Chapter Text
"Yeah, I know that you've told me a hundred times that I should let you tune-up what you want, I know."
Pierre sighs resignedly and rolls his eyes, not even trying to argue with Dania. He doesn't like to admit that he was stupid in some way, but Daniil doesn't need it - judging by the chuckle in the phone, he already knows about it.
"Will you help me or just laugh?"
And yes, Pierre may be a little sulky at him, but only because for the entire time while Pierre is talking to him on the phone, Daniil said only "I told you" and issued a symphony of different-tonal snorts. The musician inside Pierre is delighted with his talents. The man inside Pierre wanted his friend to stop judging him and finally do something useful.
"Petya, what should I do, come and change your engine in the parking lot?" finally, Danya chuckles, his voice is as clear as day fun. "Send the car to me in a tow truck."
"Dani," Pierre whines, insistently not wanting to admit that everything is so serious. "I'm absolutely sure there's nothing serious there, the engine is fine."
"Yes? And when did you become an expert in mechanics?" Pierre can literally feel Daniil's cheerful skepticism, but before he has time to be outraged that Danya is laughing at him, he interrupts his incipient swearing. "Okay, I'll come. But you'll owe me."
"Free lunch and gas payment?" Pierre bargains, biting his lip with a smile, hoping that Daniil will be satisfied with this offer.
"Deal," snorts Danya and hangs up without saying goodbye. Pierre isn't offended. After all, if he had been persuaded to come to work almost for free, he wouldn't have been a model of manners either.
Daniil really arrives in a few hours. Pierre has a break, and he goes out to greet him personally, gratefully hugs him and escorts him to his car, telling everything he has noticed. Danya listens to him with a smile, no longer expressing skepticism about Pierre's abilities in mechanics, but he suspects that all this was nothing more than Dani's way of expressing dissatisfaction with the situation into which Pierre's stubbornness drove them.
"Petya, I'll try, of course, but next time do us both a favor," he puts his hand patronizingly on Pierre's shoulder, addressing him in that tone of his I said, "admit right away that I'm right."
"Yes, yes." Pierre rolls his eyes, but doesn't undertake to argue – in the end, Danya is really right. "Come back as soon as you're done, I'll put you at a table."
**
Daniil has been messing with Pierre's car for so long that he even feels ashamed. He gives him a light snack, a bottle of water and his apologies. Danya accepts the food, but dismisses everything else, only threatening that next time he'll complain about it to Lewis, but Pierre is sure that this's nothing more than a joke (but just in case he makes a mental note not to argue with Daniil about cars in the near future).
Pierre's shift is coming to an end when Daniil was finally able to get his long-suffering Fiat to somehow drive. His hands are smeared with oil, there is a stain of something dark on his cheek, and his skin and clothes smell of gasoline and metal. Pierre is afraid that Daniil may not understand his refusal to take him to the common room of the restaurant, but Danya himself asks to take him to the back room, where he could calmly wash himself before going home. Pierre takes him to their dressing room, which should be empty right now, and leaves him there with wet wipes and cotton pads while Pierre brings him lunch (although rather closer to dinner).
He's not worried that someone will find Daniil in the office, after all, even if it happens, Susie is the most loyal boss. But when Pierre returns with a tray full of food and hears voices from the dressing room, he involuntarily accelerates his pace. Pierre isn't sure who Daniil could have met, but not all of his colleagues are good enough people for Pierre to want a meeting between them to take place.
However, when he opens the door, having hardly dealt with it, without dropping anything on the tray (Pierre promises himself to help the waiters even more in the future), he suddenly hears quite clearly the familiar sound of Antonio's slightly embarrassed laugh.
Pierre stumbles, for lack of a better description, inside, barely spilling a drop from a full cup of fresh tea, only to see the most unexpected picture possible.
Daniil, pressing his chin to the chest, quietly says something in almost perfect Italian, in the rapid sounds of which his rough accent isn't heard, and Antonio quietly snorts, nodding his head while he rubs something with a cotton pad on the back of Daniil's outstretched neck.
"What's going on?" Pierre clears his throat as soon as he regains consciousness and puts the tray on the table in front of Daniil, involuntarily interrupting them with the clatter of dishes. "I'm not the best waiter," he says in his defense, awkwardly shrugging his shoulders.
"Then good it's not your main job, Petya," Danya grins, taking a bite of a fresh croissant, and looks at his wristwatch. "Thanks for lunch, but I've been here so long that the guys have already lost me."
Pierre again feels guilty for how much time he took away from Daniil because of his stubborn unwillingness to give his car for repair on time. He stares at the wall somewhere, like a ashamed child, but even before Pierre has time to say something, Antonio suddenly enters into conversation.
"Pierre, if it's time for Daniil to go, you could ask the kitchen to put his takeaway lunch for him, no?" he offers with a reassuring smile, feeling Pierre's discomfort.
He frowns, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Have you already met?" Pierre mutters, causing Dani to laugh.
"We've heard a lot about each other," he says suggestively, raising his hands in a gesture of mock surrender when Pierre throws him a murderous look. "Relax, Petya, we just happened to have one good friend."
**
Pierre practically forgets about this episode. Yes, it was strange, but he had said goodbye to normality since he first saw Lewis, so Pierre stopped being surprised. He just continues to live an ordinary life, only briefly mentioning this incident to Lewis to make him laugh, but not to recall once again his desire to fully provide Pierre's life with the luxurious comfort that he, according to him, deserves.
He comes to work as usual, grabbing a cup of coffee on the way with him, whistling under his breath another stupid melody stuck in his brain, and practically bumps into Antonio's back, standing in the middle of their small dressing room.
"What's the matter?" says Pierre absentmindedly, putting his cup on the table to avoid a catastrophe, and turns back to Antonio, who is staring at a bouquet of white flowers lying in front of him. "Has someone got a fan?"
He asks with a grin and comes closer, taking the bouquet in his hands without hesitation and shame and looking for a note among the petals. It was far from the first time when someone in a restaurant receives bouquets, it often happened to waiters, administrators, and even Susie herself. Of course, they were also sent bouquets and gifts, someone sometimes even tried to invite them to their tables, so they got used to not reacting to it too sharply. So Antonio's current shock was, frankly, amazing.
Pierre is sulking, he's curious who this time was awarded the dubious honor of unsolicited gifts from guests. Antonio silently hands him a pinkish card folded in half, without changing his face and posture. "You could have told me earlier," he says only a little grumpily and puts down the bouquet to study the postcard.
"I hope they'll please you. Daniil. P.s. I'm sorry if I got it wrong." is written in a tight handwriting in Italian, and Pierre is seriously sure that his knowledge of Italian is letting him down, because it can't be true, but Daniil's name, equally obvious in any language, hints that, even with Pierre's mistakes in translation, there is something here definitely not.
"Okay. Wow."
That's all Pierre says, carefully putting the note into the bouquet. He stares intently at Antonio, ready to defend him on demand. Daniil is his friend, but Tonio… Pierre can't explain his constant desire to protect him, but he's pretty sure Antonio feels the same way about him, so they're even.
"Should I talk to him?" Pierre frowns.
"What? No!" Antonio answers so sharply and loudly that for a second he even scares Pierre, who didn't expect this. He looks at his friend's face more closely and suddenly notices a blush on his cheeks. "I just… It was unexpected, I..."
"But do you mind?" Pierre insinuates, squinting, and snorts when Antonio shakes his head. "Holy shit. What are you gonna do?"
"No shit," Antonio laughs awkwardly, rubbing his unusually short hair on the back of his head with his palm. Pierre still doesn't fully understand why he suddenly cut his hair. "I dunno. He doesn't even..." he suddenly blushes even more. "There's not even his number here. So I guess I'll just wait? I don't know. We met once and then by accident."
Pierre just nods thoughtfully.
**
Pierre tries not to interfere in Antonio's personal life, after all, it's just not decent even for close friends, but from time to time new small gifts appear on Antonio's table, and Pierre can't help but be curious. He says that they no longer saw each other in person, but in one of the cards, invariably attached to each gift, Daniul's number was written, and Antonio didn't refuse the offer. They haven't met since, limiting themselves to virtual communication, but that doesn't stop Pierre from hinting at playing with his eyebrows, earning a punch in the shoulder from Antonio.
Pierre doesn't want to be a matchmaker for his friends at all, perhaps he is even a little worried that Antonio is getting involved in this criminal world, and partly he is the reason for that, but Pierre knows that Antonio is a grown boy and can figure out who he should flirt with himself, and he has already done enough got hit on the ass with a towel to know that Antonio doesn't appreciate his attempts to be an aggressively caring brother. So, Pierre doesn't want to be a matchmaker for them, as he doesn't want to interfere with them, but it so happens that their next meeting takes place at a party that Pierre arranges in honor of his birthday.
He rents a house outside the city for a few days so that their festivities don't interfere with his neighbors, and categorically forbids Lewis to pay for it (Lewis sulks, but in return promises to give Pierre gifts, and Pierre knows that in his case this's practically a threat). Pierre tries not to show his feelings about gathering such different people in one house, it is important for him that the two parts of his life get along, he doesn't want to choose between them if they do not get along, doesn't think he can even do it if his friends don't approve of Lewis and Daniil, or if Lewis doesn't like his friends. And this leads to the fact that in the end Yuki and Charles have to calm his anxiety.
But, contrary to his fears, the party is going great, even though at some point Lewis makes him believe that he is giving him a new car. She's standing in the parking lot, right in front of the house, tied with a red gift ribbon, and Lewis lets Pierre silently open and close his mouth for a few seconds, hugging him around the waist before giggling stupidly and kissing him on the cheek.
"Relax, Pear, I wouldn't neglect your wishes so much," he says, still chuckling, and presses the still stunned Pierre closer to him. "This's a gift from Daniil and me. He agreed to completely sort out and fix your damn Fiat, and in the meantime I'm giving you this car as a replacement. And maybe if you like it, you'll keep it for yourself."
Lewis has the audacity to wink at him when Pierre finally looks at him and he doesn't know if he wants to hit him or kiss him. So he stops at something in the middle, pushing Lewis in the chest, and then pulling him to the back of his head for a short, passionate kiss.
"You're an idiot," Pierre says when he pulls away. His lips are moist, his eyes are shining with emotion, and there is a blush on his cheeks. "Both of you," he adds, turning to Daniil standing next to him, only to blush even more at his completely smug grin.
Daniil pats him on the shoulder.
"Say it to yourself, Petya, but you're no better," he says in the worst accent he can muster, and the others laugh at them. Pierre feels happy.
**
By nightfall they're pretty drunk, and this's a pleasant feeling of relaxation and joy that Pierre loves most of all, and he's almost sure that his friends agree with him. They're sitting in a small living room, it's almost too cramped for six grown men, but it's even better this way. Pierre sentimentally wants to keep them all closer to him.
He snuggles up to Lewis, sitting among the pillows on the floor, Charles and Yuki, wrapped in thin blankets, and slowly blink, reminiscent of owls, Antonio and Daniil – next to Pierre on the floor, in the hands of Dani guitar. He slowly plucks the strings, trying on the instrument, his friends look at him with undisguised interest.
"I didn't know you played," Pierre says with a soft, unoffending mockery, Danya just smiles, not taking her eyes off the guitar.
"Everyone have their own secrets," he says cryptically, and Pierre snorts, not demanding more, just waiting for Daniil to decide to play something.
The melody begins not very familiar to Pierre, but Antonio immediately perks up, as if he already recognized the song. Daniil doesn't play perfectly, they hear the roughness of the music, but it's still beautiful and difficult enough to require a certain skill. Antonio smiles, his face relaxed, and his eyes slightly closed, as he begins to sing along softly, beating the rhythm of the song with claps, beats and clicks. Antonio has never been a singer, his voice jumps in places, unable to follow the notes of the melody, and this isn't pop singing at all, but they're too drunk to care at all.
The song is Italian, at some point Pierre recognizes it, but still doesn't know the lyrics, so he lets the two of them perform it, only hearing Lewis humming softly during the chorus "Gelato al cioccolato dolce e un po'salato". Charles and Pierre clap lazily when the music ends, and Yuki, a cheeky little shit, even whistles, which makes Daniil blush noticeably and passes the guitar to the next person who unexpectedly turns out to be Lewis.
"When did you become such an expert in Italian, Danya?" asks Pierre with a grin, while Lewis tries to get comfortable with the guitar.
"The hard days of an emigrant," he answers easily, without trying to give his words any weight, and falls silent when Lewis starts playing something slow.
Pierre doesn't insist on more, snuggles up to Lewis, trying not to interfere with his playing.
And if he notices how Antonio and Daniil lean against each other, gently hugging as much as possible.
He's not going to say anything.