Chapter Text
“Would it kill you to be more like Lorenzo for a change?” Giuliano mimicked his mother under his breath as he stormed out of the house and down the street. He knew he wasn’t perfect. He knew that his frequently stumbling home drunk at four in the morning worried his mother, and in his better moments he felt bad about it.
But Lorenzo wasn’t perfect either. What about that time he’d had an affair with Lucrezia Donati knowing full well that she was married? But Lucrezia de’ Medici didn’t know about that. Because Giuliano was a good brother and had kept Lorenzo’s secret.
And what a good brother Lorenzo had been to him just now, sitting there and nodding sagely as their mother scolded Giuliano for his behavior. She’s right. You’re not a teenager anymore, you really should start acting more responsibly.
Giuliano kicked the wall of the nearest building in frustration and immediately regretted it as pain shot through his toes. He hobbled along in an even worse mood. He wasn’t really sure where he was going, he only knew that he couldn’t stand being in that house getting lectured for another second.
He knew he wasn’t a teenager anymore. But he was only twenty-five; surely he was still allowed a few more years of fun before settling down to boring adult life. Especially since the Medici were filthy rich, so it wasn’t like Giuliano needed to get out there and earn them even more money. And Lorenzo was in charge of the bank and was running things just fine without his help.
But that was how Lorenzo had been for years, ever since their father had died and Lorenzo had taken over as the bank’s president. Not wanting Giuliano’s help in bank matters because Giuliano would only get in the way (Lorenzo never said so, but Giuliano knew he was thinking it) and then having the audacity to lecture him for being irresponsible. As if Lorenzo wasn’t the very person who denied him any responsibilities in the family business.
Giuliano found himself in front of Santa Maria del Fiore and came to a halt, glowering up at the dome, too deep in his resentment to care about all the tourists jostling him. What he wouldn’t give to get back at Lorenzo somehow. And preferably annoy his mother too. Not that they weren’t both already annoyed by his general behavior, but still. Giuliano was feeling childish, and he wanted to do something to really piss them off.
Just then someone bumped into him so hard that he stumbled, and an irritated and familiar voice said, “Watch where you’re going.”
“I wasn’t even moving,” Giuliano retorted, turning to see who it was. “Oh. Pazzi. I should’ve known.”
Francesco Pazzi’s scowl deepened when he realized it was Giuliano. “Of course you’re standing unmoving in the middle of the most crowded part of the city, getting in everyone’s way,” he said.
“Your fault for trying to walk through the most crowded part of the city in the middle of the day during peak tourist season.”
“Excuse me for fucking living here.” Francesco gave him one last glare and continued on his way.
But suddenly Giuliano had an idea. A crazy, idiotic, perfect idea for how to upset Lucrezia and Lorenzo simultaneously. Especially Lorenzo.
“Wait, Pazzi!” he called, shouldering through the tourist horde to chase after Francesco.
Giuliano caught up to him in one of the streets leading off the piazza. “What now?” Francesco said impatiently.
“You hate my family, right?” Giuliano said.
Francesco raised an eyebrow. “Obviously.”
“How would you like to help me piss them off?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, I’m not too happy with them right now myself,” Giuliano said. “And I thought of a genius idea for making them mad, especially Lorenzo. One that involves you.”
“How so?” Francesco said, frowning.
“My idea,” Giuliano said, “was that I could pretend that you and I are dating.”
Francesco stared at him for a long moment, and then he burst out laughing. Giuliano didn’t think he’d ever heard him laugh before; hell, he’d hardly ever seen him smile. “Very funny, Medici,” Francesco said. “Now, if you’re done wasting my time—”
“Hey, come on, I’m serious,” Giuliano insisted. “Imagine how much they’d hate me dating a Pazzi, especially you.”
“Especially me?”
“Well, at least Guglielmo isn’t completely unpleasant to be around.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” Francesco said, ignoring the insult. “Much as I dislike your family, there’s no way I’d subject myself to this kind of humiliation just for the sake of—”
“I’ll pay you,” Giuliano blurted out.
Francesco narrowed his eyes. “How much?”
“Uh…twenty euros each time you have to interact with my family.”
“Seventy.”
“Seventy?”
“I know you can afford it.”
“Twenty-five.”
“Sixty.”
“Thirty.”
“Fifty and that’s my final offer.”
“Fine,” Giuliano said, rolling his eyes; Francesco did have a point about him being easily able to afford it. “So you’ll do it?”
Francesco looked at him, considering it. “Fine,” he said at last. “For one week.”
“No way, it has to be longer than that,” Giuliano protested. “We have to actually convince them we’re together, or else what’s the point?”
“Two weeks, then.”
“A month.”
Francesco sighed heavily. “Fine,” he repeated. “On the condition that I get to be the one to fake-dump you at the end of it.”
“Why?”
“It’s bad enough people will think I’m dating you, I don’t want them thinking you dumped me and broke my heart or some shit.”
“All right, then, for the sake of your ego I’ll allow you to dump me,” Giuliano said. “Any other conditions?”
“Not yet,” Francesco said. “A question, though. Why did you say that this would make ‘especially Lorenzo’ mad?”
Giuliano gulped, cursing himself for misspeaking. The truth was, Lorenzo had had a giant embarrassing crush on Francesco ever since he was about twelve, and Giuliano knew it would devastate him to think that Francesco was dating Giuliano. (Okay, maybe that was a little cruel, but Giuliano would tell him it hadn’t been real…eventually. After he’d had his fun.)
“Um, no reason,” he lied. “I meant that I especially wanted to make Lorenzo mad, not that this plan would necessarily make him especially mad. I mean. It’ll make him mad, probably, but not more so than the rest of the family.”
“Okay…” Francesco said rather dubiously. “Well, I have to get going—”
“Wait, let’s exchange numbers first, we’ll have to talk more later to nail down the details.”
Pursing his lips, Francesco handed his phone over and took Giuliano’s. Giuliano typed his number in and saved his contact name as “Giuliano” with several heart emojis, which Francesco immediately deleted when he took his phone back. “I would like to maintain what little is left of my dignity, please,” he grumbled. “Goodbye.”
He marched off, and Giuliano turned back the opposite way to head home again, having to hold back laughter already at the mental image of the looks on his family’s faces when he told them he was dating Francesco Pazzi. Oh, this was going to be good.
Francesco really couldn’t say why he’d agreed to this scheme. He certainly didn’t need the money; he was rolling in it, especially since Jacopo had died last year and left his vast fortune to him and Guglielmo in addition to what they’d already inherited from their parents. And normally Francesco would do everything in his power to avoid the Medici.
He decided it must be because his desire to anger the Medici outweighed his desire to avoid them. Bianca probably wouldn’t care, as she’d never had a problem with the Pazzi—she and Guglielmo had been in love with each other since time immemorial, though they had yet to act on their feelings.
But Lucrezia, while she’d been fond of Francesco when he was a kid, had disliked him ever since that time, after Jacopo had taken him and Guglielmo in, when Francesco had gotten in a fight with Lorenzo at school and sent him home sporting a black eye and sobbing because Francesco had said he didn’t want to be friends anymore. Francesco had not been welcome at the Medici home since, not that Jacopo would have allowed him to go there anyway. So he doubted Lucrezia would be thrilled to hear that he was supposedly dating her younger son.
And then there was Lorenzo. Francesco wasn’t sure how Lorenzo felt about him. Francesco, for his part, hated him, and he assumed the feeling was mutual—how could it not be, after that fight they’d had as kids and how nasty Francesco and Jacopo had been to his family since then?—and yet Lorenzo was never anything but nice to him on the occasions they were forced to interact for bank business. But that was just how Lorenzo was. Francesco had never heard him say a bad word to anybody in all the years he’d known him, but that didn’t mean he genuinely liked every single person in the world. That would be absurd.
“So I was thinking,” Giuliano said after he’d invited himself over to Francesco’s apartment that weekend. It wasn’t big, but Francesco preferred it to the drafty old house he and Guglielmo had inherited from Jacopo. That place held too many memories, and few of them good; they’d both agreed they’d probably sell it soon.
“I didn’t know you knew how,” Francesco said, taking a sip of the coffee he had made for himself and decidedly not offered to Giuliano.
Giuliano put a hand on his heart. “Is that any way to talk to your fiancé?”
“Fiancé?”
“That was the idea I was about to tell you,” Giuliano said. “It would be all well and good to pretend we’re dating, but imagine if we told everyone we’ve been secretly dating for years and are now engaged? My mom would be furious that I lied to her for years and got engaged without telling her.”
“Why don’t we go ahead and say we’re married?” Francesco said sarcastically.
“But if they asked to see a marriage license or something, we’d be screwed,” Giuliano said, as if he had already given this option some thought and discarded it. “No, engaged is the way to go.”
“Whatever,” Francesco said; he was already in it this far. “I hope you don’t expect me to buy you a ring.”
“Who says you were the one to propose?”
“You buy me a ring, then.”
“No way,” Giuliano said. “We don’t need a ring, we can just say neither of us wanted one. But we’ll have to decide who proposed.”
Francesco weighed the scenarios, trying to decide which was less embarrassing for him. “You proposed,” he said. The mental image of himself getting down on one knee and asking Giuliano de’ Medici to spend the rest of his life with him was horrifying, and the reverse very slightly less so.
“Okay,” Giuliano said. “I’ll tell my family on my own, so you don’t have to do anything right away. But I’m sure they’ll want you to come over for dinner or something pretty soon afterwards.”
“Great,” Francesco said, cursing himself for ever agreeing to this. Maybe he was just really bored, or hated himself, and that was why he’d agreed to something so stupid.
He invited Guglielmo out for lunch the next day so that he could explain the situation to him. He hadn’t asked Giuliano if that was okay, but he trusted Guglielmo to keep his mouth shut until all this was over. And if he did blab to someone and the truth got out, Francesco didn’t really care. Giuliano was the one who had things riding on this ridiculous plan, Francesco was just a pawn.
“So I have a pretty crazy story to tell you,” Francesco said after their food had arrived. He launched into it, and by the time he finished Guglielmo was gaping at him.
“Why?” he said finally. “Why would you agree to that?”
Francesco shrugged. “I thought it’d be fun to piss the Medici off.”
“Seems like a pretty extreme way to do it,” Guglielmo observed. “Are you sure there wasn’t another reason?”
“Like what?”
“Like maybe you actually want an excuse to spend time with the Medici.”
Francesco snorted. “What? Of course I don’t.”
“You used to love them and vice versa. We were practically part of the family,” Guglielmo said a little wistfully. “So I thought, now that Uncle’s gone, maybe you wanted to renew that friendship.”
“Now you’re just talking about yourself,” Francesco said. “Uncle’s been dead for a year, just ask Bianca out already.”
Guglielmo blushed. “I—um—that’s not—”
“Please, you’ve been in love with her since we were kids. It’s obvious.”
“Well, maybe once your stunt with Giuliano is over, I’ll think about it,” Guglielmo said. “They’ll be surprised enough for one sibling to be dating a Pazzi, let alone a second. I mean, not that Bianca will say yes—”
“Of course she will, idiot,” Francesco said, rolling his eyes. “But fine, you go ahead and keep making excuses and let her get away.”
“You’re about to pretend to date someone you hate just to annoy his family, and I’m the one who’s making bad decisions in my love life?”
“This has nothing to do with my love life. It’s more of a business deal than anything. He’s paying me, you know.”
“What are you, a prostitute?”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“I have an announcement to make,” Giuliano said as they sat around the dinner table.
Lorenzo looked over at him and saw that he looked weirdly pleased with himself, and maybe a little mischievous. “What is it?” he said, reaching for his wineglass.
“I’ve been dating someone for a few years, but I never told any of you about it because I didn’t think you’d approve,” Giuliano said. “But we just got engaged, so I figured I’d better—”
Lorenzo choked on his wine, Bianca gasped, and Lucrezia dropped her fork with a clatter. “What?” she demanded. “You’re engaged?”
“Yep,” Giuliano said, grinning.
“To who?”
“Francesco Pazzi.”
Lucrezia was staring at him like he’d just announced he was moving to Mars, and Bianca clapped her hands over her mouth. Lorenzo, meanwhile, suddenly felt like he was listening from very far away. “Francesco…Francesco Pazzi?” he said faintly. “You’re engaged to Francesco Pazzi?”
“Yeah,” Giuliano said. “See, I knew you wouldn’t approve of me dating him, so I didn’t want to tell any of you. But now I have to, obviously, so…”
There was a beat of silence, and then Lucrezia and Bianca both started shouting at once. Lorenzo couldn’t tell if it was angry-shouting or just surprised-shouting, because he couldn’t hear anything at all over the buzzing in his ears. Francesco. Giuliano. Francesco and Giuliano. Engaged.
You’re a Medici. I’m a Pazzi. We can’t be friends.
Yet now apparently Francesco not only didn’t mind being friends with a Medici, but was fine with marrying one. Maybe it wasn’t Lorenzo’s family name after all. Maybe it was Lorenzo himself who’d been the problem. Lorenzo himself Francesco hadn’t wanted to be around.
Stupid of him to think, for all these years, that Francesco might still come back to him someday. That Francesco might finally love him.
Mumbling an excuse, Lorenzo pushed his chair back from the table and strode off to his bedroom. He shut the door and flopped onto his bed, tears burning in the corners of his eyes. How could Giuliano do this to him? He knew how Lorenzo felt about Francesco.
Or…at least he’d known back when they were teenagers and he’d accidentally found a stack of love poems to Francesco in Lorenzo’s room. Giuliano had been sworn to secrecy by an utterly mortified Lorenzo, not that that had stopped him from teasing Lorenzo mercilessly for several years when no one else was in earshot.
But anyway, it had been a long time since Lorenzo had done anything as stupid and embarrassing as write love poems to Francesco and leave them around for anyone to find, so maybe Giuliano didn’t realize he still had feelings for him. Maybe Giuliano had assumed he’d long since moved on from his stupid teenage crush, like a normal person.
Unfortunately for Lorenzo, he hadn’t. He didn’t think he could ever get over Francesco. He’d tried, God, he’d tried so hard for so long, but his heart stubbornly refused to let go of him. No matter how long it had been since they were actually friends, no matter how many insults Francesco had paid him in the meantime. He was etched on Lorenzo’s soul, and Lorenzo didn’t think he would ever leave.
And that wasn’t Giuliano’s fault, and it wasn’t even Francesco’s, so how could Lorenzo resent them for being happy together? Lorenzo loved both of them, didn’t he? He wanted them to be happy, even if it was at the expense of his own happiness. Right?
He didn’t know how long it was before someone was knocking on the door and opening it. “Hey,” Giuliano said, taking a cautious step into the room. Lorenzo sat up and quickly wiped his eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Fine, just surprised,” Lorenzo said, doing his best to smile. “You and Francesco…”
Giuliano laughed. “Yeah.”
“Um…how long have you been together?” Lorenzo asked, hoping he sounded politely curious rather than on the verge of tears.
“Two years.”
He squinted a little to keep his eyes from watering. Two years. Two years Lorenzo had been cherishing the hope that Francesco might be warming up to him—particularly this past year since Jacopo’s death—and the whole time he’d been with Giuliano. Right under his nose. Lorenzo felt like such an idiot.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said.
“Like I said, I thought you guys would be mad,” Giuliano said. “He’s a Pazzi.”
“You know I never cared about the stupid feud.”
“I know, but he’s been kind of a dick to you in the past, so I thought you wouldn’t be thrilled I was dating him.”
“He’s been a dick to you too. And vice versa.”
“Yeah.” Giuliano smiled. “But we got past that.”
Lorenzo shook his head in disbelief. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t picture Giuliano and Francesco together. He thought of the past two years, trying to recall if he’d ever seen the two of them interact during that time, but he couldn’t. Well, even if he had seen them together, there must not have been anything out of the ordinary in the way they treated each other. Lorenzo would’ve noticed otherwise.
“Are you happy together?” Lorenzo said, not quite sure he wanted to hear the answer.
“Yeah. Yeah, we really are.”
Lorenzo nodded, trying to smile and keep a fresh wave of tears at bay. “I’m glad.”
“Mom wants him to come over for dinner tomorrow,” Giuliano said.
Lorenzo’s stomach lurched. “So soon?” He wasn’t ready, he needed more time before he could handle seeing Francesco face-to-face while knowing he was engaged to his brother.
“Yeah, well, she’s pretty mad about the whole ‘got engaged without even telling her we were dating’ thing, so she’s determined to make up for lost time,” Giuliano said.
“Understandably mad,” Lorenzo said. “I can’t believe you kept this from us for two years, you’re such an asshole.”
He’d meant to say it playfully, but his voice cracked a little at the end and the words came out sounding more bitter than he wanted. For a second he saw guilt flash across Giuliano’s face. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have lied,” he said. “But no more lying from now on. I promise.”
“I have never told so many lies in my life,” Giuliano said. “At least not all in one sitting.”
“So did they react the way you wanted?” Francesco asked on the other end of the phone.
“Oh, yeah. And then some. They were really upset, especially Lorenzo.”
“Why especially Lorenzo?”
Giuliano mentally kicked himself; he really needed to stop saying that. “Oh, I don’t know, I guess since the two of us have always been so close,” he said. “I’ve never kept anything this big from him before.”
“You do realize it’s not actually true that we’re together, right?” Francesco said dryly.
“Duh. I was speaking from Lorenzo’s perspective.”
Giuliano had to admit, upsetting his family wasn’t as satisfying as he’d expected. Well, Lucrezia and Bianca’s utter shock and bewilderment had been pretty amusing, but the way Lorenzo had quickly left the room, the tears he’d tried to dry before Giuliano could see…Giuliano had felt like the biggest asshole in the world.
What kind of person got engaged to someone they knew full well their brother had feelings for? Or even fake engaged? In fact, it being fake somehow made it worse, because he was putting Lorenzo through this all for what was basically a joke. Yes, Lorenzo could be annoyingly holier-than-thou at times, but he didn’t deserve this.
“Giuliano?”
“Huh?”
“I asked what time for dinner tomorrow,” Francesco said.
“Well, everyone will want to ask you a thousand questions before we eat, so you should probably get here early,” Giuliano said. “Six-thirty or seven, maybe, I’ll ask my mom.”
Francesco swore under his breath. “Why did I agree to this?”
“Hey, you’ll be fifty euros richer this time tomorrow.”
“Not worth it.”
Giuliano almost wanted to call the whole thing off, but he didn’t and hung up instead. He was in too deep now, his pride wouldn’t let him say hey, just kidding! to his family at this point. No, he had to see this through, and then he and Francesco would stage a breakup and Lorenzo would feel better again.
And hey, maybe all this time Francesco would be spending at their house would cause him and Lorenzo to get closer. Really, Giuliano could be doing Lorenzo a favor.
Or, even better, maybe it would make Lorenzo finally, finally realize that Francesco was an asshole, and he’d move on to someone who wouldn’t make Giuliano want to kill himself were they to become his sibling-in-law. Admiring him from afar for all these years was one thing, but Giuliano was confident that having a significant amount of actual interaction time with Francesco, the most disagreeable person on the planet, would put a stop to Lorenzo’s crush once and for all.