frustrates you a way you can't quite put into words because you are a boy, so why do you have to prove it?
There's a feeling of anticipation in your throat as Asbel climbs your tower (read: the low branch of a magnolia tree-- not too high, because you're not great with heights). He shuffles along the branch to you, hooking his legs around yours to help keep his balance.
Asbel picks a magnolia blossom.
A token for my lady.
The flowers are all in bloom, the fragrance pungent and heavy. Asbel shuffles closer to press his lips to yours.
A kiss for the hero.
Your brother curls a protective arm around your waist so you don't fall. His lips are soft, and something unfolds in your chest, warm and bright as honey.
When he pulls away, his lips pink from kissing, you find the magnolia crushed in your hand, fingers sticky with pollen.
Dread lodges in your chest.
Again, Aston repeats: is there anything you want to to tell him?
You bite your bottom lip. Those games are just pretend. Make-believe.
Aston exhales a small sigh, visibly disappointed.
“Very well. Frederic said he saw you and your brother... kissing... in the garden.” It costs your father an effort to get the words out. His lips catch on the word, kissing, as though through a lure caught in his lip.
Your hands have gone numb.
“We were playing. Asbel wanted me to be the princess.” You find yourself blurting the first thing that comes to mind.
“I should have gathered,” Aston says, and Hubert can feel it coming on: yet another diatribe. The last few years, Asbel can't do anything right. “Hubert, you don't have to listen to everything your brother says. He's a bad influence on--”
“No!”
Your interjection startles you and your father both. You resist the urge to clap a hand over your mouth. Heat rises to your face. Your fingers are tingling. “I mean-- it's not Asbel's fault. I wanted him to. It felt good.”
Immediately after you've got the words out, you realise you've said something you shouldn't have. Before he can clear it away, you catch a snatch of an expression on your father's face, contorted with disgust.
You'd always thought it was just a game you and Asbel were playing. Kissing practice for when you were married. Though the marriage and practice part was quickly forgotten. When Cheria had whispered in your ear- breath tickling your neck-- that one day, she wanted to marry Asbel, you'd had that crumply curling insides feeling once again.
Oh, you think.
Caught up in your thoughts, you don't notice your father has stood. Removing the impartial desk from between you, he sinks onto a knee. “Hubert. Look at me, please.”
You force your eyes up.
“Hold out your hand.”
When you see the wooden ruler in his hand, you know what's coming. For a moment, you think about resisting, keeping your hands buried under your legs, but then Aston says, “Hubert,” and you make yourself do it, biting down your bitter tears.
“You know I hate doing this,” your father says, as though it makes it any better.
You endure.
Three sharp raps to the soft skin on the palm of your hand, setting the numb and stinging flesh alight. Aston raises the ruler once more, but halts when he sees the silent tears running down your face, pooling on your bitten stinging lips, still sore from kissing.
Then he does something unexpected: pulling you into a brief but tight embrace.
You remember your father hugging you when you were a younger child, but since you started getting older, he lost that tactility. Sometimes, especially behind his desk, he seems so stiff, a cardboard cutout of the father you remember.
Your anger and hurt evaporate against the force of that embrace, and find yourself clinging back.
When Aston pulls away, he leaves one hand, gripping your shoulder.
“I don't want to hear about this happening again, alright Hubert? Brothers don't do that sort of thing with brothers.”
You agree, because there's little else you can do.
But you can't meet his eyes. And as you're sent away for bath and bed, you slip a hand into your pocket, stinging fingers curling around the browning remains of a magnolia.
#3: "i don't want your pity, i want your absence."
wc: 1 935
read on ao3 here
Hubert should’ve known his brother would find him out here.
Of course, even when they were young Asbel was never really the sensitive, thoughtful type. But his penchant for getting involved in things he shouldn’t has always been more than enough to pull him into people’s orbits at the worst of times. Perhaps this is why he was always so successful at pissing off their father, whom more and more Hubert suspects he has taken after in all matters of, at the very least, emotion.
Not Asbel, though, who spots him from the steps leading away from the inn and doesn’t stop even for one moment to consider Hubert might be outside, alone, because he does not want company.
All Hubert can do is sigh and accept his fate as Asbel settles down on the bench beside him. Above their heads, the arch of one of Yu Liberté’s famous fountains chills the air; Hubert tries very hard not to let himself appreciate the way his brother’s body heat chases it away.
“Can’t sleep, huh?”
Hubert resolutely does not look at him. “Obviously,” he says.
“Is it because of that girl? The gem polisher?”
Hubert starts. His resolve fails immediately as he turns to fix a baffled look on his brother, whose head is tilted to the side in a show of his curiosity. There is no judgement to it; he really does just want to know.
“Marian? Why in the world would you think that?”
“Well, I don’t know. You’ve been acting kind of weird ever since we helped her out. Cheria said we shouldn’t say anything, but if you’re losing sleep over her…”
Of course, Cheria must have all kinds of ideas about his history with a woman he took enough interest in to gift her something as personal as a set of tools. But not unlike Cheria herself, Marian was always something of an open book; and if Hubert had no choice but to stay on the path they were walking together when they met, the least he could have done in the moment was help someone else realize her dreams were not quite so unattainable. It worked out for them all in the end, so he doesn’t see much point in dwelling on the fact that he was paying close enough attention to her to let himself care what she wanted in the first place.
Realizing his silence is likely only reinforcing whatever ridiculous notions about him Cheria has planted in Asbel’s head, he says, stiffly, “Even if I had had any interest in her, we have long since gone our separate ways. As far as I’m concerned, we may as well be strangers now.”
“But being apart from someone for a long time doesn’t mean you don’t care for them anymore, does it?”
Hubert tenses. He did not want to have this conversation when they reunited in Lhant, and he does not want to have it now.
Asbel doesn’t really give him a choice, though.
“I mean, I feel the same about you as I ever did,” he goes on. “And Cheria, and Richard, and even Sophie. I think it’s okay to admit when you missed someone, Hubert.”
“You are completely missing the point, as usual.”
Asbel blinks. “I am?”
“I have no special feelings for her,” Hubert says. “And I don’t see what you would have to do with it if I did, in any case.”
“If not her, then was there anybody?”
Hubert bites back another sigh. Asbel’s well-meaning probing is landing far too close for comfort, in spite of his misguided aim.
“No,” Hubert says. “I have never had the time to bother with such…frivolous affairs.”
Asbel looks aghast. “Didn’t you have any friends, Hubert?”
That’s what he meant? Hubert shouldn’t even be surprised; his brother wouldn’t know romance if it slapped him directly across the face…and Hubert wouldn’t put that past Cheria, though that thought unsettles him, too, for reasons he wishes sorely it would not.
“Hubert?”
He turns a glare on his brother. “What difference does it make whether or not I did? Obviously, I had greater priorities than socializing for the sake of socializing.”
“Well, yeah, but…” Asbel frowns at him. “But you must’ve been lonely. Right?”
“Enough of this.” Hubert stands, crossing his arms over his chest. He looks at a spot just above Asbel’s head rather than his eyes as he says, “I don’t want your pity, brother. I want your absence.”
The flower behind the bench he has locked his gaze on is not enough to keep him from seeing the flash of hurt across his brother’s face.
But just when he expects—hopes?—Asbel will argue, he does not. He rises from the bench. His voice is very soft: “It’s okay. I know things are different than they used to be. Good night, Hubert.”
Hubert’s damned, traitorous heart leaps up into his throat as Asbel turns to walk away. Desperation spurs him forward, until his hand finds Asbel’s; and the shock of warmth ought to humiliate him, ought to encourage him to push Asbel away all over again, but he simply cannot bring himself to pull back. Asbel turns, eyes wide as they meet his.
“Is something wrong?” he asks after a moment, when Hubert is unable to force any words between his clenched teeth.
At once, Hubert retracts his hand, putting it and the other safely behind his back. Tied up with each other, just in case the near-overwhelming desire to reach out, to touch, rears its ugly head again.
“I should be asking you that,” Hubert mutters. “I didn’t mean I want you gone. I just…thought to be alone, for a while.”
“It’s okay, Hubert. Really. I know…for a long time now, you haven’t really—had a brother anymore.” Though it clearly pains him to do so, Asbel offers him a reassuring smile. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. Whatever I can do to make it easier…”
But the problem is not anything Asbel is doing, or has done. It is—a fantasy Hubert has had since their father put him on that ship with Garrett Oswell away from everything he had ever known. A dream he has had so many times since he has lost count. This shockwave of warmth now, the infuriating realization that Asbel has grown into such a beautiful, charming young man, and yet still he is Hubert’s brother. He has loved him and he has hated him and now he does not want to confront the depth of emotion just being near him sets surging forth, but all the same he cannot seem to rid himself of the desire to be close. As close as possible. Like they are children again sharing a bed because Hubert couldn’t sleep, Asbel’s arm wrapped around his torso to hold him in place against him. Their bodies flush against each other.
Of course Hubert was lonely. But until Asbel was standing right in front of him, he had never had a problem just ignoring it. Always, always, there was something of higher importance; and by all means that should be more true now than ever.
And yet.
Asbel’s watching him intently, waiting. But patience has never come easily to him, and so after a few awkward beats, he asks, “Do you…want me to stay?”
Hubert drops his gaze. His cheeks sting and sear. “Do what you like. It makes no difference to me.”
“Well…okay. If you’re sure.” He hesitates, and then: “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I…I was lonely, too, you know. Without you, I mean.”
The heat climbs higher. He turns away, lest Asbel take notice of it. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m being serious!” Asbel protests. “I wrote you all the time after I started at the academy. I think all I ever talked about in those letters was how much I missed having you around. I stopped writing them when I realized you weren’t going to reply, but I still thought about it a lot. And I guess I just hoped wherever you were, you’d found someone to replace me.”
Hubert takes a moment to digest this—he never received any letters from Asbel as a child, but he doubts he would have wanted to read them even if they had reached him, too afraid that he would find out something he wouldn’t have wanted to know. Something that would shatter the fantasy, as if the reality were not already abundantly clear to him.
Then, he has to admit, “You’re not so easily replaced, as it turns out.”
Though he’s not looking at him, he can hear the grin in Asbel’s voice: “So you did miss me.”
“I suppose I did,” but it is different, of course, than Asbel thinks. If it were just this, the desire to have a brother again, he would not have been awake tonight with all this dread weighing down on him. He would be able to take Cheria’s knowing looks in stride, because at least he would not burn with the compulsion to prove she has him all wrong.
A hand on his shoulder jolts him away from those thoughts. He twists back to see his brother, that soft, compassionate smile lighting up his eyes. The water reflects off of them, so they glisten with all his infuriating earnestness.
And it’s really not fair how a simple touch makes Hubert’s breath flee him. How the heat from Asbel’s hand above his sleeve is enough to drive warmth all the way down into his feet. He is arrested by it; his brother’s ridiculous, loving gaze. How simple things could be if Hubert had felt this for Marian, or any of the nameless—advantageous for them, for the Oswell name—girls his father had ever introduced him to. But he has learned to see the gleam of yearning behind them all. Everyone wants something they believe they can’t attain. Once you find it, any power they may have held over you switches hands. This is human nature: cold and calculable and easily manipulated.
“We should get some sleep,” Asbel says. His hand is still on Hubert’s shoulder, like he does not have the will to remove it. But that’s just wishful thinking.
A beat passes before Hubert can bring himself to nod. At his assent, Asbel pulls away, finally. He takes a step back, and waits. It is a courtesy he has rarely afforded Hubert before, but time has forced them all to change. And yet, as hard as he has worked to kill the compulsion since coming to Strahta, alone, Hubert follows after him.
They do not speak as Asbel leads them back up to the steps to the inn. Nothing has been resolved, and, if anything, Hubert feels worse than he did before he decided to get up and leave their shared room, Asbel’s suffocating presence, behind.
But when Hubert eases the door of that room closed behind them and Asbel says, very quietly, “Night, Hubert,” he cannot help relishing in the feeling of it. As if the sensation of drowning were really so pleasant.
He bites down on the impulse to say more. To reach out, to pull him closer. His desires surge and then retreat when they can find no hold over his will. With not another word, he returns to bed and closes his eyes and pushes his thoughts down, far down, as far as they will go.
He understands better than anyone just how unattainable one’s desires can really be.
