Kate and Hal in an Empty Nest

"I want us to have permission to like what we like. I want to see if we can be happy about the partner's happiness. I'm pretty sure we could already have a good time, watching the same porn while we get each other off. So, my impulse is to try the most extreme example in the other direction. We get naked in the same room, but we don't make contact. And we each watch different porn. You watch what you like, regardless of what I'd like. And vice versa."

"Okaaayyy?" said Kate.

As he unbuttoned his shirt, he smiled at her. Kate knew that this Hal smile meant that he wasn't really happy. "It's like this compersion thing some people are talking about. If it's load of horseshit, we need to know that."

She noted his wording from the awkward moment in their earlier talk about porn. She didn't mention that.

Committing herself to giving this a try, and giving Hal what he said he needed to know, she unzipped her sweater. "So you'll see what kind of porn I'd watch all alone?"

"Exactly."

She had already sampled some of the content from the creator group to which they had subscribed. She could probably get off to some scenes that might not trigger Hal's...sensitivity? But she thought that wasn't the purpose of this.

She picked up the remote with one hand, while setting aside her bra with the other. Her exposed breasts tingled, and she felt warmth between her still-clothed legs. If the goal was to keep their libidos limber, this impulse might work.

As she worked through site log-ins and menus, she saw that Hal's monitor was already lit with a scene. There was a nude woman in a large open shower, with several sprays and nozzles. The lighting was bright and sharp, showing no intention to obscure the view or tease the viewer. Hal shed his skivvies, and his erection flipped free.

Kate asked, "Do you have this one bookmarked?"

"Yes," he said, looking only at the monitor. He pulled a chair close to it, and sat.

She returned her attention to the TV, and clicked the remote through to the start of her choice.

It began with a set-up scene, with a young man and woman in a living room. They were fully dressed, and chatted, in a way to show that they were at least friends with benefits. When Kate had watched this before, she had found the pair engaging, and their delivery of the dialog competent. Later, when watching the physical action, Kate was very turned on, but felt too inhibited to do more than some light fingering around her vulva.

Because she was familiar with this video, however, she didn't watch the set-up closely this time. She finished undressing calmly, and looked to her left as she sat on the sofa. Hal had a hand in his lap. His armchair limited Kate's view, but she inferred that he was stroking himself slowly, lightly.

On Hal's monitor, a second woman joined the first in the shower. They smiled at each other, and began sharing the task of washing their bodies.

Kate had never thought that her dislike of shower sex left a void in Hal's life. Now, watching a white woman and a black woman happily soap-fondle their sleek young skins, Kate couldn't help feeling a teensy bit...inadequate.

On the TV, the video's set-up ended with the arrival of a second man. The three people undressed each other, with the same shared attitude of sex-is-good expressed by the women in the shower.

Kate settled on the sofa and opened her legs.

Hal's butt slid forward on the chair. This allowed his legs to separate more beyond the ends of the chair arms, and curled his trunk upward, so he could contact every surface of his balls and taint with the hand that wasn't busy with his thickening rod. His mouth opened as he gazed at the beauties who might truly be enjoying their wet frolic.

To the right of his screen, however, he saw Kate's video progress to its nitty-gritty. The woman was attractive, but unlike in many MFM videos, she seemed to be an equal participant, rather than the main focus. If anything, there was more of both men visible at any given time than of the woman. Also, the men seemed as involved with each other as they were with her. This became clearer when the men kissed each other, while their hands and pricks attended to the woman.

He turned his head just enough to see Kate. Her eyes were wide open, and her hands multitasked as Hal's did, in her case with one on a breast and the other at her crotch.

Hal himself had said that this session was more about seeing what the spouse enjoyed, than about self-enjoying. He worried that his irrelevance was confirmed.

His head rolled back to focus on his own porn. He had softened a bit while looking away, but now resumed tumescence. He imagined joining the scene, being welcomed into the shower, on the way to being welcomed into vaginas assumed to be well-lubricated. He tried to get past whether he had any appeal as a lover, with his mullet long gone and much of the remaining hair thinning. Fantasy, he told himself, fantasy already.

Kate's breath was audible, and it shivered. She yearned for the virile variety disporting before her. One man had dark body hair from his chest down past his navel to his groin, where the penis tip surged past the foreskin. The other man was hairless from torso to trunk, and circumcised. Kate's hands almost twitched, wanting to gather the men in a tri-hug, and squeeze their defined muscles against her. Her slick tunnel wanted so much more than her fingers.

But her nostrils flared to a different stimulus. One that had given her a special excitement for decades: The spoor of her husband in arousal.

"Damn! Not enough!" she rasped. "Hal, can you do me?"

He looked her way. "Right here? Now? You really mean it?" Awkwardly he got to his feet.

"Yes! Yes!" She spread her legs into an elevated vee. She still stared hard at the men she wanted, and forced herself to say nothing about them.

Hal half-crouched between her legs. He gripped her thighs, and rotated her body about forty-five degrees. Then he drove his wang into her sopping quim, fast and deep but not rough.

Kate's eyes widened even more, first trained on her husband, then again at her two hunks. Then Hal's drive, the thrill against her wet walls, made her eyes squint shut as she screamed.

Her spine bucked against the sofa. Somehow he kept his thrust steady and deep, even as he gushed hot spunk into the real woman he desired more than any fantasy creation. Their voices joined in a harsh noise that used no language, but carried clear meaning.

In time, chemicals in their brains were depleted. Energy in their sinews gave way to fatigue. The lovers slowed, and quieted.

She murmured, "You moved me."

He chortled weakly. "That's sweet."

"No, you turned me, moved me around. So I could still see them."

After a slow nod, he said, "Yeah."

"I didn't ask for that."

"But it's what you wanted," he said, and didn't soften that by asking if it were true.

"It was," she said, and almost sobbed.

"It's fantasy," he said bluntly.

"And you wanted me to have all of it." She looked again at the screen. The men were still ravishing their partner. Sweat sheened the men's bodies, and the woman's fluids glistened their pricks, which made the men even sexier. The sight still amped Kate, but...not as much?

She looked at the sweat-sheened face of her mouth-breathing husband, his eyes intent upon her.

She said, "Does this mean...that you'd let me bang other men, if you thought it'd make me happy?"

"No," he said. But he wasn't sure. When she had summoned him, seeking his penetration, he was geeked that she needed him to satisfy her. Yet the first thing he did was pivot her trunk. As he did, he focused on her yearning look at the men on the screen.

Now, she didn't look at the porn. She had a flash of anger that her body tried to betray her heart. Her left arm flailed at the side table. She got a grip on the remote, and with a fierce press, she blanked her screen.

"Hal, this is my brain talking," she said, voice trembling. "I don't want them. I don't want that. What I want is all about our nest, and you and me in it." Her voice grew quicker and louder. "I don't want anybody in the nest who shouldn't be here. And if you and I go to have fun away from the nest, it's just you and me, and we come back to the nest together!"

His fear of losing her didn't go away, and maybe it never would. But what she said, and the way she said it, matched with what he knew to be her true sincerity. He smiled in relief.

She said quietly, "When you pull back, go slow please. I think I'm going to cum again."

That returned him to the pleasure their bodies shared now. He eased his shlong out an inch. She quivered, in body and voice. "Repeat?"

He took that to mean going slightly in again, then slightly out.

He was right. Her head tipped back, and she gripped his shoulders, with the remote dropping to the rug. His dick regained some stiffness.

He looked at her in awe. What he felt went far beyond his Being-A-Man routine. He was being her lover. Her partner. Her husband.

Her soulmate.

She howled weakly, but her tunnel squeezed with strength.

After nine more repeats of this inch-long fucking, her body slumped.

In time his cock slipped out of her, and they embraced, and rearranged, to be side by side on the sofa.

"We can still watch porn," she murmured, "but I want contact. And mutual diddling. And only one show on the screen. And our own happy ending."

A different voice wailed. Hal and Kate glanced at the monitor, where the women in the shower slowly crumpled.

The spouses laughed.

***

They knew that Kevin's late high school years would pose special demands, with the college application process fraught with financial requirements and résumé bolstering. Then came the pandemic, limits to classroom presence, and the unstated but growing suspicion that high school wasn't adequately preparing students for college. The whole family was frazzled, with the addition of extra entrance exams to the already vexing ordeal.

Everyone was relieved when Kevin was accepted not only to his 'safety,' but also to three other schools. Two of those were affordable, thanks to in-state tuition discounts. Kevin narrowed his choices to two, one within the metro area, and one far enough away to require residency. Remote learning was already being phased out in Kevin's intended major, a lab science.

Hal and Kate were well aware, by then, of the concept of the empty nest. They had heard from friends with older children. These friends waxed rhapsodic about what they said amounted to a second honeymoon.

Hal and Kate worked to give Kevin unbiased advice on which school, and which department, seemed best for him. When the subject of residency arose, the parents acknowledged how much the family would save if Kevin commuted to college from home.

In the end, Kevin was as eager to leave the nest as his parents were to empty it.

As the family loaded the car for the move to campus, one of the last things Kate did was to write on the magnetized notepad on the refrigerator. She listed the date of the start of the college's autumn break, then emblazoned above it in large thick letters, 'NEST REFILL.'

***

This trip home from the campus featured an almost nonstop discussion, not quite to the level of an argument. Kevin made point after point on why he needed a car while at school. Hal and Kate gave reasons why the family's two cars were needed at home. Kevin asserted that the wait for ride-shares in the college town, especially on weekends, was hopelessly long.

By the time they were home, it was decided that they would examine rental car rates at the college town, with Kevin to find a way to cover some of the cost. Kate insisted that he not take a part-time job until after winter break, and his first-semester grades were known. This was less an agreement than a tripartite expression of exhaustion.

That night, with Kevin in his room, and believed by his parents to be texting friends, Hal and Kate nestled on the sofa.

"I'm actually relieved," she said. "Things got pretty intense. I'm okay with taking a break from impulse."

He nuzzled the top of her head, savoring the feel and scent of her hair. "Ditto. And when we have the place to ourselves again, I'll still be relieved. Because you've convinced me that it really will be just you and me. The best kind of empty."