D I S A S T E R

 Undoubtedly his heart desired much more than one extra dose of ignorant bliss, but there was also something at the back of his mind that didn’t allow Dante to fully let go of the last shreds of himself just yet - it was a good time to keep his wits about too, seeing as someone had decided to ruin his pleasant evening with a needlessly prolonged chime of the doorbell. A quiet sigh ghosted past parted lips, gently caressing the hand that attempted to arrange the messy mop of brown tresses into something a little more presentable before the man had finally decided to stand up and make his way towards the front door. There was a hint of quiet confidence behind each taken step as, after all, he knew exactly who haunted the other side of the secure, metal barrier.

Yet, there was no bullet wound, and Quinton, a boy not unused to being shot, had still lead himself here, to the surgeon, who was not unused to patching him up. It was a homewards journey, even if this particular apartment was…different to his previous. Such was the life of escaping the clutches of the city’s most delightful crime lord—lady? At least Inez had been polite, or had not threatened to spill his throat then and there on the streets, he did not miss his former employer in the slightest. Being on the other side was going to take some getting used to, and it had not clicked in the boy that he could now fully declare himself for justice. He was still mourning the loss of his damnable coat. “My brother shot me.” He scoffed in a voice that had accelerated to such a pitch that made the entire ordeal a smidge more dramatic than it needed to be. Quinton had always been theatrical.

After remembering that he did indeed need to breath, that he couldn’t sustain himself on hysterics and erratic hand movements, he asked. “Il tuo braccio, va bene?” His own moving to shed his outer layer, hoodie spilling onto the floor like a crumpled shadow, he was wearing a plain t-shirt beneath, in a lighter shade of black. Matteo had been the one to get him clothes and his brother was distinctly lacking colour in his wardrobe.

It made his existence precarious in a world where even Matteo’s loyalty could be called into question, and perhaps it was stupid to protect him. Certainly, it made very little logical sense, in the kindest of terms, the older man was an anchor wrapped up in an alarm system, giving off every single warning sign known to humankind that associating with him was a bad idea. If he had been anyone else, Matteo would have distanced himself years ago, would have ruthlessly cut ties. It irked him, that Quinton stood as living proof of his own potential for illogical behavior. If he was as truly clever as he seemed to be, he should have shot him and been done with it.

This was an enormous risk, and he was trusting someone who could very easily blow his plan to pieces, costing them both their lives. Still, although he didn’t know much about reading people, he was vaguely…surprised that what came from the other man wasn’t an outpouring of anger. Perhaps the sedative was a little more potent than he had anticipated.

He tilted his head at the feeble reach out, not moving away, his dark gaze intent. Some often found it unsettling, as they held absolute focus, but it wasn’t intended to be. He took the words as they were, with a curious tilt of his head. This was an odd reaction. “I drugged you,” he reminded him quietly, as if concerned for his mental abilities after the implementation of the sedative. Did he get the dosage wrong? His math was rarely wrong.

“With drugs,” he clarified for Quinton’s benefit.

A brow raised as the grasp to his shirt, at the smile, onyx eyes narrowing just that slightly, confused. “What?” For another long moment, he was suspicious. Was it to get closer in range for a well-deserved strike? No, he decided, Quinton wasn’t the type for misdirects even without being half out of his mind on a sedative. His brows unknitted, but despite his confusion, he slowly moved forward, shifting onto the couch. Every movement was tentative, as it always was, easily overwhelmed by sensory stimuli. He still wasn’t tremendously used to being — held.

He lay facing Quinton as they had when they were boys, breathing even and soft, dark eyes still on his face, quietly puzzled.

There was a moment of long hesitation, and then, a helpful whisper.

His brother would not wantonly hurt him. Or so he believed. Right now all he wanted was closeness, even if there a desire in him to scream and shout, it lingered beneath the surface of his brain-fog. “Feel like shit.” The words were hazy, a drifting of thought spilled out between them in a soft murmur. He did truthfully feel awful, his head was swimming and nothing really made total sense, drabs of memories that didn’t feel truly his, it was coming back to him slowly. The balcony, the cigarette, the gun.

“Why?”

Why why why. There were a thousand questions ready in wake for when he was of right state of mind, but for now only one sprung to mind. He tried with a desperate clinging effort to stay awake long enough to hear the answer. Quinton needed to know, why Matteo had shot him, why he had drugged him, why he was laying here unable to make sense of the world. A simply curiosity rather than an accusation, that would come later, again. When his voice wasn’t hoarse and a strangled whisper, when his head didn’t feel as though someone had thwacked it with a hammer. His temples were starting to pound, scarcely noticeable in his current state but a newly blossoming constant.

He shifts enough to cover them both wordlessly in the blanket, it’s precision thin knit warm enough to take the chill away from them both. It reminded him of years gone by, years of sitting huddled beneath awnings, laying on floor at the foot of someone else’s sofa with a threadbare jacket to cover them both. He could still remember the long months without a roof over his head, jumping from couch to couch as Lynna exhausted her list of friends.

As Quinton stirred again, Matteo shifted, almost imperceptibly, away from the range of his arms. Even dizzy and disoriented, it wasn’t entirely doubtful that the fixer might take a swing at him. Likely he’d miss, but he wasn’t altogether particularly keen on granting him that chance. If the accusation stung, he didn’t show it. Any pain resulting from this could be examined, alone, at a later time. Right now, his focus was absolute, that his brother might be all right.

“I drugged you,” he explained softly, keeping his voice even and calm. “I understand that this is disorienting. I gave you a potent sedative. Street name The Long Sleep. It mimics death. Slows the heart. Slows the breathing.”

“Careful,” Matteo whispered, shifting towards him a little closer. “Do not try to wake too quickly. Give yourself a moment.”

Why—why am I alive?

The younger man hesitated for a moment, and then dark eyes met his. For a moment – it could have a trick of the light – they seemed to have softened.

“Because I love you, little brother.”

His words and expression was serious.

He wanted to hate him, and for all accounts he should, what kind of brother drugged and allegedly kills the other, but he cannot. There isn’t a malicious bone in him and certainly not when it regarded Matteo. The wide dark eyed boy was his kryptonite. He reached out again, with fumbling fingers that made contact with the soft fabric of his shirt in a slow grasp. Soft smile that took all the edges out of his face with one smooth quirk, “that’s…”

“My job.”

Because it was, he was in theory, the older brother. Even if both of them knew that wasn’t the truth of it, not that Quinton would ever admit it. Humour danced thin and coarse against his lips, his throat ragged and dry, yet he still spilled a quiet asking. “Come here?” Because for all his wild gestures, hands moving through the air in silent motions to lay beside him on the sofa, he wasn’t adept at sign language. Quinton relied on a vulgar silver tongue and without it he was paralyzed.

ph. Jenya Vyguzov

He wanted to be kind to him. He wanted to make him happy. Instead, this was what he was giving him, but he was also giving him a way out – a chance for a future. A chance to start anew, away from the enemies he had made, unburdened to join the police force at last. He was damning himself for Quinton’s happiness, but that should have hardly been unexpected as he always had. Matteo had always protected him, in the background, in the shadows, watching with pride. If he was a guardian angel, his wings had long been torn from his back, but he watched over him regardless. It was his love for Quinton that humanized him – that elevated him above the nightmare so many had termed him as. It was also his love for him that made him so dangerous.

Quinton spoke. He nodded. He was aware that any word he spoke would not register in the face of his fear. It didn’t matter. Instead, he approached him as he shut his eyes, footsteps soft. He pressed the gun against the pack of theatrical blood he had stored in one of the great coat’s pockets, pressed his lips in a chaste kiss against his forehead – and fired.

He caught him before he could fully fall, not caring about the fake blood that would likely stain his clothing. Gently, he let him rest in his arms, easing him to the concrete fully, a soft humming of a song escaping from his lips, soothing and sweet. It had been the song that he had used to sing to himself and to Quinton when they were small and frightened, the song a relic of a mother that he could hardly remember, the words in Italian at last as he soothed him into the darkness, rocked him gently into shadow.

————————-

It had gone off perfectly, as much as he could have hoped for. There had been an appropriate show of deadened emotion as he carried what could have been his brother’s corpse, staggering beneath his weight. Quinton was heavy, and he was almost floored beneath him, but he managed, dragging him into the back of his car after taking photographs and keeping video of the act itself. It was an easy drive to his home – quiet, after dark – a struggle to get him up the elevator, and then into his apartment and onto his couch, but he managed. Rested him on his side on the couch, covering him gently with a blanket, before he went to change his clothes.

When he returned, dressed far more informally, he collected a bowl filled with warm water, a hand cloth, and organized himself beside him. Gently, he worked to wipe the sweat from his face, wondering what he do when he awoke, if he would hate him, demand to leave. His motions were tender as he cleaned his face, and after a time of that, he cleaned him of the fake blood as well, dressed him in clean clothes he had procured in his size.

He waited, dark eyes fixed on the barely-there motion of his chest, for him to wake up, and when he first caught him stirring he whispered, voice soothing and soft. “Attento, fratellino. The sedative will make you drowzy yet.”

It was strange, becoming aware of what should have been one’s death and Quinton couldn’t understand for a brief moment why he was alive in the first place. Or was the afterworld a mirror of their own? He panicked, his voice hoarse and catching in his throat, fingers tightening desperately into the blanket but in reality they did much more than twitch. His sentience was thinly spread across the room, as if someone had tugged and stretched him until there wasn’t much left. He felt vaguely nauseous although there was nothing but the smoke in his lungs for him to cough up.

“Fu…” His insult trailed off, his attention slipping as eyes shuddered close without meaning, for a minute his chest stilled, lingering on the precipice between wakefulness and a deep enough slumber to be mistaken for death.

Quinton startled again, although to the world outside of his hazed one his waking was filtered into slow-motion, the thin boy pale in the face from his hours out scarcely able to keep his eyes open much less lift his head. Everything sluggish. Even his breath seemed to have a lethargic quality to it. “You…”

There’s an accusation in the depths of his voice, well concealed beneath the fatigue, “shot…me…” And, he had. Matteo, his beloved younger brother, had shot him. He couldn’t recall the precise moment he’d been shot, that was a nebulous void, but he could recall the gun, the horror as Matt lifted his arm slowly to point it at him. The instructions.

Kneel for me.

They did not know him when he was frightened and starving, huddled in an alleyway for warmth. They did not know him when he woke in the darkness, shivering, from his nightmares, unable to verbalize the horrors that he had seen. They did not know him at all – and yet, Quinton did. Quinton knew him as no one else had, perhaps, ever known him, and as much as he feared him – he trusted him in that moment as well. He always had trusted in him, looked away from the darker sides of his soul and thought the best of him when others had been so quick to condemn him. To his older brother – he had never been a monster, nor a freak, only a small boy who had needed protecting. Even now, Quinton was trying to protect him.

That trust, and that love, was what was going to keep them both alive.

Matteo glanced down at the thin hand holding his wrist, in the most fragile of grips. It would not be enough to keep him from angling the barrel of the gun in the direction needed, but he wondered if Quinton had sensed something was far more than wrong, wanted to protect himself, in some subconscious way. He didn’t fight him, merely gazed at the contact with heavy, broken eyes, before following him. His footsteps were silent, tread soft as a cat. Only the man who held his wrist might have felt the tremble that had run through his slender frame, the shudder of regret and mingled resolve. This was the only way – but that didn’t mean that he wanted to do this. He did not want to do this.

Those dull, heavy eyes watched his brother light up without interest, rising only at the quiet proclamation that followed. A single tear fell, racing down pale cheek, but Matteo didn’t seem to have noticed. It was as if he had been carved of marble, still and striking, the light of the streetlamps catching in his dark hair, in his broken gaze. That sadness seemed to only deepen at his brother’s words, eyes closing briefly, before they opened again, the gun still held in his hand, barrel pointed at the ground, but grip unrelenting. “Ti amo,” he whispered softly, in return, and those that dark agonized gaze met his. There was only truth in his words. Help me.

“Ho bisogno di te per inginocchiarsi per me,” he whispered, and his hand was trembling lightly on the weapon – but not enough to release it. His cheeks were wet, but he did not step away. He was loving, but he was dangerous, perhaps all the more dangerous because he loved. “Che ho promesso che non avrei mai del male. That I would tear apart anyone who caused you harm.” His words, amusing in childhood, were not amusing now. “Ma sto già rotto,” he murmured, barely a sound at all, as he raised the gun.

    It appeared it wasn’t what Matteo wanted either. He knelt before him, knees pressed painfully against the smart-concrete, whatever that was supposed to mean, the real estate agent had told him it wasn’t real concrete. Just designed to poses the same aesthetic because dreary greyish slabs were supposed in vogue. Except it was better heated flooring on demand, sensors rigged throughout to adjust the lighting dependent on where you were stood on the balcony, gestures rigged into the bare walls that allowed the home-owner to adjust it manually. How many nights had he and Elli been out here, her back pressed against the wall, the floor, it didn’t matter, she was infused into every iota of his apartment. Her perfume lingering like a long drawn out shadow. Where are you?

    His last thoughts were of her, he was determined to make it so, would she be the one to find his body? No, he wouldn’t let his last thoughts be so dreary, so morbid. If he was honest he wasn’t sure she was coming back, their last argument had been particularly spiteful. It was difficult to muster a voice, to swallow back the fear that was threatening to spill the meagre contents of his stomach on Matteo’s shoes. “Lo rendono veloce…” He started, quiet, voice partially muffled because of the cigarette still between his lips, if he was going to die he was going to have at least one last bit of pleasure. Slowly he reached to pinch it between his fingers, exhaling after a moment with a slow release of tension from his shoulders. He seemed surer now, accepting of what was to come. “Non mi lasciare qui fratello. Portami a casa dopo.”

    Home. Now that was a distant concept, would he be buried beside the two empty graves up in the neat little graveyard out of the big apple? Or would his brother scatter his remains here, beneath the awning they’d met under. It didn’t matter. Frantically he took another drag of the cigarette, his attempts to fight back tears had failed, he was scared—he didn’t want to die—he wanted to live. He wanted to scream, to shout and wrestle the gun from his brother’s hand. Only if they’d sent someone to kill him, not just any someone, they’d send more, and his brother wasn’t known for giving in.

   But in all of this, his fear and anxiety for the world beyond this one only attributed for half of his panic. The other half was a striking despondency, sparked by yet another abandonment. In his panic there was no seeing reason, that this was likely going to be faster than if they’d sent someone who had a real grudge against the fixer, and the number of people who disliked him grew daily. It was quicker, it was a mercy, but it only tasted of desertion. Ti amo—he wanted to cry bullshit.

   He needn’t wipe his cheeks clean, tears wouldn’t matter when he was dead, so he shut his dark eyes, unable to look at him any longer. His chest choked but still he whispered, “fucking do it.”

It was this that he counted upon now = all three of those traits, but his ability to withhold weakness, as always, in his presence, was compromised. Silent, he made his way into his brother’s apartment, dark eyes dull, subdued, far more than he usually was, no quiet wit evident, a pallor to his features that seemed sharper than normal, carried that hunted look that it occasionally procured after too many long nights, too many near misses. When Quinton was visibly happy to see him, it ached – far more than he thought possible, and the deep gaze that regarded him was full of a quiet, eloquent misery. He envied him, in many ways, his cheerful ignorance, his joy even the darkest of times, bolstered by naivety but also by a spirit which was genuinely kind. For years, he had protected him in every way that he could think of – protected him from the darker understandings of how deep his involvement with the Mafia had fallen, about the necessary sacrifices that such a lifestyle required. He wished that he could protect him now – and knew that this was the only way, even if he were to think him a monster for it, even if he might curse him for his secret-keeping, even if he might make a mistake.

He was aware – hyper aware – of the weight of the gun at his hip – slim, enough to fire a perfected dart that would insert the sedative – adjusted for his height and his weight. The dart wasn’t immediately apparent as such, and for all Quinton would know, this assassination attempt would seem absolutely genuine. Well meaning as Quinton was, he could not be expected to keep this secret – and Matteo would not put him at risk further. He simply watched him with heavy eyes as the other man continued to speak on everything and nothing, the words rushing over his head, past his ears, none of them registering. 

 Voglio dire grazie, per tutto il Vostro aiuto con il mio—lavoro.

Matteo tilted his head, dark curls shifting, a movement of narrow shoulders. The look in his eyes as they met Quinton’s was distant – far away. “Vestirsi e andare con me al di fuori. Si prega di farlo per me.” It was unusual wording for him, and he knew his brother’s guard would be up – but he supposed that was part of the theatre. The quiet tremble in his voice, the broken resolve in his gaze – that was completely genuine. He knew what he would be giving up, but Quinton’s trust was far less important than his life.

It was then he reached for his gun, bringing it slowly into view.

“Se mi avete mai amato, mi aiuterai,” he whispered, and a tear slowly rolled down one porcelain cheek as he stood, still as a statue, the barrel of his weapon not yet diverted to his brother.

“Please,” he pleaded softly, for the first time. His hand was trembling lightly on the gun, and he looked small, and vulnerable.

     He’s jamming his feet into shoes just quick enough to forget to undo the laces, an array of lyrical curses spilling from his lips as he stoops to fix them with trembling hands. Quin doesn’t quite understand why they won’t stop shaking—surely his brother wouldn’t shoot him. The gun was there for another reason. His urgency was because of another reason. It was nigh impossible to read Matteo, it had always been difficult, but there were small indicators. He had to focus, hone his scattered attention down to one fine point in order to make any sense of them. Most of the time Quinton remained blissfully ignorant, blazed through life with his brother in tow because it was simpler to find ways to quirk smiles, as small as they were, to his lips than figure out the darkness that lurked in his eyes. Quinton looked for the best in him, because that’s what he did.

  He looked for the best in people, when they saw the worst in him.

    And yet, for one reason or another Matteo had stuck around all these years—despite seeing the worst in him. Despite Quinton’s accidental tendency to get them both into trouble and fuck up whatever meticulous plan his brother had spent weeks on. Perhaps that’s why he’s urgent in pulling his coat on, getting ready for whatever it was that Matteo needed him for, it was his chance to pay him back. After all these years the debt would be lifted, a little, and Quinton could see his brother smile. That was all he wanted.

   It’s a slow approach, feet are quiet against the fake hardwood flooring and a quieter hand reaches out to grasp his wrist lightly. Fingers brushing against pulse point, not daring to skirt lower than his wrist, the gun still held tight in his brother’s hand. “Come, I can help.”

   He clicks his tongue and jerks his head towards the balcony, “you need fresh air brother, come, come and then tell me all.” It’s like this that he leads him outside, it’s not explicitly fresh air—heavy and damp. His skin crawls but the city slowly waking isn’t important, nor was the argument he’d had this morning, it all faded away to the corners of his mind. Slowly, and only when he double-checks that Matteo is still there he lets go. Sometimes it looks as though his brother is simply gone.

  “It’s shitty out here, fuck. Guess it ain’t better anywhere you go.” He’s already searched for the little pink and blue box in his pocket, neon bubble writing across the top to inform him of their horrendous flavouring, he lets the cigarette hang from between his lips as he lights it. “Fratello, ti amo. Ti prego, dimmi che cosa passa per la testa…”

He knows what he has to do.

In the moment, everything for him had a complete and startling clarity. He could perceive everything in hyper saturation, the color and texture of the wood paneling in his office aching at his eyes, the soft susurrus of footsteps carving away at his ears, the mirror etching back a pale, frightened image that he scarcely recognized. Pale fingertips reaching out to touch the cool surface of the mirror, fingertips brushing fingertips of the boy – for that was what he was in that moment, despite any posturing, a boy not a man – dark eyes meeting dark eyes and recognizing the hollows that had built up at his temples, the shadows under his eyes, the hunted look in every line of his body.

 He doesn’t know if it is safe, or if anywhere is particularly safe. 

With characteristic meticulousness, he has searched for any bugs that might be placed in his office, none of his important conversations had been mentioned or referenced, so he was hopeful, but there was still the potentiality that he had missed something. That they hadn’t missed something – that he hadn’t hidden to satisfaction that way that his hands seem to tremble a little more these days, how they are less flippant in their coverance of blood, how sacrifices are much more unwillingly given with a shade of mutiny impeding like a thunderstorm on the horizon. All of these things, all of these clues, are a weakness that he has long hoped to conceal – worked to conceal with a diligence befitting his nature – but the men he worked with and for are skilled at detecting weakness in the ranks, even from the dark-eyed specter, even from a boy. Like wolves, they can sense the first instance of lameness, and can hone upon it with dreadful accuracy.

He has one visible weakness that he finds difficult to hide, and it is so much harder to hide a weakness when that weakness has a beating heart, when that weakness can trigger irrationality and confusion and all the symptoms of reckless madness that Matteo would so easily condemn in others. Perhaps it is true that every criminal has his line, and should that line be found, it might be the end of him. It is also true that if a history is painstakingly pulled apart, that a line can always be found – and then there comes not a formal proclamation, nothing as grand or as inelegant as a death sentence spoken by a self-appointed judge, no, simply a chorus of whispers. A ‘word of the street’ issues forth and builds as predictably and as menacingly as a hurricane – words of doubt, words of bitterness, words of rage. Like blind insects that climb from woodwork when it is peeled away, only with looking and with patience can one then peel away the veneer of civilization to reveal the festering corruption that lurks within – to realize how may enemies one has who will only chance you at your weakest for they would not dare you at your strength.

He knows what he has to do.

Even as he prepares for it, he feels in his heart of hearts a greater resistance that he believed imaginable, and perhaps some of it was for selfish reasons. He does not want his brother to look at him with anything but that pure and honest love that emanates from him openly and without any hesitation. He warms him like winter sunlight in bursts of fractious color let into a room that has long been boarded up. He makes him remember what it is to be outside of a pageantry that had turned much closer to truth over long years. He remembers from their childhood the first time that Quinton had smiled at him, and it was the first true smile that he could remember. 

With painful and painstaking reconstruction of those memories, he can remember the differences between that true smile and that hiding smiles of others. He can remember the first night after he had run away that he was not hungry, and that he was not cold. He could remember the loyalty that had formed, quiet and unshowy and wordless, between them, for him. The anger that had risen when Quinton was in danger. The colors of emotions bursting forth after so long only feeling the undercurrent of fear – and he doesn’t want him to be afraid of him, doesn’t want him to ever think him a monster. He knows what he looks like when he is a little afraid of him, and he never wants him to look like that again, because he doesn’t want to be that boy, and he doesn’t want to be that man. He doesn’t like to acknowledge the intensity of his emotions and so, he controls them, and he wields control over them as a man might over beasts that could devour him. He is the sovereign over his own heart, but he is not alone, and so his heart is split – given to others in its pieces and weakened in the process, these sore spots, these targets, these people.

He knows what he has to do, he just doesn’t know if he has the strength to do it.

He doesn’t want to die because the Mafia questions his loyalty. He doesn’t want the people he loves to die, and he does love them, in his own way, in a way that is incoherent of reason, painful with a brightness that is like an alien sun, disorienting and dangerous. He doesn’t want Quinton to be afraid of him, but he knows that this may be the only compromise that he can orchestrate between them, and so he does. He plans to the best of his ability and attempts to reassure himself the best he can, as he sets the pieces in motion, that this was the only way to keep them both safe. 

He hopes, as he is buzzed into the building, and climbs the stairs to his brother’s apartment, specialized side arm carefully tucked out of sight beneath his jacket, that he will understand that this was the right decision, no matter how painful it might have been in the moment. His brother’s apartment and hallway have already been bugged with cameras, placed there by his associates in order to fully capture the apparent act that is to take place, and he is hyper-aware of them as he steps out of the elevator to pad silently to the door. Pale knuckles hesitate before they rap gently against wood in a soft pattern of sound, and he realizes that he is trembling. He does not come to his brother in any formality, not in suits or accompanied by an entourage. He comes alone, in T-shirt, jeans, and baggy jacket – looking vulnerable, and a little afraid. That, at least, is not an illusion. He is afraid. He is afraid of the risks. He is afraid of the chance of failure, even minimal, he is afraid.

When they told him that he would have to kill an associate of the police, no one told him that it would have to be his brother.

When the door opens, he does not smile.

   He’s not covert, unaware of the changes that’ve been made to his apartment, evidence littering the floor of his duplicity. That and this month’s dirty attire spread out like a modern art piece. There’s nothing, in his mind, to fear. The apartment itself was one of the highest rated for security in the inner city, he had a small armory of weapons DNA locked in an off room and a police badge in the making. Not that the latter would protect him from shit. If Quin had his head screwed on right he’d be planning to leave, but there were too many contingencies for that, his brother, Victoriano, Blue. Half-dressed and a little bedraggled after a long night with her. The knock nearly made him jump out of his skin, but there was only one person who’d haul their ass all the way up here and knock.

   Not bothering to stub out his cigarette he slinked back through the apartment, away from the monstrous view of the city, in all its morbidly shit glory. He’d laughed in the agents face after she informed him there was a premium for a view like this, a view of what, mistakenly she’d thought he was joking but nonetheless the rest of the deal had been a little uncomfortable. Quinton hadn’t noticed, nor cared. He’d still bought the damnable apartment despite being heavily overpriced and that was about all he cared for. It was clean, or it had been originally, came with its own private garage down below, and access to a roof garden above which had come in handy for a few private parties.

   The door clicked open, the sight of his brother not a surprise, the lack of an outward smile orthodox when dealing with his brother. He smiled enough for the both of them. “Piccolo,” he’s grinning as he leans in to pat him on the back in a semi hug, “come, come.”

    “Chiudi la porta dietro di voi. C’è questa pazza tutta la sala. Continua a cercare di entrare di nascosto.” Quinton wasn’t particularly even sure if the man lived in the building or not, he thought it likely the man was a solo, had that look about him. Either way, he wasn’t in the mood to push it with the cuckoo. It wasn’t as if solos were known for their level heads and serene approach to life. “Sono riuscito a riparare il motore. Lei è come nuovo ora.” He keeps babbling about the everyday mundane matters, cigarette pinched between his fingers as he takes a drag. “Voglio dire grazie, per tutto il Vostro aiuto con il mio—lavoro.”

The words unexpectedly sting, innocently spoken but harsh as if by mistake as a full-blown gale. They strike him in the chest and wound in a thousand small places, make him inhale slowly as he does when he is physically hurt, trying to center himself, trying to forge onwards. It is not a foreign idea that words can hurt as much as blows, but it’s one that he hasn’t truly considered in a long time – build up his defensives tall and strong, perfected the art of putting up a wall in his own defense where nothing could creep in. However, like a siege, he knew, he realizes, by hiding behind these walls, by this extreme caution, he was starving of things that he had rarely before acknowledged that he had need. Human companionship, even touch, which was slowly becoming more acceptable.

What Quinton had said is perhaps, to a sensitive mind, painful, because he had never intended it. He had never meant to hurt him or to leave him in any shade of doubt, he had tried his best to show it in his actions, actions that might have been missed by someone who needs such sentiments spoken. He had – tried his best, had fought through an essential way of doing things, and it still had not quite been enough. He was sure Quinton loved him, accepted him, but he likely always found something in him that was wanting, and he’s sorry, in that moment, that he can’t be an easier choice, that he can’t be something that isn’t fraught with difficulties or complications.

Even wounded – he doesn’t show much, but there’s a dropping of his eyes as he absorbs those words, takes them in, to hopefully let them go. He doesn’t expect the embrace, jumps a bit at it in surprise, before relaxing. There’s a return of it, something else that is exceedingly rare, and it isn’t effortless, still feels strange to lean forward and press chests against chests, to hold another person close, but he wants to speak his ‘language’ in a sense. He wants to be understood. Although physically in appearance, they could very well be related, the languages they speak are so exceedingly dissimilar. One has to bend to communicate – and unexpectedly, it’s Matteo, pale hands resting gently against his shoulder blades, before they pull away.

There’s another of those rare smiles, quicksilver but genuine on his lips, at the honesty in the other man’s eyes, and he nods, accepting that it was true. “Non ho bisogno che tu faccia nulla, tranne quello che stai facendo.” His words are fluid and soft, his meaning clear. Quinton was to stay safe as he can, stay out of trouble, and do well for himself. If he needed him, as he did today, then he would ask.

Things were different for him than for Quinton. Things are different for him, but that doesn’t mean that things will change. He cannot see a way now, but perhaps one day, he will. For the first time, in a long time, he can see that things may be possible that are not in the moment, and he is grateful. What Quinton says next is, perhaps, laughable, but he knows that he means it, would put himself between him and any danger, and so he doesn’t laugh. Instead, he smiles a little, small, gently moving an errant strand of dark hair from his brother’s eyes. It’s a quiet gesture, a gesture of caretaking in return.

    And he is incredulous to his usual obnoxious buzzing temperament, quiet and a little taken aback, but oh so grateful. It shines in his dark eyes that pool like mirrors as they bore into his. “Grazie.” His voice a hoarse fracture as he whispers it, and against his better judgement, for just a fleeting moment because he knew it’d make him uncomfortable, he pulled his brother into another light embrace. Two boys with cold hands and hearts of gold, ruination at their finger-tips ready to spill, and yet they couldn’t be more different. For all their similarities, for all their differences, all that truly mattered was him, his fratello.

   His chin presses against a bony shoulder, thin arms wrapped around a thin chest, together they weren’t much more than harsh angles clothed in startlingly different attire. When he withdrew it was carefully, as he had learnt to be, and like an older brother ought to—even if for all accounts he was the younger, he kissed him softly on one pale delicate cheek. “I ain’t much used to you,” he’s slipped back into a tongue that feels hollow against his lips, it spilled haphazardly with hitched noises between each word. “But I ain’t got anyone else, been such a shitty brother…”

   It doesn’t matter that they weren’t brothers by blood, it doesn’t matter that there wasn’t anything binding them together than a shared heater and a few candies. He loved him. “Gonna put this all right, y’know? I gotta plan. Plan to save us all.”

  If only.