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Winter storms blow in early from the east and pour themselves liberally into the undercity, filling up the trenches with misty malcontent. The weather is more of an inconvenience than anything: the crops don’t die, the heat doesn’t give out, and it’s early enough in the season that the temperatures don’t drop to dangerous levels. It sours people’s moods all the same. Days stretch into weeks, and everything stays waterlogged and chilly. The squalls circle over the fissures like carrion birds over open wounds.
There isn’t much for Powder to complain about, personally. She’s small enough that Vi gets nervous letting her out in the cold for too long, so outside of the rare pockets of occasional afternoon sunshine, she stays tucked away in the basement when the rest of them have to trudge out to earn their keep. Not getting to go work with the big kids is a bit of a sore spot for her, but she can’t be too mad about long afternoons curled up in the prime real estate in front of the furnace. She colors and tinkers and arranges her toys into neat little rows, and arranges herself right there in the middle of them, and waits, and waits, and waits.
It’s a much less restful time for Vi, who has long since graduated from getting to stay home in bad weather. Vi is Vander’s girl through and through, and that means she’s saddled with all the adult-y business that requires caring about intangible shit like atmospheric pressure and germs and the economy. Powder can be tucked away on a shelf for convenience, but Vi lives and dies by hard work, rain or shine. It seems like more of a dying stretch, these days.
Morale and business are down. A few merchant fleets were blown off course before they made it to port, so new goods and new coin are thin on the ground in the Lanes. They get fewer customers at the Last Drop, and the ones who do come are meaner and more irritating, stay longer and drink louder and make more of a mess. The endless rainwater sluices down the ragged rock walls and drags all kinds of nastiness down with it, mucking up the roads and trying to soak into as many shoes as possible before draining all the way down into the sump. Powder’s secretly a little fond of it—the reeking mudpits and puddles tend to attract all sorts of interesting-looking bugs—but Vi has to worry about pollutants and disease and the smell sinking into all of their clothes.
Stinking mud gets tracked all over the floors, which means all the kids have been given double mop duty, which means Vi is pulling quadruple-double mop duty, because the boys always half-ass it and Vi has a total stick up her ass about letting Powder help with anything ever. The ledgers do not look good, another problem which supposedly stays between Vi and Vander but is plainly visible in the way they slump towards each other to mutter over the books. And the boys complain constantly—Mylo is always annoying, that’s nothing new, but even Claggor has taken to one of his constant heavy-sighing moods, and Vi starts twitching every time he starts up on it again. It sets Powder’s teeth on edge how oblivious they are about driving her fucking nuts, and no amount of frantic gesturing behind Vi’s back can get them to cut it out for five freaking seconds.
Vi insists it isn’t Powder’s job to look out for her, but somebody’s got to do it. Her sister is eroding right before her eyes, and no amount of crayon drawings and back scratches seem to be able to fix it. No one else is stepping in to lighten Vi’s load—ungrateful bastards—but in the end, they don’t really need to. If what needs doing is getting Vi some relief, Powder can handle things herself—she can do that better than anyone else. She just needs to bring out the big guns.
She gets her chance smack-dab in the middle of the workweek. Business is so sluggish they didn’t even open today, just took the chance to deep-clean and repair the damaged weatherproofing before the evening errands. Powder gets the world’s most microscopic cut refitting a busted window grate, and so of course is immediately banished by Vi to go sit at the bar and nurse a cup of juice while everyone else finishes the work. Mylo threw a massive fit about it, and Powder usually would too, but she has bigger fish to fry—and it works in her favor anyway, because tidying up behind the bar is exactly the man she needs to see.
Perched on the stool like a gargoyle and with an expression nearly as stony, Powder stares hard at Vander and slurps her juice unconscionably loud until she finally catches his attention. She tilts her head pointedly; his gaze follows and lands on Vi, who’s curled up in a half-scrubbed booth with her head in her hands, trying in vain to massage a migraine out of her skull. Vander blanches at the sight, then leans in towards Powder with a sheepish grin.
“If the rest of us clear out,” he whispers, “you’ll take care of it for me? After errands?” Powder nods solemnly; his grin widens, and he ruffles her hair.
They head off soon after, sludging through the streets in a loose clump like a wandering solar system. The worst of the day’s storms have petered out. This far down in the trenches, they’re sheltered enough by the crisscrossing walkways and overhangs that the rain is mostly lazy drizzles of runoff. The chill curls around their wrists and ankles, insistent, gnawing.
They pass from building to building without Powder absorbing much; her attention is too fixed on the treacherous ground, slippery on the cobbles and squelchy in between, and on Vi, glowering out at the world from the shadows of her hood. Vi’s got a lot of scowls in her repertoire, and Powder’s pretty good at identifying them. This is no ordinary scowl; stress lines carve deep into her brow like battle scars, and Powder longs to rub them away with her thumbs.
At least Vander is herding the boys off whenever they try and circle too close. It frees up the precious space right at Vi’s sides, but Powder forces herself not to pounce on it, knows her sister can get claustrophobic.
Fortunately, she doesn’t have to exercise restraint very long. As the wind picks up, Vi looks over her shoulder to find Powder picking her way across the stones. With a quiet snort of a laugh, Vi loops her arm around Powder’s shoulders and pulls her tight to her side. Powder nearly slips in the wet, but she’s pressed so close to Vi’s rock-solid frame that there’s no chance of falling.
“C’mere, squirt,” Vi says; her eyes are tired, but her smile is genuine. “You’ll get cold out there on your own.”
There’s not a lot of body heat to be gained through their rain-slicked coats—the faceful of wetness Powder gets when she nuzzles into Vi’s side is liable to make her colder, if anything—but it sets her insides aglow with warmth all the same. She permits herself a happy little skip-shuffle, pinned upright in her sister’s grip, and wraps an arm around Vi’s waist to pet her side.
They stay melded together as the evening wears on, in their own peaceful little bubble. Powder guards its borders ferociously by shooting Mylo dirty looks whenever he exists too close, or too loudly, or really at all, which offends him greatly but makes Claggor laugh. All the while Vi squeezes her shoulder rhythmically: soft at first, nigh-unnoticeable, and then harder and harder, wearing tiny fingerprint aches into her flesh. It’s entirely unconscious, so Powder bites down on her lip to keep herself from purring. If Vi realized she was doing it she’d stop immediately, but Powder knows she needs the self-soothing—she’ll make sure Vi gets it, even if her sister is too embarrassed to let herself have it.
It’s a nice night, all things considered, but Powder is itching to steal Vi away; this is a problem that’ll take a lot more than one-armed cuddles to resolve, and she wants to get cracking as soon as she can. She stares daggers into the back of Vander’s head, hoping one of them will penetrate his thick skull and impart a sense of urgency, but he just keeps humming and browsing through completely identical baskets of onions. Things stretch on and on and on and on and on until finally, finally, Vander comes through for her and announces over stew at Jericho’s that he’s taking the boys over to Benzo’s for the night.
“Awh, what?” Mylo cries, slamming his palms on the table and rattling the bowls. Claggor rolls his eyes, Vander chastises them both, and they devolve into a torrent of whining and admonishment. Compelled by the scent of blood in the water, Powder opens her mouth to jump in, but is immediately pacified when her eyes land on Vi messily licking sauce off her fingers.
No point in picking fights now; the bickering is annoying, but Vi’s occupied enough with stuffing her face to not be too bothered by it, and Powder’s got the night in the bag now.
She knows just how to play her cards. She finishes her bowl early, stands up and stretches and generally fucks around while she waits for the moment to present itself. Rainwater blurps from the gutters and spatters arpeggios on the stall roof. The wind swoops low into the fissures with a discordant echoing howl. Powder curls into Vi’s side against the chill, drapes herself over her sister’s shoulder and leans in, in, in, until her lips brush over her ear.
“When we’re home alone tonight,” she whispers, “do you want to play dolls?”
Vi freezes mid-chew. Powder hears her swallow.
“I’ll think about it,” Vi says after a beat, voice perfectly neutral as she scrapes up the last dregs of her meal.
And she does think about it, Powder can tell; she spends the rest of their evening out chewing on the idea with a faraway look in her eyes, a little haunted. Vi always gets jittery thinking in public about this stuff, like she’s waiting for someone to magically peer into her mind all of a sudden and start laughing at her in the street for liking girly baby stuff like dolls.
It makes Powder feel a little bad for bringing it up around other people—but only a little. Vi needs time to waffle before she’ll agree to play, and playtime is no fun if they have to rush, so Powder has to plant the seed well in advance of them getting home if she wants this to work—and she’s nothing if not committed.
The fogged-over nervousness lingers on Vi’s face on their walk home. She hasn’t reached out to half-hug Powder again; her hands stay at her sides, flexing around air in time with the tick in her jaw. Powder counts it out until she catches the groove, and then slips her hand into Vi’s, right on beat. Vi stiffens momentarily, looks down at her wide-eyed—but when she catches Powder’s gaze and sees her smile, she loosens up, shoots a nervous smile back and squeezes her hand. Behind them, Mylo makes a retching noise—Vi rolls her eyes—Powder sticks her tongue out at him.
When they arrive at the Last Drop, Vi almost doesn’t catch the keys Vander tosses her. Powder clenches her jaw and stares straight ahead to avoid giggling at her fumbling and muttered swears. It’s terribly cute, but now is the absolute last time to risk injuring Vi’s pride. Eventually Vi stuffs the key into the lock, ears burning pink like her hair, and she gallantly holds the door open for Powder to enter.
“You girls have a nice night,” Vander says, thumping Vi on the back while Powder shuffles a little jig on the mat to get the worst of the mud off her shoes.
“Have fun babysitting,” Mylo jeers. Claggor elbows him in the side. Powder just manages to fire off a middle finger before the door closes. Vi locks it with a sense of finality.
They wriggle out of their jackets and boots and watch through the beaded-over glass as Vander and the boys traipse off down the street. When they’re finally out of view, a bit of the tension finally starts to seep out of Vi’s shoulders, only to immediately resurface as a turned-in hunch.
She looks down at Powder, her closed-off expression rapidly melting away into uncertainty. Vi opens her mouth a little, but can’t seem to figure out what to say, and settles for shifting her weight back and forth apprehensively like a dog trying to work up the courage to approach some scraps.
It’s an immeasurably fragile moment. Powder is fiercely proud of Vi for getting this far, for being willing to walk up to the edge and start to teeter; she can’t risk disrupting the air with her voice. Instead she just smiles her best encouraging smile—not too big, not too toothy, more in the eyes than the mouth—and hopes it reads as readiness. And, because they know each other inside and out, it does: Vi takes a deep breath, screws her eyes shut, and puts her hand decisively on Powder’s bicep.
As soon as Vi closes her hand—her fist easily encircles Powder’s whole arm—Powder collapses, goes limp in her grasp the way they’ve practiced, the way she’s always done it. She gathers up every ounce of her soul she can muster and lets it all drop with her, imagines all the little bits and pieces of herself tumbling out of her own grasp like a handful of marbles.
The only thing she holds onto is the feeling of Vi’s hand on her arm: her stone-steady grip, the roughness of the bandages, the slight back-and-forth fidget of her thumb. Everything else slides away; her gaze unfocuses and the room melts into a slurry of unimportant colors. She lets her breathing slow, slow, slow till it’s almost imperceptible, and she becomes perfectly still in her sister’s grasp.
She can hear Vi’s breathing, forced into steadiness, as she inspects her. Familiar fluttery nervousness bubbles up in her gut, the desperate anticipation before approval is dispensed, like watching her sister’s first look at a drawing she’s handed over, waiting to see if it’ll get pinned up on the cupboards. She clamps down hard on the feeling before it can wiggle out into her limbs and make her fidget.
Vi must be satisfied with what she sees, because she sets off towards the basement, dragging Powder over the poorly-scrubbed floorboards. Powder’s nervousness blooms into a contented pride bordering on smugness; colors start to fuzz at the corners of her vision, streaks of white light dancing over the herringbone. She makes a shffffffffff across the floor, pretty birdsong ambiance. A slight ache creeps up in her shoulder, a pleasant soreness like after a good run.
Vi pauses when they reach the top of the stairs; Powder won’t—can’t—turn her head to see, but she can feel her sister’s gaze land on her again. Vi rocks back and forth nervously, just for a breath, before starting down the stairs.
Powder’s been her toy for a long, long time—for her whole life, really—but this is a new trick, staying limp and pliable but not getting hurt when Vi pulls her down the steps. Before, Vi would always carry her, and Powder does love being carried—but now that she’s figured out how to do this she’s found she loves the thunk-thunk-thunk she makes going down even more. Vi was hesitant to try it at first, but Powder had always been the artist between them; Vi eventually bowed to her expertise and agreed with her in the end that this was far superior. It was the little details that made the whole game work, made it feel real.
They turn the corner and Powder thunk-thunk-thunks down the second flight, and then Vi’s pulling her to the couch. She hoists Powder up by the arm enough to grab the back of her belt with her other hand—a more comfortable kind of roughness for Vi, everyday wrassling—and tosses her onto the couch like a sack of potatoes.
Powder lands in an obedient tangle, lets her limbs sit all higgledy-piggledy the way gravity arranges them, facedown in the cushions. She makes only the minutest adjustment needed to open up airflow, so as to keep the sound of her breathing quiet and even and unobtrusive. There’s a series of clunks and hisses and metallic rattles as Vi fires up the furnace, and then her near-silent footsteps come closer, closer, closer.
The couch creaks as Vi straddles her, hands landing on her waist and squeezing. This is another thing that took lots of practice—Powder is awfully ticklish and easily delighted by attention, which is a terrible combination for keeping a straight face while being petted and pinched by her favorite person in the world. But she knows Vi loves touching her here, loves the softness of her and the gentle give of her flesh, loves how small Powder looks with Vi’s big, rough hands wrapped around her: it makes it feel like Powder really was made for this, perfectly formed down to the smallest detail to be a toy for her big sister. Powder loves it too, and knows it’s better for Vi if she doesn’t crack when her sister gets touchy. She wants it to be as good for Vi as it is for her, so she bites her tongue and thinks of cottonballs and candyfloss and doesn’t giggle even a little bit.
Vi flips her over, and when her head lolls to the side she slips one rough-wrapped palm under her cheek and tilts it back up to face her. When they play this game, Powder lets her eyelids get heavy, but they don’t close all the way—just enough to keep her blinking from being too obvious, but not so much as to keep her from seeing Vi when her head’s placed just right, the way it is now.
Vi studies her with a pensive expression, brows drawn together with that little grumpy furrow that makes her look so much like Vander. Her thumb traces the upper curve of Powder’s cheek, the bottom edge of her eye socket, pressing in rhythmically. All at once, Vi takes hold of her cheek—not a fond pinch between thumb and forefinger, but a gentle, full-handed kneading, squishing the meat around like she’s fondling fabric to check its quality. After a breath, she releases her to trail her fingers over Powder’s lips instead and then to grasp her by the jaw, turning her head this way and that, pressing in a bit so Powder’s mouth falls open. Vi’s lips part too, and the furrow in her brow deepens.
“Pretty,” she mutters. Fuzzy glowing warmth unfurls in Powder’s chest.
She drops Powder’s face to smooth her hands down her torso, lets her fingertips pitter-patter over chest and waist before grabbing her by the hips, tugging her closer.
“You’re my favorite toy, y’know,” she says, with an edge of awkwardness. In these early bits, she always forgets that a doll doesn’t need to be a conversation partner, keeps trying to chat out of obligation. It always takes Vi a while to work up to the right state of mind, instead of just being able to drop into it the way Powder can: a result, she supposes, of having to be the grown-up all the time, of keeping food on the table and looking after three kids who can’t get along with each other or with their own damn selves for half a minute, and braving the undercity all the while.
The stiltedness is a sore spot for Vi, but Powder doesn’t mind in the slightest. In life Vi is always so patient with her, always waits for her to catch up no matter how long it takes; it feels like the least she can do to wait patiently herself while Vi finds her footing in their game. Like most other things about loving Vi, it comes easily enough—and Vi always makes it worth her while anyway.
Fixing her hands around Powder’s upper arms again, Vi pulls her into her lap, letting her fold at the waist so her head slumps onto Vi’s chest. She can hear Vi’s heart thudding away frantically at her ribs, and tries to will the syrupy contentment settling over her shoulders to envelop Vi as well. Vi runs her hands up and down Powder’s back, then fixes them around her waist again and shakes gently; Powder lets it carry her, a boat rolling on the waves, getting wonderfully dizzy as her head lolls around and around. She hopes it makes Vi feel powerful, to see how every small movement of her hands pulls Powder’s entire being along with it in long rippling trails.
Vi pulls her back flush to her chest and presses her lips to the crown of her head. “Pretty thing,” she mumbles again. Her breath shudders on the exhale, in time with the butterflies flurrying in Powder’s stomach and below. She loops her fingers around Powder’s thin forearms, grasp tightening and loosening, trying to work up the courage. More butterflies rush upward through Powder’s ribcage like the sea-storm rains battering the shutters, but it isn’t meant to be. It’s still too soon, Vi still too big for herself, gangly adolescent cur tripping over her own oversized paws in her nervousness.
Vi shoves Powder off her lap and stands up in a rush; Powder falls flat on her back against the cushions, head bouncing a touch before she settles, staring slack-jawed and vacant at the rafters. There’s a moment of silence and then a relieved sigh beyond the corners of her vision—satisfied with her unflinching performance, her sister trots off.
Vi’s near-silent footsteps head over to the bathroom. Powder hears the creak of the cabinet and feels a brief stab of panic, thinking Vi might be getting the scissors again—last time Vi had pulled them out, she’d gotten so carried away with the fun of playing hairdresser that Powder had wound up with truly abominable bangs she knew she’d be stuck growing out until she was middle-aged—but when Vi returns and peers back into her field of view, all she has in her hands is a brush and Powder’s little tin of hair clips and ties. She drops them unceremoniously on the cushions, flips Powder’s legs up to make room, and plops herself back down on the couch with a very Vanderesque grunt.
Taking the brush back in hand, Vi fixes her other around Powder’s bicep again and tugs her up to a sitting position, then scoops her all the way into her lap. Vi tilts her head thoughtfully before fixing the handle of the brush between her teeth, freeing her hands to rearrange Powder just so: laid against Vi’s chest, nuzzled into her shoulder with her arms folded up between them. Vi carefully plucks clips from her hair and drops them into the tin, tink-tink-tink, and then starts undoing her braid.
It comes apart quickly, without complaint—like everything else in Powder’s being, it had been put together by Vi at the start and lived its life in patient trembling readiness to fall to pieces again at her touch. Vi hums softly around the brush-handle as she combs her hair out with her fingers, separating it carefully until it tumbles loose around Powder’s shoulders.
Vi threads her fingers through the back experimentally and makes a little satisfied noise when she finds no tangles, even at the nape of her neck. Her hand briefly settles there, petting along Powder’s spine and the back of her head; it’s so large that her fingers and thumb stroke over the corners of her jaw. Powder wrestles valiantly to keep her breath steady despite the vicious longing that tears through her at the sensation, overtaken by a wild fantasy of Vi tightening her fist through skin and meat and grasping hold of her by the brainstem.
Eventually the hand pulls away, and Powder mourns its disappearance until it returns holding the brush; the other carefully portions out her hair and introduces it diplomatically to the bristles. Vi is, all things considered, an admirably gentle hair-brusher, but regardless Powder has always made it a point to avoid wriggling or complaining at any tugs even when she isn’t playing Vi’s doll. She knows it’s difficult for Vi to carve out time to take care of her, so she always accepts whatever Vi gives her as graciously as she possibly can. It’s served her well in training to maintain her perfect passivity even with the tug of the brush at her scalp, and Vi has learned that she can handle quite a bit more than that without breaking character. Still, Vi is exceptionally careful here. She guides the brush through blue waves with a familiar unbalancing deftness, smooth and gentle like a pickpocketing.
Time drips on indeterminately. In the back of Powder’s mind, the rustling of the bristles through her hair blossoms into a choir of whispers—whatever words they might be saying are too low and muddled to discern, but they lilt in pleasing harmonies, make her think of her sister’s lullabies. The experience of sound feels not wholly distinct from the friction on her skin, the rise and fall of her body carried by Vi’s steady breath, the neutral tones of Vi’s shirt blurring in her unfocused gaze, the warm scent of her fanning through Powder’s parted lips. The blend of sensation is intoxicating; it feels overwhelmingly good, but in a way she’s only dimly aware of, like an orgasm during sleep (or how she imagines one anyway, having only ever read about them).
Through the haze, Powder registers a bounce picking up in Vi’s leg. The rhythmic push of Vi’s thigh between hers makes her feel warm all over, but she knows it means Vi is getting nervous. The brush in her hair is starting to slide out of tempo.
When Vi finishes brushing, she goes for the tin of clips. She knocks her hand into it instead, and with a horrible scraping rattle the tin lurches to the edge of the couch; muttering bitten-off curses, Vi snatches to catch the lip of the tin, but knocks it off-kilter instead, and the whole thing tips over the side and crashes to the ground—Vi throws herself forward to try and intercept the mess, and then swears for real as she has to snap her hand out to catch Powder’s head before it bounces off the coffee table instead. As Vi pulls her back tight to her chest, gritting her teeth through deep breaths, Powder tries not to be too delighted by the little tinkling bounce of clips tumbling helter-skelter over the floorboards, because all mixed-up in the center she can hear Vi’s heart breaking, too.
Vi slumps back into the cushions and sighs. “Shit, I—I’m sorry, Pow. I don’t know if I can.”
Powder doesn’t move a muscle. The apology hangs there in the air, heavy and awkward. When Vi tries again, her voice comes out raw: “I don’t think I can do it. I don’t—”
This is the hard part. Vi is hurting—well, Vi is always hurting, but now she’s hurting bad enough to show, instead of hiding it away like a street dog does a limp. Powder wants to comfort her like one, too; her coaxing voice isn’t quite as good as Vi’s, but it’s nice and quiet and candyfloss sweet-soft, and her hands are just the right size for behind-the-ear scratches. The worst part is, she knows that’s what Vi’s looking for—for Powder to take her hand and walk her through the game in gentle low tones and make everything okay again. But that’s the trick of it: as soon as Powder wakes up, it’s all over. They’ll try to go back in, but the spell will be broken.
Normal nights with Vi are wonderful too, Powder will be more than happy with whatever she gets, but she knows Vi needs this, even if she thinks she wants something different. Vi is looking for her sister and Powder wants to rise to the occasion, but more than that she wants to be what Vi needs—the only thing that can give her some relief.
So she stays completely limp in her sister’s arms, traces her blurry gaze over the droop in Vi’s shoulder and listens to the tremor in her breath pick up steam. She scoops these up along with all the other fragments of vulnerability she can find and tucks them all away deep inside her heart, letting them fade out of memory and into love.
When Vi leans her cheek on the crown of Powder’s head, it’s like she can feel the warmth and the wet of her face through her hair. Her breath hitches once, twice, and then—“Oh, Powder,” and she’s squeezing the life out of her, crushing Powder to her chest, curling all around her and rocking back and forth on the couch. She buries her face in Powder’s hair, breath ragged. Her shoulders shake.
“I love you,” she says. Powder thinks it back—I love you! I love you! I love you!
She starts running a hand through Powder’s hair—slow at first, and then more and more and more, both hands, petting and stroking and tangling her fingers in the waves. Her shoulders still. In the far, far distance, thunder rolls. The rocking slows, becomes less erratic, resolves into long, slow sways, in time with the motion of her hands. They slowly curl into fists in Powder’s hair, the tightness of her grasp lighting up little prickles of pleasure-pain along her scalp. She nuzzles into the side of Powder’s head, inhales deeply. Then again. Again.
Her hands trail down and rove across Powder’s body. They skim up and down her back, her sides, her shoulders, rising and falling with her breath—then grabbing, kneading, plucking at the fabric of her clothes—a bone-deep ache settles in Powder’s ribs as Vi presses her to her front—and always, always, her hands return to twisting through Powder’s hair, steady furl and unfurl like the tides.
When Vi pulls away, wet-eyed and dry-cheeked, something has come over her expression—a sort of shadow, a pleasant pool of shade when you’ve spent all day in the sun. She cups Powder’s face in both hands, squishes in her cheeks—Powder feels so wonderfully small in her palms, her heartbeat kicking into rodential overdrive to match.
“Yeah,” Vi says, voice low and rough. “Yeah. Okay.”
With a deep, steadying breath she stands up, dropping Powder facedown on the couch to climb back on top of her. Her hands shiver up through Powder’s hair, loosening the tangles that had started to form in Vi’s fists; they come apart easily in a few more strokes of the brush. Vi does her hair back up with practiced efficiency—the same single braid as always. Vi doesn’t know a lot of hairstyles. She forgoes the clips, which seems to Powder to be a good sign. They’re cute, but ornamental, not texturally pleasant—and Vi’s never really wanted a doll to look at.
When her work is done, she sits back on Powder’s hips to survey it. An air of hesitancy hangs thick around them. The couch cushion is threadbare against her cheek. The world seems to breathe with Vi, languorous ebb-and-flow. It’s a little hypnotic, hitting zenith and nadir with metronome precision—in her mind, Powder circles through dance steps and always finds Vi at the end of the measure. One, two, three, one, two, three.
Her hands settle flat on Powder’s back again, smooth up and down like she’s rubbing in a salve. It’s honey-warm and soporific but not quite Vi’s usual style, not quite as parental, a bit more skittish. Powder’s suspicions are confirmed when Vi’s fingers creep over her shoulders, and then—her heart sings—along her neck, her jaw. Exploratory twitchiness, a mouse sniffing out a route to the pantry. Vi takes one of her earlobes between thumb and forefinger and tugs gently.
Another beat, another breath, and Vi climbs off her and skitters up the stairs to the basement door, pitter-pitter-patter. Vi’s tightly controlled breathing is out of earshot now, but the rhythm is in Powder’s bones, the world still expanding and contracting along with it. Anticipation swells in the quiet room, and then—the heavy chunk of the lock falling into place.
The door rattles as Vi tugs experimentally, gauging its resistance. When she’s satisfied, she turns back down the stairs, and the cadence of the dance has changed; her footsteps fall heavy now, slow. Percussive like the door and the lock and the blood rushing through Powder’s ears. Tunk, tunk, tunk.
Her hands land on Powder’s hips first, heavy like her footsteps, but jittery, antsy too. Her fingertips wriggle under the hem of Powder’s shirt, scratching lightly at the skin, and then she seizes the fabric and pulls it up, up, up over Powder’s head. Near the top there’s a lot of pausing and rearranging to stuff her head and limbs back through the holes, and it makes Powder even more frantic. She’s wildly grateful that the tide of Vi’s breath has picked up speed too, carries her along into a tempo that vents some of the urgency building up inside. In all the scramble she catches a glimpse of Vi’s face—dark brows drawn together, bottom lip clamped firmly in her teeth. She’s so handsome Powder wants to scream, cry, start throwing things at the walls. She’s glad this game makes her lie down and be perfectly still; she needs that kind of structure, or else she’d misbehave.
As soon as her shirt’s off, Vi tosses it over her shoulder; her hands land on Powder’s back with a bright clapping sound. The cool air draws pinpricks along her exposed skin. Fingers run up and down her spine like scales on her sax, tap out little ditties across the freckles scattered over her shoulder blades. Then her pants, tugged down, wrestled off her legs—Vi catches her ankles out of the air before they fall back down to the cushions, one sock off and then the next.
She runs her hands up and down Powder’s shins, petting the fuzz like a cat—moves them back and forth experimentally, seemingly transfixed by the way her legs fold and unfold. Then her thighs, squeeze-squeeze-squeezing—a pause, the rhythm slips into a new register, and her fingertips ghost over the hint of blue growing in on her inner thighs—they skitter back over to safety outside—creep up to the hem of her panties, flirt with the edge of the fabric for just a moment—then flinch away, gunshy.
Instead Vi flips her over indelicately, and she gets another precious glance at her big sister. She’s still chewing her lip, her eyes flickering all over the place. Each breath sweeps visibly up through her torso and back down again. Vi pokes at Powder’s tummy; Powder grits her teeth through the ticklishness and manages to completely suppress any giggling, but she can’t do much about the reflexive jump of her muscles.
Fortunately, Vi doesn’t seem offput by it—she does it again and again, tilting her head a little quizzically as she watches. With an awkward stiffness, she folds herself further down the couch and comes to flatten herself between Powder’s thighs, tucking her cheek against the flat of her stomach. She presses her face in firmly, kneading at her waist again. Tucked away down there, Vi feels small, a little delicate, like something Powder has been granted the opportunity to treasure and protect—but she also seems coiled-up, a hungry animal crouched in the bushes waiting to pounce.
Vi’s gaze flickers up to hers, and her hands follow suit, crawling up to Powder’s chest. The path is a little circuitous—ever since her chest has started to bud, Vi has always gotten a bit squiggly about touching it when they play, but she also seems more transfixed by it than ever. Powder’s not sure she gets what all the fuss is about—the difference doesn’t even seem very visually noticeable, it’s more of a persistent soreness than anything else in her eyes—but finds Vi’s anxious excitement extremely charming nonetheless. And it does feel wonderful, once Vi works up the courage to lay her big hands flat on her chest, thrilling in a way Powder can’t quite place, overwhelming when she squeezes or rolls her fingers over one of her nipples—everything is so tender it prickles at the corners of her eyes.
It’s all a little blurry, but she can make out Vi staring up at her wide-eyed from her place curled up on her stomach—she bites her lip and takes in a big, shivery breath as she tugs her nipple, and Powder feels stars pop behind her eyes. She feels so tiny, having to lay here and take the touch—completely and utterly powerless under Vi’s hands. She’s so weak to them, her whole brain liquefying in her sister’s palms and running through her fingers to pool between Powder’s legs. Her limp helplessness stops feeling affected all at once—everything becomes very real very suddenly. Vi could do anything to her, anything at all, and Powder wouldn’t—couldn’t—do a thing to stop her. That feels right, in some cosmic way. She wonders why storybooks never talk about this when they describe what it feels like to be in love.
Vi sits up with a sudden jolt—ideas come to her so much more expressively when she’s like this. She scampers off out of Powder’s field of view, and there’s a great deal of stomping and clattering and wood scraping against wood from somewhere around the bed.
She returns with a handful of Powder’s good crayons, which she arranges in a heap on the table; she picks through it meticulously, leg bouncing, before snatching up the red one and turning to apply it to Powder’s skin. It had taken her a while to convince Vi it was okay to pull this set out for play—Vi had saved up for ages to get them for her, wanted her to have colors that wouldn’t slide so easily off the metal of all her little tinkering projects, and was nervous to use them up herself. They were the best for this sort of thing, though—went onto skin as easily as they did metal, with a lovely smooth waxiness that held up great to friction and terribly to soap, perfect for their purposes. And Powder couldn’t imagine a better use for her toys than helping Vi relax, anyway, so it never felt like a waste, even though Vi tended to blow through the primary colors like nobody’s business.
She can’t really make out what Vi is drawing over her stomach and ribs, but she’s not terribly concerned about it; she just revels in the sensation. Vi rolls her over again and again to open up new space, following a long winding path that coils around her torso and runs up and down her limbs, occasionally spiraling onto her cheeks.
As time runs on, the tip of the crayon digs more firmly into her skin—the sweep of Vi’s arcs becomes longer and wilder, the shapes more aimless, spilling out of her faster and faster. She readjusts Powder with increasing frequency and winds herself tight around her, tangling their limbs up into knots.
They settle into a position that lets her really look at Vi’s face for the first time in a while—she studies the intensity of her gaze, her tongue held firmly between her teeth as she focuses her entire mind on what feels like a completely formless blob of color spread out over the back of her shoulder. It’s probably going to wear that green crayon down to a nub, but whatever makes Vi happy is fine in her book. Powder had always been the more artistically oriented of the two of them—she thinks Vi might mostly just like to look at the colors.
Vi’s movements are much looser by the time she’s making her finishing touches. She scrawls her name in huge letters across Powder’s inner thigh, bright reddish pink VIOLET—the back of her hand knocks against Powder’s junk as she emphatically crosses the T. She pauses, and the gears in her head are visibly turning. Her tongue, still sticking out, swipes back and forth nervously. She fiddles with the crayon in her hand.
Her head swivels to look at the door, her whole body following suit in one exaggerated motion. Reassuring herself that it’s still locked, she turns to Powder again, huffs a long, deep exhale through loose lips. She tosses the crayon aside to grope her thighs, her waist, her hips to ground herself. Her breath is noisy now, picking up pace—her fingers press in along Powder’s hipbones almost bruisingly tight. Then, all at once, she flips Powder over onto her front, seizes her underwear, and tugs them down.
Vi snickers a little, and Powder permits herself a slight smile, since her face is pressed into the cushions anyway. Generally speaking, Vi is far too mature to be amused by the mere existence of a butt. To Powder, that seems like a miserably tragic existence—as far as she’s concerned, a bare behind is and always will be the height of comedy. Now her sister is giggling, actually giggling as she runs her hands over the curve of Powder’s ass, kneading experimentally. Having her sister’s hands on her like this feels amazing, but hearing her laugh is a million times better—she knows she’s done it, she’s been a good toy. Her sister never, ever gets to play for herself anymore, and now it’s just her and her toy, whatever game she wants, however she wants it.
Vi spreads her ass, lets it fall back into place—pinches one cheek sharply, and then slaps it, laughing again at the smack ringing out through the room. She gets up and plods off, heavy footsteps circling the room. Some rustling, and then a fwumph as a pile of fabric flies through the air and lands on Powder in a heap. A few more garments are tossed over and then Vi’s steps come rushing back—she leans over the back of the couch with a little hup! and knocks the wind out of Powder as she lands. She shoves the laundry pile off of Powder and rifles through it where it lands on the floor.
She pulls out a pair of leggings—Powder’s best, softest pair, faded lavender patched with pink. Her big hands smooth them over Powder’s legs, very up-close-and-personal as she works them up over her hips. Then her hands glide back down, plucking at the pilling fabric and pinching at the flesh underneath. Vi digs her fingers into the meat of Powder’s calf ticklishly and then rolls her palms down her shin, the way she’s always done to soothe growing pains. She barely has to fight not to giggle anymore—at this point she feels so worked over, so petted and caressed and claimed that the stillness feels utterly and completely natural—she almost has to remind herself to breathe.
Next come the shorts, one of her pairs for sleeping, sitting high on her hips and leaving most of her thighs exposed—Vi pats her butt decisively once they’re settled—and then it’s Vi’s big brown sweater, patched at the elbows and the hems, one of Powder’s absolute favorites. She loves Vi in this, the way it makes hugging her feel like cuddling up to a giant storybook creature, the way it hugs her shoulders and makes them look so deliciously solid and full, but still remains loose enough around the torso that Powder can crawl inside with her on the coldest nights.
She feels like its magical effect must be lost on her because she doesn’t even come close to filling it out the way Vi does—she’s swimming in it, narrow-shouldered enough she almost feels like she’ll come out the neckline—but Vi seems to have discovered some other kind of magic the sweater has that works on itty-bitty sisters instead, because she loves Powder in it too, offers it to her at every opportunity, and always, always breaks it out when they play dolls.
Then fuzzy socks and mittens—Vi grumbles a little trying to stuff all of Powder’s fingers in there right—and finally, the little faded cream-colored silk scarf. Vi loops it around Powder’s neck and knots it clumsily into a little ascot, sucking on her teeth. She wiggles two fingers underneath to check the tightness, and then lets the tips trace along Powder’s jaw where they fall. The moment stretches out, long and elastic.
Eventually she extracts her fingers to drag both her hands down Powder’s front again, groping at her chest and tummy through the thick fabric of the sweater. Powder feels delightfully warm, and the soft scratching of the cloth against her skin makes her feel like cotton all the way through, a pile of loose fluff scooped together and pressed into a suitably sistery shape.
“Cute,” Vi says, but not to Powder—to herself, to the nothingness, voicing her satisfaction absently into the air in an old childhood mannerism she had otherwise left behind long ago in a little house in the sump.
Vi gathers her to her chest, buries her nose in Powder’s neck, inhales deeply. Her sister always gives mind-meltingly good hugs, ones that make Powder weak in the knees and light in the heart and flutter-flutter-fluttery in the tummy, but in this state a hug from Vi is like nothing else in the world.
On most days Powder craves getting older and bigger, desperate to molt into usefulness, but she can’t deny there’s something unnerving about inching closer to Vi’s eye level year by year. As much as she longs for equality, it also frightens her with its undeniable wrongness, makes her long for some mythical bygone age when the whole of her fit in her sister’s palm.
When Vi has her like this, though, she has no worries about being too small or too big in any direction. Powder always knows Vi has her totally in her control, can do whatever she wants with her whenever she wants to—but when Vi holds her like this, trembling, panting shamelessly with open mouth, clinging thoughtlessly tight, hands roaming everywhere to pursue the raw joy of texture, she knows Vi’s head is as far in the clouds as hers is. She knows that Vi wants that control now, craves it, sees how completely she has it and isn’t afraid to delight in it. She knows by the desperate grip of Vi’s hands pulling her thighs apart that Vi has designs on her, and she’s never wanted anything more in the world than to feel Vi’s desire.
Vi takes her by the arms and yanks her up so that she tumbles into her lap once again. Her hands are everywhere, groping, kneading, squishing. She grabs her face roughly, mashing in her cheeks so that her lips part, turning her head this way and that.
“Cute,” she says again, and breaks out in a wild grin. “Hey, Mister.”
She releases Powder’s jaw only to take her again by the back of her head, vise pressure around her skull that makes Powder feel like she’s going to pop into a burst of confetti. She can’t stop looking at Vi’s smile, her long canines catching on her lower lip. She wants, in a desperate, clumsy way that makes her delirious, and the knowledge that Vi wants too sends her head spinning. Vi stands up, catching Powder neatly by the arm before she can fall entirely out of her lap.
She marches off, dragging Powder along. She tumbles off the couch and bites her tongue to suppress a whimper at the way her knee knocks into the edge of the table, and at the scrape of the still-scattered hair clips on the floor nipping at her where she sloughs through them. The burning pull in her shoulder is ecstatic, washes over her body, stretches and molds her mind like dough. It sends her right back to before everything, when Vi dragged her around like this no matter how much their mother told her not to—and immediately after, when Vi went a whole two months without allowing Powder out of her reach for anything. Powder doesn’t remember the first bit, takes Vi’s word for it on what their mother always said—You’ll pull her arm out of the socket, she’s going to grow in all lopsided—but she remembers Vi’s little fist clamped around her littler arm and the shffff of her sliding across the floor, the same noise she’s making now—and she remembers the immediate after, the very grown-up expressions on Vi’s still-babyish face, the syncopated rhythm of Vi’s footsteps mixing with hers everywhere she went and the little raw spots rubbed into the back of her hand from the constant worrying of Vi’s thumb—and after the injury had been noticed, Vi’s guilty kisses and the forever weight of Vi’s hand on her shoulder or the small of her back instead, an insatiable craving for touch that, in her private girlish fantasies, she liked to imagine was bigger than just grief.
She hadn’t minded one bit, had been just as desperate for Vi’s constant companionship as Vi was for hers. Once the reality of their situation had set in she had become frightened of Vander for a while, and of the other children for longer, terrified at being thrown into a world that wasn’t hers and forced to learn everything from scratch, subject to new rules and new ways of enforcing them, as if she’d sailed all the way across the sea to start a new life in a distant land instead of just moving two boroughs over. Her conception of home shrank to Vi’s arms and Vi’s lap and the rise and fall of Vi’s chest as Powder buried her face in it, the last remnants of a natal den that had otherwise all but faded from memory. She wasn’t so afraid now, had come to like Vander and the jukebox rhythms of life under the bar, but the overarching feeling had never really gone away.
Her perfect big sister has brought her to a little patch of clear floor space in the basement. She’s muttering to herself now, under her breath in a way Powder can’t make out—but she doesn’t need to, after all. It’s not her business what narrative Vi playacts with her body. She doesn’t need to know in order to perform it well, in order to be a good doll—she just has to trust in her sister.
Vi scoops her up by the underarms and holds her out at arms’ length, inspecting her. The shadow has settled heavily over her features now, the sharpness Vi nowadays reserves for rivals and marks laid open and bare and hungry on her face. She waggles Powder back and forth a bit, letting her head slosh around on her neck, before pulling her close into a crushingly tight hug, letting her feet dangle. She spins in a little circle on her heel and giggles into Powder’s shoulder as her limp legs fan out with the momentum—spins again, faster and faster, before dizziness sets in and she stumbles.
Finding her footing again, Vi tosses Powder up in the air, then again, higher and higher. The butterflies in her stomach surge and rush with the momentary weightlessness, like when Vi carries her across a gap too big for her to jump on her own. She’s muttering again, the syllables seeming to expand and compress as she soars up and crashes back down into Vi’s wonderfully sure hands.
Eventually the throws get a little overexcited, and Powder comes down in such a heap she takes Vi to the floor, makes her hit the stones with a little woof as she folds around Powder protectively. She locks her arms in place and growls playfully, rolls them over and sprawls like she’s wrestling a real opponent. As she loops her arms around Powder’s head for a chokehold, her mouth is brought close enough to Powder’s ear that she can finally make out some of the muttering—no escape! No escape!
Fortunately for their immersion, Vi doesn’t play out the choke—Powder may be great at doing nothing, but eventually even she would be forced to cough and sputter. Vi sits back in her straddle over Powder’s hips and throws her fists lightly at Powder’s stomach, whispering pow, pow, pow! before devolving into groping aimlessly at her waist again. Her hands travel over Powder’s clothed stomach, up and across her chest, while Powder watches the meaningless movement of Vi’s lips.
Vi leaps to her feat and scoops Powder up into her arms, hoisting her over her shoulders indecorously. Powder blinks blearily at the floorboards as they wave past and then slowly recede—Vi’s hauling her up the ladder to the bunk. When they reach the top, she’s dumped unceremoniously onto the mattress, sprawling loosely over the blankets like a bundle of logs cut loose and rolling free.
Vi’s on her in a flash, tangling her back up into her arms and burying her face in Powder’s chest. She squeezes unbearably tight; all of Powder’s bones creak in fuzzy fracturing bliss. Vi’s feet thump against the mattress in a flurry of little rabbit kicks. They roll and roll, knocking against the walls of the top bunk and stirring up the blankets into a tangle. Powder feels dizzy with Vi-feeling and Vi-smell.
Panting heavily, Vi comes to a rest straddling Powder again. Her hair has thoroughly untucked itself from behind her ear now, falling loose around her face in big fluffy hanks. Her hair is pink, and her face is pink, and her tongue is pink where Powder can see it between her parted lips, and all of Powder’s feelings are pink too, glimmering at the edges of her vision with little sparkly flashes.
Crouching over her, Vi takes her wrists and smooths her mittened hands into little fuzzy fists. She brings one and then the other to the sides of her face, makes little pwoo, pwoo sounds for the impacts and rocks herself back and forth with the force of the pantomime. Completely enamored, Powder watches the tumble of her messy hair and the squish of her cheeks under the mittens, until the tide of the fight turns again and Vi sends another fist crashing into her gut.
It’s harder this time—not a real real punch, but an actual impact now, one that in any other circumstance would make her cry out and fold around Vi’s fist like a flytrap. But Powder is nothing if not a good playmate, so she throws herself into her powerlessness, into the soul-shaking desperate quailing that’s taken up residence in her as long as Vi has been petting her and groping her and dragging her around, and she takes the hit completely passively—and the next, and the next, and the next. She savors the pain radiating through her, melt-in-your-mouth delicious.
Vi seems to be salivating similarly, because she moves from punching to wrestling again, mouthing at Powder’s shoulder with little growls. The pressure ramps up until she’s full-on biting, sinking her sharp little canines into Powder over and over; clamping her tight in her jaws, she shakes her head back and forth like a dog trying to kill a rat.
They tumble and tumble in circles, the bedframe creaking beneath them, until Powder feels the world drop out from under her all at once—when her jumbled brain reorients itself, she realizes she’s dangling from Vi’s grip by the collar over the side of the bunk, having slipped out over the ladder entrance in the scuffle. She’s still swaying perfectly limp, thank all the gods.
Vi drops her, and she crumples to the ground before she has time to process the floorboards rushing up to meet her. She barely even registers the impact, still too starry-eyed over the sharp arcs of pleasure-pain freshly carved into her shoulders and arms, the soreness in her stomach. She hears the heavy thunk of Vi leaping down next to her, and feels her nudge her hip with her foot. Powder’s never felt so safe as she does in this moment; all her buzzing brain can grasp onto is how completely and utterly Vi owns her.
Vi scoops Powder off the floor and tosses her into the bottom bunk, where she bounces off the wall and folds into a little pile at the edge of the mattress. A rustle from the trunk nearby, and something else bounces off the wall too—then Vi crawling in, dragging Powder by her scruff up to a sitting position against the wall.
The new toy turns out to be the Sirs Puppington, the big two-headed murk wolf Vi won for her at the fair a few years back. She’s horsing around with him now too, tossing him up and slapping him out of the air, pummeling him against the mattress. The left head takes the brunt of her punishment—its eyes are sewn on a little skewed, so it has a dopier expression than the fiercer right one. In play as in life, Vi always has a clear favorite child.
Vi eventually pauses in her scuffle and flops her head over to look at Powder, one of the Sirs Puppington still wedged in a headlock. She slowly releases him and scoots closer up to Powder, looping one arm around her shoulders to keep her stable. With the other, she picks up the Sirs and—with a little ruff! ruff!—smashes him aimlessly against Powder’s torso.
The Sirs steadily beat Powder down until she’s spread across Vi’s lap, seemingly having her intestines torn out with a great deal of growling and barking and ticklish poking with his big squared-off snouts. Vi gropes for one of Powder’s wrists, and then smashes her mittened hand into the less-loved Sir with a shouted pow!
The Sirs go tumbling, and Powder gets dragged up by the arms to punish him for his insolence. It’s a severe thrashing; Vi quickly becomes dissatisfied with Powder’s fuzzy punches and resorts to picking her up bodily by the torso and sort of flopping her on top of him, bam bam bam, her limbs going everywhere and her tummy doing backflips in a way she’s awfully proud not to be giggling at.
Vi assists in settling the score, locking them both in a tight hold and rolling around and around until they collapse in a vaguely sweaty, worn-out heap in the middle of the bed. Vi pants into Powder’s hair, petting absently at her braid. She’s pressed close enough that Powder can hear her heart thudding in her chest, more clearly than she can make out Vi’s mumbling. Her other hand is ruffling the Sirs, scratching him under the chins in a way Powder manages to feel envious of despite being simultaneously petted. She can hear him whimpering—it must be even worse for him, never having Vi’s undivided attention, always having to share her with himself.
Vi nuzzles into her, her lips grazing across her forehead—and then she tugs Powder’s head back roughly by the braid to look at her eyes. She’s looking at them, not into them, gaze sliding over her features with an inquisitive fold in her brow like she’s trying to solve a puzzle. Her chest heaves. Something swells in Powder’s ribs to match. She watches the movement of Vi’s lips as whatever she’s muttering picks up steam, and she wants, wants, wants.
Vi takes the back of her head firmly, and the more-loved Sir in the other, and mashes their faces together like a train crash. Mouth to muzzle, the fuzzy fabric catches on the little splits in Powder’s chapped lips. Vi’s fingers, tucked neatly under her ears, press in sharply on the corners of her jaw to hinge her mouth open—the other hand briefly tucks fingertips inside her mouth to tug her tongue out. She feels it slide against the Sirs Puppington’s embroidered fangs, thinks of Vi’s cute little canines. Her sister is pressing her mouth into her hair, close enough to her ear that Powder can just make out her whispered murmuring—“Mister, Mister, yeah,” over and over and over.
Sound melts into an indistinct slurry—Vi’s mumbling mixes with her panting breaths, the harmonized whines of the Sirs Puppington crackling at the bottom of Powder’s hearing, and the frantic thump-thumping of Vi’s heartbeat or her own. Vi’s into it, really into it, the edge of a growl creeping in, her shoulders shaking where Powder’s leaned against them.
In a rush, Vi breaks the kiss to shove her hand between Powder’s legs, splaying them wide and jamming the Sirs Puppington between them. She cups her hand against the back of his hips and pulls in, making him thrust into her—hard, fast, slightly off beat. She’s got Powder pulled tight to her front now, starts fumbling at her chest until she manages to grab hold of one of her barely-extant tits through the thick sweater, groping so hard it hurts, panting raggedly in her ear.
“Fuck,” she whispers, “fuck,” and Powder can’t help but agree.
She can feel the heel of Vi’s hand grinding into her through the Sirs Puppington, squashing right through his stuffing. Her mind feels the same, molding itself around Vi’s hands without a hint of resistance. All her substance has fled, her existence boiled down to nothing but a medium for the force of Vi’s hand and the ecstasy radiating out from where it rubs into her, white-hot and trembling. She wants to cry out, to scream and thrash in Vi’s grasp, to cling to her sister’s strong arm and hump her brains out on her hand, but she won’t, she won’t, she won’t—she’s nothing if not a good toy.
Vi throws the Sirs Puppington down on the bed, belly-up, and lays Powder over top of him—grabs her roughly by the thighs to arrange her just so, straddling him, head tucked in the crook of his necks. She has to aggressively fluff his back end a little bit to try to get the stuffing unflattened, and eventually gives up and nudges Powder forward so she’s situated more on his tummy. The faceful of blanket is a relief, dimming some of the overstimulation.
Vi seizes her hips and drags her along the Sirs, back-forth-back-forth-back-forth. Powder’s sopping wet, feels her panties slicking back and forth with the friction, wonders distantly if somewhere in the haze of sound it might be audible. Vi’s grip on her is bruisingly tight, ever-shifting—her hips, her waist, her thighs, heavy pressure on her lower spine.
Vi grabs two fistfuls of her waistband and yanks her shorts and leggings down past her knees, then drives her hips back onto the Sirs harder, faster. The muttering picks up a snarling edge—Powder isn’t sure if it’s the Sirs or her sister or both. Vi’s leaned over her, grabbing a fistful of her ass, pressing her forehead between Powder’s shoulder blades.
With a grunt, Vi throws one leg over and settles her hips against Powder’s ass, pins them tight together. She thrusts down, driving Powder forward in a long, deep drag along the Sirs, and it’s like her whole soul is rending apart. Vi is everywhere, heavy on top of her, arms locked tight around her, pressing in, in, in. She grabs hold of Powder’s braid, wrapping it tight around her fist, pulling her into the force of her thrusts; as her head is wrenched back and she comes cheek-to-cheek with Vi, growling yes, yes, yes in her ear, something in her mind finally pops like an overripe berry, splattering juice everywhere.
She’s nothing—she’s nothing. She thinks of the laborious drip of melting candle wax, and of the drawn-out sighting-apart of metal fixings expanding in the heat, and of the achingly slow roll of a bead of sweat down her sister’s neck and collarbone, the kind she always longs to lick away in a way she’d never, ever be allowed to, and how that longing sublimates into this instead, this warm fuzzy nothing, the gooey stretch of her sense of self being pulled apart like melty cheese—Powder isn’t great at doing many things, but she’s become amazing at doing nothing at all, at going perfectly soft and pliant and prey-animal tender in Vi’s hands, at closing her eyes and trust-falling into childhood oblivion and letting Vi take her pleasure.
She loves her sister so fucking much it breaks her fucking heart. Vi pulls back and yanks Powder around by the braid, throwing her flat on her back on the bed and forcing her legs wide. The Sirs Puppington materialize there, and Vi’s grinding him into her again, rubbing with a frantic pace in time with Powder’s heart. Her soul goes juddering up out of her body into the air where it can thrash and scream and beg, and her meat is left behind, perfectly still.
Vi’s mumbling spikes in volume briefly, gritting out in frustration—“No, you stupid fucking dog, like this—” and she crawls between Powder’s legs, hitches them up around her waist and slams their hips together through the Sirs. She readjusts him roughly with a hand tight around his less-favored throat before seizing Powder by the waist and pulling her in to meet her thrusts, tugging her back effortlessly like she weighs absolutely nothing.
The force of it sends her head lolling, colors melting into each other in front of her eyes like running paint. Vi catches her by the jaw, tugs her head down to look at her properly, and everything resolves into her sister’s face—the dark glow in her eyes, her hair hanging loose, her open, panting mouth. She drops down to lay flush against Powder, burying her face in her neck—her muttering comes into focus again, and Powder realizes with a jolt that Vi is chanting her dialogue—“yes, yes, Vi, yes, harder, harder—”
She barely has time to file that away for later before, fisting her hand in Powder’s hair, Vi crushes their mouths together. Briefly hooking a finger in Powder’s bottom lip to pull it open, she licks into her mouth selfishly, mindlessly, completely absent any technique, just the ecstasy of texture—running the tip of her tongue over Powder’s teeth, slipping it beneath Powder’s tongue. One hand pulls Powder’s hair while the other desperately roams up and down her torso, and she moans and whines into her mouth with a gorgeous high pitch in her voice she wouldn’t be caught dead with if she was in her right mind.
With a wordless frustrated noise, she pulls back just long enough to rearrange her limbs, batting the Sirs out of the way to take one of Powder’s legs and tuck it up between her thighs, pressed against her cunt. As soon as she lets go to grab Powder’s chest again, her leg starts to slide down, and a whimper wrenches from Vi’s throat. Even through the sludge of sensation, alarm bells start ringing in Powder’s mind; she starts frantically floundering to get her mind back into her body, like trying to doggy paddle through a riptide. In every other way, Vi loves her completely limp and useless, wants the freedom to do everything herself the exact way she wants it, but sometimes Vi needs help, and in the rare moments where she’s soft enough to show it Powder would rather die than have her go without.
Vi can’t seem to figure out where to put her hands, trying to do too many things at once—grope her sister, pull her hair, steady her thigh so she can grind her cunt along it. She whimpers again, buries her face in Powder’s shoulder—pinpricks of wetness streak against her skin. Powder’s mind races through frenetic tabulations of sensory input, trying to ground herself, but the numbers keep slipping away from her because Vi is still humping her leg—the friction isn’t enough for Vi, but even through Vi’s pants Powder can feel the heat of her cunt, and it makes her want to start barking at the moon.
Vi grabs Powder’s wrists and sort of loosely tosses them around herself; Powder’s heart shatters at the sound Vi makes when they slide off her back and flop back onto the mattress, but she just can’t get her muscles to respond. Vi tries again, and again—and on the third go, Powder’s mittened hand flops onto the back of Vi’s neck, and she feels it, and she clamps down there, focuses all her might on the sensation, thick corded muscle and the little knobs of her spine, the fabric of the mitten against the little downy hairs on the nape of Vi’s neck. Now that she’s got her hooks in, she drags the rest of her body awake in pieces, tightening her other arm where it falls around Vi’s shoulders, and then jamming her thigh up, up as hard as she can into Vi’s cunt.
The reward is instantaneous—Vi squeaks in her ear and then breaks off into a moan, grinding down into the pressure. It must feel fantastic: Powder can feel little shivers going up her spine, and her voice keeps going, incoherent syllables flowing out against Powder’s throat.
Vi picks up a rhythm, rolling her hips along her thigh, and wraps Powder up tight in her arms to squeeze her into oblivion; Powder keeps the rest of her body loose, but locks her arms tight and squeezes right back—she’s still a doll, a toy, a plaything, but Vi wants to be held when she’s like this, needs it in order to finish, and there’s no rule that says toys can’t have special features.
It works, like it always does. Powder can’t suppress the little glow of pride in her chest, but as always she’s mostly overtaken by wonder as Vi grinds out one-two-three last thrusts and falls to pieces on her thigh, sobbing into her hair. Vi’s orgasms are very neat and tidy and near-silent on normal nights, when she thinks Powder’s asleep and works herself over in the top bunk to take the edge off a long day—but when they play like this, they’re loud and tearful and send her whole body shivering apart.
She’s wildly curious to know how it feels, although she’s not really jealous of Vi’s ability to orgasm—she figures it’ll happen for her someday, and isn’t in a terrible rush to get there. She’s just fucking obsessed with the faces Vi makes, the fluttery contractions of her abs, the sounds that wrench themselves from her throat. There’s something unfathomable about seeing her sister like this, wholly uninhibited, just giving over to pure feeling. She wonders what Vi thinks about, if she thinks about anything at all.
She slumps to the side with a sigh, their legs still tangled together. After a moment she lifts her head, peering at Powder through her mussed-up hair. Tears glisten on her cheeks in the low light. Concern has already settled heavy over her face, drawing her brows together. She reaches out hesitantly to cup Powder’s cheek, stroking her thumb over her skin.
“Pow?” she whispers, and winces at the crack in her voice. Powder manages to squeeze a little more life back into her body, just enough to put her hand over Vi’s, turning her head just enough to press a kiss to her palm. There’s a little hitch in her sister’s breath.
“I love you,” Powder murmurs, a grin slowly unfurling over her face now that she’s finally allowed to move it. Relief washes over Vi’s expression with a little broken sigh, and she presses their foreheads together.
“I love you too,” she whispers. They slow their breathing to match each other until the burrs even out; Powder rubs the tip of her nose against Vi’s and makes her huff out a little laugh.
“Didja have fun?” Powder says. She’s still slurring a little, and her limbs haven’t shaken off their melty-goopy heaviness, but she trudges through it steadily, working her way back up to the surface where her sister’s waiting. She pries one arm up out of gravity’s hold to smooth Vi’s hair out of her eyes, tucking a strand behind her ear.
A long pause. “Yeah,” Vi mumbles, like she’s confessing to taking the last cookie. She breathes in a little sharply, and then— “listen, I—how are you feeling? I think it got a little out of hand—” She starts to sit up. “Here, I can go get some balm—”
“Shhh,” Powder grumbles, tugging her back down by the collar. “Get back down here, I feel great.” Once Vi is back in her arms, her momentary flash of grouchiness fades immediately: “We can do balm in a little bit,” she offers. “I just wanna cuddle for a little longer.”
Vi chews her lip a little, hesitating. “Okay,” she decides, and then injects a little more confidence: “Okay, okay.” She scoops Powder up against her properly, tucking her head into the crook of her neck and cradling her in one big paw, running the other soothingly up and down her spine.
Having Vi hold her like this after playing feels inexcusably greedy, but Vi needs it too, needs to feel safe and gentle and tender, even if she has to be coaxed into taking time to cuddle before she starts fussing over Powder’s bruises. And anyways, a cardinal rule of life in the undercity is that you take what you can get while you can still get it. She’ll drink up every moment she can with Vi as long as she has her around, and will never ever feel a lick of shame about it.
Powder nuzzles into Vi’s chest, blinks up at her. Vi swallows under her gaze. “What’d you draw on me this time?”
Vi’s face burns. “Don’t—don’t worry about that.” And, after a pause— “Please don’t look.”
“Okay,” Powder says, letting her eyes fall shut again. “You can be the one to take it off me in the bath later, if you want.”
“Yeah,” Vi says after a moment. “I’d like that.”
They breathe together in the afterglow for a while longer, but eventually Vi makes the executive decision to go get the med kit. Powder can’t really complain—the afterglow is wonderful, but soreness is definitely starting to set in on all her various bumps and bruises. While she waits, she sees the Sirs Puppington where he fell discarded at the foot of the bed, hears his happy harmonized panting as he perks up at the eye contact. She hooks a foot under his tummy to drag him up the bed far enough to grab, pulls him into a hug and nuzzles into the crook of his necks.
Vi ruffles the ears of his dopier head when she returns, laying out the various canisters of balm over the rumpled blankets. Powder tries not to get too excited as Vi starts to peel up the hem of her sweater—Vi’s way too bashful to get touchy after the game wraps up, but Powder can never shake the hope anyway.
Vi sighs heavily at the sight of her back. “Shit, Pow—I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Powder says. “I’ve still got all my insides.”
Vi doesn’t bite. “You haven’t seen your back—that fall was pretty far.”
“If you don’t come back in with bruises, you weren’t playing hard enough.”
“Quit quoting me,” Vi says, but her nerves do seem to be relenting.
The salve is pleasantly cool as Vi rubs it into her skin. In these quiet moments, just laying here and letting Vi touch her, it’s easy to trip and slide back into being a doll, so Powder reminds herself to fidget, to pluck at the fabric of Vi’s pants and stir her heels in the blankets and waggle the Sirs Puppington along with his barking in her head.
Her soaked-through panties are starting to feel a little gross, but in a fun way, the way the creepy-crawlies she likes to play with in the alleys outside are gross. She bets Vi’s boxers are wrecked—knowing her, she’ll be preoccupied enough with rinsing leftover crayon streaks out of Powder’s clothes that her own won’t make it into the next load of washing-up, so Powder might have a chance to swipe them. The thought makes the Sirs Puppington wag his tail frantically; since Powder doesn’t have one to wag along with him, she wiggles her whole body, making Vi laugh and pinch her side.
She rolls over into Vi’s lap, and whatever she had been about to say falls right out of her head at the sight of her sister smiling down at her. Vi cups her cheek—with the hand that isn’t all salve-y, very chivalrous—and all at once she’s overcome with a hurricane of feeling, floodwaters bubbling up in her eyes. She feels so terribly lucky to not have had to wait to fall in love. She’d been born right into Vi’s waiting arms, never had to spend a moment of her life unable to worship her—she’s right where she belongs, and always has been, and always will be.
She feels a stab of worry as the tears spill over, afraid Vi will think something’s wrong—but Vi’s always been unfazed by Powder’s crybaby nature, knows all her flavors of heartache by the timbre of her voice, knows Powder inside and out and always has. She cradles Powder to her chest and lets her cry, kisses her hair while she falls apart with desperate gratitude. Powder gasps in the scent of her sister in between sobs, clutches at her shoulders—tries not to be too obvious at feeling up her muscles, and then laughs at her own ridiculous timing, snatching at opportunities to get handsy even while she’s pouring her heart out through her face. Vi laughs too, kisses the tears off her face even though it’s gross. Colors pop in Powder’s vision, pretty pretty pink, and wolves howl and bells toll and thunder peals from way, way up at the tops of the trenches, that one might even be real—and she’s in love, and she’s happy, and when Vi holds her like this she knows nothing will ever, ever tear her apart from the girl who owns her.