Art Donaldson is not going to think about you.

He tells himself this as he grips the edge of the bathroom counter and stares into the fogged up mirror. You're down the hall, still awake, the house silent. He swallows hard. He feels like an idiot standing there shirtless like an idiot, trying to convince himself he didn't just think about you in the shower. Again.

Didn't think about the sound of you in the next room over when your boyfriend was here last night. Didn't imagine your ankles over his shoulders. Didn't finish too fast. He hates it. The way it feels afterwards—empty, shameful, like he'd just stained something inside of himself. Something that bled through his skin to warn everyone and say I'm a sick freak.

You're his step sibling. That should be the end of it.

But it's not. Because he can't stop looking at you. Can't stop noticing how lovely you smell when you walk past. Can't under the way your shorts ride up when you reach for the top shelf. Can't stop thinking about the way your voice drops late at night. Sometimes, you linger in doorways. Or your eyes flick towards his mouth when he's talking. Or your foot rests against his under the table and you don't move it.

This shouldn't be a problem. He's had crushes before. Fantasies. He knows the difference between impulse and reality. But there's something about you. Maybe because you already belong to the same house, the same routine, the same quiet mornings and late-night silences. And somewhere in his twisted brain, that closeness blurs.

A storm cuts the light at around 11PM. One loud crack before everything goes black.

"Art?"

"Yeah, I got it," he shouts back, pulling a shirt on, already moving down the hall to fetch the emergency flashlight from the bottom drawer in the kitchen. If there's one thing that's stayed consistent since the merger, it's the location of that. But even after the beam flicks on, the house still feels darker than it should.

It's just the two of you tonight, parents away on some retreat. It should have been a quiet night, too. Separate rooms, separate lives, like you've been pretending for months now. But it's harder when it's quiet. When the air is thick, when his shirt clings to him from the humidity, when he catches a glimpse of your bare thighs where you sit anxiously on the couch and it almost undoes him.

You look up when he comes in, holding the flashlight under his chin. "You look terrifying," you say.

He smiles. Nervous, boyish. "Thanks." And then he offers it to you. Almost drops it in the process, too, but he manages to catch it and hand it over. Your laugh is soft and warm and god it makes something in his chest tighten.

He should go back to his room. He should leave the flashlight and walk out of here before the look in your eyes gets too hard for even the most sane of men (which he's not) to ignore. Before the silence fills with everything you've been avoiding.

But then he hears, "You're not tired, are you?"

There's an invitation in there. Or maybe he's imagining it. Maybe he wants it so bad he's twisting your words into something else. Still, he shakes his head and sits with you anyways. You end up side by side on the couch, with a singular lit candle on the table and the flashlight wedged between two pillows.

You're saying something—telling him a story, laughing under your breath—but he isn't really listening. Too focused on watching your mouth. The way your lips move. The way your fingers fidget with the hem of your shirt. The way your knees are barely brushing his and yet never pulling away.

All of this is a mistake...

But if it is a mistake, it's one you've both been dying to make.

He clears his throat when a short silence settles over you. "I should probably go to bed."

He doesn't think he could sleep if he tried. Not because he's tired, but because the problem beneath his blanket is growing increasingly hard to ignore the longer you're speaking with him, features illuminated softly by the glow of the flashlight.

Yeah. He's not surviving tonight alone down here with you.