#tgl gift exchange 2023 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cogaytes · 4 months

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hello @camelspit! i had you for the tgl gift exchange :D

thank you to @gay-otlc for hosting and @arsonistblue for beta-ing!!

Title: brothers

Wordcount: 1753

Summary:

"Who was that?" Jess asks before he can continue the argument. He can't help but be a little curious. The expression on Glain's face when reading the message had been softer than usual—almost…fond.

"Mind your own damn business, Brightwell," she snaps, holding his gaze with a dangerous expression that makes Jess shrink back…before she bursts out laughing. "Kidding. It's one of my older brothers. Rhys. Won't stop messaging me. He's a pain in my arse."

"Brothers are like that." He knows the feeling all too well. Knew the feeling.

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or, jess and glain talk about their brothers. featuring he/she glain as a treat!

Warnings: none

read on ao3 or under the cut!

It's a beautiful day in the High Garda training complex. A gentle breeze brings cool relief from the hot Alexandrian sun, carrying the noise of the bustling city outside into the courtyard. Light glances off the metal of spears in the distance, where Troll is drilling new recruits. The rhythmic chanting of their call and response sounds almost musical from afar.

It's a beautiful day, it seems, to get his arse kicked.

Shouting some sort of battle cry in Welsh, Glain Wathen tears across the field in a blur of brown curls and bowls him to the ground on impact. Jess blinks once, twice, and before he has the chance to wriggle out of her grasp, he's pinned down with the cold steel of a blade held to his throat. "Yield!" his opponent crows, and Jess coughs, tapping twice on the ground with his free hand.

All of a sudden, Glain's weight is gone; he rolls to his feet with a catlike sort of grace, then offers him her hand. Jess accepts it gratefully, still huffing and puffing as he rises to his feet. Glain looks him up and down, seeming unimpressed. "We need to work on your technique."

"What technique?" Jess protests incredulously, "I didn't even get a chance to lift my sword before you were literally on top of me!"

The other tosses a smug smile over his shoulder. "Like I said. Technique." Jess rolls his eyes and follows her to the far side of the courtyard, where he can sink gratefully onto the shady grass and grab a canteen of water. Glain sprawls out as well and wipes at his brow, despite not seeming to have broken a sweat during that whole exchange.

"I don't see why all this 'training' is necessary, anyway," Jess complains between sips. He's not even a formal part of the Library anymore, and he's good enough at surviving that he's not concerned about ending up in a fight. Let alone one where he would only have a sword.

"Archivist's orders," Glain drawls. She's lying on her back now, not even looking at him, but Jess can hear the smirk on his face.

Jess throws his hands into the air. "I don't even work for her!" He's starting to get the distinct impression that Glain just wanted to knock him around for a few hours under the premise of "training." Glain opens her mouth to retort, but he's cut off by the chime of a Codex. Jess frowns; he didn't think he'd brought his Codex with him to the complex. It must be Glain's message, then.

He watches as he rummages through her bag and pulls out the Codex. Its case is plain: smooth black leather, practical and no-nonsense. Very Glain. She reads the message, face shifting slightly, then writes out a quick reply before closing it and turning back to Jess.

"Brothers are like that." He knows the feeling all too well. Knew the feeling.

Glain rolls his eyes in agreement. "Especially older ones." She pauses, as if weighing whether or not to continue. "Was Brendan older?"

Jess' stomach rolls a little, the way it always seems to when thinking about his deceased twin. He takes a second, but still answers the question. "No, he was younger by a few minutes." It makes Jess chuckle, to remember the way Brendan would glare whenever Jess reminded him of that particular fact. His expression sobers, though, thinking about something else. "He was so small when he was born that they didn't think he would survive the night. I think that's why…he always had something to prove."

Glain's presence is steady at his side. "I hated your brother's guts," he says, and Jess barks a surprised laugh. Even after all these years they've spent together, he's never managed to not be caught off guard by Glain's bluntness. "But I'm sorry that he's dead. I don't know if I've ever said it."

"Thank you," Jess replies softly. He wonders if Brendan and Glain would have gotten along in another world. Glain would have little patience for the way Brendan hid his true intentions with extra flourishes of speech, he thinks; he'd probably grumble for him to "say what you mean, cocky twp." But it would have exasperated affection in it, the same way he snaps at Dario now. No, Glain probably wouldn't have liked Brendan, but she would have respected him, and he her.

Jess' heart aches, knowing that neither of them will have the chance to know the other now.

"Did you sign him over to your-" Glain hesitates, glancing over at him, "To Callum, in the end?"

Jess nods. "I think he would have liked it. To know my father built something suitably ornate and expensive to commemorate him. And-" he takes a deep breath, "I thought…my parents should get to bury at least one son."

"That's right. You had another brother, you said."

"Yeah. Liam. They hanged him for smuggling when he was seventeen." He takes a deep breath. "We couldn't- if our family had come forward to claim his body, they would have killed all of us." Next to him, Glain hums in understanding. "I expect he ended up in a mass grave somewhere. But my father…it changed him. I think…maybe he couldn't see us as his sons after that, because there was always the risk that we would be caught too."

"Fuck that," Glain cuts in suddenly. "Soldiers die sometimes. Doesn't mean you stop seeing them as people." She stares him fiercely in the eye, and somehow Jess can't look away. "You deserved better than how he treated you."

He swallows. The best thing about Glain, he thinks, is how he knows without an ounce of doubt that those are her true feelings, and how he shares them with a conviction that makes it so easy to believe. "Thank you. I— I needed to hear that."

I wish Brendan had gotten to. His brother had always pretended otherwise, but he was the one who cared most about what their father thought of him. Jess was the disappointment; he knew that. He wasn't interested in inheriting the business, always more absorbed in reading the books that fell into his hands than smuggling them. Brendan had been the one his father put on a pedestal, and that meant he was the one with the farthest to fall.

He looks up to realize Glain is watching him, expression betraying the closest thing to concern she'd ever let show on his face, so he changes the subject. "Tell me about your brothers?"

Her face turns fond again. "I've got six of them. Four older, two younger. They're idiots."

Jess laughs softly, hearing the visible affection in his voice. "But they're your idiots." The same way he and Dario and Thomas are her idiots. The same way he's Jess' idiot.

"Yeah. They are." Her fingers trace the grip of his sword absentmindedly. "My older brothers were the first people who didn't treat me like I was fragile or helpless. Told me just 'cause I was a girl didn't mean I got to skip out on helping them with the horses, or shoveling out the stalls, or any of that other shit. Rhys even worked extra hours at the blacksmith to save enough coin to send me to postulant training. Knew it was the only way I could join the Garda the way I wanted. And when I came out, Elis gave me my first haircut."

"They sound wonderful," Jess says, and means it. Nothing at all like either of his brothers—Brendan would never display such obvious affection, and Liam had been too old for Jess' foolishness before he died—but wonderful nonetheless.

"You could meet them, if you'd like. I'm going home for Christmas. You could come." She grins wickedly. "Unless, of course, you'd rather spend it with Wolfe and the Santis."

Jess shudders. Captain Santi's family seems to make every gathering a competition to see how many people they can cram into the smallest rooms possible. They'd welcomed him with open arms—and bone-crushing hugs—last year, but he couldn't help but feel…out of place. Everyone was so boisterous and loud, while Jess has always preferred to fade into the background. He'd ended up hiding in the corner with Wolfe after the second time someone clocked him in the head with an elbow during an impassioned speech. Apparently the Scholar spends every Santi celebration as far away from the others as humanly possible, nursing a glass of wine, and with his hands clasped tightly over his ears. "Depends. Will your brothers try to marry me off to every vaguely available cousin?"

Glain throws his head back and laughs. "Absolutely not. They tried bringing up that mushy stuff with me exactly once, when I was eight. You can probably guess how that worked out for them." Jess laughs, too; he pictures a young Glain pinning two brothers twice his size against a cottage wall with knives as long as her forearms. "No, the youngest will probably talk your ear off about dragons, and the older ones'll only be interested in hearing about your adventures." He smirks. "Don't worry, I'll make sure to add on all the parts where you tripped over your own shoelaces or got your hair singed off by Greek fire. We can't have you getting a big head."

Jess smiles, imagines sitting by a fireplace in a cozy sitting room, laughing with Glain's brothers and being cursed out affectionately in Welsh. "That sounds wonderful."

Glain grins. "It's settled, then. I'll let them know you're coming." He opens her Codex again and scratches out a new message. Watching him, Jess is hit with a sudden wave of affection. Glain has been such a steady presence, the past few years; he realizes that he doesn't know what he'd do without her.

"Glain?" Glain looks up from his Codex. "Thanks. For inviting me. And talking."

She grins at him. "Anytime. That's what brothers are for."

#the great library #tgl #tgl gift exchange 2023 #mine

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