B E T T E R T H A N A D R E A M
by Dean Lidster
dean@meta4.org =======================================================================
PART THREE DISCLAIMER ~~~~~~~~~~
This story contains sexual acts between boys. If this is not to your tastes, then why in God's name are you reading this in the first place, huh? If you're curious, then that's fine by me - just remember: an open mind and an open heart is the secret to a good and happy life. If you are UNDER the age of concent for state / geographical location / planet that you're in / on etc, please leave now (unless you want to be educated and have an open mind that is!)
I spose this story is copyrighted. By this, I mean that I wrote it and would not particularly want anyone to subtly alter it and pretend it is their own. However, you MAY post it to any newsgroups, archives etc, print it, give it to friends without my prior permission PROVIDED THAT I STAY ACCREDITED AS THE AUTHOR AND YOU DO NOT CHARGE FOR DOING SO. Easy :-)
The story, when it concerns the relationship between myself and Lee, is very nearly true-to-life, however everything else took place in my mind only (unfortunately!)
If you like this story, mail me at dean@meta4.org. If you don't like it, mail me anyway and tell me why!
Meta4 is still in bits at the mo, so don't expect to see too much if you visit the site. I know it's been a while since the last part of this story (like about three and a half years) but there ya go :-) I tripped over the files and decided they'd be better posted than sat on CD.
Cheers, Dean
Dedicated to Lee - I will love you forever.
Author's note: This story is part five of an ongoing work entitled "Midlands of Nowhere" - it is strongly recommended that you read these parts before reading this!
The order is as follows:
"A Date with Taylor"
"Touring with Hanson"
"Zac and Mac"
"The Exchange"
"Better than a Dream"
Chapter Three - Salvation
As Lee recounted these events to me, his face had a strange glazed look to it. It was as if he simply couldn't believe what he was telling me but it was all too apparant from the emotion in his voice that he had been through it all.
He suddenly looked at me and put on a brave smile. "Sorry," he sniffed. "You don't even know me and an' I'm telling you all this shit..."
Carefully, I put my arm round Lee's broad shoulders and gently squeezed him to me. All the time, my mind was torn between the lust I had for him and the compassion I felt for him: How anyone could be subjected to such horrors - never mind someone as handsome as Lee - was incomprehensible to me in my sheltered little life. I needed to hear more if only to allow Lee to get it off his chest. Actually, I suppose I was honoured that in thirty minutes he felt he could trust me with the finest nitty-gritty of his darkest past.
I suddenly realised Lee was hugging me back, and I felt all warm and glowy inside - he trusted me.
"Go on," I whispered. "If you want to, that is..."
He smiled at me in that wonderful way, but this time it had an air of gratitude about it, as if being able to ramble to a stranger was the unknown thing he had been searching for for a long time.
After a few moments of slumping against the wall, Lee hauled himself upright and back onto his shaky feet. He looked up and down the road for any sign of his persuing father, but found none. Over the road, the kids were still staring at him and sniggering amongst themselves. Ordinarily, this would have made him feel even more self-conscious but now, with the stage a whole lot broader than it had ever been previously, they were inconsequential. Gradually coming back to coherent thought, he looked around again, this time noticing a bus stop a few metres up the road.
He walked up to it and consulted the assorted splodges of faded pink that marked the roads. Almost in disbelief, he shook his head as he realised he'd run nearly three quarters of a mile from his house. As he stared at the map, he began to realise where he was. Although he didn't recognise that particular street, he wasn't a vast distance from the library - one of his favourite haunts whenever things at home got a little too turbulent for his liking.
Making up his mind, he set off towards the library - at least they had comfy seats there...
Walking through the thigh-height turntable, he cordially smiled at the librarian who returned the gesture, then made his way over to the historical records section. Tracing his finger along the tatty, uneven spines of the books, he came to rest on a fairly large, leather bound volume entitled "Witches, their craft and folklore" and carefully pulled it from the shelf.
This book wasn't exactly light reading for Lee (or for anyone, for that matter), especially as his dyslexia made the small text seem even more strange and bizarre than the concepts it was trying to convey, but the subject intrigued him so that he was determined to go at whatever pace it took to allow him to achieve a reasonable level of understanding.
He took the book and found his favourite seat at a small table concieled behind one of the bookshelves, switched on the reading lamp and flicked to a random page. But it was futile - every illustration and every word he read somehow managed to force his mind to what had just happened. He remembered the now lost picture of his mother and her smile, and he began to cry.
A couple of hours later, the librarian was doing her rounds, switching off the reading lights and replacing some books before she called it a night when she found Lee, fast asleep over his book. His brow was furrowed and his eyes darting around under their lids as he dreamed an obviously none too appealing dream.
"Lee," she said, gently placing her hand on his shoulder to wake him.
"NO!" he yelled, suddenly leaping up from his seat and knocking her hand away making her scream with fright. As he began to wake up properly, he shook the dream from his head and realised where he was. "Uh, Miss. Higgot, I'm sorry," he apologised, wiping his eyes.
"It's OK, Lee, you just gave me quite a start!" she smiled from behind her half-moon spectacles. "Bad dream?"
"I hope so,"
"I'm afraid I've got to turn you out - closing time..."
"What time is it?"
"Nearly half-nine,"
"Oh, sorry,"
"Don't you worry, love - it's nice to see someone as young as you take an interest in reading. Restores my faith in your generation."
Lee smiled weakly and began walking towards the exit.
"Are you alright?" she asked after him.
Lee so desperately wanted to say no, to tell her what had happened and for her to make everything better again, but it wasn't to be.
"I'm fine. See you tomorrow,"
"OK - night, love,"
Lee stepped out into the cool night air, the sun very low on the horizon causing exceedingly long shadows to be cast along the street. Only a few cars were on the roads now, but the ever present white noise of traffic was still there. He slowly walked along the pavement, aimlessly kicking a coke can infront of him until it escaped into the gutter and it seemed too much like hard work to retrieve it.
He walked on, oblivious to the gangs of youths talking and shouting as they mooched around bus shelters and on garden walls that usually scared him slightly. The stereotypical boy-racer car waffled its way past him, bass cannons practically shattering the windows as they pounded out some repetitive, mindless sound. It would normally have provoked a longing glance from Lee, but again the experience just washed over him as if it had never happened.
He rounded a corner into his street and decided to cross the road so he was on the opposite side to his house, not wanting to get too close straight away. As he approached, he noticed his father's bashed-up, dyssentry-brown Sierra "parked" with one wheel on the kerb outside. As he got closer still, the all too familiar sounds of a raging argument from inside began to reach his ears. To Lee, it seemed as if the entire house oozed with anger and hatred, never a good word being said about anyone or anything.
There was no way he could go back there that night, so he simply carried on walking.
A half-hour later found Lee in the little park the council had tried to set up, sitting against a tree that had bits of paper, broken glass and the odd used condom lying around. As he sat there, staring at the last few rays of sunshine that shot out from the silhouette of the houses in the distance, he began to feel like his surroundings - dirty, unkempt and abused.
The evening's events had done more than tire him out - he was completely expired. Dispite the less-than-comfortable surroundings he was in, he fell into a deep sleep.
He woke up shivering around half five the following morning, the sun having returned from it's brief disppearance overnight. For an instant, he couldn't think why on earth he'd slept outside but all too soon the reality came crashing home, causing him to burst into fits of tears so vicious he thought he was going to suffocate. He gradually managed to regain his composure, wiping the tears from his red eyes. He wasn't going to bother going home - he'd just go to school as if nothing was wrong and play the day as it came.
"Are you sure you ain't bored to fuck listenin' to all this shit?"
Lee suddenly asking me a direct question again almost made me jump.
"No... Go on..."
"Well, I spose what happened was that when I went home again that night, there were nobody in the house. Car had gone, dogs had gone... Lot of the furniture and shit were still there but all the easily-shiftable things weren't."
"They'd just left?"
"Yeah."
"What did you do?" I asked, even more horrified than I was a few moments earlier - something I didn't think was possible.
"Well, I crashed in me room, kinda expecting them to come home but they never did. I didn't have any money left, so I told me head of year at school. He told me to stop spouting crap and walked off."
"He did WHAT?"
"You don't know the kinda school I went to. Teachers couldn't really give a monkey's about the kids as long as they got paid. S'pose they got stung by having any concern they gave about a kid shoved back in their face with some smart-arse comment. They just didn't think it were worth it.
"I just went an' told the headmistress. For some reason she did listen to me an' called the social. They was fairly nice to me and shit and started lookin' for me old man. Got me a place in one of the kids' homes in the mean time."
"What was it like?"
"It were great for the first month or so - the others there had been in similar situations to me but it were very competitive - everyone trying to get one over on the others. Thing was, I'd been fuckin' dumb and admitted I were gay to the social worker on me case. One evening one of the kids was dared to go into the office in the home an' when he were in there he managed to find me file and that I were gay. Soon as that happened I had the crap kicked outa me whenever I weren't with a grown-up. They knew it were happenin' but they didn't seem like they were doin a fuck of a lot about it. Even when there WERE an adult around, they'd always be doin' shit like 'Backs to the wall, lads!' and 'Don's stop to tie yer shoelace when he's around'... Of course everyone at school found out too an' it went down hill from there."
"And the staff at the school didn't do anything about it?"
"Weren't their problem as far as they were concerned..."
"So... What happened?"
"I were stuck there for about a year. For one reason or another the ribbin' I were gettin' eased off for a bit, but it came back twice as hard. Ended up in fights with practically everyone and eventually had me arm broken by this fat bastard in the year above me who's dad 'thinks queers are a waste of skin'. Then Roz and Eddie found me and for one reason or the other decided to adopt me. Dunno why they decided I were worth lovin'. Never asked 'em neither. I reckon if I do the dream'll end - they've been better parents to me than my dad ever was."
"You lads OK up there?" came Eddie's voice echoing up through the empty house.
"Ye... Yeah, Dad, we're fine," called Lee, his voice cracking slightly as he simultaneously tried to swallow the lump in his throat.
Lee drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly causing me to feel weak all over as I felt his body flexing next to mine. I was still chastising myself for lusting over him when he seemed so vunerable, but he was just SO hot...
"You gonna give me a hand with all this shit then?" he said, turning to me, his eyes beaming out from behind his fringe.
"Sure,"
Over the next hour, Lee and I progressively cluttered the previously bare room with the kind of junk any ordinary fourteen-year-old should own - clothes, stereo, stacks of CDs, computer, radio-control car, supersoaker, Hanson poster, beer ma...
"Hanson poster?"
Lee stopped rummaging around in a box to see me holding open a huge poster of the three guys I'd been fantasising over whilst on the Eurostar and smiled sheepishly, his pale skin turning to an endearing light shade of crimson.
"Yeah..." He paused for a moment. "Don't you... Don't..."
"...I think Taylor is one of the sexiest guys to walk the face of the Earth?" Lee smiled so broadly I thought his ears were going to file for a restraining order on his lips. "I was actually gonna say 'Don't you think he's a very talented musician?'."
"Uh huh,"
"I was! But your suggestion's valid too."
I put down the Hanson poster and unravelled the next one in the box - one of the Back Street Boys.
"Nick Carter?"
"Nick Carter."
"Anyone ever told you that you look quite a bit like him?"
Lee defaulted to 'shy mode' again and looked at the floor, but this time I could see the smile still glued to his face.
"If anything, you look better. Nick's face seems slightly out of proportion..."
"You're embarassing me," grinned Lee, looking up enough to make eye contact, but this time maintaining it.
"I'm simply stating my objective opinion. That it is embarassing you is a side effect." I smiled back.
"Do you want something to drink? Sorry, I didn't think..."
"Don't worry about it, but yeah, I'd love one, please."
"OK... Dean?"
"Mmm?"
"Thanks,"
"What for?"
"Being a friend... Never really had one before."
"Well, there's a first time for everything,"
"Absolutely," He smiled. Initially I took that single word response at face value, but within an instant my mind had read far more into it that Lee had obviously intended.
Or had I? The mischevous grin on Lee's face made me think again.
"RACE YOU TO THE KITCHEN!" he suddenly yelled, legging it past me.
I leapt after him and managed to sandwich myself between him and the doorpost as we both tried to get through side by side. Grinning inanely, we fought and jostled to get out, us both "popping" out onto the landing and heading for the stairs still side by side. We clattered down them at full tilt and rounded the corner at the bottom. I had the dual disadvantages of wearing just my socks and having the outside line on the corner. This combined with the parquet flooring caused me to drop back as Lee's soles found grip. Just a couple of feet down the front hall he too stopped though and turned just as I ran straight into him, causing us to collapse in a heap on the floor.
"One slight problem," panted Lee.
"Oh? What's that?"
"Fuck knows where the kitchen is!"
"That's a quid, Lee" said Roz, poking her head from round the door at the far end of the hall.
"Sorry, Mum,"
"And I'm in the kitchen," she added.
"A pound?"
"I'm tryin' to cut down on me swearin'. Roz and Eddie swear themselves, but it usually has a reason behind it, so I get fined when I swear for 'dramatic effect',"
"Ahh..."
All this time the close proximity of Lee was making my senses do loop-the-loops: I felt like I was buzzing all over. Lee began to pick himself up from beside me and offered me his hand to pull me up. As we touched, it was as if I could feel the same buzz in Lee as was in me, a mutual understanding and elation that neither of us had experienced before. This was confirmed by the fact that the handhold didn't break as I stood: Instead it served to provide a physical metaphor for the new feeling that neither of us wanted to let go of.
"You boys want a drink?" asked Roz, breaking us from our trance. We didn't release hands quickly in the 'this ain't right' kind of way, more a reluctance to do so on both sides. We both smiled at each other and simultaneously answered
"Please,"
Lee looked slightly confused for a second, then shrugged and walked into the kitchen, me following.
"Lee, I hope you've said 'Thankyou' to Dean for helping you," said Mrs. Clarke in that unmistakable 'I'm your Mother and there's absolutely sod-all you can do about it' tone of voice that any teenager will know all too well.
"Thankyou, Dean," said Lee in a forced, primary school tone. He was promptly hit round the head with a tea towel.
"Tea, Coffee?" she offered as an electric kettle was retrieved from a box.
"Uh, tea, white, one sugar please,"
"Tea as well, please Mum,"
"Oh, I think we're out of milk..."
"Do we have any Mountain Dew?"
"Yeah, I think so - check that box over there,"
"You like Mountain Dew too?" I asked, astonished that someone other than me could drink a liquid that looked as if it had originated in the Selafield nuclear fuel reprocessing plant.
"Uh huh - less bitter than coffee with more caffeine," Lee smiled.
"I don't know how you can drink that stuff - just imagine what it's doing to your insides!"
"I think it must be a gay thing," hypothisised Lee.
I could physically here Roz stop breathing, anticipating the explosion from me.
"Mmm," I just replied, taking a glass and wiping it over with the tea towel that was still on Lee's head.
Lee turned and saw the look on his mum's face.
"S'OK, Mum, Dean's gay too,"
"He is? I mean you are?"
I nodded 'yes'.
I didn't know if she was going to laugh or cry for a moment, but whatever it was she chose I didn't have time to see as she was too busy hugging me.
"Hey ease off, mum - don't scare him away!" Lee smiled.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Dean," she said, taking a step back and wiping a tear from her eye. "It's just that we've all been through a fairly rough patch - Lee especially - and people just seem to be so hostile..."
Her emotions seemed to be robbing her of the power of speech, so she gave up and hugged me again.
"Mum! Would you please put the guest down? I'll pay you money..."
Roz let go of me and just smiled at me. "It's OK - I'll do it this time," and with that, I hit Lee over the head with the tea towel again.
We spent another half hour or so just chatting and getting to know each other, Eddie joining in after getting fed up with shifting boxes out of the garage where the removal men had dumped them all. Turned out that Eddie was a corporate lawyer and Roz an ex-care worker turned Eddie's secretary. In return, I explained where we lived and that my dad ran a small computer company and my mum worked in the managing end of a warehousing company, but was soon to quit and work for my dad as the business seemed to be in a stage of fairly rapid growth.
I suddenly noticed the time and realised that my parents were probably worrying about me by now, so I made my excuses and said I had to leave, but vowed to be back the following day. I also explained where we lived incase they needed anything urgently and made my way to the door, Lee in hot persuit. I said goodbye to Roz and Eddie as I pulled on my rollerblades and then to Lee, him smiling back at me, however I sensed a strange kind of anguish in his face.
"I'll be over first thing tomorrow, I promise," I said. That seemed to reassure him.
As I picked my way over the shale driveway in my rollerblades (probably looking like one of those early 1900's films you see of polar explorers with their stupidly large snow-shoes on) I turned and looked back at their house. Lee was still standing at the front door, and he waved vigorously the moment I turned round. I could do nothing but grin inanely and wave back in a similarly over-enthusiastic manner.
"I'm back," I yelled as I stumbled in through the back door at home.
"OK, Nit," came the reply from my dad. Nothing so simple from my mum, though.
"Are you OK Dean? You were gone an awfully long time..."
I explained that I'd met our new neighbours and that they were an extremely friendly bunch of people, and that I was going back over there tomorrow morning to carry on helping them unpack. My mum decided she and my dad would have to go over too to introduce themselves and present the standard housewarming gift of a large tub of our honey and invite them over for dinner so that they could get to know one another.
To be honest, I didn't really care as long as it didn't interfere with time that I could be spending with that gorgeous blonde hunk of theirs and, on that thought, pranced merrily up to my bedroom.
A couple of hours later, I was watching the Discovery channel with my dad (one of his favourite passtimes) when there was a knock at the door.
"I'll get it," I said, leaping from the sofa in an uncharacteristicly enthusiastic manner - obviously it really wouldn't be Lee, but I couldn't take the chance of it NOT being me to open the door to him. I quickly dragged my fingers through my hair, straightened my shirt and rearranged myself in my jeans before I reached for the latch and opened the door.
If people swooned nowadays, I would have done. Instead my legs just went to jelly and I lost all concept of intelligent conversation again. The image of Lee standing on the doorstep, smiling at me, just had that effect. We both stood there for a few moments, both not quite knowing what to say. For the first time, Lee took the initiative and took a step forward, placed his hands gently on either side of my face and drew our lips together in a short, gentle, but exceedingly emotive kiss.
I nearly creamed myself.
"We, uh, didn't get chance to say goodbye properly," he explained, going into shy mode again. He then flashed his smile at me, turned, and jogged back up the garden path into the twilight.
I stood in a complete daze. The best looking guy in the whole of God's creation had just kissed - yes, KISSED - ME!!!!! HE had kissed me. He had kissed ME! He had KISSED me! Oh YES! If Lee was the best looking, cutest, most enchanting guy in the world, then I was certainly the most lucky. Thankyou, Lord...
TO BE CONTINUED!!!!
Dean Lidster dean@meta4.org http://www.meta4.org (in bits - not a lot there yet!) =======================================================================