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"I can't believe I let you talk me into this." Roman muttered as he watched Remus lay out items on a table next to them. The brothers were sitting in Roman's room after Roman had doublechecked that his door was locked - he didn't want any of the other sides walking in on them. Not today.
The smile on Remus's face would have looked at home on the Cheshire cat who got both the cream and the canary. "But you did! After all, you promised, and a prince keeps his promises~!" he ended on a sing-song. "Of course," he paused, eyes sparkling with mischief, "We could call this off if you wanna renege and tell me what I want to know."
Roman fidgeted, biting his lip as he looked away. "I told you. The secret is of no importance."
"Now, now." Remus tapped his brother's nose. "Importance is in the eye of the beholder. Or in this case, the finger!" he cackled.
Roman sighed as Remus took a thin rubberband and began tying it around the middle of Roman's right pinkie finger. Roman watched the rubber go around and around, stretched so tight it made the flesh around it go white. It was something Thomas had done hundreds of times before back when they were a teenager, long before fidget toys were invented and you had to make your own fun. Something Thomas had done when bored, when stressed, or when simply playing, and Logan had chided them over and over again to be careful, about the risks of cutting off circulation. Now Roman had agreed to something much more risky, something he was sure the others wouldn't understand or approve of. But mutilation of the manifestation of his form was nothing compared to the secret that whispered underneath his skin - object impermanence rendered any physical damage they dealt to each other easily mended, while giving voice to his secret would damage the fragile truce between the brothers beyond repair.
Remus thrust his hand holding a second rubberband under Roman's nose, and he shook himself out of his reverie. Plucking the rubberband out of Remus's loose grip, he dutifully wrapped it tightly around the middle of Remus's right pinkie finger. He wrapped it just as tightly as Remus had, straining the rubber to the point he was almost worried it might snap. But the rubberband was just a mental construct, like Remus and Roman and everything else inside Thomas's head, and it would hold strong for as long as Remus and Roman willed it to hold. Roman glanced at his own pinkie finger again - it was quickly passing the flushed red stage and starting to turn a faint shade of purple. Remus giggled to himself as he watched his own finger rapidly change colors to match.
"No," Roman shook his head as Remus reached for a large punchbowl that had more ice than water in it. "That's not going to work, not if we're supposed to soak our fingers for an hour. I'm not going to sit here and wait for you to come up with some excuse to 'accidentally' dump the bowl over my lap."
Remus rolled his eyes and gestured, waving his fingers over the punchbowl and it shivered, splitting into two like a cell going through mitosis. The smaller bowls shrank until they were each the size of a large mug. "Better?" Remus asked, handing one of the mug-bowls to Roman.
"Much," Roman said, and stuck his banded pinkie finger into the icy water. It didn't feel too bad for the first few seconds, but it quickly began to sting. Roman bit his lip, determined that if Remus could withstand the sensation, he could too. He cast sideways glances at Remus, who seemed unaffected by the cold as he used his free hand to load a playlist on youtube for them to watch on his laptop while they waited. Roman squinted, suspicious. The cheater had probably turned off his nerve endings so he couldn't feel his finger. Either that, or the self-mutilation Remus regularly practiced had given him an extremely high tolerance for pain. Well, Roman was a brave and strong prince, and he could withstand the pain too!
Roman let himself get distracted by the videos Remus was playing, and soon enough the pain eased as his finger went numb in the icy cold water. A few more videos passed before an invisible timer dinged and Remus snapped his fingers, the laptop vanishing into a wisp of smoke.
"It's time!" Remus shrieked, literally bouncing in his chair as he set the cups of melted ice aside, splashing water across the table.
Roman squinted at his finger, which had turned an odd shade of splotchy purple and was puffy and wrinkled from the cold soak. "Are you sure that was long enough?"
Remus picked up a sewing needle from his table of tools and, in the blink of an eye, stabbed Roman's pinkie.
"Ow!" Roman said, reacting more mentally than physically - he hadn't felt the prick, his finger was still numbed from the cold and lack of circulation, but a drop of blood sprang up scarlet against the mottled skin.
"Don't be a baby, you didn't even feel it." Remus licked the blood away from Roman's fingertip before he could pull his hand away, and stabbed his own pinkie. "Yep, I'm sure!" he said, licking away his own blood.
"Gross," Roman winced. This was going to be way harder than he thought. "There's gotta be better ways to do this."
"Better?" Remus considered for a moment, cocking his head to the side. "Maybe. Easier? Certainly. More fun?" he grinned dementedly. "No way."
"I think you need to re-evaluate your definition of 'fun'."
"And I think you need to stop stalling!" Remus wiggled his right hand in front of Roman's face, and the swollen digit made Roman feel a little ill. He was glad he hadn't eaten today, or else he was sure he would hurl before this was over. "Do you wanna take turns, or do it at the same time?"
"Same time." Roman reluctantly decided. If he went first, he'd have to watch Remus take his turn, and if he went second he'd probably lose his nerve. Besides, the faster this was over, the better.
"Sounds good to me!" Remus took Roman's right hand with his left, and Roman echoed the movement. They each guided their brother's pinkie finger to their mouths, teeth resting on the last joint.
"On twee?" Remus's voice was muffled around Roman's finger. Roman nodded, and closed his eyes - he didn't want to see what would happen next. Remus grunted once, twice-
On the third grunt, they each bit down. Hard. Human incisor teeth were not typically sharp enough to part flesh, but Roman's jaw had the figurative strength of the entire imagination behind it, and there was a wet crunch as he crushed through skin and flesh and bone. Cold, salty blood flooded his mouth and Roman gagged, spitting the chunk of finger and mouthful of bloody saliva into his left hand. He didn't want to look at Remus, but he couldn't feel anything from his numbed finger and the curiosity was too much to resist.
Remus looked euphorically happy, Roman's blood smeared across his mouth like lipstick. He could see Remus's jaw moving back and forth, and realized that his brother must be rolling the tip of his finger around in his mouth like a hard candy. Remus licked his stained lips, and Roman looked away.
His gaze fell to his own right hand, where the last segment of his pinkie finger was missing, a void where matter should have existed. The bite was sharp and clean, and Roman realized belatedly that Remus's sharper teeth had done a much more surgical job of slicing through, and that Remus had sucked the blood away from his fingertip. Roman felt a little ashamed at the ragged, bloody tear he'd left of Remus's finger in comparison.
"Is that it? Are we done?”
“Almost.” Remus hummed, and Roman’s stomach sank to the floor as he continued, “You hafta swallow it.”
“No effing way.” Bile rose in his throat, choking him as he imagined trying to swallow the nub of flesh floating in the palm of his hand. “Hell no.”
Remus made an exaggerated swallowing motion, and smacked his lips as if the tip of Roman's finger had been the most delicious delicacy he'd ever tasted. Roman realized with horror that Remus wasn’t going to back down on this. “You promised~!” Remus sang, the threat in his voice as sharp as his teeth - if Roman backed out now, Remus would consider it a challenge and devote all his twisted creativity towards making Roman regret it.
“Through the teeth, past the gums, look out stomach, here it comes.” Roman groaned under his breath, and closed his eyes. He tossed back the contents of his palm, swallowing as quickly as he could. He still gagged, but managed to keep it from making a reappearance as he grabbed one of the mug-bowls of melted ice water and chugged it, trying to wash away the taste of saliva, blood, and bile. Setting the emptied bowl aside with a grimace, he wiped his hands clean on a handkerchief. “Anything else?” he gritted out.
Remus clapped excitedly, “Nope! That was it!”
“Thank Zeus.” Roman wiggled his right hand and - between one blink and the next - his pinkie finger was restored to normal, the rubberband vanishing into thin air. He rubbed the joint, twisting the fingertip one way and the other as phantom pain made the finger ache. There was no damage, not even a scar, but Roman kept rubbing his finger as if he couldn't quite believe the finger was intact again.
“I think I’m gonna keep it for a while,” Remus gazed at the stump of his finger, turning it this way and that like a woman admiring a new engagement ring. “It’s not every day I manage to talk you into a little mutual cannibalism. Today’s a red-letter day!”
“You’re sick.” Roman complained, his face squinched up in disgust.
Remus winked, “You know you love me.” He wiggled his bloody hand at Roman. “Byyyyeeeeeeeee!” he sang as he sank out of Roman’s room.
“Yeah,” Roman murmured as he stared at his unblemished pinkie finger, his secret making the words taste as bitter as cold blood in his mouth, “I do.”