Quarantining with My Brother

Everybody had different experiences of the outbreak. There were those who died. Those who lost their jobs. Jenny knew she was lucky. For her, it was a constant stress, an inconvenience. But not everything that came out of it was bad...

Just before it hit the mainland, her brother Chris happened to be in town visiting. He stayed in a hotel for the long weekend, and Jenny took a day off work to spend time with him because he lived several states away, and they didn't see each other very often. They went out to eat, went out to bars in the evening. She showed him the sights of her city, because he'd never visited before.

Monday morning, the government declared lockdown. It was the obvious thing to do, and they should have seen it coming, but not everybody expected it to happen when it did. At least Jenny got to see her brother first, and have one more fun weekend. Jenny figured the lockdown was for the best, and she could handle it, with a bit of planning. She could work from home, even if home was a studio apartment. She typically got her groceries delivered anyway.

Monday evening, Chris called. His flight home had been cancelled. He tried to handle it on his own and get it rescheduled, but soon all the other flights were grounded too. His hotel was shutting down. Some of the workers were calling in sick, others were quitting or weren't showing up. Now Chris was stranded in town with nowhere to stay. Jenny knew her apartment wasn't ideal, but she had to offer anyway. It was the right thing to do. She couldn't leave Chris in the lurch.

He came over that night with his suitcase. It was freaking Jenny out to let anyone into her apartment by then, but it couldn't be helped. It was clear from the start that it was going to be a tight fit, for the two of them to stay in her essentially one-room apartment. At least the bathroom had a door. She figured it might only have to be a couple of days. Maybe a couple weeks at most. They could make it work.

There was just the one bed, and it was only a full. It would fit them both, but not with much extra room. Chris volunteered to sleep in the armchair. It was that or a small area of unused floor.

It had been a while since Jenny and Chris had lived under the same roof, and never in such confined quarters. But they quickly adjusted to it, making sure not to get in each others' way. Soon it was just routine. Chris was able to do his work remotely too. The two of them spent their days on their laptops. It was boring and lonely and nerve-rattling all at the same time. At least they weren't completely alone.

One night, Jenny noticed Chris scrolling through his phone.

"Is that...DateMe?" she said. She had an account on the app too, and recognized it at a glance.

"I know, I know. It's not like I can actually meet anyone right now. I just...I don't know. It's kind of a fantasy thing, I guess. I thought I'd kind of plan ahead for when this is over," he said.

"Huh. Can I see?" Jenny asked.

"What for?"

"Just curious, about who it matches you up with around here. There could be someone I know on your list," she said.

"Get your own account," her brother said.

"I have my own account," she admitted. "Come on, just for fun. How else are we supposed to entertain ourselves?"

With a resigned sigh, he got up and sat next to her on the bed, and let her look over his shoulder as he went through a few profiles.

"And these are women you'd be interested in?" she asked.

"Yeah, maybe. Why?"

"I'm just...surprised," she said, and saw that he was confused now. "How can I put this...I thought you pretty clearly had a type."

When they had been teenagers, it seemed like he was into the same kind of girl all the guys were into: thin, blond, conventionally attractive. The women who were coming up as matches now looked physically fit, but they were bulkier, curvier. They didn't all have perfect skin or perfect hair. They looked a lot more like Jenny, actually.

"I'm just saying, none of them look like Vicky," Jenny said. Vicky had been Jenny's friend first, before Chris made his move.

Chris laughed. "You know why I started dating Vicky?" Chris asked. "Because she was the first girl our age who went on the pill."

"Just to be clear, she was my age, a year older than you," Jenny said. "And she wasn't actually the first one on the pill. She was just the first one to talk about it in front of you."

"She really had no concept of TMI," Chris said, reminiscing.

"No, she certainly did not," Jenny agreed. Vicky had told her way more than she wanted to know about how Chris's cock made her feel. "She was indeed very vocal."

It took Chris a second to get the meaning, and then he blushed. "Oh my god. You overheard us together?"

"A couple times, I came home from school, and you two clearly thought you had the house to yourselves," Jenny said with a shrug.

"Oh no!" Chris said, covering his face with embarrassment, even as he laughed it off.

"It's no big deal, really," Jenny said.

As the days passed, they tried to find ways to cope with their situation. After work, they'd watch movies or read at night. The siblings shared cooking and cleaning duties. Jenny would do yoga on the bare stretch of floor. Chris would do push-ups and sit-ups and other calisthenics.

Sleeping in the armchair was okay for a while, but Chris started waking up with a sore neck and back. Eventually he asked for a turn in the bed. Jenny agreed to it, and spent a night in the armchair herself. It took her a long time to get comfortable enough to sleep, and she woke up early the next morning with a spasming pain in her shoulder, from the odd position she slept in. She was still exhausted from not getting enough sleep, and her whole day was skewed. She knew she couldn't do that again. The hard floor didn't appeal to her either.

She felt bad because she didn't want to hog the bed and make Chris be the one sleeping badly most of the time. She floated the idea of sharing the bed. It wasn't big, but she figured they could come to an amenable compromise, like they did most things by now.

One morning, Chris took a long shower. Jenny wasn't trying to pay attention, but she was anxiously waiting for the bathroom. Near the end, Jenny heard Chris groan uncontrollably. She laughed a bit to herself, knowing what that sound meant, from hearing Vicky accompany it years ago.

When he emerged from the bathroom, she remarked, "It sounded like that felt good."

He looked mortified. "Sorry. I guess it had been a while."

Not that long, Jenny thought. Not as long as it's been for me. "I get it. Did you scrub down the tub afterward?"

"Did I what?" he asked.

"Chris, if your swimmers are still in there and I go to take a bath, I could get pregnant."

He blinked, surprised. "Oh shit," he said. "I'll take of it."

"Look, while we're stuck here together, I'm not going to blame you for doing whatever you need to do, and there isn't a lot of opportunity for privacy in this place. You don't have to be embarrassed about it. Feel free to jack off as necessary."

Chris laughed uncomfortably, taking it as a joke.

"I'm serious. I don't care," Jenny said. "It's a totally normal thing for you to need to do sometimes. You don't have to hide in the bathroom to do it, either. After all, it's nothing I haven't seen before."

"Hang on. Have you really seen me...?" Chris asked, cringing.

"Accidentally," Jenny said. "You walked in on me too on occasion, it's just less...uh...obvious sometimes."

"Huh," Chris said thoughtfully. He did remember times when she'd seemed flustered and kind of irritated at him. He had wondered what she was up to. Now he knew.

"Anyway, you're going to have to empty your balls once in a while. I get it. I'd really rather not make a big deal out of it."

She noticed that over the next couple of days, Chris hogged the bathroom a couple of times. The walls were thin, so it wasn't very secret what he was doing in there.

Before they got ready to sleep, Chris got up to duck into the bathroom again, a hard-on tenting his shorts.

"Seriously, when I said it's no big deal, I meant it. We both know what you're doing. There's no point hiding it," Jenny said.

"I'm not going to sit right next to you while I do it," he said.

"Well I'm going to rub one out right now before bed," she said, slipping a hand under her waistband. The truth was, without much else to do, she found herself distracted and horny often throughout the day, more often than normal. As much as she wanted him to be unashamed, she also wanted permission to please herself without judgement.

For a moment, he stood there, unsure what to do, trying not to let his eyes be drawn to the movement of her fingers under the cloth. He didn't feel right about slipping into the bathroom anymore, now that she'd made an issue of it. He also didn't feel right about jacking off on the bed, with her sitting right there, doing the same to herself. Instead, he sat crosslegged on the floor.

He tried not to listen to what his sister was doing across the room. Instead, he kept his eyes glued to his laptop, where he pulled up some porn for a distraction. He couldn't believe they were actually doing this, masturbating in the same room. Desperate times, though. After he finished, he didn't feel quite right about it. Then Jenny reached her climax. It was hard to ignore her gasps, her involuntary groans, her heavy breathing, knowing what it all meant. It was hard not to imagine what she must have been feeling in that moment.

For Jenny, it had been even longer since she had last gotten off. Since before Chris came to stay. It all came crashing down on her at once, and she didn't mean to lose control as much as she did. It was bittersweet, to be going through that in front of Chris. But she didn't want to have to hide in the bathroom and quickly rub herself raw any more than he did. Plus, she had to admit to herself, the way his cock grew, the way it fountained all over his lap, it looked like everything Vicky used to tell her about.

Another night, they were both looking through profiles on DateMe, and judging each other's results, just for laughs.

"Hey look, you came up in my search," Chris said. "The app must not know we're related. 89 out of 100 match. That's pretty high."

"What do you think of my profile?" Jenny asked.

"Not bad," Chris said.

"Not bad??" She threw a pillow at him.

"Okay, okay. The pictures are fine, I guess. But they're not...they're not you.""

"What are you trying to say, Chris?"

"Just...you're hotter in person than you look on here. On here, you just look kind of average."

He thinks I'm hot, Jenny realized. "Oh, I see yours in my list too."

"After all that, you have to tell me what you think."

"Nice photo. Not a shabby description. I'd say you're solidly ahead of the pack, mister."

Chris laughed. "If most guys don't put effort into it, that isn't saying much. If I were some stranger, do you think you would match with me?"

"Yeah," Jenny said thoughtfully. "What about me?"

"Yeah," Chris said, a little too quick.

There was a quiet moment between them. Chris swiped on his phone, and Jenny's chimed.

"You matched me?" Jenny asked, surprised. "You actually did that??"

"As a joke," Chris said. "After all, who else am I going to meet right now? I did my part. Now the ball's in your court."

"Okay, just for fun," Jenny said, as she swiped on hers. Chris's phone chimed.

"Hm. Now I can message you. I wonder, what should I say?" he thought aloud. "How about, 'hey, what are you doing tonight?'"

Jenny received the message, and replied back, "Hanging out with my goofy little bro. How about you?"

Chris laughed when he saw it. They started messaging across the room on DateMe, pretending to be strangers on the app getting to know each other.

When she awoke the next morning, Jenny felt a hand cupping her breast, and her nipple hardening against it. An erection pressed against her from behind. For a moment, it reminded her of waking up in a boyfriend's bed. A sweet memory from back when she had a boyfriend. She felt herself getting wet and hot. Something in her jumped at the chance. Part of her wanted to roll over and take that erection deep inside her.

Then she remembered where she was, who it was in bed with her. She felt disgusted with herself. She gently moved her brother's hand back to his side of the bed, and scooted away from him. She needed to be more careful.

Jenny still felt a bit awkward masturbating in front of her brother, and seeing him doing it to himself. Watching him doing it and knowing that he knew she was watching. In time, she also grew to appreciate it, and even sort of look forward to it. It was something different, to have their small shared space flooded with their shared arousal. She wouldn't have expected it to enhance the experience, but it did, in a way, even if it was Chris. She told herself there was nothing wrong with it, especially when there wasn't anything else like it to be had. She felt more sensitive with herself, seeing the careful way he touched himself. She could better chart the plateaus and peaks of her own arousal, seeing him going through the same journey across the room.

But it was always from across the room. It had to be. They had to keep that distance. To get any closer than that, for their arms even to brush while they were each pleasuring themselves, would have been too electric. To risk being what put him over the top would have been too much.

One night, Chris asked, "So you're not on birth control anymore?"

"Yeah. Before all this, I was kind of thinking about having a baby."

"Whoa. What do you mean?"

"I mean, I felt like I was ready to start a family, one way or another, whether or not the perfect guy suddenly showed up," she said. "I kind of thought I would just arrange a one night stand through DateMe, and just...let it happen."

"That's kind of crazy," Chris said.

"It really is! Maybe that's why I've never had the guts to go through with it. Once in a while, a guy might seem like the right one from his profile, but then when I bring him back here, it just never quite feels right."

"Would you tell him?" Chris asked.

"If I was going to go through with it? Yeah. I've thought a lot about what I would say. Something like, look, you don't need to wear a condom tonight, because I'm trying to get pregnant. Don't worry, I'm not interested in child support or anything. I just want you to knock me up."

She could see a rise in Chris's lap. She had to look away before any thoughts came to her that she wouldn't be able to ignore anymore.

"I still think that's crazy," Chris said. "To let a one night stand change your life like that."

"That's not how I see it. Having a baby is a decision that I've kind of already made."

"I meant just the idea of doing all of that alone..."

For Jenny, that shut down her mood. "If a long-term relationship were on the table, that'd be my preference too. But for whatever reason, guys don't seem to be interested."

Chris shook his head in disbelief. "How selective are you trying to be about this? Like theoretically, if I weren't...me, would I meet your standards?"

"Yeah," Jenny said. "Hypothetically."

"I can't imagine telling mom and dad," Chris said.

The next night, before it was time to sleep, Chris was sitting on the floor, stroking himself. Jenny was on the bed, with her fingers on her clit. She could see his penis already shining with precum. Her pussy was soaked and needy, but what she was giving herself didn't feel like enough this time.

Too many times already, she had watched his hand slide up and down the length of his rod, seen the rise and fall of his passion. Too many times, she had watched it swell and burst with milky white fluid. Too many times, her breath caught when she saw it happen, and she caught herself wondering what that would feel like inside of her.

She harbored these thoughts night after night. She fought them for as long as she could. Tonight she couldn't hold herself back anymore. She pulled a condom out of the nightstand and threw it at him. Even as she did, she questioned what she was doing. This wasn't like her, not the Jenny she wanted Chris to see her as.

"Hey, put this on," she said.

"What?" he said, his concentration broken. Then realization dawned on him. "Whoa. Jenny, are you sure about this?" It wasn't the disgust that she was afraid of, and also counting on.

"Are you trying to talk me out of it?"

He didn't answer that. "We're brother and sister."

"No one's ever going to know," she said, getting up from the bed, and pulling her panties down to the floor. She couldn't quite believe what she was doing. It didn't feel right, it just felt inevitable somehow. Her legs were shaky but determined, with what she didn't want to label desire.

Chris tore open the packet and unrolled the rubber on his erection, still in disbelief himself. Jenny came over and straddled his lap. With one hand gently aiming his rod, she sank down on him, taking him easily deep within her.

He couldn't believe that this was really happening, that they were actively choosing to do this. Even as the flood of sensations proved that it was all so very real.

Even through the rubber, Chris could feel her pressing in on him from all sides. It had been too long since he'd gotten laid. His head swam with an intense mix of warring emotions. If only he could just relax and enjoy it on just a physical level, maybe he could make it through this without losing his mind. But he wasn't sure he could or should do that. His hands hovered around her waist, unsure of whether to touch her more than he had to.

"Oh my god, Jenny," he moaned, as she started to move. "I...I'm not going to last long."

"Me neither," she said, biting her lip as she rode him, conjoined only at the crotch. It was the first real fuck she'd had in months. It felt good, surprisingly good, too good. She could feel him nestled in her, moving within her. It was something vital that she had been missing on her own. She was headed fast for a steep cliff.

Before long, spasms rocked her body. She leaned on her brother's shoulders for support, shaking with her orgasm. Having held out as long as he could, he emptied himself into the rubber, holding her thighs tight to him as he moaned. Under his touch, the skin of her thighs felt innocuous and familiar, but also somehow brand new, transformed, charged with new meaning.

His erection didn't immediately soften after he came. Jenny had to resist the urge to ride him to new heights, or to rip the condom off and go again. But when she caught her breath, she recovered enough of her common sense to get up off him before it was too late.

Chris sat splayed out on the floor, still coming to his senses. That was intense. Brief, but intense. What had he done? What had they done? How...how could his sister have made him feel...that?

Afterwards, Jenny tried to act as if nothing significant had just happened. As if everything was still normal. They went about their nightly routines, getting ready to sleep. She was careful to keep to her side of the bed.

The next day, she felt awkward and ashamed about what they'd done. She could hardly stand to look at him, which was hard to avoid, alone in the small apartment. She had brought him to that complicated physical, chemical, biological reaction of orgasm. That was hard to reckon with. She was reminded every time she looked his way. Her own body betrayed her, viscerally recalling what that moment had done to her too. She would feel a tremble deep in her core, remembering that shudder of her whole body.

After that, whenever he cuddled up to her in his sleep, it was a lot harder to pull away. That impulse, to flip him over onto his back and ride him to oblivion, was no longer abstract.