WISH UPON A STAR

In Tuscany, the night sky is amazing. It's not that Timmy has never seen a starry sky before, but here he can see the stars one by one very clearly. Somehow, in this place the sky is missing the gray overtone it has in Ohio. Plus, the soft curves of the hills close in around them, making the whole valley look cozy.

It's the perfect spot to spend the night of the 10th of August, which is some sort of festivity in Italy. Timmy didn't get all the details, but he doesn't care much. He needed an excuse to take Alex away from his sewing machine for at least a couple hours. The next Renaissance Fair is getting closer and that turned Alex into an hysterical, insult-spitting machine. Those events should be fun – lots of good food, good wine, weirdly dressed people and bands that play instruments Timmy had never even heard of before coming to Italy – but Alex takes them very seriously because he goes to them to sell his clothes.

He's got a little stand and he spends the whole day in it. These past two months he managed to be present to a lot of this fairs – they are a thing here in the summer – and Timmy understands that it's a big deal with Alex being still in high school and everything, but sometimes all that sewing makes Alex so nervous that he snaps for the smallest thing. Timmy learned from Cody and Vince to just disappear when that happens.

“What was the name of that saint again?” Timmy asks, sitting down on the plaid they have laid down on a nice spot of grass a few miles away from the farm, and he passes him one bottle of his weird juices. Timmy would be willing to play the evil boyfriend and get beers for him, but Alex doesn't like beer. If he's not on a cleanse – which happens more often than not – he prefers to challenge the law and his parents' wrath by having drinks or wine. But for this occasion drinks would have been unpractical and Blaine taught him that, when it comes to buy wine, either you know what you're doing or you don't buy it. So, weird juice it is.

Alex smiles as he grabs the bottle. The three rings he's wearing clink against the glass. “Lorenzo,” he answers. “It's not that hard.”

“Lorenzo,” Timmy repeats the name, his strong American accent making impossible for him to pronounce any letter correctly.

Alex chuckles. “Yes, something like that,” he says, mocking him a little. Alex's accent is perfect in both languages. He doesn't speak Italian with an American accent nor he speaks English with an Italian accent. Whatever he says, it always has a beautiful sound. He's not like his friends at all. When they hang out with Alex's friends, it always looks like they are in a mafia movie. Even though Timmy must admit that it's quite funny to listen to them.

“So, how does it work, exactly?” Timmy asks again, as he rummages into their picnic basket and takes out their dinner. After all the summers spent here, he learned that in Italy you just don't make a couple of sandwiches and go in the woods. It's not even an option not only for any mother in the country, but for every single citizen. It's inconvenient, disappointing and generally not enough to eat, as if eating was the main point of a romantic picnic – but after all, eating is almost an art in this place. When he told Vince, his only ally in the family at the moment, what he wanted to do, the man made them some special kind of pasta salad with tuna and all kind of vegetables, some kind of cold meat which is still very pink inside but is very tasty, and he did put some ham and salami in the basket, but carefully wrapped in a piece of tin foil with bread to the side, as if it was blasphemy to put the two things together. And now that he looks closely, Vince gave them fruits and two big pieces of a cake as well.

“How does what work?” Alex says, eying him from time to time.

“This St. Lorenzo thing,” Timmy answers, taking out the bowl of pasta, the meat in a tupperware box and some paper plates.

Alex usually doesn't let him do everything as if he was his knight in shining armor, playing the part of the damsel who's being courted. Besides, Timmy is everything but courteous. Whenever he wants something, he takes it or asks for it and expects a positive answer – something he took after Blaine. But tonight, Alex feels the need to relax, so he's willing to make an exception to his usual behavior, and he just sits there, waiting for him to set their table. “It's easy. You look at the sky and when you see a falling star, you make a wish.”

Timmy snorts. “We do that all year long,” he comments. “Was really there a need to make a festivity out of the chance of seeing a falling star?”
Alex smiles at Timmy's ever present arrogance, something that runs in his American blood. “We're not taking chances, tonight. We will see a falling star for sure,” he says. “Actually, many of them. The Earth's orbit goes through this meteor shower called Perseids every year this very night. So, you see, we know for a fact that there are gonna be falling stars and we celebrate the event. It's science!”

“Very romantic,” Timmy chuckles. “Let's go and see a bunch of dead rocks our planet happens to pass through in this period of the year.”

“It is romantic when you don't say it like that,” Alex glares at him. “So, who prepared the basket for you?”

Timmy doesn't get mad because Alex just assumed he didn't prepare it. First, because it's true. And second, because being able to prepare a basket for Alex has never been is main goal. What's important tonight is that he made this moment possible for them. And they both know it. “Your father,” he says, and there's no need to be more precise about which one. “I would have gone for sandwiches.”

“Of course you would have,” Alex laughs. “You barbarian.”

Timmy laughs too and he starts serving pasta. He knows to put just a spoonful of it on Alex's plate without insisting on him taking more. Alex is not one of those teen who starves themselves to death to be thin – he doesn't need that to be thin because he took after Cody. It's their metabolism – but he likes to choose what he's gonna eat very carefully. And pasta it's usually not one of his main choices. So he will eat out of courtesy but there's no point in force-feed him with it. After all, Vince too made pasta for two because he knows Timmy eats for two and not because it was actually gonna be the two of them.

They just eat and chitchat as the sky turns darker. By the time the stars come out one by one, they're having cake. “Ah! Look at that, it's beginning,” Alex says pushing his plate with his half eaten cake towards Timmy who wolfed down his ten minutes ago.

The act of grabbing it and eating it comes natural to Timmy. He doesn't even look down to see what's being passed to him. He's been finishing Alex's food since Alex was thirteen. “Where?” He asks, his mouth full.

“There!” Alex points at the sky as a tiny dot of light crosses it at a high speed. It's very fast, but it's clearly visible. “That one was mine though. I saw it first. Find yours.”

It doesn't take Timmy much time to find his own falling star, since the first one is followed by hundreds more. For a moment, he can't believe it. He just looks at the sky as one after the other dots start falling down, as if the glue keeping them up up had suddenly lost its grip.

He turns around to tell Alex how wonderful that is but he finds him staring at the sky, a small smile curving his lips, and he falls silent. Alex has always looked alien to him with his tiny frame and the straight lines of his face that make him so differently beautiful from any man or woman he has ever seen, and with the way he dresses, without thinking if what he puts on was intended for a boy or a girl. Alex defies gender rules while staying a boy all along, and that confuses Timmy but in a good way.

He decided long ago that he wants to be confused by this creature for the rest of his life.

“Did you see one?” Alex asks, eventually. He turns to him and smiles relaxed. Timmy looks at him for a couple of seconds before snapping out of it.

“Yes!” He said. He turns to look at the sky again, just not to lie to him so plainly. He's relieved when a falling star crosses the sky in that very moment. “There. That's mine.”

Alex chuckles. “What did you wish for?”

Timmy frowns, looking at him. “Wasn't it against the rules to tell someone what you wished for?”

It is, but since Timmy doesn't know how the night of San Lorenzo works, Alex feels free to make some things up. “Usually yes, but during this night the rule doesn't apply,” he says. “There are so many stars that each and every wish is registered very carefully by the Great Will of the Universe. It's a matter of practicality. They are well organized in the Wishing Department during this time of the year.”

“You're shitting me,” Timmy laughs.

“How dare you?” Alex pretends to be outraged, and then he laughs. “Okay, let's do this. I tell you my wish and you tell me yours. How about that?”

“Go ahead.”

Alex sighs and sits more straight as if he was about to tell him something of utter importance. “I wished to finish school with good enough grades to be able to choose exactly what I want to do next. I wished for you to come back here every year until we will be very old and very wrinkled and, most importantly, I wished for the two things to be compatible.”

Timmy looks at Alex's suddenly flushed face and he smiles, tenderly. He bends over to kiss him sweetly on the lips twice, being chronically unable to get away from him too soon. “Don't worry, we will make it so,” he comments. “Yet, that's a very complex thing to wish upon a star.”

“I don't believe in stars magically granting wishes,” he says. “I believe in people working hard to make their dreams come true. But you never know, right? So when I trust a star with my hopes and dreams, I tell her exactly what I want and what I will work hard to achieve, so in case she decides to give me a hand, she won't do a half assed job.”

Timmy laughs out loud. “You are always so demanding!” He says, amused. “Someday you will have employees and you'll make their life a living hell, like in that old movie, The Devil wears... some fashion crap, I don't remember.”

“Prada. The Devil wears Prada,” Alex sighs, shaking his head. They watched that movie together less than two weeks ago but Timmy's got a brain only when pigs, cows and Alex are involved. “But if everything goes as I planned, there won't be any need for me to ask cappuccinos to any poor young girl. But now it's your turn. What did you wish for?”

Timmy rolls his eyes and sighs. “I have everything I can have right now and I'm sure I'll have what I still don't have in the near future, so I wished for something I can't actually change, you know, in case this whole St. Lorenzo thing worked.”

That's both interesting and mildly worrying because Alex has the feeling he knows exactly where this is going. “So, what is it?” He asks again.

Timmy looks at him and shrugs. “I wish you didn't have your first time with that prick Sasha.”

“I knew it!” Alex says before Timmy can even finish speaking. He rolls his eyes, not really angry but certainly exasperated. “Please, not this again.”

“I don't want to discuss it,” Timmy says, raising both his hands. “You asked me what I wished for.”

“And I'm regretting it,” Alex replies. “Anyway, that's a wish easily granted because, as I've already told you many times, my first time wasn't with him.”

Alex never wants to discuss this matter but never misses a chance to say that very sentence, which always leads them to discuss the matter. “Baby, I don't wanna fight but it was with him,” Timmy insists, calmly. They are so used to have this conversation something like twice a month that it's not even an angry exchange anymore. They just reiterate their lines over and over, more to restate their positions – lest someone had bulged from last conversation – than anything else.

“You were there when my first time happened,” Alex says.

“I was there when our first time happened,” Timmy corrects him, predictably. “And it was the best time of my life but none of us was a virgin.”

“I was,” Alex instantly says with a timing perfected in months and months of practicing this conversation. It basically started the moment they finished having complete sex for the first time and never stopped. Timmy can't understand that, for Alex, all the attempts they had been made before Alex actually had sex with Sash count as sex. So he had his first time with Timmy, even if Timmy didn't manage to put it all in.

Timmy sighs, the shower of stars happening right above their head momentarily forgotten. “Alex, you fooled around with me for the first time, that much is true,” he nods. “I was your first kiss, I was the first one you made out with, I was the first one you rubbed against, I was the first one to put fingers in you – all the fingers you can take, they're all mine – I was the first to give you head and I'm the first one you gave head to, that much is true. These are all things I did to you first. And I'm proud of them and happy about them. But I didn't pop your cherry. It was him, just face it!”

“No!” Alex insists on denying the fact that he had sex with Sasha before he had it with Timmy with such intensity that one would think his life depends on it. “You tried all the summer to put it in me when I was fourteen!”

“Yes! And the key word is that I tried,” Timmy replies matter-of-factly. “It was too soon, you were too young and too tight. It happens, it's no big deal. And it also happens not to be sex as well.”

“You put the tip in,” Alex comments, his eyes very serious. “It was a big deal.”

Timmy looks up for a moment. He doesn't have any way with words. It's not his thing, so half the times he can't even explain himself. “Of course it was a big deal. I just meant that failing at putting it all in when you were so young wasn't a big deal,” he corrects himself.

“But the tip went in,” Alex insists.

“Yes, and what was it? An inch?” He snaps, exasperated.

“It was enough for me to feel pain,” Alex pouts, crossing his arms to his chest.

“But that's so totally not the point. It's not like it was sex just because you felt pain, Alex. Those were attempts,” Timmy insists, never losing his temper. At this point, it's not even about the fact that Alex had sex with Sasha first anymore. It's about defying what sex is, a thing Timmy suspects they will never agree on. “We actually made attempts at everything else, the difference is that we managed in every other case. But proper sex? That came later, at my house.”

“Oral sex is proper sex,” Alex informs him.

“You know what I mean,” Timmy snorts. “Do you want me to spell it out for you? I didn't put the whole length of my cock inside your ass until you were sixteen, at my house. And that was after that prick Sasha had already done that very thing six months before. That's it. I don't like it, but at least I'm not lying to myself about it.”

Alex growls in frustration for a moment and takes a sip of his juice. Timmy hopes against all odds that he will drop it, but of course it can never happen so soon. “What you don't understand, Timmy, is that, for me, there's exactly no difference between your inch and his whole length. So, since you entered first, you popped my cherry. It's not that difficult.”

“It's not difficult, it's crazy!” Timmy says, while the stars keep falling. It's a very dramatic background for such an argument. “The whole world would tell you that there's a very big difference between the tip and the whole length. Actually, you will tell me that there's a big difference tonight, if I only dare to stick just the tip. I can already hear you whining because you want more.”

Timmy loves Alex also because he never gets offended by things like that when they are fighting. He has a very bad example in Leo – who would scratch Blaine's eyes out for less – and in Tana – who instantly puts on her outraged face as soon as he sets things straight. Alex is different. He can get down and dirty as much as Timmy does, so whenever Timmy stops beating it around the bush, he just gets along.

“But this is completely different!” Alex says, shaking his head.

“How is this different, Alex? How come the tip was sex back then and it isn't now?”

“Because that was the first time, you moron!” Alex replies.

“Then, that's it! I was the first to ever put the tip of a cock inside your ass,” Timmy concedes. “You are allowed to say that. That's true.”

“Good.”

“Still not your first time as the rest of the freaking world intends it.” Alex screams. It's a low, liberating scream full of frustration that makes Timmy laugh. “What, no?”

“Can I please be the one deciding which one was my first time and which one wasn't, since it's my first time?”

“No,” Timmy replies, simply. “Because it's not something you can decide. First times match a certain description, it's a codified situation. It's like when a baby is born. You can't look at him and say that for you his mother is still pregnant. The baby is there, you can't decided he's born the day after.”

Alex frowns. “What are you even talking about?”

Timmy sighs. “Alex, listen to me. If I ask you what was the best fuck you had and you answer that it was me, and you better do that, that's okay. That's something you can actually decide. You and no one else can decide what you like best. But your first time, that's not up for discussion. Maybe you didn't like it, maybe you regret that it was with him, but you can't arbitrarily decide that it was with me.”

“I can and I will,” Alex says stubbornly. “And you are too. Right now.”

“What?”

Alex kneels on the plaid and starts putting everything back in the basket. “I'm gonna have my first time with you tonight. We're gonna pretend we never had sex together and we didn't even try anything. We just kissed a couple of times and that's it.”

“Wait, we just kissed a couple of times and you're already giving it to me?” Timmy says, helping him with the basket. He's not sure this idea will prove Alex's point – or any point, for that matter – but he likes where this is going. “I'm not sure I wanna have sex with someone so easy.”

Alex throws a piece of cake's crust at him. “Oh, shut up!” He laughs. “Help me. Get in the mood.”

Timmy puts the basket on the ground, so they can sit closer to one another on the plaid. “Alright, so what about Sasha?”

“He never happened of course.”

Timmy would have never imagined that, but the mere thought flips a switch in his brain. “So you are tight,” he comments, looking at him.

Alex looks back, his eyes darker under his long black eyelash. “Totally not the point, but yes. Very tight,” he answers, in a low voice that shows how much he wants this to be the point of it, instead. “I've never touched myself either.”

“Oh, I will do that,” Timmy says in a whisper. He leans on him, his lips brushing against Alex's. “I guess I can't jump on you right away, then.”

“Nope,” Alex says softly, shaking his head shyly as he has never done before in his life. “You will have to take it slow.”

Timmy kisses him sweetly, chuckling. “What are you doing?” He says, amused. “You weren't like this even when you were thirteen. Actually, if I remember correctly--”

“Can't you just play pretend, for once?” Alex asks, closing his arms around his neck. “Hm?”

Timmy nods and gently pushes him on the plaid, sliding on him like a snake. Not only his curves and angles perfectly fit Alex's, but Alex's legs part automatically to make room for him, taking away from this play any pretense of being a first time, but Timmy doesn't comment on that. “Don't worry,” he murmurs as his lips follow the line of Alex's jaw, leaving a trail of sweet, wet kisses. “I'll be gentle.”

He wonders if Sasha told Alex that – he did, before knowing that Alex had already had sex before. Not that he wouldn't have been gentle, if he had knew, but that sentence only makes sense during first times. In any other case it's simply just too sappy.

The whole argument put aside, he wants Alex now that he's got him underneath him but he refrains from going too quickly. He slips a hand under Alex's t-shirt, barely touching his hips. His skin is already feverish but he's shivering. Timmy kisses his way down and up his neck, and ends up sucking at his earlobe. “You are shivering,” he says, a little bit surprise.

“I'm scared,” Alex says. His voice makes it sound those words so real that Timmy has to look at his face to make sure something weird is not happening. But Alex looks calm and inviting, perfectly at ease.

“You don't need to be. I would never hurt you,” he says. Then he grabs his shirt and takes it off him. He stops to stare at him for a while and he smiles when Alex covers his face, trying to look embarrassed and failing completely.

His body always moves so gracefully and he has never been ashamed of it, so when he brings his hands to his face, his body arches sensually as if he couldn't help but being consciously inviting him. In fact, he ends up chuckling and staring at him through his parted fingers. “Oh my...”

“Shh, you are very shy and embarrassed, remember?” Timmy's kisses move along his chest, eager to follow the straight path that leads around his belly and to Timmy's favorite spot in the world, Alex's navel. Tonight, Alex is wearing a little blue jewel, with two sparkling pendents hanging from it. Exactly the kind of thing that drives Timmy crazy. He licks the skin around it, purposely avoiding the navel for a few moments, so when his mouth closes around it and his tongue dives into it, he can be proud of the moan of pleasure coming out from Alex's lips.

Alex arches his back, pushing his belly against his mouth, exactly as he did the first time Timmy has ever kissed him there, but that was just a reaction, this is a deliberate movement. Timmy grabs his hips and pushes him down, going back to kiss him on his lips. “I will take your pants down,” he informs him, softly. And there he can't help but add, “And probably everything else.”

Alex hits him gently on his shoulder but he's laughing too. “Come on! It's hard enough as it is.”

“Oh, I know that,” he gives him another kiss as his hands run down quickly to unbutton his pants. Alex never wears pants that are less than glued to his ass. Sometimes Timmy is lucky and they are just leggings – which are easily pulled down – sometimes he's not so lucky and they are real traps, forcing him to make all kind of maneuvers to get them down. Fortunately, Timmy has been having sex with him long enough to know all the tricks. Plus, Alex wiggling his ass is really helping. After that, his underwear is a piece of a cake.

“Why am I naked while you're fully dressed?” Alex asks, casually rubbing one leg against Timmy's hip.

“Because doing you with your pants half down your legs is uncomfortable and complicated,” Timmy says, kissing him soundly on his lips as he cups his ass in one hand, gently feeling it. “While I just need to pull my pants a little down.”

“So romantic!” Alex snorts, pulling him down for another kiss. “What about the shirt, then?”

“I had to do your navel too,” Timmy answers. His fingers slip between Alex's legs and find his opening. They circle it, teasingly.

Alex whines, fidgeting around them. “Touch me,” he asks, his voice bear no traces of embarrassment any longer.

“Wasn't it your first time? What's with the orders?” Timmy chuckles as he pushes a finger inside, enjoying the sound Alex makes.

“I've never been embarrassed of asking things,” Alex finally gives in. “Not even the first time.”

Timmy slips in another finger, shrugging and biting at his neck. “I wouldn't know, I wasn't there.”

Alex rolls his eyes. “Shut up,” he snorts but Timmy stops him from saying anything else with another, deeper kiss.

“Anyway,” he says, when he finally comes up for air, his fingers still moving inside Alex and Alex gently rotating his hips to both enjoy them and teasing him, “since you snapped out of your third faked first time, can you return the favor? I'm going crazy.”

Alex smiles, his lips against Timmy as he slips a hands inside his pants and closes his fingers around his member. “Come here, you.”

*

Timmy lies back down and stares at the sky. It's still very starry but it looks like someone closed the tap and no star is falling down anymore. The night is quiet and feels peaceful.
“That was intense,” he says with a sigh of satisfaction.

Alex brought a corner of the plaid to cover his crotch, but that's the only move he made. He's still too blissfully tired and basking in the aftermath of sex to even think about putting clothes on. There's always a little window of time after his orgasms when he literally doesn't care for anything at all. His mind is empty and peaceful. There's nothing he needs, nothing he wants, nothing he regrets. “Did you like it?” He asks. His voice is mildly curious.

Timmy snorts. “Are you kidding me? You were amazing.”

“You were not bad yourself,” Alex says and when Timmy glares at him, he chuckles. “Just kidding, you were awesome. I think I might have fallen in love with you all over again.”

Timmy nods with a solemn air. “That's what happens when you have sex with virgins. Now you'll stick with me forever, just because I popped your cherry. This is so embarrassing, maybe we should talk about it. I didn't want to hurt you, I thought we were on the same page, but---”

Alex bursts out laughing, throwing his head back. “Shut up! Oh my God, you're so annoying!” He cries out, reaching out to cover Timmy's mouth with his hand. Then he passes the other over his face and through his sweaty hair while his stupid sort-of-boyfriend laughs his ass off too. “I really need a shower but I don't wanna have it. What about we put some clothes on, run back home and fuck ourselves to sleep?”

“Deal.”

Timmy knows Alex too well to believe the matter has been set, but he can at least accept this truce and wish for it to be as long as possible. Somewhere somehow there must be one last latecomer star he didn't see that can grant him his wish.