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“What’s wrong?”
Abbacchio stops breathing air into his cupped hands.
“I didn’t bring my gloves out today,” he grumbles, rubbing his palms together.
You look at his jacket and notice that he doesn’t have pockets, either.
The leaves beneath the two of you paint the concrete with orange and brown hues. A gust of wind causes Abbacchio to shiver.
“Ah, wait.”
You slide your ungloved hands out of your pockets and cup his hands in your own.
Abbacchio stares at you in confusion. He lifts one of his eyebrows, “What are you doing?”
You purse your lips, “Your hands are cold right?”
He nods his head. You grin up at him.
“Are they warm now?”
There’s a beat of silence before Abbacchio humours you with a smirk. He can’t deny that his hands are a lot less cold, though.
You look up at him with hope filled eyes.
Once again, Abbacchio nods his head, smirk morphing into a genuine smile.
“Yeah. Your hands are warmer than mine.”
“Shit… We repacked the first aid kit, didn’t we, Bruno?”
Abbacchio brings his fingertips up to his forehead, frowning when he feels the stinging pain from a cut near his hairline. The little droplets of rain splattering down on him like missiles don’t help the stinging.
Bruno, not looking too unscathed himself, nods a tired head. “We have. Mista ran out to the shop after using up all of the bandages.”
Narancia and Fugo are behind, attacking each other's throats over something Abbacchio doesn’t care to listen to.
He sets the key in the hole, twisting the knob impatiently so he can finally have the 7 hour nap he’d been craving.
Abbacchio furrows his brows when the door doesn’t fully open. He’d been too tired to care what had been blocking his way.
You stayed at the base, and the building didn’t have a second door lock, so this was strange.
He takes a step back, then charges for the door with his shoulder in an attempt to force it open.
Three shoves, and it finally opens.
The dread eats him up from the inside out. It’s all Abbacchio can feel while he takes in the shattered vases, the thrown over furniture on the ground.
There’s a body on the floor, one that (luckily) didn’t belong to you.
“It was such an easy task, and you fucked it up over something as small as rain!”
“Shut up, Fugo! Like you weren’t distracted as well! Don’t be such a bi—”
Narancia’s whines are cut short when he bumps into Abbacchio, who’s frozen on the spot. The chatter between the team dies down as they take in the wrecked living room.
Suddenly, the blooming bruise on his cheek and the scar on his forehead doesn’t feel like anything anymore. The adrenaline that settled down at one point comes back all at once.
It all comes in a rush, a very vibrant rush that causes the tips of his fingers to twitch. He can feel his heart beat thunder in his rib cage.
He yells your name. Once, twice, then three times, but nothing calls back.
As if on impulse, he makes a move to run and search the home, but not before a hand plants itself on his shoulder.
Bruno stares back at him, face just as worried and scared as his, “Be careful, Leone. There might be a second person inside.”
Abbacchio nods his head, a stuttered move of hesitation. With caution, he brings out his stand. Bruno commands Narancia to scout outside for any other enemies, also telling Mista and Fugo to search with him.
Abbacchio is left alone at the front door.
A mechanic-like dial crackles through the hideout as Moody Blues makes its entry. The stand positions itself infront of the corpse.
Your form morphs into Moody blues after a series of static courses through the stand. Almost in and instant your voice cuts through the hideout.
“You really think I’d believe such a thing?” Your foot rests against an invisible form, heel digging into it.
Leone watches as your ankle cracks from an unknown blow from the side, right as you began reaching for your gun. You choke in pain, falling onto your side.
He has to hold himself back from intervening as you’re dragged up on the wall, hand marks imprinting themselves on your neck.
Your body flails on the wall, hands scratching and clawing at an invisible force.
You try to gasp for air, but the finger prints dig deeper and deeper into your neck. Leone forces himself to watch your struggling body go limp.
The finger indents soften, leaving only red marks on your skin. Almost in an instant, your hand shoots up, and an agonizing crack echoes from in front of you.
From the snap, Abbacchio assumes that you’d just broken the intruder’s elbow.
“You bitch!” He hears a voice growl, travelling further away from you now, sliding low on the ground.
“Don’t pull any shit unless you wanna die.” You point the gun at empty air, where the enemy’s head would’ve been.
“I’ll ask again, and you answer. Got it? I’ll let you free with only your fingers missing if you answer.”
There’s a staggering heave where your gun is pointed at before the voice finally yells, “Alright, alright! I’ll speak! Just…”
“...Point that scary gun elsewhere.”
After a moment of thought, you direct the gun towards the floor beside you.
Abbacchio feels his heart quicken in his ribcage. No.
“What are you doing here?” You spat, mouth twisting into a scowl.
He bites his black stained lips, anticipating only the worst.
Abbacchio hears the intruder stammer, obviously buying time for themselves, “I need something from Bruno— he’s a good friend of mine, you know? Did he ever tell you abo—“
“Shut the hell up! I didn’t ask for your life story!” Snapping from impatience, you cut the man's babbling short, “Just get to the point!”
There’s a whimper before the voice continues.
“Alright! He has something that I need…” the voice trails off. Abbacchio can see confusion in your expression.
You know the fear where everything feels like it’s about to collapse. About to crumble, like a tower of cards.
“And…”
The fear that has tension settling in the bottom of your lungs, painting your conscience with worry. The fear where you know there is only one outcome.
“And?”
Abbacchio pinches himself, because this is obviously all a bad dream. He feels like he’s falling from the sky.
He’s trying desperately to latch onto anything he can, but everything is seemingly, perfectly a hair's width away. He feels so helpless, and—
The sound of a gunshot resonating through the walls wakes him up. He brings his shaky gaze towards your gun.
Your pistol remains unsmoking, innocent of the bullet.
A moment passes, and the shock on your face morphs into pain.
Abbacchio can feel his heart race. His stomach drops as you press a palm against your gut, red immediately beginning to spread across your shirt.
A graze rips against your jawline, searing the skin an angry red.
Your eyes flit up when you hear disappointed cussing.
There’s an pistol pointed between your eyes (Abbacchio can tell,) but in a quick moment of clarity, you aim and shoot first.
Three times you pull the trigger, face expressionless in shock. Adrenaline has masked the pain you felt.
There’s a beat of silence where you’re stood firmly on the ground before you’re on the floor, breath laboured.
You cry out, hands shakily applying pressure on the wound.
Abbacchio feels a pang of fear crash in his chest.
He rushes over to you, holding your form against his, only stopping when he feels a rubbery texture instead of skin.
He looks up at your face, the digital timer on your forehead seemingly mocking him.
“Hah…” Moody Blues replicates the pained groan that escaped you. You try and stand up, limping and holding the bullet wound.
You’re coughing as you struggle up the stairs, almost tripping a couple of times. He has to remind himself that it was foolish to help ‘you’.
Slouching your way towards the bathroom, you stop. In an almost oblivious confusion, the stand morphs back into it’s original form and turns it’s towards it’s user.
Abbacchio notices the half opened bathroom door and quickly calls back his stand. His footsteps are rushed as he opens the door fully.
“Leone?”
You’re laying on the floor, the contents of the first aid pack scattered around you, with it’s bandages wrapped loosely around your abdomen.
In an instant, Abbacchio is by your side. He ignores your winces as he positions your head on his shoulder.
“Bruno! Call an ambulance!” He yells,
He begins his work, tightening up the white ribbons around your stomach, making sure to add pressure to the wound.
He’s done this before. Many, many times, but this was the first time he’d actually felt a nearly nauseating panic while doing it.
The amount of blood that had managed to get on the floor further worsened Abbacchios anxiousness. It covered half, if not, most of the tile flooring.
His eyebrows are furrowed, a calm blankness to his face, but the way his hands shake betray that idea. You can see a faint wetness begin to collect over his purple-yellow pupils.
You smile weakly. “Are you alright?”
He doesn’t respond, continuing to roll the now reddening bandage around your waist.
Abbacchio secures a knot once he’s done wrapping your wound up. He feels your head weigh heavier against his shoulder.
Your breathing is coming out in shallow huffs, he notices. He draws a comforting hand against your back, rubbing lightly.
A dooming feeling settles in the pits of his lungs.
Abbacchio knows you’re not going to make it. You know you’re not going to make it.
Even Mista, the gunslinger who managed to shoot himself more times than he’d shot his opponents, never bled this much from a bullet wound.
It’s not only the amount of blood covering the floors that warn him, it’s the way you smiled at him. The fatigued way you’d looked up at him told him more than he wanted to know.
Abbacchio turns his head away when he sees you tracing the indent in the bandages, gulping at the sight. You wince at a certain bump, and pull back as if it had burnt you.
You begin playing with your fingers. “It’s raining out.”
The water outside crashes onto the pavement, ricocheting with every drop.
The rain outside is the only noise you’re met with. It takes a while before you disappointedly lift your gaze.
He looks away the moment you two meet eyes. Abbacchio attempts to hide the worry evident in his face.
The air in the room is tense, tense enough to feel. He can feel the air climbing down his throat— though that might’ve been the dread he tried to swallow earlier.
“You don’t like the rain much, don’t you?” You ask. Abbacchio keeps his lips shut and his eyes glued to the corner of the floor.
You’re not going to lie, you were getting impatient. It’s like a rubber band being stretched just a hair's width away from its limits. With each pull came more chances to release— or break.
You know Abbacchio wants to say something. You can tell by the way he takes sharp intakes of breaths, as if he’s getting ready to speak.
With each moment he’s opened his mouth, you turned to face him, anticipating his words.
He always flinches back.
You focus your attention on the blood covered floor instead, worrying that nothing would be accomplished with Abbacchio. You touch the puddle with your index and middle finger.
You bring your hand up eye level, examining it as a droplet runs down your palm all the way towards your elbow.
The blood reminds you that your time is limited. Dancing around, waiting for Abbacchio will do nothing.
That thought was enough to make the rubber band snap.
“Are you mad at me, Leone?”
The words catch Abbacchio off guard. He can barely muster out a confused “What?” before you’re speaking again.
“It’s fine if you are. I won’t be hurt,” you mumble to him.
He can tell that you’re being genuine because your eyes don’t shake or avoid him. They stare right through him.
He’s speechless.
You try to sit up. A hiss escapes your lips, and more blood seeps through the bandages. Abbacchio lays you down on his arm once more.
“You told me before that you hate yourself. That you think you're a terrible person,” your tone changes as you continue.
“I wanna know why you think like that.” Your eyebrows downwards, and you can’t help the regretful frown growing on your face.
You wince, squeezing your eyes shut for a second as you breathe, “It’s been on my mind for so long now, and I want to finally understand.”
The air in the room tenses up. Abbacchio’s lips part, but no words fall out. You swallow thickly, attempting to stop the incoming tears threatening to well up at your eyes.
“Whatever you’ve been keeping locked away inside, I want to hear and understand you.” Your voice shakes at the end of your sentence.
It’s one of the only memories from him that you never got to or ever will unravel. He’d kept that story of his deeply locked away, scrubbed any trace he could leading to it.
The memory sticks onto him like lacquer, like a viscous substance to his senses. The more he tries to pry it off of himself, the more it spreads and consumes him.
He can’t focus properly, because he knows this feeling. He knows this situation. It’s like déjà vu to him.
“It’s been eating me alive, because maybe I could’ve helped in some way,” you could feel your eyes burning. Never had you felt so powerless, so useless.
“I wanted to help you.”
His arms are wrapped around you in an instant. They snake their way around your shoulders, tight and unmoving.
He lays his chin on the crown of your head. You feel him shaking.
Somehow, his arms twist around you more tightly, like a snake to a tree branch. He clings onto you with the foolish hope that maybe that will save you.
Because maybe if he’s honest, you’ll live.
“This helped.”
Maybe if he talks enough, maybe if he says the right words, he can keep you alive.
“I felt I did something good, because you said it made you feel loved,” Abbacchio confesses.
The vibrations from his chest lull you enough for you to close your eyes. The deep baritone of his voice brings you into a place of comfort and familiarity.
“I said that I hated it, but for the first time in years, I could look at myself in the mirror without seeing all the blood on my hands.”
You nod your head weakly and place a hand on the forearm above your chest. You rub circles on the muscle beneath your thumb, loosening Abbacchio’s grip on you.
“I can’t do anything right. All I do is fuck up,” he says.
“And I know that. I’ve known years ago.” Abbacchio ponders what could’ve been if he had just stayed at the base with you. If he hadn’t been so cocky, or if maybe instead, he were the one injured.
There was a moment in his earlier mission where he was nearly penetrated through the chest. If he had taken that hit, would you be alright? In another world where he was the one dying instead, would you have lived?
“You can’t die because of me.”
All he can do is vent, say everything he’s been holding in to keep you awake.
“Stay with me.” He shifts your position so he can look at your face clearly.
Abbacchio is familiar with the way your eyes have glazed over. He understands, but he doesn’t want to believe. Not yet.
He smoothes the baby hairs away from your forehead. “You need to be here to watch me improve. You need to be here once I’m better.”
He talks to keep you awake— because god, what else was there to do? If only he could heal, he thinks. If only he weren’t stuck with his useless Stand that can only replay shit. Hopeless, piece of trash.
“I can’t live knowing that I’ve fucked up again. Stay alive— please.”
Responding is a challenge when even trying to decipher what he was saying is difficult enough. You manage out a murmur, “I’m here, Leone.”
Abbacchio is getting desperate. You’re growing paler.
“I need more time to show you that I can do something right. You need to be there,” you feel two warm droplets plop down on your arms.
Abbacchio whimpers out your name. “Please,” he sobs, shaking your shoulders.
“If you’re there,” he gulps, “I can do it.”
If you’re there, he won’t have to live knowing that he’d taken another life. If you’re there, he can wake up without having to feel the gut wrenching guilt consume him from the inside.
He takes a shaky breath, “If I can make you happy, I can do it—“
You bring a hand up to his head, causing the rest of his words to die in his throat. Abbacchio’s hair is damp, the droplets of water stick to the tips of his platinum violet hair.
He leans into your palm when it makes its way towards his cheekbone. The dewy skin beneath your thumb is porcelain smooth, like fresh ice unscathed.
Though your eyes were blurring and clearing up with every second, from the crystal glimpses you got of him, he looked ethereal.
A few droplets run down your forearm, but your eyes are getting unfocused to the point that you can’t even tell whether they were tears or just the rain caught in his hair.
You wanted to see him clearly, smudged makeup and all.
The fight with the overwhelming feeling to close your eyes had been long dragged on. You were afraid, but the warmth from Abbacchio holding you kept you from panicking.
At least he’s with you.
Your thumb traces at the side of his lips as he whimpers out your name once more. The smudged black lipstick adds a drag beneath the pad of your finger.
“You make me happy, Leone,” you tell him, weak voice as faint as a cold morning’s foggy breath, smile as sweet as the sugar cubes Narancia used to sneak into his pockets.
He can hear your breathing grow fainter with each precious moment. Abbacchio holds your hand against his cheek, savouring the remnants of what little life your fingertips held.
Your eyelids flutter to a close. The last remaining flames within you flicker to an end.
“You always have.”
Abbacchio doesn’t feel alive.
When he screams out, he can’t feel the way the sound scratches his voice. He can’t hear the sirens slowly overpowering the sound of rain, or Bruno’s worried calls for him.
Abbacchio only feels a numbing terror enveloping his chest, covering his torso like slick black paint, spreading like a wildfire throughout his entire body.
Heart pumping in his chest, breathing heavy and stuttering, Abbacchio convinces himself that he’s dead because somehow, your hands felt warmer than his.