True Love, Hall of Fame, Beam Me Up, Blow Me One Last Kiss, Lonely Girl.
Pretty sure I said three chapters, but here I am getting caught up in the wrong part of the nit-wit's life.
I swear to god there are pairings in this story, there really are, I just keep getting side-tracked, and these chapter titles are very vulgar.
Big Brothers Don't Cry
Defender of Dick-All
The phrase Lovino wound up applying to school more than any other was "one more time". He'd made a bunch of emotional promises to a man on his death-bed, and once the black clothes were put away and the last of the funeral bills were dealt with, it was time for Lovino to start fulfilling them.
He had the same five instructors at the college, a completely new set of classmates, and because they had to keep things fresh and make sure they weren't mass producing the exact same cookie-cutter set of skills, Lovino found himself with a new set of books, a new set of recipes, and even more god-damned ingredients to get used to.
Some of this was good, like the introduction to several Morocan spices that Lovino had never heard of, but immediately found that he liked.
But others…
"Now everybody try a taste of this. What do you think?" Like traditional German cuisine, for one. "Lovino?"
"Uuh, ask someone else…" which all tasted like cream and dirt to him, and he couldn't understand why every single fucking dish he had to prepare for that entire unit involved an unhealthy obsession with the potato.
Like…
He just did not like them.
Potato pancakes, potato casseroles, potato soups.
Dirt, mush, yuck, ew.
Chilled potatoes, fried, baked, steamed, grated.
If he had more than a mouthful in a sitting his entire pallet felt grainy and covered in potato-skins. He hated the taste, and it didn't matter what anyone dressed them in, he couldn't eat it.
"C'mon, give them a try." Especially not mashed potatoes, because those were just everything bad put in a blender and reduced to mush…
"Yao you covered them in barbeque sauce." But did his classmates care? Did Yao-Stupid-Wang care?
"Special Chinese barbeque sauce, now give it a taste."
Considering he actually carried a spatula of gross and proceeded to chase Lovino around the god-damned kitchen with it, no.
"Are you fucking psychotic!?"
In the end it was a waste of good ginger glaze and shitty potatoes, but after Lovino and the snickering older student finished giving the kitchen a good scrub from top to bottom as punishment, they hit it off.
"How'd you end up taking this course twice?" Enough so that when the black-eyed under-cook from a small fast-food spot Lovino'd never heard of asked the question, Lovino shrugged and answered. He just finished scrubbing a spot of grease off a stubborn countertop first.
"Family issues. It's settled now though."
"Sorry to hear that."
Yao didn't push what 'family issues' was supposed to mean. In fact, if Lovino didn't consciously provide more details or interest about a subject he'd usually drop it. Yao was about his height, just a shy inch shorter, but with the kind of drill-sergeant attitude that made him seem a lot bigger and louder than he really was.
They worked together on a couple of co-op projects because Yao had the steady hand and artistic eye that went with plating and fancy decorating, while Lovino had the speed and dexterity with his knife-work so he only ever measured twice and cut once.
"You're not afraid of those big knives, are you?" Throw in the fact that they saw each other almost every day, and they were either going to become good friends or mortal enemies.
"I'm trying to be a chef, why would I be?" The fact that after Yao decided to introduce Lovino to (illegal) social drinking also helped them buddy-up.
"No reason, you just seem really young." Whereas Yao seemed really old, and Lovino said it just like that as he finished the can of tasted-like-shit beer from the six pack his friend had bought and stashed in the back of his car. At twenty Lovino knew he was too young to go into a bar and drink legally, but the chances of them getting caught and ID'd on a hot summer night in the park adjacent to their campus were slim to none.
"How'd you end up here?"
"Bad divorce." Yao was somewhere in his thirties, although he was damned good at hiding it both with his smooth round face and ability to crack a smile and act like a clown on a dime. He'd started sporting a thin black moustache and go-tee since the program's start, and that did a fair bit to age him, but it still wasn't enough. "She's got the kids, and in the middle of it I kind of snapped at work."
"Snapped?"
"Let's just say they gave me stress-leave and then told me not to bother coming back." The way Yao tipped his head back and swallowed several mouthfuls of beer told Lovino to change the subject. He was pretty sure Yao would keep answering if he kept asking, but it wasn't worth it to stress an easy evening. "But what about on your end? How come you've always got that cute blonde at arm's length?" Cute blonde..? "We saw her this morning, at the coffee shop?" Oh!
Belle…
"We're just friends." Lovino answered, and he looked around for the cardboard box holding the remaining cans. Yao nudged it over with his foot where he was sitting on top of the picnic table they'd claimed, Lovino on the actual seat part of it with the case between them.
"How come? She's cute- illegal from where I'm standing, but cute."
"Because we're just friends? I was close with her brother in high school, that's all." But Yao was quick to point out that Belle still, almost religiously, showed up at the café there on campus every Saturday morning when the cuisine program had their practical labs in the adjacent building. "Shut up, man."
"Not your type?" No, definitely not his type, and Lovino chased the comment with bitter alcohol. "Alright, describe her to me."
"Describe Belle?"
"Your type you twit." Oh… Uuh… well…
"T… Tall, I guess." He tried drinking more, and as he swallowed he decided that more alcohol wasn't going to help him, but it was a little late and he ended up looking guiltily down at the half-empty can when he was done. Lovino was wracking his brain for traits that wouldn't make this moment painfully awkward, but they weren't coming.
Someone a little taller than him, but not too tall.
"Short hair." But not too short, no buzz-cuts.
"Nice features." His inexperience was bleeding through, he didn't know what kind of lips, and he had to seriously wonder if the shape of the chin or brow would really matter that much to him. Someone he could actually bump into and not have to worry about knocking over like when he was around girls, someone he could raise his voice at without them getting scared or crying because he was a jerk and he was always going to be a jerk.
"Someone I can be comfortable around…" Because fuck him, that alone was one of the hardest needs to fulfill…
"Mm, next time I'll bring something stronger." Yao's comment didn't make any sense until he watched his friend pick up the now-empty cardboard box and tip it upside down, showing that the quarter-can of beer still in Lovino's hand was the last of the drink. "Because that's probably the lamest list I've heard in a long time."
Yeah well… fuck you…
But at least he had a friend now, and that felt like something he'd been going without for a while. Friends were hard to keep when you had school, work and family to take care of, so although it took some adjusting too, Lovino kind of liked being called up on weeknights and asked if he was free on x-day for y-event. It was nice to chum around and just talk about something everybody involved could enjoy, especially where in-jokes were involved.
Like when a loud discussion about wine on a break between classes led to under-aged Lovino remarking on the Italian vintages his grandparents had obviously never let him try. Their pastry-instructor Tino just covered his ears and told them all to speak more softly so no one would get in trouble, and that somehow turned into a thing whenever alcohol and the youngest member of their class were mentioned in the same sentence.
On the home-front though, it was a little bit weird when Lovino heard a question Yao had asked him come more or less the same way out of Feliciano's mouth.
"Are you and Belle together?" Say what?
"Um, no?" and it brought the same queasy kind of tremble back into his gut when he looked up from the couch where he'd been reading and saw his little brother standing there fidgeting. Feliciano's brown eyes were busy examining the rug between the couch and the TV, his hands stuffed down his jean pockets and shoulders sort of bunched up under his shirt.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes I'm sure, now spit it out: what's wrong?"
It took three days of harassment to get his brother to answer the stupid question, but when Feliciano finally knuckled the reason kind of made sense.
"I asked her to homecoming and she said no, okay?" But only kind of. "You don't get it: we have lunch almost every day together and we help each other with homework, we've been in two of the same classes all year, but when I asked she said no." It was hard to keep Feliciano's grade straight sometimes when half his classes were a level above his actual age. He might not have been graduating this summer, but a lot of his friends were.
"Okay now I get it, but where do I come in?" Lovino just wanted to get to the bottom of this, because he really couldn't stand having his little brother refuse to make eye-contact with him. Feliciano wasn't doing it because he was mad at him, but he was still doing it, and it almost scared him.
"Because she said she was waiting for you to ask instead."
BZZZT.
Wrong answer!
Fuck this shit he was going to deal with it god-damn it.
And he wasn't going to fucking trash his brother in the process by screaming "go with him to prom!" either.
Lovino just fumed and bullied his way through the next two weeks of his program until the prom-season had come and gone again at the high school level. Feliciano handled the rejection his own way and still wound up attending at a table of his other friends, because he was one of them and their grandparents were fine with him going out late for one night.
The Saturday after prom, Lovino was loitering outside the café waiting for Belle, who he knew would be upset, but somehow he wasn't surprised when instead of Belle someone else came in her place.
Lars had always been a bit taller than Lovino. His hair was blonde, but it was a much lighter tone than his sister's. He was big too: in high school he'd been a little chubby, sort of heavy, the kind of body that if you were crushing on him it made you want to put your arms around him and squeeze. Whatever he was doing in university had effectively slapped the baby-fat out of his round face and tightened up his torso, the state crest stamped on his thicker shoulders and showing off just how muscular he'd become.
Lovino'd convinced himself after a year apart that his crush had faded and died, but seeing him again in the summer light filled him with two very different emotions.
Fuck, he's gorgeous…
And:
I forgot to tell Nonna I love her.
Lars was pissed, Lars was furious, Lars was in full on defensive big-brother-bear mode. Lovino suddenly wished that there were more students around during the summer semester so someone might actually witness the murder about to take place.
"Lars…" But Lovino still tried. "It's nice to see-"
"Explain." Lars had never been a really chatty guy, but his voice had deepened and grown a hell of a lot louder behind his clenched teeth. There wasn't going to be any small-talk or catching up then- "You have ten seconds starting right now."
"Christ! What's wrong with you?" Lovino was gonna die, gonna die, gonna die- "Lars we have coffee. It's not a god-damned proposal if I buy it for her!" He'd had a plan coming into this, but what good was a plan when staring death in the face?
"Then stop leading her on!"
"I'm not!"
"Bullshit!" Okay no, how about this? Lovino had a fucking big-brother-revenge-button too.
"No, the bullshit is your sister acting like my brother isn't worth her time!"
"Well he isn't!"
Oh-
Oh Lars had not just said that…
But he did, and he said it to Lovino's face too.
"Lovino your face!"
Which Lars then proceeded to beat into his skull.
"Shit, are you okay?"
And it kind of really hurt, and having his classmates fuss over it an hour later just kind of made the splitting pains even worse.
"Personal space, gu-aaaaah…!"
"Vargas, do you need to go home?"
No, Lovino did not need to go home because he'd had the crap kicked out of him. But by the end of a two hour mock-service to wrap up their Central-American unit, he was ready to just pass out behind the deep-fryer. Thankfully, after the kitchen was cleaned and most of the students had left, Yao was there like a good friend to prod Lovino with his car-keys trying to get the story out of him.
"I'll drive you home, now just get up."
"I'll walk. I'm fine." Lars hadn't hurt his legs, just bruised his ribs and done a serious number on his shoulders and face. It hadn't been a completely one-sided fight, but Lovino had lost by a landslide and the black eye he'd given Lars didn't make up for the throbbing in his own jaw.
"Lovino someone kicked the shit out of you, now say why."
"Family issues, friend issues: drop it."
That wasn't the best way to put it. It made it sound like someone in his family was responsible, and Lovino huffed into his arms where they were down on the counter, a stool keeping his sore body upright.
"Belle's brother and I got pissed and kicked the shit out of each other: he kicked harder."
"Why?"
"Why'd your wife leave you?" It was mean but he hissed the question up at his friend, because he knew it would draw a clear line between what they could talk about, and what Yao needed to stop asking. "I don't wanna fucking talk about it." It kind of hurt when he looked up and, instead of putting on a sorry face, Yao was just giving him a stony-eyed stare.
"My wife never came at me with a two-by-four either." For fuck's sake, Yao…!
"I'm gay now leave me the fuck alone." He put his head back down and he hated the way those words sounded. He wanted them back in his mouth so he could chew them up and swallow. It hadn't been a fucking hate-crime, it had been Lovino being a fucking idiot and letting himself stab a giant Dutch bear in the eye with his temper.
He heard Yao walk away though, which was an odd feeling because he didn't expect it. He expected some kind of awkward fumble, or maybe a jump on the hate-crime band-wagon, or just something else. Something that wasn't turning around and walking away...
But then he heard the footsteps come back, and he heard a heavy thunk on the counter before the clack of two glass tumblers made him pick his head up. Lovino recognized the bottle of bourbon because they cooked with it sometimes, it was from the kitchen's pantry, and there was already a bit of ice each glass as Yao twisted the cap off and poured a small amount into both.
Then he walked away again, and this time he came back with a second stool which he pulled up and then sat on.
Yao picked up his glass and Lovino very slowly reached for the other one, sniffing the thick, semi-sweet liquor before his friend reached out and knocked the two glasses together.
"Talk."
So Lovino made himself speak. It was only after Yao was satisfied with the story and the stupidity of it all that he drove Lovino home as promised.
"Nonna wai-!"
Which meant as soon as he showed his swollen, slightly purple face to his family, it was like walking into that kitchen all over again. The difference this time was the violent Italian screaming and shrieking through the house as his Nonna vowed to do at least eight things that couldn't be reproduced in print.
"Rina!" Which meant Nonno had to step in and stop her before Carlino looked any more horrified by what he'd just heard come out of his sweet grandmother's mouth. "He's a man! He's fine!"
"HE IS NOT FINE LOOK WHAT THEY DID TO HIM."
Nonna needed a bit of time and a lot of forced affection before they calmed her down enough to just sit next to Lovino and confirm that yes, he was okay, and yes, he was still in a bit of pain but he was going to be alright. If smiling hadn't hurt so much he probably would have done more of that to sooth her, but ultimately he had to come up with one of his favourite meals and let her vanish into her kitchen and work on that instead.
She still smashed a plate on the floor and screamed a new profanity for the neighbours to hear, but it did calm her down…
Nonno really just wanted to know that it had been a fair fight, which it had been, and once he pieced together that, sadly, Lovino had lost, he just needed to know that his grandson had still put up a decent fight before warning him from being so stupid in the future.
"If you're going to fight, at least win, you know?" Yes, Nonno.
"Your face is a weird shape, Vino." The comment came from all the swelling around his jaw.
"That's temporary: yours is permanent." But at thirteen Carlino was allowed to touch the furious purple welts next to his eye, and when he asked how much it hurt Lovino lied and said it felt like fire and glass so his brother wouldn't get it in his head that he wanted to try fighting too.
Feliciano was oddly quiet for the entire evening, worried yes, and helpful with the dishes and cleaning the kitchen so Lovino didn't have to after dinner, but not nearly as chatty as he should have been.
"Was today my fault?" After Lovino had a chance to shower and put more ice on his swollen face, Feliciano was hovering at his bedroom door. He wasn't sure if his brother saw the ugly marks on his ribs before he got his shirt down properly over them, but he just grabbed the ice-pack again and put it on his jaw before answering.
"Nope. Why would you think that?" Slowly dropping himself onto his bed, Lovino put the question as casually as he could and he didn't really lie either. It hadn't happened because of Feliciano, it had happened because of Lars' fucking comment and Lovino's shitty temper.
"…Because Belle said her brother came home with a black eye and a limp today." He was limping? Good, the fucker deserved it.
"Maybe he fell off his bike?" But that wasn't going to make him admit it.
"Lovino."
"What?"
He answered his name quickly and watched the way Feliciano tried getting up a glare before giving up and staring back down at the floor. He really had to stop doing that. He really, really had to stop acting like he couldn't meet Lovino's eyes anymore…
"I'm sorry…" And then he mumbled an apology of all things, which Lovino just didn't understand. "I know I already cause you a lot of trouble, and I just don't-"
"What trouble?" On the one hand he didn't want to interrupt, but on the other he wanted to shut down that train of thought. When his brother just bit his lips and kept his eyes down Lovino'd had about enough of it. "Feli get in here, close the door."
Feliciano did what he said before coming and sitting down next to Lovino on the bed. At twenty and eighteen they didn't really hug anymore. If they were happy, sure, if Feliciano was tired and leaned on him, okay, but the time felt like it had passed where if one was upset the other would just grab him in a hug and make it better. It was a little bit sad to realize something like that…
"I don't…" but that didn't stop him from just trying to listen while his brother put his words together. It took Feliciano a few tries, which was strange for him because usually he couldn't keep things bottled up at all, but finally he found the words and the means to look up again. "I don't want to get in your way."
His way…?
It really wasn't what Lovino expected to hear, maybe not even what he wanted to because it was something he couldn't answer. But the words were quiet and the red lines around Feliciano's eyes made them sound sincere. They were eighteen and twenty years old, but Lovino decided that he didn't really care about that right now. He was happier putting one arm around his stupid brother's neck and pulling him close for something between a hug and a choke-hold, smiling a little against the brat's hair while Feliciano didn't even bother putting up a fight to get free.
"When you figure out what direction I'm heading in, little brother, be sure to let me know."
*puts head on the floor and doesn't move*
I don't know where the fight came from I really don't. Apparently I ship Romabel a little more than I thought, so when I finish this maybe I'll write a Gauken for them or something.
Really though if Lars and Lovino got into a fight South Italy would die and no one can convince me otherwise.
