#veilati

buccellati hums. the flat note signals that he's heard him, but his focus remains mostly set on the accountant's basement lit by flickering fluorescence, one hand pulling his suit jacket up over his nose to cover the post-mortem stench. buccellati always appreciates how abbacchio folds observation and sly remark into one, joke as pitch-black as the stain on his lips.

           “I've always been told that 'may you live an interesting life' is a curse,” buccellati answers dully, voice distorted through the dense fabric of his suit. “but maybe if he had, it would have taken less than a week for someone to notice he was gone.”

buccellati uses a pen to flip through some of the blood-splattered papers on the desk, the covering of his face masks his frown as he notes how incredibly ordinary everything appears. single. no children. nobody except the bookies he works with to notice he’s gone, and nothing here worth the bullet sitting in the gory petals of this man's skull. nothing worth a report to polpo. 

even after eight years, even making his entrance into passione with two bodies, he still feels revulsion at the sight of a dead body before him. this is a good thing, he reminds himself. this is normal. he swallows around the bile and summons his stand, preparing to split it for ease of transport.

revulsion does not mean there isn’t a job to do.

  @veilati​​      ★*:.゜:。    meme still accepting    ★ *:.゜:。    diavolo .

threats, promises, and good intentions don’t amount to action. (for squalo)

crowds have always been a place buccellati feels safe, disguised amongst a hundred faces moving too quickly to discern any important details. with sanaki, there's the bonus of her short stature as well: anyone scanning for her face would have a hard time picking her out in the hustle, especially now with her herb-blackened hair and small crown of braids to hold it away from her face. it's for this reason that, even while being pursued, buccellati sticks to large cities: the camouflage of sheer population is well worth the risk.

even if it means tightening sanaki's ever-smaller loop of freedom. any moment she steps behind the flow of traffic to observe a small trinket or delicious-smelling foot is a moment buccellati's hands reach for a lance he does not have on him inside the city walls. and it's one of these moments, of course, when sanaki stops to look at a stall where a man is shaving meat slowly off a tall spit, that buccellati catches the flash of the empire's armour and colours splitting the crowd.

and suddenly he's taking a flurry of steps towards her, moving through the crowd like a snake does grass; make too much noise or disturb the flow and the empire's search party might notice, too slow and he may not make it in time. his heart thumps in his ears. his fingers clamp around her wrist, and before she can get her question out to the vendor, he's pulling her with force into a narrow side street, and pressing her against the wall behind him, cloak billowing around her to block the line of sight.

the guards approach the vendor.

they exchange words, a tongue buccellati doesn't know, but the tone is authoritative and questioning.

his heart beats louder. he presses sanaki closer into the wall. as they lose interest in the vendor, buccellati reaches into his pocket a pulls out a narrow roll of tobacco, lightning it with a match: nothing but a man on a break.

they look at him. buccellati drags from his cigarette, and pretends to not notice, but out the corner of his eye he's calculating: two men. six foot, five foot eight. armed, light armour. scouts, probably. with his dagger, he thinks he could take one out without getting hurt, but the other...

they pass.

buccellati counts five, six, seven seconds, and then lets go of the breath he wasn’t aware he was holding. safe now, or safe enough, he steps away to let sanaki breathe, and stamps the cigarette out under his foot.

normal collection jobs, that is, collecting from non-stand users, requires old-school tactics of intimidation. fear of a stand’s power of course being a non-factor. muscle and guns then enter into the equation, and thus, the fates of napoli’s low-balling entrepreneurs are usually deposited onto the plates of mista and abbachio. the latter’s practical, textbook prowess with the weapon combined with the former’s natural ability and luck make this so.

mista has no complaints. it’s easy to partner with abbachio, in that all mista feels is expected from him is his best work. a challenge he gladly rises up to. beyond that, there is just relief. no internal pressure to entertain like with narancia. no need to any field any nagging from fugo. and unlike when buccellati is on board, he doesn’t have to be on his best behavior.

not to say mista doesn’t respect the older, more established soldato’s seniority. nor is mista oblivious to him being buccellati’s eyes and ears when their leader is not present. but as often as mista finds himself in amiable quiet with abbachio— it could just as easily be that abbachio ignoring him, he can’t always tell— when they’re on the job, the situation tends to rev up to high octane and brutal as hell. more-so than when work involves the others. again, mista has no complaints. he ventures a guess that abbachio doesn’t either.

sharing a smoke before they round the corner and head into the small jewelry store serves also as a means to scope out the scene. it’s late enough in the day that no kids are out running around, but not late enough for drunk couples to stick their noses into passione business. perfect timing for the two gangsters, the worst for their target. the air smells of flowers blooming, but it soon will be tinged with sweat and blood. it is more than likely for gunpowder to join in, as well.

mista takes his last drag, relishing in the nicotine rush adding to the adrenaline already pumping in his veins. he stamps his cigarette out on the wall behind them and dances his fingers over the revolver tucked into the front of his own pants.

in front of the others, they're who they always are. abbacchio chews buccellati out because he's the only person permitted to, the only person buccellati won't put into place with words or hands for doing so. they drive back home in silence, buccellati's eyes fixed on the road without meeting abbacchio's gaze. the energy both had to argue had been expended back at the loan office, with voices that sometimes shook the walls and urged the other members of buccellati's team far from his upstairs office until it was done. he knows what he did was careless, and even understands abbacchio's fury. but he doesn't owe abbacchio an explanation— especially not the truth.

the last time buccellati saw abbacchio alone was weeks ago, when they argued about the job giorno wanted them to pull. abbacchio said buccellati looked tired.

he is tired.

he's tired, and that's why he missed the obvious spot check that ended with him tasting well-travelled concrete. he's tired because sleeping has stopped being restful and so he has stopped trying. he's tired because during the day he has more control over the directions his mind points and can force them away from the topics that make his palms sweat and his heart race. he can drown every unpleasant remembrance in the diligence of work, because there is no shortage of things to be done, and buccellati is principally a man who gets things done.

abbacchio parks the car in silence. they enter buccellati's house in silence. and once the door is shut, before buccellati can bend over to untie his shoes, abbacchio's hefty arms fold over his shoulders and squeeze him to the point of crushing.

they stand there in silence. buccellati's arms snake around abbacchio's back slowly, one hand weaving into the warmth of his hair, gently stroking his scalp with his thumb. and it's buccellati who finally breaks the silence, speaking softly.