Work Text:
i. concept
“I have a question for you,” Nicolo starts.
Yusuf, who was busy trying to get some sleep before Nicolo broke the silence, holds in a sigh.
Rolling onto his side, cheek resting upon his palm, Yusuf meets his eyes, ocean licked by fire. The flame of their camp flickers in the breeze, making them a firestorm of rolling waves.
“If you are going to ask me about Muhammad’s cow again, please save it for when I am awake enough to stab you for it,” he says lightly, only half-joking.
For his snark, Nicolo rolls his eyes.
“It’s nothing like that,” he says, “I’m having trouble translating this verse. Could you help me?”
“Oh,” Yusuf blinks, only now noticing the scroll Nicolo is holding in his hands, finger and thumb gently pinching the corner.
They escaped Jerusalem as dead men in the dead of night. Bone moon ringing in their ears, crescent as the bowstring indent in Nicolo’s cheek from drawing it around every corner, making sure no one followed them. That no one saw the impossible miracle of their bodies rising from the dirt.
The graceful rolls of the dunes rose up to meet their footsteps as they made their way south from there. They barely spoke. Occasionally, Yusuf’s saif would glint in the daylight, catching Nicolo’s eyes for a blinding moment before flickering away with his sun-tipped gait. Yusuf didn’t notice until well into the second day, and assumed Nicolo was either too stubborn or too proud to mention it.
When he did notice, and subsequently asked Nicolo about it, it turned out that Nicolo simply didn’t know how to ask him in Greek or Tamazight, having only picked up a spare few phrases on his journey with the Genoese fleet. Yusuf, who knew Greek but not Latin or Zeneise, offered to teach him Levantine Arabic in exchange for Nicolo teaching him Ligurian.
(In truth, what he’d said was ‘I don’t have the words to ask for what I want,’ to which Yusuf responded, ‘Then I will give them to you.’ It was a kind of poetry he hadn’t felt since before Jerusalem, and it ruptured him so terribly that he took Nicolo in his arms in the quiet dusk, where they repeated the phrase back and forth to each other, with increasing urgency and ecstasy, until there were no words or spaces left between them at all.)
While Nicolo now understands Arabic conversationally, he’s found even greater progress in transcribing Arabic to Latin first to help his pronunciation. He’s been steadily making his way through a collection of poetry he had bought from a market in Aleppo.
Yusuf glances back up from the scroll to Nicolo’s expectant face. “Read it aloud to me?”
Either through misunderstanding him or to give Yusuf context, Nicolo doesn’t simply read the verse, but the whole poem. His voice, though unsure at times from unfamiliarity of the language, is perfectly suited for poetry of this kind. Rough yet smooth, soft and deep; Yusuf finds himself sinking into its cadences, and he almost misses the mistake.
“Hold on a moment,” he interrupts when he catches it, “can you repeat that line again?”
Nicolo does as asked.
“I cannot make sense of it,” he mutters when he’s finished, a distracting finger pressed to his bottom lip.
With a soft grunt of resignation, Yusuf gets up, knee clicking with a wince as he awkwardly shifts over next to Nicolo so he can read it for himself. Nicolo keeps hold of the page, like it doesn’t occur to him that he could simply pass it over, instead tilting it enough for Yusuf to lean in until their heads are almost touching so he can use the dim firelight to see properly.
“Ah,” Yusuf whispers, because it feels wrong to speak so loudly in a dark this quiet, this close together. He brings his finger to rest on the offending word. “You said مرحبا, marhaba, which you correctly assume is nonsensical because it’s a greeting, but what you needed to say was مَحَبّة, maḥábbah, which means love, or more accurately, agape.”
He writes each word in the dirt, using a twig from the leftover kindling they’d gathered.
“Arabic poetry is traditionally spoken, not written; it’s not uncommon for there to be slight errors when it is written down. Maḥábbah also has the shaddah, which is a symbol used to signify double consonants. A lot of early writers default to keeping the doubled letter unmarked, so it’s up to the reader to know when to read a single or a double consonant. If it’s a double consonant, it’s pronounced as if the two letters have been merged into a single sign.”
And then, awake enough to get carried away, Yusuf traces رُمّان, for pomegranate, and then next to it: a circle, with the harakat س resting atop it.
“Another example is rummān,” he says. “the -m consonant is elongated, but instead of repeating the letter, we use the shaddah to indicate that the two have become one. When I was a boy, I used this drawing to remember what the shaddah looks like, because it reminded me of the crown from a pomegranate. Do you see?”
Nicolo nods slowly, glancing between the page and Yusuf’s mouth.
“And,” Yusuf continues, “for both agape and pomegranate, since the syllables are closed by their long consonant, it becomes a long syllable, which is important when we’re reading verse.”
He clears his throat and uses the twig to cover his impromptu lesson.
“You’re coming along well,” he adds, gentler than he means to. “Are you enjoying the poetry?”
Nicolo’s cheeks are pink and warm.
“It’s…difficult to grasp who is the subject or narrator within any given poem; he switches voice so often. I am also not yet able to understand many of the references,” he says deliberately, as if not wanting to offend Yusuf with his opinion.
Just when Yusuf thinks he’s done talking, Nicolo speaks up again.
“The Book of Genesis contains a story about humankind coming together at Shinar to build a tower that would reach the heavens. When the Lord came down and saw it, He scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused, balal, the language of all the earth, so we were divided into linguistic groups, unable to understand one another.”
His fingers catch on the corner of the nervous paper. He folds it in half, neatly creasing it with the pad of his thumb.
“Each effort at translation is in defiance of this act,” he continues, talking to his hands, “In every attempt to understand, I am building you a tower of Babel.”
Yusuf has to kiss him then.
Nicolo gasps, and Yusuf drags them closer together, surprised by his own urgency, just like last time, so overcome he can’t pretend to be anything other than desperate.
And just like last time, Nicolo responds to his passion in equal measure, shoulders tensing in a reserved shudder. He rolls them so Yusuf is on his back, knocking their foreheads together while he rolls his hips downward, seeking the friction of Yusuf’s thighs.
With an unsteady groan, Nicolo utters, “have my mouth, Yusuf,” against his lips, offering so sweetly that Yusuf can’t bear to deny him, nodding gently, letting Nicolo travel down his body and split him apart.
ii. first draft
It’s hot.
The late day temperature is getting to them. Syrupy, cloying, inescapable. The kind that sticks between your teeth.
These kind of summer afternoons are for poetry, Yusuf has decided. Lazy and warm, him and Nicolo lie naked together, trying to catch some of the breeze flowing out of the window in their room. Sweat bleeds in every place their bodies touch.
Sprawled across the bed, legs splayed out, arms above his head – in a futile attempt not to touch himself, to get away from his own body. His head feels as heavy as the hull of a drowning ship, drowsy with the heat and yet unable to get any rest.
Nicolo is far away and much too close beside him, body radiating a heat and intensity that Yusuf can’t bring himself to move away from; and isn’t that poetry in itself?
Nicolo’s palm rests under his head, keeping the damp strands of hair off the nape of his neck. Unlike Yusuf’s, his fine hair slips all too easily out of his tie - he’s watched Nicolo retie it with increasing frustration over the course of the day.
Raking his eyes down Nicolo’s body, Joe catalogues the sweat gathering along his clavicle, the gentle rise and fall of Nicolo’s chest, down to his soft cock, nestled in the thicket of his pubic hair.
He blinks. The sweat of his weeping brow following the lines of his crow’s feet. He swears it grows hotter each moment, humid air seeping slow into the room.
With a sigh, he sits up and rests his chin in his hand. The sheet sticks to his back for a moment before falling down around him, and the air hits his naked back. He shudders, but no relief comes. His own hair he tied up into a bun that morning; a few curls brush his cheek with his movements, but fray back upward with an annoyed flick of his hand.
He can sense Nicolo’s eyes on him. After a beat, the bed dips behind him.
It should feel unbearable when the hot, wide expanse of Nicolo’s chest curves into Yusuf’s spine, or when the inside of his thigh presses to the outside of Yusuf’s leg. It doesn’t.
Lips press to his shoulder, and a hand rests, warm and large, on his bicep. Yusuf’s shoulders drop and soften.
“Read me something?” Nicolo asks, a soft, open request.
Yusuf, too tired and hot to move, doesn’t reach for anything physically; but there are some stories that stick with you, like heat on skin.
He’s barely halfway through when Nicolo makes a considering noise in his throat, vibrating along the tendon of Yusuf’s shoulder. The brief pause in his speech is enough of an invitation for Nicolo to say what’s on his mind.
“This one is particularly sullen, Yusuf, even for you.”
“That’s because it’s a ghazal, in the Udhrī voice – it’s supposed to be tragic.”
Nicolo hums. His fingers trace circles on Yusuf’s thigh.
“Tragically dull, perhaps – can we skip to the erotic parts?”
Yusuf turns to look at him, trying to discern his sincerity. Nicolo shifts back and waits for his reply.
“There are no erotic parts- at least not in the sense you’re thinking of,” he says finally, realising Nicolo is indeed serious. “Majnun refuses to have sexual contact with her, even after her husband dies, because he’s striving to realise divine love in her, free of earthly desires or selfish intentions.”
Nicolo stares at him. “So after all that- the yearning, the waiting, the desert, the million gazelle metaphors- he doesn’t even let himself be with her?”
“He is with her, in death, after she falls ill and he delivers his final gasp at her grave. Majnun sought the ultimate union with Layla, one that can only be reached through annihilation in the beloved. It’s often read as a Sufi allegorical narrative.”
It’s not how Yusuf read it, when he first studied it back home. Twenty and naïve, he thought it was profane, and dizzyingly romantic, that Majnun loved her so much he couldn’t bring himself to sully it with sex. To want, and want, and want, and not let oneself satisfy that ache- that, to Yusuf, was the most erotic thing he’d ever read. He touched himself for weeks to the thought of it.
Nicolo watches him with archer eyes, a smile beginning to curl up in his features. He tugs on Yusuf’s hand, lying back down so that Yusuf is hovering over him. The new position does nothing to hide their growing arousal from each other.
“Would you like to know what I think?” he whispers, gaze flirting with Yusuf’s mouth. Touched without touching.
“Hm?” Yusuf manages.
“I think,” Nicolo says, leaning close, lips grazing Yusuf’s skin, “he should have just fucked her and gotten on with it.”
Irritation rises up in Yusuf’s chest. He pushes away and sits back, knees digging into the bed.
“You’re missing the point.”
Nicolo doesn’t look half as affected, as though he has no qualms with misunderstanding Yusuf. As though he’s sure he doesn’t misunderstand at all.
“You touch me, though.” He doesn’t phrase it like a question, despite it definitely being one.
Yusuf swallows and feels sweat drip down his neck. He sees Nicolo watch as it slides down his chest.
“That’s different.”
Nicolo tilts his head and sits up as well. “Why? Because we don’t love each other?” he’s still staring at the bead of sweat.
Suddenly, Yusuf is done with his questions.
“Because it doesn’t matter,” he snaps, harsher than he means to. The heat has given him a headache, and he doesn’t wish to debate Nicolo on this anymore. “we cannot die. Even if we did love each other, there is no afterlife waiting for us. There’s nowhere for me to wait for you after I die, there’s no place for our eternal union.”
At his words, Nicolo blinks, as if waking from a dream.
“Scusami,” he says, before getting up and throwing on his clothes, a muttering excuse about finding them some supper.
Joe exhales, warm and heavy, into the empty room, before collapsing back onto the bed.
An hour later, Nicolo returns with two pomegranates. He drops one in Yusuf’s lap wordlessly and carves into his own with his back pressed to the wall, one foot resting off the edge of the bed.
They eat in relative silence. At one point, Nicolo remarks that it looks like rain outside. Yusuf says something like ‘oh? That’s nice,’ while not really meaning it, because he’s busy composing poetry about the shape of Nicolo’s hands cupping what’s left of his pomegranate, and then Nicolo opens his mouth and says:
“I think I would die, too, if someone loved me and couldn’t bring himself to touch me.”
What else can Yusuf do, but touch him?
(What else can Yusuf do, but love him?)
iii. revision
It does rain.
Thunderous and pouring, it rains. It doesn’t stop or give them reprieve their entire days’ journey between villages. An act of God, Nicolo calls it, when the streams flood and rush the banks, blinking up at the sky.
By the time they’ve found a place to stay for the night, Yusuf is soaked to the bone and utterly miserable. He pours water out of his boots, wrings out his clothing to hang over the fire in their room, and tries not to sigh too loudly when he sits down on the bed.
There’s a poem he’s been writing. It’s about language, and pomegranates, and longing. Right now, Yusuf longs for a proper bath, and warmth, and some kind of certainty that he’s on the right path.
Nicolo regards him steadily from the other side of the room.
“Are you composing poetry again?”
Yusuf smiles despite himself. “Did you know that most of the mentions of poets in the Qur’an are of God decreeing that Muhammad is a prophet, not a poet?”
Nicolo shakes his head.
“He spoke so eloquently, and the words he spoke were so beautiful that many believed at first, that he was reciting poetry. The Qur’an literally means a recitation; it was meant to be spoken. Like poetry was meant to be spoken." He snorts. "Of course, then He declared that we poets are up to no good.”
“Well,” Nicolo deadpans, approaching the bed, “in that, we are in agreement.”
Yusuf tilts his head up, and goosebumps ripple down his belly as raindrops are jostled in the process.
“Oh?”
“Mhmm,” Nicolo hums gently, leaning closer, “because poets will sit across from you and stare at you with their big, beautiful eyes and think about the most convoluted way to say, ‘I need a good fuck,’ instead of just getting on with it like the rest of us.”
Yusuf touches him tenderly on the face.
“Nicolo,” he says, “you are the worst person alive. Fuck me.”
Nicolo’s eyes soften. “That’s more like it.”
Somewhere between Nicolo licking him open until he has to smother his moans into his fist and getting bent over the bed while Nicolo shudders into him, the storm breaks.
And for a moment, Yusuf has forgotten about poetry, and religion, and longing. Except this: just as the act of praying can collapse the space and time between the devout and the creator, so too does writing poetry bring the poet and his lover together. And that it feels a little bit like poetry, the way Nicolo says his name each time he draws them together again.
Love turns all the words over again, familiar into unfamiliar, and love translates them back until they’re the only two people in the world who understand them. What else could explain how Yusuf knows that when Nicolo says ‘Yusuf,’ what he really means is ‘my love’?
Maybe it is an act of God, flooding the plains, scattering all languages, bringing them back to life, like Nicolo believes. Yusuf isn’t sure. But by God, the closest he’s come to prayer and poetry since he died has been here, in Nicolo’s arms.
After, Nicolo rolls over and traces more red-crowned pomegranates into Yusuf’s chest. He can tell they’re red because his blood sings with the touch. He can tell they’re pomegranates because his heart catches on every jagged line Nicolo makes, stitching them together.
“You said there’s no place for us, after we left Aleppo,” Nicolo says, denoting the dip in his sternum in an aching sun-blazing red, “But what about right here? No waiting, no hiding- no endless desert to cross. Only you and me with an eternity on earth, indistinguishable from one another, like one of your doubled letters.”
Something in Yusuf’s chest goes crack, crack, crack.
He steadies Nicolo’s hand and brings it to his mouth, kissing each devastating finger. In the space between his kisses, he whispers, “If I die, don’t make me a grave to mourn over. I will die in you, or not at all. Listen; this is no poem – I love you.”
iv. recitation
Joe’s arms circle his waist. His middle finger strokes Nicky’s coccyx, making him shiver closer still. Guiding Nicky over his cock again and again, Yusuf’s thigh muscles clench with the effort to thrust as deep as possible, as if expecting to find some hidden breach that Nicky has kept from him.
The moon catches the sides of their faces. Joe looks up at him, hickory gaze even darker in this light, burning Nicky with it, with his mouth, parted to reveal those crooked bottom teeth, with his brows, an aching crease, as if it feels so good it hurts him.
“You are the full moon / risen within me,” Joe utters in Tamazight, rough and breathy, invoking a poet almost as old as them.
Nicky tries to keep his expression carefully blank, before giving up and tipping his head back, directing his blush up to the heavens.
“That is- rank sentimentalism, even for you,” he pants back, even as his eyes fall shut and his heart opens, useless drapery pulled over an exposed window.
Joe’s laugh is deep and full-bodied, a dizzying wine warming Nicky to the bone, and his hands are twin burning suns when they move to settle on his side, thumbs digging into the skin above his hip bone, dragging Nicky back down until his inner thighs are pressed flush against the heat of Joe’s body.
“Not half as rank as that beard you were growing when we first met.”
Nicky huffs, pressing the pad of his thumb to Joe’s jaw, feeling the soft hair there.
“Forgive me,” he says softly, “my diocese did not provide razors for the Genoese fleet.”
He’d shaved not a few days into their journey from Jerusalem, knife gripped firm, wrist knocked at his jaw; Yusuf had been the one to give him the blade, uttering something he hadn’t quite caught, eyes lingering around his mouth.
Nicky gets a hand around himself, cringing from oversensitivity, too dry to really make it good, except it is, because Joe is still grinding up, pelvis moving in little circles that rub the smooth tip of his cock right up that soft nub inside Nicky, making him choke on his own spit.
“I prefer you like this,” Joe says, cupping his soft cheek. “I like seeing how flushed you get.”
Like two halves of a pomegranate.
The ecclesiastical interpretation of the Song of Songs argues that the poem is a depiction of the love between Christ and church. Nicky still remembers, from lifetime’s ago, a drawing next to the Latin translation of verses 5:2-7, in which the 'O' of osculatur is used to portray a mouth, inside of which two men, representing Christ and the Church, sit locked in a kiss. A kiss in the middle of a kiss, read the scrawled caption.
My beloved put forth his hand through the hole / and my belly trembled at his touch / I rose to open to my beloved / my hands dripped myrrh / my fingers full of the finest myrrh.
Lit by the flame of Christ’s love, Nicolo burned so furiously that he feared it would break loose from his body and scorch the ground he walked upon. His nights became oil dripping down his wrist, merging with his own spilled seed on the bed below him, forehead damp, mouth closed around the meat of his thumb to keep quiet. And when that wasn’t enough, he sought out more.
(He had to be careful. Couldn’t very well proposition his seminary fellows outright, lest he let slip to the wrong person what he’d been up to, how much he wanted- sex was one thing, an open secret among them. But the degree to which Nicolo craved love bordered on the sacrilegious.)
And then finally, he slipped a note to Brother Pietro, who’d been watching him intensely during morning mass. Knock twice, then enter.
How still Nicolo had laid on the bed, hearing those footsteps draw closer. Belly trembling just like the daughter of Jerusalem, a bride of Christ, a church housing His body. Nicolo’s breathing was a harsh but silent prayer as Pietro entered him, yet inside his chest something roared and thundered as loud as the voice of God.
Still, it wasn't enough. He wanted to be inside the mouth, to be the osculatur, the one who kisses. He wanted to be the lover and the poet and the devotee. To live and die in someone, to open to another so completely that it would be impossible to tell the lover and the beloved apart.
And then he died. And then, Yusuf.
Joe surges up and kisses him, bringing him across the years and back to this moment next to Joe again, rolling his hips deeper, collapsing all the space between them.
“What do you need?” he asks against Nicky’s mouth, eyes following his voice, half-lidded and all the way beautiful.
Nicky doesn’t even have to think, sliding his hands up to cup Joe’s face.
“Read me the rest?”
As always, his poet obliges.
v. appendix
the pomegranate he left
has
split apart with longing
from the memory of his
touch.
It lies still, flushed, open-
I wanted your mouth that close,
teeth
kissing my rosy crown.
I wanted you that close, so
close-
Two names, a single sigh(n).