Date: Fri, 26 Nov 99 16:03:32 +0800
From: Emellie Giggles <egiggles@moose-mail.com>
Subject: The Gentlemen's Club: Ryan

THE GENTLEMEN'S CLUB
Ryan

By Lady Poetess. Copyright c 1999.

Feel free to reproduce and distribute as long as you leave the credits and
the author's note below intact. If you somehow make money out of this,
well, good for you but please send some to me at egiggles@moose-mail.com!

Author's note:

This is actually a part of an ongoing fantasy fan-fiction about a fictional
group of friends in New York in an alternate dimension whose weekly poker
games form the basis of their story of finding love and laughter.  These
friends are - under inexplicable circumstances! - dead ringers from some
music and movie celebrities, obscure or well-known, that I find worth a
write or two. The men and their lives depicted here have nothing in common
with the real people they are based on apart from their appearances and
names. I am not speculating on their sexual orientation or personal
past. Again, everything is strictly fictional, apart from the character's
good looks. Suing me is a waste of time, as frankly, to be blunt, I'm
penniless. ?

One more thing: this is a trial. I have also many stories completed
featuring Ronan Keating, Brian Littrell, Ethan Hawke, etcetera. If you
want me to send more to Nifty, tell me! And if you want a personalized
story about you and your favorite star, a story that is a monogamous love
story with erotic sex and commitment, drop me a note and I may be able to
help. Free of charge, of course. We all need dreams and I'd be glad to help
my fellow daydreamers out.



Prologue

Mr MRP bets Mr RK that he will break a certain Playboy of The Northern
Hemisphere by the end of the month.

1

"They're talking about the bet, you know. Practically squealing about it
from rooftops. It isn't everyday a playboy and rogue extraordinaire of a
stature like yours get bandied about in betting book of Juan's. Quite
undignified and simply titillating." Ethan Hawke sat back in his seat and
waited for the explosion that never came. He frowned slightly at the man
standing immobile looking down at the breathtaking vista of Cheraddior
sands.  "Well?"

   The man didn't even look at Ethan when he spoke in a lazy, bored
drawl. "As if there's anything they haven't said about me before. What was
the last time? That I seduced Prince William on his 17th birthday? That one
was a hoot, wasn't it?"

   Ethan shrugged. "Did you?"

   "However indiscriminate I may be in the past, give me some credit for
taste, Ethan.  Young, spoilt royalties are a dreadful bore, especially the
virginal variety. Tearful, dreadful, guilt-ridden sods, the whole lot of
them."

   "There's speculation that this particular young, blond man with a
predilection for making bets may just be a virgin. They call him The Ice
Prince, because no one, it seems, has been able to lure the man into his
bed. Not even predators like Lynch and Farthosworth, and not for the lack
of trying. It seems dear Prince is holding out solely for you."

   "I'm not interested."

   "They are betting that you would show up and seduce this man and break
him into pieces. I have five grand on you doing just that. Would you.?"

   "No."

   "What happened to you, Antonio? I swear these few months you aren't fun
anymore."  Ethan shook his head in exaggerated mournfulness. "Besides,
champagne in Monaco is always bubblier and sparker than grape pulp in
Eden." He looked around the wooden log ruefully. "Eden's too country and
nature-r-us for cosmopolitan metropolis jet-setting dwellers like you. You
need to unwind and relax amidst the silent clinks of dice hitting velvet
table surface and satin sheets."

   "I'll pay you the five g, Ethan, if you'll just take a hike right
now. Go back to your fat doctor."

   For a while, Ethan's mouth gaped open. He shut his mouth with an
indignant gasp.  "Doc is not fat. I like him the way he is."

   "Fat arse."

   "Take that back or I'll beat you bloody."

   Antonio turned, and smiled in total bemusement at the other man. "Ethan,
of you don't leave when I count to five, I'm going to call up your hotel
room and tell Doc you're trying to cause trouble. Again. We all know what
Doc would do to you if he finds out, right?" He rubbed the bridge of his
nose. "One."

   Ethan fled at three.

   Antonio Sabato, Jr brooded at the darkening skies. Today was his 30th
birthday. He was thirty years old and he felt like fifty. Where had all the
time gone? Usually birthdays meant waking up with a severe hangover and
someone he couldn't remember in his sobriety sprawled across his bed, but
he hadn't indulged in such indiscriminate pleasures for two years now. No
one night stand, no reckless affair, no games, for such trivial pursuits
had long lost their attraction.

   He was bored. At thirty, he had done almost everything that was ever
considered sin, and now there was little that could arouse his curiosity,
much less sexual arousal. Yet now, he felt the undeniable stirring of
curiosity. This Ice Prince, what was his name again - Ryan? - had done
something no one had ever dared. And it was a game the Ice Prince was
destined to lose, for no one break hearts like Antonio.

   Yes, it might just be the right time to make a quick stop at Monaco.


2

He is here.

   Matthew Ryan Phillippe almost dropped his wineglass, so sudden was the
attack of nerves that hit him the moment they began to whisper that the
Playboy had just walked in the ballroom. He could feel the weight of so
many eyes on him, and he knew they had been waiting for this moment all
along. Bloody buggers, the lot of them. Ryan knew they accepted a commoner,
worse, a mere artist like him into their social circles only after he had
made that bet. It was the only way a blue-collar man like he could breach
the choking barriers of blue blood and old money that were the elite Upper
Ten Thousand of Europe.  By being a clown that would whet their jaded
palate with outrageous entertainment, which was no better at all than being
a circus clown.

   Oh, Ryan would entertain them all right. Though if he had his way he
would have fled to the sanctuary of his studio. His hands trembled slightly
and his knees began to wobble despite his best to steel his nerves. Damn.

   "Look, don't worry. I'm sure Tony would understand it's all a daft
joke," the man beside him was saying. What was his name? Brendan Fraser,
that's right. A snob who somehow was one of the more welcoming of the lot,
probably because Ryan had deigned to entertain him most with the bet. "All
the years we were together in Cambridge, he always had an outrageous sense
of the bizarre. He's probably here to punch Ronan's teeth out for
suggesting the bet."

   "I made the bet, not Ronan." It was the only way Ryan could think of to
drawAntonio from the latter's increasing withdrawal from social whirl.

   "But I had almost everyone believing it was Ronan's idea." Brendan
patted his back in what was supposed to a comforting gesture. "I don't feel
easy at the thought of a nice fellow like you tangling with Tony. No
offense, but a man like you would be devoured by that lout in ten seconds
flat."

   Ryan knew his quiet, sullen demeanor gave the illusion of innocence,
disgustingly pure snow white innocence that either aroused the lust of men
or their protective instincts.  Brendan, it seemed, was predisposed to the
latter, for which Ryan was grateful as he liked Brendan somewhat. He felt
safe around Brendan, probably because Brendan was devoted to his
partner. Likewise, Ryan felt comfortable around Ronan who was exclusively
heterosexual in all aspects except when it came to Ronan's partner Stephen,
whom Ronan was lamentably loyal and faithful to. These two wanted nothing
from him expect from casual friendship, and they were the ones he stuck to
of all of Antonio's many acquaintances.

   But tonight all would end. Things would come to a full circle. Antonio
destroyed Ryan's father and family, and Ryan intended to destroy him
tonight.

   "You want me to stay with you?" Brendan asked, his face expressing
nothing but concern mingled with bemusement. "You look frightfully white in
the face."

   Stage fright - nothing but stage fright. Ryan took a deep breath, then
held it when the crowd parted before him like the Red Sea, and there he
was. Antonio Sabto Jr stood there under the glittering lights of the
chandeliers, resplendent in black and white. He was still demonically
handsome and strikingly haunting, the same man that aroused Ryan's need to
paint, to sketch, to delve deep in Antonio's psyche until he could mingle
freely with Antonio's very essence when he saw Antonio six years ago from
his hiding place behind the balustrade. It was the same time he overheard
Antonio's vow to destroy James Phillippe, and thirty minutes later James
blew his own brains out.
   He shouldn't be feeling this treacherous heat in his soul at the sight
of the son of a bitch. He should be furious. And he was. Cold, acrid anger
rose to a fever pitch. He saw Antonio's eyes narrow, saw the man's slow
blossoming smile, and Ryan's hand slipped into his tux. In a smooth
practiced motion Ryan pulled out his semi and fired.


3

Later

Antonio was in heaven. He stood amidst visions of beauty and salvation,
redemption and acceptance, colors of tears and laughter and raw
emotions. He reached out and touched the nearest painting reverently. The
Fields Where I Lay, he read silently at the title on the simple wooden
frame. The painting was a glorious stretch of meadow bathed in golden
light, so vividly portrayed that he touched a blade of oat, expecting to
feel warm sunlight on his skin when common sense told him that he
wouldn't. The painting was. peaceful.

   Antonio turned to the next painting, simple pitch blackness with only a
thin shaft of light diagonally across the canvas. Illumination. The
contrast between light and dark was amazing, especially when the shiver of
light was so realistically done. If he was mawkish he would say that it was
a perfect metaphor of the redemption of a soul blackened beyond black.

   He wasn't an art critic and he was a rueful philistine when it came to
art. The only he use he had for art galleries was as an exotic locale to
bugger eccentric artists, not exactly a lofty notion he would brag
about. Yet he was strangely moved by the artwork in this studio. He
turned. Everywhere around him were landscapes painted in oil and pastel and
watercolors in vivid, vibrant, passionate hues.

   "He wasn't an established artist, for he was distinctly from the
Churchian traditional school, his art leaning towards religious-like
portrayal of scenery and people when the current vogue is more towards
daring, brash, and abstract," his man-of-affairs Hubbs had told him. "No
gallery display him in a major way, and he has to resort to painting book
illustrations to survive. And cover artists are lower than low in the
hierarchy of artisan respectability."

   Screw the elitist bastards. Antonio would buy an art studio and showcase
them himself.

   He reached gently at the covered canvas on the easel in the center of
the studio, and almost fearfully lifted the paint-streaked and still-moist
cloth. It was a half-done coal drawing of a medieval lady on a balcony
being serenaded by a minstrel a story below her.  There was a notepad on
the stool, scrawled between the sheets notes like Princess loves
jester. Major: sing in rain. Long flowing dress - look up lib book LGFF by
AS that made sense when Antonio realized that these were preliminary notes
for the book jacket illustration Ryan had been doing.

   Antonio absently rubbed the bullet wound in his right shoulder. Ryan's
aim had swung wild somehow, and the man's look of hatred was rather
disconcerting. Not that Antonio begrudged the man for trying to kill
him. He wasn't the first to want to kill Antonio for any reason.

   Hubbs, a short paunchy man who had been Antonio's faithful employee for
years, knocked on the door. "There's nothing to be found sir, nothing worth
a second look."

   Indeed, it had angered Antonio, for reasons that eluded him still, to
see Ryan living in this narrow, almost furniture-less apartment in downtown
New York. There was a carelessly crumpled receipt on the bedside table
indicating that Ryan had pawned off a Rolex, undoubtedly to finance his
trip to Monaco, and the crumpled state suggested that Ryan wasn't expecting
to claim the watch back.

   He would see to it that Ryan was kept in all human comfort and more.

   He was still surprised at his feelings. His flight to Monaco from Eden
was an agonizing six hours of trying to imagine what sort of man the Ice
Prince would be. A devious, cunning fortune hunter, perhaps? He had
conjured and discarded so many possibilities, yet nothing prepared him for
the real person.

   He had stood there, struck. His first thought upon seeing Ryan was how
the man managed to make every other pampered and plastic-altered handsome
men in the crowd look just wrong and pale. In candlelight, Ryan was gold
and dreams. Slender to the point of waifishness yet radiating inner
strength, the man was captivating. Antonio had stood there in the eternity
of a few seconds, transfixed; he watched the golden aura of reflected light
around Ryan's short golden curls and pale skin; of the slow, nervous tick
of the man's soft, well-defined jaw. At that moment he thought he was in
the presence of a Borticelli seraphim.

   That night he stood over Ryan. The young man was still unconscious,
sporting a particularly nasty bruise along the right side of his
face. Monaco's police force wasn't so forgiving of a man who almost
destroyed the island's good reputation with the moneyed and rich, and
Antonio had left the hospital too late to prevent the beautiful face from
being marred.

   Hubbs thought his employer was mad not to press charges, and crazier
still to take Ryan in. Maybe he was, but Antonio didn't care. He forgave
Ryan already for the bullet, and whatever it was he did that made Ryan
shoot him, he would make up for it.

   He didn't notice he had stopped breathing as he touched the man's smooth
face, letting the warm skin sear his nerves. He trace the pale lips with
his fingers, marveling at the young man's beauty. He breaks so easily. No
longer. Antonio would make sure of it, he'd buy Ryan three hundred art
studios and hell, he'd force the art journals to put Ryan on their front
cover.

     "I've hurt you, somehow, didn't I? But then again, I hurt everyone, so
it's nothing personal, you know," he whispered, bending down. He couldn't
help it; he moistened his lips and ran the tip of his tongue along the
other man's lips, first following the thinner curve of the upper lip, then
the plumper, more sensual lower lip. It probably wasn't a noble or even
virtuous thing to do to plunder an unconscious man, but Antonio had no
virtue, no nobility. He forced his tongue into Ryan's mouth, moaning softly
and he climbed onto the other man's body, resting his weight on his hands
and knees as he covered the other man. It had been too long since he fucked
anyone, damn it, and now his cock was rampantly insistent, throbbing like
hell with engorged lust. He pushed Ryan's thighs apart, and pressed his
erection hard against the man's heat. Just one simple act - he unzipped
himself, and then it would be only a small moment before he tear the man's
trousers to pieces and he would be in, so deep, so fucking deep.

   He stilled when he heard glass shatter and a particularly nasty and
sharp jagged piece pierced a few milimeters into his back, drawing a
trickle of blood. He looked up from where his penis was poised to penetrate
Ryan to the man's face. Ryan was awake, and the man had smashed the vase at
the bedside table to pieces. The biggest shard, it seemed, was now digging
deeper into Antonio's back.

   "That's the last time I have them put vases at the bedside," he told
Ryan.

   "Get off me." Ryan's voice was even, monotonous. Definitely glacial. The
Ice Prince indeed.

   "Really? You sure you want that?" Antonio drew a deep breath of pain
when the other man raked the sharp glass blade down. He pressed his groin
lower, and felt the other man gasped when the crown of his penis gently
parted the tight ring muscles of Ryan's sphincter. It would be so easy to
just plunge hilt deep, but Antonio knew how to make an unwilling bedmate
want it bad. He paused, almost crazy with lust, half of the tip of his cock
just nestled in Ryan's groove. Flexing his thighs slowly, lazily, he pushed
in another centimeter before withdrawing. The withdrawal caused Ryan to
tighten his hold on the man's penis instinctively. In fact, Ryan's erection
was now pressing insistently at Antonio's stomach.

   "Get off me." Ryan's voice was now a low growl. "Get off me!"

   "Never!" Antonio growled back.

   Ryan buckled, trying to throw off the man above him. It only caused
Antonio's cock to penetrate deeper, the wet hot velvet embrace of the man's
heated passage scalding every inch of Antonio's nerves. His control
snapped; he plunged deep. Hell, he was wet enough for the both of them, and
whatever pain he caused Ryan with his sudden penetration was more than
tenthfold repaid when the other man cut him deep. Warm blood dripped down
his back, into the grove of his buttocks, down his thighs to where they are
joined.  Antonio smiled, gritting his teeth in primitive victorious
satisfaction when Ryan's thighs raised to clamp around his torso, and he
began his savage driving, pistoning, thrusting, driving them both to
frenzied orgasmic bliss.



4

Ryan sobbed and wept bitterly, in fury and grief. He had let the man fuck
him and he had wanted it, maddened in his own need to mark the man in some
way, any way. And he had let down his father, thanks to his weakness for a
man so beautiful he had haunted Ryan's dreams for years.

   Antonio watched the man cry, and felt a strange agony in his own chest.

   "You killed my father," Ryan choked, heaving and doubling over in his
corner on the bed. "I hate you. I hate you!"

   Antonio felt his world fade. He looked at the man on his bed, and sat
down on a chair, his knees suddenly devoid of strength. "Matthew
Phillippe. Son of James. I know my sins would come back to haunt me one
day."

   It was at that moment Antonio's heart shattered into a million
pieces. Ryan had the right to hate him. He had, one day, arrogant in his
inheritance of his father's millions, retrenched three quarters of his
staff in budget cuts. James had met him, begged for his job, for his
daughter needs urgent surgery and they had no medical insurance. Antonio
had refused - James was an unskilled labor and a not-too-bright man who was
definitely dispensable in the food chain. The man had shot himself not too
long after, hoping to leave his life insurance money for the
daughter. Spoor stupid fool. His death was ruled a suicide and for
naught. The daughter died of her brain tumor and the son was sent to some
social Home.

   Antonio had spent three years trying to track him down in some vague
hope to make amends, only to have some cruel twist in life dropping the boy
in his life in this way.

   He had wronged Ryan too unforgivably. Which was why he didn't resist
when Ryan pounced on him.


"I'm sorry." Pathetic two words, but he had no idea what else to say. "I'm
really sorry."

   "Fuck off."

   Antonio touched Ryan's face and the man flinched. Antonio shouldn't feel
the hurt he was feeling at the moment. "Let me make it up to you. Let me
make you happy." He winced; even to him those words sounded like words used
to proposition a new lover. But in truth, he knew little else to say apart
from sweet nothings. He was stumped.

   "You can't give back Susie and Pa!" Ryan yelled. "I hate you!" he
yelled, drawing the last word out in one long scream until he had no breath
left. Antonio stood there, frozen for a few minutes, before leaving the
room.


He was kept a prisoner. Every day Antonio would come in his room/prison
cell and just stood there, looking at Ryan with the wounded/hungry
look. And Ryan didn't know which was worse, that he was slowly losing hold
of his anger or that he was slowly looking forward to Antonio's visit.

   His fingers itched to draw the man. His body yearned for a repeat of the
one time Antonio had ravaged him. In truth, he had been angry for so long
that any other feelings, sexual arousal especially, are unnerving. Today,
he decided, things would be different.  He would take control of his
emotions, and be in control. He would fulfill his bet and break the man.

   And if he destroyed himself in the process, well, Lord have mercy on
both their souls.


5

Antonio shut the door silently behind him. "Good afternoon."

   Ryan didn't look up from the book he was reading. "Good afternoon."

   "Look at me." It came out without thinking, but hell, he didn't like
Ryan looking anywhere but him.

   Ryan looked up, and Antonio swallowed a sigh. Light streaming through
the window danced on Ryan's golden etherealness, the beauty almost driving
Antonio down to his knees in reverence and adoration. "What?"

   Antonio swallowed again, trying to regain some semblence of control on
his mental faculties. "Look, I've had a picnic basket ready. Can we just
forget who we are and enjoy the Eden countryside today?"

   Ryan closed his book. "Okay."


   Antonio laughed, a gaily, unrestrained laugh that surprised even
himself. He stretched his nude body, feeling every muscle stretch and
protest, and sat up on the grass. Still enjoying the lull of their recent
lovemaking, he watched Ryan wash in the river. He watched the man gently
spread his thighs and cleanse the seminal fluids flowing down them. Antonio
squirmed, feeling his cock rising as he enjoyed the view of Ryan cupping
the clear cool waters and letting the water run down his chest. Oh, to be
that drop of water trickling down the smooth, tightly muscled chest,
lingering at the sparse golden curls around that wine dark nipple, before
following the groove between the corrugated stomach muscles to disappear
into the thatch of gold pubic bush around that now quiescent penis.

   "I've seen your painting," Antonio said for no reason, really enjoying
the view but wanting to let his sexual urgency simmer awhile. He had never
been this voracious, insatiable, and energetic with his many lovers before.

   "I see."

   "They're beautiful. I don't know much of art, but I know yours move me
deeply."

   "So buy them. Make me rich." Ryan stood there, a nude Greek statue in
all perfection even Michaelangelo would be in awe of.

   This wasn't going well. "Look, I'm trying to start a decent conversation
here. The least you can do is be nice."

   It was then Ryan gave a smile. A small, brief smile that was only a mere
hint, but it was enough. "I know."

   "Bastard!" Antonio cried, diving straight at the man. They fell gently
on the grass, their bodies easily joining, and Ryan laughed. Laughed!
Antonio's mouth fell open, and it had to be the light, for he felt his eyes
water. He had made the Ice Prince laugh. It was a thought that made him
feel ten feet tall.


"I'm tired of standing so still for so long," he grumbled the next day,
trying not to scratch an itch on his bum. He lay on the carpet, nude, on
his side. He had one leg bent and his left arm resting on the raised
knee. It was a pose Ryan wanted and he would be in that pose until
Judgement Day if Ryan wanted him there. Still, that didn't mean he wouldn't
complain.

   Ryan looked from behind the easel, clad only in boxer shorts. "Ssh," he
said, curtly.

   Still, the man was saying more and more each day, with an increasing
ease that Antonio was grateful for. Ryan had told him stories about his
art, this morning, and during their afternoon lovemaking, he had shared
anecdotes with him. They discovered that they both loved Bruckner and Bach
and Pachelbel, but anything else classical made them nauseous.  It wasn't
anything grand, but it was something.

   Antonio wanted to know everything and anything about Ryan, but he knew
better than to push the still wary man too much and too far. And he should
be worried, but he wasn't, when he found himself not able to hold anything
back. He told Ryan everything about his life, from his childhood to his
current state of ennui. He told Ryan about his sex orgies and experiments
and he was quite startled to find himself quite embarrassed by the extent
of his dissolution and Ryan's reluctant curiosity.

   The third day, while continuing their art session, Antonio looked
straight at Ryan. "I'm sorry about your father. I was stupid then, and if
there's anyway I could turn back time and make amends, I would. Believe me,
Ryan. I never mean for you to have hurt so much."

   Ryan placed the brush down. "I never hurt as much as my father. It is he
you should be apologizing to." With that he looked away.


6

The portrait was finished. Ryan looked at his painting of Antonio, and it
wasn't vanity that made him acknowledge that it might be his greatest work
ever. Narcissus Falls would be an apropos title, he decided, and carefully
rolled the canvas face-out. He would have loved to buy one of those
expensive art-carrier, but he would have to make do, as always.

   He replaced Narcissus Falls with another, a portrait calculated to
destroy Antonio.  Carefully tying bedsheets and curtains together to form a
long strand of rope, he packed his art and brushes and paints into a pillow
case and slung it over his shoulder before climbing out of the window.

   He didn't get far. It wasn't his intention to. He tripped a burglar
alarm and was caught ten minutes down the road.


"You tried to leave me." Antonio practically spat that accusation.

   "Why, you don't expect me to? You think a great fuck every two hours is
an inducement for me to stay?" Ryan turned away from the stark and brutal
expression of hurt on Antonio's face. A treacherous guilt - making him feel
as if he had destroyed something precious and raw - was suppressed
forcefully.

   "I thought we - you - but." Antonio turned away, suddenly feeling
weary. There was a dull ache in his chest and he felt as if he had been
carved open and there was a large gaping hole in his soul. He pulled the
canvas cloth and saw his portrait. He gave a cry of pain. "Is this how you
see me?"

   Ryan shut his eyes, his own shame and guilt threatening to drown
him. Think of father.  Think of father.

   The portrait wasn't a portrait but a caricature. Antonio's face was
immaculately handsome but devoid of any resemblance to humanity. The only
other prominent anatomy apart from his leering face was a large jutting
cock, almost obscene in its thrust and blatantness.

   "Is this how you see me? Nothing more than a stud service?"

   "I don't even like you," Ryan spat. "You have no character, no
integrity, no purpose in life. God, you disgust me. The only thing you have
to abuse is your face and cock, which you're stupid enough to think would
blind me to submission."

   "No." This couldn't be true. He grabbed Ryan roughly, pulling his mouth
to his. Damn it, he thought desperately, deepening the kiss, doing
everything he knew to make Ryan respond. Ryan wanted him. He had to. He
bloody had to.

   Nothing. Ryan was still in his embrace. His face, when Antonio looked at
it, was devoid of any expression apart of cold hatred gleaming in Ryan's
gray eyes. He pushed Ryan away and took a few unsteady steps back. "So what
we did the last few days mean nothing to you at all?" he asked
shakily. Please, please say yes. God, he sounded pathetic. He was
pathetic. He was in love.

   God, what a time to realize that! He was in love with Ryan's sly
laughter, his control, his loyalty to his family, his determination and
strength to survive. He was in love with Ryan's beauty.

   He had nothing to live for now.

   His mind reeled from the staggering blow that was Ryan. He gave a choked
cry. It was cowardly, but he fled from the room.


"You can't just hold him prisoner in your room!" Ronan exclaimed, eyeing
the man before him uneasily.

   Antonio wasn't. Antonio. The man before Ronan was haggard, gaunt, and
looked more a ghost than anything human. Antonio talked in a voice no
higher than a murmur, and his eyes held the glazed look of a man driven to
desperation without any hope of redemption.

   "I'll hold him there until he learns to want me," Antonio said, but his
tone was without fire. "If I can't have him, nobody will."

   "You're mad," Ronan said, shaking his head. "Look, there's a better way
than this, buddy. Woo him. You're the champion at this."

    "I did! I fucked him ten ways to Sunday and made him come left and
right, but he won't want me. With good reason." He choked. "I killed his
father. He did all this just to break me, like he did in the bet, and he
succeeded." He buried his face in his hands. "I don't want to live without
him, Ro. I live for the moment I make him smile, the moment I make him
laugh and sigh in pleasure and cling to me like I'm the only person that
matters to him. Oh God."

   How melodramatic. Ronan patted Antonio's back awkwardly. "Sleep on it,
and do think about letting Ryan go, will you?" Then he fled before Antonio
decided to murder him or something, in order to hide evidence or something
equally dramatic.


"Tell me about the man you can love," Antonio whispered. "Damn it, Ryan,
talk to me!"

   Ryan was silent.

   "I didn't kill your father. I didn't put his gun to his head. My own
crime is arrogance, which I will pay penance for, believe me. What can I do
to earn your forgiveness, Ryan?  What the hell can I do?" The last was
shouted out in a feral cry that Ryan jumped.  Antonio took a deep
breath. "I love you. I don't know why, but I love you. I don't like this,
you know, because loving a man who hates you is so bloody
inconvenient. It's not worth it. But I'm willing to change. I'll be anyone
you want me to be, Ryan, so please, talk to me. I can't bear me when you're
so cold to me."

   Silence.

   Antonio felt something in him break. It didn't matter. He left the room,
so caught up in his misery that he failed to see tears running down Ryan's
cheeks.

   That night he looked at his face in the mirror. They called him the most
handsome man on Earth. Good lot that did him, for the only man he wanted
found his face devoid of character and humanity. He was nothing more than a
pretty boy with large cock and endless stamina to Ryan, and the sad truth
is that, well, Antonio was all that and just that.  He looked at his nude
body, the beautifully gym-honed body that was almost perfect in its
sculpted musculature and sexual appeal. It held little appeal to the man he
loved.

   And at this moment he hated himself with a virulence alien to his usual
easy-going manner. He wanted to be someone worthy of Ryan, a man of wisdom
and culture and intelligence, not the spoilt, pretty boy he was now. He
wanted to be anyone but himself, a shallow idiot trapped in a gilded cage
of beauty. And why should he be trapped?

   He didn't hesitate. He hurled himself through the glass window panes,
never even feeling the shattered glass cutting into his face and skin,
welcoming the oblivion.


When he came to consciousness, he saw light. The blurry lights slowly
focused, and he realized he was looking at the light reflected on Ryan's
hair. The man was sitting by Antonio's bed - he looked around, he was in a
hospital - and the poor man's chin was on his chest as he slept. He
couldn't help himself but to hope for the impossible. Ryan, here, by his
side? So close.

   He touched Ryan's hand, and the other man jumped to awakeness with a
soft cry.  "Tony," Ryan sobbed, eyes widening in undisguised joy when he
saw Antonio, and threw himself into his arms. "I'm so sorry, I'm an
idiot. Can you ever forgive me? Oh Lord, I'm so sorry."

   Antonio looked at the far mirror and looked at himself. His face was
heavily bandaged.  No doubt he would have scars on his once flawless face,
but that thought somehow didn't elicit any regret or anger or even
disappointment. Why should he? His sole reason in living is crying in his
arms.

   "Are you here to stay for good?" he asked Ryan.

   Ryan nodded tearfully. Later he would tell Antonio that the latter was
right, his father shot himself and while Antonio wasn't in the right, he
didn't deserve the full brunt of the blame. Later. Right now he needed to
cry for his father, for himself, for Antonio, for them both.

   "Then I won't forgive you. You'll have to spend two hundred years making
up to me.  And I must warn you that you may fall in love with me along the
way. Which I will do my best to ensure, by the way. It wouldn't do for me
to be the only lovesick sot in this relationship."

   Ryan's slight nod was enough.