I can't help but give Liz a suspicious look. Then, I catch onto something, and I open my eyes wide in surprise.
"Wait. You never asked me to have fun. You know I have been good the way I am. I don't have any psychological issues that make it necessary for me to play like kids to develop well, so why…"
Looking at Liz, I open my eyes wide and scrutinize her, and she averts her eyes.
"How are you doing with your part-time job?"
"It has been more than a month. You should know. Don't try to change the subject, sis."
My outcry makes her blush, which is rare, despite how gentle she usually is.
She looks around, before she caves in under my insistent stare. She caves, and makes to ignore me by plunging back into her thick book of medicine.
"Elizabeth Lockdream, what are you trying to hide by making sure I won't be home tomorrow? If you don't spit it out, I… I…"
I search for a threat to pry Liz's mouth open, but my stutter only succeeds in making her spit out a muffle laughter.
"Pfft!"
She tried to keep the noise low, but despite the festive atmosphere outside only dampened by the cold, the sound reverberates and reaches me.
My face contorts, especially as Liz realizes that she failed at being discreet, and she almost let go of all restraints.
I scrunch my face, but before I can retaliate, Liz seems to have read in me. Her face hardens and she looks at me with vigilance.
"Don't… Don't move and don't come over. If you tickle me, I won't give you any milk for the next few days! And I won't let you touch my breasts!"
I freeze mid-motion, like a stalling engine. I glare at Liz, but her vigilant eyes shine with the threat that she really may go through with.
I look at her, then at her chest, before I deflate, but not before replying to her gaze with all my indignation. I sit down, and I lower my head, determined to ignore her.
I can almost feel the smile on her lips, as well as her gaze that has yet to move away with its victorious shine. My fingers twitch, and a fierce desire to ignore her swirls in my chest, but my lips twitch.
I have come to like the milk she is threatening me to cut the supply of. And she knows I have a thing for her breasts, even before they started producing milk, when I have been able to sleep better with their tips in my mouth.
I want to fight back, but call it her having an unfair advantage, I can't.
"Huff…"
I exhale, and bury my head into the interface before me. Technology is just as advanced as what I remember from the echoes in my mind. Maybe a little more, but that is only what I remember, less than two decades into the third millennium, maybe a decade and a half.
That makes me smile, because I used to have some ideas, in that life, ideas that circumstances, personal and not, have made me shelve until the opportunity crashed with me. And now, not only can I revisit them, I can study to bring them to life with my own hands.
I calm down, and forget about my sister as my focus melts into the project I'm striving to complete.
Even though it is nothing that complicated, it is still a first step for me, toward a useful tool that will help me get set for what I'm planning.
My fingers don't fly over the keyboard the way I want, but they have at least stopped being as clumsy as when I just started.
At some point, I lean back in the couch and place the computer on a pillow on my lap, with my notebook opened at the side.
Only the sound of my fingers tapping remains at some point, like a symphony in the calm so contrasting with the festive noise outside. I don't even know when Liz has stopped reading her books, or when she has stood up from the sofa.
I only know that her hand forces me to stop when it appears before me to cover my eyes, like water dousing fire. I exhale, and I finally feel conscious of my surroundings again, and of my body. That is when I feel the emptiness of my stomach.
My lips twitch, the indignation from earlier coming back like a reminder, and I pull the soft hand down to give its owner a sideways glance.
"What?"
The snappiness is not hidden at all, making Liz smile. Her eyes gentle, she leans down and plants a smothering kiss on my cheek.
"You can hold a grudge, but you should eat before that."
*Brrr*
The betrayal makes my eyes twitch, and causes my glare to struggle to hold on.
"Hahaha… Come and help me. Cooking will be faster with the two of us."
I snap my head away and push her and her shadow away. Unfortunately, Elizabeth only laughs while leaving. My glare at her swaying behind does nothing.
I hesitate, but after a promise to only postpone my grudge, I decide to make my stomach the priority. And certainly not because of Liz's reminder, though her smiles when I arrive in the kitchen after closing the laptop and my notebook shows how differently she is thinking.
Try as I may, I can't keep my angry face for long. Liz has been busy lately, and cooking together, even though it is only the two of us now, brings enough joy and warmth. For a moment, my mind even goes to Emmie and Helene who are also alone now, even though the divorce has yet to happen. But they must not be any more depressed than Liz and I, and that warmth, contrasting with the cold outside, feeds the fire in my chest.
We finish soon, eat, and clean the living room. We put everything in order, and vacate the ground floor for the night. Upstairs, we take a bath together. Liz doesn't get as handsy as she had the day I came home from the hospital.
When we return to her room, we put on casual clothes for the night, simple comfortable pants for me and a t-shirt, while she wears a silky sheer dress.
We synchronously get onto the bed with books in hand, and like the most natural thing in the world, I take out the breasts I have been threatened to be barred from, and work to empty them for the night.
And she lets me, with a gentle smile on her lips, while we both keep ourselves busy with our books. Though she shifts one of her hands to rest it on my chest, and fondles the bun under the t-shirt, that too, without putting my thought into it, because that is how we have been since losing dad and mom. That is how close we have gotten, to keep each other up after the descent into the abyss a few months ago, after our parents left, then our only remaining relatives.