The air had a liminal edge to it, like the smell of petrichor, or the bite of a crisp wind heralding a new season. The urgency of night slowly fading with the impending sunrise was like the ticking of an explosive hidden somewhere in the dark cloudy curtain of the sky.  Paolo and Enrique were walking hand in hand just chatting and enjoying the walk and each other’s company.

Paolo was young, scruffy, with a wiry, short body covered with thick abundant hair, or ‘fur’ as he called it. He had on a studded collar, and a thin t-shirt under an open zip-up hoodie. The man whose hand he was holding was forty-six years older than he was. Standing much taller than his companion at well over 6 feet tall, with that elegance that comes from having long limbs. He was 'willowy' in a dark-skinned-ancestors-chanting-songs sort of way.

To call Enrique ‘sophisticated’ was a mild insult to how much class he actually had. He kept his long, neat, salt-and-pepper locks bound with a dark red, thick ribbon tied in a neat bow. His hand nearly swallowed the significantly smaller hand of the barely-reaching five-foot-tall twenty-one-year-old Paolo’s pale by comparison hand with chipped dark nail polish on every nail and palms that were always clammy from anxiety. 

He was gripping tight tonight, but Enrique just endured it and sent his loving energy in the small embrace of their hands. 

“I told you to bring a bigger jacket than that little thing,” Enrique chided. Paolo kicked a rock on the sidewalk they were walking on.  

“I’m not cold, I’m fine. Just got a full bladder.”

“Me too. That latte was worth every ounce of discomfort I am in now, though.  What was the name of that café, do you remember?”

“We’ll look on the walk back.”

“Mmhmm, alright.”

Paolo looked up at Enrique and gave him that ‘boy with a crush, I’m so lucky he likes me back’ sort of shy smile.  Enrique chuckled.  “I worry for the day you don’t look at me like a new pair of shoes you’ve been praying for to fulfill your every athletic dream in life.”

“Will never happen.”

“Really?”

“You’ll always be my new pair of shoes, Ricky-dahhhrling!” Paolo said with a dramatic flair in his voice. 

“Oh lawd, you tryin' to out-Queen an old Queen? You know you’re gonna lose at that, right?” 

Paolo chuckled.  “Maybe. Won’t I get points for my audacity and fierceness?”

Enrique narrowed his eyes.  “You really want to push me, don’t you?”

“Admit that I am charming and adorably fabulous, that you find me so irresistible that you must suffer me my participation prize,”  again with the dramatic humor and leaning his head on Enrique’s arm so that he had to tip his head up to look at the face he loved upside down, while Enrique looked back at him with a smirk of muted amusement on his face.

“Stop being cute when we aren’t in a safe place for me to fuck that teasing look off your face,”  Enrique flirted, his voice held a Dominant edge to it that made Paolo shiver. 

“Impossible, Queen Ricky, so impossible, you should know this by now. You’ve had SIX whole months out of the whole year we have been together, living with me and enjoying the ever-present joy of my companionship and company, have you learned nothing?” Paolo chided with an exaggerated  ‘tsk' sound.

Enrique turned away from the dramatic love of his life, stopped walking, and stared straight ahead at a wrought iron fence.  “We’re here.”

“What?” Paolo asked with a smile in his voice then turned to face where the other man was facing and the smile slowly faded until his face was as neutral as the thousands of stones in that graveyard. 

This was a tradition, every year. For Paolo - it was the ultimate test of his relationships. He never had a relationship survive this test. He was really hoping that Enrique would be different.  He may go back to casual sex and say fuck relationships if this went poorly.  He started walking toward the fence and beyond it inside the graveyard grounds.  He walked with such a silent purpose to his stride, like he was being called there like he had done it countless times before, and he had.

Enrique put his hands in his pockets and took long strides to follow him, solemnly, like some sort of sentry making sure that Paolo’s soul would not get attacked by the angry spirits that inhabited graveyards.  And not just angry spirits of the dead either - but of the living, the dead left behind. Paolo was angry enough without having some astral hitchhiker making him worse.

Eventually, Paolo stopped at a grave that had an angel weeping atop the large headstone. It had the name of a man.  The day of death was less than a decade ago. The surname was the same as Paolo’s deadname. He told Enrique that deadname, but not the other one. The older man understood to never use that name but was unsure why he was being told it at all; now he knew why. So he would understand this moment.  He stood there watching as Paolo just glowered at the headstone. 

“This is the man who made me. Before I learned how to make myself into myself,”  Paolo said, his voice trembling with emotion but the volume was low and clear. The night grew still as if in respect to the moment as well.  The ticking of the oncoming daylight -- seemed to be paused, in a way.

“You mean that is your biological father?” Enrique said, his tone was solemn, blank, but compassionate. Paolo nodded, as he sucked in a sort of sob-soaked breath. 

“And my abuser.”

And then with determined, and angry motions, he unzipped his pants sagged them down a bit, and angled back before shooting a stream of piss right at the gravestone.  Watching the stream,  spray powerfully across the name, Enrique lowered his head as if out of respect. He clasped his hands behind his back. 

“How did he abuse you, Paolo?”

Letting the stream finish and pulling his pants up before he spoke, he turned to face Enrique, this tall elegant man, who was so composed and beautiful. So perfect in ways that Paolo envied that he would never be.

“He would use slurs at me. I felt powerless every day. He beat my mother. Too much." Paolo paused as if taking a moment of silence for his mother. "She never had much of a maternal instinct, which explains why she found it so easy to just leave me with the fucker, so he was left to raise me on his own into this anxious turd of existence until I, one day, had enough of his abuse and I left too. Like mother like --”  and his voice broke he averted his eyes away from Enrique’s listening stare. 

“Son. Like mother, like son,” Enrique said simply.  And Paolo broke into angry sobs. 

Enrique held space, listening in silence.  He didn’t step forward to offer affection or to say an obligatory apology.  Something in him knew on an intimate level that an apology would feel hollow to someone who had really gone thru some shit. And someone who was abused did not always welcome being touched, especially not when the traumatic memories were vibrant and fresh in the mind.

“Do you know what it is like to hurt like this, Enrique?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“I was born in an older time, remember? My great-grandparents were slaves. I was fortunate enough to hear the stories and learn my history from their exact words as shared with my grandparents. Then to my parents who shared the stories with me. Their firstborn son, their only surviving child. I am a part of an almost lost generation of history, of time.  You can’t find that kind of history lesson I got from listening to the words of my grandparents talk about how they grew up.  Or my parents sharing their struggles after they passed on.  You cannot Google that. That sort of pain is whispered and caught in a passing comment someone didn't mean to say. That shared pain passed down over and over becoming just part of 'going thru it'.  It makes light and little of the intense internal struggle that it is to be born different. To so many folks, I was just a quiet Black boy in the rural deep south.  So many people tried to beat the gay out of me, slowly strain the sugar out my step with slurs and drugs."

He took a moment and exhaled a soft shaky breath before continuing with a shake of his head, "It didn’t work.  Still gay. Still here. Alive. Thriving. But, I held hate in my heart for so, so many years,” he said softly,  for a brief moment his eyes watered, and he looked away.  He blinked and the tears receded.  “Until I didn’t,” he said as he looked up at Paolo with a bittersweet expression of both hope and wisdom laced with memory and solidarity.

“What changed?”

“I did, honey. I changed.”

Paolo turned and frowned at the gravestone.  Then turned away, and folded his arms across his chest.  “I have taken lovers here before, no one has ever been able to handle this.  They all break up with me after this.  I always thought they felt I was too broken to love once they knew my past”

Enrique bowed his head in understanding. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Dawn inched closer as the night was receding into the liminal space of pre-dawn, with birds making songs in the air and the energy shifting as Time stretched and woke up with the sunlight making a corner of the sky orange, and purple kissed among the faded blue and gray of the cloudy sky.

“Get on your knees, Paolo,”  Enrique said, his voice soft but firm.  Paolo looked at him, confused. 

“Why?”

Unzipping his pants, Enrique replied, “So I can baptize you.”

Slowly, Paolo analyzed intuitively what would happen next, before getting down to one knee, then the other.  He looked up at Enrique, who moved closer to shower his golden stream of piss all over his lover, it was near-scalding warm in contrast to the cool brisk pre-dawn air.  There were no sacred words said, just the hiss of the stream splatting out onto Paolo’s furry face, and the patchy grass that spread all over most of the graveyard. And the soft gasps of pleasure, and joy that Paolo made.

The stream went on for what felt like a long time.  Paolo started rubbing his face and hair as if bathing in the baptismal golden shower.  It was all so queerly apostolic, as one Elder gay baptized his younger gay lover with his piss. Once it drizzled to a stop and shook for any extra drops, he was about to tuck it away - Paolo reached out with a hand on Enrique’s wrist. 

“Please, permit me a taste?”

Enrique exhaled a rough exhale, but then he smiled.  “Of course.”

Inching forward still on his knees, across the damp grass, he took the still flaccid cock in his mouth, sucking slowly, reverently,  inching more in with the suction of his lips and mouth, savoring each taste, and feeling the girth expand as Enrique’s shaft grew hard in Paolo’s mouth.  

“Shiiit… that’s it, you know how I like it…” Enrique hissed under his breath, and tipped his head back a moment, strangling a groan’s volume as best he could, as his hand reached down to cup Paolo’s head, and grip the scruff of his hair. He spread his stance a bit wider, once he was fully hard and started to gently fuck into Paolo’s mouth. 

Dawn was yawning brighter in the sky before Paolo was swallowing the sticky load down his throat.  He had thought of spitting the cum on the gravestone but no.  This was his.  His first communion, and his ambrosia. His blessing.  He swallowed every fucking drop, then looked up at Enrique with a face glowing with piss and sweat, like bastardized queer anointing oil, as he wiped the drool from his mouth with the back of his hand.  And smiled. 

Enrique was trying to calm his breathing from cumming very hard moments before.  “Tuck me in and rise - reborn,” he whispered.

Paolo leaned in and tucked the flaccid dick back inside the pants, zipped up, and pressed a reverent kiss over the fabric, then got up easily without using his hands to push himself up off the ground. 

He looked up at Enrique, smiling. “Thank you.”

The older man just nodded, still trying to catch his breath.  He may have been healthy for his age, but he still was over sixty years old and that orgasm was a pretty potent one as orgasms go.  “Of course.”

“Do you need to sit?”

“No, no no, I’m fine. I … just came really fucking hard.  I’m an old Queen let me wheeze a moment - I’m not dying. In fact, I hope to live long enough to do this for you next year and the next … if you need it.”

“I’d like that.”

“Very well. Can we head back now? It’s gonna be hot soon with that sun all naked in the sky like it is; noon-hot all damn day. You know I don’t do well in this summer weather.”

“Oh, you’re made of sugar, my poor beloved Queen Ricky!” Paolo was back to being dramatically humorous. 

“That’s right, I gotta have cool, brisk weather to maintain this sweet soul of mine.”

They started walking out of the graveyard at a leisurely pace, Enrique walked slower so that Paolo could keep up, given he had a longer stride. 

“Or you’ll turn into a surly old bastard?”

“Oh no, not me.  You’re the bastard”

“That’s true, a reborn bastard.”

Enrique paused and leaned down to kiss Paolo on the lips for a long moment before pulling back.  “Yes, you are,”  he said, then reached for  Paolo’s hand, and they continued the long walk back to the apartment that they shared, stopping at that Latte Café place to at least make note of the name to go by there when they were open as it closed when they walked by it.   

And the whole time they walked, Paolo could not stop smiling.