The Town After Venice (Merchant of Venice, Antonio/Bassanio, R)
Title: The Town After Venice
Author: Aerachnae
Fandom: The Merchant of Venice
Pairing: Antonio/Bassanio
Rating: R
Summary: Antonio muses on his lost relationship with his lover Bassanio. Takes place after the events of the play.
Disclaimer: Public domain, baby!!! Yeah!!!
***
In the early Springtime Venice has a frostwarmth you can feel on your skin. In this new Belmont, though, the spring frost was enough to choke your heart with ice while you slept.
Antonio went to bed with cold for comfort late that night, and woke with no courage in the morning. He was now richer than he had ever been before, and instead of paying a debt with his flesh, he had won a lottery prize. And who had defeated his rival the usurer but his rival the bitch Queen, the talented crossdresser, the well-versed lawyer and judge and jury, and supposed virgin to boot.
Antonio lay in an entirely separate wing of the palace from where his sometime lover and his triumphant champion lay, together, in a smoldering marriage bed, supported by chance and games and blanketed with money. He woke, hoping to be hungover, sick and feverish, but was slapped with the sobriety of the chill in his bedroom and realized that, for all he drank, he had not drank enough.
Every detail of the events of the night before were preserved for his constant and repetitive perusal. The greater events themselves blended into a montage; the white dresses, the cream on the cakes and in the Tuscan sauces, the burning candles, beeswax on fire, the constant throbbing music, courtly waltzes that must be celebrated standards in purgatory. But he hadn't touched anyone. He had kept to himself, even when asked to hand off the ring, standing to the side of and a little behind his beloved, Antonio had leaned forward and dropped the little--too little, too fragile to be put on the finger of such a bald-spirited and manly warrior--ring into the hand of his best friend, and turned his head away.
He preferred the whirl of memory to the dwelling of detail, but had less control of his mind this morning than he would have had, had he only gotten drunker and been forced to concentrate on finding a place to vomit repeatedly in this strange house. Palace.
He could see his breath in front of him when he breathed out, and it formed a picture of isolation. It showed him his future. He ran his hands, smooth merchant's hands, hands that held pens and signed the documents that employed the rougher hands of the captains and crew of his ships, over the top blanket. It was a lamb's wool. Beneath that was a quilt, stuffed with down, beneath that another, coarser wool, and finally this softer material he'd never seen before. Probably imported. Eastern. It was very fine.
His nightshirt had been furnished him, like his new suit for the wedding, by the generous mistress of the house, now his lord's lady. It was linen, and he ran his right hand over the material, feeling his rib cage starting to stick out even through the fabric. He had not taken a good meal in several days, even preferring to forgo most of the wedding feast, eating only enough not to look out of sorts or ungrateful. With his left hand he wiped the sleep from his eyes, pressing down on the bridge of his nose, where not even a welcome headache would form to distract him from his thoughts.
Through the window, a soft light shone weakly. The useless sun was just coming up, and no one else in the house, not even the servants, would be awake for some time. Antonio knew he wouldn't be disturbed, he knew also that he would be left alone. And that suddenly those two things were somehow different.
He ran his left hand over his hair, bristling at the wild ends. It didn't matter what he looked like, and the care he had taken to prune and perfume every inch of himself would be wasted, would be for no one, would be for himself alone. His head felt cool, his throat chilled, though the back of his neck less so where it touched the pillow.
He took a handful of the top blanket and squeezed, clenching his eyes and hoping to produce a sob, or some kind of reaction that would exhaust him into another few hours of sleep. He could only take a deep breath, and let it out again.
The dawn was quiet. No report of ships departing and docking, coming into and out of harbor, not outside the house at least. This land was insulated from the world, insulated from the trade and the correspondence with other peoples, kept separate from the passion and vigor of everyday life.
It was a friendship separated like two halves of a broken statue, each wrapped in burlap and put away separately.
And the word friendship had become such a loaded term that Antonio did take it for granted, and didn't grow nervous when his friend talked of wooing, or took home the occasional barmaid, because Antonio's bed was where he would rest consistently, where he would play and talk, amuse and be amused. And Antonio's bed, way back in Venice, was empty.
As Antonio himself, in this new town, was empty, too.
He moved his right hand from where it had been resting on his concave belly to the hem of his nightshirt, pulling it up by increments, until it was bunched up around his middle. He felt for his tired, soft cock, where it had lain dormant for so many days now, through the ordeals and trials, but ever since his beloved had left to find this unmarried Queen and her money.
He imagined her, he had to, being stripped naked of her ornaments, her clothes, her pride, and being fucked like any princess should be, in the ass, tied to her jeweled bedposts, legs splayed behind her. But it wasn't his beloved that Antonio pictured behind her, it was the disgraced usurer who, despite his low stature in the community, was a hulking brute of a physical man, and under his clothes his cock throbbed with a revenge and the anger of history. He would slap the good Queen's hip as if she were a racehorse, and these two people who Antonio hated most in the world would destroy each other.
He would have sooner given up a pound of his flesh to the moneylender than become a kept man to that bragging cow of a woman. It would only be fitting, then, that he had been cut into pieces for the Jew's feast, and that the Queen, her little charade having been found out, be raped over his grave.
That got him hard.
What kept him there was the pressure of his own hand, lightly stroking, trying more than anything to warm himself up in this frigid place.
He tried to focus on something sunnier.
Bassanio would wake him, after their late evening nap, by sucking on his nipples. It wasn't long before their mouths would be on each other, and there were usually no clothes to remove in the warmer months so their limbs would entwine, like practiced circus performers. Antonio would look into his lover's playful eyes, and their game, their shared ritual, would go on for a good hour, sucking and tasting and finally penetrating each other, one or both of them taking turns dominating the other. Bassanio would press his hands firmly up and down his lover's spine, in such a way that no boy for any amount of money had ever been able to duplicate, but it both made Antonio harder than usual, and kept him from coming quickly, and they went on thus for whole afternoons sometimes, ignoring church on Sundays and later calling it "business" that had kept them away, not the beautiful sin they shared locked away in that room for hours. They found new ways of pleasing each other and repeated old tricks with agonizingly teasing variations. They indulged in low talk, in street slang, in dirty phrases picked up from the sailors who always knew better than anyone what Antonio and Bassanio really were.
He tightened his grip on himself, the sweat from his hands and the closeness of it a pale imitation of the real thing. If he had thought of it sooner he would have sliced his inner arm, and let the blood spill a bit, and lap it up himself the way his lover used to do on his belly, but things as they were had progressed too far for him to stop and do that. He would so have liked to ruin the Queen's sheets more than he was about to do.
When he came, he gasped, and it was the first sound he'd been able to make since his forced politenesses of the evening before. All the images came flooding back to him, Portia's defilement, his own flesh being wrenched from his body, the look on Bassanio's face as he was hacked at, the glint in Shylock's eyes, catching the reflection of the steel in the butcher's knife. His gratefulness to his enemies for letting it end in such a satisfactory, final way.
But none of this had happened, and Antonio was left cradling his penis, his belly pulling inward, shuddering for air, his eyes dry.
All he could feel, now, was the touch of Bassanio's hands up and down his spine.
And the cold.
Author: Aerachnae
Fandom: The Merchant of Venice
Pairing: Antonio/Bassanio
Rating: R
Summary: Antonio muses on his lost relationship with his lover Bassanio. Takes place after the events of the play.
Disclaimer: Public domain, baby!!! Yeah!!!
***
In the early Springtime Venice has a frostwarmth you can feel on your skin. In this new Belmont, though, the spring frost was enough to choke your heart with ice while you slept.
Antonio went to bed with cold for comfort late that night, and woke with no courage in the morning. He was now richer than he had ever been before, and instead of paying a debt with his flesh, he had won a lottery prize. And who had defeated his rival the usurer but his rival the bitch Queen, the talented crossdresser, the well-versed lawyer and judge and jury, and supposed virgin to boot.
Antonio lay in an entirely separate wing of the palace from where his sometime lover and his triumphant champion lay, together, in a smoldering marriage bed, supported by chance and games and blanketed with money. He woke, hoping to be hungover, sick and feverish, but was slapped with the sobriety of the chill in his bedroom and realized that, for all he drank, he had not drank enough.
Every detail of the events of the night before were preserved for his constant and repetitive perusal. The greater events themselves blended into a montage; the white dresses, the cream on the cakes and in the Tuscan sauces, the burning candles, beeswax on fire, the constant throbbing music, courtly waltzes that must be celebrated standards in purgatory. But he hadn't touched anyone. He had kept to himself, even when asked to hand off the ring, standing to the side of and a little behind his beloved, Antonio had leaned forward and dropped the little--too little, too fragile to be put on the finger of such a bald-spirited and manly warrior--ring into the hand of his best friend, and turned his head away.
He preferred the whirl of memory to the dwelling of detail, but had less control of his mind this morning than he would have had, had he only gotten drunker and been forced to concentrate on finding a place to vomit repeatedly in this strange house. Palace.
He could see his breath in front of him when he breathed out, and it formed a picture of isolation. It showed him his future. He ran his hands, smooth merchant's hands, hands that held pens and signed the documents that employed the rougher hands of the captains and crew of his ships, over the top blanket. It was a lamb's wool. Beneath that was a quilt, stuffed with down, beneath that another, coarser wool, and finally this softer material he'd never seen before. Probably imported. Eastern. It was very fine.
His nightshirt had been furnished him, like his new suit for the wedding, by the generous mistress of the house, now his lord's lady. It was linen, and he ran his right hand over the material, feeling his rib cage starting to stick out even through the fabric. He had not taken a good meal in several days, even preferring to forgo most of the wedding feast, eating only enough not to look out of sorts or ungrateful. With his left hand he wiped the sleep from his eyes, pressing down on the bridge of his nose, where not even a welcome headache would form to distract him from his thoughts.
Through the window, a soft light shone weakly. The useless sun was just coming up, and no one else in the house, not even the servants, would be awake for some time. Antonio knew he wouldn't be disturbed, he knew also that he would be left alone. And that suddenly those two things were somehow different.
He ran his left hand over his hair, bristling at the wild ends. It didn't matter what he looked like, and the care he had taken to prune and perfume every inch of himself would be wasted, would be for no one, would be for himself alone. His head felt cool, his throat chilled, though the back of his neck less so where it touched the pillow.
He took a handful of the top blanket and squeezed, clenching his eyes and hoping to produce a sob, or some kind of reaction that would exhaust him into another few hours of sleep. He could only take a deep breath, and let it out again.
The dawn was quiet. No report of ships departing and docking, coming into and out of harbor, not outside the house at least. This land was insulated from the world, insulated from the trade and the correspondence with other peoples, kept separate from the passion and vigor of everyday life.
It was a friendship separated like two halves of a broken statue, each wrapped in burlap and put away separately.
And the word friendship had become such a loaded term that Antonio did take it for granted, and didn't grow nervous when his friend talked of wooing, or took home the occasional barmaid, because Antonio's bed was where he would rest consistently, where he would play and talk, amuse and be amused. And Antonio's bed, way back in Venice, was empty.
As Antonio himself, in this new town, was empty, too.
He moved his right hand from where it had been resting on his concave belly to the hem of his nightshirt, pulling it up by increments, until it was bunched up around his middle. He felt for his tired, soft cock, where it had lain dormant for so many days now, through the ordeals and trials, but ever since his beloved had left to find this unmarried Queen and her money.
He imagined her, he had to, being stripped naked of her ornaments, her clothes, her pride, and being fucked like any princess should be, in the ass, tied to her jeweled bedposts, legs splayed behind her. But it wasn't his beloved that Antonio pictured behind her, it was the disgraced usurer who, despite his low stature in the community, was a hulking brute of a physical man, and under his clothes his cock throbbed with a revenge and the anger of history. He would slap the good Queen's hip as if she were a racehorse, and these two people who Antonio hated most in the world would destroy each other.
He would have sooner given up a pound of his flesh to the moneylender than become a kept man to that bragging cow of a woman. It would only be fitting, then, that he had been cut into pieces for the Jew's feast, and that the Queen, her little charade having been found out, be raped over his grave.
That got him hard.
What kept him there was the pressure of his own hand, lightly stroking, trying more than anything to warm himself up in this frigid place.
He tried to focus on something sunnier.
Bassanio would wake him, after their late evening nap, by sucking on his nipples. It wasn't long before their mouths would be on each other, and there were usually no clothes to remove in the warmer months so their limbs would entwine, like practiced circus performers. Antonio would look into his lover's playful eyes, and their game, their shared ritual, would go on for a good hour, sucking and tasting and finally penetrating each other, one or both of them taking turns dominating the other. Bassanio would press his hands firmly up and down his lover's spine, in such a way that no boy for any amount of money had ever been able to duplicate, but it both made Antonio harder than usual, and kept him from coming quickly, and they went on thus for whole afternoons sometimes, ignoring church on Sundays and later calling it "business" that had kept them away, not the beautiful sin they shared locked away in that room for hours. They found new ways of pleasing each other and repeated old tricks with agonizingly teasing variations. They indulged in low talk, in street slang, in dirty phrases picked up from the sailors who always knew better than anyone what Antonio and Bassanio really were.
He tightened his grip on himself, the sweat from his hands and the closeness of it a pale imitation of the real thing. If he had thought of it sooner he would have sliced his inner arm, and let the blood spill a bit, and lap it up himself the way his lover used to do on his belly, but things as they were had progressed too far for him to stop and do that. He would so have liked to ruin the Queen's sheets more than he was about to do.
When he came, he gasped, and it was the first sound he'd been able to make since his forced politenesses of the evening before. All the images came flooding back to him, Portia's defilement, his own flesh being wrenched from his body, the look on Bassanio's face as he was hacked at, the glint in Shylock's eyes, catching the reflection of the steel in the butcher's knife. His gratefulness to his enemies for letting it end in such a satisfactory, final way.
But none of this had happened, and Antonio was left cradling his penis, his belly pulling inward, shuddering for air, his eyes dry.
All he could feel, now, was the touch of Bassanio's hands up and down his spine.
And the cold.