Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2013 14:10:13 -0500 From: Eff Del Subject: Young-But Daily Growing-chapter 25 Young but Daily Growing-Chapter 25 By Eff Del When we sway and move our bodies to a rhythm that we hear or feel...when we croon the words or even intone the melody of a song that has touched and then rebounded from our hearts...when we clap our hands or tap our feet to a cadence we have drawn from the pulse of the universe... we are declaring our humanity more than at any other moment. The birds may warble and many creatures bounce and gambol about but only human beings sing and dance. When we do, we are sharing in the joyful laughter of heaven itself for we are part of the music of eternity. He was standing just outside of the shower entrance his hands on his hips and his lips pursed in thought. I stood looking at him realizing that I would forever be grateful for the gift that was the sight of his naked beauty with all of its sweet perfection and impending promise. I wondered as I looked if there hadn't been some changes. It had been almost six months since he'd first shamelessly almost joyfully displayed his body for me. Were those perfect legs a bit longer...was that sweet scrotum a bit looser...had that little penis grown a bit? I'd already noticed the place where his most private hair was beginning to show, but, were his shoulders a little broader or was it all my imagination? I need to measure and weigh him I thought. I suspect he's growing before my very eyes. My little boy stood before me unwittingly poised to leap from childhood into the next stage of life; the next magical change; that metamorphosis that would gradually but relentlessly transform my little manling into an adult. I shook my head in half wonder and half dismay. "Slow down...don't be in such a rush. You are the sweetness of spring now... you are new- you are fresh. Don't be in such a hurry to turn to summer. Summer is hot, it is dry. It is fire and passion that sucks the fresh greenness to desiccation as it consumes its burning days and nights. There's time enough for that. The time for your season in the dry golden fields of summer is coming later. Take great care how quickly you rush to use up your newness and green lushness because... after that comes the brown autumn and then cold white winter. It all goes so fast. Enjoy the new and the green. Enjoy yourself little boy, don't throw yourself so desperately into the insane race to become a man." I wanted to say all of that to him but of course I didn't. Even if I had, he wouldn't have understood and besides, none of it was really within his control. I might just as well have tried to beg the sun to stop its daily journey across the sky. And so, instead I just looked and enjoyed the sight of him; young and hopeful and happy. "Eric, I don't remember whose turn it is. It seems like it's been so long." He was referring to what we had come to call the "shower music" game. Early on we had gotten into the habit of taking turns selecting a song to be played over the bathroom sound system. The other person's task was to guess the song and provide as much information as he could about the recording. It was a game we shared and enjoyed each morning. "Well, I do Sport. It's your turn unless you're not up to it." I grinned as I answered him. He returned my grin and turned to the sound system display. "You just get the water ready. I've got one for you." I entered the shower enclosure and began adjusting the water temperature and spray when the music began to play through the overhead speakers. The haunting guitar introduction was long and bordered upon being discordant as it built teasingly. He entered the shower and joined me under the shower heads pressing his little body against mine in a wet highly sensuous hug. He was swaying his form against mine in perfect time to the music as his lips brushed my nipples softly, exotically and also in perfect accord to the song while he softly hummed the haunting chords. I reached down and lovingly grasped and squeezed the pliant ovals of his perfect little ass as the vocals began from the recording. "I've heard there was a secret chord That David played to please the Lord But you don't really care for music Do ya? It goes like this the fourth, the fifth The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah." Smiling I lowered my lips to the top of his head and tenderly kissed him. Nuzzling my nose through his soft wet hair I murmured; "Good choice Sean, the Jeff Buckley cover of Leonard Cohen's `Hallelujah' a very good choice." He raised his face up to me and smiled through the splashes and darting spray. Without thought or concern, I felt my dick become erect and hard as we pressed our flesh against each other savoring the closeness and comfort. The song was long over before I reached for the body wash and worked the cleansing foam over his smooth water slick skin. *********** "You know you don't really have to do this. I can do it myself." We had just finished dressing and I was brushing his hair. "I know you can do it and I probably should stop treating you like some helpless little kid but I like brushing your hair every now and again. Just tell me if you don't like me doing it." "Nah, that's OK. I like when you do it too. I like doing everything with you Eric...it just makes me happy all the time." I smiled and caressed his cheek with the fingers of my left hand while I lay the hair brush aside. "There is something very important I'm going to ask you today little man and it's something I need for you to really think about. No quick decisions Sean. It's so important that Professor Swaim is going to join us for breakfast and then we're going to meet in the library. I want him to be there when I ask you so that he can help if you've got any questions." He grabbed my hand and clutched it tightly in both of his own; his face was tense with apprehension. "Eric, you're scarin' me. Is this gonna be something bad?" "No Sean, I promise. Nothing bad. I'll never intentionally ever do anything that will hurt you again I swear." "If it's not bad, then why do we have to wait? Why can't you just ask me the question?" I thought about it and decided he was right. Ask the question, give him time to think and then we can discuss it. A reasonable request. "Fair enough Sean. I'll ask the question but you can't give me your answer now. I want you to think about it because I know you'll have questions of your own. So, no answers from you until all three of us have talked about it after breakfast OK?" "Kay." His answer was subdued and his expression pensive. I wondered silently when I was going to learn not to scare this poor boy with things that I say. I sat down on the floor and pulled him down so that he was sitting facing me. I was holding his hand and looking him in the eyes. I hoped my expression was as soft and loving as I intended it to be although I feared my trepidation was showing. "Sean, first off please understand that whatever your answer is, I will always love you. You will never go back to the NEST. You will stay here for as long as it pleases you...forever if that's your desire, but I would like you to consider making our relationship more permanent than that...more significant... more life changing." His eyebrow arched and he cocked his head slightly as if to silently indicate that he didn't understand what I was saying. "I'm always screwing it up when I try to talk to him" I thought angrily to myself. "Sean, you know how we are always saying that you're my boy?" he nodded his head affirmatively still looking at me in total confusion. "I want you to be my boy for real in the eyes of the law and the eyes of the world. Sean if you agree, I want to adopt you. I want you to be my son. You've been the son of my heart and soul for a long time but I want you to consider it...to accept it... to make it completely real." His eyes grew wide and his mouth dropped open as he sat there staring at me. "I...I...Eric,I..." I pressed my finger against his lips. "Shhh. We'll talk after breakfast remember? Let it roll around in your head so you can ask all of your questions then. Come on, let's go eat". I rose to my feet and held my hand out to him. He got up and took it with a surprised but thoughtful expression on his face. Silently we walked together to breakfast and then (I hoped) the sealing of our future. ******* We were seated in three comfortable leather chairs in the library. Martha had outdone herself with breakfast and I felt as though I had grossly over eaten although compared to Doc Swaim and Sean, I was a rank amateur when it came to putting away food. The professor regarded Sean and me warmly and I couldn't suppress a smile as his black rimmed eyeglasses slid down to the tip of his nose. "Sean, Eric has told me what he's asked of you. I must tell you I'm not surprised. I've had the pleasure of watching you two grow together almost from the beginning. You've seemed to me to be a family in spirit from the start. How are you feeling about this idea?" He looked distressed and confused and I began to panic. "He's going to reject the idea" I thought. "He's going to turn me down!" But when he spoke it was more a profession of bewilderment. "I-I don't understand what it all means. I know what the words mean but I never had a father...I never been someone's son. I've always been a NEST kid. We've got the teachers and the councilors and the proctors but never any father. What's a father do? What's a son supposed to do? I'm already born so I don't need a father for that...why do I haffta be adopted?" His face was getting flushed and I could tell he was just short of crying. It dawned on me how hard it was for a little boy who had spent his entire life in the controlled atmosphere of the NEST to understand some of the more basic concepts of life in the outside world. In many ways this all must be a "through the Looking Glass" experience for him. I was about to speak but Doc beat me to it. Folding his large hands upon his stomach he leaned back into his chair. "Let's look at it from many different angles Sean. In the first place there is the strictly material aspect of the relationship which I'm certain doesn't interest you one tiny bit but which you should be awair of because it's so very important. If you agree to be adopted, then you become Eric's legal heir. Simply put, if something were to happen to Eric and he should die, everything he owns...and you have no concept of how much that is...would then belong to you." "I don't care about that stuff. I don't want anything to happen to Eric!" "Oh, I'm not saying that we expect anything to happen to Eric. The fact is I predict a long interesting life for him and for you Sean but be realistic...you're certainly not such a child that you can't understand these things...something DID happen to your parents when you were a baby and later when you were very young something happened to your grandmother. That's how you wound up at the NEST in the first place. You also know that something happened to Eric's Father, Mother and brother. Sometimes, things that we don't want to happen still do. If something WERE to happen to Eric, if you were his son then he would know he was leaving everything to the person he wanted to have it. But that's just one point...a legal point. Another legal point is that as your father Eric would be required to take care of you, feed you, clothe you shelter you educate you..." "But..." He leaned forward in his seat and touched my leg "But Eric does all that for me already and not cause he has to... because he wants to...Oh why is this happening? What did I do wrong? Why are you both trying to change everything? Why can't we just stay the same?" He was crying now and I reached over and pulled him over to me and onto my lap. I hadn't expected this trauma. I suppose I hadn't considered it from his perspective and now that he was frightened and crying. To my shock the Professor sat silently looking at me. Expecting ME to answer this frightened little boy. ME who always makes a mess out of every important thing I say to him. I softly stroked his hair and looked down into his moist big eyes and I spoke without thinking. "Sean...that's legal...that's just stuff. That's not what this is about. I'll tell you what this is about. Of my whole family, I'm the only one that's left. There's no one else. The same thing is true for you...there's no one in your family left. They're all gone. You and me we're all alone in the world...or at least we were. Before you ever knew me, I was looking for a little boy to share my life with. I didn't know it then, but I was looking for you. When I first saw your picture I felt something in my heart and when I met you for the first time I felt...fixed. Something deep inside me was broken badly Sean and you fixed it. You have made me whole again. Happy again. Alive again. You are an extension of my life. You're as much a part of me as you could possibly be even if you were my own flesh and blood. I want to be a father to you Sean. I want to be there for you. I want to watch you grow. I want you to know I'm always there to support you and encourage you...to love you no matter what. I want to try and catch you when you stumble and fall and to comfort you when I can't. I want to laugh with you when you're happy and be strong for you when you're sad. I want to have answers for you when you have questions and questions for you when you grow too sure of yourself. I want to help you to become the man you are destined to be. I want to guide you but not push you. I want to suggest and never demand. I want to encourage you to become your own person...to think your own thoughts...adhere to your own principles. I want to help you in your search for yourself but I never want to stand in the way or be a hindrance in your discovery. And if...in the course of time, that journey of discovery should lead you away from my protection and out of my shadow, I want to love you enough to smile and encourage you to go. I want to show you the stars Sean but I want you to choose the one that you'll follow. That's what I think a father is Sean. That's what my father was to me and that's what I want to be to you. If your love for me allows you to accept that then adaption will make us a family and we won't be alone in this world anymore." He'd stopped crying and was looking at me his long dark wet lashes blinking occasionally were his only movement. I glanced across at the professor and saw that he was smiling and nodding his head. "I love you Eric. I wish things could stay the same." He whispered. I rubbed the tear tracks from his cheeks with my thumb and with a little smile I answered; If I could cast a magic spell and keep you a little boy...keep you 11 years old just like you are... as much as my heart would love for me to do it, I wouldn't. Because Sean, you've got to grow and become what you were born to become. Change is nothing to be afraid of Sean. Change occurs constantly... in fact change is going on while you're sitting around waiting for something to happen. I won't always agree with everything that you do I probably won't like everything you do but if I love you and you love me then in the end there will be understanding. Where there is love, there's always understanding. Where there is love, there is always a solution. Most important Sean...whatever change may bring, we'll be a family and we'll have each other. Doctor Swaim stood up and strode over to the fireplace a placed his large hand upon the marble mantle. "Sometimes, we need mottos to remind us of things that should always have been obvious. Eric, your great grandfather Herbert Tucker who first forged the family fortune, built this marvelous estate and gave it its name of "Joyous Gaurde"...he spelled it wrong by the way but I never bothered pointing that out to you father...he also adopted a motto for your family...hopefully soon to be your family as well Sean so both of you, come here and look at this... your family motto carved in stone." I'd forgotten all about it. It had been so long since I'd even paid attention although I realized I'd known about it since I was a child. Carved neatly into the marble were the words; `NOLI TIMERE'...I remembered now," "Nolly timur...what's that mean?" Sean asked looking up at the big man. Smiling he replied; "It's Latin and its pronounced; know-lee tim-air- eh and it means `Do not be afraid'...pretty good advice for a boy, for a man...for a family I'd say. Listen you two. Fear of change is one of the most common and yet silliest fear known to man. What a sad boring world this would be without change...Sean...think about what we've studied recently...without change there would be no butterflies. It would be a world full of caterpillars! What a wonderful exciting opportunity to experience the wonders of a changing world together. Oh guys, along the way there will be tears and there will be laughter. There will be great joy but most certainly there will be sadness as well. There will be anger and there will be confusion but also much satisfaction and pleasure. The road will not be straight and the way will not always be easy but you'll have each other and the mighty armor that is your love to protect you on the journey." He strode down the length of the room and pulled back the drapery from the window. "Outside these walls. beyond the fence...all around you is the world. It's filled with all kinds of things; wonderful and terrible things. It awaits you guys...don't be afraid. Do not EVER be afraid." I felt his little hand slip into mine and I looked down at him he was smiling even though one new large tear was slowly rolling down his cheek. "I'll try to be as good a son to you as I know you're going to be a father to me Eric." That was it. I lost it. I dropped to my knees and hugged him tightly to me and wept into his soft dark hair. He whispered something into my ear. I didn't understand him. "What?" I asked through my sobs. "Noli Timere." He said louder this time. "I love you Eric. Do not be afraid." (To be continued) Next time, plans, and more plans. Sean "visits" his family and there's an adoption. Thanks once again for all of your emails. I love them all and try to answer in a timely fashion. Please take the time to make a contribution to NIFTY to keep these stories coming.