Work Text:
Bruno made his devotion to his work clear from the start.
The moment a serious relationship began to take shape, he wanted to be sure you understood the importance of his role as a capo and his unwavering loyalty to Passione. While he would never make you anything less than his number one priority, you’ve seen him suffer from many late nights. Whatever he does into the wee hours of the morning—you have no idea, truly, as you’ve learned not to ask—brings him home dead on his feet. The worst part is that you can never really know when he’ll have to leave or when he’ll come back…if he comes back at all.
You shudder at the thought, shaking it from your mind and hugging your blanket a bit tighter around your shoulders.
The silent house has become a close companion to you as of late. The only sound comes from your own footsteps and the television, playing endless reruns of whatever reality show is the least unbearable on a given night. Bruno left five days ago for some vaguely defined ‘business trip’ he couldn’t elaborate on, and was up and out of the house before you’d even opened your eyes. He’s kept in touch only through the briefest of phone calls that come through at the strangest of hours, but you’re more than happy to wake before the sun just to hear his voice. He knows that. Still, that doesn’t make it any easier to be apart, especially when this is the longest he’s ever been away–all he wants is to feel you again. It’s hard enough when he has to leave for a single day, and the hours are starting to wear on him.
The call you’d been awaiting for what felt like a lifetime came in just before dawn this morning. In your half-asleep state, you could barely understand Bruno’s hushed words at first, but after the third repeat, his message finally broke through your haze:
“I’ll be home tonight, amore. Wait up for me if you can. I can’t wait to see you.”
He waited only long enough to make sure you’d heard him before he was gone, and you were left alone on one end of the phone again.
You couldn’t manage to get back to sleep after that. You tossed and turned in your excitement for what could have been countless hours until you couldn’t take it anymore, throwing the blankets off of you and resolving to busy yourself for the rest of the day instead. After all, the least you could do was make sure the house was perfect for Bruno’s arrival. Five days of being away have surely worn him out, and a spotless home and a cozy bed would be the best way to welcome him back.
You passed the hours task by task, chore by chore, cleaning the house from top to bottom and making sure not to miss a single nook or cranny. The house never gets particularly dirty, but a deep cleaning really makes it feel like home. Every dish was washed, just in case he came home hungry and wanted something special; the sheets of your shared bed were washed twice, so that he could really bury himself in the smell when he laid down; you even thought to make sure all of the clothes were washed, so you could both go as long as possible mindlessly basking in the presence of one another without worrying about something as trivial as laundry. Every move was made with the sole intent of ensuring that no unpleasant mundanities would interrupt your long-awaited reunion.
The hours passed on, alternating between a thrilling quickness that only seemed so when you looked away and an agonizing, uncaring slowness that dragged on with every minuscule tick of the clock’s second hand. No amount of anguish could impel the time to move faster. That made the impending reward all the more satisfying, if nothing else. Properitus was right—absence makes the heart grow damn fond.
At some point, even the sun tired of watching you flit about from one duty to another. When you looked outside to see that the sky had gone dark, excitement and worry bubbled up all at once. Excitement at knowing that the day has passed and that Bruno would walk through that door at any moment to bring you into his arms and never let go, but worry in the realization that you haven’t heard from him since this morning, and he should have started on his way home by now.
Even your best attempts to find one last menial task to attend to turned up nothing. By that point, you really had managed to do everything that could have been done, and then some. Your valiant efforts had only rewarded you with the chance to sit with your anxieties.
Obviously, the solution to this is to turn off your brain with trash TV…but even such a mind-numbing occupation has its limits.
Now, you’re on hour three and a half of sitting on the couch, staring straight ahead at the television screen as it beams another pathetically overdramatic storyline directly into your neurons.
Every moment that passes with no ringing of your phone or telltale turning of the front door lock builds your desperation. It’s become almost impossible to ignore that shrill little voice in the back of your head that cries of abandonment, no matter how its logical counterpart tells it to quiet down. The impending threat that is midnight seems to loom over you for no real reason, as if your safety blanket might turn back into a pumpkin when the clock strikes twelve. Perhaps it’s more so that Bruno will go great lengths to keep his word, and if he walks through that door a moment after tonight turns into tomorrow, then he hasn’t, and that’s just not like him.
Still, the clock ticks on. It cares not for one’s character.
Three and a half hours turn into three and three-quarters, and even sooner to ten until the hour. You try to stop yourself from watching the numbers change, but your eyes dash from the screen to the clock and back again against your will. It’s like prey instinct.
Eleven forty-five… forty-six… forty-eight… forty-nine… fifty-one…
Why are you still on the couch alone?
The anxiety is starting to give way to exhaustion. Without a new adrenaline rush to keep you upright, you’re starting to crumble. The previously faraway possibility that you might be going to bed alone tonight has snuck up on you with such graduality that you didn’t notice until it was upon you.
With a heavy sigh, you turn your head to gaze at the clock once more, with intention this time.
Eleven fifty-six… fifty-seven.
You let the blanket you were clinging to fall from your shoulders as you stand. You take a moment to fold it over the back of the couch, then turn the TV off for the night. It’s time to go to bed, Bruno or no Bruno. At this point, it’s looking like he won’t be back until morning, and you should at least be awake enough to greet him with enthusiasm.
Your steps feel heavier than usual as you trudge your way to the stairs. It suddenly seems like such a foreboding task to climb them all the way up to the bedroom, but there’s no other way to get there. One must go on despite one's wariness.
Your last bit of determination manages to carry you halfway up the staircase.
The barely audible clinking of the front door lock stops you in your tracks.
At first, you don’t move. When you turn towards the sound, it stops, but only for a second before it resumes a bit louder. The struggle on the other side of the door becomes obvious; you can vividly envision Bruno cursing under his breath as he fights with his key.
Your eyes dart back to the clock for an instant.
Eleven fifty-nine.
You hop back down the stairs so fast you nearly miss the bottom step and fall flat on your face. Your frantic stumbling looks more than foolish, no doubt, but you haven’t the patience for grace. All that matters is how close you are to what you’ve been waiting so long for.
There’s no way to come to a slow stop in your haste, and your shoulder hits the door with an undignified thud. The pain of the impact doesn’t even register before you’ve already flung the door open so fast it almost comes off the hinges. Even then, no amount of pain could matter when the insurmountable relief of seeing Bruno’s face washes over you.
A beat passes without a word. You both need a second to just stare at the other as though you’re seeing a stranger, but once that second passes, all decorum is forgotten. He brings you into his arms without warning, pulling your feet off the ground and making you yelp in surprise. You return the embrace tenfold, wrapping yourself around him like your life depends on it. You’d sooner die before you let go.
Bruno hooks an arm underneath you and uses the other to shut the door behind him as he carries you inside.
“Amore mio,” he sighs into your neck, “I am so, so sorry for keeping you waiting, I promise you it was not my choice…”
“No, no, of course not, I know,” you assure him. “You would never do that on purpose, I’m just…I’m glad you’re here now.”
You give him a gentle squeeze, and he does the same with a smile that you can feel against your cheek.
Bruno drops his bag without looking where it lands, more concerned with now having two free arms to hold you with. He presses eager kisses all over your cheek and neck, until there isn’t an inch that hasn’t been touched by his lips. You’re giggling too much to kiss him back. He doesn’t mind at all.
“You should have seen me wandering around that damned train station,” he mutters as he carries you up the stairs, “not a sensible person in that place…my train never did show, and I felt so terrible that I let my phone die before I could call you again and let you know what was happening. I finally had to give up and taxi-hopped back home.”
By the time he’s finished his story, he’s gently laying you down on your shared bed. He gives a long kiss to your forehead before pulling away to look at you.
When you get to see Bruno’s face up close, it becomes clear how tired he is. He’s done his best to put himself together, but there’s no hiding the exhaustion in his eyes, and those pesky stray hairs that should be tucked into their place are dangling in front of his face. He looks just as happy to see you as you are to see him, but even still, his smile doesn’t spread as wide as it should.
“I hope I didn’t worry you too much, amore.”
He whispers it, as if he’s embarrassed by his tardiness.
Of course, you can’t tell him the truth, at least not now. You can recount your anxieties another day.
“No, not at all,” you lie, not feeling bad about it for a moment, “I’m just glad you’re home.”
That answer seems to settle his heart a bit. His lips return to your neck, this time on the other side, as he climbs on top of you.
“I missed you so much,” he mumbles, “more than I can say…”
“I missed you, too,” you reply, reaching up to scratch at his scalp with a soft hand. You can’t help but pull him down just a bit, almost afraid he might have to leave again, or worse–stop kissing you.
“I missed you,” he goes on muttering, “I missed you so much…I’ll never leave again, I swear on it, non ti lascerò mai, not ever.”
He starts to ramble, words fading into meaningless sounds that speak vaguely of a yearning yet to be fully satisfied. Your free hand wanders down to his back, rubbing slow circles into it through his jacket and taking in his warmth as he starts to settle into you. You hadn’t realized until now how empty your bed feels without him. Now that he’s back, you wonder how you ever survived in his absence. You lean in to purr into his ear.
“It’s alright, Bruno, I promise. You have no idea how happy I am to finally have you back.”
He gives a little hum in reply, followed by a long exhale that lets him fully relax.
“I mean it,” you go on, “really…you couldn’t have missed me more than I missed you, I mean, you should have seen the way I would toss and turn all night, I don’t think I slept a wink without you. I guess I forgot what it was like to live alone.”
You adjust your hold on him a bit, making yourself comfortable underneath him. There’s not a feeling in the world more comforting than Bruno’s body weight resting on top of you, the slightest hint of his cologne managing to reach your nose. He smells like the man you love, and that’s the only way to describe it. Sure, a thousand other men might use the same cologne, but that doesn’t mean they smell like Bruno.
Suddenly, all that worrying you were doing seems so silly. He might have come home late, but he still came home in the end, just like always. Everything is just as it should be now.
Everything is right again.
That epiphany that you’re right where you’re supposed to be sweeps away the last lingering vestiges of doubt. The world is as at peace as it can be when you’re like this, holding tight to your lover while he trails kisses up and down your neck…
…Wait.
Bruno stopped kissing you. How long has it been since he stopped? You were too lost in your thoughts to notice.
Come to think of it, he hasn’t said much of anything for a good moment, either–or moved.
“...Bruno?”
He doesn’t reply.
“Bruno?” you repeat. “Are you alright?”
Still, he says nothing.
You hate to pull away from him, especially with his head buried in the crook of your neck, but even after another few seconds of waiting, he gives no reply. You tilt his head away from you just enough to get a good look at his face, expecting to see him gazing back at you; maybe he spaced out, too?
“Bruno?”
His eyes are closed, lashes not even fluttering when you say his name. His breathing has slowed, too, you realize, his deep, lazy exhales flowing out of barely parted lips.
Surely he’s not asleep.
“Bruno,” you say, a bit more firmly this time.
Nothing.
No, no, he’s… definitely asleep. He’s starting to snore.
Oh, you can’t even be mad. How could you? He was ready to collapse when he walked in, and he still carried you upstairs to lay you down and show you the love he’d been longing to give you. Even after everything, he thought about you before sleep. He couldn’t have rested without embracing you, even if he couldn’t stop sleep from catching up with him.
You give a lingering kiss to his cheek, brushing a bit of hair behind his ear before tucking his face back into your shoulder. Hopefully, he’ll stay asleep for a long time; he clearly needs it, and you’re more than willing to lie with him until he’s rested up. You’d be more than willing to lie here with him forever.
Nothing will stop your happy reunion from continuing in the morning. It can wait.
For now, you let your eyes fall shut, looking forward to the best damn sleep you’ve had in five days.