Underground Baseball

"You can tell by my tone?"

"Yep."

"How?"

She shrugged. "Chalk it up to being around you for every waking second for forever and a half. I can just tell."

Harrison nodded. "Right."

"So you do have a thought?"

Harrison paused, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. "I have a thought," he admitted sullenly.

"Am I right to assume that it's not a happy thought?"

"It's not a happy thought, Wendy."

She studied his face. "Well, you may as well go ahead and share it, Harrison. I can take it."

Harrison looked at his sister with concern on his face. "I'm not sure you can, Wendy. Hell, I'm not even sure I can."

"Jesus, Harrison, just say what you're thinking!"

Harrison took a deep breath. "Are you familiar with the concept of relating various baseball vernacular with different levels of sexual conquest?"

Wendy replayed his sentence in her head a couple of times. "Huh?" she grunted after a while.

"Here we are, trapped in this strange basement. We're being forced to walk around each other wearing nothing but skimpy underwear. We were given no source of entertainment except porn. Heck, even our food supply is boring as hell. We have everything in the world available to us to clean and primp ourselves. It's like...someone wants us to look our best while we display our bodies to each other. And they want to limit our activities so that we are bored out of our minds, to the point that we might begin to make certain...choices...in how we spend our time."

"Harrison...what are you saying exactly?"

"The baseball game," Harrison continued. "We kissed each other's cheeks, and the player moved a little closer to first base. But we can't get him to first base unless we ourselves go to first base."

Wendy stared at him with a perplexed look on her face. "I'm still not following."

Harrison sighed. "Do you know what it means when two people 'get to first base' with each other?" he asked, using air quotes for emphasis.

Wendy thought for a moment. "You mean, like, two people as in a couple?"

Harrison nodded. "Wendy," he began slowly, "I think...I think we're meant to get to first base with each other. That's how we make the players advance to their next bases."

Wendy's heart raced. "So, just so we're on the same page as far as what first base means..." she began.

"It means we're gonna have to make out with each other, Wendy," Harrison said with a tremor to his voice.

Wendy's palms had suddenly gotten very sweaty. "Oh my god, Harrison," she whimpered.

"And that would only get the little baseball player to first base. If we want to get home..." Harrison said, trailing off.

"We have to hit a grand slam," Wendy finished for him. She looked at Harrison, feeling full to the brim with anxiety. "I think I know the answer, but...what does a grand slam mean?"

Harrison gulped. "Sex," he whispered simply.

"That can't be true, Harrison," Wendy said with a shaky voice. Harrison chose not to reply, not sure what to say anyway. They sat in silence for a while, their minds racing all over the place.

"Maybe I'm wrong," Harrison uttered after a while.

"Maybe," Wendy replied. "Hopefully."

"We need to...test my theory."

Wendy slowly turned her head towards her brother. "What exactly does that mean?" she asked with trepidation.

"A kiss," Harrison replied. "Just a little one, but...on the lips. If the baseball players move, well, let's just say it would give credence to my idea."

"And if they don't move? What then?"

"I'm honestly more terrified about what happens if they do move."

"Right."

They returned to silence, neither willing to make the first move. After a while, however, it was Wendy who spoke up.

"How long are we going to just sit here, then?" she asked aloud.

"As long as it takes for one of us to find the courage to do something, I suppose." They caught each other's eyes, but then each quickly looked away, feeling all kinds of awkward and embarrassed and vulnerable.

Suddenly, Harrison found that he couldn't take it anymore, and scooted himself closer to Wendy. She turned to face him, her eyes wide with fear.

"I know," he said, gently taking her hand, knowing that she was on the verge of freaking out. "Like I said, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we find out that there's nothing at all to my theory. On the one hand, it would suck, because we'd be back to being out of ideas. But on the other hand, it would be a sweet relief, right? Knowing that we didn't have to...well, you know."

"Yeah," Wendy whispered, her voice cracking.

"So...what d'ya say?"

Wendy closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and nodded. "Okay, let's try it."

"Okay."

"Just a quick peck?"

"Nothing more," Harrison said, squeezing her hand for reassurance. They met each other's gaze, half closed their eyes, and moved forward, their lips brushing in the slightest of ways before slowing pulling back.

Right on cue, they heard the familiar noise of organ music, followed by the sound of what had to be the baseball players advancing just a little bit closer to their bases.

"Goddammit," Harrison groaned as he returned to his side of the couch.

"Goddammit," Wendy concurred.

The siblings spent the next few hours not speaking to one another and not looking at one another. They stayed in each other's general vicinity, though, each oddly finding comfort in the other's presence. They snacked and wandered around the room mindlessly, each feeling reluctant to bring up the brand new elephant that had joined them in the room.

"What if we just...do nothing?" Harrison suggested out of nowhere as they sat on the couch.

"Huh, wha?" Wendy replied with a jolt.

"Oh shit, were you napping?"

"Yeah."

"Sorry."

"It's cool. I can probably find some free time later to take another nap."

"Yeah. Probably."

"What did you say anyway?" Wendy asked, rubbing her eyes and sitting up.

"What if we just don't, you know, kiss each other and stuff."

"Okay?"

"We could just live out the rest of our days in this basement."

"That sounds pretty fucking awful, Harrison."

"At least we have food. And..."

"And?"

"And water!"

"Mmm, water," Wendy moaned sarcastically. "You've convinced me, Harrison."

"I'm just trying to think of a solution, any solution, that doesn't result in us having to fool around with each other."

"I know. Maybe...maybe the guy who kidnapped us will just get bored after a while and let us out, you know? Like, if we just choose not to play his little game. He can't watch us forever."

"Maybe. But what if he gets bored and, instead of letting us out, he just leaves us here. Trapped. We'd starve to death."

"Ugh, you're right." Wendy had a weird thought that made her laugh out loud a little.

"What's funny?" Harrison asked.

"I was just thinking that if push came to shove, I guess you could just eat me if it came down to it."

Harrison's eyes went wide. "Eat you!?"

"Yeah, eat me. What's the big-oh, I heard it now," Wendy said, turning red. "Poor choice of words given the circumstances, huh?"

"I'll say."

Wendy thought for a moment. "You know, this guy's plan has kinda backfired on him," she said.

"What makes you say that?"

"He must not have realized when he kidnapped us that we were brother and sister." She paused and looked up at the ceiling. "Hey, you hear that, creep!" she called out loudly. "You are trying to make a brother and sister have sex! You fucked up, didn't you?"

Harrison shook his head. "Wendy," he began.

"What? Don't you think he probably thought we were a couple out on a date or something? If only he had known we were siblings, he wouldn't have nabbed us in the first place. Right?"

Harrison sighed. "Wendy, I know you're only eighteen, and thus a little less worldly than I am."

She rolled her eyes. "Spare me."

"You are being a little naive in this moment."

"What do you mean?" she asked defensively.

"Wendy, there's a chance he, or she, or they, or whatever, chose us BECAUSE we are siblings."

Wendy ran that thought through her head a couple of times. "Ew, gross, Harrison!"

"Do you watch porn online?" he asked. "Like, ever?"

"Of course not!"

"Prude," he said, shaking his head. "Well, if you had, you might have already known that there's a decent sized market out there for people who are into brothers and sisters banging."

"Ugh, that's disgusting!" Wendy felt genuinely shocked to hear that.

Harrison shrugged. "Is what it is."

"Do you watch that!?"

"No!" Harrison assured her. "That's...not my cup of tea. But I know it exists. And a select group of people out there go bonkers for it."

Wendy felt very dirty and used all of a sudden. "Harrison, this is...absolutely awful."

"I know."

"It's bad enough that someone drugged and kidnapped us in the first place. But then they locked us in a basement, purposely dressed us up in almost no clothing, and gave us no source of entertainment whatsoever, in the hopes that, what, we'd just start bangin' each other just to have something to do?"

"That's the prevailing theory at the moment."

"And they KNEW we were brother and sister? They picked us BECAUSE we're siblings?"

"That part I don't know."

Wendy slumped back into the sofa and crossed her arms. "It had to be that Francis guy," she mumbled. "He knew who we were."

"You think so?"

"I mean, it couldn't have been random. It's not like I was wearing my 'the guy to my left is my brother' t-shirt."

"I suppose."

"Harrison...what do we do now?"

He sighed. "We've got all the time in the world to figure that out," he said. "We won't make any rash decisions. We just threw around a lot of information. Let's just think on it and see where the day leads us."

The only positive to come out of their realizations that morning was that neither one of them were bored. They each spent the rest of the day deep in their own thoughts, internally playing out a variety of scenarios that made them cringe within themselves, neither daring to share with the other what they were thinking.

It wasn't until around dusk that they truly acknowledged each other once again. They had wordlessly wandered over to the baseball game and just stood beside it. Number 69 wasn't even halfway to first base yet.

Harrison suddenly looked deeply into Wendy's eyes. She was shocked to see how much emotion was pouring out of his gaze. "I've gotta know, Wendy," he said simply, feeling himself almost tearing up as he took her hand in his. "We've gotta find out for sure."

Wendy swallowed hard. Her hands started shaking, and her heart raced. "Okay," she said simply. She couldn't move a muscle. It had to be him, she thought to herself. If they were ever going to get out of there, Harrison was going to have to be the one to step up and make it happen. She just didn't have it in her to be the aggressor.

Harrison stepped closer to her, closing to within centimeters of being pressed completely up against her body. Holding tight onto her hand, he leaned his face forward and kissed her, this time not pulling back as he had before. They closed their eyes and tried to block out all thoughts, focusing only on the pure physical aspect of what they were doing.

Wendy was surprised to find that the kiss felt good. Really good, in fact. So much so that she found herself starting to move her lips and kiss her brother back. She took her free hand and wrapped it around Harrison's torso, letting it rest softly on his bare back. For what could have been several minutes or just a few seconds, they stood there, becoming more and more lost in what turned out to be a deeply passionate kiss.

Just as Harrison had decided to delicately trail his fingers up his sister's side, the sound of organ music snapped them out of the moment, and they released each other.

"Shit," Wendy breathed softly, wiping her mouth and staring at the floor in a daze.

Harrison said nothing, instead trying to focus as much as he could to make his partial erection disappear. He turned himself away from Wendy to hide his hard-on, hoping that she would just think that he was too embarrassed and ashamed to look at her.

"Harrison!" she exclaimed suddenly.

"What!?" he replied defensively, terrified that she was calling him out for getting so turned on from their kiss.

"Look!" He turned to see her staring at the baseball game, and then all thoughts of what had just transpired between them were put to the side.

"Fuck yeah!" he cried out, seeing that number 69 was now more than halfway up the baseline towards first base. Losing herself in the moment, Wendy jumped for joy and wrapped her arms around her brother's neck. Harrison awkwardly had to pull his waist back, fearing she'd feel what was left of his erection against her body.

As quickly as Wendy had hugged Harrison, she let him go and took a few steps back. Harrison thought he understood exactly what she was thinking.

"We're closer to the end now," he said. "But now we know what we have to do."

Wendy nodded. "Yep," she said softly.

They chose silence again for the rest of the evening, eventually making their way to bed. They found themselves purposely keeping a little more space between them in bed than they had been doing, which strangely made Harrison feel kind of lonely.

Just as she was starting to fall asleep, Harrison reached over and took Wendy's hand in his. She immediately gripped his hand tightly back, taking comfort in his touch as she dozed off.

The next morning started off as any other. The siblings quietly rolled out of bed and went into the kitchen for some water and breakfast. When they got there, they were surprised to see a small pile of goodies under the rewards tube. There was a box of granola bars, a new set of clean underwear for each of them, plus a new camisole for Wendy, and most surprisingly there was a paperback novel.

"It's like some sort of twisted Christmas morning," Harrison said as they rifled through the pile.

Wendy laughed. It was nice having something to distract themselves from the task at hand. "The Cowboy Inside Me," Wendy read from the cover of the novel. "The sixth installation of the Boone Buckhorn series."

"Barf," Harrison said, feeling really weirded out by the shirtless cowboy on the cover of the book.

"Of course it had to be sexual," Wendy sighed. "Lucky for them I'm so desperate for entertainment that I'm absolutely going to read this."

They had a granola bar each and decided to conserve the rest, having learned their lesson from the rotisserie chicken incident.

"I'm gonna go shower, I think," Harrison said, grabbing his new underwear and walking towards the bathroom.

"We should hand wash our other outfits and hang them up to dry," Wendy suggested.

"Good thinking," Harrison called back as he turned on the shower.

Wendy read the first couple of pages of the book, but tossed it aside, finding that she was having trouble focusing on the smut at the moment. "Soooo...should we talk about yesterday?" she said with trepidation.

"Right now?" Harrison replied, sounding oddly stressed.

"Sure. Heck, maybe it's better that we can't see each other for this conversation."

"Hmm, maybe," he said, sounding very short with his words.

"You don't sound very convinced."

"Can you...could you just give me a minute?" Harrison shot back, sounding a little short of breath.

"Why? What are you...oh goddammit, are you taking a shit again!? I told you before, tell me if you're doing that so I can go to the other side of the room!"

"Not pooping," Harrison said simply.

"Then why do you sound so weird?"

There was a pause. "You've caught me at a bit of an awkward moment, Wendy."

Wendy looked suspiciously at the curtain that separated them. "What are you doing, Harrison?"

Another pause. "Just...just give me a minute, will you? For like one minute, can you not talk?"

"Oh god!" Wendy exclaimed. "Harrison, you're not, like...touching yourself back there, are you?"

Silence. "Affirmative," he said eventually.

"Christ, Harrison!" Wendy yelled. "What the hell's the matter with you!?"

"I didn't know you were gonna start talking to me right in the middle of it!"

"Well couldn't you have just waited until the conversation was over?"

"It was too late to turn back," he mumbled. "Didn't know how long the conversation was gonna take."

"Ugh, Harrison! Just...whatever, I'm going to the kitchen." She got herself some water and leaned against the counter, eyeing the bathroom curtain curiously as she did. She wondered if this was something that he did regularly. More importantly, she wondered if it was the events of the previous evening that led to Harrison feeling like he had to take care of that need right then and there.

The truth was that she herself had yet to do anything of that sort since they had been trapped. It wasn't even anything she did all that often in the first place, and given the circumstances, she found it to be even more of an afterthought.

Eventually Harrison emerged from the bathroom. "Done," he said simply, looking slightly ashamed of himself. Wendy wordlessly shook her head, noticing that he was carrying a ball of wet clothes.

"Did you wash my underwear, too?" she asked, noticing a sliver of light blue poking out from the wet clothing.

"Well, yeah," he said as he searched for a spot to lay the clothes out to dry.

"Do I need to state how odd it is that you had my panties in the shower with you while you were doing the thing that you were doing in there?"

Harrison shrugged. "Don't make such a big deal out of it, Wendy. I washed our clothes after I finished with that task."

"Not feeling terribly comforted by that, but whatever," she said, making her way back to the sofa. "So anyway, about yesterday," she began.

Harrison joined her on the couch. "What about it?"

She shrugged. "Well? Shouldn't we talk about it or something?"

"Probably," he agreed, feeling very content and at ease due to his recent release.

"Well...can you start the conversation?" she asked, feeling annoyed.

"Why me?"

"Because you're older! And, according to what I've heard you say before, more experienced in that realm."

Harrison turned to Wendy. "Maybe that's what we should talk about," he suggested, studying her.

"What?"

"What exactly is your experience? You know, with sex and stuff?"

Wendy squirmed uncomfortably. "Do we have to talk about that?" she asked quietly, turning away slightly from Harrison.

"Given what we have ahead of us, I'd kinda like to know what I'm working with. I know I always give you a hard time about being a prude and whatnot, but I assume you've had sex, right?"

Wendy's face suddenly felt like it was on fire. "And why would you assume that?" she asked nervously.

"You're a freshman in college. If someone never had sex while they were in high school, typically that's when they'll do it."

Wendy took a deep breath. "Yeah, well I guess I'm the odd one out in that respect," she admitted.

"You're really still a virgin?" he asked, feeling genuinely shocked.

"Yeah? So?" Wendy was suddenly regretting prompting any conversation at all.

"I mean, that's okay of course."

"Oh, is it? Is it okay? So glad to have your blessing on that one, Harrison."

"Wendy," he said, softening his tone as much as he could, "it really isn't that big of a deal. Anyway, I might have been exaggerating a touch. It's not like EVERYONE who's in college isn't a virgin. The only reason I sounded surprised was because, well..."

"Well?"

"You're kinda hot, Wendy," Harrison admitted. "In a truly platonic way, of course."

"Oh great, and here I was, worried that this conversation was going to get awkward."

"Certainly guys have tried getting you into bed, right?"

"Of course they've tried!" Wendy exclaimed. "I can barely walk around campus without some doofus trying out some stupid line on me."