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The book opens with Ignacio waiting for the return of Antonio, his older brother, who had been in a self imposed exile in the US for the past seven years, during which time he had gotten married, and was now returning to their family home in Spain. Ignacio had been living in France and their parents were dead, so the house had sat empty for a long time.

While Ignacio waits and cleans the houses, he recalls the memories of his childhood, of how he had been born with his eyes shut, and they remained shut for sixteen days, until they opened and saw Antonio, who had been watching and protecting Ignacio during that whole time.

Their mother, a deeply religious woman, comes to despise Ignacio for his temporary blindness, believing it to be the Devil's doing. And so, even after Ignacio opens his eyes, he is left in the care of five-years-old Antonio.

"He waited sixteen days to open his eyes! [...] Without hesitating, he looked straight at his brother, staring at him as if he were trying to hypnotize him. [...] He never looked at me. Or at his father either. His unblinking eyes were still locked on his brother's."

Sharing a room, Ignacio and Antonio grow up very close, with Ignacio admiring his older brother. When Antonio reaches puberty, the relationship between the brother starts to become more sexual as they explore Antonio's body together. The "smell of sulfur" becomes associated with their experimentations, as their mother claims that their shared room smells like when she orders the maid to exchange the stained sheets for new ones.

"I could feel Mother standing motionless behind me, like a cat about to pounce. I deliberately looked at my brother's undershorts, at the burning needle that had shot hot sulfur onto my belly for the first time the night before."

The "smell of sulfur" is not literal, serving as an allegory to represent the sinful nature of Ignacio and Antonio's relationship, as sulfur is associated with the Christian Hell and their mother was very Catholic. In fact, their relationship can be considered doubly sinful, as they are practicing both sodomy and incest. But their mother doesn't stop them, despite letting them know that she is aware of what they are doing, she can't be bothered to actually interfere in her son's life. As for their father, Carlos, he was absent, often locked in his office, not paying attention to his wife and children.

"Mother often blamed my passionate love for you on that absent God. She always suspected you of taking His place in my conscience."

Ignacio doesn't do much, not being allowed to live the house, and spends his days at home, waiting for Antonio to return from school so his older brother can give him his daily afternoon bath. When Antonio starts staying late in school to study, Ignacio feels betrayed, as if his brother was placing him in second place. When the maid tries to bathe him in Antonio's place, Ignacio begins to cry, causing their mother to say that she is "sure he prefers his brother's hands."

"On that very day, I finally understood that the bath my brother gave me every afternoon at exactly four o’clock wasn’t just my daily bath, strictly speaking, but a ritual strewn with caresses, ripe with still unnamed desires."

However, they continue their nightly ritual of laying in bed together, where Antonio and Ignacio played with each other's body until they came.

"Antonio panted like an animal as I moaned his name and clawed at the nape of his neck, and the room, the night, and everything disappeared in a whirlwind of uncontrollable love. We didn’t even realize when the orgasm burst out. It was a shaft of light I fell into, clinging to my brother with my arms, my legs, my nails, my teeth."

Since Ignacio is not enrolled in school, Antonio takes upon himself to teach his brother everything he learns in class.

"Just the same, my brother neglected neither his studies nor my education. From natural science, we went on to caresses, from breathlessness to multiplication. Never will I be able to untangle eroticism from the earliest things I learned. Two times two is four kisses, and so forth."

One day, while Antonio is at school and their mother is out of the house, Ignacio visits their father's office room. After some conversation, in which Ignacio lies about not knowing how to read, Ignacio kisses Carlos and then runs out of the room.

Apparently, Carlos gets more appalled by his son not knowing how to read than kissing him, and so he pressures the mother to hire a tutor, even though the mother doesn't feel the need for. During the conversation, which Ignacio overhears, the mother once more states that she knows that there's something going on between the boys.

"Your son Antonio is teaching him all sorts of things in the other room. Maybe more than he should. [...] How to read and write, for one thing. They’re always together. They are the only family unit in this house, the only couple … with all that entails."

"Mother was well aware of everything that happened between Antonio and me. She didn’t give a damn about our sexual relations, but she couldn’t stand the universe of love my brother sheltered me in. My insolent stare clearly told her that I didn’t consider myself abandoned by God."

Carlos, upon hearing this, ignores and goes back to work. Either way, they do hire a tutor, don Pepe, who is very strict and uses physical discipline to get Ignacio to comply. When Antonio learns that Pepe had used his cane to beat Ignacio's ass, Antonio gets furious. The next day, when don Pepe arrives, Antonio confronts the tutor and punches him, threatening to do worse if Pepe dares to touch Ignacio again.

"Man's body, if you've read the Gospel, is a temple. And that particular body, my brother's body, is my temple. I've worshipped there since I was ten, if you know what I mean"

Their mother sees the scene and, always trying to keep her role as proper lady, invites Pepe for tea to make up for her son's behaviour. Meanwhile, Antonio takes Ignacio back to their room and they have sex with the door completely open, with the intention to make a statement. After they are done, Antonio decides to go downstairs for their evening tea, dressingo only in a robe, with Ignacio following suit. In the parlor, they sit down with their mother and don Pepe, who was still on rest after the punch. They all made small talk and Antonio pulls out a cigarette, further showing his rebellion against his mothers authority.

"Casually smoking in front of Mother may have been my brother's way of saying that he had decided to fight parental authority and the ludicrous world she had enclosed the two of us in. It was obvious that he would never again submit to her insane tyranny of silence. Ever since coming home unexpectedly an hour before, Antonio had been raising the ante of his rebellion. No more submission. He was spreading the freedom he had won in his relations with me to the whole house, and - for all I knew - was already doing the same in the world outside."

Antonio also reveals his plans to become an engineer and further presses that Ignacio should be allowed to go to school and visit town. There's only one issue with Ignacio attending public school: he wasn't baptized. The mother then hurries to plan both a baptism and a confirmation ceremony for Ignacio so that it would be complete in time for the September semester. All is arranged quickly, and the mother asks that Antonio be Ignacio's godfather since she considers that "duty that arises from the social contract, which is more powerful than family love". And so, while the proper rites are being performed on Ignacio, Antonio was holding him from behind, and he takes the opportunist position to finger Ignacio's asshole.

"I felt we had just carried out a heroic action, one of our very first steps in subversion, and no one could point a finger at us. It was braver and sweeter than when we embraced alone in our room, and though the cold sweat on my forehead could have meant any number of things, only my brother and I really knew why it was there."

After it's done, Clara, the maid, suggests that she and Ignacio accompany Antonio on his walk to school, so that Ignacio can see the town. They walk around for a bit, before reaching the school, where Antonio kisses Ignacio goodbye (on the lips!) and heads inside.

"Finally, my brother said he couldn’t miss his other classes, kissed me on the lips (in front of everyone, the bastard!) and left us for his friends."

The priest starts coming everyday to give evangelization lessons to Ignacio, and also to make advances towards the boy, who rejects them in loyalty to Antonio. When it comes time for the first communion, the whole family (minus Carlos, the father) goes to the country house, alongside the priest. Ignacio and Antonio are placed in separate rooms, much to their dismay, and in the first nights, they have problems sleeping alone.

"My hands went to the places where I was used to feeling my brother's touch. They found nothing but a soft desert, and stiffened with tension, like lizard’s tails chopped off with a stick. In vain, my back searched for my brother's chest, belly, thighs, where it had always rested. At night, my body felt so cut off from my brother's I was sure it would stop working."

Before the communion, Ignacio must confess his sins to the priest, who lets Ignacio know that the mother had already told him of Ignacio and Antonio's closeness. Ignacio teases the priest while recounting his nights with his brother, causing the priest to have a hard on. The priest asks if Ignacio wants to see it, but Ignacio says that he doesn't, that the priest smells bad, while Antonio smells good.

During the communion, Antonio kisses Ignacio in front of the priest, making for a very awkward moment for their mother, but no one comments on it. After it's done, Antonio invites Ignacio for a walk on the farm, since it's their future property. Together they climb some hills and find a cave with a spring, where Antonio lays Ignacio down and penetrates him in the ass for the first time. They stay there for many hours, making love time after time, and confess their love for each other.

"Gradually, I noticed that his caresses had changed character, that his hands were trying to make me aware of what they were doing and of my own body's response. I was in the presence of someone new, a man who up to then had always kept his real desire in check, and was at last going to satisfy it in me."

While the brothers wait for school to start again, Antonio finally starts taking Ignacio to the town on the regular, despite their mother's disapproval. They don't bother keeping their relationship a secret, with Antonio flaunting it in front of everyone in town. Some people would throw disapproving glances at them, but mostly people stay quiet due to the family being very rich and influential. Or rather, having once been rich, as soon they would start to have financial troubles.

"Antonio went everywhere with me now, his arm draped around my shoulders, and didn't hesitate to kiss me in public whenever he felt like it, even if there were people around."

"Everything that went on between my brother and me was in the family, and the family is sacred."

One night, Ignacio spies as their parents have their anniversary dinner, and during that conversation, Carlos tells his wife that he thinks that "Tonio is sodomizing the boy". Their mother laughs, as she had already known of that for a long time and even had tried to tell Carlos about it, but he was absent from the family daily life that he hadn't seen it until then. Either way, the mother reassures Carlos that it's alright, comparing with how Carlos and her had had anal sex before their marriage (so that she would still be a virgin on the wedding day). She says that they shouldn't interfere, even going as far as saying "in giving birth to them, I was bringing into the world a hunger for life beyond the margins of normalcy", indicating that she had indeed come around to support her son's relationship.

In September school starts and Antonio busies himself studying for his degree, leaving Ignacio feeling lonely.

"There was still tenderness, of course, but it was as distracted as the look you give a landscape you know too well. It was as if he weren't seeing me anymore, even when he looked right at me."

Soon enough, however, Ignacio meets a classmate called Galdeano, and they start an affair. At home, Ignacio is still with Antonio, who continues to be distant due to his focus on studying engineering. Ignacio suspects that Antonio knows of Galdeano, and simply doesn't care, knowing that it's nothing serious. And indeed, it isn't, Ignacio is just keeping himself buzzy while Antonio studies.

"No one, not Galdeano, not any of the others, could compare with my brother Antonio in bed. That was his domain, and so was my body, where he expressed all his masculinity to perfection."

Then, for further tragedy, Carlos gets very sick and so their mother goes with abroad with him to try to get help from expert doctors. Carlos had cancer and the treatment is costly, forcing the family to sell painting and tapestries.

During this time, the brother's relationship falls into ruins, as Antonio can't bring himself to be intimate with Ignacio while their father is sick. One night, Antonio decides to move into another room, but his conviction doesn't lasts long and he quickly crawls back to Ignacio. Still, Ignacio marks this moment as the beginning of the end for them.

After Antonio graduates, he gets a job offer in Venezuela and accepts it. While he reassures Ignacio that he still loves him, Ignacio is upset and becomes distraught after his brother leaves. With only him and Clara in the house, he starts to get very lonely.

"There was no way I could sleep in our bed; "our" room had become a sounding-box that relentlessly echoed the obsessive memory of my brother's voice."

Soon after, Carlos dies. The family is forced to sell their city house and move to the country side. Now only three of them, Ignacio, his mother and Clara, they settle in a boring routine, doing only enough to survive. After a few months, Antonio sends a letter announcing his marriage to Evelyn, the daughter of the owner of company he works for. Ignacio freaks out, screaming and using the letter as toilet paper.

Even their mother is disappointed, writing in response that "you forgot too quickly that you were already married. So you are nothing but a traitor". Still depressed over the loss of Carlos, the mother dies. Not knowing what else to do, Ignacio leaves Spain, despite never having finished his studies.

He never answers any letters that Clara or Antonio sends him, living as a recluse until he gets the message announcing Antonio's return to Spain, which brings us back to the beginning of the book.

After days of Ignacio waiting for him, Antonio arrives in their childhood home along with Evelyn. Ignacio is glad to see him again, but is deeply jealous of Evelyn. For a while, the three live like that in the house, Antonio playing husband to Evelyn and Ignacio sulking in his room. Until Antonio can't hold himself anymore and reaches out to Ignacio, and they have sex once again.

"You cover me with your trembling body. And I don’t know if I am hearing your words from inside or outside. But I hear them. As I smother. Your lips race over my face in a panic, like hot compresses to break my fever. A fever from that abscess which is all of me, which has to burst once and for all."

"Your pajamas are getting too tight, so you take them off, and enter me. And there are no more words. At last, I know you have become my brother Antonio again."

When Evelyn goes to check on why Antonio is in his brother's room for so long, Antonio lies that Ignacio is sick and he needs to take care of him. He keeps repeating this line day after day, until finally Evelyn comes to the conclusion that her husband is cheating on her with his own brother and decides to leave back to the US. Antonio is not sad to see her go. Ignacio and Antonio go the country house and explore the hills where they had once had sex and they reaffirm their love for each other and their intend of being together despite what society thinks it's right or wrong.

"I love you because you're mine. I love you because I possess you. I love you because you need love. I love you because you're disorder, and I don't like order. I love you because when you look at me I feel like a hero, and always have. I especially love you because I've finally understood that I can't talk about my love to anyone else but you, and that's what real love is. Two beings who make up one solitude, one silence."

In the city, they find Clara, and she moves with them, as she had always had a motherly role in their lives as children and is now the only family they have left. She's also supportive of their relationship, telling Antonio she's glad that Evelyn went away, as "you only love once in your life, and you've already been in love for a long time".

Clara, who narrates the last chapter, then proudly presides over a (not-so-official) wedding for Antonio and Ignacio, and they celebrate their reunion, that will hopefully last forever.