#and for the last tag i would only say that Winston Bishop is the best man ever

[love-and-anarchy-au]

Love & Anarchy: Chapter 2

good morning/evening! here’s the second chapter. i loved writing the artino siblings and figuting out their aesthetics. hope you like itt <3

REMEMBER THIS AU HAPPENS IN THE SAME UNIVERSE THAT THIS ONE

Find out what this AU is about here

Masterlist

Tag list: @healing-winston-pratt @dawniebb @obsidianfr3sk @nodrianbcyes @everyone-has-a-nightmare

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Words:

10,227

Part 1: A boy named Alec Artino

4 years old Alec

 “That's not fair, Alec!”

    “Yes, yes it is.”

    And they all laughed.

    The three Artino siblings were mysterious, very different and identical at the same time, just like crystals. The oldest, Julieta Artino, was slender, with a smooth face and round features. Her eyes were a hug to the soul; her dark eyes were bright, as if they were filled with stars just as her soul was filled with secrets. She always wore her hair down, with a golden headband, delicate and narrow like the hair of an angel, so that her hair would not come over her face; and, also, so people’s attention would be drawn to that shiny headband instead of the greasy dirt in her hair, which could only be washed once a week. On top of that, her body smelled like cheap but fresh perfume, because the Artino family couldn't afford more than twenty showers a month, all five minutes long, so they spent a lot of their money on farmacy perfumes. Her laugh was the most angelic sound in existence and her soul held more secrets than any other one Earth. Despite knowing so much, her lips were always arched on a smile, let it be sad, happy, or repressed; it was always genuine like a pure diamond.

    The second brother, David Artino, was skinny, with the most tanned skin out of all the Artinos, since he used to get tanned under the sun of the streets where he sold his metals, which bought the subsistence of the Artino family. His eyes, blue like the sky, (or like the Mediterranean, that's how Alec liked it better), were the first thing you noticed about him, since they contrasted with the sepia photo that he resembled, with his worn out beige clothes, his golden skin smelling of sand and sea, ​​and his dusty hair. His fingers were skilled at handling metals, and that is what he did, despite being only eight years old. He was quiet, shy, introverted, and people still loved him almost as much as Julieta, (even more, Alec dared to think). He was a satellite orbiting the Artinos, isolated but bright when it received light from the sun, which was his father.

    The youngest brother, Alec Artino, was pure skin and bones,scented with manly perfume. He appeared to be the same age as his brother, when, in fact, he was three years younger. His dark and turbulent eyes, with slight sparkles, were somewhat sunken (perhaps too much for his age). His hair was strictly slicked back with gel  (perhaps too much for his age), repressing all his natural waves (which were to be expected for his age). While he had an easy laugh, laughing was a permitted act only when his father was not around. His father had hated him since  birth (perhaps too much), and Alec didn't understand why (nobody actually did). He was a black sheep among the Artinos (perhaps too much), although his mother and sister did their best to make him feel part of the family (perhaps not enough).

    At the moment, the three Artinos siblings were together playing chess on their worn out but beautiful board that had been passed down from generation to generation until it reached their hands. It was David against Alec, since Julieta was not allowed to play with them, because she had hellish luck despite being an angel; she always won all the games that could be played with wit and luck. In the face of constant protests from her brothers, Julieta had to stand aside and let Alec and David play, while she smiled mysteriously at the wooden pieces that composed the chess.

    Alec was winning at the time, and David was quite outraged (his level of outrage was a soft frown, forming unnatural wrinkles on his forehead). Each movement was more calculated and more premeditated and more confusing and more and more and more. David licked his lips, hungry for knowledge; of knowing what he should do with his remaining pieces of wood. Alec especially enjoyed watching David lose, as David used to have the upper hand overall. Being able to surpass his older brother at something, even if it was in an insignificant game in their lives and the lives of others, a game of bishops and towers, kings and queens, made him feel proud of himself for once from time to time. 

    Julieta sighed and rested her chin on her hand, bored. Alec suspected she already knew how that game was going to end.

    “Can’t we go to the beach instead? I'm bored,” said Julieta, and she shifted into a laying position with a yawn. Her skirt fell on the floor , still covering her pale and tanned legs (a textually inexplicable combination but logical when viewed) and her loafers moved from side to side, synchronized so as not to collide with each other. Julieta stared at the ceiling, her eyes lost and expectant of something to entertain her, according to what Alec saw reflected in them.

    David gently denied. Everything about him was soft, subtle, wispy, like a spring breeze.

    “We can't go to the beach alone, Julieta. Mamma and Papà are out doing their businesses, and Papà ordered us not to leave the house,” David said and felt one of the pieces, a tower, with his fingers. He hesitated for an instant and moved another, a bishop. Alec laughed. He had become confused, for having been so absorbed in his world full of doubts.

    Alec made his last move,not hesitating for a second, and won. It was not necessary to utter the words "checkmate". A silent victory was worth as much as a loud one. David sighed and rubbed his hands over his face, as if he had just woken up from a bad dream. Julieta snorted, tired of waiting for a miracle.

    Julieta stood up abrupt yet graceful way, took Alec's hand, helped him up, and led him into the hall. Two pairs of shoes collided on the floor, and the sound echoed off the adobe walls painted with yellowish paint. David stopped to keep up with them, confused but disinterested, as always. He opened his mouth to ask a question, but Julieta cut him short with style:

    “We’re going to the beach, you can come if you want to.”

    Julieta looked for the keys of  their run-down house, which were hanging from a hook on the wall, and opened the front door, which creaked when opened (it hadn't been oiled since they had bought the house and moved in). She put the keys in the pocket of her dirty white apron and looked David in the eyes. He sighed again, agreeing to go with them without saying a word; Alec choked back a snort. He would have preferred to be alone with Julieta, but David would not interfere, since he was always  deeply focused on his own thoughts.

    They walked through the picturesque streets of stone and dust, with drops of dried blood from time to time. Men, women, and children walked too, clad in worn out leather shoes, dirty skirts full of flour, and denim vests made of repurposed fabric. Some men wore hats; women had their hairs combed without a hair out of place, and they showed tired but active expressions at the same time; what a terrifying contradiction the world was! The voices were loud and the words were sung, not spoken, accompanied by hands, eyes, and eyebrows.

    Alec enjoyed the dance that was his town. The screams, the cries, the songs, the food. The landscape, the summit that was behind the colorful brick or adobe houses, located next to the celestial Mediterranean Sea, without fear of the rising tide. He liked to go to the beaches and play with the white sand in search of colorful snails and priceless treasures, without immersing himself in the transparent and bluish marine waters, since he was very small. It was a nice place to live, if you were like him.

    They arrived at the long-awaited and beautiful beach, which only the locals knew about, and the first thing Julieta did was taking off her leatherette moccasins. A sigh of pleasure escaped her throat as she touched the sand with her feet and Alec also took off his shoes, awkwardly, only to feel what Julieta was feeling. He felt the wet sand and the dry sand slipping through his little toes and sticking to his skin. Julieta rolled up his pants and David did the same with his’, so as not to get them dirty, since they only had two pairs and were washed once a week. David approached the shore, without any fear or intention, and his feet got wet from the sand and the waves that came up there (did David know that his eyes were pieces of that same sea?). Julieta took little Alec in her arms and carried him to the sea, euphoric and with her teeth exposed in a smile, shining like all the pearls they could not afford.

    Alec was about to protest, he was already big and did not want to be lifted, but Julieta put him down before he even had time to even say non. Without letting go of her hand, one long and thin and the other small and plump, they walked along the shoreline, their shoes dangling from their fingers, retracted like claws, the waves crashing against the sand and their feet, and the sun beginning to go down slowly, without any rush, just like them.

    The three Artino siblings were mysterious, very different and identical at the same time. Julieta was a living guardian angel, cursed to keep secrets that did not belong to her. David was a soul bottled up in a body very similar to this one, condemned to carry weights that were not his’. Alec was a fifth wheel on a four wheels car; he was the spare, he was only for non-substitute wheels purposes. And yet the siblings, being them an angel, a bottled soul, and a fifth wheel, worked well with each other. They were like a human brain: you don't understand how it works, but it does, and that's what really matters.

    Juliet hummed old and romantic sonatas, David walked with his head down and his hands in his pockets. Alec sometimes asked to stop to gather a snail or stone out of place that caught his attention, and to be able to put them in his pockets and then in his collection. Even back then, he was a curious being.

    When the sun began to brush the sea, changing the color of the water from turquoise to soft orange and fired at the same time, they set out to the overwhelming daily life, that they knew wasn’t so bad when they were together.

     Without letting go of their hands, sibling hands, thin and fragile hands, hands full of the same genetics and one unique at a time, they returned home.

#love & anarchy #love & anarchy au #ace anarchy's backstory #ace anarchy #alec artino #julieta artino #david artino #my au #au #renegades au #read #reblog #before renegades #aestethic #whatever