The Italian Word for Kisses

by Matthew J. Metzger

  “Hey,” Tav said, squeezing his hand. “Slow down, there’s no rush.”

  “I just want to get home.”

  Tav bit his lip. Luca was shifting from foot to foot, frowning under the edge of his beanie. He looked anxious and beautiful all at once, and where the darkened park met the edge of the housing estate, Tav caught him by the elbow and pulled him in with an arm over his shoulders again. Luca tensed, but didn’t pull away, and as they turned into the bottom of their street, finally stopped glancing over his shoulder.

  “What happened after I left, Luca?” Tav whispered.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Luca returned, and stopped Tav at the gate. “I’m sorry, okay? I just want to get inside and go to bed.”

  “With me still?”

  The smile was a little bit genuine this time, curled up at the edges and showing that dimple Tav liked best. He kissed it, and then the edge of the mouth, and then the mouth proper. He kissed the second smile, too, before letting Luca go to post his hat through his letterbox. It was his way of telling his parents he’d come home but was at Tav’s, and Tav found it kind of funny and kind of sweet at the same time.

  Especially when those curls were loose and cold and he could kiss a bare ear.

  “Inside.”

  “Okay, okay…”

  They fumbled in the dark. Luca’s smile against Tav’s cheek as he unlocked the front door was a proper smile now, and once they were inside, Tav buried both hands in Luca’s hair and kissed him properly, tasting Carlsberg and cheap cider, and seeing the remnants of fireworks behind his eyes. In the dark, private silence of the hallway, Luca relaxed into him, fluid and trusting, and Tav clumsily held on and tried to transmit something beyond drunk and mine via his mouth.

  In the dark, private silence, safety washed over them, and the dizzy glee crowded back in from the coloured explosions of a new year.

  Momentarily, Tav forgot.

  * * * *

  Luca was drifting.

  He was caught between soft sheets and a softer mattress. There was a band of heat under his back, and a gentle weight across his waist keeping him anchored. The air was too cool around his face, and it moved like a caress against his skin when something creaked.

  The bedroom door. Mamma Lau―Mrs. Pretty’s voice.

  “Yes, Alessa, they’re both here.” Mrs. Pretty had a gentle voice when she whispered. She was usually shouting for one of her kids, much like Mamma, but it was a soothing whisper now, and Luca curled his fingers contentedly into the sheets. Tav’s room. Tav’s bed. Tav, he decided sleepily when the bands of heat shifted slightly. “Of course. He’s fine to stay here if he has, don’t worry about him. You enjoy your day!”

  The door clicked shut again and the air stilled. Luca turned onto his side, pushing a little deeper into the sheets, and smiled when the heat moved and mumbled.

  “Morning.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Luca chuckled and pulled the duvet up over their heads. Tav’s arms were slack around him, and Luca squirmed close enough to kiss a hidden face and tuck his nose against the edge of a shoulder.

  “Happy new year.”

  “Mm.” Tav’s voice was like car tyres on gravel, but he did move. Luca felt an invisible mouth press to the bridge of his nose, then the duvet was tugged down. When he peeked, those orange-brown eyes were still closed. “S’too early.”

  “S’nearly eleven.”

  “Means it’s ten-something. Too early.”

  Luca smiled, blinking in the low light from the window above their heads. Tav’s hair was standing on end, tufts of light brown in the gloomy wintry morning, and his angular face was, for once, relaxed. It wasn’t watchful or sombre or calculating. It was completely open and at ease, and much as Luca was in love with Tav’s fire—

  Liquid amber eyes met his, and crinkled in a smile, and Luca felt heat pooling low in his gut.

  As much as he loved Tav’s fire, he loved that tempered burn even more. White-hot metal into the flames, and he smiled into the kiss that swallowed him as Tav draped his weight across Luca’s chest and shoulders, and effortlessly overpowered him. Luca relaxed back into the mattress and the kiss, letting it happen. Tav was in control, and Luca trusted him completely with it.

  “Love you.”

  The tyres-on-gravel had softened into a deep rumble, and Luca closed his eyes and smiled when Tav settled again, head so close on the pillow Luca could feel him breathing. The back of a fingernail lightly touched Luca’s cheek, and he turned his face into the hand with a murmured reply.

  “You’re amazing.”

  Luca smiled and stroked Tav’s wrist where it hovered by his jaw. The hand was petting now, smoothing the backs of Tav’s knuckles down Luca’s face and back up again. The bruised side from the pool, even though the marks had long since gone.

  “You are.”

  “What’s with all the flattery, then?” Luca whispered contentedly. “Trying to get in my boxers again?”

  “Last night wasn’t enough?”

  “Please.” Luca snorted. “Last night you barely got your hands down my pants before you were falling asleep. I had to finish myself off.”

  Tav chuckled, and rubbed a thumb across Luca’s lips. “I dunno,” he murmured quietly. “You’re just…you’re such a sarcastic piece of shit sometimes, and then other times I look at you and it hurts how much I love you.”

  Luca curled his toes under the duvet, and slid a foot over Tav’s ankle. He loved moments like these. The moments when Tav would drop his attitude and his who-gives-a-fuck face for a little while, and just let himself love. He’d always been hard, Luca reckoned. His dad—his real dad, not Ian—had been a shit to Tav and his mam, and then there’d been a string of shitty stepfathers before the real deal, and Luca thought sometimes it had made Tav closed-off and wary, that he got too suspicious of people too easily. That he thought there was some weakness in letting anyone see if you cared.

  So Luca always loved these moments best, when the walls came down and Tav would look at him like—

  He peeked.

  ―Like that. Like Luca was the only thing in the entire universe, and Tav the only one lucky enough to know it.

  “Shall we,” Luca whispered, like speaking loudly would be sacrilegious, “get some breakfast and come back up here and watch old shitty cartoons on your telly?”

  “Only if we can ignore them,” Tav murmured, his eyes fixed on Luca’s face. He was still stroking, his fingers warm. “Do you have any protection? I’m out, but I want to…touch you. Appreciate. Fuck you.”

  Luca smiled at the out-of-place vulgarity, and nudged his face against Tav’s fingers again. “Toast and juice, then appreciation,” he said. “And consider it a new year present?”

  “Consider what?”

  “I don’t have anything with me, but I’ll let you do it anyway.”

  Chapter 16: “So what happened last night anyway?”

  Luca was woken by someone screaming—but not, as would have been familiar, the soft and dulcet tones of Angelo having yet another row with yet another nameless, faceless girlfriend. Instead the screaming was distinctly female, and distinctly younger in the temper tantrum being thrown.

  He groaned. Amy. Tav’s littlest sister. Judging by the shaking of the floor, she was throwing her spectacular hissy fit in the kitchen, and what a hissy fit it was.

  “Oh God,” Tav rumbled. “Kill it with fire.”

  “S’your sister,” Luca pointed out, and turned over. The bed was too narrow and too short, and a blast of cold air hit his legs. He burrowed into Tav instead, burying his nose between Tav’s shoulder blades and tucked his knee between Tav’s thighs.

  “Fuck you and your cold skin.”

  “Fuck you in general.”

  “Tit.”

  “In fact,” Luca yawned, warming to the theme. “Fuck every generation of your ancestors back to the Iron Age, and then, when you’ve got that far, come back down the generations fucking all their siblings and t
heir offspring, so that when you return to this time period, anyone who was ever distantly related to you has been fucked. And when you’ve done that, go fuck yourself.”

  Tav snorted, and his fingers curled across Luca’s somewhere in the blackness of the space under the duvet. “Or,” he offered, “I could just kill it with fire.”

  “Yeah, okay. Go do that.”

  Tav slid out of the black heat, and Luca unburied himself enough to blink sleepily and admire his arse as he found a pair of boxers. That reddish-blond-brown hair was stuck up all over the place and, if not for the vague headache and the feeling that something had died in his mouth, Luca might have attacked him.

  As it was…nah.

  Tav vanished; Luca stretched, rolled onto his back, and stared at the ceiling. In the morning light, last night seemed so surreal. He’d been drunk, Jack probably had been, too, and his hands had been shaking. Luca had seen that uncertainty. He hadn’t really wanted to; he wasn’t a killer. If he was capable of it, Luca would be dead right now. In the safe warmth of Tav’s house, it just seemed silly. Jack was lashing out, and like crazy irrational, but he wasn’t actually going to hurt Luca.

  And the reason why he was lashing out—or the reason Luca was beginning to suspect, from the way he’d talked…

  There was someone under the anger on Jack’s face. Luca remembered Jack joining the swimming team, and he’d been a quiet, okay kind of kid. Hadn’t really known how to fit in, but then they hadn’t had a new member for a couple of years and their in-jokes were probably kind of intimidating at first. Luca had liked him. And last night, the things he’d said and the way his hand had shook holding the flick-knife…

  That guy was still there. And Luca felt, in a weird, crumpled-up-and-twisted-kind-of-way in the centre of his chest, a bit sorry for him. Jack was lashing out for a reason. He’d hauled off on Luca for a reason, there was something more than a guy who didn’t like queers at hand here, and in the calm safety of the Pretty house, Luca could pull himself together and see the truth of it.

  Jack was afraid. Angry and afraid. And he wasn’t capable of what he’d threatened—so, really, it wasn’t the huge deal Luca had been afraid of in the darkness of Bole Hill Park in the early hours of the morning.

  He cemented that thought in the middle of his head, and rolled out of bed.

  This—fumbling around Tav’s room in the semi-darkness—was age-old tradition, and Luca stole boxers and a T-shirt from Tav’s drawers without much thinking about it. Tav’s house was always warm thanks to having a little kid in it, and Luca didn’t bother finding any trousers. Not like the whole Pretty family didn’t know what he and Tav were up to anyway. He meandered into the bathroom briefly to use Tav’s toothbrush and get the stale, fuzzy taste of too much booze out of his mouth, and then—when the screaming had finally stopped—he deemed it safe to sneak downstairs.

  And, uh, edge about Amy. She was sitting in a prime sulking pose on the bottom step.

  “What’s up with Amy?” he yawned, wandering into the kitchen. Mrs. Pretty was making breakfast, and a cloud of dark hair and blue pyjamas that might have been Becky was sitting at the table.

  “Naughty step,” Tav said, pouring out juice. “Want one? She threw a plate at Mam.”

  “Brilliant,” Luca said, grinning, and wandered over for his hug. Tav was still hot from bed, and Luca pressed his face into the top of his bare shoulder. Tav was almost opposite-dressed to him—shirtless, but he’d found jeans somewhere—and his skin left prickles on Luca’s. He twisted his face, and rubbed his jaw against Tav’s shoulder blade absently.

  “You need to shave.”

  “You need to shut up.”

  “Good party, lads?” Mrs. Pretty asked amiably. “Luca, I take it you don’t want any mushrooms.”

  “Ew, no thanks, Mrs. Pretty.”

  “‘Mrs. Pretty’—honestly,” she echoed scornfully, and Luca hid his smile in Tav’s skin. It had felt a bit weird to keep calling her Mamma Laura after he’d started sleeping with her son. Tav didn’t seem to have any such issues, and Luca envied him. Nobody teased him for his nickname for Mamma.

  “Morning,” Tav said finally, dislodging himself and sliding a hand into Luca’s curls to hook him in and kiss him sharply. He pulled back and wrinkled his nose a moment later, and Luca smirked. “Have you nicked my toothbrush?”

  “Yep.”

  “Gross.”

  “What? Figured if you have any diseases, s’too late for me anyway.”

  Tav snorted and shoved him before taking the juice glasses to the table. Hands emerged from the hair-pyjama monster and clutched one of them protectively into the bundle. “Morning, Becky,” Luca said experimentally, and the whatever grunted in reply. Meh. Close enough.

  Breakfast—a filthy fry-up, as was New Year tradition in the Pretty household—was a busy affair. A tearstained Amy was returned from the naughty step by her dad, and they had to fetch an extra couple of chairs from the living room by virtue of the fact that Tav’s family was just as scatty as Luca’s and rarely all managed to eat together, never mind with Luca there, too.

  But it was nice. It secured that sensation of invincibility Luca had felt up in Tav’s room. Last night was just booze and fear, that was all. This was Luca’s reality, and Jack couldn’t touch this, being a freak or not. This—Tav’s foot between his on the tiles, Amy asking him to braid her hair later, Ian trying and failing to make small talk with Tav, Mrs. Pretty just shovelling food at everyone like it was her mission in life to make the whole planet obese…it was Luca’s little world, and twats like Jack couldn’t really get into this, not really.

  They retreated back up to Tav’s room after breakfast, Luca sending a text to Mamma to tell her he’d be staying over for a bit and Tav showering. When he came back, damp and smelling of lemons, he sprawled out on the sheets and scowled at Luca in the desk chair.

  “What are you doing over there?”

  “Uh,” Luca said. “Sitting?”

  “Sit here.”

  “Why?”

  Tav graced him with a filthy look, and Luca smirked.

  “You’re only gonna molest me.”

  “Ch’yeah.”

  “So…I’m sitting. Here.”

  “You’re a twat,” Tav informed him seriously, and Luca shrugged.

  “Hey, if the shoe fits…”

  “You’re a twat who won’t get any over there.”

  “Yeah?” Luca said, raising his eyebrows and eyeing Tav’s rather tented towel pointedly. “You don’t look like you much need my help. Wanking’s easy, Tav, you just get your hand around it and start stroking. It’s not hard.”

  “Will be in a minute.”

  “Lecherous fucker.”

  “Ooh, big word.”

  “Bigger’n your dick, that’s for sure…”

  “Oi!”

  Luca laughed and unfolded himself from the chair, dropping onto the end of the bed with a theatrical sigh. Tav grinned and shuffled up, looping an arm over Luca’s waist and starting to press fleeting kisses to Luca’s neck and shoulder, but Luca just snorted and pushed him back.

  “I’ll hug you, but no fucking.”

  Tav blinked. “You alright?”

  “Tav, you fucked me bareback last night. Not up for another this morning, yeah?”

  “Oh,” Tav said, and grimaced. “Sorry. Probably shouldn’t have…I was a bit drunk.”

  “We both were, but I’m paying for it this morning,” Luca complained, and Tav laughed, kissing his ear lightly before shifting so they were sitting side-by-side and looping that arm around Luca’s waist instead.

  “And you’re saying it’s not big enough…”

  “I didn’t say enough. Just not bigger than the word ‘lecherous.’”

  “Bigger’n yours, jerk.”

  “Rulers never lie, Tav,” Luca said. He stroked his thumb over the top of Tav’s raised knee, and slid his fingers to the inside of it. “Could get you off by hand, if you want.”

  “M
eh,” Tav said. “Might’ve been pissed, but last night…I’m gonna keep that memory for a bit longer.”

  “Perv.”

  “Slag.”

  “Sicko.”

  “Tart.”

  “Yeah, yeah…”

  “So what happened last night anyway?” Tav asked suddenly, and Luca stiffened.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “You didn’t come back to the party after our shag in the trees―”

  “An over-the-clothes humping isn’t a shag.”

  “―and then later you were really freaked out about something.”

  Luca bit his lip. Fuck. He should have figured Tav would remember. He got drunk easy, but he wasn’t the forgetful type.

  “Luca?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “You were proper wigged out,” Tav said doubtfully.

  Luca shrugged. “I was drunk, too.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  Luca blew upwards into his hair. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tav’s frown deepen. “Don’t blow your lid,” he said firmly.

  “Tell me.” Tav’s voice was a bit sharper, and Luca sighed.

  “Jack saw us in the trees.”

  “Collins? So?”

  “So you know how he is about gay people. Or anyone with a sex life better than his, sad git.”

  “So what’d he say?”

  “The usual.”

  Tav shifted. “So why were you freaked out?”

  Luca sighed heavily. “Look, I was pissed, he was probably pissed, the row escalated a bit…”

  “Did he smack you one?”

  “No, he, uh…made a few threats.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like…he’d slit my throat.”

  Tav laughed. “Oh right, yeah, Jack Collins is packing a machete.”

  Luca bit his lip.

  “Luca?”

  “Er…”

  “Luca. Tell me he didn’t actually have a knife.”

  Luca winced. “Er. Well. Yeah.”

  “What?!”

  Tav’s voice was deafening. He scrambled up and was suddenly hovering right in front of Luca, both hands clenched on Luca’s shoulders, those wide eyes searching Luca’s face as though he expected a huge gash to just open up right there in front of him.