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Aphrodite: Hephaestus told me he loved me. I didn't know what to say so I just squirted baby oil at him
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Quinton flipped his hand in a gesture that appeared to resemble a return on Dante’s composed and ever polite good evening. His answer to the question posed to him was simple, “no,” twisted with a slight lilt of his bastardised American Italian. “Mi scusi,” he muttered as he slipped through the door and past him, not that it was strictly necessary they both knew he was going to invite himself in regardless of Victoriano’s response. Marishka appeared to recognise him, for better or for worse, and gave him a look of foul distrust. He parted his lips to stick his tongue in her direction before waving his arms frantically in the surgeon’s direction, “he shot me!”
Yet, there was no bullet wound, and Quinton, a boy not unused to being shot, had still lead himself here, to the surgeon, who was not unused to patching him up. It was a homewards journey, even if this particular apartment was…different to his previous. Such was the life of escaping the clutches of the city’s most delightful crime lord—lady? At least Inez had been polite, or had not threatened to spill his throat then and there on the streets, he did not miss his former employer in the slightest. Being on the other side was going to take some getting used to, and it had not clicked in the boy that he could now fully declare himself for justice. He was still mourning the loss of his damnable coat. “My brother shot me.” He scoffed in a voice that had accelerated to such a pitch that made the entire ordeal a smidge more dramatic than it needed to be. Quinton had always been theatrical.
After remembering that he did indeed need to breath, that he couldn’t sustain himself on hysterics and erratic hand movements, he asked. “Il tuo braccio, va bene?” His own moving to shed his outer layer, hoodie spilling onto the floor like a crumpled shadow, he was wearing a plain t-shirt beneath, in a lighter shade of black. Matteo had been the one to get him clothes and his brother was distinctly lacking colour in his wardrobe.
This evening was a quiet one and Dante couldn’t help but savour the silence that consumed the newly refurbished dwelling, bathing in medicated tranquility. His arm got better as time ticked by, worrying the surgeon less and less, however, the inkling of pain returned from time to time, so he’d decided that prolonging a course of painkillers, even needlessly, won’t do him much harm. The opioid nature of the medication allowed the usually restless man to sit back and liquefy into the couch pillows without casting as much as a glance towards the seemingly scowling Doberman, who’d soon decided that she was no longer interested in shooting judging looks at her incurious human and settled at Dante’s feet with a heavy sigh. The dog was smart, incredibly so, and knew exactly when to back down and let the worn out man do whatever his heart desired.
Undoubtedly his heart desired much more than one extra dose of ignorant bliss, but there was also something at the back of his mind that didn’t allow Dante to fully let go of the last shreds of himself just yet - it was a good time to keep his wits about too, seeing as someone had decided to ruin his pleasant evening with a needlessly prolonged chime of the doorbell. A quiet sigh ghosted past parted lips, gently caressing the hand that attempted to arrange the messy mop of brown tresses into something a little more presentable before the man had finally decided to stand up and make his way towards the front door. There was a hint of quiet confidence behind each taken step as, after all, he knew exactly who haunted the other side of the secure, metal barrier.
❝Buonasera Quinton.❞ Composed, serene veneer matched a quiet, sleepy tang of their mother tongue as abstracted gaze attempted to focus on the pale, hooded and yet familiar visage of the restless troublemaker. Dante was used to the spiced nature of the other’s language and didn’t bat an eye at such a poor choice of a pet name - it was a little something that only Quinton was allowed to pull without getting as much as a verbal backhand in return. ❝Stai bene?❞
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jaymes young // i’ll be good
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I’ll be good, I’ll be good for all of the times I never could.
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He was a curious mix of apathy and drowsiness, the latter likely inflicting the former because with a clearer state of mind he might’ve tried to carry on screaming at him. It was a futile effort and Quinton was better conserving his voice for when it could escalate to the desired volume. He gave Matteo a small knowing smile that suggestion his next words might be best high of my life. Except he just thumbed at his shirt, tugging himself inevitably closer when Matteo did eventually and tentatively lay down beside him. “Shut up.” He informed him, his dark head bowed so that his face pressed into the cold hollow of his shoulder. He had been shot, drugged, whatever it had been for a reason, he knew it.
His brother would not wantonly hurt him. Or so he believed. Right now all he wanted was closeness, even if there a desire in him to scream and shout, it lingered beneath the surface of his brain-fog. “Feel like shit.” The words were hazy, a drifting of thought spilled out between them in a soft murmur. He did truthfully feel awful, his head was swimming and nothing really made total sense, drabs of memories that didn’t feel truly his, it was coming back to him slowly. The balcony, the cigarette, the gun.
“Why?”
Why why why. There were a thousand questions ready in wake for when he was of right state of mind, but for now only one sprung to mind. He tried with a desperate clinging effort to stay awake long enough to hear the answer. Quinton needed to know, why Matteo had shot him, why he had drugged him, why he was laying here unable to make sense of the world. A simply curiosity rather than an accusation, that would come later, again. When his voice wasn’t hoarse and a strangled whisper, when his head didn’t feel as though someone had thwacked it with a hammer. His temples were starting to pound, scarcely noticeable in his current state but a newly blossoming constant.
He shifts enough to cover them both wordlessly in the blanket, it’s precision thin knit warm enough to take the chill away from them both. It reminded him of years gone by, years of sitting huddled beneath awnings, laying on floor at the foot of someone else’s sofa with a threadbare jacket to cover them both. He could still remember the long months without a roof over his head, jumping from couch to couch as Lynna exhausted her list of friends.
None of this would be without reason, he just needed to find out why. “What did I do?” What sin had he committed now, to Matteo, to the world they walked in, the list of those he’d irked was long enough to wrap around the cityscape thrice. If Quinton hoped to evade trouble he should’ve moved out a long time ago, but he had never been able to bring himself to leave. It was as close to home as he’d ever gotten. Matteo—Dante—they were home. Then his final hoarse cry, muffled with lips pressed to a pale neck, stunted by the coarseness of his throat, “sorry.”
Sympathy for Iscariot - Quinton and Matteo
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@exvanire
He was not dead and that in itself was remarkable. There was a freeing albeit collision of thoughts as he descended through the streets. Walking the same paths that he always had and he wouldn’t be fool enough to say they looked different but they felt it. There was a fresh new energy in him, charged and ready to spill. He couldn’t deny that there was also an undying sullenness sinking deep into the circles beneath hollow eyes. Fingers tapped in the code to the building. His hood pulled up and over his newly buzzed head, face largely concealed from the outside world, as a result the little blinking camera couldn’t let him into the building purely on recognition. As he slipped through the main door downstairs and up to his apartment there was a slow sureness in his steps. Until he climbed the stairs three apiece and huffed breathlessly when he finally knocked on Victoriano’s door. “Hey bastard.” His personal choice of greeting when the door finally opened, it was not without affection.
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It was him, his beloved brother. And, he had not killed him. Fingers inexorably tightened into the blanket before releasing, reaching out for him as Matteo shifted simultaneously closer. Fingers grazed against his shirt but scarcely seemed to make contact. Everything about him as a feeble exploration of reality. He was beginning to live anew. “Ti amo.” He murmured, because the slip of the familiar language required now conscious thought, the words short enough to cascade from still lips without trouble. And I will always take care of you. Something in his chest thumped, like a shoe thrown into a dryer.
He wanted to hate him, and for all accounts he should, what kind of brother drugged and allegedly kills the other, but he cannot. There isn’t a malicious bone in him and certainly not when it regarded Matteo. The wide dark eyed boy was his kryptonite. He reached out again, with fumbling fingers that made contact with the soft fabric of his shirt in a slow grasp. Soft smile that took all the edges out of his face with one smooth quirk, “that’s…”
“My job.”
Because it was, he was in theory, the older brother. Even if both of them knew that wasn’t the truth of it, not that Quinton would ever admit it. Humour danced thin and coarse against his lips, his throat ragged and dry, yet he still spilled a quiet asking. “Come here?” Because for all his wild gestures, hands moving through the air in silent motions to lay beside him on the sofa, he wasn’t adept at sign language. Quinton relied on a vulgar silver tongue and without it he was paralyzed.
He shifted enough, forcing himself over on the sofa until his spine was pressed up against the plastic coated back, enough space for him. Neither boy took up much. He didn’t understand and he was still a little crestfallen, but the rise and fall of his trembling ire had dissipated beneath the weight of his lethargy. All that was left was a craving for human contact, to press himself into the hollow of his brother’s collarbone and disappear.
Sympathy for Iscariot - Quinton and Matteo
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ph. Jenya Vyguzov
edited by me
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There had been no moment of conscious thought, he simply ceased to exist in that split second it took for the bullet—dart to pierce his skin. When he woke it wasn’t with the sharpness or clarity of a full night’s sleep, it was as if he was still drunk, a haze fogging his mind and making him forgetful, blind to what lay three feet to his right or left. He fumbled with deft fingers curved into the fine knit of the blanket covering him. It was warm when he was not. A voice filtered through the smog, his attention blossoming slowly to the world beyond the warmth of the blanket, his brother—his would-be murderer.
It was strange, becoming aware of what should have been one’s death and Quinton couldn’t understand for a brief moment why he was alive in the first place. Or was the afterworld a mirror of their own? He panicked, his voice hoarse and catching in his throat, fingers tightening desperately into the blanket but in reality they did much more than twitch. His sentience was thinly spread across the room, as if someone had tugged and stretched him until there wasn’t much left. He felt vaguely nauseous although there was nothing but the smoke in his lungs for him to cough up.
“Fu…” His insult trailed off, his attention slipping as eyes shuddered close without meaning, for a minute his chest stilled, lingering on the precipice between wakefulness and a deep enough slumber to be mistaken for death.
Quinton startled again, although to the world outside of his hazed one his waking was filtered into slow-motion, the thin boy pale in the face from his hours out scarcely able to keep his eyes open much less lift his head. Everything sluggish. Even his breath seemed to have a lethargic quality to it. “You…”
There’s an accusation in the depths of his voice, well concealed beneath the fatigue, “shot…me…” And, he had. Matteo, his beloved younger brother, had shot him. He couldn’t recall the precise moment he’d been shot, that was a nebulous void, but he could recall the gun, the horror as Matt lifted his arm slowly to point it at him. The instructions.
Kneel for me.
“Why?” It wasn’t full of hatred, as his accusation had been, it was a desperate plea, the need to understand why his brother had been compelled to shoot him. And then. “Why…am I alive?”
Sympathy for Iscariot - Quinton and Matteo
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How many times had he been told to kneel? How many guns had he had pointed to his head? It was hard to keep count living as he did. Now, usually Quinton was fast enough of a thinker to get himself out of such situations and never did he sink down onto his knees as told. But here out on the frigid balcony he did just that, the cigarette still between his lips ghosting silver ribbons up towards the smogged out sky, hands on instinct moved to behind his head as if Matteo was the police, not a mafia man here to kill him. It had not sunk in that his brother, his beloved younger brother, was here to put a bullet through his skull. Even now. He’d been clean for over a month now, so even if it didn’t seem real it had to be, there wasn’t a chance in hell it was a dream—and he hadn’t had a drink since the prior evening. Quin didn’t want to die, contrary to all the self-destruction that alluded otherwise, he was perfectly happy being alive. This was not what he wanted.
It appeared it wasn’t what Matteo wanted either. He knelt before him, knees pressed painfully against the smart-concrete, whatever that was supposed to mean, the real estate agent had told him it wasn’t real concrete. Just designed to poses the same aesthetic because dreary greyish slabs were supposed in vogue. Except it was better heated flooring on demand, sensors rigged throughout to adjust the lighting dependent on where you were stood on the balcony, gestures rigged into the bare walls that allowed the home-owner to adjust it manually. How many nights had he and Elli been out here, her back pressed against the wall, the floor, it didn’t matter, she was infused into every iota of his apartment. Her perfume lingering like a long drawn out shadow. Where are you?
His last thoughts were of her, he was determined to make it so, would she be the one to find his body? No, he wouldn’t let his last thoughts be so dreary, so morbid. If he was honest he wasn’t sure she was coming back, their last argument had been particularly spiteful. It was difficult to muster a voice, to swallow back the fear that was threatening to spill the meagre contents of his stomach on Matteo’s shoes. “Lo rendono veloce…” He started, quiet, voice partially muffled because of the cigarette still between his lips, if he was going to die he was going to have at least one last bit of pleasure. Slowly he reached to pinch it between his fingers, exhaling after a moment with a slow release of tension from his shoulders. He seemed surer now, accepting of what was to come. “Non mi lasciare qui fratello. Portami a casa dopo.”
Home. Now that was a distant concept, would he be buried beside the two empty graves up in the neat little graveyard out of the big apple? Or would his brother scatter his remains here, beneath the awning they’d met under. It didn’t matter. Frantically he took another drag of the cigarette, his attempts to fight back tears had failed, he was scared—he didn’t want to die—he wanted to live. He wanted to scream, to shout and wrestle the gun from his brother’s hand. Only if they’d sent someone to kill him, not just any someone, they’d send more, and his brother wasn’t known for giving in.
But in all of this, his fear and anxiety for the world beyond this one only attributed for half of his panic. The other half was a striking despondency, sparked by yet another abandonment. In his panic there was no seeing reason, that this was likely going to be faster than if they’d sent someone who had a real grudge against the fixer, and the number of people who disliked him grew daily. It was quicker, it was a mercy, but it only tasted of desertion. Ti amo—he wanted to cry bullshit.
He needn’t wipe his cheeks clean, tears wouldn’t matter when he was dead, so he shut his dark eyes, unable to look at him any longer. His chest choked but still he whispered, “fucking do it.”
Burn in hell.
Sympathy for Iscariot - Quinton and Matteo
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Dionysus: I'd hate to be 100% hetero. Pretty sure they have less orgies
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“Che cosa? Perché?” He didn’t understand, it didn’t exactly make sense of Quinton but he had slowly started kicking through the mess of clothes, finding a clean t-shirt to pull up and over his head, hands grasping for his coat as the gun came into view. He stiffened, hands shaking a little as he pulled it over his narrow shoulders. There was no flash or ripple of colour from the coat, it remained a starless night sky. “Fuck, look I’ll help.” There’s a hint of desperation in his voice, the gun may not necessarily be aimed to his head but it’s presence was enough to stir Quin into a frenzy. His brother never missed his mark.
He’s jamming his feet into shoes just quick enough to forget to undo the laces, an array of lyrical curses spilling from his lips as he stoops to fix them with trembling hands. Quin doesn’t quite understand why they won’t stop shaking—surely his brother wouldn’t shoot him. The gun was there for another reason. His urgency was because of another reason. It was nigh impossible to read Matteo, it had always been difficult, but there were small indicators. He had to focus, hone his scattered attention down to one fine point in order to make any sense of them. Most of the time Quinton remained blissfully ignorant, blazed through life with his brother in tow because it was simpler to find ways to quirk smiles, as small as they were, to his lips than figure out the darkness that lurked in his eyes. Quinton looked for the best in him, because that’s what he did.
He looked for the best in people, when they saw the worst in him.
And yet, for one reason or another Matteo had stuck around all these years—despite seeing the worst in him. Despite Quinton’s accidental tendency to get them both into trouble and fuck up whatever meticulous plan his brother had spent weeks on. Perhaps that’s why he’s urgent in pulling his coat on, getting ready for whatever it was that Matteo needed him for, it was his chance to pay him back. After all these years the debt would be lifted, a little, and Quinton could see his brother smile. That was all he wanted.
It’s a slow approach, feet are quiet against the fake hardwood flooring and a quieter hand reaches out to grasp his wrist lightly. Fingers brushing against pulse point, not daring to skirt lower than his wrist, the gun still held tight in his brother’s hand. “Come, I can help.”
He clicks his tongue and jerks his head towards the balcony, “you need fresh air brother, come, come and then tell me all.” It’s like this that he leads him outside, it’s not explicitly fresh air—heavy and damp. His skin crawls but the city slowly waking isn’t important, nor was the argument he’d had this morning, it all faded away to the corners of his mind. Slowly, and only when he double-checks that Matteo is still there he lets go. Sometimes it looks as though his brother is simply gone.
“It’s shitty out here, fuck. Guess it ain’t better anywhere you go.” He’s already searched for the little pink and blue box in his pocket, neon bubble writing across the top to inform him of their horrendous flavouring, he lets the cigarette hang from between his lips as he lights it. “Fratello, ti amo. Ti prego, dimmi che cosa passa per la testa…”
“Mi preoccupo.”
Sympathy for Iscariot - Quinton and Matteo
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It has been auspiciously quiet, not a peep from the ghosts of his past and a relatively foreign norm of getting up each morning to slink his way into the academy. Life has been bristling on normal, in a freakish sense of the word, nothing had vaguely resembled normal for as long as Quin could remember. At least not in a way that would be considered so by an outsider. Hauling his ass across roof-tops whilst narrowly avoiding the spray of enemy fire was standard, as was revving the engine of his aventador until the tires screeched, and that went without mentioning his complacency towards self-destructive habits. Although it was startlingly how he’d cleaned up, the cigarette that hung between thin lips clean, artificial, but not the dreadful explosive vaping sticks that smelt like burning sugar. If there was anything that Quinton hated, it was e-cigarettes, they sucked all the fun out of smoking, the small-time act of pyromancy.
He’s not covert, unaware of the changes that’ve been made to his apartment, evidence littering the floor of his duplicity. That and this month’s dirty attire spread out like a modern art piece. There’s nothing, in his mind, to fear. The apartment itself was one of the highest rated for security in the inner city, he had a small armory of weapons DNA locked in an off room and a police badge in the making. Not that the latter would protect him from shit. If Quin had his head screwed on right he’d be planning to leave, but there were too many contingencies for that, his brother, Victoriano, Blue. Half-dressed and a little bedraggled after a long night with her. The knock nearly made him jump out of his skin, but there was only one person who’d haul their ass all the way up here and knock.
Not bothering to stub out his cigarette he slinked back through the apartment, away from the monstrous view of the city, in all its morbidly shit glory. He’d laughed in the agents face after she informed him there was a premium for a view like this, a view of what, mistakenly she’d thought he was joking but nonetheless the rest of the deal had been a little uncomfortable. Quinton hadn’t noticed, nor cared. He’d still bought the damnable apartment despite being heavily overpriced and that was about all he cared for. It was clean, or it had been originally, came with its own private garage down below, and access to a roof garden above which had come in handy for a few private parties.
The door clicked open, the sight of his brother not a surprise, the lack of an outward smile orthodox when dealing with his brother. He smiled enough for the both of them. “Piccolo,” he’s grinning as he leans in to pat him on the back in a semi hug, “come, come.”
“Chiudi la porta dietro di voi. C’è questa pazza tutta la sala. Continua a cercare di entrare di nascosto.” Quinton wasn’t particularly even sure if the man lived in the building or not, he thought it likely the man was a solo, had that look about him. Either way, he wasn’t in the mood to push it with the cuckoo. It wasn’t as if solos were known for their level heads and serene approach to life. “Sono riuscito a riparare il motore. Lei è come nuovo ora.” He keeps babbling about the everyday mundane matters, cigarette pinched between his fingers as he takes a drag. “Voglio dire grazie, per tutto il Vostro aiuto con il mio—lavoro.”
“Hai bisogno di qualcosa fratello?” A pause, as smoke billows from his nostrils in thick silver plumes. “Stai bene?” He questions, shifting forwards to close the space that’d formed between them as a natural reflex of Quin’s abundant energy.
Sympathy for Iscariot - Quinton and Matteo
He knows what he has to do.
In the moment, everything for him had a complete and startling clarity. He could perceive everything in hyper saturation, the color and texture of the wood paneling in his office aching at his eyes, the soft susurrus of footsteps carving away at his ears, the mirror etching back a pale, frightened image that he scarcely recognized. Pale fingertips reaching out to touch the cool surface of the mirror, fingertips brushing fingertips of the boy – for that was what he was in that moment, despite any posturing, a boy not a man – dark eyes meeting dark eyes and recognizing the hollows that had built up at his temples, the shadows under his eyes, the hunted look in every line of his body.
He doesn’t know if it is safe, or if anywhere is particularly safe.
With characteristic meticulousness, he has searched for any bugs that might be placed in his office, none of his important conversations had been mentioned or referenced, so he was hopeful, but there was still the potentiality that he had missed something. That they hadn’t missed something – that he hadn’t hidden to satisfaction that way that his hands seem to tremble a little more these days, how they are less flippant in their coverance of blood, how sacrifices are much more unwillingly given with a shade of mutiny impeding like a thunderstorm on the horizon. All of these things, all of these clues, are a weakness that he has long hoped to conceal – worked to conceal with a diligence befitting his nature – but the men he worked with and for are skilled at detecting weakness in the ranks, even from the dark-eyed specter, even from a boy. Like wolves, they can sense the first instance of lameness, and can hone upon it with dreadful accuracy.
He has one visible weakness that he finds difficult to hide, and it is so much harder to hide a weakness when that weakness has a beating heart, when that weakness can trigger irrationality and confusion and all the symptoms of reckless madness that Matteo would so easily condemn in others. Perhaps it is true that every criminal has his line, and should that line be found, it might be the end of him. It is also true that if a history is painstakingly pulled apart, that a line can always be found – and then there comes not a formal proclamation, nothing as grand or as inelegant as a death sentence spoken by a self-appointed judge, no, simply a chorus of whispers. A ‘word of the street’ issues forth and builds as predictably and as menacingly as a hurricane – words of doubt, words of bitterness, words of rage. Like blind insects that climb from woodwork when it is peeled away, only with looking and with patience can one then peel away the veneer of civilization to reveal the festering corruption that lurks within – to realize how may enemies one has who will only chance you at your weakest for they would not dare you at your strength.
He knows what he has to do.
Even as he prepares for it, he feels in his heart of hearts a greater resistance that he believed imaginable, and perhaps some of it was for selfish reasons. He does not want his brother to look at him with anything but that pure and honest love that emanates from him openly and without any hesitation. He warms him like winter sunlight in bursts of fractious color let into a room that has long been boarded up. He makes him remember what it is to be outside of a pageantry that had turned much closer to truth over long years. He remembers from their childhood the first time that Quinton had smiled at him, and it was the first true smile that he could remember.
With painful and painstaking reconstruction of those memories, he can remember the differences between that true smile and that hiding smiles of others. He can remember the first night after he had run away that he was not hungry, and that he was not cold. He could remember the loyalty that had formed, quiet and unshowy and wordless, between them, for him. The anger that had risen when Quinton was in danger. The colors of emotions bursting forth after so long only feeling the undercurrent of fear – and he doesn’t want him to be afraid of him, doesn’t want him to ever think him a monster. He knows what he looks like when he is a little afraid of him, and he never wants him to look like that again, because he doesn’t want to be that boy, and he doesn’t want to be that man. He doesn’t like to acknowledge the intensity of his emotions and so, he controls them, and he wields control over them as a man might over beasts that could devour him. He is the sovereign over his own heart, but he is not alone, and so his heart is split – given to others in its pieces and weakened in the process, these sore spots, these targets, these people.
He knows what he has to do, he just doesn’t know if he has the strength to do it.
He doesn’t want to die because the Mafia questions his loyalty. He doesn’t want the people he loves to die, and he does love them, in his own way, in a way that is incoherent of reason, painful with a brightness that is like an alien sun, disorienting and dangerous. He doesn’t want Quinton to be afraid of him, but he knows that this may be the only compromise that he can orchestrate between them, and so he does. He plans to the best of his ability and attempts to reassure himself the best he can, as he sets the pieces in motion, that this was the only way to keep them both safe.
He hopes, as he is buzzed into the building, and climbs the stairs to his brother’s apartment, specialized side arm carefully tucked out of sight beneath his jacket, that he will understand that this was the right decision, no matter how painful it might have been in the moment. His brother’s apartment and hallway have already been bugged with cameras, placed there by his associates in order to fully capture the apparent act that is to take place, and he is hyper-aware of them as he steps out of the elevator to pad silently to the door. Pale knuckles hesitate before they rap gently against wood in a soft pattern of sound, and he realizes that he is trembling. He does not come to his brother in any formality, not in suits or accompanied by an entourage. He comes alone, in T-shirt, jeans, and baggy jacket – looking vulnerable, and a little afraid. That, at least, is not an illusion. He is afraid. He is afraid of the risks. He is afraid of the chance of failure, even minimal, he is afraid.
When they told him that he would have to kill an associate of the police, no one told him that it would have to be his brother.
When the door opens, he does not smile.
“Fratello,” he says.
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There is for one of the first times in his life a starburst of hope and happiness at his words, never before has someone so openly told him they believed in him, no-one other than his brother—perhaps on occasion Victoriano but it had always seemed begrudged from him. As if Dante was obliged to say it, proud of you, there had never been anything to be proud of and Quinton had known it. Admitting it was a whole different matter. His heart beat with a heady pulse, he could hear it reverberating in his temples, and as Matteo reaches to move his hair form his eyes he crumbles. Wickedly so. It was not the ruination he had discovered within the arms of Elli, or the thrill and heights he’d achieved from doing something to be proud of, it was so beautifully simple, an earnest boyish fraternal love.
And he is incredulous to his usual obnoxious buzzing temperament, quiet and a little taken aback, but oh so grateful. It shines in his dark eyes that pool like mirrors as they bore into his. “Grazie.” His voice a hoarse fracture as he whispers it, and against his better judgement, for just a fleeting moment because he knew it’d make him uncomfortable, he pulled his brother into another light embrace. Two boys with cold hands and hearts of gold, ruination at their finger-tips ready to spill, and yet they couldn’t be more different. For all their similarities, for all their differences, all that truly mattered was him, his fratello.
His chin presses against a bony shoulder, thin arms wrapped around a thin chest, together they weren’t much more than harsh angles clothed in startlingly different attire. When he withdrew it was carefully, as he had learnt to be, and like an older brother ought to—even if for all accounts he was the younger, he kissed him softly on one pale delicate cheek. “I ain’t much used to you,” he’s slipped back into a tongue that feels hollow against his lips, it spilled haphazardly with hitched noises between each word. “But I ain’t got anyone else, been such a shitty brother…”
It doesn’t matter that they weren’t brothers by blood, it doesn’t matter that there wasn’t anything binding them together than a shared heater and a few candies. He loved him. “Gonna put this all right, y’know? I gotta plan. Plan to save us all.”
If only.
Such talk was big from a young man who scarcely knew how to keep himself out of trouble, never mind how to save them all from damnation. Oh, but he’d try. And he wouldn’t give up until the devil took him kicking and screaming. Even then he’d claw his way up from hell to watch over his brother, a guardian demon.
We’re not Monsters, Only Men | Matteo & Quinton
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