Jack Edwards
btomandback@hotmail.com

Silver Lining

My dad died when I was thirteen. It was in early April of the year I was to graduate from the eighth grade. I loved my dad, but for as far back as I could remember he was always busy; late nights at work, working weekends under a deadline, or on business trips. We found out when he died that there was more to it than that.

He died in a car wreck, and there was a woman with him. She died, too. No one said much about it those first couple of days. Mom was remarkably brave. I was numb.

The police officers who first told us about Dad’s car wreck returned with a social worker the night before the funeral. They went into the den, and Mom sent me out to “take care of” all the guests and relatives who were in our house. I never realized how many people came to a house when someone died.

Mom stayed in the den with the officers for a long time. Later, I heard my mom and grandma arguing. They quieted when I got close. I figured it was something about dad and the other woman. I was thirteen, but not stupid… I thought.

Mom came into my room that night. I lay in my bed, watching MTV. It was a double bed. Mom sat on the edge and took my hand.

“Davey, honey, we need to talk,” she said. She nodded toward the TV.

I muted it.

“I wish we didn’t have to talk about this until you were older,” she said, “but I have to ask you something, and I need you to understand why.”

I nodded.

“Your dad had a mistress,” she said simply.

“The woman in the car?” I asked.

Mom nodded. “Friends tried to tell me about it, and I’ve suspected for long time.”

Mom motioned for me to scoot over some, so I did. She sat onto the bed beside me and leaned back against the headboard with a sighed.

“I met her,” she said. “She was your father’s girlfriend in high school. But then she went to college in Oklahoma, and your dad went to UT, where he and I met.” She thought, quietly. “I suppose he started with her again, only a couple of years after we married. She moved here to Houston several years ago to be close to him. She moved here with her son.”

Mom took a deep breath. “You have a brother.”

I sat numbly. It was one of those moments when reality seemed… unreal.

Mom took my hand again. “He wants to come to your father’s funeral,” she said quietly. “Ben was his father, too.”

I tried to think; my mind tumbled with thoughts. I was an only child, but now I had a brother?

“I think we should let him come,” Mom said. “He’s only ten, and he’s lost both his mother and his father.”

“And he knew Dad was his dad?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“He should come then.”

Mom squeezed my hand. I glanced at her. Tears were running down her cheeks.

“Grandma didn’t want him to come?” I guessed.

Mom swallowed and sniffled. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because of you. I told her that you could handle it.”

I laid my head over onto Mom’s shoulder. I hadn’t cried much till then, but when Mom said I could handle it, strangely, I just really felt like crying.

My dad’s mom had early-onset Alzheimer’s. She and my granddad were at the funeral. Grandma – my Mom’s mom -- was there. The three of them, along with Mom and me waited in the family room at the funeral home as people gathered in the chapel. The social worker from the previous day knocked lightly and entered the room.

“Maggie,” she said, coming toward my mom. An old man and woman followed. They looked incredibly sad. With them was the brother I didn’t know I had. He was shorter than me, but about normal for a ten-year-old. He wore a dark sports coat like mine, and he was thin like me had blue eyes like mine. He had dark hair, though, and I had blond hair. I didn’t think he looked much like me, but later Mom and others told me he did. As sad as I was, I was simply glad that he didn’t look like some kind of ogre.

His eyes went immediately to mine.

“This is Eric,” the social worker said. “And these are his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Nielsen.”

Eric continued to watch me. His eyes became pleading, and he looked really hurting.

Sometimes you just know things, like I knew from how they were standing that he probably wasn’t close to his grandparents. I knew he was alone.

It was an impulse, but it seemed like the thing to do. I walked over to him, and, with an arm behind his shoulders, I brought him over to wait beside me. He sat close, looking up at me from time to time.

Eric and I did well during the service. Mom cried. My granddad cried. A lot of people cried. The chapel was full of faces I had grown up with; faces from my father’s life.

Eric rode beside me in the limousine with my mom. At the graveside, we stood for the minister to pray and the adults sang a hymn. Eric turned to me and buried his face in my side. He cried, and it made me cry. I held him tightly to me, and we cried together. Somebody behind us laid a hand on my back. Mom came up behind me, and kissed the back of my head.

Eric kept his face buried in my side and clung to me as people filed past. They told my mom how sad they were for us. Afterward, we took Eric and his grandparents back to our house. A lot of people came back to the house after the funeral.

Eric hung beside me. Though my cousins were there, and a couple of other kids I knew, I let Eric stay close and I stayed close to him. He was all I had left of my dad, but when I thought of Dad being gone, I almost cried, so I didn’t think about it.

I listened in when my mom talked to Eric’s grandparents.

They were going to fly the body of Eric’s mom back home to Amarillo the next day for a funeral there. No, they said, Eric had only an uncle, and he was in the service, stationed in Germany. Yes, Eric would probably live with them, though they hadn’t had children at home in years and they hated taking him from his friends in Houston. And no, they hadn’t talked to his school about how he should finish his school year.

“I’ve talked to Davey’s school,” Mom said. “I’ll be glad to talk to Eric teachers, too, if you want.”

Eric’s grandparents seemed grateful.

People began to leave. I motioned for Eric to follow me, and I led him back to my room.

He looked around my room. I sat on the side of the bed and he sat next to me.

“Did you know about me?” I asked. “You know, before the accident?”

Eric lowered his eyes and shook his head.

“I didn’t either,” I said. “Hey.” I got up from the bed. “Come with me.”

I led him into the bathroom and we stood side by side looking into the mirror. We studied each other, our eyes going back and forth. Eric had long, dark eyelashes and dark eyebrows. He looked a little like my dad. People said I did, too. So I supposed we looked a little alike.

“You wanna stay here tonight?” I asked.

Eric bit his lip and looked away. He nodded yeah.

Eric didn’t have pajamas with him, but I told him that it was fine because I slept in my underwear and he could too. It was late when we crawled into bed. We lay beside each other for a moment. Then I slid my arm under the back of Eric’s head and settled it behind his neck. He rolled to me, laying his head on my shoulder. I patted his back, and he hugged on to me.

The feeling of all his warm skin on mine gave me a boner, mainly because I was thirteen and got boners all the time anyway. He was pressed to my side, and I didn’t think he’d notice my boner. I thought of Dad and the funeral, and the boner went away. Slowly, we fell asleep together.

“I want to go with Eric to his mom’s funeral,” I told mom in the morning over breakfast while Eric still slept.

Mom smiled and reached across the corner of the table to stroke my hair back over my ear.

“What would you think of Eric staying with us to finish his school year here in Houston?”

“Oh, really? Yeah, Mom, let’s do it!”

Mom smiled gently. “I was always sorry that you didn’t have a brother or sister. As difficult as all this has been, some good has come out of it, huh?”

I nodded. “Yeah.” Trading Dad for a brother wasn’t something I’d choose, but I was glad about Eric.

We had to fly in separate seats because our reservations were made late, but other than that, I stuck with Eric. His grandparents were kind to me and seemed grateful that I was along. I met Eric’s uncle and he was nice to me as well.

Eric’s grandparents put him and me in his mom’s old bedroom. The bed was only a twin-sized bed.

“I can make a pallet for one of you on the floor,” Eric’s granddad said.

Eric and I glanced at each other. “I’m cool with sharing the bed,” I said.

“Me, too,” Eric quickly said.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “you don’t need to make another bed.”

Their house had a lot of visitors, too, though not as many as had come to our house before and after Dad’s funeral. Eric didn’t know many of the kids well. Evidently, his mom had taken him back to Amarillo only twice after they moved to Houston, and that had been when he was really little.

Eventually, we hid out in his mom’s old room, and he showed me pictures of her as we looked over her things. His grandmother brought us sandwiches, and both grandparents leaned in to say goodnight.

“I brought pajamas,” I told him.

He glanced up at me in surprise. “I didn’t,” he said.

We looked at each other, and laughed.

Eric and I stripped to our underwear, and I climbed into bed on my back. Eric climbed in after me and pulled the covers up over us. He didn’t hesitate; he laid his head on my shoulder and hugged on to my side like the night before. I patted his back and he cocked his leg over mine. When he did that, the top of his thigh pressed up under my package and the front of his underwear pressed my hip.

His hair smelled good and I gave in to a simple urge to kiss the top of his head.

“Davey,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“You’re my brother,” he whispered wonderingly.

“Yeah.”

He nuzzled into the side of my neck, hugging my chest, and his leg settled under my balls, and my dick filled like a water balloon on a faucet. It rolled and pointed up my belly. My dick head slipped out past my waistband. I hadn’t jerked off in days, and I suddenly felt like I really needed to.

But what was I going to do? I lay there, stroking the soft skin on Eric’s back, and I tried to sleep. His breathing grew regular, but I was wide awake. And then, his hips moved, and I felt his stiffy against my hip. He was asleep, but he had a stiffy. It was too much.

I tucked my boner back inside my underwear and pointed it off to the side away from Eric. It only took a few light strokes on the underside of my cock through the cotton fabric for me to explode into my briefs. It was messy, but I was able to sleep.

I woke later and carefully crawled from under Eric. Grabbing up clean underwear, I snuck down the hall and switched out of the cummy ones. Then I went back to the bedroom and climbed in beside Eric. He was on his side. I spooned him from behind and hugged him like I used to hug my teddy bear as a kid. I went to sleep in my clean underwear.

He cried at his mom’s funeral and I kept him hugged under my arm, and I cried, too; for Eric.

It was a long day. He fell asleep on me that night, and I got a hard on, but I fell asleep anyway.

When I woke in the morning, we were on our sides facing one another. Eric’s forehead was tucked under the side of my jaw and he was hugged on to me. I had a boner. I looked down between us. It looked like he had a stiffy in his briefs. I rolled to my other side and tried not to think about it, but then in his sleep, Eric snuggled up behind me and I felt his stiffy against my butt. I almost blew another load in my underwear.

After a few minutes of not being able to calm down, I got out from under him carefully and snuck to the bathroom for a quick wank.

They flew us back to Houston later that day, Sunday, so we could get back into our classes. Since I had a double bed, Mom didn’t set up anything separate for Eric.

“You guys need to bathe,” Mom said after supper.

Eric glanced at me across the table. “Can I take my bath with you?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Sure. But I normally take a shower. You want to shower with me?”

He nodded.

So a few minutes later, we locked ourselves in the bathroom with towels and clean underwear. We stripped. Eric had a long worm of a dick, uncircumcised, like our dad’s had been. He seemed fascinated by my heavier, thirteen-year-old version, and by my tight little patch of black pubes. He stared at it and sprung a boner, and only realized he’d sprung a boner when it was fully hard. With a small gasp, he tried covering it with his hands.

By then, my cock was on the rise, so I told him, “Don’t bother trying to hide it, dude. Guys get boners sometimes. Look, I’m getting one, too.”

Eric, staring, nodded, and dropped his hands away from his middle. His stiffy pointed straight up his belly, thick as a man’s thumb and as long as a man’s middle finger. Mine pointed up my belly in exactly the same way, though thicker and longer. Eric’s eyes got even wider.

“What do those feel like?” he said, pointing to, and almost touching, my pubic hair.

“Haven’t you seen pubes before?” I asked.

He nodded. “Dad’s,” he said. “I saw Dad’s, but I never touched it.”

“Go ahead and touch ‘em if you want,” I told him.

He did, running his finger across them. “Softer than they look,” he said quietly. Without looking up at me or asking, he ran his finger up my erection. Then he placed the fingertips of three fingers against the underside. I swallowed hard.

“It’s hot,” he said. He glanced up while pressing me. “Your skin is soft.”

I leaned closer to him and pressed my fingers against the underside of his erection to compare.

“Your skin is soft, too,” I said. I closed my thumb and a couple of fingers around his shaft and slid his skin up and down. He was steely hard under his thick, soft skin. It was the first time I felt another boy’s erection… or had another boy feel mine.

“Oh,” Eric said softly. “That feels good.”

“That’s the way you jack off,” I said, having to clear my throat first. “Have you ever jacked off?”

He shook his head. “Uh, uh. No one’s ever showed me how.”

“You do it,” I said, “like this.” I moved the skin up and down his stiffy, keeping even pressure on the underside.

“Oh,” he said. His legs wobbled. He widened his stance.

He tried doing the same to me.

“Oh,” I murmured. “No one else has ever done that.” I widened my stance, too, and we looked down between our bodies, watching each other’s hands and dicks.

“When yours gets bigger,” I said, “you do it like this.” I replaced his fingers on my shaft with my hand, closing it around my shaft. I stroked up and down.

He chuckled. “Your balls flop,” he said. He lifted my balls on the palm of his hand. “You’ve got big balls.”

“Yours will get bigger, too,” I told him, “and they’ll get egg-shaped like this.” I lifted my right nut inside my loose scrotum for him to see the shape. Eric ran a finger over it lightly.

I dropped my own balls and bent to lift his on my fingers. “See, yours are still round like marbles.”

Looking down between us, he rested his forehead on my collarbone and nodded. His hair was close to my nose, and he smelled good and the nearness of his body made my dick jump.

“I can make my dick jump like that,” he said. He stepped back, put his hand on his hips, pushed his pelvis forward, and tensing the muscles in his pelvic floor, he made his dick jump.

I laughed, and did the same. A talent we got from our dad I guessed.

We were both jumping our dicks and it just seemed natural when Eric stepped forward to jump his against mine. “Sword fight,” he said laughing.

I laughed, too, bending my knees a little to get us at the same height. We swung our hips, batting our upturned dicks against each other. He grabbed my hips to try to hold me still and I grabbed his, and suddenly our crotches were pressed together and we were grinding against one another, and not laughing anymore.

I grabbed his butt, and he grabbed mine and we pulled together.

“This feels good,” he said quietly.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

It was awkward, though.

“Let’s try it lying down,” I suggested.

“Yeah,” Eric agreed, quickly dropping onto his back on the big, fluffy bathmat Mom kept in my bathroom. He lay back partway, like half-sitting up with his belly all tight. His legs were apart and he extended his arms toward me, expecting me to drop onto him.

I did jus that, settling my legs between his, and lowering my dick down on his.

I held myself up on my hands like a girl’s pushup, and he was sitting partway up, and we watched our two dicks roll and poke out between our pelvises.

I lay down onto him and wrapped my arms under his back. He wrapped his arms around my neck and we pressed the sides of our cheeks together as we ground stiffies.

“This feels good,” I said, meaning more than just how it felt on my cock. His naked body under mine felt good, too. His skin against my skin felt good.

“Yeah,” he murmured.

My balls draped his smaller ballsack. I felt it. He wrapped his legs around my hips and we ground harder.

We made little grunts and moans in one another’s ears. His hands felt over my back.

We rolled and he was on top, between my legs. I grabbed his butt and moved his hips around between my thighs. “Feels different on the bottom,” I murmured.

“Yeah,” he said, holding on to my shoulders. He rubbed the side of his head against my cheek. “Davey?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“I like it on the bottom better.”

“I like it on top better.”

We rolled. This time, Eric grabbed my bottom the way I had done his, though he didn’t have the strength to move me around on him the way I had done. His hands felt way good on my butt, though.

We pumped and his hands traveled up my back and sides, feeling my body, feeling my muscles. I nuzzled his hair, taking deep breaths. I felt him moving under me. I felt him squeeze my legs between his. It felt better, and better.

“Oh!” he said, sounding surprised. “Oh! Oh!”

He was liking it! And that made it feel even better for me. I pumped faster and the cum churned in my balls.

“Oh! Oh!” he said, pawing at my back, his legs squirming, and I was afraid Mom might hear. My hands were under his back so I used my mouth to quickly cover his and keep him quiet. He moaned loudly, his body jerking under mine, and suddenly I was kissing his small mouth, and cum was blowing right up from my balls, and I shot between our bellies. I shuddered with my orgasm and realized that Eric was shuddering, too. Did kids have orgasms? I wondered, vaguely. I never had; not till I started shooting cum.

We stopped grinding, breathless. Then suddenly, he was hugging my neck and pressing the side of his face against mine.

“Oh, wow!” I whispered. “Wow!”

We lay there, catching our breath. I rolled off him, my belly still heaving. Eric sat up part way and ran his fingers over his belly.

“My stomach’s wet,” he said.

“I came,” I told him, glancing at his belly. “That’s my sperm. Maybe yours, too. It sounded like you came.”

“Came?”

I rolled up on my side toward him. “That’s having an orgasm. I think you had an orgasm.”

He dropped back onto his back. “That was awesome!”

I lay back beside him, gazing at the ceiling. “Yeah.” I didn’t look at him. “I’m sorry I, like, kissed you. I was trying to keep you quiet, ‘cause you were starting to make a lot of noise.”

“It’s okay,” he said.

“Well,” I said, sitting up. “We oughta take our shower before Mom comes to see what’s wrong.

I got up off the floor and ran the water till it was warm. I didn’t look at Eric. I was feeling sheepish and a little guilty about what had happened. He was quiet, too, but as I stood there beside the shower, he laid his hand on my bare back.

We got into the tub and closed the shower curtain. I was closest to the shower, so I soaped up first and then stepped aside for Eric to soap up.

When his back was to me, and he was soaping up his stomach, on impulse, I soaped his back and the back of his shoulders, and then down onto his bottom.

“All done,” I said.

Eric turned to me, backing under the shower. He let it wash his hair down the back of his neck and he had his eyes closed. My eyes traveled up and down his ten-year-old body, and the water sheeting down his chest and belly and dripping from his worm of a cock, and I decided that I had the most perfect little brother there could be.

He wiped the water from his eyes and smiled at me. We shifted so I could get back under the showerhead, but as we passed, he wrapped his arms around my chest and hugged me hard. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and rubbed my cheek against his wet hair.

The last few days had been sad, and we were both still hurting. But I was thirteen, and I was happy. I had a little brother, and I already loved him.

Eric looked up at me and closed his eyes. Flicks of water fell over his ten-year-old face and the lips of his small mouth. I lowered my lips to his.

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My email address is btomandback@hotmail.com. Please let me know if you enjoyed the story. It's the only pay us Nifty writers get. :) My other stories are listed under Jack Edwards, or Josh Btomandback in the prolific author section here on Nifty.