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mermaidsirennikita · 4 months

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One reason why I think Mila Finelli's mafia books do work for me better than most other (Italian--I did really love Kresley's series) mafia romance novels I've read is that the characters do feel DISTINCT and so do the relationship dynamics.

In a lot of these somewhat darker, more erotic reads, you do get the sense that any of the characters could be switched out for one another. The heroes are always the same types of alphas, the heroines are always the same types of a) virgins or b) defiant rebels who may also still be virgins, and what really sets the books apart are a few bananas scenes here and there, and some distinct sex scenes.

And while I definitely think there are distinct sexual dynamics and kinks at play with each couple (Fausto/Frankie are obviously daddy kink-central, Enzo and Gia are.... generalized freaks with some heavier BDSM by way of CNC vibes, Giulio and Alessio also have some D/s vibes but with a more competitive edge and are very into each other's violence, and Giacomo/Emma are obviously a breeding kink/softer touch vibe) they're also just super different people.

I guess the closest couples would be Fausto and Frankie and Enzo and Gia, but even then... Fausto is a dick, but he's more rational, more doting (see: daddy), and though Frankie is absolutely defiant and strong, I actually think that though she and Fausto have more of a traditional partnership in terms of gender than Enzo and Gia (which also could be because Frankie wants a billion kids and yes she has her MBA but she's very much a wife and mom first, whereas Gia is more about her career, which keeps them from being too similar). Enzo and Gia are more into the defined D/s shit sexually, but you get the sense that she has more control in the relationship and that, at the end of the day, he is very much... her bitch. Enzo and Gia have a very similar age gap to Fausto and Frankie, but Fausto and Frankie have more of a care-focused DD/lg relationship, whereas Enzo and Gia thrive on the friction of her giving as good as she gets.

And Alessio and Giulio, aside from the obvious of being the only queer relationship in the series, are very much coded as D/s as well... But not as inflexibly as the previous two couples. Aside from them switching it up in the bedroom a little, there's also a lot of space for Alessio to take care of Giulio. Like, Giulio kinda doesn't know shit about what he's doing lol, whereas Alessio is hypercompetent (which also makes sense, as Fausto for sure spoiled Giulio and Alessio has been in essentially a different class his entire life). So while Giulio is more sexually dominant, Alessio is really the stronger, steadier, and more threatening partner otherwise. And again, they both really get off on watching each other do what they do best, which is: crime.

I do think Giacomo and Emma have the softest relationship in the series--but it's not so much because she's this kind of babe in the woods virgin (and I will say, I did love that Frankie and Gia were NOT lol) but because Giacomo is just a much more tender guy. Like, yes, Fausto and Enzo both also had loved ones, but I think that because they'd both been running their shit longer than Giacomo had before he met Emma, they had these very set roles. Fausto and Enzo come off as more brutal, and honestly more crazy (like, Enzo is THE CRAZIEST for sure, but Fausto is a fucking nutball). Giacomo seems like a dude who's good at killing people and doing mafia stuff, but it's really like? His day job. It's not his life and it doesn't feel like his culture, even, which makes sense because he was on the fringes of the types of levels Fausto and Enzo have always been in, because his father and brother kept him separate from it. Even Giulio is more connected to that space than Giacomo, because he was groomed to take over for years.

I think it would be very easy to rely on these great sex scenes and wacky plots she writes, but the thing that does make it clear that Mila has the chops (.... and it also makes it clear that she's very experienced, lol, and someone who has had to write series with very individualized characters for professional editors in the past........) is that the characters are very DIFFERENT. Like, Frankie and Gia may both have their partners' balls in their pockets, but you see Frankie do a wheedling kind of little girl pouting thing to get her way with Fausto because she knows he looooves it, whereas Gia is like LISTEN UP ASSHOLE with Enzo (and it makes the relationship the best because nobody else can do that with him, Enzo and Gia are the greatest, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk). Giacomo is willing to let Emma go in a way that Fausto, Enzo, and honestly I would say Giulio too after working out some things, really aren't okay with. He's probably the best guy out of the series, on a moral level, while also being a scary murder man.

(Except for maybe Alessio? Because Alessio is also a scary murder man, but he literally just does it for the cash or to protect Giulio. It's PURE BUSINESS.)

I find the distinctiveness of the characters really cool, especially when I reread the books, and that is probably why I've had a hard time finding a series that really clicks for me in the same way within the sort of Italian mafia genre.

(That, and: so much of the other books center on Italian-American mafia stuff and that shit DOES NOT HAVE THE SAUCE the way Mila's Italy-set books do. Like, be real here, the Italian-American mafia has not been raking in this kind of cash for DECADES.)

#romance novel blogging #anyway my musings on the mafia fuckbooks continue #i really do need to read annika martin's books #bc she's another author i have been pleased by with other books #and similarly to mila did a hard left into mafia novels #but yes #i do think that giacomo being sort of fringe-level with the mobster CEO shenanigans did deprive us of some of the funniest shit in the book #which would be like #enzo and fausto sending each other severed heads and getting on the phone like #'is that-' 'the severed head of your employee? yeah. :)'#or giulio bopping over to be like 'LISTEN UP THE ONLY COKE DEALER IN SPAIN IS ME NOW!!!!'#like i do remember her saying she hadn't originally been planning to write a book for emma #which seemed wild to me at the time #but you can tell this story was conceived of separately from the others #bc there's a pretty clear pipeline from fausto and frankie -> the villain enzo getting a book w gia ->#tying up the arc with fausto's son falling for the guy enzo paid to kill fausto lmao #(the comedy of this series will never top enzo fully forgetting he put a hit on giulio bc of all the bomb sex he was having on his yacht)#anyway that doesn't make mafia virgin a lesser book in any way it just reads as the most oN ITS OWN

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eleanorfenyxwrites · 1 year

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The Romance of Anonymity

Part 1 / 2

@polyshipweek 2023 Day 1 - Road Trip

What universe is better for road trip vibes than the 90's strip mall AU? As per usual in this universe there's virtually no plot to this, just flirting and Vibes™. Part 2 will be 'Bed Sharing' for day 3 of the prompt list ♥

--//--

Sunlight flickers red and burning orange against Meng Yao’s eyelids, the searing heat of it tempered slightly by the intermittent ruffle of the breeze through his hair. Under the monotone rush of the wind past the cracked-open window and the hum of the asphalt beneath their tires, he can just barely hear his boyfriends talking quietly together in the front seat, a soft, safe countermelody to the road noise that had lulled him to sleep some indeterminate amount of time ago.

“I can’t believe he’s short enough to lay across the seat like that,” Mingjue marvels, snagging Meng Yao’s pleasantly wandering attention away from contemplating a second nap.

“Well darling it’s not like he doesn’t have his legs curled up as well,” Xichen laughs quietly. “He only barely fits on it better than you or I would.”

“Still!” Mingjue protests, on the verge of laughter that Xichen quickly shushes through his own chuckling. “I feel like I always forget how small he is and then he pulls shit like this.”

“I may be asleep but that won’t stop me from kicking your ass, da-ge,” Meng Yao pipes up, smiling blindly up at the roof of the car when his boyfriends laugh without muffling themselves, all of them a little giddy from the hours they’ve already spent in the car over the last day and a half.

“A-Yao, sweetheart, you’re going to get a crick in your neck,” Lan Xichen frets with a soft hand laid on his bent knee. Meng Yao cracks an eye open and turns his head enough to squint through the sunlight on his face at his boyfriend turned around halfway to reach over the top of the front seat of Mingjue’s Cutlass. “Do you want us to pull over and get the pillow out of my suitcase?”

Meng Yao stretches his arms straight up towards the roof before he turns onto his side to face the front seat with a sigh, one eye still stubbornly shut against the early-afternoon sun cutting through the window above his head. Lan Xichen lifts his hand to allow the movement but puts it back the moment he’s settled, palm rasping pleasantly over his jeans as he rubs it back and forth, calf to knee to thigh and then back down.

“Mmm maybe. How long did I sleep?” he asks around a yawn.

“About an hour and a half,” Mingjue tells him, head lifting a bit as if to look at him in the rearview mirror though Meng Yao can’t see the mirror well enough to meet his eyes at this angle. “A-Huan and I were planning to switch at the next rest stop in about ten miles, so we’re pulling over anyway.”

Meng Yao spends another long moment indulging in the sleepy lassitude of the hot sun, the rumbling of the car, the road, and the attention of his boyfriends before he lets it slip away in favor of waking up properly.

He sighs again, mutters a grumpy, “No, I’ll wake up it’s fine,” and props himself up with a hand on the seat beneath him, forcing himself upright with the promise of kissing Xichen for a reward. Xichen smiles and goes up on one leg to lean back over the bench seat and accept his kiss easily, the both of them ignoring Mingjue’s grumbling about the unfairness of being the driver and why doesn’t he get any kisses just because he has to pay attention to the road.

“Ten more miles, da-ge,” Xichen soothes when they break apart. Meng Yao gives himself a little shake to wake himself up properly as Xichen turns to lay his head down on Mingjue’s shoulder, beseeching and teasing as he tuts over Mingjue’s many hardships and how he’s so brave to endure them anyway just to get him riled up.

Smiling at the familiar tune of his boyfriends’ banter, Meng Yao reaches down to the beat up igloo cooler from the gym down in the footwell behind the driver’s seat to rummage around for something decent to snack on. (The problem with dating two health-conscious gym rats is that they think grapes constitute a snack. Which…fine, maybe, but Meng Yao is of the opinion that cheap, filling junk calories of any kind are far superior, and he’d insisted they pack accordingly.)

“A-Yao?” Mingjue calls when they seem to notice his foraging up front.

“Hm?”

“Did we bring beef jerky?”

Oh of course, how could he forget the only other acceptable snack for the non-vegetarian gym rat boyfriend?

“I could never part you from your one true love, da-ge.”

This time he’s in the perfect spot to look up at meet Mingjue’s eyes in the mirror when his boyfriend sighs and raises an eyebrow at him, unimpressed.

“Sassy. Go back to sleep, you’re still grumpy.”

Meng Yao withdraws the package of teriyaki jerky and pinches it delicately between thumb and forefinger to slowly drape it over the middle of the seat between Mingjue and Xichen, wiggling the package back and forth a bit to make it crinkle.

“No thank you, da-ge. You’re going to eat what you want of this, brush your teeth at the rest stop, and then we’re going to make out in the back seat while Xichen tries not to run somebody off the road from trying to watch us.”

Nie Mingjue’s eyes in the mirror crinkle up as he grins widely enough Meng Yao is sure his dimples are as deep as they can go.

“A-Yao,” Xichen doesn’t quite pout but it’s close, turning to look at him again to better hit him hard with his best pleading eyes. “Can’t we stop somewhere for a while so we can all…relax?”

Meng Yao offers Xichen a sweet smile and stands up a little, hunching over to avoid hitting his head on the roof (though his hair still rubs against the microfiber lining) and leaning over the seat to bury his face in the crook of Xichen’s neck. He presses a few kisses to one of the spots that makes him shiver and punctuates them with a little nibble.

“Of course, er-ge, that’s why we’re stopping at a motel tonight,” he purrs. He’s still getting used to so many things: being wanted – by two handsome men – and telling one or both of them ‘no’ (even temporarily) are probably the biggest ones. But he hopes he never gets so used to the effect he has on them that it becomes mundane. Xichen tips his head to the side to give him better access and swallows thickly, turning into putty even from such a light touch.

“The faster you drive when it’s your turn the sooner we can make that happen,” Mingjue adds, always his partner in crime when driving Xichen up the wall is on the table. Meng Yao feels Xichen shiver again and he peeks an eye open to see Mingjue’s taken one hand off the wheel to rub it slowly up and down Xichen’s thigh with clear intent. “Just, you know…If you need an incentive to drive faster than the average 90-year-old.”

Meng Yao snickers into Xichen’s neck, effectively ruining the sexy vibe he’d been going for but he doesn’t mind. He smacks another kiss to the skin under his mouth before he sits back down again and resumes his hunt for his own snacks as Xichen sighs and opens up the bag of jerky to start handing pieces to Mingjue while he drives, the 5-mile sign for the rest area flashing by the window just as Meng Yao sits up with a triumphant cry for having found his bag of goldfish tucked safely in a separate bag where they wouldn’t get crushed.

--//--

As all motel rooms are, theirs is dingy and unimpressive. Meng Yao lugs his suitcase in first with a grunt, sticky in the small of his back and under his arms even just from the short walk from the parking lot up to their room on the second floor. He steps aside to let Mingjue and Xichen through, relieved when Xichen immediately heads for the AC unit under the window to flip up the lid and start fiddling with the dials. Mingjue barely even bothers to kick the door shut behind himself before he yanks his shirt off over his head by the back of the collar and rolls his shoulders with a sigh of relief.

“Mingjue, darling, you have got to get a car with a working air conditioner,” Xichen whines from where he’s draped himself over the humming unit, cold air fluttering the strands of his hair hanging damp with sweat over his forehead.

“Can’t hear you!” Mingjue shouts back from where he’s soaking a rag at the bathroom sink to scrub over the heat-flushed back of his neck. Xichen rolls his eyes at the blatant lie but seems a bit too wilted to bother arguing. Meng Yao drops a kiss to his sweaty hair in consolation before he makes what is, objectively, the best decision out of the three of them and goes to monopolize the shower.

“There is absolutely not room for two in this shower, da-ge,” Meng Yao hums a few minutes later when the man pulls the curtain back about halfway, enough to lean against the wall so they can chat without the floor getting soaked.

“Could be, you don’t know.”

“Considering what happens when we shower together, yes I do know.”

Mingjue smirks at him and gives him a long, appraising look down the length of his body while Meng Yao turns to grab the complimentary bottle of shower gel that contains enough soap for roughly half a grown man’s body.

“Fine, suit yourself. We’re thinking about ordering pizza from that spot we passed on the way in, A-Huan’s too hot to pretend like he doesn’t want to be spoiled with junk food. I’m assuming you have no complaints?”

“Not a one. Don’t let him order mushrooms though, he doesn’t have to pretend to like them for our sakes.”

“Sure. You want soda?”

Meng Yao shrugs and preens under the way Mingjue’s watching him attempt to stretch the shower gel as far as it can go to clean the sweat-salt off every inch of his skin, looking very much like he’d absolutely be the one doing it for him if Meng Yao would let him.

“Coke’s fine, or there’s always water from the sink.”

Mingjue nods, pushes off from the wall with a sigh, and finally looks up to meet his eyes again, clearly unembarrassed by his own brazen behavior.

“ ‘Kay. Hurry up, that looks really fucking nice and I think A-Huan’s actually going to fuse with that air conditioner if I let him lay there too much longer.”

“Him you can send in to share,” Meng Yao turns his face out of the spray to say, earning himself a heartfelt, “Oh fuck you,” that makes his laughter bounce off the walls of the tiny closet of a bathroom when Nie Mingjue turns to head back out into the rest of the room.

Xichen, when he arrives just as Meng Yao is finishing his rinse, plasters himself to his back and crowds him under the weak spray with eager kisses along his neck and shoulder that make Meng Yao laugh, quieter this time, as he reaches back to pat clumsily at Lan Xichen’s thigh.

“Hi, Huan-ge,” he hums. Xichen nuzzles into his hair and wraps strong arms around his chest to hold him close as he turns them around with shuffling steps to sigh as the cool water hits his back. Meng Yao chuckles again and leans his head to the side to pillow his cheek on Xichen’s bicep, eyes drifting shut to better appreciate the contrast of smooth, warm skin and the cool slide of water between and over them both tangled up together.

They stay there like that for long, quiet minutes, just standing together under the water, swaying ever so slightly as Xichen hums something that they’d had on in the car earlier under his breath. Meng Yao relaxes his (yes, sore) neck a little further until his cheek is fully smushed against Xichen’s arm, lazy and utterly unconcerned with how he looks. He’s just held and comfortable in the too-dim bathroom of a Motel 6 in some tiny town where no one but his boyfriends knows him.

They’ll be gone in the morning, a few strange faces in a rotating cast of them through this place, a battered blue car on the road going somewhere no one around them will care about. Meng Yao feels the weight of years fall off his shoulders in the anonymity of it, secure in the knowledge that he won’t be lost, he’s still known by the most important people in his life and they’re right here with him, but outside of his partners no one else cares.

It’s more freeing than he would’ve ever expected.

They get out of the shower when Xichen decides to unstick himself from Meng Yao’s back with a few parting kisses tender enough to make Meng Yao’s eyes sting. Xichen pats him dry, smiling, with the scratchy motel towels that smell of strong industrial bleach. Meng Yao returns the favor with another identical towel, ruffling up Xichen’s long hair for good measure to stop it dripping on his shoulders and making his boyfriend wrinkle his nose at him when he emerges from the towel, rumpled and soft around the edges.

“Hi,” Meng Yao says again and earns a kiss to the tip of his nose for it. The careful brush of knuckles against his cheek.

“Hi, sweetheart.” Not fair not fair not fair. Meng Yao tries not to melt at the tenderness in Xichen’s voice and realizes immediately that that will be impossible while stuck in this tiny bathroom looking up at him and his stupid kind eyes. He needs Mingjue.

He returns the kiss to his nose with a smacking one to Xichen’s bare chest and then he’s wrapping his towel around his waist to head out into the room again in search of something sharper to force him back into the shape of his body.

Mingjue’s sitting on the edge of the bed nearer the door still in just his jeans, hunched over enough to rest his elbow on his knee to better hold the room’s phone to his ear. Meng Yao climbs up onto the bed behind him and knee-walks his way across the slippery (stained? Ew) bedspread to drape himself over his back the way Xichen had done to him in the shower, arms over Nie Mingjue’s shoulders and his cheek resting against the back of his head.

“I told you Xichen left food in the fridge for you to have for dinner,” Mingjue snaps in the way he only talks to Nie Huaisang – beleaguered and affectionate in equal parts. Meng Yao has been reliably informed that that’s simply the curse of having a little brother. He privately thinks his own brother wouldn’t feel like that if they were on speaking terms. (Or...’acknowledging each other’s existences’ terms.)

Nie Mingjue covers his eyes with his free hand at whatever Nie Huaisang says in reply. Meng Yao ghosts his fingertips up and down the familiar contours of Nie Mingjue’s chest as he focuses more on the vibration of his boyfriend’s voice thrumming through him where they’re pressed together chest-to-back while Xichen putters around them, getting dressed and turning down the covers on the other bed for the evening.

“Okay, fine, whatever, but if you spend all of your allowance eating at every restaurant in town I’m not giving you more. It’s your choice, money for the arcade for the week or dinners with your boyfriend.”

Meng Yao smiles a little as Nie Huaisang whines on the other end of the line, too garbled up for him to hear from here, and brings one hand up to card lazily through Mingjue’s hair, brushing it back from his too-warm forehead.

“Alright, A-Sang, whatever! Did you go help Zonghui with the gym today like I asked?”

Meng Yao ducks down a bit to start pressing featherlight kisses along the shell of Mingjue’s ear, smiling when his boyfriend leans his head further to the side to allow it as well as hold the phone receiver between his shoulder and his head to grab Meng Yao’s hands in both of his to squeeze his fingers, raise them to his mouth to nip at his fingertips in between his own little kisses in return.

Meng Yao sharpens his kisses into little bites the longer Mingjue spends hemming and hawing to his brother on the phone, until finally he’s gnawing on his boyfriend’s earlobe (much to Xichen’s entertainment where he’s pretending to meditate on the other bed) and Mingjue gives up with a huff of irritation, sitting up straight again abruptly and catching the receiver before it can fall away from his ear.

“A-Sang I have to go, we need to order dinner and get to sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow night, okay?”

Meng Yao smirks in triumph as Mingjue practically slams the phone down to turn and tackle him to the bed, teeth bared as he lunges in to return the favor with hard bites up and down the expanse of Meng Yao’s entire neck.

“No fair!” he gasps around breathless laughter, “I only went for your ear!!”

“I’ll order dinner,” Xichen offers, reaching for the phone and the laminated page of listings for restaurants that deliver in the area off the nightstand. Meng Yao doesn’t even have time to chide him for this betrayal in not rescuing him before Mingjue is kissing him hard and dirty, fitting all the too-soft parts of him that Xichen drags out into the light with barely an effort back under the surface where they belong.

For now.

Xichen orders dinner and Meng Yao makes Mingjue leave him be long enough to get dressed in lounge pants at least before the pizza arrives. They all pile into the bed they won’t be sleeping in to eat, sitting cross-legged with knees knocking and toes brushing ankles, dinner piled up between and around them on the bedspread that has absolutely seen worse than some stray pizza grease. Meng Yao lets the feeling of it settle into his bones, and he decides that before this road trip is over he’s going to tell them both that he loves them. Out here, where it’s just them and the road and a string of motels they’ll never see again, he feels like this is the way he can say it first.

Unwatched.

Unmonitored.

Just a man who loves his chosen People.

One of many.

#the untamed fanfic #PolyshipWeek23 #The Romance of Anonymity #3zun #90's strip mall AU #Meng Yao #Lan Xichen #Nie Mingjue #fluff #Tales from Jianghu Shopping Center #<- universe #NMJ's car (for those who are curious) is a 1994 oldsmobile cutlass which is the car my sister and I learned to drive in as teenagers #It was a GREAT car it drove like a fuckin tank and it had a bench seat in the front that was tilted at the back #so it felt like driving while sitting on a couch #in the notes of the fic on AO3 I've got a link to an article about one that was being sold last year that's got some good pictures #so you can appreciate the beautiful 90's yacht of a station wagon that it is

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