Brothers
One
Aiden
Under the pretence of rooting through my locker, I looked out from under my fringe and watched Caleb Cartwright standing outside the door to our English class, joking with and shoving his friends. It was unusual that he even came to school, so it was a rare treat to be able to watch how his dark grey skinny jeans sagged around his skinny ass, how his black hoodie sat on his shoulders, how he occasionally flicked his head every now and again to get his black hair out of his eyes.
‘Checking him out again?’ I heard to my right, and my head snapped around to face Alana, my best friend, as my cheeks burned red.
‘No, don’t be sick,’ I muttered, rooting through my locker for real this time. The bell was about to go and if I didn’t have my English book Mr Brooks would skin me alive.
‘Call me weird-’
‘You’re weird.’
‘-but I think it’s kinda hot.’
‘You’re weird.’
Alana raised an eyebrow at me. ‘I’m not the one who fancies my-’
‘Shut up!’ I hissed, looking around frantically. Alana has a naturally loud voice; I try to keep private conversations from happening anywhere there might be a another living breathing person within, say, a hundred mile radius, but she doesn’t seem to like playing along. ‘I don’t fancy him.’
Alana scoffed. ‘You so do.’
I ignored her, shuffling past Caleb and his friends, who were still roughing each other up and laughing, and slid into my seat in the English classroom, Alana sitting down at the desk beside mine.
Caleb walked in shortly afterwards, followed by Jayden and Peyton, the twins, and Rain, Damien, and Dylan. Embarrassingly, they all ruffled my hair as they walked past, even though I’m only a year younger than them (I was skipped ahead a class), and Caleb muttered, ‘Alright, Squirt?’ as gave me the noogie from hell. I knew then that he was probably high as a kite, because he’s usually quite moody on the days he deigns to show his face at school.
As soon as Caleb was seated at the back with the others, passing around a jumbo sized packet of crisps and leaning on the back legs of their chairs, Alana passed me a note, which I opened under the table as Mr Brooks had walked in and was trying to call order. I glanced down at the opened piece of lined copy paper in my hands to see a crude cartoon drawing of a guy who looked vaguely like me getting, by the look on “my” face, painfully pounded from behind by a guy who looked vaguely like Caleb. She’d even signed it.
‘You’re sick,’ I hissed, stuffing the page in my bag roughly before Mr Brooks could see me with it and demand to look at it. Alana just laughed at me, opening her copy of the novel we were studying, Bel Canto, and facing forward like the little kiss-ass she was.
Not that I could really talk, I suppose. I had been skipped ahead a year after all, but that wasn’t my fault. I didn’t study particularly hard, I didn’t even pay a hell of a lot of attention, I was bored in most of my classes, finding them too easy, and so this was the solution. I already got a fair bit of mocking over it so I wasn’t about to let anyone in on the fact that I was bored out of my mind in these classes too. I could not go to college at sixteen. No, that wasn’t an option.
What seemed like an eternity later (but was only thirty five minutes) the bell went again and we were mercifully allowed to leave. English was the last class of the day and I could almost hear my bed beckoning me from across town.
‘Are you going to frame my picture and glue it to the ceiling so you can fall asleep looking at it every night?’ Alana asked as we packed up our things.
‘No. I’m going to burn it and cower in fear as demons and witches are released from its evil confines.’
‘Oh come on. It’s not that bad.’
‘You drew a picture of me being reamed by-!’ I stopped short, clamping my mouth shut. I was not going to talk about this in school.
‘You want a drive home, Squirt?’ Caleb asked, stopping by my desk. The others were giggling and munching still at the back of the room.
‘You driving?’ I asked warily, noticing his bloodshot eyes.
‘Peyton.’
I snorted. ‘Has he been smoking all day too?’ I asked.
Caleb scowled. ‘Don’t be such a girl.’ He looked at Alana. ‘No offence.’
She shrugged. ‘Can’t deny I’m a girl.’
‘You coming or not?’
I hesitated, then shook my head. ‘I’ll walk.’
‘Suit yourself. Come on guys!’ he called to the others, and they left me alone in the room with Alana.
‘Six stoned guys in a car made to accommodate four, and you’re passing up the opportunity to be squished in beside Caleb, why?’
I shrugged. ‘He’d be sitting in the front anyway,’ I said, grabbing my book bag. Then, cringing, ‘I mean, I don’t fancy him.’
‘It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing you’ve ever done, fancying your own brother. Remember when you got drunk and tried to eat glass?’
‘Shut up!’
-------------------------------
I arrived home forty five minutes later, drenched. It had started raining about ten minutes after I left the school grounds and I began to wonder if it would have been worth it getting a ride in an overcrowded car with a high driver. My clothes were soaked through and through, and my already heavy book bag had gained weight steadily at it took on water. As I dropped it by the ratty, torn couch in the dirty sitting room, it made a squelching noise that caused me to grimace.
Caleb and I live in a dingy little council house with the twins and the three guys, alone. Jayden and Peyton are eighteen, Caleb and I are emancipated, Rain and Dylan come from homes so negligent that their parents don’t even seem to realise that not only have their sons moved out, but they’re the ones paying for it, and Damien likes to classify himself as a runaway, except his parents live across town and pay his rent and tuition.
I walked over to the fridge, ignoring the guys all sprawled out on couches watching Dylan and Rain playing Assassin’s Creed on the PS3. Either they were all so toasted they were having deep moments of faux clarity, or they were coming down from the high. I hoped it was the former; being the youngest and, as I explained, something of a nerd, I get the most ragging when they’re sober enough to dish any out. I mean, don’t get me wrong. They don’t hit me or mistreat me. They just really, really loving taking the piss out of me.
I grabbed a carton or orange juice one day past it’s sell-by date from the fridge, and trudged back into the sitting room, landing myself on the only available seat beside my brother. My gorgeous, hot, sexy-ass brother.
‘Ew, man, you’re all wet, get off me.’
Sobering up then. Great.
‘Go change, you’ll get sick.’
Funny how we achieved emancipation from our parents but I still get treated like a kid.
I just muttered, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ and grimaced and I necked some bitter orange juice.
‘Aiden, man, will you do my English essay for me?’ Damien asked, getting in there first as the others all chimed in with their requests as well.
‘You know I can’t do seven essays by tomorrow morning,’ I muttered, putting the now empty carton on the already cluttered sitting room table. One of the legs was broken so it was balancing somewhat precariously on a pile of unused school books, and there was dirt ingrained in the lines on the wood. Empty bottles and dirty plates and cups were piled on top of each other, along with overflowing ash trays and packets of tobacco and skins.
‘Come on Supernerd, you can do anything,’ Caleb drawled lazily.
The others all started calling over each other’s voices, urging me to do it, and then everyone started chanting, ‘Supernerd! Supernerd! Supernerd!’ Like that was going to make me do it. They must have still been high if they thought I was gonna strip off my wet clothes to reveal a spandex SN outfit and go write all their essays for them.
‘No.’
There was booing and hissing, but their attention was returning to the TV screen and I was pretty much off the hook.
Pretty much.
Caleb leaned over and I felt his hot breath on my ear. ‘Do mine anyway,’ he whispered, and I felt his lips move against the sensitive skin of my lobule and antitragus. I shivered involuntarily, hating myself for giving him the satisfaction. I hate when he does this to me.
I swallowed and nodded. ‘Okay.’
I felt the tip of Caleb’s tongue tracing all the way up my helix, and I stood up suddenly and walked out, unable to take it. I could feel my pants tightening and the cold wetness of my clothes was forgotten as my body heated up all over. I trudged towards my box room, leaving wet footprints on the dirty carpet and a big wet patch on the couch beside Caleb. Not to mention the embarrassing, new wet patch on the front of my jeans, as I didn’t make it to my room on time.
Caleb
I swung my legs up on Aiden’s vacated seat on the couch, not caring at the damp spot he left soaked through my thin socks. I grinned smugly at the others; who knew getting homework done was so easy? I should go to school more often.
‘You’re such a whore, Caleb,’ Jayden informed me from the couch beside mine. ‘Your own brother?’
I grinned more broadly at the joke; he and Peyton were fucking on a regular basis.
‘You know what I always say, man... If it’s not your twin, stick it in...’ I ducked as he tried to whack me over the head with a cushion, but he was laughing.
‘Shut up, you slut.’
‘I’m not a slut, I’m just popular.’ I reclined lazily on the couch, the tightening in my pants I’d felt while molesting Aiden’s ear subsiding now.
‘No, you’re a slut,’ Rain interjected matter-of-factly from the floor. ‘A gosh-darned slut.’
‘Jealousy,’ I scoffed, reaching for the carton of orange juice my brother had left on the table and shaking it; there were only a few drops left but I drained them. It was sour, but that was nothing new. ‘At least I’m getting my homework done.’
‘There’s no point in him doing your homework,’ Damien said sourly, ‘you’re not gonna graduate anyway.’
I would have argued but it was true. I’d missed way too much school to graduate, it was a wonder they bothered letting me into class at all.
‘Plus, he’s not even doing your essay for you.’
‘Sure he is,’ I said confidently. Even without the sexual harassment, Aiden owed me, not that I would ever call in the debt. It was thanks to me even got to go to school, and the kid was smart, scary smart. School was where he needed to be. Whereas I was definitely better off with my job at Virgin Megastores.
‘No, he’s not,’ Peyton countered. ‘His bag is right there.’ He pointed at the end of my couch, where Aiden’s sopping wet book bag was leaning against the worn fabric.
‘Fuck sake,’ I muttered. I didn’t particularly care whether or not Aiden actually did my essay; like I said, it wouldn’t make a difference to my academic career one way or the other. But emancipated or not, I wasn’t gonna let him fall into my bad habits of skipping school and not handing in homework.
I leaned forward and grabbed the heavy bag, pulling it onto my lap.
‘What the fuck does he have in there?’ Jayden demanded, eyes wide. ‘I don’t think I even own what many school books.’
I shrugged, but pulled open the zipper and started tugging out books. ‘Maths, English, French, History...’ I muttered, pulling out one huge volume after another and landing them into Jayden’s lap. ‘What do we have here?’ I asked once the twin was barely visible behind a wall of books. I fished the balled up piece of paper out of the bag and started smoothing it out on my lap, but looked up when the door opened.
‘Um. What the fuck?’ Aiden asked, his eyes flashing. He’s really sensitive about being so smart, probably because we take the piss so often, and gets particularly annoyed if we touch his school things. We learned that lesson after we Tippex’d whole paragraphs in several of his textbooks one night when we were drunk, and painted SN on his schoolbag in imitation of the Superman logo.
Aiden’s eyes darted from Jayden’s lap to mine and I saw his face drain of what little colour it had. He snatched the paper away before I could look at it, shoved it in his pocket, and then tried to grab all his books off Jayden’s lap at once. Of course, they were too heavy and numerous, and he dropped them all almost immediately, some of them even crashing back onto Jayden.
Aiden sighed, frustrated, and tugged at his hair, a nervous habit we happen to share. I stood up and picked up some of the books, walking out of the room and down to his. I deposited them on the his desk and another load landed beside them almost instantly.
‘You good?’ I asked, ruffling his hair. Poor kid. On top of everything else, he was probably very confused about how I switched from brother to sexual predator and back again so often without any warning.
‘Yeah,’ he muttered, pulling out his chair and sitting down.
‘Where are your wet clothes?’ I asked, noticing he’d changed. ‘I’ll put them in with my stuff when I go to the Laundromat later.’
I was working the late shift – six til ten – at the record store, but the Laundromat was 24hr, so I could drop in after work.
I noticed Aiden’s cheeks flush a light pink as he buried himself in his books, trying to ignore me. ‘It’s okay, I’ll go myself tomorrow.’
I smirked; I’d noticed him walking funny when he’d left the sitting room the first time. Standing behind him, I leaned forward and put my hands on the desk on either side of him, and bent down so my mouth was level with his ear.
‘Did we make a mess?’ I whispered, my lips brushing his skin lightly. He squirmed just a little.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he muttered, but his breathing was a bit more shallow than usual.
‘Course you don’t,’ I replied, letting my hot tongue flick out against his earlobe and then blowing on it. He shivered. I inched further forward and nibbled gently on his earlobe.
‘What are you doing?’Aiden whispered, and I pulled back.
‘Nothing,’ I answered cheerfully, and walked out of the room, closing the door behind me.
Under the pretence of rooting through my locker, I looked out from under my fringe and watched Caleb Cartwright standing outside the door to our English class, joking with and shoving his friends. It was unusual that he even came to school, so it was a rare treat to be able to watch how his dark grey skinny jeans sagged around his skinny ass, how his black hoodie sat on his shoulders, how he occasionally flicked his head every now and again to get his black hair out of his eyes.
‘Checking him out again?’ I heard to my right, and my head snapped around to face Alana, my best friend, as my cheeks burned red.
‘No, don’t be sick,’ I muttered, rooting through my locker for real this time. The bell was about to go and if I didn’t have my English book Mr Brooks would skin me alive.
‘Call me weird-’
‘You’re weird.’
‘-but I think it’s kinda hot.’
‘You’re weird.’
Alana raised an eyebrow at me. ‘I’m not the one who fancies my-’
‘Shut up!’ I hissed, looking around frantically. Alana has a naturally loud voice; I try to keep private conversations from happening anywhere there might be a another living breathing person within, say, a hundred mile radius, but she doesn’t seem to like playing along. ‘I don’t fancy him.’
Alana scoffed. ‘You so do.’
I ignored her, shuffling past Caleb and his friends, who were still roughing each other up and laughing, and slid into my seat in the English classroom, Alana sitting down at the desk beside mine.
Caleb walked in shortly afterwards, followed by Jayden and Peyton, the twins, and Rain, Damien, and Dylan. Embarrassingly, they all ruffled my hair as they walked past, even though I’m only a year younger than them (I was skipped ahead a class), and Caleb muttered, ‘Alright, Squirt?’ as gave me the noogie from hell. I knew then that he was probably high as a kite, because he’s usually quite moody on the days he deigns to show his face at school.
As soon as Caleb was seated at the back with the others, passing around a jumbo sized packet of crisps and leaning on the back legs of their chairs, Alana passed me a note, which I opened under the table as Mr Brooks had walked in and was trying to call order. I glanced down at the opened piece of lined copy paper in my hands to see a crude cartoon drawing of a guy who looked vaguely like me getting, by the look on “my” face, painfully pounded from behind by a guy who looked vaguely like Caleb. She’d even signed it.
‘You’re sick,’ I hissed, stuffing the page in my bag roughly before Mr Brooks could see me with it and demand to look at it. Alana just laughed at me, opening her copy of the novel we were studying, Bel Canto, and facing forward like the little kiss-ass she was.
Not that I could really talk, I suppose. I had been skipped ahead a year after all, but that wasn’t my fault. I didn’t study particularly hard, I didn’t even pay a hell of a lot of attention, I was bored in most of my classes, finding them too easy, and so this was the solution. I already got a fair bit of mocking over it so I wasn’t about to let anyone in on the fact that I was bored out of my mind in these classes too. I could not go to college at sixteen. No, that wasn’t an option.
What seemed like an eternity later (but was only thirty five minutes) the bell went again and we were mercifully allowed to leave. English was the last class of the day and I could almost hear my bed beckoning me from across town.
‘Are you going to frame my picture and glue it to the ceiling so you can fall asleep looking at it every night?’ Alana asked as we packed up our things.
‘No. I’m going to burn it and cower in fear as demons and witches are released from its evil confines.’
‘Oh come on. It’s not that bad.’
‘You drew a picture of me being reamed by-!’ I stopped short, clamping my mouth shut. I was not going to talk about this in school.
‘You want a drive home, Squirt?’ Caleb asked, stopping by my desk. The others were giggling and munching still at the back of the room.
‘You driving?’ I asked warily, noticing his bloodshot eyes.
‘Peyton.’
I snorted. ‘Has he been smoking all day too?’ I asked.
Caleb scowled. ‘Don’t be such a girl.’ He looked at Alana. ‘No offence.’
She shrugged. ‘Can’t deny I’m a girl.’
‘You coming or not?’
I hesitated, then shook my head. ‘I’ll walk.’
‘Suit yourself. Come on guys!’ he called to the others, and they left me alone in the room with Alana.
‘Six stoned guys in a car made to accommodate four, and you’re passing up the opportunity to be squished in beside Caleb, why?’
I shrugged. ‘He’d be sitting in the front anyway,’ I said, grabbing my book bag. Then, cringing, ‘I mean, I don’t fancy him.’
‘It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing you’ve ever done, fancying your own brother. Remember when you got drunk and tried to eat glass?’
‘Shut up!’
-------------------------------
I arrived home forty five minutes later, drenched. It had started raining about ten minutes after I left the school grounds and I began to wonder if it would have been worth it getting a ride in an overcrowded car with a high driver. My clothes were soaked through and through, and my already heavy book bag had gained weight steadily at it took on water. As I dropped it by the ratty, torn couch in the dirty sitting room, it made a squelching noise that caused me to grimace.
Caleb and I live in a dingy little council house with the twins and the three guys, alone. Jayden and Peyton are eighteen, Caleb and I are emancipated, Rain and Dylan come from homes so negligent that their parents don’t even seem to realise that not only have their sons moved out, but they’re the ones paying for it, and Damien likes to classify himself as a runaway, except his parents live across town and pay his rent and tuition.
I walked over to the fridge, ignoring the guys all sprawled out on couches watching Dylan and Rain playing Assassin’s Creed on the PS3. Either they were all so toasted they were having deep moments of faux clarity, or they were coming down from the high. I hoped it was the former; being the youngest and, as I explained, something of a nerd, I get the most ragging when they’re sober enough to dish any out. I mean, don’t get me wrong. They don’t hit me or mistreat me. They just really, really loving taking the piss out of me.
I grabbed a carton or orange juice one day past it’s sell-by date from the fridge, and trudged back into the sitting room, landing myself on the only available seat beside my brother. My gorgeous, hot, sexy-ass brother.
‘Ew, man, you’re all wet, get off me.’
Sobering up then. Great.
‘Go change, you’ll get sick.’
Funny how we achieved emancipation from our parents but I still get treated like a kid.
I just muttered, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ and grimaced and I necked some bitter orange juice.
‘Aiden, man, will you do my English essay for me?’ Damien asked, getting in there first as the others all chimed in with their requests as well.
‘You know I can’t do seven essays by tomorrow morning,’ I muttered, putting the now empty carton on the already cluttered sitting room table. One of the legs was broken so it was balancing somewhat precariously on a pile of unused school books, and there was dirt ingrained in the lines on the wood. Empty bottles and dirty plates and cups were piled on top of each other, along with overflowing ash trays and packets of tobacco and skins.
‘Come on Supernerd, you can do anything,’ Caleb drawled lazily.
The others all started calling over each other’s voices, urging me to do it, and then everyone started chanting, ‘Supernerd! Supernerd! Supernerd!’ Like that was going to make me do it. They must have still been high if they thought I was gonna strip off my wet clothes to reveal a spandex SN outfit and go write all their essays for them.
‘No.’
There was booing and hissing, but their attention was returning to the TV screen and I was pretty much off the hook.
Pretty much.
Caleb leaned over and I felt his hot breath on my ear. ‘Do mine anyway,’ he whispered, and I felt his lips move against the sensitive skin of my lobule and antitragus. I shivered involuntarily, hating myself for giving him the satisfaction. I hate when he does this to me.
I swallowed and nodded. ‘Okay.’
I felt the tip of Caleb’s tongue tracing all the way up my helix, and I stood up suddenly and walked out, unable to take it. I could feel my pants tightening and the cold wetness of my clothes was forgotten as my body heated up all over. I trudged towards my box room, leaving wet footprints on the dirty carpet and a big wet patch on the couch beside Caleb. Not to mention the embarrassing, new wet patch on the front of my jeans, as I didn’t make it to my room on time.
Caleb
I swung my legs up on Aiden’s vacated seat on the couch, not caring at the damp spot he left soaked through my thin socks. I grinned smugly at the others; who knew getting homework done was so easy? I should go to school more often.
‘You’re such a whore, Caleb,’ Jayden informed me from the couch beside mine. ‘Your own brother?’
I grinned more broadly at the joke; he and Peyton were fucking on a regular basis.
‘You know what I always say, man... If it’s not your twin, stick it in...’ I ducked as he tried to whack me over the head with a cushion, but he was laughing.
‘Shut up, you slut.’
‘I’m not a slut, I’m just popular.’ I reclined lazily on the couch, the tightening in my pants I’d felt while molesting Aiden’s ear subsiding now.
‘No, you’re a slut,’ Rain interjected matter-of-factly from the floor. ‘A gosh-darned slut.’
‘Jealousy,’ I scoffed, reaching for the carton of orange juice my brother had left on the table and shaking it; there were only a few drops left but I drained them. It was sour, but that was nothing new. ‘At least I’m getting my homework done.’
‘There’s no point in him doing your homework,’ Damien said sourly, ‘you’re not gonna graduate anyway.’
I would have argued but it was true. I’d missed way too much school to graduate, it was a wonder they bothered letting me into class at all.
‘Plus, he’s not even doing your essay for you.’
‘Sure he is,’ I said confidently. Even without the sexual harassment, Aiden owed me, not that I would ever call in the debt. It was thanks to me even got to go to school, and the kid was smart, scary smart. School was where he needed to be. Whereas I was definitely better off with my job at Virgin Megastores.
‘No, he’s not,’ Peyton countered. ‘His bag is right there.’ He pointed at the end of my couch, where Aiden’s sopping wet book bag was leaning against the worn fabric.
‘Fuck sake,’ I muttered. I didn’t particularly care whether or not Aiden actually did my essay; like I said, it wouldn’t make a difference to my academic career one way or the other. But emancipated or not, I wasn’t gonna let him fall into my bad habits of skipping school and not handing in homework.
I leaned forward and grabbed the heavy bag, pulling it onto my lap.
‘What the fuck does he have in there?’ Jayden demanded, eyes wide. ‘I don’t think I even own what many school books.’
I shrugged, but pulled open the zipper and started tugging out books. ‘Maths, English, French, History...’ I muttered, pulling out one huge volume after another and landing them into Jayden’s lap. ‘What do we have here?’ I asked once the twin was barely visible behind a wall of books. I fished the balled up piece of paper out of the bag and started smoothing it out on my lap, but looked up when the door opened.
‘Um. What the fuck?’ Aiden asked, his eyes flashing. He’s really sensitive about being so smart, probably because we take the piss so often, and gets particularly annoyed if we touch his school things. We learned that lesson after we Tippex’d whole paragraphs in several of his textbooks one night when we were drunk, and painted SN on his schoolbag in imitation of the Superman logo.
Aiden’s eyes darted from Jayden’s lap to mine and I saw his face drain of what little colour it had. He snatched the paper away before I could look at it, shoved it in his pocket, and then tried to grab all his books off Jayden’s lap at once. Of course, they were too heavy and numerous, and he dropped them all almost immediately, some of them even crashing back onto Jayden.
Aiden sighed, frustrated, and tugged at his hair, a nervous habit we happen to share. I stood up and picked up some of the books, walking out of the room and down to his. I deposited them on the his desk and another load landed beside them almost instantly.
‘You good?’ I asked, ruffling his hair. Poor kid. On top of everything else, he was probably very confused about how I switched from brother to sexual predator and back again so often without any warning.
‘Yeah,’ he muttered, pulling out his chair and sitting down.
‘Where are your wet clothes?’ I asked, noticing he’d changed. ‘I’ll put them in with my stuff when I go to the Laundromat later.’
I was working the late shift – six til ten – at the record store, but the Laundromat was 24hr, so I could drop in after work.
I noticed Aiden’s cheeks flush a light pink as he buried himself in his books, trying to ignore me. ‘It’s okay, I’ll go myself tomorrow.’
I smirked; I’d noticed him walking funny when he’d left the sitting room the first time. Standing behind him, I leaned forward and put my hands on the desk on either side of him, and bent down so my mouth was level with his ear.
‘Did we make a mess?’ I whispered, my lips brushing his skin lightly. He squirmed just a little.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he muttered, but his breathing was a bit more shallow than usual.
‘Course you don’t,’ I replied, letting my hot tongue flick out against his earlobe and then blowing on it. He shivered. I inched further forward and nibbled gently on his earlobe.
‘What are you doing?’Aiden whispered, and I pulled back.
‘Nothing,’ I answered cheerfully, and walked out of the room, closing the door behind me.