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“Grazie for the meal, Signora, but I should be heading back now.”
Luca quirked a brow, frowning as he watched his mother collect his boyfriend’s empty shell, dirtied by only a few lucky scraps of seaweed. “You’re leaving already?” He tilted his head, and he knew his eyes were pouting wide and watery. But, he didn’t do anything to stop it. He wanted Alberto to stay.
Alberto sighed, and a sad little bubble erupted from his snout before dissipating upon the stony ceiling of Luca’s underwater home. “Gotta get back to grinding my nose on the stone…” He glanced away. He muttered, “Caro,” before getting off of his tail. “You know how it is.”
Luca’s frown deepened. He knew they were early into their relationship, but Alberto ought to not be so embarrassed around his family. However, that isn’t the only reason for his unease. He also frowned as the gears inside his brain began chugging and turning over his words. Grinding his nose…on the stone…?
But, before he could place which of the countless human idioms Alberto had so endearingly fumbled this time, his mother was already waving him off! “Be safe getting back.” She smiled warmly over her shoulder, and Alberto only nodded, gave Luca a quick peck on the cheek, and swam out of the room.
Perhaps upon instinct, Luca immediately rose to follow him, but his mother stopped him in his tracks. “Hold your wahoos, Luca,” she said, and why was she grinning? “Watch this.” Why did she have that look on her face? Why was she—? “Renzo!”
Luca watched equally interested and indignant as his father poked his head up from the cast of crabs he was preening, and his mother puckered her lips as if to blow a bubble and closed her eyes. His father, wordlessly understanding, put down his crab gently, swam over to her with a singular flick of his tail, and kissed her.
Luca immediately jerk back, shivering against disgust as hands flying up to cover his eyes—gross!
Then, as Lorenzo went back to his crabs, Daniela opened her eyes and smiled again. She chuckled softly at her son, knocking him a little bit on the shoulder as she passed by him in order to get into the garden, taking the plates of scraps with her.
“Bet you could train Alberto to do that if you tried.”
———
Luca sat patiently at the table, thumbing through the pages of his book, but he wasn’t actually reading much. In reality, he was watching the contours of his boyfriend’s back and arm change as he turned over a bowl of boiling pasta upon the stove, and he was thinking.
Luca sat up a little straighter. “Alberto?”
“Yeah?” he answers. He didn’t turn to him, but Luca closed his eyes anyway.
He let his vision go dark and he pressed his lips together and jutted outward, his posture perfectly straight against the back of the chair and his hands lowered into his lap, folded and politely expectant.
For a moment, he wondered if this was silly—if he ought to give Alberto a hint. But then, he heard the sound of slippers sliding against tile. He felt a small warmth just a few centimeters from his side, then a few inches from his face.
Then, he felt the pressure, and he could have sworn his heart and lungs had both jumped out of his skin.
He opens his eyes to see his boyfriend waltzing back to his cooking with a sly grin. Alberto put the ladle back into the pot and stirred again, humming, “You got that from your mamma.”
Luca scoffed a little laugh, rocking forward. “Mannaggia, how’d you know?”
Alberto turned back to face him, grinning widely know with glittering green eyes and a single cocked brow. “You think she hasn’t done the same to me?”