Derek and Danielle

Chapter Fifteen

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

As well, this work of fiction depicts sexual activities between teenagers, siblings and otherwise. As such it may be illegal to view this story where you live, and you should cease reading at this point if that is the case.

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Derek had felt uneasy from the moment he'd woken up that Saturday morning in October. Even a nice hot morning shower failed to ease his mood. He couldn't even work up the desire to jack off, like he usually did, during his shower time. Afterwards, he got dressed in some casual clothes. After he came downstairs to find Danielle and his parents all sitting down to breakfast, the same uneasy mood seemed to envelop the entire table.

His mother half-heartedly let a plate fall in front of Derek, and he looked at the barely-cooked bacon and the sad-looking fried egg in dismay. He looked around the table, and he saw that none of them had a decent-looking breakfast. Tentatively, he said, "Uh, morning."

Danielle, to his left, kicked his leg. Surprised, he frowned at her. She mouthed, "Shut up."

Annoyed, Derek kicked back, prompting a wince from Danielle as she glared daggers at him.

For their parents' part, it was pretty plain that neither of them were speaking to one another. In fact, his father was the first to escalate it to the height of ridiculousness as he said, "Derek, ask your mother to pass the salt."

Primly, his mother retorted, "Derek, tell your father that he can get his own salt."

"Do as I say, Derek," Samuel ordered.

Derek meekly reached to his right, where his mother had left the salt shaker, and handed it quickly over to his dad, not wanting to get caught between his parents.

The meal continued amid the tense, uncomfortable silence. Derek had to put lots of pepper on his egg to be able to eat it without tasting utter blandness.

Later, just as Derek managed to eat the last of his bacon—

"Danielle, ask your father to pass the ketchup," said Rachel in a hard voice.

Danielle reached out for the ketchup, only to withdraw in shock as their dad slammed his hand down on the table. "Enough of this! Rachel, we are going to have this out, whether in front of the children or not."

Derek swallowed nervously, and saw Danielle's eyes go wide as her glances darted between her parents. They half-cringed in their chairs, not wanting to get involved.

"Fine, Samuel. Do let's inform the children, shall we?" Derek froze as Rachel turned to look at them and said, "As you two know, we are highly-paid IT workers who do outsourcing work for other companies. The consultant who recommended the Sun workstations – he and his wife started a relationship with—"

"Stop!" Samuel's face had turned a rather alarming shade of red. "We'll take this upstairs. Now."

Danielle gasped and blurted, "Mom? Dad? You've been, like, in bed with someone else?"

Derek's eyes widened in realization. Suddenly, a lot of things started falling into place…

Acidly, his father said, "More like your mother seems a little keener on doing that part on her own."

Rachel pointed at their father and said, "That is not true, Samuel! It was that – that co-worker of his, making all those crude remarks and treating it like it were some kind of fraternity ritual! It's not my fault you seem to think him mauling me was somehow me wanting to duck off on my own with someone."

Weakly, Derek said, "Um, I've heard enough. Can we, uh, leave?"

Danielle, red with embarrassment, nodded and grabbed Derek's arm. "Yeah. Um, we'll go out. To the pool, okay?"

Samuel sighed. "Go. We'll explain later, kids."

Rachel's voice echoed as Derek and Danielle made a bee-line for the back door. "You are sleeping on the couch again tonight, mister, if we don't settle this. Let's go to our bedroom and have this out."

Inside the pool changing room, the siblings hid out and tried to process.

"What the hell was that, Danielle?! Our mom and dad—" Derek shuddered.

Danielle shivered as well, and rubbed her arms. "I don't know and I wish I could forget even what I did hear."

"Why'd you kick me?" Derek frowned.

"Derek, I could totally pick up the 'shit has gone bad' mood when I came down a couple of minutes before you. And I didn't sleep well last night, thanks to them. Last thing anyone needed was you trying to start a conversation."

Derek muttered, "Yeah. I didn't sleep that well either."

Danielle by now was pacing back and forth. "Derek, how the fuck much longer do we have to pretend in front of them? Mom and Dad are off doing God only knows what, and here we are, scared as mice to even let them think there's anything between us!" She stopped and looked at him. Through gritted teeth, she said, "Damn, I'd love to give them something else to think about!"

The blood drained out of Derek's face. "Please, no, Danielle! You can't. P-please, you c-can't tell them. Don't do it, I'm begging you!" Derek was ready to sink to his knees and plead. He sniffled, hating himself for feeling so weak in the face of Danielle's anger.

Danielle's expression shifted to deep concern as she saw Derek's reaction. She unclenched her fists and took a deep breath. "All right."

Another breath. "All right. I won't. For you, Derek. Okay?" She reached for his hand and locked her fingers with his, then drew his hand to her mouth and kissed the back of it.

Derek drew a shuddering breath as relief flooded through him. He clasped Danielle's hand in both of his. "Thank you. Just… thank you. I'm sorry, I just get terrified. I really do. Remember what you said? Jail, and all that?" Derek's teeth started chattering.

"Hey. Hey, relax, okay?" Danielle's grip on his hand strengthened and she grabbed his shoulder with her other hand. She rubbed Derek's tense neck muscles and he felt himself relaxing. "Seriously, I know we can't tell them. I just – fuck, Derek, you're not supposed to hate your parents, but sometimes, I do. Because they keep scaring us, and I know they don't know it, but still…"

Danielle sighed and refocused on Derek. "Look, lemme give you a back massage. God, you're tenser than I am!"

Derek dropped his hands and moved with Danielle to the corner, where the walls joined in the change room, as did the benches to sit on when someone would change their clothes. Derek sat perpendicular to her on the other long bench, and after they adjusted their positions, she was able to get started.

Derek sat up cross-legged, closing his eyes and breathing steadily. Danielle's hands on his shoulders calmed him. He said, "I thought you're supposed to, like, squeeze my shoulders and stuff?"

Danielle giggled. "No, you don't. You can look up anything online these days, I swear. Well, I found out how to do massages. You're supposed to just gently rub, not squeeze, at first. Feel how I'm just running my hands along your shoulders?"

Derek had to admit he was already feeling more relaxed.

Danielle continued. "So that's what they say to do. I was researching this 'cause one of my volleyball teammates hurt her shoulder, and she said this kind of thing helped. Some physiotherapist did this for her."

By now, Danielle's hands were gently running up and down his back, and he could feel the tension slowly slipping away. He had heard the expression, "becoming putty in someone else's hands," but now he knew what it meant. Danielle's technique, for a beginner (he supposed) was actually rather good, and he felt himself drifting off. After a couple of minutes, he mumbled, "'m so relaxed now."

From far away, Danielle's voice came to him. "Good. You're supposed to feel like that. Now I can do a little bit of a deeper massage."

Her hands now began squeezing his shoulders a bit, kneading out some of the last bits of tension near his neck. Derek closed his eyes in utter bliss—

And woke up in his bed about an hour later.

Confused, he looked around, then got off his bed. He heard the distant sounds of a game being played, and found Danielle blasting Nazis again. She looked up, paused the game, and smiled slightly. "Hey! You actually fell asleep! You kind of fell back against me, so I laid you out on the bench. I couldn't wake you, so when Mom came downstairs, I told her what I'd done for you and between the two of us, we got you up here and laid you out in the bed. She seemed to feel kind of sorry for us after I told her how tense you'd been and how upset I was. She apologized and explained a few things. She seemed embarrassed, but insisted we should understand what happened."

Curiously, Derek said, "Like what?" He plopped down on the couch near Danielle.

"Okay. So apparently, she and dad both are… like, bisexual?"

Derek whistled. "More than I ever needed to know."

Danielle rolled her eyes. "Yeah, tell me about it. But Mom wanted to get it off her chest, and, since you were out like a light, her daughter"—she pointed at herself and made a face—"was the only one she could talk to.

"So. Continuing on, this consultant dude was originally meeting them for business, but they caught a kind of a vibe off him, I guess? To skip a lot of stuff I'd rather forget about, Mom, Dad, and this guy and his wife were all messing around with each other. Last night happened because the consultant guy's co-worker somehow heard about it and wanted in. Only he started sexually harassing Mom, and Dad thought she was trying to sneak off with him."

Derek was stunned. "Wow. I definitely didn't need to know that about our parents. I guess they made up, though?"

As if on cue, muffled noises began echoing down the hall from their parents' bedroom that sounded suspiciously like the kinds of things Danielle and Derek had been saying to each other during their illicit activities.

The siblings, in unison, clapped their hands over their ears. "Not listening, not listening, not listening," chanted Derek. After a minute, the two of them carefully removed their hands from their ears. For the moment, silence. Derek whispered, "Turn the volume up and don't pause it again."

Danielle nodded and for the next couple of hours, the only thing they cared about was Medal of Honor.

At lunch, the siblings studiously ignored the looks of satisfaction on their parents' faces and the looks they gave each other. At the end of lunch, Danielle coughed nervously. "Um, Mom, Dad?"

"Yes, honey?" asked Rachel. Samuel looked at Danielle inquisitively. Derek looked at his plate and fumbled with the fork.

"Can you just… uh, not mention the details? Y'know, if you do that kind of thing again?" She turned red, and Derek suddenly became very interested in the last carrot sitting on his plate.

Samuel's chuckle seemed a little nervous. "We would have waited until you were older, I promise. It just… came out. You have to understand; we've always tried to make sure you got proper sex education, because one day we knew we'd have to explain why we see certain people a lot more than you might think normal."

Rachel chimed in, saying, "But we understand it might be difficult to accept. We may still go out from time to time, but we'll continue keeping the details to ourselves. There is one thing we need from you both – Danielle – Derek?"

The siblings looked at their mother. "We trust you not to go mentioning this to your friends at school. Even as a joke, or if you feel tempted to brag or gloat about it. Okay?"

Derek flushed and nodded, eager to drop the subject. He couldn't imagine going up to Rick and saying anything like that without wanting to bleach his brain.

But no, his dad had to get one last word in. "We might be, er, overnighting sometimes. Can we trust you both to not take advantage of that and start trying to hold parties?"

Both Derek and Danielle emphatically shook their heads no; Derek said, "No parties, I promise." Danielle quickly chimed in, "Yeah. Promise." Derek hurriedly piled all his utensils on his plate and jumped out of his chair. "Uh, need to clean up now okay?" he blurted in a rushed voice.

Danielle was two seconds behind him and between the two of them, they had the table cleared in record time while their parents sat, bemused expressions on their faces. They didn't try to keep the siblings as they excused themselves and hurriedly escaped the kitchen and dining area.

Upstairs, Derek looked at Danielle and whispered, "I need brain bleach!"

Danielle shuddered. "Let's just pretend we didn't hear any of that, okay?"

Derek nodded fervently. "I'm gonna take off and hang with Rick."

"I'll call Sara. We'll have girl talk about you," Danielle joked.

"Well, hopefully she'll have good things to say about me. If she asks, tell her I'll see her at school. Homework's been piling up and I need to get it done tonight and tomorrow."

Danielle mock-saluted. Then, in a low voice, she said, "About last night—"

Derek's heart raced in memory. "That was way too close! Listen, I'm sorry it got ruined for you."

Danielle shook her head and kissed Derek on the cheek. "It's okay. I was too scared at the time to even think about being horny anyway. I'll feel more in the mood later and probably take care of myself then."

Derek smiled, then his face grew solemn as he said, "We need a better system. Or we need to be even more careful."

"We need both," remarked Danielle. "Let's keep it down for a while, anyway. I hate admitting that, but it just won't be safe until Mom and Dad do their"—she winced—"overnighting-thing."

Derek nodded and briefly kissed Danielle on the forehead before he went to grab his phone and call Rick.

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