Julian and June

June sat curled against the armrest of their battered living room couch, sketching idly in her sketchbook while watching some rerun on TV. The sole fan in the small apartment sputtered uselessly. God, it was sweltering. No AC meant she'd given up on shirts altogether after noon, bare breasts sticking slightly to the sketchbook in her lap where she'd pulled her sweat-slick thighs up against them.

As Julian entered the room, he greeted his sister with a ruffle of her bangs. "Hey, pipsqueak."

Julian's dumb nicknames always made June flush — something Pavlovian at this point — and without looking up from her half-finished doodle, she kicked at his bare calf with her socked foot. Her toes curled when her skin accidentally brushed his. The scent of his sweat clung to her nostrils—salt and something musky, familiar. It made her core clench with forbidden warmth.

"Don't call me that," she muttered, tongue poking out while shading some stupid comic panel no one would ever see. She could feel Julian stretching beside her — could practically hear the way his tanned abs flex as he did. She resisted glancing. "Just cause you grew six inches last year doesn't mean you're mister tall-and-mighty now."

That got her a flick at her forehead.

"Hey!" Annoyed, June finally looked up with exaggerated suffering at the sudden presence of his shadow leaning over her sketch. "I grew two inches since Christmas and you know it." Her gaze traced the sheen on his collarbone where sweat pooled—why did she keep imagining licking it off?

"Mmm. Maybe vertically." Julian's eyes flicked down to her chest, then back up. "Deflated soccer balls have more to offer."

June groaned, trying not to think about his eyes on her breasts, or her eyes on the way his hipbones protruded just above his waistband. His stupid warm thighs pressing against her bare ones as he loomed made her traitorous nipples pebble harder than the heat could explain.

"Hey, you okay, Junebug? You're all… red." Julian's voice dropped. "Way hotter than usual."

Hotter than usual hot or hotter than usual pretty? No. Bad brain. June swallowed thickly, gripping her sketchbook like a shield.

"It's nothing." She said it casually, as if her throat wasn't tight with unsaid things. As if her fingers didn't ache to trace the waistband of his low-hanging basketball shorts. "Shouldn't you be doing laundry or something?" Her flush deepened.

Smooth, June. Real smooth.

Honestly. No AC was gonna be the death of her.

After sitting here for the past fifteen minutes, the first thing Julian hears from June is this: "Don't sit so close to me, stupid."

Julian didn't even look up from his phone, the glow of the screen reflecting off the sweat beading on his collarbones. "You're the one who followed me into the living room," he muttered, shifting slightly on the couch just to make the springs creak under her.

The AC's death rattle had turned their apartment into a sauna hours ago, leaving them both sticky and irritable. They would have had it fixed if everyone wasn't so busy. Their mother had been gone for three days straight, another godawful hospital rotation. The air smelled like dust and scorched electricity from the wheezing ceiling fan that spun too slowly to do jack shit. June had his teddy bear clutched between her thighs—a habit Julian pretended annoyed him but hey, at least he was the one who'd won it for her—even as his cock thickened at the thought of whether he could squeeze there instead.

"Y'know, Junebug," he drawled, tendons flexing along his forearms as he stretched across the threadbare couch, deliberately letting his waistband sag just enough to reveal taut hipbones, "if you didn't wanna share body heat, maybe you shouldn't have flopped onto the couch."

He rolled his eyes. He needed to stop sounding so disgustingly fond.

His thumb scrolled absently through his messages while his peripheral vision tracked the way June's bare thighs stuck to his own. The tiny shorts she'd thrown on after stripping off her sweat-soaked tank top might as well have been tissue paper. He could see the faint outline of—

What kind of brother noticed his baby sister's panty lines? Christ. Julian cleared his throat and angled his phone away.

"If you're so bothered, go take another cold shower." His voice came out rougher than intended, the words scraping against the knot of heat in his gut. The last time she'd done that, he'd stood outside the bathroom door for seven minutes listening to the water hit her skin before guilt sent him stumbling back to his room.

The ice cubes in his water glass had long since melted, but he took a swig anyway, just to have something to do with his mouth besides say all the wrong things.