Five Sons

All characters in this story are aged 18 or over. Any reference to younger ages relates to non-sexual past history only.

---

Martin left at half five. I heard the car, heard the gate, lay there in the quiet for a bit thinking about what I was actually going to do. Then I got up and made coffee and thought fuck it, you only live once.

I waited until they'd all surfaced and eaten. I could hear them from the kitchen, the noise five young men make when no one's performing for anyone. Football opinions, someone getting grief about his new haircut, giggling that stops and starts. I've listened to the boys' noise for years and I've always liked it more than I was supposed to. I stood at the bottom of the stairs for a moment. Forty-five years old, black sheer hold-ups, pearl necklace, nothing else, phone in hand. Their stepmother, their father's wife.

---

Rory was reading his phone, probably his new girlfriend. He looked up and went completely still in the way Rory does everything, no wasted movement, just his full attention. Connor was already sitting up in the bunk behind him. Jamie and Callum were on the opposite bunk, again with their phones, and they both lowered them at the same moment, which under other circumstances might have been funny. Alfie's head appeared over the top rail, that young open face, blinking, and clearly blushing a little.

"Er, Mum..." The word came out before he'd thought about it. Seven years of habit bless.

"Um yes and no. Not really your mum." Technically accurate. But close enough that it counted as something, and we both knew it.

I held up my phone. "Someone needs to film all this."

Rory already had his. "For a prank?"

"Oh no, this is for real."

"Fucking hell," said Jamie, very quietly, to no one in particular.

The boards were cold through the nylon. I've had this body long enough to know it. There are things about it I've made my peace with and things I haven't. I stood there in black hold-ups in a Highland bunk room with five young men looking at me and what I felt was not anxiety. I felt like I'd been building to something for quite a long time and had finally arrived at it. Gosh, I was already obscenely wet from thinking about it.

---

Connor's hands were on my tits first, which I'd expected. He's been looking at me with that patience since his twentieth birthday and I've been watching him look and pretending I haven't, and there is something quite remarkable about stopping that pretence. Five years of watching his father's wife across dinner tables and holiday meals and Sunday afternoons, and now his hands on my tits, his tongue in my mouth, and I let him have that for a minute because he'd waited long enough for it.

Alfie came down the ladder. Just turned eighteen in March. I've known him since he was eleven, watched him grow up in the house his father and I shared, and I want to be absolutely clear that in those years I never once thought about him the way I thought about him standing there in his boxers looking at me like I was the answer to a question he hadn't known he was asking. Such a young face to have that expression on. He'd called me mum without thinking about it five minutes ago. I felt something complicated about it.

"How long have you been thinking about wanting this?"

"Um, I guess since about fifteen. I started to wank about you when you wore that dress to Uncle Simon's wedding..." He went the colour of a lobster.

Connor was still at my nipple. I kissed Alfie and he kissed back with everything he had, no technique, just urgency and sincerity, and I got my hand into his boxers and found his cock, hard and young and absolutely no patience at all, and pulled him down onto the lower bunk. I took my time. Long slow pull from base to tip, felt his stomach go rigid, did it again and felt his hips lift trying to follow, and took my hand away entirely.

The noise he made had never come out of him before. I could tell.

"Please," he said. "Please, Mum."

I looked at him. "Later," I said, and kissed him once, and stood up.

He lay there. I was not worried about Alfie being unruly for the rest of the day.

---

Jamie next. Jamie is built the way some men are built, everywhere, and getting my mouth round his cock took a moment. I worked him slowly and felt him go rigid trying to stay quiet, that desperate stillness of a man trying not to make a sound in a shared space, and I stopped when I could feel how close he was and he said please and I sat back on my heels and that was Jamie done.

Rory handed Callum his phone without being asked.

Callum I sat on. That's the right word for it. He lay back and I took my time getting my knees either side of his head, one hand on the rail above, and lowered myself until his mouth was where I wanted it. He had no instruction. He worked it out. I felt him find his rhythm and I let my weight settle and watched his hands go to my thighs and stayed there until I could feel the first pull of something I wasn't ready to give yet, and I lifted off.

He lay there. Eyes open. Breathing. "Christ," he said.

"Good boy."

Rory took his phone back from Callum, then held his hand out for mine without a word. I gave it to him. He stood in front of me.

"Not even blood," I said. "So there's no real excuse for either of us."

"Which of us are you talking to?"

"Does it matter."

He came down.

I took him in my mouth and felt him go from composed to completely the opposite in about forty seconds, his hands in my hair, not pushing, just resting, and I knew when he was close because his whole body changed, went solid and held, and I pulled back and looked up.

"Christ almighty, Jane."

"Mum," I said.

He looked at me for a long moment. "Christ almighty, Mum."

---

Connor was last and he knew exactly what I'd done to each of his brothers and he watched me walk toward him with five years of waiting on his face and I felt the full weight of that, what it meant to have been looked at that way for that long by this particular man. Martin's eldest, who'd sat across from me at Christmas for half a decade and said nothing and given nothing away. And finally I was walking toward it rather than away.

I got him out and wrapped my hand round him and looked at him for long enough that he had to look away. Then I lowered my head and took him slowly, the full length, and felt his stomach tighten the moment I did it. Pulled back. Did it again. Held the base of him and worked my tongue in a slow circle and felt his hips trying to follow. Pre-cum on my lips. Salt. I could feel exactly when he was close because everything in him went still, that held quality, a man going very quiet trying not to tip over, and I pulled back at the exact moment he needed me not to.

His head dropped forward.

"Be a good boy," I said.

I saw it land. Two seconds while he looked at me, and then he reached down and got his hand in the nylon and I heard the tear before I'd understood what he was doing. All the way up the back. One long clean rip.

---

Middle bunk. Connor behind me, Alfie in front. Connor found what he wanted in about thirty seconds. Deep enough that I had to stop and wait for my body to catch up. Callum's hand from underneath. Alfie in front of me, waiting. I got back to him when I could. Connor's rhythm broke at some point, went ragged, and he reached round and then I wasn't really thinking about anything at all.

"Take it, Mummy," Callum said from somewhere below, and someone laughed and someone else told him to shut up and I didn't stop and didn't want to.

Alfie had his hand in my hair and I looked up at him and his mouth moved and what came out was *mum*. Same as an hour ago. He looked horrified at himself. I didn't stop. He said it again and this time he knew exactly what he was doing and honestly so did I.

Rory moved round us with both phones, no narration, just quiet competence and the occasional soft direction. *Turn your head. Stay there.* I don't know when I started listening to him but at some point I was. He filmed Connor behind me for a long time and then came round to my face and held the phone close and I looked directly into it and didn't look away, and whatever was in my face then is in the footage now.

There was a mirror and I looked at myself in it. Really looked. Hold-ups in tatters. What was happening to me and what I was doing to them and all five of them involved in it. I stayed with it longer than was probably necessary. I'm not sure what I expected to feel. What I actually felt was something like relief, which I haven't entirely worked out yet.

---

I came before any of them. The first time I couldn't hold still, which Callum had to deal with. Rory said something in my ear that's not going on the recording. I've thought about it more than I've thought about most of what happened that morning, which probably tells me something I'm not ready to look at directly.

The second one I hadn't seen coming. Connor shifted, Callum's hand moved, and that was that. My legs went. Connor caught me and held on and didn't say anything and I noticed it even then.

---

I had them kneel round me on the bunk. Filming still going. Both phones. I sat up and looked at each of them in turn and they looked back, five hard cocks, five young men who'd been waiting for hours and were finished waiting, and I understood clearly what I'd made and what was coming.

"Mum loves her boys," I said, and meant every word of it.

Callum made almost no noise. His face did though.

Jamie needed the pillow.

Rory kept the phone up. Watched where it went on my face with this expression. I'll be thinking about that expression.

Alfie said it again. *Mum.* Not a slip. Just the only word he had. And then he was done and I was sitting in it.

Connor took a long time. Looked at my face the whole while. When it happened he went completely quiet and I felt it from chest to throat and he kept looking.

I didn't move. I recognised her. That's all. I recognised her and she didn't look remotely surprised to see me.

---

Rory edited the footage. Twenty minutes. He has a good eye for it as it turns out. There's a moment at the beginning where I look straight at the camera before I go to my knees, and I've watched it several times since, and the woman looking back knows exactly what she's doing. She's not performing. She's arrived.

White text on black. *Happy anniversary, Martin.*

I don't know what I wanted him to feel when he saw it. That's the honest answer. I've told myself several versions and none of them are entirely true and I've decided that's all right for now.

I then made a large pot of tea, and slept the sleep of someone who has absolutely nothing on their conscience, which is either the best or worst thing about me, and I've genuinely never been sure which.