The sun had barely risen behind the thin curtain that covered the room’s only window. Leone turned over and went back to sleep.

“Hey.”

“Fucking <i>what</i>,” he mumbled, as Bruno shook him awake again.

“Come on, it’s time to get up.”

“Mmmph.” He squinted at Bruno, indistinct against the lamplight shining from the main room. Too early for any of this, dawn was really more of an hour for finally going to bed.

“Some crews go out in the middle of the night,” said Bruno, as if reading his thoughts. “They shine a bright light from the boat to bring the fish to the surface. It’s been a traditional way of fishing for centuries.”

“Great,” said Leone, sliding his legs over the edge of the tiny bed. Bruno had the tendency to go off on weird little tangents like that from time to time, and usually, it was cute, but right now, it was too damned early. But there was breakfast on the table, and, more importantly, there was coffee, and soon, they were on the road.

“Ever been fishing before?” The sun was actually fully risen now, the caffeine was jolting Leone’s nervous system into rough compliance with being up at this unholy hour.

“I’d never been on a boat before this year,” he admitted. Boats were a rich kid thing in the city, a strange contrast to here where no one seemed to have much money at all. Leone was once again struck by how much the Maserati stood out as Bruno pulled into a dockyard, parked among the pickup trucks and cheap sedans. He’d probably do better to trade it in, buy something more sensible, but anyone who knew Bruno for more than five minutes would find it more likely that he’d trade in an actual child. <i>Narancia, no food in the car. Mista, wipe your feet.</i> The man had few apparent attachments in life, but his love for that car was obvious.

They exited the vehicle and Leone followed Bruno to one of the many boats tied up along the docks. Nothing fancy, a seaworn vessel with a small cabin in front and, piled up on the deck in a spiral of floats and rope, “You have a net,” he said out loud.

“Yeah,” said Bruno, boarding by way of a small ladder on the side. “What did you think, we’d be going out with sticks and string?”

“Rods, but yeah.” The boat listed slightly as he stepped on the bottom rung. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder what Bruno actually did for a living now. He’d left, and his story was over, but of course he’d kept on living. His hometown was a fishing village. Bruno Buccellati, stylish gangster and rising capo of Passione, was now a fisherman.

“I catch anchovies,” he explained. “That’d take forever with rod fishing.” He smirked at his own joke and started the engine. The boat slowly made its way out of the slip, through the bustle of the harbor and the crowds of other fishermen starting their day. And, once they were further out into the placid blue of the Mediterranean, it picked up speed.

The land was rapidly receding from sight and Leone felt a strange sort of grief take hold. Unsurprising, as his emotional palette held only a few options nowadays, but nevertheless confusing; there seemed to be no way to no way he could react normally to mundane things nowdays. <i>Something’s really wrong</i>, he thought, which gave the ever-lurking panic the impetus to join up with the sadness and for his mood to spiral down, feeding into itself as it plummeted. This happened more often that he’d admit to himself, but this time-

This time Bruno was here. The man had been his anchor to the real world for so many years, or, to pick a less aptly nautical metaphor on this damned boat: if his depression was a hand squeezing his chest, Bruno was the one who loosened it for just a moment so he could breathe. Not a reason to live, exactly, but a reason to keep moving. Leone looked up at him and god, he looked like a Dolce and Gabbana ad there at the steering wheel. Lovely, singularly elegant even in such a casual pose. Hair blowing back in the sea breeze and lips slightly pursed.<i>You’re going to be fine.</i>

Relax.

Leone closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. Okay. It’s okay. For fuck’s sake, there’s nothing to be anxious about. Actually, it was a little nice to be out here in the middle of - his eyes snapped open - nothing. Sea stretching out in all directions, the edges just touching the featureless sky. He was suddenly aware of how much of his day was taken up by paying attention to <i>things</i>, shadows and noises and people and vehicles, the thousands of little details that made up the ecosystem of the city. When you’re a cop or a gangster, you’re a target. Out here, there was nothing to watch out for, as far as he could see. Little waves, the sun playing off the water, and the boat. And Bruno.

Bruno, who evidently had more of an idea of what to look for: he’d slid a pair of binoculars from a compartment near the steering wheel and was scanning the horizon. Leone tried to imagine what he could possibly be scouting for, other boats? How far they were from land? He had no idea himself, he was used to approximating distance from city blocks and landmarks. They’d been traveling for a little while now, were well surrounded by the sea and-

“Ah,” said Bruno. He gestured with one hand, still focused on something in the distance. “C’mere.”

Leone took the offered binoculars and looked for himself. Hm. The horizon looked pretty much the same magnified, blue against blue. “What the hell am I looking at?”

“Hmph.” Bruno took the binoculars back, took a moment to find his target again, and stood to the side, holding them in place. “Here.” He had to crouch down a little to Bruno’s eye height, and was acutely aware of Bruno’s hand resting on his shoulder, radiating syrupy heat and comfort, but- there it was. A flock of lazy gulls, circling in place and every now and then ducking down to the water. “They gather where a school of fish is near the surface, we’ll try over there.”

Sure enough, the water was teeming with them, tiny silver flashes a few centimeters down. Leone had never seen an anchovy that wasn’t on a pizza or providing a snack for Mista straight out of the can, but he was distracted from watching them by the splash of Bruno shoving the end of the net into the water. “This’ll be a lot easier with two people,” he said. “Make sure it doesn’t get tangled as it comes off the boat.” He returned to the steering wheel and began a slow circle around the school, nodding now and then at Leone who fed the net into the sea as Bruno had done. One end was buoyed by floats and the other sunken with weights; the effect was a sort of bottomless fence around the fish. Interesting, but it wasn’t clear how this would actually bring them in.

Ah. Bruno stopped the boat again and pulled on a line that drew the bottom of the net together. Once the netting had been gathered into a bowl-like shape, he switched on a motorized winch that dragged the entire contraption out of the water and over the deck. And then, it came down, along with thousands of anchovies and a slosh of salt water that washed over Leone’s boots like the tide coming in. Bruno tossed him a pair of gloves and opened the hatch. “Just kind of shove them in there. Get rid of anything that’s not an anchovy.” He picked up a larger fish and hurled it back in the sea. “Fucking mackerel.”

<hr />

A man at the docks vacuumed the catch out of the hold and handed Bruno a wad of cash, and they were done. That was “fishing”. Leone had expected it to be more active, but there were large spans of time taken up by sailing, and looking for the next school. Nevertheless, he was physically tired in a way he hadn’t been since the heavy training days of the police academy. Palms burned by the hiss of the net through his hands, gait still adjusting to the solidity of dry land. Smelling like sweat and seawater and feeling… all right? At the very least, not bad. He stalled a bit opening the door of the Maserati, expecting a rebuke, but Burno didn’t seem to care that he was about to get in his car in the condition he was in.

“Oi!”

Bruno looked up from the door handle and gave a wave. “Hey, there!” A tall, dark haired man approached the car, a grin of familiarity on his face.

“How’s she treating you?”

Leone’s hands curled into fists. There was a certain sort of man who saw the long hair and dark lipstick and found it <i>incredibly</i> funny to call him a girl. The laughter usually ceased when he stood up and they saw how fucking huge he was. <i>Fucking dipshit, thinks he’s so clever-</i>.

“Pretty well,” said Bruno. “I replaced the winch, but other than that, things have been fine.”

<i>The boat. He’s talking about the fucking boat</i>.

“Glad to hear it,” the man said. “We’re gonna go see dad for Sofia’s second birthday this weekend, I’ll tell him things are good.”

“Send him my regards.” Bruno smiled his inimitable little grin, so fucking devastating. “This is my friend, Leone, by the way. I’m showing him the ropes. Leone, Anthonio.”

Anthonio laughed. “Get out while you still can, man.”

“Yeah,” said Leone, completely lost in this particular conversation.

“Eh, you know,” said Bruno, sliding into the Ligurian cadence that haunted his speech when he was particularly tired or stressed out. And continued in completely incomprehensible Ligurian, sounding closer to French than Italian to Leone’s ears. Anthonio answered him in kind and they both chuckled. Some kind of proverb, maybe? The physical exhaustion was giving way to an almost visceral feeling of loneliness.

“See you ‘round, then,” Bruno concluded in Italian, and they finally got in the car.

“I bought that boat off his father,” explained Bruno once they were on the road. “He’s in chemo for lung cancer right now, so.” A half shrug, in a ‘you know how it is’ fashion. And then: “Was I weird? I always feel weird talking to him.”

“No?” said Leone. Totally normal, his regular charming self.

“He was my first crush, I guess I never really got past that.” This was a confirmation of something everybody somehow <i>knew</i> without being told: Bruno Buccellati was gay. He never talked about his personal life, never seemed to <i>have</i> a personal life, in fact, but it was just something that was common knowledge in the gang. There were little tells, like the way he’d roll his eyes when the lads would talk about models and actresses, or the way he acted coldly towards the women who flocked around him. Or that one month when Sorbet and Gelato were broken up, and Sorbet came sniffing around like he was on the prowl.

“Nah, you were fine. Did you, uh,” he said unthinkingly. Why the hell would he want to know about Bruno’s past conquests?

“He’s married. To a woman, with one kid and another on the way.”

“Ah.” He unconsciously made a fist again, <i>I should have punched him</i> floating to the front of his mind. Fucking punched him for what? For the crime of being an oblivious straight kid? For the unforgivable error of not knowing that he was loved, for missing out on what could have been a great thing? Goddamnit. <i>Hello, anger</i>, he said to himself in resignation, greeting his own old friend.

They drove on through the yellow-green countryside. “So how was your first day of fishing,” said Bruno lightly.

“I thought it would smell more.”

He laughed. “That’s dead fish, city boy. You’re in the land of the living, now.”