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Han-seo knew how to deal with stronger, more powerful men with a bruised ego, knew it well.
But Han-seo, towards the end of his miserable, sorry life, had also grown tired of having to pacify, tired and sick of offering himself as the punching bag, and Alonzo, who's born into a gentler, more forgiving life, still inherits this brand of short-fused stubbornness.
So the next time Luca throws him a derisive aside, Alonzo simply won’t have it.
“What's your problem with me?”
Not gracing him with a look, Luca keeps walking along the stretch of the hallway that leads to the stairs. “My problem is you, that's just it!”
With a roll of his eyes, Alonzo bares his teeth. “What have I ever done to you?”
It's his own fault for sticking to the heel of an angry mafioso so Alonzo hides his wince when Luca, apparently forgetting about the fragility of Alonzo's body, snaps around and crowds him against the wall.
“You shouldn't even be here, for one thing!” Luca growls. “Vincenzo is wasting his most trusted men, his precious time and resources on you, and you just take it because you rich chaebol heirs think you deserve everything!”
You’re greedy.
When someone extends a finger, you want the whole hand.
“What do you know?” Alonzo pushes at Luca's chest, not to push away but just to push. “You know nothing about me!”
“I know enough to say you are the last thing we need right now.”
You shouldn't have been born.
Alonzo grinds his teeth as though he could gnash the thought, the memory, between them. “Tough luck.” Hanging on to his dignity and pride, Alonzo juts his jaw forward. When that's all he has, he'll wear his dignity and pride like a rose its thorns. Because he can do pretty, but he can do petty too. “I'm here, and I'm not leaving. What will you do about it?”
Luca’s eyes flash with something, with anger or irritation or something else entirely, and maybe Alonzo's head sways forward a little to try and figure out this puzzle and, like the first domino, that makes Luca's gaze drop further down.
Brows still furrowed to an angry frown, hands still gripping Alonzo’s forearms, pressing him to the wall, he licks his lips.
And then, out of nowhere, he shows Alonzo what he'll do about that: He surges forward and slams his lips against Alonzo's.
It's not a kiss, no.
Not in the true sense of the word. Not from the way it almost hurts, from the way the force of it knocks Alonzo’s head a little backwards against the wall and Alonzo’s lips are pressed together almost too tightly and Luca's nose knocks against his, hard and awkward.
It's not a kiss.
That's what Alonzo keeps telling himself even when his tense shoulders slowly melt under the feeling of Luca's hands roaming over his back, tracing his shoulder blades, even when his lips start to give way to Luca's hot pressure as though his body has a mind of its own.
It's not a kiss. Not even when Alonzo's hand comes up, his fingers rake through Luca’s hair, play with the soft locks in his nape, where Luca is still a little damp from the sweat of his morning jog.
It's not a kiss, not even when Alonzo kisses back.
That's why it's easy to let go, to put his free hand to Luca's chest and shove back softly when his lungs skip out on him and he sounds like an eighty-year-old who just tried to run up a flight of stairs. For a moment they stay in each other's orbit, breathe the same air. Too afraid to lift his gaze, all Alonzo can see, stare at, is Luca’s lips, so he can’t be sure where Luca's eyes are aiming, just that the next time he moves, those wicked lips find his neck, and Alonzo gasps.
In his drunk-like haze, all Alonzo can think, when Luca expertly finds exactly the right nerve endings to set aflame with an accuracy that would drive even the strongest-willed of men wild, is, madly, it's true what they say about Italians.
But then Luca's hands roam further down, and Alonzo's stomach tenses and his breathing flattens even more, and Alonzo shoves him away again, hard this time. So hard, Luca stumbles back a few steps, halting just a few steps before the edge of the stairway, looking at him wide-eyed, as though suddenly waking up from a dream, as though surprised by a cold shower.
They look at each other, Luca trying to find words to speak, Alonzo trying to find air to breathe.
“This never happened,” Luca says finally.
And he storms off down the stairs, leaving Alonzo with only the wall at his back as support.
It wasn’t a kiss.
That's what Alonzo keeps telling himself.
*
They never talk about it.
True to Luca's words and Alonzo's mantra, it's like it never even happened.
*
It drives Luca crazy.
As long as he could pretend to hate Alonzo, he could shove back his momentary lapse as a defect of his libido. He hasn’t exactly had much free time lately, with everything going on, and being forced to share close quarters with the same person for an extended period of time would give anyone the wrong idea.
But once he started giving Alonzo a chance and they became something like friends… It's becoming hard to pretend.
Especially considering how absolutely easy it seems to be for Alonzo.
Alonzo who'll come back from physical therapy with his cheeks an enticing red and that one strand of hair sticking to his forehead and his biceps flexing when exhaustion urges him to rely on crutches again.
Alonzo, who'll scrunch up his nose adorably when he finds something confusing or funny or when he's about to say something he knows is cheeky.
Alonzo who, for his part, seems to already have forgotten all about their little incident. Like it's easy, forgettable. Like it doesn’t replay in Luca's head whenever he tries to have a single sane thought when Alonzo is near.
*
The first time Alonzo can be bullied into swim trunks, Vincenzo makes a whole deal out of it while trying to look for all the world that he's not. Hovering between the pool and the terrace door, Luca silently amuses himself at the sight of Italy's most feared Cassano looking like a parent who's attending their child’s first day at school.
Until the door bursts open and Alonzo strides out and Luca’s own heart drops to his stomach.
Luca never thought it was possible to experience a scene playing out in slow-motion but it does seem to freeze time at the same rate it’s speeding up his heart, the way Alonzo brushes his fingers through his hair as the first rays of sunlight make the sunscreen-slick skin on his bare chest gleam enticingly.
“Stop staring.” Vincenzo suddenly pipes up beside him and Luca almost jumps out of his skin. His best friend's face is stern, almost cold as he looks ahead, and he knows, Luca thinks with dawning trepidation, he must know, and his right hand is in the pocket of his jacket, hidden from sight and— “This is the first time he feels comfortable enough to go out swimming,” he adds, “So don’t make him feel insecure about this.”
It takes Luca a minute to figure out that he's referring to the surgery scar across Alonzo's abdomen and nothing else, and another minute to realize that he's been spared from suffering a heart attack for now.
*
Until he decides to no longer evade it.
“Consigliere.” Luca knows the risk of broaching this topic with Vincenzo of all people. He's Alonzo's brother after all, and Vincenzo tends to be protective of his people to a fault, but he was Luca's best friend before he was anyone else's anything. So there. “Have you ever put your foot in your mouth with… well, with a girl? As in, you made the first move but then backtracked saying it meant nothing only to regret your own words because maybe it did mean something after all?”
Vincenzo raises his brow. “A girl, hm?”
“Well.”
“You caught feelings?”
“Well.”
Not really.
His eyes stray over to Alonzo who is studying with Sergio on the other side of the room, or he should be, but he seems to be paying more attention to balancing his pencil between his upper lip and nose than to keep up with what his teacher is telling him. Luca smiles. What a ridiculous man.
So maybe he did after all. Catch some feelings or other.
Possibly.
“If you’re serious about her, then fix it. Tell her how you feel.”
Luca nods silently to himself. Then shakes his head. Considers Vincenzo. Looks down again. Plays with the coaster of his beer, lets it twirl between thumb and forefinger. “What if it's not a girl?”
The eyebrow on Vincenzo’s forehead climbs higher but, to his credit, he catches himself quickly enough. “Then my answer would be the same. Talk to him. Hey.” His eyes force Luca's gaze back up to meet his. “What exactly happened?”
“Well, I was kind of a jerk to h– to him, at the beginning. But he wouldn’t take any of my shit, and I guess his stubbornness… got to me.”
No doubt thinking of his own stubborn person who captured his heart, Vincenzo smirks. “Stubbornness can be attractive.”
Agonized, Luca nods. “So I kissed him. And I… may have wanted to do more.”
“So?”
“So then I panicked and told him it didn’t mean anything.”
“But it did?”
Luca nods. “To me? Yeah.”
Vincenzo puts a hand on his shoulder. “Tell him that. Tell him what it meant to you.”
Drawing his bottom lip between his teeth, Luca nods again, feeling like an idiot. Feeling like some animal in a cartoon that runs full-speed towards a cliff but can’t avoid the fall because it's too late to slow down or change tracks. So they fall.
“What if it was,” Luca's gaze, deliberately, drifts over to Alonzo again. “Someone you know.”
Vincenzo blinks. “Someone I know?”
With decreasing subtlety, Luca cants his head in a specific direction. “Someone you’re close to.”
Vincenzo blinks again.
Luca gestures even less subtly.
Until it clicks.
“Han-seo??” Vincenzo basically shrieks.
From the other side of the room, Alonzo whips his head around to them, all question marks in his gaze. With a clatter, the pencil falls to the ground. Luca gets up, takes Vincenzo by the elbow and drags him out.
*
He drags him to another, more secluded room where Vincenzo promptly freaks out at Luca, but at least here they are undisturbed and without audience.
“No.”
“Vincenzo.”
“No!”
“Consigliere.”
“Absolutely not!”
“I'm not asking you permission,” Luca states. “We’re not supposed to be so old-fashioned anymore.”
“Well, we are, in this case, and I'm not giving it!”
“He can make his own decisions.”
“He makes real dumb decisions sometimes.”
“So I would be a dumb decision?”
“Yes!”
Luca throws him a look of hurt. Vincenzo counters with one of exasperation.
“He probably doesn’t even feel the same way!”
“Good!” Vincenzo says. “Because otherwise, you just macked on my little brother only to stomp over his heart right after, and best friend or not, Luca, I will get you for this, merda!”
“Well, don’t worry because I'm sure he doesn’t. Because he seems immune to any of my attempts to come onto him.”
“You—” Pinching the bridge of his nose, Vincenzo cuts himself off. “You're coming onto my little brother? Still?”
“Alonzo,” Luca says. “I'm coming onto Alonzo, stop it with that big bro bullshit.”
“Well, you know what happened to the last person who hurt him.”
“I know! Message received, can you be my best friend again for a second now? Because a moment ago, when you didn’t know who this was about, you just told me to tell him how I feel.”
“I take it back.” At Luca's hurt look he softens his voice a fraction. “No, really. He has a lot of shit to deal with at the moment. Don’t add your,” he waves his hand in the air in a vague gesture, “ thing to the list. Just be his friend. That's what he needs right now.”
Longing for the drink he left in the other room, Luca brings his hand up, drags it over his mouth. Slowly, he nods. “You're a good big brother, you know that?”
*
When Luca steps out on the terrace, Alonzo is fast asleep on his deck chair, the book he'd been reading still open and resting on his chest, one finger still marking the page where he left off even in his sleep.
Despite the persistent warmth left behind by the vanishing evening sun, the wind is blowing just as strongly today and Alonzo is wearing only a t-shirt. So Luca takes one of the comforters from the living room and drapes it over the young man.
The weight of the blanket wakes Alonzo and he blinks up at him sleepily, squints into the setting sun that Luca's head can’t quite obscure and— smiles. Smiles so freely and innocuously it makes Luca's heart skip a beat.
Oh, he's so screwed.
“‘Time’s it?” Alonzo asks, voice as rough and sleepy as he looks.
Luca isn’t wearing a watch but he can make a guess. “Sometime past nine.”
“Oh, that's not so late.” With the back of his hand, Alonzo stifles a yawn. “Then why am I so tired?”
“It's been a long day.” Between physical therapy, Italian lessons and worrying about both Vincenzo and the little girl he met at the hospital, Alonzo didn’t allow himself much of a respite lately, and Luca wonders if that's on purpose, if he needs to have every minute of his day occupied by something or other just to not go crazy.
He’d be very like his brother, that way.
Luca takes the book out of Alonzo's hands, taking care to place the bookmark that lies abandoned on the small glass table next to the deck chair inside the book and sets it down. Then he extends a hand to Alonzo. “Let's get you to bed.”
He half expects Alonzo to protest, to claim that it's not that late and he's not that tired but this time, Alonzo just takes his hand with a grateful, tired smile. “Thank you.”
His hand is warm in Luca's.
*
He leans heavily on his shoulder as Luca leads them up towards the sleeping quarters. He smells faintly of lemon and lavender, from the trees and bushes in the garden, and something else Luca can’t quite make out, maybe from his shampoo or some perfume Alonzo uses, a tantalizing scent he's come to associate with something purely Alonzo.
Luca accompanies him as far as to his room, his bed, where Alonzo's arm slips from his shoulder, fingers lingering on his upper arm for one breathless second, and Alonzo lets himself fall onto the bed. His eyes already fall shut again and he smacks his lips together ones, twice, curls them into a lazy, content smile.
For an awkward moment, Luca just stands there and watches him. The irony doesn’t escape him that just a few weeks ago, he wanted this man gone, and now he can’t tear himself away.
He allows himself another second to compose himself, then clears his throat.
Alonzo's eyes snap back open as he motions to go. He drapes one arm uselessly over the edge of the bed, as though reaching out. “Stay until I'm asleep?”
The breath catches in Luca's throat and he needs a moment until he's sure his voice will come out normal. “Don't ask me that.”
“What's the big deal? I asked Vincenzo that plenty of times when I was still in the hospital.”
“Really not the same thing.”
“Why not?”
Vincenzo told him not to.
But Alonzo's eyes are a warm dark shade of brown in the low light of the nightstand lamp and they look up at him with a guileless openness that would disarm even the most heavily armed soldier and it makes Luca feel stripped naked, split open and helpless at his feet.
Pushed to the edge of a cliff, Luca takes the leap. “Because I don't want it to be.”
Alonzo stares at him. Holding eye-contact, he deliberately scoots over on the bed, leaving the right side empty. “Stay,” he says again, and Luca thinks, fuck. This man will be the death of him.
Naturally, he complies.
Shrugging off his jacket and ridding himself off his boots, he gingerly lays himself down.
For a moment, they both just lie there side by side, staring at the ceiling and shoulders carefully not touching.
Holding his breath, Luca wonders if Alonzo knows. If he’s as oblivious as he seems, or if it's all been a ploy to drive Luca to insanity. Or if he’s had a revelation, here, in the quiet, intimate little bubble of his bedroom. If the staccato rhythm of a racing heart, the only sound in the quiet room, comes from within Luca's chest alone or if there's a twin rhythm accompanying it.
“I'm a mess,” Alonzo says after a drawn-out stretch of silence, and Luca thinks, oh.
Well.
If that's all.
“I'm in the mafia,” he counters.
Alonzo turns his head to the right, cheek smothered against the pillow. One strand of hair is sticking to the side of his forehead and Luca itches to reach out and curl it behind his ear. “I… have a lot of baggage.”
Luca blows up his cheeks. “I'm in the mafia.”
“You can’t win this by constantly repeating that line.”
“Watch me.”
But Alonzo doesn’t return Luca's grin. “I… talk to my dead brother sometimes.” Now it's Alonzo's heart that beats loud in his chest, Luca's almost sure. “No, it's more like he talks to me.” A furrow appears on his forehead and Luca aches to wipe that off too. “No, it's more like I do something, and I just know what he would have to say to that. And it's like. He's in my head and I can’t shake it off.”
Luca looks at him. He doesn’t know what to say to that. “Okay,” he tries. “Want me to kill him again?”
Alonzo snorts. “Wish you could.” His voice is low, quiet, as though he half expects to be punished for the admission if uttered any more loudly.
“Look, everyone has their baggage.”
“There's more,” Alonzo insists. “I killed people. Well, I didn’t— not with my own hands but. I definitely got some people killed.”
Luca looks at him. “I'm in the mafia.”
They both laugh. “Right.” Alonzo says. “That one's on me.”
“You don't have to tell me everything yet. I promise I don’t scare that easily,” Luca says. One thing he has to ask, though. “Can I just… hold your hand?”
Alonzo rolls his eyes and reaches across what little distance there is left between them on the huge bed, and threads his fingers with Luca’s. “I thought the mafia just takes what they want.”
“Nope. The mafia are real gentlemen.”
“And you’re the exception?”
Luca knocks his shoulder against his and Alonzo laughs until his stomach aches. “Ow,” he makes, but a smile lingers on his face, one that makes his eyes crinkle and this time, Luca doesn’t stop himself from reaching out and brushing that strand of hair from his forehead. He keeps his hand there, cupping his cheek, eyes tracing the way Alonzo's mouth drops slightly open.
Alonzo's free hand, the one that's not holding Luca’s, comes up to cover the hand against his cheek. A shiver runs down Luca's spine as his thumb rubs back and forth over his knuckles. Those brown eyes bore into his. They’re just looking at each other, they’re not even kissing, but this still sparks one of the most intense feelings in his gut, like he's free-falling but without the fear of crashing down. It feels safe, here on the bed beside Alonzo.
At some point, and for the life of him Luca can’t tell how much time has passed, Alonzo shifts to his side, one hand still holding Luca’s, and tucks his head on Luca’s chest, just under his chin, and demands, “Hold me.”
And Luca does.
Free hand coming up to Alonzo's back, he holds him, and he stays until Alonzo is asleep.
And for a long time after, until the first rays of the rising sun peek through the window, casting both their sleeping forms in a golden haze.