"Are you sure this is a sport...?" Ezio asked, an eyebrow cocked skeptically. He and Yusuf were observing two men wrestling in the middle of a field of grass, the two of them bare-chested themselves in anticipation of participating. Yusuf had brought him here, promising him a good time. Ezio had scoffed at the time, saying that it sounded like he was trying to seduce a woman with such shady lines.
If only he had known what had been in store, and how it seemed he wasn't too far off.
"Of course it is a sport," Yusuf replied, laughter booming. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he stood confidently next to Ezio as the two of them watched two men covered in olive oil run their hands over each other trying to gain purchase. "What would you call it?"
Ezio opened his mouth to reply, but caught sight of one of the men slipping his hands beneath the waistband at the back of the other man's pants, and shut his mouth. The slickness of the oil made the man's hand slide easily beneath the oily fabric, and the way it followed the curve of the other's ass seemed more sensual than aggressive. He was no blushing virgin - far from it - but such a blatant public display caused a bit of color to rise to his cheeks.
"Amico, where I am from, this is called foreplay," he said finally. Yusuf laughed once more, even louder, and slapped Ezio on the back. Ezio tottered forward from the unexpected force of the blow, combined with his surprise at the situation he was apparently about to get himself into.
"Come, it is a lot more difficult than it appears. Care to give it a go?" Yusuf asked, a challenging lilt to his voice.
"Are you saying foreplay is not difficult?" Ezio asked, chuckling.
"Not if you do it correctly," Yusuf said with a grin. "Are you stalling for a reason, or are you afraid to take me on?"
"Normally I wish to be wooed before doing something so intimate," Ezio joked, following Yusuf toward the olive oil. He looked down at his chest, then at Yusuf, and sighed with a smile. It was a good thing nobody who knew him was going to see him like this, he might never live it down.
"Later I will buy dinner for you," Yusuf teased back, taking one of the vessels filled with oil and slowly tipping it over his chest. He used his other hand to spread it over his bare skin, and Ezio tried not to stare. "Or perhaps bring you flowers to make up for it."
"This is probably a terrible idea," Ezio said, ignoring Yusuf's joke and murmuring a half-hearted grazie to a wrestler who had come over to help him oil himself up. Yusuf watched appreciatively, the sun glinting over his oil-slick tan skin, and Ezio felt his mouth go dry.
"The only terrible idea would be to not try it at all, I think," Yusuf shrugged, moving to the middle of the grassy field and beckoning Ezio to follow. Ezio did, the oil soaking his pants squishing uncomfortably as he walked. "New experiences are to be savored, not fled from."
"I smell like a plate of pasta," Ezio said, trying to lighten his own mood. His friend was clearly having fun, and who was he to ruin that? Yusuf laughed, putting an arm around Ezio's shoulders to pull him forward, resting their foreheads together in a huddle. Ezio had seen the other wrestlers do this before beginning, and figured it was just how things started. The two of them were so close, that if he wanted to he could push himself forward to kiss Yusuf.
"You smell delicious, then," Yusuf murmured, causing Ezio to blink. Was he doing that on purpose? Could he somehow read Ezio's thoughts? Before he could think of a reply, witty or otherwise, he found himself flying through the air, landing heavily on his back and looking up at Yusuf's grinning face in a daze.
"What was that?" he asked.
"You just lost," Yusuf answered, offering him a hand. Ezio took it, but it was too slippery to help him up and so he found himself falling the few inches back to the ground again. He glared up at Yusuf, who was too busy looking pleased with himself that he had tricked him. "You must focus. Stop thinking about the wrestling, and wrestle."
"Is that rule number one?" Ezio asked in a wry voice as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. Yusuf shook his head, his laugh echoing across the field.
"No. The first rule is not to wrestle against a Turk and expect to last more than a few seconds." Ezio groaned and rolled his eyes. "Want to go again?" Yusuf asked, hands on his oil-soaked hips.
"Will it last more than a half-second this time?" Ezio questioned sarcastically.
"That depends more on your stamina than on me, my friend," Yusuf said, waggling his eyebrows.
"You need not worry about my stamina, as I have it in abundance," Ezio said stubbornly, standing up and brushing blades of grass from his arms. "Though I do worry that you are not gentle with someone whose first time it is."
"You did not strike me as the type to need gentleness," Yusuf hummed, eyebrows raised. Ezio blamed himself for letting the whole afternoon become one extended metaphor for sex, but he knew more about that subject than the one at hand.
"Shut up and put your hands in my pants," he finally said after a long silence. The laugh his words drew from Yusuf could be heard for miles, Ezio thought. So at least if he couldn't pin Yusuf, he could still surprise him.
At least their day would be interesting, no matter how it ended. Somehow, though, he knew that the tangle of limbs they found themselves in that afternoon would continue well past sundown.
He could hardly wait.
