When she is five, she punches him in the mouth and licks the blood off her knuckles. It tastes exactly like hers when she bites her lip.
He looks at her for a quick, begrudging moment and then punches back.
She puts her hand up to her eye. "You can't hit a girl."
"You en't one. You're just my sister."
-
They grow up with bulls and half-naked youths painted on their walls.
They grow up sneaking onto each other's mattresses, warming cold feet between barely less cold thighs.
Every year it get just a little warmer. Every year her ankles sneak a bit higher, bone and joint settling above the knees and climbing up inch by inch.
He groans in his sleep. He groans out of his sleep. Every now and again she digs her elbows into his back just to hear his sharp, wordless replies. The sounds he makes, the gamut of them.
Midnight chimes and his fingers are blunt between her legs, not looking where he touches. She hisses and he snorts a low laugh into the air between them.
The delineations of his body are so much like hers, she is anxious to make them different—to mark him as something else, to touch and remind them both a thousand times of the pieces they don't share. Their asymmetries fit into something more symmetrical than either of them manage on their own.
Night after night she journeys in trying to break it. When morning rises in pale thin streaks outside their window it finds her chin tucked into his shoulder, her teeth, small and square, marking his neck.
-
Their parents tell them they are destined for greatness. "Make us proud," they say to him, and she says "I will" even before he can.
They hadn't been talking to her, but she has always taken the proclivity to taste his words same as him.
If he'll be great she'll be great, if not—
She doesn't tell him any of this. When their parents leave the room to them, they clasp hands behind the close of the door without sparing a glance toward each other. They've never had to look to link.
-
The marks they make, they mirror. They meet the world as two halves; they meet it whole.
blood is thicker | alecto/amycus
He looks at her for a quick, begrudging moment and then punches back.
She puts her hand up to her eye. "You can't hit a girl."
"You en't one. You're just my sister."
-
They grow up with bulls and half-naked youths painted on their walls.
They grow up sneaking onto each other's mattresses, warming cold feet between barely less cold thighs.
Every year it get just a little warmer. Every year her ankles sneak a bit higher, bone and joint settling above the knees and climbing up inch by inch.
He groans in his sleep. He groans out of his sleep. Every now and again she digs her elbows into his back just to hear his sharp, wordless replies. The sounds he makes, the gamut of them.
Midnight chimes and his fingers are blunt between her legs, not looking where he touches. She hisses and he snorts a low laugh into the air between them.
The delineations of his body are so much like hers, she is anxious to make them different—to mark him as something else, to touch and remind them both a thousand times of the pieces they don't share. Their asymmetries fit into something more symmetrical than either of them manage on their own.
Night after night she journeys in trying to break it. When morning rises in pale thin streaks outside their window it finds her chin tucked into his shoulder, her teeth, small and square, marking his neck.
-
Their parents tell them they are destined for greatness. "Make us proud," they say to him, and she says "I will" even before he can.
They hadn't been talking to her, but she has always taken the proclivity to taste his words same as him.
If he'll be great she'll be great, if not—
She doesn't tell him any of this. When their parents leave the room to them, they clasp hands behind the close of the door without sparing a glance toward each other. They've never had to look to link.
-
The marks they make, they mirror. They meet the world as two halves; they meet it whole.