Both Hands

Twelve days into it and he still couldn't work out which was worse: the wrists, or everything else.

The wrists he could account for. Two arms, both broken, both plastered from the knuckles to past the elbow, the result of a stupid thing he didn't like thinking about and a wall that hadn't moved. The casts went on for another twelve days and then there'd be physio and then, eventually, hands again. That part had an end to it. He could mark it off.

The problem was that his body was also eighteen. And it didn't particularly care about dignity.

He couldn't do anything about it. That was the plain fact of it. Two plastered arms, two useless hands, and a stepmother down the hall who had done things in the last twenty-four hours that he was still not entirely sure had happened. He kept going back over them in the dark. The shower. Her hands. The flat way she'd talked the whole time, like she was running through a list. He'd lie there with his arms propped on a pillow because he couldn't lie on them, and he'd think about it until he was wide awake and aching and there was nothing he could do with either, and he'd think: this is going to be a long twelve days.

---

She'd been gone since eight and he'd had the house to himself.

He'd watched television for an hour, then turned it off. He'd sat at the kitchen table and looked at his phone propped against the fruit bowl and answered a few messages one-fingered with a knuckle, slowly, getting half the words wrong. His mate Dec had asked how the arms were. He'd typed back fine and then sat looking at it.

He'd thought about the radiator in the bathroom with her stockings on it and whether they were still there, and then told himself not to go and check.

He went and checked.

They weren't. She'd taken them. The rail was empty and the bathroom smelled of her soap and that was all there was to show for any of it. He stood there for a moment, eighteen years old, two broken arms, looking at an empty towel rail, and felt something that was mostly want and partly something he didn't have a name for.

He went back downstairs.

He tried to read. He couldn't hold the book at the right angle and gave up on it. He tried the television again. He watched the clock more than the screen. Half ten, eleven, half eleven. He told himself she worked till five most days and there was no reason today would be different and he should stop sitting here like a dog by the door.

He kept sitting there.

---

She came home at half twelve.

He heard her key in the lock and then her heels on the hall tiles and then silence while she hung up her coat. He was on the sofa with his arms folded across his chest and the television off. She came to the doorway and stood there in her work clothes, the dark navy skirt and the cream blouse and the pearls, and looked at him.

"I thought I'd come back for lunch."

"Yeah, nice."

"Are you hungry darling?"

"No. I'm good Iz."

She looked at him for a moment longer.

"Yeah, nor me."

She came into the room and didn't sit down. Just stood in front of him. She had her bag still over her shoulder and she put it down on the chair and stood with her hands at her sides and waited, because she could see there was something, the way she always seemed to see things, before he'd worked out how to say them.

"So, I've been thinking."

"Have you now."

"Um yeah, about something specific."

She held his eye. She reached up and took her glasses off and folded them and held them at her side.

"Go on then, tell me.."

---

He told her. He told her plainly, without dressing it up, what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it. He'd had it worked out since seven that morning, the words for it, and he'd half expected them to fall apart in his mouth, but they didn't. He said it. She listened the way she always listened, completely still, giving him nothing back until he'd finished.

"But you can't use your hands?"

"I know."

"So how would you, um you know."

"I'd manage. I've been thinking about it since about seven this morning."

She didn't laugh and she didn't tell him he was being ridiculous, which was the thing about her that he was only starting to understand. She just turned it over, the way she'd turn over a problem at work, and arrived somewhere, and you only found out where when she got there.

She sat down beside him. She didn't unclip anything this time. She lifted one foot, looked at the toe of her stocking for a second, and put it down again.

"Lie down Finn."

---

The skirt rode up when she moved over him. She kept her clothes on, which he understood was the point: the blouse still buttoned, the pearls still on, the stockings still clipped to the belt at both thighs. She knelt over his chest facing him and looked down at him and he looked up at her.

He had his casts on his chest. He hadn't been told to put them there this time. He just knew.

She moved forward and he pressed his face to the front of her knickers and breathed against her. Just that. He felt the warmth of her through the fabric before he did anything else, and he took his time with it, getting his mouth around the shape of her through the cotton and pressing his lips flat against her and breathing, feeling her feel it.

She was still above him.

He turned his face slightly and found the edge of the fabric with his mouth. He worked at it, the way he'd thought about working at it, using his lips and his teeth, drawing it aside by degrees. He had no hands. It took a while. He didn't mind. By the time he'd got the fabric clear she was holding the back of his head very lightly, not pushing, just there.

He put his mouth against her.

He lay there for a moment with his lips just resting on her, feeling her warmth and her softness and the way she went very still above him, and then he started to lick. Long and slow, the full length of her, base to top, taking his time with every stroke the way he'd planned it. He could feel the shape of her with his tongue. He could feel where she was softest and where she went firmer and where the small tight bundle of her clit sat at the top of all of it, waiting.

He went there last.

When he got there she made the sound. He stayed with it. He pressed the flat of his tongue against her and moved it in the slow even stroke that she'd pressed into before, and she pressed into it again now, her weight coming down slightly, and he took that as the instruction it was.

She moved her hips. A slow forward roll, then back, then forward again. He followed it. He had nothing else to do but follow it and pay attention and he was paying very close attention: the way the pressure changed when she tilted forward, the way she'd pull back a fraction if he varied his rhythm and press in again when he found it back. He was mapping her. She was teaching him without saying a word.

His cock was straining against his joggers and he couldn't do a thing about it.

She started to move faster and he kept up with her and didn't change anything. She said his name once, the same way she'd said it before, low and certain. He felt her gathering above him, the small tightening, and he stayed exactly where he was and didn't deviate.

Then she stopped.

She lifted herself away from his mouth and sat back on his chest, her weight on her knees. He looked up at her, breathing hard, his mouth wet. She was breathing hard too and her face had colour in it and her hair had come loose at one side and she looked down at him with an expression he couldn't fully read.

"Not yet," she said.

"Iz."

"Not yet."

He lay there.

She moved down his body and sat back on his thighs and looked at the front of his joggers.

"Lift up."

He raised his hips as best he could and she drew them down to his knees, the same way she'd done in the bathroom, except this time she didn't pause. She looked at him for a moment, hard and pointing up at his stomach, and then she shifted back and brought one foot up and set the sole of it flat against the side of him.

He felt the sheer nylon against him and closed his eyes and opened them again. She brought her other foot up and pressed it against the other side and held him between her soles, the nylon warm and smooth and thin enough that he could feel the heat of her skin through it. Her toenails were red. He could see them through the sheer.

She didn't move yet. She just held him there, her feet flat either side of him.

"Look at me Finn."

He looked at her.

She started to move her feet in a slow slide, up and down, her arches pressed together around him. He made a sound he hadn't planned on making. The nylon was barely anything, just a thin layer between his skin and hers, and that was somehow the whole point of it. He lay there with his arms folded on his chest and watched her do it and couldn't help any of it.

She was watching his face. She was in no hurry.

"Iz, please."

"You were the one who wanted to take his time.."

"That was different."

"Was it?"

She kept the same pace. He stared at the ceiling and then at her face and then at her feet moving on him, the red nails and the sheer nylon and the slow deliberate way she did everything, always the same way, as if she had all afternoon.

He came with his hips pressing up and his arms grinding into his own chest and the sound coming out of him in a rush, and she kept her feet moving through all of it, steady, not stopping, and it spread across her toes and the tops of her feet and soaked into the nylon in dark patches, and she looked down at the mess of it on her stockings and then looked back up at him with the careful face on, except not quite careful, something else underneath it.

She held her feet still and looked at them.

"Look at the state of these."

"Iz."

"You've made a mess of them." She said it the way she said most things, flat, like she was reading the gas meter. "You'll want to deal with that."

He didn't follow her at first. Then he did.

She lifted one foot away from him and moved up his body again, unhurried, and brought it to his mouth, the toes first, the nylon wet and warm and his own taste on it. He looked up at her over the length of her leg.

"Go on."

He had no hands. He put his mouth to the top of her foot and started to clean it, working over the nylon with his tongue, the toes and the arch and the tops where it had pooled and soaked through, tasting himself through the sheer, and she watched him do it with her head tilted slightly and gave him the foot at the angle she wanted, turning it, presenting the next bit, in no more of a hurry over this than she'd been over anything else.

When she was satisfied with the one she gave him the other.

He did that too.

She took her feet back when he'd finished and looked at the stockings, damp and laddered now at one toe, and reached down and unclipped them from the belt, one and then the other, and rolled them off the way she always did, brisk and neat, and balled them together in one hand.

"I need to get back by two."

"Right."

She stood up and smoothed her skirt down and found her glasses. She looked at him on the sofa, his joggers round his knees, his plastered arms on his chest, his mouth still wet, and there was a brief moment where something very close to a smile crossed her face and then didn't.

"I'll make you a sandwich."

She walked to the kitchen in her bare feet, the balled-up stockings still in her hand, and he heard the bin lid go and then the fridge open and heard her moving about, and he lay on the sofa with his arms across his chest, and after a while he could smell toast.

He had twelve more days.