Freshers Ch. 03

"We're fine." Jenny replied with a smile, "Takes more than a scumbag like that sorry-ass excuse for a head-banger to scare me!"

"We've had our eyes on that arsehole and his mates all evening." The bouncer continued, "We would've intervened sooner, but to be honest, we were well impressed by the verbal battering you were giving him!"

"Oh, that was justtooeasy!" Jenny chuckled, "That dickwad would lose a battle of wits with a retarded earthworm!"

"I don't doubt that for a second!" The bouncer chuckled in reply, "Anyway, the local constabulary will be having a few words with him and his merry little band of baldy-headed compadres. I hope this little incident hasn't spoiled your evening too much."

"Not at all." Jenny grinned in reply, "I kinda enjoyed it actually!"

The bouncer gave Jenny a knowing smirk.

"Well. You've certainly got bigger balls that that skinhead and his mates that's for sure! Good evening ladies."

"God, are you alright Jen?" Alex asked once the bouncer had taken his leave and returned to his duties.

"I'm fine!" She insisted as Alex hugged her tightly and kissed her on the top of her head, "We all are."

Tommy meanwhile, had come to sit between myself and Terri and likewise gathered us up in his arms.

"Shit Beth, I should've noticed that guy sooner!" He said, cursing himself that he wasn't there to stand up and defend us for himself.

"That's okay Tommy." I assured him, "I knew you would've done if you'd noticed him sooner."

"Yeah, but still..." He protested.

"But nothing." I insisted, "Jenny had it all in hand!"

I turned to address our American friend directly.

"Holy bejesus Jenny!" I exclaimed, my heart still pounding from the intensity of the moment, "You were like... I mean... damn that was impressive!"

"Ah, s'nothing really!" Jenny shrugged, "Our Mom's from Georgia originally, and I guess I inherited some of her southern sassiness. I may be a SoCal girl but there's enough Georgia in me to spar with the best of 'em!"

"That guy had no chance against you!" Terri grinned, "He was well out of his depth when he tried to take you on!"

"You have no idea!" Alex chuckled in reply, "When we were kids I could never win an argument against her."

It was aninterestingconclusion to our night out, but as we eventually left the club and returned to the chilly streets of York, we couldn't help but feel a sense of smug satisfaction about taking down that vile skinhead and his gang with just words alone. Well, apart from a little help from the bouncers!

Morning After (Tommy)

The following day dawned bright and cold with a light frost on the ground. I still felt a shaming sense of guilt that I wasn't there to defend the girls against that vile skinhead and his mates the night before, but that was tempered somewhat by Beth's account of Jenny's verbal tirade against the guy. To say I was impressed by her linguistic skills in brutally taking down that vile skinhead would be a monumental understatement! But still... I felt I should've been there.

But the reality was I was just too caught up in the moment with Alex to have noticed. I now know why club DJ's call the slow numbers the'erection section', since just being so close to him made me feel a stirring inside me that I hadn't felt since that night at the restaurant and on the beach in southern France all those months ago. I was hard... monumentally hard, and I could feel his own hardness against mine as we danced slowly together to the softly romantic soul ballad without a care in the world about who saw us together.

Things could well have progressed much further had the incident with the skinhead not happened. I sighed as I thought about just how far things might have gone between Alex and I. Was I even ready to contemplate that sort of thing just yet? I mean, things between us that night on the beach in France had become pretty intimate - we ended up doing what I had later discovered was calledfrotting. That is, him masturbating both of us together at the same time by rubbing our... well, I'm sure you get the idea. But masturbating together was one thing, but the other... y'know, thing, was an altogether different prospect.

Did I really want to have sex with him?

And more to the point, would he want to have sex with me? These were all still new and conflicting feelings for me. I sensed that Alex also felt the same dilemmas in his mind too - the question was, could either of us ever pluck up the courage to ask that question.

I was shaken out of my thoughts by Beth stirring beside me. We were all far too exhausted to do anything... y'know... in bed together when we came home from the nightclub. We had simply collapsed into bed and were asleep in minutes. I looked at her peaceful face as she slept and I thought about how lucky I was to have her in my life. I yawned deeply, stretched my arms and legs and hauled myself out of bed. To no surprise, I discovered that I was substantially erect, as was pretty much normal for me in those days. I padded naked towards the bedroom door, my stiffly engorged penis leading the way, and as I opened the bedroom door I remembered that we had guests and that it wasn't the done thing to share our... relaxed attitude towards nudity in the home with them, and so I turned back into the room and found my dressing gown which was still in the plastic bag following my modelling session at Beth's art college the day before. I stepped into the bathroom and took care of my aching bladder - with some difficulty, as any guy who has tried to pee with an erection will tell you!

My morning ablutions taken care of, and already feeling more refreshed, I went down into the kitchen to put a pot of coffee on. I took a moment to peek into the living room to check on our guests - they were both soundly asleep, Jenny snuggled into Alex's arms on the makeshift bed of settee cushions on the floor. I left them in peace and returned to brewing the coffee and making some toast. I had, of course, planned on preparing a full English breakfast for our guests, but that would have to wait until at least everyone was awake. As soon as the toast popped out of the toaster, I spread on a little butter and some marmalade and placed it on a small plate. I decanted three mugs of coffee and placed everything on a tray - I would make some fresh coffee for Alex and Jenny a little later on once they'd had some time to rouse themselves from their slumber. I placed a mug on Terri's bedside table and then went to rejoin my sister.

"They still asleep down there?" Beth yawned as I set her mug down beside her.

"Soundly." I replied, "I didn't want to wake them just yet.

I laid back on the bed and set the plate of toast between us.

"Got any lectures today?" She asked.

"No, I had planned on putting in some overtime at the store today but since we have guests I thought it'd be rude to just disappear all day. And besides, I sort of... y'know..."

"Want to spend more time with Alex?" Beth said, finishing off my sentence for me.

"If... it... it's alright that is." I said.

"Of course it's alright." Beth said reassuringly, "Tommy, I already told you that I totally accept you being bisexual."

"I know, but..."

"And I know Jenny feels the same way about Alex." Beth continued, ignoring my feeble protestation, "We both want you and Alex to be happy, because we both love you, and you being happy makes us happy. And we both know that seeing us girls happy makes you boys happy too."

"But what about Terri?"

"Well, I think she feels the same about you and Alex as she does about you and me." Beth continued thoughtfully, "She doesn't really understand it, but she does accept it as the way things are between us all. And she'd far rather have things this way than not have us all together at all."

"I guess." I replied uncertainly, "But it still seems ridiculously complicated. I mean look at me... look atus... I have sex with my sister and her best friend, whom I both love and care for more deeply than they could ever know, but I'm also in love with someone else. That someone else being a boy from California who, like me is also in love withhissister."

"None of us gets to choose the people we fall in love with." Beth said as she took a sip of coffee, "Love just... happens. It's one of the great mysteries of the universe, like... why does sour cream have a use-by date when its already sour? Or... why are houses and schools and hospitals called'buildings'when they're already finished? Surely they should be called'builts'right? What I'm trying to say here is... love and happiness should be more important than what other people think about us, just as long as we keep it to ourselves and don't ram it down people's throats. There are plenty of people out there who would feel that we'd go straight to hell for the the things we do together, and I say let them - let it be their problem, not ours."

I sighed deeply. To be honest, I wasn't sure if she was wrong or right, but I didn't want to voice my thoughts at that moment. I had grown to love my life with my sister and Terri, and Alex and Jenny too, and I didn't want anything to come between us all. I knew that incest was wrong - I guess Beth felt it too, deep down - but after that first time back home all those months ago, we both knew there was no going back. And once the Pandora's box of our love for each other had been truly opened, things would never be the same again.

"Jenny was awesome last night." Beth said, changing the subject back to Jenny's verbal jousting the night before, even though I'd already heard it all before, "You should have seen her. You should'veheardher! There's no way in hell I'd ever stand up to an animal like that skinhead and his gang, but Jenny just shot him a look filled with venom that would make a rattlesnake jealous and gave him both barrels right to his face! She definitely hit a raw nerve when she suggested that he might be even more gay than you and Alex!"

I couldn't help but smirk at that thought.

"Well maybe he was." I said, taking a sip of my own coffee and picking up a slice of toast, "Maybe his outright hatred of anything that isn't one hundred percent heterosexual is his way of suppressing his true desires. Maybe, in the privacy of his own home, he has a pretty pink fairy costume stashed away in his wardrobe and he likes to put it on and prance around his bedroom and become a fairy princess, for a while at least."

"Either that or he has a stack of gay porno mags under his bed and he likes to beat himself off and fantasise about getting hold of another guy's hot, hard cock!" Beth sniggered.

Tour Guides (Terri)

Well, what a night it had been! Despite the incident with the skinhead that soured our night out somewhat, it had been more fun than I could've possibly imagined. My first time clubbing definitely left me wanting more! And just how impressive was Jenny's vocal attitude in dealing with that ghastly skinhead?! I wished I had just a tenth of the confidence she so obviously has!

Plus she's so pretty too - she looked amazing in her outfit last night and I knew I had to pick up some makeup tips from her. Mum always insisted that her makeup be kept to an absolute minimum, a standard which she, of course, insisted I follow. I woke up to the aroma of a steaming mug of coffee on my bedside table - Tommy had obviously put it there while I was still asleep since out of the three of us he was almost always the first to get up. After a quick shower and dressing casually in jeans, t-shirt and a loose fitting patterned sweater (a vibrantly colourful affair Beth helped me to choose that was apparently the height of fashion in 1985), I went downstairs to find Tommy at work in the kitchen. I greeted him with a kiss on his cheek and took my place at the table.

Tommy had made us all a huge full English breakfast of fried bacon, eggs and sausages with beans and something called hash browns that I'd never had before but loved immediately. The three of us had deliberately kept our day free to show Alex and Jenny around the historic city and I couldn't wait to show our American friends the sights.

We began with the railway museum, though it wasn't particularly interesting to me (trains are such a'boy'thing) but I loved seeing Queen Victoria's opulent private carriage from the old Royal train. Tommy and Alex though, were in their element, checking out one historic locomotive after another, and it was clear to us they were besotted with each other. After the railway museum we visited the recently opened Viking centre with its at the time innovative ride-on cars that ran along a sort of conveyer system through the various tableaux of life in Jorvik, the Viking name for what later became the city of York. Tommy, being an archaeology student was of course very enthusiastic about the place, wishing he could have been a part of the team that had originally excavated the site. I found it to be utterly fascinating - they had even gone to the lengths of recreating the smells of the place, from a Viking kitchen and marketplace and even to the latrines!

After that we headed to the York Castle museum with its recreated Victorian street, complete with old fashioned shops and even the old prison cell where the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin was reported to have spent his final days before being hanged in public for his many crimes.

It was mid afternoon before we left the place and ambled through the historic city centre towards the majestic stone edifice of York Minster. The previous year the vast cathedral had been struck by lightning which resulted in a fire that destroyed much of the south transept, and as a result, much of the building was covered with scaffolding and protective plastic sheeting as a program of stabilising and restoration had got underway. But that didn't detract too much from the experience of seeing the awe-inspiring and ancient building up close. The inside, of course, was where the Minster's true glories resided, from the magnificent nave, its finely honed stonework and colourful stained glass windows, to its lofty vaulted ceilings, the intricately carved and surprisingly intimate choir, and the dizzyingly high ceiling of the crossing just beneath the Minster's central tower. Our American friends were unsurprisingly gobsmacked at being inside the mighty building.

"This place is older than our entire country!" Alex gasped as he looked up at the ceiling some 100+ feet above our heads, "And not just a little bit older, I'm talking like,centuriesolder!"

"And this isn't the first church to be built on this site either." Tommy explained, "Apparently the first church to be built just here was a small wooden chapel in the 7th century."

"That is... I mean, that's just incredible." Jenny whispered in awe at the idea of just how ancient this place of worship was.

"Makes ya think doesn't it." Alex added.

"You guys are so lucky to live in the middle of all this history." Jenny commented.

For a moment I had to think about what she had said. I guess maybe we British folk are lucky to have such a rich history all around us, and maybe sometimes we are a little guilty of simply taking it for granted. I mean, how often does one simply walk past a medieval church, drive along a Roman road or see an Iron Age burial mound in a farmer's field without giving it so much as a second thought? I know for a fact that I was a serial offender where that was concerned.

Tommy was in his absolute element as he guided our friends around the building - it turns out that a love of archaeology wasn't just the only string in his bow, he was quite the authority on gothic architecture too. To me it was just a cathedral, but to Tommy it was"the finest example of Perpendicular Gothic in Northern Europe", and his enthusiasm was clearly rubbing off on Alex in particular. He looked to be utterly transfixed by Tommy's every word as he explained the difference between trefoils and quatrefoils and the skill involved in carving the intricate tracery of the windows and the choir screen. Eventually we left the Minster and returned to the bright autumnal sunshine outside.

"Did you know Emperor Constantine was proclaimed as the first Christian Roman emperor right here in York?" Tommy said as we crossed High Petergate and went in search for somewhere for a cup of coffee and a much needed sit down.

"An emperor??" Alex gasped, "You mean an actual Roman emperor like... what was the dude's name... Julius Caesar?"

"Well, quite a few generations after ol' JC." Tommy replied as we strolled along the historic old thoroughfare, "But yeah, a genuine Roman emperor."

"Whoa..." Was all Alex could say in reply, "That just blows my freakin' mind!"

We eventually found a small place in the Shambles for a refreshing cup of coffee and a piece of cake each. Jenny was utterly charmed by the Shambles - a narrow street of medieval buildings of brick and timber that are so close together their upper floors were sometimes only a few feet apart.

"These buildings are just the cutest!" She exclaimed as we ambled along the narrow cobbled street.

As we came in to the cramped but warmly lit coffee shop with its wood panelled walls and low timber beamed ceiling, Beth instructed the boys to order for us while we girls went to find ourselves a table. We eventually settled on a cosy table towards the back of the place. I had wondered why Beth had been insistent that the boys go and order for us since it wasn't as though we girls were incapable of ordering for ourselves, but of course it all became clear once we all sat down.

"I think we need to give the boys some time to themselves tonight." Beth began.

"I have a distinct feeling you may be right." Jenny replied.

"Time to themselves?" I queried, "What, like another date? Like they did in France?"

"No, I umm... I think that this time it's us girls who need to go out this time." Beth said cagily.

"What you mean... Oh my goodness!" I said once I realised what Beth was implying.

"You really think they're ready for that step yet?" Jenny asked.

"Well, I think we ought to at least give them the chance." Beth replied, "I mean, if they... y'know... want to erm... ahem, experiment with each other, then they'd obviously need some privacy."

"You think they'll actually do it?" Jenny asked before continuing in a whisper, "Y'know, have sex?"

"Whether they do or don't is up to them." Beth answered, "But we have to let them know that it's okay with us if they want to. But without actually saying it, if you know what I mean."

"Just as long as they do it safely." Jenny said gravely, "I guess I'm okay with them doing... stuff together, just so long as they do it safely."

"I'm sure they will." I said, not wanting to be left out of the discussion, "I mean, I can vouch personally for how responsible Tommy is at least."

"So it's agreed, right girls?" Beth took over, "We'll go out to the cinema or something and let the boys have the flat to themselves."

Jenny gave her agreement after a moment's consideration. I got the impression that she was still a little unsure of her true feelings towards the concept of her brother and Tommy wanting to... y'know, have sex together, but I guess she knew deep down that forcing Alex to repress his desires would make him unhappy. As far as my own feelings about Tommy and Alex were concerned, I had to say the very notion of two males wanting to be so... intimate with each other still filled me with a sense of bewildered curiosity. Needless to say, my mother would definitely not approve!

I suspected she would condemn them both as impure sodomites who would burn in the fires of hell for eternity. But I decided I was not going to go down the same path as my mother and the rest of her religiously ultra-conservative family, so I voiced my agreement to Beth and Jenny.