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Once, three months ago, Buccellati had promised as a part of getting together with Abbacchio that he would take him out on the sea. It was a lofty goal, to find a space of time they could be alone and disconnected from the mainland when they were still working to secure their new rule in Passione, but like any of Buccellati's goals, it became impossible to dissuade him from it the moment it crossed his mind. Even if they had to set sail in the dead of night, guided by the same lampara they'd use to coax the fish out from the depths, they would spend some time together on the body of water Buccellati considered his second home.
Mercifully, it's evening when they do set out. As Buccellati pulls the boat out from the marina with practiced ease— and with far more skill than he drives, Abbacchio notes— the sun is brushing its fingers along the horizon, painting the sky above and sea below the powder blues and pinks of sunset. By the time they've dropped anchor, the water is gold: summer sunsets stretch on for hours, their brilliance lingering even long after the sea has covetously swallowed the sun beneath its waves.
There's a bottle of Greco di Tufo between them. Buccellati takes a swig directly from it before returning to the fishing rod balanced between his knees. For the two hours they've been out here, neither have caught anything larger than their hand, and Abbacchio's concern for the rod steadied against him is second-tier at best. His eyes never stray from Buccellati for long, preferring the blue he sees in his eyes to the blue of the sea all around them. Buccellati feels that gaze even as he watches the flicker of scales just below the surface of the water around their bait and hooks, lets himself linger in its sweetness as he offers the bottle.
"What did you say your father named this boat, again?" he asks.
"La serendipità. And it wasn't my papà who named it. It was his grandfather."
"Your..." Abbacchio squints slightly. "Great grandfather?"
"Mm. Bruno Buccellati. The first one," there's a secret kind of smile Buccellati gets sometimes, one that's in his eyes and not his lips, that he wears when he says something clever or novel enough to provoke a reaction. He's wearing it now. "It had fallen into disrepair when the previous owner died, and he bought it for a pittance. Rebuilt it with his own hands. Then named it after the thing he believed had brought it to us."
"Serendipity."
"My papà told me his grandfather always believed it was luck that had brought it to him. That if he hadn't taken a walk by the docks that day, he never would have seen the rotting thing hauled up onto the shore, and our family never would have been able to enjoy the sea like we are now."
His tone hangs like an unresolved note. Abbacchio urges, "But?"
"But I never much believed in luck. I don't think there are coincidences in life. Everything that happened this April couldn't have happened without meeting Giorno, meeting Giorno couldn't have happened unless I recruited all of you, and I never would have had to do it if my papà hadn't used this boat to ferry tourists to the islands," an almost-imperceptible pause as grief closes its fist around his heart. He adjusts his grip on the pole. "Everything falls like dominoes. I can't believe it's luck that got us this far— it must be fate."
"That's just cause and effect, Buccellati."
"Is it? Or was it how things were always meant to be?"
Only a syllable of Abbacchio's response comes, cut short by the bend of the rod between his legs. The flexible metal curves abruptly downward and nearly disappears into the water altogether, as Abbacchio's hands had migrated away from it to rest on his knees as they spoke, only barely managing to snatch it and start reeling before it's lost to the depths.
"That looks like a good one. Albacore? Or maybe snapper?" The pensive look on Buccellati's face is obliterated in an instant by an all-consuming focus on the thing at the end of Abbachio's line. "Hurry, Abbacchio!"
"He's a stubborn bastard," Abbacchio pulls the rod back sharply, reeling hard.
"So are you."
To his credit, Abbacchio keeps his grip secure, even when another one of Buccellati's terse compliments-disguised-as-observations makes his heart thrash like the fish thrashes on his hook. The line draws in closer until finally the waters part, and dangling from the hook is a glistening red snapper the length of his forearm.
Buccellati examines it critically. The lowering sun makes the snapper's scales seem rose-gold, each one like a small and precious gemstone embedded in its skin. Under scrutiny, its gaping mouth and struggling on the hook seem like signs of good health; and its size will mean each of them will have a good fillet. With every criteria passed, Buccellati reaches forward and pulls it off the hook.
The way Abbacchio's expression slackens tells him he's glad his manicure will not have to deign to touch the still-thrashing thing in Buccellati's hands. Even with the boat rocking underfoot, Buccellati rises easily with only one hand; the kind of balance only years with the rise and fall of a deck underfoot can give someone.
"Reel in that other line," he calls over his shoulder. "I'll start cooking."
Any response is swallowed by the wind as Buccellati moves below deck. At one corner of the cabin, a portable grill sits on the counter; Buccellati tucks it under his arm and turns his attention to the locked drawer below. The key has long since been lost but locks do little to deter him as long as he can rely on Sticky Fingers, who ghosts out in the form of a hand to unzip the drawer and allow Buccellati to pull it open.
Inside is a single knife. The wooden grip is etched with grooves worn by a strong grip that had held it day after day, the metal of the blade whittled down by years of sharpening— when Buccellati was younger, he would test it in his hand, and feel how the grooves were too wide for his childlike fingers; as he grew, the grip became more comfortable, and he felt as though he was growing into both it and the noble profession he was set to inherit.
Of course, things didn't work out that way.
The first thing Buccellati cut with this knife was a man.
He hears the heavy thud of what must be Abbacchio hopping off the bow and back onto the deck and takes that as his signal to reemerge. One of the panels of the deck has been elevated to form a table, and that's where Buccellati sets the fish, knife, and grill: he makes sure the fuel tank isn't leaking before he lets the grill heat up and finally turns his attention to their meal for the evening.
Each precise movement of the blade catches the sun, throwing light across the deck as he works. Buccellati plunges the blade into the still-living fish and makes it pour red deeper than its scales onto the stark white of the cutting surface, reducing it to fillets with less than a dozen efficient flicks of his wrist. The way Abbacchio's brow quirks slightly from his seat on the bench opposite tells him he's finally understanding where Buccellati first perfected the knifework Abbacchio has seen when he fights. The rest of the fish, fins and guts and still-gasping mouth, are thrown back into the sea.
"You're not going to eat the rest?" Abbacchio asks, dull surprise in his tone. You, because he's seen Buccellati pick whole fish apart down to the eyes and bones, eating even the parts that make Abbacchio's stomach turn. Throwing any of it back seems unusually wasteful of him.
"I could," he says. "But it's a matter of respect. Giving back what we don't use. And since we only intend to eat these fillets tonight..."
"I get it. It's as cruel as it is kind."
Buccellati nods. "For everything it gives us, it also takes. The sea destroys buildings. Sinks ships. Kills."
A small silence falls, filled by the sizzling of the fish on the grill. Abbacchio crosses his arms over his chest. When he thinks of the sea, he thinks of Buccellati: he thinks of the sun refracted through its waves like the brilliant drive set in his core; he thinks of the dark tumult of its surface in a storm, vicious and unrelenting; he thinks of the dark abyss of ocean trenches, the unknown depths where alien things dwell like the things Buccellati keeps so close to his chest, that Abbacchio may get to glimpse when Buccellati allows the light through.
He thinks about April, how Buccellati's seas were burned gold by Giorno Giovanna, like how the waves all around them are golden in the setting sun.
"But it is kind," he rumbles. It gives Buccellati pause, hesitating before he sets the salt down on the counter and looks out onto the water. Focused on the scorching sun instead of Abbacchio, instead of the scorching implication of his words and the too-gentle tone that cradles them. Something like reverence and longing both.
"That does not exempt it from being a killing thing."
"It doesn't," Abbacchio rises. His steps aren't as certain as Buccellati's, but he only needs two to close the distance between them and knot his arms around his tapered waist. There's no sign of how the motion makes Buccellati's heart kick up a fuss in his chest. The nothing in Buccellati's gaze as it stares out into the water is the kind of guarded nothingness Buccellati only gives when he's trying to not give everything. A swarming baitball of sentiment and vulnerabilities rise up and are quickly caught in the trawling net of his rigid self control.
But then Abbacchio presses his nose into his hair to drink in the scent of his shampoo, and Buccellati suddenly forgets how to breathe.
"But I think I can love it anyway," Abbacchio finishes.
This closeness is still foreign to him. Internally, he reminds himself that he's still relearning what it means to have a touch that's kind, that these things take patience, that Abbacchio does not expect him to change overnight; after years of smothering himself, denying himself, killing himself for Passione, he still struggles to gut himself in a way that doesn't bleed. He wishes he could do it as easily as he guts snappers and traitors alike.
"The sea is a treacherous lover," he murmurs, uncharacteristically quiet. "He drowns everything he keeps."
"Maybe he's never loved someone who can swim."
Slowly, like he has to dictate the motion to each of his muscles, Buccellati raises a hand to tangle in the smooth strands of Abbacchio's hair. He anchors himself there by the fingertips. Anchors himself to Abbacchio, anchors Abbacchio to him; keeping them both steady as Buccellati's lips come to brush his jaw. He savours the feeling of a pulse under his lips with his eyes shut.
"Maybe."