My Ask | My Ko-Fi | My Ao3 | Requests always welcome!
Gino paused for a moment as he came into the restaurant. The lights had been dimmed for the evening, the partition drawn between the restaurant and the main part of the hotel, and the chairs had been neatly set on top of each of the tables, seat resting against the table surface. All of them were at the typical angle, like they’d been measured with a compass point...
James was sitting in one of the booths, his knees spread apart, his elbows resting against them, his head buried in his pretty hands. It was typical of an Englishman, Gino thought, to have pretty hands - James got his manicured, and probably spent several minutes every morning buffing his pretty nails and making them nice and pink.
“What’s wrong with you?” Gino asked, and James, for a long moment, was silent. Gino looked at the back of his head, at the golden spin of his hair, and then he looked at James’ face. “Lines show in your face, you know,” Gino said. “Like tracking marks.”
“No,” James said tiredly. “You do not mean track marks.”
“You mean,” James said, his gaze landing on Gino’s face, and Gino looked at the blue in his eyes, caught by the dim light filtering in from the lobby, “that my face looks as if it has sustained artery damage due to heroin use?”
This was not, in fact, what Gino had meant. He didn’t let his expression change.
“Yes,” Gino lied, pressing his lips together. “You look like man who does a lot of the white lady, eh?”
James sighed, long and slow and hard, and Gino watched the way his fingers slid over the surface of his cheeks, loosely cupping the sides of his own jaw. He pinched the skin there, dimpling the flesh at his jawline, and he looked... tired. And then he smiled, in an exhausted, ruined way.
“What do you want, Gino?” James asked.
“Is Thursday,” Gino said. “We always compare inventories after shift. Don’t tell me you forgot, mopping in dark?”
“You know how many languages I speak, eh? You, sad little Englishman, you don’t speak nothing--”
“I speak English,” James said, “which is more than you do, Gino.”
“Don’t you picknit my English--”
“Nitpick,” James said, standing to his feet, and Gino took a step forward, jabbing his finger against James’ chest through the fabric of his suit. “It’s nitpick, you ingrate, which if you paid any attention, you would know.”
“Gino,” James said, and his hand touched Gino’s wrist. For some reason, it made Gino’s tongue fall over itself like a clumsy dog all high from the vet’s, and he stopped whatever it was he was about to say, feeling the warmth of James’ thumb - a soft, pretty thumb, very English, no Italian man would have a thumb like that - slide against the inside skin at the joint. “I have been nursing a headache for the past seven hours, moving through an unbearably long and difficult shift. I don’t have time to bicker with you over your perceived claim to my winelist.”
Gino’s eyes narrowed. “Your wine--”
“Please?” James asked. Defeat was not in the English nature - not according to James, anyway, who was usually a high strung bitch when it came to interactions with Gino. His lips were loosely pursed together.
His thumb was still resting on Gino’s pulse point.
“First thing tomorrow,” Gino said. “After pretty English boy gets his beauty sleep.” It was said with sardonic scorn, but to Gino’s surprise, James’ eyebrows raised, and his smile widened. His cheeks dimpled. “What? What I say?”
“God knows,” James murmured. “I can never follow a word that comes out of your mouth.”
“Ah, so you admit it’s not me,” Gino said, triumphant. “It’s your stupid English brain can’t follow me talking.”
James wasn’t listening: he seemed to have become aware of the fact that his hand was still loosely clasping Gino’s wrist, thumb against the skin, his fingers resting loosely against the back of his lower arm. The smile had bled away from his face, and Gino was looking now at the more familiar expression - the brow furrowed, the lips pressed tightly together, the little wrinkles in his jowls and his forehead.
“Good night, Gino,” James said. His hand pulled away, and Gino felt the ghost of the warmth of his fingers stuck to the skin, as if he’d left his grasp behind, before it faded. He pulled away, and Gino couldn’t think of anything to say. “We’ll go through the inventory first thing.”
In the dim light of the restaurant, Gino saw James’ head turn, saw the momentary hesitation, as if he was going to say something else, but it lasted only a second. James walked out of the back, then, and Gino, feeling like he was missing some big thing, watched him go.
