Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2024-12-10 08:18 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2024-12-10 08:18 pm
Entry tags:
Fanfiction: Two Become One (Better Half, Thiu/Thiu)
The themes of my writing this year have very much been 'only one bed' and 'weird niche visual novels'. It's time to combine the two! Also: selfcest.
I tried really hard not to name this after a Spice Girls song, but here we are.
Title: Two Become One
Fandom: Better Half
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Thiu/Thiu
Wordcount: 2,200
Summary: There are a lot of problems with being split into two people. One major problem is that there's only one bed.
“How are we going to sleep?” Thiu asks.
“Well, I’m probably going to sleep better than you,” the other Thiu says, which is both true and outrageously unfair. “What do you mean, how?”
“Well, we only have one bed.”
They both look at the bed for a moment.
“We just share, right?” the other Thiu asks.
Thiu shakes his head. “I don’t want to share with you.”
“What?” the other Thiu asks. “I’m fine with sharing. So you should be fine with sharing, right? Like, we’re the same person. Isn’t that how it works?”
“You tried to murder me,” Thiu points out.
“I mean,” the other Thiu says, scratching his neck. “Kind of?”
“There’s no ‘kind of’. You extremely tried to murder me. I don’t want to cuddle up to anyone who’s attacked me with a knife.”
The other Thiu shrugs. “If it bothers you, just sleep somewhere else.”
“Excuse me?” Thiu asks. “I’m not giving up my bed. You’ve already got every good thing about my lousy existence; I get to keep the bed.”
“I mean, I’m the main Thiu,” the other Thiu says. “So it makes sense for me to have the bed, right?”
“The main Thiu?” Thiu echoes, incredulous. “We’re just two different halves of the same person. What makes you any more me than I am?”
“We did this whole split thing because we wanted to get rid of our negative feelings, right?” the other Thiu asks. “So I’m the one who got them stripped out. You’re just the negative feelings that got removed.”
“I’m not just – I’m a person!” Thiu protests. “I’m just as much of a person as you are! The fact that this whole thing sucks way more for me doesn’t mean I’m less Thiu than you are! Maybe I’m more Thiu, because things already sucked pretty hard for us before we got split.”
The other Thiu seems to consider that for a moment.
“Speaking of sucking pretty hard,” he says.
“No,” Thiu says.
“Fine,” the other Thiu says. “So we’re both Thiu. I guess we just share the bed, then.”
“Uh, no,” Thiu says. “That doesn’t fix the reason I don’t want to share with you.”
The other Thiu tilts his head back, frowning a little. “What was the reason, again?”
Thiu stares at him. It doesn’t feel good, looking at his own face from outside; it just makes him that much more aware of every little imperfection. “Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t want to share a bed because you tried to stab me,” Thiu says. “I can’t believe you forgot.”
“Oh, right!” the other Thiu says, with a laugh. “I guess I don’t dwell on things the way we used to.”
“It’s probably easier not to dwell on the attempted murder if you’re not the victim,” Thiu mutters.
The other Thiu rolls his eyes. “God, we’re so melodramatic. This is why nobody likes us. Look, I’m the one who actually got stabbed, so let’s just call it even.”
“That’s not how it—” Thiu cuts himself off and groans. He does not have the energy to keep arguing about this. To be honest, he doesn’t really have the energy to do anything. “Fine. We’re even. I’m so sorry I fought back when you were trying to murder me.”
“Great!” the other Thiu says, brightly. “So I guess we’re sharing the bed.”
Thiu sighs. “I guess so.”
-
Thiu’s never actually shared a bed with anyone before. Unsurprisingly, it substantially reduces the amount of available space. His bed was very much designed for one person.
Well. Technically, he guesses there’s still only one person sleeping in it. But it’s one person with two bodies, and that makes the situation pretty cramped.
“Why are you lying like that?” his other self asks, laughing. “I’m not going to cut your throat, I swear.”
Thiu’s pressed himself as closely as he can against the wall, ramrod-straight. It takes him a moment to make sense of the throat-cutting comment: he’s got his hands tucked up under his chin, so pretty much none of his neck is exposed. Not actually his intention, but he guesses it’s a bonus. “I’m just trying not to take up space.”
“Aww, so considerate! I think you can take up more space than that.”
Not without touching. He’d assumed his other self wouldn’t want to touch him. He tends to assume people don’t want to touch him in general.
Of course, it’s possible his other self actually wants to touch him slightly too much.
“This isn’t your weird sex thing again, is it?” Thiu asks, cautiously.
The other Thiu snorts and closes his eyes. “Oh, my God. Stay there if you want. I’m going to sleep.”
It... actually does look like he gets to sleep pretty quickly. It’s strange to see; it’s something Thiu has struggled with for a long time. He doubts he’s ever looked so peaceful in his life.
He wonders what it feels like, just being able to get into bed and sleep.
After a few minutes, Thiu dares to shift, to take a little more space in the bed.
He’s touching his other self a little, now, and his mind is racing: is this weird, is it somehow wrong on a cosmic level?
Of course it’s wrong. He’s half a person; he’s a crime against nature. Whether his knees are nudging the other Thiu’s thighs probably isn’t going to make a huge difference.
-
The second night is a little less tense. There haven’t been any more murder attempts, and the other Thiu seems to have abandoned his efforts to talk Thiu into two-player masturbation.
His other self has changed the sheets and bullied Thiu into taking a shower. Thiu grumbled at the time, but it does feel kind of nice to be going to bed clean. He’s not quite as selfconscious about the places they’re pressed together, either, now that he’s less sweaty.
Still takes him a long time to get to sleep. A little less long than yesterday, maybe.
-
“You’re up early,” his other self remarks, eyebrows raised, when Thiu opens his eyes after the third night.
Thiu drags himself up in bed, checks the time. It’s not even ten o’clock.
He still feels lousy; he always feels lousy. But he feels marginally less lousy than he’d expect at this hour.
Now that he thinks back to last night, he might actually have managed to fall asleep sooner than he used to before the split. Which doesn’t make sense. What little positivity he used to have has been stripped out of him; he’s more of a mess than ever. By all rights, his insomnia should be worse.
But he guesses he used to spend a lot of time lying awake, dwelling on how alone he was. Maybe it’s harder to do that when there’s someone else breathing right next to you.
-
About five days in, Thiu stops worrying too much about policing exactly where all the parts of his body are in bed. He’s not planning to start cradling his other self’s junk, but it’s just himself; he probably doesn’t need to obsess so much about making sure nothing is near anyone’s hips.
About six days in, Thiu wakes in the night to find his arms around his other self, the two of them almost wrapped around each other. His first instinct is that he should freak out, scramble away, probably fall out of bed, but—
He manages to keep himself where he is, even if his heart is suddenly beating so fast he’s half-convinced he needs a doctor. If he actually takes a moment to think about this...
Honestly, it’s nice. It’s... it’s not something he’s ever really had, before.
A part of him is convinced his other self will hate him for it, if they’re still this close when he wakes up. But they’re the same person; doesn’t that mean his other self would probably like this, too?
Thiu closes his eyes again. His heart is starting to settle down.
-
Thiu definitely isn’t going to be able to sleep tonight. At least there’s a good reason for it, for once.
“Hey,” he says, into the darkness.
“Hmm?”
“Are you awake?”
Because that’s in doubt, obviously, after the response he just got. Very smart question, Thiu. Excellent work.
“Apparently,” his other self mumbles, through a yawn. “What’s up? Do you want to try sex yet?”
“Um, n-no,” Thiu says, feeling himself blush. At least nobody can see it right now. “You said we were going to date, right? I – I guess I want to do it properly.”
His other self makes an indistinct noise. “So what is it?”
“I was just thinking,” Thiu says. “What made you say yes? To, uh, to being boyfriends?” Maybe it’ll get less embarrassing to say that at some point, but that point is apparently not right now.
For a moment, it’s quiet.
“I asked a toy capsule machine for a sign,” the other Thiu says.
Thiu takes a moment to process that. “Wow.”
“It gave me a ring,” his other self says. “I guess we have to get married?”
Thiu would have liked an answer more along the lines of I realised I actually like you. He should have known it would be too much to hope for.
Still. He never asks for a sign if he doesn’t want to do something, on some level. It’s usually a way he talks himself into bad ideas.
“I guess so,” he says.
-
True to his word, Thiu’s other self takes him out on a date.
“Where are we going?” Thiu asks, stooping to lace his shoes. There’s a fizzing, alien excitement in his chest. He’s never had a date before.
“Pizza Hut,” his other self says.
Thiu stands up, laces forgotten. “Pizza Hut? Seriously?”
The other Thiu shrugs. “Why not?”
“Our first date,” Thiu says. “Pizza Hut.”
“What, are you going to pretend you have standards?” his other self asks. “One, you’re me. Two, you’re dating me. Nobody’s fooled.”
Thiu contemplates for a moment.
“I can’t really think of anywhere better,” he admits at last. “And I guess money’s even tighter now that there are two of us.”
His other self opens the door, gestures to it. “You ready to go?”
Thiu takes two steps, trips on his undone laces and concusses himself on the doorframe.
-
Their Pizza Hut date is delayed for a week.
Honestly, when it eventually comes, after all that time to agonise over ways it could go wrong, it’s kind of perfect. They make bad jokes, they eat greasy pizza. For dessert, they share a ludicrous quantity of cookie dough that would have been way too much for Thiu when he was only one person. It’s all he really needs.
After the meal, though, Thiu’s other self leans towards him, and Thiu freezes up. Is he going to—?
No. No. No, this absolutely cannot happen.
Thiu shoves his chair back and runs out of the restaurant.
-
His other self finds Thiu crouched in the alleyway next to the Pizza Hut, trying to hide himself in his clothes.
“Hey.” His other self nudges Thiu’s ankle with his foot. “What happened?”
“You tried to kiss me,” Thiu mumbles into his hands.
His other self folds his arms. “You remember you’re the one who asked to be boyfriends, right?”
Somehow, Thiu finds the courage to straighten up. “You can’t kiss me in public!” he hisses. “Do you get what people are going to think about us?”
The other Thiu raises his eyebrows. “Thaaaaat we have terrible taste?”
“Well, yeah, that too, probably, but...” His face is going to burn off. “You know people think we’re twins, right?”
“Oh.” The other Thiu starts laughing. “Wow, yeah, we’d probably weird some people out.”
How can he think about that and just laugh, instead of wanting to die on the spot? Well, yeah, Thiu knows the answer, and it mainly involves having his insecurities magically removed. It still doesn’t seem possible from where he’s standing.
Still, the fact that his other self can laugh it off makes Thiu feel a little less humiliated, at least.
-
The other Thiu got all their confidence, such as it is, so he takes the lead in bed. He tries to be serious about it at first, tries to act dominant, and for a stunned moment Thiu starts to think they might actually be capable of being sexy.
But Thiu can’t stop laughing nervously, and before long his other self cracks and starts laughing too.
It’s not very sexy. But it doesn’t feel bad.
Afterwards, once his other self has drifted off, Thiu keeps his eyes open for a while, watching his own sleeping face. For the first time, he thinks he might not hate it.
It still feels surreal. He has someone.
And, yeah, maybe that someone is himself, which is about as bottom-of-the-barrel as it gets. But he thought for a long time that the barrel was empty, so he’ll take it.
I tried really hard not to name this after a Spice Girls song, but here we are.
Title: Two Become One
Fandom: Better Half
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Thiu/Thiu
Wordcount: 2,200
Summary: There are a lot of problems with being split into two people. One major problem is that there's only one bed.
“How are we going to sleep?” Thiu asks.
“Well, I’m probably going to sleep better than you,” the other Thiu says, which is both true and outrageously unfair. “What do you mean, how?”
“Well, we only have one bed.”
They both look at the bed for a moment.
“We just share, right?” the other Thiu asks.
Thiu shakes his head. “I don’t want to share with you.”
“What?” the other Thiu asks. “I’m fine with sharing. So you should be fine with sharing, right? Like, we’re the same person. Isn’t that how it works?”
“You tried to murder me,” Thiu points out.
“I mean,” the other Thiu says, scratching his neck. “Kind of?”
“There’s no ‘kind of’. You extremely tried to murder me. I don’t want to cuddle up to anyone who’s attacked me with a knife.”
The other Thiu shrugs. “If it bothers you, just sleep somewhere else.”
“Excuse me?” Thiu asks. “I’m not giving up my bed. You’ve already got every good thing about my lousy existence; I get to keep the bed.”
“I mean, I’m the main Thiu,” the other Thiu says. “So it makes sense for me to have the bed, right?”
“The main Thiu?” Thiu echoes, incredulous. “We’re just two different halves of the same person. What makes you any more me than I am?”
“We did this whole split thing because we wanted to get rid of our negative feelings, right?” the other Thiu asks. “So I’m the one who got them stripped out. You’re just the negative feelings that got removed.”
“I’m not just – I’m a person!” Thiu protests. “I’m just as much of a person as you are! The fact that this whole thing sucks way more for me doesn’t mean I’m less Thiu than you are! Maybe I’m more Thiu, because things already sucked pretty hard for us before we got split.”
The other Thiu seems to consider that for a moment.
“Speaking of sucking pretty hard,” he says.
“No,” Thiu says.
“Fine,” the other Thiu says. “So we’re both Thiu. I guess we just share the bed, then.”
“Uh, no,” Thiu says. “That doesn’t fix the reason I don’t want to share with you.”
The other Thiu tilts his head back, frowning a little. “What was the reason, again?”
Thiu stares at him. It doesn’t feel good, looking at his own face from outside; it just makes him that much more aware of every little imperfection. “Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t want to share a bed because you tried to stab me,” Thiu says. “I can’t believe you forgot.”
“Oh, right!” the other Thiu says, with a laugh. “I guess I don’t dwell on things the way we used to.”
“It’s probably easier not to dwell on the attempted murder if you’re not the victim,” Thiu mutters.
The other Thiu rolls his eyes. “God, we’re so melodramatic. This is why nobody likes us. Look, I’m the one who actually got stabbed, so let’s just call it even.”
“That’s not how it—” Thiu cuts himself off and groans. He does not have the energy to keep arguing about this. To be honest, he doesn’t really have the energy to do anything. “Fine. We’re even. I’m so sorry I fought back when you were trying to murder me.”
“Great!” the other Thiu says, brightly. “So I guess we’re sharing the bed.”
Thiu sighs. “I guess so.”
Thiu’s never actually shared a bed with anyone before. Unsurprisingly, it substantially reduces the amount of available space. His bed was very much designed for one person.
Well. Technically, he guesses there’s still only one person sleeping in it. But it’s one person with two bodies, and that makes the situation pretty cramped.
“Why are you lying like that?” his other self asks, laughing. “I’m not going to cut your throat, I swear.”
Thiu’s pressed himself as closely as he can against the wall, ramrod-straight. It takes him a moment to make sense of the throat-cutting comment: he’s got his hands tucked up under his chin, so pretty much none of his neck is exposed. Not actually his intention, but he guesses it’s a bonus. “I’m just trying not to take up space.”
“Aww, so considerate! I think you can take up more space than that.”
Not without touching. He’d assumed his other self wouldn’t want to touch him. He tends to assume people don’t want to touch him in general.
Of course, it’s possible his other self actually wants to touch him slightly too much.
“This isn’t your weird sex thing again, is it?” Thiu asks, cautiously.
The other Thiu snorts and closes his eyes. “Oh, my God. Stay there if you want. I’m going to sleep.”
It... actually does look like he gets to sleep pretty quickly. It’s strange to see; it’s something Thiu has struggled with for a long time. He doubts he’s ever looked so peaceful in his life.
He wonders what it feels like, just being able to get into bed and sleep.
After a few minutes, Thiu dares to shift, to take a little more space in the bed.
He’s touching his other self a little, now, and his mind is racing: is this weird, is it somehow wrong on a cosmic level?
Of course it’s wrong. He’s half a person; he’s a crime against nature. Whether his knees are nudging the other Thiu’s thighs probably isn’t going to make a huge difference.
The second night is a little less tense. There haven’t been any more murder attempts, and the other Thiu seems to have abandoned his efforts to talk Thiu into two-player masturbation.
His other self has changed the sheets and bullied Thiu into taking a shower. Thiu grumbled at the time, but it does feel kind of nice to be going to bed clean. He’s not quite as selfconscious about the places they’re pressed together, either, now that he’s less sweaty.
Still takes him a long time to get to sleep. A little less long than yesterday, maybe.
“You’re up early,” his other self remarks, eyebrows raised, when Thiu opens his eyes after the third night.
Thiu drags himself up in bed, checks the time. It’s not even ten o’clock.
He still feels lousy; he always feels lousy. But he feels marginally less lousy than he’d expect at this hour.
Now that he thinks back to last night, he might actually have managed to fall asleep sooner than he used to before the split. Which doesn’t make sense. What little positivity he used to have has been stripped out of him; he’s more of a mess than ever. By all rights, his insomnia should be worse.
But he guesses he used to spend a lot of time lying awake, dwelling on how alone he was. Maybe it’s harder to do that when there’s someone else breathing right next to you.
About five days in, Thiu stops worrying too much about policing exactly where all the parts of his body are in bed. He’s not planning to start cradling his other self’s junk, but it’s just himself; he probably doesn’t need to obsess so much about making sure nothing is near anyone’s hips.
About six days in, Thiu wakes in the night to find his arms around his other self, the two of them almost wrapped around each other. His first instinct is that he should freak out, scramble away, probably fall out of bed, but—
He manages to keep himself where he is, even if his heart is suddenly beating so fast he’s half-convinced he needs a doctor. If he actually takes a moment to think about this...
Honestly, it’s nice. It’s... it’s not something he’s ever really had, before.
A part of him is convinced his other self will hate him for it, if they’re still this close when he wakes up. But they’re the same person; doesn’t that mean his other self would probably like this, too?
Thiu closes his eyes again. His heart is starting to settle down.
Thiu definitely isn’t going to be able to sleep tonight. At least there’s a good reason for it, for once.
“Hey,” he says, into the darkness.
“Hmm?”
“Are you awake?”
Because that’s in doubt, obviously, after the response he just got. Very smart question, Thiu. Excellent work.
“Apparently,” his other self mumbles, through a yawn. “What’s up? Do you want to try sex yet?”
“Um, n-no,” Thiu says, feeling himself blush. At least nobody can see it right now. “You said we were going to date, right? I – I guess I want to do it properly.”
His other self makes an indistinct noise. “So what is it?”
“I was just thinking,” Thiu says. “What made you say yes? To, uh, to being boyfriends?” Maybe it’ll get less embarrassing to say that at some point, but that point is apparently not right now.
For a moment, it’s quiet.
“I asked a toy capsule machine for a sign,” the other Thiu says.
Thiu takes a moment to process that. “Wow.”
“It gave me a ring,” his other self says. “I guess we have to get married?”
Thiu would have liked an answer more along the lines of I realised I actually like you. He should have known it would be too much to hope for.
Still. He never asks for a sign if he doesn’t want to do something, on some level. It’s usually a way he talks himself into bad ideas.
“I guess so,” he says.
True to his word, Thiu’s other self takes him out on a date.
“Where are we going?” Thiu asks, stooping to lace his shoes. There’s a fizzing, alien excitement in his chest. He’s never had a date before.
“Pizza Hut,” his other self says.
Thiu stands up, laces forgotten. “Pizza Hut? Seriously?”
The other Thiu shrugs. “Why not?”
“Our first date,” Thiu says. “Pizza Hut.”
“What, are you going to pretend you have standards?” his other self asks. “One, you’re me. Two, you’re dating me. Nobody’s fooled.”
Thiu contemplates for a moment.
“I can’t really think of anywhere better,” he admits at last. “And I guess money’s even tighter now that there are two of us.”
His other self opens the door, gestures to it. “You ready to go?”
Thiu takes two steps, trips on his undone laces and concusses himself on the doorframe.
Their Pizza Hut date is delayed for a week.
Honestly, when it eventually comes, after all that time to agonise over ways it could go wrong, it’s kind of perfect. They make bad jokes, they eat greasy pizza. For dessert, they share a ludicrous quantity of cookie dough that would have been way too much for Thiu when he was only one person. It’s all he really needs.
After the meal, though, Thiu’s other self leans towards him, and Thiu freezes up. Is he going to—?
No. No. No, this absolutely cannot happen.
Thiu shoves his chair back and runs out of the restaurant.
His other self finds Thiu crouched in the alleyway next to the Pizza Hut, trying to hide himself in his clothes.
“Hey.” His other self nudges Thiu’s ankle with his foot. “What happened?”
“You tried to kiss me,” Thiu mumbles into his hands.
His other self folds his arms. “You remember you’re the one who asked to be boyfriends, right?”
Somehow, Thiu finds the courage to straighten up. “You can’t kiss me in public!” he hisses. “Do you get what people are going to think about us?”
The other Thiu raises his eyebrows. “Thaaaaat we have terrible taste?”
“Well, yeah, that too, probably, but...” His face is going to burn off. “You know people think we’re twins, right?”
“Oh.” The other Thiu starts laughing. “Wow, yeah, we’d probably weird some people out.”
How can he think about that and just laugh, instead of wanting to die on the spot? Well, yeah, Thiu knows the answer, and it mainly involves having his insecurities magically removed. It still doesn’t seem possible from where he’s standing.
Still, the fact that his other self can laugh it off makes Thiu feel a little less humiliated, at least.
The other Thiu got all their confidence, such as it is, so he takes the lead in bed. He tries to be serious about it at first, tries to act dominant, and for a stunned moment Thiu starts to think they might actually be capable of being sexy.
But Thiu can’t stop laughing nervously, and before long his other self cracks and starts laughing too.
It’s not very sexy. But it doesn’t feel bad.
Afterwards, once his other self has drifted off, Thiu keeps his eyes open for a while, watching his own sleeping face. For the first time, he thinks he might not hate it.
It still feels surreal. He has someone.
And, yeah, maybe that someone is himself, which is about as bottom-of-the-barrel as it gets. But he thought for a long time that the barrel was empty, so he’ll take it.
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A DREAM OF YOU AND ME TOGETHER
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say you believe it, say you believe it
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