Gilbert feels better. The sores gradually heal thanks to Alain's care. For a while Gilbert stops his night raids. But Christmas vacations come and Gilbert starts his night visits again. As Alain can seldom stop at his place during the night, he can go to steal without his lover being aware.
They celebrate the year's end and the New Year together. Gilbert cooks a perfect supper - he is skilled in the kitchen. They wait for midnight by making love. The traces of Gilbert's bad adventure have almost disappeared from his body - those wounds were not too deep. It wasn't long before they also disappeared from his soul, even though they were deeper, thanks to the unconditional love of Alain.
>From the living room TV, the countdown comes.
At the "zero" Alain whispers to him, "Have a good year, Love."
"A happy New Year to you."
"I hope that the New Year brings us only good days... in spite of all." That phrase - "in spite of all" - is clear to Gilbert, even if he pretends to not get its real meaning.
"As long as you'll love me, Alain, every second will be splendid," Gilbert says with great tenderness.
Gilbert deeply loves Alain, yet he is not able to give him what he asks - he is not able to renounce his periodical thefts. Gilbert is not greedy - if he earns good money from a theft, then for a long while he won't steal any more. He determined a kind of ceiling that he, in his thoughts, called his "monthly wage", almost as if it was a normal salary. Gilbert tells Alain everything about himself, therefore Alain knows that for his love Gilbert renounced hustling and he is grateful for that.
In the spring they celebrate their first anniversary by going to Paris for the weekend. They are amused to see the expression of the receptionist when they ask for a double room. They have supper on the "bateau mouche", climb on top of the Tour Eiffel. Alain succeeds in taking him to see the ballets, and Gilbert discovers that he likes them. They visit Montmartre far and wide, they go to see a video art show at the Beaubourg, and they make purchases... they are happy.
When they return to Lyon, Gilbert decides to close his old savings account at the bank and open an account in both their names at a different bank. Alain doesn't agree, but Gilbert insists. "It is a symbol that we really are one," he says. As usual Alain yields in the end, even if he is determined to never use "their" money. Besides, he doesn't need it - his parents don't make him miss what he needs.
In the summer, for the first time, they manage to take their holidays together. They rent a mini-apartment in Provence, in Vaucluse. They take long, romantic strolls, they eat good country food, and they enjoy the sweet days of intimate communion. They seem like two reckless boys, happy and headless. They bathe naked in the streams, and make love amongst ferns and bushes, under the hot summer sun, mitigated by the half-mountain breeze. Alain would like to not have to go back to town...but they finally had to return.
Gilbert resumes his night raids. It is the end of September. Alain didn't yet resume his courses at the university, where he would be starting his third year. Gilbert is keeping an eye an apartment in an elegant condominium in Vassieux. When he feels sure, he decides to try the robbery. He enters without too many difficulties. He is not aware that there is a modern alarm system connected through the telephone to a security agency. He finds the money, the jewels - he is happy, for it is a good boot. He puts everything in his bag and silently goes out as he entered.
When the entrance door closes with a soft click, he turns to find himself face-to-face with three private policemen, their guns level. He lets his bag fall down and, with a resigned gesture, raises his hands. They seize him, put him in handcuffs, and take him to the near police station, handing him over and filling a report. Because he was caught red-handed, he doesn't ever attempt to defend himself. He is put in a cell.
Early the following morning, he asks for and gets the authorization to call a lawyer... when in reality he doesn't have a lawyer. He asks for the list of the lawyers, browses through it, pretends to choose one and instead he dials Alain's number. The elder sister answers. He had already called other times, saying he was a course mate of Alain.
The sister recognizes him at once. "Oh, hello Gilbert...I'll call Alain."
"Yes, thank you." When Alain says, "Hello?" Gilbert says, "I was arrested tonight. I have no accomplices. Now I need a lawyer."
"Oh my god, Gil! But how..."
"Just that, there is nothing else for the moment. Do you understand? If they allow me to I'll write you. Forgive me. Bye," he says, cutting the line before the policeman could intervene.
"Who did you call? That wasn't your lawyer!" the man says, angrily approaching.
"No, but my sister will look for one. Is that not the same?"
"You have no right to talk with others!"
"Oh... I didn't know. This is the first time I've been in this situation," Gilbert answers in a naive tone.
Alain catches the meaning of the message on the fly. He runs out of the home and with a taxi goes to Gilbert's house. He takes all his pictures, whatever else can connect him to Gilbert, and the checkbook then he goes out. Then he starts to think about how to find a good lawyer for his Gilbert. He will pay him with the money from their joint account.
The police get the search warrant for Gilbert's apartment, but they find nothing. Alain finds a lawyer who agrees to be charged with Gilbert's defense - even though the boy is a suspect for other thefts, no other connections are made to him. Despite this, Gilbert is sentenced to one year and ten months of jail time - it's the minimum sentence, as he is not a previous offender, but there's no probation.
Gilbert is at last allowed to send letters. He writes a long letter to Alain asking him to be forgiven. He thanks him for not abandoning him. He tells him that, even though he knows that he is giving him a new great pain, he loves him and therefore would understand if Alain wanted to part from him if he found a worthier lover. He asks him to have for him at least a friendship. Alain answers with a similarly long letter, in which he says he will wait for him, and he doesn't want anybody else.
In jail, Gilbert feels lost for the first time. During the first night, no longer in the cell of people awaiting for a process but together with other inmates, he almost can't sleep. From cues thrown around there with indifferent air, and from glances more eloquent than the cues, he guessed that his young age, his handsome aspect, lit the lust within the men closed in there. He is worried.
On the second day Gilbert goes to the toilets at a moment when there is nobody, feeling safer. But as soon as he leaves the box, three men block his way.
"Hey, boy, stop. Wait, we have to talk with you..."
"Yes, but outside here, where all the others are..." the youth says defensively.
"No, no, this is just the right place - back on the box, and lower your trousers."
"No, I don't like..." Gilbert answers, trying to reach the door.
"But I like!" the man answers, seizing him.
"Let me alone or I'll scream and the warden will come," Gilbert sharply says.
The one holding him closes his mouth with the other hand and raises him, drawing him towards the sink. One of the other two men stops it up and makes the water flow. Gilbert wriggles to free himself but the third man helps the other to hold him fast.
In front of the sink, now filled with water, the two men keeping him still plunge his face into the water while the third unbuttons his trousers from the back. "Noooo..." Gilbert says when they let him breathe again, but at once his face is plunged again in the water. The one at his back lowers his trousers and briefs at once. Gilbert understands their system - in order to breathe, he has to keep silent and let them have their fun.
When the one at his back tries to push his face under the water again, Gilbert hurriedly murmurs, "No... I won't scream, but let me breathe..."
"A good boy, you see?" the one at his back says while slowly but determinedly sinking his tool inside the boy's hole. "A fast learner." he adds, panting as he starts to vigorously piston inside him.
On the day after Gilbert is even afraid of going to the toilet. When he is not in the cell, he does so to always be amongst the crowd of the inmates. It seems that his stratagem is working since nothing bad happens that day. In the evening, when they have to go back to their cells, Gilbert draws a relief sigh.
On the following day, after lunch, he goes into the recreation room to watch TV. The room is crowded with inmates sitting in rows of aligned chairs. There is only one free chair, in the center of the room. Gilbert goes to sit there, feeling safe.
After a while an inmate comes. "Stand up, this place is mine," he says.
Gilbert, thinking that it is not wise to oppose, stands up and tries to go towards the wall while the other sits.
The man seizes him by his arm and enjoins him, "Sit on the floor... in front of me."
"No, thank you. From there I wouldn't see the TV..." the youth objects quietly.
"I don't give a shit. Just so the wardens can't see you. Sit down!" he says with menacing air, pushing him down.
"But I..." Gilbert starts to say.
But the inmate sitting near the man who took his place orders, "Down and shut up, boy!" as he shows Gilbert the blade he is holding in his hands.
Gilbert understands, crouching down on the floor while the first man parts his legs and unbuttons his fly. That's why there was only that free place - he fell into the trap! He resigns himself to satisfying those men, under the amused and lusty glances of the others...
When at last they let him go free, Gilbert asks himself with a forlorn feeling in his heart where, when, how and with whom it will happen next time. He doesn't have to wait long to find out...
That night, when he is about to fall asleep, he feels somebody shaking his arm.
"Hey! What..." he asks, dazed.
"Shut up or you'll wake up the others. Undress. Go on, I need vent."
"No, please..."
"If they wake up, they will queue... then you'll have to satisfy them also..."
Gilbert shudders, but realizes that he can do nothing - if they want him, they can force him. He lets the man enter his bunk. The man lowers his briefs that much that suffices, and thrusts it into him with force. He takes him with energy for a time that seems to Gilbert to be endless. All happens in perfect silence. But when the man unloads inside him and then stands up, Gilbert sees that another cellmate is already near his bunk, slowly masturbating with a smirk of lust on his face, waiting for his turn...
The following day there is the weekly projection of a movie. Gilbert leans against the wall bear the door, where the two wardens are standing. The lights are switched off. Gilbert becomes aware that some inmates are encircling him. He tries to move towards the door, but is rudely pushed away from it
Aloud he says, "I don't like this movie, I want to go out!"
"Don't make a fuss! You should have said that earlier. Now shut up!" the voice of one of the wardens says harshly and the inmates push him even farther from the door.
He has an inmate at each side and two in front of him, he almost can't move. He tries to wriggle away, to go towards the exit, but he at once is grasped by his arm and pushed into the room's corner.
A sharp, low, hard voice hisses at him, "Don't make a fuss, punk, it's not wise. Today it's our turn..."
In the corner there is now some free space, enclosed by a compact wall of men in a double row. The one who pushed him there opens and lowers the boy's trousers, bends him over and starts to fuck his ass. Almost at once another inmate enters the empty space, placing himself in front of the boy and opening his fly. Gilbert, submitting with a big desire to cry, opens his mouth and lets the man have his fun in his mouth... Then two more give the change to the first two... until the movie is happily over.
Gilbert is aware that he has become everybody's whore. Unhappily for him, he is the youngest inmate inside there, and he is also very handsome. 'Well, it is not so different from when I hustled,' he thinks, 'but at least then I could choose who I would go with, and they also paid me afterwards...' He still chose once in a while, and not more than one each day like here. But he is also aware that if he doesn't oppose the men's lust, it is less bad than it could become - at least they don't hurt him like the sadist he tried to rob did.
Gilbert has given up. Now it is enough for an inmate to make a gesture to him, and he would go with him and let the man take his fun on him as he pleases. In the toilets, in his cell, even during the work time in the joinery workshop... One, two, three men at a time... Most times they give fast vent to their lust, but some of them instead enjoy his young and fresh body for a long while. Happily, this doesn't happen every day.
He writes nothing of all that to Alain... partly because he is ashamed, and partly because he is afraid that others might read his letter, but also to not make his lover feel bad.
They often write to each other and to Gilbert each letter from Alain is a moment of relief, and of sweetness.
He is in jail for a little over a month when another inmate is moved there from a different prison. Everybody understands at once that he is a tough man. He is in for an armed robbery and has already done six years in jail. His name is Serge, but he is called the Nicois ("the man from Nice"). He is a man of few words, almost forty years old, and with eyes sharp as a scabbard. The Nicois is assigned to Gilbert's cell.
He is there for three days. On the third night, one of the other cell's occupants slips into Gilbert's bed.
"No, go on, leave me alone tonight..." the youth tiredly whispers. He already had to satisfy four other inmates on that day... two in the showers, one in the joinery and one in the recreation room just before going to bed.
"But I feel like fucking you now." the other murmurs, trying to undress him.
Gilbert wriggles away. "No... let me alone..." he insists.
"Stop that, whore!" says the man, angrily.
Nobody calls him a whore, even if he really feels like one. He gets mad and makes the man fall out of his bed with a violent push. The man goes again to assail him. A short, silent struggle starts.
Suddenly the man leaves his hold and turns.
The Nicois stands near the bed, holding the man by his hair. "The boy said 'no'. Leave him...NOW!" he says with a low and hard voice.
"But..." the man starts.
"Don't 'but' me. From now on, the boy belongs to me. I'll kill anyone who touches him. SCRAM!" The man leaves the bunk without a breath while Gilbert tidies himself.
"Sleep now," the Nicois says to him, going back to his bunk.
Gilbert is astounded - his heart beats violently. After more than one hour he manages to fall asleep.
On the following morning, while they are washing up, he moves near the Nicois. "Thank you..." he says. The man looks at him but says nothing. "Why did you..." Gilbert asks.
"Because I decided so. I don't like others using my boy..." Gilbert is about to object, since he neither chose nor decided at all to be the Nicois's boy, but he keeps silent, thinking that it will be better to satisfy just one man than every other inmate. After all, he had neither the strength nor the possibility to oppose him in any case. "And, as you are my boy, it will be better from now on if you stay near me and you seriously think about caring for me. Do you see what I mean?"
"I am not really sure..." Gilbert hesitantly says.
"For instance... keeping clean and tidying my belongings," the man says, stepping away.
Gilbert notices that the man left behind his soap, towel and other things on the sink. He readily gathers them and takes it all into their cell. He notices a short satisfied nod of the man. 'Good,' he thinks, 'I understand - I have to be his servant... and why not!'
But with some anxiety he awaits the time when the Nicois will demand from him those other "services". He has not to wait for long. Just three days elapse, during which nobody bothers him. That third night he is woken up by the Nicois.
"Help me," he says.
Gilbert leaves his bed. The Nicois has a blanket in his hands. He is fixing it on the bunk's frame, between the upper bunk and his own, so that it hangs like a curtain. Gilbert understands and helps him. This way his bunk is sheltered from the glances of the others. The blanket well in place, the Nicois gently pushes him onto his bed and climbs into it with him.
The man starts undressing. Gilbert follows suit, thinking, 'we are getting to the point'.
Naked, the Nicois lies down on his back. "Come on top of me..." he suggests, "Make me enjoy it."
Gilbert busies himself. He licks him all over, sucks him, and the man seems to appreciate his job.
But his amazement is huge when the man, fully aroused, whispers in his ear, "Fuck me... now... go on!"
The Nicois turns onto his belly and Gilbert complies, mounting the man. He very smoothly enters the man's hole, having no difficulty. He starts to pump inside him and the man murmurs, "Harder!" He hammers into the man with a will until he unloads inside the man. Then the Nicois turns again and points at his erect and hard member, making Gilbert understand that he wants to be satisfied by his mouth. When the man at last cums, he keeps the boy's head down, forcing him to swallow all his strong jets, to the last drop.
Sated, the Nicois now holds him tightly against himself and says, "If you'll tell a living soul... I'll cut your throat!"
Gilbert nods in assent. The Nicois French-kisses him for a long while, fingering him all over his body as he kisses him. He then dresses, and makes him dress as well. He stands up, pulls away the blanket, folds it and goes back to his bunk. Gilbert is bewildered - the Nicois is gayer than he, but he would have never guessed... he seems virility made flesh... So much the better, anyway...
The Nicois puts up the blanket-curtain a couple of times each week.
When Gilbert officially became his boy, his life changed radically, for the better. Everybody fears and respects the Nicois and, as a consequence, respects Gilbert. He doesn't like nor dislike the Nicois. Sexually he is not bad at all, but his character is closed, introverted, and hard. Gilbert often asks himself how such a man as he can like being only a bottom - and to a much younger boy - but is not able to find an answer. However, it fits him well - and if the Nicois is happy in this way...
Gilbert misses Alain incredibly. Their forced parting makes him understand how important his friend is to him. Both are counting the days that still keep them apart. At Alain's demand, so that his family does not become suspicious, he writes him twice a week to the poste restante. Their letters are at times short and at times long, but they are always filled with love. Gilbert tells nothing to Alain about his odd relationship with the Nicois. He almost feels as though he's cheating on Alain whenever the Nicois wants him... even if it is the man wanting him and not Gilbert wanting him. He also feels this way because he underwent what the inmates did to him beforehand... and now even felt pleasure from it. He misses Alain more and more... not because their sexual relationship was between peers... not because Alain was so beautiful...but because, above all else, he felt that he could give and receive love with Alain.
The months pass in one way or another and, finally, the pain Gilbert had to undergo ends.
Alain waits for him out of the prison, with a car. He lent it from his father with a pretext. They hug tightly, for a long time. Alain then starts the car.
"Where are you taking me?" Gilbert asks as he puts his hand on Alain's thigh and caresses it.
"Back home, of course."
"Will you stop?" Gilbert asks, the meaning of those words clear to Alain.
With a sweet smile he answers, "What do you think? It's been almost two years... I've missed you!"
"And I you. God, how beautiful you are, Alain!"
"Gil, if you touch me in this manner, you'll make me lose my head... and I'll risk crashing somewhere," he murmurs with emotion, in a low voice. Gilbert pulls his hand off. "No, leave it there..." Alain says, "but don't caress me that way... not yet." Gilbert smiles blissfully - yes, he had regained his lover, and now life smiles to him again.
Back home, they embrace, kiss, and feverishly undress each other while making their way to the bed, leaving a long trail of clothes behind them from the entrance door to the bed. They climb onto it, intertwining, searching for each other.
"Oh, Alain, my Alain!"
"Welcome back, my love!" his lover whispers. Around their intertwined bodies, their love, and their pleasure of belonging to each other again, nothing else exists.
Alain graduated from the university and found a good job as a manuscript reader. He loves this job and earns a discrete wage so, one day, he proposes to Gilbert that they go looking for a larger apartment together.
"Why, don't you like it here?" Gilbert asks him.
"Yes, but... I would like looking for something together... something beautiful... something ours..."
"Do you want something newer, more modern?"
"No, rather something ancient. I was thinking of looking for something in the Vieux Lyon, possibly behind Saint Jean as a little upper... but something really ours..."
"As you want, my love. When do you want us to start looking for it?"
"Do you regret too much leaving this place?"
"No, not at all. But would you come to live there?"
"Yes, sure. I want to be with you, day and night."
"But... what about your family?"
"Now that I have a job, they will say nothing. They understand that I've decided to set up my own home, since I'm twenty three years old..."
"With me?"
"It's not that I have to tell them... but anyway, even if they come to know it, I won't care..."
They look in that quarter. They finally find a five-room apartment on the third floor of a medieval building. When they go to rent it, they want to have it in both their names, but the owner says that the rent contract can be done in the name of only one person, so they decide it should be in Alain's name. They draw up plans. The square rooms connect directly to each other, in a row, the entrance being in the central room. They decide to have their bedroom and a studio on one side and the living room and kitchen on the other side. In the central room they fix the bathroom, the toilet and the entrance.
Before moving into the apartment, they have it painted, and they choose furniture... the first piece being a wide wooden double bed with small elegant columns, which they find in an antiques shop. They spend a big part of their savings, but in the end the apartment is really beautiful - an agreeable mix of the old and the modern.