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The Contrabbandieri took one look at Martino's pride flag pin on his bag before buying their own in support. They loved their boy and they dove at any chance to show him that.
Nobody blinked an eye when Elia came in the next day with a bi-flag pinned next to it (though a few days later, he noticed how the others had picked up their own pins too).
When Elia left a party hand-in-hand with a guy from the year above, the only thing Luca said was "don't forget about tomorrow".
He didn't forget, and no one brought up his partner of choice over coffee.
Things had always been simple for him in that way. He was Elia, neither here nor there. If he wanted to come out, good for him, but he didn't need to. Not after Marti had cleared the path for him (even if his way was a little destructive).
He didn't need a coming out story.
That was how he liked things. Nobody knew what to expect so they just stopped expecting things all together.
That's not to say that he never surprised people.
"I need to get laid," Elia said one night Marti's, hogging a couch to himself. He and Niccolò were having their own little conversation while the others bickered over what was acceptable in a sandwich. He and Nico had agreed early on that anything could be put in a sandwich if you believed hard enough, so they decided to call it a mutual win and left the others to it.
"Then why don't you?" Niccolò said, sitting on the floor with his back to the sofa Elia was lying on. His hair was a fluffy mess and Elia would've reached out to ruffle it if he wasn't in such a bad mood.
Not a bad mood as such, just irritated.
"It's not as easy as that," Elia said, groaning. He picked up a nearby pillow and placed it over his head. A second or two later, he pulled it off in a huff and sat up. "I'm going out."
"Have fun," Nico said, not hesitating to jump onto the sofa when Elia stood up. He poked Elia on the back of his leg with his toe, flipping him off when he did so to him.
"Mature," Elia said, rolling his eyes. "Should I bother saying bye?"
"No, just leave before they suck you in to another debate on 'reasons why ketchup is the underrated spread'," Nico said, grimacing. "Even I won't eat that. I'll cover for you." There was a few seconds silence while Elia stretched, but Nico looked up again from the boys and called out to him. "Oh, good luck by the way."
"Right... Thanks," Elia said, giving a small salute before slipping out of the front door with his jacket in his hand.
He didn't know where he was going nor how he was going to get there, but it was dark and cold and he was prepared to jump into the next club or bar that let him in.
Of course, the nearest one to where Elia got off of the bus was one that looked packed full of people. While he knew that would elevate his chances of getting off with someone, he wasn't in the mood to be pressed up against everyone and anyone he came across.
A few buildings down, there was another club that seemed lively enough that he could find a hookup, but not crowded enough for him to get claustrophobic. The door was being watched by a man who let him pass through without a hitch, barely noticing his presence in the wave of people who entered along side him.
The first thing Elia noticed inside was that it was loud. His bones were vibrating and he felt drunk on the beat alone.
The second thing he noticed was how different everyone seemed to be. Normally, the parties and bars he went to were full of the same people, usually people from school and their friends.
It wasn't that he'd never been out to a place like this before. No, it was simply that he'd never gone to one without his friends. The experience felt completely different alone.
To his left, there was a group of women in their twenties, seeming to be out celebrating a wedding, going off what the bride-to-be was wearing. Further along, there were men in suits, sitting down around a table looking like something out of a hitman-based movie- a table he was going to avoid- right next to the group of almost naked people orf various genders gathering around the DJ.
It was a lot to take in, and he definitely needed a drink to warm him up before setting out to find a substantial partner who would satisfy him that evening.
God, he felt weird thinking of it like that. Why couldn't he just say hookup and get on with it?
Elia walked over to the bar, but didn't have time to even call the bartender over before a drink was being placed in front of him. He probably should've asked where it'd come from before drinking it, but he was thirsty and the bartender had vanished down the row.
After almost downing the drink, a person came to sit by him. They ordered six shots and Elia watched carefully how he pushed three toward where he was sitting.
"Ciao," the guy said, giving him a smile that looked confident and the expression alone explained why he was there next to Elia without having to actually say it.
Luckily for him, Elia was looking for just that.
"Ciao," Elia said, giving his own smile back. "What's your name?"
"Filippo," he said, putting out a hand for him to shake which while it seemed unnecessary, it was to see check if Elia was actually interested. When he was met with a firm grip, he relaxed and waited for a name.
"Elia," he said, noticing how not-clammy Filippo's hands were. It was an odd thing to point out, even internally, but it urged him to wipe his own clammy hands down his trousers when they parted.
"So, Elia," Filippo said, pushing the shot glasses further toward him. "Do you want to play a game?"
"That sounds creepy, not going to lie," Elia said, but he didn't dismiss the idea completely.
"Don't worry, nothing creepy about it unless you make it that way," Filippo said, winking at Elia who didn't even flush in the slightest way. Confidence was attractive on him, Filippo concluded. "You can ask me three questions, but with each question you have to take a shot. Same goes for me."
"Alright, who goes first?" Elia asked, lining the glasses up in front of himself before Filippo gestured that he could. "Ok, why did you come over to me?"
"You're a fresh face- and a cute one at that. It'd be a shame to let someone else whisk you away," Filippo said, fiddling with his lip ring. Elia probably spent longer than necessary watching the movement before downing the shot. He'd only had one drink and it wasn't enough to mask the taste, so he ordered another drink to wash it down. "Why did you come here tonight? As much as I love a rebound, I don't want to put up with a sad drunk."
"I came here to get laid," Elia said, and Filippo stopped halfway between raising his glass. He smirked, leaning in. "I think it's your turn to take a shot."
After downing the shot with more grace than Elia, Filippo turned to him. "You're legal, right? I also don't fancy going to prison; it definitely wouldn't suit me."
"Yes, yes; you won't be wearing a jumpsuit anytime soon. Well, unless you're planning on murdering me," Elia said, shuffling closer to Filippo so that he could hear him.
"That wasn't the plan. Why murder a pretty boy like you when I could kidnap you and see you everyday?" Filippo said, twirling an empty shot glass without looking away from Elia who was laughing. He quickly took his shot and turned but to face him. "You're turn."
"That counted?" Elia said, realising that he now had a shot more than Filippo.
"Maybe I just want to speed this up," Filippo said, coming next to Elia's ear before speaking lowly. "That could count as a question if you want it to."
When Filippo moved away, Elia wasted no time before drinking. His motives hadn't changed, and the longer he spent anticipating the end of their 'game', the more he wanted to get to it.
"Do you want to get out of this place?" Filippo asked, not waiting for an answer before finishing his last shot. He took a step closer to Elia, who drank his last shot. Before he could complain about the rules, Elia mumbled into his ear.
"Your place or mine?"
As it turned out, they were only a five minute walk (or three if you were two mildly drunken- or very drunk, in Filo's case- young adults who were at risk of jumping each other before reaching their destination).
"My sister's out for the night so don't worry about being quiet," Filippo said, unlocking the door before slamming it shut behind him, effectively trapping Elia between the wood and himself.
They stood there for a second, and Elia was quick to talk before Filippo had chance to do anything. "Aren't you going to kiss me?" Elia asked, putting his hands on Filippo's waist.
"Gladly," Filippo said, before kissing Elia heatedly up against the door.
They weren't going to take it slow, that was for sure and was made excruciatingly evident by the way Elia cupped Filippo through his jeans and by how Filippo ground their hips together.
They were throwing their clothes around the apartment on their way to Filippo's room, and Elia stopped to laugh when his boxers were thrown into a lampshade. Needless to say, Elia was going to have to search for his clothes later.
From there, there was a lot of kissing and sucking and way too many moans to count while they both tried get the ultimate pleasure out of the evening.
Filippo pressed Elia down on the bed after a while, winning temporary dominance. Pretty was one word Filo would've described Elia, but while he was lying there naked underneath him, all his mind could think was hot, hot, hot.
So, when he asked Filo to fuck him, how could he say no?
When it was over, Filippo fell beside Elia, almost crushing him when his arms gave out.
"That was..." Elia said, panting. He put a hand on his sweaty chest as he turned to face Filippo who also seemed a wreck beside him.
"Yeah," Filippo said, no other words making it to the front of his head. Now that would be stuck on replay behind his eyes for a while. "Not to be presumptuous, but would you like to do that again? Preferably in about ten minutes when I've recovered."
"God, yes, please," Elia said, his body reacting simply to the thought of doing it again. "Then we can say we fucked and were fucked."
"Elia, my mind is too fuzzy to make sense of that," Filippo admitted, shaking his head. It really was, and his entire body felt like someone had wrapped cotton wool around it.
"Fair enough," Elia said, rolling over so that he was on top of Filo. It felt a little sticky and their skin was cool with sweat, but it didn't make Elia want to get off. He leaned down and kissed Filippo, albeit a little sloppy as they were both still short of breath.
"Maybe you could explain it tomorrow over coffee," Filippo said, proposing the idea to Elia who'd moved on to peppering his neck with kisses. He sucked his collarbone and grinned when it elicited a moan from Filippo.
"Sounds good," Elia said, licking over the small mark he'd made before looking up at Filo through his lashes. "I might as well stay the night and give you something good to wake up to."
Filippo wiggled his eyebrows at the suggestions and pulled Elia into another kiss. "Can't wait."
Round two went well, almost as well as the first time only now, they weren't in a rush and they were getting tired. It was nearing four in the morning and it wasn't as if they were sober.
So, when they parted and the last of their buzz seemed to wear off, neither of them could muster the energy to get cleaned up.
"We'll do it in the morning," Filippo said, waving an arm as if to say 'why rush?'.
-
The next morning, Elia almost rolled off of the bed when he felt something touched his leg. Luckily, Filippo had wrapped his arm around him in the night so he didn't go too far before realising that it was just a foot. He looked around for his phone before reminding himself that it was in his trousers which were somewhere in the apartment.
He peeled himself out of Filo's embrace, not surprised at how he'd managed to stay asleep; he seemed like a heavy sleeper.
Now, he had to find his clothes.
It was almost like a treasure hunt, but instead of finding gold, he found another item of clothing every few steps. Thankfully, his boxers were the closest thing to him, hanging on a lampshade only a meter or so from Filippo's room. Next were his trousers, discarded to the side of the living room. He found one sock beside his shoes, but the other was still missing.
Also, he couldn't find his shirt anywhere.
In his quest to find his clothes, Elia hadn't noticed someone slip in through the front door. He was still one sock and a shirt missing when he heard keys being dropped into a bowl and a coat being hung up.
"Elia?" A girl's voice questioned, surprised, and Elia looked up in panic.
"Eleonora?" Elia said, not sure how to play this out. He was shirtless in a room which still had clothes scattered around- though they weren't his, to be fair. That didn't change the fact that he was in her house. Shirtless. In the early hours of the morning.
"Ciao..." Eleonora said, looking torn between sighing at the mess and asking Elia why he was there. She did neither, instead she called for her brother.
Filippo walked in, only wearing his boxers with his hair all ruffled. It shouldn't have looked that good, Elia thought to himself.
"Ele," Filippo said, yawning, "is their a reason you've woken me up so early?"
Eleonora looked at Elia who was still trying to locate his clothes. "Please tell me he's here with you."
"Yes, why wouldn't he be?" Filippo said, looking confused, annoyed and a little too tired to be talking. "Elia, Eleonora. Eleonora, Elia."
"We know each other," Elia said, looking between the two. Something clicked in his mind and his mouth dropped open. After a few failed attempts at getting his words out, he managed to stutter out something that was a little better than 'oh my god'. "You're Filippo, as in Marti's Filippo?"
Filippo's eyes widened as he pointed at Elia, his arm wavering a bit as he spoke. "And you're Elia, as in Marti's Elia!" Filippo turned to Eleonora quickly before turning back to Elia.
"But I've met you! You're not you!" Elia said, not sure if he was making sense. The Filippo he met had a different hair colour and he was sure he would've remembered the lip ring (after last night, there was no forgetting it).
"I should've realised," Filippo said, walking over to Elia before putting his hands on his shoulders, inspecting his face. "Ele, this is the one-."
"Yes, Filippo," Eleonora said, sounding bored. Anyone would've thought that he'd done this a thousand times; maybe she had.
Elia wasn't bored at all. "What do you mean?" He said, looking between the two. In front of him, Filippo locked his lips and dropped his hands, making Elia once again awake of how very topless he was.
In that moment, he was sure he'd never felt more vulnerable.
"I've ruined my sister's plans by the looks of things," Filippo said, skipping over to Eleonora who was standing beside the sofa. "It would seem that your friends- and her friends- have been trying to set you up with Silvia."
"Filo," Eleonora complained, looking at Elia apologetically. "It wasn't my idea."
"Well," Filippo said, shrugging. "She was part of the plan."
"Stop it," she said, pushing him away when he started humming childishly.
"Thank you," Elia said hurriedly and somewhat breathily, before pulling Filippo into a quick but content kiss. He sighed in relief and flopped down onto the sofa. "The guys have been talking about her non-stop for days now. I'm going insane."
"Glad to be of service, daring," Filippo said, before reaching behind the tv. He threw something at Elia and started walking out of the room. "Get dressed, we're going on a date."
How did his shirt get behind the tv?
-
As they'd both been in such a rush last night, neither of them had bothered charging their phones. This meant that they were out solely with each other. With anyone else, Elia would've felt as if he was missing a part of himself. Call him dramatic, but his phone was like his third hand and normally he couldn't do anything without it.
With Filippo, it was different. There wasn't a time where he needed to use his phone.
They spoke for what felt like days, getting to know each other. At one point, when it felt like they'd reached the end of anything interesting (and some of the not-so-interesting things) about themselves, they started making up ridiculous stories for the people who passed.
"Don't you think that it's weird that we knew each other before, but didn't actually recognise each other?" Elia said, thinking out loud. They'd stopped to get drinks and some food, but were now walking through the streets with no place specific in mind. "Right now, I feel like I could pick you out of a lineup with my eyes blindfolded."
"It is a little weird, but I'd already had quite a few drinks before you turned up. I'm not I would've recognised my own reflection, to be honest," Filippo said, knocking his arm into Elia as they walked. Elia nudged him back and it started a mini battle.
"You didn't seem that drunk," Elia said, raising an eyebrow. It was true, but he guessed that he was too focused on getting off and getting drunk to really look into things.
"Trust me, I was," Filippo said, whistling. "That's not to say I wouldn't do it all again- though maybe next time, let's do it sober."
"You want sober sex with me?" Elia faux gasped, covering his mouth. He couldn't hold it for too long, and broke out into a smile.
"Daily," Filippo added, and Elia kissed him in response.
He loved being able to do that.
Before they parted, they borrowed a pen from a passerby and quickly scribbled their numbers down on each other's forearms before handing the pen back. It was a little thrilling to know that underneath his sleeve, their was evidence of his time spend with Filippo.
"This is something out of a 20th century chick flick or something," Filippo said when the stranger had gone. "Where they'd write down their house phone numbers because they didn't have mobile phones. So, Elia Santini, thank you for being my perfect-movie-moment partner."
"No problem," Elia said, laughing. "Is this where I say 'call me'?"
"Definitely," Filippo said, before pulling him into one final kiss.
(And maybe Elia thought about the way Filippo ever so casually snaked his hand up his chest during that kiss for most of the journey home, but only because it made his insides mushy and his heart beat a little harder.)
It wasn't until Filippo had really left him that he started to feel that empty-pocket feeling of carrying a dead phone around with him.
-
When he'd eventually gotten home, Elia decided to take a nap for a few hours before finishing off whatever bits of homework he had left to do.
Of course, that plan was thrown out of the window as soon as his alarm went off the next morning.
As it turned out, he'd forgotten- partly because his phone was on charge, and partly because it felt like he was still in a dream- to set an alarm for his nap and ended up sleeping right through until the next morning. He turned over and switched off his alarm, running his face with his hands.
"Shit," he mumbled, fumbling for his phone.
As he suspected, there were a few missed calls from the boys, over one hundred new messages on the group chat, and a message off an unknown WhatsApp number.
He knew he should've prioritised the Contrabbandieri, but he couldn't help but open Filippo's message first.
F: what's the 1990's equivalent of sliding into your dms?
F: never mind, it's sliding into your pants
Elia smiled and quickly typed a reply before answering the boys, still half asleep. Besides asking where he'd gone, the only other message directly involving him was a short 'did you get laid?' from Nico which he typed a smug 'of course' in reply to.
His phone vibrated just as he was about to get up and decided that he had time to answer one more message.
F: what's the 1990's equivalent of sliding into your dms?
F: never mind, it's sliding into your pants
E: the only thing sliding into my pants this morning is my hand
F: doesn't mean I can't help ;)
Maybe he had time before he had to actually get up.
Ok, so he didn't have time to be messing around with Filo before school. That became alarmingly clear when he stumbled in with only a minute to spare.
"Where've you been?" Giovanni whisper-shouted, failing at looking frustrated but making Elia feel guilty all the same.
Out of breath and a little red in the face, Elia raised a finger, asking for a minute to recover. "I'll explain later, ok?"
Between Gio's relentless stares and the fresh memories still floating around in his head, it wasn't a shock that the only thing he picked up from the lesson was that it was most definitely a math class and he was going to need to gets notes off someone.
When the end of the day came, Giovanni looked like he was on the verge of bursting with questions. Elia would be lying if he said he wasn't amused by it, and grinned at his friends who were looking at him expectantly by the school gate.
"So, are you going to explain where you were?" Martino asked, sitting on the wall beside Elia. He looked at Luca before turning back to Elia, somehow staying patient. The look on Gio's face was anything but patient, and Elia decided to leave them guessing for a few more seconds.
"Yeah, just let me..." Elia said, typing something on his phone.
Gio, apparently, was a lot less patient than he thought and grabbed Elia's phone out of his hands before putting in into his pocket. He wasn't rude enough to read what he was typing, but the way Elia flushed made him curious.
"You're practically glowing," Nico said, a knowing smile on his face which only grew at Elia's glare. He was supposed to have his back. "Excuse us for wanting to know what's making you so happy."
Elia wanted to flip Nico off so badly, but he didn't. Instead, he shrugged and started to smile dopily. "I met someone."
"Anyone we know?" Giovanni said, all impatience gone from his body.
"Yes," Elia said, looking at the ground before tipping his head up to the sky. "Filippo."
"Sava? Like, Filippo, Eleonora's brother?" Luca said, piecing everything aloud for everyone.
"Yep," Elia said, popping the 'p'. He held up two fingers and wiggled them, purposely looking at Niccolò when he did so. The others looked between them curiously but didn't say anything, leaving it to stick between them.
Nico mouthed 'twice' in Elia's direction, and he simply nodded in return. After all, Nico had been the one to wish him luck so he should know the most details. Though, that didn't mean he was feeling gratitude towards Nico that he had sex (twice) that evening because after all, he hadn't stuck up for him a moment ago.
"Congrats, man," Gio said, patting him on the back. "Though, never leave us like that again. The others had to cook so it's a miracle that we're all here today."
Elia winced and said his round of sorries before hopping off the wall. "If you wouldn't mind, I'd like my phone back. This booty is getting a call."
"Uh, sure," Gio said, handing over the phone. It hadn't stopped vibrating since he put it in his pocket and he wondered how Elia could cope with it going off like that. "Have fun."
Elia waved at them before ringing Filo, not wasting anytime before calling him up.
"See you in a few."
"I'll keep the bed warm."
-
Filippo had kept the bed warm, bless him, even on their tenth or so weekend spent together.
On one side, there was popcorn and on the other, a laptop with a film playing quietly while they slept wrapped up in each other.
Eleonora found them like that when she came home. It would've been a crime to walk out without taking a photo. Just to be safe, she posted it on Instagram too and tagged them both, though she regretted it after seeing the love-fest down in her comment section.