19 - More potassium than DMil's banana
*waves to everyone who is still around*
It's great to still see people prompting and writing :) We may have lost a few people on the way but we also had some new intake. Thanks for keeping this place alive!
Let's hope that conference season and the next election will help to pick up the pace a bit.
The ususal stuff:
1) All fills for prompts of ( Read more... )
It's great to still see people prompting and writing :) We may have lost a few people on the way but we also had some new intake. Thanks for keeping this place alive!
Let's hope that conference season and the next election will help to pick up the pace a bit.
The ususal stuff:
1) All fills for prompts of ( Read more... )
~//~
David wasn’t entirely sure how he ended up playing Cluedo with his career-stealing, back-knifing brother.
No, that wasn’t fair, he did know how. It was because it was the holidays, and because his eight-year-old son had been recently introduced to Cluedo and wanted to play it with everyone he saw. David had spent more than a few after-dinner hours moving Reverend Green around the board and doing battle with Isaac’s Miss Scarlett. (He wasn’t entirely sure why Isaac was always Miss Scarlett, but he thought it had something to do with Peter Mandelson indoctrinating him in the love of red from an early age; he had the sinking feeling that Peter would be well pleased.)
David could tell that Ed had been as wary as he’d been when the suggestion had come up. Perhaps Ed had shared his sudden vision of Professor Plum, with the dagger, in the ballroom. They might have been able to put on a good face for the children (because after all family was family, especially at the holidays), but awkward small talk was one thing. A game custom-designed to whet their competitive fire and bring up difficult memories was another thing entirely.
But Isaac had climbed into Ed’s lap, giving him his best puppy-dog eyes, and Ed had given in. After that, how could David have refused? He wasn’t afraid of a simple board game, even if it involved him sitting across a table from his brother and pretending not to notice the parallels between their history and the game in front of them.
It helped that Isaac was grinning, nearly bouncing in his excitement. They’d handicapped the game by giving him several extra cards, and so far it had been working nicely. He’d been hinting about being close to the solution for two turns now, even though he hadn’t dared to make an accusation yet, and the awkwardness around the table was melting in the face of his enthusiasm. “Professor Plum, in the study, with the revolver!” he crowed, and Ed solemnly moved his piece to the indicated room.
David had the study, and he duly showed Isaac the card, but he was pretty sure that Professor Plum was the killer. Hopefully it wasn’t the dagger. Please let it not be the dagger.
It was Ed’s turn. David watched him as he rolled the dice, idly cataloguing the ways he’d changed while David had been in America. Tired eyes, careworn face… his hair was less grey, but David was fairly sure he hadn’t discovered a fountain of youth, but resorted to hair dye instead. He wondered whether his brother wouldn’t be better served by gracefully bowing to the natural course of things - a dignified grey might have lent him some of the gravitas he lacked.
“Reverend Green, in the study, with the rope,” Ed said.
David was Reverend Green, as always, and he moved his piece. What would it have been like, he wondered, if he’d identified Ed as a rival earlier? He could have taken him out, could have metaphorically strung him up in the study - if he’d been willing to be ruthless, if he’d been willing to lose him. Instead, he’d prevaricated, held back his hand, and look where it had led; Ed in David’s place, and David exiled to America.
He gave Ed the study card, and reached for the dice.
Louise never played Cluedo, and Justine had taken one look at the three of them - at Isaac, bouncing happily, and at David and Ed’s grim faces - and left them to it. She’d patted the back of Ed’s neck as she went, a fleeting touch of comfort, and David had watched the tension ebb momentarily out of Ed’s shoulders.
Once that had been David’s job.
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Isaac shook his head, scribbling something on his clue sheet.
Ed looked up, some wry acknowledgment lingering behind his eyes. “Professor Plum, in the study, with the dagger?” he repeated.
David had missed his voice. They hadn’t been allies, before the leadership race; they’d never spent hours together, heads down hatching schemes. But they had laughed together, in this very house. They had been victorious together, Blairite and Brownite differences put aside for a moment in the thrill of success and Conservative defeat. They had talked together, two men with a common history, bonded with the countless small memories of a shared childhood.
He nodded, and Ed slid a card over to him, their fingers brushing for a second.
David turned the card up, keeping it facing away from Isaac. It was the dagger.
He met Ed’s eyes, which were still rueful, and older than they had any right to be; surely David was the older one, by both chronology and experience. But then Ed had a new history that David knew little of, he supposed. David had fled, making a new home for himself far from painful memories and frustrated dreams, and Ed had shouldered the title they’d fought over and turned back to the larger battle. This Ed was not the Ed he’d known as a child, or the Ed who’d been a bit player in Tony’s governments, or the Ed who’d shown sudden teeth and stolen David’s future. This Ed was someone different, and David found himself wondering who exactly that was.
“Not this time,” Ed said, softly, and put the dagger back in his hand.
“I know who it is!” Isaac said, clapping his hands in glee. “I know who it is!”
Three years, going on four. Perhaps the wounds would always smart; David knew that Louise for one would never forgive Ed for what he’d done. Given the choice, she’d be a metaphorical Mrs Peacock, with the lead piping, in the kitchen without a second’s doubt.
But she wasn’t Ed’s brother. She hadn’t grown up at his side, fighting and arguing and competing, laughing and sharing and protecting. She hadn’t been torn between the urge to dominate and the instinct to safeguard. She hadn’t seen the guilty resignation in Ed’s eyes, the rueful acknowledgement that his actions had lost him the closeness they once shared, the hidden wince as he handed over that dagger card.
“Who is it?” Ed asked, smiling at Isaac. “I hope it isn’t me!”
Isaac wriggled with the joy of beating his uncle and father. “You’ve been very naughty,” he told Ed, solemnly, in an eerie imitation of David himself. “You mustn’t go around hitting people with candlesticks.”
“I’ll remember that,” Ed said, saluting him.
“Professor Plum, in the library, with the candlestick!” Isaac pronounced, jubilantly, and spilled the solution envelope on the board, showing them that he was correct.
“Congratulations,” David said, though it was Ed he was looking at. “Well played.”
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They left Isaac happily putting the game away, and headed back to the kitchen together. There would be laughter there, and too much food, and babies to hold and compliment. The holidays, in a word.
“Sorry,” Ed said, one step behind him in the dim hallway.
“For not beating Isaac?” David said, lightly, stopping but not turning. “Oh, he’s a Cluedo fiend. I half suspect him of cheating.” Another thing to blame Peter for, that streak of charming ruthlessness.
Ed put a hand on his arm, heavy through the ridiculous holiday sweater. “You know what for.”
He’d said it before, but David had never believed him before. He’d never been ready to believe him before.
“I know you can’t forgive me,” Ed said, his voice rueful, “but it’s the holidays, and I just wanted. To say it. To tell you that I’m glad you’re happy in America.”
Of course Ed was glad that David was happy in America. One less person to conspire against him here in the UK. Balls and Yvette were just biding their time for the next leadership election, and god knew who else; if David was still maintaining his power base, it might have already happened.
The words you don’t have anything to be sorry for were on David’s tongue, glib and insincere, but he swallowed them. Ed would know as well as he did that they weren’t meant. Ed did have something to be sorry for, and they both knew it. He’d made the decision that the prize was worth the sacrifice, and he’d no doubt have made it again if given a do-over, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t something to be sorry for.
“I forgive you,” he said, finally, slowly.
Ed made an incoherent sound, the hand on David’s arm tightening involuntarily. “Really?” he said, his voice strange.
David thought about his sons, playing happily together in the park. He thought about Isaac’s love for Labour red, and the way Jacob’s pout reminded him of Ed’s. He thought about childhood rivalries and adult fights, about daggers in ballrooms and Ed’s eyes across a Cluedo table.
“Yes,” he said, and turned to face Ed.
The surprise on Ed’s face faded slowly into a smile, small and a little shaky, but there. “That’s good,” he said.
David rolled his eyes, reached out, and pulled him into an awkwardly clumsy hug. If they were going to do this, if they were going to succumb to the holiday spirit and get all mushy and emotional, they might as well go all the way. He’d never been a fan of half measures.
“Come on,” he said, after a moment. “They’ll eat all the pie without us.”
“That would never do,” Ed agreed, his voice suspiciously scratchy.
David ruffled Ed’s hair as they went into the kitchen together. “You should really just let yourself go grey. You’d get gravitas points.”
“Not you too,” Ed said, laughing, and then they were with their wives, and their mother was looking up, her face alight.
~//~
After dinner, Isaac put on his best wheedling face and asked for a Cluedo rematch.
David knew without looking that there would be worried looks being exchanged between Louise and Justine, but he only had eyes for Ed, and Isaac sitting angelically beside him. “Sure,” he said, smiling, and watched the tiredness in Ed’s eyes fade.
Isaac bustled off to set up the game, and David helped Ed clear the table.
“You know you’re raising a little Peter Mandelson,” Ed told him, as they put the dishes in the sink.
“Shut up,” David said, and jostled him with his hip.
~//~
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