Stillness and silence engulfed the hotel room, mimicking the way the atmosphere tended to calm itself after a storm. Stagnant speechlessness devoured the air around the two identical bodies that were sprawled out next to each other under the sheets, and the sweat that glazed every crevice of skin may as well have been the product of rain. It felt exactly the way it did when the trees abruptly ceased swaying with the gust; if they peered outside, they could even almost see the scattered slew of debris littering the wet ground.
There wasn't a storm, but oh god it felt like it.
They both remained rigid as they stared at the ceiling instead of each other, stone-faced and seemingly hypnotized by the twirling of the fan's blades. Cars honked and screeched amongst the tangle of streets below them and a couple passing the room's door shared a giggle. After a small eternity, Tegan was the first to stir, turning her head to gaze at the body beside her. She snaked a timid, shaking hand out from under the sheets and stroked Sara's face, who flinched away as if the caress was a sting.
"You all right?" Tegan's voice was small, a decibel away from being smothered amongst the mass of the trivial sounds of life that seeped into the room from outside. Her lips cracked into a crooked half-smile, but it failed to reach her eyes.
Sara said nothing. She only wrenched her gaze away from the vortex of the ceiling fan and fussed her body over to the far end of the bed, snatching the sheets and yanking them up to her neck - the same neck, Tegan noted, that was stretched back and projecting moans and receiving greedy nips from her mouth not thirty minutes ago.
Something had gone very wrong since then.
Every muscle in Tegan was aching and groaning to just make the two-foot journey to Sara and engulf her, to cradle her like a mother (or a lover, she thought) instead of a sister. Instead, she merely watched the uneven, erratic rise and fall of Sara's back, which was bare under the sheets, until she too fell asleep.
She dreamt of nothing, only blackness. No sound, no feeling, no sight. The dark swelled and boiled around her brain and she knew she deserved it. She knew she wasn't worthy of the exaggerated fantasies that her mind conjured up in the throes of the night, and she sure as hell knew she wasn't worthy of the life she could only be part of in her sleep. Not tonight and, in her opinion, not ever again.
But she was worthy of the plush object that came into contact with her face.
The blackness was sliced in half as Tegan's eyes flung open. Her sister was straddling her, clad in a milk white hotel robe that obscured all of Tegan's favorite parts. A pillow, the apparent weapon of choice, was still clasped between the younger twin's fingers in a vice grip. "Sara, what the f-"
She slammed the pillow down on Tegan's face again, hard. "You're a piece of shit, you know that?"
"Well, I do now." Tegan shot her hands up to barricade her head from the abrupt unrelenting barrage. "Good morning to you too."
"Oh, don't even try to act like your hands are clean and that everything is okay." Sara's voice had melted into what resembled a growl, but the words were darting out as fast as ever, her throat a loaded gun. "You're a fucking deplorable human being."
Smack. The pillow hammered down again.
"All right, all right! My white flag is up." Tegan's arms seized Sara's shoulders, fingers digging into her flesh if only for the sake of ending the assault. "Can we just talk? Please?"
"Now you want to talk?" Sara chucked the pillow with near marksman accuracy at Tegan's head, who dipped and jived to evade its path. The silken square collided with the headboard then fell limp to the bed.
"Yes," Tegan said, her voice reduced to pleading. Her arms made their descent to wrap themselves around Sara's hips, tugging at them and coaxing them down into the sea of sheets with her. "Let's just sort this out."
Sara jerked away from the soft pull, abandoning Tegan's still-outstretched arms. She retreated from the bed, which may as well have been a tomb, and began pacing around the room like a caged animal. "You truly have impeccable timing."
Tegan didn't rise to follow her, remaining bolted to the mattress. "How so?"
"Are you seriously asking that right now?"
"Yes, Sara, I'm asking. Just tell me."
"Oh, nothing too serious." Sara came to a halt at the foot of the bed, teeth gritted. "Just the fact that you told me you were getting married right after you fucked me."
Tegan threw her hands up. "What did you want me to do, huh? Keep it from you until the last minute? That would have worked out great, right?"
"And telling me in the post-coitus afterglow was an even better idea, yeah?"
"What else would you have wanted me to do?" Tegan's voice was defeated. "What else do you want from me?"
"I want you to understand where I'm coming from and how fucked up this is."
"Oh, you think I don't?" Tegan's head shot up, fists balling up the sheets, voice raising. "What about when you married Emy? Hmm? Because I do understand, Sara. I fucking do."
That was the wrong thing to say.
The atmosphere violently shifted, the air seeming to be sucked and sapped right out of the room by some unseen force. There were no cars on the street or couples in the hallway this time; only the sound of an old wound being cleaved open, then a deafness so hard and serrated that it burned through the ears.
"Shit." Tegan cradled her head in her hands. "Shit, Sara, I'm so sor-"
"I'm beyond done with you, Tegan."
The elder twin startled up with wide and desperate eyes. "C'mon, you don't mean that." She scrambled out from the confines of the bed, the sheet falling from her body as her feet reached the floor. She extended an arm. "Sara, please."
"Don't fucking touch me." Sara jolted away, then crashed her eyes shut. "And c-cover yourself up or something."
Tegan ignored her. She staggered over to where Sara was seething and flaring, her jaw clenched and brows furrowed, features primal in their furious grace.
She was so angry.
She was so beautiful.
And that was what it always boiled down to; it's what Tegan crumbled to, what her knees collapsed to the ground for, and the reason her body quaked. Behind that beauty was a boundless, eternal sadness that consumed the expanse of Sara's being until it meshed itself permanently into her soul. Yes, it was anger, but it was also misery so excruciating and dark that it put the blackest nights to shame.
Tegan wrapped her arms around her in an almost crunching embrace. Sara balled a fist up to Tegan's chest, but it was useless. She deteriorated into the entwinement, pushing herself closer as if trying to dissolve into her sister.
"I hate you right now." Tegan felt wetness in the crook of her neck as her sister shook. "I fucking hate you right now."
"I know."
Rain then tapped at the window as they rocked back in forth, Sara breaking and Tegan umbrellaing her from the storm.