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Two years ago today, Abbacchio accepted a bribe and watched his partner get shot instead of him.
One year ago today, Abbacchio spent all day getting absolutely fucking shitfaced, and then pickling in jail until Buccellati came to bail him out.
He can't do that today, because he's been sober for six months and he doesn't want Buccellati to be disappointed in him. And anyway, he's got things to do tomorrow that he can't be assed to do hungover, so he has to find some other way to self destruct. If he can't drink himself into a stupor, he can achieve the desired effect (miserable distraction) by pushing himself to the limits of his physical ability.
As soon as he and Fugo are done for the day, he goes home and peels himself out of his normal clothes, throws on ratty black sweatpants and a ratty black undershirt, and heads to the shittiest little gym he knows of. It's a Sunday, so the gym is closed, but he just breaks in. It's better that there's no one here anyway; he's all keyed up and he's been halfway dissociated all day and he just doesn't want to deal with anyone.
He breaks into the shitty little sound system first, and puts on something loud and angry at full blast, and then he just runs laps around the floor for half an hour and tries not to think. He hates running; he's never been an endurance person, and he always starts getting anxious about his breathing before he hits the mythical fuck-it bliss zone. He forces himself to run anyway, because "feeling good" is not his goal here.
It's okay for the first five minutes, and then the cramping and the anxiety set in and it sucks until around the twenty-minute mark, which is when the endorphins kick in. He finally stops with the end of a song, and leans over his knees to catch his breath. He'd pulled his hair back into a ponytail to stop it from getting in his mouth, and now it flops over to the side of his face, stinging like a whip. He straightens up and shakes his limbs out, and heads to the punching bags.
If he cared more, he might bother wrapping his wrists and knuckles, but as it is, he takes vicious enjoyment in the jarring scrape of his knuckles against the canvas. It's not like showing up with bloody knuckles is out of the norm for him, after all.
--
He's moved on to the limited gymnastic equipment when the door opens. He finishes the full-body swing he's in and flips to face the intruder, already saying loudly, "Gym's closed, fuck off."
"I know the gym is closed," Buccellati tells him, because of course it's Buccellati. "It's almost midnight. Do you know how long it took me to find you?"
Abbacchio scowls at him. "Half an hour," he guesses. Buccellati is melodramatic, but he isn't incompetent.
"Twenty minutes," Buccellati agrees with the shadow of a smile. "You're a creature of habit."
"What do you need, capo?" Abbacchio asks him. Normally he likes the caustic-friendly banter he can get into with Buccellati, but he's not in the mood right now. "I assume you're here for something."
Buccellati looks at him, and then starts pulling his suit jacket off. Abbacchio raises his eyebrows at him. "I thought we could spar," he says, folding the jacket carefully and placing it on a nearby bench. "No Stands." He peels off the weird little lace undershirt that Abbacchio likes so much, and he folds that and puts it on top of the jacket too.
"No," Abbacchio refuses, grimacing to hide his blush at Buccellati, shirtless. He wants to look away. He wants to look at nothing else ever again. "No, absolutely not, what the fuck is wrong with you?"
"Rude," Buccellati says mildly. "What, you don't think you can take me?"
"Fuck off," Abbacchio growls, trying not to think about Buccellati saying you can take me. "I'm not sparring with you because I have ten centimeters and years of training on you."
"Hmm," Buccellati says. "Humor me."
Abbacchio crosses his arms. "I don't want to hit you," he says, because he doesn't feel like bullshitting and that's the real problem here.
Buccellati looks at him. "Abbacchio. I can take it. Just fucking spar with me."
"Is that an order, capo?" Abbacchio asks him, narrowing his eyes.
Buccellati sighs and lifts his arms over his head to stretch. "No, Jesus. If you really don't want to, I won't force you to. But I'm not leaving you alone here and I figured sparring would be more fun than watching you destroy yourself with equipment I don't even know the names of."
That shuts Abbacchio up. It's one thing to be aware that your coping mechanisms are unhealthy, but it's another to have the love of your life read you to pieces over it and tell you he won't leave you alone.
"... Fine," Abbacchio says.
"Okay, I-- wait, really?" Buccellati asks. Abbacchio rolls his eyes and nods. "Okay."
They agree: no Stands; no gouging; no crotch shots. Three taps to end a round. It's uneven at first, because Abbacchio still doesn't want to hit Buccellati, so he mostly just plays defensive. Buccellati pins him easily in the first round, and lets him up immediately, and frowns, and they start again.
This time Abbacchio actually bothers getting a jab in before he lets Buccellati sweep his legs out from under him, but Buccellati still growls in frustration when Abbacchio taps out. "You're not taking this seriously."
"Maybe you're just better than me," Abbacchio says, and it's half a lie, because Abbacchio is probably objectively a better grappler when he actually tries, and half the truth, because Buccellati is better than him in every way other than that. Buccellati's eyebrows pull together in vexation, and he leans forward to reach around and tug on the end of Abbacchio's ponytail.
"Bullshit," he says, and he kind of pats Abbacchio's cheek gruffly. With his wrist right by his face, Abbacchio can smell his spicy perfume. "It's no fun if you don't take this seriously."
"Fine," Abbacchio says, again, and he stands up, and then he takes it seriously. Buccellati has been taking him down in three or four moves; Abbacchio takes Buccellati down with one fluid movement, with a hand pushing Buccellati's bare chest backwards and an ankle hooked around his left leg. Buccellati whoops as he loses his balance, and Abbacchio follows him down to pin him to the ground. Buccellati struggles a little in his grip, and then taps out when he realizes that he's not going anywhere.
"See?" he gasps immediately when Abbacchio lets him up. "You're good at this."
Abbacchio scowls. "You keep leaving your left side open," he says, instead of accepting the compliment.
"How can I make it better?" Buccellati asks him, looking interested.
They stand up, and Abbacchio shows him how to stand more solidly, more defensively. "Feet farther apart," he says awkwardly. "Turn so that your right side is facing me more, so I can't reach your left. If I were trying to kill you, I could have stabbed you in the kidney before you could react." He pulls his thumb across Buccellati's abdomen where he would, hypothetically, slice him open. "Rest in fucking pieces, Bruno Buccellati, adored by all, died with his intestines outside of his body."
Buccellati looks at his hand, and then back up at his face. He grabs his hand and presses it flat against his stomach, his skin hot against Abbacchio's palm. "Let's be glad you're not trying to kill me, then."
Abbacchio swallows, feeling suddenly too hot. Normally Buccellati doesn't respond to his weird violent flirting seriously. "Uh, yeah," he chokes out.
They take a minute for Abbacchio to correct Buccellati's stance, and then they start over. Buccellati has good instincts, and he's strong and fast; with better form, they're more evenly matched. After a couple more rounds, it starts feeling less like Abbacchio kicking Buccellati's ass and more like dancing. Abbacchio realizes that he feels more present and focused now than he has in… probably a month. Maybe more. Being around Buccellati tends to feel grounding anyway, the one solid point in the sloshing hellscape of Abbacchio's psyche, and it seems that the physical give-and-take is heightening that effect.
Abbacchio is still better at hand-to-hand, but the rounds last longer and Buccellati really does win a couple, even without Abbacchio fudging it on purpose. Sparring with Buccellati is interesting and fun in a way that fighting almost never is, and Abbacchio likes predicting Buccellati's movements before he makes them. He likes when Buccellati predicts his own movements, too; he likes that Buccellati is smart enough to notice patterns, and he likes that it's Abbacchio's patterns that he's noticing. It's clear that Buccellati has no compunctions about fighting dirty; he pulls Abbacchio's hair, or he drags his fingertips hard down Abbacchio's shoulders and back in a way that emulates scratching, or he bites at Abbacchio's hands when Abbacchio tries to shove him away. He makes sure to never do real damage, because that's not the point here, but the history behind the gestures is clear; Abbacchio has years of training on him, but Buccellati has been in Passione for over a decade. Of course he knows how to fight.
Because they aren't hitting each other particularly hard, Abbacchio gets to enjoy Buccellati's rough hands all over his chest, his arms, his hips. His own hands on Buccellati. Feeling it all throughout his torso when Buccellati's chest heaves. He likes the little sounds Buccellati makes: huffs of effort, and gasps of surprise, and the occasional little pleased hmm that Abbacchio tries not to read anything into. He likes that he can still hear him over the throbbing music still playing over the loudspeakers. He has a feeling he knows what the soundtrack of his wet dreams will be for the next month.
When Buccellati manages to pin him down for the third time, he doesn't immediately let go and sit up. Instead he releases Abbacchio's arms from where he'd been holding them crossed across his chest, and sits back on his heels. He's straddling Abbacchio's waist, so his back brushes Abbacchio's bent knees when he leans back. Abbacchio is trying desperately to ignore how much he likes the warm weight of Buccellati on his hips, but he feels heat high in his cheeks anyway. (And heat in other places.)
"Are you done?" Abbacchio asks him, trying to think of something to do with his hands that isn't putting them on Buccellati's thighs.
"Are you?" Buccellati counters. "I'm prepared to spar until 6am, if that's how long it takes for you to feel okay."
Abbacchio thunks his head back on the mat. "Jesus," he says quietly. He doesn't deserve Buccellati. He's never gonna feel okay, is the problem; he might feel less awful, but there's no okay for him anymore. If his existence could be measured on one of those goofy pain assessment scales that hospitals have, he would be somewhere between four and eight the majority of the time.
"Hey," Buccellati says, leaning forward over him again. "Abbacchio. Come back to me."
Abbacchio looks up at him again. "I'm right here," he says, confused. He's pretty sure he's about as close to Buccellati as he could possibly be, actually.
Buccellati shakes his head. His hair swings as if to emphasize the gesture. "You're not. You're two years away."
Abbacchio's confusion drops away, replaced by irritated indignance. He sits up suddenly and pushes Buccellati over, twisting their legs so that their positions are reversed. Buccellati hits the mat with a startled Uh! which Abbacchio refuses to feel bad about.
"Fuck you," he snarls. "What do you know?"
Buccellati's face hardens, and he flips them over again so that he's back on top of Abbacchio. "I know you," he says, catching Abbacchio's hands and pulling them up over his head. Abbacchio hates how hot that is. "I know you," he says again. "Abbacchio. Leone. Come home."
All the fight leaves Abbacchio at once. "I don't have a home," he says, wretched.
"You do," Buccellati says. He leans forward, and it's only when his bangs are literally brushing Abbacchio's forehead that Abbacchio realizes he's about to be kissed. He closes his eyes and lets Buccellati kiss him, his lips soft and warm and only barely there before Buccellati pulls back again.
"Capo," Abbacchio says quietly, his eyes still closed. He feels sick with a combination of anxiety and arousal and treacherous hope. "What are you doing?"
Buccellati doesn't let go of his wrists. "Do you want me to stop?" he asks, his voice close.
Abbacchio opens his eyes again. "No," he says immediately, and then he corrects himself, "--Yes? I don't-- Why. Why are you kissing me."
Buccellati sits back again, and then he seems to realize that it's a little weird to still be on top of Abbacchio, so he rolls off. He stays close, though. "I want to kiss you," he says, as if it's that simple. "I thought you wanted to kiss me. Am I wrong?"
Abbacchio stares at him, and then he drags his hands down his face and groans. "No, you're not," he admits. He sits up and pulls the elastic out of his ponytail, so he can at least have the curtain of his hair between himself and this conversation. "But I'm a fucking mess, Buccellati, you don't--"
Buccellati grasps his shoulders with both hands. "I really do," he promises, his eyes big and dark and bright. "We can talk about this more in-depth later but right now I would really, really like to kiss you again."
"There is something deeply wrong with you," Abbacchio tells him, strained.
"Is that a no?" Buccellati asks him, laughter in his eyes.
Abbacchio is going to hell. "No," he says, "God, no, please kiss me again."
Buccellati laughs, and does. He cups Abbacchio's face in his hands and kisses him like he's something to be treated gently, mouth closed and sweet. Abbacchio kisses back, but he's a little distracted; he feels aware of every part of his body in a way that he almost never is, and every part of him feels, suddenly, intolerably far away from Buccellati.
The only way to fix this is for him to pull away just a little farther, so that he can say, "Okay, no, come here," against Buccellati's mouth. Buccellati hums and shuffles closer so that he's half in Abbacchio's lap, and then he winds his hands into Abbacchio's hair and goes back to kissing him. Abbacchio runs his hands hesitantly down Buccellati's sides-- god, why'd he have to take his fucking shirt off, Abbacchio's going to die-- and Buccellati makes a sound of appreciation. He presses forward more, kisses Abbacchio's mouth open, sucks on his tongue. Abbacchio shudders and moans into his mouth. Buccellati swallows it and tugs on his hair, laughing a little at the mngh sound Abbacchio makes when he does. Abbacchio gets him back by pressing his thumbs into Buccellati's hips, right at the angle where the hard edge of his pelvis gives way to the smooth vee of his oblique muscles, which makes Buccellati gasp.
"God," he breathes against Abbacchio's mouth, "God, Abbacchio, you're so good," which is a fucking lie, but he'll let it slide. Between the pulsing music and the crashing haze of endorphins and Buccellati's everything, Abbacchio feels like a cicada shell: he is about to split open, and something with wings will come out. He doesn't know how to say this to Buccellati, though, so he settles for kissing him with everything he's got (as if kissing Buccellati could possibly count as just settling) and hopes he gets the message.
They startle apart minutes later when the playlist ends and the howling music is replaced by the electric whining of the overhead lights. "Uh," Abbacchio says. He'd forgotten that they were, in fact, in a gym, in the middle of the night, illegally.
Buccellati blinks at him from centimeters away. His pupils are blown and his lips are smeared with Abbacchio's black lipstick, and he is generally the hottest thing Abbacchio's ever seen in his life. "-- Come home," Buccellati says, after a moment of dazed eye contact.
Abbacchio bonks their foreheads together, frowning. "You already said that," he points out. He doesn't say, and I don't think I've ever been further away from two years ago, but he thinks it.
Buccellati blinks again, and then gives him a rare grin and says, "No, I meant, come home with me, we should get out of here. I don't want to have sex with you on the floor of a shitty gym."
Abbacchio stares at him for a good ten seconds before he can force himself to say, "Oh." And then he says, "I-- okay. Okay. Yeah," because Buccellati had actually started to look nervous during the ten seconds, and there's no universe that exists in which Buccellati could say something like that and Abbacchio wouldn't be 100% on board.
They sit for a second with their heads together-- Abbacchio, for one, is using that second to will himself into not cumming in his pants-- and then Buccellati uncurls and stands up, pulling Abbacchio up after himself. He goes over and shrugs his suit jacket back on-- he doesn't bother with the lace undershirt-- and says as he does, "I swear I didn't actually come here with the intention of seducing you. That would be inappropriate and fucked up of me."
Abbacchio snorts and follows him out of the gym. The air is cool and damp from the sea, and the sky is black-black once you get past the light pollution; it's probably nearing two in the morning. "You really thought there would be any other outcome to taking your shirt off and wrestling with me?"
Buccellati blushes a little. "I may have been assuming some things about how this would go," he admits. "You went from miserable and keyed up to like… hot and competent very quickly." He pauses to close the door behind them, zip a hole in it, and re-lock it from the inside. They start the meandering walk back to Buccellati's place, but after a block Buccellati turns to him and asks, "Wait-- this isn't just a continuation of the keyed-up misery, is it? I don't want to do this if it's just another way for you to hurt yourself."
Abbacchio's instinct is to say, of course it's not, but he bites that back and actually considers the question. Buccellati deserves honesty from him. "I don't think so," he says eventually. "I trust you not to hurt me, or whatever."
"Okay," Buccellati says. "Okay. And you really want-- This? Me?"
Abbacchio stops walking. "Buccellati," he says.
"What?" Buccellati asks, stopping too. His hair is almost liquid in the orange glow of the street lamps.
"Buccellati," Abbacchio says again. "Buccellati, I am crazy stupid in love with you."
Buccellati stares at him. It occurs to Abbacchio, belatedly, that Buccellati was probably just looking to hook up with him, nothing more, and he definitely was not expecting a love confession from his second-in-command. God, even when he's not looking to fuck himself over, he still manages to do it. "Uh," he starts.
Buccellati takes a step closer to him. "Abbacchio," he says, "Do you mean that?"
"Yes," Abbacchio says helplessly. He lies a lot-- he lies to Buccellati, even, when he needs to-- but he wouldn't lie about this. "I honestly thought you knew." It's not like he's particularly subtle.
Buccellati steps even closer, curling his hands around Abbacchio's jaw like that's where they belong. "Can I kiss you?" he asks quietly, his face serious.
Abbacchio raises his eyebrows. "I'm sorry, was that not clear, with the making out and the being in love with you--"
Buccellati kisses him, and he shuts up.
--
They do eventually make it back to Buccellati's apartment, even though they keep stopping to make out against buildings or on street corners. When they get there Abbacchio is fully prepared to be tumbled into bed, but Buccellati insists that he eat something first, "Because I bet you just went straight from your assignment with Fugo to the gym, right? And we should probably both take showers, too," so he takes a quick shower while Buccellati makes some sort of… food situation. Abbacchio loves him, loves him, loves him, but the man cannot cook to save his life, so they end up scrapping whatever pasta thing he was trying to make in favor of having eggs on toast.
It's strange, sitting with wet hair in Buccellati's tiny little dining room in soft pajamas that are a little too small on him, laughing at Buccellati's dry humor. Abbacchio has been to this apartment before, of course, but never at two in the morning, and never with the concrete plan of going down on Buccellati until he forgets how to breathe. (This plan has existed since pretty much the moment they met, of course, but only ever in an abstract way.)
He feels his age right now in a way he almost never does, like if he hangs out with Buccellati at 2am he's allowed to just be nineteen. Like he gets to take over some parallel universe where he isn't a sick void of guilt and grief, but actually a semi-functional young person who gets to do things like go home with his crush in the middle of the night and eat shitty toast in his kitchen. He's kind of getting emotional whiplash, going from the sucking awfulness of the day to-- this. Feeling warm and clean and like he gets to want things.
"You're looking contemplative," Buccellati says around his last mouthful of toast. Abbacchio huffs. "Penny for your thoughts."
Abbacchio shakes his head a little. "It's nothing interesting," he says, because he may be a fucking sap about Buccellati but saying just thinking about how much I like you is a little much, even for him.
Buccellati says, "Hm," but he doesn't push it. They put their dishes in the sink, and then Buccellati goes to take a shower himself, because apparently he cares about things like "hygiene" and "not being covered in the dust and sweat from off a gym floor." Weakling. He tells Abbacchio that he can hang out or look around the apartment or whatever, and disappears into the bathroom.
Obviously, Abbacchio goes straight to the bedroom. He's curious, okay? He's only ever been in the front kitchen/dining room/parlor area of Buccellati's apartment. He wants to know what Buccellati sees when he falls asleep.
He pushes the door open and slips inside, flicking the lights on, and is somehow both surprised and completely unsurprised. He was kind of expecting some sort of sleek modernist aesthetic, straight lines and dark wood, but that's not what he finds. There's really no theme at all, no unifying style to the furnishings; most of the things look like they've been mended several times. Of course Buccellati would fill his space with the things that no one else wants.
It's clear that most of the wood furniture is old: hand-me-downs, maybe, or curbside rescues. The bookcase by the window is simple and blocky, probably homemade, and looks like it was probably painted with normal wall paint and left unvarnished. There's a quilt on the bed that's made from so many different scraps of fabric that Abbacchio has a hard time picturing anyone buying it sincerely. Abbacchio climbs onto the bed to look at it; after a moment he finds a carefully-stitched signature in the corner: Giulia • MORETTI • 1935. Moretti was Buccellati's mother's maiden name-- Giulia must have been her mother. Or her sister-in-law, or something.
God. This boy. He's a gangster with superpowers, and he sleeps with his grandmother's ugly homemade quilt. Abbacchio slides down the bed, feeling disgusting and fond and, suddenly, overwhelmingly sleepy. It's pushing 3am by now, after all, and it feels like the punishing exercise is finally hitting him. But he can't let Buccellati take him home just so he can fall asleep in his bed, so he sits back up and grabs whatever book is on Buccellati's bedside table. It turns out to be a collection of poems by someone whose name only barely rings a bell for Abbacchio. He flips it open and starts to read.
--
He wakes up to Buccellati plucking the book off his chest and crawling on top of him. It appears that he ended up falling asleep on his back anyway, despite his attempt to stay awake. "Hi," Buccellati says. He's warm and soft and his hair is wet, and Abbacchio suddenly wants this to be the only way he ever wakes up.
"Hi," he says back.
Buccellati braces himself on one elbow, still holding the book in his other hand. "I loved you," he says in a low voice, and Abbacchio's heart stops, "in that city where on sunlit streets languid footsteps tread," and, oh, he's quoting something. Abbacchio can't breathe. "Where a tender peace that rains at evening on the unsated unrepentant heart turns to an ambiguous violet springtime, far above the pallid sky."
Abbacchio can't say anything, so he just looks up at Buccellati, who's looking down at him. They're touching almost everywhere.
"It's from a poem in here," Buccellati says after a moment, gesturing with the book. "It's like… page forty-six, I think."
"...Okay," Abbacchio says finally, drawing his arms around Buccellati's waist. He might still be a little bit asleep. Buccellati looks at him for another moment, and then he drops the book back onto the bedside table and tucks his head under Abbacchio's chin. His wet hair smells like his fancy coconut shampoo.
"If you want to take a rain check on this, that's okay," Buccellati says into his throat. And then, as if it's no big deal, he continues: "I promise I'll still like you in the morning."
The last of the tension leaves Abbacchio. "Okay," he breathes. "Okay. That would be good."
Buccellati pushes himself back up off Abbacchio's chest, then leans forward to kiss Abbacchio. "Sleep," he tells him when he pulls away.
Abbacchio obeys him.