Kiss Me in the Dark

Squick Alert: Contains sibling .

This is my submission for the Literotica Winter Holidays Contest 2024. Please enjoy!

By now, you should know the drill. Everybody getting laid is over eighteen and capable of providing consent.

This is a work of erotic fiction. The persons and events depicted are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

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It was the kind of wakeup nobody wants. A rough hand on my shoulder and a parent’s worried voice.

“Norm. Norman. Wake up. Carrie’s been in an accident and we’re going to the hospital. I’ll call you as soon as I know something, okay?” Carrie was my sister, probably my best friend, and the one person on this planet I never wanted to lose.

“Gimme a minute, let me get dressed. I’m going too.” I was now wide awake. I threw back the covers and rolled out of bed as Dad closed the door behind him.

I could hear him tell Mom, “He wants to go with us.”

“I’m not sure ” She sounded stressed.

“They said she was stable. It will be okay.”

I threw on sweatpants, a Tshirt, and some old running shoes I used for house slippers. They were waiting by the stairs and we all trooped down to the garage.

Dad drove like every demon in Hell was on his ass. My phone displayed quarter after two in the morning. Shit, she broke curfew again. There would be hell to pay now.

The emergency room waiting area was empty when we arrived. The admitting clerk buzzed us in and told us which bay we would find her in.

She looked like shit. Her face was swollen, her left eye was almost invisible from the swelling, her nose looked funny, and bruises were starting to develop. Her head was completely wrapped except for her face and she had one of those huge neck braces.

Tears rolled down her face as our parents hugged her carefully and told her it would be all right. I squeezed her hand and she wrapped her fingers around it in a death grip and wouldn’t let go.

Carrie had just turned eighteen the month before. A senior in high school, she was ready to graduate next month. She had been really looking forward to it, too. It meant an end to curfew.

The doctor came and checked on her and then pulled my parents out into the hallway, away from us. They kept their voices low so we couldn’t hear what was said. I could tell they were upset but still relieved at what the doctor told them. Carrie never let go of my hand the entire time.

The three of them came back and the doctor explained the findings that they had so far.

Carrie had sustained a fractured nose, jaw, and cheekbone. They had a call out to a specialist to evaluate her for corrective surgery since her jaw and cheekbone fractures were slightly displaced. They were waiting on his evaluation before resetting her nose.

She had also chipped some teeth and suffered a concussion. She would be admitted so they could observe her and provide some pain treatment.

A police officer was waiting for the doctor to finish before filling us in on the accident.

The driver of the car Carrie was in was making a left turn against the red arrow when a drunk driver blew through his red light and hit them on the driver’s side rear quarter panel. Carrie had been seated behind the driver. The side of her head smacked the little pillar between the driver’s door and the little side window.

The drunk driver was unhurt except for bumps and bruises from the airbags. Carrie’s friends were also just banged around a little and scared shitless.

They sent us home eventually while she was wheeled upstairs. The specialist would repair the fractures and reset her nose sometime tomorrow.

The next morning, Dad was on the phone early, trying to get insurance information and police reports. He also called our health insurance to find out what was going to be covered.

Mom was just a wreck. She was worried about her daughter and pissed that she had been out that late. On school nights, we had a ten o’clock curfew. Nonnegotiable.

Carrie had snuck out. It certainly wasn’t the first time she had done that. It was going to be a while before she was in any shape to do it again, though.

We went back early in the afternoon. They had determined that it was safe to operate and it had been scheduled. The surgery went very well, minimal fixation was required, and we were able to see her shortly before the end of visiting hours.

There was plenty of bad news to go along with the good news. She was withdrawn from school on doctor’s orders to allow her to rest and heal. No graduation this year. That wasn’t the worst thing to happen to her, either.

We had been told there would be scarring from not only the procedure to fix the fractures but also from the removal of the hardware. None of the insurance companies were willing to pay for cosmetic surgery to remove the scars. To make matters much, much worse, she developed what they called keloids, making the scars blindingly obvious.

Carrie was pretty, always had been. She used to make jokes about her “pretty privilege” and how she could get guys to do whatever she wanted. The keloids gutted her. She tried everything to get rid of them but nothing seemed to work. She refused to leave her room with her face uncovered.

The school district allowed her to sit out the fall semester while she healed. Our parents put their foot down finally. She would have to return to school for the spring semester and graduate or find someplace else to live. I thought that was harsh but was quickly told that it was none of my business.

Carrie finally settled on a solution, extralarge sunglasses, which not only served to hide the scars from her surgery but minimize her nose deformity to some extent.

From my parents’ perspective, her “deformities” weren’t serious. They were only cosmetic and she should just accept reality and live with it. To her, they were hideous, she thought people stared constantly and made fun of her behind her back. Yeah, people talked about it but mostly because she made such a big deal out of it. For the most part, nobody paid that much attention. She really didn’t look any different to me, she wasn’t horribly disfigured or anything.

During the winter and early spring, her disguise worked for her. She still only left the house for school and that was it. No parties, no dates, no socializing at all. She had to be going stircrazy, being cooped up in her room because our parents eventually forbade her sunglasses in the house. They insisted she needed to adjust to it and she continually refused.

For some unknown reason, when the house was built, they had placed a fake balcony across the back of the house. There was no door to access it, just my window and Carrie’s. Since it faced the backyard, we had never decorated it.

Starting from the time we moved in, I would hang out there at night during warm weather. Carrie used it to sneak out at night. I had swiped a beer from my father, he had just stocked up and wouldn’t notice one missing. I was hanging out, relaxing in the breeze and enjoying my spoils when Carrie’s window opened and she quietly climbed out. She turned to look at my window and froze. I was stretched out underneath it, can to my lips as I froze in shock at the sight of her. She put her finger over her lips and I gave her the thumbs up. She was sixteen and I was fourteen at the time. She climbed down off the balcony and disappeared into the night and I finished my beer.

After that, it was our secret. Some nights, we just hung out. Occasionally, one of us would score alcohol and we shared it. That was how I fell in love with my sister. At night, stretched out in shorts and Tshirts, we talked about things. Boys, girls, what we wanted to be when we grew up, what we hoped our lives would be like. She wasn’t stuck up or bitchy, she was a little selfconscious about her looks, how hard it was to be popular, things adults sneer at but to a teenager, they might as well have been life and death.

There were people that she liked and wanted to be friends with but she had to be careful, not only because she would be mocked but they would be bullied and harassed. She hated to see that happen. She hated going along with the charade but it was the lesser of two evils because deep down, she liked being popular and pretty. It was expected.

The first halfway decent night during the spring, I opened the window and climbed out to stretch out and enjoy the sky. I heard her window open and I felt actual joy. She was going to come out and hang out. We didn’t get to do much of it inside, she hated wearing the glasses any longer than she had to, and she refused to be seen without them if she could help it.

I laid there, anticipating actually getting to talk to her, when something hit me in the chest. I fumbled around, turned on the flashlight on my phone, and found a pair of super dark wraparound sunglasses.

I heard a loud whisper, “Put them on.”

“Why?” I whispered back.

“Because you’re already outside. Put those on and don’t take them off until I tell you to.”

I couldn’t see a thing through them, not even from the corner of my eye. “Okay, they’re on.”

I could hear the rustle of her clothes as she climbed out the window and the low scuffling noise she made as she crept over to me. I felt her hand on my shoulder as she sat down next to me. A cold can was pressed into my hand. “I brought you something.”

I carefully cracked it open and offered her the first sip, a tradition of sorts. It would be as close as I would ever get to kissing her on the lips. She took the can, I heard her swallow, and it ended up back in my hand. I took a nice long sip, the taste of her lip gloss mingling with the beer. For some reason, it tasted different. Better.

“Thanks.” She was sitting much closer to me than usual. I could smell some kind of fragrance, I thought it smelled a little citrusy. I could feel the warmth of her arm near mine and I thought I could feel her leg almost touching mine.

“Sorry.” Her voice was low and she sounded sad.

“Why? You okay?” I knew she wasn’t, I wanted her to talk. I wanted to talk to her, I didn’t care about what.

“Not really. I’m sorry about the glasses. I didn’t want to stay inside and I didn’t want to wear the glasses. Only solution I could think of.”

“No problem.” I wanted to tell her I didn’t care about her scars but it wasn’t about me. If this was the first step back for her, so be it.

Carrie reached over and took the can from my hand. Then she slipped her hand into mine, wrapping her fingers around mine. The only other time she had done that was that night at the hospital. I felt my cock twitch ominously. I heard her drink again from the can and she placed it in my other hand.

“I hate this. I hate my face, I hate my life, I hate everybody telling me ‘it’s nothing, live with it’, and I can’t. Mom and Dad keep telling me it’s not that bad, you can’t even notice, you’ll get used to it. I look in the mirror and I’m ugly. My nose is bent funny, it looks like I’ve got leeches on my face, and I’m supposed to get used to it?”

“I would have a hard time with it.” I took a sip from the can and handed it back, she took it from me but didn’t drink from it right away. Her nose had a slight lean to the right. The keloids weren’t that big over the scars around her eye. They were only slightly larger than a mediumsized mole.

“Insurance won’t pay for cosmetic surgery. Mom says they’ll pay for therapy, though. I’m supposed to go tomorrow after school. I asked if you could go with me but she said no.” She took a small sip and put it back in my hand.

“Why would you want me to go with you?” That was confusing.

“I just feel better if you’re with me in public. I don’t know why.” I slowly sipped from the can again. Her lip gloss was slowly wearing off but I could still taste it.

“You know where I am, you can always text me or even call if you have to.”

“I know. I like this better.” She squeezed my hand. Her leg shifted slightly and I could feel her warm skin against mine where our calves touched.

“Okay. I’m getting sleepy so I’m going to head in. How are we going to do this?” I wasn’t getting sleepy, I was getting hard, fast.

“Keep them. I’ll go back inside and tell you when you can take them off, okay?” I felt her move and she let go of my hand to brace herself on my shoulder as she stood up. “Just hold on to them for now. I guess we can figure out a code or something later.”

I sat quietly and killed what was left in the can while she shuffled back to her room and climbed through the window. When I heard her whisper “Okay,” I took the sunglasses off. I put the empty can in the small plastic bucket I kept for that reason and crawled inside to go to bed.

Our little evening hangouts became more frequent after that. They didn’t involve alcohol all that much, really. It followed the same pattern, though. I would crawl out, wait for the window to open wider, and then put on the glasses. She would crawl out, sometimes we’d talk and sometimes just sit. Eventually, she would go back inside, then I would.

The therapist seemed to be helping her, she complained less and less about her face. Our parents relaxed their prohibition after talking to the therapist.

I almost never saw her in person. I rode to school with one of my parents while she had a friend pick her up and bring her back. Sometimes I would get a ride home, more often than not I rode the bus.

Neither one of us went to the prom. I think we were about the only seniors who didn’t. I had liberated a beer and was enjoying it quietly when her window opened wider. I reached up over my head for the sunglasses and put them on.

She crawled out and shuffled over, her hand on my shoulder as she sat down next to me.

“Hey.” I heard her set something down.

“Whassup.” It was still hot and humid. There were some serious storm clouds in the distance, the lightning would make them glow occasionally. They were still too far away to hear the thunder.

I could hear the breeze blowing through the trees, the humming of the AC unit next door, and her breathing next to me. She was wearing her favorite body spray, and I could also smell the shampoo she used.

“Not much. No prom?” I heard the familiar sound of a poptop and the cold can was pressed into my hand after she drank from it.

“Nope. There’s games coming out I want.” There was one. I didn’t want to spend the money and not have anything to show for it. The only girl I had any interest in couldn’t say yes, whether she wanted to or not.

“You?” I knew the answer. She wasn’t ready. I had heard that she had been asked, rumor had it by four different guys, and she had declined. I think my parents silently breathed a sigh of relief. Money was still tight and prom shit cost a small fortune.

“I’m not ready to do the whole full exposure thing.” She didn’t sound sad at all. The therapy seemed to be doing her some good, she hadn’t been as down as she had after the accident.

“You figure out what you’re going to do over the summer?” I had interviewed at one of the home improvement stores and gotten hired. They would schedule around my classes when I started school again in September. This Saturday would be my first day.

“I have an interview after school tomorrow for a telephone customer service representative. I’ll start training after graduation and be working from home after that. I’ll be working nights from eleven to seventhirty. That’s if they hire me.”

The sad fact was that both of us were going to have to work our way through school. Carrie had gotten some money from one of the insurance companies but it wasn’t enough to pay for everything. She thought she would get enough to cover school, a car, and getting her scars fixed. I had to rely on what I could save and student loans.

She would be able to get a car, not new, and pay for part of school. Getting her face fixed was going to be expensive. She chose going to school.

“They will.” That place hired everybody who could pass the background check.

We sat in the quiet for a while in silence, occasionally trading the can. I wasn’t happy about her job, I barely saw her now as it was. Carrie removed the can from my hand, slid over so that our sides were touching from shoulder to ankle, interlocked our fingers, and leaned her head on my shoulder. We stayed there until the rain came.

The summer days seemed to go by in a blur. The nights felt like they dragged on forever. The way our schedules worked out, we never had the same day off. There were nights I hung out on the balcony and we talked through her window when it was slow but that wasn’t very often.

When we started college, my classes never seemed to align with Carrie’s. I literally saw her more at school than I did at home. It was from a distance, her glasses were unmistakable from any distance.

It wasn’t like we didn’t talk. We did, on the phone a couple of days a week. We texted every day. Between working and school commitments, there just didn’t seem to be enough time to meet up.

Our lives had settled into a predictable rut. Then Dad announced one day that he had accepted a promotion and they would be moving to Arizona in the next couple of months.

Living at home while working had allowed me to get by without a lot of student debt. That was going to change. I had worked my way up to department manager at the store, I was halfway through my degree, and I liked living here. Moving to Arizona was out of the question.

Carrie’s first question to me when she heard was to ask if I was staying. I expected her to go with them, thinking that she might jump at the chance for a new start someplace else. When I asked, she said she was staying too.

As my parents made plans to sell the house, I started looking for an apartment. I asked Carrie about getting one together but she thought that it would be too stressful with our different schedules. When I pointed out we never saw each other as it was, she admitted that she thought living with her brother would cramp her attempts at a social life. So going solo was apparently my only option.

At least I got a car out of the deal. They transferred the title of Dad’s little commuter Camry. I needed the car now, as the best studio apartment was too far to walk to work and took fortyfive minutes by bus. It made getting to school easier as well.

Before the move, I could count on seeing Carrie twice a year in person, Thanksgiving and Christmas. After the move, we lived five miles apart and I never saw her. We still talked on the phone and texted daily. This went on for another four years.

I had to cut back on my classes because of the new expenses between the apartment, car, and surviving. Carrie graduated before I did, she continued working nights for the call center in management. She got a boyfriend, which was a bittersweet experience for me.

I was happy that she was finally getting on with her life. I was sad because I still never got to see her. Her holidays were spent going to Vegas, LA, skiing, basically living her best life. Mine were spent looking at four walls while I tried to pay down my student loans.

The first sign things weren’t what they seemed was at Thanksgiving about two years after I graduated from college. Mom called early that morning, which was very early Arizona time.

“Norm, I want you to be honest with me. Have you ever met this guy Carrie’s seeing?” Carrie had told me she was taking her boyfriend to meet our parents.

“No, I haven’t. What’s he like?”

“That’s a good question. He couldn’t make it this time, either.”

I hadn’t known there was supposed to have been a first time. “Either?”

“How often do you two actually see each other?” This question came up regularly and the stock answer was “sometimes.”

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