Work Text:
“What next, Amadeo?”
“Oh, whatever you want.”
Riccardo plucks idly at the strings of his oud. The summer sunshine falls warm and golden on his brown skin. Amadeo watches his fingers dance. “That’s what you always say. Come on, pick something!”
Amadeo shifts where he sits. He and Riccardo have made use of the clear day by sitting outside in father’s garden. It’s a big garden, rolling splendidly down the hill from the house. Fruit trees dapple the light and scent the air with lemons, oranges, and pomegranates. Amadeo can hear the babble of the nearby fountain tucked behind the rosebush. Though there are benches beneath some of the trees, Riccardo insisted on them sitting on the grass.
Amadeo hopes that he’ll have time to wash the stains out of his shorts before Father gets home. Riccardo snuck over while Father had work in the city. Riccardo is one of the best painting students, but for some reason, Father doesn’t seem to like him. Amadeo isn’t sure why.
Thinking, he chews on his tongue. He won’t let the discomfort of demanding something from Riccardo spoil the afternoon. “You could play another song that your dad taught you.”
Riccardo smiles and strums the oud, warming up to it. His cheek dimples on one side when he smiles. Amadeo bites the inside of his own cheek.
“Just as the young master says!” Riccardo starts playing and singing. His voice has dropped since last summer, but it’s as sweet as ever. He sings in the flowing Tunisian Arabic of his childhood.
Amadeo likes listening to the folk songs. He can’t understand most of it, but it’s odd, like feeling words stuck on the tip of his tongue. The nagging feeling that he doesn’t know something, but should. The words he knows, he gathers like fallen ripe fruits. Beautiful. Love. God.
Amadeo often feels this way around Riccardo, even when he’s not singing Arabic. He feels sometimes like he’s looking into a world at once foreign and not-foreign. A secret knowledge that was whispered once into his ear, then forgotten.
He can’t help but tap his toes together and hum a bit, though he’s no singer. Not like Riccardo. He’s grown in other ways, too, since Amadeo saw him last. Broader in the shoulders, in the chest. He’s put on weight, and the softness of his chin and arms makes him look solid and warm. His thick fingers pluck lightly on the strings, often too fast for Amadeo to follow.
Amadeo looks away from the fingers. If he looks too long, that’s when the bad thoughts come.
He hadn’t known they were bad thoughts. Since he’s moved, there have been so many strange things to learn, dizzying in their multitude. Like how it’s bad to want boys. It’s bad when men do things together. He thinks he knew that once, but then— then he was supposed to do it, but now it’s bad again, except for when.… It’s too confusing. But he tries not to think bad things about Riccardo.
“Where’d you go?” Riccardo is still playing, but he speaks Italian now.
Amadeo blinks and looks at him again. “Nowhere.”
“Nowhere!” Riccardo strums a few chords. “Nobody’s nowhere.” He switches his song to an Italian one that Amadeo recognizes from the radio. Amadeo grins and claps along to the familiar rhythm, and Riccardo winks at him as he sings.
With the way the world is, it has a future for you
You see it like a stormy sea
It frightens you, I know, but I believe that
in your pocket you have at least one dream.
But why that dry singing?
Don’t hold everything inside yourself
There’s one thing you can do instead
If you want, if you want, if you want.
Hearing the Italian pop song played on Riccardo’s oud fills Amadeo with a giggling delight. He finds himself singing along in spite of himself. He knows that his accent is imperfect, but then, so is Riccardo’s. Riccardo won’t sigh or snap his knuckles with a ruler. He feels something in his chest unwind. He’s loose-limbed, warmed inside-out by the sun.
When Riccardo finishes the song, he absent-mindedly plucks a few more notes. “Girls love that one. You think I can play it for Laura?”
Amadeo tries not to wrinkle his nose. “Who’s Laura?”
“I told you, that girl from my school. I have to be extra cool in front of her when I go back.” He sighs. “I wish we went to the same school. Then you could help me out.”
Amadeo doesn’t like hearing about Laura. “I wish I went there, too.” Then he realizes what he said. “But I like Father teaching me better! I get to paint much more this way.”
Riccardo’s quiet for a moment. He sets the oud gently down on a bench. “He taught you Italian so fast. I remember last summer when you would barely look at me and mumble a few words before running away! Now you talk like a natural.”
Amadeo shrugs. Already, last summer feels like a blur to him. Everything from before— before the sunlight and the garden— feels like a dream he’d rather forget, so he does. He likes his new name. He likes being here with his father and with Riccardo. Arun doesn’t get to ruin that. “Well, I can be a quick learner.”
Riccardo’s mouth quirks. “Oh, yeah? Maybe I can teach you something.”
Amadeo sees the half-smile and feels excited, like he’s about to be let in on a prank. “I bet you can’t, stupid.”
“You ever kiss someone before?”
His stomach flips. Suddenly, he feels tense. Like this is some sort of test he hasn’t studied for. There’s a right answer, he knows there is, but he’s not sure what. He searches for the answer in Riccardo’s eyes, searches for what he might want to hear. “No.”
“Not even for practice?”
Amadeo scoffs. “Practice!”
“Yeah! Lots of people practice.”
“I do not need practice.”
Riccardo taps his fingers on his leg like he’s still trying to play. “I kissed Bella Carraro last year. But her parents made us break up.”
“… That’s too bad.”
“Yeah.” Riccardo squints at him. “You’ll be fourteen soon, you gotta know how to kiss girls.”
Kiss girls. He’s kissed grown women, old women… little girls, he thinks, but for some reason that thought fills him with a cold dread, so he shoves it away. “Bet I’m still a better kisser than you.”
“You wanna practice?”
His stomach flips. His heart flutters in his chest. Fast, small, bird-thing. “What?”
“It wouldn’t be for real.” Riccardo’s face is flushed. “Like I said, it’s just practice. It doesn’t matter.” When Amadeo doesn’t answer, he adds, “We don’t have to, geez.”
“No, it’s… um. It’s. It’s okay.” Amadeo can’t say no, and he… doesn’t think that he wants to, either. He really doesn’t want to say no.
But he’s not sure what to do. Should he crawl to Riccardo on all fours? Should he take off his shirt all slow? Should he start begging for the kiss? Or would Riccardo like it better if he made his voice all high and said no, please, no!
He’s not sure. So he waits, frozen, while Riccardo leans towards him.
His lips are full and warm. A little clumsy. Amadeo holds very still, a glass statue, afraid of breaking and cutting something if he moves. He feels Riccardo’s nervous breath and the peach fuzz on his upper lip.
When Riccardo pulls away, he says, “See? It’s not so hard.” But his voice is shaky.
Oh. Riccardo is afraid. Amadeo doesn’t want him to be afraid. He feels the need to guide, to comfort. To show him it’s okay. So he reaches up and touches Riccardo’s cheek with his hand. He pulls him into another kiss.
He can tell that Riccardo has not kissed many people. He seems unsure where to put his lips, how much to move. The back of his neck is damp, and there’s always a bit too much suction or too little.
But Amadeo likes it. He likes Riccardo’s curiosity. His innocence. He tries to mimic it, just like he practices copying Riccardo’s body language when he’s alone in his room. He pretends this is the first time.
When Riccardo pokes his tongue out, Amadeo lets him inside. The wetness feels nice, like nectar, rosewater. He tries to etch the taste into his memory.
Riccardo huffs and wipes off his mouth. “God. It’s a hot day.”
“We can go into the shade.”
“Oh.”
Amadeo takes him by the hand and guides him into the concealed shade of an orange tree. Sitting in the dirt is a little uncomfortable, but he doesn’t mind. He’ll do it for Riccardo. He’ll do anything.
When they sit down again, Riccardo’s tongue goes back in his mouth, and his hand in Amadeo’s hair. Sometimes when he teases Amadeo during art lessons, he tugs at the long curls. He does that now, pulling slightly at the strands near his scalp.
The twinge sends a rush of hot need through Amadeo. He tries to push it away. It always comes too fast, his need, and then the shame. The feeling of Riccardo’s fingers in his hair— sometimes he imagines those fingers, blunt and thick, pushing inside him, maybe by force, maybe hurting him. He’s had dreams of Riccardo picking him up, making him struggle, he’s bigger than Amadeo, he could do it, he could do it easily.
Riccardo would never. Of course. He doesn’t want to. He’s not like that. Usually when the thoughts get to be too much, Amadeo can go into his Master’s bed, and Master makes him feel good, makes it all better.
Riccardo is so different from his Master. He kisses differently. Cautious yet uncontrolled. He’s closer to Amadeo’s height, closer to his coloring, and it makes Amadeo’s bird-heart flutter with half-familiarity.
And he can’t hide how it makes him feel. Everything is too close, too warm under his skin. He tries to pull his knees together to hide the feeling away, scolding bad Arun, very very bad.
But Riccardo’s tongue is on his neck now, and that’s nice, oh that’s so nice. When the teeth come out, he aches with want, but he has to remind Riccardo that father mustn’t see.
“Oh. Right.” Riccardo avoids his gaze. He rubs his palm over Amadeo’s knee. “I’m sorry, we can stop….”
“No, it’s okay.” I like it, he wants to say, but that might be the wrong choice. “I don’t mind it.”
Riccardo blushes deeply and goes back to kissing Amadeo’s neck, sending shivers down his spine. His body is wide and soft, and when it’s pressed against him like this, Amadeo can feel the swell of muscle beneath the fat. It makes him think of fullness, of sweetness, of the juice of ripe fruit split down the middle. His mouth waters.
Riccardo shifts, and then suddenly there’s hardness pressed against his own. Oh. Amadeo has to freeze and clench his fists to not rub against him. He’s hard himself, poking up in his shorts, but Riccardo feels bigger, wider…. Paper strips curl and smoke in the back of Amadeo’s mind, burning up with want, his whole back a line of tension, needneedneed. He wants Riccardo to push him down in the dirt and fuck him from behind, or maybe Amadeo can take it into his mouth yes that sounds even better, taste it feel it choke him feel it need it Riccardo Riccardo Riccardo yes I can teach you you can learn I can make it nice for you so nice
Riccardo’s hand touches the hem of his shirt and he thinks yes, now, but Riccardo just pulls away and lets him go, leaving him confused and a little dizzy. “That was good,” Riccardo breathes. “You, uh, you’re definitely ready.”
Amadeo hides his hands in his lap. “Thanks.”
“No problem. Man.”
They stare at each other for a while. Amadeo gulping, Riccardo panting and blushing. Then Riccardo picks up a handful of mulch and throws it at him. “I’ll race you to the fountain!”
Amadeo chases after him, shouting that his head start is unfair. They splash water at each other and pretend that their erections aren’t there.
That night, Amadeo can’t sleep. A pillow between his legs, he moves his hips to the thought of the kiss. He knows he could go to his Master and get help with it, but… but he doesn’t want to. Not tonight. The friction feels good even if it goes nowhere. It’s dark and quiet in his bed. It's his own secret.
He lifts his hand to his mouth and kisses his wrist. He pokes out his tongue and tastes his own skin. “Like this?” he whispers. “Like this?”