"Squish my face," Ghiaccio insists as they walk to the restaurant.

"I told you that you did well. Isn't that good enough?" he says, scanning the crowd for anyone who looks suspicious. He sees no one out of the ordinary. Good.

"You said that you can't squish my face in front of the target but he's gone. Therefore, you can squish my face now."

Prosciutto sighs, in no mood to argue with a young boy's logic.

"The moment has passed, Ghiaccio. If I did it now, it would simply be weird."

"But you said- "

"Ghiaccio, Ghiaccio, Ghiaccio, you aren't a baby. Don't whine like one. You are incredibly efficient and you do not even understand your own strength. The fact that we completed the job should be reward enough for us in this profession. Take that as a lesson."

Prosciutto treats them to lunch courtesy of the target, whose wallet he rifled through after he was done kicking the living daylights out of him. Normally, he refrains from stealing from dead men but rent is coming up soon and his latest suitor has decided he no longer wishes to fund his lifestyle, which means he's woefully single and poor again. Ghiaccio sulks the entire walk to the restaurant but he doesn't throw snowballs at his legs and he doesn't muster up the audacity to call him an asshole, so he counts that as a success. Even if Ghiaccio doesn't realize it, he makes progress each and every day. He's a fine apprentice.

Prosciutto orders a steak just how he likes it: so rare it might as well be raw. Ghiaccio, notoriously picky, debates each item on the menu before eventually settling on a plain salad.

"This steak is large enough for two people. Try it," Prosciutto, in a benevolent mood, says. "You need protein or else you'll just become hungry in an hour and then Risotto will accuse me of not feeding you properly."

The knife cuts through the meat like butter and he offers up a piece to the boy. Ghiaccio's nose wrinkles and he pushes his fork away.

"Gross. It's bleeding."

"It isn't blood. It's myoglobin," he explains but it does little to lessen the boy's distaste.

"I don't care if it's goblins," Ghiaccio says with a disgusted grimace. "It looks like blood. I'm not eating that."

"Suit yourself."

It's divine. Everything always tastes better after a job well done: the vegetables crisper, the meat more savory, the wine sweeter. He'll have to give his compliments to the chef. Ghiaccio, meanwhile, stabs his tomatoes like they owe him money.

"Don't hold your fork like that. It isn't a shovel. We're at a nice restaurant and it's important that you show respect by eating with manners."

But Ghiaccio shovels food into his mouth quicker.

"Ghiaccio."

"What? I didn't know there were frickin' rules to eating."

"Ghiaccio."

"I said frick! I didn't say fuck. I followed the rules."

He did, in fact, say fuck just now but Prosciutto is too hungry to argue the point. Instead, he takes another sip of his wine and cuts off another delectable morsel of steak. It's so rich, so flavorful. It doesn't need any fancy sauce or seasoning to be delicious. It's so tasty he wants to cry.

"The laws of etiquette are vast and numbered, Ghiaccio, and we must take care to obey them if we want to succeed in life."

"Yeah, well," the boy says through a mouthful of lettuce, "you know what else is vast and numbered? It's your a-"

Prosciutto is not paid well enough to deal with children on a regular basis.

"Please, Ghiaccio, by all means, finish that sentence. Insult your superior. I'm sure that Risotto will be so happy to know that you've disobeyed his orders to behave while in my instruction. Go on, do your worst. I'll be waiting."

Ghiaccio glowers as he devours a hunk of red pepper.

"I wasn't going to insult you," he insists as if Prosciutto doesn't know otherwise. "I was going to say that the stars are vast and numbered."

"Learn to lie better."

Ghiaccio chews the pepper as loudly as possible. Really, he should scold him further for that but the steak is so good, he still has plenty of money left over to indulge in his favorite vices later, his wine's soothing every frayed nerve, and he's in such a good mood that he really can't be bothered.

"You really are missing out, you know," Prosciutto says, making a big production out of eating his steak. "A rare steak is one of life's finest pleasures. I feel like a lion after a good hunt."

He watches the wheels turn in Ghiaccio's head.

"It's the lionesses who do most of the hunting. The males patrol the territory and chase away rivals or else they'll kill the cubs."

"Nature's red in tooth and claw," he replies, "and so are we."

"So are you a lion or lioness, huh?"

Prosciutto cuts off another piece of steak and deposits it on Ghiaccio's plate before he can protest.

"Considering that I'm feeding you and I do generally like to be useful, consider me a very competent lioness, Simba."

"I don't like stupid fu...stupid frickin' Disney movies. I'm not a baby."

Prosciutto knows for a fact that young Matteo Ghiaccio sleeps every night with a stuffed lion. This is because he bought it for him and pretended he had nothing to do with where it came from. Still, he says nothing so as to save the boy's pride because if there's anything we're all entitled to, it's our pride.

"Of course not. Eat up, little lion. You'll need your strength for the hunt."

He doesn't touch the piece of meat right away but Ghiaccio's a curious little cat and after a few minutes, he pops it into his mouth.

"Oh," he says, surprised, "it doesn't taste like blood."

"It's good, isn't it?"

"I didn't say that," he snaps, but then he says more quietly, "Am I allowed to have some more?"

All in all, a good feast is perfect after a good kill. Prosciutto leaves the restaurant in high spirits, half convinced he should seduce the chef just to have someone cook him steak like that every day.