Our Elliptical Orbit

I.

Kelly stared at the pregnancy test in her shaking hands. It explained so much, and yet it was the last thing in the world she wanted to deal with right now. It had been hard enough to sneak off after swim practice, get the test at the pharmacy, and find a restroom stall at the public library to take it.

It felt so unfair for this to be happening to her. After she and Brian had already stopped. After just the one little mistake. There was no way she was going to have her brother's baby at age 18. She was going to find another way, one way or another.

It had all started so sweetly and innocently. Well, as sweetly and innocently as incest could be.

Kelly had a crush on Brian for as long as she could remember. At first, she told herself she was just attracted to his friends, and some of that spilled over onto him. And it was true that she was kind of attracted to his friends, except each one had at least one solid dealbreaker. Phil smoked a ton of weed. Theo had weird teeth, and his laugh was too loud. Nate was fit, but maybe too obsessed with his gym time and his protein shakes; Kelly could never see herself adapting to that whole lifestyle.

It wasn't like she ever imagined being with Brian, she just liked to read stories that got steamy, and she'd have to cast somebody as the male lead. Over time, that started to be Brian.

This all changed when she went into his room one day, looking for the car keys, and his art portfolio tumbled off of the precarious pile of stuff on his desk. A charcoal drawing peaked out, and she opened the portfolio to get a better look.

It showed a woman in the nude, her hair tied up in a bun. She was leaning over to reach one of her feet.

It was a good drawing, and Kelly recognized herself immediately. Those were her curves. That was how she had sat on her bed the other day, painting her nails. She was sure she closed the door, but there was always still something--a keyhole, or a gap below the door. Brian had intentionally looked, she was sure of it.

This should have freaked her out, but this was more like learning that the guy you've been pining after for years is into you too. It put a spring in her step, and gave her a glowing smile for the whole day.

When she got back home from practice, her hair still smelling of chlorine, Brian was raiding the fridge.

"Nice drawing," she said.

"W-what drawing?" he asked, still hoping he hadn't been found out.

"The one of me," she said, her heart racing. Now it was all out there in the open. Or almost all of it, anyway.

Brian's face paled, his mouth struggling to work. She didn't like seeing him in distress, but she knew one way to resuscitate him, from her lifeguard training. She grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him close, pressing her lips to his.

His breath finally returned, in a great, complicated sigh, and the nervous tension of a deer in front of a car turned to the ecstatic tension of a teenage boy's dream coming true.

Had they ever kissed before? Maybe. As twins growing up together, they'd never been far apart, but only now, after 18 years, did this wall between them fully crumble.

Kelly had all but given up on high school boys. On experiencing the kinds of firsts you were allegedly supposed to experience in high school. It wasn't like she was going to start dating someone at random just to check that box; that was assuming she could even get a guy's attention. Half the time, it felt like being in a luxury wristwatch store or something, one of those places where the staff know who the customer is, and it isn't you.

After that first kiss, Kelly backed off. She needed to know for sure if Brian was into her. She could sense how disastrous it'd be to mess up their sibling relationship over nothing.

But when she was alone in her room, she wondered now if Brian was watching. The thought made her smirk; it made her run hot between her legs. So she found herself spending more time nude. Sometimes she pleasured herself when she could be absolutely sure she was alone, but other times, she made sure to do it when he might be watching, and put on a bit of a show for her shy audience.

Then one day, the doorknob turned. Kelly knew it was just the two of them in the house, and from the tentative way Brian was opening the door, he wasn't just randomly barging in.

His pants were unzipped, his hand on his erection. "Mind if I join you?"

Kelly scooted over to make room for him on the bed. Maybe the pretext was that they'd each pleasure themselves, but Kelly wasn't satisfied with that. She reached over, replacing his hand, stroking him. To let his hand replace hers, she straddled his waist.

They were both quickly getting about as worked up as teenagers can be, with Kelly pushing her crotch down on his hand, and his rod getting firmer in hers.

"Kelly, I--" he gasped, and the tone of his voice told her what his words could not.

She leaned down, kissing him again, hungrily sucking his lips to hers. His breath was hot and damp on her cheek as he lost control. It shot up out of him, splashing her under her cleavage, and running down her stomach.

Meanwhile, she was so close to a climax of her own. She broke off their kiss to better ride his fingers as it overtook her, a strangled cry escaping her.

That was as far as they went that day. Soon their parents arrived, just in time for Brian to be clothed and smelling like sweaty teenage boy, and for Kelly to be in the shower, washing off from swim practice. But that was enough to do it: as Brian's fingers were plunging into his sister's vagina, his semen was running down her abdomen, his fingers unintentionally pushing his sperm cells up into her.

There'd been another time as well, though. When he pushed himself into her, taking her virginity once and for all. It felt like he was prying her open, remaking her insides to serve him, to bring her pleasure. She was so out-of-her-mind with arousal that it didn't even bring her pain, just a sense of pressure and fullness. She loved the feeling of him sliding in and out of her, wanted it to go on forever, even if she could feel her limit on the horizon.

They should've been using some kind of protection, but this wasn't planned, and it felt more pure this way. More innocent, more perfect. Finally consummating that years-long crush. She'd known Brian her whole life, almost as well as she knew herself. It was hard to imagine that his body could pose any kind of risk to hers. There was nothing dirty about him, nothing dangerous.

Brian knew well enough to at least try to pull out in time. "Try" being the operative word. He didn't want to stop either, and held out until the very last second, and then just a heartbeat more. A fraction of a breath. Even as he was pulling out of her, the first gush of his ejaculation shot out into her.

Kelly might have felt it, but she was so brand new to this, that she didn't entirely know what she was supposed to feel down there, when a man withdrew from her. She had never felt a man ejaculate inside her, so she didn't recognize the feeling of this little slip-up for what it was. There was a momentary warmth she felt in the same moment she felt his absence from her, but she didn't know what it meant.

Still, that close call was enough to swear the two of them off taking any further risks. A couple days later, Kelly told him firmly that they had to stop before anything happened. Most of all, Kelly was worried about getting caught somehow.

They'd had some fun, but it still felt like something they could put a stop to. They didn't recognize the momentum of what they'd set in motion. Kelly had long seen her brother as also her crush, and now she saw him as that crush consummated, but he was still just as much her brother as he'd been before.

When she didn't get her next period, Kelly didn't realize it at first. Her PMS was always a pain and inconvenience, and so she didn't mourn the loss of it. When she started to feel sick a month after that, and noticed she was putting on weight, then she started to suspect what she didn't want to be true.

"Dad, I need a ride to the clinic," she said. The hardest words she'd ever spoken.

In his study, he turned to look at her. "What kind of clinic? Your mother didn't mention this."

She held out her phone, which had the clinic's location pinned. It was way out of town, along the highway. If she could've gotten there on her own, she would have.

"But Kelly, this is--"

"Will you, or won't you?" she asked, growing impatient. She deflated. "Fine, I'll call a cab."

"Hang on a second," her dad said. "I'll give you a ride. It's fine."

Ten minutes later, they were headed up the highway in awkward silence. Kelly wondered if her dad actually knew where they were headed or not.

"Who's the father?" he asked.

"There is no father, because there's going to be no baby," she said.

"Seriously? I'm not going to go harass the guy, but I think under the circumstances, I deserve to know how this happened!" he was starting to shout. "I could just turn this car around."

"I'm not going to tell you. Not now, not ever," she said. Maybe she wouldn't go this far if the "father" (so to speak) had been anyone else. But as it was, she didn't have a choice.

"If you prevent me from doing this, I'll just kill myself instead," she went on. But she wasn't entirely sure of that herself, and wasn't prepared for how this was escalating. "I'm going off to college in a few months. Can we just not hate each other?"

"Of course I don't hate you," her father said, but Kelly could tell that some damage had been done. They drove the rest of the way in a brittle silence.

II.

Kelly waited at the airport for Brian's flight to land. It was the least she could do, with him making the trip. He was going to school at a big state university in the city, and she was at a small liberal arts college that made up over half of the local population. Not as exciting, she figured. There was a bus from the airport into town, but she didn't want to task him with navigating it after a red-eye.

In the years since their teenage fling, Kelly still nursed a crush for her brother, but knew they had to stay apart. In her maudlin moments, she savored the tragic melancholy of it. It was destiny that brought them together, despite everything, and it was destiny that kept them apart. This didn't help diminish her forbidden desires.

By unspoken agreement, they'd gone off to separate colleges, and over the past three years, they'd only seen each other over holiday breaks. Whenever Kelly found herself back in that family home, with Brian's room just diagonally across the hall, she felt the pull of his presence, but also the constant, watchful eye of their parents, and the parade of friends back home that wanted to make the most of their scant time back home.

At college, and out from under her father's judgment, Kelly had explored her sexuality again. It was a pain sometimes, trying to get to know someone from scratch before you jumped their bones. Sometimes she wished she could just fuck people she already knew. Except she tried that too, once in a while, and it often led to drama. Feelings. Attachments.

Once she started college, Kelly started taking birth control for her peace of mind. She tried male companionship a few times. She'd come to appreciate that feeling when a guy reached his climax inside her, even if the alarm in the back of her mind was hard to ignore sometimes.

Kelly also found herself attracted to other young women too, if the right one came along. It was different that way; she found those pathways to pleasure less primal, more intentional, and some of the women she slept with were quite skilled at bringing it out in her. Others were as green as she'd been to start with.

Somehow it never lasted, though, not with anyone. Whenever she was in it for the exploration, she felt no need to cover the same ground twice. Even when that meant burning bridges.

Brian came out into the terminal, looking tired and bleary. He'd filled out a little at college too, but in an appealing way. His jaw was a little more defined. Somewhere along the way, he learned the value of a good haircut.

"Brian!" she called out.

He smiled as he turned towards her voice. They met halfway and hugged. Kelly didn't want to let go, but she couldn't let it show, especially here in public.

"How was the trip?" she asked.

"It sucked, but I knew it would," he said. "That's what I get for trying to squeeze in a weekend here."

"And then you fly out tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow night. Another red-eye," he said. "They're so cheap."

"Well, if you have to nap it off, that's totally fine," she said.

"I hope not," he said. "I didn't fly out here just for the bed rest."

Kelly wasn't sure exactly what he meant by that. Maybe it was nothing. But she also wasn't going to ask about it in public. She could feel the presence of other people around them, even if she didn't recognize anyone in particular.

They walked out to catch the bus; Kelly swiped him through with a borrowed fare card. They sat together, and it felt good to be sitting close with him again. Cozy. And there was a part of her brain that wouldn't shut up about it, even if there was zero chance of anything happening on the bus. Kelly pointed out landmarks as they rode past. Brian was trying his best to keep up, despite his obvious lack of sleep.

She gave him a bit of a tour of the campus, on their way to drop his stuff off at her dorm room.

"Wow, I like what you've done with this place," he said, pointing out her posters and her Christmas lights. "It's really you. How come you never did this kind of thing back home?"

He set down his pack, and sat down on the edge of the bed. There was a desk chair too, but it was tucked away.

"I dunno...I guess I always knew dad would disapprove," she said, closing the door behind them.

"Maybe you're right," he said, as if encompassing all the things their father disapproved of. "On the other hand, sometimes I feel like we never rebelled enough."

"Never broke the rules, you mean?" She felt so self-conscious even saying this, that she didn't meet his eye at first. Instead she tried to tidy up her stray laundry. As a college junior with a room to herself, she didn't always have any reason to put things away. "So...what do you want to do today?"

But when he didn't respond, she glanced over. He was laid back on the bed, dozed off, the overnight flight abruptly catching up with him.

She went over and started untying his shoes, so he wouldn't draw them up into her bedding. This movement roused him a bit.

"Sorry," he groaned.

"It's no problem," she said. "You go ahead and take a nap. Just...let's get you undressed first."

He stripped down to his boxers and t-shirt, and climbed under the covers, making himself cozy. Kelly felt half-inclined to join him there, just to cuddle up against him, but she was also hungry, and went to grab breakfast for the two of them instead.

When she came back, he woke up and seemed a but revived, especially once he had some food and coffee. She took him all over town, perusing the main shopping street with its hip record store, and up into the highest tower on campus, to get a view from a closed of floor of a laboratory. They went to her favorite lunch spot, and boba in the afternoon. And then an arcade and pho for dinner. Basically all the highlights of her neighborhood, and her life here.

It felt good hanging out with Brian. There was no awkwardness to it, no pressure. They talked about all sorts of things. Their schools, their parents, their part-time jobs, their extracurriculars, their friends. Kelly learned that Brian had been dating someone, and it had ended not long ago. He didn't get into why, and she wasn't going to interrogate him about it.

Even with her long-burning crush on him, she had never really appreciated hanging out with him before, because it had always been the default. Growing up, they'd often been forced into each other's proximity until it chafed. Now she was living on her own, and trying to hang out with other people, with all of their own expectations and drama. Nobody could agree on what to do, and nobody could be counted upon to show up or be on time. Hanging out with Brian was so simple and easy.

After dinner, they went back to her dorm room to regroup.

"So for tonight, do you want to go out to a party?" she asked, hands on her hips.

Towards the end of high school, Brian hadn't really been a party guy per se, but she thought he aspired to be.

"Is that what you'd normally do on a Saturday night?" he asked. "That's not a judgment, I'm genuinely asking."

Meanwhile, he slid back onto her bed, careful to take his shoes off this time. They still hadn't actually discussed who was sleeping where. When he suggested visiting, she figured he intended to sleep on the floor. Certainly he shouldn't just assume he could kick her out of her bed without asking. Not that she wanted to make him sleep on the floor either.

"No. I mean, sometimes I have plans with friends, but I don't tonight," she said. "Sometimes I just put on a movie or something..."

"That'll put me right to sleep," he said.

Is there something else worth staying up for, she wondered? Her feet were worn out too from all the walking they did, so she sat on the bed, tucking one knee under her to face him.

Her pulse was pounding now. The entire day had been a struggle to keep her desire at bay. Every moment, there was a question on her lips that she was afraid to ask.

Was he just here to visit his sister? Or was he visiting his high school girlfriend? From how the day had gone so far, it was hard to tell the two apart.

If she made the wrong move now, what would happen to them? They had already committed incest, even if it was years in the past now. Neither of them had explicitly said never again, but they had put an unambiguous stop to it, at the time. Now she had no idea if that crush of his was still a thing at all. If she said something that creeped him out, would he even want to sleep on the floor?

"Um...one other idea. Take it or leave it," she said, half expecting that she'd find another way to finish the thought. "Remember the kind of stuff we used to get up to together?"

He reached out, putting a hand on her knee. Both of them watched it there, like it was a giant spider. Kelly felt the contact intensely, the warmth under the pad of each finger. They'd been in some contact many times throughout the day, but this was different. They both knew what it meant, as his hand inched from her knee to her thigh, his face leaning slowly towards hers, giving her every opportunity in the world to object. The sounds of their breath filled the room, leaving no space for anything else in Kelly's mind, when his lips finally reached hers.

His tongue danced against hers. The way they used to kiss--naively mashing their lips together--was still there when she wanted it, but they had both learned new things from new people too. She gasped as his hands rediscovered her form, finding those erogenous points he hadn't known to find before. It was reassuring to feel his admiration for her body.

Unsatisfied with even a little distance between them, Kelly pressed forward, a knee on either side of his thighs, her skirt draped around them, feeling his erection press teasingly against her slit through layers of fabric.

Whenever Kelly was exploring her sexuality, she had to work herself up to it, and intentionally get herself in the mood. But with Brian, it just...happened.

They broke off their kisses to strip off an article of clothing at a time. When she returned to him without underwear, his fingers found her under her skirt, brushing against her tender, sopping clit. She reached some kind of climax then, pushing herself down on his hand, but it was the kind of climax she could tell was still building to something more.