Dizzy, Glitter in the Air, Beam Me Up, Try.
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Big Brothers Don't Cry
A Jobless Sponge
It took until the end of Lovino's time at college before he finally understood what his brother meant by 'not getting in his way'.
But before that the most important thing was that he when he left college, he did it with a piece of paper for his grandparents to put on their wall and a skill-set that he honestly considered worth more than gold. The fact that they didn't let him get away with skipping the ceremony this time didn't even bother him that much. Stupid robe, stupid hat, stupid stage that was actually fucking terrifying to walk across when his name was called- he hadn't known the campus had a legitimate auditorium and stage, but they did and he was sweating bullets telling himself not to trip or do something stupid.
College was the longest and shortest year of his life, but Lovino hadn't known if he was supposed to be getting ready to burst out of the gates at a run, or slam on the breaks when he received his graduation gift.
"I can't go."
"See? He said he's not going."
"Rina."
Because although he tried slowing things down at their dinner table with his family sitting around him, Lovino could see the road in front of him getting steeper by the minute.
His gift wasn't another set of knives or a white chef's jacket. It was an offer Lovino couldn't accept, from a great-uncle he'd never met, in a country he'd never been too.
"Why not?" But somehow everyone around him was taking this as a good idea, because Feliciano's voice was more than just curious, it was pushy.
"I don't have a passport, for one." Lovino's first excuse fell flat as soon as it left his tongue. He didn't know how he knew his grandfather had out-maneuvered him, but he didn't even need to see the thin bundle of papers before he felt Carlino rudely manipulating his fingers around a pen.
"You're in luck, here's a passport application." Nonno wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer with this, but as the government form was placed in front of him Lovino struggled for another reason.
"I don't even speak Italian- not enough to work there!" They could all fend for themselves in the language, their grandparents had made sure of that, but just because Lovino could describe a day at school didn't mean he could actually function in another country.
"You speak food, that's practically the same thing…" Nonna was the absolute only person at the table who was even half-way on his side, but even with a tight-lipped expression on her narrow face, she was still against him. "You'll pick it up just like your Nonno and I learned English."
"And your cousins will help you. Sign."
"I don't even need to go! I can get a half-decent wage now, so-"
"Your father earned a half-decent wage until he got married." Nonna shot Lovino's argument down in a ball of flaming guilt. "Then he had a wife, a car, three boys to feed and a house to pay for." But it felt like Lovino was only getting a third of it, because Carlino felt stiff on the chair next to him, and Feliciano was staring at the table like he wanted to crawl under it. "He earned a half-decent wage until he needed to make a good salary, and then he spent the rest of his life travelling back and forth missing every important-…"
Nonno didn't stop her from talking, Nonna just let her voice go quiet and balled one fist up in front of her mouth. The five of them sat there in a steady silence for several long moments, everything she wasn't saying filtering through Lovino's thoughts very slowly. He didn't expect Carlino to nudge him in the side, but his little brother had to do it twice before he looked at him.
"You should go." It wasn't hard to take advice from a thirteen year old, it was just very strange. "It'd be fun, and maybe we can visit you!"
"I can take your job at the restaurant." Feliciano chanced a look up, dropped his eyes, then tried again when he seemed to get that Lovino didn't want to speak. "Money won't be a problem, and we have the rest of Papa's insurance money too if we need it."
"That's your university money." Lovino said the words very quietly because he was trying to sort out how to feel. The only thing he knew for certain was to say university, not college, because he'd already trained himself not to make that kind of slip: his brother was not going to some dinky little community college after high school.
"Yes, but-" No, no buts, no maybes, no what ifs. That money wasn't for plane tickets or passport applications or stupid things like that, it was for- "Lovino, this is your career!"
Feliciano never shouted. Lovino would scream on a dime but the middle brother hated raising his voice. Everyone, Lovino included, jumped when Feliciano stood up from his seat and shouted the words across the table at him. The sound actually scared Carlino so when he jumped he grabbed Lovino's arm.
"Feli-"
"Don't blow this!" His face was solid red and Lovino didn't know if he was furious or embarrassed, he just listened. "Yes, I will go to university! Yes, you're the reason why! Yes, Carlino will go too! Now stop worrying about us and for once will you just worry about yourself!?" Lovino's ears were ringing, there was no way he'd heard any of that properly.
And for a good ten seconds he mis-read Carlino's sudden hug around his neck as 'I'm scared' instead of 'stop being an idiot and go'.
"Okay." He'd do it then, but not without crushing the idiot kid trying to choke him first. "If it means that much to you people, then fine." He… He'd do it.
Because of the passport and Visa applications, Lovino's departure was delayed by another three months. Despite the cost of the plane ticket, he lost the argument with his grandparents to postpone his departure until after Christmas. It took two painful months of packing to put all the useless shit he'd accumulated in seven years into boxes for shipping or storage, and by the end of it he spent his last night at home silently freaking out in a completely bare, empty bedroom.
So fuck that, he took his pillow and blankets and slept on his brothers' floor instead. When Feliciano tripped over him at two in the morning on his way to the bathroom, Lovino took a minute to recognize the whisper of more blankets and the light plop of another pillow hitting the floor next to him. By the time he woke up in the morning, Carlino'd slunk down next to them and was sleeping half up on his back.
"You're heavy. Get off."
Foolish words, because that just prompted both of his brothers to completely smother him in blankets and bodies.
"I SAID GET OFF OF ME YOU LITTLE SHITS."
But somewhere between the grappling and swearing, there was a three-way hug and tears wiped off on bed-sheets and pillows.
At least getting up was fun, because breakfast just hurt on every level. Nonna did a good job of acting like nothing important was happening today, but when Lovino asked if she wanted help in the kitchen or not, the conflict bubbled up and she refused to speak again until he'd hugged and held her and the eggs started burning.
"My nephew will be there at the airport to pick you up in Rome." Nonno had arranged with his brother's family in Italy to put Lovino up for a month, maybe two, and help him find both a job and an apartment somewhere in the city. He'd never met them before, but during the long drive to the air-port Nonno filled the stifling silence with details Lovino had already heard over and over again.
In the end he flew from Chicago, made a brief stop-over in New York, then flew to London and changed to a smaller plane which carried him across the continent to Rome.
When he finally got off the plane and met the father-and-son duo there to pick him up, Lovino botched a simple-as-fuck greeting in Italian, swore twice in English and then just sat the fuck down on the terminal floor wondering what the hell he'd gotten himself into. Was it too late to turn around and go home?
"You're just tired, a good effort though!" The men were his grandfather's brother Giorgio and his nephew Marcello, so that made them Lovino's Great-Uncle and Second-Cousin. Marcello was a thin man with stooped shoulders and a large nose which dominated his narrow face, but he was friendly, and forgiving, and he took the heavy bags from Lovino and helped carry them out to the car. Giorgio was Grandpa's younger brother, but he wasn't built the same way: he looked older with his crooked spine and thin white hair, a cane keeping him upright as he made quiet conversation about Lovino's flight and everyone's health back home.
The car-ride wasn't as long as what Lovino was used to, especially since one of them said it would be a long drive home. In fact it was a very small ride. Tiny. Narrow. Winding. Lovino had been convinced that he'd drive around Italy as much as he'd driven back home, but even jet-lagged and assaulted by the bright sun coming through the car windows, he took one look at the ridiculously small lanes winding through Rome and decided he'd rather invest in a bicycle.
But the ride was thirty minutes at most, no more, and along the way his relatives dropped name after name after name in an effort to list the entire family tree. He had absolutely no idea where he was by the time they finally stopped on a hill bricked with tall stone houses that blocked the bright sunlight. He understood why his grandfather had been so picky about what luggage to buy when he saw the narrow doorway, and the tiny corridor and what he assumed was the twisted stairwell to get to the upper floors of the town-house. When he got home Lovino vowed to never complain about the size of American town houses again.
"He's here!" but a silly little promise like that wasn't enough to distract him from the mob of people waiting in the larger-than-expected living and dining room on the house's first floor. While the dimensions were small, the actual footprint of the house was large enough that there were at least fifteen people comfortably seated inside, the smell of food cooking and sitting out in a welcoming spread over a table that put his Nonna's to shame.
There were lots of people- maybe even too many people. Lovino wasn't afraid of a gathering or large crowd, but his senses were drowned in loud, noisy Italian, and he'd learned on the ride from New York to London that he couldn't sleep on air planes.
He was kissed, smooched, hugged, knocked around, patted on the back, had his cheeks pinched and hands shaken, and when he wasn't looking he nearly shrieked and jumped out of his skin when he felt a hand invade his shirt and pinch his stomach.
"Rina doesn't feed him enough!"
Back off, back off, BACK OFF PSEUDO-NONNA.
"He's too skinny to be a cook!"
Shut up he was not!
"He's very American." Lovino didn't even know what that was supposed to mean- "Do you think he even speaks Italian?"
Apparently he understood more than he'd given himself credit for, because if he heard one more old woman titter behind her hands and say a female name he was going to burst through the wall and find somewhere to fucking hide.
By the time the aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins and friends had all been introduced in a blur, then eaten in a steel-drum of dishes and noise, and then said good bye in twos and threes as the daylight faded, Lovino was ready to fall over. His Italian had not improved over four hours of constant backwards attempts to speak, but at least he'd been able to translate a portion of what was said around and to him.
"And here, this will be your room while you stay with us." It was creeping up on eleven at night by the time Marcello noticed him staring half-dead into the glass of wine someone had decided he needed. He was taken away from the remaining guests and led upstairs to a small room that mimicked his old bedroom in size, but all Lovino cared about was the fact that the bed had a blanket and a pillow.
Showering could wait for morning.
Lovino passed out for a solid twelve hours and then found himself terrified to leave the room after he woke up: what if the guests were still downstairs?
Stupid thought.
But what if they were?
Food was what got him to finally creep down the narrow wooden staircase and check. Food, because even if he had even the slightest chance of communicating intelligently with another human being in this country, that would be the subject.
Food came before shaving and showering and all that stupid junk. Lovino sort of recognized the woman cooking as someone in Marcello's immediate family: it wasn't his wife, but Lovino couldn't remember if he had a daughter or not.
"Good morning?" But after his repeated fuck-ups with Italian yesterday, he was a bit unsteady trying to use the language today.
"Ah, there you are!" She was about his age, dark brown, almost black hair. She had green eyes and a healthy bronze tan, and she threw something else on the end of the greeting that he assumed meant 'sleepy-head'. "Did you sleep well?"
"Very, thanks. What are you making?" It smelled good, but his senses weren't working very well at the moment.
"If you can remember my name, I'll give you some." Fuuuuck…
Chiara Vargas was his something-th-cousin, a university student like what Feliciano would be next year, and because of her light class schedule she was also his primary means of transportation around Rome.
"Papa said to ask if you wanted to do some sight-seeing today after you wake up a bit."
"I thought I was supposed to be looking for a job?"
"What, are you saying Rome isn't worth your time?"
She also very quickly turned into his Italian teacher, sparring partner, and favourite cousin over-all.
"God, you're cranky!"
"Well at least I have a job!"
The work-visa with his passport had been a bitch to get, but that was how he got his bank account, his cell-phone, and the right to actually go into small restaurants where word-of-mouth said they needed help and try to sell himself.
Somehow, doing it in Italian was easier than if he'd had to muddle through in English. When your vocabulary was limited, you said what you fucking needed to say and didn't dick around with super-politeness.
"I will work. I need to work. I want to learn: teach me!"
His attempts were by-and-large unsuccessful in the area immediately around his cousin's house, but he kept trying, moving further and further out of the neighbourhood, then the district, until he was taking transit on the days he couldn't bother Chiara for a ride out to smaller and smaller locations.
Being a dish-washer for four years back in America wasn't much of a resume, and having to repeat culinary school was likewise unimpressive. He didn't blame the assholes for not even giving him a chance, but the first little bistro that did was the one that hired him.
"Make an omelette."
"What kind would you like?"
"One that isn't terrible."
It was a simple pass-fail test, and Lovino passed. He'd brought his own knives with him to every place he'd applied, dressed sharp and with an apron from home with only enough stains on it to show he actually fucking cooked in it, not purposefully splashed himself with his creations. Omelettes weren't hard, they were fussy: you had to know how to make an omelette.
And you had to know how to make one with roasted bell-peppers, onions and just enough garlic, salt and pepper before serving it in a timely manner. He almost fucked it up twice by being a little more ambitious than a simple cheese and onion serving would have been, but again: it got him the job.
He was given a place on the bottom rung of the restaurant ladder. He was a dish-washer all over again, but he came early like he was told and peeled, chopped and prepped his way into learning the kitchen like the back of his hand. He knew where every knife, pot and pan was supposed to go, he knew how the order system worked and was in charge of maintaining the sanitizer in the back where the plates and cutlery were seared with hot steam and soap before being ready for service. It didn't piss him off to be at the bottom, because unlike when he'd been back home: here there was the promise of moving up.
But the routine was hard. Get there at ten and prep for two hours, work the dish-washer and sink for four hours during lunch service, prep again for an hour before dinner, and work the line for exactly one hour at night doing specific tasks dictated and often changed by the head-chef on a whim. Maybe he was sautéing vegetables, maybe he was garnishing plates, maybe he was dressing salads: really, he was doing whatever another pair of hands wasn't already all over.
"Loosen your wrist, not like that." The head-chef's favourite way of telling him he was fucking up was to smack Lovino's wrist with the flat of his knife, which was intimidating as hell but he never nicked him once. "Let the sauce run off the spoon: you're not controlling it, you're helping it."
That pristine sixty minutes was the whole reason he put up with the other nine hours of shit on his plate. Dinner service was three hours, he cooked for one of them, and that was enough to sustain him for another two hours of dish-duty and then a long trek home so he could do it all again tomorrow.
His first pay-cheque was given to his relatives as a thank-you for letting him live with them. The money did a strange dance around the world before it wound up back in Lovino's bank account with a wire-transfer from his grandfather, but apparently the thought meant more than the cash.
The second pay-cheque was devoured by his rent, and for the first time in his life he found himself living completely on his own.
No grandparents.
No brothers.
No cousins.
Just Lovino alone in the morning when he showered and got dressed, and Lovino alone when he opened the door to an apartment where everything was in exactly the same place where he'd put it that morning. Just Lovino alone with nothing but a couple phone-calls a month back home to talk to his family, and a lot of chatter and fumbled Italian at work trying not to get kicked or stomped on by someone higher up the ladder.
The only break in the stressful cycle came three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And it always came in the early morning too, when Lovino was the only one there to deal with it.
His name was Antonio Hernandez Carriedo, and in as little as three short months in Italy Lovino Vargas was in love.
OKAY SO.
I have at least two details I need to Ret-con in Game of Cooks, but I'm lazy and don't want to do it right now.
In a chapter Lovino thinks about "A car-crash and things they didn't talk about" taking their parents away. When I edit the stupid thing it will say CANCER and things they blahblahblah. This is a draft line between different AUs, because in my fic The Gay Brother I was going to use cancer, but it was a car-crash, and I forgot to change that in GoC so I wasn't doubling-up on plot devices.
The other one is Monica's doctor in GoC should be someone else. I was lazy and name-dropped Spain because I wasn't paying attention when I wrote it.
Aaaand that's all for me! Next update soon-ish!
