Everybody had different experiences of the outbreak. There were those who died. Those who lost their jobs. Jenny knew she was lucky. For her, it was a constant stress, an inconvenience. But not everything that came out of it was bad...
Just before it hit the mainland, her brother Chris happened to be in town visiting. He stayed in a hotel for the long weekend, and Jenny took a day off work to spend time with him because he lived several states away, and they didn't see each other very often. They went out to eat, went out to bars in the evening. She showed him the sights of her city, because he'd never visited before.
Monday morning, the government declared lockdown. It was the obvious thing to do, and they should have seen it coming, but not everybody expected it to happen when it did. At least Jenny got to see her brother first, and have one more fun weekend. Jenny figured the lockdown was for the best, and she could handle it, with a bit of planning. She could work from home, even if home was a studio apartment. She typically got her groceries delivered anyway.
Monday evening, Chris called. His flight home had been cancelled. He tried to handle it on his own and get it rescheduled, but soon all the other flights were grounded too. His hotel was shutting down. Some of the workers were calling in sick, others were quitting or weren't showing up. Now Chris was stranded in town with nowhere to stay. Jenny knew her apartment wasn't ideal, but she had to offer anyway. It was the right thing to do. She couldn't leave Chris in the lurch.
He came over that night with his suitcase. It was freaking Jenny out to let anyone into her apartment by then, but it couldn't be helped. It was clear from the start that it was going to be a tight fit, for the two of them to stay in her essentially one-room apartment. At least the bathroom had a door. She figured it might only have to be a couple of days. Maybe a couple weeks at most. They could make it work.
There was just the one bed, and it was only a full. It would fit them both, but not with much extra room. Chris volunteered to sleep in the armchair. It was that or a small area of unused floor.
It had been a while since Jenny and Chris had lived under the same roof, and never in such confined quarters. But they quickly adjusted to it, making sure not to get in each others' way. Soon it was just routine. Chris was able to do his work remotely too. The two of them spent their days on their laptops. It was boring and lonely and nerve-rattling all at the same time. At least they weren't completely alone.
One night, Jenny noticed Chris scrolling through his phone.
"Is that...DateMe?" she said. She had an account on the app too, and recognized it at a glance.
"I know, I know. It's not like I can actually meet anyone right now. I just...I don't know. It's kind of a fantasy thing, I guess. I thought I'd kind of plan ahead for when this is over," he said.
"Huh. Can I see?" Jenny asked.
"What for?"
"Just curious, about who it matches you up with around here. There could be someone I know on your list," she said.
"Get your own account," her brother said.
"I have my own account," she admitted. "Come on, just for fun. How else are we supposed to entertain ourselves?"
With a resigned sigh, he got up and sat next to her on the bed, and let her look over his shoulder as he went through a few profiles.
"And these are women you'd be interested in?" she asked.
"Yeah, maybe. Why?"
"I'm just...surprised," she said, and saw that he was confused now. "How can I put this...I thought you pretty clearly had a type."
When they had been teenagers, it seemed like he was into the same kind of girl all the guys were into: thin, blond, conventionally attractive. The women who were coming up as matches now looked physically fit, but they were bulkier, curvier. They didn't all have perfect skin or perfect hair. They looked a lot more like Jenny, actually.
"I'm just saying, none of them look like Vicky," Jenny said. Vicky had been Jenny's friend first, before Chris made his move.
Chris laughed. "You know why I started dating Vicky?" Chris asked. "Because she was the first girl our age who went on the pill."
"Just to be clear, she was my age, a year older than you," Jenny said. "And she wasn't actually the first one on the pill. She was just the first one to talk about it in front of you."
"She really had no concept of TMI," Chris said, reminiscing.
"No, she certainly did not," Jenny agreed. Vicky had told her way more than she wanted to know about how Chris's cock made her feel. "She was indeed very vocal."
It took Chris a second to get the meaning, and then he blushed. "Oh my god. You overheard us together?"
"A couple times, I came home from school, and you two clearly thought you had the house to yourselves," Jenny said with a shrug.
"Oh no!" Chris said, covering his face with embarrassment, even as he laughed it off.
"It's no big deal, really," Jenny said.
As the days passed, they tried to find ways to cope with their situation. After work, they'd watch movies or read at night. The siblings shared cooking and cleaning duties. Jenny would do yoga on the bare stretch of floor. Chris would do push-ups and sit-ups and other calisthenics.
Sleeping in the armchair was okay for a while, but Chris started waking up with a sore neck and back. Eventually he asked for a turn in the bed. Jenny agreed to it, and spent a night in the armchair herself. It took her a long time to get comfortable enough to sleep, and she woke up early the next morning with a spasming pain in her shoulder, from the odd position she slept in. She was still exhausted from not getting enough sleep, and her whole day was skewed. She knew she couldn't do that again. The hard floor didn't appeal to her either.
She felt bad because she didn't want to hog the bed and make Chris be the one sleeping badly most of the time. She floated the idea of sharing the bed. It wasn't big, but she figured they could come to an amenable compromise, like they did most things by now.
One morning, Chris took a long shower. Jenny wasn't trying to pay attention, but she was anxiously waiting for the bathroom. Near the end, Jenny heard Chris groan uncontrollably. She laughed a bit to herself, knowing what that sound meant, from hearing Vicky accompany it years ago.
When he emerged from the bathroom, she remarked, "It sounded like that felt good."
He looked mortified. "Sorry. I guess it had been a while."
Not that long, Jenny thought. Not as long as it's been for me. "I get it. Did you scrub down the tub afterward?"
"Did I what?" he asked.
"Chris, if your swimmers are still in there and I go to take a bath, I could get pregnant."
