#brubba

“You’re cleaning again,” Bruno points out, dropping the bag of groceries onto his kitchen table. His flat is big, but it has no dinner room. He doesn’t cook that often to begin with, so having a place with two additional beds seemed more reasonable than one with a big room to eat breakfast in.

Of course that meant that when Bruno did eat at home he had to do so at the wobbly kitchen table. It’s not particularly glamorous, but it serves its purpose. It did get somewhat cramped when people were over.

Abbacchio looks up from the floor he had been scrubbing. His hair, sans some fly away, was tied in a high ponytail, with the fried silver ends sticking stiffly out from the elastic. 

“The floor was sticky,” he says, which Bruno wonders about. He hadn’t spilled anything here before he left.

“The tiles? Did something drop to the floor?”

Abbacchio turns back to the floor in avoidance, swiping over the teal and white stone.

“Leone?” Bruno prompts again, sitting down at the table. He feels off-kilter – uneven – when they’re like this. With Abbacchio kneeling on the floor and Bruno looming over him. He doesn’t like the distance it creates between them and only tolerates it because it seems to give Abbacchio something to hide behind. Like a scared cat having a corner to run to when it gets spooked.

“I spilled wine in the living room. Figured I might as well do the rest of the flat,” Abbacchio clips out, wringing the dirty water into a buicket he had standing on the ready before dunking the towel back into the other bucket, this one filled with clean, bubbly (and presumably soapy) water.

Bruno watches Abbacchio shimmy across the floor and wipe it. He tries to think of something to say, butnohing comes to mind. ‘Thank you’ would only gives him the impression that this was something Bruno appreciated, and Bruno doesn’t appreciate his guests crawling over the floor. ‘Good job’ would set an expectation that Bruno never hopes to instill in Abbacchio. ‘Stop cleaning’ sounds rough and ungrateful, and that was simply rude consdiering the Abbacchio did put all that work into wiping the floors.

“Why?” Bruno asks when Abbacchio stands up and bows down to pick up the dirty bucket.

Abbacchio stills, before slowly righting himself again. He blinks slowly. taking note of Bruno sitting, and with a jerk jums into motion to also seat himself. The chair screeches across the floor and Abbacchio drops his head to the table in faux exhaustion, leaving him to look up at Bruno once again.

“The floor was dirty. Figured you wouldn’t mind…”

The unspoken question hangs in the air. ‘Do you mind?’

And even though the answer – yes – is on the tip of Bruno’s tongue he keeps it to himself. 

“Well, the floors are often dirty, since we walk through most of the flat with our shoes on,” Bruno agrees with a alow nod. “I was simpy wondering why you always end up cleaning the whole place when you have to wipe a spill.”

Abbacchio stares up at him, and Bruno thinks he can hear the gears kink and bend under the pressure of remembering. Abbacchio can recall things so incredibly well it’s more of a handicap than aid. He had once explained to Bruno that filtering through the mountains of useless information in his mind took up most of his time. It’s why he kept notes of important things.

Remembering is a bother.

“Last week you took all the curtains to the laundry room because you spotted an oily spot in the ones in the second guest room,” Bruno recounts, and Abbacchio blinks in recognition, as if the memory was playing before his mind's eye.

“Some of them changed colour. The curtains needed it,” Abbacchio insists, but Bruno raises his hand to stop the justification.

“The week before that you deep cleaned the shower,” Bruno starts. “Same week as you getting up and wiping all the window-panes, inside and outside. Last month you went through my kitchen and reorganized all my utensils. Two months ago I found you rearranging furniture to ‘Clean in the corners’. Why? Why is it always the whole flat that needs to be scrubbed down?” 

Abbacchio is scowling up and Bruno, clearly unhappy with the turn this conversation had taken. He isn’t a man who likes to be inspected in his behaviour. Unlike Fugo, who craves the acknowledgement, Abbacchio seemingly wishes to become one with nothingness; forever left to be ignored.

It stands in juxtaposition to his detail oriented nature.

"Because I’m tired,” he finally presses out, hiding his face in the crook of his arm.

“You’re… tired. And that’s why you make every dust-bunny into a whole scrub-down? Seems like you should rest instead of shining the floor,” Bruno sighs, getting up to put the groceries away. He is sure that this is where the conversation will end. Abbacchio never likes to talk after Bruno advised him to maybe take it a little easy.

“I’m tired of being the problem,” Abbacchio grumbles, defying Bruno’s expectations. “Cleaning your place… it’s a solution. It’s fixing something. I’m tired of soaking ed wine into your beige carpet all the fucking time, wiping the floors at least makes my continued existence in your space a neutral one.”

Bruno freezes, unsure what to say. I want you here, is much too forward. And Abbacchio wouldn’t believe it anyways. You being here is a net positive, would probably make him laugh. I don’t want to live alone, is… too embarrassing to admit out loud. Ever since Fugo moved out Bruno has been afraid to walk the dark hallways at night, as if suddenly now that the fourteen year old had moved out from his room the restof the flat was haunted by ghosts that were out to get Bruno.

“I am grateful for your efforts, but you don’t have to earn your keep.” Bruno decides to say, already regretting how dioplomaticlly he formulated his words. “Host you is no inconvenience to me.”

Abbacchio scoffs at that, looking up again witha crooked grin. It’s an unkind one, selfdeprecating in nature.

“Right…. hosting. I basically live here rent free,” Abbacchio points out with a scowl.

“You can pay utilities if that would make you feel better?” 

The water and heating bill has shot up since Abbacchio started staying over. Long, hot showers seem to be absolutely nbescessary to him. Bruno, who has been showering cold for as long as he could think, had once unfortunately turned on the shower without checking if the water was set to his usual cool temperature and gotten the full brunt of the scalding hot water that Abbacchio usually soeaked hismelf in.

He wonders how the other man doesn’t start to peel. Bruno had been worried about developing burns for the rest of the day.

Abbacchio shrugs, sitting himself up.

“Do you want me to stop cleaning?”

Kind of, Bruno wants to say, but he shakes his head.

“If you wish to clean the space feel free, but…” he grabs the first bag, the one with the fish in it. “You cana lso ask me for help. I figure doing chores together would be less of a hassle.”

Abbacchio doesn’t say anything for a while as Bruno starts to walk around the kitchen and put away the things he acquired for dinner. Eventually Abbacchio joins him,, grabbing the other bag to rifle through and find things to put away or on the counter for dinner preparations.