It's a terrifying thing to come to terms with how much power someone has over you.
Before Santo burst into my room looking like he was going to fall apart at the seams, I'd been many things. Angry and hopeless. Scared. Uncertain. That had all culminated in a sick haze clumped in my gut and spreading through fatigued limbs, a physical illness perpetuated by the knowledge that we were not okay.
When a man can make you feel physically ill, that's when you know you're fucked. And when he can make you feel like you can breathe again, like that pressure is gone from your chest and your heart can do its job, you're even more fucked.
The knowledge that he's all I have, that if I weren't to have him anymore that would mean I'd be out all my friends and even a fucking place to stay... it's more than terrifying. But what's worse than all of that is not trying.
Love can be simple. Despite how he hurt me and no matter what he was going to tell me, I knew I loved him. It beat at my chest the moment I saw his tortured face, saw how physically ill I'd made him feel.
It's fathomless and logical at the same time. Cosmic and precious. And the knowledge of the power he has over me—the possibility that everything we've built is just that unstable or that our world is just that dark, just that merciless—is irrelevant.
Because he's trying, isn't he?
And until it stops working, there's nothing else to do but try.
I feel the need to give us both a break, pull away from the heavy stuff and do something for Santo. Something I've been thinking about for a while. He's settled beneath me now, no more of that erratic quality to his voice and movements. I could tell that was him on the edge of something like a breakdown, and it threw me. I don't like seeing him like that at all.
So lost. Almost like he was hurting with his inability to communicate.
Despite the fact that I'm the one who just dramatically professed their love without it being reciprocated, I feel a peace settling deep in my bones. I've been so hungry for it, for someone in my corner, that my poor heart knows when to stop looking for it and grab ahold.
Santo isn't looking for it because he doesn't think he deserves it. And he is terrified. I see it all over his face—he needs to relax.
What better way to help someone relax than to give them head?
He's been patient with me sexually, never asking me to do anything. Letting me get to it in my own time. His eyes blow wide as I fumble with the zipper on his pants and he sucks in a breath.
"Angioletto," he says on a breathy exhale, and that alone immediately triggers my arousal. Jesus. "You're sure?"
I slide down his legs, finally getting the zipper down but unable to free him like I want to. I need him to move, to lift his hips. But he just sits there.
"Hello?" I yank at the stupid fabric in my way, raising a brow at the dazed look on his face. Did I break him?
"Oh Jesus Christ," he mutters, and I get the distinct impression that he didn't mean to say that out loud. But he moves in the next second, allowing me to reach for him and feel the silken hardness of him.
It's becomes apparent that he's been... thinking about this more than I realized. His abdomen jumps at my touch, chest already beginning to rise and fall unevenly. His jaw sharpens as he presses his head back into the headboard, teeth gritted in restraint.
"Fuck, ragazza dolce. You want to suck my cock?"
"Yes. Please, Santo."
His mouth pops open on a silent groan as he looks down his nose at me, eyes hooded with unadulterated lust. "Fuck. Been thinking about this for a long time. Put both hands on it, amati. Oh fu—good girl."
"Was that too hard?" I almost squeak, a little nervous at his reaction. He shakes his head, thick hair shifting over a glittering eye. Okay. So he likes me to be a little more aggressive.
I hold him in both hands, the feeling of him so hot in my grip. His hips are shifting but he's resisting thrusting into my palms, and his quickly disintegrating hold on his restraint from just one touch is enough to make me squirm. A smirk crooks those lips of his.
"So fucking wet, aren't you, baby?" he drawls, and I squirm again at the pet name. He only uses it when we're being intimate, and I like that way more than I ever expected. "Could you come like this? Fuck."
Saliva gathers in my mouth, and I press lower, finding that in order to get my mouth around him at the best angle I have to straddle one of his thighs. Those thick, corded thighs. I wrap my lips around his tip, simultaneously finding friction, groaning long and loud around his dick.
He anchors one hand in my hair, wrapping it in the strands until his fingers curl close to my scalp and it stings with the slightest movement. I can feel him this way in a completely new way. Every breath and shiver he makes, every flutter, I feel it on my tongue and it resonates in a dull pulse between my legs and it's heaven.
I find a rhythm with my hands and mouth, drinking down the noises he makes, gradually able to take more and more of him until I know I can go no further. I'm gagging on him, tears smarting my eyes, and his hips jerk, but he only uses his hand on my head to press me further into him.
He knows my boundaries. Somehow senses that him fucking my mouth at the same time he pushes my head down would be too much right now.
"That's it, baby. You're taking as much of me as you fucking can, huh? That's—shit—that's a good girl."
I suck harder, faster, loving the hitch in his speech that shows I'm overwhelming him. I'm still chasing pleasure against his thigh, the pressure building in a syrupy tsunami that will destroy me when it breaks.
He throbs in my mouth, thighs twitching, and I moan as I feel him harden impossibly between my lips. Head thrown back, chest dewy, he's a ruined man and I'm the woman with the power to do this to him.
He's vocal, and it's the most erotic thing I've experienced. His moans are deep and guttural, and somewhere along the way he's shifted to Italian. Foreign phrases drizzle past bitten lips, broken apart by what I recognize as my name and some of the pet names he likes to call me.
My jaw and wrists ache, my neck sore, and on reflex, I hollow out my cheeks, sucking him so hard that his body jolts. I drag my lips up the length of him, sucking hard at the tip, and it's my turn to startle as a rush of warm liquid suddenly fills my mouth in several insistent spurts. He's twisted up in pleasure, his moans becoming raspy, hoarse utterings of praises. I work to swallow around him, my mouth filling quickly, lightening my contact as I try not to let it dribble out of the corners of my mouth.
The next second I'm being lifted up his body, tossed lightly on the sheets next to him, and his mouth is covering mine.
He pushes two fingers inside me, and my back arches off the bed in pleasure. Two seconds later, I'm coming with a whimper of his name, and he's pushing his fingers into my mouth so I can taste both of us on my tongue.
My eyes are lidded, and I feel drunk. A giggle shakes through me at the thought. I'm cum-drunk.
"Come here, giggles," he murmurs, voice tinged with humor. I feel a warm, wet cloth between my thighs as he cleans me up and then the dipping of the bed as his warm body crawls in beside me. I haven't slept well for the last couple days so I'm drifting now, pressed into the warmth of his body.
I hear him murmur something, feel the soft brush of lips over my forehead.
"I'm scared," I whisper into the softness of the sheets, his skin.
He tenses. "Of what?"
Of so much. Of love not being enough. Of you not accepting it. "Of something bad happening when you go. I don't want you to go."
He folds his body around me, pressing the splintering parts of me tightly together so they don't keep cracking.
"I'll be okay," he noses the soft skin below my ear. "I have someone to come back to now."
I sink further into his embrace, further into a puddle of sleep. Able to push away, for now, all the anxieties about the future.
"You'll always have me."
His body relaxes, pressing into me fully and deliciously. His words float to me, so light and fluffy, like the stuff dreams are made of. "I'm counting on it, cuore mio."
+
I wander into the kitchen the next morning, coffee the one thing on my mind, eyes bleary with sleep.
My grogginess, however, doesn't stop me from immediately noticing Tommaso. He's facing away from me, one muscled arm braced on the counter. And unfortunately, I have a clear view of the woman on her knees before him. I'm frozen in place as she gags and he pulls out, cumming all over her face.
It's nine in the fucking morning.
The woman gazes up at him sultrily, her eyes shifting towards my frozen figure. Tommaso turns, and I'm surprised at the anger etched across his face. He dismisses her with a few muttered words and she leaves the kitchen at a leisurely pace, like she doesn't have... stuff dripping down her face. Is that an infection if it gets in her eye?
Tommaso's muscles are tensed—looking rather on edge for a man who just orgasmed—and I notice he looks particularly exhausted, too. I make my way to the coffee without a word, starting an extra big pot. Hearing him pull on some clothes, I breathe a quiet sigh of relief.
Really didn't need to see that this morning, but glad everyone's having fun.
"Hey, short stuff. My big bro go for a run?"
I frown at the sound of his voice—slurred and gravelly.
"Are you drunk?"
"Perchaps," he grins, stumbling back to sit on a stool. Assuming that's a combination of 'perhaps' and 'perchance,' I eye the precarious way he sits. I won't be able to stop his large body from falling. "Everybody has their poison of choice, sweetheart."
I nod slowly, carefully. "Well, I'm making extra coffee, so—"
"What's yours?" He interrupts.
"My... what?"
"Poison of choice. Mine is sex. Fucking. I love to fuck, Nina," he smirks, and I clear my throat pointedly before he delves into that any further. I already know much more about his sex life than I ever wanted. "Simo's is... well, nothingness," he continues, that anger creeping back. "Fucking nothing. And Santo—he runs. He avoids pain like a fucking pro and you know how he does it? By recreating it in others. Feeling what they feel. Fucking liking it. It works for him, and I'm happy for him," he slurs. "But it sucks for us sometimes. You know that though, don't you?"
Worry rockets through me at the agony lacing his words as his bloodshot eyes stay closed longer with each blink.
"Hey, let's get you laying down," I suggest in a light voice, walking over and hesitating to put a hand on his shoulder. His skin is hot, and my worry escalates. "Can you walk?"
He chuckles, stumbling to his feet, and I watch in dismay as he heads to the liquor cabinet, grabbing a glass and attempting to fill it with whiskey. The glass and the bottle slip from his fumbling hands and shatter loudly on the floor. I jump back as shards skitter clear across the kitchen, and Tommaso sags against the wall.
Seconds later, Massimo enters, quickly taking stock of me standing against the wall and Tommaso on the other side of the room, slurring incomprehensibly with glass everywhere.
Immediately, he's striding towards his brother, hands latching onto his collar and pushing him back into the wall. I watch in horror as Massimo pins him there, looking back at me, those expressionless eyes running over me mechanically.
I'm scuttling towards them, navigating around the glass, words spilling from me. "Oh God, he didn't hurt me. It wasn't like that. He was trying to pour another drink and it slipped." Massimo takes in my words with his head slightly cocked as I swallow back surprise that he would come to my defense like that.
"Can't you just fucking hit me?" Tommaso spits, eyes venomously fixed on the Capo. "Y'know you want to. Shit," he laughs, "do you ever get tired?"
Massimo doesn't react, so Tommaso continues.
"What do you think Nico's poison of choice is? Huh? Being fucking oblivious? At least he doesn't have to wonder why his father fuckin' cared so little about his kids that he was fine killing himself—" he chokes, breaking off, "but he does still have to wonder, y'know? What fucking scum dick our mother sucked and fucked to make him. D'you think it was a rapist? Pimp? Someone worse? They're all the fuckin, same, huh? Maybe it's best he doesn't know."
I hear something clatter behind me, and whip around to see Nico standing in the doorway, his eyes wide. His Xbox controller is lying on the floor.
I can't process the information being spewed out, concerned for Nico, unsure if he even knew about any of this. But all I can do is watch the one-man tennis match between Tommaso and a wall otherwise known as Massimo.
I silently will Massimo to understand his brother's pain. To help. Doesn't he get it? It was his family too. My eyes flit desperately between the stricken look on Nico's face, to Tommaso's anguished one, back to Massimo's vacant one.
Finally, someone moves.
Massimo loosens his hold and Tommaso slides down the wall, crumbling into a pathetic heap on the floor. He hits his head back against the wall, eyes getting glossier by the second. Massimo is standing there like a statue, looking down at his brother with absolutely nothing on his face. Just watching him break.
My heart pangs and before I know it, I'm crouching before him, placing a hand on his shoulder until he looks at me. "Hey. You want someone to hit you? I'll hit you."
A broken sound escapes him, but he keeps his eyes on me and doesn't try to hit his head into the wall again. I don't know what I'm doing, but I know I can't let him hurt like this all alone.
"What's your reason then, sweetheart? He doesn't have one," Tommaso gestures towards Massimo, who has backed up and is watching us quietly. "Miraculously. I'm not that fucking pleasant to be around. Santo probably—" he breaks off, hiccupping, and I pray he doesn't get sick.
"Well, you like to talk about your dick and you make comments about my tits," I muse, smiling so he sees I'm not serious.
"I have a nice dick," he shrugs. "And you have some nice tits." But then his eyes shift to Massimo still standing there. I look back at the Capo, desperation no doubt radiating from my face.
Why isn't he doing anything? His brother is on the floor barely hanging on by a thread—why won't he move?
Tommaso laughs, and the sound tears at me. "Why does nobody in this fucking house deal with emotions in a healthy fucking way? Jesus Christ. You'd let me fucking kill myself, huh?"
It's at that moment Santo enters the room, and I'm reminded that it's about the time he'd be returning from his run. He let me sleep since I was clearly exhausted—I awoke to a text saying as much. His eyes jump quickly from me to his brothers.
"What's this?" he demands, striding to my side. Crouching next to me, he sees the pain on my face, shifting his gaze to his drunk brother who is now half conscious.
"Help him. He's hurting," I mutter, and Santo nods. He doesn't ask what happened; understanding already coats his face.
"Help me move him," he snaps, and I realize he's speaking to Massimo.
I step back as they come on either side of their younger brother, lifting him with little difficulty.
"Careful of the glass, Nina," Santo warns, waiting until I step clear of the shards before moving. They leave the room, Tommaso's head bobbing to his chest in between them, and I watch them go.
I look at Nico, still standing off to the side. He looks so young in that moment.
And I have no idea what to say.
Nico runs a hand through his hair, and I watch in horror as his bottom lip trembles and he turns away from me to hide whatever emotions he's feeling.
I'm already striding across the room, and by the time I pull him into me in a tight hug, silent tears have begun tracking down his cheeks.
"It feels like everything is falling apart," he mumbles, and I tighten my arms, feeling tears of my own begin to form. Eventually, he wraps his arms tentatively around my back, and then suddenly he's squeezing me back just as tight. Tighter. Damn, he's strong.
I wonder about the last time he received a hug like this, if he ever has.
It seems that every day, more brokenness unfurls in this house, but I know that's just because I have eyes to see it. It's always been here. Pain doesn't wait to make itself known, it just takes on different forms as we try and shape it into what we deem acceptable for those around us. We might think we're hiding it from those we love, molding it into something easily digestible, but it's only a matter of time before our methods of hurting become transparent to our loved ones. Before they start hurting them.
I only hope Santo and his brothers are equipped to handle each other's pain when it does make itself known. I have the distinct feeling there's a lot more lurking beneath the surface.
---
Why does writing smut at 9 in the morning feel weird pls. Like shit it's too damn early. Hope this was a good chapter!
Angst is so fun. Do we want more? Less?
- G