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Give an Inch chapter 11
Aug. 15th, 2021 03:49 am*
Now that the truly unpleasant stage of their ruse has ended, Yusuf is rather impressed that he and Nicolò have managed this situation without really quarrelling once. It’s not over, exactly, but it’s been long enough that Nicolò can feign some difficulty and hobble about the house without inviting suspicion that his miraculous survival is a little too miraculous. Yusuf, for his part, feels much less guilty about spending his last several days locked in a room in Kazem’s house, translating trading contracts, than he would have otherwise.
He certainly doesn’t find much cause to complain about having a meal waiting when he returns. Nicolò is either so pleased to be able to actually do something to occupy himself or simply so lacking for any other pursuits that he has taken to more elaborate dishes and experimentation than Yusuf is used to, in addition to whatever housekeeping he thinks he can justify. The experiments run from interesting to extremely pleasant, with only one meal so far proving to be less than appetizing. He’ll miss that, he supposes, when next they are on the road, at least as much as having a real bed. But there is no sense in borrowing trouble; it is likely to be a good while yet.
They haven’t discussed what their plans are once Nicolò’s superfluous recovery period is over. Yusuf can’t imagine they will leave Baghdad immediately – that would render Nicolò’s recent trials entirely meaningless – but it seems unlikely that they can go back to exactly how they were. Nicolò will already have to forgo the bathhouse near their home, and it seems an unnecessary risk for him to go back to his old forms of employment.
Yusuf’s heart twinges. He’s no stranger to relationships that are transitory by nature – even before al-Quds, he had travelled enough to become accustomed to the strange act of welcoming someone into your heart while yet knowing it will necessarily be temporary. He has made dozens of friends he knew from the start would be only in his acquaintance a short time, and then, likely, never again. But he’s never yet had to move on solely because of his unnatural age, because of his propensity, Nicolò’s propensity, to outlive everyone around them.
Indirectly, of course, it is one of the most pressing reasons they have spent so much of the last fifty years travelling, staying in one place a few months, a year at the utmost – long enough to earn a little coin, to hear a little news, to rest a while and disappear into the bustle of humanity for a time, rather than into the emptiness of the desert or the mountains or the forest – but it was never so very different from his old life that Yusuf had any real trouble meeting and then farewelling any number of temporary friends. Different again is watching those around him die by violence, or even by unfortunate accident; bitter, difficult, shaded almost more harshly now that he himself is immune to such things, but a sadness that befalls every man, immortal or not.
He’s outlived his entire family, everyone, by now, from his first life, with the possible exception of one or two of his nephews (and he puts that line of thought firmly aside at once; the knowledge that there might be more, relatives he never met, a niece born a year after the fall of Jerusalem, a favourite cousin’s child from a marriage that occurred after Yusuf himself had already died a dozen times – the family that still exists, that he will never know, is too much to face, impossible not to dwell on, once thought. It always has been. And yet worse is the idea that for whatever reason, there is none left – he puts it aside). But he’s done so long after leaving them behind. Omran died young; Saima died (and she must have) long after he last saw her. Or after, at least.
But now – this is as settled as he will ever be, as they will ever be, and yet Kazem will still die and pass into Yusuf’s memory the same way as Omran and Saima and Eman from Cairo, and long before that happens they will have to leave. Kazem with all his kind words and his mild stuffiness and his penchant for sweets, and poor young guilt-ridden Esmail who was so relieved when he heard Nicolò was getting better, and Ammar with his ill-employed perceptiveness and awkward kindness – they’ll go on with their lives, and then one day when Yusuf is telling some story or explaining an anecdote or trying to remind Nicolò of something, he will realize with a sudden dull shock that they are almost certainly dead, just as he did with Saima – far, far too late for it to mean what it should.
It shouldn’t be so difficult for him to get past perhaps, just because they’ve stayed in one place for several months and will probably stay another year or more – but then, when is the right time for a particular crisis of immortality? At age one hundred? One hundred and ten? Sixty? Three centuries in? There’s no real way to know; perhaps all that matters is that right now, today, is when Yusuf happens to be struggling with the weight of it: that everyone he meets, everyone he cares for, laughs at, mildly dislikes, will die – everyone he has known, everyone he does know; children born to parents who themselves have not yet drawn breath will one day share a joke and a meal with Yusuf and then some time later they will die and he will realize, belatedly, that they must have done so. Every single person – except, of course, for Nicolò.
That thought, perversely (although perhaps also in self-defence), sends his thoughts to another place, one they’ve been on and off the last day or two. Yusuf takes a breath and firmly redirects them – not that it isn’t worth, maybe, a little more thought, but he simply cannot stand himself if he goes directly from this subject to sordid self-gratification.
There is a time and a place for self-gratification – it is at least five minutes from contemplation of the tragedy inherent in the mortal state of humanity.
Yusuf rises, with the intent of doing something, and then sits down again when he realizes he has no notion what that something is. He laughs at himself internally.
“Yusuf?” Nicolò leans into the doorway, low enough that if they’d had an unexpected visitor, it would look as if he was still bent over a staff or a walking stick. “I thought I heard you moving.”
“Just me,” Yusuf agrees.
“I thought you would still be at Kazem’s house.” Nicolò straightens, relaxing, and steps into the room. He doesn’t sit, leaning against the wall instead. Yusuf supposes he still finds some enjoyment in making a point of utilizing his renewed freedoms. “It’s early yet.”
“Oh, he has a wedding.” Yusuf flaps a hand. “His cousin’s sister or some such. The whole house is busy; I wasn’t to go today.” He spent the morning at the mosque and the bathhouse instead.
Nicolò frowns. “How could his cousin have a sister who wasn’t also his cousin?”
Yusuf is only mildly annoyed that Nicolò is interrogating a clearly speculative turn of phrase; he is more than prepared to delve into the implications and possibilities, now he’s been asked, but when he opens his mouth, Nicolò hastily says, “Never mind, I apologize, it doesn’t matter.”
Yusuf shuts his mouth, feeling vaguely stymied, a little insulted, and yet strangely pleased. Nicolò knows him so well.
He blinks at that thought, because of course that is the case, and why would he think about it? Certainly there’s no reason for such warm feeling at such a small, honestly irritating thing – but it’s pleasant, he thinks firmly, definitively cutting off the strange tight spiral beginning in his chest. He will enjoy it, instead of beating it to death.
“He is attending a relative’s wedding.” Yusuf puts just a little haughty offense into his voice, hoping to make Nicolò smile. He succeeds, and spares a brief second to consider how that little quirk at the left side of Nicolò’s mouth is more gratifying than a broad grin from anyone else.
“You’ll be back there tomorrow?”
“Trying to be rid of me already?” Yusuf asks idly.
Nicolò sighs with mild exasperation. “I’d like to avoid revealing myself to a housebreaker because I think it is you, and I’d rather not think we have some sort of housebreaker when it is you; I didn’t find that to be very enjoyable.”
“But,” Yusuf says, just to be provoking, “would a housebreaker be likely to know about your specific accident? It might not be revealing after all.”
“I’m sure it would be when he stabbed me to death to prevent my raising an alarm, and then I got back up afterwards,” Nicolò responds drily.
“Well, if you are determined to be murdered.” Yusuf throws his hands up in mock exasperation.
“Hmm.” Nicolò face goes… quiet; not upset, precisely, but contemplative. If he hadn’t, Yusuf would not have marked anything odd in his own words, would not have remembered any long-ago moments of teeth-bared desperation which seemed as willing to die on his sword as to draw his blood – but of course, now he has.
He feels, for a moment, immensely annoyed. A life of uncomfortable reminders is, he cannot argue, a fair and reasonable consequence of some of the mistakes Nicolò has made, but Yusuf should not have to pay that price; what right does Nicolò have to remind him of these things?
It is utterly unfair, of course – for one thing, Nicolò has not said anything; for another, even if his memories are unpleasant, Yusuf does not have the same burden attached to them as Nicolò does; for a third, unhappy memories are a consequence of living; for yet another, this is a small and petty thing to be upset over, when he has forgiven the main offence…
“I am not, I think,” Nicolò says, after a moment. “I believe I will allow the housebreaker to knock me over the head and leave me in the storeroom.” He offers Yusuf a small smile.
Yusuf feels abruptly very relieved that Nicolò cannot see inside his head, as well a little ashamed of himself. It is not a productive emotion, and so he pushes it aside.
“I will be devastated to find you thus,” he returns cheerfully, with only a little effort. “But I am sure with a few weeks of rest you shall recover–”
“Yusuf!” Nicolò seems genuinely outraged. “That is not funny! Do not you even–!” He sputters to an incoherent finish, losing hold of his Arabic grammar the heat of his reply.
Yusuf, caught slightly by surprise despite already looking forward to the amused irritation he had anticipated causing, has no defences and consequently bursts out laughing.
Nicolò stares at him in disgust for a long moment, shaking his head very slowly back and forth, which only makes Yusuf laugh harder. His ribs are beginning to hurt. Finally, Nicolò says, in a tone which could cut glass, “I believe I will knock you over the head and leave you in the storeroom.”
Yusuf finally snorts himself to a halt and takes a deep, wheezing breath. “And well-deserved it would be, I’m sure,” he comments, voice only slightly strained.
Nicolò eyes Yusuf, fighting the slight curl of his lips. After a breath, he changes the subject with an abruptness that makes Yusuf want to start laughing again; he refrains.
“We’re out of coriander.”
“Indeed?”
Nicolò huffs at him a little. It shouldn’t delight Yusuf as much as it does. “As near as makes no difference, if you want supper to be any good.”
“I appreciate the information?” Yusuf isn’t sure why the contents of the spice cabinet are his fault when of course Nicolò has been doing most of the cooking lately – another aspect of his loosened restrictions he appears to be enjoying.
“It is a little early for me to be doing the shopping for our household,” Nicolò speaks slowly, as if to a child, “circumspect trips to the bathhouse aside. So since you are home already, and since you presumably do not wish our neighbours to think you are a cruel person who forces an invalid to shift for himself…”
“You want me to go to the market.”
“I want you to go to the market,” Nicolò agrees.
Yusuf considers feigning overblown reluctance, but the idea of getting out and stretching his legs in the sunshine is appealing enough that his heart wouldn’t really be in the performance. Instead, he offers a mildly melodramatic, “Your every wish is my only errand.”
Nicolò glances away instead of continuing the joke or showing any sign of amusement, restrained or otherwise. This is unusual enough that Yusuf wonders if his friend finds him annoying, just now – but Nicolò just says, composedly, “You should bring back some garlic as well.”
Yusuf wishes idly that he’d saved ‘your every wish is my only errand’ and could use it in response to this, but Nicolò seems to have lost interest in being teased, so perhaps it is for the best. He wonders for a moment what strange mood it is the other man is in, since he rallied rather easily from the earlier memory of unpleasantness. But perhaps he is very distressed by lacking coriander, or perhaps he simply tired of their levity, or perhaps Yusuf read the interlude incorrectly, earlier, and he was the only one reminded of unpleasant history after all.
He doesn’t like that last idea, but he sets it aside, to be examined later, while he digs out a scrap of paper he’d ruined for serious use by drawing patterns on it while he’d been stuck on a particularly intricate passage in the trade agreements, in order to put down the entire list of what they need from the market. It’s a pleasant day, and he wouldn’t mind going just for two items, but offering to get anything else Nicolò is in need of seems to put the other man in a better mood, and Yusuf doesn’t wish to undercut that by forgetting something.
The afternoon sun is warm on his face, and the heat radiating from the streets and the buildings after soaking in it all day reminds him just a little of summers as a child. There’s no smell of the sea, and the language of the bustle around him is wrong, of course, but Yusuf isn’t particularly homesick at the moment, so such things are a pleasant alternate note, not a jarring missed step. He likes being outside, with a purpose, however simple, part of the larger crowd full of people with purposes, also outside, many of them also happy – and yet he himself is at this moment separate from the crowd, in that he is himself.
It sounds very profound, but the feeling itself is very simple, and one which existed before al-Quds and has no connection to any philosophical crisis.
Of course, Yusuf can never leave well enough alone, so he toys with the idea of his earlier discomfort as he walks, gets as far as admitting he dislikes the idea of reading his own feelings in Nicolò’s reactions instead of his friend’s true emotions, but not as much as he does the thought that he might have been the one dwelling on their unfortunate history, when such high sensitivity to the topic is now largely in the past – but then, he is in a good mood, and he simply doesn’t wish to interrogate the why of those feelings any further. His thoughts keep wandering away from the subject, chasing a snatch of music or a beam of sunshine or an unusually beautiful smile.
He buys everything on his list without having to consult it more than once – a small and insignificant victory to give him so much pleasure, but his mood is good enough that this fact only amuses him. Instead of turning back immediately, he wanders through several different areas of the market, idly examining brasswork and textiles which he has no intention of purchasing. It has been, he thinks, a long time since he did so. Yusuf feels at home in most markets, and while admittedly the vast majority of the time he spent in such places was related to his livelihood, he used to wander like this every now and then when he found the time. Sometimes he would end his afternoon with a gift for his mother or one of his brothers, if he found a suitable bargain – and more than once he stumbled upon a useful opportunity – but such things were rarely the purpose.
When he pauses too long in order to examine a particularly lovely silver bracelet, the shop owner smells a sale and begins to question him about his wife, his sister – who would surely appreciate such a gift, and at a bargain to please anyone! Why, if the seller’s own wife knew how little he was considering letting it go for, she would shake her head in sorrow, but Yusuf looks like such a good young man, one with an eye for jewelry and surely a mind to appreciate a good price…
The man isn’t bad, although Yusuf himself had always liked to be a little less obvious. It’s unlikely to work on him, even aside from the misdirected appeals about his family, because he knows every trick being used, but the knowledge that he could knock the price down considerably if he really tried almost has him bargaining for it.
But of course he has absolutely no need for the thing, so he pleads his unmarried state, and insinuates that he really has not brought enough money to even consider such a purchase.
“Oh, but if no wife, a handsome man like yourself must have an intended, or a lover?” the man presses. “Think how sweetly she will look on you when you present her with such a gift!”
Yusuf can’t keep his lips from twitching a little. Nicolò is the closest thing he has to a lover – indeed, he realizes with a slight shock, by most classifications, that is exactly what they are – and this is not the sort of gift he would appreciate.
“Oh,” he says regretfully, “I really only came to buy coriander. I certainly haven’t enough for such a pretty thing.” And then, to make sure the merchant doesn’t think he’s merely trying to drive the price down, he adds, “Perhaps I could return.”
“Ah, yes, take some time to think about it. You’re young, you have time.”
Yusuf makes a polite response, and walks away. In reality, he is probably more than half again the other man’s own age, but he certainly does have time. Infinite time, perhaps.
That’s a concept which has been preying on his mind, of late, in more ways than one, and too heavily to be easily dismissed now.
Infinite time ought to mean infinite opportunities, but it is already clear that isn’t entirely the case. There are any number of things which might technically be done, but which, it is plain to see, would be highly ill-advised to follow through on. Yusuf would not likely have been tempted to crown himself the king of anywhere or to become a famous poet, but other things are more relevant; he cannot imagine taking a wife or a lover – a committed lover, rather – with the plain knowledge that he will watch them die, and continue live on unceasingly with that pain – even if it could be contrived to do so without raising any undue fears or reprisals from anyone who discovered his secret, without lying to that hypothetical future lover. (He dodges away from even the thought of children, shuddering.)
There is, he supposes, nothing preventing a brief, casual encounter, if the right precautions are taken, but it has occurred to him recently that he has no reason for such a dalliance. As far as bedroom matters go, his activities with Nicolò are more than satisfying thus far, and anything he does not have there, he cannot expect to have with anyone who can only be a fleeting encounter.
When he’d first realized this, he’d toyed idly with the idea that maybe one day he would choose to go in search of a woman to bed – maybe in a century or so, for variety, since it seemed like something that ought to be desired. But while the logic seems hypothetically sound, Yusuf can’t find the idea especially attractive; it is, instead, actively unpleasant. He has most of what he wants already, and as much as he does tend to miss the possibility of kissing his partner in the moment, he doesn’t particularly think that indulging with a stranger instead would fill that gap.
Of course, with a serious relationship impossible and a casual one being entirely pointless, there is a strong possibility that Yusuf will spend the rest of his seemingly eternal life with Nicolò as his only bedmate.
This is, and has been when since it first crossed his mind, somehow disturbing, bizarrely thrillingly, and boringly obvious all at once, and as before he attempts not to dwell on the strange mix of emotions rising in his chest.
There are worse things, after all, then a foreseeable future he can spend going to bed with a handsome, talented man whom he likes, and who has so far proven both receptive and skillful. Given eternity – given centuries, rather, which is a more palatable way of thinking of it – and ruling out what is already proscribed, the odds are nonetheless high that Nicolò will be able, and likely willing, to give him whatever he thinks to ask for, and probably any number of things he never thought to want. Anything that might be done between them, in the fullness of time seems sure to be done, with only the one obvious exception.
It ought to feel like a cage, the predictability and inevitability of it, but it doesn’t. Yusuf can’t put his finger on why, exactly – perhaps that particular aspect of their relationship is still new enough to make the idea primarily titillating rather than confining, perhaps he has already accustomed himself a future with Nicolò as his sole companion in enough other ways that one more is of no consequence, perhaps it is something of a relief at this juncture not to have to wade through quite as many choices in the matter.
Despite that, when he contemplates the idea, Yusuf has found that there are things he can’t ask. The circumstances make him reasonably certain that when Nicolò explicitly ruled out all possibility of Yusuf fucking him, that it meant the obvious act only, and yet…
The slide of Nicolò’s cock between his thighs comes back to him viscerally, the sensation hot and heavy in his bones, on his skin. It’s not as if Yusuf has anything to compare it to, but it definitely felt like being fucked to him.
His thoughts always seem to linger on it even as he tries to turn them away, on Nicolò’s solid weight against his back, Nicolò’s hand warm and comfortingly large on his hip, Nicolò’s breath brushing his spine.
There have been times, since that morning, that he’s considered the endless decades ahead of them and thought it to be time enough for anything.
But that’s just cowardice, of course, squirming away from spelling things out even inside his own head, when what he really means – Yusuf declines to take a deep breath, huffing out an annoyed sound at his own evasions instead, and smiling an apology when a stranger turns to frown at him – when what he really means is, surely at some point he would have decided to let somebody fuck him, and since the reverse is off the table (since he has recently acquired a better idea of what it might be like and found it more than appealing), perhaps he should just… broach the subject outright.
He does – he has considered it, after all. Now that he has a little more suggestion what it would be like, the truth is that he’s begun to not infrequently consider it as an actively attractive concept. It seems a little harder to acknowledge, now that it’s not only some hypothetical fancy, but it is the truth nonetheless.
It’s not just one thing, making him hesitate, but of not inconsiderable weight is the fact that everything else that’s happened, everything he and Nicolò have done, seems to have happened more or less by accident – or if not by accident, at least without blatant premeditation.
Sitting down and having a conversation about what particular debauchery he would like to get up to next seems both far too ridiculous and uncomfortably meaningful in a way he hasn’t yet been able or willing to parse. Whether that is more due to the specific situation or the act in question… Yusuf can’t say, entirely. It’s certainly true that that the idea of allowing such a thing is a new one – not something he’d ever dismissed out of hand, but a notion that had never even occurred to him in any real sense, even when he was pressing Brahim against an out-of-the-way wall in Tiaret, kissing him with his entire body and beginning to wonder about what might be possible had they a little more privacy.
It’s not as if he didn’t know it was something men did – one heard things, after all, even before one knew they applied to one’s self, and Yusuf had always been a curious child, and an easily intrigued youth, listening to stories that were not meant for his ears and, on more than one occasion, demanding explanations his parents hadn’t enjoyed giving, although luckily those conversations had largely been around money and what was honourable (or dishonourable) conduct, rather than intimate particulars.
Most of it was harmless enough, if occasionally sobering – Yusuf’s bits and pieces of knowledge meant that he put together the true circumstances of more than one unfortunate event when other children still blithely believed what they were told, and he had sometimes been a little young to grapple with the realities of the situations in question – but it meant he was well-positioned to get a good idea of things people left half-said. And if sometimes that was horrible secrets and sometimes it was unfortunate habits, it was also, sometimes, salacious affairs.
So he knew the general way of things, even if rumour varied on just how pleasant (or unpleasant) both ends of the thing were, how precisely the act was executed, and various sundries of that sort. It was easy enough to work out, from both gossip and the general experience of life, that it could not really be so very terrible (or else why would anyone permit it? he’d gathered some men asked for the same from women as well, and certainly, given the very reasonable alternative they had access to, no one would agree if the experience was utterly horrid), that the rough particulars could not be entirely different from the ordinary act, and that there was probably rather more of it going on than most people acknowledged.
And yet he’d never put himself into the equation. He was old enough and established enough, by the time he was having any sort of love affairs, that the idea wouldn’t have arisen naturally, and it had simply not crossed his mind to submit himself to someone else in that way.
Yusuf stops beside the arch of a somewhat ostentatious doorway, struck by a thought. He’s passingly familiar with the generalities of life in Genova – and Pisa and Venice and for that matter many more distant places as well – but he’s never had cause to interrogate their notions of appropriate sexual behaviour. Neither of his brief, exciting affairs with other men had involved Christians. The specifics of… he hardly knows how to voice the idea in his own head. The specifics of what things mean might be best discussed, if he can find a way to do it; the trouble is that no one is well-suited to explain why they think the things they think. Of course, in all likelihood it is not especially different – Nicolò might not be staunchly against the experience for the specific reason that he is clearly more than old enough to grow a beard, but Yusuf’s instinct is that the connotations cannot be so very dissimilar. But he does not know, and if travelling has taught him anything, it is that unspoken customs are dangerous to break and difficult to discuss.
Ah, but if he wants to know what Nicolò is thinking, the best way is to ask. And he won’t, he thinks firmly, not least because he cannot think of a way to ask for an explanation of the reasoning behind Nicolò pre-emptive refusal to allow him that particular liberty without seeming to be questioning that refusal. Yusuf would never question a refusal by anyone, and he particularly would never wish Nicolò to believe that of him.
(It is also, perhaps, that part of him is irrationally afraid that Nicolò will refuse to explain, and that idea is painful in a way he doesn’t like to contemplate. As if his friend is not entitled to his privacy, if he wants it! Better for both their sakes to let it all be.)
Enough speculation, in that case. If somehow he asks for something that is somehow offensive or unworkable, Nicolò is more than capable of telling him so.
~
“Coriander!” Yusuf announces himself, lifting his purchases aloft as if they comprise a great victory. “Also garlic, and other sundries which are my gift to you.” He bows with a hand over his heart.
“A truly noble one,” Nicolò intones solemnly. “I can never hope to repay this debt.”
He’s no longer in whatever strange mood took him earlier, then. It’s something of a relief. Only one of them at a time ought to be in an odd temper, for the sake of keeping matters congenial.
That said, Yusuf sits in the kitchen while Nicolò cooks, chopping the occasional vegetable and making agreeable noises as Nicolò thinks aloud about various spices. Yusuf believes he’s doing quite well at holding up his end of the conversation, but halfway through an entertaining digression about the fishmonger who used to live down the way when Nicolò was a child, he stops and looks consideringly at Yusuf.
“You’re very quiet tonight.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Yusuf blurts out, and immediately regrets it, because he hadn’t intended to say anything – not until he had straightened out what was in his head. He bites his tongue in an involuntary reaction of sheer vexation, and regrets that as well, because it stings more than intended.
The sting eases immediately, of course, but the vague memory of the pain lingers, resentfully.
“Oh?”
“Ah-hmm,” Yusuf answers, as if he can mumble a reply and Nicolò will simply nod and pretend he heard it out of politeness – something he has never observed the other man to do in casual conversation, let alone when he is specifically waiting for someone to elaborate. Nicolò listens when people speak.
Yusuf knows, resignedly, that he deserves the incredulous gaze currently fixed on him, and yet he can’t entirely avoid stalling. He never intended to say anything, and he still doesn’t even know if he wants this enough to actually raise the subject.
“In fact I suppose I’m always thinking. I have been told,” he adds, with a slight archness, “that I think too much.”
“Yusuf.”
Yusuf pushes his mouth into an exaggerated wince in acknowledgement. He knows how to behave better than this. He tends to behave better than this. He hasn’t defaulted to inappropriate humour to try to wiggle out of uncomfortable situations since he was young and stupid – actually young, not just comparatively so.
“I don’t know how to talk about these things,” he forces himself to admit. “I’m not sure I know how to think about these things. And it’s embarrassing,” he adds, “because it’s such a small thing, relatively.”
“And these things?” Nicolò prods gently. He’s changed from unimpressed annoyance to sympathy, which makes Yusuf feel less guilty, but not really better. There’s still far too much attention on him, which puts more weight than there should be on what he says. But then Nicolò never does anything halfway.
Yusuf fidgets a little, but fights the urge to drop his eyes. “Later?” he asks. “I’ve not yet given up hope of marshalling my thoughts into some kind of order.”
This earns a twist of Nicolò’s mouth that might be a laugh in a more expressive man, and, pointlessly, Yusuf feels gratified by it.
While Yusuf would like to think that ‘later’ means, more or less, once the idea of speaking of such things no longer makes his stomach attempt to curl up and die, he suspects Nicolò is thinking more along the lines of ‘after supper’. He’s too old and too wise to his own tricks to stoop to picking a fight over semantics, so he firmly resigns himself to bargaining only for ‘tomorrow’.
“The hake,” he prompts, to nudge the conversation back onto safer ground, and Nicolò blinks at him for a brief moment before laughing briefly, more in surprise and good humour than mirth.
“You don’t really want to hear…”
“No, no, I was listening,” Yusuf protests, and he runs down the details of the story Nicolò was telling. He may have been distracted, but it would take a lot more to make him actively inattentive – not least because he was raised better than to be so rude, but perhaps more because he is always interested in what Nicolò finds to be worth telling. Yusuf imagines it is because Nicolò is the sort of man who rarely speaks without something worthwhile to say.
Besides, the fishmonger story had been shaping up to be very interesting.
Nicolò is laughing a little at Yusuf’s recitation – not least because he’d thrown in several details of a less-than-pertinent variety, as much to make Nicolò laugh as to prove he really had been taking it in – but he shakes his head and lets the corner of his mouth curl in the tiny smile that has become, at some juncture, Yusuf’s favourite, and he resumes telling the story even as his hands skillfully dice and chop and season.
Later, Yusuf is sure he will remember the story – it is entering his ears, if nothing else – but just at the moment he cannot pick out any details, because he is distracted by the ease with which Nicolò performs his tasks, the casual skill with which he tells the story, falling into Ligurian for all of the fishmonger’s lines. Yusuf suspects the story would be even funnier if he was better acquainted with the language, or the city, but this does not prevent him from laughing heartily, and sincerely, at every appropriate point.
Dimly, he is aware that the fascination which has him dwelling on the efficient movements of Nicolò’s hands, the ebb and flow of his voice and the curl of his mouth as he speaks, has little or no carnality to it. Equally dimly, he is aware that this should distress him, but Yusuf is strongly disinclined to consider why. It’s easier, more pleasant, to just sink into the happy warmth of the moment, rather than ruin it with overthinking.
And after all, he wasn’t lying when he told Nicolò he’d been accused of thinking too much. Why perpetuate his own flaws, when there will be enough time to worry later.
~
Yusuf is on his back in the sheets, mouthing hotly at Nicolò’s shoulder with Nicolò’s hand on his cock, when his mouth betrays him a second time.
“What you did,” he mumbles into Nicolò’s skin. “When we were – before – to yourself. You could…”
Nicolò pulls back, detaching Yusuf from his shoulder and stilling his hand. Yusuf bites back a whimper, more at the former than the latter.
“I thought I was doing that?” Nicolò is frowning in confusion, but his voice is lightly teasing.
“Mmh?” Yusuf asks articulately.
“When you say ‘before’…” Nicolò pauses and Yusuf attempts to marshal his wits enough to make the expected response, but he does not prove to be quick enough about it, “…you mean, before we came to Baghdad?”
“Ah.” Yusuf tries to think. “Yes. No.” No, the thing he’s specifically thinking of happened in this room. On this bed. A dizzying wave of heat swamps him at the thought.
“No?”
“Before we… before the touching.” Nicolò’s hand is distracting and torturous around his cock, still unmoving. Yusuf wants him to begin again more than he wants to be having this conversation. “Never mind it, if you’d rather not–” He hitches his hips, pointedly.
“Yusuf.” Nicolò sounds warmly amused, and his tone steals through every part of Yusuf’s body in a way that owes only a very little to lust. “This is what I did before. To myself.” He accompanies his words by beginning to move his hand again, but much more slowly than before. Yusuf is minded to bite him, just a little.
Yusuf reaches up to pull him back down, wanting to be closer, wanting the taste of Nicolò’s skin back in his mouth, but Nicolò resists his hands.
“Well?”
“Come here,” Yusuf says, because he’s lost all control over his own words. Nicolò smiles, but doesn’t move.
“I want to know what you meant, first.”
“Unnh,” Yusuf manages. “I don’t care what I meant. Just – faster, a little, and come here.”
Nicolò lets go of him entirely and sits back, bringing Yusuf half-upright with sheer outrage. “Nicolò–”
“Tell me what you want,” Nicolò coaxes. “I want to know; how else might I do it?” One third of his mouth twitches just slightly upward, forming a barely-noticeable smile that Yusuf’s heart clutches at, since it’s forbidden to his lips. “Don’t you want me to please you?”
Yusuf can’t help but groan at that, sparks crackling down his spine. Part of him wants to take hold of Nicolò, flip them over, and make the other man forget he’d said anything at all.
Instead he slides back down, closing his eyes until he’s able to make an attempt at regulating his breathing.
“It’s… I remember you –” It would be difficult enough to find the words even if his thoughts weren’t fuzzy and disjointed with lust. Yusuf bites the inside of his cheek sharply enough to force himself to refocus. He drops Sabir for Arabic; that helps as well. “If you wanted to use your fingers to…”
Nicolò’s face in the moment he realizes what Yusuf is saying is going to remain graven in Yusuf’s memory for as long as he lives – which is only right, because some things should never die, and the expression of revelatory wonder and arousal lighting his lover’s features is one of them.
Yusuf notes, absently, that the word lover has slipped into his thoughts again, but it doesn’t disconcert him as it did early. Maybe it has crossed his mind in such circumstances before; maybe his attention is simply too taken up with the way Nicolò’s mouth moves as he bites the inside of his cheek to particularly care.
“Is this what you have been… thinking about?”
Yusuf flushes, more than he feels should be possible when he’s already so hard. He doesn’t know if his reaction owes more to embarrassment or to the jolt of further arousal the topic incites, but the edges between them are tangled together regardless. “Among other things,” he allows.
“Mm.” Nicolò is putting up a creditable attempt at a neutral expression, but Yusuf knows him too well not to see the signs of how very far from dispassionate he really is in the too-careful set of his face, in the roll of his throat as he swallows a little too hard. “We said we would talk later.”
“You said that,” Yusuf points out, too forcefully. “And this is talking, the talking has been accomplished.”
Nicolò laughs a little, half-disbelieving and affectionate in a way that makes the inside of Yusuf’s chest squirm about. He looks wonderful, hair disarranged and face slightly flushed – more real than flawless, with the colour in his face a little patchy, and one half-lock of hair sticking out at an odd angle, so that Yusuf almost wants to laugh. It’s also somehow everything he could have wanted.
Nicolò’s hand is barely moving against him, and Yusuf wants to reach down and encourage him back into more productive action, use raw lust to drive out and distract from the peculiar and unsettling emotions that are displacing all of his internal organs. Instead, because he owes Nicolò better, he reaches down and moves Nicolò’s hand away entirely, so he can think properly.
“You don’t have any obligation,” he says, ignoring how desperately compelled he feels to reach out and fruitlessly smooth at that errant tuft of hair. “There’s absolutely no – I know I don’t sound as if I mean it, but I do, it’s just…”
“The moment.” Nicolò’s mouth twitches in acknowledgement, his tone warm enough to somehow worm its way into Yusuf’s belly and curl up there. “I’m prepared to take your sincerity on faith.” He smooths a palm lightly against Yusuf’s side, as if to apologize for the gentle teasing in his voice. He’s still breathing harder than usual, but otherwise seems largely unaffected by the situation they’re in; Yusuf finds Nicolò’s superior ability to keep his head in the midst of otherwise passionate circumstances entirely unfair.
Yusuf tips his head back and shuts his eyes, which aids his focus somewhat. “Please do nothing you are disinclined to do.” The words come out stilted, awkwardly flat, despite how much he means them; Yusuf suspects Nicolò has very little idea how relieving his easy assurance actually is. He’d be tying himself in knots without it. “I didn’t mean to ambush you. I only meant – if you would please do something.” He opens one eye. “Or nothing, but if a discussion is really necessary, perhaps you could back up a little.”
Nicolò chuckles, and he does shift his weight back, rising a little on his haunches, but unless Yusuf is drastically misreading the way his eyes have darkened, this is not likely to be a lengthy state of affairs. He runs a hand through his hair from front to back, leaving it disarranged right down the middle, and Yusuf’s stomach squirms with an excess of fondness that would be out of place in the moment if it didn’t feel so natural.
A thought – less than a thought, really, a fragment, an awareness without any solid thesis – winds its way across his mind, something about how surprising it is, the way that volatile desire and warm affection can coexist so easily. Yusuf lets it alone instead of attempting to pin it down; this is hardly the time to be chasing distractions.
“You want…” Nicolò begins, in a tone that clearly indicates he means to be painstakingly precise, but then he frowns and pauses. Yusuf can guess the problem – perhaps there is a word for this in Zeneize, but Yusuf is certainly not familiar with it, and it will therefore clarify nothing. He doesn’t even know a specific term in Arabic.
It’s not that it would be impossible for him to simply describe, explicitly, what he was referring to – that would confirm that they are on the same page, at least – but he’s not entirely comfortable doing that, not yet used to such things in a way that would allow it. The idea of hearing Nicolò lay out those details is both terrifying and far too arousing.
Instead, he says, “Yes,” and when Nicolò seems inclined to pursue the subject further he says, “Or I want whatever you think I mean. Either. Both. I trust you.”
Whether he means he trusts Nicolò in the truest sense, or simply that he has every faith in the other man’s knowledge of pleasurable activities, Yusuf hasn’t bothered to consider, since both are true, regardless. Nevertheless, something strange happens in Nicolò’s eyes at the words, pained and soft and intense, and the corner of his mouth twitches in a way that almost resembles trembling.
Yusuf has very little time to think about it, because Nicolò’s face disappears as he leans to the side to snatch something from beneath the bed or beside the table. He rights himself almost immediately, and heads off any questions by tipping Yusuf gently back onto the bed – the more surprising as Yusuf had not even realized that he had propped himself on his elbows – and slide further down, nudging Yusuf’s legs a little wider.
“If you’d given me a little notice,” he murmurs, voice just slightly breathy in way that thrills up and down Yusuf’s spine twice over, once for lust and once for something more tremulous, “we’d have more options, but I can work with this. Maybe it’s better to take these things slowly.” His mouth crooks with wicked humour. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Hah,” Yusuf responds, because his mouth has forgotten how to form the sound hmm. He can hardly be blamed for it, when one of Nicolò’s hands is feathering maddeningly light touches along his cock and the other, after a brief moment, is sliding smoothly along the curve of his ass into the cleft between his buttocks.
That touch is hardly less light, but he shivers with it deep in his bones.
Nicolò readjusts himself and flicks his tongue lightly across one of Yusuf’s nipples, seemingly more for something to do than any other reason. It’s urgently unsatisfying, and Yusuf squirms minutely under the touch, unwilling to risk any greater movement which might put a halt to the main event, but utterly unable to stay still.
A fingertip brushes across flesh much more sensitive than he ever thought to consider, and Yusuf shivers himself into stillness.
Nicolò raises his head just slightly; his breath whispers across Yusuf’s chest. “Well?”
“It is.” Nicolò has something on his fingers – oil, perhaps – which explains the smoothness of his touch and leaves sensitized trails against Yusuf’s skin. “Were you – were you intending for this?” Yusuf manages, which is probably incorrect grammar, although he doesn’t care. He doesn’t much care about the answer to his question, either, when the circumstances are so agreeable, but all his thoughts seem to be falling directly out of his mouth tonight.
“No,” Nicolò murmurs. “I thought you might like a turn…” He releases Yusuf’s cock briefly to slide a finger down Yusuf’s thighs, then returns to his maddeningly gentle strokes.
“Oh,” Yusuf says dumbly, his mind ceasing to form thoughts when presented with that image. It isn’t as if it had never crossed his mind, but the idea of Nicolò intending it, planning for it… the possibility is instantly much more real and much more erotic.
He shifts half-unconsciously, dropping one leg a little more to the side in encouragement, and Nicolò inhales deeply, his breath shaking with emotion. He circles a finger around the part of Yusuf’s ass they’re both focused on, making Yusuf’s breath catch.
He knows several different words for where Nicolò’s finger is, of course, but they are either too clinical or too vulgar to use in this moment. Fortunately, in his own mind the concept needs no description, and aloud, he can just say…
“Yes.” His voice catches as Nicolò rubs a little, gently. “Oh, yes, please…”
“Just this?” Nicolò murmurs against Yusuf’s breastbone, voice even but breath hot and almost damp with the exertion of controlling himself. Yusuf finds himself both wildly annoyed and heart-clutchingly fond; he has no will or wish to parse the nuances of the situation just at this moment, and he feels confident that even clear-headed, he would stand by the blanket permission he had thought was quite clear.
“Yes, no, don’t know what you’re asking,” he pants. “Do not care, do not stop, still trust you.” He leaves off the casual insult that wants to append itself to the end of the sentence – that hasn’t been their way with each other in decades, and though the likelihood is that Nicolò would laugh it off, Yusuf certainly has enough self-control not to be needlessly unkind.
Given the state he’s in, it is perhaps equally likely that if he tried to call Nicolò an idiot or an annoyance it would come out sounding like a besotted endearment, which would no doubt embarrass both of them.
Nicolò’s eyes are fastened on Yusuf’s face, his own unreadable, although in truth Yusuf had half-expected to be laughed at. Finally, slowly, Nicolò says, “Very well,” and wriggles himself quite smoothly farther down the bed. Yusuf’s cock, which is by now not unfamiliar with similar situations, jerks against his stomach, leaking onto Nicolò’s fingers, and he bites down on the inside of his cheek a little too hard to bite back a moan.
It stings sharply for a moment and then immediately heals, and truthfully Yusuf cannot bring himself to care.
Nicolò retrieves the bottle of oil from wherever he had put it, abandoning Yusuf’s cock and ignoring his plaintive noise of protest, and then rolls half to the side to add more to his fingers. The angle is too awkward for Yusuf to see precisely how he does it, though he is suddenly very interested to know. He doesn’t know enough about this business to know if it matters how one applies it, and his head is buzzing too strongly with half-formed thoughts and stupefying heat to get any further along that line of thinking before Nicolò is leaning over him and pressing very gently at his entrance with one finger.
Yusuf makes a small, shocked noise, not expecting to and almost equally surprised by the sound itself. There’s so much contained in the sensation; in most ways it’s not different from what led up to this, but somehow he is nevertheless utterly unprepared. He’s never been breached, he thinks, breathlessly, which is utter nonsense when he’s had a sword between his ribs and an arrow in his eye and that was unlike this in every way because truthfully it was very unpleasant and he’s not sure he can even remember what unpleasantness is just now so it is very strange to remember that Nicolò also put that sword through his chest but if he were to do it again Yusuf is possessed with the notion that it would not hurt, that Nicolò can just reach right into his chest and squeeze his heart and that is perfectly acceptable and even desirable –
“Yusuf,” Nicolò murmurs, his tone verging on concern, and Yusuf makes a noise of what he hopes is general encouragement, because his mind will not stop babbling at him but he certainly cannot speak. It comes out higher than he intended, and he does his best to swallow and close his mouth, because it has been hanging slack without his permission.
Nicolò slides a little deeper, and Yusuf grunts, because it seems a more appropriate alternative to squealing. The sensation would probably only be strange if he wasn’t already so aroused, but he is and as such it is strange in a very different way. He can’t quite pin it down, whether it’s the whisper of taboo or the fact of putting himself under another’s tutelage or simply that he has some undiscovered weakness for this act, but Yusuf feels hot all over, wanting at the same time to fall back and spread his legs in encouragement, to shut his eyes and hide his face with an arm like an overcome innocent, to pull Nicolò closer and kiss him until they’re both mindless.
Instead, he reaches down to do something, without really knowing what, and the result is his palm pressed flat against the back of Nicolò’s shoulder. It’s somehow more than enough, just the matching heat of their skin, and he can feel the muscles shift as Nicolò pulls back – Yusuf can feel him withdrawing – and asks, “Just this? Another?”
“Please,” Yusuf mumbles, which cannot be helpful, but Nicolò only smiles, setting off a warm sunburst in his chest which is much gentler than the heat inhabiting the rest of his body. His muscles flex under Yusuf’s hand as he adjusts his angle, and then he pushes forward again with two of his fingers.
“Unh.” Yusuf can barely hear himself; he feels as if his ears are ringing, although they aren’t, as if all the breath has punched out of his chest, although it can’t have. It ought to hurt, he feels vaguely, and yet it doesn’t – Nicolò’s fingers are so large and he can feel himself stretching to accommodate them, so odd and bewildering and like nothing he’s ever felt before. His cock is leaking onto his belly and he doesn’t even have the presence of mind left to reach for it. Nicolò pushes in a fraction more, every movement making Yusuf grunt and whine and squirm against him for more, even though it burns a little, because it burns. It’s – he’s so full, in a way he doesn’t know how to process, he can’t seem to hold a thought for any more than a moment, but those moments are full of memories of how large Nicolò’s hands are, vain speculation about what his cock would feel like, everything hazy with heat and lust and that sunburst of satisfied affection beneath his sternum.
Nicolò must have reached as far as he intended to – he is touching the inside of Yusuf right now, with his fingers, in the perfectly ordinary way that perfectly ordinary men do without slicing each other open, and somehow Yusuf is awash with delighted incredulity at that fact – because he pulls his hand halfway out and then presses forward again, slowly, and then again, faster, and once more, and again.
It's wonderful. Yusuf is panting for breath, air coming ragged into his lungs, because surely there are more important things than breathing. He manages a few actual words of encouragement, but with no clear idea which language he’s using. The push and pull and clutch of Nicolò’s fingers and his own body make such things immensely inconsequential. Everything seems inconsequential just now, when he would be quite willing to lie here forever, and let Nicolò do this to him as long as he might be willing –
Nicolò presses in firmly, twisting his fingers in a way that makes Yusuf’s legs tremble, and Yusuf realizes abruptly with a shock that this is what it feels like to be fucked.
His cock jerks against his skin and for a moment he thinks he’s going to spill across his own stomach just from the thought, but that would mean the end of it, so he shuts his eyes and grits his teeth and pants through several seconds of self-denial until he’s safe again, if still hard and wanting.
Nicolò had slowed his movements, because he has always seemed to know what Yusuf needed. Now he’s practically still, and Yusuf when manages to say, “Don’t stop,” words clumsy in his mouth because his tongue has become unwieldy and useless, he chuckles fondly and instead of resuming, bends his fingers a little. Yusuf grunts, because everything Nicolò does feels good, but then Nicolò does it again and this time something about it sends white-hot pleasure shooting up Yusuf’s spine. He gasps, almost choking on his own saliva, and twists, writhing on Nicolò’s fingers.
“I – no, I’m going to – I –”
Mercilessly, Nicolò shifts his weight just enough that he can lean forward and close his soft, wet mouth around Yusuf’s cock, then presses in that same exact way.
Yusuf’s vision whites out entirely.
The tide of pleasure sweeping over him is so intense that he loses track of his own body, no longer remotely preoccupied with where or what he is. If there was any room left in his mind for thoughts, the sole remaining one would be that he has never felt anything like this.
Yusuf loses several seconds, only vaguely aware as he blinks himself back to reality that some amount of time has gone by – more than he can quite account for, but apparently not enough for Nicolò to become concerned. His lover is balanced on knees and one arm over Yusuf’s body, flushed and smiling – not smugly, though he would be well entitled, but simply pleased.
He isn’t quite confident of his ability to speak yet, so Yusuf hums in a deeply satisfied way, hoping it conveys his feelings. The sensation of having had something inside of him is still highly present; Yusuf clenches his muscles curiously and can’t hold back a small noise. It doesn’t hurt, precisely, but his body is decidedly conscious of what just took place, and equally aware of the present absence of Nicolò’s fingers.
“You’re well?” the owner of those fingers enquires. He seems reasonably confident that the answer will be in the affirmative, but of course he would ask anyway. Both of these things make Yusuf’s chest swell, even as the way that Nicolò is breathing somewhat harder than his exertions alone would have merited send a lazy spark of desire on a slow circle through his abdomen. He’s too sated for it to do anything but slowly evaporate, but the sensation is nonetheless pleasurable.
Idly, Yusuf’s eyes follow the flush from Nicolò’s face down his chest, and though the angle is not the clearest, it is nonetheless easy to tell that the other man is still tremendously aroused. In an ideal world, Yusuf would tip him over onto the bed and, miraculously knowing whatever act Nicolò himself had the greatest affinity for, bring him immediately to the same kind of spectacular climax. In a more realistic one, perhaps he would settle for the best cocksucking he was capable of.
In the real world, Yusuf is lethargic and slightly stupid from pleasure and satisfaction, and he has minimal control over his own limbs, so instead he opts to drag Nicolò up next to him and stroke him clumsily until he grunts and sighs and spills over Yusuf’s presently unskilled fingers. It takes a satisfyingly short amount of time, and does just as well as an answer to Nicolò’s question as anything.
“I could make it better for you,” Yusuf murmurs, once Nicolò has his breath back, “but I believe you have damaged my brain.”
“I always knew you kept it down there,” Nicolò murmurs without opening his eyes.
It takes a moment for Yusuf’s mind, still somewhat sluggish, to parse this, and once it does, he is caught between absolute affront and unrestrained hilarity. While he lies there with his mouth partly open, the corner of Nicolò’s mouth twitches slightly, and Yusuf gives in and dissolves into laughter.
After a moment, Nicolò shifts to sit up, smiling more openly now.
“Cruel,” Yusuf tells him, once he’s managed to half-restrain his amusement. “Utterly untrue. I would say something entirely worse to you just now, but a passing scoundrel has liquefied my brain.”
Nicolò stretches a little, allowing Yusuf to appreciate the shift of flesh and muscle in his torso. “Such slander. Would a scoundrel fetch you clean cloths?” He pushes himself to rise, and Yusuf almost objects, but choses not to. He doesn’t anticipate having any trouble moving about, but is still entirely aware of the strangeness of having just been… he’s not sure there’s a specific verb, but perhaps in Zeneize; he can always ask. It occurs to him that he may still be able to feel Nicolò’s fingers inside him in the morning, and that…
That is not an unappealing idea.
Nicolò is more active in assisting Yusuf than usual, and while Yusuf is of course perfectly capable of cleaning himself, he does not actively object. There’s a care, if not a caution, in Nicolò’s touch as well as in the glances he seems to think Yusuf can’t see him stealing, that seems a product more of tenderness than anything else. There’s no need for it, especially since Yusuf can’t seem to stop smiling, but perhaps those who take the woman’s part in such acts often require coddling afterwards, or perhaps their pride does, and Nicolò may think that what they’ve done is close enough. Whatever the custom in Genova, Yusuf himself has no second thoughts, and no expectation of having any in the future – and for that matter, neither do actual women, at least in his very limited experience.
In evidence of this, he sighs in a very satisfied matter, once Nicolò puts out the light, and says, “You were right, talking about it was a very good idea.”
“This is what you were thinking about?”
“It was certainly what I was thinking about by the time we got in here.”
“And what else have you been you considering?” Nicolò asks, both warmly and gently.
There are any number of other things, but one in particular has been haunting him, and Yusuf is too tired and pleasure-addled to restrain himself. After a brief pause, he says, “If his uncle or his aunt had been married twice, his cousin might have a half-sister who wasn’t also his cousin. Or if he considered his cousin’s husband, or wife, to also be his cousin, and they had a sister, she wouldn’t be his cousin.”
It takes Nicolò a moment, but then he sits upright in bed and cries, aggrievedly, “Yusuf!”
Yusuf can’t help chuckling to himself, even though he was entirely serious. He stops when Nicolò hits him with a pillow, but he manages to wrestle it away and secure it under his own head, and thus considers himself to have won.
“Never mind,” Nicolò says sulkily, settling himself back down. His petulant tone, perversely, makes Yusuf want to cozy up to him and bury his nose in the back of Nicolò’s neck.
“The sort of things that go along with it,” Yusuf tells him instead. “The obvious ones. And Kazem’s cousin’s sister, because you did ask me – twice.”
“Just now doesn’t count,” Nicolò mutters, clearly more for the form of it than anything else. “What’s obvious may not be the same to everyone, and I wouldn’t want to presume–”
“I don’t know if you want to fuck me,” Yusuf tells the ceiling bluntly. “And if it’s included in… I will not mention it again, but if it isn’t, I think I would like that. Later,” he adds, because he really does not want anything other than sleep tonight.
“Ah.” Nicolò’s voice is strained, and he says nothing else, but Yusuf believes – or hopes – that it is for a good reason. He doesn’t think Nicolò would have difficulty telling him no.
“And if there’s anything else that goes along with that, or with this, my education has been lacking, but I am more than willing be shown,” he adds. “I meant what I said earlier; I may not always know the specifics of what I assent to, but I do know when I’m ignorant and I should think I know your character well enough to say I trust you to do whatever you choose to me and not have it considered bravado or foolishness.”
“Yes, I understand.” Nicolò sounds rather choked now, and Yusuf turns toward him in concern, but the other man is lying perfectly still. After a moment he adds, sounding perfectly ordinary, “I shall think on that.”
