memory box, peter/edmund, hard r

[likecharity]

Title: memory box
Author: likecharity
Pairing: Peter/Edmund
Rating: Hard R
Warnings: Incest
Summary: Edmund finds a box Peter keeps under his bed, and from it, learns a lot of things he didn't know about his brother, and remembers a lot of things he had forgotten.
A/N: Dude, this got long. Oh well. This was for the prompts 'memory' and 'box', because I couldn't choose.


Edmund burst into the bedroom, shutting the door quietly and tightly behind him. He wasn’t sure what he was doing. He wasn’t even sure what he was feeling but he knew things couldn’t go on this way. He was angry - furious, even - but deep down he was upset, too. Once more, he’d confronted Peter, and once more, Peter had refused to listen.

He flung open the drawers in Peter’s bedside table, rummaging through them. He dropped to his knees next to the bed, lifting up the skirt and pushing his head underneath. He didn’t really know what it was that he was searching for. Just something, anything, to reassure him that Peter knew what he was talking about, knew how he felt. A diary, perhaps, though Edmund was aware he’d never seen his brother write in one. He reached out, running his hand along the wooden floor, feeling nothing. He wriggled further under the bed, stretching his arm towards the wall, and that was when he found it.

It was a box, a bit smaller than a shoebox, and it was pushed right up against the wall underneath Peter’s bed. Edmund grabbed it eagerly, dragging it out, and lifted it onto Peter’s bed to have a look. The lid was poorly attached, the tape almost crumbling, and Edmund pulled it off and threw it aside. He didn’t care if he ruined or broke anything, didn’t care if he made a mess. He and Peter had gone through so much together in Narnia, things that Susan and Lucy couldn’t even have begun to understand, but Peter seemed adamant about acting as though Narnia had never even existed.

He was about to reach inside and begin taking things out, but what he saw made him freeze. It was a photograph of the two of them, when they were quite little - Edmund thought he looked about seven, Peter ten or so. It was a photograph their mother had taken, one Edmund had always hated because he was scowling at the camera and his face was dirty, while Peter looked composed and perfect as always. The faces stared up at him as he gazed into the box, and he felt his anger fading away.

”Edmund, sit still for heaven’s sake,” their mother cried, exasperated, strands of her hair coming loose from her bun, frizzy and curling at her temples. She held the camera tightly in her hands, giving her children a warning glare before dipping her head and aiming the camera at them.

“Yes, sit still, Ed,” Peter hissed, nudging Edmund in the side and causing him to almost fall off the bench.

“Shut up,” Edmund snapped, squirming as he tried to regain his balance.

“Boys!” their mother called, her face appearing from behind the camera again. “Edmund, would you behave yourself like your brother, please?”

Edmund frowned at her, and the frown turned into a scowl when Peter reached out and put his arm around him. He glanced at his brother. Peter was smiling angelically at the camera, his hair shiny and his skin clean.

“Oh Peter, that’s lovely,” gushed their mother, and Edmund let the flash of the camera sting his eyes over and over as Peter’s fingers gripped his shoulder.

Edmund lifted the photograph out of the box, wondering what he would find underneath. There were quite a few things, in fact - the box was stuffed full of things that didn’t immediately seem important, just bits and bobs that Edmund found himself briefly wondering why Peter had kept. But as he looked, he began to understand the significance, and he could hardly believe it. He picked up the next thing he saw - some crumpled paper. He unfolded it to see writing, and was surprised that it seemed scrawled and messy, while Peter usually wrote perfectly neatly.

Ed, I’m writing this because I don’t trust myself to say this in person to your face. Talking to you now has become unbearably difficult and I don’t understand why. All the words vanish from my brain when you are near me, and right now you are off with Mathilda and I think I’m able to get the words out on paper because you aren’t here.

It’s not I’ve always loved you - you know that, I hope, no matter how many times I’ve been a pain, it’s only because I love you - but recently everything has changed. I’m sure you must have noticed it. It’s inescapable. As I said before, I can’t talk to you anymore. You’ve been angry with me lately because of it, and it isn’t my I promise you, you’ve done nothing wrong.

I have to admit that I don’t even know how to write this, because it doesn’t make sense in my head. I always loved you - and of course I still do, that hasn’t changed, but it seems that everything else has…since we’ve been here, it’s been amazing and I couldn’t have asked for more out of life, but you’re different here, I’m different here, and it’s not what I’m used to it’s not how it used to be. I could swear you feel it too.

When I’m with Anne, I can’t help thinking of it doesn’t feel right, and when I’m with you I feel things I’ve never felt before. Things I haven’t felt with anybody before, not just you. I don’t know what they mean but I don’t think they’re proper right normal. I don’t know what else I can say. I’m so confused. I wish I could talk to you. I don’t even know if I can give this to you. I’m so sorry.

Your brother, Peter.

Edmund stared at the words on the paper. When had Peter written this letter? He couldn’t even guess - so much had happened in Narnia, and sometimes it seemed so long ago, everything merged together. He sighed, folding the paper back up, and as he did, something fell onto his crossed legs. Looking down he saw that it was a button, a tiny silver button. He picked it up, turning it over in his fingers, and gazed at the little engraving of Aslan on the front. Suddenly he realised where the button had come from, and why Peter had kept it.

They’d been in Narnia for ten years. Peter and Edmund had barely spoken to each other for the past two, and the gossip told everybody that the two Kings did not get along because Edmund was jealous, believing his brother had more power. This was nowhere near the truth of course, but the brothers let people think that way.

“Edmund, we have to go back in,” Peter said, agitated, scuffing his foot along the grass. “Susan asked me to come and look for you, she’s going to follow if I don’t go back to her soon.”

Edmund said nothing for a moment. He took a sip of his wine, staring out into the distance.

“Edmund, talk to me.”

“Me? You want me to talk to you?” Edmund burst out suddenly, leaping up. “You’ve hardly said a word to me for years! I can’t remember the last time we even had a conversation!”

Peter looked troubled. He looked back behind him at the castle and bit his lip. “Edmund, let’s not, let’s not fight,” he said quietly.

Edmund shook his head. “Peter, this is hopeless,” he muttered. “I don’t understand you. I don’t understand. I saw Anne out in the woods earlier this week, she was crying and Susan told me you weren’t seeing her anymore, and ever since then you’re been ignoring her, you’ve been so rude, and all of this isn’t like you, Peter - I don’t understand what’s happening.”

Peter brought his hand up to his mouth, as if clamping it shut to keep the words in. Edmund wished he wouldn’t. He so badly wanted an explanation. He so badly wanted his brother back.

“Never mind,” said Edmund softly. “I ought not to have said anything, it’s no use anyway.”

Peter suddenly grabbed him by the front of his waistcoat, so forcefully and tightly that he felt scared. Peter’s breath was coming in short little gasps, and he looked close to tears.

“Peter, what is it?” Edmund asked, genuinely concerned. “Peter, are you ill? What is it?”

Peter took a deep breath, then yanked Edmund forwards suddenly, pressing their mouths together hard. Edmund held his breath as Peter’s lips moved desperately against his, and he let his brother push him against the wall of the castle. He fought it at first, keeping his lips still and his body stiff, but he felt himself falling into the kiss almost as though he had no choice. He knew it wasn’t like that, though. Everything was making sense now - Peter’s silence, the tension between them, the way Peter had been treating Anne and the way Edmund felt about Mathilda.

Peter broke away from him, his skin flushed and his mouth open. “Oh, Ed,” he gasped. “Oh Ed, I’m sorry - I don’t know-“

Edmund cut him off, kissing him, lifting his hands to his brother’s face and pressing their bodies against each other. Peter opened his mouth almost without thinking and their tongues touched, tentatively at first, and then they were kissing passionately against the stone wall, desperate with desire and frantic with confusion. Peter’s hands twisted in the fabric of Edmund’s shirt and waistcoat, fiddling with the buttons. One button clattered to the ground, and Edmund felt cool air hit his skin.

“Peter? Edmund? Are you out here?” Susan’s voice called suddenly, and the boys leapt apart. Edmund hurriedly fastened his waistcoat and shirt as best as he could, and Peter wiped his mouth anxiously before calling out, “Yes, yes, I found him! We’ll come back in now!”

Edmund leaned his head back against the headboard of Peter’s bed, the memory seeming crystal clear in his brain. He rolled the button between his thumb and forefinger. He remembered how he had rushed around the corner, how Susan had commented on his dishevelled appearance and made some lewd joke about Mathilda that had surprised and embarrassed him. He hurried inside with her, Peter following a little behind. Peter had picked up the button and kept it. And all this time he’d thought Peter didn’t even remember that night. He certainly acted like he didn’t. He refused to speak to Edmund for weeks afterwards, as though nothing had happened at all.

He shook his head. Peter did remember. He’d kept the button all this time, brought it back from Narnia. He’d written a letter; a confusing, muddled, unsent letter, confessing feelings for Edmund, even if he hadn’t known at the time quite what those feelings were. It all meant something to Peter, and Edmund had been convinced all this time that it hadn’t meant a thing. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he looked through the rest of the things in the box. Reaching underneath another photograph - the four siblings together at a ball, though he couldn’t remember the exact event - he felt something sharp and drew his hand away quickly, gasping. There was a cut on his finger, beads of blood forming across it. He stuck his finger into his mouth and sucked, carefully lifting the photo to find what he had cut himself on.

It was a shard of glass, thin and dark blue, and he instantly recognised it as being from the set of wine glasses that Mr Tumnas had bought him for his twenty-first birthday.

”Please don’t have any more, Ed,” Peter pleaded, half-heartedly reaching out to take the bottle of wine from his brother’s hands.

“I can do what I want,” Edmund snapped, pulling the bottle back to him and pouring himself another glass. “It’s so lovely that you care,” he added, his voice thick with sarcasm. “But I wouldn’t bother if I were you.”

“Ed, please, listen to me,” Peter said, lowering his voice even though there was no chance of them being overheard as everyone had gone to bed. It was past 2am. “I’m sorry I never talked to you about that night-“

“Peter, it’s been six months,” Edmund interrupted, taking a large gulp of his wine before continuing. “Six fucking months.”

“Edmund,” Peter admonished, then sighed and rubbed at his forehead, looking down at his lap. “I know, Ed, I’m sorry. I couldn’t - I don’t know what it meant, I was - it was a mistake.”

“A mistake? It was a mistake?” Edmund cried, almost shouting. “Peter, you kissed me. It wasn’t a mistake. Mailing a letter without a stamp is a mistake. Letting Lucy have caffeine is a mistake. Kissing your brother is not something you do by mistake.”

“Would you please listen to me?”

“I would if you were saying anything I wanted to hear.”

“What is it that you want to hear?” asked Peter helplessly. “Do you want to hear that I love you? Do you want to hear that I never stop thinking about you? Because I do, and I can’t. I’ve never felt love and pain like this before, Ed. I love you so much that it feels like it’s killing me. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do. I don’t even know how I feel, how am I supposed to know how you feel? And would you please stop drinking?”

Edmund had finished his glass of wine and was pouring more, sloshing it into the glass, his hand unsteady. He took a swig, then looked at Peter, his eyes furious and blazing. “If you really feel it, why don’t you just accept that you feel it?”

Peter didn’t say anything, just opened his mouth and then closed it weakly, staring at his brother with no idea how to respond.

“Fuck you Peter,” Edmund spat. He leapt up from the armchair, grabbing the wine bottle and his glass and heading towards the door.

“Edmund, please don’t drink any more tonight,” was all Peter could say.

Edmund turned back, flinging both bottle and glass onto the tiled floor surrounding the fireplace. The green and blue glass shattered, and the crimson wine pooled like blood across the tiles. Edmund stormed out of the room, leaving Peter to clean up and come up with an explanation to anyone who hurried down to see what had happened.

Edmund found a napkin in the box, with an unidentifiable dried liquid ring and some scribbles on it. He peered closer and smiled when he recognised his own writing asking ‘Why are we here? This is so boring.’ and Peter’s response - ‘We’re Kings, we have to do boring things like this as well as have fun.’ He couldn’t remember the exact meeting they’d been in when this scrawled conversation had gone on, but he knew it was early, before everything else. He wrapped the shard of glass in the napkin and put it to one side.

There were so many things in the box that he could hardly believe it. More letters that he read, apparently draft after draft of the first he’d found, more scribblings and ink blots on each until they became almost impossible to read. What he could make out from one, the most crumpled and unreadable of them all, made him blush furiously out of shock and embarrassment. He peeled it away from the sheet stuck to the back of it and stuck it into the pocket of his shorts.

There were more photographs - it seemed that the box contained every photograph of Edmund ever taken - and more little notes they’d exchanged. There were items that Edmund couldn’t even place - counters from board games, part of a balloon, a piece of chalk. He continued to look through the box, object by object, reflecting on each one, still unable to believe that Peter has kept all of these things. He found a scrap of fabric near the bottom. It was thin and white and it looked like part of a ripped bedsheet. But surely Peter wouldn’t have torn his sheets just to keep a piece for his memories?

Edmund remembered the night that Peter joined him in drinking too much, and how it turned out to be quite a good thing after all.

”Ed - no - we can’t,” Peter spluttered between the kisses he wasn’t doing anything to put a stop to.

“Here, I’ll save you the trouble of saying it all,” whispered Edmund, a drunken smile upon his face as he locked the bedroom door behind them. “What if we get caught? What if people find out? How will we be able to hide it? What will people think? What about Susan and Lucy? Are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure we haven’t simply had too much to drink?”

Peter couldn’t help but laugh. “Cheeky,” he chuckled, then pulled his brother back towards him for another kiss.

Seconds later they were between Peter’s pristine white sheets, naked together for the first time since they were children. Peter wrapped his hand around Edmund, tugging and rubbing and feeling his brother do the same to him.

“Oh Ed, how can it feel so good?” he murmured foolishly, pressing his lips to Edmund’s neck and letting out a moan.

“Why wouldn’t it?” Edmund asked with a grin, tightening his grip and watching Peter’s eyelids flutter shut.

“Because - oh, because it’s so wrong,” Peter sighed, hearing the words come from his lips but not quite believing them anymore. Everything wrong he’d ever done had made him feel horribly guilty, made him hate himself. But now, here, doing this with Edmund, it felt right, it felt amazing. So much so that there was no way it could be wrong. It just couldn’t be.

Edmund slid out of Peter’s grasp and rummaged in his bedside drawer for a small tube. He handed it to his brother. “On your fingers,” he said.

“What?” asked Peter, feeling a bit stupid as he unscrewed the cap and did what Edmund told him.

“Inside me…” Edmund whispered softly, pulling Peter towards him and pressing a kiss to his lips.

“My fingers?” Peter asked, wishing he wasn’t blushing and hoping Edmund wasn’t going to tease him for it.

“Your fingers first,” Edmund replied with a smile.

“Oh,” said Peter, his heart thudding in his chest as he brought his hand down between Edmund’s legs. His brother spread his legs wide, and Peter heard himself muttering, “How do you know all of this?”

“I had to have some sort of replacement for you, didn’t I? All this time?” was Edmund’s reply. “I’m sorry.”

“All those men?” asked Peter, suddenly understanding a few things at once. “They weren’t coming to talk to you about the gardens?”

Edmund laughed quietly. “No,” he admitted. “Not quite.”

Peter’s face fell. “So - this isn’t your first time?”

Edmund shook his head. “No,” he said. “But it’s my first time with you. And that means more than anything in the whole world.”

Peter’s lips curled into a smile and he leaned down to kiss his brother again.

It was true. This meant more than anything. He had never felt anything so incredible, so important as being inside Edmund, and he knew as he watched his brother’s flushed face that Edmund felt the same way about everything. Edmund’s lips parted as he looked down between their bodies and watched Peter thrusting into him.

“Peter, I love you,” he whispered, so quietly, as though he didn’t want Peter to hear him at all.

“I love you too, Ed,” Peter told him, a little breathlessly as he felt himself getting closer. “This is forever.”

Forever, thought Edmund, the anger returning as he remembered his brother’s words. He’d said it was forever, and now it was nothing. Now it seemed like all these things in the box didn’t mean anything after all. Peter was probably just keeping them because he didn’t know how to throw them out without anyone seeing. How could Edmund still mean anything to him, the way he was acting now? Edmund sighed, remembering the many arguments he’d had with his brother since they’d got back from Narnia. It’d taken a couple of days for them all to work out what had happened, but once they had, Edmund didn’t realise it would affect his relationship with Peter at all. Until he tried to kiss him, and Peter shoved him away, asking him what on earth he was doing.

Since then, he’d tried to talk to Peter over and over, talked to him about Narnia and everything that had happened there, reminded him of when they’d made love, which technically had only been a week ago in the Narnia-Earth calender in their minds. But Peter had avoided him every time, either asking him what he was talking about or telling him he was going crazy. Sometimes he hadn’t even said anything, just left the room or pretended Edmund wasn’t there. It was the most frustrating thing in the world. Edmund clenched his fists, sitting there on the bed surrounded by all these souvenirs. How could it mean nothing to Peter, if he kept all of this? Yet, how could it mean something, if he continued to ignore the past this way?

Edmund began to pile everything into the box again angrily, unwrapping the napkin from his finger and shoving it, blood-stained, back inside. Then he saw one more thing. The last thing in the box, the only thing he hadn’t looked at. It was a twig, a tiny twig from a tree or bush that would have seemed utterly insignificant to anyone else, but Edmund could remember exactly where it came from. It'd been a few days since they'd slept together, and there was no more denial, no more argument. They woke up in each other's arms, and only smiled at each other, snuggling closer. Neither claimed they'd just had too much alcohol. Neither made any excuses at all. They were in love, and they finally accepted it.

They'd just headed into the woods for a walk, but it wasn't long before they thought they were far enough in for nobody to see them, and Edmund abruptly stopped walking and instead pushed Peter up against a tree.

"What are you doing?" asked Peter, and Edmund just laughed at him before pressing his lips to his brother's.

Peter's back was rubbing against the bark of the tree and he broke off the kiss, muttering "Ow."

"What is it?"

"The tree, it's uncomfortable."

Edmund raised his eyebrows, looking slightly amused. "Yeah, well, kissing someone with a beard isn't particularly comfortable either, you know," he said.

"I'll shave it this afternoon," Peter said immediately.

Edmund shook his head, chuckling, and then moved Peter out of the way, putting his own back against the tree. "There," he said. "Better?"

He pulled Peter to him, holding him as they kissed passionately.

"I still can't believe-" Edmund began suddenly, then stopped when he realised that Peter was grinning. "What?"

"You have a twig in your hair," Peter laughed, reaching forwards to pluck it out.

Edmund scowled. "Can I continue now?" Peter nodded. "I still can't believe you want this. All of this. I can't believe you've felt this way all along."

Peter nodded again. "I thought you might say that," he admitted. "Which is why-"

"Peter? Edmund?" came a voice suddenly. It sounded like Lucy's.

Peter leapt back. "Yes? What is it?"

"Susan and I were wondering if you'd like to go riding with us!" Lucy called.

Edmund made a face but Peter ignored him. "That would be lovely, Lucy, we'll be there in a moment!"

And it was when they were riding that it happened. They found the lamp-post, and with it the wardrobe, and everything was over, just when it had finally begun.

Edmund hurriedly wiped a tear away from his face. He had not even realised he'd started to cry. If they'd never found the wardrobe, never been so curious, never been reminded by it of a distant past…nothing would have changed. He stared down at the twig, turning it over in his hand. Peter had kept it.

Suddenly the door was flung open, and Peter appeared in the doorway, looking utterly shocked. "What do you think you're doing?" he cried, staring at the box in front of his brother.

"I was-" Edmund began, but couldn't think of anything to follow it. His reasons seemed trivial now. What mattered was that he had found the box, he knew how Peter truly felt.

"That's private!" Peter shouted. "You can't just go round looking at people's private things!"

He snatched the box up from the bed, shoving the things back inside and clutching it to his chest.

"But Peter…" Edmund whispered. "All of the things in the box…"

"What about them?" Peter snapped. "They're just memories from Narnia, that's all."

"Peter, I looked at them," Edmund told him. "Don't try and tell me they're 'just memories from Narnia'. They're more than that. Why did you keep all of these things?"

Peter said nothing. He grabbed the lid from the floor and tried to cram it onto the box.

"Why do you act as though I mean nothing to you, as though I'm only a brother and that's all I ever was?" Edmund went on. "Yet you keep a box to remind you of everything we once were to each other?"

Peter turned away. "We can't do this, Edmund," he said.

"What's changed?" asked Edmund, standing up from the bed now. "What's changed? Seconds before we came back here, you were kissing me and we were saying it would be forever, and seconds after, you were refusing to touch me."

"This is the real world, Edmund," Peter told him, raising his voice a little. "Things matter here. We can't just-"

"Peter, look at me and tell me you don't love me."

Peter looked at him, but reluctantly.

"You can't do it," Edmund said softly. "If you didn't love me, you would have thrown this box out ages ago. If you don't love me, throw it away now. Go ahead."

Peter held the box even tighter.

"Peter, what were you going to say, the day we left Narnia?" Edmund asked suddenly. "Before Susan and Lucy asked if we wanted to go riding? I said I couldn't believe you wanted me, and you were going to say something, but-"

"I was going to show you this," Peter interrupted. "Everything I'd kept from Narnia that made me think of you. I had it all with me, to show you, because I knew you would want proof of my love. But I never got a chance. When we fell back through the wardrobe, it was still all in my pocket, and I put it all in this box along with some other photographs and things I already had here. I didn't…" his voice was beginning to fade, "I didn't want to ever forget."

"You don't have to!" Edmund cried, frustrated. "You don't have to forget, you don't even have to remember with a box like that, you can have me, you can make new memories!"

Peter would not respond.

"Peter, come here," Edmund hissed.

Peter did, dropping the box as he did so and scattering mementos over the floor. The glass scratched the floorboards and the button fell on top of the square of sheet. Peter and Edmund's lips met with desperate need and want, and they clung to each other so tightly it hurt.

"Edmund-" Peter breathed.

"Don't," said Edmund, pressing his finger to his brother's lips. "Don't say anything."