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It has always been about crossing a line. When they were twelve or so Alfredo would draw it on the ground with a stick, tentative and unsteady hands, and Olmo would trample all over it. He’d kick the dust up in the air in clouds; it would get everywhere, in their noses, in their mouths, on their clothes. He’d rub his bare feet into the dirt until a furrow formed. Only after Alfredo had drawn the line, though, for that reason alone and never sooner. He was violently reactive like that and Alfredo liked him for it, if not for else, then for the sensation that whatever he did had affected the world in some way. When a line was drawn he would cross it. It was an anchoring certainty for Alfredo for many years.
It’s a muggy summer night when he decides to go to Olmo’s house. The cicadas make a deafening racket in the shrubs all the way. Alfredo walks there, doesn’t take a carriage or even a bicycle, which makes for a punishing, almost christian discomfort. It’s a last resort type of situation, perhaps he can convince Olmo of it if he looks a bit imperfect and worn-out. He wouldn’t believe it otherwise. He’d send Alfredo home and tell him he needs more sleep and less drugs. It makes him curse and nearly turn back when a blackberry bush catches in his blazer.
On the dust road, for a minute, Alfredo assumes he’s just imagining the squelching sound but then it begins to get louder as he advances. Movement, a dark spot in the middle. His first urge is to turn around but his legs want something else, they want to get as close as possible and all his control over them is vanquished. It’s a cat, as it turns out, picking at a crow carcass with urgency — it freezes as soon as it notices Alfredo, then runs off to the bushes in a blink.
Something about the circumstances is prophetic. Olmo is coincidentally awake doing— one of the many of tasks Alfredo delegates to house servants and never thinks about again, counting food supplies or some such. He’s confused when he comes to terms with Alfredo standing in his doorway. Exhausted but mostly confused, strained tendons in his neck and a slight upturn of nose Alfredo can spot only after having observed him for years.
“I was busy but, well, we have all night.” There’s a tinge of sarcasm in how he places the burlap sacks in the lower cabinet before closing it. “Just keep it down. The children need to sleep more than we do.”
“The children.” Alfredo chews on the words. He’s so pointedly unaware of what’s happening five hundred meters from his own home. “Just how many did you make?”
“Not my own. They need to stay here for now. Their parents are in prison.”
Olmo gives him that look then, that pure hatred that bubbles out of him sometimes, the ice-cold edge that turns his eyes from muted grey to vivid blue. It makes Alfredo shift on his chair and then grit his teeth through it like he always does.
For a terrible moment the entire setting seems miserable to him, his guilt for this fact included. The furniture is falling apart despite the care it’s being maintained with, the plaster is detaching in pieces, the lamp is surrounded with a halo of bugs. Alfredo wishes he could talk to Olmo somewhere else. In his clean and currently empty villa, among the antiques and with better food and wine than Olmo will ever afford in his lifetime. It’s an absurd wish. He lets go of it soon enough.
“You brought the hysterics out of Ada again,” Olmo states matter-of-factly as he leans against the cupboard.
“No, this time it…” Alfredo exhales. He glances up at Olmo, waits for a sign of approval before continuing. “It wasn’t violent. She says she needs a few days to cool her head off. I have no idea where she went. I usually don’t, when she does this.”
Olmo makes a few discreet nods, crosses his arms. He’s validating Alfredo’s propensity to complain, in a way, and Alfredo is grateful to him for it. It’s always uncertain whether Olmo is actually doing something for him but he likes to imagine so.
“And besides,” Alfredo continues then, taken by irritation, “why are you framing this like I caused it? I ‘brought it out of her’? She’s been like this long before she knew me.”
“And you went and married her for it.” Olmo laughs. For a mere moment, bathed in that horrific lamp, Alfredo realizes how nicely he laughs about the cruelest things.
“I put up with the torture. Because she’s wonderful on her good days. And — for the sex.”
“You sound awful,” another snicker, “really, rehearse before you say something.”
Alfredo rolls his eyes and leans back.
“You know I don’t mean it in a thuggish way. The sex is— it’s spiritual to us. It’s something new every time. Not just baby-making.”
“Perhaps that’s the problem,” Olmo jokes. He sits down and keeps talking after he’s only met with a sigh. “What they say here is— how was it? Everything outside of bed becomes like inside of bed sooner or later.”
“Or the other way around,” Alfredo remarks. “She can’t stand me, some of the things I do. She won’t come to bed possibly because her hatred would show.”
“You know that’s never a good reason not to fuck, right?”
As the other reflects on it, really reflects, Olmo’s seat moves with a shove; a sudden impulse of some kind.
“We’re nearing midnight, I’m pouring us a nocino,” he explains.
The dusty bottle comes around from the remote back of a shelf. Inside, the nocino swirls opaque and unfiltered, it looks nearly solid when it settles in Alfredo’s deciliter glass. They take the shot in silence — it’s so sweet and so deadly strong that for thirty or so seconds he only sees Olmo in blurred flashes, his rough manner of placing the empty glass down with a click, the menacing contours of his figure. The last reins Alfredo had on his own speech slip from his hands.
“I thought I…” no, the tone won’t come out right from the sting of alcohol, “I really thought I was marrying for love.”
“You r—”
“I read too many novels, yes.” The more they talk with each other out loud the more it reveals itself unnecessary.
He looks at Olmo, head tilted and chin perched on his wrist, like shy girls would look at him at dinner parties when he was younger. Olmo doesn’t change very much at all whenever Alfredo sees him, he realizes. His eyes still start darting after he’s in company for too long, looking for a trick or a way out. It makes Alfredo smile even though there’s nothing to smile about in his misfortunes; about his wife running off, the political tensions he can’t handle, the degradation, the guilt.
“You wanna know something about Ada leaving?” Olmo clears his throat as he can’t suffer being observed. “Since you can’t figure it out on your own.”
He clasps Alfredo firmly by the shoulder and Alfredo goes limp at the gesture, bones turning to jelly — it’s the nocino alright. A fly begins to bump against the lampshade repeatedly with an irritating buzz.
“She left because you won’t run the fascists out of town.”
Alfredo detaches Olmo’s hand with a huff and a headspin. He doesn’t want to think about the ridiculous width of his wrist when he grabs it.
“That’s one problem out of many. In fact, it has little to do with the rest.”
“You make up a lot of problems,” Olmo retorts, “because you don’t want to solve the only actual problem.”
“As if that would be so easy.”
The chair opposite to Alfredo is violently jerked backwards, screeching against the floor and jolting him marginally more awake.
“Yes, it is really fucking easy! You go to Attila Mellanchi and tell him to fuck off! Ten minutes of your god damn time, Alfredo!”
The worst part is that a remote corner of his brain keeps yelling at him about how shabby this place is, how he can smell the mold on the ceiling and — vaguely — the rotting flesh the cat left over outside. It’s such a strong compulsion it almost drowns out whatever Olmo is talking about, no matter how loud. If he’s going to be treated with complete ingratitude at least let him have a picturesque backdrop: Alfredo thinks back to the myriads of arguments he had with Ada, her in nightgowns, hot with anger and smashing expensive furniture to pieces.
“Hah, of course.” Olmo sits back down with a caricature of mirth. “You’re too afraid. One big man with a commandeering attitude and you cower back.”
That’s interesting — because Alfredo knows what he wants to say next. He knows Olmo wants to mention his father. It doesn’t happen but it’s implied.
“You really want me to punch you in the face tonight, don’t you?”
Olmo laughs.
“Careful or you might break your knuckles, Master Berlinghieri.”
There is something unbearable between them that has festered over the years. Its seeds had already been planted when young Olmo would grit his teeth at Alfredo, call him names, wrestle him and trample on lines drawn into dirt. Superficially it looks like antipathy and they might kill each other over it just the same. Many times though they come to an agreement that it’s always been like this and the tension defuses miraculously. Olmo distributes each of them another glass of liquor after enough time passes for that.
“Besides,” Alfredo says at some point, “it’s curious how well you seem to know Ada.”
The sentence comes quicker than the thought behind it and the jealous bile that floods him afterwards. That the two people who were supposed to be there for him would conspire even in just a friendly manner.
“I relate to the issues she has with you.”
“So you are just projecting your own issues onto her.” Before the other can say anything else Alfredo gets carried away with the new wave of momentary anger. “My wife isn’t a political instrument. I want her kept out of whatever is happening here and be allowed to have a peaceful life.”
“Your entire marriage to her is a political instrument,” Olmo rolls his eyes and sends down the whole shot of nocino as a possible attempt not to be provoked.
If he knew as much as he pretends to know about their relationship he wouldn’t say that, Alfredo thinks. How would he even explain it to Olmo? That Ada is the one who always does whatever she wants, that she vetoes Alfredo’s decisions so freely she’s practically making them, that his entire emotional state depends on her. That she’s the one who will push Alfredo up the wall or onto the bed after late night returns from parties.
“That’s nonsense. Am I really the one who should think more before speaking?” He says instead of going into details.
“Oh it’s nonsense? Wild liberal French girl. You prove to yourself you have the firm hand to tame her, prove to everyone else you’re a proper patriarch.”
“I’m assuming this means I’m not one.” Alfredo cards through his hair with so much exasperation it remains disheveled, misshapen.
“Your hands are soft and delicate,” Olmo shakes his head.
After a long lapse of silence he stands up, unclear what he’s doing at first. Alfredo watches him stretch a hand out to the lamp and effortlessly enclose the fly in his fist; the buzzing ceases shortly. An ugly death, he reflects. To much of his surprise, when Olmo pushes the door ajar and opens his palm the fly reemerges unharmed, drifting off into the night.
“It wasn’t for politics. I truly wanted to marry her because I loved her,” Alfredo repeats.
“Politics influence how you can love someone.” It sounds oddly reflective. He turns around. “No, none of this is about love. You made it about something else for yourself.”
“What a philosopher you suddenly are,” Alfredo clasps his hands in mock prayer, “what is about love then, you backshed Socrates? Meeting a girl and knocking her up two days later?”
He can now happily ascertain he’s managed to upset Olmo. Alfredo anticipates every motion of the sequence; the lunge towards him, being grabbed by the collar of his shirt, the grit of teeth, the exact colour of his eyes.
“What did you just say?”
Alfredo stares defiantly, plays into the arrogance just because this idea of him is so precious to Olmo.
“Wanna settle this outside then?” Olmo’s words are hurried and low.
It’s surprising this hasn’t escalated hours ago. They stumble out the backdoor and Alfredo gets hit first by a humid waft of air and second by a right hook to the jaw. Some bushes rustle and crack under him as he topples.
It’s a ritual more than a fight. A dance that summons the cicadas from the thicket and the bruises from under Alfredo’s skin. He hits back, as tradition would have it, but it rarely lands — the only injury he administers to Olmo in a struggle that stretches several minutes is a busted lower lip. A thin, bloody line glistens right in the middle, muted red from the dark, transfixing. He ends up on top of Alfredo, like he always does, the latter pushed uncomfortably against a multitude of compressed arborous stems and leaves. The weight above him is solid, stifling.
Something in Alfredo would rather Olmo beat him to death than get up from there. He wants to run his thumb over his cheekbones and cracked lip.
Before he can, Olmo backs away, in a settled and exhausted mood. He waits for the other to come along but doesn’t help and Alfredo is just stunned and disillusioned for a while, clothes stained with every shade of brown and green. When they go back inside he realizes he’s never drunk with Olmo like this before, possibly because he knew it would unhinge them both.
“I should really bring you a bottle of something in exchange for this,” Alfredo comments on his fourth dose of liquor.
“Those horrible German wines from the Berlinghieri cellar? Gods no.”
If the ambience was right they’d both laugh.
“What will I do with Ada when she comes back? Fascists aside.”
“Nothing,” Olmo shrugs. “Stop trying to own her, I guess. She’s a person, not an object.”
Alfredo stares wistfully into space for some time, aware of how laughable he is, sitting here in these tattered clothes.
“I think, by virtue of us being together, she does belong to me.” He leaves a dramatic pause just to rile the other up. “But I belong to her too. I never thought of it in any other way.”
“You can’t help but put it like that, can you?” Olmo snorts, but the explanation continues on without it being acknowledged.
“I said that to you too, once. Do you remember? You completely took it the wrong way.”
“Oh come on, are you really pretending you weren’t mocking me? After you compared me to a silkworm? Don’t be fucking ridiculous.”
There is something genuinely hurt in how Olmo is hunching his shoulders. Some emotion that could only be identified after scraping two decades of calluses off of it, all the war, violence, poverty, ostracism. A second brawl would be better than this, at least then he wouldn’t be as exposed to the elements as he is in this abnormal misery. Alfredo feels an urge to alleviate it, for the first time in many years; sympathy for Olmo is a relievingly pure sentiment, like drinking fresh water after swimming in sewage.
“I’m sorry,” he mouths even though it’s years too late for it.
“Well, it’s true though,” Olmo crosses his hands behind his nape. “The land belongs to you and so I belong to you too. Can’t argue with that.”
He draws closer to Alfredo’s and gives him a sarcastic half-smile just to be mean.
“Perhaps you should keep me in harnesses so I don’t wander off.”
“I wasn’t talking about the land!” Alfredo’s anger is explosive. By a spur of the moment he’s grabbed Olmo’s worn-out linen shirt with both hands, almost catapulting himself off the chair. “I didn’t want you to leave! I suffer constantly from the love I have for you and you enjoy it, you torture me at every opportunity!”
It’s embarrassing. Alfredo feels like he’s a teenager again, begging for some affection he’s destined to never receive. And Olmo seems so cold for a few moments, so lost in thought, too unaffected to even free himself from the grip. When he speaks again, though, the pent-up strain becomes evident from the tremble in his voice.
“This isn’t the world we live in. We—” he glimpses down to Alfredo’s fists with an exhale. “ This isn’t about love.”
There is an intent appearing behind his eyes, then, that paralyzes Alfredo. He realizes he’s drawn a line and that Olmo is now determined to cross it. One of his hands is enveloped in Olmo’s — large and coarse — and all he can do is wait for something to happen, frozen in place.
“If this was about love it’d be you in my bed.” Olmo doesn’t even wait for the phrase to set in, leans closer, words cascading uninhibited. “You would have been years ago. Much sooner than Anita.”
He looks him straight in the eyes the whole time and Alfredo can’t breathe, his entire muscle frame tenses in a surge of panic mixed with arousal. All the images he never dared to entertain flash in his brain in rapid succession; him in Olmo’s bed, naked and covered in sweat, the two of them skin-to-skin, no hookers, no intermediaries, no politics. Olmo being rough like when they fight. Alfredo is dizzy.
This is the wretched predicament they’ve entered. They’re kissing and it’s hard to tell who even started, it’s too much reality at once to taste the dry blood on Olmo’s lip and Alfredo thinks he might die on the spot. His skin is numb everywhere. As sensation returns and they part, there’s a burn at the corner of his mouth, scraped up by Olmo’s stubble and teeth.
It ends here, Alfredo thinks. He didn’t receive an offer as much as an explanation as to why that offer is impossible. Olmo has an arm around him and some blush on his cheeks and it feels so nice , almost convincing, but he can’t love Alfredo. Not while the blackshirts are thrashing someone on the other side of town, Ada is possibly putting herself in danger and his children are sleeping upstairs. But Alfredo wants to keep deluding himself — it’s what he always, always does. So he clings to Olmo’s neck until they nearly tumble and palms across his back muscles, trying to get as much tactile memory as he can. The other is taking deep, heavy breaths in wordless silence.
“It’s not too late,” Alfredo unwittingly thinks out loud against Olmo’s nape. “You can have me. You can do anything you want.”
“You’re so drunk.”
“Excellent observation. I’m also horny.”
“Then we do this the way I say.” Olmo holds the side of his face with an angry, feral determination and Alfredo nods into it because who cares anymore.
They go to a half-abandoned shed ridden with weeds, among scattered haystacks and a damp smell of decomposition. It’s humiliating beyond measure to be hidden away in the filth like this and Alfredo is quite sure he was in a better state at the worst parties he’s been to. Like everything they do, this too has to be secret and conspiratorial. In a corner of the world reserved to them. If anyone sees them like this — well, Alfredo doesn't like to think about it but they might have to kill them.
He knows the etiquette, he begins to undo his shirt— Olmo doesn’t, and thus the shirt is torn off with a violence that surprises Alfredo but shouldn’t. The way he latches onto Alfredo’s neck to suck disastrously visible marks into it makes a gasp stumble out his throat.
“Nh, that hu—”
Olmo bites into the same spot with the full force of his jaw. Alfredo sobs, both from pain and some liberatory sense that there’s something in this Olmo wants.
In a few moments he has an iron grip around Alfredo’s wrist and shoves his hand down his own pants, maintaining eye contact. Alfredo’s breath hitches, ceases, his first instinct is to retreat and swerve their positions back to normality. Olmo’s cock is right in his palm, stiffening each second.
“Are you backing down like last time?”
It is quite funny. Alfredo’s eyes glaze over a little and he considers that memory of them with the hooker. How disappointed he felt, maybe because he wished he could watch what Olmo would have looked like while fucking her. What it would have been like to smell him and feel him and touch him like an uncivilized animal. He doesn’t pull back, strokes Olmo’s cock until it’s erect and immediately — for christ’s sake — thinks of what else they could do like this.
Olmo grabs onto his shoulder to encourage him. He could probably encircle his upper arm and it’s a little unnerving. A single droplet of sweat traverses his temple as Alfredo jacks him off diligently.
“You didn’t seem too interested before,” Alfredo observes, regaining a semblance of control and teasing the cock’s head with his thumb.
“You, hah , sheltered fool. I wouldn’t have come to the hooker if it wasn’t for you.”
It’s the worst half-executed love confession he’s ever heard but it makes Alfredo so warm inside. His need to demonstrate gratitude is quicker than his forward-planning, so he drops to his knees without having an entirely clear idea about the motions. He recalls receiving blowjobs a few sparse times but never giving one. When Olmo realizes, he exhales an immense amount of air and his cock twitches in a very evident reaction to the power play. Alfredo is overwhelmed by sensation and laps at it before taking it into his mouth way too soon. The ground under his knees is soft from plants, soil, compost.
It’s careless, something more than a favour. When Olmo grunts and tangles his fingers in Alfredo’s hair just behind his ear it sets something off like a pet getting scratched at the right spot. It distracts Alfredo and his gag reflex has him coughing and sputtering to the side as he grabs onto Olmo’s thighs for support. He expects some form of ridicule for a fraction of a second. Instead Olmo is just shaken back from the haze.
“Are you alright?”
Alfredo just nods, chin wet with some mix of drool and precum, then feels the need to immediately return to the matter at hand as though it’s a question of accomplishment. He swallows Olmo’s cock more slowly this time because it’s one task and he needs to do it well. Alfredo always wants too much, he’s a bottomless well for praise and approval — he arches upwards, lets Olmo hit the back of his throat, moves his hands to the other’s stomach and the juncture of his hip almost pleadingly.
He can tell Olmo is enjoying it from the way he rolls his hips. It’s more surprising that Alfredo does too; that he’s rock hard by now and, oddly, thinks about how he never wanted to rule over anyone, he only ever wanted this . But ah, then this is about him again.
Olmo seems frustrated when he pulls back. He probably would have climaxed soon.
“How did you imagine this?” Alfredo asks, slurring his words a little. “Because you said we should do it ‘the way you say’ before.”
“You sucking dick wasn’t a bad sight.”
“Can you just… I suppose, have some mercy on me later?” He shifts in his pants, looks away for a bit, and it sounds like some form of bargaining.
The world takes a spin in the next few seconds. Olmo tackles him to the ground and they both land on the dirt in a cluster of limbs, just like they did hours ago. Alfredo barely has the time to voice his surprise as he’s pushed onto the hay; the nostalgia hits him then, they did this before — not exactly this, but it’s the same intimacy, the grime and the straws and Olmo’s body pressed against him. Back then it wasn’t about sex and now it’s not about fighting and maybe it was never about either of those things but it isn’t Alfredo’s right to speak that into existence so he just lets out a choked moan when Olmo strokes him through his trousers.
Shortly, his tension is finally alleviated. They lie there, Olmo on his side and taking both their cocks in one hand; Alfredo goes in for another kiss, aggressive and demanding, before moaning into it from the friction. He’s dazed from pleasure, which makes him voice the first thing that comes to his mind, quick and breathless.
“Tell me about that time with the hooker. You didn’t elaborate.”
“ Fucking hell , Alfredo.” Olmo looks pissed rather than turned on, strokes them more vigorously for emphasis. “I don’t want to see or think about other people than the one I’m trying to fuck. There’s your explanation.”
“Yes but if we had been alone, AH !” Alfredo convulses when Olmo bites his clavicle. “What would you have done?”
“What I’m doing right now.”
As the other looks at him with some kind of expectation he adds; “And what I’m going to do later.”
“ What you’re going to do later ?”
Olmo shuffles away with a few cracks of straw then, a tinge of exasperation, and fishes something out of his pocket. Alfredo takes the jar to examine it in the moonlight, rolls it around a bit.
“You know, right?” It’s less blunt than one would expect from Olmo.
“Yes, I know…” Alfredo squints at the label closely in an outright scientific reverie. “I just expected you to bring cooking oil or something similar. Why do you even have vaseline?”
“Because it’s a household necessity. You’re really just— Irritating.”
He gives the vaseline back and then considers that maybe there’s at least some charm he picked up in high society — a shadow personality that manifests when he’s drunk enough, more like — so he removes the rest of his clothes completely. The smugness of rebellion against his own respectable image. It comes across to Olmo, who suddenly looks a little dumbfounded.
“So, am I too irritating to fuck?”
There isn’t an immediate answer to that but it’s not difficult to extrapolate from the sheer frantic rush in which Olmo smears lubricant all over his cock. They’re kissing again, hungry this time, as if stopping was the more difficult option; Olmo yanks his shirt off and that interrupts them, but merely for a fraction of a second. It really is just skin on skin now, Alfredo wrapping his arms around his neck and back, pulling Olmo’s entire mass between his legs. He’s pure and concentrated need, teased way longer than he normally would be; on the other hand this is blissful . It's the same happiness as when Olmo came back from service and kissed him enough times that it lingered in a yet undefined way. Alfredo hasn’t felt happy in months — years — but now he does. That veil has been pulled away from his reality and he doesn’t know how he’ll put it back.
Olmo fucks into him. All of Alfredo’s senses focus on this fact and it’s too much at once. The discomfort and pain seem to fade into the background from salvaging reassurances like the warm breaths on his neck. For once Olmo will help him through this and won’t leave, perhaps in his harsh ways — he gives it another roll of hips and Alfredo shifts, rubs his scalp into the hay — but he won’t leave . Alfredo becomes aware, shortly, that he’s getting accustomed to the intrusive sensation of being penetrated, reframing it from illicit to hedonistic.
“You can go faster,” he cups Olmo’s face, drags his fingertips over coarse stubble.
As Olmo picks up his speed Alfredo tries to etch everything into his mind; the impressions, the shapes, the smell of sweat, the precise rigidity of each movement. He wonders if this is how Olmo fucked all the others, if he just got the job done as quickly as possible in the nearest barn. Probably not… He must have done this with his wife in an actual bed, but in a way Alfredo doesn’t feel bad about it; Olmo would never bring his meek country girls here, wouldn’t take them as savagely as he does Alfredo, grasp their thighs so hard. It’s more authentic to him by measures.
Their pace becomes regular like it’s been properly kicked into gear. Alfredo is now moaning every time Olmo’s cock enters him — inhumane sounds, like he’s in heat, all the ones he has to stifle during regular sex. Not biting his cheek or grinding his teeth for once is so relaxing that he lies in a sort of trance on the hay, focuses on the sensation of getting fucked and Olmo’s hold on his hips. He jolts when Olmo aims just right for his prostate. It’s so good Alfredo’s hands instinctively snap up to hide his face; it makes him incapable of coherence.
“Olmo, gods it’s so— hahh… I— god… I’m yours… I belong to you…”
Olmo’s thrusts turn forceful, out of control.
“Fuck,” he swears loudly, eyes shut from the intensity.
They really aren’t so different. Olmo can’t escape the urge to possess either, in some crevice of his mind. The same Olmo who was so outraged by the mere thought of cheating, who’s setting up his warm little family life — turns around to get horrifically aroused at the thought of humiliating and fucking his landlord into incoherence. Alfredo enjoys the idea of bringing this out of him, he realizes, as much as he enjoys not having to emulate power, and it’s so cathartic for a moment he doesn’t understand why he’d have to go back to pretend the two of them disagree.
“Can you touch me?” He sobs, completely wrecked. “...Please, please, I’m going to cum, Olmo, please—”
The combination of Olmo’s thrusts hitting just right and him stroking Alfredo’s cock sends him into a blinding orgasm that he hasn’t fully recovered from when the other spends inside of him. Olmo emits a scratchy, uncontrolled moan despite usually not being very vocal. For a while they both remain on the haystack, unable to do anything but pant from exertion.
A nightingale announces the approaching dawn.
“It will be difficult,” Alfredo says, sluggishly scrambling for whatever remains of his clothes, “to act like this didn’t happen.”
The other doesn’t respond aside from a shift and a quiet groan of frustration. Doesn’t object either, though.
“I need to wash up and change immediately. What do I even say if I meet somebody on the way?”
“You won’t meet anyone at this time,” Olmo rolls over, finally determined to get up as well. “It’s too early even for milking.”
They don’t send each other off like lovers. It’s silent, detached; Olmo gives him a pat on the shoulder as Alfredo resists the yearning of kissing him again. He’s overstepped already. Taken too much. As they leave the shed and give each other a last glance before walking off on separate paths, Alfredo is truly hit by the sting. Whatever he’s asking of this man can’t be fulfilled in a lifetime and the last thing he wants is to cause pain. He just wishes he could have any of this without provocation, without giving Olmo something to trample over.
The crow carcass is still on the road, mangled and anticlimactic. Though Alfredo doesn’t meet anyone, he does hear people in the far distance; the drunken jubilation of men and the sound of something breaking. It ends soon, he reassures himself, both the noise and the stench, as soon as he gets home safely. Ada will be back. Some day he’ll get to kiss Olmo again.