If You'd Kill For Them, They're Family [2]
Title: If You'd Kill For Them, They're Family - Part 2
Originally posted: 2/9/2009, on the kink meme. Link
Length: 2000 words.
Characters/Pairings: N.Italy, France. Implied Germany/Italy.
Premise: With Russia down, Mafiatalia goes for the next name on his list.
Time period: 1953
Smuttiness: 0/10
Funnyness: 2/10
Wrist slashiness: 0/10, unless you really like France.
Lolhistoryness: 3/10
Violence: 8/10
Would I like it?: If you liked Part 1, but felt like it needed that certain je ne sais quoi, you'll like Part 2.
France didn't cook for himself, of course; he had someone for that. But when he heard that the girl in the kitchen was preparing coq au vin with wine from Jura, something in him had snapped. He'd pushed her aside, turned up his sleeves, and prepared the mirepoix of carrots, celery, onions, and minced garlic himself. He exiled the girl to mix the roux and gather the bouquet garni with an expression of stormy displeasure.
So the meal, when it arrived, was perfect. The wine was also perfect--of course, he always chose that for himself. He was halfway through dinner, admiring the sunset, before it occurred to him to wonder--
Where was everybody?
He stopped, his glass raised halfway to his lips. He closed out the outside world like snapping shut a set of blinds while he thought. There was his driver, but he always kicked off at five on the weekends. There had been no one in the cellar when he went to retrieve his wine. That was strange, now that he thought about it. He tipped his head and listened.
No faint wash of voices from the servant's sitting room downstairs. No footsteps in the outer hallway.
France sat up slowly. He had not lived as long as he had without learning to trust his instincts. He reached out to set down his wine glass and watched it tumble between his fingers and shatter on the floor. He pushed to his feet, staggered against a crushing wave of dizziness, and collapsed to the floor himself.
Now he heard footsteps.
The last thing he thought as a row of black calfskin shoes lined up in front of his eyes was, but I made the sauce myself.
***
France was better at this than Russia. When he came to, his mouth tasting like blood and cotton, his arms gone numb, he realized immediately that he was tied to a chair. He didn't bother to open his eyes until he'd worked some spit into his mouth and swallowed thickly. He didn't hurt too much, so they hadn't beaten him (whoever they were) but he couldn't feel his fingers, and he was cold, so he'd been here at least an hour. Lifting his head sent the most extraordinary stab of pain through his neck. At least two or three hours.
It was a small apartment. Not much furnished. A light was on in the next room, and five Italians were playing cards around a table. The one facing in towards France's room blinked slowly at him, and gestured to the man across the table.
"E sveglio," France heard.
"Ah? Buon." The Italian in the best suit folded out of the game and stood. He flicked a long curl back from his face. France gaped a moment before Italy turned, met his eyes, and smiled.
"Italy?" he croaked.
"Mm," Italy agreed. He strolled into the room and inspected France from a foot away, both hands in his pockets. "Fraaance, you're not looking so good!"
France shook his head a little, trying to clear it. All he could come up with was another weak, "…Italy?"
"Ah, ah, and you don't sound so good, either! Do you want a glass of water? Oh, or wine! I, um, I took the bottle you were having with dinner--it looked so good, and you shouldn't just walk away from a Beaujolais once you've let it air, you know!"
France grimaced. "So it was the wine?" He swallowed again. His throat spasmed. "Just out of curiosity, how did you know which one I would pick?"
"Mm? What do you mean?" Italy raised his eyebrows and tipped his head. He was an unassailable wall of innocent confusion.
France tried another track. "Do you think you can get away with this?"
Italy bit his lip. "You don't sound like you're happy to see me. Aren't you like my big brother? You should be happy to see your family."
France stared at him warily. At last he replied, "I don't have any brothers who would drug me and let me wake up tied to a chair."
Italy giggled softly. He pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and flicked it open. It had France's instant, full attention. "Maybe you're right."
"Come to your senses," France snapped.
Italy gave him a smile and a look of such unnerving clarity that France's stomach sank. "I take my family very seriously. And, well, um, I thought about it for a while." He drifted forward, snapping the switchblade open and shut, open and shut. "I thought about it really hard, you would be so proud of me, France!" Pop-snick, snick-click. Pop-snick, snick-click. France felt a drop of cold sweat slip out of his hair and race down the bed of his spine. Italy stopped right in front of him, so close that France could have leaned forward and bitten off the black walnut button below Italy's lapels. "And um, I decided…I decided that I don't, ah, think that anyone who hates anyone else in my family can be in my family."
He waited for so long that France eventually realized he had to speak. He didn't take his eyes off the switchblade. "What are you talking about?"
Italy never stopped smiling. "I'm talking about Germany."
He slammed the knife into the other nation's side. France screamed. A gout of blood followed the blade out and spluttered down France's shirt and onto the floor. Italy snapped his wrist and sent a sparkle of blood drops across the carpet.
"Je t'emmerde!" France shouted. "Tu derailles!"
"You crossed the line." Italy's eyes narrowed. He flipped the switchblade and pushed the tip into the soft hollow under France's chin. France snapped his head as far back as it would go, braced into the chair, but Italy kept wiggling the knife and he felt a trickle of blood slide down his neck and seep into his collar, and the warm blossom of pain spread from his side all the way to his teeth. "You, ah, hurt me. You hurt the person I care about most. It wasn't nice." France sucked in air raggedly as Italy stepped away. He put the knife on the table. France lurched against his bonds, but a flare of pain from his side curled him back. He glared, murder in his eyes, as Italy calmly unbuttoned the jacket of his expensive suit and shrugged it from his shoulders. He folded it across the back of a chair.
"France should think about how his actions affect others."
"You stupid slut," he snarled. "That was Russia more than me! Listen to--ahh--listen to me! Tu deconnes ou quoi? You're--"
Italy punched him in the side, over his knife wound. France nearly threw up.
He only heard Italy go back into the kitchen, since the world was dark and green and swimming before his eyes. He heard the clip…clip…clip of his shoes across the linoleum floor, and the muttered signores from his subordinates. He heard a heavy, metallic scraping, and then heard Italy return. He felt a tap under his bloody chin with something cool and smooth.
Heaving in air, he forced his eyes to focus on the sunnily smiling Italian, and the thing he held.
It was a pipe--a bit of pipe, with a faucet. It was Ivan's pipe.
"I've already talked to Russia," Italy chirped. "It was good. I think he understands how important mi famiglia is to me now. I feel like nothing is more important than family." He spat into his palms, rubbed them together, then hefted the faucet. It was nearly as long as he was. "It makes me so sad that France doesn't agree. But maybe France can learn, the way that Russia learned!"
The first blow across the head made half his teeth go numb. His ears rang and he missed the start of Italy's next sentence.
"--can't teach you a lesson the same way I did with Russia," he was saying. "Because the others would notice, you know? Russia never visits anyone anymore, but people still visit France, even though France was so mean to his little brother by hurting the person his brother liked best. But that works okay for France, doesn't it?" How could he still look so fucking innocent? "Because it means you don't have to worry about your face!"
"If you think I'm going to hide what you're doing to me--" France felt like he was talking through a mouthful of wet pennies. He shifted, and what he would swear was a lump of blood pushed out through his side, and he fought off another flock of grey-green spots.
"Mm, but you will." Italy thrust the bent side of the pipe into France's chest. He coughed up a spew of blood. "Because I could drug your food again whenever I wanted. Or replace your driver!" He swung and connected with France's knee. A shattering split him from hip to ankle. "Or just get one of my friends out there to cut your traitor's throat in your sleep." He flipped the pipe so the faucet faced the floor, and brought it down hard on France's foot. There was a sickening sound like a shovel smacking wet cement, and France greyed out of the world for a few seconds and when he came back to it he was screaming.
"Ahh…you could get rid of everyone on your staff, and I would still find a way!" Another thump in the chest. It broke a rib and tugged at the wound in his side. "You would never know who was going to betray you. Mm…maybe then, France would know how I felt?" He jerked France's chin up and stared into his eyes from an inch away. The tips of their noses almost brushed together. "You just trust everybody, and believe that things are going to be okay. But then somebody you thought you could count on, maybe they get greedy, or mad, or scared…and they cut your fucking heart out. It doesn't matter to them what happens to you, so long as they get what they want."
He spat in France's eye and pushed back. "That's what France did to me, when he fucked with Germany."
The last blow came in low and tight across his shin, and he felt the bone bend and snap like a piece of straw in a whirlwind. In his mind there was a long, red, silent pause before agony swept him under all at once.
Italy threw the pipe away. It clanged and rolled across the floor. "And that's what will happen to France if he ever makes trouble for mi famiglia again," he finished.
Italy plucked the handkerchief out of his jacket on the table and dabbed it with his tongue. He wiped at the red mist that covered both his hands to the wrists.
"You ruined my shirt," Italy told him.
France concentrated on breathing.
Italy shrugged his jacket back on and tugged the sleeves down to hide the red-brown splatters on his cuffs. He picked up the switchblade, flipped it open again, and walked behind France's chair. France didn't feel him cut the ties, but he knew he had because suddenly there was nothing holding him upright. He thumped to the floor.
"You'll be okay!" Italy offered. "The cut, it's not that deep. You can just sleep here for, mm, a day or two? Then make your way down to the street and get a cab home. You'll find some fresh clothes in the next room. And if anybody asks, you fell down some stairs, si?"
In the kitchen, Italy's button-men gathered up their things. They filed silently out the door. France watched a long procession of black shoes and Beretta MAB 38s.
He forced through grit teeth, "Germany beat me up worse than this."
Italy tossed his curl back and smiled. "Ciao."
Continue to Part 3.
---
One of the commenters on the kink meme described my mafia!Italy as a blend of Don Corleone, the Joker, and the Bride from Kill Bill, which I thought was pretty much perfect.
Originally posted: 2/9/2009, on the kink meme. Link
Length: 2000 words.
Characters/Pairings: N.Italy, France. Implied Germany/Italy.
Premise: With Russia down, Mafiatalia goes for the next name on his list.
Time period: 1953
Smuttiness: 0/10
Funnyness: 2/10
Wrist slashiness: 0/10, unless you really like France.
Lolhistoryness: 3/10
Violence: 8/10
Would I like it?: If you liked Part 1, but felt like it needed that certain je ne sais quoi, you'll like Part 2.
France didn't cook for himself, of course; he had someone for that. But when he heard that the girl in the kitchen was preparing coq au vin with wine from Jura, something in him had snapped. He'd pushed her aside, turned up his sleeves, and prepared the mirepoix of carrots, celery, onions, and minced garlic himself. He exiled the girl to mix the roux and gather the bouquet garni with an expression of stormy displeasure.
So the meal, when it arrived, was perfect. The wine was also perfect--of course, he always chose that for himself. He was halfway through dinner, admiring the sunset, before it occurred to him to wonder--
Where was everybody?
He stopped, his glass raised halfway to his lips. He closed out the outside world like snapping shut a set of blinds while he thought. There was his driver, but he always kicked off at five on the weekends. There had been no one in the cellar when he went to retrieve his wine. That was strange, now that he thought about it. He tipped his head and listened.
No faint wash of voices from the servant's sitting room downstairs. No footsteps in the outer hallway.
France sat up slowly. He had not lived as long as he had without learning to trust his instincts. He reached out to set down his wine glass and watched it tumble between his fingers and shatter on the floor. He pushed to his feet, staggered against a crushing wave of dizziness, and collapsed to the floor himself.
Now he heard footsteps.
The last thing he thought as a row of black calfskin shoes lined up in front of his eyes was, but I made the sauce myself.
***
France was better at this than Russia. When he came to, his mouth tasting like blood and cotton, his arms gone numb, he realized immediately that he was tied to a chair. He didn't bother to open his eyes until he'd worked some spit into his mouth and swallowed thickly. He didn't hurt too much, so they hadn't beaten him (whoever they were) but he couldn't feel his fingers, and he was cold, so he'd been here at least an hour. Lifting his head sent the most extraordinary stab of pain through his neck. At least two or three hours.
It was a small apartment. Not much furnished. A light was on in the next room, and five Italians were playing cards around a table. The one facing in towards France's room blinked slowly at him, and gestured to the man across the table.
"E sveglio," France heard.
"Ah? Buon." The Italian in the best suit folded out of the game and stood. He flicked a long curl back from his face. France gaped a moment before Italy turned, met his eyes, and smiled.
"Italy?" he croaked.
"Mm," Italy agreed. He strolled into the room and inspected France from a foot away, both hands in his pockets. "Fraaance, you're not looking so good!"
France shook his head a little, trying to clear it. All he could come up with was another weak, "…Italy?"
"Ah, ah, and you don't sound so good, either! Do you want a glass of water? Oh, or wine! I, um, I took the bottle you were having with dinner--it looked so good, and you shouldn't just walk away from a Beaujolais once you've let it air, you know!"
France grimaced. "So it was the wine?" He swallowed again. His throat spasmed. "Just out of curiosity, how did you know which one I would pick?"
"Mm? What do you mean?" Italy raised his eyebrows and tipped his head. He was an unassailable wall of innocent confusion.
France tried another track. "Do you think you can get away with this?"
Italy bit his lip. "You don't sound like you're happy to see me. Aren't you like my big brother? You should be happy to see your family."
France stared at him warily. At last he replied, "I don't have any brothers who would drug me and let me wake up tied to a chair."
Italy giggled softly. He pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and flicked it open. It had France's instant, full attention. "Maybe you're right."
"Come to your senses," France snapped.
Italy gave him a smile and a look of such unnerving clarity that France's stomach sank. "I take my family very seriously. And, well, um, I thought about it for a while." He drifted forward, snapping the switchblade open and shut, open and shut. "I thought about it really hard, you would be so proud of me, France!" Pop-snick, snick-click. Pop-snick, snick-click. France felt a drop of cold sweat slip out of his hair and race down the bed of his spine. Italy stopped right in front of him, so close that France could have leaned forward and bitten off the black walnut button below Italy's lapels. "And um, I decided…I decided that I don't, ah, think that anyone who hates anyone else in my family can be in my family."
He waited for so long that France eventually realized he had to speak. He didn't take his eyes off the switchblade. "What are you talking about?"
Italy never stopped smiling. "I'm talking about Germany."
He slammed the knife into the other nation's side. France screamed. A gout of blood followed the blade out and spluttered down France's shirt and onto the floor. Italy snapped his wrist and sent a sparkle of blood drops across the carpet.
"Je t'emmerde!" France shouted. "Tu derailles!"
"You crossed the line." Italy's eyes narrowed. He flipped the switchblade and pushed the tip into the soft hollow under France's chin. France snapped his head as far back as it would go, braced into the chair, but Italy kept wiggling the knife and he felt a trickle of blood slide down his neck and seep into his collar, and the warm blossom of pain spread from his side all the way to his teeth. "You, ah, hurt me. You hurt the person I care about most. It wasn't nice." France sucked in air raggedly as Italy stepped away. He put the knife on the table. France lurched against his bonds, but a flare of pain from his side curled him back. He glared, murder in his eyes, as Italy calmly unbuttoned the jacket of his expensive suit and shrugged it from his shoulders. He folded it across the back of a chair.
"France should think about how his actions affect others."
"You stupid slut," he snarled. "That was Russia more than me! Listen to--ahh--listen to me! Tu deconnes ou quoi? You're--"
Italy punched him in the side, over his knife wound. France nearly threw up.
He only heard Italy go back into the kitchen, since the world was dark and green and swimming before his eyes. He heard the clip…clip…clip of his shoes across the linoleum floor, and the muttered signores from his subordinates. He heard a heavy, metallic scraping, and then heard Italy return. He felt a tap under his bloody chin with something cool and smooth.
Heaving in air, he forced his eyes to focus on the sunnily smiling Italian, and the thing he held.
It was a pipe--a bit of pipe, with a faucet. It was Ivan's pipe.
"I've already talked to Russia," Italy chirped. "It was good. I think he understands how important mi famiglia is to me now. I feel like nothing is more important than family." He spat into his palms, rubbed them together, then hefted the faucet. It was nearly as long as he was. "It makes me so sad that France doesn't agree. But maybe France can learn, the way that Russia learned!"
The first blow across the head made half his teeth go numb. His ears rang and he missed the start of Italy's next sentence.
"--can't teach you a lesson the same way I did with Russia," he was saying. "Because the others would notice, you know? Russia never visits anyone anymore, but people still visit France, even though France was so mean to his little brother by hurting the person his brother liked best. But that works okay for France, doesn't it?" How could he still look so fucking innocent? "Because it means you don't have to worry about your face!"
"If you think I'm going to hide what you're doing to me--" France felt like he was talking through a mouthful of wet pennies. He shifted, and what he would swear was a lump of blood pushed out through his side, and he fought off another flock of grey-green spots.
"Mm, but you will." Italy thrust the bent side of the pipe into France's chest. He coughed up a spew of blood. "Because I could drug your food again whenever I wanted. Or replace your driver!" He swung and connected with France's knee. A shattering split him from hip to ankle. "Or just get one of my friends out there to cut your traitor's throat in your sleep." He flipped the pipe so the faucet faced the floor, and brought it down hard on France's foot. There was a sickening sound like a shovel smacking wet cement, and France greyed out of the world for a few seconds and when he came back to it he was screaming.
"Ahh…you could get rid of everyone on your staff, and I would still find a way!" Another thump in the chest. It broke a rib and tugged at the wound in his side. "You would never know who was going to betray you. Mm…maybe then, France would know how I felt?" He jerked France's chin up and stared into his eyes from an inch away. The tips of their noses almost brushed together. "You just trust everybody, and believe that things are going to be okay. But then somebody you thought you could count on, maybe they get greedy, or mad, or scared…and they cut your fucking heart out. It doesn't matter to them what happens to you, so long as they get what they want."
He spat in France's eye and pushed back. "That's what France did to me, when he fucked with Germany."
The last blow came in low and tight across his shin, and he felt the bone bend and snap like a piece of straw in a whirlwind. In his mind there was a long, red, silent pause before agony swept him under all at once.
Italy threw the pipe away. It clanged and rolled across the floor. "And that's what will happen to France if he ever makes trouble for mi famiglia again," he finished.
Italy plucked the handkerchief out of his jacket on the table and dabbed it with his tongue. He wiped at the red mist that covered both his hands to the wrists.
"You ruined my shirt," Italy told him.
France concentrated on breathing.
Italy shrugged his jacket back on and tugged the sleeves down to hide the red-brown splatters on his cuffs. He picked up the switchblade, flipped it open again, and walked behind France's chair. France didn't feel him cut the ties, but he knew he had because suddenly there was nothing holding him upright. He thumped to the floor.
"You'll be okay!" Italy offered. "The cut, it's not that deep. You can just sleep here for, mm, a day or two? Then make your way down to the street and get a cab home. You'll find some fresh clothes in the next room. And if anybody asks, you fell down some stairs, si?"
In the kitchen, Italy's button-men gathered up their things. They filed silently out the door. France watched a long procession of black shoes and Beretta MAB 38s.
He forced through grit teeth, "Germany beat me up worse than this."
Italy tossed his curl back and smiled. "Ciao."
Continue to Part 3.
---
One of the commenters on the kink meme described my mafia!Italy as a blend of Don Corleone, the Joker, and the Bride from Kill Bill, which I thought was pretty much perfect.