The first time Abbacchio met you, you'd been sobbing into a waffle cone right outside a tabacchi, cradling a pigeon wrapped in a napkin. The poor creature had shat on your sleeve, and yet you'd still insisted on saving it. He'd told you to let the damn thing go. You said "Maybe it's scared. We all do stupid things when we're scared."

Abbacchio still doesn't know why that sentence stuck with him, but it pissed him off. Greatly.

The second time, you'd held a battered copy of Dante's Inferno, cornered him in a bookstore, grinning like an idiot. Inside was a post-it note: "You remind me of the angry one. Not the hot one. The other."

He hadn't said anything as he took the book, immediately throwing it out when you weren't looking.

(He went back the next day and bought another copy, just in case—in case of what?)

Abbacchio should've, and had, at some extent, known it would only worse.

You'd started appearing everywhere. Never intrusive or particularly demanding, just... there. His usual café, sipping a cappuccino at 2 o'clock like some sort of lunatic with a penchant for offending Italian culture. The pier, the tram, the dock, always pretending you were surprised to see him, always smiling like it meant something.

Then came the notes, always tucked into something idiotic, whether it be matchbooks or croissants or those sudokus you'd find in the middle of a newspaper, one written in eyeliner on a torn paper napkin: “Every time I see you, it feels like my heart’s been hit by a small, unlicensed scooter.”

You weren't well. At all.

Yet he never blocked you. Never tossed the notes with enough force that they didn’t find their way home to his coat pocket. Never sent you away with enough fury to scre you off.

He told himself you'd lose interest eventually, so why bother? That your little obsession would whither away. That you'd find someone who actually smiled back, someone who wasn’t drinking himself into the silhouette of a ghost every night.

You didn’t.

The night he finally, truly hit rock bottom, stumbling down the three flights of stairs separating his apartment from the ground floor, blackout drunk, bleeding from the head and leg, he had a brief thought, just before losing consciousness.

You’re going to love this, aren’t you, you absolute freak.

Then nothing.

He awoke to a pain like a steel-toed boot in his shin, blinding white light, and an IV drip stuck to his arm. One eye fluttered open, and he groaned, regretting it instantly.

There you were. Of course you were.

You sat beside his hospital bed with the audacity of a feral raccoon that'd claimed a garbage can and dared someone to fight you for it. Your coat was too big, your hair was a mess, and you hummed reading Wuthering Heights like a psychopath.

He stared. You didn’t look up yet.

“…No,” came his voice, raspy and painful sounding. “Absolutely fucking not.”

You finally lifted your head, blinked, and smiled like he’d just offered you to elope.

“Why are you here?”

You opened your mouth.

“Actually, shut the fuck up. I don’t care.”

His face turned away from you with a scowl like the sun was in his hospital room, too bright and irritating and smelling of cinnamon. Silence followed, long. He could hear you turning the page. You didn't leave. He absolutely despised you.

He despised himself even more for not calling the nurse to kick you out.

The paper left on his bedside table caught his attention. He reached for it, wearily, unveiling a drawing. Ink. It was him, adorning a hospital town, a cast, as disheveled and annoyed as a wet cat, captioned: “Fall for me” — Me, five seconds before the fifth floor incident."

He stared at it. Didn't bother to look up at you.

“You are deeply unwell,” he said flatly, and you grinned.

He stared up at the ceiling for a long, long moment again, asking the void for a second chance, a better staircase, a different universe where you, the supersitious lunatic who stuck to him like glue, had fallen for somebody else. Someone easier. Someone more manageable.

He didn't ask you to leave.