As term at Edinburgh did not begin until October Tom and I had almost another month to get used to not being at school any more. His father and mother had to move out of the local police house on Wednesday September 13th because of his promotion to Inspector, and they were moving to the local headquarters and new accommodation. Tom and I made tentative plans for him to move into Aunt Margaret’s with me, but, first, we had to inform his parents and Aunt Margaret of our intentions, and, second, I had to square it with Stuart, who was quite happily sharing my room and my bed.
So, Stuart would have to be turfed out into the spare room and a lonely bed, and a rather terrifying set of statements would have to be made. We didn’t know how the grownups, as we called them, would take on board what we had to tell them.
Stuart was also a bit apprehensive over the August Bank Holiday weekend. He was to start a new school, in an unfamiliar country, with an unfamiliar syllabus, and with unfamiliar peers. At least there was one lad in the village who would be in the same Year as him. Aunt Margaret had made certain he and the other lad, Mr Ferguson’s grandson, Archie, were introduced, and I was glad to see that they got on quite well. Archie had been away for most of the summer holidays, so he seemed very pleased to see someone his own age in the village. Whether it was because neither had age-mates in the vicinity they did seem to hit it off together immediately. Stuart abandoned Tom and me, somewhat to our relief, and he and Archie disappeared off, exploring on their mountain bicycles most days during the last couple of weeks of the school holidays—just as Tom and I had done, although without benefit of transport, during our holidays over the past four years.
I liked the look of Archie. He was a stocky lad, a bit older than Stuart, already just over fifteen. He wasn’t near so tall as Stuart—only about five foot six to Stuart’s five feet ten—but he looked a real toughie. Mr Ferguson doted on his grandson and I’d seen Archie fishing with his granddad many times in his younger days when Tom and I had been on our hikes. Tom had a rather pensive look on his face when he saw the enthusiasm Stuart had for Archie’s company but I didn’t enquire. Stuart didn’t say much to begin with about where they went, but they often came back with fish and Aunt Margaret grilled his share for our supper.
One night a couple of weeks after Stuart arrived—in fact, I think it was a couple of nights before he was due to start at his new school—he was even more edgy all evening. I put it down to fear of the new school. However, whatever was bugging him didn’t interfere with the eagerness he evinced as we went through the mutual process of curing that extra itch which boys seem to have once their feet leave the floor in their bedrooms at night. I didn’t tell Stuart that Tom and I had already indulged in a very leisurely session that afternoon while he and Archie were out somewhere, but I did notice I took a bit longer than usual to produce his ration of my boy cream as I still called it.
We snuggled together with his head on my shoulder. We often went to sleep like this, but that night Stuart was a bit restless, even though I thought the mighty orgasm he’d just had would have quietened down an elephant. I waited to see if he would settle down. If he didn’t, I was going to carefully move him, great lump that he was, over and away from me in the bed so I could get my well-earned beauty sleep.
“Flip?” he started rather hesitantly, “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes,” I said, wanting nothing more than silence and a chance to drop off to sleep as my bodily needs had been more than satisfied that day.
“Will I get as big as you?” he asked.
“Christ Almighty!” I expostulated. I didn’t want long discussions about growth at this time of night! “You’re not even fifteen and you’re nearly six foot already. You’re probably taller than I was at your age and from the amount you eat you must still be growing.”
I felt him recoil at my outburst. I knew I’d touched a raw nerve. I put a hand out and stroked his bare, muscular back.
“Sorry, Stuart. I didn’t mean to say it like that,” I said contritely. “What’s the matter?”
“Oh, Flip, I didn’t mean that,” he said, rather subdued. “I meant down there!”
His hand jabbed me somewhere in the stomach region and moved downwards. I knew what he meant.
“What do you want to know?” I asked.
“Well, you and Tom are so big, you know. You’ve both got big cocks and I haven’t, and Archie’s…” He stopped and put his arm round me and hugged me tight. “His cock is bigger than mine,” he whispered.
Oh, so he and Archie had been comparing attributes had they? I forbore from asking straight off what little adventures they’d had off their bicycles. I didn’t think all their time had been spent tickling for trout for supper! Probably other fishy business!
“What about Kenny?” I asked, knowing from previous revelations that he and his pal Kenny had regular wanking sessions.
“Well, we’re the same as each other and he’s a month younger than me.”
“Look, Stuart, you’re not quite fifteen yet. When I was your age my cock was just like yours. In fact, I think it might have been a bit smaller. Archie’s lucky, his has grown sooner than yours. But it might not grow much more, and anyway, he’s about three months older than you, isn’t he? Mine didn’t stop growing until I was nearly seventeen, and it’s just got fatter since.” I squeezed his arm and put my mouth near his ear. “Tom says if it gets much thicker he’ll have to have his teeth taken out to make more room, but…” I paused to make an admission. “His is fatter than mine!”
Stuart gave a little giggle. “I know!”
He was silent for a moment.
“How will I know when it’s grown?”
“I really don’t know?”
“You’re going to be a doctor so you should know.”
“Look Stuart, I haven’t even started studying to be a doctor yet. As soon as we have a lecture on how big boys’ cocks grow I’ll let you know, but that may be in four years’ time!”
I was heaving with laughter. Big brothers had to be accurate and comprehensive founts of knowledge. What could I do? I had an answer.
“Look, why don’t you do an Internet search tomorrow?”
Aunt Margaret didn’t mind if we went online after one o’clock, when BT was a bit cheaper. And, anyway, she said she could write it off as an expense. Her computer didn’t have a modem, but Stuart’s laptop did. He mainly used it to send emails to Kenny.
“Good, I’ll use Google, but what should I put?”
“Penis size, boys of nearly fifteen with big mouths and large feet. And now, shut your mouth and let me get some sleep or I won’t be in a fit state to start studying to be a doctor!”
“It’s not fair. You’ve got another month before you go to Edinburgh—”
I put a hand over his mouth and kissed his forehead.
“Shut up or I’ll find out how to shrink little boys’ cocks, like those natives used to shrink heads, first time I’m in the library!”
Obediently he shut up, and kissed my shoulder. I fell into a deep sleep.
I was awakened by a throaty whisper in my ear and a stiff prick thrust into my hand.
“Do you think it’s grown much overnight?”
“Shut up, you little toad! Let me sleep. Do it yourself.”
“Come on, Flip,” he whined. “I want it now, and I want my big brother!”
I rolled over on top of him. He was giggling almost uncontrollably.
“Come on, Flip. Aunt Margaret had to go out on a call. I heard the phone at half past six, and your prick’s been hard ever since I woke up then.”
Little bastard. He’d had a crafty feel. Yes, I had a raging hard-on. I also had a great urge to fuck my little brother, but I desisted. As I lay on top of him, hoping to press the breath out of him, I reached down and grabbed both rampant cocks and rubbed them together, up and down. At the same time I thrust my tongue into his mouth and the combination of the tongue-fucking and the friction made both of us fire our wads within minutes.
When I regained my breath and composure I rolled off him, squelching slightly as I did so. The Menzies boys were no slouches in the spunk production department!
“Christ, Stuart!” I said with a degree of emphasis, “if a little cock like that can produce so much spunk I don’t know what you’re worried about.”
My little brother was no fool! He scooped up some of our combined load from his stomach and smeared it over my cheek.
“My cock only fires it. My balls make it—you should know that—and I want a bigger gun!”
I laughed. “Don’t you worry, you’ll get it.” I decided I’d get my own back for being woken so early. “Now, tell me about you and Archie.”
That flummoxed him. He obviously had to do a quick think to remember what he’d said the night before. He’d told me about Kenny before he let the cat out of the bag when he said Archie was bigger than him. Ergo… confession time.
“Oh, well…” he began, then stopped.
I prodded him.
“I want to know,” I said sententiously, “and I want to know everything.”
He moved closer and snuggled up tight.
“Yesterday Archie wanted to know what it’s like to fuck somebody, but I wouldn’t let him do it to me ’cause his prick’s too big. And he asked if I’d done it yet.”
Oh, my God! Heavy brother coming up!!
“Have you done that to him, or anyone else? Girl or boy?”
I felt his head shake a decisive negative.
“Stuart… you’ve got to slow things down. Tell me what you’ve done already.”
“Same as you and I’ve done. You know, toss each other off and suck. I haven’t done anything with girls. I don’t really know any. Our old school was all boys, remember.”
I ignored the last.
“But you’ve only been going around with Archie for a couple of weeks.”
He snuggled closer. “We jacked each other off the first day.”
Huh, quick worker. “Who started it, you or him?”
“Oh, he did. We were sitting by the loch and he said he was horny. He reckoned I looked horny as well, and then he said he wanted a bloody good wank. Just like that.” He chuckled. “I’m always horny, just like you…”
“Don’t bring me into it.. Are you sure he started it?”
I felt him nodding vigorously. I wasn’t going to disbelieve my own brother. Ready now for the heavy brother treatment!
“Look Stuart, I don’t mind you and Archie just doing that… even the sucking… but I don’t approve of you and him doing anything else.”
“But you and Tom…”
“Stuart, I think Tom and me are a bit different. You like Archie, and boys will experiment—just like you and Archie now, and you and Kenny in the past. Tom and I love each other and that’s quite different. We’ve known that since we were about your age and we knew it almost from the day we met. You don’t love Archie, and I don’t think you ought to encourage him. Have a friendly wank, but don’t get involved in anything you can’t control. I know I’m gay and I know you’re straight, and I think you know that. So, please, Stuart, be good and kind to Archie, but don’t get carried away. What I’ve seen of him I like. I think he’ll be a good friend. You’re going to need him at your new school. He knows all the other kids. Now, you don’t want someone who might let out secrets about more than most boys do together if you piss him off over something, so be careful. Archie’s a schoolfriend—no more! Just remember you can always ask me anything or tell me anything. Whatever you want to know or tell, come to me, or Tom. He’s your brother as well, now. OK?”
I put my arms round him and hugged him tight for some minutes as he nuzzled my neck, brushing under my chin with his lips. The heat from our bodies was drying our cum and gluing us together. We both giggled and that broke the ice as well as the surface tension of the bodily fluid.
“Thanks, Flip, I know you’re not angry with me,” he murmured. “I won’t do anything else, and I won’t let Archie, I promise. I love you and Tom and I’m going to miss you even more now than I did before. I know you love me, too. I’m glad I’ve got two big brothers now…” he paused. “And when are you going to tell Aunt Margaret and Tom’s mum and dad?”
Perceptive boy. Tom and I had only discussed that very issue the previous afternoon. We had decided to tell them all the following Sunday, well before the move. Aunt Margaret and us two boys had been invited over to have a farewell Sunday lunch with the McLarens. Tom would be on home territory. We also had to ask if he could come and stay with me when his parents moved. I needed to broach that with Stuart first.
“Look, Stuart, you’re not to say anything about it, but Tom and I plan to tell them about our commitment to each other after lunch on Sunday.”
He leaned up and back and grinned broadly.
“They know, even if you haven’t told them yet. They must know. I knew before you told me.”
“Yes, Stuart, I expect they’ve guessed something, but what I haven’t told you and what we’ll tell them is what we are intending to do soon.”
Stuart gave me with a puzzled look.
“What do you mean?”
“If I tell you, you mustn’t say anything because it has to come from me and Tom. Promise?”
He nodded energetically. “Of course I promise, but I can guess what it is.”
“No guessing! I’ll tell you, but I’ll show you something first.”
I reached over to the bedside cabinet and opened the drawer and took out the jeweller’s box Ghazi had given me. I switched on the bedside light. Turning towards Stuart, I opened the box slowly. He gasped when he saw the ring. It shone with a rich silvery light. I took it from the box and put it on his outstretched hand. He looked at it intently.
“It’s lovely,” he said. “What’s it made of? It’s very heavy. And has Tom got one? ’Cause there’s T and P written in there.”
“Yes, it is lovely. It’s platinum, and Tom has an identical one. Ghazi bought them for us, not this summer but last summer. He knew then that we loved each other and he was confident that we would keep on loving each other. I love Tom even more each time I’m with him, and we are going to make our commitment to each other with the rings. All our friends know this and Ghazi is one of my best friends after Tom.”
Stuart turned the ring over carefully and scrutinised the engraved initials.
“I wish I had good best friends like you’ve got, Flip—like all those initials on your watch.”
“You have. You’ve got me and Tom, and Darryll and Michael, and Kenny… and now you’ve got Archie. You’ll make other friends at school. You know what happened to me. If I’d stayed at home with you and Mum I expect my only friend would have been Michael… and would he have ended up wanting someone who had a reputation like mine? I was lucky to be sent away to school, because I learned a lot quickly, and I’m grateful for all the friendships I’ve made, especially with Ghazi. Remember how I’ve told you there were seven of us and we had to cope with each other all day every day? But even all that isn’t anything compared with being with my Tom.”
“I want to meet Ghazi and your other friends. Will they be there when you make your commitment? Can I be there?”
I kissed him on the cheek. “Of course you’ll be there, but nothing’s planned yet.”
“And do you want Tom to come and stay in here with you until you go to Edinburgh? ’Cause I want him to. I’ll have the other room. I’ll ask Aunt Margaret for you.”
“Oh, Stuart,” I said, almost breaking down. “Oh Stuart, my lovely brother, you are so kind. Of course I want Tom to stay here, but I don’t want you to be lonely.”
The evil child sniggered. “At least I won’t have to see that you’re satisfied every night!”
“Give me back my ring, you horrible child,” I said, recovering quickly and swatting his bare bum with a free hand. “You’ll probably just wank yourself senseless every night without my restraining influence.”
He leaned over and put the ring into the box I was still holding in my other hand.
He kissed my cheek, then snickered. “I love you so much, Flip, and I’d rather have you wank me senseless every night—you’ve had so much more practice.”
What do you do with younger brothers?
Things moved rapidly that morning. Stuart went off well before nine o’clock to meet Archie and get a morning’s worth of nefarious activities, no doubt. He assured me they were cycling into Fort William, a return distance of some thirty or so miles, just so Archie could exchange some ill-fitting trainers his mother had got for him the previous week. Better exercising his legs that way than on his back in the heather, I thought! He said he’d be back for lunch and he’d be hungry. Toad!
Aunt Margaret returned from her house call just after nine, announcing it was another infant delivered into this wicked world. I got breakfast ready for her while she showered and changed. I’d just handed her a rack of toast and poured another coffee for both of us when she said she had something to tell me. I sat opposite her at the kitchen table.
“Now, Flip,” she began in her usual brisk manner, “Tom can move in with you over the next couple of days because it’s stupid him taking all his stuff up to the new house and then carting it all back down again when you’re living together here when you’re not in Edinburgh.”
I must have looked a picture. I was astounded.
“You might be intelligent but you are quite stupid at the same time,” she said, laughing. “You and Tom are made for one another and I certainly know what’s been going on for the past four years. You don’t think I haven’t been watching how your love for Tom and his love for you has been developing?” She paused. “I want you two to be together. As I said, you’re made for each other, and Tom’s parents think the same.”
I gaped again, lost for words. Had we been discussed? Aunt Margaret read my thoughts.
She grinned. “You must think we live on another planet. We’ve all watched you two grow together, and Tom and Jeannie look on you as their son as much as they do young Tom, even though it means they aren’t likely to have any grandchildren.”
I shook my head almost with disbelief.
“And you needn’t worry about Stuart. He told me yesterday he wants to move into the spare room. He said yours is so cluttered he needs his own space.” She grinned again. “He’s so transparent—it was obvious he wants you and Tom together here, too.”
I got up, knelt beside her and flung my arms round Aunt Margaret.
“I didn’t know how we were going to tell you all,” I said. “Thanks.”
“That’s that, then,” Aunt Margaret said, ruffling my hair. “Get up and you can spend time this morning tidying your room and making space for Tom’s clobber.” She smiled as I got up and stood back. “I love you very much, Flip. I didn’t know what was going to happen four years ago, but you’ve made it… and now you and Tom will be very happy together, I know! Now, come on, chop, chop! I’ve got patients queuing up—and you’ll find out soon enough that patients come first!”
I couldn’t begin to speak. I knew things were going to be OK. Aunt Margaret and Stuart hadn’t spoken together but they both knew, instinctively and through observation, what was going on. Tom and I had been quite oblivious to all this—almost living in our own little world, or as Aunt Margaret had said, on a different planet.
Thinking about it as I washed up the breakfast things, after giving Aunt Margaret the biggest kiss I could muster as she rushed to the door with her medical bag, all our other friends had known as well and supported us. Ghazi with the gift of the rings; Hamed and Clyde with their knowledge of Ghazi’s purchases; Paul with the invites for both of us to Linnhe; Little Dick and Fergie in their own ways; Mr and Mrs Douglas entrusting us with Pete; Mr McCrae and what he said to Tom; and even Clyde’s granddaddy in having the rings engraved. All had known, and all had contributed in some way. Stuart now, too. And, from the conversation with Aunt Margaret, she and Tom’s parents were also supporting us. I couldn’t have been happier.
My reverie was broken by a tap on the door and the appearance of an unusually glum-looking Tom. He was carrying a rather bulging travel bag.
“I’ve been thrown out!” he said, then burst into roars of laughter at my immediate stricken look of alarm. He dropped the bag and rushed to envelope me in a great hug, oblivious to the fact that I had knives and forks in my hands. With a frightful clatter they dropped harmlessly into the sink. “I’m moving in with you, permanently—at least that’s what Mum and Dad said last night. Dad said if you didn’t want me I would have to live in your Aunt’s back shed. No, Flip, they want me to live with you and I do so want to as well! You’ll have me won’t you?”
He was so excited. He babbled on about wanting to rush over the night before after he and his parents had discussed things. He said he didn’t realise they knew. Another stupid boy! After he’d calmed down a bit I quite deliberately put down my drying-up cloth, and—trying to keep a straight face and my excitement at a low level—said there were more things to discuss.
“For instance, first,” I began, holding up one hand and counting off a finger, “there’s Stuart. We share a room and a bed. He’s my young brother and I have to protect him from the evils of this world. It’ll be another year before he’s legally old enough for you to lay a finger on him if the three of us share my bed…”
I couldn’t sustain it. I just collapsed in laughter. “Oh, Tom, Stuart told me this morning he wants to move into the spare room so you can move in with me. It seems everyone else has plans for us and we’ve been worrying quite unnecessarily about things. He’s gone off to Fort William with that sex-maniac Archie…” Tom’s eyebrows rose. “It’s OK, nothing too dreadful; I’ll tell you later. But bring your things in.”
He lugged the bag into my, now OUR, room and dropped it by the bed. A millisecond later we were on the bed just holding each other tightly, not sexually, not sensuously, just lovingly. We didn’t need to do anything; just being together made the magic happen. We knew each other’s thoughts, almost as if we had always been together. I suppose it must be like identical twins, like those horror friends of Paul’s who he said worked uncannily as one.
Anyway, we didn’t waste time. Tom made four trips across to the Police House and came back with clothes, books, photos, even a hockey stick, which seemed to fill every available space in a sizeable room. Aunt Margaret looked in after surgery and over a cup of coffee said she was so glad we were now properly together. On seeing the room she immediately phoned a local carpenter for him to come and measure up for more shelves in OUR room and in Stuart’s room. She then said we were to go into Fort William that afternoon and choose new curtain fabric. She grinned and said that would be something to witness, two great hulks fingering the muslins and cottons! Tom immediately said he wanted little pink and blue flowers as that made him think of a nursery. I swiped him one and said we would have red and gold to match my hair and my personality. Aunt Margaret laughed and said she hoped the assistant serving us was one of her patients so she could catch up on what was said in the shop. She then produced the measurements from nearly twenty years before when she’d had the present drapes made when she first moved in. She said it would be best if Tom supervised the choice and with a grin and cheerful wave she rushed off to visit more patients.
Tom and I had an early lunch. I left a stack of sandwiches for Stuart, and no doubt Archie, then we set off in my car for Fort William. We didn’t see the pair cycling back along the road, so assumed they had found a shady nook for some mutual comparisons and release of tensions.
The young lady in the shop was helpfulness itself. We both spotted immediately the material we wanted and told her it was for a bedroom in Dr Menzies’ bungalow in Glenfinnan. Sure enough, she said she knew Dr Menzies and wasn’t I her nephew and we had actually danced together at the Glenfinnan Ceilidh. She then said her young brother Archie and my brother had been in the shop earlier and wasn’t he like me. I also found out she was married to the soldier who had passed on the kilt her grandfather, Mr Ferguson, had given me. I was quite bewildered by all this, but I suppose in a smallish community everyone knows everyone else, or is related to everyone else!
Anyway, she approved of the material we had chosen and said she would personally see it was made up to the correct specification within the week. Tom, of course was then chatted to and congratulated on having a father who deserved such a promotion and where would he be living now? Tom said he was moving into the bungalow until we went to Edinburgh. “Then I wish you to be happy together,” were her parting words. How does everyone know?
We mooched around Fort William for a bit and I bought my young brother a football shirt in his school colours. I was feeling generous after our little talk that morning.
When we got back Tom went off to the Police House to see if there was anything thing else left. I hoped not, the room was cluttered enough already. All was quiet. The sandwiches were gone and two plates were on the draining board—washed up, I noticed. The worm was turning as Stuart was usually a dab hand at leaving things around. I went along to the spare room to leave the football shirt on his bed. Stuart was there, sitting in the easy chair by the window reading the latest, rather thick, Harry Potter book. Mustn’t denigrate them as I’ve read them all with relish. I, in fact, had wondered many times what delights a magic wand and a few spells might conjure up! There was also a sizeable pile of paper on his bed. Looked like printouts.
“Something for you,” I said, dropping the bag on his bed. “Where’s Archie? I’ve just met his sister in Fort William.”
“Yeah,” he said, sticking a piece of paper in the book and dropping it to the floor, “Saw her this morning. That’s his eldest sister. He’s got two. That one seems very nice, like Archie. He’s got to help his mother. What’s that?”
Telegraphic, succinct.
“Something for you,” I said, “from a very generous brother.”
He grabbed the bag and opened it. His eyes opened.
“Caw, ta, Flip,” he said quite enthusiastically. “I need a spare ’cause Archie says I’ll have a good chance to be in a team.”
“If there’s any of my old stuff you want have a rake around,” I said generously.
“Already have,” he said, pointing to a substantial pile of gear heaped at the top of his bed. “Thanks, it’ll all be useful.”
I walked over to the bed. I recognised some fairly new things of mine but then thought he might as well have them. The pile of paper also looked interesting. Whatever he’d done had produced a substantial little pile. Unfortunately, the pile of paper was upside down so I couldn’t see what was printed out.
“What’s this?” I asked, pointing at the heap. “I hope you haven’t used up all Aunt Margaret’s paper.”
He grinned. “Naw, there’s plenty in the box. I did as you said this morning and went on Google. Found a lot. Some ve-e-e-ry peculiar sites, I can tell you, but I did find a very useful one. It’s called jackinworld.”
I raised my eyebrows. He grinned back.
“Oh, it’s OK, it’s for boys and it’s got lots of stuff.” He pursed his lips and looked up slyly at me. “Shan’t be lonely while you’re away. I’ve learnt a lot. Tells you all sorts of different ways, you know, for jacking off.”
Oh God, my little brother is now teaching me. I didn’t say anything, just stared at him.
“I found out I’m OK. They’ve done surveys. You and Tom are big.” He paused and stared at me. “Crikey, did you know most boys in America are circumcised? And they had a picture of ancient Egyptians doing it.”
I must have looked puzzled.
“Circumcising some kid!” he clarified. “Ugh! I thought they only did it to babies.”
I was dying to have a riffle through the pages but I’d better not show too much interest.
“And how did you get the printouts?” I asked, knowing he only had his laptop and that Aunt Margaret’s computer in her office was ancient, well at least four years old. But she did have a new inkjet printer.
“Oh, I found the driver disk in the printer box and installed it on my laptop and hooked up to Aunt’s printer and went online. It was fab!”
Little brothers, ten times more knowledgeable about modern technology! I still wanted to see the printouts.
“Go on, Flip, have a look!” He looked at me with a smile playing at the corners of his lips. “Bet ya learn something you didn’t know!” He began to giggle as I stared pointedly at his lower abdomen region. “It’s OK, took care of it!”
I casually picked up the bundle and leafed through. Most informative. I did learn several new things even from that cursory glance.
“I think I’d better have a proper look later,” I said, not wanting to indicate to my brother that one method I’d seen was having a slightly arousing effect. “Those tables of results look interesting.”
“Yeah!” he said, “Especially all the kids who’ve done it with others.”
I put the papers back on the bed.
“You’d better put those away safely so nobody finds them,” I instructed him.
“Yeah, I’ve pinched one of Aunt Margaret’s folders, but I left them out for you to see.”
“Well, you’d better put them away now and I can see them another time.”
He handed me a folder which he picked up from the floor beside him. I put the pile inside and put the folder down on the dressing table.
“And Tom?” he asked guilelessly. “He could have a look as well. Anyway,” he continued, before I could say anything, “if you and Tom are in that room you’d better not make as much row every night as you did last Wednesday afternoon. You’ll wake Aunt Margaret—and she’s three rooms along!”
“What do you mean? Last Wednesday? Where were you?”
My mind raced back. Last Wednesday afternoon? Oh, help! Was that the day Tom and I had indulged freely in my room in an empty bungalow?
The toad sniggered. “I was in here reading. And I don’t know what you were doing to Tom but you certainly made him holler and you weren’t all that quiet yourself a bit later. You should shut your door or issue earplugs!”
I went over to him and he sat back in the chair with his hands up in self-defence or submission, grinning. Grinning! I’d make the little bastard submit!
“You were fucking spying on us, you snivelling little bastard,” I said, “Did you come along and watch?”
I was standing over him now. He was curled up, laughing.
“What for? I heard enough! Actually it was rather exciting, I came twice while you two were at it. I didn’t need to watch, the sounds were enough! You must tell me what you were doing, especially to make Tom go ‘OOOOOOOOH’ so loud.”
His imitation of Tom was uncannily accurate. I knew what I had been doing. I had run my saliva-dripping tongue from his neck down to his shaft, backwards and forwards, while wanking him slowly and steadily. The loud and prolonged ‘OH’ was his response to the treatment as he fired off a veritable fusillade of warm spunk which missed my face by inches. He had immediately grabbed me and sucked me dry in a couple of minutes and that was when I became vocal. And the toad was wanking himself at the same time, enjoying the vicarious pleasure!
“You should have told us you were here, you little fucker,” I said, “That’s spying!”
“S’not. It’s you who should be more careful. Aunt Margaret might have been in her room with a migraine. That noise was enough to give anyone a migraine!” He laughed again. “It’s you two, you’re a real pair of horny buggers!”
“I say you were spying.” I knew I hadn’t a leg to stand on but I couldn’t let my little brother get the better of me, could I? “I’ll tan your cheeky little arse for you!”
He grinned up at me. “You and whose army?”
I’d heard those words before. Years of tussling with Ghazi and the others had taught me a move or two, or three. I reached down and hauled him up, all eleven or so stone of him, and had him over the bed in a trice. He was writhing and giggling at the same time so I knew I had the better of him. My expert fingers soon had his jeans undone and down to his knees, rapidly followed by his black boxers. His black boxers? MY black boxers! The crafty sod! His rake-through of my possessions had been very thorough. I soon had him pinned with a knee in the small of his back and his bare, slightly suntanned arse ready. I gave him six good hearty slaps, reddening his cheeks a bit. I let go and he rolled over, still laughing, with his near enough six inches of rampant boy meat stuck up in the air.
“I’ll make you fucking go ‘OH’,” I said with mock anger. I held him down by his chest and gave him the most violent, fast and furious wank I could muster. Wow, didn’t he holler! He opened his mouth and gave vent to the most almighty screech as he shot the biggest load I’d seen him make so far. I remembered he’d already fired a copious amount earlier in the day and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he and Archie hadn’t had a session together earlier and he’d obviously had another when reading the stuff on the computer. I did have the kindness to stop pounding his prick as soon as the final squirt appeared—I knew the almost unbearable pain one got if one’s companion tried to go on. Perhaps I should have, just to make my point a bit stronger. He was gasping for breath as I removed my knee from his midriff.
“Gosh, Flip,” he gasped out at last, then smiled and shook his head. “That was wonderful. I wish I was Tom! I’d want you all the time! Oh my God!”
Retribution, my arse! The toad had revelled in it!
Tom came over with even more things just after five o’clock. Stuart had cleaned himself up and both of us were in a good mood. Both of us knew it wasn’t even a brotherly spat. He’d teased me and I had teased him back. I knew we were even closer after that little episode as he kept deliberately brushing up against me, or putting an arm round my waist, as I got the table laid, with his willing help, ready for the four of us to have supper. Tom saw all this and I winked at him and he wisely said nothing. Telling Tom about it was sure to set him off nicely in bed that night.
In bed! Our first, almost official, proper sleep together! But first we had to have supper. Aunt Margaret had been given a brace of pheasants at the weekend and had had them de-feathered and eviscerated ready for the pot. I had put the prepared casserole in the oven as instructed at four o’clock so there was a heavenly smell by half-six when Aunt Margaret bustled in after a long day being a doctor. I was beginning to realise I had a busy life ahead if I qualified.
“Gin and tonics all round,” she announced. “Even for the young ’un if it doesn’t rush to his head.”
I managed to get in another swipe at his tightly-jeaned arse in the kitchen as I made up the potent mixtures and placed them on a tray ready for him to carry in as our servant boy. He put an arm round my waist and hugged me. Poor lad. Lonely bed for him tonight, but no doubt he’d be trying out method seventy-two from jackinworld!
Aunt Margaret obviously wanted us to celebrate somewhat, because a bottle of red wine also appeared. I made sure young Stuart had an extra glass. What he hadn’t realised was that I had deliberately also given him an extra measure of gin in his pre-prandial drink. The whole meal was very relaxed. As well as the casserole we also tucked into a fruit pie Tom had brought across from his mother. We just sat and chatted until about nine o’clock, when Stuart said he was off to bed as he had to go to his new school in the morning. What a turn up for the book!
At about ten Aunt Margaret said she’d had a long day and was off to bed too. Tom and I tidied up, put all the things in the dishwasher, and also retired. While Tom was in the bathroom I checked on Stuart. There was no sound from his room so I carefully opened the door and went in. He was fast asleep, curled up, with just his head peeping out from under his duvet. I gently kissed his forehead and thought if I ever had a son, which was most unlikely, I would want him to be just like Stuart. Tom was out of the bathroom so I went straight in as I came out of Stuart’s room and closed the door quietly.
Tom was waiting in our room when I finished in the bathroom. He was standing there in the nude, arms outstretched. I was carrying my clothes, except for the boxers I had left on in case Aunt Margaret was (most unlikely) on the prowl. I slipped them off and we embraced each other, one arm over each other’s shoulder, the other round the back. We stood still, feeling each other’s warmth, until Tom whispered in my ear, “Let’s go to bed, I need you.”
We needed each other. We resumed that gentle hugging and as we were so close our now-erect shafts were side by side. Gentle movements made them rub together until, without anything else but our love for each other, our creamy offerings joined as one between us.
“Oh, Flip,” Tom whispered, as his outflowing spunk finished spurting so forcefully. “Please don’t let this ever end.”
I knew how I loved Tom, and here he was, expressing his love for me in the most human way that two young males could. Like him, I wanted our love to never end. I kissed him gently and he knew how I felt, too.
We held each other close again and, not bothering to mop up, we parted and dropped off to sleep.
I was awakened by a more than gentle tap on the door. The door opened and Stuart came in, all togged up in his new school uniform, bearing a tray with two cups of coffee.
“I’ve come to see my brothers,” he announced brightly. “I had a lovely sleep, did you?”
He put the tray down and went around to Tom, who was still asleep. He bent down and kissed him on the cheek, then came to me and did the same.
“Don’t expect to get that every morning,” he said. “And I shan’t be bringing the coffee in, either. Got to go, Archie’s at the door and the bus will be here any minute. Aunt Margaret’s in the kitchen and she says she’s off to surgery soon so you’ll have to get your own breakfast. Ta-ta for now, and don’t do anything today I wouldn’t do!”
He blew a kiss and closed the door none too gently, big ox that he was. It didn’t exactly slam but it was enough to make the hinges on a lesser door buckle. The noise roused Tom who turned and looked at me and his face broke into a wonderful smile. I leaned over and we continued that close, close embrace of the night before. I kissed his nose, his eyes, his forehead, his ears and his lips. He nuzzled my chin and gently probed my Adam’s apple with his tongue. That had an even more hardening effect on my already very rigid rod, which he took into his hand and gradually raised me to a height of spurting, shooting passion which could have gone on for ever I was so lost in my feelings. Propelled by my need to give my Tom all I could my hand went to his cock and took over his rhythm and drew him to a similar conclusion. We kissed again and just held each other, feeling as one. I didn’t want to move but in the end Tom took the initiative.
“Come on Flip,” he said. “We promised to get things done for your Aunt and the carpenter’s coming as well this morning. We don’t want to be too worn out to clear the garden and do that painting, do we?”
We prised our glued-together torsos apart. We grinned at each other—this was beginning to be a common occurrence. I’d thought yesterday that we Menzies boys produced a substantial amount but Tom, with his hefty bollocks, was no slouch in the production line either. I held his balls for a moment to feel their weight and pecked him on the nose before I extricated my six foot three frame out of the bed.
“I’m all yours for orders,” I said. “Bags I clean the paintwork on the back of the bungalow and you can start on that hedge.”
“That’s just like you,” Tom complained. “You tell me to give the orders and then you say what you’re going to do anyway.”
He came round the bed to me.
“I may not be as big as you, but don’t you start getting any ideas who’s boss.” He laughed. “’Cause I am when it comes to this.”
He grabbed me and upended me on the bed and began to tickle my chest and rub his body up and down mine. I was going hard again. He quickly let go and jumped away.
“See, you horny bugger, I can get you rampant any time I want. And I don’t want you now. You stink, you sexy monster. Go and have a shower and get all that crusty spunk off you and put plenty of deodorant on.”
Bugger me, the pot calling the kettle black. Half the crusty spunk was his and he was also liberally coated, especially where one of my mighty squirts had mingled in his little patch of chest hair. I hadn’t told him about my encounter with Stuart the day before or about the printout, and I was also itching to tell Tom he made too much noise for comfort! This last I did, sparing no details and embroidering the telling, saying—quite untruthfully—that Stuart had watched open-mouthed and wanking vigorously while Tom was sucking avidly on my cock after frightening the poor boy with his bull-like roars.
I relented and put the record straight as we went into the bathroom and tried to shower together. Tom responded by unfairly kneeing me out of the shower, dripping wet and still soaped up. We were still horsing around when the backdoor bell rang. I hastily tied a bath towel round me and went through to the kitchen. A rather goggle-eyed short lad of my age stood there, dressed in smart dungarees and carrying a bag. Before I, or he, had a chance to speak nosey Tom came up behind me, also attired in a bath towel and rubbing his hair with a hand towel.
“Oh, hi there, Wayne,” he said. “Come to measure up for the shelves?”
Wayne stared a moment longer. “Och, Tam, I heerd you’da moved across here. How ya, eh?”
I stood aside and beckoned Wayne in. His accent was more pronounced than Tom’s. As he passed me I appraised him. About five-seven, slim, dark-haired, with blue eyes and a ready smiling expression.
“Ma aunt saw ya yesterday lumping ya stuff across and told ma sister Marcie last night you’da staying here cos your dad is promoted and going off.”
At least, the bush telegraph was alive and kicking. Wayne—and who had ever heard of a good young Scot called Wayne?— was well away. Except that he was stopped in his verbal tracks by Tom.
“Look, Wayne, I’ll show you Flip’s brother’s room and you can measure there while we get dressed and then you can measure in ours. You know what he wants in there, don’t you?”
I was rather glad Tom suggested Wayne look at Stuart’s room first. At least his bed would be tidy. I pictured our bed, duvet scattered and evidence of the night on the sheets. Not a sight for Wayne and his roving tongue. Tom ushered Wayne past our room and the intervening bathroom and Wayne disappeared into Stuart’s room. I looked at Tom, raised my eyebrows, and he grinned. I felt my chin—no time for a shave—and went into our room. As I’d thought, the bed was a mess. Two largish patches were evident on the bottom sheet. I hurriedly pulled the duvet across as Tom came in. He saw the need and helped me cover the evidence.
“Wayne was in my class at school,” he informed me. “He left at sixteen to work for his father who’s got a builder’s business near Fort William. He’s a great lad, but mouthy. We played in the same football team.”
I nodded at this intelligence and he said no more as we went back to the bathroom to get rid of the soap. We were back in our room just finishing dressing when Wayne came to the door.
“I’ve made a start,” he said. I listened carefully, translating his accent. “Six feet high do? Then there’s a bit across the other side of the window, shall I measure that up? I could build a nice cupboard there.”
I was sitting on the edge of the bed tying the laces of an old pair of trainers. Wayne cast his eyes across. I could almost see the cogs turning. One double bed, two large lads, and Tom had said ‘ours’.
I stood up and went with him into Stuart’s room. He was quite voluble about the improvements which could be done. All the time, though, he was taking in the attributes of the room. I grinned inwardly. This time: one double bed, one boy.
I agreed with what he proposed and then we processed back to our room, since Tom had been a silent witness to the flow of suggestions towards the end. Our room was then subjected to close scrutiny. Again, most sensible suggestions were made about what could be done, while mental notes were made of rumpled cast-off boxers and shirts on either side of the bed… I had also detected that slightly musty smell of new sex which the newly washed would be aware of. I hoped young Wayne’s nostrils were not as cleansed as mine.
Tom and I left him to his measuring and went through to the kitchen where Aunt Margaret had left a note propped against the coffee pot. Please put washer on when filled.
I asked Tom what he would like for breakfast and we both decided on cereals followed by toast. This was in train when Wayne tapped on the door and came in.
“Can I set my measurements down in here?” he asked.
I pointed to the stool on the other side of the kitchen table and made a space for him. I must say he was most efficient. Rapid, neat sketches were made and filled in with the sizes. Tom and I chomped through our breakfast watching him. I pointed to the coffee pot. Wayne nodded, and Tom got up and poured him a mug. Three spoonfuls of sugar were stirred in and the sketching went on. I thought I’d better start the washing; one item would be our bottom sheet. I scurried off and came back with that, plus a pile of tops, boxers, underpants, and socks collected from both our rooms. There were already some of Aunt Margaret’s things beside the washer. Wayne looked up as I opened the washer door and began to stuff things in.
“You mustn’t mix those coloured things with those whites,” he said authoritatively.
I looked over at him. I generally just shoved it all in and set the dial and switched on.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “How do you know?”
“If you’d got three older sisters you’d soon learn,” he said, grinning. “I’d have my ears boxed if they saw me doing what you’ve just done. Take all that stuff out.”
He got up and came over to me.
“You’ve got plenty of whites to do on a hot wash,” he said, picking out the sheet and holding it up. Oh, sod it, I thought, he’ll see. “Then there’s these as well.” He held up two of Aunt Margaret’s white coats she wore in the surgery. “And all these hankies, they need boiling really.”
“You’ll make someone a lovely wife, Wayne,” Tom said, laughing.
“Fuck you, Tam McLaren, you wouldn’t last a morning with those sisters of mine.”
He continued deftly to pack things in the washer. He closed the door, put washing powder in the holder and turned the dial, then sat down again. He continued to fill in the sketch, now of our room.
“And I tell ye,” he continued, without looking up, “You mustnae do all those knickers and boxers and things on a hot wash or they’ll shrink and they won’t fit round anyone’s arse.” He pronounced the last word in the delightful Scots way as ‘erse’. “I got a right slapping for doing that with my sisters’ bits and pieces and I telt them they wouldnae fit anyone’s erse afore anyway. They slapped me again for that. I’m always getting slapped.”
He sighed. “All they think and talk about is boys. They want doing sae bad I telt them if I was’nae their brither they’d a had ma breeks round ma ankles years ago. I got slapped for that, too.” He looked up at me and Tom slyly. “You wouldnae want to take a coupla off ma hands, would ya? I know he’s got enough and I expect ya have too. They’re begging for it but they’ve nae got near it yet for all their trying.”
What was Wayne fishing for? Both Tom and I laughed, me a bit hesitantly. Tom came to the rescue.
“No good, Wayne,” he said, chuckling, “we’re off to Edinburgh and we can’t take excess baggage, or baggages.”
Wayne had the grace to laugh too. “But what about his brother? He’s a braw lad, I saw him this morning with that rogue Archie Ferguson, waiting for the school bus.” He looked at me. “He’s like you. What about him?”
“It’s no good, Wayne, he’s not fifteen yet for a couple of months and, anyway, he’s worried whether he would be big enough.”
Tom shot me a sharp look and, of course, I’d let Stuart’s worry out and where would that gobbet of prime gossip get to now.
Wayne sniggered. “I’d say as long as it’s stiff and greasy they’d sit on any pole. Mine’s only five and a half, as he’ll tell you, and no one’s complained yet!”
I looked at Tom, who closed his eyes resignedly. Something I would have to ask him later! By this time Wayne had completed his drawings. He held them up for inspection. They were very good. Not a rough sketch but a very detailed depiction of what he was planning.
“They’re very good, Wayne,” I said “You’re quite an artist.”
His eyes met mine. There was a recognition of something in his look. What I’d said had sparked a memory.
“I know where I’ve seen you before,” he said. “The laird’s son’s got you drawn on his wall.”
The laird’s son? Pete Douglas!
“Oh, yes,” Wayne went on, “my dad got the job of repairing the roof over that side of the house and I’ve been doing the woodwork inside. That’s where I’ve been for the past three weeks. I saw the drawings and talked to the lad—his name’s Pete, isn’t it?” I nodded. “I took some of my drawings and paintings in and we had several chats. He’s a bonny lad isn’t he?”
I explained I’d been at school with Pete and that he’d actually stayed with us for part of the summer. He nodded.
“Have you seen that one of you?”
I said I had.
He smiled. “Not the one in the frame.” His eyes travelled down my chest. I got the message; I had seen the drawings of Pete’s school pals that were on display. “It’s very good,” he averred. “Pity you can’t have one of my sisters. You’d be just right for her.”
Tom had sized up the situation and got up and went and stood behind Wayne. He crossed his arms and caught hold of Wayne’s ears, one in each hand. He lifted Wayne up from the stool and, as he uncrossed his arms, Wayne was whirled around to face him. Tom held him at arm’s length. He spoke slowly and deliberately.
“You’ll get a bloody good slapping from me, Wayne, if you don’t behave, and I’m bigger than your sisters. In fact, if you’re not careful I might start right now.”
Wayne looked quite scared.
“OK, OK, I know, I wouldnae say anything ’cause you did help me at school.”
“Too true, you deserved being beaten up after what you said there. I did stop them, but it was mainly because we needed you in the team.”
Poor Wayne… a deep blush rushed from his neck upwards.
“You should never have said what you saw Willie McBride and Charlie doing in the boiler room. You had a dirty mind and a big mouth, and if I hadn’t stood up for you then you’d have lost even the less than five and a half inches you had at that time. Don’t worry, Wayne, I also stood up for you ’cause we were friends!”
He let go of Wayne’s now bright red ears and he dropped back onto the stool, obviously relieved. Tom patted him on the top of his head and winked at me across the table.
“When we want an example of a short dick in our studies we’ll get him as a prime exhibit, eh, Flip? You could have come and examined him when I was holding him up just now, he always had it hanging out at school!”
Poor Wayne. He went even redder. I wanted to put the poor lad out of his misery.
“Come on, Wayne,” I said, “let’s have some more coffee. I’d like to see some of your drawings as well, sometime. Young Pete wants to go to art college. What about you?”
He shook his head. He said he was quite happy working at his carpentry, and drawing and painting in his spare time. He said he liked working with his hands and he was quite content. When he was ready to go he promised us the best job he’d ever done, and said he would bring some of his work with him when he started on Monday.
After he went I got the confession from Tom that he and Wayne had been guilty of the same act of mutual stimulation involving Willie and Charlie that Wayne had blabbed about. He was covering himself and several others in their group of friends. I taunted him about having to slap such a wee cock, but we just ended up in fits of laughter imagining what Wayne had deduced from his visit. At least, with Wayne’s advice, our knickers would still fit our ‘erses’! We then went and spent an informative hour with Stuart’s printout before starting work in the garden and on the bungalow.
Stuart was actually quite cheerful when he arrived home from school. I think he was much relieved that it wasn’t too different from his previous one. He said a couple of the boys had called him a Sassenach and had started to say something about his accent but this had stopped once Archie said something to them. Tom said it was best to ignore ignorance, and he should find boys were boys anywhere.
God, what that boy could eat, too! I had to put away the tin of scones after he’d devoured three with the two mugs of tea he had while telling us all this. He wanted to know if we had seen the printout and we said we had. We also told him Wayne would be starting on his room on Monday. He wanted to know who Wayne was, so we told him we’d arranged for Wayne’s three sisters to come to tea on Saturday. That scared Stuart sufficiently to wash up the tea things without being kicked and pummelled—which he then tried to do to us when we disabused him of the plan. He went off to his room saying he was going to read the printout and if we wanted a copy we would have to print our own.
On Friday afternoon when Stuart arrived home from school I was alone in the sitting room reading an introductory textbook of General Medicine I had found on the shelves in Aunt Margaret’s study. I was fascinated, and knew I was going to enjoy studying. The main thing worrying me was learning all the long Latin names and so on in the anatomy text I’d looked at previously.
Stuart looked a bit sombre as he walked in. I asked how school had gone and he said it was OK. He had the first batch of homework to do and asked if I would check it for him when he’d done it. Then he came and sat by me on the sofa.
“Can I ask you something, Flip?”
I immediately said he could.
“I think there’s something wrong with Archie,” he said slowly.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, realising Stuart was truly anxious.
“He’s got a lump on his testicle and there’s a poster at the school the boys were laughing at saying boys should test for lumps ’cause they can be dangerous.”
My usually telegraphic brother was obviously worried. I’d seen a telly programme about the same thing one holiday time and had that night surreptitiously felt my balls very carefully after undressing ready for bed.
“How do you know and does Archie know?”
“I felt it, and I told him last week,” was the straight reply.
“What, were you looking for lumps?”
He shook his head. “Please, Flip, don’t get angry, but it was when we were doing things. He wanted me to hold them and I was feeling them and I said he’d got another ball growing cause I could feel this pea on his left one. He laughed and said he needed three balls. But then we saw that poster today. Now he’s worried, and so am I. D’you think I should tell Aunt Margaret?”
Wow! What to do? I thought for a moment.
“Where’s Archie now?” I asked.
“He went home all upset and there’s no one there till his mum comes home.”
“Go and get him and I’ll talk to him. I'll tell him to see Aunt Margaret as soon as possible, OK?”
Stuart nodded and went off. Both boys arrived in less than five minutes. Archie’s eyes were a bit red. I made him sit beside me.
“Look, Archie,” I said, “Stuart’s told me what he found. Don’t worry, I won’t say how you found out, but you should see my aunt as soon as possible. Can you wait until the morning? She’s got evening surgery tonight.”
Poor lad, two tears welled up in the tough guy’s eyes. Stuart sat beside him and held his hand.
“Come on, Archie, it’ll be alright. They’ll do something for you.”
Archie nodded and I got up and went to the kitchen to make a pot of tea as I had put the kettle on as soon as Stuart went to fetch Archie. When I got back with three mugs of tea and a plate of scones Archie was sitting with his head on Stuart’s shoulder and Stuart had his arm round him.
“Here you are, Archie,” I said. “I know it’s worrying, but my aunt will deal with it.”
Archie nodded. He took the mug I handed to him.
“I don’t want to be ill,” he said with a tremor in his deep voice. “There was a boy last year who had to go to hospital and he didn’t come back.”
I said he wasn’t to think things like that and we managed to get him off the topic of illness and sat and chatted and drank tea and ate scones until just before six when he said he’d go home. I said he needn’t say anything to his mum and dad but that I would talk to my aunt and he should come across next morning at nine and I expected she’d examine him then. He did look a bit apprehensive when I said this but I said aunt was a doctor and examined everyone, including him at least, I expected, when he was a baby. He did grin then and Stuart went off across to his house with him promising he’d fetch him in the morning.
Tom came home soon after Stuart got back and we told him the sad story. He didn’t question Stuart’s tale but just accepted the straightforward account which Stuart gave of discovering the lump. He nodded in agreement when I said I’d talk to Aunt Margaret as soon as she came home.
When Aunt Margaret came in and demanded G and T’s all round, I asked if I could speak to her privately. We went into the fourth bedroom which doubled, or trebled, as her study and emergency consulting room. I told her exactly what had happened, even to the fact that Stuart had spotted the lump. She looked at me quizzically. I shook my head. I knew what she was wondering. I grinned.
“No, it’s not that,” I said. “He’s straight, as the terminology goes. It was just boys together.”
She didn’t bat an eyelid. I wondered if girls were just girls together in the same way.
“Right,” she said in her usual brisk manner. “You did the right thing. I’ll see him at nine in the morning. He doesn’t have to tell his parents yet.” She smiled at me. “You’d be surprised the number of girls I see who daren’t tell their parents certain things. With boys it’s much less often. Usually they’re frightened they might have picked something up and they generally ask to see Jimmie Henderson. Anyway, I would like you and Tom to be there when I examine him. I’ll ask his permission, but it’ll be for two reasons. It’ll be better for him to have male support, and it’ll be experience for you two. Can’t start your training too soon, can we?”
Nothing more was said that evening and I told Tom what Aunt Margaret had said as we lay in bed. Sex that night was again slow and very intense. It was strange. Both yesterday and today we only came once each but I know for me it was quite sufficient. I shall have to discuss this with Tom to see if it’s the same for him.
We were all up bright and early. Aunt Margaret was pleased with our progress in the garden and the beginning of the painting of the rear of the bungalow. Over breakfast she told Stuart that she would like him to wait in his bedroom while she examined Archie and, if he was agreeable, then Tom and I would be in with her as potential medical students in training. I knew Stuart wanted to be there as well but he didn’t say anything and just said he wanted Archie to be alright.
Stuart went off about ten to nine and came back with a rather pensive looking Archie. From his fairly frequent sniff I knew he’d had a weep during the night. Stuart disappeared, and Aunt Margaret asked Archie if Tom and I could be present when she examined him. A look of some relief crossed his face and he nodded. We went along to the makeshift consulting room where Aunt Margaret had laid a sheet of absorbent paper over the single bed.
“Will you take your shoes and trousers off and lie down, please?” she asked.
Archie slipped off his, I noticed, new trainers and rather hesitantly dropped his jeans and stepped out of them. Tom picked them up and put them over the back of a chair. He lay on the bed, which was raised up like the couch I remembered in the doctor’s surgery where I’d been examined once.
“Now, I want you to pull your shirt up and push your pants down, because I’ve got to feel for any lumps.”
Archie did as he was told, sniffing a bit more as he did. Stuart was right, Archie’s cock was bigger than his. Even in its quiescent state it lay fat and long across his thigh. Aunt Margaret rubbed her hands together.
“Can’t have my fingers cold, eh, Archie?”
With that she lifted the right hand side of his ball sac and felt around the quite substantial testicle enclosed in it. Archie winced a bit and I put a hand out and held his hand nearest to me. He grasped my hand in response and gripped it hard. As Aunt Margaret continued running her fingers around she looked up and across at Tom and me.
“This is called palpating,” she said. “I’m feeling to see if there is anything which shouldn’t be there. I’m not going to say anything, and I’ll ask Archie if he will allow you two to examine him as well. That’s the right one done, now the left one.”
She let go of his right ball and began the same procedure with his left. It was over in a few moments.
“Now, Archie, would you let Tom and Flip do the same? They are going to be medical students very soon so they have to learn very quickly how to do things like this.”
Archie looked up at me. I gripped his hand and he nodded.
“Right, Tom first.” She turned her attention to him. “You’ve seen what I did, now do it carefully, and very gently. Don’t say anything until Flip has finished as well.”
Tom went around the bed and copied the movements he had just witnessed. He looked very gentle as he felt poor Archie’s balls. Then it was my turn. It was odd. If I’d been feeling Tom’s or Ghazi’s balls in the normal way I’d have been as stiff as a poker immediately. Here it was different. The boy on the bed was a patient to be examined, carefully and clinically. I felt his right testicle and felt it slide in its sac. It was smooth except for a bit of roughness on the underside. It was a different story when I moved my finger around the surface of his left testicle. On the side I felt a distinct little lump, about the size of a small pea. I carefully lowered his sac.
“OK, Archie, you get dressed and go and see Stuart in his room, we’ll be out in a moment,” Aunt Margaret instructed him.
Tom handed him his jeans after he’d pulled his pants up. He picked up his trainers and went out sniffing. Aunt Margaret shut the door behind him.
“Well, Tom, what did you notice?”
“A small lump on his left testicle, about pea-sized.”
“And you, Flip?”
“The same, just by that roughness you can feel.”
Aunt Margaret nodded. “Yes, very noticeable. That roughness is his spermatic cord and the growth is just beside it. I have to tell you it could be serious and I want you to go and sit with him while I make a telephone call, then I’ll go across with him to see his parents.” She smiled at us, “You did well, very professional. I liked the way you both dealt with that because it was quite a test for you. A bit more interesting, though, than looking down someone’s throat, eh? You’ll find you have to be rather detached, and you both coped with that most competently. Now, you go and just talk to him. Don’t say what you found. I’ll tell him in a few minutes after my call.”
We went to Stuart’s room. He and Archie were standing together with Stuart hugging Archie and Archie sobbing.
“Come on Archie, Aunt Margaret’s on the phone and she’ll be out in a moment.”
Stuart guided Archie to the bed and they sat side by side, Archie’s face buried in Stuart’s shoulder. Stuart looked as if he could weep at any moment. We all sat in silence for a few minutes until Aunt Margaret came into the room.
“Now Archie, please listen. I’ve made arrangements for you to go down to Edinburgh to hospital on Monday. I know it’s a long way but I’ve just spoken to a friend who is a consultant there and he’ll see you at half past two on Monday. All being well you’ll only be in hospital a few days.”
Poor Archie really did begin to sob then, his shoulders were heaving and tears were also forming in Stuart’s eyes. He looked helplessly at me. I went over and knelt by them and put my hand on Archie’s shoulder.
“Look, Archie, I’ll tell you what… Tom and I will take you to Edinburgh. We’ll drive you down in my car. It’ll be good for us as we both want to see where we’ll be living, and we’ve got friends at the Medical School. What do you think? Would that be OK? I know your parents are very busy and it’s a long way for them to go and take time off work.”
Archie’s sobs and sniffs grew less. He turned his tear-stained face to me.
“Please, I would like that, but I don’t want to be a nuisance.”
“You’re not a nuisance, Archie. We want to help our brother’s best friend.”
Aunt Margaret came up and stood beside Stuart.
“That’s a very kind offer. Archie, I’ll talk to your parents now. Let’s go.”
Stuart helped Archie stand up, towering over him, held him and handed him a clean hankie. Archie wiped his eyes and then put on his trainers, which Tom handed him, before he followed Aunt Margaret out of the room. As soon as we heard the back door shut Stuart burst into tears and rushed over to me and hugged me.
“He won’t die, will he?” He sobbed. “Poor Archie, I don’t want him to die.”
“No,” I said quietly, putting my arms round him, “he’ll be OK, but they’ll have to do something about that lump.”
We sat Stuart down and Tom hugged him too. He told Stuart not to worry as he was sure whatever it was could be cured.
Aunt Margaret was gone nearly an hour and when she came back she wasn’t her usual bustling self.
“I’ve talked to his mum and dad,” she said after she had sat down in Stuart’s easy chair with us three lads ranged along the bed. “They are worried, just as Archie is. I explained to them what will happen and after that he should be quite alright. As you three are all involved I’ll tell you everything, but,” here she looked at Stuart, “none of this goes beyond this room. What a doctor knows is confidential and I think you’ll be making a decision soon, won’t you?”
Stuart nodded. That was the first I knew he’d been thinking about his future.
“What Archie has got is likely to be serious if left. Thanks to Stuart it’s been caught, I would guess, at a very early stage. If it’s what I think then Archie is very young to have it, but it is something that young teens can develop. Having said that, though, of the two cases I’ve seen in the past five years one was nineteen and the other twenty-five. It’s probably because Archie developed young—he said his voice broke when he was twelve—but that’s not the cause, it’s just that he’s very mature for his age.”
Stuart nodded again, he was about to say something but stayed silent.
“I’m afraid the treatment is rather drastic,” Aunt Margaret continued. “They’ll have to remove his left testicle and I guess they’ll give him some chemotherapy after they’ve done the biopsy. The biopsy will tell them all about the growth.”
She saw the look of horror that passed over the three teenage faces in front of her.
“Don’t worry, you only need one!” She smiled. “There are lots of boys who are very singular for all sorts of reasons, but he may have problems if he has to have more chemotherapy. They do have a solution for that—he can have a sample frozen in case he wants children later.”
Stuart twitched against me. Here was his aunt calmly telling him and us about such things. Then he relaxed as she went on.
“His mum and dad would be very grateful if you would take him down to Edinburgh. They suggested you went by train but I think you would be OK by car. They want to pay for the petrol and you must accept that. I’m going across to see his granddad in a moment. He’ll need to be told as he and Archie are very close and his parents don’t feel up to it at the moment as they want to be with Archie. Luckily, Archie’s other sister is training to be a nurse. She’ll be home this afternoon and tomorrow, so I’ll chat to her as well. Archie wants you to go across after lunch, Stuart, and I rely on you not to say anything to him. It’ll be a test, not only of friendship, but of trust.”
Stuart nodded, and Aunt Margaret got up, smiled at us three solemn looking lads, and went off to see the elder Mr Ferguson.
If this was what being a doctor was like it was going to be difficult but I knew I wanted that career. Stuart was sitting between us. He put out his hands and took one of each of ours and squeezed them.
“Thank you, you’ve been so kind. I hope Archie will be OK and I promise to help him any way I can.”
Friendship and trust.
After lunch Tom suggested we went for a run. It was something we’d never done before but we changed into shorts, rugby shirts and trainers, and set off. It was just what we needed. It released a lot of tension just loping along in silence along the track beside the loch. After about four miles or so we slowed down, then stopped and sat watching the ripples on the loch surface.
“I really want to be a doctor,” said Tom, softly. “So do you.”
Nothing to say. I put my hand out and covered the back of his, which was resting on the grass. After five minutes of silence and getting our breath back we set off again. We must have done a good seven miles more by the time we reached the bungalow again. The feelings I had as we entered the back door were just the same as after an intense loving sex session with Tom. We showered together. No nasty kneeing this time. We soaped each other and then retired to our bed where we lay and brought each other to a very satisfactory climax. We were as one.
We mopped each other up with the handy towel we kept under the bed for such occasions. We dressed casually and went into the kitchen. I made some tea while Tom looked in the pantry for food. Aunt Margaret came back as I was pouring a second mug of tea. She sat opposite us and I passed her a mug.
She smiled. “I feel as if I’ve got three good sons,” she said. “I may be an old maid but you’re just like my own. I wish your mother could see you now, Flip. I hope you’ll contact her when you feel you can.”
I thought about that last statement a lot while I helped Aunt Margaret get supper. I couldn’t quite steel myself to write just yet. I wondered if Stuart was missing Mum. He never mentioned her, and definitely not the Creep. I knew he’d sent her a couple of cards but I hadn’t seen any replies. Perhaps she was still away licking her wounds having got rid of Ray.
Tom laid the table and was instructed to open a bottle of red wine to go with the rest of the pheasant casserole we were having for supper. Both he and I were getting a liking for the wine Aunt had stored away. She said the bottles were mainly gifts from grateful patients. I hoped I might have such generous patients!
While the supper was heating up Tom and I showed Aunt Margaret the duplicate sketch plans Wayne had left behind. She thought they were very good and she was confident he would make a good job of the improvements to the two rooms. I told her about his encounter with Pete and that Wayne would be bringing some of his own work to show us. Aunt Margaret laughed when we told her that Tom’s move was now common knowledge. Tom asked if she knew the three sisters. She said she most certainly did as she had brought the younger two into the world—and Wayne as well. Tom said the three girls were known as the Vampires by the lads around because if they got their teeth into you they wouldn’t let go. The three were Tracey, Marcie and Sherrilee. I had noticed them prowling in concert at the Ceilidh and I’d had a brief encounter in a couple of the reels as they flung themselves around giving one the glad eye all the time.
When Stuart came back he still looked rather sombre. He said Archie was much better now and glad that Tom and I were going to take him to Edinburgh on Monday. His parents had asked if we would go and see them in the morning.
Things did liven up a bit as the wine flowed and Aunt Margaret told us about some of her more spectacular, rather eccentric, patients. We all went to bed early. I wanted to talk to Tom about the meeting with his parents the next day at lunchtime, when we were going to tell them officially of our resolve to make a commitment to each other. However, Stuart was still a bit down and when he came along the corridor as we went into our room Tom asked him if he would like to come in with us for the night.
Stuart’s face lit up. “Oh, please, if you and Flip don’t mind. I’m still worried about Archie.”
Our double bed was very full when Stuart spooned himself in between us. I think we all dropped off to sleep very quickly. I know I did. There was no sex, just three lads helping to comfort each other with their company.
I woke up quite early and felt my brother’s erection planted firmly between the cheeks of my arse. He was still fast asleep and had his arm flung over my shoulder to keep himself close to me and, again, it was very comforting knowing he was as sexy and randy as we were. I dropped off again and woke to find him turned away from me and whispering to a still comatose Tom, “You taste lovely, Tom, salty and nice.” Then he crawled over me so he could get out of bed.
I caught hold of his arm. “What did you mean by that?” I asked.
I could see him grinning in the half-light. “Nothing, Flip. I just kissed his neck and then licked it,” he explained, “but I’ve got to go to the bathroom now. It’s rather urgent!”
I knew why when he turned… his boyish rod was still as erect as it had been when I first woke.
There was quite an interval before he returned, clad only in a pair of tatty shorts, but bearing a tray with steaming mugs of coffee.
“This is getting too much of a habit,” he said as he set the tray down on the bedside table. He sat on the bed beside me. “Oh, Flip, I do thank you two for looking after me last night. Poor Archie, I hope he will be alright.”
I leaned up in bed and held him round his torso and drew him down to me.
“Whenever you need us, we’ll be here. And you are not to worry about Archie. You probably saved his life.” I put a hand down and felt up the open leg of his shorts. No underpants on so I tickled his balls. “Do you think we ought to examine yours?”
He giggled. “Have done this morning. No problems.”
The end of his limp prick was still a bit sticky against the back of my hand.
“And you took care of another thing as well, eh?”
“Of course. I expect I’m just like you were at my age…” He leaned down and pecked me on the nose. “…Brother!”
I turned and poked Tom in the back. He grunted.
“Coffee’s here, Tom,” I said. “Your little brother’s a good slave, isn’t he? Except that he didn’t wash his hands before he made it.”
Tom grunted. “What d’you mean?” as Stuart poked me hard in the ribs.
“He’s a horny little sod, so he made our coffee with his sticky, wank-stained paws.”
“Leave him alone. I wouldn’t mind him as a real brother, even if he’s sex-crazed like you!”
Stuart scuttled around the bed. “I am your real brother now. Aunt Margaret said so… and so did Flip before he turned nasty.”
“Punishment, eh?” said the devious Tom, now wide awake, sitting up and scratching his incipient hairy chest.
The pair grabbed me and subjected me to a most intense tickling with me shouting and hollering until Aunt Margaret banged on the door. This only set the bastards off on a renewed onslaught with Tom very effectively shutting my mouth with one of his large hands.
“Go on, Stuart, tickle the old fella’s balls,” mouthed Tom, who was going to get a damn good going over when I got him alone!
Stuart was giggling as I was squirming. As Tom tickled my very sensitive chest, so Stuart ran his fingers lightly round and round my ball sac and up and down my rigid shaft. Stuart giggled even more as my cock started to drool. This was something I’d noticed in the past year or so. When I got really aroused I produced quite a stream of colourless liquid, which I’d learned from Ghazi’s and my explorations of some of the more forthright Internet sites, was what the Americans called pre-cum. Well, be it on their heads, or more likely their hands, if they continued with their ministrations. It didn’t take long. Stuart was giving my tool a fingering as if he was playing the flute and I just erupted. My cum flew out in gobbets all over Tom’s arm and hand, and landed in great drops all over my stomach and chest. Stuart giggled even louder and Tom shook his head in his usual disbelief at the amount I habitually produced. He flicked the trusty towel over to me after wiping my spunk off his arm.
“Look at that, Stuart. He just can’t control himself. I don’t know what we can do with him. Get up and clean yourself up you randy bugger.”
They let me up and I wiped up the evidence of my randiness. I was very much aware of the readiness of Stuart at any little signal to help Tom to the same type of climax. The signal never came, although Tom was sporting seven inches of hardness. I wondered why? I wouldn’t have minded. Tom was my property but I thought it was something which would have made the bonding between the two new brothers even firmer. It was something I would have to discuss with Tom when we had a quiet moment together.
Anyway, Stuart and I had released our tensions that morning and I was glad Stuart didn’t feel that he was letting Archie down by indulging in something that poor Archie might not be doing for some time, if at all. Again, I would take the opportunity at some point to find out more.
We were up and about so we shooed Stuart off to his room as soon as we finished the coffee. He insisted he had already washed before he made our coffee so the bathroom was free for us. I went in first and had a shower, making sure I rid my chest and abdomen of any lingering traces of spunk. As lunch was going to be rather formal I decided I’d better have a shave and really look tidy. I then relinquished the bathroom to Tom who went through the same procedure, except for any spunk removal!
I dressed carefully, and as I got out my father’s kilt and buckled it on I wondered what he would have said to the announcement I was going to make at lunch. I hoped he would have approved. I still didn’t know if my mother had any inkling, either. Tom came back in as I was tying my tie.
“I love you, you know that, Flip,” he said, coming up beside me as I stood admiring myself in the long mirror. “You’re a vain bugger, but I still love you.” He put his arms around me and we kissed deeply. As he only had a towel round his waist I was very aware he was still erect.
“Let me, Tom,” I said. I untied the towel and flung it on the floor in front of me. I stepped behind him and we watched in the mirror as I ringed his lovely thick shaft and pulled back and forth slowly, until, with a great contented sigh, he shot the load which had been welling up behind his balls waiting for my loving hand.
He turned to me. “I won’t hold you, Flip, I’m still leaking a bit and I don’t want to get anything on your kilt. Wait until tonight and we’ll love each other properly. Today we are going to make a move towards our vows, so it will be a red-letter day for both of us.”
He picked up my right hand, the hand that had brought him to that stunning climax, and kissed my fingers.
Tom was dressing when Stuart knocked on the door. He came in and said he’d finished his breakfast and was going along to see Archie. We said we would be there about ten o’clock to make arrangements for the journey. As Tom and I were having our breakfast Aunt Margaret came into the kitchen with a map. Edinburgh was about a hundred and fifty miles and we should do the journey in four hours at the most if we took the A84 and A85 route.
I knew that Simon and Richard (aka Big Dick) were in their flat. They had moved out of student residence and were living in a house belonging to some Trust that Richard’s father had set up, as he was a property developer in a big way. I phoned Simon, who said we were to stay in their spare room and not return until at least Wednesday. This suited us down to the ground because it would give us a chance to explore where we would be studying and to find our residence. In fact, Simon had managed to get us a two bedroom flat in a particular block, and said it was the same one he and Richard had lived in during Simon’s first year.
We called at Archie’s house just on ten o’clock. His parents looked very worried but were relieved that Tom and I would be in Edinburgh while Archie was being examined. They made it quite clear that they would pay all our expenses. I told them that would probably not be much more than the cost of petrol. Aunt Margaret had already explained that Archie would most likely be in hospital until the weekend, and we said we would find out all the details. Poor Archie sat beside Stuart looking woebegone, but he was thankful Tom and I would be around at least until Wednesday.
The next ordeal was lunch and our announcement. The four of us made our way over to the Police House just before one o’clock. Mrs McLaren opened the door and enveloped me in a big hug, then did the same to Tom. I couldn’t have felt more welcome. Tom’s father shook my hand and said he hoped we would support each other in whatever we decided. Well, I felt so relieved, and Tom’s face was a picture when Stuart very calmly said he was glad he’d inherited another brother.
We’d rehearsed what we would say and I’d volunteered to make the little speech. It was very simple. I just said we realised soon after we met four years ago that we wanted to be together and that desire had never wavered. We showed Aunt Margaret and Tom’s parents the rings and told them the story. As Mr and Mrs McLaren had met Ghazi when he had stayed with me they knew what a good friend he was. I said we had decided that we would make a commitment to each other at Christmas, but we would have to plan where and exactly when. Mrs McLaren gave us each a box. Inside were identical silver kilt pins. She said she hoped they would help to pin us together as well. She was so proud of her son and wanted him to have the best and she knew I was the best for him.
It was all rather emotional and poor Stuart burst into tears. He said he was so happy for us but he was so worried about his friend Archie. So what with all of us feeling happy in one way and sad in another it was quite a heart-rending occasion. Luckily Mr McLaren came to the rescue with a bottle of champagne and we were toasted and wished all the best for the future. Aunt Margaret then proposed a toast to Inspector McLaren and great things for him in the future as well. What was also great was that Tom’s father said quietly to both Stuart and myself that if we wanted to call him Dad he would be pleased, and so Stuart was welcomed into his family as Tom’s young brother.
Sunday lunch was a stupendous affair. I’d had venison at the Campbells’ but I don’t think it was as succulent and tender as the huge piece Tom’s mother had cooked. What was also most intriguing was that it was a present from the terrible twins’ father because Tom’s father had somehow got them out of some scrape. That would be a story to find out about sometime!
My worries about how our announcement would be taken were quite unfounded. Tom and I were seen as part of his family and certainly Aunt Margaret and Stuart had no problems either. My mother was still an unknown quantity.
That night in bed I asked Tom why he hadn’t signalled to Stuart that he could have tossed Tom off that morning.
Tom was quiet for a moment. “Flip, I’m afraid that if I get nearer to Stuart I shall fall for him as well as you. He is so like you when you were his age it’s almost like you have a twin. I love you too much, and I love him too. Sometime, perhaps, we will be intimate, but I think for Stuart it would be a passing experiment. It wouldn’t be for me, and I think it would be too much for me at the moment. I want you, and I need you all the time. I don’t want to become confused.”
I knew what he meant. I also loved my brother dearly and I could see that he was very, very fond of Tom, but his love for Tom was not the same as mine. He wanted to experience the power and force of that seven inch tool. I knew he wanted to compare it with his brother’s and to find out what it would be like when he was also so fearsomely equipped. However, I wanted and needed Tom in a quite different way, just as he wanted and needed me, although we were both boys. Stuart would find someone to love and have children with at some time, but that was a different sort of love, one which I knew I could never experience.
We lay in silence for a minute or so then began that slow prelude of loving each other’s bodies, minds and spirits which reached the ultimate with the release and enjoyment of each other’s gifts of love. There was no loudness about our love that night. Gently and slowly we laved and sucked on each other until we released our separate tokens which we then shared as our lips met and our tongues softly stroked, and so fused our love.
On Monday morning we were up bright and early. We had to get on the road by half past eight and Stuart rushed over to see Archie before he had to catch the bus to school. Stuart was enjoined that he was to say nothing more at school than that Archie was going to hospital for tests.
Archie was very quiet as we set off. Tom drove and I sat in the back of the car with Archie. After a while we did start to chat and I learned a lot about some of the other villagers that even Tom didn’t know. Chatting away like this kept Archie’s mind off the hospital visit and it wasn’t mentioned again. We stopped at Lochearnhead and had a couple of sandwiches Archie’s mother had supplied, along with coffee for Tom and me and a Coke for Archie. I took over the driving from there. As we entered Edinburgh and negotiated the route to our destination, Tom gave me clear instructions from notes that his father had popped through the door the night before.
We found where Simon and Richard lived quite easily, and parked in a back road. It was not quite midday when we arrived so we had done well. My old banger, as Tom rudely called it, had done us proud. Simon was in and he was pleased to see me and Tom and was most solicitous about Archie. He’d got a ‘carry-out’ from the local Chinese and we had that before he walked with us to the hospital, where we arrived at two o’clock.
We were met immediately by a young Registrar, Martin McMillan, according to his name tag, who knew Simon as they’d played together in one of the Medics rugger sides. He was very enthusiastic when he found Tom and I were coming up to study, and insisted we sat in while he did a preliminary examination of Archie. Poor Archie. Here he was clad now in a green hospital gown having his balls felt by a complete stranger.
Dr McMillan confirmed that there was a lump and said the Prof would be down very soon. He asked Archie if he minded if some medical students also examined him as they would be with the Prof on his rounds. Archie, I think, was a bit apprehensive, but I spoke up and said he was already quite used to being examined so he shouldn’t really mind. Of course, that meant we had to explain that we had been given a lesson in palpating by Aunt Margaret. Dr McMillan grinned and said you can’t start too soon. We didn’t say that young Stuart had started even earlier!
There was a sudden flurry of activity outside the small consulting room and the Prof arrived with six students who seemed to be not much older than Tom and me. The Prof asked Archie if he would agree to being examined by the others as well and was he happy if we stayed with him. Archie looked a bit flustered but I held his hand and he nodded and said yes.
It was quite a performance as the Prof gave the same instructions as Aunt Margaret. He started by showing the students how to feel the testicles and then they each had to do it without saying what they found. I saw Archie redden a bit as two of the students were girls and I wondered if they might have an effect on his well-developed young cock. A well-used cock, too—Stuart had told Tom and me on Saturday evening that Archie said he’d first come properly when he was not quite twelve. Well ahead of any of us! So Aunt Margaret had judged right that he was a very early developer.
After the last student had palpated Archie’s balls the Prof asked each in turn what they had found. All six said they had noted the pea-sized growth on the left testicle. The Prof then ushered them out and sat on the bed beside Archie.
“I’m afraid, Archie, I have some bad news and some good news for you,” he said very carefully. “The good news is I think you’ll be OK once what we are likely to do is complete. The bad news is you will have to lose one testicle.”
Poor Archie, he burst into tears immediately. I gripped his hand hard and the Prof took his other hand and held it.
“I’m sorry, Archie, but it will be for the best. You only need one, and I promise that once I’ve finished you won’t know the difference, because I’ll put in a dummy one and no one will be able to tell. In fact, if you’re good I’ll make sure it’s a good size!”
Archie looked a bit startled at that. Aunt Margaret hadn’t told us that was something they could do, so Tom and I were also surprised. I think we’d imagined Archie with a single ball in his rather pendulous sac.
“Also, Archie,” he continued, “once we’ve examined the lump we’ll be able to tell you what other treatment we’ll give you. My hunch is that it’ll be no more at the moment than one injection on Thursday. If so, we’ll ask you to come back in November for some blood tests and take it from there. Is there anything you want to know?”
Archie looked at the Prof and in a rather hesitant voice asked, “Will I be able to have children?”
The Prof smiled. “I sincerely hope so, but we do allow for this just in case. I’ll leave that for Dr McMillan to talk to you about, but I want to talk to these two first. The nurse will come in now and get you ready for the ward. I’ll operate on you tomorrow morning quite early.”
As we followed the Prof out a young nurse went into the room and I heard her talking to Archie and then Dr McMillan came along and went in as well and shut the door.
In the corridor the Prof turned to me and laughed. “You couldn’t be anyone else but Maggy Menzies’ nephew, could you? We were students together, and I met your father several times. I’m sorry he was killed, but that was some ago, wasn’t it?”
I nodded, and said “Yes.” I was rather taken with Maggy Menzies! She was always Aunt Margaret to me. But there was no stopping the Prof.
“Yes, Maggy said you were joining us here. She was a very good student, won the gold medal in her final year and could have stayed on.” He turned to Tom. “And you’re Tom, aren’t you? Maggy told me about you as well.” He looked up and down at Tom’s handsome kilted figure. “She’s proud of the pair of you, you know! And I think you’ll both like it here.”
He beckoned both of us and we went into the next room, another small consulting room. “I’ll tell you little bit about what I’ll do tomorrow morning and then you can come and see young Archie when he comes round from the anaesthetic.”
He explained that because of the general seriousness of the possible condition the initial treatment might seem drastic, but there was a chance of spreading cells if just a needle biopsy was attempted. He said that one thing Dr McMillan would be explaining to Archie in the room next door was the provision of a sample of sperm which would be frozen. Tom asked him what was the probability of Archie being sterile and the Prof explained that it depended on what they found when they examined the removed testicle and whether Archie needed more than the single shot of chemotherapy. He assured us that in the majority of cases now when the growth was found at an early stage the patient had a very high chance of not needing more than a minimum of chemotherapy. Tom asked him about radiotherapy and I could see the Prof was impressed with Tom’s questions. He said if radio was used the sperm producing cells in the other testicle would in all probability be destroyed—so he always tried the single shot first. The check up in November would tell them how successful the treatment had been.
“You were at Kinloch, weren’t you?” he said, looking at me. “I was there, and my twin horrors are starting there next week. They’ve been to prep school here but we think they’ll like it there especially as they’ll be in Mr McCrae’s house.”
The next ten minutes was taken up with me telling him my story, assuring him McCrae’s was the best house. He told me that when he was there over thirty years earlier, Mr McCrae had joined the school as an assistant master, and had made quite an impression on him even then. He invited Tom and me to tea the next day to meet the ‘horrors’ and put them into fear and trembling for their own good. I said I would tell the truth, and as long as they fitted in they would have a wonderful time.
The Prof bid us farewell and said if we asked his secretary she would give us directions to his house but he had to rush away as he had a pile of patients to see.
After finding the very pleasant secretary we whiled away some time exploring the area around Teviot Place, where the Medical School was located, and then went back and found Archie. He was a bit more cheerful, tucked up by himself in a separate room.
“I’m too old for the Children’s Ward and too young for Male Surgical, so I’ve a room of my own,” he announced. He then looked a bit sheepish. “Can I tell you what they want me to do?”
Tom went up to him and poked his arm. “We know. Popping your pickle in a wee jar, eh? With that pretty nurse to give you a hand, you horny little beast.”
Archie went as red as a beetroot. Then we all laughed.
“No, I’ve to do it in the lav, that young doctor said.” He fished down in the bed and produced a bottle. “He said if I can manage two even better and they’ll freeze it in there. I have to ring the bell when I’m done.”
I hadn’t noticed but there was a shiny steel container by the bed and it was smoking rather ominously. I realised it probably contained liquid nitrogen or something similar.
Archie suddenly went silent, then two great tears coursed down his cheeks. “And they’re going to cut my balls off tomorrow,” he wailed.
I grabbed a tissue off his bedside locker and wiped his cheek.
“No, Archie,” I said, “the Prof is only removing one. You’ll still have the other, and he also told you he’s putting a dummy one in so no one will ever know.”
Archie looked at me and sniffed. “Will I be alright, Flip? Please tell me?”
“You’ll be Stuart’s friend for many years to come,” I said. “He’s just as worried as you are, but my aunt and the Prof have assured us you’ll be OK.”
Archie was silent for a moment or two. “D’ya think I’m ill ’cause I’m a sinner? ’Cause I’ve done bad things and I’m being punished? I don’t want to lose my balls! I’m a sinner!” he wailed again.
I must say I was rather startled by this emotional outburst. Archie was clearly very worried. Tom leaned over and took his hand and spoke very softly.
“You’r’a daft wee bugger, Archie Ferguson, with that gey stupid crap. Who told you that? You’re ill because you’ve got something wrong, not because of your evil ways.” Tom gripped Archie’s hand harder. “I know your evil ways. You tried to get young Lucy’s knickers down to get her to show you her thing when you were about eleven, didn’t you?” Archie stared at Tom and started to blush furiously. “…And I know you and Gavin have been wanking each other in that old barn since you were twelve and he was thirteen, and you told him if he didn’t do it you’d tell my dad he’d made you do it first.” Archie went even redder. “…And you got that fat kid Elliott to pinch those ciggies from Patterson’s shop last year, didn’t you?” Archie began to sniff again. “But Archie, you’re just a naughty wee lad, you’re not ill because you’re bad. Anyway, if you were really evil my dad would have had you inside the Police House like he did that thug Angus White.”
Archie nodded. I’d heard rumours about Angus White and his tearaway exploits and how a single interview with Tom’s dad had somehow subdued him. He now worked industriously in a garage in Fort William.
“How do you know about all the other things?” sniffed an intrigued Archie.
“Because my dad’s a policeman I know how to listen carefully to what people say, and watch what they do. Anyway, you were very lucky because Lucy’s mum came and told my mum what Lucy said you’d asked her to do. They agreed no harm was done as you didn’t make Lucy do anything when she just ran away. I know you got that kid Elliott to pinch the ciggies because when Mr Patterson reported the theft to my dad I’d seen you smoking and you had a packet of the same sort ’cause you’re sae daft you didn’a hide it.” Tom’s accent became even more pronounced. “…And fatty Elliott followed you around at school until you told him to fuck off or you’d kick his arse. He was always pinching things from the cloakroom and when one of the prefects caught him, as well other things he had two packs of fags that he said were his dad’s. That was a lie because fatty Elliott’s dad doesn’t smoke. I know that ’cause I get my hair cut at his barber shop and there’s a big No Smoking sign up. And you shouldn’t have picked on Gavin because he told me and another prefect about you when we found him and his pal Denzil up to no good in the bogs at school!”
Poor Archie’s face was a picture.
“Be sure your sins will find you out,” intoned Tom, “but you’re not ill because you’re a wee sinner. If that was true you’d have been carted off long ago!”
Archie in turn gripped Tom’s hand.
“And Tom, I’m sorry I called you that rude name.”
Tom laughed. “Oh my God, Archie, that was three years ago—and I had threatened to tell my dad about you tormenting that poor dog.”
It turned out Archie had been poking a stick at the guard dog a local farmer had tied up by his gate, trying to make it bark. Tom rode up and told him to stop it as he had to get through the gate to take a message to the farmer’s wife. Archie had called him a fuckpot or some such epithet, and then run off waving the stick at Tom.
“You need a bloody good hiding, young Archie,” Tom said. “And if you involve young Stuart in anything you’ll have me to reckon with, OK?”
Archie looked suitably impressed with the threat. The message had got home.
Then Tom’s face creased into a huge smile. “But you wait, I’ll get Wayne’s sisters to ask to feel your balls as soon as you get back because you’ll be missing all the attention you’ve had. Think of it, Archie, I bet there aren’t many boys who’ve had their balls felt by so many in a few days and you’ll need to keep up the experience. It was eight today, wasn’t it, including two very nice young ladies? Bet that made your little worm turn.”
Poor Archie. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He laughed just as Dr McMillan knocked and came into the room.
“What’s all this hilarity?” he asked, laughing himself. “Can’t have patients suffering from a surfeit of jocularity. Any results for me yet, Archie?”
Archie’s sheepish look returned and he shook his head.
“OK, but the sooner the better. Two lots if possible, eh?” He pointed at a second small bottle on the bedside cabinet.
As soon as Dr McMillan left we said we’d be off as well as we didn’t want to spoil his pleasure. He blushed again. We told him we’d be back in the morning to see him after the Prof had finished with him. As we went out of the door I looked back and saw Archie getting out of bed, clutching the wee bottle, a determined look on his face. I hoped he could aim straight!
Tom and I made our way back to Simon and Richard’s flat. Both were home, and Richard, looking rather harassed, said he was so pleased to see us both. They wanted to know what we had learned and what was happening to Archie. The whole tale was told then Simon said Richard was working very hard as he was about to start his fifth and last year of his MB BCh and the work was piling up. Simon said he was also going to be very busy this coming year, but if we ever wanted any help to just ask.
We then caught up with all the general news. Tom told them he’d moved in with me and told of our meeting with his parents and Aunt Margaret the day before. We had both brought our rings and I said we wouldn’t wear them until Ghazi had heard us make our commitment. Simon looked at Richard after I had explained this.
“Could we make our commitment with you?” he asked, and Richard nodded in agreement. “Richard’s parents aren’t too keen about us openly making a statement, but we’ve decided we want to. You know Richard’s dad is in Scottish politics and he’s a bit wary of what the press might make of his gay son. But Richard talked to him a couple of weeks ago and they agreed it was up to Richard to decide and he is well over twenty-one. My parents have said it’s up to me. My mother certainly isn’t worried. She gave up thinking about me years ago. Dad wants someone to carry on the line, but I have an elder brother and he’s married, so the question of grandchildren isn’t a problem.”
We explained we hoped to take the ultimate step at Christmas but we would have to see if Ghazi would be available and then, of course, where. We continued discussing all this during the evening when Simon and Richard took us to a rather nice Italian restaurant for a meal. It was rather obvious that neither Simon nor Richard were short of money, but they told us they lived carefully, and their biggest plus was that they didn’t have to pay rent because the house belonged to a Trust that Richard’s father ran.
That night Tom and I slept in their spare room. At least, we went to bed, but didn’t sleep until both of us had shared our love with the other three times. Tom whispered at one point that he hoped Archie could produce as much spunk for his wee bottle as I had on my second outpouring when he had lovingly sucked me to a most fruitful orgasm. I told him I thought once a night was going to be the norm. Tom snickered and said he would make certain his little Norm was well and truly satisfied, however many times I wanted it.
I was awakened in the morning by the heavenly smell of bacon being cooked and the sound of laughter from the kitchen. There was no Tom beside me, so he was one of the noise makers. I crawled out of bed, stretched, and wandered through to the kitchen. Simon was standing with just a pair of shorts on and an apron over his front, frying pan in hand, by the stove. Tom was sitting at the kitchen table holding a mug of coffee. He was also bare-chested, but he was wearing an old pair of shorts. Having just got out of bed I was in the nude. Tom spotted me just as I stopped in the doorway.
“Come here, hunk, we were just discussing you!”
I went over to him. He put an arm round my buttocks and drew me to him and, much to Simon’s amusement, planted a great wet kiss on my dangling tool.
“Don’t get many of those to the pound, eh Simon? Go on, Flip, that’s your bit of excitement for the moment, take yourself off and cover that thing up before I get Simon to cook a nice sausage with my bacon and egg.”
I went over to Simon and kissed his cheek, keeping well back from any spitting fat from the pan on the stove.
“At least I’m not crude like that hulk over there, am I? And you’ll do me some nice bacon and egg as well, Simon, won’t you? And I’ll give you kisses wherever you want!”
“Get out, you sexual monstrosity!” Tom said. “Leave Simon alone, we were having a nice gossip. Come back when you look a bit more decent.”
“You’ve never objected before, you old fraud! ‘Come on, Flip, show me your lovely cock’, you whine incessantly. ‘Please, Flip, I want it! I want it!’”
Simon was helpless with laughter as I went over to Tom and caught hold of his head and, holding my prick in my other hand, pushed my knob into his ear.
Just as Tom was about to retaliate I let him go and scuttled out of the room to the sound of both of them laughing. I found a pair of old shorts and some flip-flops in my bag, then went back and sat by Tom and kissed him on the cheek as if nothing had happened.
“Good morrow, sweet Tom, have you been up long, or is it just dangling this morning? And what have you and Simon been gossiping about?”
Simon came across and put down plates of bacon, egg and fried bread in front of us. He trundled back and brought his own plate and sat on the other side of the table from us.
“Ah, nothing like a cholesterol-laden start to the day. Makes your lips all greasy too, doesn’t it Tom?” he said, winking at him.
“I asked a question,” I said, forking up a generous mouthful of the most welcome mix.
“Oh,” said Simon, “Tom was telling me how he pissed on you one fine morning and I said I always thought you were a bit wet!”
“He didn’t piss on me,” I said in measured tones, or as measured as I could get with a mouthful of crispy bacon soaked in runny egg yolk. “He missed, because I jumped out of the way, but…” I stopped, realising that was the fateful episode after which we both knew we would never be separated. I thought quickly. “But I forgave him. For that and a thousand other annoyances, especially when he and Ghazi used to gang up on me. And as for being wet…”
Simon grinned. “I’m going to tell you two something I’ve only confessed to Richard.” He looked straight at Tom. “You know, if I hadn’t known about you and if it hadn’t been for my love for Richard, I would have moved heaven and earth to get Flip to love me. I was very fond of Ghazi who is sweet and kind and gentle, except when his friends are under attack, but your Flip would have been the target of my affections. I did get the chance to have some of his love and, I hope, give him some of mine, when we were at Linnhe that time.” He waved his knife at Tom. “You’re a very lucky lad, Tom, don’t ever let him go!”
I put my knife and fork down, got up and walked round the table. I put my arms round Simon and kissed him deeply on his greasy lips. I was joined in moments by Tom and we two led Simon to our bedroom, leaving our congealing breakfasts, stripped ourselves and him and between us made long, sensual love to him. His moans and little cries, as we sucked his spunk from him, not once, but twice in that half hour of ecstasy, were enough to make us shed our loads all over him.
Afterwards we lay quietly as Simon kissed us both and whispered to Tom, “I knew that Flip was a wonderful sensuous lover but to have both of you now was sheer bliss. He’s lucky, you’re lucky. Be happy. Now you two wash and dress and when I’ve got my strength back I’ll re-cook your breakfasts.”
Of course, as soon as we got back to the kitchen, all clean and smelling sweet, there was a bit of ribaldry about ‘breakfast interruptus’ but it was tempered as we knew we had all expressed our love for each other so spontaneously we couldn’t really make too much fun of the happening.
As we sat and continued with our breakfast I asked Simon what he had meant about Ghazi being roused if his friends were under attack.
Simon looked at me rather surprised. “Remember Creepy Crawley Crowley?” he said. “Who didn’t say no to taking part? Who did the art work on him? I know you and Paul were involved, but Ghazi really had nothing to do with Little Dick, yet he volunteered. And then I heard how he’d stood up to another loudmouth who thought Clyde was a prime target before he lost all that weight—which I’m sure you never heard about.”
“Who told you about Crowley?” I asked.
“Who do you think? Mr McCrae, of course! The whole thing was seen by another master who was out for a walk. He realised what was going on and made himself scarce once the dirty deed was done. Crowley was due for his comeuppance, but his own housemaster and those shitty prefects wouldn’t, or couldn’t, deal with him. That other master was most impressed with the planning and the clockwork nature of the way you executed it. He told Mr McCrae that Ghazi’s final act was a master stroke because it deflected everything from you as Crowley was well known for his bullying ways. The Rector knew, and said nothing was to be said or done other than the suggestion to Crowley that he might be happier elsewhere. Mr McCrae gave you two lots of gentle hints, though, didn’t he?”
I nodded. “I thought many times afterwards that we would have been expelled if the beaks had known. We were very naive.”
“Crowley never believed it was you three, because he thought you were just some kid brought in off the streets—his actual words—and Ghazi was some stinky little Arab with a camel-trader father.” I bristled when Simon said that. “And as for Paul, Crowley thought he was all bull and bluster and no brains because he was in the CCF. By the way, I’ve seen Crowley around Edinburgh several times since I’ve been here. He went to some crammer here and he’s now gone to Bristol to the university down there, I hear. I also heard he got mixed up in some drugs crowd and nearly got arrested but had a warning. He’s a nasty customer and I’m glad he’s not around here now.”
My old temper was rising. Anyone who impugned my friend Ghazi would suffer horribly. I said so in forceful words and described in graphic terms what I would do to Crowley if ever I saw him. Then Tom took over. He put a hand on my arm.
“Calm down, Flip. You and Ghazi are just like brothers. I know how much you both love each other. Like Simon, Ghazi would have given everything to have you as his lover. We used to tease you, Flip, but Ghazi would never have done anything to hurt you. He told me many times he would never forgive me if I ever hurt you. I’ll tell you something about Ghazi’s friendship for you which you don’t know.”
What was this? I thought Tom and I had no secrets.
“I told Ghazi I was so unhappy when you had to go back to school and leave me. I told him I was worried in case you met someone else who would take over your love. I confessed to Ghazi that I cried myself to sleep many nights pining for you. That was me, tough guy Tom, but Ghazi said he understood. He told me then how much he cared for you and although you had sex together it was for brotherly release and affection and no more. In fact, he wrote to me every week you were at school after that first time I met him. I’ve never told you this, but I knew all the things you were doing—the games you played, the weightlifting, the way you helped the new bugs, everything—because he wanted me to feel safe and sure.”
That made a lot of sense to me now, because several times I had puzzled over things Tom had said and I’d not taken any notice at the time. I thought I must have told him in my usual monologues, but now I realised some of those little things must have been in Ghazi’s letters.
Tom laughed. “It was funny, when the first one arrived it was addressed to Tom McLaren, and as that’s my dad’s name too and he didn’t recognise the writing, he opened it. He said he thought it was one of the usual anonymous letters he got as a policeman, accusing someone of defrauding the system—but then he realised it was for me. After the third or fourth one came he asked me if there was anything between me and the boy sending them. He said he didn’t want you to be upset. I think he already knew how we felt about each other. I told him it was Ghazi writing so I knew what was happening in your life. I showed him the next one where Ghazi described how you’d kicked a penalty and won a match, and Dad told me I should keep them all. I was already doing that, and they’re all in a file now.”
“Can I see them, Tom?” I asked. I was rather confused. Tom and I had no secrets and now he had a secret file on my career at school. Tom saw my confusion and laughed.
“Yes, of course you can. When I spoke to Ghazi on the phone last week he asked if I still had them, and we decided to give you the file at our commitment. Now I’ve told you, you can have it as soon as we get back. We weren’t keeping anything from you, Flip, we were sharing our love for you.”
“But you’ve been talking to him on the phone as well?”
“He rings up every week and I have to tell him how you are. I want him to feel loved just as I love you. I’m very fond of Ghazi, and I’d do anything for him, just as I would do anything for you.”
Simon had been listening to this most intently.
“And what about Ghazi, has he got anyone yet? Does he only like boys or will he get married off?”
I confessed I didn’t know. I said he was a randy little so-and-so, even more than sexpot Tom, but whether he was unisexual, in either direction, or plain bisexual, I didn’t know. I explained that Hamed and Clyde were made for each other and there was a fierce passion there, but whether Ghazi was just caught in the slipstream of all his coupling friends was something I hadn’t really considered. I said I’d worried about Ghazi being in London but he’d said he had to make his own life.
We chewed over the topic for some time until Simon said we’d better get off to the hospital as Archie would be in the recovery room by now and would then be taken up to his room. We said we’d sit with Archie for the afternoon, but the Prof had invited to tea to meet his twin sons, and I was to tell them a bit about Kinloch School. I said that if Simon and Richard would choose somewhere I would treat us all to a meal later in the evening.
On the way to the hospital I told Tom I wanted to pay for the meal and he wasn’t to get involved. We would share my income from the Trust, just as any couple would. He said he wished he could contribute more but he was reliant on his parents and the bursary he’d been awarded by the Education Committee.
We went straight up to Archie’s room and waited there as, sure enough, just as Simon had predicted, he was in recovery and would be brought up once he came round.
About noon there was a flurry of activity outside and the trolley bearing Archie was pushed in. As soon as he saw us, although he still looked a bit groggy, his face lit up. Then he burst into tears.
The porters were obviously very used to dealing with newly recovered patients and soon had him into bed. A nurse, male this time, came in and settled him with his head raised. He quietly told Archie he was quite OK and gave him a tissue and told him to blow his nose carefully. The nurse took his blood pressure, then winked at Tom and me as he went out and left us with Archie.
“Are you OK, Archie?” I asked, “You look fine.”
Wrong thing to say. The tears began to roll as he shook his head.
“What’s the matter, lad?” Tom asked, “you know what the Prof said he was going to do.”
The tears came fast and furious.
“I’m all shaved,” he wailed. “That nurse there shaved me last night. I’ve got no hair.”
The penny dropped. Of course, any operation needed a clear area and I’d seen how hirsute young Archie had been around his cock and I remembered commenting to myself that his balls were pretty hairy when I had examined them.
“What the hell are you worried about, boy?” Tom said sternly. “It’ll all grow again.”
“But ma ball won’t grow again,” he wailed, even louder, his accent becoming more apparent, “He took ma ball awa’!”
“Look, Archie,” I said quietly, hoping it would quieten him down so his wails wouldn’t cause an influx of worried medical staff, “you knew that’s what the Prof was going to do and he promised to put a dummy one in so nobody would ever know.”
“And that nurse waited while I made my second jar,” he sniffed, and there was venom in his voice. “I was in the lav and was just ready when he came in and asked if he should hold the jar. I nearly dropped it and he grabbed it and put it over my end ’cause I was just ready. He knows I do it!” he cried.
Oh, poor Archie! The anaesthetic—or something—wasn’t allowing him to think straight.
Tom again took charge. He put a hand out and held Archie’s right hand, which he was waving about limply.
“Archie, we all know you bloody well wank,” he said quietly and firmly. “The doctors know you bloody well wank or they wouldn’t have asked you to fill two jars. The nurse knows you bloody well wank. We wank, all boys bloody well wank, so shut up and think to yourself you are so lucky you’ve got friends who care about you, as well as doctors and nurses who care about you. If you don’t shut up I’ll put a hand under the cover and squeeze your other ball and you will have something to holler about!”
This did shut Archie up, and between sniffs he began to grin. “But I’m bald and it aches a bit.”
He then recovered a bit more and became a lot more sensible. Tom’s admonition had been a help in steadying him. We then got a blow by blow account of the production of two samples. No holding back in embarrassment in telling us, especially the bit where the male nurse came in and capped his knob and they had both finished up laughing about it with Archie saying the nurse had told him not many boys produced as much as he did. Archie was still a bit miffed about being shaved. No one had warned him of that and it didn’t help when Tom said he’d heard that the worst thing was when the hair started to grow again because it itched like hell.
Just before one o’clock the male nurse came back and asked if we all wanted some lunch. Tom and I could have sandwiches but Archie had quite a choice. Losing a ball didn’t diminish Archie’s appetite and he wolfed down a plateful of some spaghetti dish as if he hadn’t eaten for ages. Of course, he hadn’t; he’d had a light supper and no breakfast because he had to fast before the op.
As the afternoon progressed he became more like the old Archie. By the time Tom and I left to go to the Prof’s for tea he was almost cheerful. We found out from a surreptitious peek at one point when he wanted a bottle to pee in, that he was well bandaged up and was wearing a natty pair of net knickers, as Tom described them, with just his lengthy tool protruding from a convenient hole in the front. We said we’d be back in the morning before we set off for home, then waved him goodbye just as the nurse came back to take his blood pressure again.
Tea at the Prof’s was scrumptious. Two rather subdued identical dark-haired boys sat and scoffed vast amounts, as we did. Then their mother said she had to go out and we were left ensconced in an elegant sitting room, with me extolling the virtues of Kinloch School. The Prof had told us their names were Tom and Jerry, but of course they weren’t. Their mother introduced them as Will and Geoff so I guessed father was rather a tease.
I told them I’d just left Kinloch. I explained that I’d been in Mr McCrae’s house and if he introduced the dogs they would be well thought of if they knew they were named after James Boswell and Samuel Johnson. One of them, I think it was Will, grinned and said when they went for their interview they’d been licked and pawed by them and had heard they were Boz and Sam. That set the other one off and he asked so many questions I had a job keeping up. Why did everyone wear different shades of green? What was Big School like? Did they have to sleep in a room with all those others? Did they have computers? And so on and so on.
I said I would phone my friend Pete Douglas who would be in the First Year Sixth and ask him to look out for them. Their eyes opened wide. Their ideas of big boys at boarding school were straight out of Tom Brown’s Schooldays because the next question was right there. Do they make the small boys make toast? I said no and they don’t toast small boys, either, except on Bonfire Night! They didn’t quite squeal with delight. Their voices were just breaking, so I guessed that at thirteen and three-quarters they had discovered the delights of a boy’s favourite activity and would find out pretty quickly that the other new bugs would be at the same stage of development. I didn’t dare say anything about watching out for the predatory males in the Second and Third Years, or even the Sixth Form, but I knew if I spoke to Pete he would keep a vigilant eye on them, as both would have scored a one on my bed-worthy scale. They thawed out fast with all this chat and I could see that McCrae House was going to have a lively pair in its midst.
I had to explain that Tom hadn’t been at Kinloch but we were great friends (I left out ‘and lovers’) and that we were going to study medicine at Edinburgh. I think they were quite impressed with that because of daddy’s reputation. We left them buzzing with excitement and full of wanting to go to Kinloch because as their mother had said when we arrived they had been very apprehensive about leaving home.
“And what did Shagger Menzies think of that brace of pleasant peasants?” Tom asked when we had gone no more than ten feet from the Prof’s house. “Bet he wishes he was still at school to have that pair toasting his crumpets for him, or warming the bog seat for his lofty prefectorial bum, or worse.”
I laughed. Tom’s idea of Public School life was also based on hearsay, rumour and titillating boyhood novels! But, it was true as far as ‘or worse’ was concerned. I could see both causing havoc with the hormone-ravaged older lads. They would be like Pete, his wanking pal Jamie, Christopher Phelps, and Dolly condensed into two very fetching young bodies. I’d taken good note of them as we talked. Both had black hair, clear blue eyes and flawless complexions, not a hint of a spot between them. They moved and acted with grace, without that gawkiness of the adolescent in full-blown growth spurt. If they had been in Rider’s House I think they would have been cast as young angels in any of their more fanciful productions.
“Twat!” I responded. “Who was staring fixedly at that one’s bum when he went over to fetch that book off the shelf? Your sporran rose at least two inches!”
We were kilted, as we were most of the time. The twins were very attentive when I told them how I had started the now firm tradition of many lads wearing the kilt to Chapel on Sundays. They both said they would take theirs as they had recently been bought new ones for a wedding they’d attended.
“Oh, you mean Will,” said Tom absently. “He’s very tasty.”
“That’s let the cat out of the bag, eh? You fancied him! Wait until I get you home, your sporran won’t be shifted by your measly dick for a week. And, anyhow, how did you know that was Will? I don’t think I could tell them apart.”
Actually, I had noticed that Geoff had a slight graze on the back of his hand when we shook hands on being introduced, but as they moved around I just gave up trying to work out who was who.
“Elementary, Dr Watson,” said Tom, looking at me with a disdainful upturn of his chin. “Young William has a small but noticeable scar just above his right eyebrow. He reminded me so much of Ghazi—and both of us think he’s tasty!”
“And Geoff had a graze on his hand,” I retorted, not to be outdone.
“Ah, yes, but I noticed the permanent. All you saw was something transient—and, like your beauty, it will soon fade!”
Oh God, I couldn’t compete with Tom. I laughed, but I realised he had been much more observant than I had. I would have to pull up my metaphorical socks.
“And, moreover,” he continued, “I was not experiencing a sudden hard-on at that moment, because, like you, I’d had one from the time we sat down, but I don’t fidget and make it look so obvious. But I think they’re horny little toads already. Geoffrey had his eyes fixed on your hairy legs and young Will kept glancing at mine. There’ll be a couple of puddings pulled with vigour tonight, with plenty of mental stimulation.”
We were still laughing and joshing each other when we arrived at Simon and Richard’s house. I pushed the button on the speaker-phone by the front door and Richard answered and told us to push the door when we heard the buzz.
He was alone in the flat when we went upstairs. He was busy working at a desk in the small room off the sitting room which they used as a study. It was full of books, files of paper and a most up-to-date desktop computer.
“I hope we’re not too much of a disturbance for you,” I said.
Since Richard had already left school when I arrived at Kinloch and I had only met him at Linnhe Castle I didn’t know him very well. I knew Simon idolised him from what he used to say and now, I recognized, they were deeply committed to each other, but being five years older than us, he did seem a rather distant figure.
“God, no,” he replied. “Let me find you a drink.”
As it was just gone six o’clock we both said we’d like a G and T. I explained that my aunt had weaned us onto them from Coke. He laughed and poured out three very stiff gins and went to the kitchen for ice, slices of lemon and tonic water. When we settled down in the sitting room Richard wanted to know how we had got on with Will and Geoff. It turned out he’d ‘babysat’ them for a couple of years when he first came up to Edinburgh as, of course, there was the link with Kinloch with him and the Prof. In fact, he said it was the Prof and Mr McCrae who had persuaded him to try for a place here and he had enjoyed every minute, even more so when Simon came up as well and joined him.
“I’m glad you came, even if it was because of young Archie’s troubles. I’m even more pleased that you’ll soon be here permanently. We need some new blood around us pair of oldies. Anyway, you’re good company for poor old Simon. I’m afraid I’ve been neglecting him lately as I’ve taken on a bit too big a project for part of my finals and I’ve had to work all over the summer on it. Still…” His face lit up in a big smile. “He told me about this morning and he’s so, so happy now. I don’t know whether I can compete after his description of what happened.”
“And he’s a good cook, too,” said Tom, without any expression on his face.
We all fell apart and Richard refilled our glasses.
“What are you going to specialise in when you qualify?” Tom asked. “Simon said you like surgery.”
“No,” Richard replied, “I don’t think I’m cut out for that!”
Weak joke, but we did giggle. The gin helped.
“I think I’ll do a couple of years in Accident and Emergency—you learn a lot there—and then I’ll do general practice. Surgeons are usually tight-arsed little Hitlers and think they’re God’s gift.”
“The Prof isn’t,” said Tom. “He’s very human. I wouldn’t mind working with him.”
Richard nodded. “There are some exceptions. There’s one I can’t stand, though, and I don’t think many others can either. He’s always after the best-paying private cases. I acted as his dresser a couple of times and he treated me and the other student with me like shit. Surgeons earn the most, and this one I’m telling you about is the greediest bastard out.”
Tom was looking very intently at him as Richard continued his narrative.
“I was told he was walking his wee Scottie dog to the park one day and he passed a synagogue. He spotted a note on the board saying they wanted a circumciser, experience necessary, apply within. So he went and rapped on the door and the rabbi came out and asked him what he wanted and he said he was a well-known surgeon and he would like the job. How much do you pay? he asked, and the rabbi said, five guineas. Five guineas? says Mister X, I never charge less than two hundred. Ah, said the rabbi, we only pay five guineas, but you can keep the tips!”
Poor Tom. He had been so absorbed in listening to Richard, who was being so serious, he missed the joke. I was in hysterics. Not so much about the awful joke but that Tom had met his match. He did get it and said he would deal with Richard in his own way at some time.
Simon came back as we were having our third G and T, which had been pressed upon us, although not too unwillingly on our part. He took one look at Tom and me, sprawled somewhat on the very comfortable couch giggling about reprisals on Richard. “Oh, my God, Richard!” he said, “I go out for five minutes and you lead these two infants astray. They’re as pissed as newts and you’re not much better. Where are we going for food?”
Going out for food? Neither Tom nor I were sober. Not being used to drink, the three large G and T’s had more or less floored both of us. At least we felt relaxed and happy.
It was decided we would have a carry-out Indian. Neither Tom nor I were experts on ethnic food so dear Simon volunteered to get it as long as I was paying! He said the streets of Edinburgh were paved with enough drunks without us three staggering around letting the Medical School down, although it had its share of inebriates. He was in a really righteous mood and said we were not to have any more as we were driving home tomorrow and alcohol remained in the system far longer than people usually imagined. Unfortunately, Richard agreed with him, so my first experience of being drunk as a skunk was sadly curtailed.
After that diatribe Simon told us he’d dropped in to see how Archie was, and he was getting on fine. He and the male nurse, Wilf, were discussing the merits of various fishing flies and Archie suggested that Wilf should come up and visit him and his granddad, who was a noted fly-fisher. Simon said Archie never once mentioned his lost ball.
“By the way, I bumped into someone you know,” he said, looking at me. “D’ya remember Ollie Pringle—big lad, a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic—in Messiter’s House? He’s here doing Agriculture.”
Richard laughed. “Hey, Tom, do you know how to recognise an Agric when you see them?”
Tom looked at Richard rather warily, he’d been caught once. “No,” he said rather hesitantly.
“Quite easy,” said Richard. “They’ve all got foreheads like Martin Johnson, and long hairy arms, and they wander around with their knuckles dragging on the ground. Half of them can scratch the soles of their feet without bending down, and most of them boast other bits dragging on the ground as well.”
“Fool!” said Simon forcefully, then turned his attention to me. “D’ya remember him? Left school the year before me; he’ll be starting his third year here now, but he had to come back early for a viva. I think he must have failed something.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, “he used to help out coaching the scrums for the Junior sides, didn’t he?” I laughed. “Yeah, I remember the day he packed down by the side of me and he’s certainly got hairy arms. Do you know what he said? He gave me a great heave and bellowed in my ear ‘Come on lad, shove harder. Imagine you’ve got that fat cock of yours up your best friend’s arse, and push!’ Of course, the scrums collapsed after that and some of the bastards kept on at me while I was in the showers later… until I threatened to try pushing something large up their arses.”
Richard laughed. “That’s him alright. He does have a Cro-Magnon forehead but I don’t think he’s got a cock to match. Doh, doh, doh…”
“Why’s he only finishing his second year if he left before you?” I asked Simon, interrupting Richard’s rather unconvincing imitation of a caveman.
“Oh, he did a gap year in New Zealand. He went there to coach rugby, but the rumour is that he shagged his way through the whole school.”
“Not surprised. That school he was at is populated by the sons of sheep farmers, and we know what their hobby is…” Richard said.
Simon raised his eyebrows in a look of resignation. “You’re so fucking crude. As if a good Kinloch lad would do such a thing!”
“Speak for yourself, old dear, but needs must when the devil drives, and Ollie is a fucking horny devil. It’s well known he’s always looked at the world through the eye of his prick.” He laughed. “Stories abound about his seduction techniques when he was in the first two years at school. One of the more erudite types said he was like Julius Caesar on the rampage but his motto would be ‘vidi, vici, veni’. Get it? ‘I saw, I conquered, I came’.” He laughed. “True, I heard he managed to bed several of the Sixth Formers at CCF camps even when he fourteen—and it was that way around. He made the running and they succumbed—willingly, no doubt—but it was they who were the underdogs in more senses than one! He patted my bum more than once in the scrum, but I didn’t allow him entry. Didn’t he go after you?”
Simon sniffed. “Hell, no. I don’t suppose I was as pretty as you if he was tapping your posterior and not mine.”
“Poor thing, don’t be jealous, and you’ve made up for it since. You’ve got a nice posterior and it would be even better looking going out of that door with the rest of you in front to get our food. Anyway, don’t you remember, Simon, I played in that intra-mural match last year against the Agrics?” He turned to Tom. “Did ya know, Tom, they have to have one intellectual in their team, and Ollie’s theirs. His job is to check before a match that they have their jockstraps on the right way round otherwise they’d probably run backwards.”
Simon gave Richard a good two-fingered salute. Tom and I groaned. I got up, a bit more steadily than I thought I was able, and handed over forty quid as I had no idea what the food might cost. Simon said that would more than enough, but, just in case…
“We’ll leave you to choose,” Richard said. “Better not get anything too hot for these two neonates until they’ve been weaned properly.” He turned to Tom. “Know the difference between a candle and a vindaloo?”
Tom looked even more wary. He shook his head.
“A candle only burns at one end.”
Tom and I groaned again, this time more loudly.
“Your bloody weak jokes, you great fool,” said Simon through gritted teeth. “Give them a rest, for fuck’s sake!”
“Ah,” said Richard, “but it’s the way I tell ’em. Now you fuck off and get some nice food and Flip’ll lay the table because he can stand and Tom’s nearly falling off the sofa.”
We both fucked off. Simon out of the front door with a shrug of his shoulders and a grin on his face, and me into the kitchen-diner where I proceeded to find plates to warm, and the cutlery we would need. I heard Tom talking in a low voice to Richard. I wasn’t being nosey, but I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation, could I?
“You’ve been living together for two years now?” Tom asked.
There was a confirmatory murmur from Richard.
“D’ya think Flip and I will be alright?”
“If your friendship is as good as Simon’s and mine you’ll be OK. That’s the important thing—being good friends.”
It was Tom’s turn to make confirmatory noises and Richard went on.
“You’ve got to share everything: good things, bad things, the rough and the smooth, and really understand each other. Don’t keep things back. If you do they’ll rankle. Everyone has their bad moments, and that’s where the love and support come in. Does that make sense?”
“I love Flip so much I couldn’t bear losing him,” Tom said. “I think we do share things. I know I tell him my worries, and he’s so kind to me. He might be big but he’s so gentle with it.”
“You’re a lucky lad, and so is he,” Richard said very quietly and, I knew, sincerely. “And don’t forget it’s not all about sex, you can have that with anybody, but it’s so different when you love someone, isn’t it? That was love with Simon this morning, wasn’t it? He knew, and you both knew. You could get your rocks off in a jiffy with some kid in the lavs down the road any time, but that would be no more than blessed relief. I bet it won’t ever be like that with Flip, and I bet it’s never been like that so far. I’ve seen the way you look at each other. I’m right, aren’t I? You both knew right from the beginning?”
“Oh, yes!” was Tom’s even quieter, heartfelt reply.
I’d finished getting the table ready long before, so I thought that would be an opportune moment to reappear. They were sitting side by side on the sofa. I knelt on the floor between them, and took a hand of each of them in mine.
“I couldn’t help overhearing that conversation,” I said. “Tom means more than anything else to me and I hope I’ll live up to what he wants and what he needs. If we ever have a problem can we come to you and Simon?”
“Any time,” said Richard, squeezing my hand. “Any time. And I think the four of us are going to get on well, don’t you?”
We had sobered up quite a lot by then and I sat on the sofa so that Richard was between Tom and me. Tom asked about the course and Richard explained that we would have to get used to working through modules and being continuously assessed. There was a lot of work and detailed learning to do. He said his big project was a real bugger; he’d bitten off quite a problem but he was certain all would be well. He explained that groups could do mini-projects as well, as part of the course.
He then said one of the lads in the year above him had asked the tutor, when they were dealing with the reproductive system, why a boy’s dick had a shaft and a knob when, ergonomically, it would be much more efficient if it was just a cylinder to go in and out and inject just like a hypodermic syringe. The tutor laughed and suggested the student could search the literature and perhaps do a project.
After a week or so in the library the lad hadn’t found any answers, so, over a beer in the student bar five of them decided they would do some research and write it up. They decided the best approach would be for each of them to fuck five willing females, make notes afterwards, and compare and contrast their findings. They did this over the next few weeks. Richard said the lad had heard that the totties in the English course would lie back and think of England for two tequilas, and as far as he knew the lads had concentrated on them. The general consensus when they compared notes was that the main reason for the design of the penis was that the knob, especially the ridge under it, was there to raise the man to the heights of sexual pleasure, so it was ergonomically exactly right for that reason.
Of course, Richard went on, five of the girls on the course heard of the project and were miffed because they hadn’t been selected to take part so they thought they would also explore the peculiar construction of the male organ for their own project. They set to and managed to get the required twenty-five blokes but it did take them a lot longer and whereas the lads’ project cost them the price of fifty tequilas and twenty-five pints of beer the girls had extra expense of five pints each to persuade each lad, then two pints before the act and a further five pints each afterwards to help them forget. Richard whispered that two of the young ladies were real dogs and the others had enough hair under their arms to stuff a cushion so all their couplings had to take place in the dark. Well, when they came to write up the results, their conclusion was that the structure was ergonomically perfect because the knob, and especially the ridge, was there to rub against the clitoris and thus raise the woman to the height of sexual frenzy. Richard said he thought there had been a few fake orgasms on their side, but those could be put down to experimental error.
Then, he said, one of the Agrics heard about the two projects after they’d been finished and reported. He told his pals on their rugger team about the projects one Saturday after a match. Next afternoon a note signed by all fifteen of the rugby Agrics was pinned on the Medical School notice board. It said that after intensive trials the previous evening and night their conclusion was that the knob and ridge were ergonomically perfect and were there to stop a boy’s hand from sliding off the end of his cock.
Oh, Christ! Tom and I both groaned mightily.
Richard chuckled. “Yeah, you can groan,” he said, “but you’ll need jokes and stories like that to relieve some of the tension you’ll get while you’re under training. Medics have a reputation for jokes. They’re necessary ’cause we have to cope with all sorts of things and situations others would rather not think about. I’m being serious now. You’ll be doing things you never thought you’d be capable of, and you’ll need a few laughs—even if the jokes are crap—when you’re dealing with all the crap thrown at you.”
Tom was rather taken aback at this.
“Do you think we’ll be able to cope?” he asked, his mood becoming very serious.
“I’ve learnt to do so, and so has Simon—and the rest of the school have, too. If you can lighten up when the going’s rough, you’ll cope. One or two can’t, and they go pretty fast, but the whole training you get here is so interesting and so worthwhile I know you two will cope. Don’t forget, we’ll be here to hold your hands whenever you want. And my jokes may be crap but have you ever heard a mathematician tell a joke? The only joke they have is the square root of minus one and they repeat that one ad nauseam!”
Well, we did hear a few more of Richard’s crappy jokes and were having a good giggle when Simon returned with two great carrier bags of wonderful smelling goodies. Four sated lads, having also had a lager apiece to cool our palates, were in a very relaxed mood after that meal.
“Can’t you keep your bloody hands off him?” Simon said at one point when Richard was in the lav having a much needed piss.
I was sitting next to Tom on the sofa. I had my arm round him and was running my hand up and down his thigh. I retaliated by staggering up, full of food rather than alcohol, and plonking a curried kiss on Simon’s lips.
“Don’t think you’re neglected,” I said “I bet Richard’s got something tasty for you tonight.”
Richard came in at that point.
“Get your hands off him, it’s my turn,” he said. “And it’s early bed tonight!”
It was too. We were all in our rooms by half-nine. Tom was as randy as hell. If that was what ginger in a hot curry did for him we were going to have it every night! Anyway, I almost had my clothes torn off me and we rolled on the bed, licking and holding each other until he suddenly quietened down.
“I want you to fuck me just like that first time,” he whispered in my ear.
I was ready and willing, but I made sure my Tom was carefully and gently dealt with. Slowly, ever so slowly I found his pucker and slowly, slowly my fingers caressed him there. Slowly, slowly I kissed and nuzzled him while he gently, gently, moaned his pleasure. Slowly, slowly I coated my fingers in the KY jelly I’d filched from my aunt’s little consulting room and slowly, slowly, one, then two, then three fingers opened him ready for me. Slowly, slowly, I moved across him and raised his legs. Slowly, slowly he guided my hard prick until it was touching my fingers. I groaned as he pulled my foreskin back and my so, so sensitive knob brushed my hand. A second groan of pleasure came as my end, now coated in that helpful unguent, pushed through his yielding ring. Slowly, slowly my length entered him as he whimpered, his mouth wide open, his eyes tight shut. His arms were around my shoulders, holding me firm and secure as I fucked him slowly, my length moving in and out, probing him so deep at one point and then at the lips of his entrance at another. I was so hyped up I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long, and my dear, lovely Tom was in the same state. I gave one long, deep thrust and tried to press even further into him, as, with a rush my whole being felt as if I was one with him. My seed spurted, quickly, so quickly and deep, deep within him.
I panted and drew great breaths into my lungs and knew that this was one of the most incredible moments of my life with Tom. My mouth had opened and my neck muscles had tensed but now slowly relaxed. It was his turn now.
I withdrew my still steel-like ramrod very slowly, and carefully moved down his body until I could take his lovely shaft into my mouth. He held my head and whimpered more and more as I moved up and down, licking and sucking on that oh so hot, swollen, beautiful knob of his. My tongue ran around that mighty ridge, seeking out the join which we had both experienced as the fount of pleasure. I touched it once, twice, three times, and his thick, long prick twitched and pulsed, and his warm cream bathed the whole of my mouth. My tongue swirled his lavish gift and slowly, slowly I let his shaft drop from my mouth. Gently, I moved up his still-heaving body until our lips met and his token of his love for me was returned to be shared.
There was nothing to say. We held each other, relaxed our hold, and went to sleep.
I awoke at about five and went to the bathroom to clean myself. Tom was still dead to the world so I just spooned up against him and put my arm around him and went to sleep again.
We must have woken withing moments of each other. He turned over to face me and found my lips. He rubbed his rough chin against my face and licked my ear lobe.
“That was perfect,” he said, very quietly. “I need you, Flip. You’re my rock.”
We held each other and dozed again. If I was his rock, then he was my salvation!
A knock came on the door at about half-seven. It was Richard. He came in with two mugs of coffee, which he put on the bedside table next to Tom. We were still entwined as we opened our eyes. He leant over us and kissed us both gently on our cheeks.
“You’ve had a wonderful night, I know,” he said. “And so have we.”
We both put a hand up and round his bare shoulders and gave him two loving and very grateful kisses.
“You may tell crap jokes… but I like you!” said Tom in a passable imitation of Dick Emery
In retaliation, and no doubt to check on our accoutrements, Richard pulled off the king-sized duvet and left us floundering in the nude, both sporting healthy nigh on seven inch hard-ons.
“Oh, my God,” he drawled, “how do you young ’uns keep ’em up like that?”
“Have you forgotten how then, Grandpa?” Tom riposted as he grabbed at Richard’s short shorts.
Luckily the waist was elastic because it was quite a tug and they were straight down to his knees exposing a floppy five-inch uncut length.
“It’ll take a wee bitty more than willpower to get that up, eh, Granddad?” Tom went on. “Does Simon splint it for you?”
Richard chuckled and took a good-natured swipe at Tom’s bare bum as he rolled over to me, clutching at me for protection. I shoved him off.
“Fight your own battles,” I said, poking him in the back then pointing at Richard’s appendage. “That’s a nice dick on Richard, but I don’t see why he was always called Big Dick, do you?”
“Cheeky pair of buggers,” Richard said, clutching at his rapidly descending shorts, “I’ll have the pair of you!”
“Anytime!” we chorused and gave each other a high-five.
That morning it was Richard’s turn. We leapt on him, Tom at his top and me removing his shorts. Moments later he was on our bed with Tom straddling his chest and me his legs. His five inches grew into a sturdy six plus inches almost as soon as it was engulfed in my mouth. Tom was working on his lips and neck and teasing his nipples as he lay back, mouth and eyes wide open. We worked as a pair. As Tom’s head moved downwards so I relinquished Richard’s now stiff shaft to his mouth and I took over licking and sucking on his chest and neck. I rubbed my face in the curly mat he had between his prominent pectorals, and as I tongued his nipples they hardened and rose, pink and inviting. I sucked on them and Richard moaned in pleasure.
He must also have been horny as hell. I heard Tom gasp as he withdrew his head and I received a great gobbet of cum on my cheek as Richard fired the rest of his morning load.
“Fuck me!” came a voice from the doorway as the three of us were gasping and trying to get our breath back. “I leave the bastard for two minutes while I cook your breakfast and he’s feeding the five thousand already!”
Tom and I laughed and scrambled off the bed, leaving a still panting Richard, and chased Simon into the kitchen, where he defended himself with the fish slice he’d been using to turn a mound of sausages in the frying pan on the stove.
“En garde,” he cried, making fencing movements towards our vulnerable, now flopping cocks. “Get that disreputable monstrosity out here to help me.”
He pointed to me. “Go and wash yourself, you cum-faced wretch!
“And as for you,” he added, turning to Tom, “…you won’t need any breakfast after what old spunk fountain in there just thrust down your throat.”
All the time he was dancing back and forth, keeping us at a distance.
“Get on with your chores, varlet!” Tom cried. “We don’t want a burnt offering, and I only got a half ration just now.” He laughed. “He certainly packs a punch!”
We left Simon to his culinary duties and went back to find Richard, now with his shorts on properly, hogging the bathroom. While we waited for him to finish we packed up our clobber and tidied the room. Tom peeled back the duvet and there was some evidence of my endeavours the night before on the bottom sheet. He screwed up his face and stripped the bed.
“Come and get your breakfast first,” sang out Simon, “You can wash your evil bodies afterwards.”
We both scrambled into shorts and tee-shirts and paraded into the kitchen where we each had a heaped plate of the most delicious fry-up. I apologised about the mucky bottom sheet and Richard made some comment about young lads who couldn’t control themselves.
“Bloody hell!” said Tom, with his mouth full of sausage and egg. “Listen to the old fella. He was certainly ready and willing this morning. But I suppose at his age he needs to see if everything still functions!”
“I’ll give you age,” said Richard, waving his fork across the table at Tom. “Experience counts as well. You wait until you reach the great age of twenty, the future looms large then, and even more so as the years roll by. Anyway, I saw Marty McMillan yesterday and he thinks you two would be OK for his Medics Intramural team if you’re willing and able. Simon and I are in it, but five have left so there’s room for you young ’uns. That is, if you’ve got the stamina to keep up with us older, more experienced men.”
“Oh, yes, we met him when Archie first came in,” I said, ignoring the gibe. “Obviously he recognises talent when he sees it, doesn’t he, Tom?”
Richard snorted, “Conceited young bugger. You wait until the Agrics get you. They’ll tear your hairy limbs apart, I can tell you.”
Richard was interrupted by a chorus of “Oh God, here we go again!”; “Tell us another one, do!”; and “Once upon a time…” following which we all collapsed into hoots of laughter, with Richard leading the cacophony.
After breakfast Richard had to go off to try to finish his report, so by the time Tom and I had finished in the bathroom he was packing up a briefcase of notes. We both thanked him for having us in the flat. He said he’d enjoyed having us around and everything Simon had told him about us was true. He rushed off after that so we had to attack Simon who ended up cowering in their bedroom. We let him be and only tickled him until he cried for mercy and then we sat and chatted until about ten o’clock. He said they were so pleased to have had us and, if we wanted, we could have the flat below for our second year. The present occupants would all be in their final year when they came back off vacation and the place would be empty when they finished.
I think Tom and Richard had hit it off in the same way that Simon was a great friend for me. Simon whispered to me when he was checking that we hadn’t left anything in our bedroom that I was very lucky to have found someone like Tom.
Copyright © 2002–2025 Joel
Posted at AwesomeDude 2007
Updated 1 October 2025