Lincoln liked when Lucy wore her hair up; the way her bangs still hung in her eyes despite it was cute. She knew this, and would do it once or twice a week even though she personally preferred her hair down. On Monday it would be a ponytail, and on Friday it might be pigtails. Every time he caught sight of her like that, her face burning red with embarrassment, his breath would catch and he'd smile. Their sisters teased her about it, because that's what sisters do, and that made her self-conscious, but she did it anyway, and Lincoln loved her all the more for it. To be fair, she never left the house with her hair up, but, hey, it's a process. Rome wasn't built in a day...and neither was Akron, Ohio, for that matter.

That Sunday morning it was a simple ponytail held in place by a black scrunchie with a little skull emblem on it. They were sitting on Lincoln's bed in their pajamas, hers consisting of a white T-shirt and black and white striped leggings and his a simple orange top and bottom set that was starting to get just a littttle small. In his hands was an Ace Savvy comic, in hers was a slim paperback book with the rotting face of a ghoul on the cover. Lincoln leaned against his pillow and turned the page with a crisp sound. At the foot of the bed, Lucy did likewise.

Lincoln relished moments in the company of his sister. They didn't need to touch, or speak, or even acknowledge that the other was there...being together in comfortable silence was enough. Lincoln imagined that this is what old married couples must feel after forty or fifty years...sort of a...mutual understanding of one another and of one another's love. Newlyweds touch and kiss incessantly to show affection; old couples bask in the lingering afterglow of those early kisses, sustained by years and years of touches, sighs, and declarations of love to the point that nary a word need be said. Granted, he and Lucy had only been...uh...together...for a little over a month, but theirs was a different case: As siblings, their romantic love rested on the immovable bedrock of family love. It was like moving into a fully furnished home versus building one with your bare hands (uphill...in the snow...). They weren't exactly like an old married couple, but they weren't exactly like newlyweds, either. They were both...and neither. They liked to touch and kiss...but they also liked to just be together, her following her passions, him following his.

"Something just occurred to me," Lucy said, breaking the tranquility. Lincoln glanced up. She was still staring down at her book.

"What?" he asked.

"Zombies...you kill them by destroying the brain."

Lincoln lifted an eyebrow. "Yeah."

"Doesn't decomposition destroy the brain?"

Lincoln shrugged. "Yeah, I guess."

"And what about bugs? You know their heads have to be infested with bugs slowly eating away their gray matter."

Lincoln's nose crinkled at the image of carrion insects ripping and rending soft, pulpy brains in their sharp mandibles.

"And what happens when they rot so much that their brain isn't even connected to anything and it's just sitting there?"

"I don't know," Lincoln said, another image popping into his head: Drippy, melted brains sloshing in a shattered skull like sludge. Maybe I'm spending a little too much time around Lucy, he thought. "Zombies don't make sense."

"Neither do vampires."

Ice dropped into Lincoln's stomach. In his mind, he saw the thing climbing through the kitchen window, its eyes glowing and fangs hanging over its bluish lower lip. A shiver raced down his spine and his hand crept instinctively to the rosary he now wore at all times. Didja find God, Linc? Lynn asked. Makes sense, Luan laughed (she blacked out and forgot that a vampire broke into the house...lucky bitch), he does like being on his knees. Lori simply called him Father Twerp.

"A lot of things don't make sense," he said evenly.

She shrugged. He was right. Sitting her book in her lap, she turned to face him, shivering at the alien feeling of her ponytail wagging behind her. Why Lincoln liked her hair up, she would never know, but whatever. "Are you hungry?"

He started to say no, but now that she mentioned it, he kind of was; he was in such a rush to spend a quiet morning with her that the thought of going downstairs never even crossed his mind. "I could eat," he said.

"Me too," she said, and tossed her book aside. He closed his comic and laid it neatly on the nightstand. A ghost of a smile touched her face and she leaned over. He met her half-way, and their lips brushed faintly together, their breaths mingling. Her bangs parted just enough for him to catch a fleeting glimpse of clear, crystalline eyes, and his heart pounded. She grew more and more beautiful with each passing day.

They kissed then, their tongues meeting and moving coyly together. Lincoln cupped his hand around the back of her smooth, slender neck, and she trembled. When she drew back, her lips were pink and she was smiling. "That never gets old."

Lincoln grinned. No, it didn't. Though he'd given her a thousand kisses over the past month, each time was just as electrifying as the first. He grinned goofily and brushed her hair out of her face. Looking into her naked eyes, he said, "I love you."

She grinned. "I love you too. Now come on."

Holding his hand, she led him downstairs, releasing him when they reached the dining room threshold: Their sisters were clustered at the table.

Lincoln was not stupid, he knew what was coming.

Currently, though, they were focusing on Lynn.

"She just loves catching balls to the face," Lori said, and bit into a dry piece of toast.

Everyone laughed except for Lynn, who shook her head and inhaled deeply through her nose; her lips were a bloodless slash.

"Her proclivity for promiscuously performing oral sex on her male peers is well-known even in the elementary grades," Lisa said. "In layman's terms: Everyone knows she's a slut."

Luan threw her head back and held her stomach. Lola laughed mean-spitredly through clenched teeth, her shoulders shaking. Luna snickered into her hand. Lynn trembled. "I'm not a slut," she growled.

"I heard she sucked some dude off because she needed protein before the big game," Lana said.

Luan threw herself back, and her chair tipped: Her eyes went wide as it crashed to the floor. Lynn bent over. "Serves you right, bitch!"

Everyone was howling with laughter. "LOL!" Leni said. "Lynn has VD!"

Lincoln poured himself a bowl of Capt'N'Crunch and topped it with milk. He handed the jug to Lucy, and she poured a slug into her own cereal. "I'm not going out there," she said, sticking her spoon into the bowl and bringing it up; milk dripped from the smooth underside. Lincoln glanced over his shoulder. Lynn's face was beet red and he imagined he saw a little curl of smoke rising from the top of her head. Next to her, Luan had gotten back into her chair.

"Have a nice fall, chuckles?" Lori asked.

"Lana's joke blew her away," Lola piped, "which is what happens when you hear real humor, sweetie."

"The only thing Luan's ever blown away was that creepy kid in the fifth grade," Luna said. "What was his name? The one who walked around with a boner every day?"

"Tommy Harper," Lori said. "His brother was a senior when I was a freshman. Luan blew him away, did she?"

"No!" Luan cried.

"She blew him every day at lunch."

"Neither am I," Lincoln said. "I could do without being roasted." He bent over his bowl and started eating.

Next to him, Lucy swallowed. "It's probably going to happen anyway." She craned her neck and looked past him. "When they spit Luan out."

"I have a joke," Lana said. "You!"

Luan and Lynn had switched places: The former seethed while the latter slapped her knee. "You hear that, Carrot Top?" Lynn asked, shoving her grinning face into her sister's. "You're the joke! Get it?"

"I, like, get it!" Leni said. "She's the joke because she looks like a beaver and she's not funny!"

Luan pushed away from the table. "Screw you guys!"

"You know a beaver's favorite thing to put in its mouth, right?" Luna called after her sister as she stormed away. "Wood!"

Lincoln shook his head. Goddamn. Picking on your siblings could be fun now and then, but these girls took it too far.

"Any time now," Lucy said, and Lincoln looked at her.

"Any time for wha...?"

He was cut off by Lori's singsong voice. "Oh, Lincy..."

His heart dropped. Sigh.

"What are you and Lucy doing in there?"

Lincoln turned and his eyes locked with Lynn's. "They're doing it," she said with a shark-like smile. "Or he's trying, but it's so small it keeps slipping out."

Lincoln looked down at his bowl and flipped her off. Lucy bowed her head and blushed.

"Could you imagine them actually doing it?" Luna asked, and shuddered. "Their flat chests rubbing together like two pieces of white bread..."

"Lincoln's cowlick bobbing with every clumsy thrust of his hips," Lisa added.

"Lucy just lying there like a corpse," Lola put in.

"Smelling like one, too," Lana winced.

Heat touched Lincoln's face. You know...he didn't mind it too much when they picked on him, but he didn't like it when they picked on Lucy. His fist tightened around the spoon and he took a deep breath; the nails of his free hand unconsciously dug into the countertop. It hurt him more than it did Lucy, but still...

"Whose name would she cry out as she came?" Lori asked. "Satan?"

"Cthulhu," Lisa offered.

"George Bush?" Lola asked.

"No," Lana said, "Bill Clinton."

"Uhhh...I'm pretty sure she wouldn't cum because Lincy's dick is too small," Leni said. "Remember?"

Lincoln squared his shoulders.

"Hey," Lucy said, laying her hand on his. He turned, and his anger melted in the face of her warm smile. "Ignore them. If you don't react they'll move onto someone else."

She was right. And it happened sooner than either one could have expected.

"Lot of small things in this family," Lori said, "Lincoln's dick...Leni's brain."

Leni gasped. "My brain is not small."

"Speaking of small things," Lana said, "are those pimples or breasts, Lori?"

"Shut up!"

Lincoln hurriedly finished his cereal and took the bowl over to the sink. Lucy came over and did likewise. "So," she said, "do you want to do something today?"

Lincoln cocked his head. "Like what?"

She shrugged. "I don't know, but I don't feel like being cooped up in the house with Saturday Night Live out there."

A grin crossed Lincoln's face. "What?" she asked.

"Nothing," Lincoln said innocently. "I'd love to. Under one condition."

She crossed her arms.

"Keep your hair up?"

She sighed and bowed her head. "I guess we could always hang out in the vents..."

Author's Note: Lucy's wearing her hair in a ponytail in this chapter was inspired by a piece of fan art on DeviantArt called "A Break From the Darkness" by someone CoyoteRom. It depicts Lucy sitting on her bed and reading one of those pony princess books and she's wearing a ponytail, which, I think, it a good look on her. Kind of breaks up the monotony. I stumbled across it when I typed LOLA LOUD into Google Images; I needed to see if she wore eyeliner by default (she does not – I guess that detail escaped me). I wound up browsing through pictures because sometimes I like to procrastinate. If it's not pictures it's Facebook, or Youtube, or some damn thing. The internet is a black hole and it's very easy to fall in.