Chapter Text
For all their differences, Abbacchio is actually a very good addition to the team. Fugo has to admit this after several weeks of pointed skepticism, because it’s difficult—not to mention a little rude—not to have a little respect for a guy who’s just saved your life.
They’re having lunch when it happens; Fugo’s halfway to taking another bite out of his sandwich when both his sandwich and the entire diner around him vanish in a swirl of movement. In the time it takes for him to register that he’s been shoved under the table, Abbacchio has already landed two clean shots into their assailant. It must have all happened in a span of two seconds: three gunshots, a dull thud, then a sharp scream. Fugo looks up and sees the exploded upholstery of his seat’s backrest, just behind the spot where his face had been—a thick rupture of beige foam padding spilling out like brain matter from under the perforated faux leather. There hadn’t even been enough time for fear—it was already over by the time he’d realised anything had happened.
Abbacchio’s half-drunk for the whole thing, of course, because Abbacchio is half-drunk pretty much all the time (with the possible exception of their Wednesdays off, which is when he goes and gets himself fully drunk), but he’s enough of a practised alcoholic that it’s hard to tell anyway, and after this impressive demonstration of mental acuity Fugo really has no complaints anymore whatsoever.
When Fugo manages to climb back up to his feet, he finds Abbacchio standing over their freshly neutralised threat, poking at his body with the toe of a boot as the man writhes and screams and bleeds all over the linoleum, clutching at his thigh. It’s at this point that Fugo glances over at Bruno, finds him watching the sculpted lines of Abbacchio’s back with his mouth slightly parted and possibly watering.
“Care to tell us who you work for?” Abbacchio digs a heel into a bloody patch on the man’s torso, compressing a shriek and then a sobbed curse and then a whimpered name out of his throat. He turns to Bruno, “You got all that, yeah? Because I don’t actually know who that is,” slides his gun back into its holster—a sturdy leather thing, strapped tight around the thick muscle of his thigh—with the careless ease of someone completely in his element. “Oh. Sorry, didn’t mean to do that part for you, but this one looked easy.”
Standing right next to him, Fugo watches the pupils of Bruno’s eyes dilate, darkening his pale blue irises, and well, he can’t say he doesn’t get the appeal.
* * *
It’s more than lust though, what’s going on between Bruno and Abbacchio. That much becomes clear when Bruno doesn’t pounce the moment they get back to the safe house. He just stares, with this irritating longing look, while Abbacchio kicks the bloodstained boots off his feet, cursing up a storm and heading straight for the shower.
Bruno stays in the doorway for several seconds beyond what would be considered typical, just standing there in his socks, looking slightly stunned.
They’re sitting at the kitchen table as the shower runs in the background. Fugo’s busy working his way through some slightly overripe tangerines, watching Bruno not very convincingly pretend to read a magazine. He’s probably just listening to the water and imagining Abbacchio soaping himself up, hot and wet and naked; that’s what Fugo’s doing, anyway. The small segment of orange peel he flicks across the table strikes the glossy cover girl on the forehead with a little thwack . “Hey, if you’re not going for it I will.”
“What?” Bruno looks up from the page he’s been parked at for several minutes, frowning, playing innocent. Fugo rolls his eyes, jerks his chin towards the bathroom door. It’s been left ajar, and if that isn’t just the most exciting thing in the world.
“I said if you’re not going for it, I will.”
Bruno scowls, “don’t talk about him like that.” Fugo blinks, then grins. He slides a foot up Bruno’s leg to rest on his thigh.
“You’re thinking it too, though, aren’t you?” He lets his toes pry Bruno’s legs open, “want me to help take the edge off?” There’s a drop of orange juice rolling down his wrist, which he licks off, glancing over at the bathroom door where the water is still running, “might have to be real quiet though.”
Bruno yanks himself out of reach, standing, too abruptly. The movement knocks his chair backwards and it lands with a muffled clatter against the carpet. He throws the magazine onto the table between them, looking almost murderous, which is just confusing.
They haven’t done anything in weeks , not since Abbacchio got here. And maybe a couple of days to adjust would have been understandable but it’s been long enough and Fugo needs to fucking get off , damn it. Surely Bruno must be feeling it too. He frowns, “I’m just saying I think he’ll be in there a whi—”
“No .” And since when did Bruno get so shy about doing it with other people around? He never had a problem back when Toni used to stay here; the walls in this building were so thin everybody pretty much knew what everybody else got up to anyway.
“No as in you’re not thinking it? Or no as in you don’t want me to help take the edge off?”
“No as in we’re not having this conversation, Fugo.” There’s a finality to that tone that’s infuriating; Bruno’s never pulled rank like this before.
“What the hell is wrong with you? You’ve been fucking weird ever since he got here.” The sound of water cuts out then, leaving an icy sort of silence in its wake. Bruno’s eyes dart over to the bathroom door, and then he just picks his magazine back up off the table, moving to the sofa to continue pretending to read it.
“You know he’s not a cop anymore, right?” He says to the back of Bruno’s head, “it’s not like he can actually arrest you.” Not that it really matters either way; Fugo’s had so many cops he thinks he might be able to figure out their ranks by mouthfeel alone. But Bruno actually flinches at this. Flinches . Bruno—the guy who once tore out a man’s tongue and made it lick his own face— flinches, because oh of course Bruno thinks cops are some kind of gold standard in morality now, even the disgraced drunks.
Fugo scowls. “Whatever,” he says, pushing himself to his feet as the bathroom door creaks open. Bruno’s clearly not going to put out anytime soon, or possibly ever again.
He makes sure to slam the front door behind him as he leaves; from the hallway he can still hear Abbacchio’s voice, the words only slightly muffled through the paper-thin walls. He’s probably shirtless, probably dripping water down his chest, towel draped across those broad, muscled shoulders— “That the kid? Where the hell is he going?”
And fuck. Fugo really, really needs to get off.
He can’t remember the last time anybody’s called him a kid.
*
He spends the night at Edoardo’s, because Edoardo never asks questions and never says no to anything; he’s always liked the guy.
In another life he might have joined Edoardo’s little operation instead, parting tourists with their wallets on a scale that should definitely be raising some eyebrows in Passione leadership, because while Edoardo has made it very clear that he’s not actually involved in 'their whole song and dance', his weekly takings are nothing to be sniffed at. For now though there appears to be some kind of gentleman’s agreement where Passione turns a blind eye to Edoardo’s business as long as Edoardo keeps his business north of the theatre district.
“Maybe I should come work for you,” Fugo muses out loud. He is flushed and boneless and sated, content to just lie flat and not get up for the next hour or ten. The sex is amazing, of course, but sometimes Fugo wonders if the whole joy of doing it is to get to this part; Edoardo is propped up on some pillows, fiddling with a lit cigarette while his other hand strokes idly at Fugo’s messy, sweat-damp hair.
“Mhm?”
“I said maybe I should come work for you, then I could be here more.”
“Oh. Oh nuh-uh-uh, no way man. Not a chance,” the hand on his head is snatched away, a sudden loss of contact which makes Fugo’s chest ache. He shifts closer, presses his shoulder to Edoardo’s side.
“You were the one who offered,” he mumbles, a bit put out. Fugo could be a good pickpocket if he tried. He just needed a little practice; maybe some proper instruction; maybe some proper incentives.
“That offer expired the moment you went and got yourself involved with the goddamn mafia—still a stupid-ass decision, by the way—okay, sorry, sorry —” he breaks off at Fugo’s glare, mutters something unintelligible before continuing, “but if you think I’m gonna go poking that bear you must be out of your mind. That Bucciarati will have my cock on a skewer if I ever try to poach you.”
Fugo arches his neck to meet Edoardo’s eyes, flutters his lashes in the way he knows makes men want to ruin his face. He sets a palm on Edoardo’s stomach—on the smattering of dark hair under the navel—his touch light and teasing. “Guess we can’t have that,” he smiles sweetly, “you know how much I love your cock.”
The answering snort comes out as a puff of smoke, “christ you’re fucking insatiable, kid, you know that?” It’s that word again; for some odd reason he’s hearing it more the older he gets.
“Am I?” Fugo asks, frowning.
“Are you what?”
“A kid.”
Edoardo blinks. For a while he says nothing, blank-faced and thoughtful, looking for all like he’s seeing Fugo for the first time. Then he turns away, sucks a slow breath through the length of his cigarette before sighing a noxious cloud of white.
“Nah,” he says quietly, shaking his head, “don’t suppose you ever were.” He reaches for the crumpled box of Camels on the wooden stool he’s using as a nightstand, tips one out in a wordless offer. Fugo declines.
* * *
It’s more than lust, what’s going on between Bruno and Abbacchio. It’s gross, is what it is, because the two of them are disgustingly hot and clearly want to fuck each other silly, but they’re just. Not. Which as far as Fugo is concerned, is a complete waste of resources.
Now Abbacchio’s getting all tense and Bruno’s getting all twitchy—still not letting Fugo anywhere near him—and there’s a limit to how many nights Fugo can stay at Edoardo’s before the guy gets nervous and starts muttering paranoid crap about encroaching Passione territory and Bucciarati coming for his balls. Fugo needs to fix this last week.
And then Abbacchio goes and fumbles a shot, during a chase a couple of days later.
They’ve been tracking this dude down for weeks, and now they’re back to square one with no other leads and several hundred man-hours circling the drain. Fugo is, in his opinion, justifiably pissed.
“—and maybe if you tried being sober for once in your miserable life —”
He’s been laying into the guy for quite a while now, so it’s a real testament to Abbacchio’s character that he’s lasted even this long, but it’s at this point that he finally snaps, rounding on him, wraps a rough hand around Fugo’s jaw. His voice is a low, gravelly snarl, “you watch your fucking mouth .”
It’s hard to say if it’s the skin contact that does it, or that voice, or the slight suggestion of pain, or just that very physical reminder of Abbacchio’s power in relation to his, but it’s like the air’s been punched right out of his lungs. A rush of heat shudders through Fugo’s body and settles somewhere in the root of his dick, churns his stomach. “Yeah?” He breathes, almost dizzy with the force of his own desire, “Bruno ever tell you what else I can do with my mouth, officer?”
It’s not like he’s planned this all out in advance, though even as he says it he knows it’s a good play. There are maybe two ways this can all go down: either this jump-starts the two morons into having a frank conversation about all the stress-relief options available between a couple of comrades, or Abbacchio bites and Fugo gets to have a little bit of fun himself. Either way, win-win.
“What?” Abbacchio just looks confused; his grip loosens a fraction. He clearly needs more of a push, so Fugo sticks the tip of his tongue out, just a little, nothing too outrageous, just moistening his lips a bit, gets them pink and shiny with his own spit. He lets his lidded gaze glide across Abbacchio’s body as he does it, heavy with implication, just to drive everything home.
“What ?” But this only seems to confuse him further, enough that he releases Fugo to take an unsteady step back. Fugo rubs absently at his jaw, a little forlorn. Being manhandled was kind of nice.
“Did you—did he just,” Abbacchio splutters, incredulous “did your boy just hit on me?”
He can’t deny this response is a little disappointing. There are people who are into that, but Fugo doesn’t get the sense that this particular instance of boy is indicating any kind of latent fetish here. Abbacchio spins on his heel towards Bruno, whose face has gone completely void of all colour, frozen in a kind of horrified rage.
*
Bruno finds him the next morning, as Fugo’s slipping back into the flat, sitting at the table nursing a coffee like it’s single-malt.
“Fugo, can you come sit?”
Fugo obliges, wincing as his ass hits the hard wooden chair; sat down way too fast there. “Yeah?” He knows what’s coming, of course.
“Look, we can’t do this anymore.” It still stings just the same, being shoved aside for the newer model, but Fugo can’t say he doesn’t get it. Abbacchio is definitely a looker, even if he can’t stand up straight sometimes.
“Yeah, I figured.”
“I’m sorry,” Bruno is hunched over in his chair, sounding so solemn and so sad that it just rubs Fugo the wrong way. What’s he got to be miserable for? He’s the one who decided to end this.
He rolls his eyes, “Bruno, you don’t have to apologise. I know you have a nice dick and all but I’m not gonna cry just because you won’t let me—” He nearly tips over in his chair as Bruno punches him in the face. Pain flares up his jaw. Christ , that hurt; Bruno had not been holding back. “Changed your tune fast enough,” Fugo sneers. He tastes blood in his mouth and runs his tongue over his teeth in assessment. All there, so maybe Bruno had held back a little bit. Warning punch then, not actually trying to hurt him.
Bruno’s on his feet, scowling at him across the table. He’s put it between them on purpose, Fugo realises, but he’s going to have to do better than that. Fugo leaps forward, grabbing the front of Bruno’s shirt to drag him closer. The kiss lasts all of two seconds before he’s shoved away.
“No,” Bruno’s eyes are pressed shut like he can’t even bear to look at him, which is pretty rude, considering. He shakes his head and wipes at his mouth, pink and slightly bloody, “no we can’t.”
“Pretty sure we can. And we have,” Fugo reminds him.
“I’m sorry.” Apologising—why does he keep doing that? He should just tell Fugo to fuck off if that’s what he wants Fugo to do. “We should have never—you’re just a kid.”
And again, that word.
So this is what it’s been about. Did seeing Abbacchio remind him what people his age looked like? Bruno did just turn twenty, maybe he’s having a problem because they’re not both teenagers anymore. But it’s still the same five years between them. Five years is nothing. Five years is just about when he remembers being rolled out for parties to entertain guests with snippets of Mozart, and he bets Bruno can’t do that even now, so what does that really say about age anyway.
“Never stopped you before.”
“Maybe it should have.”
“Did he tell you to say all this?” Fugo raises an eyebrow, tilting his head towards the bedroom. He can hear Abbacchio’s soft snores through the door—the guy probably passed out again.
Bruno pales. There’s a strange expression on his face that Fugo takes a moment to recognise as terror—he’s never seen that on Bruno before. He doubts he’ll ever see it again. “Fugo,” his voice is small, weaker than Fugo’s ever heard it, “Fugo, you can’t tell him.”
He folds his arms, “don’t you think he’d like to know?”
“Fugo, please don’t tell him,” pleading; that’s a new one too. Fugo’s not sure he likes seeing Bruno like this. It feels wrong, somehow. “He’s not like—” Then he stops, but Fugo knows what he’d been about to say. As annoyed as he is by this whole thing, he does understand what Bruno means. He’s not like us.
‘Us’—him and Bruno—the kind of people who did their growing up in a kind of place like Passione.
There was a way time worked that was slightly different out here. It just didn’t pass the same way it did for everyone else—the people who went to school and played basketball with their friends and went back home to a proper bed and proper meals and proper mothers who kissed them on the cheek. The streets were littered with very old children and very young grown-ups. It defied chronology, something like that. Time just worked differently; sometimes five years was five years, and sometimes it wasn’t, and that’s not something you can explain to somebody who didn’t already intuitively understand. Abbacchio did not intuitively understand, and he never would.
“I won’t tell him,” Fugo promises, letting the sincerity bleed through in his voice. “I won’t, okay? It’s none of his business anyway.”
Bruno’s shoulders ease, and because Fugo can’t let him get off that easily, he adds “but you know, I’ll always be here if you ever get bored.” He takes a moment to enjoy the way Bruno’s face tightens in a pained grimace, then slips into the bedroom before he can respond.
* * *
Kid had been the word Fugo disputed, when Edoardo had used it, but there had been that other one too, the one that was far more frightening, which is why Fugo hadn’t wanted to think about it too hard.
Fugo’s mostly fine with kid, honestly, because it’s relative. It’s not a word that has anything to do with who he is—not really—just how long he’s been alive in relation to who’s talking. No matter what, there will come a day where he will have grown out of it, and then it wouldn’t even matter any more.
The other one though… Fugo doesn’t know if he will ever grow out of that.
Insatiable, Edoardo had said. His tone had been light, teasing, but that’s only because he had no idea how close he’d hit to the mark.
Insatiable. If he’d only known about that gaping chasm inside Fugo’s stomach, that void that only warm bodies and brain-melting orgasms seemed to be able to fill, and even then only briefly, only for a little while, before that crushing need would overwhelm him again. It terrifies him, sometimes, how deep his cravings can really go, how little control he seems to have over any of it. The truth is he might not have any control at all. Maybe void is the wrong word here—it’s a monster inside him, and when it makes demands Fugo has no choice but to obey. It terrifies him that it might never go away, ever, that he might have to live with this… this thing gnawing on his insides for the rest of his life, without relief, that will always be there, always need more, always hungry, never satisfied.
Insatiable.
“I want him,” Fugo says, without preamble.
Bruno ignores him, continuing to chew leisurely on a mouthful of spaghetti, dabs his mouth with a napkin before taking a sip of tea, not even acknowledging that he’s there. That’s fine, two can play this game. Fugo just sits, waits patiently with his arms folded, because he isn’t going to let Bruno psych him out on this one.
When Bruno sets his cup delicately back into its saucer Fugo says again, “I want him.”
And Bruno replies simply, “no.”
“That’s not fair,” he hates how petulant he sounds, but Bruno has a way of bringing out the worst in him, “that’s not fair. You got to pick one.”
Bruno sighs; he’s finally looking at him now, three full minutes after Fugo first burst into the restaurant and planted himself at Bruno’s table, refusing to budge. Bruno will definitely have some pointed words with the Libeccio staff later about letting people into his private dining room without notice; Fugo would feel bad about throwing that waiter under the bus like this, but also the guy really shouldn’t have let him in, so he kind of brought this on himself. Fugo will send him a gift basket. “Fugo, I like the kid as much as you do, but he has a father. Believe me when I say he’s not worth that kind of trouble.”
“I found him going through the garbage for food, so I don’t really think this father is going to be any sort of trouble at all.”
“Fugo,” Bruno says sharply, betraying his carefully masked irritation, “ no.”
“Abbacchio has a father.”
“Abbacchio is old enough to make informed decisions about his own life.”
“Yeah?” Fugo sneers, “so you informed him about everything going on with us before you jumped into bed with him, yeah?”
Anyone who didn’t know Bruno as well as he did might’ve missed that tiny hitch in his breath, the way his body stills for just a moment before he reaches for his fork. He puts another bite of spaghetti into his mouth, chases it with another slow sip of tea. When he finally speaks again, his voice is deceptively calm, “you can’t keep bringing that up whenever things don’t go your way.”
“Yeah,” Fugo tries not to look too triumphant, but he knows he’s already won, “yeah, I know. Someday it’s not going to work anymore,” he grins, leaning forward, “not today though, right?”
Bruno’s gaze is fixed firmly on his plate. He does not answer for a long while, just sits with his fists clenched on the table, breathing slowly, deeply, like he’s trying his best not to lose his composure. When he finally looks up, his eyes are burning with something akin to genuine hatred.
For a brief, terrifying moment, Fugo thinks he might have actually gone too far this time, pushed too hard, but then Bruno presses his eyes shut, takes one last fortifying breath before speaking, “you’ll watch over his recovery. You’ll teach him everything he needs to know. I wash my hands of this whole thing. You’ll take him to see Polpo yourself. He is your responsibility, his mistakes are your mistakes, am I clear?” And that panic in Fugo’s chest ebbs away.
He rolls his eyes, trying to look less rattled than he feels, “I promise to feed him and wash him and take him on walks every day, dad.” This is a joke, of course, a parody of a kind of relationship neither of them will ever actually know. Bruno allows him a slight quirk of his lips. He takes a sip of his tea as Fugo rises to leave.
“Oh, Fugo,” he adds, so casually as to be anything but, “this is the last time you will ever threaten me, understood?” He sets his cup down in its saucer with a sharp clink, leans back slightly in his chair to cross his legs in one smooth, deadly movement. His eyes are steady, intent, daring Fugo to challenge him. Fugo swallows.
“Yes sir.”
Bruno holds his gaze, says nothing, lets the silence fill the air. It’s an interrogation technique Bruno had taught him a long time ago. People are very afraid of quiet , he’d said. If you do nothing, they torture themselves with horrors in their head worse than anything you could possibly come up with. And then he’d just stood there, twirling a screwdriver in front of an informant until the man had broken down and just told them everything.
Fugo’s fully aware of what Bruno’s trying to do here, but he still finds himself starting to sweat under this unrelenting scrutiny, that cold silence reminding Fugo without words, of Giancarlo Di Chirico, scattered across the city in fourteen separate parts, of which only three were ever found (left foot, right arm, left eyeball), of Jacopo Varda, pissing himself as Bruno had brought a chisel up to his back molars, a mallet rubbing gentle circles into his shoulder, of Matti Anselmo, unwillingly parted from his fingernails with a pair of needle-nose pliers.
Bruno just watches him, lets that silence stretch until he is sure Fugo remembers every single one of these men, and perhaps a dozen others, and when finally he is content with what he reads on Fugo's face, he smiles a bland little smile, lifts his teacup to his lips, “now get the fuck out of my sight.”
Only too happy to oblige, Fugo flees.
* * *
Fugo is true to his word, teaches Narancia all there is to know about being a good Passione soldier. It turns out to be fairly straightforward, since a large part of what makes a good mafioso is just basic survival skills, and Narancia is nothing if not a survivor.
He doesn’t fuck Narancia. He doesn’t. He’s surprised at first that he doesn’t even really want to, but Narancia’s not his type, for one, and more importantly he is Fugo’s responsibility, so Fugo doesn’t fuck him. Most days he doesn’t even consider it, and on the rare occasion that he does, he knows it’s time to find Edoardo, or Gaetan, or anyone, really—even fucking Carlos, at this point.
It’s just a line Fugo doesn’t want to cross, though he can’t quite articulate why. He just doesn’t want to do it—doesn’t want to touch Narancia, in much the same way you wouldn’t want to touch a clean tablecloth with mud all over your hands.
Despite what the Minister of Public Education would like people to believe, five years of juvie is no adequate substitute for an actual education. There’s no beating around the bush—this is a bit of a problem; there are significant gaps in Narancia’s foundational knowledge which he refuses to address. Fugo tries his best to fill them in as and when he learns where they are, but there is only so much you can do for someone who isn’t cooperating, and Narancia is very much not cooperating. Narancia isn’t having any of it. He survived this long without Fugo’s help, he argues, he doesn’t need it now.
He blows up spectacularly when Fugo first brings him the textbook, screams that Fugo is being a snob by forcing him to do all this useless bullshit. You all just think I’m fucking stupid, don’t you. Do I look stupid to you? Fugo screams back that it’s not snobbish to want someone to be able to look at the label on a bottle of paracetamol and figure out that it’s a bad idea to swallow nine of them in one afternoon, assuring Narancia that he only ever looks stupid when he’s kneeling in front of a toilet with vomit all over his face. Narancia’s eloquent response is to hurl the book at him, which strikes Fugo squarely in the forehead in all its four-hundred-page glory, giving him an instant concussion and a massive bruise that lasts about two weeks.
Narancia does end up feeling so bad about it that he finally agrees to the grammar lessons, so Fugo counts that as a solid win.
Sometimes he will look up from correcting Narancia’s homework and catch Bruno staring at him, with a very strange look on his face. Unreadable, if you haven’t been living and working with the guy for the last three years, but Fugo knows that particular expression all too well; it's how Bruno always looks when there’s some serious, heavy duty self-flagellation going on inside his head. ‘This is the last time you ever threaten me’, was what he’d said, not, ‘I don’t feel guilty anymore’ .
Does he wish he’d done for Fugo what Fugo is doing for Narancia? The thought is laughable. Fugo never needed help with reading, or grammar, never needed anything except maybe a good fuck now and again. There hadn’t been a shred of innocence left in the boy Bruno had found three years ago. Not like Narancia, sweet Narancia, whose eyes—even swollen with pus and half rotting out of his face—still shone bright and clear and good.
Fugo and Narancia are not the same.
As promised Fugo doesn’t try the ‘ I’m telling your boyfriend about us’ thing ever again, but if Bruno wants to continue beating himself up over it Fugo’s not going to stop him. Not when the guilt makes him so much more effusive with his praise, more generous with his ‘good job, Fugo ’s and ‘well done ’s and ‘nice work ’s. And if Fugo has to rub himself raw in the Libeccio bathroom afterwards, gasping, shuddering, fucking helplessly into his fist, drunk on the memory of those words—of the warm pressure of Bruno’s hand clapping his shoulder, imagining the touch moving lower and lower and lower because he’s sick, and he’s insatiable, and oh, oh god, yes —
Well. That’s just to say, Fugo and Narancia are not the same, and Fugo will do his damnedest to make sure it stays that way.
At least now Fugo can tell Edoardo to relax on the wrath-of-Bucciarati front, because Bruno still believes he owes Fugo for keeping this secret—still believes that he owes Fugo for every second Abbacchio chooses to spend with him—and that means not interfering with where Fugo chooses to spend his nights off, no matter how much he looks like he wants to.
It strikes him then that Bruno really has no idea just how much Abbacchio worships him, if he still thinks Abbacchio will leave him because of this. People will forgive a lot more than you’d expect when they think you’re all they have.
He senses Bruno's uneasy eyes on him the day he brings Mista back to Libeccio, brash and loud and just so happy I'm not in that shithole anymore, man, seriously, I owe you a fuckin’ solid. I mean twenty years like, what the fuck am I right? What can I do for you man. I mean anything, yeah? Anything, man, just say the word. What—shut up? Oh you got it, I'm shutting up right now, not another word out of me, boss.
Mista’s like a gift, really. A gift all perfectly wrapped up for him in soft cashmere and sun-drenched skin. Fugo spends that first introduction staring at that stretch of exposed neck peeking out from under Mista’s collar, resisting the urge to put his mouth on it, to lick every square inch to see if it was really as hot as it looked. He’s actually been really good about keeping it in his pants around the team these days, but this is an outright provocation. How could Bruno hand this to him and expect him not to tear into it immediately? That’s just unfair.
Bruno's been awfully judgmental about Fugo's favourite pastime since he stopped being an active participant in it, but Bruno doesn't get a say in that anymore—a sentiment Bruno thankfully shares—and so despite the many rueful looks and disappointed faces he makes when he finds Fugo wincing in his chair again, he doesn't actually comment on what Fugo chooses to do with his own life.
Mista’s arrival had been completely unplanned, a lucky confluence of several unfortunate events. Polpo had been on vacation the week Bruno got himself arrested, so while the rest of them scrambled to put together enough of their own money for either bail or a bribe, Bruno had spent seventy-two apparently quite enjoyable hours locked in a cell with one freshly-convicted Guido Mista. He’d come out of jail utterly charmed, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why.
If there’s one area Fugo will always defer to Bruno’s judgement, it’s building out a team.
Mista turns out to be competent and fun and genuinely good company, bringing some much-needed levity to their whole dynamic. Even Fugo will admit that things could get a bit joyless back in the day (and that’s speaking as the second biggest killer of joy on the team, after Leone Abbacchio in first place). He gets along with Narancia like a house on fire. Fugo’s very grateful he managed to commandeer Bruno’s old room, on account of his being the next most senior member of the team, because Mista comes as a package deal with a PS1, making it absolutely essential to have a place to hide when someone decided it was a good idea to load up FIFA .
Mista is also either completely straight and/or completely obtuse, because Fugo is not being subtle. Gave up on that a long time ago. He is dropping hints—hints that even Narancia is picking up on, if those scandalised looks are anything to go by. He is tossing them like confetti in Mista’s face and Mista is just blowing it all back, responding with things like, oh sure man, I’ll give you a ride. Where to? Smiling guilelessly while Fugo leans over the table in a translucent shirt and trousers that are sitting so low half his ass is hanging out.
It’s a good thing Bruno doesn’t actually live here anymore—took off with Abbacchio as soon as he could, probably so they could spend even more uninterrupted time staring into each other’s eyes and sighing. Bruno would not have approved of ass-hanging-out in the kitchen.
The thing is though, Fugo knows a lost cause when he sees one, which is why he doesn’t give up on Mista. Call it a hunch. Well-honed instincts, because you don’t survive very long out in this world if you don’t learn to distinguish between the sorts of people who are and aren’t into what you’re offering, and something tells him Mista’s not as obtuse about all this as he pretends to be. No, something tells him he’s not obtuse about this at all.
He has to know exactly what Fugo is asking, and he’s definitely not the type to sit there and take it if it weirded him out—just last week he’d asked Fugo to stop drumming his fingers on the table while he oiled his gun (sadly, not a euphemism) because it was really goddamn annoying. Sorry but I’m trying to focus here, can you just give me a minute? —so this is definitely some kind of strange game he’s playing, sitting there pretending he doesn’t want Fugo too. It’s not narcissism if they actually want to fuck you.
Still, Fugo gets the message, and he decides to lay off Mista for a while. Just until he finds a good way to test his theory.
* * *
He gets his chance on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, when Bruno takes Narancia out for some recon in his old neighbourhood. Abbacchio tags along, because he’s Abbacchio and Bruno is there, so Fugo is left with a precious, sixteen-hour window with just him and Mista. Sixteen hours should be more than enough for them to work some things out.
Mista’s having dinner at home with his actual family, but he’s promised to bring back leftovers; leftovers are apparently a foregone conclusion when it comes to Mista family dinners. Three brothers and two sisters, he’d mentioned once. Fugo can’t even imagine a family like that. He never grew up with siblings. He technically has a younger sister now, though. She must be about three at this point, born a little over a year after Fugo lost his case. They’ve never met, and he doesn’t know her name, but the tabloids haven’t broken any new scandals involving the Contarini-Fugo bloodline so he supposes she must be doing alright.
He wonders if Mista’s siblings are anything like him, if being loud and brave and good and kind was something that ran in the family. If it was genetic, that strange ability of his to put people at ease, to make people feel like they were wanted, like… he actually enjoyed having them around. It all seemed to come so easily to him.
Fugo hadn’t asked him to bring anything back—he didn’t even know it was something people did when they went home for dinners—Mista had just offered, like it was the most natural thing in the world. And maybe it was a perfectly natural thing to do, it’s just that Fugo’s never done something like that before, so maybe he’s the unnatural one here for reading so much into something that was probably meaningless.
For Fugo’s seventeenth birthday Mista had gotten him a book of nineteenth-century ornithological drawings. Saw you looking at it the other day, he’d said with a proud grin. The gesture had been so incredibly thoughtful Fugo hadn’t quite known how to respond, had just stood there staring at the red cardinal on the cover while Mista blathered on about something or other. Surely, Fugo had thought, surely, a handjob, at least, but Mista hadn’t wanted anything in return. Nothing at all.
A buzzing in his pocket shakes him back to reality, heralding Mista’s imminent arrival with the simple message:
back in 10 ;)
And Fugo realises he has ten minutes to come up with a solid plan of action; ten minutes to figure out how to do something he’s been failing to do for months, and then he decides, fuck it. He’s been thinking about this for too long, maybe it’s time not to think anymore.
(Later, Mista will ask him what he’d been thinking, and Fugo will not know how to tell him he’d been thinking, fuck it.)
He thinks, fuck it , as he goes back to his room, strips, tossing his clothes haphazardly onto the floor. Fuck it, as he drops back onto his mattress and wraps a hand around himself—already half hard and he’s barely even begun. He stares at the gap he’s left in his bedroom door and finds that it’s somehow become the most intensely arousing thing in the universe. A door left ajar is so full of possibilities—the possibility of Mista coming home right this instant and finding him like this: flushed and red and leaking, panting open-mouthed as he strokes himself; the possibility of Mista’s eyes on him, and then his lips, and then his entire body; the possibility of seeing Mista come apart, of giving Mista so much pleasure, making Mista feel so mind-numbingly good he would have no choice but to keep Fugo around forever—
His thumb catches the head of his cock in an exceedingly gratifying way on the next upstroke, and Fugo’s body jerks, heat radiating through him via his overtaxed nervous system. Back in 10, Mista had said. Fugo hopes to god he hadn’t been lying, because he doesn’t think he’ll last very long like this. This will be over far too soon if he doesn’t slow down.
He thinks he might hear the jangling of keys in the front door, and the sound wrenches a groan out of his throat. Yes, he thinks, yes, please.
“Fugo?” Mista’s in the doorway; he’s taking off his shoes, “Fugo you there?” Footsteps, moving towards him.
He’s close, god, he’s so close. Fugo should be thinking about what he looks like. He should be thinking about how he should arrange his body, how he wants to be seen, but he’s too far gone for that now, his mind completely consumed by the feeling of his hand sliding over his cock. It feels too good. He just wants to make Mista feel this good all the time.
Out the corner of his eye he sees his door swing open, and this is what does it for him, tips him clean over the edge. He rocks his hips into his hand—hears that choked inhale at doorway—and then he’s coming, he’s spilling all over his fingers, his body spasming; his back arches off the mattress as he trembles, moans, shakes with the intensity of it, desperately trying to prolong that high. “Mista,” he gasps, at no one in particular, “oh god. ”
The door slams, and then all Fugo can hear is the sound of his own heavy panting, breathing deep as he eases into that warm afterglow,
He shuts his eyes and lets his body go limp. There’s a lazy grin working its way across his pleasure-slackened face, and a different sort of ecstasy unfurling inside him, slower than the last one and higher up inside his chest, because in the split-second before the door had closed Fugo had caught a glimpse—had seen the expression on Mista’s face, had seen that naked desire—and now he knows for certain, without a doubt, that he’d been right all along.
It might feel even better than the orgasm, this. This one feels like triumph.
*
He gives his body a cursory wipe, throws some random clothes on before leaving the room. Unlikely he’ll be wearing them for very long anyway.
He finds Mista in the kitchen, emptying boxes of food out onto a plate with a kind of determined placidity. “Jeez,” he grins when he sees Fugo, but it’s tight around the edges, forced, “warn a guy next time, won’t ‘cha?” He turns away to slide the plate into the microwave, futzing with the controls in a very obvious attempt to avoid eye contact. Mista has never passed up an opportunity to make eye contact in his entire life. “It’s baked rice, uh, grilled fish... Bunch of vegetables. I think there’s an egg in there. Oh, and there’s some soup in that bowl. Got all your stuff out before everything got drowned in chili so you can relax, it won’t burn that delicate little mouth—” He breaks off, clearly unable to discuss Fugo’s mouth at any greater length.
“Mista,” Fugo takes a step forward, wanting so badly to touch, to tell Mista it’s okay to feel like this, because Fugo feels the same way too.
Mista hits start on the microwave but he still doesn’t turn around; he just stands there with his back to Fugo, watching food rotate like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. “It’s fine,” he shakes his head, “like, I shared a room with three brothers, so I’ve pretty much seen it all, you’re golden.” He laughs like he’s in pain.
“Mista, look at me.”
“Nah, I think someone should really be keeping an eye on this stuff,” he’s still staring resolutely into the orange glow of the microwave, “you never know what could happen in there.”
Fugo watches the timer as it starts counting down the seconds, frowns, “Mista, twenty minutes is way too long.”
“Why don’t we wait and see?”
“Mista will you please just look at me—”
“I can’t, okay?” Mista chokes out, his fists are clenched tight around the edge of their laminate countertop, the back of his shoulders tense and hunched over slightly, “I’m sorry, I can’t.”
Fugo doesn’t understand why he’s still fighting it, why he insists on holding himself back like this when the solution is so plainly visible, so easy, so simple. “Mista,” he says softly, taking another step closer. He keeps his voice low, careful not to startle him, because one wrong move and Mista might flee, “are you not turning around, because you’re hard?”
Mista takes in one long, shuddering breath before spinning on his heel, almost defiant, to lean back against the countertop. A quick glance downwards reveals that yes, Fugo’s assessment had been entirely accurate.
“I’m sorry, okay?” He folds his arms, forcing another chuckle, “guess I gotta take a leaf out of your book and go take care of this later, eh?” His face is flushed pink, his pupils blown—Fugo doesn’t know who he’s trying to fool with all this. He takes another step.
“Let me,” he whispers, they’re nearly chest to chest now—so, so close. Fugo wants so much but he doesn’t dare let himself touch, so he just lowers himself slowly onto his knees, “let me, please?” Puts all his desire into that please , all his longing. He hopes Mista can see how badly he wants this too, how badly he needs it, “let me, Mista. Plea—” Then finally, finally, Mista’s mouth crashes against his own.
It’s a desperate thing, that first kiss, nothing sweet or romantic about it. They’re crumpled in a heap on the floor of the kitchen—Fugo, kneeling, Mista, crouching awkwardly—trying their best to continue drawing breath without ever having to break apart. “God,” Mista moans weakly against Fugo’s mouth, “oh god, Bucciarati is gonna fucking kill me.”
And that final puzzle piece slides into place, because of course. Of course Bruno wouldn’t know how to mind his own damn business.
Fugo feels a flare of fury that he tries his best to beat back down. The fucking nerve—but no, not now. There will be time for that later, plenty of time to get angry at the correct target after they’re done, but right now Fugo has to make Mista feel good, has to make sure Mista forgets everything Bruno has ever said to him. His hands are moving of their own accord, roaming all over Mista’s body, touching him in all the ways he’s dreamed about for so long; Mista mirrors his movements with an almost frantic urgency. Fugo maneuvers them such that he’s straddling Mista’s hips, takes a moment to bask in that indescribable pleasure of feeling Mista’s body rut up against his own. It’s so perfect. How could Mista have let Bruno stop them from having this . His hands are trembling as he reaches down to undo Mista’s belt. He whispers, “who’s gonna tell him?”
* * *
It wasn’t like with Bruno, or Edoardo, or any of the others; those were arrangements born mostly of convenience, straightforward and reliable ways to get off.
With Mista it wasn’t about getting off—or maybe it was a little bit, can’t deny that was an important factor—but it was also about getting off with Mista, specifically, like a subcategory of getting off that was uniquely enjoyable, not because of the getting off, but because of who he was getting off with. Getting off with the added bonus of getting to be around Mista.
It was strange. Fugo’s never encountered anything quite like this. He doesn’t know how to describe it, what this thing was with Mista. That first time in the kitchen—which had ended very quickly with some urgent and fairly rudimentary dry humping on the kitchen floor—was more of an outlier, as Fugo would later learn, because in line with all other aspects of his life, Mista generally liked to take his time.
He might compare it to the way Mista maintained his gun. Very attentive, and very thorough.
He liked to have everything he needed set out in front of him before he even brought the weapon out. It was only after he was sure all his tools were present, that he would remove his revolver from its holster to begin disassembling it, carefully, one piece at a time, laying all the separate parts out on a clean cloth to examine them, one by one. He would take a ball of fine steel wool to any microscopic bits of rust he could find, scrubbing until the metal was spotless, then he would touch up the bluing with a cotton swab, dabbing the solution onto areas where it’d worn, before sealing it all with a coat of wax. He repeated this process for every part with unwavering care, and when it was all done he would take a soft cloth and buff out the finish until everything was gleaming under the fluorescent light.
He was not to be interrupted when he did this. It was almost like a choreographed ritual, and that’s what it probably was to him, more than just simple gun maintenance. Abbacchio had seen him do it once and had looked very confused (though if you didn’t know him you might have assumed it was irritation), he does that every week? He’d said, frowning, yeah, that’s not normal.
There had been no point stopping him though, and no harm in letting him just do it. Fugo had always enjoyed watching him work. There was something very meditative about that whole drawn out process.
It’s still enjoyable to watch him now, though in a slightly different way. It’s hard to explain without sounding like a madman, but he’s been feeling a strange sort of kinship with that gun ever since he and Mista started fucking, like he might understand a bit of what it could be feeling when Mista goes about his weekly routine. He’s just blowing your mind isn’t he? Fugo wants to ask it, aren’t we both so lucky .
Mista liked to touch him sometimes, not in the foreplay way, not just to get him worked up in anticipation for something else. This type felt more like an end in itself, entirely non-sexual—more like cartography, the way Mista’s hands would roam over Fugo’s body, like he was trying to map it out. Where did you get this one? He would ask about a scar on Fugo’s shoulder, or, You have freckles on your back, did you know that? And he would press down on them with his fingertips so Fugo would know exactly where they were. Other times his breath would hitch, like that first time he saw the round, raised scar on Fugo’s left thigh, a clean shot that had healed as well as it possibly could. Must have hurt, he’d murmured softly.
Mista’s still relatively new to their world so he doesn’t know yet, but there’s still time for him to get a few of these of his own, and once he does he won’t think this is such a big deal, won’t look at Fugo like this anymore, won’t be so careful.
And the questions. Fucking hell. The questions. Do you like that? Is that good? This feel okay? Mista had this weird need for constant verbal feedback, and so Fugo can’t be anywhere else but in his body the whole time, has to actively pay attention to everything that’s going on, or he might miss a question and Mista will pause. It’s like Mista won’t do anything until he’s certain Fugo’s brain and Fugo’s body are feeling the same thing, but as lovely as that can be there are days where it all gets very frustrating, because sometimes Fugo does want to think about what he’s feeling, and sometimes he just wants to go somewhere else.
Mista doesn’t let him go anywhere else. He actually stopped once, stopped mid-fuck like a lunatic to ask Fugo if he was fine.
“What the hell are you talking about, course I’m fine. Just get on with it.”
“It’s just,” he’d said, still halfway buried in Fugo’s ass, “it’s just you got a bit quiet there.”
“I’m always quiet.”
Mista snorts, and Fugo feels the puff of an exhale on the back of his neck, “Fugo, you’re never quiet. C’mon, did I do something, baby? You need to tell me.”
Fugo presses his face into his pillow, wanting to scream, because Mista is nothing if not a stubborn shithead who never knows when to let things go. He groans, “Mista, jesus fuck, it’s fine,” tries to wiggle his hips in an appropriately enticing way, but Mista actually pulls out completely this time and flips him over onto his back, frowning. Against his stomach, Fugo’s dick gives a forlorn little twitch.
“Hey, it’s okay if you want to stop,” he says, softly, cupping Fugo’s jaw, and for the love of god, this fucking guy is going to be the death of him.
Fugo squeezes his eyes shut, prays for patience, “Mista. I don’t want to stop. Christ. It’s nothing —you were saying something, and I just—I’m not really into all that. That’s all. It’s fine .”
Mista furrows his brow, trying to remember, because of course he doesn’t remember what he’d been saying. People say weird bullshit all the time during sex that they don’t actually mean, and Fugo is being a fucking idiot again for even listening to any of it. Except that Fugo has to listen now, because Mista will randomly hit him with those fucking questions that he expects proper answers to—and not just simple yes-no questions too; one time it’d been what are you thinking? Fucking open-ended questions — like this was some kind of weird sex exam where only the correct response would unlock more thrusts. Very good thrusts though, admittedly. Well worth the trouble.
“It’s fine,” Fugo moans, “come on , just fuck me already.” But Mista isn’t listening to him. He just looks confused.
“I was saying, you were beautiful,” he says, slowly.
Fugo fights a grimace, but isn’t sure if he succeeds. “Yeah. It’s... weird, you know how it is.”
“You. Don’t like that.” It’s not quite a question, more a flat statement, with a note of uncertainty.
Fugo shrugs helplessly, unsure what Mista wants him to say. “I just mean, you don’t have to say that shit. You weren’t even looking at me anyway—” he covers his face with a sweaty hand, breathing in deep, “look, I can’t explain—I’m just not into it, okay? I don’t know, it’s this weird thing I have, like your thing with the socks. You wanted to know, so there, I told you. Now can we please get on with it?”
He’s clearly said something wrong, because Mista’s face falls. He doesn’t move for a while, hunched over, looking for all like he’s been stabbed. Fugo’s hurt him somehow, and he doesn’t know how to fix this mistake; he doesn’t even know what he did. He bites his lip. Maybe this was important to Mista, saying things like that, maybe he liked that. Fugo hadn’t even considered.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, “I’m sorry. It’s really not that big a deal. Really. You can say it if you want, I don’t actually mind.”
“No,” Mista seems to come back to his senses, and just shakes his head emphatically, “No, don’t apologise. I’m sorry, okay? I won’t do it again.” He smiles, a little strained, but it seems genuine enough so Fugo lets himself relax. Mista rests a hand on Fugo’s calf, shuffles closer, “can we continue like this though? I kinda want to look at you now.”
“Fine. But I swear to god, if you stop again I will actually kill you,” and at this Mista laughs out loud, so all must be well.
* * *
Mista is the one who eventually puts a name to this unnameable thing between them. It’d been several months by then since they started messing around, but he’d been looking like he wanted to say something for quite a while. Sometimes when Fugo got up to shower he would say wait, and then go, never mind, it’s nothing, when Fugo stopped. Or they’d be at Libeccio listening to Bruno giving them instructions and he’d turn and find Mista staring at him, before quickly looking away.
It might have started that awkward night Mista had accidentally said he was beautiful, or it could have been earlier, just that Fugo hadn’t noticed before. He can’t say for sure.
It doesn’t really bother him though, because Mista’s weirdness is nothing compared to his own, and if Mista can put up with everything wrong with him, Fugo can damn well tolerate a little bit of odd behaviour now and again. In any case, the sex continues to be delightful as ever. Having to keep it from everyone else puts quite an irritating limit to their activities, but it does make it sweeter when they do happen to have some time alone.
*
Narancia is spending the afternoon out with some friends, so naturally Fugo has Mista against a wall the second they get home, because the earlier they start the longer they can go, that’s just basic maths. He’s already on his knees, undoing Mista’s fly when Mista puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “wait, Fugo.”
“Yeah?” Fugo says impatiently, sliding Mista’s belt out of the way. He’s pulled the zipper halfway down when Mista says again, more insistently.
“Fugo, wait.”
Fugo stops, inches away from Mista’s navel. He looks up, confused, “yeah?”
Mista’s expression is a strange portmanteau of arousal and… something else Fugo can’t recognise. Fear, maybe? Or concern? For a while he doesn’t say anything, frowning like he’s trying to find the right words, and well, this has to be important if Mista is actually thinking about the shit coming out of his mouth, so Fugo waits, and after a few more seconds Mista says, hesitantly, “You know… you know we don’t have to do this all the time, right?”
And of all the things—
Fugo really hadn’t been expecting that. He looks at his hands, sitting at Mista’s waistband, and slowly pulls them into his lap. Did Mista not want this anymore? That would—he looks down at Mista’s shoes, the black leather loafers with copper-coloured fittings—that would be a real shame. He had thought things were going well, but perhaps he’d misread the situation; he did do that with Bruno too.
In his haste to get them through the door he must have messed up his hair, because Mista reaches down now to brush some out of his face, his thumb lingering a second too long on Fugo’s cheek. The gesture feels almost unconscious, unexpectedly tender in a way that makes Fugo twitch. And Mista must misunderstand, because he drops his arm immediately and elaborates, “like, don’t get me wrong, I really like doing this too, but if you,” he trails off into an absent hand wave, “you know.”
Fugo really doesn’t know. He frowns, “if I what?”
“I just mean, if you ever want to do anything else, that’s okay too, you know that, right? Like, I don’t want you to think I’m only with you just to have sex or anything.” Fugo blinks, taken aback, because they’re not just having sex. They were also teammates; maybe even friends. He thought Mista saw that. “Sorry,” a frustrated sigh, “sorry, this is coming out wrong. It’s just, if you ever wanted other things—I thought I should let you know I might also want those things too, is what I meant.”
“… what other things do you want?”
It was the wrong thing to say, because Mista’s face spasms like he’s in pain. He shrugs helplessly, slumping against the wall to rub at his temples, “I dunno, I guess I was thinking we could watch a movie sometime?”
“Like, here?” They’ve recently upgraded the TV to a nineteen-inch Panasonic, though so far it’s only really been used for FIFA, “sure, I don’t mind. We’d have to fix the CD player though, but we could do that if you wanted.”
“No…” Mista is saying, slowly, “I was thinking we could maybe go to that theatre down the street from the park. Maybe eat some popcorn, maybe get some dinner. I don’t think we’ve done that before.”
“We get dinner all the time.”
“Yeah, but I meant just the two of us, you know? Like a proper date. What do you think?” Mista’s eyes are wide and earnest, brimmed with hope, and Fugo realises that he’s completely serious about this.
Huh.
He hadn’t been expecting that either, but that’s just Mista for you.
“… is that what we’re doing?”
Mista holds his gaze, chewing on his lip; Fugo doesn’t think he’s ever seen him look this nervous before. “We could be,” he swallows, “if you wanted. But you don’t have to. I just thought maybe...”
Fugo sits back on his heels and mulls it over. Going on a date with Mista—he supposes that could be fun, and it’s what a lot of people do with the people they’re having sex with, so it was actually perfectly reasonable that Mista might like to give it a go. “I guess we could do that,” he says, frowning, “I’ve never done this stuff before though. You might have to tell me what to do.”
At the way Mista lights up—Fugo knows immediately that he’s made the right choice.
It startles him at first, Mista’s face, so unguarded in all its joy. So much of it, so plainly visible; Fugo hadn’t known it was even possible for him to make anyone look this happy. “Oh, Fugo,” Mista’s smile is so radiant it catches him off guard, makes him almost forget to breathe. He can’t believe he’d put it there just by agreeing to see a movie. If he’d known this was what it took—Fugo will go to a thousand movies. He’ll go to a million movies. He’ll sit through Monica Bellucci’s entire filmography ten times over. Mista’s looking at him like he thinks—like he thinks Fugo is something good. “Oh you just stick with me, baby. I’ll show you a good time.”
It makes him oddly self-conscious, to have Mista beaming down at him like that, but it’s not... a bad feeling, just unfamiliar. “Okay,” he smiles back tentatively, and then he remembers Mista’s fly is still half-open in front of his face. “I still get to suck you off though, right?” It’s an important question.
Mista groans, “Fugo you can’t say shit like that and expect me to—c’mere. Come up here you, let me give you a proper kiss first,” before reaching down to pull Fugo up to his feet, until they’re face to face, so close their noses are almost brushing.
“Hey there baby,” Mista whispers.
It’s here that something in Fugo’s mind finally clicks into place, a truth that might have been hiding in his subconscious for quite some time, finally breaking the surface. He hadn’t recognised it because it had been too alien—the way some birds can’t recognise periodical cicadas as food, because they arrive too suddenly and then disappear for too long. Having Mista look at him like this—Fugo sees it now; he thinks he might have been wanting this all along, before Mista gave him the name for it.
How was it possible that joy could feel so much like fear? His face must be doing a very funny thing, caught in between. Mista rests a soothing hand against his cheek, like he can tell, like he understands. He smiles, “c’mon. Let’s do this in the right order.”
“I didn’t know there was an order,” Fugo whispers back. He worries if he speaks too loudly this precious thing he’s just uncovered might get spooked and run away.
“There is now.” Mista’s still grinning, but there is a set to his jaw, something like determination, the kind of look that would usually make Fugo very nervous, because it usually means Mista has gotten a crazy idea into his head and will not rest until he’s made it a reality, but then Mista leans forward and kisses him, gently pressing their lips together, and Fugo shuts his eyes and forgets to be nervous about anything at all.
* * *
It’s strange, dating Mista, mostly because Mista’s a strange guy, but also those normal parts too—or rather, the parts that are probably supposed to be normal, but that Fugo finds strange because he’s the one that’s not normal.
He never understood before, why couples walking hand-in-hand always had that look in their eyes, that kind of glazed over expression that made them trip over their own feet and bump into people, made them unaware that they were blocking the street when other people were trying to walk by.
He thinks he gets it now.
He and Mista don’t really hold hands, but there have been times where Fugo would blink, only to suddenly find himself someplace with absolutely no idea how he got there. He hadn’t been paying attention to where he was going, because he’d been too busy looking at Mista—looking at him gesticulate as he talked, at the expressions on his face—so preoccupied with cataloguing every minute detail of him that Fugo hadn’t even noticed they’d been moving.
Where am I, he would ask himself, confused, how did I get here? And all he would be able to remember of the last ten minutes would be the shape of Mista’s lips, the dimples that appeared on his face when he laughed, like someone had pinched his cheeks when he was a baby and left permanent indentations in the soft flesh.
* * *
He gets a message from Edoardo one afternoon.
yo did you die
It makes him laugh, because it is a very Edoardo thing to say, but also because it reminds him he’s not been over in quite a while. He hasn’t realised how long it’s been, since he started doing this dating thing with Mista.
Sorry, still alive.
all good?
Fugo frowns, thinking over what to say.
Yes
He sends over first, before deciding to add:
I think I’m dating someone
Edoardo’s reply is nearly instantaneous.
what kind
The actual kind
lucky guy
And then, after a moment:
he know about your gag reflex?
Actually he’s catholic, so we’re thinking of waiting till marriage
He doesn’t get a response to that, and is about to slip his phone back into his pocket when it starts ringing.
“You’ve got to be fucking joking,” Edoardo says flatly, without preamble. He actually sounded more disappointed by this than that time Fugo told him he’d joined the mafia. Fugo snorts.
“Of course I was fucking joking. What, did you think I was serious?”
“Oh thank fuck. Thought you actually went insane. What the hell was I supposed to think, I didn’t know you knew how to be funny. When did you learn to be funny?”
Fugo grins, “must be the boyfriend. I think it might be contagious.”
“Huh. So you really—” Edoardo pauses, then clears his throat. “ Ri-ght. Well, you’d better stay away from me then. Wouldn’t want to catch whatever the hell he gave you.”
“Yes I think I might do that for a while.”
His voice is steady, but Fugo’s heart has gone slightly haywire, still caught on that earlier confession. Boyfriend. It’s a pleasant rush, saying it aloud. He hasn’t said it before; he thinks he could get addicted to this. Boyfriend. Fugo wants to carve it on his forehead for the world to see; he wants to press it into his heart and bury it there so no one can find it. God, he wants to—
“Hey ,” Edoardo says softly, after a while, “I’m happy for you.”
“Yeah,” Fugo lets himself smile, a little shaky, though Edoardo can’t see, “yeah, I think I am too.”
“You be safe, yeah?”
“Mhm, will do.”
‘Safe’. Yes, that’s the word for it, not just ‘happy’. Fugo thinks he might actually be safe this time.
* * *
There was a story in the papers a couple of years ago: some Scandinavian archduke that decided it’d be a good idea to keep a mountain lion as a pet. He’d bought her as a cub and nursed her by hand, kept her on a leash for daily walks around his sprawling estate, fed her a solid diet of veal and occasionally wagyu beef, got his portrait painted with her curled up next to him like a gigantic house cat, her head resting in his lap. He’d loved her like she was his own child. And then one day he tripped on the steps heading back up to his palace, broke his hip, and the lion had pounced. She ended up consuming most of the archduke’s upper body, already mangled beyond recognition by the time his butler had calmly brought out the emergency rifle and shot her six times. Closed casket funeral.
There were a few articles calling it a tragedy, for the archduke to have loved her so much, so dearly, only to have his kindness repaid like this. Such expensive tragedy. Lion and archduke. Scorpion and frog.
Most articles just called the guy an idiot. An idiot who tried to keep something he never bothered to understand. An idiot who could not fathom that the only way to love something like that was to leave it well alone, too arrogant to even consider the possibility that it might’ve been better off without him. An idiot who had the audacity to think he ever had the right to own something that was never his for the taking; never his to have. A selfish, ignorant, complacent, greedy, conceited, rapacious, entitled idiot, who thought himself exempt from the laws of nature and had gotten exactly what was coming to him.