Fucking my brothers bully

The flat was never truly quiet, even when both of us were home and no one was speaking. There was always the low hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, the occasional click of the ceiling fan when it settled into a slower speed, and the distant sound of traffic from the main road three buildings away. I had lived there since I was twenty-one. My brother moved in when he was eighteen, the year our parents left for the two-year posting in Hyderabad. They had offered to take him with them or to put him in a hostel, but he had looked at me across the dining table one evening and said, simply, “I want to stay with akka.” I was twenty-three then. The five years between us had never felt large, but that night it felt smaller than the width of the table.

We shared the two-bedroom flat without much discussion about rules. He took the smaller room because it faced the courtyard and caught the morning light; I kept the larger one because I worked from home three days a week and needed the desk space. On weekdays I left for the office by eight-thirty if I had to go in. He left later, after he had made tea and stood at the kitchen counter scrolling through messages on his phone. Most mornings he would call out, “Akka, I’m going,” and I would answer from my room or from the sofa, “Okay, text me when you reach.” It was a habit that had started when he was still in college and the bus routes were unreliable. Even after he got the job at the software company, the habit stayed. Some days he remembered to text. Some days he didn’t. I never made a point of it.

Our evenings were quieter than most people would have expected from two siblings living alone. He came home between seven and eight, depending on the traffic and whether the team meeting had run late. I usually had something on the stove by then—rice, dal, whatever vegetable was left in the fridge. He would change out of his office shirt in his room, come out in a T-shirt, and sit at the small dining table with his laptop open. We ate while he worked, or while I answered emails, or while neither of us spoke much at all. After dinner he washed the plates if I had cooked; I washed them if he had. It was not an arrangement we had ever written down. It simply happened that way most nights.

He talked to me about the office more in the first six months than he did later. The company was mid-sized, the kind that still held all-hands meetings in a conference room instead of on video calls. He sat near the window on the fourth floor. His manager was a woman in her forties who mostly left the juniors alone as long as the work was done. The person who did not leave anyone alone was Gangadhar.

Gangadhar was thirty-two. He had joined the company three years earlier and had stayed in the same team while other people moved or left. My brother described him, the first time, as someone who spoke loudly in meetings and laughed at his own jokes. Later the descriptions changed. Gangadhar corrected him in front of the client on a call and then forwarded the recording to the team chat with the message “listen and learn.” Gangadhar assigned him a report at five-forty on a Friday and expected it by Monday morning. Gangadhar stood behind his chair during stand-up and asked questions that made the rest of the team look at their laptops until the moment passed. My brother never used the word bully. He said “he keeps giving me extra work” or “he talks a lot in the meetings.” I heard the rest of it in the way he sat at the table after those days, shoulders rounded, scrolling through nothing on his phone while the food cooled.

I met Gangadhar once, by accident. I had gone to the office building to drop off a folder my brother had forgotten at home. The security guard called up, and my brother came down to the lobby. While we stood near the turnstiles, a man in a light-blue shirt walked past us, slowed, and stopped. He looked at me for a second longer than necessary, then looked at my brother.

“This is your sister?” he asked.

My brother said yes. Gangadhar nodded, smiled with only one side of his mouth, and said, “Nice.” Then he walked toward the lifts. My brother did not introduce us. After Gangadhar was gone, my brother said, “That’s him,” and we left the building without talking about it further.

At home that night my brother was quieter than usual. I asked if the folder had been important. He said it was for a client call the next morning and that he would have managed without it. He did not mention Gangadhar again. I did not ask.

The closeness between us showed up in smaller ways than people usually notice. He still called me when the power went out in the building and he was stuck in the lift for twelve minutes; I stayed on the phone until the doors opened. I still bought the specific brand of detergent he liked because the other ones made his skin itch, and he never remembered to write it on the list. On Sundays, if neither of us had plans, we watched whatever film was playing on the old channel that still showed movies from the nineties. He would stretch out on the sofa with his feet near my end, and I would move them without comment when I needed more space. He never apologised for taking up the sofa. I never asked him to.

He started talking about Sravya in the third month of the job. She was from his college WhatsApp group, the one that still sent birthday messages and occasional memes. She had moved to the city for work a year earlier and had begun replying to his messages more often than she replied to anyone else’s. He showed me a photo once—her standing outside a café, hair tied back, smiling at the camera. He said she laughed at things he said that other people did not find funny. I said that was good. He smiled at his phone for the rest of the evening.

The plans for the movie had been mine. A single-screen theatre near the old market was showing a film we had both watched as children, the one with the songs our mother used to play in the car. I bought the tickets on a Wednesday for the Saturday 7:40 show. I told him while we were eating dinner. He said yes immediately, then added that he would check with Sravya in case she wanted to come. I said the tickets were only two. He nodded and went back to his laptop. I assumed that meant he understood.

On Thursday evening he came home later than usual. He changed, sat down, and said Gangadhar had kept him back to redo a slide deck that another person on the team had already approved. He did not raise his voice. He simply listed the times—started at four, finished at seven-fifteen, missed the bus he usually took. I put his plate in front of him and asked if he wanted the leftover sambar heated. He said yes. While the microwave ran, he checked his phone and smiled at something on the screen. I did not ask who it was.

Friday was ordinary until the afternoon. I was working from home. My brother texted at three-twenty to say the client call had gone well and that Gangadhar had not spoken much. I replied with a thumbs-up emoji. At six-fifteen he texted again: Sravya is free tomorrow. She wants to see the movie. Can I take her?

I was standing in the kitchen when the message arrived. The rice was already measured in the cooker. I read it twice. Then I typed, The tickets are in my name. I already paid. He replied almost at once: I’ll pay you back. Or we can all go? But there are only two seats. I stared at the screen for a long moment. The cooker beeped. I turned it off, opened the lid, and watched the steam rise. Then I typed, It’s fine. Take her.

He sent a string of thank-you emojis and a message that said he would make it up to me next week. I put the phone face-down on the counter and finished cooking. When he came home at seven-forty he was already smiling. He talked about the theatre, about how Sravya had said she liked the old songs, about whether they should eat before or after. I listened and served the rice. He offered to wash the plates. I said I would do them. He went to his room to change and call her. I stood at the sink with the water running and listened to the low sound of his voice through the wall.

Later that night I checked my phone again. There was a new message from a number I did not recognise. It had arrived at 1:17 a.m., while I was already asleep. The preview showed a photo of me from my brother’s Instagram story—the one I had posted three days earlier, standing in the kitchen in a pale yellow kurta, holding the coffee mug he had given me. The message read: Saw you on your brother’s story. Pretty. Come out sometime. I know places.

I did not open it fully until the next morning. When I did, I saw the profile picture: a man in a light-blue shirt, standing in what looked like an office corridor. I recognised him. I typed Not interested and sent it. The reply came within a minute: Don’t be like that. Your brother talks about you. Says you’re close. I can be close too. I blocked the number. Then I unblocked it, read the messages again, and blocked it a second time. My brother was still asleep. The fan in his room turned at its usual speed. I put the phone down and went to make coffee.

Saturday arrived without further messages from the unknown number. My brother left the flat at six-thirty, dressed in the shirt I had ironed for him two days earlier. He said he would be back by eleven. I said okay. The tickets were still in my bag. I took them out, looked at the seat numbers, and put them back. The biryani I had ordered arrived at seven-fifteen. I ate half of it standing at the counter and put the rest in the fridge. The flat was quiet except for the refrigerator and the fan. I sat on the sofa with the remote in my hand and did not turn the television on. Outside, the traffic moved at its usual evening pace. Somewhere in the city my brother was sitting in a dark theatre with Sravya’s hand on his arm, watching a film we had planned to watch together. I stayed where I was until the food was cold and the light outside the window had changed, and I did not text him once.