Brin: I didn't, like, run off first thing this morning. I have to work, like all weekend because of taking off the other day and not showing up til Thursday.
Brin: I just didn't want you to think I was like, abandoning you after last night. Because I'm not. And I don't need space, so, come home tonight? Please?
Claudia: So, future birthday boy, what is on your wishlist for your birthday that's within my giving capabilities?
Claudia: I thought about purchasing movie tickets for every rated R movie released this summer in honor of turning 17, but then that would include movies like Resident Evil: Vendetta and Annabella: Creation, which seem more like punishments.
who: braxton & claudia
what: finger-painting and getting high
where: claudia’s bedroom
when: sunday, may 21st, afternoon
Claudia stood in front of her floor length mirror on the back of her bedroom door, debating on changing.
She tilted her head to the side, her short hair following along. She was wearing what she usually wore: a shirt buttoned all the way up, mostly clean except for the random splatters of oil paint. There was a rough shape of a heart in red paint that Brinley had one once with her index finger while she was high and came stumbling into Claudia's room after Claudia had texted her about recently arguing with her mother. (The early days when every fight cut deep.)
Her jeans were loose enough to hide the shape of her legs and were cuffed around the ankles, also splattered with paint. The back pockets had large green handprints on it, courtesy of Stella, also when incredibly high.
She brought her hands to her collar and unbuttoned the first four buttons. She didn't have much cleavage and her nude-colored bra wasn't enticing in the way that Brinley's or Stella's or Phoenix's multicolored bras and bralettes were. Flushing, she quickly buttoned her shirt again so the collar was resting properly against her throat.
(Confidence, Cohen.)
((It’s Braxton - she needs to get ahold of herself.))
While her attitudes regarding sexual relationships were counterintuitive to the way she presented herself, she never felt the need to change herself in anyway and she wasn't going to start with one of her dearest friends.
Her room was already set – the tarp was on the floor, the papers and watercolors and acrylic paints organized, the neatly rolled joint resting on a large ceramic plate she made when she was thirteen.
She was ready, but it was still a shock to her system when the doorbell rang.
Given that her mother didn't immediately call out to her, she assumed that her mother was in the studio, lost in whatever project she had put on hold while she was in contending with finals at the college. She glanced herself in the mirror one more time before shaking head, quickly making her way out of her room and down the winding staircase.
She didn't pause to open the door and greeted Braxton with a large smile. "Hey."
HAPPY BIRTHDAY 2 ME FROM THE BEST BEST BEST BIG BROTHER ANYONE COULD EVER ASK FOR @braxtonroberts !!! everyone say hello to BANDIT. don’t let the flower fool you. she’s definitely a fighter. 🐕 🐕 🐕 🐕 #besttwinever #braxtonbrinleyandbandit
who brinley and braxton
what after days of avoiding, brinley finally breaks once again
when late friday night, may 26th
a/n originally intended for tomorrow night but we finished hella early so if it seems like its a weird time of day in one place its bc i am half asleep when i tried to edit it xoxo. also, incest.
BRINLEY
It was all over the news, Camille’s face drowning in crocodile tears, the kind that made Brin roll her eyes.
“I watched her go.”
Brinley had known this, of course, and truthfully she should have gone to the cops with what she did know. How this wasn’t some random thing, that they’d been going to Junkie’s for months, Grayson never touching but almost.
But she had told her friends. Warned them, but no one wanted to believe her. No one trusted that Brin just might know what she was talking about. When you spent your life trying to numb everything, you weren’t taken very seriously.
She had thought about showing up on Phoenix’s doorstep with a box of wine coolers, a bottle of tequila and a baggie of Charlie’s best, despite having left her and Claudia only a couple hours ago. She had thought about going to Junkie’s herself to ‘celebrate’ the occasion. She’d thought about doing a lot of things, and instead she stayed where she was. Sitting on the living room couch, knees against her chest in her favorite pajama pants (a pair of Charlie’s, really, Braxton’s all returned to his room.) with a bottle of nail polish in her hands.
It had been a long time since she spent the night at home, alone.
Braxton was...somewhere, maybe screwing Charlie or Claudia since apparently he had the same taste as she did (irony that did not escape her), and her father was still missing, though Brin wasn’t too sad about that. He could stay that way forever, for all she cared.
(Except she did, care. Once upon a time, before puberty hit, before cheer and late nights out, her dad had been half her world. He’d been a good father, and then one day -
And how do you explain that when his relationship with her twin had never been that, not really. Braxton had been an accessory, a necessity. To keep one, you had to keep them both.)
So she flipped between channels, unable to sleep (and would she ever truly sleep normally again?), the late night news reporting on every channel with Stella’s latest instagram picture in the corner.
“Startling Family Secrets” read the tagline.
As if anything was startling anymore.
Braxton stumbled in as she was finishing her toenails, skin glistening with a light sheen of sweat from riding his bike and a surprised (but happy) look on his face to see her.
“Keys are on the counter,” she told him, blowing one last time at her toes and flicking the television off. “She’s low on gas, though, so you’ll have to fill her up before work.”
And with that, she left the room, not even waiting for whatever short answer he might have given in reply.
BRAXTON
When the news about Stella dropped, he felt like the only one really unaffected by it. Brin had been saying it for weeks and while no one else believed her, he hadn’t exactly ruled it out. Stella has run away, willingly, and that was the latest development. It felt like sure a non starter to him; maybe because he had his own shit to deal with. Too much shit, really.
Things with Charlie had settled down enough that Brax didn’t feel awkward around him. In a way, Brax was almost grateful for the fact he hadn’t been able to dwell on it. It made it a lot easier to talk to him about it once it was brought up. Because he hadn’t spent hours running it through his head, making it bigger than it was. He could just let it be… whatever it was.
But there were still things unsettled and while everyone was looking to Stella and Camille, Brax just wanted to figure his own stuff out. And his stuff, as it almost always did, centered around Brinley. She wasn’t acting like herself, and hadn’t since they’d come home from her almost across the border run. She had visited him at the station when he’d been locked up, but she didn’t talk to him as much as he talked about him to everyone else. And when he came home, she hadn’t come to his room like she always did. He’d had to go to hers, in desperate need of some comfort and physical affection - she was his only family, after all. He noticed she’d cleaned, something she only did when stressed. Even her sheets were different. They didn’t quite smell like her yet.
She was gone when he woke up the next morning. He thought maybe to work, but no, she’d just gone off with Charlie. Then with Phoenix. And he meant it when he told her - told everyone - that he didn’t want to be alone in the house. Never alone with Jack and never in the position that it could happen. If Brinley wasn’t there, he didn’t want to be either. She should have understood that immediately, but she didn’t seem to get it. So he’d stayed at Oliver’s, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that something was still really wrong with Brinley.
When Brax went to visit her at work, she pretended to be too busy for him. “You’re sitting in a chair,” he’d tried to joke and she just insisted that she had to make sure no one drowned. Which, yeah, very admirable but all he’d said was “hi” and “do you want a snack?”
And he couldn’t work it out in his head. He thought maybe she was somehow mad at him for how things had happened between him and Jack. Or she was regretting ever coming back with him. Or… that moment… the one he still wasn’t sure he’d processed..
So when nothing had really been figured out, he took his bike and rode around town, as fast and as far as he could. There was something about the way his muscles burned when he pushed the pedals, how the wind rushed by him because he allowed it to, and how he could build enough speed to outrun his thoughts that always made him feel better. It was like if he went fast enough, he could become a new person just by force alone.
But that feeling, that easy elation, faded as soon as he got back to the house and before he could even say “hi” Brinley had bounced off the couch and left the living room, a flippant reminder about gas in the car he didn’t even want to take.
“No, wait, hold on,” he said, trying to catch up as she went up the stairs but she’d gotten too much of a head start and he’d stumbled halfway up, hitting his knee. But still, he caught up to her just before she could open the door to her room, his hand wrapping around the knob as he wedged himself between her and the entrance.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“What are you doing?” he echoed, standing in front of her room and forcing her to look at him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
BRINLEY
“What do you mean, ‘what’s wrong with you’?”
It came out harsher than she’d intended, the words echoing around in her brain as he stared at her. Confused, definitely, but not understandably. It was like the other day hadn’t even happened for him. And maybe it was better that way, if he just pushed it aside, forgot all about it.
Brin wished she could have.
Instead it was at the forefront of her mind, the first thing she thought of when she woke up (alone, or with Phoenix, or with someone who just wasn’t Braxton) and the last thing she fell asleep agonizing over.
She’d kissed her brother. And he hadn’t kissed her back. What was wrong with her?
“You’re avoiding me,” Brax tried to argue, even as Brin pushed past him, rummaging around through her closet like she was actually going to go anywhere. (She wasn’t, but it was late on a Friday night and how was he supposed to know that?) “Did I - is it because of Jack?”
She dropped the shoes she’d been holding, spinning around on her heel in surprise. “About dad?” she questioned, not missing the slight flinch he made. (She wanted to write him off just as quickly as Brax had, tell him to go fuck himself and leave right that minute. But she only had one parent, and even if he was a shitty one, did she really want none?) “No, I’m pissed at him. Who do you think bought my new sneakers?”
Her grin came out as more of a grimace, but she put them away nonetheless with the rest of her cheer practice stuff, a little section organized in her closet in a way that it hadn’t been….ever. Jack barely kept the house clean, used to hire a maid service once a month to tidy up after them, no one had taught her how to pick up after herself. It took extraordinary stress to make her organize. Stress she’d only been through a handful of times before. And never quite so severe.
“Then why won’t you talk to me?” he asked, his voice quiet and sad and Brin could feel her heart breaking, her teeth worrying her bottom lip as she refused to look at him. It wasn’t fair, it just fucking wasn’t. Her heart was already breaking in a thousand pieces, why should she have to pretend it wasn’t so he’d be okay?
“I’ve been busy,” she replied flippantly, hoping to evade the subject as long as possible. “Figured you were busy with Charlie or Claudia. Your new beaus.”
The words were snide, just a twinge of jealousy and anger lying beneath them. She hadn’t meant to let it slip out but….there it was. And chances were, Braxton still wouldn’t even notice.
BRAXTON
“You keep saying that,” he said, shaking his head, still trying to get her attention. She was moving around her room like she had a reason to be but it was too stiff to actually mean anything. When Brinley moved, she moved with chaotic freedom, a flow to her that didn’t seem to be going anywhere until you got there and realized how exciting the whole thing had been. But this stiff, organized, methodical thing she was going just wasn’t her.
“You keep saying that,” he tried again, pressing his back against her door so that even if she rushed him, she couldn’t leave without talking to him. “But like, they’ve always been friends. You, you’re my best friend and you’re not talking to me.”
“I don’t have anything to talk to about,” she muttered. And he wasn’t sure what was worse: the fact that she was lying to him or the fact that maybe, after the drama passed, she didn’t see the need to bother herself with it.
“And what if I had something to talk to you about?” he asked, his voice quieter than he wanted it to be. “Because come on, Brin. This has been the worst fucking week of my life and I don’t know, I just thought you’d like… care about that. A little bit.”
She signed then, a softer voice than his before she turned around, just barely looking at him. “Of course I fucking care, Brax. I just don’t know what you want me to do about it.”
“Nothing,” he shrugged, taking a few steps towards her until he realized she’d stepped back. Away from him. Actually, physically away from him, like being close wasn’t something she could do anymore.
“Seriously?” he breathed, his teeth on edge.
“What?”
“You like backed up just now!”
“I so didn’t.”
“You did!” he said, taking one step and sure enough, just like before, she backed up. Just this time, she seemed to notice it, her eyes going a little wide with panic before she turned around and started fiddling with something on the table by her bed.
“Brin, please,” he begged. “Just… whatever it is, just tell me. Okay? I don’t know what I did and I don’t know why you’re mad at me or you’re - whatever at me. But you have to tell me because I’m really lost here.”
He was standing right behind her when she turned around and he didn’t think she realized it until she was looking directly at him, actually looking him in the eye. And he could see then how mixed with fear they were, how she was trying to hold it back, but he knew her better than he knew himself. He knew what she looked like when she was afraid. He knew because he spent most of his nights looking in those eyes while their dad stomped around downstairs. Or when his gaze lasted just a little too long or his attempts at paternal affection made Brinley shiver even under the two comforters she and Brax shared.
“What are you scared of?” he asked, reaching up and pressing his thumb against her chin to make sure she kept looking at him. He was blunt. The only way Brinley couldn’t ignore him.
BRINLEY
She swallowed thickly, but he held her still and she couldn’t even try and look away. Sure, if she had demanded it, he would have let her. He’d never lay a hand she didn’t ask for on her. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? She wanted more than what he could offer. Brinley Roberts, the heartbreaker, having her own heart broken by her very own twin.
“I’m not,” she told him, and he scoffed but let his hand drop. Only to her shoulders, fingers warm against her bare skin beneath her tank top, her own arms wrapping around her stomach. Scared. It was ludicrous, really, because she’d never been afraid of Braxton. Not physically, not mentally, but now…
Was it possible she was? A little? She’d been avoiding him for days, really, but it wasn’t out of fear. It was because she was hurt, and upset, and she’d be the first to admit that rejection was not something she often received. Maybe that was what was happening. Maybe she reacted to emotional pain the same way she did fear.
“I’m not,” she said again, more forcefully. “I’m a lot of things, but I’m not afraid of you.”
“Then tell me,” he pleaded, his entire face open and vulnerable and how, how, how did he always get to be the good one, the innocent one, while she was just the bitch?
“Tell you what, Braxton,” she snapped, finally getting angry about it. It was past due, she was sure, but she stepped out of his grasp, her arms crossing her chest as she stared him down. “You should know what’s wrong with me, you better than anyone. But you don’t. Because you don’t even care that I put myself out there for you, that I put myself on the line. And then you rejected me, Brax. And I get it, I really, truly do, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be all sunshine and daisies right away!”
Her voice had escalated, higher and higher and she knew - she could see it, plain as day - that this had somehow taken him by surprise. Like she could have possibly cared about anything else this deeply for this long. As if any other potential situation in the entire world would have cut her so deep.
“I’m sorry that dad arrested you,” she tried to say evenly, “but you don’t even know what happened when you left. And I know it wasn’t your choice, but fuck, Braxton, I had to spend an entire night alone in this house with him with your dresser against the door because I didn’t know what else to do! And I can’t sleep next to you anymore because it doesn’t make me feel like it did! Because now all I can think about is how you’re shoving your tongue down Charlie’s throat or how Claudia wants to fuck you now and why the hell shouldn’t you? Because your sister is crazy? Because I’m jealous? So I need some fucking space, okay, but you keep pushing and pushing and pushing and you - “
She let out a frustrated half-scream, storming around the room and sitting on her bed just to be as far away from his as possible. Just for the space she had been asking for for days upon days now. So she could figure herself out, figure out what had gone so intrinsically wrong in her wiring that this was her life.
And she didn’t care if he left or stayed. She was just exhausted and every day seemed to drain her more and more.
She wondered why she’d even come back to Ashbourne at all. Why she hadn’t left, alone, when she could have.
BRAXTON
Well, he’d asked for it. And there it was, all spilling out of her in a way that made him feel so fucking guilty for not getting it. But he’d been so shocked, so unprepared when she kissed him that he hadn’t even been able to focus on what was happening, much less what it might mean. Or even mean to her. And with everything that happened immediately after, he’d been so…
Exhausted. So fucking drained that he’d gone numb. Feelings weren’t a real thing because he couldn’t feel them. Nothing happening was real, much less the fact that his sister had made a move on him. Like, it barely even registered in the grand scheme of fucked up things happening in his fucked up life.
His mistake had been not seeing how much it registered to her, how much it mattered to her. Because now all her comments about Charlie - who must have told her that they’d kissed - and this thing about Claudia - who wanted to fuck him? What? - and how he didn’t need her or want her, that somehow she’d believed he’d pick anyone else in the world over her-
It hit him. Like nothing else in his life, not even Jack Robert’s fist against his head. Hard and fast, like whatever block had been inside of him that kept all of this at bay finally broke. It broke because Brinley broke. Because she screamed and yelled and she was hurt and she felt like something was wrong with her and that meant something was wrong with them and he couldn’t handle that. He couldn’t deal with that. Nothing in his world had to make sense but she did. Brinley had to be Brinley and he had to be Braxton and together they had to be what they’d always been.
She was on the opposite side of the bed, her back to him but he lunged forward anyway, his knee sinking into the middle of the mattress until she tilted backwards, losing her balance because of his sudden move. She swirled around, already ready to yell at him again. But her face was in his hands, fingers tangled in her hair and caught on the shell of her ear.
And this time, he kissed her. Frantic, and hard and it might have felt like he had something to prove but really… yeah, he did. Because she didn’t get it either. He hadn’t rejected her. He knew how to reject someone. He’d just been so tired and surprised and maybe he was the one who’d been scared. Maybe he was the one who was really afraid to show any kind of real emotion. But he’d never had to be that way with her. Until that moment. Until it all crashed and forgot to make sense for a second.
But he kissed her. He did it this time. And when he pulled away, she looked dazed. But she looked at him still.
“You,” he said as sternly as he could, as serious and insistent, “are the most important thing in this world, okay? I would never let anything happen to you. I love you. I kissed Charlie once. I’ve done nothing with Claudia. You aren’t… crazy. You’re just miles ahead.”
She didn’t say anything but he still held onto her, stroking her cheek with the pad of his thumb as he settled a bit more gently into the middle of her bed. He had no idea what he’d just done. What it might mean. But maybe… maybe she’d get him now too. Now that he got her. Now that he thought he did.
“I’ll give you space, okay?” he whispered, still touching her. “But don’t ever think I’d trade anyone for you. You, Brinley, are the only family I have. Whatever that has to mean, maybe it’s different now. Or maybe it’s always been different. But nothing you do or say or think or feel or anything will ever, ever make me go away. Ever.”
