A Fool For Lesser Things

"What are you doing?"

The lumbering beat of their apartment's ancient washing machine filled the silence. Their stove clock flashed silently, patiently, repeatedly, one minute past midnight. But beneath his chest his heart was pounding, pounding, pounding

Because in that moment, his sole conscious thought was not how whipped he was from that evening's hockey practice, or how he was so hungry he could eat an entire fucking pizza, or that he was completely screwed for his biology test the next morning—

But the fact that his sister was standing in the middle of their kitchen wearing one of his old hockey jerseys and apparently nothing else.

"I want you so bad," she said inexplicably, and his heart stopped.

12:01.

12:01.

12:01.

Correction: step-sister.

"Uh, Case?"

She stood with her back to him, folding a pile of laundry she had dumped on the counter. Her voice carried obliviously over the tumult of his universe, her head a-bob beneath oversized earphones, her foot a-tap on the linoleum floor:

"I think you ought to know that…"

He swallowed, the weight of his duffle bag sliding slowly from his shoulder and sinking softly at the base of the doorway.

12:01, the stove clock insisted in his peripheral.

Averting his eyes, he repeated, "Casey?" When she didn't respond, he hesitantly stepped nearer until he found himself behind her.

"…I intend to hold you…"

The smell of clean cotton washed over him, and as his hand hesitated above what he estimated was her shoulder, he felt a tingle of static and heat and realized she must have just…

"Oh my god," she gasped, and a swirl of hair later she was looking up at him, wide-eyed and flush-cheeked.

She panted breathlessly for a handful of seconds before he asked again, at a loss for anything else to say:

"What are you doing?"

"What?" she said, squinting. Then, unaware that she was echoing him: "What are you doing?"

The unnecessary loudness of her voice jolted him back to reality, and with a roll of his eyes he reached up and brought the earphones to rest around her neck. They chimed on faintly:

"…for the longest time!"

At long last, his natural instincts stirred, manifesting in a smirk.

"You know, Case, I don't think the solution to your fashion crisis is to steal my clothes and prance around in them to the tasteless lyrics of a has-been pop singer."

His suggestion was rewarded with an indignant huff.

"It's your iPod, Der-ek!" she shot back reflexively. "And I do so apologize for taking the time to wash and dry your endless supply of dirty laundry." Scowling, she turned back around and busied herself with said mountain of clothes, making no effort to push him away.

"Hey, I did your laundry last week! And I never asked you to wash my sheets, Saint MacDonald," he retorted, reaching both arms around her to grab a pillowcase and fling it in her face.

"They were posing a health risk to the apartment!" she protested, swatting the offending article away and shooting a well-practiced glare over her shoulder. "I had to wear a biohazard suit to remove them from your bed."

"Biohazard suit? That'd be a wardrobe upgrade," he countered, nudging her.

"Whatever, Derek." She grabbed his hands and pulled them towards the laundry pile, never-minding that it brought them that much closer. "Why don't you make yourself useful?"

He laughed suddenly into her hair.

"Oh, let me guess," she said, dropping her voice to unflatteringly imitate his, " 'That's what they all say when we get into my sheets.' You really need to stop being so predictable." But suddenly, she was laughing too.

And then, without thinking, he pressed the bridge of his nose to the curve of her ear, and one of his hands slipped under his jersey and came to rest on the bare skin at her hip, and he said:

"You know, my sheets are probably the only thing that'd look better on you than this."

It only took a moment for him to clench his eyes shut—for her to let out a shaky breath—for the world to stop turning—for them to collectively identify that moment and all the smaller ones that came before and all the bigger ones that might come after as a Great Mistake.

12:01.

12:01.

12:01.

"Case, I'm sorry," he said, but he couldn't bring himself to move. "I didn't…"

"I know," she told him quietly. "You don't have to…"

Pressing back into him, she moved her own hands forward, returning them to the laundry pile. He watched as she began folding his shirts and socks, their washcloths and towels, his sheets and pillowcases. Then, his head still resting against hers, he stacked her work into neat piles, which they left cooling before them on the countertop.

"What are we doing, Derek?" she asked as his fingers returned to making circles against her hip.

"Something we shouldn't," he answered, his voice and the music from her earphones humming against her neck.

12:01.

12:01.

12:01.

"I intend to hold you for the longest time! Oh! Oh, oh, oh…"

They stood like that for…

He didn't know how long.