Chapter Text
Hot Pants watched her roommate in vague amusement as he tore through his clothing drawers, getting increasingly agitated as he failed to find what he was looking for.
“Not that one,” she supplied helpfully as he checked the sweater drawer for the fifth time.
Diego turned to shoot her a nasty look before resuming his search. “It’s not funny. I know I have one.”
She stifled a laugh, trying (and failing) to keep her face impassive. “A nice t-shirt? You wear those diamond-print sweaters all year, with the sole exception of those horrendously ugly t-shirts you use as pyjamas. I honestly didn’t know you owned anything else.”
“And my dress shirts,” he muttered, almost absentmindedly.
He pulled a suitcase out from underneath his bed, tearing it open. He let out a grunt of frustration when it wasn’t in there either.
She leaned against the doorframe, studying the scene. “Why do you need it, anyway? Going somewhere special?”
Diego stood, walking to his closet. “Italy. It’s my nephew’s birthday this week, so I have to look nice.”
Hot Pants paused for a moment. The first thing that caught her interest: Italy. That was a long way from North America. She’d made the journey back and forth a few times when she was younger, though it was tiresome. In an odd way, she was glad she’d given up on being a nun in the end— though, old prayer habits were hard to break. She absentmindedly wondered if he was going to see the Vatican while he was there.
Then the second part of his statement set in. His nephew’s birthday?
She blinked. “You have a what?”
“A nephew.” Diego said, as if it were normal that he had never mentioned any siblings nor their children for the entire time she had known him.
A muscle on her forehead twitched. “Sorry. Let me rephrase. You have siblings?”
He winced, turning away to continue searching his closet. “Ah. One.”
Hot Pants stood there in silence, waiting for him to elaborate. He did not.
Diego seemed to have found the shirt he was searching for, because he picked something out of the closet with a satisfied chirp and placed it in the suitcase.
They stood in an uncomfortable quiet for a minute or two. Diego seemed to be making it his life’s mission to not turn around and meet her eyes, instead attempting to busy himself with folding clothes to put in his suitcase.
She rolled her eyes and walked around to his bed, sitting down next to the suitcase and glaring at him. “Are you really going to make me ask?”
Her roommate stopped folding clothes and sighed, raising his eyes to the ceiling as if in prayer. “Do you have to?”
“We’ve known each other for two years, and lived together for one.” Hot Pants folded her arms. “You’ve never once mentioned any siblings nor their children. Pardon me for being curious.”
Now it was Diego’s turn to roll his eyes, meeting her gaze. “Fine. I have one older brother. Haven’t really spoken to him in years. The kid is his. Happy?”
She wasn’t, really, but she supposed it would have to do for now. Diego had resumed packing his items, folding the last of his pants and moving on to sunscreens.
“So you’re going to visit them both in Italy?” Hot Pants asked.
“Just the kid. My brother was in Egypt, last I checked.” He hesitated, as if thinking. “But for all I know, that could have changed. Like I said, it’s been a couple years since we last spoke.”
That raised about a hundred more questions, but she settled on just one.
“He lives with his mother, then?”
To his credit, Diego was answering every question she had asked rather than avoiding them entirely. Though he was being awfully cryptic about a lot of it.
“No. The kid lives on his own now, so far as I’m aware. But he knows we’re coming to see him.”
Lives on his own? Hot Pants had assumed his nephew was on the much younger side, as you typically do when a twenty year old tells you they have a nephew. But for a kindergartener to be living on their own? Unlikely.
She tilted her head to the side slightly, watching him debate mentally on whether he needed SPF 30 or 50 more. “… Sorry, how old is your nephew, exactly?”
“Is this an interrogation?” Diego scoffed, but continued nonetheless. “He’s fifteen, but his birthday is this month. That’s why I’m going.”
Okay. His nephew was fifteen and lived on his own. Somehow. It would then go without saying that his brother was significantly older than him, which would probably explain why they weren’t close. His brother had likely moved out shortly after he was born.
“You’re a lot closer in age to your nephew than your brother,” she stated, trying to subtly pry for a little more information.
Diego tossed the SPF 50 into his suitcase and shut it. “Yeah. The kid is five years younger than me, and my brother is about eighteen years older.” He paused briefly, seemingly weighing what to tell her. “My brother moved out before I was born— didn’t like our old man too much, from what I gather. Not that it mattered in the end though, since our father up and left shortly after I came into the world. That’s that.”
Hot Pants sat on the bed, taking in that new information. It was a lot more than Diego had said about his family… well… ever, really. He was usually very private about any family aside from his mother, but even then it had taken quite some time (and trust) before he started to talk about her.
Though she couldn’t blame him. She had been quiet about her younger brother for a lengthy period of time as well.
Her roommate moved his suitcase to the floor and sat in the indent it left, leaning back on his hands. “So, what’ll you do while I’m away? Looking to enjoy your spring break?”
She thought for a moment. She’d had nothing planned but studying and work. It was spring break after all, and relatively few friends had stuck around the city. She would’ve gone home herself, but she really had no desire to do so.
“Just some studying, probably,” Hot Pants said truthfully. “I don’t have any special plans.”
His eyes gained a mischievous glint, and his face cracked into that horrifically impish smile which (as Hot Pants had learned over their shared time together) indicated he was up to something. His canines were a little too sharp for her liking.
“Great.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, handing it to her face-down. She looked down at it briefly, puzzled, then back at him.
“And this is…?”
Diego stood up and stretched, picking up his suitcase from the floor. “Well, I’ll need someone who knows Italian to help me get around. The flight leaves tomorrow afternoon.”
He walked out of the room with no further explanation, leaving a dumbfounded Hot Pants with a piece of paper in her hands.
… What?
She grew up in an Italian-American family, and had lived in Italy for a few years, sure. But she hadn’t spoken it since she’d entered university, save for a phone call or two to her family.
Hot Pants glanced down at the paper in her hands, turning it over. She immediately did a double take, staring at the words printed neatly on the front.
It was a plane ticket straight to Milan. And it had her name on it in big bold letters.
… That goddamn lizard.