When They Became Reunited

(As a follow up to "When They Became Roommates", this story should stand on its own, but you might want to read the original to better understand why they do the things they do. In either case, enjoy! mrjones)

Around them, the chaos of graduation filled every conceivable crack in the universe. Freshly degreed students in purple and white robes mixed on the sculpted lawn with parents dressed in casual chic. Small children bored to distraction cried and struggled to break free of the sweaty adult hands that enslaved them. Camera flashes went off like lightning bugs somehow confused into firing in broad daylight. Multicolored balloons trailed from skinny ribbons singly and in clusters, whimsically trapped in the vagaries of the afternoon breeze.

"Congratulations," Toni said. "You made it."

Mike was all grin from the chin up.

"And in three years, I'll be saying the same to you."

Toni was two years older than Mike, but she'd married right out of high school and never went to college. Not until this past fall, when she began at the very same school her brother had just graduated from.

"Yeah, we'll see about that," she said. "It's no picnic, taking courses and working to support yourself at the same time." Especially not alone.

Her marriage to Steve had lasted about four years. Shortly after she and Mike's parents were taken from them in a car wreck, Steve announced he was leaving her. Crushed and alone for the first time in her life, Toni had moved to the town where Mike went to school, and the two of them shared a small apartment, both working part time while Mike continued his studies.

And they'd shared a lot more than that.

But, Mike had been gone, on his own for almost a year, and Toni had been left once again.

The cause of that abandonment came bouncing up to them out of the crowd of perspiring celebrants. Her name was Patti, and she was a junior. Short, petite, cute, with blonde hair cut short and big green eyes, she was the essence of enthusiasm. In a perky sun dress and white sandals, she ran up and hugged Mike hard, squealing with excitement. Mike lifted her off the ground, and as they pivoted in place, trying very hard not to fall down and make complete asses of themselves, Patti noticed Toni standing there with a somewhat nauseated look on her face.

"You must be his sister," she said, and she extended a hand in greeting, which Toni hesitantly took. "He never shuts up about you! I've wanted to meet this superwoman he keeps talking about for so long! How are you?"

"Warm," Toni said.

Mid-May had turned unnaturally hot, perhaps in compensation for the late winter storm that had dominated April. The sun hung like a yellow ball in a crystal-blue sky, making it feel like late July, just before the Dog Days of August set in. The mere act of breathing was enough to make people perspire.

"Tell me about it," Mike said, tugging on the front of his gown. "Try wearing this goddamn thing in this heat!"

Patti unclenched herself from him. "Where's your hat?" she asked.

The mortarboard had been snatched off his head shortly after the tassels had been turned. Whoever had taken it flung it into the air where it joined another hundred of its brethren in a tall arc, falling into the anonymous crowd.

"Lost it," he said.

"What are you wearing underneath?" she asked.

"Not a damn thing," he said.

Patti squealed again. Toni got the impression she did that often.

"I was gonna suggest you take it off," Patti said. "I guess that's out."

"Why not?" Toni said. "Maybe it would give some of these people something else to think about besides how badly they want some shade."

Patti made a face, and mimicking dire weightiness she said, "I don't think the world is ready to see Mike naked."

Toni raised an eyebrow. From what she remembered, he looked pretty damned fine naked. He couldn't have changed that much in a year. Maybe she was just prejudiced.

"So, what now?" Mike asked shortly thereafter, realizing that an uncomfortable silence had grown over their small triangular crowd. "Anybody hungry?"

"Too hot to eat," Patti said, and she mimed vomiting.

"Maybe we can just go inside somewhere and get out of the sun," Toni suggested. "How about your place? That way you can change."

No one objected. Toni followed Mike and Patti in her own car to the apartment they shared on a quiet, tree-lined street. Patti jumped out practically before Mike had the car stopped completely, declaring that she had dibs on the bathroom. She ran to the front door and vanished inside.

"You okay with this?" Mike asked Toni when they met on the sidewalk

Toni smiled wryly. "Kinda late in the game to ask that, isn't it?"

"Well, I mean..."

"I'm fine," Toni said, sounding one-hundred percent confident. They headed for the house. "Just two questions," she added as they reached the wide front porch steps.

"Shoot."

"Is she always this...?" Not normally at a loss for words, Toni found herself incapable of saying what she really wanted to ask without sounding catty and jealous.

Mike understood precisely, however. "You overlook it after a while," he said. "Really, she grows on you."

Like shelf fungus on the side of a dead tree, Toni reckoned.

"So, what's the other question?"

Toni looked at him naughtily. "Are you really naked under that thing?"

Mike smiled back. "Wanna see?"

They had just gone inside and were still in the foyer leading to the other four apartments.

"Right here?" Toni asked.

"If you want," Mike said. "I was thinking of someplace a bit more private, but..."

He started up the stairs ahead of her, and lifted the bottom of his gown, way up farther than he had to so as not to trip on it. Toni, being below him, got a great view of the backs of his legs, and the round white globes of his ass.

Mike dropped the gown.

"Satisfied?" he asked her.

Not in the least, she thought inside her head.

"For now," she said.

Mike and Patti's apartment was on the second floor, in the back of an old house that at one time was a single-family home to some very affluent people. The grandchildren who inherited the place chopped it up into four apartments, because it had far more commercial potential than sentimental value.

Mike and Patti had four rooms, and from the way things were stacked all over the place could have used at least two more. When Toni and Mike had lived together in her little three-room efficiency it had seemed plenty big for them, especially when Mike stopped sleeping on the couch and began sharing his sister's big bed. Now it was all hers again, and some days it felt to her like a cavern and other days it felt like a straightjacket.

"Nice place," Toni said.

Mike knew bullshit when he heard it. The walls needed paint, the ceilings showed stains where the roof leaked, and the window in the kitchen had a jagged diagonal crack right through the bottom pane.

"We're practically never here," he said. "We're either in class, at the library, or at work. It costs almost twice what our place did."

'Does', Toni wanted to correct him. But, it hadn't been 'their place' for quite a while.

On a cold and stormy autumn evening a few months after Mike had moved in with his sister, and by no design on the part of either of them, they became lovers. For six months they lived more like man and wife than brother and sister, and both couldn't have been any happier.

Then Mike met Patti, and everything changed.

At first it was just study dates and lunches on campus, but Toni knew something was up by the way Mike had become less attentive. A short while later, Mike and Patti started formally dating, and not long after that Mike moved back to sleeping on the couch in the living room. A few months later, he moved out, taking this apartment with Patti, and Toni found herself alone again.

Patti came out of the bathroom like a leaf being blown by a hurricane. The toilet flushed noisily behind her.

"I wouldn't go in there for a while," she said, and headed for the kitchen. "Who wants a beer?"

They both said they'd take one.

"She's cute," Toni said while Patti retrieved the beers.

Mike thought for a second before he said, "She's okay."

Toni wanted to ask him if he was seriously in love with this...child...but she was afraid of the answer. That Mike and Patti had been together almost a year said a lot, but then again, if they were really all that busy all the time like Mike had said, maybe the newness just hadn't worn off yet. When it did she was sure that Mike would find some excuse to get away. Blonde hair, green eyes, and perky little tits can only take you so far, and are poor compensation for a lack of intellect. In a battle of wits, Patti was unarmed.

Toni and Mike had been so much more than just lovers, and so much more than just brother and sister. They'd become each other's lives, each one half of a much greater whole. She still couldn't accept that this lemon-topped tart had come between them.

Maybe it had something to do with her, with Toni. Steve had left her for another woman. Mike had, too. Maybe some women were just born to be left behind.

"You seeing anyone?"

The question caught Toni off guard.

"Yes," she said at first, then changed it to, "No, not really. I mean, I'm dating, but nobody in particular."

"Good for you," he said, trying his best to sound sincere without being condescending.

Patti came out with the beers. "Why don't you take that off?" she asked Mike. "Get comfortable."

Mike downed half his beer, placed it on the nearest flat surface (which happened to be the stereo turntable) and said, "Sounds like a deal."

He undid the three buttons at the collar and whipped the gown off over his head. In sneakers and white socks alone, he carried the gown to the bedroom and closed the door.

Patti, of course, squealed. Toni wondered if they had cotton balls in the medicine cabinet she could use as ear plugs.

"I can't believe he just did that!" Patti exclaimed. "In front of his sister!"

She made the word 'sister' sound like Toni was a nun, or possessed of some dread and highly communicable disease.

"We're a very close family," Toni said dryly.

"Jesus, God!" Patti went on, plopping down in a beige overstuffed chair and nearly spilling her beer in the process. "He gets so crazy sometimes!"

Indeed he did, Toni thought, remembering that first night together, when their lovemaking was suddenly interrupted by Mike's near rape of Toni's ass. Even her husband had never taken her that way, and while initially she was horrified, she had wound up enjoying it so well that she made anal contact a regular part of their sex-play.

"That he does," Toni said.

Mike came out a minute later in jean shorts and a white tee shirt.

"I thought business school graduates were supposed to wear three-piece suits?" Toni kidded him.

"Not today, they don't. Today I'm just another unemployed graduate."

Headhunters had been all over campus for months, interviewing the graduating class for possible employment. Mike had received two good offers, one with a company right in town, and one from across the continent on the west coast. He had another two weeks to decide which one to make a serious stab at.

"And what's your major?" Toni asked Patti.

"I haven't decided," Patti said, scrunching her face up as if she'd just bitten a lemon. "How about you?"

"Business," Toni said.

Patti slapped her thigh. "You guys are like two peas in a pod," she said.

She had no idea.

"How about we all go to Tony's for pizza?" Mike suggested. "Then maybe we can do some bar-hopping."

Patti frowned, and then pouted. "I have to work tonight," she said. She was a waitress at a ritzy hotel restaurant just outside of town. It was hard work but the tips were amazing.

"I'm game," Toni said.

"Great," Mike said, and then looked sheepishly at Patti because he knew he'd sounded a bit too excited. Patti didn't seem to have noticed.

It was settled. Toni would go home, and Mike would pick her up after dropping Patti off at the hotel. Toni drained her beer and left, saying how wonderful it had been to finally meet Patti. Patti said the same back. Mike knew they both were full of it.

The heat of the day refused to let go. The evening was warm and muggy. When Toni answered the door she was wearing a loose-fitting white gauze shirt.tucked into tight white shorts. The way her breasts swayed freely Mike knew she wasn't wearing a bra, and when he checked out her ass he saw the outline of the shirt material and nothing else. He suspected she wore no panties either, and was immediately overwhelmed with memories of how magnificent she looked naked. As if the time between had never happened, he saw himself taking her to the bedroom and getting them both naked, and fucking her all night long. He had to shake his head to break free of the fantasy.

Mike was still in his jean shorts and tee shirt, and wore floppy sandals. Beneath the shorts he was, in the vernacular, 'commando'. In hot weather he'd found the restrictions of underwear unbearable. His cock dangled down beside his left leg.

"You didn't have to knock," Toni said. "You still have a key."

Mike shrugged. "It's not my place any more," he said.

She wanted to tell him it would always be his place. She thought it best not to.

They got a central table at Tony's and had downed a beer each before the pizza came. It was too hot to eat. They ordered more beers.

"So, how is she in bed?" Toni asked suddenly, as if they'd been talking about Patti all along.

Mike stared at her. "I don't think that's an appropriate question."

"I think it's perfectly appropriate," Toni told him. "She's fucking my brother. I want to at least make sure she's doing a good job of it."

"What about you?" he asked, dodging the question. "You said you were dating. Any overnight guests?"

Sauce for the goose, as the old saying goes, is sauce for the gander.

Toni hesitated, thinking about lying. "No," she finally said.

Mike shook his head. "So, you're not getting any at all?"

Toni slapped the table and then slid a slice of pizza off the aluminum tray and onto her plate. "You're right," she said. "Bad subject."

They ate a while in silence, and then Mike asked her about her courses and professors for the coming fall and gave her tips on the ones he had already suffered through. One of them was a very droll accounting course taught by Dr. Mendes, a middle-aged married man who always dressed in tweed.

"He's a total dog," Mike told her. "Major perv. Wear skirts. You've got great legs, you'll get an A."

They managed to eat half the pie, and had the rest boxed to take home.

Neither one really felt like bar hopping. Mike drove back to Toni's place.

Their place.

"Coming in for a while?" Toni asked.

It was still early. Patti wouldn't need a ride home until the wee hours of the morning. Mike carried the pizza box and followed his sister into the apartment.

It was almost exactly the way he remembered it. Not a stick of furniture had been moved. The same curtain hid the kitchenette from the rest of the main room. The bathroom still smelled of mold in hot weather.

And the bedroom sat open and inviting.

"Beer?" Toni asked.

"Sure."

She put the pizza on the counter by the sink and retrieved two cold beers. They sat on the couch together and drank.

That was where it had all begun. The two of them snuggled together on that couch, in the dark, in the cold, sipping tea and listening to the storm rage outside. That was where they had first touched each other, where they had first kissed. She'd gone down on him, right there on the couch, before taking his hand and leading him to her bed.

Mike squirmed where he sat. Toni pretended not to notice.

"So, tell me about some of these guys you've been dating," he finally asked. Anything to break the silence, and to distract his mind from how close she was to him, and how good she smelled and looked and felt. It also helped soothe some of the guilt he'd always felt about leaving her by allowing that he'd actually been freeing her to have a normal relationship with someone she could actually build a future with.

Like most well-intentioned inquiries, it backfired.

"You want to see who I've been dating?" she asked him.

Not sure where this was going, he said, "Sure."

She took his hand, got up fast, and dragged him off the couch and into the bedroom. Leaving him to stand in the middle of the room, she opened the cabinet door to her nightstand and took out a lidless shoebox, which she placed on the bed.

"Take a look," she said.

Mike cautiously approached the box and peeked inside. He expected photos of men, maybe nudes, who knew? Perhaps she'd started a collection, a Rouge's Gallery, such as it were, saved up for a chance just like this to throw her blatant sexuality into her brother's face.

But, that's not what he found.

"Wow."

That one word said it all.

In the box were two dildos. One was very lifelike, very large, with a peach-colored shaft complete with veins and a plum-colored head, and fake balls at the base. The other was its much-skinnier cousin, with only lip-service paid to anatomical accuracy. This one had a thin wire leaving its base that went to a small black box. In there with them were two tubes of lubricant, one nearly gone, the other untouched.

"That's been my love life since you left," Toni told him, and her voice cracked. She was very close to crying. "What do you think? Do they pass muster?"

Mike was silent. He was hurting inside in ways he hadn't felt since their parents' funeral.

"I'm sorry," he managed to say. It was a pathetic excuse for the remorse he felt, but he was so afraid of saying something that would only make this worse.

"Don't be," she said. She took the larger of the two toys out and studied it, turning it around and around in her hands. "I don't want a relationship right now. I've done that, remember? It didn't work out so well."

Did she mean Steve, her ex-husband? Or Mike? Both, perhaps.

"Actually," she went on, "they're quite satisfying. No egos to stroke, no toilet seat left up during the night. They don't snore."

Mike couldn't take any more. He encircled her in his arms, slowly, the way fog embraces a landscape.

"They don't do this," he said, and he kissed her. The dildo fell from her hand and landed back in the box on the bed.

Toni had promised herself that she would not let herself be overcome with seeing him again. She ached for him physically and emotionally, and being with him again had melted the past year and a half as if the time had never been allowed to grow between them. In that kiss they were still lovers, he had never left, everything was just the way it had been, the way she wanted it to be.

The kiss deepened. Their mouths opened to let their tongues become reacquainted. Toni's hands flattened against Mike's back, holding him in. His went to her hips, his fingertips sinking into the soft flesh of her ass. The feelings towards his sister he thought he had been able to set aside for good all came back at once. Between them, his cock swelled and pulsed, still trapped now uncomfortably down that left pant leg.

He thought of Patti. There was no comparison. She was good, but she wasn't Toni. Nobody would probably ever be.

He maneuvered them closer to the edge of the mattress, and one hand swept down to shove the box and all its contents aside, and Mike very gently laid Toni down, settling over her softly.

They continued to kiss, and their hands reconnected with places that had become so familiar. Mike tugged her blouse up to her shoulders and massaged each breast, pinching her nipples to full erection. He adored her wide, dark areolas and how they stood out in stark contrast to the milky white of her breasts. Patti's nipples were pink and small, almost the same size as his.