Suggest scenarios or stories you'd like to see me write in the comments. No guarantees but they might pique my interest. I plan to continue this story in subsequent chapters.
On another note, it's been ten months since my first story. Oops, lmao. I got busy with my novel, but when I finally got to this story I had a lot of fun writing it one night. Thoughts, feedback and suggestions are super welcome. Also use condoms irl guys and make sure your partners are sober. Xx
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Sweat and Delirium.
It happens at the peak of summer, on one of those days when the asphalt gets too hot to stand on and sweat clings to the back of necks. Sweat. It runs freely in the space between two bodies. It moistens an embrace just enough for limbs to glide over one another without friction. Sex becomes that little bit hotter on those summer days; that little bit more tiring. It's harder to keep quiet—and this, perhaps, is what makes the night so intoxicating for Isobel. Trying to keep quiet. Turning it into a game. But not just yet, not quite. Not till after dark, when she's in her brother's bedroom, when
it
happens. A taboo firework.
For now Isobel just tries to survive the commute home. She's drunk off the back of some party, stuffed into a city bus with her head against the window, watching the world slug by. It smells of hot concrete and petrol. The hospitality of vodka had kept the evening from being a complete dud, but now the dip and turn of the road punishes her. Her stomach contorts, her head pounds, and her clothes soak into her flesh like water into sand.
Isobel digs at her eyes with her palms. Everyone's off to university next year. She's staying at home, but they're all dispersing around the country, her nameless ensemble of friends. Off to start their lives. She presses the button for the next bus stop. It's funny to feel abandoned by people who don't even know they're abandoning you. Funny, like not wanting to go out but still wanting an invite. She'll never see some of those partygoers again. Isn't adult life silly?
The route home from the bus stop is no more than ten minutes. Isobel does it in five, by which time the sun has set and dark has fallen. When she gets home she lets herself in silently and rests at the start of the hall. The house is asleep. Her parents room is directly to her right, and her brother's to the left. Separated by a metre of hall. The heat persists indoors. It saps her of her strength and pulls her hair and edges her closer to delirium. Delirium, and the firework.
"Fuck," she says.
She peels her shoes and socks away and sets them by the front door, and tries to catch a glimpse of herself in its frosted glass. Her hair's a mess. She tugs it into shape. Her mind has turned to shit. It hurts to think, from heat or self-pity or alcohol. Probably all three.
A voice from behind her. "Izzy?"
It's her brother Tony. He's standing just outside his bedroom door in a dressing gown. Each sibling pauses and eyes the other. Even in the dark they can both tell something's wrong: in his vacant eyes, or in her grubby hair, or in the way that neither of them can quite sustain their usual eye contact.
Tony shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "Are you okay?"
"I'm not sure I have friends anymore," Isobel says. Her own voice is like a noose, but she shrugs it off. "Are you okay?"
"I... broke up with Sarah."
"Oh." Isobel pauses. She unsticks her shirt from her back. "Do you wanna talk about it?"
"Not really." Tony laughs, hardly more than a breath. It's a little hysterical. "Do you?"
"I don't think so."
It's the truth, Isobel thinks. Talking is mature, but it is not immediate. No string of words can relax the mind like alcohol. An immature thought, maybe, but an honest one. There is no euphoria in talking.
"Okay, well..." Tony opens his door. He pauses, stares. "We'll go our lonely ways, I guess."
Isobel's lips hang slightly apart for a moment. "Yeah."
He goes into the room and shuts the door. Tony is two years older than her, and like her, he chose to live at home after leaving school. Isobel waits outside his door for several long beats. The world has righted itself. Tony was in her position. Tony is in her position. That fact—the reality that the boy she's grown up with more than any of her friends will be around in the coming year—it reassures her. It wipes the pity from her mind and leaves her standing there outside his door. Her heart is going.
Isobel doesn't know what makes her act next. The hysterical warmth, the alcohol, the loneliness and the comfort Tony offers—or all three. Or maybe they're just excuses. Because the vodka doesn't grow a voice and usher her along. She chooses to act of her own accord. She opens Tony's door and slips inside. For a moment her eyes struggle to adjust, then his room comes into hazy focus.
"Izzy?" Tony is already in his bed. He props himself onto his elbows. "What's up?"
His bedroom never gets much sunlight in the day, and a fan on his bedside table is circulating air, so the space is delightfully cold. Isobel wipes the sweat from her palms. Tony's duvet is discarded on the floor in favour of a sheet, which he's nestled under.
"Tony?" Isobel looks at him, and speaks almost as though surprised to find him there. Maybe it's because she still doesn't want to talk, but she came to see him all the same. The hook of excitement in her stomach is hard to place. She wipes her hands again. "Hi. Sorry."
"Did you want some company?"
Isobel feels very exposed standing there before him. She unsticks her shirt again. "I thought you didn't feel like talking."
"No, but..." Tony shrugs. He shuffles under his sheet. "Silent company is still nice."
Isobel crosses the room, draws back his sheet, and lies down beside him. For a long while there is nothing but the spin of the fan beside the bed, and the rise and fall of their chests. Her side is pressed against his so they fit under the sheet. Flesh on flesh, silent company like good tea. Isobel finds she could cry. There have been days or weeks in which they scarcely hung out, as is often the case with siblings absorbed in the thrill of fresh adulthood—but there is something in their love that is purer than romance or friendship. Friends and lovers go, but Tony never has and never will. Isobel finds his hand and gives one of his knuckles a gentle squeeze. They will always be resolutely present for the other.
"Izzy," Tony says. He lies his head sideways on the pillow to meet her gaze. "Are you okay?"
Isobel lies her head on its side too. Their eyes are inches apart.
"I just mean..." Tony shrugs and squeezes her hand back. "Will you be okay?"
"I think so. Will you?"