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It started when you were eight.
You had always been jealous of your brother’s hair, even when you were both sweet little three-year-olds with fuzzy little curls and no real concept of envy. His hair was thick and black and wavy, the sort of hair that is naturally messy and windblown, curling down his cheeks and barely kissing the nape of his neck. Your hair, on the other hand, had always been so fair as to look white, as well as being dry and wispy.
You were on the playground at recess and you were staring and staring and staring at Caliborn’s hair, until finally you reached out a hesitant little hand and pulled at a lock of it.
He yelped and smacked you across the face, and you of course retaliated. Twenty minutes later, it took three teachers, the school nurse, and a stern kick from Dirk Strider to separate your teeth from your brother’s shoe and his fingernails from your arm.
(You noted with satisfaction that his shirt needed ten stitches.)
That was the first time that he realized he could lay hands on you.
You had many the scuffle and skirmish over the next two years, about everything from who got which toys to whose turn it was to set the table. Neither of you ever got seriously hurt (although Roxy Lalonde got punched in the face when she tried to break you apart once). Your parents, who were always off on some business trip or other, laughed and called it “sibling rivalry.” Your brother never listened to your nursemaid when she frantically tried to talk some sense into him, wringing her hands in that green dress of hers and asking what his parents would think. The butler just smiled in that creepy way of his and adjusted his bow-tie.
That all changed when you turned ten.
You began feeling weak all the time, weak and sleepy. Sometimes you wouldn’t be able to get out of bed to go to school. You began getting paler and thinner, and one day when you were in the shower (you and your brother had always bathed together; the nursemaid and the butler who took care of you never seemed to see anything wrong with it, they even appeared to encourage it), Caliborn had poked your side and asked what the hell you were doing to get so skinny.
You smacked him and told him not to swear.
Two weeks later, you were sent to see a doctor. They poked you and drew your blood and your nursemaid said that you were very brave and gave you a lollipop and went off to talk to the doctors in a worried undertone.
You started taking a lot of nasty pills and vitamins and going to the doctor more often. They made you feel better, though, and you weren’t quite as weak and you could go to school again. The butler started forcing you to eat things other than frozen fish fingers and bread with mustard, and when you finally gave in, you slowly started feeling much better.
Caliborn, of course, seemed blessed with a strong, healthy body (although you’re rather consoled by the fact that you got all the brains). He joined the track team (your school was so small that it only had a soccer team and a track team, and he wouldn’t be caught dead on the soccer team) and began going down to the gym; while you were wasting away in bed, he was developing, becoming stronger and faster.
You were twelve before you could reliably say that you had recovered. During that time, you and your brother hadn’t slept in the same bed or bathed together once, although you weren’t sure why. Something about safety, they had said.
So it came as a surprise when your nursemaid had smiled at you and told you that she thought you were ready to start sleeping and bathing with your brother again. “It’s important for you to reconnect,” she had said. She never said why.
That night, you curled up under the blankets with Caliborn, alone with him for the first time in two years.
It didn’t take long for the bickering to start.
“Quit hogging the blankets,” he had grumbled.
“You’re the one hogging them.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Am not.”
“Are too to infinity.”
He shoved you off the bed.
After that, of course, it had seemed inevitable that the scuffles would start again.
The next day, you started arguing over the TV remote, and he slapped you across the face.
It was just like that day on the playground, except this time, he hit you hard enough to knock you over.
And this time, you just stared at him from the floor, gently brushing your fingertips across your stinging cheek, not flying on him like a banshee, kicking and screaming, like old days.
“Get up,” he said.
You stared.
“Why don’t you fight back?”
You stared.
“Fight back, you pussy!”
He kicked you in the face.
“Fucking bitch,” he spat, and turned the TV on.
You raised a shaking hand to your slowly bleeding nose.
***
And it continued for one, two, three years.
It got to the point that, the few times you actually tried to retaliate, he hit you all the harder and you eventually gave up.
He would hit you, yell at you, call you all sorts of names, and you would cry and sniffle and beg for him to stop, which only seemed to enrage him more.
Nobody noticed.
That was the worst part; nobody ever noticed.
Not even your dear old nursemaid, who was really a well-meaning sweetheart, but had no control over Caliborn by now anyway.
Not even the cold and distant butler, who was always off at his second job as a tutor for the Lalondes now anyway.
Not even your permanently traveling parents, never home long enough to see what was going on.
Not even your best friends, always wrapped up in their four-person soap opera.
And then you were fifteen and you realized-
you almost forgave him.
You didn’t know why. It’s sick and twisted, falling in love with your tormentor, your sibling, but it happened. You read in a book that when hostages begin expressing positive feelings towards their captors, it’s called Stockholm Syndrome. While Caliborn certainly isn’t holding you captive, it might still apply… right?
You got to the point where you were on the verge of calling a therapist you had found online, your finger was hovering over the little numbered buttons on your cell phone before you realized something else.
You couldn’t tell anyone.
He would kill you.
***
Somehow, you felt like you could change him.
Something had clicked in your head that day and you couldn’t push your feelings aside anymore, you couldn’t feel the smack of his hand across your face without also thinking about how maybe, just maybe, you could rub off on him, teach him to care.
On some level, you knew you were crazy.
On some level, you knew that you should just tell someone.
That level, however, was buried deep under a whole pile of other levels, which were all screaming kisshimchangehimlovehim, and the sensible level’s little whisper was no match for them.
So that night, after you pulled your nightgown on over your head and snuggled under the covers, after you said your prayers and brushed your teeth and all the other tiny rituals that you had been doing since you were old enough to understand the meaning of the word ritual, you rolled over and asked him “Why do you hit me?”
Being Caliborn, he gave you a fairly matter-of-a-fact answer. “Because you deserve it.”
“But why? Why do I deserve it?”
You could tell that the questions were making him uncomfortable, making him think about what he never wanted to probe too deeply into. “You’re a weak bitch. You used to… You used to be strong. Stronger, at least.”
“Cal,” you whispered, “I was sick.”
He rolled over to face you. “Look. You could at least try to fight back.”
You snorted. “I do. You just hit me all the harder.”
“Because I’m helping you. You need to get stronger.”
It made sense, in a weird, perverted way. Caliborn had always been violent and rather lacking in the common sense department; he’d been arrested four times by the point, twice for shoplifting, twice for assault. It made sense that he would convince himself he was hurting you for your own good.
And maybe he was. You really were incredibly weak, after all. You couldn’t even stand up to your own brother, for God’s sake!
Maybe he really was helping you.
You noticed a little hot, wet trail on your cheek and realized that you were crying.
“Oh, God. Are you—Callie, the fuck. Stop blubbering.” He reached out a hand and roughly wiped a tear away from the corner of your eye. “Quit that. You’re such a crybaby.”
It’s all my fault, my fault for being weak and stupid and weepy, he wouldn’t have done it otherwise, he’s a good person, I made him hit me…
Suddenly, before you had time to think or consider or even make a conscious choice, you acted on the crazy impulse you had been holding back for weeks and months and crash your lips into his.
Your teeth bumped and he went very still and tense, not moving a muscle, and you didn’t move either, just stayed there, connected by the lips, until he gently, almost tenderly placed a hand on your cheek and pulled back.
“Calliope,” he hissed. “You—“
You grabbed at his t-shirt, balling your hands in the fabric, unable to meet his eyes. “I—Please?”
“How—we’re siblings, I—“
Desperately, you pulled him in for another kiss, mashing your mouth against his frantically, tried to make him understand, to feel how much you need this, how you’d needed it for a long time and all that waiting and wanting just built up inside you and you couldn’t stand it, you couldn’t!
His hands passed restlessly over your cheeks and sides and finally came to rest on your back, nearly covering the width of it, God, there’s so much more of him than you. He slowly relaxed into you, let you pry his mouth open with your tongue, let you grasp his face in your hands and just press, you needed to be so much closer to him than was even physically possible, you were pushed up against him and it just wasn’t enough.
Caliborn pulled away, trailing a string of saliva from your mouth, which should have been absolutely disgusting but somehow it wasn’t. Your eyes were welling up with tears again from the neediness and the hunger and him and he stared at you, eyes wide and his breath coming in short, sharp pants; and he rolled over, settled on top of you, began kissing your neck and your collar and fuck, you just couldn’t take it.
He began unbuttoning the collar of your nightgown, kissing down your chest, and he passed his thumb over your nipple through the thin cotton of your nightgown, eliciting a fretful, whining noise from you, oh God, it felt so good it almost hurt…
You rolled your hips up against his, his erection painfully obvious through his boxers, and slipped a hand between his legs to clumsily rub against it, you had no clue what you were doing but the noises he’s making are encouraging to say the least, but then he pulled your nightgown over your head, so you had to stop and lift your arms up, completely naked except for your panties, and he, oh God, what is he doing?
He gave your stomach a kiss and hooked his thumbs into your waistband, pulled your knickers down; he bent over and gave your clit a tentative lick, glancing back up at you to see your reaction. You had bitten down on your bottom lip so hard it nearly bled and the tears were streaming down your face by now; he looked nervous, as if he thought he had done something wrong, but you hissed through clenched teeth “Don’t you dare stop now, brother, don’t you dare.”
Somehow you managed to hold it together as Caliborn slowly circled his tongue around your clit, gently sucking; little bursts of pleasure bloomed in your stomach, sending waves of warmth through your body. You wound your hands into his hair, his beautiful, soft, think, black hair, clenched them so tightly that you almost pulled it out… You let out a hiss of pain as he placed a finger at your entrance, slowly working it in.
“Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit,” you muttered; you’d fingered yourself before, but never without lube. A quick tug on his hair and he looked up.
“What’s wrong?”
“Spit on it,” you mumbled.
“… What?”
“Your finger, dummy, spit on it or you’re going to hurt something up there!”
“… Huh?”
He stared up at you, hair mussed, face red, lips soft and swollen, looking utterly debauched and confused and scared and you realized—
He’s a person.
He’s not perfect or evil or a god or a devil or any of that. He’s confused and terrified and muddling his way through life as best he can and most of all he’s wrong.
And you realized that that night—it was going to change the dynamics between you forever.
Because you knew that he could be wrong, but you never really knew it.
And he knew that you were tolerable, but he never knew how much he actually depended on you.
And goddammit, you want this.
“Nevermind,” you whispered. “Nevermind, just—just, please, can we… can we?”
He looked at you and seemed to understand what you were trying to say (quite possibly a first for him). “Are you sure? I mean—yeah, we can, yeah.”
“Okay.” You took a deep breath and closed your eyes, sitting up. “Okay, hold on—I should—just hang on.”
You shakily rolled over and got to your hands and knees, kicking away the discarded knickers. You couldn’t quite see what he was doing behind you, but you could feel it when he pressed the head of his cock against your entrance and then he asked you again, “You sure?”
You considered for a second. “Well, yeah, uh, I think the missionary position wouldn’t work, and, ah, I don’t really, ah, think I’d like being on t-“
“No, I mean doing this. At all.”
“I know what, ah, what you meant. I was deliberately avoiding the question because, ah, I can’t answer it.”
He was silent for a beat and then he pushed inside you, letting out a moan, and you clenched your teeth in pain, your eyes welling up again, but you refused to cry, you refused—
“Hey, Callie?”
“Mmmm.”
“Can you, uh,” he hesitated for a second, his breathing hard and heavy behind you. “Can you keep, uh, keep…” Caliborn trailed off and reached around to wipe a tear from your cheek.
“What?” you asked, genuinely curious—what could be so embarrassing that he refused to admit it?
“Nevermind.”
You spent a minute or two just kneeling there, clenching the bedsheets in your fists, trying to breathe regularly as you got used to the feeling of him inside you—God, that just felt so weird and wrong and right, all at the same time.
“You can, uh—“
“R-right,” he said shakily, and moved his hips slightly, drawing out and then clumsily thrusting back in, and oh shit, that was too early, you were not ready for that, oh fuck, you couldn’t hold back the tears anymore and they dripped down your cheeks, hot and wet.
But then came the second thrust, and then the third, and it got a little easier, a little better—you angled your hips back, trying to help him get at a better angle—oh, ok, yes, that was—nice, yes, that’s nice. Okay.
You could hear yourself moaning, you could definitely hear him moaning, honestly, that boy could wake the dead; and as the pace grew faster, the little core of warmth in your stomach returned, but now it grew quicker than before, until you knew it, just a couple more minutes, just a little bit longer and—
“C-Calliope,” he gasped, and a weird, wet sensation spread inside of you, filling you up, fuck, that almost sent you over the edge, but not quite, why wasn’t he mov—
“Oh my God,” you muttered.
“S-sorry,” he replied weakly, pulling out and flopping down on his side of the bed.
You didn’t even register that he had just apologized to you for the first time in at least four years. You just grabbed a towel from the floor of your room and snapped “I am going to take a shower and then I am going to finish wanking in the shower and if I get pregnant, it’s your fault.”
“Not fucking likely,” he called after you, muffled by the pillow he buried his face in.