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To say that Nicolò is nervous would be an understatement.
It is the first time he has attempted this duty, fresh and newly ordained under the watchful eye of Father Giambono. He is frighteningly aware he holds in his hands the souls of whoever might come to confession today, will beg him for the Lord’s forgiveness, and it is a great responsibility to give them the correct means to do so. He must calibrate each penance perfectly, and listen with open, sympathetic ears, as he has been taught.
He crosses himself in the cool darkness of the confessional booth, seated in readiness, closing his eyes to calm his racing heart.
“Ah, your first soul,” says Father Giambono, and Nicolò opens his eyes to see him, through the lattice, squinting into the light of the open door.
“Excellent!” Nicolò says, mustering all his enthusiasm to smother any of his jittering anxiety.
“Morning, Father!” the approaching figure says. It is a man, and he waves jauntily in a way Nicolò finds quite surprising for someone about to confess his sins. He looks to Father Giambono, who is grimacing.
“Anselmo,” he mutters, and Nicolò frowns. He should not know the name of his sinners, for he must listen without judgement. “Perhaps I should take this one, Nicolò…”
Nicolò shakes his head. “No, I can do this! I have been taught to do so!”
Father Giambono clears his throat. “I am aware you are more than capable, my boy, but Anselmo is a… difficult person…”
“I must aid the reluctant as well as the pious. That is my duty. It will be good practice!”
Nicolò just manages to see Father Giambono massaging his forehead with a pained expression before he walks away. The man now kneeling behind the screen, enclosed by thick drapery, clears his throat, drawing Nicolò’s attention to him.
“Bless me, Father,” the man drawls, sounding utterly unrepentant – no matter, it is Nicolò’s duty to change that, “for I have sinned. Again.”
Ah, a repeat offender. Nicolò clears his throat.
“What is it, my child?” he asks, keeping his tone mild, free of his own thoughts, acting but as a conduit for the forgiveness of the Lord.
“I have kept seeing Luciano,” Anselmo says. Nicolò cannot fathom why seeing a man would require penance.
“Continue.”
Anselmo sighs, very dramatically. “He entices me so. One heated look from his eyes and I am a fool seduced again, every time. We were on our knees, this time, Father. He took me from behind like a dog, and I was greatly pleased.”
Nicolò’s eyes go wide in the dark, and his mind is immediately filled with lustful images, like a poorly-made dam easily broken. He grips the grey wool of his cassock, his knuckles turning white. It takes all his power to choke out some words as the silence dangerously lengthens.
“So,” Nicolò says, his voice cracking. “Lust.”
“Lust I merrily acted upon,” Anselmo blithely continues. “I cannot help myself, Father, I long for the cocks of other men.”
Nicolò presses the back of his head, hard, against the wood of the booth, and wills his breathing to slow down. Some hot claw has seized hold of him at Anselmo’s brazen words, boiling his blood as it all heads southwards against his own will, to his horror.
“Is that all, my son?” Nicolò asks, praying for brevity.
“Good Lord, no!” Anselmo says cheerfully. “There is much more to discuss!”
And so Anselmo launches into a richly detailed retelling of his sexual escapades, all with men.
“There was a sailor, I believe the ship was from Greece, and the man was great and broad, strong in the chest, thick-bearded, hirsute all over, that he let me see. I did not even know his name, only that I needed his robust cock in my mouth, satiating me. I sucked him to completion and swallowed his seed, of course, it would have been rude not to, you understand, an appalling lack of hospitality…”
Nicolò covers his mouth with his hand, and tries not to think about how his mouth is watering at the thought.
“I have seen this Armenian before, he is a merchant, he fucks like a stallion, and is hung like one too. I can always barely walk after, whenever I see him, there is no other like him in all creation and I feel great envy that anyone else might partake of his generous gift. The preparation of my arsehole alone, you see, Father, takes such time. To slick the way with oil, I must take at least three fingers before I can take him, and it does lead me to limp, but to be filled in such a manner is an ecstasy I have yet to encounter elsewhere…”
Nicolò shifts in his seat, hoping the bench will not creak, as his own hole clenches hungrily for something it cannot have.
“My preference in general, Father, is to take – be the wife, as some men say – but with Federico he has such a beauteous arse it would be a crime to not indulge. It is round and meaty, more like a maid’s than a man’s, and when you part the globes it reveals such a delicious sight. His arsehole is miraculously hairless, always so tightly furled, it takes a while to remind it how to take a single finger, let alone a cock, but when it blooms again, oh, the joy of it! It is like being surrounded by hot silk, so tight and welcoming, it never wants to let you go…”
Nicolò grits his teeth, trembling at the desperation of his own cock, rigid beneath his tented cassock, his hands itching to offer it some relief when it has nowhere to go.
“Have you thought,” he says tersely, “of marriage? Surely a more productive outlet for these desires, some dutiful wife…”
Anselmo sighs. “Oh, many times. I cannot seem to find the right woman, you see.”
He does not sound as if he has been trying very hard at all.
“And will you continue on this dissolute journey of self-destruction?” Nicolò demands, shaking his head to try and clear it of the thought of some hot mouth or tight hole around his own prick. He has never felt this, and never will, but this wretch has reawakened vicious desires he thought he had quelled. For he knows, in some deep, dark, terrifying place inside him, that he is no better than Anselmo: immune to the charms of women, but dangerously drawn in by those of men, with their beards and strong bodies, their muscle and sinew and musk. He swallows, tears pricking the corners of his eyes. How little it took to break down the walls it took so long to build!
“I swear, Father, this is the last time,” Anselmo says, and Nicolò wishes he would at least feign sincerity. “I repent entirely.”
“And are these the only times you did this?”
There is a telling pause. “Since last confession, yes.”
“When was that?”
“Last week.”
Nicolò nearly topples over. In a week?! He has done all this in a week?! Is he not exhausted?! He composes himself with great difficulty, not least because he has been fraying at the edges for the last half hour, at least, and clears his throat.
“Your penance, then,” he says. “Fast until Sunday, bread and water only. Attend Mass every day, no exceptions, ten Confiteors, two score of Hail Marys.”
“Thank you, Father,” Anselmo says. Nicolò sees the shade of his crossing himself, and hears his Actus Contritionis as if from a great distance.
“Te absolvo,” Nicolò says, blessing him. Anselmo thanks him, still as cheerful and clearly unrepentant, and Nicolò is left alone in the now stifling booth with sin crawling over his skin and a cock that now drips desperately, aching, burning between his legs.
He had, more or less successfully, repressed himself for the next five years, and for another five after that, though with far more difficulty and far more indulgence in touching himself than he might have been comfortable with before, when shame meant more than it does now. But how else was he to keep himself sane, in the presence of someone so entrancing, so bewitching?
Before Yusuf, Nicolò feels as if his desire was distant, felt through a screen or a curtain, there but not fully understood, and dismissed with what, in hindsight, seems like laughable ease. All theoreticals. But now? The sight of Yusuf ignites in him a fire he never could have dreamt of before, and now he has cast off at least some of the decades of guilt for his inclinations, it is a fire that cannot be quenched.
And since those sweet words of confession, of the great revelation of love between them, Nicolò has barely been able to think without spiralling into a haze of unfulfilled lust.
Yusuf in the morning, rumpled and sleep-heavy, yawning, stumbling towards their washbowl and his morning ablutions and prayers, and Nicolò wishes to drag him back beneath the sheets. Yusuf during the day, dressed modestly, with but glances of his wrists and collarbone, and the edges of Nicolò’s teeth feel deprived. Yusuf in the bathhouse, naked but for that strip of cloth about his loins, and Nicolò’s entire body surges with the need to press him down upon one of the tiled benches and strip him of that cloth. He has never hungered for a man with such pressing, mind-bending need, before. Nicolò would devour him, piece by desperate piece, if Yusuf allowed.
He knows Yusuf has had other lovers. He told Nicolò himself, when Nicolò confessed he had not had any, afraid of his inexperience. He knows, of course, of the theory, all the sordid and sinful shapes that sodomy might take between two men, but the practice of it is a foreign land. He does fear that Yusuf might find him inadequate, and rightfully discard him for a better lover. Nicolò does not know if he might withstand that abandonment.
But he is also willing to try, and he knows well that skill comes with practice. He is eager to indulge. Has he not waited long enough?
However, perhaps in deference to Nicolò’s inexperience, Yusuf seems to be taking things incredibly slowly, and is driving Nicolò mad with it.
They share language now, enough for Yusuf’s poetry to be properly bewitching to Nicolò. He has a way with words, a silver tongue indeed, and he conjures such vivid pictures that Nicolò feels transported to new heights. The odes of devotion make Nicolò feel both ten feet tall and humbled, but it is not those that set him ablaze and render him weak with wanting. No, Yusuf also has great skill in the erotic realms of poetry, as well. It is enough that merely Yusuf’s breath by his ear, a promise of honeyed words, has him trembling with desire. Yusuf’s tongue is a dangerous thing.
“Like a flower to the Sun I turn to you, I bend to you, and feel your heat around me. Such ecstasy I have never felt before, to have you is to be driven mad and sustained all at once…”
Nicolò takes his kisses, sweet as they are, and moans as they rut together, barely unclothed. To be this close to Yusuf, finally, is transcendent.
“Your body captivates me, draws me to it, I cannot escape. Milk and honey, the rivers of Paradise flow from you…”
Nicolò reaches for him, holds him close with gasping breath, and Yusuf’s hands on him feel like fire. Wrapped around his cock, Yusuf’s long fingers tease climax from him, time and time again.
“Oh, what would I not do to keep you in my bed? In my heart? To be with you is a tempest of desire, a storm of lust and need. Our bodies joining is the sweetest gift that could be received…”
Well, joining in some sense of the word, Nicolò thinks, as Yusuf’s hand meets his in stripping their cocks, pressed together, breath heavy, bodies slick. And yet, head-spinningly wonderful as this is, they could be doing… more. His hole flutters, disappointingly empty. His mouth waters and has yet to taste, prick or hole. His cock, though it does love Yusuf’s beautiful hands, could do with more interesting sport. Even his thighs, a part most would dismiss, long for some sort of hot friction between them, to be made use of.
“I would have you,” Yusuf purrs, “in all the ways I can divine–”
“I would like that, Yusuf,” Nicolò drawls. “When you eventually get to having me.”
Yusuf stops decanting odes into his sternum and looks up, one eyebrow raised.
“Is something wrong?” he asks. Nicolò blinks.
“Nothing wrong,” he says carefully. “I simply think that we are ready to move on to… something more.”
Yusuf’s face goes blank.
“More?” he eventually says, and his voice slightly higher pitched. He sits up, his delectable cock flagging. Nicolò blinks at him, frowning slightly, as he lifts himself up as well. Sitting like this makes the discussion seem all the more serious.
“Yes,” he replies. “More. It has been long enough, Yusuf, I am not made of glass, surely you know this? Even without our strange gift for healing I would be more than capable of withstanding anything you do, and I am certain this is reciprocal—”
Yusuf’s face, to Nicolò’s surprise, clouds then, looking perhaps… slightly offended? Does he think that Nicolò is not content with the affection lavished on him? He moves closer, hands ready to reassure, but Yusuf jerks back.
“What else would you have me do, then?!” he demands, flustered. Nicolò scowls at that. Does Yusuf not want more from him? Is this the extent of their possibility? Will he look elsewhere for satisfaction even when he has promised sweet and eternal devotion?
“For God’s sake, Yusuf!” Nicolò snaps. “Take me! Or let me take you! Whatever you want!”
Yusuf blinks, a flush rising on his cheeks. “I, ah…” His hands flail somewhat, and realisation dawns for Nicolò.
He does not know. For all his flowery poetry, his words of confidence, his experience… He has never gone further with men. Nicolò takes his nervous hands, stilling them, and kisses them.
“There is so much more we could do,” he says. “An entire realm of possibilities.” His lips twitch. “Does your poetry not talk of that?”
Yusuf’s flush deepens and for once he cannot seem to meet Nicolò’s eyes. All confidence has evaporated, something Nicolò has only actually seen once before, when, breathless and doe-eyed, he’d blurted his affection as if he could not bear to keep it trammelled any longer.
“I– there is a lot of metaphor involved…” he mumbles. Nicolò leans forward and kisses his shoulder, enjoying the gentle shiver he receives.
“Then perhaps I have something to teach you after all,” he says, unable to stop himself from grinning into Yusuf’s hot skin.
Yusuf glances at him. “You said you had never—”
“Oh, no, I never have,” Nicolò reassures him, “but a priest hears many things during Confession.” He releases Yusuf’s hands and trails his fingertips down Yusuf’s chest. “You would be surprised just what people can do with each other.”
Yusuf’s breath hitches, and Nicolò feels triumphant. He idly thumbs one of Yusuf’s nipples, sensitive things that they are, and kisses his way to Yusuf’s throat. Yusuf trembles.
“S-such as?” he gasps, his body curling towards Nicolò’s, towards his hands.
“I find it strange to think you had never considered your cock in my mouth,” Nicolò says. “Or how I might taste myself in turn. Mouths can do so much more than kiss. However…” He trails off for a moment, his hands now on Yusuf’s hips, and he is pleased to see that lovely cock erect once more. It is mouth-watering, it is the perfect length and has such a satisfying heft in Nicolò’s hand, pleasantly different to his own, and he cannot help but breathlessly wonder how it might feel inside, within his longing hole. “I would greatly desire if you buggered me.”
Yusuf makes a choked noise. “How? Where?”
Nicolò looks up then, eyebrows raised. “Your cock in my arse, Yusuf, that is how it works.”
Yusuf stares at him, eyes almost perfectly round, face absolutely burning. Nicolò shakes his head, chuckling, and kisses him, demanding entrance, tasting Yusuf’s tongue and teeth, the roof of his mouth. When they part again, Yusuf sways forward before remembering he has bones he can hold himself up with.
“I never… I imagined there was something, but I thought I was mad for thinking it,” he admits. “But, ah… why should you be the one to, er, take—”
“Because I,” Nicolò says with a patience that is fast unravelling, want flaring up in him, hot and syrupy and insistent, “unlike you, have been cleaning myself thoroughly at every visit to the bathhouse in foolish hope you would take the hint and fuck me blind.”
Yusuf goes a little cross-eyed at that. “Ah.” Is all he says, and he looks vaguely distant, perhaps lost in visions of Nicolò’s self-ministrations. In quiet moments and hidden corners he had prepared himself as best he knew how, choking on his own desire and his regret that his fingers were not Yusuf’s own slender ones within him.
“Shall we get to it?” Nicolò asks, voice pitched low, his entire body longing for Yusuf’s in a way that, were he less conscious of the need for someone to be directing proceedings, would render him practically incoherent. He is a man starved, and Yusuf is the prey he must be so careful to not startle away.
Yusuf swallows, stares at him in unabashed wonder, and kisses him. He takes that as a blatant and enthusiastic “aye”.
“There are plenty of ways of doing this,” Nicolò says, aware of how didactic his tone is, as though it is merely some lesson in the pieve. “From behind, on all fours, is a common one, so I have heard. There is also the way of riding, as one would a horse, almost. I, however, would like this.” He lies back against the bed, legs spread, and he does not miss the bob of Yusuf’s Adam’s apple as he swallows. “I wish to see you.”
He holds out his hands and Yusuf comes to him readily, happily, settling between his legs. He has been there before, of course, but this is altogether different, far more momentous. Nicolò’s skin crackles with desire, his hole fluttering in empty anticipation. He has wanted many times, and longed for Yusuf for years before their first, thrilling touches exchanged in tenderness, but this… His entire body bows towards him, like a sunflower to the sun itself. And Yusuf is close, beautifully close, the heat of their bodies simmering together.
“And then?” Yusuf asks, slightly breathless, delectably eager. Nicolò pretends to think, as if the steps have not been burnt into his mind for the last ten years. Anselmo, bless him, was never less than vivid in his retellings – Nicolò could have taken notes and drawn accurate diagrams from his words.
“Preparation,” he murmurs. Optimistically he has kept a pot of oil hidden, within reach between the straw tick mattress and the pallet they have for a bed, and he uncorks it. “You must ease the way.”
Yusuf licks his lips, takes the small terracotta pot and sniffs it. He raises an eyebrow.
“Olive?” he asks, lips twitching, and it is good to see his usual confident self make an appearance again, nerves ignored for the moment. “Can we afford it?”
Nicolò snorts. “I bought this one myself for just this occasion,” he admits, eyelids heavy, tone almost sultry, and it earns him something rather like a choked whimper from the back of Yusuf’s throat. Nicolò cups his cheek and draws him into another kiss, for fortitude, and somehow they manage to slick Yusuf’s fingers. Nicolò’s breath grows heavy, a shudder of anticipation jittering up his spine as Yusuf draws back slightly, looks down to aim his hand better.
In truth Nicolò is already somewhat ready. He visited the bathhouse earlier, used some of their scented oils on himself in a private nook, learning his own way and wishing so fervently for Yusuf it made him ache. He gasps when Yusuf touches the furl of his hole, snagging his lip with his teeth and releasing it again. Yusuf’s gaze snaps back to him.
“Is everything fine?” he asks, truly concerned. Nicolò nods, covering his face to recover himself, for a moment.
“I have just…” He takes a deep breath. “I have wanted you there for so long.”
Yusuf kisses Nicolò’s collarbone. “I am sorry for making you wait,” he says.
Nicolò can look at him again, and smirks. “Well, stop making me wait any longer.”
With his own snort, the tension morphed to something softer, less nervous, Yusuf nods. “As you wish.”
He breaches Nicolò with one finger, and Nicolò cannot help but groan, arching into the touch, his cock twitching, precome dribbling from the tip. The mere knowledge that that is Yusuf inside him could have him spend far too soon. But also wants more, needs more, with a fiery desperation he can barely contain.
With strained direction, he guides Yusuf into giving him more, two fingers, then three. He squirms beneath the other’s exploratory touch, curiosity leading Yusuf to caress Nicolò’s innermost place more than Nicolò does himself. It is a strange sensation, but it also has him trembling, gasping for breath, and when Yusuf brushes a certain place, he arches with a groan, pleasure radiating from the point like lightning.
“Nico?” Yusuf asks, worried.
“There,” Nicolò breathes. “There, again.”
Yusuf, obedient in his inexperience, does so, and Nicolò shudders. He burns from the inside out, understanding with almost divine clarity why Anselmo was willing, time and time again, to sin with such abandon, and he can feel himself careening too quickly towards climax. More of this and he will not last, and he wants to last.
“Enough,” he grits out. “Your cock, Yusuf, please…”
He feels painfully bereft once Yusuf removes his fingers, throbbing around the sudden emptiness, but he gathers himself enough to find the pot of oil again. He looks down between them and, with a strange fondness, admires the differences between their two equally hard cocks. In truth perhaps Yusuf might not even need more oil to slick the way, dripping as he is, but it is better to be safe than sorry.
Yusuf, his own hands quivering, takes the oil, the implications leading his movements. He slicks himself with a plaintive whine, his cock now glistening from precome and oil, and Nicolò aids him in aligning himself with Nicolò’s entrance. For a moment all is still, their breaths held, the world frozen around them.
And then Yusuf pushes forward, the girth of him more than three fingers, softness and steel at the same time, and Nicolò flails for him, sinks his nails into his shoulders as he moans, something high and keening at the intrusion. Yusuf groans himself, and when Nicolò can open his eyes and see, he is a portrait of beautiful pleasure, pink mouth hanging open, teeth white, eyebrows knotted. Nicolò’s lungs empty in awe, and he drags him down into a kiss, hard, desperate, unifying.
Yusuf continues to push forward, agonisingly slow. There is a sting, yes, but the wonder of it all allows Nicolò to easily overlook any discomfort. He arches into it, demanding, the slow pace of his fulfilment not enough, not nearly enough. He has waited long enough for something he never thought he would have from anybody, much less someone as deeply beloved as Yusuf, and he finds that he simply cannot abstain any longer.
He lets out a breathless laugh when Yusuf finally stills, as deep as he can seemingly go, his balls settled against Nicolò’s arse.
Nicolò pulls him closer, their bodies pressed together in sublime and miraculous contact. He has never felt so full, so complete, in his life – somehow this is not merely the physical. The knowledge of Yusuf inside him, joined so, causes great golden light in his heart.
“Do you…” he swallows, “…do you know how many nights I prepared myself? Cleaned and opened myself on my own fingers in readiness for this? For you?”
Yusuf’s answering moan is a broken, tormented thing. He quivers beneath Nicolò’s palms, his body taut, tense, all coiled muscle fighting desperately needed movement with its every sinew. Nicolò spreads his hungering hands over that broad back, down its trembling spine.
“Waiting with bated breath for you to take what I wanted to give,” he continues. He is vaguely, distantly aware of what he is saying, how very… Anselmo-like it is. He is not given to ornate verse and lofty words, he is a man of statements and plain truths, but like this, entwined finally with Yusuf inside him, something has been unlocked within. These are plain truths in their own way, and Yusuf must know them. He must know how Nicolò loves him and wants him.
“Ever since the day I knew I could have you, the day I knew the burning inside was requited, I wanted you like this.” He rolls his hips, shifting Yusuf inside him, and his next words are a rough groan that mingles with Yusuf’s choked cry. “Where you belong.”
Yusuf drops his head, whimpering, sweat beading on his heated skin, glistening copper. Nicolò cradles his face, traces the edges of his inky beard with his thumbs.
“Move,” he urges. “Yusuf, my heart, move.”
Yusuf, eager, half-mad with it, obliges with a groan of sheer relief, pulling back and then thrusting back in. Nicolò goes from renewed woeful emptiness to exquisite fullness again, and the dance begins in earnest, a far more joyous reprise of old penetrations.
Yusuf is now unleashed, his hands fists in the threadbare sheet, grounding himself as he moves. There is little finesse to him, but in truth Nicolò barely notices, too consumed with the fire of it, with the burn of Yusuf inside, dragging along his walls. He can already feel that lasting any sort of time will be a lost cause. His cock throbs in time with his hole, with his heartbeat, with their movements against each other. Nicolò clamps his legs about Yusuf’s waist, somehow drawing him deeper, gasping at every thrust, at the words Yusuf has found the wherewithal to pour into his willing ears.
“Divine, exquisite, oh, the sweetness of Heaven couldn’t match you…”
Nicolò laughs, something more carefree than anything he has ever felt before in his life, and pulls Yusuf into another messy, clumsy kiss, all pursuing tongues and clashing lips and mingled moans. Surely there is some heavenly mystery to this, Nicolò thinks, his balls tightening, reaching for the pinnacle with outstretched, worshipful desperation.
Yusuf stills suddenly, whimpering, gasping, crying Nicolò’s name, and liquid heat spills deep inside Nicolò, painting him, filling him, a gleeful vessel. There is a dizziness, an incandescent, illicit thrill to it. Nicolò wraps a desperate hand around his own cock between them, and strips himself to his own rapid completion, spilling over his hand, stomach, chest.
Yusuf’s arms give way, as if Nicolò’s own climax has taken what little strength he had left. Nicolò curls his other hand around the nape of his neck, sinking into his thick curls, and hums at the soft, lazy kisses and delightful scratch of Yusuf’s beard on his skin. They lie there, boneless and spent, sweat-slick and filthy. The air reeks of their joining, and when Yusuf shifts, he has softened enough to slip free, making Nicolò hiss. He can feel Yusuf’s seed trickling from him, oozing to the bed, and for a moment feels oddly bereft.
It will be a nigh impossible task to allow Yusuf out of this bed from now on. It is as if a gate is now opened, some portal to great and breath-taking things, and Nicolò is as cheerful a sinner as Anselmo ever was. He will gladly fall into temptation, again and again, unrepentant.
Yusuf nuzzles at the side of his neck, the edge of his jaw, humming. “Thank you,” he says, his voice rough and his words thick, soft and loving in a manner Nicolò is still struggling to find himself entirely worthy of. For this moment, he cannot bear not to accept it.
“Whatever for?” he asks. Yusuf waves an indolent hand.
“This introduction to an entirely new realm of pleasure,” he replies.
“It is as much my pleasure as yours,” Nicolò notes tartly.
“And that is what makes it all the sweeter.”
Nicolò swallows, thinking of the intimacy of it, the closeness, the conjoining of their bodies and, by extension, their souls. The promise of more, and the dizzying, night unbearable feeling of finally belonging, unmasked and unhidden, could drive a man to tears. For once, Nicolò feels he has done something purely and utterly right. He turns his head and kisses Yusuf again, their arms enfolding one another.
It is a journey of strange discovery they will take hand in hand.