Chapter Text
They never kiss as themselves. We're the same person, Kiri says, feels kind of silly, doesn't it. She can stop his heart with a thought, he can open and close her fingers if he concentrates hard enough. They may have physically split apart in their sleeping father's womb, but that was really just a formality.
He blinks as Kiri opens her eyes, he breathes in as she breathes out. They go to war together, fight and kill together, run from Toruk Manto's dripping legacy together. Compared to all that, a kiss feels like a parody of real intimacy.
But they're not always each other, because sometimes they're not even themselves at all. Sometimes, they're their father and uncle, Jake and Tom living a not-quite blissful life as children back on Earth. Tender not in their innocence, but in their softness, the pain they soak up and hold close.
Tsyeyk loves that game in particular, loves pressing his lips to Kiri's ear, whispering about his day at school or the fight he had with an older boy, stolen memories of their father's life that no one else understands or believes in. He loves kissing her slowly, gently, it's just practicing, he teases, and they both giggle.
Kiri likes making Tsyeyk happy, but playing Tom always feels awkward on her, a reminder of when she was Tām. She's never been Tom the way Tsyeyk was Jake; the memories that drape over him like a shroud are like wisps at the back of her mind.
It's the disconnection that intrigues her, the novelty of having to make something up instead of ripping it from someone else's mind. She likes playing Grandma and Grandpa, the human versions that they catch scattered glimpses of from time to time, the relatives that no one else on Pandora has ever met.
She gets a big kick out of roleplaying suburban domesticity, arguing about what to buy for dinner (imagine, buying dinner) or dreaming up fantastical "TV" programs for them to watch. And she loves kissing Tsyeyk the way a wife should kiss her husband, hungry and sharp-toothed.
Sometimes, she'll say I know what you did to Jakey, he says, and Tsyeyk will shiver as the memories buried five fathoms deep twist instead of him. Kiri rakes her nails gently over his inherited wounds and he revels in it, because that means it's real, opening his mouth with slack gratitude.
Kissing is, usually, enough for them. Too much touching reminds them how very alien they are, how they'll never be Jake and Tommy, how they'll never be Mom and Dad, they were born blue and they'll die blue.
Kissing, though--that's a normal gesture, in the face of everything. Kissing your brother and pretending not to know what it means, kissing your husband and pretending not to know what he's done. How ordinary, compared to the things they've done and the things they've become. How delightfully quaint.
And in the end, don't they deserve a bit of that?