When the requiem for the man I have been has reached its conclusion, I open the door.

Lorenzo looks up when I step into the room; he is crouched on the floor with a saucer in his hand, that fat gray cat winding itself between his ankles and little Eurilla scrabbling at his thigh. I feel as though I haven't seen him in years. This room, this man, the look on his face - the last time I was truly happy, it was all the same. For an instant I forget everything that has happened since. He sets the saucer down and rises when he sees me, brushing cat hair off the cuff of his breeches instead of meeting my eye. "Well?" he asks, and my heart twinges at the familiar cadence of his voice. "How is our friend Mozart?"

"He's dead," I say, and I seize Lorenzo by his lapels and pull him into a kiss.

His mouth, his breath, his body pressed to mine - this is what I remembered from that day in the music room. The heat bursts over me the moment our lips touch; my cheeks are already burning and my head is swimming when he breaks away. It is over too soon. I lean toward him, his lapels still clutched in my fists, and he grips my shoulders. He holds me back.

The fire drains away when I see his face. The way he is looking at me - his brows are drawn together and his gaze is heavy with regret. He shakes his head and murmurs, "Don't do this again."

I list where I stand, an icy thread of fear unwinding in my gut. In all the times I've rehearsed this moment in my head, I never imagined that he would push me away. I never could have imagined that his gaze could be cold. "Lorenzo-?"

"These past few years... you can't keep doing this," he says quietly. He isn't meeting my eye. "What kind of person do you think I am, Antonio? Don't you know what it did to me every time you pretended you couldn't hear me when I spoke to you? Every time you left a room because I had entered it? You- you punished me for wanting you. You made it my fault that you almost broke your vow for me." He releases my shoulders and untangles my hands from his lapels, still shaking his head. "I want you- I wanted so badly to be with you," he says as he steps back, "but you'll always choose your career over me. And I'm too selfish, Antonio. I won't be able to stand it when you push me away again."

I stay where I am, both hands hovering in the space between us. I cannot remember the melody of my requiem; a roar fills my ears instead. Memories of these wasted years whirl through my thoughts: Lorenzo in the imperial box, watching me pretend to flirt with a dancer; Lorenzo in the music room where the two of us had nearly made love, watching me stare at Mozart's mouth; Lorenzo tending to me in his home after I had nearly died on his doorstep, learning that I had kissed Gottlieb Stephanie. What must he think of me? What must he see when he looks at me? That day in the music room, the pledge he made to do anything for me - was I not the same man? Or have I already burned him away for the sake of my career?

I withdraw the emperor's medal from my pocket and turn it over in my hands. It is cold against my skin, the filigree biting into my palms. Everything I have done, everything I haven't done, has been for this- this trinket. For a lump of gold. For the fleeting admiration of strangers. For...

"Bullshit," I whisper.

I look up at Lorenzo, and for some reason I nearly laugh when I see the confusion on his face. He glances uncertainly at the medal, then at me. "What did you say?"

I thrust the medal into his warm hands. "You're right," I tell him, my voice rising as it all falls into place in my mind. "You've always been right! That day in the music room, you looked me in the eye and you told me my vow was bullshit."

"Antonio, if you need to lie down-"

"Bullshit! My whole life-!"

"You've been through so much-"

"But how can I keep pushing away our love in the name of music when- when true music comes from love?"

Lorenzo falters at that, but his grip on my medal tightens. "Antonio." He almost sounds hoarse. "What are you saying?"

A flush that I hope he can't see blooms across my cheeks. "I'm... telling you that I'm in love with you," I say unsteadily, and when I see the furrow between his brows soften I say it again: "I love you. I always have. I've loved you since... since the first time you made me smile."

The emperor's medal hits the floor with a clatter that sends both of the cats scampering to the far side of the room, and suddenly I am wrapped in Lorenzo's arms. I release the breath I have been holding, letting my forehead press into the crook of his neck and winding my own arms around him. His breath dances through my hair; the low throb of his heartbeat fills my ears. And just as I am thinking that I'd be happy for this embrace to last the rest of my life, he pulls away. He brings one hand to the side of my face and draws me up into a long, languorous kiss.

Love! The word sails through my mind as soon as our lips touch. It has never been like this between us. That night on his divan, that afternoon in the music room, our embraces were clumsy and desperate, our kisses were frantic. I attributed the guilt that weighed on my heart to a vengeful God glaring down at us. I believed every touch was an irresistible sin, a test that I was failing over and over again, and I hated myself for it.

But love- love cannot be a sin. Love is a muse.

I slide my hands around his waist and up to his chest; he breaks away when I begin unfastening the top button on his waistcoat.

"You're sure about this? You won't change your mind?" he asks.

I lean forward in his arms and press my forehead to his. "I would burn every page of music I've ever written for one day with you."

"God!" Lorenzo says, and then he kisses me harder. My hands are trapped between us, but not so trapped that I can't work open the second button of his waistcoat.

He releases me a moment after I have undone the third button, and before I have time to collect myself he bends over, his shoulder collides with my gut and he rights himself, lifting me completely off the ground. An Italian curse bursts out of my throat; my head and arms are dangling uselessly over his back. "Lorenzo!" I protest, but he wraps an arm around the backs of my knees to steady me and carries me into the bedroom like a sack of potatoes.

I am breathless when he drops me onto the bed, and only partly because of the impact. He is kissing me again before I've had time to inhale. The weight of him as he presses me into the mattress, the pressure of his tongue against mine, of his fingers in my hair! When I reach for the next button on his waistcoat, he grinds his hips against mine and spots of color flash before my eyes.

There have been times when I have resented the people who have shared Lorenzo's bed over the years, but tonight I am grateful that he knows what to do. And he has always been able to read me. His kisses are tender, and he touches me delicately, undresses me carefully - at first. And then I lose myself in the brush of his hands on my skin, the thrust of his hips against mine. The heat is passing over me in waves and I can feel sweat beading along my brow when he dips his head and begins to murmur in my ear. He describes a time we were working together, practically strangers, when my fingers had touched his as I passed him a quill, and he tells me that he imagined himself pulling me into his arms and having his way with me right there in front of the emperor. He says that I purse my lips when I'm trying not to smile, and it takes all his resolve not to shove me against the wall and kiss me every time he knows I am biting back a laugh. He tells me that he can barely stand to watch me conduct an opera, that the way I close my eyes when the music swells makes him want to bend me over the stage and take me hard until I make the same face for him, my sheet music scattered around us. I can only shiver beneath him as each story he weaves sends a flush through my veins. My breathing is ragged in my own ears. When he slides a hand between us and finally strokes the length of my erection it is too much: my hips buck against him as I come undone in his arms; a moment later he quivers and lets out a long groan as he does the same.

We lie tangled together for a moment, our breathing uneven, his body pressing down on mine, his burning forehead against my flushed cheek. And then he lifts his head and kisses my jaw before peeling off of me and crossing unsteadily to the washstand. I lean up on my elbows and watch him clean himself off with a cloth, my eyes traveling the long lines of his back, of his legs, taking in the unnatural sight of Lorenzo Da Ponte standing naked before me. He catches my gaze and smiles that toothy grin of his, a look I haven't seen in years, and my stomach lurches. "Are you alright?" he asks, and when I nod he picks up another cloth and rejoins me on the bed. As he is passing the cloth over my stomach and chest, I see the corner of his mouth twitch as a thought strikes him. He glances up at me with mischief dancing in his heavy-lidded eyes.

"What?" I ask warily.

He tosses the cloth toward the washstand. "I was just thinking. How long has it been? That last time you were here, when you walked out- how many years ago was that?"

I shrug, though we both know the answer.

"Well, it occurred to me to remind you: you're late, Antonio."

"Late?"

He nods, arranging his face into a scowl. "You were supposed to be here years ago, so you shall have to stay-" he pretends to consult an invisible pocketwatch.

Biting back a grin, I follow a stray lock of his hair with the fingertips of one hand. It was perfectly black that day in the music room, the same color as his ugly wig, but now it is threaded with premature gray. I had nearly forgotten this silly game of ours. I had nearly forgotten how hard it was not to laugh at his persistent jokes.

"-Yes," Lorenzo says, snapping his imaginary pocketwatch closed and returning it to the pocket of a waistcoat he isn't wearing, "I'm afraid that since you were so very late in returning to my arms, you shall have to stay here with me at least until my grating personality gets me exiled from the Austrian empire."

"Oh," I sigh, "is that all? Then I shall tell the maid to expect my return within the hour."

"Ah! The devastating wit of Antonio Salieri!" he cries. He claps a hand over his heart and falls back among the pillows, then seizes me by the arm and pulls me down on top of him.

I awaken partway through the night when Fideling stations himself next to my face yet again and launches into that skull-rattling purr. But this time it is also punctuated by the long, low breathing of Lorenzo on my other side, each hot exhale ghosting over the back of my neck. One of his arms is wrapped tightly around me, the other is crooked under my head, and the length of his body is pressed to my back. I realize when I try to flex my leg that Eurilla has climbed up onto my hip and curled up there: her little claws dig into me through the blanket the moment I start to move. I return to my original position, and she settles back down again. A moment later, I hear a high-pitched purr from her, too.

There is no music in my head. The requiem has reached its conclusion. But as I lie there in the stillness, my leg cramping and the back of my neck tickling relentlessly, the rhythm of Lorenzo's breaths and the harmonies of his contented cats begin to fill a space in my heart that I had never realized could be anything but silent until now. Beneath the sheets I thread my fingers through Lorenzo's, and he sighs in his sleep and draws me closer.

Even after I close my eyes, I cannot force the smile off of my lips.