sleep together, rated pg-13. miki/kozue (garbage challenge). series-set. 645 words.
(i got you crawling up a mountain, hanging round my neck)
The concept of his sister as a beautiful, desirable body is a peculiar one to his still-childish mind. Yet the shock of that realisation seems very far away as she comes to him, pale as ivory in the moonlight.
"I'm your bride, Miki," she says quietly as she crawls into his bed with him, the darkness not so dark at all with the harsh eye of the moon glaring down at them through the half-closed curtains. "I want to stay with you tonight."
"My bride?"
"Your bride," and she curls up into and against his side, a warm body filled with blood so similar to that which courses through his own veins. But despite the power of her presence, of her voice and her bold eyes, she still feels like a fragile bag of bird-bones against him tonight. He's reminded of the baby birds that she had rescued earlier this same week, and wonders if it is really so odd that they'd turn to each for comfort and warmth in this otherwise empty nest.
Her fingers are gentle on his skin, tracing patterns that are too disordered and chaotic for his orderly mind to make sense of, but they make him tremble all the same. He sighs, turns his head even though he can still feel her warm breath tickling the nape of his neck.
"I just want to hold you," and his voice is so unsure in the darkness, even now with all that he knows thanks to what lurks at the ends of the world she helped take him to. "Just…hold you."
Perhaps they were in the womb like this together, once upon a time. Two small bodies, naked and warm as they pressed together in a place where they, and only they, mattered at all.
"Why are you doing this, Kozue?" he asks finally, his voice small in the too-large room.
Her hands are in his hair, turning his face back to hers. "Because I am your bride, Miki."
"You are always my sister before that, Kozue."
"Sometimes, Miki, those two things aren't so different." She smiles, gently kisses his lips so briefly that he can't react quickly enough to pull away from her. "At least, not for people like us."
He has made his sister into a bride so he can fight for possession of another, and it makes him wonder as he lies in his bed with his sister in his arms. Makes him wonder if he's really ready to flap his wings at last and leave the nest he shares with his sister, the nest they'd been left to make a home out of alone when their parents had themselves flown away.
He doesn't think he's strong enough to go very far, but what really bothers him is the fact that he knows Kozue is that strong…and yet she'll wait for him forever…just because she is his sister.
He closes his eyes, holds her tighter and listens to her sleep. He himself doesn't sleep at all, at all. He thinks he can hear the branch their fading nest rests upon rocking, rocking in the growing wind. It will fall, one day, and he knows they'll both fall from it. He'll never leave the nest, after all…and he knows perfectly well that Kozue will never leave him alone, not again. They are two baby birds, only one of which ever wanted to grow up.
Oh, he'll try to leave the nest tomorrow, but even now it's obvious he will only go so far. Kozue will press him ever forward, but she'll return with him when he can go no further. That is, after all, not only the role of the bride…but of a sister.
He holds her closer, and realises clearly for the first that she is right…that the two are really not so very different at all, at all.