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With the kind of nonsense the three of them were acting out in the middle of that quiet alley at such an hour of the night, if some poor sleep-deprived soul finally blew a fuse and decided to call the cops on them, Aureliano could not in good conscience have fully faulted them for it.
"Come on, Lele! Come on, man, I know you can do it!"
Spadino underscored each word with a thundering hand-clap, “cheering on” Gabriele's struggle with heaps of his signature, jackass snickering. Lele, in part because of how hard he was laughing and in part because he was plainly, irremediably drunk off his ass, failed yet again to keep a hold on his house keys, dropping them miserably to the ground for what had to be at least the tenth time that night. Which of course only caused both him and Spadino to dissolve into yet another spiral of breathless, idiotic giggles.
Hopeless, Aureliano silently sighed.
Leaning his elbow against the heavy stone doorframe of the old Roman palazzo, Aureliano rubbed an exhausted hand over his eyes. He was smiling too, but despite being passably tipsy, he still felt more or less in control of himself - unlike the two idiots he called friends.
"Yeah, daje, Lele, let's go, for Christ's sake. We don't have all fucking night," he doubled down, while Gabriele staggered one more time to pick up the set of keys from the ground, clinging to the door as support in a frail attempt to keep his - rather precarious - balance.
"You guys are the worst," the poor sod slurred as he finally, after a couple of last shaky attempts, managed to slip the correct key into the hole.
"Trouble getting it in, my man?" Spadino cracked, "I'm starting to see why Granny peaced out."
Gabriele answered the jab with a muttered curse and a shove - or rather, the clumsy attempt at a shove, because even with a blood-to-alcohol ratio well above the legal limit, Spadino was still much too quick on his feet to be surprised by such a limp attack.
"Dickhead," Gabriele resorted to mumbling - a rather accurate diagnosis, to which Spadino only replied with a new bout of laughter and the usual, flowery curtsy.
The heavy wooden gate was, at last, open. Gabriele still paused for a moment longer on the threshold, leaning on the brass handle for stability.
"Are you gonna make it up the stairs?" a skeptical Aureliano asked.
Gabriele gave a slow nod, then dipped his eyes. The mask slipped off his face for a second, revealing some of the honest - if hazy - sadness hidden behind.
"Thank you, guys," he whispered, "For showing up tonight."
Aureliano landed a gruff hand on Gabriele’s shoulder, soothing it with a hearty rub. He had never been the best at the whole "words" thing, but hopefully the gesture would manage to convey the obvious on its own: of course they were there. Their best friend had just been dumped, ruthlessly so, by the married woman who had him chasing his own tail for months - hell, almost years. Under those circumstances, taking Lele out to drown his sorrows was a solemn duty, one which Spadino and Aureliano would never have dreamed of shunning for all the gold - or hours of sleep - in the world.
"Are you kidding?" Spadino snorted - always, unlike Aureliano, excessively at ease with the concept of opening his mouth and speaking his mind, "You were buying! Did you think we'd be dumb enough to pass on a deal like that? Actually, help a brother out and get dumped more often, you know?"
Aureliano had known Spadino for far too long not to instantly be able to tell when the man was being a jerk on purpose to boost morale: it was practically his signature move. Gabriele, too, was more than accustomed to Spadino's habit of disguising true affection under an avalanche of clownery - so he just smiled gratefully.
"You’re way beyond any help of mine," he weakly retorted, and with a final hair-tousle from Aureliano, Gabriele was bid goodnight and left to finish making his precarious way up to his flat.
As soon as they had made sure to see the light turn on at Gabriele's window, without needing to exchange a word, Aureliano and Spadino started their way back up the narrow alley, and away from the city center. The conclusion to their nights out always followed a well-defined protocol: the practiced ritual required them walking each other home in reverse order of proximity to their usual watering holes. By that logic the next stop was, as always, Aureliano's.
"Man, Lele really can't catch a break, huh?" Spadino sighed after a long minute of uncharacteristically silent walking, "First that fight with his dad, now this..."
Fingers knotted behind his neck and face craned up towards the charcoal-colored, starless sky of their Capital, Spadino strolled, a thoughtful look tugging at his sharp features. As always, just looking at him like that, he didn't seem drunk at all - a real feat, given the many spirits Aureliano had watched the man drain that night.
It had been a while, Aureliano realized, since him and Spadino had last made that once-familiar little trip together. This night had been an emergency, of course, but lately, it was getting harder and harder for their trio to get their schedules aligned and go out drinking the way they used to - which, to be fair, was probably in excess. Inescapably, work - and student life, in Gabriele’s case - had started crushing them all in its monotonous gears: free evenings were growing increasingly hard to come by, and nights like this one were becoming a rare exception. Their highschool days, Aureliano was slowly beginning to realize, were already turning into a distant past.
"Well,” Aureliano sighed back, shoving his hands in his pockets with a tired shrug, “He did fuck himself over, on this one. I mean, lapping up the divorce bullshit for the second time... At this point, he's either a masochist, or completely braindead. Seriously, what’s with being so hung up on someone who's never going to give a shit about you?"
Aureliano had gone on a longer rant than he’d first intended. Still, he expected Spadino to agree with him: when it came to Lele's "relationship", from its inception the both of them had shared the same brand of silent but resigned pessimism. To Aureliano’s surprise, however, Spadino lightly shook his head, ringed hands unclasping from behind his neck.
"I don't know if I agree," the man said quietly, dropping his gaze to stare at the uneven, cobbled pavement under his feet, "It's not something you can control, Aurelià. You don't always get to pick who you fall in love with."
Aureliano resisted the temptation to steal Spadino a quick sideways glance, rather electing to keep his gaze firmly pointed straight ahead instead.
"I s’pose," he conceded.
Aureliano knew it better than anyone: Spadino had his fair share of experience, when it came to that kind of issue. Between them, in particular, the topic came weighted with a heavy, uncomfortable load of baggage.
Ancient baggage, yes, but never truly unpacked. One Aureliano, lately, caught himself rehashing out of the blue, when he least expected it - and way more often than he would have liked to admit.
"How fucking hot is it, right now?" Spadino suddenly and loudly complained, a - not so subtle - attempt at changing the subject.
It was indeed the middle of summer, and without a cold beer in hand to counter it, even late at night the clammy Roman heat bore down on the city with unforgiving heft. Rather theatrically, Spadino flapped his t-shirt against his chest, before nodding his chin towards a nearby fountain.
"I could go for a little dive," he joked.
"Need a hand?" Aureliano heard himself tease, before even having decided to open his mouth, "I'll toss you in, if you're not careful."
Without missing a beat, Spadino swiveled on his feet to face him.
"I don't fucking think so," he grinned, proudly puffing out his chest, like the total blowhard he’d always been.
Aureliano was already all but on him, but Spadino was the one to raise his hands first, anticipating the grapple.
They began to wrestle, sloppy and graceless, their movements clearly hindered by the very-much-ongoing bender. Even as tipsy as he was, however, Spadino remained strong, much stronger than he could ever have looked from the outside. Aureliano knew that fact full well - he had always liked it - but size and weight, as they’d always been, still remained undeniably on his side. With a slightly wild grin of satisfaction, Aureliano began to force Spadino back towards the fountain.
"Wait, are you for real?" Spadino whined, dropping some of his inflated bravado, "Come on, Aurelià, cut it out - my fucking cell's in my pocket!"
The act wasn't very credible: Spadino was laughing, in-between the grunts of effort caused by the struggle of resisting the pressure of Aureliano's significant mass pushing him backwards. Aureliano brushed off the pointless objection.
"Oh, so that's your excuse?” he scoffed, “Your phone?"
"What the fuck are you- ?" Spadino yelped, as Aureliano managed to slither a hand between their mashed bodies.
Aureliano ignored Spadino's useless attempts to swindle his hips away: he knew perfectly where his friend kept his cell phone - front right pocket of his jeans. After some struggle, Aureliano managed to slip his fingers in and steal the phone from its hiding place. Victorious, he then - with a minimum of caution, of course - flung the device at the foot of the short wall which surrounded the fountain's pool. From his own back pocket, Aureliano then pulled his own cell phone and swiftly sent it to join the first.
"There you go - safe, along with mine," he lightly declared, "Now, how’s it gonna be, tough guy?"
Spadino didn’t answer right away. Clearly a little surprised, he stared at Aureliano instead, for a long couple of seconds.
It didn't use to be rare for evenings to end like this, between them. Late at night and alone in the streets of Rome, in the company of only a few other poor inebriated souls staggering on their uncertain way home. Play-fighting, joking and shoving each other around, like kids refusing to grow up - forgetting everything else about their lives in the process, if only for the few hours still separating them from the cruel ringing of their alarm clocks.
It didn't use to be rare, but it was, now. Spadino and Aureliano hardly played that kind of game anymore - and it wasn't just because they saw each other less often. Aureliano knew the why of that insidious, growing distance slowly creeping its way between them. And he also knew, deep down, who was to blame for it all.
That night, however, Aureliano was too tired to keep up the charade. Or, maybe, he was finally sick of it.
"So that's how you wanna be?" Spadino grinned, recovering his cocky facade to lunge back at Aureliano, "All right, Adami. You brought this on yourself!"
The fight picked up where they'd left it off, with renewed energy. Someone stumbling on the scene, right then, might have mistaken their drunken struggle for a brawl, or maybe a robbery. Aureliano couldn't care less. He was tipsy and dicking around with Spadino, just like old times. Neither the summer heat, nor the weight of a long week, were able to detract from the simple truth: he felt better in that moment than he had felt in ages. Spadino looked happy too, judging by the wide smile still splitting his face, even as he struggled with growing desperation to keep Aureliano from overwhelming him.
Aureliano had missed that smile - so much - too much. Treacherous stab in the back, the realization had struck him earlier that evening: as he made his way back to their bar booth, fresh round of drinks in hand, and found Spadino intent on soothing a depressed Lele's back. At the time, Spadino had been so busy stringing together one terrible joke after the other to try to make his friend laugh that he hadn't been able to notice Aureliano stopping in his tracks in the middle of the room, motionless and staring like a complete idiot.
That true smile. So different from the jokester mask Spadino wore for the rest of the world.
The smile he had almost stopped giving Aureliano, ever since one fateful evening not unlike this one.
Aureliano had always been the first to tease Spadino about his lack of girlfriends, in high school. He could never wrap his head around the odd puzzle: chicks liked Spadino well enough, and weren't coy about displaying that interest. Spadino, however, never accepted their invitations to go out - or if he did, it was always with a sigh bordering on annoyance, as if taking a girl out for a couple of dates tops before leaving her hanging, like he always ended up doing, was a favor he begrudgingly surrendered to doing her. Ironically, that aloofness only seemed to increase his aura of mystery, and somehow consequently his appeal - and with it, the number of proposals he had to turn down each year.
Aureliano had grown more and more puzzled by that incomprehensible attitude. Over time, his confusion had soured into annoyance, a childish kind of frustration he often found himself venting out with snide jabs and sarcastic insinuations. The worst happened after school, when they would gather on some square or bench with Lele and other boys to exchange tales of conquests and other spicy anecdotes. In those moments, Spadino would always listen, laugh and bounce jokes with the others, but never share any experience of his own. Even back then, he already camouflaged himself behind one of those big fake smiles of his, whenever faced with a more direct question. Somehow, Spadino always managed to change the subject - often by retorting with a quip sharp enough to dissuade the curious investigator from ever trying to push the line of inquiry any further. It gave off the impression that he, unlike other boys, was already somehow above such childish matters. Eventually everyone got tired of trying to crack the enigma and dropped the issue. Aureliano pretended to do the same.
After graduation, some went on to study, others didn't - eager, or needing, to earn a living and fly out the nest as soon as possible. Drunk on his new-found independence, Aureliano had made it his mission to sample as many of the types of girl his father would have punched him in the face for bringing home, while Lele spiced up his first year of university by diving head-first into his doomed forbidden relationship. And all the while, Spadino still had nothing to share.
Aureliano's frustration only worsened. Did Spadino not trust his two best friends? Did he not think they might have any worthwhile advice to share with him, or even care that they might eventually start resenting being left out of such an important part of their lives, one which they, unlike him, had always bared their hearts about without hesitation?
Did he not trust even Aureliano?
In the end, of course, the truth had turned out to be entirely different. In the end, Spadino had actually trusted Aureliano way too much. Because in the end, when Spadino - chin held high but jaw tense and fists clenched at his sides - had pulled Aureliano aside, one night not unlike this one, at the end of that first year after graduation, it was to confess to him, in no uncertain terms, that he was gay.
And Aureliano had laughed.
It had been an ugly laugh, too. Terse. Not an ounce of softness to it.
"Figures," Aureliano had snorted, "Well, mystery solved, I guess."
Or something like that. Aureliano couldn't remember the exact words he’d used. They didn’t really matter, he knew that.
What mattered was the uncomfortable half-smile he'd forced on his lips, and the awkward way he'd slammed his hand on Spadino's shoulder - with unmistakable condescension. What mattered was how quickly Aureliano had pulled that hand away, and how abruptly he had changed the subject, leaving Spadino no time to add another word.
What mattered was how Aureliano had stopped texting first to hang out and let Spadino inexorably drift away from him, over the months following that night.
At the end of the day, it really was no wonder Lele had learned that fact first, and Aureliano last.
By way of push and shove, the pair had reached the foot of the fountain. It wasn't a particularly large, or even pretty one - just big enough to fall into. Spadino was dangerously close to the edge, but in the midst of the struggle, he had managed to secure a firm hold over two full handfuls of Aureliano's shirt.
"Aurelià, I’m warning you," he victoriously panted, "If you toss me in this fountain, there’s no way in hell I’m not taking you down with me."
"Oh yeah?" Aureliano said, much quieter than before, "Wanna bet?"
Spadino never backed down from a bet. He'd only done it once, really, in all the years Aureliano and him had known each other: on the distant night he'd found the courage to open up to his best friend, and as a reward, got laughed in the face.
"Alright," Spadino said, "What do you wanna bet?"
That smile. Aureliano missed that, along with everything else: the inexplicable closeness the two of them had always felt despite their diametrically opposed personalities, the evenings spent on the couch making fun of the movies Lele desperately tried to get them to take seriously. The much quieter nights, shared sitting in the damp grass of some park, taking turns swigging cheap gin off the same bottle and talking trash about the terrible families they couldn't wait to break free of.
Aureliano missed the way Spadino used to reach up and wrap his arm around his shoulders without warning to pull him down closer to him - he missed smelling the overly-sweet scent of hairspray in the man’s ridiculous hair, when he did it. He missed it all, and it burned him even more to know that he’d ruined it all himself.
Because the truth was that on the night of Spadino’s confession, Aureliano had suddenly found himself panicked, just as inexplicably as he had already felt way too many times in his life, in the presence of Spadino and his smile - and his tight flashy t-shirts, and his stupid emo skinny jeans, and his ink-dark eyes, which reflected the glimmer of the Roman skyline like mirrors, whenever he was tipsy late at night.
Because the truth was that, in that moment, Aureliano had sensed what Spadino really wanted to tell him. He had guessed it all too well, but he’d been too much of a coward to let him try.
That night, however, Aureliano was sick and tired of running away.
What did he want to bet?
"Everything," Aureliano answered quietly, before moving in to let his mouth meet his favorite smile.
It was more an awkward stamp than a proper kiss, and to be honest, they kind of knocked teeth a bit as well. Aureliano only had time to see Spadino's dark eyes shoot wide open in surprise, before the man lost his hold on Aureliano’s shirt, and with it, his balance.
With one too-many steps backwards Spadino tripped on the little wall surrounding the fountain’s pool and plummeted straight into it. The water swallowed him with a loud splash, submerging him for a brief moment before he managed to sit up, coughing and wiping wet hair from his eyes. The basin wasn't deep, and for a second Aureliano worried Spadino might have hurt himself slamming into the rough, coin-dotted concrete of the bottom end. But there was no trace of pain on Spadino's face, as he sat there in the water, staring up at Aureliano. Only pure, stunned disbelief.
"What the- the hell’s gotten into you?" Spadino stammered, "Are you nuts?"
"Maybe."
Aureliano stepped over the short wall. The fountain’s water was half-way up to his knees, and just cold enough to make him shiver. That didn't stop Aureliano from kneeling over Spadino, one leg on either side of him. Tipsy as he was, and with his heart racing madly in his chest, there was little grace to the way he moved, but it didn't matter. The fountain’s lights were on, their gleam filtered through water flooding them both from below - an electric blue, marbled glow which ebbed and flowed bewitchingly on Spadino's skin, on his fake gold, and in his dark eyes.
"Maybe I've lost my mind completely," Aureliano admitted.
He had never been the best at the whole "words" thing, but for some things, thankfully, words weren't a necessity. On all fours in the cold water Aureliano leaned forward and pressed a second kiss over his best friend’s mouth.
Much more satisfying than the first.
"Is this really happening?" Spadino whispered, just a breath away from Aureliano’s lips.
Aureliano laughed again - only this time, the laughter was right.
"Does it look like I'm messing around?" he whispered back.
Spadino had never been the bashful type. Once the mystery over his secrecy in highschool had finally lifted, that fact had become crystal clear in record time. It was obvious in the way he’d immediately stopped hiding that part of him, and in the way he’d started talking openly about the men he slept with: with plenty of detail and a brazen, cocky grin which had long caused Aureliano incomprehensible amounts of discomfort.
Spadino being everything but demure had become even more obvious when, once or twice, Aureliano had spied him making his move on some guy at the end of a night out. He'd glimpsed - unwittingly, of course, not like he was trying to see something - at the confident way Spadino leaned in, smiled, and boldly wrapped his hands over the boys' waists. Aureliano still remembered the slow, measured way he’d watched Spadino bring his lips close to the strangers’ ears and whisper stuff in there that was apparently brazen enough to make even the least chaste-looking of guys dip their eyes with a flushed grin.
Spadino had never been the bashful type, so it wasn't a surprise when Aureliano felt him rise towards him and take his mouth as confidently as if it had been his all along. Aureliano let him, because all things considered, maybe it was. Maybe it had been for a long time, way before Aureliano had been able to even formulate the thought. And now that Spadino had it, Aureliano thought dazedly, he had to admit that all these years spent denying the obvious felt like a painful waste of time.
Spadino's mouth was drenched in chlorinated water and still faintly tasted like beer. It was boiling hot and skilled and perfect, the kind of good that makes your head spin. The cold water from the fountain soaked through Aureliano's shirt when Spadino pulled him further down. Aureliano let himself be tugged, lower and lower until his elbows were resting on the rough concrete bottom of the fountain. He sank there, submerged by contrasting cold and burning waves, as Spadino doted on his mouth and held him tightly - finally, finally.
In a remote corner of his mind Aureliano made a mental note to thank Lele and his shit taste in women, as soon as they’d all sobered up.
"Do you know how long I’ve fantasized about something like this happening?" Spadino mumbled after a while, voice hoarse and hands traveling slowly up and down Aureliano’s back, neck and arms, as if unable to decide on where to linger first, "It’s so fucking embarassing, Jesus. Years, Aurelià. Years."
His breathing had gone tight, Aureliano noticed. Spadino seemed entirely unable to keep himself from filling every space of silence between words, however brief, with lighter kisses on Aureliano’s chin and jaw, which he now held cupped with both hands. Aureliano was suddenly grateful for the cool touch of the water pooled in the crook of his back: a needed reminder to keep breathing and rein in the sudden heat he felt traveling through him in ways which were probably beyond what was decent in a public place. It wasn't out of fear, however: any tourist or passer-by could have seen them like that, it was true, but right then, Aureliano felt like laughing just thinking about it. Let them watch: when Spadino and him were together, no one had ever been able to stand in their way. They certainly weren't going to start now.
"I know," Aureliano said, "You're not as good at lying as you think you are, Spadì."
Spadino stared up for a long few seconds, stroking Aureliano’s temple up and down with the pad of his thumb. Quieted - an exceedingly rare event.
For once, he really did look inebriated.
"We're grown ups, now," Spadino said softly, "Even Lele calls me by my name."
It was true: Aureliano was the only one still referring to Spadino by his high school nickname. Everyone in their entourage probably thought it was because the two of them had always shared a special bond, but maybe that, too, had been a way for Aureliano to keep Spadino at arm's length. To pretend their relationship was never meant to grow and change alongside them.
Deliberately slow, Aureliano allowed himself to wrap his tongue around that paradox of a name, deeply familiar yet foreign to the taste at the same time.
"Albè."
They stayed there, unpacking the baggage and making up for lost time under the starless sky, until the cruel ring of their alarm clocks rose in unison from the cell phones they’d left, forgotten, on the ground.