Segue Alpha – Frank Comes Clean to his Sisters

(THIS STORY FITS BETWEEN CHAPTERS TWO AND THREE, CHRONOLOGICALLY)

*Disclaimer* My segue chapters will have no sex in them; they are story continuations or bridges, so if you like the story for what it is, here’s more, but if you’re looking to get off, there might not be much content here for you.

The day after Frank and Ashley realized their bond was a Friday, with threatening clouds amassing in the west all morning. By the time Ashley had come home from the gym, sprinkles were falling irregularly and the temperature was dropping a bit. When Frank’s mom popped her head into his room, saying that she was going to visit Frank’s aunt, Tasha’s sister, across town, the sprinkles had increased to hail, so that there was a constant rattle coming from outside.

After his mom had left, Frank decided to see what his sisters were up to, so he put a mark in his book and shelved it on his way out of his room. Halfway down the stairs, he saw Ashley and Jean seated in the den playing what looked like a very intense game of checkers. They didn’t even look up when he went into the kitchen for a sports drink and took a swallow.

“So who’s winning?”

To his query, Ashley held up one finger, and then used one of her kings to jump three of Jeans checkers, making her scoff and cover her eyes.

“Let’s play two out of three, you distracted me!”

Ashley laughed at Jean’s excuse and acquiesced, sweeping what remained of their armies off the board and beginning to replace them in the beginning state.

“You’re welcome to play the winner, Frank, but we are a little busy settling this series right now.”

Frank held up his hands to Jean, “Play on, sisters. I was just seeing what was up.”

He left them to it, and went back upstairs with his drink in hand. He passed Vanessa’s room on his way back to his own, and barely heard a sound coming from the otherwise silent room. He frowned and paused outside her door, painted black, and attempted to listen intently despite the hammering of the hail outside. He distinctly heard a sob from within.

His frown deepened. He had planned on speaking to his metalhead sister about the twin bond that he had discovered between him and his other two sisters, but now it seemed that she was in some sort of distress. He felt for her, despite her offish personality, so he knocked on the door, and opened it a crack.

Inside was a similar layout to the other bedrooms in the house, except metal band posters stood in prominent positions on the stark white walls. There was minimal furniture, consisting of a chair and a tv on a stand and a twin bed against the wall. Vanessa sat on her grey bedspread with her fists in her eyes, but looked up at Frank when he entered.

Immediately she reacted negatively.

“Get the hell out of my room!” she said in a raised voice, but not quite yelling. Her make-up was blotted around her eyes and ran in rivulets down her cheeks.

Frank, caught off-guard, raised his hands and backed out the way he came, closing the door behind him. From within, however, he heard a single word.

“Wait.”

He cocked an eyebrow at the sudden reversal, and reopened the door, gazing warily inside at his sister. She was wiping her make-up off with tissues where it had run, sniffling back her tears as best as she could. When Frank stepped into the room, she threw the tissues into her trash bin and got up off her bed, making for the door. She shut it and twisted the lock in the knob, and then returned to the bed. Her blue eyes, shot with red veins and lined with partially smeared black make-up, slowly rose to meet his.

“Will you… talk with me?”

Frank nodded to her, and grabbed the chair, which had been unprofessionally painted black, and drew it over to her. He was willing to brave the abrasive personality that Vanessa had adopted, because she was obviously distressed in some way. He sat down in it backwards, leaning his crossed arms on top of the back of it, and looked at her, taking in her condition.

Her newly blacked hair was clean and brushed, her skinny frame wearing black baggy pants and a pair of shirts; one a black long-sleeve and the other a basic black t-shirt over the long-sleeved shirt. A single silver band clung to each wrist, and an oval pendant hung from her neck over her shirts. Her pale face, although marred by the ruined make-up, was otherwise clean and unblemished, her high cheekbones drawing down to a slender jaw and her narrow nose centered perfectly in her face.

Frank was worried that she was going to confront him about his recent relations with his sister, afraid that Vanessa had heard them during their throes of passion.

Vanessa cast her eyes about the room for a dozen heartbeats, and then spoke again, her gaze lingering on the blank-screened television.

“Do you- I mean, what do you- Am I attractive to you? As a guy, I mean, do you think I’m hot?”

Frank tried to buy some time as he tried to think of how to word his answer like he wasn’t actually someone who went around fucking his sisters, and to try to give her a fair appraisal.

“Why are you asking me?”

She shot him an acid-filled look which immediately dissolved into something less forceful.

“Just- Please answer the question.”

“Well, I think you’re very striking, not counting the fact that you’ve been crying.”

She shifted her weight and met his eyes before looking at the ground.

“And I’ll bet that underneath all that make-up you’re beautiful too.”

She looked up with an almost disdainful look in her eye, so he rapidly backpedaled.

“I mean, in a very Morticia Addams sort of way.”

A smile came, with a quick flash of teeth, but she shut it down and glanced around again. She leaned back against the wall and pulled her knees up with her, her socked feet on the bedspread. Frank wondered where exactly she was going with this, but he had a vague idea.

“Did you have a boyfriend that none of us knew about?”

Vanessa sighed, apparently searching for where to start.

“This is… strange for me, talking to you about this stuff. We’ve never been close, and to all of a sudden…”

Frank held up his hands off the chair back.

“I don’t mind at all, in fact I’m glad to help if I can. Even though we are very different, I’m still your brother.”

She sniffed again, rubbing circles in her temples with her fingertips. Finally she re-opened her eyes and established intermittent eye-contact with him again while they spoke.

“You know my friend Hadley?”

Frank thought for a moment, “Is he that guy I’ve seen over here every once in a while? Tall and gangly, wearing your colors?”

Vanessa nodded.

“What about him?”

“Well… I’ve been- I mean, we’ve been… You know.”

Frank raised his eyebrows questioningly, “Sleeping together?”

Another nod from her. Frank waited patiently until she summoned the proper words to explain what was on her mind.

“For a couple months now we’ve been… sleeping together. It was just supposed to be a fun thing, friends-with-benefits or whatever. We didn’t really talk about it. Recently though, I’ve felt… well, feelings towards Hadley, especially after we had sex.”

Frank signaled that he understood.

“Well, I tried to talk to him about it today. How I feel about him. But he just said I was complicating things, and that it wasn’t cool. So I told him that I wouldn’t fuck him anymore.”

She looked over at the corner that her bed was tucked into, “He got mad. He told me that that’s okay, because he’s been fucking Mary AND Tabitha for longer than I have been with him.”

Her lip was quivering now, and her brow creased. Frank groaned in vexation, silently raging against the stupidity of some men, and shook his head.

“That’s just ridiculous. I’m sorry you got hurt, Vanessa.”

A sob escaped her throat. Her eyes squeezed shut again, forcing more tears from the corners of her eyes. Frank scraped his chair forward and put her hand on one of her socked feet, but she spasmed and slapped the bed beside her.

“It’s my fault! I should never have fallen for him!”

Frank leaned back a bit, just in case she started kicking in rage, and made a disbelieving face.

“You were having sex with him for months, which is the second-most profound expression of love, and you expected yourself to not fall for him? In fact, you blame yourself for his outrageous reaction to your feelings because of it? That’s just as ridiculous as his reaction.”

Vanessa met his eye solidly, surprise on her face beneath the tears. Frank moved the tissue box from next to her TV onto the bed where her left hand could reach them easily.

“I… didn’t really look at it like that.” She said as she took a tissue and wiped at her face.

“You should give yourself some credit once in a while. Despite how you want to mark your difference from everyone else, you are, after all, still human.”

She blew her nose and tossed the tissue into the trash with a low-energy throw. She shut her eyes and shook her head.

“It still hurts though.”

Frank sighed, at a loss for words. Finally he decided to just be with her for the moment, so with a scrape, he got out of the chair, sat on the edge of her bed, and put one hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with suspicion in her eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“How about a hug, sis? You look like you need it.”

He eased back to the wall next to her and put his arm around her rigid shoulders. Vanessa didn’t relax into him; instead spoke the words that made Frank’s own frame go rigid.

“I know you’ve been fucking Jean and Ashley. That’s not what this is, right?”

He paused, trying somehow to separate his incestuous leanings and his genuine want to help Vanessa through her obviously torrential feelings.

“That’s not what this is, I promise. Right now, I’m just your brother who is trying to support you in a time of need.”

Vanessa quivered some more for a moment, then relaxed under his arm. He drew her against his chest with his left arm, his right pushing her hair out of her streaming face. She cried aloud, and then cried some more, her copious tears wetting the front of his t-shirt. Frank had never been this close to his sister before, either physically or emotionally, but he did his best to just support her in both ways. His left hand squeezed her shoulder; his right fingers tucked in behind her knee, hopefully making her feel secure.

Because he wasn’t touching her skin, he didn’t feel an electric connection between them. However, he did feel a sort of metaphysical tingle in his chest, and realized there was some sort of transfer of energies happening between him and Vanessa via the wet spot on his shirt from her tears. He began to feel slightly drained, the feeling continuing even while Vanessa began to calm down, her emotional storm blowing itself out. By the time she was reduced to sniffing and breathing through her mouth, Frank was tired too, and he wasn’t sure why. He reached around for the tissue box and laid it in front of her, and she used them again.

After a few minutes of just holding her in his arms, he realized that she had stopped sniffling, and her breathing was quite regular. Cranking his head around to see, he saw that her eyes were closed; leaning against him she had cried herself to sleep.

“Well, now I’m trapped.” He whispered to the four walls around him.

He carefully fished his phone out of his pocket and typed out a text to Jean.

‘Hey, I’m up in Vanessa’s room, she’s pretty distraught. I was talking her through some stuff and she fell asleep against me, so I’m going to be in here a while. Her door is locked, so don’t try to come in.

And NO, I’m NOT fucking her!’

The message sent, and a minute later, he received a response from Jean.

‘Okay, weird that she opened up to you, but okay.

I believe you’re not fucking her lol, I don’t think you would go behind my back like that  ’

Frank read the message, stared at the ceiling for a moment, then responded that they would talk later. The pressure behind his solar plexus told him that he needed to address the situation between himself had Jean, and himself and Ashley.

Feeling his fatigue heavier than before, Frank decided that it could wait until tomorrow.

As he fell asleep, the hail slowly diminished into a steady rainfall. It drenched the whole county, continuing all afternoon and into the evening, until it finally fell off and quit at around ten o’clock. Soon after, Frank swam back to consciousness, finding himself in almost total blackness, his surroundings only vaguely familiar, a warm body held against him, and aching joints from falling asleep upright against a wall.

His senses returned and he remembered what happened.

“Oh yeah…” He whispered aloud.

Lighting his phone screen, Frank ever so gently lifted his sister off of him, moved out of the way, and laid her down just as gently on the bed spread. He hunted around for something to cover her with, found a drab afghan, and settled it over her sleeping form, then quietly extricated himself from the room, the door snapping shut behind him.

Sighing with vague relief, he stumbled to his own room, past Jean’s open doorway flooded with light.

“Hey!” came Jean’s voice from behind him as he came to his own bedroom door.

He turned around, blinking at Jean leaning around the doorframe, her long hair waving when she spoke.

“Is Vanessa okay?”

“I think she’ll be all right. She took emotional blows recently. Mostly guy trouble, but it’s more complicated than that.”

Jean nodded, “It usually is.”

Frank paused, remembering that he had to talk to her and Ashley.

“Wanna… come inside?”

Frank blinked at the dual reference, and saw the mischievous smile on his sister’s face. He trudged over to her and drew her into a kiss that lasted for about ten seconds, but then drew back before it went any further.

“Not while everyone is home,” he whispered. Jean made a disappointed sound.

“I do want to talk to you about that subject though. You going to be around tomorrow morning?”

Jean nodded, still affected by the electric kiss they shared. Frank realized that he wasn’t immune to it himself, so he nodded and kissed her forehead, bidding her goodnight. They lingered, reluctant to part their hands from one another, but gave in and retreated to their own rooms.

Distant, retreating thunder rumbled as their doors shut and their lights extinguished.

Frank was up early the next morning, which was strange for him on a Saturday, but he had slept rather irregularly the following day and night. He was downstairs rummaging around for something to eat when he heard the rhythmic noises of someone coming down the stairs. Vanessa turned the corner from the stairway, her black bag swinging from a black-clad shoulder, and stopped short when she saw Frank in the kitchen. He set down the box of cereal he had just grabbed, and turned to face her, a slight look of sympathy crossing his features.

“How are you this morning?”

Vanessa shrugged one shoulder, but smiled at him. She actually smiled.

“I still feel kind of terrible about Hadley. But for some reason I’m- I feel almost optimistic.”

Frank nodded, and smiled at her. She took a step toward him.

“Hey, um… I just wanted to say thanks about yesterday. Thanks for listening to me and comforting me, and for not taking advantage of me. That was… really cool of you.”

“Yeah, not a problem Vanessa. You definitely needed a shoulder.” He looked down and to the left at his shirt, “Luckily, I had a spare.”

A smile sprang unbidden to her mouth that reached to her eyes, and surprisingly she didn’t immediately shut it down. Instead, she rushed forward and wrapped her arms around him, trapping his arms at his side, and then just as quickly drew back and left the room with a swirl of black hair. She glanced over her shoulder at him once before opening the front door, and then she was gone.

Frank sighed, glad that she was making a proper emotional U-turn, out of the doldrums she had been thrown into yesterday. He returned to getting something to eat.

After breakfast, he went and got the mail. Setting it on the table, he heard another pair of feet thumping down the stairs, so he turned to see Jean yawning and stretching. She noticed him and smiled sleepily, waving at him. Frank let her get something for breakfast before broaching the subject he didn’t want to broach.

Returning to the kitchen, he saw Jean on her phone, as was her custom right after breakfast.

“How about that talk now, Jean.”

She nodded and pocketed her phone.

Frank sighed, not quite sure how to begin, so he took a seat across the table from Jean. She looked at him with a slight smile, and then leaned forward a bit with concern written on her face, her brown hair falling forward past her shoulders.

“Is there something wrong, Frank?”

He looked at her, remembering their tryst a couple weeks ago; how incredible and intense it was, and wondered at how he could ever have gone for someone else after that. His experience with Ashley a couple days ago was visceral and very fun, but if having sex with her had ruined everything between him and Jean, it was definitely not worth it. Despite all that, he knew he had to tell Jean what had happened, simply because he respected her as a woman, as his sister, and as a lover.

He decided to just dive right in.

“First off, I just wanted to say how much I loved our experience. You’re my sister, but now you’re more than that, because of our bond and what we did. I never want to lose you, for any reason, and that’s been my feelings on the matter since we made love.”

Jean’s smile grew and her face reddened as he spoke. They both reached their hands out and played with their fingers; their sense of touch amplified whenever their skin brushed one another. Frank sighed with conflicting emotions.

“That’s why I have to tell you that I had sex with Ashley a couple days ago.”

Jean’s hand withdrew suddenly, her blinking in complete surprise.

The words poured out of Frank.

“It was the same unintentional coupling as what happened between you and I, only somewhat of a different experience. I found out that our bond is not exclusive to just you and me, it is between me and all three of my sisters, and probably between you girls too. I didn’t actually realize just how important my actions were until after I had been with Ashley; the experience just ramped up too quickly. I don’t have an excuse for my actions, but I thought you deserved an explanation.”

Frank shivered as he thought of how Jean would explode at him; her eyes were a cauldron of smoldering coals. He dropped his gaze to the table, his hands clasped before him.

“I’m sorry, Jean.”

For a moment he just clenched and unclenched his teeth, waiting for the hammer to fall. He knew he deserved it. Instead of a screaming monologue, he instead felt Jean’s hand gently work its way between his own, and the static tickled his nerve endings once more. He looked up and found conflicting emotions playing across Jean’s features.

“I forgive you, Frank.”

He knew he couldn’t keep the surprise off his face, so he didn’t try.

“I’ve seen and felt your compassion, Frank, what with comforting Vanessa the other day and our own awesome sex. I can’t imagine you doing anything to hurt me intentionally.”

Her gaze hardened.

“But you did hurt me. I know you know that. So as long as you promise not to go behind my back ever again, about anything that concerns us, we can move on from this.”

Frank marveled at Jean’s emotional maturity, and a smile touched his lips.

“I promise you Jean, never again will I go behind your back.”

She sighed with relief, and came up with a confident smile.

“Good.”

Frank whooshed out his breath and nervously giggled a little bit, “That was a little easier than I anticipated. Now I just have to figure out what to tell Ashley.”

Jean cocked her head to the side, “You didn’t tell her about you and me?”

“No, she is clueless. Vanessa knows though, about you and me and me and Ashley. I think she’ll keep a lid on it though, it didn’t seem to concern her much.”

Jean nodded, her gaze thoughtful, “We’ll tell her together.”

Frank thought about it, and then nodded.

Ashley liked to sleep in on the weekends, just like Frank usually did, so it was almost another hour before they heard footsteps on the stairs. Ashley came into the kitchen with just her sleeping attire on; a t-shirt with no bra, and a pair of dark lacey panties. Frank, who was at the checkers table with Jean in the den, saw this and immediately attempted to focus elsewhere, lest his pants tent up.

“Good morning, Ash.”

She looked over at Frank’s greeting and gave a wide smile to him. With a husky voice, she returned the greeting, “Good morning lover.”

Jean, seated in such a way that Ashley was unable to see her from this angle, smiled with raised eyebrows, and leaned over so that Ashley could see her too.

“Good morning, Ashley!”

Ashley’s face froze, and she glanced between Frank and Jean. She began attempting to stutter out an explanation.

“I um, I didn’t mean to- um, what I meant to say was-“

Jean giggled a little and waved her hand dismissively.

“It’s all right, Ashley, I know about you and him.”

Ashley clamped her mouth shut in surprise, and her gaze snapped over to Frank.

“This is super weird. Why did you tell her, Frank??”

Frank got up from his chair, and came into the kitchen. He took up her hands in his own and said, “Because I was with her a week before I was with you.”

Another layer of surprise poured over Ashley, her mouth falling open and her gaze flicked between her brother and sister. Frank went on, wanting to get as much explanation out before she had a chance to get over her surprise and begin freaking out.

“It was an unintentional discovery, believe me. Quite similar to how you and I got together, actually; simply marveling at the bond between us escalated to more pleasurable things. Jean and I have the same connection, and I’m pretty sure that Vanessa and I do as well. I was so astonished at the fantastic bond we share that things got carried away.”

Ashley’s mouth had slowly closed as she began processing the explanation; she remembered the intensity of the erotic experience she had shared with Frank, the there/not there electricity that was rippling through their nerves right now as Frank held her hands in his own. She looked down at their joined hands.

Jean came around Frank and wrapped an arm around Ashley’s shoulders.

“I understand just how wild this bond between us all is firsthand. I shared something with my brother that I never thought was possible to share with anyone. It has to be because we are all twins; quadruplets. I’ve forgiven Frank for getting with you after he got with me because I understand that this connection is exclusive to only us four siblings. Who am I to say that he can only experience it with me?”

Jean took her arm from around her sister’s shoulders and clasped her hand over Frank and Ashley’s hands, adding her energy to their own. Ashley gasped at the touch of her sister, and the fire that danced between their fleshes. Ashley met Jean’s eyes in wonderment.

“We are all connected.” Jean finished.

Ashley shook her head and extracted one hand from their embrace, and rubbed at her face and eyes.

“This is so incredible. I’m not still dreaming, am I?”

Frank smiled and let her hand fall to her side, leading her over to the kitchen table where she sat down.

“I think you just need something to eat; we laid a lot on you this morning.”

Ashley nodded and yawned again. Jean put down some toast and Frank went into the fridge for a couple bananas, keeping one for himself and giving the other to Ashley.

Jean decided to go upstairs and put some day clothes on, so Frank ate with Ashley, and when they had finished, Ashley leaned back in her chair with a bit more capability in her eyes now that she had taken on some fuel. She crossed her legs and looked at her brother, calculating his motives and words and weighing their truth.

“Things did happen a little fast between us the other day, didn’t it?”

Frank nodded, half-smiling in concurrence.

Ashley bobbed the foot that was crossed over her other leg.

“I can understand how you could have been caught up by certain events; there wasn’t much of a chance to think about why we shouldn’t do what we were aiming to do. So, I forgive you.”

She smirked and leaned forward coyly, “I know that how sexy I am can interfere with how guys think, so I really don’t blame you.”

Frank laughed aloud, and soon Ashley joined him.

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