My Cousin's a What?

"Ah. Here we go." She clicked a key. A panorama of thumbnails sprang up on the screen as she slanted him a saucy look. "What kind of scene do you want to watch?"

He swallowed. "Anything but another guy's dick, please."

"Oh." Her pink lips pouted. "You're no fun at all."

"Go and complain to Mom, if you want. I'm sure she would be fascinated by how you and I can't agree on which one of your sex scenes we should be watching. It's not like sharing the Big Wheel when we were kids."

"I don't know. I bet you could give me a nice ride." Ignoring the choked sounds he was making, she clicked on a menu bar. "So no guys. That's okay. I've done lez work. And masturbation. What would you like? Solo? Or me and another woman?"

"Oh." She caught his sudden obvious interest as her mouse hovered over a picture. "Who is that?"

Sara smiled. "Kim Devine? Oh, she's an absolute sweetheart. Man, I do love the Asian girls. Not many of them get into the industry. But the ones that do..." She made a show of fanning herself. "That body and her skin, all golden brown. And you could bounce a silver dollar off her ass." She looked up at him, her eyes twinkling. "Want to watch?"

"You don't mind?"

"No." Her voice deepened, going slightly rough. "I told you. I like it when someone watches."

"Okay." He looked around the room. "But we're going to need another chair. Or something."

"Nah." She took the laptop in one hand, and his hand in the other, and led him to the bed. "But the clothes are staying on," she warned. "We don't need your mom trying to break down the door when she realizes we're in here alone."

Setting the laptop on her stomach, she started the video. The movie itself wasn't terribly original, he thought. Sara was playing a potential pledge to a college sorority. One that was, apparently, very selective about who it asked to join. When Sara expressed her doubts about whether she was a good fit for an all-lesbian sorority, Kim very generously offered to give her a tryout.

"Wow," he said, as the two women peeled off their clothes, slow, soft kisses becoming more and more ardent. "This doesn't waste much time, does it?"

"Mmmm," Sara agreed, her had pillowed on his shoulder. "It was one of the first ones I did, before I signed exclusively with Sweet Seduction. My last couple have been way better.

"But Jake shoots movies differently than a lot of other directors," she added, as her character began to kiss Kim's luscious breasts. "He doesn't choreograph the sex scenes too much. He just makes sure that everyone is into each other and then kinds of turns us loose. And he uses multiple cameras. So he's not always telling us to cut the scene so he can get the angle he wants. You can't see it, but there's four different cameramen on the stage with us. Two do the close-in work, one for the medium shots, and one for the wide angles. He takes all the footage and then splices it together in the cutting room. It's more expensive, what with the cost of the cameras and the people to run them. But it definitely makes the scene hotter when we're shooting it. It all flows better. You don't need to worry that the director is going to insist on a pussy-licking scene when you're having the best time playing with Kim's tits, like I am here. You're just having a really good time fucking an absolutely smoking woman."

"Oh." He thought for a moment, trying to frame the next question right, even as his cock throbbed inside his slacks. "So. Are you bisexual?"

"Yeah. I suppose," Sara answered absently, as if he had just asked her if she wanted him to load the dishwasher.

"Um." He chewed his lip. "Do you like boys or girls more?"

Her eyes focused on him, suddenly intent. "It doesn't work that way, Tommy. At least, not for me. I'm not attracted to men. Or women. I'm attracted to people. If a guy is cute and has a nice butt and is funny and sweet and smart, then I'm probably going to be attracted to him. And if a girl is hot and has an absolutely awesome rack like Kim and knows the lyrics to my favorite Taylor Swift songs and likes to watch trashy horror movies with me, then yeah, I'm probably going to want to screw her.

"I'm attracted to people, Tommy. Not groups. Like Kim. Damn, she's fine." She waved at the screen. "And isn't that just the cutest little pussy in the whole world? It makes me hot, just watching. And hell, I was there."

"Hot, huh?" He tightened his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to him. Nothing ventured...

Something gained, as his lowering face met Sara's rising mouth. She moaned, her fingers tangling in his hair, as they finally gave in to years of secret, long-denied desire. His hand found her breast. Even through the shapeless, baggy sweater, worn for comfort on a cold, dreary day, his cousin's tits were almost amazingly tight and firm. He squeezed, and was rewarded by a soft, sexy whimper. The movie played on, forgotten, and when Sara's hand left his hair and slid down his chest to wrap around his hard, insistent erection, he pulled her to him, needing to be with her, needing to be inside her.

"No." Sara pulled away, one hand flat on his chest. "Tommy, stop. We have to stop."

Somehow he did, though it was almost painful. Inside his slacks, his cock was a solid, aching bar of need. "Why?"

"Because it's almost lunchtime. And your mom or my mom are going to come looking for us as soon as all the other rugrats come in from outside. Do you really want Aunt Evey to find out we've been alone in your bedroom with the door locked? She would have an absolute meltdown. And then Christmas would be ruined.

"So go and beat off or take a shower or whatever it is boys do to make their naughty bits behave. I," she added virtuously, "will be downstairs, sharing an exciting story of a really cool audition with Mom and Aunt Evey."

"Which will be a total lie," he said, "since we both know it's not true."

"No. It's not. And if even think about whispering a word of it before I decide to tell everyone, Tommy, I will punch you in the face so hard that they will have to invent a new kind of math just to figure out where the dimension is where your body landed."

"Behold the field of my fucks. Lo. It is barren. I have no fucks left to give." He folded his jacket over one arm and paused, one hand on the doorknob. "Sara?"

"Yeah?" She shut her laptop, cutting off a pair of rapturous moans.

"You were right. Kim was gorgeous."

Her golden brows knitted. "And?"

"You were even better."

He shut the door behind him as Sara sputtered. Last word. I win.

After lunch, he and Sara and a selection of his siblings and cousins were drafted to help prepare the Christmas Eve feast, while the ones who couldn't be trusted to boil water were sent into the family room with instructions not to bother them unless someone was dead (or, at the very least, bleeding heavily).

"I really don't know how you did this, Mom," he said, as he peeled a pile of potatoes that seemed only slightly smaller than Altgeld Hall. "Just you and Grandma and Aunt Elizabeth?"

"Well," his mother dimpled. "When you were younger there were a lot fewer of you. And the ones who were here were a lot smaller. And didn't eat near as much." She opened the oven and slid in a baking dish, trying to find room next to the enormous ham which was taking up most of the room. "Things didn't really start to get bad until you and Patrick got into your teens. I swear, it was like the both of you had a tapeworm living in your stomach. You'd eat and eat and eat, but you'd never gain a dang pound. A pair of fence posts with stomachs."

He snickered. "Yeah. Remember the year Grandpa Whitman bet me twenty bucks that I couldn't eat an entire turkey leg on Thanksgiving?"

Evangeline Whitman smiled sadly at the reminder of her father, gone for five years now. "I told him he might as well have set his money on fire. Watching you and Patrick and the rest of them was like watching one of those movies about the piranhas in the Amazon. First you'd see a cow. And then a few minutes later there wouldn't be anything but a pile of bones. Sara?" She raised her voice. "How's that garlic bread coming along?"

His cousin laid a white cloth over a lumpy object on a baking sheet. "It's ready to bake. Of course," she shrugged fluidly, her mouth curling in a wicked smile. "It could kill us all. Can you remind me? Was I supposed to mix in eggs? Or was it mayonnaise?"

"You're a rotten little girl and I should have let your mother sell you to the gypsies when you were six," her mother sighed. She flicked up the dishcloth, eying it as if it might leap off the baking sheet and bite her in the eyeball. The garlic butter which Sara had spread on the surface of the braided loaf gleamed in the late afternoon light. "It looks all right," she admitted grudgingly.

"Well, it better." Sara stole a celery stick off a platter and bit down with her sharp white teeth. The crunch was audible. "I haven't made that recipe in something like three years. Why couldn't you have given me something easier? Like nuclear physics?"

Miranda snorted, but subsided. Luckily, before the conversation could go completely off the rails, his father appeared out of whatever hole he had been hiding in all day. Tom grimaced. When his Aunt Elizabeth had been married, his father and his uncle would spend the entire Christmas holiday watching college football bowl games, and he thought he still missed him, despite the fact that his brother-in-law was a philandering, two-timing weasel.

"Smells good," the older man said. "When do we eat?"

"When it's ready," his mother said, with long-suffering patience. "Unless you want to catch a real good case of food poisoning. Rick, stop it!" she exclaimed, as he opened up the oven and bent down to saw off a sliver of ham. "It's not done! You'll get sick!"

"You say that every year and I never do," he replied, popping the piece into his mouth. "Ah, that's the good stuff." He chewed happily. "Now I know why I married you." He winked at the watching audience. "Other than the reason why we've got four kids."

"Eew!" Miranda said. "Dad, could you be any more gross?"

Rick Whitman chewed slowly, his brows knitted in a contemplative frown. "Yeah. Probably."

After the meal, which left most of the adults groaning and barely able to walk, they gathered around the Christmas tree. The younger children were practically salivating with excitement, while the older ones and the adults merely pretended to be uninterested and above it all. Tom chose a place to the side, his back propped up against the end of the sofa. He smiled as he spied the old Christmas stockings that his grandmother had made -- bright green yarn embroidered with red and white, with his name (and his brother and sisters) stitched clear and bold across the top, where his ankle would have fit if he were a giant. They were hung from the doorway that led from the living room to the dining room, and he remembered his excitement when he was five years old, and his older sister had read out the letter from Santa that they would be getting a younger brother in a few months.

"All right," Aunt Liz said, clapping her hands. The smaller children grew quiet, their eyes wide. "Who's first this year?"

"How about youngest first?" Sara suggested. She leaned back in the corner of a comfy armchair and stretched out her long legs in front of her. "Your little girls, Kate, are about to fall asleep on their feet. Might as well let them have their fun before they pass out."

"Sounds good to me," Katherine said. She glanced at her oldest daughter, who was watching, wide eyed. "Tommy, can you help Ashley pick out a present for Stacie?" She moved a shoulder, indicated her youngest child, who was blinking sleepily in her lap. "I don't think she's up to it, yet."

"Sure." He caught up Ashley by her hand and swung her around to the tree. "What should we get your little sister?" he asked in a stage whisper. "How about this one?" he suggested. When a shake of the little girl's head said no, he pointed at a larger, flat object wrapped in merry white and red paper, decorated with bright green trees. "Or this one? Yes? Good! All right," he said, "this is your little sister's present. But you have to help her, because she's too little to open her own presents right now, all right?"

Ashley nodded, and her pudgy fingers flew as she tore at the paper. "Oh. A book," Tom said in tones of wonder. "By Neil Gaiman. Blueberry Girl." He opened the front cover, recognizing the handwriting immediately. "And it comes from your cousin Sara. Isn't that nice!"

"Sara!" Kate scowled at her younger cousin. "Didn't I tell you that you didn't have to get the kids anything? You're still trying to get on your feet. You shouldn't be spending money on them!"

"That sounds like the sort of thing you'd say," Sara said with a smug grin. She waved off Kate's next exclamation. "Don't worry about it. I can afford it. It's not much. And the book is lovely. You'll cry. I did."

"Humph." Kate sat back in her seat, apparently unmollified. But her hands were careful as she took the book and set it beside her chair. "Ashley, darling. It's your turn."

Tommy watched as Ashley's father helped her pick out a present of her own. And then it was a ladder, climbing through the ranks of his brother and sisters and cousins -- Justin and Mark and David; Megan and Miranda and Taylor. Until it was his turn and the family was looking at him, eager to see what present he would pick.

"So many choices," he mused, looking at the small pile which was his. The scent of the evergreen boughs reminded him of his childhood, when his mother would try to cure his colds with hearty doses of Mentholatum smeared around the inside of his nostrils -- strong enough to clear the sinuses of a wild pig, he would swear. "Well, this one looks nice," he said, picking up a small box, oddly heavy for its size. "And from Cousin Sara, too! What could it be?" He picked apart the wrapping paper, dark red with boughs of green holly. A dark box appeared. He opened the hinged lid, and was met with the sight of a pair of cuff links. "Oh. Nice." He cocked his head at Sara. "Steel?"

"Silver," she replied evenly. "They might come in handy when you start to interview for jobs after you graduate."

He fingered the heavy metal. "They're lovely. Thank you!"

He was half-tempted to put them on at once, just to see how they would look against his dark blue dress shirt, when his thigh was given a sharp nudge. Little Ashley was there, apparently bored without any presents to open. She held her sister's book in her hands. "Story," she demanded. "Read."

"Well, look who's a little bossy-pants," he said, picking up his niece and depositing her in his lap as he sat down. "Comfy? Good."

"Blueberry Girl, by Neil Gaiman," he read, opening the front cover. With difficulty, he fished his cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it to Sara. Picture, he mouthed as she stared at him. Ashley snuggled into the corner of his arm, her dark hair spread like a silken fan across his chest, he turned over the first page. "Ladies of light and ladies of darkness," he read. "And ladies of never-you-mind." His finger traced the ornate lettering, letting Ashley follow along. "This is a prayer for a blueberry girl." He swallowed. "First, let you ladies be kind."

When he was finished, he looked up into a room which was oddly quiet. "What?"

"That is an absolutely lovely book," his mother said. Her eyes were wet. "A beautiful book for a little girl. And you read it wonderfully, Thomas."

"Yeah," Taylor said. "I guess you're not a big dumb boy after all, you dingus."

"Taylor!" Their mother's voice tore through the snickers. "It's Christmas Eve!"

"And he's still a dingus."

Tom pitched his voice low. "What's it like being a girl, Taylor? Is it like being a bug? The slow, horrifying realization that evolution has played a cruel trick on you? And that no matter how hard you try, you'll never be as cool as I am?"

"Stop it." Aunt Liz's voice brooked no disagreements. "We've all opened our presents. And it's time that everyone was in bed. Otherwise Santa might skip this house. Or leave coal in our stockings. Now. Who wants to sing us all to bed?"

One song. That was the tradition. Tom bit his lip, fighting from making a completely inappropriate suggestion, like "The Night Santa Went Crazy" or "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer."

"O Little Town of Bethlehem," a voice sang. Sara's low, warm contralto, achingly pure and sweet, filled the room. "How still we see thee lie."

Tom had abandoned most of his religious beliefs a few years ago, when he realized there was no one to actually make sure that he was going to mass, rather than sleeping in every Sunday morning. But even he couldn't deny the beauty of the old Christmas carols. Although his voice couldn't compare to Sara's, he could still carry a tune without needing a basket. So he added his voice to hers on the next couplet.

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by.

More and more of his family joined in. Parents, his aunt, brothers, sisters, and cousins.

Yet in the dark streets shineth

An everlasting light.

The hope and fears of all the years

Are met in thee tonight.

The last strains of the song faded away, leaving only silence in its wake. His mother smiled. "Thank you, Sara. That was very nice." A quick tilt of her head took in the children. "Well? What are you waiting for? Time for bed."

Her children scrambled upstairs to their bedrooms, while her nieces and nephews sought the sleeping bags which had been rolled up and set neatly against the sides of the room. In less time than you would have thought possible, the room had been converted into a temporary bedroom. As Tom turned off the lights and headed for the door to the basement, the glowing lights of the Christmas tree, still shining dimly, glowed on the faces of his young cousins.

He took a quick shower in the downstairs bathroom, for once glad that his parents had decided to finish the basement. They had done it when he was in middle school, and he had resented being drafted as his father's chief go-fer for most of that summer. But with over a dozen people in the house, bathroom space was at a premium. And the last thing he wanted was to try to sleep when he still could smell himself.

After his shower, he tried to read for a while on his tablet. But his mind kept drifting back to that morning, when he and Sara had been watching her movie together. His cousin was so gorgeous, even in the bright lights of a Los Angeles soundstage.

And so kinky, a treacherous thought reminded him. She told you herself that she gets off on doing taboo movies. Maybe you should sneak upstairs and find out of she wants to do some...rehearsing.

Yeah. With Mom and Dad only two doors down from my bedroom? Get a fucking grip. He put the tablet down beside the couch and reached up to snap off the lamp. I can figure out what to do about her later. Maybe we can find some time to talk tomorrow, when all the kids are busy playing with their new toys and the parents are too tired to pay attention to what we're doing.

He lay down on the couch, rolling himself in the comforter he had swiped off his bed when his mother had told him he would be sleeping in the basement. He could deal with a crick in his neck. He wasn't going to put pneumonia on top of it.

The basement was pitch-black, the only light coming from a night-light set in an outlet in a corner. It made the mismatched furniture, only dimly visible as stark black lines, look like a set of medieval torture instruments.