A Morning After Amongst Equals

"I was born to make you happy.

I think you're just my style.

Everywhere I go,

tellin' everyone I know.

Baby, I love to see you smile."

-Randy Newman, "

I Love to See You Smile

"

Foreword: Most of this story takes place the morning after "A Conversation Amongst Equals." The events of the day leading up to that story may be read in "A Remembrance Amongst Equals." I don't know if I've explained my "code" to the titles here before. It goes like this:

"Amongst Equals" means that the focus will be Troy & Julie's love story. Hopefully in the vein of old-timey romantic comedies. They got their "Happily Ever After" the night we met them, and now they're living it. Don't come here looking for sad endings. There's generally less graphic sex in them than in this story; however, this is taking place the morning after their first night together. They're likely to go again.

"Day" means Friends of Troy, Julie, and Susan may take focus over them. Once again, old-timey happy-go-lucky romantic comedy; as opposed to the modern "Jennifer Aniston has to jump through some hoops before eventually fucking this guy. Will her Gay Best Friend™ and Klutzy Gal Pal Who's the Only One Who Brings Anything Resembling Comedy to This Movie™ be able to help? Not until they talk to The Magical Negro™! Honestly, why do we keep making these? Money? No, I've done fifty of these fucking 'can you imagine a world where fucking Jennifer Aniston can't just step out her front door and point at a passerby if she really wanted to get laid that badly' trailer voiceovers alone, I'm rollin' in it! What the hell am I contributing to society? You know what? Fuck this, I'm out of here! I'm going home to pop in the original black & white '

Sabrina

,' watch Bogie and Hepburn fuckin' nail it as I lay on my bed of worthless-in-the-next-world money, think upon my sins, and cry myself to sleep" definition of "Romantic Comedy." Don't expect much violence or sadness in these ones, either.

"Night" means that the story will focus on Contessa Helena de San Finzione. Like Propappou said, "She busy. She gots the Queening to do!" Although Helen is family to the others, her world is one where things explode, people die, and she's the one expected to do something about it all. There also won't be much more science-fiction tech involved. Springheel was an idea in my head that had been looking to escape for years. Although, Helen actually FUNDS her Ministry of Science, so who knows?

Susan Bailey gets title billing in her stories because she's got a great agent. (Note from Susan: I really DO!!) She can also do that "House of Cards" thing where she stops and turns to us, the audience, says a few words, then goes back to the story. She employs parenthesis for that purpose. (Note from Susan: Like just back there. Also, right here. I COULD totally do the whole Deadpool thing if I really wanted, but The Foul and Profane Masked Thing That I Worship trusted me with this, ya know? So, I try to keep it down to Ferris Bueller.)

I love you too, Susan. Her stories tend to focus upon the personal journey that she's undergoing, and she walks between their worlds, so she could end up anywhere.

I recall hearing that something that was always on Tolkien's "To Do" list was to go back and rewrite "The Hobbit" as a gorier, more adult tale. The idea being that the version we all know and love was meant to be the "Disneyfied" Children's version of a tale from Middle Earth's mythology. And this second version would be the "Grown-Up" one that they don't tell in the Mythology books in the kids' section.

I've thought about going back and rewriting the first three stories with actual descriptions and details and such. This should take care of that desire, since the Conversation should be nicely bookended here, and Susan's taking care of the fourth and bailing me out before it became "my schtick" was why I rewarded her with Free Will and Fourth Wall Awareness. She has an email address if you want to talk to her about it. (Last Note from Susan: I grant my full permission to post my "writing business" email. It's thisisnotevenmyfinalemail at gmail dot com)

So, on with the story.

* * *

A Morning After Amongst Equals

Julie Equals and Susan Bailey sat on the couches of one of Air Finzione's SST flights, finding the seat belts between the cushions as the plane taxied onto the runway at SeaTac to take them to San Finzione.

Nine months prior, the two of them had visited San Finzione for the Festival of Cupid, at a time when a dear friend of theirs had been through a life-changing experience and decided that she wanted a child and could think of no better father than Julie's husband, Troy. Because all of them but Susan had been friends since childhood and because Jealousy was not a concept that existed in the Equals Household, they were honored to help.

Now, they were on their way to join Troy and their friend, Contessa Helena de San Finzione, for the birth. Troy had been spending a lot of time in San Finzione the past few months, primarily to help Helen's nicotine cravings, as she was a heavy smoker; but also, to assure her that she could handle motherhood, that the father would be there to help, and that their upbringing would be nothing like her own. She'd gone into labor two hours previously, and they'd been packed and ready to run out the door when the limousine from the San Finzione Consulate in Seattle came to rush them through security to their flight. With the diplomatic plates and the owner of the airline being a personal friend, they were rushed onto the tarmac to the plane for immediate takeoff.

"I keep hearing about all this airport security shit," Susan half-said to Julie, who was on the phone with Troy and Helen. "And I never have to go through a metal detector."

"It's good to be friends with The Queen." Julie responded after ending the call.

"Until one day, it's 'off with your head.'" Susan replied.

"I doubt she'd ever do that." Julie said, locking her belt into place as they turned onto the runway. "Despite everything else, Helena's really not the vindictive type." Julie thought on those words for a moment. "Unless you hurt someone she cares about. Or really piss her off. When that happens, we stay out of her way. Well, you and I do. Troy might be able to talk her down. He says everything's fine there, by the way. Paul's with them now, he's saying we should get there about in time."

Julie referred to Dr. Tenente Paul Maisson of La Squadra de Ultimados, San Finzione's Special Forces division and, since Generalissimo Ramirez had been made Supreme Commander of their armed forces two years before, La Contessa's personal guard.

"The way she feels about both of you," Susan said, tightening the seat belt. "I'm surprised she hasn't tried to steal Troy away from you. Or you away from him. Or both of you."

Julie gave a little laugh at that.

"You might be surprised to hear this, but she was always sort of pushing for us to get together. It wasn't like 'if I can't have you, nobody can.' More like 'if I can't have your hearts, then you two should have each other.'"

"She already had both of them." Susan replied. "Just not all to herself."

"Even with what was going on between us, Helena's still the first person I called the morning after."

"Well, Seattle to San Finzione is the only flight I've ever taken, so I have no way of knowing if it's a long or short flight. Other than the fact that it's Trans-Atlantic, so I'd imagine it's a long one. We've got time, is what I'm saying."

Julie checked the time on her phone. Three in the afternoon meant that they'd get to San Finzione at about ten in the morning.

"It looks like we've got time," Julie said. "So, would you like me to tell you the story, or would you like to experience it?"

Susan leaned over as far as the seat belt would allow. This was something that the power that they, Troy, and Helen all possessed to control the minds of others made possible. Whenever they could, they used it to help others. One of the uses that they'd discovered for it was telling stories of their past. Julie could simply tell her the story, or she could let her experience it as if Susan were playing Julie's role in the memory. Susan chose the latter. With the three of them having known each other their whole lives, and Susan only having come to join their family in the last two years, they'd been able use it to let her in on a few 'you had to be there' stories.

"Hmm... HEAR about you fucking Troy or EXPERIENCE it... I'll take the second one."

Julie reached out to take Susan's hand. She felt her pulse and began tapping in time with it. Susan began to relax and close her eyes.

"In that case," Julie said, her voice taking on a relaxing tone. "Go deeper and relax, Susan. Come, enter my imagination and see him."

Susan sighed and was there.

* * *

Troy Medina was dreaming about an angel giving him the best, most loving blowjob ever. He slowly began to wake up and open his eyes as it dawned on him that it wasn't a dream, but something happening to him in real life right at that moment.

Another angel was giving him the best, most loving blowjob he'd ever had. In the morning light streaming through the windows and shining down at the foot of the bed that used to be his parents' and was now his, he could make out the halo around her head, but couldn't see her face from it.

A reminder that he'd been drinking the night before came in the form of the hangover that hit him. Troy gave a sound that was half a moan at the amazingly skilled mouth around his dick, and half a moan at his head, when he remembered what had happened last night, and whose face was under the halo that he could now see was hair that started as Dishwater Blonde at its roots, then shifted color as it grew longer to a Buttery Blonde. She took her mouth off of it and looked up at him.

"Morning, Master." Julie Andrews, no relation or affiliation whatsoever to the actress/singer of the same name; said to him as she took a little pause. "He got up a few minutes ago and was looking lonely." She said before going right back to it.

As he enjoyed it, memories of the day before began trickling through the hangover as his blood was diverted away from causing him a headache. Picking Julie up at the airport, his talk with The Colonel, coming back over here to pack up Propappou's things, then taking a nap with Julie. A nap that made him start thinking about her in a way he'd never spent much time dwelling on before. Waking up too late to go out, deciding to grab something from a drive-thru and pop in a movie; having some of Propappou's Metaxa over Cookie-Bar Sundae Rainbow Explosions, deciding to play a little hypnosis game like they'd done since the two of them learned the secret of controlling minds at a young age. And that led to... the building tingling sensation started in his balls. Julie was... amazing at this.

"Julie, I... I'm gonna... I don't wanna..." He tried to tell her that he was about to cum. Julie's response was to toss her hair back, look him intensely in the eye, and redouble her efforts. Despite the movement of her head and placement of her mouth, he recognized the look on the face of his oldest, best friend. It was the look she gave whenever someone dared her to do something, right before she did it. She sped up and swirled her tongue around him until Troy couldn't take it anymore and exploded.

Troy had never thought of Julie as "the little girl next door." Not the little part, at least, because she was a week older than he was. It was an occasional joke that, because she'd been born before him, HE was the one who got to claim that SHE had been his best friend his whole life. And any suggestion of the two of them doing what they'd spent the last night doing usually came as part of Julie's reply to that joke, along with a laugh and a punch on the arm. That Julie might do what he'd woken up to her doing; much less, after Troy warned her what was now happening, and Julie made clear that she was all right with it, had been something they'd laugh off and whomever they were with at the time filed away with all of their other suspicions until inevitably concluding that the two of them MUST be "more than friends."

They had, in fact, been more than friends forever; just not in the way that their partners in previous relationships thought. Julie had been raised just as much by Troy's parents, and then his great-grandfather after they were killed in a car accident, as her own, and vice versa. When she was still a child, Julie learned to speak Greek simply from how much time she spent with Troy and Propappou. By the time they reached the age where boys and girls typically start noticing each other, they were close enough to brother and sister that the idea had been completely absurd to them.

As Julie crawled up the length of his body, he gave a little chuckle and thought the same question they'd been asking each other all night. "Why the hell didn't we do this years ago?" Julie gave Troy a brief peck on the lips, not knowing if he was the sort of guy who'd think a deeper kiss after she'd just swallowed him would be "gross." She was surprised when Troy gently lowered her lips to his again and parted his own to let her know he wasn't that type of guy. He'd tasted himself on other women's lips before, but Julie's taste was something he'd only experienced last night. Troy had always loved her scent, and now he had a new favorite thing about her.

"Morning, Mistress." He replied at last. Calling each other Master and Mistress was another habit of theirs that failed to convince anyone that they didn't have something going on behind everyone's backs. Nothing sexual had been intended by it, though; it had simply gone back to when they were children. The two of them had watched cartoons and read comics where people were hypnotized or mind-controlled to the point of being obsessed with learning how. It had been reflected in their childhood games as well. "Hypnotist" had been a popular pretend game with the two of them, and long before they moved that game into the bedroom like they had last night, Master and Mistress had become pet names to them. They'd learned quickly not to use them in public; so, the fact that it was "yet another little private thing between them" added to the list of suspicions.

"You're probably hung over, too." Julie told him, placing her hand behind his right ear and tracing small spirals. "Let me take care of that for you. Go deeper and relax."

"Umm... thank you, Mistress. You did a pretty good job of clearing my head already, though." Troy replied with a smile.

"Benefit of Doing What We Do," Julie replied, using their preferred term for the power they possessed. "Hel... SHE says that it's because I've been doing it since before we were old enough for this kind of thing, so I've never given a blowjob that I didn't absolutely want to." She gave him a little kiss. "Or to a guy I didn't really love."

Julie had an unusual experience for her upon almost mentioning a name from their past, and again when mentioning love. She and Troy had loved each other forever, and often said so. This was new, though. This time, she'd meant "love" in every possible sense; now that the one way in which they never had before had been accomplished last night.

"I can see the logic there. I certainly felt it, anyway." Troy replied with a smile. He stopped himself from saying more before the "she" that Julie had mentioned came up again.

The "She" in question was known to most of the world as Contessa Helena de San Finzione, ruler of the Sovereign County and Independent Nation-State of San Finzione; the world's most popular and successful tourist destination since the 1950s. She was also CEO Emeritus of the royal family's international business concern, Società Finzione. They had known her almost as long as each other, since she'd been Helen Parker from the bad family down the street. She was also the woman whom both of them occasionally referred to as "My First Girlfriend," although Troy had only found out just how deep her and Julie's relationship went last night; when Julie told him that she was into other women and that Helena had been her first lover, too.

Troy simply hadn't read much into Julie's friendship with Helen or other girls to pay attention to what went on in her bedroom when they shared an apartment the summer after high school. Thanks to Doing What They Did, Troy was often too busy with the woman or women he was currently with to think much about Julie's sex life. Not having any sisters of his own, he didn't have anyone to explain to him that best girl-friends didn't sometimes just look at each other or kiss the way he and Helen kissed.

His relationship with Helen was more complex. Helen had met Byroni Medina, Troy's Propappou, at the age of eight; when she ran to his house to escape her drunken abusive father. He and the little girl bonded immediately, and Propappou fought in the courts for years to get Helen out of her father's clutches and adopt her. During that time, Troy and Julie taught her their secret to save her from him as well, making Helen Parker the third person in the world who knew the secret of mind control.

While Propappou had been fighting in the courts, Helen became Troy's first girlfriend. Between joking about the logic of how their relationship would continue once she'd technically be his grandmother and anticipation of joining his family, she'd taken to calling herself Helena Medina before the courts declared that Byroni was too old and already raising a great-grandson to take care of another teenager. The possibility of one day marrying Troy and still being able to take that name caused her to keep using it until the two of them broke up for reasons Troy still didn't quite understand. Propappou had given her the name Helena, though; and he was her real father by then, so she kept it.

After high school, Helena and Julie had decided to spend a year traveling around Europe. That year became two as they partied their way across Europe, using their abilities to take whatever they wanted from the entitled rich boys and girls of the Continent. Their non-stop party ended abruptly when the two of them met Count Vincenzo Ramon de San Finzione at a Società Finzione resort in Madrid. Helena saw something in the old man and wanted to go back down to the bar and get closer to him. Julie, aware of Helena's criminal upbringing and lack of principles, thought that she had it in her to take the nice old man for everything he had. The argument over it ended with Julie returning to America to get her Fine Arts BA. The next time she saw Helena again was on the news, marrying the Count in a grand royal ceremony; becoming Contessa Helena de San Finzione. Two years afterwards, Count Vincenzo died of a heart attack while making love to his 57-years-younger second wife. The thought that Helena might well have used the power they'd taught her to marry and deliberately fuck the old man to death to become the Ruler of the country wasn't one that Julie had difficultly imagining.

Troy had kept in better contact with Helen than Julie had over the years. Mostly because they still loved each other, but also because Troy felt a pang of responsibility for anything Helen did with the power they'd taught her. Helen had been raised in a household of petty crooks; and sometimes still had that criminal mentality. Troy imagined it was an asset as the ruler of a country but hadn't often been in their lives.

"I hope you felt a lot more than that, Math Boy." Julie said with a nudge. "Because I certainly did."

Julie's choice of words gave them both a thought: It DID feel like more. Not the awkward "What did I do" feeling that people who get drunk and have sex always seemed to get on movies and TV. Those people on TV also didn't have the power of mind control and didn't have the rush of emotions from seeing each other again, dealing with both of their homes being sold, and packing the rest of Propappou's things. And then that nap they took together, and the evening that followed. The drunken suggestion of one of their old hypno-games, leading to... now. In their state, maybe one of them had influenced the other into what both were having to admit to themselves was the best night of their lives.