Several days passed, and Wulfstan continued to find it hard to avoid Leofric's blue-gold gaze every time their eyes met. Something about what he had overheard that night latched onto him, digging into the back of his mind. Church bells rung backwards, proclaiming a dangerous, encroaching presence.
Yet he still didn't know what it was that he had heard that night. None of the writings he had read told him about what it meant when someone was panting and making strange noises in the night. What it meant when someone shouted another's name into the dead, dark silence. Wulfstan was clueless – nothing he had lived through, nothing he had learnt, could tell him what Leofric was doing then.
Feasibly, he could ask Donngall or Ita what it meant, but, for some unforeseen reason, that felt even more peculiar than asking Leofric himself.
He could ask the Father at the church, as he was probably the most educated man in written works nearby and had years more experience than Wulfstan.
That felt even more of a terrible idea.
There was no one else he could think to ask about this matter unless he went to the tavern, but he couldn't see how he would get a worthwhile answer from those rowdy, crude drunks. As if they'd even talk to him. Indeed, Wulfstan was in the dark with no light to lead him out.
He was unable to put his finger on why it felt so unpleasant and, somehow, disgusting to ask about what the hell Leofric had been doing. Something about it was getting under his skin in an undeniably repulsive way yet his curiosity couldn't be satiated until he knew. It harkened back to the Garden of Eden, Wulfstan couldn't help but think. The forbidden fruit and Eve's desire. Even though he was so scared, he couldn't help but want to know despite the consequences. Who was the snake in this story? Arguably, Wulfstan was Eve and the snake, his own gnawing curiosity. He didn't like the comparison, not one bit –Leofric was not an apple, not something to possess nor consume.
It was a frustrating riddle.
-
As he heaved his hoe through the soil, making drills in the soil for the seeds to be sown, Wulfstan watched Leofric doing the same, his back facing him. Only able to turn his rogue thoughts about in his head, he considered if Leofric would react badly if he did actually ask. There had never really been many secrets between them, just Wulfstan keeping his tumultuous emotions to himself, so it would make sense for him to be able to ask but every time he opened his mouth to do so, the words got stuck in his throat.
All he could do was look at Leofric's lips and imagine what he looked like when he hoarsely panted Wulfstan's name into that otherwise silent room. The sweaty, glistening sheen coating his biceps, the beads of it dripping down his face. The way his hair was swept back, offhandedly displaying the deep red exhaustion that spread all the way to his forehead. Wulfstan couldn't help but think that this was what Leofric looked like when calling his name. Dishevelled yet alluring.
A flood of shame at this creeping perversion and Wulfstan had to hastily look away, focusing only on the dirt beneath his feet. He didn't want to think about where his thoughts were going or what they had meant. They couldn't mean anything. It made no sense, the strangeness deep in his bones.
After being so stuck in a rut for several days, he decided that he would, next time he heard the sound, go and stay by Leofric's own window, crouching below it to see if he could get any better idea. If the window had been covered, he would take it as being something very private and would no longer poke his nose where it wasn't wanted – it was the least he could do. Wulfstan did not want to risk making Leofric uncomfortable or cause the man to dislike him. However, if he could see what was happening, he reasoned that it meant it couldn't be that private if Leofric didn't mind if someone could see him through the window.
Only actually seeing what was happening could make it all make sense, Wulfstan reasoned to himself.
-
Fortunately, the sound started again that very night, mere hours after Wulfstan had decided to investigate what it was that Leofric was doing. That made the build-up a lot less uncomfortable,getting it over it done with would alleviate his curious, concerned mind.
Not having to sneak, his movements always silent even if his limbs sometimes felt too long, his body not always in line with his mind, Wulfstan slipped out through his window. Despite the mud and the foliage around their house, his footsteps didn't echo any sound into the silent night, so agile it was like there weren't even footprints; he assumed he was just overly light-footed by nature. Crouching down, close to the floor just in case a sharp-eyed watchman – namely one Godwin Ward, who would relish in causing a hassle – saw him and thought he was a ne'er-do-well trying to rob the Smythe household, Wulfstan made his way around the short end of the hut.
He didn't know how long it took; it felt like an eternity, though he was sure it was only a couple of minutes. After becoming infinitely grateful that he couldn't give himself away by breathing too loud, he saw the black maw of Leofric's window, just a few steps away from where he was half-crawling.
Anxiety swirled in the empty pit of his stomach. The sound was somehow louder than it had been when he had pressed his ear to Leofric's door those few nights ago. It couldn't be as deafening as it felt to him, though – the closer bedroom of Leofric's parents' didn't stir. He already knew that he heard many things no one else could hear.
Creeping forward until he was right below the edge of the window, Wulfstan paused, almost too frightened, now he'd reached the final hurdle, to peek his eyes over it.
Shaking his head, he made up his mind, resolute in his decision. Wulfstan was far too curious, far too needy to know everything he could get his hands on, to let this opportunity slip away from him. In a fluid motion, he went from an awkward half-bent walking position, to dropping himself into a kneeling position. Hands braced against the wall, he settled in comfortably. As the breathing and the wet undertone became ever louder and ever faster, Wulfstan looked into Leofric's room.
Nothing blocked the window but that didn't make the scene anyclearer to Wulfstan's inquisitive, sinless eyes.
Leofric was lit by only the full moon, but that didn't matter much – Wulfstan had perfect vision, even in total, pitch dark. The man was sitting up, kind of leaning diagonally, at the head of his bed. Whatever nightclothes he would normally be wearing were thrown to the wayside, his bareskin completely on display. Wulfstan's eyes couldn't help but travel further down, before darting quickly away when realising Leofric was entirely nude.
Movement around that lower area immediately pulled Wulfstan's bashful, embarrassed eyes back down, pushing away the strange heat – if that was what it was – and tugging he suffered within his ribs. It felt like his mind was telling him that he was choking on his breath, but no air was in his lungs, none spilt from his lip so all he did was scrutinise the scene before him.
A sheen of sweat glistened across Leofric's skin, just asWulfstan had thought it would. The furrowing of his brows belied a certain ecstasy in the rest of his face, something that Wulfstan had never seen on anybody. It was a new expression: everything before him was new. He couldn't help but think, astounded, that it suited Leofric quite well.
At the bend of Leofric's body, where his legs met his torso, his hand moved in an odd motion, pulling and tugging in a fervent rhythm at something that was obscured from Wulfstan's view. After taking a moment to think, he realised it seemed to be– what the hell was it that Donngall called it, that weird fleshy thing between his, Wulfstan and Leofric's legs?
It took Wulfstan a moment to remember: the prick. That's what it was.
Something that Wulfstan saw no purpose in him having. Donngall and Leofric would vanish off sometimes, pull down their pants and 'piss' through it, as they called it, but Wulfstan didn't do that. He'd heard at the tavern that it would get hard, and men would put it in their wives, who had what they called a cunt instead, for one reason or another but Wulfstan didn't have a wife and it had never gotten 'hard', whatever that meant. In Church, something called 'masturbation' had been a hushed, warned-against topic. A heinous sin. By the Lord, sodomy¹! From what Wulfstan knew, that… that was what Leofric was doing.
He was a sinner.
Yet Wulfstan didn't say anything, didn't stop him. If he stopped him, maybe Leofric's soul wouldn't be condemned to Hell, but Wulfstan couldn't. Firmly planted to the ground he remained, his knees digging into the soft dirt below Leofric's window.
Completely entranced, Wulfstan felt a burning heat – that must be what it was, he had never felt it before, only heard it described and it ached in the way that heat must – coursing from his heart, through his bones, pooling in his stomach. Odd prickling spread across his skin, suddenly alight with sensations that had never occurred before. Almost horrified, the soft piece of flesh that was his normally useless prick began to harden. Wulfstan couldn't understand it: he didn't have a wife, there was no purpose for this to be happening.
But as he watched Leofric's panting, sweaty, ecstatic form, Wulfstan felt like that euphoria was somehow passed to him through the air. It was such a foreign feeling in his blood, throwing him all out of whack yet his eyes were glued to Leofric's scalding, handsome face, listening to the unseemly noises spilling from his bitten-back lips.
No one but he could hear the noises being made. Only Wulfstan could see what he was seeing and, in that moment, as his left hand moved down to the treacherous area between his legs without thinking, he knew he couldn't bear the idea of anybody else seeing Leofric in this state. The lustful eyes of the girls around town became tenfold more poisonous and wretched as his elongated fingers found themselves grasping the hard root poking out from his body.
He startled for a moment. It felt so wicked, so strange. Wulfstan was doing something that God would smite him for, that could cause him to serve years of penitence, but he couldn't care less. Not a single iota of him thought about anything but the sounds Leofric was whining and the soft, cold, rhapsodic flesh his hand grasped. Unbearably intimate was this scene between them but, also undeniably distant and peculiar.
It was like he was flying, yet he felt so impossibly close to the earth beneath his feet. No matter how sinful the Father, the Church, and the Bible itself, screamed that this was, how could that be true? Touching his flesh, watching Leofric touch his own flesh, made everything fall away. This action was the most natural one there was. That thought flooded Wulfstan's brain: if self-pleasure was a sin, it wouldn't be so intrinsic in human nature that people had to fight to make others stop.
Nothing short of an ironically religious experience was happening under the cloudless, full-mooned night as Wulfstan knelt, like a pose of prayer, outside Leofric's window, both men in the throes of self-intoxication. Not that Leofric knew Wulfstan was there nor did Wulfstan know the importance of his own thoughts. All both boys knew was the exhilaration their hands brought them, the sensitivity of their flesh calling out into the silence.
Time warped and something began to build in Wulfstan's stomach, a pressure shooting through the hard prick in his hand. It was startlingly sudden that he almost let go but, as if instinctually, he just continued, mirroring the motion that Leofric was doing. The other's man panting was getting faster, more desperate sounding.
Suddenly, like he was screaming into the void of the night, Leofric jolted, his mouth forming a hoarse, hushed shout. It was the same thing he'd uttered those days ago.
"Wulfstan…!"
Silence befell the both of them, though Wulfstan, still in the throes of his fervour tugged a few more strokes before everything he felt bubbled up and erupted. He thought it must be what Eve felt when she ate the apple, that comparison flooding back into his mind once more. Transcendent. Not one thing could ever compare to the pleasure of enlightenment. In a stuttering motion, unbefitting of his usual certainty, his entire body convulsed, and a white fluid shot from his prick, painting the grass below Leofric's window. It dripped slowly down the rough wall, a trail that demarked nothing yet was beautiful in what it signified. Wulfstan had learnt of the joys of sin and seen a sight that his eyes could never forget, burnt into his mind for eternity. All he could do was watch that fluid, that strange thing that his body had
produced, slide down until it mingled with a puddle in the dirt, catching the gentle rays of the moon.
Emptiness replaced the pleasure until something even heavier plunged into his stomach. Uncomfortable and violent. An influx of realisation knocked through Wulfstan. Everything good he had felt fled. Pulling up his trousers, not caring about the mess on his thighs, he stumbled, crawled, away from Leofric's room. Terror surged through as he realised that he had done something completely abhorrent.
As he rounded the corner, ready to dive into his room and try to forget what he had seen, what he had done, his feet tangled over the half-toppled wheelbarrow his keen vision had missed in his haste. Dirt, black in the darkness, surged towards him, a glint of metal catching his eyes. Too late, his trajectory already decided, Wulfstan had but a second to think of what to do. Unable to stop himself, he threw his arms out in front of him, trying to protect his face from the sharp edge of the hoe he was making a rapid downward trajectory towards.
He felt it make contact. Its muddy edge tore through his skin, starting at the base of his smallest finger and dragging down the entirety of his forearm. Skin unstitching like wet fabric – never had he thought he would know what flesh wrenching open would sound like. As he went, it dug so deep it almost lodged into the bone within him before it wrenched out from the flesh of his elbow's crook.
As his body came to stop atop the hard-packed dirt, he made quick peace with dying, his immediate, God-given punishment for his sin. However, what he'd seen happen to others when they had such accidents, the crippling agony, the torrents of spurting blood, the screams he couldn't stop tumbling from his lips, never came. Lifting his face from the dirt, he looked at his arm, wondering if he'd just imagined the odd, but not painful, sensation of the metal tearing his skin open and gouging his bones. Perhaps he had died already, the agony never having to set in. He was a spirit being pulled to the afterlife; God, benevolent and forgiving, was just gracious enough to give him a brief moment to say goodbye to the world.
When his eyes focused, he realised that he was not dead.
Right before his eyes, the dry, bloodless, bone-deep gash began to sew itself back together. Eyes widened in horror, more white than clay, Wulfstan did everything in his power to not scream.
He was not dead, but that was no good omen.
This was not natural. Death was not his punishment – this must be it, twisting him against the natural order of things. Wulfstan could think nothing else as not even a scar was left on his skin, still pure as fresh snowfall, aside from small smudges of dirt.
Turning onto his back, Wulfstan sank into deep, horrified contemplation, watching as the moon hid behind the clouds. It was as if it couldn't bear being looked at by something as repulsive as he was. What a wicked creature Wulfstan was, staring up at the sky, none of the puzzle pieces of his life coming together to make any sense.
¹ Sodomy didn't just mean gay sex. It was anything the Catholic Church deemed unnatural or non-procreative sexual acts; man-on-man, oral, anal, dildos, bestiality and exotic positions (anything not missionary)