Zinnia Blossoms Ch. 02

Clothes were strewn everywhere. We own a lot of them and plenty are suitable (or, perhaps, sufficiently unsuitable) for going out in. I was favouring a basic black dress but we've got these green latex skirts and tube-tops that really turn heads. I was standing in front of the wardrobe - it has a mirrored front, it's one of those - scratching my head when Dane came in.

Surprisingly Sandy wasn't with him. That confused me. And kind of unnerved me, I have to admit.

We stood there staring at each other for a while.

"You made up with Sandy, then?" I asked finally, busying myself with clothes to hide how weird the whole thing felt. And you know, I wasn't sure why it felt weird. Dane saw my tits, I misread my own body, then I realised what was going on. Big deal. But something was eating at me and I couldn't work out what.

Dane nodded. "Yeah. I get it," he answered softly, "she's protective. But I'd -"

"I know, you'd never hit her," I said, sighing. "Sandy knows that too but you know how she can be." He nodded again and I shrugged. "So no big deal, right? She thought the wrong thing but it's all cleared up now."

My brother nodded again. He still looked wretched. I had some idea why but it still kind of irritated me. He can be infuriatingly soft, in an adorable kind of way.

"What? What is it?" I insisted. I had an urge to hug him - like I said, close-knit families can get like that - but something stopped me. Somehow I knew it'd be the wrong thing to do. "Is it because of what happened downstairs?"

He nodded and looked at his feet like he was being scolded.

I laughed. I couldn't help it. And then I did go over to him but instead of hugging him I punched his arm. Quite hard, actually.

"Ow!"

"Stop being an idiot," I said, a bit harshly now that I think of it. "You saw my tits, it's not like you -" I stopped myself, the thought going way further than I expected, and shook my head. "It's not a big deal. You wander around shirtless all the time."

"Yeah, but -"

"But you're not a girl," I nodded, getting angry. Not at him, not really. It's just such a fucking double standard! "Because you're male and your nipples are somehow inherently less confronting than -"

Dane held up his hands like he was warding off a tiger. "Okayokay, it's no big deal," he assured me hurriedly. "I just wanted to make sure you were all right."

I turned the sentence over in my head a few times. "Um. Why wouldn't I be? You saw me topless, it's not the end of the world." There, there it was again, the nagging feeling like I was missing something important. There must have been something about the way I was looking at Dane, too, because something flashed across his face and he all but backed out.

"Okay, good. Just... making sure," he muttered before all but running from the room.

I know what guilt looks like. What I couldn't understand was why it flashed across my brother's face like that.

Oh well, no point dwelling on it, I figured. I'd find out what it was about. I could wait.

*****

EDIT NOTE: This is the bit where I write about what happened that night at the club. Now, I should point out that originally I'd named the club something different but there's been... New information, I guess you could say. So I'll call it Avenue 8.

You know. For consistency.

*****

It's not the club we usually go to and the reason for that is about to become pretty obvious. It is, however, in our list of top 5 places to go when we're sufficiently bored and so we decided to take a chance. A short taxi ride and there we were, paying half of the ridiculously low cover charge because the girl who's usually at the door has a thing for us and insists that because we're twins it's kind of fitting we pay as one person.

Hey, I'm one of those twins and I don't get that logic. But it means half-price entry so I wasn't complaining.

Avenue 8. It's a typical nightclub, really - half watering hole, half meat-market. It's in a pretty good part of town and the crowd is varied so it's also where a lot of the older crowd mingle with the younger crowd - 'cougar hunting ground,' one of our friends calls it. Which is why he's usually there.

But he wasn't that night. I thought that was a bit of a shame, really. I like him - largely because while he doesn't hesitate to flirt with us and make us feel a bit sexy, he doesn't actually have any serious interest in us. He likes the older women. He's our age but young women just don't push his buttons. Gotta be over 40 to make him bulge.

Anyway, Avenue 8. Sandy and I, we love to dance, but more than that we love to people-watch. That night was no different so I perched on a seat by a wall while Sandy pushed off through the (relatively light) crowd to furnish us both with alcoholic beverages. Sure, we CAN get guys to buy us booze but we prefer not to. I prefer not to, anyway, and Sandy's never really argued with me. Pride aside I really doubt my twin sister's going to dose my drink. Safety first, right?

Josh is a bouncer at Avenue 8 and the older brother of a guy I used to date in high school. One thing that I can say for that club is that we're well looked-after. The one time anyone tried to get too hands-on with us Josh - who is built like someone put three smaller guys together like a kind of organic Voltron - threw him out quick-smart. He's married - and gay, though I assume his wife doesn't know that - so again, we were safe with him. Now THAT was a strange marriage.

"Everything okay?" he yelled to me over the noise of the music, coming close and putting a huge hand on my shoulder. If he weren't gay (and married)...

"Only just got here!" I called back, beaming up at him happily. I pointed through the crowd to my sister who, returning, passed me a drink and slapped Josh playfully on the backside. "Anything good going on?" I asked as Sandy settled beside me and put a proprietary hand on my thigh.

Josh shook his head. "Quiet night, supposed to get noisier later on, though." Catching a wave from the bartender he nodded in response and then grinned at the two of us. "I'll come by and check on you later, if you like!"

"See you then!" Sandy was in a much better mood. She even smacked his butt again when he left. Then she turned to me. "If he weren't gay..."

"And married," I agreed.

*****

"Tall guy, probably originally blonde, skinny."

"Meh. Kind of blah."

"Muscle shirt guy, nine o'clock, dancing with a blocky-looking dude."

"Not bad. Not sure he's got the body for that shirt, though."

"Hot blonde sitting at the bar."

"Know her. She's straight."

"Ohh, shame. Neckbeard at the door." Sandy's grin was impish. She knew what my response would be.

"Eww!" I made a face. Guys, if there's something that I just gotta say doesn't look good, it's a neckbeard. I'm fine with a bit of extra weight and I can dig nerds just as much as I can fit jocks, but a neckbeard looks like you've got a normal beard that's kind of slipped a bit. Shave that motherfucker off. I've heard some women like them but I haven't actually met a single one.

A friend of Sandy's once made the pretty stupid comment that men tend to sit around evaluating the 'local talent' and that women don't. What the hell, guys? Do you really think all we do is wait around passively for you lot to show up? Hell no. We're judging your muscle shirts and neckbeards.

We'd been there a couple of hours. Both of us were pretty juiced up by that stage (by which I mean somewhat past tipsy) so when Sandy got off her stool to go get more drinks I was precisely pissed enough not to mind. Josh would look after us and we'd made it home dead drunk more than once. People say it's a sign of the times that young people are getting drunk too often. Yes, yes it is. And yet we still do it.

I'd been staring at her for a good minute or so before I realised that I knew who she was - Mum's best friend, Linda. I groaned inwardly. You wanted to know why, with the awesome bouncer and cheap entry, this isn't our number one spot? Linda is it. She's a nice lady, lovely really, but neither Sandy or I particularly need our doings being reported back to our mother.

Now, Linda is... free with her affections. Some people would call her a slut, in fact, but I dislike the term. She's got control over her sexuality and I think that's a good thing, particularly if it gets her laid a lot. Good on her, you know? More power to her. She's married to a neat guy called Nate who's cute as hell but a bit... wet. If that makes sense. From what I can gather their love life doesn't involve much of a sex life so she's given to getting a bit hands-on when she's been drinking.

Right at that moment she was getting hands-on with that tall skinny guy Sandy had spotted earlier. I had to admit she was fun to watch. Live-action softcore porn, in a way. She's not a tall lady so she had to stand up on her tippy-toes to kiss him and I could see her hands working at his (particularly flat) butt. She's got these fantastic curves that she was pushing up against him like she wanted to get inside his skin - which maybe she did, I don't know.

He seemed a bit stunned when she pulled away from him, grinning up at him wickedly, her face an invitation. That's when one of his friends - and I use the term very loosely - dragged him away and out the door. Seems someone didn't approve of him getting some action. Linda didn't care, though - and a few seconds later I saw why.

An awkward-looking redhead was making her way through the crowd from the direction of the toilets. Or, to be entirely accurate, a smoking hot redhead moving like she didn't frequent clubs much came toward Linda. It was no great guess on my behalf that the woman wasn't much of a clubber because - you guessed it - she was my Mum.

Sandy got back then and handed me a drink. She reached over and closed my mouth which had, rather rudely without consulting my brain, fallen open. Then she looked in the direction I was looking and hers did the same thing.

We sat there sipping our drinks for a while.

"Holy shit," Sandy opined. I nodded. Holy shit indeed.

Linda was all over our mother. Linda's got great curves but our mother's no slouch in that department, as I've mentioned, and Linda had her hands all over them. She actually tried to pull Mum's tits out twice and the slapping her hands got only seemed to encourage her. There was a bit of space around the two of them on the dance floor - whether to give people room to watch or as a coincidental thing I'm not sure, but we had prime seats.

Mum's eyes were rolling back as Linda necked her, a hand on her butt and the other very obviously massaging one of her nipples through the dress she (barely) had on. It was clear Mum was into it and I've got a feeling she had no idea how obvious it was. At one point Mum almost kissed back but seemed to stop herself, remaining content to pull Linda against her with her hands on her friend's marvellous backside. Linda was beyond horny, all but grinding on her.

"So they're fucking," Sandy commented in a tone of disbelief.

"It's Linda, she might just be teasing Mum," I said doubtfully.

Sandy snorted. "She's doing more than teasing, look. She doesn't quite have her fingers wet yet but she's damn close."

"Should we go?"

"The way those two are at it? I doubt they'd notice us unless we started fondling them."

"Are we okay with this?" I asked.

My sister shrugged. "Could be worse," she pointed out.

"Could be Dane," I nodded.

Sandy downed the rest of her drink. "Fuck it, I need another to deal with this." I nodded my agreement but didn't take my eyes off the pair. Sandy kissed my cheek and headed off as I tried, without any success whatsoever, to ignore the growing heat between my legs. This was hot stuff. That it was my mother and her best friend didn't really register properly - alcohol, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. I was watching two grown women grope each other in public - sure, I probably SHOULD have been affronted no matter who they were, that's generally what society expects, but there are reasons I'm studying sociology. I've watched people fuck against the pool table in one of my favourite bars and not batted an eyelid.

If anything, I was slowly discovering, I was kind of hoping they'd go a bit further. Come on Linda, get her breasts out... Pull her skirt up a bit, Mum, I can almost see her panties - wait a second, she's not wearing any...

Mum froze just as Sandy was getting back with more drinks and I felt my heart leap. She'd seen me! A second later I realised she'd seen Sandy, too. Sandy, to her credit, clearly didn't care. She handed me my drink, sat down beside me and stared at Mum. She'd missed a lot of the best parts.

Linda quickly found that trying to dance against someone who wasn't moving was tricky and her attention swung around. When she spotted us, well, she loved that. This wicked little laugh that we could see but not hear, pulling Mum's hands against her boobs, then all of a sudden Mum had her by the wrist and was dragging her outside.

I can't say that surprised me. I can't say it didn't disappoint me, either.

It's okay to think this way, I reasoned, I wouldn't think this if I were sober...

Bullshit, of course. If I were sober I'd still think the same thing but I'd cover it up with bluster and false distress. I know that now. There's a lot of stuff I know now that I didn't before. The fact was that seeing my mother being fondled half to death in a club didn't turn me on - seeing two grown women fondle one another was what got me raging and wet but, and this is the important bit, I didn't care that I was directly related to one of them. That's a subtle but important difference. I mean we're talking about incest here, of course, but there's two main ways of relating to it. You can get horny BECAUSE it's someone you're related to, or you can simply not care.

I simply didn't care.

By the time Linda came back into the club without Mum I was all but wriggling on my chair. I was aching for some attention and Sandy and I had gone back to spotting good-lookers in the crowd, eliminating them one by one and contemplating the rest. If nothing else happened I knew there was a particularly large dildo with my name on it at home (literally with my name on it, written on the base) but there's nothing like flesh against flesh. Wet flesh, preferably.

"You two enjoy the show?" Linda leered as she sauntered up. Seriously, this woman could leer like a champion. All of the rampant sexuality that Mum doesn't display is more than made up for by her crazy friend.

Sandy blushed and looked away but I felt myself nodding before I could stop it. Linda laughed and put an arm around me.

"Let's get out of here," she suggested, "there's a bar down the street. Quieter."

Sandy and I looked at one another doubtfully. We did our best to avoid Linda at the best of times when we were out... but at the same time we were burning with curiosity as to how our mother's relationship with her friend had... grown. And I was burning with more than just that. So was Sandy, though she was better at hiding it. Not from me, of course.

"Come on, I won't bite," Linda laughed, "and I'll buy you both a drink."

"Deal," Sandy said immediately.

*****

The bar. Um. Let's call it Watchers, partly because it's a vague reference to the Lord of the Rings but mostly because it's what people do there. Watch one another.

Bars are different animals to clubs. In a club you basically go to dance and drink and be a dickhead. It's too loud to be really social but if you want to be you've got to lean in close so that's nice (until it's not). Clubs are more physical, I guess you could say.

When you step into a bar, though, that's different. You can talk a lot easier in a bar because most of them don't have the music up as loud (there are exceptions, of course). There's less dancing but more socialising so people tend to watch more - after all, there's more chance you'll end up talking to someone in a bar.

Also, depending on the bar, a lot of it seems to be those kind of guys with fast cars and fake tans checking out each other's haircuts. At least that's how it seems to me.

Watchers wasn't one of those kinds of bars. It was a mid-range 'alternative' bar - not Goth but not exactly mainstream either. It was actually frequented pretty regularly by swingers but of course we didn't know that at the time.

Linda walked in like she owned the place, waved to the bartender (who she obviously knew quite well) and headed straight for one of the more private booths up the back. She didn't sit. Instead she pointed to the bench seat.

"Set your arses down, girls. What's your poison?"

Really? 'What's your poison'? People actually say that, apparently. Anyway, we both ordered a black Russian and she sashayed off to get them. She came back with hers - something potent and clear - with the bartender in tow carrying our 'poison'.

"June, this is Sandy and Sally, don't ask me which, I always get it wrong."

June put the drinks down and nodded to us. My God. June. How to describe June... Think of Annie Lennox in her younger suit-wearing days. Bleached blonde hair, short and spiky, face that was masculine and yet feminine all at once. Her bartender outfit was a masculine cut and I admit I actually thought she was a particularly cute guy when we walked in. Now that she was closer I could see very subtle lipstick and eye shadow.

Holy shit. If she'd asked me to go down on her right then and there I would have. Androgynes, girls or boys, just melt me.

"Breathe," Sally," Sandy whispered to me, "you're staring."

"Your girls?" June asked Linda, raising an eyebrow that I suddenly wanted to lick. "No, wait, that redhead friend of yours."

"Mine? Hah! Can you imagine me birthing anything this good-looking? They're Zinnia's, yeah," Linda nodded, slinging an arm round my shoulders and squeezing me to her side. "I'm like an aunt to them, really," she confessed, melodramatically wiping away an imaginary tear.

June just snorted and nodded to us before heading back to the bar.

"Shit, Sally," Sandy scolded me, "you're like a deer in headlights." She waved a hand in front of my face and I have to admit it was only then, when I blinked and looked away, that I realised how much I'd been staring.

"You're just a bit horny, aren't you?" Linda grinned, patting my leg as she squeezed in next to us.

"No," I said, a bit defensively.

"You're an awful lot horny," Sandy commented drily. Androgynes aren't her thing.

"Yes," I admitted, in exactly the same defensive tone.

"Good," Linda nodded, laughing lightly at my shocked expression. "Oh, come on. Horny is a healthy state of being for young women your ages. Or my age," she added, winking at Sandy. Her hand was still on my thigh and, I noticed, was quite a bit higher now. "So you're probably wondering..."

"If you're fucking our Mum? Yeah," Sandy said bluntly.

"Well, I'm not going to tell you," Linda countered, just as bluntly. "But whether I am or not she's not my girlfriend. Not in that sense, anyway. So IF anything's happening between us it's casual." She smirked a little but her tone was serious when she added, "You know I'd never do anything to hurt her, right?"

We both nodded. It was an automatic nod, one that young people give older people to shut them up, but we knew she meant it. She seemed satisfied, anyway.

"Are there toilets here?" Sandy asked suddenly. "No, I'm fine," she added when I tilted my head toward her, asking silently if she wanted company. We slid out and let her go. Then I slid back in place and Linda sat right next to me.

I'm not sure what we talked about but I felt her hand on my thigh with every word. I've got no idea when exactly she kissed me but I know I kissed back hard and then my skirt was pushed up and her fingers were between my legs, wet within seconds.