Ivy
Ivy couldn't sleep, tossing and turning, kicking the blanket away and pulling it back up.
Damien was in Calista's room.
Again.
She checked the hour, it was barely two in the morning.
Calista had warned Ivy to not butt in. Tried to brush it off. Ivy had been skulking around like a burglar trying not to raise attention, and predictably Calista had caught her.
'Just a music thing, kid.'
Calista told her, with a dismissive wave of her hand. Ivy proceeded to skitter away under the oldest's imposing figure. She didn't believe her. Music thing? More like a thing between her legs.
With her face pressed into the pillow, Ivy tried to drown out the mental noise.
If not for the fact that the walls were pretty good at dampening sound, Ivy would've surely heard a lot more than just the muffled music coming from Calista's room.
It wasn't like she wanted to imagine it, but her brain kept conjuring the worst of it.
Calista had always been the most distant of the sisters, cold and aloof, with little interest in Damien—though in Ivy's eyes, her sister was perhaps the most possessive of them all, simply better at hiding it.
Ivy didn't think forcing sleep to come to her would work and instead climbed down from her bed, creaked the door open enough for an eye to peer out. The halls were pitch dark, with only the moon casting long shadows across the floorboards, no signs of other figures in sight.
A breath.
From young, she always imagined Damien as a creature she needed to protect, or at the very least, keep an eye on.
As soon as a change in attitude occurred, everyone would use magnifying glasses to pick through Damien's behavior. When something he does stands out, there are a number of concerns to deal with, and an excessive amount of maternal intervention.
It only stood to reason that, with his current mismatching and puzzling attitude, Damien would have to be treated twice as carefully.
The alarm bells that should've been set off by the drastic shift in his personality never sounded in their heads.
For the simple reason that maybe he was more approachable now, that maybe the rules no longer applied, and that maybe it wasn't all that wrong to 'push the boundary' a little.
It made Ivy afraid.
Fearful, protective.
Damien would do things he'd never have dreamed of doing before, things that Ivy always dreamt he'd be like.
She fully opened the door and tiptoed down the hall, ears alert and sharp.
Her auburn tumbled over her shoulders in a messy bundle.
Barefoot, sneaking like a cat, she reached the corner and leaned in for a peep.
Nothing.
Stood on her toes, stretching out her neck and craning as far as she could with the lightest of touches, she scanned left and right and right to left, before making her way towards Calista's room. 'Are those two really just doing music...?'
The doorknob yielded beneath her touch, and Ivy's breath hitched at the unexpected lack of resistance. If anything weird was going on, surely a locked door would be the first line of defense... right?
She surveyed for proof that her sister and brother were, indeed, simply composing, and all the evidence was lined neatly, like dominoes stacked high, with no threat of it collapsing right above her head.
But everything was silent. No sight of Damien anywhere. In fact, all the monitors were off. The workshop looked closed for the day. That was a good sign.
Except...
'What's that?'
There, upon the tousled sheets, lay Calista. A bundle of hair and clothes in a disarray that heaved with each breath that distinctly echoed off. Her body arched in an elegant slant, one hand tangled in her own golden hair while the other disappeared beneath the blanket, below her navel.
In a swift, half-crazed panic, Ivy shut the door as softly as she could.
Eyes wild, breathing ragged. A guilty conscience for probing into someone's private moment.
Then she calmed down, one hand on her chest.
'Uh huh... it was just Calista masturbating...'
But Damien's not there, at least.
She curled her nose, frowning. Nothing abnormal there. No, the only abnormal thing was the sheer audacity of Calista to get herself off in a place she knew her brother was just a few meters away from, not even locking the damn door! At her age, she didn't even know the basics?
She shook her head.
'I'm not gonna stand here and listen to her cum though... ugh...'
With balled fists and a stomach churning with apprehension, Ivy turned to face Damien's room. It was a mere two doors down. It should have been quiet, too. She didn't hear anything coming from it, but she was sure that he was inside. She was sure of it.
So, was it possible for her to take a tiny peek? Just to make sure he was asleep, of course. He'd never know.
A quick glance would do.
Another few cautious steps.
Her knuckles hovered over the wooden surface before her courage dwindled, and her hand retreated. No. That was too risky. She shouldn't. But what if...
The thoughts warred inside her head, one side screaming at her to go back to bed before she got caught, the other pushing her forward with the promise of what she might see.
And what was it that Ivy wanted to see anyway? Damien in a compromising position? Maybe half naked? Maybe with a fist curled around his—
'No… men aren't like that, are they? They would never… they wouldn't… but maybe…'
Maybe this new Damien would.
Her desire won. Always.
Ivy decided against opening the door, but the keyhole wasn't off limits, was it?
It was a much smaller risk, but still a risk nonetheless. Yet, her body refused to listen to reason.
She pressed her eye against the cold metal.
It gave her a sliver of a view.
She suppressed a grunt of frustration—the gap was too small for anything but a partial view of the room, mostly obstructed by a dresser and a pile of clothes on a chair.
Then she saw him.
He was walking around, slowly, back and forth across the keyhole's view.
Out of focus at first, only making out a tall, slender figure roaming about, or pacing.
For one glorious minute, he was only visible from the knees down. A masculine creature of pure perfection. And that was just a keyhole fraction of him!
Of course, Ivy's mind supplied all the imagery she needed to see what could've been underneath all that fabric.
His hands latched on the hems of his shirt, and pulled it all up, revealing a tiny swath of perfect white skin and the masculine swells of his chest and—oh my fucking God!
Ivy's lone eye strained, unblinking, nearly bloodshot from all the depleted mental energy she'd used up just for this.
Did someone plug her spin into a wall socket? She felt a zap from the tips of her toes straight to the back of her neck.
A blush covered the entirety of her face as she snapped her face away from the keyhole, eyes wild, fists squeezed around the fabric of her pajamas, and spine straight.
She wasn't quite sure what she saw. And, with a short span of rationality left, she opted to turn the other way and flee.
It wasn't quite like that day in the kitchen, where she had an unobstructed view of her brother, but that was of his own volition, of his own actions. Here, she had to dig deeper and press her eye up against a hole that had only a narrow, circular scope.
Here, she was snooping. Peeping. Like a creepy, dirty perverted woman.
She fled to her own room. Her heart pounded as she entered, silently closing the door behind her and making her way to her bed, collapsing onto it like a fish flapping its last breath on dry land.
Despite closing her eyes, she felt this lancing rush of guilt running through her, followed by an unfamiliar pulsing feeling below.
She covered her face, ashamed.
She felt guilt… for wanting to see more, too.
…
Damien was in the living room, headphones on, hands steepled under his chin and eyes closed. Ivy should've known better than to approach him like this; she also didn't think it'd be smart for a criminal to approach their victim directly, either.
So, like one, she stood her distance, hungrily peering and watching Damien from the hallway.
His head bobbed ever so slightly to whatever was blasting in his ears. He wasn't in the gym today, dressed more relaxed, like he could afford to stay indoors the whole day without burning off a single calorie.
His fingers tap-tapped along his cheek, brows knitted together.
It was only after a minute or so that he cracked his eyes open and removed the headphones, seemingly satisfied with whatever he was listening to. He sighed, looking up at the ceiling, arms stretching above his head.
Ivy had the worst timing, as his eyes roamed over to her standing there, peeping at him from behind a wall with that trademark auburn hair of hers. She gave him a nervous, jittery smile.
Damien gave her a once over and returned a smile of his own. "Hey, Ivy. What are you up to?" He asked, sliding his headphones off.
"I was just... passing by. And, and, and I saw you." She explained, the tip of her ear was a little red. "I was wondering what you were listening to."
Was it music he was working on? Was it one of his own songs? What did it sound like?
Damien looked at her for a long moment.
"Would you like to have a listen?"
Ivy perked up. "Can I?"
"Sure." He patted the seat next to him.
She sat down, making sure there was a distance between them. Not too close, not too far—though by the time she finished calculating the appropriate distance she realized she was pleasantly too close to him, enough to snuggle up to his shoulder if she wanted to.
Damien handed her the headphones and she slipped them on, feeling the earcups embrace the sides of her head.
"This is something Calista and I have been working on, the... baseline for my voice. It's all instrumental as I've yet to record the vocal tracks."
She listened quietly.
It was... catchy. Slow at the beginning, but picked up soon after with a beat that got her body moving. As a standalone, it could probably work, but with a vocal line, it would be ten times better.
"Wow..." Ivy mumbled under her breath, before taking the headphones off. "That sounds amazing."
"It's far from done." Damien said, looking excited "But I'm glad you like it."
"Is this the song you're going to put out?" Ivy asked.
"Well... technically yes..."
"Hmm." She hummed. "What about the lyrics?"
"That's a surprise." Damien gave her a smug, heavy-lidded grin. "You'll have to wait for it."
Ivy pouted. "Boo. I wanna know."
"Patience, Ivy, patience." He ruffled her hair, much to her silent protest. "It won't be long, anyways. We're almost done." His hand lingered atop her head. "But, how about you? Anything new with school?"
"It's the same as always." She shrugged. "Nothing ever changes in school. I just want it to be over already."
"You're only eighteen, you've got plenty of time."
"Mm... I guess. But I'm not sure I want to keep going to school anyways. Mom and Aunt Freya are always pressuring me to find something else, but... I don't know." She gave him an uncertain look.
"Well, what do you want to do?"
"I just want to stay home and do nothing." She puffed up her chest. "I want to be a kept woman!"
He laughed out loud. "Wouldn't you have to find a rich man for that?"
The likelihood of that happening was so abysmal you might as well stay cooped up in your room watching movies and anime.
"True..." Ivy's face fell, but only for a second. "But what if I just... stay home with you?"
Ivy realized that her question wasn't exactly an intelligent one, with all the implications one could extrapolate once you've seen past the faux innocence of it.
Damien's laughter subsided ever so slightly.
Ivy's heart thudded in her chest.
"Aunt Freya might have something to say about that." He said, a smile slowly returning to his face. "And I don't think Mom would be too happy about you lazing around the house all day."
"Hey, you laze around the house all day too!" She retorted playfully, poking him in the arm.
"Hey! I'm actually being productive, thank you very much. I'm a musician now, in case you haven't heard."
"Right, right." Ivy rolled her eyes. "A great musician…"
"You know it." He said, puffing out his chest in an exaggerated display of pride. "One day, you'll be able to say 'I knew him when he was just a nobody, recording music in his sister's room'."
"I'm your sister, not a groupie." She shot back, though a part of her fluttered at the thought. She was already going around collecting his clothes, so perhaps she was halfway there.
"......"
"That's right." He cackled. "Start treating me with the respect I deserve."
She poked him in the arm again, for no other reason than to find an excuse to actually touch him.
Damien poked her right back, and in retaliation Ivy swept her legs right over his lap, crossing her arms aggressively with downturned lips, looking very much childlike and exaggerated.
He burst out laughing at her silly expression.
This was the most playful she had seen him, ever.
She curled her knees, her feet sliding along his thigh in a manner that would've every other woman in the house stare daggers at her. She gulped.
"Uff. You're heavy."
"No I'm not!"
"Yes, you are."
"Fine, then I'm not moving."
She was trying her damndest not to look at where the soles of her feet and toes were so close to. She held her breath, counting the seconds until her brother snapped at her for being so touchy and dirty—but none of that happened.
He kept his smile throughout, even if it was a questioning one. He didn't refuse her. Didn't reject her touch.
"......"
Once again, she covered her face in shame.
And once again, she found herself unwilling to extract herself from this intoxicating new side of Damien.
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