Chapter Text
Fugo knows something’s up from the moment Bruno and Leone get back from a routine mission - something’s different in the air between them, something a little lighter and fresher.
(Also, there’s a dark lipstick mark under his jaw that Bruno must have missed when trying to wipe the evidence away. A valiant effort, but Fugo’s much too observant to not notice it.)
He honestly feels less about this clear development in their relationship than he thought he would. It feels like something that was bound to happen, and it’s not like he’s mad about Bruno getting another source of happiness. Really, it’s the opposite.
He’s still not above a bit of teasing, though. As Bruno walks by, he snickers quietly. “Got something on your face there, boss.”
Bruno fumbles for a second at the spot on his jaw where Fugo points, then takes a moment to examine his fingers and flushes, obviously aware of what's there. He looks at Fugo, almost fearful, clearly trying to gauge his reaction.
Fugo carefully relaxes his shoulders, exudes nonchalance as best he can. Bruno relaxes a little bit too, reading him - Fugo’s not sure he can express how much he enjoys how Bruno can read his body language when words fail him. For someone with such an extensive vocabulary, Fugo sometimes finds it surprisingly hard to fit them together in a way that expresses what he wants.
But Bruno’s understanding - he huffs in pretend indignance and leaves the room to go clean up.
And that’s that, really. They’re not really subtle about it, but at least they’re not all over each other all the time, so Fugo doesn’t really care all that much. He makes gagging noises whenever they PDA too close to him, but it really isn’t all that bad. Besides, it is... really something to watch the way they relax around one another - Leone makeup-free, a pale figure of calm, pressing their forehead to Bruno, who hasn’t smiled like that - well, ever.
So yeah, Fugo doesn’t really doesn’t care. Besides, a short while after, he finds himself with another problem.
At first he thinks it’s just a stalker, which is distressingly common in his line of work, and while they’re a pretty shitty one, he pretends to ignore them for a while, gauging the situation.
However, when he spins around at a corner and seizes the person trying to hide, he doesn’t exactly expect the wide purple eyes of Narancia Ghirga.
He also doesn’t expect the first words out of his mouth. “Let me join your gang!” He says, all in a rush, no forethought, like a horse racing out of the gate.
“I’m... sorry?” Fugo blinks.
“I went back to school like Buccellati said but everyone made fun of me and it sucked and I don’t care about the danger I have to get out of there so let me join your gang!” Narancia says it all in one breath, less of a sentence and more of an overflow of words.
Fugo wrestles with this information for a moment. It’s not as if he doesn’t know how it feels to be an outsider among your peers - but Passione is hardly a better out. He didn’t have a choice, cut off from everything he had: Narancia still does. He shakes his head firmly. “No. It’s in no way safe for you, and I’m not putting you in harm’s way for no reason. Bruno definitely isn’t.”
Narancia’s facial expression morphs into something between a pout and a startlingly genuine anger. “Did you listen at all to me? I don’t care about the danger!”
Fugo grits his teeth. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint, but we do.”
Narancia doesn’t seem like he conceptualized that, the idea of other people caring about the danger he could be put in. His face twists into an expression Fugo learned means he’s thinking hard, and he takes the opportunity to make his escape.
He’s only taken a step away when Narancia’s voice comes again, quiet and sharp in its content. “...I don’t wanna go home.”
It’s simple, could be something said by any teenager with parental issues, but Fugo feels a chill run through his entire body. It’s the same thing he’d said to himself, hundreds of times, silently but desperately, knowing what awaited him at home - the watching eyes, the countless tests, the expectations.
He finds he can’t take another step - feels pinned in place by something like the same strange feeling that had made him offer his hand to Narancia, months ago, in that alley. He’s beginning to realize he might not be able to fight it.
He doesn’t turn - doesn’t want to look Narancia in the face and have to face that feeling head-on. But he sighs. “Visit Polpo. He’ll test you. He can offer you... an out.” So this is what’s meant by being between a rock and a hard place. Fugo feels like his whole life has been between the two. He swallows. “Be safe. Please.”
Then he walks away, doesn’t give Narancia a chance to follow, or to ask who Polpo is, or anything else. Not like he doesn’t try - he hears Narancia starting into a flurry of questions, but he doesn’t follow Fugo when he goes.
He keeps an ear to the ground afterwards, and shortly he gets word a scruffy kid has been asking around about Polpo - Narancia’s never been subtle, that’s for sure. Fugo goes on a casual walk about Naples the next day - kid works fast - and before long he comes across a trail of people complaining about a kid with a lighter, and eventually that awful chill that comes with Polpo’s stand, something that strikes deep into your bones. Fugo’d barely even ran when he first saw it, on the 22nd hour of his test, when one of his neighbors had started doing some kind of construction and shook the lighter out of the place he had so carefully secured it in. He’d stood there as the shadows cast by the early afternoon had come to life and boomed about his destiny, wrapped in a deep, constricting kind of fear.
Fugo knows he can’t interfere with Polpo’s test. It still feels kind of cruel, though, watching Narancia shake as the stand towers over him. He seems to be able to see it, at least. That’s a good sign.
He doesn’t look when the arrow pierces him, though he hears the strangled scream, and it’s almost as bad.
When everything is said and done, he walks to the limp body on the ground, tension and fear rippling through him. Presses his head to Narancia’s chest, and-
Thank God. There’s a heartbeat. He exhales all at once.
He lifts Narancia with less effort than he thought: Fugo’s not exactly physically strong, but the boy’s light as a feather, no doubt from malnourishment. At least under Passione he’ll never have to go hungry again. He carries Narancia to the nearest safehouse, more than out of breath by the time he gets there. Fugo can’t claim to ever have been much but a book person: he’s not incredibly physically developed. He lays Narancia on one of the futons and pulls a book from his bag to wait.
As always, he’s there when Narancia snaps awake, gasping. His hands fly to his throat, where the arrow was embedded, and finding nothing there, he relaxes by an increment. His glazed eyes start to focus, and then focus on Fugo, who’s put down his reading as soon as Narancia awoke.
“Hey,” Fugo says, as gently as he can muster. “How are you feeling?”
Narancia makes a little noise in his throat before seemingly regaining control of his voice. “Awful.” He groans.
Fugo huffs out a breath like a chuckle. “Well. Unsurprisingly, it’s painful to have the manifestation of your soul dragged out of you and given a form you have to face.”
Narancia squints at him. “I don’t get how you always put things so artsy-like. What about my soul... thing?”
Fugo sighs. “We can work on that later. For now you should rest. The arrow may not kill those who are worthy, but it’s not kind to them.”
“Yeah, what the fuck was that about! Some initiation!” Narancia protests. “Fuckin’ hurt!”
He’s got such a nasty mouth. “It’ll scar, but you’ll be alright.” Fugo tugs aside his collar to reveal his own scar, a star-shaped bit of rough tissue just below his collarbone, misshapen from how he had tried to pull away at the moment of contact. He’d never had good pain tolerance. “See?”
Narancia blinks, his eyes lingering for a moment like he’s not sure what exactly he’s supposed to be focusing on. Then he blinks again. “Oh. Yeah, I see. Same thing, huh?”
“Yes. You should rest for a while more, now.”
“I don’t really wanna sleep right now...” Narancia whines. “I’m hungry.”
“I’m not spoon-feeding you.” Fugo warns. “That was a one-time deal.”
That’s a little bit of a lie - it definitely happened more than once, back when Narancia was hospitalized, but Fugo can hardly be blamed for taking care of a sick, malnourished person. This is different.
“Boo.” Narancia pouts.
“Can you walk?” Fugo asks. “We can have something to eat and I can... fill you in on what’s going on.”
“Yeah, that’d be nice.” Narancia complains. “Coulda told me your gang involved weird ghost monsters and shit! Is that why you think it’s so dangerous.”
Fugo stiffens his shoulders. “No. It’s not the monsters that are dangerous. It’s the people attached to them.”
***
They grab lunch at a nearby restaurant, getting paninis to go so they can retreat to a slightly more private place to talk about Passione affairs. Narancia stuffs his face throughout the short walk down to a nearby pier, which is fairly abandoned due to the cloudiness of the day. He’s almost done with his meal before they even sit down, crumbs all over his face. Fugo’s glad he had the forethought to grab a few napkins.
Narancia doesn’t wait until his mouth is empty to start talking, either, telling Fugo about how Polpo had granted him a spot in Bruno’s group after he had begged, saying something about how they could use a long-range fighter. “I don’t get it.” Narancia says through a mouthful of bread. “What’s he mean? I mean, yeah I was a scamp, but I never used a gun or anything. I don’t know that kinda shit.”
“I think,” Fugo starts. “He was referring to your stand.”
“My what?”
“Stand is the most common word in usage for these... physical forms of your soul. Something about them standing directly next to you... I’m not sure where the term came from, but we have to call them something.”
“Wait, what?! So what’s my stand? I haven’t seen it! Wait, it’s my soul? Do I have to die to get it to come out?”
“I don’t know, it makes sense if you haven’t yet, yes, and no.” Fugo fields his questions. “You won’t die if you didn’t by the arrow. But it requires a certain amount of concentration to make your stand appear.”
Narancia immediately scrunches his face up in what seems to be a rough parody of concentrating hard. A whole lot of nothing happens.
He peeks his eyes back open after about seven seconds. “Anything?”
Fugo can’t help but smile a little bit at his hopeful expression. “No. It’s not just... concentrating really hard. Hold on.”
He takes a moment to sweep the area with his gaze, looking for any potential onlookers, threats, or... well. If Narancia’s stand ends up being anything like Purple Haze, anyone or anything nearby could be collateral.
Luckily, it seems like they’re alone as far as Fugo can see. He turns back to Narancia. “Alright. I’ll help you.”
Narancia shoves the final bite of his panini into his mouth, barely managing to even close it around the huge amount of food. Fugo tries not to wince as he chews with difficulty, mouth unabashedly open. After a few painful seconds, he swallows, leaving even more crumbs around his mouth. Fugo twitches. “Ready!” Narancia crows proudly.
Fugo sighs. “Step 1 is...” he picks up a napkin, without thinking brushes the crumbs and bits of meat and cheese off Narancia’s face. “Having some damn thought to your hygiene.”
He realizes a moment too late that he hasn’t touched Narancia since he was ill in bed, and there was a reason to, a justification - his fingers suddenly twitch with doubt. Is he allowed to just reach for him like that? He’s learned more from books than most people have in their lives, but nothing really stands in for, well, having any fucking friends your age to reference social cues from.
Narancia interrupts his worries with his jarring, obnoxious laugh. “What are you, my mom?”
Fugo lowers his hand and gets away with a simple eye roll, trying not to betray his momentary nerves. “You can’t fight looking like a fucking slob. Now...” He takes a second to think, struggling to put into words how exactly it feels to manifest your stand. “Your stand is a part of you, usually the part that sees something inflaming and wants to fight, or defend. It is your passion, your-“
Narancia cuts him off with another laugh. “Is that why you’re called Passione?”
Fugo almost tells him no, then finds he actually doesn’t know. “I... don’t know. Possibly. Can we continue?” He asks icily.
Narancia grins innocently, but doesn’t apologize. Fugo’s not sure he knows how. And here he is taking social cues from this strange, upstart of a kid, because he knows so little himself. What a pair they make.
“Alright.” He tries to re-center himself. “Passion doesn’t have to mean any particular emotion - just something that drives you. Something that makes you want to fight. For yourself, or someone else, or something better: or just, well, fight.” God knows Purple Haze seems to be a beast made of nothing but the passionate, frothing anger that sleeps inside him until it finds a chance, yet again, to explode out of him and destroy everything in its wake.
“I couldn’t fight Mama’s sickness.” Narancia says suddenly, his tone much more somber than Fugo had heard since he got back from initiation. “But I remember I wanted to so bad. I wanted it to be a thing I could fight, something I could just beat the crap out of, hurt for hurting her. I wanna... I wanna fight for her. ‘Cause she treated me right. Like I was actually her kid and not a nuisance on legs.”
Fugo blinks, suddenly processing... a lot about Narancia. He’d gotten the idea that Narancia’s parental situation wasn’t great, but he really just... put it all out there. Fugo almost wonders what he’d done to deserve that kind of trust.
He won’t let it go to waste, though. “Okay. You feel that passion?” He only hesitates for a moment before he steadies a hand on Narancia’s shoulder. “Easy now. Just breathe. Let it flow through you.”
Fugo still remembers, clearly, when he first got Purple Haze. The bone-chilling terror of looking at a monster that was him and wasn’t him all at the same time. This is the shape of my soul? He had wanted to cry. This is who I am?
Bruno had assured him that stands weren’t always someone’s soul as much as a specific side or bit of them, but it was empty. Fugo had seen him take a half step back when Purple Haze appeared, watched fear flicker in his eyes. He’s not an idiot. He knows.
It hasn’t done wonders for his self-esteem. Purple Haze hasn’t done much for anybody, overall.
Fugo hopes, desperately, Narancia will get something better.
When the air wavers and shimmers into the outline of a tiny fighter plane, he’s not sure what exactly to think. Most stands he’d seen up until now were at least mostly humanoid, but this seems to be completely an object. Did he lean too far in on the fighting metaphor, and make Narancia think of war?
But Narancia gasps when he sees it, eyes lighting up. “That’s... dude! I had this plane when I was a kid - I mean, smaller, but it looked just the same and had a little guy inside and- HOLY SHIT IT SHOOTS?”
The last bit is in response to a small pattern of plunks as the tiny fighter plane shoots out a tiny jet of automatic fire into the nearby water. Fugo feels his eyes widen - it really does seem to be long range. Narancia seems ecstatic.
Narancia’s eyes are sparkling with joy, his cheeks round and the corners of his eyes scrunched with the power of his smile. Fugo feels a strange warm feeling rise in his gut at the sight. “I can fight! I can fight! I can protect you! Fugo, don’t ever get sick, okay? ‘Cause I can fight anything else that comes after us.”
Fugo decides not to mention the virus-ridden nature of his stand, and smiles back. “Okay. I’ll... do my best.”
He certainly doesn’t expect it when Narancia dashes forward to hug him - feels himself go stiff, and that warm feeling expand to something almost uncomfortable. Almost uncomfortable, but well- not bad.
...When was the last time he even got hugged by anyone by Bruno or his grandmother? He decides pointedly not to think about that, and doesn’t get much time to anyways, as Narancia squeezes him so tightly he worries for his ribs and draws back, still grinning.
“Thanks, Fugo.” He says, and it’s so clearly genuine Fugo feels heat rush up from everywhere in him.
Fugo’d always thought he might be incapable of properly blushing - sunburn was common with his fair skin, yes, and red blotches from acne, but he’d always been too prideful and repressed for the kind of embarrassment that made one cover their face as not to show the red flush rising in their cheeks.
He can feel it though now, blood roiling in his cheeks and his neck. He gets a feeling this may not be the only time Narancia proves him wrong.