The air had a liminal edge to it, like the smell of petrichor, or the bite of a crisp wind heralding a new season. The urgency of night slowly fading with the impending sunrise was like the ticking of an explosive hidden somewhere in the dark cloudy curtain of the sky. Paolo and Enrique were walking hand in hand just chatting and enjoying the walk and each other’s company.
Paolo was young, scruffy, with a wiry, short body covered with thick abundant hair, or ‘fur’ as he called it. He had on a studded collar, and a thin t-shirt under an open zip-up hoodie. The man whose hand he was holding was forty-six years older than he was. Standing much taller than his companion at well over 6 feet tall, with that elegance that comes from having long limbs. He was 'willowy' in a dark-skinned-ancestors-chanting-songs sort of way.
To call Enrique ‘sophisticated’ was a mild insult to how much class he actually had. He kept his long, neat, salt-and-pepper locks bound with a dark red, thick ribbon tied in a neat bow. His hand nearly swallowed the significantly smaller hand of the barely-reaching five-foot-tall twenty-one-year-old Paolo’s pale by comparison hand with chipped dark nail polish on every nail and palms that were always clammy from anxiety.
He was gripping tight tonight, but Enrique just endured it and sent his loving energy in the small embrace of their hands.
“I told you to bring a bigger jacket than that little thing,” Enrique chided. Paolo kicked a rock on the sidewalk they were walking on.
“I’m not cold, I’m fine. Just got a full bladder.”
“Me too. That latte was worth every ounce of discomfort I am in now, though. What was the name of that café, do you remember?”
“We’ll look on the walk back.”
“Mmhmm, alright.”
Paolo looked up at Enrique and gave him that ‘boy with a crush, I’m so lucky he likes me back’ sort of shy smile. Enrique chuckled. “I worry for the day you don’t look at me like a new pair of shoes you’ve been praying for to fulfill your every athletic dream in life.”
“Will never happen.”
“Really?”
“You’ll always be my new pair of shoes, Ricky-dahhhrling!” Paolo said with a dramatic flair in his voice.
“Oh lawd, you tryin' to out-Queen an old Queen? You know you’re gonna lose at that, right?”
Paolo chuckled. “Maybe. Won’t I get points for my audacity and fierceness?”
Enrique narrowed his eyes. “You really want to push me, don’t you?”
“Admit that I am charming and adorably fabulous, that you find me so irresistible that you must suffer me my participation prize,” again with the dramatic humor and leaning his head on Enrique’s arm so that he had to tip his head up to look at the face he loved upside down, while Enrique looked back at him with a smirk of muted amusement on his face.
“Stop being cute when we aren’t in a safe place for me to fuck that teasing look off your face,” Enrique flirted, his voice held a Dominant edge to it that made Paolo shiver.
“Impossible, Queen Ricky, so impossible, you should know this by now. You’ve had SIX whole months out of the whole year we have been together, living with me and enjoying the ever-present joy of my companionship and company, have you learned nothing?” Paolo chided with an exaggerated ‘tsk' sound.
Enrique turned away from the dramatic love of his life, stopped walking, and stared straight ahead at a wrought iron fence. “We’re here.”
“What?” Paolo asked with a smile in his voice then turned to face where the other man was facing and the smile slowly faded until his face was as neutral as the thousands of stones in that graveyard.
This was a tradition, every year. For Paolo - it was the ultimate test of his relationships. He never had a relationship survive this test. He was really hoping that Enrique would be different. He may go back to casual sex and say fuck relationships if this went poorly. He started walking toward the fence and beyond it inside the graveyard grounds. He walked with such a silent purpose to his stride, like he was being called there like he had done it countless times before, and he had.
Enrique put his hands in his pockets and took long strides to follow him, solemnly, like some sort of sentry making sure that Paolo’s soul would not get attacked by the angry spirits that inhabited graveyards. And not just angry spirits of the dead either - but of the living, the dead left behind. Paolo was angry enough without having some astral hitchhiker making him worse.
Eventually, Paolo stopped at a grave that had an angel weeping atop the large headstone. It had the name of a man. The day of death was less than a decade ago. The surname was the same as Paolo’s deadname. He told Enrique that deadname, but not the other one. The older man understood to never use that name but was unsure why he was being told it at all; now he knew why. So he would understand this moment. He stood there watching as Paolo just glowered at the headstone.
“This is the man who made me. Before I learned how to make myself into myself,” Paolo said, his voice trembling with emotion but the volume was low and clear. The night grew still as if in respect to the moment as well. The ticking of the oncoming daylight -- seemed to be paused, in a way.
“You mean that is your biological father?” Enrique said, his tone was solemn, blank, but compassionate. Paolo nodded, as he sucked in a sort of sob-soaked breath.
“And my abuser.”
And then with determined, and angry motions, he unzipped his pants sagged them down a bit, and angled back before shooting a stream of piss right at the gravestone. Watching the stream, spray powerfully across the name, Enrique lowered his head as if out of respect. He clasped his hands behind his back.
“How did he abuse you, Paolo?”
Letting the stream finish and pulling his pants up before he spoke, he turned to face Enrique, this tall elegant man, who was so composed and beautiful. So perfect in ways that Paolo envied that he would never be.
“He would use slurs at me. I felt powerless every day. He beat my mother. Too much." Paolo paused as if taking a moment of silence for his mother. "She never had much of a maternal instinct, which explains why she found it so easy to just leave me with the fucker, so he was left to raise me on his own into this anxious turd of existence until I, one day, had enough of his abuse and I left too. Like mother like --” and his voice broke he averted his eyes away from Enrique’s listening stare.
“Son. Like mother, like son,” Enrique said simply. And Paolo broke into angry sobs.
Enrique held space, listening in silence. He didn’t step forward to offer affection or to say an obligatory apology. Something in him knew on an intimate level that an apology would feel hollow to someone who had really gone thru some shit. And someone who was abused did not always welcome being touched, especially not when the traumatic memories were vibrant and fresh in the mind.
