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He awakes tangled in his sweaty bedsheets, unable to properly catch his breath. Just like so many nights before, his dream still lingers in his mind, memories of his parents’ dying screams and their desperate pleas to save their son as that insane puppet tore them to pieces right before his eyes.
Lorenzini trembles, sitting up in bed and switching on his lamp as he rubs his face with shaking hands, trying to calm himself down. He is so infuriatingly used to this experience, but it never gets easier. Lorenzini shudders for breath, frustrated when his eyes begin to sting; he isn’t a child anymore, and Krat’s Prince of High Society will not be reduced to sobbing like a little boy.
His stomach churning with anxiety, Lorenzini climbs out of bed, not wanting to go back to sleep after that (and somewhat doubting that he even could sleep if he wanted to, his body running on adrenaline after the nightmare). Wrapping his bathrobe around himself, he steps into his slippers and approaches the door, prepared to go downstairs and tinker with gadgets all night so he can at least do something productive when he cannot sleep. Blinking back another urge to cry, Lorenzini opens the door to his room at Hotel Krat…
And finds Pulcinella right outside his door, arm raised in preparation to knock.
“A-Ah, Pulcinella, what can I do for you?” Lorenzini asks brightly, as though it isn’t two o’clock in the morning and he doesn’t look like an absolute wreck and Pulcinella isn’t intimately aware of his nightmares, having comforted him through many as a child.
“Master Lorenzini,” Pulcinella says, looking him up and down, “I know you had a nightmare.”
Lorenzini tries and fails to supress a flinch. “H-How can you possibly know that?”
“Because I know you.”
And he really does. Lorenzini remembers crying in his butler’s arms night after night when he was a child, so there is nobody better at detecting when Lorenzini has suffered a nightmare.
Lorenzini lets out a weak chuckle. “I can’t hide anything from you, can I…?”
“You do not need to hide anything from me, Master Lorenzini,” Pulcinella says, taking a step closer. “I am your butler. It is my job to help you.”
Pulcinella is so much more than just a butler. He is Lorenzini’s trusted confidant, his oldest friend, and the only remaining member of his family after his parents died. Lorenzini loves him more than anyone on the planet. So why does he keep trying to shut Pulcinella out when all he wants to do is help?
“Merda…” Lorenzini mumbles. And even though anyone could see, Lorenzini darts towards his butler and wraps his arms around Pulcinella, resting his head on Pulcinella’s shoulder. He still won’t let himself cry, ridiculously embarrassed about something totally normal.
Pulcinella’s arms encircle him, holding Lorenzini close. And even though Pulcinella’s body is stiff and cold, Lorenzini has never felt more comfortable than he does wrapped in his butler’s arms.