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“Hello? Me?” Thiu greets as he steps into their—our—pitch-black flat. He flicks the light switch on as he scans the sad lump of blankets on the couch. It looks as though he hasn’t moved an inch since he’d left their place this morning; he can’t claim to be surprised. “What are you—we up to?”
“Ugh,” mumbles the pile of blankets.
“Interesting. What else?” he asks as he nudges his other half aside, curling up near the armrest. For a moment, he considers yanking the covers to the floor, but seeing his face marred with puffy eyes and tear streaks somewhat disgusts him. The other Thiu looks better with a smile he thinks. His purple eyebags are still prominent and his teeth are yellow, sure, but making him smile is Thiu’s favorite thing to do; self-love at its finest.
“Fuck off,” he states with no real malice.
“My, aren’t we testy today?” A beat of silence. Then two. “Do you—“
“No,” he interrupts. Thiu bristles, reaching out and poking what he thinks is his shoulder.
“You don’t know what I was going to say.”
“Yeah, I do; you’re me. I don’t want more candy.”
“Okay, well, that wasn’t what I was going to say, so.” Thiu was going to suggest stuffing themselves with more candy, but his snippy self doesn’t need to know that.
“So?” He finally emerges from his blanket nest, face pallid and hair bedraggled like he’s been tearing his fingers through it. It’s out of their customary ponytail too; he sort of wants to run his fingers through those greasy strands. Thiu would presumably slap his hand away, however, so he discards the thought as quickly as it emerges.
“So it’s a Friday night. Let’s do something fun!” He doesn’t give his counterpart room to talk as he beelines toward the cabinet, intent on getting so wasted he forgets that they’re one soul split into two bodies. “Since when were we a tequila person?”
“… Vivian said it would help. I don’t know.” He sounds no louder than a whisper.
“Help what?”
“I don’t know.”
Thiu shakes his head, liberally filling two disposable cups with his best estimate of a double shot. Either they’re going to have an incredible night or he’ll end up taking care of a drunk, blubbering Thiu—he already takes care of him sober, so it’s not like this plan has any real downsides. Who knows? Maybe he’ll even get a hand job later. It’s the least he deserves for putting up with a pathetic bastard like himself with minimal complaint. “Cheers?”
“Seriously? I doubt that alcohol would—”
“Quit being a whiny bitch and take the shot, will you? God, it’s like we’re allergic to fun.”
“...” Thiu reluctantly takes the cup, regarding the drink as if it’ll spontaneously gain life and attack him, clutching it on top of his thigh while he makes quick work of his own shot, swallowing the burning sensation down with a quick swipe of his hand across his mouth. “Is there no soda in here?”
“What did I just say?”
Thiu watches with smug satisfaction as his other self tilts his throat back, screwing his eyes shut as he chokes down far too much tequila. He never noticed how slender his neck is before; it’d be really easy to strangle him. It’d be really easy to sink his teeth into that malleable flesh, chew on the steady thumpthumpthump of his pulse like a dog with its favorite toy. “I have an incredibly biteable neck.”
“W-what?” Thiu stammers, hunching his shoulders, face flushing so hotly that if he were to flatten his palm against his cheek, he would burn himself. “Don’t say that.”
“It was only an observation.” He snickers as he pivots to the kitchen to pour another round of shots. “Would you let me?”
“Do what?” Thiu seems to connect the dots a split second after his hand curls around the base of his cup. “Holy shit, no, you’re not biting my neck. You’re trying to fucking kill me again!”
“Well, you’re no fun.”
“Oh, I’m sorry that I don’t want the guy who tried to stab me when we met anywhere near my neck!”
“Our neck technically. I know you’d enjoy it, and you know exactly why I know that.” With that, Thiu gives up on the pretense of taking shots and retrieves the entire bottle. The living room is already softening at the edges, lights brighter than usual; the weightless, heady feeling of alcohol is something they (he) should indulge in more often. He passes the bottle to Thiu, head lolling back on the couch as he studies the faint hairline cracks dotted across their ceiling through half-lidded eyes. “Hey, turn on a movie or something, I’m sick of listening to the downstairs neighbors.”
When no sound cuts through the heavy bass pumping through their floor, he lets his head roll to the side to find Thiu already watching him intensely, chewing on his bitten-raw bottom lip, much to his surprise. They don’t say anything, merely staring each other down; he can’t tell what he’s thinking, which is a bit strange because shouldn’t he already know? They finish each other’s sentences and each other’s thoughts; they’re quite literally two halves of one whole, yet Thiu is drawing a blank trying to figure out what emotion is flickering in the other’s eyes.
“If I uh—“ He clears his throat before he laces his fingers together in his lap, unsteady and uncomfortable in his actions like the amalgamation of negative emotions this bitch—himself, fuck—perpetually is. “Never mind.”
“Spit it out,” groans Thiu, reaching for the bottle. Sometimes, he has no clue how he lives with himself.
“If I kissed you right now, how illegal do you think that would be?”
He can’t help the derisive laugh that bubbles out of him, overpowers the thrum of their neighbors below. “Are you fucking kidding?”
“O-oh! Screw you, you’re reacting exactly how I thought you would—y-you’re the one who—you asked me to blow you—“
“And?” Thiu grins, elbowing himself in the side. And then he takes a moment to think about it while the other Thiu is busy guzzling down tequila as though his life depends on it. He’s not entirely proud of taking advantage of himself to get his dick wet… but if it’s himself seducing him then how could he be at fault?
He’s sure his brand of logic doesn’t entirely make sense, but he grabs the bottle out of Thiu’s hand, taking a small swig for himself before he yanks the other’s hair back and sinks his teeth into his collarbone. He emits some sort of strangled sound; it doesn’t matter who, they are both the same.
Skin bruised maroon, drool on his lips, he lets up. “You need to take a shower.”
Thiu gapes at him, rubs a hand over the expanse of his neck, redirects his gaze to anywhere but at him for a few charged seconds. Two empty cups lie abandoned on the laptop. Both clatter to the floor when Thiu scrambles across the couch to clamber onto his lap, lanky arms locking behind his torso. He clumsily aligns his lips with his and he has a second to think wow, this is pretty fucked up before the other Thiu is tentatively licking along the seam of his mouth. Can I still write this off as masturbation if there’s kissing involved?
Shoving down the small bit of hesitation threatening to climb up his throat, he wraps his arms around the other’s narrow waist and parts his lips. Tequila is all he can taste alongside the remnants of an earlier candy binge and, strangely enough, himself. He never would’ve guessed that spit had a flavor, but he supposes that was before he had his tongue probing around his mirror image’s teeth. He draws a shaky moan out of Thiu when he presses their chests closer together, raising a concerned eyebrow once he notices how hard the other’s heart is jackhammering, like it’s three rapid beats away from escaping the confines of his ribcage.
“I feel like you’re liking this a little too much,” states Thiu, turning his face away so his other half can’t drag him back in like he’s a piece of meat tossed to a starved dog. His lips are currently stamped onto his cheek like an unwarranted branding and his arms tighten around him, a possessiveness Thiu didn’t think he had in him. Or the other him. Himself? Themselves? Even though it’s been a little while since he was split into two bodies, he still doesn’t quite know how to refer to him, me, I, Thiu, every idiotic pronoun in existence.
“You like it as much as me,” Thiu eventually replies as he smacks a wet kiss on the underside of his jaw. A hand dips below his hemline into his boxers. “You’re me, I’m you, I know you want this to happen, you know I want this to happen, it’ll be so good, you asked me first, you want me as much as I want you and I’m tired of—“
Jesus fucking Christ. “You aren’t supposed to want me. We’re the same person!”
Thiu licks a long stripe down his neck. “Not right now, no.”
He thinks he’s going to say something else, but the response never comes. Not a verbal one anyway. The hand on his ass tentatively squeezes and he assumes that’s when Thiu will back down, right up until he withdraws his hand to anchor his head where he wants him, sweeping him into another crushing kiss that reeks of tequila and desperation. He wishes he would’ve taken more shots, hell, finished the bottle off. This whole mess is unraveling threads in his body that weren’t meant to be snapped; a hand job or anything sexual with the suffix of job is one thing, but having a snog with yourself? That’s a little too narcissistic for him and frankly, he’s shocked that it’s his depressed half that’s scheming to escalate their relationship to this extent.
“Dude,” escapes as a breathless demand when he succeeds in his third attempt to free his jaw from Thiu’s iron grip. “What’s with all this—“ He gestures uselessly. “Like, why is your hand not already on my dick? Let’s get this over with.”
Thiu scrutinizes him, all dark eyebags and darker intentions, and for the first time in his short life, he feels a sliver of fear settle in his bones. Cold and unrelenting. And a hint of desire which amplifies the fear. “Get this over with? What the fuck is your problem?”
“My problem is that all we’re doing so far is kissing and it’s starting to feel like—like you enjoy kissing yourself way too much. You know we’re going to merge back eventually, don’t you?”
“No,” he states simply.
“No?”
“No. I refuse to merge back. I vehemently deny your suggestion.”
For a second, Thiu thinks about grabbing the knife and having a second go at offing him. He looks at him, at his crossed arms, at the incredibly noticeable bulge digging into his thigh, at the hard line of his swollen mouth tugged into a defiant frown, at himself. The bottle is a siren’s call that Thiu blindly answers, imbibing from the tip as he pretends that his other half isn’t toying with loose strands of his hair, isn’t surveying him with wantwantwant thrumming through his veins. For a second, Thiu thinks about unlatching a window and jumping out with him, free-falling like Icarus to the pavement, two mangled bodies where there should only be one marring the dirty sidewalk below, their remains so intertwined they’d be buried in one coffin.
“Seriously?”
“Fuck you,” Thiu replies, fingernails cutting so deeply into his hoodie, there’ll probably be crescent-shaped moons embedded in his skin.
“Well, that was the idea at first,” says Thiu. “Now I’m not so sure.”
“Y-you’re such an asshole—it’s okay for you to hit on me, but when—when I finally reciprocate, you change your mind?”
“I wasn’t hitting on you; I was trying to get off! It’s just masturbation when it’s yourself after all. And we will be merging back so—“
“No,” interjects Thiu. He wonders where all this boldness is stemming from—isn’t his depressed half supposed to be spineless? “I’m not giving you up, not when this is the first time I’ve actually felt sort of… happy.”
There’s a faint ringing in his ears. He sputters out a half-baked “There’s something seriously wrong with you.” Mostly, he doesn’t know what to think.
“That just means we’re both fucked up.”
And yeah, maybe his other half has a point. They are the same person. It hasn’t escaped his notice how much he enjoys doting on himself, how much he likes poking and prodding and teasing the other for a glimpse of any emotion besides melancholy, how he’s fallen asleep with the blissful thought of his lips sealed around his dick more than once. How they’re constantly touching each other, how they wake up with limbs intertwined like a human tapestry, how they are two halves of one whole that shouldn’t have been separated in the first place. But here they are.
He tells himself it’s the tequila that has led to this maelstrom of a Friday night when he reconnects their lips. It’s the tequila that has Thiu grinding on his thigh while he’s sucking languid hickeys across the pale breadth of his skin. It’s the tequila that has Thiu unzipping his jeans and honest-to-god nuzzling his shaft before taking him in.
When he awakens in the morning with Thiu curled into him, snoring softly and looking peaceful for once, he drags a hand through Thiu’s hair and sighs. Neither of them remembered to close the blinds last night, and the sunlight is too much, too hot for his aching eyes to acknowledge. He wonders if they should talk about the events that transpired. He wonders if Thiu wants this to be their relationship moving forward. In the wake of a new morning, he finds that he’s not as disturbed as he was initially by the idea.
Maybe he’s more narcissistic than he thought.