Newquay

When we got back to our hotel room, and were sitting around in our underwear, he was beginning to settle down and his earlier irritation was starting to turn to humour. That's always been Chaz's way: he gets a bee in his bonnet for half and hour and then starts taking the piss out of himself about it. Tom would have been mardy about it for a week.

At one point I said to him, "Do you really think I'd have been cool with lying here, just three feet away from you, listening to you hump some tart?"

He chuckled and nodded. "Yeah. Why not?"

I could tell that he knew that I would have had a fairly significant problem with it, but he acted like it was the most ordinary, bog-standard thing to expect from a brother.

He added, "We're not exactly shy around each other... what'd be the harm in it?"

"You'd be totally pissed off if I did that to you. If I brought some girl back with me and screwed her while you were lying there, listening."

He laughed. "Would I fuck! It'd be a fuckin' non-event, mate. And you know it."

He was being deliberately facetious. I could tell. There was no way he believed a word he was saying. He got like that sometimes when he was pissed. He would argue, sometimes quite convincingly, stuff as ridiculous as the moon being populated by giant hamsters if that was the mood he was in. He never got aggressive with it, and it was always just a case of him "having a laugh" if you managed to overturn his argument, but while it lasted he could be surprisingly insistent.

I went along with his game.

I asked, "Okay, so let's accept that you might be okay with it. Possibly. But what makes you so sure that I'd feel the same way?"

He shrugged. "Come on, mate. We've never had any secrets. We've never been embarrassed around each other... I mean, we've never had any problems being naked and stuff..."

I laughed, "But Chaz. This is about you having sex, mate..."

"Yeah and we've wanked and stuff... you've never had any problems with that..."

I shrugged. "That's something all brothers do. That's natural..." Then something came right out of my mouth before my alcohol-sedated brain had time to censor it. I added, like it was just another teasing comment we were making with each other, "We're not talking about us having sex together, mate. I'd have no problems with that... what we're talking about is -"

Before I had time to finish, Chaz leapt on what I said. "You'd have no problems with us having sex?"

I lost my train of thought but was sure my argument was sound. I continued, attempting a shrug of dismissive authority, "Yeah... but this isn't about that... it's about the fact that -"

He laughed and interrupted me again before I could continue. "Hang on, Ollie, let me get this straight - if that's the right word..." He paused to chuckle at his own wit, then went on, "What you're saying is, you'd be okay with screwing me, but you'd have a problem if I was screwing a girl...?"

Now that did sound a bit odd. I couldn't have meant that, surely. I stammered, suddenly uncertain of the point I'd been trying to make, "I wasn't saying that... I just meant we could wank and stuff like that... I wouldn't have any problem with that. We've done that since we were kids..."

He smirked broadly. He was going to remember this conversation. This one was going to come back and haunt me. He went on, "I remember the wanking, Ollie, mate. I just don't remember the 'stuff like that' you mentioned... what else did we do?"

"We did some other stuff... didn't we?" My voice sounded too defensive. To be honest, I couldn't really remember what exactly we'd done together.

He shrugged. "Maybe in your fantasies, mate... I don't remember anything..."

I glared at him, now very uncomfortable by the turn our conversation had taken. I paused for a few seconds, and then went on, slowly, "Look, Charlie... I mean, Chaz... I'm don't get myself off by imagining the two of us having sex together... you know that..."

He grinned, clearly pleased with himself. Of course he knew that. He'd just wanted to provoke a reaction, like he always did when he was drunk.

He said, "Okay... sorry... but you've got me really intrigued. You said, 'We could wank and stuff like that'. What exactly did you mean?"

I was becoming irritated by his persistence. "Come on, mate... I'm as pissed as you are. It was a slip of the tongue... don't fuck around with me..."

He laughed again. "I'm not fucking around with you..." Then he did a mock-smooch and added, in a camp voice, "Unless you want me too, big boy..."

I was getting really pissed off. "Come on, Chaz. Enough."

He went quiet, still grinning at me, and must have recognised - finally - how annoyed I'd become. His smile faded and he said, in a low voice, "Okay, mate, that was too far. It's just I know this guy at uni and one night when we were both pissed he made this comment - obviously intended as a joke but he made it - 'no girl can suck my cock like my older brother'."

I looked up at him, a little shocked.

He laughed, but this time his face betrayed a little of his own discomfort. "The next day I said, 'Dave, what did you mean about your brother sucking your cock?' At first he said nothing, of course, like anyone would. That it had just been a joke. But after a while of me going on at him, asking, 'Where would a joke like that come from?' he eventually admitted that they'd been doing it since he was sixteen. Their closeness and their physical similarities meant they knew exactly what each other liked..."

My face must have still looked stunned by what he was saying. It was dawning on me that his attempt to draw out of me what I'd meant by my throwaway remark was rather more than just him taking the piss. This was something that clearly interested him...

I shrugged and shook my head. "Come on, Chaz. He was having a laugh with you..."

He shook his, looking more serious. "He wasn't. There's no way. And they weren't gay, neither. They both had girlfriends. They just liked getting blow jobs and... I suppose, when you think about it... who can give you a better blow job than your brother?"

We both left that one hanging in the air, staring at each other. I was about to tell him that I was crap at giving head but fortunately realised before it came out how much explanation that would have lead us into.

I settled for, "I think I'd be crap at it. Girls reckon I'm all teeth when I take the plunge..."

He asked, his eyes fast on mine, "But would you try it?"

I didn't know how to answer. I had no immediate hang-ups about the act itself: I'd sucked cocks, or attempted to suck cocks, since I'd been at school. Even the fact that Chaz was my brother didn't pose any physical problem: if anything, it would make his cock far more palatable to me than those of the strangers I'd taken. The problem centred around how we would both react afterwards: we'd have to see each other for most of the rest of our lives; would the memory of what we'd done come to mar our relationship?

After a few seconds, I said, "I dunno... if we did it, we might end up getting funny with each other... regretting it and stuff... it might completely fuck us up..."

This time the mood was far too serious for him to make another pun on the word 'fuck'. He replied, "Maybe, but it didn't fuck Seb and his brother up. They still do it, sometimes, he told me. I think as long as the two guys go into it on the understanding that it's sex purely for pleasure, no different to wanking together, then there aren't gonna be any emotional screw-ups. It's not like the two guys would be boyfriends or lovers or anything - they'd just be taking brotherly intimacy one step further than most people do..."