Both Hands

Finn Lynch was tearing down the right wing, the ball glued to his feet. Somewhere far off someone was calling his name, but he paid it no mind. The centre back closed him down; Finn dropped his shoulder, shifted his weight, and the defender bought the dummy. He was through, just him and the keeper.

The voice grew louder, more insistent. He wasn't going to look up now. He took the ball wide, away from the keeper's reach, and got ready to bend it inside the far post. The grass under his boots felt soft, too soft, like he was running through wet sand. His legs wouldn't quite do what he asked of them.

"Finn!"

The keeper was off his line, coming fast. Finn tried to lift his head, to pick his spot, but the figure rushing at him seemed to swell, growing taller and broader by the second. He was going to have to round him, take the ball wider still.

"Finn, come on!"

Then a defender he hadn't seen was sliding in from his blind side, studs up. There wasn't time to skip the tackle. He felt his boot catch the turf, his weight pitching forwards, his hands shooting out as the ground rushed up to meet him.

"Finn, wake up!"

The impact never came. Instead he was rising, drifting up through something thick and dark towards a soft glow above him. He forced his eyes open and found himself looking up at a string of pearls.

Three rows of them, small and even, at the base of her throat. He'd never noticed her wearing them before, probably because he'd never been flat on his back looking up at her at six in the morning. Behind them was the cream of a silk slip and below that the soft swell of her chest and he wasn't ready to look at her face yet.

"Finn, darling. Come on now.."

He knew the voice. It took him a second to place it, because the voice belonged to his stepmother and his stepmother wasn't usually leaning over his bed in a silk slip and a string of pearls. Izzy. Of course it was Izzy.

Then it came back. The match against Hills Road, the late tackle, the sound of his wrists going as he hit the deck, the blue lights, A&E, the surgeon explaining the plates and screws, his dad on the phone from somewhere off Aberdeen with helicopters in the background. They'd kept him in overnight and then sent him home because his stepmother had told them on the phone, in the voice she used on hostile barristers, that she would be at home with him for the next fortnight and that this was not a matter for further discussion.

He blinked at her. The codeine was still sitting heavy on him and everything felt a step removed. She had her glasses on. Her dark hair was pulled back the way she wore it for court, and a few strands had come loose at the temple. She'd done her face already. She'd done everything already, by the look of her, except put a skirt on.

His morning erection was straining the front of his joggers like a tent pole. He tried to shift his hips, to angle himself away from where she might see, but his hands were two useless lumps of plaster and there was no quick way to do anything.

"You were out cold," she said, straightening up. The view of her tilted away from him and he wasn't sure whether he was disappointed or relieved. "I've been trying to wake you for the best part of ten minutes. We need to get you sorted before Anya gets here at half eight."

Anya was her nine o'clock. He'd met her once, a small woman with a child and a husband who sounded like a piece of work.

"Iz, honestly, I'll have one later. You crack on."

She sat down on the edge of the bed, which brought the silk slip and what was inside it back to roughly his eye level. He looked, then made himself look away, then looked again. He couldn't help it.

"We agreed," she said. "If you were coming home this soon, we'd manage it together. You're not lying in your own sweat all day, and you're not going back to the ward. They've got nothing for you and they need the bed. So either you let me do this, or I ring your nan and you spend the next two weeks in Histon. Up to you."

His grandmother was a saint, but she fussed and she chattered and she'd want to know about every single thing on the telly while he was trying to sleep. He'd take Izzy over Histon. Probably.

"Fine. You win."

"Good."

She got up, and he watched her cross the room. The slip reached the very top of her thighs, no further. Below it her legs went down into sheer stockings and stockinged feet. She'd been about to put a skirt on, he realised; she'd come up to wake him in the state she got dressed in, before she put the day on. He lay there a moment longer than he needed to.

Hobbling along behind her in his joggers and a stretched-out t-shirt, he kept his arms low and tried to hold the loose fabric over the front of him with his forearms. The walk from his bedroom to the bathroom felt about three miles. By the time he got there she had the shower running and was testing the spray with the back of her wrist, the way you'd test a baby's bottle.

"Right. About right. Up with your arms."

He looked at her legs and how good they were encased in nylon. He had a pair of hers in his bedside drawer for two years. Found them in the laundry basket when he was younger, still hadn't put them back, and the number of times he'd thought about it since was not something he was going to examine right now.

The slip rode up a little as she straightened, and he saw the underside of one buttock, silky black knickers, before she smoothed the silk back down.

"Bags first," she said, in a voice that was almost normal.

She came over with two carrier bags and a roll of brown parcel tape and got to work on his casts. Izzy was forty, ten years younger than his dad, a family solicitor on Hills Road who'd been doing a better job of being a parent than she'd had any right to since he was twelve. Mates at school had been making comments for years and he'd stopped a couple of them with a fist. Now here he was with an erection like a fence post, looking down the front of her slip while she taped him up.

"There. Up."

He raised his arms as best he could and she eased his t-shirt up and over his head, careful of the casts. Then she stood back and looked at his joggers, and the moment stretched.

"Sorry. I know."

"Don't be daft."

She slipped two fingers into the waistband at his hips and started to ease the joggers down. His erection, which had been pinned flat against his stomach by the elastic, came with them. There was a horrible second where she didn't realise, and the angle just kept getting worse, and she looked down and went still.

His joggers fell to his ankles. The whole thing sprang back up against his stomach with a soft slap. Neither of them said anything for what felt like a very long time.

She was looking at him. He had his eyes shut.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I tried to. I didn't know how."

"It's fine, really."

She said it low and careful and left it at that. He opened his eyes a fraction. There was a flush high on her cheeks and the line of her mouth had gone careful, and she was looking at him steadily, the way she might look at a witness she was about to take through something difficult.

"In you go."

Before she followed him she reached back and unclipped her stockings from the belt, rolling each one down and off with the brisk efficiency of someone who did not intend to ruin good hosiery. She folded them and laid them over the radiator rail. The whole thing took about fifteen seconds and she did it without looking at him.

She helped him step into the cubicle, one hand at his lower back, the other guiding his elbow. He stood with his nose almost against the tiles while she stepped in behind him, still in the slip and the pearls, no point in soaking a dressing gown she wasn't wearing. The slip went dark down the front as soon as the spray caught it, and the silk stuck to her in a way he felt against his back before he'd turned round.

She soaped a flannel and started on his shoulders.

It felt good. That was the problem. Her hands moved across his back in slow circles, working the soap in, then down his arms as far as the casts would let her, then back up to the nape of his neck and into his hair. He'd forgotten how it felt to have someone else wash you. His erection was, if anything, getting harder.

"Turn round."

He turned. His cock turned with him and hung in the steam between them. She didn't look at it. She focused on his face and chest and worked the flannel across him without particular hurry. The silk slip was soaked through now and the cream had gone almost transparent with the water and he could see through it. He had nowhere to put his eyes that wasn't her.

Her glasses had steamed up. She paused and lifted them with her free hand and wiped them on the only dry corner of the slip she could find, which meant lifting the front of it almost to her waist for a second to get at it. He saw her knickers again. She put the glasses back on and said nothing about it.

She crouched to do his legs. From above, the view down the front of the slip was going to be there for a while. The pearls hung forward away from her skin. His cock pulsed against his stomach.

She worked her way up his thighs. She paused.

"I'm going to have to do this part," she said, her voice careful and quiet. "Try and stay still for me."

Stay still. He nearly laughed.

She soaped her hand and reached up and gently cupped him underneath. His testicles barely fit in her palm. She washed them with no more pressure than she would have used on his shoulder, and the slow deliberate way she did it somehow made it worse than if she'd been rough.

Then she took the base of his cock in her hand. Her fingers didn't quite meet round it. She said nothing about that either. She started to slide her soapy hand up the shaft in a slow even motion, and his whole body went tight.

It wasn't a wank. She wasn't moving fast enough for that. But it wasn't not a wank either. Her hand reached the head and she paused and came back down and went up again. He stared at the wall tiles and tried to think about cold things.

"I need to pull this back," she said, in the same quiet voice, and with her other hand she rolled his foreskin down.

The cool air and her fingers and the slow deliberate way she did it sent something pulling tight all the way through him. She washed the head with the flannel in steady circles, completely focused on the job, holding him in place with her other hand. She knew exactly how close she was bringing him. That was the part she wasn't saying.

He clenched everything he could clench and bit the inside of his cheek and somehow held it.

She rinsed him off with the shower head and stepped back.

"All done."

She killed the water and helped him out and patted him down with a towel, careful and quiet, and that was its own kind of answer about whether they were pretending the last five minutes hadn't happened. She got herself out and stood on the bath mat with the slip clinging to her and the pearls running with water, and didn't seem to know what to do next.

"Let's get something on you and I'll do you some toast."

"Hang on. I need the loo."

"Alright, give me a minute. I'll be just outside."

She stepped out and shut the door behind her, and he stood looking at the toilet and feeling the slow horror of his situation work its way through him. His cock was still pointing at the ceiling. His hands were two plaster bricks. He needed to go, badly, and there was no possible way to aim.

He stood there for a minute trying to will it down. His eyes went to the radiator.

Her stockings were still folded over the top rail. Sheer, dark, slightly warm from the metal, exactly how he already knew them to feel. He'd been telling himself that wasn't a problem for two years.

He looked away.

"Iz?"

She opened the door a crack, took one look at his face and at the angle of him, and something passed across her own face that he didn't have a name for.

"Right. Yes."

She came to stand beside him at the toilet. She reached down with two careful fingers and bent his cock towards the bowl, holding it just under the head. The contact sent a jolt through him and his cock pulsed and slipped out of her grip and bounced back up against his stomach.

"Sorry. Sorry. I can't help it."

"I know."

She took hold of him again, more firmly this time, and aimed him down.

Nothing happened. He couldn't go. The angle was wrong and his body wouldn't cooperate and she was holding his cock and he was eighteen, not twelve, and this was not happening.

"Sorry. It's like when someone's watching. Could you turn the tap on?"

She reached over with her free hand and ran the cold tap. After a few seconds the sound of the running water did the trick, and a stream came out of him in a hot rush. She did her best to keep him aimed and not bend him too far down. He let out a long breath and she didn't speak, just stood there and held him steady, and the whole thing went on for what felt like an embarrassingly long time before it tapered off.

"Done?"

"Pretty much. There's a last bit."

"A last bit?"

"You have to sort of squeeze it out, otherwise you end up with damp pants."

"Oh. How."

"Just squeeze the base and stroke up. A few times."

"Err, right."

She squeezed gently at the base of him and ran her hand up the shaft. A few drops fell into the bowl. She did it again. And again. He watched her hand move on him and he felt it starting to gather somewhere deep behind his belly button and he opened his mouth to tell her to stop but then stayed quiet.

She did it again, the same slow careful stroke as before, and he felt the thing inside him slip past the point where he could have called it back. He made the sound again and his hips jerked forwards without his permission and she took half a step closer to him and kept her hand where it was.

The first pulse caught her on the inside of the wrist. She didn't flinch. The rest of it went up his stomach and his chest in two long arcs and a few smaller ones after, and she held him through all of it, the same steady pressure, her face quiet and her eyes on what her hand was doing. He'd never come like that before. When it finally stopped his legs nearly went.

She kept hold of him for another second. Then she let go and reached for the flannel.

He couldn't look at her. He looked at the ceiling, at the extractor fan, at anywhere else.

"Iz, I'm so..."

"Shush."

She wiped her wrist on the flannel. Then she looked at his stomach, and at his chest, and at the mess he'd made of both, and she went very still in the way she'd gone still earlier when his joggers had come down.

She put the flannel on the side of the basin.

She bent her head and put her mouth flat against his chest, just below the bone at the top of it, and dragged her tongue down through it in one slow unhurried line. He felt her glasses against his skin. He felt the give of her lower lip. He felt the small wet press of her tongue going down across his ribs and over his stomach and stopping at the waistband of nothing, because his joggers were still round his ankles.

She straightened up. She didn't wipe her mouth. She looked at him for a long second over the top of her glasses, and her face was the same careful face she'd worn the whole way through, except that now there was something underneath it that hadn't been there before.

"Right," she said quietly. "Let's get you dressed."

She bent and pulled his joggers up and tucked him in and smoothed the fabric down over him, and she did all of it without saying another word, and her hands were perfectly steady.

She left the bathroom and he heard her go down the stairs, and a few seconds later he heard the kettle, and the radio coming on low, and the small ordinary noises of a woman getting ready for work.

He stood in the bathroom with his casts hanging at his sides and looked at himself in the mirror. There was a wet line down the middle of him where her mouth had been. He could see where it started and he could see where it stopped.

Her Wolford stockings were on the radiator behind him.

He had two weeks of this.