Work Text:
The place is filthy and Melone stares. He grits his teeth. The daily scrutiny they’ve been subjected to ever since familiar scattered limbs started appearing on the hideouts’ doorstep is nothing compared to the constant relocation. He cares not for the traitor label if pigsty motels are to become their permanent base. The thrill of excitement that comes with underground plotting fades quickly with the stench of piss and mediocrity. Capo hasn’t strung more than four words together ever since the prettily wrapped up corpses, though. So he says nothing beyond some trivially loud complaining. He, like everyone else, resigns to begrudgingly move his belongings and more or less settling into the new rathole.
“Dropped this.” He hears, too distracted in his displeasure to remember his depth perception is far from suitable for him to glance over his shoulder. He does it anyway. Prosciutto looks at him through a cloud of smoke, handing him something he quickly snatches off his hand. “Grazie wouldn’t kill you.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Prosciutto taps the ash off, letting it pile on the carpeted floor - what’s one more hole gonna do to the interior design. “Throwing tantrums won’t get you any favours.”
Melone barks a laugh, high pitched and hysterical. “And you sure know what will around here, don’t you.” The cigarette moves unevenly in Prosciuttos hand and Melone revels in it, laugh dying into an unnerving smile. “I don’t need favours, I’m no lapdog.”
Prosciutto’s grip on the cigarette stills for a short drag. His pulse is quiet but his eyes aren’t low and that’s his mistake. As he speaks, Melone’s pupil pierces.‘“Keep telling yourself that.”
---
A week of desperation induced by inactivity, theatrical amounts of testosterone-camouflaged grief and one too many fucking roaches is enough for Melone to run out of personal funds. Something has to numb him out of his bored trance and that something tends to be as illegal as it is expensive. By the time he realises it’s too late for an elaborate, dignified excuse. He can drop his pride like a hook up when it’s necessary, and once the itching starts - grovelling calls.
“This shithole is rotting.” Melone swats at the tattered wallpaper in Capo’s improvised office - nothing short of a glorified foyer with a desk. Cramped enough with excessive paperwork to be stupidly claustrophobic yet spacious enough for his stomach to churn with jealousy. “When are we going to leave.”
Something stutters on a worn CD-Player, it’s sound abhorrent enough to warrant inflicting even more scratches on it. Risotto turns a page parsimoniously as it reaches chorus, a burst of out of tune anger describing a protest gone awry - a hunt for those left behind beginning. “Not yet.”
“If what you’re making me endure right this minute is some kind of pretentious Union Ska i’m going to barf. It’ll make nice accents on the carpet. You’re welcome.”
A smile. Or at least something that resembles one. Melone’s vocal chords make a groan but his throat is smart enough to let it die in there.
“I need money.” He says.
“You’re full of surprises.”
“And you’re full of shit. How many ribboned corpses to wake up and smell the fucking coffee.”
“Lost cause. Or so you tell me. Frequently.” There’s a beat, just enough for another page turning, before Risotto looks up to the same question. “Nothing can be done until risk is lower.”
“Risk is always high.”
Melone’s remaining eyeball nearly bursts out of his skull at the sound of a third voice. He gives up wondering how much of his begging Prosciutto may have heard for fear his liver, in a suicidal defense mechanism, may just begin to substitute his boiling blood with bile.
Risotto leans back on the chair. No words are exchanged between the two - no need. His only gesture in response to Prosciutto’s arrival is one of order - to shut the door.
“How much.” He says. Melone comes back down to earth.
“Just money.”
There’s a contained exhale. “Specify.”
Melone’s glance darts from the predictably dead, spent calculating gaze of one man to the infuriatingly unpredictable intentions of the other. He’s not above begging, but he is above this kind of potential shut-up-about-it monetary muzzle. Before he can reach a conclusion a stack of 500s is dumped on the table.
“Take it.” Prosciutto says. If it was ever possible for Risotto to blink slower than at his regular pace, this is the occasion. Melone’s words seethe with rage.
“I’m not taking your fucking money.”
“It’s still money.” Prosciutto says, squashing an unfinished smoke on the desk’s silver ashtray - gesture almost ceremonious. “You didn’t specify.”
Melone’s reason is engulfed by his temper. The ashtray is thrown across the room, incandescent debris left floating in the air. He storms off and is interrupted by a firm hand on his wrist only a dozen footsteps into the hallway. There’s a firm gaze on needle prick marks. Melone twists his arm to force release. Prosciutto doesn’t budge.
“You’re lucky he’s still willing to take this shit from you, even at this time. Your usefulness saves your ass.”
Melone scoffs. “Get back in there and finish. The tension in your ballsack is reaching your brain.”
“Your planned colpo di stato is no secret to him. Nor to anybody with fucking eyes.”
The hand around his wrist burns and Melone’s mouth has remained open, nothing coming out of it but shortness of breath and the ghost of his mind’s muttering. Fuck fuck fuck.
“Shut up about Sorbet and Gelato. Take the money.” The stack of 500s is placed in his hand. It is only by the time the other has turned around and started walking that Melone remembers to look up at his face - his voice now the only thing he can try to decipher. “Buy yourself something to eat.”
---
Prosciutto’s vice of choice is best enjoyed outdoors. He won’t complain about the temporary caging, understands it’s necessary, but that won’t stop him from bending the bars to take a whiff of nicotined air every once in awhile. Who’s going to come spoil his salary man rebellion at six in the morning, anyway. He stands with his back to the wall next to the fire escape stairway and smokes, his mind at peace until the smell of caffeine mixes obscenely with tobacco. His mouth waters. It dries to a desert once Melone turns the corner, two paper coffee cups in his hand.
“What the fuck are you doing up here.”
“Relaxing. Attempting to.” Prosciutto’s eyes betray him and fixate on the paper cups. It only takes a glance at the other to take in the look of smugness but the extent to which it engulfs his entire expression takes Prosciutto another couple of takes. It is other-worldly.
“Not for you.” He nearly sing-songs. Prosciutto averts his gaze, taking a longer drag to compensate. Melone sits on the first step. “You can choke.”
“Trying my best.”
Melone produces something similar to a cough-laugh. “Try harder.”
There’s lingering silence that Prosciutto is perfectly fine with upholding but which he knows will be massacred by the other any minute now.
“Anyway so fuck you.” Melone says, fulfilling the prophecy before taking a sip. “And fuck this place.”
“Very cheap resentment, this.”
“How long have you known.” He spits. “How long has he known.”
“Long enough to weigh your pros and cons.”
Melone squints. “You’re telling me it’s too late to exert your blowjob influence in my defence. Is that what you’re telling me.”
Prosciutto smiles into the cigarette filter. “You’re assuming things.”
“No one with catalogued suits would have worn knees on their armani's for any other kind of manual labor.”
A snort. Melone’s eyes widen. His nervous system does something he doesn’t recognise and his left foot taps impatiently on the stair below, as if the reaction were decipherable through morse code.
“Shut up.” He manages. And it stings to see his hostility reduced to a diversion - a way to buy time.
“You’re assuming I’d defend you.”
Melone’s left leg stills. He doesn’t know what the other’s thinking or what he wants. He’s never fucking known - always like an itch he can’t scratch. Reduced to hurrying thoughts again. Again. Several vulgarities die on his lips. He hands one of the coffee cups to the other, without looking at him. Without a word.
“Espresso bribes.” He hears him speak, and almost immediately regrets his gesture. Prosciutto reaches for the paper cup and there is a brief pause of hesitation between his first words and his last. “Aren’t you kind.”
---
Melone thinks whoever has the gall to be knocking on his door at this hour better take pleasure in having each of their fingernails twisted off. Some force beyond his comprehension gets him to not only groan gofuckyourselves but actually stand up, a sharp complain shrill growing quiet at the sound of the voice on the other side of the door.
“Get dressed.” Prosciutto says. “Roadtrip.”
“What the fuck are you talking about.”
“We don’t gain anything from you being on edge. You need some air. ” Melone opens his mouth for a retort but nothing’s coming. Its unclear whether the other’s observations are an insult or a compliment. He stops guessing. The ones that mean anything are usually a combination of both, anyway.
Melone sulks preemptively once he’s sat in the passenger seat of Prosciutto’s car. It disappears quickly once the other starts speeding. Off the main road into another, and then a highway. Two overpasses. It's not even been thirty minutes and they could already be in another fucking province for all he knows. Prosciutto’s quiet. All four windows roll down. The withdrawal itching stops and Melone could scream. He reduces his astounding relief to dropping his head back on the headrest, eyes nearly closed.
“Seatbelt.” He hears. The barked laughter that comes up his throat is the lightest and less venomous he’s produced in a long time.
“You’re hitting 120.” He says, quickly going into an elaborate impression of the other. “Catch me on the pavement before I let synthetics touch this velvet blazer.”
“Velour.”
“It's still Gabanna, you fuck.”
Prosciutto laughs. Open and loud. Melone sinks back into his seat by the sheer force of gravity and a damning sense of loss of control, as heavy as a rock.
“Anyway, what is this.” He speaks, trying to fill the air. Trying to fill his lungs with something other than his fucking cologne.
“Told you. Roadtrip.” Prosciutto looks at the center mirror for the first time and the other’s arched eyebrow greets him like a skeptic mirage. As does the blue iris. Prosciutto doesn’t lower his gaze. Big Mistake.
“How you have managed to work your way up the chain with your ability to lie relying on permanent life support is beyond me.”
“No it isn’t.”
Melone turns to Prosciutto with the contained excitement of an estranged wife standing over the corpse of her fifth mogul husband.
“Are you giving weight to the allegations of superior oral.”
“No comment.”
“Come ooooon.”
“It’s a warning.” Prosciutto says, cutting. Melone feels a corkscrew work its way into the pit of his stomach, twisting rotten flesh and naiveté into an indistinguishable gruesome blob. What is he becoming. And at the hands of whom, no less. Fucking embarrassing. Prosciutto clarifies. “A talk. It's a talk.”
“Well aren’t you merciful.”
“Melone.”
“WHAT.”
Prosciutto pulls up to the curb of a service station and Melone wants to die. He is not about to be condescended next to a gas pump and a fucking highway sbarros. He refuses.
“I’ll walk.”
“Seventy kilometers.”
Melone slumps down on his seat. As Prosciutto puts the car on neutral he unsuccessfully attempts at guessing what he’s thinking. He follows the gestures, holds his gaze when the other looks up at him. Nothing. Melone wants to punch the stoicity off his face, he’s wanted to ever since he realized it often softened for him.
“I shut up when you gave me the money. What do you want from me.”
“To never mention their names again.” He says. The urgent cadence is unbecoming of his unbothered monotone. Like stern begging. Its confusing. It stays so as they ride back to the motel, Melone’s brain going three times faster than the speed limit. He observes the other but there’s no crack on the wall - all focus and firm grip on the wheel. Until they pull over. Then its chaos. Prosciutto stammers on an inhale, stumbling over his own breath. A crack on the wall. He runs a hand through his hair and exhales deeply in annoyance, then slams his hand and forearm against the steering wheel. A big crack on the wall.
“Fuck.” He rasps, eyes away from the other - stuck on the no vacancy flickering neon. His gaze fogs up and he stays quiet, dazed expression on his face, and Melone has never in his life seen the other express anything with this level of decomposure. Like a controlled demolition. His morbid excitement is barely contained by apprehension and something else, something he doesn’t want to acknowledge. Prosciutto moves his body, turning towards him, right hand on a strong hold on the passenger's seat headrest. He leans in and speaks and it's the thinnest his voice has ever been.
“It’s going to kill him.” He says. “It’s going to kill him.”
All that Melone couldn’t read from his thoughts he now reads through his expression. The confusion dissipates and leaves a level of clarity that only a him like that can produce. He remembers the very picture of Prosciutto’s panic, in front of him just over seventy two hours ago. Thin veins under the eyes and persecutory paranoia, cumulative byproducts of stress induced insomnia. Of unresolved grief and camouflaged terror. The weight of an overwhelming and annoyingly unwanted responsibility. All on him, on capo. On Riz.
What a pathetic display of sensibility, he thinks. But he doesn’t say. He has enough on his plate trying to contain the surfacing of his own in a nausea-inducing need to comfort the other. To reassure. And to conceal the worst of all - deflating ambition. He expected none of this. Much less what was to come.
“It’ll rot you too if speed doesn’t do you in first, so drop the fucking regicide. Drop all of it. I won’t let it.” He says. “I won’t let it. No more”.
Melone kisses him, handbrake digging into the skin on his thigh as he lunges forward. His hands claw at the others clothes with the strength of someone who’s been close to drowning. Prosciutto’s steadiness ends at his limbs, hands shaking with every movement of the thin lips against his own. Melone’s sure he reeks of cold sweat and that this is unpleasant for the other and Good, he thinks petulantly. Good. Have it. Handle it. When Prosciutto meets him at the corner of his mouth, all open invitation, his pride is tatters. Damn it, is all his mind produces - grip punishing on the other’s collar. Damn it damn it damn it.
“Upstairs.” He demands. Dropping everything has a price.
Prosciutto blinks slowly, deliberately. There is a ghost of a smile.
“I’m double parked, Melone.”
“Come upstairs you fucking rompipalle.” He hisses. Prosciutto laughs. The sun comes up.