Green-Eyed Monster

I only wis cou could have been permanently, when I wake up to agony screaming along every nerve I only wish it could have been permanently, when I wake up to agony screaming along every nerve. Okay, so maybe the morphine did make a difference after all, I’m forced to admit. I lie there on my back, breathing shallowly through my mouth and it finally dawns on me that Vince isn’t in his bed. And panic sets in. I’ve got the nurses’ call button in a death grip and when one finally show up, I launch into her without preamble. "Where the hell is my partner?!" I demand. "Calm down Mr. Lococco," she croons in her most soothing monotone. "Mr. Terranova is in surgery to repair the damage to his kidney." I don’t know whether this is good or bad, and I glare at her until she elaborates. "His blood pressure was dropping and his electrolyte balance was unstable, so the doctors decided he’d be better off if they worked on him now, instead of waiting until later," she says, knowing that this little bombshell is likely to set me off again. I struggle successfully with my temper, and I see her relief. It sure hasn’t taken me long to earn a reputation around here. "How long ago’d he go into surgery?" I ask. "About two hours. They should be finishing up with him shortly, then he’ll be in recovery until the anesthesia wears off. We’ll bring him back when he’s woken up again," she reassures me. I get her to go check on how he’s doing, and when she comes back fifteen minutes later, she’s all smiles. "He came through beautifully," she tells me and I relax for the first time since I woke up. She messes with the paraphernalia around my bed and then zaps me with another dose of morphine. I can feel it hit my bloodstream within ninety seconds and the edge finally gets blunted between me and the pain of reality. I consider the queasiness it brings with it a fair trade for the pain relief. She leaves, and I doze in my fuzzy drug cocoon, waiting for Vince. When I wake up this time, almost half a day later, he’s back beside me where he belongs, and he actually looks better than he did when I saw him last. "Hey, Buckwheat," I greet his apparently unconscious presence. "Glad you could join me here in this paean to modern medicine," I say, waving my non-IV arm around graciously as I welcome him to my current domain. He groans slightly, and I roll over to eye him. "Beats the alternative," he mumbles, eyes still closed. "Geezus, I feel like shit." "I’m not surprised, sweetheart, considering all the bits and pieces they had to remove to clean you up," I tell him, trying for sarcasm. My elation must show in my voice, because he turns his head slightly to look at me with one partially open eye. "So what’re you so cheerful about?" he asks irritably. "The love of my life may just pull through after all," I grin, only I can see he realizes I’m serious, however teasing the tone. The tiny smile that flickers over his mouth makes me grin harder. "I bet you say that to all the girls," he says, closing his eyes again. "Nah, just the ones that look like Elvis," I answer lightly. He laughs, then groans again as it triggers discomfort. "Cut that out," he scolds wearily, and I reach out for him again, stroking his hair, then chuck him lightly on the cheek. "Go back to sleep, Prince Charming," I tell him, knowing the affection comes through loud and clear. And he does. "Hey, Rog?" comes the groggy inquiry, twelve hours later. "Hmm?" I mumble back, barely awake. "How ‘come we’re in the same room?" he wants to know. "I twisted a few arms," I tell him, yawning. It must be the middle of the night. My time sense has been decidedly skewed, what with all the drugs I’ve been given. I’m sleeping and waking at random intervals, regardless of what time of day it actually is. "I wanted to keep an eye on you," I add. "Don’t trust me?" he asks, and I can hear his amusement. "Not as far as I can throw you, Buckwheat. Some pretty little nurse gives you a sponge bath, and you’re gonna be all over her. I have my interests to protect." "I didn’t know you were the jealous type," he says, and the laughter is plain in his tone. "I didn’t, either," I reply dryly. Silence descends between us, companionable, unthreatening. I’m almost back asleep when he speaks up again. "Roger?" "Yeah?" I can barely manage the word, I’m so dopey. "You okay?" I sigh. "I’m just here to keep you company, Buckwheat," I tell him. "You took the worst of it. We weren’t sure if you were going to pull through or not." "You think it was the MacTavish woman?" he wants to know. "Tess. Her name is Tess. You sound like Frank when you call her ‘the MacTavish woman’," I complain. It sounds peevish even to me. He’s quiet for a second. "Maybe I’m the one who should be jealous," he says eventually, something strange in the inflection. Suddenly I’m awake again, and I open my eyes to the dimness of our shared hospital room, listening to the steady beat of monitors, the glow of their displays providing the only illumination. I think about it. Tess. Tess of the red-gold hair, the sweet, sweet body, the hot, wet tightness of her as she gloved me. And I can’t believe I’m lying here with who knows how many stitches in my guts getting intensely turned on by the memory of fucking a woman who just tried to kill me, and worse, Vince. "Maybe you should, at that," I confess. Vince is quiet, and I wonder if he’s going to continue the conversation. "Tell me about her," he requests, the strange quality still in his voice. "Vinnie, I don’t know anything about her," I protest, annoyed. "I’m not talking vital statistics, Rog. Tell me what she made you feel. Tell me what you talked about. Tell me about her," he reiterates. "There’s something about her…" I say, not sure exactly what it is he wants to know. Anen ien it hits me. "She res mes me a little of you," I say. "Huh? How so?" he asks, mystified. "Same cocky tough-guy attitude… And the same careful observer underneath it all. She asked if we were sleeping together," I say. "What’d you tell her?" he prods when I don’t go on. "I told her the truth," I snap, then sigh. "I told her yes. That it just kind of… happened." I lie in the dark, starat tat the invisible ceiling, thinking about it. "I’m still not even sure why it did." "Because you wanted it to. We both did. Because we needed to be touched. To touch each other. And I needed to know why you came after me in El Salvador. Because I owe you. Because I love you. Because you’re my friend." The odd tone of voice is still there, and I turn my head to look at him, even though he’s barely visible in the gloom. "Why’d you come to my bed that night?" I ask him quietly. It’s his turn to sigh. "Because I’ve wondered what it’d be like to… be… with you since that first day we met. Remember those Finnish blondes?" he prompts, and I hear the fondness of the memory. "I never did get why you invited me to party with you and the girls," he goes on. "But I wondered what kind of man’d invite a Jersey hood back to his rooms for a game of hide-the-salami with a trio like that, when he coulda kept ‘em all to himself." "The kind who wanted to see how you’d handle yourself, not to mention the girls. You can tell a lot about a potential employee by watching them in the sack," I inform him bluntly, my voice ironic. "I figured it might be an audition," he says, the grin back in his voice. "So how’d I do?" "You got the job, didn’t you?" I remind him. This time the laughter is audible. "Maybe that’s why I liked you. You remind me of Sonny." Sonny. Sonny Steelgrave. The Atlantic City cappo who started Vinnie’s OCB career off with the biggest FBI collar in years. The man he first fell in love with, then betrayed. "How so?" I ask, feeling jealousy of my own. He thinks about it for a minute. "You’d have liked him, even if you’re crazier than he was," Vince comments. "You’re both… I dunno, larger than life, or something. Sonny… Sonny would’ve done anything for me, by the end. And I’d have done anything for him. Except let him walk. And now I don’t know why I didn’t just let him. I coulda let him go, coulda helped him. Coulda done something… anything.t; t; I can hear the old grief in his voice, grief he still can’t let go of. "So then you came along, and when you turned out to be a white hat, well, okay, maybe a gray one, I wasn’t gonna let you get sucked under by the same riptide." "I’ve never understood what it was that made you come after me. Take the risk I wouldn’t kill you, or McPike, when you tracked me down in Stockton." "Because I couldn’t let you go ever that edge. Not if the truth meant anything to you." He continues after a heartbeat or two. "I saw the way you looked in that hotel elevator," he says. "You know, when we were in New York with Mel to meet with don Aiuppo? And the Marine color guard walked in? Man, you looked like someone had just kicked you in the gut. I didn’t really get why till later." Oh, Vinnie, you don’t know the half of it… "I was about a half a second from shoving a knife between your ribs when they walked onto the elevator," I say flatly, trying to keep the self-hatred out of my voice. "Herb had just ordered me to kill you." That silences him. I continue. "All I could think about, seeing them in their dress blues, was, ‘I can’t kill Vince. He’s a cop. He’s my friend. This isn’t part of my oath as a Marine.’ I swear, I went straight to the phone and told Herb that if he sent anyone else after you, did anything to you behind my back? I’d kill him. Slowly." I wait for him to say something. It takes a while. "Would you have? Killed him, I mean, if he’d sent someone to… you know…?" "In a New York minute," I state emphatically. "I’d been looking for reasons to carve him up and feed him to the lions for years, Vince. It wasn’t the smoothest of working relationships. Particularly not after you wandered into the middle of things." He thinks about this, and I wonder what’s going through his mind. "Rog, can I ask you something?" Anything. "Yeah," I say instead. "Why’d you decide you wanted to… wanted me?" I can tee
e’s watching me in the dark, trying to see my reaction. "I didn’t decide, Vince. It just fucking happened. When I was looking for you, trying to find a way to get you out of Central America, I started having these… dreams about you. It’s not like I’d’ve done anything about it, if you hadn’t walked into my bedroom a monto, bo, but when you did, there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be able to turn you away. Don’t ask me to explain it, don’t ask me to justify it, I can’t. But when Frank came to me to ask me to find you, I knew I’d have to. Because I need you. In all your primordial glory," I say, quoting Mel Profitt’s comments over Vin146;146;s hospital bed four years before, though he won’t know it. "It scares me, needing someone, anyone, like this. Especially another guy," I add, knowing he’ll hear the self-mockery. He has no idea how much it scares me. "Love like this is so far out of my realm of experience, I might as well be on the moon. And if I start thinking about it, I start freaking out. Better to just go with the feelings, because what I feel when I’m with you is that maybe the world is alright. Maybe I am. And that’s a whole new thing for me, too. The idea that I might be okay. That I’m not just taking up space on the planet. That maybe my life means something to someone, beyond just using it for their own ends." I try and keep the emotion out of my voice, try to keep it level, try to downplay the desperation I feel, praying he understands what I’m telling him. "Rog." The single word is soft, filled with the same grief I heard when he spoke Sonny’s name. "Your life isn’t meaningless. Not to me. Not ever. And not to any of the men whose lives you’ve saved." And I’d give anything to be able to see him, hell, to hold him, right now. God help me. I reach out towards his hand, extended into the dim void between our beds, and we catch hold of each other, thumbs interlocked, fingers curled around each other’s palms, the gesture one of fraternity, one of respect, of unutterable affection. We touch in the dark, brothers, lovers, friends, all of those things new to me, and cherished beyond gold. "You didn’t tell me about Tess," he says into the comfortable silence after a while. "How’d she get past that radar of yours?" I snort ironically. "What radar? She played me like a deck of cards, Vince. I folded. I spilled my guts to her about you, about us, about everything, like a total rookie. And here we are, on the receiving end of her expertise with wet work." "What expertise?" he says, laughing. "We’re still alive. How do you know she’s the one who shot us?" "You’ve gotta admit she’s the most likely suspect," I say sarcastically. "Maybe, but there’re plenty of other possibilities out there. I say we let Frank do some detective work before we pin the blame on your girlfriend." "She’s not my girlfriend," I snap irritably, and Vinnie laughs. "Maybe not yet, but she’s perfect for you. You need someone who can beat you at your own game," he teases me. "You haven’t even met her and you’re playing matchmaker. I thought that’s what I had you for. To keep me in my place." I keep my voice light, but the subject is starting to make me antsy. "You’re the one who’s all gung-ho to do the wife and family thing, Buckwheat," I remind him, hoping to change the focus of the conversation. "I hate to break it to you," he begins, thumb stroking my wrist, "but any woman who takes me on, takes you on, too. I’ve already started my family." I’m stunned speechless for a heartbeat at the straightforward commitment, without a clue how to reply. I settle for irony, my standard fall-back position. "In that case, sweet thing, I suspect you’re going to have an uphill battle on your hands. No woman in her right mind is going to want to set up housekeeping with me." "Then we’ll just have to find one in her wrong mind, huh?" he says, that thumb doing things to my libido that shock me, given our physical injuries. "How the hell do you do that?" I ask, dazedly. "Do what?" he queries, all innocence and disingenuity, his thumb stroking lightly over the bones of my wrist, over the skin just above the palm, unbelievably erotic. "Turn me on just holding my hand, Romeo," I retort without heat. "If you don’t cut that out, I’m going to have to jump you, and something tells me neither of us is in shape for those kind of calisthenics right now." His laugh is soft, sexy. He gives me a last caress and lets me go. My hand feels cold without his fingers wrapped around it. "I’ll take a rain check," he tells me. "Damned right you will," I mutter. Remind me to avoid bullets in the future. Healing just takes too goddamned long. It’s not until the next afternoon that McPike comes in to relieve the boredom with an update on the shooting. It’s been two and a half days since Vince and I were bushwhacked outside his Brooklyn house, and I’m starting to feel enough better that the enforced bed rest is beginning to grate on my nerves. Which explains my testy response to his greeting. He isn’t looking particularly cheerful, himself, so he glowers at me before reciting his spiel like a school kid presenting a book report. Vince and I listen in silence, not interrupting until the end. "The crime scene guys found a shell casing that matches the caliber of the slug they dug out of the mystery gunman on the mini mart roof," he informs us. "Since the powder burns show it was fired at close range, that means that there was someone else up there with him, which explains where the rifle went. The question is, who? And what were they doing up there? Beside a little pest control, I mean." It’s not until then that I remember the sound of that single pistol shot in the wake of the rifle fire. "It sounded like a Glock," I say, amply familiar with the report made by several types of handguns. While I prefer the Heckler & Koche automatic, personally, the Glock is a good gun, reliable and not prone to jamming. It’s also the first choice of law enforcement everywhere. "Well thanks for that, anyway," McPike says sarcastically. "That’ll sure narrow it down. As it happens, Sherlock, the ballistics guys agree with you. Any other little snippets of information you’d care to volunteer?" "Any hair or fiber?" I ask, ignoring him. "Not yet. They’re not finished processing the scene, though. I’ll let you know when they are. You have any theories?" Frank inquires, backing off from the smart-mouthed digs. "Yeah," I say tersely. "I think Tess was up there, whether she was backup for him, or the other way around, and she took her best shot at us, then put a slug in him to muddy the waters," I say bitterly. Damn Tess, anyway. "There’s another scenario," Vinnie speaks up blearily for the first time. "Maybe he was totally unassociated with her. Or maybe he forced her to take him to us," he speculates. I turn my head to stare at him. "Why the hell are you trying to defend her?" I snap. "Because you’re in such a hurry to pin it on her," Vince answers. "Which usually means, in ‘Lococco-speak’ that the idea hurts, so you’d rather bite the proverbial bullet on her possible involvement right off the bat, than risk it hurting even more later, when there’s actually evidence saying she was there," he informs me. When did he get to be so blasted insightful, is what I want to know. I just stare at him, trying to work it out for myself. It bugs the hell out of me to realize he’s right, at least to a certain extent. If you always assume the worst, you’ll never be disappointed. Though sometimes you might be pleasantly surprised when you’re proven wrong. The Roger Lococco philosophy in a nutshell. And totally contrary to the Vince Terranova school of thought. which is more or less, ‘give everyone the benefit of the doubt, at least until you’re sure they’re assholes’. Maybe we’ll meet somewhere in the middle, one of these days. Philosophically speaking, I mean. McPike glances between us, frowning, knowing that once again the subtext is eluding him. "This isn’t much help," he observes sarcastically. "Oh, and Vince, your mother is getting out of the hospital today. You can expect her to drop in on you on her way home. She wasn’t very happy with us when Dan told her you were in the hospital with another bullet hole in your belly." I bite back the groan that piece of news elicits and sigh, instead. "Hell. She okay? How’d she take it? Her heart didn’t act up on her again, did it?" Vince barrages McPike with questions. "She and your stepfather are fine," Frank reassures him. "Rudy told Dan to tell you he’ll see you when he brings your mother by on their way home this afternoon." I can see the muscles tighten in Vinnie’s jaw at this. "I don’t want him anywhere around me, Frank. He and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms after the whole thing with the Commission," he reminds McPike. "Vince, the man is married to your mother. You’re going to have to make peace with him eventually," Frank argues. "Why? Huh, Frank?" Vince is pulling his patented stubborn act. I watch as Frank makes a face, recognizing that petulance. "I don’t know what it was that pissed you off about that whole bust," McPike complains, and that’s when I realize he hasn’t figured out where the gift horse of one of the most successful OCB prosecutions came from. "But get over it. Your mother married the man, and now both of you are going to have to live with him." Vince turns his head away in a classic sulk, refusing to meet his former bosses’ eyes. I can’t help grinning at the little scene. "And you! What are you smirking at?" Frank demands of me as he catches my expression. "How long have you known Vince?" I ask him. "Longer than you," he snaps, angry. "Then you’ve known him long enough to know he doesn’t pull the prima donna act for no reason," I prompt him, wondering what it’ll take for him to figure it out. Vince is steadfastly ignoring both of us. I go on. "Has he ever talked to you about why he’s frozen the old man out of his life?" I ask, curious. Vince hasn’t really said much to me about it either, but I know him well enough to have some theories. McPike glares at me, then frowns as he thinks about it, eyeing me, waiting for me to go on. "Think about it, Frank," I urge, seeing his forehead furrow. "Shut up, Roger," Vince snaps at me, turning his head to shoot me a look that bodes ill for any more leading questions. "Vinnie, the man ratted out the whole Mafia ruling council, and as a result, you and Frank pulled off one of the biggest OCB coups the Bureau’s ever had. There’re probably a dozen gold stars in your personnel files for that one operation alone!" I respond, not interested in letting him continue this ‘suffer in silence’ routine of his. "You can’t have it both ways, Buckwheat," I inform him flatly. "What he did probably saved your life at the time. It wouldn’t have taken much for those goombas to start putting the pieces together and figure out you were pulling an inside job. Instead, Aiuppo did it for you. He rigged the game and took out all the players in one shot. He did it to protect you — and your mother, his family, and all you can do is shut him out for choosing you over the mob? Sometimes you can be the most selfish bastard, you know that?" I chastise him. "What’s more important to you, anyway? His vows to your mother, to you? or his oath of silence to a bunch of criminals?" Put like that, his pique with the old man seems outright childish, and he’s furious with me for destroying his self-righteous feelings of betrayal, and I can see a good bit of embarrassment, too. "Fuck you, Roger," he mutters and stares up at the ceiling, ignoring McPike’s attitude of enlightenment. "Any time, Buckwheat," I answer Vince’s curse with cheerful seriousness. Once again, Frank fails to pick up on the undercurrent of truth in the words, all his attention on his former prize agent. "Is that true?" he demands. "Did Aiuppo handed us the whole Commission on a silver platter?" Vince glares at him briefly before returning his gaze to the ceiling. Frank turns to me, frowning, his expression telling me that he’s busy kicking himself for not seeing something so obvious. "Did he tell you all this?" he asks me. I shake my head on the pillow, denying being privy to anything more than a good working knowledge of Vince and his cases. "It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out," I say, knowingly rubbing in in his wounded pride. "Oh, thank you very much, Lococco," he snarls at me. "Your opinion of my IQ has been duly noted. Geezus," he says irritably as he turns to look at Vince again. "I swear, I don’t know how you can stand this prick," he tells Vince, referring to me. It’s all I can do not to snap back with some raunchy comeback, but I keep my mouth shut. More or less. If you don’t count the grin. Vince sees it though, and one of his own starts to force it’s way through the determined frown, until we’re both laughing quietly, with Frank staring at us as though he’s thinking about putting us in a rubber room. "Would somebody mind letting me in on the joke?" he says with the same irritation, seeing the slight blush on Vinnie’s face, but still clueless. "Don’t worry about it Frank. We’re just agreeing with you," I tell him taking a certain amount of pity on the man. After all, I’m the one sharing Vinnie’s life at the moment, even if I wish to hell we weren’t doing it in a hospital room, with tubes and lines shoved into places they have no business being. All things being equal, I’d much rather we were just about anywhere else. Especially somewhere with a bed and some privacy. And without the bullet holes. Geeze, you’d think I’d gotten enough in the last month not to be hovering at the edge of an erection, what with the Foley catheter shoved up my dick. Frank looks at us both, shaking his head. "Alright, you jerks, just be that way. I’m going to see if I can get one of the DOJ computers to cough up any more dirt on Lococco’s girlfriend. You two try and get some sleep. The sooner you’re out of here and somewhere safe, the happier I’ll be," he says as he heads for the door of our room and lets himself out. When the door has shut after him, Vince opens his mouth. "He’s right. You are a prick, Rog," he tells me. "That’s what you love about me," I reply, closing my eyes and settling in for a nap. ************************************************* When I wake up next, it's to the sound of voices, heavily accented despite most of a lifetime in this country. Vinnie's harridan mother and her husband the Godfather. Just the thing to cheer a soul up, I think to myself, careful to keep my eyes closed and my body still. They're here to visit my partner, not me, so conforming to the social niceties is unnecessary, from my perspective, anyway. Instead, I settle for eavesdropping. "Filio mio," mamma Terranova moans, maternal distress unmistakable in the tone. "Vincenzo, whave tve they done to you?" "Aw, mom, I'm all right, I swear," comes Vinnie's penitent response. He sounds like a little kid, and I guess to her, he always will be. "You are lying here, machines hooked up to you, and you tell me you're all right?" mamma T protests, not buying it for a second, and she shouldn't. Her baby boy is barely four days past almost dying on the floor of his home. He's nowhere near all right. Not yet, anyway. And unless I can convince him to leave New York permanently and slip into a life that's a little more anonymous than the one he's been leading for the last eight years, he may never be all right again. "Ma, I'm gonna be fine. Just ask the doctors," he tries for the reassurance of an authority figure's word in corroboration of his own. "Vincenzo, even when you have healed, even when you have been released from the hospital, there are still men - evil men - who will seek you out to kill you. Perhaps they did not succeed this time, but one day they will. You have still not left the work behind, have you?" she asks, a note of accusation appearing in her voice. I'm impressed at her insight. McPike may have pushed through Vinnie's official resignation from the OCB, but Vince has yet to really deal with the end of a career that fed his adrenaline addiction for so long. Psychologically, he's about as far from having quit as it's possible to be, with no paycheck coming in. "Mom, Frank put through my 'retirement' before I was out of the hospital in Miami," he tries to excuse himself. "As far as the OCB is concerned, I'm outta there. On my own. They'll probably cough up some psych-discharge pension, eventually, but I'm not officially an employee of the US government anymore," he adds, a little defensively. The only reason he's out of the FBI is because I told McPike I'd be coming after him, next, if he didn't cut Vince loose. I'll say this for the little bastard, he knows enough to take me at my word. That, and the fact that he'd rather know Vinnie was alive and safe somewhere, then spend another sleepless night worrying about the jerk. Frank's an okay guy, for the competition, I have to admit. Maybe some of the feeling of smugness comes from knowing Vince will be spending the rest of his life as my problem, not Frank's, if I have my way. It allows me the luxury of reluctant admiration for the little Irishman and his doggedness in finding a way to retrieve his lost agent. Even though it meant turning to me, his nemesis and rival for Vinnie's affections. At least in my jealous little world. I wasn't lying when I told Vinnie that I hadn't known I was the jealous type. No one was more surprised to figure that out than me. Except for Preet, I guess I've never really let anyone close enough that it much mattered to me what they did, or who they did it with. Until now. "Vincenzo," comes the deeper, slightly quavering voice of the old don, jolting me out of my self-absorption. "Your mother is worried about you, about how you will stay alive, without the protection of the FBI," Aiuppo offers, speaking his two cents' worth. "Surely you can ask them to create a new identity for you, help you start over elsewhere," he suggests, accompanied by my silent cheers of encouragement. Damned right he could, if he weren't dead set on maintaining the umbilical cord he has to his mother. "I didn't ask for your opinion," Vince says, his voice surly, and I mentally brace myself for one of petupetulant little snits. "If I asked, Frank'd put me through witness protection. But I'm not asking him. Not as long as my family is still in jeopardy." I hear the rustle of sheets as hens hns his head on the pillow, presumably to look at his mother. "I'm not leaving you utecttected, ma. Don't you get it? Too many people know that the fastest way to get to me is through you. You're all the blood family I have left," he adds, and I'm wondering what the distinction he just made means, a warm fuzzy feeling sneaking up on me out of nowhere as I recall our midnight chat a couple of nights before. "Vincenzo, I am old. My life is almost over-" "Don't even think like that, mom," Vince interrupts sharply. "You're not going to die, not as long as I can stop it." Geeze, what an egomaniac, I shake my head mentally, stunned at the hubris. "You cannot stop time, Vinnie," his mother contradicts him. "And when it is my time, not even my son will be able to prevent it," she says, audibly upset. "What do you think it would be like, Vinnie, for me to survive beyond all usefulness? Beyond my first husband, the father of my sons, beyond my first born? Beyond you? You have no wife, no family to carry your name, Vincenzo!" she brings out the big guns, the whole procreate-or-die thing that seems to go hand in hand with Catholicism. "Mom," he tries to get a word in edgewise, "I can't raise a family, not when all they'd be is hostages to fate," he argues shortly. There's a pause that practically shakes the walls, it's so fraught with meaning. "Exactly, Vincenzo," mamma T agrees with him. "That is why you must leave. Make your way in a place far from here. Far from the people who could use you, use your children this way." "I am not leaving you unprotected, ma," Vince responds, launching into the second lap of an argument he hasn't figured out is circular, yet. "It is no longer your place to protect her, Vincenzo," the old don interjects. "You are her son. But I am her husband. It is my responsibility to keep her safe, not yours." "She's my mother," Vince snaps petulantly. "And she is my wife." The argument goes on for a few more rounds, no one giving ground, but it has me thinking that I have a pair of allies in the old folks, if I can just come up with some kind rationale that'll convince them, as well as their son, the mule-headed bastard. I give it a few minutes after their departure before I stir deliberately and open my eyes to see Vinnie lying here, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling, looking like he's a million miles away. "Hey, Buckwheat," I mumble, yawning conspicuously. "What's up with the gloomy expression?" I ask, wondering if he'll talk about it with me. He sighs softly. "Don't play coy, Rog. You'd have to have been dead to miss the little knock-down-drag-out I just had with my mother and Rudy." He turns his head to eye me. "So don't start with the 'I told you so', okay?" I debate whether a plea of innocence will get me anywhere then decide to come clean. Lying to my intended mate is not a precedent I want to start setting. Not this time. I shrug a little. "I wasn't planning on it, sweetheart. This is your Gordian knot to unravel, not mine. You want to talk, I'm listening. But you already know what I think. And now you know what McPike and your folks think, too. So what you have to decide, Buckwheat, is what difference what we think makes to you. If any. And whether you care enough about your own life to decide to live it. Preferably with me, but-" I shrug self-deprecatingly, "live it somewhere, with someone. Someone who loves you." I watch the glare in his eyes soften, and he reaches out a hand across the gap that separates us, and I reach back to grip it tightly, feeling the big bones of his fingers interlock with my own. "Rog, you know I love you. God, please tell me you know that by now. But she's my mother. I can't just walk away from that." I know better than to argue the point with him right now. Until I can feel out his folks, get a line on how serious they are that he make his own way in the world, exercise a little enlightened self interest and show some evidence of basic survival instinct, it's pretty much pointless. I'm going to have to enlist the aid of every one of the people Vince sees as reasons to put his own life second, or third, or fourth, and get them to help me to force him to see that it goes both ways. That the fate of the universe, or even of his loved ones, doesn't have to rest solely on those broad shoulders. There is such a thing as self-determination. For all of us. "I'm not asking you to," I tell him evenly. "I know better then to ask you to let go of that martyr complex of yours. If you had a red fucking 'S' on your chest, you'd be superman. Man of steel. Leaper of tall buildings in a single bound." I pause for a heartbeat, then shoot him a sarcastic little smirk. "I guess that makes me Lois Lane, huh?" He snorts with amusement, then groans. "It hurts when I laugh, you bastard," he complains, and I grin back at him. "Serves you right," I tease him. "Yeah, well, if I'm some kinda superhero, that'd make you my sidekick, right?" he jabs back at me. "Roger Lococco is no ones sidekick, sweet thing," I respond smugly. "I come at this as an even partner, or we ain't got no deal. 'Sides. I'd rather be the love interest, anyway." He laughs again, biting off the groan it triggers. "Remind me what I see in you," he gripes. "You love me for my wit and charming disposition," I remind him cynically. "Ah, that's right, I remember now," he agrees with equal sarcasm, and we lie there in the friendly quiet of our room, basking in the comfort of each other's presence. "I thought I loved you for your body," he adds several minutes later, and it's my turn to laugh till I hurt.