The boys' two bodies tightly embraced, melted together, and shuddered as if shaken by electric shocks.
Little by little, Alain relaxed panting, just as Jacques did.
"It's been fabulous. Thank you love." Alain murmured, caressing Jacques's cheek and giving him little kisses on his eyelids, nose, and lips.
Jacques closed his eyes in bliss, then said: "Yes, it has been wonderful. Thank you, love."
"Then, are you persuaded that I love you?"
"Yes."
"And are you happy?"
"Yes. And you, love?"
"More than happy. Jacques, many have given me pleasure, but no one gave me the happiness you are able to give me. I want to be yours forever. I want make you mine forever."
"From tomorrow I will start the gym. I want to improve my body... for you."
"Yes, sure, but I love you even as you are. You are my Charming Prince. You are the most extraordinary being I could meet."
"Without legs..." Jacques said, sweetly but sadly.
Alain put his finger on Jacques' lips, like to make him shut up: "No, with two beautiful legs that, unhappily, you can't use, but with two beautiful legs. And we will make them well shaped, even if we can't heal them. Does it bother you, if I caress them?"
"No, I like it. I can't use them, but the feeling in them remains and I like
the way you caress them. Oh, what are you doing? Do you want make me cum again?" the young man asked when Alain started to caress his member. Then, with a slightly ashamed tone, he said: "I soiled you all over. Before, when you made me cum again. It was too beautiful..."
"I'll take you there, so we can bathe together. All right?"
"Yes, thank you. I love when you rise me in your arms. You are strong, you move me like a feather."
"And I like taking you in my arms. Especially now that we are naked. Your skin is velvety." Alain said taking him towards the bathroom.
He passed the kitchen, opened the bathroom door. He held Jacques with one arm making him sit in his folded leg, and started to fill with water the low tub. Jacques held himself thigh to Alain, embracing him, and gave him light kisses on a shoulder and on the chest, caressing Alain's nape. Then, always keeping Jacques against his body, Alain entered the tub sitting down and sat him between his legs, then turned to face him. While the tub was filling with lukewarm water, Alain took the bath gel, the shampoo and started to wash his lover's body.
Jacques at his turn started to wash Alain: "Good Lord, isn't it beautiful to bathe so, in two..." Jacques said with a luminous smile.
"We will always do it this way, together." Alain said.
"And we will also make love here in the tub?" Jacques asked with the happy expression of a child to whom you promise the moon.
"Sure. All you want, my love."
They washed off, then Alain emptied the tub and with the shower nozzle, rinsed off their bodies. Then he got out of the tub, took Jacques under his arm and lifted him from the bath. Taking the towel, Alain started to dry Jacques and himself. Then he took his lover in his arms and brought him to the bed.
"Do you want to dress now?"
"No, not yet. Let's stay a little longer this way. Anyway Mum comes back later. What time do you have to be back home?"
"I told them I would have had supper out. I wanted to stay with you until late. What do you think about going to a restaurant?"
"In a restaurant? I never went after the accident. And even before, just a couple of times..."
"So we'll go out tonight, to celebrate. And after, we will go to see a movie, then I'll bring you back home."
"To the movies?"
"Sure, like any couple in love. What kind of movies do you like? What do you want to see?"
"I don't know, what you like. In a wheelchair at the restaurant, at the movies... Will it be possible? Wouldn't there be problems?"
"I think there aren't, anyway we have just to try, right? Now we dress, we'll leave a note for your mother then go."
"I... don't know... I would like to, but... I'm not used to all that." Jacques hesitantly said, looking at him with unbelieving eyes.
"You will have to get used to a lot of things, with me..." Alain answered him sweetly, then added: "As I will have to get used to a lot of things with you. Both you and I are starting a new life, and I want it to be beautiful, as beautiful as is our love."
"You enter into my life like a hurricane - gym, restaurant, movies..."
"Never forget that it was you the first to enter in my life, with your telescope and with your novel. But I'm happy you did. Aren't you?"
"Yes, sure! But before I was living a quiet life."
"Possibly a little too quiet, maybe? A retired man's life, not that of a boy twenty five years old."
"Twenty four, please." Jacques corrected him, smiling with a little coquetry.
"Yes, and you lost too many of them. But you'll have them back, with me. I want to live a normal life with you. We can't go dancing, or ski together, but there's a lot of other things we can do, and we will do them."
"Wouldn't you miss... dancing or skiing?"
"No, because we can do a lot of other things together, and because if I am near you, I feel good."
Jacques began a new life. Alain, on his way back from school, took him to the gym, where they trained for a couple of hours. He also persuaded Jacques to shower in the gym, using one of the private boxes.
Jacques sat on a plastic chair and washed himself, Alain helping him just in the few things he couldn't manage alone. Alain's father, just thinking that his son was devoting himself to an experiment on the recovery of handicapped people, and foreseeing an interesting development of his gym's activities, was happy with the new activity of his son. Didier went to the gym to meet Jacques, and sometimes helped his brother. All went well, and Jacques' body began to shape up.
What Jacques loved most was swimming in the pool - there he could almost forget his handicap and soon was able to swim very well. The other clients of the gym soon got used to Jacques and soon started to be friendly with him, and that was good for the young man's mental health. He also went with Alain to the sun-tan booths and his skin lost its pallor, turning a light bronze colour that was very agreeable to see.
Jacques mother was happy for that transformation. Once, when she was alone with her son, she asked him: "Are you happy, Jacques?"
"How could I not to be? I feel so good, with him..."
"Yes, you are new man, now. And I don't say just your body. He is able, luckily, to make you do things that I could never make you do. Possibly, even not wanting it, I pitied you too much, and I allowed you to do a little too much in your way..."
"Mum, I was pitying myself too much, I had given up. But you have no reason to reproach yourself. You always did all you could for me."
"I thought so...I tried..."
"I know Mum." Jacques said, caressing her hand.
Then, Jacques realised that when he first met Alain, his mother had ceased to bother him with her thousand trivial stories and he understood that the woman, with her chat, was just trying in her way to keep him anchored to everyday life, to make him not to close in himself. Jacques felt a sense of gratitude for that.
So, almost to demonstrate her that he had now understood, that he now appreciated her efforts, he asked: "But, does cousin Babette still stay with that married man?"
His mother looked at him, slightly surprised, but Jacques understood that she had perceived the reason for his question.
"It seems that they are cooling down. Who knows... possibly she is starting to understand that it's too full of problems. Even he has no intentions to give up his family, so he continues to have his foot in two shoes. The poor girl doesn't seem really happy."
Jacques nodded, and felt that a full communication was starting to open again between his mother and him, a relation more serene than ever, and also for that he felt grateful to Alain.
His mother had started to call Alain by name and asked the young man, with whom she was growing more affectionate, to call her by name. About one month after Alain started to come to their home, she gave him a copy of the apartment's keys, so that he could freely enter even if she was out. In reality it was more a gesture of full acceptance than a real need, in fact Jacques could go to open the door...
The two young men, as they got to know each other more deeply, were more and more in love with each other. Besides strengthening his physical body, Jacques gained a deep serenity and a new joy of living from his love. Alain's teachers followed with interest the results of Alain's work on Jacques, lavishing advice on him. All seemed to proceed very well. It became harder and harder for both of them to part every evening. They desired to live together, to share everything and all. The main problem was Alain's family - how to explain to his parents moving to Jacques's place? The other problem was Jacques apartment and room - they were too small for another person to live there...
One evening, Didier went to talk with his brother Alain said to him: "Didier, I'd like to go to live with Jacques, but I don't know how. How to explain that to Mum and Dad. If I just was economically independent... But then, even in that case, Dad wouldn't allow us to use the gym, and that's so important for Jacques. Really, I don't know what to do."
"Continue as you have. Even if, I understand, it's hard for you two, I think it would be the best thing to do. Anyway, you meet every day, now."
"Yes, but when we go to the gym, three times per week, we don't have even the time to make love."
"Well, the other four days are left each week." his brother noted with a kind smile.
"I would like so much to sleep with him. In these five months, we didn't have one night together. I am almost twenty one years old, now, I would like to live in my way, with my Jacques."
"In a couple of years you will graduate, and then possibly you'll find a good job. Try to wait." Didier advised him.
"I think we have no other choice. But I never felt right being in my family, but I feel right with Jacques. We are so much in love..."
"I know, and I can see that. I like Jacques. He is a remarkable man, he knows how to make himself agreeable and I understand why you are in love with him. But I'm afraid that Dad wouldn't be able to understand. Now he seems so favourably disposed towards Jacques, because he is interested in the rehabilitation program you are doing with him. Even if at times he says you take too much time to take care of him..."
"And you can guess his reaction, if he knew what is between Jacques and I!"
"Unfortunately, yes. So, if you really care about being together without too many problems, it's better you wait and continue like now."
"You're right."
Even if Jacques desired to live with Alain, he pushed Alain to be patient. Meanwhile, Jacques sent his second novel to the publisher, writing an accompanying letter that explained this story was the sequel to 'My Boy', but that he didn't foresee a continuation to it. The publisher accepted the new manuscript with the same appreciation of the first, answering him that if he didn't want to write a further continuation, he had to write a new novel. Jacques was becoming famous, even if in the limited world of the gay literature. The publisher received a proposal from England, to buy the rights for the translation in English and the publication of his first novel 'My Boy'. Jacques accepted.
Alain stopped working for Gay Pied, with the editorial staff voicing regrets because the first two interviews had been great successes. Now Alain was completely taken up by his relationship with Jacques, and felt he had too little time to dedicate to his lover, even if he was spending with him three or four hours per day and all Sunday, when they went to the movies, or to the Stadium, restaurants or even out of Paris to take nature walks.
It was late spring and the two young men soon would celebrate the first year of their relationship, along with Alain's twenty first birthday, when something happened that made the situation to come to a head.
A journalist with one of most widespread national magazines heard, from one of the teachers of the National Academy of Physical Education, about the work that Alain did with Jacques. He thought that it could be a fine article, so he started to research the matter, and interview, always followed by a photo reporter for an adequate photographic service to complete his articles. To that point, nothing peculiar. The two young men liked the idea of that article, because they thought that other handicapped people could benefit from it. They willingly accepted the request of the journalist to interview them together. After talking, asking, searching, the journalist started to suspect the depth of the relationship between the two young men and thought that, if his suspicions were well grounded, the article, besides being interesting, could also have some spicy turns.
Without telling anything to the editorial staff, and even less to the two interested parties, he started a secret, parallel investigation. With some luck or skill, he succeeded in his intentions, finding an old classmate of Alain with whom he had a relationship, along with some of the gym clients who in past times had sex with Alain. Confirmed with the evidence he had gathered the journalist thought he had found the real relationship between Alain and Jacques. The man even met Patrick who told him about the novel "My Boy", giving him a hint about the Author named Marc Jaures. Unfortunately, the journalist was lucky again: one of his friends worked for the book's publisher, so he had the last confirmation: Mark Jaures was really Jacques Moiret.
When the article was published, an article that was very precise and well documented about the physical recovery of handicapped people, with interviews with famous sports doctors, Alain's work, and the complete interview of Alain and Jacques, the homosexual love linking the two protagonists of the story was clearly mentioned. In a subtle way towards the end of the report the Reporter wrote of "the strength of love of two young men" and, even if it presented their gay relationship without critique or irony, narrated all in detail, quoting some extracts of the novel as proof of the relationship, and underlining sentences that he put in parallel with some parts of the answers of the interview.
Alain's father read the article (he knew it would have been published, because it contained a panel with a short interview with him about his gym chain "that was specialising on the recovery programs for the handicapped people") more or less at the same time that his son and Jacques did, and there was hell to pay!
Alain, having read all the article, was expecting that confrontation with his father. "What is this shame? This obscenity?" the man said furious waving in front of his son whom he summoned, the magazine open at the article page, as soon as Alain entered his studio on the first floor.
"What is written, and it is neither shameful nor obscene." Alain answered seriously while frowning.
"Really! We'll be on everybody's lips by now...How can you say it is not shameful?"
"Dad, as the title says, we love each other. I would have preferred you not to know about it, but possibly it is better this way..."
"You didn't want me to know it, so you were ashamed of it! You see, you understand that it is an obscenity!"
"Absolutely not. I knew you weren't able to understand, and I was right."
"I'm not able to understand? What? That you are depraved, you like your poor crippled friend? I can understand that!"
"Dad, my poor crippled friend has a name, and I love him, so please don't use such absurd expressions to talk about him!"
"We're on everybody's lips! You made me lose my dignity, you and your shameful relationship. That Jacques perverted you. He seduced you!"
"Dad! Stop it!"
"Stop it? What stop it? But do you realise? My gym is made to be a den of homosexuals?"
"Don't exaggerate, now. He writes just that Jacques and I are gay, he doesn't talk about all the clients of your gyms I fucked before meeting Jacques." Alain shouted in a challenging tone.
His father widened his eyes left speechless, then, shuddering with indignation, said: "You mean that... you mean that you..."
"Yes, dad. It is not at all Jacques who perverted me. It's been years that I've fucked men, including some of your precious friends and clients. Do you want their names? Réné, the president of your bank, ask him if he didn't like giving me head or liked me fucking his ass, when I was seventeen? Ask Monsieur Fleury if he didn't like my little ass he fingered each time nobody could see us, that he often enjoyed in his garçonnière? Do you want more names? One of the last, I was eighteen, the son of your dearest friend Damien, who loved pushing his twenty centimetre cock down my throat. Or do you prefer knowing about the first? Your dear friend and colleague Jean Chambard, who helped me discover I was gay, when he deflowered me in the showers of your gym? Or perhaps do you..."
"Stop it! Stop it!" his father shouted, standing up and hitting the top of his desk with a strong punch.
"Now you say stop it? Now you see Jacques didn't pervert me as you think. And not even your dear friend Chambard, who simply made me discover something I would anyway have discovered sooner or later, and possibly with someone else. But, by the way, with all these people, before, I was just amusing myself. Now, on the contrary, I am in love, dad, and Jacques is a splendid person."
"In love! In love! And I'm down the crapper for your love!"
"But stop it. You won't lose clients, since I see that this is your main concern. On the contrary, after this article you'll have a good flow of handicapped or gay people. You might build some boxes, instead, so they can fuck and not disturb the other clients. But you will earn lot of money!" Alain said with sarcasm.
"Anyway... anyway...we will talk again about it. Don't think this is over!" the father furiously snarled.
Alain left his father's studio. That was that! Now he could go to live with his Jacques, if his lover accepted. He went upstairs, prepared a sack and a suitcase and went downstairs to fix them on his bike.
Didier saw him and understood: "Are you going to Jacques's, now?"
"Yes! Finally!"
"Dad... you met him, right?"
"Met and heard, how you can guess."
"I see. That was the last straw, right? That pig of a writer! What right did he have to publish such personal things?"
"That journalist in his article understood me better than my dad."
"If they ask me, should I tell him where you are?"
"As you like, but anyway I think they can guess it. See you, Didier."
"Can I come to see you?"
"Wherever you feel like." Alain said and was soon riding his bike to Jacques's place.
Jacques had read the article too. When he heard the key on the door, he knew it was Alain. He went to the door in his wheelchair, the magazine on his lap.
"Alain, love, did you read it?"
"Yes. Do you want me here with you, now?"
"You father... did he drive you out?"
"No, I decided to go away. Now I can, as he knows it all. As I guessed, he had a very bad reaction."
"I'm sorry..."
"No, not I. At last we can live together, if you want me here with you. We will be packed, but..."
"Sure I want you here with me! Mum now is in her room taking a nap, after we will tell her. But for sure she will be happy to have you here."
"Did she read it?"
"Yes, on the way home. She went to by the magazine for me. She was put out, but not so much. She is a strong woman, my mum, in spite of her mien. But how do you feel, my love?"
"Fine, now that I'm here with you. I'm almost happy it happened, you know? At last now we can stay together." Alain put his luggage at the side of the bed, going to embrace his lover.
Jacques held him tight against himself, tenderly fondling and snuggling against him.
Two days later, while Alain was at school, where nobody made comments on his relationship with Jacques, and while Jacques was at home with his mother, somebody rang the Moiret's door bell.
"Madame Moiret, I presume..."
"Yes... And you? Who are you?"
"I am Monsieur Dumarne, Alain's father. Is he here?"
"No, he is at school, you must know that."
"Yes, certainly, but... May I enter? I would like to talk."
"Yes, enter, please. Do you want me to get Jacques?"
"No, I would like to talk with you, Madame."
"Yes?"
"You too must be distraught for the... news, I guess."
"Distraught? I? No, I was well informed of it."
"What? You..."
"Since the accident, my son and I live with closer contact than most mothers do. So, isn't it natural I know everything about him? I knew he is gay, I knew he was in love with your son, and I see that the two boys fit very well with each other. My son flourished again since he..."
"It's all normal, according to you. All normal." the man said, unbelieving and speechless, looking at her with a hard, cold glare.
"Normal? What's normal and what's not? It's not for to me to judge, I am just a poor woman. But I know that my son is that way, that your son is that way, that they are in love with each other and that they are fine together. And that they both are splendid boys. I only have my son's happiness at heart, that little of happiness he can scrape together from life. Do you feel that's so strange?" the woman quietly asked.
"Does that seem strange? Of course it seems strange to me! How can you be so phlegmatic, how can you accept to have a perverted son? I will never accept such a thing!"
"Poor Monsieur Dumarne! I pity you, believe me."
"Me? You pity me? Your son is an homosexual and you pity me?" the man asked, quite hurt.
"My son is above all and first of all my son. And he is a splendid boy, as your son is. If you were just able to look at him with objective eyes! About being depraved, as you say, or homosexual, gay, faggot, queer... Well, it happens, and that is not up to me, or to you, or to the boys. It is not within our control. It just is that way. Since it's like that, I hope that at least they could be happy, right?"
"Such a scandal has to end! I will ask my lawyers for a denial of that news, but this relationship has to stop. Absolutely and immediately."
"Poor Monsieur Dumarne... I really pity you. You, so dull-minded, so heartless, so full of money, of lawyers and of inability to understand. What do you think life is? A set of numbers to plan? Does the happiness of our sons have any meaning to you? A great father you are! Aren't you ashamed? Not even a little bit? And you dare come here to ask me to make our two boys unhappy? Come on! What kind of man are you? I am just a poor widow, uneducated, trying to make both ends meet, but how much richer than you I am, Monsieur Dumarne! Alain is of age, responsible. He will do what he thinks is right. And if you, as I can guess, will cut off his money, Jacques and I will help him to carry out his studies, at any cost. Now, if you have nothing more to tell me, I'll see you to the door..."
"I... to discover in that way that my son is a homosexual, that he has a male lover... Put down, black on white, on the press, together with the name of my gym that I worked so hard for, like a slave... To you it is all more simple, more easy to accept..."
"Ah, do you think? Do you think it has been simple, easy, first to accept the loss of my husband and my son, he was just fifteen, reduced to that state? Simple, right? Sure, I didn't have gyms to build, I just had to try not to starve. But what do you know? How do you dare to tell me that it's been easy? And then, just a little after, to discover that my son is gay. To try to understand what it really means to be gay. At first, I asked myself if it was my fault. Then, little by little I understood that it was neither mine nor his fault. And then, I asked myself how should I make his happiness. As a mother, I could look for a good girl for him, if he was so oriented. It would not have been easy, but at least possible. But how could I look for a boy for him? I didn't even know from where to start. And it was for sure not him, in his conditions, to be able to look for a boy by himself. Seeing his sufferings, desiring a mate and not being able to have one. Yes, my dear Monsieur, because a handicapped person has exactly the same desires of a healthy person, and the same sexual drives, I mean, just he has thousand difficulties to overcome, just to hope I say, to realise those desires. What do you know of the daily suffering of my Jacques, and in consequence, my own? You say that you would rather not learn that your son is gay and in love with mine in that way? If between you and your son, there was dialogue, communication, even just a little bit, possibly your son would have opened his heart to you, like my son, a little, did with me. Because my son never felt judged by me, and therefore even not rejected. My impression is that you are more annoyed by the scandal, and worried for the future of your gyms than for the future of your own son. Poor, poor Monsieur Dumarne!"
"Stop pitying me in this way! Don't you understand that I am upset by the news and that I'm just looking for the best way to come out of that? Don't you understand that we risk being besieged, hunted by all the journalists of the scandal mongering newspapers and magazines? Don't you understand that I..."
"I just understand that I would liked to have heard from you just one word of understanding for your son, but that I haven't heard it yet."
"I... I could also understand, if it hadn't come out in that scandalous way..."
"A real middle class man of the sound French tradition, right? As long it is not known, you can do anything you feel like: cheating on your wife, cheating your best friend in business... as long as it is not known. I take off my hat to your morality, Monsieur!"
"It's impossible to talk with you. You distort anything one can say. What do you want to hear me say? That I'm happy and that I bless the two boys? That I thank God to have a homosexual son?"
"Possibly, that would be not bad at all. I thank God even having a son. And I would like him to be healthy, lot more than not being gay. And I thank God he found a friend: good hearted, and sound, and strong like your son; who happily doesn't resemble you a little bit, my dear Monsieur Dumarne. I am happy to have met you, you know? Now my esteem for your son has grown incredibly."
"Well. I cannot say he is not a good boy. I just hoped he was normal."
"But he is normal, my dear man! It would be very good for you, to go to the meetings of the Gay's Parents Association, it would do you lot of good. Those meetings helped me
very much to find my serenity and to see at things in the right light..."
"A Gay's Parents Association exists?" Alain's father asked, in amazement.
"It exists just like everything else, in this world. And, fathers who don't want to understand their sons even exist..."
Alain's father kept silent, thoughtful. Then said to the woman: "So; what would be your advice?"
"All for the journalists, or for your gym's image, I bet. For the journalists, we have to make a wall around our sons, and not be ashamed of them. Letting those people understand, if they want to understand, that love is holy, whatever colour it might be. You read the article, right? That is the strength of love of two young men. Right? That is the answer. As for your gyms, continue with Alain's programs for physically handicapped people, and you will get esteem and respect from everybody, believe me. Or, at least, from all the intelligent people. But, above all, and I don't know if you want to hear to this or not, try to accept your son as he is, and to make him feel that you accept him. Try that, at least."
"I have to think about that. I don't know..."
"Don't think about it too long, Monsieur Dumarne, or you risk being run over by everything that'll happen."
Alain's father left.
Jacques came from his room: "Mum, you've been GREAT!"
"You were listening to us!" the woman said frowning.
"It was impossible not to. You were talking so loud! You never told me you went to the Gay's Parents Association."
"I didn't need to tell you. It was just my problem..."
"Maybe we could have talked a little more? Mostly, I should have been more open to you."
"You had your problems, Jacques. I could understand you."
"Mum, do you have a man?" Jacques suddenly asked her.
"You did notice it then? Yes, for three years, now..."