#leftnotright

So Basically, I've been watching One Piece for a while now and have gotten up to Dressrosa (new world) and I've had something living in my brain for Ages now. It does steal from my Oracle naruto fic but i think we've come to terms with the fact that I will not be writing that Behemoth. Anyway so—

There's this girl (20-22), we'll call her Poppy. Causal, average, in university, got a job in customer service. Just vibing and rolling with the punches of life. She's just chilling on the beach in Sydney, with a lot of other people cause it was a scorcher that day. There's old folk, children and even a particularly rowdy group of young (13-15) girls showing off their bikinis to each other. Everyone's having fun. Poppy decides to get in the water and swims around for a bit, bobbing and cutting waves. Then a wave comes she decides to swim under.

Poppy plunges, swims a bit then — cold patch?? Suddenly the water is colder, which ya know happens but is Unappreciated. She swims a bit more and breaks the surface. Flat ocean, as far as the eye can see. No land in sight. Poppy is confused, and definitely internally panicking. 

Then there's a shout and Poppy, treading water, spins around to see a little dinghy slowly floating across the horizon. There’s people in the boat, two — one of them is pointing at her and jumping. With little else for it, Poppy swims over as they begin to row towards her. 

It’s been years since Poppy has had to do more than a brief sprint of a swim, so by the time she’s made it to the dinghy, she’s panting. She grabs the edge of the boat and hauls herself up to see over the edge—

“ARE YOU A MERMAID!?” 

Poppy is confused. Verily. Cause there is a boy in a straw hat suddenly up on her face and close enough to nearly make her let go of the boat’s edge. No, she is not a mermaid. Do you guys know where the shore is? The boys both blink at her. They haven’t seen shore in over a week.

Poppy is displeased. Poppy is stressed. At the behest of the boys, Poppy gets in the boat, half dragged in by the boy in a straw hat that’s much stronger than he looks if he can haul her, soaking and drenched, over the edge. The boat’s cramped as it is, the less-than happy looking boy with green hair is already taking up precious leg-room, but when Poppy clambers aboard, the boat Dips. And that’s when Poppy notices: they’re Small. The boat seems like it was built for children, with small oars and cramped little slats for seats. There are even miniature barrels, mostly empty, with their lids sitting on the boat’s floor beside them. 

Poppy looks at the boy in a straw hat beside her, who hasn’t stopped grinning since he had yanked her up into the boat. He’s small too, and so is his friend. They kind of look like children, with some weird proportions and almost no baby fat — but when had Poppy ever really understood how children matured. 

Poppy uses this time to get her bearings, looking around again for a sign of something she had missed — seagulls, the lighthouse, the aeroplane, Anything. She finds nothing and tries not to focus on the dread that grabs her stomach.

Instead, she asks the boys if they know the way back to the shore, if they can take her. Narrabeen will do, Avalon if they’re further north. The boys have no idea what she’s talking about. “You know: Sydney? Australia??” “Is that the name of your island!?” Okay, wow, powermove. Unnecessary. Poppy had never heard someone call Australia an Island foremostly before. “I guess? Technically?”

And so through the power of Monkey D. Luffy the two (2) members of the Strawhat Pirates pledge to help Poppy find her way home if she can promise them food. Poppy remembers she had a bag of twisties and is more than ready to part with it if these two boys can get her back.

The boat drifts and Poppy regrets her choice in swimsuit, a little black bikini she had picked out when she had been riding high on retail therapy and the heat-hazey fantasies of reclining on a sunny beach. Now, her shoulders are burning from the sun overhead and she is actually aware of the fact that she did not shave nearly finely enough to her bikini line to be spread-eagle as she was with these two boys, the three of them playing human tetris to make way for each other. 

She doesn’t get much time to linger on it, however, as Luffy proceeds to take advantage of his captive audience and pokes and prods Poppy for every detail about the ‘Australia Kindof-Island!’. Poppy is baffled and awkward as she tries to explain that Australia is a continent-country-island and very large actually and one of the only countries in the southern hemisphere how do you not know—?

Then Zoro calls “bullshit”. He’s never heard of an island called “Australia” and he’s been all over the East Blue. Poppy: the fuck is the East Blue? Zoro: The EAST of the four seas? Dumbass. Poppy:...you know there are at least seven seas right? Luffy is confused but also elated because THERE’S MORE!? :DDDDD Zoro is unimpressed, because there’s Not She’s Lying! Poppy is confused because???? Seven Seas! And then all those little ones why are you so angry??? 

And it’s while they’re shouting, while they’re going back and forth (with luffy just So Excited for the chaos) that Poppy sees it. That Thing just trundling along in the deep blue sea. It’s massive, easily the size of a bus, easily the size of a Ship, and dear god the T E E T H—

“Sea King!” Luffy shouts “Zoro! I wanna eat it!”

“It’s too far away.”

“I’ll bring it over and you can do the slicing trick!” And then Luffy, that skiny little twink with a straw hat, just s t r e a t c h e s ? ? ? ? And Poppy hears this Thing (sea king??) yelp as it is all but roadhauled like a skipping pebble across the glassy sea. Poppy thinks it’s about to hit them, going so fast and so LARGE there’s no way it’ll stop — Zoro bursts off the side of the dinghy and pulls out two swords that are distinctly not foam nor harpoons and slices.

Luffy is elated. Zoro is just glad they’ve got food for the next few days (hours if Luffy has his way). 

Poppy sits there. There’s blood over the crusted up salt-water, a distinctly fishy, blue-red blood raining down on her head. 

Zoro plucks out the eyes of the sea king and eats it. (a great source of omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin A and C, and protein.)

“I’m…going back into the water” Poppy says and just crawls back into the sea.

So that’s where chapter one would end with our dear Poppy realising she is Not in Kansas anymore and now incredibly not okay with it. So in total, Poppy comes to be before they meet Nami and kind of has her own little arc before Nami hits, with Zoro and Luffy trying to help her find her way home. It takes a while, a full days’ cycle, but come the new morning, Poppy feels a Tug in her chest. It’s uncomfortable, urgent and almost grating. With nothing to lose, Luffy declares they set a course with Poppy’s Chest-Compass.

It takes over a week to get to where they need to go. Over that time, Poppy gets used to the boys on the boat with her, Luffy tries to give her his vest to cover up but it’s little more than a hand towel on her. She takes it anyway and uses it to cover her head, to try and get some shade. The nights are cold with nothing to stifle the wind and so much bare skin, and it’s more than uncomfortable in such a small boat. By the end of the second night, Luffy has declared Poppy the Bottom, letting her stretch out the length of the dingy (and then some), Zoro and Luffy akimbo atop her belly. Luffy tries to wrap her up with his arms, but when he falls asleep they snap back (Poppy is so confused he ate a fruit and did this i beg your pardon my brother in christ) 

The boat is small enough too that Poppy just can’t stay in it for too long at a time, the slats dug into her back and hips and it wasn’t fair that Zoro kept trying to stuff himself into a corner for her so Poppy swims beside them, holding a rope as they slowly row the way her chest pulls. Some days, Poppy swims, pulling the boat behind her. She gets good at swimming, by the end of the week, Poppy notices she’s not panting nearly as much anymore. 

And they talk, Poppy more than Zoro and Luffy more than anyone. Poppy learns about their ambitions to be the Pirate King and the Greatest Swordsman, Poppy admits she’s just living life, day by day. Luffy talks about windmill island, and Zoro talks about his kill list. They both tell her about a boy named Coby and a man with an axe for a hand. How they met at a cross. Poppy looks over her shoulder and realises: oh, they’re gay. Good for them (they don’t know, bless them, baby queers). 

It’s one of the days that Poppy’s swimming, on her back with the rope in her fists and just idly padding, a slow, easy pace. Zoro is snoring on the boat, fast asleep after taking the night watch. Luffy is grinning as he lays on Poppy’s soft underbelly, kicking his feet in the air and making his sandals clap against his soles. He’s been keeping Poppy company, like a living podcast about the most inane things — with the occasional terrifying ‘my grandpa left me in the jungle!’ With little else to do, Poppy listens, and laughs at the energy Luffy talks with, at how he speaks of everything with such unbridled optimism. And then Luffy scoots up Poppy’s front, grabbing at her bikini straps for stability as he looks down at her, grinning, and asks, “hey, wanna join my crew? You’d fit right in!”

Poppy stares at him, that straw hat eclipsing the sun. She laughs a bit, “I don’t know if the pirate life’s for me, Luff.”

Luffy pouts and whines, “But it’d be so much fuuun! Come on, think about it!”

Poppy shrugs and says, “I’ll think about it.”

By the end of it, nine days of following a hunch, eating raw fish and sun-dried seaweed, Poppy is ready to see land. Luffy sees it first and nearly steps on her damned appendix when he jumps to his feet one morning, the dawn breaking over the back of a small township. It’s not an island, per se, more like a town built on stilts, like an outpost that expanded from itself. But Poppy can feel the tug grow stronger, and scrambles to follow when Zoro grabs the oars and rows them into port. 

They get to the wharf and immediately, Poppy is aware of herself again. Nine days on the boat had desensitised her. Nip-slips were laughed off, wedgies were ignored and Poppy had seen them relieve themselves over the edge more times than she cared to admit. But as she sat in the dinghy among men and moores, Poppy was horrendously aware that she was in a little black bikini and Luffy’s red vest little more than a caplette on her shoulders. 

“You coming!?” Luffy and Zoro are already on the wharf, dinghy securely tied up. 

Poppy glances around and feels the eyes. She curls in on herself. Then she gets something warm (and more than a little smelly, bit sticky too actually, ew) thrown at her. It’s Zoro’s green haramaki belly warmer thing. He tells her to put it on and get up, they came to this place for you damn it. It’s small, and Poppy has to decide between a little skirt or a kind of skimpy tube top. Skirt it is. She shuffles it over her hips, Zoro yelling at her not to stretch it out. She shoves Luffy’s vest down the front of the bra, hoping to cover a bit more.

When she steps up onto the wharf, however, Poppy is once again struck by the…scale. They’re small, short. Poppy has never been a tall woman, boasting the average height for a woman in Sydney. She’s never had to look down so much in her life.(giant woman, giant woman, giant woman, giant woman)  Luffy grins up at her.

Luffy leads the charge into town, seemingly oblivious to the constant anxiety Poppy feels as she walks barefoot through the stone-floored town that seems to rumble with a hollow boom now and then. Seemingly, but since Poppy had stepped foot on the township, Luffy has had her wrist in a deathgrip, never once letting her go. Zoro stands on her other side, arm resting on the hilt of his swords. No one approaches them, but Poppy sees the stares and — to her mortification — hears a whistle. 

Eventually, with gritted teeth, Poppy uses the tugs to lead Zoro and Luffy deeper into the town full of stone and metal houses, pot plants and shrubbery a hot commodity on a man-made island. Poppy’s walking fast, eagre to get out of the bustling main street and into quieter suburbs. And then she stops, takes four steps back, stops in front of a door. A line of houses on a comparatively quiet street, one of them tugs at her most. “This is?” Zoro asks and Luffy is already at the door. He bangs on it, calling out. A man answers, maybe late twenties. He looks tired, annoyed. Frustrated, like he’s been working on something for a long time with no product to speak of. 

He’s got something in his hand. A little something shiny hanging from a cord. Poppy feels the tug as it sways.

“That’s the thing, that’s the thing that’s been pulling me!” Luffy is enamoured and squats down to see it. The man looks at the item, then looks at Poppy. He flinches, and gives a weak, awkward smile. “Oh, sorry you weren’t who I was…uh, expecting?”

Poppy pauses. Expecting? Maybe it’s the week+ that’s been telling her to question everything she knew, maybe it’s been the week+ out at sea, maybe it’s been the long, painful, fifteen minute walk through the main market street— Poppy doesn’t Trust Him. She doesn’t Like Him. 

But she keeps her mouth shut, lets Luffy, bouncy and wide-eyed do the talking. Says he found her out in the ocean, says she’s far from home, says that something has been pulling her this way — to you! Do you know what’s happening, are you someone important!? 

The man shifts, like he’s about to hide behind his door. Then he pauses and looks at Poppy again. Tall. Imposing. Wearing barely nothing.

He opens the door and lets them in. Poppy thought she was used to the smell. But inside a room was so much worse than on a boat, the smell of Male Body Odour is almost oppressive, even when hastily covered with some kind of coconut spray. Poppy desperately wants to open a window and let a gale force wind blast through. 

That’s not to say the house isn’t clean. It’s…Lived In. Rumpled. It’s just the Smell of someone desensitised to their own presence.

The man gestures for them to sit on an old couch. Poppy doesn’t want to. 

The man waits and then falters when he sees she doesn’t do as requested. He clutches the pendant a bit, Poppy feels a tug. She digs her feet into the floor, stubborn. 

Luffy and Zoro watch, quiet. If they hadn’t before, they’ve picked up by now that something is odd. Luffy throws himself onto the couch and laughs when he bounces, Zoro goes to lean against a wall. Poppy stands behind Luffy’s couch.

The man watches with an awkward, strained smile. The pendant sways. Poppy feels her knees bump the back of the couch. 

The man explains he’s been trying something, from a book passed for generations. It was a summoning, of sorts. He didn’t know if it’d work, he didn’t have all the pieces after all, just a few scraps of pages. Poppy asks if he can send her back. No, he can’t. Or at least, not with the pages he has, it might have been somewhere else in the book but he doesn’t have the chapter.

Poppy feels her heart sink. So she can’t go back? She’s stuck here?!

The man flinches and raises his hands to try and placate her, taking a step back when Poppy (giant woman) stands tall behind the couch. He just wanted a companion! He had been so lonely for years now and just wanted company! He was sorry you got mixed up in all this ma’am, he really wasn't going after you! 

Poppy stops. He wasn’t after her? Who was he after?

But it’s okay! The man continues and, like he’s trying to please her, runs to one of the doors in the house and pulls it open. Poppy follows and stares at what he shows her. The room on the other side is pink, decorated with frills and hearts. There’s a wardrobe stocked with dresses and mary-jane shoes, a bed laid with plush blankets and pillows, dolls and toys.

He wasn’t after her.

“I was prepared! I got everything ready before I tried the summoning, they would have loved it— you’ll love it! Everything a young girl loves!”

He wasn’t after her.

Poppy suddenly remembers those young girls, no older than 13-15, showing each other their bikinis, a tired mother acting as chaperone under an umbrella. 

He wasn’t after her. 

Poppy slowly looks to the bottom on the bed, something snaking out from underneath the frilly trim. Metal. A chain link. 

Poppy looks to the pendant in the man’s hand. An opal. It sways and Poppy feels the tug, feels the influence and for a second, just a split second, she feels the cuff of the chain clamp around her ankles.

Poppy backs out of that room. She bumps into something and looks behind her to see Luffy, craning his neck to see around her. “Wow, this guy must really like pink or something” Poppy wants to tell him to run, tell him to grab Zoro and get the fuck out of this house, out of this town, get on that dinghy and paddle—

Poppy drops. Knees hit the floorboards, dry, hard crumbs dig into her skin. The opal swings in the man’s hand. He looks stressed, smiling with teeth and fearful eyes. He looks between the men in the room, Zoro has his hands on his swords. 

“H-Hold on there! We’re fine, we’re good! She just got- spooked, you know! Spooked, she’s fine! Right!?” he looks at Poppy. Poppy’s face says she’s anything but fine. “We’re fine!” The man grabs the opal and Poppy’s head wrenches back then snaps forth in a painful looking nod. (also wow not me realising how dark this is getting)

“So, you guys can go! Thanks for bringing her here— I can, I can work with this!” He’s sweating visibly, shirt going dark in the front. He’s got a chokehold on the opal, Poppy is still nodding like she wants to break her neck.

Luffy punches the man in the face. He hits the side of that pink bed with a groan of misery and a yelp of panic. 

Poppy gasps and falls on her hands, neck aching, head spinning, heart pounding with dread. She looks at Luffy. He looks livid.

“What the hell was that?!” “Stop! Stop, you can’t hurt me!” The man gasps, holding his bleeding nose as he holds out the opal like a defence. “I-I have her Anchor! It holds her here, it’s connected to her! I’ll break it! Who knows what’ll happen!? She could die!”

Luffy stops. Poppy stops breathing. 

“Okay!? Okay, good!?” He’s shaking as he stands up, still holding the opal. “N-Now come here.”

Poppy digs her nails into the floor, stares at the stray hairs and bits of dirt, feels them jut into her soft palms and knees. 

“Come!” Poppy’s shins scrape as she crawls. 

Poppy stops and pushes her palms into the ground, feels her body ball up as her knees keep trying to move. Her teeth are tight, they’re gritted. She looks up at the man clutching the opal and she Hates Him.

“I’d rather die.”

It’s the permission they’ve been waiting for. To risk her life. In an instant, Zoro has crossed the room and Luffy is upon the man. In the next, the man’s hand is gone, there’s blood in the air and Luffy’s fists are slamming into his face over and over again. Pink sheets turn red, and by the end, the man is slumped across the floor of his pink room.

Poppy is shaking. She doesn’t want to move, in case the next action isn’t her own. And then there’s a hand in front of her, fingers clutching the opal on a cord.

“Here.” Zoro says. Poppy looks up. It’s not Zoro’s hand — Zoro is holding the still-bleeding wrist of the decapitated hand. Zoro does not want to touch the opal directly.

Poppy pries the opal free, hating how sticky those fingers were. She holds the opal and lets out a breath. The tugging stops. It settles, finally at rest.

The man on the floor groans. Luffy stands over him with bloody fists, shoulders heaving. Poppy stands, legs shaking, shins red.

“Zoro, I know you’d never let your swords go blunt. But right now, which one is the dullest?” Poppy, angry, humiliated and terrified of what could have been, draws her first blood. Zoro and Luffy don’t wince as they witness the castration. 

Poppy scrubs her hands and her opal with soap and water in the sink while Zoro has his turn taking his anger out on the man. When she comes back from the kitchen, the man is distinctly dead. He can’t try to summon those girls again. 

She should have been terrified. Of the boys with bloody hands. But Poppy, numb and horror-stricken, just begins to collect those scraps of paper on the man’s desk. She can read some parts, others are in a language she doesn’t know. The diagrams mean nothing to her. 

By nightfall, they’re back at the wharf. Poppy doesn’t want to spend another moment in the town and Zoro wants to get out before the body is discovered. 

They’re back out to sea, a storm rolling overhead. Poppy stares at her hands, the opal glinting against far-away lightning. This is her Anchor. He had used it to control her. If someone got their hands on it, they could make her Do Anything. Immediately, Poppy feels sick.

Luffy lays on top of her chest, Zoro uses her legs as a cushion, and it’s the only way she can sleep.

At some point, out at sea, the three run across a small merchant ship no bigger than their own. The would-be merchants draw blades as soon as Luffy pulls them up alongside the boat. There’s a scuffle, one of the pirates sees the opal around Poppy’s neck and goes for it. Poppy tries to stop him and he cuts the cord and grabs it in his hands. Poppy feels the tug and the influence. The pirates warns her to stay still, usual threat talk, and Poppy Cant Move.

Luffy kicks the man out of the boat, the opal goes flying — Luffy catches it in the bowl of his hat. Poppy can breathe again.

They loot the boat, taking enough food to last them fifteen minutes, fresh water, and a small stacks of  bolts of cloth, the last leftovers of the merchants that used this boat pre-pirate. Poppy chooses a cloth wraps it around herself, it’s worn and soft and she uses some rope to synch it at the neck so it hangs like a cloak. It’s good for keeping everyone warm at night.

Poppy is scared. She couldn’t defend it, her Anchor, if someone came after her. When Luffy and Zoro had fought off three, four men each, she had barely survived one. 

She’s scared, she’s lost, she’s cold. All Poppy has now are these two boys, and a boat. 

“Hey Luffy, is that offer still on the table?” Luffy grins, “Of course!”

And Luffy is her Captain, Zoro is her Vice, they’re there to defend her — Poppy gives Luffy her Anchor. Both the boys are stunned. Poppy admits she can’t look after it herself, that she needs to keep it in the safest place possible and on a boat like this, the ‘safest place’ is Luffy. Poppy asks Luffy to protect her Anchor, until she’s strong enough to look after it herself. Luffy takes it and uses the cut cord to weave the opal into the hat’s straw thatch, opal pressed tight to the inside. When Luffy puts it back on, you wouldn’t even know it’s there. 

Poppy feels the tug. But she doesn’t feel the dread, it feels like the hand on her wrist when they had walked through the port. Comforting, protective. 

And from there, everything goes as per canon. Nami, Buggy. As often as she can, Poppy stays with the boat. It’s her safe space, maybe she’s not handling her last on-land experience well. Ussop, comes along to the crew and asks for Poppy’s story, how did she join the crew? Poppy says ‘oh, they found me on the ocean’ and doesn’t elaborate more. Nami and Ussop gets the sense to shut up but they’re curious. Sanji. Things go as usual, Poppy Hates Arlong for what he did to Nami. 

Poppy isn’t great at combat, nor is she a skilled sailor. For the most part, Poppy’s main purpose on the ship is to fill the gaps in the crew. Everywhere someone needs help Poppy is there, acting as a kitchen hand for Sanji, fetching crates and barrels from the hull, holding Usopp steady while he paints something, helping Nami hang up her maps. More or less, Poppy is just there to make things a bit easier, a bit smoother. 

They make it to the grand line, they make it through to Alabasta, Vivi too. And then when it’s all over Poppy is sitting in the infirmary of Alabasta castle and she’s wondering if she should get back on that ship. She’s not cut out for this, for fighting, for struggling. She’s always been someone with a soft underbelly. She didn’t have a wanted poster yet, no bounty. She’d be safe.

She gets back on the ship, to her comfort place. Hides in the hold and wraps herself in her cloak. She wonders when she should bring it up to Luffy. Maybe run it by Zoro and Nami first. If she can just find somewhere safe, a stable island, she could call for dock. 

No one is happy when she finally breaches the subject. They find an island with a small town, and when the crew goes for supplies, Poppy begins to pack her things. It all amounts to a canvas bag. They see her off at the port, and Luffy gives her back her opal. It’s the first time Usopp or Sanji have seen it. Nami didn’t realise it was hers. 

Poppy finds work, she finds a place to stay, room and board. She’s jaded. The bar fights of rowdy pirates fresh on the grandline are nothing compared to the chaos she dealt with aboard the Merry. She misses them, always touching the Opal. There’s a bit of straw still stuck to the cord. 

And then the Marines come. A small boatload of them in their white suits and cigars. They reek of gunpowder and Poppy doesn’t like the way they eye her. Then, while Poppy is giving the Captain of the crew his ale, she sees it. It’s not a wanted poster, not an official one. But it has her face and the words WANTED: “POPPY” For Piracy. After so long with Zoro, Poppy knows the sound of someone grabbing a sword. 

Luce sat in the reception room of the Giglio Nero, the large window behind her spilling in the morning light of a clear summer day. She reclined in her chair, hands busy with her latest embroidery pattern; a duo of soft-cheeked squirrels amongst a setting of blooms, yellow petals between their teeth. 

Luce paused and ran her thumb over the silken thread, made sure it was tight. There was nothing more disappointing than having your careful work snagged.

The room was still around her. Three figures sat staunch and unmoving, each in the furthest corners. Storm, Rain and Mist. Bundled tight, unintrusive. 

It was quiet. Meditative. They could hear the leaves rustle on the olive trees in the garden. 

The ice in her glass shifted, sweet tea watered down to almost-bitter. Sweat dripped down the back of her legs, her shirt clung to her sticky skin. Her needle slipped in her grasp.

Luce didn’t need to look to see it. The air tasted burnt. 

Reborn had arrived. 

Reborn, and something else. Something more. 

He was different, changed — amplified. Doubled in size, like something was feeding him and he in return. An ouroboros of Suns, an endless repeating mirror of light and heat and Will. 

Luce, still looking down at her embroidery, noticed her hands were shaking. Skin sparkling with beads of sweat. Thread damp.

“What happened to you!?” Skull asked, voice almost abrasive blunt against Luce’s sensitive ears, rasped raw by the crackle pop of an out of control fire. 

“Nothing short of a miracle, really,” Verde drawled as he got comfortable on one of the many chairs. He smelt damp, a bit salty. Like he had been trudging the soggy edges of a cold beach. “He found someone almost worse than himself.”

Reborn, ever to bathe in the limelight, sat himself primly upon the grandest chair available. Back straight, shoulders back and chin up, Reborn looked every bit the preening peacock with a fanning halo of excess Sun as his feathers. He was sat on the far side of the room, the other head of the table, but Luce could still smell it too. The smell of hot sand, of wine and barley.

Reborn tilted his head at Luce as she regarded him. His tie had always been impeccable, tight to his throat like some sort of noose. Now, it hung just a touch low, just a touch undone. Like it was making room for something else.

And she could feel it. For every feathery halo, there was a bristle of wings. There was the grinding of teeth, the shuddering of skin. The hiss and pop of a Flame unsettled, a Flame unsatisfied as it found her lacking, suffocating. 

Luce felt her trembling fingers strain. Fingers slipping at something so huge the curves felt flat — the edges of the world, the boundless horizon. Massive and eclipsing, blinding even as she bowed her head. That Flame, born anew in the company of something more, was plucking at her strings, at her straining fingers.

Luce took a breath. Felt her throat dry up. Felt her neck break out into a sweat.

Felt the careful embroidery of their Courting begin to snap.  

That Flame would not settle for Luce.

“I have a proposal,” Reborn said, his first words since entering the room and everyone was at attention. “I wish to bring another into our… group.”

Group. Not a Set, not yet. 

Reborn regarded the people around him with a sharp eye that could cut glass and weld metal, weighing each of their worth — not just for him, but for his Ryohei. 

These people: the best the world had to offer in their modern age. He would bring them to Ryohei on a gilded platter, and offer them up to him. Lay them at his feet and let him poke and prod, sink his nails into their flesh and get a feel. 

Not as a Set — not unless Ryohei said so — but as company. Monsters among monsters. Let Ryohei stretch his wings and find release amongst the giants of their time. Let him burn, burn and burn it all anew. 

Make it new, make it better.

Reborn blinked. That was what he wanted: better. This but better. This, but the best version it could possibly be. 

This, but with the incomparable heat of Ryohei setting every other Flame to boiling point. 

Luce sat at the head of the room. In a room full of life, full of the most vibrant Flames the world had to offer — she was so very still. 

“You Harmonised? With another Flame?” Lal Mirch asked, her posture strict and attentive, eyes even more so as they took in the new phase of the Sun before them. 

Reborn only raised his chin more, nose in the air with pride so potent it burnt as hot as his Flame. He let it crackle and pop, let his pyre sing with the overtone roar of two voices.

“Lal Mirch.”

Everyone snapped around. It wasn’t a raised voice. It wasn’t even a change in tone. But in that single phrase, Luce of the Giglio Nero demanded their attention. In a room full of the finest, all eyes were on her. And she was smiling, tranquil and steady as she brushed her hand over her work.

“I think you’re confused, Lal,” Luce said softly, her brows furrowing ever so lightly, “Only a Sky can Harmonise.” There was a long pause, a dragging silence. Luce finished a stitch on the squirrel’s tail, fluffy and bright. “But, I’m sure what they have is a strong friendship.”

Luce turned her gaze upon Reborn and smiled something warm and pure. She tasted the blithe sweetness of her tea on her tongue, the bland aftertaste of melted ice cubes. 

Luce was the Sky Arcobaleno. Just as her mother, and her mother’s mother before that. The ultimate sacrifice. That was her destiny, her purpose, her burden to bear. 

She must keep this Sun.

☀☀

Verde had studied Flames for over a decade now. The concept of the separation between Flame and Ego was one well known to him. The metaphysical chasm in which ‘instinct’ was a thin bridge — and Will the moment of unity. Like a secondary mind, or a Flame-tailored Id, that worked quasi-independent from the Ego, and grew alongside it. Despite this separation, Flames had a way of informing the Ego: the person.

Reborn was an excellent case study for this theory, and Verde watched on, enraptured.

☀☀

The Brazil mission had come and gone, and the seven of them once again sat around a table. Lal Mirch’s choice in rendezvous point was an office building in Palermo for lease, showroom furniture crammed into corners and billboards covering the windows. 

Lal Mirch hated being the one to organise meetings, but another job had come in specifically requesting for a handful of their ‘team’. Again, the anonymous broker had promised a hefty amount for their services. 

For the most part, Lal spoke exclusively to Viper and Skull, those two being the ones who had accompanied her on the original Brazil mission under the same broker. The rest of them were under invitation to join on the next job to Siberia, though it was unlikely to get a bite.

Verde didn’t care. He had only come to watch.

Luce hadn’t taken her eyes off Reborn since he had walked into the room. Her smile had been bright, warm and welcoming. She had urged him to sit in the chair beside her.

Reborn had sat primly, shoulders back and tie loose as his cheeks flushed pink and healthy. He had been wearing a new cologne lately, something to complement the extra warmth he gave off. 

Luce said she was sad to see the old one go. It had been his signature scent for months. It had smelt clean, she said, smelt like citrus. Her Flames curled with a mournful twist.

Now, Reborn smelt like a bonfire, burnt cedar and summer herbs. 

Verde knew that back on a little island, Ryohei smelt the same. Reborn made him stand still so he could spray him with that little bottle before Ryohei was released upon the Simone. 

Reborn said he likes it better this way. Had been looking for something that fit him better. Sun rumbled in warning.

Luce smiled, her lips pressed tight as if to hold back whatever she wanted to say next. 

Reborn faced forward to the group and elected, once again, not to go on the mission. He has other business to attend to in Sicily.

Luce said she looked forward to seeing him at the next meeting. Reborn inclined his head, but doesn’t speak more on the matter. His Flames, however, spoke of nothing but disinterest. 

☀☀

The next meeting was called before Lal, Viper or Skull had even returned from Siberia. 

Reborn didn’t speak once, despite how Luce flitted about, restless in her tending. Her Flames lapped high, burning between the cracks in the floorboards as she surveyed the group. It brushed against them, sweet and suggestive. 

Fon sat beside Reborn, listening to everything, not a thing given away on his placid face as he responded to Luce’s gentle conjoling. Verde sat on the other side, notebook balanced on his knee.

The meeting ended shortly.

 ☀☀

Verde was deep in the bowels of the Vindice, the stench of fish and rot in his nose and the glitter of broken glass in his hair when the next summons arrived. The rendezvous point once again the Giglio Nero reception hall. 

Verde watched as Luce stared at the empty seat beside him. Her nails bit into the soft upholstery of her armchair. Her Flames hissed in frustration.

 ☀☀

Lal Mirch and Viper had returned. Skull had gotten hurt, but nothing a man of his constitution couldn’t bounce back from. Lal Mirch blamed herself, and Luce was all too ready to soothe the aches of her dear Rain.

Reborn sat on the far side of the room, one leg crossed over the other as he inspected his hat, brushing grains of sand from the black strap after it had fallen on the beach. Skull sat on an ottoman beside him, happily rambling about the shashlik skewers he had eaten during the trip. Skull was wrapped in so many bandages you could have mistaken him for a Vindice ghoul if not for the stinging scent of antiseptic that followed him around.

Verde made a note in the margins of his investigation: Cloud acting as buffer. Sensitive to group dynamic.

With all the sand in his hat gone, and Skull reliably alive, Reborn excused himself. 

Verde checked the time; Reborn had stayed for ten minutes. He wrote it down, already seeing a negatively skewed trend in time spent at meetings, Luce being the defining factor. 

When Verde looked up, it was to meet the gaze of Fon who sat across the room from him. Black eyes flitted from the now-empty chair to the notebook on Verde’s lap, to the soft frown that adorned Luce’s lips as she stared at the door. 

Enter Robin

When Robin joins the crew there's tension because of course there is half an hour ago she was on the enemy's side and now she's getting comfy on the deck. Poppy is noticeably not looking at the new member and gets quiet when Robin is around. Zoro thinks thank god someone has common sense. Poppy is helping Sanji in the kitchen, Zoro is drinking there too, when Robin walks in next. The loud discussion they were having cuts off suddenly and Poppy freezes. Robin picks up what she needed and leaves. Zoro is prickly, stressed. A Traitor is aboard his Captain's ship and she can sprout arms wherever, what if she pulls Luffy overboard, what if she goes for Poppy's opal!? At least Poppy's got the sense to be wary...

Poppy, large, lumbering Poppy, leans down and whispers something in Sanji's ear. He screams.

"You're absolutely correct Poppy-swan, our Robin is beautiful!"

aka. Poppy has a big, fat, massive crush on Robin for at least an arc. Zoro is about to throw himself overboard and be done with it.

Poppy's Room

The first thing Nami did when they stepped aboard the Going Mary, was claim the captain's quarters for herself. Luffy and Zoro took the barracks. Poppy wandered the boat until she found her perfect spot: a storage cabin, deep in the heart of the ship. It was long like a galley, and probably the only room she could lay out and still have room to wiggle.

It was dusty, but the seals in the wood held strong and nothing felt damp. There were no windows and when Poppy closed the door behind her, it was dark as night. She sat there, listening to the hollow thunder of Luffy's steps on the deck, of the groan of the ship on the water. She grinned. This was perfect.

Kaya's manor had offered them gifts. Luffy took food, Zoro took alcohol, Nami took treasure and paper and ink and Poppy? Poppy took blankets, and pillows and every old rag she could. Poppy walked with the maids of the manor and let them dig into the storerooms, pulling out moth-eaten curtains, dusty rugs. The people of the manor sucked on their teeth and assured the pirates they could provide something better, fresher -- but Poppy took them all gladly. Zoro and Luffy spent the night at the Manor, having one last feast. Poppy spent the night fashioning those scraps of fabric into a glorified futon and comforter set. She cut the thread with her teeth and laid it out, taller than she was and spanning wall to wall of the storage cabin, squeezed under the narrow shelves. It was lumpy as hell, the bits of canvas and hessian she had used were still kind of scratchy -- but Poppy almost couldn't remember the last time she had laid out on a 'bed' and not hung off of it. The last time she could stretch her legs out and have her feet still be warm by the blanket.

As Poppy and the crew sail around, Poppy collects soft stuff for her storage cabin. Since the boat is her safe space, the cabin is her Ultimate Safe Space. She fills it with pillows, with bedding, with things that smell nice.

Luffy is amazed when he finds it and asks very nicely not at all loud and screaming to be let in. Poppy says if he takes his shoes off first. Zoro sits in the doorway. It's only after Arlong does Nami enter the room. Nami spends her first night back on the Mary in Poppy's room, wrapped up in blankets.

It's through this room that Ussop gets the idea that there's something Up with Poppy, because one morning, she comes up to the deck a bit slower, a bit stiffer. She seems jumpy. She's sticking close to Luffy and Zoro more than usual. It's around midday, when everyone's thinking about taking a nap to escape the heat, that Poppy approaches Ussop. She's carrying a hammer, it looks tiny in her hands.

"Hey Ussop," she says, and he turns, craning his neck. Poppy is easily the tallest woman he's ever met. "Can I add something to the Mary? Just to my room?"

Ussop doesn't see why not. But why not let him do it, he's been maintaining ships since before he could walk. Poppy hesitates, but admits that yes, she didn't want to damage the ship right after Ussop's friend gave it to them. Poppy asks Ussop: please make me a barricade lock to the door. Just something simple, two brackets on either wall, and a strong beam to go across. Ussop is stunned at first, "you know we'll knock right? even Luffy will wait for the ok" Poppy just wrings her hands a bit, doesn't quite look at him. Just says please. Ussop builds the lock, makes sure its strong. Poppy looks so relieved. She sleeps better that night.

When Reborn and Verde returned to the sunset-tinged sands of the Simone Island, it was to the sight of Ryohei frolicking in a shore tipped with gold, surrounded by a flock of boys and girls with red hair and stigma eyes. Reborn stared out at the sight of Ryohei, his shoulders blushed pink and his hair slicked back, children hanging from his arms. 

Pink and red and warm, summer golden-yellows. Reborn thought those would be a good colour palette for a wedding — he should update his mood board. 

Then Ryohei turned, sun-lit eyes scorching the horizon before they laid upon that figure dressed in black, standing on the sand. He grinned, lips wet with seawater, and waved with both arms. 

“Reborn!” Ryohei cheered and, like something out of Baywatch, came wading out of the shore, waves breaking on his calves.

Reborn stared. 

Reborn turned to Abramo, “You have done exceptionally.”

Abramo nodded, arms crossed over his chest, puffed with pride. “Thought you’d like the tight shorts. He chose the worst colours though.”

Verde sighed and walked away, shoulders slumped and eyes squinted against the bright outdoors. Good, Reborn didn’t think he deserved to bear witness to Ryohei dressed in only wet, clinging swimwear.

“How’d it go!? Did you have fun!?” Ryohei asked as he came to a stop in the soft, white sand. 

“A few moments short of painful,” Reborn shrugged and reached his hand across. Reborn trailed his fingers along Ryohei’s sun-blushed chest, connecting constellations of just-there freckles with the droplets that clung to his skin. “I’m glad to be back on Simone soil.”

“Well, welcome home!” Ryohei laughed, hands on his hips and completely unperturbed by the finger tracing along his pectoral. 

Abramo glanced between the men, then the hand that had still yet to drop. He wiggled his eyebrows at them before not-so-casually excusing himself, splashing loudly into the surf.

“How’s the mainland? Everything still intact?” Ryohei joked as he squatted down next to a haphazard pile of towels, pool noodles and discarded clothes. 

For a moment, Reborn was distracted by a single drop of sparkling seawater as it made a journey down Ryohei’s spine and into the tight waistband of Ryohei’s flamingo-themed shorts. He wondered, if he were to tug them, if there would even be any give. 

“Nothing of note,” Reborn hummed, and watched as Ryohei shrugged on one of his many Hawaiian shirts, left mercifully unbuttoned.  

“Reborn, you should swim too, the water’s great! Something about a volcano!” Ryohei said as they began the slow, sandy walk towards the Simone quarry.

Reborn slipped his arm through Ryohei’s and smiled, “That sounds like a wonderful idea. Can’t let a day like this go to waste.”

Ryohei grinned and cheered, scattering the seagulls scavenging along the shore. 

“Wait for me here will you, my dear Ryohei?” Reborn crooned as they stepped through the hazy darkness of the Vindice portal, solder and fumes stung their noses. “I’ll be out in a moment in something more… Comfortable .”

“Remember to bring Leon! He needs some real sun!” Ryohei called and Reborn waved over his shoulder as he disappeared through chained-down doors.

Ryohei rocked on his heels and looked around, the grand atrium of the Vindice’s Simone Base still as impressive as the first time he had seen it. The skeletons of the Machine were filling out with muscle of thick wire. Those heavy, metal bases were bolted deep into the bedrock to support the towering beams, finally set and soldered into place in arches overhead.

Vindice ghouls floated around, carrying boxes of materials, sand and shattered glass. There were loose bolts and nuts littering the floor, as numerous as the crushed-up remnants of ancient shells. Ryohei could feel them under the thin soles of his sandals as he walked, inspecting each frame with barely bottled excitement. 

And at the centre of it all, surrounded by those looming structures of metal and hope, Verde sat on the floor, nearly nesting in his papers. 

Ryohei had barely seen Verde since bringing him to the island, elusive and nearly outsight evasive of all things unrelated to ‘his Machine’. In truth, Ryohei didn’t know Verde well — or knew the would-be- could -be Verde well. The Verde of the future had always been too taken with his creations to deign an audience with the Vongola for anything short of the Tri-Ni-Sette collapsing.

Ryohei could see that same fanaticism now as he made his way over, stepping around the wires thick as great tree roots. He peered over Verde’s shoulder to read what the man was scratching down with a pen running low on ink.

“What?” Verde snapped, quick as a whip.

Ryohei grinned, “How’s the progress? Figured out the glass?”

“Components are missing. Working backwards,” Verde answered, eyes shifting around as if knocked by every new idea in his rattling brain. “Someone— I created intentional voids. I do not know why.”

Ryohei tilted his head, brows furrowed. Verde had left out information. Crucial information. Ryohei squatted down and rested his chin on his knuckles, sandals grinding into the sandy stone floors.

“There's no distinct pattern to the omission. If there's a code, it's not obvious.” Verde dragged a box full of rolls of grid paper, elbow-deep as he scrounged for a loose piece. 

There was silence. Soft breathing. Completely unobtrusive, but almost omnipresent. A heat that warmed the stone under Verde's thighs and dried out the paper in his hands. Inescapable. Like the smell of summer on a windless day.

Verde turned his head and regarded Ryohei, still dripping with water, flecks of shells clung to his shins and between his fingers. His shirt was damp with a mixture of seawater and sweat, the bridge of his nose glistened with sunscreen. And he was still. Sitting on his sandy haunches, sun-kissed face cradled in his seashell-sparkled hands. Watching. Windless.

Verde returned to his work. Verde continued to speak. Less to Ryohei and more to Ryohei’s presence — to the heat —, an engineer to a rubber duck. Ryohei listened wordlessly, eyes bright and alert despite the odd, jargonistic words that flew well over his head.

“Everything else is laid out. Working with that, it will simply be common sense. It will require a heat, apparently even more so than the kiln the Vindice uses now but— there’s a piece missing.” Verde scrubbed his hair, sticking up weirdly with oil and sea salt residue. “I will find it. Given time, I will find it.”

“You will,” Ryohei agreed without missing a beat, without taking a breath, without a doubting thought.

Verde blinked and turned to the man crouched at his side, sand sticking to his legs from the beaches, nose bridge pink from the sun. He was smiling. Unhindered. Unwavering. The sky was blue, the sea was deep, and Verde would solve this puzzle made just for him.

What faith.

Verde clutched his near-empty pen tighter, took a breath and felt his lungs scorch. The near-constant damp of the place ripped from the very fibres of his clothes. Under those smiling eyes, Verde was warm.

People hailed Verde as the next Da Vinci. Under those smiling eyes Verde was Now .

“I will,” Verde said, voice almost raspy-dry. 

Ryohei grinned like a bonfire. Like a collapsing star. Full of blinding life and steadfast, searing, unrelenting Will . 

Oh.

Verde shifted his gaze to the side and saw Reborn standing there, cast in shadow with eyes so bright it was like looking at a sunrise. Reborn inclined his head.

Do you see it? 

How could you not?

He’s perfect—

It’s huge—

It could be ours.

Verde swallowed greedily, throat parched, hands tingling. Reborn regarded him with sunrise eyes from behind the figure made of heat and some astronomic faith — clad in an eyesore of a blue and red Hawaiian print shirt.

Verde felt his eyes sting from the light, but kept them open. He felt the buzzing in his teeth. Verde felt the strike of dry lightning on brushland.

Reborn smiled, vindicated. 

☀☀

Reborn reclined on the wicker lounge, cradling something boozy, fruity and full of crushed ice. The sun beat down on him as he laid there, his open white, linen shirt fluttering in the salty sea breeze and Ryohei’s wet abs reflecting in the black of his sunglasses.

Ryohei grinned as he helped a small gaggle of Simone children build a sandcastle, shoulder-deep in the sand for a secret tunnel. Reborn watched the slick muscles along his back flex. 

“Enjoying the show?” Abramo asked as he came to occupy the lounge beside Reborn, his own crushed ice cocktail sloshing about in his four-fingered hand. 

“It’s a luxury,” Reborn sighed, fixing his sunglasses upon his nose. “I need to enjoy the sights while they’re still so exclusive.”

Abramo glanced at the man from around his cup. Reborn looked smug, a curl to his lip, a lilt to his tone — it reminded Abramo of a barn cat after a hunt, picking feathers from its teeth. Abramo sipped his cocktail and cast his gaze over to the man crusted in sand and sunshine, children clambering onto Ryohei’s shoulders as he knelt on the shore.

“Does he know?” Abramo asked. 

Reborn regarded him out of the corner of his eye. 

Abramo let his cup settle on his stomach as he watched his Family orbit around this new Sun on their beaches, blond hair gritty with salt and seashells, laugh louder than crashing waves and smile brighter than daylight. 

“He’s told you right? About his old Set,” he continued, “Things like Harmony… Ryohei’s been hurt, ya know?”

Reborn didn’t utter a sound as he laid there, dark eyes cast in shadow as the rest of him basked in sun. He could feel his skin burning. He didn’t want it to stop.

“I know,” Reborn said finally, almost too softly. 

Reborn remembered the suitcase full of pictures, full of papers he had yet to read. He remembered the whiskey, how it had let the words float to the top and spill over. He remembered the lonely, lonely look in Ryohei’s eyes and Reborn’s teeth wanted to grind.

Reborn looked forward and saw Ryohei wrestle with the Simone youths, heard the cheers as no less than seven young boys sent him crashing into the shallows. 

“Okay,” Abramo uttered, and Reborn felt the pressure ease, the weight on his chest and crushing gravity. Acceptance was light against his skin. “Nonna Teresa’s pub has an upstairs balcony. It faces the west beach. It’ll be empty tonight.”

Reborn raised his sunglasses and glanced at Abramo. The man was smiling, red eyes soft and warm as he watched his Family play in the sand and the sea, little hands dragging the Sun to follow. 

“Reborn!” He turned to the call and saw Ryohei waving, a child standing on his shoulders. “You coming!? You said you’d swim! Volcano water!”

“Volcano water!” The child agreed loudly and jumped into the sea, almost immediately replaced by another clambering Simone child.

“Be gentle with him,” Abramo said as Reborn rose from the lounge.

“How gentle can you be with something just short of a god?” Reborn asked and threw his sunglasses on his towel, sand between his toes and salt in his hair. Ryohei welcomed him into the shore with open arms, sunflares sparkling on crested waves and red eyes watching everything. 

☀☀

It was getting cold, a southerly breeze biting through the summer night’s heat haze. The low roar of the pub below melted into the drag-and-crash of the tide, salty meals mixing with salty sea air. The door to the balcony closed with a snap, their private table stocked with alcohol and nibbles.

Reborn let out a long, burning breath, a Simone-style whiskey almost scoring him down to the belly. Beside him, Ryohei sat, elbow on the table and cheek upon his fist, staring out at the bay, the last curve of a smile still on his face. 

“What is Harmony like?” Reborn asked, staring out at the pink-orange-red of sunset. 

Reborn had heard stories. The moans of Harmony-drunk Flames post-bliss. They say it's like drugs, but better. Like alcohol, but stronger. Like sex, but deeper. Something that could make a hardened mafioso roll over and show his belly, all sticky sweet like honey and tar. 

“Warm,” Ryohei answered finally, gently, voice just over a murmur. “Like a bath after getting caught in a storm. Like seeing family. Like coming Home after a long…long forever.” 

Reborn listened to Ryohei breathe. Slow, soft draws of breath through his nose. There was a slight whistle, like it had been broken before. The hand on the table, loosely wrapped around a glass, flexed. Scars pulled at rough skin, bumped and callused. Dark at the knuckles. 

“You’d do anything for it. To protect it. To stay,” he said, “It feels like being loved.”

Home. Reborn barely understood the concept. Base, safehouse, touchstone — those were all more familiar to him but Home? Said just over a whisper and with such warmth it all but melted off Ryohei’s tongue and nestled inside Reborn’s ears. 

Reborn tapped his cup with the tip of his finger, a crystal ‘twing’ rang light through the air.

“What was your Sky like?” 

“Which one?” Ryohei asked back.

Reborn ran his thumb through the condensation on his glass, ice clinked as it melted. 

“Your first.”

Ryohei didn’t move, still cheek to fist, still staring out past the bay like there was something out there. Something heartbreakingly close. 

“She was perfect,” he said, a smile in his voice. “She’s my little sister, my childhood friend. I held her hand the day she was born — it was tiny. Tiny little nails.” 

Ryohei took a drink. Reborn mirrored him slowly. 

“We were always together. She was shy before she went to school, used to hide behind me. I would always have to talk to the shopkeeper if she wanted ice cream.” Ryohei looked into his cup for a moment, watching amber whiskey shift and swirl. “She ate a lot of ice cream. Even in winter. Has a sweet tooth. Likes things cold.”

Reborn let the silence settle, let the glass in his hand go lukewarm under his fingers. He sipped neat whiskey with a slow relish. 

“And the second?” He asked, prompting gently.

Ryohei didn’t respond quickly. He pressed his lips to his glass and drank, long, slow draws of the burning liquid. His breath fogged the cup. Ryohei put the glass back on the tabletop with a soft clatter and licked his lips when they tingled from the alcohol.

Reborn watched.

“He was everything.”

Ryohei sounded raw. Like an open wound, meat and nerves, exposed down to the bone. 

“He — He was everything. To everyone. You should have seen it- You will see it. God he was —” Ryohei covered his mouth for a moment, breathed hard against his hand covered in starburst scars. “So scared. All the time. He didn’t want to be there, Boss wasn’t raised to be a, well, Boss . He got thrown into it. He was scared.”

Ryohei shifted in his seat, the old wooden chair groaning under his weight. 

“Maybe…that was why I loved him so much. Boss was scared, all the time, but that didn’t stop him from fighting. From trying . He built a family out of strangers. He fought for a Family that he had only just heard of. He protected everyone — He tried —”

Ryohei’s voice hitched. Reborn didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Eyes wide, fingers clutched his glass. 

“He tried —” Ryohei said again. He swallowed, throat flexing in the sunset light. “He tried to suffer through it. Tried to be big enough, to- to make room for me.” His leg moved, the chair wheezed. “And even then he tried to keep me, to love me, to give me a home even when it hurt . Even when I hurt them— ”  

Reborn didn’t know when he moved. Before or after the bolts and wedges of the old, rickety barstool gave under the heat of a Sun ablaze in self-loathing. But he had lept, feet off the ground and hands stretched out, fingers seeking that burn, burn, burn as they fell—

They hit the old timber deck of the pub. Their glasses shattered beside their heads, amber whiskey soaked Reborn’s sleeve, and matted Ryohei’s hair. Bits of wood scattered around, smelling of smoke and black as char. His hat was somewhere in the ruins.

Ryohei laid there, arms out akimbo. Reborn laid there, arms wrapped tight around Ryohei’s crown. Chest to chest, belly to belly, Flames alight and aching as Ryohei laid there under Reborn.

“I can’t do it again,” he whispered, voice muffled into Reborn’s collar, cologne and sea salt in his every breath. “I can’t lose it again. I’ve already lost so much — I can’t lose a home again .”

Reborn could feel him shaking. A spring wound tight, years of compression bubbling under his skin. Years of being small, of being held tight and forced to bow to fit a box. Reborn let his fingers, wet with whisky, slip. And he stared at Ryohei. At the pinch in his brow, the ache in his jaw, the whistle of his broken nose and the burn of his eyes as they blinked, stubbornly dry despite it all. 

Ryohei was used to loss. He had run out of tears to cry about it.

Reborn had thought about Skies, like all young Flames, he had fantasised about the day someone worthy of holding him would come. A Sky vast and pure and just the right kind of unhinged that would make room for him, bend the horizon for him. A Home. Better than wine, better than sex.

“You won’t,” Reborn said. With such conviction, with such faith —

Ryohei would not lose again. Not now. Not him. Not ‘His Reborn’ . 

Flames rumbled like the coming of a solar flare.

Reborn had thought about Skies, like all young Flames. And he let those dreams, those little thoughts burn with the rest of him as he laid there atop this supernova, his very own Impossibility . 

Flames bubbled. Lashed. Stretched. Reached.

And like Icarus he fell, his forehead pressed to the rough timber decking just beside Ryohei’s. He breathed in deep, scorched his lungs with smoke and sunlight. 

He felt Ryohei breathe against him, chest expanding under his — that shocking Hawaiian shirt still searing in the twilight. 

“You won’t,” Reborn said again. 

Ryohei’s chest rattled, “Reborn—”

“You won’t lose me.”

It hurt. 

Like sinking into a hot bath after a snowstorm. A shock to the system to feel True Heat. 

Reborn felt it tear through him, through his arms, down his legs, up his throat until his tongue tingled and his gums throbbed. And then he looked to the side, his forehead slick with sweat, he saw something divine .

Ryohei laid there, head turned to face him. His cheeks were flush, red and pink and ruddy. There was sweat bubbling on his hairline, slicked back with the fall. His horrendous collar open against the seabreeze that barely cut them a break. The cut on his eyebrow was bright pink like it was fresh again, rebirthed in place. Reborn could see the pulse in Ryohei’s throat jumping a double-time rhythm even for him.

And Ryohei was smiling. Lips puffy and cracked in the corner, teeth knocked just a bit askew from one too many punches without a mouthguard. His eyes were wet — with sweat or tears Reborn didn’t know, but he didn’t care.

Reborn was going to make this man, this Sun, his Icarian Sun , cry for so many reasons. Happiness, frustration, anger, love and every overstimulating nerve he can touch.

And he had all the time in the world. Their world. Their Harmony —

Reborn took a breath, felt his chest expand and relished in the knowledge that he would never know the chill of cold again. 

Reborn reached up, fingers sticky with dried up alcohol and sweat and cupped Ryohei’s shining face. Felt his hand sear like he cradled the molten core of a star.

“Till the fall do we part.”

Ryohei stared at Reborn, sweat dripping from his nose. Then he let out a laugh that boomed from the belly, grin bright and utterly radiant in the twilight. A celestial body plucked from the heavens and laid out before him, barely contained in mortal flesh. Reborn bounced with every heave, would have tumbled away if not for those arms that wrapped around his waist and held on with a vengeance. With desperation. With a plea, and a hope and a faithful prayer—

“Why would we fall?!” Ryohei laughed, eyes bright and voice brighter, glittering with seashell sand and glass. “Don’t worry, I’ll catch ya!”

And that was all it took. Reborn let the air seep out through his lips, let that torrent of heat turn into a slow, molten crawl in his veins. Let it curl up in his chest. Let it find a place to call Home.

“Because you did that so well just now,” Reborn huffed, and looked at the charred remains of the barstool. They were going to have to reimburse Nonna Teresa. She took payment in manual labour.

“Hey! I’m a great catch!” Ryohei defended hotly.

Reborn smiled, so deeply satisfied he could barely find the space to be surprised. “Indeed you are, my Ryohei.”

The Vindice was the culmination of parts. The chewed-up, spat out parts of what remained of the Best the world had to offer. The Giants of their time, whose shoulders now act as the stairs of success, steep and treacherous. In the same manner, the Vindice was the culmination of broken, dazzling minds. 

Bermuda Von Vichtenstein was no stranger to eccentrics, in a past life he had dabbled his fair share, and his kin were cut from the same cloth. 

But these men. These men that Ryohei Sasagawa had dragged in, sopping with an untimely downpour, were unbearable.

Verde, the supposed hidden trump card, all but crawled over the metal skeletons, getting shoe-marks on the fresh weld and jostling the delicate wiring. On his knees, Verde turned components around and upside down, inspecting everything like some sort of uncouth child would a shiny seashell. Only it was the very fragile, very important pieces of the Machine.

Water splashed Bermuda’s cheek and he bristled. 

Reborn, the pest, slicked his wet hair back from his face with all the pomp and flamboyance of a preening peacock. He shrugged off his jacket and draped it over his arm, exposing his dress shirt that had turned tastefully transparent. He was dripping water on the floor. He hadn’t even wiped his sandy shoes.

Ryohei Sasagawa, the instigator, grinned at the two things he had brought upon Bermuda, joyous in his ‘progress’.

“Do you know where we have more copper solder?”

“Storage 3.”

“Ah, good. I’m so glad we’re labelling the rooms now.”

“Truly, it makes life so much simpler.”

Bermuda didn’t react.

Instead, Bermuda gritted his teeth against the loud clapping that came from Verde as he sat upon the floor, his glasses still rain-dotted and shoes crunchy with gravel and sand.

“Give me my design!” He called out, fisting a pen out of his pocket as his socks squelched. “Blueprints! Notes, surely you have them, I would never create something without the relevant calculations.”

“You’ll have to ask their code breakers, Verde. It seems even the Vindice cannot distinguish your chicken scratch,” Reborn chimed idly, then he stopped, blinked, and looked at his watch. “Ah, right on time. Pardon me, dear Ryohei, I hate to leave you in such lacking company, but I’ve something to pick up.” 

“Sure! Oh, dude, while you’re up there, could you swing by nonna Hellena’s shop? She’s got that dinner I ordered waiting for us,” Ryohei said, and rubbed his hands together eagerly. 

“Will do,” Reborn inclined his head before he disappeared through a swirling mass, courtesy of a Vindice ghoul. 

Ryohei bounced on his feet as he watched Verde all but wrestle a stack of notebooks and folded papers from inside a well-stuffed folder. The Vindice codebreakers floated around him, tattered bandages stained with ink, spectacles and monicals smudged and the frames rusty.

Verde, ghastly pale, looked right at home as he adjusted his glasses and scratched the stubble on his chin. He leant the notebook up against that massive metal base and spread out the folded blueprints. Eyes, quick as lightning and just as bright, flitted across between crooked penmanship and the strict ruled lines of diagrams, ratios exact, footnotes copious. 

Ryohei looked utterly elated as Verde called for paper, and — to Ryohei’s delight, and Jaeger's gripe — began making more notes in that same, abhorrent handwriting. 

“Astonishing,” said a ghoul that loomed over Verde’s shoulder, spectacles glinted red from the fresh solder burnt overhead. “Who taught you to write?”

“No one. I taught myself,” Verde uttered, and started a new page.

“Shame. I would’ve much liked to have them shot.”

Ryohei grinned.

☀

For three days, Verde didn’t leave that amphitheatre of metal skeletons and solder for anything short of a bathroom break. He poured over those documents, reverse engineering his own future-thought to find exactly what the Vindice were missing. 

Because that was their issue. There was something missing. 

The composition and procedure for the glass walls of the Machine. It wasn’t illegible, or convoluted, or coded— it was missing.

…Or, more specifically: Excluded. 

Verde stared, cross-legged on the uneven stone floor of the amphitheatre. In front of him, the pages were spread out in an array. He blinked and moved a page, unfurled another large sheet with the Machine drawn in bright white ink. 

Still, he found no indication of a method, or even an allusion. He was baffled. Verde would never forget to include something so important. He had seen the original package, every paper and file crammed into the small, beige bundle. He, and whoever he had worked with, had been adroit in ensuring every necessary detail fit in place. 

Verde frowned. 

The air in the amphitheatre was moist, perpetually chilled-wet, the walls sparkled with condensation. Verde was pretty sure his pants were damp, his shirt had long become that specific kind of uncomfortable that came from the lack of dedicated moisture sensors.

It was night, then. It got colder in the Vindice caves when the sun went down. 

He was close, Verde could feel it. It was like lightning in his lungs, the smell of ozone on his hands. In a few days, maybe a few hours, Verde would make a breakthrough.

A vibration in his pocket. 

Instantly, Verde was irked. That livewire in his veins died to a low buzz. His focus was broken. This would add another hour to his discovery.

His pocket vibrated again and, with no less than great reluctance, Verde put his future-notebook down. Verde grimaced as he read the notification that blipped across his PDA.

☀

Deep within the catacombs of the Vindice’s Simone Base, the quarters of the only Suns for miles glowed with warmth and the soft scent of cardamom. 

Reborn reclined comfortable across his pile of plush pillows, silken pyjama shirt unbuttoned just right and just a touch too tight around the chest. A tasteful flash of the edge of a nipple. The waist of his pants rode low, teasing his Adonis belt and the strap of Calvin Klein. 

Ryohei grinned as he watered the potted tree in the corner of their quarters, the UV lamp that hung overtop almost eye-searing when compared to the soft, amber bulbs Reborn had selected for the space. The nonna from Ryohei’s favourite restaurant had given the small tree to them as a ‘housewarming’ present, some kind of Simone-style magnolia that boasted red-green-orange leaves all at once. 

“Wow! Look, there’s a bud! It’s gonna flower to the extreme!” Ryohei cheered and poured more seaweed fertiliser into the soil. 

Reborn drummed his fingers on his knee, impatient. Snubbed.

Because Ryohei wasn’t talking to Reborn. No, not this time. Ryohei had seemed to be utterly rapt with another man recently, someone else in his heart and in his hands—

Leon the Chameleon reached out from Ryohei’s arm to gently grab a green-gold leaf in his three-fingered foot, investigative. Then, Leon slowly plodded his way to bask beneath the UV bulb.

“Look at you go, little dude! Self-care!” Ryohei boomed, gassing Leon up as he sat there, tail curled in content.

Under the pile of pillows, Reborn’s pager vibrated once. Reborn stopped drumming.

He frowned as he read the message, thumb running across the black, metal shell. Reborn looked over to Ryohei who bustled about the room, never one to settle easy even so late at night.

Ryohei rinsed out the watering can and set it aside before he proceeded to wipe down every surface to an inch of its life, getting between nooks and crannies for dirt that wasn’t there. He paced, steps light and springy. Then Ryohei dropped to the floor and started counting as he alternated between push-ups and sit-ups.

Reborn rested his cheek on his fist and watched. Ryohei had been restless since Verde had arrived. Ryohei wanted progress and Verde was taking his sweet time down in the dome. 

The pager beeped again. Reborn was tempted to let the damned thing slip between the bed and the wall. 

“Who’s trying to call you? Is it important? You haven’t taken any jobs in a while, is that what it’s about?” Ryohei asked, peering over the edge of the bed.

Reborn blinked at him. Ryohei disappeared, then he popped up again, then dipped, then returned. Still doing push-ups. Still burning with energy. 

Reborn huffed affectionately and rolled onto his belly, a throw pillow hugged to his chest in a way that squished his pectorals into cleavage. 

Ryohei’s eyes flicked; up, down, up. Then he disappeared again.

Reborn grinned.

“I take on jobs exactly when I wish to, my dear Ryohei,” he said slowly, and Ryohei smiled when he came back up as if to say ‘of course’. “But it does seem like something has come up. Otherwise, I doubt I’d be called upon.”

“Is it something cool?”

“Unlikely. At most, it’ll be mildly interesting. Nothing like I get from you, my Ryohei.”

Ryohei snorted, “Not everyone has a Machine to save the world! Give ‘em a chance, Reborn!”

Reborn hummed, “I suppose. And not everyone is from the future.”

Ryohei didn’t pause, biceps working to take his weight, shoulders flexed, back muscles taut. His posture was perfect, flat enough to eat a meal off of.

“Ah, I guess you wanna talk about that now, huh?” Ryohei laughed awkwardly. “I said I was sorry! I forgot!”

“And then you forgot for three days more,” Reborn all but purred, and Ryohei pouted. 

“We got busy.”

“Oh yes, so busy. Running around, showing Leon the whole of Simone Island.”

Ryohei gave a loud whine and flopped on his back. Reborn let out a laugh and peered down at the man below, splayed out with arms wide, warm skin flushed with the workout. Underneath him, Reborn could see the cold tiles mist, the heat of Ryohei’s skin leaving a shadow in his wake. 

“So, Ryohei Sasagawa. Who were you, before you were mine?” 

Ryohei stared up at Reborn, at the way the amber lights played on the edge of pale, silken pyjamas. Ryohei knew those pyjamas were smooth against skin, cool to the touch until early in the morning, just at dawn, then that silk had taken on the heat of two Suns under the same sheets.

“Well,” Ryohei uttered, pondering on where to begin. “I was born in this town called Namimori. My dad ran a gym, my mum worked for the local newspaper. I have a sister— but you knew that.”

“What is her name?” Reborn asked, his cheek rested on his arm.

“Kyoko! She’s the sweetest thing, you’d like her!”

Would like her. Does like her. Will like her. 

“I was the captain of my boxing club in middle and high school. Did a few semesters of university and then dropped out, I’m just not built for studying,” Ryohei continued, trampling that panging thought. “But that was fine! Boss was too scared to go to Italy alone anyway, no way was I leaving my little bro stranded!”

Reborn’s fingers played with the decorative embroidery stitch of their sheets, soft threat against his fingertips. Ryohei watches his fingers move as he talks, eyes bright with an edge as soft as the thread as he reminisces. He’s eager, he’s jovial. Everything he’s kept bottled up pouring forth.

But still, no names. So careful, his Ryohei. Like a hammer in the hands of a stonemason.

“How old were you when you joined your Family?” Reborn asked, hearing ‘middle school’ so many times. 

“Fifteen! There was this big inheritance issue between Boss and his adopted cousin and, wow, they nearly levelled the school! Had a bunch of Mists around to hide everything.” Ryohei laughed, his belly jumping. “My fight— I was in this big cage. Real cool set-up with a bunch of really bright, hot lights, I couldn’t see! So I went and shattered them using the salt crystals from my sweat!”

Reborn blinked, and let his eyes drift to the dip in Ryohei’s clavicle. The UV light in the corner glowed a soft white light which pressed against Ryohei’s skin. Then his eyes snapped back to Ryohei’s face, the quiet prolonged. 

Ryohei laid there, arms spread like a crucifixion, breath slow. He looked dazed, distant. The sacrificial lamb of his Set.

Reborn didn’t utter a word. Not of encouragement, intrigue or comfort. 

The UV light snapped off with a click. The timer run down.

“Let’s go to bed, Ryohei,” Reborn said finally.

Ryohei’s fist clenched. Left-hand side. Sometimes he complained about it aching. ‘Early-onset arthritis’ a doctor had told him once upon a time, because that was what happened when you shattered your fist. 

“Let’s go to bed, my dear Ryohei.”

Ryohei took a breath through his lips, tasting cardamom and smoke and summertime air even so deep in the caves. 

“I’m still their big brother,” he said. “I’m still their big brother. Even if I never will be again.”

When Ryohei settled into bed, it was to the cool touch of a silken pyjama shirt and the scalding brand of skin. And as he closed his eyes and drifted, Ryohei felt warmth lay over his still-clenched fist. Felt that heat seep into his skin and soothe the ache in the joints. 

Ryohei hoped if he didn't say anything, Reborn wouldn't let go. 

Ryohei didn't know if he could do it. Again.

☀

A line of townhouses made of cut stone and limewash paint. Old, but well kept, their windows aglow with a warm, yellow light as a summer’s night took the town. Shadows cut the yellow glass, children and adults, families in silhouette as they set their tables for dinner and toasted to another good day gone.

Taste the air. Count the doors. 

Reborn’s shoes clacked against the uneven cobblestone as he walked the street. He took a breath and tasted fog, tasted lilacs. There was one door too many. 

“This is entirely unnecessary,” Verde grumbled, scratching at a notebook with a pen running low on ink. 

Reborn didn’t deign to answer him. For the past two hours of travel, he had been making a fine effort in ignoring the fact that Verde existed. Reborn reached for the doorknob and swung it open.

Verde’s shoes scuffed the stone stairs loudly as they entered the foyer, and Reborn heard the moment those footsteps all but disappeared. The smell of lilacs and damp came stronger. It seeped into their clothes— Reborn had to remind himself to let it happen, let it breathe into his lungs.

They were meeting in Viper’s territory. They were easily the most skittish of the group, the ‘team’, so it was no surprise that Reborn and Verde were met with thorough investigation.

Reborn stepped over a tentacle that slithered across the floor. It made way for Verde who walked on blindly.

The door at the end of the hall seemed to fade in and out of sight, like eyes adjusting in flickering light. The hall tilted, flexed like a gulping throat, the carpet squelched underfoot thick with saliva—

“I see you made it,” Viper grumbled as Reborn and Verde entered the room. 

Viper was slumped a bit in their chair, seven seats wrapped around a large circular table. Their hood was up, eyes obscured, hands out of sight. 

“You never call unless it’s important,” Reborn said and pulled himself a chair. He sat, one knee crossed over the other. “I hope this holds true. I have places I’d much rather be.”

Verde dropped himself into another seat and immediately started using the table space, pulling out more notebooks and scraps of paper from his pockets and spreading them around. He muttered something, before grabbing a blank paper and proceeded to fill it with symbols and code.

Reborn glazed around quickly. It seemed he had been fashionably late. 

Every one of the other seats, save two, had been occupied by the rest of their company. Fon sat comfortably as he waited for the meeting to begin, his hands tucked into his sleeves and his eyes closed lightly. Under the table, Reborn could see his foot just barely bounce with restlessness. 

Beside him was Lal Mirch, arms crossed over her chest and chin raised to show severe, steady eyes. Her uniform was tight to her, hair pinned back and sleek. There was a thin chain around her neck, barely peeking out from beneath her collar. 

Reborn quirked his brow. That was new.

On Fon’s other side, Skull rocked in his chair. The young man balanced precariously on the back legs, arms raised to disperse weight as boredom crawled into his bones. 

And, in the last seat, sat Luce. Always early, always eager to welcome everyone personally. Luce smiled at them as they all got comfortable. In the centre of the table sat a plate of sugar-dusted scones, cream and jam supplied with spoons embellished with the Giglio Nero coat of arms. You could feel it on your tongue, rich with cream and sweet with jam. 

The basket sat untouched. Reborn could smell her perfume, some kind of tangerine blend. Bright and citrusy. 

“It’s so good to see you all again,” Luce beamed as everyone settled and Skull’s chair clattered as he rightened himself to attention. “Viper, would you like to begin?”

At her bay, Viper cleared their throat. 

“We’ve been posed a new request,” Viper began and a scroll unfurled along the centre of the table. “A set of artefacts. Somewhere in Brazil. The amount they are willing to spend is exorbitant.”

Reborn relaxed into his chair with little regard for the crusty parchment and flamboyant script. Rich eccentrics with a hankering for traditionalism were in no short supply. 

“This is something that can be done solo?” Fon pondered, reading the curling cursive seemingly cast by a quill. 

“Unfortunately no,” Viper murmured and indicated a map as four points took a purple glow of their influence. “The four artefacts are connected and react in tandem when touched. As soon as one is displaced, the others will alert the guards. All four will have to be taken at once.”

“Several kilometres apart,” Lal Mirch said and traced the map's key to get an idea of scale. “Too far for your illusions then?”

Viper pointedly did not respond. 

“So it’s a smash and grab! Easy money!” Skull crowed and crossed his arms behind his head. 

“Read the stipulations, newbie,” Reborn sighed. 

Skull leant over and squinted at the page. It was times like these Reborn wondered if the youngest of their merry band had ever taken an eye test. 

The words ‘covert’ were emphasised. Whoever wanted these artefacts didn’t want the original custodians to know they were gone until it was too late.

Reborn read the payment statement and wondered if it was worth it. An 11-12 hour flight to Brazil and then whacking around in the mosquito-infested, South American jungle when he could be enjoying a night in with Ryohei, prying stories and whines from smiling lips. 

After all, Reborn had yet to hear about himself. Where would Reborn be in thirty years, pushing fifty-five? And how he had played a role in Ryohei’s young life, a role so large he had whispered “Reborn” while kneeling on a church’s floor. How he had made him look happy.

Reborn tried to imagine it himself, older, mature, greying at the temples. Tried to imagine how he had entangled with Ryohei, young and eager to impress, to break out into the world like nothing short of a big bang.

Cute as it was, recalling those young eyes from the photos in Ryohei’s suitcase, Reborn was glad he had met this Ryohei. His Ryohei. Tall and loud and muscled and eye-searingly bright.

Reborn liked looking up.

Skull made a loud noise at something Lal Mirch said and threw his hands up in the air, nearly knocking Viper’s candelabra. The shift in lighting brought Reborn back to present, and with him, a low lying…dissatisfaction. 

Reborn tilted his head forward and let the brim of his hat cover his eyes. He observed. Skull laughed as Lal Mirch half-heartedly attempted to organise a strategy with Viper whose face was lemon-pinched at the concept of cooperation. Fon breathed in deep as Verde’s pages kept piling up and crawled to encroach into his space. And overwatching it all with a smile and a warm, motherly gleam in her eye, was Luce.

Ah. That was it. 

They were lacking. No drive, no fire under their heels. He had been spoilt recently.

Reborn frowned, his Flame stirred. 

Luce looked at him. Eyes wide and alert. 

“Is something the matter, Reborn?” She asked.

There was something in her tone, but Reborn was glad for the invitation. 

“I’d much like to bring someone along,” he said, airy and casual. Like he wasn’t offering to add another person to their already precarious balance. Like his Flame wasn’t flickering and sweeping, licking at the underside of his ribs with the scent of Dual Guardianship.

Like she could smell it, Lal Mirch turned her head first. Everyone else was slow to follow. 

Reborn regarded the woman out of the corner of his eye. Lal Mirch was interested. Her Flame hissed like the white noise of rainfall.

Verde glanced at Reborn with a raised brow.

Reborn remembered how Ryohei had laid out on the floor with arms wide like Icarus after a fall. His voice sad-happy-nostalgic and heavy as he spoke of a Family of a future long past. How he spoke gently of his Sky, too immature and inexperienced. Of his Mists, always willing to enshroud him. Of his Rain, Storm, Cloud and little Lightning. A Set too small for him, that he still wanted to cradle in his hands and protect from the world— 

Reborn looked upon those Flames before him. Purities of the highest degree, size almost colossal, and with an individual drive near unmatched. And a vast Sky who welcomes even Reborn with open arms. 

He could imagine Ryohei at the table, another chair at his right-hand side. Almost seamlessly in place, warming the Set from the inside and setting them on fire in just the right way to send them running for greatness. 

“Well—” 

Luce’s voice broke through. It cracked unpleasantly, caught off guard. 

“It is…certainly something to think about!” Luce smiled. Reborn watched her slide her hands off the table, hidden clenched in her lap. “I’m so glad you’ve found someone you like so much Reborn!”

The ‘but’ hung in the air. 

No one said a word.

Dino patted his face dry gingerly, looking every bit the drowned rat he felt like. 

Hot water had all but reignited the powder the man had thrown at him, and as soon as Dino had stepped into what he had hoped to be a relaxing, warm shower, he had immediately regretted it. So, Dino had subjected himself to a speedrun of a freezing shower to get as much of the powder, old water and soil off of him.

The soil had been the hardest. It had been in every one of his sweaty nooks and crannies. 

Dino had only dug a grave himself once before. He hoped he remembered all the steps.

Dino continued to pat his red, blotchy face as he slumped into some clothes and, finally, looked at the state of his dorm. 

Powdery handprints, footsteps and drag marks covered the place. There was water on his papers and soaking both his textbooks and carpet, and so many things had been knocked over and pulled down in the fight. It was going to take forever to clean.

Dino sighed and looked at the clock, already 11PM. At least he didn’t have class tomorrow. 

He moved to the coffee table and gently pulled at his papers. Thankfully, none of the Mafia-related ones were damp, but Dino was going to have to reprint that spreadsheet handed out at his last tutorial. He packed away the sensitive documents in their hidden cubbyhole.  

Enzo plodded out from Dino’s bedroom, finally deciding to leave his sunlamp and sand bath. 

“Some help you were,” Dino pouted.

Enzo peered up at him with beady eyes, then made a b-line for the water spill. 

“Hey! Hey! No!” Dino shouted and scooped up the turtle who continued to wiggle his legs in his insatiable water-lust.

Then Dino froze and listened.

The crunch of boots against pavement and leaves. The rustle of fabric against skin. The jangle of metal. Laboured breaths and a sigh through clenched teeth. The knock of knuckles against a door.

Dino blinked. Knocking?

Carefully, Dino peered through the slits of his blinds and spotted the figure at his door. Their head snapped around.

“Dino! Show me the baby damn it!”

Dino sputtered. What was Vic doing here at 11PM!?

“Let me see the little babyman!” Vic whined again.

Dino didn’t know if it was his anxiety-induced people pleasing, or the fact that Dino all but had a death grip on the knowledge that Vic was his friend who liked Dino and his company, but before he could think, Dino’s mouth had happily said: “Of course!”

Then Dino choked and shouted, “No!”  

But Vic had already marched through his door. 

Dino looked at Vic, then at the state of his dorm, then back at the frightening still girl. 

Slowly, Dino extended Enzo towards Vic and said in a small voice, “Do you want to hold the baby?”

Vic turned her head to look at Dino, and Dino saw the moment her temper snapped.

“What the fuck happened!?”

Dino’s face must have been worse than he thought, because the moment Vic laid eyes on him, she lost her head. Vic crossed the room in long, heavy strides and grabbed him by the head so she could see the chapped, red skin. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen, his nose was crusty and peeling, and Dino was still damp.

Vic looked upon Dino and the state of his dorm, and it all pieced together. Vic could hear that familiar rumble in her ears, and the pressure in her throat — but as she moved Dino’s head to see if there was any more damage to him, she saw a tear track down his cheek and Vic did everything she could to stomp down that anger. 

The pressure eased, but that rumble remained, a constant background noise that made it hard for her to hear, to think. Vic gritted her teeth and bore it.

Her baby boy Dino had just been robbed, and possibly attacked! He had been alone and crying, for who knew how long — and of course this had to happen on a night when there were two house parties going on, so no one was aware of the world, or too piss drunk to care.

“Are you okay?” She asked, and let go of Dino’s head, circling around Dino and nudging at his body.

Dino flinched with a sharp hiss when Vic prodded his shoulder and he quickly spun around, “I’m fine! Promise! No lies!”

“Yes lies,” Vic snapped and poked him in the shoulder again, “How the fuck did you get hurt? Did they jump you? Where are they, I’m gonna beat their ass—”

“No, no, no,” Dino rambled and grabbed Vic by her arm to redirect her deeper into the dorm, kicking his door shut behind them. “Far away, they are far away now. They will not come back, I am sure.”

They paused as something crunched under Vic’s foot, and they both looked down to see shattered glass underneath her boots. Vic looked at Dino over her shoulder with eyes sharp enough to cut, and Dino continued to push her over to the dining table.

He thinned his lips when he saw the state of the back porch door, the way the hitman had entered. 

“Your fucking deck door is smashed—”

“It can be replaced—”

“Dino!” Vic shouted, sounding appalled and she spun around to grab Dino back. “Why are you so calm about this!?”

“It is over,” Dino said slowly, and let her grip him by the forearms, her nails digging in and grip so tight she was shaking. “It is over.”

Vic was not calm at the moment, but Dino could see she was trying. Trying so hard to keep it together, but she was slipping constantly. Everything she saw was something to set off the tripwire in her brain — Dino knew that feeling well.

Then Vic stared at him, her nails still biting his skin, and she uttered, “You’re used to this.”

 Dino winced but nodded and gave what he hoped was a comforting smile, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m used to this. It is not the first time.”

Vic swallowed hard and squeezed Dino’s arms again. She wasn’t satisfied. But her anger had gone quiet, a rolling boil just under her skin that she could keep a careful lid on.

“Okay, fine,” she said, taking slow, deep breaths through her teeth. Her voice was low, like she was trying not to wake what was left. “Fine. We’ll— for a few hours— we’ll act like this is fine.”

“For a few hours,” Dino agreed but didn’t pull away.

Vic puffed out a sigh, “But are you okay? Like, actually. Other than your shoulder, I mean.”

“Yes, I am well,” he assured, and she gave him a short look. “I promise.”

“...Okay. Okay, that’s good,” she relented, and then looked at the state of Dino’s dormhouse. “Fuck, they made a mess.”

“Yeah, it will take a while to clean up.”

Vic let go of Dino’s arms and rubbed her face, before she clapped her hands loudly. 

“Let’s get cracking, then,” she said, and set into the mess.

Dino blinked at Vic, then put Enzo down and rushed to join her. He brought over a dustpan from under the sink and swept up the spilt pot soil as Vic picked up the shattered plastic terracotta bits with her gloves.

Dino looked over at Vic and took in what she was wearing: beige, steel-capped boots, jeans and a red polo shirt. She had a bulky carabiner clipped to her belt, cluttered with an arrangement of keys, glove clips and some kind of yellow tool with small blades. 

“Where were you?” Dino asked, looking her over and Vic paused dropping those shards in the dustpan.

“Work,” she answered, “I do the closing shift on Friday.”

Dino blinked slowly, “Oh. That is all work items?”

Vic looked down at her carabiner and bounced in her squat to make it give a little jangle, “Yeah. Locker key, mover key, bat knife, mini measuring tape. Other ring is car and the dorm key though.”

“You came from work then?” Dino asked as he pulled over his kitchen bin to dump everything.

Vic stared at the limp, blackened succulent on the floor and tossed it in the trash as well. She rose from the floor with a groan and punched at her lower back as she moved over to the next mess.

“Yeah. Wanted to see Enzo. And you too, I guess, you’re here.”

“Thanks,” Dino said flatly, and heard Vic snicker as she inspected the handprints on the walls and floor. “But it is so late, why did you come now?”

Vic glanced at Dino before she shifted on the spot, and carefully touched the powder with her gloved finger, trying to see if it would wipe off easily.

“Had a bit of a shit shift, is all,” she said.

Vic moved to the dustpan and beat off any remaining soil, before she moved to the walls.

“I, uh, I will do that,” Dino insisted and dashed over to take the brush from her hands. He had felt what that powder was like, and he didn’t want Vic getting any of that in her eyes or lungs. “I do not know what the powder is.”

Vic’s frown returned with a vengeance and the grinding of teeth. She turned on her heel and opened the front door and every available window, channelling her temper into fighting with the stubborn bathroom windows.

Dino smiled at Vic as she started scooping up the back porch door’s glass while muttering under her breath. He pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth before he started brushing that capcaissum-like dust off the walls. 

By the time they were done, it was well past midnight, and Dino had a lot of laundry to do come the morning after stripping his bed and couch of their covers. Vic had managed to use trash bags and a mini stapler to wrap Dino’s porch - deck - door and keep out the bugs.

Dino came inside from putting out the bins and locked the flyscreen door to the front, still airing out that powder. He stopped when he saw Vic standing in his, thankfully untouched, kitchen. 

“They stole your food too!?” 

She opened one cabinet after another, nary a scrap or packet in sight. All that was there were plates and haphazardly stacked pots. Dino blinked slowly, the clock blurry in the corner of his vision.

“I suppose?” He said, “I did not have much food. Cooking is not strong.”

Vic looked at him, “How much is not much.”

Dino thinned his lips. Vic continued to stare at him. 

“...I did not have any stored there.”

“Dino,” she said shortly, then she pinched her brow and looked around, “Then where do you store your stuff?”

Dino moved to the fridge and opened it. Kebabs and various pastas from the student Ubar took up the top shelf, a jug of water and a half-drunk Pepsi in the door. There was nothing else. 

Vic looked at him.

“I am one man,” he reasoned in response to that flat stare.

Vic thought about it for a moment, before nodding in her head in defeat, “Okay, fair.” 

Then Vic went about looking at those cabinets again, all hauntingly empty. She seemed to count them, then count the five shelves in the fridge, with only one in use. Ample storage, far too much for ‘one man’ with little to no guests. Dino watched as she sized up the space, wondering what was going on.

“Have you had dinner yet?” Vic asked, looking over her shoulder. 

“No,” Dino admitted slowly, “I have not had time.”

He had been too nervous to eat before the meeting, save that cookie Vic had given him, and too busy afterwards. His usual shop in the Ubar for a hot meal would be long closed by now — besides, Dino rarely had an appetite after handling a corpse. 

Dino suddenly wondered if his lightheadedness was from that powder, or over 12 hours without a proper meal. He needed to eat soon.

“Proposal!” Vic announced and Dino snapped to attention just as a cup of cool water was shoved into his hands. “You lemme store my foodstuffs in your capacious cupboards, and I’ll help you learn to cook! Life skills, My Little Pony, life skills!”

“But, you have a kitchen in your dormhouse? Do you not use it?”

Vic’s smile twitched and became the baring of teeth. 

“I would, but roommates,” she said, voice strained. “They kept using my stuff without asking, and they didn’t even replace it!” Vic took a large breath and crossed her arms, “I just keep everything in eskies now.”

Dino blinked. He remembered those three coolers stacked up on top of each other in the corner of Vic’s bedroom. Vic was hoarding her food in her room to protect it.

Dino sipped at his water and glanced at his storage. More than one man, one university student, could fill. Again, Dino’s anxious need to please reared its head. The idea of Vic, his friend, having to all but resource guard in her own dormhouse only fanned those flames. Dino fought it as best he could.

“Yeah!”

Which wasn’t much. At all. But he tried!

Then Dino remembered what was shoved into his underwear drawer, and what was coiled up in his back pocket. What was stored away in a cubby hole, what was cooling deep in the dirt outside. Mafia shit. 

“But, uh, please be careful of my items,” he pressed, imagining the chaos of Vic finding any of his files.

“Of course,” Vic nodded, not an inch of humour or sarcasm in her tone. “Your dorm, your stuff. I won’t touch anything unless I have the go from you.”

Dino relaxed a bit. 

“Anyway, gimme a sec and I’ll grab us some dinner. Be right back!” And Vic was out the door with the vicious jangle of her keys.

Dino resisted the urge to rub his face lest he irritate his still-red skin, and instead went about fitting the sheets back onto his bed so he had somewhere to sleep all of this off. 

Dino sat on the floor of his living room, not willing to use the bare couch, especially with that suspicious stain that they had exposed. He gave a glance to the washing baskets full of laundry for tomorrow and tried not to think about how his lazy day was no longer looking any sort of lazy.

Enzo took that moment to appear, rounding the side of the couch and chomped Dino’s socked toes.

“Ouch!” Dino hissed and yanked his foot away. “Damn it Enzo!”

“Is that the baby I hear!?” Dino heard from outside and looked over to see Vic hauling two eskies down Dino’s path, dressed down into her usual garb.

Dino stood and let her in, the girl hoisting the eskies up over the step and into his living room. 

“I’ve got butter chicken leftovers that need to be eaten soon and naan bread for a quick and dirty dinner,” she offered, taking off her shoe next to the door where Dino’s were.

“Okay,” Dino agreed and went about getting out the few plates he had, running them under the tap just in case. 

“Is there anywhere in particular you’d want me to stay out of?” Vic asked, crouched in front of Dino’s fridge.

Dino shrugged as he briefly tried to read the instructions of microwaved rice. He didn’t really use more than the top shelf by himself. Divvying up a fridge had never been a pressing matter. 

Dino shrugged and put the rice in the microwave, punching in the numbers he saw on the packaging. 

Vic hummed unsurely up at Dino, before she slipped a bottle of almond milk into the second bottom shelf. Dino stared at the bottle and remembered suddenly: Vic is lactose intolerant. 

“Top two can be yours, and we can discuss the door shelves when you’re not ready to pass out.”

“How are you so alive?” Dino asked, still fighting the need to rub his eyes. 

Or, well, as ‘alive’ as someone as lethargic as Vic could be. It hadn’t been quick, like coming down a steep slope, but Vic had returned to her lazy state as she stocked up Dino’s fridge.

“Night shift, baby,” Vic sang flat, and put her esky aside as she closed the fridge. “And I didn’t get broken into.”

Dino huffed and Vic gave a short laugh that had to all but crawl from her throat. Then she stopped, sniffed and snapped her head around, “How long did you put that in for?”

Dino looked over his shoulder and smelt melting plastic. Dino yelped and scrambled for the cancel button, the microwave door popped open and steam and white smoke came pouring out. Vic hacked and couched, and Dino slammed the door shut again.

Dino glanced at Vic. Vic looked at Dino.

Vic put the container of butter chicken into the fridge, middle shelf.

“Let’s just eat cereal tonight.”

A bowl of almost-chocolate milk sat in Dino’s lap as he and Vic watched videos of silly cats on her laptop, the girl herself munching through her share of Milo cereal. Enzo peaked up and over Vic’s thigh, happily cradled in the nest of her crossed legs.

“How’s your shoulder?” Vic asked out of the blue, and Dino glanced at her.

She looked drowsy, all but slumped against the baseboard of his couch. Her bowl tipped dangerously. Each breath she took was long and paced. 

“It’s okay,” Dino said, moving his murky cereal soup around. “They did not hurt me. I did not even see them.”

Vic breathed out, long and slow. A cat fell into a bathtub. Another got scared by a piano. Vic ate a heaped spoonful.

“Do you want me to stay over tonight?” 

Dino blinked, “Pardon?”

Vic watched a cat run headlong into a glass door. 

“You had someone break in. People usually don’t wanna be alone after that, ya know?” she huffed, “I don’t particularly want to leave you alone, either. They might get cocky and come back.”

Dino looked at the dots of black dirt under his nails, the last remnants he couldn’t scrub out. He doubted they would be coming back. 

Dino glanced at Vic. A civilian would be shaken by a break-in. Right. Already, this breach had put Vic on edge. Hypervigilance. She would be watching Dino, and everything around him. Dino had to act civilian. 

“I would like that, yes,” Dino nodded gently, and Vic nodded back. 

Then she tipped back the last of her almond milk and got to her feet, Enzo wheezing at the abandonment. 

“I’ll go grab my nighties and shit then. Be right back.”

Dino watched Vic go, before he reached for his phone and texted Romario.

Dino Cav Vic is staying the night in my dormhouse.

Romario did not respond for at least ten minutes. Then Dino’s phone started to shake on the countertop as ‘Romario’ became ‘Romario (15)’ and ‘Zio Croix (7)’. 

Dino paused rinsing the bowls and looked at his phone, wondering about the frenzy — and how Zio Croix was caught up in it. He put the bowls on the drying rack Vic had found deep in his cupboards, but before he could reach to address those texts, Vic was once again knocking on his screen door.

Dino let her in and was immediately faced with felt teeth. 

Vic’s head peered from around the large, nearly life-sized, toy shark. She grinned with teeth, nearly the spitting image.

“Meet Nip,” she introduced, shaking that shark at Dino. “My cuddle shark.”

“...Hello Nip,” Dino uttered and made way as the girl shuffled into the dorm. “Why?”

“I need to hug something to fall asleep,” she said as she put down a tote bag against the side of Dino’s couch. “Hence: cuddle shark, Nip.” Vic looked around and said, “So uh, where do you want me to sleep?”

Dino paused and looked at the couch, stripped bare and with newly exposed, suspicious stains. He looked at the laundry basket, the only spare sheets in the dorm, and in danger of holding that powder residue.

“Did not think about it,” Dino said slowly.

He had towels, but he couldn’t ask Vic, his guest, to sleep on towels. All of the Cavallone would have his head! 

“I will sleep in this room,” Dino offered, thinking of laying towels on the couch. “And you may have my bed.”

Vic tilted her head, “But you’re the one who needs the better sleep. I can sleep on the couch.”

“Please, my Family would kill me,” Dino nearly pleaded.

Vic let out a short bark of a laugh and hiked up her shark onto her shoulder. She looked down the hall into Dino’s bedroom and hummed before she turned to Dino and said, “Mate, you’ve got a queen size. We can share if you’re comfy?”

Dino stared at Vic, “You would like to share?”

Vic shrugged, “Up to you, I’m good for it though.” 

Dino looked at his bed, then at the couch, then at Vic and her life-sized shark. Immediately, Dino was rushed with a nervous excitement. He felt his face split into a shaky smile and rocked on his heels, full of elated jitters.

“I am okay!” He agreed, “We can share, yes!”

Dino had taken a while to get used to the bed at the dormhouse. It wasn’t especially soft or hard, but it was different. He sorely missed his own pillow; this one made his neck hurt for the first few weeks. 

So Dino understood as he watched Vic pull the slip off his spare pillow and replaced it with her own. She folded the slip up and laid it on the chair in the corner. Then she stood in front of Enzo’s suitcase, full of topsoil and sticks.

“They stole his fucking enclosure,” she whispered staring down at it and the way Enzo slowly rubbed himself into his sandpit.

Dino decided it was an investment in his personal safety to let her believe that. 

She squatted down and gently petted Enzo’s shell with the soft utterance of ‘red-eared slider, my ass’ before she clambered up into the bed, Nip in arms. Dino fisted his sheets in his hands, sat on ‘his side’ of the bed, a clear divide down the middle. 

Vic sat on her side, lamp the only light in the room. 

Dino smiled at Vic, “I have never had a sleepover before.”

Dino could barely contain himself. Sure, it was under less-than-ideal circumstances, but Dino was having his first sleepover with his friend! He couldn’t wait to tell Romario.  

Vic blinked, “Me neither.”

All the movies Dino had seen showed people at sleepover playing games and consuming an array of foods — none of which he had on hand. Especially with his microwave out of commission until it stopped smelling of something toxic. He remembered his classmates back in Italy discussing sleepovers, well ‘rendezvous’ or ‘meetings’, as they called it at the time. Dino didn’t think Vic would much like it if their sleepover activity was an impromptu helicopter ride like the Tomaso Family did. 

Dino tugged at his blankets a bit, “What do we want to do?”

Vic flopped back into the bed and bodily wrapped herself around her shark, pulling the duvet all the way up to her chin. 

“Sleep,” she decided, and God that sounded utterly sublime.

Dino didn’t hesitate to curl up like a little comfort crustacean. His head hit the pillow and all those dopamine jitters were sapped straight from his bones for melatonin mugginess.

 “Good idea,” Dino grumbled and Vic turned out the lights.

☁ ☁ ☁

“Hey Romario?” Dino asked as he held the phone to his ear, watching on as Vic stubbornly piled the straps of several hefty shopping bags onto her hands and waddled into his dorm. “Would you be able to send me some, uh, cooking stuff?”

“Cooking stuff,” Romario echoed slowly.

“Yeah,” he said, as Vic organised their food in the cupboards and fridge, following some sort of system Dino had no clue about. “Stuff that I’d need for cooking. Cooking stuff.”

“Very well, Boss. I’ll ask the chef to organise a basic package.”

“Perfect! Thanks a lot, Romario,” Dino said, before wheezing as Vic shoved a bag of flatbread in his chest.

“Come on, ponyboy, we’re making wraps for lunch,” Vic announced, waving the bag of roasted chicken. “No way we can mess this up.”

Later, Dino choked on a bone. Vic now knew the correct spelling for ‘heimlich’.

 ☁ ☁ ☁

Sunday morning, Vic sat on the couch, still smelling fresh from the laundry, and bodily wrapped around Nip as she watched Dino haul a box into the living room. He wheezed and heaved, dragging the box as it clanged and banged with whatever was inside.

“Doing good there buddy?” Vic asked, but made no move to help. 

“Good,” Dino said, before his socked feet slipped out from under him and he fell on his ass. “Still good!”

Vic snorted and leant over the edge of the couch to rummage through her bag. She pulled out a box knife from her balled-up work apron and tossed it at Dino who was haplessly picking at the taped-up box.

Dino fumbled with the knife for a bit, before he managed to open the box. Vic peered over his shoulder.

“The hell is this?” She asked as Dino pulled out one smaller box after another, carefully packaged and wrapped in scrunched-up newspaper. She snagged a page and squinted; Italian. “This from home?”

“Yeah! I asked Romario to send some tools!” 

“Ah, Romario,” Vic uttered. Her rival for custody of Dino.

Dino grinned at Vic, happy she knew so many of his Family by name. He really should have thought it dangerous, negligent even, that he was letting a civilian know so many of the pieces that made the Cavallone’s top level — but really, Dino reasoned, when would it come up again? Vic was going to be a teacher in Australia, after all. 

Dino huffed as Vic batted at him with Nip to get him to hurry up and show her what he had been sent. 

A pasta machine, made of black cast iron and polished wood, came out first. It was heavy and Dino wheezed as he tried to raise it up to show Vic. On the bottom, Dino could read VillaWare Manufacturing Co. 1908. The head chef had always found it a bit annoying that the first pasta maker had been built in Cleveland, USA of all places.

Dino gave it a testing crank. It was old, but it turned without so much a creak. 

The next item Dino pulled wasn't exactly heavy but had a heft to it that made his fingers hurt as he clutched the edge. A circular slab of stone, flat as a tack and thick with little handles on either side; a pizza stone. Accompanied by a pizza paddle that Vic used as a rather dangerous choice of fan.

The last large piece was a large pan, at least a finger in depth. Dino had seen the chefs use this kind of pan to make sauces before.

Aside from that, the box was full of miscellaneous bits and bobs, some coming in multiples in a way that made Dino think they were important — did he really need that many wooden spoons? Why were they different shapes? 

At the bottom, sat a few small folded paper packages. Dino reached in and read that familiar handwriting on the backs: basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano. Seeds, sent from home.

“You got a letter,” Vic hummed from over Dino’s shoulder and he jumped to attention and saw an envelope wedged beneath the folds of the box. “What’s it say?” 

Dino leant back into the couch as he read Romario’s clean and precise handwriting, always a stickler for clarity and precision, down to the penmanship. 

“Instructions to look after the pasta machine,” he said, before getting to the bottom of the letter. “They are going to send more later. A, uh, ‘care package’?”

“More!?” Vic asked, looking at what was already spread across the coffee table, stacked on top of each other and nearly toppling off the edge. 

“Yeah, my Family tends to over-give sometimes,” Dino chuckled, still trying to figure out why there was a random, gritty block packaged with the knives. “A lot of us live in one household under the head, so we use quite a bit.”

Vic blinked, “You all live in one big house?”

“Yes! After induction, you are to live in the house until deemed ready!” 

Dino's smile froze. Vic stared at him with a particular look on her face that somehow told Dino that something he had said was not a social norm. 

“What?” Vic uttered, and squinted even as her eyebrows shot up. 

Dino wheezed and started waving his hands frantically, “I, uh, mean — the new members of the Family come to live in the house! It is safe there and tradition and uh— Please do not focus on it—!”

Vic lurched to sit up on the couch, Nip the shark all but flung across the living room as she gaped at Dino’s spluttering self. 

He fucked up!

“Wait, are you in a cult?”

Oh, he fucked up!

“Dino? Are you? In a cult?” she pressed, both fascinated and concerned. “Like, you can tell me, I won’t judge. My uncle believes that a secret race of people called the ‘True Earthlings’ run the world.”

“No, I’m not in a cul— your uncle believes what?” Dino squinted. “How? Why does he think that?”

“Beats me,” Vic shrugged as she crossed her legs, feet pressed flat against one another. “But he talks about it at pretty much every family gathering. We usually change the topic.” Then she rocked forward on the couch and loomed over Dino. “But you. Cult?”

“No,” Dino stressed, “We are not a cult. We are a Family.”

“Sounds like a cult, not gonna lie,” Vic muttered, scratching at the piercing hole in her ear.

“Not a cult!” 

“Okay, okay,” Vic laughed and backed off. “But fuck mate, that must be a big house you’ve got.”

Dino smiled, remembering those long halls and polished floors, perfecting the sliding on socks and being dragged on blankets. “Yes, enough room for everyone.”

Vic huffed and groaned as she got to her feet. 

“Okay, let’s get that machine cranking! Pasta time!” She paused and looked down at Dino. “You know how to make pasta noodles right? You’re Italian.”

“Did you remember to park your koala?” Dino shot back. “And I’m Sicilian.”

Vic stuck her tongue out at Dino and flipped him off, “The stereotype is ‘kangaroo’, you Sicilian piece of shit. Now get up, we’re gonna Youtube it.”

Vic was glad they had started preparing their dinner early, as the next half an hour resulted in a rather frantic back and forth of more egg yolk, more flour, more egg, more flour, more egg, more flour, more—

“I don’t think we can eat all of this,” Dino murmured as the two looked down at the ball of rested dough the size of a small toddler.

“Speak for yourself, coward,” Vic huffed and grabbed handfuls.

True to her words, Vic ate her whole serving of five large bowls. Dino had to rub her belly as she laid on the couch in pasta-ey regret. 

At least, now Dino had plenty of pasta in the fridge. He would be eating it for a while.

☁ ☁ ☁

Dino laid on his couch, a sheet of paper draped across his face. Enzo gently gnawed on his shin through his pyjama pants. 

He was bored. And lonely. 

Semester break had set in. Dino had meant to go home over the mid-year break, spend the semester's end on Sicilian soil. Instead, when Winter crawled into the southern hemisphere and Dino had reached for the plane tickets home— 

“I’m sorry Boss, Reborn’s instructions were clear. You can’t come back this time, not yet.”

Dino had damn near broken into tears. 

Instead, after much bed-rotting, Dino had thrown himself into the familiar stress of number crunching, creating pages of cramped value tables and highlighted budget summaries. On the floor sat a bin full of tear-soggy tissues. 

Vic had gone upstate to New Castle for the mid-year break, but Dino hadn’t had the time to miss her company as she made sure to text her ‘poor, lonesome boy’ at least once a day. Dino’s phone was full of photos of ‘blobfish babies’ and some kind of mixed mutt that looked like it could win a bullfight called Pepper. Or, as Vic liked to call her: ‘Pepe my sweet little girl, so beautiful!’

Dino did have to admit, her baby cousin, Ant, did look a bit like a blobfish. A cute one. A cute blobfish.

He still wished she was here, though. Dino had never liked the quiet, it never brought good things. For Dino, a quiet house was a house in mourning.

Dino tried to play some old Italian music to help the homesickness. He found he couldn’t stand it without the sound of Romario snoring in his armchair, or Brutus heckling at the football. 

Dino crossed his arms over his eyes, the sheet wrinkled under the weight.

“I wanna go home, Enzo,” he murmured, muffled.

Enzo made another bite at his shin.

“I wanna see Vic.”

☁ ☁ ☁

It had been months since Dino had struck a deal with the rest of the Cavallone: Bet everything on one last race. Bet everything on the Cavallone horses.

And yet, he had made minimal progress. 

The search for jockeys had been difficult, he hadn’t even known where to start. But as he paged through the list of names and backgrounds Romario had sent, Dino could see his options wearing thin. 

There were jockeys, young upstarts and disgraced retirees. But Dino needed a specific brand of person. 

He didn’t have the money to pay them lavishly, nor buy their silence, so he needed someone low budget, low maintenance. Young, maybe. Inexperienced and unaware of their worth. Skilled enough to handle a horse of Cavallone’s breeding. Loyalty easily fostered. They couldn’t ask questions. And they couldn’t be Mafia.

One jockey per horse.

The Stable Master had given him seven horses to work with, Madam Celeste, Buttercup Pop, Today Junior, Red Riding, Bottle Top, the best of the Cavallone’s renowned Snortle line and, of course, Glory herself. 

One jockey per horse. Dino needed to find at least seven jockeys. And then he had to pray that the horses accepted their riders.

Dino grimaced at the concept of trying to introduce a jockey to Glory. He made a note to have a medic on scene.

Dino sighed and dropped his head onto the dining table, articles and handwritten notes of half thoughts stacked high enough to cushion his dismay. Dino was tired.

Enzo bit his little toe through his sock. Dino screeched. He shot up with a gasp — he saw Vic pressed against the window. 

“Show me the boy.”

Dino screeched. He fell off his chair into the sweet embrace of his cold, tile floor. 

“Careful! You could have hurt Enzo!” Vic scolded as she banged on the window. 

Dino gaped at her from the floor, offended. 

“What!? No sympathy for Dino!?”

“Shut up and let me in! I’m freezing my tits off!”

Dino resisted rolling his eyes as he heaved himself up off the ground. It was only 17 degrees, barely coat weather, but Vic was whining like she was up on Etna. Dino opened his door and Vic came barreling past, honed on his couch.

Dino laughed when he saw the mass of blankets on the couch, each one brought by Vic every time she couldn’t resist the knick-knackery of Kmart. Two grumpy eyes peered out, and the tell-tale sound of Enzo’s disgruntled wheeze.

“You’re back?” Dino smiled as he came and sat by Vic’s head, those eyes glaring up at him. 

“Nah, I’m astral projecting — yes I’m back!” Vic huffed and Dino grinned.

He leant over and threw his arms around the mass that was Vic bundled within her blankets, squeezing tight even when the girl gave a wheeze. One of Vic’s hands wriggled its way out of the hold and gently patted Dino’s shoulder with an obligatory “there, there.”

“You were away for so long,” Dino grumbled.

Vic huffed, “I was gone for three weeks.”

“Three weeks much too long!” He whined and Vic let out a laugh that jostled both of them.

Dino let out an indignant sound as he slumped into Vic and felt the twang in his back and the ache in his eyes. He had been looking at documents for so long, done so much close-up work, that he could barely make out the clock face on the wall. 

“You look like shit,” Vic grumbled from within her blanket mount.

Dino smiled weakly and rubbed his nape. He felt like shit too. A bit sweaty. Cooped up. 

But he had work to do. So many relied on this one last gamble. 

Dino tried not to let the stress show. That stone in his stomach and pressure in his chest.

Vic stared at him.

“Dino?” She asked and sat up, Enzo slid down a blanket and tottered off into the distance. “Dino?”

‘What’s wrong?’ she wanted to ask, but as Vic looked at Dino, she couldn’t quite get the words out. Because she could see that whatever was festering under his skin, was far too large to unpack. It had too many layers. One lone issue didn’t make someone’s face that dark and pale.

“Do you…Do you want to call home? I can give you some space?” Vic offered gently. “Call your dad or something?”

Dino flinched. Hard.

Vic snapped her mouth shut. 

Then her mind swarmed with memory, scanning every instance she had with Dino, every mention of his family, every giggle of his past. Not once had Dino mentioned his father. Or his mother.

Fuck. Vic had fucked up.

“Or—” she scrambled, nearly biting her tongue in the rush.

“He is, uh…passed,” Dino said, barely above a whisper. 

Vic paused. She pulled the blankets around her tighter. 

“Oh,” she uttered.

“Last February,” he continued, his hands plucked at the edge of the blanket, pulling the loose tassels. “He got hurt. He didn’t get better.”

“Oh,” Vic whispered. That was recent. “You’re…mum?”

She looked at him carefully. Dino’s nose had started to blush, his fingers worked to untangle stylised knots in the blanket. His voice croaked.

“I was seven,” Dino whispered, and that was all Vic needed to know. 

“Dino,” Vic murmured, and Dino shrugged. 

“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

“Dino, your dad was last year,” Vic said, not at all convinced. Maybe Dino had come to peace with his mother’s passing, but his fathers? She didn’t think he was ‘okay’ as he said he was.

“I am busy. There’s much to do. The Family needs me now that I am in charge.”

Vic held her breath for a moment until she was sure she could let it out without a sound. Her Dino was in charge? Of a whole family? Her Dino, who choked on rice, who cut his lip on his toothbrush, who tripped on shoelaces. Had been put in charge of a whole family — an extensive one if ‘induction’ meant anything (not a cult, totally not a cult unless it is). 

“When did you take over?” Vic asked and closed her eyes, bracing for the worst.

“...Last February,” Dino uttered.

He had taken the reigns out of cold hands. No time to mourn.

Vic felt her heart lurch in her chest, and a rumble in her ears. Anger and indignity yanked at her naval as she looked at the papers on the dining table, laptop open, fan spinning fast to cool down after days of almost non-stop use. Her Dino was doing all this. Practically alone, so far from home. And he hadn’t even had the time to properly mourn.

Vic turned her gaze onto Dino. 

“Last February,” she echoed out to him. “Fifteen months.”

Dino smiled at Vic, full of teeth and wrinkled eyes. Eyes that started to swim as she stared at him. Brown eyes going blurry until one, then two, fat tears rolled down his cheeks. Dino sniffed, loud and full of snot. 

Vic pulled her feet up onto the couch, leant back against the armrest and opened her arms to Dino. Dino’s face pinched, his breath shook, and slowly, Dino crawled until he laid himself on her chest. 

Vic lifted her chin to breathe around his hair and felt her shirt go soggy as Dino hiccuped and rattled.

Vic liked to think she knew Dino well. At times like this, though, Vic was reminded that she knew very little. 

Dino’s dad had died last year. His mother, long before that. And now he was here, alone, the rest of his family in another hemisphere. And there was that whole issue of finances that she knew she wouldn’t ever fully understand the gravity of. 

Arms wriggled under her back and Vic felt Dino clutch at her like a lifeline, his watch dug into her ribs and she felt snot, spit and tears smear along her collar. 

“I miss him,” Dino wheezed. “I don’t want to be the Boss yet. There’s so much I could do wrong.”

Vic gritted her teeth and pulled the blankets over Dino, the weight pressing down on his back. She looked at the list sitting on Dino’s dining table. A criterion for employment. A jockey selection. 

Dino needed jockeys. At least seven.

Vic scanned the criteria, doing her damnedest to burn every detail and refinement into her memory. Cheap, talented, foolish. She felt her stomach roll with heat and discomfort. 

Someone to be taken advantage of. 

Dino coughed between quiet sobs. His nails dug into her shirt, just short of her skin. Vic pushed her cheek into his hair and squeezed him back, just as tight. 

Dino needed jockeys. 

“It’ll be okay, Dino,” Vic murmured. 

Dino needed jockeys. Dino needed help.