In in.
One of the comments someone made about my story
"What Happens In Lockdown"
, was that it was easy to read using a translator because the English was so correct. Sorry. This one is bit more colloquial, there is slang and modern idiom, and the grammar is far from perfect. I've tried to make it accessible and yet still keep the Britishness. I hope you can enjoy it.
Oh - and all the characters are over 18 and there is incestuous sex, but that's why you're here isn't it?
My sister and I were staying in, 'in in' in.
English is funny, isn't it? The way it's constantly using words in new ways, ones that weren't intended when the words were first invented, but anyway 'in in' was how it began.
The weather was foul; continual waves of heavy wind-driven rain from the tag end of a tropical storm all the way from the Gulf of Mexico. It was hammering down and the whole country was sodden, waterlogged, so me and my sister, Livvy, had binned our plans for the day and were going to have an afternoon watching films we liked.
We had decided that we were staying 'in in'. Not 'staying-in-but-ready-to-go-out-at-a-moment's-notice' in but 'staying-in-and-not-budging-for-anything' in. This was instead of being 'out' - as in 'popping-down-to-the-shops' out and definitely not going 'out out' - 'going-out-and-staying-out' out. We hadn't seen each other much recently, so we'd been planning to spend the day, and possibly the evening in Chester, because it's recently been named as more attractive than Venice, and Liv hasn't been there for years -
that
would have been an excellent 'out out' for the pair of us.
We were staying put and that was it. It was the type of afternoon to fire up the log burner, plump up the cushions and dig out the furry throws, lay out the snacks and drinks, get on the sectional and chill out watching films on the telly.
Me and my sister are pretty close as brothers and sisters go. I was a tear-arse kid, sporty - played Number 8 for my year and later the school, doing as much as I needed to, getting into scrapes and shit. Livvy - her Sunday name is Olivia - put everything on hold - boys, a social life, fun - to get where she wanted to be. My kid sister - aka 'Our Kid' - is three years younger than me, though she has always had an older head than me (see - there we go with the colloquial English again) and she had mastered a killer eye-roll by the time she was twelve. She'd hear my stories - often from her friends, and she'd give it the 'old Number 1', which was a full on dramatic eye-roll filled in equal parts with disdain, despair and a prayer for salvation from her idiot brother. But despite her frequent demonstrations of disproval - she often wondered out loud whether I had been swopped at birth - we got on together. We just did. We each of us had our own friends, but we were friends as well, I was into my second year at uni - a psychology element of my course - before it was suggested to me that the eye-roll was actually a measure of how much Livvy loved me.
Me? I wasn't into PDA's but I loved her too.
Once I got to university, after a first term of going ape-shit with partying and so on that I reckon I was lucky to survive, I got my head straight. I stopped buggering about, got into studying and came away with a first-class honours degree in Business Sciences - processes and management techniques, then turned that into a Masters and then into a top flight business consultancy and at the age of thirty I was earning enough for a good life style.
Just so we're clear - I tend to be a bit more formal in my language when I'm dealing with clients - but it's just you, me and Livvy here now, so we're good, yeah?
Anyway, despite various scrapes and knocks, I haven't done three bad in life. I'm six-two, a couple of pounds over fourteen stone, and in good nick. I'm told that I'm
not
an ugly bastard - a bit rough around the edges but not bad looking, physically well put together and bless me! but apparently I have a nice set of tackle too.
Livvy, on the other hand - petite - four foot six dead on, naturally blonde and heart-achingly beautiful with a kind of 70's French film star wistful thing going on, she got great grades at school but bombed out when she went to uni. The pressure was too much, she said, and she quit. She met a guy and married him. Stuck with him for about four years before she caught him screwing the neighbour's wife, kicked him out and took him to the cleaners in the divorce.
The problem was that she lost herself in the process.
Liv's confidence - in people in general, and men in particular, and in herself, was shot. Because of the settlement, she didn't need anything materially, but she seemed lost. No sense of purpose, which if you'd known her at school was totally unlike her. She had a few boyfriends - none of which have lasted very long - she said she was looking for something but didn't know what it was. I wasn't impressed by any of them, but hey, who cares what I think? Livvy didn't let herself go physically, but she just wasn't on top of her game.
Then, during the pandemic she worked as a volunteer with a local medical centre and got herself a permanent job out of it - one of those bad-ass medical receptionists that people complain about. Once she was in full-time work, she seemed to get her legs under her and she was a changed woman. She lost a little weight; she tidied herself up and started going to yoga on a regular basis. At twenty-seven, Our Kid is still beautiful but less a young Bardot these days and more a matured Leslie Caron. She's doing better than she was after the divorce, but it could be better.
I did what I could to help her through the divorce and after, but I don't get to see her as often as I should. She lives and works in Manchester and I live near to Chester, though my work can take me all over the place - hence our week off together. After a few months of humming and haaing, we both cleared a week in our schedules and were just going to spend it hanging out together - going places and just doing shit together.
"I know what it's like in here when that thing starts chucking out heat," she said as she came into the living room. I looked and my eyes nearly popped out of my head. Livvy was wearing skin tight yoga pants and a light, white flannel camisole/vest top thing, and it appeared that that was it. I'd never really looked at my sister - well, not as in perved on her. I'd looked - I was male and hormonal, so of course I'd looked - but I'd never really 'looked looked' at her boobs. I said 'petite' didn't I? Well bobbling about in her top were a nice pair of boobies, pleasantly sized, 32C-ish.
"Jay!" She eye-rolled a full Number 1 at me, as she sat down and tucked her bare feet up underneath her, "Eyes up, Big Man. I said what are we watching?" (Liv calls me 'Big Man' because of the difference in our heights - nothing more) Honestly though, she didn't appear too annoyed about me perving.
"Oh!" I said, "We've got loads to go at - Sky, Netflix, Prime, Disney, and Paramount."
"Jesus!" She said. "How much do you pay for all of that?"
"Most of it comes with the telly package," I told her. It's still an arm and a leg, but I don't go out a lot and I like films. "And if that's not enough, I've got a six terabyte hard drive plugged into the back of the telly and all the weird shit is on that."
Livvy laughed, and that was a nice sound, (after the divorce I worried about her a lot), and she curled up next to me on the couch. "Staying 'in in' was a good idea," she told me as the rain beat on the windows.
It was never going to be a conventional list of 'best' films, like Oscar nominations, it was always going to be eclectic, based purely on our own tastes. And as Livvy is a huge fan of The Rock, we started with
San Andreas.
It's awful.
It's clichΓ©d, predictable, and the plot is full of holes you could drive a transit van through, but it has lashings of Dwayne Johnson in it for Livvy, and for all of its faults it's an easy, fun watch.
Oh and it's got Alexandra Daddario in it, which works for me.
To be honest we were neither of us that into it, it was more a settling in exercise. The rain was still hammering on the windows, the room was getting warmer and we were getting used to being close to each other again.
"And of course the wolf has got wings!" That line always makes me laugh, and at this point as I laughed, Livvy moved for some reason. I ended up spilling some of my water on her.