#laebb

the silence of the private range is torn in two by the powder blast of successive gunshots, muzzle flash lingering in buccellati's vision as he watches the way abbacchio's body braces against the recoil. textbooks have more imperfections in their stance than abbacchio does, he thinks, and buccellati has long since let his pistol rest in the small booth in favour of watching him as he lines up the next shot. with arms crossed, he traces down the tense muscle of his legs, the angle of his feet— where is buccellati's own mistake, why does abbacchio shoot more accurately? the off-left cluster of buccellati's shots next to abbacchio's center precision makes him set his jaw invisibly around what he considers an imperfection to be stomped out by force.

it hasn't mattered yet.

but he knows it's only a matter of time until it will.

abbacchio slides his muffs off, the fluorescent orange clashing loudly against his blacks and blues. buccellati does the same. they're the only two here, aside from the manager tucked into his office; with the protection off, buccellati can hear the small tv there play a rerun of the arsenal game.

his eyes, though, are focused on how deftly abbacchio removes the empty magazine, and slides a fresh one back in. it's the kind of familiarity one can only achieve through intimate hours of practice— hours buccellati lacks.

there might be something under his dull rumble, something like amusement in the quirk of his brow. it takes a moment for buccellati to realize why.

he's staring.

           "I'm not accurate enough," he explains quickly, cocking his head sharply so his nose points to the two targets. "mista is a natural, so getting an explanation out of him is futile. but you've had training... come over here. tell me what it is I'm doing wrong."

“Tell me again,” he says, doing his best to sound blithe. “How the fuck did we get into this mess?”

There were few nights like this to Bruno. Indulgent. Free. A step away from the hooks at his back that sunk a little deeper everyday. He’d resigned to their tether long ago, and they moved with him now, comfortably as they could be. Until he’d met Abbacchio. They all started to feel a little tighter, again. And he was restless, wanting to reach around and sever a line, two. 

But that was just a notion. A thought beyond what he deserved.

It nagged at him, though, the longer Abbacchio lingered at his side. Which had been longer, lately. He wasn’t counting, but something was.

The air was warmer tonight than he expected. But that didn’t really matter. He wore silk tonight, the cream dipped to a v at his front, his lace not left behind. The silk rippled against his skin as they walked, close enough to care, for his cool sleeve to brush the back of Abbacchio’s hand, for his finger to reach out, and glance.

Bruno looked up, tired of ahead despite it being a beautiful night, and watched the streetlights pick its way down Abbacchio’s profile, remembering the way it felt beneath his touch behind closed doors. He felt malleable beneath Bruno’s hand. It wasn’t because he had the power to pull you apart at whim. No. It was a different power, something either had yet to fully address. Unspoken words on touched lips.

He wondered if Abbacchio had ever felt like that, or if it was all just a mirage, simmering away to dissipate, to nothing.

Bruno rubbed his thumb and forefinger, remembering the way his lips had stained his skin. A print that had never really rubbed off. 

Bruno turned away, back to ahead. The bright lights and bustle and beauty, the people who had their lives together from A to B; to those who laughed and didn’t have to tuck it away; to those who touched and didn’t have to care. To those that fit. Bruno made himself fit where he stood, with faux meek eyes, with a politeness to make you dip your head, a warmth that made you step closer. It fit, even if beneath, bones broke. 

The fractures splintered less around Abbacchio. Or he just didn’t care that Abbacchio saw the cracks. He didn’t know, yet.

A breeze licked his pristine bob, threads breaking against the slide of his jaw. He’d wanted to speak for most of the walk, but the words had caught on his tongue every time; forgotten, when he’d looked up. He wondered if he could find those lost words if he unzipped his throat, or Abbacchio’s. He touched his own, and finally spoke.

he’d said he wasn’t a cheap date, and that had been true three drinks ago but the truth is he’s never actually drunk negronis before (he read about them in a book and thought it’d make him sound sophisticated) and they are far stronger than he’d anticipated. Way stronger.

The worst part is, Abbacchio looks like he’s still stone cold sober, even though he’s downed at least four bourbons. If Mista squints real hard, he can make out Abbacchio’s features, and he can’t whether the cool stare Abbacchio is currently furnishing him with is disdain, or amusement, or something else.

(He can still remember the heat of Abbacchio’s hands on his thighs.)

He’s always liked this bar. The music is just loud enough that you can feel it all the way through your body; the bass thrumming in your bones, pleasant. It’s dark, and it’s small, and the seating arrangements absolutely do not take personal space into consideration, which makes it the ideal spot if you’re trying to score a hookup. Especially if you’re a handsy drunk. And Mista, well. He’s touchy-feely enough when he’s sober.

Abbacchio must hate it here.

“Guess you probably regret bringing me here, huh?” Mista grins. It feels lopsided on his face. He’s dimly aware that his hat is beginning to slide off, and somehow it feels a little scandalous; he’s pretty sure Abbacchio has never seen him without it, but fuck it, he thinks, they’re kind of past those sorts of petty taboos by now.

Abbacchio swirls his bourbon thoughtfully. It’s dark enough that his eyes are cast in shadow; the hollows of his cheekbones, elegant, sharp as famine. This is not his kind of establishment, and yet it suits him: beautiful under blacklight, the slender line of his neck as he lifts his chin, observing everything around him.

This being the kind of bar it is, it’s not long before a highly drunk and questionably conscious man lands beside them. Abbacchio shifts to accommodate him, but there’s nowhere to go; there is a drunk man, and there is Mista, and between them there is Abbacchio, looking distinctly uncomfortable with the entirety of this setup.

the problem with Buccellati designating Abbacchio the de-facto squad medic (and never forget that Bruno Buccellati is a goddamn sadist) is that Abbacchio’s bedside manner is akin to that of an especially imperious housecat. More to the point: his medical skills seem to be limited to stabbing people with sharp implements, and call Mista a coward, but that’s just not his idea of a good time.

And so to here, and now: Mista, wheeled into Dr. Abbacchio’s ‘surgery’ (i.e. Buccellati’s kitchen) with a six-inch knife wound across his left pectoral, gouting blood between slick fingers, and he can sense the delight as Abbacchio tells him that if the knife had gone any deeper, it might’ve pierced his heart. And that would typically be the point at which Mista would remind him, breezily, that he is a uniquely lucky man.

But he doesn’t feel lucky. Not here. Laid out on Buccellati’s kitchen counter, shredded sweater pillowed beneath his head; the rich iron stink of his own blood, and he’s not sure which is worse: the searing pain in his chest, or the way Abbacchio is examining him with clinical interest.

“This needs stitches,” Abbacchio informs.

He disappears momentarily, rummaging in Buccellati’s guest bathroom for his ‘surgical kit’. Mista cranes his neck, glancing down at the wound; at the ragged cleft, still streaming bright blood, and he’s pretty sure he can see muscle gleaming in the crater of his own flesh. No wonder Narancia had looked a little green when he’d first clocked the wound.

Abbacchio returns, wielding in his gloved hands a wicked-looking needle and a length of what Mista suspects is fishing line. He lifts it to the light; the needle gleams - shit, it looks sharp - and Mista does not like the way Abbacchio’s lipsticked mouth curls up into a smile. He does not like the way Abbacchio places a gentle hand on Mista’s sternum, leaning so that his chin almost rests on Mista’s abdomen, as though lining up his shot.

“No,” Mista says, adamant.

Abbacchio looks up at him, brow furrowed in confusion.

“That-” he points at the needle “-is not coming anywhere near here.” Accidentally indicating his left nipple with an unsteady hand, but Abbacchio must surely get the point.

Abbacchio rolls his eyes. “It’ll get infected,” he points out, quite sensibly. And yet Mista shudders at the mere thought of Abbacchio sliding that needle into his skin, over and over; weaving the fishing line through, butchering his skin worse than the idiot with the knife ever could have. He’s not afraid of pain. He’s just afraid of Abbacchio.

By virtue of never having died (at least not fully), Mista has no idea what it must be like to find yourself suddenly and violently alive again, but he can intuit from the way Abbacchio curls in on himself on the bathroom floor - shuddering, the grit of his teeth audible - that it must be rough as hell.

There’s no Buccellati to make everything better; Gold Experience Requiem is working its dubious magic on both he and Narancia, and no doubt Mista will be the one to handhold them both through their transition back to the world of the living, but for now there is Abbacchio, and his tight-curved spine - intact, miraculously, and Mista can still remember that terrible absence; the missing piece of him, bloodwet and ragged, the glimmer of viscera, of bone.

He sits beside Abbacchio. Places a careful palm on his back, marvelling at the wholeness of him, at the pulse thrumming beneath the skin. Will it scar, he wonders? Can Requiem erase all traces of the past, or is it merely the fact of his death that Requiem winds back to zero?

“Feels bad, huh?” he says.

Abbacchio says nothing. And because Mista can’t stand silence - has never known how to be silent, because silence invites thought, and thought invites overthought, and it’s better to speak, to fill that emptiness with sound - he rests his fingers along the curve of Abbacchio’s ribcage, and he tells him about all the things he missed. About the way Narancia had cried for him on the boat from Sardinia (”but don’t tell him I told you that, ‘cause he’ll kill me”); the way Buccellati had led them all the way to Rome, a ghost clothed in skin, in love. The way he’d felt at the end of it all, when there was only him and Trish and Giorno left, and everything else was dust. And when he’s done talking - minutes, maybe hours later, he can’t tell - he looks down at Abbacchio, and Abbacchio is looking back at him, exhausted, his hair plastered to his face with sweat; a pale but definitive green cast to his skin.

Mista doesn’t know how he manages to lift Abbacchio up but he does, and just in time; propping him up over the toilet as he retches violently into the bowl. And Mista - who has dealt more than once with drunk teammates, and several times with drunk Abbacchio - gently fingercombs his sweat-damp hair away from his face, holding it back.

it’s not entirely unexpected when Abbacchio hooks his fingers tight in Mista’s collar, pulls him sharply down; only a few inches between them but Abbacchio always does like to remind how much bigger he is, how much stronger, how he could crush your jaw with his bare hands, if the mood took him.

It’s not entirely unexpected, because Mista has been goading the everloving fuck out of him for the better part of an hour, and Abbacchio is not a landmine like Fugo; he does not spark like a cut wire the way Narancia does, and that’s what makes it fun. It’s a test of endurance; a long game in which they compete to see which will give out first: Mista’s patience, or Abbacchio’s temper.

(Mista usually wins. The fact of it surprises nobody.)

But this. Close enough that he can make out the contours of Abbacchio’s lipstick, the deliberate smear of his eyeliner, and his eyes are cold fire, narrow and hungry. The flash of teeth between black-painted lips, a wolf’s smile. Like Abbacchio could eat him whole; like he longs to try.

He’s always been a sucker for a man who can kick his ass.

He casts his mind back. Combs through the haze of adrenaline for the last thing he’d said to Abbacchio; the quip that had rolled lazy off his tongue and pushed some unseen button. Abbacchio, accusing: you’d do anything that moves, and Mista grinning, Mista inclining his head in a parody of seduction: guess you’d better keep still, then. And then Abbacchio, rising to his feet, whipquick, pulling him sharply down; he could straddle the taller man’s lap if he wanted to, but he likes his bones exactly where they are, thank you very much.

(He’d be lying to himself if he said he’d never thought about this, but not once in his life had he ever thought he might get this far.)

Mista swallows hard. Stares at the sharp line of Abbacchio’s mouth, the black gloss of his lips, and he wonders, idly, what it would look like smeared along his jaw. Whether Abbacchio would kill him if he tried.

it’s uncomfortable,   strange,   a complicated situation with no end in sight;   so much that he finds himself wondering,   not for the first time,   how much worse it would have to get before gold experience could do something about it.   

but his stand does not heal,   nor is it able to remove the dull pain on his joints,   and so giorno pushes the blankets up to his chin and lets himself sulk,   for a moment or two,   propped up by pillows and enveloped by darkness,   brief flashes of light coming from the tv in front of his bed.   the last time he’d caught a fever — one bad enough to put him in bed and keep him there,   groggy and sweaty and miserable — had to have been at least a decade ago.   maybe more.   he doesn’t remember,   and forcing his head to try makes it hurt,   pinching at his temples and at the back of his eyes and forcing a permanent frown onto his face.

when the door opens,   giorno turns his heard towards it,   and watches unblinking as abbacchio makes his way inside the room,   a seemingly unenthusiastic twist to his mouth that tells giorno all he needs to know — everyone else must be rather busy if it’s him the one to walk in with a bowl of soup in his hands,   shoulders tense and no clear explanation.   it’s not in giorno to question it,   not when his mouth waters at the sight of food,   his upset stomach clearly done with running on lukewarm water and inconspicuous slices of bread.   

the bowl warms up his numbed fingers,   and although he can’t quite smell it,   he can tell it’s good.

“  thank you...  ”   he says,   firm enough that it does not fit the rest of the picture — were not for the redness on the high points of his face and the streaks of blond hair sticking to his cheeks,   it would mirror the image of a lazy,   uncaring boss,   comfortably laid upon his big bed while other people do the work for him,   more than one of a sick boy too eager to get better because the faster he does,   the quicker they can resume their journey up — up and up until they reach the clouds,   and then higher.

abbacchio grunts in lieu of an answer,   a sound giorno barely hears over the booming noise of the television,   whatever movie he’s been half paying attention to for the last hour about to end.