Please note that this story is complete and highly erotic.
Summary: An impulsive act brings twins together.
Enjoy…
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It was a bright Saturday morning. The damned Hadedas in the bluegums at the bottom of the garden had woken me at some ungodly hour, and I’d lain in bed, somewhat stupefied from the previous nights’ raucous dinner party. But the lure of the morning was strong, and I’d decided to make best use of the glorious weather and actually get outside into it.
Half-past six saw me humping my surf ski onto the roof-racks of my battered Volkswagen Golf. It was a twenty minute drive through to the bay, where I hoped the winds of the week had generated some gentle rolling waves for me to surf. Erin had not answered my call, so I guessed the slut was still in bed with the boy she’d been flirting with the prior night. I hoped she’d used protection, he’d looked a little greasy, but I guessed a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do when pickings are slim.
Traffic was light, and I was singing Dire Straits’ Romeo and Juliet out loud as I crested the pass and started the winding descent on the far side.
The beach was almost deserted; which suited me fine. I love my body, but it draws the wrong sort of attention, and the bay’s seafront is not the most upmarket of places – definitely not a place I enjoy wandering around solo in skin-tight paddling shorts, a sports bra and a neoprene rash vest, especially not when handling my surf-ski. It makes a certain kind of man come up and offer to “help” me. The beach has the advantage, though, of being mostly shark-free, which on a coast otherwise infested with Great Whites is a pretty good draw card in my book.
The swell was good – not great, but good. I locked my car, secured my dry-bag to the straps behind my surf-ski’s cockpit, hefted my paddle, and charged the waves, grinning.
.:.
For an hour I lost myself; the charge out into deeper water, the fast turn, and the burst of acceleration necessary to catch a wave as it rolled past; this was my favourite thing. The hiss of the wake I carved, the tumbling helter-skelter of limbs if I misjudged my exit, and the walk of shame to retrieve the ski.
I loved it.
The tide came in, as it always does, and eventually the flat white sandy bottom of the bay was too deep to generate surf – what waves there were were turning into dumpers that crashed a few metres from the shoreline. I sighed, caught one of the last decent sets in, and pulled my surf-ski up onto the beach. Tourists and locals were now out in force; it was time for me to think of moving on. Breakfast called.
I smiled quiet good-mornings to one or two local paddlers that I recognised. They’d just come in from a distance piece out into the ocean – crazy, to my mind, given what lurked out there in the water. Then, in one fluid practised movement I lifted my surf-ski over my head and slid it onto the roof racks. I unlocked my car, recovered my ratchet straps, and wound the hull down tight so it wouldn’t move before I tied off the loose ends.
I flung my beach towel onto the seat, arranged it so I wouldn’t further stain the fabric, and headed home.
.:.
A long, hot shower in the upstairs bathroom saw to the sea salt, and I let myself drip-dry as I tied my hair up into the habitual straggly pony tail. University holidays were a lovely opportunity to abuse my parents’ hospitality, and I did so shamelessly. They were away for the week, of course, on some mad hiking sojourn up the West Coast. I wasn’t complaining, it meant I could have friends over or, much more frequently, close the blinds and wander around the house nude or barely clothed, enjoying the cool inside air while the summer sweltered outside. Later I’d don a bikini and sun myself by the pool, but for now it was a pair of thin gym pants and a cotton vest as I dug in the fridge for fruit.
I put one of the innumerable movie channels on to provide background noise as I mixed strawberries, raspberries and some still-OK plums with yogurt and muesli. And then I sat, staring out the window at the water rippling in the sunlight, at the trees moving in the first hint of the morning breeze.
.:.
I lay, knees raised, on the deck chair; my tatty woven grass hat, cheapo sunglasses and a glass of white wine all the company I wanted. The day was getting hotter, and I could feel sweat starting to slick my shoulders and anywhere else that wasn’t exposed to airflow. It was shaping up to be a scorcher.
I watched two gulls cut the air above me; one gave a forlorn cry as they passed. “You and me both,” I answered. I sat up, flung aside my hat and sunglasses, and knifed cleanly into the pool, carving a long, slow arc through the cool water. I surfaced, turned onto my back, and floated for a while, enjoying the cold kiss of the water against my flanks and breasts.
Something made me open my eyes.
“Olly!” I shrieked, disbelieving, jerking upright in the water.
He grinned down at me from my deck chair; that shit-eating smirk I know so well.
“What the hell, asshole, when did you get here?”
“Literally this minute, I just walked in the door. It’s thirty one degrees and I thought to myself ‘Where could Shannon possibly be?’ Answer, of course? In the water.”
“You should have told me you were coming,” I protested, giddy from the surprise. I swam to the steps, clambered out, and attacked him, swinging my arms up behind his neck, laughing like a carefree girl as my twin swung me around and around.
“I missed you,” I yelled, as he set me down. “You dick. You didn’t phone me once from Italy.”
“I was having too much fun,” he retorted, grinning. “Ski trips are serious business, I had a lot of drinking and so on and so forth to do.”
“Uh huh. Too busy to phone your sister when you know she’s eating her guts out with jealousy. You complete penis.”
He laughed, and I grinned up at him.
.:.
Olly and I were born a scant few minutes apart, by C-section, after mum went into labour a week or so before term. He’s supposedly the oldest, but come on, what difference does a few minutes make? We’re two sides of the same coin. Except that Olly is totally adept at being an adult. While I… I pretend. Sometimes I fool even myself.
But I only feel whole when he’s there.
So, unexpected surprises like this really are like all my Christmases have come at once, and I use them to their full advantage.
.:.
“You got back now, I take it,” I asked, eyeing his duffel bag and ragged backpack.
“Landed at CT International a short while ago, retrieved my car, drove straight here to abuse the shower and the pool.”
“Mum and Dad are away; we have the run of the place.”
“Excellent. Holiday part two, fight!”
“Yeah, yeah, go shower, you reek of other people.”
He snorted, and stripped off his shirt to fling it at me. I screeched, ducked, and he disappeared upstairs, laughing.
I kicked his shirt into the corner by the washing machine and straightened my pony tail. Then I broke out the coffee and plunger and boiled the kettle to make us both a cup; I could see my twin was struggling from lack of sleep – he was too tall to sit comfortably in any economy class airline seat, and even when he could stretch out his legs, he’d be awake most of the flight.
If we flew together, though, I always slept like a baby, drooling quietly on his shoulder from shortly after takeoff to shortly before breakfast in the morning.
I sat in the armchair by the sliding door, in the breeze but out of the sun, enjoying the kiss of the wind on my skin and the goosebumps it raised. I wondered how long he planned to stay this time; whether this was a whistle stop or whether he’d stick around for a few weeks and enjoy the long, hot days with me for a while.
The sea is my chapel, but Olly is my pantheon. When I’m happy, when I’m sad, when I need divine intervention, when I need my best friend – Olly is who I call.
And he always answers.
.:.
“Coffee, sahib,” I murmured, fluttering my eyelashes.
“Stop it,” he laughed. “You’re my sister, not my body slave.”
“Play-acting amuses me at times,” I retorted, sticking out my tongue for good measure.
He smiled at me. “I missed you, Shan.”
“Missed you too, Olly. How was Tirol?”
“Too hot. We didn’t get much snowfall so I spent a lot of time sunbathing. The Italians there were telling me it’s the hottest winter they’ve had in a couple of years. We had one or two good powder days and the pistes were OK early in the morning, but it was so busy that by mid morning we were down to ice on the lower slopes. Ice and moguls.”
“Ugh,” I sympathised. “Unpleasant snowboarding conditions.”
“Yeah. I was on skis after the first day, easier.”
“Show-off.”
“Nah, it was more about not killing myself by digging the edge of a board into a mogul and slamming myself face-first into rocks.”
I yawned and stretched. “I’d love to go skiing again. It’s been years.”
“You should have come with this time, it was a good crowd.”
“Mm. Timetable clashed. I’ll make do with the ocean this year I guess.”
“You go paddling this morning, then?” he asked.
“Same old, same old.”
“How was the surf?”
“Reasonable till the tide came in.”
“Maybe I’ll join you tomorrow,” he said, sipping his coffee.
“Maybe you should,” I answered, softly.
I stood and stretched again, then touched his shoulder gently. “I’m going back into the water, the weather is too good to miss.”
“Shall we head down to the beach later for sundowners?”
I draped my towel over my shoulder and glanced back at him. “That sounds like a great idea. It’s a date. Go sleep, you look broken.”
“I will now, just finishing my coffee.”
“See you later, Olly.”
“Later, Shan.”
.:.
I ducked under the surface and pushed off the wall of the pool, gliding slowly towards the far side, watching the small whorls of bubbles I trailed in my wake. I touched the far wall, spun, and pushed off again, my hair trailing like spiderwebs over my shoulders and neck. I surfaced and floated a while, gently moving my hands and feet, keeping myself centred in the pool against the current of the filtration system and water feature’s cascade.
I thought about myself, about my life. About the statistics degree I was pursuing without real conviction; about my low levels of give-a-fuck towards most things in modern life. I wondered, briefly, at what point I’d become so broken. I took a breath, submerging again, turning a somersault, two, three, before coming back to the surface once more.
It wasn’t trauma. There was no abuse in my childhood; nothing had been done to me. I’d just… never fitted right into the world and the world’s view of me. A tall, slender blonde girl who shows no interest in men earns herself some foul epithets in day to day life. I had guy friends and girl friends, but that was all they were; bar some senior school experimentation with a boy or three and a memorable evening with a girl in first-year, I’d stayed pretty much uninvolved.