Blurring Lines: my twincest journey

Since I can remember, I have always been obsessed with twins. The Olsen Twins and their movies were a staple in my house growing up and both me and my younger sister agreed being a twin would rock.

But for me it didn’t end up in fantasies of pranks in the Parent Trap style, I also soon began to fantasise about twincest. Back then, it was private, but after years of living it in my mind, I began to write it too and I found a community of like-minded people. Fandom first, then you guys, where brothers crossed all the lines, and their love knew no boundaries.

…Boundaries. Funny how it sounds so romantic, right? So did soul bonding your worse enemy (Harry and Draco, how I enjoyed watching you suffer!), but you know what wasn’t so great? When my sister wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone so I could read, or when my father didn’t get he had to knock before walking into my room to ask me a question.

And guess what? Those are boundaries too. At my house, we weren’t very good at them. Hell, we were terrible. And it wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t loving either, to not acknowledge there are limits.

Growing up as I did created a sense of love that was so overwhelming it would drown you, possess you, demand everything you were. It did not go so well in actual romantic relationships either, because I didn’t know I could say no, and I didn’t know that when someone didn’t take the ‘no’ that was a serious red flag I had to address with a firmer ‘no’ or with getting the fuck out.

After all this time, I have come to see I wrote a lot of the Intertwined Fates series to explore that limitless love and how twisted it could get, to give characters the balls to put limits in place when I hadn’t been able to myself, to have other characters offer them more space (instead of get angry and push, which is what happens in real life when one begins saying 'no' or stops saying 'yes' to everything). Sometimes I needed to talk about the absolute despair of having no control (or feeling like you didn't) over your life, like with Ray in Omega for the Pack, other times I rallied and gave my protagonist a say in his fate like in Runt of the Litter.

A love that allows you to continue to be yourself.

That's another aspect of twincest and brocest that I have always loved, a guy's brother isn't under any false impressions, is he? He's seen it all and he's stuck around (he almost, by society's dictates, cannot leave). And if someone cannot leave you, it is safe to be yourself with them, to be authentic.

But of course anyone can leave, and the fact that they choose to stay is the reward we are really after. If we are brave enough to open our hearts when someone can dislike what's in them. If we can believe we are enough and bare our souls... then when they say 'yes' we know they mean it. And when we say 'yes', we mean it, there isn't anything we are holding back because it could flood this box we are trapped in together.

I think I have known for a while that's the trick of it, that's why Cracking Ice is the story that took me five years to figure out and the one closest to my heart—a map for the future.

Recently, writing Always Mine (short companion to His, Truly, republished as Always His) I enjoyed the angst immensely, but I realised I couldn’t take it anywhere sexual anymore. Then the other day I tried re-reading a brocest fanfic I have loved for about a decade (the author remains absolutely brilliant btw, re-reading = <3) and when I got to the sex scene, I realised I wanted to get out of there.

So I did.

I’ll miss the story, and many others I collected and carefully curated for the person I was then.

The person I am now has healed something and knows how to say ‘no’, even if it’s not always easy and often makes me anxious. Every time I practice it, I grow a little more convinced I have every right to my space and that love doesn’t mean drowning, but flying—side by side, while headed somewhere warmer together.

P.S: Of course, if you enjoy bros crossing lines, enjoy away! I’m still pretty hooked on arranged marriage, for one, and for another… Stories are the best healers I know.