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It was strange to see water used this way.
Luca studied the clear ice, meticulously cut and smoothed into the shape of a life-sized mermaid (for decoration, Giulia had said), her tail angled stiffly behind her and fins fully spread in all their icy glory. Luca frowned, noting with disapproval the proud flare of her fins and judging the boldness of it as a little too aggressive to match the serene smile of her mouth and the lightness in which she held her arms. He supposed though that it was probably unlikely that the human who'd carved her would know the nuances of underwater body language, and he let decided it go in the name of creative interpretation.
Luca touched his fingertips to her arm, watching green scales bloom where the heat of his skin melted the ice. He quickly withdrew his hand and shoved it into his pocket, scanning around the crowded ballroom nervously. There was no way to know how this company of strangers would react to a sea monster crashing their party— even one as polite and nicely dressed as he was.
He turned around to look for Alberto, catching them both off guard when he found the other boy right behind him. Luca looked at him curiously.
"Is everything okay, Beto?"
"Oh. Yeah, I—" Alberto swallowed, attempting to regain his composure by putting on a confident smile. "I was just thinking that you look really different tonight. Good different. That suit really—" he broke off, his smile faltering and mind scrambling for another word, but he couldn’t concentrate properly when Luca’s mouth was creeping into the beginnings of a grin. Alberto sighed, hanging his head in mock defeat. "That suit really suits you."
The grin formed fully around Luca’s laugh, but he brought a hand to rest on Alberto's shoulder. "Thanks," Luca's smile softened when Alberto raised his eyes again to meet his own. "You look really good too."
"Scusa, what about me?" A voice came up beside them, rising above the tinkling of ice cubes against a glass.
"Giulietta, you are the prettiest young woman at the ball," Luca pronounced grandly, taking Giulia's free hand to kiss the back of it with a theatrical bow. She preened back at him before sending a searching look over to Alberto.
"I already told you that you look nice, Giulia," Alberto stated in a bored tone, examining the finger he'd just had in his ear. He moved to wipe his hand on his suit pants but Luca caught his wrist, giving him a tissue and an amused, but pointed, look.
"Only because Papà told you to!"
"Well if you want to hear it again I'll have to count it as an early birthday present."
"How about you come dance with me and we'll call it even, fratello." She grabbed hold of Alberto's arm to drag him sputtering toward the dance floor, draining her glass and depositing it on a table as they passed by. "You too, Paguro!" Giulia called back over her shoulder. "You're not spending the whole evening against the wall like you've done at every school dance!"
Luca rolled his eyes outwardly but followed, smirking at Alberto's desperately mouthed thank you. It was familiar enough, the three of them dancing together in their own little group like they'd done sometimes in summers past— energetic, with spins and dips and rowdy laughter, simply enjoying the nostalgia of it.
It was when the musicians started up a new piece, less flamboyant and more relaxed, that Giulia bowed out.
"This music is too slow for three people," Giulia decided with an open wink at Luca, his face flushing as he shot her a desperate, warning look. She ignored him, tugging on the boys’ hands to bring them together into a handclasp. "I think you two can take it from here."
"Wait! You can't—" Luca called to the retreating Giulia, who responded by briefly spinning around to flash the boys a wide grin and an embarrassingly encouraging double thumbs-up. “...sharks."
Luca swallowed down his nerves, his love-infused brain struggling to keep calm as he turned back to his best friend and wondering if he could continue to maintain his careful balance between putting his heart on the line and staying safe. It wasn't that he didn't want to dance with Alberto, because he really did, it was just that this was so...different for them. This immaculate ballroom, this enchanting orchestra, this breathtakingly handsome Alberto with a softly confident smile, holding his hand and now extending the other one to him in reassured offering.
"Come on, Luca, we've got this. You just have to follow my lead."
Luca's free hand slowly came up to take Alberto's without even thinking about it, simply trusting him as he always did, and found it placed on Alberto's shoulder, a strong hand on his back, and they were off— ready or not.
Their steps weren't always synced, with Alberto sometimes moving them just a little too fast or Luca missing a count and tugging them both sideways instead of backward, but perfection wasn't the goal. It never was with them, and all the worry that Luca felt about their undetermined relationship was slowly dissolving in quiet breaths, in knowing glances, and the feel of Alberto's hand warm and comforting around his own as they came together.
"Are you nervous?" Luca asked, noticing the way Alberto seemed a little distracted, holding his body tense.
"Yeah, a little bit. It's just— well, it's finally you that I get to dance with instead of the girls back in Portorosso, and I don't want to mess it up, y'know? They asked me to help them practice often enough that I feel like I really can say that I'm 'pretty much an expert' at dancing now though."
"It only took you three years and half a dozen broken hearts to be right about that line finally," Luca teased, laughing when Alberto tried and failed to pinch him through the layers of his suit.
It felt to Luca like somehow something had shifted here between them, like they were on the cusp now of openly acknowledging the other dance— the one where they'd spent years growing closer and closer, recently becoming a confusing mix of shy and bold with neither of them ever coming right out and plainly saying what needed to be said.
"Alberto?" Luca began, a little hesitant but needing to break the silence between them, to ask once and for all. "Are we...are we together?"
"Oh." Alberto swallowed, clearing his throat as his eyes briefly darted away and back again, and Luca watched his tongue dart out to wet his lips before he steeled himself. "I...I'd like us to be. If you want to?"
"I want to," Luca replied in a rush, relief replacing the hesitancy of self-doubt as he searched Alberto's eyes, his face warming before he spoke the next words that were running through his head. "And for what it's worth, I feel really lucky. I couldn't ask for a better partner than you. And I don't mean just for dancing."
Alberto let out his held breath, lowering his head to affectionately bury his nose into Luca's hair, hiding his relieved, happy expression. Encouraged by the quiet vibration he heard start up in Luca's chest and the way his hand was squeezed just a little harder, Alberto smiled at the memory of his past insecurities, vanished for now in the space of another turn together over the dance floor.
Wrapped now in a gauze of affection and devotion, it was easy to put aside all the arguments and other imperfections of the past— blights of jealousy, sadness, fear. Not to be forgotten, but to be remembered as pieces that contributed to the path they'd been on since their first summer. Too young then to understand, and old enough now to recognize love and welcome it.
The music changed in the distance as the piece came to a close, melting into a slower tempo as a new one began— shimmering notes in the air pulling long and clear and demonstrating the beauty of the whole made possible through connection. Their dancing similarly slowed, the aim no longer to move through the room and instead to stay in one spot, simply existing together for the remainder of this moment.
"I've always wanted to dance with you like this," Alberto began quietly after a few minutes, whispering so only Luca could hear. The words were coming in the ease of pure honesty, the dimmed light of the room and their quiet closeness making Alberto brave. He brought Luca's hand in to rest on his chest, holding it gently over his heart.
"I've always wanted to be allowed to hold you like this too, for longer than a few seconds," he continued, sliding the hand he had on Luca's waist a little higher up his back, bringing him in closer. "And not just when you were coming home. Or leaving again."
Luca sighed softly, a little sorrowful with regret. His nose brushed the warm skin above Alberto's shirt collar, nudging gently below his ear. Alberto was lost in this dream-like bubble, not daring to open his eyes but instinctively registering Luca's intimate gesture as he spoke his deepest desires into existence.
"And I want to kiss you," Alberto breathed, his voice falling so soft that Luca felt his words were a single delicate thread connected directly into his heart. "Not since always; I didn't know at first. But one day I realized that I want to kiss you until you can't remember if the sun is a planet or a star, or who said that the Earth is round, or what a black hole is. I want to kiss you
until the only thing that you're sure you know...is how much I love you."
Luca could already barely think, his capacity for thought so consumed with longing that there wasn't room for anything except the overwhelming need to act. With his eyes raised to Alberto's he could see the space behind him reminiscent of a vision he'd had before they'd met— the ceiling cast full of reflected light, like being underwater and seeing the sunlight sparkling on the surface above, tempting him just out of reach.
Only it wasn't, anymore.
Luca angled his face up, eyes closing as their noses touched, and they just breathed. He tentatively nudged his nose against Alberto's and Alberto nudged back, once, twice, and his fingers slid up into the curls at the back of Luca's neck. Luca shivered, making the smallest tilt of his head to lean in toward Alberto's mouth and—
The world shifted, and began to reappear at the fringes of his consciousness.
Movement had begun to stir throughout the room, with chatter and laughing voices replacing the music, and Luca turned his head to look around in surprise— the quartet was setting aside their instruments for an intermission. He felt the way Alberto trembled against him and groaned into his shoulder from their interrupted, would-have-been-romantically-perfect first kiss. Luca turned back to him, but Alberto had already let him go, forced to step aside as the other couples jostled around them exiting the dance floor.
"Ragazzi. Let's get away from this crowd for a bit, sì?" Giulia reappeared, with a fresh drink and a thoughtful expression.
With a nod of her head toward a set of balcony doors at the far end of the room she led the way and Luca followed, disappointment heavy in the beats of his aching heart until he looked around, searching for Alberto and finding that he was already at his side with a shy smile, his hand slipping easily again into Luca's. Luca understood, in the way Alberto's hand gripped his to not lose hold of him as they moved together through the crowd, that it didn't really matter in which exact moment a thing happened; the perfection would be there whenever it did.
—
And if Giulia sipped her drink and looked to the stars as she walked out onto the empty balcony, dreamy in the complete satisfaction of the evening and conveniently missing the way Alberto held Luca back to kiss him in the doorway behind her, then that was her gift to them.