This is not about love or tenderness. There is neither compassion nor sharing in their actions. Shame, on Luc’s part? The harshness of his caresses suggests as much. Rémi loses his composure. His own shame is even more palpable. He wants it. Everything is grey? No, at night everything is blinded. They grant themselves permissions they readily believe forbidden by day. To silence his conscience, Rémi becomes the prey of a clumsy Luc, at the threshold of pain.
With his fingers, Luc forces Rémi’s mouth open, and for a moment Rémi imagines a slower exploration of desire. But Luc withdraws them, spreads Rémi’s buttocks, and plunges his wet fingers into the other forbidden mouth. He barely listens to Rémi’s protests, telling him not to go too fast.
And yet, yet, always desire; the pain that, through sheer habituation, turns to pleasure, the senses on alert, the glands jostled, becoming, for the occasion, the skins of fragile drums, tearing almost blissfully. Above all, that magical lull when Luc, once inside him, lets go, stops moving, his damp chest against Rémi’s rigid back, his breath in the hollow of his ear, his teeth wanting to devour the globes, their breathing in unison, the river pursuing its course without agitation.
Then… Luc’s astonishing, sudden gentleness as he runs his hands along Rémi’s muscles while playing inside him. The obvious desire to give him pleasure. His hands everywhere again until he comes, murmuring, “Yes!”
Then… still inside him, Luc grasps his companion’s cock. Rémi tightens his anus around Luc’s shaft. He becomes the second sex. Pierced and piercing. He comes. Happy and constrained. Rémi weeps from it, convinced. It lasts so little time. Luc swiftly pulls out, abruptly cancelling the pleasure he had given Rémi. The senses return to their customary mode, resume their roles as unfeeling bureaucrats, noting the damage, the injuries, blandly reporting them to the brain, which grows agitated, protests before the closed door of Rémi’s consciousness, and, as if to punish him, intensifies the pain, sharpens the lingering smells.
“Come on,” Luc says.
“Where?”
“Follow me. We’re going for a swim.”
“In the river?”
“There’s a little lagoon over there. You’ll see.”
Rémi follows him. He lets Luc walk ahead so he can watch him. He forbids himself from falling in love, yet again, with this man who remains too much a stranger. Their nakedness in the night is itself a gift from heaven.
When they reach the foot of the cliff marking the eastern edge of the property, Luc shows him a small pool, almost a bath, formed by the now-receding tide.
“Is this water clean?”
“Don’t be such a city idiot.”
Luc is the first to plunge in. Rémi does the same. The water is warm and reaches their waists.
“Sit there.”
Rémi obeys. Beneath the water, a small rock serves as a chair. Luc stands before him and kisses him.