A/N: This is a thing that was in my brain. Super angsty and ALL THE HUGS YOU GUYS YOU GET ALL OF THEM. This has extreme self-loathing, extremely kinky sex, incest, and suicide. So remember you get all the hugs and whoever you are if you read this and you get sad, I love you and I think you look really nice and you're a lovely person and if I was near you I'd cuddle you. Just so you know.
The first time, it happens suddenly and strangely, by way of two bottles of whatever they could get their hands on and some mystery pills that Effy swears are great.
Up until this point, both Katie and Emily were relatively happy with their lives. They weren't perfect, but at least they weren't being eaten alive by radioactive snake-spiders. But after a bottle and a pill each, they find themselves doing things that they never even thought about doing, or not doing, things that had never even crossed their minds in any capacity.
At least, that's what they say to each other. Emily had thought about it on occasion, when she was incredibly drunk or high or both, whether they were truly identical in every way.
The second time is a complete accident, stumbling home after a party to an empty house. They're both drunk, and they have no excuses this time.
Tops shed just inside their doorway; bottoms bared before they hit the bed. Fast-paced. Manic, almost. A rush to the end so they can deny it ever happened.
In the morning they do just that, pretending they are nothing other than normal twins. They go to school and behave like nothing has changed, but they both realize that something has shifted in their basic dynamic.
The third time, they don't even bother drinking.
The fourth time happens in school.
They certainly don't plan on it. They don't plan on it at all. Katie mentions to the group that she's horny and they tease her for the admission, and soon she excuses herself to go take care of it. Half a minute later Emily follows, presumably to make sure that Katie isn't really masturbating at school, and finds her sitting on a restroom sink.
Emily locks the door, and then their mouths meet hungrily, neither of them particularly aware of the other. Both are of the opinion that as long as they ignore each other, it's not really happening. Both of them know that their internal argument is ridiculous, but they'll take anything at this point.
With each only aware of their own pleasure, it simply makes sense for Emily's leg to slip between Katie's, and press hard and hot against what she finds there. She's not aware of Katie's answering gasp, only her responding leg pressing against the same spot.
They work in tandem, grinding and pressing and kissing, until they reach quiet, uniform orgasms, drowning out the moans in each other. They kiss quietly for a few minutes longer, then straighten their appearances and go back.
Effy looks at them curiously, but otherwise their return is not marked in any major way.
Naomi tries to talk to Emily; Emily turns her away, gently but firmly, aware of her twin's eyes on her. Quieter, she promises to explain later.
Later, there is no explanation. She slams Naomi against a wall and takes her with a violence that the blonde has never experienced before, all rough searching hands and some yearning that she can't explain. The only problem is that Emily doesn't feel it, not the way she feels it with Katie.
Emily leaves feeling depressed and confused, and Naomi leaves feeling confused and worried.
The fifth time happens with feeling. Katie takes one look at her sister when she stumbles through the door and takes her out, to an empty place that Emily doesn't see but Katie's familiar with, and they kiss and make love for the first time. Soft hands and warm mouths, and it takes them a while to build up and topple over that final crest.
Katie wants to talk. Emily flees.
Emily doesn't want to talk, because no sex feels as good as Katie's and if she doesn't allow herself to feel like this, absolutely disgusted with herself, she won't be able to do it anymore, and Emily doesn't know if she could settle for anything less than her twin anymore.
The sixth time is when Effy finds them.
They are at school again, and having Katie that close without touching her, fucking her, is simply excruciating. So Emily finds some excuse to take Katie away, and they find an empty room of some sort—Emily isn't that attentive, she has more on her mind than what room they're fucking in—and the next minutes are full of shedding clothes, hard mouths and rough fingers, exploring and taking.
Katie thoroughly wrecks Emily, brings her crashing down with love and hard sex, and in the aftermath is four words: "We need to talk."
Emily is prepared. She's broken, crying, and ready to talk about it. The words "I love you, Katie" are barely out of her mouth when she hears the door click, the "and I love this" that follows tumbling out against her will.
Effy is with them.
She looks at them, undoubtedly having heard what Emily said, and she retreats into herself again under that impassive stare that seems to know everything about her. She props up her walls again and reinforces them with steel.
Effy asks, "Who started it?"
Katie says, "Both of us."
Emily hides herself in her sister, hugs her and feels her soft skin as a defense mechanism.
Effy asks, "How long has this been going on?"
Katie says, "A few days."
Emily presses a soft kiss to Katie's neck, and feels a hand petting her hair in reward.
Effy asks, "Are all parties willing?"
Katie says, "Yes."
Emily absently presses herself into Katie's body, wanting to fuck again. She wants that feeling back from earlier, of being completely and utterly deconstructed, ready for inspection.
It doesn't return.
Effy doesn't out them to their friends, thankfully, and the seventh time happens in a park. Emily doesn't count the second time at school as the seventh, merely the other half of the sixth.
The seventh time is entirely Katie's fault, Emily reasons. If she didn't look so fucking sexy in that little skirt, Emily wouldn't have to shove her against a tree and push it up, go down there. It had occurred to her earlier that she'd never actually tasted Katie, the source. Only on fingers, never actually between her legs.
The eighth time is too lovely for Emily to think about, and the ninth time destroys her again.
They talk for two minutes before Naomi finds them.
Emily tries to explain it to her.
"So this is why you don't talk to me anymore," the broken blonde says, her eyes flashing betrayal, anger, sadness at Emily. "I thought something was going on. I didn't know it was… that."
Emily whispers, "Please don't be angry."
"You're disgusting." They're both upset now, crying, and Emily feels that word vibrate inside her. "You know that, right? You're—God, Emily, you're fucking your sister!"
Emily whispers, "It's not something I can control."
"Like bloody hell you can't control it, Emily." Naomi crosses her arms over her chest and asks, "Does anyone else know? Besides me?"
Emily whispers, "Only Effy. She caught us."
Later, Effy tells them that she convinced Naomi to keep the secret, just barely. But the damage is done: Those words are reverberating in Emily's skull, cracking her more and more: You're disgusting. Like bloody hell you can't control it. Disgusting. Fucking your sister.
The tenth time is Emily's fault. She wants to feel as disgusting as she thinks she should and dresses up for the occasion by dressing in almost nothing. She strips for her sister, the self-loathing incredibly erotic for Emily, and then they grind to mutual orgasms, kissing (or managing a vague approximation of it as they fuck each other to stars) until that finish.
The next three times are like that. Emily finds some sexy, degrading thing for them to do, because this new aspect of sex drives her wilder, and Katie goes along with it because she thinks it makes Emily happy.
The fourteenth time, Emily gets her sister naked and draws a knife from under her pillows. "Use this," she begs in a whisper and soft moan. "Please. Cut me."
Katie pulls back. "The fuck, Emily? No!"
Emily whimpers, following. "Please, Katie. Don't you want to make me happy?"
"Yes!" Katie grabs the knife and throws it under her bed. "But not like that! Jesus, Emily, I'm not going to cut you!"
It's the first time Katie sees the cracks in her sister, and it scares her.
The next day, Emily's visited by Effy. They sit and don't talk, and then Effy says, "Sometimes we break and we don't know why we break. All we can do is find what patches us together and hold tight for as long as possible." And she leaves.
The fifteenth time, Katie finally acquiesces, and it makes Emily feel more than good. It makes her happy, the knife slowly dragging along her skin as fingers push deep into her.
The sixteenth time, Emily makes a show of it, literally. She sets up a camera and records them having sex, and she uses that occasionally, instead of asking Katie. Their friends have begun to wonder, and so Katie has been going out with them again. Emily stays in their locked room, often idly drawing a knife along her skin as she masturbates. She has a few deep cuts on her body, mostly her upper arms.
The seventeenth time, Effy watches. There's no knife this time, but that's okay, because the spectator makes Emily feel delightfully dirty. She thoroughly hates herself at this point, and nothing has ever felt as arousing.
The eighteenth time, Katie stops in the middle to cry, and Emily goes out and finds a hooker to finish her off.
The nineteenth time, Katie refuses to cut Emily, and so she settles for the camera again.
The twentieth time, Katie insists on making love to her. Katie worships Emily's body with fingers and tongue, and this brings her further down than any kink. Emily cracks, but not in a good way this time. The last bit of herself that she was holding on to slips away, and she's checked into a place that night.
The twenty-first time nearly happens in front of everyone. Katie takes one step into Emily's room and Emily's on her immediately, kissing her heatedly, but someone pulls her off and she retreats to her corner, aligning puzzle pieces. There are voices somewhere, but she doesn't hear them.
Then she hears, "Em. We're alone."
Her arms slide around Katie's neck, and the twenty-first time is slow and confused, full of tears and kisses, and Emily requests to be left alone afterwards.
The next time one of the nurses checks in on Emily, she's minutes gone from a hoarded stash of pills.
Katie doesn't stop crying at the funeral, and she confesses everything to her friends afterwards. Some comfort her, some are confused, and most disapprove, but they realize how much Katie needs them.
Effy finds her at some point and tells her, "I tried to keep her here. I tried to give her words to help you hold her."
Naomi tells her, "I never wanted this. I was angry when I found you, but I never wanted this. Emily was too good for something like this."
They all agree to tell nobody.
Emily visits Katie at night, making love like they rarely did in life. It's a form of therapy, and more effective than the actual therapy her family placed her in. She doesn't talk to the doctor, doesn't say what she knows about her sister, what they did. It's not until Effy's breakdown that Katie cracks.
"Nothing I say leaves this room, right?"
The doctor nods, her eyes flashing delight at this victory, this breakthrough. After weeks of nothing, any progress is progress, a step towards someone getting better. "Unless it raises concerns that you'll hurt yourself or someone else. Then I'm obligated to tell."
Katie rubs the back of her neck. "The only person this could hurt is dead. I was, um, having an affair with my sister."
For the next month, that's the only topic between them. They explore every aspect of the relationship between the twins, and Katie gives a (censored) account of what she considers the most important times: When they started, when they were caught, when Emily started to show her cracks.
Eventually, her therapist convinces Katie to bring one of her friends. She brings Naomi, who hasn't spoken to her since Emily's death, and by the end they're both in tears. When Naomi asks why, Katie tells her what she had arrived at: "I loved her. Things just got a little… mixed up. You know, my feelings and stuff. So I've stopped, you know, doing stuff." Drugs and the like. She'd told everything about that, and swore that she'd stopped.
Naomi hugs her hard. "You took her from me."
"No I didn't." Katie's arms slide around Naomi's body, holds her close and together. "She took herself from you. I was just there. I'm sorry, Naomi."
In the world, she's calmer. Therapy, and talking, has given her an outlet, somewhere she can talk freely and sort herself out. She doesn't feel things as viscerally, and though she sometimes misses it, she enjoys her new self. She cleans up, stops drinking and smoking, and eventually drifts away from her friends as a result. She makes new friends, though, ones that don't know her past with her sister.
She sets goals for herself that sometimes seem a little silly, when the weight of an absent twin starts to weigh on her. Make it to the kitchen. Write three words for your paper.
She makes it to university, and past.
At some point, Emily stops visiting in her dreams. When she does, they talk, like Katie does with her therapist. She makes the drive every other week because she has a level of trust with the woman that she doesn't have with anyone else.
She finds someone new, an American called Quinn, and they make a life together. When Katie tells her about Emily, Quinn doesn't judge.
And eventually, Katie forgives herself for the last time.