Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Part One: 

A House by the Sea

Chapter 1:

Minutes to Midnight

It was 11:59pm and his father wasn’t home. 

He was 7 the day he first noticed his father had a tendency to arrive late at night; or rather very early in the morning, just before there was any light. This realization came after he discovered that his mom would not, in fact, stay sleeping with him through the night, and would rather tuck herself in with him in at 8pm and then leave, falling asleep sitting in the living room sofa. The one that was dark red, wrinkled, and faced the front door diagonally. She must have always come back to bed at some point during the early hours of the day, he always found her in the same position when he woke up after all: hugging him around the waist, her cheek on top of his head. 

He had wanted to use the bathroom during that night, which he never did, and had woken up to find his arms spread across the bed instead of clinging to his mother’s shoulders. That had upset him, which had prompted him to look around the house for her, the urge to use the bathroom long forgotten, lost somewhere along the quiet of the night. Eventually he had entered the living room, where his mom, in her brown sweater and gray sweatpants, her wooden cross resting on top of her chest, her white hair falling past her shoulders and spreading into the seat, slept.

Her body faced the door, her head tucked into her collarbone, her body curling into itself. 

This had been weeks ago. And ever since then, he had made it a habit to wake up late into the night to tuck his mom in his purple blanket, use the bathroom in the kitchen quietly and quickly, as not to wake either of his parents, and then go back to his bed. In his room, he would begin then to mimic his mom’s sleeping position, curling into himself, and fall asleep on top of the bed: his fingers crooked, as if during the night something would materialize between them, as if there was something waiting to be held, something to hold onto. 

The clock on his right wall always marking 11:59pm as he drifted off to sleep, one minute to midnight. 

As an adult, he would marvel at the fact that his young body had had the ability to wake always at 11:50pm to the dot, realizing then that ever since that first night when he had found his mother asleep in the old, crusty living room couch, which had stayed in that same position all fifteen years he had lived there, he had always had the urgency to go to the bathroom around that same time. As if an external force, one he would never be able to explain, had urged him to safeguard his mother in the only way a 7-year-old, naive, innocent boy could. 

The morning after that night, unbeknownst to him, Viviana had woken up perplexed to find a blanket over herself, thinking that it had been her husband that had put it there for her, as she slep waiting for him to come home. A gentle gesture she would cherish for years, a gesture she would cling on to when things got bad, a gesture she would years later recount, crying, to her son, as he urged her to listen. As he urged her to understand.

One night, weeks into his new routine, he had woken up again at 11:50pm, and in his sleepy haze had remembered that the kitchen bathroom was leaking; so he had tiptoed into his parent’s bedroom, careful to be as quiet as he could, putting the entirety of his weight on the front of his feet. He had figured a long time ago that walking with his weight on his heel made too much sound, his father had constantly apprehended him for his loud walk in the past.

“You’re stomping” his father used to say, not looking up from his paper, in a calm, steady voice. So he would walk slower, breathe faster, trying to get wherever he meant to go. “I can still hear you” the man with glasses and unkept beard would say, this time firmly, a little bit like a mockery. As if he was demanding to be obeyed and hoping to be ignored at the same time. After the second warning, the kid in worn out socks would stop walking, and would look pleadingly at the woman sitting across the room, who would glance at him for a second, before looking back down. This was back when she still glanced, an understanding between mother and son.

“You’ve got this” the kid used to think his mother told him in those glances; a silent reassurance from a woman who didn’t speak much, some days not even at all. So, the kid would gather up courage and walk agonizingly slow, urging his feet to be quiet. Urging his dad to stop listening to him, urging himself not to be perceived. 

But the kid was just a kid, and kids are bound to disappoint their parents. After all, parents only want the best for their kids as long as they are the ones that get to define what best entails. And so, the kid breathed. You’ve got this, the kid heard the walls echo. Walls that didn’t speak. 

He decided, against all odds, to take a step.

And then another,

and then another, 

and then- 

That had been a loud one, the kid was doomed. 

“Leone, what did I just way?” the man said; the words barely a question and more like venom. Spitting and poisoning the entire room. The entire house. 

That’s true, he remembered. The kid had a name.

Leone tilted his head and looked back at his father above his shoulder. Two black eyes stared back at him, through thick lenses. A man with dark brown hair trimmed all the way down his scalp, long fingers that bore no rings, thick eyebrows that bent near the eyes and thin lips that sat unmoving, as if they had never opened at all.

“I’m sorry, father” he barely breathed, using every bit of courage he had, every bit that had yet to be stripped away from him.

“Louder, kid.” The steady, slow voice rumbled, amplified, sticking to the walls, flowing down the water pipes and through the air, breaking through the skin down Leone’s ear.

“I’m sorry sir!” he exclaimed, trying to mimic his father; a pathetic display for a pathetic child. 

Oh, how pathetic he was back then; how pliable, how small. 

That day he had been lucky. His father had recently been promoted at his job and was in a better mood all around; even buying ice cream for Leone every Wednesdays and Fridays. In those months, Leone would bask at the fact that his father always seemed to remember what his favorite flavor was. He seemed to forget, however, that his favoritism for vanilla wasn’t really his own; oblivious to the fact that his father always bought the same flavor for himself, and had done so all those years he had lived with him. Or maybe he had always noticed and had chosen to ignore the detail, a detail that meant so many things and at the same time meant nothing at all. An ice cream flavor, a broken record of a child.

And so, when he had tiptoed into his parent’s room, the position of the bathroom already mapped out carefully in his brain as he calculated the smallest route from where he stood to the brown door, he had stupidly forgotten that there was a wooden table right between the bedroom’s door to the bathroom, and so he had bumped his stomach with the pointy end of the table; letting out a small, barely audible gasp. For a moment he only registered pain. Agonizing, concentrated pain in his lower abdomen. Then the pain dissipated and he regained consciousness of where he was and the situation he was in. In that moment he dared not move, he dared not breathe, he dared not be. He waited impatiently for his father to wake and look at him, look at him the way he hated to be looked at, or rather dreaded to be, and prepared himself for what would come after. 

Nevertheless, the moment never came. He stayed still, trying to perceive any sign of movement, waiting to feel his father’s gaze upon him daring him to act, stopping him from moving. Slowly, after almost a minute went by and the beating of his own heart stopped overflowing his senses, allowing him to hear his surroundings other than his own pulse, he started to register that he was, in fact, alone in the room. His father wasn’t there. He turned his head slowly, his eyes already well adjusted to the dark, and saw his parent’s bed empty. The blankets untouched. 

Up until then, he had thought all parents did what his did: the mom would sleep with the child, wrapped up in the same blanket, and the father would fall asleep on the big bed in the big room, alone. He was a child, and when you are a child you believe your experience to be universal, the standard. It was normal for parents to behave like his, so he never thought anything of it. However, the moment he saw the bed untouched, he knew something was off. Some part of his brain was able to understand that, even though his parents didn’t sleep together, they should both sleep in the same house. His father, despite his demeanor, should sleep under his own roof, on his own bed. And yet his father wasn’t there. So either all fathers fell asleep outside their houses, or his father was weird. And so, for the first time in his life, he had the strange thought that maybe his father wasn’t normal. Maybe not all families were like this. Maybe, just maybe, there were families were both parents fell asleep together on the same bed; and maybe in some, if he dared to be romantic back then, sons would fall asleep next to their fathers. Hugging. The son’s head on his father’s collarbone, the father’s arms protectively around his son. 

Unfortunately, it would be years later that he would find out that his family was in fact, strange. He would figure out that parents slept together, sometimes sharing a loving embrace. Children would sometimes sleep next to them when scared, feeling secure between them both. He would understand that fathers did in fact hug their sons, and in some cases, would kiss them on the head. A kiss meaning nothing more than just what it was supposed to: a symbol of care, of love. 

He would be 10 when he first saw a father kiss his son on the cheek. 11 when he would be over at a friend's house and see both their parents close the door to the big room, together, sharing a smile. 13 when he understood that some sons would feel protected by their fathers, confident under their gaze. At 14 he would hear a father congratulate his son for a thing he would do in front of his father many times, always critiqued. And 17, when the first man he ever loved, would tell him that he also believed that all sons somewhat feared their fathers, and the idea would make him feel less alone. Maybe his childhood had been more normal than he remembered, maybe all fathers were like his behind closed doors, when no one was looking. Maybe they had all been putting up a performance for Leone, one meant to test him, trying to see if he would break under the acceptance of an abnormal childhood. Of a lonely one.  

Finally, at age 19, he would meet a man with somewhat short black hair, a black that in certain lighting rendered blue. A man with sharp edges and toned, small muscles. A thin man with big, dark eyebrows, big dark eyelashes, and even bigger eyes. Only his eyes wouldn’t be dark, and instead blue. Piercing, deep blue. Blue like the sea; the big, all-encompassing deep waters that his father hated and feared so much, the deep waters he would learn not only to love but to belong to, throughout the years. A man with smooth, olive colored skin. Skin so smooth he had understood it was smooth before even daring to grace it by accident. The man would wear eyeliner under his eyes and mascara over his face, making its tone a little cakey, a little fairer. And the man would look at him, daring but gentle. A playful dare he wouldn’t fear but feel playful under too.

And the same man would say to him one night as they watched the sea from the shore they would make a habit out of walking by, only weeks after meeting:

“I loved my dad. I think he’s the person I’ve loved the most.”

This startled Leone;

“You did?”

“I did.” Bruno laughed quietly, “why? Does my appearance suggest otherwise?”

They stopped walking then, their feet daringly close to the water.

“No, I just…” Leone answered quickly, somewhat embarrassed, unable to explain all the reasoning behind his inquiry. The vast, unspoken terrains the story behind it encompassed, threatening to spill over by both their feet; where it would wait patiently to be washed clean by the waves of the sea. 

“I just…” he repeated, feeling silly, “I’ve never heard a man say something like that, that’s all.”

Bruno smiled, he seemed to understand. “Well, I suppose most men favor their daughters.”

“You think?” he asked, now staring somewhat close to Bruno’s eyes. 

“I do. Or so I’ve heard, from many different people at least.”

“What, so, many different people have told you, explicitly, that their fathers favored their daughters?” The question was silly, Leone knew. A playful resort for the ears of a playful man.

“No, of course not Leone.” Bruno answered in pretend anger; a smile across his lips, his pointy hair blowing softly with the wind, “it’s a conclusion I arrived at a while ago.”

“Weren’t you an only child?” he asked cheekily, his entire body now facing Bruno’s, his eyes casted down to meet his. 

Bruno’s left eyebrow shot upward as it usually did when he registered an upcoming challenge.

“Yes, why?” he asked, cautiously and happy.

“Well,” Leone’s mouth twitching upwards as well, “maybe that’s why you love your father so much, you didn’t have a sister to compete with for his attention.”

Bruno snorted.

“Oh, shut up. Weren’t you an only child too?” 

Leone smiled.

“That’s irrelevant.” He said with a small laugh, as Bruno bumped his shoulder against his, beginning to walk again by the shore.

He followed the black-haired man along the shore for many more hours that night, once again startled by the amount of times his lips would quirk up to form a smile. An honest smile. One that registered no danger nor fear, one that he would take years to discover. His long white hair, that now got to his waist, flapping against the wind, in opposite direction of the sea.

But seven-year-old Leone did not know of that smile, nor did he know of fathers like Bruno’s. So, when his dad had been sitting down on the kitchen table the next day after his discovery, his fingers gently grasping the newspaper on his hand; his glasses just below his eyes, supported by his thick, long nose (one Leone had inherited, much to his dislike), he had chosen to forfeit the thought that his father was unusual. Or rather, he had chosen to seclude the thought deep inside his brain where it would not bother him, at least not until it had been begging to be heard again in the lonely hours of the night over a year later. 

That night, almost a year later to the date, it had been 11:59pm again. On a Tuesday.

Oh, how he dreaded Tuesday nights back then, since then. And he had been curling into himself on top of his bed, his blanket already secured over his mom, when he had heard the front door open quickly and then heard it close even faster with a barely visible click.

Leone had looked up at his clock in that moment, checking to see if he had not dreamed the time when he had woken up that night. Maybe it was the morning, he had thought. Maybe today is a rare day when a summer’s morning doesn’t bring with it the sun and there is no light to signal that he should already wake up. But he had found that he had not been wrong. And somehow, as if by another instinct he would never be able to explain, he had known that something was deeply wrong that time around. This time he had been sure. No time nor place to store the lingering thought again inside the depths of his brain. It was instead staring back at him, like a warning, urging him to hide. Urging him to flee. The clock had marked a minute to midnight, a minute to a new day. 

And then it had been Wednesday, already hours into the morning, and Leone had woken up once again to realize that last night at 11:59pm his father had in fact, been home. Barely, but surely. And he had wished he hadn't. He had wished he could forget that night altogether. Wished he had been a kid that didn’t need to be quiet in his own house, a kid that was gentle out of goodness and not out of fear, a kid that didn’t need to wake up late into the night to tuck his sleeping mom under his purple blanket on the living room sofa. A kid like every other kid, a kid he could and would never be.

Because last night it had been 11:59pm and if he had had a better childhood, a good one even, his father would have never been home.  

Chapter Text

Part One:

A House by the Sea

Chapter Two:

The Color Green

The first birthday gift he ever received was a small, rectangular coloring pencil set that came inside blue, wrinkled wrapping paper with a matching blue bow.

Leone woke up on the 25^th of march to find his mom sitting down beside him on his bed, gift in hand; smiling and excited for her son to smile at her as well.

“Is that for me?” he said gleefully to the blonde woman beside him, his arms and hands already reaching out to touch the wrapped-up gift.

“Happy birthday Leone.” His mom’s voice sang, gleeful as well, as he unwrapped the present quickly to find a thin wooden box.

“What is this? Is it a set?” he asked excitedly as his fingers ran across the seams of the box, trying to find its opening.

“It is.” She affirmed, proud.

She had heard from several of her son’s teachers that Leone would constantly draw, or rather attempt to draw, on his work papers instead of actually doing his work; one of them, the art teacher, had told her privately that he would sometimes come over to the art classroom during recess and stay there painting instead of playing outside.

As a result of this discovery, Viviana had chosen to buy him coloring pencils, overly thrilled to share something she loved so much with her son.

Leone took the pencils out of the box one by one and tested them on his fingers, feeling their texture and testing their weight.

“Do you like it?” his mom asked him, skittish and restless, her fingers tapping the mattress on his bed.

“Yes.” He gleamed, “I love it.”

It was a cold morning of the year 1985, and Leone Abbacchio had just turned 5.  

For the following several years, both Leone and his mom would huddle up in the right corner of his room, just below his clock where the red carpet sat, always washed, and they would fill different coloring books his mom would buy. Every week a new book filled with white pages and dark outlines would sit between the two, each containing different set of forms which followed a theme; and for everyone of those, both mother and son would choose a color to use. This had been his mom’s idea, as she said it would help him understand the different ways in which one could play with a same color; how different strokes could represent different textures, how the strength he used on the paper would translate in the intensity the color would have, how the direction in which he slid the pencil across the paper could disrupt the depth of the shapes he would color. She also taught him why artists use white paper to color in and not black, because he asked one day, telling him that black and white were not really considered color and instead were shades. Because apparently, or the way he understood it, colors are visible in white paper as white is the absence of them, and instead black is a combination of many of them together, making color on top of it disappear; lost in its contribution to the ever-expanding shade of dark. The box of pencils brought with it a chromatic circle, as his mom would explain, and from it they would choose.

For the first one, the one that featured different types of architecture, they mostly colored red, like the carpet, and so Leone would start imagining filling up the buildings he passed by in his daily walks to school with red.

He would imagine himself 70 feet tall, crouching with his red pencil beside the church at the back of his house, the one that was white, a white so empty it seemed to be a canvas itching to feel itself smothered in paint. He would imagine his gigantic-self dragging the pencil by the entirety of it, filling it with uneven strokes of deep red. He would imagine himself standing on top of his desk at school, reaching to the ceiling of the classroom with his red pencil and drawing different types of flowers his mom used to grow in their backyard; the words his teachers spoke lost in between the petals of the roses he drew, in between the tulips he attempted to mimic, in between the roots of the trees that grew beneath the playground outside the classroom window that stood to left of where he sat.

When he got back home he would draw the same flowers beside the buildings he colored, enrichening their terrains. And so, by chance, which had really been no chance at all but instead his mother’s keen eye on the pages he filled, the next coloring book she brought to their hideout was filled with different plants and flowers for his mom and he to explore.

When he turned 6 he got an even bigger coloring set, of 20 different tones, and by the age of 7, Leone had a set of 32 different tones and was versed on different types of plants and flowers, on the layout of buildings he had never visited, on different animal species, house utensils, automobiles; on clothes women wore, on clothes men wore, on different things he didn’t own but people in movies seemed to own, and then little by little he learned to attach certain colors to certain things. He slowly started to perceive his surroundings as coloring books waiting to be filled by his unsteady strokes, waiting to be decorated by his ever-growing imagination. He was beginning to see the world with an artist’s eye, a curious, greedy eye; one that thought that his hand, and only his own, could make the world a bit more colorful, a bit less dull.

When he turned 8 however, the gifts stopped; and although he knew this was bound to happen, his luck running out once again, he still mourned the idea of receiving an even bigger box that time. A box who he once dreamed could contain every single color to ever grace the eyes of men, a box to allow him to fill yet another coloring book which would never come, as they had stopped coming weeks before; a box that would allow his mom to sit down with him once again on a carpet that wasn’t there anymore, that would allow his mom to smile down at the shape they would be coloring at the time, laughing, as she drew her steady fingers along the pages he once thought would never end.

And finally at the age of 15, Leone would be hugging his mother by the waist on a carpet in his room that would also rest below his clock, only this time it would be black, and he would finally ask her what her favorite color was. All those years sitting down beside her on that same spot, and only in a moment like this would he come to the realization he had only theorized about what her favorite color was. How cruel of a realization that had been, how cruel it was to only realize such a thing as the tears of his silently weeping mother wet his shirt, as his mother clung onto his shoulders the same way he used to cling to hers as they slept, all those years before.

“Mom, I’m sorry” he managed then, his throat dangerously closed, “I’m sorry, but can I ask you a question?”

Viviana stopped trembling then, just a bit, turning her head to face him, just a little, as her green eyes casted a dim light across Leone’s face.

She was silent.

“Mom” his voice trembled, now truly threatening to become a cry like hers as well, “can I? Please?”

The room stayed silent.

“Please” he begged now, a tear already streaming down his left cheek. “Please, I need to hear you allow me before I do.”

Her eyes lit up then, truly lit up, as she turned to face him entirely. The color they casted filled the entirety of Leone’s room, coloring the dark of it; an impossible feat for a woman that barely believed in the possibility of things. Her hand reached down to squeeze his arm as she closed her eyes and managed to say yes to him before opening them up again.

As he stared back at her, he delicately placed his hand above hers and brought his mouth to her ear:

“What’s your favorite color mom? I’m sorry, but I never really knew” he whispered, now squeezing her arm back.

He felt her smile.

This was the first time she smiled in weeks.

“Purple” she said, or maybe whispered. Leone was so close to her in that moment that he would not have been able to tell the difference, “It’s purple.”

“What kind of purple?” he urged, desperate to know as much as he could about a person that every year became harder to describe, a person whose past mostly existed in the depths of Leone’s imagination, a person who lately seemed to only pretend she was a person, an act for the only pair of eyes who seemed to notice her act at all.

She took her left palm and brought it closer to her chest then, and started to trace it daintily with the fingers in her right hand, smiling even wider.

“A soft purple, like this.” She was beaming at him as she said it, her eyes sparkling, and now Leone was certain her words hadn’t been whispers but instead loud; as loud as a beat-up woman, a dying woman, could manage for her only son.

Leone felt himself tremble before he felt himself cry. He felt his heart against his chest, the pain in his sore muscles no longer there, and for the first time in years he allowed himself to sob, uncontrollably sob; shrieking quietly but vividly as he held his mother close to his chest. He pretended he was his purple blanket, wrapped around his mother, shielding her from the entire world.

He remembered then the night when he was 7 and his mom had been so ill she had been sleeping in her room for days, unable to paint with him, and so Leone had felt lonely in his drawings, so lonely that by the fourth day he had dared to do the impossible and had gone to his father’s studio, to knock on his door.

“Father?” he tried, as quietly as he could from the other side of the door.

“Father? May I come in?”

For a long moment all was silent, and as Leone was turning around defeated, he heard the door click. Then the studio door was sliding open and his father stood before him, his glasses on his right hand. Leone looked up at him, his coloring book and coloring set in hand, and waited for him to speak.

“Come in” he said as he turned around, and Leone entered the studio quickly, as if his father would soon notice his mistake and usher him back out.

“What do you want, son?” his father asked now behind his desk, glasses on, studying the paper he held on his hands.

“Would you color with me?”

“No” he announced, his eyes still on his paper, “I have work, don’t you see?”

“I’m sorry” he blurted swiftly, his head bowing as he spoke, “I’m sorry for asking, I don’t want to disturb.”

His father sighed.

“That’s all right. Go on ahead.”

Leone looked up and allowed himself one more question before his inevitable leave:

“Do you want me to leave?”

His father sighed again, lower this time.

“If you could, I would like that.”

Leone looked down again, his knuckles white from clutching his things, and fought a tear that was threatening to spill from his right eye.

“Wait.” His father called loudly, “wait.”

Leone waited, head still down.

“If you want you can color in here for a while. Do it next to the window please, the noise might bother me otherwise.”

He stood still for a moment, untrusting of what he had just heard. Did his father just invite him to stay? Was this a test? What was he supposed to do now? He had not planned for this scenario, one where his father actually allowed him to stay;

For a moment all he did was stand, eyes still on the floor, trying to come to terms with a reality where his father actually wanted him around.

“Leone, what are you doing?” his father’s voice demanded, grudgingly.

That snapped his head up.

“Sorry, father.” He managed, his feet quickly dragging him next to the window. “Sorry, I’m going.”

“Good.”

For several minutes the room was dead quiet, the only noise coming from his father’s pen. The studio, which he had only been in a couple of times before, was rather empty, he noticed. The desk his father sat at was near the back of the room, rectangular and black, with stacks of paper on each end of it and a lamp on its right side. His father’s work chair was also black, just like his suitcase, and the floor was grey. Dark grey, like the roots of his father’s hair. The opposing walls were filled with paintings he assumed his mom had made, judging by their eccentric colors, and Leone let the idea of his father decorating his personal space with something she had made warm him. He let himself believe his father had put them up smiling, proud of what his wife had achieved, so proud he wanted their colors to disrupt his rather colorless room, his rather colorless existance. But then the room wasn’t really entirely without color, as the walls were green. A smudged green, a toneless one, one he would use to paint over a bleak terrain; a terrain that was worn out, were no life was allowed to blossom nor gleam.

Just when he noticed the particular shade of color his father noticed something too: Leone, unlike him, was not using his pen. He instead held it, unmoving over the pages of his book, as he stared at the walls of the room.

“Leone, why aren’t you coloring your book”

He snapped back to life then, back from his pretend reality where his father stood proudly beside his mom, beaming at the artwork plastered around his walls.

“Sorry, I’m-”

“You’re what, son?”

His father’s tone had become accusing, instigating, and he felt small before it. Judged.

“I just, I haven’t decided what color to use.”

“What color to use?”

“Yes, mom and I always choose a color before we start.” He felt incredibly foolish as he admitted his stalling, knowing his father would find this agreement with his mom dumb, unable to understand the importance, the trust it entailed.

“Can’t you choose it yourself?” his father’s tone confirmed his fears, he did in fact not understand. He sounded mocking, he sounded amused. Amused at their foolish little pact. A foolish pact between two foolish people that now stood in court before a very mean, a very critical judge.

“Can’t you do anything by yourself?”

That hurt him. It hurt him a lot. Was he incapable of making decisions on his own? Was he incapable of doing anything on his own? Maybe he was, he probably was, and that made him terribly sad. It made him incredibly self-aware.

“You’re right. I’m sorry, father.”

That earned him an amused grunt, and Leone felt even smaller before it, even sadder before the paintings on the walls of the room.

“Do you want me to choose for you?”

Before he registered the improbability of his father’s offer, he registered the test in entailed. The question was an assessment, his father was putting him on trial. He could say no, say he could do it on his own and in turn make his father proud. Proud of his non-existent independence, proud of his pretend, decisive decision making, proud of his hypothetical strength. He could also say yes, the wrong answer, he could let his father choose for him and in turn for his failure he would get to share the color his father would choose with him in the strokes of his book. This coloring book could belong to the both of them then, and maybe it would help him feel his father liked his drawings, his colorings, knowing in all truthfulness that giving this decision to his father would make him respect him less.

But Leone was seven, he was a child. And children at that age do not yet comprehend that their fathers already have a set notion of what their children are, of who they are, and instead think they have a chance to rewrite their doomed fates. Leone was seven, a child who thought that bestowing this important decision to his father would somehow make them closer, make them more loving and caring towards the other. Because Leone was in fact seven, he was in fact only child who back then still thought hope was a loyal friend. Loyalty is sacred when you are so young, so naïve, so full of hope and trust and curious that is set to be tarnished by time. He did what was destined for him then, what is destined for every child who somehow respects his dad, and asked for something he would not have if he had, if he fully had known back then the type of man his father was.

“Would you?”

“Would I what?”

“Would you choose for me, please?”

Please, sorry. Please, sorry, PLEASE, SORRY. Is that all he knew how to say back then? Is that all he knew to spell before this man? Is that all he was to his father all those years? Was that all he would ever be before the eyes of quiet, dangerous men?

His father grunted, amused again, and then shared something his mother would only share with him many years later; only she would share it with love when he would ask, staring kindly into his eyes as her time ran out in between his thin, pointy arms.

“Use green” he said, his eyes already back on his papers.

“Green?”

“Yes, green.”

“Why?” he asked, regretting the question as it fell off his tongue into the empty space of his father’s empty room.

“Why?” his tone was higher now, dangerous.

“Sorry, you don’t have to-” he began explaining painfully, regretfully, as he wished time would revert itself to stop the question from ever being asked.

Nonetheless, his father did not shout at him, did not reprehend him for talking still, he didn’t even look up.

He instead simply interrupted him to say:

“If you must know, I want you to use green because I like green. It’s my favorite color.”

“Why the hell do you hate it?”

“I just do.”

“Nature, Leo, Nature.”

“Nature?”

“Yes, nature. Plants. Grass. Vegetation. Life. You use green to represent things that are alive, don’t you not?”

“You also use it to represent boogers, vomit, rotten food-.”

“God, you know I’m right. You’re just being stubborn.”

As they argued, a bottle of wine sat on top of the small, wooden table of their living room. It was well past midnight, and Giovanni had bought it yesterday for the two of them, meaning to celebrate valentine’s day. This had become their tradition since they had both discovered they had no one else to spend the date with, only days after meeting. Leone had been 15, then.

“No, you’re being stubborn. Why are you so offended by this?”

“I’m not offended, I’m just confused.”

“By what?”

Giovanni rolled his eyes. He always did that when he wanted to make his annoyance apparent, as if it would somehow make Leone realize how unreasonable he was being.

“By your weird hate for a widely adored color.”

“Since when is green widely adored?” he was smiling now, he knew Gio was being purposefully dramatic and it was always endearing to Leone when his friend resorted to dramatics.

“Since I said so.”

“Oh, excuse me.”

“Oh, shut up.” Giovanni was smiling now too.

“Green is toxic waste Gio, that's what it represents.”

His friend chuckled, moving his head side to side disapprovingly.

"Deny it, deny it!" he challenged, as a smile began to form on his lips.

"The earth is green, Leo."

"It's actually mostly blue."

"Oh, come on! You know what I mean!"

“God, ok. Would you like me to lie, my lord?” he emphazised the words as he spoke them, trying not to laugh as he did.

“Shut it, you’re drunk; and that was a shitty impression.”

Every Thursday they had a habit of sneaking into the cinema around the corner of their apartament to watch a badly reviewed movie. This ritual had started several months ago, when Giovanni's ex-girlfriend Carla had broken up with him and Gio had decided to watch the worst movie he could find on the billboard to spite her; Carla adored cinema, and Leone had tagged along to cheer up his friend. Last week they had seen one about a lonely, English lord in the seventeenth century and the acting had been so bad that the only ten people in the room had burst out laughing every time one of the American actors attempted to do an English accent. Since then, both of them started attempting to mimic the shitty accent to the other from time to time, trying to see who made a better impression of a character in the movie that had stolen the show with his ridiculous enunciation of the phrase 'my lord'.

“Maybe, but so are you.”

Gio laughed, “I'm tipsy, not drunk.”

“And it wasn’t that bad of an impression, idiot.” 

“It was!" his friend was slurring his words a little as he tried to point a finger at Leone, accusingly.

Leone chuckled, "you look ridiculously drunk."

"Tipsy! I'm tipsy! And it’s my Lord.”

“My Lord.” Leone attempted, again.

“No! MY Lord.”

Leone laughed breathily, “MY Lord?”

“No, no. You have to say it with more intensity. MY LORD.”

Gio was now doing a full body impression of the character, trying (and failing miserably) to mimic his facial expression and the way he sat.

Leone took the chance to grab the wine.

“It’s still shitty, and this is empty.”

“What?” Giovanni stopped acting abruptly and looked at him, alarmed.

“Its empty.”

“No its not!” Giovanni snatched the bottle from him and started to pour the remains of it on his cup.

“Its barely dripping, Gio.” He said amused, “you look like an alcoholic.”

“God, it really is empty.”

“Told you.”

“Fuck.” Giovanni put the bottle down and looked at him. “We need to get more.”

“What, now?”

“Yes, now.”

“Gio, its 3AM”

“I’ve seen you drinking this shit at five.”

He giggled.

“Have you?”

“Yes, I have. Many times.” Giovanni was giggling too.

“Do you really think I don’t have more stashed?”

Giovanni’s eyes lit up.

“You do?”

“Of course I do, who do you think I am?”

The black-haired man snorted.

“A seventeen-year-old, hateful alcoholic?”

“Hateful?” he gasped as he placed his hand on his chest, mockingly hurt. He loved being dramatic in front Giovanni, it always made the other smile.

“Yes, hateful.” Gio accentuated, “who the hell hates a color.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes, why?”

Leone stopped smiling then and instead looked slightly away from Giovanni’s eyes.

“Do you really want to know?”

“No Leo, I’m asking you because I don’t actually want to know.”

“Ok then, I won’t say.”

“Oh, come on!” Giovanni was rolling his eyes again. Cute. “Please!”

Leone forced a laugh.

“Fine, if you really must know, it was my father’s favorite color, apparently.”

That shut his friend up.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

Leone felt vulnerable, he could see in Giovanni’s eyes that something had shifted, something had changed. He hated feeling self-conscious about his past, hated sharing it at all to begin with, hated how Giovanni’s expression would change to a pitying one everytime he brought it up. But Giovanni was his friend, and he was safe. Giovanni knew about his past because he had first told him about it a long time ago when they had both been high, and he had broken down crying, unable to control himself, in front of the painting of an old woman who lay curling into herself in the bed of an empty, grey room. So he tried to stop feeling self-hatred and forced a sad smirk for his friend.

“Well, then fuck green.” Giovanni announced finally and pointedly, staring directly into his eyes.

Leone was shaken for a moment.

“Fuck green?”

“Yes, fuck it. World’s ugliest color. And that’s a fact.”

This warmed his heart.

Thank you, he thought silently.

“Is it?”

“Yes, it is.

“Because you said so?”

“Because I said so.”

Giovanni was smiling at him now, his eyes no longer bearing pity.

Leone knew he was trying to be amusing for him, and although he felt ashamed of receiving such special treatment, he also felt honored to. Thankful to. And so, he let the friend he loved and trusted be kind to him in a way no one except him was.

“Ok. Fuck green.”

They both grinned at each other fondly. Leone felt like he wanted to cry.

“Now onto more pressing matters.” Giovanni said. rubbing his hands, dramatic again.

“Such as?”

“Such as the bottle of wine you keep teasing.”

Leone snorted.

“I only mentioned it. Once.”

“And now I am here, begging for you to bring it to me.”

Leone stood up, grabbing the empty bottle to bring it to the trash, “maybe a please would be nice?"

"Please?"

"Fine, but don't whine about your headache tomorow before work."

"I won't, I promise."

"All right then you drunk, I'll bring it.”

“Happy Valentine's day to you to, sweetheart.”

When Leone finally left home at fifteen, he decided he would never again wear green. Nor would he use it to paint, or décor, ever again in his life. He bowed to it. He promised it to the deep waters he past as he run from home, deep into the night, as he left everything behind. That dawn he only took with him the clothes he had on, some money he had found on his father’s wallet, and a small, purple bag his mom used to take with her back when she still left the house. Inside of it, he took his mother’s purple cloth, the one she used for her hair when she would go with him dancing as a kid. He also took his hairbrush, which was also his mother’s, and he took his favorite sandals and his favorite discs. He also took his mother’s makeup, and finally he took the first coloring set his mother gifted him, the one that had 12 different tones. Although now the wooden box contained only 11 tones, eleven different coloring pencils that were almost completely worn-out because he had used them all.

 He took it because it represented a time and activity that had been sacred to him, that had given him joy. A silly activity that had given him knowledge, that had given him company, that had given him peace.

The wooden box slid side to side inside his mother’s bag as he ran beside the sea, a wooden box that was now missing one color because Leone would make use of it no more.

Because his father’s favorite color had been green, and his mother’s eyes had been green, and both were people who would no longer be with him, hopefully ever again. And for that, in vastly different ways, Leone felt himself feeling grateful as he passed the streets of a neighborhood he had once colored red. Coincidentally however, last night he had once again colored it red, only this time it had been tainted red by his hand, in a much less innocent way; in a completely devoid of innocent way, much different than when he was a child. This time he had done it with anger and shame, he had done it blinded by hatred and disgust, and now he felt his clothes, stained with blood and soaked by the hand of the sea to his right, heavy with its hue. Heavy with a color so different from green, so completely opposite from it, as the chromatic circle his mom gave to him on his fifth birthday taught him, that although he knew he had done something horrible that night, something terrible, it was never going to be as terrible as choosing to feel himself covered by the green of his father’s presence or the green of his mother’s now absent eyes.