Chapter Text
Melone stands in front of a sign. It's made out of wood, painted white, with clean, no-nonsense lettering he recognised immediately.
The shop looks sweet. Open and light and wood no darker than oak. It could be any old quaint and charming mom and pop shop. It isn't.
As soon as he opens the door (white frame, nauseatingly decorated square window), a little bell jingles above his head. It rings through his skull even after the door's closed, so when Prosciutto stands up from where he was kneeled behind the counter, wearing an apron and holding pruning shears, Melone stares first.
Prosciutto doesn't say anything, closes his mouth and swallows what were probably going to be sickeningly mundane good mornings he saves for customers. Instead, he just leans forward, palms on the countertop, shears still underneath one of them.
The smallest tree Melone's ever seen sits next to the cash register. Melone's face crumples and he guffaws a laugh that seems to echo off the large windows. He laughs until he feels tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, and then he suddenly stops.
"A flower shop, huh?" he spits. "Did you suddenly decide to go civilian?"
"I suppose I did," Prosciutto answers.
They're in Naples, and Melone found out through a free subway newspaper they're June, 2014. He's also alive, and, evidently, so is Prosciutto, though Melone wonders how alive if he's dedicating his time to delicately pruning stupidly small trees.
Melone hasn't been too occupied with the why and how, not questioning things when they're given to him entirely for free.
All he knows is he skipped several years (good ones, if MTV is an indication) and now he lives in a two-room apartment that has creaking pipes and no hot water and was definitely not rented in his name, wearing colours that don't suit him like he's a prisoner. And Prosciutto has the gall to open a flower shop of all things.
His eyes fall on the desk calendar that's open on the counter, Prosciutto's crowded handwriting filling up nearly every square. It's so typical and reminiscent of back then, back in 2000, when Prosciutto had him crowded against his desk and Melone's laugh was almost, not quite, genuine, that Melone snarls.
"Good for you," he bites out, turns on his three-inch heel and leaves, resisting the urge to stab the doorframe when the bell jingles behind him.
The next time he visits, he does jab a knife into the soft wood when it does. He doesn't know why he came back. Maybe because Prosciutto is the only one of them he knows and remembers and found again, and what Melone would give to find Illuso and have him drawl at him to get his shit together.
But Illuso isn't here. Just Prosciutto in a fucking apron surrounded by Lily of the Valley and bunches of Baby's Breath that make the room smell like hot cat piss.
Prosciutto looks first at the pocket knife sticking out of his painted woodwork, then at Melone, expression unchanged. He gestures at the bunches of foul-smelling flowers and mutters, "wedding."
"Disgusting," Melone drawls cheerfully. "Did you tell them their happy day was going to smell like a cat sewer?"
"Yes," Prosciutto immediately throws back. "But they wouldn't listen, and what is a flower shop owner to do."
Melone doesn't answer. Instead, he gives the workbench a wide berth and starts stalking past the window displays, the vases, the arrangements. Prosciutto has a small display of differently coloured ribbons Melone has no doubt he learnt to style perfectly.
"What's this one?" Melone asks, next to a display of pots hanging from a rack attached to the ceiling. The leaves of the plant hang over the edges of their pots, nearly touching the top of his bottle-blond hair.
Prosciutto throws him a quick glance before he's back arranging petite bouquets. "Spider plant."
Melone looks at one of its flowers, the same colour as its leaves. "Hate it. Too wiry and sprawly."
"You usually like mirrors," Prosciutto mumbles around the ribbon in his mouth.
Melone ignores him. "What are you doing here, Prosciutto?"
In the quiet following, Prosciutto keeps carefully diagonally trimming tiny flower stems. Melone hates repeating himself, so he waits like the ten plus years of being dead made him grow patience like a layer of mould. He thumbs through a small display of tiny, inane cards half the size of the palm of his hand.
"I was here before you, you know," Prosciutto tells him emotionlessly while using his scissors to curl the ribbon enough to delicately wrap around the wedding's table bouquets. "I got here in 2004. Had a lot of time."
"To hone your green thumb?" Melone baulks.
"Yes. Tell me Melone, what have you been doing?"
Nothing, but Melone doesn't say. Instead, he glares, spits words like a snake hisses. "So you're good here? Doing this? Chatting up customers and keeping fucking orchids for a living?"
"Yes," Prosciutto tells him, and to Melone it only feels like a quarter of a lie. Enough to make him walk out the door again, the bell's chime following him out mockingly.
He finds Gelato a week later, in a grocery store of all places. They don't hug, but Gelato smiles a little, like a cat, and Melone follows him as he trails around the vegetable aisle, eyeing whatever's in season.
"I found Prosciutto," Melone tells him, inspecting manicured nails while Gelato weighs zucchini.
"Oh yes, in that flower shop he has now," Gelato says. "So you went and said hello, did you?"
Melone feels a wave of something biting, something like unreasonable betrayal banging around in his skull at the thought Prosciutto knew more of them were here, alive, Sorbet and Gelato most of all, the two of them who went first, and didn't breathe a word of it to him. "I did," he says loftily, breathing past the feeling. "So darling and steady."
"Something like that," Gelato laughs. It sounds happy, almost carefree. Melone recognises it despite not remembering the last time he sounded like that.
Gelato walks off with steady strides Melone doesn't have much trouble following. "You know," Gelato says, eyeing the contents of Melone's basket (margarita mix, a bag of nachos, pistachios, unsalted). "I got my second chance."
Melone curls his lip in disdain, wishing Gelato was less perceptive. That death had taken some of it and given it to other people. "That's different. You're different, you and Sorbet."
"The only difference was I knew what would happen, didn't have to guess," Gelato concedes, replacing the nachos in Melones basket with a box of cheese crackers from his own. "And I don't think you have to either."
Hours later, Melone chews on his cheese crackers while the pipes in his apartment rattle with the force of lukewarm water trying to get to his upstairs neighbour, and tries to ignore everything except for the almost ever-present sirens outside.
He walks in while Prosciutto is opening, slotting bouquets and arrangements perfectly in front of the windows, spraying everything with a plant mister. Little droplets of water make the flowers look like they're shining. Melone wants to hurl.
"I hate that fucking bell," he tells him brightly.
"Nobody's forcing you to listen to it," Prosciutto grunts, carrying an armful of brightly coloured bouquets over to a raised platform, arranging them in a bucket. His apron pockets are full of small sticks with cards attached, prices and names listed in neat marker.
"You are," Melone says. "Why didn't you tell me Sorbet and Gelato were here?"
Prosciutto looks up from his plant mister. "I forgot."
"You forgot."
"I did," Prosciutto tells him, finally putting down his stupid tools. "They've been here for a long time."
"Who else did you forget?" Melone snaps, imagining his gloved hands snapping the stem of every delicately glistening rose on display. "Ghiaccio? Risotto? Any annoying little blonde kids lurking around the corner?
Prosciutto frowns at him, and Melone wants to punch it off his face. "There's nobody else. Just the four of us now. Nobody's come for us, but we've been keeping our heads down."
"This is keeping your head down," Melone snaps. "To you, this is what keeping your head down is?"
"Yes," Prosciutto says, equal annoyance creeping into his tone. "If you'd like to go back to the old warehouse, be my guest. It's still there, though someone took the couches. Gelato works at a pet store. You're not biting his head off for fraternising with puppies."
Melone breathes out heavily through his nose. He counts to three and breathes back in. "You think they'll be here someday? Risotto, the others. Or maybe they're in Greece or whatever. Ghiaccio would love that shit."
Prosciutto laughs, very softly, barely more than an exhale and the sound almost startles Melone into unclenching his fists. "Maybe they'll be back, like us," he says. "Pesci doesn't have the temperament for customer service, though, does he?"
Melone tries not to think about how it looks like Prosciutto is smiling and tries even harder not to think about the glimpse of his gap teeth.
"You've gone soft," Melone declares, standing in front of a new display of flowerpots. "What is this?"
"Slipper orchid," Prosciutto says helpfully.
Melone hums, touching its longer, twisted petals. "It's pretty."
"Very rare too. Took me ages to get them here."
Melone hums. "It's like it has stupid small arms. Reminds me of a boy I dated once. Med school boys."
Prosciutto looks affronted. "Because he had arms?"
"Stupid small arms, and a little sexy." Melone almost laughs at Prosciutto's frown, the wrinkle in his roman nose. "Like this flower in a turtleneck."
"Not even they think they're sexy," Prosciutto exclaims. "They self fertilise."
"Don't be jealous Prosciutto, I'm sure you could self fertilise if you set your mind to it." Melone turns away from the delicate flowers in their colour-coordinated pots. He repeats, "you've gone soft."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Prosciutto critically eyes his card display for any misplaced cards in the rush hour crowd, last-minute bouquets after work, apology- or get well soon arrangements, men picking up roses as an afterthought. "I thought I was, what was it? Domestic. Civilian."
"Same thing. All this," Melone says, waving his arm to indicate the shop. "It keeps you busy, but when's the last time you went out? Do you even touch guns anymore?"
"I don't go out, you know this."
Melone huffs, folding his arms, the fabric of his blouse rustling. "No guns, huh?"
Prosciutto sighs. "I do have mine," he says, slightly defensive. "I touch it sometimes."
Melone thinks of at least fifty lecherous comments before Prosciutto interrupts.
"Besides, you've been dead for thirteen years. I'm not the one who's been laying around with the maggots, Melone."
"Bet I'm a better shot than you," Melone tosses in between their feet. "Prove you're still as good with your pistol as you are with your stupid tiny pruning scissors, angelo."
The nickname comes out like a challenge, and Prosciutto takes it as one.
They're in the parking lot behind Prosciutto's shop, an open space belonging to every surrounding store. It's just past seven, the sun hanging low in the sky but still high enough to miss nothing.
Melone's set out several glass bottles of cheap beer they picked up at the corner twenty-four-hour supermarket, and they're standing several metres away.
"Well?" Melone nudges. "Don't just stand there, Sundance Kid."
"I'm focusing."
"Never needed this long before."
"Alright," Prosciutto barks. "Fine." He extends his arms, shoulders relaxed and pistol firmly gripped in his large hands, assuming the position of his legs and feet naturally, effortlessly. He pulls the trigger, and one of the bottles explodes.
Melone laughs, once, loudly. "Did you want to drink it off the asphalt?"
"Thought you might," Prosciutto answers, relaxing out of his stance and handing him the small pistol.
Melone misses the bottleneck by several inches.
"Maybe," Prosciutto mutters after their third exploded bottle. "We should practice more."
It's months before they find Ghiaccio, who's been alive for two days and curses anyone and everyone who looks at him. Prosciutto drags him into his shop before he can get himself arrested.
Weeks later, Formaggio arrives.
Prosciutto comments on how their resurrections are getting closer together, how it might be only a matter of time before they're all here again. Melone can tell he misses Pesci like his brother, but doesn't comment. He misses them too.
The missing members of their group slowly, one by one, arriving has Melone almost jumpy. As though when they're all together again something will give. Someone will realise they got a second chance they didn't deserve or work for and rectify the situation.
It has him almost chewing at his nails, which is the final straw. He opens the door to Prosciutto's flower shop quickly and harshly enough the sound of the bell above it is clunky and cut off. Prosciutto looks up from his stupid desk calendar.
"Do you ever think about if that blonde kid is still around," Melone says, walking up to the counter. "You think he won?"
"Think so," Prosciutto mumbles, circling a date halfway through the month. "No drugs anywhere."
"He's going to kill us," Melone declares. "We're back, for no reason. How well do you think a fucking blonde Barbie Ken on a powertrip is going to deal with that? He's going to kill us."
"Maybe," Prosciutto concedes. "Kid seemed pretty keen."
"Keen," Melone repeats, mockingly. "Anyone ever tell you you talk like fucking mister Darcy?"
Prosciutto caps his pen. "Yes, you."
"And I'm right."
Prosciutto sighs. "Are you going to spend ages preparing for the Don to pick your eyepatch out of a crowd and take you out, Melone?"
"Better than sitting duck in a shop with my name on it."
"Is it?" There's no mockery, which raises Melone's hackles.
"Yes," he hisses. "Much."
"Well," Prosciutto leans forward, inviting himself into Melone's space; a space Melone usually carefully controls and allows people into. "At least visit once in a while."
Prosciutto's cologne is the same as it was years ago. Melone imagines he probably orders it online, wholesale, like an idiot. He doesn't stop Prosciutto from pressing a delicate kiss to his cheek, next to his ear.
Melone feels it for the rest of the day, sizzling on his skin like a cattle brand, no matter how often he tries to tap it off.
Weeks and weeks later, he's standing outside of Prosciutto's shop. His gloved fingers trail the lettering on the door declaring the shop is closed on Mondays. Second chance, he thinks, resisting the urge to scoff.
"So," he yells as he opens the door, immediately grabbing the bell so it doesn't get a chance to sound. "Any new idiot flowers in?"
Prosciutto sips from what looks like a vitamin drink. "Yes, actually."
Melone steals the small bottle and inspects it. Added b12. He swigs as well as you can from a half litre bottle of flavoured water. "Do tell," he says, leaning his elbow on the counter and his chin on his palm. "I'm suddenly so interested."