Aya awoke to the sound of water running. She was laying cuddled up under the blanket on the futon, her hair a tangled mess over her eyes. She pushed it out of the way and rolled over onto her back, rolling right off the edge of the futon in the process. The floor was cold, and hard, and it jolted her wide awake.
Sitting up and quickly dragging the cover back around her, she stared blearily at the bottom of the bathroom door, where light was peeking around its edge.
I don't remember going to sleep, she realized. And then she felt her whole being brighten when she realized...nothing. No dreams. No un-allowable thoughts. Just a full-night of uninterrupted rest.
Gods, she felt...refreshed. Bounding suddenly with energy, she flung the blanket off and got up. Then forcefully pushed herself back to the futon, smoothing the cover out over it and re-settling the pillow. She looked curiously at the bed and noticed that it was already made...curious because he usually waited until after his shower.
Of course, she usually waited until the last moment, so she couldn't fault him for doing things out of order, now could she?
I feel great today! She really did. All the thoughts that had been weighing her down for the last couple of days...they weren't gone, but they seemed lighter somehow. Flimsier. Like she could turn her head and easily ignore them.
And that's just what I'm going to do, she decided firmly. Humming to herself, she sashayed over to the dresser and began pushing things about.
She was looking for something special today. She was in a great mood, and she wanted her clothes to definitely reflect that. So she smiled as she snatched up a skirt and top, then her favourite panty-set.
Now it was just a matter of waiting for Aki to get out.
She sat primly down on the foot of the bed, and waited calmly.
For five seconds, before she shifted impatiently, crossing one leg over the other.
Come on. Come on—come on.
The water shut-off.
Yes!
More time passed.
Aki! Come on!
The faucet at the sink turned on. Aya twitched, her whole body slumping forward. Is it backwards day or something? Aki doesn't usually take this long in the bathroom in the morning...
And you're usually not so quick to crawl out of bed, something in her pointed out meaningfully.
She frowned. Well, that was true. Aki often had to 're-awaken' her when he was done in the bathroom. And then she was often left to running about, trying desperately not to make them late.
So maybe he wasn't taking any longer. Maybe she was just more aware of time passing.
She had an intense urge to go and beat on the door. But she held herself still, knowing that Aki was a little touchy about people bothering him while he was in the bathroom, and always had been.
The fastest way to irritate Aki in the morning was knock on the bathroom door, and while a part of her always loved to torment her brother-she had no interest in true irritation. Aki wasn't fun at all in true irritation.
She marveled for a second at how...normal her thoughts were. The knowledge was still fluttering at the edge of her awareness, but it was like a small bird outside a window now. There when she chose to look at it, easily ignored when she didn't. She didn't dare believe the mood would stick, but while it did, she was going to take full advantage of it.
She pulled her hair to one shoulder, and absently began picking the gold tangles out of it. The water shut off once more, but this time she didn't react. She focused on her hair, and absolutely refused to consider the possibility of him coming out in a towel again. Her hands paused a moment, then slowly resumed combing through the tangles.
The knob turned and her fingers twitched, but the action didn't mean anything. It didn't mean anything because she wouldn't let it mean anything.
Today was a good day. She had already decided, so nothing would change her mind.
The door swung in, and Aki emerged fully dressed and rubbing a towel through his damp hair.
Aya chose not to examine the fact that she was partially surprised at the abundance of concealing cloth.
The emotion, of course, stopped at slight surprise.
"Morning, Aki," she said cheerfully, getting up.
He froze in the light of the doorway, looking at her in mild puzzlement. "Good morning...?"
She smiled at him, having to turn sideways to slide past him through the doorway. He turned his head to look at her curiously, and she raised an eyebrow. Then, with a little grin, she slowly closed the door, pushing him the rest of the way out of the opening in the process.
She leaned against the closed door and felt a moment of...strange fluttering. Then she bounced back, pushing away from the door and stripping off yesterday's now wrinkled clothes.
The bathroom was still hazy from his shower, the mirror still steamed over. She paused in her steps and had the...utterly useless and strange realization that she was naked and standing in a room that Aki had been naked and standing in, only moments ago.
She cocked her head and felt...calm. How odd. She shrugged, pulling back the curtain, and stepping into the still-damp tub. She turned on the water, a little hotter than she knew Aki liked it, and flinched reflexively back. But the water was still warm, from his shower.
She wet her hair, then dumped a palm-full of shampoo on it. She probably used too much, but one of her pet peeves was if her hair didn't feel absolutely clean. Rinsing, then repeating with the conditioner, she piled the saturated, sudsy locks loosely on top of her head and grabbed the soap. She froze again.
Aki used this soap.
Her fingers tightened around the slippery bar, as her breath shortened slightly. Not with unease, but realization.
The water was far too hot, she reached out and twisted the cold knob just a touch.
Better, better. The slightly cooler water soothed her skin. Then she stood there and stared at the wall, feeling the soap in her hand.
Stop it, Aya. You're going to drive yourself crazy if you keep thinking like this. Yes, he used the soap. Yes, he was naked in here only minutes ago.
But he also sits in the kitchen chair, he sleeps on the bed, the futon. His parts constantly come into contact with yours, vicariously. Did you think it wasn't like this before...? It happens, when you share your living space with someone...
When you live with them.
True as that might be, she couldn't help but be aware of it now.
Well, be dirty then, her mind mocked her. Don't use the soap. Don't forget not to sleep on the bed, or sit on the chairs, or even the toilet. Heaven forbid you place your bare bottom where his once was. Why are you being so neurotic about this? You're acting as if he has some kind of disease. He is in love with you.
That's a feeling, not a virus that you could catch if you have too much contact with him...
She started at that, wondering if that's how she really thought. That his emotions might influence hers somehow.
Because...haven't they already?
Feeling stupid, and uneasy, and still strangely enough, in a good mood, she took a deep breath, and slid the soap across her arm.
She washed herself thoroughly, unable to stop herself from imaging him doing the same. Watching the stretching suds circling the drain, she closed her eyes and turned her face up into the water.
He stood here like this.
She combed her hair back from her face, rubbing close to the scalp to make sure all the conditioner had rinsed out. She hated the stringy, oily feeling of conditioner residue in her hair.
He washed with the soap.
She imagined him running the soap across his arms, his legs, the clear suds running in eddies down the water-sleek lines of his body. He washed his chest, and she found her hands sliding down from her hair, caressing slowly across her breasts.
The image in her head ran his fingers over his nipple, not fully a sexual move yet, but just enjoying the heat and sensation. He rubbed the soap over his stomach, his navel.
It was just as the image in her head had moved lower that she realized her hands had followed the same path. She quickly reached out and shut off the water, snapped up a towel and began scrubbing it hard over her skin.
I'm not thinking about that, damn it! Why does this stuff keep popping up in my head?
She paused in her 'drying', her skin stinging and red. She tilted her chin down, and her wet hair swung in an arc to fall over one side of her face. Water beaded from the ends and trickled down her back. She quickly wrapped the towel around her like a blanket, and shivered.
Why does it? I don't want to think about it, do I?
Another image came forward, something that had really happened, but she had forced herself not to remember.
That night last week, that night when I woke up...
I touched him.
Her fingers twitched, tightening on the damp edge of the towel. She lifted her head slowly, seeing only a foggy outline of a woman in the mirror.
I did that. Why did I do that?
Why couldn't I remember that before...?
She was shaking. These questions were full of too many insinuations. The fact that she even thought them was an insinuation.
Lying to oneself never works, she thought. But what's the lie? What's the truth?
Do I...keep thinking these things because...I actually...want to...do...them...?
A harder, more laboured breath, as if something had just reached inside her chest and wrapped around her lungs.
I couldn't.
...
Could I?
On auto-pilot, she bent at the waist and drug the towel down over her head, wrapping her hair up in it like a turban.
It's just curiosity, she tried to comfort herself. I'm trying to understand his feelings...
Again, the thought came. Could she really understand his feelings, without assimilating some part of them?
Have I already?
She couldn't deny that something in her had shifted, was still shifting the longer she held this knowledge in her hands.
Habitually, her hands performed familiar motions, pulling on clothes and smoothing them into place. Standing before the mirror was a useless gesture, as the surface was still unclear, but with an absent frown she took down the towel, then wiped it across the glass. Her features were fuzzy, but distinguishable now.
Mirrors still slightly unnerved her, because part of her sill saw Ceres. Not physically, but emotionally. She didn't understand how their bond had worked, but Ceres had felt like both her 'mother', and her 'past self'.
Aya mostly didn't understand the mechanics of that, not when she tried to think of it through the filter of logic.
But she touched upon it with her emotions instead, her emotions understood it. But not in anything resembling words.
My 'past-self'. And Aki's 'past-self'...They had some sort of relationship?
They were...lovers...?
What did that mean? Did it even mean anything?
She realized it had to have meant something, if one or the other of them had followed the other back to this plane of existence.
If we weren't siblings, it would almost sound romantic...
Like one of my stories on TV, the tragically separated lovers, reborn and reunited.
If Aki wasn't my brother...Could I...?
She stared at the mirror as it slowly started to fog over again. She imagined a different world. A world in which she and Aki met by chance at school or the subway. The setting didn't really matter. She imagined all the positive and negative qualities about her brother, and tried to place them in a body that didn't have her own blood coursing through it.
She closed her eyes, and pushed at the image, trying to form such a picture in her mind.
He's serious. And playful.
Smart. And sarcastic.
The way he sipped his tea, careful and slow. The way he looked at her sometimes, when she was trying to explain a point to him-as if he were lost in the dark and trying to follow her voice out. And that moment when he would finally grasp what she was trying to say, and his eyes brightened with understanding. And amusement.
How he could laugh at her, and himself, and not be cruel about it.
The way he tilted his head down when he was really concentrating, and his blonde bangs fell over his right eye.
That shallow curve of his back...
She blinked, the hazy image in the mirror doing the same. It took her a long moment to remember why she was doing this. Her cheeks felt hot, and she lifted her hands to them, pressing down gently. Her hands seemed awfully cold in comparison.
The truth is, she thought weakly, the truth is, I can see it.
Why some one might fall in love with him.
In fact, it's harder for me to see reasons why they wouldn't.
So...Aki and I, we could have...we could...
She slowly lifted her right hand from her cheek, then brought it sharply back down. She flinched, as her skin stung and the dull slap of flesh filled the bathroom. But the pain did what it was meant to, and brought her thoughts to heel.
That will never be. Whatever we were before this life, it doesn't change what we are now.
Now the question: did she want it to?
No answer. And that silence in her own head was more damning than any answer could have been. She shuddered. Took a hard breath. Stared at the grey mirror.
If he wasn't my brother...
I would...
Her cowardice made her spell it out. Made her taste every illicit word, though she refused to let it pass her lips.
I would be so in love with him.
Spoken words are real, after all.
TBC...