All the characters and events in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, either living or dead, is entirely unintentional.
The story is copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any way without the express permission of the author who can be contacted at:
pjalexander1753@gmail.com
PJ
D'n'M Part 5
From Chapter 8:
M's face appeared above Dan's and a trickle of fresh cum fell from one mouth to the other. Once Milo's was empty a huge and satisfied grin appeared on his face. "Good night my lovely man. You make my life complete."
`That works both ways,' thought Dan but he was asleep before he could turn thoughts into words.
Chapter 9:
The Sunday Plan' went into operation first thing on Monday morning. Milo rang Margelles and Associates to request compassionate leave so he could, "Deal with an unexpected but urgent family emergency" and as soon as he got the all clear he was on the phone to Ms. Lamar, discussing next steps and departmental protocols. Gerry's call to the immigration department was encouragingly brief and purposeful. As long as Nico's birth certificate was valid and he had a current passport there was no reason why he would be refused entry to the country once the necessary paperwork had been completed and suitable arrangements were in place for his care and well-being. Helen's sequence of calls was equally productive. According to her contacts, The Our Lady of Flowers Home for Orphaned and Destitute Children was a reputable institution where Nico could expect to be well looked after and kept safe. As Dan said, "Who'd have thought a provincial dentist would be so well networked and connected?", a remark which earned him one of Helen Reed's looks'. He counted himself lucky to escape with nothing worse. So, within a couple of days, the wheels to bring Nico `home' were well and truly turning.
For Nico himself, thousands of miles away in Argentina, time passed in fog-cloaked slow motion. When he first arrived at the Our Lady of Flowers Home he was given a bed in a dorm room with seven other boys, ranging in age from eight to sixteen. He immediately recognised their type from his years living on the streets of Buenos Aires so it came as no surprise to him that a couple of the older ones were keen to establish their superiority in the home's unofficial macho pecking-order. They made that mistake only once, and after ensuring that he wouldn't be bothered again, he kept himself to himself and spoke as little as possible, either to his fellow inmates (as he thought of himself and the other children) or to the warders (the adult carers). If anyone ever needed to know where he was (which they rarely did) they just had to follow the thud-thud-thud of a ball being repeatedly kicked against the back wall of the kitchen block where he spent his time, determinedly rejecting all advances from the other boys to start a pick-up game or join the nightly circle-jerk in the showers. In fact, he couldn't remember the last time he'd got hard. No, actually he could. It had been just a few hours before he'd discovered his mum collapsed and dying, when he was doing what he had to do to get what would turn out to be her very last fix. But this was a memory he worked hard to keep firmly in the darkness at the very back of his memory. Now he had no interest in touching himself or jerking-off or even of just thinking about sex. It was almost as if his teenage dick had forgotten how to do anything except pee, a situation that bothered the boy not in the slightest.
Despite Nico's negative opinion of them, the adults who ran the home were generally kindly and concerned for the well-being of all the children they cared for. Of course, some of the residents stretched that kindliness and concern to the limit and Nico quickly became one of that number. He never directly challenged the authority of the adults but his determined near silence and self-imposed isolation from the other children certainly taxed their patience and understanding. On two occasions he disappeared, the first time for several days and the second over one night. He had thought that anything had to be better than the unfamiliar and unwanted constraints of Our Lady of Flowers, even the haunted streets of the city which he still thought of as his natural territory. After all, he had survived the shadowed alleyways, the dripping underpasses, the stinking doorways and they were as familiar to him as any place could be. So it came as a real shock, the first time he ran away, to feel rejected and out-of-place in the very setting where he expected to feel welcome and at home. But the other kids, girls and boys -- some of them he recognised -- wanted him gone from their hang-outs, their pitches, their hard-fought slices of territory. And many of them had their adult `minder' who wasn't just unfriendly or unwelcoming, oh no, they were aggressive and violent men who made it clear that they'd slash his throat as quick as fuck if he didn't fuck off out of it and not come the fuck back.
So Nico's world narrowed and shrank as, increasingly, he lived life inside his head. Whereas in the past he'd felt free to go wherever in the city he wanted to, now he didn't feel as if he fitted in anywhere and the only place he thought of as his particular piece of territory was the yard behind the kitchen where he spent hour after hour kicking a ball, imagining it was the head of Su Excelensia, or of Miguel, or of the last guy to fuck him in exchange for his mum's final fix, reducing it to a bloody, mangled pulp. As far as he could see there was no future, only a lonely and unfriendly present that made no sense and had no point.
Once he'd received the all-clear from the immigration department, Gerry was all for jumping on the next flight to Buenos Aires and nothing that Milo or Dan could say would dissuade him. Even the warnings of his doctor, called in by Roger, that the flight and all the associated stress could easily bring on another heart attack, had no effect. It was Helen who finally got through to him, pointing out that it had always been clear that Kate had sided with her mother and also had made no secret that she blamed him, her father, for the breakdown of the marriage and the resulting breakup of the family. So who knew just what Kate had told Nico about the de Beers and that it was a fair bet that Gerry had not been portrayed in the most glowing of colours. If he were to turn up now, so soon after Kate's death and before the boy had had time or opportunity to begin to come to terms with "all the shit that has been dumped on him", there was every chance that Gerry's arrival would do more harm than good and set back the process of bringing him home, possibly permanently. Best to take things steadily, be guided by the authorities in Buenos Aires and the professionals here at home and concentrate on beginning to build a relationship via text, email and FaceTime. Reluctantly Gerry allowed himself to be persuaded, much to the relief of Milo who, finally, managed to get some decent nights' sleep.
Dan continued to liaise with Ms. Lamar, whose professional efficiency and attention to departmental detail quickly morphed from teeth-grinding irritant to box-checking reassurance. At their first appointment following the formation of the `Sunday Plan' she outlined, step by meticulous step, the hurdles (she called them milestones) that would need to be negotiated before Nico would be allowed, not simply to come to live with his uncle and husband, but into the country at all. First, the authenticity of the boy's passport and birth certificate would have to be verified by the authorities in Buenos Aires (a process which, she cautioned, could take many weeks), following which, and in the absence of a biological father, Gerry would have to formally waive his right, as Nico's closest known relative, for his grandson to live with him but, rather, to be placed in Milo's care. When Dan reported all this back to the family there was much throwing of hands in the air and a great many non-deleted expletives. But, as he explained, Ms. Lamar had made it clear that procedure was procedure and nothing they could do or say would either speed up or smooth the running of the bureaucratic cogs, so there was no point in anyone, especially Gerry, getting worked up about it.
On the other hand, he told them, there were various practical actions that could be taken to speed the process of ensuring D'n'M's official suitability as prospective foster carers, and the first of these was the Home Environment Assessment. This would involve a member of the department's Children and Young People's Support Team -- almost certainly Ms. Lamar herself -- undertaking a detailed review of every aspect of Dan and Milo's lives -- their home, lifestyle, attitudes, beliefs, finances and health. On hearing this, and despite Dan's protests, Helen's immediate reaction was to call a professional domestic cleaning company to arrange an initial deep-clean of the apartment followed by regular fortnightly maintenance visits.
"Yes," she said, "I know you boys ..."
"Boys?" This was Dan.
"... you boys keep more or less on top of the basic cleaning, but you lead busy lives and there's no point in giving that Lamar woman an easy-to-avoid excuse for turning you down."
"But she doesn't want to turn us down," Dan argued, still stung by the "boys" label. He was thirty years old for heaven's sake. "She knows that, if she does, she's gonna have to find some other placement for Nico and they don't exactly grow on trees you know, especially not for fourteen-year-old boys."
"Whatever," was Helen's dismissive reply. "I've made the booking and, if it'll make you feel any better, your father will pay. Won't you Roger?"
"Wha ...!" exclaimed Roger, who then looked at the expression on his wife's face. "Yes, of course I will. Delighted!" He wasn't smiling.
"Good, that's settled. So, when does this assessment visit happen?"
"It's pencilled in for early next week but we're waiting for confirmation."
Now it was Milo's turn to look surprised as he knew that Ms. Lamar's visit was definitely booked in for that Thursday afternoon. But, as Dan explained later in bed that night, by telling a "little lie" and keeping things "just a bit vague" it bought them some time and kept his mum off their backs. `Sneaky,' thought Milo, with a smile on his face, before he turned to kiss Dan's.
When they arrived home at lunchtime on Thursday, in good time for Ms. Lamar's HEA visit, Dan had to admit, albeit reluctantly, that the cleaning company had done a pretty spectacular job. The whole apartment was immaculate, hardly looking like their home at all. In fact, Milo decided it all looked too pristine and surprised Dan by moving round the sitting room and messing up the cushions and untidying a perfectly neat pile of magazines on the coffee table.
"Hey, M, what are you doing?"
"Making it look as if someone actually lives here and less like a House and Home photo shoot. The last thing we need is to make Ms. Lamar suspicious the minute she walks in the door. The place is still clean, but now it at least looks lived-in."
Dan immediately saw the sense of what M was saying and took a glass of water through to the bedroom and left it on the table on his side of the bed before he half pulled a shirt from the laundry basket.
Of course, neither of them knew that Ms. Lamar was already several steps ahead of them, having made a good start on her HEA checklist that very first evening when she had unexpectedly called to break the news about Nico and Kate. She had been pleased, overall, with what she had seen and, as Dan had accurately explained to his mum, she wasn't about to let a bit of mess and clutter result in a negative assessment. What she was more concerned about, as she took the stairs up to the top floor, was the fact of them being a same-sex couple and also that they both worked full time, with Dan's job, quite often, taking him away from home for days at a stretch. So it was to a concerned-looking Ms. Lamar that Dan opened the door at precisely half past one on that Thursday afternoon.
After an initial and, to Dan and Milo, a surprisingly brief tour of the apartment, the three of them were soon sitting - the two men on the sofa and Ms. Lamar opposite them in an armchair -- ready for the detailed questioning to begin. Ms. Lamar didn't waste any time in voicing her concerns.
"The department has never had an application from a same-sex couple before ..."
"And is it against the rules?" asked Dan, immediately on the defensive and borderline aggressively, before she could finish what she had to say.
Ms. Lamar let the attitude pass. "No, not against the rules, but there is no precedent and, if I may be frank?
Dan and Milo both nodded.
"The fact that we're talking about a male couple taking in a teenage boy has the potential to, at least, raise eyebrows with some of our less open-minded elected representatives."
Milo could sense that Dan was already close to exploding so he quickly took control and very deliberately knocked the ball back onto Ms. Lamar's side of the court.
"Then it's surely your responsibility to write a report that convinces them that having Nico here to live with his uncles is one hundred percent in his best interests."
Ms. Lamar was not expecting such an assertive response and was unusually flustered by it but, as she had to reluctantly acknowledge, it left her with no choice but to agree.
"Generally speaking that is true," she conceded, "But I can only write the truth as I find it, and that is the purpose of this sequence of visits." The ball, she felt, was back over the net.
"Sequence? You mean you'll be here more than just today?" This was news to both Milo and to Dan, who had asked the question.
"There's a great deal of information that goes into my report," explained Ms. Lamar, "And today is just the first of a number of assessment conversations. So perhaps we ought to get on."
Professional pride and superiority restored, Ms. Lamar spent the next two hours interrogating Dan and Milo. Where would Nico sleep? (as she expected, that would be the second bedroom, currently used as a home office); where would he go to school? (Greenside High, of course, was the obvious choice); how would they afford all the extra expense of an addition to the household? (she already knew they paid no rent on the apartment, but the size of their combined salaries came as a surprise and they also assured her that Gerry, as Nico's grandfather, was keen to contribute). Questions about their professional commitments were more difficult to answer. As Ms. Lamar pointed out, Dan and Milo both had full-time jobs and Dan's involved a lot of distant site visits. What out-of-school care would they put in place? And what about school holidays? The two young men agreed that they would be working carers but, as they pointed out, Nico was a teenager, not a young child, that Greenside High offered a range of after-hours activities and that there was an extended family of grandparents who were both willing and able to provide whatever additional support might be needed. As Milo pointed out, "Just like hundreds of other teenage kids in this town." Ms. Lamar made no reply.
And so the process ground on, with weekly visits, seemingly endless and, sometimes intrusive, questioning, interviews with both sets of grandparents and even a meeting between Ms. Lamar and Shania Margelles. Of all of them, it was Gerry who reacted most negatively to what he called, "All this stupid and unnecessary box-ticking and time-wasting nonsense."
The truth was that Ms. Lamar was keen to see Nico safely settled with his known birth family, and she definitely didn't welcome the prospect of having to find any alternative provision, but her professional pride wouldn't allow her to do anything other than a thorough and comprehensive job in compiling her report. So the weeks quickly became months and she lost count of the number of times she was pressed to allow the family to make contact with Nico but on each occasion she explained (with increasing weariness and just-about-concealed irritation) that, before any contact could be allowed, the social services in Buenos Aires insisted on establishing that the boy was undeniably a de Beer family member with genuine and fully-verified paperwork.
Which meant that Nico had no idea of all the efforts going on thousands of miles away to the north to reunite him with his mum's family, and the silence which turned from days into weeks into months simply confirmed to him every negative thing that she had told him about them. With each passing day he became more and more surly and angry and increasingly feared by the other residents, and even by some of the staff. He continued to speak only when there was absolutely no alternative but his range of gestures, facial expressions and occasional expletive-filled outbursts became both familiar and recognisable and it was never difficult to work out what he wanted or how he was feeling or, most dangerously, who had crossed the line into his jealously-guarded, keep-away-or-you'll-regret-it personal space.
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