Reconciled - 15. Chapter 15

Salem's sleep was agitated. He must have been having a nightmare, because he woke Arran up. It was a big bed, but they slept close together, touching, and it was Salem's violent lashing out which woke up Arran.

"You had a bad dream."

Salem looked towards the voice and realised he had almost attacked Arran in his sleep. The room was dark and he could barely make out anything, but he felt the touch of their bodies.

"Oh shit! I'm sorry. I... I was trying to escape."

Arran leant over and flicked on the little bedside lamp. A warm yellow glow filled the room, revealing reality and security.

"It's okay." Arran put his arm around the boy.

Salem snuggled up to him, burying his head in Arran's chest. They lay together like that, in the semi-gloom, holding each other. Salem felt tears welling up. He was becoming overwhelmed by everything. Overtaken by fear and not knowing, uncertainty. Arran stroked his hair and felt guilty. Guilty because his body was reacting to their closeness in the middle of the night. He hoped Salem wouldn't notice.

As he thought about what had happened, or rather thought about Salem, he genuinely wanted to help and he didn't want to take advantage of a desperate situation. That would be ugly. It didn't matter how he felt. He stretched out his arm, found the switch and clicked off the light. The room was dark once more. Arran turned back towards Salem and hugged him close.

He had decided he didn't care if Salem felt his erection, it only showed what? That he found the boy attractive? That he was a normal teen? They fell asleep in each other's arms and Salem had no more bad dreams that night.

"So who was that kid you were chatting with online?" Salem rolled over to look at Arran.

"He's Alison's brother. And, he's no more a kid than you. He's thirteen, name is Sam, Samuel. Didn't you already know that?"

"He's gay!" Salem grinned.

"I reckon he might be. What's it to you?"

Now Arran was smiling, he knew there was more to these questions than Salem wanted to let on.

"What were you doing?"

"You really want to know?"

"I asked, didn't I?" Salem was becoming a little frustrated with their verbal game.

Arran reached across the boy's naked body and let his hand rest on the warm thigh.

"Alison thought it would be good if he talked to me."

"Talk?" Salem pushed the hand away.

Arran rolled over to face Salem. He took a long look at him.

"Don't go getting all jealous about nothing."

Salem could feel the pressure of Arran lying next to him, their two bodies sandwiched together.

"I don't think I can stay here forever," Salem said, taking Arran by surprise.

"You can stay as long as you like. I like having you here."

"And Tom?" Salem posed the question.

"I love you both," Arran smiled.

"Can I believe that?"

"I don't know. Why not?"

A week had passed and everything had quietly, or sometimes not quite so quietly, settled into place. Arran's father had gone abroad and Salem had moved in. He had sneaked home once to pick up his stuff, seen his mother, who said nothing. His father wasn't there.

Arran had talked to Ali and discovered Vicki had moved on. Apparently the police or the CPS had decided to take no further action. Sammy, she told him, had changed. He was a little bit more grown up. She thought the talk with Arran had answered a lot of her little brother's questions.

Tom was not a jealous guy and he didn't mind at all that Salem was living full time at Arran's house. Tom had been over several times and they said nothing to his mother about there being no adult in the house. Well, Arran thought, they were both almost eighteen.

Spring was on the horizon, the freezing temperatures were left behind with the fading winter frost and the three of them had gone out to the park. They spent the whole day together, laughing, joking, and playing about. A game of tag eventually found them exchanging kisses. Arran had a fantasy of them all sharing his big bed, it didn't happen.

As Alison had noticed, Sam had changed, although it was difficult to pin point exactly what it was. Confidence, ease, or self-belief? Arran didn't know him very well, only through their chatting which hadn't happened since that one time.

Achim had been released from custody. Tom did not make any complaint over what had happened. They stayed well away, as far as possible, because Tom still lived with his mum and Achim and his cohorts still hung around the estate. They both saw him from Tom's window one evening when Arran had gone back with Tom. A tiny speck down there in the street, but still recognisable.

It looked to both of them like he was dealing drugs judging by the brief contacts and how he was behaving. Arran wondered if anything ever changed, but obviously it did, because for whatever reason, Achim left Tom alone. They had passed each other at a distance, seen each other on more than one occasion and it was evident Achim saw Tom, but he did nothing.

They watched Achim leave, the far off figures tiny against a sparse backdrop. There were three of them strolling off towards another of the tower blocks. Actually, they were not often outside where Tom lived.

The two of them stared out of the window looking across the almost deserted empty space. Arran's arm went behind Tom's back as they stood side by side.

"You're the sexiest boy in the world. You know that?" Arran gave him a sly smile.

"I know what's on your mind," Tom said.

Arran sighed. "You know that feeling that something is familiar, you recognise where you are, what you are doing?"

They were looking at each other, Arran waxing philosophical.

"You even think you could have done this before, but you haven't, you haven't done it before, it was a glimpse of the future."

Tom carried on smiling as if the expression was fixed on his face.

"That's right, you saw a little bit of the future before it arrived and now you're living it. How is that possible?" Arran was talking to himself, staring through the window at the gently rolling clouds.

"Because time, it's an enigma. It exists because you grow older." He had answered his own question.

"You're not older. Your not yet eighteen," Tom broke the spell, but it didn't stop Arran's musing.

"You know it only takes one person, one single individual out of the whole of humanity to change the world, forever."

"Hmm..." was Tom's reply.

"Think about it. The beauty of the human race is that out of billions of living men and women, it only takes one person to save the world. Kind of funny, don't you think?"

He was thinking about something else, something more physical than philosophical, but he loved Arran. He loved the way he was, his little quirky ways. A wave of feel good emotion washed over him and he moved his head, brought their lips together and kissed Arran.

After a long languid kiss, Arran turned to Tom and pulled him gently into a face to face hug.

"So this was our destiny," he said. "For me Tom, you are that one person. You changed me, although maybe, just maybe, I had a glimpse of the future and it was you."

END.