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"Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms, he has sat on the prow of Adrian's barge, looking into the green, turbid Nile."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture Of Dorian Gray
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph." Scout mutters.
He is looking at a sculpture, white marble and beautiful, with delicately curled hair, and the prettiest eyes he's ever seen. They're empty, stone and staring, but they're damn perfect nonetheless, and Scout stares, transfixed and motionless in the presence of divinity.
"You two share a resemblence!" Medic teases, standing just close enough that Scout can feel the heat off his body.
"You gotta be kiddin' me doc."
He, with his too-big teeth, and his mean eyes. Hair that was almost red before age darkened it, and freckles on places that didn't need them. He has never been able to grow a proper beard, no matter how hard he tries. He's scrawny, and the runt of the litter, latest in a long line of Irish Catholics with too many siblings and not enough money, and the only one of them born out of wedlock.
"Nothing of the sort." Medic says, and when he smiles, Scout can almost believe it. "You both have a youthful glow about you. It's delightful."
Scout looks away, because if he looks at the other man any longer, it'll kill him. Like staring into the sun.
"Who is this kid, anyway?" He asks instead, and pretends not to care.
He can't stop staring. The bust has beautiful lips. So lifelike and plump, as though he was a real man turned to stone. Must be some god or saint. Scout thinks.
"Hm. His name was Antinous. He was a young man once, like you. Though a bit younger, I think."
"Like me, huh?"
He laughs softly. No way this beautiful guy had anything in common with a kid from the streets of Boston, and he lets Medic know it with a scoff. The doctor just smiles, and nudges him gently with his shoulder. They move on to the next exhibit, and Scout can't help but look over his shoulder at Antinous as he goes. It feels like the statue is watching.
They're in Washington D.C. Scout's never been to the capital before, but it was Medic's idea to go see some art, and in the states, the National Gallery was the place to go. He'd insisted on arranging everything, from the hotel, to the flight, to dinner at a fancy place afterward. He'd have paid for the tickets too if they cost anything.
Something about it made Scout feel weird — in a good way, but weird nonetheless. He felt like a girl almost — was this what it was like when the guy took the bill for a date? He'd argued at first, because they both made the same incredible wages, and it felt wrong to not pitch in, but Medic shut that down pretty quick.
"It makes me happy to treat you." He'd said, eyes twinkling, and Scout had gone red.
(He couldn't have known Scout was sending easily over half of each paycheck back home. Blood money is gonna put his nieces and nephews through college, and what else is he gonna buy? Bonk?)
He's on the first real date of his life — not like kissing behind the bleachers, or getting drunk on the fire escape. A real, honest to god date.
It is 1970, and they cannot hold hands in the art gallery.
"As delightful as Antinous is, we have more to see." Medic announces quietly, a far-cry from his brash voice on the battlefield. He's a different man in the gallery — a thoughtful academic, where before there was a mad scientist.
"What'd he do that made him famous?" Scout asks.
Medic smiles, and the look is playful. Mischevious.
"He was the emperor's lover."
"No shit?"
He half believes Medic is joking with him.
"Would I lie to you, Liebling?" Medic asks, with a pleading look that just barely hides his grin.
"If it's funny enough, yeah." Scout retorts.
"Well, I wouldn't lie about this." Medic says firmly. "The story of Antinous and Emperor Hadrian is so well known that it's become synonymous with an older man and his young lover."
Scout reddens. Their shoulders brush. He does not need to ask about the story, because he knows Medic will tell him in his own time. Instead, he touches the older man's hand, and lets their fingers intertwine. When Medic pauses, Scout looks over his shoulder at the room they've just left, and squeezes his fingers.
"If they let queers like him hang around in the national gallery, they shouldn't have a problem with me, eh?"
Medic laughs, and squeezes back. Their shoulders are touching and their hands are warm, and Scout's giddy from the thought of it. I love you, he thinks. I love you, I love you.
They hold hands all through the next room, and only separate when they hear a tour group coming. There is a cold emptiness at Scout's left side, and as they move through the sculptures, a little bronze disc catches his eye. There's a little hole in the top, as though someone once wore it as an amulet, and the placard reads: "Leda and the Swan. Italian, 16th Century."
It is not nearly so engrossing as Leda Atomica — the swan's beak is too rectangular for regal Zeus, and there are a pair of cupids necking in the bottom left.
"Rather disappointing, isn't it?" Medic sighs.
"Feels like those cupids are watching, doesn't it?"
"They are little voyeurs." Medic agrees.
There's a little bronze Ganymede too, but it doesn't bear mentioning. The surface is so smudged that Scout can't tell where Zeus is, and this Ganymede is of the chubby baby variety.
"They aren't always lovers," Medic laughs when he sees Scout's face. "Some interpret the myth as being about child mortality."
When the tour group passes, the warmth returns to Scout's hand, and he, too, is being carried away with a rush of feathers. Eagle, swan, or dove. It doesn't really matter.
I love you. I love you.
The impressionists are wonderful, or so it seems to Scout. Monet's Banks of the Seine is a beautiful work, and the way the gallery lights shine on the oil paint gives a new dimension to the water in the riverbed. He pronounces it like "sign" and Medic laughs.
"It's 'sen,' like 'zen.'" He explains.
"Not all of us can speak three languages, doc." Scout scoffs.
"Four, actually." Medic retorts, preening. Scout rolls his eyes.
"What language is it, anyway?"
"French. The Seine is the river that runs through Paris." Medic explains.
"Does it really look like that?"
The distant silhouettes of trees and the bushes of white flowers in the foreground of the painting are dreamlike, not at all like the filthy waters of the Charles, the polluted and grimy river that runs through Boston. Just five years earlier, The Standells had written a song about how foul it was.
"No," Medic chuckles. "Not any part of it that I've seen, though it might have looked like that in 1880, when this was painted."
They move on, pulled by an invisible thread.
"Guess they couldn't get married, could they?" Scout says suddenly.
"Whom?"
"Those guys." Scout continues. "Antinous and the Emperor."
"No." Medic agrees. "They couldn't get married. Hadrian had been married for many years before he met his lover. And they had a precious few years together as it was."
Scout holds tighter to his hand.
They move through the galleries, and Scout finds himself unimpressed by the realist movement. They all look like George Washington to him, stuffy old men and women with powdered wigs and sour expressions. They look like the people he once saw in his history textbooks at school.
(Sure enough, they soon find Gilbert Stuart's famous portraits of George Washington and John Adams — two of each, in fact.)
"Solly'd love this room."
"He probably would." Medic agrees.
While Medic examines the finely detailed portraits, Scout wanders towards whatever draws his eye. Eventually he finds a cityscape that looks familiar to him. The City From Greenwich Village is a taste of modernity in the swarms of country cottages and idyllic landscapes. The city at night reminds him of his time in highschool. It calls to mind the time he spent drinking whisky with Jimmy O'Reilly on the fire escape, and jumping down like rabbits because they heard his uncle come home, and couldn't be caught with the booze.
They'd never thought they'd live this long, and last Scout heard, Jim left for San Fran, where he could be a fag in peace away from his family.
In a way, Scout thinks, I'm in a place between life and death. Last week I watched my guts fall out, and here I am today. Fit as a goddamn fiddle.
He wonders how Jimmy O'Reilly is doing, and if he found what he was looking for in California.
He is not aware that Greenwich Village was the site of a queer protest just last year — an event that came to be known as The Stonewall Riot.
Eventually, Scout makes his way back to paintings of food and clutter and assorted grapes. So many grapes, it makes him wonder why everyone and their grandma wanted to paint them in this style. There are easily ten different paintings of grapes in this part of the gallery alone. They all look good enough to eat though, like you could pluck them right out of the canvas.
Medic is examining a still life when Scout meets back up with him.
"I don't understand the obsession with apples and grapes." He admits.
"I was wonderin' about the grapes myself. Apples though, I know about."
"Oh really?" Medic chuckles, but he is the only man in the world who can laugh at something Scout says and not sound condescending.
"Yeah. It's a mythology thing. In America, there was this guy called Johnny. He loved apples so much that he collected all the different breeds of apple, and saved the seeds, so he could give 'em to people and plant apple trees across the country." Scout explained.
"Was he a real man?"
"Probably not, but we all act like he was. Guy loved apples so much we called him Johnny Appleseed, and that's why Americans love apples too. Supposedly, he wore a stupid little pot on his head."
That makes Medic laugh out loud, and he goes a little pink with it. He seems really, genuinely amused by the story, and Scout likes seeing him happy.
That's why I like seeing him work, Scout thinks. He always looks like that when he's made a breakthrough. Hot as hell.
Finally, Medic takes a breather, and Scout brings up the thought he's had since the fourth picture of George Washington he's seen.
"Why didn't these guys paint more stuff like this? That looks good enough to eat."
"Keep in mind that this was a time before detailed photography. People wanted to remember the faces of their loved ones and heroes." Medic offers, by means of explanation.
"Makes sense." Scout nods. He squeezes Medic's hand again, and thinks about what he'd do if they lived in a time before photography.
(He thinks about the photographs they've taken together — their artbook of degeneracy — and goes red.)
He'd never be able to capture the way Medic looks, but he'd love to try. Mapping every contour of his face, down to the way the light gleams off of his glasses. He'd spend his whole life trying.
He slips his hand into Medic's again, and squeezes. They are as close as they can feasibly be without melding into one another.
Together they look at the foxes and minks and song bird paintings based on studies of Audubon; all the nature paintings that were better than the photos people had at the time, tiny and blurred, and monochrome.
I guess it's not all stodgy old white guys, Scout thinks. They wanted to recreate nature too. And that's good enough to redeem the style in his eyes.
When they reach the rococo section, Scout gains a new interest in the displays. It's as though the artists care about mythology again. Sure, there are the same still lives, and portraits of rich people living rich lives; but there with them are the gods, walking among mortals. There's Ceres with her harvest, and Venus bathing. Diana and Endymion, and loads and loads of cupids.
And there, in a place of honor — Scout feels his heart skip a beat.
A painting he recognizes — yes! It's one of the paintings in Medic's coffee table book; the one Scout has poured over, front to back. This is a painting that he has seen, and studied, and read about. Jean Francois de Troy, and his Abduction of Europa.
Scout is... moved, to say the least. This is a painting that he's never dreamed of seeing in person. It's beautiful, and powerful, and there are details that can never be seen in a shrunken, printed work. He can see every single hair on the tail of the bull, and the light on the oil paint makes the sea foam real — glistening and bright, like it moves with the tide. Scout tilts his head, and the light shifts, making it look like the water is in motion.
Europa's handmaidens are chasing after her, but she holds fast to the bulls' horns, and smiles back at them, looking drunken and dreamy. Cupid is there, with a garland of flowers, and the symbolism isn't lost on him — they mentioned it in the book. Love is Cupid, and Cupid is love; Europa could easily jump into the arms of her ladies and be whisked away to safety. Her compliance is her love, and Cupid blesses their union.
I love you, I love you. I love you forever.
Scout feels overpowered with emotion, and Medic puts a grounding hand on his shoulders.
"I thought you would like to see it in person." Medic whispers, and the warmth of his voice makes Scout melt. Every wrinkle in the gown of Europa is crisp, and up close like this, Scout can see minute little cracks in the paint — along with all manner of surface wear from the years.
"It's incredible."
They are surrounded by cupids, Jean Honoré Fragonard's Love series. Just like Leda and the Swan, and like Europa here. The cupids and doves and the garlands of flowers are a love that the gods look down upon and envy. He remembers being hazy and love-drunk like Europa; and swearing in his heart to go willingly into that ocean.
"How does the story end?" He asks, quietly.
"Hase..." Medic says, hesitating. At the moment, Scout does not want to be called a bunny. He doesn't feel terribly fluffy right now.
"Well?" He still doesn't clarify. Is he asking about Antinous, or the lovers of Zeus?
"Scout, none of these stories have happy endings."
Read between the lines. There are no happy endings. Not for people like us. And Scout's known that — he's known that for a long time, but he doesn't want to hear it. The love of Zeus comes at a cost. Europa's maids will never see her again, and Ganymede's parents will grieve again and again in every new painting, ad infinitum. The last letter back to Boston from Jimmy O'Reilly came two years before Scout left home to go out to New Mexico, and he has a feeling about it. In the pit of his stomach, he knows, and thinks; I'll never see that crazy kid again.
His mother, with her old-world sentiments and her love for the church, will never understand his "lifestyle" or his partner, and she will probably never speak to him again when he tells her. He won't blame her for it either. He is going to be like Jim, and fuck off out west if that happens. He is going to leave everything behind for this man, and no one will ever see him again.
"What are you thinking, Schatz?" Medic asks softly. There is real concern in his voice.
"How the phone call's gonna go when I tell my ma about you."
Medic snorts, but remains silent otherwise.
"'Oh yeah, I met someone out in the desert. German guy, early fifties.' She'll have a freakin heart attack before I even get to the sex shit."
He expects Medic to frown, but instead, when Scout finally looks up, he sees an expression of pure love.
"You want to tell your mother about me. About us."
"Well, yeah." Scout admits. "I'd do it today if I didn't think it'd break her heart."
Medic embraces him, sudden and tight. He runs a hand through Scout's hair, and pulls him close into the warmth of his chest.
"My dear." Medic breathes into his hair. "Junge, Liebling."
"I was mostly joking. Kinda serious. I don't think it's normal to tell your ma about your sex life, but Christ! If she saw a bruise or something." Scout huffs. "I want it all out in the open before she can make up her own ideas, but it's so hard."
He looks at the painting again, and feels his heart clenching. Doesn't it ever turn out for people like us? Do we ever go out in any way but screaming?
"Antinous grew old." Medic says, slowly. He has decided to finish the story.
"Not that he was an old man, but by Roman standards, once a young man grew a beard, it wasn't proper to sleep with older men. He had become an older man himself."
"And the Emperor —" Scout breathes.
"Still loved him. Terribly so." Medic interrupts. "It became a scandal at court. No one wanted to take Hadrian seriously, but he would have given it all away for the sake of love."
Medic pauses, and looks into the depths of the painting before him.
"Antinous drowned. Most believe he threw himself into the Nile to keep his lover's reputation. He was the Emperor of Rome after all."
An elderly couple plod in, and the sound of a distant tour group grows nearer. Scout has to say his goodbyes to Europa and Zeus. And he does not care if the old couple notice him clutching tightly to Medic's hand. He is trembling.
They find a quiet bench in a little nook at the end of the rococo era and Medic holds him around the shoulders, peppering kisses to the top of his head. He murmurs endearments in German that cause an almost pavlovian response in Scout. He associates these sweet words with nothing but adoration.
"I didn't get to finish the story." Medic whispers.
"I don't know if I wanna know the ending."
"It's quite beautiful."
Scout has never considered himself a lover of beauty, but he is, regardless. So he sighs, and closes his eyes, letting the words wash over him.
"When Antinous died, Hadrian was devastated. He mourned for months, neglecting everything but his grief. People complained that he grieved for his lover more than a man grieved a wife. When he finally recovered, the Emperor used his power to deify the young man who had drowned on Osiris' most auspicious day."
"Aren't we mixin' myths here, Doc?" Scout chuckles.
"At the time, Rome had absorbed all the religions of its' states. The cults of Egypt were all the rage at the time." Medic replies with amusement. "That helped Hadrian's case actually. There was a belief at the time that all people who drowned in the river Nile on Osiris' day became a part of him."
"In Rome, he was associated with Dionysus, and crowned in his laurels. His cult became so popular that for a time, it was set to overtake Christianity, and some believe it was only the early church's inclusion of women that finally turned the tide."
"Seriously?" Scout laughs. "No shit?"
"Everyone over the whole Roman world knew his name." Medic confirmed. "Even in Victorian times, people knew him. Oscar Wilde used Antinous to show the beauty of his protagonist Dorian, saying a painting of him 'had sat on the prow of Adrian's barge.'"
Scout shakes his head and shivers. He has read bits of that book, like he has tried everything Medic loves. He might not understand it all, but he certainly understands that love which cannot be named.
"So you see," Medic concludes. "It doesn't have a happy ending, but the story isn't sad. Hadrian worshipped him until the day he died. And I will do the same for you."
"You're pulling my leg." Scout snorts. He can't look up. He is afraid of what he will see.
A few beats of silence, and when Scout can't take it anymore, he looks up to Medic, and the intensity in the man's eyes is everything he expected it to be.
"No matter what happens." Medic breathes. "I swear I will worship you until the day I die, Schatz."
Scout leans into him, held against that warm body, he can finally breathe again.
"Thank you." Scout murmurs.
"There is nothing to thank me for. I'm just stating the facts." Medic huffs. Still, he runs his hands through Scout's hair, kisses the top of his head. They scoot apart just in time for the elderly couple to catch up to them again.
They wait until the tour group passes to get up again.
"I think I'm about done with art for the day." Scout admits. There is something for the list of things he never thought he'd say.
"There's just one more exhibit I wanted to see," Medic admits. "I think you'll like it."
So they meander through rococo and into abstract, and there they take a left turn into surrealism. Among the dream landscapes and abstract patterns and not-quite-right scenes, there is a perfect painting.
Scout notices it as soon as they enter the room. The composition is the same as every other painting of the last supper, from DaVinci onward. But something about the style is different, and the look of it is instantly recognizable and familiar. Scout's throat goes dry — this is Dalí, and he has recreated the last meal of Jesus in his own, unique way. The man who painted Leda Atomica has painted The Sacrament of the Last Supper.
A man's nude chest floats above the group at table, half-transparent, like a vision, and the stigmata is visible through the ghosts of his thumbs. It has a strange, sci-fi quality to it, like a set on Star Trek, and Scout feels that, for the first time, this is a last supper he can understand, a sacrament for the new generation.
He turns to Medic and grins.
Without a moment's hesitation, he pulls the doctor down by his lapels and presses their lips together, tasting Medic, breathing against him and then doing it all over again. He doesn't even stop to look and see if there are people in the room, and he doesn't care. It is 1970 and the world is new and wonderful. What are they going to do? Kick him out?
They were done here already.