Subject: The Gift of Stolen Time, Chapter 8 (Gay Adult/Youth) THE GIFT OF STOLEN TIME By Wes Leigh This is a work of fiction intended solely for the entertainment of my readers. Any resemblance to real people or places is purely coincidental. This story is the property of the author and is protected by copyright laws. The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author’s consent. If you enjoy this story, please support the Nifty archives today with a thoughtful donation. Chapter Eight London, England, April 2027, Fifteenth Journal Entry I’m not sure why I’m numbering my journal entries. It seemed like the thing to do when I started, so I just kept doing it. That’s how I am. A creature of habit. I start doing something and keep going. I start numbering my journal entries and keep going. I fall in love with boys and almost ruin their lives and run away and keep going. I tear my heart out and patch it up and look for someone else to cut it to shreds again and … you get the picture. Well, the good news is, I’m persistent. I don’t know why I haven’t given up, because I certainly don’t know where I’m headed or what I’m doing. Take this week for example. I’m here in London where a major diamond exhibition is scheduled for later this month. They’re advertising it as the biggest diamond extravaganza ever held, with a special feature: the Koh-I-Noor diamond will be on display. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Its name means `Mountain of Light’. The damned thing weighs over one hundred carats. It’s one of the British Crown Jewels, so I would imagine the security will be inconceivably tight. No, I’m not even thinking of trying to steal it, but I have to admit … it would be fun to try. There has to be a way to use the time stealer to get in and out again with that big old rock. I don’t know what I’d do with it if I did steal it. How do you unload a Crown Jewel? Anyway, that’s not why I’m here attending the exhibition. I’ll probably go by and check out the Koh-I-Noor, but I’ll be stealing a few briefcases worth of lesser diamonds while I’m here. I’ve discovered that precious gems are much easier to steal than money from banks, and I now have excellent contacts who buy the gems from me. That means my Swiss bank accounts will be overflowing with cash. But what’s the point? I’m so rich I don’t bother keeping track of how much I have. That’s what I mean when I say I don’t know where I’m headed or what I’m doing. I have all this money and no clue what I should do with it. I seem to be drifting along in life, taking advantage of opportunities that pop up in front of me, without any plan for where it’s leading me. That’s what I did with Miguel. Cute boy at motel. Wants a friend. Loves video games just like me. Boom. He’s screwing me on the bed and I’m hauling him halfway across the country. I didn’t think about what I was doing. I just did it. That’s what I did in Milan. Two cute kids show up and help me unload my stuff. I meet their parents. Boom. I’m adopting the family and taking it under my wing and doing whatever I can to make their lives better. Oh … and I’m messing around with the boys in my apartment. No thinking. Just jump on the opportunity to make my life complicated. Carlo was the same. He was lonely and needed a friend. I liked his photography. Boom, we’re friends and eventually–surprise, surprise–I’m sucking his dick. What the hell is wrong with me? You think I’d learn my lesson by now, but it seems I just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again. I should be looking forward and planning my future, but I’m not. Instead I keep thinking about my past, wishing I could go back in time. I really miss Milan. I miss Carlo and the twins and Giovanni and Maria. Such wonderful people. I wish the time stealer could somehow take me back to that day we first met in March 2025 and freeze time for all of us. Can I tell you a secret, oh mysterious reader of my journal, whoever you are? I see ankara eve gelen escort you nodding your head yes, so I’ll take that as permission to let you in on it. Here’s my secret: I went back to Milan last week. I know. Not very smart. I snuck in with the time stealer and checked everything out first. The gallery was doing just fine without me; Giovanni ran it during the day and the twins and Carlo came by after school to take over for him. From what I could tell, those three had become inseparable. They were the best of friends, laughing and talking, tussling and carrying on. Carlo had filled out quite a bit and was no longer as skinny as a toothpick. He’d turned into quite a handsome young man. Marcello and Enzo, now fourteen, were as cute as ever. Hell, all three were gorgeous examples of teenage hotness. But more importantly, they all seemed happy, and I was happy for them. Really. I was. I probably shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t resist. I waited until Giovanni went home and the boys were alone in the gallery. Then I walked across the street, as bold as day, and walked in the front door. Marcello was behind the front counter; the other two were out of the room. Marcello looked up and saw me. His eyes opened slightly when he recognized me. He grinned and called out, “Enzo … Carlo … we have a customer.” I heard thumping on the floor upstairs and looked up to see the other two run to the stairway railing and look down. When they saw me, Lorenzo screamed, “LUCAS!” and they both ran down the stairs and grabbed me in tearful hugs. Marcello walked around the counter and joined them, all four of us hugging and crying and talking at the same time. “Where have you been? I’ve missed you?” “How is school? How are your parents?” “I’m working out with Enzo and Marcello. Can you tell?” “The Leoni have a game tomorrow. Can you stay and watch?” We laughed and stopped talking and just stared at each other. God, how I had missed those guys. They had filled an empty spot in my heart, and I hadn’t realized it until that moment. I tried to answer all the questions I could remember. “I’ve been in Germany, missing you guys something fierce. I want to be back tonight, so I’m planning to stay for only a few hours. Carlo … my handsome boy … you look terrific. Yes, I can tell you’ve been working on your body and eating good too. You look amazing. You all do. God, HOW I’VE MISSED YOU!” “We’ve missed you too,” Lorenzo said, hugging me again and pressing his cheek against mine as he stood on his tiptoes. Yes. Amazingly, the twins were almost as tall as me. How were they growing so fast? Marcello pulled me away and led me to the back wall of the gallery. “Carlo created another masterpiece,” he said with a grin, pointing at five black-and-white photos. Each showed a face, very close, filling the entire shot. The first was a young boy, laughing, his mouth open wide in delight, with one tooth missing. The next was a woman holding one hand partially over her mouth, her eyes wide in shock or surprise. Then there was a bald-headed man, his teeth clinched, the veins in his neck swollen, his eyes glaring with fury. Next to the angry man was a teenage girl with lips curled in disgust and one eye squinting at whatever had revolted her. The last was an elderly woman in a funeral veil, her head thrown back as she wailed her misery for the world to hear. The emotions in each picture were raw and poignant. Once again, Carlo had shown he was a master of capturing an unforgettable moment. I told him that. He smiled at me and took me in his arms and said, “I owe it all to you, Signore Lucas. You told me I could be an artist like you. You put my pictures up in your gallery, and people know who I am now … because of you.” He kissed me gently on the lips and hugged me. Lorenzo put a sign on the front door and locked it. “We’re closed for the afternoon. Everyone upstairs! Now!” And that is how I gaziantep escort spent a sweaty afternoon in my old apartment above the gallery, catching up with the guys. At one point, Marcello told me that he had a girlfriend, which was ironic and surprising, because he said it while he was nibbling on my ear lobe and thrusting himself in and out of my ass. When he heard this, Enzo said he had a boyfriend, which didn’t surprise me at all. In fact, I expected it. In between Marcello’s pounding lunges, I asked Enzo if it was anyone I knew. He pointed at Carlo, and Carlo blushed. They both giggled and went back to sucking each other. What an afternoon! I wish it could have lasted longer. Stupid time stealer. Why doesn’t it work the way I want it to work? Nevertheless, it was a gloriously fun moment in time. We spent an hour playing and an entire evening talking. It was that talk that helped me to realize the guys were moving on without me. When I had left after the big blow-up with Fernanda, it had been rough at first, but they had dealt with it and had begun adjusting to life without Lucas. Adapting to life as athletic teenagers, stunning photographers, and future Formula One drivers. They took my departure in stride, with the amazing resilience of youth, and moved on. I’m happy they did. No, that’s not right. I’m happy for them. Let’s leave it at that. Oh, and speaking of Fernanda Brambilla … while I was in Milan, she suffered a major mental breakdown. It seems the tools, equipment and supplies in her workshop started jumping from place to place. Every time she moved something back to where it belonged, she’d find it in a different place only seconds later. She eventually ran screaming out into the street, collapsed in a gibbering heap, and yelled hysterically whenever anyone tried to touch her. She did eventually calm down enough to claim there must be ghosts in her workshop. Everyone, including her husband, assumed she was crazy. I don’t think she’s crazy, but I’m glad she’s getting the help she so richly deserves. I’m grateful I had the chance to go back to Milan, but I’ve decided I won’t be going there again. There’s no need for it. It was a chapter in my life that I can finally close. A complicated, crazy, tumultuous, wonderful episode. For some reason, it seems my life has been that way lately. Wonderful, yet complicated. Delightful, yet crazy. It wasn’t always like that. Life with Johan was wonderful without being crazy. It’s true. I suppose you think I’m biased, that I’m overlooking things or exaggerating or glossing over the bad stuff. Why would I do that? I’m telling you the truth … life with Johan was perfect in every way. After the near disaster with Kyla, life settled down for us. Johan forgave me completely and never mentioned it again. We finished our bachelor’s degrees. Mine was nearly worthless because I could only find substitute work as a teacher. Johan stayed in school and went on to get his doctorate in physics. I’d had enough of classes and tests and homework, so I never even considered getting a graduate degree. Instead, I worked when I could, kept our apartment tidy, made fantastic meals, and planned long sessions of kissing and loving after my sweetheart Johan got home. I suppose that made me the `wife’ in our relationship? Whatever. That’s not how it was. We weren’t like some old married couple. We were both guys after all, and a married, gay couple was still pretty unusual back then. No, what Johan and I had was a loving partnership. We fit together like a perfectly tuned machine. We never argued or disagreed, not that I can remember. Johan and I meshed in every way. Every day with him was wonderful, and I’m not talking only about the sex. Sure, that was incredible. But it was also the quiet moments at the end of the day, sitting next to each other and holding hands, and the carefree weekends, shopping together or catching a movie or trying a new restaurant. It was the trip ankara gerçek resimli escort we took to the Grand Canyon one spring, camping and hiking and sightseeing. It was the week we spent at Lake Havasu, skiing, swimming and launching ourselves through the air on a giant inner tube pulled behind a speeding boat. It was drifting in rubber rafts for endless hours on the Colorado River. It was a midnight tour of the gypsum sand dunes at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. It was spending Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family, spoiling my nephew and two little nieces, and wishing Johan and I had a family of our own. It was sitting under a tree and leaning our heads together and whispering our love for one another, then touching lips and staring into the eyes of the one who held your soul. Life with Johan was never complicated, but always delightful. Until 2004. It stopped being wonderful then. That was when Johan came home from work and told me he needed to talk to me about something important. I still remember how hard my heart started thumping, anticipating all kinds of bizarre scenarios. Johan knew how easy it was for me to spin out of control with fear and worry, so he sat me down and told me straight away that the time stealer was no longer working for him. I was confused at first, not understanding what that even meant, so he showed me. He pressed down on the gems and nothing happened. Then he put it on my wrist and held my hand while I pressed the gems. Still nothing. Then he released my hand and asked me to try on my own. I pressed the gems and time froze. I saw Johan sitting there, a captive of time, unable to slip between the seconds with me any longer. I pressed the gems to make time flow again and asked Johan what it all meant. He told me he didn’t know exactly, but he had an explanation of sorts. He said his theory was that a person using the time stealer would slowly build up immunity to the time freezing field. I shook my head in confusion. Time immunity? What the hell was that? He said he didn’t know any other way to describe it. Time immunity was something he had built up with each use of the time stealer, until it finally reached a point where the time stealer simply refused to work for him. He would no longer be able to go into frozen time but would simply have to endure the passage of time like the rest of mortal man. Yes, that’s how he phrased it. Johan always had a penchant for the dramatic. Johan also told me that he’d seen this phenomenon once before, so he was fairly certain he knew what would happen next. My heart started thumping out of control again. He took my hand and told me that his body would no longer age. He would appear to be 42 for the rest of his life, for however many years he had left. If his time immunity worked the same as the one case he’d seen in the past, he would live for another 10 years at most. He also warned me that his body would begin to break down rapidly as he aged far faster than normal. It was a mixed blessing. He would not appear to age, but he would be growing older at an accelerated rate. I shook my head, telling him he must be mistaken. It couldn’t be true. He smiled and told me not to worry. He and some of his fellow researchers were quitting their jobs at the university and forming their own company. They would be studying the effects of frozen time. Perhaps they might learn something that would help before the years he’d stolen could catch up with him. But they didn’t. I’m so sorry. I do this to you every time, don’t I? I don’t intend to make my journal such a roller coaster ride of emotions, but it always seems to be that way. I wanted this to be a fun entry, all about diamonds and Milan and sweet revenge, but then you got me talking about Johan and one thing led to another … I thought I could do this, but I can’t write anything more today. I’m just not ready to talk about it. I’ll finish this entry later, I promise, because you really do need to know how it ended for us. The next time I write, I’ll try to keep it under control. Thanks for being so understanding. Damn. I just noticed. The gems in the time stealer are half eaten away. Huge, gaping holes here and there. I really must stop using it so often. End of THE GIFT OF STOLEN TIME, Chapter Eight