Brotherly Bedwarmer

"So it's not safe to come in today? The rest of the week? Fine, please call if anything changes." Jacob got off the phone with his professor. He couldn't fault the facilities for shutting down if students would have to go out in ten inches of snow and ice.

Noemi poked her head around the corner. "Told you." She stuck out her tongue impishly and returned to her little blanket fort on the couch with a mug of cocoa.

Four months in and Jacob was still unsure how to act around his little sister. The six years he'd been away studying left behind a girl who he saw only once or twice a year if he was lucky on holidays. And when it came time for a newly minted adult to continue her schooling, it was just the best financial choice to have her move into his unused bedroom. Never mind that he was already looking for a roommate.

At some point without him noticing, that gangly, awkward girl had become a dark-haired beauty on his doorstep. But she still felt like a stranger. There were too many memories missing from his mental picture of his little sister that this woman might as well have been someone random.

She put on something romantic and waved her big brother over to her side, clinging to his arm from inside a four-thick blanket mound when he took his place beside her.

"What did they say?" She said between sips.

"Campus is closed, no classes. They say because of the big hill the bus route can't get in." He said. "That's what they get for only having that one road going to the campus I guess."

"Told you so. But you said it's not like high school where they'll close down for just any reason. So I'm thinking we do a whole movie day, but nothing scary. And no nerd stuff."

That excluded half of his dvd collection. "One horror movie and one action movie, or you cook lunch and dinner. Two separate meals, not one big portion." He remembered a similar situation weeks ago that had resulted in a gigantic pot of vegetable stew.

Noemi pouted. "Meanie. Fine, I wanna just snuggle in this spot all day." She flopped over and trapped him with her head in his lap, nuzzling in to find the most comfortable position.

Thinking to snatch up the remote, Jacob only got a glimpse of it before it disappeared into the folds of Noemi's blankets. So a romance movie ensued. At least it was a good one for being so bad, the two of them shared laughter at how absurd it got. A hand count on Noemi's slender fingers showed how many times the police should have gotten involved but weren't and she soon ran out of fingers.

She ended up prying Jacob's fingers up to continue her count.

"See that?" She said, pulling another finger up. "Running through the terminal, he should be getting tackled right now by security. They don't know he's in love."

"Not that it would make that better. Wouldn't a bomber say he was in love if he knew it would let him sprint toward the gate? And she already left him, so who cares that he's in love? He's been acting like a stalker this whole movie."

"You think so?" Noemi said.

"So they met back up at a class reunion, that's pretty normal. But then she goes to sleep at her parents' house and he just happens to remember where that is, shows up later? There's a police report right there."

"But her parents renovated her old room and they were going to have her sleeping on a couch. He remembers that and shows up because he has a spare bed for her."

"So?" Jacob said. "Who keeps up with their high school crush's parents enough to know that sort of thing?"

"But... they didn't have a place for her to sleep."

"How long are you supposed to keep an adult's room the way they left it? The couch was more than good enough."

Noemi pouted, but didn't argue the point. She emerged from her blankets only long enough to put in the next disc and dove back into warmth.

Jacob grabbed up the remote, started the movie and set the clicker too far away for Noemi to reach without exposing herself to the cold.

"I know you have warmer clothes than cotton shorts. Why don't you go put something on?"

Noemi rested her head on his shoulder, curly, dark hair tickling his skin. "You really don't get girls, do you? Shorts are cute, sweats are gross. How are you okay with a shirt anyway? I'll lend you a blanket if you want."

"Nah, I'm actually a mammal. I make my own heat."

She kicked him pathetically with a blanketed foot.

The action movie was from a ten pack sold in a huge basket at the grocery store and likely couldn't be sold any other way. It would have been perfect to watch with a drinking buddy, but Noemi ignored it in favor of playing on her phone the entire time, having flopped back into Jacob's lap.

It really was boring if you didn't have someone to laugh with, so Jacob found himself petting his sister's hair. When he noticed and started to pull away, Noemi took his hand and kept it there to keep petting.

"Feels good, don't stop." Noemi whispered.

Suddenly there was another reason she couldn't stay in his lap, Jacob extricated himself hoping she wouldn't notice and retreated to the kitchen. It would be a little early for lunch, but it gave him more time to cook anyway.

As soon as he left the room, the tv's audio cut out as Noemi found the remote and changed out the movie for one of hers again. But she kept it on the selection screen and moved her blanket monster self to the counter where the two rooms connected.

"Wha'cha makin'?" She asked.

Jacob surveyed his shelves for ideas. "I have a bunch of garlic that I have to use. How about garlic buttered noodles?"

"They make your breath smell."

"So? It's not like we're meeting anyone today."

Catching a quick look at Noemi's cherubic face made Jacob worry she was getting too hot inside her blanket mound. She was turning a pinkish red and she refused to meet his gaze.

"I don't want it." Noemi said. "If you make garlic, I'm eating cereal..."

He ignored how rude it was. Any kind of pasta would use up too much cookware to justify using for one person's meal, so back to the drawing board he went.

"Grilled cheese and tomato soup? Pretty good when you're cold."

"You use butter. Too greasy." She rejected it and Jacob thought better than to press the issue.

"What about fish sticks and tater tots?"

"I'm not a kid..." Noemi retreated into her pile.

"Then stop acting like one and tell me what you'll eat."

"Why did you get up?"

Jacob's face went chill with the thought of what his sister might have felt growing against her cheek. "It was worse than I thought. Turns out that's one of those movies you can watch with a drinking buddy."

She seemed to accept this answer, folding her arms on the counter and resting atop them. "I'll eat garlic if you want to. but promise you won't tease me about my breath." And with her mouth hidden in her elbow, she said something he couldn't hear. "Coward."

Thirty minutes and a sinkful of dishes later, the were back on the couch with plates of his best recipes and some pan-toasted bread for texture. Despite her objections to it, Noemi slurped down noodles with enthusiasm, humming a quiet tune she made up as she went.

This next movie was as impossible as the last. Something about an american tourist having some small-country european prince fall in love with her on sight. It felt ridiculous that she would even be in the position to be noticed by him and more ridiculous that the dowdy-looking actress they hired would be more attractive to the prince than any number of other options.

Noemi ate, stealing glances to make sure Jacob was still watching the movie.

"There's no way this ends well for her." He said.

"Wha?" Noemi said through a mouthful of noodles that she hurriedly gulped down. "Of course they get together, that's the whole point of the movie!"

"It always cuts off before succession comes into play. Princes can't just fall in love with whoever they want and expect everything to work out in the end."

"Then he'll have to make it work. That's how you do it, you have to make love work." Noemi had begun playing with a noodle on her plate nervously. "It doesn't fall into your lap, you know. Love takes work."

"For you and me, that's how it works, but he's a prince. What other people think about his wife is actually important."

She quietly watched, flushing, and Jacob wondered if he'd been too hard on her. It wasn't right, but she was an adult now and her childish view of love, absent practicality, would end up hurting her if it were allowed to fester. Not only did princes not get to love whoever they wanted, but commoners shouldn't harbor such unrealistic fantasies either.

Learning to be happy without fantastic success, that was adult love. But it wasn't really necessary to chop off those feelings in one go.

Noemi's slurping had left a little sauce on her cheek.

"You have some on you." Jacob said.

She wiped an entirely different spot.

"No, on your cheek."

She wiped the wrong cheek.

"The other one."

"Just get it for me." Noemi thrust her face into his and took his hand, bringing it to her cheek. "You can lick it off if you want."

Jacob scooped the sauce off and to his surprise, his sister popped his finger into her mouth, sucked it clean before removing it, her tongue trailing across his skin.

With him staring down at her, Noemi retreated into her mess of blankets, pulling them tight around her face. "What?" She said. "It's not dirty, you're my brother. We've got the same germs. It's good sauce..."

"Are you sure you're okay? It looks like you're sweating in there. If you have a fever, you should get in bed. Nobody needs us to go outside today anyway. Best time in the world to get sick."

"I-I'm fine." She said.

Jacob brushed her bangs out of the way and held his palm to her forehead. She refused to look him in the eye still, but it didn't seem like she was running a fever, so he let it rest and cleaned up from lunch while Noemi picked her next movie.

And this movie started with a sex scene.

It seemed like Noemi forgot about that, as she panicked and shut the tv off entirely to avoid it going any farther. Meekly, she plucked the dvd out of the player and replaced it with the horror movie Jacob had set aside.

Throughout the ghost movie, Noemi clung to Jacob's arm, burying her face in his sleeve whenever it seemed like a scare was about to happen. It brought back memories of when he'd made her watch something gory way back when. The earful he'd gotten from mom back then would peel paint off the wall and Noemi would start wetting the bed again for the next month.

A touch of shame came from the memories of those mornings, when she had to make the march of shame to the washing machine with a bundle of soggy sheets in her arms. In fact, it kept happening until Jacob let her sleep in his bed "to keep the monsters away".

Finally done with their movie day, Noemi excused herself to calm down in a hot bath. The cheap water heater provided for the apartment wouldn't let Jacob take one himself before bed, but a man could go more than one day without a hot shower, especially if he had nowhere to be.

Cleaning up the dishes from lunch, Jacob started brainstorming for dinner. The two of them hadn't done much of anything today and he already fed them butter and carbs, so he was thinking of something vegetarian.

Noemi was finished and blowing dry her hair when a thundering crack echoed through the neighborhood and in the same moment the lights all shut off. She screamed and there was a thud from inside the bathroom; Jacob ran and threw open the door to help.

Sitting on the floor and illuminated by snow-reflected moonlight, Noemi's bare skin sparkled with beads of bathwater.

She didn't yell at him to get out, but rubbed a sore spot on her thigh where the hair dryer, hanging by its cord off the counter, had hit her when she slipped. Instead of simpering, she took a towel and wrapped it around her slim figure then carefully walked out.

"Can you... dry my hair for me?" Noemi asked.

Jacob didn't dare refuse and soon sat with her on her bed, quietly rubbing her head under a towel.

It wasn't a very pink room, which surprised him. From what he remembered, her old room looked more like a page out of a fairy tale, complete with glowing stars he had helped paint on the ceiling back when it had been a nursery. Compared to that, this room was almost homely. But her bed, the main feature, was laden with enough pillows and stuffed toys to make up for the lack of girliness around it.

Noemi sat with nothing but a towel between them, complaining that changing into pajamas at this point would get them wet.

"We shouldn't have watched that ghost movie..." She said.

Jacob finished toweling off her hair and threw the towel into the corner to take care of later. He would have left Noemi to change into her pajamas, but she turned and clung to his chest.

"Come on, you can't still be afraid of ghosts." He pushed her off by her naked shoulder. Only the grip of a couple slender fingers maintaining her decency. "I need to grab the emergency flashlight, let go."

"They don't care if I believe in them or not!... Can you... sleep with me tonight?" Tears shimmered in her eyes with the moonlight.

"We can't do that."

"Why not? We used to do it all the time when I was too scared to sleep by myself. What changed?"

"I'll just be in the next room."

Noemi stood abruptly, snatching her pajamas out of her dresser, and let the towel fall. Before he could look away, Jacob was hit with the image of her creamy skin, her delicate curves. The sheer immodesty of it all drove him out of the room, heart swelling.

Did she know what she was doing? Even now, did she not think of her own brother as a man?

She emerged minutes later using the light from her phone to navigate into her brother's room where he lay, feigning sleep. She bent, and her breath was hot in his ear.

"Are you asleep?" Noemi asked to no answer. "It's so cold, and I know I'll have nightmares if I sleep alone..."

Without permission, Noemi lifted the covers and slid beside her brother. He would continue pretending to be asleep; she really was a scaredy cat after all, so it wouldn't hurt. He was the one who made them watch a horror movie after all, so it was his responsibility.

When it had all settled down and Jacob was starting to drift off, the quiet revealed a soft shuffling like fabric on fabric. On top of that, something was gently tugging on the blanket from underneath.

Noemi's breathing grew ragged, like she was trying to hold it, and under the covers it was like a warmer was pressed against Jacob's back.

And she let out a tight-lipped moan.

Like a flash of lightning, Jacob knew what was happening beside him.

Noemi's arm rustled under the covers, her fingers thrust below her pants, stirring herself agonizingly slow so as not to wake her brother. Her aching chest rising and falling with every secret breath of chill air.

Unable to move properly on her back, Noemi bravely rolled onto her side, warm breath falling on Jacob's neck as she plunged her fingers inside her pussy, the movements of her arm nearly bumping into him.

It was okay. She was probably just hopped up on fear. Jacob kept pretending to be asleep, as hard as it was with his sister's quiet moans in his ear.

Humping her fingers, Noemi's shifting tugged at the blankets. Even if he'd been asleep, there was no way he would have been able to stay that way with the stirring of her hips.

Noemi's breath quickened, her breast heaving under the blankets. Orgasm came and she clenched down hard, trembling to avoid convulsion. It was finally done, and she hugged Jacob from behind, her heart throbbing against his back, her excited nipples tickling his skin.

"Why can't it always be like this?" Noemi whispered to herself in the dark, weaving her slender arms under his. "We always used to sleep together... why did you have to have another bedroom? I thought it would be better than this. I finally got to see you again after so many years, but we both spend so much time in class..."

This had to be a prank. Noemi knew he couldn't have fallen asleep that quickly and she was testing how far he would let this go.

That notion faded away when Noemi gently rolled Jacob onto his back and crawled onto him, her breasts resting on his chest and her breath was on his cheek.

"Garlic... at least we match." Noemi pressed her soft lips against his, her tongue threatening to poke its way in. She lingered in the embrace, hushed moans escaping her as she worked her lips against his.

Then she opened her eyes. Now adjusted to the dark, she could see that his were also open by the moonlight filtering in from the window.

She reeled back, throwing their blanket off, and she tried to flee. But Jacob caught her arm before she could even leave the bed. And they were left in the cold, too embarrassed in the moment to move.

Jacob eventually broke their silence. "Good one, you knew I was awake this whole time, didn't you? Maybe it went a little too far, though." He took up the blanket again having dismissed the situation, but Noemi spoke up in the darkness.

"I didn't know." She said.

"Stop that. You've already taken the joke too far. Sleep in here if you want, but cut that out."

Noemi sniffled. "It isn't a joke." She crawled under the covers and clung to his arm. "I love you."

Jacob was determined to reveal the trick, but his heart strings twinged hearing her stop herself crying. "I love you too, as a sister. Did someone put you up to this or something? It's coming out of nowhere."

Noemi was holding his shirt in tight clumps, mustering her conviction. "It isn't coming from nowhere. It's always been here. I thought I could be content with just living near you, have dates like today without you knowing, but that's just made it worse! How was I supposed to hold back after all that?"

With teary eyes, she pulled herself closer, pressing her soft lips to his neck, his cheek, and stopped where she could stare into his eyes.

He took her by the shoulder to hold her back, but she had already undone her top's buttons and it slid away, revealing a tender, throbbing breast. Stunned with embarrassment, he didn't resist his sister taking his hand and pulling it to cup her boob, its hard tip tickling his palm.

"One time..." She whispered partly to herself. "All I want is one time, then I can move on. Please, all I need is to have sex with you one time, then we'll never talk about this again..."

Jacob panicked and pulled her into an embrace, rested her chin on his shoulder. "How long have you felt like this?"

She whispered into his ear. "I didn't know how I felt until you left. It was so lonely in that house. And all I heard was how proud mom and dad were of their lawyer son. You should have heard them talking about you as if they were surprised by your success. I wasn't surprised. I always knew that my prince would do well."

"I'm your prince?"

"Of course you are... you raised me as much as those two did. You're the one that put me to bed and kissed me goodnight, that made my favorite meals and slept with me when I was scared. Even when I just said I was scared so I could sleep with you..." Noemi pulled back, wiping nascent tears away so she could look her brother in the eyes again. "I felt like a princess, so you had to be my prince."

"Is that why you applied to my college? To stay here with me?"

"I thought I could play house for a few years, pretend I was your wife. I was so happy when you said yes, but it hasn't been anything like I thought... We're both at school all day, then we have to do homework. At least we do that together. And then we sleep against the same wall, but what I always wanted was to sleep next to you. It's torture!"

"We can't do it."

"It's just once, then never again. I'll even move back home if you want me to! Let me see what it could have been like, then I promise I'll be satisfied."