lucrative_pink | fic [ and in between ] (Reply)

Timeline: July, 2015.

And In Between.

The Sicilian sun is too southern to be gentle. She leans back in her sun chair, the water from Ezio’s swimming pool drying on her skin. Summer generosity, a trait that characterises her father from approximately mid-June to late August. After that, he sends her away. To be on her own because he is out of artificial affection, something you must expect from a man who never tries to any notable extent. She humours him primarily for the drink in her glass; Sex on the Beach, the way only Cassio can make it. The double-entendres aren’t without charm either, considering how rarely she sleeps by herself when she visits the Salvoca House. Cassio is only fifty-six. She is only forty. We are too young, she thinks and sips her drink, to spend even a single night alone.

Her phone lies silently on the table next to her. Ten messages from Mario that she won’t answer; for a hardened criminal, he is such a clingy little boy. A tiny soul with a nice, big cock to compensate. But every word from him is becoming a drag on her patience; afraid to lose you, he says, and I will kill to keep you, kill to see you, murder your husband. For you. Empty promises and stupid ones, too. From a stupid man. She sighs and puts her drink back on the table. Sleeping with morons is easy because they kill themselves eventually and leave her with no commitments. They call her again and again and when she doesn’t answer, they leave a message. Inquiries and questions and no need for her to reach much farther than her bedside table when – if – at some point, she finds the proper inclination to reply. And with such little work, with such little effort (prego – the magic word in the Salvoca household!), she keeps them at bay at her own leisure and they fall to the wayside when they run too far ahead. It works so why change it?

Si. Why change it, doggy, just because you’re stubborn rather than stupid? It breaks the chain in a very unfortunate place – with all her pretty beads slipping off the thread. Rolling, you’d say, right into the palm of his hand if he’d care to open it, if he’d do that much to finish the pattern. But unlike Mario, unlike Cassio and Alessandro and Eligio and Daniele (and everyone else on a list that is much too long for her memory), Jean Louis’ barking animal of a bodyguard leaves her waiting for her own move, a move that she can’t make because she’s not a fool. Her text has gone unanswered, left in a vacuum of what is no doubt a Japanese lolita fetish. Combined with an odd business strategy that has Ezio laughing his head off at regular intervals, as soon as he’s surrounded by people who won’t dare to judge by themselves. In any case, she has sent him no additional requests; logically, it goes one way and one way only.

Raising her left hand over her head and shielding her eyes from the sun, she looks her nails over. Not critically for what is the use? If they break, she has them repainted. If she loses a rhinestone or two, she can sell a tiny fraction of Ezio’s kingdom and exchange them for diamonds. In all fairness, it is well and good for Marcel to treat her like air because breathing is simple, the simplest thing and everything’s so replaceable. It is not that he reminds her of what she already knows; it’s that she’s powerless against it and to be honest – to be very honest, uncharacteristically so - dealing with it is new. Unwanted and unwarranted, but recent enough to seep right through the cracks. They are so very established in the Salvoca dynasty; brimming over with rules and traditions and this-is-how. And her men are all too easy, coming and going (and coming, again, unless they bore her). Some broken, some repainted but all of them transparently consistent.

It is good, she thinks as her hand drops back to her side. It is good to be shaken up, to be reminded that habit is just another lie. No, she doesn’t mind it. There’s a reason (or several, his short-term erection included) why she ignores Mario’s overall existence, even as another text buzzes onto the list. The dominating issue is heat. Forty-five degrees amidst the shadows in Italy is nothing compared to the burn she suffers with every humiliation, every time she spreads her legs like a prostitute just because radical change feels better than orgasm. And now her skin is burning again even without the addition of violent, dirty, disgusting sex – the suffocating heat has transcended the air, settled in her bloodstream like the laughable alcohol percentage in Cassio’s fizzy drinks. She can swim until she drowns from exhaustion; it does not change the fact that all the rocks she would cling to for breath are crumbling. Regardless of what she does.

Mario can wait, she thinks as she gets up. Indefinitely. She ties up her bikini top properly, smiling at Cassio as he hurries forward to replace the drink she hasn’t finished. Her reflection in the water’s surface seems distorted and it’s fine, she thinks, it’s as expected. She dives right into it and it shatters against her body while she goes under, one foot at a time.

~