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La Fée Verte*His eyes are not blue, like everyone supposes. No, they are green. Blue-green, if he’s obliged to be accurate, a Nordic color, clear as the Mediterranean and just as quixotic. They are drinking absinthe in the night café, which is crowded with all the others, perhaps half the population of Arles, even – but he has eyes for no one else but Vincent. Vincent and his blue-green eyes both hold him here. He has seldom allowed himself to be thus captured, and certainly not by love, a word he would have scoffed at, mere days ago. But that was before. He hadn’t known Vincent the way he does now, after their night together, hadn’t known he was capable of falling so completely into a pair of blue-green eyes.
How long are we supposed to stay here? You said one drink.
Are you in a hurry to leave?
He elects not to answer him in words, but slips his hand below the level of the table and squeezes Vincent’s thigh, massaging it, spreading warmth into his flesh. Vincent’s eyes grow warm and hazy with lust, and he reaches for Paul Gauguin’s hand and moves it higher, so that it rests on the growing bulge in his trousers.That’s better, he says. Then, as Gauguin squeezes him slightly, he presses his eyes shut and the corners of his mouth turn down and he groans, deep in his throat like an animal, and the sound finds its way inside Gauguin’s belly, coiling like a snake.What do you think you’re doing, Paul? It’s a rhetorical question.I wonder if I can make you spend like this. Here, right now. His gaze is narrow-eyed and calculating, not entirely friendly. There’s always something predatory about Gauguin, an animal determination that excites and frightens him. He wouldn’t like to meet him somewhere unfamiliar in the dark. Gauguin would be dangerous.I have a much better idea. In truth, he couldn’t possibly countenance such a thing as this, could never let Gauguin bring him off under a café table. Ginoux and his eagle-eyed wife would know something untoward was going on, and they’d both be turfed out into the street.You do? He senses at once what Van Gogh means to do, and smiles, a slow spreading of his lips like a woman’s surrender.You’re a filthy boy, Vincent.Gauguin drops some money onto the table and tosses the last of his drink down his throat, following Van Gogh out into the night. December now, and Arles is chilly in the nighttime, but le fée verte is singing in their veins. No one feels the cold. Gauguin drags him up the street, both of them stumbling in their haste now, until they find a narrow channel between two buildings. Gauguin doesn’t even bother to kiss him, but drops to his knees and yanks the front of Vincent’s trousers open. The cold noses its way into his clothes, chilling his cock and torturing his tender balls, and then Gauguin engulfs him, drawing Vincent into the heat of his mouth. A jagged shard of pleasure stabs him through and through; his hips jerk violently, forcing him further into Gauguin’s mouth and Gauguin is sucking, sucking, sucking him until he is boneless and melting, and the climax rises up and takes him in its teeth, shakes him—He clutches Gauguin’s ebony hair and holds his head, keeping him there until Gauguin swallows. In the dim illumination of the streetlamps, Van Gogh watches the ripple of his throat. A powerful aftershock sizzles through him, and he cries out. Gauguin gazes up at him with a bemused expression. Liked that, did you?And then they are home, naked together in Vincent’s bed. Gauguin’s desire is as fervent as his own had been, and he clutches at Vincent, digging sharp nails into Vincent’s back. His crisis overwhelms him, making him keen like an infant, his pleasure going out and out from him in great pulsing waves. They lie together, Vincent’s sweat-damp head on Gauguin’s chest, while Gauguin slowly rubs Vincent’s shorn hair, his palm memorizing the shape of his skull. Unspoken words press against the underside of his tongue; he can still taste Vincent’s essence there, a remembered tang like cinnamon or cloves. Their bodies are slick with their communal sweat, and when Van Gogh moves to kiss him, Gauguin takes his mouth with a fervor that is nearly violent. He doesn’t quite love Van Gogh. Not quite, not yet, but close. It’s very dangerous.Perhaps they sleep a while, and Paul Gauguin dreams that he is lying on the grass beneath an apple tree, its branches heavy with fruit. When he bites into an apple, it floods his mouth with sweetness, quivering and delicious. He is dreaming about Vincent, who is with him below the apple tree; they kiss each other tenderly and Gauguin presses some of the sweetness into his lover’s mouth.
He sleeps again, coming to drowsy awareness in the hours before dawn. Vincent is tucked against his side, his face relaxed, his expression slack with sleep, his eyelids quivering while he dreams. Gauguin wonders how he could have ever thought of him as delicate. He is a taut-strung wire, every inch of him quivering with life, yet Gauguin knows that eventually the thrumming life of him will ebb away. He will be worn down as everyone is worn down, sooner or later. I can’t love him. But it’s too late; he already does. He knows it, and so does Vincent. My God, what have I done? How will I ever leave you? But he must leave, and soon, or Vincent will devour him; they will consume each other. Vincent will burn him to ashes.He stirs in Gauguin’s arms and smiles sleepily at him. You’re thinking too much, Paul. You always think too much about simple things. Long, paint-tarnished fingers graze his cheek and trace the outline of his lower lip. Tell me you love me.Gauguin doesn’t speak; he smiles. He smiles and captures Vincent’s mouth with his own, saying with his lips what he could never, ever say with his human voice.You own my heart, he thinks.You own all of me.*written while drinking absinthe