Laura and I Finally Together Pt. 01

1. Introduction

For a long time we had both ignored our feelings, or no, completely overlooked them. We lived under the same roof, as if we were brother and sister. But of course we weren't really that at all. From the moment we were old enough to realize that, our relationship, in retrospect, had slowly changed. On the one hand, we naturally behaved like family. Close, familiar, and often guided by daily routines. Yet inside we subconsciously felt that we were playing a role in that area, no matter how automatic the play had become to us. In fact, we were nothing of each other, other than the situation we found ourselves in together.

Coincidentally, we were practically the same age. Laura was almost 7 weeks younger than me. We were peers, partly with the same interests and habits, but different enough from each other to open our eyes to each other. To feed curiosity.

We never had the typical bullying between brothers and sisters. As young children we played together, or sometimes alone, as all young children do. But when we were a little older we perhaps started to behave more like cousins or second cousins who happen to live close to each other and who happen to get along well. Friendly, but without the claustrophobic animosity and envy of some brothers/sisters. Familiar and loving, but with an appropriate distance.

That appropriate distance was, in retrospect, a harbinger. The distance created the space for attraction. Or to put it the other way around: probably at some point we both felt something growing, or at least the potential or curiosity for it, and just to be safe we kept some distance from each other to let it (whatever 'it' was, or whatever it could become) be less wrong. Or to preventively avoid uncomfortable situations with a wide turn. In practice, we lived more like friends, classmates or maybe cousins. But precisely this created full space for any mutual feelings to grow unhindered. We did not realize at that moment the jump start that we unconsciously created for ourselves then and there.

2. The bench in my room

When Laura suddenly walked into my room that afternoon, which we almost never did together, I think we both realized within a second what was going on here and what was going to happen. It must have been partly her body language where I could tell she wasn't coming to discuss an annoyance or make small talk. Something was about to happen that made all my antennae stand up. I felt that. It started with the fact that when she came in, she didn't say much.

"Hey." she said softly in a failed at attempt at sounding casual.

She walked to the bench in my room and sat down on it slowly and carefully. Her hands on her knees. Her feet pointed together, and her ankles were bare above the low sneakers she wore. She didn't say anything yet, but was clearly preparing herself for something. Not like anything bad had happened. No one had died or anything. There was clearly something personal going on here that she needed to think about.

From that moment on, a deep peace and warmth came over me.

In an instant a series of realities dawned on me. And to her, no doubt. She wasn't my sister. She was a peer. One I knew particularly well, and she knew me. Which made it a privilege to have grown up so close to her. A unique opportunity. There was no one in this world I knew better than her. She was a kind of mirror image, but not quite like a twin sister, I imagined. And besides, we were old enough to make our own choices if we wanted to. And what that was, we actually saw it confirmed in each other's eyes at that moment before a word had been said.

She had short dark brown hair, not overtly boyish, but a bit cool. She was cool, but sensitive. Funny and intelligent. And what had not escaped my attention lately: she hid a beautiful hourglass figure hidden under her light blue dungarees.

She started.

"I want to talk with you. We need to talk, I think. I just need to ask you something. May I ask you something?" she asked restlessly, moving her feet together.

My heart started beating faster for a moment. But it was more out of excitement than fear. Something inside me knew what was coming.

"That sounds serious. Nothing bad I hope?" I asked innocently.

She laughed nervously for a moment. Then the serious look on her face was back.

"Have you been avoiding me lately?" she suddenly asked out of the blue.

"Uh no, I um... we are cool, right? I wouldn't know why." I said.

"No, that's not what I mean either. I know that too." she smiled kindly. "But could it be that you no longer see me as a sister?"

"Um, well... how do you see that?" I now asked in my turn.

"Well, you're just... I mean, we've kind of always been together. But lately... it's all so strange. It feels like a play that we have to participate in."

Suddenly she stopped. She looked at me in shock.

"Do you understand me? Don't you have that?" she asked, slightly desperate.

I looked at her kindly. I wanted to reassure her. She hadn't said anything concrete yet, but I knew exactly what she meant. At least that's what I assumed.

She saw my small smile and her expression calmed down. She seemed reassured by my look. She continued immediately. "I have the feeling more and more that we both understand each other very well. We know each other so well. But it feels like we have to keep our distance from each other for others. I think it's so frustrating."

She looked at me again. It felt as if she now sensed that we were on the same page, that she could express her feelings. Still, I saw the anticipation in her face. She wanted me to say something now before she completely exposed her thoughts.

"Yes, I understand you, I think." I said. "What you just asked about how I see you... well, not really as a sister, I guess. Of course I never had another sister. So I don't know..."

She now gave me an analyzing look as she sat bent over with her elbows on her thighs. She waited for a little more clarification of my words.

"I... well... I hope I don't scare you," I heard coming from my own lips, "...but I would like to be closer to you." I said softly, as I gave her a long look directly in her eyes.

Immediately after that my look changed to somewhat startled. The words were out. It felt like a scream that had been suppressed for years pushing itself out. It felt good to finally say this. Still, I was shocked by how quickly it came out of my mouth. And I now looked at her expectantly.

She gave me a look that confirmed that she understood exactly what I was saying.

Yet I, in turn, looked for confirmation from her mouth. It was like a game of chess.

"I hope not... is that also what you wanted to say?" I asked. I laughed nervously. "Please say something now, haha. I'm standing here... I hope... Jesus..." I said as I realized the gamble I had taken here.

She exhaled and brushed her short brown hair behind her right ear, as if she were about to say something very serious. But I saw the relief in her face. "Me too." she said briefly but clearly. "Relax."

"You mean... I..." I searched for words.

"I missed you, I guess. I don't want any more distance. I actually want less distance." she said.

"Yes. Precisely." I said with a serious look of agreement and a nod. But it was a nod that begged her to continue talking.

She could tell from my face that I was hanging on her every word.

"I mean, well... I mean, I just feel... I want to be with you." she continued, looking intently at me again. I still hung on her lips.

"Well, you get what I'm saying, right?" she said.

Of course I understood her, and she understood me. But we were both looking for a huge load of confirmation. As if we wanted to make sure we meant the same thing, and wanted to make sure we knew what we, well, us together, were actually doing here.

"So I don't mean like brother and sister anymore. I haven't seen you like this for a long time. I want to be with you. I... I... we... I dreamed about you" Laura suddenly said. Another one of those sudden sentences that blurted out of her. "It was such a nice dream. When I woke up I didn't know what I should... well. But then I started thinking."

She also spent a moment thinking now. About what she was going to say.

"You are important to me. Well, more than that. Well, what I just said. I just feel, I want to be with you. It feels like we belong together. I really want that anyway. I just feel it. You are part of me. I... I... well, I just think you're sweet. Very sweet." She made wild gestures with her arms.

She took a breath and sat up. "I think I have a little crush on you. Well. That's it." She held her palms open on her knees and looked a little startled, as if to say, "Here, voila, it's out. There's no way back now anyway."

Now it was my turn again.

"I think about you too, sometimes. No... not sometimes actually. Quite often actually. But I have never seen, or well... not seen for a long time, what it actually is. I don't, I can't... well, I don't want to be without you. I never meant for this to... but, that's just how it is. To me you are just, Laura. I... we... we belong together. And we fit together. And I like you so much too. Well, more than like."

Laura responded, and at the same time continued her previous words:

"No, you know, it's more than just being in love. It feels like I skipped a few steps. Falling in love is so... This is different."

Her story was unstoppable now. Her words just kept coming.

"I feel like it works differently for us, you know what I mean? I know you way too well for that. It's like you're part of me. As if you are already a part of me. That can't go away, that will never go away anymore."

I nodded in agreement. Laura saw that I wanted to confirm everything she said. That's how it was, and nothing else. Also for me.

We looked deeply at each other. We understood each other. And we knew that, we actually already secretly felt that. But the words were out now. Now it was real.

A silence that seemed to last an hour. We looked at each other quietly as we both calmed down. She rubbed her thighs and sat up. I leaned back.

===

3. The backyard

After a long silence, she sighed deeply.

"I'm sorry for back there, I just... I wasn't sure if..." Laura started. "I suddenly didn't know how to continue when I was sitting here or something. But you took over. I'm sorry I put you on the spot like that."

"It doesn't matter... we're saying the same thing, right? But it was also more than a little scary for me just now." I said laughing. I paused for a moment.

"But in fact it was you who took the first step. You came to me, right?" I said encouragingly.

"Oh, so now it's my fault?" she said, laughing.

"No, I just mean..." I started very very seriously to form a compliment.

But she already knew what I wanted to say. "Thank you." she said. "Also that you just, well, that you took over there. That you were the first to say, well... what I feel too."

"I think I already knew what you were going to say." I said. "Somehow, when you came in and sat here."

Laura took a breath and smiled. "This is exactly what I mean." she said. "We feel each other so well."

She sighed briefly. "But how did we get here? It's so strange actually." she said. "This whole situation."

"How, I don't know,. I said. "We didn't choose all this, did we? We didn't create this. We didn't put ourselves in this situation. But now I just feel so... you... I can't help it."

We looked at each other. We both felt that we didn't have to apologize to each other. There was not an ounce of fear in me that we would blame each other or judge our feelings. Certainly not now anymore. But actually I already knew that before. I sensed it beforehand. Deep down, I always trusted her despite the distance we had created.

Not only did we turn out to have felt a deep love for each other for much longer than we realized. It turned out that we knew each other better than anyone else. Well, that wasn't really a surprise either. Not given the situation, and certainly not for us.

It was a deep feeling that we had both had for a long time and that this afternoon had suddenly been given a name. Suddenly everything fell into place.

"We don't have to be ashamed, do we?" she asked, just to be sure.

"I don't think so." I said with a little bit of mocked bravery.

"Some people may think we should just deal with this." she said as if she wanted to play devil's advocate. "Learning to deal with it... putting it away." she continued sarcastically. "But why exactly?" she said immediately, answering her own doubt. "We're not doing anything wrong, are we? We are not brother and sister. This is just the way I feel about you, right? We are not doing anything wrong."

There was another long silence. I wanted to walk up to Laura and hold her. But at this point, that felt like an easy ending to a cheap movie. Too obvious. I watched her lean on her hands thoughtfully. She looked down at her feet.

For a second it felt as if the short moments of happiness and relief just now had started colliding rudely with harsh reality.

"Yes, no... I don't think so. We're not doing anything wrong. But what are we going to do now?" I wondered out loud.

"I... I don't know." Laura hesitated.

"If we both don't think we're doing anything wrong, then we don't have to explain anything to anyone, right?" I suggested.

"Well, that sounds easy." said Laura. "But seriously, I don't know." She looked at the window as if trying to assess the outside world. As if she could find the answer in the backyard about how we should deal with the outside world.

It was quiet again for a moment.

"But I think you're right." she said with sudden determination. "I think it's nonsense that we have to hide if we're not doing anything wrong. I'm not going to do that. I don't want that. I don't want that anymore!" she said energetically now.

It occurred to me that our situation, which was not of our choosing, actually forced us to think four steps ahead. It felt like we were already planning our long term future here. That thought in itself didn't scare me. On the contrary. Not with Laura. But it felt like an injustice that the world had cast on us. An unreasonable pressure that was placed on us while other people did not have to go through all this.

"This is pretty absurd, right?" I said.

Laura looked at me somewhat questioningly.

"Well, we just sat down right here. We only just expressed our feelings."

Laura's facial expression now went from questioning to interested.

"We can't, right now, just... we can't know everything, can we?" I asked.

"No." she confirmed.

"Maybe we should just..." I started thinking out loud.

"We'll just have to see." Laura added to me. "For now let's just..." She sighed deeply. She looked straight at me. Her face suddenly lit up. "I'm just so happy. I... I actually can't believe it." She smiled.

"We deserve to be happy here, right?" she wondered out loud as she continued to look at me.

There was mixed feeling in her voice. She had just decided for herself to look ahead, with optimism. And to think about themselves, about us. At the same time, her words reflected the oppression she felt looking back. Only now did she realize, as her first question to me this afternoon illustrated, what had happened recently. We had unconsciously, but actually artificially, sought and maintained the distance. While that turned out to be the exact opposite of what we both felt and wanted. Neither of us realized it at the time. Or we didn't give it space, and we didn't give it a name. But it now had a name.

And looking back on it, Laura concluded that there was a twist, perhaps even an injustice, that she no longer felt like dealing with.

"Right? Don't we deserve to be super happy here?" she repeated her question, now in a slightly indignant tone.

"Yes. I think so." I said firmly.

I now stood up and walked towards her. I sat down next to Laura and for the first time, for the first time in my life, in our lives, or for the first time that I could remember, I hugged her with both arms. I pressed her tightly against me. A shiver went through me. Again that feeling as if a scream that had been suppressed for a long time was now pushing out through my arms, my chest and my heart. Right through Laura. Laura's upper body relaxed. As she exhaled deeply, she leaned her head against me. She placed her hand gently on my knee. We both got a lump in our throats. She cried softly with her head still against me. I started sobbing too.

But they were tears of relief.

4. Sweet sleep

We sat next to each other for a while. The feeling of holding each other was indescribable. It felt good, happy, warm. It felt natural, logical. It didn't feel wrong or forbidden at all. We embraced each other even tighter. As if we were making up for all the lost time right here on the spot. As if we were planning on never letting go.

We leaned back against the back of the bench. As we held each other, the minutes, the quarters, ticked by. We slowly dozed off. As if we had delivered heavy work, we were so tired. Relieved, blissful. But exhausted. We fell asleep in each other's arms. This felt so pure. At that moment, nothing mattered to us anymore. We didn't care if people could see us like that. The way we were lying against each other and holding each other here, no one could be against that, right? And if they did, to heck. That was the conclusion we definitively drew together here and now. And that was the warm, soothing feeling that made us fall asleep softer and sweeter than either of us had slept in a long time.

5. Author's notes:

Read parts 2 and 3 soon, for the erotic sequel.

Sources of inspiration for Laura (her original name in the Dutch version of this story is 'Maike'): A classmate from the author's past. And also a certain video of a girl in dungarees who gets a marriage proposal at a bird show. Girl with short dark hair, light blue dungarees, bare ankles and black Vans sneakers.

Inspiration for the story: the classic erotic plot about a stepbrother and stepsister. But I wanted to tell it in the most believable way I could.

I have deliberately left details in the middle. Is it a blended family? Or is one of them an adopted child, or maybe both of them? I have also deliberately left out details about the parents or where they are (during the events in this story or in general).