Work Text:
Within the brush of hands, knuckles running against knuckles, skin to skin, lies a thousand potential words. The breadth of a sermon. The brevity of a hum. A sentence spoken beneath breath. A question asked without hesitance. In the realm of speech through the touch of skin resides the unsaid. The thoughts of the cowardly. The complaint of a martyr. The confessions of a sinner or the prayers of a saint. Like the love in palm against cheek and lips on lips, or the frustration of fists clenched, the respect behind a handshake or resentment behind a glare.
Bucciarati’s hand, for only a moment, brushes against Abbacchio’s, and from the gesture springs the melancholy of words repressed; in the silence, broken only by the humming of the engine, with sea on the horizon and the kiss of sunset against the windshield, there is temptation to speak them. Bucciarati folds his hands in his lap, eyes fixed on the water ahead. Abbacchio withdraws his hand away from reach. He crosses his arms. Folds in on himself, and he looks away.
Thoughts of the cowardly run through his head. And Bucciarati can feel it, thick in the air like humidity. Trepidation settles over him like fleece. He swallows.
Of the thousand potential words he could choose to say, he chooses a question.
“Do you think we’re going to make it out of this alive?”
And Bucciarati, of course, with the way he takes in a breath he does not need, knows that he will not. But Abbacchio is oblivious to this fact.
“Uh,” a pause, a long one, and a needed breath. A measured breath. Abbacchio is careful not to take too deep of one, as though he’s already taken too much today. His hesitance comes not because he’s never thought of the matter, but rather, in the face of a new conflict that he has found within himself. What was once an eagerness to die, a preparation for the end and a hope–rather, desperation–for a new beginning, has become a sort of fear with which he is unfamiliar. So he says, simply, “I’d like to think so.”
“But do you really?”
“I don’t know, Bucciarati,” Abbacchio admits, and he shifts his leg, and in the way his knee brushes against Bucciarati’s before pulling away, he finds the words to mirror the question. “Do you?”
Another breath, for emphasis. But Bucciarati does not need it. And still, he finds enough gall to say, “I’d like to think so.” His confidence is unwavering, but his confidence is placed in a statement of uncertainty. It does nothing to ease Abbacchio’s unease. It does not clear the heaviness from the air.
Abbacchio’s gaze roams back to Bucciarati’s figure, tense. To his expression, lost in thought. To the pallor of his complexion and the dullness of his eyes, but Abbacchio assumes he’s just tired because they all are. Bucciarati catches his gaze. He returns it. Sunset meets sea, a kiss along the horizon. It’s a look they’ve shared. A look, prior, broken in haste.
“Leone.” Bucciarati brings a hand up to cup Abbacchio’s cheek in the way he has never, previously, allowed himself. Because something in his chest–perhaps lying in the gap where a beating heart once was–tells him he must. Tells him he may never get to do it if he does not do it now, to hold him, his cheek, like glass, delicate and beautiful. Tells him this beauty is like sand, like water, cupped in hands that cannot hold it for long. Tells him that time is running out, because it already has. Because he cannot feel the warmth, the smooth plane of Abbacchio’s skin, against his fingertips.
And his touch says it all–or maybe just some. His touch is cold.
“Your hands are freezing,” Abbacchio says, and pulls away. “Why are they so fucking cold?”
From the contact, in the love of palm against cheek, Bucciarati finds the words, “I hope I don’t die after you.”
In the confusing admixture of emotions in those dull blue eyes, Abbacchio finds a demanding, “what? Why the hell would you even say that?”
“Because it’s true,” Bucciarati says, like it’s simple.
“Why not hope we don’t die at all?” Abbacchio asks, like it’s simple.
Bucciarati takes pause. Fills it with a breath; Abbacchio doesn’t need to know. Of the potential words, the potential thousands, within the contact between them and the air they are sharing, Bucciarati could easily find the truth. The complaints of a martyr.
I’m sorry, Leone.
I need more time.
I am already dead.
I love you.
“You’re right,” he chooses, and smiles slightly, only the smallest quirk upward at the corner of his lips. “Perhaps I am just feeling a bit melancholy this evening.”
“Well, quit it, because we’re going to be fine.” Abbacchio shakes his head. “We always have been, right? Takes a lot more than this to take us out.”
I’m sorry, Leone.
I’d give anything for just a little more time.
I love you more than anything.
I am already dead.
“You’re right.”
Abbacchio turns his eyes back to the sea. The glare of the sun reflecting off of it. The prayers of a sinner run through his head, because he doesn’t believe the words he’s saying. Because he is a coward, but he is a coward with faith. A coward who claws for it. Hope. Potential. A coward, but a blessed one, blessed by the hand of a saint.
And the saint beside him prepares himself to greet the stairway down to hell, because life is not always so cut-and-paste. He swallows his confessions. Takes them to his grave, as planned. As he will be, any day now. The sensation of a lack thereof tingles steadily closer to his wrists. Soon, all-consuming. But his heart, for a long while now, has been dying a slow death. It was only a matter of time before the rest of his body caught up, corrupted by blood pumped out of obligation.
Soon, he will no longer be obliged to anything but the sea from whence he came.
Abbacchio doesn’t know that. He doesn’t need to.
Bucciarati stands, tentative. He would deliberate further, if he had the time. He needs more time. But time is not something he can wish for, so he must take advantage of what he has. What he has been given. Make the best of what is left and love it dearly, love it like skin against skin, lips on lips, so in his cold palm he takes Abbacchio by the chin and turns his head to lock their eyes again. Locks their lips in the way he’s always wanted to, and he hopes his are still soft.
Abbacchio’s eyes widen; if Bucciarati didn’t know any better, he would think the plane had swerved, but perhaps it’s all in his head. Perhaps his balance, now, is falling to the wayside with everything else. He can still feel his lips. Feel Abbacchio’s against his. Feel him reciprocate and melt in, and in that touch is the confession that Abbacchio has wanted this just the same as Bucciarati has.
Left unsaid in the love of lips against lips is Bucciarati’s hope that, perhaps, this plane goes down here and now and they all go out together. And then he won’t need to wish for more time. He’ll have all the time he needs.
But life is not so cut-and-paste, so he kisses harder.