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It's late when Abbacchio arrives at Libeccio - too late.
The sun is almost at its highest point in the sky, and the restaurant is already filling up with midday diners. Not good. The briefing was scheduled for eleven, but it must be nearly noon.
He grimaces as he weaves his way between the restaurant's tables, narrowly avoids a collision with a woman whose handbag looks more expensive than his entire wardrobe, nods to a waiter. By the time he's made it to their private room at the back, he's just about braced himself for whatever reprimand is going to come out of Bruno Bucciarati's mouth.
"Finally," Mista crows, leaping to his feet. "Thank God, boss, we were beginning to think -" His eyes meet Abbacchio's, and his brow furrows. "Hang on. You're Abbacchio."
"No shit," Abbacchio says, opens his mouth to tell Mista that there is something deeply, fundamentally wrong with his brain, and then -
And then he notices the empty chair beside Fugo, Bucciarati’s chair, and Mista's words finally sink in.
He stares. Three pairs of worried eyes stare back. Three.
"Where the hell is Bucciarati?" Fugo says, stealing the question right out of Abbacchio's mouth. "If you're here, and he still isn't...”
Abbacchio doesn't like the implications of that statement. He's a responsible member of the team, thank you very much. If anyone's going to roll in late, it's Narancia. Abbacchio's still not convinced the kid actually knows how to read a clock. However - Fugo has a point. Bucciarati is never late for their weekly briefings. Ever.
"Shit," Abbacchio says. "Has anyone seen him at all this morning?"
A general shaking of heads.
"Shit," Abbacchio repeats, because that seems to sum it up nicely.
"Maybe he's taking the day off," Narancia says.
Fugo looks skeptical. "You do realise we're talking about Bucciarati, right?"
"Huh. Yeah. Well, maybe he had, like, an emergency meeting with Polpo, or something."
"And forgot to tell us? No, there's no way he just wouldn't show up. He'd call, at the very least."
Mista exhales, slowly. He looks at his hands. "This is gonna sound terrible, but do you think he could be - y'know – dead?”
Everyone looks at him as the words sink in. The room is silent other than Fugo’s fingers tapping an anxious rhythm into the wood lacquer of the table.
"No," Abbacchio says, eventually, ignoring the creeping feeling of dread in his stomach. And something else. Panic. "This is Bucciarati we're talking about. He can look after himself better than any of us. He's fine. Probably."
He immediately wishes he'd said something else. Anything else, actually. The probably hangs in the air like an omen.
"Almost certainly," he adds, doubtfully, too late, which makes the whole thing worse.
Narancia looks like he's about to burst into tears. Goddamn it.
"Fine," Fugo says. "If he hasn't turned up by midday, we'll go search for him. Until then - we wait."
They wait.
It's the longest twenty minutes of Abbacchio's life. He paces the room, stopping to glance out the window every so often, squinting against the pale February light, heart stuttering whenever he catches sight of a white suit. But it's never him.
Narancia and Mista are both watching the clock unwaveringly, as if the hands might suddenly jump to twelve without them noticing, and Fugo has picked up his book but hasn't turned a single page. He's gripping the cover so tightly that his knuckles are white.
(They're all gonna feel very stupid about this when Bucciarati turns up at the door, composed and alive as ever, and explains everything, and they'll all laugh about how obvious it was, how they were all worrying for nothing.)
(Any second now. Any second now. Any second now-)
"Time's up," Narancia announces, leaping to his feet. Aerosmith is already whirring above him. "What's the plan, Abbacchio?"
Abbacchio doesn’t know. Hates that he’s the first one Narancia turns to, that he’s the one these kids have to trust now. The dread has built up in his organs into a strange and heavy nausea.
He takes a deep breath. “We split up.” Most logical solution, right? It’s what Bucciarati would have suggested. “Fugo, head to the prison. Find out if he's visited Polpo this morning. Mista, Narancia, check the usual places in Chiaia, and then search the port. I'll go to his apartment."
"What then?" Mista asks, eyes wide. "What if we can't find him?"
God. "We'll deal with that if we have to."
He really fucking hopes they don't have to.
Bucciarati's apartment is in the nicer part of town, Viale Gramsci. It's within walking distance of Libeccio, which Abbacchio is thankful for. He's too keyed up to take the metro, and the cool winter air is a relief after the stuffy central heating of the restaurant.
Locating the building is easy enough: he's met Bucciarati outside a few times, and the lemon-yellow walls and wooden shutters are a familiar sight.
Inside, however? That's where things get a little bit convoluted.
Technically, he's been inside before. Back in the autumn, bloody and half-unconscious from a fight. Not exactly the right headspace to double check the apartment number, especially not while Bucciarati had hastily fumbled with the key whilst trying not to drop Abbacchio’s limp body onto the fancy marble floors.
Moody Blues materialises as commanded, and flickers as it transforms into Bucciarati from yesterday evening. At the very least, this confirms that he got home safely last night. Abbacchio lets out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.
He follows the not-Bucciarati to the elevator, at the echo of his footsteps, loud in the empty lobby. He watches as not-Bucciarati presses the button, smiles and bids buona sera to an invisible passer-by, steps inside, one, two, three elegant steps. Abbacchio follows.
Not-Bucciarati looks past Abbacchio, unseeing, adjusts the cuffs of his suit jacket, as the elevator rattles upwards. Even like this, even with the knowledge that this isn't really Bucciarati, their proximity makes Abbacchio's skin prickle with a strange electric current, makes his stomach knot and unknot itself. It's stupid. Pathetic.
"Yes, it is, isn't it?" not-Bucciarati says, and Abbacchio nearly jumps out of his skin. "How are you this evening, Signora Moretti?"
Oh. Someone else must've entered the lift.
He stares as Bucciarati laughs amicably, nodding at Signora-whatever-the-hell's response. This is a very different man to Bucciarati the mafioso. This is Bruno Bucciarati the neighbour. What the fuck.
"Well, I hope you have a lovely time," Bucciarati says sincerely as the lift stops on the fifth floor. Abbacchio follows him out, eyebrows raised, and then along the obnoxiously nice corridor to an equally obnoxiously nice door.
16. Right. He never would've remembered.
Bucciarati unzips the door down the middle. Steps inside. Seals the wood back up behind him.
"Fucking weirdo," Abbacchio mutters to the empty corridor. "Can't you just open a door like a normal person?"
He fast-forwards Moody Blues, up until the present moment. Bucciarati does not reappear.
This could mean one of two things. One, that Bucciarati left his apartment via a different exit. Two, he never left at all. Which raises a whole flurry of new questions that Abbacchio really doesn't want to start considering.
Swallowing down the bile rising in his throat, Abbacchio knocks, and waits.
And waits.
There's no noise from inside the apartment, no sign of life.
He knocks again, louder, and calls, "Bucciarati? Are you there?"
Maybe he's injured. Maybe someone broke into his apartment in the middle of the night and murdered him. Maybe Abbacchio will open the door to find a corpse.
No. There's no way he's dead. Not him.
"Shut the fuck up," Abbacchio growls to the neat little 16, and raises his fist to hammer it into the door for a third time.
The door swings open.
"Abbacchio?" Bruno Bucciarati says. "What are you doing here?"
“Thank God,” Abbacchio says, and then blinks. “Uh.”
Bucciarati – and Abbacchio can’t believe he’s thinking this – looks like absolute shit.
His eyes are tired and puffy, his hair tangled and curling around his head in a dishevelled halo. There's even a fucking pillow crease on his cheek. He's barefoot, dressed in nothing but boxers and a faded Rolling Stones shirt.
(It hadn't even occurred to Abbacchio that Bucciarati ever wore anything other than those white designer suits he likes. For all he knew, the guy slept in one of them. Apparently not.)
Abbacchio's first coherent thought is: Bucciarati is alive. It’s closely followed by Bucciarati straightens his hair? And then, once he's recovered from that little existential crack in his worldview: is Bucciarati sick?
Bucciarati is apparently unaware of his staring. "I hope you have good reason for waking me this early.” His voice is all sleepy and scratchy. “Is everything okay?"
"Yeah," Abbacchio says, a little disconcerted. "It's just - you didn't show up for the meeting. I - uh - we were worried that something had happened."
Bucciarati frowns, and then his eyes go very wide. "What time is it?"
If Abbacchio had been concerned before, he's now outright alarmed. "Past noon. What's going on, Bucciarati?"
Bucciarati seems to misinterpret his panic as disapproval. "I must've slept through my alarm," he says, hoarsely. Runs a shaky hand over his face. "I apologise. I'll go and get changed immediately."
"Wait," Abbacchio says, and before he can think about what he's doing, before he can consider how inappropriate it is, he reaches out to place a hand on Bucciarati's forehead. It's hot - too hot. "Fuck. You're burning up."
This isn't right. Bucciarati isn't supposed to get sick.
Bucciarati looks away sharply, forcing Abbacchio’s hand to fall back to his side. "I'm fine. Give me a few minutes to shower and I'll be ready to leave."
Abbacchio hesitates. It's not his place to question orders, however mildly they are given. If he says he's well enough to leave, Abbacchio won't push.
But then Bucciarati doubles over in a coughing fit that probably feels as painful as it sounds.
"Yeah, no, I don't think so," Abbacchio says, nose wrinkled, once he's certain Bucciarati isn't going to hack up an entire lung. "You're going back inside and you're going to let me make you, like, a tonic or something."
Ignoring Bucciarati's protests, he manages to manoeuvre Bucciarati back into the apartment. He’s shivering, now, shoulders trembling beneath Abbacchio's grip.
"It's just a cold. I'm perfectly capable of working."
Stubborn bastard. "Look, you might not care if you make yourself feel worse, but… what if Narancia catches whatever you've got? His immune system is shit. He could die," he adds.
He's played his cards right. Bucciarati looks at him, clearly caught up in some ridiculous internal debate that Abbacchio is glad that he's not privy to, and then sighs. "You're right. I hadn’t considered that. But I'm doing this for him, not me."
“Of course.”
Bucciarati collapses onto the couch with none of his usual grace. "And you need to call Fugo and tell him that our meeting is rescheduled for tomorrow morning. Nine o'clock. They can all have today off. But make it expressly clear that if Narancia and Mista get into any trouble I will personally kill them both. No shoplifting, no causing any kind of public spectactle. No duels. Not again."
Abbacchio's lips twitch. "I'll call him now."
"Thank you," Bucciarati says, weakly. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Leone."
Before Abbacchio can let himself think about… well, any of that, he makes a meaningless noise of acknowledgement and ducks through the nearest door.
He finds himself in the kitchen. Just like the living area, it's fancy enough, but devoid of any personality. Marble countertops and grey appliances. A painting of a stormy seascape, frame battered, as if it's been picked up from a thrift store or the side of the road.
Abbacchio exhales slowly. On the walk from the restaurant, it had seemed like a straightforward mission: all he had to do was locate Bucciarati. But now that the case has been solved, and he's here in Bucciarati's apartment, he doesn't know how to do any of this.
(He's not like Bucciarati. He doesn't know how to take care of things. He never has.)
Right. First things first.
Fugo picks up after the second ring. "Well?" he demands, in way of greeting. "Did you find him?"
“Yeah,” Abbacchio says. “He’s here. I’m at his apartment.”
“Is that Abbacchio?” Narancia pipes up in the background, just audible. “What’s going on?”
“If you’d shut the fuck up for a second I could find out,” Fugo snarls, and then, more measured, “Is he okay?”
“He’s alright. Just sick.” There’s a boat in the painting, fragile and pale, tossed about by the waves. He absently runs a nail over the brushstrokes. “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, but I’m gonna stay here and keep an eye on him for a bit.”
He can practically hear Fugo’s body language relax. “Thank god. Anything I can do to help?
Abbacchio glances back through the kitchen door to the hunched shape of Bucciarati, curled on the couch. Sure, it would be easier if Fugo was here, but there’s no way Narancia and Mista would let him go on his own. The last thing Bucciarati needs right now is a bunch of annoying teenagers crowding his apartment.
“I can handle it,” Abbacchio says.
Once Fugo has hung up, he stares at the painting for another moment – he’s no artist, but it’s fucking depressing – before he forces himself to focus on the matter at hand.
There’s a fruit bowl on the table. He grabs a lemon, then rummages around in the cupboards until he finds a mug. Slices the lemon in half. Adds hot water, a dollop of honey, a generous splash of whisky from the admirably well-stocked liquor cabinet. Carries it through - carefully- to the living room.
“Here,” he says, handing the mug to Bucciarati. “Drink this. It’ll help with your throat.”
Bucciarati sniffs the drink, wrinkling his nose. “It smells like whisky,” he says.
“That’s because there’s whisky in it. It clears the congestion. Or something.”
Bucciarati squints at him, but takes a sip anyway. He hums. “That’s good. Thank you.”
“What did I tell you?” Abbacchio says gruffly. “You should trust me, you know.”
He means it as a joke, but Bucciarati looks at him strangely and says, “I do trust you.”
Christ, he can’t do this. He should’ve asked Fugo to help.
“Uh,” he manages to get out. “Right. Well. I’m gonna get you some medicine. Some soup, if you want. Just a tin of it, I know that sucks, but I don’t know how to make it. Or maybe I could threaten that restaurant down the road to let me take away a bowl. Mushroom’s your favourite, right?”
“It is. I’m surprised you remember.”
Of course he remembers. He carries with him every scrap, every fragment of Bucciarati that he’s ever been given, turns them over again and again in his mind until they’re shining like coins.
(Is that weird? Does Bucciarati think that’s weird?)
Bucciarati is still looking at him with that strange expression. His brows are furrowed, but his eyes are glistening as if he’s on the verge of tears. Which is ridiculous, of course, because Bucciarati doesn’t cry.
Just like how Bucciarati doesn’t miss work, and doesn’t answer the door in his pyjamas, and doesn’t get sick, and can always take care of himself, and –
Abbacchio’s starting to think he might be slightly delusional when it comes to Bruno Bucciarati.
He ends up going to the restaurant down the street after all. Partly because it’s closer, mostly because he knows Bucciarati will enjoy it more than tinned supermarket soup. He’s ready to resort to blackmail when the waiter says, “I’m sorry sir, but our menu is not available for takeaway,” but it turns out that all he needs to do is throw Bucciarati’s name about and before he knows it he’s walking back to the apartment with a Tupperware pot of fresh mushroom soup warming his hands.
(He never imagined that he’d use his mafioso privileges to get soup, of all things, but here he is.)
Bucciarati is right where he left him, in a miserable huddle on the couch, and Abbacchio lays out his purchases on the coffee table like a buccaneer displaying his spoils. Cough medicine, pain killers, a candy bar he thought looked nice. The soup, still warm. He wishes, irrationally, foolishly, that he’d bought flowers.
“Abbacchio,” Bucciarati says softly. “You’re too kind.”
“You would’ve done the same for me,” Abbacchio says, which is true, except Bucciarati would’ve done this and more, and probably would’ve brought flowers too, like he’d done when Mista had broken an arm last year. A vase of carnations, white and red.
(Abbacchio doesn’t know what Bucciarati’s favourite flowers are. There’s still so much he doesn’t know.)
“Thank you,” Bucciarati says again, and Abbacchio really wishes he would stop saying that because it’s making his chest ache and at this rate he’s going to be fooled into thinking he’s actually doing something right for once. “I’m sorry you had to see me like this.”
“It’s fine,” Abbacchio says, because it is.
“I’m disgusting.”
Abbacchio assesses this. “Yeah, a bit.”
Bucciarati laughs, hoarse and scratchy, until it dissolves into another cough, and when it has subsided, says, “You don’t have to stay.”
He doesn’t. He’s done the job. Bucciarati’s alive, he’s safe.
“Yeah,” Abbacchio says. “Yeah, I do.”