Chapter Text
The next morning, I woke up to the feeling of Vic’s fingers stroking sweetly across my face. I wrinkled my nose and hummed, nuzzling her fingers with my nose, and licking them playfully. Vic wriggled away with a groan, coughing dramatically into an over-fluffed hotel pillow.
“Your breath stinks.”
“So does yours. Don’t touch my face if you don’t like it, elskan. Besides, I thought I was always so sexy.”
“Mmm. Only when you brush your teeth.”
Grumbling, I rolled back over. There was sun streaming in through the gossamer curtains that overlooked the courtyard of the hotel where we were staying, and birds were chirping outside the slightly opened window. I vaguely remembered Vic struggling with the latch last night before we had gone to bed. She always got hot while she slept.
We lay together for another few minutes, Vic’s slim arm wrapping around my naked torso and snuggling me back against her. I could feel the beads of her long rosary necklace digging into my spine, and the slow rhythm of her breathing as she woke up.
“Should we order some coffee and breakfast? I’m starving.”
Vic hugged me for a second and then extracted herself, rolling over and setting her bare feet on the carpet. I followed her with my eyes, drinking in her body, naked except for her rosary and crucifix.
“I want to go out this morning,” she said, sounding cheery, “Get something from a bakery, maybe? We might as well enjoy being in another country and having different food, hmm?”
“I’m not sure Berlin is famous for its cooking, especially after Rome...are you sure you want to go out? There are probably people outside.”
“Not at this time in the morning. And they’re good to us here. If I say we want to go and enjoy breakfast on our own, I’m sure they’ll respect us. Or security will give us help.”
Vic ran her fingers through her tousled hair in front of the mirror and applied clear lip-gloss as well as a little bit of clear mascara. I loved the way she looked naked of any makeup. Simple, beautiful, with her milky skin and beautiful eyes. I lay back as she put on a black bralette and matching underwear, blue flared Gucci jeans and a red button-down which she tucked in and secured with a belt. Around her neck she tied a black silk neck scarf with tiny white lines crisscrossing it, and a black beret perched atop her head.
“Ao, are you coming, stupido? I’m dressed already.”
“Mmm. It was a nice view. I don’t get to watch you get dressed enough these days.”
Vic rolled her eyes and threw a top out of her bag at me, along with a pair of leopard print flares I was always stealing. I moaned and rolled out of bed, allowing myself to flop onto the plush carpet of the hotel.
“Pathetico. Every day for the next few weeks is going to be like this, you know?”
I propped my head up on my hands.
“I know. I’m just joking. Tired out from the flight and everything, and maybe I wasn’t quite prepared for people to be so interested in me, instead of just you. I just need to readjust my expectations a bit.”
Vic tossed me my underwear and bra as well and came and sat down on the floor next to me while I struggled into them.
“Most of the fans are nice. And we have security now, which is a big improvement on things before Eurovision. Just try not to let it overwhelm you and keep good boundaries. If someone does something that you don’t want them to do, stop them and tell them no. Life’s too short to let people do things that don’t make you comfortable.”
“It’s strange to think that the security is for me, too. Gio was telling me about it, and I didn’t quite believe her. Although she’s been out with you since the Eurovision win, and I haven’t really.”
“Ah, you’ll get used to it. They’re all sweethearts, really. We’ll probably have to take Janne along with us this morning to go get coffee. He should be downstairs in the lobby, I sent him a text.”
I let myself shiver for a moment. Needing security just to go get breakfast was definitely not something I was used to, and while it was good they were there, the implication of it made me a little nervous. We all knew how upset Damiano had been after a girl had kissed him in Rome. I couldn’t imagine something similar happening to me or Vic. I winced and pulled on my pants and top, a bit relieved that Vic still seemed just as new to this and confused about it as I was.
Finally ready, I pulled on some platform heeled boots and grabbed my purse, taking Vic’s hand.
“It’ll be nice to go out into the city, just us. Like we’re a couple just travelling Europe together.”
“With Janne.” Vic laughed, and I giggled a bit too at the thought of the burly security guard trailing two lovers on a summer vacation. The man looked like he had never smiled a day in his life.
We got on the elevator and met Janne in the lobby. There was no one out front, and I breathed a small sigh of relief. Vic buttoned up her fur coat against the cold and pushed her sunglasses up. I did the same, hoping that between our two coats and hats and glasses, we would make it to the café relatively unimpeded.
For the most part, we got lucky. There were a few girls we bumped into as we were walking out of the hotel. They both gasped when they saw us, and the older looking one tugged on her friend’s shoulder, whispering momentarily before they approached us a bit shyly to ask for a picture. I smiled and stepped away, letting Vic have a moment to chat with the two of them and snap a photo, and then we headed on our way. The streets were nearly deserted, and the café I had originally looked up on my phone turned out to be closed, so we ended up walking an additional three blocks to find another one. Even Janne relaxed, chatting with us about the tour and what we missed about Rome. He was from Germany, and was pleasantly surprised when I was able to speak German to him. He also told us he had a young daughter who was hoping to get Damiano’s autograph out of her dad’s current gig. Vic laughed and said she’d do her best to make it happen. I’d never known Damiano to turn someone down, even on his worst days. For all his peacocking, he took his interactions with their fans very seriously. All four of them knew that they owed a lot to their expanding fanbase outside of Rome, and they never stopped being grateful, even when they were tired and irritable and just wanted to escape to the hotel and lie down. It always impressed me immensely.
Finally, we found ourselves seated on a small pavement terrace outside a little German café, sipping extremely strong espresso and eating peach almond croissants. Vic leaned back in her chair, pastry crumbling around her lips. Around us, the city was starting to wake up. A few people rode by on bicycles or hurried by, chatting on their cellphones. No one gave us a second glance. Behind Vic, the sun was rising and glancing off the windows of the apartments adjacent to us. The sandstone building glowed in the early morning light.
“Quanto sei bella, amore mio.” I took a sip of my coffee and a drag of an early morning cigarette. I rarely smoked, but the day was beautiful, and I felt invincible. Vic smiled prettily, the sweet, coy little look that I loved, where her mouth didn’t quite open, but her cheeks dimpled and flushed a bit. She bit her lip, and I watched, enamoured at the way the morning light dappled across her hair.
“I’m so happy I came along,” I continued, licking croissant and coffee foam from my lips, “I’m so happy you’re feeling better. I’m just…happy. My heart feels so full.”
Vic just kept smiling and took a sip of her own coffee. She didn’t smoke, but she inhaled the drifting mist from my cigarette and blew it back out at me, ruffling my hair a bit. I stubbed it out on the ashtray in the middle of the table.
“Those will kill you, you know.”
“Ao, you know I don’t ever smoke. Today just felt like a good morning to enjoy myself a bit.”
Vic frowned. I knew she worried about Damiano and the others smoking so much, even though they’d had enough arguments about it that she had given up trying to convince them to quit. I took her hand.
“It’s just the one time. Don’t equate your worries about them to me.”
Vic poked at the cigarette for a second before taking it out of the ashtray and sucking at the dregs of it with a cheeky look on her face. She blew out the remaining smoke over the sidewalk next to us and coughed, fanning her face for a moment.
“I’ll never know how I used to smoke these all the time.”
I laughed and reached across the table to smack her on the back until her coughs subsided, giggling helplessly. I swirled my coffee and knocked the rest of it back before stuffing the remaining bits of croissant into my mouth. Vic pulled some money out of her purse and left it on the table, and we waved to Janne to signal we were ready to go. Vic needed to be back at the hotel to get ready for the band’s first radio interview that afternoon; she always took hours to sort through her clothes, even though they always redressed once they got to the studio.
Just as we were leaving the café and wandering into the street, Vic’s phone buzzed. She leaned up against an entrance to a building before opening it up, and immediately her face darkened. I squeezed her shoulder worriedly.
“What’s the matter?”
Vic swore viciously and her knuckles went white around her phone. I gave her space for a second before she looked up at me. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she looked a bit tearful. Not for the first time, I thought about how exhausted she must be, playing shows almost every night and spending her days doing interviews. She was trembling a little, and I snuggled her in my arms.
“Damiano can’t do the interview today. He can’t do anything. He said he woke up this morning and his leg wouldn’t hold him.”
Vic’s words were muffled against the wool collar of my coat, but I hugged her tighter anyways. We rocked back and forth for a moment before breaking apart, suddenly conscious of the fact that the streets were getting busier, and it was likely only a matter of time before we were spotted. I took her hand and rubbed her knuckles, giving her space to wipe a stray tear off the end of her nose.
“You’ll be alright. Thomas and Ethan are getting so much better in English, they’ll be able to hold their own just fine during the interview. And there wasn’t a concert scheduled for tonight. You can stay in the hotel. I’m sure Dam will be happy for the company, right?”
Victoria sniffed, obviously trying to control herself in case someone with a camera was watching. She looked so tense, and I wondered why. Damiano was the frontman, but the band stood well on their own for interviews. And the fans would be disappointed, but they were always kind and understanding, for the most part. His taking a day didn’t seem to be worth crying over.
“Vic, what else did he say? You wouldn’t be this upset if he just needed a day to rest, I know that. What’s going on?”
Vic passed me her phone, which was still unlocked, and I read the message. My heart sank.
Woke up this morning and couldn’t get out of bed, my leg’s fucked. Sorry – Damia.
It was followed a half hour later by another message, just a few short words.
Doctor says the tendons are torn. Need to take a week off. I’m so fucking sorry.
Vic was biting her lip, and I handed her phone back and pulled her to me, wrapping my arm around her trembling shoulders. Not for the first time, I was so happy that I was taller than her. I liked being able to wrap myself around her and protect her, even just for a moment, from everything that was happening.
“Oh, Vic. It’ll be alright. You can reschedule performances, and still do some interviews. Don’t worry.”
She sniffed again, and I realized she was seconds away from bursting into tears. I snagged Janne’s arm.
“Is there a back entrance to the hotel? I don’t think we should go in the front doors if there are people waiting right now.”
Janne nodded, and took a swift turn down an alley, ushering us both to follow him. I kept my arm wrapped protectively around Vic as we wove around a few spiral staircases and came to a utility door. Janne buzzed it and spoke in short, sharp German with someone on the intercom. I didn’t catch what he said, but a moment later the door clanged open, and we were ushered up a back stairway that brought us up to our floor of the hotel. I sighed with relief and shot Janne a grateful look.
“Thank you so much. If there’s people waiting outside, maybe let them know that there’s been a change in the schedule for today?”
Janne nodded and left us to key ourselves into our room. As soon as the door snapped shut behind us, Vic sank down into an ornate chair with her head in her hands. I eased off my coat and then her hat, rubbing her shoulders gently.
“It’ll be alright. Just take a moment. Nothing terrible is going to happen, the world won’t stop turning. Things happen. Fans have to understand that, right?”
Vic looked up, eyes red-rimmed and tired.
“It’s just all so tenuous. If...if we cancel…what if people don’t want to hear us anymore? What if we’ve run our course? And what if Damia isn’t well enough to perform for ages? After his shoulder while we were working on Il Ballo Della Vita he couldn’t perform for months, and he was so upset that he’d let us down. I don’t want to see that happen to him again, especially now, when it’s so important for us to stay relevant.”
I could see Victoria’s thoughts picking up speed like a runaway train. Her breaths came short and choppy, and her hands fisted in her pants with increasing vigour, so tense I was worried she was going to tear the fabric. I took her hands in mine to stop her from doing damage and sending the stylists into chaos.
“Shhh. Deep breaths, just try to calm down.”
Vic took a few shaky breaths, still sounding a bit panicked. Her hands twisted in the fabric of her top, white-knuckled and shaky. I took them and drew them into my own hands, placing her palms against my chest. I took a few deep breaths and let her match my breathing pattern before looking up into her eyes again, keeping her hands fixed on me. I knew grounding helped her when she was panicking, and already I could see a little bit of colour coming back to her cheeks.
When she was a bit calmer, Vic collapsed into my chest, resting her cheek against the bare skin exposed by my top. She sighed shakily.
“I’m sorry. I know I’m being selfish. I’m just so frightened, because all of this is so new and so wonderful, and I feel like it could all be gone so easily. And I know Damiano would never forgive himself if he thought it was because of him that we lost momentum.”
“You’re not being selfish,” I wrapped my arms around Vic and let her snuggle into my lap, sliding out of the chair and onto the floor, “I understand. This is your dream, all of you. It’s a lot at stake. But the best we can do right now is let Damia know we don’t blame him, and that it’s not the end of the world, right? He’ll heal up and you’ll keep touring like nothing happened. That’s what we need to tell ourselves until we have some reason to believe otherwise.”
I was a bit surprised at my own ability to remain level-headed. There was a time in my life when I would have been at a loss in such a situation. With a little smile, I realized I had done a lot of growing up since I first began living in Italy. Somewhere along the way, I had become someone who was capable, understanding a patient. With a small pang, I realized my parents would probably be proud of who I had become since they last saw me. Snuggling Vic closer, I leaned back against the hotel wall and hummed under my breath, letting her rest and collect her thoughts.
Damiano looked pale and sick. His hands were shaking, and he was breathing in his cigarette like he wanted to inhale the whole thing in one go. His already prominent cheekbones were shot with pallor. I squeezed Vic’s hand and rubbed her back gently as we stepped into the room. It was strange; Vic and Damiano were such good friends and I had never seen Vic nervous around Damiano before. Now, though, she was chewing at her lip and worrying at the dead skin on the inside of her thumb, a nervous habit that often led to bleeding and torn up hands in the nights leading up to a big show.
As soon as Damiano saw us, though, he brightened a bit, even though his face was coloured with a tired, guilty smile. He raised his cigarette exhaustedly, and I noticed that his hand had not stopped shaking.
“Damia!” Vic crowed cheerfully; all her worries gone now that Damiano was directly in front of her. I was always impressed by her ability to put aside her own fears to take care of her bandmates.
“Ciao.” Damiano sounded tired and beat-down. Vic and I were the first to come see him; Ethan and Thomas had decided to go out and get some breakfast to bring back to the hotel. I found myself wishing everyone was here, to keep Damiano from spiralling into the pit of self-hatred he was inevitably already circling.
Vic and I had both been friends with Damiano for years, though. We knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t want to talk, at least not without initializing the conversation himself. We both curled up in the bed with him without a second though, Vic laying her head on his chest and me resting on my stomach with my feet sticking up in the air. I stole a cigarette out of the pack on the bedside table and lit it, blowing the smoke towards the open window. Vic shot me an admonishing look, but Damiano smiled at me a bit. He breathed the smoky air.
“I’m glad you remembered to open a window. As it is, we’ll be lucky to get the damage deposit back on the hotel in this state. This whole room reeks.”
Damiano hummed his acknowledgement but continued to suck on his cigarette like it was the only thing keeping him breathing. There were ashes on the bedsheet, which Vic dusted away while grumbling to herself. I exchanged a look with her. Damiano’s hand continued to shake. We could both see he was spiralling, and neither of us wanted to push him.
Luckily, it didn’t take long for him to break. It was possibly one of Damiano’s best qualities, that he could never keep anything from his friends for long. He read like an open book, and he knew it. Knew we were only giving him space to come to us in his own good time.
“Fuck, but the two of you are staring at me as though I’m about to fall apart!” He exclaimed it loudly, rudely. Manuel Agnelli had said many years ago that he was rude and brazen in his singing, and I remembered laughing when I watched it on television from Iceland. Damiano was rude and bright and brazen in every part of his life, even when he was falling to pieces.
Vic’s hand clenched where it was resting on the sheet. I took it in my own and lay my own head next to hers, on Damiano’s other shoulder. We both rested our cheeks against his bare skin, knowing he valued the connection. Vic spoke up after a moment, her voice slightly muffled by the way she was pressed into the words il ballo.
“We’re worried you might be.” Bless straightforward, blunt Victoria. Unable to tell anything but the unvarnished truth, especially when she was worried.
“Cazzo, Vic,” Damiano slumped, letting his forehead rest in his palm, the glowing end of his cigarette dangling perilously near to his cheek, “I…I don’t even know. I don’t even know where to begin. This is fucking shit and you know it as well as I do.”
I leaned off Damiano’s shoulder and back against the pillows. Vic had this. She was good at this. No one could take Damiano’s fears and self-destruction and turn them on their head like her.
“You could start at the beginning. When did it start bothering you?” Vic thumped dully on Damiano’s leg, and he winced and sucked a bit of air in between his teeth. I saw his toes curl with pain under the sheets, and Vic placed her palm on his thigh, clearly not having realized how bad it was.
“I don’t know. It’s been bothering me since Moscow, but when I stood up after we were on the plane…” Damiano winced and turned his head to the side, fingers tensing in the sheets, “It was so bad. I could barely walk into the hotel, but I thought some sleep would sort it. When I woke up this morning, I called Leo and he found a doctor to come look.”
Damiano looked downcast. He was normally quick to smile, but now his cheeks were hollow, and he was still taking enormous, desperate drags of his cigarette. It was burnt nearly to nothing, and his hand was already scrabbling for another on the bedside table. I took pity and dumped the last cigarette into his hand, squashing down the worry piling in my gut. That pack had been new yesterday evening. Had Damiano spent the whole morning smoking to alleviate whatever mental and physical pain he was in?
The singer, whose hands were now fumbling with his lighter, gave me a desperate look. I took the lighter from his hands and struck it before holding it to the end of the cigarette dangling listlessly from his lips. He took another drag and gave a little hiccupping cough before settling back into the pillows.
“Did the doctor give you anything for the pain?” Victoria had been watching the whole exchange a bit disapprovingly, but I figured we could debate the merits of letting Damiano chain-smoke himself to self-destruction later.
“Mhmm. Leo said he’d go to the pharmacy and fill it for me. I can’t walk for shit. I could barely get up to wash my face and piss this morning.”
Vic caught my eye and gave me a worried glance over Damiano’s head. I could see the gears in her mind turning a million miles a minute.
“Damia, you can’t just smoke yourself to death until Leo gets back. Finish that one and then put the pack away, sì? We need to talk about this properly, as a group, and we can’t do that if you’re out of your mind on nicotine.”
Damiano clenched his hand in the sheets, and for a moment I thought he was going to snap at Vic, but he seemed to get himself under control. He took another drag, stubbed out the cigarette on the ashtray in his lap, and looked a bit longingly at the garbage can. After a moment, I realized what he was asking without actually asking for it, and took the butt and disposed of it for him.
Fuck, I thought to myself, trying to keep my concern under control so Vic wouldn’t pick up on it and start panicking again, He can barely move. I don’t know what we’re going to do. We can’t just stay here for the next week until he gets better.
Damiano winced as he settled back, although he brightened a bit when there was a knock at the door, and Ethan’s dark baritone sounded from the other side. He pulled himself to the edge of the bed and got part of the way up before he seemed to remember how much pain he was in. Wobbling on his one good leg, he gasped and nearly pitched forwards before Vic grabbed his arm and steadied him back against the mattress.
“Fuck, Damia, don’t hurt yourself more. You said you couldn’t walk, so stay in bed. I’ve got the door.”
Vic hopped up and jogged to the door, which clunked open and released Ethan and Thomas into the room. They were weighed down by countless paper bags and a plastic sack that seemed to be from a corner store, all of which they dumped on the hotel coffee table before turning to Damiano, who gave a shy little wave. Vic hopped back onto the bed, although now she shoved us both down so she could snuggle up under my chin. Damiano moved stiffly, and eventually took my shoulder to lean on so he could shift without jostling his hip.
For a moment, there was an awkward tension while Ethan and Thomas seemed to try to figure out if there would be room for them on the bed. As friends, we had never had much by the way of physical boundaries. It took them barely a moment before they piled on top of Vic and I, careful to leave Damiano his space so they didn’t hurt him accidentally. I ended up with Ethan’s head resting on my legs and Thomas’s feet crossed at the ankles across my chest. Vic’s hand was held in mine, and her pretty head rested against my chest, right above my heart. Damiano bit worried at his lip for a second before tentatively curling in around Victoria, though his movements were stiff, and his knuckles were white in the sheets.
“Leo gave us this on the way up.” Thomas said, holding out a bottle of what proclaimed itself to be an exceptionally strong dose of paracetamol. He shook it under Damiano’s nose, and the singer took it cautiously, fiddling with the bottle between his long fingers. Vic leaned over me and snatched a water bottle off the bedside table and handed it over. Damiano swallowed nervously.
“Sigrid, can you translate this for me? It’s all in German.”
I took the bottle and read the list of side effects and warnings off to him, mostly just boiler plate cautionary statements about operating heavy machinery and mixing pain pills with alcohol or narcotics.
“Mostly it should just make you drowsy,” I said, “Don’t worry about it being addictive, nothing should happen with a prescription this small. You’ll be off them in a few days and back to normal. You’ll probably just be a bit out of it in the meantime.”
I tried to offer up a reassure smile, knowing that Damiano lived in fear of becoming addicted to some sort of narcotic that would keep him from being able to compose or sing. He liked smoking, I knew, but it also bothered him that it was outside of his power to control. He couldn’t bear to have another vice, and we all knew it.
“You’ll be alright,” Vic said sweetly, her voice slightly muffled from where it pressed against my skin, “Just take it. We’ll take care of you. Make sure you don’t walk off any balconies or embarrass yourself too much.”
“I want to reserve the right to take videos.” Thomas added, and Damiano shot him a venomous look, though we all knew the singer couldn’t stay angry at him for long. Thomas was his fratellino, his little brother, and we all joked that he loved the guitarist more than the rest of his friends combined.
“Please don’t. I don’t want this getting out. I already feel terrible that we’ve cancelled our shows, and I don’t want people to know anything more about this than they have to.”
Damiano shook the bottle of pills anxiously, and Vic, Ethan and I exchanged a look. We all knew he was thinking back to Eurovision, to the drug allegations. If the news got out that he was taking prescription pain medication, even for something as innocuous as a leg injury, the rumour mill would start turning again. After the damage it had done the last time, I couldn’t imagine how Damiano would deal with the allegations.
Ethan crawled over top of Vic and I and eased the bottle of pills out of Damiano’s hands, shaky from the lack of a cigarette. He popped open the bottle by pressing it against his leg and poured a pill into his hand.
“We said we would take care of you,” Ethan said seriously, dark brows drawn together and only adding to the earnestness with which he displayed himself, “Nothing will get out. Just take them and feel better. We can have some breakfast when you’re done if you like. I’m sure eating something besides the ash from your cigarettes would do you some good.”
“Mmm. You’re one to talk.” Damiano plucked the pill from Ethan’s palm and downed it without water and without looking at it, closing his eyes as he swallowed. Thomas got up and rifled through the paper bag that he had dumped on the chair.
“No cornetti in Berlin, apparently. But we did get apple pancakes with whipped cream and crema con cioccolatto. Ethan had to order; I couldn’t remember the word.”
Damiano smiled gratefully and let Vic steal a fingerful of whipped cream off the top, which she fed to me. She seemed to be feeling a bit better, although there were still dark circles and leftover tear tracks under her eyes. I snuggled her close, letting her wrap her legs around me and feeling a push against us as Damiano leaned back, poking dubiously at a bit of apple sticking out the top of one of the pancakes. Ethan and Thomas hooked up one of their phones the Bluetooth and Ethan started playing the Police. Vic and I exchanged a look, relieved that he had read the room and not turned on the weird techno/funk music he had been listening to far too much recently. She brushed a bit of whipped cream off my nose and leaned against my shoulder with a sigh.
“Grazie,” she murmured, barely audible, “Grazie di tutto.”
“Prego, amore.”
I wrapped my fingers in hers and felt her breaths even out against my chest.