This fic is a prequel to a GerIta fic I published about eight years ago called Ristorante Rosso. You don't have to have read RR first in order to read this, but events are referenced between both. This fic takes place in Minneapolis around 2015/2016ish (about two years before RR takes place); that's important mostly because there are some references that make more sense for that time period and also, yeah, some angst about being out at the work place for that time. (Not that that's necessarily been eradicated.)
This fic is already completely finished! But will be posted in parts. (: It will eventually be rated M lol.
It should also be noted that although it's the prequel to Ristorante Rosso, RR wasn't originally written with a second fic in mind; I've gone back and changed a few things in RR for consistency (like Liet's human name), but there will still be some discrepancies between them. See the end for more notes and also who's who for character notes. If you're still reading my fics in 2025, thanks!
On the day that Gilbert Beilschmidt first met Roderich Edelstein, he woke up on his best friend's sagging brown couch with only half of his pants pulled up his leg and the smell of warm alcohol perfuming the already-claustrophobic living room.
Despite how the situation looked, Gilbert had woken up in far worse scenarios. (Like Francis' graduation party, for example—which was something they had never spoken about since, and likely would never speak about in the foreseeable future.) But the thought didn't bring him any sense of comfort as he laid sprawled on Tony's couch, dying.
"Tony, you forgot to close the fucking blinds, you bastard," Gilbert groaned aloud, without even knowing if the Spaniard was anywhere near his vicinity to hear his justified complaining. He gave another long, moody noise and rolled over to block out the sunlight streaming in from the open windows with a suspiciously stained pillow from the equally-suspiciously stained couch. The sound of birds and light traffic outside added to the ambience of feeling like complete and utter shit.
Some bottles clinked against each other from the other side of the couch.
"Gil?" a pathetic voice asked. "Is that you? I think I'm dying, man."
Gilbert didn't have enough sympathy on reserve to respond. The pounding in his head felt worse when he squeezed his face into the pillow, but the pain did lessen the churning in his stomach, so it was a worthwhile tradeoff for the time being.
Like any other aging god facing the consequences of their encroaching mortality, Gilbert felt like shit, and just a little bit, maybe, like he was starting to get too old for this. Apparently, being in your thirties wasn't all that it was jacked up to be. Said no one ever.
"I can't believe you convinced us to take shots of Jägermeister," Antonio eventually spoke up again, a thump sounding for when he assumedly laid his head back down on the wooden floor. From the corner of Gilbert's eye, a blurry green bottle spun menacingly, sitting on top of a coffee table full of empty beer cans. In his defense, it had seemed like a good idea at the time, but finishing an entire bottle in a night had, probably, been overkill. Gilbert raised his head just enough to squint accusingly at the offending liquor.
"You can thank me later," he grunted. He wriggled his hand under the pillow and along the couch cushion, searching for his phone. "What time is it, anyway?"
Another slow slide and host of clanks. "After two. I gotta go to my parents' place soon, I promised I'd help them out with the shop tonight."
Gilbert grimaced. "Sorry, man. Hey, you got any aspirin?"
"In the bathroom medicine cabinet next to the—"
The rest of Antonio's instructions were cut off by the muffled sound of Rammstein playing from the other half of Gilbert's pants that had fallen off the couch and pooled on the floor.
"Qué?" Antonio questioned.
Gilbert groaned and muttered a curse under his breath as he groped for his phone in the pile of denim. "This better not be my fucking boss," he grumbled before changing tone. "This is Gilbert, what's up?"
"Gilbert! My favorite assistant manager, how're ya doing?" an all too cheerful voice broke out on the other end of the line. Gilbert made a face and held the phone a few more inches from his ear.
"Good? Good," Roma Vargas, the owner of the Italian restaurant he worked at, continued without waiting for an actual response. "I need you to come in and cover a shift for me today. Carlos called out on me for family matters and I'm short of a bartender tonight."
The pounding in Gilbert's head jumped a level. "Uh," he managed.
"Great!" his boss enthused. "I'll see you in thirty minutes. I want to go over some numbers with you before dinner starts. Ciao!"
Roma ended the call as quickly as he'd started it, the one-sided conversation still spinning in Gilbert's head. "Uh," he said again, staring at his phone.
"What was that?" Antonio piped up from the floor.
Gilbert flopped his head back on the pillow, wincing as it reverberated like a metal pan being dropped on his skull. "I think Roma just volunteered me to cover Carlos' ass tonight. Fuck," he groaned.
Antonio's voice somehow managed to sound even perkier than before as he made the realization, "Hey, that means you're working tonight too!"
Gilbert sent a glare in the Spaniard's direction, hoping the look would be strong enough to burn a hole through Antonio's stupid, rotting couch and maybe force him to get a new, more comfortable for aching backs, one.
"Tony?"
"Yeah, tío?"
"Fuck off."
...
Ristorante Rosso looked charming in the summer with the patio section in full swing during the nicer weather. Large red umbrellas matched the rich vermillion of the restaurant's exterior and blossomed across the outdoor seating area, casting everything and everyone underneath them in a slightly rosy color. The inviting smell of upscale Italian food wafted from the building and despite the late lunch hour, the outside section was still busy with a few tables chatting and sipping on iced down drinks in the midday Minnesotan heat.
Gilbert ignored all of these pleasantries as he stomped his way into the restaurant with muffled curses (some internal, some not so much), not even bothering to use the employee entrance in the back. Even after downing an entire pitcher of water straight from Tony's faucet, his head was still pounding. In his rush to get out the door by Roma's thirty minute deadline, he'd forgotten to grab the aspirin Antonio had offered and the idea of having to cover a shift on his one day off did little to sweeten his mood.
"Gil? What are you doing here?" A round-faced server with light blond hair looked up in surprise as Gilbert trudged through the restaurant's entryway. Gilbert waved him off, semi-conscious of the group of middle-aged ladies gossiping in his direction.
"I'll explain later, Tino," he threw over his shoulder before continuing to the back. One of the dish room boys was clocking in at the POS station and he gave a nervous hello in his stumbling Eastern European (Latvian or Lithuanian or some shit like that) accent as Gilbert brushed past. Not that Gilbert's mood was any of the junior staff's problem, of course, but as one of the longest running frontend employees at the restaurant, Gilbert's mood had its own reputation.
"Ahh, Gilbert, there you are!" Roma greeted as soon as he stepped into the kitchen. Gilbert tried to fix his glower into something slightly more suitable for meeting his boss.
"Carlos called out, huh?" he got straight to the point instead, nodding briefly in greeting to the rest of the bustling kitchen staff.
Roma shrugged, his wide gladiator's shoulders clothed in a nice, Italian-made suit as he always wore. Although the older Italian was the original founder of the restaurant, he mostly handled the business aspect of it in its present stage, and only stepped behind the stove when really needed (and nobody wanted that). "He said he had a family emergency. I assume it is the same as last week, with his grandmother," he replied.
Gilbert nodded understandingly, but still annoyed at having to come in last-minute on his day off. "Is he back in Cuba, then?"
"Possibly until the end of the week," Roma affirmed, "so I will need you to cover the bar until then. I am sure you can handle it," he winked.
Gilbert grunted. "That's fine." Like he had another choice.
Roma laughed and swung his arm around Gilbert's shoulders, patting his bicep teasingly. "Think of it as a nice change of scenery, eh?"
"Yeah, yeah," Gilbert waved him off, still feeling his headache. "Didn't you want to talk about some financials before dinner?" he changed the topic.
"Ah! Yes!" Roma perked up, already turning from the kitchen. "Let's talk in my office, yes?"
"Sure, sure," Gilbert watched after him. "I'll be there in a sec." He turned with a slump of relief to the cabinet where they kept the first aid kit, tearing it down with a degree of desperation and rooting through its contents to find the aspirin. "Where's the fucking Advil?!" he groaned, turning back to the messy shelves in annoyance.
The dish boy from before glanced up at him fretfully, his mousy brown hair swinging against the sides of his face as he tried to edge past Gilbert to get to the basement. "No more," he supplied.
Gilbert glanced back at him, one hand still patting along the contents of the shelf. "What was that?" he asked distractedly.
"No more medicine," Toyls said again, offering one last, timidly sympathetic look before scurrying down the stairs.
Gilbert resisted hitting his head against the cabinet in front of him. Of fucking course there wasn't.
...
Gilbert's headache hadn't improved any by the time dinner shift rolled around. He leaned against the back counter at the bar moodily, polishing glasses while watching the rest of the frontend staff hurry to put everything in place before the first customers arrived.
Roma's meeting hadn't taken too long, but by the time Gilbert left his office it was time to get ready for the dinner shift, and since he was playing both assistant manager and bartender that night, there was a lot to get done. Tuesdays weren't a terribly busy day for the restaurant, but with school out for the summer there was still a steady crowd in the evenings, particularly for happy hour.
With three years at Ristorante Rosso, Gilbert wasn't a stranger to its ebbs and flows. He'd started at a smaller restaurant down the street as the first job he got after moving to Minnesota, but Roma had walked in one day and they struck up a conversation and the next thing Gilbert knew, he was working for the old school Italian. Restaurant work wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind when he'd gotten his MBA, but it paid his bills and kept him from moving back to his family in Virginia, and Gilbert supposed that was all that mattered. Still, three years at the same job since graduating was starting to feel a little stale, and until Roma retired, Gilbert didn't see any way to move up in the business.
It was during moments like these, standing behind the bar and filling in for another person's shift, that Gilbert felt the same kind of restlessness in his gut that had originally propelled him to move halfway across the country with his best friend Francis and away from his family. To start something new, in some place completely new. Maybe it was time again….
"Carlos called out again?"
Gilbert looked up from the wine glass he'd been polishing for the past five minutes and refocused his vision on the head of pale blond hair in front of him. Tino's soft face looked up at him innocently from behind the counter.
"Yeah, family problems," he grunted, finally hanging up the glass in the racks over his head. "He'll probably be out for the rest of the week."
"Oh…" Tino's eyes softened in sympathy. Although the blond was in his late twenties, customers frequently mistook him for a teenage boy, with his soft features, cheerful personality, and short stature. But Gilbert had also never seen Tino lose a drinking contest—and that came from personal experience, on multiple occasions. "Well, I guess it'll be nice to do something new for a bit, huh?"
Gilbert shrugged. "I used to bartend at my last job. Don't mind doin' it," he replied.
"I wish I knew how to bartend," Tino said wistfully. "Then I could make fancy drinks like you guys do."
"Tino, the only thing you ever drink are vodka shots. I think I've seen you drink a cosmo once, and that's because you were already drunk."
Tino answered with a genuine laugh and tucked one of the bar pens into his apron, watching the hostess grab menus for the first table of dinner customers. "Hey, I'd drink more of them if I knew how to make them. Vodka shots just do the work quicker!" He flashed a grin in Gilbert's direction before walking over to greet the table, still carrying the same cheerful personality.
Gilbert watched the shorter man go with an affectionate snort. Tino had only been working at the restaurant for a few months, but he was easy to like and a quick worker—both pluses in Gilbert's book. Unfortunately, with Tino busy, it meant that Gilbert was back to being alone at the bar. Ristorante Rosso's happy hour began at five, when the restaurant opened for dinner, but patrons usually didn't start rolling in until closer to six.
Oh well. The one benefit of filling in for the other staff was that it gave him a better chance to people watch. Gilbert interacted with customers plenty as the assistant manager, and had been coached well under Roma in how to be a charming manager, but it was still very much a supervisory position. Sometimes he missed the more direct interactions with (not angry) customers from when he was a server.
A group of five or six guys entered the restaurant then, Gilbert sparing them a cursory glance as they talked with the hostess. He wasn't entirely surprised when she began leading them to the bar, probably for happy hour deals.
"Gilbert will be with you in just a moment," Lili informed them before scampering back to the hostess desk. Without bothering to rush, Gilbert finished the glass he was cleaning before making his way over to the group at the end of the bar. They all looked to be in their late twenties or early thirties and dressed nicely, which wasn't entirely surprising given that the restaurant saw lots of young professionals during its happy hour. Gilbert assumed they all had some kind of cushy office job downtown—they probably made at least triple of what anybody in the restaurant made, and for a tenth of the effort.
"Welcome, gentlemen. My name is Gilbert and I'll be your bartender for tonight, if you have any questions over the menu or happy hour specials just let me know," he ran through the script effortlessly, pouring each of them a water as he spoke.
A man with curling red hair snickered and thumped the back of a brunet lingering towards the edge of the group like he was volunteering someone in a crowd. "You can start off by giving this guy a beer—he never comes out with us so we gotta get him drunk when he does," he smirked.
Gilbert chuckled and looked up at the person in question and was immediately taken aback by the unusual color of his eyes. Even in the trendy lighting of the restaurant and behind a pair of black framed glasses, the man's eyes shone a deep blue, almost violet, color. The man didn't seem particularly bothered by his companion's brash behavior, but he also didn't disguise the rolling of his eyes, looking like he was used to their teasing as he glanced in Gilbert's direction and said, "I'll take whatever wheat beer you have on tap, thank you."
Gilbert blinked. "Sure, man," he said, feeling a bit taken aback without knowing why. The rest of the group all cheered and provided Gilbert with their own round of orders, giving him the excuse to focus on something else other than the man with the striking blue eyes.
Working in customer service, Gilbert had seen all sorts of beautiful and attractive people come through the restaurant. His last relationship, which had flitted in and out of a year with another MBA student named Monique, had ended years ago, and though he'd done some dating here and there since, Gilbert had never been a believer in mixing work with relationships. Rosso's normal bartender, Carlos, already did enough flirting with both customers and staff alike without Gilbert having to add his own charming self to the mixture.
Antonio liked to tease that it was Gilbert's serious, rule-adhering north German heritage that kept him to a mantra of "all work and no play." That was probably at least sixty percent true; but the other forty percent Gilbert chalked up to his own set of ethics and morals. There was a time and a place for everything, and work was neither the time nor the place for romance. Or hookups. Those things were reserved for Francis' over-the-top outings "with the boys." (Regret was also usually reserved for Francis' outings "with the boys.")
"Alright, gentlemen," Gilbert announced, setting the round of beers down in front of them. He made sure to look anywhere but the brunet in the middle. "Cheers."
"Cheers!" the group echoed enthusiastically, but Gilbert couldn't help but notice the softer, more reserved way the man with glasses spoke as he brought the glass to his lips. Soft and tinged pink, like he had a habit of biting them.
Gilbert looked away quickly and hoped that his cheeks didn't look as hot as they felt. He was probably still just hungover from Antonio's and his rowdy night. Definitely that.
...
Almost an hour later, the pace in the restaurant had picked up considerably. At least a third of the dining room had occupied tables, and Gilbert's bar was nearly full with happy hour customers.
The first group of guys that had come in were still gathered at the corner of the bar, mixed between sitting and standing. Most were a few drinks in and the topics swung wildly from work-related matters to any number of boring hobbies. From what Gilbert could gather (not that he was purposefully listening, but it would be impossible to not listen in his occupation), they were all musicians.
Not the cool, rock and metal playing kind, but musicians with the local symphony, or something of that nature. It sounded like they were in rehearsal for a series of outdoor concerts at the zoo. The kind of thing that people like Gilbert never got to see because he was working.
"Hey, Gil, did you already send out my drinks on twelve?" Tino popped up across the counter, wearing the expression he got when he was slightly overwhelmed but still managing to hold it together. It was only Tino and him as servers on the floor, with Leon running barback-slash-everything else. Again, not atypical for a Tuesday dinner service, but sometimes it took a minute to get adjusted.
"Yeah I sent the kid out with them a couple of minutes ago," Gilbert shrugged broadly towards the dining room. "Why?"
Tino didn't answer, instead just muttering "Shit," under his breath and ducking away again.
Gilbert shrugged again and turned his attention back to the bar, where one of the musicians was waving for his attention. He slid over casually and leaned against the bartop. "Yes, gentlemen? What else can I get ya'?"
The redheaded man, who'd by far had the most to drink out of all of them, looked like he had dragged the man with unusual eyes back to the bar, his arm slung around the brunet's shoulders in a way that the other man didn't quite seem to appreciate. "I need you to get this guy another drink! He keeps thinking he's bein' clever with nursing his beer on the sides but I see 'im," he laughed, jabbing the brunet with a finger.
"Alistair, I said I am fine–" the man tried to protest but the redhead seemed to be having none of it, his own glass of beer swaying dangerously in his other hand.
"C'mon, Rod, why you always gotta be this stuffy? This is why the rest of the orchestra can't stand you," Alistair scoffed. Gilbert didn't miss the way the brunet's–Rod's–eyes flashed with surprise and then hurt at the other's words. He decided to intervene.
"Sorry, pal, I can't serve him if he doesn't want a drink. He's gotta make that decision on his own."
One of the other group members tried to add, "Nobody thinks that, quit saying that shit, Ali," and tried to brush the redhead's arm off which then caused Alistair to jerk back reflexively, spilling the rest of his beer quite effectively down the front of the bespeckled brunet's shirt.
Gilbert would have laughed at the high-pitched yelp the other made, but this was quickly turning into a situation he would have to handle. Quite in fact, it already was. "Alright–" he started, in a new tone, but before he could get even that out, the bar had devolved into a game of dominos, with patrons jumping back to avoid getting splashed and that, in turn, causing more drinks to spill.
"Whoa, whoa–" Gilbert put his hands out in bewilderment, thinly aware that the entirety of the restaurant was watching the commotion at the bar.
"That wasn't my fault!" Alistair was already protesting, having stumbled back a few feet with the empty glass still in his hand... "I was just–" and then right into Leon, who was walking back to the bar at that moment with a tray full of empty glassware.
The crash was spectacular, and of course the entire restaurant was already watching. Even the hostess, Lili, had popped her head around the corner to watch with wide eyes. Tino, who was somehow standing only a few feet away from Gilbert in all the chaos, raised his hands in a tiny, sheepish shrug. "Opa?" he said unhelpfully.
"Shut up, Tino."
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Ohh hey it's been a couple of years. A few years since I last posted anything (typical) and almost eight years since I first published Ristorante Rosso (lol).
I've been thinking about making a prequel fic for RR since I first wrote it, and since I've been getting back into fandom stuff it somehow surfaced again and ballooned into this. I tend to hop between different writing styles and for me, the style RR and ILR are written in is just kinda fun to write; sometimes you just gotta take characters and put them in the dummest situations possible because why not. Although I loved writing the GerIta for RR, the background PruAus in that fic was especially fun for me, so it was nice to explore it more in this fic. Roderich is a bit more forward and while Gilbert's no stranger to dating, he's also kinda an idiot in the same way that Ludwig is an idiot in RR. Brothers, amirite.
It's a little hard for me to gauge how active the Hetalia fandom is at this point, but hey, if you're reading my stuff in 2025, thanks!
- Chapter Notes -
-In my head, RR has always taken place vaguely in Minneapolis and so I've tried to allude to that fact a lot more in this fic; I've kinda located the restaurant around the Uptown neighborhood.
-Roma (Rome), Toyls (Lithuania), Lili (Liechtenstein), Carlos (Cuba), Leon (HK), Alistair (Scotland)
-Roma is the owner of Ristorante Rosso; he's a great cook but he handles mostly the business side of the business at this point
-Gilbert moves to Minneapolis somewhat on a whim after his friend Francis goes there for grad school; he has a bit of an estranged relationship with his family/mother, but is very protective of his younger brother, Ludwig, especially after their parents split when they were younger.
-Antonio's family owns a corner grocery store close by the Rosso that also has a cute little flower shop attached to it.
-Toyls recently moved to the United States and started working at Rosso that summer; his English is patchy, but surprisingly good considering he could barely speak any when he first arrived.