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Francesco twiddled his thumbs angrily in the elevator, the three others standing idly near him talking angrily amongst themselves while he made his own little plans in his head. Yes… he’d be the first to… to what with Higgins. Take care of him yes but to what end…?
Maybe they could flip him. Yes. That’d be wonderful. Take him along. They seemed like they'd have a lot to talk about. Plus it’d be just a shame really to lay waste to all that. Despite his… complexion and his… color pallet he seems like a fairly attractive young man. I mean he wouldn’t any sort of compunction being seen maybe on a long walk with him… Higgins would have to wear a hat of course… would get in the way at some p- WAIT. WHAT? NO. Enooough we are here for violence and nothing else.
“Franci what’r you doing??” Gabriella grabbed at his face and put herself between him and the elevator wall he was banging his head against in frustration. “Stop that you- woooah” He’d made another effort to hit himself against the wall and she naturally pushed back against him but this was as the door was opening behind him where Dolco would have been to catch them but he, not paying attention to the din behind him moved as soon as the door opened and the two of them, Franci and Gabriella, nearly fell over from the momentum of it all.
“Oi. Move your asses. We’re here on business stop your damned goofing. Get moving. Are you going to find Vento or not?” What? Oh. Yes, Vento of course. He’d gotten distracted thinking about the Leprechaun. He’d completely forgotten he’d already called dibs on Vento instead. Yeah Ok…
Francesco wandered down the hall tryna focus on his goal of ‘Find Vento’s Room’ and handle him and he made it but when he got there, like a huge cosmic joke, Mr. Higgins was laying on the floor against the wall outside of the room. He groaned nonsensically and smelled so strongly like alcohol and vomit that Francesco could smell him from the maybe 3 meters away he was standing. Charming.
“Blugh shite.” Higgins rolled over a bit like he was tryna get his bearings and stand up. He ended up sliding down the wall and sprawled onto the floor down into the center of the walkway. Francesco couldn’t very well leave him there.
“Higgins,” Francesco said, crouching down and reaching out to grab Irishman “Higgins what are you doing out here in the hall?” Francesco grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back up to lean on the wall. He bounced off the wall himself though when Higgins pushed back on him with all of his weight.
“Fuck off Harry I can do it myself.” Harry?? Is that… O’Connell? Yeah. That sounded right. Francesco rubbed as the sore spot on the back area of his shoulder where he hit the wall. He had not expected that kind of power to come from someone who couldn’t even hold himself upright. It was sure going to leave a mark. Nonetheless, Francesco wasn’t going to leave him on the floor.
“Don’t take this the wrong way but no you can’t. I’m gunna grab you. Don’t you push me again.” Higgins had rolled back over onto the floor chest down. Francesco grabbed at the yoke of his dress shirt dragged him up into a seated position and leaned him up against the wall where he sat down next to him. “What’s the matter with you? I did not take you for this kind of a drunken fool. Higgins, are you awake?”
Now that he had Higgins in a better position he took a moment to actually take in his appearance. Gray, woolen, herringbone slacks paired with a teal linen dress shirt with the faintest of fine silver pinstripes and walnut brogue Derbys. He’s actually a fairly well dressed individual. Francesco wonders how long ago his tie, waistcoat, and jacket were lost… shame. He’d looked so dapper last he’d seen him… Francesco bet if he’d been allowed to dress him… or undr- NO. Not going there.
Higgins stiffened and looked up from where he was leaning on Francesco’s shoulder. “You’re not Harry… It’s Charlie, you beautiful tanned angel. Charlie. Ugh” What. Well… he didn’t know what else to say to that other than-
“Pfft okay. No. I’m not Harry”. Charlie had his head down again with his face pressed into the fabric of Francesco’s jacket sleeve. “Don’t you dare rub your face on my jacket. This is Italian Cashmere. I will put you back on the damned floor and mug you.”
“But it’s so soft.”
“Don’t you fucking dare. Do you know how expensive this suit is?”
“Yes…. I do have an idea.”
“What…? No. I don’t care, now why are you drunkenly crawling around on the floor?”
“I’m not drunk. I’m hungover. I was drunk last night.”
“You smell drunk.”
“You smell like a bronze angel. Mmmm in cashmere. What is that you’re wearing?” Oh dios mio this is getting exhausting. “But… if you’re going to keep asking... Because Marco gave me the cold shoulder for casually flirting with that Belfari chap. So I got drunk and frustrated and took it out on him and ruined it all. So I drank some more. And went crying to my best friend. And got sick a lot. Tried to go back to my room this morning but I didn’t make it very far. Gimme a few minutes to catch my bearings and I’ll give it another go. I’m fine now. Well… no… I have some music to face this morning. I went and got my sad little heart broken.”
Well. Francesco wasn’t entirely sure what he’d expected from this conversation but that wasn’t exactly it. Boy troubles. Boy troubles he could relate with even. He didn’t know the specifics but the misery and frustration of an unrequited love… yes… he knew that well. And damned him if his maternal nurturing side wasn’t trying to reach for the sympathetic words that could comfort this poor love sick fool.
“Look… Charlie. I don’t know what’s gone on here but whomever has rejected you, this Marco, it’s okay to love someone and not be loved in return. I don’t know what you did to ‘ruin’ whatever you had but maybe, if you have someone, maybe you should stop flirting with other men. Especially with that Belfari. That might help. Well… But if you need someone to, I can take care of that Italian that broke your heart.” Francesco didn’t know what came over him when it came to this bog-hopper but something in his insides jumped a little when Charlie looked up at him and laughed and it was like his blue eyes sparkled and he got a little color back in his cheeks.
“Noo. No please don’t ‘take care of him’. What a hinky thing to say.”
“That’s all you took from that?”
“Psh no but I’m still trying to process the rest of the message. How’d you come to be so smart mister anyway?” Charlie was nodding off again and Francesco wondered how long they’d be like this for. Francesco also vaguely wondered how he came to be in this position and what would happen when Charlie finally came to.
“I have my own troubles in love. Stuck in an unrequited love of my own. And maybe a… new unrequited crush… no real hope for either of them and also no helping either of them. And yet I can’t seem to turn it off. Fell in love with my best friend you see. She’ll never love me like I love her but I know I’ll always have an amazing friend in her. It’s enough for me to just be near to her like I am.” It was enough alright. To be near and to be trusted by Gabriella despite his obvious one sided feelings for her. And unwanted by her. He was happy to have what he had. But it was also, in its own right, very difficult, and heart-achingly miserable to be so close and yet… he just wasn’t close enough. To be always held at arm’s length…
“Oh… doesn’t it… hurt though? You really think it’s worth it?” Yes Charlie… it’s worth it. And he told him so. Charlie grew quiet for a time and Francesco wondered what was going through his head. Maybe he’d fallen asleep. “I think… I could try… Thank you.” Oh. Well then…
“It’s Etro Anice.”
“Huh?”
“Earlier, you asked me what I was wearing. Cologne yes? It’s Etro Anice.” Yes… Anise, how every man who loves himself should smell. Or, every man who wants others to think he loves himself. At the very least any man who values how others perceive him… Curiosity won over and he took advantage of Charlies eyes being closed and drifted ever closer to sneak the smallest of sniffs just to catch even the slightest hint… for curiosity’s sake only of course. Nothing. Still just booze and vomit. Shame really. “And what of you? Surely you don’t smell of… drink… normally?”
“There’s this stuff… don’t laugh ok. Green Irish Tweed” Right. ‘The Gentleman’s Mist’. Ok. Franci couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing anyway.
“So… you normally smell like… a classy stripper…?” Yeah… a classy one… that’s some pricey shit.
“Hey. Hey now. Don’t be like that. Strippers don’t need that… that-“ Charlie seemed to take offense to that and actually sit up on his own and raised his voice… which… had how he’d said it implied he’d had a problem with strippers..? That would have been… “Stripper’s have enough problems and don’t need people using them as a butt of jokes and… and!-“
Suddenly the door behind Charlie opened and a messy red head peaked out with a scowl on his face. “Charlie! I swear to god whatever has you out here shouting about strippers again I will fuck you up. Shut. Up!” And threw a large shoe before disappearing back into the room again.
Several things happened simultaneously in direct response.
Oh dios mio it’s O’Connell, Francesco realized with horror he’d gotten completely distracted by Charlie and forgotten what he’d been here to do.
“Bluuuuhh FuCK” Charlie was bent over kneeling over Francesco, cradling the back of his head and neck, apparently having been struck by the heel of the shoe that O’Connell had lobbed at him.
What the fuck does he do now??
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“UUUGhhh shit fuck.” Charlie falling over into Francesco’s lap brought him back out of his head. What the hell was going on? He got hit with a shoe it shouldn’t be that bad. But when Francesco looked over and saw a piece of metal on the heel of the shoe glinting underneath the lights in the hall, the horror of what exactly hit Charlie dawned on him.
“Charlie, show me your head.” Charlie did his best of course and took his hands away from his head in order to look up at him. Once his hands were free of his red mop though, a much darker red, wet puddle was smudged across his palms and dripping down his fingers. At least one of the multiple metal clasps or the sharp edge of the metal heel had bludgeoned Charlie in the back of his head and he was bleeding out. Probably not fatally of course. A shoe could hardly… well… it was a Mafioso’s metal heel so, who knew…
Francesco looked all about himself. Damn his sense of style and his compulsive need to look better than everyone else. He had nothing to press into Charlie’s wound to stop the blood that wouldn’t be ruined in the process.
A little voice in the back of his mind said ‘this is the perfect way to transition into actually getting your job done, don’t squander it’ but he disregarded it and grabbed at Charlie’s shoes and threw them off his feet. The way they bounced down the hallway and seemed to land in a planned clutter would have been comical if it weren’t for the situation. Ignoring Charlie’s protests, he also stripped him of his socks. He then folded them and pressed one onto the back of his head. He’d save the other for later. It immediately started soaking up the blood.
What a goddamned predicament he’d gotten himself into. Should’ve just left him on the goddamned floor. Probably would’ve been able to get his job done and Charlie wouldn’t have been able to do anything at all. He wouldn’t have been any the wiser. Now though, 1) he was awake and ‘sort’ of cognizant, and 2) Francesco had bonded with him ‘sort of’ and his damned conscious couldn’t just let him be now. How he had escaped being noticed by Harry in fact must have been the work of the gods and still, thank god he was here or who knows what would have become of Charlie bleeding out on the floor. Although… if he hadn’t have been there, Charlie probably wouldn’t have been struck either…
“Hold that there dammit. Stop moving.” Francesco looked up and down the hallways and spotted a break in the hallways where a small table stood for decoration. On it stood a large vase filled with… relatively fresh flowers. It would have to do. Francesco ran for it and tossed the flowers onto the floor and ran back with the vase.
Back on the floor, Francesco swiped the sock from Charlie and poured some plant water on it, wrung it out and grabbed Charlie by his shirt again but this time dumped him across his lap and started dabbing at his wound with the wet sock. He did it twice. Three times, tuning out whatever Charlie was trying to tell him. He finally wet the sock a fourth time and wrung it out and pressed it back to Charlie’s wound. It wasn’t a necessarily serious or even a big thing but it was a head wound and even the most superficial ones, once the skin breaks, they just bleed and bleed. So annoying.
“Would you just look at the pair we make…” Francesco mumbled. “We’ve both been marred today.”
“Did Harry hit you too?” Charlie garbled from his lap.
“No but he probably should have hit me instead of you. He would have hit me instead if he had any sense. I don’t think he saw me though. You pushed me into the wall earlier, remember? It’s going to bruise right under my tattoo. Bruising there never looks natural.”
“You…. You have a tattoo??” God bless Charlie. He sprung up in excitement from where Francesco had laid him across his lap and promptly smacked heads with him.
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If someone had the misfortune of needing to get down the hallway they’d see two men rolling around on the floor cradling their heads and whining like a bunch of babies. That is what Shunnella and Quinnella Willis, twins visiting from America saw when they left their rooms to go get breakfast in the lobby. Just two men crying on the hallway floor two doors down from their room. With a broken flower vase and a pair of shoes laying on the floor nearby. “Girl, this is a messed up country. Let’s go.” And they quietly shimmied around the two crying men to go on with their day. None of their business after all.
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Francesco was able to collect himself much sooner than Charlie and sat himself back up against the wall holding his jaw while Charlie cried on the floor. Understandably, because Charlie hit his open wound against Francesco’s chin. Ow. How unlucky can someone get...? Apparently… well… quite. Francesco was sure that he now had Charlie’s blood smeared across his face. Gross. Not the kind of human body fluid he wanted on his fa- Nope. Why does he always have to go down that road?
He couldn’t really keep the thoughts away though, especially watching Charlie writhe on the floor. For some reason, he thought that image would stay with him for a long time. Charlie Higgins writhing around on the floor. He knew that Charlie’s groaning cries were that of pain and yet there was something disastrously attractive about the whole thing. He deserved the head-butt in the face for sure. For ogling if nothing else.
But for a moment right after their heads collided, while he still had Charlie in his lap, they’d been curled around each other and Francesco cursed himself for it. Cursed himself for being so distracted and not taking that moment to soak it in. He cursed himself for wanting to turn back to that moment and soak in it. And more and more he cursed himself and he cursed Charlie for just being Charlie. He didn’t have time for it. He wasn’t supposed to be here and he wasn’t supposed to be enjoying it. Oh he cursed to himself over and over again quietly and only to himself.
Charlie was of course able to collect himself eventually and he sat back down next to Francesco again and immediately proceeded to stuff his face back into his sleeve and groan miserably. “You… you have a tattoo then?”
“Ugh. Yes.”
“Can I… can I see it?”
“…No.”
“What. Why? You thought about it. I know you did. I could hear it. You hesitated.”
“I’d have to take off my shirt.”
“So? Is that all?”
“I said no Charlie.”
“Ugh. Fine. I bled for nothing.”
“You bled on me, you ass.” Ever so slowly a realization started to dawn on Francesco. Charlie wasn’t garbling anymore and he wasn’t drunkenly clumsy anymore. Charlie was likely fully sober by now and mostly awake. Francesco was sure that very soon in fact he would realize whose sleeve he was stuffing his face into… and… sniffing. Again. “Hey… Charlie?”
“Hmm?”
“Why did you flirt with that Belfari guy if you have someone?”
“I wasn’t actually flirting with Belfari. I was… complimenting him on his face.” That was sort of true… He only really called him handsome. It was true enough. Francesco knew what he looked like. He knew his reputation. It wasn’t really enough that Francesco thought it was flirting either. But to hear it from Charlie now, that no he wasn’t flirting with him kinda… stung a little. In the chest. Damn his crush.
“But in a way that everyone thought you were flirting…” just complimenting his face, eh? “So, you like Belfari’s face?”
“Oh yes. He has a very nice face you see.”
“Oh is that all?” Francesco decided to go for it. Let Charlie in on the secret. Who knows what was going to happen. With his head wound he didn’t think Charlie would be much of a threat to his safety. Besides, Francesco, bump or not, was in peak condition yet. And was armed to the teeth.
“Well I suppose he has a nice enough voice too but that’s all I really know. It’s moot at this point anyway.”
“I suppose you’d recognize it again if you saw it.”
“What.”
“You heard me. His face. Or his voice. You’d recognize it again?”
“Well… yes I think so. I mean… we’ll probably meet again because our work.”
“You think so… Well Charlie, I think if you can’t work things out with Marco you should try actually flirting with Belfari. Maybe you’ll like more than just his face.
Charlie stiffened and pulled himself up off of Francesco and back up against the wall so that he could look at him. Francesco watched in calm disappointment as Charlie’s eyes widens and his face grew visibly paler. So, that’s how it was. His chest hurt.
“B- You’re Belfari.”
“Francesco. My name is Francesco.”
“Why..? Why’re you telling me this?”
In the distance Francesco could hear the pattering of feet and shouting drawing closer. He prepared himself for a confrontation. Or at least to run. He was not prepared just yet to leave Charlie. But, looking at him again… he may not have a choice. A shattered vase on the floor, plant watered soaked into the hall rug, Charlie’s shoes thrown down the hall and his socks strewn about- one very bloody. Charlie’s hands were red with his own blood. His blue sleeves were spattered and stained from blood trickling down and staining its edges. Even his cuff links were caked in the carmine of recently dried blood. All Charlie’s. The same color that was tainting Charlie’s already ginger hair. The same color of the blood that was surely smudged across his own chin.
He wondered how far across his face he’d gotten Charlie’s blood with that tiny collision. If he licked his lips would he taste Charlie? He wanted to.
The shouting drew ever nearer.
Like the feeling of falling from tipping your own chair too far, time seemed to slow to a near standstill in the anticipation of what he knew was to come. He didn’t know how he knew it but those shouts did not belong to any of his associates. Sicilians were coming.
“Charlie. Punch me. Quickly.”
“What?”
“Do it!”
“NO!”
“Damn you Charlie.”
In what he would later excuse as what he thought was the last act of a desperate man, he lunged for Charlie. Grabbed at what he could and pulled himself to his feet and dragged Charlie with him. Charlie, bless him, probably dizzy from the bump on his head, the blood loss, the shock of the action, who knows, but Francisco didn’t care, but Charlie staggered and failed to do much else but fall into him.
Francesco pushed his back violently against the wall. So much so the decorative light figures all down the wall shook on impact. His insides churned with guilt as he watched the back of Charlie’s head also hit the wall. A third impact in less than an hour. The third time he had to hear Charlie cry out in pain. A loud thud followed from Vento’s room accompanied by voices of alarm. There wasn’t much time now.
“While there’s no shame in admitting defeat but there’s also no reward. Do try to make it work with Bontade.” He pressed himself against Charlie to take in the single moment he’d ever get to be close to him.
He pressed a firm and brief kiss to the corner of his mouth and he saw stars.
“The fuck do you think you’re doing?!” Shouting surrounded him and he’d been struck in the temple by a fist and then violently pulled away from Charlie. He blinked away the pain and saw that he’d been tossed to the floor. He shook off his own dizziness and scrambled away down the hall like the miserable broken hearted fool that he was.
Looking back for one last glance at Charlie, he saw him slumped over on the floor again. His blood splattered and dripping down the wall where he’d slammed him. The identical twins had split up. The one –who he assumed was Marco- crouched over Charlie’s prone body and the other screamed obscenities and promised the fate of a bloody and violent retribution. O’Connell was trying to help Marco drag Charlie to his feet. Nooo you morons that’s no way to help someone with a concussion, you must let them rest- oh Merda- Vento and the other twin were running after him.
Fuck that shit. Bye.
He allowed himself to feel regret over what could have been with Charlie and leaving him in such a state but he’d already flipped the switch that was moral ambiguity and there was no time for take backs and he ran for his life.
Francesco always was good at playing the bad guy.
“Goodbye Charlie.”
Racing down the stairs he thought he just might find a perfume vendor later in the week. He wanted to buy a bottle of Green Irish Tweed.