For Sunny

Lovino ducked into a Manhattan alley, laughing and screaming friendly obscenities back at a few of Little Italy's Neapolitan immigrants whom he'd gotten into a playful argument with.

He snorted at the men's shouted replies and leaned against the alley wall, still laughing, and tried to catch his breath.

"You sound like your grandfather."

Lovino half-choked in surprise, and his undignified scramble as he lost his footing in the drift of torn flyers that had accumulated over the concrete below his feet didn't make him feel any better. He coughed a few times, trying to sort his airway out again, and then glared at the man sitting atop a crate a few feet away.

"What are you doing here?"

Yao dipped his head towards the opposite end of the alley, which gave a view of a street equally as packed as the one Lovino had just escaped from.

"You have your festivals, my people have theirs."

Angrily, Lovino told himself to stop looking like a fucking idiot and straightened up, sticking his hands into the pockets of his dress pants.

"Yeah?"

Yao took a drink of whatever was in his paper cup, then set it down on the wood beside him and paid attention to the plate of food Lovino could only assume he'd acquired from various street vendors.

"Watermelon?"

He eyed Yao, then the watermelon, before glancing back the way he'd come.

"I can smell the meat from here," Yao continued, still holding out the food. "Surely you'd rather have fruit?"

"I like my own food!" Lovino snapped.

Yao just shrugged and put the plate down, picking up a moon cake and biting into it.

Lovino walked back into Little Italy.

Yao had eaten everything but the watermelon when the smell of roasted sausages suddenly became much stronger.

His crate creaked in a worrisome way as Lovino thumped down onto it next to him, now holding his own plate of food, and a bottle of wine in the other.

"It's too damn loud out there!" he snapped when he noticed Yao looking at him. "I want to eat in peace!"

Yao was fairly certain he just wanted company.

"Watermelon?" he asked again as Lovino bit into a sausage. "It's traditional."

"Yeah, well so's this," the other man retorted, jabbing his plastic fork at his plate, snaring another sausage.

Yao turned and reached over his shoulder, plucking a zepolle from the plate and replacing it with his last moon cake.

"Fair trade," he declared, and popped the Italian pastry into his mouth, analyzing the cream filling as he chewed.

Lovino spent a moment glaring at him before attempting to tear into the moon cake he'd been left with, making an outraged noise as the sweet bean paste filling surprised him.

"They don't make them as well here as they do in Beijing," Yao told him wistfully, sucking a bit of powdered sugar from the zepolle off a finger. "Lotus seed paste is much better."

"Zepolli are better in Naples, too," Lovino grumbled, glaring at the paste he'd managed to get stuck under his nails. "Fucking UN meetings are always on San Gennaro."

Yao raised an eyebrow at him.

"Your brother doesn't insist on taking it off?"

"Januarius died in my damn city; San Gennaro is my holiday!" Lovino fumed. "Ungrateful bastard never misses his feast day! Fucking Nazis."

"So he's not here, then?" the other man asked mildly.

"I don't go to Venice for San Marco, he doesn't come to Naples for San Gennaro."

Yao stood and grabbed Lovino's arm.

"Come," he ordered, and began to drag Lovino towards the other end of the alley into Chinatown.

Lovino just managed to grab his wine bottle.

"What the hell!"

"Zhōngqiū Jié is for family," Yao told him sternly. "Your brother isn't here, and Vietnam is celebrating in her own country. We will spend tonight together."

The wine was gone and Lovino's head was pounding in time with the heavy percussion of the lion dance. The taste of bean paste was thick in his mouth, and at the rate Yao kept shoving moon pastries at him, he didn't think it would ever wash away.

Five times he'd nearly lost the other in the crowd, taking wrong turns into packed streets and narrowly avoiding stumbling over the curb into the path of the dancers and musicians. Unfamiliar food smells were everywhere, warring in his nose, and it seemed that no matter where he turned Chinatown was awash in color, becoming more and more intense as the night wore on and the streetlamps and storefronts became the sole illumination, casting twisting shadows across the festival.

It was too much.

Lovino grabbed Yao's arm and yanked him into the mouth of an alley, then leaned against the wall and threw an arm over his eyes.

"Too much," he muttered, sure that Yao was looking at him strangely.

Yao, shook his head, amused, and took the wine bottle from his grasp. "Your grandfather was just the same," he said, gently tugging Lovino's arm away from his face, wrapping his free hand around the wrist. "Come then."

Yao led him back out into the street and they hugged the storefront walls, staying out of the worst of the traffic. Lovino kept his gaze fixed on the ground, trying to spare his eyes. The sudden appearance of stairs surprised him, but he followed Yao up over one of the stores, reveling in the almost-silence after the door swung shut behind them.

"Where-"

Yao motioned for him to be silent, and pulled him into the shrine.

Lovino hung back, unsure, and Yao stepped forward to kneel and light incense and murmur prayers. The sticks caught, and the scent hung in the air.

Lovino closed his eyes and let the scent of the burning sticks and the soft sound of Mandarin wash over him, trying to focus on that instead of his headache.

He didn't know exactly how long they stayed in the shrine, but it was long enough for him to feel a little better, and for a calm ease to settle in his mind; so when Yao rose from his prayers, this time he was one to take the other by the hand and lead him out.

The Church of the Most Precious Blood was dark and quiet. The San Gennaro festivities had wound down for the night, the tourists long gone and the locals back in their homes, any who were still awake celebrating privately.

Yao sat in one of the front pews while Lovino crossed himself in front of the altar and silently recited prayers to his patron saint.

Lit candles were everywhere, filling the room with thin smoke and glinting off the windows.

"What is his story?" Yao asked softly when Lovino raised his head. "I know your saints have stories."

"He was born in Benevento," Lovino replied, voice quiet. "He came to Naples when Rome was still alive. He was the Bishop of my city until Diocletian's men found him, and then I watched them cut his head off at Solfatara. Eusebia collected his blood, and now it liquefies, every year, to show my city and I that God still hears our prayers."

He let his rosary fall back under his shirt, and a fist clenched around the fabric of his pant leg.

"But every September 19th for decades now, I haven't been there, at my Cathedral, to make sure."

Yao stood and helped Lovino to his feet. He was slightly unsteady from a lack of sleep, and leaned into Yao's side when he slipped an arm around Lovino's shoulders. They walked out together onto Mulberry Street, into the moonlight.

"Zhōngqiū Jié celebrates Chang'e, the Moon Goddess of Immortality," Yao told Lovino as the other's head drifted down onto his shoulder and his own arm slipped down Lovino's back as they walked back toward the UN Building. "Her husband was Huo Yi, who shot down nine of the ten suns that rose in the old days and made the people suffer from drought and heat. A god was pleased with his actions and gave Yi the Elixir of Immortality, but Yi was good and loving, and would not take it because there was not enough for Chang'e to become immortal with him."

"Good choice," Lovino murmured, walking half-asleep, trusting Yao to get him back safely. "Hurts loving a mortal when you can't die."

Yao smiled at him, though Lovino couldn't see.

"Yi was wise, and his fame spread, and he took an apprentice. But the apprentice was greedy and immoral, and one day when Yi was out, he tried to steal the Elixir of Immortality. Chang'e caught him and, knowing his true character, snatched the Elixir before he could and drank it. She became immortal, and fled."

"Oh fuck. That's a shit thing to happen to someone in love."

"Chang'e couldn't stay on Earth, but didn't want to be far from her love. So she made her new home on the moon, and Yi returned to his home in sadness. He offered her all her favorite foods- watermelon, pomegranates, peaches, everything she grew in her garden- but she did not return to him. He died of grief, and now each year we too offer her the fruits of her garden, and light lanterns so she can look down from her home and see the place she loves still."

Lovino was quiet as they reached the UN Building. Yao got them past security and into the elevator that would take them to their rooms.

"You have really terrible stories," he said as they passed the second floor.

Yao smiled.

"No more than Emperors beheading Bishops."

Lovino grumbled unintelligibly, too exhausted to argue further.

His floor came up, and he pulled himself half-out of Yao's arms.

"When I told you Zhōngqiū Jié was for family," Yao said, stepping into the doorway of the elevator with Lovino. "I didn't technically tell the whole truth."

"Hmmn?" Lovino mumbled, no longer coherent enough to process much of anything.

Yao brought the arm that had slipped from Lovino's shoulders back up, and twined his fingers in the dark brown hair. His other fingers trailed briefly across the other's cheek- and then the kiss.

"Sleep," Yao whispered against Lovino's lips. "Sleep well, and tonight I shall dream of my beauty on the moon."

Author's Notes

Zhōngqiū Jié: Mid-Autumn Festival; on September 19th for the year of 2013
San Gennaro: the Feast of St. Januarius; on September 19th.
San Marco: the Feast of St. Mark, Patron Saint of Venice; on April 25th. Also an Italian National Holiday commemorating the day the country was freed from Nazis and Mussolini.

Thank you to KnowledgeandImagination for catching my pinyin mistake and correcting me!