With your new 'magic' socks in your backpack you make your way home, going through a mental list of the stuff you need to get done before you can start your weekend; homework being chief among them.
As you walk through the front door you almost trip on one of your younger brothers haphazardly discarded shoes and a jacket.
"Hey, anyone home? Benji you left your damned shoes right in front of the door again!".
Waiting for a reply you make your way to the kitchen and grab a can of soda, but hearing nothing you assume you’re home alone. "The correct thing to do would be start my homework first, tidy my room and then chill, buuuuuuut" your voice trails off, deciding it’s been a long week and you deserve a little break before jumping back in to school work - with a boring english essay of all things.
Drink in hand you head up to your room, wrinkling your nose at the whiff you get of your gym bag as you sling it over your shoulder, "if I smell anything like that I need a shower".
You dump it with your backpack by your desk and kick your sneakers off at the foot of your bed. Then you start to take off your clothes, leaving them in a pile in the middle of your bedroom. Standing in only your boxer briefs and socks, you flex a little to yourself, thinking that maybe a little more time spent in the gym wouldn’t be so bad - maybe you could try out for a school team. After all, no one wants to date a lanky 16 year old whose little league younger brother has more muscle definition.
Shuffling your way over to the bathroom you turn on the shower and while it’s warming take a second to critique yourself in the wall sized mirror. You aren’t an Adonis for sure, but you really aren’t all that bad. Just had a growth spurt, 5'11 last time you checked, still got braces but the orthodontist said you should be able to get them off in a few months. Light brown, short, and if you do say so yourself kind of fashionable haircut. Green eyes, a few freckles - all in all you aren’t really handicapped in the looks department. Now you just need to work on your body a bit, a little too pale and no real muscle definition to speak of, not a lot of body hair; but then maybe that’s a good thing.
“Just a bit of effort, and I’ll be a hottie” you wink to yourself ironically, and drop your boxers kicking them off and hopping on to each leg to take off your socks. After a long and ‘intimate’ shower, ‘no better way to unwind’ you think, you walk back to your room towel wrapped around your waist. On the way passing your brothers open bedroom door - noticing your laptop on his bed.
“AGAIN? Every time you touch my computer it ends up with viruses and porn popups!”.
Still wet you decide to grab it in a minute when you’ve finished drying off and are dressed. You head over to your dresser and grab clean underwear, a white t-shirt and some deep red basketball shorts. Putting one leg into your underwear you hear a faint buzzing, “always when I’m right in the middle of something”. Rushing to get your other leg in and pull your boxers up, perhaps a little too fast, you wince as you give yourself a slight wedgie. You walk over to your earlier discarded jeans and pat your pockets, taking out your cell phone.
“Yeah mom, I’m home, no he isn’t yet … you know all he does is whine. I’m not going to cook for… fine, but I’m going to the movies tomorrow with Mike and Charlie so I need it back by then. Yeah, bye”.
Your mom was telling you she wouldn’t be home from work until late, and with your dad away until Tuesday with business you’d have to sort out your own dinner … and your brothers.
She recommended take out, and you’re buying. As you pull your shorts up and grab for the t-shirt you wonder when shorty will get home, you’re already starting to get hungry and knowing him he could turn up in ten minutes or three hours. Having ended the call with your mom on 4% charge, you also reach down to plug your phone in to the charging cable laying on the floor. And then feeling a sudden chill on the warm spring evening with your hair still slightly damp and your arms and legs still glistening in parts, you close your open window and decide to put on some socks.
Deciding you may as well test drive the new pair you blindly rifle through your backpack until you can feel the polythene packaging, pull them out of your bag and rip the packet open, ignoring what you think are the usual promotional jargon and care instructions on the back. “Man these are soft” you begin to pull them on “I thought I got no-shows, not crews", you sigh slightly "… still I’m only at home” after all, long socks with shorts looks pretty dumb.
You take a sip of your soda and remember what you told your mom earlier, you’re going to the movies tomorrow and you told the guys you’d pick the show time and message them. You look first in the direction of your charging cell phone, and then at your desk “aaand Benji has my laptop”.
Heading across to your brothers room you curse him again under your breath, “dad really needs to get him a tablet or something, every time I turn round he’s taken my laptop for one of his boner sessions. I mean geez I know he’s getting older but the dude needs to consider … chaffing” you can’t help but amuse yourself with what in your opinion was a quite witty remark.
As you walk into his room to collect what is, after all, rightfully yours - you notice the sheer amount of stuff strewn around his room. There is barely a space left uncovered by dirty clothes, school work, games, or just general trash. “Is that? That’s gross dude” you say as you see strands of spaghetti on his floor, “we had that for dinner like two weeks ago!”.
At first you try and make your way through the maze, but unable to find a ‘clean’ path to the bed on the other side of the room, and not wanting to get god knows what on your brand new white socks you look around for a minute. Deciding it’s far too much effort to go back into your own room to grab some shoes, you spot a discarded pair of Benji’s chunky black skate shoes.
You hope that they don’t smell like his room looks - picking them up they aren’t actually too bad, a first for your brother. Considering you’re over three years older than him, he having just turned thirteen a few weeks back, they won’t fit you properly, but you should be able to kind of tip toe to his bed in them.
You slip your feet into them, noticing the bright red interior and the signs of wear and tear from skateboarding and who knows what else. A cold shiver runs down your spine, you look up to his window “Closed. Maybe I need to put pants on.”
You then haphazardly make it to his bed, pick up your laptop and consciously avoid the rumpled up tissues that seem to have missed his wastebasket as you make your way back out, not even noticing that your feet have shrunk just enough for you to have subconsciously gone from standing on your toes in his shoes, to walking normally.