9"Live fast and die young." are the words I live by.
I wish those words had never slithered out for him to heed, yet I can remember the precise fashion that my tongue descended achingly across my desiccated lips, and the way his eyebrows vaulted in that faux way when he displayed his eminent imitation of apprehension.
"So. I-I d-don't know where you should sleep tonight do you want me t- to see if."
I cut him off in an undertone that was almost inaudible, "Here's fine."
My spine aligned with the arched entryway, eyes inspecting the bookshelves as they darkened the walls, the cream plaster was beginning to shed like skin. Speaking of skin, I couldn't keep my eyes from drifting to the place at his throat where his starched lapel lay unfastened. Perhaps it was the fragile curve of his bare collarbones or the way his Adams apple, indistinguishable to mine, dipped smoothly in anticipation beneath coarse gold skin.
Sweat trickled from his high forehead as I slipped my hand beneath the rigid fabric of his shirt. His skin was moist as my fingers stopped just above his erect nipple. The soft cadence of his heart pressed against my palm was enough to make me purr in enchantment, "Can you feel it?" I whispered harshly, breath hot in his ear, "F-f-feel what?"
I looked into his eyes, the same disquieting opaque as mine as I realized he was playing innocent. We'd done this before, so many times I questioned mercilessly if maybe it was too soon to start again. I'd been alienated from him for two years since the divorce. He was my other half. Images of that interlude blazed through my mind like slides.
The woman that was supposed to be our mother her face in pale mourning. This time she'd been silent long enough. Her silky blonde hair cut short, framing her face in soft waves like water cascading down her scalp. Her lips were voluptuous, but arid. In the courtroom the curve of her breasts suddenly seemed too evident in the sinister dress that flowed against her body like a second skin. At that instant as she sat there, tears splashing against her cheek, I remember feeling this masculine urge to shelter her from him. I discerned that he would have us divided, someone needed to take care of her and I was always the strong one. But the actual motive was that he wanted Kye all to himself. There was something about my brother that seemed malleable and it was inevitable that I was going to be estranged from the person I loved even more then her. I couldn't believe that it wasn't until her death that I would have him back.
I shook this away, the light caught my hair as it hung in my eyes, and I knew that only I could touch his fire. "Your heart," I whispered, answering his question, "It's beating in time with mine." Something flared in his eyes, something from long ago. I caught my breath as he moved my hand away, shoving me back against the bedpost; he lowered his head until his ear was pressed against my heart. I sensed his hands beginning to seize the thin cotton of my shirt, pulling it taut against the muscles in my chest. He sat like that for a while with his eyes closed, listening, breathing.
"Don't move" his whisper raspy as if he was about to break. Disobeying him, my hand moved to stroke his hair away from his eyes, and then it happened. A strange animal resonance escaped his throat and he would have pulled away if I hadn't caught him roughly, forcing him to look me in the eyes, his face so full of sorrow. Before either of us could stop it I was licking his tears, the salty taste stung my tongue.
I felt his breath heavy against my neck, "I-I want to." I stopped, we were clinging to each other now, the silence was deafening as I waited for him to finish his sentence.
"I want you-you're the only one." He was sobbing into me now; his hands were ripping the cotton of my shirt as if it was something delicate, like the wings of an insect. I pushed him roughly against the sheets, and everything had his smell. He crushed his lips against mine, biting my bottom lip; the softest thing about us was our mouths.
The soft blue light of morning was shimmering against my skin when I awoke to feel him next to me. His face against my neck, he was huddled in a fetal position trying to keep warm. It was then that I realized that I was draped with the old quilt that had stars on it, I knew that there was some significance to this, some story about those stars that was supposed to represent our kind but I could never remember if it was a dream or not. My skin was sticky with cum and sweat as I shifted so that he would be covered with the blanket also.
With scratchy material against our sides he groaned and I could feel his lips vibrating with the sound against my throat like the soft skin of a plum. Our limbs were sore and entangled, I could feel him breathing with sleep as I tried to shift without him waking. Once I slid my arm from underneath him I opened my eyes again to see him looking at me so calm and content; and it occurred to me that I had no idea what he was thinking. For the first time in years it felt like we were complete strangers.
"Is it morning?" he gasped as I pulled him to me, my hand grabbing his most vulnerable place, moving, pumping, breathing. The whites of his eyes gleamed under the blue glow of the blanket and I smiled, my lips full and my teeth sharp against them like fangs. I wanted to bite him, taste him for all that he was, his skin bare against mine, identical, sticky as if our very pores were reaching out to be recovered. His voice was soft, making these small whimper sounds that reminded me of snow, his hands around my neck as if he was hanging on for life. And then the noises began to change. They became hoarse, as if I were hurting him, my hand stopped where it was.
"Don't" I was surprised to feel his hand against mine, warm, fine boned. I looked into his eyes questioningly, the tears crystallizing around them. His cheeks were hot and I didn't know if I should go any further, but seeing him shudder made the longing swell deep within my loins. His eyes had an almost milky sheen when he looked at me, eyebrows drawn up with hunger as he made noises of pleading. It was more then I could swallow and before I knew it I was on top of him, pushing myself inside, our bodies one sea of tones and feeling. The sounds from our throats washed over us almost as intensely as our caresses. His spine twisting with my thrusts, his shoulder blades arched like the wings of a sparrow.
Once I was spent I held his face in my hands and couldn't stop crushing my lips against him. His delicate features were so rugged and flushed that I couldn't let go of him. It was just too much. His tongue inside my mouth exploring me, it was as if we had switched places. I could feel his hands on my skin, we'd only been together for less then 24 hours and already we had tasted each other repeatedly, it was as if we had never been apart.
I had taken him inside my mouth, massaging him with my tongue when I heard footsteps echoing along the hallway, just outside our door. I knew it was he. And I knew that he knew just what we were doing, the moans escaping our lips couldn't be silenced as we fumbled for one another at an almost carnivorous rate. More sounds came from the hallway, footsteps, whispers; I'm not really sure what else, but whatever it was my brother's eyes snapped open in shock and he held me to him.
"Shit Aiden," he breathed into my skin, "What if he knows?" I knew he knew, always had known. We sat there, curled into one another like a seashell, our bodies as frozen as the colour of our eyes when the doorknob began to turn. It jiggled from side to side for quite sometime until it had become quite apparent that I had locked the door the night before.
"Kye, Kye I know you're there. I heard you! Why won't you open the door?" To my surprise it was a small high-pitched voice, innocent sounding. The handle jiggled one last time before I heard light footsteps descending briskly, as if whoever it was had no time to waste. The expression on Kye's face softened as he sighed and whispered against my cheek that it was only Kaolin.
"Who's that?" I couldn't stop myself from asking, the tone of my voice lifted. "Oh, it's only this little kid of the girl dad's been banging'." The tone of his voice was gruff suddenly and he seemed to struggle to hold the distaste within him, which caused his shoulders to tense up around him like a shield. It was in those moments that he seemed for the most part out of reach, but also it was in those moments that he resembled me the most.
"Come on, she don't care, she's just a kid." He said playfully, trying to break the dark cloud that seemed to have filled the room like spilled ink. Standing up he grabbed my hand and pulled me into the bathroom that was adjacent to his room, the clear glass of the skylights illuminated the tile with a frosty glow. I glanced in the mirror to see us standing there, the symmetry of that image struck me as humorous somehow. Maybe it was because we were so different no matter how much we looked the same. Or maybe it was the fact that as he turned to turn on the shower, breaking the symmetry, I realized that we were farther apart then I had expected. That even if we still had not wanted to mention it, we had a lot of shit to clear up, as my father would have said. Probably that there was so much to tell, yet no way to really say it without drawing out some sort of rejection from one another.
I looked down, my feet tan against the white tile, and it still seemed strange to me even after all those years that there were people who didn't have someone who resembled them completely. That there were people that were completely separate, with no other half save the one that they saw in the mirror. I remembered, when I was 15, sitting on the edge of the bus seat, or looking at myself in the mirror of some cheap Hollywood hotel, wondering if Kye was doing the same. Knowing that there was someone who was more a part of me then anything else. I used to try to make the same faces that he made when I was sad because I thought that maybe, in some way it would help bring him back.
"A-a-aiden, what's wrong?" as he pulled me to him underneath the steam and soap, I knew that he didn't need to ask.
"Do you still talk to her? Like, I mean, do you feel her when no one is there?" Kye was looking at me with a steady gaze that told me he really did want to know about what happened to her, what she wanted, who she was. I looked down at my fingers, the scar tissue from those times I had outlined my wrist in angry jagged vines. The cool metal of my switchblade was still in the pocket of my coat and in a voice that only he could hear I managed to say, "yeah."
I swallowed and felt as if there was glass in my throat and beneath my eyes, causing my vision to blur. "I just was wondering I didn't mean to- you know."
I was swallowing hard, trying not to cry. Not here, the little table we were sitting at was made of glass and I hadn't even wanted to think of all the lonely faces that surrounded us. Why did we have to go out? I kept tormenting myself with that question only to remember that it was so that we didn't run into him until I was ready.
"Why do you try so hard not to cry, why ya gotta be so tough all the time?" To my astonishment he was kneeling down now, his hand on my thigh as his other hand held mine, slipping into place like a key. I was nervous because I kept wondering what the other people in the café were thinking, but deep down I knew it wasn't that. Not really. I couldn't have given the least amount of thought as to what I appeared to be to everyone else, but what I really couldn't handle was to have Kye think I wasn't strong. A part of me had always tried so hard to hold it all in, Christ, hadn't he done the same all along? He hardly ever let go of his composure. But the truth was, I never had any composure to begin with as my hands trembled and my face grew hot.
"M-m-maybe we aren't supposed to know what could've happened. Christ Kye, I mean, what am I suppose to say? I-I j-just want to feel you, be here, now, before anything else happens." My body was shuddering with tears and I felt so out of control sitting there, not even conscious of what was really coming out of my mouth. "I am not tough, no matter what you think, I'm the weakest person because I couldn't stop her from dying, coz I couldn't break the cycle..but worst of all I couldn't save you." The last words seemed to cling to the air around us, drawing in my breath, I knew this wasn't the first time I'd said it.
The world seemed to stir as we entered the city streets exiting the restaurant; the air was lucid and sultry against my skin from the rain. There was something about the rain that had always pacified me, but it wasn't nearly as appeasing as the sensation of Kye's hand when it seized mine.
"It's been a long day." Kye said gently as he nudged my shoulder playfully, his eyes dark and sad. It came out as more of a sigh to be ingenuous. I glared at the saturated street; the lights reflecting upon the sleet generated vibrant slides against the cement. Swallowing I could feel my heart exploding from the burn, everything had become so much more evident to me since she died. It was as if a new perception had taken the place of where my old resilience had been. The details that encircled me seemed all the more dramatic and multifaceted to take in, as if everything detained answers to what could have been.
"Why didn't you come down to Baton Rouge for the funeral?" I said gruffly, and then when I saw the affliction in his gaze, I realized that I hadn't meant for it to come out that way. He leaned over to ram the button of the crosswalk and just shook his head as if he couldn't believe what I'd said.
"What makes you think I had a choice in that matter?" he'd asked, his voice flouting with trepidation.
"Christ Aiden, sometimes I just don't fucking believe you, you know that? You act so sullen, as if it was my bloody fault that I wasn't there. Well a part of me died that day, just as a part of you died. I begged him to let me go, I pounded my fists against his door until my knuckles were bleeding, but he just continued to ignore me. I tried to leave but he caught me before I could escape, he tied my wrists to the bedpost and whipped me with the buckle of his belt. So don't fucking say I didn't try, I did all that I could. I-I"
He was holding his head in his hands, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head so that he didn't have to look at me. Trembling with vehemence, he kicked at the wall of a nearby café until I wrestled with him to stop. He was growing hysterical now; his curses weren't at me anymore but at what had happened to us. Our limbs were intertwined, his heart against mine as I used all my strength to get him to stop. But people continued to pass as if it was nothing; society does nothing to inflict compassion on the common bystander.
As long as I could remember people in my life had always looked the other way. Yes, having a twin did compensate for a lot, yet people had always treated us as if we weren't human. As if we were just some cute sideshow, the prospect of us being whole separate human beings didn't even seem to cross anyone's mind. I could feel my own fury at the world begin to swell inside me but the sight of my brother kept me grounded.
Before I knew it, it was me who ended up against the wall with his face flushed and sorrowful, his eyebrows drawn up in disbelief. His hands on my shoulders as he began making primal sobbing sounds against me, but still fighting me. I caught him off guard and pulled him to me, pushing his arms down and holding him there.
"Hey, hey it's ok-calm down," I began singing into his ear, and he was all salty with tears and trying so hard to hide it.
"Look, Kye, Kye it's ok-I don't blame you, I don't blame you at all. It's not your fault I'm so sorry god damn it, Kye. We have to stop with all this bullshit or we'll never get anywhere. Look at me damn it, please, I need to see your tears just as you need to see mine."
That seemed to do it; he looked at me from underneath the shadow of his hood. Never had his eyes seemed so transparent with liquid as he kept shaking his head, fighting it. No one knew what it was like to be us he kept saying, his words melting into a jumble of gasps and tears. I pushed his hood back, grabbing hold of his hair and brushing my lips to his cheeks until finally our lips met. I was drinking his sighs as he was mine and I didn't care what anyone beheld. I heard whispers as people passed by, but I couldn't bring myself to really comprehend the danger of it.
Breaking away from him, my eyes heavy lidded and drunk with lust, "Come on, it's getting late."
He grasped my wrist huskily as if he was afraid of losing me in the obscure street corners of Seattle. This time we didn't wait for the crosswalk, instead we dashed through the puddles and past glass buildings that reminded me of metal, the way the light bounced off of it in the desert heat I was so used to. But here the air was thin and wet, crisp against my skin like ice.
"So...boys, it's been awhile." I looked up to see him sprawled across the couch like a sloth with this ominous smile lurking beneath the shadows of his face. Tucked under his arm was a woman who couldn't have been more then twenty-five, her bottle-blonde hair fluffed up in strange shaggy points, while her skin held a slightly jaundice tone.
I wondered if this was Kaolin's mother or just some other woman he had picked up. Without another word he looked away as I felt Kye's hand tense in my grasp. " is gonna be alright." I hushed into his ear. As we moved past the static glow of the television that illuminated his face he chuckled and said
"Oh yeah, your shrink called and wants to meet both of ya 'morrow at the clinic. She's really excited to meet your-twin."
He said the last word as if it was an infectious disease. My father had a way of making me feel as if he was water moccasin, slithering around my ankle about to strike. For as long as I could remember he never called us by our names. It was just "boy" and "you there". In fact he never directed his speech to me, it was only to Kye he spoke. That was the first time he had seen me in two years.