savetheearth | [closed; action]

Dante couldn't say that he was sure what had come over his brother. Lucca was supposed to be the docile one. Maybe it was their father's incarceration that had given him carte blanche to feel that he could do as he pleased, but Dante had to draw the line somewhere--the question was just whether that somewhere came before or after his brother ran off with a sheath of RX paper or not was still up for debate. He'd stopped him. This time. Of course without their father around there was no squealing on him up through the family's ranks; Dante definitely didn't have the heart to go to Leo about it. Well...heart wasn't quite the right word. He just didn't respect his brother as head of the family the same way as he did his father.

Which meant that he had to deal with this himself, figure out what Lucca thought he was doing all by himself, and sort his little brother out before he ended up doing something that messed everything up.

"Looking for someone?" he called, stepping out of library behind the stairs, a book open in his hand. He shut it with a snap. "Let's talk."

It wasn't a request. He made room for Lucca in the doorway.

"Let's not."

Couldn't it be just that easy? His response to his brother was immediate, almost as if he wasn't trying to sneak out of the house in the first place; as if he was expecting Dante to round the corner and say anything at all. Lucca wasn't interested in conversation but he could pretend he was entirely unbothered by it.

Glancing over his shoulder, he gave Dante a brief glance before looking back to the front door. He wasn't entirely sure if this would be a chase that carried out to the yard, or if he'd be dragged back before he could even get there. It wasn't as if he was going to get in 'trouble' - their father was a little bit busy and Dante would never take any of this to Leo. Leo wouldn't even pay attention if he did; Lucca was too young and subdued to try anything substantial, Leo wouldn't be bothered by anything except the idiotic information.

"I've got things to do. We both know that." A response that was meant to answer any following questions.

He knew Lucca could see right through him. The wonderful and terrible thing about having a chain of command under their roof was that everyone knew which way information went, and what happened when the information wasn't worth sending that way. The only thing Leo or their father would do with it would be to roll their eyes and tell Dante that he should deal with his own problems. They weren't interested. So Lucca was running off with his things - big deal - he should take more care of his belongings. And teach his little brother who was in charge.

Not that Dante ever had.

There wasn't much use telling their mother either, she was rarely sober enough to know which one of them she was speaking to, let alone care particularly.

He resisted the urge to stomp a foot, instead narrowing his eyes at the side of his brother's head.

"After the other day I think I deserve more than 'I've got things to do'. You owe me for the black eye, if nothing else."

"I don't-"

Owe you for anything. Lucca shut his trap before he finished a sentence he hadn't even thought his way through - not that he wanted to think about any of this, but that wasn't the point. With Dante it was different.

He hadn't really meant to give him a black eye - to start throwing punches at the drop of a hat. It had seemed like the right thing to do though, it felt familiar. And then the next thing he knew the dust had settled and he was out of his own line of fire, lacking one rx pad and feeling shittier than when he'd started. With an aching sense of deja vu to boot. None of it had really made sense and it was only part of why he wasn't interested in conversing about it.

Mostly, he still just didn't want to talk.

"Fine." He turned, heeling his shoes back off and leaving them in a poignant heap. "What do you want to talk about."

"In the library."

This time he didn't wait, but stepped in behind Lucca, using the extra foot he had on his younger brother to edge him into the room, and pulling the door shut behind him. No escape, just the two of them and the room full of books.

All of said books were removed and dusted by the maid in a routine that made the painting of the San Francisco bridge look like a work of a childish mind. The desk, too, was pristine; imported from Italy like most of the furniture in the house, it had elegant cherry wood legs and a darker mahogany surface, and took up most of the room. An equally extravagant chair, a life exact replica of the Rising Sun armchair in which George Washington had once sat, was behind that desk--fortunately it wasn't the only seating in the room.

This had once been their grandfather's smoking room, the place where the men retreated to after dinner to share a drink and a smoke while the women chatted around the table. There was still brandy in a locked cabinet set amongst the shelves, but that was only because their mother didn't have the key. Since Lucca wouldn't sit even if he was directed to, Dante didn't bother, instead beginning to speak even to the back of his head as he shepherded him in.

"Since our talk about my prescription pad turned into fisticuffs, how about we start with a talk about specialness, and how you don't walk over your own brother - the only one who remotely cares about you - to get it."

Lucca hated when he did this.

Crowded him in like he was three years old and needed to be shepherded from place to place. Maybe once upon a time Lucca had even found it comforting, like some sort of embrace you were supposed to get from a family member that implied that you were safe and wanted and that everything would be alright at the end of the day. Now it was just frustrating to be shuffled about when it was blatant that it was just Dante using his height, leaving Lucca to try to duck and skirt out from under him.

Which had absolutely nothing to do with his next words, "Don't fucking shrink me, Dante."

Backing into the library, stuffy and claustrophobic as always, Lucca looked away, his gaze bouncing off any number of the gleaming surfaces in the room. There was nowhere substantial he could hide and so he was left out in the open, giving Dante all the home advantage. This was like a paid appointment for him, and Lucca wasn't about to go down this road. Not when it wasn't fair. Not when he hadn't asked for it, and not when it meant just one more person lording something over his head.

Lucca shook his head, figuratively swimming in frustration.

"Wanna talk about being brothers, don't treat me like one of your patients, i've told you before."

It was more about not having Leo barge in on them than anything else. If he was going to be forced by convention to keep his elder brother out of it, then he was going to keep him well out of it.

"Hard to shrink you when you're already so short, Lucca. There. I wouldn't talk to one of my patients like that, would I? And you notice I haven't told you to take a seat. Lie down. Tell me about your mother."

Now he was just being an ass. He kept his back to the door, making sure that Lucca couldn't get out even if he wanted to--not without starting another fist fight at least.

"You know there's plenty of reasons why I haven't thrown you under the bus with this one, mostly because nobody else around here is going to care. You could really mess up, Lu, and nobody will so much as bat an eyelash at you. No, they'd be too busy blaming me for not stopping you before things got too much out of hand. You're always putting the cart before the horse; that's your problem."

Lucca ignored the height jab as if it was something he'd heard a million times before. And it was - sort of. Ever since Dante had started to take on inches while Lucca remained the same, there'd been an opportunity for jokes. The biggest brother had somehow not also been the eldest. And sometimes, it was worth it to fight back; to take offense. Except if you were Leo - really, it was only Lucca's job to be offended than he was short, everyone else just dealt with it while he was expected to be petulant.

But this wasn't one of those times and Lucca just rolled his eyes, wondering why his brother was choosing this to pretend to be a hard ass about. He just had to be careful. Find his way around this conversation. And then he could walk free like the whole thing hadn't even mattered.

"What're you even talking about?" Beginning to pace around the room, Lucca stopped and stared at Dante, baffled as he was pissed off. "Worried that you'll have to pick up after me because everyone else's got too much else on their plate to care? Because that's all that it sounds like - that you think I can't manage on my own. That I don't know what i'm doing."

Trying to put space between him and his brother, Lucca was nearly in the center of the room when he finally stopped backing up, looking like a bull ready to charge. "I'm not gonna mess anything up."

"Sure, because you never mess anything up, and I never get blamed for it. Not you, Lucca. I'm the older brother, I'm responsible for you, and you just slip through the cracks of responsibility like you do every time."

"But this is a big deal," he said, his voice taking on a slightly darker edge. "And you know it. This isn't knocking Ma's favorite vase over and pretending the dog did it. This is real life. Something people get sent down for; and how's that going to look when you're going for one of those white collar jobs you were meant to be getting, eh? All that wasted education, and for what? So you can turn out like our older cousins, taking it from some Irish in a supermax?"

He squared his shoulders. If Lucca was going to come at him again, he was going to be ready to fight back.

"Shut up."

Lucca's eyes near glazee over with anger, his fists curled into balls of upset. Lucca wasn't going to start swinging, but he wanted to scream at the top of his lungs until Dante bowled over with it. He wanted him to swim off in a pool of Lucca's rage and he wanted nothing more than to leave his big brother in a puddle of all of his puffed up pompous self-assuredness. Knowing that it was exactly what was going to destroy them.

"I'm not going away for anything unless you tell anyone and you're not going to. You never do it so stop acting like someone's gonna figure me out." His words were a growl, a snarl of twitching anger. "And comparing me to our cousins? You're being a goddamn fucker- i'm not gonna get arrested with army grade rifles pointed at a cashier that's too ginger for his own good because i'm not that stupid. And i'm not takin' the next white collar job that tries to reel me in!"

It was a terrifying thought and he swallowed hard, lowering the tone of his voice. "I'm better than that."

Lucca had one thing right: he wasn't going to sell his own brother up the river. But if he could give him a little shit for potentially jeapordising not only his own future but the lawfulness of Dante's own? Well then, that was exactly what he was going to do. And he wasn't going to be nice about it. Those papers had his name printed in the top corner, his business. If someone had caught him, he'd have had his license revoked for not declaring the scripts stolen.

"Better? Better? Cause you're a De Angelis? Cause that's all you got going for you, and it's not the kind of approval that's gonna do you much good if you go turning this family's name into a joke. That what we are to you? People who sell off prescription meds?"

He stepped forward, raising his hand and pointing it hard at Lucca. "Might as well get a tramp stamp and sell your body instead."

That one made Lucca sputter and then snort, the bubbling of laughter the sort that came with hysterical amusement. It was such an absurd comparison that he couldn't really help himself - the idea that Dante was comparing him to a whore meant so much and yet so little. All at once.

"You're gonna call me a whore? Then fine, we'll go there. And you won't need to say anything else because this conversation is over. We're done, Dante. Don't need your help with anything and if you want to sell me out then maybe you just damn well should. I don't gotta come back. I don't have to have our family name if you think it actually means shit to me."

"I don't gotta live here or speak to you or come back." He shrugged, meaning to head back to the doors and shove his way out of them. "You're the kind of people who don't need to speak to me anymore 'cause it won't matter."

He rolled his eyes and stepped between Lucca and the doors again, shoving right back at him with both hands.

"Don't be an idiot. Sorry to headcase you, sweetheart, but the name means everything to you. Living up to it, making something of yourself. And even if I wasn't a shrink, I'd be able to see right through you cause you're my brother.

"But I'm worried about you. Just worried. You get me? You're my little brother, and I don't want you going out and getting yourself fucked." It took a lot to make Dante swear; he was usually a more intricate kind of rude. He tried to look placating, tightened his grip on Lucca's shoulders. "If you needed help you'd ask me, right? If you were in trouble?"

"I'm not getting fucked. Goddamn."

Lucca squirmed, wiggling his shoulders and knocking his forearms against Dante's wrists, trying to get him to let go, twisting away. The idea that he was walking the streets made him want to be ill, but the idea that Dante thought he was doing that - or worse, somehow - was what really got to him. That Dante suspected him of something infinitely more foul when all Lucca was trying to do was dig his own way down.

It was his turn. His turn to make it.

"And don't call me sweetheart, jesus. The name doesn't have anything to do with it for fucking once, you don't get it. You can headcase me all you want but you don't get it and you're not gonna get it cause you're daddy's other big boy. How many scripts have you written to get his buddies outta trouble, huh? What've you done to make yourself so high and mighty?" He scowled at Dante, eyes narrowing. "I don't need any help when you should stop and look at what it is you do."

"That's good. Real good. I mean paramount deflection there, Lu. Well done. I tell you what, let's talk about me; let's talk about all the nasty shit Pop's made me do over the years so that you didn't end up messed up in any of it. Let's do that. You wanna go there, really?"

His hands had become particularly tight as he spoke, and now he gave him what he wanted, freedom from touch, and all it cost Lucca was a hard shove against the desk behind him. He didn't follow it through, he was still guarding the door.

"None of what I've done justifies you trying to steal from me. That's what I don't get. And no amount of throwing our fists around is gonna make any of that make any sense."

"You're the one shoving like the rest of them do. Barely even touched you, don't go blaming me for throwing around my fists this time." The desk had dug into his lower back and Lucca looked miserable for a moment, rubbing at the slope of his spine and knowing he'd have his own bruises in the morning. Not that anyone would see his, but Dante had made some kind of a point. One that Lucca had been entirely interested in listening to.

"What do you want me to tell you, huh? Why I did it? 'Cause it's not gonna happen, we both know it. Not gonna get me to give up my shit just because you want to be the one to hear it. Not this time. You lost that fuckin' chance."

Grumbling low under his breath, Lucca stayed put, his air caught up in his chest and squeezing tight. "You want me to stay outta trouble, keep me from walkin the streets? Then you gotta know that stealin from you's the safest thing i've got."

At least he was staying put. Dante called that one a win and put his hands into his jacket pockets, huffing as he sank back against the door again. He was winning, and while the difference was very subtle, he knew when he was supposed to back up to get the most out of the other person, and this was one of those moments.

"It doesn't have to be like this, you know. You can get that decent job same as you've been training for your whole life, then prove whatever it is you've got to prove. It don't gotta be unsafe. You don't gotta go out there playing rough with those people, cause end of the day they don't care who you are when they cap you.

"I don't want you dead, Lu. What've I gotta do to stop that coming to pass, huh?"

"What the hell's so important about a job behind a desk, uh? Reading papers and filing 'em and going through numbers like it's the end of the world? I mean- it's what I do the rest of the time. Do it for dad and all the businesses I check the numbers for and all the taxes I make sure look the way they're supposed to, I already do all of it and Dante, I can't stand it."

He wasn't whining, but the emphasis behind his words was all desperation. He'd backed himself into a corner in his life and while Dante was figuratively unwilling to let him out, Lucca had found his own perfect way to squirm his way free.

"It's nothing, and you know it's. It's nothing."

"Life behind a desk still gets to be a life. Gets to be a pretty Italian wife and a house that isn't here and half a dozen screeching, wriggling De Angelis kids, and finally you don't gotta be the shortest one any more, you know?"

He sighed, reaching his hand up to take off his glasses, and moving over to sit, leaving the door there like an elephant in the room. Lucca could make a run for it, but...but Dante thought he might stay, now. The tone had dropped, and while the topic of the conversation was now much more serious, at least they were talking rather than just yelling at each other.

"I want you to be special. You know that."

Lucca shook his head at so many parts of that comment that he lost count by the time Dante was claiming he wanted Lucca to be special. He felt like no one wanted him to be special and it was all Lucca could do sometimes to keep from popping someone in the face. His brothers included. The last people he should be punching, especially Dante.

But he'd done that already.

"I don't know, Dante. I don't. What if I don't want half a dozen wriggling kids and a house somewhere else. What if I just don't want a life behind a desk? Going over papers for assholes who don't know the difference between first and second degree? They don't get where i'm coming from and they never will, except the guy's down the block that launder money through their nose. I get that Dante. S'all I get." He hesitated for a second, shrugged. "And maybe a few other things."

"And that's the kind of person you want getting you, Lucca? That's the sort of life you really want? To be nothing except some two bit crim in a Locke City back street? You're a De Angelis; you're better than that.

"Not better like you can walk into any job in the city, that people should be salivating over the very prospect of you being unemployed, but better like you don't deserve to be pulled outta the damn river and left on some slab for me to identify you. You ever see someone that's been pulled outta the river?"

He wasn't really helping. "Who d'you wanna be, Lucca?"

"Cut it out."

Shoving himself away from the desk, Lucca was already heading towards the door. He didn't want to be in the middle of this conversation anymore - he didn't want his big brother trying to dig into his head and replace ideas with ones of his own death. It made his stomach flip before going numb, a chill spreading to the tips of his fingers. It was agony and he wasn't sure he could find his words anymore. With anyone else, maybe. With anyone else it would've been something entirely different.

"We're done. We're done. It's not about being a two-bit anything, or who's bein' pulled outta the river. It's just not and you're not listening. Can't talk about this with you when you can't even see who I am anymore. When'd you lose that, huh?"

"You're not special enough. Not unique enough. Everyone else always got the best, and what was there left for you when we were done? You think I haven't heard it, huh?"

He didn't move, but he did look up as Lucca made for the door, reaching for the right words to stop him.

"You were free. You were always free. Like, you could cut loose and get away from all of this, no responsibility, no breaking your knuckles on some ugly dude's face because he's been taking an extra cut of Pop's money. But you don't want it. You want into it, and you're right. I don't get it. I don't know when you stopped being my kid brother. And all I want is you to explain it to me, Lucca. Just help me to understand it."

Lucca closed his eyes against the words, slowly stopping his footsteps until he'd stopped walking entirely, just listening to words he knew he'd said before. Words that had already existed between them as children. Words he'd said and cried and spoken from behind hands as if revealing the broken innards of a well tuned clock. He hadn't meant to say those things but they'd appeared because they were who he was. And he couldn't escape it for the life of him.

"I can't cut loose. I can't. I can't escape the way we used to talk about just because I went to business school and just because dad won't look at me twice. I know how to get out of it this time, finally, and I know how to make..." Lucca shrugged high, turning back and desperate to slump against something.

"I know how to make a name for myself. Like you did, as if you always knew how to do it. You knew Dante, and look what you are. Look! i know how to do the same for myself and it won't be from behind a desk. It'll be what's always supposed to have been there. I found it. I know."

Dante knew he wasn't going to get through to Lucca like this. Not like this. He'd already made his mind up, and carrying on being negative and telling him that it wasn't acceptable was just going to get Dante pushed out too. He couldn't stop him if Lucca wouldn't even listen to him. No, he needed to get back inside somehow, needed to make Lucca trust him again.

"Alright. What...what if you just promise me one thing, huh?"

He rose up, stepping toward Lucca, though this time he neither crowded him nor tried to stop him getting to the door, simply stood close behind him, trying not to sound as desperate as he probably looked.

"I know you gotta make your own mistakes, gotta do things to prove you can. But I just want you to promise that if you really are in trouble, you'll come to me. Whatever it is, I can always fix it. That's what big brothers are for."

"What kinda trouble do you really think i'm gonna get in?"

It was first honest thing he'd said, the first thing that came out of his mouth that didn't sound like it was ultimately reaching for a fight. If Dante was going to try and keep the peace then Lucca should be doing the same, and it was all he could do not to pull his brother in and tell him everything. Leaning against the nearest flat surface and exhaling a dramatic, hefty sigh, Lucca shook his head, staring at his brother like they were in the middle of some secret meeting. Like the ones they'd had since they were kids.

"You really don't have any faith in me do you, huh. Really think i'm gonna get myself gutted in the streets by some thug waitin' with his thirty-two after a meeting gone wrong. You really think i'm that stupid?"

He gave Dante a short, pleading look before his brows furrowed into determination. "I got through school for a reason, Dante, you knew what marks I got. Know my skull isn't as thick as yours." Teasing was always a good sign.

"Yeah, Lucca, you got through school. But street thugs usually have nothing to lose. And you do, don't you? Have things to lose?"

The edge of his mouth worked, briefly, and Dante sighed, leaning himself over his knees, trying to exhale some of he tension he felt. For a moment there it had seemed like they were going to fight again, but Lucca was being much more reasonable now.

"I have plenty of faith in you, you know. It's them I can't trust. I get people like that in my office, sent there when there's really no saving them. They're broken people. And I don't want them breathing the same air as my baby brother."

He shook his head, dropped his chin all the way down to rest on his knee. "You can't tell me it's not ever gonna be dangerous."

"I breathe the same air as them whether or not you like it or not, Dante." Lucca huffed, almost miserably, before leaning up against the nearest bookcase. He tipped his head back for a few seconds, stared at the ceiling as his brother spoke and wondered if he'd always been the baby. Even to Dante. Even when he was supposed to be the same as, equal to, no better than.

But now he wanted to be better than everyone.

"What isn't dangerous?" He snapped his attention back down, still looking miserable for a few more seconds before he gave his head a shake and cleared his expression back to placidity. "Everything we do is dangerous. Our lives have been dangerous since we were been born and even if I took some class act bullshit job, it'd still be dangerous. Because it'd be me."

He sighed, shrugging helplessly. "Because it's us. You want to hold onto our name so badly, you gotta know all of it follows us wherever we go. Follows all of us."

He knew Lucca felt this way about it, but making a dent on his brother's determination to be obstinate had never done much good ever before. So what could he say, really? He let out a soft huff all his own, sinking back.

"How about this? You take a consulting job, something where you have to go in once or twice a week and do nothing but look over someone else's shoulder. You'll walk into it. You get something to put on your CV, something to tell Ma you're doing that's legit, and we won't talk about what you do the other working hours of the week.

"That's fair, isn't it? That way I don't have to lie to Ma and make up something you're doing all the time when you're not."

His lips quirked. "I'm thinking of myself, you understand."

"How about you stick it where the sun doesn't shine."

It could've been said viciously - could've been said in a snarling, menace of a voice that would've left the conversation in shambles. But Lucca was practically cracking up when the words tumbled free, leaving him to shake his head and try to be serious. "Yeah, sure, fine. I'll follow some crackpot around who'll end up knowing dad anyway and i'm sure it'll be fun. Just like every other job i've done for him."

He shrugged amicably, pushing a few footsteps away from the bookcase on rocking feet.

"What else do you want me to do, huh?"

"How about an hour a week doing my books? I mean, while you're being so amicable."

He'd gotten through to him a little. That was good. And if Peter did something legitimate, at least in two years time when he gave up whatever this was, there wouldn't be an empty mark on his record. He'd have something to show for it.

"Alright, lecture mode is over." He wasn't going to win any more prizes for it anyway, and the last thing he wanted was for Lucca to resent him. "I wouldn't be your brother if I didn't insist on checking up on you at the worst possible moments."

"You're never done with lecture mode anymore, Dante." Lucca huffed, giving his head a tiny, near imperceptible shake. He missed his brother of years gone by, the one that played with him and sat on an equal level with him. Not the one that wanted him to do his books to keep him out of trouble. So that he had something on his resume when Date already had medical school certificates and everything else plastered all over his walls.

It wasn't fair.

"I'll do your books, okay? That make you feel better? Can we stop talking about it now?" It was halfway pleading and Lucca was done arguing. He didn't want to do it anymore, but he had no intention of stopping his own plans either. The books wouldn't take much time and he'd still be all too prepared to go about his own business.

Can we stop talking about it now?

That was the instant end to the conversation as far as Dante was concerned. Lucca had asked, and so that was it, conversation over. Instead he stepped forward, reaching up to open the door and immediately carrying on a conversation with his brother as though they'd been discussing it all along, and not drugs and accountancy and what Lucca was doing with his life.

"You know what, Louie, it has been forever since the two of us went and played pool together. Or we could do a round of golf, make a weekend of it; put 50 dollars each on who comes out on top."

"You might as well just hand over your money already, you know I always win at pool." While that wasn't necessarily true, it didn't really matter - Lucca was interested in moving the conversation along to this new topic and to the idea of promptly getting the hell out for awhile. It was appealing in more ways than one and Lucca couldn't help but want to put everything away until it was the right time to even consider bringing it up all over again.

[closed; action]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject