"We're twins," Menja continued. "And... while we might have... very close feelings for each other, it wouldn't be appropriate for them to be anything but sisterly."

Don't get turned on. Don't get turned on. Don't— Oh God, Fenja's blouse was practically bursting open at the seams, were her tits that big?

"It's like a hierarchy," Fenja said. "Some things are more acceptable than others. For a hypothetical example... incest. Less acceptable than say... homosexuality. And considering our background, and yours, some things might be highly frowned upon."

Holy shit, they were totally coming on to her.

"I'm not sure I follow," Rune said. She swallowed, her lips suddenly dry.

Menja shifted on the couch, her legs— and weren't they long— pressing against Rune from hip to thigh. Rune chanced a glance down and nearly bit her tongue when she saw how Menja's skirt was riding up, nearly to her hip. Any more and she'd be showing off her panties. If she has panties, a small, treacherous voice said in the back of her mind.

"Hypothetically," Menja said. And her hand came to rest on Rune's thigh. Not stroking, not moving, just resting, waiting. "Hypothetically, it might be more acceptable for a say... lesbian tryst to occur, than say... an incestuous one. And if two of the members of this tryst happen to be sisters, well..."

"Menage a trois," Fenja added hurriedly.

"Hypothetically," Rune said slowly. "If I were to go into the other room, where there's a bed for when I spend the night, and two women were to join me there."

The twins nodded, both faces taut and tense.

"In this hypothetical example," Rune continued, her head nearly popping off with anticipation because they were fucking into her. "I would definitely not mention it to anyone, because lesbianism isn't exactly acceptable. So I certainly couldn't say that I was involved with Fenja and Menja, because I'd be in trouble too."

She smiled slyly, raising her eyebrows at the older women. The twins exchanged a long look, nodded, and then turned to Rune again, wearing identical smiles. She couldn't get another word out before the twins stood, caught her under each arm, and carried her toward the bedroom. Was it demeaning to be carried like a little girl by two teens? A little.

But she wasn't going to mention it. Just like she wasn't going to mention that the Herrens were related to the Biermanns by blood and marriage.

Because it was all hypothetical.

Tinker & Taylor (CYOA)

(Автор: serapheus)

Well...this kinda exploded into something bigger than I thought. A bit over 2.1 thousand words. Damn good for me, I wasn't expecting more than a few hundred when I started.

Ah, I don't exactly have a name for this premise/snippet. -thoughtful—

Anyways, have snippet and enjoy

— — — — — — —

Silence.

There are many different kinds of silence.

The companionable silence of friends, the yawning silence of a graveyard, the oppressive silence when you're alone in the wilderness at night, the tense silence you get when you and your buddies are waiting in a trench for the call to go, the sheepish silence after someone makes a completely unexpected joke and nobody knows how to react, the comfortable silence when you're sitting in your backyard looking up at the stars, and all sorts of other kinds of silence.

That said, most silences weren't actually, y'know, silent. A living world rarely is, even if the only thing you can hear is your own breathing.

Right now? I could hear the sound of butter sizzling in a frying pan, the electric 'hum' of the heating elements in a toaster, the quiet thrum of an old refrigerator compressor, the clitter-clack of a metal whisk in a glass bowl, the quiet click of the stove top turning on again, the whirr of the kitchen's ceiling fan with the slightly wobbling tone it ahd gained from the little imbalances it had picked up over the years, and thanks to the fact that I was listening for it I could also just make out the sounds the room's other occupant was making.

I had to fight the urge to rip the fan down and fix it and make it faster and make it quieter and make it—

But if I had to describe the 'silence' that was flooding the room with its miasma like feeling, I'd have to call it an 'awkward silence'.

And if I had to elaborate on that, then I'd call it the kind of awkward silence one gets the morning after they have sex with someone but don't actually know if the other person enjoyed it beyond that night and whether or not they would want to have anything to do with you after this or if it was going to turn into something that was never ever mentioned or even acknowledged, even if it meant the world to you, because your partner just doesn't want to deal with what happened.

Adding in the fact that she hadn't shown any real attraction to girls in the past and she was probably having a bit of an identity crisis in addition to the other identity crisis she was probably having.

Oh, and she's my sister. So yeah;

Awkward. Silence.

I tapped the whisk against the side of the bowl to get the last of the omelet mixture off of it and tossed it into the sink beside me. I checked the frying pan and rolled the melted butter around to fix any spot that hadn't been covered yet before lifting the bowl and tipping the egg goop into the pan which quickly began to hiss as it started cooking.

I picked up the silicone, heat proof flipper that had been a present from dad and tried not think about that as I fiddled with the edges of the omelet.

Then I sighed as I had to just let damn stuff cook and promptly grimaced at the unpleasant feeling that had settled over the room.

I watched the egg whiten as it heated for a moment before sighing again and reaching up to scratch at the back of my neck.

Screw awkward silences.

"So~" I said, dragging the word out for probably a bit too long as I glanced over my shoulder "Why were you slowly crushing our alarm clock into the nightstand anyways?"

The fifteen year old brunette with long curly hair, and looking frankly far too adorable for just wearing an old flannel shirt and a pair of panties, turned pink, well pinker, at my question and ducked her head before mumbling something indistinct.

"Huh?" I cupped an ear, "Speak up, sis, I couldn't hear you over your sheer embarrassment"

Her head snapped up and she glared at me with venomous bright green eyes.

"I said, it was beeping and I couldn't reach it because someone was hanging onto me like a fucking limpet, Ellen!" Taylor, my darling twin sister, groused out.

Ellen Hebert, which would be me, turned more towards her and grinned slyly.

"So you decided to make the alarm clock flip over and bump it repeatedly into the nightstand until it stopped beeping, nevermind that it wasn't even the thing that was beeping to begin with."

She growled at me, snagged a fork out of the gallery of things that she had slowly orbiting above her head and brandished it menacingly in my direction.

"I don't want to hear it from the person who started taking said clock apart while they were lecturing me about breaking it."

I stuck my tongue out at her in response before turning back to the omelet and flipping it with a very well practiced flick of my wrist.

"C'mon, sis, I didn't even realize that I was doing it." I said, waving my flipper over my shoulder at her, "You can't blame me for that."

Taylor 'harumph'ed at me and I heard her flop back down into her chair.

"Then you can't blame me for trying to grind the clock into dust."

I snorted and gave her a look over my shoulder.

"Of course I can. Not only could I put the clock back together afterwards but I am your big sister and that makes me blameless and you not."

"You're older by a minute," She said, and I could practically hear her rolling her eyes as she did, "And you're not exactly a 'big' sister, are you?"

I paused in plating the finished three cheese and three egg omelet to glower back at her and waved my flipper threateningly in her direction.

"Come over here and say that, dear sister."

She stuck her tongue out at me.

"And besides, I'm older by-"

"One minute and twelves seconds, exactly." Taylor interrupted with a groan in her voice, "You've only said it a few million times, Ellen. Get some new material already, please."

I sniffed haughtily and dropped the plated omelet in front of my sister with an expression of grand disdain before glancing at the disassembled remains of two alarm clocks, a radio, and an old fifty gig hard drive and had to fight the urge to start picking through the bits and pieces and make them fit into the blueprint that had suddenly flashed into existence in the back of my brain.

I had to clench my hand around the handle of my silicone utensil hard enough for my knuckles to pop before I managed to force myself to return to the stove top and tossed another pat of butter onto the pan with a violent gesture.

I could feel Taylor's worried eyes boring into the back of my head and waved a hand at her.

"Eat up already, c'mon. You think I made that just for you to look at?"

She let out a choked off laugh and a few moments later I could hear the sounds of cutlery on platery.

Yes, I said platery. My mother was a professor of literature, I can make up words whenever I feel like it.

Shut up.

I absently fiddled with the heat controls of the stove top before I heard a click and reached out to snap the just popped pieces of toast out of the air. I flicked my wrist and tossed them behind me with no more warning than an abrupt 'think fast'.

I glanced behind me and pouted at the sight of the toast floating a couple feet out from my sister.

"Cheater." I said with a moue of annoyance.

She swallowed a bite of egg and grinned smugly at me.

"Who was it again that said 'if you're not cheating, you're not trying', hmm?"

I threw up a hand in disgust as I turned back to the stove-top.

"Bah, my own teachings used against me by my student." I groused as I poured another bowlful of omelet goop into the pan "What is the world coming to?"

Taylor snickered behind me and I had to fight the urge to dance in triumph at getting the happy sound out of her after...

After that happened.

I shook my head, hard, and forced myself to focus on my omelet.

After a minute or so I heard Taylor sniff at the air.

"Huh."

I half turned to look at her and caught her frowning at me with her head tilted quizzically.

"What?"

"Have you got the burner on high?"

I blinked, turned back to the stove, and flipped the omelet, taking in the darker than usual cooked side.

"Yeah...guess I do."

"Don't you usually like your omelets...light?" She queried and I could hear the caution in her tone.

I hummed thoughtfully and tapped the back of a fingernail against the control knob set to high.

"Yeah. Yeah, usually I do." I said in a contemplative tone.

I quickly flipped the omelet again to check the underside before turning off the stove top and plating my eggs. As I turned around I caught Taylor's worried expression and sighed.

"You think that was, um..." She paused and chewed on her lip for a moment "Overlap or something?"

I considered that for a moment. Then I put the plate of omelet down on the kitchen table before closing my eyes and focusing on the knot of...something that felt almost like awareness in the back of my mind, coiled tightly around the well of not-mine memories that had appeared in my head when I'd woken up this morning.

And then I poked it with a metaphorical stick.

It, or 'he' maybe, grumbled something sleepily in the weird non-wordy-thinking-concept way it had communicated with earlier. Before it had decided to take a nap of course.

'Hey, you. Yeah, you. Are you the reason I'm making my eggs all tough and overcooked.'

He, it, whatever, grumpled something in reference to my disturbing their nap that tasted like a rotten egg smelt before it seemed to shake itself and I could feel that subtle awareness of it actually focusing on me. Or more specifically, on my memories of the past few minutes.

After a few seconds I could feel it thinking, a feeling that was something like a feather made of steel tracing over my skin while a slow jazz band played in the back of the room, and then it buzzed with confirmation, in a sensation that sounded like sex felt and I shivered involuntarily as I drew myself back away from the deep of my mind.

"Yeah...yeah, it was overlap." I said, my voice just a little too husky and throaty on that first word to hide my sudden arousal.

Taylor went pink for a second before shaking her head and focusing worried eyes on me.

"You okay?"

I hummed noncommittally, sat down at the table, and eyed the well fried omelet before me.

After a moment I held out a hand towards my sister.

"Fork."

"Hmrph?" Taylor asked, through a mouthful of toast.

I glanced up at her before flicking a gesture at all of the crap she still had floating around her, for 'testing purposes' as she called it.

"Fork."

Her eyes widened in understanding and a fork separated from the 'stuff' and slowly floated down to me.

"Still can't accelerate anything quickly?" I asked as I plucked the fork out of the air.

Taylor gulped down her mouthful and hummed as she looked up at the cloud of things.

"I'm starting to think I won't be able to. I can accelerate anything in my field at a constant rate, even ignore the velocity loss there should be from making them curve into a circle, but..."

"Nothing above a certain amount per second per second."

Taylor nodded in agreement and took another bite of egg before glancing between my own cheesy omelet and me.

I sighed in distaste and glowered at the ugly thing on my plate. I tilted my head to look at it from a couple angles before grumping quietly and ripping a chunk of it off with my fork.

I eyed the bit on my fork for another long moment before closing my eyes and stuffing it into my mouth.

Chew.

Gulp.

I considered for a moment before opening my eyes and looking at Taylor. She was watching me with a bemused look on her face and an imperiously raised eyebrow.

I waited another moment before shrugging emphatically.

"Eh, its not bad."

Taylor giggled a couple little giggles and I smiled at her.

Then I got to eating breakfast in earnest.

Silence.

The silence of eating a meal with your family.

The only family you have left.