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The mere thought of La Squadra di Esecuzioni had terrified you for years. Though the threat of being paid a visit had never come from Passione itself, everyone within the gang knew of the team’s existence. Everyone had a friend of a friend who had been “cleaned up” by the team and they were quick to indulge you in all the gory details, over a drink of course.
As result of all the stories that you heard, even though you knew that they were exaggerated, you were always on your best behaviour. You took extra assignments that paid pennies just to compensate for anything you might have done to slight Passione. In hindsight, it was ridiculous and something that only a rookie would do, but the habit had persisted for almost two years. More precisely, it was a habit that had lasted until you had been introduced to La Squadra.
The circumstances under which you met the team were as good as they possibly could have been. Instead of waking up to find yourself tied to a chair or whatever else your teammates had insisted happened to people who displeased the higher-ups, you had been introduced to the team by your boyfriend.
Risotto and you had met each other through Passione during an assignment gone awry, and while you knew he worked on a different team within the organization, he had never told you which. To be fair, you had never asked. You had assumed, wrongly, that he served some role in the organization of Passione. It was the energy he gave off. Though he talked about people being killed from time to time, you had assumed that he had meant that he was arranging, not carrying it out. By the time Risotto corrected your assumption, it came as a bit of a surprise.
Your reaction to being told that Risotto belonged to, or rather was the leader of La Squadra was what drove him to introduce you to the team. Though he hadn’t hidden it from you purposefully, your shock had caused him to realize that the introduction was long overdue. Things would be easier if you knew his team and were comfortable enough around them. However, under no circumstances had he expected that you would become as comfortable with them as you had.
Despite fearing for years that you would have the misfortune of encountering La Squadra, in the end it turned out that the team wasn’t much different from your own. While that team and yours had different roles, the camaraderie within the group was just as strong. Everyone within the team got along surprisingly well considering their diverse backgrounds, and that extended to you. When Risotto had introduced you to his team, it had been nothing more than a formality and yet you enjoyed the time that you spent with them.
Having spent most of your time with your own team, it was refreshing to hear from members of Passione who weren’t on that team. Somehow, it was almost as if you had forgotten that there were other jobs within the organization. You were used to getting a target, usually someone who had neglected their dues to Passione for too long, and roughing them up a little. Your Stand made the job simple. The people who you dealt with rarely found back, and if they did it was never anything serious. They might wave a gun in your general direction but they would never fire it.
But other teams weren’t used to things going so smoothly. La Squadra dealt with the occasional Stand user, something that your team never encountered. In fact, apart from your team and Risotto you hadn’t seen many Stand users. You knew that many of Passione members had Stands but fighting against someone else’s Stand wasn’t anything you had ever considered.
Once the members of La Squadra had warmed up to you, some taking longer than others, you got the stories you had been waiting to hear. Their Stands were just as varied and interesting as you had hoped, and most of them had no problem telling you about assignments they had used them on.
In exchange for the stories they told you about the Stands of their targets, and sometimes about their own, you shared your much more mundane stories. While your targets weren’t ever as interesting as theirs were, the ineptitude of your targets made your stories stand out from theirs.
“But your Stand was on the car, wasn’t it,” Prosciutto commented quietly. Perfectly content with nothing but his cigarette, he hadn’t said anything until that.
“Right,” you said with a nod. “But he kept driving.”
“Wouldn’t the tires burst?” another member of the team asked.
“They did!” you exclaimed, waving your hands to imitate what had happened. You hadn’t expected the tires to blow out so quickly or with such force, but it had been exciting at the time and was still a bit exciting even now.
“And of course I needed him alive,” you muttered, “so I had to finish things up using the car instead.”
It was unfortunate. Everyone in the room, regardless of whether or not they would admit it, was curious about what would have happened if the effects of your Stand had progressed. If the car had kept rolling down the hill, would anything have been left of the man within the crumpled ball of metal? By dismissing your Stand you had missed out on your opportunity to find out. You had used your Stand on many different people under many different circumstances but never had you used it on anything as big as a car. You hadn’t thought that you would have a need to.
And so instead of describing how the car crumpled into a ball as if were made of paper, you told them how you pushed his car out of the road with your own. Unfortunately it hadn’t gone how you had expected it to in the slightest. You knew that things weren’t like they were in the movies, but you hadn’t expected it to take as much force as it had. You were hardly going slowly when your car had rammed into his and yet the other car had kept moving. The sound of metal grinding against metal had gone on for what seemed like forever before the two cars came to a stop. Even then, with his car out of commission, the man hadn’t given in.
“Everything turned out fine with bringing the target in,” you said, “but I’m disappointed that I had to cancel my Stand.”
“You haven’t used your Stand on a car before?” Melone asked, to which you shook your head. You had tested your Stand on many things, spending the first week or so after you had discovered its abilities dropping items out your apartment window and rushing down to see how they had folded up, but never a car. Slapping your Stand onto the bumper of your target’s car as it had sped away had been out of desperation. You had been surprised that it had worked as well as it had with the car being so large.
“I’d be glad to help you,” he said, too enthusiastically for your liking. His tone told you that wasn’t all that he was going to say. You cringed when you heard him take a breath to continue on. “I’ve been meaning to test out some things with my own Stand, and I’d love some help.”
There was a collective grumble from the team and Melone shrunk back in his seat, but didn’t rescind the offer.
“Actually, (name),” Formaggio mumbled, catching your attention. You turned towards him with a smile, glad to move on from what had just happened. Instead of looking back at you, Formaggio was fumbling around in his jacket pocket. After not finding whatever he was looking for in one pocket, he switched to the other where he found what he had been looking for. Quite proudly, he held out a small model car in the palm of his hand.
“You can have it if you want,” he told you. As you were about to reach out and take the car to examine it further, you remembered his Stand and frowned. Even if it was some cheap car he had picked up off the street, you couldn’t accept a car like this. When you hesitated, he offered it again. It was an old car he had picked up long ago and didn’t have a use for, and truth be told he wanted to see what would happen if it was rolled down a hill while your Stand was affecting it.
Formaggio’s offer went unanswered with Risotto’s reappearance. He had been sorting something out in his office when you had arrived and you knew better than to bother him. Waiting around with his team hadn’t bothered you in the slightest. Although the chatter had died off as Risotto had emerged from his office, you turned and offered him a wave. While he didn’t give you one back, he gave a slight nod in acknowledgment.
You got up from the couch and began walking over to him. It was time to head home. The only reason you had stopped into to the headquarters instead of heading back to the apartment yourself was because you had been in the neighbourhood, running errands after finishing up that assignment. You would rather go home with Risotto than by yourself even if it meant waiting around for a bit, and with his team members to keep you company, it didn’t seem as if you had been waiting long.
“Did they explode?” The words caught you by surprise and you nearly missed your next step. Somehow managing to keep your balance, once you were righted you froze. Out of everything that Pesci could have possibly said, that took the cake. Just like Prosciutto he had been quiet throughout your story but unlike his friend he had been paying close attention. You could hear from his slight tremble in his voice that he was asking out of genuine concern for you, but his timing was unforgivable.
Slowly, you turned towards Pesci. You shook your head in the hopes that would understand and say something to fix things, but it was pointless. There was nothing he could do to take back what he had said. That didn’t mean he wasn’t about to try.
“With anger,” Pesci added. It was too little too late but you appreciated the effort.
“What’s he talking about?” Risotto asked quietly. Though he kept his voice hushed, his words were pointed. You weren’t about to brush his question off.
“A car,” you answer hesitantly. You knew it wasn’t a good answer but it would buy you some time to think.
Risotto squinted at you then looked over at Pesci. Though you didn’t turn to look, you knew that Pesci had given everything away without even speaking. If it had been someone other than Risotto he might have gotten away with it, but Risotto had no problem reading people.
“You crashed your car?” he asked, not wasting any more time with Pesci as you would have preferred.
“It wasn’t my car,” you clarified, being too pedantic for his liking. He knew it wasn’t your car. You didn’t own a car. “But I crashed it, yes,” you admitted.
Though you wished that Risotto would say something, anything to fill the silence, he did nothing except stare at you. If you had been one of the men on his team he would have said what was on his mind. He would have told you that your actions were endangering the team, and that if you wanted to be so reckless you could do it on your own time. The rest of the team would have sat there in awkward silence, thankful that they weren’t the one at the receiving end of things. Somehow, despite how bad it would be to be on the receiving end of that lecture, you would have preferred that to what you got. His silence now meant that he was saving his words for later.
The ride back to your apartment was tense at best, just as you had suspected it would be. Neither of you spoke a single word or even attempted to. Risotto had nothing that he wanted to say and you couldn’t think of what you should say. You considered explaining what had happened on your assignment but found that you couldn’t explain things in a way that would relieve him. No matter how you ran through the events of the morning, you found yourself at fault. Although it had been a dangerous assignment, your actions had contributed to that more than they should have.
Although you were hoping that things might resolve themselves, nothing was any better once you were in your apartment. Risotto lingered by you for a moment as if he were waiting for you to say something, but once he realized you weren’t about to, he wandered off.
You grumbled but didn’t follow him, and instead went to the kitchen in search of last night’s leftovers. The food itself was fine, but as you ate you couldn’t help but think that it would have been better to eat with Risotto. While you considered going to find him, you thought it best to leave him be until things had cooled down.
As you were cleaning up, Risotto made his presence known with his voice before anything else. Although you should have been used to how quiet his footsteps were by now, you doubted whether you would ever be able to.
“Is that from today?” he asked. Covered in scars that ranged from small flecks to several inches long, Risotto knew what a fresh cut looked like. He didn’t need to ask.
“It’s not that bad,” you replied. It looked worse than it was. You had scraped your arm against the broken glass as you had pulled your target out of the car, leaving a series of small, ragged cuts. It had stung but it was far from the worst injury you had ever had.
“Don’t you remember Milan?” you asked, careful to keep your tone light but not brave enough to add a laugh. Though Risotto didn’t respond and instead turned back to the report he had been skimming, he remembered. Neither of you could forget the events that had transpired in Milan last year and how they had cumulated to you getting shot. The bullet had only grazed you, but even that was enough to send you to the hospital.
You glanced over at Risotto for an acknowledgment of what you had asked and when you found nothing, you sighed and left for the living room. If he wanted to pore over the reports while sitting on the hard, wooden chairs of the dining tables instead of the couch, it was on him.
Your time in the living room didn’t last for long. Although you had picked up a book you had left on the coffee table, planning to read it, you couldn’t make it more than a paragraph or two. You could feel Risotto staring at the side of your head as if it were what he was supposed to be examining, as opposed to the report in front of him. You tried sinking down into the couch but it did nothing to relieve the feeling. You couldn’t help but wonder whether this was how the people he interrogated felt like, and you weren’t even looking him in the eyes.
You didn’t dare turn towards him. While you knew he wouldn’t react except to look back down at the papers spread out on the table, the very act of looking at him felt like it might start something. It likely wouldn’t even be Risotto who started the real argument. Seeing him glare at you as you knew he was would set you over the edge. It was better to pretend not to notice and to try to have a calm conversation about things tomorrow when the feelings weren’t quite as raw.
While you were hardly the type to go to bed early, much preferring to stay up late into the night even if it meant you got little sleep, you felt the urge to turn in. Not to sleep, but to lie there. You couldn’t handle being in the living room any longer.
You left a light on for Risotto even though you questioned whether he would sleep. He didn’t sleep much during the best of times. It wasn’t that he couldn’t sleep or slept poorly, just that he didn’t need much sleep. He was perfectly fine with only a few hours’ sleep.
Although Risotto usually made an effort to go to bed when you did, though he was rarely around when you woke, you didn’t expect him to join you tonight. It was early, hardly close to the time when either of you usually went to bed.
Or at least you thought it was early. Lying in bed with the duvet pulled up high, you couldn’t see your clock. It hadn’t seemed like much time had passed since you had given up and crawled into bed but you weren’t sure that you hadn’t drifted to sleep. You didn’t know whether it was the events of your assignment this morning or what had happened between Risotto and you, but once you had gotten into bed you realized that you were more tired than you had thought you were.
You heard Risotto moving around on the other side of the room but didn’t turn to look, not even when he slipped into bed. You hadn’t prepared yourself to deal with him. You had been hoping that you would be asleep by the time he came to join you.
Although you thought about switching off the light on your side of the bed, you didn’t. You didn’t know what Risotto was doing. If he was reading something the room would only stay dark or a moment or two before the lamp on his side of the came on. While you didn’t hear pages being turned, you decided to leave things as they were. You didn’t want to risk starting something when you were getting close to falling asleep. You would be able to explain yourself better tomorrow, you knew it.
Despite how carefully Risotto usually moved, there was rustling in the bed next to you. Just as you had when he had arrived, you paid him no mind.
Fingers ran across your arm, drawing you from your thoughts. Though the tips of his fingers were calloused and rough, he touched you gently enough that you didn’t feel anything except his touch. He moved his hand back and forth, wanting nothing more than to feel you next to him, but didn’t say a word.
Although Risotto couldn’t see where he was touching, he avoided the scrapes on your arm, not grazing them even once. You hadn’t bandaged them; there had been no need to. Your arm wasn’t bleeding and it didn’t hurt, but truth be told you didn’t have a bandage that was large enough to cover the injury. It was awkward in both shape and size.
Eventually his hand drifted down from your arm and settled on your thigh. Just like when he had been running his fingers across your arm, he was barely touching you as if he were afraid to touch the scar his fingers were circling. Just like how the memory of what had happened in Milan would never fade, neither would the scar.
As gentle as his touch was, it didn’t stay that way for long. When his hand travelled back up your body to where it settled on your hip, it gripped you an unexpected intensity. Knowing that it wouldn’t help, you didn’t bother resisting when he pulled you back towards him.
Although both of you were wearing your shirts, you could feel the heat of his body against yours. Most of time you would be glad to have him hold you like this, but not tonight. Grumbling, you tried to pull yourself back over to your side of the bed only to be interrupted. Risotto yanked you back against him, refusing to let you go. No matter how hard you tried to get back over to your own side, Risotto kept you where you were without the slightest effort.
“(name),” you heard, just as you were about to speak. You let out the breath you had taken to speak in a slow sigh, almost as you were slowly letting the pressure out of something.
“Do you ever think about what you’re doing?” he asked, although his inflection of his voice hardly reflected that it was a question. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t looking for an answer.
The hand that had been resting contently on your hip slid downwards, taking your shorts along with it. You froze and despite how part of you wanted to swat his hand away, let him continue working your shorts down until they wouldn’t get in the way. With that dealt with, he set his hand back on your waist. Although he was always warm, the palm of his hand felt blisteringly hot.
“About what the consequences might be?” His fingers dug into your skin as if to drive the point home, although he hadn’t meant to do so. Showing none of the emotions he was feeling in his voice, they had to go somewhere.
“I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of this,” you said, exasperated. No sooner had the words left your lips than you regretted saying them. It came out sounding far more argumentative than you had meant it to. You shouldn’t have said anything. You had known that you should leave things until tomorrow when you could express yourself properly.
As much as you regretted your reply, Risotto didn’t care or at least ignored it. It didn’t matter what you had said. Nothing you could have said would have satisfied him, regardless of how well thought-out it was. He grumbled, telling you that he had heard, but left his actions to do the talking. Keeping his tight grip on you, he began to move on the bed. You felt the bed dip as he got up, only letting go of you at the last possible moment.
The two of you didn’t stay separated for long. Although you could have told him to stop bothering you and to leave you alone, when you felt him pushing on your shoulder you went along with the suggestion and rolled onto your chest. You grabbed for your pillow and pulled it close, accepting but not encouraging what was happening.
“Risotto,” you mumbled, “I am sorry.”
“It’s not about being sorry,” he said. Although the pillow had muffled your voice, he had had no difficulty making out what you had said. “Sorry” was always easy to hear, no matter the circumstances.
When Risotto grabbed your hips and pulled them upwards, you obliged without a single complaint. The complaints didn’t come until he began to slide his cock inside you. It didn’t matter how many times it had been, every time felt as if it were the first. You were glad you had the pillow to vent into.
It hadn’t helped that Risotto hadn’t given you any warning. You had known it was coming, but as more of an eventuality than something that was happening right that second. That being said, even if you had known you would have reacted in the same way. Gritting your teeth, grabbing at your pillow and hissing out curses, it happened every time. Nothing would change that, no matter how slow and careful Risotto was, and tonight he wasn’t being either.
Just when you thought that you couldn’t take him further and that you might have a chance to catch your breath, he seized you by the hips again and made you take that last inch. You grumbled his name as you took it, unable to hold it back. It felt like far more than an inch.
He held you there for a moment, not allowing you to move until he decided to start moving. You gave a sigh, glad to find some relief, but it didn’t take long for it to become a sigh of frustration as he buried himself back inside of you.
Little by little the two of you fell into step with each other, or rather you began to fall into line with the pace that he had decided upon. While the two of you never made a leisurely time of things, the pace that he had set could only be described as relentless. All your breaths were captured in short gasps, and each time Risotto thrusted it knocked out what little air there was in your lungs.
As you began to lean away from him, looking for some respite, Risotto caught you and reeled you back in. The whine that you let out as he did so was accidental, but you regretted letting it slip. The next thrust had ever so slightly more force behind it than the ones before it.
“Think about what you’re doing,” Risotto snapped. Preoccupied with trying to match the rhythm of his strokes, it took you a moment to realize that he wasn’t talking about right now.
As he kept going, driving you into the bed, you heard him repeat words carrying the same sentiment time and time again. Unlike his thrusts, there was no consistency to what he was saying. He would grumble something only to interrupt himself with your name, just making sure that you were hearing what he was saying.
“Just think for once,” he growled, each word accompanied by a thrust. As hard as each stroke was, his fingers were gripping you with much more force. You could tell that there would be bruises there tomorrow, however faint, but much like what he was saying, that wasn’t what you were focusing on. All you had the capacity to do was try and keep up with him.
Eventually even that became too much. Leaving everything to Risotto, you grabbed onto your pillow, wishing that it were his back instead. When you threw your arms over his shoulders and held onto his back, you could feel the muscles that lied just underneath skin strain with each stroke. You could tell how badly he needed you just from that alone.
Although it wasn’t his back, you were holding onto the pillow with the same desperation. The fingernails that might have scratched his back harder than you would have liked, and the sounds that should have been whispered right into his ear, and all your other frustrations were all directed towards the pillow. But just as the “sorry” you had whispered earlier, no pillow could hope to hide the way that you growled his name as you finished.
When he did stop, nor even relent, you repeated his name over and over again, hoping he might hear you. Looking for relief, you shouldn’t have called out his name as you had. Hearing his name called out like that did nothing but encourage him.
The grumbling that came from low in his chest continued on even after he finished, only stopping once he had pulled out. He made no effort to compose himself as he lowered himself down onto the bed and got settled, pulling you into his arms. There was no point in worrying about the mess. He would clean the sheets in the morning.
With Risotto holding you tightly against him, your breathing quickly evened out alongside his. The pillow that you had treated so terribly was now under your head and your hands were resting at ease beside you. You wiggled your fingers as if testing them out for the first time. They ached from gripping the pillow and hurt more than the arm you had almost forgotten about.
As if the pattern of his breathing and the slight movement of his fingers against your arms didn’t say enough, the small yet precise movements he made whenever you moved told you that Risotto hadn’t fallen asleep. Though you wanted to get up and get cleaned up, it didn’t seem as if Risotto was about to let go. Whenever you moved, even if it were just to get more comfortable, he would tighten the arms that were wrapped around you.
“Don’t be so reckless next time.” Though his voice was quiet, barely loud enough to hear, there was no mistaking what he had said.
You couldn’t possibly argue with him. He was right. You had made countless thoughtless decisions in your short time within Passione, any of which could have ended much more poorly than they had.
While Risotto had put himself in many more dangerous situations than you had, he never rushed into things blindly. Unlike you, he considered what he was doing before he acted. But the most glaring difference between the two of you was that Risotto cared more about the outcome of the situations that you found yourself in than he did his own. He could deal with getting injured himself, but the thought that happening to you bothered him.
Although no words were exchanged, they didn’t need to be. A silent agreement had been made, and you would be more careful in the future, although that didn’t mean you weren’t planning on taking Formaggio up on his offer. All it meant was that you would watch the car crumple into a ball from a bit farther away.