Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 13:32:30 -0600
From: Rusty Slocum <rustyslocumerotica@gmail.com>
Subject: Because -- 4-1 Primary Colors

The Usual Disclaimers.  Don't read if for some reason you're not supposed
to.  The fictitious characters in this story are any age you want them to
be, but the actors portraying them are all consenting adults.  Please
realize this is fantasy.  Doing anything like this in real life could
seriously jeopardize all parties, possibly resulting in psychiatric
counseling or even legal penalties.  This story belongs to me copyright
2014 and may not be reposted on any other site or situation without my
express authorization.  Write your own dysfunctional porn.  And remember to
donate to Nifty.  Let's face it, without Nifty you'd be stuck with the
generic porn of other sites, and who wants that shit?

Thanks to everyone who wrote for their kind words and encouragement!  This
includes: Matt, John, Rob, Robert, Bill, Blake, Leen, John, Kinky Female,
and Levi!  You guys rock!


BECAUSE
by
Rusty Slocum


	Mom's shower is huge.  Literally.  Room enough for four at least,
maybe five.  The spigot, directly overhead, sprays water down liberally
over the whole area.  I stood there under the stream, eyes closed, trying
to relax.  Whatever happened with Sam, I had an open invitation to Chad's
hole tonight, and if I had to do pizza and movie with my brother, I could
easily go over later.  My cock stirred as I imagined the delights we'd
surely share.

	So lost in the tranquility and heat and lustful imaginings was I
that I did not hear the shower door click open and then closed.  I did not
sense the presence of another body until I felt a touch on my arm.
Startled, I let out a Janet Leigh-like squawk of surprise and blasted open
my eyes.

	Sam, my little brother, his glasses missing and making him appear
even younger than his tender years, stood next to me there under the spray.
He was, needless to say, naked.  "Is this what you wanted to see when you
stared me down, Damien?" he asked, his hands sweeping up and down his
skinny, completely hairless body.  As I stared at him, quite possibly more
astounded than I have ever been in my life, even counting the surprises of
last night and this morning, Sam dropped to his knees and looked up at me,
heedless of the water showering down upon his upturned face, and then he
leaned forward and lightly kissed the head of my cock.  "And is this what
you wanted me to do, sir?"  He bent his head, staring at the tiled floor,
and waited for my answer.

	Guess what I replied?

	"Yes," I said.  "Oh, yes."

	* * * * * the fourth orgasm – section one – Primary Colors

	At my words, Sam raised his face and said, with a sly but amiable
smile on his lips, "I thought you'd say that."

	For a split second I wondered if I'd been gooked, although a cock
kiss seemed pretty extreme for a practical joke.  "Uh, well, I mean--"

	He stood and reached up and laid a finger on my lips.  "And that
too.  Sir."  He hesitated, then said, "Ssh, sir, let me do this.  Please."
I watched, bemused, as he lathered his hands with shampoo, and, at his
silent request, I lowered my head and bent my knees and let him wash my
hair.  His small but strong fingers massaged the shampoo into my scalp, and
cold shivers made even more pointed by the hot water telegraphed ecstasy
all the way down to my toes.  My cock, already semi-erect from my idle
imaginings of the night to come, stiffened to a halfie, and I sneaked a
peek at Sam, but if he noticed he said nothing about it.  His own penis
hung flaccid, small and shy in seeming timidity, over those monster-sized
testicles and under a smooth lower abdomen.  Surely he was old enough for
crotch hair, I thought, I'd had mine for a couple years by that age.

	"I shave, sir," Sam murmured without looking at me, "down there, I
mean."

	"Why?" I asked.

	He answered, "My pubic hair is . . . untidy."  A small shiver of
revulsion quirked the corner of his mouth.  I was floored, but as I rinsed
my hair, I stumbled over my own hypocrisy.  Shaved pussy turns me on; so
naked, so clean, so inviting; it embodies, to me, the base essence of
femininity.  So on a guy, a naked crotch just appears, yeah, unmanly.  I
remembered when I discovered that initial ultra-wispy strand sprouting down
there; it thrilled me even more than shooting cum for the first time.
Because it signaled an end to childhood, a sundering of innocence.  Because
anyone that had occasion to see me naked must recognize that I was growing
up.  Because it meant that yes, someday soon, I would be a man.  So maybe
you can understand why such a simple thing as a shaven male crotch
perplexed, nay, offended me, and even inspired in me a false sense of
superiority.  I say false because, given what I have stated above, I can
but conclude that I disdained a smooth crotch as a symptom of effeminacy,
and Sam, clearly, fell far outside the stereotypical sissy image.  My
younger brother is all boy, all the time, and I'm not talking about in age
so much as in temperament and proclivity.  Yeah, he's a brain, all right,
at least in abstract subjects such as language and social sciences (numbers
bother him; it runs in the family), and maybe he's not as athletically
inclined as me, but he's a sturdy, rowdy little bastard for all that.  My
false sense of superiority crumbled to ash the instant I realized that
masculinity presents itself in many forms, and 'twould be prudent to remind
myself that just because I couldn't see it didn't mean it wasn't there.

	Which is just my long-winded way of saying that I'd neither seen
nor even imagined Sam so aggressively male as at that moment, when he stood
beside me in Mom's shower, naked and bare and submissive in word and deed,
and it threw me.

	Anyhow.

	While I'd been ruminating, Sam had traded the shampoo for the
cucumber-melon body wash I favor (don't be a h8r; it makes me feel pretty)
and soaped a cloth, which he rubbed, in gently sweet circular motions, over
my face and neck and shoulders, down across my chest.  My dick had drooped
back to normal during my introspection, but that cloth across my nips
nudged it back up.  This time Sam noticed.  He hesitated for the briefest
possible fraction of a second, and his eyes flickered that way.  The
attention caused a further stiffening.  Then Sam moved his eyes back up,
refocusing on the cloth and my chest.  The deliberate indifference boned me
up to full.  Sam ignored it, but he resolutely washed lower, across my
belly, and lower still, until the cloth brushed untidy pubes.  I hissed,
anticipating his touch on my erection; alas, he veered off and scrubbed,
one at a time, my flanks and legs and feet.  At one point, as he knelt in
front of me and soaped between my toes, my rager brushed against his
forehead.  No reaction from him whatsoever, although it sure sent a tingle
through me.  After finishing my front (and he was one thorough sonofabee)
he stood and slid around behind me (his own penis still flaccid, though
hanging lower from the heat) and started on my back side. He washed all the
way down my spine and lower back, lingering a little long (in my mind, at
least) on the cheeks of my ass.  He didn't scrub the crack, as yet; he
circled back around and grasped my penis with an almost clinical
detachment, and I let slip a moan at the disinterested, impersonal touch of
his soapy, cloth-covered fingers.  He didn't linger there long; he dropped
me with unseemly haste and attacked my hangers, savagely enough that I
hissed again, this time in discomfort, and he eased the unnecessary
roughness, glancing up at me apologetically.  Then he squatted again, still
ignoring my rager, and, nudging my legs apart, he worked the cloth across
my taint and on up into my crack, digging into my hole so deep that I
pulled a Chad and came up on tiptoe, almost blacking Sam's eye.  After he
finished lathering, he stood, tossed the washrag away, and rotated me
slowly around to rinse, using his fingers to sluice away the soap.  When he
judged me squeaky clean enough, he grabbed the wash again, this time for
personal use.  He scrubbed himself quickly and thoroughly, while I watched,
both confounded and fascinated.  His cock remained monumentally unimpressed
with any of the proceedings; my own remained enraptured.  After he rinsed,
he stepped back up to me, started to kneel before me again, and even though
I had an intuition regarding his next move, I grabbed him by the arm and
arrested the movement.

	"Sam."  When he raised his eyes to mine, I asked, softly, as soft
and warm as the water raining down on us, "Why are you doing this?"

	Sam blinked at me.  "Later, sir," he said, and on his face he wore
a strange, enigmatic expression that I couldn't interpret.  It mixed in
determination, nervousness, and a sublime plea for my tolerance.  "Mom will
be --"

	I tightened my grip on his arm.  "No, now," I insisted.

	He pursed his lips.  "It's something I have to do."  A slight
hesitation, then he corrected himself.  "Something I have to see if I can
do."

	"But why?"  I let go his elbow and pointed at his limpness.  "This
isn't turning you on even half as much as it is me."  I wavered my index
finger between our two cocks.  "See the difference?"

	He appeared startled at my blunt inquisitiveness.  "But, Damien,
uh, sir, this isn't about me.  Well, not totally.  It's about you, sir, you
and your pleasure."

	"My pleasure," I said flatly.  Sam nodded.  "Okay, it would please
me very much to see you as aroused as me."

	"Sir?"  If his eyelids widened any further we'd be chasing the orbs
all over the shower.

	"Get hard."

	"Whuh --"

	"I said to get hard.  Now."  I crossed my arms; my cock pointed at
him, emphasizing my order.  Rudy would be proud.  "I'm curious about
something."

	"But I . . . uh . . . yes sir."  He reached down and grasped his
penis between thumb and forefinger, began frigging on it halfheartedly.

	"Oh for shit's sake," I said, pushing him back against the wall,
out of the spray of water; his head smacked against the tile with a thump,
and he cried out, but I hurried away from the scene of the accident,
uncaring.  I grabbed the cucumber-melon from the rack and poured a liberal
amount in my palm, then, knocking his hand away, I grabbed his peter myself
and stroked on it.  He gasped at my touch, gasped more from astonishment
than sensation.  "Get hard!" I demanded again, wanking relentlessly at him,
and, more quickly than I would have believed, I felt it stir and come alive
under my touch.  Sam whimpered, his eyes closed and his head thrown back,
and when I, on a hunch, cruelly pinched his right nipple, he groaned and
boned up completely.  I stopped stroking and pressed close to him,
spreading my stance and bending my knees until our crotches were roughly
level, and grasped our cocks together, the way I'd done with Rudy the
previous night.  Mine was a couple inches longer, and maybe an inch or so
thicker, but, as I'd suspected, our shafts curved together smoothly at
exactly the same angle, mine outward, his inward, towards his belly; we
touched skin to skin all the way down.

	"That," I said to myself as well as to Sam, "is so fucking cool."

	Sam, much less impressed than I, frowned up at me.  "Damien, sir,"
he said, a bit forcefully, "sir, may I please --"

	Satisfied, I let go our ragers, spread my hands benevolently.  "By
all means," I said with just a soupcon of sarcasm.

	He not-very-gently pushed me back, giving himself room to work.  "I
have to see if I --" he muttered as he knelt in front of me; the rest of
his words got shoved back into his throat as I grabbed his ears and yanked
him down.  He spluttered around my cock for a few seconds, and I shuddered
at the frissons of his irritated surprise.  I gave him a beat or three to
acclimate, then I started fucking his face, hard, sinking deeper into his
heat every stroke.  He brought his hands up and lay the palms on my upper
thighs, but he let them rest there, lightly, not resisting as I picked up
the pace and ear-tugged him up and down on my cock, corkscrewing his head
so his lips spiraled in irregular circles around my shaft.  At first he sat
there passively, accepting my direction, but at last he swallowed some of
my manic energy and cooperated with me, seeming to read my instructions a
split second before my hands moved him.  His tongue wiggled and jiggled and
giggled against me, clumsy but eager, and he kept his teeth well-sheathed.
He opened his throat to me, gagging some as I slid in but not at all
complaining, just working to coordinate his breathing and my thrusting, and
at last my entire bone rested in his wet fire.  I looked down at him,
relishing the sight of his skinny nose buried in my soggy upside-down
mustache, and he looked back up at me, his black eyes fathomless and
bottomless, and we stayed frozen in that pose long enough to forge the
baseline of the bond I burned to build between us, until he began to choke
in earnest and pushed his palms against my upper thighs, begging me to
release him.  I let go his ears and he came up off me with a gasp, his face
a very light shade of blue.  He didn't back away from me though; I didn't
scare him; as a matter of fact he looked up at me with both a challenge and
a plea in his gaze.  "Turn around, Damien.  Turn around, sir!"

	"What?"

	Sam snorted and said, echoing me, "Oh for shit's sake!" and he
grabbed my hips and physically spun me around until he had a face full of
ass.  "Bend over.  Sir," he said, nudging my legs apart, and almost before
I could move, he dive-bombed his tongue into my crack, zeroed in on my
unsuspecting hole, dug into with a hunger and ferocity that, had it a touch
more desperation in it, would have reminded me of Chad.  I braced myself
against the wall, grinding my ass back against the gyrations of his madly
fluttering tongue-fuck, lost in the head-buzz of having my younger brother
service me.

	And then I bumped and ground my ass against shower-misted air.

	I turned around, expecting to slide my cock back into his mouth,
but he'd moved away.  Now he stood with his back against the opposite wall,
chest heaving, a satisfied gleam in his eye and on his lips.  His cock,
still erect from my earlier ministrations, poked up out of his crotch like
an exclamation mark to the declarative statement of his posture.

	"What the hell?" I demanded.  Pointing the index fingers of both
hands at my angry, abandoned tumescence, I continued, "Come finish what you
started!"

	Sam shook his head, said one word.  "Mom."  Then he snatched the
towel I'd thrown over the door for my own convenience and bolted from the
stall.

	"Dammit, Sam!" I hollered, shutting off the shower and following
him out.  I was just in time to see his narrow, towel-draped ass disappear
around the corner into Mom's bedroom, heading for the hall.  At the same
moment I heard the garage door clanking up and the toot-toot blast of the
Saturn's horn, Mom's signal to come help bring in groceries.  Cursing, I
dripped and bobbled my way across the floor to the linen closet and pulled
a fresh towel out, hurriedly dried myself and wiped our spoor from the
tile, then loped to my room and threw on some clothes, including a
long-sleeve pullover sweater; its hem fell well below my crotch area.  All
I needed was for Mom to clock the rager that my dear soon-to-be-departed
brother left me wielding.  Not that she would say anything.  She'd be just
as embarrassed as me, and Sam would be laughing his ass off at both of us.

	Sam and Mom had most of the groceries and sundry other packages
unloaded by the time I appeared downstairs.  I helped with the last of it,
slamming the trunk and then the kitchen door behind me and almost dropping
the bags as I tried to shove them onto the counter with everything else.

	"Nice timing, Damien," Mom said drily, leaning against the counter.
Sam had settled onto one of the cane-back kitchen chairs.  He refused to
meet my eye.

	"I was in the shower!" I protested.  "If you'd waited--"

	"If I'd waited the ice cream would've melted into sugar soup," she
said.  She pushed off from the counter, reached into one of the bags.

	I shooed her away.  "Don't, Mom," I told her.  "I'll do it.  You
unloaded, I'll put them away."

	"My hero."  She popped up on tiptoe and kissed me on the cheek.
"Yum, cucumber-melon," she said, inhaling my fresh scent.

	"You going to let me put up the groceries," I complained, "or you
want to sit and smell me all day?"

	"I used to sit and smell you all day," she told me, to my horror.
"When you were a baby you smelled better than a new car.  Well, when you
didn't have a loaded diaper, anyway."

	"Hey, Sam," I called out, "you want sugar soup for supper?"

	He smiled at me, tight-lipped, but didn't answer.

	"Fine, then, I know when I'm not wanted," Mom said.  "I'll remove
myself and my undying maternal affection and free you to put up the
groceries in blessed peace."

	"That'd be great, Mom, thanks."

	"Except for these," she said, gathering several of the packages,
"I'll take care of these myself, so you won't be struck blind.  See how
much I love you?"  She exited the kitchen, laden down with enough loot to
found a small lesbian boutique, and within seconds I heard her slow,
careful steps going up the stairs.

	As soon as I was relatively sure she was out of earshot, I turned
and hissed at Sam, "What the fuck, bro?"  I flipped up the hem of my shirt;
my erection had abated some but still impressed a distinct outline in the
crotch of my jeans.

	He shook his head, his face just as tortured as my blue blue balls.
"Later, Damien," he hissed back.  "We'll talk it about later, I promise!"

	I started to say something else, but his imploring expression
caused me to snap my mouth shut hard enough to click my teeth together.  I
busied myself emptying the bags and storing everything away.  As I folded
the cloth bags and tossed them into their bottom drawer home, I heard Mom's
footsteps descending the stairs.  She came back into the kitchen, and,
looking around critically, said, "Good job, guys.  House looks awesome."
If she noticed the brick thick tension between Sam and me, she didn't say
anything.

	"Thanks, Mom."

	"We want everything to look good for Diana too, Mom."  Sam all
happy to have something to talk about.

	"I'll be sure to tell her who sparkled the place up for her."

	"What are you cooking?"

	"I'm doing Mexican tonight.  Carne Asada with a chimichurri sauce
and caramelized onions."

	"How are you preparing it?"  And they were off into a culinary
discussion that I had no interest in.  Sam is actually a damn good cook, as
long as he has a recipe.  His need to experiment often proves his undoing.
While he and Mom debated the proper temperature to serve flank steak, I
wandered over to the cabinet, grabbed a glass (one from the Q's cupboard,
natch), and padded to the fridge, from which I pulled the new gallon jug of
sweet tea.  Performing these actions on automatic.  I did, after all, have
other things on my mind.  So lost in thought was I that I failed to hear
Sam the first time he said my name.

	"Damien!"

	"What?" I snapped, rather more harshly than I'd intended.  Sam
raised an eyebrow, and Mom's mouth pursed, though she did not vocally
reproach me.  I softened my tone.  "Sorry, bro.  I was zoning and you
startled me."

	"You're fine," he said, but that one eyebrow remained cocked.  (I
can't do that.  I hate him because he can.  And he knows it.  And he knows
how to use it to annoy me.)  "I was just gonna suggest you drink some water
instead of tea.  You could use it."

	"Amen, Sam," Mom applauded.  "We all could use more water."  She
watched me until I put the tea up and grabbed the gallon jug of
charcoal-filtered tap water (Mom refuses to buy bottles) from the back of
the fridge, then she turned to start pulling from the pantry items I'd just
put away.  As soon as she diverted her attention to that I shot a murderous
glare at Sam.  He raised that eyebrow again and bugged out his eyes, being
a brat.

	Or maybe not.  "Don't you remember, Damien?" he asked me, that
eyebrow threatening to become a tiara.  "I'm pretty sure Chad told me you
two had discussed the benefits of drinking more water?"

	Chad?  When did he talk to Chad?  Then I flashed on the
forty-eleven incoming texts Sam had received this afternoon.  Of course.
What had the convivial cracker (puppeted by Rudy, you can be sure) told my
brother?  Then my mind flashed even further back, to the very first
(articulate) thing Chad had said to me this morning.

	Was Sam serious?  For that matter, was I?

	"Oh, yeah," I said to Sam, my tone of voice a whole lot milder than
my gaze.  "I remember that."  And, picking up the glass, drank the whole
thing down, staring steadily at Sam the entire time.  Finished, I poured
another full glass.  Held it up to him in a toast.

	He looked a little green.

	"So what's on the agenda for you guys?" Mom asked, dumping a mess
of spices and cans and whatnot all over the counter I'd just cleared.
"Still planning to spend the night at Rudy and Chad's house?"

	Too busy guzzling water to answer, I raised both eyebrows at Sam.
Let him field that one, he's so smart and informed.

	"We're not sure yet," he answered smoothly, though his eyes still
measured my liquid intake.  "We thought we'd discuss it over pizza.  Can we
let you know after?"

	"That'll be fine," Mom said.  "I'd prefer you spent the night at
the Q's, though.  That way I'm not worrying about you and can concentrate
on Diana."

	Several remarks suggested themselves to me, but some would get me
grounded and most would get me slapped, so I merely said, "I'd prefer to
crash over there too.  You deserve a night without us in your hair."
Unable to resist, I winked at her and sang a bit of the "boom-chick
a-wow-wow" tune.

	"We probably will go over there, Mom," Sam said, ignoring that as
thoroughly as Mom.  Honestly, are all comedic geniuses so completely
unappreciated by their families?  "We just have some things to discuss
first."

	"Oh?  What sort of things?"

	"You know, brother stuff."  'Twas amusing to watch his cheeks turn
pink.  Mom had her nose in a cookbook and didn't notice.  Thank God.  No
way he'd stand up to the pressure if Mom sensed something amiss.

	"Cease-fires, peace treaties," I broke in breezily; I'm much better
at prevarication and diversionary tactics than Sam is.  "That sort of
thing."

	"Okay," Mom said, apparently not caring.  She'd tuned out at
"brother stuff".  But now she turned her attention from the cookbook to me,
personally.  "It's cold and it looks rainy out there tonight, and I've got
too much going on to play chauffeur, so you can drive the Saturn, but --"

	"Really?  Cool!"

	"-- BUT you are to go nowhere except the Pizza Joint and then
either to the movies or to the Q's, then straight back here.  Understood?"

	"Got it," I nodded.  "Pizza Joint, liquor store, either the movies
or the Q's, home again home again, jiggety-jig."

	Now it was Mom's turn to raise an eyebrow.  God, I hate them both.

	To my surprise, and to his own, too, I think, Sam said, "Pizza
Joint, liquor store, bus station, then the movies or the Q's, then home."

	Mom turned the eyebrow on him.

	"Why the bus station, Sam?" I asked him, dreading the answer.

	"To pick up transient hookers!" he said, and broke into a roar of
hilarity, tickled at his own wit.

	"Oh, dear," Mom said.

	"He needs a raise in his allowance," I told her.

	"So he can afford a real sense of humor?" Mom asked.  She totally
gets me.  "But I'm worried he'd never find one that fits."  We turned our
backs on Sam, humanely ignoring him while he laughed himself out.  She
reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a debit card.  "There's sixty
on this," she said, handing it to me; even parental pizza-and-movie money
has gone hi-tech.  "I want a receipt for every penny spent."

	"Moe, the guy at the liquor store, never gives me a receipt," I
said, pocketing the card.  "Says that way nobody can prove he's the one
sold to me."

	"You tell Moe that this time you need it for me.  He has a mother
of his own, I'm sure.  He'll understand."

	"Yo, Sammy-boy!" He hates to be called Sammy.  I turned back to
find him wiping tears of mirth off his cheeks, holding his glasses in his
other hand.  Weird kid.  "Train leaves the station in five minutes.  I'm
hungry!"  And, very deliberately, drank off a third glass of water, even
smacked my lips.

	He pretended not to notice, just wrapped his wire frames back onto
his face, and, hiccuping slightly, said, "Okay, I, uh, I'll be ready."
Still repeating the punchline "transient hookers" under his breath and
snickering like it was actually funny, he hopped up and jogged out of the
room, across the foyer, and up the stairs, slamming his door when he got to
the top.

	"That kid has the oddest life outlook I've ever been baffled by," I
commented, shaking my head, "and I'm speaking as Rudy Q's best friend,
which means I know whereof I speak."

	"Sam is an odd one, all right," Mom agreed, but her voice held no
disparagement or worry.  "And I wouldn't have him any other way.  Now, hand
me my purse from the table over there?"  Along with the keys to the Saturn,
she gave me the standard lecture on caution and alertness.  I barely paid
attention, just nodded and "yes ma'am"-ed occasionally.  She'd let me use
the car a few times before, mainly to pick up Sam from some after-school
thing or to run to the store for bread or whatever, but this was the first
time she'd allowed me to retain possession overnight.  Sure, the entire
round trip might only be six or so miles, but I'd get to hold the keys for
a good twelve hours.

	How cool is that, huh?

	After Mom had repeated herself a few thousand times I broke away
and trotted up the stairs myself, passing Sam as he descended.  Neither of
us looked at the other or said anything.  Fine by me.  I had a feeling
there'd be a whole mess of looking and saying soon enough.  Already
regretting the ostentatious drinking display, I stopped by the john on the
way to my room, and, anxious to avoid considering the whole compelled by
water theory while I emptied my overflowing bladder, I called Rudy.

	He answered after only two rings.  "Dude, he messaged Chad first, I
swear!"

	"And you couldn't send up a smoke signal or hang two lanterns in
the window?"

	"I didn't find out until they'd been texting awhile," Rudy
confessed, "and by the time I did find out Chad had already promised not to
tell you."

	"I don't get why Sam would text Chad at all," I said, still
pissing.  Jesus.  "I didn't know they were such close friends."

	"They're not.  Sam said something about you coming into his room
with your zip down and looking all ready to rape him and --"

	"What?"  So shocked I nearly peed on my shoe.

	"-- and he wanted to know what I'd done to you.  His words, dude,
not mine.  Hang on, let me find the text.  Hey cracker!  Gimme your --"

	Beep.  Blood boiling, I shoved my phone back into my pocket and, my
yellow stream finally petering out, I did a half-ass job of shaking the
last drops off and probably spotted the front of my jeans when I put my
cock away.  Okay, so maybe my zip had been down when I confronted Sam; I
couldn't remember either me or Mr Q raising it.  But looking like I wanted
to rape him?  Was he fucking mental?

	"Dude!"  I flushed and pulled my phone back out.

	Rudy: "dude ok?"

	Damien: "yeah just tiny bit p.o.'d"

	Rudy: "chill dude s just being drama queen"

	Damien: "s being a putito today anyhow, we gonna have long talk
over pizza"

	Rudy: "pepperoni? haha"

	Damien: "it won't be anchovy"

	Rudy: "LOL"

	Rudy: "be careful"

	Damien: "he shoulda thought of that earlier"

	Rudy: "i smell a good story"

	Damien: "don't worry u'll b there for hahaha climax"

	Oh, yeah, I thought as I put away my phone and grabbed my wallet
and jacket from my room, I'd get Sam over to the Q's tonight if I had to
drag him.  Whatever game he played with me, I'd make him sorry for winning.
And I'd make the turd-knocker like it, too.

	I grinned a nasty grin as his voice floated up the stairs.  "You
said five minutes, Damien!  You're not the only one hungry, you know!"

	Shrugging on my jacket, all but leaping down the stairs, I called
out, "Keep your pants on, turd-knocker!"  For now, I thought.

	"Damien!"

	"Sorry, Mom!"

	"Really, Damien," said Mom as I entered the kitchen, "turd-knocker?
Whatever happened to the classics, like douche-bag or butt-munch?"  She
didn't look at me as she spoke, all her attention fixed on the mixing bowl
in front of her.  Sam had already gone out; the door opening out into the
garage stood slightly ajar.

	"I prefer a rougher, more baroque insult.  You're the one always
challenging me to cultivate my own idiom."  I stopped on my way to the
door, sniffed the air.  "And what the heck is that stench?  It smells like
somebody vomited perfume all over the place."

	"Well, cultivate your idiom in a less unpleasantly graphic
direction, would you?  And that stench, as you so politely deemed it, is
cilantro, and I think it smells lovely."

	"You would," I muttered, softly enough for her to ignore if she so
chose (and she did), and, zipping my jacket, said, louder, "Have a good
time tonight, Mom, and --"

	She interrupted me, her voice concerned enough to cause me to pause
at the door and turn back to look at her.  "Damien, is everything all right
between you and Sam?"  She'd forsaken the mixing bowl and instead gazed at
me, her gaze troubled.

	Willing myself to remain calm, because if she sensed that flutter
in my stomach she'd be on it like a duck on a junebug, I said, "Uh, sure,
Mom, we're peachy, why?"

	She frowned at me.  "What's all this about discussing 'brother
stuff' over pizza?  What's 'brother stuff'?"  So she hadn't been completely
oblivious to Sam's discomfort after all.

	Easy, I thought.  Delicate work here.  "Sam has some . . . um
. . . issues he wants to talk to me about."  I deliberately imagined these
issues, in great detail, and let my cheeks color up, hoping the red worked
for me.  "Some, you know, personal issues."

	"Personal issues?  What kind of personal issues?"  Mom looked ready
to jump on the phone and call for professional assistance.

	"Chill, Mom, it's nothing that serious," I said, and hesitated,
feeling my face heat up even more, this time on its own dime.  Saying the
next sentence would be difficult, but it would also surely shut down her
line of questioning.  "He wants to talk about, you know," and I whispered
the word, "masturbation."

	 Yup, that did it.  "Oh!" Mom said, her own cheeks turning pink.
"Oh."  She floundered for something to say.  "Well, tell him its normal and
natural and –"

	"I'll tell him," I agreed, anxious to end the conversation.  All I
needed was a siren on my nose and my face could race to house fires.

	"And tell him that you yourself --"

	"MOTHER!  I'll handle it, all right?"  Oh, God.  I did NOT just say
that.  I turned to go before one of us turned into a pillar of salt.

	"Damien," she called after me, and I turned around again, only
barely resisting the urge to roll my eyes.

	"Ma'am?"

	"Don't take that tone," she said.  "I just wanted to tell you that
I gathered up all the Q's glasses and plates and put them in a box on the
garage steps."

	"Thanks, Mom, can I go now?  Before scandal-rag photographers show
up to take pictures of the two starving children and their
cilantro-swilling mother?"

	"And you were such a sweet baby, too.  Go, go!"

	"Okay love ya buh-bye."

	"Be care--" I cut off the "-ful" with the door, closing it behind
me.  Free at last, free at last.

	Sam stood beside Mom's work truck, wearing a long, black,
fake-leather duster that hung, on him, almost to the ankles.  He'd found it
in a thrift store a few weeks previous, and had paid five bucks for it.  It
was worth almost every penny.  He thought that it, along with his unkempt
black hair, black eyes, and round, wire-frame spectacles, made him look
like the hero of some obscure Japanese manga.  I thought it made him look
like an attendee of Professor Slughorn's Christmas party in the Half-Blood
Prince movie.

	"I don't get you," I said.  "When you should keep your yap closed,
you go and try to be cute and evasive and end up broadcasting to the world
that you have a secret, and when you should be spilling your guts, like any
time in the last half hour or so, you clamp down tighter than an
altar-boy's asshole on Easter Sunday."  With more than a little
exasperation, I punched the button to raise the garage door and started
down the steps and promptly tripped over something, nearly falling flat on
my face.  What the hell?  What numb-nut left that box –

	Oh.  Never mind.

	Sam regarded me gravely, his hands stuffed in the duster's
voluminous pockets.  Not even watching me pinwheel for balance on the steps
sparked a smile on his lips.  When the clanking and rattling of the garage
door ceased, he said, "This is isn't easy for me, either, Damien."

	"Babyboi," I said, trying to calm my racing heart while pretending
to be unruffled, "ain't nothing easy in this world but Inbred Wanda and
Wheel Of Fortune, and you don't got the scratch to appear on either one."
I bent over and rummaged through the box of dishes until I found the mug
I'd "borrowed" from the Q's that morning.

	"What does that even mean?"  I'd figured he'd bridle on being
called Babyboi; he'd sure flinched at the words.  But he said nothing about
it.  I filed that factoid away for later use.  "And how exactly does it
apply to this situation?"

	I shrugged.  "Dunno.  Ask Rudy.  It's how he talked me down from
the ledge over my algebra final."  Mug safe in hand, I jogged around to the
driver's side of the Saturn.

	"Rudy is an idiot."

	"Yeah, true," I said, opening the car door.  "But he smells nice."
I considered.  "Sometimes."

	"That's a matter of opinion.  Dude."

	"Will you get in the damn car?  Standing there like that, you look
like the one Hogwart's student forced to take auto-shop."

	"When are you going to lay off my cool duster?" he demanded,
dropping into the passenger seat and slamming the door harder than strictly
necessary.

	"When you get one that's actually cool," I replied.  "Seatbelt,
please!"  The Saturn fired right up, and Sam knew enough to shut up and let
me concentrate while I backed out of the garage and driveway and into the
street.  The last rays of the sun sank behind the horizon as I put the
transmission into drive, and a light rain began to fall.  I turned on the
windshield wipers and we drove in silence for a couple blocks, until I
could stand it no more.  "Sam --" I started, but he leaned forward and
switched on the radio, interrupting me with a stream of country crap.  I
switched it back off, twisting so hard on the knob it fell off in my hand.
"Dammit, Sam, I was just going to say I didn't know you and Chad were such
tight pals!"

	"We're not!"

	"Then why the hell do you have his number in your contacts?"

	I could feel his measured gaze on the side of my face.  "Because
you and Rudy are tight pals, and sometimes its good to have advance notice
of what you loose cannons are up to."

	Fair enough.  "So that's what that was?  With all those texts
flying back and forth?  Advance noticing and shit?"

	"No!  Well, kind of," he admitted, "but, Damien, I'll explain all
that at the Pizza Joint!  Okay?  If we ever get there," he added.  "You
drive slower than Grandma after a glass of wine."

	"The speed-limit in residential neighborhoods is twenty-five unless
otherwise posted," I informed him.

	"Then why aren't you going twenty-five?"

	"Because its raining, smartass!"  Exasperated with the whole
conversation, I dropped the radio's volume knob into his lap.  "Here, fix
that and turn on the radio.  Maybe ol' Hank is cryin' about the time his
hamster got drunk and left him."

	He fixed the radio but didn't turn it on, and we rode the rest of
the way to the restaurant listening to the sound of the windshield wipers
and to the non-sound of brothers engaged in productive discussion.  There
aren't, overall, many times that I wish I were an only child, but I do have
my moments.

	The Pizza Joint's parking lot held only a few cars, making it easy
to find a choice spot not too far from the front door.  I stepped out into
the cold wet night, zipping my jacket up to my throat and mentally
castigating myself for forgetting my cap.  With the appearance of rain and
the disappearance of the sun, the temperature had dropped down into the
lower regions of chilly.  I shoved my hands in my pockets and took off to
stride across the lot, but Sam's voice stopped me.

	"Damien?"

	I turned to see him standing by the Saturn, a black smudge in the
orange-y glow of streetlights.  He held up a hand, and, squinting slightly
against the wind, I made out that he clutched a blunt in his fingers.

	"Want to smoke this before we go in?"

	"In this drizzle?"  I thought about it.  I was cold, and slightly
irritated, and my bladder had begun to intimate that it would shortly be
requesting another drain.  "Hell yeah.  But we can't burn in the car."

	"Well, duh," he said.  "Let's go around the side of the building.
All the employees get high out by the dumpster."  See?  Observant as hell.
If he'd only use his powers for good.

	"I didn't know you toked," I said, falling into step beside him.

	"Very rarely," he replied.  "I've had this for awhile.  I've been
saving it."

	"Occasions don't get any more special than this." I said.  "Where'd
you get it?"  As we angled around the corner of the building, the rain died
out, like God himself approved this side trip.

	"From Inbred Wanda."  We stepped into the plank-fenced area
containing the dumpster.  It smelled foul but we weren't there to admire
the olfactory scenery, as it were.  At least the fence blocked the wind.
Somewhat.  "Same place you get yours."

	I passed over that as not worthy of comment.  "So you're fucking
her too?" I asked, neglecting to mention that I'd never fucked her myself.
I struck a light for him and he toked up, coughing slightly as he inhaled.

	"No," he admitted, passing the blunt to me.  "Not her."  His face
pinking from embarrassment (or maybe just the cold; who knows with that
kid?) he continued, "I let her little brother suck me off sometimes."

	Whoa.  That knocked me back and almost made me lose my toke.
"Sloppy Joey?  No shit?"

	"Yeah."  Sam didn't look very proud.  "That's where I got those
porn magazines.  His grandad was stationed in Germany in the seventies and
brought back a huge box of them.  Joey gives me a couple every time I let
him do me."

	"I didn't know he was queer," I said thoughtfully, hitting the
blunt a few extra times on my turn.

	"Hey, don't bogart," Sam protested.  "Is that what you call it?
Bogarting?"  I gave him back the blunt and nodded, noticing how glassy his
eyes had become behind the spots of rain on his spectacles.  "Not many
people know Sloppy Joey is gay," Sam said, his mouth quirking up.  "Just me
and most of the boys in my grade."  He giggled.

	I giggled with him.  Yeah, I remembered this strain of weed.  Good
shit.  "So," I said slyly, trying to trick him into admitting something,
"you're gay too, huh?"

	"Oh hell no, Damien," he said, almost too quickly.  "Michelle
Gorman is always good for second base, and Heather Simms gave me a handjob
and let me finger her once."  He smiled, and I could see his cock twitching
way up in his black, glassy eyes.  "But Emily Crane is the best.  She likes
me to tie her up and call her a slut and dry hump through our clothes."

	Holy shit.  Kid had pert near as good a track record as me at that
age, if a bit more, uh, extreme.  Who'd'a thunk it?  "So I guess that makes
you bi?"  I had attained a righteous buzz by now, and, as my bladder had
thoughtfully forewarned me, I needed to piss pretty bad.  But I wanted to
take advantage of Sam's stoned ease, the first time all day he'd even been
close to candid.

	He thought about it carefully, trying to catch words as they
floated through his consciousness.  I discreetly pinched the blunt out and
dropped it in my jacket pocket.  Kid didn't need anymore right now.  "Not
really," he said at last, not noticing that I'd stopped passing.  "I guess,
if I had to put a label on myself, it would be . . ." he hesitated "
. . . heteroflexible?"  Asking me, not telling me.

	"Heteroflexible," I mused aloud.  "Okay, I can get behind that.
Its got a good beat and you can dance to it."

	"What about you, Damien?" he asked, looking at me more alertly than
one would have thought him capable.  "Are you gay?  Or bi?"  His voice took
on a teasing tone.  "I don't think you can honestly claim to be
arrow-straight."

	I wondered if he referred to what we'd done in the shower or to
what he may have learned in his text-fest with the cracker.  Or both.  "I
suppose I'll have to settle for heteroflexible too."

	Sam laughed at that, harder than the sally required, and I
understood that he'd been sweating my response and that his laughter
signaled relief.  I waited patiently for him to quieten, stood there by the
dumpster, nicely baked, but also cold and hungry and –

	"I gotta piss," I said, when he calmed some.

	"Okay," he said, still chuckling.  "Let's go in.  I think I could
eat an extra-large by myself."  He probably could; I've seen his skinny ass
pack away even more than that.  "Plus hummus."  He turned and walked off,
all stoned and giggly.  After he'd gone a few feet he noticed that he
walked alone.  He turned and goggled at me, surprised to see that I hadn't
moved.  "You coming, Damien?"

	"I gotta piss," I reiterated, my feet nailed to the greasy asphalt,
my hands stuffed into my jacket pockets.

	"Oh, yuck, Damien, you're not gonna pee by the dumpster are you?
They have a perfectly good if slightly unsanitary restroom inside."  He
sounded exactly like Mom.

	My response?

	"I gotta piss," I said for the third time, this time adding,
"Babyboi."  Really drawing out that last syllable: bo-weeeeee.

	Sam got it that time, and he didn't particularly like it.  He came
back towards me a couple steps, his nose wrinkling.  "Not now, Damien.  Not
now, please."

	"I didn't drink all that water for nothing," I pointed out.
"Besides, you owe me.  Say you don't!"

	"I know, I know I do," he said, "but later, please, Damien, later!"
His voice eerily Chad-like as he pleaded for clemency.  As if in sympathy
with the kid, the clouds started sprinkling rain again, and the wind picked
up.

	Unmoved, I stood there by the dumpster, my stance adamant.  "I said
that I gotta piss," I repeated, again adding that endearment I meant for
him to come to despise, "Babyboi."

	It was a struggle of wills.  And I won.  "Yes, um, yes sir," he
muttered.  Amazed, I struggled to maintain my impassivity as he trudged
over and hitched up his dress robes and knelt in front of me.  I pulled my
hands from my jacket pockets and, widening my stance as per proper
urination protocols (P.U.P. -- look it up), unzipped and fished out my
hose.  With a sad, submissive sigh Sam inclined his face and closed his
eyes and opened his mouth, and I delicately placed my cockhead on the edge
of his lower lip.

	And stood there.

	And stood there some more.

	Dammit.  What was wrong with me?  It's so easy to piss the boy off;
you'd think it would be cake to piss on him, too.

	Nope.

	My bladder bitched about needing to lose some weight but refused to
release the gallons necessary to do so.

	I stood there so long it began to be embarrassing.

	Until Sam opened his black eyes, wondering, and looked up at me in
the spillover of light from the Pizza Joint's rooftop neon sign, and the
primary colors of its square, multi-hued pie twinkled in the lenses of his
glasses, red and yellow and green and blue.  He looked at me, and I looked
at him, our gaze a wind of warmth that matched the warmth of the water that
finally began to trickle out of me.  It started out slow at first, and a
good thing, too, a gusher might drown the kid.  He wore no expression that
I could see as he tasted those first drops; he merely swallowed them and
patiently awaited the deluge.  More urine spurted out, stronger this time,
and he blinked, startled, but he held position and didn't spill a drop.
The spurt turned into a stream and the stream into a river.  I held back as
much as I could, but he never flinched, just swallowed what I pissed out,
and I grew confident in his intake skills and let loose the dam, and his
eyes widened, and his brows drew together, accepting the challenge, and he
reached up and gently grasped me between thumb and forefinger and settled
my head more firmly against his lip.

	How did I feel?

	Glad you asked.

	I felt like the high priest of the water god, and it bathed me in
cold rain as I led the worship.  It had created me to not only carry itself
from place to place but also from person to person.  The awesome
responsibility of transfer filled me with power.  Not raw power, mind you,
nor physical power, nor even sexual power.  No, this was far from a sensual
trip; 'twas ethereal.  A power of vitality, if you will.  A power of
generosity.  I gifted my brother the holy fluid, and he drank it in, drank
me in, taking what I (we) gave and converting it into fuel to burn in his
own fire.

	Me big, you small.  Me give, you take.  Me love, you love.

	The river ebbed to stream which shrank to spurts and, at last,
trickles.  We watched each other until the last drop rolled down his
throat, and he blinked.

	All this takes longer to read than it took me to empty every
milliliter of moisture my bladder could muster, you don't have to tell me
that.  I write like I piss, I guess; spurting and spouting, meandering and
measuring my words.  Deal with it.  The point is, I got an idea that moment
is permanently graffitied into a prominent spot on my memory's wall, like a
vivid and impressionistic cave painting, the kind sure to bumfuzzle
archeologists ten millenia hence.  Oh, the colors.  Oh, the spirals and
lines.  Yeah, baby, the flow of power etched me deep.

	It's the moment immediately following that I'd like to forget.

	As we posed there between the dumpster and the fence, on a taint of
greasy wet asphalt, a shocked female voice exclaimed, "What the hell?"  And
with it returned the wind and the rain and the cold and the stench.  The
power of reality shattered our drowning pool.  "What?  The?  Hell?"

	Goddammit.  Will somebody please tell where I can hire a surgeon to
implant eyes on all sides of my skull?  Because apparently I need them.  We
both snapped our heads to around to discover staring at us an obese teenage
white girl wearing a Pizza Joint plastic apron and a wide-eyed moue of
disbelief.

	I was too stoned and too mellow from the trip I'd just taken with
Sam to panic; I just reached up into the aether and channeled down Rudy.
Slipping my unabashed pony back into the barn, and making sure to zip, I
shrugged and said, "Kid's own fault.  He lost the bet."

	Her jaw dropped and it took her a second to speak.  "Oh, wow,
that's harsh!"

	I pulled Sam up off the asphalt by the elbow.  "What can I say?  He
insisted on Ole Miss by ten."

	"Oh."  She nodded as if that made the slightest bit of sense.
"Okay.  I can see that.  Sort of."  She glanced over at Sam and her nod
changed to a shake.  "Wow.  Poor bastard."

	"Yeah," I said, keeping a firm grip on Sam's elbow with one hand
and fiddling in my jacket pocket with the other.  "Pobrecito.  Come on,
Chad."

	"Uh, sure, Rudy."  Right on cue.

	I found what I'd been scrabbling for, and, pulling out the
half-smoked blunt, slipped it into her grip, then eased us past her bulk
and out the enclosure's gate, where Sam promptly stumbled over one of the
rolling trash cans she'd lined up like piglets to follow her out to the
dumpster.  Yanking him back into relatively proper balance, I grinned a
Rudy grin in her general direction.  "See ya.  Uh.  Y'all got awesome pizza
here!"

	She looked up from the blunt she'd just discovered in her hand, a
delighted smile on her face.  "Hey, thanks, good looking out!"

	"Uh, yeah," I called back, strolling casually away, gripping Sam's
elbow with enough force I wonder I didn't bruise him.  Good looking out, my
ass.  Sorry looking out.  Stupid stupid stupid.  I resolved to be more
careful in future.  If I get busted by anybody ever again in this chapter
of the story of my life, then I'm going to just run naked down Main Street
and scream that I'm a juicy perv.  In other words, ain't never gonna
happen.  Enough's enough.

	I swear.

	Anyhow.

	"Omigod, I am sooo mortified," Sam muttered, as he we strolled away
with fake insouciance.  "Are you happy, Damien?  I'm so embarrassed I could
die."

	"Are you boned?" I asked, flashing on Chad.

	"Huh?  No!  Why?"

	"Just, uh, curious."

	"No, Damien, humiliation doesn't turn me on."  He yanked his elbow
from my grip and crossed his arms as he glared at me.  "And then you gave
her the blunt!"

	"That, Babyboi, is called bribery.  To keep her fat, nay, obese
mouth shut.  Besides, if there's one thing we possess plenty of, it's
weed."

	"You know how much trouble we could get into, giving away pot like
that?"

	"Not nearly as much trouble as if she blabbed and the manager
called the cops or, even worse, Mom."

	"Fair point," he grumbled, conceding but not liking it.

	I paused at the restaurant's front door, my hand on the handle.
"So, uh, Sam, how did it taste?"

	He looked up at me, his rain-streaked face tight with intoxication
and humiliation.  "I don't know.  Like . . . like nothing.  Salty water,
maybe.  Warm.  Can we go in please?  I'm cold and wet and ready to sink
into the concrete with shame.  And now I have to pee too."  He paused.
"Unless you want to go back to the dumpster and taste it for yourself?
Baby, uh, man."

	I snorted.  "Go ahead and think about that all you want to," I told
him, opening the door and bowing him inside, "then wipe off your belly and
go to sleep."  A young pregnant couple passing by on their way out shot me
a startled glance, and I summoned the grace to blush and mutter, "Sorry."

	Figures Sam would find my social faux-pas amusing.  "I'm going to
go pee.  Get us a table somewhere isolated."  He grinned at me and he and
his robes dripped off to the restroom.  I watched him go, thinking about
how well I knew him, how well and how feebly.  I knew that he lined his
paired socks up by color and his underwear by type and make in the drawer,
but I didn't know he smoked weed.  I knew that he smuggled chocolate kisses
into the house in his book-bag, right under Mom's death-on-candy nose, but
I'd no idea he'd experienced hand- and blow-jobs.  I knew he jerked off,
and I could probably even calculate the frequency, but the news that he
harbored a kinky side blew me (so to speak) out of the water.  I knew what
Sam was, but not who.  Hell, if you want to get right down to it, I
thought, I know Rudy better than I do my own brother.  It made we wonder if
we ever really, really know anybody at all, know them deep down into the
skin, when we can never really see anything beyond what we expect even in
those closest to us.

	Okay, yeah, I was stoned.

	Finally a skinny, fortyish waitress showed up at the host stand,
rescuing me from my maundering.  There weren't many other customers, five
or six tables of twosomes all seated in a group at the front end of the
dining room.  I asked the waitress to seat us somewhere off to ourselves,
and she nodded and led me to a table smack dab in the center of the thin
crowd.  I merely looked at her, drawing Mom's thin-lipped smile on my
mouth, and she huffed a little, barely hidden annoyance flashing in her
brown eyes, but she took me, stiff-legged, to a booth in the rear corner.
I thanked her very politely and took my seat, ordering two sweet teas, no
lemon, and some hummus, please.  She slammed the menus down on the table
and flounced off.

	While I waited for Sam I laid my phone on the table, shrugged out
of my jacket and brushed a hand through my crew-cut, spraying drops of
deity everywhere.  Oops.  I looked around at the other customers, realized
that each of the five pairings of customers was male/female, spaced in age
from late teens to middle-aged bordering on elderly.  Of course, I thought.
Saturday night is date night.  It occurred to me that, in a very real
sense, I was here on a date myself.  Sam and I were just another couple,
having a nice dinner before setting out on an activity designed to incite
intimacy.

	A pizza date with my own brother.  The heteroflexible equivalent of
taking your sister to prom.

	The realization was disquieting, to say the least.  It was also
decidedly chuckle-icious.  Instead of hitting a movie or a nightclub after
dinner, we were (hopefully) going to get stoned and buttfuck our black
little souls out.  I wondered which of us couples would enjoy our evening
more.

	Sam apparated almost out of thin air, startling me out of my amused
melancholy.  He'd dried off his face and glasses and combed his damp hair
into a close approximation of a tidy 'do.  "Whew.  I may not look any
better, but I sure as heck feel better," he said, borrowing from me a joke
that had originated – where else? – with Rudy.  He climbed out of his
duster and draped it neatly across a chair at a nearby vacant table and
slid into the booth opposite me.  "Did you order some hummus?  And what did
you ask for us to drink?"

	"Sweet tea for both," the waitress said, appearing with our drinks
in hand.  Setting them down, she continued, "Originally unsweetened, but I
stirred my finger around in it."  She laughed what she thought a charming
laugh.  It wasn't.

	Gross, I thought to myself, and I know Sam did too, but we both
chuckled dutifully, even as my kid brother shot a disappointed glare at me.
"What?" I asked, knowing full damn well what.  "You can drink as much tea
as you want," and his eyes widened and then narrowed as he harkened to the
full meaning of that, "and if it means that much to you I'll go back to
water when we get to Rudy's.  If we go to Rudy's," I added hastily as his
eyebrow threatened to rise.  "They have tons of it there.  I just want tea
with my dinner."

	"Tea goes good with pizza," the waitress said (what the hell was
she still doing here?), "the only thing goes better with pizza is draft
beer."  She smiled at me hopefully.

	Sam turned the eyebrow on her, clearly wondering if she were blind,
but I gave her the benefit of both mine.  "Thanks, uh, Hilda," I said,
peering at the nametag on her desiccated chest, "but I think I'll stick
with tea.  Too much beer keeps me from studying for my SATs."

	The hopeful smile switched off.  "Your hummus will be out soon, and
I'll get your pie order then," she informed us, then stopped mid-flounce
and said to Sam, "I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to move your robe into
the booth with you.  We may need the table."

	"It's not a robe, its a duster," he called to her retreating back,
and when she didn't respond, he muttered under his breath, "bitch."  But he
retrieved the jacket and folded it carefully into the seat beside him.
"And you shut the hell up too, Damien," he said, although I'd not uttered a
syllable, merely grinned at him.  "It's a duster, not a damned robe."

	"Such language," I chided, smiling, but he gazed back at me with
absolutely no repentance in his glittering black eyes.  "You know," I said,
tactfully changing the subject, "if I didn't have to take a receipt back to
Mom I'd damn sure order a beer just to see if Hilda would really bring me
one.  Not that I'd drink it."

	"Maybe you should," he replied, his mouth quirking up, "it might
make your pee taste better."  And he burst into that uniquely Sam burst of
laughter, which meant he enjoyed the joke on a level far above (or far
below) the rest of us mere humans.

	I gave a polite chuckle at the quip (which wasn't bad, for Sam)
and, when I could make myself heard over his amusement, I said, "Mom would
absolutely explode if I gave her a receipt with a beer listed on it.
Boom!"  I illustrated the sound effect with the fingers of both hands.
"Blond hair and Old Navy all over the kitchen."

	"And then her bloody exploded flesh would clump back together into
a zombie golem and eat your brain," Sam said, chortling so hard he had
trouble speaking, "and then she'd eat mine for letting you order the beer!"
Tears leaked from his eyes, so mightily amused was he, and I just goggled
at him for a sec before joining him in laughter.  I heartily approved this
display of an imagination I'd not dreamed existed, even if the bent of it
left me a little unsettled.

	A platter containing a wealth of warm pita triangles and a generous
scoop of the best hummus in the known world slammed down on the table
between us.  Surprised, we choked off our laughter and looked up.  Hilda
looked down at us, her expression one step shy of aghast.  Without saying a
word, and while eying us, and Sam in particular, as two especially odious
specimens of the despised genus teenagerus-savagus, she pulled an order pad
and pen from her apron pocket and waited expectantly.

	When I could trust myself not to burst back into fits of giggles, I
told her, "We're not ready yet.  Give us five minutes?  Sorry to be such,
uh, trouble."

	She flounce flounce flounced away.

	"Her tip is dropping with every eye roll and flounce," I observed
to Sam, and he nodded back, all grave and shit, and that did it, I lost it
again and almost fell out of the booth.  I let it go and laughed heartily,
delightfully surprised to discover how much fun I was having.  More fun
than I'd ever imagined a night spent baby-sitting my little brother could
be.

	"Damien.  Damien!" Sam hissed at me urgently through his own set of
giggles.  "Everyone is looking at us!"  And it was true; the couples at the
other end of the room and a handful of employees, including Hilda and the
obese dishwasher girl from the scene at the dumpster, all of them eyed us
if wondering if a discreet call to the loony bin were in order.  I didn't
care; there is enough of Rudy's philosophy in me to not give two craps what
the herd thinks of me; but I tried to rein it in for Sam's sake.  "The
whole point of getting a booth away from everybody is so we can talk
without anybody paying attention to us!" he said, his normally pale cheeks
red with his own mirth, and I struggled upright and, for lack of anything
better to shut up my braying laughter, I slathered hummus on a pita
triangle and shoved it in my mouth.

	Heaven.  Sheer heaven.

	Sam, still chuckling softly to himself, grabbed some hummus for
himself and bent over the menu, and the two of us munched out happily for a
minute, him studying the pizza descriptions and me studying him, until –

	"Sam?"

	"Hmm?"

	"Sam!"  He looked up, blinking at me, as if having difficulty
focusing on me, and I wondered how dilated his pupils were; I couldn't read
it in the fathomless opacity of his irises.  "Talking about Mom a minute
ago reminded me."  I cleared my throat.  "You do masturbate, don't you?"

	He blinked at me some more.  "Have you ever heard the latin term
'non-sequiter'?" he asked me, his tone reasonable, like you'd talk to a
crazy person.  "It means --"

	"I know what non-sequiter means," I interrupted, trying not to let
him annoy me.  "Humor me.  Shoot me a straight answer for once in your
weird life.  Do you or do you not spank the monkey?"

	"You know I do," he said, and his cheeks, only so recently reddened
with mirth, pinked up again.  "Why?"

	"How often?" I asked, overriding his query.

	"Jeez, Damien, I don't know!  Couple times a day, maybe three or
fuh-four if the mood strikes me."  His face color far surpassing the red it
had been during his giggle-fest.

	I drew a deep breath.  "Well, your big brother is here to tell you
that it's normal, and natural, and that I myself have been known to partake
of the activity, at the same frequency you yourself have described, and I
can report that the experience has truly left me healthier, wealthier, and
wiser, a much better person and, uh, a more respectful, dutiful son."  Sam
stared at me in stoned consternation.  "Plus, uh, studies have shown that
rollin' the bone relieves stress and may even enhance your immune system."

	"Maybe we shouldn't have smoked that blunt, Damien.  You're
rambling."  Obvious concern in his gaze.  "Maybe I kept the blunt too long
and it molded up.  I read on the internet that moldy marijuana can cause
hallucinations."

	I waved that away.  "You set off Mom's early-warning system when
you went on and on about needing to discuss 'brother stuff' over pizza --"

	"I did not go and on!"

	"-- and she asked me what you wanted to talk about that was so
delicate and the first thing I thought of was --"

	"Was to tell her that I wanted to talk about . . . about
. . . that?"  Horrified that I'd spoken to our mother any sentence
containing both his name and the word masturbation.

	"Hey, it worked, it shut her down!  And it's your own fault,
anyhow, and that's what I meant when I said you tried to be cute and
evasive and blabbed to the world that you had a secret."

	"But --"

	"So there, we've done it, discussed masturbation, in much greater
detail than either of us were completely comfortable with, so that means at
least one thing I said to Mom about tonight isn't a bold-faced lie."

	"But you brought the subject up," he pointed out, "not me."

	"I swear," I said to him, my eyes squinting at him in bemused,
benign irritation, "if you don't grow up to be a lawyer I'll shoot you
myself."  He started to talk but I held up my hand, shushing him.  "The
judge has ruled, councilor.  The defendant is not guilty on one count of
gross mendacity."

	"Mendacity?" he asked, squinting back at me.

	"Dude!"

	Sam looked around wildly, a glaze of fearful expectation on his
face, as if he expected Rudy to materialize out of the fake wood paneling
of the walls.  Chuckling, I held up my phone.  "Just a text alert, bro."
Spotting Hilda bustling across the dining room towards our booth with her
pad and pen already poised for battle, I said hastily, "I'll read it in the
restroom.  I gotta piss again anyhow.  You choose the pizza."

	"What do you want on it?"

	"I don't care," I said.  They don't do halfsie pies at Pizza Joint,
and Sam could be trusted to choose wisely.  "You pick."  I slid out of the
booth just as Hilda rolled up.  "I'll pick the movie."

	He glanced up me, ignoring Hilda's smoldering impatience.  "I hope
it isn't something with a lot of sex and violence."

	"Brother mine," I said, gazing at him fondly, "even those, done
right, are family friendly."

	Hilda snorted.

	"I'll be right back, bro," I said, leaving him alone with the
dragon lady, confident he could handle her.  Truth be known, I pitied her a
little.  Get my brother's back up and he's more than a match for any snotty
waitress the world might throw at him.

	The restroom door's lock read "occupied", and while I waited I
leaned against the wall, legs crossed, and cursed myself for allowing
myself to be goaded into chugging those three huge glasses of water.  I
swear, I thought, I swear by Saint Bobo's hairy foreskin I'll think twice
before letting Sam (or Rudy, for that matter) manipulate me ever again into
stupidity.  I didn't swear by anything more serious than a fictitious
saint's foreskin because I figured I'd break the vow before too many hours
passed, and I could do without an angry deity dogging me over a little
harmless blasphemy.

	Finally, right about the time I seriously started to consider
storming the ladies room, the "occupied" tile clinked over to "vacant" and
an ancient man wearing a horrible toupee and an assistant manager's
engraved plastic name-tag shuffled out, half-smiling at me in apology, and
I gifted him with a tight smile as I slipped past into the restroom,
wrinkling my nose at the incredibly foul smell of old man bowels.  Trying
to breath through my mouth (actually, trying not to breath at all) I had my
hose hauled out and ready to spray almost before I flicked over the lock.
Thank God the urinal hung beside the door, and thank God there was a urinal
at all.  I so did NOT want to have brave the toilet stall that old man had
just vacated.

	Oh what blessed relief!  While I pissed I opened Rudy's text.

	Rudy: "status?"

	Damien: "oh yeah it is SO on!!!!!"

	Rudy: "lol so u guys got it all worked out?"

	Damien: "not entirely but dude dude dude"

	Rudy: "what what what"

	My flow dripped and dribbled to only the occasional drop, but I let
my hose hang free while I finished my conversation.

	Damien: "filled babyboi w/ so much piss he squelches when he walks"

	Rudy: "NO FUK'N WAY"

	Rudy: "cracker wants to drink mine but isn't it gross??"

	Damien: "urine is sterile when it leaves the body"

	I have no idea how I knew that.  Weird the shit you pick up and
don't realize.

	Rudy: "maybe"

	Damien: "try it. gonna go eat now holler soon"

	Rudy: "bring me some hummus"

	I smiled and put my phone up, then my pecker.  As I washed my
hands, thinking how Sam had correctly described the room as perfectly good
if slightly unsanitary, my pocketed phone chirped, "Dude!" and then "Dude!"
again.

	Rudy: "wait babyboi?"

	Rudy: "BABYBOI????"

	Damien: "u got a cracker i got a babyboi"

	Rudy: "u coulda done better"

	I flipped off the text before flipping shut my phone and putting it
away and leaving the restroom.  Could've done better, indeed.  As I exited
the short corridor leading back out to the dining room I spotted my kid
brother hovering over the jukebox, punching buttons, and I just had to stop
and shake my head and grin.  Babyboi fit him at least as well as that damn
duster did.  Even when he wasn't wearing it he seemed to exude it like an
aura of . . . yeah, magic.  I stood there in the archway to the service
hall, just admiring him for a sec, until some forgettable pop tune burbled
up from hidden speakers.  I bit back a groan.  Oh well, I thought, nobody's
perfect.

	I made it back to the booth to find that Hilda had topped off our
tea and that only two pita triangles and a pitiful half-smear of hummus
remained on the platter.  The grumpy waitress had also removed the menus
and provided us with side plates and a handful of napkins.  Despite her
obvious disdain for us, and her excessive flouncing, she proved to give
fast and efficient service.  Too bad we can't include 'friendly' in that
description.

	"Sorry," Sam said, indicating the ransacked appetizer plate.  "I
was just hungry and didn't realize . . ."  His voice trailed off, and his
black eyes, magnified slightly in his round lenses, held a true glimmer of
remorse in them.  "I'm sorry."

	He means it, I thought, oddly touched.  Usually food is first come
first served between the two of us, full speed ahead and damn the
indigestion.  "It's okay, Babyboi," I soothed, cleaning up the tattered
remnants of our app.  "I'm not that worried about it."  I smiled at him.
"Besides, it gives me a reason to spank you later."  I popped the last of
the hummus and pita into my mouth and winked at him.

	He blinked at me, startled, and an embarrassed grin surfaced on his
lips and in his eyes, wiping away the honest regret.  He started to reply,
something flirtatious, I surmised, but then he checked himself and went off
in a totally different direction.  "Maybe," he said.  "If . . . and that's
a big if . . . we --"

	I laid both elbows on the table and peered across the booth at him.
"There ain't no ifs anymore, Babyboi," I said, almost whispered, "and both
us chickens recognize that fox."  Okay, so I'm not above a little
plagiarism.  Rudy wouldn't mind.  Probably.  "This shindig hootenanny is
gonna go down.  Oh yeah, Babyboi.  Oh yeah."

	Blink.

	Blink.

	Floundering for words, while the first forgettable pop song faded
out and a second forgettable pop song took its place.

	I grinned at my speechless brother and let him off the hook.
"What's with this shit on the jukebox?  I raised you better than that."

	Sam found his voice.  "I only wanted to put some music on.  I put
five bucks in and pretty much just picked the popular stuff."

	I groaned and melodramatically massaged the bridge of my nose with
my fingers.  "Crap.  Justin Bieber --" Sam helpfully made the "ptui!" sound
"-- will be in there somewhere.  Bet."

	"Jeez, Damien, sorry.  Maybe you can give me a couple extra licks
for it."  Grinning at me.  Daring me.  Cheeky little shit.

	"Five extra licks for every time I have to hear him say 'baby'," I
threatened, and both of us laughed.

	"But seriously, Damien, I only put the music on so we could be sure
nobody could overhear us."  He pursed his lips and settled his arms firmly
on the table.  "'The time has come, the Walrus said'," Sam quoted, and
waited expectantly.

	"'To talk of many things'," I finished.  Mom had made sure we knew
our Carroll.

	"Exactly."

	We stared at each other across the booth for a long time.  At last,
unable to withstand the interminable waiting, I blurted out, "Well?"

	Sam blinked at me, startled.  "You go first."

	"What?" I hissed, almost exploding.

	He held up his hands defensively.  "You go first," he said again.
"Start with what happened with Rudy and Chad last night, and then I'll tell
you why I've been acting like a total spaz all day."

	I fumed at him.  Not even a lawyer yet and he already fenced with
his first hostile witness.

	He sighed.  "It's just easier to do this chronologically.  It's the
safest way to navigate, I reckon."  He sounded so grown up, more mature
than me even.  "You do realize that this whole thing has a very great
potential to blow up in our faces?  That it might even ruin our
relationship?  For life?"

	Well, when ya put it like that.  I reached over and laid my hand,
lightly, on his wrist.  "We won't let that happen."  The next bit came
harder, even harder than when I'd launched the M-word into conversation
with Mom, but if ever a time called for the sentiments, that time was now.
"I love you, Sam, and all I really want is to express it.  To bond with
you, somehow."

	His expression softened.  Whatever he'd expected me to say it
wasn't that.  "I love you too, Damien, and you're right, that does make me
feel better.  A little."  He hesitated, and his cheeks pinked up, and when
he spoke next his tone carried a light, teasing touch that only reinforced
my need of him.  "But are you sure that's all you want?"

	I smiled at him.  "Well, that, and to fuck your narrow ass until my
spooge saturates every cell in your body and you are totally and completely
my bitch."  All cocky, I leaned back against the booth seat and grinned and
sparkled my brown eyes at him.

	His face turned the brightest red shade of the evening, but he gave
it right back to me.  "That's gonna take a lot of spooge, bro."

	"I always carry spares in case of an emergency."

	A delighted screech escaped from his lips, and he clamped a hand
over them, mortified at making a sound like a tweenage girl.  You'd think
he'd never flirted before.  Hell, maybe he hadn't.

	Then again, flirting with your brother does have its surreal side.

	I leaned back in over the table.  "But, okay, anyhow, fine, I'll go
first.  Just realize that it'll cost you later."  He'd just began to get
himself under control, but that set him off again.  I never knew somebody
could be that tickled and that embarrassed at the same time.  After a bit
he did manage to get calmed down, and I started in on the whole laborious
story.  Figuring I owed him full disclosure, I began with Rudy telling me
the story about busting Chad and concluded with the moment I'd tossed the
porno mag back onto his own bed.  I told of my fit of jealousy over Rudy's
and Chad's intimacy.  I even spoke of my thought processes when I caught
him wanking, detailing the circumstances that led to my, shall we say,
excited demeanor.  We'd moved past the point of wary mistrust; we each
possessed enough damning evidence of the other's clandestine activities to
force detente; we got MAD, baby, mutual assured destruction.  He listened
silently as the tale unfolded, nodded his head at various salient points,
the whole time wearing an oddly smug look on his face, as if rather than
hearing brand-new information he received confirmation of facts already
supposed.

	The pizza had arrived before I was too far along in my long, drawn
out, Q-worthy story, and we devoured half of it while I finished talking.
I'd been a little worried when Hilda set the pie on the table, but, as
usual, Sam-the-gourmand had chosen well.  He'd ordered a veggie pizza
(which I inferred, correctly, would positively affect the flavor of my
urine) with several different kinds of mushroom, caramelized onions, some
sort of garlic-olive oil drizzle, and six different types of cheeses, all
with a pesto-based sauce on a hand-tossed rosemary- and basil-infused crust
(I hope I got that right; Sam had to tell me twice just now).  After my
first hesitant bite I dug in like I might never eat meat again.

	"So I figured I'd blown any chance in hell I might have of doing
something like that – like this – with you," I wound up.  "Though I
must admit to being mighty intrigued with your choice of wank material."  I
laughed.

	He didn't.  "Yeah.  About that.  Over the last couple years I've
discovered my sexual interests are a little . . . um . . . off the beaten
path."

	I grinned at him through a mouthful of bliss.  "You're miles off
even the unbeaten ones, Babyboi."

	"I've always been terrified of you or Mom finding out.  I hide
those magazines pretty well, I think, and, no, don't bother looking for
them, you won't find them."

	My facial expression marked astonishment, reproach, and the tiniest
smidgeon of hurt that he should slight my moral integrity with the merest
suggestion that I'd violate his sanctuary and rifle through his
possessions.

	His facial expression didn't buy that, but he moved on.  "I only
get them out when I'm sure I'm going to be alone in the house.  Like I
thought I was going to be this morning."  He shot me an exaggerated frown.

	I snorted.  "Shoulda texted Chad for some advance notice."

	"So when you busted down my door and came bumbling in, and then
didn't immediately apologize and back out of the room, I almost had a
heart-attack.  Seriously.  A heart attack."

	"You have one helluva poker face, bro," I said.  "Remind me not to
play you for money."

	"Taking the offensive and bulling straight through the front line
is usually the best strategy for dealing with you," he said, then groaned
and did the whole face/palm thing.  "I should never have told you that.
Dammit!"

	"Don't worry.  You'll come up with a new and improved strategy.  I
know you.  Fuck-tard."

	"Dude!"  Talk about timing.

	I ostentatiously ignored the summons, fixing my glance firmly on my
brother.  I had a pretty good idea what the text said, anyway.  "I'm
listening."  I stuffed more pizza in my mouth, but I kept my eyes on Sam.

	"But you just noticed me wanking, not what I wanked to.  So I
relaxed a little bit and settled into sparring with you, but I noticed
right off that your heart didn't really seem to be into it, like you were
acting or something.  Like you were flustered but covering.  And the
blackmail attempt?  Come on, Damien.  That was a douche move, even for
you."

	I was saved the necessity of replying by the appearance of the
lovely Hilda.  While she refilled our teas, I looked around.  The
restaurant had filled while we'd been talking, although our corner remained
virtually untouched with couples.

	"Almost finished, are we?" Hilda asked, delighted to see only two
pizza squares left.  "Save room for dessert?  We have a gorgeous
apple/cranberry tart that makes a perfect topper for your meal."  Her tone
suggested she rather thought our palates were too unsophisticated to
appreciate such a treat, but she'd bring us one if we so demanded.

	"Dude!"

	Hilda glowered at my phone on the table, as if the phone had
addressed her personally.

	"No, thanks, Hilda," Sam said, drawing her ire back onto himself.
Because he didn't want the bitch's visage burning a hole in my otter-box, I
guess.  "Neither one of us has the room for it, and nothing on your menu
could ever come close to matching your sweetness."  Perfectly sincere.

	Her nostrils flared.  "Why, thanks, hun," she said, perfectly
insincere.  "I'll bring your check around directly."  The concept made her
so giddy she forgot to flounce as she walked away.

	"Nice one," I said, grabbing one of the two remaining pieces of the
manna pie.

	"There's just something about her that would tick me off if I
wanted to care," Sam said, snatching the last square of pizza in case I had
any designs on it, "which I don't."

	"Dude!"

	Continuing to ignore Rudy as best I could, although he skirted the
edge of pissing me off, I said, "I only attempted the douche-y blackmail
move because I couldn't think of anything else to say, and because I was
under severe physical pressure at the time.  I had Rudy's story fresh on my
mind, and I wanted so badly to, um, achieve the same result he had that I
blurted that out without meaning to.  I almost shit my pants in relief when
you interrupted and shut me up.  I told you that."

	"I said it was a douche move," Sam said patiently, "not that I
believed you meant it.  And I broke in when I did because I had the
strangest feeling that you were going to demand something much, uh, harsher
than that I do your chores.  If that's all you wanted you wouldn't resort
to blackmail.  You'd either bribe me or threaten to kick my ass.  Bless
your heart, bro, but if human skeletons had subtle bones, you'd have to be
classified as an alien species, because you don't have a single one."

	Bless my heart?  Kiss my ass.  "Thanks.  Now I know what being
damned with faint praise feels like."

	The eyebrow raised.

	"I didn't say you were wrong," I said, feeling the blood throb in
my temples.  "I know my limitations."

	Satisfied with that, Sam returned to his narration.  "Okay, so we
played through the scene, and I started breathing again, and then you
snatched up one of my magazines off the bed and fled with it before I could
stop you."

	"Be glad I left when I did, no matter what I grabbed on my way
out," I said to him.  "Be very glad."

	"I'll take your word for it.  All I know is that gave me my second
almost-heart attack of the day.  No way I could finish what I started when
any minute I expected to hear you busting your gut laughing in the
bathroom.  So I got dressed and put up my magazines and sat down at the
computer to play something, I don't know what."

	"GTA," I said.

	"Maybe.  All I know is died about a hundred times waiting for you
to explode all over me.  And then it got, I don't know, weird."

	"Oh, then it got weird."

	"Well, weird-er, okay?  Because I kept thinking about how you
looked when you busted in my door.  Your zipper down, your face red from
the cold, your eyes flashing.  You looked like you'd just had the most
amazing sex ever and like you were getting ready to have amazing sex again,
with whomever happened to be around.  It was kind of scary."

	"Dude!"

	I slipped my phone underneath my jacket on the seat next to me.
"Mostly I just had to poop."

	"Shut up and take a compliment once in a while, Damien!"

	"That was a compliment?"

	He busied himself tidying the table, placing our empty plates and
used napkins on the pizza platter and moving the set over to the edge of
the table.  "Yes, it was."  Blink blink blink.  "Because it turned me on.
Thinking back on it, if you'd said one word about it you could've screwed
my brains out right then and there.  I know you wanted to.  The way your
eyes crawled all over me told me so."

	Blink blink blink.  Me this time.  Ten million responses in my mind
and I didn't have a damn thing to say.  Forgettable pop song number four
hundred thirty two sprinkled down like dandruff in the silence between us.

	As if the stacked plates had been a signal Hilda swooped in and
snatched them up, slamming a copy of the bill down in their stead.
"Payupfrontthankyouboysyouhaveagreatnightcomebackandseeus!"  And then,
poof! she was gone.

	"But like I said only realized all that stuff later, when I also
realized that the whole time we stood there sparring I stayed hard as a
rock, and that I was still hard as a rock remembering it."  His blinking
became as fast and furious as a hummingbirds wings, and his cheeks pinkened
again.  "There I was, waiting in agony for you to come back in and either
laugh your ass off at me or call me sick and perverted and threaten to tell
Mom, and yet I was so hard it hurt.  The conflict --"

	"Dude!"  Though muffled by my jacket, the alert rang loud and clear
in the air, and both of us jumped.

	His mouth pursed in irritation, Sam said, "If you don't answer that
he'll just keep annoying me."

	I laughed at that.  "I know what he wants, but you're right, if I
don't answer he'll just keep annoying both of us."  I retrieved the phone
and put it on the table in front of Sam.  "'Dude!' times five, right?"

	"Yeah?"

	I held up my hand and counted off the fingers, one to four.
"Hummus, hummus, hummus, hummus."  And, holding up my thumb, "Please."

	His expression skeptical, he picked up the phone and opened the
text app.  "You're wrong, Damien."  He turned the phone to let me read it.

	Rudy: "hummus"

	Rudy: "hummus"

	Rudy: "hummus"

	Rudy: "hummus"

	Rudy: "hummus"

	Sam said, "See?  'hummus' five times and no ple--"

	"Dude!"

	Sam read the new text, groaned, showed it to me.

	Rudy: "pweeze??"

	"How do you do that?" Sam demanded.  "Do y'all really share one
brain between the two of you, like Mom says?"

	"Rudy, like most males, has basically two modes," I explained,
ignoring the one brain crack as old material.  "Hungry, and horny.  If he's
not naked, bring him some hummus."  I thought about that a sec.  "Actually
it would be a good idea to bring him some hummus anyway."  When Sam just
blinked at my joke, I sighed and said, "He knows where we're eating, and
he's stoned and got the munchies.  Trust me, it wasn't a stretch to predict
that."

	Sam reached the phone over the table toward me.  "Well, answer him,
would you?  So we can finish this up and get on with the --" He blinked
again, at himself this time.  "Just tell him we'll bring him some hummus,
okay?"

	I shook my head.  "You tell him," I said.  "Pretend you're me."

	His face brightened, and he took back the phone, and I watched him
with a big grin on my face as his brow furrowed and he contemplated the
proper response.  I grinned because he looked so, yeah, adorable, in his
concentration.  Because I enjoyed his company tonight; he challenged me and
stimulated me on levels Rudy didn't ken were there to touch.  Because, in
agreeing to pick up some hummus for Rudy, he'd tacitly agreed to spend the
night submitting to my lust.  Not that there was ever any doubt.  On either
of our parts.

	But I figured it was nice of me to let him think he was in charge.

	Sam finished typing into the phone and held the response up for my
approval.

	Damien: "k. k. k. k. k. pweeze dis, douche-wad"

	"Perfect," I told Sam.  "Hit send."  He did so, a delighted smile
on his face, but, as he slid the phone back across the table at me, that
smile slid off his lips, indicating a desire to return to serious
conversation.  Because, having already made the decision or not, he still
needed to tell me why.  And I needed to hear why, too.  I may be a stupid
teenager, but even I registered that the two of us trod very shaky ground,
and, for us to come through this intact and with the bond that I craved
solid between us, every action must be firm and above-board, with clearly
stated terms and reasons.  So I followed his lead and rearranged my own
face into a more serious expression and said, "Sam, bro, I would never
laugh at you, or call you names.  Well, not over anything serious, anyhow.
And I would never blab to Mom about anything that personal, even if your
kink was ten times weirder.  If I had any issue with you I'd discuss it
with you myself."  Like we're doing now, I thought but didn't say.

	"I get that.  Now.  Then all I could think about was being
destroyed.  And then you came back and tossed the magazine on my bed and
didn't say anything about the, uh, subject matter.  But you weren't
embarrassed by it, either.  You treated it like it was no big deal, like
. . . well, you had almost a 'been there done that' look on your face.  And
. . . well . . . that just complicated things even more."

	"Like it wasn't complicated enough."

	"Right?  Because . . . that just made me hornier?"

	"You're asking me?"

	He sat silently for a minute, breathing through his nose,
concentrating on banishing his embarrassment, trying to toss it like a
cloak that had become more hindrance than necessity in the heat.  When he
spoke again, his face wore its usual implacable paleness, and no shame
danced in his eyes or colored his tone.  "Yeah, Damien, it made me hornier,
and I . . . I . . ."  Not embarrassed, just searching for words.  At last
he settled for, "I couldn't understand why.  Damien, you know I'm
interested in the rough stuff, the spanking, the ropes and chains and all
that?"

	"Yeah?  So?"

	He took a deep breath.  "Well, until you came along and busted down
my door, I always wanted to be the one doing the spanking and the roping,
and mostly only doing it to girls, at that!  I'm into dominance, not
submission."

	I burst out laughing, despite his obvious sincerity.  He closed his
mouth with a click and the first returning tendrils of shame began to bloom
on his cheeks.  I cut off my laughter instantly.  "No no no, Sam, I'm not
laughing at you!  I swear I'm not!  You just surprised me, that's all.  I
believe you."  He looked at me through narrowed eyes, wanting to trust me.
"Okay, maybe I am laughing at you, but only a little bit, and not because I
have a problem with whatever position you want to assume during sex.  No,"
I continued, unable to avoid a bit of a smile curling up my lips, "I just
brayed out like a jackass because I thought, 'that explains so much'!"

	The tendrils of shame curled up and died as the glow of Sam's more
usual irritation fired up his eyes.  "Explain it to me, then!"

	"No offense, bro, and bless your pea-pickin' lil ol' heart, but you
can be a bossy sumbitch.  I can't picture you being submissive to anybody."
I winked at him.  "Anybody but me, that is."

	"I'm not usually submissive at all.  Anybody thinks I'll kiss their
butt can kiss mine."

	I brayed out laughter again, and, after a startled sec, he joined
me.  "So maybe you can see why I was freaking out," he continued when we'd
calmed.  "You bust down my door like a sex superhero and suddenly I'm
thinking about turning bottom!"

	Remembering my discussion with Mr Q, I said, "Maybe that's what you
really want, way down deep inside."  Trying to keep my voice neutral.  "A
bossy, uh, take-charge attitude often hides a need to be controlled."

	"Thank you, Dr Freud," Sam said.  "And no, trust me."

	"I trust you," I said.  "And I believe you, trust me.  So why the
one-eighty?"

	"I didn't know that either, then," he said.  "Later on, when we
were doing our chores, and I'd about fried my mind trying to figure it out,
something else occurred to me.  I started thinking about how you'd
positively reeked of sex, and I wondered where you got it.  Mr Q had called
Mom earlier, so I knew you'd spent the night over there, and whatever their
faults I couldn't imagine them letting you guys have a girl over for sex.
So I got curious and --"

	"Wait a minute, bro."  He stopped and blinked at me.  "What's all
this about me reeking of sex?  How could you tell I'd had sex at all?"

	"Damien," he said, his voice impassive, "I can read you with
ninety-nine point nine percent accuracy.  I can tell when you've
masturbated in the shower.  I know when you flunk a test or flub a tackle
at practice.  When you're younger and smaller than the Tasmanian Devil that
Mom swears is your brother, you learn to read him pretty dang quick.  It's
a survival skill.  If I hadn't been distracted this morning I could have
told you how close your turd was to dropping."  Instead of that eyebrow, he
cocked his entire head at me.  "Can you honestly say that I was wrong?
About any of it?"

	"So you got curious and – ?"  I made the two-fingered rolling
motion at him.  Get on with it.

	He smirked and then un-cocked his head and said, "I got curious and
figured I'd ask Chad.  He's learned to be as smart about Rudy as I have of
you, over the years.  He'd know what happened for sure."

	I let my next words ooze out in a concerned drawl.  "I do hope you
told him how I almost raped you and how Rudy was somehow to blame."

	Blink.  And despite the exile of embarrassment, a red tendril
explored the cheeks of his skinny face.  "Damn.  Of all the texts I told
Chad to not let Rudy see --"

	I snorted.  "Rudy saw them all, trust me."

	"Wonderful."  Sigh.  "That's not exactly what I meant, that's just
how it came out.  I mean, it is what I meant, but I didn't mean it come out
like that."

	"Spoken like a true woman."

	"That is so not funny, Damien."

	"Wasn't meant to be, Sam."  At his imploring blinking, I relented
and said, "It's okay, Sam.  I know what you meant."  Pause.  "I'll give you
plenty of time to repent those words later." I paused.  He blinked.
"Plenty of time."  Blink.  Pause.  Blink.  "Babyboi."

	Before he could formulate a reply, a deep male voice boomed out,
"Hilda!"  Startled, Sam and I (and every other couple in the restaurant)
turned our heads to witness the invasion of a group of teenage boys
carrying backpacks and laptops into the dining room.  "Bring out five
waters and one Mountain Dew and some hummus!  We're back!"

	At the invocation of her name, Hilda, who'd been lurking in the
back kitchen, shot out into the dining room at the speed of a summoned
minion.  "I am NOT," she hollered even before the door swung shut behind
her, "do you hear me, I am NOT going to sit here until one o'clock in the
morning while you mutants quote stupid British movies and throw dice and
pretend to fight Ogre Chieftain Grummsh!"

	"Grummsh is an orc chieftain, not ogre," said the boy who'd
announced the occupation.  "I thought I explained the difference last
week."  He wore a duster identical to Sam's (although his fit, unlike my
brother's) and had, despite being at least a year younger than me, more
hair on his face and head than Rudy had on his entire body.  Dammit.  He
dropped his pack and laptop into a chair, and reaching into one of the
duster's voluminous pockets, pulled out what could only be a crooked tree
limb sanded down and painted and glittered into a genuine imitation magic
wand.  When he shrugged out of the jacket I saw that he wore a too tight
tie-dyed t-shirt featuring a picture of gaming dice and captioned 'Jesus
saves.  All others roll 2d8.'

	"Oh great," I muttered to Sam as the other boys, laughing and
joking at maximum volume, hijacked three nearby tables to pull together,
"invasion of the nerds."

	"I don't care if Grummsh is an orc or an ogre or a --" Hilda began,
but broke off in disbelief when she realized the hairy boy ignored her,
preferring instead to gaze in my direction.  I flushed, wondering if he'd
heard me, but –

	"Hey, Todd," Sam called, waving to the hairy boy.

	Todd flourished the magic wand into a salute.  "Hey, Sam."  Having
hailed and well-met my brother, he turned his attention to fending off
Hilda's outraged whispers.  Conversation in the dining room returned to
normal levels; well, normal levels plus Dungeons and Dragons decibels.

	"Poor Hilda has her hands full tonight," Sam observed.

	"It couldn't happen to a nicer hag," I grumped.  Not five minutes
into the dungeon and I wanted to shove a twenty-sided die down somebody's
throat.  I had no inclination to discuss Hilda's problems and even less to
inquire how he knew Todd.  Computer club, maybe.  He looked the type, hair
and all.  "At least we don't have to worry about being overheard anymore."

	"Say what?"  It took a beat before I realized he kidded me.
Snickering, he said, "I guess we need to finish this before one of those
guys gets a d20 shoved up his nose."  I raised my eyebrows at him.  "What?"
he asked, meaning it this time.  I shook my head.  Nothing.  "Where was I?"

	"Telling Chad how you narrowly avoided becoming the bitch of
cell-block Damien."  Straight-faced, I added, "Temporarily, anyhow."

	"How do you manage to go through life without a constant stream of
black eyes?"

	"I pay Rudy two donuts and a scoop of hummus per week for his
skills as a bodyguard.  Remind me to stop at Krispy Kreme on the way over
to the Q's.  After the liquor store and before the bus station."

	Blink.

	Sigh.  "I don't know, Sam.  I'm just lucky, I guess.  So, Your
Horror, you were curious as to the circumstances that prompted the sudden
perceived change in my demeanor."  I made the two-fingered rolling motion
at him.

	Sam closed his eyes, and if not for the hoopla caused by the rugged
adventurers preparing for bloody combat, the sound of him counting to ten
might've been be audible.  When he had his emotions firmly under control,
he opened his eyes and continued, "At first Chad didn't want to tell me
anything.  He kept saying he didn't know what I was talking about."

	"I bet he's a horrible liar even over text," I said, chuckling.

	"The worst!  Even I can do better than that!  But finally he broke
down and mentioned that he'd busted you and Rudy doing something nasty.
That's what he called it.  'Something nasty.'  I asked him what he meant,
and he didn't answer for a long time, but when he did, he told me in exact
and vivid detail what he'd seen.  And then, without me even prompting, he
started in on what you and Rudy had done to him last night.  Omigod, the
stuff he told me, Damien!  If I blabbed things like that to somebody I'd
only just barely call a friend, I'd die of humiliation!"

	We locked gazes and both of us said the name at the same time.
"Rudy."

	Sam groaned.  "Oh crap, Damien, I can't believe I fell for it.  I
should have seen it from miles away!"

	I laughed, reached over and patted his cheek.  "It's okay, Babyboi,
people much older and much wiser than you have fallen victim to Rudy's
games."  As for me, I resolved, I'd make him pay.  Nose or ass, his choice.
Nobody asked for his "help".  "And he owns Chad body and soul today.  No
way you could have known that."

	Whap whap whap!  Conversation in the restaurant ceased again, and
every eye turned to the gamers.  Even the jukebox was silent.  The hairy
guy, Todd, stood at the head of their long table, his magic wand raised and
ready to whap again if necessary.  He noticed he had the entire room's
attention, and he gave us all an abashed and apologetic grin.  "I'm sorry
about that.  You all go back to eating and we'll be quiet and let you enjoy
your meal."  Lowering his voice, he hissed at his surprised group, "Will
you dick-heads shut the hell up?  We left off last week with your party in
the antechamber to the orc mausoleum . . ."

	The jukebox kicked back in with, you guessed it, yet another
forgettable pop tune.  Not, thank the white, one of
he-who-must-not-be-named's abominations.  The adventurers eagerly charged
into certain death, but they managed to keep the chaos muted to a dull
roar, and conversation in the real world resumed.

	Sam picked up right where we'd left off.  "I'm just so glad I
didn't talk about my own kinky side, or how I felt about you.  But it's
almost like he knew anyway.  Because Chad – Rudy, I guess – started
in on how I should consider playing with you guys myself, how much fun it
was and how good it felt to . . . well, you can figure out what he said."

	Oh, yeah, I could figure out what he said.  And what Sam didn't
say.  "I didn't put him up to it, Sam.  Honest."  Too bad Rudy's ass wasn't
listed on the spank list tonight.

	He studied me intently, his black eyes owlishly wide and not
blinking at me for once.  "Okay, Damien, I believe you."

	Surprised at how relieved I felt, I said, "Thanks, bro," and meant
it.

	He shotgunned me a quick smile, on and off.  "But I'll have to say
it worked."

	"How?"

	Sam took his time before answering.  "It got me thinking about it.
Like I said, I've always leaned more to the dom stuff than the slave, but I
have to admit I've wondered about the other side.  Not because the thought
of it turns me on, but because it just seems like a good idea to me to know
what it feels like.  If I'm going to tie somebody down and spank them and
. . . and screw them in the butt then maybe I should experience all that
for myself.  So, you know . . . so I don't hurt them too bad.  And so I got
to thinking that if I were going to bottom for anybody, it might as well be
you.  Since I have this irresistible draw to you anyhow."

	I barely bit back a chuckle.  Trust Sam to take something as
mind-blowingly illogical as sex and worry it into a shape he felt
comfortable with.  Not that I had a problem with his personal goals and
quest for knowledge; I applaud anyone who chases their dreams with more
than a stick to tilt at impertinent windmills; but I didn't buy it.  Not
completely.  Why couldn't Sam lay back and enjoy the ride?  Why couldn't he
just accept this as a crazy adventure, one that promised a bond for those
brothers who dared dip a toe in the mystery?  Was it really necessary to
analyze it all out to the last spurt of semen?

	Why not simply admit that he wanted me to fuck him as badly as I
wanted to do it?

	"I guess what it all boils down to is that I wanted you to . . . to
fuck me.  I wanted it bad.  I wanted you be rough, and hurt me, and show me
how it felt to serve."

	Oh.  Well alrighty then.

	"Because," Sam continued, his tone steady and face unashamed,
"you're big and strong and naturally dominant.  Because you've been
dominating me all my life, and I'm comfortable with it.  But mostly," he
paused and looked me in the eye, "because I trust you.  Something like
this, I trust you, Damien, more than anybody else in the world."

	Now that was unexpected.  For the second time that night I reached
over and laid my hand lightly on his wrist.  "I trust you too, Sam," I
said, holding his gaze.  "Because if I didn't I couldn't go through with
this either."

	He smiled, grateful for the touch.  And for the words too, I hope.

	I squeezed his wrist and withdrew.  "Go on," I said, "tell me the
rest."

	"Okay.  So I figured out that I wanted it, and you wanted it too, I
knew that both from Chad's, or rather, Rudy's texts and from seeing it with
my own eyes those two minutes you stood in my doorway.  The next question
was, could I actually go through with it?  You know, suck and
. . . everything else.  So I decided on two tests, one for each of us.  The
first one was for me."

	"The shower," I guessed.

	"The shower," he confirmed.

	"The shower was a test for me, too," I said.  "A test of my
patience.  I wanted to beat you to death with the club you left me
holding."

	His facial expression scrunched up in sympathy even as his eyes
blinked at me in apology.  "I'm sorry, Damien.  That wasn't about cumming,
for either one of us.  It was about seeing if I could . . .  could do those
things with my mouth.  And about seeing if I could please you."

	"You were truly a babyboi on a mission," I observed.  "I just wish
you'd stopped and explained it all to me before you lit my fuse."

	"I knew Mom would be home soon," he said, but even he kenned that
his explanation bordered on weak.  "And like you said, I was on a mission."

	"You might have had time for a discussion of your motives if you
hadn't been so intent on scrubbing all the skin off my body."

	His nose wrinkling, Sam said, "Damien, I wash all the whites every
Tuesday, and, no offense?  I've seen your skid marks."

	Stung, I muttered, "More diplomatic to say you wanted to run your
hands over my body."

	He grinned at me, cocky, almost of Rudy quality.  "That too."  He
lost the grin.  "And then you almost aborted the mission I was on."

	"Uh, what?"

	"When you made me get hard.  Yeah, that's exactly right, Damien,
you made me get hard.  I wasn't expecting that.  Your hand felt so amazing,
I almost came."

	I shrugged.  "I just wanted to see how we matched up down there."
Remembering, I added, "The way we do is sooo fucking cool."

	"And that's what saved it," Sam said.  Reading the confusion in my
face, he explained, "Not the way we fit together, but the way you got me
hard just so you could compare us, that was hot.  And then when you took
control and . . . and shoved yourself into my mouth like that . . . yeah, I
knew right then that I could do it.  That I wanted to do it."  The memory
caused my cock to stir, and I'd be willing to bet Sam's did too.

	"Okay.  What about the second test?  The one for me?"

	"Don't worry, you passed."  He smiled.  "You even got a gold star."

	"Well?  What was it?"

	All serious again.  "When you told me the truth about what happened
with Rudy and Chad last night.  The whole truth, not just the parts that
made you look good."

	"I figured you already knew most of it, anyway."

	"I did.  Most of it.  Chad, or Rudy, or whoever --"

	"I'm sure Rudy dictated and Chad transcribed."  I snickered.
"Cracker so humiliated he probably came every time he hit send."

	"Well, whoever I talked to, they were very explicit and detailed
about your . . . uh . . . activities, so yeah, I knew most of it.  What I
didn't know I guessed."

	"Oh, you guessed.  What did you guess?"

	Eyebrow.  "How about that little fit of jealousy when Rudy took his
attention off you for five seconds?  I know how . . . uh . . . fond you are
of him.  I had wondered if any of Rudy's, uh, activities with Chad made you
. . . uh, uncomfortable."

	I glowered at him.  Undaunted, Sam widened his eyes and the corners
of his lips curved up in a smug 'you asked' expression.  But he took the
hint.

	"The point is, Damien, you didn't lie to me.  And that's when I
decided that, yeah, we can do this."

	"Wait.  Wait a sec."

	"What now?"

	"You've had my dick in your throat and my asshole on your tongue.
You've even drank my piss."

	"Yeah.  So?"

	"And you just decided ten minutes ago to fully commit?"

	"Damien, if you'd lied to me, I'd have shut down completely, no
matter what we've done so far."

	I snorted.  "That would be asking for rape."  Sam raised the
eyebrow again.  "Okay, okay, yeah, you know I wouldn't force you.  But
damn, Sam, if you backed out now, leaving me all hotted up for you like
this, well, that would do more damage to our relationship than anything I
might do to you tonight."

	"That was a risk I chose to take," he said to me, looking at me
steadily.  "Because I had faith in you.  And I was right."

	I blew out a stream of not quite frustrated air.  "Okay, Sam, I get
it.  But just to ease my mind, if it so please you, tell me point-blank
that we're going to do this."

	"What?  Damien, I just --"

	"Dammit, Sam, tell me, in plain, unadorned, and explicit English,
that you are going to let me take you to Rudy's house and fuck your brains
out."

	"Damien," he said, "sir, I want you to take me to the Q's and fuck
my brains out tonight.  I want you to be rough with me.  I want you to
spank me and, and, and twist my nipples, and, and whatever else you want to
do to me tonight.  That plain, unadorned, and explicit enough for you?"

	I nodded regally, magnanimous in victory.

	"But there are rules, Damien.  I – "

	Another disturbance broke out at the gamers' table, distracting
both of us.  The hairy guy, Todd, stood up at the head of table, pointing
his wand at a corpulent, pock-marked young skin-head who resembled, to me,
one of the ogres Hilda had spoken of (and yes, I do know the dif between an
orc and an ogre; duh).  "Because I'm the DM, that's why!" Todd insisted,
shaking his wand so hard flakes of glitter dusted the air around it.

	Ogre, leaning back in his chair and compulsively rolling dice on
the tabletop in front of him, protested, "But it clearly states in the PHB
and DMG that immediate actions are --"

	"I don't care what it states in the PHB, there's absolutely no way
you can hold a dagger to somebody's throat and take an opportunity attack
without --" Todd noticed that once again all eyes in the dining room were
upon him, and, brushing his hair back over his shoulders, he lowered his
voice and sat back down.  Ogre kept rolling his dice contemptuously.

	"I hate rules lawyers," I observed.

	"Rules are there for a reason," Sam said, his mouth quirking.
"Like the rules for --" A fresh outburst of squabbling broke out in
orcville, and my brother sighed and pushed up his glasses and rubbed his
eyes.  "Can we finish this discussion in the car?  Those idiots are more
annoying than Rudy when he's bored."

	I laughed, knowing exactly what Sam meant.  "Yeah, good idea.  I
gotta go piss again anyhow."  I'd had to go for quite awhile, but I didn't
want to break the mood with Sam.  "You flag down Hilda and order the hummus
to go, and I'll be right back.

	"Wait," Sam said, stopping me as I started to slide from the booth.
"Hang on and I'll go – Hilda!" he called to the waitress, who happened
to be passing (what a coinky-dink!) with a tray-full of beverages.

	Startled, she halted, almost losing a glass, and therefore the
entire tray, but, a true professional, she managed to prevent the
catastrophe with an amazing feat of grace.  "What?" she grumbled at Sam
peevishly when she had her load back under control.  "Now you decide you
want a tart?"

	"No, no, but thanks for asking.  No, I was just going to ask you to
bring us an order of hummus --"

	"Two orders," I interrupted.  An image of my brother licking hummus
off my personal pita pulsed through my groin.

	Sam shot me an intrigued glance, as if reading my mind, but he
merely continued, drily, "Okay, make it two orders of hummus to go, please,
Hilda?"

	She narrowed her eyes, as if contemplating the best way to cook
bespectacled black-haired boys, but she nodded.  Grudgingly.  "Five
minutes."

	"Then we'll go away," Sam promised.

	She looked as if she rather doubted she should be so lucky, but she
nodded again and moved along.

	"Can I go piss now?" I demanded.  "Before I'm forced to use my tea
glass?"

	He eyed me speculatively for a sec, as if he might like to see me
to do that, but at last he nodded, and, when I slid out of the booth, he
followed.  "I just wanted to go with you," he said.

	"Why?" I asked, suspicious.  "So we can discuss which of our dates
is cuter?"

	"That's easy.  Your date is the cutest one," he said, and I barked
out a laugh and maybe a drop or two of urine at his sally.  He winked at me
and continued, "No, I found out I had a little room left for dessert after
all."

	I stopped and cocked my head, smiling at him.

	"What?"

	I liked this side of Sam; so submissive; so assertive in the way he
went about it.  "Nothing."

	"I thought you had to pee?"

	"I do.  Why'd you stop?"

	He huffed and stalked off.  I followed, grinning.

	On the way to the service hall, we had to stop for a moment to
allow a tiny Mexican boy to carry a loaded bus tub bigger than he was into
the back kitchen.  As he inched through the swinging door, we spotted the
obese white girl at work running the dishwasher.  She saw us at the same
time we saw her, and her fat face lit up in a wide, stoned grin.  She waved
to us, then took her spray hose and held it above her head, opened her
mouth and pulled the trigger and got a face-full of water for her efforts.
The Mexican busboy, struggling with his load, didn't notice, thank the
Lord.  After a surprised (for her; appalled, for us) moment, she burst into
a roar of laughter, then checked herself and laid a ssh! finger across her
lips.  We smiled and nodded until, at last, the busboy and his tub made it
through and the door swung closed.

	"Dear God, Damien," Sam said, "let's hurry up and get out of here
before swat teams from the entire tri-state area converge on us."

	"I hear ya, bro," I said, and we hurried on down the hall to the
restroom, fortuitously unoccupied.  We went in and, almost before I could
click the lock on the door, Sam had fallen to his knees on the perfectly
good if slightly unsanitary floor and was impatiently pulling down my zip.
I spread my legs into P.U.P. stance and leaned a hand against a wall for
balance as Sam fished out my hose and put it to his mouth.

	No hesitation this time, folks, none at all.  No sooner had Sam
parted his lips than my flow streamed out, hot and strong and heavy, and
Sam took it, eagerly, drank it down with a thirst that bordered on
desperation.  I put the hand that wasn't required to hold me erect on Sam's
head, tousled his unkempt black locks, thrilling to the power and to the
give and take that twined so effortlessly between us.  After a moment,
though, Sam put his palms against my upper thighs and pushed gently against
them, signaling that he needed me to stop.  With a great deal of mental
cursing and willpower, I halted the stream, and he let me go.  "I'm sorry,
sir," he whispered, moving aside so I could make it to the urinal.  He
watched me let loose the flow once again with regret on his face.  "I
couldn't swallow any more.  Another drop and I'd explode."

	I laughed and finished my piss, glad that the restroom door had a
lock on it.  I wouldn't have put it past the obese girl to decide that the
perfect time to clean the restroom was the moment my brother was once again
swallowing my urine, and I would have hated to invent a bet involving the
Cubs.  They have enough troubles without me using them as an excuse.  "It's
okay, Babyboi," I said as my flow at last began to ebb.  "There will be
plenty more of it, and probably sooner rather than later."  He didn't
answer, but as I went to shake off the last few drops he grabbed my pecker
again and licked them off instead (apparently the remark about the
consequences of drinking even one more drop had been hyperbolic; he didn't
explode), sparking a fire that was neither ethereal nor metaphysical but
blatantly sexual in nature, and I boned up into a semi in the time it took
me to blow out a shaky breath.

	The little shit merely grinned and tucked me back away.  "Time and
place, sir," he reminded me, zipping me up.

	"You are so going to pay for being a prick-tease," I told him as he
stood up.

	"I hope so.  Sir," he said.  "Sir, may I --" he asked, nodding at
the urinal.

	I stepped away, giving the pisser a game-show hostess flourish with
my hands.  "By all means, Babyboi."

	"Thank you, sir," Sam murmured, brushing past me, and then he did,
like, the cutest, most adorable thing ever.  He pushed his pants and boxers
down to his knees and hiked his pull-over shirt up to his ribcage, then,
thrusting his skinny buttocks forward and without handling his penis at
all, let loose a stream of urine.  He even swiveled his hips back and
forth, drawing short-lived yellow designs on the urinal wall.  Behaving,
all in all, like a small boy making wee.

	That innocence contrasted sharply with the perverse sexual
dilettante I'd discovered hiding in my brother tonight, and it drew me to
stand behind him, drew me both sensually and emotionally.  I needed to
touch him, suddenly, and I reached out, laid my fingers on the nape of his
neck.  I heard him inhale, and his stream faltered for a nanosecond.  He
felt the vibrations in our contact too.  I slid my fingers down, across his
bunched shirt, onto the bare flesh of his lower back.  He hissed and again
his flow stuttered.  "Sir," he breathed as my fingers dropped lower, lower
still, until they stroked his tailbone.  "Sir," he said again, as my touch
crawled into his crack and came to rest directly on his fluttering hole.  I
massaged the quivering flesh, feeling it nip at my finger, and, with my
other hand, I reached around to grasp his rapidly inflating cock, heedless
of the warm piss that still spilled from it in erratic bursts.  He boned up
to full, and I stroked his cock with the same rhythm I used in rubbing his
hole.  "Sir," he panted, "sir . . . not the time . . . or . . .  oh sir
. . . or the place."

	I leaned over his shoulder and whispered in his ear, "I'll decide
times and places, not you."  He let out a gasp as I left the seductive tide
of his asshole and reached up to grasp a hank of his hair and yank his head
back.  "Understood, Babyboi?"  At the same moment I ground my jean-clad
erection into the small of his back, giving him evidence that he did not
suffer a monopoly on horny.

	He gasped again.  "Yes, uh, yes, sir, Damien, under, uh,
understood!"

	I released his hair, put my hand on his shoulder and spun him
around to face me; down below, his surprised penis spurted out another
stream of piss; drops of it landed on my hand and on both our pants, but
most of it hit the tiled floor, changing the description of the room from
"slightly unsanitary" to "decidedly unsanitary".  Oh well.  Shit, you
should pardon the expression, happens.

	"But maybe you're half-right," I said, releasing him and backing
away.  Teasing him.  Pulling a Rudy.  "Maybe this isn't the time.  But it's
for sure the place."  And, very deliberately, I brought my saturated middle
finger to my lips and lapped up the droplets of his urine splattered there.
Sam had been right.  It tasted like mostly nothing; dribbles of rapidly
cooling salt water.  But it was Sam's.  That fact alone gave it flavor.

	He moaned, standing there rigidly a couple feel away, his eyes
blinking in disbelief and lust behind the thin lenses of his glasses, his
hands bunching his shirt higher and higher on his narrow chest.  If not for
the jeans and boxers cushioning his knees, you could probably have heard
them knocking.  His erection poked out from his shaved crotch, strumming
and throbbing in the air, demanding to be touched, and Sam heard the call,
felt the call, and he reached for it.

	"No!"

	His hand stopped micro-millimeters from encircling his rigidity.
"Yes, uh, yes sir."  He didn't want to, but he pulled it away and settled
it back on his chest, glaring at me the whole while.  I smirked at him.
"Now . . . uh . . . now who's being a tease, Damien?  Uh, sir?  Who?"

	"Ah," I said, winking at him, "but that's my right, now isn't it?"

	"Yes, yes sir, that's --" He broke off as I stepped up close again,
reached around with my dry hand to re-entwine my fingers in his hair and
yank his head backwards.  I pressed up against him, trapping his cock
between my blue-jeaned thighs.  I held up my other hand, still glistening
with his moisture, and wiped each finger and my palm across his lips,
cleaning myself.  His tongue snaked out to taste the driblets of piss I
left there, and I flicked it, hard, forcing him to withdraw it with a gasp
of unfeigned pain.  My fingers finally free of piss, I reached up and
pulled his glasses from his face, and he blinked up at me, our face inches
apart.

	"I'm only going to do this once," I said, not caring if my breath
or his reeked of caramelized onions and pesto, "and don't ask me why I'm
doing it because I don't know."  He started to speak, but I cruelly screwed
a tighter grip in his hair, and he shut up.  "And, for the record, whatever
else happens tonight, this little dysfunctional family moment will stay
completely between me and you.  Neither Rudy nor anyone else will ever
know."  And, before I could lose my nerve, I smashed my lips to his.

	He gasped, and for a moment I thought he'd refuse my kiss, but he
didn't.  Instead, he reached up and and circled his arms round my neck,
bringing me in closer, holding onto me tighter.  He came up on tiptoe in
hunger for our embrace, and his cock head knocked pleasantly at my
denim-covered balls.  The cool, salty drops of urine I'd deposited on his
lips contrasted sharply with the heat of his mouth, and I moaned deep into
his throat.  Our tongues twisted and tangled around each other, our teeth
knocked together in the careless passion of our kiss.  I ground myself
against him, and he ground himself against me, both of us craving more, but
both of us also knowing that, yeah, this was neither the time nor the
place.

	So, at last, requiring breath and despising my species for its
silly reliance on oxygen, I released him, stepped back, faced him.  Looked
at him looking at me.  Both our chests heaving from the exertion.  Both of
us boned to the max, his pointing at me accusingly, mine throbbing against
my pants, threatening to tear a hole in the denim.  Neither of us possessed
the words to speak of what we'd just felt thrum between us.  And that was
fine.  We needed no words, and sometimes 'tis better to not name something
so fleeting and fair.

	Thump thump.  Thump!  The sound of an irritated fist pounding on
the door echoed through the room.  "Holy freakin' moly, hurry the fuck up
in there!  Other people have to piss too, y'know!"

	"Dammit, Babyboi," I whispered, "you make me forget there's such a
thing as a real world."

	"I've been told I have that effect, sir," he grinned, squinting at
me, his face naked.  Oh yeah.  I handed him back his glasses, and while he
wrapped them back onto his ears I knelt and yanked up his boxers and jeans
(giving his cock a quick and friendly squeeze as I put it away; the muffled
gasp he gave proved reward enough for my efforts), fastening the pants, and
pulled his shirt down, covering the tent I'd left behind.  Stepping to the
mirror, I smoothed down the hem of my own sweater, and then both of us
washed our hands, hurriedly.  But not our mouths.  Or our faces.  It is,
after all, rude to make a rude person knock twice.

	Which is precisely what the rude person was preparing to do as we
opened the restroom door; his fist almost rapped Sam on the forehead, and
my little brother ducked and weaved instinctively; the guy checked his
knock with little space to spare.  His other fist jiggled rapidly at his
crotch.  I thought for a sec that he masturbated, until a faint clicking
sound made me realize he held a fistful of dice and was compulsively
rolling them around in his fingers.

	It was, of course, Ogre.

	"Jeez," he grumbled, his gaze flickering between me (bigger than
him) and Sam (smaller), and he took what he considered the safer option by
settling it on Sam (thus proving himself stupid as well as ugly).  "You
guys been in there for hours.  What, you had to help each other pee-pee?"
He guffawed, thinking himself funny.

	Neither Sam nor I laughed, although I at least smiled.  Sam stepped
up close to the buffoon, and looking up into his surprised face, said, very
seriously, "Did you know that playing with your dice when you're not
actually rolling can lead to blindness and hairy palms?"

	Ogre took a step back, glanced over to me, clearly wondering if Sam
was a crazy person and I his keeper, but I just shrugged and said, "On the
other hand, studies have shown that it reduces stress and may even enhance
your immune system.  You have to decide for yourself if the risk is worth
it."

	Ogre gaped at us, and his hand stilled; the sound of no dice
clicking together echoed through the hall.  Failing to regain his composure
quickly enough to suit himself, he muttered, "You assholes are retarded,"
and pushed between us into the restroom, slamming the door behind him and
snapping over the lock with the haste of an old woman fearing werewolves in
the night.

	"I thought you were gonna punch him, Sam," I said as we turned to
go back to the dining room.  "Why didn't you punch him?  You could take
him."

	"Of course I could take him," Sam said, not conceited, just
convinced.  "But then somebody would call the cops and somebody else would
call Mom and next thing you know we're beating off in separate cells
instead of you beating on me."  My cock, which had deflated some in the
altercation with the nerd named Ogre, swelled up again, even though it knew
good and damn well nothing good could come of it.  For about the thousandth
time that night I congratulated myself on the decision to wear a long
sweater.

	"You have an absolutely incredible way of expressing yourself in
words sometimes," I said.  "Why have I never noticed that before?"

	"You've never paid attention before," Sam replied as we reached our
booth.  The hummus waited for us, all bagged up and ready to go, on the
table, along with a new check adorned on the back with huge, swirly message
("Thanks tons!  Hilda") from our dedicated server.  Sam reached into the
booth seat and pulled out his dress robes; I reached into my pocket and
pulled out my phone.

	"What are you doing?" Sam demanded as he began the laborious
process of shrugging into his duster and buttoning himself in.

	"Texting Rudy," I answered, ignoring my brother's huff of
annoyance.  "Telling him we're on the way.  You might make yourself useful
and text Mom that we're for sure going to the Q's."

	He grumbled but did as I asked while I awaited Rudy's reply.

	Rudy: "cool cool u bringin hummus???"

	Damien: "yes we're bringing hummus asshole"

	Rudy: "awesome love you tell s next time to put fuk'n before
douche-wad when he's imitating you"

	I burst out laughing, and Sam looked over his own phone at me, eyed
me suspiciously.  Waving at him to mind his own business, I replied –

	Damien: "yup u be da masta at imitating folks over text"

	No immediate reply.  Not that I expected one.  I'd just lobbed a
word grenade at him, and he needed time to figure out the best way to lob
it back.  While I waited, I asked Sam, "What did Mom say?  She replied
yet?"

	"Yeah, a minute ago," Sam said.  "She said fine and have Mr Q call
from the landline when we get there."

	"Man, she's not trusting me at all tonight," I said with a frown.
"I wonder if she knows something or if it's just in general."

	"Probably just in general," Sam said.  "But then you did lie about
Rudy's parents being home last night."

	He only avoided strangulation because my phone chirped "Dude!"
right as my fingers started itching.

	Rudy: "wuz onwy twying to help a bwuddah out"

	Hmm.  Rather than lob the grenade back he chose to throw himself on
it instead.  Interesting.

	"Will you hurry up?"  Sam had managed to get his duster all
buttoned up and waited for me impatiently, hands in his pockets and playing
with whatever he had stashed there.

	"If you're in such a freakin' rush summon your broomstick and I'll
meet you at the Q's."

	"Oh ha ha, that's so funny I forgot to laugh."

	"Forget to talk for a minute, okay, and let me finish up here?"

	He made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a groan, but he piped
down and let me finish.

	Damien: "u got choice to make before i get there"

	Rudy: "shit"

	Rudy: "nose or ass??"

	Damien: "nose or ass"

	Rudy: "shit"

	Rudy: "oh well it was fun so worth it"

	"What was that all about?" Sam demanded as, chuckling at the
audacious twit I have the dubious honor of calling my best friend, I
slipped my phone into my pocket and shrugged into my jacket.

	"Nothing," I said, zipping up.  If I had the right to hold our
unsettling kiss secret from Rudy, I had the right to hold my private
dissatisfaction with Rudy secret from Sam.  "Just master stuff, that's
all."

	"That's worrisome," he muttered, making me laugh as I gathered up
the bag of hummus and the ticket and rummaged in my pocket for the debit
card.

	"Relax, Babyboi," I said, reaching out and smoothing the lapel of
his dress robes, "I won't let anyone hurt you."

	"Well now that just defeats the purpose," he said blithely, turning
to go.  I chuckled and watched him walk off.  Like with Rudy, you never
know what's going to come out of his mouth.  Although I had, ho ho, an idea
what was going to cum into it.

	Yeah, I groaned too, even as I thought it.

	Sam had made it several feet away from me, but instead of heading
for the cash register and the exit, he headed instead for the table of
gamers.  I noticed that in the time I had been texting Rudy and teasing my
kid brother, Ogre had come back from the restroom and lounged in his place
opposite the hairy dungeon master, still rolling that handful of dice in
his hand like he masturbated fickle fate herself.  I further noticed that
Sam had clocked Ogre's return as well, and I hurried to catch up my brother
before I missed anything good.

	" . . . and in the dead orc crypt-keeper's hand you find a gemstone
worth . . . " Todd trailed off as my brother came up beside him.  "Hey,
Sam, what's up?"

	Sam didn't answer; instead, he took from Todd's hand the genuine
imitation magic wand, and aiming it down the table at a very much surprised
Ogre, the best kid brother in the whole wide motherfucking world hollered
at the top of his lungs, "EXPELLIARMUS!"  Glitter danced in the air around
the wand, proof of the magic in his spell.

	In the shocked silence of dining room, I registered two things.
The first was that I saw Ogre's fist open and the dice spill out onto the
table and floor before his own horrified eyes.  And the second was that I
heard Justin Beiber's voice moaning something with about fifteen 'baby's in
it.  And there I stood, too damned shocked to even think about making the
"ptui!" sound.

	I don't think Sam noticed the hated voice in the air (and if he
did, I'd forgive the threatened spanking simply for the entertainment he'd
just given me); he merely turned to me and, with both his face and voice
deadpan, said, "Y'know, Damien, you just might be on to something with this
Hogwart's student business."  Then, bowing to the still-floored and
still-hairy Todd, Sam returned the wand and said, "Thanks."

	"Anytime, Sam," Todd answered automatically, then, regaining some
of his composure, he added, "Wrong universe, though."  I think a grin
sprouted somewhere in all that beard, but I couldn't be sure.

	"Don't care," Sam grinned back.  "I still threw a nat twenty."

	"That was a crit hit if I ever saw one, my friend."

	"See ya, Todd."

	"See ya, Sam."

	As Sam spun around and began marching back toward the cash
register, the table of gamers got over their amazement and burst out into a
roar of laughter and insult.  Ogre, his cheeks red with humiliation, slid
out his chair and started patting around on the floor for his elusive dice.
Conversation resumed around the restaurant, although it seemed, to me, to
be fairly hostile towards the gamers, and me, and Sam, and, in general,
anything on this end of the room.

	I didn't care.  I was leaving.

	Sam abruptly turned on his toe and marched back toward me.  "Give
me that," he said, snatching the bill and the debit card out of my hand,
"you'll leave too big a tip.  Besides, I'm on a roll here."  I had to
agree.  He most certainly was on a roll.  He spun back around, and I
trailed along in his wake, pure delight in my step.

	Hilda and the ancient assistant manager with the smelly bowels and
bad toupee stood at the register, Hilda because she wanted to witness our
departure with her own eyes (I presume) and the old man because he needed
to lean against something or crumble into dust (I'm certain).

	Sam gave the manager the bill and the card.  Ringing in the
transaction, the old man and his toupee asked, "Was everything awesome
tonight?"  Trying to sound energetic and hip, and failing miserably.

	"The food was excellent, as usual," Sam said neutrally.  "Fresh
veggies do make a difference."

	"Yes, they do, don't they?" the manager replied, completely missing
that Sam had omitted mention of the service.

	Hilda didn't miss it.  Her eyes narrowed, warning Sam to be
careful.

	"Here you go," the manager, pushing the card and receipts and an
ink pen across the counter to Sam.  "If you'd like to, ah, leave a tip for
your server, just put it in there and total it up and give us your, heh
heh, autograph at the bottom."

	"I'm going to leave a tip because the service was fast and
efficient, and because my Mom raised me to believe its only right, as
servers depend on their tips to survive," and he paused here, first to
decide the amount he should leave and then to figure the total (while Hilda
watched him with smoldering slits in her eyes, just itching to come across
the counter at him), then continued, "but when my Mom asks me why I only
left ten percent I'm going to tell her because my waitress was a raging
bitch who apparently gets off on serving alcohol to minors."  With a
flourish he scrawled Mom's name across the bottom of the ticket and pushed
it back across the counter to the flabbergasted Hilda and the shocked old
man.

	Hilda recovered first.  As Sam folded his receipt around the debit
card and shoved them into his pocket, she snarled and slapped both hands on
the counter, preparatory to launching herself up and over.  The manager
snapped to and yanked her back, surprisingly strong for such an ancient
being, and, shooting us a "please just go" smile full of false teeth and
desperation, he chattered inanely, "Well, ah, not everyone is fond of
Hilda's, ah, method of serving!"

	"Orcs and ogres wouldn't be fond of Hilda's method of serving," Sam
called over his shoulder as he turned to walk away.

	"Come, ah, come back next week sometime for a free pizza," the
manager called, trying to wrestle Hilda into the back kitchen.  "And sit in
Robin's station, Robin is, ah, nice!"  He called out something else (I'm
guessing for someone to call 911) but we were outside by that time and
couldn't hear exactly what.  Yes, back out in the wind and the rain and the
cold, and I felt warm enough to survive temperatures at least a couple
degrees lower.

	"Sam, I just have to say that makes two times, count 'em, TWO times
in the last five minutes that you have made me prouder to be your brother
than you ever have before."  And, right there in front of God and
everybody, I grabbed his chin and laid a fierce smack-a-roo on him.

	He pushed me away before my lips had lingered on his for more than
a second or two.  "Dammit, Damien," he said, he spluttered, "you said you
were only going to do that once!  And out here?  Are you nuts?"  But he was
pleased, I could tell.

	"Relax," I said, still grinning at him like, yeah, like a
love-struck idiot, "that was a 'good job, kick-ass bro, way to go' kind of
victory kiss, not a weird, incestuous, Tennessee Williams on crack kind of
kiss."

	"It's the kind of kiss that can get us arrested or beaten up," he
said crossly, turning towards the Saturn.

	"Relax," I repeated, following him across the parking lot.  "We can
obviously never eat here again anyhow, so who cares what they think?"

	"Oh well," he said as I unlocked the car, "I heard Big Ed's across
town has good pizza.  But no hummus," he finished, regretfully.

	"We all have to make sacrifices, Babyboi," I pointed out, ducking
into the driver's seat before he could reply.  I leaned over and unlocked
his door, and he slid in beside me.

	"But it's hummus, Damien!"

	"After tonight, you won't want any hummus for a couple months,
Babyboi," I promised, "and by that time Hilda will be in prison, the old
man manager will have taken his toupee to the afterlife, and Ogre will have
died at his own party's hands.  We'll come back then and I'll order you all
the hummus you want."

	"But the obese girl will still be here," Sam complained, and I
rolled my eyes.

	"Nah," I said in my best 'placate the drama queen' voice.  "She'll
probably get fired tonight, for smoking weed and making up crazy stories on
the job."

	"We can only hope," Sam said.

	I started the car, turned on the heater, cracked my window so we'd
be safe from carbon monoxide poisoning.  Sam stared out at the parking lot,
chewing his lip, hands in his duster's pockets.

	"Stop worrying about the hummus," I told him.  "If it means that
much to you I'll print a recipe off the internet and buy you a thousand
pounds of chickpeas."

	"Oh, screw the hummus," he scoffed.  I picked my jaw up off my lap
and waited for him to retract his blasphemy.  He did not, to my sorrow.
"Only I'm starting to have second thoughts.  I mean, yeah, what we just did
in the restroom was hot, but --"

	I shot a hand out and grabbed his chin, jerked his head around to
face me.  "No," I said.  "Just – no."

	"Damien --"

	"Don't 'Damien' me," I said.  "After all the soul-searching and
fear-swallowing and blue balls we've both suffered through today, there's
no damn way in this world we're going to back down."

	"Damien --"

	"I said don't!"  He shut up, but I could see my name hovering on
his lips, ready to drop a third time.  "Sam, check this out.  If you go
chickenshit now, they win."

	"They?"  He looked at me as if wondering if I'd suddenly gone
paranoid, and his hands fiddled with the contents of his pockets.  I
wondered if he had a straightjacket in there; there was certainly enough
room.  "Who is 'they', Damien?"

	I let go his chin, sat back in my seat, tapped an irregular,
frustrated rhythm on the steering wheel.  "Them," I said, nodding my head
at the world outside the Saturn.  "You know.  Society.  The law.  The
church.  All the adults who say we're only kids, that we don't know what
we're doing or even what we want.  Too young to have sex, too young to
smoke cigarettes or weed, too young to have an opinion or a brain.  Don't
do anything, be safe, they say, be careful, don't destroy your life, like
they aren't destroying their own every day.  They're just jealous, they
are, because we're young and daring and willing to take what we want, damn
the consequences.  So ignore them, Sam.  Don't let them win."

	He sat quiet a moment, mulling over my words, then, "You sound like
you've given this a lot of thought, Damien."

	"I have," I said truthfully.  "Not this particular situation; I
never had a clue that one day I'd be debating the ethics of screwing my
brother.  But dammit, Sam!  Don't you get awfully tired of being told how
to think, how to act, what to say and what not to say?  The whole point of
being young is to experiment, to act crazy, to make fools of ourselves in
pizza joints the world over.  To figure out this crazy thing called life
for ourselves, to make mistakes, to fall down and learn and pick ourselves
up and move on.  And all those so-called concerned adults out there in the
world?  All they do is cry and wring their hands and pass knee-jerk,
masturbatory laws designed less to prevent us lost, ignorant teenagers from
hurting ourselves and more to keep us out of their hair, to keep us from
presenting them with annoyance and problems that need to be solved.  And
the longer we let them lead us, the longer we allow them to cushion us from
the 'real world', whatever the hell that is, the stupider we become, so
when some major crisis does hit all we know how to do is weep and look
around for some helpful adult to pick up the pieces, because we don't know
how, because we've never had the opportunity to practice at minor crises,
because we're stupid sheep with no brains and no opinions and no fucking
spines."

	I could have crawled into one of Sam's eyes and out the other, they
were so wide.

	"Look, Sam," I said, tempering my tone downward, "have I ever told
you about my 'Permanent Record' moment?'  He shook his a head.  "It was a
couple of years ago.  Coach was haranguing me about my grades, threatening
to bench me if I didn't raise them a couple points, and he was going on and
on about how my grades and my attitude and smart-assed ways were all noted
in my 'permanent record' and how I'd better keep my nose clean.  But you
know what, Sam?"  He shook his head, fascinated and a little frightened by
my passion.  "There is no permanent record.  There's a school record, yes,
and I suppose it's important for college, but some huge terabyte file
listing all your foibles and mistakes and embarrassments that follows you
all your life and gets bigger and bigger every time you fuck up?  There
ain't one, Babyboi.  The only permanent record is the one in your head, and
in your heart, and in your gut, and the only person who ever gets to read
it is you.  And you have to decide if you want it filled with
accomplishment or failure, with joy or regret.  With knowledge or
ignorance.  You yourself, no one else."  I sighed and sagged in my seat,
winded by my long speech but not regretting it in the slightest, even if it
had slipped from the main point of persuading Sam back into commitment.
But the words needed to be said, and, no matter what did or not happen
later in the evening, Sam needed to hear them.  "Anyhow, that was probably
the most significant epiphany I had ever had in my life, and now I'm laying
it on you."

	He stayed silent a minute, thinking over all I'd said.  "That
sounds like something Rudy would say," he ventured finally.

	I blew out an irritated sigh.  "I can think for myself, you know.
Me and Rudy do not share one brain, no matter what anybody says, and I am
most certainly not his puppet or acolyte.  It was my epiphany, not his, but
when I explained it all to him, his face lit up and he said he felt exactly
the same way, he'd just never known how to express it in words."  Sam
looked as if he doubted that Rudy knew how to express any complex idea in
words, but he kept quiet.  "And say what you want to about Rudy, that he's
reckless, and brash, and rude –"

	"And an idiot."  Sam said it under his breath, and I pretended not
to hear it.  It wasn't the first time he'd expressed that particular
sentiment, anyhow.

	"-- but he grabs every moment and drinks it in, sucks it like milk
from the teat of life, and he takes just as much joy from the last drop as
he did from the very first.  He's alive, Sam.  He doesn't care what the
world thinks of him, only what he thinks of himself."

	"All Rudy ever thinks about is himself," Sam muttered, but it was
an automatic reflex insult and his heart wasn't into it.  I'd definitely
given him something to ponder.

	"And besides, Sam," I said, segueing gently back to the main point,
"whatever happens between us is between us.  It's nobody's business but
ours."

	"And Rudy's, and Chad's, and Mr Q's," he retorted.  "Which is kind
of freaky in itself, Damien.  What kind of father --"

	"A human father," I interrupted.  "A father with issues of his own,
and a tolerance of teenagers thirsting for experience and a good time.
Don't worry about Mr Q.  He knows what we're doing, but he'll be off in
another room, not right there with us."  Probably.  Maybe.  "And he'll be
discreet.  He could get into more trouble than us if anyone found out what
he let go on in his house.  The point is, Sam, that, yeah, Rudy and Chad
and Mr Q may know what we do, they may see what they do, and maybe they'll
even do it with us, but they won't know why we're doing it.  They might see
our bond, but they won't feel it.  Like the kiss in the pisser while ago,
that bond is between us.  It's ours."

	"Stop, Damien, stop!" Sam said, putting both hands in his hair and
yanking on it, illustrating to me how far I'd ridden him to distraction.
"Fine, we'll do it, I'll go through with it, just shut the hell up!"

	"No!"  I reached over and grabbed his left hand, engulfing it
between both mine.  He looked at me, flabbergasted at what he perceived as
my sudden change of heart.  "No, Sam, I still want to do it, I want you so
bad that if I don't have you tonight my head just might explode.  But I
don't want to do it if it means subjecting you to something you don't want
to do yourself.  If you're not willing, I'll sweep up the pieces of my
skull and quietly drop the subject.  And --" I hesitated, but it needed to
be said.  Because I meant it.  Whatever I wanted for myself, I refused to
steal something that may only be given.  "And no recriminations, no
grudges, no hurt feelings.  We'll go back to being 'normal' brothers again,
whatever that means, and I'll never mention it again or throw it in your
face, not ever."  And then I shut up.  Either the war was won or it wasn't.
I had no ammunition for another campaign, and no energy for it, to boot.

	The decision lay with Sam, and I could not make it for him.  If I
did I became the object of my own derision, a pure red flag of everything I
despised, everything I'd just railed against.

	Sam said nothing for a long while, just sat there in the Saturn's
passenger seat and stared out into the rain- and wind-swept night, his
cool, dry hand between my own warm, sweaty ones.  He stayed silent for so
long that I interpreted his reserve negatively, assuming that he'd decided
against continuing our surreal journey and was currently trying to figure
out how to break the news to me gently.  Well, I thought, good thing I had
a back-up plan.  Movies first, then drop Sam off at home and head to
Rudy's, on foot if necessary.  Just because I intended to keep my
relationship with Sam intact no matter what didn't mean I had to become
celibate; I needed, absolutely needed to drain my balls of all the
frustration my little brother had caused me today.  I mentally reviewed all
the movies I knew to be playing at the mall, and had just about decided on
the latest Hunger Games sequel, when Sam tightened his grip on my hand and
turned to face me, his black eyes flashing behind his lenses and, writ
large upon his skinny face, that serene but nervous determination I'd first
seen in the shower and last seen in the Pizza Joint's restroom.  Even
before he spoke I knew he'd been won over, either by my words or his own
undeniable desire.

	"Yeah, Damien," he said, slapping his other hand on top of our
clasp, "yeah, let's do this.  You're right.  If anybody is going to win
this thing, it should be us."

	"So you want this experience etched into your permanent record?" I
teased, wincing at the relief and gratitude I heard booming in my words.

	"I want it etched into my flesh, sir," he said, softly, almost
inaudibly, over the twin hums of the heater and the engine.  "I want to
ache all over for days after you're through with me.  I want it etched into
my fucking bones."  His fingers rubbing gently against my skin, his eyes
unblinking and stolid.  "Sir."

	Boing!  I sprung a boner so quick I swear it gave my cock a
charley-horse.  Barely resisting the urge to laugh like a loon at my good
fortune, I squeezed his hand, hard, tight, and smiled at him.

	"There's that wild child Sammy I know and love," I said, and before
he could rebuke me for my use of that most despised diminutive, I shrugged
off his hands and said, "You won't regret this, Sam.  Neither of us will, I
promise."

	"I promise too, Damien," he said, gifting me with a grin of such
startlingly blatant lust I throbbed and probably stained my boxers.  At
that I couldn't help but allow the loon in me to emerge, and I laughed like
hell as I put the Saturn into reverse to leave the parking spot.

	But wait.  I shifted back in park and willed myself to calm down.
Sam looked at me, that eyebrow arched, and suddenly I loved the mischievous
expression rather than hated it.

	"What, Damien?"

	I took a breath.  "You said something about there being rules to
this.  I reckon that's something we need to talk about."

	"Oh yeah, I forgot."  He laughed, but when he looked at me he he
wore his most serious, don't fuck with me expression on his face.  "These
rules are non-negotiable, Damien.  I have to be able to trust you to follow
them.  To the letter."

	"When I said you could trust me," I replied, my face as serious at
his own, "I meant you could trust me all the way down the line with this.
Whatever your rules are I promise to respect them."

	He nodded.  "I know.  I don't even have to think about that.  I
know.  But I had to say it, all the same."

	"Understood."

	"Okay, first rule.  Ready?"  I nodded.  "You are my Sir tonight,
Damien.  Nobody else.  Not Rudy, not Mr Q, you and you only."

	"What about Chad?" I asked, snickering.

	"If you make Chad alpha slave over me, I'll challenge him to a bout
in the arena and rip out his heart and intestines."  He roared that
patented Sam laugh at my startled face.  "Kidding, Damien.  Duh."

	"I think at some point very soon we need to address the, uh,
somewhat violent bent of your newly-discovered imagination," I ventured,
only half-kidding.

	"Oh, bite me," he said, still chortling, then suddenly stopped and
proffered his left wrist to me and said, "Seriously, sir.  Bite me.
Please?"  Begging, but dignified about it.  His aggressive submission a
world away from Chad's more servile version.

	Who could resist that?  I took his hand and raised his inner wrist
to my mouth and bit down, not hard, but no softly, either.  He gasped and
jerked back against his seat.  When I removed my lips and glanced down I
saw my teeth-marks in his flesh.  I'd not left a hickey, but it was close.

	Sam looked over at me, a lazy, contented smile on his face as he
took back his arm.  "Thank you, sir."

	No, thank you, I wanted to reply, but didn't.  I merely winked and
waited for him to return to the subject at hand and tried to ignore the
throbbing ache in my balls.

	"I want your word, Damien," he said, still smiling at me despite
the seriousness of his tone.

	"I'm your Sir, Babyboi, nobody else."  I hesitated.  "Does that
mean you won't do anything with Rudy or Chad at all?"

	"Would that be a problem?"

	"If you don't want it, then, no, but . . . well, I kinda figure I
owe Rudy for letting me use Chad last night."

	Sam thought about it.  "We can compromise on this one, I guess," he
said finally.

	"Put it on the table, bro."

	"If you order me to, I'll do whatever you want with whoever you
want, Rudy or Chad or even Mr Q.  God help me.  But you have to tell me to,
not them.  And nobody but you gets to pee down my throat or, uh, finish in
my mouth or butt.  No, uh, fluids from anybody but you."

	"Done."  We nodded at each other, an oath more binding than a
hand-shake deal.  "What's the second rule."

	"Damien, sir, I want you be rough with me.  I want you to hurt me,
I want you to make me cry out, but you can't leave any marks, and you can't
harm me at all."

	"Hurt, but not harm," I said.  "Yeah.  It'll be a fine line, but I
promise I'll find it."

	"What it means," Sam said, "is that you can twist my nipples but
not tear them off.  It means you can spank me till my butt is fire-engine
red, but you can't leave me black-and-blue and unable to sit down for a
week.  It means you can't draw blood.  That clear enough?"

	"I get it," I said.  "I get it."

	"You know about safe words, Damien?  Sir?"

	"Yeah, I know about safe words.  Sir."

	"Don't mock me, Damien."

	"I'm not mocking you, Sam.  I'm just playing with you."  I thought
for a sec.  "How about 'polka-dotted elephant'?"

	"How about 'stop that now or when I get loose I'm going to rip your
balls off'?"

	I eyed him, ninety-nine point nine percent sure he was kidding.
"That's a little extreme."

	"So is 'polka-dotted elephant'.  Seriously, Damien, do you think
either one of would be able to remember something that specific under
severe mental or physical pressure?"

	"Never thought of that.  Good point.  So, Professor de Sade, what
do you suggest?"

	"First, that you find a dictionary and look up the meanings of the
words 'sadist', 'masochist', 'dominant' and 'submissive'.  I think you'll
be surprised to find they all mean different things."  I raised my eyebrows
at him.  "De Sade was a sadist," he explained, as if to a child, "I am a
'dominant' currently exploring my 'submissive, slightly masochistic' side.
I am not a sadist.  So calling me Professor de Sade wasn't quite as funny
as you imagined it was."

	Pause.

	"You spend waaaaaay too much time online," I said finally.

	"With all the knowledge that's out there, free for the finding,
there's no reason to --"

	"Can we skip the Super Bowl ad for the world wide web, VP Gore?"  I
demanded.  "And before you take issue with that and assert that you're a
card-carrying Republican so my joke wasn't legitimate, let me beg to remind
you that we have only a few more minutes at best before Rudy starts
'dude'-ing us to death again about his hummus."

	"Fine!"  He glared at me, enjoying the bickering every bit as much
as me.  It only seemed to heighten the already dramatic tension between us.
Very hot.  "We were discussing safe words."

	"Close.  We were discussing you coming up with something that
doesn't involve bloody revenge."

	"I read online --"

	"Of course you did."

	"-- that its best to use a simple system.  So it's easy to
remember.  Some people just use yes or no.  That, uh, that won't work for
me.  I want to say no even when I mean yes."

	"That is so hot," I said, shifting in my seat, trying to get
comfortable and failing miserably.

	Blink.  "I like the idea of using primary colors, like on a traffic
signal."

	"Green means go, yellow is slow down, red is stop that or nuts go
bye-bye."

	"You always was a fast one, dude," Sam drawled, sounding so much
like Rudy it made me giggle.  "That's exactly how it works.  And remember,
Damien, safe words work for you too, you know."

	"Uh, what?"

	"What if I'm so deeply into whatever we're doing that I'm begging
you to do something to me that you're not comfortable with, or something
that you think has a fair chance of harming me?"

	"So I can say 'red' too, and you'd respect that?"

	"I might be disappointed, but I'd respect it.  Same for you.  You
might be disappointed, but you'd respect it."

	"Fair enough."

	"And no jokes about not respecting the safe words, Damien.  At all.
I have to trust you, and you have to trust me, or somebody could get
seriously hurt.  I could get seriously hurt."

	"I realize this," I said.  "So.  Done.  From the primary colors to
the one size fits all approach, done and done."

	"Cool," he said.  "Now, rule number three, and this is a biggie.
You ready?"

	"Lay it on me, bro."

	"This game we're playing, this bond we're building?"  I nodded.
"It ends after tonight.  If you ever call me 'Babyboi' again, I swear
before God and Bruce Lee I'll --" he thought for a second, came up with on
our grandfather's sayings "-- I'll knock your dickstring up into your
watchpocket."

	He'd do it, too.

	"Understood," I said, nodding my head.  "This is a one time thing
for both of us."

	"And for the fourth and final rule," Sam said, his face lighting up
into sly amusement, "is you owe me.  You owe me big-big."  Reverting into
the language of our childhood so I'd comprehend how serious he was.

	"Fine," I said, laughing at him, "I owe you big-big."  I figured
he'd want me to get him some pot sometime, or introduce him to girls who
might let him spank them.

	I was wrong.

	Anyhow.

	"Well, what are you waiting for, Sir?" he asked, his eyes wide and
face all a-glow with excitement because the negotiations were complete, the
terms agreed.  Because he'd given in and allowed himself an adventure.
Because he loved me and trusted me and knew I wouldn't let him down.  "Put
this sucker into drive and lets get nekkid!"  Figures he'd know the
difference between that and naked.

	"Yes, sir!" I barked, giving him a backwards British salute, and he
snorted, and I reached down and shifted into reverse.

	"Dude!"

	I paused before putting the transmission into drive and fished out
my phone, tossed it, unopened, into Sam's lap.  "Tell him, quote, O T W
slash B R T slash fuk'n --" I spelled it out for him "--douche wad.
Unquote."

	Sam did so.  As I pulled out into the far lane and prepared to make
an almost immediate right –

	"Dude!"

	"What's it say?" I asked when I'd completed the tricky maneuver and
somehow managed to not get us killed.

	Sam sighed.  "'Nice try, Sammy'."

	I reached over and patted him on the knee.  "If it's any
consolation, you'll grow up to make a shitload more money than he'll ever
dream about."  I kept my hand right there on his leg.  Matter of fact, I
inched it up a little.

	"I don't know, sir," Sam said, dropping my phone into my jacket
pocket before laying his hand atop mine and moving it even further up his
thigh, "I hear shit-talking monkeys make pretty good on the freak-show
circuit."

	I burst out laughing.  Sam's remark, as usual, hit his target dead
on.  I've always enjoyed his scathing insults, as long as I wasn't on the
receiving end.

	We drove the short distance to the Q's house in comfortable
silence, our hands still joined on his thigh, dangerously close to his
jewels.  His hand atop mine was cool, and dry, and confident, but I could
feel, through the fake leather of his duster, his skinny leg vibrating in
anticipation.

	As for me, I was so fucking hard it hurt.

	Finally, as the digital clock on the Saturn's radio switched over
to 7:36, I pulled into the Q's driveway.  I killed the engine and we sat
there for a second, neither of us quite willing to give up our touch yet.
At last, of course, we had to, so I squeezed his thigh and he squeezed my
hand, and we let go.  He grabbed the bag of hummus and pita triangles and I
grabbed the hijacked coffee cup from this morning (thought I'd forget,
didn't you, bitches? Ha!) and, steeling ourselves, yet holding ourselves
back as well, to savor the moment, I suppose, we stepped out of the car and
started up the walk.

	"Wait!"  He stopped and glanced back at me.  "I just remembered
something," I explained.  "What's the max amount of points you could get if
you bingo-ed 'fellatio' across two triples?  Theoretically."

	He didn't remark on the oddness of my question.  I guess he was as
attuned to the night's surreality as I was, and was taking things as they
came, no matter how odd.  As I was.  "Well, if somebody left a
single-pointer on the row to play off and give that eighth letter, I guess
you could get," he calculated, "one hundred and forty-nine points.
Theoretically."

	"That is so fucking bizarre," I commented.  "So bizarre."

	"What?"

	I shook my head, not wanting to get into it.  Sam could be a demon
for dream interpretation, and he was horrible at it.  "Nothing."

	He shrugged.  "Okay."  Accept it and move on.  As we mounted the
front steps, the porch light switched on and Mr Q opened the front door,
holding a cordless phone to his ear with one hand and his finger to his
lips with the other.  He still wore the wife-beater he'd sported that
morning, and he remained just as barefoot, but he'd traded the jeans for a
worn pair of sweat pants that left no doubt as to his, uh, endowment as
well as his religion.

	". . . that's right," he said into the phone as we moved past him
into the warmth of the house, "they just pulled up, and I wanted to let you
know they arrived safe and sound . . . uh huh, yup, still in one piece, no
major dents that I could see . . ."  He closed the front door.

	Funny, Mom, I thought as I pulled off my jacket, already feeling
the heat in the house.  The Q's kept it hot as a sauna in the winter and
cold as an iceberg in summer.

	". . . you're very welcome, I don't mind a bit, your boys are
always welcome here . . . uh huh . . . uh uh . . ."

	I hung my jacket on the coat-rack and helped Sam hang his duster on
the next hook (that fucker was heavy!) and made the yak-yak motion at Mr Q.
He winked at me, then shook a mock-scolding finger at for not respecting my
elders.

	"Sure.  I'll make sure to tell him.  Good night.  Yes.  Uh-huh.
Good night.  Enjoy your dinner with your, uh, friend."  With an expression
of relief, he switched off the phone and said, "I like your mother, boys,
she's a fine woman, but she can be awfully, um --"

	"Exacting?" I offered.

	He touched a finger to his nose and pointed at me.  "That one," he
said, that clown-wide, ugly but charming grin on his face.

	"You should live with it," I said.

	"I have female problems enough here, thanks very much," he said,
and we both laughed.  I turned to Sam, expecting him to be bemused at my
easy familiarity with Mr Q, but he just stood there, listening silently,
waiting to be introduced.

	"Mr Q, you remember my brother Sam?"

	"Of course I do," Mr Q said, smiling down at my brother warmly.
"I'm glad you could make it."

	Sam smiled back, and I was relieved to see no intimidation or
humiliation in his face or hear any in his tone.  "Thanks for letting me
come, Mr Q."

	"You're welcome, Sam," Mr Q said, then, turning back to me, "Before
I forget, do you have my coffee mug?"  He was teasing, but I was glad to be
able to hold it up.  He took it from me, saying, "Good boy.  Thank you,
son, I really appreciate that."  He grinned.  "Your mother said you'd be
happy to walk the rest of my dishes over tomorrow afternoon.  She said
they'd be sitting right there in the box on the garage steps where you left
them."  He put the phone and the coffee mug on a nearby table, where he
presumably forgot them.  I know I did.

	"See?  Exacting!" I said.

	He laughed.  "She made me promise to have you home by noon, too.
But, ahh--" he said, drawing out the word more from amusement than
embarrassment, "-- you should have plenty of time to get stoned and
buttfuck your black little souls out.  Which reminds me," he said, sobering
to seriousness, "I have a couple questions I'd like to ask your little
brother, if you don't mind."  His tone said he didn't care if I minded or
not, he meant for Sam to answer.

	"Go ahead, Mr Q," I acquiesced.  "You have every right, and he has
every obligation to answer."  Raising my voice, I said, "Sam, front and
center," and we turned to where we'd last left my Babyboi, right there
beside the coat-rack, and both myself and Mr Q gasped in astonishment.

	Sam stood a few feet away from us, beside one of the living room's
plush easy chairs.  He'd stripped down and folded his clothing into a neat
little pile on the chair's seat and, even as we watched, his skinned down
his boxers and stepped out of them and folded them neatly in with the rest.
He hesitated for a moment, and then he unwrapped his glasses from his eyes
and laid them gently on the end-table by the chair.  As if he might never
see them again.  Then, buck naked, his tiny flaccid penis and monster balls
quivering with each step, he came back over to us and knelt in front of me,
stared down, either at my feet or at the carpet.  In a strong yet
submissive voice, he asked, "Permission to speak freely to Mr Q, sir?"

	I looked at Mr Q and he looked back at me, both of us speechless.
When I had picked my jaw up off the floor I said in my haughtiest voice,
"Permission granted, Babyboi."

	Sam looked up at me gravely.  "Thank you, sir."  Then, to Mr Q, he
said, "Mr Q, this slave knows the reason it is here, and is well aware of
the trials that it will be expected to endure.  Mr Q, this slave and it's
Sir have spoken a great deal about what each of us expects and wants from
this, uh, situation, and we have come to an agreement about how, uh, this
slave will conduct itself, and how it's Sir will conduct himself, and we
have, um, implemented a safe-word system of red, yellow, and green.  Mr Q,
I freely grant my Sir my consent to use me as he sees fit."  And with that,
Sam fell silent.

	"He spends way too much time on the internet, Mr Q," I said.  Sam
shot me a reproachful look, but I ignored it and he didn't say anything.

	"Well, I certainly can't ask him to be any more explicit than
that," Mr Q said with some amusement.  "Thank you, Sam.  I appreciate your,
um, clarity."

	"You're welcome, Mr Q," Sam murmured, then, back to me, he said,
"Permission to retrieve some items from my jacket, sir?"

	"What kind of items?" I asked, almost afraid of the answer.

	"Nothing serious, sir," he said.  I nodded and he reached into his
dress robes and pulled out, as if by, yeah, magic, a chain dog-leash with
matching leather collar and –

	"What is that?" Mr Q asked, peering at the small black object in
Sam's hand.

	I peered at it myself.  "Looks like vet wrap."

	"It is vet wrap.  Sir.  I got it and the leash out of Mom's work
truck before we left."  Sam handed me the leash and collar and wrap and
knelt again at my feet.

	"Vet wrap is sort of like a cross between cloth bandages and duct
tape," I explained, handing Mr Q the roll so he could examine it for
himself.  "You wrap it around the muzzle or the legs of a struggling animal
and it sticks to itself like tape."

	"Thus immobilizing the animal safely," said Mr Q approvingly.
"Nice."

	"Or," Sam said, still staring at the floor and waiting patiently
for me to lock the collar on his neck, "you could use it to tie down
babybois and crackers and do horrible things to them and they couldn't get
away.  Sir."  He sounded resigned and apprehensive about the idea, but both
me and Mr Q heard the excitement quivering underneath.

	"Good thinking, Babyboi," I said, patting him on the head before
fulfilling his silent request and slipping the collar around his neck.  "I
might have to reward you with an extra load in your ass."  I winked at Mr
Q, and he winked back, bemused at both of us.

	"Thank you sir," Sam said serenely as I fitted the collar snugly
around his neck, using my finger to make sure it wasn't too tight.  I
tugged on the leash and he stood up, and, Omigod, the power that rocked
through me!  Again, not a sexual power, but neither was it the power of
vitality I experienced when pissing down his throat (which, by the by, I
needed to do pronto).  Rather, this was a savage burst of dominance, an
explosion of possessiveness and greed.  I held a leash with my little
brother on the other end, and that meant that tonight he was mine and I
could use him as I willed.  For the first time I grasped that fact deep
down in my heart and guts and in my mother fucking balls.

	Mine!

	Mr Q grinned at me, like he understood exactly how I felt, but also
like he understood exactly how Sam felt as well.  Who knows, he probably
did.  He didn't say anything though, merely handed me back the vet wrap and
said, "I like the wrap.  Use it along with the other toys I gave Rudy and
Chad and you should have yourselves a night to remember."

	"What kind of toys, Mr Q?" I asked, and Sam looked up at him too,
both curiosity and apprehension on his face.

	"Rudy will show you," he said, teasing us both.  "The boys are
downstairs, in the rec room.  It'll be a whole lot easier to clean up and
air out than the boys' bedrooms."

	"Thanks, Mr Q," Tugging on Sam's leash, I said, "Come on, boy,
heel."  He trailed along behind me obediently as I headed down the hall to
the basement steps.

	"Have fun, boys, and I'm up here if you need me."  He flopped down
on the couch and grabbed the television remote and I left him to it.  If I
didn't get downstairs and into this whole thing soon my dick might just
break off like a frozen tree limb.

	"Sir?"  I felt a tug on the leash.  When I glanced back, Sam said,
"The hummus?"  It still sat, all bagged up, on the table by the front door
where he'd deposited it when he took off his duster.

	Might as well get it started, I thought, and, raising my hand, I
slapped him across the face, cupping my palm so it sounded like it hurt
more than it probably did; the report thundered through the room,
overwhelming even the sound of the football game Mr Q had settled on.  Mr Q
himself glanced over sharply at us, but his gaze held no concern, merely
amusement.

	"You stupid little bitch," I hissed at Sam, while he blinked at me
in surprise.  "How much intelligence does it take to remember the one thing
you're responsible for?"  I yanked him back over to the table.

	"I, I'm sorry, sir," he gasped, abject misery at having failed me
on his face.  But I could not help but notice that his pecker had started
to plump.

	"Pick that shit up," I ordered him, and he snatched the bag from
the table, held it against his chest, willing to guard it with his life.  I
nodded in grim satisfaction and tugged him back towards the basement, but
then, remembering my manners, I stopped and asked Mr Q, "Would you like
some hummus, Mr Q?  Rudy wanted some, and we brought plenty."

	"God no I hate the stuff," Mr Q said.  "Thanks for the offer
though.  How much do I owe you?  Let me get my wallet."

	"No, Mr Q," I said firmly as he started to rise from the couch,
relieved that he hated the stuff; that left more hummus to feed my babyboi
later.  "Me and Rudy don't worry about who owes what to who.  We share and
share alike."

	Mr Q settled back into his seat, chuckling.  "You certainly do,
don't you?  Go, go, have fun, leave me to my game."

	"C'mon, Babyboi," I said, dragging at Sam hard enough that he
stumbled –

	"I'm sorry, sir, I'm clumsy," he muttered, flinching as if he
expected another blow.

	– which I ignored.  "Let's get that cherry popped."  I strode
off across the living room and down the hall at a good clip, Sam stumbling
and tumbling at my heel. As we descended the stairs to the basement, I
heard the unmistakeable thump-thump-thump of what Rudy called 'gay bar
music' coming from behind one of the three doors at the bottom of the
stops.  One of the doors led out to the garage; another led to a small
toilet and smaller shower, and the third, the one literally shaking with
the bassline of the dance music, led into a large cheaply carpeted room
with a pool table, big screen tv, and two plush overstuffed couches already
stained with the history of two active male children.

  	In other words, the perfect room for an orgy.

	I didn't bother knocking on the door; they wouldn't hear us over
the music.  I just turned the knob and pushed open the door.

	Several things assaulted me at once.

	The music beat at me, beseeching me to come in and join the
madness.

	The smell of marijuana and sweat rolled out, as heady and enticing
as the funk of last night, and my dick throbbed at the reminder.

	Heat reached out and enveloped me; a fire blazed in the rarely used
fireplace on the other side of them.  A prudent move, I thought; I'd soon
be naked in there, and I knew the room to be prone to chilliness.

	And then I spotted the action in the center of the room.

	Rudy, shirtless, his chest and back gleaming with sweat, held a
huge (and ancient) camcorder to his eyes, filming . . .

	Uh, filming . . .

	Oh lord.

	They'd draped a sheet over the pool table, upon which stood Chad,
gyrating to the beat of the frantic music like a furry go-go girl in a
cheap porno.  He wore a bright red fright wig on his head, a stuffed bra on
his hairy chest, and a pair of thigh-high panty hose.  Nothing else.
Except for (of all things) a belled collar encircling his balls.  On every
bare patch of skin the boy possessed (including a newly-mown area above his
genitals) Rudy had written in lipstick every name he'd called Chad last
night.  Yeah, and some new ones too.  "Ckskr."  "Asslkr."  "Cum Dump."  The
crackers cheeks were redder than the lipsticked insults, and his peter
jutted out from his crotch like a, yeah, gonna use it again, like an
exclamation mark punctuating his excitement.  A wire from Rudy's camcorder
trailed over to the bigscreen tv, providing Chad with every opportunity to
study himself and relish his own humiliation.

	Neither he nor Rudy noticed that we'd opened the door and stared in
at them in amazement.  "Put more hip into it, Cracker," Rudy barked.  "Show
me how bad you want my cock in your hole!"

	I felt a tug on the other end of the leash.  I glanced at Sam, bent
down to hear what he had to say.  He spoke two words and two words only.

	"Sir?  RED!"

	* * * * *

	Thanks for reading the latest part of my serial.  I hope you
enjoyed it, and I apologize that it took me longer than usual to post it.
My boys led me to some interesting places I hadn't expected to go, and
between Sam's insistence on having his own moment in the spotlight (I've
fallen in love with the babyboi and can deny him nothing) and my own desire
to employ some of the precepts, practices, and general philosophy of BDSM
(drastically over-simplified, I'm afraid) in my tale, the telling took
longer (and more words) than I expected, but I think it was worth it.  In a
very real sense I'm discovering the story right along with you.  I have
some landmarks in mind, and I already know the final line, but the journey
holds such joy for me that I can't resist meandering along all the turns
and side-paths my boys want to drag me down.  I hope you're enjoying their
trip as much as I am.

	Anyhow.  :-)

	You've already witnessed Damien gain his temporary slave, so coming
up in "Because—the fourth orgasm—section two--You Put The Hummus On
The Pita And You Slurp It All Up: Rudy learns the proper way to fuck a
cracker, and Sam learns to count.

	If you're enjoying my serial (or if you'd just like to agree with
me about Sam's utter adorability) shoot me an email to
rustyslocumerotica@gmail.com and tell me.  If you didn't like it, you can
let me know that too, but I won't be as interested.