This little tale has its origin in an advice column from a local newspaper. I thought the advice was terrible, but the situation was interesting, thus the story. I'm not sure about the proper category, but I just don't feel fulfilled any more without my "1* wimp cuck shit" comment from Anonymous, so into LW it goes.
Thanks as always, to BlackRandl1958 for her peerless editing and constant encouragement. It's a privilege to be on her team.
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So, there I was, on Christmas morning, sitting in my truck, watching the local park fill up with snow. That's all there was to watch. The homeless guys who've staked out spots for themselves under the pine trees were all down at the mission enjoying Christmas dinner. Even the birds, the squirrels and the chipmunks were holed up with their families, cozily sharing whatever it is they eat. There was nobody here but me, and I didn't seem to matter very much. Thereby, as they say, hangs a tale.
Before I go on, I'd better introduce the dram-mantis pair-son-nay, as it used to say in the plays I had to read in school. I always thought that sounded sort of cool, that's why I'm throwing it in here.
Most important, to me anyway, is my wife, Ellen. She's thirty-six, like me, and we pretty much grew up together. She always had a thing for protecting the underdog, and I always hated bullies, so we fell in together a lot. She's smarter than I am, which doesn't take much, and I'm stronger and tougher than she is, which also doesn't take much, but don't tell her I said that. We both feel sort of protective about other people, and we were a good team; sort of an anti-bully league. We fell into being best friends, and found out we had a lot in common, and we figured we would try dating. That went pretty good too, and after a while we looked around and found out we each liked each other a lot better than we were ever going to like anyone else, so we got married.
Okay, it's not Romeo and Juliet, but hey, remember what happened to them? Yeah, we have sex, and like it, a lot, but it's never been the most important thing in our lives, and it never will be. It sounds corny, but we're each other's other half, in just about every way you can think of. We're only half a person without the other, and we'll still have that when we're seventy or whenever it is we kick the bucket.
So, now I guess I'm supposed to say what we look like. I'm sort of big; Ellen tells me I'm "ruggedly handsome." I think she exaggerates some, but I'm good with her thinking that. She's no cheerleader: tall and skinny, little boobs and ass, but pretty dark brown hair that she wears long so I can lose myself in it, and deep brown eyes in the most honest and open face you've ever seen. She may not be everyone's idea of a raving beauty, but she's mine, and always will be.
Sue is Ellen's younger sister by five years. Ellen takes care of people; it's what she does (and why she's a great RN), and she's been taking care of Sue almost since she was born. Sue was always pretty and sweet and nice to everyone, whether they deserved it or not. Trouble was, as she grew up, she would be sweet and nice to guys who only wanted to take advantage of her, and Ellen and I felt like we spent half our lives getting her out of scrapes. She always thanked us, and cried a little, and promised she would be smarter next time, and then a few months later some other bad boy type would have her on a string.
Ellen and I had been married a few years when Sue fell hard for this David character. He was a good looking sonuvabitch, I have to give him that. Sue had grown into a gorgeous young woman, and they made a fine-looking couple. Joyce, Sue and Ellen's mom, was half in love with him herself, especially when she thought about grandbabies. (Ellen and I couldn't have children.) Problem was, he was crookeder than a dog's hind leg, slippery as an eel, and had the morals of an alley cat. That's just what I thought of him: Ellen thought, and said, a lot worse.
Well, Ellen and I sailed in and tried to rescue Sue again, but this time she wasn't having any. David was her man, and she was standing by him. Things got heated, especially between Ellen and Sue. I think part of it was that Sue saw how happy Ellen and I were together, and was sick of being the third wheel, so she wanted a husband of her own. Mostly, though, Sue just couldn't get her head around the idea that anyone could be as outright evil as Ellen and I knew David was, especially someone that good looking.
It all blew sky-high one night when Joyce invited Ellen and me to dinner. We figured Sue would probably be there, but hadn't planned on finding David sitting in the recliner like he owned the place, with Sue on his lap. Sue picked that moment to announce that she and David were getting married in three months. Ellen got this murderous look on her face, and David just smirked at her.
"Anyone who can't get along with my husband," Sue proclaimed, "isn't friend or family of mine."
I had to get Ellen out of there before she did or said something that couldn't be fixed, so we left pretty quick. That night, I held my wife as she cried her heart out onto my chest. We both loved Sue to pieces, in spite of her having no sense whatever when it came to men. I was an only child, and had thought of Sue as my little sister, long before Ellen and I married and it became official. We both knew what she was in for, so yeah, my tears were falling into Ellen's hair about as fast as hers were wetting my shirt. We were both a soggy mess.
Joyce was all for the marriage. She and I managed to patch things up enough between Sue and Ellen that the wedding went off okay, but let's just say there's a reason hardly any of Sue's wedding pictures have Ellen or me in them. When we got home, Ellen pulled out the pictures of our wedding with her and maid-of-honor Sue just glowing with happiness, and cried some more while I held her.
"I've lost my sister," she finally said. I didn't know what to say, though we both knew I felt the same way, so I just held her.
Joyce was a widow; Ellen's dad had died about five years before she and I married. It was a work accident of some kind, and the company and the insurance had actually done right by the widow, for once. She owned her house outright, and had left Jim's investments pretty much alone, so she was in good shape financially. Of course, Ellen took care of her mom, which meant I did, too. I had the bright idea that we should put Ellen's name on all of Joyce's accounts, so if she got sick or something, Ellen could handle stuff for her. We'd done that just after Ellen and I got married.
That leaves me, Joe. I'm a welder, and I'm okay. We're all right financially, nothing to write home about, but we don't have to scrimp, and most months we put a little something away for retirement. I try to do the right thing, when I can figure out what it is. There's never been anything special about me, except one thing: I love Ellen, and she loves me. Which sounds like two things, but it isn't, at least not for us.
After the wedding, we didn't see much of David and Sue. Truth to tell, we didn't expect them to stay together very long. We did get together at Joyce's for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but that was about it, and more often than not, David found some reason not to be there. That was fine with Ellen and me. Sue still wouldn't say or hear a word against him. Ellen and I developed a grudging respect for her loyalty, misguided as it was. Still, she kept a weather eye on her mom's finances to spot any leakage to David the Dickwad.
They'd been married a few years when I was working a two-day job out of town and had to be gone overnight. Ellen had picked up a night shift that night, both for the overtime and to help out a friend, so after work I left a message for her, and headed down to the hotel bar for a little refreshment and a bigger television than they had in my room.
The game had gotten boring and I was just about to head back to my room when I saw him: Sue's worthless husband. Asshole had a girl in his lap who was most definitely not my sister-in-law, and was tickling and groping her to his heart's delight. Hers too, judging from the little squeaks she kept making. She was having a lot of trouble keeping her legs together, that little miniskirt was headed north in a hurry, and the part of her tight shirt that sort of covered her big tits was looking the worse for wear. As I got close enough, I took some pictures with my phone. I figured I might need evidence or something. David ignored me until I was next to their table. He gave each of the girl's nipples a final pinch and twist, then turned and smiled his smarmy smile at me.
"Well, Joe, I see you're no smarter than you were last time I saw you," he said. "Just what do you think you're doing with that?" He pointed at my phone.
"Fixing something that should've been fixed years ago," said I, and put my phone away in my pocket.
"Oh? And what might that be?"
"Your marriage." He leaned back in his chair and laughed loud and long.
"Oooh, you're married? How naughty!" simpered the girl, as she rubbed a tit or so on his chest.
"Joe, you poor fool," he began, when he stopped laughing enough he could talk. "You still don't get it. Listen, I'll make this easy for you. I'm in room 509, and Trixie - Trixie?" the girl nodded, "and I are going up there and we're going to fuck all night. You can come up and take all the pictures you want."
"Ooooh, kinky!" came from the girl. David slapped her ass to keep her quiet. It didn't work. She squeaked.
"Then you can take them home and show them to your sweet little sister in law. And you know what? It's you she'll be mad at, not me!"
I could feel my face turning red, and my fists clench at my side as he laughed. I forced myself to be calm. I think I've mentioned that I hate bullies, and there was one in front of me that needed seeing to. Being around Ellen all those years had taught me some manners, however.
"Trixie, this gentleman and I have some business outside. Would you excuse us?"
The girl looked at me as though I was talking Latin; Asshole grabbed her around her waist and laughed at me some more.
"Hiding behind her won't help you," I said. Asshole laughed harder, and I was aware of a large presence behind me.
"Is there a problem here?" asked a gravelly voice. I turned around to thank him and tell him we'd settle it ourselves, then I realized he wasn't talking to me.
"No, he was just leaving," said Asshole, while the girl in his lap giggled. The large presence laid a hand on my shoulder.
"This isn't finished," I groused at Asshole.
"It is for tonight," stated the gravelly voice. It sounded like it knew what it was talking about. I stalked away as Asshole and the girl laughed at me.
The next day I finished the job and drove home, pulling in about nine. I'd been trying all the way home to figure out how to tell Ellen I'd seen David cheating on Sue. Saying nothing wasn't an option, she knew me too well, and would see that I was upset. Besides, I never liked not telling her things, it felt too much like cheating. Not cheating cheating, like Asshole was doing, but we'd been best friends before we even dated, and I could and did tell her everything, even then. This was going to be hard.
I could see the excitement on Ellen's face turn to worry about two seconds after I walked in the door. That's how long it took her to figure out something was seriously wrong.
"I don't need to ask how your trip was," she said, with a serious look. "Dump your gear and wash your hands while I get you a drink. Then we'll sit on the sofa and talk." Well, that's what she did, except after I sat down on the sofa, she knelt in front of me, pulled off my shoes and socks, and started rubbing my feet. I could feel the tension leaving my body as she worked. She watched my face as close as I watch a pressure gauge, and when she thought I was cooled down enough, she wrapped a little rug around my feet and joined me on the sofa. I wondered what I'd done to deserve a woman like Ellen, and not for the first time, either.
"I've never seen you look like that before. Now tell me about it, and we'll figure out what to do."
