bellacissy - the summer after andy leaves
it’s both bella and cissy sneaking into andy’s bed after she’s gone. it’s the room already being stripped bare by their parents, now a guest room that they’ll never use, like andy never even existed. it’s clinging to memories of the three of them tangled up in that same bed, giggling together late at night, andy kissing them both goodnight, a silly, innocent, sisterly routine.
it’s the only traces of andy that they can find being in each other.
they’re desperately trying to fill the gap that andy left behind, the barrier she always was between them - both physically between them on the bed when they were little and in terms of her being the middle sister. she was always between them, balancing them, and without her things just swing wildly into extremes. the oldest and the youngest sister become just the older and the younger sister. the innocent pecks on the lips become something much more than that.
trying to fill the void that andy left by pulling each other closer than ever before, and to them they don’t see it as weird, it’s just like . comfort. they just miss their sister and want her back and don’t know how to express that. bella wants to take care of cissy and be her protector and try to make sure that she won’t leave like andy did. cissy wants the comfort and to be looked after and bella looks so much like andy that, in the middle of the night, when she can feel bella, maybe she can pretend that andy’s still there.
and it’s only for this one summer, in the immediate aftermath of andy leaving, and they never speak about it or tell anyone. it’s insular and intimate and they never even consider that there might be something weird about it. and maybe in public they’re more distant than usual bc they haven’t got andy to tether them together, to be the bridge between them, but in private, at night, in andy’s bed, where they can allow themselves to miss andy, even if they still don’t speak about it, they have this brief, intense, desperate, miserable, twisted closeness that transgresses the boundary that had always been between them when andy was there, when they were sisters like they were supposed to be, the three of them.
