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(Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Luke 23:42-43)
“Did you know that dolphins are the second smartest animals on Earth?”
“Is that so?”
Dio was smiling. Enrico couldn’t quite see him from this angle, but he didn’t have to. He recognised it from the tone in his voice.
“I saw it on a TV program last night,” Enrico continued. “They were talking about the intelligence of marine mammals compared to human beings. Apparently they can recognise themselves in mirrors like human toddlers, and solve problems and use tools in the same way that humans do. Did you know they’ve even found accents in the clicks of dolphin pods from different oceans?”
“And yet they kill other sea creatures for sport.”
Enrico hesitated, trying to form the words before he spoke them out loud. He could sense Dio’s expectant attention coaxing them out of him. He wanted to get it just right.
“Well, that’s what I wanted to bring up. Dolphins are meant to be just as smart as people, but they don’t follow any of the same morals we do. They have no laws or ethics keeping them from doing whatever kind of violence they want. Their evolution ends right before they invent society.”
“And how do you think it views itself, in that case?”
“I think the dolphin would consider itself the smartest animal on Earth.”
There was a hushed laugh as Dio rolled over, and Enrico saw his smile flash in the darkness of the room. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
It was late. Some hour in the single digits.
They were both splayed out across Enrico’s bed, laying at odd angles like a pair of opened scissors. They’d been reading earlier but now their books were left open on the bedside table, abandoned in favour of conversation.
That was how it usually went. Books, wine, conversation — in that order. An easy routine to get used to. One Enrico wouldn’t change for anything else in the world.
Outside, frogs chirped in the swampy greenbelt and gators snapped their teeth in distant wetlands. With the curtains pulled shut in anticipation of sunrise, the only light in the room came from whatever moonlight was able to find its way through and the rare car passing by outside. The slow stick of sweat crawled between Enrico’s shoulder-blades, pasting his shirt to his body in the humid night air.
Florida summers were a different kind of heat from Cairo. He’d come to learn their differences rather well from a life split between both places. Cairo was dry at best and like being flash-fried at worst. It came in waves during the day, but always kneeled to the cold at night.
But mid-August in his home state was something else entirely. Long summers carried the worst kind of heat imaginable, the type that smothered and drowned and boiled alive in one’s own sweat, clinging like a second skin long after the sun had set.
Not for the first time, Enrico thanked God for air conditioning.
“Would you like some more wine?”
The wine had been his idea. A gift for his friend that was gratefully accepted. The candles had burned a little later that evening, and the church cellar had mysteriously become two bottles lighter.
They wouldn’t miss them. They probably wouldn’t even notice they were gone.
“I didn’t know if you preferred red or white, so I decided to get them both.”
“White wine?” Dio raised an eyebrow. “I thought you Catholics loved your gory blood-drinking rituals.”
Enrico shook his head with a slight smile. “The kind of wine doesn’t actually matter when it’s used for communion. Anyway, you can always take the other bottle back to Cairo, if you want. I remember you told me once that it’s hard to find good wine over there.”
Dio laughed, the clear sound of bells ringing.
“You’re too generous, my friend.”
“Well, of course.” Enrico glowed at the praise. “I want to share everything with you. You’ve already done so much for me. The least I can do would be to try to give it back to you.”
“I see.” Dio nodded, but he seemed to be lost in another thought.
His gaze slid from Enrico’s face to the glass in his hand, turning it around and around and around by the stem. He held it for a moment, watching the liquid move inside, before viewing him with a look that Enrico didn’t quite recognise.
“There is one thing that you haven’t given me.”
“What is it?” Enrico’s brow scrunched in confusion. If there was some object Dio wanted, he wasn’t aware of it. He’d already offered everything he could possibly think to give him, and yet, there seemed to be something he’d missed.
Money? His friend didn’t need charity. Art? He already hoarded all of the artwork in the world. It seemed no gift Enrico could think of would be so important that Dio would ask him for it directly, and yet…
He became suddenly aware of a hand placed upon his upper thigh, toying with the drawstring of his pyjama bottoms, and the ‘one thing’ that Dio spoke of became evident within seconds.
Enrico went still.
He may have been cloistered, but he wasn’t stupid.
He knew what his friend did with the string of people coming and going from his home in the dead of night. He saw the way his followers dropped to their knees at his feet, heard the things they’d beg him to do to them. He noticed how his touch would always linger on his skin for just a moment too long, or the fire that lit in his eyes when he would recite the words of Boccaccio and Chaucer.
It had always been easy to ignore such things when they were passed off fleetingly — just actions without intent. A consequence of friendship with someone who was used to getting his way through temptations of the flesh. But there was something different about the way Dio looked at him tonight.
He knew seduction when it stared him in the face.
“Dio,” Enrico started carefully, pronouncing both syllables with an even tone. “You know I took a vow when I decided to join the cloth. I promised God that I would stay loyal to Him, and it’s a promise I’m going to keep for my whole life. I’m sorry, but I can’t give you what you want.”
Despite the rejection, Dio didn’t seem affected in the slightest.
His hand stayed where it was on Enrico’s thigh. His eyes didn’t break contact for even a second.
Enrico was the first to look away. The wine had left his head feeling muddled, a cloying taste coating his tongue. Everything felt a little bit heavier than usual and he was having difficulty keeping his breathing steady. Dio’s smile widened.
“I can hear your heartbeat from here,” he murmured softly. He cocked his head to one side and the hand on Enrico’s thigh began rubbing in circles. “What are you so afraid of? Are you scared that you won’t like it? Or perhaps it’s the opposite. Perhaps you’re scared that you will, and you won’t be able to stop once you’ve tasted real delight.”
Enrico tried to squirm away from his touch, to create some distance between their bodies, but found himself pursued. Everything he tried seemed useless.
“Stop it,” he insisted, becoming indignant by this point. His friend wasn’t listening. “I already told you we can’t do this. My parents are in the other room, and— and——”
The hand on his thigh was joined by another on the opposite side, a trap that snapped shut and enclosed him, and then Dio was leaning in close enough that Enrico could see his own startled reflection in the black of his eyes.
“I know how to make it feel good. I’m very good at it.”
His grin was boyishly charming, an effortless kind of wile, and yet his sharp teeth sabotaged any attempt at painting a portrait of innocence. Enrico couldn’t help but remember the pictures of lions he’d seen in nature books.
1 Peter 5:8 — Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
Enrico shook his head fiercely, blinking back tears of frustration, of having his obedience called into question.
“I’m not a sodomite!” he choked out.
Dio backed off slightly and sat back to study him. “So that’s it. You’re afraid of dirtying yourself in the eyes of God. Do you think He won’t want you anymore after I’ve had my hands on you? Is that what scares you away from me? Becoming ruined?”
“I won’t let you make me complicit in sin.”
A dog barked from the street outside. A bell chimed somewhere very far away.
Dio’s smile turned into something cooler, sharper. “Don’t pretend you’ve never thought about it, Enrico. I’ve seen the books you read.”
Venus in Furs winked from the bedside table.
Enrico flushed dark red and opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out.
It was his only vice.
The one worldly indulgence for a boy who found himself driven by a much higher calling.
Erotic classics, bawdy dime-store romance novels — probably rather tame by most standards, but to a youth with an overactive imagination they were an escape from the dusty scripture he was used to. All quivering heroines and brawny lovers and unbidden passion and indulgence without limit.
Enrico had lost count of the number of these books that had found their way into his possession, slipped beneath misleading dustjackets so he could read them unbothered at seminary.
At first they’d just been a bit of entertainment. Something to stir the emotions and keep him awake during long sermons.
But his thoughts had strayed.
The corseted maidens took on a younger, masculine form and the handsome, muscled-up strangers became unmistakably blonde.
He’d assured himself that these fantasies were just that. After all, a sin only becomes an offence against God once it escapes the confines of the mind.
Romans 13:14 — But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
No temptation can sway you so long as you live with righteousness in your heart.
But that could not explain his body’s reactions to Dio’s touch, creeping steadily towards the place between his thighs, nor his lack of any desire to make it stop.
“Please.” Dio’s voice softened, almost to a whine. His hand fumbled to find Enrico’s and their fingers tangled together in the darkness. “Please let me have you. I’ve never wanted anybody the way that I want you.”
It was the most desperate Enrico had ever heard him. There was an odd vulnerability to his voice, something close to human weakness. Like he wasn’t used to begging for it.
Enrico’s breath caught in his throat. He stared at the man in front of him, who seemed to shine despite the darkness. His very wonderful friend, who had healed his club foot and given him the power to preserve memories forever.
He was the star at the centre of the universe. A glittering scholar who taught him things he’d never heard before and talked to him for hours on end and recited Enrico’s favourite psalms with the scorching passion of a preacher.
Dio was loved by God. Sometimes he even wondered if maybe Dio was God, come to Earth in a beautiful form to guide him when the night became very dark and he was so very alone.
And there can be nothing purer than the love shared between man and God.
It was a sweet thing, little more than an innocent brushing of lips. A nervous offering presented by a boy with no experience in these kinds of things. Delicate and devout.
But the heat intensified as a pristine hand snaked to cup his cheek, and Enrico let himself be kissed in a way he had only known in books.
He shut his eyes as Dio coaxed his mouth open and his tongue slipped between his teeth. It was a foreign feeling, though not a totally unpleasant one, and Enrico gasped when Dio licked the inside of his mouth. His teeth may have been sharp but his lips were soft, and his tongue was hot and alive in a way his skin might once have been, a long time ago. Enrico could hear his heartbeat in his ears. His head was spinning from the taste of second-hand wine, and he was panting hard when they finally broke away from the kiss.
His first kiss.
The thought came as a small shock, the realisation that, yes, this was his first kiss. Enrico knew he should be overjoyed at the fact that he’d shared it with his dearest friend, and yet, somewhere in the back of his mind, he could not help but feel some sense of mourning. Like standing in the rain at a funeral, feeling it drip down his spine.
He thought about his brother and sister and wondered if they had felt the same thing.
His second kiss followed, then his third, and his fourth. Dio’s hand shifted from his cheek to the nape of his neck, the other fitting neatly against his waist as he claimed his mouth again, teeth leaving dents in the flesh of Enrico’s lower lip.
Enrico could not help but shudder as the kisses became greedier, more demanding, poured down his throat like wine. Still gentle but with an unmistakable air of possession. Dio seemed eager to have his hands on every part of him, to lay claim to the places nobody had ever gotten their hands on before.
They slid down, further still. Porcelain fingers eased beneath the waistband of his pants and the seminarian bit his knuckle to avoid crying aloud.
Jesus wept.
Enrico averted his eyes.
Is it wrong to want to share happiness with the one you love above all else in the world?
Is a sin born from pure love really a sin at all?
The kisses paused as Dio crawled on top of him and laid him back against the pillows of his bed. What little moonlight that came through the curtains was blacked out completely by his frame, casting a shadow across the boy spread and panting beneath him. Overcome by sudden shyness, Enrico looked away.
He was taller than the other boys in seminary by about a head, all knock-knees and long limbs that he kept tucked in by his sides, but even he felt like nothing more than a ragdoll next to Dio. His friend had a way of making anyone seem utterly eclipsed by his presence.
Like a fire consumes all of the air in a room to burn brighter, so too did Dio swallow up the very essence of anyone that wasn’t himself.
“Have you touched yourself before?”
“No,” Enrico answered between gasps for breath. “Never.”
“How pious,” Dio laughed with a small sigh, and Enrico could tell that it excited him. “You’ll become a very fine clergyman some day.”
Enrico could only shiver in response.
He had never felt this kind of ache before. He felt hot all over, like he was melting with desire. Teenage hormones left his blood thrumming white-hot in his veins. Each kiss served to stir his racing pulse and, he noticed with mild horror, a growing stiffness in his pyjama pants.
Prayers failed him. The prime numbers escaped him. This was a new feeling, as thrilling as it was completely and utterly terrifying.
Self-pleasure had always been forbidden and Enrico was obedient to a fault. He made no provisions. He gratified no desires. His body was made to be an instrument for God, not defiled in that pointless animal ritual. That was the vow of priesthood.
But all of those vows and devotionals held no meaning now, not now that he was being invited to taste what had been locked away from him for so long. Not when it was Dio who was holding the fruit to his lips and instructing him to bite.
“Let me teach you how to do it.”
Dio sprawled back next to him and took Enrico’s hand into his own. Somehow this gesture felt even more intimate than everything they had done this far, and the young American flushed at the contact.
Carefully, Dio teased his pants down from his hipbones. He folded his fingers around Enrico’s hand and guided it to his penis, which was now hard and throbbing very uncomfortably. It strained upward from between his thighs, as if pointed to Heaven.
The reaction was automatic, like bumping into an exposed nerve.
Enrico’s mouth fell open and his hips jerked upward into their entwined hands. Dio laughed at this, probably amused by his desperation, and Enrico wanted to cover his face in shame.
It was dirty. It was depraved.
And yet he had never been so turned on in his life.
“There’s no need to be afraid,” Dio purred. He rubbed his thumb along the swollen organ, sending sparks of pleasure skating up Enrico’s spine. “I promise I’ll show you how good it feels.”
The temptation was impossible to resist for even a moment longer. Seeking salvation, Enrico took his friend’s hand and followed him into the sweetest of sin.
He was clumsy. His tepid strokes and trembling hands bore the mark of inexperience.
But Dio was an expert.
His fingers moved in a perfect push-and-pull, dragging along Enrico’s erection with the practised poise of a man who knew exactly how to make someone come apart beneath his fingertips. Each twist of his wrist was deliberate, every press of his thumb against the leaking head was calculated to make the future priest cry loudly into his shoulder. He was a filthy teacher, biting at his earlobe and sucking kisses into his dark brown neck as he showed him how to do it right, how to make it feel the best.
It was too much far too quickly.
Enrico was not used to so much stimulation, especially not all at once. He was strung like a rosary, twisting and writhing within his friend’s embrace. But no matter where he tried to squirm, he couldn’t escape the short, merciless strokes, nor could he escape the tension building in his lower stomach.
“Hold on,” Enrico stammered. “Please— Dio, wait a second——”
No sooner had the words fallen from his lips than Dio’s hand withdrew completely.
Enrico’s hips chased after his touch, bereft at the sudden loss, the feeling of being without. It was almost too frustrating to bear, and he whined despite himself.
Dio’s smile was carnivorous.
One by one, he flexed each finger, before he brought them to his jade-painted lips and licked them clean.
O, God.
Enrico almost cried. He wanted to burn that memory onto a DISC, etch it into the tracks of his own mind and preserve it this way forever.
Dio arched over him like the angels on the ceilings of cathedrals, like the icons that decorated Byzantine basilicas. Skin like marble, verdant lips wetted with both of their saliva, eyes half-lidded and starving. Looking at him like he could devour him whole.
It was just like in his fantasies. Just like in his books. Exactly the way Enrico had imagined and replayed so many times in the privacy of his own mind.
Not the way he did it with his followers. Not the primitive mating and disposal that made up most of the encounters that happened in that mansion.
But to lie together on satin sheets, entwining themselves together until physical and cerebral passion melted into a singularity point. To be consumed entirely by him. To worship him like God.
So persistent were the fantasies he’d wished for on those nights when they were separated by oceans. When the urges became impossible to ignore and abstinence turned from self-discipline into self-torture. Preying in the back of his mind, tormenting him as he swept between the church pews and said his prayers and prepared to walk down the lonely road of ordination.
Such was the temptation that drove him to sin.
Corinthians 10:13 — No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.
But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
“Dio,” Enrico whispered into the small space between their lips. His voice was drawn so thin that he could barely hear himself speak. “I want you to have it.”
He let his gaze fall beneath his pale lashes as his voice cracked apart into a wanting sob.
“I can’t stand it anymore. Please take it. It’s yours.”
That was all he needed to say. His confession spilled out and then Dio was upon him.
His pyjama pants were tugged off and his underwear along with them. His shirt was similarly discarded and then Dio slid out of his own skimpy clothes, decorating Enrico’s floor with flashes of black and gold.
Enrico shivered despite the stifling heat in the room. He felt suddenly shy to be seen in this way, so bare and displayed. It felt like being dissected.
He had lost most of his baby fat by now, replaced by muscle and sinew, but some of it still clung in places like his cheeks. It made him feel like a child trying to outgrow himself, still dithering in that awkward step between manhood and adolescence. Too big for the altar boy’s gown, not quite big enough for the priest’s clothes.
Not like Dio, whose precisely carved muscles and expanses of milk-white skin seemed to have been sculpted by Michelangelo himself. The line from his chest to his abdomen was like the river that flowed from the slopes of Mount Hermon to Jericho. The star on his shoulder was like a signature on a priceless work of art.
Dio effortlessly turned him onto his stomach, and Enrico felt his arms folded around a pillow to support his lower body.
“Put this beneath your hips. I’m going to be gentle, but it may still hurt.” Dio’s voice dripped like dark honey as he stroked down the curve of his spine. “It always hurts for virgins.”
He cooed the last word, and Enrico burned.
There was the snap of a bottle being unsealed followed by the cool drizzle of liquid against his overheated skin. The oil pooled between his legs, beads trickling down his thighs and coating the place at the centre. Another kiss marked his shoulder-blade as Dio pressed a finger into the untouched hole.
Virgin Mother, please close your eyes.
Enrico clamped his hand over his mouth to avoid waking the whole household. His hips jutted forward automatically, his cock aching where it rubbed against the pillow beneath him.
It hurt. He had prepared for that, but the breach still brought tears to his eyes from the feeling of being stretched. It was tight, almost too tight, tiptoeing across a line between pleasure and pain.
“How does it feel? Would you like me to stop?” the voice behind his shoulder asked, as if reading his mind.
“No,” Enrico panted. “It’s okay. It feels alright.”
It was mostly a bluff. He tried not to make it obvious that his legs were shaking from the conjoined sensations, that his lashes were brimming with tears, wanting to prove he could take it. But slowly the pain ebbed away, until it was barely a background emotion to the pressure building in his stomach.
The digit inside him invaded the virgin passage in a slow but deliberate rhythm. It moved easily with the wetness of the oil, becoming slicker with each inch that was fed into him.
A second finger joined the first. Dio eased them both into him until they were knuckle-deep in the undefiled hole. They scissored apart, working him open a bit at a time, and Enrico could not prevent himself from sobbing when they curled up within him.
O Lord, all my longing is before you;
my sighing is not hidden from you.
Enrico stifled a whimper as the fingers inside him withdrew. The emptiness did not last long, and soon he felt Dio’s erection nudging at the place his fingers had been moments before. It pressed needily against his entrance, filled out with blood he must have drank earlier in the night. Enrico blushed at the thought. Even without looking, he knew it was much larger than his own. He wondered absently how something like that would even fit inside him, but the worries disappeared moments later when Dio took hold of his hips.
Presented on the altar of his bed, in the chapel of his childhood bedroom, Enrico gave himself to God.
The feeling shot through him, sharp and wet. The first bite that breaks the skin of the apple.
Dio’s fingers had prepared him, but not for this. Nothing could have prepared him for the feeling of being penetrated, of having his friend’s cock filling his body. His mouth fell slack with a soft exhale. His back arched, more reflex than conscious movement. It was almost overwhelming.
Slowly, Dio eased into him, splitting apart his warm and wanting flesh. Enrico could only breathe in shallow inhales until he felt Dio’s pelvis pressed flush against his ass. He heard his satisfied hum, felt his nails digging into the skin of his hip, and Enrico realised that he was fully inside him now. Their bodies were one body. Their flesh was one flesh.
“God.” Dio’s voice was a breathy cackle. “You really are a virgin.”
The pillow did little to muffle Enrico’s filthy cry.
He felt himself slipping through his own fingers, spoiling the purity he had fought so hard to maintain. The last echoes of his youth, pinned open and fluttering against his bedsheets like a butterfly in a glass case.
The pious devotee who prayed to God for guidance. The dutiful clergyman who followed the rules of the cloth. The innocent boy who loved his parents and begged his sister for forgiveness.
That boy was gone and now he wept into a pillow as his friend buried himself completely within his body.
Dio’s hips snapped against his ass, hard and demanding. He found a rhythm that agreed and began to rock his hips, until Enrico’s bedroom was filled with the sound of skin against skin. Aroused beyond shame, Enrico could focus on nothing but the pushing-and-pulling against his insides and the sound of Dio whispering encouragement into the crook of his neck. It blended together with those filthy, filthy noises and the litany of moans already clawing their way out of his throat.
Beneath him, the pillow was soaking.
Dio reinforced that rhythm with another firm roll of his hips. His free hand trailed up Enrico’s body, groping his scant chest, pinching at a nipple that was lighter, pinker than the rest of his skin. He tweaked it without warning and the pain sent a spark of shameless pleasure directly to Enrico’s cock.
He needed more. He was drowning in the feeling, but a feeling is all it was. He longed to meet his eyes, to tether sight and touch, maybe seeking proof that it wasn’t just another dog-eared novel hidden under his pillow or wet dream that tortured him in the middle of the night.
“Wait,” Enrico bleated, “I… want to see your face…!”
There was no reply. For a moment, Enrico wondered if Dio had even heard him.
But seconds later, he would feel it.
It was barely perceptible. Invisible to the eye. For the briefest of moments it was like time itself gave a short stutter, as if the second hand on the clock stood still for a fraction of an instant before continuing on as normal.
Nobody would have noticed if they hadn’t been paying attention. Not unless they had been listening out for the misplaced beat of a heart.
The world tilted on its axis, and Enrico realised he was no longer biting a pillow.
He was looking up at Heaven and he was seeing an angel.
“Ah…”
The new position allowed them to draw closer than ever before. Warm skin met cold marble as Dio’s arms encircled him, and Enrico was made holy in that moment.
(He wondered if Dio’s followers were allowed to see him like this, to look into his eyes as they were deflowered, to see the way his lips trembled as he got close to orgasm. The thought was selfish, Enrico knew. He hoped he was right.)
This pose also meant that Dio’s cock was able to slide deeper than before. Enrico’s legs fell further apart, allowing each thrust to sink to the hilt in his ass, brushing against the sweet spot that made his hips buck up on instinct. His own dick was pinned between both of their stomachs and leaking uselessly. It twitched at the slightest brush of Dio’s fingertips and, oh God above, Enrico really didn’t know how much more of this he could take.
“Such a good boy,” Dio panted. His parted lips hovered over Enrico’s, darting to kiss him between breaths. “Are you going to come soon? That’s it, my darling. Give it all up for me.”
This time it really was too much. Enrico squeezed his eyes shut tight as ecstacy overtook him. His cock spilled helplessly into Dio’s fist, leaking over and staining his own stomach pearly-white. The feeling seemed to extend into every part of his being at once, and Enrico shot until he had nothing more to shoot and he fell, exhausted, against his bedsheets. His chest heaved with each breath. Every single nerve in his body felt raw and oversensitive.
But Dio did not stop to let him recover.
He fucked him without mercy, rough and greedy, promises of gentleness forgotten as he used him for his own pleasure. Each thrust sank his cock balls-deep in the twitching hole, each jolt of his hips hitting the spot that was quickly edging into agony.
The grip on his waist tightened. A wave of nausea washed over him. Tears prickled in the corners of his eyes, threatening to spill down his cheeks, but Enrico would not allow his faith to waver.
Hebrews 11:6 — But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
Fists clutched at the sheets, Enrico let himself be used. Pain and desire bled together until he could no longer tell them apart. Another thrust hit his prostate, the blunt vigour of it forcing another whimper from his lips. Another, another. The tears poured openly now, streaming down his flushed face from the overstimulation.
“Promise me.”
“U-uh…?”
“Promise you’ll come to Heaven with me,” Dio demanded. “Swear it to me, right now. Tell me that you’re mine.”
“Yes!” Enrico babbled, half-moan and half-sob. “Anywhere! I’ll follow you anywhere! Oh, God. Oh, please, I’m all yours…”
That was it, and the vampire stiffened. His cock pulsed once, twice, and then Dio was coming with a low groan. Enrico felt it spill inside him, hot and thick and deeper than he ever thought was possible. It flooded his insides, filling him to the very brim, the excess leaking out and trickling down his still-trembling thighs.
Dio gave a few more shallow thrusts, fucking the last of his seed inside, before he finally stopped moving. He was still for a while — for how long, Enrico had no idea. Time seemed to have no meaning anymore. Eventually, Dio made a hum that sounded like satisfaction and, with no more ceremony, he pulled out. The sound was beyond obscene and Enrico shuddered, both from the sudden emptiness and the fullness left behind.
A light rain had started up outside. Without the sound of sex filling the room, the raindrops’ rhythm replaced it.
Enrico lay on his back in the dark. His whole body was damp with sweat and sticky with fluid. Evidence of the sin they’d committed was streaked over his thighs, pooling on his abdomen and (God almighty) dripping from between his cheeks. His throat felt stripped dry, like he’d been praying for hours. His entire being felt soiled to the core.
He had given it away. That precious virtue he was told to save for God. The chastity that identified him as a member of the cloth. He’d stolen it and gifted it to another like the guilty sinner he was.
Human beings are born to sin, but they are also born to meet each other.
Enrico turned onto his side. He thought of the first night they’d met in the chapel, of the force that brought their paths together and kept them tethered since. The force that Dio called gravity.
He reached out to touch Dio’s hand. Their fingers found each other, pulled together like magnets in the dark. Like heavenly bodies in orbit. The rain was getting heavy.
The sun would rise soon. There would probably be a rainbow.
There’s a click as the DISC ejects itself, and Father Pucci is left gasping for air. His whole body is drenched in sweat beneath his clerical collar. His heartbeat pulses in his ears.
The DISC is still warm from where it was nestled inside his skull.
The taste of the memory lingers on the tip of his tongue, fuzzy like television static. The recollections of that person’s face, sharp only moments before, are growing hazy again.
How long has it been? Twenty years? There’s no point counting the years anymore. After a certain amount they become exponential.
Savouring the fading sensations, that memory of a mid-August night, Father Pucci feels for the split in his forehead where the DISC resides. He pauses when his fingertips catch the plastic edge. Fingers the bone in his pocket. Repeats the words of Our Father. Seals it with an Amen. Crossing himself one last time, Pucci forces the DISC back in and shuts his eyes.