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It was only when the rest of the world had slunk off into the night that Vi let the dread creep back in.
It was the kind of late hour that stretched thin and translucent, where every thought felt louder than it should. Worry gnawed at her tired bones. The emptiness of the night robbed everything of its camouflage, threw it all into sharp relief. It felt raw and exposed, things laid bare in ways they shouldn’t be, less like nudity and more like the world had been slit open groin-to-collar.
Deep in the bowels of the house, pipes ticked like an old watch counting down. A box fan whirred unevenly in the hallway. Every blasted spring in the pull-out couch wanted to throw in its two cents whenever she shifted half an inch. The blankness between every sound made it all feel excruciatingly conspicuous, ill-fitting, pieces to the wrong puzzle.
The lava lamp in the corner pulsed like a heartbeat, slow and syrupy, casting blobs of bloody light drifting up and down like molten ghosts. The red-orange glow blurred into sunset purples around its far edges, caught by the sickly blue light of the TV. She watched the shadows on the popcorn ceiling stretch and shrink and stretch again. Little monstrous faces melted in and out of existence in the crevices, a hazy nightmare trickling up into the waking world.
She hadn’t slept a wink. Her sister had, thank God—Powder was dead to the world, all elbows and knees curled into Vi’s side, breathing in the shallow, weightless way kids do. Vi’s arm had gone pins-and-needles where it was trapped under her, but Vi had long since learned how to endure the static-y numbness without complaint, what she saw as one of the many requisite skills of older sisterhood.
It had been a long, long day of exercising everything in her repertoire. She’d been tasked with keeping Powder’s chin up while Vander tried to sort out their next moves. Powder was always happy with anything that involved getting a modicum of Vi’s attention, but Benzo’s was an especially good place to keep her distracted. They’d been given the run of the den, a long, slouchy room permanently marinated in the smell of stale weed and menthols, like a party that had ended hours ago and didn’t quite clean up after itself. It was obviously aged, and not particularly gracefully; band posters slouched in frames, beanbag chairs slouched in corners, wicker shelves slouched under too many battered vinyls.
But even if it was transparently a museum of someone’s better years, it also had an Atari and a ColecoVision and movies out the wazoo, so Powder was basically set. All Vi really had to do was swallow her pride and let Powder beat her ass in Donkey Kong and Q*bert for as long as she could manage. She’d picked at cigarette burns in the beanbags in between turns until her pride was too aggrieved to continue, and then stomped off to cool down under the guise of ordering a pizza.
When she had returned, Powder was booting up WarGames. She’d looked over her shoulder at her with that nervous grin she always got when she had Vi’s attention for longer than she knew what to do with—too good to be true, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Thanks for letting me win,” she’d said in a small voice as Vi settled back into the beanbags. It would have made her feel vaguely murderous if she didn’t know how sincerely Powder was trying to patch up her ego, so she’d just grunted and patted the beanbag next to her. Powder had scrambled over gratefully to curl up next to her and sink into a politely silent play session. Vi hated how well Powder could read her, how she’d sensed her exhausted grouchiness and shifted to entertaining herself to accommodate, but she was also wildly grateful for the opportunity to rest.
She had let her head lean on Powder’s while the game bleeped and blooped incomprehensibly. She’d never been able to follow this one well, and Vander had banned it from their house for being in poor taste after San Francisco, but Powder seemed to be sharp as ever. Vi’d kissed her temples and made her giggle and writhe at every win screen, told herself she was trying to help Powder feel proud of showing off her skills and make up for her sore attitude, and almost believed it.
By the time the pizza arrived, Powder had started to slump hard into Vi’s chest. They’d hit the home stretch. She’d nudged her sister gently to her feet and sent her wobbling groggily to the overstuffed VHS cabinet to pick out a movie while Vi went about setting up the pull-out.
As Vi finished smoothing out the last blanket, she’d seen Powder’s little hand pause, hovering, and carefully tug a tape free. After a long moment, she’d trotted over and bashfully turned it towards Vi: that new Bowie flick with the muppets that Mylo had been incessantly calling gay ever since it came out. Vi couldn’t possibly give less a shit about what Powder wanted to watch as long as it’d keep a smile on her face, so she’d just petted her quickly reddening cheek and said, “Sure, kiddo, whatever you’d like,” and went to go fiddle with the player while Powder scrambled into bed.
Even in her exhaustion, Powder had obviously been just about vibrating out of her skin when Vi came and settled next to her—she kicked her feet against the bed in little overjoyed flurries as Vi pulled the blankets tight around them and settled the pizza box over their laps. Vi’s plan was going off without a hitch, which she felt proud and ashamed of in equal parts. Powder seemed entirely convinced she was getting to stay up this late on a school night as a special treat, radiating that fizzy, mischief-drunk happiness that made Vi’s insides do all sorts of unspeakable things, even when they weren’t curdled over with a thick slathering of guilt.
Vi loved seeing her little girl happy more than anything else in the world—but she also knew Powder hated lies, and she’d be baffled and heartbroken when she realized they’d all been hiding the fact that she wouldn’t be going back to school tomorrow, or the day after, or next week—maybe not ever again. Vi felt like a total piece of shit about it, felt she owed it to Powder to be the one person she could trust to be honest with her—but she also couldn’t bear the thought of Powder putting the pieces of the bigger picture together any sooner than she absolutely had to. Powder would find out eventually, she always did, but Vi didn’t have the guts to rip the band-aid off, wanted to put it off as long as possible. And anyways, Vi was used to feeling like a total piece of shit about Powder and continuing to be shitty anyways. Like now.
They’d started out sitting up against Vi’s expertly-crafted pillow stack, holding hands under the pizza box like they always did (Vi prayed to every saint she could name that Powder didn’t wonder why her hand was so goddamn sweaty), but Powder kept snuggling closer and closer in careful, plausibly-deniable increments. At first it was obviously-affected sleepiness, eventually relegating Vi to feeding slices of oversauced extra-pepperoni into her sister’s mouth like she was putting evidence through a paper shredder. But Powder lost sight of her game as the movie wore on, unabashedly shrinking back into Vi’s chest in fascinated horror at whatever weird faggy bullshit David Bowie was doing with those crystal balls—Vi hadn’t really been paying attention to the movie, but from what she’d caught out of the corner of her eye it seemed like Mylo had been right, yeesh—pulling the blankets up to her nose and staring out with huge saucer-round eyes. Vi spent longer than she’d ever admit watching the film reflected in her sister’s blown-out pupils, till exhaustion called curtains and Powder fell asleep there in the midst of some hazy Escher sequence, legs tangled up in Vi’s, head pillowed on her shoulder, one thin arm looped around her waist.
Vi had paused the movie once Powder was out cold, but hadn’t the heart to turn the TV off. Its thin blue light limning Powder’s face made her look even more ghostly pale than usual—washed out the dark circles under her eyes, set her ginger hair off in faded reds like a poorly cleaned bloodstain, sent shadows playing along the curve of her jaw. Her breath had fallen faithfully into Vi’s rhythm, so Vi focused very hard on keeping it slow and even despite the off-beat skittering of her heart—setting a good example, as always. She counted the freckles spattered across her sister’s cheeks and nose in a valiant effort to keep herself from staring at her mouth, soft lips parted and sighing against Vi’s collarbone—but like everything else she tried in her pitiful life, it wasn’t a very effective strategy.
Vi permitted herself a sigh. The hour was late and getting later. She couldn’t afford to be sleep-deprived tomorrow—if they were lucky it’d be another long day of keeping Powder distracted, and if they weren’t they’d have to bolt up the coast, straight-shot north or maybe hook west over the border, and Vi would have watches to keep and driving shifts to take until long after next sunset. She pitied herself for having to worry about this sort of shit at fifteen, and hated herself for her self-pity, and ran her hand up and down Powder’s shin, soft downy fuzz and tender muscle, and hated herself for other things, also.
Anxiety twisted in her guts, and before her brain caught up with her she pressed her mouth to the crown of Powder’s head and inhaled. The old, familiar pull came like muscle memory. Even under all the smoke and pizza grease and stale car-ride stuffiness, Powder still smelled like herself—the warm-skin sweetness Vi had always chased after, ever since Powder had been first handed to her in the hospital. Vi had buried her nose in that fuzzy little skull back then and hadn’t stopped since, used to follow Powder around the house like a bloodhound, nuzzling at her insistently for whiffs of baby shampoo and graham crackers.
It had been the subject of many a crass family joke—Vi’s Powder habit, how she’d always hung on too long during hugs, how she always wanted to hold Powder first and procrastinate giving her up as long as possible. She’d found most of them pretty funny too, right up until she started to understand the butterflies in her stomach when she scooped Powder into her arms, the way her whole body sighed in relief when she pressed her face into the curve of her sister’s neck. She hadn’t laughed about it since.
The realization hadn’t cured her of the habit, even though the shame had soured the comfort it used to give her into a hollow rot in her gut. It hasn’t worked properly in years, but even now, even here, with the shadows lapping at the couch and the soft blue fuzz off the TV making the whole room feel underwater, her first instinct when the anxiety reared up was to lean down and breathe her sister in, just keep taking hits as long as it took for the ache to quiet.
There was no part of their sisterhood that Vi hadn’t managed to soil with the sickness in her. Her filth slopped over onto everything, even their rapidly fading life with their parents, the few sweet words and half-fogged memories they had left over. Vi just had to twist every good thing she had into something gross, take it too far, make it too real. She’d ruined it all with her freaky junkie shit, had really gone and gotten herself addicted to her baby sister’s body.
She was still buzzing all over, wired to the teeth. The lava lamp oozed up a particularly fat glob of wax, painting the wood-paneled walls in bruised oranges and reds. Dust danced in its amber spill, drifting like ash. The restless fear prickling through her intestines hadn’t cooled a jot. The whole house felt like it was holding its breath in the silent stretches between the clicks and clunks of various utilities. Visible, exposed, out of place. She didn’t belong here. She didn’t belong anywhere lately. All she could do was lie there and wait to be somewhere else.
The couch’s rusted springs dug into the meat of her shoulder, made her spine ache. Powder was drooling on her a bit, spit welling up in the divot of her clavicle. She knew it couldn’t be real, but if she stretched her hearing hard enough she felt like she could just make out the edges of Vander and Benzo’s police scanners murmuring static, like a secret trying to get out. They wouldn’t have left one running outside of their bedrooms, but there was a chance there was a spare in the kitchen. She wanted so badly to run and grab it, to stay glued to the chatter until the sun rose, but there was no real point in it—and there was no extracting herself from Powder.
Her arm tightened almost imperceptibly around Vi’s waist, as if she could hear her considering fleeing. The TV’s light glittered around her face, catching in her lashes like tears. Her weight was soft against Vi’s chest, the open, vulnerable sprawl of a body that believed in her protection unquestioningly.
Vi swallowed thickly; her throat felt raw.
She let her hand drift down until it caught the edge of the blankets. Her fingers twisted in the fabric, a few seconds of debate she already knew the end of. Then she started to peel it back, carefully, methodically, inch by inch.
Powder was in one of Vi’s old hand-me-down tees again, the only shirts she ever wanted to sleep in. It was soft and faded and enormous on her, stretched-out neckline slipped halfway off her shoulder, exposing the soft slope of collarbone, more spatters of freckles and moles. The shirt puddled around her hips, swallowing her tiny frame, riding up just enough to show the hem of her little shorts bunched high on her thigh where it was thrown over Vi’s.
God, she was fucking hot.
Her stomach immediately turned for thinking it. For Christ’s sake, this was her kid sister. Powder was the sweetest, gentlest thing in the whole wide world, soft-voiced and soft-hearted, the most perfect little angel anyone could ask for. She knew everyone said that about their godawful snot-nosed rugrats, but Powder was honestly like something from another planet: said please and thank you without being told, ate whatever Vi put on her plate without a word of complaint, slept like a rock as soon as Vi called lights out. She was almost frighteningly obedient, trusted Vi so completely and utterly it was like it had never once occurred to her not to—and here Vi was, taking advantage of it.
She told herself it was reflexive, self-soothing—but she knew that she was full of shit. There was no excuse for this, no way of taking the revolting edge off her ragged, heavy breathing in the dark. She knew it was wrong, knew she was sick, had crossed a million lines just by way of her wretched rotting thoughts, crawling all over each other like a swarm of rats. As much as she had feared hell when she first caught herself staring too long at Powder, she knew by now there was no way there was anything close to a God. No loving Creator would have let her go this long without smiting her where she laid—if not to bring her to justice, at least to rescue her poor sweet sister, who had never done anything to deserve this.
Vi’s self-loathing was as pathetic as the rest of her. No matter how hard she berated herself, no matter how much her guts churned, it didn’t make her tear her eyes away from her sleeping sister, from the slow rise and fall of her breath or the soft down of her arm glowing in the TV light or the shining trickle of spit leaking from her mouth—and it didn’t stop her from slipping her hand down into her own pants, pawing through her hair to drag her fingers through the lips of her cunt.
She was already wet just from looking, sick slimy bastard that she was. She drank in Powder’s scent and slowly circled her fingers over her clit, not with any real direction, just lazily playing with herself. She was only trying to take the edge off a little, soothing the ache to keep herself from going insane. That’s what she always told herself when she cracked like this, and it was just as flaccid an excuse as every other time—and her recognition of that fact did as little to stop her as it did every other time, too.
Because what was she supposed to do, really? It wasn’t her fault her sister was so fucking hot. Powder was practically glowing in her arms, bleached out by the light, nearly spectral. Her hair was soft where it fell over Vi’s shoulder, and her skin was soft where she was pressed against Vi’s arm, and her thigh was soft where it was tucked against Vi’s hip. She was all long, gentle lines and delicate round shapes, basically made to be scooped up and petted, like a stuffed animal or a friendly cat.
It was uncontroversial that Powder was almost aggressively adorable, in the way that elicited from normal people a great deal of cooing and cheek-pinching, and from Vi an overwhelming desire to fall to her knees and wail and clutch at her like a man dying. But under the companionable kittyish cuteness was something much more striking, visible only through Vi’s insanity (or perhaps concealed from the rest of the world by their own collective delusion). She was astoundingly pretty, all soft jaw and sharp brows, with fathomless round eyes—Vi’s fingers picked up speed on her clit—and plush lips—faster still—and an almost hypnotizing angledness to her movements, the way she neatly tucked her lanky limbs into small places and then spilled back out of them, like a secret note being folded closed and opened back up again. Mad as it sounded even to herself, her sister was so, so unbelievably fucking sexy. Vi was completely helpless over her, and how could she not be? She was only human, after all.
She switched tack, stroking the length of her clit between middle and ring finger, sighed as quietly as she could manage into Powder’s hair. The pace of her breath had quickened, and Powder’s had come along with it, still obediently plodding after Vi even while dead asleep. The change in rhythm had started Powder up with making little sounds, tiny murmurs half-pressed into the skin of Vi’s shoulder, and it was pouring gasoline all over the steadily building fire in her festering organs. Once the thought caught, she couldn’t tear her mind from thinking of all the wonderful sounds she could pull out of Powder, the way she’d whimper under Vi’s big, rough hands, how she’d writhe in her grip. Whenever Vi had to get Powder through something uncomfortable or scary, she always wriggled and flopped like a fish on a dock, but she’d press herself closer to Vi all the same, knowing her sister would hold her through it. Vi’s hand quickened even further—in the punctuated quiet of the night she could start to make out the sopping schlick-schlick-schlick.
She stared at Powder’s mouth, her pretty lips still rounding out around incoherent half-exhaled syllables, thickened lightly by the smear of drool now thoroughly covering that cheek. When Powder sighed out the vowels, Vi could see a sliver of the pink of her tongue. She remembered the feeling of it earlier, of Powder taking hold of her wrist and absently cleaning sauce and pizza grease off her fingertips in little kitten licks and completely destroying whatever tenuous grasp Vi might have still had on the movie’s plot. She had wanted so badly to work her fingers into her mouth, to know the feeling of her lips and tongue, had gotten her brain stuck on it all night. It was one of her most woefully pervasive perversions, the fantasy of taking Powder down between her legs and making her eat. The curse of their closeness was that Vi could envision it with perfect clarity, all the minute details: Powder’s little nervous shuffle as she knelt, looking up bashfully through her bangs, the softness of her chubby cheeks that she still let Vi squish with such boundless tolerance, and how adorable she’d look with them pressed between Vi’s thighs—
In a wild rush, she wished she’d had greater foresight and weaker morals when she had first started coaching Powder over and over to never let anyone talk her into any sort of genital touching. She wished she had thought to make an exception for family, because if it wasn’t for those lessons she knows it would have been unimaginably easy to talk Powder into letting her do this for real. She wished she was fucking dead for even thinking of such a thing.
But she really could make Powder do it so easily—Vi would just have to tell her she needed it, that it would help her relax, and Powder would happily do anything she asked without a second thought. She briefly wondered if Powder would struggle with the taste—but no, Powder had never been a picky eater. Her perfect girl had always been great with unfamiliar flavors, wouldn’t be at all fazed—might even like it, actually. That idea cut through her like a straight razor, bone-deep before she even felt the sting.
She worked a finger inside herself with a choked-off whimper, and then another, rubbed the heel of her palm into her clit. Powder wouldn’t know what to do, of course, she’d have to be coached—and she’d be so nervous, she was such a shy kid at the best of times. But despite her timidity, she was so eager to please, and such a quick study, and she trusted Vi so fucking much—if only Vi could convince her to try without setting off alarm bells, she’d be set for life.
She could have it whenever she wanted, as much as she wanted—the thought made colors twine behind her eyes as she clenched down on her fingers. She could teach Powder how to tonguefuck her just right, could praise her and pet her and come all over her pretty mouth over and over again—she could make her suck on her clit for hours until it was raw and twitching—she could fuck her sister’s face with all her years of pent-up animal starvation, with her hands in her hair and those big baby blues staring up at her—
Vi hooked her fingers with a frenetic jolt and brought herself to a silent, shaking orgasm, clenching her jaw grindingly tight to keep from making a sound. When she settled, letting her muscles slowly untense one-by-one, Powder was still peacefully snoring away—and the fire in Vi’s innards hadn’t cooled a bit. Familiar failure settled heavy on her aching shoulders. She sighed and went back to petting Powder’s leg, the wetness on her fingers leaving a little shining trail across her soft skin.
The fleeting high had passed—if it had ever been a high at all—and now all she had was the bitter aftertaste of clarity, metallic on her tongue. She was inescapably pathetic. She felt violently hollowed out, her insides scraped out so she could be restuffed with chaff that burned dirty in her shame and clogged everything up with soot.
She was supposed to be safe. That had always been her job—to insulate Powder from the world. She cleared the way for Powder, got her hands dirty so her sister didn’t have to, kept the wolves at bay so Powder never had to be afraid inside their home. Whatever filth washed downstream from all the fucked up shit their family was mixed up in, it would stop with Vi. But the rot had gotten inside her. It had made her its servant. She had brought it into Powder’s home and Powder’s bed, and no matter how tight a leash she tried to keep herself on it was only a matter of time now.
She had tried—God, she’d tried. She wanted nothing more than for Powder to have a normal life, and did everything in her power to be the kind of sister that demanded—sweet and steady, unflappable, clean-cut as she could manage. The crime wasn’t so hard to hide; if she had been anyone else, Vi would have been too young to be made, and even in her special case they kept things as inconspicuous as possible. The few bloodstains she got stuck with managing were easy enough to wash out. But it was the exhaustion that got to her. She was always stretched so thin, always skinned raw and never able to fully heal over. She had to be gentle with Powder—Powder deserved tenderness—but she didn’t know how to find that softness without letting Powder see the monsters she kept kicking under the bed. Powder was perfectly pliant with a gentle touch, but Vi needed to crack the whip to keep herself in line. She tried to conceal it, to keep her snappishness cordoned off from where Powder could see, but she always found a way to fuck it up somehow.
The worst part was that it never even seemed to matter in the end. Powder’s devastation was blindingly obvious every time Vi spoke too sharply or lost the thread of her patience, but her idolization never wavered. Vi couldn’t understand it. No matter how many times she failed her, no matter how many times she broke her heart, Powder still looked at her like she hung the moon and stars.
She wanted so badly to be worthy of it. She wanted to be the kind of person who could carry that love with the reverence it deserved, keep it safe and whole and unstained. The passion was bred into her—the adoration, the zealotry, the shame-faced weeping gratitude that made her pour her very soul into endless exaltation of the one and only thing that ever mattered—but it was that same fervor that made her unsanctifiable, made her poison the altar with her unclean hands.
She was completely and utterly obsessed with her sister, entirely enamored with her, so in love it made her teeth ache. It was honestly pathetic how every little glance upended her, how she was brought to her knees by every glimmer of affection. Powder was certainly never stingy with them, gave everything freely, like it cost her absolutely nothing, an endless font of milk and honey—and Vi still clung to every scrap with nauseating greed. No matter the abundance of Vi’s life, she never lost her starvation frenzy.
She was so fucking horny it hurt. Her self-hatred burned only in low embers, timid and quailing, too wretched and weak to fend off the threat. Bubbles of hot poison swelled in her in time with the lava lamp’s hellglow. Powder’s thin little leg was so small under her hand; she felt like a lumbering freak, brutish and hulking and swollen near to bursting. She couldn’t keep a grip on her own enormity. To conquer herself was so difficult, and Powder was so easy.
If touching herself couldn’t sate her, maybe she just had to touch Powder instead. It would be evil beyond words, of course, of course—but Powder was still dead asleep, and could happily slumber through all manner of bullshit. If Vi was careful, if she crept up on her delicately, tread lightly, she could pull off the trick without Powder knowing—she could go her whole life without ever having to learn the sort of fucked up shit Vi wanted from her. She would still be restrained, still keep the leash tight: it would only be a taste, just enough for a moment’s satiety so she could sleep. Completely in secret, just her alone with the sickness, no witnesses and no victims. It would be like a dream; it would be like it never really happened at all.
Her hand crawled up Powder’s thigh like a spreading mold. Their matching breaths crystallized into a steady countdown tick. It didn’t take remotely long enough to cover the distance, tiny as she was. She froze when she crossed from skin to fabric, thumb just edging over the inseam of her tiny rumpled sleep shorts, moments from sweeping into the hollow of her thighs.
She hung on the precipice. Drops of waxen hellfire floated in the marine glow of the TV. Her mouth was watering in a way that turned her own stomach. Her fingers pressed into the tender meat of her sister’s thigh. The silent eyes of the night-world were on her. She wondered briefly if she should turn back, leave the sin uncommitted—but the idea that she had any moral high ground left to cling to felt oddly conceited. The line had already been crossed. She had already committed adultery in her heart.
For all her self-flagellation, nothing could dampen the spread of quiet awe as she slid her hand home between Powder’s legs. She cupped her carefully through her shorts; her sister fit perfectly in her palm. The back-row theater fingerings and fumbling parking lot trysts she always mocked her peers for suddenly made complete sense. It was such a small thing, just a twist of the wrist, and she was still chastened by two layers of cloth and however many choirs of angels were staring down at her from their heavenly posts, but she knew immediately that there would never in the world be anything as sweet as these stolen touches of her little sister’s pussy.
She crooked her middle two fingers, pressed them upwards, feather-light—Powder sighed against her chest, with a little humming undernote, but otherwise remained perfectly still. No harm done. She began to rub, gentle circular motions, achingly slow; her chest was so tight it felt like she might split open. Still nothing, just contented slumber. She wondered if it felt good, tucked away somewhere in the depths of Powder’s subconscious. From the next fluttery exhale that skimmed over her throat, it sure did seem like it.
Vi had braced herself against all manner of fear and rage and self-loathing; she hadn’t been remotely ready for the thrill. Something felt primordially correct about it—about Powder so breakable in her arms, Vi drooling over her in the dark, despicable and degenerate but not dangerous. Even in her slavering lunacy, she gave only tender touches—no harm done. Powder was safe, and she was safe. She wondered if she should do this every night, give Powder sweet salivating dreams and disappear before she woke—she could show her pleasures beyond belief and never once tread on her innocence. She could keep herself fed, really fed, spend every day glowing in the smugness of satiety with the whole world none the wiser. She had gone completely fucking mad.
She experimented with different motions, playful, exploratory. There wasn’t much feedback to be garnered, but she supposed that was the point of indulging herself in this private, one-sided way. She wondered if Powder had ever touched herself like this, if she knew how she best liked to be petted. The idea felt like a deathly insult as soon as it landed, made her seize with a sudden imparsable violence. There was no way in hell Powder would do anything like that. She was a good girl, and for all Vi’s sins she hadn’t yet damaged her sister’s purity. It would never occur to Powder to betray Vi like that, to rob her of the chance to teach her all the things her perfect body could do.
Vi was wet beyond belief, and damn near shook with the effort it took to keep her touches light; she wanted so badly to bring Powder over the edge of ecstasy, but she had to stay unknown, a whisper in the night. This was her moment, only hers, and she had to keep it that way; couldn’t afford to be generous, had to indulge her selfishness quickly and completely. She slowly extracted her hand from the press of Powder’s thighs, worked her fingers up under the hem of her sleep-shirt, and began the excruciating climb, the raising of the curtains inch-by-inch.
Her carefully steadied breath drifted from her grasp as the shirt came up. Despite all her efforts, she was already intimately familiar with the smooth planes of Powder’s stomach and the light sweeping curve of her waist—but there was something dreamlike about her here, anesthetized under the quivering lights. Vi’s hand was splayed wide across her waist; it made her feel unbelievably huge. She didn’t even have to stretch to bridge the gap from hipbone to hipbone with pinky and thumb.
The shirt crept up, up. Shadows settled long and thin in the hollows of Powder’s ribs. Vi wished so badly she could get a little more meat on her. No matter how obediently Powder ate and how many of her own portions Vi sacrificed, there was only so much to go around. Her hand hovered at Powder’s sternum, bashful young lover or still-green thief about to be caught.
The last fettering strands of her morality tugged at her in desperate warning. She reminded them that the battle had been lost years ago. They sighed apart like cobwebs, and she lifted the shirt up, and she looked at Powder’s breasts.
Like everything else about her, they were tiny—so, so small, they’d fit perfectly in Vi’s hands, or maybe her mouth. Soft puffy nipples, faded blushing pink, and a little lone freckle on the outside curve, stage right. Vi’s thoughts went sluggish and off-keel, bouncing off each other impotently. God, she was every horrible stereotype of a teenager all at once, completely fucking braindead at the sight of a boob—she had boobs, for Christ’s sake—mindlessly, she took a shaky, open-mouthed breath, earsplittingly loud in the silence, and Powder started to stir.
The world listed to the side, the box fan’s distant hum bending out of key in the back of Vi’s hearing. Her sister’s eyes rolled under her eyelids; she whimpered under her breath. Vi briefly felt like she was going to start puking everywhere, which would still probably be a better way for her sister to wake up then catching her in the middle of—this.
But she couldn’t afford to panic, or she’d give the whole game away. Whatever happened to Powder tonight, there was no way in hell Vi would let her see the agony pouring through her veins. She had to stabilize the ship, calm things down, finish the job. She clenched her jaw tight, swallowed roughly, grasped wildly within herself for Powder’s big sister, levelheaded and competent—and didn’t come up short.
Vi settled her hand on Powder’s stomach and rubbed in wide, slow circles—one of her old tricks, for nightmares and cold drafts and poorly-hushed arguments. As always, it worked like a charm. Powder rolled a little, turning onto her back like a dog who’d been shown who’s boss. The motion made her legs fall open and Vi’s mouth go dry—but when it all settled, Powder was even deeper in sleep than before. She could feel her breath pooling in her stomach with every inhale. She knew nothing. No harm done.
The close call had rattled her nerves, but there was no slowing her momentum. If anything it spurred her on; the night wore on and on, and she still had so much to enjoy in the little time she had left. Biting down on her trembling lower lip to keep herself silent, she made her approach, slowly as she could manage, quickly as she dared. She swept the circles higher and higher, smoothed over the arc of each rib, and finally, finally—her fingers met the underside of the soft swell of Powder’s breast.
Once again, that feral rush of rightness that she had no clue how to stand against. Powder was delicious to the touch, perfectly malleable, substantial but completely pliant. Her eyes flicked up to Powder’s expression between every little movement, fearful of a resurfacing—but she slept on faithfully, her only reactions the tiniest shadows of expression traveling across her face in time with the swimming lights. Licking her chops, Vi pressed the pad of her thumb a little more firmly into Powder’s flesh. The faintest flicker of pain started to blossom in her brow, and then it was gone as quick as it had come, smoothed away by Vi’s gentle stroking.
She worked faint circles around the very edges of Powder’s nipple, sighed through her nose with the effort of restraint; Powder was still budding, sensitive as could be, and a direct touch was far too risky. But she could still cup her tiny breast from below—so perfectly small, just enough to bounce almost imperceptibly when pushed up and let go. It was a slightness that invited detailed study, made Vi want to lean in further and further, even though each fractional movement made the couch springs groan.
She wanted to touch herself so badly her head spun. Her thighs were damp where they chafed against each other in her loose boxer shorts. It made her feel sick and slimy, made her want to crawl on her hands and knees to beg her baby sister for forgiveness or relief. She had melted into a pathetic neediness that cannibalized all her faculties to demand satisfaction, but she had no way to sate it—one arm was trapped pillowing Powder’s head and the slightest movement would surely wake her, and the other hand was groping her fucking sister, and there was no way in hell she would stop that now.
She loved her sister so fucking much it drove her to madness. It double-flashed in her chest, radiated out into her heavy limbs. Its searing heat should have burned through her fingers and left sooty shadows smudged across Powder’s pale skin—but there was no trail, no stain, no evidence. She was getting away with it.
She rubbed her thighs together pathetically for whatever meager relief it could provide, and couldn’t even be frustrated with its inefficacy. There was no torture in hell or on Earth that she wouldn’t endure for what she had found here. Her whole body came alive, sang with hunger—her fingers sank into cloud-soft, fork-tender flesh—she had grasped a supernatural wonder, committed the most ecstatic sin, and done no harm, no harm at all. Her mouth watered. The springs creaked. She couldn’t fucking believe she was getting away with it.
“Whuzzgwan?” Powder mumbled.
All the breath fled from her body in a jagged rush. Her muscles seized—thoughtlessly, she clamped around Powder like a bear trap. The arm Powder had been laying on folded back whiplike—her half-asleep nerves screamed in time with the couch springs—her hand clapped firm over Powder’s mouth. Her fingers met the wetness still smeared across her cheek. Her throat felt tight. Her lungs clenched around nothing.
Their eyes met. Powder blinked at her foggily, pouting into her palm like she couldn’t quite make sense of the sensation. Her unfocused eyes wandered over Vi’s stricken face for a moment and then drifted down. Vi followed her gaze and realized she still had a handful of Powder’s boob.
Her mouth went dry. When she looked back up, Powder’s eyes were clear—she was staring straight at her, a little confused furrow starting to come in between her brows. Vi snatched her hand away from her chest like she’d been burned.
Her life was fucking over. Water roared in her ears. Her skin crawled, infestation or the bends. All her joints felt achingly loose, like her limbs were about to pull themselves apart along with the dissolution of everything she’d so tenuously built for herself—for Powder. She knew beyond doubt that this was the worst thing she had ever done, worse by far than looking down at the soup-splatter entrails of all the men she’d killed—she envied them for the bloody simplicity of their ends, for not having to linger in the darkness past the final point. For once in her life, she couldn’t read Powder’s eyes as they stared at each other. Fat drops of orange light swam over her sister’s face, the Virgin Mary curling to ash in Vi’s palm. She knew—she knew.
All of a sudden her dull thumping panic sharpened into ice-cold clarity. The jig was up. She was living on borrowed time. Eventually Powder would scream, and that would be it—maybe Vander would blow her brains out as soon as the words left Powder’s lips, or maybe he’d drag it out, but either way she only had moments left before it was all over. Everything stopped mattering very suddenly. She was supposed to be the good safe big sister who gave up everything to give Powder a better life, who always always always put Powder first, and she’d failed so badly there would never be any coming back from it—spliced under the shame was a kind of freedom. She’d fucked up so bad there was no point in trying anymore. The line had already been crossed. All she could do was live out her last moments, however many she had—and if she had already failed to be anything other than selfish, she might as well die as she lived.
“Are w—” Powder started to say, muffled through her hand.
“Shhh!” Vi hissed, and squeezed her fingers down hard on the corners of Powder’s jaw, locking it in place. Her breathing was coming heavier now, nerves scrambled up and sparking off each other as she dredged up the resolve to do what she had to do—and when she let her gaze fall back to Powder’s tits she realized that her sister was once again matching her.
She didn’t have time to parse the emotions that churned up in her before Powder’s hands came into her field of view—signed “What are you doing?” with far more crisp clarity than Vi would have liked.
“Shut the fuck up,” Vi snapped, ragged whisper tearing at her throat, and immediately regretted it—but what the hell could she say? Powder’s eyebrows raised into her sleep-mussed bangs, and her head canted minutely to the side, just the few degrees it could eke out in Vi’s firm grip. Her shoulders fluttered a little, like she couldn’t quite tell if she ought to shrink into herself or not.
“Just—” Vi could barely get the words out—she didn’t even know what to say. So much of her longed to comfort, to explain, to apologize—anything at all that would make a shred of sense, that could be passed off in any universe as trying to do right by her sister. But she was too far gone now—she had to take what she needed, and she couldn’t bear to insult her sister by trying to mend her in the same moment she was tearing her apart. She swallowed—awful metallic taste, brutish, deadly, mouthful of thumbtacks.
“Just let me do it,” she breathed in her awful rasping voice. “Don’t do anything. Don’t say anything. Just—I need it.”
Powder shifted apprehensively for a moment, but stayed silent. Her eyes traced over Vi’s, still unreadable. When she moved, Vi’s heart nearly tore itself in half in panic—she wondered if this was the decisive moment, when their genetic bloodlust would rear its head in Powder too, let her take her place among the wolves with Vi’s lifeblood smeared over her jaws—but she only leaned a little into Vi, fisted her hands in her shirt, and fell still. The little shiver Vi could feel where they were pressed together tugged at the shame-pit in Vi’s stomach, but it thrilled her all the same—exactly as she had known, Powder would take anything Vi told her to without complaint.
She put her hand back on Powder’s tit, more decisively than she felt—but now she had nothing to hide from her, and that opened up a world of possibilities. She could feel her up properly, palming and squeezing with a shamelessness befitting the thing she had become. The sensations were overwhelming, stamping her mind out into glazed-over quiescence. She swiped her thumb over Powder’s nipple, then pinched it—felt it harden in her fingers, felt Powder squirm and tremble in her arms, make a strangled whimper into her palm—but no resistance, none at all.
Vi smoothed her hand down her girl’s flank, squeezed her waist with lightheaded impatience. Vi’s own brain had become profoundly unfamiliar to her, and not only in its carnality—there was a shy, princessy, turned-in quality to her thoughts with every stroke and pinch and pet, like she was making herself flustered with her own moves. The thin scrap of consciousness that made it through the fugue found it vaguely emasculating; she overcompensated with a bullish rushing frenzy, shoving her hand past the hem of Powder’s shorts before she could comprehend the action.
She gripped Powder’s ass with one hand and her face with the other, nosing at her temple, drawing in her scent in greedily. Fear and want prickled along her spine in tandem. She squeezed her eyes shut against the world outside: the red-blue-red-blue pulse of the lights, the edges of her sister’s face in her peripheral view. She couldn’t look at her sister—she couldn’t bear the thought of what she might see. Powder had always been the one and only person that could shake her from her course, and she couldn’t lose this now. She chewed her lip and held her breath and hid in Powder’s neck, and let her hand travel in bruising grasps over ass and hip and thigh until it finally tucked itself in her little sister’s panties and spread her open.
Powder was wet, really wet, soaked all the way through. Vi sent a silent prayer of thanks to whatever horrified, envious angels might be watching that at least Powder’s body was trying to take care of her, that at least this biological mechanism had kicked in to ease the process, to make it hurt a little less when Vi—when Vi—God, oh God, what the fuck was she doing? Her brain revolted before she could begin to wrap it around the word, cringing so painfully she felt the sudden overwhelming need to dry heave. She should stop—she had to stop. She might have already ruined their lives irreparably, but she could at least cut it short for Powder’s sake, not make her have to experience this any longer than she already had—
Except Vi was up to the knuckle in her pussy now, and she was hot and wet and tight and soft around her fingers, and the thought of pulling out was so ridiculous and abhorrent it short-circuited before it had a chance to fire down her nerves. There was no fucking way she was stopping now.
Vi clenched her thighs as tight as she could, halfway to humping into the air. The need to curl in permeated her whole body; she clung to her sister like they were drowning, buried her face in her neck, hooked her fingers up sharply to drag at her walls. No matter what she did, she couldn’t get enough.
As always, she felt fucking crazy—but she also felt suddenly, wildly pissed off. She wanted to—to strangle Powder for doing this to her, for reducing her to this monstrous, wretched thing—for being such a fucking tease—for not just staying asleep, for intruding into Vi’s private fantasy, making it real. If she could have just minded her own fucking business Vi could have gotten off and cleaned up and went to sleep with the world none the wiser, her sins left between her and the angels and the unreal God. She ground her palm near-hatefully into Powder’s clit, relishing the way her thighs twitched and shook like an asphyxiating rat. Little choked-off cries landed muffled in her palm; she opened her jaws over Powder’s throat and dragged her tongue across the skin, feeling the vibrations as much as she heard the sounds.
Vi stuffed another finger in her stupid little sister’s stupid little cunt. Powder made a punched-out wheeze—her whole body twisted and arched into Vi’s like she was fucking possessed. Her hands twisted in Vi’s shirt, tight enough to press her knuckles into her chest through the fabric. Her jaw trembled in Vi’s grip. She wanted to look—she couldn’t look—it was too much, too much. The springs creaked with every roll of Vi’s hips. It sounded like crying, like hunger pangs.
She wanted so badly to bury her face between Powder’s thighs and eat and eat and eat, but she couldn’t—she was hamstrung, neutered, collared and leashed by the need to keep Powder silent. She yanked her fingers out of her sister’s pussy, trying to ignore the broken sound it dragged out of her, and shoved them into her own mouth—sucked the taste of her off her fingers, the closest she could get. The sound was fucking humiliating, panting and whimpering and slobbering all over her hand, but the taste was a revelation, burned through Vi like a holy sword—sharp and tangy and blindingly bright, but under it all, not dissimilar from Vi herself.
With a great grind of springs she rolled half on top of Powder, pinning her own with her weight, and shoved her drenched hand down her own pants. It only took moments, a few swipes over her clit, the remnants of Powder’s slick mixing with her own, before she tipped, and fell, and shattered. Her whole body unspooled over her poor probably-squashed sister; the tension seeped from all her muscles and dissipated into the air like steam.
She slumped numbly back to the mattress. The arm she had curled around Powder’s head unfolded with almost as much rusty complaining as the springs. She was spent, immobilized, had loosened her grip on her prey—but Powder didn’t scream, or cry, or run away. She just wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist, adjusted her clothes, and lolled her head to the side, staring at Vi with that same unreadable expression.
The staccato quiet of the late-night den settled back over them too quickly. The fan whirred and the pipes clicked and a dog barked somewhere in the far, far distance of the suburbs. Powder’s ghostly skin was tie-dyed in the light, stained in pools of red and blue and violet.
“Don’t tell anyone,” Vi whispered—her voice came out so hollow she could barely even hear it. She cleared her ragged throat, coughed, tried again. “Don’t—don’t fucking tell anyone, or—I’ll—” She swallowed. “I’ll kill you.”
Powder blinked at her. The perfect stillness on her face made Vi’s insides curl up into knots.
“Okay,” she said in the end, and closed her eyes.
Vi’s mind went blank. She stared at Powder in the darkness. Her chest rose and fell, slower and slower, counting sheep. Everything was cold and clammy and limp. It felt—slippery. Out of control.
Heart wringing itself into a panic, Vi grabbed Powder by the shirt, shook her awake—she just lazily opened her eyes again, not an ounce of resistance to the way Vi flopped her to and fro.
“I fucking mean it, Powder, I’m not playing around,” she said desperately. “I really will—I really will do it—”
“I said okay,” Powder said again, a little sluggishly. “I won’t tell. I promise.” And she held up her little hand, pinky extended, and let her eyes close again.
Vi couldn’t tell if this was a dream or a nightmare. She looped her pinky through Powder’s by rote, barely registered the tug, watched Powder’s arm fall slack to the mattress once the pact was sealed. The dog barked again.
“Powder,” Vi said, for no reason she could discern. And again, when there was no response, “Powder—”
“Violet,” Powder snapped, and suddenly sat up. In a panic, Vi bolted up too, clamping her hand around Powder’s arm to keep her from running—but Powder didn’t try to flee, didn’t even react to her touch, just peered over her shoulder at the clock, blinking sleepily.
“It’s four in the morning,” Powder said, flopping back into the pillows and looking at her with an expression closer to disdain than Vi had ever thought her capable of making, but threaded through with affection all the same. “Can we please go back to sleep? I’ve got school.”
Vi opened her mouth, and closed it, and opened it again. Powder raised an eyebrow at her, and it sent a funny little skittishness down her spine—and that might have been the most confusing thing she had felt that whole night, somehow.
When she didn’t move, Powder sighed a strange half-smiling sigh and reached past her, fumbling for the remote. She turned the TV off; the room plunged into deep scarlet shadows, a bloodstain through a good suit. Satisfied with her conditions, Powder grabbed Vi by the wrist and rolled over—no tugging, no force, only a gentle guide. Vi followed her dumbly, laying down and letting Powder mold them both into nested spoons, fingers laced together, her face tucked into Powder’s hair.
“I love you,” Powder said, and it sounded exactly like every other time she had said it. “Good night?”
Vi’s idiot mouth mumbled some syllable mishmash into the back of Powder’s head, but whatever it was seemed to satisfy her: she did her little happy wiggle, and pressed her back into Vi’s chest, and dropped off into sleep as quickly as the television had. Vi felt her sister melt into boneless, dreamless quiet all along the horizon between their bodies—except for their joined hands, where she kept a reflexive grip on Vi’s fingers. An inherited instinct, maybe; never lose track of the murder weapon.
Powder’s body was warm against Vi’s, a sort of persistent glow along her spine that slowly cracked and thawed every icy scrap of dread in her guts. Her hair was mussed—it’d be hell to brush tomorrow—but it smelled warm and clean and familiar. Vi breathed it in and realized with an odd tummy-flip that it worked. Her heartbeat wound down and her lungs unfurled and the stabbing tightness in her chest began to unpick itself, piece by piece. Her eyes were heavy but her body was strangely light, floaty and fragile but tethered to the safety of the bed by her sister’s hand and her metronomic breaths. She let her eyes close (though the red light hung there on the inside of her eyelids) and followed Powder’s rhythm, and drifted into the night.