I know my sister like I know my own mind
You will never find anyone as trusting or as kind
If I tell her that I love him she’d be silently resigned
He’d be mine
She would say, “I’m fine”
She’s be lying
[x]
It would be so easy. It's almost scary how easy it would be. He could just… lean across the table and his lips could be upon Tanheen's.
Light, he is breathtaking. His cheeks are flushed faintly from the wine, his eyes glowing happily and his lips moving, smiling, laughing. And what a laugh. Koumar could spend hours listening to it. Does spend hours listening to it. He wonders what that laugh would taste like on his lips, what delightful sounds he could draw from that perfect mouth, having that lithe body arching in pleasure beneath him. He wants those eyes to look at him with lust, with want, with love, the same way they look at his brother.
His brother… Tanheen is in love with his brother and Koumar would choose Anstarian's happiness before his any day. So he wishes and he wonders and he dreams, of lips he'll never kiss, of words he'll never hear, of a heart that will never be his. Light, if only they had met under different circumstances, maybe it could've been his name that was spoken with such deep love.
“Koumar?” The young elf is looking at him with a grin, almost embarrassed. “You are staring. Do I have something on my face?”
“What? Oh, no, I was just thinking about how pretty you are”, he says, hating himself for absolutely loving the way Tanheen's cheeks flush and Light, he is laughing again, glancing away. Koumar knows he is the worst brother ever the moment he reaches over the table and cups the priest’s cheek, tilting his head back up. “You are even prettier when you’re blushing.”
It would be so easy and it takes Koumar all he has to not lean across the table and taste those lips. He can’t. He never could, he knows that too well, yet his whole being aches for the other elf.
Tanheen laughs, batting the hand away and rolling his eyes.
“And you are such a charmer, thinking you are all smooth and enticing.”
“You know me so well, dear.”
“Too well, I would say.” The priest leans over the table and Koumar can feel his hot breath on his skin and he has to dig his nails into his palm to keep his self control. “I know what a nerd you truly are, beneath that polished facade. You are not fooling me.”
Now it’s Koumar’s time to laugh and Tanheen looks ridiculously proud over it. He leans back in his chair, a smug smile on his lips and arms folded across his chest. Those gorgeous eyes scan him and Koumar almost thinks he sees… desire? Love? That look, which is usually reserved for Anstarian, and Anstarian only, is resting upon him and the worst possible realisation dawns upon him.
Tanheen loves him.
The very next second, the priest has averted his eyes and grabs his glass of wine, his face flushed not with laughter but with shame and he tries to hide it behind fumbling with the glass.
Koumar wishes he had never seen it.
How is he to resist now, when he knows his love is reciprocated. How painful it is to know that what he desires is within his reach but he can never have it. He’d never betray his brother, never break his trust and so he has to resign himself to watch from a distance, savouring each brush of skin, each laugh and each shared secret. More than anything, he wants to make Tanheen his, to have him beneath him the the heat of the night, to wake him up with a kiss in the morning, to be dragged away from a crowd for a fuck behind the first best closed door. He wants to be the subject of every dirty fantasy and every sweet dream, but he could never allow himself to have that.
“Tan!”
Both elves look up, and Tanheen stands the moment he sees Anstarian approach them. His hair is wet from a shower and he’s dressed in his favourite shirt and pants, with a big smile on his lips and he just… glows. Koumar knows everyone in the inn can see it too, how he brightens up his surroundings by just being and he both loves and hates his little brother for it.
Tanheen melts into Anstarian’s embrace and hides his face in his chest, clinging to him like he’s the source of his life. The paladin smiles fondly and kisses the top of his lover’s head, closing his eyes and breathing in the scent of his hair. Then he opens them and meets Koumar’s gaze, happiness radiating off him.
“Hey, Kou”, he says and Koumar wants to die right then because he loves his brother beyond words and there’s nothing he wishes more than to switch places with him.
“Hey, little brother”, he says. His eyes are on the couple as they sit down, Tanheen in Anstarian’s lap with his arms wrapped around him and laughter on his lips.
The priest steals a quick glance at Koumar, shame and fear flickering across his face before he looks away. Koumar downs the rest of his wine, laughing at a joke he didn’t listen to and he orders another drink to drown the endless guilt and shame coiling in his stomach.
For his brother’s sake, he forces himself to pretend and be content with always being just out of reach.
It is empty.
Empty. Hollow. Devoid of everything.
The wounds do not hurt. The tears do not string, they simply fall and he does not notice.
He is empty.
Someone escorts him away. From grime and dirt and blood. From cries and screams and death. Away from the body of his brother.
It is done. He ended it.
He found his brother and took his life. A life that had been spent caring, nurturing, loving. A life that had been ripped apart, torn and twisted beyond recognition, turned into a monstrosity. He did not deserve this. No one did.
But it is over and there is nothing more. No aftermath, no coming home, no what happens next. There is no home, there is no next. He ends here, wearing the blood of his brother, miles and miles from the rays of sunlight under which they were raised. He ends in darkness, in emptiness.
He killed his own brother and there is no going back.
Someone holds him. They talk, but the words do not reach. They whisper, hush, soothe, but the void has consumed him and it tunes out all sounds.
He is empty.
Years he spent searching, wishing, longing, for the brother he held so dear.
To what end?
What he killed was not his brother. It could not be. He remembers a smile, a warm hand grabbing his own, a laughter filling the air. Those cold eyes did not belong to his brother. That voice, hollow and dead, was not his brother’s. The hands that swung a sword towards him were not his brother’s. It could not be.
Was this what he had spent years missing?
No.
It could not be.
When the senses slowly return to him, cold is the first thing he becomes aware of.
It is seeping through clothes, through skin and flesh, into his very bones. It pierces his heart and turns it to ice. The tears freeze on his cheeks.
If he sits there, if he never moves. Will he become part of it? Another frozen soul in this cold wasteland? Maybe death would have mercy and take him away.
But there is no such thing as mercy in this forsaken place. There is death and there is darkness.
It is over. He is over.
What point is there to him now? He failed. He does not deserve whatever life has yet to rob him off. He failed.
The only thing that ever mattered and
he failed.
Someone leads him up a staircase, to a room, to a bed. To warmth. They tuck him in, strokes his hair, kisses his forehead.
Then he is alone and the shadows mock him. The howling of the wind never stops. The ice that he has turned into does not melt.
The winter is eternal and he hides in its darkness, afraid of the judgement of the light.
He failed.
How could he ever go back?
Some backstory and developing for Tanheen and some venting for me. (I make everything in his life horrible because I use him as subject for vent writing hahaha)
AKA, the reason why Tanheen hates Northrend more than anything else in the world and why he’d rather cut off his own hand than ever go back there.
