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It started when Narancia’s radio started blaring some oddly familiar music.
“Isn’t that - ugh - that guy - Berlin or Rome or something? Dolce vita guy?” Abbacchio frowned.
“Yeah! Isn’t it great?” Mista was nodding along and bouncing in time.
“Disco’s over , guys. I don’t think Narancia was even alive when it was a thing, what the fuck?”
“Your goth look is over ,” Narancia snapped back, “and besides, you’re wrong! We’re in a disco revival!”
“I don’t think any of us are qualified to criticise each other’s clothing,” Bruno cut in - arguments about fashion and practicality had been known to last for days - “and besides—”
Whatever he had been going to say was drowned out by the storm of responses.
“This is an extremely fashionable crop top!”
“Hey, hey, what are you saying about my clothes?!” Narancia had jumped up again and was yelling.
“I am the most stealthy out of all you. Even Buccellati with his stupid zipper suit.” Abbacchio’s entire persona was not really suited for stealth, from his white hair down, but pointing that out would not have been worth it; Bruno tried to let him have his rare moments of bragging.
“I have many potential pockets!”
Everyone stopped their various bickerings to stare at Fugo, and he shrugged. “Yeah, I know, but it works for me.”
“Works for you for what? There’s no way you’re getting girls with that,” said Mista, and Fugo just shook his head slowly.
Bruno agreed with Fugo, though he wouldn’t have shown any external signs of it; Mista was extremely oblivious about some things. He knew that Abbacchio, Narancia and Fugo had a betting pool going on what would be the eventual catalyst for Mista’s realisation that he was the only straight person here; it would be inappropriate for him to join said betting pool, but if he had, he would have gone in with Fugo on ‘will only realise when he walks in on one of us making out with a guy’. (Narancia, ever the optimist for some fucked-up definition of optimism, was betting on ‘when he realises he wants to make out with a guy’ and Abbacchio had predicted that even walking in on any of them having sex would just baffle Mista and possibly create an awkward conversation for Bruno. Bruno really hoped that Abbacchio wasn’t right about that, but he could not disregard the possibility.)
The radio switched songs; Bruno didn’t know a huge amount about pop music, but he, along with the rest of the known universe, could recognise ABBA when he heard it.
“Narancia, you were talking about a disco revival?”
Narancia always deflated a little, just momentarily, when he figured out that people were actually listening to him; Bruno wanted many things for all of his team members, but top of his list for Narancia was for him to be as naturally friendly and exuberant as he obviously could be, rather than expelling all that energy with violence and defiance. “Yeah. Yeah! It’s a thing. People have started putting out new records for all the big disco names, you know, and clubs have started playing it more, and it’s even on main radio channels again. Which, thank goodness, I was getting so bored of the latest pop single that sounds exactly like twenty million others. This is where it’s at!” He shook the radio a little, and it emitted a strange distorted sound before settling back into the song.
“All disco sounds the same too,” Abbacchio said. “It’s all just synths, four-on-the-floor drums, and tepid lyrics about sex and romance. You’re just romanticising it because you think it makes you look smart and hipster to like music that’s not currently mainstream.” Bruno raised an eyebrow; he hadn’t known that Abbacchio knew much about music. Of course, Abbacchio worked very hard to obscure anything that might draw attention to him as a person other than the incarnation of self-hatred, but that just made any fragment of himself that he accidentally dropped more precious.
Bruno was aware that this was maybe not quite what he should feel about one of his team members; he was in charge of them, supposed to look after them rather than take advantage, but no matter how many times he tried to convince himself that he just cared about Abbacchio’s tiny infrequent revelations as data that could inform his strategies, it never quite worked.
The conversation had continued while he’d been distracted; Narancia and Abbacchio were having an argument about the intricacies of house music that Bruno could not for the life of him understand - for some reason they were talking about Chicago now, but he wasn’t sure whether it was the city, the musical, or perhaps both - Fugo was fiddling with the radio knob while Narancia was occupied, and Mista appeared to be thinking. That was always dangerous, and Bruno was just about to steer the conversation in a direction that would engage anyone before he seemingly finished his train of thought at top volume.
“Hey! Narancia! You said clubs were playing this now, right?”
Narancia turned away from his ever-more-frantic argument. “Yeah?”
“Yeah! We should go!”
“...Why would we do that, Mista?” Abbacchio looked deeply unimpressed.
“You and Narancia can find out whether all disco does actually sound the same or not, and the rest of us can dance .” Mista waggled his eyebrows up and down suggestively. Fugo snorted.
“Mista, I don’t think that’s wise.” Crowded, dark places filled with people who either wanted to fuck or fight - or sometimes both - weren’t really the best places to let off steam while avoiding attracting attention; sure, they could all defend themselves if needed, but was that really anyone’s favourite way to spend a night out? (If Bruno was honest with himself, they weren’t his favourite places, full stop; but his preferences weren’t really relevant when it came to ensuring that his team was safe, were they now?)
“What’s to worry about? We’re Passione ,” Narancia said, drawing the vowels in Passione out to an exasperating degree. He’d started doing that from the very moment he’d been accepted into the gang and showed no signs of stopping any time soon. “We can take anyone.”
Bruno wasn’t really religious; his belief in a benevolent power had started draining away once he realised that it was up to him to take care of his father, and had evaporated completely when he’d had to ‘take care’ of the gangsters that threatened his father more euphemistically. There was no justice and no judge, he’d realised; just him and his knife defining the line between good and evil. As he’d gotten older, faced with more complex decisions than a child’s decision between his father and anonymous strangers, this weighed on him more; this was especially the case with some of the decisions handed down from the Boss. It wasn’t like he’d ever be in a position to make or challenge those decisions, though, so instead he did what he could to take care of his team, of his neighbourhood, of everything that lay within his power and a few more things besides.
He wasn’t religious, but at that moment he sent up a prayer to anyone who might be watching, to the uncaring universe itself, that Narancia never met something that he couldn’t tackle head-on and beat without losing a whit of that arrogant self-confidence.
Still. “Is that really worth going out to a club for? If you want to fight someone, you don’t have to go that far for it.”
“Eh, why not,” Abbacchio said, and Bruno pivoted towards him, surprised. “Narancia will have to admit that it all does sound the same, the rest of us can have some fun, and maybe we’ll even get to see our precious capo dance.”
Bruno was distantly aware that it wasn’t right to capitulate that quickly, that he couldn’t be seen to be favouring Abbacchio, but - he’d expressed a preference; Bruno didn’t think he’d ever heard that before unless it was buried in at least three layers of deflection and self-hatred. He couldn’t deny that. No one could. (Right?)
“Oh, all right. Narancia, you know the most about the kind of clubs that would play disco, right? Take Fugo and check them out; let us know what you find out.” They both nodded, although Narancia was mouthing ‘the kind of clubs that would play disco’ in a way that boded ill for his future dignity.
“Why Fugo? He can’t use Purple Haze in a crowded area, whereas Sex Pistols are perfect for that!” Mista was still in the stage where he was eager to be doing things all the time; it was a little exhausting, but his enthusiasm tended to carry the others with him on dull missions, so Bruno wasn’t complaining.
It did mean that he wasn’t a good choice for anything low-key, though. “Fugo shouldn’t need his Stand, but if anything does go wrong, he will be a good backup for Narancia.”
“Buccellati means that you can’t stay still for shit, so you can’t be the one standing behind me and scowling,” Narancia helpfully contributed.
Bruno shrugged. “Pretty much. Besides, there’s always plenty to do. If you really get bored, you can sort out everyone’s laundry.”
Mista shuddered, and everyone laughed. Laundry was a constant issue in the apartment they shared; Abbacchio’s clothes always needed washing on delicates, and would stain any other clothes washed at the same time as them; Fugo’s clothes always ended up wound through with other people’s underwear; and Mista’s crop tops shrank at the slightest provocation (admittedly, Mista didn’t mind this, but the rest of them did).
It only took Narancia a few days to check through the local clubs, and the worst that happened was several people mistaking Fugo for Narancia’s father or much older brother. (That was still pretty bad; Fugo had had to drag Narancia away from a few potential fights, which hadn’t really helped with the assumption that he was responsible for Narancia.) Narancia declared that the most likely-looking place had a ‘disco night’ the next week, and that any crime that night would have to wait . Bruno wasn’t entirely comfortable with that sort of bravado, but what was his job if it wasn’t to take care of his team? Making sure that they could let off steam occasionally surely fell under that umbrella.
It was raining that evening, and Bruno insisted on finding folding umbrellas for all of them. Mista shook his head at them - ‘I have a hat!’ - and Narancia insisted that the true experience of clubs involved getting soaking wet beforehand and dancing away the rain . Bruno was pretty sure that Narancia had misinterpreted the saying, but on the other hand, dealing with damp team members would be much better than dealing with absolutely trashed team members. (That actually hadn’t happened that often, for such a young group of people; most of the drunkenness had involved Abbacchio and his absolutely terrible coping mechanisms, and they didn’t talk about that. Though, now he thought about it, that hadn’t happened for a few months now; maybe Abbacchio had found something else. As long as it wasn’t drugs.)
Bruno shrugged and zipped the discarded umbrellas into his trousers, to shrieks of dismay.
“What else do you have in there?!” Narancia demanded.
“Oh, just some emergency items, in case we need them. Knives, bandages, that kind of thing.” ‘That kind of thing’ included, among others, various local anaesthetics, sewing kits for clothes and for injuries, emergency chocolate, naloxone, epipens and antiseptic, but no one else needed to know how often he ran potential scenarios in his head where someone died because he wasn’t prepared enough and how often he added more and more useful items to the mysterious zipper spaces.
“Knives?!” Narancia half-yelled. “Don’t they stab you? How do your weird zippers even work for that?”
“That’s why I keep all my knives in sheaths , Narancia, like I keep recommending that all of you should do.” Bruno pulled out a handful to demonstrate. He wasn’t entirely sure how the zipper spaces worked, but they did connect to his body in some sort of way, as he’d discovered when a syringe of lidocaine came uncapped and he’d experienced the very strange sensation of local numbing starting from deep inside his tissue. After that, he avoided pre-loaded syringes wherever he could; it might take longer to draw it up, but he wouldn’t just fall over in the middle of a fight again.
“Oh, Buccellati keeps his knives in sheaths , does he,” Mista snickered. “In sheaths , right? Right?”
Fugo sighed and Narancia rolled his eyes. Abbacchio swatted Mista across the back of the head. “Someone please tell me boys grow out of this phase.”
“What phase? The phase of being too cool for you all to handle? ” Mista posed in a way that he probably thought was sexy to someone, somewhere.
“Oh God, let’s just go ,” Fugo said, hastily shoving them all out of the door. Bruno took advantage of the sudden bustle to pick up a few water bottles - for his actual pockets this time; they were a bit heavy otherwise - before they all spilled out onto the street.
The club itself wasn’t much to look at, but the front was bathed in lights and there were people hurrying in and out constantly. Narancia took off from the group as soon as they were within reasonable view of it, screaming and running through the door in the true fashion of umbrella-refusing teenagers everywhere.
“Anyone else want to run ahead?” Bruno asked.
It seemed that everyone else was content to huddle under his and Fugo’s umbrellas for a little longer. (Mista had tested the theory that his hat was secretly waterproof, had found it sadly lacking, and had retreated to the relative safety between Fugo and Bruno, trying to wring his hat out as he walked. Abbacchio, on the other hand, had once volunteered that the feeling of rain dripping down his hair was one of his least favourite sensations, and Bruno had held the umbrella just far enough out that he could shelter underneath it without having to ask or acknowledge it.)
There were so many people in the club; Bruno was used to navigating around people, but crowds this thick made him a little nervous, not least because Fugo and Narancia tended to disappear in the throng. Still, he was tall enough to stand out if they needed him, and his white suit was becoming extremely fluorescent under the blacklights. He could just get a lemonade and sit at the bar until they were all done (or until disaster struck, whichever came first).
Of course, like all plans, that didn’t last very long.
The first crack in the plot was ordering the lemonade; while there was no actual problem with the drink (and Bruno had watched every move the bartender made, having no desire for a spiked drink), the bartender handed it to him and winked, asking if he was here alone. That by itself would have been merely somewhat strange, but Bruno put that together with the security that was just that bit more on the ball than usual and the general tenor of the room to realise, maybe too late, that Narancia had brought them all to a gay nightclub.
Bruno’s first thought was of Mista, anxiously scanning the room to check that nothing had gone wrong there. God, why had Narancia thought this was a good idea? He was the one that held out hope that Mista would turn out to be bi, so maybe this was his way of trying to accelerate that? Bruno would have to talk to him about that; it wasn’t okay to potentially endanger people like that. At least it looked like nothing untoward had happened quite yet; Mista was dancing with perhaps more enthusiasm than style, but he didn’t seem to have approached anyone yet. Still, he’d have to keep an eye on the situation.
Fugo seemed to be in his element, surrounded by people who seemed intensely interested in his clothing, and/or the lack of it; it seemed that it did have some use, after all, even if it was still objectively terrible for fighting in. Narancia was harder to find, but Bruno eventually spotted him, thrashing around and screaming and happier than he’d looked in a long while. They really should find ways to let off steam more often; he’d try to keep that in mind, plan a few more excursions.
Abbacchio was… Abbacchio wasn’t. Bruno flicked his eyes over the room again and again, willing long white hair and a black outfit into existence, but he was nowhere to be seen. Just as he was starting to panic - he’d been expecting something to go wrong, but not this quickly (not to Abbacchio) - someone tapped him on the shoulder, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Hi,” said Abbacchio, with a shit-eating smile. Bruno slapped his hand over his heart, overtaken by relief and the adrenaline crash, before remembering that he really shouldn’t be showing vulnerability like that.
“Aww, capo , you really do care.” Abbacchio sat down next to him. He had some sort of… strange orange concoction in his hand; it could be straight orange juice, or the latest and weirdest new cocktail. It had two umbrellas, which didn’t really assuage Bruno’s concerns.
Abbacchio had noticed him staring. “It’s mango juice. The bartenders here are such soft touches; all I had to do to get one of those tiny umbrella things was ask, and then they just gave me two more when I put one behind my ear.”
Sure enough, there was a third umbrella tucked in Abbacchio’s hair, and Bruno laughed; it should have looked ridiculous, but instead it just looked… adorable. Sweet. Cute.
It was possible that the Abbacchio problem was growing rather than receding. Bruno wasn’t sure what he should be doing about that; he was sure that there was something he ought to do, and equally sure that he wasn’t capable of figuring it out right now.
He’d been staring, and Abbacchio elbowed him. “No, it really is mango juice this time. Here, try some; it’s good. I mean, it’s not freshly squeezed or anything, but, y’know, it’s good for places like here.”
Bruno nodded and mutely sipped the offered drink. It was good, and Abbacchio had been telling the truth; it wasn’t alcoholic. (A lot of people said that alcohol didn’t really taste of anything, often when trying to persuade him to try a cocktail. These people were wrong.) He’d learnt well enough that hoping for good outcomes was a waste of effort that would be better put to use actually helping people - the only actions you can control, after all, are your own - but, well, he’d never quite been able to eliminate the habit completely. Maybe this was progress. Maybe it was, at the very least, not regression. Maybe…
Abbacchio waved his hand in front of Bruno’s face. “Hey, earth to Buccellati. What’s up? Are you drunk? Or are my kisses so good that even an indirect one knocks you out?”
“I don’t get drunk,” Bruno said, trying to regain some dignity and painfully aware that he was blushing like crazy. “It would be irresponsible of me.”
“Irresponsible, huh? But you’re not on Mista’s case for it?” Abbacchio gestured across the room to a knot of people that, sure enough, contained what looked like an extremely buzzed Mista. He seemed to be still in approximate control of his body, though, and hadn’t pissed anyone off too much yet, so that was all right; Bruno would just have to remember to keep checking in on him.
“Mista’s not responsible for all of us, so as long as he doesn’t get so drunk that he starts fighting people or loses control of his body, that’s his problem. Although I still don’t know what Narancia thought, bringing him here .” Bruno massaged his temples, trying to drive away the impending headache.
“Probably that he’d have some sort of magical gay realisation, complete with rainbows and unicorns.” Abbacchio shrugged. “Alas for everyone’s crushed dreams. Well, except for Fugo, who looks like he’s fulfilling some dreams of his own.”
Bruno told himself that he was not going to look, that Fugo could look after himself and was, in fact, pretty much the only team member that would ask for help if he needed it; instead he ran through all the various pressure points associated with headaches. None of them worked, shockingly enough.
“Hey, uh, do you need a drink? You’re not looking so good there.” Abbacchio sounded oddly unsure of himself.
“ No. No. I’m fine, I’ve got ibuprofen somewhere in here, ugh.” Bruno rummaged through his zipper spaces, eventually pulling out the box of ibuprofen and liberating one of the water bottles from his pockets. “Okay, there we go, just got to wait for this to work.”
“God, how much stuff do you even carry in there? Are you preparing for the apocalypse?”
“Oh, just some things that might come in handy, you know - hey!” Abbacchio had taken advantage of the temporarily open zippers to stick his hand in and fish around.
“What’s this? Some sort of pen type thing, a bunch of mysterious hard case, a - is this a roll of bandages? ”
“Those bandages have saved plenty of people’s asses before now; you can’t mock me about that.” Bruno was running through his mental inventory of his zipper spaces, wondering if there was anything he should be worried about Abbacchio finding. That is - he shouldn’t be worried about any of his team members finding anything out about his preparations; he was only looking after them after all, but… nevertheless, he worried.
“I can’t even figure out what most of these are; what’s with all these bottles and containers—” Abbacchio looked up mid-sentence, catching Bruno’s eye, and they both froze for a long moment, shocked into stillness by the awkward realisation that Abbacchio’s hand was technically inside Bruno. Abbacchio jerked his hand back, looking everywhere but at Bruno, and Bruno tried to cover for his - confusion? Hurt? Neither of those were appropriate feelings; god, he had to get it together - by stowing away the pills and the water for later and checking that all his knifes were sheathed and bottles capped.
Had Abbacchio noticed? Had his face betrayed something awful? Or maybe all his fears and worries and terrible over-intense feelings were just coded into his body somehow, written on his muscles and tapped out in morse code by his red blood cells.
A long moment later, Abbacchio still wasn’t looking at him, but spoke into the void with an awful stilted lightheartedness. “You know, dancing is supposed to cure headaches in this kind of situation.”
“How would that work? Wouldn’t it just make it work?” Bruno was grasping at mental straws to stay the responsible, reliable, unemotional person he knew he had to be.
“Oh, who knows. Maybe jumping up and down cancels out the sine waves coming from the speakers. Maybe there’s a natural anti-headache frequency and we just haven’t attained it yet. Maybe the headache is some sort of divine punishment for not dancing.”
Bruno frowned, aware that he was missing something. “You don’t believe in God, though.” That wasn’t quite what was off about this conversation, but it was a start, maybe.
“God? No. Some sort of deity who punishes people for not listening to shitty same-y music and dancing? Sure, why not; it would fit with the rest of the world.” Bruno hadn’t thought that he’d ever be relieved by nihilistic jokes, but here he was. “Oh my god, just come on, let your team see that you’re a human person too.”
Still, this… wasn’t something he should be doing. He had a job to do. “No, no, I can keep an eye on them from here; I couldn’t see everyone if I was dancing.” Not his most convincing statement by a long shot, but he was trying.
“Oh, just come on .” Abbacchio was outright exasperated; an unusual look on him. “I will drag Mista out of a fight by myself if it comes to that.” He tugged on Bruno’s arm, and suddenly they were both standing up and walking towards the dance floor. Bruno realised halfway through this that Abbacchio’s statement made no sense, since he also intended to dance (didn’t he?), but it was too late now.
Bruno didn’t exactly know how to dance, but he’d learnt very young how to fit into any social situation, and this was no different; he watched the crowd, figuring out the prime factors of whatever composite of movements was called dancing here, and combining them in the least awkward manner possible. Abbacchio, to his right, seemed to be swaying gently and performing some sort of slowed-down tap dance.
They stayed like that for a while, blending in with the crowd as best they could and listening to the music. Bruno could understand why Abbacchio thought it all sounded the same, but you could say that about most genres of music, if you defined them tightly enough. The generic elements became, well, generic, and you could tune out any of the differences. Good for a DJ or a radio station; bad for recreational or academic listening.
As he was thinking that, the song changed and Abbacchio brushed the back of his hand.
Bruno turned towards him. “Hm?”
“Hey, do you want to dance?”
Bruno frowned. “We are dancing.” He thought of his carefully reverse-engineered manoeuvres and added “I think?”
“No, I mean - oh, nevermind,” Abbacchio’s face started to close up; Bruno hadn’t even realised that he’d been so uncharacteristically open tonight.
“It’s fine. Tell me.”
Abbacchio opened his mouth, closed it again, looked like he was having a brief but tumultuous war with himself, and finally settled on grabbing Bruno’s hand, which… huh. Bruno wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been that.
Abbacchio was tugging on his hand very delicately, like he was afraid that - what? That Bruno would break? Or maybe that he would be angry? Nothing could be further from the truth, and Bruno obediently spun towards Abbacchio, taking his other hand. Abbacchio glanced down at their joined hands, surprised, and smiled the most beautiful smile that Bruno had ever seen.
(God, he was so fucked. This was not appropriate; he should be the rock on which the rest of his team could depend, not - not having feelings beyond the intense love and care that he had for all of them, and that he did not ever expect or want to be reciprocated. Not this fragile and terrifying moment between him and Abbacchio on a dance floor.)
They tried just dancing like that, like stupid teenagers in an abstinence-only sex ed program, but it quickly became apparent that the dance floor was much too crowded for that sort of careful distance, and bit by bit they got closer and closer until Abbacchio’s chin was resting on Bruno’s shoulder and their arms were wrapped around each other.
It didn’t take long for Bruno to notice that Abbacchio was shaking.
“What’s wrong?” he muttered into Abbacchio’s ear. “Is it - do you want to—”
“No, no,” Abbacchio shook his head violently, which unfortunately meant that it bashed into Bruno’s jaw. Bruno winced and worked his jaw back and forth. “Sorry. No. It’s - I just, I’m not used to this. It’s okay.”
When had Abbacchio last hugged someone? When had any of them? Maybe he’d have to introduce some sort of mandatory friendly touching activity; it was supposed to be a human need, right? He’d think about it.
Meanwhile, Abbacchio was right here, and having some sort of emotion into his shoulder. He absentmindedly stroked Abbacchio’s hair for a while, on the basis that that was probably what you did in this situation, until Abbacchio took in a few deep breaths, lifted his head up a bit more, and seemed to be engaging with the world a little more.
Neither of them had worked out how dancing actually worked yet, let alone dancing with someone else, so they just swayed and bounced in time to the music, ending up in some kind of deeply modified 4/4 waltz step. It was… nice, just to be in contact like this. Maybe he would institute film nights, encourage this kind of casual touch, Bruno thought, trying very hard to tell himself that that was all this was; that Abbacchio had needed… some sort of physical touch, and that he’d needed touch himself, and all of his emotions were just… transference, or displacement, or something.
Of course, at that moment Abbacchio kissed him, so that successfully derailed his train of thought.
It was clumsy and awkward, just brushing against the corner of his mouth, just deniable enough to be passed off as a cheek-kiss gone wrong or Abbacchio gently falling over mouth-first. Abbacchio pulled back the moment after, staring at Bruno for his reaction, and Bruno - Bruno had forgotten how to react; all the constant traffic of observations and anxieties and predictions swept from his brain and replaced with: Abbacchio kissed me?!
(Deep in the most instinctual corners of his mind, he noticed that that effect in and of itself was dangerous; that it was necessary, was his job to stay alert and aware at all times. He should run away from anything that had that effect on him. He should. He wasn’t going to, though.)
He’d taken too long to think, again - seriously, what was it with this night - and Abbacchio had taken his silence as an answer and was pulling away. Bruno tugged him back in, as gently as possible, and kissed the tip of his nose. Abbacchio sneezed into Bruno’s jacket, which was definitely going to need a wash when they got home.
“Do you… want to do this?” Bruno tried to keep his voice low enough that no one else could eavesdrop, but loud enough that Abbacchio could still hear him. He was not entirely sure that he was succeeding.
“God, you’re so fucking thoughtful and considerate all the time,” Abbacchio muttered. “What, do you not want to?”
Bruno took a deep breath in, considered trying to express all his feelings and reservations and ridiculous infatuations here in this crowded noisy place, decided it was a bad idea and settled for just kissing Abbacchio again, with as much vigour as he could put into it. Abbacchio seemed to find this an acceptable answer, kissing back with just as much inexperienced energy (the inside of Bruno’s bottom lip was going to be sore for weeks ).
Bruno was just getting around to the thought that maybe they shouldn’t be doing this in such a public area when he heard Narancia yelling his name and, from the sound of it, getting closer to them very quickly.
“Buccellati! Buccellati, we have to—” Narancia pushed through the crowd and finally caught sight of them. “Okay, well, good for you, it’s about fucking time, but Buccellati, we have to go.”
Bruno let go of Abbacchio and twisted round. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“You remember the drug dealers we were dealing with a couple of weeks ago?”
Bruno nodded; that had been a fairly routine incident, but he’d had a feeling that there might have been more than met the eye.
“Well, one of them has shown up here, and I think we should probably leave . Aerosmith, Sex Pistols and Purple Haze will all be useless here—”
“And we don’t want to risk that much collateral anyway, yes. Good thinking. Can you find Fugo? We’ll find Mista and meet outside the side entrance in five.” Bruno should have seen that coming, shouldn’t have had to rely on Narancia because he was too distracted by his own stupid feelings - but that wasn’t a train of thought that he had time for right now. He had to find Mista and get all of his team safely home. He could do that. He knew how to do that.
The trip home was thankfully uneventful, and he made hot chocolate for everyone before sitting down with Narancia and figuring out who had shown up at the club and why. There wasn’t really anything conclusive that they could figure out, so pretty soon they all scattered to their respective rooms after figuring out who could use the shower when.
Bruno had showered first; everyone usually at least offered him the first shower, and he’d generally refuse, but enough had happened that night that he was glad to get at least fifteen minutes to stand under hot water and not have to worry about what anyone might need him for at that moment. (He still worried, of course, but at least he didn’t have to also worry whether other people were noticing his worry, and so on.)
He’d only been back in his room for about twenty minutes when Abbacchio appeared, closing Bruno’s door behind him.
“Hi.”
Bruno put down his book and sat up. “Hi. Have you showered? Do you need anything?”
“Do I need anything?” Abbacchio shook his head in bewilderment and stared at Bruno.
Bruno patted the bed beside him; if they were going to have an awkward conversation, they could both be sitting down, at the least. Abbacchio shrugged and made his way across, sitting down flush with Bruno’s side with his hair dripping water down Bruno’s back.
“Look, it’s okay, we don’t have to talk about, we can just pretend it didn’t happen, I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you—” Bruno started.
Abbacchio cut him off. “Oh my god , what, you think I’m the one who would have regrets?”
“Well, yes, logically, I’m the one who is supposed to be looking after all of you, you can see why I would be concerned by—”
Abbacchio made a noise of frustration, grabbed Bruno’s face and started kissing him again. Bruno mentally shrugged; they’d have to have this conversation at some point, probably, but he couldn’t really argue with Abbacchio’s apparent prioritisation here.
Neither of them had magically improved at kissing in the intervening hour or so since the club, so there was a fair amount of bumping noses, awkward elbows and one incident of clashing teeth (which was terrible ; Bruno made a note to avoid that in the future at all costs). Abbacchio had climbed into Bruno’s lap at some point, for convenience, and Bruno had pulled them both up the bed until he could lean against the headboard. This was working quite well for them, and they were finally getting into the swing of things when someone yelled “Buccellati!” and opened the door on them.
“Hey, Buccellati, do you know where Abbacchio is, because I needed to - wait. What. What?” Mista had appeared in the doorway.
“Oh no, this is not happening, it is not happening.” Bruno massaged his forehead in preparation for the imminent headache.
“Yes, Mista, I’m right here. What did you want?” Abbacchio was grinning wickedly, which was a good look on him but not helping the situation.
“I. Uh. I wanted to know if you were done with the shower? Because it’s my turn next, and—” Bruno could see the cogs turning painfully slowly in Mista’s head, and it boded extremely ill.
“Yes, I am done with the shower, as you can see, so it’s free now.”
“Okay. Good. Uh, so, can I ask, what is—” Mista was interrupted by a Narancia-size hand appearing and dragging him away by the collar of his top. Narancia’s other hand flashed them a thumbs-up before pulling the door closed behind them.
Bruno thunked his head on Abbacchio’s shoulder. “I can’t believe I have to explain sexuality to him. How is this my life.”
“ I can. I even said so from the beginning!” Abbacchio undercut his bragging by kissing the top of Bruno’s head. “It was bound to happen sometime.”
“I suppose so, yes.” Bruno sighed into Abbacchio’s shoulder. “You didn’t win the bet, though.”
“How did I not? I called it!”
“You said that it would happen when Mista walked in on one of us having sex. I’m pretty sure that’s not what we’re doing right now.” Bruno poked Abbacchio’s back very gently.
Abbacchio tilted Bruno’s face back up and looked him in the eyes. “Are we not?” He sounded uncertain of himself, even more than he had earlier.
“God, not tonight, I’m ready to sleep for a week. I don’t know how all these young people do it.” Bruno kissed Abbacchio again and then stretched and yawned hugely. “Ugh. Sleep . Yes.”
Abbacchio looked somewhat disappointed and started getting up. “Yeah, of course, I’ll get out of your hair.”
“No, no.” Bruno hooked an arm around his waist and pulled, then remembered himself and let go. “I mean - you can go, of course, but you could also stay?”
“Oh.” Abbacchio's sudden tension evaporated. “Yeah. Okay. Sleep it is.” He climbed back onto the bed, and they shuffled around underneath the covers until they found a comfortable position.
The next morning, Bruno woke up and saw a sleeping Abbacchio and a note under his door. The note read “GOOD FOR YOU also I explained being gay to Mista and you owe me laundry for a week” and was signed from Narancia. Bruno looked at it, and at Abbacchio’s hair spread out over all the pillows, and felt like he loved everyone in this team so much that he might burst from it.