The Italian Word for Kisses by Matthew J. Metzger

Author:Matthew J. Metzger [Metzger, Matthew J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Queerteen Press
Published: 2015-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16: “So what happened last night anyway?”

Luca was woken by someone screaming—but not, as would have been familiar, the soft and dulcet tones of Angelo having yet another row with yet another nameless, faceless girlfriend. Instead the screaming was distinctly female, and distinctly younger in the temper tantrum being thrown.

He groaned. Amy. Tav’s littlest sister. Judging by the shaking of the floor, she was throwing her spectacular hissy fit in the kitchen, and what a hissy fit it was.

“Oh God,” Tav rumbled. “Kill it with fire.”

“S’your sister,” Luca pointed out, and turned over. The bed was too narrow and too short, and a blast of cold air hit his legs. He burrowed into Tav instead, burying his nose between Tav’s shoulder blades and tucked his knee between Tav’s thighs.

“Fuck you and your cold skin.”

“Fuck you in general.”

“Tit.”

“In fact,” Luca yawned, warming to the theme. “Fuck every generation of your ancestors back to the Iron Age, and then, when you’ve got that far, come back down the generations fucking all their siblings and their offspring, so that when you return to this time period, anyone who was ever distantly related to you has been fucked. And when you’ve done that, go fuck yourself.”

Tav snorted, and his fingers curled across Luca’s somewhere in the blackness of the space under the duvet. “Or,” he offered, “I could just kill it with fire.”

“Yeah, okay. Go do that.”

Tav slid out of the black heat, and Luca unburied himself enough to blink sleepily and admire his arse as he found a pair of boxers. That reddish-blond-brown hair was stuck up all over the place and, if not for the vague headache and the feeling that something had died in his mouth, Luca might have attacked him.

As it was…nah.

Tav vanished; Luca stretched, rolled onto his back, and stared at the ceiling. In the morning light, last night seemed so surreal. He’d been drunk, Jack probably had been, too, and his hands had been shaking. Luca had seen that uncertainty. He hadn’t really wanted to; he wasn’t a killer. If he was capable of it, Luca would be dead right now. In the safe warmth of Tav’s house, it just seemed silly. Jack was lashing out, and like crazy irrational, but he wasn’t actually going to hurt Luca.

And the reason why he was lashing out—or the reason Luca was beginning to suspect, from the way he’d talked…

There was someone under the anger on Jack’s face. Luca remembered Jack joining the swimming team, and he’d been a quiet, okay kind of kid. Hadn’t really known how to fit in, but then they hadn’t had a new member for a couple of years and their in-jokes were probably kind of intimidating at first. Luca had liked him. And last night, the things he’d said and the way his hand had shook holding the flick-knife…

That guy was still there. And Luca felt, in a weird, crumpled-up-and-twisted-kind-of-way in the centre of his chest, a bit sorry for him. Jack was lashing out for a reason.

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