digiorno | ic inbox ( ruby city ) Ⅰ

I'll probably misspell it. Bruno something.

[Which is vague, but not too vague, and assuming he's right, probably all that Giorno's going to need.]

He seemed nice.

[Nailed it, Jotaro. Nailed it.]

Well, I don't know everyone from Napoli.

[Just almost everybody. And definitely Bruno something.]

Nice how?

Friendly. Seems like he cares a lot about his family.

I think he said he was some kind of local politician? He was pretty passionate about city beautification.

[There's a pause here, while Giorno looks up the conversation again - to refresh his memory, and also to lend credence to:]

Oh, he reminds me of someone I used to know.

Are you sure he's talking about city beautification, though?

Cleaning up the community? That's what it sounded like.

Still, maybe you could find some common ground to talk about, if you ever got together.

It sounds like it. What a coincidence that he arrived so close to me.

[:))))))))))]

[All right, that should do it. Giorno's far from stupid, and given the general tenor of amusement in the underpinnings of the messages he's getting back, Bruno Buccellati probably checks out, too.

Which is good, because if for some reason he'd turned out to not be the kind of face Giorno wanted to see in and hailing from Napoli —

...

......

...Wait. That was a sort of...oddly adamant surge of inexplicable loyalty to just come out of left field like that, wasn't it.

...Hmmm.]

We should hang out sometime, too. Speaking of that.

[That's a nice thing to hear - especially since Giorno knows that Jotaro knows that Giorno isn't being completely honest with him. Nice, but not wholly unexpected. Jotaro is shockingly kind, for someone so loath to express himself.]

I'd like that. Something's come up that I'd like to talk to you about.

[Which is a sideways kind of promise.]

[Hmm. Now, the question of the moment is, does he mean something different from the current topic, or is this just an easy pretext to get off the pocketwatches...]

Is it urgent?

Not urgent! It's just a conversation better had in person, I think.

This isn't a trick to get me to come over so you can rope me into helping you move furniture, is it?

That depends. How many chairs can you lift in one hand?

As many as you can stack on top of each other.

Then I'll have to find more chairs.

How long will that take you? I'm not doing anything right now, so I can lift them whenever.

I can usually find things very quickly. Would an hour from now work for you?

[An hour is probably enough time to. Gear up for this.]

Sure. Same place as before?

Are you referring to the coffee shop or the middle of the street?

If you want to pile up chairs in the middle of the street I can't really stop you.

Maybe sometime if there's ever a revolution here. For now, sitting on chairs inside is probably better than making a barricade outside.

OK. I'll be there in an hour.

[alas, if his tutelage in emoji had already begun there would probably be a smiling or at least vaguely affirmative one punctuating that, too, but for now that is all there is.]

See you then.

[And he is, of course, there promptly, looking as though he never left the table, right down to the half-drunk cappuccino.]

[He's reasonably on time when he comes rolling in, hat brim pulled down low over his eyes and his hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat, and the good news is he seems...genuinely calmer today than he'd been previously, having made good use of the downtime to settle and begin sorting some things out, and obviously not getting blindsided by unexpected flashbacks to one terrible night in Cairo isn't hurting anything, either.

The empty chair that Kakyoin had occupied, though, does earn a glance that lingers just slightly too long, before he sits and settles himself back in with the same vague discomfort of not precisely fitting into the cafe's chair as before.]

I don't have to ask permission to sit or something, do I?

[He says, already seated.]

[It's good to see Jotaro calm. It really is. Not that it's Giorno's place to worry about him, necessarily, but - well, he's never been very good at keeping to his place, and Jotaro is already important to him for several reasons.]

[The probability that this conversation will make him upset again is . . . not zero, but Giorno gave himself a little bit of buffer time to work out how to make is as painless as possible.]

[Still, professionalism or no, he wrinkles his nose at the question.]

Don't be ridiculous. You're not my subordinate.

[Jotaro is - sort of sideways. Probably. He's still working it out.]

[He tips his head a little to the side, taking that in, and as he does he adds it silently to the repertoire of little things that he's gradually picking up from Giorno — not just that words are important, but distinctions are, too. Some of them, he suspects, can overlap, even if he doesn't know what the outcome is when they do. But he can tell that it's important, somehow, subtly so, to have a good grasp of where it is he stands with Giorno Giovanna, which of those distinctions are likely to be applied, and what they mean once they are.

"Family" is the one to watch for; talking with Giorno and Buccellati both has made it abundantly clear that it's a word they both put a lot of significance on. It's something, he suspects, that's earned and not simply discovered. But "friend", that one might be floating around nebulously to acquire someday, and "not my subordinate" strikes him as valuable too, in an equally vague and ambient way.

...Plus, the fact that he cracked enough to make a face is a little encouraging.]

You're right about that.

[Which probably didn't need to be said, but there it is.]

So. Something's come up?

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