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The boats are out early today.
That’s understandable, it’s gorgeous out. The boats that dot the shore like pins on a map are mostly vessels for pleasure, but sometimes he’ll spot the occasional fishing boat out on the waves.
It’s pretty out here. Untouched by tourism, a little slice of Italy where only people that speak the language and know the country’s secrets will find themselves, a real paradise. If you had told him years ago of paradise, he’d tell you there’s no such thing. He’s been wrong before, that he has.
Their house is small, but ‘cozy’ seems like a kinder word for it. The lap of luxury doesn’t suit him very well, but he knows it’s an option if it ever does turn out to be what he wants. Big happy place full of little ankle-biters, cats and dogs. He has to laugh. There’s a strict ‘no-kids-allowed-rule’ between them, and that is just fine by him.
In the mornings, he comes out from bed to sit on the deck and watch the water twinkle blindingly under the rising sun. Cup of coffee, newspaper. The kinds of things he imagined maybe his father doing, never himself. He’s sliding into middle age nicely, he thinks. He’s old, sure, but his hair’s already white so, does it matter? He’ll be forty-six this year. His back has really started to act up on him, and in general, he can’t move around like he used to, but he’s in good shape otherwise. It’s not like he needs his body to be at the standard it was before. To be old at all is a grand privilege he never thought he’d see himself having.
For eighteen years, the young, fresh and new don of Passione has been running things well - as far as he knows. He’s not part of that world anymore, and thinks that it’d be too unfamiliar to him if he tried to come back to it now. But they’re familiar with Giovanna. Are they ever. But there’s no more bad blood between any of them, and he freed them all from the gang with high honors, and every now and again he’ll call and ask if they need anything. A nice kid. Not even a kid anymore. How the years do roll by.
He sips his coffee and absentmindedly thumbs through the paper, skimming over things he doesn’t care about, occasionally seeing a story he’s been following on the news that matters to him somewhat, but in the long run doesn’t affect him. Nothing much affects him, and that’s okay. Being stagnant is a lot kinder a fate than being high risk. He’s content, he can finally say. He hasn’t been able to say that since he was sixteen. Sixteen, when he had dropped out of school and thrown himself into a hasty revenge plot and lost every bit of the kid he was for those sixteen years leading up to it.
Maybe now, that kid has find a place in him to live again.
It’s hard remembering that man. That lonely, starving man either living wiTh hopelessness or a narrow minded hunger for revenge at the cost of everyone he’d grown to love. It was only a miracle that most of them had come back to him, failures but living. It stings to think that he put them through that, that they loved and served him so well they’d be willing to die for this, for their cause. But he knows not a single one of them didn’t want what he wanted - for Sorbet and Gelato to be able to finally rest in peace.
“Good morning,” he’s snapped from these pointless reminiscent thoughts by the sound of the sliding door opening followed by a cherished voice. Prosciutto walks around the house with a catlike quietness, so his appearance by his side is sudden, but not unwelcome.
A slim hand rests on his shoulder. It’s the real one, he usually doesn’t bother with his prosthetic until he has to head out for work. Risotto’s shoulders, along with the rest of his upper half are bare, so he can feel the warmth radiating off it. He takes it into his much larger hand and places a gentle kiss to the pale knuckles as a greeting. His golden wedding band sparkles just like the water under the rising Italian sun. Prosciutto scoffs a little at the sickeningly romantic gesture, he always does. But Risotto can always feel his smile without having to see it.
The other man sits on the deck chair next to his, crossing his legs neatly at the ankle and pulling a cigarette and lighter out of a pocket in his robe. Risotto sometimes wishes he wouldn’t smoke, but knows that there’s really no telling Prosciutto what to do. Not when they’re just husbands and there’s no business obligation to their relationship. Risotto’s no longer his boss, so Prosciutto roams wild and free. And he adores that.
“Light it for me, would you?” Prosciutto hands him the lighter and Risotto complies, flicking it to life and igniting the thing in smoke. Prosciutto presses it to his lips and takes his lighter back, and for a while they just sit peacefully next to each other, staring at the same peach sky.
Their union was made official sometime after it became legal, but they’d been dodging the law for bigger crimes than being in love. The circumstances they had met under couldn’t have been worse, coming together in the underbelly of society where every day was just another day to worry about the swords hanging over their heads, but if anyone was with him during it, he’s glad it was Prosciutto. He often said he wished they’d met under better circumstances, and Prosciutto would tell him not to waste time with wishing. It was, and still is, as if Prosciutto is the very ground beneath his feet.
Risotto wants to take his hand, but it’s occupied by his cigarette, so he just speaks. “What’s the plan for today?” His eyes stare past the sea. His ex-team lives beyond it, in various comfy little homes on the other side of the shoreline. He’s been to each one, helped christen them with housewarming gifts, spent nights drinking and getting headaches and staying the night like the stupid teenager he never got to be before things got so...serious. He’s proud of them all, really. Proud to see his dear friends in a place of normalcy that he’d never get to see trapped beneath the boss’ thumb.
“Melone and Ghiaccio said they wanted to come over, so they will,” Prosciutto chuckles, clearly unable to stop them from intruding and clearly not minding. “I wanted to visit Pesci, see if he fixed the issue with his sink that I told him he should’ve already fixed.” He takes a drag from his cigarette, shaking his head in a way not unlike a disapproving parent. Risotto smiles.
The best thing about all of this, about freedom, is that it hasn’t changed any of them one bit.
“You’re coddling.” he says simply, looking back to the sky. He can just feel that look on Prosciutto’s face, the ‘I know what I’m talking about’ look.
“Yeah, well,” he huffs, always quick to explain himself for caring too much. “He’d be a mess if I didn’t.” Finally, he stubs his cig on the ashtray and Risotto can take his hand. Prosciutto sighs, but lets him, opening his palm to receive Risotto’s broad, dark hands in his slender, pale ones, both palms still scarred by years of that dirty work they used to do.
Risotto finds it remarkable that he should get to hold this hand at all. That a monster like him could deserve to slip into his fifties like any other member of society, that he’s been living without fear for all these many years. That he’s married. Happy. Comfortable. If he could speak to the Risotto Nero he was back in 2001, he’d call him an idiot for thinking he was doomed to that.
Because he knows now that there’s so much more.
He hasn’t gone by Risotto Nero in quite some time. On a drunken night with his found family around a table, they had decided that these should not be their names anymore. Names tied to that once foul organization, names that certainly meant them now, but couldn’t continue to define them if they were truly to be free from bondage.
It’s the quiet moments with Prosciutto that he’s always loved. Since the days of them simply being workplace consorts, he admires that no silence with him feels unnatural, that there’s no pressure to speak when words aren’t needed. Though, he loves hearing his love rant and whisper sweet nothings more than any music he’s ever heard. He leans in over the arm of his chair and kisses Prosciutto on the cheek.
It’s the side of his face where the glass eye is, so Prosciutto didn’t catch him coming in for it and turns to look at him with a questioning grin.
“What was that for?” He asks as if it was unwanted, but Risotto can see the reddening of his neck, a sign that the affection was welcome. Prosciutto has lost most of his sharp edges, is no longer as fiery and dangerous as he once was. Whether that’s age or just Risotto being able to see through him now, into that deeply caring and warm center of his, he’s not sure, but it’s probably the latter. Prosciutto has not changed. That love was always there.
“I love you.” Risotto says simply, and watches the blush on his neck spread to his face. His husband huffs, then turns his sapphire blues back towards the sea.
“I know that.” He mutters indignantly, but there’s a laugh in his voice as if he thinks Risotto is absolutely ridiculous, a complete wax poet with his mind in the clouds. He squeezes his hand as best as he can, small and thin pale fingers wrapping themselves around the broad and calloused palm of his treasure. “I love you too. Idiot.”
A smile crosses Risotto’s lips. Perhaps he is an idiot. An idiot for leaving behind a life that would surely bring them wealth, by using hands made for killing to kill yet again, and this time for the money their deadly services were worth. For choosing not to live under Giovanna, not to live under anyone, at the simple cost of his bones becoming weary and his reflexes not being as sharp.
But there hasn’t been a gunshot wound in their ranks in years. Hasn’t been a night spent with someone guarding the door, a night spent awake pulling his hair out looking for answers and the bloodthirsty urge for hopeless vengeance. He wasn’t the one who made it so, and maybe that hurts a bit, but as long as Sorbet and Gelato rest easy, so does he.
On one of the boats drifting along the glimmering sea, he sees hands waving to him, hears voices shouting at him. Prosciutto groans and mutters. “They’re here early. Go get dressed.” And his beloved retreats back into the house to get himself ready for the start of an undoubtably interesting weekend in good company. He can see Melone hang off the edge of the boat to make perfectly sure they see him, hears more than he sees Ghiaccio shouting pulling him back before he falls in the water. The smile on his lips never fades. He throws up his hand and gives a gentle wave back before standing up and making his way back inside.
He’s weary. He’s only just reaching middle age, but it feels like he’s quickly slipping into his retirement years. Risotto Nero is forty six in a few months. Someday he might be fifty. Maybe sixty, seventy, eighty.
To be alive at all, to be surrounded by his friends, his family, that’s a victory too often unappreciated.
It’s a victory they’ve earned.