Love's Blinders
By Fictioneer
Based Characters created by Reki Kawahara
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It hit me with incredible stunning awkwardness during our team quest in New ALO's Banta Alps while watching Leafa in all her sleek sylphness hiking up the snowy pass.
I felt a rush of awe and enchantment and fathomless yearning I hadn't felt since Asuna!
I friggin' love her!
Leafa!
Jesus Christ, I really do!
It was like the mist finally lifted and admitted the irresistible charm and character within her blond beauty.
Awesome!
Best thing was Leafa's always flagged me with her cute teases that she was open to me, waiting for me and I had no excuse not to oblige her anymore, especially since Asuna's crushing "Dear John" text while she was studying in America. Now suddenly it was like her aching void was suddenly filled like an imploding vacuum of thawed realization and awe as I realized my closest female gaming companion was far far more than that.
Leafa.
It felt like we've known another forever. She knew me backward and forward and every button to push. She coyly leaked my secrets and humbled me with cute curt banter. Even more than Asuna it felt like I wouldn't have to break her in knowing my embarrassing foibles and habits and quirks because she teased me about them almost before I showed them.
Jesus, where's Leafa been all my life?
Wait.
Wait friggin' wait!
How could've I skipped the obvious like that?
Jesus, it smacked me on the head why Leafa felt so easy, so familiar, so totally cozy with me in subtle ways even Asuna wasn't.
We've been together before even before we even met!
Or more accurate, lived together.
Sweet Jesus Christ, Fate twist the dagger!
Suguha!
My imuoto!
Her VR proxy catching me on the rebound?
Was I really in love with Suguha then?
My instincts flinched at that, at seeing my sister' face imposed over Leafa's, yet I could feel a wild tug, as though wistfulness blurred Sugu's face into someone lovely and new.
Maybe I could...
But I have to tell her.
As awkward and humiliating that'll be.
I want her bad as Asuna - even way more!
The one thing in my favor is I won't have to worry about the humiliation of being turned down; Suguha's unwitting infatuation expose for me made that crystal-clear long ago.
Still, it's going to feel awkward. It's one thing announcing your feelings to someone who only partly knows you at best and opening up your feelings to someone who's long known you inside-out.
And Leafa's alien appearance sure didn't help.
The emerald fairy swooped near me.
I swallowed, feeling needlessly nervous."Leafa! We have to talk. A nice quiet place to remember."
Leafa nodded and led our flight to an Alpine valley's sprawling flowery glade bordering a crystal lake and I found a picnic spot under an elm on a high hill.
"Leafa -" I began, on desperate impulse skipping the standard how difficult part. "Leafa, I think...I think I love you."
"I love you too, onii-chan!"
"No, I mean I love you, not like an onii-chan," I stressed and her quizzical emerald eyes grew wide with dawning matching the sunny bloom on her face and her smile was a nova.
"Oh - Oh - Oh , onii-chan -!" she cried, nearly bowling me over hugging me tight and I indulged the once forbidden sensation of warm soft pillows mashing against me.
Ten years of suspended and stifled longings gave way and I felt Asuna's ghost finally dissolve away.
God, Leafa's already giving her hard competition! I used to jest back home how it felt like we were man and wife by how we prepared meals together and bantered over the breakfast table, but holding Leafa's willowy firmness and pressing petal-soft lips that sighed and trembled with true innocence oddly felt more like an re-energized re-affirmation of our current closeness than just a deeper awareness between former strangers.
Damn, would Sugu also 'feel' this way IRL?
No guy, not yet!
I gently held Leafa back while she wiped her eyes and tittered like a schoolgirl. "So Kirito-kun finally kept his promise from our moonlight waltz above the clouds!"
"Uh, I guess, but that wasn't what moved me just now."
"Onii-chan, if you only knew how hard it was holding it back!"
"I know, know. You showed it after finding out I was also Kirito outside the World Tree gates and I can't you how much it pained me seeing your tears like that, to hear how you always felt about me. It tugged my heart like you can't believe but I had to stuff it because I was hot on Asuna, but still, I felt like a real heel and a half not seeing the signs all along -"
"Don't blame yourself, onii-chan! You were respecting your imuoto."
"I suppose.." I licked my lips for the hard part, but she must sense that's coming. "Listen Leafa, because it's kind of complicated because - because if it stands to reason that if I love you then I - I love Sugu too."
"Not 'too'. You do!" she chafed and I needlessly blushed. That was the magic about Leafa. She could seem at once an intimate sib and coy stranger. It was always a fun challenge remembering that.
"Uh, right...but my gut doesn't feel comfortable confessing that to my imuoto's face, Leafa."
"But it's my face too, onii-chan!"
"Leafa, get with the program. I'm trying to get over years as a proper and dutiful onii-chan only seeing you as my sister. Being with you - seeing you is - is like blinders over Sugu's face and person that just lets her personality shine through."
Leafa pouted. "My real looks puts onii-chan off," she lugubriously said.
I burst into a tactful laugh. "No, no don't say it like that! I mean, like - Sugu's a very pretty girl once I stand back and try to fuzz out that she's my imouto!"
Leafa blinked as though I just made a long overdue welcome comment but coyly muted her smile. "So you think you loved me all along?"
I looked at the snow-capped mountains and drew a sigh of finally admission. "I - I think that's why I shut Sugu out and plunged into MMOs and VRMMOs when I was a kid. I felt stirrings for the girl down and - and like most guys that age I was scared of them. I knew I shouldn't be; that one shouldn't be scared of their own imuoto, but it was different. Maybe Mom sensed that then and that's why she told me that lie that I was really your adopted cousin because she didn't want me to feel weird about how I felt about you. That's sure a funny way of correcting someone's attitude, isn't it?"
Leafa nodded. "She was too proud to take you to counseling and how it'd reflect on dad's pride being a successful father, but don't be quick to blame her, onii-chan. She's from a very traditional rural family."
"I know. It's just funny that she'd come out confessing that last month."
"It was probably a mistake that ate at her a long time, but at the same time she knows that what she did also helped create Kirito-kun who saved thousands of people, so maybe she feels vindicated enough to confess what she did."
"Logical as Sugu, Leafa," I quipped with an admiring smile that sobered. "But what's funny is what she said should've put me off even more than ever my feeling like this for you. I mean, that we're really blood after all."
Leafa demurred; "Onii-chan...did those feelings for me you had as a boy totally stop or linger?" she wondered with female wisdom and I smiled and mulled.
"Well, I could say I was in denial of slow smoldering feelings buried under my duties and regard of you as your onii-chan. I mean, seeing how cute Sugu is I sometimes wondered a little about it on and off, but never let it get past more than that -"
"'Cute'?" Leafa beamed like I endorsed that homely hoyden Suguha was beauty pageant material..
I blushed. "Uh, sure, sometimes - don't smile, I'm just standing back and being honest - I mean, nothing's wrong with an onii-chan breaking out and admitting their imuoto's cute!"
"Just tickles hearing you say it about my real self, onii-chan!"
"Uh, well, anyway, I'm just being straight about how I feel about you now."
"It's been so long onii-chan!" Leafa gushed, seizing me in a meaty hug.
"Uh, and I'm sorry I was so blind about how you felt about me all that time and how I hurt you -"
"No, onii-chan. It proved that true love shone through even when I didn't know you were Kirito-kun! And now we can finally always be together!"
"Uh, about that..."
"Huh?"
"Leafa -" I tactfully began, "I know I can go back IRL and you'll be there as Sugu knowing all this, but I'll still be facing my imouto - my innocent imouto, and I maybe if I really pushed I can get over my onii-chan blinders from seeing and talking and touching with Sugu this way, but - I think it'd be too dangerous because chances are that our affections will slip out and our reputations and family honor will be ruined. I can't do that, so we have to keep our true affections here, safe and secret."
Leafa blinked aback and balked. "Only here?" She squeak-gasped as I impulsively clasped slim upper arms and gazed into her dewy emerald eyes, my fingers caressing her warm softness.
"Leafa - I so want to hold you, hug you, meld you, everything I long missed with Asuna, but - if I get over the proper brotherly roadblocks I have for Sugu I wouldn't be able to resist touching her, wanting her like this. If we were seen acting unsiblingly, even looking at another funny to them, it could ruin us and our family. The shame...the stain..." I shook my head. "That's why I mustn't defeat my instinctive proper onii-chan regard for my imuoto's image and innocence. Leafa - you're my living blinders that allows me to want Sugu - my innocent imuoto - this way without any qualms or guilt. Yes, if I closed my eyes IRL I could do this with Sugu IRL; touch Sugu...stroke Sugu..."
"Onii-chan..." Leafa cooed as my stroking clasp drew her close and I pressed petal-soft lips that sighed and trembled with true innocence before I kneaded them quiet and eager and I felt her lissome firmness press against me, felt twin firm melons mash my chest while my palms strayed over her curves and firm flank.
"We can runaway..." I barely heard her wistfully whisper in my ear and regrettably I held her back.
"That'd only confirm their suspicions of they had any. And we don't have to. We've here."
"It's not the same - like me," Leafa rued and I smiled and pet her golden crown.
"One day, we can both live off-campus the same college, right?" I suggested with a smile that rekindled her smile of hopeful infinite intimacy. "Leafa, seriously, whatever Sugu does back home now, don't utter anything we do here outside quests with the gang, aqlright? Don't smile or tease or flirt me there like you do here. Yes, you might be able to lure me to crash Sugu's imuoto image, but you'd be crashing the wrath of God on us, so promise me that Sugu will behave and stick with the program, got it?"
After a long pause Leafa weakly nodded and wiped an eye. "It's - going to hard, onii-chan. Very hard to sit across the table or spar in the dojo and not touch you so, not talk to you or even look at you like my love..."
"Leafa, one day I'll be a place free to break this Sugu block and have her as she is, but I'm not going to ruin your life being caught by mom and dad sneaking anothers rooms at night, got it?"
Leafa blushed pink and giggled then somberly nodded and her lush bosom swelled with a heaving sigh. "You are right, onii-chan. I'll do my best and keep playing the proper imuoto to her onii-chan back home but my heart won't be in it."
"Don't worry. We'll make up for it here," I gibed before mashing smiles and warm fleshy pillows mashed against my chest.
God, this sylph's God's gift to men!
One day we'll going to make long overdue love, but not yet. Not until I'm sure Sugu could hold herself back IRL the way things are before her pines and loins are whet by Leafa's sexcapades. Still, as instinctively abhorrent it feels to my brotherly sense, the wild forbidden notion of doing Sugu herself is almost damningly titillating...
Sugu.
In all her pretty pert tomboy buxom legginess.
Under me, Astride me, Before me...
Such damning visions. Such damningly delicious thoughts.
If only my libido can get over my brotherly qualms and honor.
Thank god for her soft and lovely VR blinders.
FIN