Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro is a m/m 19th Century Florentine novella and is published by Aspen Mountain Press in their NIGHT MOVES anthology.
Days crawl. I hardly slept. In the rooms given me, beautiful light rooms at the top of a house in the Oltrarno district, I had been sketching in a mania of inspiration the like of which I had never experienced before. Suddenly, a week – a span of time which sometimes passes in a blink of creativity - stretched before me like an unbreachable chasm.
Papers littered the floor, each sheet defiled with mere lines, nascent ideas hastily started and rejected within seconds. Half hearted, amateurish, child-like scribbles of hands and fingers, an impression of hair waving back from a clear forehead, an obscure collusion of light and shade attempting to recreate an image of perfect cheekbones. All defaced, rejected. I felt disgusted at my mediocrity, a mere simian given free rein with charcoal and bark. The rest of the week passed without my participation in it. With every day, with every destroyed drawing my headache continued; only slight, hardly noticeable, but a constant band of tension around my temples. I blamed its presence for my lack of concentration, and my inability to attend my Patron at dinner any night that week.
The night before the day when I will see Him again I was ordered to attend a ball. A diamond occasion of mirrors and candles. I was still in disgrace for my behaviour at the Opera but my Patron was obliged to show off his property, his recent acquisition, parade his beneficence. This country has progressed by some 2 thousand years but slavery has never disappeared. I was worse than useless that night; still in pain, keyed up with the thought of the morning to come, too quiet, distracted as the carriage deposited us at the base of the steps. Signor Bettano muttered instructions to me in a steady stream, dance with this one, smile at that one, flatter this other one. I felt nauseated and disaffected, longing to be back amongst the detritus of my lost talent in my attic instead of in a too too bright ballroom with sweating Florentine men and hummingbird women.
Standing sullenly near a corner, out of sight of my Patron I wondered how long it would be before I could escape, how many glasses it would take before he forgot where I was in the room and stopped trying to find me. A voice spoke from the other side of the column.
“Don’t move. He’s looking this way.” I flattened myself against the marble in an instinctive movement. The voice spoke again. “Now. Round the back, this side, he’s moving.” I obeyed without thought, sliding around the pillar; the stone cool through my jacket. The man had his back to me, scanning the glittering dance floor, broad shoulders filling black velvet. He turned and my knees weakened, a smile on his face that made Lucifer throw himself from the gates of heaven. “Well done, now I have you. He has been claimed by Count Dimillio. He will not escape from him for at least an hour.”
He took my hand to shake it, and my arm was suddenly boneless; I had no control over the muscles and sinews that held me together, if he had let me go at that moment I knew that I would have slid to the floor like quicksilver. The nerve endings in my hand were burning under his touch, cool skin that singed my flesh. He used my hand to pull himself closer to me, and keeping my hand in both of his I felt his fingers dancing over my knuckles, entwining and tangling his fingers with mine until I could not differentiate between which belonged to me and which to him. My member boiled in its prison of cloth, a guttural visceral rumbling that seemed deafening to my ears, making the blood drain from my head.
“A pale and silent artist.” he said in the lowest of tones. “A rarity. How will you pose me without words?” His eyes reflected the glitter of the room, the pupils so large I could hardly make out their colour. The flames of the candles coalesced their light in his golden hair, and he seemed more alive than anything I had ever seen before - light radiated from him. The impulse I felt to pull him closer still was unbearable; I imagined I could feel the heat of his body even though we were still inches apart. He leant forward, he is as tall as I but he seemed that night to tower over me like a god.
“Are you as hard for me, I wonder?” Softly, he pulled my hand down, down, and my breath was held in a prism of sound, suspended by cobweb. One swift cut and my heart would have stopped. His lips parted and a deliciously moist tongue ran its course along those pale lips. He pressed my hand to his trousers and the palm encountered such rigidity beneath the soft velvet that I gasped, the breath returning to my lungs like a forest fire, scorching and burning.
My own cock was as his twin; its own being, a sudden colossus which I felt must have been visible to the entire room. Even in that brightly-lit place I felt a sudden wanton need for him to touch me. How had I existed until this moment without his hands on me? I felt familiar liquid seeping from my member as it wept for its neglect; I was never so aroused. My happy hand was blackened with his heat, the skin crisped and charred. My fingers extended in a reflex of want and I groaned as he lifted my hand away from him, I was cut adrift, released and if he had not caught me by the elbow I would have collapsed upon the parquet.
“Gently.” he pushed me back and placed me on one of the gilt upholstered chairs, knelt before me. “Take deep breaths.” His hand was back in mine and I looked down at it in wonderment. It was whole, not seared and skinless. He teased my palm imperceptibly with his fingers, his mouth still parted and closed his eyes, scenting the air slowly as if smelling fine Armangnac.
He can sense my arousal, I thought dazedly, not even knowing how I knew that. His eyes glittered with concupiscence as they flash open; I saw then that his irises were dark blue, like pure sapphires. As he dropped my hand onto my own lap and fluttered his fingers so that they feathered over my unbearable erection, I knew nothing except that I never again wanted our skin to part.
“Is he quite well?” A battleship of a woman; all sparkle and grey silk sailed then into our safe harbour, her wake destroying our intimacy, concern radiating with every wrinkle as she saw my blood drained face. My Adonis stands, leaving my hand homeless.
“He felt faint,” his eyes flickered from the dowager to me and back again. “I think perhaps he should go home. I believe he has a busy day tomorrow.” I attempted to intercede for myself but my immediate future was at least decided even if anything after tomorrow was suddenly obscured. The dowager looked down at me. She knew my identity and took charge in the way large women often do. The headache of my talentless week, which had been forgotten in the excitement of his touch, threatened me afresh as he stepped away from me.
“Should I call Signor Bettano?” she asked, her double chins quivering, cut in half by the diamonds around her throat. “You do look rather unsteady.”
He saved me. “He shall have my carriage.” My heart raced at the thought of him close to me in such intimate darkness. He helped me to my feet, claimed an arm proprietarily. “Still so stern and silent.” He murmured as he led me towards the exit. Down the stone steps he took me and the anticipation of being alone with him again was unbearable. I dared not look at him, but I knew his eyes are upon me. If I had looked in his face at that moment with my actions thereafter I would have shocked Florence to its rotten core. As the carriage pulled up, and liveried servants bustled about pulling out steps and opening doors I find to my horror that he has handed me into the carriage and has shut the door, trapping me inside and him out. The disappointment lashed across my face with a crimson whip and I found my voice at last and far too late. I grasped his hand through the window, and as the horses strained at their harnesses he walked beside me, his smile gone, his eyes deep and committing.
“You, you are not coming?”
“A domani.” Is all he said to me as his hand slipped from mine; I lean out of the window to keep him in my sight and notice for the first time how he is standing in a pool of light even though the torches outside the mansion do not illuminate so far. He does not move from the spot and he is still emblazoned on my eyes when the coach turns the corner. As I fall back into the padded interior of the coach I realise that my headache is raging afresh and I do not even know his name.