Doctors Orders | La squadra x Reader

6| The Things I Deserve

(Sorry for the late update!)

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It's not fair.

He wants to love, love. To not flinch when it reaches inside his chest, when it braids his hair with tender fingers. To be able to smile without the urge to claw at his skin and rip it to ribbons, to hold and claim a beating muscle with a staining, lingering kiss.

A broken, hollow doll, his head bashed in and heart strung in wires. It hurts, when he cuts apart his walls to open up to someone, those wires constrict around him and snap him shut again. Let him finally throw up his grief in muddy, messy piles and he will break.

It's humiliating, his life line not a vow or a goal, but a person he clings to like life itself, the sun that peeks through cotton clouds in somber days. A person he must live for, if nothing else, that is his fuel to wake up the next day.

The train drags along its electric lines, guided by sparks and sighing in hums with each turn. Melone's been gone for three days, and from what he's heard from Pesci, that darling nurse has eagerly awaited his return since the moment he left the door.

Why? For what reason did they seem so attached, eager to even be beside him? He figures it's some sort of imprint, with the other team members coming and going so frequently, it must be hard to be able to know that there's still someone you can look forward to seeing. The moment one comes, another leaves.

It's not that he would much complain, in fact, it's simply that it's him, of all people, that's receiving that graceful, loving attention. Does he deserve that? He tells himself he has a right to embracing love, but could he ever accept it?

No matter how much he wants to deny it, to feed into that pulsing parasite, rooted in his brain, he knows that he could. He could stand to swallow it, take little bites of it and chew slowly, lick his plate clean and ask for seconds. It would just be a matter of taking everything slowly.

An echoed chime rings through aged speakers, and Melone finally meets his stop with a rocking halt. He brings himself to his feet with a sigh, unison with the few other passengers in the train car as him. 

There's a flower shop just beyond the station, between a tailor and bakery, that seemed to catch his attention. It'd been there for the longest time, perhaps longer than he'd been part of the famiglia, and yet only now did it seem to be worth his eye.

Purple flowers, green flowers, petunias and roses, and a good deal more. A particular bouquet catches his eye behind a branded store window, a hefty bundle of blue spread into the air like the glimmering tails of a firework frozen in time.

Instantly he was reminded of (Y/n), for maybe no particular reason, and thought, wouldn't they like an apology? He'd been gone for so long, he knew they would, so why not apologize with some flowers?

Upon talking to the shop keeper, he found that the flowers he'd spotted were Baby's Breath. It was odd, the shop keeper mentioned, that someone would buy an entire bouquet of that particular flower alone. They were always better paired with something, another bloom that'd outshine them.

But no, it was enough, and before the shop keeper could coerce him into at least throwing in a few tulips or something of the like, he'd long left.

The base looked the same as ever, something he noticed but didn't acknowledge as he met the door. An aged complex, concrete walls cracked and stained with age, a growth of moss and mildew clutching onto the side in a thick mass. A birds nest teetered along the edge of the roof that was bound to cave in, and the windows on the far side were boarded up, the broken glass kicked beneath the rug inside.