No Lock, No Luck

"Mums don't knock. They announce. There's a difference, and you'll only learn it the hard way."

There's something about a winter morning when you've got nowhere to be. The cold pressing against the windows, the grey light not quite making it through the curtains, and the warmth of another body beside you turning the bed into the only place in the world worth inhabiting. I'd woken maybe twenty minutes earlier, that slow drift into consciousness where you're aware of your own breathing before anything else, and I'd just... stayed.

Brianne was still asleep, curled on her side facing me, her red hair fanned across the pillow in that way she'd hate if she could see it. She always complained about waking up looking like she'd been electrocuted. I thought she looked beautiful, but I'd learned early in our relationship that telling a woman she looks beautiful when she feels like a mess doesn't land the way you'd expect. So I kept the observation to myself, just watching the gentle rise and fall of her shoulder, the way her hand rested on the swell of her belly even in sleep.

Six months. In three more, I'd be a father.

The thought still did something strange to my chest whenever I let myself sit with it properly. Not panic, exactly — that had faded sometime around month four — but a kind of... weight. Good weight, mostly. The same feeling I got when I looked at architectural plans and could see how all the pieces would eventually fit together into something solid and real. We had a plan. Finish my apprenticeship, save what we could, move into our own place when the baby arrived. Mum had been more than generous letting Brianne move in, setting her up with a studio in one of the manor's endless spare rooms, but we both knew this arrangement had an expiry date. You couldn't raise a kid in your parents' house. Not properly. Not the way I wanted to do it.

Brianne stirred, making a small sound that wasn't quite a word, and her eyes fluttered open. That moment always got me — the transition from sleep to waking, when she looked at me like she was still deciding whether I was real or part of some dream she'd been having.

"Morning," I said, keeping my voice low.

"What time is it?"

"Doesn't matter. Day off."

She smiled at that, the slow smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. "Day off," she repeated, like the words tasted good. "I'd forgotten what those felt like."

"Liar. You don't have a schedule. You're an artist. You just paint whenever inspiration strikes."

"That's not how it works and you know it." But she was still smiling, shifting closer until her belly pressed against my side and her head found its usual spot in the hollow of my shoulder. "Also, I haven't painted anything decent in two weeks. The baby's sitting on my creative impulse. Or maybe my bladder. Hard to tell the difference these days."

I laughed, my hand finding its way to her hip without any conscious decision on my part. She was warm, sleep-soft, and the thin cotton of her nightshirt had ridden up somewhere during the night. My fingers found bare skin, traced the curve of her waist, and I felt her breath catch slightly.

"Kain."

"Mm?"

"Your mother's probably awake."

"My mother's been awake since six. She's been awake since six every day of her life. It's a medical condition."

Brianne snorted, but she didn't pull away. If anything, she pressed closer, her leg sliding over mine in a way that made my thoughts scatter in several directions at once. Pregnancy had changed her body in ways I was still learning — her breasts fuller, her hips wider, that incredible curve of her belly that she sometimes complained about but that I couldn't stop wanting to touch. She'd been self-conscious about it at first, worried she'd become somehow less attractive, and I'd spent considerable effort demonstrating how thoroughly wrong she was.

"We should lock the door," she murmured against my neck.

"Probably."

Neither of us moved to do it. The door was too far away, the bed too warm, and the specific pressure of her body against mine was making rational thought increasingly difficult. My hand slid further up her side, thumb brushing the underside of her breast, and she made a sound that went straight through me.

"If someone walks in—"

"No one's going to walk in." I was already shifting, rolling her gently onto her back, mindful of the belly the way I'd learned to be. "Mum knows better. And everyone else is at work or school or wherever normal people go on Thursday mornings."

Brianne's hands found my shoulders, her nails dragging lightly down my back in a way that made me shiver. "You're very confident for someone who lives with his parents."

"I prefer to think of it as optimistic."

"Idiot."

"Your idiot."

She pulled me down to kiss her properly then, and conversation stopped mattering.

There's an honesty to sex that I've always appreciated. Not the act itself, necessarily, but what it strips away — all the careful performances we put on for the rest of the world, the versions of ourselves we present to employers and family and strangers on the street. In bed with someone you love, all of that falls away. You're just bodies and breath and the fundamental fact of wanting someone and being wanted in return.

Brianne sat astride me, her nightshirt abandoned somewhere on the floor, her hands braced against my chest for balance. The morning light had grown stronger whilst we weren't paying attention, grey giving way to the pale gold that winter sun managed in Tasmania, and it caught the red in her hair like something from one of her paintings. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted, and watching her move above me — confident despite the changes to her body, lost in sensation — I thought, not for the first time, that I was the luckiest bastard alive.

My hands gripped her thighs, steadying her rhythm, feeling the muscles work beneath her skin. Her pregnancy had made her more sensitive, quicker to respond, and I'd learned to read the subtle shifts in her breathing that told me what she needed. The sounds she made were soft, breathy things that she'd be embarrassed about later but that in the moment drove me half-mad with wanting her.

I was close. That building pressure at the base of my spine, the tightening in my thighs, the way every nerve in my body seemed to be converging on a single point. Brianne's pace quickened, her breath coming faster, and I let my eyes fall closed, let myself stop thinking entirely—

Two sharp knocks on the door.

My body registered the sound before my brain did, some primitive threat-response cutting through the haze of pleasure. But before I could react, before I could even open my mouth to say anything, Mum's voice came through the wood.

"Kain. Time to get up."

Brianne froze. I froze. For one terrible, suspended moment, we were statues — her still seated on me, me still inside her, both of us holding our breath as if silence might somehow convince my mother that the room was empty.

Another knock, harder this time. "Kain, I need to talk to you."

I tried to form words. What came out was more of a strangled sound, not quite language, the kind of noise you make when you're desperately hoping that if you don't actually respond, the problem might go away on its own.

It didn't go away.

The door opened.

Mum stood in the doorway, already talking, her eyes on something she was holding — a piece of paper, maybe, or her phone — and for one merciful half-second, she didn't look at the bed. Then she did.

The tableau we presented must have been impossible to misinterpret. Brianne's bare back to the door, her spine curved, her hair tumbling loose. My hands still on her thighs. The duvet tangled uselessly around our legs, concealing nothing of consequence. And the movement we'd been making — interrupted but unmistakable.

Nobody moved.

Then Brianne screamed.

Not a horror-movie scream, but that sharp, startled yelp of someone suddenly caught in a situation they'd give anything to escape. She twisted sideways, grabbing for the duvet, and I sat up so fast I nearly bucked her off entirely. There was a chaos of limbs and fabric as we both scrambled for coverage, the duvet proving woefully inadequate for the task, Brianne's pregnant belly emerging from the tangle like evidence in a court case.

"Mum! Jesus Christ!" My voice cracked on the words, somewhere between outrage and mortification. I grabbed a pillow, clutched it to my lap as if that might somehow restore dignity to the situation.

"Oh god." Mum's hand flew up to cover her eyes, her face already flushing. "Oh, for heaven's sake."

"Could you maybe knock?"

"I did knock." She was still covering her eyes, her voice strangled. "Twice. You didn't answer."

"We were busy!"

"Yes, I gathered that."

Brianne made a sound against my shoulder — halfway between a laugh and a sob, her whole body shaking. For a horrible moment, I thought she was crying. Then I realised she was laughing. Hysterical, horrified laughter that she was trying desperately to suppress, her face buried against my skin.

"This isn't funny," I said.

"It's a little funny," she managed, her voice muffled. "In a horrible, I-want-to-die kind of way."

Mum lowered her hand cautiously, as if expecting the scene to have somehow improved in the few seconds she'd looked away. It hadn't. She took a breath. Then another. I could practically see her filing this moment away in whatever mental cabinet she kept for things she planned to never think about again.

"I'll wait in the kitchen," she said, and her voice was almost normal, almost like this was any other morning. "Come down when you're... finished. Or. Not finished. Dressed. When you're dressed."

"Mum—"

"Take your time. But not too much time. I need to talk to you about something."

She pulled the door closed behind her with a firmness that suggested she was considering nailing it shut. Her footsteps retreated down the corridor, and then there was silence.

Brianne lifted her head from my shoulder. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright with the tears that hysterical laughter produces, and she looked at me with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"Well," she said. "That happened."

The mood, unsurprisingly, had evaporated.

What had been urgent and necessary five minutes ago now felt impossible to recover. My body hadn't quite got the message — there was still a persistent, frustrated ache that had no interest in the social complications my brain was processing — but the moment was gone. Brianne had already rolled off me, was already reaching for her discarded nightshirt, her movements quick and jerky with residual embarrassment.

"I told you we should have locked the door."

"You were right. You're always right. I'm an idiot."

"Your words, not mine." But there was an edge to her voice now, something sharper than the mortification warranted. She tugged the nightshirt over her head, her red hair emerging tangled. "You'd better go see what she wants."

I was already swinging my legs out of bed, scanning the floor for wherever my underwear had ended up. "I'm sure it's nothing. Probably just wants to know my plans for the day."

"She couldn't have texted? Called? Sent a carrier pigeon?"

"You know how she is."

"I do." Brianne sat on the edge of the bed, watching me hunt for clothes with an expression that had cooled several degrees. "That's rather my point."

I found my jeans crumpled beside the dresser, dragged them on without bothering to locate underwear first. "Bri, come on. She didn't mean to—"

"Of course she didn't mean to. That's not—" She stopped, pressed her lips together, looked away. "Never mind. Go. She's waiting."

"Hey." I crossed to her, crouched down so we were at eye level. "Talk to me."

"There's nothing to talk about. Your mother needs you. You should go."

"Brianne."

She met my eyes then, and I saw the frustration she'd been trying to contain. Not just about this morning, I realised. This was bigger than one interrupted moment, one embarrassing intrusion.

"You always do this," she said quietly. "She calls, you go. She asks, you do. It doesn't matter what we're in the middle of, what we've planned, what we might want. The second Louise needs something, everything else stops."

"That's not—"

"It is, Kain. It is exactly what happens, every time. And I understand, all right? I do. It's her house. We're living under her roof, eating her food, using her space. I'm not ungrateful. But sometimes I feel like..." She trailed off, shook her head. "Forget it. It doesn't matter. Go see what she wants."

I stayed crouched, studying her face. The freckles across her nose that she'd had since childhood. The stubborn set of her jaw that I'd learned meant she was holding back more than she was saying. The slight swell of her belly beneath the thin cotton of her nightshirt, our child growing there, our future taking shape in the most literal way possible.

"Three more months," I said. "We'll have our own place. Our own space. No one walking in on anything."

"You've been saying that for six months."

"And I mean it. We're saving. The apprenticeship finishes in November. By the time the baby comes—"

"By the time the baby comes, we'll have a newborn and no sleep and bills we can't pay and we'll still be here, in this house, with your mother timing our every move and your father—" She stopped abruptly, looked away again. "I'm sorry. I'm being horrible. I don't mean to be horrible. I just..."

"I know."

"Do you?"

I reached out, tucked a strand of red hair behind her ear. She didn't pull away, which I took as a good sign. "I know this isn't what you pictured. Living with my parents, pregnant, cramped into one room of a house that's got about forty rooms we're not supposed to use. I know it's hard. And I know I don't always... that I sometimes..." I struggled for words, for a way to name the thing she was pointing at without making it sound like an accusation. "Mum's had a rough time lately. With Dad being... the way he is. And she worries. About everything. I can't just ignore her when she needs something."

"I'm not asking you to ignore her. I'm asking you to sometimes put us first. Put me first." Brianne's hand found her belly, rested there. "Put us first."

The guilt landed like a physical thing, settling in my chest. She wasn't wrong. I knew she wasn't wrong. But knowing something and changing it were different beasts entirely, and I'd spent twenty-three years being Louise Jeffries' only son, the one she relied on, the one who didn't challenge or argue or make things more difficult than they already were.

"I'll talk to her," I said. "After I see what she wants. I'll tell her she needs to knock properly. Wait for an answer. Give us some privacy."

"Will you actually?"

"Yes."

Brianne held my gaze for a long moment, searching for something. Whatever she found seemed to satisfy her, at least partially, because some of the tension eased from her shoulders.

"Fine. Go. But Kain?"

"Yeah?"

"Lock the door on your way out. If she comes back, I'm not here."

I grabbed a t-shirt from the chair by the window, pulled it on as I headed for the door. The fabric was inside out, but I didn't bother fixing it — Mum had just seen considerably more than a backwards t-shirt could offend.

"I shouldn't be long," I said, pausing with my hand on the knob. "Whatever she wants, I'll sort it quick and come back."

Brianne had already burrowed back under the duvet, only her red hair visible against the pillows. "Take your time. I'm going to lie here and die of embarrassment for a while. It's very time-consuming, dying of embarrassment. Don't want to be rushed."

"Drama queen."

"Your drama queen."

"My drama queen," I agreed, and despite everything, I found myself smiling as I slipped into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind me.

The corridor was empty, winter light falling through the windows at the far end, illuminating dust motes that drifted in the still air. Jeffries Manor had that particular quality of old houses — a sense of weight, of accumulated time pressing down on every surface. I'd lived here since I was thirteen, since Granddad Charles's disappearance had forced Dad to take over and brought us all under this roof permanently. The grandeur had stopped impressing me years ago. It was just home now, with all the complications that word implied.

Mum would be in the kitchen. That was where she went when she was waiting, when she was thinking, when she needed something to do with her hands. I should go straight there, get whatever conversation was coming over with, get back to Brianne before her frustration had time to harden into something more permanent.

But my body had other priorities.

The interrupted... situation... had left me in a state that wasn't going to resolve itself through willpower alone. Every step down the corridor reminded me of the ache that still pulsed insistently, the need that had been building towards release before Mum's knock had shattered everything. I couldn't go downstairs like this. Even with jeans, even with careful positioning, there were some things a man couldn't hide from his mother, and I'd had quite enough exposure for one morning.

The bathroom was three doors down. Cold water, I thought. That's what blokes did in situations like this, wasn't it? A cold shower, shock the system, reset everything to factory settings?

I slipped inside, locked the door — learning from recent mistakes — and turned on the shower. The manor's plumbing was ancient, temperamental, and took approximately three geological ages to produce hot water, so cold wouldn't be a problem. I stripped off the jeans and t-shirt I'd only just put on, stepped under the spray, and immediately regretted every life choice that had led me to this moment.

Cold was an understatement. The water was glacial, straight from whatever underground pipe system the Victorians had installed, and it hit my skin like a physical assault. I gasped, swore, nearly slipped on the wet tile, and grabbed the wall for balance whilst my body tried to decide whether to go into shock or simply register a formal complaint.

The problem was, it wasn't working. The cold was certainly unpleasant — deeply, thoroughly, comprehensively unpleasant — but the persistent ache between my legs remained stubbornly present, apparently unbothered by temperature extremes. My body had been promised something, and no amount of icy water was going to convince it to simply forget.

Sod it.

I reached down, took myself in hand, and decided that efficiency trumped dignity. If I was quick about it, I could be dressed and downstairs in five minutes. Mum would never know. Brianne would never know. This morning's humiliations would stop accumulating, and I could face whatever conversation awaited with something approaching composure.

It didn't take long. The memory of Brianne above me, the sounds she'd been making, the way she'd looked in that pale morning light — even interrupted, even awkward, the images were vivid enough to do the job. I braced one hand against the tile, let my head fall forward under the spray, and let my body finally have what it had been chasing all morning.

The release, when it came, was more relief than pleasure — the easing of a tension that had been wound too tight, the restoration of something like normal function. I stood there for a moment afterwards, breathing hard, water streaming down my back, feeling vaguely ridiculous and thoroughly human.

Right. Shower. Actually shower this time.

I reached for the shampoo — and realised I hadn't brought any clothes.

My jeans and t-shirt were in a heap by the door. The fresh clothes I'd normally have grabbed were still in the bedroom, where Brianne was presumably still burrowed under the duvet, avoiding the world. I had no towel, either. The bathroom towels lived in the linen cupboard down the hall, which might as well have been on the moon for all the good that did me.

For a long moment, I just stood there, water dripping down my face, contemplating the series of decisions that had led me to be naked, wet, and stranded in a bathroom with nothing but my own stupidity for company.

Typical. Absolutely typical.

I turned off the water, shook myself like a dog — which helped marginally — and assessed my options. The dirty clothes were right there. Not ideal, but functional. I could put them back on, make a dash for the bedroom, grab proper clothes, and try again. Or I could wrap myself in the shower curtain like some kind of tragic Roman emperor and hope no one chose this particular moment to walk past.

The dirty clothes won.

I pulled on the inside-out t-shirt, wincing at the way the dry fabric clung to my wet skin. The jeans were worse — denim was not designed to slide over damp legs — but I wrestled them on through sheer determination, not bothering with the button because nothing about this morning deserved that level of effort.

When I opened the bathroom door and stepped into the corridor, I found Brianne standing three feet away, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised.

"Forget something?"

I looked down at myself. Wet hair plastered to my forehead. T-shirt inside-out, now also wet, clinging to my chest in a way that probably looked absurd. Jeans unbuttoned, barely staying up. No shoes. No dignity.

"I had a shower," I said, which was technically true.

"I noticed. The walls aren't that thick."

The heat that flooded my face had nothing to do with the cold water I'd just endured. "You heard—"

"I heard the water turn on. I heard you get in. I heard a lot of very creative swearing." Her expression remained unreadable, but something at the corner of her mouth twitched. "And then I heard the water turn off, and I waited, and I waited, and I thought to myself, 'He's going to come out of there without any clothes, isn't he?' And lo and behold."

"I was trying to be quick."

"Yes, I imagine you were."

There was a pause. Then Brianne's composure cracked, and she started to laugh — real laughter this time, not the hysterical edge from earlier, but genuine amusement at my expense.

"You're an absolute disaster," she said, reaching out to tug at my wet shirt. "Go get dressed. Properly dressed. I'll survive without you for five more minutes."

"You're not still angry?"

"I'm furious. I'm also entertained. The two aren't mutually exclusive." She stretched up on her toes, pressed a kiss to my damp cheek. "Go see your mother. Hear what she wants. And Kain?"

"Yeah?"

"Maybe put on some underwear this time."

She retreated to the bathroom before I could respond, the door clicking shut behind her with what I could have sworn was a pointed emphasis.

I stood in the corridor, dripping onto the ancient floorboards, and allowed myself a moment to appreciate the absurdity of it all. This was my life. Pregnant fiancée, interrupted mornings, humiliating parental intrusions, shower-based poor decisions. It wasn't what I'd pictured when I'd imagined being twenty-three. It wasn't glamorous or impressive or particularly adult.

But it was mine. Ours. And despite everything — the frustrations, the complications, the endless feeling of not quite having our footing — I wouldn't have traded it for anything.

Five minutes later, properly dressed and marginally drier, I headed downstairs to see what my mother wanted.