Shades of Gray -- Ch. 8 is up.

Chapter 5. =) More smutty goodness, and things start to get weird.

Reviews are loved.
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Maria and Aurora were sitting in the tree house near the stream, talking and waiting for some of Aurora’s friends to show up. “So you worked out what was going on with Seth?” Maria asked her.

Aurora nodded. “He apologized, and I said I’d go out with him again.” She dug around in her purse for a while. “He’s cute.”

Maria shrugged absently. “Are you sure we should be sneaking out like this?”

Aurora grinned. “You’ve never stayed out past curfew?”

“Not without Seth.”

Aurora snapped her purse closed, rested her elbow on her knee and her chin on her palm. She gave Maria a careful look. “You and him are really close, huh?”

Maria nodded. “He’s my best friend. Always has been. Joseph and Amelia, they’re great and everything, and I love them, but Seth is my blood, you know? He’ll always be what’s most important.”

Aurora smiled a little. “Was he serious with that girl you mentioned, Emily?”

“Sort of.” Maria shrugged. “He called her, when we first got here. I saw her number on the call list. But they didn’t talk that long, and I haven’t seen the number since.” She thought about it for a while. “Seth never got really serious with any of the girls he dated, now that I think about it. He was always too busy for a really serious relationship.”

Aurora looked aggravated, and was about to say something, but the flicker of flashlights in the trees and someone calling Aurora’s name made her grin. “There they are.” She stood up, leaning over the railing of the tree house, and called, “Over here, guys!”

Two guys and a girl came through the trees and into the clearing. The girl was short, curvy, and blond, and looked disgusted by having to be out in the woods. The taller of the two boys was wide shouldered, plain faced, with light wavy brown hair. The other boy was shorter, thinner, and blond. Aurora climbed down, and Maria followed.

“Guys, this is Maria.” Aurora introduced them when they were face to face. “Maria, this is Beth. The big one’s Will and the small one’s Adam.” Maria shook hands all around, smiling nervously.

The boys built a fire, which made Maria nervous until Aurora explained that they did this all the time. They sat around, talking and laughing, and Maria slowly began to feel comfortable with them. When Adam started asking her about her family and where they’d lived before, she answered most of them as best she could. They talked about her father’s new job, living in Florida, her mother’s painting. When they got around to asking about siblings, Maria told them about Seth.

“Should’ve invited him.” Aurora said with a tiny smile. “He would’ve had more fun here than with those creepy twins.”

“What creepy twins?” Will asked.

“Her brother started hanging out with the Grays.” Aurora explained, and all three of them looked at Maria like she was an alien. She flushed.

“Those two are fucked up.” Adam muttered.

“Seth thinks they’re okay.” Maria said softly, looking away from the others. It wasn’t her fault that Seth was keeping company with the twins. “I don’t know anything about them.”

Beth rolled her eyes. “If you did, you’d be pretty worried for your brother.” She told Maria. “Those twins have been in trouble a lot, and they are really weird on top of that.”

“Yea, well, being weird runs in the family.” Adam put in. “I mean, their dad’s a total freak, and my grandfather told me that the whole family’s been nuts since they first showed up around here. One of the Grays from way back when was a murderer. Killed a bunch of people in town, and then when everyone found out, he killed his sons and then himself.”

“Wouldn’t that have killed the family name?” Maria asked, skeptical.

“The daughter he left alive was pregnant by one of her brothers, no one ever knew which.” Will told her. “So there was still a Gray. They never found most of the bodies of the kids that guy killed, either. They were all teenage boys, though.”

“You’re making this all up.” Maria accused. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

“It’s true, honest.” Adam insisted.

“The daughter ended up trying to kill the baby, too. She said it was a monster. She ended up dying a few years later, and no one could figure out what happened to her. My grandpa told me people thought she looked partially chewed, but they found her in her bedroom, so no one really believed an animal did it.”

“So, what? Her kid chewed her to death?” Maria laughed. “That’s ridiculous.”

Will rolled his eyes. “Who knows what happened? Either way, its weird. That kid ended up a preacher, you know, but he was also a child molester, and a grave robber. Walter Gray, the twins’ dad, is his bastard. He’s got a sister up in some mental hospital. She tried to kill her kids too.”

“So the whole family is a bunch of filicidal maniacs?” Maria asked him, glaring a little. “You realize how dumb that sounds, right?”

“What’s filicidal?” Aurora asked, frowning.

Maria sighed. “Filicide is the murder of one’s own children. You know, like matricide is when you kill your own mother.”

“Oh.” Aurora studied her. “Why do you know that?”

“I read.” Maria told her simply.

“Anyway.” Adam cut in. “Now we have those twins and their weird ass dad. I remember them in elementary school, they used to hold hands and shit like that. Some kid picked a fight with them once, and they hurt him so bad he was in the hospital for a long time. Everyone remembered that, and no one really picked on them after that, all the way through school, even after they caught jerking each other off.”

“It’s more than that, though.” Will put in. “They disappear sometimes.”

“What?” Maria shook her head. “What do you mean?”

“Sometimes they’re just… gone. In school, they’d be gone for two weeks at a time, and when they came back, they were even weirder than normal. It happened a lot too, like every three months or so. I’ve noticed it still happens. My brother works at the bookstore, and he says that Casey, the twin that works there, will take two weeks off every couple of months. No one sees them at all for that time.”

“It’s called vacations. You know, going out of town.”

“Without their father? In the sixth grade?” Will countered. “And don’t even say other relatives, the Grays don’t have any.”

“That’s so dumb!” Maria snapped. “Of course they have other relatives. Even if you can trace the Gray line like that, what about the twins’ mom?”

“Disappeared.” All four of them said at once.

Maria threw her hands in the air and stood up. “I’m leaving. You guys think I’m stupid, and I’m sick of just sitting here and letting you try to make a fool out of me.”

“Maria, no, stay.” Aurora caught her wrist. “They’ll stop.” She looked at her friends. “Seriously, knock it off.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” Will slid over to sit down beside where Maria had been sitting a moment ago. “We’ll knock it off.” He took the hand Aurora wasn’t holding and pulled until she sat down. “That’s better.” He smiled at her.

They sat around and talked, and after a while Maria forgot how angry they had made her. She didn’t forget what they said though. When she got home, she told herself, she’d look it up and see just what was true and what wasn’t about the Grays.
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Seth tilted his head back and watched Casey as he secured the handcuff around his left wrist to the headboard’s post. His Right arm was already stretched back, secured as well to the opposite post. He had a moment to curse his mother for the intricately carved king-sized bed, with its massive and ornate headboard, a gift when they’d first adopted him. It had the perfect design for bondage, it seemed. This struck him as both demented and amusing, and he snorted laughter. Cayden, who was straddling his torso, raised an eyebrow.

“Something funny?” he asked. Seth had managed to put up a pretty good fight; but the twins were so much stronger than they looked, and eventually they’d overpowered him. Cayden crawled off of him, joining his brother at the foot of the bed.

“No.” Seth replied. “There’s very little about this situation I think is funny.”

“Pity.” Casey said, and turned to yank at his twin’s belt buckle. “Then again, comedy isn’t exactly the entertainment we intend to supply you with.” He pulled the belt from it’s loops, smiling sweetly at his brother, who moved to reciprocate. “This is for your own good, Seth.”

“I hardly see where that makes sense.”

The twins smiled at him, one of those ‘humor-the-idiot’ smiles, and Seth clenched his teeth together. Then they turned back to each other and ignored him entirely. Casey slid his hands up Cayden’s chest, his fingers pausing for a moment to play with his nipples. Cayden sighed, his eyes half lidded, his hands slowing on the belt buckle at his brother’s waist. Casey leaned forward, and Cayden moved to meet him. They seemed to hesitate at first, their touches so delicate and timid. Seth watched them, his mouth dry, his hands clenched into fists above his head, as they divested each other of what left of their clothes.

The twins moved, flowing like liquid onto the bed to kneel on either side of him again, brushing him with the lightest of touches, long pale limbs and the graceful way they moved making him feel like he was on fire. They leaned over his chest, meeting above him, their mouths tangling again, and one of them, he wasn’t sure which, made a low, growling moan.

Seth watched them, hearing his own breath as it shortened and became erratic. They moved together so perfectly, each one knowing exactly where to touch, when to move. They said the most terrible, arousing things to each other in whispered, laughing voices, made the most intoxicating sounds. Their touches became harder, less fingertips and more nails, less tongue and more teeth, but somehow that made it better. Seth strained against the handcuffs, feeling like he was going to go insane.

“Please.” He whispered, his throat so dry he barely made a sound at all. The twins didn’t stop as Casey slid down, his mouth leaving a wet trail along his brother’s stomach, but Cayden looked up at him, a tiny smile on his swollen lips. Seth licked his own lips and tried again. “Please.” It came out stronger this time, though Casey ignored it entirely, his tongue tracing the sharp curve of Cayden’s hipbone.

“Do you think it’s been long enough?” Cayden asked his brother, tangling his fingers in his raven hair. Casey swiped his tongue along the head of Cayden’s cock, making him push his hips forward a little. “Should we let him go?”

Casey laughed, and Seth saw the way Cayden twitched. “Do you think he’s suffered enough, brother?”

Cayden turned his eyes towards Seth. “That’s a good question.” He said. “You don’t sound anywhere near repentant.” Casey moved, his mouth sliding around Cayden’s cock, taking him almost all the way in with one movement, and Cayden moaned.

“Okay. Okay, I’m sorry about Aurora.” Seth realized he was beginning to panic. The huge, feverish need in him was making him start to shake. He couldn’t stop staring at the way Casey’s swollen pink lips wrapped around Cayden’s cock, the way his tongue curled around the head. As he watched, Casey’s hands moved, one wrapping around his own erection, the other sliding lower. The sound he made when he pushed his fingers inside of himself nearly broke Seth entirely. “Please. Let me go.” He yanked at the handcuffs, feeling the sharp, painful of bite of the metal on his wrists, and didn’t care.

Cayden watched him, smiling, his hands combing through his brother’s hair, tugging gently in time with his movements. He shuddered, his back arching, and Casey’s moans seemed to get louder as his brother started to move against him, his hands tightening in his hair. The climaxed simultaneously, and Seth watched the line of Casey’s throat as he swallowed. He groaned, his own neglected erection aching so badly just the pressure of his jeans was agonizing.

Then Casey moved, sliding up to kneel above his hips. He leaned down, kissing Seth so roughly he whimpered, tasting Cayden on his tongue. Seth felt a quick tug at his zipper, and then Casey broke the kiss, shifted, and in one move impale himself on Seth’s cock. Seth would’ve screamed, but Cayden was there where his brother had been a moment before, his tongue and teeth doing painful, amazing things. Casey rocked against him, making low, moaning sighs. It didn’t last long at all. Seth’s back arched, his hands straining so hard against the cuffs he felt like they were cutting into his flesh, and came inside of the twin above him.

He slumped against the restraints, panting, and the twins moved and readjusted until they were both comfortable.

“Can I have my hands back now?” Seth asked. They discussed it silently, then Cayden leaned up and unlocked the cuffs around his wrists. Seth brought his arms down with a content sigh, and saw the deep red indentations in his wrists. “Fuck.”

The twins laughed.

“We need to talk about this.” Cayden told him quietly, after their mirth had gone. “There are things we need to discuss.”

“Okay…” Seth eyed them both warily. Casey moved, half sitting with Seth, who was leaning against the headboard. Cayden stayed where he was, snuggled against Seth’s stomach. “What did you want to say?”

The twins were both silent for a while, as if deciding who would start. Finally, Cayden jumped right in and said, “You’ve confused us. You came along and messed up our lives.”

Seth looked down at incredulously. He felt an overwhelming urge to grab them both by the hair, shake them, and smack their heads together. HE confused THEM? HE messed up THEIR lives? Were they fucking serious? For a moment he was truly afraid he was about to go insane and kill them both. He closed his eyes, his fists clenching, and tried to calm down. It would do no good to go ballistic, he knew, so he put all his effort into keeping a rein on his anger.

“Cayden and I have never been with another person before.” Casey told him. He remembered one of them saying that. He used the very tips of his fingers to brush a strand of hair from Seth’s face. “You were our first. It doesn’t make sense to us.”

“We enjoy you, don’t misunderstand.” Cayden said as if assuring him. “But you weren’t supposed to happen.”

“We don’t need anyone else. We never have.”

“But now there’s you.”

“Listen.” Seth said quietly, through clenched teeth. “You say you don’t understand what this is, or why. That it wasn’t supposed to happen.” He heard both the boy murmur assent, and he continued. “Do you honestly believe I have any more idea than you? I don’t even want to do this. I’m not gay. What this is… it’s wrong. People don’t…”

“Perhaps that is the appeal for you, then.” Casey suggested. “The… what was the word you used before?... morality. The morality in you balks at this, at us. Some people are into that sort of thing; the like it because it’s wrong. Perhaps you are one of those people.”

“Why did you start this in the first place?” Seth asked. “Why even bother if you two are so confused and upset about it? You did start it.”

They both nodded. “Yes, we started it.” Cayden agreed. “When we saw you, we were both very intrigued. That’s never happened before. We’ve never been attracted to another person. It never occurred to us that it would get to this point, though.”

“What point? The sex?”

“No.” Casey shook his head. “It’s not just the sex. We want more than that from you. Companionship. Affection.”

“We’ve only ever relied on one another for those things. Our father is… distant, to say the least.” Cayden reached up to run his hand along his brother’s side. “He’s had to be, and we’ve been understanding of that.

“But now we want something else. Something different and new.” Casey smiled at his brother. “He’s perfect, my brother.” He said affectionately. “And so am I. The perfection of us together has made us…” he paused, searching for a word.

“Jaded.” His brother suggested, and Casey shrugged and nodded. “We will always need each other, of course.”

“Needle and spoon.” Casey said cryptically, and they both smiled so lovingly it almost hurt to look at. “But you, you give us something we cannot give each other.”

“You make us feel. You make us wonder at things. We want that, we want it more often than we have it, and we want it in more ways than just during sex. We aren’t ready to let you take that away from us.”

Seth thought about this. He thought about the way they made him feel; like he was going insane, like he had no control over himself. Did he really want to get into something more serious than just fucking with these two? Furthermore, wouldn’t that mean coming out in the open with what they were together? Wouldn’t that mean admitting, once and for all, that he was gay? He didn’t think he could do that. However, he had to admit that the whole thing was so new and so scary that he had to at least give them the respect of seriously evaluating the situation. So he closed his eyes again and tried to get behind all of his fear, all of his conceptions, and just think about what was.

He didn’t seem to have any problems as far as his body went. It knew what it wanted. That was for certain, something he couldn’t bother denying to himself anymore. The twins did things to him that he’d never even considered, never thought he would enjoy, and he didn’t just enjoy it, he craved it. He knew this truth about himself, and knew that no matter how hard his mind might fight against it, it wasn’t going to change. The problem with the whole thing, with what he was doing with the twins, was his mind. It just wouldn’t let go of what he’d always believed about himself. It seemed as though he was split directly down the middle.

One half of him, the ‘normal’ part, truly and honestly believed that what he was doing with the twins was just a phase, just one of those things that guys his age sometimes do. It held onto the idea that he would wake up one day, and the twins would hold no attraction for him, that they would just be those weird creepy kids across the street. It tried to convince the rest of him that everything would just go back to normal, and he could be a normal person with a normal life and normal sexual urges.

The other half of him, the part that seemed to have gone crazy in a matter of days, would have nothing to do with the normal part of him. It dug its heels and refused to acknowledge the fact that things had ever been any other way. It was the part of him that shut down his body’s ability to listen to his brain whenever the twins were anywhere near him. The strange part, the scary part, was that in his head, Seth believed that the crazy part of him sounded more familiar than the normal part of him.

He could almost accept what he wanted from the twins. He could almost shove that normal part away and convince himself that it didn’t matter if it was moral or not, it was good, and that was what mattered.

But a relationship?

“I need to think.” He said softly. The twins didn’t try to stop him from getting up. He headed for the bathroom, intending on taking a very long shower. He stopped at the door, uncomfortable. “I’m sorry.” He told them. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

The twins dressed and went home. Once there, they stopped a spoke to their father for a while. Walter seemed tired, worn out. The twins sat with him for a while, one on either side, and tried to be good sons. It didn’t work well, it never did, and when they finally went upstairs, their father was miserable and near tears.

They could always be themselves with him, their true selves, but he could never look at them. He hadn’t looked either of his son’s in the eye since they were very young. The twins knew he was ashamed of them, ashamed of himself for letting them be what they were, as if he could stop it, as if he had a choice. It almost made the twins feel sorry for their loving, hopeless father.

“He tries so hard.” Casey said softly as he undressed his brother.

“Of course he does.” Cayden replied. “He loves us. We frighten him, but he loves us.”

Casey slipped his arms around his twin. “It’s coming soon.” He said quietly. “I can feel it.”

“Yes.” Cayden brushed his brother’s hair back. “I wonder what our new toy will make of our absence.” He sighed softly. “I don’t want to go away. It’s too important right now to stay.”

“We don’t have a choice. We tried before. Besides, father wouldn’t let us.” He rested his forehead against Cayden’s. “I love you.”

“And I you.” Cayden kissed him. “When do you think they’ll come for us?”

Casey shook his head. “It feels soon. Days.”

Cayden nodded. He felt it too. “When we come back, we’ll take care of Seth.” They walked to the window together and looked over at the faint gold light from Seth’s bedroom window.

“He’s sorry.” Casey said, and slipped his arms around his brother’s waist.

“Not as sorry as he’s going to be, should he turn us away.” Cayden ran his tongue along the shell of his brother’s ear. “We aren’t going to just let him say no, are we?”

“Of course not.” Casey kissed his brother softly. “We have a few days before they come for us. We’ll use that time to make things difficult between him and that girl.”

Cayden smiled, and it was a cold, hard smile. “You’re worried he’ll connect with her while we’re away.” Casey nodded. “Then we should show her what we are to him, shouldn’t we?” he pulled his twin towards the bed. “We have a long day tomorrow. We should get some rest."

Casey slipped into bed beside his twin, smiling. "When do we ever just get into bed and go to sleep?"

Cayden shrugged. "Stranger things have happened." he said softly. "People see aliens and Bigfoot all the time, after all."

Casey laughed. "Come here." he pulled his brother against him. "Do you think we can keep him?"

Cayden shrugged. "I don't know. We'll have to wait and see."

"He'll he angry at us for what we plan on doing to that girl." Casey pointed out.

"We'll have to risk it." he ran his hand along his brother's stomach softly. "Now enough talk." he whispered, and crushed Casey's mouth under his own.
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Thanks so much for you repeat readers, especially Lisa. I always love reading your reviews! I'm grateful of all of you, though, and thanks again! =)

(ps to all of you who read my other stories: new chapters of the lucad/david sequeal are coming, and the multiple endings for the jin/connor story... there was a terrible accident involving my USB thumb drive, a cup of coffee, and a flailing hippie. i'm serious. that wasn't a joke, it really happened. anyway, i lost the chapter's i'd been working on, so i had to perform rewrites. look for them in the next 48 hours. MUCH LOVE!)