Family Snapshots: Solo Trio

"Harry!" our sister cried in obvious delight.

"Carrie!" he yelled back, averting his eyes sharply.

"Rocky," I muttered, not caring if anyone got the reference.

"What the fuck is going on here?" Harry demanded, jumping out of his seat.

Our sister is smarter than us. Harry might refute that but it's true. More importantly - in this kind of situation, anyway - she's a lot quicker of wit than both of her poor, slow brothers put together. She didn't even blink, lying through her teeth without a single clue to give her away.

"What's - oh, Mark and I went out clubbing last night and I was too drunk to go home so I crashed here." She even yawned behind one hand. "I only just woke up, to tell you the truth."

"But you're naked," Harry countered, quite rightly but entirely unnecessarily.

Carrie just shrugged. "We used to have baths together all the time when we were kids," she reasoned. "It's nothing Mark hasn't seen."

"That's flawed logic at best," our brother pointed out. "You were kids. You're not any more."

She huffed impatiently, striking a pose that would have been entirely innocuous had she been clothed. As it was I couldn't stop staring at her. My cock was rock hard and I was glad beyond words that I had the counter to hide behind. Harry, refusing to look at either of us, didn't see Carrie throw me a wink.

"Well, Mark and I aren't bothered by it so he's seen everything as an adult, too," she retorted. Damn, had I ever. "If you're just not mature enough to be able to handle the naked human form -"

"Carrie, Jesus!"

"- Then I guess I'll go get some clothes on." She flounced out, breasts bouncing, hips rolling.

I was in awe. Somehow she'd managed to walk in on her two brothers while completely naked and had left not only sounding as if she was acting completely rationally, but as if Harry was the one acting strangely. Seeing my brother's gaze on me I shrugged. My cheeks were burning but hey, anyone would blush in such a situation.

"She's quite a character," I suggested, heading to the fridge for the milk.

"I just... That... That was..."

I laughed. "Not what you expected to find at my house?" A speechless Harry was an entirely new experience for me. I can imagine it was new for Harry, too, especially given the context.

"It was not," he agreed, taking his coffee when I brought it over, my boner having thankfully abated. "I mean, she's our sister, man."

Using Carrie's brilliant falsehood as my own defence I shrugged again. "See, that's why it doesn't matter if we see each other, right? At least that's what we've kind of come to terms with. If she were someone else, like Bethany..."

Harry's mood visibly dimmed. I swore internally. Stupid, stupid thing, mentioning She Who Must Not Be Named.

"You'd find cobwebs or that Sims 4 censorship mosaic," he sighed, mostly to himself, I think.

"What's she done now?" Carrie demanded, walking back in. She'd put her Princess Leia outfit on and from the look of the front that little episode had her a little warmed up. Her nipples were standing proud, quite visibly peaking the white fabric. Somehow - I don't know how - she managed to make it look more erotic than when she'd been standing in front of us buck naked. Women are strange, powerful creatures and our sister was stranger and more powerful than most. To me, anyway.

Harry, strangely enough, didn't give the outfit more than a double-take. If he noticed her nipples pushing at the blouse he didn't say anything and didn't even stare - so I have to assume he missed that bit. Those two bits.

"Nothing," he temporised, trying not to worry Carrie, but it was obvious that whatever was wrong it wasn't 'nothing.' "She's cut me off. Um. Sexually, I mean."

"That stupid bitch," Carrie growled. I wondered if she would have said the same thing no matter what Harry had said his wife had done. 'She painted the kitchen eggshell blue? That stupid bitch.'

"What did she do that for?" I asked, passing Carrie her tea. Jumping automatically to defence was Carrie's forte; I preferred to get more information first because sometimes Harry could get bent out of shape over more or less nothing. Being flatly denied sex, though, that didn't sound like 'more or less nothing.'

Harry sipped his coffee, looking from me to Carrie and back. I could tell he was judging the likelihood of his being able to back out of the conversation but all three of us knew that wasn't happening. Carrie and I let him calculate, knowing that he'd spill the beans sooner or later, and eventually be put his cup down and started to talk.

"She's... Look, she's a good mother and I do love her so please don't start with the 'stupid bitch' stuff," he began, throwing a clearly irritated glance at Carrie. "But she's decided - no, that's not the right way of putting it. She's come to the realisation," he tried, nodding as the term seemed to please him more, "that she's asexual."

There was silence. None of us took that kind of news lightly. Harry was a bit hidebound but Carrie was deeply into LGBT+ culture. She wouldn't make fun of someone announcing they were asexual, not even Bethany.

"Fuck, that's awkward," I offered. The irony of the statement wasn't lost on me, given that Harry had just seen his little sister naked and found out that it wasn't even the first time I'd seen the same thing. Harry, though, didn't seem to notice. He just nodded, so I tried again. "So that explains why she's cut you off and I hate to say it but it sounds, well, pretty reasonable."

"It is," Harry agreed, glancing at Carrie to see if she'd object but our sister just shrugged, looking a little petulant that she couldn't bad-mouth Harry's wife. "Only, the thing is, I'm not asexual. So that's a problem. Or at least it's a problem if she doesn't give me permission to sleep with other people - which she hasn't - and if I'm not comfortable cheating on her, which I'm not."

"Wait," Carrie said, her eyes narrowing, "she's cut you off completely from sex? She's saying that because you're married and she doesn't want sex that you don't get to have it either,under any circumstances?"

Harry exchanged a look with me - 'Oh, here we go' - and nodded. "That's the size of it. We had a big fight and she threatened to walk out on me, said she'd take Janey," he added, his voice trembling a little as he mentioned his daughter, "and I'd never see her again."

"That is so fucked!" Carrie's voice cracked off the walls and she sipped her tea vengefully.

"Yeah." I had to agree. "Yeah, that's fucked. Not wanting to have sex, that's entirely her right. Not wanting to be cheated on, I can get that. But threatening to take your daughter away," I shook my head, "no fucking way. Hell, Dad'll fight that every step of the way even if you won't."

"Which I would," Harry assured me. "And that'd be the end of it if..."

"If you didn't still love her," I supplied, nodding.

We were quiet for a while and then Carrie stood up. Harry and I looked up at her from where we sat, fully expecting an extended rant - Carrie's good at those - but she surprised us both by glaring at Harry with her hands on her hips. It was exactly the same pose she'd used while she was naked and a very specific part of me twitched, not only at the memory but at the sight of our own personal Princess Leia in rage-mode.

"That settles it," she announced. "We'll get you a costume and you'll come to this Hallowe'en party with us tomorrow night." With that she whirled around and marched for the bedroom where, I knew, her phone waited. And so did her panties, the ones I'd pulled off with my teeth the previous night.

"Wait, how did that settle anything of the sort?" Harry asked, but Carrie was already gone.

*****

The party was crazy.

I'm not the most party-oriented sort, I have to admit. I'm way less gregarious than Carrie and nowhere near as confident as Harry so normally I spend most of the time just hanging around against a wall watching people and making stupid small-talk with whoever comes by. But that night I danced, I drank, I laughed, I even got in a crazy-fun Star Wars trivia argument with two of the girls from Carrie's uni. I mean, I lost terribly but still, it was a hell of a good time.

To look at Carrie you'd think she organised the whole party and from the rumours I heard that wasn't far from the truth. She was the absolute social butterfly, flitting from group to group, keeping everyone as engaged as possible, taking photos, having photos taken. She was, as always, the life of the party - and I'm aware I sound pretty besotted with her. I guess I am, but it's not as simple as you might think. I guess I have a very clear view of my sister's worth, both as a person and as a lover.

Harry, meanwhile, took to the scene like a duck to water. Carrie set him up with a Han Solo outfit in no time flat; she had the blaster pistol from a previous costume but she even altered it a bit 'to make it more like Han's.' He was looking pretty dubious about the whole thing but as soon as he got to the party it was like he slipped into a second skin. He was Han all damn night - dashing, debonair, just a tiny bit of an arsehole. It was fantastic to watch. You'd never know he was married, let alone that his marriage was on the rocks.

Carrie had convinced Harry to leave his wedding ring at my place. I think the plan was originally to see if he hit it off with any of the girls there and then get him severely laid. At first it looked like it was going well, too, but Harry in Han mode is, we found out, outrageously flirty without any real intention of doing anything about it.

It's not as if the ladies he was chatting to didn't try. Damn, they were all over him! I don't get jealous, personally - some kind of mental block, I guess - but if I did then that would have made me envious as hell.

But he just had no interest. The number of times I saw him detach some woman from clinging to him and explain that no, sorry, he wasn't looking for a 'shipmate' right now... Well, it was just amazing. Carrie even came over and whispered angrily to me that Bethany seemed to still have an iron-tight grip on his balls, even from a state away.

From what she'd told us Carrie intended to stay after the party was done and help clean up. It was at a function room and technically cleaners would do that but she felt it would be rude to leave them to do the bulk of it. She can be thoughtful like that. However, the friend who was supposed to have organised it told her to go home after Carrie had a drink or three too many.

With her leaving Harry and I were as well so that was the end of the party for us.

We all piled into a taxi and headed on home.

It wasn't until about halfway there that I realised Carrie had given the taxi driver directions to her place, not mine.

*****

She chose the taxi as her place to strike.

No, that's maybe unfair. I think she was as surprised with how things turned out as we guys were. But it started basically on the ride home.

"I don't get why you were pushing so many girls away," she said, frowning at Harry and clinging to his arm.

Truth be told she was actually clinging to both our arms. We were all in the back, with her in the middle and us either side. It was really cozy and the way she had her arms looped through ours I couldn't help but be amazingly aware of one of her breasts pushed up against my bicep.

"I don't know what part of it is causing you difficulty," Harry grumbled, looking out the window and trying in vain to ignore our sister. "I'm still married and I'd rather not be some cheating bastard. Besides..." He trailed off and sighed. Before Carrie could prod, though, he continued. He knew that staying silent after saying 'Besides' wouldn't have ever worked. "Besides," he explained, "even if I did... do anything with one of those girls... They're all young single women. They'd want more than a married, depressed guy with a daughter could give them."

I felt Carrie's hand move on my thigh. Before long she was massaging at my crotch and when I looked over at her, shocked, she just winked. Harry wasn't paying any attention and she was incorrigible.

"Right, okay," she nodded, sounding as if she understood. Harry stared at her unbelievingly and my legs flinched but she kept right on palming the length of my cock through the thin material of the costume pants. "No, really, I get it," she went on in answer to Harry's expression. "Strings can be a pain and your situation's complex. I might not like the bitch but I'm not stupid, I get that it's not just as easy and kicking the mother of your daughter out on the streets."

"Right," Harry nodded, his tone betraying his surprise. He'd kept his gaze at eye level, perhaps out of shock but maybe to avoid looking at Carrie's boobs, but in any case he couldn't see what she was doing to my dick. "Okay, good."

"So what you need," our sister went on, "is a girl who doesn't want strings. One who's got no interest in moving further into your life."

"It's a trap," I muttered quietly, the Admiral Ackbar quote not at all distracting me from the lap-action.

Harry laughed, a low and cynical sound. Carrie had him. She'd caught all of the things he wasn't saying and laid them bare for him. No, he didn't want to cheat on his wife, but why didn't he want to? Sheer loyalty? He'd have been under fire from a string of accusations of infidelity if Bethany had known Harry had even gone near a party, let alone to one. That he'd been actually talking to real live girls? Shit, meet fan.

"They don't exist," he answered, both inaccurately and bitterly. "All women want something more. All people do," he added hurriedly, forestalling the argument he could all but see lining itself up in Carrie's brain. "We're communal animals. It's just how we're wired."

"I think that's bullshit," Carrie answered primly, "and that's my apartment there so it looks like we're home."

*****

Harry paid the taxi because he was the only one who'd brought a wallet.

While he did Carrie stood right in front of me, her hands behind her back, running up and down along my very hard length as we waited. I could have pushed her off, I knew I could have, but that would just have drawn more attention to us. Then Harry would see my suspicious boner, put two and two together and calculated it - correctly - to equal incest.

So I was just determined to enjoy it while I could because I knew that no matter where we slept there was no way Carrie and I would be fucking tonight. Carrie knew it, too, and whispered to me that we'd make up for lost time after Harry had left to go home again.

By the time Harry turned back around Carrie actually had her hand down my pants and was jerking me with slow, hard-to-see strokes, skin on bare skin. I thought I was going to go mad. Harry was staring dubiously up at the top floor, which was the only thing that gave Carrie enough time to pull her hand free.

Her downstairs neighbour's light was on and a face appeared briefly at the window. It was a nice face. Perhaps she was waiting for someone, though, because after a puzzled look at our outfits she drew the curtains again and was gone.

"Come on," Carrie urged, taking our hands and leading us toward the door. The taxi ride hadn't been short and she was nowhere near as drunk as she'd been when we'd left the party but still, she took our hands and led us like kids.

Her flat was dark when we stumbled through the front door. Harry looked around and whistled but decided not to say anything while Carrie went straight for the corner kitchenette and rummaged in a cupboard, giving us a triumphant grin as she flourished a full, unopened bottle of actual French champagne.

"The good stuff," she announced. "I was keeping it for a special day but my graduation's ages away yet."

"Don't waste it on us," Harry tried, but that had a rather different reaction than the one he was expecting.

"It's not wasting it, you idiot!" Carrie snapped, slamming the bottle down on the bench with a but more force than necessary. "Champagne's meant to be drunk. So shut up and drink it." The cork came free with a pop and bounced around the room, making us all duck instinctively. The ridiculousness of the moment seemed to break the ice, though.

Soon we were sitting around, drinking very good champagne - I'm not sure where she got the money for it from - and chatting about... Nothing, really. Just stuff, you know? It got real rude in parts, though, and soon we were telling stories about ex-lovers.

"Harry," our sister said halfway through this, "I'm not trying to screw up the good vibe but what was Bethany like? You know, in the sack."

He froze halfway through a laugh and sighed, looking down at his hands. At first I thought he was going to refuse to answer but then he shrugged and I could almost hear him think, 'Fuck it, why not?'

"Good. Not great. I did most of the work. Fantastic tits but she was always kind of..."

"Cold?" I suggested, but he shook his head.

"No. Well, in a way. Very practical. Almost mechanical," Harry said thoughtfully, "like it was a chore. An enjoyable chore but still just a task to get done. I suppose, in hindsight, that's exactly what it was to her. She didn't find it disgusting or anything - at least I don't think she did. She just wasn't that interested. The way she described it to me is that she can't see what the fuss is about. She's had a kid, she's got no interest in others and she doesn't get any real entertainment value out of it."

Carrie shook her head. We could both see what was on the tip of her tongue - 'Stupid bitch,' or some variant of it - but she was too sympathetic to LGBT+ issues to actually say it. What she did eventually say surprised us both.

"That's sad. For both of you. What a shitty thing to have to come to terms with." Our sister sighed and tipped back the last of her glass of champagne, then refilled everyone's with the last of the bottle. "She's still a bitch, using it like a weapon to force you to give up sex, but it's still a shitty thing. What you really need," she added, "is to find a nice girl who doesn't want to drag you away from your family and who'll fuck you good and proper." Then she shook her head. "No, you need a nice girl who actually can't get in between you and Bethany."

"Seriously?" Harry blinked a few times. "You don't want some woman getting between me and my wife, the wife you hate?"

Carrie shook her head, swallowed another mouthful of wine and waved a hand expressively.

"Nono, you misunderstand me. I'm fine with you finding love somewhere else and leaving Bethany. No problem there." She shook her head again for emphasis. "But what you need right now is stress relief. Your marriage, it can break down, but it's better if you just go your separate ways. She finds out you've cheated on her and that's it for your paternity rights. She'll fuck you over every chance she gets. But with a girl who can't get in the way, who's got some reason they can't spill the beans..."

Her voice trailed off and she narrowed her eyes at me. I came to the same conclusion she did and at about, I think, the same time.

"Yeah, I see what you mean," Harry admitted, staring at his own glass and nodding to himself. "A pressure valve, but someone who's got as much or more to lose. But the only kind of woman I can think of is a married woman and I don't want to be the 'other guy,' as hypocritical as that makes me."

"Nnnnno, there's another type of woman," Carrie began, a slow grin creeping across her face. She was still staring at me.

"What, a prostitute?" Harry asked.

"Carrie, are you absolutely sure about this?" I asked, the warning in my tone very clear. Even Harry heard it. "Once it's out, that's it..."