Work Text:
“It’s not what you think,” Aureliano tells him afterwards as he’s putting his pants back on. Spadino watches him with his back turned, concentrating on each piece of clothing. Shirt, jacket, socks, shoes. This way Aureliano doesn’t have to look at him sprawled out naked on the bed behind him, still damp with sweat. “This won’t happen again.”
Spadino listens to Aureliano breathing. His eyes trace the curve of his shoulders and his spine as he walks out the door. They both know a lie when they hear one. No need to say it out loud.
“Your business is your business,” Angelica tells Spadino out of the blue one night as he’s staring up at the ceiling, resolutely not meeting her eyes. “But you don’t have to keep secrets from me.”
When he doesn’t answer, she takes his hand and presses it against her belly so he can feel the baby move. Her voice is gentle. “I mean it, Alberto. I know something happened.”
He removes his wife’s hand from his, but instead of moving away, he turns on his side and brushes her hair from her face. When it comes to Angelica, he’s always on the verge of speaking. Only ever on the verge, though. “Nothing happened,” he lies. “Go to sleep.”
It happens again.
It isn’t like the first time, frantic and awkward, with Aureliano vanishing out the door almost immediately. This time, he lingers after they’ve finished. It doesn’t take long for him to start talking, and once he’s started he can’t stop. Spadino lies there and listens while Aureliano tells him about his resentment towards his father and how he never got over his mother’s death; about Livia, and how he hated her for what she did to Isabel but then how lost he’s been without her; about Isabel, and how he failed her too. All the ghosts that surround him and whisper in his ear and make him crazy. “I hate living like this,” he confesses quietly. “But I don’t know any other way to be.”
Spadino doesn’t have an answer for him. “I know what we need to do,” he says instead, and Aureliano props himself up on his elbows and raises his eyebrows expectantly. “We should find another priest to blackmail,” Spadino continues, very seriously. “To make you feel better.”
Aureliano stares at him for a moment. Then his face splits into a broad grin and he starts laughing. To Spadino’s surprise, Aureliano leans over and kisses him. “Maybe later,” he breathes in Spadino’s ear, and they get distracted by other things after that.
Another doctor’s appointment for Angelica. No ultrasound this time, but they discuss vitamins and food and light exercises. Spadino isn’t really paying attention, and the doctor calls him out on it. “Mind your fucking business,” Spadino tells him, and Angelica rolls her eyes. Still, she doesn’t say anything until after they get the vitamins and drive home. Once the door closes, she crosses her arms and gives him a look. “It’s Aureliano, isn’t it?”
He eyes the exit but she’s already blocked it off. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I know you don’t. I’m not stupid.”
She isn’t crying, but he can see that she’s close. She’s not usually like this; it’s just that the pregnancy has made her more emotional. Before, he would have bristled at her cornering him. He would have pushed her to the side and taken the car keys and sped off, because fuck her and fuck his brother and his mother and the entire family; he never asked for this shit. But not anymore. Somewhere along the way, when he wasn’t looking, something changed between them.
“I told you I wanted to be the princess of this family,” she’s telling him, her lip trembling. “I didn’t say you had to love me.”
“Come on, Ange, don’t be sad.” He takes her wrists and tries to think of something that will make her happy. “Remember you said you wanted to go dancing?”
“What?”
He tugs on her arm. “Let’s go.”
She pulls back at first but then follows after him. “Right now? It’s still morning.”
“Fuck that; we’re going.”
He drives her to the family’s club. At first, she stands there and watches him dance with her arms still crossed, but he can tell that she’s trying to hide a smile. After a while, he lets her pick the songs. Her taste in music is terrible and he makes fun of her, though only a little bit. They dance together anyway.
It’s starting to rain when Spadino pulls out of the police station, Aureliano in the passenger seat. “The head of the Adami family, picked up by an Anacleti,” Aureliano complains as they turn onto the main road. “What a fucking joke.”
Spadino turns to look at him while they’re stopped at a light. Aureliano is staring out the window, still bleeding from a cut on his forehead. A bruise is forming on his jaw. He won’t even tell him exactly what went down that got him arrested the night before, except that it was a stupid fight over some stupid shit, because of course it was. Man, what the fuck is your problem, Spadino wants to say. He could start another fight, but he won’t. Aureliano wants to talk. Aureliano needs to talk.
“Nadia left me,” Aureliano says suddenly. A few seconds pass. He doesn’t elaborate.
Spadino knows he should say sorry, but he can’t quite bring himself to do it. “Why?” he asks instead.
Aureliano won’t look at him. He slouches down in his seat, eyes fixed on the traffic. When he speaks, his voice is so low Spadino can barely hear him. “She knew about us.”
“Knew what?” he asks, as if he doesn’t know the answer already.
Aureliano whips his head around. “She knew that we fucked, all right? Is that what you wanted me to say?” His eyes are red from crying and his breathing is ragged and uneven. “I told her it was just one time. She didn’t believe me. I told her you have a wife and you’re going to be a father, and I’m not—I’m not.”
Not what. The light has turned and there are cars honking behind them. Spadino tightens his grip on the wheel. “It was more than one time.”
“Shut up.” Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Aureliano’s hands balled into fists.
“I told you I was seeing this guy, remember?” Spadino says abruptly. Aureliano had never asked about Teo; he hadn’t wanted to know. “I killed him. The same night Lele died.”
Aureliano lets out a sharp breath. “The fuck did you do that for?”
“Because somebody found out.”
He rubs his beard and sighs. “Jesus, Spadi.”
“I had to, all right?” Even to himself, his voice sounds high and desperate, scrambling for justification.
“Had to. What does that mean?”
He pulls over to the side of the road and brakes hard, coming within inches of a parked car. “The family has to respect me, or nothing I’ve worked for matters,” he snaps. “If it were you, you’d have done the same.”
Aureliano gives him a look he can’t quite decipher. “Did you love him?”
When Spadino doesn’t respond, Aureliano shakes his head and sinks deeper into the seat. “This is never going to work,” he mutters. They don’t speak to each other again for the rest of the ride back to Ostia. They don’t speak at all for a while.
He tells Angelica, eventually. He’s completely wasted when he does it, of course, and when he wakes up the next morning alone in bed and nursing a massive hangover, it takes him a few minutes to work through that creeping sense of horror that he might have said something to her about somebody that he hadn’t really intended to say anything about. Possibly. Or he could have imagined it.
He manages to hold on to that particular illusion for about fifteen more minutes, until after he showers, gets dressed, and spends some quality time in front of the toilet contemplating whether or not he should vomit—eventually, he decides against it. It’s well after ten by the time he drags himself into the kitchen. Angelica is in there with a cup of coffee ready for him, and her eyebrows are quirked at just the right angle for him to know beyond a doubt that he’s fucked.
She hands him his coffee and says—not unsympathetically—“You don’t remember what you told me last night, do you?”
“Fuck,” Spadino groans. He takes a sip of his coffee, and it does help his headache slightly. For a moment, he considers denying everything; making it all out to be some big joke. But when he looks at her, he knows it just isn’t possible to take it all back now. “Don’t worry,” he sighs. “It’s over between me and him anyway.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah,” he admits, thinking of Aureliano slouching down in the car beside him. This is never going to work, he said. Maybe he was right after all.
Her expression is full of skepticism. He sets aside his coffee and touches her face. “I married you, all right? We’re having a kid together. Nothing else matters. Okay?”
“Okay,” she says uncertainly.
“Fine,” he grumbles. “Don’t believe me.” He’s not sure he would believe himself either.
Angelica runs her finger in circles along the kitchen counter, hesitating. “Alberto,” she finally says, “who is Teo?”
Without warning, the bile rises in his throat and he rushes to the sink to vomit. He spends the next few minutes hunched over and heaving until his stomach is completely empty. He can talk about Aureliano with Angelica even if he doesn’t want to. He can’t talk about Teo.
“It’s not important,” he says to her once he’s able to find his voice again. “Forget about it, Ange. He’s just some guy that I knew.”
You’re going to be a father, don’t get yourself shot.
He gets himself shot. It hurts like a bitch. He passes out from the pain and wakes up in the hospital with tubes coming out of his arms and nose and so doped up he can’t even feel anything. The doctors and nurses tell him he was lucky; the bullet missed his organs and didn’t shatter any bones. Good for you, Spadino, for not bleeding to death on the pavement outside some warehouse in Ostia or ending up paralyzed or a vegetable. Congratulations, you’re alive, you fucking idiot.
He drifts in and out. Sometimes his mother is sitting by his side, lips pursed in disapproval, or Manfredi, bending down and grabbing him by the neck and whispering, you thought you could just take my place, you little shit? Sometimes Lele is there, dripping with seawater and brushing the sand out of his hair. He stares at Spadino and his jaw twitches with silent rage. Once, standing on the left side of the bed, his father holds out the knife, blade extended. On his right, Teo offers him a joint. He’s still bleeding from the gash in his neck, and Spadino can’t tear his eyes away from the gaping wound. It’s Moroccan, Teo says. You’ll love it.
“I’m sorry,” Spadino tells him, and Teo shakes his head. His disappointment is obvious. It’s fine. It’s just a concert. Another time, I guess.
When he wakes up—really wakes up, this time—he can hear the murmur of voices in the hallway. It sounds like Angelica. And—
“This fucking idiot,” he can distinctly hear Aureliano telling her. “I told him to not get shot.”
“Fuck you, Aurelia,” he says hoarsely when the two of them walk through the door together.
Aureliano just grins at him. “I can’t believe you married this asshole,” he says to Angelica, who smiles and wraps her hand around Spadino’s.
“Nobody asked you,” Spadino mutters. “I don’t even know why you’re here.”
“Yeah, well.” Aureliano shrugs like it’s no big deal, but Spadino can see the tears welling up in the corner of his eye. “You were there for me when nobody else was. So I’m here.”
Suddenly it’s all too much for him to take. “Hey, don’t cry,” Angelica says, squeezing his hand, but once he’s started he can’t stop. Because here he is, and here they are, the two people he loves and who love him. Sorry, sorry, he blubbers, sorry for all my shit, sorry for everything, and please stay with me is in there somewhere and so is I need you and so is I love you.
And because they love him, they sit there with him and they wait until the sun goes down, and his wife holds one hand and Aureliano holds the other, and it he knows won’t be perfect but somehow, some way—it will be all right.