When I was 12 my father fell in love with a Dutch woman. Her name was Helen and she worked high-up in finance, my father met her because he was a remote accountant working directly under her and they spawned some form of connection over zoom conferences. It morphed into flirtation and soon those two couldn’t stop sending each other private messages on Skype and it wasn’t long before she had him relocated to Sydney in an office down the hall from hers. As if a mouse made their hole next to the cat’s bed.

Helen was an ex-rower, she was tall, much taller than me or my dad with a full-figured athletic body that’d aged gracefully into her forties. She lived in a penthouse on the harbour at the time and welcomed us with open arms. It was a couple of years before they married and I was yet to go through a proper growth spurt, I hadn’t surpassed my father’s measly 5’4, and compared to Helen, I had to turn my head to the side when she took me in a warm hug as her bosom enveloped the top of my head.

Then I met Helen’s daughter, Quinn. She was three years younger than me with blonde hair like her mother. I thought her a little odd at first but in hindsight it was hormones and a distinct lack of knowledge about girls. I didn’t like that she was almost as tall as me and our first few interactions were awkward and we didn’t hang out in our spare time, if anything we would occasionally watch a movie together. We weren’t close at that age; we were strangers forced together because our parents were in love.

Soon we moved into a bigger house to support our new family. Somewhere in Sydney’s North-Eastern suburbs and I started at the co-ed school that Quinn went to. One morning we caught the train together dressed in our navy-blue school uniforms, and I was playing Pokemon Heartgold on my DS and I could tell Quinn kept glancing at the screen until she was simply just watching. She asked what I was playing and I told her and she kept asking more questions about it. I showed her my pokemon, she liked Feraligatr a lot. She asked me why my character was a girl and I shrugged and said because I like her. In the afternoon I found her waiting by the school’s front gate for me and we caught the train home together. She told me she waited for me because she wanted to watch me play again and I found myself unable to contain my excitement as I went on and on about different Pokedex entries I thought were interesting. Quinn asked for a DSi XL and Pokemon Soulsilver for her birthday and those morning and afternoon commutes became some of my fondest childhood memories. We spent a lot of time together, huddled under the covers playing in the dead of the night, though she’d often tease me about having a smaller screen.

Then our parents got engaged and I started high school. Quinn no longer caught the train in the morning because she’d joined the volleyball program and had training before school instead, so naturally we drifted a little without that tying bond and our relationship moved more into the usual sibling hostilities where we’d argue over the TV or get pissed at whoever managed to make it into the shower first. When I hit tenth grade was when Quinn matched me in height and one hot summer’s afternoon, she came home from practice in her sports uniform drenched in sweat and we ran into each other in the kitchen. She went straight for the ice-cold jug and poured herself a glass before greedily gulping it down, I don’t know why but I couldn’t stop watching her throat bulge with each gulp. She finished the glass, still panting a bit but looking right at me, her eyes narrowed, and she stepped closer and I felt the warmth radiating off her body. We were eye to eye.

“You’re so short,” was all she said and walked past me and soon passed out on the couch.

One year later on our parents’ wedding night, somewhere far out in the country, Quinn and I were lounging beside each other on lawn chairs looking up at the stars, we were closer those holidays because we’d been binge watching IMDb’s top 100. The adults were inside still dancing in the farmhouse, the bass of The Police thumped through the wrap around porch. We were just chatting about random things and talking about what we were going to do when our parents went on their honeymoon. Then she asked me if I’d ever kissed anybody and I said no and she turned around on her chair to face me and asked me if I wanted to try it. It stumped me because maybe I did want to a little bit but I told her we couldn’t because now we were brother and sister and we fell into silence.

“It doesn’t feel like you’re my brother,” she said.

And of course she had a point, our parents often made a point of how different we were. My skin was olive and I had a mop of curly black hair and her skin was fair and she had straight blonde hair. I had brown eyes and she had blue eyes. We were both on our side facing each other.

“Can I see your hands?” she asked.

I held my hands out to her and she took them in hers, gently rubbing her thumbs over my knuckles, playing with my fingers and taking a good look at them.

“I like your hands,” she said. “They’re so soft.”

I blushed and said thank you and that I liked hers too. She pushed our left hands together and her fingers just eclipsed mine. “Mine are bigger though,” she giggled and I laughed too as I threw her hand away.

“I’m not done growing yet,” I said.

“Yeah, but I’m growing faster.”

She wasn’t wrong, in the last year she’d shot past my eye and I found myself looking up at her when we spoke, eye level with the tip of her nose.

“Imagine how much taller I’ll be when we’re older,” she said.

There wasn’t much point in arguing the fact. “How tall do you think you’ll get?”

“Taller than mum at least. Apparently dad was a giant too.” 

Helen was an enormous woman and I hardly came up to her chest and it made me feel weird to imagine Quinn in that position, towering over me so surely, having to literally bend her neck to look down at me.

“I wonder how much bigger your hands would be then,” I said.

“Maybe you’d juuust cover my palm,” she giggled at the thought of it, circling on her palm how small my hand would be. My imagination did the rest.

Our conversation slowly petered out and at the tail end of the night of our parents’ festivities, we went past all the drunk adults back to our room and pushed our beds together to lay next to each other and we dozed off to some random YouTube Let’s Play Quinn put on her iPad, her head lolled against my shoulder, and we fell asleep like that.

We never spoke about that night again. I think we both had the realization that we were technically and legally siblings now and that was the end of it. She was my sister and I had to love her like that. And I did.

Soon I was in my final year of school. I was planning on going into physiotherapy and heard of an exclusive program in Denmark that motivated me to keep my head in the books and I graduated with the ATAR I needed and after a successful application I was bound for Copenhagen for the next four to five years. By the time I left, Quinn was 15 and while I’d actually caught back up to her somewhat as puberty squeezed out the last of my height, she’d been going through a spurt, and I found myself staring far up at her again. She’d dropped out of the volleyball program and blossomed into one of the best upcoming rowers at our school and was no longer tall and skinny but tall and strong as she so elegantly followed in Helen’s footsteps. She grabbed me in a huge hug before I left and cried into my shoulder and told me she’d miss me, and I told her I’d miss her too.

College was obviously fun but I’m not one to go on about it. I made a lot of friends and had my flings here and there; I’d been dating a girl named Hazel for the last two years but we broke up a few months ago which made my fifth year lonely since most of my friends had moved on from the college by then. And to cap it all off, going into my final year a virus became widespread and shocked the world into lockdown. It was easily contagious and appeared deadly in some cases. I took all my classes from my tiny dorm room and my graduation was slated to be over a zoom call and by the time I finished my fourth year, the dorms were quiet since most people had moved back home or were encouraged to stay in lockdown. It was a sad way to cap off my college life, but these things happen I suppose, every once a century or so. I decided it would be best if I moved back home for my last semester which would be online anyway, so I packed my bags and told my dad I was coming back.

I caught a plane from the city airport and was excited to see my family again, I’d flown home a couple of times while I was at college, but I hadn’t visited since I dated Hazel. I missed dad and I missed Helen to some extent too, but I was mostly thinking about Quinn. Each time I’d gone home she was taller and taller. She wasn’t so active on social media but I saw glimpses of her aging in photos, how she looked more and more like Helen, but she had a softer roundness to her face whereas Helen was more angular, they had the same thick eyebrows, sky blue eyes, thin nose and dimples around their warm smile. The most recent photo my dad had sent me was of the three of them in front of the opera house where he was sandwiched between both of them, only coming up to their chest. Quinn had graduated from school at this point too, she’d become the captain of our 1st VIII boat and lead them to a close second at Head of the River which is the closest our school had come to winning in two decades. She was such an athlete. I zoomed in on a photo she’d sent me after the race, of her and her best friend posing with their silver medal, my eyes were drawn to the round swells of Quinn’s breast as they fought for space in her tight zootie but I quickly chastised myself for even having such a thought. I hadn’t grown any since finishing school and I couldn’t really wrap my head around what it would be like to face Quinn now.

I let my mind wander about other things for the rest of the flight and when I landed in Sydney I caught the train home. It was a ten-minute walk from the station to our house and I trudged up the hill with my suitcase before I paused in front of our white gate catching my breath and looking upon our two-story home with its sloping grey tiled roof. It was a hazy afternoon and the sky was starting to glow above the house with a soft lavender tinge. I knocked on the door and waited.

There were excited footsteps inside and they loudened as they approached the door and it swung open to reveal Quinn beaming down at me. She was dressed casually in a tank top and exercise shorts and her blonde hair was tied in a spiky bun.

“Bailey!” She shouted and pulled me into a tight hug upward, only my toes touched the ground. “Awwww I missed you,” she said into the top of my head and pulled me tighter.

By this point I had levelled out at a paltry 5’5 and it seemed like she had at least a foot in height on me as she pressed me deep into her chest. She wasn’t only taller now, she’d filled out all over, with broad shoulders like Phelps and a frame I wrapped my arms around like she were a tree, I felt the powerful muscles in her back tense as she hugged me harder again. She smelled like the Quinn I knew and it immediately flooded me with nostalgia and summer afternoons.

“I missed you too,” I said, our hug coming to an end.

Now that we stood apart, I gave her a once over, mostly out of reflex because of her stature and those trunk legs pulling her shorts tight, but it was long enough to where she’d noticed and had her hands cocked on her hip and smiled down at me smugly.

“Whatcha lookin’ at punk?” she teased.

“It’s just, you’ve grown a bit,” I matched her smile, I knew I shouldn’t let my eyes linger like that. She’s my sister.

“Only a couple of inches, I was taller than you last time.”

“Not this tall!” I gestured up at her.

“I don’t know… maybe you shrunk,” she flashed me these wide playful eyes and spun on her heel and beckoned me. “Come on, come in. Mum and dad are still at work.”

She’d grown more confident with age and had a sureness to her I hadn’t really seen before. And god help me but I couldn’t help watching her big ass sashay inside, chewing the seam of her shorts. I was replaying those words, maybe you shrunk, the thought of only being as tall as her knees, having to ignore the enormous presence of those long and powerful legs, her butt blotting out the sun. It was obvious she took care of herself and probably frequented the gym, but I couldn’t look at her like that, I couldn’t think about her like that. She’s my sister.

I lugged my suitcase behind me and followed her inside. It was similar to how I remembered, a bunch of shoes and heels by the foyer which opened up to varnished floorboards and a high ceiling, the living space where the dining table and kitchen and its marble island were to the left and lavish leather couches were to the right facing the wide-screen TV, toward the back wall was the spiral staircase that lead upstairs to the bedrooms, there were a bunch of posters and artwork on the white walls, Helen was somewhat of a collector. Quinn made her way to the couches and flopped onto one and patted the space next to her.

I left my suitcase by the stairs and sat on the couch next to her. She asked me about my flight and the last two years, and I opened up to her about Hazel and why we’d broken up and she comforted me and said that it was her loss anyway. We briefly discussed how crazy all this virus stuff was, but it was all anyone ever spoke about these days, so we moved past it, and I asked her about school and what she was up to now and she told me before the lockdown happened she was in her first year of a business degree and was rowing for the University of Sydney. By this point I’d gotten comfortable and had my back against the armrest with my legs laid out, my feet almost touching Quinn’s thigh as she lounged into the corner of the couch with her long legs stretched out on the floor. She was telling me some stories of her early clubbing experience and was fiddling with the bun in her hair, in doing so both her arms were lifted and my wandering eyes glanced at her biceps and I couldn’t believe the definition and thickness of her arms. So when her story was over I asked her how often she went to the gym and she laughed and I immediately felt embarrassed.

“What makes you ask that?”

I blushed like an idiot. “I- it’s, I mean. Look at you,” was all I managed in my flustered state.

“Oh you mean these puppies?” She flexed her biceps and what I’d thought was defined and full before exploded into a bundle of powerful muscle. “What you wanna feel ‘em?”

“No, that’s not –”

She interrupted me and shoved my legs off the couch and scooched over so we were right next to each other and her huge bicep was flexing in my face. Her overbearing size dented the cushion and pulled me into her gravity slightly.

“Come on touch it,” she said. “I’m pretty huge huh?”

I timidly poked the solid flesh and she wrapped her other over my shoulders and flexed her arm against my cheek and when I tried to push her off she locked her arm around my neck in a headlock. I started to squirm in her vice grip and she just laughed at me.

“Well I can tell who hasn’t been going to the gym,” she said and flexed again and her bicep flared against my cheek and squished my face into her left tit which I felt fully through her thin tank top. My face was beet red. 

“Get off me!” I heaved against her arm and it only made her laugh harder as she manhandled me and jostled my body against hers, cleanly lifting me from the couch at times, it made me feel a lot smaller than I was. Eventually she let me go and I cowered into the corner of the couch. “You’re so evil,” I said.

While my face was red from exertion and laughing, she started poking me in the rubs until I was giggling uncontrollably and smacking uselessly at her huge mitts yelling at her to stop. Her fingers dug into my sides and sent me into another hysterical round, I had no escape from the armrest and I sunk further and further into the couch as she loomed over and continued to tickle me.

“Stop! Quinn stop! Please!”

She went on for a few more moments until I was properly squealing. “Okay, okay, I’m done,” she said, holding her hands up but still with a mischievous smirk as she hovered above. “I forgot you were so ticklish.”

“I can’t take it anymore.”

She sat back on the couch and I caught my breath.

“But what if…” she began, and I saw her toes and the plush, wide balls of her feet come into view and before I could react her toes attacked my side and I burst into a fit of giggles again. Her feet were so huge that when she dug her heel in, her foot almost reached across my stomach and with me slunk down so low into the couch it felt like she could just trap me against the armrest with her feet and easily hold me there. And I proved my theory when I tried to push them away and she easily overpowered me and threw my hands off and squashed my arm to my side with one foot and she plied my weight against the armrest, the dense ball of her foot, slowly, but heavily playing on my chest.

“Stoooop,” I wailed as another round of tickling began, her toes wiggling back and forth against my ribs. I was dying, I was hysterical.

I did the only thing I could think of and leant forward and bit her foot and she yelped and yanked it away.

“You little bitch!”

“Please!” I held my hands up in defense. “I’ve had enough. Seriously,” I said between panted breaths.

“The audacity,” she scoffed. “You have to kiss it better first.” She raised her long foot, so it was right in front of my face, there were fading teeth marks on the side.

“I’m not kissing your foot.”

“Do it.” She moved it closer.

“Quinn…” I met her narrowed challenging eyes.

“Doooo iiiiit~” she started wagging her foot in circles, getting closer and closer to my face. Her toes playfully scrunching.

I was overwhelmed by this overbearing attitude of hers and I ducked under and launched myself off the couch, leaving her to laugh at my daring escape, clearly my bite didn’t hurt that much. I was feeling quite strange after getting tossed around so easily by her. There were occasions in the past where we fought mano a mano, it’d been somewhat of an even match (Quinn would probably refute that) but after seeing how she’d so easily pushed my weight around like I was some kind of ragdoll made me feel a way I couldn’t parse. Even atop the couch I could tell she was a big girl, how she took up almost an entire cushion with those milky thighs, her shorts ridden up in her messing around.

“Now you owe me.” She poked her tongue at me.

“I don’t owe you shit.”

“You know I could just force you, right?”

“Whatever.”

Something was going on inside of me and I had to get out of there. As I walked around the couch to leave, Quinn turned around, so she was leaning over the back of the couch, wagging her big butt behind her. “Don’t sulk you big baby,” she said.

“I just need a bit of R&R,” I weakly smiled at her. My face hurt like I’d been laughing too much and was probably flushed a deep red.  

She pouted. “Fiiine, fair enough. Sorry if I was annoying you.”

“No, no. It’s fine. I’m just tired is all.”

“Well, you go rest then,” she said and turned back around to face the TV and sunk into the couch. “I’ll get you when dinner’s ready.” She flicked the TV on and opened Binge.

I grabbed my luggage and started to haul it upstairs. I heard Quinn shout after me when I reached the top of the stairs. “It’s good to have you back Bails!” That made me smile and I walked down the carpeted corridor and opened the door to my room. It was left mostly as I’d left it, my bed was made with navy sheets and my walls were covered by album covers I liked. There was a Totodile plush on my dresser that Quinn had gotten me for my 16th birthday. I collapsed in bed and stared at the aircon vents on the ceiling. I was trying to think about anything other than what I couldn’t stop thinking about. Quinn. She was all I could see when I closed my eyes. How I felt the skin on the back of my neck fold when I took in her enormity as she loomed from the doorway for the first time. How she’d so easily buried me in a headlock and held me against her warm body, she had softness to her but when she tensed those muscles, I felt the work she put in rise to the surface. Those soft, broad padded feet of hers, worn golden with callous from how often she was on her feet, I looked down at myself and remembered how one foot could almost cover the width of my torso. I felt a stir in my pants, and I rolled over and growled into my pillow. Was it because I was lonely? Was that why I felt it was okay to fantasize about Quinn? She is your little sister, I told myself that over and over again. She is your little sister. And again, she is your little sister. At which point another part of me became fed up. Stepsister, actually. I felt my ears go hot. And she’s not exactly little. And she’s fucking gorgeous. Now was that so hard to admit?

But I couldn’t do it. It felt too wrong. I distracted myself on my phone until I passed out drooling on my pillow. 

*

I woke up in a jet-lagged daze to Quinn leaning in my room from the doorway, knocking on my wall.

“Hey sleepy baby,” she said.

I mumbled something in response.

“Dinner’s here.” Her voice was warm.

“Mmm,” I rolled over yawning as I sat up in bed. “I’ll be down in a sec.”

Quinn disappeared and I heard her footsteps thud downstairs. Eventually, after pulling myself from bed, I tiredly made my way down too and was greeted by my dad and Helen as they both rose from the dining table to greet me. It was all hugs and kisses and it’s always funny to go from hugging dad, who is one of the few people I know that are shorter than me, to then hugging Helen who is among one of the tallest people I know. Her and Quinn at this point. I sat across from Quinn next to dad and we were having takeaway Thai that night since they worked late. Much like my discussion earlier with Quinn we went over everything that’d happened in the last two years and by the time we were finishing our meals, conversation had dulled slightly, so Quinn spoke up. She looked at Helen and said, “Bailey was surprised how tall I’d gotten.”

Helen heartily laughed and dad was smirking too. “How tall would you have been last time Bailey was here?” Helen asked.

“I think I was just over six foot,” Quinn said matter of factly and looked at me, twirling the last of some pad thai onto her fork.

“And what about you Bails?” Dad asked.

“I don’t know I don’t measure myself.”

“I feel like you were only up to my chin,” Quinn said.

“Wow you’ve got such a good memory.”

She poked her tongue at me.

“We must have photos from the beach trip,” Dad said excitedly and pulled out his phone to start looking through his pictures, he loved taking photos on his phone.

“That was years ago honey,” Helen said. “Get up you two I want to see.”

I could tell Quinn was hiding the satisfaction she got from making me compare my height with her in front of our mum and dad and she flashed me these wide eyes and a delighted smirk as if to say ‘gotcha’ and she pushed her chair back and rose. Helen had always found the height disparity between me and her daughter hilarious and often referred to me and dad as their ‘little men’. I wasn’t going to cause a scene over some lighthearted ribbing, so I stood up and Helen immediately clasped her hands together and cooed at the sight of us.

Quinn and I stood at the end of the table and she wrapped her arm around my shoulders and pulled me into her, she was still wearing the casual wear from before and I leaned to the side so my cheek didn’t collide with the side of her boobs but she just pulled me tighter and smushed me against her soft tank top covered flesh, which didn’t exactly leave much to the imagination. The rest of my body was easily outsized by her too, the curve of her hip dug into my stomach below my ribs and I felt her massive butt rounding out the back as she kind of wiggled into me slightly as if she was really trying to feel how much smaller my body felt against hers. Of course, it was mostly for Helen’s amusement it seemed as she happily clapped and aww’d at drastic the difference in our height as grown adults.

“Last time I checked I was half an inch over six seven,” Quinn said proudly.

“That’s my girl,” Helen said.

I looked at dad and he shrugged. “Sorry about the genes son,” he smiled.

“Thanks dad,” I said.

“Now go back-to-back,” Helen made a little spinning motion with her finger.

Quinn and I complied and I felt the plushness of her butt spread across my back, wider than my back as she backed right into me. She looked down at me over her shoulder and giggled. “Aren’t you supposed to be my big brother?” She wiggled her butt into me, pushing me off balance.

“That’s too precious,” Helen said, then to my dad. “Quinn’s leg is almost as tall as Bailey.”  She was exaggerating of course.

It began to feel weird with all this attention on my lack of height and I stepped away from Quinn and sat back down. Quinn sat down too and was trying to catch my eye but I wouldn’t look away from my empty plate as I poked it awkwardly with my fork. Mum and dad started to talk about work and I felt Quinn kick my foot under the table, finally I gave in and looked at her and she pointed at me and then pinched her finger and thumb together and mouthed ‘so little’.

That was too much and I got up and used my jetlag to excuse myself. I left my family at the table and rushed upstairs to my room and jumped into bed, face down in my pillow. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep but it was no use and my mind kept settling on visions of Quinn. And a war of attrition started as I lectured myself but then reassured myself and soon the reassurances took over as I thought about the warmth of Quinn’s body as she held me against her hugeness, she liked to tease me about my height in the past but there was something about the way she did it now that was driving me wild. I knew why she drove me wild, it wasn’t a secret, but she was my little sister. I was her big brother. I was supposed to be her big brother, but how could I honour myself with such a title when compared to Quinn. She made me feel less than her with her sheer presence and eventually the lines blurred between little sister and big brother, and I settled on big sister and my hand snaked its way into my pants. She’s my big stepsister.

And what do you know, the next morning I woke up ill.