—i. 4:16

It doesn't bother him much—soulmates, the string, the loss of his own—since he has you, after all—

(a home made of flesh and blood; a place for him to return to when he's done being the other. the phantom. the Ghost. Ghost, to everyone except Price. less a dog of the military, and more a half-kept secret; a dead-eyed beast reeking of rot. emanating wrongness and ruin from his gnarled, scarred pores. a walking biohazard that comes to rest in soft skin and small bones; little chirps in his ear (where have you been? and i missed you and i wish you could just stay home instead and—with a pout, voice little bruised—why do you keep leaving me?) that he replays on repeat when he's gone, a trilling coo just for him. just for him—

where safety and comfort—or the closest approximation to either that he's ever found outside of the cold composure of a weathered, obedient knife in the thick of his palm, a rifle over his shoulder: safety in brute force, in dependable bones; thickened meat, grizzle; an uncapped muzzle—come naturally. instinctually.

his own cocoon. a place where he rests: a slow metamorphosis from the other to the man. maskless. laid bare. the only thing keeping him from reaching for the cold comfort of a blade is the way your hands wrap around the thick of his wrist when you drag him along, small snips of words diluted in sunlight and warm breath. your world without him being filled in slowly; reshaped under his heel.)

—and that is what he tells you when you ask him about it, about his string. Words soft in the gloam, a mere whisper—much they usually are after he comes back—as if you're speaking to a wild animal and not a man, afraid to scare him off even though you have to know by now that you'll never get rid of him. 

Can't get rid of him. 

“Jus’ need you, birdie.”

but doesn't it bother you? is threaded between the screams of cicadas as the sun dips in the horizon, painting their garden, the one he built for you with his bare hands, in a sea of warm, gauzy ochre. Shadows violet touched. The air humid, skin-warm, and reeking of sun-scorched grass, loam; earthy. Herbaceous. 

It's been unusually warm this summer—almost unbearably so—and the shade of twilight does little to abate the thick humidity that clings to everything like a second skin, making each breath feel wet. As if he was drowning. 

It's uncomfortable. Nothing but hot days and sticky nights. A constant, steady percolation of sweat gluing to every inch of his skin; the air warm enough to make him nauseous. But coming out to the garden every evening when he's home has morphed into a routine. A thing they share that always starts with a look, one full of intent. There's never a question in your gaze, just a quiet, simmering agitation—a restlessness that grows as soon as the shadows darken, and the sun sinks low on the horizon. An itch only he can soothe with nothing but his presence in your garden. 

When it reaches a fever pitch and you can't bear to be stuck inside any longer, your fingers will curl over his skin before tucking into the inside of his forearm, his wrist. You'll tug on him—and sometimes he'll go instantly. Melt the hard, unyielding metal of his body into something pliant. Something malleable enough for you to drag along as you please. Other times, he'll firm his feet. Give you nothing—not even an inch—because it's just what older (decades older) brothers do, isn't it? Taunt their younger sisters with a hint of meanness that edges closely to malice. Anchored in derision, in a sadistic sense of amusement that runs through him like a low grade fever, as you pull on him and pout. Keeps the game going until you end up popping his name out on a whine that makes something inside him shift—something unnamed, unknown: a thing that belongs to the other—and he's forced to relent, to give in, before it shatters.

In the end, though, it's always the same:

Tucked into a hidden corner of the garden, buffeted by the thick scent of green.

(and he pretends that smears of your fingerprints on his bare skin doesn't feel like a brand, a hot iron—)

And now, those same green-tipped fingers tugged and pulled, that plucked tomatoes from the vine for him only hours ago in the dizzying heat of the sun are absently rubbing at your wrist where nothing grows. 

(a blessing; a curse—)

He shrugs, and it's a careless thing despite the weight of his words when they slip out, rustling the leaves of the ficus that reaches towards the heavens between them. “Don't need anyone else.” 

“It's not the same, though, is it?”

He knows what you mean even if you can't seem to bring yourself to utter the words aloud, to sound them out. 

You're not my soulmate; soulmates are lovers, and we can never be that. 

“I ‘ave you,” he says again, and reaches over to snatch a fat, ripe tomato from your basket. Pops it in his maw as you sputter that was for dinner, Simon! “An’ that's all tha’ matters.” 

And it is—

Despite the jokes and jabs when he's the other about the idea of you, this mysterious entity he shapes his other world around (all whispered behind hands and tucked into alcoves because no one has the balls to say anything to his face with his string rotting under his boot the way it is), it's incongruent to reality:

in thoughts of others, you are his woebegotten mistress trying to live up to a corpse; he touches you with fingers stained with adipocere, smearing the untouchable death of another person over your still-living skin.

but reality is apodictic. the bonds they share, the woven walls of affection, are entirely platonic. unblemished, untainted, by the notion of the string.

He isn't your soulmate. You aren't his.

This is incontrovertible, but it doesn't matter. 

Soulmates can be platonic, too.

He's heard the spiels. The lectures. Read the memos and the pamphlets from the group that started petitioning for a restructuring of laws and legislature to legally, and definitively, separate the State from the String; to allow bonds and ties to be inclusive to other forms of affection and love beyond connected strings.

your soulmate doesn't have to be the person at the other end of your string.

Ever since the moment he saw you, he knew you were his.

and you was just a little thing, a baby bird; someone—the only one—he'd easily (and decisively) rent the world in half for. render it all to ash and ruin; sodder a safe haven out of the broken bones and charred skin and flayed limbs he'd litter the ground with if anyone got too close.

a moulded sanctuary. a untouched baptism in the shape of little hands on his scarred cheeks; milk-touched breath ghosting so sweetly over the crooked arch of his nose as you stumbled into him, babbling incomprehensible nothings as his brother cooed and his wife watched, hawklike, as the little thing they promised to care for after the disappearance of their parents, tripped into his arms, smearing messy kisses, spit-slick absolutions, over his jaw and chin. the garble of words retextualizing in growth, becoming the approximation of his name that become clearer each time he came back from his missions until there was a sanctity nestled into each Simon's and welcome home's. when goin' back became goin' 'ome.

it was always only (and ever) a fondness, a love. familial and perfectly untainted. innocent—or the closest he'd get to feeling clean, unpolluted, as he'd ever come. 

Desire never factored into the equation. Want, lust; it was all neatly tucked into the closet of the room in which feelings for you were housed. 

Platonic. A home. That's all you'll ever be to him—

(of course, of course—)

“Oh,” you say, frowning at him from over the table as night devours the sky. Bathed in a soft, warm gold from the fairylights you had him string around the garden when you were eleven, and oh, you say again, quieter this time. Oh—

He feels his age, suddenly, in the ache of his bones. In the distant memory of a child he barely knew, but would devastate the world for all the same, stumbling towards him when he's come home from training, from missions, babbling out some amalgamation of his name that got clearer with each stretch of time between the last visit, and then now—

The pout of a bratty teenager dissolving into the curved lines of an adult's frown as you stare at him from across the wrought iron table. Older. Less delicate. Fragile. The same eyes, the same look, but plucked out of the head of the child he adored and shoved into the body of a woman he doesn't know. 

(College, he remembers that. Remembers Tommy's phone call. The texts. Dunno what m’gonna do, Si, m’not ready to watch her grow up. The fear—what if she doesn't come back? But you did. 

Out-competed in every single bid you placed for a house. Flats suddenly unavailable hours before you were set to sign a lease. Jobs drying up. No one calling you back—

except a little company down the street from your childhood home, and, hell, should jus’ stay ‘ere, he'd said, lounging on the couch during his perennial return home, flipping through a book as he watched you fret over it all, worried, and really? you wouldn't mind if I stayed home until I found something else?  

The no was unequivocal. 

You came home. Tommy was happy. 

And he—

Well. He got into real estate.)

But there's still that child in you, he knows. Your cheek dents when you sink your teeth into the soft, inner tissue—a habit that hasn't changed since you were six—and just like then, he has to fight the urge to pinch your skin because somewhere deep down, he knows if he touched you, it would hurt.

(knows if he started, he'd never stop—)

And then comes the low pitch of your voice as you say: i just want you to be happy, Simon. 

It's such a strange thing to say to a man like him—one who lives half of his life in a mask, making quiet, drawling jabs at everyone around him; a steady, easy distance where he doesn't think about the girl he has waiting for him, the man, late at night when he's the other, half a world away from you, scrubbing the blood from his knife while you sleep. 

Shapes him into a respectable military mutt called to heel when he's not at home, not with you. The Ghost is something of a joke between them—is that really what they call you?—and not a spectre, a wraith, that has killed more people than you've ever met in your entire life—

is actively thinking about it, even now, as you sit, pretty as a sunrise, before him, whispering a prayer only the ficus can hear. i just want you to be happy. 

(happy—

as if doesn't keep all of his happiness—or some approximation of it—sitting there, his own little sun, right across from him.)

“makes you think m’not?”

You're still rubbing your wrist, nails curled down. Scratching at your skin. Irritating flesh. He can't seem to peel his eyes away from it, even when you shrug. When you say, quiet and unsure, I don't know—you just seem different. 

(he knows why. knows he brought too much of the other home tonight. can smell that man—unwashed and rotting—amid the ferns, the lush bath of sweet, earthy green. tangled up in gunshots and hasty burials, the man had no choice but to drag the corpse back with him—)

“What ‘bout you?” He grunts, if only to distract himself. “Anyone I gotta take care’a for you, huh?” Anyone piss you off?

The tension breaks. Your too-adult, too-knowing frown dissolves into ash as you laugh, even though he's only half-joking. And maybe a little less than that—a promise only the ferns can hear. That the oak can remember. 

No is a breathless whisper, one caught on the tail end of a giggle. “I don't want you to have to hurt anyone for me.”

“I will,” he says, and he's not joking. Not anymore. “Anyone messes with you, come tell an’—”

“—and you'll take care of them?”

“‘course.” 

You're trying to be sly when you roll your eyes at his antics, and for a moment, he wonders what you'd say if he ever told you he already has. Already hurt for you. Already killed for you—

(you, seven, eyes filled with tears as you clutched his jacket and him why you don't have a mom, a dad. did you do something bad to make them go away? if he stays, you won't be bad anymore. you won't, so please, please stay;

him, twenty-five, with more blood on his hands than he could ever dream of scrubbing off, had said—)

it doesn't matter. nothing changes. he curls his fingers into a fist, a tight ball. bottles up all the things he wants to say in his palm, holding tight, and instead says:

“What are big brothers for?” 

(brother—

is murmured into the pale spill of moonlight. —brother, and not soulmate.)

It doesn't matter, though—

soulmates, the string, the loss of his own

—because as long as he has you, has this garden, everything else is secondary. Peripheral. 

Or it was:

was a safe, uncontaminated space free of pollution, of madness—

(i missed you, you whisper into the thick swath of violet blanketing around them, and you're somehow softer and prettier when all you have to illuminate you is the gauzy, warm glow of old fairy lights and the pale spill of moonlight across the garden. ethereal, almost. hallucinatory. like he made you up inside his head. a product of madness; a symptom of hypoxia. 

sometimes he wonders if he really did dream you up. if his subconscious—or what was left of it—scraped together all the good lingering inside of him until it was a pile of claylike residuum on the dirty floor that he sculpted into the shape of you. his own Galatea. here to haunt him—

you offer him a smile, soft and sweet. i kept counting down the days until you came home is whispered out like a secret.

and he reaches for you—a bad idea, he knows: his atoms are needy, unstable; they have this awful habit of clinging to things and refusing to let go. fusing to anything misfortune enough to end up in his grasp. 

but he's greedy. 

greedy—

and more than a little selfish. 

but beneath the veneer of hunger, the eagerness to quell his insatiable appetite, is desperation. he's been carrying around a corpse for the better part of a week, and seeing things that aren't real—not anymore. he needs to know—needs to convince himself—that you're real, whole, and not one of the figures cut out from his childhood nightmares and pasted into the corners during daylight. 

touching you is like sliding his fingers across the milky sap of a poisonous plant—a feeling that will linger like an incessant itch beneath his skin hours after you're gone—but he does it anyway. takes in your shape, the softness of your skin. the hard press of bones buried in muscle. you're all soft skin, soft peach fuzz—all flushed with life and warm. warm, and—

wet. 

you wince when his thumb touches a faint, sticky line curling over your wrist. a small scratch, he realises. from earlier, maybe, when you kept itching at your arm, oblivious to the blood beading up, congealing beneath your nails. 

instinct drives him, makes him hum low in his throat when you wince again, and try to pull away. stay still, is a rumble. lemme see. but it's his training that has him checking for other injuries, following the path back to the sticky, warm source. making sure it isn't catastrophic, isn't a bullet to a temple, striking across skin like a meteor—

it's minor. cat-scratches. your skin is fever-warm, the wounds a little swollen. but you're fine. you'll be fine; it's just irritated skin. you must have annoyed the milkweeds again, or touched a plant that wasn't meant to be touched, and he opens his mouth to tell you this, mocking words nestled in the crooked curve of his teeth, but he stops short. thumb pausing, digging into something that isn't supposed to be there—

—and then he feels that faint bump on your wrist. 

It's the emergence of a single thread cracking through skin and bone, a little seedling desperately stretching towards its sun, its other half

Reaching out for someone who isn't him. Who will never, who could never, be him—

You’re a late bloomer, it seems. 

(something Tommy calls you with a soft nudge of his elbow against your arm when he hears about it. needling joke, full of fond, brotherly humour—

and it is just that. 

a joke. 

their green-thumbed little sister—the same one with a garden that never seems to wilt or slumber, always a thick viridian that you can smell before you see, much like you (an earthy, herbaceous scent lingers around you, leaking out like a dense miasma of damp soil and sun-soaked plants)—a late bloomer, of all things.) 

But it isn't unheard of. Or even at all that rare, really. 

For some, the thread is already sticking out when they're born: a little, red thread poking through the skin of their wrist, a match made in the womb, dangling like their severed umbilical cord; and for others, they don't feel that itch, that prickling pain of something outgrowing the scant space where tendon meets bone, being forced to split through skin and tissue, until they're older. 

You are not an exception to any universally established rule, but statistically, if someone hasn't grown a thread by the time they're twenty, it's unlikely to happen at all. 

He thought he was safe when you turned eighteen, turned twenty. Grew comfortable when the years kept passing after that and nothing came of it because no string, no other half—an idea that crushed you, he knows; but it didn't matter because you have him. Tommy. His wife. The ones who raised you from infancy. Platonic bonds blooming, full of life and vibrant, enough to slake the ache of a missing soulmate. Something he thought was enough—

Until he's watching silently as you marvel over it, lost in the burgeoning wonderment of who it could be. What they might look like, when you’ll meet them, and oh, if only it were sooner—

Your string is a pretty, shiny pink in its incipient germination; steadily pulsing with life as it cranes high into the air, seeking the other thread to link itself to. Seeking that burgeoning fantasy that he can see spinning in the back of your head. Forging a life without him because what is platonicity, familial affection, in comparison to that promised wholeness.

It's not as if he hasn't imagined that you would eventually move on. Want things for herself that he couldn't, and wouldn't, be able to give you. Braced for that day when you would come home from high school, from college, from work, from trips with your friends to places he could only follow in secrecy, and declare that you found someone you loved. Would move on from the house tragedy built, one brimming with ghosts, and become an occasional guest to a love, a comfort, that once was.

But that was without the string. 

And now—

Well.

The apex of it all is simple:

He thought he was safe.a folly he recognises in the paradigm that follows in pursuit of that little bump. the fissure growing, rotting, as reality around him is prodded at, and bends. proves to be more malleable, more penetrable, than he thought.

on the pristine walls of his undiluted sanctuary, a crack appears.

“You okay?” Tommy asks through a slow inhale of smoke. 

He can feel the shift of his gaze; feel the burn on the side of his face as Tommy watches him from across the kitchen table. It's the same look as back then, when he stumbled onto the patio in a daze, and found the backyard torn apart. Seven mounds of dirt, all six feet in depth, scattered across the disturbed ground. Bags of soil stacked against the railing. A shovel in his older brother's hand. Dirt, that was a little too red, caked under his nails. 

Inside, his wife shushed their baby sister while she cried. Their mother, their father, nowhere to be found. 

It's something full of caution. Reproach. He wonders if somewhere, maybe deep down in a place he can't even reach, Tommy knows that wherever his brother went that night, something else came home the next morning. 

Something covered in dirt and blood. Manic. Half-crazed. A thing that had an awful habit of making every problem they've ever had disappear. 

When the silence stretches on for too long, he forces himself to shrug. But his shirt, damp from sweat, clings to his slick skin, and makes him acutely aware of how hot he feels. 

Feverish, almost. 

Half-crazed. 

He knows how to act. What to say. Reaches for the pack of cigarettes even if the drag of fabric on his sodden skin rankles down his spine in a way that makes him grind his molars together until he hears the creak of a tooth on the nerve of shattering. Enamel tensing under pressure. 

The cigarette, the nicotine—or maybe just the habit itself—lessens the strain in his jaw, but does little to quell the heat in his guts. The slow, simmering fever of fury running through his veins. 

Everything is hazy. Fever-touched. The sharp end of a manic splinter driving itself deeper into his cranium until everything around him looks slightly smeared. Smudged fingerprints rubbed into the edges of his periphery. 

The heat, the stench—because beneath the stale smell of cigarettes, smoke, and ash, is the rot, and it is almost unbearable. Has him gnashing his teeth in anger. Rattling the bars to a cage he hasn't felt like he's been locked inside since he was seventeen. Whatever is leashed inside of him is snapping its jowls to get free.

His string aches. The seed deep in his tissue burning hot, infectious; each pulse makes pus oozes out from the rotted nub that cracks through his skin. 

It's worse than it's ever been. Instead of just the string itself rotting from inside of him, his flesh around it is waxy and red. Hot. Tight. The skin bracketing the string cracks and bleeds each time he flexes his swollen fist—

Beneath the heavy swath of ink etched into scar tissue and mangled flesh, the veins that run the length of his arm are black. Branching tendrils drift off from the main line, leaving webs of rot pulsing under his skin. 

He knows what he needs to do, what he should have already done, but for a moment, he considers going to rest in the garden instead. Dragging you along behind him before he smears myrrh and milk and honey over their skin—

But he knows that he'd never get that far. And even if he did fall victim to scaphism at his own hands, Price would still find a way to prop his mouldering body up on a stick to wave at their enemies, denying him the rest he doesn't deserve. 

Still. 

He needs to leave, he thinks. Needs to bring the corpse he dragged home with him back to the battleground. Needs to sink his teeth into something, into—

“m’leavin’,” he says, and it's only an ironclad control over himself that keeps the rabid froth from spilling out of his mouth. 

And Tommy—

Tommy doesn't say anything for a long stretch of time. Just stares. Watches him that same expression he started to hone into constant veneer the moment you turned eighteen, frowning at him from above your head with a look Simon can't place (won't place) fixed on his face like some loitering mother hen. 

It drives the distance that cracked open between them even wider than it was before, now a deep, jagged bergschrund neither are willing—or wanting—to cross. 

In another life, the irreparable damage to his relationship with Tommy might have clawed at his chest until it was a gaping wound; but in this lifetime, he knows—without an iota of uncertainty—that he did the right thing. Did what had to be done. 

But each look tinged with suspicion is an arrowhead dipped into poison. A chip at the chasm walls that only widens the maw further. 

And when Tommy glances towards the backdoor, to where you’re clawing at the dirt on your knees to make a home for the blue fox willow and rose of sharon you picked out at the nursery this morning, he feels something hot, sickly, twinge in his guts. 

“Oh, yeah?” Tommy says finally, turning back towards him and ashing his cigarette in the overflowing tray. 

He wonders if Tommy remembers that night in the garden, when he'd come home to a dirty house—dishes lying everywhere, food moulding on the counter; pills scattered across the coffee table, the needle of a syringe dripping onto the floor—and found you screaming in your bassinet while Tommy was passed out on the couch, too high to notice anything around him—

Maybe even Simon grabbing him by his collar and dragging him outside. Pushing a shovel into his hand and telling him if anything ever happened to you, to their sister, while he was gone, Tommy should just start digging his own grave. 

The slur in his voice when he said f–fuck, you know I wouldn't let anythin’ ‘appen to her, Si, you know that—

It hummed under his skin each time he had to go away, ears ringing with the sound of your screams echoing through the empty, dark hallway. Worry a splinter beneath his skin he couldn't pry out (even when he took his knife to his flesh, trying to dig it up)—a feeling that still lingers even as Tommy eventually cleaned up his act, sobered up (in parts, pieces), and raised their sister better than their parents ever could. 

He should be proud—and he thinks he is (or feels some approximation of pride)—but he can't shake the look. The suspicion, dappled in red against the jaundiced smear of sleeplessness and a glassy high, that keeps burning through. 

It's there now, too—clearer this time, brighter without the drugs dulling his senses, but just as potent. As heavy. 

Drenched in askance when he shuffles his feet beneath the table their mother sat at, silent and still as a ghost, as their father dumped a tray full of ash into their food after he found a pack of stolen cigarettes stuffed under their mattress, and made them eat it. 

Simon thumbs the scrapes in the wood where he was forced to bite down on the edge while their father threatened to bash his teeth out for talking back—something he'd only done to distract the man from beating his brother senseless—as Tommy finally meets his gaze, and says:

“Yeah. Might be for the best.”

His nail scrapes down the torn wood, each ridge a perfect impression of all the places his teeth had caught in the wood. He chipped three teeth. Lost two. Tommy cowered in the corner while his mum sat, still as a ghost, at the table drinking her tea. 

Dad laughed. Laughed at the scream he let out. At the tooth that scattered across the wood. Ain't talkin’ back now, are ya?

Laughed—

Until he noticed the blood soaking into the varnish. Bellowed at the mess, at the fuckin’ mess—

He ignores the flicker of discomfort when he scrapes his finger across the torn varnish, unbothered by the sting as little chips, flakes, of wood gather underneath his nailbed. Barely notices it as he holds Tommy's gaze, and curls his hand into a loose fist on the table, knuckles facing downwards. 

“Sure,” he rasps. 

And the crack widens.

(it began with a garden.) 

a garden—

and a choice.)

A choice for which the lines of his conviction never blurred, never smeared. A concise, pristine demarcation emerged from the moment he made a choice that changed the trajectory of his life from tragic to harmonious, giving that little thing germinating inside the womb of his mother a chance—giving you, his safe haven, an opportunity to pullulate within this harsh world built around them.

It's something he's never questioned, despite the wealth of scars and crooked bones and gaping wounds he gained when he uprooted everything around him until all that remained was disturbed soil—enriched with peat moss and calcium; a blood-fed garden freed of all weeds, and slowly leaching from the percolating minerals as his enemies (and the gangrenous limbs of their parents—ones unexpectedly, and suddenly, lost to a quiet disappearance that Tommy stopped asking about when the investigation dwindled and the sparse, threadbare sympathy dried up along with the askance in his gaze whenever it was brought up) slowly decomposed humus and perlite, feeding the tomatoes and blood-red berries they planted together when he was on leave. 

And beneath your soft, unblemished fingertips, the silent graveyard he filled for you turned into a lush basin of growth. Everything rich and heady—

Carnivorous, even though you’ll never know the truth of what he fertilises your garden with. Or where their parents disappeared to when you were just a few weeks old. 

Secrets he'll take to his grave because the blood dripping from his hands, the slow rot of his string, is worth it just to see you bloom—

And to reap the rewards of your garden as you feed him from it each spring:

please eat better, you said—demanded, really—when you were no more than ten, and he dutifully swallowed the cherry tomato you plucked from the shade of its leafy umbrella without a word when you pressed it to his scarred lips, crooked teeth sinking into the tight, smooth skin until it popped in his mouth, leaking juice and pulpy flesh between his teeth, a mimicry of what he'd done to the man with blooded, bare hands who tried to bludgeon you to death in infancy. 

Says nothing about it, about the blood in the vines, in the roots, of your pretty garden that you still fuss over every spring despite the years that passed since your siege of longevity, allowing Tommy the occasional beer, and him his preferred cigarette when you weren't around to see it.

"want me to live longer, eh?" he'd quip instead, licking the stuck skin from between his teeth. breath warm, herbaceous; tomato juice—that was always a little too red—dribbling down his chin. "tryin' to butter me up an' become my favourite sister, are you?"

and your breath would hitch slightly. a shallow catch, made more out of fondness and affection than anything else, that always happened just before you would smile, bright and wide, and volley back:

"i'm your only sister."

and the thing is:

what he felt for you has always been platonic, desireless—

but maybe it wasn't as apodictic as he thought.

and as the fractures split and grow, crumbling the walls of his once unblemished refuge, he's beginning to see how wrong he was. that, at some point, a foreign seed was thrown into the satchel and sowed in with the others. a parasitic, carnivorous spore that grew down instead of up. invasive. pervasive. silently, unknowingly spreading beneath the soil and under the roots of everything else until the infection grew, the rot festered, and he began looking at you with the face of the man but the eyes of the other—

a blameless notion. accidental. happenstance. divined by fate instead of choice.

easy to pick at, to cling to; to wrap the thread of this new truth around his fingers and anchor himself to it as his insides are subsumed by the fecundated spores. unwittingly, and helplessly, consumed by pathogenesis—

an easy out.

but he's been thinking a lot about platonicity lately. dwelling on the shapes his world took when he reduced his overarching sense of greed and possession to an oversimplification, or a symptom, of familial piety.

the raw truth is that he's always had those recesses buried deep in his cranium, waiting to burst. the ooze, that putrid sludge, building up over time as the half of him that died in that shallow grave festers; necrotizing in the back of his head. a bloated corpse of the man he once was: a man who wouldn't feel these twisted, awful things for his own sister—not at all; or at least, not at the expense of Tommy. his own flesh and blood.

a casualty, then—or a cruel twist of fate—that the putrid runoff of the good man's rotting body built up over time, forming a cesspit where ruin thrives. where all the good things inside of him go to rot.

even that hallowed place he made in the softness of your touch. desire, possession: psychosomatic.

reality is a layered plane. multifaceted, multileveled. misshapen and bent. and in the staggered remains of it all is another half-truth:

something shifted inside of him. another crack. another fracture wrought in the gauzy, sweet spill of a girl who has always been his proclaiming your burgeoning love, your desire, for another man, a person you’ve never met before, in front of him; each soft soliloquy, these gentle musings of a life without him in it, unearths the things he buried in the dark: the raw, clawing desperation; the possession he's felt since you wrapped your hand around his finger and wouldn't let go—

his. but not—not really.

familial. a safe, softened affection, a love he knows is there—one that's always been more than enough until now. until he still see that glossy love in your eyes, but is now forced to see it buffered from the inky, wet spread of desire spilling in those unbidden fantasies that spin and spin and spin—

it's irrefutable, he knows. his birdie, his baby, loves him, but it's not enough—

not anymore.

and a man that has only known hunger and desperation is readymade to snap his jaws and bury his teeth into the hand that tries to take his meal away from him.

(a meal that has always been his;

after all, would a truly innocent domicile really need a closet in which to stuff greed, desire, into if the threat of it permeating the air hasn't always been lingering in the shadows, tucked into the putrid recesses of his rotting mind—)

Tucked away in a safehouse he hasn't used in a decade, Simon takes a blade he'd heated over the stove until the metal was red-hot to the blackened skin on his wrist, and cuts out the infectious seed from his body. 

On the table, exuding leachates and putrid, old blood into dust-covered wood, is the rotting string he'd cut out first. 

The tail is shrivelled into a husk of mummified tissue. It's brittle. Pieces flake off when he touches it, crumbling into char, into ash between his fingers. The string itself is more of a muddy brown than a red. His blood, too, leaks slowly from the gouged wound in his skin—a thick, sticky tar-like ooze that's more pus than blood, he thinks. Or a noxious mix of both—sanies; a seropurulent discharge that reeks of infection. Of fetid flesh. 

The seed, too, drips the same fetid liquid as it sits on the flat edge of his knife, and he can't help staring at the slimy, black spore. 

It's so insignificant for what it is, for how much trouble it caused twenty-three years ago; now. 

Everything about it is—

Underwhelming. 

The blood-drenched roots he felt being pulled out from his veins are smaller than he expected them to be. Finger-length. Thin. Just these spindly, desiccated strands that look like they'd uproot with just the slightest tug. Branching secondary roots with torn ends—the part he figures must embed itself in veins. The anchor points that act like an umbilicus, leaching nutrients from his body in an anomalous symbiosis. 

To him, it looks far more parasitic than the benevolent organism they've claimed since humans first encountered whatever theorised spore or prehistoric parasite is believed to have caused the strings, one that dug deep into a neanderthal's tissue and refused to let go. That, he supposes, or divine intervention. An act of God. 

It's immobile, much like the plants in your garden. The little saplings you picked from the nurseries in town. Lifeless, almost, but it's beguiling. 

Even as a dessicated husk of pulp and rotten roots, he can feel the life brimming through the veins. The artificial arteries. There's a heart in the nucleus, even if it's blackened with rot and mold. The apex of his problems sits in the string that emerged eighteen years too early. Reached for someone else—

It's in the lifeless corpse of his supposed fate where he thinks of you. 

Of the string budding in your tissue. It's longer, you'd texted last night—another unanswered message in a sea of many because each time he tried to reply, the words you're mine were the only things his fingers seemed to be willing to type—and weird. 

He knows. 

Has been through it before. Endured the alien sensation of a kernel slowly germinating in your wrist, budding between tendon, ulna, and radius. Burying roots in your median cephalic vein. A new, foreign growing pain that felt like it didn't belong—like glass, a sliver, embedded in skin. An entity. A passenger he was forced to carry as it sliced into muscle and tissue, curled around bone, and broke through skin. A constant ache. A throbbing pain. 

His hand became a petiole, a rib. A stalk. Vibrant, blood-red palmates, curling around his fingers as it sought the other half it was cut from. 

It's been two weeks. The only spark of guilt he's ever felt in his life is nestled within the words wish you told me you were leaving, i didn't even get to say goodbye, the text sent only an hour after he'd left the house, the kitchen; the suspicion in Tommy's eyes, sharply cut with a thread of relief when he'd stood to go. 

That inchoate bud would now be several inches long, the string, the stem, curling around your fingers like a nemertea with branching ganglions. Midribs that slot into place, sessile. Designed to be as unobtrusive as possible as it stretches out from between the brackets of your knuckles, seeking its other half, its other polyp, to join, completing the lifecycle of the parasitic string, or—as romantic manuscripts from the early medieval period like to proselytize—finalising a soulmatic union. 

And, with the subsequent text messages that follow, it's a process that might be completed for you sooner than thought because maybe there was a little more to the suspicion in Tommy's eyes at that table, in the garden, on the porch, than he'd realised. 

Tommy is being really weird lately, you'd texted. he keeps pushing for me to check out that company that finds your soulmate for you—

On the table, laying open beside the bisected string and parts, is a translated copy of that manuscript. It's the last book he'd read about the topic—everything else stacked behind it is thicker, dense with the knowledge and understanding of this (still) mystifying organism that infects humanity; filled with scientific research, anatomical outlines—and arguably the most fantastical of the lot. They believed that it was a divine blessing from God, and most of it is unfounded, uneducated assumptions, but nestled in the slew of religious nonsense is a single line he can't stop reading. A noetic line in Middle English that bought on this self-guided surgery to begin with: 

that in this world nys creature lyvynge. Now be we caytyves, as it is wel seene, thanked be Fortune and hire false wheel, hangynge by a soutil twynes threed. And ther I lefte, I wol ayeyn bigynne.

A bagatelle, really. Or the majority of it is. Almost indecipherable even with the translation beneath—that in this world is no living creature; now we are miserable wretches, as it is easily seen, thanks be to Fortune and her false wheel—but the last part stands out. 

hanging by a thin thread of twine; and where I left off, I will again begin—

On the table, the bloodsoaked husk of his string begins to reek of rot, but nestled between tendon and bone, a familiar ache gnaws at him. 

Between the carved pieces of tissue and fat, a new seed emerges. 

He has two fingers buried in the shallow grave of his wrist when a plan starts to take shape.

—ii. 5:1

The oppressive heat soon gives way to a torrent of summer storms. 

Thick, craggy smears of slate and iron clot over the cloudless cerulean skies, hiding the unrelenting sun behind a veil of charcoal. Everything is overtaken by a heavy swath of grey gloom and streaks of lightning. 

The deluge that follows is near biblical—a downpour that lasts three days, drenching the ground so heavily in rainwater that it sits on the grass for hours before it eventually soaks into the earth. Feeding the roots. The voracious maw of your garden and the bodies drowning underneath the soil.

Geosmin and petrichor pepper the air in a dense spool, a thickened web. 

He comes back during a respite in the cloudburst when the draping greys lighten into a muddled blue and the dense stormcloud crack apart, a sliver of the setting sun spills through. He finds you in the kitchen, your back to him, stirring something in a pot. It smells rich. Full of spices and herbs. Aromatic. 

Curry, he thinks. Simmering in a pot on the back burner. Then beneath it—rice, buttery and sweet, browning in a shallow pan with butter and garlic and onions. 

On the counter, a handful of sun-ripened tomatoes, diced into pulpy, oozing chunks of red rest on a cutting board next to a small mound of minced, green herbs. Several spoons sit on a cloth near the sink—each of them covered in sauce. There's a wooden spoon tucked behind your ear. A damp towel thrown over your shoulder. 

Your phone is on the table; something mid-tempo, atmospheric plays from the speakers, and you hum along under your breath—I gotta know tonight, if you're alone tonight—as you stir grains of rice. Soft. Easy. Can't stop this feeling. Can't stop this fire. Swaying slowly to the beat. Head bowing with each shallow nod, and it gives him the perfect view of your nape. Sloping and vulnerable. Fragile—like the arching handle of fine bone china. 

It's—

Sweet. Domestic.

In his chest, something cracks. Fractures. It aches, and it bleeds—

You notice him, then, just as the other man, more of a feral animal now, drags itself to the edge of the precipice, ready to jump—

A flicker. Surprise, he thinks. And then: 

a smile, all wrapped up in the rich, heady scent of spices, and herbs; warm, toasted butter and milky cream. home, and him, and you.

didn't know you were coming back, you say, turning towards him with that same, soft smile. “Dinner is almost done. Hungry?”

Is he hungry? He doesn't think a single day has gone by where he wasn't ravenous. 

Starving comes out as a mangled sound in the back of his throat. Raw. Charred. Forced out between clenched teeth. All ash, cinder. 

The growl he lets out makes that pretty smile falter, just a touch, at the edges. Dimming. Hackles raising. Body tensing in anticipation—even if you're not really sure why. 

It's all—

Primal. 

Muddled. 

You take a cautious step back—unconciously done; atavistic fear driving you away from the bigger, dangerous man looming over you, blocking the only exit; your hindbrain sensing the predator in the bush before your mind catches up to the fact that your body, your instincts, are trying to protect you from your own kin. 

Your own big brother. 

He scrapes his tongue against his teeth. The pangs in his belly are almost impossible to ignore—a gaping, rapacious beast in his guts that can't stop eyeing the way your meat clings to fragile bones. The cushion of fat. Muscle. Plump and full and ready for him to sink his teeth into—

In the pale light, soft lines of ruby gleam:

Curled—protectively—around your wrist is the string. Thin, branching hyphae loop around your fingers. The trailing tail tipped inward, kept tucked against the heat of your inner wrist, resting along your pulse, unmoved. Unmoving—

the string doesn't stir. 

the refusal is clear: 

he is not your soulmate. 

The anger that sparks through the hunger in his guts is a sick thing. Twisted. But he swallows it down, tucks the feeling into the folds of his chest and steps closer, reaching for you with dirty hands—

“c’mon,” he grunts, curling his fingers around your wrist, cupping the string beneath his palm. He feels agitated. Restless. 

“You wanna eat outside?” 

Even sounding—and looking—so perplexed, you still turn away from him, turning the dials on the stove to bring the heat down to a simmer. Letting everything rest, your own meal is kept in stasis, as you rearrange your evening to sate his appetite. 

“Rain let up,” is all he gives in response. Then, when you make to grab another bowl from the cupboard, he adds: 

Done enough, ‘aven’t you? 

He lets go of your wrist, and nudges you towards the door. You don't question him at all. Then again, you rarely ever do. Always so eager to please, to soak up any scrap of attention he has leftover to give;

“Go sit outside. I'll grab the food, an’ make some tea.”

so sweetly obedient for him—even to your own detriment. 

You always smell like the garden. 

Earthy. Damp. A forest floor after a rainfall. Mossy and rich. Slightly mineral, too—wet rocks, stones. Herbaceous—like the thick, full fronds on your boston fern. 

A particular thing: like everything before then, before the heart of your scent bloomed to life, was baking in the heat. Everything is still a little sundrenched, a little burnt, but now bathing in the cool respite of a rainshower. The air tinged, slightly, with that soft, sweet acidic scent that lingers in the air after a summer's storm. Geosmin. Water on wet pavement. A street—full of dirt, grime, oil, and scorching concrete—drenched in the aftermath of a deluge. 

It's a scent he carries with him everywhere he goes, invoking you through the process of dampening his fingers and digging through a small patch of soil until the urge to run home is slaked in the disturbed earth.

(—him: hunched over on his knees, thick forearm braced against the ground, nose pressed into the soil; breathing the heady scent of loam into his lungs, the scent of you—)

The respite from the storms comes at a cost, and the price to pay tonight is a thick, wet humidity that drapes over everything like a heavy blanket. And within the sticky, molasses-like air is the scent of you. Thicker tonight. Maddeningly so. 

He can't escape it. Not when the air itself is perfumed with it, with you, in a dense sillage that drips down the back of his throat with each inhale. 

The world itself moulding around the two of you as the trees around the garden table dip from the weight of the droplets sitting heavy on soaked branches and wind-battered leaves, bending to form a lush parentheses of wet, earthy green. 

it's enough to drive a man mad, he thinks, and know, then, if he stayed, if he hadn't left, he would have broke until the heavy spill of you clinging to his skin, soaking his lungs—

(—his hand knocking into his thigh each time he stroked downwards on his cock; teeth sinking into a groan that threatens to spill out, the shape of it a little too close to your name for him to do anything but ignore it, ignore it and pretend like he isn't burying his face in the damp dirt, tugging on his cock, and thinking of his baby sister—)

He's half-hard. Half-crazed. You're stuck in the fading vestiges of the hidden sun still desperately trying to squeeze through the thick, dark clouds above. Glowing in soft ochre. In the warm gold of the fairylights. You look—

Otherworldly, in this garden. This moment. Ethereal—

And drunk. 

Lids, half-mast, over glossy, red-rimmed eyes. Unfocused. Slumped over the table, the bowl of half-eaten curry and rice perched precariously between the edge and your drooping elbow. All effort focused on keeping you from dropping your head onto the wrought iron. 

The mug of tea sits, empty, in front of you. 

“Tired?” He pries, leaning back against the chair. Legs kicked out. A big, dusty boot sliding between your ankles. 

It's a sick thing when you give a sluggish nod and he coos, a little lower, a little meaner, than usual. Poor baby, slips out into the dripping ficus. You're too out of it to notice the edge in his voice. The hunger. 

It's as if the world around you is stuck in molasses, in tar. Slowed to a drip, an ooze. Everything tangled up in a thick, sticky web. Thoughts catching on the strands like flies, unreachable. Paper-thin. He slips his booted toe up your calf, your leg. Nudging your knees until they split apart over the chair for him. 

The old table and chair set is a deep emerald—patches of it blackened; lost to time, to rust, to rot—and made of curled iron, all of it bent into curving leaves and vines that twist into a pretty rose centre. Open gaps, finger-thick, keep it from being a solid piece; but that wasn't the design for these old, vintage bistro tables. He can see right through to the ground where dappled sunspots scorch the pavement, and—higher up—the split between your knees, the pretty part of your thighs. 

It's too dark out to see much, but the hazy shadow at the apex, hiding the colour of your panties from his view, is enticing enough. More than enough. 

In all the people he fucked, in all poses, the positions, not a single one of them comes close to the sheer eroticism of his little sister struggling to stay awake, but keeping your thighs spread for him to look between. A good fuckin’ girl. 

It's nothing but shadows. A vague hint—the suggestion of it, of your cunt—but it has sweat pooling along his hairline, dribbling down his spine. A fever in his veins at the thought alone. That dark patch is enough to make him sweat. 

Wonders, then, what you'd look like arching into it. Willingly spreading your thighs for him. Desperate for it. Rubbing that pretty cunt on his boot—a little performance, just for him. 

“Look’it you,” he rasps, and with his foot, he pushes your thighs apart wider. Openly staring at that crux. Poor thing. “Should get some sleep, huh?”

You mumble something, the words tangled up in exhaustion. Delirium. Slurred and incomprehensible. 

Adorable. 

“C’mon,” he urges, and pulls his boot away with a huff. “Gotta be a good big brother an’ get you to bed, don't I?”

You say nothing, but he doesn't expect you to. The sleeping pills he crushed up and mixed into your tea are probably stronger than you can handle—

But he pulls back, boot dropping to the ground after tucking the image of you slumped over the table, legs spread; silently letting your older brother push his boot between your thighs just to steal a glimpse of your panties. 

(it's not the first time, though—he has several pairs shoved in his duffle bag, all snatched up from the hamper before he left—

some of them kept, just for him. the rest forced onto whoever he picked up for the night; modelled and posed for him. their faces hidden. 

he's sick in the head, he knows; and more-so now after the cutting, decimating realisation that just that sliver, that peek, of your panties beneath the table turned him on more than the people he'd forced into your used panties—)

“C’mon—”

He stands with a huff. Hard, amused. Starving. Watching with a strange, awful, mix of want and affection as your head drops backwards, and you blink up with him with liquid eyes, lost to the medication. The drugs. Droop-eyed and dazed, but still so fuckin’ trusting. Arms sluggishly lifting up when he steps towards you, thrusting the string—the one that refuses to even twitch for him—into the warm, gold glow from the lights, putting it on display. 

You were so happy about it during dinner. Prattling on about how Tommy was going to register you for a string search, find your soulmate for you as soon as possible. The elation cutting into your gaze as you spoke about it, about finding your mate made his skin crawl. Made him clench down tight until his jaw ached and his head pounded. Biting down on the urge to growl out you're fuckin’ mine—

His sweet baby sister, blooming for someone else. 

The mumble of his name brings him back. Centres him. 

He helps you up as you babble. A syrupy slip of a thing that he tucks under his arm, holding tight. A sloppy smile, all wide and bright, even as it wobbles at the edges, builds when you see him. 

Your nose pressed into his ribs. Missed you, mumbled into the damp fabric of his shirt. Missed you so, so much—

You're so much his baby sister at this moment that it aches. 

But it doesn't make the hunger go away. 

Instead he presses his lips to your temple in a sloppy, smearing kiss, all teeth and sticky skin that makes you giggle, and pulls you up, walking you back into the house, down the hall. To your bedroom. Pushes you towards the bed, echoing the yawning, slurring mumble of goodnight, Simon that follows him down the hall as he pretends to leave. Leaning against the wall as he waits. Listening to the creak of bedsprings in the old, tissue-walled house as you settle into an artificial sleep. 

Then, he prepares. 

It's quick. Just two snips. Four neat stitches. Faster than he expected it to be, and with this newfound wealth of time, he can't ignore the itch in the back of his head—some long, forgotten conscience of the man he used to be (the man he could have been if he never dug that grave)—whispering in the still, quiet dark that he can stop here. That this is more than enough—

But he thinks that man ought to know better.

He's known hunger like no other; knows what an empty stomach does to itself. Knows just how far someone would go to try and sate the ache inside that pit that is never full, never satisfied. Should remember rummaging through bins for scraps. Begging on street corners. Stealing from stores and shops just to bring his wears home and have it taken away. Unable to sleep on an empty stomach. And—

The feeling of self-cannibalisation. The act of the body eating itself to survive.

It's never enough. And in that shallow grave, he told himself he'd never settle again for seconds, never beg for the leftovers on someone else's plate. Barter for scraps.

All or nothing.

And he wants all, wants everything, he can gorge himself on when it comes to you.

A rapacious, selfish beast that eats, and eats—

He's decidedly unbothered by the lack of guilt he feels; the absence of morality in any shred of his being as he picks up the torch and continues. Cauterizes the wound, welds the flesh together.

When he's done, he holds the fresh wound between his fingers, letting the blood settle so it can start to ebb and flow. Watches the blackened, burnt skin slowly begin to peel and flake. Dead tissue fluttering onto the bedsheets the way it should, leaving behind nothing but red flesh, slightly inflamed. A little swollen, but nearly healed. Strings heal quick. Quicker than flesh, than skin. The antibiotics will help, too. Everything coming together in a quiet breath; tucked between the stench of rot and burning flesh until all that remains is soft, sutured tissue and a small pile of ash beside your elbow.

And the rest, he supposes. The severed string in his hand, slowly withering away—the signifier to an immediate death on the opposite end of the rope. Whoever your soulmate was, they're gone now.

That, too, he feels nothing about. No guilt. No anguish. Just a bone-deep sense of satisfaction thrumming through him. Something primal, all animal, that preens in the back of his head as he gathers the string in his palm, the symbolic other half that tried to take you away from him, and without a second thought, he pops it into his mouth and starts to chew—

(Can't leave behind any evidence, after all.)

Gamey, slight tough. Touched with incipient bloom of rot percolating from its dying pores. With a single swallow, it goes down: falling to the yawning chasm of a belly that'll never be full; and with it, so too goes the only thing in the world that has ever stood a chance to take you away from him.

And without much else to do but wait it out, he gathers his things, dusts the dead, burnt skin from the bed, and leaves—as if he was never there to begin with.

In the morning, he yawns awake to the sound of a shrill scream. Then the hammering of feet on old, weathered wood. His brothers voice echoing down the hall, words garbled with sleep and confusion. hey, wait—

but heedless, his door is wrenched open, and you're filling the frame; eyes widening with disbelief. With a touch of disgust and horror that he's sure you'll overcome with time. Looking slightly sick, a little mystified as the once small nub stretches across herringbone until it kisses the mouth of his umbilicus. A connected line that gets smaller as the gap closes.

soulmates found.

(or—

reforged.)

A minute later, and Tommy is there, his eyes just as wide as the gears turn, as the sight before him is laid bare. Unmistakable. A breathless, shaken no, oh fuck, no leaving the slack of his jaw as he watches the scene unfold, as his eyes follow that hideous trail. One that binds his brother and sister together—

It's telling, he thinks, that the first thing Tommy says to him is not what happened, but instead:

“Simon…what the fuck did you do?”

He's comfortable in the chaos that follows.

In the visits to doctors and specialists, and the uncertainty that clots the home like a thick, noxious miasma as everyone around him, around you, try to poke and prod at the cauterised knot that ties you to him eternally.

There's no give. No loopholes. His precision fools everyone because no one has ever tried to do what he's done, and the string is a living, breathing thing that's as easily manipulated—just like an organ transplant, tricking the body into thinking things are as they should be—and it pulses to life as it heals, sharing nutrients and blood between the two of you.

Inserverable, the specialists say.

A bond—even one as rare as this (if not utterly unheard of)—cannot be broken without consequence. While there are rumours and theories about it, nothing has been proven. All that is known is that no one has been able to find the perfect middle of a soulmates fated string, and when cut, the individual whose string is shorter than the other dies. This is ironclad. Laws were formed, strengthened, around this very notion.

The string, however taboo, cannot be cut.

And even if it could, he won't let it.

Because the thing is—the missing part to that half-truth—is that he's been waiting for this day since he was eighteen.

—and ther I lefte, I wol ayeyn bigynne, indeed.

from the moment he showed up to the hospital after getting the call from Tommy, and held you in his arms as you peeled your red, swollen eyes open and looked right at him (him, not Ghost, not the other; not Simon, the man, but him, him, him—), he knew you were his. that first hitch, that little breath. he leaned down and caught it between his teeth—warmed milk, honey-sweet—and swallowed it down. let it moulder in his belly until he could taste you in the back of his throat.

this tiny, insignificant thing—

the schematics never mattered much. he doesn't think there was ever a time when dwelled on blood or familial bonds, or felt sick over the fact that you grew up calling him brother. that his brother is your brother, too. same parents. same blood. it isn't, and wasn't ever, a perversion; he didn't try to reshape the boundaries of your relationship, or push you past what was normal. it was kinship. platonic. familial.

you were, and are, simply his.

he was content with just having you close. your presence a balm to the aggravation within himself. sprouting life within lands he once thought were barren. reshaping the geographical plains of his own existence until it perfectly bracked around each breath you took; a shadow that loomed with every step.

he became this—

this thing. a wild animal, once feral and crazed, domesticating itself just so it could be allowed close enough to smell the sweet, warm milk of your breath; feel it on his scarred cheek when you used the broad stretch of his shoulders to balance on his knees, wobbling like an unstable sun in his lap as you kissed the mess of his chin whispered the words that kept bringing him home, over and over again. dragged him back from beneath the funerary dirt he was buried under. giving him the will to turn a nightmare into a home (into mausoleum that entombed the rotting remains of his father and mother—neither good enough to be near you). a lush garden. a happy, giggling girl in his arms pushing blood-fed tomatoes between his maw. he stretched his legs out as he chewed and knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life just like this: no more, no less.

but then he felt that nub. that little seed beneath your skin that mocked him, told him that, under no uncertainty, you belonged to someone else. and that just wouldn't do.

see, the universe might have gotten it wrong—gave him another soulmate, another person, instead of you—but he's learned a lot from the military, from John Price; knows that the most important thing in the world is correcting mistakes. making things right.

killing his own soulmate (and yours when he cut your string) was just the right thing to do because even then, he knew there couldn't (and wouldn't) be anyone else.

and when you slip into his room, the epitome of a sacrificial lamb marching towards death, he feels the cracked, misshapen pieces of himself begin to shift again—

(a little hitch, a hiccup, as you come to stop in front of him, wide-eyed and nervous. wincing sharply when familiarity bleeds into unease, and you can't stop the routine that shapes you anymore than he can stop the blood in your veins; a little slip shattering the silence: Simon—)

—and then fall into place.

he loops his finger around the joined thread, giving a sharp tug that makes you gasp as you're pulled from within; stumbling forward, and catching yourself on the breadth of his thighs. warm, soft hands sinking into the give of fat before steadying against solid, tensing muscle.

your touch, even featherlight, ignites something inside of him. the animal slinks back, squeezing between the gaps of the man and the other until it's prowling in the forefront, ready to stake it's claim—

(a primal thing that buzzes along his hindbrain, over his skin. little animalcules that bead from his pores, fattened with the logic they syponed until all that remained was raw instinct, an itch reaching a fever pitch.)

"c'mere, baby," he burrs, breath reeking of bone ash and cherry tomatoes. "come closer. ain't gonna bite—"

much, is left unsaid, but you flinch like you hear it all the same. the urge to soothe is there—a reminder that despite the desire, the want, the drive to reach for you, his unstable sun, and protect is keeping pace with the fever burning in his veins.

a dichotomy, of sorts.

and he sees the way you lean into him, too—familiar, heartbreaking; his baby and your grabbing, clinging hands always reaching for him when you wobble—before the new delineation of what you are to him, of what he is to you, slips back in, and you pause, hovering. unsure what's allowed anymore. what isn't.

he wants to say anything. everything. that despite it all, he's still the man you baby-fed cherry tomatoes to; the heavy, herbaceous scent of lush green clinging to the tips of your dirt-crusted fingers. all of it shaded in something endearing, sweet (warm, sticky summer evenings spent on the patio he built, watching as you chased down fireflies and beetles and fussed over the perennials: all of it a thick, percolating drip of nostalgia in the back of his throat, stuffed into his nose like the sweat that gathered on the nape of his neck)—even if the man he is now wants to chase them with his mouth, lick the blood-red juice from between your fingers.

wants to fuck you in that garden where the bodies rot until the cries of your ecstacy wake the dead—

he tries, he does, to let you adjust. grow into acceptance, into love, without brute force or shallow manipulation. knows that you need time, space. need to acclimate to the newly established boundaries of your relationship, and come to terms with this—artificial—reality when the man you've known only as family, as kin, as your brother, is your soulmate.

bound by fate, by this dangling red string that clings to each umbilicus, sharing breath and blood. an unignorable truth that the man who built you a garden, taught you how to tie your shoes, and called you baby and birdie and brat is now calling you mine. is allowed to call you that. expected to, really—

could fuck you in that garden if he wanted to despite everyone knowing you're his baby sister because all it takes is a single string and the noble lie blooms back into consciousness.

the boundaries of your relationship blurred overnight, and he wants to give you time, he does, but the other (and maybe the man, too) hunger. have always hungered. and there was a moment, a slip in time, where he could have lost you—

it's enough to drive a half-mad man insane.

push him to the brink.

and that's where he is. what he is. a man on the brink—

until your hands lift, coming to rest on his shoulders. fingers digging into his collarbones as you wobble over his thighs. onto his lap. milk-sweet breath puffing against his chin, his jaw. that little hitch when his hands come up, grabbing your hips; steady and firm and unrelenting as you squirm into this new skin, this new role.

a messy kiss against his cheek, and barely even that. just a smear of trembling lips over scarred skin. too nervous, too novice (too rattled over the sudden shift of your reality—) to really know what to do: you pepper soft, shaky kisses over his skin and pretend that he can't feel the feverish chills racking through your body. a symptom of the lingering uncertainty as you wrap your head around what the world is telling you to do (and not do), to feel (and not feel), and try to figure out how to claw out of the brackets and be as comfortable in his arms, in his bed, beneath him, the way soulmates are expected to be.

sympathy, though, isn't enough to eclipse greed, and he drags you down firmer into his lap, letting you feel the unmistakable press of his cock seated against your clothed seam. relishing in that hitch, that gasp, as he bends down and takes over. turns innocent, kittish kisses into something that's devouring, an eating: all teeth—soaking your lips in his spit, tasting the inside of your mouth as he gags you on the thick of his tongue. swallowing down your spit, your gasps, these little whines in the back of your throat as he pushes his cock into you and wraps his hands around your neck so you can't pull away and hide. revels in the triumph when those little mewls lose the touch of disgust and your hips shift, searching and seeking. eager for the pressure his thickness brings. a smearing, messy kiss—

"want more, don't you, birdie?" he sinks his teeth into the panic shaping your lips with a groan. a greedy nip. "s'alright," he adds, his hand slipping down, down—

the width of his legs pry your thighs apart, but he gets a sick little thrill watching the way they twitch, desperately trying to close. likes it more, he thinks, when you're like this—unsure, but forcing yourself to like it. to enjoy it.

you have to, after all.

but he can taste it on your tongue. the slow glaze molting over your eyes. you don't want him now—not really. any desire you feel is a placebo caused by the string that tugs and pulls between the two of you, but—

not for long.

"it's alright," he burrs again, petting the inside of your thigh. "you're mine, ain't you?"

there's a pause, but it's briefer than he expected. and then a nod, a little less unsure than he thought it would be. he can't stop the groan that slips out, raw and fractured, as your martyrdom begins to crack with the shift of his hand, leaving behind a slick, sticky leak that he chases with his fingers until he reaches soft lace—

soft, damp lace.

he pushes his knuckle into the spill of it, groaning at the soft, wet heat he feels hidden behind the fabric. pity, force, doesn't soak you like this. doesn't make you fever-hot and sticky. hips rocking slightly, a little hitch. pushing forward, into fingers. his touch. 

him. 

you're his. all his.

"'course you are,” he coos as you ruck against the press of his knuckle, eager and needy and so fuckin’ sweet. that soft, elated look you had for the person who was meant to have his place is angled up, focused on him. it's ego-feeding. has him preening in the aftermath of his hardwon conquest: the spoils his baby sister, his soulmate; doe-eyed and needy. sating the man, but stoking the fire of the other. 

after, he'll drag you out into the garden and fuck you amid the drooping vines of the tomato plants just because he can—because you're his. after all,

“the universe said so, didn't it?"

(you've always wanted a soulmate. 

Your face does something that stops his heart. It opens. That’s the only word for it. You step inside and your expression unfolds, and the love that moves across your features is so naked, so undefended, that he feels it land in his chest like a bullet he didn’t know was coming.

You’re looking at Price. You’re happy. 

The dog in his ribs whimpers, tucks its tail between its legs.

You take another step, already smiling, mouth shaping around a word that hasn’t arrived yet, and then your eyes track past Price’s shoulder to the woman tucked against him. To the proprietary ease of her posture. To the hand she’s resting on his forearm like it belongs there.

Laswell is talking, her voice cutting through the noise, ”…how did Price propose then? Go on, tell us…”

Ghost’s jaw locks. He knows what’s coming before it lands. He can see the trajectory, the inevitability of it, the way something thrown, arcs before it drops.

The woman beside Price, his fiancée- Jesus Christ- lifts her hand again and the ring catches the light. “He did it in the garden,” she says, laughing. “With this ridiculous bouquet- ”

The change is immediate. Seismic.

Your face doesn’t crumble. It empties. All that light, that unguarded joy, just…drains. Like watching a glass tip and spill in slow motion, inevitable and obscene. Your eyebrows pull together, confusion first, then something sharper. Your lips part but nothing comes out.

He watches you see the ring and you go so still he could mark the exact second your nervous system shuts down everything that isn’t critical.

Freeze response. Textbook.

Your head shakes. Just once. A tiny movement, barely there, the kind of denial that happens below conscious thought. No. This isn’t real. I’m seeing it wrong.

But you’re not.

The table erupts in warm, affectionate chaos. Someone claps. Someone else catcalls. Price ducks his head with that sheepish grin he gets, the one that says aw shucks while his ego preens.

Ghost doesn’t move. Can’t. His body has turned to stone.

Because he’s watching you die standing up.

Your hand comes up to your chest, slow, uncertain, like you’re checking for a wound you can’t quite feel yet. Your mouth shapes a word he can’t hear. Could be no. Could be please. Could be nothing at all, just your body trying to make sound while your brain goes to static.

You’re shaking your head again, sharper now, faster, and he knows that gesture too. He’s seen it in mirrors at night when sleep won’t come and the past gets loud. This can’t be happening. I’m wrong. I misunderstood.

But you didn’t.

He sees the exact moment it locks into place. When the confusion hardens into certainty and the certainty detonates. Your shoulders curl inward like you’ve taken a hit. Your breath catches, he sees it in the hitch of your chest, the way your lips press bloodless.

Your eyes sweep the table one more time. Desperate. Searching for an exit that doesn’t exist, some explanation that will reorganize the world back into something that makes sense.

There isn’t one.

Price is laughing. He’s laughing, hand on his fiancée’s knee, looking every inch a man who’s chosen well and knows it. He doesn’t see you. Doesn’t feel the weight of your gaze, the freight of your devastation landing on him like ash.

He has no idea you’re there.

The dog in Ghost’s chest bares its teeth. His hands curl into fists beneath the table, slow and deliberate, nails biting into his palms to keep the rest of him locked down. The want to move, to stand, to cross the room, to step between you and this, is so violent it tastes sour.

But he doesn’t. Can’t. Not here. Not now. Not without a plan.

You step backward. It’s not a decision, just a body trying to escape a trap. The bell jingles again, thinner this time, and you’re gone.

Just like that.

The door swings shut and you’re erased. The table doesn’t notice. Price doesn’t notice. The noise swells back into the gap you left, laughter and clinking glasses and someone ordering another round, and the world continues like you were never there at all.

Ghost stares at the door. His pulse is a hammer. His breathing is too controlled, the kind of controlled that comes before violence, and he has to force his hands to unclench one finger at a time.

He thinks about you walking out into the cold with your chest caved in and no one to catch you. He thinks about the text you probably sent hours ago- have a good night, be safe- still sitting in Price’s phone, unread or ignored. He thinks about you going home to an empty flat that still smells like him, still has his coffee mug in the sink, still holds the shape of a life you thought you were building.

He thinks about the way you looked at Price before you saw the ring. Like he was the sun and you’d been cold your whole life.

The woman beside Price leans in, pressing a kiss to his jaw, and Ghost has to look away before the leash snaps.

“You alright, mate?” Soap’s voice, closer than expected.

Ghost blinks. Turns his head a fraction. His face is a mask. Always is. “Fine.”

Soap’s eyes narrow, because Soap is a pain in the arse who notices things, but he doesn’t push. Just claps Ghost on the shoulder and turns back to the conversation.

Ghost doesn’t hear another word.

He’s already making lists. Cataloging. Planning.

He waits exactly forty seven seconds after you vanish into the night. Enough time for the door to stop swinging, for the laughter inside to swallow your absence whole, for his own pulse to settle into a low drum.

“Smoke,” he says to the table, the word a flat stone dropped into the river of noise. It’s not a request. His chair scrapes back, a sound like a bone resetting.

Soap glances up, eyes sharp, but Ghost is already turning, a wall of shadow detaching itself from the light. He doesn’t look at Price. Doesn’t dare. The image of your emptying face is branded behind his eyelids, and if he looks at the man now, the leash will snap. He pushes through the door, and the cold air slaps him.

He spots you immediately, halfway down the block, a small, hunched silhouette moving like a leaf caught in a drain’s current. Not running. Drifting. Defeated already.

He follows. Not close. He keeps a buffer of shadow and pavement between you, a man who knows how to tail a mark without becoming a presence. Your hand is pressed to your sternum, as if holding your heart in place. He matches his stride to the limp rhythm of yours, a silent, stalking guardian.

You find the bus shelter. A cage of damp metal and streaked glass. You sink onto the bench, folding in on yourself, and he watches from the mouth of an alley, a statue in a bomber jacket. You don’t cry. You just sit, staring at nothing, while the city peels its glowing advertisements around you. You look like the ghost of your own life.

The dog in his ribs whines, pressing against the cage of bone.

He moves then, not toward you directly, but at an angle, as if his destination just happens to be the same slice of wet pavement. His boots are quiet on the concrete. 

He stops a polite ten feet away, leaning against the shelter’s side, his broad back to the brick. He doesn’t look at you. He digs into his pocket, pulls out a crumpled pack, taps one free.

The scratch of the lighter is loud in the damp quiet. The first drag burns, sharp and familiar. He exhales a plume of smoke that the wind carries away instantly.

Only then does he turn his head, just enough to see you in his periphery. You’re watching the coal of his cigarette, a tiny, dying star in the gloom.

“Rough night?” he asks, his voice a low rasp, sandpaper over gravel. It’s not really a question.

You flinch, just a little, as if remembering you’re not alone in the universe. You look at him, your eyes huge and liquid in the reflected streetlight. You don’t answer.

He taps another cigarette from the pack, holds it out between two fingers. An offering. A bridge. “Looks like y’need it more than I do.”

A beat of hesitation. Then your hand, pale and trembling slightly, reaches out. Your fingers brush his as you take it. Cold skin. A static shock jumping the gap.

He leans in with the lighter, cupping the flame against the wind. In its sudden, intimate glow, he sees everything: the salt tracks you haven’t wiped, the bruised look under your eyes, the way your lips are bitten raw.

You inhale, cough a little, then settle. The smoke leaves your mouth in a shaky sigh. “Thanks.”

He grunts, shifts his weight, goes back to looking at the street. “Man trouble,” he states. Another non question.

A wet, humorless sound escapes you. It’s almost a laugh. “Something like that.” You take another drag, your voice softening to a whisper the wind almost steals. “Found out my boyfriend is engaged. To someone else. Tonight. In there.” You jerk your chin back toward the pub, a world away.

He lets the silence sit. Lets the words curdle in the air between you. You stare at the glowing end of your cigarette. “It’s like… you know when you’re a kid, and you’re always the last one picked? For everything? You think, maybe as an adult, it’ll be different. That someone will finally… choose you.” Your voice cracks on the last word. “Turns out, you can be chosen for the team and still not be on the roster.”

The metaphor is perfect. It lands in his chest. 

He thinks of the dossier in his mind, the quiet life you’ve built, the way Price talked about you like a precious, secret thing. A thing he kept in a drawer.

“What are you gonna do about it?” Ghost asks. His tone is neutral, like he’s asking for the time.

You laugh again, a hollow, broken sound. “Nothing. I’m not… I’m a coward. I’ll probably just… go home. Delete his number. Try to forget how stupid I was.” You say it like you’re reciting a punishment you deserve.

The dog snarls. Coward. He shoves it down, muzzles it. The word doesn’t fit you. What he saw in your face wasn’t cowardice. It was annihilation.

“Could do nothing,” he muses, taking a slow drag. “Clean. Easy. Lets him win.”

You look at him, curious now through the pain.

“Could also key his car,” he continues, voice still that low, casual rumble. “Sugar in the gas tank. Classic. Practical. A nuisance.”

A startled, wet sniff from you. Not quite a laugh, but close.

“Could tell his fiancé,” he offers, watching a taxi splash through a puddle. “Post the evidence online. Burn both his worlds down in the same match.” He says it with no malice, just the calm assessment of a strategist.

“That’s… violent,” you whisper.

“Is it?” He finally turns his head fully to look at you. In the half light, his eyes are dark pits, but his expression is oddly still. “He made a promise to her. He made a home with you. He’s living in the lie. You’d just be turning on the lights.”

You hold his gaze for a long moment, then look away, shaking your head. “I couldn’t.”

He shrugs, a massive, slow movement. “Then there’s the fun option.”

“Fun?”

“Send him a wedding gift. From the two of you. Something tasteful, but personal. A set of knives with your initials engraved. A photo album of your best moments. Let him explain that to her on the morning of.” He says it so deadpan, so utterly serious, that it takes you a second.

Then you make a sound, a choked, surprised giggle that bubbles up through the tears and the hurt. It’s raw and real and it hooks something deep in his gut, yanking hard. The dog in his ribs doesn’t just sit up; it rolls over, exposes its belly. The feeling is terrifying and warm.

“You’re terrible,” you say, but you’re smiling, just a little. A fragile, broken thing, but a smile.

“I’ve been told,” he murmurs, and the corner of his own mouth- usually a grim, flat line- ticks upward for a millisecond. A rare event.

You finish your cigarette, stubbing it out on the wet metal bench. “I should… go. Try to walk this off.” You stand, unsteady.

He nods, straightening from the wall. “Keep the pack.” He holds out the crumpled box. “Might need another.”

You hesitate, then take it. Your fingers don’t brush this time. “Thank you. For the smoke. And the… talk. And the terrible, terrible ideas.”

“Any time.” The words are gravel in his mouth. He means them more than you can know.

You offer one last, wan smile, then turn, shoving the cigarette pack into your coat pocket. He watches you walk away, your shoulders a little less hunched, your steps a little more certain. You don’t look back.

He stays until you turn the corner and are swallowed by the night; only then does he pull out his phone. The screen illuminates his impassive face. A simple mapping app opens. A single, pulsing red dot appears, moving slowly away from him. South. Toward the river- your aunt’s house, he’ll later find out.

He’d palmed the wafer thin tracker while lighting your cigarette, slipping it into the cellophane of the pack with a sleight of hand born of a thousand darker operations. It’s not about trust. It’s about logistics, about needing to know where you are, filling in the empty blanks in the dossier in his mind, starting out with where you live and what your name is. 

It’s a plan beginning to breathe.

He drops his own cigarette, grinds it under his heel, and melts back into the shadows from which he came. The pub, Price, the laughter- it’s all background noise now. His focus is on the glowing dot, on the woman carrying his silence in her pocket, walking home to a ruin that is no longer hers alone.

***

The information comes to him in clean, orderly packets, filed away in the silent vault of his mind. He learned your street, your flat number, the fact your window faced a brick wall but you kept a pot of resilient herbs on the sill anyway. He learned your name- something that made the dog in his ribs wag its tail when he imagined attaching the name Riley to it. He learned your work schedule, the grocery store you preferred, the route you took on evening walks when the silence in the flat grew too thick to breathe.

Every new detail was a treasure offered to the dog in his ribs. You hum when you cooks. Tail thump. You rereads the same fantasy novels when you’re sad. A happy whine. You still haven't changed the locks. A low, protective growl that vibrated through his sternum. The dossier grew, rich and textured, a map of a life built in quiet corners. The lead in his chest grew taut, a constant, physical pull in your direction.

For six weeks, he maintained the perimeter. He was a shadow in a parked car three streets over, a silhouette in a opposite building’s window at dawn, a presence felt but never seen. He watched you move through the world with that careful, apologetic grace, your loneliness a scent he could now trace on the wind. The dog paced, impatient, nails clicking against the bone of his resolve. Close enough to watch, but not to touch. 

The rule was beginning to chafe.

The break came on a Tuesday, damp and grey. The dog tugged, hard and insistent, a final, definitive yank on the leash. Enough.

He planned it like a mission: minimal variables, clear objective. The cafe you visited every Tuesday after your therapy appointment (he knew about that, too). He arrived first, chose a table with a clear view of the door and a solid wall at his back. He held a newspaper he didn’t read, a prop in a play with an audience of one.

His stomach flipped with nerves when you entered, shaking rain from your hair, that same slight hesitation at the threshold. Your eyes scanned the room, passed over him, then snapped back, and his heart ricocheted off his rib cage. A flicker of recognition, then confusion. The man from the bus shelter. The one with the terrible ideas and the quiet voice.

He let a moment pass, then looked up as if sensing a gaze. He gave a small, neutral nod- I see you, but I won’t intrude- and returned to his paper. The choice was yours, even if his throat suddenly felt dry and his palms sweaty.

He felt the moment you decided. A soft inhale, then the shuffle of your boots on the tile. You appeared at the edge of his table, holding your mug like a shield.

“Hi,” you said, your voice a little rusty from disuse. “Um. From the… the rainy night.”

He lowered the paper slowly. “Right.” He gestured to the empty chair opposite him with his chin. “Join me. If you like.”

You did, lowering yourself into the seat as if it might collapse, and something loosened under his skin. A few minutes of brittle silence passed, filled by the hiss of the espresso machine and the murmur of other lives.

“So,” he began, stirring his black coffee with a deliberate slowness so you wouldn’t see the way his fingers trembled. “Did you ever key the car?”

The question was so blunt, so devoid of social preamble, that it startled a genuine laugh from you. It was a better sound than he’d imagined. Clearer. “No. No keying.”

“Sugar?”

“No sugar.”

“Photo album?”

You shook your head, a real smile touching your lips. “I’m afraid I went with the coward’s option. Nothing. Radio silence.” You looked into your tea. “Deleted everything. Pretended he was a ghost.”

He’s the ghost, Ghost thought, the irony a bitter pill. I’m the one who’s real. “Clean break,” he said instead. “Sensible.”

“It feels less sensible and more… pathetic.” You sighed, wrapping your hands around the warm mug. “I just couldn’t face it. The drama. The confrontation. Seeing him… with her.” You glanced up at him, your big, careful eyes searching his. “Does that make me weak?”

“No.” The answer was immediate, absolute. “It makes you someone who’s had to swallow too many broken things already. Your throat gets sore.” He’d meant to say something less revealing, but the truth slipped out, sandpapered raw.

You stared at him, and for a terrifying second, he thought he’d shown too much of the dog’s teeth. But then your shoulders relaxed, just a fraction. As if he’d named a pain you thought was yours alone.

He steered the conversation then, with the subtle skill of a man used to directing focus away from himself. He asked about your job, the parts you liked. He asked about your hobbies. He asked what you were reading.

And you, trained by a lifetime of being the listener, kept trying to hand the spotlight back. “What about you? What do you do?” you’d ask.

“Contract work. Boring,” he’d deflect. “Tell me about the book. The dog in the story- is it loyal?”

“You travel a lot?” you’d probe later.

“Here and there. You said you walk by the river… is it better in the morning or at night?”

He was a wall, gently but firmly reflecting every question back to you. It was a novel experience. You’d start a sentence, pause, expecting to be interrupted, to be tuned out. He’d just wait, his gaze steady and patient, until you found the words again. He watched you slowly unfold, like one of the flowers he’d seen you buy from a market vendor (he knew about that, too). Tentative, colorful, surprising yourself.

You talked about your fear of large parties, your secret love for terrible baking shows, the way you wanted to learn how to fix a dripping tap but didn’t know where to start. Ordinary things. Sacred things. The dog in his chest was lying on its back, paws in the air, utterly disarmed.

The cafe emptied and refilled around you. The light through the window shifted from grey to a pale, watery gold. You were mid-sentence, explaining why you preferred pencils to pens, when you glanced at the clock on the wall and gasped.

“Oh my god. It’s been three hours.” You looked at him, mortified. “I’ve been talking for three hours. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He meant it. They were the three most peaceful hours of his life. A silent, sun dappled clearing in the middle of a war zone. “I wasn’t keeping track.”

“I should… I should let you go.” You began gathering your things, flustered.

He saw the opening, a door about to swing shut. The dog whimpered. Now.

“Before you do,” he said, his voice deliberately even, unconcerned. “Might be good to have a number. In case you ever decide to pursue one of those terrible ideas. Or… need a second opinion on a dripping tap.”

You froze, your hands on your scarf. You looked at him- really looked- searching for the angle, the hunter’s glint you were so accustomed to. You found only steady, calm patience. A wall, yes, but one you could lean against.

A slow, shy smile bloomed on your face. It was the most beautiful weapon he’d ever been struck by. “Okay,” you said softly.

He handed you his phone and watched you type in your number. Your name appeared on the screen, that soft beautiful name, now in his official possession. The leash in his chest went slack with a profound, almost painful relief.

He saved it, then sent a quick, generic text to your phone so you’d have his. Your pocket buzzed. The connection was made. A live wire, humming between you.

“I should…” you said again, standing.

He stood with you, a courtesy that made you blink. “Take care of yourself,” he said.

“You too. And… thank you. For the company.”

He nodded, watching you walk out into the fading afternoon light. You didn’t hunch your shoulders. You didn’t look at the ground. You held your head a little higher.

He sat back down, alone at the table, and allowed himself one deep, shuddering breath. In the quiet of his ribs, the dog was ecstatic, spinning in happy, frantic circles. He placed a mental hand on its head, not to chastise, but to soothe.

Easy, he thought, a silent command to the wild joy within him. Patience. We have her number now. We have time.