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Nicky had thought the most nerve-wracking conversation he would be having that week (no, make it that month. Or, actually, that decade, if he were being truly honest with himself…) was the one he’d had when he’d finally mustered up the courage to ask Joe on a date. That worry had been for nothing, thankfully. He still couldn’t believe the most gorgeous man he had ever seen had agreed so quickly and so (and Nicky very much hoped he hadn’t only seeing what he'd wanted to see) eagerly.
That had directly led to the need for this conversation though, and Nicky trying to psych himself up for what could be one of the most important questions he’d ever had to ask in his life thus far.
The more he thought about it the more nervous he became, so he finally just bit the bullet and pressed the little blue icon on his phone. He then propped it up against a pile of books on the coffee table in front of him while the familiar bubbly tune of Skype placing a call filled his flat. (The jaunty tone did him no favours; it just felt like it was mocking him.) Sitting on the edge of his sofa, he didn’t even realize that he’d started tensely wringing his hands while he waited for his mother to answer.
“Nicolò!” he heard the delighted voice of Maria Di Genova exclaim, along with some fumbling while she worked to turn her tablet’s camera on. Her smiling face looked through the screen at him and he couldn’t help but smile in return. “What a lovely surprise, I was not expecting to hear from you until the weekend.”
“I had a time-sensitive question,” he explained, attempting to instill a casual tone in his voice (but his mother was never fooled).
“What is it?” she frowned, worriedly - something he never liked to see.
He let out a deep breath and thought for a moment about how to phrase his request. There was no way to do it subtly; his intent would be clear no matter what. So he decided to speak plainly, as always, and just blurted out, “I need the tiramisu recipe.”
There was a strange silence for a few moments, and Nicky thought at first the screen had frozen - but no, he could see his mother blinking. The rest of her was just very, very still. She finally managed to ask, in a careful tone, “When you say you need the tiramisu recipe, do you mean… the recipe?”
All he could do was nod stiffly.
What happened next was a bit of a blur. He could see his mother’s eyes widen before she dropped the tablet she was using to speak with him, and then all he could see was the kitchen ceiling of his childhood home fill the screen. That didn’t dampen the sound quality whatsoever, because he could very clearly hear her shrieking, “Girls! Girls, come here, quickly! Nicolò is getting married!”
He winced at her words. They were exactly what he’d feared. Well, there was no way out of this now.
Nicky then heard the thunderous footsteps of his two younger sisters racing into their kitchen, asking a million questions at once and their mother chattering back at them, and he just waited for the interrogation to begin. He could make out the sounds of Elena and Bianca practically tackling each other to grab the tablet first, and it was Bianca who, to no surprise (she was a hair puller), emerged victorious.
“Nico! You are asking for the recipe? Tell us everything!” she demanded.
“Yes, what is his name? What does he do? How did you meet? How long have you been together?” peppered Elena from over her sister’s shoulder.
“And why have you not told your poor mother that you were seeing anybody all this time?” Maria wailed from somewhere off screen.
“Why didn’t you tell us that you were seeing somebody?” scolded Bianca, looking quite put out by the fact that her brother had kept something from them. Elena didn’t look any happier, again inserting herself into the frame to badger, “Why were you hiding him? What’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing is wrong with him!” Nicky burst out, a bit more defensively than he’d intended (more indignant on Joe’s behalf rather than his own). “I haven’t been hiding anything, I haven’t been seeing anybody.” Maybe that wasn’t entirely true. Technically he had been seeing Joe, but only in the strictest, most literal sense - in that he was only seeing him, with his eyes. And he wanted to be doing so much more than that, in a much more up close and personal manner.
“So you’re not seeing anyone, but you still want the recipe?” Elena wondered, her voice full of confusion.
Nicky exhaled slowly, trying to keep his voice steady. “I have not been seeing anybody, but I have been hoping to. For quite some time, really. And now our first date is this Friday. I will be making him dinner.”
Once again there was a strange silence - made exponentially stranger by the fact that there were multiple Di Genova women together in one room, not making a sound. Nicky tapped his phone experimentally just to make sure it hadn’t frozen.
“Your… first date?” echoed Bianca, stunned. “And you want to make him the tiramisu?”
“You do know what you are asking for, Nico?” his mother gasped.
“I know perfectly well what I am asking,” he replied tersely, having expected this sort of disbelieving reaction from his family - but not having expected feeling like a small child being scolded.
And he did know, all too well in fact, what he was asking. He, and his siblings, and his cousins, and everybody else in the extended Di Genova clan, had been raised with the tale of the tiramisu. At every wedding and anniversary celebration - and there had been many - they had been repeatedly regaled with the story of the Di Genova women who, over many generations, had passed down the secret family recipe for tiramisu that was guaranteed to make the man they made it for fall madly in love with them. According to family lore, it had never failed to result in a wedding.
Nicky hadn’t put much stock in the story before, to be honest. Nor had he given weddings and marriage much thought, what with his lackluster dating life. But that was before he had laid eyes on one Joe Al-Kaysani. That had been a transformative experience, and he just needed to convince his family of that.
“I know what I am asking,” he repeated, slowly and seriously. They were hundreds of miles away, but he hoped his mother could feel the complete sincerity in his gaze transmitted through the screen.
He thought he could make out Bianca and Elena giving each other some side-eye, but Nicky kept eye contact with his mother. They said nothing until a slow, contented smile finally blossomed across Maria’s face. “Well then. Let me get the recipe,” she said, clearly surprised but in a pleasant way; and Nicky finally felt the tense knot in his chest release a bit.
There were a few minutes of familiar familial arguing over how to send it to him. Elena started to type it out on her phone to email him, but Bianca kept pointing out typos over her shoulder and quickly became too impatient at her sister’s words-per-minute. She ended up snapping a photo of the well-worn piece of paper with her phone and texting it to Nicky, and he quickly pulled open the notification on the screen.
“Perfetto,” he murmured, zooming in on the image and skimming over the ingredients list. “I will get groceries tomorrow. I have most of these things already, I will just need to pick up a bottle of Marsala and-”
“Nicolò, no!” his mother suddenly shrieked, while his sister gasped in horror. “Dio, what are you thinking? You cannot just go ‘pick up a bottle’. You cannot use just any Marsala, you know this - it must be from Guglielmo’s vineyard. No substitutions!”
“Unbelievable, Nico!” one sister tsked, while the other accused, “Do you want the tiramisu to work or not?” He couldn’t even tell who was saying what at this point, they were in such an uproar, but he thought he heard one of them mutter that “He does tend to self-sabotage, you know” before he decided he had to cut in.
“Of course I want it to work!” he protested, feeling unfairly chastised. “But I cannot simply hop on a plane and come by to pick up a bottle, can I?” He did not mention the fact that, had he not been in the middle of an overly busy week at work, he might very well have considered it.
“Maybe I can mail it to you,” his mother wondered, and then the girls were suddenly looking up shipping regulations and comparing courier rates.
“That is really not necessary -”
“It is entirely necessary! You know the rule,” Maria insisted, and then with eerily exact timing, all three women chanted in almost cult-like synchronicity, “No substitutions.”
“All right, all right, I know better than to argue against generations of family tradition! I will follow the recipe to the letter,” Nicky swore, raising his palms in the air in a show of peace. Or surrender. (It was definitely surrender.)
“The results will be worth the effort,” his mother promised, before hitting him with a stern look. “Now, do not think you are getting away with telling us nothing about this mysterious man you think is worthy of the tiramisu! I expect a call on Saturday to let us know how this date went, and I expect you to tell me about him then, capisce?”
“Yes, we want all the details!” Bianca added excitedly.
“Ew, maybe not all the details,” muttered Elena.
“No, we definitely want all the details!”
And Nicky just sighed, burying his face in his hands as he started to regret all his life choices.
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That regret re-emerged constantly over the next few days, with multiple texts and emails and Facebook messages popping up from his siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and even second cousins, each excitedly wishing him luck and regaling him with their own successful tales of the tiramisu. He should have known word would spread quickly, but he had been hoping it would at least have been after the date. Well, there was nothing to be done for it now. He would send a polite ‘grazie’ in return and tried not to engage with what felt like half the Genoese countryside making inquiries into his love life; while he appreciated their well wishes, he also felt increasing pressure, like he would not be allowed back into Italy if this recipe did not turn out.
And his stress did indeed keep building the closer it got to Friday, but then mid-week Nicky returned home from work to find a large box sitting at his flat door, with labels slapped on it revealing it had been expressed shipped from Genoa. He lugged it inside, wondering what could be so heavy - there was no way it could simply be a bottle of wine.
He opened it suspiciously; it was insulated, which he found odd, but it quickly made sense once he saw the variety of food inside. The bottle of Marsala was included, of course - but so was virtually every other ingredient he would need as well, from fresh locally sourced mascarpone to the savoiardi baked by Signora Tommasi in their town’s oldest bakery. His mother was clearly taking the “no substitutions” rule extremely seriously - and it simultaneously warmed Nicky's heart while also making him all the more nervous.
He sent her a heartfelt thank-you text before beginning to unpack the ingredients (and froze when he came across a box of condoms shoved into a corner - clearly Bianca’s doing, and he reminded himself to chastise her later), only to find he did not have much room left in his fridge. He had already done groceries yesterday and purchased all the items he thought he would need for the recipe, along with the rest of his planned meal. He decided to feed two birds with one scone and do a test run of the tiramisu - not only would it use up the duplicate ingredients he had, but he hoped practicing the process would ease his growing nerves as well.
When he took the trial tiramisu into his office the next day, he did receive a few “Oh my god, marry me!”s from his co-workers, so he had to admit that his confidence grew a bit at that.
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Any shred of confidence Nicky may have had when looking over the table he had carefully set, or when smelling the delicious aromas wafting from his stove, or even when nodding in satisfaction at the picture-perfect tiramisu he had whipped up, had been sadly temporary. Because, when the jaunty knock sounded at his front door, he swore he was about to have a heart attack. Perhaps he’d already had; perhaps his body was actually laying dead on the kitchen floor and he was now having an out-of-body, near-death experience, because Nicky could not for the life of him recall how he managed to pull himself together and move to open the door.
But suddenly there was Joe, his dark eyes twinkling and his dimples carving themselves into his cheeks and all Nicky wanted to do was dive into them and make his new home there.
In his daydreams of this moment, Nicky was the picture of utter suaveness. He would greet Joe warmly, maybe even being so bold as to kiss him on each cheek before smoothly stepping aside to beckon him in. He would kindly offer to take Joe’s coat, hanging it up and then putting a gentle hand on the small of his back to guide him further into his flat, where he would spend an evening impressing the man with a delicious meal and dazzling conversation.
In reality, all Nicky could do was breathe out, “Joe!” as he was blinded by the delightfully crooked smile that he had seen so many times by now, but that seemed - though this may have only been wishful thinking on his part - a little broader and more genuine at that particular moment.
It was Joe who took the initiative, because apparently Nicky’s brain-to-mouth channel had been blocked somehow. “Nicolò,” he replied warmly, stepping forward to brush a quick (too quick) kiss on each cheek. “Thank you so much for inviting me over.”
And then, just like that, Nicky’s rabbit heart calmed. His cheeks were certainly burning now, but he did feel calmer. Not calm enough to manage not to stutter and stumble slightly as he moved aside to let Joe in, but at least he was able to speak again.
Joe, it seemed, had no trouble speaking. He asked a bevy of questions as Nicky gave him a quick tour of the flat, sincerely inquiring about this photo and that trinket as if he were genuinely curious to mine every nugget of information about Nicky that he could, no matter how insignificant. It was a heady feeling to be the subject of such attention, and Nicky could feel his confidence slowly growing again.
It came back even more once they settled in the kitchen - that was his domain. As he fell into the familiar steps of pulling pots off the burners and spooning gnocchi onto plates, his language skills appeared to revive. At least, he thought so? Most of the meal was a daze, to be honest - because it had started with Joe taking one bite off his plate and letting out a satisfied (and frankly, inappropriate) moan and Nicky swore his brain just started buffering before going completely offline.
He didn’t know how he came back from that (did some higher power take pity on him and hit control+alt+delete?). But he must have been able to say something, because he did remember there being back-and-forth conversation, and he remembered Joe seemed to smile quite a lot, and he had even made him laugh. Nicky was paying attention to every single word that came out of Joe’s mouth, he honestly was - he just couldn’t seem to truly absorb them yet. How could he, when Joe would grin like that? How on earth was he supposed to maintain higher cognitive functioning when something so powerful was directed right at him? It was as if the force of it penetrated straight through to the caveman part of his brain whose only coherent thought was “oooh, man smile pretty”.
But he must have faked being a fully functioning modern human being well enough, because Joe kept smiling and laughing and eating (in between showering him with praise as to the deliciousness of every single thing), and he didn’t make some strained flimsy excuse to rush off the second his plate was empty. Instead he accepted Nicky’s offer of seconds, and Nicky could have sworn that the brush of his hand against Nicky’s when passing the salad bowl was done on purpose, and then when Joe’s legs stretched out under the table and he rested his calf against his own and kept it there, well, that was surely deliberate. And so Nicky’s confidence suddenly felt at an all-time high.
Somehow the conversation didn’t ebb at all. The typical first date discussion points of work and family and schooling and friends were all covered, and then beyond, to faith and religion and sexuality and identity, and it could have been very awkward and cringey but it wasn’t. Instead, it felt easy. And Nicky felt a warmth within him that had nothing to do with all the food he had consumed, and he knew the moment was right for the tiramisu.
“I hope you left room for dessert,” he said as he rose and started clearing the table.
“Absolutely,” Joe smirked, and Nicky raised a brow at the tone of his voice.
“I do mean actual dessert, you know.”
Joe’s eyes were practically dancing as he replied, “I’ll take anything you’re so generously offering.”
Nicky had to fight the blush that he could feel wanted to blossom across his face. He tried to distract both himself and Joe by explaining, “This is an old family recipe, passed down from my great-great-great… well, many times-great nonna, I can never remember how many.” He shrugged as he cut a generous slice from the dish and placed it carefully on a clean plate, then passed it over to Joe.
He turned to cut his own portion, satisfied at the moistness of the savoiardi cookies perfectly soaked with the boozy coffee syrup. He could smell the Marsala waft up and the scent hit him in the nose, but instead of reminding him of home and family, it prompted a tingle of worry in his brain and he frowned at the odd feeling.
There was something he was missing, Nicky slowly realized. There was something his brain was trying to tell him, but it hadn't percolated to the surface just yet.
He turned, heading back to the table with his plate in one hand and the larger tiramisu dish in the other, still trying to figure it out. His attention was then caught by a spoonful of tiramisu about to cross Joe’s lips - but where that likely would have distracted him in a very provocative way, instead understanding hit him all at once and his brain screamed, “Oh fuuuuuck.”
Nicky had never been a fan of those loud, obnoxious shoot-’em-up blockbuster action films. He found them formulaic and uninspired and unrealistically cheesy, especially during those scenes where the hero would make a slow-motion lunge, their arms outstretched and shouting “Noooooo!” in anguish as they valiantly tried to reach their target in time. He silently sent out an apology to the director of every such movie he had previously slandered as he finally realized that those scenes were not unrealistic - because the world very much slowed down to a crawl around him as he dropped his tiramisu and dove across the table to knock the spoon out of Joe’s hand.
Multiple things happened at once. Nicky’s plate of tiramisu dropped to the floor and broke. The corner of the larger dish snagged the kitchen table as it fell, causing it to flip over and deposit its contents all over the floor with a horrid splat, but when the dish landed on top of it at least the destroyed dessert cushioned its fall and prevented it from shattering. All that shattered instead were the remains of Nicky’s pride, as he ended up splayed across the table with Joe’s hand in his, shoving the spoon away from his lips harshly enough that the dollop of dessert fell straight down to splatter onto Joe’s sweater.
And then there was an awkward, petrified silence.
Joe somehow hadn’t been startled out of his seat. Instead he merely blinked a few times in confusion as he took in the sudden destruction around him.
“Um, Nicky? Did you just have a stroke or something?”
“Marsala!” was all he could gasp in return.
“Come again?”
“The Marsala! Wine! And rum! There is alcohol in the tiramisu! I’m so sorry, I just realized. I didn’t think to confirm with you beforehand whether you drank or not, and I just made it without thinking, Dio, that was so inconsiderate of me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it just came to my mind now, and I know we talked about being observant earlier, but you are just so distracting, and -”
His ramblings were cut off by Joe suddenly bursting into laughter. And from his position still stretched across the table with his head right at the level of Joe’s chest, looking up at the man throwing his head back and whooping with uproarious abandon, Nicky suddenly couldn’t breathe - and he wasn’t sure how much of that was due to intense embarrassment and how much was due to the other man’s deep belly laugh washing over him.
But then Joe’s amusement quieted, and he leaned forward and dropped a kiss onto Nicky’s forehead. “Oh Nicolò, you are too kind,” he declared fondly.
Well, that certainly didn’t help Nicky with being able to breathe. All he could do was stare back in confusion, which really made no sense whatsoever because he was the one who was splayed out across the kitchen table - so really, shouldn’t it have been Joe gaping incomprehensibly at Nicky and not the other way around?
Instead, Joe gave him a warm smile and said, “I truly appreciate your thoughtfulness, Nicky. That means a lot to me. There is nothing you need to apologize for.”
Of course there was. He hadn’t connected the dots of Joe politely refusing his offer of a glass of wine earlier, he hadn’t thought to ask about food preferences or intolerances earlier in the week, he’d acted like a complete and utter fool, and the evidence of that was literally right in front of his nose. “I… I ruined your sweater,” he groaned, eyeing the splotch of cream and coffee syrup that had dropped onto Joe’s chest. Suave imaginary Nicky would have used a finger to wipe it up and then sucked it off seductively, making some sort of innuendo about it. All real Nicky could think to do was desperately apologize again.
“It’s not the end of the world,” Joe said graciously, cutting off another round of sorrys. “Though I should soak this in something before the stain sets.”
Nicky quickly nodded in agreement, moving to carefully push himself up off the table while Joe stood from his chair. But then, before he could make it onto his feet again, Joe began to pull his sweater off and Nicky was suddenly met with an eyeful of abs.
And so he fell off the table.
By some small stroke of luck, Joe still had his sweater up around his head and didn’t see Nicky’s less-than-graceful dismount from the table and onto the floor (judge’s score: 0 out of 10, he did not stick the landing). He at least managed to get upright just in time as Joe yanked the sweater up and over his curls (without managing to ruin his hair somehow, a skill Nicky had yet to master).
He headed towards the sink and began to rinse the glob of cream off his sweater while Nicky looked sadly over the remnants of the dish he had pinned all his hopes on, now smeared artlessly across his kitchen floor. He crouched down and started to clean up, and found himself beginning to apologize again. “I really am so sorry about this. I wish I could offer you a proper dessert to end our meal.”
“I’m sure it would have been delicious, like everything else was,” he heard Joe say sincerely, before the tone of his voice changed. “But maybe I can propose an alternative to dessert?”
Nicky froze, nearly dropping the dish in his hands for a second time. He glanced up, hopefully, and took in the positively sinful smirk on Joe’s lips and the devious quirk to his brow.
The mess on the floor would keep, he decided quickly. There were clearly more important things to get to at that moment, including finding out that Joe tasted sweet enough on his own, without the need for tiramisu.
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Hours later found Joe and Nicky splayed out on Nicky’s bed, sharing one fork as they alternated picking bites of the evening’s leftovers from a plate. (It turned out that Joe’s dessert alternative involved burning off quite a few calories.)
Nicky’s brain stuttered again when Joe let out another moan biting into a gnoccho. “These are so good,” he murmured. “I mean, who needs tiramisu after this? I’m not missing anything.”
“I am in no way complaining about the way this evening ended up,” said Nicky, “But I planned to make you a full course meal. We will have to try this again so I can get it right next time.” There, that sounded like a perfectly rational reason for another date - surely Joe would be kind enough to allow him to redeem himself.
“Is that an invitation for a second date?” Joe grinned. “Because I was hoping for one the minute I got here, so I am certainly not going to argue with you.”
“Good,” Nicky smiled back, pleasantly surprised and relieved and newly determined. “And I will make you a tiramisu without alcohol next time. But my family can never hear about this.”
The forkful of gnocchi froze halfway up to Joe’s mouth, and he frowned. “What, you’re not out to them? They don’t approve?”
“What? Oh, no! Not that, they know I am gay,” Nicky quickly clarified. “I meant about the recipe. They cannot hear about me altering it.” That revelation would be much scarier than coming out to them had been, truth be told.
“Ah, yes, family tradition and all that?” Joe nodded sagely. “I understand, say no more.”
And his attention quickly turned back to the plate of food between them, and he stabbed more gnocchi and started directing them toward Nicky’s mouth - but something on Nicky’s face must have given him away, because he paused. “...Nicky? Maybe say a bit more after all. Is there a story behind your tiramisu?”
And how could he refuse the man, particularly when he was looking at him like that, and in his bed no less? Nicky was not that strong. And it wasn’t as if he could feel more embarrassed, he had already used up all his embarrassment reserves earlier in the evening and apparently they took time to replenish themselves. So, he took a deep breath and explained about the family lore, attempting to be as casual as one could be when essentially bringing up the topic of marriage on the first date.
Joe was surprisingly quiet throughout, only reacting with a raise of a brow here and a quirk of his lips there, and only spoke once the story was done. “So. I have a question.”
“Yes?” Nicky sighed, dropping his head down in an attempt to play ostrich in his sheets.
“What are we going to serve at the wedding then? It seems the secret will come out eventually, if we have one version of the tiramisu for your family and one for mine.”
Nicky lifted his head just the slightest bit, enough for Joe to see the glare in one of his eyes. “You think you’re funny, don’t you.”
“I am,” Joe stated matter-of-factly, accompanied by a shit-eating grin. “But I've also never been more serious in my life.”
Nicky blinked at that, and found himself lifting his head up completely. “Oh?”
“Oh Nicky, you say this as if I wouldn’t have done the same thing!” Joe chuckled, and leaned over to softly press his forehead against Nicky’s. “In fact, I tried. There is a family tajine recipe that my mother swears made my father propose to her as soon as he smelled it, before a taste of it so much as crossed his lips. I’ve already asked her for it, but she refused.”
“She does not approve?” he now worried, his innate ability to hone in on the worst-case scenario with a sniper’s precision fixating on that small piece from Joe’s otherwise heartwarming admission.
“No, no, the opposite in fact - she worried that my attempts to make it would poison you,” Joe confessed, and winced. “I am… not a good cook. So as much as I would like to reciprocate and make you a meal in return, that would probably not be safe for either of us.”
“Ah,” Nicky snorted before he could stop himself, but when that only elicited a delighted grin on Joe’s face, he let a smile spread across his own. “I will just have to keep you well fed then.”
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The next day, because he was in a particularly excellent mood, Nicky decided to give Bianca a taste of her own medicine and texted her a picture of the box of condoms she had sent him - now ripped open and half-empty. While she loved to tease her big brother about his sex life (or lack thereof, depending on the situation), any actual acknowledgement that such a life truly existed was a sure-fire way to flip the mortification from him right back on her. That was underscored by the multiple ‘my eyes are burning’ and ‘can’t unsee!’ gifs he received in return, which only lifted his mood further.
He also sent his mother a picture of the tiramisu dish before he cleaned it - and if she assumed that it was empty because it had been completely devoured rather than blunderingly spilled across his kitchen floor… well, Nicky wasn’t about to correct her. As far as he was concerned, it had still managed to work its magic.
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