Chapter Text
Since the doctors gave him a green light to do physical exercise again, the treadmill has become Manuel’s best friend.
For some reason, when he’s running, he manages not to think about anything, just the rhythm of his breath and the movement of his legs, and they are the only moments he feels at peace.
The doorbell rings just when he switches the treadmill off and jumps down, trying to catch his breath. His legs are numb and he knows that he’s probably overdoing it, but it’s the only therapy that’s worked so far.
Not like he got much other therapy.
There’s Patrick on his doorstep, wearing jeans and a red hoodie, so he’s definitely off duty now, and he’s looking at Manuel in a way one would look at a bomb.
“Keeping yourself in shape, eh?” he grins. “Good.”
Manuel gives him a death stare. “What are you doing here?”
“Checking on a friend?” Patrick suggests.
“Gattuso sent you,” Manuel states, looking around for a towel and then throwing it over his head, drying his hair. “At least have the decency to admit it.”
Patrick spreads his arms. “Guilty as charged,” he says. “But I think he’s got a point.”
“A point in what exactly?” Manuel asks.
“That you should go back to work. The longer you stay out of it, the harder it’s gonna get. It’s like when you fall off a horse, you know… gotta get back in the saddle immediately, or else you’re never going to do it again.”
Manuel rolls his eyes. “So you and Gattuso are now into horse riding?” he asks. “Listen, you’re the last one to tell me what to do. Everyone knows you’re Gattuso’s favorite, and the most dangerous people you meet are the creeps who try to get close to the models you guard.”
Patrick stares at him for a while, and then he start to laugh. “Ouch, that hurt,” he says, his tone of voice telling Manuel the exact opposite, that it didn’t hurt at all, because Patrick doesn’t give a damn about people knowing about his special relationship with their boss, and he’s quite content with not being assigned the difficult clients. After all, Manuel knows some of them would run from having to drag drunk girls out of parties or holding their hair while they throw up.
He probably would now, too.
“Rino’s got a job for you,” Patrick says. “He thinks it’s going to be a nice slow start for you, nothing crazy.”
“I would more expect him to fire me,” Manuel mumbles. “I thought he just didn’t want to do it while I was on sick leave.”
Patrick frowns. “He doesn’t want to fire you,” he says. “Or else he would have done it already. He just figured you’re not going to come back unless we drag you in by the hair, so I’m here to do that… or at least, to tell you about the job.”
Manuel presses his lips together. He should be grateful to still have a job, but Patrick, and Gattuso by proxy, making it sound like nothing ever happened just infuriate him.
“It’s this one politician. He’s pushing for a law that some people are not going to like,” Patrick says, pushing a pile of dirty clothes out of the way before sitting on the sofa. “And he’s worried for his son’s safety.”
Manuel throws the towel onto the pile of clothes Patrick has just moved. “Then he should ask for police protection.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what he doesn’t want to do,” Patrick says patiently. “First of all, you can only get police protection if there’s an actual threat, and right now, there’s none. No one’s gonna give you police protection just because maybe someone could sometime try something. And second, he doesn’t want publicity.”
“So instead, he wants someone whose last client literally died under their protection,” Manuel says. “Bullshit.”
“What about someone who nearly died while protecting them?” Patrick suggests quietly.
“Someone who literally let them get slaughtered like an animal!”
“Because you had five bullets in your body, damn you!” Patrick finally snaps and jumps up. “You were fucking dead when they got you in the hospital, remember that?”
Manuel turns his back to him. He doesn’t remember, because he was, well, fucking dead. He doesn’t remember anything from the moment he passed out in that dark alley behind that cursed club, until the moment he woke up to a white room and Patrick sitting in the chair next to his bed, holding his hand. Between that night, and Patrick calling his name and screaming for the nurse or the doctor or fucking anybody, is a full week of darkness.
“It’s a full on job. Twenty-four seven. Accommodation and all,” Patrick says.
Manuel frowns. “That means I’d be alone on the job?”
Patrick looks at him, slightly uneasy. “Yeah… this guy has his own security in the house, so they’d be your support. He just needs you to follow the kid around, because well… his own security are kinda busy protecting him.”
“The equivalent of driving a Ferrari and giving your kid an old Mercedes.”
Patrick snorts. “If you consider yourself an old Mercedes…”
Manuel considers himself a beaten up Volkswagen that should have been scrapped a long time ago, but he keeps it to himself. After all, it was Patrick who got him this job in the first place, and if it wasn’t for him, he would have no job now.
“Gattuso really wants me on the job?” he asks. “I mean… it sounds all too much like the last one I had, and…”
“It must be nothing like the last one,” Patrick says, and all playfulness is gone from his voice. “Rino doesn’t know anything. I didn’t tell him anything. But it will not repeat itself, you get me?”
“Yeah,” Manuel mumbles.
“I know you,” Patrick says. “And Rino does, too, without me even telling him. I assured him you would be strictly professional. You know what that implies.”
Manuel looks at him. “I’ve learned my lesson,” he says. “The hard way.”
Patrick sighs and gets up. “You can’t imagine how much I want to believe you,” he says. “Well, just know that if you fuck this one up, you’re dead. And I’m probably dead as well.”
He walks to the door and turns around one last time, looking at the mess around, like it just confirms his suspicions that it’s about time he got Manuel out of his den.
“I’ll pick you up tomorrow,” he says. “Just in case you forgot the way to the headquarters.”
~ ~ ~
When they arrive at the Pessina mansion where he’s supposed to start his job tomorrow, Manuel deeply regrets not having a big mug of coffee earlier. He didn’t get much sleep, as with the prospect of leaving his house and meeting people, leave alone returning to work, his nightmares tortured him all night.
His fears are confirmed. It’s way too much of a déjà vu. The white picket fence, the English garden and the white stucco on the walls, the unnatural silence of a house with way too much money and too little joy inside.
Gattuso is next to him, sporting a suit that he has reserved for dealing for clients who care. Although it might also be so that he doesn’t look like a poor version of the head of security in the mansion, because this Mancini guy clearly takes his job seriously and his suit must have cost just as much as his boss’.
The man hiring them offers them a drink, which they obviously decline, and pours himself one, sitting in an antique armchair, looking at Manuel with less interest than he showed for the crystal bottle a minute earlier.
“I just need you to be with him whenever he goes out of the house,” he says. “Here we can handle it with the house security, but… well, I’m not happy about it, but I had to promise him and my wife that he would get to have a normal life, or I would be in for a divorce… you know how women can get sometimes.”
Manuel honestly doesn’t know, and doesn’t care.
“I can’t afford any scandals, leave alone a divorce, so… I have to concede him his school and some activities.”
Manuel blinks. School? How old is the kid exactly? He wonders if they didn’t have a misunderstanding with Gattuso.
“If we can call it school,” Pessina sighs and reaches for his drink. “Fashion design. My God. I swear, I should have been more involved in his upbringing. Is that a career for a man?”
Mancini clears his throat and they all look to the door. Manuel looks at the boy who is without a doubt the one they have been discussing, and swallows hard. No. Not again. Just not this thing again.
It all comes back to him, and he doesn’t know why Gattuso thought it would help him. If anything, it’s going to make things worse. His last client was exactly this, a young boy who refused to give up his lifestyle. And he thought that with Manuel he didn’t have to.
His body makes a subconscious movement, like he wants to get up and walk up to Gattuso, tell him that he can’t do this, and to take him out of that house immediately and assign someone else, maybe Davide, right, this would be a good fit for Davide… but he is too slow, and by the time he stands up, Gattuso is already gone to the adjacent office with Pessina and Mancini. Manuel realizes that he’s now alone with the boy… Matteo, his hazy mind recalls, and he feels his hands going numb.
He’s quite sure that he’s going through a panic attack of sorts, and once again he’s reminded that he should have taken the offer of therapy, but insisted he was fine and Gattuso, not believing in the “therapy bullshit” didn’t pressure him.
“So you’re the new one,” Matteo says and sits on the sofa.
“Yeah,” Manuel nods, leaning over the table that’s holding the bottles of expensive liquor, keeping the maximal distance from him that way. “So, tell me what to expect.”
Matteo shrugs. “You’ll be bored.”
Manuel raises his brows. “Bored?”
Matteo leans back in the sofa. “You’ll drive me to school in the morning and then you’ll spend hours sitting outside the classrooms, unless you’re interested in fashion product management and trend forecasting… in that case, I think they wouldn’t mind if you joined us.”
“No, thank you,” Manuel says. “And then?”
“Then you’ll be sitting in the library with me, or in the study room, with a lovely little break for lunch sometimes. That’s probably it.”
Manuel is already cursing Gattuso’s ancestors, but he doesn’t let it show. “I’m glad to hear you don’t expect me to watch your back in the club or anything like that,” he says.
“Yeah, no,” Matteo says. “I haven’t had any personal life since my dad got elected. Doesn’t sit well with his image.”
Manuel’s heartbeat slows down a little. At least history won’t repeat itself this way, then.
“We all know here that nobody wants to kill me,” Matteo says and looks at him.
“Your father thinks otherwise.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Matteo objects. “Just in case someone would really try it, he wants to be able to say he did something to prevent it.”
Manuel stares at him, momentarily taken aback by the crudeness of that statement. He’s met quite a few spoiled kids who hated their parents. Never one who knew with absolute certainty that their parents didn’t care about them.
“I’ll do everything in my power to prevent it,” he says then.
He doesn’t promise that he won’t let it happen. He can’t promise him that. Not anymore.
“I know,” Matteo smiles a little, and then he gets up and walks up the stairs before Manuel has the chance to ask him how he can know that.
~ ~ ~
The room he gets assigned in the house is bigger than his own bedroom at home, so there are no complaints about that. He’s got everything he needs, he doesn’t even need to bother with cleaning up after himself since there’s a housemaid taking care of that, leaving him fresh towels every morning and taking out the thrash that consists pretty much only of soda cans. Honestly, he thinks it’s a bit excessive, but it’s not bothering him too much.
What does bother him is having his room right under Matteo’s. Mainly because of Matteo’s music taste.
The concert usually starts around ten at night, and lasts a few songs, like Matteo is somewhat aware of it possibly bothering the rest of the people living in the house - although Manuel is fairly sure that everyone else’s rooms are far enough to protect them from it, only he has to suffer through it.
His window is open to let the cool evening air in, and the song is playing loud enough for him to understand every word.
Standin' on your mama's porch
You told me that you'd wait forever
Oh, and when you held my hand
I knew that it was now or never
Manuel closes the window before the song gets to the “Summer of the 69’” part.
His phone beeps quietly on the nightstand and he plops down on the bed, reaching for it and opening the text. It’s from Patrick.
- Everything good?
Manuel runs a hand over his face.
- Everyone’s alive.
Patrick replies with just a laughing emoji. Without a doubt he’s either working, taking a quick snack break somewhere at an event full of models and wanna-be influencers, or he’s somewhere with Gattuso, having way more fun than Manuel right now.
Manuel puts the phone back on the nightstand and reaches for the remote to switch on the TV on the wall. He’s learned that falling asleep while watching it usually results in less nightmares than letting his mind do its thing. He’s not risking anything.
~ ~ ~
He’s up so early in the morning that he actually has breakfast in the kitchen before it is served to everyone else in the house. He doesn’t really mind. At least he can enjoy it in peace, sitting at a small table in the corner of the kitchen, reading news on his phone while the cook and the housemaid prepare the meals for everyone else.
He meets the staff of the house quite regularly, but it’s almost like no one else lives in the house. Matteo’s mother is sometimes mentioned, but Manuel has yet to see her in person, and his father is only there in the morning and in the evening, making brief appearances during which he manages to create tense atmosphere nonetheless.
The days have quite a precise schedule, for which Manuel is grateful. It’s something he didn’t have in the last job, and every minute took him by surprise. It’s much easier this way, when he knows exactly what time they leave the house and arrive at the school, what time the lessons end and what time they are expected to be back for dinner.
It’s not the best of things if there is really someone waiting for an opportunity to cause harm to his client, of course. Then the precise schedule is a curse. But since it’s unlikely to happen, Manuel just enjoys the comfort of knowing what’s coming next.
Matteo doesn’t seem to be embarrassed about having a bodyguard, and nor do his classmates comment on it. It’s probably not that uncommon at this school anyway. At least it seems to Manuel that this is a school bored rich kids would attend, because it lets them play at doing something incredible while teaching them absolutely nothing.
He would never think he’d one day agree with someone like Matteo’s father, but maybe he had a point.
He sits on the uncomfortable bench in front of one of the classrooms, just staring at the abstract art on the walls, occasionally turning his head and looking at whoever is walking past him. It’s a bit of a conditioned response, and it seems to make the people uncomfortable.
He gets up when he hears the cacophony of voices get louder behind the door.
A few people walk out, and then Matteo, with a cluster of girls around him, discussing something Manuel doesn’t even bother to try to understand. He gives him a questioning look, Matteo utters a simple “library”, and Manuel resigns himself to his fate.
The library is a building separate from the faculty and has a magnetic frame, which Manuel hates because he always has to remind the elderly guy sitting at the reception why he carries a gun and that he is allowed to carry it - Matteo’s father had to pay off the school’s dean who wasn’t happy at all about guns in the campus.
He follows the group to one of the study rooms, looking around out of habit, but the most dangerous things there seem to be the microwave ovens in the corridor where some of the students are warming up their lunches.
He should of course stand guard, but at this point, standing at the door for hours would look stupid, and he doesn’t think that any attacker would choose a study room full of kids out of all places, so he finally sits in one of the dark green sofas.
“It was your idea, so why are you changing the whole thing now?” one of the girls asks Matteo, shaking her head so wildly her colorful dreadlocks almost whip Manuel’s face.
“I’m not, but with this pattern, it’s not going to work!” Matteo says.
“It is!” the girl objects, and then slides the paper over to Manuel. “What do you see?”
Manuel looks at it skeptically. “It’s a sweater with holes,” he says. “What else am I supposed to see?”
“Nothing. A sweater with holes,” she says contentedly.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t wear it,” Manuel mutters.
“Good,” the girl giggles. “You’re not really the… target buyer group. But you see the holes, and that’s the point.”
Matteo sighs and looks over at Manuel. “Traitor,” he says. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I’m on no one’s side,” Manuel says and leans back in the sofa to remove himself from their circle as much as possible.
“Fine, if we’re going with this, I’m not the one presenting it,” Matteo says and folds his arms.
Manuel tilts his head to the side unwittingly, suddenly intrigued. It’s the first time he witnesses Matteo assert some sort of dominance instead of cowering in the corner when his father speaks, and it’s strangely satisfying to see this side of him surface.
“Come on!” one of the girls whines. “You created the whole thing!”
“And you slapped a Christmas sweater pattern over it,” Matteo says. “No.”
At this point, Manuel kind of wishes he had popcorn with him.
“The pattern stays,” the girl with dreadlocks says, locking her eyes with Matteo’s like they’re arm wrestling. “And we bring back your sweater that looks like it’s been washed in bleach. And you present.”
“You know the washed in bleach effect was the point, right?” Matteo pouts. “Because you can’t put wool in bleach. It would fall apart. So to create that effect…”
“I don’t give a flying fuck,” the girl says, causing Manuel to almost choke on thin air. “Tell the jury that. Do we have a deal or not?”
Please have a deal, Manuel thinks to himself. Because I can’t take much more of this.
“We have a deal,” Matteo says.
Manuel waits for them to gather the papers with notes and sketches, and then gets up slowly. His body feels sore as it still doesn’t like him staying in one position for long. Which is quite unfortunate in this job.
“Are we going home, or should I take you somewhere for lunch?” Manuel asks when they get in the car.
He feels more like a personal driver than a bodyguard at this point.
“Home,” Matteo says. “I need to study for an exam. I’ll just grab something.”
Manuel nods and gets on the road, checking the road behind them just in case.
“I told you you’d be bored,” Matteo says.
“No, it was very entertaining,” Manuel says with badly hidden sarcasm, and then focuses on driving to avoid more interactions.
~ ~ ~
When they get back to the mansion, Manuel warms up some leftovers from the previous day that he finds in the fridge while he watches Matteo make himself something that looks way too healthy to be really tasty.
He’s noticed that whenever Matteo can avoid the family meals, he does so. He doesn’t really leave his room once they come back, there’s never been anyone to visit him and as far as Manuel can judge from what he more or less accidentally hears from Matteo’s room, he doesn’t talk to anyone on the phone either.
It’s like the only life he has is within the campus, and the only people he talks to are his classmates. And Manuel. And Manuel would like to take himself out of that equation.
He takes the food up to his room and eats it while watching some stupid show on TV. He ends up taking a nap and only wakes up when there’s a knock on his door.
He sits up and rubs his eyes before dragging his body to the door. There is Matteo standing behind the door, looking at him a bit guiltily.
“I… sorry, I woke you up,” he says.
Manuel tries to act like he totally didn’t, because it’s not the very definition of professional, but his appearance probably gives him away anyway.
“No problem,” he mumbles. “Did you need anything?”
“I needed to go… no, never mind, I’m not going to bother you.”
“I am literally paid for this,” Manuel says. “You don’t bother me. Is it okay if I’m at the car in ten minutes?”
Matteo nods and turns around to go back to his room. Manuel splashes some cold water in his face in the bathroom and tries to comb his hair to make it a bit more presentable. His back is killing him and it seems like the scars have decided to remind him of their existence, so he opens the little cupboard above the sink and swallows a painkiller.
Which is one more thing Gattuso doesn’t know about and would kill him for, because he’s strict on total sobriety and all while being on the job, but what is new with Manuel breaking the rules, right?
He actually walks out merely a minute before Matteo does, and as he goes to open the car door, Matteo’s father’s car pulls up in the driveway as well, with Mancini getting out and opening the door for him.
“Where are you going?” he asks Matteo, as if him going out of the house any later than four in the afternoon is highly suspicious.
“I need a book from the library for tomorrow’s exam,” Matteo says.
“Oh, you need books in that school?” his father raises his brows. “I thought you only used crayons.”
Manuel gets in the car, because honestly, he doesn’t need to get involved in this. He just waits for Matteo to get in, and then for the other driver to move the car so that they can pass.
“The university library or a different one?” he asks.
“The university one,” Matteo says quietly.
Manuel nods and drives through the gate, watching it close behind them in the rear mirror.
The journey is quiet, much more quiet than he’s used to. Usually, Matteo wants to talk, completely ignoring that Manuel doesn’t, and he sits in the front seat, absolutely not getting why that is an issue, but not now. Manuel could experience the forgotten baby syndrome now, that’s how quiet Matteo is in the back seat.
The sun is slowly setting and the air is pleasantly warm. Manuel feels like he hasn’t been at peace like this for a long time, and he wishes he could close his eyes and just melt into the seat. Because he is an idiot and realizes way too late that it’s that painkiller he had taken, slowly lulling him to sleep.
They are nearly at the campus when he completely overlooks a sign and only slams the brakes when it registers in his brain a second later, and just by sheer luck they don’t get hit by the car coming from the right.
Manuel just stares ahead, gripping the wheel in total shock, while the other driver honks at him furiously and drives past him while calling him all the names in the book.
“Are you okay?” Matteo asks quietly from the backseat.
“Yeah,” Manuel breathes out. “You?”
“I’m fine,” Matteo says.
Manuel nods for himself and steps on the gas again, driving the rest of the way to the library in silence. He accompanies Matteo to the library, and waits until he picks up the book which he apparently ordered from home through the library system. Once they walk out, Manuel heads to the car, but Matteo stops him.
“What?” Manuel asks, annoyed.
He just wants to drive them home and lie down and sleep.
“One more place we need to go,” Matteo says.
Manuel follows him, cursing his entire existence in his mind, until they arrive at their destination and he just can’t believe his eyes.
They are at the school cafeteria, the place that looks like a wannabe jazz club and is always full of people discussing things that Manuel doesn’t even want to understand.
“Are you kidding me?” he mutters under his breath, standing at the door awkwardly and just watching the people go in and out, until Matteo appears in front of him again, nods to a small table at the wall, and puts two cups of coffee on it.
Now Manuel doesn’t feel like having a chat over coffee, at all, but he also feels like having coffee… and he realizes that the only reason Matteo is doing this is because he doesn’t want Manuel to kill them both on the way home.
Caving in and drinking it is definitely better than the other option, which is calling Mancini and admitting to him that he can’t drive.
He sits at the table and pulls the cup to him. Matteo glances at him, like he wants to make sure he’s doing what he’s supposed to, and then he opens the book and doesn’t lift his eyes from it until their cups are empty.
~ ~ ~
The first thing Manuel does when he gets back to his room is throw the bottle of painkillers in the trash bin in the bathroom.
He had promised Patrick that this job would be nothing like the last one, and right now, it’s heading exactly in the direction it shouldn’t be heading.
He plops down on the bed and just stares at the ceiling until it’s time for the usual night concert. It’s Walking on sunshine tonight. Manuel wonders if Matteo has a playlist labeled “annoying songs from the 80s”, and uses it to torture him.
He closes the window and goes to have a shower.