Love And Care
Damiano “Il Merlo” Bastoni x wife! reader
💭 | Damiano arrives home from the mines with anger in his mind and blood on his face. You make it all better.
Decided to write that little fic idea I posted about 🙃 could not stop thinking about it. I have been in love with Damiano since the release of this game. The world is in desperate need of more Damiano. I hope that anyone who reads this likes it and thank you for reading 🩶 this is my first time ever writing for Damiano so I do apologise if parts of him seem OC but I do think he would behave different with his wife.
Shining in from the open windows of the home you share with Damiano, the Sicilian sun warms the skin of your face and arms. An occasional breeze blows in past the trees of the private land and offers a fanning of cool air. You sit in a cozy armchair in the parlour, drinking from a fresh preparation of tea and reading small portions from the usual newspaper that sits spread out on across the low wooden table in front of you.
The sound of a car screeching to a sudden halt right outside of the house pierces through the peaceful air. You lower the porcelain teacup back onto the painted saucer that sits atop the small table beside the armchair with a resounding clink as your attention snaps toward front door. The harsh slam of a heavy car door follows shortly after, reaching your ears with ease through the open windows.
Your eyebrows furrow with rising concern. You were not expecting Damiano to be home from the mines for at least a few hours longer at this point. It was not often that he was ever able to or allowed to return home earlier than planned. Such a thing is not a liable luxury in his line of work. His line of work never fails to be time consuming and demanding at the best of times. Even then, Damiano did always try his hardest for you at least. You had given new meaning to him and your marriage had only strengthened that further.
Suddenly, the front door all but thunders open and thuds back against the wall. Damiano steps in through the frame, his steely gaze is locked on the ground beneath his boots. Your lips part with an unstoppable gasp when you see him. One of his hands is covering the side of his face as the unmistakable crimson colour of fresh blood drips down his knuckles through the gaps of his fingers. His other hand slams the door closed again behind him, locking out the outside world. “Damiano-” you start. Your voice wavers with overpowering concern. His hair is in a far messier state than when he had left earlier. Multiple strands of his hair are loose from the usual immaculate style he had brushed it back into before leaving. No doubt the result of some kind of violent altercation.
His head snaps up to face you at the sound of your voice calling out to him. Upon the mere sight of you looking back at him with visible worry on your face, his intense and stormy eyes soften by a massive fraction in a way that only you can cause. “Cuore mio…” Damiano clears his throat in a desperate attempt to wash away the lingering threat in his low tone. You watch in a shocked silence as he fully straightens his slightly hunched back, still grasping at the side of his face.
It is not the first time that Damiano has come home with blood on him. He has come home with bruised and split knuckles more than once in the past. You are always the one to sit him down and clean his hands for him while he looks up at you like an angel sent from high above for him and him alone. You have observed fresh stains of crimson on his clothes more times than you can even count on both of your hands. But he had never once arrived home with such a notable wound to himself. He had never been one to let another person get the upper hand on him.
You stand up from the armchair and rush over to him in a series of hasty steps. Your heart thumps wildly in your chest with a rush of fiery adrenaline caused by your concern. “Damiano, what has happened?” You ask, stopping in front of him. “Let me see…” you lift a careful hand to his face, intending to pull his hand back and observe the state of the hidden wound. Damiano takes a small step backwards, turning his head away from you with a stubborn tilt of his chin. “No. I will deal with it myself.” He declares.
Your eyes soften at the familiar tone of his voice. You can see the invisible walls he is attempting to build up around himself in the moment. You can see the vulnerable spark in his endearing eyes and hear it loosely disguised in his voice. You can always find it and see it. No matter how much he attempts to hide it away from you. “Come over to the kitchen at least.” You sigh, aching to at least sit him down and not let him lock himself away in the bathroom or bedroom to clean his wound up alone.
Taking his free hand that hangs idle by his side, Damiano allows you to guide him over into the sunlit kitchen and sit him down in one of the wooden dining table chairs. His hand still refuses to drop down from his hiding whatever wound marks face. Turning around, you grab a clean rag from the countertop and run it beneath the tap, drenching it in cool water and ringing it out. You throw a glance back over your shoulder. Damiano is staring at his dust covered boots. You can almost see the heat of rage and humiliation steaming on his skin and radiating in the air around him. His hands are trembling with unbearable anger and what you have no doubt is a sense of unfamiliar embarrassment. Your heart tightens at the sight of him in this state.
You pull a chair up to sit close enough to him until your knees brush together. “Lift your face, Damiano. Please.” You plead softly, moving your free hand that is not holding the damp rag to settle on his knee, stroking the skin through his dusty trousers. You can smell the lingering scent of the sulphur mines that still clings to his skin and clothes; a mixture of blood, sweat and earth. It is a scent that you are long since used to by now and yet you still find yourself resisting the urge to wrinkle your nose at it. At the pleading tone in your voice, Damiano relents. He was never one who could let you want for something. He was never one to deny you or something. Damiano lifts his head to face you. He swallows thickly when you bring your hand to cover his own on the side of his face.
“Let me see.” You stroke his crimson covered knuckles, noting how a large amount of the blood has since dried and is cracking against the skin like a staining mask. “It is not pretty, cuore mio.” He warns, his voice thick with glaring resentment for someone unknown to you. “I do not care. It needs to be cleaned and I will not have you doing that alone. I want to see it.” You reinforce. Damiano lets out a low, gravelly chuckle at the burning fierceness and stubbornness on your face and in your tone. “As you wish.” He breaths heavily.
Damiano watches your face as you slowly pull his hand away from his face. He waits to see the disgust. He waits to see the disappointment. He waits to see the embarrassment. None of it comes to your face. He only observes your eyes and your face softening even further than before with blatant worry for him at the sight of the now revealed wound. The cut is an unbearable size, spanning a sizeable length up along his cheek beside his lips all the way up to the very corner of his eye. Most of the blood seems to be dried now but some large pearls of dark red still rise from some sections. With no doubt in your mind, you can recognise that the smooth cut was given to him by a sharp handheld knife of some kind. It was certainly no accident.
You do not ask questions for now and simply bring the cool rag in your hand up to his face. Your hand halts. “This will hurt a little bit, my love.” You prepare him. Damiano meets your gentle gaze with a swift nod of simple permission and understanding. Glancing down at his lap, you notice that both of his hands are sitting limp atop his knees, still trembling in place with the intensity of his emotions that are boiling inside of him. You reach down with your free hand and take one of his hands into your own. Instinctively on contact with the familiar warmth of your skin, Damiano squeezes your hand. It is a little thing that he has done for a long time now. As if having to prove to himself that you are truly here and not a lonely delusion or a fabricated angel of his imagination.
When the damp rag makes direct contact with the deep cut, Damiano immediately stitches his brows inward, biting back a grimace that threatens his stubborn resolve with a quiet, rumbling groan. “‘m sorry, my love.” You apologise, offering your own comforting squeeze to his hand as you watch his face. “Not your fault, cuore mio.” Your hand pauses in the middle of cleaning the wound for a fleeting moment before resuming again. “Who… what happened, Damiano?” You hesitate.
You can see the way he grits his teeth together at the question alone, the aggression and hatred in his eyes from earlier when he had first stepped into the house returning with a sudden burst as he thinks back. “Just a little rat from the mines; a worthless nobody who has no idea what is coming for him.” He spits the labels out with a spiteful venom, causing you to instinctively begin stroking the back of his hand with the pad of your thumb in an effort to calm his spiking anger. “He got out and ran like a rat from the mines. I have to leave soon to find him. Rats do not get far but...” he trails off and averts his gaze toward the open window above the sink. You do not even need him to finish to understand and know exactly what he is too stubborn to admit aloud in this moment. He needed to come home for a moment. He needed to breathe in the signature rosewater scented air of you. He needed to see you. He needed to feel your skin against his.
His lips part with a sudden breathy groan of pain that he fails to bite back when you continue to clean the cut and brush against a particularly sensitive part of the wound. The grasp of his hand tightens around your own. You can feel the small grits of dust and sand from the mines itching against your palm from his skin. You can tell that he is attempting to hide the deep stinging pain from you. “You need to rest, Damiano. Not go searching for someone. Let the others do it. This cut is bad and you have been working like a dog for the past week.” You plead with him, noting how the endearing steely blue of his eyes appears darker than usual with tiredness. Damiano shakes his head with a quiet sigh, looking into your eyes as you continue to clean his face with a gentleness that makes his chest warm with a sensation that arises around you alone.
“I cannot. Spadaro wants me there searching with the rest, cuore mio. I have to do it.” You bite your tongue at the mention of Ruggero Spadaro. As much as you may hate it, Damiano and his brother are loyal to the older man. “I will find the rat and deal with him.” He assures, his voice ringing with a violent promise, though it sounds directed more at himself than to you. Damiano lifts your hand up to his lips and presses a deep, lingering kiss to your smooth knuckles. “Then I will come back home to you.” He finishes, breathing in the scent of your rosewater perfume on your wrist with a quiet hum of approval.
After a few more moments of dabbing at his irritated skin, the wound is as clean as you will be able to get it. You drop the stained rag down onto the kitchen table and observe the cleaned cut. “That will leave quite the scar.” You point out, offering Damiano a small smile as you tuck a stray strand of dark hair back out of his handsome face. “But lucky for you…” you lean in and brush your lips against the slice in his face, planting a featherlight kiss to the split skin. The sound of his breathing growing heavier at the intimate contact fills the room and throws a heavy veil of tension over the air. “I think you will look handsome all the same - with or without a scar, my love.” Damiano turns his head and immediately presses his lips to your own in a deep, wanting kiss that steals the breath from your lungs and makes your head feel light.
Damiano takes ahold of your hips through your expensive dress blouse, carefully but quickly pulling you up from your chair and onto his lap so that you sit sideways across his thighs. You hold his cheek as he parts your lips with his tongue and pushes it inside to meet your own. You are careful to keep your hand a good distance away from his wound whilst holding his cheek, not wanting to press down on it and cause more pain for him. His own calloused hand holds the back of your neck, tracing the sensitive skin below your ear with his thumb. The feeling of his body easing and relaxing beneath your weight is unmissable. The tight tension in his back and shoulders is loosening and melting down into nothingness from the mere feeling of your skin against his and your lips on his. His earlier anger and humiliation is being overshadowed and washed out by his intense love for you and the attention he dedicates to you in an almost religious manner.
The sound of birds chirping outside and the occasional breeze blowing through the air fades away into the distant background of your minds. The kitchen fills with nothing more than the quiet sound of open mouthed kissing and deep breathing with the occasional creak coming from the chair that now holds both of you. When you eventually force yourself to pull away from the kiss, Damiano blindly chases your now swollen lips but only finds the skin of your cheek instead as you turn your face away from him with a quiet laugh. “I believe that is more than enough for now, mr Bastoni.” You tease softly, leaning further into his chest.
Damiano leans his forehead against yours, his eyes heavy now lidded and hazy, swirling with a newfound passion and heat that makes the room feel ten times warmer and smaller than it is. “It is never enough for me with you, cuore mio.” He rebuttals. His breathing is heavier from the kissing, the feeling of his breath is hot as it fans across your lower face.
Before you can even think of responding, Damiano stands up from the chair and hoists you up off your feet, all but throwing you half way over his shoulder with an ever surprising ease. “Damiano!” You gasp out with a breathy, surprised laugh. “Put me down right away.” He simply chuckles lowly, keeping a secure hold on you and walking out of the kitchen, heading toward the stairs that lead up to your bedroom. “You teased me, cuore mio. You know what happens when you tease me.”
At that, you bite the inside of your cheek, a familiar heat igniting deep inside of you. Your lips curve up into something awaiting and eager as you smile to yourself, watching the staircase and the back of his boots move with his hasty steps.
Safe to say, you were most certainly going to help him forget all about the distant sweltering, demanding environment of the mines and relieve his pent up anger and you were going to take the greatest pleasure in doing so.
