Archive of Our Own

“Abbacchio. Leone. You understand that—” Bruno makes a helpless gesture with his hand, wincing.

“I do,” Leone cuts his unsaid speech before it even starts. Mainly because he’d already heard it before at least twice.

“Okay, then,” Bucchiarati scrubs at his face and presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. Takes a deep breath. “Okay.”

“I’ll draft all required paperwork,” Giorno is already scribbling something down with that obscenely good penmanship of his, ”Or would you rather leave completely under the radar?”

He tunes out the rest of the conversation. Not particularly sinking in his thoughts, rather just letting his eyes roam the interior of Giovanna’s new office. It’s oddly normal. It’s painted in dark subdued colors and has an obnoxiously large armchair with green plush furnishing that is closer to a throne than to a chair. Older documents — courtesy of Diavollo, probably, — are neatly lined across a glass cabinet. What Leone would assume to be ongoing issues and projects are mostly stacked in pristine rows on the long mahogany table. There’s a collection of writing pens, also immaculately lined. Something about the sharp edge of calligraphic nibs is slightly more unsettling. Leone would’ve preferred if Giovanna kept his knife collection on display instead. 

Bruno taps his shoulder and his attention snaps right to him.“I got a nice two storey place facing the shore.” 

“Not your old house?”

“No,” Bucchiarati shakes his head, “I think returning to my childhood home if the goal is to move on from the past is counterproductive.”

It makes sense, just as it makes sense to follow Bruno into retirement, so Leone only nods and goes on about his day of packing his belongings into boxes.

Well, one box. He doesn’t really have much to pack. 

“Come by any time,” politely smiles Giovanna. It stretches across his jaw artificially, like most gestures he performs tend to do. 

“Of course!” Bucchiarati’s smile is as gentle and genuine as it gets, “Feel free to stop by our place as well, for work advice or as a friend.”

Abbacchio doesn’t deign him with a response and steps outside of the Passione’s headquarters first. The door behind him and Bruno closes with a quiet click. 

And there’s that. It takes a fifteen minutes long discussion and ten steps down a staircase to become a law abiding citizen that has nothing to do with the mafia that runs Naples.

He can’t do this.

Bruno wakes up with a smile, with relaxed shoulders and hums songs out of tune to the radio on late mornings. It took him maybe a week at most to befriend the local fishermen — his cunning way of speech and charisma mellowed out from something deeply unsettling  into just a generally kind-and-nice-neighbour demeanor — so now he’s permitted to borrow a boat and some of the equipment until he gets his own. He goes out into the open sea twice a week. Abbacchio tagged along once, but found himself restless and useless due to the lack of his fishing skills and incompetence when it came to learning those. Bucchiarati laughed and said the sea is not for everyone. Leone agreed and decided to stick to the shore for the foreseeable future. 

You’d think you can take a man out of Passione but you can’t take Passione out of a man, and yet Bucchiarati enjoys spending hours on end in the kitchen and reading on the couch in the evenings when it’s dark outside. He slipped into the daily mundane routine seamlessly, like he never left. Like he never was a capo or had an entire ragtag team of criminals that specializes in murder. 

But Abbacchio isn’t Bucchiarati. Abbacchio lived his entire life serving authorities above his rank, whether it be the academy, the police or the Passione. He ran errands and followed orders and when the door to his room closed behind him on late nights when he got time to sleep, he rarely did. Leone Abbacchio’s worst nightmare was always himself.

He sits down in the kitchen with a mug of bitter coffee that he hates the least and reads a mediocre detective by Tess Gerritsen he’d found in the living room. He gets through two of them and in a few days and in the middle of the third he realises he can’t read a single line because his hands shake too much. He slams the book closed. Grits his teeth to stop them from chattering. Bucchiarati throws a mildly concerned gaze in his direction over his shoulder. Leone just abruptly stands up on his stiff legs.

“I’ll go for a walk,” even his voice sounds rigid, “I’ll be back by dinner.”

Reading wasn’t a hobby of his, anyway.

He tries to pick up drawing. His artistic skills consist of a two month long elective course in the police academy, something to do with detective work and being able to quickly and somewhat recognizably sketch down suspects if needed. Not to say he excelled at that, but it’s something over nothing. He picks up a ballpoint pen and finds himself hesitant to draw the only person he would realistically want to draw; it feels like he’s insulting Bruno by even entertaining the idea, so instead he scribbles down a very ugly depiction of Fugo, suit full of holes and all of that. Tries to draw Mista’s gun from memory and gives up in the first 10 minutes of the ordeal. 

He drags his hardcover notebook to the pier and looks at the sea, at the sand, at the house he inhabits from the distance. Snaps the pen in half after a third attempt at drawing scenery and drops the notebook into the salt water, washed away to never be seen again.

He wants to tail Narancia’s Aerosmith through the streets again. Wants to hear the satisfying crunch of someone’s skull under his fist. God fucking damn it, he’s about to admit that he misses writing reports, even. He thinks of Giorno Giovanna, the artificial machine tailor-made to run the Passione at the ripe age of 16 years old. Maybe that’s what the Naples needed instead of the eccentric Diavollo that had them all under his thumb. He finds that he doesn’t care who runs the circus, but he cares that he’s not on the performers’ list anymore.

He ignores the wine bottle in the fridge of their shared house. He ignores the wine bottle in the fridge and goes on his daily morning run as he always does, at 8 am sharp. 

The air is crisp and humid. Something adjacent to mist billows above the water as he moves across the shore without shoes, feet sinking into the wet sand. Leone runs in long, powerful strides, feeling every step reverberate throughout himself as his tibialis anterior — or whatever it’s called, he’s rusty with his anatomy knowledge — contracts. He imagines himself a hunting dog of sorts, aimlessly trailing through the field in search of something on command. Lets himself tilt a little more forward. Pushes himself more than the previous days. Feels how muscle sets in the top part of his back complain and threaten to tighten his ribcage enough to make breathing through gritted teeth impossible. 

He stops about three fourths of his usual distance, heaving, arms braced against his thighs. The air that escapes his mouth in gasps forms into tiny clouds of mist. He screws his eyes shut for a little while, suppresses a guttural scream and dashes back towards the house. He falters midway, staggers as his leg catches on a patch of quicksand and plummets face first into the remnants of a just departed wave of salt water. 

It’s cold. Autumn is slowly creeping to an end. His shirt is soaked and his teeth clatter as he stumbles back to his feet.

He can’t do this.

“Leone,” almost whispers Bucchiarati when he shows up at the entrance, covered in sticky sand and murky shore water. He sounds— Wistful, almost. Regretful, as if he knows. Stretches his arm towards Abbacchio and Abbacchio flinches away.

“Don’t,” is the only thing he manages to say, still breathless as he brushes past Bruno into the house, “Don’t.”

He can’t leave Bruno’s side, he knows. Wouldn’t dare to even wish that in his deepest of nightmares. But he isn’t made for this. He can’t live like this. He isn’t—

Something’s missing in him. Something they strip every hunting dog of, something they just intentionally don’t put in them when those are created. Something that Bruno and the others have and he doesn’t. Not even a concept, something tangible. Something that makes others capable of breathing and makes Leone unable to make his regular running distance.

He throws himself into his room and locks the door and stares at the wall until his eyes burn and the sun begins to set. Time freezes and jumps and passes in chunks, just like it did back then. Back then, when—

When. He lets the wave of irrational fear crash over him and lets his legs move on their own accord, long strides and all. 

“Leone?” carefully asks Bruno, when Leone is holding onto the door frame, panting. His blue eyes slightly glisten in the dark.

“Sorry, I—” his voice cuts off as he trips over the act of trying to inhale, “Sorry.”

He hasn’t allowed himself in Bucchiarati’s room even after they moved here. He’d seen it, of course, but never entered. He sits on the opposite side of the couch in the evenings while Bruno reads, his legs thrown across Leone’s lap and hovers over his shoulder if Bruno asks him to help with cooking, but nothing more. Politely kept his distance just because he always had and felt like he should, but the air is humid and full of vapor and salt water sloshes in his lungs aimlessly and ruthlessly. 

Bruno silently scoots over closer to the edge of the bed and pats the empty space next to him. His head is slightly tilted sideways as he studies Abbacchio. His dark, unbraided hair falls across his face, probably at least partially obscuring his vision. He doesn’t move to brush the locks away. Just watches. Just waits. 

Leone crawls into Bucchiarati’s bed in all his miserable glory and curls on himself, head pressed against Bruno’s shoulder. Bruno carefully pulls him closer, hand sneaking around Abbacchio’s middle while another cards through his hair until he slowly unfurls and settles into a more normal position. 

“Do you want to go back?” Bucchiarati’s voice is quiet, dulcet.

 “No. Yes. I don’t know,” then, after a pause, adds, “You’re happy here.”

“I am,” sighs Bruno into the crown of his head, “But I miss the morning briefings. I worry, Leone. I know all of them are capable people, but being in charge was easier to handle than to let them figure it out themselves.”

“Control freak,” scoffs Leone, “No wonder you and Giorno got along so well. He’s running Passione like the navy out there.”

“Mhm. Doesn’t make me any less worried.”

Leone isn’t good at comforting words or anything that doesn’t involve investigating or dismembering people, so he just hums something that sounds vaguely affirmative. He holds Bruno in his arms for the first time in his life and listens to his breath even out after a while.

Two days after Leone kind of just moves into Bruno’s bedroom Bucchiarati shows up to their little breakfast with a creature that vaguely resembles a dog.

“It’s a borzoi,” he explains, gesturing at the animal, “Quite rare in our side of the world. Can’t even fathom where Trish managed to acquire one, but he needed a home, so.”

The dog in question is tall and lanky and is about as wide as a sheet of paper. He’s grey with a slightly darker back and a bright white stripe spanning from his nose up to the forehead until abruptly ending there. He blinks, his eyes zeroing on Leone, and Leone is— He’s not sure. Mostly in disbelief. Somewhat angry. 

“I can't handle a dog,” he hisses through gritted teeth and points at the animal as incredulously as he can.

“You've handled Fugo just fine,” flatly says Bruno. He’s being dead serious about this. ”You'll manage.”

No I won’t, almost snaps Abbacchio. I can barely handle myself, and this is just—

“Can it— Can he— Can he at least be our dog?” meekly asks Leone. His head is spinning.

“No. This one's yours.”

“This one? Are you getting your own?”

Bucchiarati produces a sound that is almost a laugh but not quite. “I don't think that's a good idea, Leone.”

“I don't think this is a good idea, either,” he murmurs under his breath, tentatively brushing his fingers against the dog’s skull.

“You need to name him,” Bruno says.

“Doesn’t… Don’t dogs like this come with a name already?” The dog goes for a lap around the table and ends up standing next to Leone, breathing somewhere above his elbow. Leone instinctually stiffens, “Thoroughbreds from fancy lineages have naming rules, I think.”

Bucchiarati squints at him before opening his mouth as if he’s assessing if saying what he wants to say is appropriate. Then just shrugs.

“They do, but I figured you’d want something different. His name was Wind.”

Abbacchio thinks of the man who dragged him back into the world of living and left a handful of sand in his new lungs by accident. Thinks of a stand so jarringly inhuman, of how Golden Requiem’s eyes never blink, boring right into him and through him, looking at every hypothetical Leone Abbacchio to ever exist. Moody Blues whirrs and clicks. Aerosmith comes with the rumble of his engine. Golden Requiem is silent and devoid of any personal quirks or physical gestures. Just there. Just waiting for something. There’s a feeling in the back of Abbachio’s throat that he can’t name. There’s glass in his respiratory system that he doesn’t feel but just knows is there. It vibrates against his vocal cords.

“Ah.” says Abbacchio. 

“Yeah,” says Bruno. 

The dog curls on the floor at Leone’s feet. Bruno turns on the radio and moves onto preparing breakfast.

At the prime age of twenty three Leone Abbacchio discovers that he’s outstandingly bad at picking names. He cycles through a list of common Italian names and decides that the dog deserves something slightly less mediocre. He then goes through music genres, from Jazz to Opera as some sort of weird juxtaposition against Moody Blues, but none of them sound right. Monteverdi is another option he briefly considers and later ultimately decides that that’s too magniloquent.

He overhears kids at the pier talk about ospreys on one of the walks. They’re there more often than not, playing tag or hide and seek or chase or building sand castles; Leone opts to avoid approaching them, lest he wants to jostle some of the memories he tries so hard to forget. But kids are kids, and most of the time they’re loud enough for the wind to carry their voices right towards Abbacchio. One of them is talking about a DVD he watched, a documentary about ospreys. They’re fishermen, or, like, you know, fisher-birds! So cool, right? And they’re fast, like, really-really fast. I wonder if my dad’s boat can outrun an osprey. It’s sad there’s none in our region, I’d love to meet one. It would be awesome! 

According to his own small private investigation, ospreys, on average, are slower. The speed they develop when diving into the water is unmatched, but their general flight is slower than an average running pace of a borzoi. Also maybe naming something in honor of a bird he had never encountered in his life is stupid. It’s also a dog. 

But then again, Leone is named Leone despite being abhorrently human. Maybe a borzoi can be a fucking Osprey. Who cares. 

“I like it,” says Buchiaratti after a moment of consideration, leaning onto the kitchen counter with his hip. “And he likes fish just like real ospreys do.”

“How do you know?” 

“Have witnessed with my own two eyes,” he shrugs. 

“Are you feeding him fish?”

“This thing is taller than our fridge on his hind legs, Leone,” giggles Bruno, ducking away from Leone’s angered glare, “It’s impossible to keep him away from the counter.”

 “Unbelievable,” mutters Abbacchio, trying to force himself to frown. The corner of his mouth treacherously twitches upwards. Osprey perks up from his spot at his legs as if sensing the topic of the conversation. 

A week into the ordeal Leone still barely knows how to handle a dog, let alone a grown adult one. 

While Bruno is finishing his next cheesy medieval romance he dreamily sighs over, Abbacchio drowns in books about cynology. He scours each and every paper that has anything to do with hunting dogs at the local library. Osprey sprawls across the couch, taking up all of the space between Abbacchio and Bucchiarati and half of Abbachio’s lap as well. 

Modern borzoi dogs, reads one of the articles, are typically divided into two main categories: hunting dogs and show dogs. Show dogs tend to be more timid and reserved in nature in comparison. However, any borzoi dog is generally governed by its instincts — they were first and foremost created for chasing down prey on short distances. They’re devoid of protective instinct towards humans and are unsuitable for guarding duties. Not very demanding in terms of attention from their owner and are either indifferent or friendly towards people, but easily agitated at the sight of another animal. Borzoi dogs aren’t prone to being loud or noisy and rarely bark. Possess a high level of independence in decision-making and are distinguished by independent behavior, which should be taken into account when training them.

It’s impossible to tell what kind of training Osprey had gone through. He’s well-behaved, but if it's the result of effort of his previous handlers or his own intelligence Leone can’t tell. So Leone sighs and hands all of the borrowed books back to the library the next day. He’ll have to play this by ear.

Bruno was right. He’s been a successful mafioso, god damn it. Surely he can handle a dog.

He’s disproven quite fast the very first day he decides to take Osprey with him on a morning run. He obediently trots next to Abbacchio, his long limbs matching Leone’s running strides with ease. The air is still crisp and cold and the sea is getting darker in color day by day, foretelling the imminence of winter. Leone is still learning to pace his breathing properly.

And then Osprey suddenly stops dead in his tracks, whips around and bolts in a direction opposite of Abbacchio at such a speed his grey figure almost blurs together with the scenery, sand flying from under his trained paws. 

Leone has never run this fast in his life. By the time he manages to catch up to Osprey by some absolute miracle, he’s wheezing and sweating bullets as his lungs actually feel like they’re going to collapse any second. He holds the dog by his wide blue collar and thanks every higher power for the fact that he’s in a good enough physical shape to be actually able to hold Osprey in place.

The cat that Osprey managed to notice on the sidewalk from a god knows how big of a distance scurries away unharmed, barely avoiding the encounter with Osprey’s very deadly and eager teeth. 

“Easily agitated at the sight of another animal, huh,” rasps Abbacchio, sinking to the ground next to the dog. Osprey’s attention finally drifts back to him, now that the alleged prey of his had escaped, “That’s not agitated, that’s a fucking murder switch that got flipped. Holy shit.”

Osprey blinks at him and sneezes. Then sits down on the wet sand next to Abbacchio. 

Later at night, when both of them are hiding from the onslaught of the low temperatures and rainy weather under the covers, Bruno finds this entire affair incredibly funny.

“That’s endearing,” he grins, “He’s just like you.”

“Excuse me?” Abbacchio abruptly sits up. The blanket goes flying off his side of the bed. Bruno bursts into full-fledged laughter.

“Tall, lanky and angular for one,” he starts bending his fingers one by one, “Blindsighted by murderous intentions if given a target, for two. Fast runner for three. Long and soft hair to the touch for four.”

“Stop that,” he snarls.

“Temperamental for five,” giggles Bucchiarati. Leone swings at him, but Bruno easily dodges, “Hasty and self-reliant in his decisions for six.”

“You’re awful,” Abbacchio grumbles. Picks up the blanket and tosses it over both of them.

“Yeah, well,” says Bruno, settling closer to Leone with a yawn and doesn’t continue.

Osprey, with all his thoroughbred grace, haphazardly throws his limbs over the remaining space on the bed and half of Abbacchio.

And there’s that.