Home again from a night out with friends, off in gloomy rainy lovely Manchester. The cold walk back from the train station had left my exposed flesh goose-pimpled and a fair proportion of my flesh was exposed. My dress wasn’t as tight-fitting as some of my friends’, but it only just covered what it needed to. If I’d have bent over at any point in the evening a lot of people would have seen midnight-blue knickers and my firm little bum. I wrestled with the key and let myself into my parents’ semi-detached house in what must be Northern England’s tamest suburbia.
No sound inside which made sense, it being Two AM and my parents the deep sleepers they are. I crept up the stairs, dodging that creaky step, taking my shoes off to pass my brother’s room to my own door a few feet away. I opened the door and saw familiar things- framed photos, piles of books, clothes left on the chair and the bed. Bits and bobs I’d dragged back from university last year- it was strange, my brother and I being back home after three years away studying in different parts of the country, back together again now. Born a few minutes apart and we’d always been close, everyone said that.
Not drunk but not sober either. I stood by my bed but didn’t feel like lying down, sleep seemed a long way off. I’d flirted with a couple of guys that evening, gone a little way down the road with them but stopped short with each, no exchange of numbers, no physical contact. That had seemed right at the time, neither were exactly God’s gift, but now….. now I felt just a little bit frustrated. Wound up, coiled and ready. No one to share that with.
I took a glass to the bathroom and filled it at the tap, looking into the mirror above and seeing a young face with gentle features and that nose I always felt was a bit too small. People said I looked younger than twenty-two, looked more like I should be starting university than home after finishing my degree. I wasn’t too happy about that- always being asked for ID at pubs and clubs, having jokes made. My height, or lack thereof, didn’t help. I ran hands through copper hair and silently told myself it was time to go to bed.
I didn’t expect to see my brother reclined on my bed, but there he was. Reading a book- Hardy, who’d always been his favourite ever since our English Literature lessons in sixth-form. My single bed was snug to the wall on the far end of my small bedroom, which he used to tease me was my enclosure. You’re too grumpy tonight, get off to your enclosure.
He lowered the book from his face and pretended to be surprised to see me, good looking features giving a poor acting class. “Charlotte, to what do I owe this pleasure?” He never called me Charlotte in seriousness. It was always Charlie or Char.
“Get off my bed, Dan,” I hadn’t spoken any worse since my fourth drink and hoped my speech wasn’t too slurry- it must have been a bit dodgy because I could see him suppressing one of his explosive laughs.
“I thought I’d wait up for you, Mum was worried.”
“About what?”
“You know, nothing really. She still thinks of us as kids.” He put his blue card bookmark in (why not just fold a page corner over? I didn’t get it- he was always the neat one), and put the book down next to him. “She was going to stay up for you so I said I would.”
I grinned and stooped uneasily to take off my stupidly-high-heels. “You’re a real hero.”
“Yeah I guess I am. How was your night?”
I tried to think How had it been. “It was okay. Run of the mill.”
“Come sit down,” he said, shuffling along slightly on the bed and making just enough space for me to slouch next to him, which I did, and I could feel his warmth and familiar smell. Something in me stirred, not for the first time. He gave one of his contented little sighs, which I always had a love for, and I knew it was because he loved the night and loved to be with me. Loved me.
“I could have gone off with someone tonight.” I don’t know why I said that.
“But here you are,” Dan said, moving to face me with his elbow on the pillow. “With me.”
“Here I am.”
“What’s it like for you, when you do go home with some guy you meet?”
I laughed and smoothed down my dress which had been making its way up my pale thighs. “I’m not exactly going home with guys all the time you know. It’s pretty rare for me.” I knew a lot of guys found me attractive- petite, a look of real young innocence. A dirty smile, sometimes.
“Yeah, I know. But… is it fun? Or are they like, disappointing?”
I thought about this. “The build up’s fun. Dancing with them, flirting, a bit of touching…. a taxi to their place… all of that. But…. yeah, I suppose for me it never really lives up to that.”
“The sex?”
I blushed like a prude, weird to hear my brother talk about it. And he seemed so calm and assured, earnest.
“Yeah. It’s…. it just doesn’t do it for me.”
“Why?”
“Why are you so interested, you great plonker?” I shook my head in a show of mirth but my heart was beating faster and I could feel everything more intensely, more real, somehow.
“I’m your brother, I have a right to know,” he said in his silly Dad’s Army Captain Mainwaring voice, which he knew was my favourite of all his put-on voices.
“Alright then, I would have to say that….. it’s the….. emotional connection. That side of things. I need that. It doesn’t really work for me otherwise, I don’t get anything from it.”
I snuck a glance to my left at him- he seemed to be deep in thought. I’d inadvertently revealed a lot. But not everything. Not that I fantasised about him. Sometimes though about him when I had a cock deep inside me. These were unsayable things.
“Have you ever enjoyed…. sex?” He looked straight ahead when he said it.
I closed my eyes. Tried to remember. Past encounters- the good, the bad, and the clumsy. None of them actually enjoyable, when analysed. “No, I don’t think I have.” It sounded sad.
His voice was soft, gentle. Like him. I’d always liked how he was tall and strong, a bit hefty-he always made out that he was chubby and needed to lose some weight but I liked him as he was, he was a solid safe anchor in my life. “Do you think you could? With someone you care about. Who cares about you.”
I didn’t speak for a long moment and we stayed still, reclined but not quite lying down, propped up by pillows, comfortable and warm with no care for the time, happy at home. My drunkenness was fading to a pleasant tipsy state and I liked it. “I hope so,” I said.
With my eyes closed and everything so quiet I thought, after a couple of minutes passed, or must have passed, that Dan had fallen asleep. I was fine just being there. With my brother. Then I felt his hand just above my knee, on my bare skin. That’s how it all started.
Source: reddit.com/r/sexystories/comments/at4b66/fm_my_affection_oh_brother_part_1