#nadia!

So here it is, @heybuddy-drabbles​, @bohrapbois​ and @that-hardzello-girl​, a drabble. 638 words.

It’s not so much of trying to avoid the questions, because there’s none to begin with. They’re very much Italian still, at heart. Anyone who comes to eat with them is family, and they don’t ask questions. At least not the relationship kind. But they did ask him all sorts of questions about himself and Sherborne, where he grew up, and feed him a lot of food, delicious homemade Italian food. Joe’s grandma still speaks the language, so imagine the way her face lights up when Ben starts speaking to her in Italian. Five minutes into their conversation, one of Joe’s aunts who is sitting beside her, starts laughing. “She’s complaining to Ben about how none of her grandchildren can speak Italian,” she tells no one in particular at the table, which basically means everyone, and they nod and chuckle around their food. A man in his forties, who was introduced as Joe’s older cousin, tells her from across the table that she’s forgetting him, who “always order Italian food in Italian,” which makes the matriarch scoff and start lecturing everyone on how Italian food in America is either overpriced or Americanised, or both. Much like the seemingly never ending flow of food to the table, their conversation flows from one topic to another, never stopping, even when the jumps between them don’t make any sense. Everyone talks loudly, laughs even louder and they make fun of each other mercilessly, and Ben keeps expecting someone to let it slip in one of their teasing, the question as to why exactly Joe brought him to the family lunch, but it never came. Not even when he finds himself chatting comfortably with Joe’s only uncle, before Joe comes crashing on the sofa beside him, bringing with him a horde of nephew and nieces who are now clambering over the both of them instead of just their favourite uncle Joe. John brings two mugs of something warm from the kitchen, one for their uncle and one for Ben, but he ends up drinking it himself, sitting beside the older man and chatting with him. Neither of them do more than give an amused glance when the two grown men and the kids plastering themselves on top of them begin a tickle war, and the cackling and scream-laughing amplify. They only stop when Mary comes in with a large plate full of cookies, and the kids switch their attention to the sweet sugary treats instead, leaving both men a little breathless with remnants of laughter between their grins. When Virginia comes into the living room she asks Joe to get Ben to the kitchen to get something to drink, so the redhead gets up on his feet immediately. Ben gets up too and follows him to the kitchen.

“I love your family,” he tells Joe once he realizes that they’re alone in the kitchen. Joe turns to look at him now, laughing a little, as if he can’t decide whether Ben is messing with him or not.

“What?”

“You’re serious.” It wasn’t a question.

“I am serious.”

He watches Joe’s eyes dart quickly to the direction of the kitchen’s entrance, unconsciously licking his upper lip briefly with the tip of his tongue. Ben raises his eyebrows a little but can’t help grinning, thinking about how Joe has gotten as bad as he is in being obvious.

It takes another second, no, half a second, for him to find Joe’s lips pressed on his, and he is both mortified that Joe is kissing him in the kitchen of his family home with literally the entire family and extended family members sitting in the living area, and that it is over too soon.

“So who else do you love?” Joe asks almost cheekily.