Unyielding Roles: Brothers in Phallocracy

Imagine a world in which your dick size is public, and dictates every aspect of your life. Welcome to Virilius.

Thank you also to the many Nifty authors I've enjoyed for over half my lifetime (and many of whose tropes I have shamelessly pilfered!). Thanks also to Nifty itself, to which you should consider donating.

Check out my other stories: https://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/authoritarian/boyclit

https://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/authoritarian/my-six-twink-top-lodgers

And check out the stories of Mathias Gold, one of my doms. He is one hung young stud!

https://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/authoritarian/shrinking-his-dicklet/

https://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/authoritarian/stepford-boywives/

Unyielding Roles: Brothers in Phallocracy

Chapter One - Oath of Fidelity

Under the sun's majestic golden hues, the squeak and slap of sneakers against wet asphalt echoed around the Thompsons' modest back garden in the suburb of Valourwood.

Sammy, a tall and lithe twenty-one-year-old, dribbled the firm ochre ball - ducking and weaving quite gracefully as he made his way to the hoop. He came face to face with Jack, his sixteen-year-old younger brother - shorter and more muscular - whose style of play was less calculated, more spontaneous and explosive.

"Can't get the ball from that easily, lil bro," Sammy teased.

Jack's laughter filled the garden most and loudest of the three, and he had a mischievous glint in his eye as he mocked back the second his brother moved, "Oh yeah, watch this!"

He inelegantly but successfully swept the basketball from under his brother's hand. He ducked, weaved and three-point turned away from his brother's attempts to retrieve it - turning to the basket and biting his bottom lip a little with focus as he landed a near-perfect hoop.

"Well done, my boy!" Marcus congratulated Jack - Marcus was their loving but authoritative father, in his early forties, slight wrinkles forming on his handsome face - their family's patriarch and provider.

The format of the play was quite formless - with the brothers meant to practise both competitive shooting and collaborative passing, so they'd each better bring honour on the Thompson name when playing together on Valourwood's team in the Boldberg Future Tops' Basketball League.

"Not bad, Sammy, not bad," Marcus offered, as Sammy managed at one point to use his greater experience and height to manoeuvre around Jack and dunk a hoop of his own. "A little more aggression next time!"

"Yeah, like this," this younger brother gloated.

Jack, not to be outdone, showed just such power - not just in his play - but in the growing muscles that bulged out of his vest, contrasting with his deepening boyish laugh, and hinting at the cusp on manhood he was just passing. He swept the ball from Sammy, around the small family half court, and into the basket thrice - making two shots out of three.

"Hey, Jack! You don't always have to be Mr Star Shooter," Marcus laughed, "give your brother a chance!"

Egged on, Sammy grinned, and used Jack's moment of distraction to show off some of the best moves he'd learnt from years of play to score another hoop.

"Yeah, show off," Sammy joined in, giving his brother a cheeky friendly wink.

As the sun set, the patio lights came on, and the sound of squeaking sneakers and the pat-pat-pat of the basketball against the warm and drying ground began to slow, replaced by the panting of the exertions of the three big sweaty boys.

"Okay boys, time for dinner," Marcus announced. "Let's see what you poppy's got cooked up for us."

And the three of them bounded from the garden into the kitchen.

Soft lighting and gentle music subtly filled the Thompson kitchen, along with the lemony aroma of Oliver's famous roast chicken - which he was just serving up, used to his husband and son's daily routines.

Oliver was Marcus's devoted wifey and loving poppy to Sammy and Jack. He was some six inches shorter than Marcus - although not at that moment as dad had just collapsed onto a sturdy wooden chair - and Oliver kissed him on the cheek, placing a beer in front of him. Oliver's longish hair was tied back for cooking, and he wore a red-and-white polka dot pinny over his clothes.

"Good game, boys?" Oliver cooed, watching as Jack and Sammy competitively tore into the chicken after Marcus had had first dibs.

"Save a little for your poppy, sons," chuckled Marcus, but with a hint of seriousness.

"Yeah!" Jack regaled, with his mouth half full, "I whooped Sammy's butt!"

Sat to his side, Sammy swallowed. "You did not! Shut it, you stink!"

Which was not untrue. In contrast with the fruity and sometimes floral scents Oliver wore, - not having bothered to wash after the game, Marcus, Sammy and Jack were all glowing and sweaty, and Jack - not having washed for a couple of days, as sixteen-year-olds are wont to do - was sweatiest of all.

"Shut it, you!" Jack said, grabbing the head of his big brother with his right hand and shoving it into his left armpit. Sammy scrunched up his face at the acrid teen funk and fought to get free.

Marcus waited a moment. This sort of boisterousness was common among men in Virilius, but Jack needed a little more respect for his older brother. "Leave your brother alone, Jack."

Jack released Sammy as instructed and tucked into his chicken, even putting a little of the delicious but less loved salad on his plate, not wanting to hurt Oliver's feelings.

"I'm sure you're both going to do the family and the Valourwood Future Tops team proud at your game on Saturday," Oliver said, beaming at his boys hungrily demolishing the meal he'd made.

"No doubt about it!" Marcus agreed.

Sammy thought about just how lucky he was. The table at which they sat and ate had been made from scratch by him, his dad and his brother - from chopping down the tree, to helping at the lumber mill for it to be made into planks, to hammering and nailing it together in the garden into the sturdy heart of the home it now was; and on which his poppy now placed like clockwork a never-ending string of tasty baked and roasted things for them to eat. It was an idyllic family - one in which any Virilian boy would be lucky to grow up.

Sammy was in a similarly reflective mood as he walked around the park later that week. He stopped off at a stall selling soft drinks for a lemonade, and was sipping at it, as he watched the people go by.

Five such people were some members of the Valourwood Future Tops football team. He knew them slightly, and wondered if they recognised him too as one returned a nod of hello. They were wearing the crimson and navy uniforms of Future Tops throughout virilius, each proudly had a silver badge of the proto-insignia on their chest - a firm phallus unadorned by the stars that confirmed tops wore. Tuesday's next basketball meet wasn't until Tuesday, so he wasn't in uniform. He hung back to watch the boys rough-housing around the park. He winced slightly at the prospect of them getting grass stains on their honourable uniforms, but figured they too must have loving poppies at home who'd expertly wash and press them for the next day.

Two of the footballers - Ryan and Ben - were Sammy's age, and so he knew them especially, from school.

Ryan was so lucky. A natural leader, who excelled not just in football but the other sports at which he tried his hand; not to mention fire-building, fishing and other camping skills; and the plethora of other activities in which Future Tops took part.

Ryan was especially lucky as he loved and was loved by Sebastian - who wasn't here of course. Sebastian was a devout Bottom of Tomorrow. This much smaller organisation attracted its members from the fifth or so of Virilian boys who knew even in childhood that they were destined to grow up to be bottoms - kind, gentle and nurturing, and more often than not a little feminine - they were usually right. They were sometimes seen in their teal and pastel pink uniforms on their way to help adult bottoms with sewing, to sit in cookery classes, and to volunteer to read to toddlers in the local nursery. Given how few boys wanted to be bottoms when they grew up, aspiring tops who managed to find such a high school sweetheart were very fortunate indeed.

Ryan, Ben and the other three were leaning against some railings, uniforms a little scruffy but unsullied, and Sammy watched as they in turn people watched.

They offered respectful nods to the adult tops who strolled on the path along the railing, some in military uniform and others in civilian dress, but each wearing the golden insignia of his Tier - indicating his rank in Virilian society. These men returned the nods to these young model Future Tops.

They were less respectful to say the least to the adult bottoms who walked by, pushing prams or laden with the day's shopping, who bore no insignia and dressed modestly. The five lads wolf-whistled and passed comment on them, one languidly chewing gum as he did so. One bottom, not much older than the boys, was stopped - ostensibly to ask for the time, given the way he checked his watch.

As the bottom tried to continue on his journey, Ben grabbed his wrist. The three other boys whose names Sammy didn't know fell about laughing, and Ryan shook his head but had a forgiving smile the whole time. Sammy couldn't hear what was being said, and squinted in vain to read their lips; the bottom was attractive, with youthful androgynous facial features and pert buttocks, good for child-rearing, and Sammy imagined the five tops were telling him just that.

Sammy could see trouble abrewing, however, as he saw two men in military uniform - golden insignia of a firm phallus underlined with four stars, the Tier of Dominance, and lapel pins with a red fist. The Advocates - tops who spent their spare time ensuring propriety across the lands of Virilius - ensuring tops behaved like tops and bottoms behaved like bottoms. The Future Tops and the Bottoms of Tomorrow were youth organisations overseen by the Advocates, in fact.

As these two men approached the ruckus, Sammy winced. He knew what was coming. The Advocates' deep voices carried far enough for him to catch snippets as they berated the unsuspecting bottom

"Totally inappropriate!"

"Jodhpurs far too tight! Of course you caught these young men's eye!"

"Have you no modesty?"

Luckily for the bottom, they seemed to let him continue on his way with just a firm and public warning, and Sammy watched as feminine young man scurried away with bright blush spreading across his pretty cheeks.

"Gentlemen," the Advocates said, nodding to the Future Tops, before continuing to patrol the park.

Sammy almost felt sorry for the young bottom - having seen the whole thing unfurl, he clearly hadn't stopped to flirt with the Future Tops, but rather the other way around. Nevertheless, it was a foolish thing to do - for a bottom to allow himself to be objectified by men so publicly. It simply wouldn't do in Virilius, where bottoms are meant of course to be demure and modest. Really, it was a good thing the Advocates came by when they did before the bottom could have dishonoured himself by anything more happening to him. Sammy shuddered at the thought.

All felt right with the world back at home. Marcus was working late, Jack was out with the Future Tops tennis squad, and as Sammy lay in bed he could hear Oliver in the kitchen preparing the casserole they'd be eating that evening.

Sammy's eyes wandered around the room from the bottom bunk of the bed he'd shared with Jack almost as long as he could remember. There were posters of elite sports stars, great tops who brought victory and honour to Boldberg in the Virilian Games. He and Jack had discussed whether or not to pin up the calendar of bottoms in lewd positions that Jack had one day got from his schoolmates on the wall, but both agreed their dad and poppy might think it inappropriate, so it was tucked under Jack's mattress above - and he'd said Sammy could use' it whenever he liked. Two small desks side-by-side on the wall opposite were stacked with Sammy's and Jack's schoolwork past and present, and they and the walls above them were adorned with medals, certificates and a trophy or two from the Future Tops' sports leagues and camping trips first Sammy and then the two of them had been on together - Sammy's seniority meant he had a few more, but Jack was catching up rapidly. In the middle of this collage of achievements was a joint poster of five strapping young men in the crimson and navy uniform of the FUTURE TOPS!', as the poster exclaimed, `Power. Dominance. Triumph. Shaping Virilius' Destiny.' And beneath it, a photograph of Sammy and Jack in their uniforms on the first Future Tops camping trip they went on together.

It all made him feel rather nostalgic. That summer was his last as a Future Top. Tomorrow would be his Epiphany Ascendus. The Virilian coming of age ceremony is taken by all boys in Virilius at twenty-one at the latest, Sammy's current age. One could take it up to five years early, but three quarters of Virilians chose to wait until the last minute and for good reason. In the ceremony, your manhood was measured and gauged - length and girth alike. Tops, like Marcus, and the rest of the half of men who ran this phallocratic nation, were those whose dicks were deemed above average - and they were sorted into Tiers based on which of these five deciles they fell, indicating the power and rank of the jobs for which they were eligible. Marcus for instance was in the Tier of Strength, the third decile - indicating a cock in the top 30% but not the top 20% - and he supported the family by managing a regional chain of games arcades. Sammy couldn't wait to find out which of the Top Tiers he'd be in tomorrow, and what sort of vocation he might pursue, be allowed to drink and smoke, and of course to find a loving bottom with whom to raise a family. He'd always loved building furniture with his dad and brother - maybe he could get a job in construction, maybe even as a contractor if his Tier was high enough.

Anyone whose `virile' volume was deemed below average, however, didn't get a Tier. They won no insignia to don. They were bottoms. Bottoms like his poppy, Oliver, they had an honourable role in Virilian society, supporting the men, keeping house, and bearing them children. Sammy loved his poppy dearly, but - almost as much as Jack - he'd always had more in common with his dad Marcus, and couldn't wait to join him in Virilian top adulthood the next day. Sammy loved Oliver dearly, but knew he'd want one day to have a bottom wife to love the way Marcus loved Oliver - and bear him lots of sons.

That night at dinner, Sammy's Epiphany the next day was all the family could talk about.

"Tomorrow, you become a man, son," Marcus said, beaming, and slapping Sammy heavily on the back.

"I can't wait for my Epiphany!" Jack exclaimed, his boyish voice cracking and deepening by the day, "I'm gonna the best top ever - like you dad! Maybe even better!"

"Watch it, cheeky," Marcus chuckled.

"You'll both make fine Valourwood tops and be husbands to some very lucky bottoms one day, just like I am," Oliver smiled indulgently, and squeezed their dad's hand across the table.

"Have you thought about what sort of job you might like, my boy?"

"I was thinking maybe construction, maybe even a head contractor. I loved our trip to the lumber mill that time," Sammy said.

"A fine career, son. As manly as they come," Marcus opined, nodding.

Once they'd finished eating, Marcus said the boys could play some videogames and the three of them settled in the living room. Oliver brought Marcus a whiskey, the newspaper, his cigarettes and his lighter, and picked up the sweaty shoes he and the brothers had all shucked off, before shuffling off to the kitchen to clear the table and wash-up.

Jack was something of a whizz with computer games, and in even the ones at which Sammy was much better practised he could pick up the moves and the flow quite quickly, as was the case this evening where whatever the permutations of characters in the beat-'em-up, Jack seemed to whoop Sammy's butt over and over. Sammy found it a little demoralising, but knew tomorrow would make it all worthwhile - he'd be a confirmed top, something for which his little brother would have to wait another five whole years.

Marcus chain-smoked and sipped his whiskey, occasionally reading snippets from the sports and then the business sections of the paper. Just as Oliver was coming in from the kitchen to snuggle up towards Marcus with a glass of dry white wine for himself, Marcus had reached the news section.

"This Piers Vanderpuye is at it again," Marcus growled.

"What's that dear?" asked Oliver, who like most Virilian bottoms didn't take much notice of current affairs.

Piers Vanderpuye was an Alpha Tier top, men whose dicks were in the largest decile of Virilian society, destined for great leadership roles. After an esteemed career as a general in the Virilius Armed Forces, he'd retired a little early to take up a post as rather a reactionary a columnist in Virilius' newspaper of record.

"Universal Chastity: Strengthening Virilian Tradition," Marcus read from the paper. Oliver and Sammy both pricked up their ears, with Jack only half-listening as he adolescently focused on the console controller in his hands and the screen before him - Jack's main reaction was to laugh as Marcus put on a posher more clipped accent, mimicking the times they'd seen Vanderpuye on the television, and doing a rather good job of it:

"For centuries, our great society has been based on balance and harmony between tops and bottoms. I have been lucky enough myself to be adored and supported by the same devoted wife, which has allowed me to focus on keeping our esteemed nation state."

"I read with great alarm, therefore, in this paper and others about an ever increasing number of bottoms who do not do so. They are not adoring. They are not supportive. They're barely even respectful of the great men who do what we can to protect and provide for them. Back chat. Immodesty. Even infidelity. Flirtations and encounters before marriage. And, one of the most odious practices of all, role confusion. Yes, dear reader, I am talking about bottoms who use their own modest penises, insofar as they can be called that, for personal pleasure. I have even read of unmarried bottoms using their penises for penetration among each other. What next? Them attempting to use their penises for penetration with tops? This abhorrent misbehaviour must be stopped in its tracks."

Marcus furrowed his brow. There was nothing disagreeable in the article so far, but Piers Vanderpuyre usually found a way to go beyond the pale by his peroration. Oliver was smiling docilely and nodding, but with a slight look of discomfort on his gentle features. Oliver had barely even considered his penis before his Epiphany, and has certainly never touched it beyond a cursory wash in the shower, even sitting down to pee. The idea that there were bottoms in Virilius doing anything but was bizarre.

Marcus continued to read aloud from the Gazette, "Since the time of our forefathers, role compliance enforced by chastity cage has been used as punishment for those bottoms who commit these unspeakable acts. It is a system rich in history and tradition. It is a system which works well. It is a system the time has come to expand. Why do our so-called leaders, fellow tops no less, not see what is needed? Universal chastity for bottoms, from the moment they undertake their Epiphany Ascendus, is a firm but fair, a cheap but effective, method of ensuring our beloved Virilian values are upheld. As sure as a mighty oak protects the tiny buds beneath it from all weathers, we tops must act now to protect our bottoms from this impropriety."

The words hung in the living room air for a while, now silent as even Jack had paused his game to listen to Vanderpuye's rather extreme proposal.

Oliver, if he had any opinion, offered up none. Jack seemed to look at the dad he idolised to take his leave before forming an opinion. Sammy thought it sounded a bit barbaric. Chastity was a punishment for misbehaviour, so universalising it would be a punishment for all bottoms. But he didn't say this out loud, wanting to know his family's thoughts.

Marcus, the family patriarch, put the matter to rest. "Pah, typical Vanderpuye, that old reactionary. Why do ALL bottoms need to be placed in chastity for the misbehaviour of the few. My little Ollie here's never been in one of those cages and has never had to be."

He pulled his bottom wife into an embrace and kissed him dotingly on the head.

Sammy exhaled with relief, and Jack and Oliver decided they too shared Marcus' viewpoint. They switched off the games console so they could watch a film together before it was time to sleep.

That night, in bed, Sammy could hardly sleep from the excitement. The excitement manifested itself quite physically - and he found himself the hardest and biggest he'd ever been. It was such an urgent excitement, in fact, he found it stopped him from sleeping - and as his hand reached down to explore himself for his twice-daily relief - his thumb, fore- and middle finger deftly playing with himself, quietly as he could and with baited breath so as not to attract Jack's attention. He had his eyes closed - picturing first the attractive young bottom he'd seen in the park that day, then a ballroom full of them, then the visions became more abstract, him on the stage tomorrow, becoming a man, becoming a protector and provider. His movements became a little more urgent - disturbed once or twice by Jack turning in bed above him. It took him only a couple of minutes for release, and he fell asleep in his own mess.

It was rather a cloudier day than Sammy had always envisioned for his Epiphany Ascendus, as the air was thick and humid as the Thompson family walked around the corner to the Valourwood Civic Hall. Epiphany ceremonies were held monthly in each neighbourhood and were days of pomp and pageantry. The Virilian coat of arms featured prominently on banners and flagpoles - a shield whose elements were four firm phalluses with a fifth and larger phallus at the helm, representing the five Tiers of Tops who led the great nation, and - underneath either side at the mantle, a modest peach topped by a budding flower, representing the care and nurture the nation's bottoms gave to their tops.

There were ten other boys from their suburb entering for their Epiphany - and Sammy knew most of them, given they were mostly the same age. Some looked extremely confident, others a little more nervous - and Sammy hoped they felt he belonged in the former camp. Even girly little Sebastien Harris, whose arm was looped through Ryan's, seemed poised and sanguine in his own unassuming way.

Ryan Johnson and Ben Taylor, and the twins Jonjo and James Evans, greeted Sammy with huge grins, handshakes, and manly back-slapping hugs. They had all been in the Valourwood Future Tops since they were young boys, and the shared excitement of the life as tops - as real Virilian men - was contagious.

The Grand Preceptor for the event was Victor Rodriguez. A firm but patient top of about fifty, Preceptor Rodriquez had been working in the neighbourhood overseeing its Epiphanies for decades, and so the young men assembled at the front of the Hall knew they were in good hands - as they'd seen Preceptor Rodriquez assign hundreds of older cousins and neighbours and others to their adult roles - a life of rule or of service.

As the Grand Preceptor took to the stage, the boys' hubbub and that of the friends and family assembled at the back petered down. He wore almost clerical robes, and about his shoulders was draped the yellow silk tape measure with which he would administer his important role.

"Esteemed men and fair bottoms," he began, "we are gathered here for a most momentous occasion."

Sammy marvelled at how Preceptor Rodriguez managed to bring the same gravitas and momentousness to each ceremony over which he presided. He felt, with some relief, himself start to harden urgently. As he glanced up the row, he saw most of the other boys shift in their seats. Most boys were achingly erect by the time they reached the stage, but at past ceremonies Preceptor Rodriquez was more indulging than most at letting those who needed it reach the rigidity they wanted before undergoing the most important measurement of their lives.

"For centuries, our great nation of Virilius has been based on the deep and traditional values of phallocracy. For our generously endowed tops: dominance, strength, valour and fortitude. For our modestly endowed bottoms: honour, modesty, chastity and submission. These ancient and complementary principles underpin our esteemed Virilian society and ensure its continued prosperity and harmony."

Preceptor Rodriguez cleared his throat. "The young men assembled before you find themselves on one of two paths. For the tops, a life of leadership, contributing productively to our nation's greatness and protecting and providing for their families. For the bottoms, a life of nurturing, settling down and finding a top husband, someone with whom to raise a family and make a warm and caring home. Just as we celebrate the glory and achievements of our great tops, we must respect the role our nation's bottoms play - in their chastity, our tops find esteem; in their submission, our top's find dominance; in their nurture, our tops find fortitude; and in their modesty, our tops find strength. Theirs too is a role of honour."

"And so," Preceptor Rodriquez boomed with expert flourish, "without further ado - I shall call these Virilian young men to the stage."

"Evans, James" called the Grand Preceptor - and the first of the sporty twins made his way to the stage. James' back was facing the audience - and the Grand Preceptor was facing him - as he fiddled with his trousers and lowered them.

Preceptor Rodriquez's silk tape measure was to the ready, and the crowd could see the movements they'd seen many times before, as first James' length and then his girth were calculated. On a stand next to the Grand Preceptor was a tablet, into which the figures were entered digitally. In the past, these would have been entered into a municipal ledger accessible by any citizen in the Civic Hall - and Preceptors had to be deft at mathematics - for the result to be declared aloud. Now, however, these things were done on-screen and the calculation, the percentile and the rank projected onto the screen:

Length 7.1" x Girth 5" = 55th percentile = Top: Tier of Fortitude

Grand trumpets let out a pompous arpeggio. The audience broke into applause, and after a few moments James turned around, grinning a little bashfully at the audience and - as was customary - showing the assembled crowd his manhood, before buttoning himself off and exiting to the side of the stage.

Next up was his twin "Evans, Jonjo", whose identicalness was almost entire

Length 7" x Girth 5.1" = 54th percentile = Top: Tier of Fortitude

More pompous horns and more applause from the audience.

Sammy felt his palms start to get a little sweaty and he gulped. Obviously not all Epiphany ceremonies ended with exactly even numbers of tops and bottoms, but that's the average towards which they tended, and here were two of presumably five or six spots taken already.

"Harris, Sebastien," Preceptor Rodriguez called. Sebastien made his way gracefully on stage. He wore jodhpurs of the type that were fashionable among bottoms, as though he knew the life that was ahead of him. The Grand Preceptor took his measurements, tapped away and they flashed on screen:

Length 4.2" x Girth 3.8" = 17th percentile = Bottom

This time gentle flutes let out a delicate arpeggio and the audience's applause was more muted, but firm and polite. An exception was Ryan, who clapped heartily and let out a whistle at his now-confirmed bottom boyfriend. Sebastien turned around to show his little dick to the assembled Virilians and beamed at Ryan, whom both knew was up next. Sebastien did up his trousers and walked to the side of the stage.

"Johnson, Ryan," Preceptor Rodriquez called.

Ryan swaggered onto the stage, turned and gave a cheeky wink to the other young men who still awaited their turn and a thumbs up to the crowd. The Grand Preceptor gave him a nod to do what needed to be done.

Ryan deftly undid his trousers and whipped out his member in the direction of Preceptor Rodriquez, who began to take the measurements. After the customary tense few seconds and some tapping, Ryan's dreams came true:

Length 8.4" x Girth 6" = 77th percentile = Top: Tier of Strength

The crowd broke into rapturous applause even before the trumpets sounded, and Ryan waited a showman's moment before turning around to show his pride and joy to the crowd. He was almost twice the volume of his bottomy boyfriend - and now he was a confirmed top. He grinned a winning smile, and strutted towards the side of the stage, taking his time to shove his substantial erection with some effort into his jeans as he did so.

Next up were five boys Sammy didn't know so well went next - he supposed he hadn't seen them at Future Tops, or perhaps they were a little younger, but nor had he seen them with Sebastien when his Bottoms of Tomorrow group were out and about. The former seemed likelier for three - maybe they didn't have enough sporting prowess or care for the boisterous behaviour that was expected, and so hadn't signed up for or got into Future Tops. Three of the five were assigned as bottoms, to flute and applause, and two were tops.

Only Ben and Sammy were waiting for their turn now.

"Taylor, Benjamin," said Father Rodriquez, giving each of the boys' names the sense of occasion it deserved.

Sammy cast his mind back to all the basketball games and campfire shenanigans he and Ben had got up to growing up in the same Future Tops troop and as near-neighbours. Ben was an even better sportsman than Sammy was, and Sammy felt that surely the two of them were destined to be tops together.

Preceptor Rodriquez took his time in measuring Ben - which usually meant someone was likely to be on the borderline between Tiers - something a Preceptor with as much experience as he had could often intuit. Sammy wondered which two Tiers of Top Ben was between and into which he'd fall, when Preceptor Rodriquez nodded at Ben and Ben nervously nodded back. He entered the figures into the tablet:

Length 5.1" x Girth 4.2" = 48th percentile = Bottom

A tense moment's pause impregnated the air, before the audience let in a collective inhalation of breath and before the flutes started to play. The polite applause came eventually, but to be so narrowly assigned a bottom must have sent Ben's mind racing. He was a little slow in turning around and showing everyone his slightly-too-below-average endowment, before hiding it away and scurrying to the side of the stage.

That left just Sammy now - who had a deafening buzzing in his ear and whose heart was thumping, as he was trying to picture what these numbers might look like as an actual dick - was still convincing himself that he might just make it and be assigned as a top, perhaps a lower Tier one than Ryan or his dad, from what he'd just seen on stage - but, after having just seen Ben, he wasn't so sure - but then again, he could know for certain, as Ben was quite far away, and in any case...

The buzzing in his faded and he realised Preceptor Rodriguez was speaking with the slightly tried patience of someone who was repeating himself.

"Thompson, Samuel?" The Grand Preceptor was looking down at where Sammy sat.

Sammy's legs seemed to have seized up and he was slightly rueing having turned twenty-one so soon. Maybe if he asked nicely he could wait another year to find out his destiny was to be a top? But the expectation of the face looking down at him and which he sensed in the crowd before him, not to mention centuries of Virilian tradition, all told him this would be impossible. He managed to wrestle himself from the seat and tread his way carefully towards the stage.

Preceptor Rodriquez cleared his throat again and nodded dignifiedly to Sammy's crotch. It was a sacred part of the body, for tops in particular, the source of one's honour and power. Sammy had always dreamed of this moment, but now it seemed like a nightmarish out-of-body experience as he reached down and unbuttoned his chinos, pulling them and his boxers under his balls and giving his offering to the master of ceremonies.

Preceptor Rodriquez, who had known Sammy since he was a boy and indeed mentored the Valourwood Young Tops in many a matter, quickly concealed his raising of the eyebrows. Sammy watched as the Grand Preceptor's tanned brown hands handled the yellow silk tape measure that had hung from his shoulders and was now doing its work to decide what Sammy's destiny was to be. He felt it placed professionally over his length, and licked his lips with some nervousness, then felt it wrapped around the thickness he had. He watched as the Preceptor Rodriquez's long fingers tapped away at the tablet and he felt a deafening silence in his head.

His heart thumped, deep and slow, in his eardrums - once, twice, thrice - and he was brought back to reality by a gasp from the audience. He looked up over Preceptor Rodriguez's head to the screen the audience could see

Length 3" x Girth 2.9" = 2nd percentile = Bottom

Sammy suddenly felt his throat tighten and his eyes well up - the gentle flutes which played played again in his head in melancholy-tinged minor key variations - not celebratory nor nurturing, but bitter and ironic. He barely knew he was displaying himself, although just as well as it was expected, as he turned to see the audience still silent and agog.

Eventually, their polite applause started up, and this snapped Sammy to his senses as he looked down and buttoned away at what they had just seen. His dicklette, not even breaking double figures in length or in girth. The smallest at the ceremony by some margin. The smallest, as far as he could recall, that he'd ever seen at a Valourwood ceremony. With a sense of clenching foreboding he made his way to the end of the stage where the ten other boys stood.

Two Deputy Preceptors had come to greet the assembled boys, as the friends and family in the audience headed home, not privy to this next more private part of the ceremony. Unlike Grand Preceptor Rodriguez, these Deputy Preceptor roles were part-time and voluntary. Ryan, Jonjo, James and the other two tops were now proudly donning their top insignia - Ryan's with three stars beneath the imposing-looking phallus, James' and Jonjo's each with just one. Oh what Sammy would have done for just one star at that moment. The Deputy Preceptor who took them aside was a local business mogul, who wore his four-starred Tier of Dominance insignia with pride. But among the tops, there would be no pulling of rank - it was a moment of fraternity and shared pride - and he seemed a striking and charismatic figure, as he led the five newly assigned tops into the Ascendants' Hall for their Dominion Rites.

The top who had been assigned as Deputy Preceptor for this ceremony's bottoms was a man Sammy didn't recognise. He was a military man, as indicated by his uniform, and he too wore the four-starred Tier of Dominance insignia.

"Well done, ladies," he growled with a hint of hazing malice, and told them to follow him into the Serenity Chamber for their Oath of Fidelity.

The room was austere - a dozen seats facing a stage, with small bouquets of white unblossomed lilies on tables on either side. On the stage, onto which the Deputy Preceptor strode, was a screen which presently he disappeared behind.

Starting with Sebastien, the five other boys began to undress, and it was only through peer pressure and a slight state of disassociatedness that Sammy began to do the same.

Sebastien was beaming, glowing even, as he neatly folded each of his garments and put them in a neat pile under his seat. The three other boys who Sammy didn't know attempted to do the same, although with it not coming quite as naturally as it did to Sebastien - they looked nervous, but nowhere near as bad as Sammy felt.

Sammy looked at Ben, whose furrowed brow and look of concentration hinted at an emotion slightly more similar to Sammy.

"I can't believe it," whispered Ben.

"Nor can I," offered Sammy, speaking for the first time since the Epiphany, his voice a little hoarse. "I was sure we'd be tops together!"

Now all six of them were naked, and Ben looked down at Sammy's pitiful dick. Sammy felt sure Ben was thinking that he, Ben, had been borderline - and almost given the life he felt was owed to him, one of a top; but that Sammy's case was open-and-close. Which, numerically, was true - but surely that didn't detract from the fact that Sammy had always been one of the boys, goofing and horsing around together, he and Ben had played just as much sport as James and Jonjo, and stuck up for themselves almost as much as Ryan for that matter.

Sammy had never seen so many dicks in his life - or dicklettes as he should say, as was customary for bottoms after the Epiphany. In truth, Ben's and even the others' felt down right intimidating to him - even if they were modest enough for them too to have been assigned bottoms. He looked at Sebastian, whose grace and femininity was something he'd always found attractive and often envied Ryan for being able to enjoy, whose pert little erection stood at three centimetres larger than his own! How could Sebastian - a model Bottom of Tomorrow - have a bigger dick than him?! This was a nightmare! And if the dicks in the Serenity Chamber of all these bottoms made him feel this way, what must the dicks of all the tops out there be like?

He didn't have to wait long to find out.

"I'm Colonel Walker," began the gruff old soldier, who strode around from behind the screen - butt naked apart from a medallion worn around his neck of strong and firm phallus emphasised by four stars beneath it - and emphasised further by his substantial manhood, as upright as the bearer, the strongest and of course the largest in the chamber.

"And I'd like to congratulate each and every one of you on your Epiphany Ascendus. You now take up the very important mantle of bottomhood here in Virilius. This is a great privilege," he said, twitching his moustache slightly, "you do not need to work. In fact, you cannot work. That's a man's job - quite literally - for tops. Instead, you will live lives of quiet humility and modesty, and one day I hope you will each make a top husband very happy indeed."

"There is no greater privilege in Virilius than supporting a strong and virile man, ensuring his stomach is full and his balls are empty," there was a little shuffle in the crowd at his salty soldiers' language, "raising his sons, and keeping the home."

The Colonel went on: "Now, before I let you get dressed and move on with the next stage of your lives, I must remind you of the tenets of the Oath of Fidelity you have all taken by being admitted to the role of bottom:"

"The Tenet of Reverence: you shall revere the sacred bond between top and bottom, cherishing the roles bestowed upon us."

"The Tenet of Submission: you shall submit willingly or otherwise to the authority of your top, trusting his guidance and leadership."

"The Tenet of Modesty: you shall embrace modesty in your appearance and conduct, honouring the virtues of Virilian values."

"The Tenet of Service: you shall dedicate yourself to serving your top and your family with unwavering devotion and care."

"The Tenet of Respect: you shall treat all tops with respect and honour, recognising their vital roles in our society."

"The Tenet of Responsibility: you shall take responsibility for your actions and decisions, understanding their impact they have on our great nation of Virilius.

"And finally," the gruff Colonel went on, "the Tenet of Chastity: you shall vow to maintain your chastity until marriage, and forevermore refrain from using your penis for penetration or for personal pleasure."

There was no call for Sammy and the others to agree to these oaths. They were taken, both de jure and de facto, by virtue of being Virilian bottoms.

Sammy, whose dicklette had gone soft from the chilly air in the unheated chamber, hardened up at these last words - and releasing some of the tension he felt from this sickening turn of events would have been very welcome indeed. Most of the other boys had gone soft by this point, Sammy noted as his eyes wandered, before settling on the crotch of the perfect little bottom Sebastien who - even soft - had a volume which rivalled Sammy's hard. The Colonel looked down at Sammy's modest upward pointing endowment and shook his head with gentle disapproval.

After the Epiphany, Sammy took the long route home and arrived just as Oliver was serving up dinner. Ben and the others had dashed off right after the ceremony, and Colonel Walker didn't seem like the chatty type, and Sammy was desperate to talk to someone and get things off his chest after the shock from earlier today.

"You're a little late?" Marcus said, looking at his watch, "Oh, uhh, and well done on your Epiphany." he added, offering out a soft gift roughly wrapped in brown paper with messy sticky tape holding it together.

"Yes, congratulations, sweetie!" Oliver offered, smiling, hugging and kissing Sammy on both cheeks. "Here's this is from me," he said, giving Sammy a small box, wrapped again in brown paper with a neat red bow around it. "And this is from your brother," Oliver added, proffering a smaller-still wrapped box.

Judging by the look on Jack's face, and the neatness with which the gift was wrapped, Sammy very much doubted Jack had taken much time to choose it.

But more pressing and nagging still was how his dad, poppy and brother seemed completely unfazed by what had happened earlier at the Epiphany.

"Uhh, thanks," Sammy said. "So - what do you think? Of my assignment at the Epiphany."

"I said well done, didn't I?" Marcus muttered, nudging Jack on the arm.

"Oh, uhh, yeah, well done big sis!" Jack said, with a mischievous smile.

"You'll make a wonderful bottom," cooed Oliver, "although I'll have to start passing on some more of the family recipes to you!"

Sammy was dumbstruck. Just yesterday, everyone - including him - was certain that after years of waiting and expectation he'd be a top, just like his dad, just like most of the Future Tops with whom he'd grown up, and now they were acting like his assignment as a bottom was nothing of note.

He ate with less alacrity than usual that night - Marcus and Jack shovelled slice after slice of the leg of lamb Oliver had cooked onto their plates, and into their cutes, while Sammy found he'd lost half his appetite. Oliver demurely had two slim slices and a little asparagus.

After dinner was finished, Marcus turned to Jack, "Fancy a few hoops before bed, my boy?"

Sammy's face lit up. A good sporting distraction was just what he needed right now, and he looked at his dad expectantly, but Marcus avoided his gaze.

"Sammy, darling," Oliver said, "why don't you stay and help poppy clean up?" he asked in the third person.

"Oh, uhh," Sammy muttered, feeling his cheeks begin to flush red, "I- I guess."

"Ata boy!" Marcus said, "you help out your poppy."

"Open your Epiphany gifts first, darling," Oliver said.

"Oh yeah, umm, thanks guys," Sammy said. He unwrapped the one from his dad first - an apron - polka dots, like his poppy's, but teal and white rather than red and white.

"Thanks, dad," said Sammy, feeling his cheeks begin to colour.

"Try it on, sweetie," Oliver said encouragingly, "we can wear ours together for the washing up!"

Sammy stood - hesitant and awkward - and put the hoop at the top around his neck, with Oliver tying the back into a bow.

"Beautiful! Open your brother's next," Oliver went on. This household matter, and it being a newly minted bottom's Epiphany, clearly gave poppy domain over the occasion.

Sammy undid the bow and then unwrapped the paper, revealing a box with an expensive and popular perfume he'd seen advertised to young bottoms:

"Whispers Pure: A gentle scent infused with white tea and clean cotton, symbolising the purity and virtue of our nation's bottoms."

Judging by how intently his younger brother was watching Sammy as he unwrapped the gift, Sammy felt surer than ever that his poppy had picked it out as `From him'.

"Oh `Whispers Pure'!" Oliver exclaimed, feigning surprise, unboxing it and squirting a little on either side of Sammy's nape. "That's just what I wore when I was your age. And how appropriate given your strong younger brother can help ensure you stay pure until marriage, just like I did. Do mine now."

"Uhh, thanks, Jack," said Sammy, before unwrapping the final neatly bowed gift, and this one contained a thin silver chain with a modest pendant at the front - in the shape of a peach, with an unblossomed flower bud at the top - and on the pendant was the one-word inscription "Chastity".

"I hope you like it," Oliver trilled, taking it from its box and walking behind Sammy to hang it over his neck. "Remember, it's not just pretty. It's one of the most important pledges we take to safeguard the honour of our family and our future husband."

Sammy flushed in emasculation, and hallucinated the chain tightening around his neck. "Thanks, poppy," he said, and allowed his reddening cheek to be stroked.

The mandatory family soppy stuff now out of the way, Marcus stood up and walked towards the garden, with Jack bounding after him like a big boisterous puppy, and Sammy tried to follow his poppy's lead with picking up plates, and scraping them clean. He tried to wash things in the sink at the same time as Oliver, which didn't work, so Oliver gave him a cloth with which Sammy could instead dry dishes after Oliver had washed and rinsed them. Sammy had never washed up before. It wasn't anything that had ever occurred to him - or his parents for that matter - as they'd all until recently assumed he'd one day be a top like Marcus; and so it required the focus and concentration of learning something new and difficultly important.

Sammy felt himself welling up with tears for the second time that day, as he heard the sneakers squeaking and the basketball pounding on the ground out in the garden, along with Marcus and Jack's laughs and barks of mutual encouragement. Oliver saw the tears in Sammy's eyes, and gave him a comforting smile, tiptoeing to kiss him on the cheek.

After he'd helped with the clear-up for the first time ever, Sammy decided to head to his room for some privacy - and to be away from sounds of the sport he loved and might never again get to enjoy playing. He breathed deeply, calming himself, still not quite fully registering the day's news - not being able to play b-ball with his dad and brother, helping out with the washing up - all of these small and unforeseen ways in which his life would now be different, and all on day one. Helooked around his and Jack's shared room until his eyes settled on his desk. Jack's was as he'd last seen it, but Sammy noted all his work books had been put into neat piles, and there was now a sewing machine on his desk for some reason.

Odder still, all of his Future Tops medals and certificates and the like were gone. His heart skipped a beat and clenched up and he pounced up from the bottom bunk.

"Poppy?" he asked, peering his head into the living room where Oliver was using some free time to flick through a magazine.

"Yes, darling?" asked Oliver.

"Where's all my Young Tops stuff? My basketball medals and swimming certificates and stuff?"

Oliver blinked and then cocked his head to the side.

"What do you mean, sweetheart?"

"My stuff from the Future Tops! It's not in my room!"

Oliver sighed deeply. "Sammy, darling, you're a bottom. You were never in the Future Tops."

Sammy's mind and body alike clenched up. What did his poppy mean? Of course Sammy had been in the Future Tops. Oliver had walked him to all his earliest sports tournaments.

Sammy ran out into the garden.

"Dad! Jack! Has one of you moved all my Future Tops medals?" he asked, tenser and more urgently.

"What are you talking about?" Jack responded, screwing up his young cute face.

"My b-ball medals and- and- my certificates from Future Tops camp??" Sammy pleaded.

"You were never at Future Tops camp, Sammy. Only Future Tops go to those and you're a bottom," their dad Marcus said firmly. "You must be thinking of Jack."

"Huh? But I was in Future Tops WITH Jack, dad!"

His dad and brother just shook their heads like Sammy was deranged - like he was making it all up. With a heaving and heavy heart, Sammy stormed off to his room and pulled close the door, throwing himself onto his mattress and as he drifted off to sleep trying to subdue his sobs.

Jack was distracted from his game with his dad in the garden, missing a few more shots at the hoop than usual, after Sammy's little outburst.

He knew he'd always looked up to his older brother, knowing they would grow into fine Virilian citizens with each other. Well, after Sammy's Epiphany - Jack thought with a shrug - he guessed he'd be more like an older sister figure now.

Marcus seemed almost to read Jack's mind. "It's good your poppy will get some help around the house now," Jack's dad said. "With Oliver guiding him, Sammy will make a fine bottom wife some day."

"Yeah," Jack agreed, hesitantly at first. Then a firmer "for sure!"

Jack had tennis again later that week, and was just two matches away from being Boldberg Future Tops champion. He loved and respected Oliver, and Sammy for that matter, but he felt more hopeful than ever that when his Epiphany came he'd be assigned as a top - just like his dad. Basketball was awesome, and he didn't think he'd be any good at washing up or cooking. And besides, some of those bottoms at today's ceremony had looked mighty fine.

Jack had spent a lot more time looking at and thinking about bottoms recently. He felt his dick chub up in his sports shorts a little, and hoped his dad wouldn't notice.

It was getting late, given they'd started playing after dinner, and pretty soon Marcus suggested they hit the hay.

Jack pushed open the door to his and Sammy's room gently. He didn't think it would be fair to wake his older brother after the big day he'd had. Jack sniffed at the air a couple of times to a surprise scent - what was it his poppy had said? Tea and laundry? He raised his arm and sniffed his own pit, letting out a chuckle - the smell was the total opposite: he'd not showered in a few days, and one sports fixture after another had strengthened into quite the symphony of sweat and testosterone. He could see why young bottoms might wear the perfume Sammy was now wearing, asleep, to attract a top husband - having such a girly scent in his and his brother's room for the first time certainly seemed to make Jack's dick thicken for the umpteenth time a day.

So much so Jack's mind drifted to the naughty calendar under his mattress, and he thought about sneaking it into their ensuite bathroom and giving himself some much needed release. Jack needed to cum three or four times a day - and when privacy and his schedule allowed, could easily go to a dozen times.

But he didn't want to wake Sammy, he remembered, and figured he could wank himself off in the shower tomorrow - it was probably about time he had a wash. He clambered silently onto the top bunk the way he had a thousand times before, and closed his eyes.

Just as melatonin and sleep were washing over him, his eyes sprang open!

What was that gentle rhythmic squeaking he could hear? And if he concentrated, he swore he could feel the bed frame moving a little to the same tempo? And then, it dawned on him, when he heard Sammy moan beneath him - more softly than he remembered Sammy sounding.

"Sammy? What are you doing?"

There was a moment's pause as squeak, movement and moans all stopped.

"Nothing," Sammy protested.

Jack felt sick to his stomach.

"Are you? Are you touching yourself?"

If Sammy had ever done this before while Jack slept, Jack hadn't noticed. But this was different. Sammy was a bottom.

"No!" Sammy pleaded, defensively.

"Yes you are," Jack whispered. "I heard it. I felt it."

"I'm sorry," said Sammy, his voice sounding almost tearful. "It's just - after the day I've had, I really need some relief."

"Sammy, you can't!" Jack said. He knew, just as Sammy did, that bottoms touching their so-called penises wasn't just taboo - it was strictly forbidden. "Bottoms don't do that!"

"I know, but I- I can't be a bottom. I need release, just like you, just like dad..." Sammy went on.

"Stop!" Jack said, firmly. "That's totally different. Dad's a top. I'm gonna be a top too one day. You're a bottom, Sammy. We all saw what the Preceptor measured. Hell, you showed all of Valourwood. Your dick's not meant for that."

"But- But-" Sammy tried to protest, but knew it was no use. Jack was the golden boy, the perfect Virilian young man, and he knew there'd be no persuading him it wasn't fair. "You're right, Jack. I'm sorry."

"Yeah, that's better," Jack said, soothingly. He loved his older brother and wanted to make sure he grew up to be a bottom of honour. "Now go to sleep, so I can sleep too."

Jack heard a few more moans, but after listening strainingly figured them to be gentle sobs - as Sammy tried to fall asleep with aching balls and his unsatisfied untilised little dick straining beneath his duvet.

Jack's own dick was now fully hard, and he could feel it straining youthfully upright past his navel and against his abdomen. Jack turned onto his front. It turned out his own horn was not in fact so easily ignored, and he wondered whether the firmness he'd had to show to his older brother - now a certified bottom whose modesty needed protecting - had played a small part in his insistent and urgent his hard-on was. As discreetly as he could, he rubbed his cock into the mattress, visions of bottoms flashing across his closed eyes - that cutie Sebastian, the sexy Stevie Adams next door, even his brother Sammy, until all the bottoms' faces melded into one with shared pert buttocks just built for Jack's cock - into which he'd thrust just he did here with his boyhood mattress. He let out a low guttural moan as cum flooded from his cock onto the clean bedsheet below. As he fell asleep, Jack almost felt guilty that it would need cleaning up by his poppy Oliver - or even, for that matter, his bottom older brother Sammy.

The next day, Oliver talked Sammy through how to make pasta from scratch. Oliver had already made the nduja and tomato filling with which it would be made into ravioli for that night's dinner, and had left Sammy to it - keen that he would grow up to be the domestic goddess expected of a Virilian bottom and wife.

Sammy wasn't sure if his poppy Oliver and his dad Marcus knew he could hear their urgent whispered conversation through the open window from the garden.

"Why didn't you start teaching him these things when he was younger?" Marcus asked his bottom wife.

"Me?" Oliver pleaded, "he was always off with you and Jack, dear. How didn't you know he was a bottom with measurements like that? You should have known he'd be like me!"

Marcus lowered his voice further, as not to be heard by their neighbours, "Well, he was always sporty to be fair. It wasn't really `til Jack started growing up I thought he might not be sporty enough. And he always changed quite discreetly at the pool - I certainly never thought he had that little thing under his trunks. In fact, I thought it was bigger."

"You don't think he was ... stuffing, do you? I always thought he went through rather a lot of socks when I did the laundry," pondered Oliver.

Sammy blushed so hard he felt the heat reach his ears. His mind flashed back to his early teens, when he had indeed started packing an extra pair of socks to stuff down his boxers at school, on the court, at the pool. He thought all young Virilian boys did it - except, perhaps, the Bottoms of Tomorrow - to emulate the well endowed tops they hoped one day to join.

"Maybe. Anyway, the Preceptor has spoken and the numbers never lie," grumbled Marcus, "it's the bottomiest endowment Valourwood's seen in years."

"You're right," agreed Oliver, whispering in awe, "I've always loved how proud you are of my tininess, and his is even smaller. I'll go see how he's getting on with dinner."

At the table, Oliver served first Marcus and then himself, and Sammy did as was expected and served his younger brother Jack first with a more generous portion, before dishing out his own meal. Sammy was tense, slightly fearful Jack might blab to their parents about the previous night's indiscretion, but Sammy was on great form - psyched for his tennis match the next day, and talking animatedly with Marcus about that.

Jack persuaded his dad and poppy to let him go and hang out with some friends around the corner for a couple of hours - and Marcus went to the Adamses' house next door to have a drink with their dad Mike - leaving Sammy and Oliver to clear up dinner, do the dishes, and make a start on the laundry.

Sammy was sent into his and Jack's room to get the washing basket and strip the beds, and as he reached up to strip Jack's sheet from the mattress the unmistakable boyish aroma of cum which had stiffened up on Jack's bed clothes hit his nose. His jaw dropped slightly as he held the sheet up against the light - how many loads was this? It surely couldn't be just one - it would have taken Sammy a week to make this much, or - at least - it would have done back when he was allowed to use his little dicklette for such things. He felt red-faced and self-questioning as he shoved the sheet in with the laundry, and put on fresh sheets.

After Oliver had told Sammy he was done with his chores, Sammy excused himself to his room.

He tried to read, he tried to read one of the cookery magazines his poppy had given him, he tried everything to keep his mind off the one place it kept wandering - his urgent need to cum.

Double-checking the bedroom door was firmly closed and figuring it would be a while before Jack's return, he carefully slid the dirty calendar from under Jack's mattress, then sat horizontally on his own bunk, sliding down his trousers.

His almost-four-incher felt heavenly in his hand, as he tugged at it with his usual thumb-and-two-fingers method. One of the bottoms, his favourite in the calendar, wore nothing but a pink thong and presented his butt to the camera - so naughty! So immodest!

Sammy let out a sigh as he fapped away faster and more urgently, he just ... needed ... a minute ... or so ... more ...

His heart jumped into his throat as the bedroom door burst open.

"What the fuck?!" shouted his brother, Jack, stood there, sweaty and panting from whatever gallivanting he'd been up to with his Future Tops friends - his face suddenly flashing angry.

"Oh, shit," Sammy said, trying to pull his trousers back up.

"I cannot believe you're doing that again," Jack said, suddenly lowering his voice so their parents wouldn't hear. "After our talk yesterday!"

"I know, I know-" begged Sammy. "I'm sorry. I thought you were out."

"That's not what's important," Jack hissed. "Even when you're alone, you can't use your dick like that! Fuck, can't you get a fucking vibrator?"

Bottoms having enough libido to need a vibrator was something of a running joke about Future Tops - who were simultaneously amused at the idea of bottoms having a sexuality beyond pleasuring tops while being a little turned on at the prospect.

"What?! No, fuck you! I just need release! Normal release, like you clearly have!" Sammy whined.

"Excuse me?" said his shorter and younger but musclier brother, advancing on him, "Don't talk to me like that, you fucking bottom."

The words hit Sammy like a smack across the face.

"What I get up to is totally different. When I grow up I'm gonna need this dick," Jack said grabbing his crotch, eliciting wide-eyed awe from Sammy, "to fuck bitches and make fucking babies. Your little dick isn't made for that."

Sammy silently began to cry, and felt the little dick in question wilt under the humiliation of it all.

"What would dad and poppy say if they heard about this? Hell, what would the Advocates or Valourwood Council say?" Jack said, angrier still, his face filled with revulsion.

"No one wants a bottom who acts like this, Sammy. No self-respecting top would want a bottom who thinks there are two dicks in their relationship," Jack went on. "If I ever fucking catch you doing this again, I'll have no choice but to report you."

The words hit both of them with an element of surprise this time. Jack seemed now momentarily torn about whether he would really dob in his flesh and blood, his beloved older brother, for a moment. But then his features hardened. Jack would do what was right - for Virilius - for his family - and, even if he didn't yet know it, for Sammy.

Sammy gulped.

"I'm sorry, Jack. I'll try. I promise," he said, hands clasped together in submission.

"You fucking better," spat Jack, as he climbed back into bed.

Sammy couldn't sleep for an hour or so, as it all sank in - this would be his life, now, surveilled by his family, then any future husband, forbidden to get the release he had had so easily before the Epiphany - back when he was a Future Top - if he ever was a Future Top. No, he was sure he had been - the basketball competitions, the fireside, the boyish fraternal ribbing. But the memories seemed hazier now. He was also deathly scared of what would happen if Jack was as good as his word - the disappointment of his parents, the scorn of the Advocates, the potential punishment of the Council.

Sammy hugged his pillow as he fell asleep, unaware of Jack above him whose heart pounded too for quite different reasons and who had a rage boner firmer than ever - but he was too shocked at his brother's lack of respect for Virilian honour even to fuck his mattress like he hoped one day to fuck bottoms far and wide.

The next night, Jack slept a little more soundly. He'd thrashed a bottom for nearby Woodsfield 6-1 6-0 in tennis, jacked off three times thinking about his victory - in the locker room, on the coach home, and in a field near his home - and was suitably tired. And, best of all, he seemed finally to have got through to Sammy - who'd seemed especially subservient all throughout dinner, with no hint that Sammy's thoughts were thinking of his dicklette as a dick.

He was just dreaming about pinning down some of the more comelier bottoms who'd turned out to cheer and watch the match, which seemed to whirl with him gently fucking them, to the same rhythm of one of the longer rallies the other Future Top had managed to defend himself with in the second set when this all dematerialised and he found himself - frustratingly before climax - rock hard in his bed, and vaguely aware of the ensuite door closing and a sliver of light coming from beneath it...

Jack breathed deeply, trying to savour the memories of his dream, hoping to continue it again in a few moments before Sammy had so rudely needed to go for an early hours' pee.

Come to think of it, Jack pondered, he'd never known Sammy to need to go to the toilet in the middle of the night before. He couldn't be? Could he?

If he was, thought Jack, surely he wouldn't want to know. Sammy must have understood by now that the bottoms' Tenet of Chastity was absolute - mandatory for any bottom ever hoping to bring honour on himself, his family, his future husband. And yet, Jack realised, he did want to know. He couldn't allow Sammy to dirty himself like this if he had any hope for fulfilling his destiny.

Swiftly but silently, Jack pounced down from his bunk, and walked towards the lockless bathroom door. He placed his fist around the knob and pulled it back with a growl...

Sure enough - there was Sammy, tugging away at his pitiful little dicklette.

Jack felt a wave of anger surge over him.

"For fuck's sake!" Jack yelled, not caring their parents or all of Virilius heard this time. "What the FUCK do you think you're doing."

Sammy's hand froze in place, his eyes filled with fear, "I'm sorry, Jack. I'm sorry! I tried, I really did! All day today!"

Jack strode forward, grabbing Sammy by the wrist, and pulling his hand away.

"Look at yourself!" Jack barked, as Sammy looked down po-faced, his gaze meeting his small achingly hard cock. Jack looked at it too. He'd never seen anything so laughable - Jack hadn't seen a lot of hard cocks. None except his own had ever interested him. But what he saw before him and what the numbers had said were wise and immutable.

He pulled Sammy up from the toilet seat and span him around, facing the mirror above the sink where they'd brushed their teeth since they were boys.

"I mean, fucking look at yourself! Does that look like a top's dick? Does that look like the cock of someone whose dick is to please himself or anyone?!"

Despite being 5'9" to Sammy 6'3", Jack had never felt taller - watching his brother's increasingly meek and terrified face. Jack felt surer than ever of Virilian tradition and his own destiny as a top one day, at least surely - if Sammy's endowment was anything to go by. Seeing the two of them in the mirror, Jack's cock lengthened and fattened in the black fitted boxers in which he'd gone to sleep, from knowing he was doing what's right - and, in no small part, from exercising this righteous power over his older brother.

Sammy, meanwhile, was terrified but so desperate for release that his little boner stayed upright. Fuck, thought Jack, Sammy's six years older than me - but I don't think my dick was that small six years ago!

In the reflection, it seems Sammy saw it too. He broke down crying, big heaving sobs, interspersed with whispers. "No. Of course not. I just- I just- I just really need to cum. Please! I'm begging you! Just go to the other room and let's not tell anyone. Just PLEASE let me cum, one last time! Forever!"

"Bottoms! Don't! Touch! Their! Dicklettes!" boomed Jack, his voice now indisputably deeper than Sammy's, which had seemed to soften over the last few days.

"What's going on here?!"

Both boys jumped and looked behind them, as Marcus, who'd yelled first, and then Oliver - had been alerted by Jack's yelling and joined them in the bathroom.

"Nothing!" Sammy yelled, looking pleadingly at Jack.

Oliver's face awash with worry, and Marcus' was a picture of incredulity.

"Dad! Poppy! I caught Sammy wanking!"

Their dad's expression shifted further into a scowl, and poppy gasped.

Oliver tried to be understanding, "These ... transgressions are not unheard of after the Epiphany."

"Three times!" Jack went on. He was running on adrenaline now, shocked that the values he and his brother had seemed to share now went out of the window just because Sammy had been deemed an unhung bottom.

"WHAT?!" boomed Marcus. "THREE TIMES!? Once would be bad enough!"

"I know," Jack said, slightly taken aback to see his dad even angrier than he was.

"Oh, Sammy, how could you?!" Oliver gasped once more, shaking his head.

"I'm sorry, I just-" Sammy started

"What a DISGUSTING notion," Marcus' brow furrowed, and even he felt shocked at how like Piers Vanderpuye he sounded.

"And you're sure it's three times?" asked Oliver, hopeful it couldn't be true.

"Three times in three nights," Jack assured them earnestly. "I can't believe it either. I think-" he paused, unsure he could do this even for Virilius. But then went one "I think I'm going to tell the Advocates tomorrow."

"Please, NO! Don't!" begged Sammy, looking at his dad and poppy pleadingly.

But they were unmoved. Marcus snarled and went back to bed, while Oliver shook his head a few times and headed after his husband.

"Go to bed!" snapped Jack.

Sammy slinked back into the bedroom, and Jack felt pretty sure he wouldn't dare try anything again that night.

Jack also, he realised, had had a hard-on the entire time. Sport always made him horny, and winning matches even more so - and the way he was responsibly ensuring his brother's honour seemed to make his bold erection throb. He watched himself in the mirror as his right hand stroked up and down his shaft. He let out deep sighs as he stared himself in his eyes, stared into his destiny and his brother's destiny alike, and that was enough to bring him off. A dozen spurts of cum volleyed from his cock onto the mirror.

He nodded at his reflection and the patterns his substantial seed made as they seeped down the mirror, and caught himself hoping that before his poppy cleaned it off the next morning that his bottomy younger brother would see obscuring his reflection the sheer manly volume of Jack's load.

Sammy found himself sitting in the dock at Valourwood Council Hall.

True to his word, Jack had woken up the next morning, donned his Young Tops uniform and hailed the first Advocate he could see. The Advocate had called for back-up, and despite Sammy pleas and protestations, his dad and poppy had merely shaken their heads and followed as Sammy was led to the municipal centre.

Judge Tanaka, a Tier of Dominance magistrate, was known and feared for his strict adherence to honour and the meting out of punishment. He presided over Sammy's trial:

"Sammy Thompson. You are charged with three counts of using your penis for personal pleasure. I see here, you are not just a bottom - but you are a bottom in the 2nd percentile. What sort of message do you think it sends to society and to the tops who might one day wish to court you that you would deign to use such a modest endowment for pleasure, even your own?"

Before Sammy could answer, he was cut off-

"Silence. It was a rhetorical question. It would send a very bad message indeed. Yours is a dicklette not ten centimetres long nor ten centimetres around. It is the opinion of this court that these measurements are laughable as a prospective sexual organ, and that the ancient Epiphany Ascendus has rightly deemed you to be a bottom."

"I read here also that your brother Jack, the upstanding Future Top in uniform in the gallery, esteemed men and fair bottoms, caught you on all three occasions and they were three nights in the row. How do you plead?"

Sammy waited a few moments, to see whether he was now allowed to speak, before answering - with a heavy heart -

"But, Your Honour, I know it is forbidden. But I just don't see why- I just really needed to- I- I- I-" but Sammy's words failed him. The confidence he had known before his Epiphany seemed to melt away before the courtroom, before the Judge, before his very own eyes.

"I ask you again, Sammy Thompson, how do you plead?"

"Guilty, Sir," Sammy said. His head hung low.

There was a gasp and much tutting and even a few boos in the courtroom. Valourwood was a respectable suburb, and trials like this didn't happen often. And here was Sammy, bringing such scandal and dishonour to his neighbourhood not even a week after his coming of age ceremony.

Judge Tanaka was known as a conservative justice, and those in the courtroom who knew this knew this would not go down well.

Punishment was swift and decisive. The top Judge continued, "Well then, young Sammy, I'm afraid I have no choice but to sentence you to six months not just of psychological counselling but also in chastity. I hope you will use this time to forget about your dicklette, given you shall have no access to it, and shall instead focus on improving your community and attract a well endowed top husband for yourself."

A mixed murmur of gasps and assent came up from those assembled in the courtroom.

"The punishment will be administered immediately. Bailiff, take away the criminal!," spat the Judge.

Two burly tops, Tier of Fortitude ones with dicks in the fifth decile (not much bigger than Ben, thought Sammy, squirming at the injustice of this justice system) manhandled him out of the dock and into the cells downstairs. As they pushed him inside and slapped the door, Sammy's eyes teared up once more and he couldn't imagine how this could be any more humiliating.

He needn't have imagined very long. He was mortified to see his dad Marcus, then his poppy Oliver, then his `upstanding Future Top' brother Jack, led down a different flight of stairs - one at a time - shown by a different bailiff to a row of seats facing his cell.

Most judges delegated this stage of proceedings to a bailiff, but not Judge Tanaka. The middle aged magistrate liked to stare into a bottom's soul, which he devoutly believed he was saving, when they were placed into chastity for crimes such as pretending their own pathetic pensises were for any use beyond peeing.

A bailiff followed after him, however, with a small trolley of equipment.

"Strip, you wanton bottom," Judge Tanaka commanded. His tone was more scathing away from the court record, but none of Sammy's family seemed to care.

Sammy fought back his tears as his trembling fingers removed his shoes and socks, his shirt, the jodhpurs Oliver had brought him, and - finally - his boxers.

He could see the Judge scowl at his `masculine' underwear.

As if having brought shame on his family for all their neighbours to see; having justice meted out by this cantankerous old judge, who - as an affirmed top - could never understand Sammy's plight and frustration; who seemed to relish what he was about to do; and have his entire family watch as he did it weren't enough; there was one final embarrassment. Sammy's little nine-centimetre pecker was hard as rock from it all.

"Hmmm," Judge Tanaka scowled. He reached over to the trolley the bailiff had brought down and pulled out a hose. Pressing a button at the top of it, a laser-like jet of high-pressure ice water blasted Sammy in his tiny little junk.

"Ahhhhh!" Sammy yelped. The freezing cold and the bullet-like blast of the water first taking his breath away, and then blasting at his tiny dicklette and now-shrunken balls. It didn't take long, not more than five or so seconds, for his little nub to shrink back to an unblossomed bud.

"That's better," smirked Judge Tanaka. "Now - let me see - no, extra small won't do. I think you are an extra extra small."

His fingers plucked first a ring, almost as cold and clinical as the ice hose, which he slid over Sammy's dicklette and tight cherry-like balls. He then picked up the extra extra small cage in question, and slid that over Sammy's shrivelled little penis.

Judge Tanaka took a padlock from the trolley - slightly larger than the cage itself(!) - and slid it through the mechanism which connected the cage to the ring, before locking it in place.

Sammy tried to squirm out the way, but was quickly grabbed and held in place by the brute of a bailiff.

With a hint too much sadism for a professional jurist, Judge Tanaka clicked the lock shut and then pocketed the key with a number which corresponded with the lock.

"There we are," he chuckled.

Sammy looked over at his family through the bars. Jack was staring at Sammy's crotch, with seemingly mixed emotions on his face, avoiding Sammy's eyes. His father Marcus looked at Sammy more brazenly, a look of deep and genuine disappointment on his face. And Oliver - his beloved poppy Oliver - looked utterly crestfallen that Sammy would do this to himself and the family in front of all their neighbours.

Judge Tanaka went on: "Now, the court psychologist will write to you in due course. And you can come back for this," he said, patting his pocket, "in six months' time - in January. Do you have any questions?"

Our young bottom criminal Sammy was too crushed to even think whether he had questions, let alone what they might be, and so shook his head.

"And you, Mr and Mrs Thompson? Young Jack?"

Marcus and, if anything even more so, Oliver shook their heads more gravely. They knew Sammy had this coming to him, and hoped beyond hope this meant he wouldn't do something like this again.

Jack looked pensive and a little guilty, but also determined.

"No, Your Honour," Jack said, the starless phallic proto-insignia of the Young Tops glinting on his chest.

Three weeks had gone by and Jack had a bigger spring in his step than ever.

Judge Tanaka had taken him aside and awarded Jack the Valour of Vility award for having upheld such strong Virilian values, even (or, perhaps, especially) in light of it involving his older brother.

Sammy, as far as Jack could tell, seemed to move between a stroppy moodiness and a resigned submission - helping Oliver around the house, and sometimes being enormously polite and obsequious to Jack, and other times avoiding his gaze and seeming a little frosty.

Well, thought Jack, it didn't bother him. He had one of the highest honours it was possible for a Future Top (or, like that sexy Stevie Adams next door had been, a Bottom of Tomorrow) to achieve. And dinner was better than ever now poppy had some help around the kitchen. After that night's bratwurst and potatoes, Jack found himself with his dad Marcus shooting hoops in the garden. He'd not missed a shot all evening, and was feeling pretty bold and brazen.

"Dad?" Jack opened. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yes, son," Marcus said, catching the basketball he'd been dribbling in both his hands. He made his way to the picnic bench he and Jack had made together on which the family sometimes dined outside and sat down.

Jack went and sat opposite him.

"I'm thinking about Sammy, and what happened to him in court, and how he seems to be struggling with ... his role, since his Epiphany."

"Hmm," growled Marcus, not enjoying this besmirchment on the family name of Thompson - which he wore with pride, which Jack did too, which his bottom wife Oliver wore literally tattooed on his wrist as all Virilian brides did with their husbands' names, and yet which Sammy seemed not to grasp.

"And, the thing is," Jack continued, "I don't want to wait, dad. I want to take my Epiphany."

Marcus spun the basketball between his fingers, letting his younger son's words sink in.

"Are you sure, son? It's no light matter."

Jack was boyishly enthusiastic in his prepared response.

"I know, dad. But ... I think I'm ready!"

"But Jack, my boy," Marcus countered, pausing for effect, "you've only been eligible a few months. And you could wait another five years. Once the Preceptor takes the measurement, that's it for life. You have a few more years' growth left in you. Why not wait?"

"Dad! I've seen Sammy's dicklette, remember. Too many times, to be honest!"

Marcus joined in with an indulgent chuckle to match Jack's laughter.

"And I know I'm not like him. I know I'll be a great and honourable top!"

"Hmm," said Marcus. In truth, Marcus had platonically spotted Jack's bulge a few times at the pool - and, combined with his prodigal and rapidly improving sports prowess, the way he often took on leadership roles with his friends, thought he was probably right.

"Son," Marcus continued, "there's no easy way to ask this, but... Have you ever `stuffed'?"

"What's that?" Jack asked, oblivious.

Marcus frowned and then smiled.

"Your poppy and I, we think ... we think Sammy may have shoved socks and things down his boxers growing up. Have you ever done that?"

Now Jack thought about it, he did remember one of the reasons he'd bonded so fraternally with Sammy was that he seemed to be packing a top's heat in his trunk, the way their dad did, the way their poppy didn't, and the way Jack himself had - recently and so rapidly - done himself.

"What? No. Why would I need to?"

Marcus stared at his son and didn't see even a glimmer or glimpse of a lie in his soul.

"Very well, Jack my boy. If you're sure. If we register you tomorrow, we'll be in time for next week's Epiphany."

Jack leapt from his seat and wrapped his arms around his dad. They patted each other roughly on their back.

"Really, dad?! Thanks!"

Oliver's initial uncertainty was easily overcome. Sammy was already in bed, and would have to wait `til the next day to hear the news.

It took Jack substantial restraint not to wake Sammy and break the news to him, as he tossed and turned and struggled to sleep from the excitement. Boy oh boy. Taking the Epiphany aged sixteen. It wasn't unheard of, but it sure didn't happen often. But here was Jack Thompson, golden boy of the Valourwood Future Tops, who in a week - five years early - would be taking his Epiphany Ascendus to learn his destiny.

I hope you're enjoying this story. Any feedback and suggestions would be much appreciated at sphsublondon@gmail.com