Chapter Text
I Can't Get Started
This space between the two of them, tonight, cluttered by men and their destitution and softened by smoke born from cigarettes like mist over a sod field, is as poignant and palpable as it is common. Beyond the crowd, and maybe above the world, they are alone together, delineated by an evening they are not proud of.
Because for every man in this bar that drowns in lowballs and chokes on gaudy cigars, men before them had drowned just as vigorously by not only Risotto’s hand, but Prosciutto’s as well.
It was a job like most others; they rarely arose any problems. They were too perfect. Even now, everything moves with great purpose to ensure tomorrow, because it’s all they have.
Despite that - Risotto’s musings, silent confessions, and all - Prosciutto hides stereoscoped behind hills of thoughtless men and they’re soundless jokes. His smile, cracked just enough to reveal that beautiful gap between his top teeth, is not the one Risotto knows from nights when they are their only company, when they are strengthened by the things they can’t seem to forget; hazed by those damned cigarettes - Prosciutto’s cursed lovers.
Risotto often finds himself chasing Prosciutto like he’d chase the sea, always a goodbye, never a covet for more time to cherish each other. And time after time, when he tries, he finds himself wandering aimlessly in waters that do not abide by the gravity of the earth - that are pulled by a force that is not logical.
Prosciutto is a logical man by nature. Risotto’s always known this, but it’s this feeling, so deep and hard to figure, that permeates Prosciutto’s every grin, every sway of his elbows, gesture of his poised hands, tip of his glass, or swig of his cigarette.
He wonders what good this has done. Being unapologetically quick to hide away, to find shallow solace under earthy lights and stenchy denim coats, as if to insult him. Prosciutto never dares to insult him; through hushed lips and reassuring fingertips, he promised him that much, and not necessarily out of fear. Between them, it’s never fear that imbues these private nights, subdued dances, and the occasional shared thought. It’s why Risotto sits heavy, like the penny cutting through a whiskey one had mistaken for the tip jar, on a sigh meant only for himself that shakes with longing.
Because god, if there ever is one to a man of Risotto’s caliber, is Prosciutto still the most handsome man in the room. Risotto, if not for his innate and perfectly reasonable desire to be as inconspicuous as possible, would level this bar just for the sight of him. And his laugh, loud and ideal but never a roar, makes the ribs of Risotto’s fingers clench splittingly around the heart of his glass. What Risotto wouldn’t give to get day and night of him, sew this broken seam frayed with words unsaid.
And the longer Risotto watches him, the tighter the thread coils in its attempt to fix something.
“But it’s not broken. The pieces simply don’t fit where they are now, but that doesn’t mean they never will.” Prosciutto had mused to Pesci, once, absently as if it were a prayer, in the midst of reassembling his pistol. It hadn’t been meant for Risotto, but he couldn’t help listening; Prosciutto’s voice was a pull he could not fight, nor a song he could not hum.
Because there could be many nights when Risotto’s standing like this, another fall, another spring; when he’ll unknowingly seek a thrill only to find nothing will ever thrill him the way Prosciutto does, because there will never be another Prosciutto.
It’s why little things like this cut deeper than Metallica ever could, as Risotto sits in half knowing, trying to forget the fading stars in Prosciutto’s eyes as he kept looking away from him like he looked away from all the things cluttering his nightstand that morning, by a bed left unmade.
A part of Risotto just wants to go over there and shake him - tell him he could always see it. Prosciutto knows, though. He has to.
He has to, Risotto repeats as the dial turns, and the men part against him like water on the bow of a ship. Prosciutto’s glass, subject to the many angles of a warm, hazy shine, falls back to the counter with maddening effortlessness. His eyes catch the light in a similarly complex way.
He knows what Risotto wants, as much as those distasteful Muratti’s try to lie around the smug curves of his mouth, and an indistinct part of him perks up at the impossible to spot curl in Risotto’s lip that doesn’t say: “With me. Now.”
Prosciutto sighs, and they’re retreating to a hallway tucked between bustling spots with about as many posters as there are men with cigarettes. Some fall to the floor at Risotto’s passing, kissing the ground that Prosciutto walks on. And despite this space that they just about squeeze into, Risotto’s eyes search Prosciutto as if he still had a bar full of men coming and going in a riptide to stall the words hanging on his tongue.
The caramel wood that hugs the walls reaches out and keeps the back of Prosciutto’s suit with their splintery hands. He couldn’t want their company more. His eyelids have hit sundown, and Risotto wishes for the morning, when the blue was its deepest.
“Let’s leave,” Risotto says.
For a moment, when Prosciutto’s gaze flicks up, Risotto swears it beats, like a heart would, unsteady, and with yearning. But just as quickly, it slows into something more smug. The Muratti sitting in the bend of his lip is like an old, horrid friend, there only to hide what he might regret saying. “I’ll quit,” he’d promised, but Risotto’s learned that it’s the only promise Prosciutto can’t manage.
“I think I’ll stay longer,” he says, so sure of himself that it has Vasco Rossi blushing, somewhere.
“Why?”
Prosciutto hesitates at first, his brows meeting in that way they’re so familiar with, “I haven’t…finished my drink-”
“How long will it take?” Risotto’s head bows down only slightly, as if weighted by the bells on his hat. Prosciutto instinctively turns away, only to meet him again with infuriating confidence.
“I like. Taking. My time. Perhaps I’ll grab another.” Prosciutto sneers, and his voice curls around the tender parts of Risotto’s chest, wanting it bare, drawn away, and never too close. There’s something strangely indiscernible about him, a start but no finish, an assassin without a target.
Risotto aches. “Why…”
“I just-”
“Why do you do this to me?” Why must Risotto be so taboo? Risotto, who’d always stick to him. Risotto, whose skin would paint in bumps and bruises, for he’d always fall for him.
Because Prosciutto is not that simple a man. Prosciutto, who always settles for a drink miles more bitter than expected. Prosciutto, who’s either bathing in scents that smolder men into complexions of the greenest degree, or enticing them with a musky sexuality.
For someone so terribly assured, a simple whisper to his heart is more like a flame, burning him alive. How can I be of any kick to you?
Risotto thinks this as he locks their gazes together, tightly and without restraint. Prosciutto’s head takes a step back before his leg does.
“The hell have I done?”
Risotto doesn’t say anything to that. Once Prosciutto decides he’s right, no one else is. Risotto can do nothing but soften under his vice-like teeth. His jaw, tightly wound as well, falls in a steady want, a move of slight surrender.
Prosciutto’s unnerved by it. “You….do not get to control me like this.”
“I’ve never quite been able to do that and we both know it. Don’t pull that on me.” On a dime, Risotto has him again. It’s not a game, it doesn’t have to be. It never does. But Risotto has to match this man, if only a little, if he wants to get even slightly farther than Spain.
Prosciutto feels smaller than before, shrunken like paper in a fireplace. His words have been shockingly sparse for a man riddled with asymmetry - a man unabashedly himself yet restrained all the same. Finding the words for Prosciutto tonight is like trying to find a face in a Pollock painting.
Risotto squints in that deeply inquisitive way that has most shifting in their seats. Prosciutto is no exception. “Why is it so hard for you to accept that this is your job?”
“Excuse me?”
“This has never been an issue before.”
That breathtaking efficiency and pure resolve are ingrained into Prosciutto’s every fiber, every flick of his finger or curl of his wrist. When it’s gone, it leaves a perfect hole only Risotto can peer through. And yet,
“Why do I have to tear through men I barely know just to spare a glance?” Risotto almost whispers, melting against dimming lights and a cigarette now hiding under designer shoes. “I just want…” When he clutches Prosciutto’s sleeve, he aches at how warm he is under there. He holds onto words tightly as a winter coat, and softly, they fade away against his breath, trembling like the threshold of a glass.
Prosciutto is just as unsteady as Risotto draws near, and the rhythm is shared. Are they foolish to dance with two left feet around broken floorboards, or lie against each other with skin so pining underneath cracks charting the ceiling, in days that are not nearly long enough?
How Risotto longs to hold him again, without the worry of what will become of them. He longs to hide for a moment in that beautiful pattern littering Prosciutto’s suit, Risotto’s favorite work of art, only because it’s him who wears it. He longs to tangle and collide with the sharp points of his body, knowing how soft they can get if he kisses them enough.
But that creeping worry personifies against Prosciutto’s lips.
“We go out,” Prosciutto starts, low, “Every day on our assignments.” His eyes have lost something in the same way autumn trees lose their leaves when summer’s through. His bottom lip meets and parts, over and over.
“And there’s this new thought in my mind that I’ve never had before…”
“I know,” Risotto says, against his cheek, and he does.
“You’d…” Prosciutto trials. He’s a train halting slowly, right before the tracks end, where its purpose would be served. Perhaps he thought his heart was safe, that he knew the score, but like every whiskey poured and Murratti tolerated, it’s all too strange and strong. And when his gaze, stunning in its yield and utterly heartstopping, meets Risotto and his closeness, it feels like he’s pleading for forgiveness for this helpless haze he’s in.
But Risotto makes a promise, “I wouldn’t leave you first.”
The wall is a friend reuniting with Prosciutto’s back as he tips against it. Tight are the corners of his face, as if nothing could ever loosen them again. “Fuck, Risotto…” he seethes, “It’s shit like this…” his arm rises then returns feebly back to his side. “You just say whatever the hell you want as if it’ll make things just….fall the way you picture it in your head…”
They come together again, softly, like clouds meeting in the evening, and Prosciutto appears weaker and weaker under Risotto’s hands as they graze his neck and caress his face. “I fear very little, Risotto….” His voice is a dying song. “So please…” His sigh shakes like the top of a golden drink, disturbed by its many penny-shaped occupants slinging along the bottom. The threshold plays dangerous games against the corners of his eyes.
“Let me have this.”
Risotto’s never seen him so divinely sad. Selfishly, he doesn’t once stop thinking about how handsome he still is despite it. Maybe Prosciutto thought, at a time, that he was wiser for hiding it, for not letting anyone in, no matter how special he made them feel. And Risotto thought he could fly around the whole world, settle revolutions, or chance to meet Berlusconi before he finally got started with Prosciutto.
But sunlit days go by, and he does not want to chase him anymore.
“I can’t do that.”
Prosciutto releases a heavy breath, “Fuck…” He wants to make fields, tall and foggy, grow between them, but Risotto always crosses through to find him, every time. And Prosciutto curses him for it, between warm, long kisses, “I hate you…” But they move together like they never have.
There’s an ease in Risotto’s mind knowing this is not forever, these dreams of seamless wines and dines, carefree nights, and paper-filled mornings, because they’ll be living it, slowly, as it should be lived. Maybe there will be doubts when they can’t get started, when they’ll feel strange and foolish because of it. Risotto wants to be there, always, right next to him, hands intertwined underneath a table, or in between their coats, until the day Prosciutto wants to love again.