The boy of my dreams came into my shop to get his dick pierced.

I was in the back at the time, minding the autoclave when the brass bell above the front door jangled.

Ga-ding ga-ding!

I checked myself in the full-length mirror. Having just done a favor for the delivery guy, my hair was a bit disheveled and the mascara on my right lid had smudged slightly. But I hadn't gotten any on my Dokken t-shirt and none of my seven facial piercings were askew, so I put on my game face and slipped out from betwixt the curtains Giulia made from the bedsheets Sid Vicious had been found dead in.

"Hi, welcome to the Battered Starfish, Portorosso's only combination nautically-themed gay hangout and tattoo/piercing establishment. How can I…"

Oh fuck me sideways on the railroad tracks - it was him!

There's this little lip of wall you have to round before you're in the shop proper, so I didn't see who it was at first. But lo, there he was - school uniform, sweet little baby bitch face and all. He must have just gotten off the train!

"Uh… h-hi." My mouth was painfully dry all of a sudden. "How can I help you?"

"Hello. I just wanted to see how much you guys charge for a piercing?"

Those eyes, goddammit - those eyes! They'd been the death of me all throughout middle school, and now here they were again, in my very own shop. "It varies, based on what you wanna get and where. What were you thinking about getting?"

Here, my future ex-husband (we're gonna get married, see, because we're soulmates, but we'll end up getting divorced once we realize that the sex was better when we were just two skaggy teens sneaking off to bang eachother senseless in abandoned shopping malls and nude beaches in front of an audience of admiring men) kind of shuffled his feet, his freckled cheeks lighting up. "Nothing too complicated. Just a… I think it's called a "Prince Albert"? The one that goes through the underside of the head of your dick?"

Gesù Cristo … I'm going to faint!

"Oh, that's easy," said my mouth, running on autopilot with no interference from my brain. "PAs are a snap, and they don't hurt nearly as bad as people think. I'll give ya a deal on it - say, ten Euros for the piercing, then whatever the jewelry is. So probably around fifteen Euro for the whole shebang."

I don't know how I was maintaining such a high degree of professionalism when literally the only thought in my head right then was that I was about to have my childhood crush's cock in my hand.

"So… Luca…" I growled, splaying my fingers out on the glass counter, leaning in. "Does that sound do-able?"

At the sound of his name, Luca's face lit up. "Heh… didn't think you'd actually remember me. It's been so long."

"Oh, I remember you." I lifted the wooden bar door separating the front of the store from the back, gesturing a hand towards my work station beyond the curtain. "Shall we?"

I may have imagined it, but I thought I detected a faint blush on those sunburned cheeks as he brushed past me, flooding my nostrils with the intoxicating aroma of whatever shampoo he used, turning the hairs on the back of my neck into little painful needles.

"Alright, hang tight," I said, pulling a pack of blue chux pads down from a shelf and fishing one out, draping it across my black piercing table. "I'm gonna need access to the site, which means pants and underwear off. You can put 'em over there. Then hop up on that blue pad and relax while I get stuff ready."

I turned around and started opening things, trying my best to ignore the sound of a belt buckle opening, of a zipper sliding, of coarse fabric slipping over smooth, possibly freckled skin. I got out a sterile pack, some gauze, an iodine wipe, and a sealed pair of gloves, all while sporting the most painful erection to ever occur outside of a school presentation.

"First piercing?"

"Yep."

"Nervous?"

"Nah. Always kind of wanted one. Plus, I kind of like pain."

I dropped something that made an awful racket clattering to the floor.

"Was that important?"

"No," I said, kicking the thing under my shop tower and getting another one from the same drawer. Kit assembled, I steeled myself for what came next.

"Alright, so…" I turned around.

Nice.

He was laying back on my fainting bench, hand tucked behind his head, legs slightly splayed.

Like him, it was cute and well maintained. Like him, it had freckles. And just as with its owner, I found myself falling madly in love. I didn't say or do anything for what must have felt like an eternity, trying to commit as much as I could to memory for later use.

"Okay, so," I sat down on my rolling stool, setting my sterile field up on the little metal surgery tray Giulia found for me at that orthodontist office's liquidation sale. "Pretty easy-peasy kill me pleasy. I'm gonna have you stay lying down, real relaxed like, taking nice deep breaths. I'm gonna put on gloves, wipe the site down with an iodine solution. You're not allergic to iodine are you?"

"No."

"Shellfish?"

He chuckled. "No."

"Alright. Then, once you're all clean, I'm gonna force this massive fish hook through your piss slit and out the bottom. Then I'll feed the jewelry through, clean you up again if needed, then we'll go over aftercare instructions and settle up."

"Sounds like a plan."

The whole time I was giving him my usual spiel, he was just looking at me with his pants off and those fucking eyes boring through me, and I swear on the blonde head of the sweet baby Jesus it took everything I had not to crawl up on that piercing bench with him. Because he looked soft and cuddly, warm and vulnerable, and so desperately in need of a good hard corrupting.

With my sterile field set up, I donned my gloves and took a deep breath. "Alright - you ready to get started?"

"Yep!"

"Is it okay if I touch you to wipe you down?"

"Yep!"

My mouth was dry again as I reached out a gloved hand and gathered him up, trying (and failing) to not notice how surprisingly warm it was through the nitrile. With my free hand, I freed one of the iodine swab sticks that I'd pre-torn, carefully swiping the brown-orange liquid over the meatus where the hook would enter, and along the glans where the hook would exit.

"S-sorry."

I didn't immediately understand what he was apologizing for. Then I noticed that I had a fuller handful than I'd had when we first began. "Oh, yeah. No, it's cool - happens to everyone."

Luca sighed, covering his eyes with the crux of his elbow. "That must be awkward."

"Only if the guy's ugly."

"Huh?"

"Nothing. Okay, SO… I'm gonna have you take some deep breaths for me. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Real relaxing Zen-type shit, ya dig? Then, I'll tell ya to take one last deep breath, let it out, and while you're exhaling I'm gonna gently force this massive fish hook through your cock. Okay?"

He was grinning - at me . "Okay."

"You scared?" I grinned back.

"No. Are you?"

"A little. I've never done this before. I don't even work here - I'm a notary for the tax adjuster across the street. I'm just trying to be neighborly, looking after the shop while the owner's away."

He giggled - this high, tinkling sound - the notes of which seemed to fly through the air and alight in my ribcage. I found myself wishing that he'd never come in my shop, because it was a Friday, and now this was all I'd be able to think about for the rest of the weekend. But it soon passed. "Alright… nice big, deep breath in through the nose for me."

He obeyed as I readied the curved needle at his piss slit.

"And… let it out slowly."

He did, and as he did, in one swift practiced motion, I pushed the needle through. I felt the tension shoot through him, could hear the black pleather covering the bench crinkle as his hands gripped it for dear life.

"Almost… almost."

I followed the needle immediately with the curved post that would be the stand-in for a few months until he was ready to have the ring installed. Carefully I screwed the threaded ball onto the end, and voila! We were done.

"All done, fratello. You good?" I already knew he was though. He'd taken it like a champ.

"Whew!" he breathed, mopping the light sheen of sweat that had formed over his freckled forehead. "That was…"

"A lot?" I offered, tidying up. "Don't I know it. Just cleaning ya up right now - you bled a little. Not too much tho."

The erection was long gone by this point - getting stabbed through with a fish hook tends to do that. Luca shivered as I cleaned him up with a saline-soaked cotton 2x2, making sure to be very thorough. As I worked, I prattled off my usual post-op care instructions - salt water soaks, unscented Dove antibacterial hand soap, clean underwear twice a day, no fornication for a while, come see me if anything changes, go to l'ospedale if it starts to turn black or fall off... all the while, thinking about is how nice it would be to bury my face in that little over-pruned strip of soft brown pubes and take a nap.

But alas, the time came for him to sit up, stab his skinny legs into his underwear and pantaloni, tucking it away forever. Heartbroken, I led the way back to the front. Money and banalities were exchanged, I gave him a thing of saline spray on the house, and walked him to the door.

"Well, it was great to see you again, Luca Paguro. Here's my card. Call me anytime, day or night, if you need anything. Or down the road, should you decide you want another hole somewhere on your body."

For a time, Luca stared down at the little white business card with my name on it. Then he pocketed it, squared up his narrow shoulders, and extended a freckled hand.

"This was fun," he said, as I took it in mine. "I'll be in Portorosso for Summer break. Maybe I'll see you around?"

"Hope so," I smiled, still holding onto his hand.

"Ciao."

"Ciao," I said, adding bella in my head.

At long last, and with enormous effort on both our parts, his fingers slipped from mine and he was gone. After watching him leave, I calmly flipped the sign to CLOSED, locked the front door, headed back to the operating room, laid down on the dirty bench and furiously masturbated myself to the point of dehydration. Then I got up, cleaned up the shop and and started for home.

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