Chapter Text
His lips… oh my god his lips! I am certain I will dissolve like a tablet of sugar on his tongue as he closes the tiny gap between us and presses those lips to mine, answering the question that had been hanging over my head for months, since I finally worked up the courage to slide that envelope through the mailbox slot. I had wished I could take it back the instant I let it go, tried in vain to slip my fingers after it and pluck it back out – now I can’t believe that my fickle heart could ever have thought such a thing.
Every moment after that was a glorious torture, like “see you at midnight” all over again but stretched out for months on end. As I practiced for hours upon hours, talked with the organizers of the Lincoln Center and did press conferences about the concert, as I sat at my piano and scratched notes onto manuscript and looked out towards what my brain lovingly dubbed new heaven, the only thing I could think of was what I might see when I looked up toward the balcony that night. Would I see him, for the first time since Italy? Would I see an empty seat? Would I, worst of all, see someone else altogether, my gift to him re-gifted like an unwanted sweater? When I sent that letter, it had seemed like a power play, moving my queen and saying “check” when I knew there is no way for him to avoid a “mate”. Instead, it felt like I was just as powerless as I had been fifteen years ago, desperately waiting for a response, any response.
As the date of the concert drew nearer and nearer, my imagination pressed further and further. What if he didn’t come? What would I do with his encore – send it to him to let him know, burn it so that no one would ever know? What would I do with the chilled white wine I was keeping in the fridge for that night, if he would not come back with me – would I drink it all myself, hoping I could forget who it’s intended recipient had been? And if he did come, what would I say? What could possibly be said? Scenario after scenario would burn through my mind as I worked, as I taught students and chatted with fellow faculty. The only place my imagination dared not stray was to the end of his encore, and what came after. That moment was too frightening, too full of potential harm even for a masochistic mind like mine.
And now it is here, and his lips are on mine, and his hands are holding my back just like they did that first night together, with a grip both gentle and firm. I move my hands from his face to his shoulders to steady myself – I feel suddenly extremely high, as if I might fall over. I haven’t felt this way since Monet’s Berm, this breathless collapse of infinite possible universes into a single one, and not just any one but the one I desperately desire. This is not a memory, played again and again on loop in my mind – this is something new, a composition we are improvising based off of an era long past in an unquestionably modern style. All the same, I hold this moment as delicately as I hold those memories, afraid to drop it, afraid it might shatter in my hands, embedding glass in my palms.
When we pull away, I rest my forehead against his, trembling slightly. Fifteen summers ago, I had been reluctant to let myself feel – I was too young to understand, too unaccustomed to my own desires. Now, I feel in every inch of my skin, in every pulse of my heart. It tears through my veins – it is overwhelming. “Better now”, I whisper, and I feel him laugh. Oh that laugh… I didn’t realize how much I longed to hear it until it was returned to my ear. I am a boy again as I tilt my head and greedily reclaim his lips.
I feel a tiny flicker of fear, remembering another second kiss halted hastily in the name of morals or something like them, but the damning words, the hand saying ‘stop’ on my chest never come. Instead, he leans into my lips even more, sitting slightly more forward on his knees so he can draw up to his true height, his hands running up from my back to my jaw so that I have my head tilted slightly back, my throat totally exposed to him, a vulnerable position. It’s a possessive action, and I feel a thrill race from my toes to my cheeks as I realize that he too is claiming my lips as his own. There is no fear, there is no doubt left in me – all of that has been washed away by years of lips that weren’t his, of ‘not the same’s. I run my hands down his chest and ball one into a fist around the soft fabric of his dress shirt, anchoring myself as I edge closer, until we are pressed flat against one another, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, the other reaching under his coat to wrap around his waist, to pull him to me. I want to leave no room for the time that separates us, I want to fill it up so that then and now blur together as if none of the pain and heartbreak had ever happened. I want to press so close to him that we are back in Rome, back in San Clemente, back in 1983.
He pulls away, and I hear a tiny, breathy sound come from my lips. He grins, and perhaps goaded on by that sound, releases my face and slowly trails his hands down my sides, slides them under Billowy’s hem and settles his warm palms against my bare sides. I look up at him with unfettered wonder, relishing his touch. Is this real? Something awakes in me that I had long since forgotten, or rather, had not forgotten but had simply ceased to notice, like a constant noise that one no longer hears until it is pointed out. I again crave to know the touch of his soft skin against mine, want to pull him into my bed and see what two can do in such a space. Almost without thought, my hands are responding to his, undoing his tie, pushing his suit coat from his shoulders until they both pool on the ground. My fingers find his star of David as they undo the top buttons of his shirt, and I look up to find his eyes. Those deep blue pools, no longer filled with tears, hold the compassion I remember from the best days of that summer.
“Oliver,” I murmur gently, tracing his collarbone – he shivers, “Are you… are you sure you want this?” It has occurred to me suddenly that the tables have turned for us in more ways than one. It is no longer I who is in danger of being messed up – Oliver has a life that this could all too easily topple, and as such, I am now responsible for –
“Elio,” hearing him say my name with such a lambent tone stops those thoughts unceremoniously, replaced by other, less virtuous ones, “I have never wanted anything but this.” He dispels any further fears I may have had by sliding his hands up my back and, with some minor assistance from me, freeing my torso from Billowy’s embrace, before pressing his lips back against mine.
The tone has shifted. No longer does caution permeate the air. Instead, we are now two starving men, deprived of food for fifteen years, suddenly presented with a feast. Our hands quest with desperation, but also with a confidence gained by years of practice with other lovers, stand ins who let us hone our skills until we could finally use them on the one who deserved them. His shirt is gone as he pushes me to the ground, his right hand twining through my left to pin it to the ground, and I use my free hand to twine through his hair, to hold him to me, to keep his lips on mine. As he lowers himself to his elbows, our bare chests touch, and I feel something almost electric at the contact. He is still so muscular, and though I have filled out my frame since my youth I am still petite by comparison. Everything has changed, and yet, in this moment, I know that at the same time, nothing has changed.
Though I am loath to break our lips apart, I eventually do, slightly loosening my grip on him. “As much as I love the floor, I do have a bedroom, if you want. Wouldn’t want your elderly bones to be sore in the morning”.
He scoffs, but his eyes are glowing with hunger. “Elio, if I didn’t think that the floor might bruise your back, I would have you right here, right now, sore or no.” Despite his big talk, however, he slides off to one side of my hips, offering me a hand to help me stand with him. “But I just got this body back, and I can’t bear the thought of marring it before I get to experience it again”. We are still standing very close, so it is easy for him to reach around me and trail his fingers along my spine. Almost involuntarily, I close my eyes and tilt my head back, and so I don’t know he has moved his lips to just beside my ear until I feel his breath on my skin as he whispers, “And as I seem to remember, good things happen in rooms that belong to you”.
* * *
The morning after is somehow even more agonizing than our very first night together, though for completely different reasons. I do fall asleep briefly, immediately after we have had our fill, the surge of chemicals my brain releases doing their job well. But, as soon as a flicker of consciousness returns only a few hours later, I am wide awake. Oliver is curled up against me, his breath caressing the crease of my collar in a slow, regular rhythm, one arm wrapped across my chest, his legs still tangled up in mine. Though his face is unmistakably older, with creases at the corners of his eyes and faint lines across his forehead, as he sleeps he looks as young as the day we met. He is the picture of serenity. What preoccupies my mind is what feelings will be painted on his body, on his face, in his eyes in a few hours, when the cold light of morning shines through the skylight and casts our sins out of the shadows of night that have so far hidden them. Perhaps last night was simply an outlier, my music and theatrics like a drug, altering his state of mind, muddling his choices, and in the morning he will accuse me of taking advantage of him. Perhaps he will think of his wife and children and feel the disgust I felt that morning fifteen years ago but tenfold, maybe he will push away from me, maybe he will indeed hold it against me. Perhaps he will simply reassess the risks of what we have done and change his mind, flee the precipice’s edge and return to solid ground, to a happy and sure future. My heart thuds so loudly in my chest that I’m surprised it doesn’t wake him.
And yet. For all my fear, I also feel a sense of contentment. This was everything I had ever wanted. Years of burying my love and regret and pain, suddenly over, even if only for this moment. I am holding Oliver in my arms, he is here in my bed, in the aftermath of making love with a passion that went well beyond lust. His scent has stained my sheets and will stay, hopefully forever, even if he never again lies between them. What more can I ask?
The sun peeks out slowly, and I watch as the square of my skylight slowly changes from black, to indigo, to navy, to pure blue, and then so blindingly bright I have to look away. When I do, I find a different blue, the blue of Oliver’s eyes, looking up into my face. We say nothing for a long time, each of us simply looking, savoring the taste of this moment, this pause before our minds return to their churning, ever-thinking state. He lets out a long, slow sigh, and buries his face against my skin, his arm reaching further to pull me into a clumsy embrace. I’m not sure what this means, so I hold my body and lips completely still, hoping he will elaborate. He does, whispering his name into my skin, and planting a gentle, loving kiss on my collarbone. I sigh in return and pull him close, burying my nose in his hair and breathing in the scent of his sweat and shampoo.
“Elio,” I tell him, again and again, even as my tears begin to darken his bright blonde hair, “Elio, Elio, Elio.”