"Patiently Wait to Hear the Words You've Never Said", DreLinor
Title: Patiently Wait to Hear the Words You've Never Said
Author:
thepiss_artist
Pairing: Elinor and Drefan Curston
Rating: PG because of some slight incest.
Warnings: More Original Characters. Hooray.
Summary: Fumbling through your dresser drawer, forgot what I was looking for. Try to guide me in the right direction. Making use of all this time; keeping everything inside...
A/N: It's a medieval sort of setting, I don't know. It probably won't be obvious, but I think the whole "maidservant" deal seals it.
--
It started with a hug.
It was always the hugs. Always. She had hugged him so much as a child that it was almost a wonder why he hadn’t died yet. They came off as thank-you hugs or I’m-sorry hugs, and sometimes even Ambush Hugs. She flicked his nose, and often told him to shut up or leave her to her reading, but it was always the hugs. He could forgive her nose-flicking and her telling him to go away, but the hugs; he could never forget the hugs.
Every time she did it, he pretended to hate it. Pretended not to like it. Pretended that she was spreading her girly cooties all over the place. Of course, he hadn’t always pretended. At first, he found the hugs disgusting -- truthfully disgusting.
But that was before the hormones came in.
They came in when he started having two-digit ages. They were initially quite mild -- mild enough for him not to have noticed. But then they exploded somehow, and he had found himself secretly wishing, waiting, for the next embrace from his sister, Elinor.
Then everything was in pretend disgust and irritation. Whenever she would hug him again, he would make sure to put on a façade of annoyance and would try to push her away, but of course, he wanted it. So much. He liked having her arms around him, he liked hearing her laughs when she did it, and he liked it when she held him extra tight.
But nobody knew this. Not even Elinor knew this. And Drefan wanted to keep it that way.
The hugs lessened when Drefan turned eleven.
They almost disappeared completely when he hit the twelve-year-old mark. And then Elinor just stopped when he turned thirteen. She stopped giving away those hugs, stopped wrapping her arms around him, stopped laughing in his ear… It was over. Over before Drefan could even appreciate it for a longer time.
He thought that maybe it was just because she was getting older. She was seventeen now, after all; seventeen and he was still thirteen. Far too young, of course, but it wasn’t his fault. They were hormones. He could not blame himself for the hormones.
Many times over, he had tried talking his sister into it. …Or tricking her into it, rather. Like he would do something worthy of a small embrace, but it would never really happen. Elinor had somehow grown more distant. … Of course, they were never really very close to begin with, but there were always the hugs to look forward to. And now they were gone, and Drefan was just about ready to give it all up.
That is… Until the idea struck him.
The idea was simple. Very simple. In fact, it was so simple, it bordered on slightly ridiculous. And it wasn’t very genius material, to be honest. The plan barely sounded like it would work very well. It depended on him being sneaky enough -- and on him being convincing enough. He had no problems with being sneaky, of course; he was born to do that after all. No, it was the Being Convincing part. That, he was not so good at.
But he would have to try.
This was, of course, how he found himself poking about inside his sister’s room during one particularly boring afternoon.
He was safe because he knew he wouldn’t get caught. His sister was in the library right now, and she was known to stay there for hours and hours on end. She won’t be coming in any time soon. Should she decide to take a break or fetch something from her room, then Drefan would be dead, so to speak. But he was confident that she was going to stay in the library, and so, he never planned anything in case that scenario would ever occur.
That wasn’t the hard part.
The hard part would come later on.
But Drefan pushed that out of his head. At present, he was focused on looking for his sister’s comb.
Elinor’s comb was most precious to her, though it only came in second -- right after “knowledge”, which was awfully general and, in her case, involved books and inventions and experiments. But Elinor was far more protective about the books and inventions and experiments, so Drefan had no choice but to go with the next best thing.
Every night, Elinor tended to brush her hair at least half a hundred times before going to bed. Drefan had never actually seen this happening, as the only time he had ever really willingly entered his sister’s room was whenever she wanted him to test out an invention for her, but he knew it was true. How else could she have kept those long, straight locks of her if it wasn’t for that?
“Ow!”
Drefan accidentally ran his finger over one of Elinor’s shears. He jumped back a bit and shook his hand to try and make the pain go away. He blew on it, and then proceeded to open up her dresser drawer. He fumbled through it and had, for a second there, almost forgotten what he was looking for. He looked at the ceiling, mouth hanging open a little bit, with his eyebrows knitted together at the edges.
Then he snapped his fingers and went back to looking for the comb. Granted, it was quite difficult to look for, as Elinor had hidden it very well, but he was able to find it all the same. It was located at the very bottom of the dresser drawer, just beneath the shears and scissors and rolls of thread.
Drefan took it out and stuffed it in his pocket.
Pretending that nothing was wrong was surprisingly difficult.
Drefan had to wait for Elinor to notice that her comb was gone. This probably would not occur until later that night -- possibly even midnight, as Elinor was obsessed enough with reading to stay up that late to keep doing it. Throughout the rest of the day, Drefan had to keep himself from fidgeting and being antsy. It was very, very hard work.
Now, Drefan loved going outdoors, loved it as much as his sister loved books, and he liked staying outdoors, but today, he couldn’t help but check back from time to time, just in case he might be able to catch Elinor stressing over the loss of her comb. It never happened, of course. She was inside the library for practically the whole afternoon.
Elinor went out once dinner came, but she went back in the moment she was through. Drefan was tempted to sink his head in the soup bowl and let it stay there.
“Drefan!”
By the time Drefan had finally heard his sister’s voice, it was already a few minutes past midnight, and the thirteen-year-old was lying quietly beneath his sheets. Elinor’s voice woke him up immediately, and he sat up, jumped out of bed, and opened his bedroom door.
Elinor stood barefoot in the doorway. She was in her white nightgown, and she looked awfully distraught.
“What is it?” Drefan rubbed his eyes and pretended to look tired and sleepy.
“My comb. Have you seen my comb?”
“Your what?”
“My comb, Drefan. My comb!”
“Oh. …Oh, well, I haven’t seen it.”
“Are you sure?”
Drefan nodded, putting on an annoyed expression. “I’m sure. Where’d you last place it?”
“In my dresser drawer. It’s always been there. I’ve never taken it out of my room before.”
Drefan started to close his door, but he did it very slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe you have. Maybe it’s with one of the maids…”
Elinor stopped him from closing the door, and a wave of satisfaction surged through him. “It’s not with ‘one of the maids’, Drefan; what are you saying?” she told him. “I’ve strictly forbidden the servants from entering my room. They would never disobey any of the house rules!”
Drefan scratched the back of his head. “So you’re saying…?”
Elinor crossed her arms. “I’m saying that you have to help me look for it.”
“Now? Oh, but it’s midnight now, and I’m tired,” he complained, batting his eyelids in what he supposed was the “groggy” way. “Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”
Elinor glared at him. “Now.” And then she was off. Probably to interrogate the maidservants just in case one of them did enter her room. Of course, Drefan knew that this was not the case. He smiled to himself, feeling a titchy bit proud, then when he was sure Elinor was really gone, he crept back inside his room, opened up the drawer on his bedside table, took out Elinor’s comb, and stuffed it inside his pocket. Afterward, he ventured off into other parts of the house in “search” of the missing object that was now tucked safely within the pocket of his pajamas.
Elinor met up with Drefan again after several minutes, in the hallway between their rooms. The girl had obviously been running up and down certain flights of stairs. It was obvious from her heavy breathing, and from the tiny beads of sweat that rolled down the sides of her face. Her bangs, which usually hung over her eyebrows, were now stuck to her forehead. The bottom of her gown was ruffled and had somehow hiked up from her run and was now up to her shins.
Drefan looked away.
“Well, did you see it?” she asked him. “The servants tell me that they’ve never--“
“Yes, I’ve seen it,” Drefan said, his eyes widening in that sort of way that made you think the person had just recalled something. He held up a finger and began fishing around his pocket for the comb. He took it out and handed it to her. Elinor looked perplexed.
“Where did you find it?” she asked, looking and sounding rather puzzled. Drefan shrugged. He told her that he had found it in the lab.
Elinor raised an eyebrow. “But I didn’t use the laboratory today.”
Drefan could have slapped himself. His heart began beating in his ears. “I meant the library. Yes, the library. Sorry, I mixed both places up. Sorry.” His saying sorry twice made him want to kick himself. The hard part was obviously starting.
Elinor nodded very slowly. “I see,” she said. Drefan, on the other hand, nodded very quickly, almost as if he was insisting that the comb had, indeed, been in the library.
“I don’t recall leaving it in the library.” Elinor was back to being confused.
“Pff…” Drefan was probably trying a little too hard. “I’m sure you did. I mean, how else could it wind up there, right?” Small, nervous chuckle. Not as convincing as he had hoped. “You might have been very interested in the books you were… you know… reading. So you didn’t notice.” Weak.
“But I’m really quite sure I--“ Quick. Interrupt.
“Oh, I don’t know, Elinor. I found it there, and I don’t know how it got there, so can I just go to bed now, please?” ‘Can I go to bed’ was actually, secretly, code for ‘a thank you and a hug, please’. Drefan hoped that she would get the message somehow.
“Well…” Elinor started, sounding rather unconvinced still. She turned slowly. “If you insist…” It was obvious that she had her suspicions, and Drefan mostly blamed it all on the fact that he was born with the disheartening inability to persuade people.
But that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that his plan wasn’t quite functioning well. Elinor hadn’t received the message, and the ‘thank you and a hug’ didn’t look like it was arriving any time soon. Somehow, the sudden appearance of the comb in the library was still puzzling her, and this kept her from entering her room immediately. Drefan was able to buy some time to think of Plan B. The second Elinor’s fingers closed around her bedroom’s doorknob, however, Drefan had panicked so much that he could only say the first word that popped into his head at that very moment.
“Wait!”
Plan B had vanished completely. Elinor looked surprised and a little taken aback, but she stopped and waited all the same. She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow, and kindly said ‘yes’. Drefan stood there and swallowed a lump of something that tasted like sandpaper against his throat. He opened his mouth, and, upon finding that he had nothing to say, closed it almost immediately.
Elinor looked expectantly at him, her head tipped to the side to emphasize this. Drefan adjusted his collar.
What could he do now? He couldn’t tell her what he wanted, what he longed for, what he needed to keep his pre-teen hormonal imbalances in check. He couldn’t open his arms and ask for a thank you -- no, he didn’t want to seem immature. It should’ve come naturally, he thought to himself. But of course, it didn’t, and now, he was left with an impatiently expectant sister and a heavy load of awkward silence.
What was he supposed to do?
If he was seventeen, just like her, what would he have done? If she understood how he felt for her, what would he have done? And if, by some strange twist of fate, the two of them weren’t related in any way, what would he have done? What was the most proper thing to do?
…
Proper.
Did the word “proper” even exist in this sort of attraction?
Drefan had been leaning forward without even noticing.
His eyes weren’t closing, and his mouth wasn’t puckering up. He was just… leaning forward. His face felt hot, and sweat was running down his temples. His feet felt extremely cold against the floor, and his hands were clammy and weird. He took a step forward, and Elinor, whose face painted a mixed palette of surprise and confusion, took a step back. …Or, at least, you know, he hoped it was confusion.
Confusion and not, of all things, horror.
…
“Miss Curston? We’ve looked everyw--“
Drefan jumped back and almost stumbled against his own bedroom door. A few strands of Elinor’s jet black hair, the very same jet black hair that Drefan himself had, stuck out, and her eyes were open wide. Her face, too, was awfully red. Drefan was pretty sure that he had gone red as well. The maidservant who had just appeared -- apparently the Head maidservant -- didn’t seem to notice.
And if she did, she was doing a good job of pretending not to have.
“--where. Have you found your comb?”
“Oh, er…” Elinor began. She tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear, and pathetically held up the comb. “Library.” Her voice didn’t sound like she fully believed that, but she covered it up with a feeble attempt at laughter.
The Head Maidservant, who looked every bit as perplexed as Elinor had been earlier on, nodded anyway, gathered up her skirts, and proceeded to walk down the staircase steps.
They were alone again, Elinor and Drefan, but he couldn’t bear to look at her. He was embarrassed, thoroughly embarrassed, but he had had the moment. It was there. Waiting. Just waiting to be taken advantage of. That moment. And now, it was gone, and there was no other way for him to get it back.
Now, Elinor would probably never want to hug him again. She must have felt that awkward.
Instead of bringing it back, bringing it all back, he had terminated the last ounce of hope.
Some plan.
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
Drefan had been mentally beating himself up when Elinor had said that. His head snapped up almost immediately when he heard her speak, and he found that his sister was looking at him with a certain “knowing” sort of glint in her eyes. He pretended not to have noticed it. “What d’you mean?” he asked, hoping his voice wasn’t cracking from all the nervousness.
Elinor smirked. “You know perfectly well what I mean, Drefan,” she told him. She crossed her arms and held up the comb with one hand. “You stole this and tricked me into thinking you found it yourself.”
Drefan kept silent.
“I see now; I knew it…” Her smile had grown more obvious. Her eyes twinkled rather mischievously, and Drefan could only guess what she was thinking of at that very moment: Not a very well-crafted plan, kid. Or possibly something else that was just as mocking and mentally deflating.
He swallowed. “Kn-knew what?”
Elinor placed her hands upon her knees and crouched a little, her body leaning toward Drefan. He found it unfair how quickly she was able to turn the tables all the way round, when, earlier on, she too had felt rather awkward. Perhaps, Drefan thought, she still did. Perhaps she was very good at hiding it. Perhaps it was an attempt to push all of those into the depths of her mind. Perhaps--
“Your sister isn’t dumb, Drefan,” she said in that airy -- and admittedly annoying -- matter-of-fact voice, which she almost always used when she talked; sometimes even in casual, civilized conversation. “You didn’t have to go through all that trouble. You could’ve just asked.”
Drefan’s heart bean thrashing madly against his ribs. What did this mean? Did she know? Was she honestly that good an actress? The boy could do no more but to purse his lips, shut his eyes tight, shut them as if he were expecting a painful slap on the cheek, and hope for the best. He didn’t know what else to do. His heart, his mind, his soul -- they were all dreadfully embarrassed.
He hadn’t noticed it at first because it was very, very soft and because he had been thinking about things a little too much.
But then there came a sharp, hot sort of sensation, and this sharp, hot sensation burned on his right cheek -- and then he realized. He opened his eyes and looked at his sister. Her face was a little flushed, but he was sure that his looked even more flushed.
“Goodnight, little brother,” she told him. Elinor’s voice drifted and faded, but it lingered for a bit in his head, even as her figure disappeared behind the door. It lingered, and it played over and over and over inside his head. It lingered, and so did the little seed of joy she had planted herself upon his right cheek.
He touched that spot on his face. It was probably meant as a family sort of thing. A brother-sister, sibling sort of thing. Harmless. Platonic. But he wanted to think of it as something more. Think of it how he wanted to think of it. That would have made him believe that his plan had kind of worked somehow -- for when it started with a hug…
…It ended with a kiss.
--
Author:
thepiss_artist
Pairing: Elinor and Drefan Curston
Rating: PG because of some slight incest.
Warnings: More Original Characters. Hooray.
Summary: Fumbling through your dresser drawer, forgot what I was looking for. Try to guide me in the right direction. Making use of all this time; keeping everything inside...
A/N: It's a medieval sort of setting, I don't know. It probably won't be obvious, but I think the whole "maidservant" deal seals it.
--
It started with a hug.
It was always the hugs. Always. She had hugged him so much as a child that it was almost a wonder why he hadn’t died yet. They came off as thank-you hugs or I’m-sorry hugs, and sometimes even Ambush Hugs. She flicked his nose, and often told him to shut up or leave her to her reading, but it was always the hugs. He could forgive her nose-flicking and her telling him to go away, but the hugs; he could never forget the hugs.
Every time she did it, he pretended to hate it. Pretended not to like it. Pretended that she was spreading her girly cooties all over the place. Of course, he hadn’t always pretended. At first, he found the hugs disgusting -- truthfully disgusting.
But that was before the hormones came in.
They came in when he started having two-digit ages. They were initially quite mild -- mild enough for him not to have noticed. But then they exploded somehow, and he had found himself secretly wishing, waiting, for the next embrace from his sister, Elinor.
Then everything was in pretend disgust and irritation. Whenever she would hug him again, he would make sure to put on a façade of annoyance and would try to push her away, but of course, he wanted it. So much. He liked having her arms around him, he liked hearing her laughs when she did it, and he liked it when she held him extra tight.
But nobody knew this. Not even Elinor knew this. And Drefan wanted to keep it that way.
The hugs lessened when Drefan turned eleven.
They almost disappeared completely when he hit the twelve-year-old mark. And then Elinor just stopped when he turned thirteen. She stopped giving away those hugs, stopped wrapping her arms around him, stopped laughing in his ear… It was over. Over before Drefan could even appreciate it for a longer time.
He thought that maybe it was just because she was getting older. She was seventeen now, after all; seventeen and he was still thirteen. Far too young, of course, but it wasn’t his fault. They were hormones. He could not blame himself for the hormones.
Many times over, he had tried talking his sister into it. …Or tricking her into it, rather. Like he would do something worthy of a small embrace, but it would never really happen. Elinor had somehow grown more distant. … Of course, they were never really very close to begin with, but there were always the hugs to look forward to. And now they were gone, and Drefan was just about ready to give it all up.
That is… Until the idea struck him.
The idea was simple. Very simple. In fact, it was so simple, it bordered on slightly ridiculous. And it wasn’t very genius material, to be honest. The plan barely sounded like it would work very well. It depended on him being sneaky enough -- and on him being convincing enough. He had no problems with being sneaky, of course; he was born to do that after all. No, it was the Being Convincing part. That, he was not so good at.
But he would have to try.
This was, of course, how he found himself poking about inside his sister’s room during one particularly boring afternoon.
He was safe because he knew he wouldn’t get caught. His sister was in the library right now, and she was known to stay there for hours and hours on end. She won’t be coming in any time soon. Should she decide to take a break or fetch something from her room, then Drefan would be dead, so to speak. But he was confident that she was going to stay in the library, and so, he never planned anything in case that scenario would ever occur.
That wasn’t the hard part.
The hard part would come later on.
But Drefan pushed that out of his head. At present, he was focused on looking for his sister’s comb.
Elinor’s comb was most precious to her, though it only came in second -- right after “knowledge”, which was awfully general and, in her case, involved books and inventions and experiments. But Elinor was far more protective about the books and inventions and experiments, so Drefan had no choice but to go with the next best thing.
Every night, Elinor tended to brush her hair at least half a hundred times before going to bed. Drefan had never actually seen this happening, as the only time he had ever really willingly entered his sister’s room was whenever she wanted him to test out an invention for her, but he knew it was true. How else could she have kept those long, straight locks of her if it wasn’t for that?
“Ow!”
Drefan accidentally ran his finger over one of Elinor’s shears. He jumped back a bit and shook his hand to try and make the pain go away. He blew on it, and then proceeded to open up her dresser drawer. He fumbled through it and had, for a second there, almost forgotten what he was looking for. He looked at the ceiling, mouth hanging open a little bit, with his eyebrows knitted together at the edges.
Then he snapped his fingers and went back to looking for the comb. Granted, it was quite difficult to look for, as Elinor had hidden it very well, but he was able to find it all the same. It was located at the very bottom of the dresser drawer, just beneath the shears and scissors and rolls of thread.
Drefan took it out and stuffed it in his pocket.
Pretending that nothing was wrong was surprisingly difficult.
Drefan had to wait for Elinor to notice that her comb was gone. This probably would not occur until later that night -- possibly even midnight, as Elinor was obsessed enough with reading to stay up that late to keep doing it. Throughout the rest of the day, Drefan had to keep himself from fidgeting and being antsy. It was very, very hard work.
Now, Drefan loved going outdoors, loved it as much as his sister loved books, and he liked staying outdoors, but today, he couldn’t help but check back from time to time, just in case he might be able to catch Elinor stressing over the loss of her comb. It never happened, of course. She was inside the library for practically the whole afternoon.
Elinor went out once dinner came, but she went back in the moment she was through. Drefan was tempted to sink his head in the soup bowl and let it stay there.
“Drefan!”
By the time Drefan had finally heard his sister’s voice, it was already a few minutes past midnight, and the thirteen-year-old was lying quietly beneath his sheets. Elinor’s voice woke him up immediately, and he sat up, jumped out of bed, and opened his bedroom door.
Elinor stood barefoot in the doorway. She was in her white nightgown, and she looked awfully distraught.
“What is it?” Drefan rubbed his eyes and pretended to look tired and sleepy.
“My comb. Have you seen my comb?”
“Your what?”
“My comb, Drefan. My comb!”
“Oh. …Oh, well, I haven’t seen it.”
“Are you sure?”
Drefan nodded, putting on an annoyed expression. “I’m sure. Where’d you last place it?”
“In my dresser drawer. It’s always been there. I’ve never taken it out of my room before.”
Drefan started to close his door, but he did it very slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe you have. Maybe it’s with one of the maids…”
Elinor stopped him from closing the door, and a wave of satisfaction surged through him. “It’s not with ‘one of the maids’, Drefan; what are you saying?” she told him. “I’ve strictly forbidden the servants from entering my room. They would never disobey any of the house rules!”
Drefan scratched the back of his head. “So you’re saying…?”
Elinor crossed her arms. “I’m saying that you have to help me look for it.”
“Now? Oh, but it’s midnight now, and I’m tired,” he complained, batting his eyelids in what he supposed was the “groggy” way. “Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”
Elinor glared at him. “Now.” And then she was off. Probably to interrogate the maidservants just in case one of them did enter her room. Of course, Drefan knew that this was not the case. He smiled to himself, feeling a titchy bit proud, then when he was sure Elinor was really gone, he crept back inside his room, opened up the drawer on his bedside table, took out Elinor’s comb, and stuffed it inside his pocket. Afterward, he ventured off into other parts of the house in “search” of the missing object that was now tucked safely within the pocket of his pajamas.
Elinor met up with Drefan again after several minutes, in the hallway between their rooms. The girl had obviously been running up and down certain flights of stairs. It was obvious from her heavy breathing, and from the tiny beads of sweat that rolled down the sides of her face. Her bangs, which usually hung over her eyebrows, were now stuck to her forehead. The bottom of her gown was ruffled and had somehow hiked up from her run and was now up to her shins.
Drefan looked away.
“Well, did you see it?” she asked him. “The servants tell me that they’ve never--“
“Yes, I’ve seen it,” Drefan said, his eyes widening in that sort of way that made you think the person had just recalled something. He held up a finger and began fishing around his pocket for the comb. He took it out and handed it to her. Elinor looked perplexed.
“Where did you find it?” she asked, looking and sounding rather puzzled. Drefan shrugged. He told her that he had found it in the lab.
Elinor raised an eyebrow. “But I didn’t use the laboratory today.”
Drefan could have slapped himself. His heart began beating in his ears. “I meant the library. Yes, the library. Sorry, I mixed both places up. Sorry.” His saying sorry twice made him want to kick himself. The hard part was obviously starting.
Elinor nodded very slowly. “I see,” she said. Drefan, on the other hand, nodded very quickly, almost as if he was insisting that the comb had, indeed, been in the library.
“I don’t recall leaving it in the library.” Elinor was back to being confused.
“Pff…” Drefan was probably trying a little too hard. “I’m sure you did. I mean, how else could it wind up there, right?” Small, nervous chuckle. Not as convincing as he had hoped. “You might have been very interested in the books you were… you know… reading. So you didn’t notice.” Weak.
“But I’m really quite sure I--“ Quick. Interrupt.
“Oh, I don’t know, Elinor. I found it there, and I don’t know how it got there, so can I just go to bed now, please?” ‘Can I go to bed’ was actually, secretly, code for ‘a thank you and a hug, please’. Drefan hoped that she would get the message somehow.
“Well…” Elinor started, sounding rather unconvinced still. She turned slowly. “If you insist…” It was obvious that she had her suspicions, and Drefan mostly blamed it all on the fact that he was born with the disheartening inability to persuade people.
But that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that his plan wasn’t quite functioning well. Elinor hadn’t received the message, and the ‘thank you and a hug’ didn’t look like it was arriving any time soon. Somehow, the sudden appearance of the comb in the library was still puzzling her, and this kept her from entering her room immediately. Drefan was able to buy some time to think of Plan B. The second Elinor’s fingers closed around her bedroom’s doorknob, however, Drefan had panicked so much that he could only say the first word that popped into his head at that very moment.
“Wait!”
Plan B had vanished completely. Elinor looked surprised and a little taken aback, but she stopped and waited all the same. She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow, and kindly said ‘yes’. Drefan stood there and swallowed a lump of something that tasted like sandpaper against his throat. He opened his mouth, and, upon finding that he had nothing to say, closed it almost immediately.
Elinor looked expectantly at him, her head tipped to the side to emphasize this. Drefan adjusted his collar.
What could he do now? He couldn’t tell her what he wanted, what he longed for, what he needed to keep his pre-teen hormonal imbalances in check. He couldn’t open his arms and ask for a thank you -- no, he didn’t want to seem immature. It should’ve come naturally, he thought to himself. But of course, it didn’t, and now, he was left with an impatiently expectant sister and a heavy load of awkward silence.
What was he supposed to do?
If he was seventeen, just like her, what would he have done? If she understood how he felt for her, what would he have done? And if, by some strange twist of fate, the two of them weren’t related in any way, what would he have done? What was the most proper thing to do?
…
Proper.
Did the word “proper” even exist in this sort of attraction?
Drefan had been leaning forward without even noticing.
His eyes weren’t closing, and his mouth wasn’t puckering up. He was just… leaning forward. His face felt hot, and sweat was running down his temples. His feet felt extremely cold against the floor, and his hands were clammy and weird. He took a step forward, and Elinor, whose face painted a mixed palette of surprise and confusion, took a step back. …Or, at least, you know, he hoped it was confusion.
Confusion and not, of all things, horror.
…
“Miss Curston? We’ve looked everyw--“
Drefan jumped back and almost stumbled against his own bedroom door. A few strands of Elinor’s jet black hair, the very same jet black hair that Drefan himself had, stuck out, and her eyes were open wide. Her face, too, was awfully red. Drefan was pretty sure that he had gone red as well. The maidservant who had just appeared -- apparently the Head maidservant -- didn’t seem to notice.
And if she did, she was doing a good job of pretending not to have.
“--where. Have you found your comb?”
“Oh, er…” Elinor began. She tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear, and pathetically held up the comb. “Library.” Her voice didn’t sound like she fully believed that, but she covered it up with a feeble attempt at laughter.
The Head Maidservant, who looked every bit as perplexed as Elinor had been earlier on, nodded anyway, gathered up her skirts, and proceeded to walk down the staircase steps.
They were alone again, Elinor and Drefan, but he couldn’t bear to look at her. He was embarrassed, thoroughly embarrassed, but he had had the moment. It was there. Waiting. Just waiting to be taken advantage of. That moment. And now, it was gone, and there was no other way for him to get it back.
Now, Elinor would probably never want to hug him again. She must have felt that awkward.
Instead of bringing it back, bringing it all back, he had terminated the last ounce of hope.
Some plan.
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
Drefan had been mentally beating himself up when Elinor had said that. His head snapped up almost immediately when he heard her speak, and he found that his sister was looking at him with a certain “knowing” sort of glint in her eyes. He pretended not to have noticed it. “What d’you mean?” he asked, hoping his voice wasn’t cracking from all the nervousness.
Elinor smirked. “You know perfectly well what I mean, Drefan,” she told him. She crossed her arms and held up the comb with one hand. “You stole this and tricked me into thinking you found it yourself.”
Drefan kept silent.
“I see now; I knew it…” Her smile had grown more obvious. Her eyes twinkled rather mischievously, and Drefan could only guess what she was thinking of at that very moment: Not a very well-crafted plan, kid. Or possibly something else that was just as mocking and mentally deflating.
He swallowed. “Kn-knew what?”
Elinor placed her hands upon her knees and crouched a little, her body leaning toward Drefan. He found it unfair how quickly she was able to turn the tables all the way round, when, earlier on, she too had felt rather awkward. Perhaps, Drefan thought, she still did. Perhaps she was very good at hiding it. Perhaps it was an attempt to push all of those into the depths of her mind. Perhaps--
“Your sister isn’t dumb, Drefan,” she said in that airy -- and admittedly annoying -- matter-of-fact voice, which she almost always used when she talked; sometimes even in casual, civilized conversation. “You didn’t have to go through all that trouble. You could’ve just asked.”
Drefan’s heart bean thrashing madly against his ribs. What did this mean? Did she know? Was she honestly that good an actress? The boy could do no more but to purse his lips, shut his eyes tight, shut them as if he were expecting a painful slap on the cheek, and hope for the best. He didn’t know what else to do. His heart, his mind, his soul -- they were all dreadfully embarrassed.
He hadn’t noticed it at first because it was very, very soft and because he had been thinking about things a little too much.
But then there came a sharp, hot sort of sensation, and this sharp, hot sensation burned on his right cheek -- and then he realized. He opened his eyes and looked at his sister. Her face was a little flushed, but he was sure that his looked even more flushed.
“Goodnight, little brother,” she told him. Elinor’s voice drifted and faded, but it lingered for a bit in his head, even as her figure disappeared behind the door. It lingered, and it played over and over and over inside his head. It lingered, and so did the little seed of joy she had planted herself upon his right cheek.
He touched that spot on his face. It was probably meant as a family sort of thing. A brother-sister, sibling sort of thing. Harmless. Platonic. But he wanted to think of it as something more. Think of it how he wanted to think of it. That would have made him believe that his plan had kind of worked somehow -- for when it started with a hug…
…It ended with a kiss.
--