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Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2024 08:33:35 -0700
From: Boy Mercury X <boymercuryx@gmail.com>
Subject: Pompeii

This story is fictional and intended for adults only.

Copyright, Boy Mercury X and Chi Bear, 2024.

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You can email me at boymercuryx@gmail.com.

I'm on Twitter @TheMercuryJones, and on Tumblr at
www.tumblr.com/the-mercury-jones.

I hope you enjoy the story, and I'd love to hear from you. I will share any
feedback with co-writer Chi Bear.


POMPEII by Boy Mercury X & Chi Bear


1.

They leave early for Pompeii, the low, uneven triangle of Vesuvius hazy in
the distance. Brick is lulled into drowsiness by the motion of the train,
compounded by the time change and the disorientation of international
travel. He lets himself bob gently between wakefulness and a dreamy
state. The visit is not part of the original itinerary, just a day trip,
born out of longtime curiosity to see the ruins, and impulsively tacked
onto a conference Brick is attending.

His travel has often been leveraged by conferences, adding a day here or
there to parts of a trip already covered as a work expense. It's the
unspoken reason conferences even exist, his husband likes to say, one of
his jokes about their class privilege. And he has a point.

But Brick has a point too, though an unspoken one.  He hopes a visit to
Pompeii will allow this crush to run its course. Or at least provide a
distraction.

It had started innocently enough, no different from any of the others. They
met through work, sitting across from each other at a meeting table. Brick
was part of the design team, Vincent part of the client team, a
philanthropic foundation planning a new headquarters.

At their first in-person meeting they had sized each other up. There was
nothing unusual about the introduction, but Brick felt an immediate and
undeniable heat.

Vincent moved and spoke with quiet confidence. Brick wasn't surprised. He
knew the foundation kept a low profile but did significant and influential
work. He just wasn't expecting someone so...attractive. And Vincent
certainly was. Fit and well dressed, trim waisted, his jaw angular like the
v in his name. Still and alert, he reminded Brick of a fox.

Their mutual interest had grown bolder that first day: subtle jokes, shared
glances. Brick had realized that Vincent knew more about design than the
average client, and could push back on the design team. It would have been
irksome from someone else, but Brick found it mildly arousing. He was a
little competitive and rarely had such an appealing opponent. At one point,
Brick caught Vincent staring and silently congratulated himself on choosing
a shirt whose rolled up cuffs showed off his muscular forearms.

Vincent's silence and watchfulness had been provocative. Brick liked to
know what people were thinking, clients especially.

"You've been quiet, Vincent. What do you think?" he had asked during a
pause in discussions.

Vincent had been thoughtful for a moment, then responded. "Brick. And
team. You've done a few projects like this. Looking back, is there some
theme to what you'd do differently if you had them to do over again?"

Brick had smiled at the sly question. One of those, he thought. The type
who sits quietly throughout the meeting as if they don't have a thought in
their head, and then pulls out the question that changes everything. Yeah,
well, two can play at this game.

"Adjacencies," he answered. "The relationships between spaces. How they
make each other work better. How they connect, interact." He held Vincent's
gaze. "But don't be afraid of being unconventional. Just because you've
seen other places do it one way doesn't mean it's the only way. Think of it
as an iterative process. We might have to try out a few different
configurations before it feels like the right fit for you and your needs."

Vincent raised an eyebrow before smiling. "I think you have a pretty strong
sense of our needs," he said. Brick felt his cock pulse. At the end of the
table, an intern nodded earnestly, typing notes into a macbook. "I like
that. Let's explore this," Vincent continued, nodding imperceptibly to a
teammate who continued the conversation without missing a beat.

Impressive, Brick thought with a smirk. Not afraid to disrupt the entire
process and confident enough that it's actually for the best. Classic
trickster. Brick liked him.

As the teams worked, Vincent went to the men's room. Brick rose to follow
him out. They stood beside each other at the urinals. Brick forced himself
to look forward, his eyes on the tiled wall in front of him.

"Is there a term for being low-key turned on by someone who makes a
meaningful difference in making the world better?" Brick asked. Even
without turning his head, he could feel Vincent smile.

"I'm disappointed in your question," Vincent answered. "Only low-key?"

Brick turned, barely hiding his own smile. He glanced down at Vincent's
cock, still in his hand, larger than Brick would have guessed. Big dick
energy, Brick thought to himself, as Vincent leaned in with a mischievous
look to kiss him.

They had met at Brick's hotel bar afterwards, laughed when they both
ordered Manhattans, and made their way to Brick's hotel room by unspoken
agreement.

2.

"You have a very suckable cock," Vincent said, his voice raspy and his lips
wet with spit and cum. Brick ran a thumb along Vincent's jawline, feeling
the stubble, then hooked his hands under Vincent's armpits and pulled him
upwards until they were face-to-face. Brick wrapped a hand around the back
of Vincent's head and kissed him, tasting himself in Vincent's mouth.

Vincent ran his hand through the ruddy fur on Brick's chest and belly. He
pulled away from Brick's kiss to spit into his hand and, half leaning and
half lying, began to jerk off. With their foreheads pressed together, Brick
could feel the muscles in Vincent's body begin to tense. He pulled Vincent
in for a deeper kiss and with three short breaths, felt his body clench and
then shoot. Vincent exhaled with a soft sigh and Brick continued kissing
him, losing sense of time, lost in the familiar pleasure of making out with
someone who is suddenly no longer a stranger.

They had fallen into a comfortable pattern: meetings, a perfunctory drink,
tumbling into Brick's hotel bed with the enthusiasm of horny teenagers. And
afterwards, lying naked, legs intertwined or absent-mindedly tracing
Vincent's nipple, Brick surprised himself by opening up, sharing stories
about past flings. Some funny, some wistful. It felt good to talk to
Vincent. Easy, and with the illicit thrill of confessing secrets to a
confidante.

"How do you know so much about design?" Brick had asked one afternoon, as
they lay together.

"You're not my first architect," Vincent answered, with a wry smile.

He rolled into his back, and Brick admired the view of his form, and the
thatch of hair on his chest and fanning over his abs.

"You're not my first trickster," Brick replied, leaning over to kiss
Vincent's shoulder.

They both wore wedding bands, but Brick didn't ask about details or
complications. His own relationship was awkwardly open. It was not ideal, a
source of some sore feelings and resentments, but neither Brick nor his
husband were quite willing to renegotiate the terms. More accurately, never
quite willing at the same time. An observant outsider would have said
off-timing was a theme of their relationship, not lack of attraction.

But Vincent's relationship was his own business, Brick resolved. And living
in entirely separate cities, linked only by this project, they'd see each
other rarely, and only temporarily.

And that should have been enough. But it didn't stop their messaging. Or
the growing flirtation, in texts and calls, even in meetings. And certainly
not their recurring assignations.


3.

Vincent was complimentary, and Brick enjoyed it. "In a room of effete
designers you looked like an actual man," he told the architect. "You look
like your name."

He was born Jason, but picked up the nickname Brick in college, owing to
his rusty hair and his tough guy looks.

He wasn't a youngster any more, but age had treated him well. He'd gotten
beefier. His chest hair was more dense, his forearms and neck thicker,
making his collars and shirts more snug. He knew he looked like a real man,
whatever that meant, and he was secretly flattered when guys called him a
"daddy," either friends, tongue in cheek, or kids on apps, completely
unironically. This unfamiliar self-confidence confused him, though, almost
as much as the patchy white that had begun to appear in his close-cropped
beard.

What hadn't changed, even after two decades, was how still incredibly
turned on he was by his husband. Brick often wanted nothing more than to
pin him against the wall and shove his tongue down his throat, groping his
ample package, feeling up his athletic chest and shoulders. (It wasn't the
kind of relationship they have any more, he thought with resignation, but
surely it must be a good sign to have the urge.)

That left Brick with his side flings for the most part, like the one with
Vincent.

He had to be careful to not let feelings for them run wild. There had been
another, earlier, that had crossed a line, that left him with a dull
ache. He didn't need to touch the hot stove twice.

But the thing no one ever says is how much you want to touch the hot stove
again. Not to be burnt, but for the allure of thinking you could do it
differently the next time. If you could just be nimble or artful enough to
have the thrill, but not the consequence.

It was harder to not feel so much with Vincent. He had a gentle prying way
about him. He asked about Brick's life, his interests. He asked about
Brick's husband, and their sex lives and the terms of their
relationship. And it felt good, damn it. Beginnings always feel good.

Until just days before this trip, when Vincent asked the question that
caught him off guard and lingered with him still.


4.

"Fortune's favor was somewhat overstated," Alex says with a chuckle,
rousing Brick back to wakefulness. It takes him a moment to orient
himself. Train. Italy. Husband next to him, reading from his tablet.

Alex glances over at Brick, smiles gently at his confusion, and says,
"Pliny the Younger, writing to Tacitus about the eruption of
Vesuvius. Pliny's uncle, the Elder, died attempting to rescue a friend and
his family in the aftermath of the eruption. He was advised against the
effort, and famously replied, `Fortune favors the bold.'

"Which was somewhat overstated," Alex says, smiling as he reaches his
point. "Pliny the Elder died from asphyxiation caused by the toxic volcanic
gas." He half shrugs, raises his eyebrows, and bends over his tablet again.

Brick remains silent, watching his husband's reflection in the window,
superimposed on a blur of tired stucco buildings and, beyond, the
unmistakable slope of the volcano itself. Pliny the Younger also wrote that
an object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in
pursuit.

Alex nudges his thigh. "We're here."

He hands Brick the sunblock from his bag, knowing his husband is prone to
burns. He's always one step ahead like that.

Walking through the ruins of Pompeii, Brick is struck by how much the city
is structured like a modern one. The streets, vendor sites and crosswalks
are completely conventional. Of course. People don't change.

The one notable difference is that unlike most modern cities, the walls and
streets of Pompeii are adorned with penises. They're in stones on the
roads, carved into stones on the walls, hanging above doorways and bread
ovens.

Purportedly, Alex tells him, the phalluses serve as arrows, and if you
follow the arrows, you'll wind up at one of the city's many brothels. The
more scholarly view is that the phalluses were good luck signs or symbols,
not advertisements, intended to ward off the Evil Eye.

"That's why they're often found outside homes, not just brothels," Alex
adds. "And others think they just reflected a hyper masculine society with
a penchant for erotic art."

Brick watches a group of giggling women pose in front of one and is briefly
tempted to imagine their social media captions, the comments from their
friends. How different his take must be from the hetero tourists, he
thinks. How much less scandalized or titillated, or both. As a gay man in
21st century America, he knows how much modern cities too are adorned with
cocks. Not as obviously as the Romans, of course, but just as
ubiquitous. Between the hook up apps and subtle cruising, there isn't a
modern city in the Western world in which cock isn't available to those who
seek it, in broad daylight. You only need to look through the proper lens.

Before he can help it, he is thinking of Vincent. Flirting through
meetings, none of their teammates the wiser to it. Making eye contact
across the table and knowing that Vincent, too, is sporting an erection
that no one else is aware of. Brick has more dick pics in his phone - those
he's received and those he's taken of his own - than any street in Pompeii,
and all transacted in the hustle of daily life in a major American city, at
work, in transit, standing in line for a coffee.

The amount of casual sex going on right under heterosexual noses always
amazes and amuses Brick.


5.

Of course no visit to Pompeii is complete without seeing the famous plaster
casts.

Excavators who uncovered the human remains of Pompeii centuries after the
eruption noticed that the skeletons were surrounded by voids in the
compacted ash. By carefully pouring plaster into the spaces, the final
poses, clothing, and faces of the last residents of Pompeii were
revealed. The plaster casts were primarily made in the mid-1800s, and there
are over 100.

In the Garden of the Fugitives, Brick and Alex view the casts of the 13
people who sought refuge in a fruit orchard. Alex pulls out his notebook
and starts sketching the figures. Brick can see how caught up he is,
imagining these people, imagining their lives.

Brick notes the quick movements of his husband's wrist as he sketches,
flickering like a little flame, and if he looks carefully enough he can see
tiny twitches run up his arms.

Alex is wearing one of his bro tanks, the t-shirt sleeves roughly cut off,
as he habitually does in the summer. They're flattering to his slim build,
his well defined shoulders and arms, and offer a teasing glimpse of his
sides and hint at his flat, hairy belly.

Alex has this funny habit of letting the tip of his tongue jut out from his
lips, just the tiniest bit when he's very focused, as he is sketching the
Pompeii figures. It's part of his charm, which is considerable.

They move on to a cast of a pair who perished together, their remains
locked in an embrace.

"Famously once known as `the two maidens' they were assumed to be two
women," the English speaking tour guide is saying. "When anthropological
tests revealed they were both men, it was assumed they were father and
son. But it was revealed that they were biologically unrelated after DNA
testing. Some say we can only guess at the relationship, due to the
closeness of their embrace."

Alex rolls his eyes at that, making Brick snort.

"Husbands," Alex turns to say, loud enough for anyone nearby to
hear. "They're husbands."

He's never been one for keeping his feelings too well hidden. His passions,
especially for any social justice issue, still catch Brick by surprise. His
clarity and conviction burn so bright, Brick can hardly look full on
without feeling anxious that he must come up short. At the same time, he's
not humorless. Alex can still make Brick laugh like no one else.

Alex takes Brick's hand in his, defiant and loving, as they move on. They
walk through the Pompeii Forum, the Lupanar, the Villa of Mysteries, and
Alex grows more handsome in Brick's eyes with each step. The back of his
neck has grown ruddy and beaded with sweat from the sun and the small of
his back is damp. But even more, he's now so engaged. He has such a fire in
him. Brick feels an old familiar flutter inside, somewhere between his
heart and his cock.

They wander off onto the surrounding area to find a spot to sit in the
shade of a tree and unpack their lunch, sandwiches purchased from a
salumeria in Rome, and bottles of mineral water.

He runs a hand over Alex's exposed leg, and then up into his shorts, high
enough to give away his intent. His fingers graze over Alex's rising
erection before withdrawing.


6.

Brick uncaps the sunblock and squeezes a long stream onto his fingers and
rubs it in just enough to cover them. When his fingertips are smeared with
the makeshift lube, he pushes into Alex's shorts, and then into the sweaty
cleft of his ass.

"Oh fuck," Alex gasps, glancing around to be sure they're not seen by
tourists.

Brick continues to prod into Alex, with knuckles and fingertips, slowly
opening him. He's good with his hands, with his fingers, and he's drawn
more cum out of men with them than others have with their dicks. Not that
he's above a good honest fuck.

Alex gets up on his knees and loosens his shorts, giving Brick greater
access, and Brick works fingers into him, one, two, three, and then deeper,
past his knuckles, slowly pumping into his husband.

Alex straddles his husband's thigh, dropping at his waist to kiss him, his
tongue probing Brick's mouth as Brick's fingers do the same to his ass.

They could do this for hours, kissing like this, but Alex rises back up to
keep watch.

Brick gets off on the expressions of pleasure running over Alex's handsome
face. The way his half closed amber eyes roll in his head when he grinds
his hips down onto Brick's fingers in him. Early on Brick had bragged to
his friends that based on photos of his grandfather and dad Alex would
still be a catch years later. And he is.

Alex jerks himself off with a fist in his shorts as Brick finger fucks him,
a moment of rare abandonment between them. They used to do things like this
all the time, and now Brick can't think why they ever stopped?  He doesn't
care if he gets off himself, just seeing the pleasure he gave Alex is
enough.

Brick's fingers find their target, a firm presence, Alex's prostate, and
his husband groans at his touch. Brick smiles like a hunter - he knows what
he's doing, and he knows how this will end.

Alex opens the front of his shorts so his thick cock juts out, oozing the
clear precum Brick is nudging out of him. He lifts some on his finger and
presses it to Brick's mouth to suck off.  *Look at what you're doing to
me," his expression says.

He jerks himself more urgently, grinding his ass down onto Brick's
hand. When he does cum, he gasps like a caught animal, his load streaking
Brick's arm and shirt with white jets.

Fuck yes, Brick thinks, feeling his husband's insides contract around his
fingers, and the heart in him pounding rapidly.

He removes his hand only to shove it into his own shorts, the sunblock
smeared fingers and palm on his own cock. As Alex begins to dismount his
legs, Brick stops him.

"Stay there," he says.

He likes the sight of his husband over him, the nearness of him, the way he
smiles, so loving and knowingly of everything Brick is, in a way no other
man - not even clever Vincent - could.

"Yeah baby," Alex whispers, grinding his hips against him as Brick jerks
off more intensely.

Even feeling so good it's hard to cum, there in the open, expecting to be
caught. And if he's honest, it feels awkward and vulnerable to keep going
when Alex's already cum.

"Fuck," he whispers, he's so close.

He closes his eyes and grasps at Alex's side, sliding a hand through the
gaping bro tank to feel his furry abs, something that always turns him
on. Images of his husband and of Vincent flit and shift under his eyelids,
sometimes one, them the other. He even sees them fucking each other, and
when he thinks of Alex cumming on his leg moments ago it becomes Vincent,
and then Brick himself, pumping a load out of his ruddy cock.

He feels something against his face and opens his eyes. Alex has pulled the
opening of his bro tank to reveal more of his broad shoulder and chest,
pressing the muscular deltoids and supple pecs to Brick's face.

Brick gasps with an acute vulnerability at how Alex knows him, knows what
he craves most.

"Oh fuck," he gasps, and shoots his load onto his belly, leaving him
shuddering as Alex runs fingers through his thick hair.

"That's it," Alex whispers, and lowers himself to kiss Brick, covering him
with his own body.


7.

Volcanoes and their study, volcanology, are named for the Roman god Vulcan,
husband to Venus, patron of fire, metalworker to the Olympians, and father
of the legendary sixth king of Rome via a disembodied phallus that rose
from the ashes of a sacred hearth. (Pliny the Elder disputes this last
point, but then again, how reliable is his judgment?)

Vulcan forged Cupid's magical arrows which triggered love at first hit, and
Mercury's winged helmet. When that trickster god brought Vulcan news of his
wife's infidelity, Vulcan threw himself into his work with such fury that
red hot sparks flew from his forge in Mount Etna. (Named from the Greek
"aitne", meaning "I burn".) Though the marriage of Vulcan and Venus was by
no means conventional, their union remained bound by forces more powerful
and more subtle than Vulcan's own steely creations.

Volcanologists speak of volcanic activity as they might animals: active,
restless, extinct. Volcanoes that are not currently erupting but may do so
in the future are termed dormant, though experts take the long view of this
timescale. The power within volcanoes can lie sleeping for what seems like
an eternity: a single eruption within the past 10,000 years is enough for a
volcano to be considered active, not extinct.

Although humans have studied volcanoes since ancient times, there is still
no accurate way to predict the precise moment of eruption.The effects can
be swift and cataclysmic or slow-moving and insidious. No wonder that
volcanoes - like mythology, like passion - continue to fascinate.

And so the surveyors watch them with anticipation, to understand the
signals that may indicate an eruption will happen soon, the potential
hazards, their personalities and behavior - yes, it's true, they do - and
how best to be near their extraordinary stirrings.


8.

Brick dozes again on the train back to Rome. He's more tired now, and his
mind wanders as the sun and shade flicker on his closed eyelids.

He's back in the hotel room with Vincent, but the room shifts from the one
they were in, and the room there in Rome. Maybe all hotel rooms are the
same room. Liminal spaces, the domain of trickster gods. Lying there after
cumming, Vincent nimbly revealing his heart with invisible fingers, Brick
barely even realizing it until he's exposed.

The train lurches Brick into the present. He slides a hand between Alex's
thigh and his seat, the way he once did in the early days of dating.

He thinks of the picnic at Pompeii. Of kissing Alex. Of their first time
together, years ago. How Alex's wrist moves with tiny jerks as he
sketches. And then he's with Vincent again, in a hotel room, in the past.

Vincent asked him a last question. *What do you love most about your
husband?*

He's sought to answer it for himself since.

They grab a bite to eat back in Rome. Not the full meal the Italians
like. They're a little too weary and grimy from the long day. And they long
to get back to their room, their bed.

You can't dig a hole to plant a tree in Rome without uncovering some
relic. History keeps resurfacing, resisting the forgetfulness of man.

In a corridor outside their hotel room there is a sixteenth-century fresco,
discovered during restorations and left exposed beneath a glass
panel. Faded and serene, a Madonna and Child gaze at each other against a
pale receding landscape. Alex knows the artist, of course, but all Brick
can think about is the wonder of perspective; how amazing it must have been
when Renaissance artists realized they could use triangles to make the
viewer focus on what was important and allow the rest to fade into the
background.

In their room Brick showers, and then Alex, leaving Brick to settle into
the cool white sheets.

Brick glances at Alex's notebook, lying open where he tossed it next to his
phone charger. The name "Pompeii" is doodled across an entire page. For the
two i's at the end, slight figures of two men on their sides, pressed
against each other, the dots as their heads.

*What do you love most about your husband?*

Who asks their side piece a question like that? Vulpes vulpes. Prince of
foxes. Trickster, disrupter.

But he knows the answer to Vincent's question. He knows the answer is not
for Vincent, has never been meant for Vincent.

He once would have said what he loved most was the physical. Alex's amber
eyes. The serpentine line of the small of his back and ass. How he filled
out his shirts.

One afternoon, when they were first dating, Alex rose from the bed after
sex and as he walked out of the room the setting sun shone on the curve of
his shoulder. Brick's heart unexpectedly lurched. He thought at that moment
that Alex might be the one, though he'd never believed in such a thing
before.

But years later, what he loves most is how Alex still surprises him,
whether it's his righteousness over an injustice, or his boyish excitement
over art. There's a fire in his husband that never goes out. He could never
see his life without him.

"It feels good to get the dust cleaned off," Alex says, coming out of the
bathroom and rubbing a towel over his torso.

"And you look good," Brick replies.

"Speaking of good looking," Alex says, and crawls into their bed, between
Brick's legs, to get his cock into his mouth.

They play at sex, exploring each other's bodies anew. Eventually they fall
into position to snuggle, chest to back, Brick's arms around Alex. It's as
pure and good a physical sensation as he's ever known.

When his time does come, Brick thinks, when there's no escape, he hopes
it'll be the two of them wrapped together like this, like the figures in
Pompeii. He wants it to never end. He'd be perfectly content.

It's a design flaw of modern cities that there are so few active volcanoes,
he thinks, nodding off, kissing Alex's back. They could do a tour of them,
he guesses, and begins to count off those he can think of. Mount Fuji,
Mount St. Helens and KÄ«lauea. He knows there are others too, but
before he can think of them all he rests his eyes, and sleeps.


- END -