Chapter Text
A wave splashed over the side of the boat as it docked.
Narancia yelled. Bruno turned away from the spray, but still received a healthy dose of salt water on his face.
A bouquet of violets, the darkest they grew, were also victim to the spray. Bruno scowled as he upturned the bouquet to dump the seawater from the cellophane cone. He scowled further when in the corner of his eye, Narancia was peeling his shirt off.
“Keep that on, Narancia.”
“But I’m soaked!”
“You’ll dry off.”
That received a groan in return.
The water that had drenched them at least had been warm, the Sardinian shore touching the temperate waters of the Mediterranean.
The violets seemed to have appreciated the water as much as Narancia did, however. A couple of stems bending over, some petals falling off. Perhaps the fault of the florist, but Bruno didn’t know anything about flowers. All he knew was he wanted something grown naturally, from the earth, not from their leader’s Stand.
Abbacchio would not appreciate those on his grave.
“...Hey, Buccellati, I don’t think he’d care about the flowers,” Narancia said, coming up beside him.
Ah. He’d been making a face at them. Usually he tended to be more careful, but those of his former team...they could read him like a book. The few of them that were left. Only he and Narancia came to visit Abbacchio’s grave this time, Mista and their leader busy. Two years.
Had it only been that long?
It seemed like a lifetime ago. Just as the few weeks between meeting Giorno and the overhaul of Passione felt as such. Things changed so fast, so much happened at once. Abbacchio’s death in the middle of it. His last effort, what allowed all of it to come to an end, a sacrifice of himself.
But he’d have wanted them to leave him behind. A soldier to the last.
Bruno clenched his fist.
“We’ll stop and change,” Bruno said to Narancia as they stepped from the boat. The flowers ruined, their mourning clothes soaked, there wasn’t a point to go straight to the beach as he planned.
Narancia sighed a breath of relief, and Bruno wished he’d zipped his ears before he began talking about the inner-thigh rashes he got from wet clothes.
Abbacchio never received a proper grave. Don Giovanna had called every morgue in Sardinia looking for an unclaimed body, but one matching the description of Leone Abbacchio never appeared.
The rock his corpse laid limp behind, it turned out, stood in the path of high tide. It was most likely he washed away with all other evidence of what happened there. His body taken to be food for all likes of fishes and crabs and-- well, no matter what happened to a dead body, no matter how interred, was unpleasant.
There was no proper grave marker, but the rock still stood there, something they could visit.
The sound of footsteps on wood thudded under Bruno’s dress shoes, louder than the more sensible shoes of the other foot-traffic of the boardwalk around them. Perhaps it could draw attention, but he’d rather be gawked at than hear the slapping sound of sandals with his every step, or to even have that sort of atrocity on his feet.
They faced the sea, walked along it. The lighthouse where Trish Una’s mother met Diavolo stood in the distance, placed on the beach after a line of fishing piers. Not as tourist-catering as it could have been, but the town still had the effects. Most of the people around them were locals, besides those in their incessantly slapping sandals.
Including Narancia.
Did he have to wear those?
Bruno questioned that especially as a blur of action happened beside him. Narancia tripping, his sandal flying, himself grabbing Narancia to prevent the boy from smashing his face into the boardwalk. Narancia’s face, instead, smashing into the already-destroyed flowers. Of course.
“Naran--”
“HEY! YOU BASTARD!”
And Narancia began to rip out of his grip, turning on his shoeless heel. If he asked Bruno to aid in removing splinters in his foot, so help him…
Then he tore down the boardwalk toward a dock where a tall man strutted with a long stride befitting his height. One that Narancia, or even himself, would probably have to jog to keep up with.
Now Bruno would also have to jog, to chase after Narancia and make sure he didn’t beat the shit out of a civilian again.
Narancia, at his pace and with a youthful energy Bruno himself had lost before his age, reached the man before Bruno could so much as catch up.
“Hey! You fucking shoved me!” Narancia reached for his pocket knife and Bruno was going to have a heart attack. They
just
got him back in school. “Do you want to g--”
And the man turned, and Narancia froze, and Bruno’s steps slowed to a stop.
A handsome face: strong jaw, straight nose, serious eyes, full lips. A tall, foreboding stature. Muscles bared in a tank top, lines of his chest and arms showing strength. Cropped silver hair under a cap.
His face naked of paint, the cap a fisherman’s rather than an officer’s. But still:
The spitting image of Leone Abbacchio.
Then the figure turned, brushing Narancia off, quite literally, shoulder checking him.
“Abba!” Narancia yelled after him.
The man glanced back, but that was it. He kept walking.
“Abba!” Narancia yelled again, his voice catching.
“Bruno,” Narancia said, a whisper, impossible to hear in the bustle around them. But Bruno saw his mouth form the sounds, knew exactly what Narancia meant.
Bruno nodded. He held up a hand to Narancia, started walking past. Narancia nodded, too, as he watched him follow the fisherman up the pier. Stay put, I’ll go forward- the unspoken message. After all, this could be the work of an enemy Stand.
The fisherman stopped at the end of the pier, a small bait shop. The man picked something up from the ground, dropped it, then turned to the window of the shop. Started banging on the wood. Shouting in Sardinian.
Well, Abbacchio certainly did not know Sardinian. It was foolish to have hopes, anyway. The man had half of his organs blown away.
Still, he kept his approach, and as he reached the man the… loud exchange was over. The fisherman sat beside the shop, nets in his lap, muttering under his breath, seemingly having lost the argument, simply given up, or...the shop was just empty.
“Hello,” Bruno started. Greeting someone was simple enough.
The fisherman looked up at him, then turned back to where he was tending to nets. Ignoring him. Lovely. At least Bruno was… fairly decent at breaking the ice.
As the man shifted the net around, Bruno saw why it was that he was so angry. There was a giant rip through it.
“I see you have a tear in your net.”
A snort.
“My father was a fisherman, I’ve found myself fairly skilled at repairing them.”
The man raised his head, made a point to look him up and down. Raised a brow at his clothes, “A fisherman.”
“Yes. May I?”
“Have fucking fun,” the fisherman said, handed it over.
Bruno had no idea how to fix a net. Luckily, he didn’t exactly need to.
Keeping a close eye on the man, watching his gaze, where it fell, he called upon Sticky Fingers. He zipped the net shut, handed it back over. He let his Stand linger behind him as he handed it back over. His eyes briefly darted behind Bruno, but didn’t seem to hold onto the space where Sticky Fingers stood.
His eyes widened at the sight of the repaired net, face contorting into a wild confusion.
Bruno smiled down at him, “I’m Bruno Buccellati.”
The man stood, gathered up his net, “What do you want?”
“Would you believe me if I said, ‘nothing’?”
“No.”
Obstinate. Fortunately, years with his gang had given Bruno the patience of a saint. A change of topic would bring them back around: “What happened to your nets?”
“Asshole kids cut holes in them.”
“...Ah.”
“Don’t know how the hell you fixed them that fast,” and the man shrugged, as if that were his way of saying thanks.
“You’re welcome.”
“I didn’t thank you.”
So it wasn’t his way of saying thanks. Time to turn the conversation again, then.
“I gave you my name, what’s yours?”
“It doesn’t matter,” the man looked over Bruno’s shoulder, sneered. “But it certainly isn’t ‘Abba’.”
Narancia stood there, eyes still wide.
Bruno frowned, shook his head at him. No, this wasn’t Abbacchio. He couldn’t see Sticky Fingers, he wasn’t even a Stand user. Just a civilian.
Narancia’s response was to shake his head back at him, fast, his eyes tearing up. He wouldn’t believe it. Bruno felt his heart breaking at the sight.
The man put on a confused expression once more, different this time, “So you wanted me to apologize to your kid.”
“No-- Do I look that old?” Bruno didn’t want to be a vain man, but...some things, they just were.
The man snorted.
Change tactics, change tactics.
Bruno spit out the first thing that came to mind:
“Would you believe I followed you because I found you handsome?”
The man’s face turned bright red. “Wh-- what the fuck!”
It was...not exactly a lie. The man’s features were objectively attractive.
And he shared Abbacchio’s face. But that crush would always remain Bruno’s dirty little secret. Especially given that it could never be realized. Abbacchio was dead.
“Here,” Bruno said, handed over the bouquet to the fisherman. It was ruined, but...the man took it.
The man’s mouth fell into a stern line, his expression uncomfortable, his face still red. He clutched the flowers to his chest, didn’t say anything. It was… cute, almost, the sudden change in character.
Bruno would fill the silence: “Will I see you again?”
He swallowed, “I’ll be in town the next couple of days.”
Where would he be going remained the question Bruno had, but it would be far too prying.
“...Here at the docks,” the man added.
Bruno gave him what he could of his best smile, “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
He turned, guiding Narancia to follow him.
Tomorrow they were supposed to be leaving Sardinia, taking a boat back to the mainland.
But Bruno had to investigate further, if only for Narancia’s sake. He knew, he knew this wasn’t Abbacchio. The distraught look on Narancia’s face had hurt more than his own quashed hopes.
“So we’re staying?” Narancia asked. A hopeful expression back on his face. That was what Bruno wanted to see, but not falsely.
“No, I’m staying, on the Don’s blessings,” Bruno corrected him, “you’re going back to school.”
Narancia groaned, “School’d be better with Fugo here.”
Bruno didn’t quite know how to respond to that. It would be. A lot of things would be better. With Fugo, with Abbacchio. Abbacchio...they knew where he was, at least. Where had Fugo gone? Wherever he was, Bruno hoped he was well.
Narancia then immediately perked up-- “We gotta tell GioGio.” And his cellphone was out, the Nokia too strong to be taken down by the water they’d been drenched with.
“Narancia, we don’t need to tell the Don about this, it probably isn’t going to go anywhere--” it wasn’t that Bruno wanted to hide what happened, it was that he didn’t want to see that heartbroken expression on Mista, on Giorno. “He’s busy with…” whatever it was that Mista had eloquently described with a vague hand motion.
“We gotta tell him about your date , though,” Narancia had a devilish smirk.
Bruno sputtered, “It’s a valid investigation tactic, Narancia, but one you shouldn’t engage in--”
“BUCCELLATI HAS A DATE!” Mista’s voice through the phone, a tinny yell that could be heard from the few feet Bruno stood away from Narancia.
No, no, no. When had Narancia dialed.
Narancia handed the phone over to Bruno, grinning. As much as he tried to ignore it, his former team thrived on gossip.
“ Congratulations, Buccellati,” the voice of their young Don came through, “ I sense there’s more to this, but I assume Narancia will fill me in when he arrives. You are, of course, to stay. For your date.”
Giorno wasn’t one to tease. But this, seemingly, was a teaseable offense.
“...Narancia will,” Bruno replied, “thank you, boss.”
“ GioGio .”
“GioGio.” He wouldn’t get used to the Don insisting on being called such.
The line cut.
Bruno looked Narancia in the eye and threw the phone over his shoulder, in the water.
Narancia looked at him in disbelief, and Bruno hid his smirk by turning away, starting to walk.
“Let’s go see Abbacchio, now.”