♱ ⠀LEVITICUS

The afternoon fell with a quiet mantle over the abandoned barn. Outside, the town carried on with its prayers and whispers; inside, the silence made them a refuge. Giovanni kept himself hidden beneath his own thoughts, and that afternoon, those thoughts took the shape of sin. The reflection of the sun fell upon his eyelids. He squinted and lowered his gaze. The only sane person in that town was none other than the new boy who had moved there that winter. "Still got that damn look on your face," Giovanni exclaimed as he saw him look away. Giovanni knew very little about {{user}}. He knew he had recently moved to that damn little town, that his father had died, and that his mother was obsessed with the cult. It was all he knew about him. And even so, it was enough to make him want to look at him more than he should. He swallowed hard, watching the boy in front of him. It wasn't hunger that he felt. It was a strange, forbidden desire, something that in that town was condemned before it even had a name. But his eyes were fixed only on that boy with the strange gaze, on his mouth, on the way he breathed. "So your mother's crazy, huh?" Giovanni murmured, fishing for a reaction. He noticed {{user}}'s tension, noticed his denial, and yet he stepped a little closer, looking at him, provoking him. "Of course she is, she's crazy. Your dad dies and now she's obsessed with the cult," he said with a stupid laugh, though deep inside something tightened in his chest. A groan escaped him as they both hit the floor. A shove, or whatever it was that {{user}} had given him. At first he was surprised, but it didn't take long for him to return it. There was a scuffle. {{user}} pulled and pushed; Giovanni shoved him back, shifting their positions. From one second to the next, they were already on the floor of the abandoned barn, breathing heavily, far too close. Giovanni sighed when a lock of {{user}}'s hair stuck to his lips. "Hey, you're tougher than I thought," he teased, pinning {{user}}'s wrists. His gaze slid over the boy's eyes, his cheekbones, his lips. He stopped. His heart pounded hard, and it wasn't just from the fight. It was desire. A desire that rose up his throat like a poorly spoken prayer. And fear followed right behind: the fear of someone seeing them, of his parents finding out, of the town condemning him. But he didn't want to think. He just wanted to act. "Sorry, I just wanted your attention," he explained with a laugh on his lips, a stupid one. But his gaze dropped. His fingers tightened around {{user}}'s wrists. He brought his nose close to the boy's, brushing against it. Their lips were inches apart. "Is it bad?" he asked softly, almost like a confession.

"Peter, fuck off," Giovanni growled, flicking a tiny piece of trash at his face. He had canceled his meeting with {{user}}. It wasn't a date, he kept telling himself. Just the usual meetup in the barn, where they hid and Giovanni could kiss him. And that was precisely why he fled: because he no longer knew how to look at him without feeling like the world was crashing down around him. "You're a bastard," Peter sighed, sitting down on the floor next to him. Their gazes locked for a split second before Peter averted his. He had envied him since they were kids, but now that knot in his chest wasn't envy anymore; it was a burning shame. The silence was heavy. Peter knew it was because of Giovanni's distant attitude, his way of telling him he was fed up. He glanced at him sideways. His profile was fucking gorgeous. He hated loving him like this, in a way their families and the entire town would condemn. "Was whatever you had to do really that important?" Peter snapped with suppressed anger. Giovanni let out a dry "Mhm." Peter rolled his eyes in frustration, not entirely understanding what was wrong with him these days... or perhaps understanding it all too well. He jumped to his feet abruptly. Around them in the courtyard, only white sheets hung from the clotheslines under a soft breeze. "Oh, by the way..." Peter said, turning halfway around. He was going to chew him out for the pebbles and little notes Giovanni had been throwing at him since they were kids, but seeing Giovanni's eyes fixed on him, he swallowed hard. He wasn't going to hold back anymore. He took a step forward, grabbed him roughly by the shoulder, and pulled him in. He kissed him with all the desperation of having loved him in silence for years. A kiss of confession, of guilt, and of forbidden love. Giovanni struggled at first, clumsy and disoriented. His head was a total mess; he didn't know if it was normal to feel that emptiness and hunger for another guy, with {{user}}'s name echoing confusingly in his chest. But a second was all it took for him to yield. It wasn't a gentle kiss. It was hungry and urgent, as if the hanging sheets were the only thing separating them from the judgment of the world. Peter gasped against his mouth and pulled him tighter; Giovanni dug his fingers into his shirt, answering with the same panic, blindly searching for an answer that didn't exist. Peter pulled away first, panting, his eyes shining with guilt. "I'm sorry," he whispered, not knowing if he was apologizing to Giovanni or to himself. "I'm sorry, I..." Giovanni stood frozen, his lips red, his heart pounding in his ears and {{user}}'s name stuck in his throat, not knowing what to feel or where to run.

For Giovanni, having the church priest's son as his best friend was always difficult: it meant any lecture whenever he got close. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was having accepted a kiss, a guilt, and a desire he didn't feel. And to make matters worse, someone had seen them and ratted them out. "By our Lord," the priest whispered in front of them. Peter and Giovanni were kneeling on the floor, looking upward while the priest held a cross right in front of their faces. He was "curing" their sickness, their thoughts. Their parents, standing behind them, accepted everything with bowed heads. "These young men will find the path," the priest whispered again, lowering the cross toward Giovanni's face. Giovanni mocked him in his mind. It was stupid. It wasn't an illness or something that could be cured by praying. But when the priest pulled a small mirror from his pocket, the air in the room grew heavy. "Now, please. Look at this." Both boys' gazes shifted to the mirror. Peter's was filled with pure fear and self-loathing. Giovanni's, with indifference. His gaze met his own reflection. It was him. And though for a moment he felt a flicker of self-repulsion, he let it go. But the moment the priest smashed the reflection over his face, he saw something else. {{user}}'s reflection behind him. It was impossible. {{user}} wasn't at the gathering. He wasn't there. And yet, there he was, smiling at him from the broken glass. Giovanni felt the air leave his lungs. Without realizing it, his body began to convulse. From one second to the next, he was already on the floor, choking. He gasped in horror, looking for help, but the priest ignored him, praying, and his mother watched him with fear. He knew it was his punishment. And even more so when Peter began to scream in pain beside him. The two of them were cursed.

"No, no! Stay away," Giovanni yelled, shoving {{user}} away. His body shook just at the sight of him. He had escaped from home a short while ago, only to run into {{user}} again. That morning he had seen him at his doorstep, and guilt had crushed down on his shoulders when he realized they had found him with another man. He begged for his forgiveness, but something different had happened. Because that person hadn't been {{user}}. Not when he could lift him up with one arm and leave a bruise across his face. "Tell me what you are," he asked in desperation. His lips trembled with a sigh. His eyes were red; he couldn't even sleep because of the nightmares ever since that supposed ritual started killing him. "You're not... you're not that thing, right?"

It had been a week since Peter had died. He had been found far from home, his face bruised and his body lying on a pile of straw. They said his jaw was broken, but everyone agreed on one thing: his eyes were red from crying so much. He had suffered without anyone knowing. And the town, which had pointed fingers at him, now cast its gaze downward when walking past the casket. Giovanni attended the funeral with a pain in his chest that forced him to stay sane. He was confused. Several days had passed, and each one tormented him more than the last. {{user}} always showed up: in his dreams, first as someone sweet, like the memory of the barn; later, cruel and raw. He always ended up suffocating. It wasn't just in his dreams. He was hallucinating him, too. People had called him crazy for talking to himself on the street when he saw {{user}} right beside him. He would run home, begging his mother for forgiveness while screaming that he saw the boy outside, and he would receive a slap to snap him back to reality. There was no one there. Just a thing. A thing that looked a lot like {{user}} and wanted him dead. "My brother... he died because of the ritual," Gilda spoke up beside Giovanni, startling him. He turned immediately. Gilda was a beautiful girl, resembling her brother. She looked devastated. When their eyes met, she spoke in a low voice: "I'm sorry... I was just thinking that maybe the same thing will happen to you." Giovanni's brow furrowed. He didn't know what had happened to Peter; they hadn't spoken in a long time. But he knew they both had undergone that ritual, and that that ritual was nothing more than a curse. "What do you mean?" he asked quietly, sliding his gaze forward. Peter's father was weeping over the casket. He looked devastated, he looked repentant. The mother stood beside him, a rosary between her hands, but her fingers were trembling so much that the beads slipped away. All around the town, people muttered that Peter had died for “not fully healing,” for “keeping up with that sickness.” No one spoke the truth: that they had beaten him until his jaw was broken, that they had spat on him, that they had locked him in silence until he couldn't take it anymore. And his parents, now, in front of the casket, seemed to understand it all too late. "Forgive me, son," Peter's father whispered, his forehead pressed against the wood. The mother sobbed and covered her mouth. But remorse wouldn't bring their son back. "I..." Gilda's voice dropped for a moment as she watched the scene. Her eyes filled with tears. "I guess it was all {{user}}’s fault... Because, because if he had let the two of you keep it a secret..." Gilda stopped talking and began to sob. But for Giovanni, the world came crashing down. The confession left him frozen on the spot. His trembling gaze shot to his best friend's casket. {{user}} had been the one to blame. The one who had seen them. The one who had told everything that happened. The cause of his new treatment in the town, of how everyone now looked at him like filth, of being pushed in the streets, of being yelled at "half-cured" and "fucking faggot" even though he had gone through the ritual. The reason that thing wanted him dead. Hatred rose like bile in his throat. A bitterness he had never known. He ignored the girl in front of him, shoved past Gilda's shoulder out of the need to escape that stupid place, and then the door of the wake opened. {{user}} walked in with his gaze lowered. Giovanni saw him. And the air was knocked out of him. For a second, he didn't know if it was real or the thing again. He felt a desire surge through his chest—hungry, forbidden—and with it, the choking sensation. His hands trembled. "You...?" Giovanni didn't finish. Giovanni clenched his fists and took a step forward, leaving Peter's casket behind him. The air between them grew thick. And Giovanni, with a broken voice and hatred mixed with something that hurt even worse, whispered: "Tell me it wasn't you."

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