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Whether or not Bruno Buccellati is actually charmed to meet Pucci, the priest cannot tell. What he is positive of is that he certainly acts like it.
After delivering the priest's son to his room to rest, Giorno’s supervisor compliments Pucci’s head for interior design. He walks the area of the quaint living room and states aloud the beauty of Pucci’s artwork, all paintings, which hang on the walls in simple frames. When Pucci offers him a cup of coffee he enthusiastically accepts, and when the priest invites him to sit on the tasteful leather couch he certainly does. His face is both stoic and relaxed at once and as the priest prepares coffee for himself Buccellati seems content continuing his incessant barrage of compliments.
“Your work is positively gorgeous, Father Pucci. I have half a mind to buy a piece or two off you,” says Buccellati. He takes a sip from his mug and hums, satisfied. “You do make an excellent cup of coffee, too. I’m a bit of a stickler about beverages, but I must say this is delightful.”
“Hospitality is of the utmost importance to me,” replies Pucci from the nearby kitchen. He selects his favorite mug from an overhead cabinet and places it delicately on the marble island. “It’s a subjective thing, but I personally think a good host should always know how to brew a proper cup of coffee. Were it not for my faith I’d say I pride myself on that skill.”
The mobster cracks a smile. “Perhaps I’ll be proud for you. It’s delicious.”
Pucci pours his drink and crosses to the living room, leaving the carafe on the island should his son emerge from his bedroom thirsty. He sits adjacent to Buccellati, settling into his favorite wing chair with a quiet sigh. The poorly-hidden worry on his face makes him look older than his thirty-nine years.
“How has your day treated you, Father?” asks Buccellati, casually, crossing his legs. A sympathetic distraction. Pucci cannot tell if the kind curiosity on his face is genuine or otherwise — he considers the idea that the mobster may simply be better at the whole conversation thing than Pucci himself is — but the interest does seem real, so he obliges.
Perhaps he owes Buccellati a bit of conversation, after the mobster so kindly brought the priest’s wounded son — who is currently sound asleep in the other room — home to him, as well as agreed to tell him everything about Giorno’s sudden disappearance from home, and the events that left Giorno so exhausted and beat up.
Or, perhaps the small talk is Buccellati’s way of pity.
Either way, Pucci obliges him.
“Rather busy,” admits Pucci. “It’s been nothing but errands for me these past few days.” He adds quietly, “Well, that, and— you know.” He glances absentmindedly in the direction of Giorno’s room.
He has not seen Giorno for a week. He’s been worrying himself sick, and now his son has come home to him, exhausted, covered in scars and looking significantly less like a child, delivered to Pucci by a capo of all people with a smile as kind as an angel’s.
Pucci is conflicted and confused and thinks it a true miracle that he hasn’t folded, not yet.
A sympathetic (and perhaps guilty) frown ghosts Buccellati’s face. “I truly am sorry, Father,” he says, honestly. “I simply can’t imagine what this must have put you through—”
“No,” agrees Pucci ruefully, reliving the week he’s had in just a few seconds, each day spent trying to catch even a glimpse where his son might have disappeared to and failing, all the while being forced to continue as usual, as though nothing had happened. Duty always calls. “You can’t.”
Buccellati retreats into a grim silence, reluctant to argue though he knows he can imagine, and has many times. He lowers his gaze to his lap and takes another long drink from his coffee mug, the opposite hand fiddling with the lace brassiere beneath his jacket.
Eventually, he looks up, and despite being startled to find Pucci’s eyes still on him he says, seriously, “I take full responsibility for everything that happened, Father. I made a foolish error, and should have returned your son to you the second we encountered one another.”
The words are genuine. Both Buccellati and Pucci know that. The priest weighs them carefully in his head and nods.
“That is very kind and very admirable of you, Signore Buccellati—”
“Please,” the mobster smiles. “Just Buccellati. If your son knows me well enough to call me by name, then so does his father.”
“Alright.” Pucci nods. He seems impressed by Buccellati’s sincerity. “That’s very kind of you, Buccellati, but it was Giorno who ran away from home, not you. You brought him back to me, and for that I am grateful. Any bitterness I may have is not directed at you, but at myself, for failing to keep my own son out of harm’s way.”
Buccellati nods, his mouth dry. He understands that feeling. He downs the last of his coffee.
“Giorno owes you an apology, there’s no doubting that,” says the mobster. He smiles softly. “But you’re a good man and an even better father. Giorno speaks of you with the utmost fondness. You should feel no guilt."
Pucci smiles tightly at that and says nothing. Silence bridges a gap between the two men for a long while, until Buccellati opens his mouth again to speak.
“I suppose I should tell you everything,” he says, sitting upright and setting down his empty mug. He leans forward. “Unless you’re not ready to listen just yet, that is, Father, in which case please take your time. It’s… not a very nice story. Not all of it, anyway.”
The priest deliberates over the mobster’s proposal. He knows plenty well that he is not even half-prepared to hear about the hell his son has been made to slog through the past week, but dismisses the fear quickly. He needs to know, and he wants to understand so much more than he does now, confused and hurt by his son’s inexplicable vanishing.
He meets Buccellati’s gaze and says, “Please, tell me.”
So Buccellati complies. He tells the story in great length, certainly not skipping over any of Giorno’s impressive feats— though he doesn’t skip over the losses, either.
Pucci is, understandably, quite shaken up by the end of it.
“I owe Giorno my life,” Buccellati says, and the gratitude is there, in the mobster’s face and voice. “And so do his friends. They would have accompanied me here had I allowed them, but I sent them back to my home to rest.” He swallows and adds, “They are… without proper care.”
“I see,” Pucci manages, still reeling at the apparent evolution his son and his Stand had endured in their fight against a mafia boss... and at the fact that his son was now apparently something like one.
He wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about that, either.
Buccellati smiles kindly, understanding. “It’s a lot to take in, I’m sure. If you’re angry or upset and would like me to leave, I will understand, Father. Make no mistake.”
Pucci shakes his head wearily, waving dismissively, the gesture clearly weighted with exhaustion.
“That’s unnecessary,” he says, assuredly. “But, please, if you would be so kind as to give me a moment…”
“Certainly.”
“Thank you.”
The priest stands on shaky legs and leaves to his study. As he goes, Buccellati notices that the distant memory of a limp affects the way he walks ever so slightly.
Pucci’s Stand Whitesnake materializes in front of the double doors as they close, like some sort of ghostly bodyguard, and Buccellati stares, fascinated, though the crowned Stand appears to be pointedly ignoring him.
With a vague gesture Buccellati summons Sticky Fingers. The smaller Stand crosses the room and tries to strike up a conversation with a cheerful ariari. Whitesnake turns its head immediately, feigning disinterest with an indignant uosha and crossing its muscular arms.
“Come now, you’re no fun, are you?” Buccellati grins. Whitesnake huffs.
The minutes pass as Sticky Fingers tries uselessly to befriend the priest’s stubborn Stand, who seems to be much less kindly and polite than its user. More than once Sticky Fingers looks over its shoulder at Buccellati with a hopeless arrivederci, but the mobster is no help either, resigning to watch with an amused smile on his face as his Stand tries again and again to make friends.
When Father Pucci does emerge from his study after some time, looking considerably less shaken up but still tired (Buccellati absolutely can imagine the sleepless nights), he too seems amused by the sudden show. Buccellati relays the events of the past few minutes and Pucci chuckles.
“Whitesnake isn’t the most social Stand. Far from it, really,” he tells Buccellati, prodding Whitesnake teasingly. The priest leans against the study’s doors, trying for nonchalant despite being so obviously exhausted. “It’s been a very long time since it’s had a friend. Or, at least, a friend its age.”
Pucci grins wryly, and Buccellati grins back, imagining the brooding, haughty Stand before him alongside Giorno’s eager but level-headed Gold Experience.
“You ought to try making new friends,” Pucci scolds his Stand playfully. “That furrowed brow of yours is an eyesore.”
Whitesnake, affronted, puts a clawed hand on its chest, looking between an expectant Sticky Fingers and an amused Pucci with disbelief. It rolls milky white eyes with a despaired uosha.
Pucci shakes his head and rolls his eyes right back. “You are impossible.”
Buccellati can’t keep the slight smile off his face as Pucci returns to his wing chair, though he notes with poorly concealed concern the sluggishness of the priest’s movements, as well as the red rims around his already bloodshot eyes. The movement he makes to sit down in his chair seems more like a collapse.
“Are you quite alright, Father?” Buccellati asks gently. “I apologize for what I must have put you through, telling you all of that at once—”
“No, no,” Pucci dismisses him easily yet again and Buccellati sees suddenly where Giorno’s refusal to admit his own pain comes from. “It was good of you to bring him home, and good of you to tell me. A week ago I would have said Giorno tells me everything, but now—” he shakes his head somberly. “Now I’m not so certain.”
Buccellati frowns. Across the room, Sticky Fingers and Whitesnake are in a heated debate about God knows what, ignoring both their users. The mobster looks back at the priest, slouched and defeated in his chair, and takes a deep breath.
“Truth be told, Father,” says Buccellati. “I took the responsibility of bringing GioGio home after our uphill battle against Diavolo because I believed it was the least I could do. Boys like Giorno’s friends are one thing, but a boy like Giorno, an academic with such a doting father, that’s entirely another.” Buccellati swallows. “I think perhaps I wanted to prove myself to you. I wanted to prove that I had no intention of getting him wrapped up in Passione’s business, nor getting him seriously injured. I care about your son, Father Pucci. Please forgive me for my ignorance and my mistakes. I was desperate.”
For an eternity Buccellati sits under the stark gaze of Pucci’s strange, tired eyes, two white cross-shaped irises glistening in pools of brown underneath the overhead lights. The silence makes Buccellati afraid, intimidated in a way he’s not been since his initiation into Passione, when everything was made to be frightening, intimidating, a test. He knows he’s being analyzed and has no idea what to think.
But, mercifully, Pucci’s face relaxes into a gentle smile. “I forgive you, Buccellati. Your actions today have convinced me that you are a good man.”
Buccellati returns the smile, relieved, and says, “Your son said something similar to me.”
“He learns from the best.”
“I believe it. Thank you, Father.”
“Do call me Pucci. And you can save the thank-yous for dinner, if you do intend to stay.” Pucci rises and makes for the kitchen, that hint of a limp following him there.
“Would you mind?”
“Not at all. Do you have any allergies?”
“No.” He adds, “But maybe it’s worth mentioning that I rather dislike apples.”
Pucci cracks a smile, fetching the carafe from the kitchen island. “I suppose I ought to reference scripture here, but I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
Buccellati laughs brightly, accepting the carafe Pucci passes him and pouring himself more coffee. He says, “You are a very unusual priest, Pucci, if you don’t mind me saying so. And I do mean that in a good way.”
The priest chuckles. “Believe me, that’s not the first time I’ve heard that. But I do attend confessions and deliver sermons, like all the others.”
Buccellati hums his acknowledgement. It seems Sticky Fingers and Whitesnake have concluded their argument and are now chatting far more passively.
Across the room, pulling things down from the refrigerator, Pucci seems to have noticed, too.
“It looks like your Stand has finally coerced Whitesnake out of its shell,” he jokes, beginning to splay his selected array of ingredients across the kitchen island. He beams at Whitesnake’s withering glare. “An event worthy of the history books, for sure.”
Buccellati smiles into his coffee. “Sticky Fingers is nothing short of a social butterfly. I’m not surprised.”
“I’m glad for it.” Pucci huffs at Whitesnake, “Wipe that scowl off your face and make friends, you drama queen.”
The crowned Stand gripes an ousha at its user. Sticky Fingers places a hand on its newfound buddy’s shoulder and offers a comforting ariariari.
Buccellati grins. He finishes off his coffee and notices Pucci struggling to carry a particularly heavy load of grocery bags taken from the refrigerator. “Can I help you with that?”
“Please do. I appreciate it.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Late at night, after Bruno Buccellati has eaten, said his thank-yous, and left, Giorno Giovanna-Pucci wakes in his own bed, clad in his favorite pajama pants. It takes him a moment to remember where he is, and another moment to recall the events of the past week. He lets out a long sigh, the comfortingly familiar, distinct smell of Pucci’s home — his home — invading his senses in a wave, as he relaxes into the headboard of his bed. His bed.
He’s missed it. Tears well up briefly in his eyes before he quickly wipes them away, and climbs with some effort out of bed, aided by Gold Experience.
Everything of Giorno’s is just as he left it. Pucci has spent lots of time in Giorno’s room this week, looking for clues as to where his son might have gone, and praying for him, but everything looks mostly if not exactly the same.
The regret catches up to Giorno in his tired state, so much so that he chokes on it, his eyes watering.
The team’s goodbye to him echoes in Giorno’s ear, as well as their demands to see him again soon. He can still feel Mista and Narancia’s arms around him, telling him to be safe. He can still hear Abbacchio’s begrudging admittance that Giorno might be kind of an alright kid and see Buccellati’s comforting smile as they departed together.
Go see your dad, GioGio. Tell him we said hi.
Giorno wipes furiously at his eyes and brushes his hair out of his face. He asks an expectant Gold Experience, “Where’s Padre?”
As if on cue, the door to Giorno’s room opens, the light from the hallway forcing its way in. A familiar crowned head pokes in through the doorway, milky white eyes crinkling at the edges as they find Giorno in the darkness. Whitesnake flips the light on, and steps out of the way.
Enrico follows Whitesnake inside, and when he sees Giorno, he smiles, bright and broad and ear to ear. Not angry, not upset, only happy.
Giorno feels a sob welling up in his throat. He surges forward and embraces his father.
“My Gio,” murmurs Pucci. He wraps his arms around his son. “My sweet, baby Gio. I’ve missed you, piccolo.”
“I missed you, too. I’m sorry, Padre,” gasps Giorno, his face in Pucci’s shoulder. “I’m really, really sorry.”
“Hush. Save that for later, Gio.” Pucci presses a kiss to his son’s forehead. “We have much to talk about.”