Archive of Our Own

"Well," he drawls, the word is clipped, pointed. He leans against the doorframe, one hand shoved into the pocket of his jeans while the other brings a bottle of beer to his lips. A storm brews in the dark eyes he levels at you. "Don't let me interrupt."

The sloshing sound it makes when he takes a deliberate swig cuts through the sudden silence, and you flinch at the sharp noise. At the gaze never wavering from where your hands are tangled into Vincent's locks, tugging him closer; or the place where he's situated - right between the apex of your thighs like he's allowed to be there. 

"Bo-," you start to speak, but it dissolves into nothing when his raging eyes cut toward you, narrowing. The clench of his jaw and the intense, burning anger frothing up in those dark depths choke the words in your throat, keeping them from spilling out. 

Something is wrong. 

An angry Bo is never usually this docile, this quiet. It's unnerving. 

Vincent has years more experience with Bo's explosive, destructive wrath, and the sudden change seems to shake him up as much as it does yourself, but he can't untangle himself fast enough from this compromising, sinful predicament to salvage any sense of propriety with the way your hands are thoroughly lost in his locks, and his are wound around your waist.

Maybe it's the way you flinch and try to curl in on yourself, or the way Vincent tries to escape, to flee, that makes Bo scoff derisively. Maybe it's all of it. Everything. It doesn't make the impact any less brutal when it cudgels into your chest. 

"C'mon, now… y'all weren't in any rush before," the thick, acerbic accusation in his tone halts all futile efforts to feign innocence, to force some semblance of decorum in the face of what you've been caught doing. "So… what's the hurry, then?"

Vincent tenses under your hands, body coiling tightly at the palpable scorn that leaks in the words. 

But you can't really blame Bo, though. 

What could you possibly say to your boyfriend when you can still taste his brother on your tongue?

Bo has this fear of commitment that rears up at the slightest hint of something more, something that isn't casual or borne out of necessity. Anything that isn't staunchly familial or temporary. 

Saying things like boyfriend or partner or committed monogamous relationship tends to make him recoil, and then - like a spooled whip - lash out. 

Bo is the effigy of anger. Wrath personified. Through the frothing rage, the seething vitriol, he creates a wide breadth of distance between himself and everyone else. It's a chasm; a deep, uncrossable crevasse. 

You've only heard the vaguest details of his childhood through your conversations with Lester, and through the drunken, rage-fuelled anger of Bo when he got in one of the moods that made him want to hurt, to scream; but even without all of that, it's easy to ascertain that Bo doesn't like anything on him, or near him. In the emotional sense, and physical.

The scars on his wrists and the fire in his eyes are enough to stop any of your well-meaning attempts to get closer than what he'll allow. 

Bo is prickly. Untouchable. 

So, it surprises you when you meet his literal other half, Vincent: the apogee to Bo in every, singular way. 

(It's almost equally as surprising when Bo - instead of burying you in the marshy grounds he was forced to drag you out to - hauled you in the back bed of his truck and fucked you senseless, beginning the abrupt and consuming relationship with a man you once thought was wholly untouchable.

A man who, until a very short while ago, wanted you encased in wax.)

There is a fixed point in time that started the foundations for both of these surprises (and for all the others that swiftly unfolded): a rather innocuous flat tyre. 

And the catalyst for these occurrences? Well, you blame Lester, really. 

Though, you'd never say such a thing to his face - never to his face - since Lester is the only big brother you've ever had, and the only person who you're wholly convinced isn't plotting your death (Bo) or which pose you'd truly look the best perched in for eternity (Vincent). 

Still, despite his well-meaning attempt to grow his family and save a deer who should have become roadkill, Lester's machinations are the unexpected impetus for it all. 

(You think it might crush Lester if he knew his act of mercy came full circle and ended up being your demise, so it'll be a secret you take to your grave. 

He saved your life, after all.)  

It begins like this: 

Sour Louisiana weather brings a deluge to the area, flooding the roads, and causing traffic to spill all over the highways near Baton Rouge. In true horror story fashion, you decide to take a smaller, lesser traversed rural county road that cuts through the outback. It's mostly covered in swamps and wetlands, and your GPS protests the moment you take the trail, telling you that there are no roads to be found here, turn back, traveller lest you get lost. 

But the signs say otherwise, and - in an egregious display of how much of a gullible fool you can be - you believe it. 

The thicket surrounding you on all sides a few kilometres off the highway is haunting in the dour weather that promises a hideous squall. The forest is dark in the absence of the sun - and, even with the blazing inferno in the sky bearing down on it at full bloom, the dense canopy overhead speaks of an abundance of tenebrous and poor visibility as the caliginous clouds block out the liminal light that seeps through. 

It's every bit of the cliche stranded in the creepy forest horror trope. The only thing missing is the killer waiting for an opportunity to strike, but - you think with white knuckles blanched from the tight grip you have on the steering wheel - thank god you have your car. 

Fate, of course, loves a good laugh. 

There is the unmistakable drop of your tyre falling into a deep pothole, and the loud, booming pop of the rim colliding with the pavement that shakes you to your core. As you quickly slow down to stop the other tyre from suffering the same fate, you can feel that there is something wrong when the rim breeches the top of the hole and slides on the gravel. 

It's the way your car bobs on the road, and the thap thap thap that follows tells you everything you need to know.

You don't say it aloud, and you certainly don't think about it, either. It's now a Macbethian curse. If you say the name and let it seep into the atmosphere, then it'll come true. You'll be haunted. Bad things will follow. 

You know. Of course you do.

But you also know that you did the same thing in Pennsylvania on your way here, and had to use the other one in the trunk. 

And sure - it's probably your own fault for riding around with it for so long when you've grown up hearing stories about how this is something you absolutely don't do - like leaving your windows down in the rain, or driving through a flood, or leaving your lights on all night, and draining your battery. It's enough to make a mechanic tsk at you in that godawful way only they can pull off; the kind of sound that says how are you so stupid and also welp, I guess it's time I overcharged you for an oil change, you big dummy. A sound you never want to hear them make. 

But it's also true that you don't have money for another one. Your impromptu road trip was a lot more costly than you'd expected, and with your accounts frozen (thank you mum and dad), you don't have access to any immediate funds to get a new tyre. 

Oh. You weren't supposed to think about it. 

Well. Looks like you're going to be cursed after all. 

As of on cue from a movie scene, rain starts pouring down over your car like it was on a pulley system connected to a dam. Rain the size of nickels pelt across the hood and sloshes down on the ground around you, flooding the potholes and spilling over on the gravel path. 

Just your luck. A flat tyre, a curse, and now a torrential downpour. 

You settle in for what's sure going to be quite the storm as the aether grumbles, roaring thunder and whiplash cracks of lightning overhead, and try to cling to that little gossamer of hope that spools inside your chest. It'll all be over soon. Squalls never last forever.

The only saving grace is the thick canopy keeping the deluge at bay from inundating the desire path that leads to certain death - if the day is anything to go by.

Tomorrow you'll have to make the arduous trek back to Baton Rouge, a whole 45 kilometres away. Jones Creek or Small Wood might be your best choice for a lift - the two towns you passed on Route 10 - but both of those are still several kilometres away. Maybe you can find a tow truck in the nearest town and bite the insane lift fee to a mechanic. 

With the expenses adding up in your head - tow fee, tyre - it seems that you might have to swallow your burning pride and call home. You won't go back. You refuse. But you'll demand - and beg, plead - that they unfreeze your accounts so you can afford all of this. 

Or. You find a job in one of these small towns until you have enough saved up to continue on to California. 

Neither sound particularly appealing, but being stranded in the middle of nowhere with barely enough cash for a night at a sleazy, bed bug-ridden motel doesn't give you many options.

You're broke, broken down, and shit out of luck, and should have listened to the snippy voice on your GPS that called you a big idiot and said there was no road to be found here. 

(Or your mum who said you'll regret ever running away.) 

You don't, but in the silence of your car in the middle of a brutal tropical storm, you wish things could have been different. 

In actuality, the real beginning happens in North Bergen, New Jersey. 

It starts with a family of nine all stuffed inside a tiny house perched rather precariously on the steep street of Bergenwood Avenue. 

Ever since you were a child, you've had this itch inside of you to see the world. It starts when you stand at the top of River View Park and watch the sun yawn across the skyline of New York City. The ocherous smear over the concrete jungle tangles inside your head like a web, spooling a greedy thing inside that aches for something more than the small incline your city can offer you. 

Being the middle child of six with an absentee dad who works in New York for three hundred and sixty days out of the year (who, ostensibly, believes renting an entire flat in Manhattan is somehow better than paying twenty dollars to cross the bridge every morning is somehow a better alternative), and a picky mum who often mistakes you for your younger, successful sister, you begin to yearn for more. Much more.  

And so you plan. 

New York City loses its charm after your seventh school trip to various points of interest ("have your parents fill out the form and send it back with sixty dollars because we're going to see the Empire State Building for the fourth time - isn't that exciting, kids?"), and your eleventh family vacation to see the Statue of Liberty.

Sometimes they splurge and take you down to Maryland to see Washington, D.C., but most of the time, you stay in Brooklyn at this cheap Motel 8, and drive through New York without ever really stopping ("we can't afford to stop in New York! Parking is almost thirty dollars here, are you crazy? We have all the same shit at home, anyway;") and pretend that you're having a blast while your older sisters argue with each other over which famous person they didn't see. 

Despite coming from a large family, it never really felt like one. 

There was always some aspect that was being controlled. When your older sisters left for college, their bedroom was given to the youngest instead of you ("she needs the space to study! Share with your younger sisters;"). You only ever wore hand-me-downs from your sisters who had different proportions and sizes to your own ("I don't know what to tell you, here. Stop stuffing your face with food and maybe they'll fit;"), and the idea of freedom of choice was a non-existent entity in your world.

The zenith that dredged up your desire for freedom happened when you wanted to go to an art school in California after your younger sister was sent to Brooklyn. She excelled in class - especially in mathematics - and while you had average grades, your art teacher said you had talent. Tuition for her private lessons was even less than the cost of everyone else's school. You weren't going to take the actual collegiate courses. 

When you said all of this, your mum exploded and rained ire down on your dreams. Not going to college? Are you stupid or something? What the hell do you think you'll do without a degree, huh? Go to a college here - I need you to help with your younger sisters, anyway. I'm calling the school - I don't know what nonsense that hippie is feeding you, but I'm done with it all. 

It ended with her tearing up your application and tossing it in the trash. 

You need to stop being so selfish, she snapped, digging her fingers into her temple. Jesus Christ, you want this and that and this, and where the hell am I supposed to get the money for it, huh? If you want something you have to earn it or pay for it yourself. 

She'd come to regret those words. 

It took several months of frugality and instant ramen until you finally had enough money saved up and a car of your own. 

With the taste of freedom on your tongue, you took off in the middle of the night, windows down to let the cool air from New Jersey filter through. You felt lighter than ever. 

They promptly told you to stop being so ridiculous and to come home right away. When you refused, they froze your accounts and told you to either smarten up or never talk to them again. 

You turned your phone off with the last message your mum sent being: you're so disappointing - all of this drama because you can't get your own way? Stop being so selfish. 

It was easy to ignore until Cranberry, Pennsylvania when you realised the cost of a tyre. Until the meagre cash you brought was quickly chewed up by gas and tolls and food and motels along the way. 

Until your spare tyre popped in the middle of nowhere, Louisiana. 

There is a hollowness in your chest that you should have expected, really, but sits like an anvil inside of you when you turn your phone on after weeks of not speaking to anyone and see no new messages in your inbox. 

The call log is barren. No voicemails or texts wait for you. 

Just when you think about pressing the call button, a pickup truck appears out of the thicket like a saving grace. 

(Or, as you'll later learn, a herald.)

The downpour did little to abate the sweltering Louisiana humidity the next morning. With the sun cloaked from touching the ground, the gravel remains a marshy slurry of saturated dirt and rocks. It squelches under your feet when you slip out - wearing nothing but a pair of flip flops (you are headed to California, after all) - and peer in abject horror at the state of the path stretching out before you. 

The squall blew branches and thick leaves into the road, blocking the only way back to civilisation.

It would be quite a task to remove all of the branches from out of your way, but doable. The potholes that caused this predicament, however, have been completely flooded and where a slight slope in the road sat, it is now completely submerged. A fen hinders your way forward. 

Going around means traversing through the thick, rural woods that brackets you on all sides. A forest that looks dark and imposing, and a literal copy-paste of everything else all around you. 

You once got lost for hours in Central Park despite the abundance of signs to help you along your way. 

Without any markers to indicate which way you should go, you'll undoubtedly get lost in the woods. The wide breadth you would have to travel to avoid the marsh is the size of a Target parking lot, and one misstep could lead you in the wrong direction. 

You're stranded. Literally now.  

You swallow the meagre sandcastle of pride you scraped together in the midst of your independence on the road after years of them taking a sledgehammer to the majority of it, and take out your cell phone. 

Maybe you don't have to call them. Maybe you can call someone else. The police or something. 

You close out her contact and dial 9-1-1 only to be met with the horrifying sight of NO SERVICE flashing across your screen. The call won't go through. No calls will. 

If you weren't wearing the cheapest pair of flip flops from Walmart, you might have kicked the ruined tyre in frustration. 

You glance at the road ahead, but see the same flooded gravel waiting for you. 

The only stroke of luck is the place where you decided to stop. A little island in the middle of a freshet. 

The spate of your luck culminates with you trying not to cry in the middle of a swamping forest on a rural road you never should have taken, wondering if maybe those ugly words spat at you about your naïevty, your stupidity, your ignorance were all true after all, because you feel every little bit of the selfish dumbass they said you were in a series of text messages that made you sob in the middle of a Wendy's parking lot in Pittsburgh. 

Just when you consider drowning yourself in the fen, the squelch of tyres rolling up the road grabs your attention. 

An aged pick-up truck ambles into view. 

It feels like the start of every horror movie you'd ever seen that takes place in some decrepit country setting, but you still breathe out a little sigh of relief that you won't have to inhale swamp water to end it all or deal with an uncomfortable onset of anaemia thanks the buzzing horde of mosquitoes that descend on you as if they have a personal vendetta against you. 

The truck comes to a stop a few feet away and idles for a moment. 

It's creepy and leaves you feeling a visceral sense of unease, but you force it down, and bring your hand up away to give a friendly wave toward the person who will either murder you or bring you to salvation. 

(Or damnation, as turns out.) 

The door rattles when it's wrenched open. The man's boots slosh in the still water when he jumps out. 

He's young, a little dishevelled and dirty, but you can't really be too judgemental when you're sure you reek of road trip. 

The man wipes his hands on a rag, nodding toward your car. "You good?" 

"Uhh-," you blink at him, then glance at the flat tyre, shoulders slumping. "Depends on what your definition of good is, I suppose."

He snorts, and then dissolves in a series of low giggles as he strides up. "Yer funny," he adds, slipping the greasy rag into his back pocket. It looked black from a distance, but up close, you can see splotches of red splattering across the fabric. You hope it isn't blood. 

"I try," you shrug, offering a smile to abate the swell of anxiety. It's been nearly seventeen hours since you last spoke to anyone. The itch to chit-chat is a burning thing inside your chest. 

(Always talking, they used to say. But never really saying much.)

"Wanna lemme check it out?"

"It's a flat tyre," you say, and resolve to take your own machinations in such an incident to the grave. 

"You got a spare?" He bends down, hands prodding along the rim. 

Sheepishly, you shove your hands into your pockets, scuffing the wet gravel with the foam of your shoes. "This is the spare."

"Well, shit," he mutters. 

"Um… do you know where I can get another one?" 

You'll beg him if you have to - you're not above it. You'll grovel and plead, too. Anything to get out of the heat. The humidity. The mosquitoes alone have taken at least a quarter of your blood by now. 

"I reckon I can," he says, and looks up at you with a wide, toothy grin. 

The sight of it jars into you.

The way he runs his tongue over his teeth when he catches your eye feels like it's intentional. Purposeful. You think of your burgeoning art classes where your professor spoke about the gaze. 

How the audience views a piece of work - le regard. 

With his tongue curling over his stained teeth - so universally indicative of every redneck hillbilly stereotype you've ever heard - you wonder what he wants you to regard in this. What are you supposed to see, to feel. Where is your gaze supposed to wander and what conclusions should you draw from it? 

If you had to guess, you'd say that it's probably a scare tactic. A means to make you uncomfortable. The leer in his stare feels that way, too. The way his eyes flicker up and down your exposed legs doesn't really fill you with that same embarrassed, shameful feeling it did when you got out to put gas in your car and the old man across from you openly gawked at the way the hem rode up just a little bit from the drive. This feels forced. Like it's supposed to fill you with dread. Fear. 

But the man has been nothing but helpful so far, so why - why would he want you to fear him? 

Unless it isn't fear. 

Whatever it is, you don't like it. 

So, you ignore it. You match his artificial grin with a genuine one of your own, smiling brightly at him, and muster as much gratitude as you can when you breathe out a very emphatic: "thank you so much, um..."

Equals. Just two people on a lonely road getting chewed up alive by mosquitoes - who, in your opinion, are the real enemy here. 

He stares at your smile for a beat, his brow furrowing. 

His smile dampens, and you wonder if, despite your best intentions to the contrary, you somehow offended him. Did your thanks seem too forced? Did you make it seem like you thought he ought to help you because of who he was? 

He doesn't say anything else aside from a small huh under his breath before he stands up. 

"Lester," he says, and slips the rag out from his back pocket, levelling you with that same appraising stare again. 

Lester wipes his hands on the dirty cloth and hums to himself. 

Whatever he finds in the uncomfortable, wide-eyed stare you gaze back at him with is a mystery, but it makes his shoulders slump, sagging in an uncharacteristic sense of defeat that feels misplaced on his easy-going comportment. 

"Reckon you ought to talk 'ta Bo about a new tyre."

He says it with a degree of reluctance that makes the skin on the back of your neck prickle. "Bo?" 

You like that name - Bo - and the way it fits around your lips, like Lester. 

"Yep," he pops the p, and glances toward his truck. "M'older brother." 

An older Lester appears in your mind with the name Bo hovering over the top. 

"Oh," you say, smiling. "Is he a mechanic?" 

"He's-," something flashes across his face; unease. Distress. It's gone before you can pin it down. "He's whatever we need 'im t'be."

There is a lot to unpack in that simple statement. Warning bells sound in the back of your mind. 

"Lester-"

"Say," he interrupts, mouth knotting to the side again. "You… uh, you in any rush t'be anywhere?" 

"No… I, um…" 

Horror movies dictate you say yes. And my dad is an FBI agent who works for the CIA and Interpol. Oh, also my uncle is the best tracker in the world for the Texas Rangers, and I am due promptly for a meeting with the police force within the next several hours, and if I do not show up, they will reign justice down upon this ramshackle town - and they totally know where I am at all times because I have a GPS chip inside my body that is nano-sized so… you never find it! Better think twice about killing me, mister. 

Against all common sense, all logic, you think about the broken home waiting for you in New Jersey, the scorn from your parents. You think about the I told you so 's and the see? You'll never amount to anything's and the why can't you be more like your sisters? and the inescapable dread hanging over you every second. 

The crushing weight of their disappointment that has been festering since you barely knew how to walk makes you sniffle. Going back to that, somehow, feels worse than death. 

You should say, yes, but instead - with tears burning your eyes - you say, no. Absolutely nowhere. And it's the shuddering honestly, the shrill sincerity, in your wavering, cracking voice, that makes you realise just how unflinchingly true those simple words are. 

Lester's hand on your shoulder is more comforting than anything you'd ever felt in your life. The small, "come on, then, Bambi. Let's get ya home," is more familial than anything your parents had ever said to you. 

(And home is exactly what it becomes. 

Home, and much, much more.)

He tells you about his older brothers. Plural, because there are two. 

"Twins," he says, and the image you had in your head of an older Lester duplicates into another one. "His name is Vincent. He's, uh… he's a lil' different."

A bubble forms, the name: Vincent floats over his head. Beside it, the word: different (?).

"Him'n Bo are conjoined twins, actually." 

The split image of the two fuses together.

"But… now they're separated."

They pop apart. 

"Wow…" you say, showcasing all the eloquence afforded to you via the upscale preparatory education, and follow it up with a series of large, languid blinks. Un-conjoined twins. "Wow."

"Yeah, they, uh…they're… well." He reaches over and ruffles your hair. "We'll work on 'em."

It's a surprise to everyone when instead of becoming another figure to gawk at, another victim, Lester takes a liking to you almost instantly. He finds you, broken down and shit outta luck on the side of the road, and sees something in the Bambi eyes that stare at him, helpless and innocent, ensnaring him almost effortlessly. 

Like a small bird, he says, ruffling your hair. Fell outta the nest, and heck - I've always had a soft spot for lil'baby birdies. 

He takes you back home, back to Bo - who rains anger and seething vexation at the prospect of you runnin' back to whenever the hell it came from and spillin' its damn guts (it, because that's all you are to Bo at first, it, an unwanted thing ). Then, like a paradigm shift that happened seemingly overnight, his anger at you breathing the same dank air as him is swept to the wayside when you get stuck in a torrential downpour on the side of the road. Lester had to go into Baton Rouge and implored Bo to at least try and get to know you better. 

("C'mon, Bo," you hear him plead in the kitchen as you begin packing up your bag for the trip you're surely about to go on with Lester. Bo will never say yes. "Ya can't say no t'Bambi forever."

It turns out, he can't say no to Lester forever.

Bo relents with a series of curses and the sound of something being slammed on the kitchen table. The noise makes you flinch. You think you'd rather go with Lester, really. It's safer. 

"For fuck's sake Les, it better not be any trouble, or I'm leavin' it wherever t'fuck it starts pissin' me off!"

Lester wanders out, wiggles his brows in success, and says, "be good for Bo, 'kay, Bambi?")

You're playing with fire when you ask Bo a series of inane questions while he sourly glares out the window and gives either half-assed responses or nothing at all, but you can't help it. Bo is fascinating in a way that no one else in any place you've been managed to be. He's handsome, so much so that you often have to remind yourself that he isn't some hallucinatory spectre that walked out of the glossy pages of rugged country boy magazine. 

You know that Bo is capable, and very much willing, to commit acts of unspeakable cruelty and evil against anyone misfortune enough to set him off - or even just innocently cross his path - and you also know that this heinous nature can, and will, extend to you. You are not immune to his ire. To his bloodlust. His wrath. 

And it's not even that you think you're somehow above everyone else; you know, without any hesitation or doubt, that Bo wants you dead, and if he ever has even the slightest inclination to do so, there is nothing Lester or you can say to the contrary. 

In spite of that certainty, you still push, and prod, because there is something about him that makes you want to see him unravel. 

Its only after an intense row where you think he might bash your head in despite Lester's warnings, that he ends up hauling you to the back of the truck, and fucking you senseless for hours instead. 

It flips everything on its head, because - wow. It was not the outcome you were expecting in the slightest. 

You assumed he was going to kill you when he bellowed out a frothing, shut the fuck up! from the pit of his chest after your silly decision to play I spy by yourself, and fully expect to be a corpse within ten minutes when he jerked his seat back and wrenched you to the bed with him. 

You weren't at all sure what to do when instead of burying your body, he buried his cock inside of you until the rain had passed hours ago, and the sun dipped well below the horizon.

So… you say, because you don't know when to keep your stupid mouth shut, we're dating, then? 

One moment, you're playing the wry curls on his chest, basking in the afterglow of an almost tender moment (because Bo is only ever soft and malleable when he's blissed out on euphoria or keyed up after a successful kill), and the next the fear of commitment rears, and he flees. 

It would be comical to see a man nearly a decade older than you hobble out of the truck with only one leg in his pants, bouncing around in the rain-soaked fen to avoid any semblance of a deeper connection to another person that wasn't a forced familial tie or smarmy charm to beguile a victim.

You pull his jacket over your chest, watching through the condensation that coats the back windows as he spits curses and slides in the mud like he's throwing a tantrum, and can't help that little swell of affection from swirling in your chest. 

Despite his tough exterior, his hateful words, and the too-rough touches that quickly edge into genuine pain, Bo is an enigma that you can't help wanting to solve. 

It's foolish and stupid and you're sure if your friends were still in contact with you, they'd say this was a quick descent into domestic violence and spousal homicide, but you can't ignore the thrum in your heart; that little prickle in your pericardium that strums whenever he flashes a recherché grin in your direction. 

Because the thing is - despite Bo's choleric temperament - there are moments where the defences he built around himself fall, and there's the briefest glimpse of something so achingly sweet, broken, and wanting underneath that you know, you know, you can't just leave him. 

And so you don't. 

You stay and find your place in this ramshackle family. 

Lester takes on the role of a doting older brother and takes you with him whenever some hapless straggler happens to stumble upon Ambrose. He takes you into the woods and shows you which foliage and fungus are edible, and which plants and berries can kill you instantly. Lester shows you how to forage, and how to survive in the harsh fenlands of rural Louisiana. 

(And neither of you speak about what Bo and Vincent are up to back home.)

It's easy with Lester. Fun. He's the family, the older brother, you've never had. Though you know that it makes him a little wary whenever he sees you and Bo together, but in spite of that, he's happy because you are, and if that means it's with Bo, he'll put up with it. 

("'Sides," he shrugs, handing you a small coneflower he picked by the side of the road. "Ain't much can stop Bo when he wants somethin'. Just… be careful, Bambi."

You chirp, always!

And Lester has this look on his face that says he doesn't believe you.)

It's undoubtedly warranted - you have this thing inside of you, this propensity for saying whatever comes to your mind, or talking too much to compensate for the years of never being able to say anything at all, maybe, maybe, to drown out the hissing in your head. 

So, it's probably a good thing that you don't end up meeting Vincent until the clutches of affection have started to take root inside Lester.

"He's shy," Lester says. He taps the side of his face in a way that seems like an unconscious action. "He doesn't really… take to people too easily."

Bo snorts. "People don't take to him too easily." 

He doesn't think this whole family meeting is necessary despite what Lester says, and is convinced that it's a contrivance meant to plaster on the image of an ideal family to you - who, according to many tirades over the last week, should be dead and not be the centrefold of a family dinner. 

Lester only offers an easy grin. When he catches your eye, it turns small. Secretive. 

It's tense. Bo doesn't like you - doesn't want you here - but he's overruled (somehow) by Lester's quick insistence that he gets to keep you, like a pet. A pet sister. 

You haven't met his other half. You know, mostly from Bo, that Vincent agrees with his sentiment that you're a liability. A potential thorn in their side. 

Vincent is the artist behind it all - the executioner, the embalmer. 

A part of you - the most rational one by far - is a little nervous about meeting him. Vincent is a killer. One who wants you dead. 

It's not at all different from how Bo feels, but -

("And… if Bo didn't wanna do somethin', he wouldn't.")

Bo teeters a precipice of being completely honest with his thoughts and feelings when it comes to murder and you to the point of it almost bringing you a sense of comfort to know that if he wanted to, he would and since he hasn't, then he doesn't. 

(Honest, and at the same time - incredibly obscure, enigmatic.)

You don't know Vincent. You've never met him. All you know is through the glossy, pain-stricken eyes that watch your every move, begging you for mercy, for help. 

(Sometimes, looking at them makes you more afraid of Vincent than anything else in your life.)

So, it surprises you, then, when Vincent steps into the living room for the first time. 

Vincent is - 

Not quite what you were expecting. 

He's not the complete carbon copy of Bo that you were anticipating, but the similarities are there - in equal measure to the stark contrasts, too. 

Bo is bulky, tall. His hooded, piercing eyes, and dark, tousled hair make you think of the term ruggedly handsome, but really - he'd be a better fit on the pages of a glossy magazine or action thriller. Bo is stunning to look at, and despite how much he wants you to become another figurine for the museum, you can't look away from him sometimes. Your eyes are drawn to him, to his gait, his stature, his eyes, his chiselled jawline - it all pulls you in like a moth to a flame. Unable to stay away from the danger, going so far as to risk your life, because the draw of the fire, and the beauty of the blaze, is worth the burn. 

Being his twin - his un-conjoined twin - Vincent has the same physique, the same height; though, his shoulders are a little broader, and his biceps are a little bigger (no doubt due to his hobby of hauling around dead weight), but aside from that, the physicality of the two are the same. 

It's there where the noticeable similarities end. 

You could wax poetic about Vincent's hair for aeons; the lush locks that fall to his mid-back, as black as midnight, is a sight to behold. It might be a thing, but you can't stop staring at his hair in much the same manner that you can't stop staring at Bo's face. It's that this is too good for my lowly mortal eyes feeling that wells up inside of your chest, aching to touch. Touch Bo's jaw to see if your fingers would get sliced on the jagged edge. Touch Vincent's hair to see if it's as soft as it looks. 

You want to wash it. 

It's stupid and childish and even when Bo has you ensnared in his grasp, gushing over how handsome your reluctant boyfriend is, you can't stop thinking about it. 

It takes up so much room inside your head that you almost miss the waxy, wan mask hiding underneath the unkempt strands that cover his face. 

It's only when Bo says don't just stare at 'em, Jesus Christ - do you even realise that you had been. 

Sputtering, you choke out an embarrassed, your hair is lovely, and really - it isn't the worst way to meet someone. 

Vincent startles from the abrupt compliment, jerking his head in some facsimile of a nod, and it's then that you notice his face is covered by something. That his face isn't just a startling unctuous alabaster shade. 

A mask. 

Lester, much later, fills you in on the details after some college students on spring break roll through. He takes you out to the forest, lets you sip on some of his homemade moonshine, and doesn't seem too bothered by the abundance of questions you hurl at him about Bo. And Vincent.

Vincent was… stuck t'the back of Bo's head. Pa wanted 'em separated. Said it was freaky. Sinful. Vincent got half is face missin', and Bo, well… Ma says that's why he's wild. 'Cause the pa messed with his brain too much. He ain't been right since the surgery, Ma said. Different. Ain't at all like Vincent. Had to be tied down - like an animal. 

Lester's words put a lot of things into perspective for you with Bo. 

And leave you with a lot more questions. 

(You're not about to tempt fate too much and become a wax figure because you pushed past his boundaries.)

But as you begin to understand Bo, a new itch inside you starts to grow. One that wants to unravel the mystery of Vincent just as much. 

And as much as you love Bo, and you do:

You love him in that consuming, fireshrine way that makes you feel like you're a wicker pyre made to burn for him, for an atavistic god, and like a moth to an uncontrolled flame, you can't help but to be drawn in by the blaze. Enraptured by it. You love the burn, love the heat, love him - 

So, why, why, can't you stop looking at Vincent? 

If Bo is a wildfire, hellfire on earth, scorching everything in his path, then Vincent is the smouldering husk left behind; and through the charred ashes, life emerges unhindered by the embers. Sometimes trees need to burn before they can thrive, and Vincent is that equinox of beauty, of life, in death, destruction, and you can't look away. 

Both are destructive and damning in their own way - one brims with fury and the other makes beauty from death - but both take, and take, and take. You can't stay away from the devastation either of them is sure to bring. 

You can't understand this rapacious yearning inside of your chest. The only experience you have with a consuming love like this is Bo - who, on a good day, looks surly when you make big, grand declarations of love - and the fact that you feel something similar toward his brother feels strange. It itches inside of you - the same desire that welled up when you stood above the world and stared down at New York rears: the hunger for more. 

It's a cacoethes, you're sure. 

Something that will only spell your doom, demise, should you pursue it further. 

But it doesn't go away.

It feels like a prickle inside your head that says more, more, more. 

Naïvely, you look at Lester and liken the urge to that. He's your big brother. Your partner in crime (but not literally because while Bo thinks he could perch you at the side of the road to pick up potential victims under the guise of being a pretty little hitchhiker, Lester is immediately averse to this - and what if they just don't stop, Bo? Take Bambi and keep goin'? - so it never comes to fruition). Your best friend. 

This is your burgeoning family, and it isn't complete if Vincent avoids you like you're the harbinger of unspeakable atrocities. 

It might be unattainable to achieve the same kinship you share with Lester, but you could imbue some friendship or closeness with him. 

So, you do the most inadvisable thing you possibly could. You chase Vincent and make excuses for the hankering inside of you. You want to make him your older, older brother. 

That's all. 

That's all -

At first.

And then it somehow becomes much, much more. 

There is a picture in Bo's room of a pair of pomegranates that are sealed together. 

The chiaroscuro of the piece is so breathtaking that you often stare at it, eyes roaming greedily across the dark background that serves to accentuate the fruit in the middle. The sfumato curve of where the pomegranates merge into the tenebrism behind it is so seamlessly that it almost looks like a photograph in the mid-morning light. 

And at first, you think it is. 

A beautiful piece of art was snatched from a gallery and hung in a room to be forgotten, to collect dust. The sight of it sitting there, abandoned and alone, makes your chest twinge with something mournful, sympathetic. It should be admired; appreciated. 

You clean Bo's room one day and spend several hours carefully polishing the frame it sits in and brushing the dust and grime off the canvas. It's then, when you run your fingers gently over the curve of where the fruits are connected, that you see the intricate paint strokes that encapsulate the picture. 

It's a painting. 

Your gentle hands turn almost reverent because this isn't just capturing the right lighting, and snapping a picture - this is creating the image from nothing with only the gentle strokes of a paintbrush. Filling a barren canvas with beauty. 

When you finish cleaning it and sit back to admire the restored splendour of the finished piece, you see the curve of silver poking out from beneath the frame. Partially under a layer of dust and the lopsided frame, the signature of the artist is made known to you: Vincent. 

He created this. 

And it's - 

Stunning. 

It's then that you discover all of the paintings in the house - all imbued with tenebrism and grisaille - were created by him. They remind you so strongly of Goya, of Fuseli, Bosch, Böcklin, and Géricault. All atmospheric artists in their own right with a flair for macabre which Vincent emulates so hauntingly. 

His paintings evoke a feeling of futility; the inescapable plight of either what has occurred or what is about to. Vincent dabbles in death both in art and in life. 

He is a quietus: both the reaper and the scribe. 

It's this enchanting image of fruit in a barren, dark landscape that makes you see Vincent's work as more than just a means to get rid of bodies; a morbid hobby was borne out of some sick pleasure or fascination you could never even begin to understand. 

Your obsession begins with the joined fruit. A much larger, fuller one in the foreground and the smaller, unripened one behind. Attached but in the shadow. 

Staring at the image, you have the strangest notion that it could very easily be flipped around in the reverse. 

It's a gripping picture and one that leaves you with more understanding of the Sinclair twins than ever before.

You're not trapped in Ambrose. 

(Not explicitly, anyway.)

Lester has made it clear that the town was open for you to wander wherever you wanted. And Bo never said anything when you peaked into the movie theatre and watched What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? for the eighth time surrounded by the mummified bodies of strangers, or when you showed up at the auto shop and hung out for the day while he fixed the busted coil in the old lady's animatronic arm. 

Lester encouraged you to look around, to get familiar with the layout. 

"Sometimes they fight," he says, handing you a snickers bar he snagged from work. "Yer a little thing, Bambi. Gotta be able to run and know where yer goin' in case they ever get the drop on Bo 'r Vincent." 

It's scary - this whole town is - and sometimes you feel like the people around you are staring at you, blaming you. You won't help us? Set us free? You lay with the man who did this and think you'll be safe? How long until he gets bored and decides you would look oh-so-pretty as a statue who can't talk back? You don't have an answer, and you sit amongst the odd scent of mothballs, decay, and stale candles, and pretend that you aren't an awful person. 

(That you aren't condemning yourself to hell for a man who refuses to even call you his lover.)

You tuck the unease inside your chest and plaster on a smile for Bo, for Lester, whenever they ask what you got up to during the day. You don't tell them you climbed the rails in the old sugar mill and gazed out at the cars rotting inside while their owners sit, posed for eternity, in wax elsewhere in the town they never should have come to. The town they should have left. 

You tell them little things you know about Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, and pretend that you spent all day perusing around the town. 

Bo accepts it. Doesn't really question much except on the days that you stall a little too long or end up falling asleep in one of the old cars, wondering if any of the choices you made are right. 

Bo gets antsy during these rare instances. Accusatory. His hand settles over the curve of your neck and jaw, fastening his worn, rough fingers on the rapid pulse thudding against his calloused pads and deliberately brushing his thumb over your jugular. Sometimes he presses a bit when you ramble, babbling off-topic and oblivious to the danger you're in - it's just enough to make his intent clear, to draw you back into the questions he asked. 

Where did you go? and what did you do? and why did you take so long?

You grin at him, wide and placating, and tell him you went exploring the sugar mill, you poked your head into the houses, you wandered around. 

There's an old car in the corner that you found - a rotting old Plymouth Fury - that steals your heart from the moment you lay eyes on her. 

("Does she have a name?" Bo snorts. 

He isn't, at all, amused when you chirp out, "Christine, of course!")

She's stunning, you say, and you're quick to add that you had an affection for old beaters despite not knowing a thing about them. Talking about cars, the intricacies of engines, and the natural beauty of the classics softens him around the edges. This is what Bo is best at - fixing things, getting his hands dirty with grease - and he lets you babble the longest when it's about Christine. 

You never tell him about the doubts that sometimes settle over you, the ones that sound just as incriminating as his tone when he demands to know where the hell you were all damn day. You never tell him - and you won't. 

You know the implications in his voice. See the suspicion that settles in his brow.

Sometimes you wonder if he's only fucking you to keep you obedient and docile. You mean something to Lester and maybe, to him, you're a pretty little thing to keep his bed warm until his brother grows bored with taking care of you. 

The little moments shared with Bo are important because without them, there really isn't anything substantial to cling to in your delusions over what you mean to him. 

And you know that the moment you even hint at being unnerved by any of this, he'll snap. He'll kill you. You'll become a liability and no matter how much he likes to pull you close and whisper dirty things in your ear until you're flushing cherry red and sputtering in his grasp, no matter how much he likes to throw you on his bed and fuck you until you can't take it anymore, until you're sobbing for a reprieve, or he likes to see you on your knees just for him - your time here is ephemeral and precarious. 

So, you tuck it all away. Hide it. 

You might be every bit of the naïve, foolish child your parents think you are, but you aren't stupid. 

Bo has never said he loved you. He still gets squeamish when you say it to him. 

It's the fact that he doesn't stop you, he doesn't correct you, that makes you feel emboldened to think of him as more. Until he says otherwise, you're content with what you have. Content to let him run away when you try to get closer, to wiggle through his defences. Content to turn a blind eye when you feel that pinch in the pit of your gut at the odd smell that clings to every surface of this town; that mouldy decay of the mummified remains of a town perfectly preserved. 

Because if you aren't - if you weren't - then you'd have to come to terms with the fact that Bo and Vincent have decimated an entire town. That there are more cars stuffed inside the sugar mill than you care to count. 

And you don't. 

You don't count. 

Because if you did, if you start now, you don't think you'll ever be able to stop. 

So, you smile wide, shoving down that thrum of fear that wells up inside of you, and wrap your hands around his wrist when he squeezes a touch too tight, and say: nothing, just exploring. 

Lester grins wide, ruffles your hair and says, "I'm glad you like it, Bambi. This 'ere's yer new home so get nice and comfy."

The because you're not allowed to leave isn't uttered, but you hear it, anyway. You hear the words that aren't said in the way both Lester and Bo stay up waiting for you. The way that Lester is so eager to volunteer to run into the city for you to get whatever you need now that you're here in town. Feel it in the brush against your soft, delicate, vulnerable throat. The eyes that bore into you as you prattle on about your day. 

(The eyes you feel watching you as you meander through the barren town that you know, know, is from the careful way Vincent follows you around now.) 

You are not trapped in Ambrose.

You're free to go wherever you desire. To roam around the houses, to pester Bo at the shop, to keep Lester company when he works, to watch Whatever Happened to Baby Jane over and over again, to see statues posed around town and marvel at the wonder that is Vincent's artistic talent, and Bo's mechanical prowess. To play house with a murderer. 

But you won't be leaving the town. 

That much is certain. 

Without much to do in the confines of a footnote on the Louisiana State map, you venture down to the only place you haven't really explored yet: the museum. 

With Bo's growing restlessness over the lapses in time when you're not being watched by either himself or Lester, or even Vincent (though, you certainly do feel his eyes on you as you wander around), it's probably better to stay a little closer to home before you strain that something that is allowing him to let Lester keep you like some pet. 

It's also the perfect time to get to know Vincent a little more. 

(And through him, how to properly win Bo's affections. 

Yeah… that's it. 

That's why you want to know him so badly. Because of Bo. 

It makes sense -

As long as you ignore that little prickle inside your chest that almost preens whenever that feeling of being watched rears up, knowing that there is really only one Sinclair who can hide in plain sight, then it all makes such perfect sense.)

You don't know how any of this unfolded. How this town became the way it is now. 

Or what happened to Bo, Lester, Vincent. 

You pick up pieces of things, but it isn't a complete picture. 

And at some point, you stop trying to put it together. You accept what is in front of you and you don't question it. 

From the moment you pry open the museum doors, passing by the much too friendly we are closed sign that dangles from the handle, you know that Vincent is aware of your presence. He has to be. The creaking floorboards do little to aid in your attempt to sneak around. 

("You got some heavy feet, Bambi," Lester snickers, pulling down the scope of his rifle. "You scared all'a animals away.")

It seems rather silly to knock in this town. To try and hide is even less likely to pan out when Bo has a perfect headcount of every single effigy in the theatre, the houses, the church - all down to the exact number in each of the rows (and you're sure that Vincent, by extension, does as well). Hiding is futile. 

Maybe it's your gullibility, then, that drives you forward. The way you're clinging to the hope that being Lester's little sister and Bo's lover (even if he gnarls his lips to the side whenever you say it and snaps at you to stop talking about stupid shit like that) will somehow grant you immunity to wander around here as well. Untouched. Unbothered. 

Alive.

You meander through, taking in the newness of a place you've yet to explore. 

It's like the rest of the town: eerie. Gut-wrenching. The coalescence of rot and death and decay branded as art drapes over every inch of the mausoleum. Covered in thick layers of dust and cobwebs, it sits vacant and horrific. 

There is something about the smell of the wax corpses that makes your stomach churn in disgust when the scent of it has all but been nullified under routine and some proxy of normalcy, but it's the miasma of it leaking in the air, as if to remind you that this thing you're gazing at so intrusively used to be a person. 

(And one day, it might be you.)

The unsettling look on the face of the effigy - of some nameless passerby who had the misfortune of ending up stranded on the same gravel path you stumbled down - always makes you say a silent apology for their plight, for both not being able to do anything to let them rest, and -

Not even trying. 

It must be horrendous, you think, staring at the pleading, uncomfortable grins on the couple's faces as they forever dance in a house made entirely of rot and wax. Being like this forever. Forced to pose. To be gawked at. To collect dust. 

You have the slightest inclination to topple them over, to shatter them so they are rendered useless in this graveyard built to resemble a home, and could then be laid to rest, but you wouldn't dare try such a thing. 

This is their grave, permanently fixed in rigour mortis and unable to leak back into the earth they came from, and disturbing that feels almost as sacrilegious as staring at them so voyeuristically.

So, you turn away. Turn toward the walls where the true pieces of breathtaking beauty lay. 

Vincent's paintings. 

There are so many of them here along the walls in the creepy museum, all haunting and mesmerising. 

You walk along the foyer and take them all in, but one, in particular, catches your eye. 

It jumps out at you in impasto with rich, saturated colours and dark tones meant to convey the longing of the subjects standing across a river that divides them. 

"Persephone…" you breathe, reaching out and running your finger along the strokes, collecting the dust that gathers across the canvas. 

In her hands, she holds a pomegranate and looks over her shoulder at the indomitable being gazing at her from beyond a strait. With her expression hidden from the viewer, all you can see are the dark lines of agony on Hades' face. 

A thin hand is wrapped around Persephone's wrist, pulling her away from him. The person taking her away is hidden out of frame, but the gentle curve of their hands makes you think of Demeter. 

It's gorgeous and dark. The sky seems to mourn their separation as thick, grey clouds saturate the aether, hiding the sun away behind a thick, Stygian curtain. 

In the corner of the canvas, you see the signature of Vincent peering out at you, and unable to help yourself, you slide your finger over and slowly brush away the grime and dust that collected along the edge. 

This painting is too pretty, too heartbreaking, to be left in such a state. 

It's only when the canvas is free of grime do you hear the creak of the floorboard behind you. 

Vincent. 

Slowly, slowly, you turn around, and quickly draw up a small smile when you see him standing in the foyer - blocking the door, you note with a tendril of trepidation snaking down your spine - and nod your head in a proxy of nonchalance, as if to convey an implicit you belong here. You're allowed to be here. 

As a living, breathing person and not as a figurine. 

Vincent tilts his head at you, and his lack of anything in response makes the small, unsure smile you plastered across your face wobble a little. 

The atmosphere between you feels terse with him just - watching you. Does he remember meeting you? Or the way Lester implied that he was allowed to keep you, like some pet sister so long as he fed you and made sure you didn't run for the hills and warn the town of their - 

Machinations feel so wrong to use in conjunction with everything they've done, but you really can't fathom anything more fitting or apt than lurid schemes to expand on their mother's legacy. 

And in this strange meeting ground with a man who can, and does, snatch people off the highway if they wander too close, you're beginning to feel that sense of dread that should have sprung up when you first popped your tyre and Lester seemed rather sorrowful and reluctant when he said he had to bring you to Bo. Like he didn't have a choice. 

It spools, hot and thick, in your stomach, and you wonder if you should have told Bo or Lester that you'd be coming here. 

But - 

You'd rather not become an effigy of Icarus: some poor, unfortunate soul who wandered too close to the sun because they thought they could. 

Uncomfortable with the sudden, eerie staring contest with a man whose eyes you can't really even see to tell if he blinked at all, and a little scared, you babble. 

It's what you do best, and as Bo often says, you really can't seem to shut up. 

You ramble on about nothing - your morning with Bo and Lester, and the eggs and bacon he made for you, about how you used to wander around but don't want to worry Bo anymore (or make him any more suspicious than he already is), and how you'd never been here, so you came to explore, and maybe talk to him a little bit -

That makes him lift his head a little more. 

And the sight of his eye piercing through the curtain of black hair (that still makes your fingers ache) and the wax covering his face causes you to falter, stumbling over your words.

"...And - um…" you trail off meekly, unsure what to say now that you undoubtedly have his full attention. 

It makes the first time you met feel cursory and brief in comparison to the burning intensity of his stare fully directed at you. You didn't have his full attention then, but you do now. 

You flounder for a moment. "Bo… gets worried sometimes-," neither of you react to your wince at the wording, but you're sure both of you know that it isn't true. "-and, ahh… I guess I just wanted to, um-," it's then that his attention shifts. His head lifts and follows the awkward twitches you're making with your hands. 

You glance at them and have to swallow down another wince, and the creeping panic that pools inside your stomach. 

He's staring at your hands which are now covered in grime, dirt, and cobwebs. 

You're not an artist by any stretch of the imagination - just someone with a burgeoning talent that can easily be expanded on with proper training, according to your teacher, but even you know that there might have been an artistic faux pas you just committed. 

Sitting here now, taking in everything outside of just creepy statues that make you question your moral integrity and fill you with a sense of existential ennui and haunting pictures you can't look away from, you can see it. The artistic intent. 

It strikes you how, perhaps, it wasn't so much a wax museum but a wax mansion. It feels like a house that was frozen in time and then abandoned by whatever Eldridge horror had broken the clock. It's decayed. Old. Forgotten.

You can't help but wonder if that was intentional. 

You thought it was just - happenstance. None of the boys strikes you as particularly neat so the idea of spring cleaning seems almost as foreign as the thought of God gazing down at this town. The most you'd seen Lester clean was the skulls and bones he found particularly appealing from the carcasses he picked up. 

(You watched Bo run a dirty cup under warm water for three seconds, and then attempt to put it away as clean before you'd stepped in and asked Lester to pick up some dish soap and sponges on his next run.)

When you peeked into the museum and saw the dust, you figured it was just because none of them wanted to clean it, but maybe this was purposeful. 

And the efforts of his hard work and artistic vision are now smudged across your fingers. 

You don't want to look back and see the somewhat clean canvas amid all the decaying others. 

"I'm - I'm sorry-," you babble again because this is what you do when you're nervous, happy, anxious, scared, apologetic. "It was just so beautiful and I wanted to see it better and I should have asked - because, wow, so rude! I hope I didn't ruin it, I just-" 

Vincent moves. 

You don't expect it, and you don't have time to react, but before you can say anything, he's striding up to the painting in three even steps, tilting his head as he gazes at the smudges you left behind. 

You don't think Lester can save you from this one. 

"It's, um-," you'd never been this close to him. So close that if you took a step to the side, you'd be brushing against his shoulder. 

In this new proximity, you can easily see just how much bigger he is compared to you. Broader. Even compared to Bo, his literal other half, Vincent's just a soupçon more stocky in his arms and shoulders. 

It's also now that you can make out just how long his hair is. It's - 

"Beautiful," you say, and flush - immediately - when his head jerks toward you. 

Vincent doesn't say anything. It's not that he can't - he called Bo one night before, so it's not impossible for him - but maybe he just doesn't want to. Maybe the effort to speak isn't worth the trouble. 

Or maybe he just doesn't want to talk to you.  

The odd stranger who compliments his hair - of all things - and runs your greasy fingers over his art like you're allowed to. Someone who just shows up unannounced and talks his ear off for twenty minutes about why you decided to come over in the most roundabout, redundant way possible.

You'd never really understood murderous impulses or that something that could make a person snap. You're mum once told you about the terror she felt living in Brooklyn during the reign of Son of Sam, and when you asked why he did it, she shrugged and said, he snapped, is what happened. Went crazy and just killed people. 

You didn't get it then. 

But you think you get it now. 

If someone did what you did to your magnum opus, you'd probably shove them into a vat of boiling wax and polymer as well. 

"Sorry for-," you make another vague motion with your hands as if to summarise all your transgressions: intruding, touching his things, talking his ear off, your entire existence, and somehow giving his baby brother little sister fever. 

Vincent doesn't say anything. His hand reaches out - covered in wax, you notice - and brushes across the canvas you attempted to clean, catching a missed spot of dust that still clings to Hades' face. The cobweb tangles in the drying adhesive, and he pulls it back, staring at the grey spool covering his fingers. 

His expression is veiled entirely from your prying, greedy gaze. The curtain of hair - that you long to reach out and touch, to buy him stupidly expensive shampoo and conditioner to make it shine as it should - and the mask make looking at his face almost as impossible as wriggling inside Bo's heart, but the slight hunch to his shoulders, the way he bows his head, makes something inside of you itch. 

He looks like a tortured artist. 

When you were younger, you'd often get in trouble whenever your teacher would give you a connect the dots assignment because when you couldn't quite make it all fit and bring the image to life, you tended to make your own. Adding little dots here or there to fit the narrative you're trying to spin. 

And maybe that's what you're doing here - with Bo and Lester, and now Vincent. Making something out of nothing. 

It's what you always seem to do. 

Given a picture and told to colour the hippocampus grey, because that's what colour they are, and you decided that yellow would work best because it was your favourite colour. 

("Hippopotamuses aren't yellow, after all," your teacher says, waving the garish picture at you.) 

It became a clutch, a mantra, whenever you would find yourself repeating the same pattern. Making something out of nothing or deciding that something should be a certain way when it clearly wasn't. 

Hippopotamuses aren't yellow. 

Still: 

Patterns are hard to just stop.  

"I really like this," you murmur, gentle and low like you're trying not to startle a wild animal. "I always used to think of impasto as, like, backgrounds and scenery, but this is - this is really beautiful, Vincent."

Flattery that's maybe a touch too much, but you can't help the praise that spills, uninhibited, from your lips. 

He doesn't say anything at all in response but he keeps his gaze on you as you flit about the tiny space, filling it with your gushing chatter. 

There is a small modicum of comfort in the fact that if he wanted you dead, you would be. You heard drunken renditions of the earlier days when they would slink around and subdue the remaining townsfolk - all older, retired pensioners who were fixated on staying and had no family to speak of - and how often they'd mess up, or almost get caught. Bo likes to tell these stories. He likes the idea of it all and looks at this barren graveyard with something like pride in his eyes. 

"Mama'd be proud of us," he says one night, words slurred and forceful as he lounges on the couch with you laying across his chest. It's a rare moment of intimacy and honesty that you can never seem to get enough of. "What we did here. What we’re doin'. I know she would."

(And that's that. 

To Bo, this is worthy of his mother's affection and pride, and therefore, all else is rendered moot. He simply doesn't not, and will not, care about the repercussions of what might follow should some lucky person manage to sneak away.)

In those stories, he speaks of Vincent like a spectre. A shadow. He tells you of the tunnels all carved out underground; the hiding spots he used to get the jump on some fleeing victims who tried to run. 

Bo tends to speak about Vincent like he's a monster. 

You know that Bo loves his brothers more than he could ever possibly love anything else, but there is a degree of control he exudes over them that is beyond the typical familial bonds. It's suppressive, almost. He barks out orders and knows that they will listen. 

And you also know that he's been agitated lately. Vincent, the docile twin who does whatever Bo says with minimal hesitation or questions, has been slipping away from Bo's control. Doing his own thing. Ignoring the orders given to him. 

It's minor. Small. But considering how domineering and controlling Bo is, he notices. He sees the slight gap growing. 

Sometimes he looks at you and you wonder if he thinks this is somehow your fault. You feel the blame, the accusation, but it's unfathomable. 

You've never had a conversation with Vincent beyond your stammering idiocy where you throw platitudes out at him in the hopes he'll catch one and offer camaraderie or friendship in return. 

The initial thought process was, of course, Bo kept you alive because Lester wanted a sister. And maybe Vincent isn't happy about that. 

You can see why that would cause friction in such a tight-knit family; a family that branches out beyond the standard familial relationships into something heinous. 

But you guess any family embroiled in macabre and luridness like they are would have to be pretty close. Petty infighting, which is normally expected and of no real consequence in a traditional household, could be the end of everything. 

With the thought that maybe Vincent is pulling away because he wants you dead, hates your guts, and thinks you'd look much better with your lips permanently sealed - you resolve to show him that you're not trying to fix this. That you're not some morally strong person who wants to change them from their murderous intentions. You don't think you ever could. And you never will. 

And maybe that says more about you as a person than it does about a patchwork family so entrenched in trauma and completely settled into their lifestyle. That you're someone so utterly desperate for familial affection, kinship, belonging, and love that you - someone who is not seeped in the same psychological troubles as they are - are completely willing to ignore the plight and suffering of others just to stay. 

It's a dirty thing inside your chest. A disgusting, selfish greed that makes you think everything is fine. That everything is okay so long as you have Lester, Bo, and Vincent.

"And I-," you don't want to cause any fractures in this family. "I really like your paintings, and - um… the, uh… wax statues… That's why I came here…"

He doesn't say anything. 

And you start to think that maybe you said too much, but - 

You can never seem to help yourself. 

"And because I really, really like Bo, and-," Vincent turns his head when you mention Bo, his expression still completely hidden from view. It startles you. You blame the sudden movement for why your heart races. "And - and Lester, and - I wanna get to know you, too…" 

Nothing. His breathing is even, measured. You can barely hear the quiet puffs of air leaking through the cutouts in the mask. 

He's as still as a statue and staring at you in a way that makes you feel slightly unnerved and more than a little flustered. It dredges up that greedy want inside of you again; the one that rears sometimes when you wake up earlier than Bo and just gaze at him as he sleeps. That prickly feeling that wants and wants and wants. Greedy and hungry for more. 

It feels strange that it's present here, in the company of a man who isn't Bo, but you blame that on the fact that they're twins and tuck it aside for now. A mystery to unravel later when you aren't so nervous about potentially pissing Vincent off and becoming his next project. 

Your eyes drop to his hands again when he rubs them against his jeans, shedding the wax and grime over the stained, worn trousers. 

It tumbles out before you can think it through. "Oh! Are you working on another sculpture-," you aren't really sure what the technical term for encasing people in wax is officially, and wince only slightly at the blasè phrasing: "-can I - umm… do you mind if I keep you company?"

There are many instances in your life when you were overtaken with chronic foot-in-mouth disease - an ailment your mum used to say was from your dad's side of the family - and this is no exception, really, but it feels a little more distinct, a little more important than the others. 

It's probably because you're asking a serial murderer to watch him mummify a person whilst being pretty sure he would much rather be encasing you in the wax casing. 

As embarrassment seeps in and the absolute absurdity of your situation settles inside your marrow, heavy and weighted with that ennui that sometimes threatens to consume you whole, you see it. 

It's so minute and so barely discernible, that you almost miss it, but ever-so-slightly his chin ducks down in a small nod, and he turns away from you, the painting, and begins walking away. 

You hesitate for a moment - unsure if the nod was even a nod or if it's a dismissal or a yeah, whatever just shut up and follow me - but when Vincent slows his gait before turning around the corner, a small, subtle well… you coming? you hurry and follow along. 

This was your idea, but as you trail behind Vincent you can't help but think maybe you should have stayed home, after all. Maybe you never should have gotten out of bed. Bo certainly was very keen to sleep in for the morning. You could have been pestering him over inane things until he got tired of yer damn mouth, and decided to put it to better use. 

Instead, you felt that tingle in the base of your spine - that itch that said, do something about this already! - and here you were. 

Here, of course, being: some strange wax staircase leading to (certain death in) the basement where an array of tortured skulls were encased in the walls and floors with candles precariously littered about. It reminds you of Capela dos Ossos. 

The poem seems to echo in the recesses of your mind as you avoid staring at the gnarled faces of the men and women frozen in the walls. You stare at his broad back covered in a work coat, and wonder if maybe you should have stayed in New Jersey, after all. 

(Where are you going in such a hurry, traveller?
Recall how many have passed from this world
Reflect on your similar end)

It's haunting. Frightening. The slippery stairs lead into an alcove where a machine roars deafeningly in the corner and the scent of bubbling wax is potent. 

Vincent doesn't stop, and he doesn't look back to see if you've followed. He continues straight until he comes to a work area with an unmade cot in the corner - his bed, you note - and a workstation with a humanoid blob of drying wax and polymer sitting on a surgeon's table.

(Ponder, you so influenced by fate
Among the many concerns of the world
So little do you reflect on death)

The humanoid blob turns out to be one of the college kids on spring break that rolled through a week ago. She's now encased in a coffin. 

It's… a lot to take in. 

The brown, fleshy tint of the wax mixture ("it's wax - industrial grade - and polymer," Bo told you when you asked why they didn't decay or smell too much) has cooled completely over her skin, adhering to it entirely. Part of her legs had been chiselled down from the clumpy mess sprayed over her body, and you can see the smooth curve of her knee and shin as it begins to reshape itself under Vincent's dutiful efforts. 

From mid-thigh to her head she has more in common with the Blob from the Lake than she does with anything resembling a human. It's a pulpy mess that reminds you of the sharp peaks of limestone deposits in caves. 

A person is under that. Someone close to you in age, who might have had the same dreams and aspirations, the same drive, a similar home life, and now -

Gone. Dead. Buried under layers of hardened wax. 

Bo said he didn't like taking younger people - they were a bigger liability since they could have family looking for them - but he didn't really care if they happened to stumble by. It was an opportunity to grow his mum's museum, and with traffic dwindling as other highways branched out and GPS got better as technology advanced, fewer people were finding themselves in need of service along that rural road you got stranded on. 

She was a casualty of being at the wrong place, at the wrong time. It's hard to reconcile the fact that it could have been you. 

(And it still can.)

Vincent pulls an old stool up to the table, and taking that as another one of his nonverbal cues, you sit back into the other chair in the room, watching.

The words blustering inside of your chest have diminished - quite quickly - at the sight of someone lying on a table encased in resin and wax. It almost feels surreal. 

You knew it was happening, of course you did - Bo and Lester have admitted to it - but it was much easier to pretend without the aftermath of their slaughter in your face like this. 

Sometimes you pretend that the wax figurines are just that, and this is all a bad dream; that boys are nothing more than big talkers who enjoy telling stories, and you're their willing and enabling audience. 

But as Vincent grabs his chisel and - after a quick, quiet glance in your direction - begins to cut away at the excess wax building up along her legs, it sinks in that this isn't some garish fantasy. That this is real, and the man you're in love with is a murderer. 

It pulls the wool over your eyes until you're left with a hollow feeling in your chest, one that says: the longer you pause, the further on your journey you will be.

Despite the unease, the deep sense of existentialism and mortality that feels much too big for you to contemplate, it's almost soothing to watch Vincent work calming. It pulls you into a state of mindlessness; nothing matters in this room except the sound of Vincent easing into his craft. 

The terse atmosphere fades around you, and you relax into the chair, content to simply watch. It almost feels like it's not real, but the gentle motions and the clumps of wax fitting the table cement cognisance into your being. 

When it becomes clear that you aren't going to ramble anymore, he sets down the chisel he was using to sculpt her knee and turns on the radio. 

Le Nozze di Figaro fills the atelier amid the soft sounds of the shaper cutting through the hardened polymer. 

For the first time in a while, you don't feel the need to add noise to the silence that cuts through the room. The desire, the itch, to chatter to keep the uncomfortable feelings at bay dissipates the longer you watch the careful, concise ministrations of Vincent as he slowly, painstakingly, carves his new effigy out of her cocoon.

(You have no greater concern,
Than this one: that on which you focus your sight)

When Bo asks where you've been, you offer a sleepy smile that's only a little shaky around the edges, and say, "with Vincent." 

It surprises him - you can tell by the way his brows furrow slightly and his nostrils flare - and while he doesn't like surprises, he doesn't push for more. It must be the sheer absurdity of Vincent allowing it that overrides anything else, even dulling the sting of his ire when his control is slacked, or the leads he keeps around everyone are being pulled a little too taut. 

Bo's mouth knots to the side like he's chewing something unpleasant, but finally - finally - he relents with a little chuckle, one that sounds so sweet to your ears. 

"Really, now?" He drawls, knowing exactly what it does to you when he lays his accent on thick and heavy. His gruff voice and rough words always get so deep under your skin. "And what did you get up to?" 

Bo's hands wrap around your wrist, tugging you closer to him. It's always a comical sight to see the height difference between you two - even when Bo's sitting on the couch and you're standing at his knees, he's almost at eye level with you. 

There is a flutter of heat simmering in your lower belly (a low ember that flickers to live, on that you pretend was only just ignited), and when he gazes up at you from under his ball cap, eyes burning with desire as his hands slide away from your wrists to grab your waist, pulling you down to straddle his lap, it only intensified to a blistering inferno. The hard lines of his body under your palms make you pant into the balmy night, eager and wanting for more - more of his touches, his voice, the astringent tang of ozone, gasoline, and something so distinctly Bo it never fails to make your toes curl. 

He pulls you down roughly, manoeuvring you to his whims at the moment, and digs his fingers sharply into your thighs when they spread over his lap, knees resting on the couch below. 

Your legs are a little too short, and Bo's thighs are a little too big. You can never quite manage to balance on top of him; one knee is always left an inch from the ground, but it's easier on the couch where the cushion bulges up to fill the gap. 

He'll take you like this, you're sure. Let you mewl and pant and whine into the sultry night as he grabs your waist and growls demands into your chest until he can't take the sloppy, desperate way you ride him, and ends up canting into you hard and fast, letting you dig your nails into his shoulders and cry out his name into his chest until he cums. 

Bo grunts when you settle over his hardening cock, eyes blazing with want when he glances at you from under the crooked rim of the hat. His hand reaches up, fingers ghosting across your cheek, your neck. He cups your jaw and brushes his thumb across your lower lip, pressing just enough for you to know his intentions. Your mouth drops open for him, and there is that little thing that rears up in his eyes - that satisfied look of a child getting exactly what they want - and the possessiveness alone in his smouldering gaze nearly makes you whimper. 

His thumb tastes like salt and petrol when he runs it across your tongue. 

"Look'it you," he almost coos, words seeped in a palpable smug satisfaction when your eyes spool with misty desire and you wrap your lips around his appendage without needing to be asked. "Such a lil' slut for me, ain'tcha?"

You wouldn't dare dispute his claims when they ring so true. Instead, you arch into his hold, greedily, eager for more of his warmth, the solid tautness of his body underneath yours, and the dulcet lull of his cadence that sends goosebumps rippling across your skin. 

Bo's desire flames as hot as his anger; the two are almost indistinguishable from each other. Caught in the beauty of his fire, all you can think to do is willingly go wherever he commands, mind stuck on one thing only: more more.

And he gives you more. 

His hand slips down the seam of your pants, fingers teasing across your aching centre. He makes a low groan deep in his chest when he feels how wet you are for him. 

(And him alone.)

"Fuck, Bambi," he hisses into your neck, teeth scraping against your skin in a way that's sure to leave a constellation of bruises when he's finished. The deep, rumbling tone makes you press harder against his hold, eager and wanting. It's consuming you entirely. "So fuckin' wet for me, huh? Want my cock that bad?"

In these moments, Bo seems to relish the way you lose the ability to speak. To form coherent sentences. To even think. You can tell by the way he grows more and more dominating, more teasing, crueller. His hands grip your waist, stopping your desperate cants into the hard ridge underneath you and the fingers that feel so good rubbing against you.  

He won't give you pleasure without his permission. 

He grunts when his hold slips and you push yourself against him. The wobble in his brow and the grimace on his face spell trouble, but you can't be bothered to care about the punishment when the crime feels so good. 

"Yer gonna get it for that one," he hisses, eyes half-mast and dark. A sneer curls up at the corner of his mouth, and it's the only warning you get before his hand catches your wrists - still pushed against his chest - and he tugs you forward. His teeth dig into your collarbone; a warning to behave. 

Bo is restrictive when it comes to sex. He likes holding you down and tying you up. 

You'll never ask if it has anything to do with the scars on his wrist, but you let him do whatever he wants to you - use whatever he wants to subdue you. If it's what he needs, you'll gladly give it to him. 

You would give him whatever he wanted. Anything.

With the ring of his teeth now imprinted in your flesh, so deep the skin splits and blood leaks out in rivets, he nuzzles into the soft give of your chest and rasps out horrible, awful things he wants to do to you. Growling how much he's going to enjoy making you beg and plead.

The sandpaper grit of his voice abrades your skin as the hideous words leak out and lacerate through you. 

You can't get enough - of him, of this, of his voice - and eagerly soak it all up, letting them wash over you and tucking them inside where they'll stay forever. 

As Bo hisses vile things into your neck and sends you careening toward that peaking nirvana, you can't stop the phantom thought that burrows deep, and wonders, does Vincent sound the same?

A routine forges in the days after Vincent let you watch him as he worked. 

You no longer go to the old sugar mill and gaze at the ramshackle mess of cars that lay abandoned in the empty warehouse. 

(Your own now included amongst the rotting remains of the others. A warning, you're sure.)

You don't wander around in search of new things to find or something to do. 

When you wake up in the morning, you make a coffee and some breakfast for Lester before he heads out to work, his lunch already packed, and leave some behind for Bo if he wakes up after you. 

He knows where you're going but it always seems to surprise him when you back home at night and relay to him that Vincent, yet again, let you stay. Let you watch. 

Vincent doesn't seem bothered by your reappearance the following morning, though he does stare at you for a moment longer - probably wondering which God he offended to have you back again so soon to bother him - and then simply turns around and wanders down to the atelier to commence his work.

Sometimes you talk to him, but not at first; you let the notes of Le Nozze di Figaro fill the static silence as he carves perfection out of a moult. 

There is a rhythm to his movements that is so captivating to watch that the words, the burning questions, die down in the back of your mind, as if tamed and subdued by the lull of his efforts. The way he brushes his fingers against the curvature of the newly shaped leg feels distinct and hypnotic. The way he works is almost stupefacient and before you even realise it, he's retiring for the day. 

You return, somnolent and dazed, to Bo, falling into his arms as he wears you out even more before letting you sleep. 

It's simple. Easy. It's not comfortable at first - there is always that slight hesitation when you arrive at the museum, the little fear in your chest that wonders if today will be the day either Vincent kills you or doesn't come and collect you from your perch lamenting the aching separation of Persephone and Hades - but slowly it unfurls as routine takes shape. 

Cautiously, deliberately, you try to wriggle into his good graces by muting yourself while he works. Being as quiet and unassuming as possible in the hopes that he'll relax and forget you're even there. 

Vincent is always looking at you. Looking up when you move, when you accidentally marvel aloud at something he does that you find particularly interesting or cool, when you have to physically bite your tongue to stem a flood of questions that well up like a broken levee in the back of your throat. 

You distract him for the first hour when you arrive and settle into the chair that has unofficially become yours, but ever so slowly, he stops flinching whenever you breathe too loudly or swallow too thickly and settles into his usual motions. 

And eventually - 

When complacency bleeds into your marrow and the unease dissipates into comfort, you can't stop the torrent of questions from pouring out like a deluge. 

He never speaks. He doesn't even try.

He'll point to things, nod or shake his head, shrug. Even when you try to trip him up on open-ended questions, like how do you do that? or what is this called? he always has some way of responding nonverbally - either by showing you what it does, or by repeating the process so you can see how it's done. 

You try not to push too hard for him to speak. It doesn't seem right to force it when he's so unwilling, but you nudge the boundaries just a little bit, always inching for more and more.

You can't help yourself, it seems. 

And when you aren't asking him questions or commenting on his work, you fill the gap with anything that comes to your mind. 

Unlike Bo, he doesn't snap at you to shut up already, for fuck's sake (or just simply shove you to your knees and keep your running mouth occupied - though, you might have an aneurysm if that ever happened), or tune you out like Lester sometimes does when he's preoccupied. 

There is no, oh, boy, you sure do talk a lot, huh? or any condescending: wow, doesn't that mouth of yours ever get tired? from him.

If anything, when the novelty of just how long you can carry on a one-sided conversation with yourself wears off, he seems to content, almost, to let you fill the barren silence with whatever springs to mind - usually art, Bo, Lester - and never tries to shush you or turn the radio up louder to drown you out. 

I guess I talk enough for the two of us, huh? you murmur one night when he's busying himself with putting his tools away, and you stretch on the chair after hours of sitting stiffly. You're not thinking when you say it - your head is spooled with that thick gossamer of soporific nothing - and the words tumble out without preamble. But if you ever get annoyed, just, um, go ahead and throw something at me. And if you don't want me here, just… don't come up, or something…? I'll get the hint! 

He pauses from where he's fiddling with the contraption that looks like the most elaborate torture device you've ever seen, and jerks his head sharply to stare at you. 

You can't see his expression, but there is something about the sudden hunch in his shoulders and the even, almost poignant, stare he levels at you that makes you feel slightly nervous.

The words that bubbled out of you, reeking of wry self-deprecation, embarrass you now that they are left to fester in the suddenly tense atmosphere. 

The sorry, ignore me - that's what everyone else does, ha…ha that wells up is equally lambasting and sheepish, but before you can even form the words, Vincent shakes his head once. 

And that's that. 

He turns back to the device, as if he isn't in the process of tilting your skewed world even further off its axis, and leaves you standing there, humbled and numb and reverberating like a gong inside your chest had been struck. 

Lester, by far, has the most patience for your rambling tales and long-winded anecdotes, but even he sometimes asks you to slow down or cool it, Bambi, we got the whole trip ahead of us to chit-chat no need to talk my ear off before we even reach the end of the driveway. 

Bo is less accommodating with that thing inside of you that feels the need to fill the silence with something (lest the despairing thoughts eat you alive), and snaps at you to shut up so often that the novelty of that, too, has worn down to nothing, and simply rolls off of you. 

Bo is mordacious words and trenchant scorn. He flips, quite easily, between normalcy and ire, and if you couldn't handle his burning choler, you doubt you would have lasted as long as you have. 

It doesn't bother you. You get it.

But being under the oppressive thumb of someone who only vaguely acknowledged your existence, whose domineering control had the distinct quality of being impersonal to the point of near detachment, coming here and finally, finally, being able to breathe without being snapped at for doing it wrong (whilst being called the wrong name) is freeing in a way you'll never tire from.

And maybe you talk too much to fill the silence because the echoes of the aloof contumely scorn still ring so shrilly in your head when you let the absence of sound leak in. 

(Maybe there is something to be said about going from one controlling personality to another, but none of it matters as long as you feel free; with Bo? Lester? Well. You've never felt freer so you'll swallow down the tang of their slight mockery for your chatterbox tendencies because there is nowhere else that has ever made you feel so complete, so whole.)

But this? This leaves you in shambles. 

Vincent's nonchalance in the face of what you know has to be somewhat annoying, his unspoken it's fine, is more than anything you'd ever gotten before. 

For a moment, you wonder if somehow he sees you. If he sees through the mask of friendly, silly indifference you plaster on to simply get through the day without falling into that never-ending pit of Weltschmerz and despair, and this is his way of saying, I don't care, it doesn't bother me.

It probably does, and this is you doing what you always do - filling in the gaps with what you want - and Vincent is just apathetic toward you, entirely ambivalent, but you're so desperate for something else that you're willing to overlook all the apt signs that sit in front of you. 

After all, Hippocampuses aren't yellow. 

But you can't help that budding sense of happiness and complacency that swells inside of you at the first sign of a breakthrough. 

You swallow it all down, and huff out a small laugh that sounds a little bit like you're choking. When you gather your things together, you pause at the door, and say, thank you, Vincent.

Then you head home to Bo, mind gummy with all the unspooled thoughts that are caught in a web, and let him pull you in closer as the scent of gasoline and ozone fill your senses. 

In the back of your head, you can't help but dwell on the coiled curve of Vincent's shoulders when he works. His hands, always covered in wax and smears of paint, and the gentle, almost kind way he considers you when you ask too many questions, or - 

Run yer mouth too damn much. 

You think of Vincent and wonder what it would feel like to have that intense, fervid focus solely on you instead of the effigy on the table.

(You think about it and don't know what to make of the burning itch inside of you that begins to fester at the thought.)

You learn things about Vincent. 

It's all mundane and doesn't matter, but for some inexplicable reason, you can't seem to get them out of your head.

Things like: he enjoys Mozart while he works. He's meticulous and pays extraordinary attention to detail. He's a little bit of a perfectionist - eying his work critically before he moves on. When he's unsure of something, his shoulders slump down, and he tilts his head as he mulls whatever it is that's bothering him. He tilts his head when he's curious about something, too, but his chin dips a little to the side. 

He doesn't take his mask off. Ever. You've never even seen him reach for the edges or scratch at the skin. It's almost as if it doesn't bother him anymore. But you also saw the pictures at Bo's house and you know he's been wearing wax masks since he was a toddler. 

He seems to have a preference for the softest-looking cream-coloured cashmere sweater you've ever seen when he works. It has braided wool designs and you long to reach out and touch it to see if it's as soft as it looks. 

Vincent's hands are worn and rough from years of working but are deft and gentle when he needs them to be. You stare at his hands sometimes and wonder what it would feel like if he touched you, too. 

Thoughts like those - the ones where you can't help but wonder what his hair would feel like if you were to run your fingers through it, or if he'd hold you just as methodically and gentle as he does the effigy that's almost complete - seem to come more and more frequently when you start to piece together that the Vincent you've built up inside your head is entirely different from how he is in real life. 

He isn't some rampaging killer like Bo implied. He isn't someone who wants you dead - or if he does, those impulses have yet to arise in the entirety of the month you've been coming by - in fact, he seems to tolerate you the most; or, at the very least, he has the most patience for you. 

When you stop talking, going quiet in fear that maybe you're being too much, he always looks up at you. He never says anything, but his chin tilts up toward you, as if he's asking, why did you stop?

It only serves to further that strange unease inside your chest whenever he does that, but you can't help the swell of affection you feel when he goes out of his way to acknowledge that you stopped talking, and he wants to know why. 

Maybe you're misinterpreting the action instead of reading in-between the lines, but it doesn't matter because he keeps doing it. You stop, or you pause for too long, and he looks up at you. 

It's pretty hard to misread something as obvious as that. 

He's nice, too. Gentle, despite his size and the task he's currently attending to. 

The more time you spend with him, the more you realise how wrong you were about him. He is Bo's twin, but he couldn't be more different. 

And it's that contrast between them that makes you curious. Insatiably so.

The way he stares at you sometimes does rather peculiar things to the pit of your stomach. 

You catch him watching you while he works - when he thinks you aren't paying any attention as you sit in the same chair that is now always perched in the spot you like best, and flip through the various books you've found amongst the belongings of the dead. It's a physical thing; abrasive. It feels like a weight on your skin. 

You peek up at him, catching his eye from under the curtain of tangled locks. 

And then turns his head away from you, almost shyly, and that weird flutter in the depths of your gut starts up again. Butterflies battering themselves against your innards to escape. 

It's - 

It's cute. Endearing. 

It makes a warm sensation well up in your chest when he hurriedly busies himself with something to do. 

Almost as if he is just as curious as you are. 

You offer little insights about yourself after that. Small things from your childhood. Where you were from. 

Bo laughed for nearly thirty minutes when you told him you were from New Jersey, mocking your - non-existent - accent the whole time. 

Lester had a similar reaction, chuckling at you as if the idea was completely absurd. He ruffled your hair, and said, ain't no Bambi's in New Jersey.

Vincent doesn't say anything, but there's a slight tremor to his shoulders that makes you think he's laughing, too. 

Most of what you divulge doesn't seem to surprise him much, as if he somehow already knew the inane things you told Bo and Lester during dinner or when you were relaxing together at home.

So, you tell him things you've never told anyone else - not even Lester. 

Things like how you wanted to be an artist. Not really because you felt the drive or had the passion for it, but because it was the first time in your life someone said you were good at anything. 

It throws him off, you can tell by the way he stares at you for a moment longer after your confession. 

It makes you nervous. Ashamed. Spilling your secrets into the open air is never easy, and sure - you talk a lot, but it's never been about yourself, per se. There is something almost embarrassing about it: confessing to the world that no one in your life ever really saw you, knew you. 

You wish you could swallow the words back down, or have the wax museum open up and swallow you whole. 

Foot-in-mouth makes you a chronic rambler who needs to fill awkward silence caused by your unhinged tangents with even more words. So, you do. You tell him about how it's futile since you're here now and not in California, and how it's too dry there, anyway, and how you'd never really practised much to begin with. You tell him about the dots and your favourite colour once being yellow. 

"It's pointless, anyway," you babble, laughing in that low, self-deprecating cadence that always takes the sting out of the inevitability, yeah, that's true that typically follows your deepest confessions. Or the haha, yeah, I can't imagine you doing that! It always hurts less when you pretend it's all a big joke. "After all, Hippopotamuses aren't yellow."

You brim with tension, anticipating much of the same when he cocks his head to the side at your curious expression. He stares at you for a moment while you pointedly look everywhere else but at him.

He'll ignore it, you're sure. Go back to what he was doing and pretend you never said anything.

You think you'd prefer that, too, so you didn't have to wallow in your despondency for too long. 

But he doesn't.

Vincent does the most unexpected thing: he hands you the wire brush, fingers ghosting across the skin of your hand as he does so, and points to the woman's shoulder. 

And that's that. 

There are no words of comfort. No grand declaration that it was all going to be okay, or that they were wrong. No scorn, no derision. 

Just inclusion. 

And it's - 

Overwhelming. 

This is Vincent's entire life, isn't it? Bo's, too. Continuing with their mum's legacy, finishing what she started. And sure: you'd never really know if this is something she would ever be morally okay with, knowing that her sons were essentially killing in her name, but you also know how much they care for her. 

Bo dresses up sometimes, always on Sunday, and spends hours in the church where his mum's wake is forever ongoing. Continuously reliving the moment; caught in stagnant grief. It's a cycle that rears on a loop. He wears his best and sits with her. 

You never go - you'd never even ask - but you can see the rim of red around his eyes, the thickness in his voice when he speaks. He's gentle, the most he'd ever be with you, after those visits. He holds you tight - tight enough that you always find bruises in the shape of his fingers the next day - and takes what he needs from you before pulling you on top of him, like a physical weight holding him down, and he sleeps. His dreams are chaotic. He flails. His brows knit together. His jaw gnashes. 

But it's almost like a catharsis. The next morning, he's subdued. Almost tender. 

Lester never goes to the church, but he collects things his mum would have liked, would have been inspired by. Butterflies, beetles, gorgeous antlers from the wild deer, a cow skull, wildflowers - and he hangs these things on the truck he practically lives in. A symbolic dedication to his mum who he feels so much grief over barely remembering the longer time passes, but as the hoofs clink together, he's reminded of the chimes she decorated for the museum, the way she found beauty in the macabre. 

Vincent doesn't speak - certainly not to you, anyway - but the simple fact that he has completely enshrined the museum in his mum’s honour is a testament to his love for her. She was the only person who looked at Vincent and saw something extraordinary, special. Bo goes on for hours telling you about the bond they shared over art, something he never really understood.

(You tell him he's incredible at fixing things, at making something work in a way no one else could ever think about - that his art is mechanical; the ability to create something new with just a few pieces lying around.

Bo, of course, told you it didn't matter - because anything related to affection or softness makes his hackles rise like a startled animal. 

But - and you'll never tell him this - you see him staring at some contraption he was working on with something that looked almost like pride in his eyes.) 

You're exceptionally good at making something out of nothing, but as Vincent simply turns back to his task of finishing up the details on her collarbones, you know this is something. It feels pertinent. Important. This is his mum's legacy, and now his own, and you've seen how serious he takes each detail before moving, and he's trusting you with this. It might be a small piece of the overall puzzle, and barely anything that will impact the project, but still. 

He's doing this because he knew you were upset. 

He's trusting you. 

And that - 

That simple notion warms you in a way you haven't felt since your teacher pulled you aside after class and said you mattered. That you had talent. That you were good at something after being told all your life you weren't. 

You duck your head and steady your hand as you begin to work. 

It should feel deplorable that you're helping them on their lurid pastime, and actively assisting in the desecration of a corpse, but you can't stop the flurry of contentment and belonging that swells through your chest. 

Despite this being the most heinous thing you've ever done in your life, you've never felt more at peace. 

(The feeling of his rough, waxy fingers dragging over the sensitive skin of your palm lingers even hours later when you hand him the brush and offer a small smile, and a hushed, thank you.)

You're dazed on the walk home. 

Head filled with the thought of Vincent and the catharsis you found in brushing away layers of wax, getting entirely lost in the motions of it all until everything - all of the silly little worries, and the fears in the back of your head - melted away under the abreaction in the catacombs with Vincent by your side. 

You almost miss Bo when he meets you at the corner of the street, just past the mechanic's shop. 

His hand curls around your wrist, jerking you from that docile, gummy reverie you slipped into, and he quickly pulls you home. 

He's anxious. You can tell by the tremor in his hands, the way he says nothing when he throws you on the bed and digs out some rope from his closet. The smouldering intensity in his eyes makes your toes curl in response to what is undoubtedly going to be a very long night. It blazes inside of you, stroking those embers that never seem to die out, and you willingly let him hold you down, restrain you, and take what he needs. 

Bo has been on edge for a while lately. It's been building up inside of him in conjunction with everything else - Lester bringing you here might have been the catalyst to it all, the thing that started the fire, but Vincent's growing independence is the kerosene that fuels the blaze. 

Fuck, he snarls into your neck, rutting inside of you so hard it hurts. Fuck, Bambi. M'gonna fuckin' ruin ya. Gonna mess you up so bad nobody'll want ya ever again, nobody but me will make ya feel so fuckin' good.

You don't know what he's saying, what he's talking about, but the intensity of it all numbs any form of coherent thoughts that pass through. You're at the whim of your nucleus accumbens, soaked in pleasure so deep and so visceral you think you might forever cease to exist under the overwhelming onslaught of oxytocin, dopamine, and endorphins that flood through your whole being. 

Tangled in the rope, in Bo, all you can do is let it all surge over you until your head is thrown back on rapture as Bo brings you closer to God than you've ever been before. 

Bo has always been a biter, always wanting to sink his teeth into your flesh, so when you feel his mouth sliding across your jugular, it doesn't surprise you when the abrupt burn of his teeth sears through your neck. He latches on as you whimper from the ecstasy roaring through your veins and the sudden pain right under your jaw where your pulse beats loud, pounding over the warring duality of the pleasure-pain that wrecks your body. 

It doesn't surprise you. 

He's always been possessive and controlling. Always wanting, wanting, wanting - 

But he's never been so persistent, so bold, with his claim on you, his domination. He usually saves the scars he carves into you - all in the shape of his teeth - for your collar bones, your inner thighs, the curve of your ass; this is the first time he'd ever marked you so bluntly, so visibly. 

It's also the first time he'd ever laid dominion on you in the form of a ragged, proprietorial snarl into your ear. Bo never explicitly said you belonged to him. Not with such burning ownership or clarity in the words he muttered. 

It's always, always been in the form of his hand around your neck, the burn of his teeth throbbing on your inner thigh, the implicit rules that you followed, and the way he let you into his bed, refusing you let you sleep anywhere else.

It was always unspoken. 

Hearing it verbalised - and from his own mouth and not just grunts of agreement whenever he was working on something and only vaguely listening to you ramble - nearly makes you weep because as much as you forced yourself into the role of being his, and as much as he didn't really push you away, it's entirely different to have it confirmed. Acknowledged. 

You don't know what has gotten into him, what spurred this on - you haven't spoken to another person outside of himself, Lester, and Vincent - so the idea of you meeting someone else, or needing to be reminded that you're his is startlingly unexpected, but - 

You won't look a prize you've been yearning for in the face and ask stupid questions. 

(Not yet, anyway-)

So, you thread your fingers through his hair, trailing one palm down his broad back to grip him closer as he grunts into your wet, bloodied neck with his release, instantly relaxing into your pliant, welcoming body, and you hold him so tightly to yourself as all the words Vincent stole away from you earlier rear and threaten to consume you. 

I love you so much, you say in return. Repeating them over and over and over again until the words seep into his skin, into his marrow, and maybe one day, one wishful day, he'll return the sentiment with an echo of his own. 

You don't think too much about the way he tenses suddenly, or the strangeness of his unusual candidness - your head is too full and too stupid on thoughts of him, and how good this feels having him in your arms. 

(And you don't think about the phantom tingle on your palm as you clutch him tighter into your body.

Or the way your heart twinges at the thought.)

Bo is gone when you wake the next morning. 

The bed beside you is cold. 

You try not to dwell on it, or the little voice in the back of your head that sounds too much like your mother as it screeches at you for being so bloody stupid -

(You should know better than to think you'd ever get what you want, that you'd ever be happy when you can't do anything right. You don't deserve to be happy- )

You go and see Vincent when the shrill echoes become too much to bear. 

Vincent keeps staring at you. 

This isn't - entirely - unusual: he often does whenever he thinks you aren't paying attention, or when you suddenly stop talking, but this - 

The way he's so intent, so purposeful, is different. 

All of that burning intensity directed at you is a little stifling and makes you feel slightly shy. Self-conscious. Why is he staring at you, so unabashedly, when he usually is so much more discreet about it? 

It's only when you catch him for the nth time that day that you realise what exactly has ensnared his attention. The dull throb on your neck is barely noticeable to you anymore, the pain numbed now, but when it clicks, it makes you flustered. 

The impression of Bo's teeth is a garish sight of deep red and bruised with smears of black and purple in a compact circle on your neck.

You reach up and brush your fingers over the raised indents, flushing at the spark of pain it sends down your spine. A semi-permanent reminder of what happened last night now bared for the world to see.

When you touch it, he stares for a moment longer and then turns away. 

You want to say something. The silence is filled with a static buzz that sounds like every caustic word ever murmured at you in the kitchen that used to smell like hot grease and Palmolive, and the scent of it is so thick it nearly chokes you. 

But you don't.

You say nothing and let the ringing in your ears drown out the uneasy flutter in your chest at the sight of Vincent staring at the mark Bo left on you, and then turning away so he didn't have to look at it any longer. 

It is easy to mistake Lester's job as a ruse or a front to seem like a trustworthy source when stranded, broken-down stragglers happen to come across him, but it doesn't really surprise you when you find out he is employed by the county as an animal control officer. 

Catering to the municipalities around Baton Rouge, his job keeps him away from home for large swaths of the day. 

Before you and Bo became a thing, this often meant that you would follow him around while he worked. 

The job stinks - literally - and Lester is as worried about sanitation as he is that his brothers have systematically reduced the dwindling population of his hometown to nil. It takes some time before you build up an immunity to the stench of rotting corpses - most often left to fester in the unbearable Louisiana heat; which is very wet - but aside from the sorrow you feel in your chest at the sight of a mangled animal, or even worse: one that somehow managed to survive, you enjoy the little road trips around the area with Lester. 

It's when you both just talk. 

About nothing, everything - most often you try and steer the conversation into a territory that'll divulge the most about him, Bo, Vincent, and how they grew up, how they came to this - and it's these moments which solidified the concrete desire inside your heart to stay with them for as long as they'll have you. 

Dreams of California are swept aside, and you slowly realise that it was never about art school, or wanderlust at all - at the core of it all, you just wanted a family that accepted you. That wanted you. 

And you find it with Lester. 

(And then Bo, Vincent.)

After driving around all day, he takes you back to the house where he and Bo live. 

It isn't until you and Bo become something that you stop travelling around with Lester as much as you used to. 

("Safer, too," Lester says, shrugging. A tallboy sits in his hand. "An' I know seein' the little critters gets t'ya, Bambi. You can stay home w'Jonesy n'Bo."

It's the appeal to your love of their dog, Jonesy, that softens the blow of Lester jumping at the opportunity to leave you. 

You know it's convenient for him, but the idea that he's abandoning you, that he doesn't want you, hurts.)

The house they live in is cluttered, but you guess that they don't really care much for cleanliness considering there aren't too many viable neighbours who stop over for dinner or a barbecue. 

Before you stayed in Lester's room while he slept on the couch - immediately turning down any protests you had, or compromises where you said you'd take the couch to give his back a break - and now, you stay with Bo. 

There is an inherent implication in that. The suggestion of something more. Strangers don't often cohabitate. They don't share a room, effectively living together, and they don't share intimate moments late at night after several rounds of sex, or wake up entangled in each other, unsure where one begins and the other ends. 

Bo doesn't ever kick you out. 

Even when he gets in one of his moods where his teeth begin to ache with the need to sink into the world and tear it into pieces, or when you bother him too damn much; he always takes the couch instead, leaving you alone in a room that smells like stale cigarettes and the heady scent of Bo lingering in the air. You can almost taste him on the pillow when you breathe in. The thick pine and tar smell envelops you. 

And in that, you find some proxy of comfort despite his absolute resistance to confessing anything for you that isn't just a base, sexual thing. If it was, why wouldn't he make you sleep in another room? 

Vincent is rarely ever home, preferring to sleep in the museum, and his bedroom could easily become the one that Bo relegated you to if he didn't feel anything for you. If it was just sex, why let you stay? 

Why make you stay?

But there is an ebb and flow with Bo when it comes to this fragile thing you have with him.

And it's quite easy to see the ebb in the way he puts a margin of distance between the two of you after that breach of closeness.

Things unravel quite quickly from there. 

Bo is distant. Waspish. He drinks more, and stays up later and later into the night before tumbling into bed reeking of cigarettes and cheap beer. Whatever this is, you make the mistake of trying to fix it.

You reach out to him, content to bask in the aftermath of his pseudo-confession (and needing a reprieve from the strange tumult inside your head when you think of Vincent, and roughness of his hands, and the intense way he stares at you sometimes), and it only serves as the ignition to the kerosene that leaks from his pores. 

"Fuck, you're a clingy one, ain'tcha?"

His snappish words bludgeon into your chest, knocking the air from your lungs. Bo has been in a mood for the last three days. Cantankerous, irascible. He has a surly furrow on his brow and a tick on his jaw. 

Lester grabbed you this morning, ducking his head low when you woke up and wandered into the kitchen. He looked unsure, nervous, when he leaned down and said, be careful, Bambi. Bo ain't… Bo ain't in a good mood today.

Naïevly, you laughed him off. Get to work, you giggled, and then rather haughtily added: I can handle Bo.  

And the thing is: normally you can. 

None of this is new. He's always been rather peevish and bilious; lashing out when you get too close, or annoy him too much. Pushing you away. Putting you in your place. It's nothing novel. It's nothing you haven't dealt with before. 

But this time - 

It feels different. His captiousness makes itself known when you wander into the kitchen, smiling at him softly and asking him what he's planning for the day. The same thing every day is all he gives.

"Lemme guess," he mutters, tugging on the cap. "Goin' t'see Vincent, huh?"

You hesitate. "I… I could stay home. Is everything okay, Bo?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"You seem angry."

His grin is vicious. "Do I? Well, maybe if I didn't have you fuckin' pesterin' me all the damn time - clingin' to me like a bitch in heat-"

Lester's voice crackles through the walkie-talkie. "Got a straggler, Bo. Comin' up in about a half-hour. Dunno if this one's the usual type. Business lady, real professional - says she has an important meetin' tomorrow. Needs a motel, or somethin'."

Bo doesn't look away from you when he says, "send her to the shop." 

There is something in his gaze that reminds you of a trapped animal. A rapid thing on the verge of lashing out and hurting because it was scared. 

You hate that look on his face. Hate the way it burrows under your ribs and rots.

The chair topples backwards when he stands, clattering to the floor with a harsh thud that reverberates through the small, cluttered kitchen. 

"Did I do something wrong?" He doesn't answer you, but you can hear the aggravated breaths he takes.

The silence should be enough of an answer for you, but you don't know what happened, what caused this abrupt change in him. It always feels like he pushes you three steps back before you can even take the first one forward. 

It becomes too much - the hisses in your head telling you that you ought to know better than to believe he'd ever really want you, the ones that laugh and mock you - and you can't help the hushed words from slipping out; a broke levee spilling deluge into the swamp. 

You whisper: "I love you, Bo." 

He slams the walkie-talkie down on the table. "Fuck-"

It's a balancing act with Bo. A precarious tightrope in which you need to navigate the route with the most attentive care lest you end up careening downward to certain death. 

The precipice is steep and treacherous and littered with warning signs telling you to turn back, to run, but you're stubborn (and stupid), and you persevere despite everything - everyone - including Bo himself sometimes - telling you not to. 

There is something about him, about this, that makes you cling to it, to keep wandering despite the pain, the confusion, the anger that rains down over you. 

You're in love. It's love, right? That pesky little emotion that burrowed its way inside your pericardium and fixed itself to the walls of your heart, refusing to budge. 

But is it love or is it self-preservation? Stockholm Syndrome. Survival instinct. Whatever -

Because after all, if he loves you, if he cares for you, then he's less likely to kill you, isn't he? 

This unknown rattles you. Is that why you're so forceful with this praxis? Pushing and pushing until something inside him gives and you wriggle through the crack and never have to worry about death, about effigies, ever again. 

(You'd pray for guidance but this place hasn't been looked at by God in a very long time, and whatever questions you muster will only slip, unheard, into the aether.)

You're naïve. Stupid. Childish. Reckless. 

Your image of love is borne from the shattered remains of your parents' distance, and the iciness of your mother's care. 

Do you love Bo? 

You've never felt this way about anyone before. And that - that has to mean something, doesn't it? 

(Or are you just colouring a grey hippopotamus yellow once again?)

The vulnerability inside your aching chest resonates through you all morning until you give up, desperate for a distraction, and head for the museum.

"Goin' t'see Vincent, huh?" 

There was something sharp and dark in his expression when he asked. Something that lurked, dangerous and unknown, beneath the frothing pool of anger that simmered. 

It's overwhelming. The deluge of it all swells over you, threatening to drag you under the inky depths until you slam against the bottom, trapped under the raging current that roars overhead. 

It's his anger, his ire, his strange bitterness when he asked, the look in his eye: the one that reeked of an enraged cornered animal; the softness in his touch when he held you before, when he hissed his claim into your ear, marking you for the world to see that confounds you so immensely that you almost feel like you dreamt the whole thing up. 

He went from wanting you, pulling you closer, to suddenly pushing you away. Snapping at you. Distancing himself.

He has a fear of commitment, you know this, but he is the one who tugged you in, who whispered all those things into your ear. Did he spook himself? 

You stare at the image of Persephone, at the pomegranate nestled in her hand, and wonder if she ever regrets her choice to eat the seeds that damned her to Hades for eternity. 

The floor creaks behind you, but you don't turn

You almost didn't come. The sugar mill is just a little further down the road, and a part of you wanted to keep going, to go and sit in the rafters and stare out at the rotting cars in the lot, your own now included, and think. To tuck yourself inside Christine until the world around wasn't completely engulfed by that turbulent maelstrom that tugs on your shackles.

You don't know why you turned down the curved road that led here. Getting lost in the routine of it all only to go home to Bo drinking, belligerently angry and pushing - always, always pushing - and crying yourself to sleep only to wake up the next morning and repeat it all. Over and over and over. Until Bo decided you weren't a threat to him anymore. Until that thing inside of him that wanted to hurt, and lash out, was satiated for the time being. 

How long could this continue? 

How long until the ouroboros consumed itself in its never-ending spiral?

You said you were used to the flames, the heat. The fickle nature of this, and the precariousness of your relationship with Bo, and your place in this family. 

And you are. 

You were. 

Until you had a taste of reciprocity. 

It made you greedy. Greedy and wanting. It twists in your chest - an ugly, possessive, hungry thing - and grows with each minute action of Bo seemingly returning the messy feelings inside of you. 

And now it aches with need. It yearns for more. More of this, more of him. More. More. More - 

The floor creaks again. 

You turn your head. "Sorry," you murmur, voice raspy and thick. "I was just looking at the painting."

Vincent doesn’t say anything, but you hear his deliberate footfalls as he steps closer to you. 

"Does… does Persephone ever find happiness in this?" You ask, the words tumbling out before you can stop them. 

You can feel his stare burning into the side of your head. 

"Does she want to be with Hades? Does-," you swallow down the thickness that wells inside your throat, the words hushed; seeped in the same tenebrous he saturated Hades in. "Does she love him just as much as he loves her? Or is she just with him because she has to be? Because she damned herself to his side-"

It's just a painting. 

(And Bo is just a man.) 

"Umm… sorry," you murmur, reaching up and rubbing your forearm. "I just got…"

Carried away. 

As usual. Another yellow hippopotamus. Another dot you added to the paper.

He doesn't say anything. You don't expect him to. 

Later that night, when Vincent's arm brushes against your own, you think of calm waters in the middle of the night and the ethereal comfort of inky black stillness yawning out farther than you can see.

(The tingle that snakes down your spine feels just the same as when Bo touches your wrist and pulls you close.)

The feeling of it ricocheting through you turns everything on its head. 

You barely pay attention to the sculpture as Vincent works. 

You can feel his gaze on you, the silent question weighing in his stare, but you don't speak. The words are lost in the vacuum that splits open inside your chest that eats everything up in you until you're empty. Hollow. Numbed with despondency. 

(Maybe tonight you'll go home and tell Bo this - all of it - should end-)

Vincent catches you before you leave. He hands you a box wrapped in parchment paper. 

"Is this… for Bo?" 

He shakes his head, pushing it into your hands. His fingers, always covered in wax, brush across your palm. 

That odd tingle again. Battery acid splashes across your exposed nerves. 

"F-for Lester…?"

Another shake. He pushes it into your hand with more insistency.

"For me?" 

Vincent nods slowly, pulling his hands back when the box is firmly in your hold, letting them drop to his sides. 

The sight of his hands fretting against the legs of his pants makes something pool in your once barren chest. A warm heat that gnaws at you. 

Cute. 

You glance down at the box, pulling it close to your chest, and trying to fight off a dumb, giddy grin from pulling at the corners of your lips. 

It's the first time anyone gave you something just because. It's not an obligatory Christmas or birthday gift. It's - 

Special.

"Thank you…"

You reach for the knotted twine on top, holding the seams together. When your finger slips into the loop, Vincent's hand reaches out and grasps your wrist, stopping you.

You lift your head, gazing at him. There is a sharp pain in your chest - an unruly prickle that thrums deep inside - and you shiver at the sensation of it juddering through your veins. 

His hand tightens around your own, a gentle, comforting squeeze, and then he pulls away from you, ducking his head like he's suddenly shy. 

"Thank you," you say again, and something knots inside your stomach when he jerks his head up, and nods. 

Bo touches you and it makes your body feel like a livewire. Electrified. Conductive. 

Vincent touches you - 

And it still feels the same. 

There is a basement under the garage that Bo warned you about entering. It is off-limits. An immediate no. It was something that, should you disobey, could mean your death. 

The fire in his eyes when he warned you were billowing with thick black smog and crackling embers. A heavy omen. A portant.

And really - you should have listened. 

The car parked in the space outside of the garage piques your interest. It's new. Modern. Not something Bo or Lester would ever drive. 

It fills you with a strange sense of foreboding as you walk up, peeking into the tinted windows. 

Lester said a woman was driving alone this morning. This must be her car. 

But where was she? 

The garage is empty when you wander inside. 

You glance around but see nothing except two bottles of empty beer sitting abandoned on the counter. The reddish smear around the rim of one fills you with a sense of unease you can't see to shake. 

"Bo…?"

Nothing. 

The only light is coming from the basement where he told you never, ever, to go down. 

You should have listened. 

It's fairly innocuous at first. A plain, worn mattress on cinder blocks rests against the wall, a television set in front of it. 

A gurney sits in the middle.

It's just another room - almost similar to the one Vincent has in the museum - but you can't shake the feeling inside of you that pools thick and heavy in your gut. Dread. 

The feeling is magnified when you turn around, cradling the box Vincent gave you in your hands as something visceral gnaws inside your stomach. You don't like this room. You don't want to be here. 

Before you can leave, it catches your eye. 

The wall above the mattress is covered in polaroids. 

Don't look. 

Don't enter. 

Don't love a monster. 

(You do anyway.)

Women. Some posed in various states of undress. Others are fully nude. Lifeless. Bloodied. 

You know what you're looking at before it fully registers. The sheer magnitude of what's depicted nearly makes you crumble. It makes you break. 

But - 

You clutch the box to your chest and you run. 

Fear. Disgust. Anger. 

It froths inside of you. The taste of it is all putrid and vile on your tongue. 

You know what it was. What it is. 

A chamber. A nook he carved out just for himself. For his own sick, twisted pleasure -

At the expense of another person. 

Did they consent to it? Some were smiling. Wide, big grins as they gazed into the camera. Others looked sultry and manicured to perfect like the glossy, curated pictures in Playboy. 

Others were crying. Restained. Covered in blood. 

The juxtaposition, the uncertainty, makes something awful pool in the depths of your chest, compounded by the car in the lot, and the red lipstick smears on the bottle. 

You need to see Bo. Need to ask -

The lights are on when you come home. You hear laughter in the kitchen. 

"...And it's always worse in corporate…" 

A woman. 

"Oh, I reckon it's a bloodbath." 

A giggle. "You have no idea…" 

"Well, why don't you-"

Bo sits at the table, in the chair he knocked over this morning, another beer in his hand. He lifts his head when you approach, and you wish there was something in his gaze when he looked at you from over the head of a woman you've never seen before. 

She's stunning from behind in a neatly pressed navy pantsuit and red heels. Her hair is pulled over her left shoulder, her hand buried in the locks. A poignant picture of ease in a house of death. 

Her nails are a shade of buccaneer that matches the shoes and - when she turns to see what caught Bo's attention - the lipstick stains around the nozzle of beer in the garage. 

A perfectly manicured brow raises in your direction. "Oh," she says, smiling at you. "I didn't realise I was intruding. Bo never said anything-"

She's professional. Beautiful. Confident. 

Bo. She says his name so casually. 

You hate it. Hate her. It's stupid and immature and the feeling inside of your chest burns at it all - the photos, the implications of the bed in the garage, this strange thing you feel over Vincent that isn't at all that strange but if you dwell on it for too long you might really sink to the bottom of a deep, unfathomable abyss, and now this, now her - all surges forward, on the verge of erupting. 

"And sorry," she laughs and it sounds like the tinkling of bells. "My name is Megan, but I don't believe we met. Who are you?"

Bo ducks his chin, levelling you with a stare that says shut up, do not speak, and the blankness in his eyes screams of pain and reeks of death if you do not obey. It's not the first time you've felt a little scared of Bo. 

But it's the first time the fear had been so visceral. So genuine. 

When she glances at him, the severe look in his eyes is gone, and he graces her with a wide grin.  

It comes to a head when he introduces you as his little sister, and things unravel fairly quickly from that point on. 

Charming. Sweet. He rests his hand against the door frame, and leans down when tells her to wait in the truck while he makes sure his baby sister is settled. 

Perils of bein' a big bro… he chuckles. 

She grins wide and waves at you from over his shoulder before leaving the house with a wink, and a coy: don't keep me waiting… 

When he turns to face you, the saccharine charisma is gone, and a burning fury takes its place. His jaw ticks as he stares at you - at the box still cradled in your hands. 

Bo is experienced - he's also older than you by nearly a decade - so you know, logically, that he isn't some chaste man. 

(The photos on the wall tell you so.)

Despite his propensity for violence and his murderous scorn toward you, he was the one who initiated this whole thing by dragging you into the back of his pick-up truck and fucking you. He wanted you dead and still had sex with you. Kept having sex with you. 

And maybe your inexperience made you attach meaning to something that he wanted to remain labelless, but he never stopped. He knew what you were calling this, knew what you wanted and what you assumed, and while he would scoff and dismiss you, he never dismissed it. 

It is anger that drives you to ask him why he would call you his sister when you're his girlfriend - anger, and bitter jealousy. 

And Bo matches ire with fury, so it's rather heartbreaking when he says, immediately, firm, that you are not his girlfriend. That he likes fucking you, but that's all. That you're lucky you're not dead.

Maybe it's that thing inside of him that pushes and pushes; that lashes out in anger whenever someone backs him into a corner and makes him feel weak, or trapped - restrained - but the words hit you like a physical slap, and bludgeon into your chest like a club. 

You say, I thought we were together.

And he laughs derisively, spits, well, you thought wrong, darlin'.

You sleep in Lester's room that night. 

Bo doesn't come and get you. 

He doesn't come home at all. 

The next morning, you find lipstick smearing his collar.

It's the same shade as the plum-coloured gloss Megan wore when you first met her. 

It shatters you into an unfathomable amount of pieces that ricochet through your entire being. The jagged edges lacerate your heart until it's a mutilated husk of messy pulp and brutal agony. 

You pushed. 

And this was Bo lashing out. This was him creating distance and separation between the two of you.

A chasm you aren't entirely sure you can cross. 

(Or if you even want to try anymore.) 

Hours later, when the tears refuse to yield and Bo still hasn't come back, hasn't popped in the room and confessed this was all some elaborate hoax, a bad joke that went too far, you know, you know, you need a distraction. A reprieve from the deluge of pain that threatens to swallow you whole. 

It's then that you remember the gift Vincent gave to you - the first one given to you not out of obligation - and you peel your face off the saturated pillow, and reach out for the beautifully wrapped box on the nightstand. 

You set the box Vincent gave you on your lap, heaving through the hurt and the heartache, and slowly tug at the twine until it pulls apart. 

The parchment paper splits at the seam, and with hands that won't stop shaking, you slip the lid off of the box, peeking inside. 

The sight makes you sob all over again, molten tears running down your raw cheeks in scalding rivets. 

You slip your trembling fingers under the fragile sculpture, and slowly, delicately, pull it out of the box. 

Vincent made you a Hippocampus. 

And he painted it yellow. 

Wracked with agony, you go and see Vincent. 

He doesn't let anything show when you arrive, eyes blurred red with all the tears you shed, mouth curled up into a grimace of pain, pale, sallow. 

His hands fret by his sides like he wants to do something, wants to reach out, but he isn't sure how. So, he doesn't. He stands, straight and unnaturally still, as you scrub your hands across your face and tell him about the disgusting bed in the eerie room that made your skin crawl with the pictures all over the wall, the woman - Megan - and what Bo did with her last night, and all the things he said. 

It culminates with a sob. A broken, wrecked howl that is dredged up from the battered remnants of your once full, once consuming heart. 

Vincent's hands tentatively touching your shoulder is a reprieve amid a storm that rages on, whipping across your being and leaving you angry and heartbroken and hollow. The soft lull of his embrace steps the onslaught. Cuts the pain. 

It's then that you think Vincent can fix this, and you burrow into his chest like you belong. 

And maybe you do. Maybe the space between his arms was made just for you - because when you lay your ear across his thundering heart, you're overcome with feelings of comfort, security, and belonging.  

Your body goes slack in his grasp, and you think, this must be what coming home feels like. 

Vincent isn't someone who can fix things. He creates them. Moulds them to perfection. 

Bo is the one who fixes broken things and makes them better. His hands which mend so many broken pieces are just as adept at destroying. 

Dismantling something and fixing it up to be something else.

Vincent can't fix you. But he can't create something different from the pieces Bo destroyed. 

You tell him about the consuming love you feel for Bo and how you aren't sure what to do with all of these feelings inside of you now. Betrayal. 

Anger. 

You feel the brunt of it festering and congealing into a raw slurry of agony and bitterness that gnashes at the tips of your fingers when you get too close. It's burning. A frothing mess of maddening fury. 

(You hate the pang of sympathy that rears when you think, is this how Bo feels all the time?)

You press your palm into your eyes, rubbing until you see a kaleidoscope of phosphene erupt behind your eyelids. It hurts. It still hurts. The pain won't go away and you aren't quite sure what to do with all of this ache that seizes your chest, twisting the gnarled lump until it can bleed out every last ounce of hurt you're capable of feeling.

It all surmounts one lingering question: 

What now? 

Bo hasn't come home yet, and even if he did, you don't really think you can face him. Not right now when it feels like someone is gripping your neck in a vice, and cruelly jabbing their thumb into your jugular where a lump sits, blocking all words and sounds from escaping. 

You don't even know what you would say. 

Maybe why. 

Just why. 

What could you have done differently to stop this from happening or was it always going to end up this way? Whenever a pretty woman passes through, are you going to be maliciously edged into the bracket of little sister while he satisfies a drive inside of him that you just can't? 

(That you aren't enough for.)

You ask Vincent these awful questions, but he has no answers. No secret insights. 

You haven't let go of his arms since he tensed in the abrupt hug, and began pulling away. 

(You don't think about the pang in your chest, a staccato amongst the rest when he did.

You also don't think about the dizzying relief when it became clear he was only leading you out of the foyer.)

His fingers ghosted across your wrist when he led you to the atelier, a small, gentle act of reassurance, and you dutifully followed along.

With you perched and sniffling in the chair that is now permanently yours, he tried to move away from you, but you snagged the soft cashmere sleeve of his sweater, keeping him close.

It's greedy. Clingy - just like Bo said you were - but his proximity dims the hurts and the dams some of the anger growing through you. You want him near, need him, and try not to think of the implications of it all. The yellow hippopotamus standing in your periphery, mocking you for your reluctance to face it. 

Thinking of it makes you aware of the excuse you gave to yourself on why you had to come here, to Vincent.

Your voice is shaky with sorrow and thick with pain, but you choke the words out any way to give credence to the blustering confusion inside of you, the one that pulls you in two directions and calls you selfish for the way you teeter over the line, one foot planted on either side. 

"Thank you," you sniffle, fingers tightening on his arms. They're strong like you knew they would be. Your hands fit over them in the same way they do when Bo brackets your head and takes -

"F-for… the gift."

Thinking of Bo in that context aches. And you try not to think about why the comparison is so easily drawn for Vincent. 

Selfish. Stupid. 

Greedy. 

He doesn't say anything. You stopped expecting him to a long time ago. 

The corded muscle in his arms flex - just once, briefly - and then he relaxes, going slack. You don't look up in fear of seeing what you're trying so hard to avoid in his eye. The accusation that would surely brim in the small cutout if the pallid wax will eat you alive. 

You're not ready to open the window in the confessional. 

(You wonder how much sin you can bury before the ground you hide things in starts to rot.)

There is the slightest inhale from him, sharp and pointed, but it's broken by the crackle of the walkie-talkie buzzing to life on the workstation behind him. 

Bo's voice cuts through, deep and angered, words slightly slurred. 

"Where is she? "

Vincent turns his head to look at the desk, his hair brushing across your hands that now dig painfully into his skin. He doesn't flinch. Doesn't try to shake you off. 

"Who?" Lester. Hearing his voice makes you relax. Your big brother, protector. "The lady? Uhh, you said to let her go, man, so… I drove her to town, and-"

Let her go. Bo let Megan go. 

Vincent starts to pull back, but you surge forward, the plea to stay, to not let him know where you are, not yet, burning in your eyes. He turns his chin, visible eye widening in the small peephole. His pupil dilates, the black of it eclipsing the cerulean and phthalo of his iris. 

You don't want to see him. Bo let her go, and you don't want to see him. You can't see him. 

The walkie-talkie crackles again and when Bo says your name - not Bambi, not darlin', not it - it sounds like a curse. You flinch at the ire in his tone, and know, almost immediately, that this is it. The end. 

Vincent stands, the motions dragging your hands until they're wrapped around his wrists. 

When Bo says, "she with you, Vincent ?" you know it's over.

You drop your gaze to your lap, and let your hands slide back, fingers running over the dried wax that covers them. It's a lost cause to think Vincent wouldn't answer the summons. 

It's Bo, after all.

He moves, just like you thought he would, hunching over the desk, and picking up the walkie-talkie. It buzzes through the room when he pushes down the comms. 

You wonder if Bo will be the one to do it. 

Or would he make Vincent do it instead? 

Maybe if he'll let you, you'll give Lester one last hug. A proper goodbye. 

"...No. "

Your head snaps up, eyes widening in shock. 

(In dismay.)

The first time you've ever heard Vincent speak and he was lying to Bo for you. 

It's - 

A lot. Too much. Unexpected.

His voice, cracking with disuse, is a rough, raspy growl. It sounds strained, almost, like it's difficult for him to force the words out. 

It bludgeons through you, sending you reeling over that precipice you've been teetering on since you first saw Vincent, saw Bo, and were drawn into that primal magnetism that saturated the miasma around them. 

That itch you tried so hard to ignore is fervid. 

In the corner, the hippopotamus glares at you, at the gnarled, ugly thing inside your chest that gnashes with greed, with want. 

You knew when you pulled back the twine and saw the delicately crafted gift from Vincent - painstakingly carved from the wax he uses to enshrine the effigies dedicated to his mother, and the paint he used to create the stunning works that mesmerise you - that you were not in the midst of drowning in the strait, but we're already plundered out to sea. 

"Vincent-," Bo starts, but his voice is replaced with a whine of static when Vincent turns the dial, changes the channel, and then shuts the walkie-talkie off completely. 

The low grind of the machine echoing down the hall, the soft flicker of the candles around you, and the bubbling vat of wax are the only sounds that fill the now stifling room.

Vincent lied to Bo. 

For you. 

And really -

Well, if you weren't dead before, you certainly are now. 

You can't even really begin to fathom why he said no to Bo, but you're not under any delusions that Vincent is somehow picking you over his brother. This is a small raindrop amongst a sea of loyalty. In the grand scheme of things, it's a mild inconvenience. 

And it's not the first time Vincent has done something like this to deliberately disobey Bo. 

You heard it from Bo before - about how Vincent was becoming a little more independent. A little more decisive. It annoyed Bo at the time. You heard the brunt of it all when he ranted, one-sidedly, after Vincent elected to target someone that Bo had decided not to pursue. 

So, when Bo said he didn't want the old man, that he didn't fit, he expected Vincent to listen. 

But he didn't. 

He ended up becoming part of Vincent's wall instead, but the rift was there. The gap was widening. 

And this - 

It feels pointed. Poignant. But hardly anything that was going to cause serious strife between them. At most, it's just a still wet signature on your death warrant. 

Amid your quickly surmounting acceptance of your fate, Vincent hesitates at the workstation, head swivelling between the sketches on the wall, and the small lamp that seemed to flicker under the sudden tension that welled up in the room. A palpable current that lingers, festering there. He sits at the desk, eyes darting between the outlines and you, almost as if he isn't quite sure why he did what he did, either. 

There is an itch, a need, in your bones. Something you want so badly to confirm. 

You're dead after this, anyway, and maybe it's the prospect of your demise looming on the horizon that spurs you on, that makes you feel that rapacious greed so viscerally.

"Vincent-," you say his name so softly that it's quickly swallowed by the cacophony of everything else, lost in the bluster of background noise. 

You know what you want. What you've wanted. 

He startles when you stand. Head jerking in your direction when you walk close to the desk, one hand pressing down against the metal of the table to keep you balanced, steady, as the other reaches up, hesitating only briefly, before letting your greedy, wanting, fingers get tangled in the smooth locks that fall across his shoulders. 

It's as soft as it looks; thick and full. The locks curve around your index finger when you brush your thumb over the strands in your grasp. 

"Sorry," you say, but don't know who you're saying it to. Yourself, Vincent, Bo. Maybe all three. Everything. Your mind is clouded with the eventuality of your demise, the grief over losing this thing that was never really a thing with Vincent, and the betrayal of Bo. It all coalesces into a recklessness that urges you to give in to the cacoethes that has been bubbling up inside of you since you first met Vincent.

So, with nothing left to lose, you do. 

He's tense under your hand, his eyes wavering with uncertainty behind the mask and the loose hair that falls over his face. You want to brush it back, and say something - maybe how this isn't just a whim, you don't think, and while you're imbued with megrim, you want this. Have wanted it. 

How there's a tepid sensation that grows inside of you when you're around him, a yearning for more. For this. It's uncontrollable. And if Bo hasn't shattered your heart, if you weren't on the cusp of becoming another effigy like the very one you watched Vincent work on, you think you might be able to control yourself a little better than this. But you can't anymore. 

All your life you've been called selfishly jejune. 

Spoiled. Ungrateful. Self-centred. You think he even wants you just because he didn't tell Bo where you are? He just wants to kill you for himself, you sick, disgusting -

You shut the hisses up, the ones that sound like your mum, Megan, when you let go of his hair and place the flat of your palm over his wax-covered cheek.

"Push me away if you don't want this," you murmur, heart pounding so hard you think it might break from the force alone. 

You don't give yourself a moment to let doubt seep in. The choice is made when you bend down, pressing your lips against the fake curve of his mask where his real mouth sits. It's chaste and tastes like plastic. A small peck. Just a brush. 

You might even be able to play it off as a display of gratitude.

The thought twists inside of your chest: unwanted and awful. The mere notion of it leaves something bitter welling up in the back of your throat. 

He hasn't touched you, and perhaps that should scare you away; he isn't reciprocating. He isn't even breathing, you don't think, but it only makes you desperate for more.

Your hand slides into his locks, fingers tangling through the strands. It's a little greasier near his scalp, but still as soft as the middle. A piece catches on your fingernail when you curl your hand and scratch your nails lightly over his head. 

The little tug seems to shake whatever revere Vincent fell into. 

He makes a noise in the back of his neck. A sound so soft, so achingly wounded and starved, you can't help but shush him, to calm him. 

Amid another soothing noise, his arms lift.

Vincent is quick. His speed and control over himself is astounding, and before you can even react, his hands are grasping your waist. 

But then he hesitates. 

He doesn't push you away. He doesn't pull you closer, either. 

He just -

Touches you. Holds onto you as you pepper kisses across his wax covered mouth. 

Under your hands, he is as still as his statues. Tensed. Coiled. You raze your nails across his scalp again, letting his locks pass through your fingers, and you impart another kiss over the apex of his symmetrical, unmoving mouth. 

It's then that you regain some semblance of control, of propriety, and you pull back from him, your teeth grazing over your lower lip. 

The mask, his artificial mouth, was warmer than you expected, and the taste of it is heavy on your tongue. 

"Sorry-," you murmur again, contrite and sheepish. Your ears burn under the curtain of your hair, hands dropping to his shoulders, ducking your head to hide away from the accusation, the condemnation, surely in his gaze. 

As you move back, attempting to put some distance between you and wait for the inevitable punishment that will come from kissing Vincent like you're allowed to, like he permitted you or wanted it, his hands tighten on your waist, fingers digging into your skin. 

His hand slides up the curve of your side, thumb brushing over the first nook of your rib, pressing into the space that separates it from the second one. 

It feels good to be touched so tenderly, so carefully. 

His hands are big, firm. The wax still covering the digits snag on the loose threads of your shirt, pulling it up only slightly until a small sliver of skin above your hips is uncovered. The room is humid, almost to a suffocating degree, but you can't fight the shiver that runs down your spine or the way your skin prickles with goosebumps when he touches you. 

His pinky finger grazes across the exposed patch of flesh. Real skin on real skin. It sends a jolt down your spine; an electric buzz at the feeling of his rough pad sliding just so over your body. 

You whimper his name into the stifling air; the soft, needy mewl filling the scant chasm between your body and his. Vincent's head rises, jerking up to look at you as you pant above him, caught between this is so so right so so good and oh god oh god what am I doing, and hunches forward, just slightly, just enough to close the distance and bring his artificial lips back to your own. 

It's all it takes for you to give in to the rapacious need that floods through you. Your fingers grip the soft, plush fabric of his sweater, feeling the heft of his corded, coiled muscles beneath your wanting hands, and you push your mouth to his in a feverish kiss. 

The rough nips and demanding way Bo consumes you in his own vicious kisses are missing in this. Vincent's mouth isn't real; the plastic doesn't mould to yours in a flurry of slippery wet softness, the painful dig of teeth, the smooth curl of a tongue is nowhere to be found. Entirely absent is the sharp musk of cigarettes, the bitter tang of beer, and the ambergris that clings to Bo when pulls you in tight and devours you whole. 

Wax doesn't taste like much. The mild, muted flavour is tinged with the richness of the coffee you had this morning, and the spearmint tang of your toothpaste. 

Kissing Vincent tastes a little bit like regret. Like sadness and softness and the too-full feeling of eating a big meal. Cosying up on the couch. The patter of rain across the shingles. The crackle of a warm fire. 

The longer you kiss him, the more you grow accustomed to moving your mouth without the familiar burn of reciprocity. For the first time, it almost feels as if you have some control over something. 

Kissing Bo feels a lot like how you'd imagine it would be to get swept out to sea. Awash in the raging currents. At the whim of a primordial abyss that cares very little for your wants, your needs. His kisses feel like being held under water. Forced to take it. To try and cling to driftwood in the onslaught. 

Vincent is a gentle current in the shoal, lulling you from side to side in the waves that lap at your skin. Without the harsh, demanding tug, you're free to do what you want. Go where you want. Free to linger in the calm waters without fear of drowning in the depths. 

Bo doesn't give you control. He makes you take what he has to offer. To swallow you whole and spit you out wherever he decides to take you. 

You're under no disillusion that you're in any genuine control of this moment. You're standing so close to Vincent, kissing him the way you are, because he allows it. 

But he's much more malleable than Bo, and pushes against you in a way that makes you see constellations behind your eyelids and feel the pull of gravity when he holds you close. 

You want to taste him, not just the muted wax of his mask, but you'll never ask. Never bring it up. You swallow the words down, and slide your hand into his hair, nails scraping along his scalp and holding him close to you as you take, take, take from the unyielding mesh of his mouth. 

The fingers around your waist flex, and it's the only warning you get before he pulls you closer, pressing you into the corner of the desk. You pant over the facsimile of his lips when he digs in, stabilising his grip, and then a moment later, he stands to his full weight, pulling you up off the ground and perching you on the surface of the desk like you weigh nothing. Like you're a doll. 

Vincent moves closer into the space you open for him, right between your thighs, the thick bulk of his body clamouring over your own. You shake, gasping at the new angle, the burning heat of him pressed intently on you. 

"Vincent-," you choke, fisting your hands into the wool covering his chest, trying to get him closer, and closer still. You want to merge your atoms with his, entangling yourself into the smouldering heat that crackles like a flame in front of you. 

You want him. All of him. 

He rasps deep in his throat. A choking sound that bludgeons into your heaving chest, and turns your kaleidoscopic world off its tidally locked axis. 

"Vincent," you gasp again, pouring as much meaning into the small mewl as possible in the hopes that he just understands, that he just knows, because you aren't quite capable of coherent thought outside of the burning heat of his body, and the papier-mâché scent that clings to him. 

He seems to understand, to know without any more than a staggering huff into the aether, and answers your call with one of his own, his body moulding into the divots yours leaves behind, tangling his limbs into the spaces you open up, and pushing his chin up in a facsimile of a kiss. 

It's the most he'll give you right now, and you take it, eagerly, gasping wetly into the soft pout of his lower lip, and curling your fingers into the strong, firm bulk of his chest before sliding it up to grasp and pull the corded muscles of his arms, his strong shoulders, the base of his thick neck with the other fixes itself firmly in the soft give of his hair, twisting your fingers around the locks until each digit is wrapped up in raven softness. Your nails kiss across his scalp when he moves, his hand sliding more insistently, more confidently, up your torso until his thumb is caught under the curve of your breast. 

It's then that he seems to startle a bit. Flinching in your hold. 

His breath comes out in quick, deep gasps behind the mask. The muffled sound makes your lower belly flame with desire; the embers that sparked when you first saw him ignite at the hushed, low noises he makes. 

Even just his soft inhales leave you feeling dizzy and clouded with want, trembling with accomplishment, and conquest. It's you that makes him shake like this. That makes him groan and huff behind the mask when he's usually so silent, so still. 

Sweat drips down his brow in the impasse that envelopes you. You catch the droplets on your index finger when you brush your hand up the smooth, thick column of his throat, cupping his jaw in your hands. His skin is soaked, tacky and wet with sweat; you feel it when you brush your thumb under the mask, rubbing over the slope of his jawbone. 

A part of you wants to rip it off and kiss his full lips senseless, greedily taking your fill of him. You're parched and only the wetness of his mouth can quench the ache in your throat. 

But you don't. You won't. 

It's not yours to take. 

Your hand around his jaw is a plinth. You pull him closer, murmuring his name into the bow of his mouth, words soft and full of a gentle, questioning cadence. "Are you okay?"

He doesn't respond, but his hand under your breast twitches. The first knuckle on his thumb presses into your soft flesh, tentative and curious, and so light you barely feel it. 

Your lungs ache with the lack of air, but you force the words out, whispering them into the chasm between you. 

"Touch me - I want you to."

His chest heaves, grazing against yours. It's the only acknowledgement he gives that he heard your desperate plea. 

Slowly, his thumb reaches out, sliding over the curve of your breast until it finds the centre, brushing over your nipple, already hard and wanting for his touch. 

It's just a graze, really. Barely there. Just a whisper of a touch makes your body seize; floods you with a sense of right, and want, and a pang of hunger so feral you can barely contain it. 

His touch, his presence, his smell - it electrifies you, ripping open a chasm so deep inside your chest that nothing but the warmth of his skin bleeding into yours can fill. You were slowly being pulled into his orbit this whole time and now you're locked into his rotation, facing the heat of him seeping into you. Dizzy, dazed, and entirely overwhelmed by it all, all you can do is cling to him for stability as the ground under you crumbles into ashes and threatens to swallow you whole. 

And when his broad palm finally, finally, eclipses the entirety of your breast in his hesitant, exploratory grasp, you can't remember a time when you didn't feel this pressure in your chest or the blistering heat of his flesh pressing into you. 

You move to push your lips into the artificial ones above you, but he ducks his chin, pulling away before you can. 

With the flat of his palm on your chest, fingers digging into the plush give, the other moves away from your waist, and curves over your cheek, sliding up until the tips of his fingers brush over your lashes. 

They flutter closed at the contact, and Vincent swipes his thumb over your eyelid - a warning, you wonder - but before you can ask, the presence of his hand is gone from your face. There's a clicking sound, the shuffling of fabric, and then his hand is back on your cheek. 

The soft, warm press of a mouth brushing over your lips makes your eyes snap open in surprise.

It takes a moment for it to crack through the thick haze that surrounds you, the heat of his body and the surrealness of standing so close to him makes all logic and thought turn into a gummy mess, but when it does, it makes you whimper. 

Vincent pushed the mask up until it sat on the tip of his nose, exposing just his mouth so he could kiss you. 

His hand twitches on your cheek, inching up to tickle across your lashes. A silent plea to keep your eyes closed. 

You want so badly to tell him that it doesn't matter, that you saw the pictures of when he was a boy, and you don't care - but it's swallowed up by the quiver of his lip, the unconscious flinch of his hand still sitting, paralysed and unsure, on your breast, and you let your eyes flutter shut. 

You'll take whatever he wants to give you, and you're not going to pass up the chance to finally get a taste. 

Vincent is clumsy. His lips thin into a taut line that sits, unmoving, against your own. The way his jaw trembles makes your heart twist in a way that's both mournful and disgustingly satisfied when you begin to wonder if he's ever been kissed before. 

Something ugly and awful wells up inside of you at the thought. 

Anger for no one wanting to press their lips against this man's as much as you do, the indignation over no one pursuing him, or trying to see beyond the wan face that stares back at them. 

And pure, undulated triumph at being the first person to do so.

It gnashes inside your ribs, heavy and uncomfortable, and you try to push it down but it refuses to relent, to yield, when his lower lip quivers when you catch it between your own. 

You feed it, letting that greedy thing grow and flourish, when your teeth scrape over his bottom lip, and his hands tremble. 

He's cute. His reactions to you make your head swim, spooling with a slurry of want and accomplishment. Heat floods you. Your spine tingles when his mouth opens after you run your tongue along the seam, parting slowly to let you in. To give you a taste. 

It's sweet. Dulcet with the tang of something sharp - black tea, you think - and hopelessly addicting. You can't get enough. 

But you don't get the chance to. 

Vincent tenses in your hold, his head jerking back and darting to stare at the entrance. 

You blink, dazed and already missing the searing feeling of his mouth on yours, when you hear it. 

The distinct sloshing of liquid falling back down the barrel of a bottle, splashing across the bottom. 

You twist your head, your stomach churning with a vicious feeling of dread and sorrow, and meet Bo's stare. He brings the bottle back up to his lips, his gaze never wavering from your own. 

His eyes are black pits.  

You can't make out the emotion in his expression, but you know the particular tang of fury that makes him grimace when he drinks. 

"Well," he drawls, the word feels like an abrasion on your skin when he says it, voice rough and thick with barely constrained anger. "Don't let me interrupt."

All at once the world around you - the gossamer of want and the haze of getting so lost in Vincent - shatters, shards clattering to the ground as the withering stare of Bo impales through your chest. 

For the first time, you're speechless in front of him. 

You've never seen Bo like this before. 

He leans on the door frame, bottle dangling by his side, and he says nothing. 

Vincent tries to move toward him, but you slip off the table, standing in front of him. This is your fault. The blame belongs to you, and you alone. You won't let him get hurt over something you caused. 

Still - the distance feels hollow, and you reach back to clutch his wrist, ignoring the clench in Bo's jaw and the flinch you feel from Vincent when you do.

"Vincent didn't do anything," you say, wincing at the breathlessness in your voice. Bo's brow raises, but he doesn't say anything. It's unnerving. Bo is never this quiet in his anger. "Don't… don't blame him."

Bo's jaw ticks again, his eyes narrowing under his cap. When he does speak, you wish he hadn't. "Oh, no? Well, don't let me interrupt you, then. Go on, finish what y'all started." 

"Bo-," you start, but he doesn't let you finish. His abrasive stare leaves you, settling over your shoulder to look at Vincent.

"My own brother," he scoffs, and the words make you flinch, make something awful well inside of you. It's all your fault. "Always gotta have everything, huh? Just like ol'times, yeah? Instead of stealin' the spotlight, you're tryin' steal my-"

"Bo, please," Vincent's hand shakes in your grasp. "It's not his fault-"

"Couldn't help yourself, could'ya?" He doesn't acknowledge your words, lip curling up in the first display of his anger. "Watchin' wasn't enough for ya anymore? How about I watch this time, then-"

Vincent pulls away from you, moving around you without a word, without a glance. You tense when he gets close to Bo, and his hand lashes out, snagging Vincent's shoulder before he can pass. 

"I reckon it's about time me'n you talked," Bo says, tone low. Even. The chill lacing his words makes you shiver. 

For a moment, Vincent does nothing. He just stands there and stares at Bo, lost in - what you assume must be - some strange twin telepathic conversation, before he finally nods only once. It's barely noticeable. Barely there. His shoulders coil, tensing, and he pulls away from Bo, fleeing the room without even glancing back in your direction.

You did this to yourself. You have no right to feel hurt by it. None at all, and yet -

There is a painful twinge in your chest when he leaves. 

The ache is only compounded when Bo turns back to you, eyes blazing, and instead of feeling guilty or remorseful, you just feel numb. Overwhelmed. You feel hurt for putting him in this position and making him feel the same thing you felt, that you feel, but you're mostly upset that you don't feel anything else. 

It cements what you've already known. That this thing - whatever it might be - with Vincent wasn't just an act of revenge; an awful, abhorrent way to get back at Bo, but is instead something much deeper, much more meaningful. 

And when you raise your head to meet his stare, it's incomprehensible that you feel just as strongly for him as you do for Vincent. That the love you might have convinced yourself of at first is still there, burning through everything you thought you knew, and threatening to blister and char your skin with its deadly flames. 

It's impossible, isn't it? To love two people at the same time.

You're greedy, your mother's voice twists in your head. Greedy and spoiled and selfish. 

You're always wanting. Always hungry. And now that you've gotten a little taste, you can't help but to want more.

"But you, Bambi?" He takes one last swig of the beer before setting it down on the table and walking toward you. His eyes are wildfires swallowing the forest. You can feel the heat, and hear the crackle of trees crumbling into nothing as they're consumed whole by the flames. "We're gonna have that little chat now." 

Bo looks at you like he's going to eat you alive. To burn away your flesh under his apoplectic fury until nothing but ash and bone remains. 

(And with all the ache in your heart, you just might let him.)

"Ain't much," he rasps, his fingers coiling over the wooden casket. 

He rocks forward, staring at the immaculately preserved effigy of his mother. He doesn't say anything else, and you don't think you could speak after everything that happened, so you bow your head in the wake of his unexpected detour from the museum, head still reeling from everything.

You don't know why he brought you here. The church you never enter. The perpetual funeral you avoid. Being here with Bo feels important. Distinct. 

It's also uncharacteristic in an entirely unnerving way. Bo doesn't do this. He doesn't show you vulnerability. Weakness. Bo is all the toxic aspects of masculinity; the inherent fragility in being open and emotional makes him recoil and retreat. 

This - taking you to pray over his deceased mum who he razed a town for and drenched them in her craft, her passion - is not something he does. 

You see the tremble in his tensed shoulders, the furrow in his brow that is sfumato of anger and rage and sadness and sorrow and guilt and regret all converging on each other in abject grief, and you know. 

You gaze at her, and you know. 

He's showing you this because despite everything he does care, and he knows just as well as you do that this little incident with Vincent is more than that. That whatever you're suppressing inside when you think of him, of Vincent, is more than what you admitted to when you rained betrayal and hurt and heartbreak down on him that night he came home with lipstick smears on his collar. 

That it wasn't, and will never be, lex talionis. 

You scared him with the intensity of your commitment and devotion, and he ran. He lashed out in the worst way that he knew would push you away and hurt you. 

And if it was just that - an eye for an eye with the only person you could snag to accomplish such a feat - you wonder if things would be different. 

But what you feel for Vincent should be wrong and awful and impossible; you can't love two people in equal, but different ways. It's nonsensical. 

And you hate that it doesn't feel wrong. 

This gnashing inside of your chest warring over the futility of loving two separate people with the same depth doesn't feel sinful or disgusting or selfish. You look at both of them and it feels right. 

He knows this, you know he does, and it's - 

It's too much. 

It can't continue. 

Or rather, you can't continue. 

Bo is ironclad control and suppression, and this - in conjunction with the betrayal, with Vincent's surmounting distance and burgeoning independence from him - is the crack in the foundation that threatens to topple the empire. 

You're a potential fissure between them. A growing wedge. 

You're a break in the dam that must be stemmed before it causes a deluge. 

Despite the inevitability, and the face of death staring you down, you can't help but bask in the beauty of Bo's breaking. 

There is something so poignant about his suffering, so mesmerising. 

Vincent's felt almost voyeuristic; intrusive. It makes you avert your gaze in some proximity of privacy, forcing you to look away. 

Bo's makes it so that you can't.  

The slight heave of his shoulders, the torrent of emotions on his face that are so viscerally gut-wrenching - it all pulls you in. A gravitational force that drags you closer. Tidally locked and unable to look away. All you can do is let yourself get swept away in the pull and hope the centrifugal force won't obliterate you in its intense spiral.

His sorrow is silent, and despite the fear spuming inside the pit of your stomach, you can't help but gaze at him in wonder - ensnared until the very end, just like you knew you would be.

His ragged breath cuts through the recording of his mother's funeral destined to loop for eternity. "So," he grunts out a strange laugh - a facsimile of apathy and indifference - and clears his throat before he leans over the casket once more, hiding his expression from your prying eyes. "How long, huh? How long have you been fuckin' my brother behind my back."

"We haven't," you murmur, staring down at the cloth hanging over the side. "We - we never -"

"Yeah?" He scoffs derisively. "Y'all ain't ever fucked? I walked in on such an intimate moment, and you expect me to believe you never fucked?"

He's getting angry. An angry Bo promises hurt, pain. 

"Bo, I never - we never - fucked." 

"Then what? You were tryin' t'get back at me? That it?"

"No." 

You leave it at that and drop your head further. You don't feel shame over it, and it's that - the lack of remorse - that makes everything so much worse. It would be so much easier if you did. If it was just a stupid mistake. 

But Vincent is never - and could never be - a mistake. Something to regret or feel ashamed over. 

Bo seems to realise this, the implications of what you aren't saying, because he tips his head down. 

"You want that freak so bad-"

It cuts you like the jagged edge of broken glass. Bo sometimes says cruel things to his brothers - calling Lester dimwitted or Vincent a freak - but it's only when he's angry. When he's pissed off and wants to hurt. You don't like it; you don't like that part of him that needs to lash out. Hearing it spat so awfully at you makes your heart twinge with regret. Sorrow. You caused it. You did this. 

"Don't-," you say, voice trembling. There is playing with fire and then there's jumping head first into a burning building, but you can't let Bo say nasty things about Vincent when it's all your fault. "Don't call him that, Bo. He's your brother-"

"Yeah," he scoffs. "My brother. You are pissed off at me, huh? Goin' around - playin' with anyone who'll take ya. Just t'get back at me, that it?"

"No-!" You stress, shaking your head. "I really care about Vincent."

Bo snorts. His arms cross over his chest as he glares at you, anger twisting into jealousy, into bitterness. 

"You're picking him, then? Well, Go on." He says again, turning away from you. "Fuckin' get-"

You think of the pomegranate. The picture that can be easily reversed. Growing up strapped to a chair and called a problem child all his life. What he says about Vincent - how his mother always said that Vincent's talent made up for what God took from him. The house is full of his twin. His art. His trophies. 

The home has so very little of Bo inside. 

You reach out, but he shakes you off.

"Can you believe this, ma?" He laughs again, bitter and angry. "I reckon they think I'm stupid, don't you? Actin' like I don't understand what I saw."

You don't like the disparaging tone he uses, one that reeks of something rancorous. 

"And what about what I saw?"

"What?" 

A calm Bo is dangerous. Everything inside you screams to tread carefully, but the scorn, the bitterness, is eating at you. 

"I told you I loved you, and you - you fucked some other woman. You clearly don't feel the same, so what does it matter if me and Vincent-," you shake your head, annoyed at yourself, at the words that just won't stop. "You pushed me away. And what did you say? We were never together, remember?"

"You-!" he grabs your forearm, his grip tight and unrelenting. He bares his teeth in anger, nostrils flaring with each vexed breath he takes, ragged and deep. 

He wrenches you forward, pressing his forehead tightly against yours. "You belong to me," he seethes, brows knitting together in fury. Anger brims so white-hot and possessive, that you think it might burn you soon if you aren't careful. 

Still. You can't help yourself sometimes. 

"That's not what you said-!"

He grabs the back of your head in a vice grip before slamming his mouth onto your own. It's feverish and demanding. Bo nearly consumes you in his raging fury. It hurts and you taste blood from where his teeth split the delicate tissue of your lips, flooding your mouth with the astringent tang of salt and copper. Mercury pools in the back of your tongue as he lashes his own across your teeth, stealing the air from your lungs. 

There is no reprieve. He burns you with his anger; the possessive way he consumes you leaves you fumbling, unsure and confused, but so, so enraptured by him still that it hurts. Your heart sings with his proximity, the bold display of a claim, but the ugliness inside of you is still unsettled. 

You pull away from him, jerking your head to the side so that his next kiss swipes across your cheekbones. He grunts, his hand curling around your jaw to force compliance. 

If you don't stop this -

"I saw the photos!" You gasp, ducking your chin down. "The ones in the garage."

"What about them?"

"I should be asking you that, Bo-"

"They wanted it," he sneers, dismissive and cruel. "Beggin' me for it. Took a little picture to remember the good times I had with them. Gonna cry over that, too?" 

"Was it - did you-," you can't even say the words. "Would that have happened to me? Would I just be another picture on your wall?"

He pulls you closer, and it's like a switch has flipped. Suave. Charming. His fingers leave indents in your waist, his breath on your neck feels like a noose. "No, no, darlin'." He coos, tone docile and saccharine. "Yer too pretty for that. That pretty lil' mouth'a yours? Gotta treat that special."

He isn't answering the question. Hasn't answered any of them, really, but your head is filled with the scent of cigarettes and beer and the bitter tang of kerosene. He'll burn you alive. He's a raging wildfire with nothing but destruction on his mind, wanting to ruin to, to leave you charred and broken and consumed wholly by his flame, and you -

Stupid, naïve little you, fall for it all. 

Because despite the betrayal, the hurt, the prickly distance Bo keeps at all times, you fell for the devastation he wrought. There was nothing pretty about his pyre, and yet - you were captivated by the flames. 

"Bo-," you start, voice shaking as his mouth, the one that spews nothing but lies and promises only pain, nips along your jaw. "Bo, I really can't - I can't do this-"

His hand grasps your breast, the same one Vincent's hand was cupping when he found you, and he shushes you. "Yes, you can, darlin'. Now, shouldn't you be makin' it up t'me? Beggin' for my forgiveness?"

"Bo, please, stop-," you push at him, but he doesn't budge. The heat is smouldering. You're breaking. "I can't do this. I love you, and I can't-"

Bo tenses under your palms, body going taut. Rigid. His chest heaves but he makes no move to keep pushing you, consuming you. When you glance up, the look on his face nearly shatters you. 

His head bows. His hair tickles your cheek when he burrows his head into your neck. 

It's so soft, you almost miss it. 

"Yeah," he breathes into your collarbone, shoulders sagging. "I know, Bambi. I know."

And it's - 

It's too much. 

(Too much - and not enough.)

Bo leaves you once again. 

He takes you home, pushes you down into the sheets, and takes - he's always taking - and then leaves you when he's finished. 

You don't know where he goes. What he does. The house is eerily silent, and you lay on his bed staring up at the popcorn ceiling as scalding tears pour down your temple. 

When he gazed down at you, one hand wrapped around the wrists he held above your head, and the other around your throat, you thought he was going to kill you. And for a moment, maybe he was - maybe he looked at you and wanted to end you forever - but something stopped him. 

His hands tightened around your wrist, the delicate bones creaking under the strain, and then he stopped. He stared down at you in a way that made the breath in your lungs dissipate; they evaporated under the withering stare of suspicion and scorn, a palpable fragrant of blame and anger and betrayal all tied together with possession and ownership. The noxious mix brought tears to your eyes, and stole the words from your lips. 

And then like a shutter falling, his expression sealed over with indifference. Contemplation. He huffed out an aggrieved sigh you couldn't discern the meaning behind, and then let go of you. 

Bo rolled off of you when he'd finished, laying beside you in the bed, and despite your arms and legs touching, you'd never felt further apart than in that moment. 

Another crevasse you can't cross. One where the embankment was carved out by your own hands, widening the pit until the other side was unreachable. 

The air ran cold, stagnant. 

Bo leaned over, grabbed a cigarette, and lit it while he stared at the ceiling. The scent of smoke and tar filled the room, and you tried to fight back the tears gathering in your eyes. 

He only took a few drags before getting out of bed, throwing his pants on, and leaving. 

He, like Vincent, didn't look back. 

This is your fault. The abasement that burns through you lacks your mother's tenor, and you wallow in the guilt, the shame, that makes you weep into the empty, hollow room, in the place that once felt like home, now broken and frayed by your own undoing. 

Through the opprobrium, you can't find it in yourself to regret what happened. You regret how it happened, and hurting Bo, and dragging Vincent into this, but the distinct lack of true remorse over kissing him, feeling something for him, is entirely absent from your self-flagellation. 

It just further cements what you already know. What you've known. 

And in that epiphany, one that came much too late, you wonder what you could have done differently to prevent this from happening. Bo hates you now. Can barely look at you without his lip curling in a sneer. 

Vincent can barely look at you at all. 

Usin' my own brother t'get back at me, now, Bambi?

Bo's words scorch your mind. Twisting inside your head until you're trembling with the impact. 

You never explained yourself properly, did you? The one who can't stop talking is suddenly rendered mute when it mattered most. 

Was that why Vincent wouldn't look at you? 

Both of them think you used Vincent to get back at Bo, and that -

That couldn't be further from the truth. 

And you know that despite your greed, you need to explain. 

You reek like sex and cigarettes. The taste of stale beer and smoke is heavy on your tongue. Showing up to confess the ugly, selfish feelings inside of your chest to Vincent while dishevelled and smelling like his brother makes you recoil, and you wash away the bitter tang of Bo from your body, and this - this simple act - is where you feel that stab of guilt. It feels sinful, in a way, to scour away the imprint of Bo. 

And it makes the ephemeral whims inside of you lose some of their fight as you watch the water pool down the drain. 

What are you hoping to accomplish? What do you get out of loving two people - formerly conjoined twins, no less - and how do you expect them to react?

It feels selfish to force this on them. 

Bo is already teetering between killing you and letting you live. His hand around your throat was proof enough of his internal struggle. 

Vincent must think you used him to get back at Bo. 

You miss Lester. Your big brother. But how are you supposed to take this conflict to him and hope that he'll somehow solve it for you like he does everything else? 

You don't know what to do. 

Maybe you don't have to confess. Maybe you can tell Vincent that you didn't use him to make yourself feel better or to make Bo jealous, and leave it at that. 

You got swept up. A moment of weakness driven by real feelings that can't come to fruition. 

You've already made your choice, haven't you? From the moment you laid eyes on him, you knew that Bo was what you wanted. 

With Bo, it was instant. A spark, a flame, in a pool of kerosene. It ignited through you like the fury of uncontainable wildfire, burning everything in its path. There was no hesitation, no moment to consider the outcomes. All of sudden, you were burning. And then you were ashes. 

Vincent -

You don't really know when the feeling that sits so heavy in your chest started. It was fueled by the weakness of Bo's betrayal, but it certainly wasn't the catalyst. It snuck up on you, like a slow, deliberate smoulder. You were charred and smoking before you even realised you were standing in the flames. 

One that slowly dwindled down a wicker stick, melting the wax of a candle until it was snuffed out by the liquid it made. 

Both burnt you - leaving you a hollow husk of what you once were, rendering you nothing but a pile of ashes and dying embers in their wake - but the way they incinerated you couldn't be any more different. 

Bo swallowed you whole. Consumed you entirely. 

Vincent was a sedated simmer, dissolving you slowly. Melting over a low flame. 

It snuck up on you before you even knew it was there. Acknowledged only by the thrill that ran down your spine when the morning sun caught the glimmer of gold and green in Bo's eyes, and -

Those evenings when you'd sit beside Vincent, watching him work on his latest masterpiece; your mind was silent and filled only with thoughts on what to do next, where to shape the polymer, and the scent of buttermilk and camomile wafted through the atmosphere, so different from the ozone tang that clung to Bo. Soft moments, and a cosy ambience.

You looked up when he stopped and the world felt like that groggy somnolence after a long, unexpected nap. Your head was spooled with cotton. The gossamer of that soporific haze clung to you. It felt like blinking awake after a long day in the sun. And Vincent was there. His hands, matted with wax, brushed so softly across your own when he took the scalpel from you. Your heart didn't pound - it didn't race. It felt full. Content. Like you ate a hearty meal. 

Serene. The gentle sea. 

Vincent's tide slowly pulled you in deeper, but the waters were calm, allowing you to tilt your head back and stay buoyant as you gazed up at the sun. Before you knew it, you were in the middle of the ocean, much too deep and too far from shore to swim back. 

And now -

The sea froths around you. The tides pull you under.

You struggle to keep your head above water, but it's futile. 

It's not meant to be. 

The choice is easy - it'll always be Bo, it has to be - but it doesn’t make it any less painful. 

It aches. The loss of this gentle drag, the sleepiness of slowly stumbling into feelings of contentment and love, lacerates through your pericardium until you're gasping and shaking from the hurt of it all. 

Lester once said, if you're around somethin' long enough, you can get used t'anythin'. You didn't know what he meant at the time; you thought it was the wisdom of your older brother - a lesson for how to overcome the moral dilemma of watching him pluck innocent people off the roads for slaughter - but you're beginning to see it in a different light now. A different meaning. 

You'll get used to the pain. 

And if you can't stop looking at Vincent? Well, you'll just have to learn how to look away. 

"Where're you goin' in such a hurry?"

You startle at the unexpected voice, dropping the cheap flip flops in your hands. When you turn around, you find Bo leaning against the door frame, blocking the front door. 

His expression is concealed under the ballcap, but from the clench of his jaw, you think you might be in trouble. 

"Well?" He presses, cocking his head to the side as he stares at you. 

You straighten up, your back pressed tightly against the pool table. The look in his eyes makes your knees quiver, and you lean into the table for support as his gaze threatens to flay you alive. 

"I'm going…to see Vincent."

Bo lets out a derisive huff of laughter. "Vincent, huh? Gonna go finish what you started?"

"I want to apologise," you say, ducking your head. Riddled with shame, with loss, and knowing that this is all you can do to salvage whatever remains between you and them. You'll apologise to Vincent first, and then - 

Then you'll try to mend the fracture between you and Bo. 

"I dragged him into this," you explain, but Bo just seems to grow angrier with each word you utter. "And I just need to-"

"You need to, huh?" He mocks, irritation burning in his eyes. 

"I love you, Bo-," he jerks his head toward you, eyes blazing in anger, but you think he's said quite enough. "And I love Vincent." You confess, the words feel right on your lips. The taste of the sweet on your tongue. Your heart aches at the way Bo's expression closes off, his defences shuttering in front of you. It aches. You hate this. You hate yourself even more. "But I think you already knew that."

He doesn't say anything. 

"And I know it's wrong. It's awful, but-," you take a deep shuddering breath and hold it inside for a moment, gathering the last vestiges of your courage before breathing everything you out into the aether to rot in the space between you. In the chasm that was always, always, there. Uncrossable. Unavoidable. "I don't feel that way at all. I don't…" you huff, shaking your head in scorn at yourself. "Maybe it's selfish, but I can't help feeling the way I do. And if you hate me for it, that's fine - but don't hate Vincent because of the way I feel for him."

"You love him," he reiterates, his tone is inscrutable. Blank. 

You wish it wasn't so vacant. So indecipherable. 

This side of Bo is so uncanny, so unknowable to you, that it makes you yearn for the venom he should have hissed at you by now; that choleric anger that barbs into your chest like a dull knife. 

"I do. But - I can't-," you shake your head, squeezing your eyes shut. "I can't have both, and I'm picking you. I'll - I'll always pick you." 

Bo doesn't say anything else. He stands straight, and shoves his hands into his pockets. 

A lot festers in the crackling atmosphere between you; deeply embroiled in bitterness and hurt and malicious hostility that you almost feel like you're being choked by everything unsaid. 

You can handle his vituperation, his ire. 

But this makes you feel like you're being smothered. 

There are so many things that you want to say, to ask -

"Y'hear that? Or are y'gonna sulk all damn day, now?"

Your eyes snap open, blinking at him. You're not sulking. You're ripping your heart in half and giving the pieces to him. How -

It's so quiet, you almost miss it. The floorboards creak behind you, accompanied by the pointed footfall of a boot stepping into the foyer.  

Vincent.

The flip flops drop from your grasp when you dart your gaze toward the hallway, finding him standing there before you. His head bows, chin tucked to his chest. His hands clenched by his sides; fingers flexing and furling as you gape at him. 

There is so much you want to say, need to, but the words are ashes in your throat when he lifts his head.

Gentle sea. Calm breeze. A slow descent into the inescapable depths. 

You were never going to confess. Never going to tell them about the ugliness festering inside your - greedy, selfish, spoiled - heart. It was a secret you'd keep. One you'd be buried with. 

Now the words rot in the open air. 

Vincent knows. He knows -

It's terrifying. It's intense. There's a whining in the back of your head that bellows at you to escape; this is a trap, it hisses. No good can come from the inexorable rapacity inside of you. It's a ravenous chasm that wants, and wants. 

You're selfish. Awful. 

(But the way he stares at you makes you think that he wants this, too.)

"What…?" You start, voice cracking over the word. You swallow thickly, trying to gather your tumultuous thoughts into some proxy coherence, and keep the hope - that aching, desperate thing - from brimming up inside your heavy heart. "What is going on?" 

It's Bo's hands on your waist. His broad chest against your back. The searing heat of his fingers digging into your skin. 

But it's Vincent you can't look away from.

"We got to talkin'," Bo says, his low drawl ghosting over your ear when he bends down, resting his chin on your quivering shoulder. "Yer a greedy thing, ain'tcha, darlin'?"

His words, blunt and unforgiving, bludgeon through you. You try to hide a wince, but with the limited space between your spine and his chest, he notices it. Feels the jerk of your body. His chin nuzzles into your neck, soft coos falling from his lips. They sound rough and jarring in your ear - the whetting of a blade - and you tremble in his hold. 

Greedy, he says. A greedy thing.

You are. The want is etched into your marrow. There is a fever in your veins that festers, that yearns, that's been wanting and hungering since before you even knew what it was you sought. 

Selfish, your mother sneers. 

"Sorry," you whimper in response to her, to them, to him, Vincent - there is a never ending list of people you scorned with your own self-centred nature. "I'm sorry-"

He shushes you again. The burn of his stubble scraping across your skin soothes the maddeningly cacophony of blame and vitriol inside your head, and you focus on the way his lips pepper kisses over the soft skin around your throat. His arms locked around you feel less like the shackles of your mother's unwonted embrace, and much more like the comfort of home, familiarity. They snake around you, tugging you further into his chest, into his hold, and they stay there, tucking you into him. 

"I gotcha, darlin'," he whispers the words so softly that you know they're just for you. That this, this, is just yours, and yours alone. 

The rapid thundering of your heart settles. The bellowing ugliness and blame inside your heart are balmed by the gentle way he speaks to you. It's still rough; there is still an edge to his tenor, but this, you think, is the softest Bo will ever allow himself to be. 

And it's all for you.  

Bo slides his hands over your stomach, bunching up the fabric of your shirt as he goes. The motion of his hands pulls up the top, exposing the smooth flesh of your stomach, your ribs. 

You gasp, flinching back into him, but he brackets you, and offers nothing more than a low coo to placate you. 

You flush; your whole body heats as more and more skin is exposed to the balmy Louisiana afternoon, and -

Vincent's unwavering gaze. 

"Bo-!" You yelp when he pulls your shirt up higher, but he's already shushing you, his low chuckle filling your ear, and making your spine tingle. 

"Don't worry, darlin'," he growls, humour - and something dark, something possessive and wanting - lacing his words. "Ain't nothin' he hasn't seen before. Ain't that right, Vincent?" He calls over to his brother, words teasing, jocose. It makes you shiver, and when he leans down and murmurs, "he likes to watch you, Bambi," the words are low and sultry, his voice thick with want, and your whole body trembles. 

You flush at the implications of Bo's words, the heat of his hand as he slides it under your shirt, and up your stomach. He grasps your breast in his hand, squeezing once. His thumb pushes against your lips, and your mouth falls open for him. 

Vincent watches it all. Watches as Bo gropes your chest and pushes his thumb into your mouth. Watches as your lips close around the digit. 

It's too much. Your whole body feels like a livewire. A coiled rope on the verge of snapping. You're tense. Every atom in your body pulled taut. 

With the way Vincent is staring at you, and the way Bo just keeps touching you, you're on the equinox of breaking apart; splitting. Your whole body is electrified and hot; the fever rushing through you makes you dizzy, and if it wasn't for Bo's arm around your waist keeping you steady, you would have melted into a puddle by his feet. 

Vincent's gaze is a visceral feeling that sears into you, into the patch of skin Bo exposes when he tugs your shirt up, and the intensity in his eye makes you pant. It feels like last night, when you pressed against him, and felt his body hard and unyielding on your own.

"Bo…" you mewl when fingers slip under the wired rim of your bra, toying with your sensitive nipple, already hard, aching. It sends shivers down your spine. "What-?"

"You want us both, darlin'? That greedy for it, huh? Well," he pinches your nipple between the v of his index and middle finger, making you gasp at the ripple of pleasure that lacerates through you. His head lowers, lips brushing against your ear. "We'll give it t'ya."

His teeth dig into the crest of your ear, the sharp pain numbed by the pleasure of his fingers rubbing over your sensitive flesh, kneading your breast in his searing palm. 

Phosphenes erupt across your vision when your eyes slip closed, and you turn your head, panting as Bo continues to touch you. The rough skin of his scorching palm rasping across your body in front of Vincent makes goosebumps prickle across your flesh, each place he touches buzzes. 

It is a trap. You're thoroughly caught between Bo's touches and the weight of Vincent's stare. There is nowhere you can go, nowhere you can run to, and when the tips of Bo's finger drag down between the valley of your breasts, your navel, and begin to toy with the seam of your trousers, you can't do anything except take it, let it happen. 

Distantly, you think: you should stop this, but it's overridden by the flurry of heat rising in your abdomen as Vincent's breath stutters in his chest, a rasping hiss escaping him and filling the charged atmosphere around you. 

Bo chuckles in your ear. "Gotta go easy on him, darlin'. All this whinin', all this writhin' and beggin' for it is gonna make him pop before you get that pretty mouth around him-"

Nothing at all could have prepared you for the way Bo's blunt words bludgeon into you. They steal the air from your lungs, from the room itself, and you choke; gasping for breath and whining at the mere thought of it all. 

You press your hips desperately into his hand, and he laughs again. 

"Damn," he drawls, fingers sneaking past the waistband of your shorts, and sliding over your pussy. "Bambi really likes that. You want it, darlin'? You wanna suck his cock while I watch?" His fingers dip, rough and demanding, between your folds, and you mewl at the feeling of it, of the liquid heat coiling inside of you. "Or do you want me to fuck this tight pussy while Vincent fucks your mouth, hmm?"

It's all too much for you - his words, his touch, the way Vincent's gaze brands your skin, the thought of taking them both, of finally, finally, touching Vincent - send white-hot pleasure lacing through your veins. It's exacerbated by the rasp of Bo's stubble, the firm press of his fingers inside of you, and his thumb rubbing your clit. 

Bo holds you steady as he brings you to the brink of ecstasy, teasing you with the skilful hands of someone who'd done this many, many times; each touch is pointed and purposeful, measured and practised, and it's with startling ease that sends you careening over the edge, spiralling toward the murky abyss below. 

You try to hold it, but bliss spools across your eyes, hazy and intense, and you can't focus, can't see past the glaze of pleasure that congeals over your vision. 

Your eyes close as you slip beneath the depths of euphoria, gasping and mewling in the humid air; the sounds of your pleasure are accompanied by the slick sound of Vincent touching himself, and the harsh pants of Bo's voice in your ear as he ruts his hard cock into the plush softness of you ass, grunting out his pleasure. 

It's the sudden groan from across the room - a hushed, raspy growl - and the harsh thrust of Bo's hips - his deep, messy grunt into your neck - that sends you tumbling over the edge. 

You say nothing as Bo pushes you past the brink, wracking your body with inexorable pleasure that coils molten and visceral in the pit of your stomach before releasing into a white-hot haze of drunken ecstasy. The only sound that leaves your throat is a sharp cry; slurred and full of bliss. 

Your body sags against Bo's broad chest, heaving from the aftershocks of it all, and he pulls you closer, nuzzling his chin into the crook of your neck.

His fingers pull back, slowly, so slowly, and you gasp at the overstimulation, at the rough drag of him pulling them out of you. 

He presses a kiss to your neck, and really - 

It's your fault for thinking it was over when - if the bulge still pushing insistently against you was any indication - it only just began.

His fingers thrust back into you, rough and demanding, and he grunts as you lean back, eyes snapping open, and crying out at the feeling of him pressing against your sensitive walls, filling you once more. 

The feeling of Bo's fingers inside of you, and the sight in front of you makes you moan. Makes that greediness inside of you rears up, uninhibited and wanting. Yearning. 

Vincent's hand strokes his cock, gripping himself in tandem with Bo's messy thrusts. 

The entire time, his gaze never wavers. 

He watches you come undone by his twin's hand, and you can't help but wonder - with a shiver of pleasure that makes each synapse inside of you erupt - how many times has he watched this happen? How many times has he seen Bo take you? Push you to your knees? Make you cry and pant into the drenched bedsheets? 

You want him. You want to taste him -

"God, darlin'," Bo sneers into your neck. "You're droolin' for it, ain'tcha?"

You shudder and arch into Bo, eyes never straying from the way Vincent strokes himself. 

"Please-," you gasp, canting your hips into Bo's fingers. You want it - them - so bad. 

Bo hisses, and tugs his other hand away from your breast, slipping two of his fingers into your mouth. "Suck," he snarls, his hips snapping into your ass. "Show 'em what you're gonna do after. How those pretty lips are gonna wrap around his cock, go on. Show him how good you can be-"

It's too much: the way Bo harshly pants into your neck, the way the commands roll off of his sinful tongue, the thick, hard pressing of his cock into your flesh; the way Vincent groans at Bo's words, the way he tugs on himself, imagining how you would feel, how your mouth would swallow him whole - 

You gag when Bo slides his fingers to the back of your throat, choking you on them. Vincent flinches at the sounds you make when you sputter, gagging around Bo's fingers, and he gasps brokenly, ropes of thick, milky cum staining his hand. 

The sight of him curling in on himself, grunting with his release, sends you reeling once more over the precipice, clenching around Bo's fingers once again. His palm muffles the cries that leak out, tongue lolling around his index finger as the cacophony of pleasure and that spooling heat of rapturous euphoria grip you once more. 

Every synapse in your head seems to ripple with white-hot pleasure that rockets down your spine with such intensity that your knees threaten to give out. 

Your body is a string being pulled taut

It's too much. This is too much. 

Your head swims with that hazy gossamer of soporific bliss, and you fall into Bo with a gasp, legs quivering under the strain of keeping your body upright.

His hand leaves your mouth, arm coiling around your waist to keep you from crumpling onto the ground in a pleasure-fatigued heap. 

"I gotcha, darlin'," he says, the susurrus timbre of his voice wraps around you like an anchor, a bracket. He keeps you steady as you slowly come down from the crash of adrenaline and the surge of endorphins that slurry your mind. 

You should know better, though. 

The hard, hot press of his cock against your thighs makes you tremble. 

"I ain't finished yet, Bambi." He rasps in your ear. His fingers curl inside of you, and the feeling borders on the equinox of being too good, and too much. The flash of pain when he sinks his teeth into your neck has you keening into the air, surging forward to get away from him. To flee. It's too much. Too intense. You can't -

But Vincent is there, a silent move of cohesion and shared thought that you weren't privy to, and suddenly your head is burrowed into his chest as he closes you in from the front, blocking out your only means of escape. 

You gasp into his chest, your chin sliding over his sweater to look up at him. Vincent stares down at you; his eye is burning: molten delectation brims in the inky depths of cobalt gaze, iris nearly entirely eclipsed by the pure black of his pupil. It's the feeling of his hands on your forearms, his body pressed once again across yours, that makes your knees buckle. He's there to catch you as you fall, arms winding around your body, holding you close to his chest. 

Bo leans down, his broad chest a searing heat on your back, and licks a stripe across the new impression of his teeth now embedded in your raw, tender skin. 

"C'mon, darlin'," he coos, grinning wide against your throbbing flesh. 

The nip of his teeth makes you shudder and burrow deeper into Vincent to get away from the pleasure-laced pain he inflicts on your body. It's too good, too much, and if he doesn't stop touching you, whispering these filthy things into your ear and putting these ideas and images in your head, you might succumb to the greediness festering, rotting, inside of your chest, and sink to the bottom of the selfish whims that ensnare you. 

"I-I can't-," you whimper, pleading with him to give you respite from the pleasure lacerating through you. 

But you know better. You know Bo.  

And you know that this is just the beginning. 

"You quittin' on me already?" He laughs when he says it, his hands roaming across your body in a way that lights up every synapse and nerve inside of you. You're a coiled wire. Spooled too tight. 

And he knows this. 

Because Bo knows you. 

Vincent's hand curls around your forearms, a soft noise spilling from behind the alabaster mask. It's gentle. Questioning. You huff, but the noise is drowned out by Bo's derisive snort from behind you. 

"Bambi's fine." He says for you, fingers tugging on the belt loops of your shorts. "You want it - you want this - don't you?" 

It's not really a question. The way he says it - firm, assured - cuts into you, into the shuddering aftershocks of two consecutive orgasms, the overwhelming sensation of vertigo standing between them - both of them - and finally, finally, getting what you've wanted for so long. It bifurcates the meek protests that rear inside of you - things like we should talk about this first, do they really want this, is this a time-time thing - and leave only pure, and simple yearning, greed, behind that solidify your resolve and shake the hesitancy from your fingers. 

(The last one is a blunt club to the chest when you think, immediately and aching, that you hope, so desperately, that it isn't.)

Without the weight of things that don't matter - fickle little things such as morality, propriety, and the festering unease between you and Bo and Vincent - you whimper, and push back into the harsh thrusts of Bo's clothed cock into your - undoubtedly bruised - ass. 

He groans at your eager ruts, breathing out your name so softly that it sounds almost foreign to your ears. He's never called you anything other than some pet name - darlin', Bambi, or sweetheart when he was particularly tipsy - and the way his brassy voice curves around the consonants and slurs over the vowels makes your toes curl, makes your heart ache. 

Your ears burn. You feel sunburnt and sun drunk, and the heat smouldering around you - smothered by the weight of Bo behind you, and the smoky wisp of his voice as he whispers your name, hushed and rapturous, in a tone you'd never heard from him before, a tone that sounds almost like he's saying - 

You matter. 

You can't breathe. 

You sag into Vincent's chest, quaking with the almost hysterical need for the air Bo stole from your lungs, breathing in the static scent of him that fills your nose. Heady and potent. It's enough to make your head swim. To make your body tremble. Chills rocket down your spine when Vincent touches you, holding you close; his touch tender, cautious, like he isn't quite sure what he's allowed to do, to take. 

All of it, you think, delirious. All of you. It's his the same way you're Bo's. 

There is no logic to it. It just is. The earth spins on an axis; the sun sets and rises. 

You belong to Bo in the same way you belong to Vincent. 

Your hands reach up, grasping the fabric of his sweater. Your fingers snag on several strains of his hair, and you wince, murmuring a quiet apology into his chest before lifting your hand and burying it into his locks. 

Bo doesn't say anything else. It's the second time he's seen you and Vincent touch, but there is no anger in the way he grips your hips, the way his teeth scrape over your neck, ruddying your skin up with his mark, the imprint of his teeth. 

It's the silence and the soft assurance from Bo that pushes you. That hardens the resolve burrowing into your marrow until your bones are leaden with desire, and purpose, and want. 

He tilts his head into your touch as your nails scratch across his scalp. 

There is a prickle in your pericardium. A deep thrum of satisfaction spumes inside of you when he ducks his head down to press his masked lips against your own. When his hand trails down your forearm, your wrist, your palm, his fingers locking in between the divots of your own, spaces in your phalanges meant just for him, you don't think your heart has ever felt fuller, more content. 

The gnashing thing inside your chest is soothed by their smouldering flames, the embers catching on your skin until you're incandescent; warmed by the heat of their bodies, the burning want in their touches. 

You're a wicker pyre made to burn until you are ashes by their feet. 

"I want it," you whisper, voice wrecked, raw with emotion, with need.

Bo stands straight up, his chest once again pressing against you. "You want it?" He says your name again in the same broken, bare cadence that turns your heart candescent with undulated affection. 

You lean into Bo, eyes never wavering from the widened eye of Vincent's gaze boring into you. The vulnerable glint in the scant expression he shows makes your heart twinge, makes you want to reach out and soothe him, to show him how much you want this. Want him. Bo. Them

"I want you," you whisper, shivering at the feverish intensity in his gaze. The stutter in Bo's chest. "I want this: I want both of you."

The air feels charged, and electrified. Your fingers tighten around Vincent's hold. You pull the other from his hair, reaching blindly behind you to grasp at the blanched knuckles that grip your waist, fingers digging in hard enough to leave bruises. Marks. Your body is full of them by now: a mosaic of yellow, red, black and purple smeared over your flesh in the shape of his fingertips. 

Your hand slides down his forearm, ghosting over the raised welts on his wrist, a careful brush, before gliding over the clenched spaces of fingers. 

Bo tenses like he always does when you touch him like this, in a way that's so gentle and kind, and full of affection, and love. He shudders behind you, his chin rubbing over the back of your neck. His breath is humid on your skin. 

His fingers unfurl from your waist. His hand flexes, muscles tensing and spasming, but you wait. You don't move your hand from over his, thumb brushing across the scars on his thenar. 

He huffs. His chest shudders against your back. 

Then slowly, so slowly, his hand turns under yours; the fingers curled slightly over his palm, spread wide enough to let yours slip through the spaces. 

You squeeze their hands: wordlessly conveying your affection, your love for them. You wonder if they can feel it in the way your pulse thunders, your veins rushing with liquid heat. 

There's a stutter in Vincent's breath when your fingers grip his hand. His eye widens in a way that makes your chest ache at the hesitancy in his gaze; the meekness in his countenance. You squeeze his hand again; a soft clench meant just for him, and he ducks his chin in response

It's cautious and unsure, his hand curl around yours once. Gentle reciprocity - barely there, barely as hard as he could grip you - as if he's afraid to hurt you, to squeeze too tight. 

It burrows into you, and you bite back a coo of affection from slipping past your lips at his careful, almost protective, consideration. 

It's then that you feel Bo tug you back, his chin nuzzling into your neck. He doesn't squeeze your hand. He doesn't give in to your sought-after reassurance. 

Bo nips your nape instead. 

He breaks the tension after. His hand grip your hip once more, tugging you back into him. "Well," he huffs, amusement and desire drenching the rough drawl. "Better give Bambi what she wants, then."

It's the way their hands fit unequivocally into yours and the warmth of their palms bleeding into your skin that dovetails the heavy feeling of fullness, completion, inside of your chest. It negates anything at that moment - worries, fears, right or wrong - and everything that isn't the heavy weight of Vincent's gaze, or the bite of Bo's teeth instantly falls dead. Nothing matters except their smouldering heat. 

They fit around you like a glove, taking up the space like it's theirs - like it's always belonged to them, and them alone. You push back into Bo and stare up at Vincent, pleading, wordless, asking for more. More of this, him, them. 

It's the most delirious sense of equilibrium when they bracket you between them, nestling you there in a way that feels like it was carved out just for you. Meant just for you. 

There should be a discussion, you think. 

So much has happened in the last twenty-four hours that this - sandwiched between Vincent and Bo - should be a thorough conversation. Boundaries. Limits. The potential expiration of it all. It itches like a fever under your skin. You need to talk. To say something. 

Bo seems to know this - because Bo knows you - and when he sees the pinch growing between your brow, his fingers tap across your lips. 

"You need'ta turn that brain of yours off for a bit, darlin'."

Your words are slurred, muffled around his thick digits. "But Bo-"

"S'fine, okay?" His arm loops around your shoulders, tugging you to his chest. He slips his fingers free, holding you close (and, rather conveniently you note, smushing your mouth into his pectoral, further quieting your protests and questions), and places a kiss on your crown. "S'alright. I forgive you."

You huff into his chest. With your hand still linked to Vincent's, the angle leaves your arm awkwardly slinging out behind you. You feel his grip slacken, his hand twitching, and you squeeze tighter - refusing to let go. 

It's easy, then, to tug on it, making your intentions clear. You want Vincent close. You want to feel the skin of his chest on your back. The wry curls in the same messy pattern as Bo's. The little scars they share from scuffles over the years. 

You want a kiss from him, too. 

You must look ridiculous when you turn your head as much as you can under the solid, unyielding weight of Bo's arm locked around you, and throw him pleading looks from over your shoulder. 

"C'mon, then," Bo huffs again; his words sharp, but his tone is light. Even. "Get over here before Bambi starts runnin' 'er mouth again. I ain't as young as I used to be, so you'll have to be the one to shut 'er up." 

You grumble into his chest, pouting at him. "You don't always need to shut me up that way, Bo-"

Your petulant words are cut off by the dip on the bed as Vincent shuffles closer. 

His hesitation is palpable. You can feel his uncertainty bleed through the slow, stiff movements he makes to inch closer. 

"Come on," you murmur, squeezing his hand once more. 

The difference in size is almost comical, and it's made more apparent when he blankets himself across your back. Laying with your heads parallel, you can't help noticing that your feet rest somewhere near his knees. 

Vincent feels molten against your back. The press of his study chest imbues you with a potent thrum of security when he completes the bracket, sliding in the space behind you like he belongs. With Bo trapping you from the front, Vincent behind, you're nestled in their embrace. 

The potential irony between the intense, overwhelming feeling of protection coming from two serial killers isn't lost on you in the slightest, but - 

You've never felt safer. More content. 

With your chin nuzzling Bo's chest, and Vincent's broad hands smoothing over your back, your eyes slip shut, basking in the equanimity that floods you. It's soporific: the unease with Bo is mollified, the discontentment with your conflicting feelings is pacified, and you feel more complete, more whole, than you ever have in your entire life lying between the twins. 

There should be a conversation. You vacillate between bringing it up, but the even strokes Vincent makes over your back bleeds somnolence into your bloodstream, leaking into your marrow. You've heavy with it. Fatigue clings to you. 

Bo leans now, breathes you in, and murmurs, "you better turn all'a that thinkin' off." 

"I'm trying," you murmur. Questions rear. Festering. 

Vincent presses his hands into your flesh, kneading your muscles. The sensation of it makes you gasp; liquid bliss pours from the tips of his expert fingers. 

"Oh, Vincent-," you shudder when he works on a particularly hard knot that formed when Bo, true to his word, finally got to watch as you slipped to your knees and took Vincent into your mouth. They're so tall. So big. The kink formed between your shoulder blades when you reached up to him. "That feels so good. "

You didn't think he noticed the small wince when you sat back on your haunches, swallowing down the taste of his release on your tongue. 

Bo grunts. "Fuck… moanin' like that… you must wanna go again, huh?"

You can't - you really can't - but the way Vincent's fingers dance across your skin sends shots of pure dopamine to your brain until it's mushy with the slurry of bliss and pleasure congealing inside. It spools over your thoughts, drenching the itching questions in the euphoric haze of his rough, meticulous sculptor’s hands spreading over your shoulders. 

His fingers digging into your flesh renders you stupid. Mercury pools on your tongue, drowning the words you want to say into gurgles of pleasure and mewls of contentment. 

You gag on it when he prods at a spot that has you seeing Antares behind your eyelids, arching into Bo in a strange oscillation of wanting to get away, and wanting more of those hands that fit over your flesh like he's trying to make you see god with just the right press of his thumb and forefinger. 

He digs in deeper, holding the pose, and then drives his cachet into your flesh before splaying his large hands over your tremorous skin and smoothing out the buzz that tickles along your vertebrae. His rough palms slide from the top of your spine down to your tailbone, and your whole body liquefies into the bed at the gentle touches.

You sigh, blissful and sleepy, into Bo's chest. His arm tightens around you. Vincent nuzzles, shyly almost, into your shoulder blades, pressing his masked mouth to the supple skin near the base of your spine. 

It makes you feel slightly vertiginous when they touch you like this, holding you close between them. 

Dopily, you grin into Bo's chest, and whisper an emphatic, slurred, I love you both. 

The breath stutters in Vincent's chest. His fingers flex, digging into the soft skin on your waist. The softly, sleepily, uttered confessional seems to stun him for a moment. 

As Vincent buries his head into the base of your skull, nuzzling softly into your hair, Bo tenses. 

This isn't anything new. He shirks around affection and commitment like it's a potential sickness, a weakness. Where Vincent flusters, he runs. 

But there is nowhere to go in a four-poster queen with your legs tangled together. 

Maybe he knows this. Or maybe you're chiselling away at the thick veneer of protection that surrounds him - a warning, a barbed wire wall that screams don't come any closer - slowly, but surely breaking it down and leaking in through the crack. 

Maybe you're dreaming when he brushes his lips into your crown once more, and murmurs - so achingly soft that if it wasn't for the tussle of humid breath through your hair, you might have thought it was the breeze - I know.

And then he says your name like it's a prayer. Not a curse. Not a nuisance. 

Reverence spumes into the word. 

It's that - the gentle, almost cautious way he speaks - and the way Vincent's hand tightens around your flesh - as if you'll disappear if he lets go - that pickle at a tangible weight in your chest; a heaviness that almost burst from the brimming feeling of fullness. Satiety. 

The greed inside of you is abated - for now; the hunger fed. Thirst quenched. 

The ugly hisses are drowned by the cacophony of Bo's soft, oh, so soft utterance of your name and the rasp of Vincent's breath in your ear. 

The dyad of their embrace serves to succour and stanchion that wanting little thing inside of you that says this, this, is what it feels like to be complete. 

The notion is ironclad. Apodictic. You belong between them. 

Vincent etches his name in your ribs on the space above Bo's where it sits, burrowed into your bones, deep enough to leak marrow. He burns hot but warms slowly; it takes him a while to open up to you - to truly chisel his chest open and let you rummage around through the things that make him, him. 

Patience is your strongest virtue (your only one, Lester adds) and you wait for him, give him space. It pays off when he shyly reaches over, brushes your hair away from your ear, and rasps out a soft me, too that makes your chest swell so much that you worry, a little, that it might rupture. 

(It doesn't - it just feels fuller than it has been in a very long time.)

The chair in the museum's basement is where you spend the majority of your time, but now - when you feel that prickle of greed in your chest, you can simply lean over and rap your knuckles against the side of his mask, conveying your desire for a kiss. He has to work, you know he does, but you think he prefers it when you sit in his lap and watch him paint on a new canvas or create another effigy for the town. 

He paints the Rape of Persephone again but in this one, she's smiling down at her hands where a conjoined set of pomegranates lay. The look on her face is soft, open; the love, the affection, is palpable. 

It's beautiful. 

You cry when he shows you the sketches, and he frets a little when you bury your head into his chest and weep. His hand rakes down your back as you whimper out how amazing he is, and how much you love this new outline, and will he please let you watch him while he paints it? 

Vincent tucks you into his chest as you babble out praise and adoration and gratitude that he's showing something so wonderful. He never tells you to shut up. He never quiets you with a kiss, or keeps your lips busy. It gnashes inside of you - slipping that caliginous veil off from over your eyes where the ugly hisses reside - and has you brimming with love for his gentle acceptance. 

(When the painting is finished, he hands it to you, and it makes you sob for an hour.)

Bo says nothing when you bring it home. He grabs the drill, some nails, and asks, where'd you want it? and sets to work when you pick out the perfect spot for the painting. 

He listens to you gush about it for three days straight while he tinkers away at the garage (a couple passed through and Vincent didn't want you seeing the aftermath so you'd stuck to Bo's side and tried not to think about the carnage, the horror happening in the museum), and then hands you a set of keys with a terse, get over here, when you simply blink at them in astonishment.

"It ain't a paintin'," he says, and the inflection in his tone makes you think he's trying to force some of that patented derision, and scorn, into his voice, but it misses the mark when he won't quite look you in the eye. "But I figured you'd like this."

He takes you to the back where Lester stands with Jonesy next to what's obviously a car covered with a tarp. 

"Um-" the words die on your tongue when Bo rips the tarp off. 

"You better not ruin the interior," he warns, but the roaring in your ears deafens the words. 

"Christine…" the reverence in your tone makes him scratch the nape of his neck. "Bo-"

The catch in your voice has him immediately defensive. His arms cross over his chest, and he stares at the freshly painted car - fury red - and shrugs, like it's no big deal.

"Like I said… it ain't a paintin'-"

"Bo-," the tears run down your cheeks in rivets. "I love it-"

"Yeah," is all he says when you throw your arms around his waist, burying your head into his chest. He smells like gasoline, gunpowder. His hands are stained red from the paint. 

"Since when-?"

"Since you brought it up," Lester supplies, the grin in his voice is palpable. "Needed a lot of work-"

Bo tenses. "Shut up-!"

His words lack any heat - it all seems to have gone to the nape of his neck where you can see the blossoming rubicund growing under the locks that are getting a little too long - and the sight of it, of him - him - getting flustered is enough to puncture your chest with that aching sense of fulfilment and love and all those sappy things that would certainly set his teeth on edge. It might be enough to make him push you away, but with your knees on the verge of buckling under you at the weight of it all, you swallow down the bloom of absolute devotion that sometimes spooks him, this indomitable force of nature who shells out hate and rage easier than affection and nuzzle your head into his chest.

"Fuck," he mutters, holding you close. "Why are you always cryin'?"

"Why are you always making me cry?" 

It makes him huff, but he doesn't push you away when you indiscreetly rub your face over his chest to rid yourself of the tears still streaming down your cheeks. 

"Now," Lester says, rapping on the hood with his finger. "We ain't gettin' rid of ya, Bambi… but we reckon you'd like to go into town on your own from time to time."

It's a massive display of trust - one that has you sobbing, again, into Bo's chest. You can't help the tears that pour down your face, or the way Lester just knows you; knows that ugly thing inside your head would spin this as them letting you go, wanting to be rid of you. It's too much for you to handle. 

"C'mon, now… stop your blubberin'," Bo whispers into your ear, words soft, quiet. Meant just for you. "Instead of all'a this cryin', I reckon we should christen Christine here, huh?"

You snort wetly into his chest. "You'll ruin the interior."

When you look up, his grin is nearly blinding. "That's m'girl…" 

"I'm goin'ta see ma this afternoon," he says, combing his air back. 

Bo gets into these strange moods where he'll sneak off and spends hours reliving her funeral. Maybe he prays. Maybe he curses her for all of this. 

You wouldn't blame him for it. The welts on his skin, and the prickly fury weren't just borne from having his head messed with by his father. 

It's not Vincent's fault, you know this, but you can't help but hate their mother a little bit for making Bo the way he is, by blossoming an inferiority complex that's dealt with by a merging of superiority and an obsessive, murderous impulse to see her legacy through in the futile hopes of making her proud. 

Vincent didn't come out unscathed, either. His perfectionism is a byproduct of a mother who saw only brilliance in her son and settled for nothing less. The legacy he has to live up to is mountainous; the climb is treacherous. He'll die trying to make her proud. 

They both will. 

It's tucked aside when he glances at you in the mirror. You smile, shoving down the spooling bitterness for a woman who'll never face the repercussions of her actions. It's hard to blame Trudy entirely - her love for Vincent is a shrine that ensnares the entirety of the museum, but you wish she didn't put them both in iron boxes with no escape hatch. 

"What're you up to today?"

"Hanging out with Vincent."

His grin turns sly. "Hangin' out, huh? You ain't tired from all that hangin' out last night?"

The ludic timbre that flavours his words makes you giggle in response. "We're really just hanging out today!"

You love when Bo gets into these playful moods. 

"Uh-huh…" he says, waggish. "Well, don't get too worn out today from all that hangin' out," he turns to you, stepping closer, and reaching out to cup your jaw. His gaze is burning, like always, but it's the softest flame you have ever seen. A bonfire on the sea. The breath stutters in your chest. "Because we'll be doin’ some of our own later."

"Bo…"

The walkie-talkie on the table crackles to life. 

"Hey, Bo…" Lester's voice fills the room. The sound prickles across the back of your neck. Unease blooms. "Got a few teens headin' your way. Need a belt or somethin'."

Bo grabs it off the table. "How long?"

"Bout ten minutes, I reckon." He responds, voice staticky. "I'll meet Bambi at our usual spot. Got a whole group of' em. A few split though. Headed back to Baton."

"Alright." 

The look he sends you is shrewd. "Guess you won't be hangin' out with Vincent today after all."

"If you let them go…" you implore, straightening the lapels of his jacket, and keeping your gaze fixed on his tie. "...Then we can spend some extra time together tonight. You know-," you lean forward, looking up at him through your lashes in that way you know he likes, and press a small kiss to Adam's apple, murmuring into his skin: "to hang out."

He chuffs; the noise vibrates across your lips. "That right?"

You rest your chin on his sternum, nodding. "That's right."

Bo leans down, pressing a kiss to your crown. "I'll think about it."

He pulls back, and his hand reaches back out to cup your jaw. 

"You know, I…" He struggles for a moment, his fingers flexing on your skin. You can't place the look on his face, but it's the same one he sometimes has when you say -

Oh. 

Oh. 

The molten feeling inside of you spumes in your cheeks. "Bo. I love you."

"Shut yer damn mouth," he says, but he's smiling. Grinning. He leans down and presses his lips to your forehead. " Go on, now, go see Lester. I'll talk to ya later."

It ends like this:

"Huh…" is all Lester says when you finish the story. There is a pinch in his brow that's been growing since you first started, rather candidly, with how Bo hauled you into the back of the pickup truck, and only deepened when you finished with the painting Vincent made for you, chipping out, and now I'm dating both of them!  

"Huh," is what Lester said then, too, when he caught you and Vincent kissing. His mask in one hand, the other holding you close.  

It's not a secret - or, rather, you don't think it is, nor do you want it to be - and Lester says nothing when you explain. 

"Well," he adds, then shakes his head like he's trying to wake up from a dream but is dealing with the awful realisation that he's, unfortunately, wide awake. "Uhh… I guess it was bound'ta happen sooner or later…"

"Whatdya mean?" 

He squints at you in the same way he does when you sometimes ask, is this edible, and then hold up a death cap. 

"Well…" he scratches his neck, mouth gnashing to the side. "They both… were kinda weird when ya got here, Bambi. Took to you quick-," they didn't, you want to interject. It took Bo several weeks, and then almost a full year before you got to this point. Vincent sometimes flinches away from you after he's finished work, hands fretting by his sides like he doesn't want to touch you. You tuck it aside when the nervous flit around Lester's mouth relaxes, and he flashes you a wide, leering grin. "Caught both of 'em peepin' on you a few times through the window when we'd leave, so I… well, I guess I didn't expect this, but it doesn't surprise me."

His words bring a deep hue to your cheeks. You can feel the heat spreading to your ears. 

Pieces begin to slowly slot into place: snippets of conversations you had with Bo become a lot clearer; interactions with Vincent taken on a new palette. 

The fallout has you sliding your hands over your cheeks until the tips of your fingers rested under your lower lash line. 

Lester's hand reaches out. He presses a finger into the apple of your cheek, and snickers. "Aw, lil'Bambi, you embarrassed? You can tell me all about your ménage à trois but this is makin' ya blush?"

"It's a sunburn," you squeak, batting his fingers away. "It's hot tonight, okay?" 

"Sure, sure…" he shakes his head at you, grinning widely. "Very hot…"

It's his easygoing comportment that makes you peer at him from over the tips of your fingers. Through your entire retelling, he seemed rather passive about it all. It's how he is, really: Lester has this absurdly simple way of accepting the things around him that he might not necessarily like. 

He isn't innocent in any of this by any stretch of the imagination: he was on that road waiting for someone like you for a reason. You just happened to catch his attention at the time. If you hadn't - well. 

Despite what Bo says, you would likely have ended up in the basement. You doubt Vincent would have put a stop to anything, either. The velleity to save you wasn't fleshed out enough for any of them to rescue you. 

Still: the ease in which Lester just… accepts this - that you, his baby sister, are now dating both of his twin brothers - is almost a little too pliable. If you didn't know better - if you didn't hear Lester arguing back at Bo and holding his own - you might have the mistaken belief that he was somehow incredibly tractable. 

"How are you… so okay with-," you stumble over your words, and wave your hands around. "-With this?"

Lester's brows draw together as he considers your question. It's vague. Intentionally so. He grabs a twig from beside the makeshift log bench you're sitting on, and starts carving out the mud beneath your feet. You watch him draw a circle. 

"I just want… everyone t'be happy, I suppose."

You blink. "Oh…"

"It don't bother me none," he nudges your shoulder, glancing at you with a small smirk. "You got a thing for twins, I reckon-," his hands raise in mocking surrender when you shove your shoulder into his. "Hey, now… we all got the things we like. Who'm I to judge?"

It's easy with Lester. A soft, warm comfort. A midday nap near the Bayou; the crepuscular graze of the sun on your cheeks as it peers through the canopy. He's a gentle fulgor amid a brewing storm. 

"When I first heard about y'all, I thought - oh, what is this lil' couillon doin'?" He teases. "But you make 'em happy, they make you happy, and that-," he ruffles your hair affectionately, quietly adding: "and that makes me happy."

You drop your head on his shoulder. "Thank you," you say, the words muted and soft. 

His arm shakes slightly with his airy chuckle. "Anytime, Bambi…"

It's more than that, and he knows it. You know it. But with Lester, it's always been easy. Effortless. There is no need to dredge up more meaning, more words, because both of you know. Attuned, perhaps. Like Bo and Vincent with their strange nonverbal communication where they glance over the heads of everyone around them and have an entire discussion with just the furrow of Bo's brows and the tilt of Vincent's head. 

So, you say nothing else - and ignore the way his eyebrow ticks up at the lack of a sudden question deluge - and lean against his side, watching the sun slowly meander out of sight in a smear of orange, pink, purple, and dark blue. 

In actuality, the real ending happens like this:

There's a photo tucked into the sun visor of Bo's truck. When you pull it out, it becomes apparent that this wasn't meant for your eyes - or anyone else's, either. It's a candid picture of you staring down at Jonesy, cupping his muzzle in your palms. Lester leans over your shoulder to pat his head.

You remember that day. It was only a few short weeks after you arrived - a balmy evening in mid-July. Jonesy trampled all over mud in the Bayou when Lester was digging out a deer skull from the bog - the same one he later gave you, painted a pretty pearlescent ("a Bambi for Bambi-"). The two of you spent nearly an hour scrubbing him down. 

You don't know who took this picture - Vincent or Bo - or why he had it in his truck, but it makes you think of what Lester said - always watching - and you feel that same burn inside your chest, your cheeks, that you've always felt around him. Around them. They set you on fire without even trying. 

When Bo asks why you're so flustered later that night, you pull him down for a kiss, and say, "I love you." 

It makes his jaw clench, but Vincent's there to fill in the blank with a tender touch to the soft skin between your shoulder blades, tapping out a gentle, I love you, in time with the flutter of your pulse. 

You turn to him, smiling softly. "Me, too."

Bo bends down, his chair brushing over your still-warm cheeks. The ghost of his breath turns your bones molten when he says, "welcome home."

In the photo, the way the sun bathes you in an ethereal, ocherous haze makes you look like your skin is made of fire. The flames dance over you: an eternal pyre, an effigy made to burn. You stare down at Jonesy with the same look as Persephone gazing at the pomegranates in her hands.

(You tuck the photo beside the yellow hippopotamus and the pearlescent deer skull from Lester, keeping them all on your dresser under the painting of Persephone.)