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Music was a tactile experience; that much Wolfgang knew. At parties and balls and gatherings, he had blinded himself with a dish rag or napkin to impress concertgoers, then played a song. He’d trace the ivory of the piano board, feel each key with the pads of his fingers—each key, and the space between them. He’d memorized every spot by the sound it made when he touched it.
After months of excursions through the deep streets of Vienna and feisty trysts in the royal palace at Trieste, the same could be said for the body of Antonio Salieri. He had a Sicilian sculpt: thorough, firm muscles in a lean structure, damp but plush skin against the bulge of muscles honed by hours in the gym. “Composition is like lovemaking,” Salieri would jape in their more intimate moments. “It is a purely physical exercise.” Wolfgang quashed the blush that was blooming in his gut—how pestilent it was.
November had come again, as it was wont to do, and he had an opera to do for the king. Wolfgang guided his fingers across the piano. He flipped the thinning, dry paper, sozzled with ink. Scheisse. Hours, hours, hours, and nothing, nothing. He’d become creatively incontinent. It had left him. He’d once said to his sister, Maria, that either the plague would kill him or writer’s block would. And the plague had come and passed through Vienna, leaving a trail of boiled, haggard bodies, leaving Wolfgang unscathed. Yet writer’s block darkened his door all the same.
A knock at his door summoned Wolfgang from his sleep. “You wore the mask,” Wolfgang replied, Amadeusly. The cocky, arrogant, but oh-so-sexy smile that could only be that of Antonio Salieri slid through the mask. “Always,” Salieri said.
“Come in,” Wolfgang asserted. Salieri entered unceremoniously.
“I’ve been commissioned,” Wolfgang explained, guiding Salieri through his flat. He poured a cup of sherry into a goblet. If Wolfgang wasn’t so proficient in… other tactile activities, perhaps Salieri would be too jealous, but his meat hammer was more proficient than his ego at this point. “Although certainly not bigger,” Wolfgang would tease in the soupy, sweat-drenched aura of their post-lovemaking gaze.
“Well, there’s no accounting for taste,” Salieri teased with venom to it. He grabbed Wolfgang by his cheeks. He could feel the sherry still wallowing in his lover’s cheeks. Then Salieri kissed Wolfgang, open-mouthed and wet. Their lips met, and Salieri tilted Wolfgang’s head upward, so the sherry and saliva fell into his mouth. Yes, perfect, Salieri thought. Sherry and saliva.
Mozart laughed as Salieri siphoned sherry from Wolfgang with his talented tongue—that shrill, knave-like laugh that made Salieri want to slam his lover into the wall and pull his powdered wig from behind as he—“You’re shameless,” Mozart teased.
“Maybe so,” Salieri supplied. “So tell me about this commission of yours,” Salieri asked.
This seemed to spoil the mood with Amadeus. “Oh, it’s derivative dreck. That spoiled Leopold wouldn’t know art if it invaded Austria.” Amadeus rolled his eyes. Having played many a night in his court, Salieri could hardly disagree.
“Oh, you know the royals. They haven’t lived enough to appreciate true art. They haven’t had enough genuine experiences. Haven’t fought an enemy, haven’t gotten drunk with a friend, haven’t made love…” Amadeus could begin to feel the pressure building between Salieri’s legs. He playfully shoved the composer off him.
“It’s called The Swan,” Wolfgang scoffed. “Trite, right? Tells the story of these water pixies that approach this group of swans and offer them the privilege of becoming human. All but one of the six swans choose to become human, and they go about their lives, drinking, whoring, gambling.”
Mozart raised his finger. It wasn’t where Salieri usually liked to see Mozart’s finger, but he’d take it. “Yet this swan, this one swan”—Mozart waggled his finger, a prelude for later, Salieri hoped—“chooses to remain in the pond, content with the simplicity of pond life. He’s content with the gentleness and normalcy of just living as a swan, eating whatever it is a swan eats. He loves dappling in the sun, singing his song as the morning cracks open the sky, hearing the birds sing above.”
Salieri joined Mozart’s scoffing in this moment. “Perhaps he should stick to foreign affairs,” Salieri joked. “Or inbreeding.” This earned a shrill, nasally, and piercing laugh from Amadeus. His laughter quickly turned solemn.
“I just can’t crack it, Antonio. How am I supposed to determine the quiet, stoic life of this swan? With the other characters, the ones that become human, Leopold wants me to play against type. He wants me to criticize the very life I have. But I can’t. It is anathema to a creative. How do I understand the life of that swan, the inner peace it holds? I feel I’m missing something. I’ve lost this stoicness, Antonio, and I cannot retrieve it. And if I cannot retrieve it, then I cannot write.”
A small smile was punctuated by dimples in Salieri’s face. “Come, little sparrow. I think I can figure out a way to unblock your mind.” Salieri’s voice was a frayed, gentle purr. He put his hand on Wolfgang’s shoulder, on the epaulets upon his coat. He felt the tension existing within Wolfgang’s shoulders—the pressure of greatness, of false sense of superiority. He massaged and applied gentle pressure to the knotting in Wolfgang’s shoulder.
Salieri beckoned Wolfgang, walking him through the halls of the apartment, grabbing him by the shoulder and then by the hand. Salieri was a shepherd, not shepherding his sheep to the fields of pasture, but the fields of pleasure. Yes, he was about to fuck the brains out of his sheep.
Salieri guided Wolfgang through the extravagant, decadent, circular walls of their apartment. It was filled with hues of gold and red and green, Machiavellian paintings of historians conquering, paintings of empires falling, and paintings of gods breaking tide. He opened the door into the bathroom and turned on the faucet into the hot tub. (Pretend running water existed in the 1700s. I don’t know. Fuck you.)
“Spogliarsi,” Salieri whispered. Wolfgang could feel his hot breath against the back of his neck, erecting the hairs there. How Wolfgang loved the low hum of him speaking Italian in his voice, tinged with his Sicilian accent. “Spogliarsi.” Disrobe.
Wolfgang had always been a rebel—against constraints, against the crown, against the established laws of music, of art, of life. But this… this he could not challenge. And Amadeus obeyed. His petticoat and tailcoat fell in rings around his bare ankles, his purple-stained undercarriage falling to the floor too. As he felt Salieri breathe from behind him, Mozart suddenly felt so much more at home. It all felt more real. The drip of the water from the faucet into the tub. The feeling of his bare toes against the porcelain floor. The ticking of the cuckoo clock from behind.
“Yes,” Mozart thought, his thoughts now the farthest thing from quiet. “This will do quite nicely for inspiration.”
Mozart descended into the tub, feeling the bubbles wrap around his ankles. He felt his leg hairs stick to his ankles. Wolfgang descended further into the tub, sitting on the bench within the gold-laced, wood-paneled tub. Salieri followed suit, disrobing and entering the tub with him. He continued his massage of Mozart’s masculine shoulders, this time without the hindrance of clothes.
“Feel this, Wolfie,” Salieri teased, his voice so low it was barely a whisper. He whispered this into his ear, biting the lobe. “Feel the water, and feel the peace of the precious swan.” He began kissing the earlobe, followed by the neck.
Wolfgang gasped at the intrusion. “Yes, feel the gentle warmth of the water, feel its tranquility. This is where the swan belongs. This is where he thrives, bella ragazza,” whispered Salieri.
Wolfgang began to clutch the bottom of the bench. “Oh, Xenu,” Wolfgang bit his lip and blushed. (Yeah, Mozart’s a Scientologist in this.)
“Let’s get this pesky thing off before it gets wet.” Salieri whipped off Mozart’s powdered wig. As his messy, dirty blond hair began to puff out, Mozart could not feel more naked. Mozart turned around to face his rival in music and his partner in life. He clasped Salieri’s bony cheeks and kissed him, passionately, then violently. Salieri clasped the back of his lover, pulling Mozart closer, closer, closer, closer.
Mozart withdrew from Antonio’s mouth and then leaned his forehead into his, nuzzling his protruding nose. “Make me hear the music, Antonio. Make me hear it,” Mozart exhaled between breaths.
Salieri smirked cockily, and began to reach between Mozart’s thighs. “I always was a better composer.” And indeed, Salieri could hear the music. This time it was not through piano or harpsichord or flute. It was through the gentle beating of Mozart’s heart through his throbbing tumescence. Mozart took in a sharp breath as Salieri’s hand began to slide back and forth, back and forth. He raised his voice in arousal. “Eh—eh—eh—”
Salieri hushed. “You must be silent during the composer’s performance.” Bastard, thought Mozart, as Salieri continued pumping.
Amadeus began to crescendo like the finest and most triumphant moments of a symphony. But as if a tornado came through and destroyed the concert hall before its final moment, Salieri ceased his ministrations.
“Before we proceed,” Salieri began, “the so-called musical genius of Vienna must answer a musical question.” Salieri tutted him. Through the blushing and pumping of blood within his nethers, Mozart cursed his lover. “Tell me, so-called music genius of Vienna, what is the chord that is played most in your Andante?”
Mozart breathed in. He could answer the question in his sleep, but in the burning blood of arousal he couldn’t for the life of him begin. “G,” he finally squeaked out.
“Very good,” Salieri praised. “Tell me,” Salieri asked, “have you ever heard of the G spot?”
Mozart shook his head. “There were whispers in the court, but I hadn’t believed it,” Mozart replied.
Salieri grabbed the back of Mozart’s dashing hair and began to guide him lower, lower, lower. “There are more things in any Heaven and Earth than can be written by any single composer,” Salieri chided.
“No, it’s not true. It’s filth. It’s imperial propaganda. The G spot was a lie, fabricated by Napoleon’s troops to degrade our morale,” Amadeus argued.
Salieri chuckled. “I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that someone who’s been playing for the royals at such an age would not live to see the real world—its eccentricities, and its pleasures.” This Salieri punctuated by focusing Mozart’s gaze on Antonio Salieri’s Emperor Leopold II. “Shall I continue?” he asked the genius composer in front of him.
“I should enjoy nothing more.”
With pressure from his hand, Salieri guided Mozart deeper, deeper, washing his face and ashen blond hair into the depths of water and then to the depths of pleasure. Although Mozart was never a vocalist, his mouth was not as untalented as his hands. “Thank God all my teeth fell out due to scurvy,” Mozart thought as he made quick work of Salieri’s excitement.
Now it was Salieri’s turn for a composition, and for all the talk he made about being the next great genius of Europe, Salieri’s next masterpiece wasn’t an ode, or a waltz, opera, or even symphony. It was a low, primal, guttural moan from his belly—nay, from his nards. Even muffled by the water, Amadeus could make out his lover’s pleasure. It was a greater thrill than any tour around Europe. No badge, no title, no bounty any emperor could give him could possibly match the euphoria he felt in this movement.
For the first time that night, Salieri’s face began to unbuckle. He began to sweat, his fingers began to tense, and his pulse began to quicken. “Wolfie,” he breathed in ecstasy, hitching his breath.
“I’m the wolf, yet I’m about to hear you howl,” said Mozart from beneath the water, except it came out more like glug glug glug glug.
Time passed, and Salieri’s toes began to curl, his fingers began to claw the gold and red paneling of the hot tub. Finally, Mozart descended from the water, soaked and decomposed and positively famished. “Oh, the great Salieri can’t handle a little head? You’re gonna hate France,” Mozart teased. That brat, Salieri thought, as he entangled his tongue into Mozart’s.
Mozart began to ascend from the water, pushing Salieri out of the tub, grabbing the taller man and letting Salieri hitch his legs around his back. He pinned him against the walls, making out with his neck, then his clavicle. He hitched up Salieri’s legs and began to have sex with the fourth hole, the one that scientists haven’t discovered yet, but believe to exist somewhere between the elbow and shoulder.
After hours of sweaty lovemaking, their skin began to dampen, and their musks began to stink. “Well, Wolfgang, that was positively amazing,” Salieri said.
“Agreed, it was splendid,” Mozart concurred.
Salieri nodded in agreement. “I should love to continue our furious lovemaking, but I seem to be coming down with a case of the plague,” Salieri said.
“Well, I’m sorry for your untimely demise, and I shall miss our lovemaking dearly. I hope your trip to the afterlife is a pleasant one, and I shall remember you fondly,” Mozart replied.
“Thank you, good chap,” Salieri continued. “Shall you stay for sherry?” asked Mozart.
Salieri shook his head. “I’d rather love to, but I appear to have died. Have a good day and a pleasant tomorrow.”
Salieri then passed out, dead from the plague.