Title: Isolation

Author: macavitykitsune

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Tenpou/Hakkai

Warnings: twincest. Explicit m/m.

A/N: written for the 7thnightsmut AU community.

This was one thing they had learned, and learned well over the last year:

Silence was intolerable.

There were simulations, of course; extended periods of sensory deprivation, a battery of psychological tests designed to reveal every tiny flaw in their character, every instability, every faultline that could be tapped just so to break them apart (twins, co-dependent, the doctors had said, shaking their heads mournfully, but they'd passed the tests better than anyone). Still, nothing could prepare them for the invasive ever-present silence that pressed in on their ears and tickled at the edges of their sanity and made them edge a little nearer (and thank gods for the anti-grav, both of them never said) while they worked, or made them press silent fingers against the partition while they slept just to be that much closer to the sound of someone breathing.

There was music to distract them, and it worked - sometimes. Sometimes, it reminded them how isolated they were, a tiny speck of sound in the middle of interstellar space.

It was eerie being the only two people awake on a ship full of them.

Tenpou hated the stasis chambers, avoided the entire level as much as he could, trading off cooking and external maintenance checks with Hakkai in exchange for not having to go in there twice a day and examine each chamber, look into each death-slack face and check for dehydration, malnutrition or overexposure to the various drugs being pumped through the veins of every passenger on the ship to keep them asleep and ageless until they reached their destination. He claimed it was because Hakkai was worse at external maintenance and anyway he was lousy at med checks, and this was true, but it wasn't the real reason and they both knew it even as they smiled and agreed silently to hold up the facade.

One year. 365 Standard, which the Federation held to stubbornly two centuries after Earth had been depopulated, decades after it had been turned into a living museum for tourists to gape at and rich people to stay in to experience the 'simple life' - which they paid handsomely for, of course. 378 Standard down, 981 Standard remaining before they reached Vega and could unload their cargo of living dead, pick up their pay and retreat to noise, pollution, crowds and life - until the money ran out, of course, but neither of them mentioned that.

They weren't quite sure when, but at some point, they had mutually and silently decided that this was not worth the pay, ridiculously high as it was, perhaps not even worth the effort they'd put into the training. Live Cargo Transporters were the galaxy's best, far more rigourously trained than Cargo Transporters or short-hoppers, and they'd graduated at the top of their class. Their scores in the psychological analysis had helped.

What had probably helped more than the training, they suspected, was that they had no real understanding of what solitude was. They had no recollection of being alone, of sleeping without the other at their back, of not having that presence in their life and their minds. Even their prenatal memories were intertwined, as claustrophobically intimate as their lives afterwards had been.

Twin births were rare now, identical twins even rarer - they were used to people staring at them wherever they went, and they went everywhere together. Their school years had been one psychologist after another telling them that so much togetherness was not good for their personalities; Hakkai would laugh and say it would have been unremarkable if they hadn't shared blood, and Tenpou had learned to freeze people in their tracks with a pointed question as to what exactly needed fixing.

There hadn't been much. High scores in school, both academic and athletic even though they both suffered from defective eyesight - another reason people were fond of reminding them that twin births often resulted in genetic defects, since correction procedures were far more complex in the womb. In defiance, Hakkai had chosen to wear eyeglasses rather than undergo surgery once he was thirteen as most did, and Tenpou had followed suit. (Their mother had often remarked that Tenpou was likely to do something rash, in which case Hakkai usually restrained him, but if Hakkai did something rash it was after a lot of careful thought, and he was absolutely unstoppable when he did, mostly because Tenpou usually agreed with him; Tenpou found this amusing enough to record on his log, though Hakkai disliked it.) They had stuck to the eyeglasses through LCT training, substituting lenses only for the physicals, though they always carried a pair in their pockets in case of emergencies. For the rest, they quite enjoyed the novelty - no one wore glasses except actors in period dramas and the double-takes were always satisfying.

They talked to drive back the silence, and it seemed to help.

Even though it wasn't necessary, they'd taken to wearing their earpieces all the time, and whenever they were both awake - about fifteen hours through a thirty-hour cycle, usually - they talked to each other, until the faint hum of static was one they'd learnt to dread, and the sound of a voice that was almost but not quite their own filled their hours.

They could have wondered about the faint clawing edge of desperation in their words - I'mhereareyouthere?ohpleasebethere lurking under everything they said, whether practical or playful - but speaking about that would be acknowledging the strange thing growing between them and transforming them, and so they didn't.

There was a reason LCT training was so infamously difficult; the long voyages were taxing on the psyche and no matter how well a team clicked there was only so much they could do - no one person could fill in all the gaps in another's life, and in deep space there was only void to deal with and only three people to keep it away from you. One, in their case; twins, the board had decided, especially such talented ones as the Cho twins, were apparently good enough to allow them to waive the normal security reasons.

They knew what it was to depend on someone. In a way, they had depended on each other all their lives; and if there was power and confidence to be had in knowing someone was always at your back, there existed simultaneously the heartbreaking knowledge of the frailty of that power. Every creature is instinctively aware of what will destroy it, and the twins were no exceptions. With every shared gesture, every slightly different habit - Tenpou's fondness for wearing his hair long, Hakkai's for formal clothing, or even the different colours they preferred - Hakkai green, Tenpou white - they knew how fragile their independence was, how much each defined himself by the other.

Still, the suffocating necessity of relying on someone wore on their nerves. They were each other's entertainment, mental stimulation, guide and confidant, and if they had played those roles for less than a lifetime it would have been too intrusive to bear for long, for either of them.

They retreated to the libraries when they could, as long as they could - Tenpou had used up most of his luggage allotment to transport his rare paperbacks, leaving Hakkai to sigh, pack microdiscs for himself and clothes for both of them. Reading, whether onscreen or off, was their solace, their passion; and as the months inched by and the forced companionship began to grate on their nerves, their escape as well. They didn't seek each other out in their spare time as they would have earlier; they retreated to their bunks instead, reading. Neither of them was much of a viewer, and they'd taken only a few favourite vids - an error their older colleagues had warned them against at the time, but they were young and confident and such things didn't seem to matter. Not that it mattered now either, that they were starved for the sound, because the rich voices that boomed out of their consoles and the holograms that danced across their tabletops just made it all the more obvious that their presence was a sham, a cheap substitute for what pressed in around them like eyes over their hands and ears, and it seemed futile to whistle in the darkness like this when there was someone beside them who knew just how ridiculous it all was.

That was when they began listening a little more carefully.

They'd taken their similarity for granted, but that was changing slowly.

Their lives had been mirror images: primary ed, higher ed, LCT training, long-haul training. They had the same interests, the same tastes, and when they did differ, it was in tiny details, and they knew how to maneuver around them. Hakkai had given up on keeping Tenpou to a hair-care schedule and usually confronted him with a comb once a day with a smile that suggested that Tenpou should shut up, sit down and pretend it was his own idea to be there, and Tenpou was used to checking him for signs of overwork or exhaustion and snapping that he was quite capable of taking care of things for a few hours while his control-freak of a brother slept. They were as used to moving around each other as anyone could ever be - and yet that synchronicity was slowly starting to develop edges and corners.

It wasn't that the way they interacted had changed. It hadn't. Hakkai still left little bags of snacks around his twin, knowing Tenpou had the transfer-food-to-mouth-while-reading response down pat where he hadn't got used to the notion of regular meals yet, and Tenpou continued to ensure that Hakkai, with his more advanced short-sightedness, didn't spend too many hours on the vidscreen, and the familiarity was comforting. Their actions were the same, he'd examined that for any changes and discarded the possibility.

What had changed, Hakkai was beginning to realise, was the fact that they no longer regarded themselves as a single person.

He couldn't remember Tenpou not being at his back, could remember schoolyard fights and more dangerous politicking during their years at higher schools where they had fought as one, kicking and punching around each other without needing more than a brush of air or a whisper of sound to know where who was going to strike next. They had studied as one, and though their scores on tests had never quite been identical, they had made a formidable team on joint projects. But all those little differences were starting to become clear now. No matter how he tried, Tenpou was never going to have the patience needed to care for their cargo or the slow meticulous checks Hakkai was expert at, and Hakkai knew he didn't have the eye for analysis and navigation that Tenpou did. It wasn't something they had to voice, the division of duties occurred quite naturally, but he didn't think Tenpou had even noticed. Then again, Tenpou had no gift for self-analysis.

There was also the fact that he didn't think they sounded the same anymore.

This was something Tenpou had pointed out a while ago, distractedly, possibly not even considering the implications of what he'd said: simply that, after all these months listening to Hakkai's voice, he didn't think they sounded a bit alike. Hakkai had laughed and dropped the subject, but it was probably a self-fulfilling prophecy that he'd begun to notice the tiny variations in their speech. The way he lifted his voice to ask a question was distinctly different from the way Tenpou did; and Hakkai managed to sound marginally more polite when he was saying something incredibly rude. Tiny changes of inflection and phrasing which no one would have caught except the two of them, and not even until Tenpou had so casually mentioned the elephant in the living room.

But secrets would out, and now that this one was, Hakkai wasn't sure what to do about it.

It wasn't that he didn't know, it was more that he wasn't sure what to do about it.

It felt as if they were drifting apart a little at a time, even though they were closer than they'd ever been. Every time he noted Hakkai saying something he would have said a little differently widened the gap between them a little; every time he reacted, and Hakkai looked surprised, it widened even more.

He was fairly certain Hakkai thought he didn't know, and was trying to protect him from it. As always.

It was a little insulting.

It was also subtly devastating, feeling the one person he could rely on absolutely being stripped away from. Worse than losing a limb, worse, even, than losing his mind, because he was aware of the loss. Had it been anyone else, he would have known how to draw them closer, but how did he do that when there had never been any distance to begin with? They were reasonably social when in the mood, and they did have a few friends, but Hakkai was...different. Closer. Infinitely more important. Distance was incomprehensible, and thus to be feared.

There was no defined moment he could trace when that quiet clawing desperation inside him began to transform itself into another expression entirely, no concrete point of transition between love and lust. He was still unsure which it was.

He couldn't remember not loving Tenpou, but he couldn't remember wanting him either. Not like this. This was alien, uncomfortable, irrational. What it didn't feel was wrong.

He puzzled over that inconsistency for a few weeks, and concluded it was simply a temporary problem. Another longing layered on a temporary estrangement. It would subside when they reached Vega, deposited their shuttle-full of people on the outer colonies and hitched a ride home with another LCT ship. Ephemeral, unnecessary, and therefore safe to ignore ad infinitum.

Or act upon

It crept towards him slowly, in the way he caught himself watching Tenpou when he pored over the star charts or stood in the observation deck, staring out into the Black; in the way he found himself running his fingers through Tenpou's hair a little more than combing required; the way he sometimes quietly switched beds during sleep shifts and buried his nose in soft bedding, trying to trace the precise similarities and differences in their scent - there wasn't anything beyond the obvious differences in their choice of soaps, and yet he thought he could almost smell something, something different...and if his hands stole over his own body while he analysed every factor that contributed to Tenpou-smell, it wasn't any different from when they'd masturbated in their own bunks, was it? Their sleep-times were different for the most part, there were just two overlapping sleep-hours, there was no risk of being discovered unless he was careless, and even if he was, Tenpou would probably just raise an eyebrow and shut the door again.

Besides, Tenpou could be blissfully oblivious to these things. He just staggered in when it was time to sleep and flopped onto whichever bunk was empty (and sometimes the one that wasn't, but that had come to a screeching halt about six months ago, which Hakkai was grateful for); Hakkai was willing to bet he hadn't even noticed he was sleeping in different bunks occasionally. He was absent-minded like that.

It was ridiculous to wonder about someone's body when you had seen every inch of it, knew every healed wound and vanished childhood scar as if it was his own. Every inch was familiar to him, but still he found himself wondering how exactly it would feel to touch him with that wealth of memory guiding him.

So much so that when he touched himself, he wondered. They had the same bodies, they had gone through the inevitable phase in their preteens where every contemporary authority on twin births had been devoured, but no one had ever mentioned whether erogenous zones on twins were the same. He found himself wondering, as his hands trailed down his chest to his nipples, rubbing and flicking, whether it would feel the same for him, whether he liked hands stroking down his neck, whether he'd also arch when that spot near his spine was presed, if he'd want his erection stroked just so, if he also slid cautious slick fingers into himself as he was on the verge of coming, if he'd ever come with Tenpou's name trembling on his lips, choked in his throat.

It wasn't as if he was ever going to ask, though, no matter how the words itched to spill out when he saw Hakkai watching him with that calm happy look as he ate something Hakkai had made, or felt hands running through his hair and pressing just right against his scalp. It was simple curiosity, of course, but it still felt too intimate, too personal to even imagine.

But perhaps...

It was a small thing. It could be explained off as a whim, should Hakkai ask - and he rarely did. But it might be useful.

It was ridiculously easy to slip quietly back to the tiny rooms that served as living quarters when Hakkai was in the stasis chambers performing the night check (a rather pointless definition in the Black, Tenpou thought, but Hakkai had taken a fancy to it). The edge of the blade whined as he drew it closer to his ear, and Tenpou flinched; one reason he hated haircuts was the sound the blade made in his hair, and Hakkai usually had to threaten him to trim it. This was the first time in about fifteen years anyone but Hakkai was cutting his hair, he realised, and chuckled. Grimaced. Raised it closer.

The first strands of hair fell to the floor of the cramped bathroom, and Tenpou clicked his tongue. Hakkai was going to scold him about the mess later. For a moment he felt a childish impulse to hide it, but that was stupid - it wasn't as if Hakkai wouldn't notice. He shrugged and raised it again.

Twenty minutes later, he was reasonably satisfied. Hakkai peered back at him from the mirror, and it was an eerie sensation. He still felt the same, after six years of wearing his hair long he couldn't quite imagine not having it, he even dreamt himself with long hair, and looking into the mirror, he didn't know which one he was.

Tenpou smiled, and Hakkai smiled back.

Perfect.

Tenpou was asleep when Hakkai came back, a lump under the covers, and the bathroom was a complete mess.

It took him a second of blank staring to recognise that it was hair lying in straggly clumps on the pristine white tile. Then he realised what Tenpou might have done.

He didn't rush through the door to the bunks, no matter how much he wanted to find out what his twin had done. That was an unknown reaction, it would be best to attempt to understand before he confronted him. Hakkai activated the waste disposal unit and stared unseeingly as it cleared away the debris. Then he slipped into the shower, as he had planned to do, washed himself and let the blast of hot air afterwards dry him, mechanically pushing the right buttons. Selected another set of clothing, light sleep wear - it wasn't even his sleep shift, but he didn't think he would be able to read anything right now. Stepped back out into the cool dry air of the sleeping quarters.

Tenpou was awake. Bright green eyes alert, narrow. It was like looking into a mirror, and Hakkai wondered whether his own expression was so cold and closed. Raised a hand to his own lips to check whether they were drawn into such a sharp thin line, and looked into his own smile as Tenpou slowly threw back the covers. Sat up on the bunk, one leg drawn up to his chest, and raised an eyebrow.

Well?

He didn't know what his own face was showing as he stalked over to the bed, but Tenpou watched him like a predator, those sharp hungry eyes fixed on his. His gaze flickered down to Hakkai's lips for just a second, and Hakkai felt something tense up in his stomach as he caught hold of that short hair, pulled Tenpou's head back viciously and kissed him.

And it felt a little like dying as he caught Hakkai's hair in turn, softer than his in spite of all Hakkai's efforts, kissed him back as brutally. Hakkai rested a knee on the bed and leaned forward, pushing him back into the bedding; Tenpou curled a hand in the back of his sleeping shirt and fought back, tongue to tongue, force to force, his other hand clawing at Hakkai's neck, back, ear, hair. Hakkai hissed and drew back; there was a thin line of red on his neck. The next moment, though, he was back, shoving Tenpou roughly back, pushing forward with his other leg to end up straddling him, crouching over him, hands clenched in two handfuls of Tenpou's shirt.

Hakkai was breathing hard, his eyes wild. He looked as much a stranger as Tenpou could ever imagine.

They stared at each other silently for a few seconds, wondering what had happened.

The corner of Hakkai's mouth twitched. "You still have hair on your collar."

Something in him unwound, relaxed. He could feel himself smiling back. "Yeah, I guess so."

"Messy."

"Mmm."

They were frozen, trapped in some kind of limbo that left them reaching out with inadequate words while their bodies quivered with the effort of not doing the same.

Tenpou, ever more impulsive, was the first to break it. He reached up slowly to the blood welling up from Hakkai's neck, where his nails had accidentally dug a little too deep. Hakkai hissed again and flinched but didn't pull away; watched him intently as he raised his fingers, his nostrils flaring as Tenpou tasted the blood on them slowly.

And then Hakkai's mouth was on his again, fingers still trapped between their lips, and Hakkai was pinching at the tie-seams of his shirt, his pants, the material parting and falling away from him at a touch, as they had been designed to. Tenpou retaliated, and it took only seconds before they were naked against each other.

There was no hesitation, no embarrassment. They knew each other perfectly, after all, had spent years around each other, had tickled and wrestled and bathed and laughed together and this was only another layer of knowledge added on top of a thousand others, knowing where touch provoked a gasp or a moan, that hot lips on the curve of a shoulder made a shudder ripple through a slender body, that the press of hands on hips was unbearably arousing, remembering the exact way they liked stroking themselves to quick, dizzying climax. They attacked each other with what they knew aroused themselves, and every identical reaction was a minor triumph; there was nothing to discover, despite the newness of it all.

Nothing to discover but the pure relief of touch at last, and the driving need to kisslicktouchtastetake that was chipping away at their sanity.

They fought each other for top until they were laughing at how ridiculous it was; a tangle of limbs and stray touches and then Hakkai was under him, wicked humour in his eyes, rubbing up against him and panting with the pleasure of it. Tenpou moaned and thrust, and they ground against each other again and again before Hakkai threw his head back, shuddering, and parted his legs. It was as much permission as either of them could ever give and get.

It was calculated, Tenpou knew that; even when he slid a finger into Hakkai and watched him shudder, watched his head turn restlessly from side to side, one hand clutching his hair, he knew Hakkai was learning. Analysing. Every twist of his fingers, every trick of movement stored away, and he wondered if he would look like this under Hakkai next time, as Hakkai was undoubtedly planning. Whether that same mix of fierce arousal, naked need and remnant amusement would look back at Hakkai, if having him slip a third finger inside and brush against his prostate as ruthlessly as Tenpou was now would make him arch and shiver and make those same small sounds in his (ever so slightly different) voice.

Sliding inside him was pure shock, recognition of an intimacy they had never dreamed of, and how utterly ridiculous that they had never dreamed of it; Hakkai's legs were tangled around his waist and his hand was moving on himself and the other tight around his arm and Tenpou couldn't tell who was growling and moaning anymore, was lost in the slick glide of flesh on flesh and the way Hakkai's eyes went half-lidded and his lips parted when he thrust into him just right. They were moving as if they were one, striving to be closer, closer, a single being, crawl into each others' skin and become what they had been before. But this was more intimate, perfect, that subtle knowledge of dichotomy that had haunted them all their lives and screamed in their ears the past months erased in every touch, every sigh, every kiss. Tongues and lips roving over shoulders, necks, chests, and then it was too much too quickly, and they shuddered as climax took them, loving the feel of it and hating the closure it would bring to this soul-shattering unity, kissing through the end and drinking in each twistscreamshudder as if it were the end of the world they were witnessing.

They lay on the sheets, still tangled, wet and messy and breathing too fast to give in to the sleep tugging at the backs of their minds. Arms curling around bodies, fitting into each other perfectly from mouth to toes, legs twined together, nuzzling at each others' cheeks and necks almost absently as they drifted down towards sleep.

Their hands slipped into each other slowly, and they watched it happen.

"Which one am I?" he asked, darkly amused, and wondering.

His twin smiled at him, and he sighed at the sincerity, the perfect understanding in his eyes.

"I don't know."