Tim's Strip Trip - Part 11 The Future is Now
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Background -- This is the story of Tim, an eighteen year old college student at UCSD with a taste for self-exposure that led to Tim being abducted, auctioned off as a sex-slave. He's now on a ranch outside Jibberding, Western Australia, and no one knows exactly how he and Kyle got there. Kyle and Tony had a quickie in the showers but this somehow seems to have brought Tim and Kyle closer together. And now Tim's dad is on the way to see them.
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"What do you mean? You went and got in touch with my dad and you didn't even think to ask?" Tim screams at Andy when he walks in later. Andy looks at Tony, who shrugs his shoulders, "Not quite like it happened, Tim. Don't know what Tony told you, but I got woken at 3am, asked if Tim was there. Before I had a chance to put my brain in action I'd already said you were in the barn asleep. It was 3am, what did you expect? The caller hung up and I went back to bed, went back to sleep. Got called again an hour later. It was your dad, told me not to hang up. Begged me to listen to him, sent pics of you as a kid and you at college. It was def you. I asked him every question I knew to ask about your abduction and he knew it in more detail than all those articles I had found. Said he had nearly given up hope of you being alive, asked if you were ok, hurt, injured, mentally ok, said he would be on the next flight. There was nothing I could do to make him change his mind. He knew exactly where we were. Said he needs to see you eye to eye, in the flesh, so to speak. That's all he's wanting. Then you can take it from there."
There's a silence in the room, a long time before Tim talks, you could see ideas, thoughts, questions forming in his head, but him discounting them. He doesn't look like he knows where to start, what the first thing to ask should be, but eventually, "What about my mum, is she coming too?" Andy shakes his head, "Your dad never mentioned your mum. I took it was just him coming. So we'll just have to wait and see. You don't look ok about this, Tim. Sorry to throw it on you, but it's been thrown on all of us." "I'm ok, I guess, just a bit weird, feels sudden, way too sudden." "I know. Best get that breakfast eaten first, get some coffee in you too, eh?" They eat and drink and talk, Kyle quizzing Tim, looking at him, concerned, and thinking about his own parents, had they been searching for him too?
Breakfasted, showered, they hang round. Tim's dad arrives late morning looking dead beat after the flight. "OMG, Tim, I can't believe it." Tim's dad saying, hugging Tim in tight and close, stroking his hair, "You didn't have time to get dressed eh?" Dad looking at Tim and then Kyle, both naked. "I'm naturist now, dad. Oh, and this here is Kyle." "Kyle? Kyle as in the police officer who went undercover for you?" Tim nods, and watches as his dad gives an embarrassed Kyle a bear-hug, "You put your neck on the line for my son, thank you, thank you. Don't know how to repay you." "Let go? Let me breathe, perhaps?" Says a near-crushed Kyle. "Oops yeah, sorry." Tim's dad looking at the two naked boys, so you're naturist too?" Kyle nods, "Well, that's how we were kept for four years, so yeah, it kinda seems natural to us now." "But you'll both put clothes on for the flight back to the States, right?" Tim butts in, "Dad, why isn't mum here with you?" This catches Tim's dad by surprise, "Erm, your mum's not well, not sure how to say this, she went off the rails after you disappeared, couldn't cope. She's in rehab. I called her just before I flew out, told her I was coming to see you. She told me to stop fucking with her head, that you were dead, and why couldn't I accept that and move on. Then she slammed the phone down on me. Guess she will only accept you as alive when she sees you face to face." "Fuck," is all Tim can manage as a reply. "Yeah, fuck. It's been difficult you know, but you're here now and we can get you home soon, yeah? Andy here has told me his doctor brother has given you both a clean bill of health, so we're good to go, right?" "Woah, hang on dad. You can't just come in here and start telling me what to do like that." "Eh? What are you saying, Tim? You want to come home, right? And you, Kyle, you'll want to get back to your family, rejoin the police or something?" Tim's dad looks at them both, both of them shaking their heads, `No.' "Dad. Shut the fuck up for once, yeah? You don't know anything. About how I feel, what I've been through. How Kyle feels, what he's done to keep me safe. How I feel about him." "Feel? About him? What you saying son? That you gone soft on him?" "Dad, you're such a fucking redneck at times. Yes, I've gone soft on him, as you put it. Kyle's my boyfriend. We're together. Get used to it."
Tim's dad stands there mouth open, "Woah, ok. I guess... I got a lot of catching up to do here cos last time I saw you you were a straight college jock." "Yeah, that was four years ago. I'm not that person anymore," Tim saying, Kyle beside him, holding Tim's hand. "Look, I get it, you two have been really close, had to be to get through it, but you're saying..." "I'm saying I'm gay, bi, whatever. Never mind the label, dad, I'm with Kyle. He's with me. We're an item, boyfriends, however you want to put it. And you need to accept that or you need to leave me, us, alone, ok?" Tim near shouting at his father. "Son, son, son," Tim's dad says, taking deep breaths, tears in his eyes. "Sure, it's ok. Of course it is. I just didn't know, or think. I was just so worried, thinking you were dead, then when the team tracked you down, feared if you were injured, maimed, or out of your mind. And now none of those. I'm so happy you're here in front of me, totally fine."
"Wait. What did you say? The team, your team, tracked us down? How? Who? What?" "Yes, with the court settlement, I created a couple of funded student places at UCSD, in return for them researching, scanning, looking for anyone and everyone who entered an internet search on you, or Kyle, or any of the hundreds of those who have disappeared in the US, tracing where the searches were coming from, liaising with police forces to investigate, call round. We've traced scores of youths, men, got them reconnected them with their families. Got lots of misdirections too with VPNs, they insisted on protecting peoples anonymity, so when we saw this activity, the searches from WA, Jibberding... first up, we kind of thought it was a new VPN router, a decoy, the students investigated it, and that's when they made the call and that's how I'm here right now." There would have been goosebumps on Tim's skin if he had any body hair. Tim is speechless. "Dad, that's fucking incredible." Tim hugs his dad again, feeling close to him, aware of his dad's love for him, searching for him, and those like him. "So, what now?" Tim's dad asks, holding Tim in his arms. "What do you want to do? The both of you?" Looking round at Kyle, including him in the question. "Well, that's the big question, dad. I dunno. The past couple of weeks, I feel as if I'm only just beginning to get my head round it all." "I guess it's quite a change, Tim, eh? A lot to take in?" "Yeah, and I need some time to process it all. Work out what I want to do, what we want to do," Tim looking over at Kyle. "Well, I can't tell you how much it means to me that you're safe. Alive. Free at last. That's all I ever wanted. And to have you back in my life again. But you're twenty-three now, a grown man, needing to make your own life decisions, I can see that. I'll need to sign over the trust to you, the money the courts awarded me. It's yours now, to do what you want with it. After I paid out those who helped you, Kyle here, Andy and Tony too. You're fixed for life, you know, the fund, it's tens of millions." "Dad, I don't know what to say. But if you found me through this team at UCSD then I want that to continue to help others who've been taken from the streets like me. And perhaps for some rehab, half-way house, to help them prepare for reintroduction into society. Actually that sounds good, setting up a half-way house for people to get their heads round what happened to them, give them space and time to recover, like me and Kyle have had here with Andy and Tony." "Yeah, you sure were found by the right people," Tim's dad answers. "And that's a great idea Tim. Great project for you and Kyle to throw yourselves into." Tim beams, that his dad had already turned round, including Kyle just like that, "Thanks dad, thanks."
Andy says, "You guys can stay here for as long as you want, there's no hurry for you to leave." "I don't want to head off yet. Gotta thank you guys, though. How do we celebrate the fact that we now have the rest of our lives to live?" Tony grins, "That's a good question, best chewed over first with a cold beer." "I think we could all do with one," Tim's dad answers.
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Wow, what a reconciliation between Tim and his dad. Looks like Kyle and Tim are set up for life. Is it?
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