#tagging the food names rly is gonna make me bonkers after a while but thats how it is

[blasphemings]

closure

hope was closing with my eyes down the shallow grave I was lying then I heard someone say "he'll be stuck here forever" but I prayed it wasn't forever

'cause you were leaning over me clutching memories of when I was alive and then you breathed life into me one last time

the kiss of life / the dear hunter

[though i’m inspired by all the art I see people making of the various characters i used here, @lemon-cookies​ in particular is a huge source of my characterization for risotto and prosciutto and i actually pulled one of their exchanges from this piece so go look at emmy’s outstanding art if you like these two]

link to part 1

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“I told—I told you—”

The raised voices were deeply familiar and he almost wanted to laugh at the sound, clamping his teeth shut over the cry that tried to escape. He knew it was only a matter of time. It had been ever since he had chosen to find them here.

“Yeah, okay, I, I, know what you said, and I didn’t—”

“Do you? Were—were you even listening? What did I just say?”

Even he had been slain, in the end.

“I…” Pesci groaned. “Does it really matter?”

“You see?” Prosciutto threw up his hands and shot a gap-toothed grin at the two men on the couch opposite. “See what I’ve been dealing with?”

Even their nail polish was the same. If he still had breath to hold, he would have held it as tightly as he held himself, searching for the horizontal scars; they were light, lighter than his own, such that he would not have noticed had he not known where to look.

Sorbet snorted softly. “We leave you alone for what, a few months?”

Risotto remembered calling it a kindness, that they became whole again after death. Or a cruel joke, Abbacchio had said.

“And you all lose your fucking minds, huh?” Gelato smirked up at him.

“Yeah, man,” Pesci said, oblivious. “I told—”

“Capo, you do know we can see you, right?”

Sorbet looked straight at Risotto with mild amusement. He watched Prosciutto stiffen from behind.

“Tell me it’s not you,” he murmured.

“I could say that,” Risotto said evenly. “Little use, though.”

“No…you’re not—”

“I’m sorry.”

“Damn. Damn it.”

He glanced down. “Not happy to see me?”

“No—I mean, well, yes—that’s not—you know that’s not what I mean.”

“I know.”

The silence seemed to last an eternity, something to be said for being together in a place without time.

“So he even got you, huh.”

Sorbet’s voice was soft, missing any of the venom with which he had so frequently spoken in life.

“I…”

Risotto looked down at the hand on his arm. The nail polish would have looked black, to someone who hadn’t known any better. Sorbet had always said that it told him who was paying attention based on who thought it was black, and who watched closely enough in the light to see the plum color for what it was.

Gelato had complimented him on the color the day they first met, and Sorbet had smiled and said that he could share if he liked it so much. Sorbet’s left hand went from being smudged to pristine in a span of time far too short for it to have been explained by the man suddenly becoming extremely skilled with his non-dominant hand. It was Risotto’s job to notice such things.

The sole time he had seen it he had known it for the transgression it was, that he was on the verge of walking in on something more intimate than any embrace. It had been in the room they now faced one another in, or rather the living version of it, and he remembered how close to one another they had been on that couch, how he had never seen Sorbet hold anything so gently as he held Gelato’s hand still for the nail polish. How, when he thought about it, it was the first time he had ever seen Sorbet be gentle with anyone at all.

The others remembered that day as the only time Risotto failed to appear on time for a meeting.

“I almost didn’t think I could show my face,” he said quietly. “Here, that is. To you.”

“Why was that?”

“You deserved…” Risotto met Gelato’s eyes over his shoulder and winced. “I failed to—both of you deserved more than what I—there was no justice in it, I wanted to—”

“You know, it’s funny.”

Pesci was blinking up at him as though he had only just realized he was there.

“I used to kind of think you couldn’t even die at all,” he said slowly.

Gelato smirked. “Immortal Risotto, hmm?”

“One hell of a shelf life, at least,” added Sorbet.

“Oh, okay, shut up—”

“I tried to be,” Risotto interrupted. “For all of you,” he added, but his eyes were on Prosciutto, who watched him carefully with an inscrutable look on his face.

“I know you did,” Sorbet said. “We watched for a long time.”

“I tried,” he repeated softly.

“It was enough for me.”

Gelato’s arms were folded, and he wouldn’t meet Risotto’s eyes, but he stood very close to the two of them now, the tapping of his left foot on the floor growing more rapid by the moment in a nervous habit that it seemed even death couldn’t break.

“It was enough,” he repeated stiffly when he realized he had cast the room into silence. “You did enough.”

“Gelato, I—”

“You tell me you’re sorry and I’ll hit you so hard you’ll think death came for you a second time.” He tilted his head to the side, considering. “Speaking of which—how’d he get you?”

“He—”

“He?” Prosciutto’s hands balled into fists where they rested on his knees. “What do you mean, he?”

“The man himself,” Sorbet said. “Isn’t that right?”

“It was a trick,” Risotto muttered. “Dirty trick. I almost had him, I—”

“You saw the—him? The boss?”

“Yes, I—yes.”

“Hope you made the fucker spit nails before he got you,” said Gelato, examining his nails somewhat dispassionately, though once he looked closer Risotto saw that his hand had begun to shake.

He glanced down at Prosciutto. “Actually.”

“You didn’t. You—you didn’t.”

Risotto nearly smiled as he made a snipping motion with one hand.

“The scissor thing?” Prosciutto laughed out loud. “Oh, that one’s horrible. I’m so glad.”

“What scissor thing?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t have—he didn’t start doing that until—until, you know. After.”

Risotto stood very still, staring at the floor, as Prosciutto struggled to describe it. The carpet was just as he remembered it, nail polish stains and all.

“You made scissors come out of his—” Gelato whirled on him, delighted.

“That’s disgusting,” Sorbet said reverently.

“It’s even worse in person,” muttered Pesci, but he was smiling too. “Just wait until Illuso hears. He really hates it.”

“You can thank him,” Risotto said, jerking his head towards Prosciutto, who watched him with something like pride in his eyes. “Was his idea the first time.”

“Sure, but the finesse was all you, caro.”

Gelato and Sorbet exchanged a look. “Pesci,” Sorbet said. “Let’s go tell the others that the big guy is home.”

“Oh—!” He looked up in surprise. “I mean, yeah. Good idea. Bro—?”

“Nah, leave those two here.” Gelato tugged on his arm. “C’mon, mammoni.”

“You know, he’s actually pretty smart when he’s pissed,” Prosciutto remarked, watching the two of them gently drag Pesci away as Risotto gingerly sank down onto the couch at his side. “I mean, it isn’t as though he really got the chance to use it. But still.”

“I regret getting him involved sometimes.”

“As do I.” He looked sideways at Risotto, averting his eyes when he realized he was being watched, and sighed in frustration.

“Still not happy,” Risotto murmured. The fact that Prosciutto had refused to meet his eyes even once had not been lost on him.

“I had hoped…” He closed his eyes. “I had hoped I wouldn’t see you again so soon.”

“I’m sorry,” Risotto said. “I…I am so, so sorry.”

They sat, looking down at their hands, shoulders brushing together. He wondered briefly how much time they had; he wondered if time was even a concern at all.

“You didn’t have to do it, you know.”

He didn’t need to ask what Prosciutto meant. “I know.”

“It wasted time that you very much needed.”

“I wouldn’t call it a waste.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Are you just going to leave him here?

And he could have. It would have made sense to leave the mangled body on the train tracks where he had fallen. It would have been easier. He would not have been haunted by the memory of how holding it had felt for the remaining days he had left among the living.

I don’t want to leave him here all alone.

The boy’s words had been a knife twisted into his own heart, even as he had watched them reach the spirit of the man to whom they were directed. It had all happened too fast for the memory to be anything other than an open wound, stinging where it was struck by the tears carried by that ocean air as though they were made of acid.

“There was barely anything left to bury,” he said quietly. “But I couldn’t…I couldn’t just leave you there.”

It had only been a matter of chance, that the poppies Prosciutto had always liked were growing nearby. Almost as though there were nothing they could ever have done to avoid his dying at that moment, in that way. As though he were always meant to rest there.

He was silent for a long time before Risotto felt a familiar hand wrap tightly around his own.

“Thank you.”

This time, when he looked down, Prosciutto did not look away.

“It was stupid,” he said. “But it was kind.”

“Out of character, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh, extraordinarily so.” Prosciutto grinned up at him. “So where to now, capo? Heaven? Hell?”

Risotto paused. “What do you think?”

“I think…” The edges of his smile hardened, an expression as vicious as it was familiar. “I think I’m not going anywhere until I get to see that dickhead boss of ours get pounded to a pulp.”

“Someone say dickhead?”

“Yeah.” Prosciutto turned towards the voice. “Amazing enough, Formaggio, I wasn’t talking about you this time.”

“Hah!” The man dropped heavily onto the couch opposite and winked at Risotto by way of greeting. He raised his eyebrows, watching the others appear, unable to fend off the guilt provoked by each new face.

Melone. Ghiaccio. Illuso…

He started to pull his hand back reflexively but Prosciutto only tightened his grip.

“It’s not like we have anything to lose,” he murmured. “Besides. They’re not that stupid."

“Capo,” Gelato said. “You bought him the time he needed, didn’t you? That other Passione guy.”

“Abbacchio,” Sorbet corrected him. Illuso flinched.

“Whatever. Yeah. Him. Right?”

Risotto nodded slowly.

“And you think those guys will get him?”

“They’re nothing to fuck with, that’s for sure,” muttered Illuso.

Melone grinned. “So we were the practice round, huh? One shitty little boss shouldn’t be a problem for them at all after us.”

“Speak for yourself,” Ghiaccio snapped.

“I think they’ll kill him.”

One by one they turned to look at him.

“I do,” Risotto said. “I saw their eyes after—I think they really are going to kill him.”

“Maybe they’ll take out that fucking mushroom-head on the way there,” grunted Sorbet.

“Mushroom head?”

“’S what he looked like. Little green mushrooms.”

Gelato laughed. “You’re fucked up.”

“So I’m told.” Sorbet turned and offered his hands to the sitting men. “Seems like we know who we should be watching.”

“I guess we don’t want to miss any of the good shit.” Prosciutto allowed himself to be pulled upright. “You coming, capo?”

He hesitated.

“Risotto.”

Sorbet had rarely used his name in life; whether to maintain the distance between them, or simply to be flippant, Risotto had never quite been able to tell. But it had been hard to read the man in a lot of ways. If it hadn’t, I might have—

“All this time,” Sorbet muttered, crouching before him. “All this time and you still carry all that guilt.”

Risotto looked down. “It was my responsibility.”

“You were our boss, not our mother—”

“You didn’t see—what it—the others,” Risotto hissed. “Prosciutto can’t even—he tore down all the picture frames in the house the next day. He still can’t—couldn’t…look at one without flinching. Pesci started to panic every time he saw a mailman. Lost his goddamn mind. They all tried to act tough but it was bullshit. It was bullshit, you—”

“You stayed.”

He glanced up to find Gelato’s eyes piercing him much more deeply than he was used to.

“All that ‘forget about Sorbet and Gelato’ bullshit and you stayed in that empty chapel for hours. Just sat there like you were waiting for some priest to realize there was a stray sinner and drag you back down to hell but no one came, no one ever came for you. You waited with us until dawn. You were alone, but you stayed.”

The two marble coffins were swathed in a silence dead in more ways than one. He had told himself to get up, to leave them behind, more times than he could count, and somehow each had felt more impossible than the next. He could not erase the terror on their faces from his mind. He could not shake the feeling that he had lifted it from their deaths, and that it had now become his own.

“And you…”

Risotto could not remember the last time he had heard Sorbet’s voice shake. If he had ever heard it do so at all.

“I know what you did for me,” he said softly, so low that only Risotto could hear him clearly. “I saw what you did.”

Reassembling Sorbet had been a grueling process, and not one he would have undertaken had he felt there were any other option, but having him buried with the frames felt like a declaration of defeat. As though to say the two of them could be remembered as nothing more than what had been done to them.

“…I wasn’t going to just leave you like that.”

Prosciutto had found Risotto in the morning asleep beside the coffin, surrounded by broken glass and bleeding where it had sliced him. The frames were present, but what was left of Sorbet was nowhere to be seen. He found, later on, that Risotto had stitched him back together as well as he could with iron filings pulled from his own blood, so that he could be buried in one piece.

Prosciutto had never said anything indicating he realized the extent of what Risotto had done, but when he staggered home from church in the early hours of the morning, he found Prosciutto equally as awake and nearly as exhausted. It had been the first time two of them had been unable to sleep alone, if only to reassure one another that I will not leave you here alone.

“The dignity you returned to me is not something I can thank you for with words,” Sorbet said. “But I am as grateful as any who understands everything you did for us.”

“You did beautifully, capo.” Gelato smiled and patted his arm. “But it’s not our fight anymore.”

Risotto met his eyes and, after a moment, he nodded. “Thank you.”

Sorbet stood and stretched. “You know what I want?”

“What do you want, stronzo?”

“I wanna see those fuckers get what’s coming to them.” He and Prosciutto hauled Risotto to his feet. “Come on, big guy. Think you can track down that friend you made?”

Illuso grumbled something nearly unintelligible.

Melone laughed. “Well, don’t call him that to his face.”

“Seems like he’s hanging around the others on some kind of vehicle,” muttered Risotto. “Car? Doesn’t look…this might get interesting.”

“Don’t tell me it’s a turtle…” Prosciutto winced.

They watched the others disappear one by one, Melone turning to shoot him a wink before he vanished.

“You know,” Prosciutto said thoughtfully, gazing out the window where he now saw the dreaded turtle appear. “I’m still not glad you’re here. But whatever happens next…I am grateful that I won’t have to face it without you.”

Risotto snorted. “Till death do us part, is it?”

Prosciutto smiled.

“I would love to see it try.”

but I prayed it wasn't the last time because it would be so wonderful to see your starry eyes again.

#jjba #risopro #sorlato #la squadra #risotto nero #prosciutto jjba #gelato jjba #sorbet jjba #vento aureo #tagging the food names rly is gonna make me bonkers after a while but thats how it is #this is called these characters were not given enough canon development to warrant closure so i did it myself #it also was NOT meant to get this long but shit happens anyways ill be back later i have commissions to work on have this in the meantime #love n light etc