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April, 2012; Cardiff, Wales
Wales stands to one side by the bagged salads, feeling superfluous and also slightly embarrassed, as Romano storms down the vegetable aisle like some sort of epicurean whirlwind, prodding at and tutting over the produce on display.
It's rather like food shopping with France, only a lot angrier.
By the time Romano's reached the potatoes, a fellow shopper has stopped alongside Wales to watch the spectacle. Wales exchanges a sheepish look of shared understanding with him, rather wishing he'd insisted on making this trip on his own as had been his original intention.
"He with you?" the man eventually asks.
"Yes," Wales admits, somewhat unwillingly. "He... He's Italian," he finds himself adding, as though that's a reasonable explanation for, well, anything at all.
The man, however, gives a thoughtful nod, as though he's just been granted some sage wisdom, and then trundles away towards the bakery section.
Wales is still puzzling over that reaction when Romano finally returns, placing a bulging bag full of tomatoes and a single onion into Wales' trolley.
"Is that it?" Wales asks incredulously.
"Only stuff here that's worth eating," Romano says.
Wales can scarcely believe that an entire supermarket's-worth of vegetables are otherwise inedible, but, then again, he's hardly the best judge. He will just have to defer to Romano's superior knowledge on that score, and forge on.
"What else do you need?" he asks.
Romano stares down at the meagre contents of the trolley with such furious intensity that Wales is a little surprised that they don't spontaneously combust.
"Basil," he finally decides.
"I've got some of that at home already."
Romano snorts and rolls his eyes; a particular combination he reserves for those occasions when he thinks Wales is being especially dull-witted.
"Okay," Wales says, belatedly recalling the derision with which Romano had viewed his small selection of dried herbs to the first – and thus far, only – time he'd attempted to cook in his kitchen. "You'll want fresh, I suppose. Well, there's a chilled cabinet just round the corner of this aisle that should have those little pots of them."
Even though it does add a touch of verdancy to the otherwise utilitarian starkness of the building, Wales has always felt unaccountably saddened by that display of potted herbs. Perhaps it's the knowledge that their spirited attempts to continue to live and grow despite being dropped into the alien and inhospitable environment of a supermarket fridge will all come to naught, and they'll be chucked in the bin a few days after being purchased after having half their leaves torn from them.
On the few occasions he's overcome his ridiculous squeamishness with the whole concept and bought some himself, he has tried to transplant them to his flowerbeds once they've outlived their usefulness in his kitchen, but they all curled up and died within a week, eventually falling victim to the stray cats who frequent his garden even if they did manage to survive the nightly invasion of slugs.
Romano, however, looks them over with a far more pragmatic eye, dismissing this one as too spindly and that one as too stunted, before finally selecting a lush specimen with broad leaves that seem to almost glow with good health.
One of the ones he's dismissed as unworthy looks particularly sickly, drooping pathetically on its brown and wilting stem. Its end will probably be even more premature than the one which its culinary destiny had had in store for it.
"What's the matter?"
The snappish irritation in Romano's voice makes Wales think that he's likely been looking forlornly at the plant for quite some time.
"This poor little thing will probably be thrown out by the..."
Wales' words, reflexively and honestly given, wither under the force of the glare Romano turns on him, which is far fiercer than the one the hapless tomatoes had been subjected to.
"Look, I know I'm being stupid, but..." Wales falters yet again, because, really, there is no 'but' worth speaking of. He sighs heavily. "Forget it. Let's just go and—"
"Fine," Romano announces suddenly, scooping up the browning plant and dropping it unceremoniously into the trolley. "Come on, you need to show me where the oil is in this place."
It comes as no surprise that Wales' own store of cooking oils has been judged and found wanting in his absence, and only slightly less of one that most of the supermarket's selection has also been deemed unfit for purpose, but Wales can scarcely credit that each and every mid-range brand is completely inedible.
He looks down at the glass bottle clutched in Romano's hand, back to the price ticket attached to the edge of the shelf, and then winces. 'Eight pounds?' a voice that sounds very much like Scotland's intones derisively in his head. 'You'd be better off buying your own fucking olive grove and making it yourself.'
"Michael's only ever had cooking lessons from Arthur before, so he's not exactly what you'd call skilled in the kitchen," he says. "The good stuff will be wasted on him."
Romano doesn't dignify that observation with a response. He turns the bottle over and reads the label on the back. Whatever he sees there clearly displeases him, because he slams the bottle back down on the shelf, and picks up a £9 one in its stead.
Wales bites back a pained groan at the sight. "Does it have to be extra virgin?"
"Yes," Romano says with a degree of brusqueness which suggests he considers the question itself somewhat insulting.
"Why?" Wales asks exasperatedly. At this rate, he's no doubt going to end up spending his week's food budget on the preparation of a single meal. "Is it not worth eating at all if the olives weren't crushed between the thighs of the most virtuous maidens in the whole of Italy?"
Romano's mouth twitches a little at one corner. He's never once appreciated any of Wales' attempted jokes, so Wales doesn't anticipate a smile, but the expected scowl isn't forthcoming, either. Just the twitch, and then a remarkably patient-sounding, "That isn't what it means."
"I know," Wales has to admit, feeling a little deflated yet again. "It's something to do with the age of the olives, isn't it?"
Romano shakes his head. "No, it's—"
"Dylan!" a very familiar voice calls out from the direction of the shelves of ketchup, a little further away down the aisle.
"Janice." He smiles in greeting at his friend, and they both say in unison, "Fancy meeting you here!" as they do every time their paths cross here – their shared local supermarket – which tends to happen at least once a fortnight.
She catches hold of his hand when he approaches her, drawing him close enough to first press a slightly powdery kiss to his cheek and then whisper in his ear, "Got company, I see."
"Oh, yes. Yes, he's my..." The term still feels so foreign and wrong that Wales' mouth initially rebels against forming it. "My boyfriend."
Janice's laughter makes her voice ring out so loudly that there's very little chance that Romano might not have heard her. "Another one?" she says. "I can hardly keep track of them all!"
"The only one," Wales says – much to his chagrin – pitching his voice low in the hopes it will encourage her to do the same. Everything's gone very still behind him. He's sure Romano's listening to them both very intently. "For the past year or so, at least."
"And you've never brought him round to meet me?" Janice tuts, and then cranes her neck to inspect Romano over the slope of Wales' shoulder. "He's very handsome," she mouths to him afterwards.
Objectively, Wales supposes she's right, but as he's never been able to fully separate himself from the almost certain knowledge that behind that face lies a mind which considers him an annoyance at best, and an unfathomable idiot unfit to breathe the same air as him at worst, its appeal occasionally eludes him.
"Hmm," he says noncommittally.
"He is!" Janice insists, pushing playfully at his shoulder. "Well, are you going to introduce us, then?"
Wales likes Janice a great deal, and would really rather not subject her to Romano's current (constant) sullenness of mood, but he can't think of a way of refusing her request that wouldn't make her think that the fault lay on her side and not Romano's.
He takes a deep breath to steel himself for the catastrophe to come, then beckons for Romano to join them. When he draws near, Wales gestures between the two of them, and says, "Janice, Lovino." He flips his hand. "Lovino, Janice. My next-door neighbour."
Janice holds out her own hand expectantly. For a long, excruciating moment, Romano hesitates, and Wales has the horrible feeling he's going to refuse to shake it, in which case Wales will just have to up sticks and move house because he'll certainly never be able to bear the shame of it, otherwise.
But, eventually, Romano takes gentle hold of the tips of Janice's fingers, presses a kiss to the back of her hand, and then murmurs something too softly for Wales to catch, though he presumes it's complimentary given the way Janice blushes pink to the tips of her ears.
She laughs again, and then turns towards Wales to tip him a very unsubtle wink and say, "Oh, I think you should try and keep hold of this one, love."
If Wales hadn't been absolutely certain that Romano had never once left his sight from the moment they stepped into the supermarket, he could easily have convinced himself that he'd lost the Romano he knows somewhere around the cereal aisle and unwitting picked up his alternate from a kinder, gentler universe, instead.
He listens to Janice's tales about her many grandchildren with a keen attentiveness that even Wales himself would be hard-pressed to emulate, displays what appears to be genuine concern when she shares her worries about her shiftless son-in-law, Greg, and very graciously accepts the invitation to pop around for tea the next day that she offers before she reluctantly takes her leave of them.
"Okay," Wales says once she's rounded a stack of discounted biscuits and disappeared from view, "now I'm not at all surprised that Belgium's been getting suspicious about our relationship."
Romano's expression hardens in an instant. "Why?" he snaps.
"You're obviously perfectly capable of being pleasant to other people."
"And...?"
"And I don't think I've ever even seen you smile before, never mind anything else," Wales says. "Look, we've only managed to fool my family because they'd all prefer to imagine we're not dating in the first place. God only knows why your brother's been taken by it all. If this whole charade's ever going to work out in both our favours, then you're probably going to have to learn to look like you enjoy spending time with me on occasion."
"What the hell do you want me to do? You were the one who decided we should never try to kiss again."
"Jesus, no, I didn't mean we should be kissing." Wales' chest constricts at the very thought of it. "Just... Just maybe you could try to stop acting like you're worried that you'll have an allergic reaction if you come into contact with me."
Romano ruminates upon this for a moment, the close scrunch of his eyebrows suggesting deep cogitation, and then, very decisively, reaches out and takes hold of Wales' hand.
His grip is tight almost to the point of pain, and so unexpected that Wales' nearly chokes on his own tongue in surprise.
"Jesus Christ," he splutters. "I didn't mean you had to do it now. There's no point to it if we're on our own, is there?"
"Make up your fucking mind." Romano drops Wales' hand as quickly as if it were made of hot lead, and then glowers at nothing in particular whilst Wales attempts to massage some life back into his poor, constricted fingers. At length, he draws back his shoulders and sets off at a rapid clip with no warning save a terse, "Flour next."
After flour – both bread and pasta – comes organic free range eggs, then sea salt, sugar, and a veritable mountain of chocolate, all of which, to Wales' astonishment, Romano insists on paying for.
Wales thanks him profusely at the checkout, and then again as they make their way across the car park, as a single utterance hardly seems adequate to the situation.
"It's very kind of you," he says. "You didn't have to do all of this."
"Who else was going to teach him to cook?" Romano shrugs. "You?"
"Well, no, but I'm sure Ffrainc would have jumped at the chance if I'd asked him. And he's over here all the time, anyway; he wouldn't have had to make a special trip like you did."
Romano gives a single, curt and accepting nod to that, but he doesn't see fit to expound on his motivations further until they reach Wales' car, whereupon he offers the slightly opaque, "He doesn't like me much, does he?"
"Who? Gogledd?" Wales asks, stalling in the desperate hope that he will be able to come up with of a palatable alternative to the bald truth of the matter if he can buy himself a little more time.
Romano trots out the combined snort and rolled eyes again, and says, "I know he doesn't."
"I wouldn't say—"
"I know he calls me your 'horrible boyfriend' and 'Grumpy Italy'. Scozia, too."
Wales was an enthusiastic proponent of the latter, as well, not much more than a year ago. He flushes, and his resultant guilt prompts him to suggest the extremely overoptimistic assessment that, "He's bound to come around after you give him these lessons. He'll really appreciate them."
Romano's lips curl upwards a little; not quite a smile like he was bestowing on Janice earlier, but closer to one than he normally manages in Wales' presence.
Wales finds it utterly inexplicable. He'd always thought that Romano had taken as much of a dislike towards Scotland and Northern Ireland as they had to him, and he'd never once before given any indication that their antipathy affected him in the slightest.
"And Scozia...?"
The small, hopeful lilt to that question makes Wales chuckle ruefully. "I wouldn't even bother trying with him," he says, shaking his head. "Maybe if we had a year or two to work on it, he'd eventually come around, but with any luck this... This entire farce will be nothing but a distant memory by then."