Not My Brother’s Keeper
21.
My stepbrother kept his word and was now talking to me outside of our dorm room. At first, we got a few odd looks here and there, especially when walking together. It was clear as day that we were different. I even distinctively heard a girl asking Adrian why he was hanging out with ‘that nerd’ when she thought I was out of earshot. Nerd was a term I could live with. At least I was no longer the weird guy who preferred bible study to smoking and shooting the breeze, as I had used to be back home. All those guys and gals in my hometown, they should’ve known it was my father’s fault that I wasn’t spending time with them, though I have to admit I had developed a superiority complex from a young age, comparing myself to them and finding them lacking basic intellectual skills.
We threw ourselves into our studies, Adrian out of passion, me out of necessity. Although we didn’t have sex again for a while, there was a tacit understanding between us now. We talked, and we spent hours in silence, bent over our sketches and textbooks. And we were, to an extent, I like to believe, quite happy.
Adrian didn’t mention again that I should come out to my father. I was content with that, because I couldn’t picture myself in that position. For all my determination to do things my way, there were strings holding me back, strings that stretched between me and the home I wanted so desperately to leave behind.
“So, you two are brothers?” A chick in goth makeup and shredded jeans stopped in front of us as we were enjoying a quick lunch on a bench in the quad.
“Yeah, why?” Adrian asked. I always let him speak when people talked to us, because he was the socially-adapted one. While I was, well, the opposite.
“You don’t look alike at all.”
“We’re actually--” I started, but Adrian stopped me by wrapping one arm around my shoulders and pressing his cheek against mine.
“Are you sure we’re not alike at all? Look closer,” he said to the girl.
She did lean forward. Didn’t she realize Adrian was making fun of her? She was cute in that punk way chicks who rebel against the norms are. Her whole attitude and clothes and makeup were screaming ‘don’t call me beautiful’, when they were all perks to make her stand out.
“Nope,” she concluded. “I’m not calling your mom names, but seriously, you two can’t have more than one parent in common. Biological parent,” she added quickly.
So she was smart, too.
“Also,” she added, “you two look more like a couple than brothers.”
That gave me pause. The skin on the back of my neck pricked unpleasantly and I tried to pull away from Adrian. He was too close, and we were making people talk.
“For real?” Adrian asked, drawling the word. “Then you wouldn’t be shocked at all if we did this, right?”
I had no idea what he meant until he turned his face to mine. I pulled back in terror. “What the hell?” I murmured, pushing Adrian away.
“Ah,” the girl snapped her fingers, “you must be stepbrothers. Whose mommy married whose daddy?” She looked completely unfazed that Adrian had been about to kiss me. In public. In broad daylight.
Unlike me; I was barely keeping from shaking, and the physical reaction I was having took me by surprise. If it all had been in my head, then I would’ve managed somehow to deal with it. But my problems and hang-ups ran deep, and they were beyond my control. The truth was: I was reeling from a simple touch and a joke. Adrian was known on campus as being unconventional, in the way artists always get away with, so if he’d just kissed a guy out of the blue, no one would’ve batted an eye. Even if that guy happened to be his stepbrother.
Adrian, shocked and hurt by my reaction, didn’t reply. He was staring into my eyes, conveying without words that punishment waited for me. I stared back, helpless and angry.
“His mom married my dad,” I said, without tearing my eyes off Adrian. We were starting to fight that very moment, and the goth girl just happened to be a witness to our drama.
“Cool. So you get along?”
Either she was tone-deaf when it came to social cues, or something else was happening.
“Not really, no,” Adrian said and pulled away from me. “Actually,” he said, pushing himself up and offering the girl his arm in an exaggerated old-fashioned way, “I was barely waiting for someone to come along and save me from this bore.” He threw the word at me, along with a hard stare, over his shoulder.
My punishment was starting. He continued to look at me, long enough that the girl, now hanging on his arm, gave him a questioning look. Then, her eyes moved to me, asking the same silent question.
I couldn’t answer that, not because it was a stranger asking, but because I was still frozen in place, unable to do or say anything. Adrian was waiting for me to do something, to prove my undying love or simply admit the fact that we were together now. I would prove it to him eventually, and it would be done in such an unequivocal manner that he’d never doubt me or my feelings again. As much good as that would do to us, but when you are left with no choice, you discover quickly that making yours is not hard at all.
“Let’s do something fun,” Adrian said to the girl, pulling her along and moving away from me.
I’d never get used to watching him go. But while in that moment, it all seemed possible, him coming back, telling me it was only a cruel joke he was playing, me calling after him and telling the girl Adrian was mine, stepbrother or not, it wouldn’t be forever that way. We waste so much when we are young: time, feelings, words, silences.
***
Adrian returned late. I was still studying, wanting to blame staying up late on needing to do that, so I could talk to him. If he’d never come back, I would’ve stayed up all night.
“Listen,” I started without looking at him, still pretending to be absorbed by my textbooks, “you can do whatever you want. Just don’t humiliate me in public again. Is that okay with you?”
He stopped, whatever was that he was doing. “Jo, are you for real?” He wasn’t taunting me; what I read in his words was curiosity and a bit of shock.
“Yes, as real as I can be. You’re not tied to me.”
Stupid young me, hoping he’d relent in front of my so-called indifference and give me what I wanted, despite me saying the opposite of it.
“You’re positively mental,” he accused. He began undressing.
When he threw his t-shirt at my head, I didn’t dodge. The smell of his sweat – his post-sex sweat – hit me.
“Did you sleep with her?” I asked.
“Does it matter? You just said I wasn’t tied to you.”
“You did. I hope you’re not imagining you can fuck me after you just fucked her.”
Adrian came closer. He leaned against the desk. When I stole a look at him, I saw that he was completely naked. His cock was hanging limp, and I could sense the rubbery smell of condom and spermicide. At least, he was playing safe.
“Have you ever fucked anyone raw?” I didn’t realize that the question came out of my mouth, when I thought I was just thinking it.
Adrian took one of my textbook, closed it and dropped it on the table. Then he proceeded to do the same with all of them, until they were stacked together to one side in a disorderly heap.
“Why would I answer that?” he said. “Why would I tell you anything at all ever in this life?”
His voice was filled with rancor, which surprised me because I was too inexperienced in feeling love to understand.
“You went with her.”
“You didn’t come after me. What will take, Jo? Do you want me to fuck you raw? Do you want that only if I’ve never fucked anyone else raw? What do you want from me?” He was growing gradually frustrated, putting me, as well, in a state of restlessness. And then, that fateful question: “What are we going to do, Jo?”
I pursed my lips and locked myself in stubborn silence. Adrian huffed and pushed against the stack of textbooks, making them spill over the desk and onto the floor.
“So damn childish,” I murmured under my breath. I was one to talk. However, pretending to be the grownup in the room, I started picking them up and putting them back on the desk.
I thought his little act was over, but he had something else in mind. The moment I had all my textbooks back on the desk, arranged neatly as I liked them, he returned and pushed them off and on the floor again.
His lovely green eyes were almost dark with fury. Do you know that old Chinese philosophy about yin and yang? I was cold while he was hot, I was darkness while he was light, he went and did things while I waited them to be done to me. I guess those ancient people knew a thing or two about human beings and how they function. Of course, such concepts refer to the feminine and masculine dichotomy, so I have no idea how they apply when both parts are supposed to be the same.
Hence my and Adrian’s problem. He expected me to be the same as him, and that was where he was wrong. I expected our love to be doomed because it couldn’t happen – because we were so different – when in fact, we were gravitating, drawn irresistible like a two-planet system that would either end up existing in balance, succumbing to a crash or drifting away.
We were clashing and crashing now. That was our phase.
“Are you fucking twelve?” I asked. He was trying to get a reaction out of me, and I didn’t want to give him any satisfaction. I didn’t get angry; my father had driven that out of me, and I had learned it as an important survival skill.
“No. Are you?” Adrian challenged me. It was hard to face him while he was naked like that. He was comfortable in his own body for sure. And he didn’t mind using it so he could get the upper hand in this confrontation with me.
“Definitely not. Stop being a brat.”
I grabbed my textbooks and huddled them in my arms. Giving him a triumphant look wasn’t the wisest choice. Next thing I knew, we were on the floor, wrestling with each other, my textbooks quickly becoming collateral damage in our little furious dance.
When he slapped me, it shocked me. It wasn’t even a hard slap, but it was meant to humiliate me and make me act for a bull seeing red. That was what he wanted to get out of me.
“What?” he hissed in my face. “Pretty nasty, right, Jo? Don’t look so offended, for fuck’s sake. Each time you behave like you did today, it’s a slap in my face.” He emphasized the last words. My, mine, me. These are words used by selfish people. But I didn’t mind him being selfish. I wanted him to be more than selfish.
“I can’t be that,” I said, my fury, which had been on the rise for the last half hour, subsiding already. “Out in the open like that. Adrian, I can’t.”
My honest reaction made some of his anger fade, too, but not enough. He wrestled me until I was on my belly, pressed against the floor.
“You asked me a question, Jo,” he hissed in my ear. “Unlike you, I’m going to be honest and tell you. I’ve never fucked anyone raw. But I am going to fuck you like that because you deserve it, you fucking scumbag.”
How was that a punishment? I suspected that it wouldn’t be a nice experience for me, but I still wanted it, that part of him that he’d never given anyone else.
“Aren’t you going to protest? Beg me not to do it, and I won’t,” he said, shaking me.
“Do as you please,” I whispered, and there must have been so much desire in my voice, so much want, because Adrian chuckled, making the hair on the back of my head rise in a pleasant, almost unbearable way.
He pleased to fuck me. Raw.
I didn’t pose any resistance as he took me out of my closest. We remained on the floor, so the carpet was rough under my knees and elbows as Adrian put me in a doggy-style position.
“Spit will do, fucker,” he mumbled.
Even if Adrian seemed bent on punishing me hard, he wasn’t inconsiderate enough to forego preparation completely. As much as he tried to be bad, he wasn’t good at it because it wasn’t in his nature. While I was all good and pristine on the outside, harboring dark thoughts and feelings underneath my veneer of respectability.
I knew what I was doing by not fighting back. If I’d done that, he would’ve stopped; I’m sure of it. But this way I was dragging him down with me, and as much as my conscience told me not to do it, I was too tired to fight my feelings anymore.
It was better this way, I told myself in that very moment. Adrian would see how wanting me tasted of ash and bad behavior and wouldn’t continue on that path. I’d be left with my suffering once he abandoned me, and it would all work out.
How’s that saying? When man plans, God laughs? The Big Guy surely had a field day with my bad choices because no good thought nurtured by my religious education stopped me then.
Adrian was behind me, struggling to get his cock inside my ass. He was growing frustrated because I wasn’t planning on making it easy and he wasn’t a rapist. But I loved it so much; I loved him so much. What I was thinking and feeling combined into a strange explosive cocktail, so much so that when he tried to push his cock inside me once more, I thought I’d come on the spot.
I could tell he was about to give up when I stopped him. I grabbed his hand first, that without turning; then I let go of it so I could search for his cock. Then I placed it at my backside, enjoying how silky, alive and pulsing it was in my hand and aligned it for proper entering.
“Jo,” he whispered.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You wanted to fuck me raw, didn’t you?”
“Is that what you want?” Emphasis on ‘you’.
“I only want to make you happy,” I said instead of admitting the truth.
“Liar,” he accused me, but his voice had grown thick with desire as my ass started to swallow his cock slowly.
You may say that it’s psychological and all that, but sex did feel better when he took me like that. His cock slid inside me after a few more tries and more spit, and when he started moving, oh my heart…
To compensate for his lack of bad boy charm under the circumstances, he grabbed my hair. All over me, his lips over my ear, his nipples rubbing against my back, his pubes against my ass, we were closer than ever. And he kept telling me things, about how he hated me but couldn’t stop wanting me, that I was like a curse on his life but he wouldn’t bear not to have me.
I came twice. The first time happened after he was barely in for under a minute or so. The second, when he grabbed my cock and pumped it hard while slamming into me and making me see stars and heaven and all kinds of other beautiful things.
But the most beautiful was him coming hard inside me. Yes, it was the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to me until that moment.
tbc
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