This is my third and final piece for Smutathon 2020. As I finished writing it, we passed our £3,000 fundraising target, which feels like a fucking INCREDIBLE achievement, and one that owes everything to the wonderful people who joined in with this madcap venture, and of course to the 100+ generous folks who sponsored us. The money you donated to Endometriosis UK will make a huge difference, and we’re both happy and honoured that our campaign inspired you to help them out*.
This story is inspired by a tweet I saw a couple of months ago. At the time, I resolved to write four 500-word pieces of fiction, each inspired by one of the four images. Of course that went out of the window almost immediately, and instead you get one 3,500-word story, which features two of those positions. I hope you enjoy it.
*If you haven’t yet sponsored us, but want to do so, the fundraising link will remain open for (at least) another week. You can find it here!
As at all good weddings, by 10pm the dancefloor was packed. I fished a bottle of red off an abandoned dinner table and filled my glass as I surveyed the carnage. Of course my sister was in the middle of it; pint in one hand, phone in the other, she twirled, screamed, and stomped to the beat, surrounded by three bridesmaids and her adoring new husband.
I caught her eye and raised my glass in a silent toast.
“Aw, that’s so sweet. And to think your idea of brotherly love used to involve putting spiders under Amy’s pillow and dismembering her Barbies.”
I turned to see Eddy smirking up at me from a chair she’d pulled away from one of the tables. Her feet were bare, and in the process of slinging one over the other knee to give it a massage, the emerald dress that I’d already mentally classified as daring had ridden halfway up her thighs.
“Hey, those Barbies all needed serious medical attention,” I said. “Without my surgical expertise, they wouldn’t have made it.”
“Uh huh, well I don’t seem to recall your mum being too impressed by that story at the time…”
Eddy unhooked her leg and stood up, apparently revived. She was a full head shorter than me, and I smiled at the memory of the one awful summer when she and Amy had both briefly passed my height. They’d lost touch for many years after 6th form, but I would never stop thinking of her as my little sister’s best friend.
After a few minutes of comfortable conversation, Eddy reached over to ruffle my cravat. “This is nice,” she said. “I do like a man in a waistcoat.”
“Thanks, but I was actually about to take it off,” I said. “I should probably stop skulking in the shadows, and this get-up is a bit hot for dancing.”
Eddy’s gaze drifted over to the throng of people slowly circling Amy. She wasn’t the only person at the wedding without a date, but it occurred to me that everyone else who’d shown up on their own belonged to a clearly-defined group: family, uni mates, friends from work, the guys from Jamie’s cricket team. Amy and Eddy were inseparable as teenagers, but that was partly because neither of them had any other close friends. My sister fled our home town at the earliest possible opportunity, and there’d been no question of her inviting anyone else from school to her wedding.
“What a shame for you that all the bridesmaids have boyfriends,” she shrugged, downing her glass of champagne. “Guess you’ll be wanking into that tea towel again tonight.”
“How many times do I have to tell you – it was milk! I’d spilled milk on the floor and needed to wipe it up. I just forgot to take the tea towel back downstairs. That’s why it was so…”
“…crusty? And why you kept it over the end of your bed? Sure.”
I suddenly remembered what a nightmare Eddy had been as a 14-year-old. While I wasn’t always the kindest big brother to Amy – at least not where spiders and Barbies were concerned – the two of them conspired to ensure that any minor victories rapidly turned pyrrhic. They dreamt up elaborate stories to explain my total lack at 16 of anything approaching a love life – often at the dinner table, in front of the rest of the family. They made fun of my clothes, my friends, my music, and my hobbies (all of which were, in fairness, pretty awful). For a while, they frequently dissolved into laughter just at the sight of me.
At one stage I begged my parents to let me put a lock on my bedroom door, in the hope it might stop them bursting in while I did my homework to hurl water balloons made from the free condoms handed out at school, or that my porn stash and (worse) my diary might be safe from them when I left the house. After that request was denied, I took to moving anything private from one hiding place to another in a futile attempt to keep them safe, like key witnesses in a mafia trial.
I smiled and shook my head. Ok, maybe not a nightmare, but if an older brother’s job is to tease and torment his sister (and back then, I believed firmly that it was), her best mate is there to make it a fair fight. On that front, Eddy definitely succeeded.
I pulled my thoughts back to the hotel ballroom in time to see her looking round for another bottle of champagne. When I pointed at the entrance to the saloon bar, she handed me her shoes and we wandered over together. Dancing probably didn’t require any additional liquid courage, but it never hurt to make sure, especially when all the drinks were free.
“What about you?” I said, as we hopped up onto soft leather stools.
“Oh I never needed a tea towel,” she said. “Not back then, anyway.”
“No, idiot. I mean who do you have your eye on tonight? And sorry, wh-“
“Never you mind. And that’s an answer to both questions.” She grabbed her left foot again, and I put a steadying hand on her shoulder as the stool wobbled alarmingly. “Stupid fucking shoes. Wedding or no wedding, this’ll teach me to wear heels.”
I watched as she ran her thumb over a blister the size of a 20 pence piece. One strap had slipped off her shoulder and dropped far enough down her arm to expose a swathe of lightly-freckled skin across the top of one breast. I dragged my eyes away from the gentle swell that disappeared into the green fabric, and focused instead on a point somewhere beyond her right ear, aware suddenly of a flush creeping over my cheeks.
“I must admit,” Eddy said, without looking up from her foot. “I never had you pegged as a prude.”
“I’m not a-“, I started to say, then realized I couldn’t think of a single way to finish that sentence without exposing myself to further mockery. God, it really was like being 16 again.
“Well in that case, don’t look away on my account. I have fucking fabulous tits – feel free to check them out for as long as you like.”
Eddy wasn’t over-selling them. Nor did she flinch for one second when I slowly returned my gaze to the top of her sternum. Instead she sat up straight on the stool and looked me in the eye as she moved the strap back onto her shoulder.
“You know we’re not teenagers any more,” she said. “If you want to do more than look at them, you only have to ask.”
I glanced nervously towards the dancefloor. Even at the height of adolescent hostilities, there had been one unspoken truce in my lifelong sibling war with Amy: namely that we didn’t mess around with each other’s friends. For many years, I’d felt like the rule worked heavily in my favour – for some reason, she was always a lot more interesting to my mates than I was to hers – but at 10.30pm on my sister’s wedding night, with her childhood best friend (and my teenage nemesis) staring straight into my eyes, I found myself rapidly reassessing that view.
“If you’re worried about Amy, she’s far too busy having fun to notice what her boring, well-behaved big brother is doing.”
Eddy had a point. I opened my mouth to acknowledge her flawless logic, then rapidly closed it again as she grabbed my hand and pulled me off the stool to stand in front of her. I thought about how little I knew of her life after high school – after GCSEs really, as I’d left for university when she was still 16. I’d heard rumours of a broken engagement in her early 20s, and after she’d added me on Instagram a few months before Amy’s wedding I’d seen the occasional photo of her dressed up for a night out, or posing against a backdrop of sea and sky along one of the coastal paths near her home. She always looked happy enough; different, of course, to the girl I’d known over a decade earlier, but it hadn’t surprised me in the slightest that the dominant mood radiating from her pictures was one of fierce independence.
I opened my mouth again, but Eddy pressed a finger against it, then gently swept a stray lock of hair off my forehead.
“You should really think about just kissing me,” she said, draping her arm over my shoulder. “I’m done with the whole talking thing for now.”
I didn’t trust myself to form an adequate verbal response, so just nodded mutely. At such close quarters I could see flecks of gold in the brown of her irises, and a line at her temple where sweat had started to encroach on a thin layer of foundation. I leaned down and brushed my lips across hers, then jerked my head back far enough that she kissed only fresh air in response. The surprise – and brief flash of anger – on her face was enough to make up my mind. Not everything good in life came easily.
“I think I would like to do more than just look at them, actually,” I said. “How can we make that happen? And where?”
I followed her eyes as they drifted over to the neon sign for the bar toilets. The “are you fucking serious?” expression on her face was hard to ignore. Yeah, OK: at this stage, the ‘where’ was pretty damn obvious.
Not least because most of the guests would be pissing elsewhere. The bar toilets were not officially available to us – the wedding party was meant to use the ones in the Ballroom or go out to Reception – but as Eddy turned back to me, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that exceptions could be made. Especially if no-one knew we were making them.
Without another word, we jumped down from our stools. I hesitated for a second, then rested my hand in the small of her back as she walked confidently toward the entirely unattended double doors.
We stopped outside the toilets themselves. Gents or Ladies? Tough call. Much easier for her if we got caught in the former, but…
“Are you kidding me? I haven’t been in many blokes’ loos, but I know for a fact that the Ladies will be cleaner. Come on, I’ll show you.”
We burst through the door, more confident than perhaps we should’ve been that the bathroom was empty. Eddy took me by the hand and – after pausing in front of the appealingly wide sink counter – pulled me into the nearest cubicle.
“Can’t be too careful,” she said, then spun round and, without in any obvious way pausing for breath, kissed me hard against the barely solid door. I broke away and glanced over her shoulder. Loo seat down, everything recently cleaned and smelling reassuringly of disinfectant. Brilliant. And a perfect excuse for more unrestrained snogging.
“I might need to see those fucking fabulous tits now, please,” I said, and before the words had even passed my lips Eddy peeled the bodice of her dress over what turned out to be an elaborate – and seriously impressive, given the weight it had to support – strapless bra.
“Surprised?” she asked, her voice lower than it had been at the bar.
“Not remotely,” I said, and meant it. I wasn’t sure anything about Eddy could truly surprise me (certainly not expensive lingerie), and as she stepped out of the dress entirely, I realised that had been the case for a long time. “Can I…”
She nodded, and closed her eyes. I fiddled with the clasp, resisting the urge to apologise for my temporary clumsiness. Everything about the entire situation felt like the dictionary definition of ‘mitigating circumstances’.
“You know I’m not wearing knickers, right?” I stopped in my tracks. I didn’t need a mirror to work out that a warm flush was creeping across my cheeks. Pretty much any reply seemed risky, but silence was an equally unacceptable option, so I cleared my throat and tried to keep my voice steady.
“Yes. But. My attention was momentarily elsewhere. Can you blame me?”
“Seems like your attention has been elsewhere for far too long, if I’m honest.” I started to protest, but was cut off by her laugh, which echoed clear and true like a bell around the bathroom walls. “I’m jok-“
“It’s ok,” I muttered. “I got there in the end.”
This time I really felt like I should apologise. It was a strange new dynamic to navigate – a decade-long friendship would be challenging enough, but we had been something rather less than friends for well over 10 years, which was both liberating and – for whatever reason – a confusing proposition to wrestle with.
However, ambivalence didn’t feel like a mood that would do either of us much good. In an attempt to shake it off, I pushed Eddy back till her arse met the loo seat. She raised an eyebrow, and stared pointedly at the growing bulge in my trousers.
“I assume you want me to suck it? That’s not a problem – I’d just rather be on my knees, if you don’t mind.”
“I do,” I said. “Mind, I mean. But only because I want to taste you first.”
For once, Eddy remained silent. I bent again to kiss her, then planted my hands on her knees. I let my lips criss-cross her neck and slide down from the base of her throat to her cleavage. I waited for some sort of guidance, and was rewarded with her hand on the back of my head, moving it across one breast then the other, then decisively down over her belly, toward her cunt.
“Lick me,” she murmured. “Please. I need it now.”
Even more so than kissing her, going down on my sister’s childhood friend was a boundary I’d never imagined crossing, but the soft, thick cadence of her voice was so persuasive, so compelling, that I didn’t hesitate for one second. Her thighs were hot to the touch. I pressed them apart and inhaled deeply. She smelled fucking amazing, and was very clearly already wet.
Pulling her right to the edge of the lid, I positioned my tongue at the very bottom of her labia, and dragged it up between them. Every muscle in my body felt tight with concentration: I really wanted to get this right.
“Do you want my fingers as well?” I asked. Eddy sighed, as if in deep thought.
“Ordinarily yes. But I’m so turned on right now that if you finger me as well, I’ll be too desperate for your cock to properly enjoy your tongue.”
I nodded, and let my hands rest on her thighs. I returned my tongue to her cunt, deliberately avoiding her clit as Eddy squirmed against me and tried to grind her vulva against my mouth. She tasted sour – almost metallic – like fizzy laces from the sweet shop we used to pass on the way home from school, Eddy and Amy traipsing behind me arm in arm, giggling together in a way that always made me wonder darkly whether I was the subject of some nascent plot or merely the butt of their latest joke.
Breathing steadily through my nose, I kept the pressure light on the entrance to her cunt, moving my tongue slowly up and down the inside of her labia. Each time I lingered a little closer to her clit, aware that it caused her breath to hitch, as she waited in vain for me to lick it.
“God, I always knew there was a bit of bastard in you,” she said, reaching down to tug my hair in frustration.
“Sorry, I’m just really enjoying myself,” I said, aware that I didn’t sound even vaguely apologetic. It was true though. She was so slick and smooth under my tongue, so responsive to each change in pressure and focus, that I could’ve spent the whole night exploring her like that – for all that it might have cost me my life (or at the very least a couple of limbs) to do so.
When I did eventually relent, that first casual swipe across her clit was very much worth the wait (for me, at least). She arched her back and gasped like I’d just passed an electric current through her body. I darted away again, then as she launched into what I felt certain would’ve been the most vociferous – and justifiably indelicate – of protests, I pressed the flat of my tongue directly against it and stroked up and down, my hands gripping her thighs more firmly to contain the anticipated physical spasm.
“Oh fuckkkk,” she hissed, locking her arms against the lid and lifting her ass an inch or two into the air. I took the opportunity to tongue her cunt again, doing my best to push inside and greedily taste as much of her wetness as possible.
Her clit suddenly felt like a magnet though. I settled into a busy rhythm, guided by her semi-articulate verbal feedback, and the occasional impatient hand on the back of my head. Her cunt was practically pulsing, and it took an act of willpower greater than I’d thought I had in me not to inch my fingers up her thigh and ease two of them inside her.
“I’m so close,” Eddy said, her eyes squeezed shut. “I need you to fuck me. Do you have-“
“Yes I do!” I scrambled to my feet and reached into my back pocket. “Here?”
“No. Fuck it…no-one’s going to come in here. I want you to take me over the sink. Hard.”
We clattered out of the cubicle, Eddy’s dress in my hand, and she dropped to her knees by the counter to free my cock from the still miraculously uncreased suit trousers. It bounced out, eliciting a grin of appreciation from Eddy, who licked her thumb and ran it over the tip.
“I used to make myself come thinking about your dick. Did you know that?”
“No! Um, but, how? You’d never seen it?”
“Well that was kind of the point.” She flashed a wicked smile. “Meant I had free rein to imagine whatever I wanted. And believe me, I’m not disappointed.”
I pulled her back up and into a hungry kiss. “Mm, you taste of me,” she said, breaking off to brace against the enamel surface as I tore open the foil and rolled the condom over my cock.
I entered her without any ceremony or hesitation. We stared at each other in the mirror, faces flushed, and I realised – in what felt like the cheesiest way imaginable – that on one level at least, we really were seeing each other properly for the first time.
“This isn’t going to take long, is it?” she said, reaching round to grip the back of my neck. No, no it isn’t, I thought to myself, teeth gritted and thighs tensed as I slammed into her, feeling each eager squeeze of her cunt along my entire length. Her head dropped, but my eyes never left the mirror. I needed to see her orgasm hit.
It didn’t disappoint. Eddy came with her mouth open, her jaw twitching like a fish and an angry red smudge spreading across her chest. Trust me, it was 1000% hotter than it sounds. I gave up any attempt to delay my own release, letting her grip and pull and ride me to an orgasm so intense that when I opened my eyes afterwards I had to wait a good half-minute for the black spots in front of them to fade.
Cock reluctantly withdrawn, and condom safely wrapped and tossed in the bin, I handed Eddy a fistful of paper towels and leaned back against the counter. We wiped the sweat off our faces in silence, then she threw back her head and laughed in pure delight, before bending down to pick up her dress.
“Bra?” I enquired, lifting it off the sink. “I think we’ve moved beyond any real need to pretend we’re, y’know, decent,” she said, then paused for effect. “I mean it’s nearly midnight, for Christ’s sake.” We left the toilets arm-in-arm, and made our way towards a dancefloor somehow even more frenzied and bacchanalian than it had been two hours earlier. Amy remained upright and impossibly glamorous in the eye of the storm. She spotted me mid-twirl and smiled in greeting, then frowned. I turned my head to look at Eddy and shrugged. Some explanations could definitely wait till morning