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One year after defeating the former gang boss and taking over the organization, many changes took place within Passione. This was Giorno and Buccellati's main goal, so, okay by Narancia. Basically, the boy mafioso would follow his team and his hero Buccellati to wherever they went, and he was more than pleased that the bossy dumb ass who wanted to kill Trish was now in a worse place than Hell. The young man imagined that Buccellati would become the new head, and he would be there, on his side, being the good soldier as always – but none of this happened.
First, Giorno became the new boss. Okay, the blond was very smart and had incredible power, then nothing against the idea... And Buccellati took the Counselor position, which actually looked good too because he really always had a piece of advice to give even if nobody asked for. They were both good leaders, and Narancia admired them.
The other odd thing was about Mista. He was the new Underboss, and this was funny: after months of missions in which his friend got involved in many commissioned killings and general cleaning of remnants of Diavolo's rotten contacts, lately, Narancia has found the gunman behind a huge desk, his head buried in stacks of papers. Had Mista got richer? Yes. Was Mista on the command line? Yes. Did he look like a middle-aged office worker looking at the computer like a zombie and reconsidering his choices in life? Also yes. Narancia couldn't imagine even seeing his friend in a tie. Mista was taking this Underboss thing seriously.
“Hey, did you want to see me?” Narancia couldn’t hide his mocking laughter when he saw Mista raise his head from paperwork as if waking from a long nap.
“Yes… Uh… I have a mission for you.”
“Good! I was dying of boredom!”
“I could say the same.”
Narancia burst out laughing. “You look like crap, dude!”
Mista rubbed his eyes and stretched in his chair. “I'm struggling, okay? You can’t have fun at work all the time. If not, it would be called 'leisure' rather than 'work'.” The Underboss started rummaging through the drawers and piles of papers, and Narancia noted that they even had colored labels for intersecting matters. Mista was really committed to his new role.
“Yeah, you can tell... All well dressed and executive behaved... You're not losing any effort to impress the Boss, huh?”, the boy propped himself on his elbows on the table, his chin resting on his fists.
“Of course”, the man had his eyes relaxed, reading over some folders, looking for something. “Any idiot with two working brain cells would do the same.”
“Hmmm…” Narancia mimicked the Thinker monument. “Love really has the power to change a man’s ways.”
“Oi! This again?” Mista lightly altered his relaxed eyes to a bit of annoyance as he handed out the mission statement to the soldier. “Swap the disc, Giorno is only my comrade. I don’t imply that you and Fugo are boyfriends just because you two spend a lot of time together.”
“Because I’m not gay.”
“I’m not gay either, Narancia, now, take your assign-”
“Do you know when people say, 'I have a gay-dar to track down other gay people?' I have two radars. One identifies amounts of carbon dioxide. The other is my straight-dar, and I don’t know exactly what your case is, but you don’t echo on it since a certain blonde appeared in our lives.”
“Okay, have you had a good time? Some people have work to do around here. And apparently you do too.” That would be really convincing if the man didn't blush on the cheeks. Smooth, Mista. The signs are there, Narancia could see.
“Ok, fine!” Narancia snorted, rising from his chair and carrying the mission file with him. At the door of the small office, he turned on his heel and replied Underboss “You were funnier before all this. You really need to get laid.”
The weeks passed and Narancia tried, really, not to make fun of Mista with his suspicions about the gunman's feelings. The soldier was his friend’s old habits of making fun of others with the brunette, taking a nap on the lawn or playing video games in Narancia's room. Sometimes, when it was his night watch at headquarters, Narancia could see Mista through his office window, working until late hours, sighing and staring at nothing. Love could really dismantle a man. Narancia hoped it would never happen to him.
Friendship is a man's treasure, and Narancia wouldn't be a real friend if he allowed himself to do nothing to help Mista. Underboss or not, he was his friend, a very nice guy who deserved to be happy in the romantic nonsense of his dreams. And Giorno definitely was into men, it was written on his pretty Don's face. What wasn't obvious was if Giorno noticed the infatuation of his right-hand man or not. If Giorno didn't feel the same way about Mista, Narancia would check and then he would go to great lengths to find a beautiful woman for his friend. Or a handsome man. Preferably blonde.
From there, the boy started to observe the Boss’s behavior near the Underboss, which wasn't very frequent, because often the interactions in Giorno's office were behind closed doors. When it was possible, Narancia was paying attention to the small conversations between the two men, not bothering to be very discreet. At lunches where the Don would show up to eat (Buccellati had the unofficial job to forcing Giorno to feed himself properly), Mista was in the chairside by the blonde, making absurd remarks about bizarre topics or telling funny stories. Giorno smiled or laughed lightly. When the two gangsters were circling side by side by the headquarters hallways, touches in each other's arms were regular, which could be friendly, but it wasn't the physical intimacy that Giorno shared with Narancia, for example.
Giorno next to Mista was less Don and more an ordinary Italian young man. Mista with Giorno was much more Mista. And while looking those two talking to each other, Narancia thought to himself "Giorno and Mista are good friends. They could be lovers. They should be lovers. Don’t these idiots see the obvious..." The signs said to the boy that the two good friends had room for a date. And that courtship dance was not going anywhere. Narancia had to do something.
What Narancia knew about romance, in large part, he had learned from Mista. The Underboss had a collection of sugary movies, stupid romance books, and girly magazines. More than once, Mista made Narancia answer those silly quizzes questions, which the gunman treated with great seriousness. If the romantic advice of those stupid newspapers really worked, why didn't Mista put them into practice? Maybe people in love can’t reason right. Makes sense.
So Narancia bought a magazine like that. It talked about many bland artists, soap operas, make-up brands, and clothes that made no sense at all. There was even a session of seduction tips that the boy read over and over but said tips were too stupid to be taken seriously.
The only thing that could help the love affair was the Zodiac sign section. Narancia read everything about Taurus' luck, and he saw himself in those lines. The signs of the Zodiac were the answer for the soldier to help his friends. If he remembered well, Mista was Sagittarius and Giorno was Aries... And, according to the magazine, they combined romantically. Well, that was good, and true, as far as Narancia had spied.
Arians were leaders, ambitious, sincere and honest, passionate about their goals and does everything to reach them. That was Giorno. Sagittarians were cheerful people with great ease to make friends, optimistic, sincere and who love freedom. Mista, very Mista. According to the magazine, the Sagittarius person in love tries to conquer with charm and joy. Mista made a list of silly puns to use at lunch, and, recently, only makes use of it when Giorno is present. Sagittarians are attracted to creative and energetic people. Giorno had many crazy ideas and... He hardly slept. Does this count as 'full of energy'? Aries, in turn, dives headlong when he falls in love, making the person of his affection the most important creature in the world. He doesn't like routine, because it makes the horn cool. This describes Giorno's relationship with Passione. How Narancia will know if Mista was the most important person in his Don's life? Explain that, stupid magazine!
Of all that, Narancia more or less understood was that Giorno and Mista need a happy and totally absurd atmosphere. A circus? Definitely a circus. No, that doesn't make sense. Narancia was feeling his head hurt. Plans were easy to follow, but he wasn't the kind who made things out of nowhere. What else could be funny and out of the routine enough for those two friends to confess their crush to each other?
Then, an idea popped into the boy's head. Fun and surprises? Narancia gets the signs.
One morning, someone had put a banner on Don's desk with the words ' I'm not a photographer, but I can picture you and me together '. Buccellati was apprehensive of the anonymous daring, and Polnareff smiled, commenting that it was very romantic. Giorno made no mention of it, nor did he give any command about the apparent invasion of space. At lunch, it was a huge gossip about the case. Narancia saw how Mista seemed nervous – everyone saw him, actually. Mista was nervous because someone had taken the lead, but that only made him seem guilty for the occurrence. Narancia grinned from ear to ear.
The other day, late in the afternoon, Narancia passed a package containing chocolate pudding from a well-known bakery in the city for a soldier to pass on to another soldier who was supposed to deliver it to Don's table. "I don’t know anything, the Underboss who sent it", Narancia vaguely explained to his gang mate, shrugging. The next morning, when Narancia talked amenities with Fugo, the blonde quickly complained about Mista, saying that he was interrogating all the new recruits about a pudding that Giorno had received. "As if Passione didn’t have serious problems at the moment", Fugo grimaced. Narancia nodded, seriously, but, deep inside, he was satisfied.
A few days later, after returning from a mission, Narancia proceeded with his new romp: he commissioned twelve flower arrangements from a flower shop station in the nearby town, each with a typed note. They said ' Are you religious? Because you're the answer to all my prayers', 'I seem to have lost my phone number. Can I have yours?', 'I'm lost. Can you give me directions to your heart? ', ' Are you sure you're not tired? You've been running through my mind all day' , ' Was your dad a boxer? Because damn, you're a knockout!', 'I was wondering if you had an extra heart. Mine was just stolen', 'Would you grab my arm, so I can tell my friends I've been touched by an angel?', 'Did the sun come out or did you just smile at me?', 'Kiss me if I'm wrong, but dinosaurs still exist, right?', 'Can I follow you home? Cause my parents always told me to follow my dreams', 'I'd say God Bless you, but it looks like He already did ', an d ' Are you a dictionary? Cause you're adding meaning to my life '. All cheesy and out of fashion, just like Mista. Giorno's office already smelled like flowers, but now it was unbearable. With that one, the Boss should have picked up the message.
However, seeing Mista feeling miserable inside his room, cleaning his own gun so many times that it could lose its surface relief marks, made Narancia feel a little bad for the tricks. In fact, he had a little fun, learned more about the arts of love conquest, but the main goal was to help his friend confess to Giorno - which wasn't happening. Stopping to think, Narancia realized that Mista might be accepting the fact that Giorno had a boyfriend or something, and now he was simply dealing with his own disillusionment. Narancia also observed Giorno's behavior: even though he was balanced and full of a pose, the blond was in a better mood than usual, laughing more openly, and the gardens around the headquarters were fuller of flowers than they used to be. The signs.
As the last act, Narancia did the same thing as the heroine of the one romantic movie he watched with Mista: among the mission files directed to the Underboss in the internal mail, the brunette hid a romantic note with the words ‘ I am dying to kiss you, to hug you with my arms, to caress your skin, to reach your tenderness and your passion. To love you ’ – it was hard to think of something deep, elegant and passionate as if it were written by Giorno, but Narancia thought it must be something like that. Narancia was tired of all that effort, but now Mista and Giorno would surely fall into each other's arms. Narancia was going to prove to the whole gang that he's the B.E.S.T. best friend ever.
“Hey, did you want to see me?”, the boy mafioso asked while greeting with one hand. The Underboss had a murderous look.
“I figured out what you were doing. Seriously, Narancia? Didn’t you think of the consequences, man?” Mista waved his arms in the air, frowning. “Giorno is your boss, first of all! We can be all brothers and all, but hierarchy is a hierarchy, dude. If Giorno weren’t cool and good-hearted, he would have given you punishment or worse.” The older man sat back in his chair, visually tired. “You better stop with this nonsense right now.”
“First, you're a pussy. I fucking tried my best so you could confess to Giorno at once, but you resolved to be a soft dick for the rest of your fucking life. Second, I've stopped to try to help you for days now, and I sincerely hope you to suffer a lot when you see Giorno with another guy because you decided not to take the opportunity I gave you, for free. Third, you're welcome.”
“What a lie!” Mista picked up a paper between the files. “You keep with those stupid tickets." Then, he read aloud one ticket “' You are going to be the first and the last person I will think of every one of my days until the end '. You have no limits, man?”
Narancia looked at Mista, wide-eyed. Nor did he understand what was happening.
“Dude, I swear for my mother’s name… I didn’t write that.” Narancia’s voice tone was serious and despite being a liar a few times, when Narancia swears for his mother, he couldn’t be lying.
Mista knew that.
“So who the fuc-…”, but the Underboss didn’t finish the sentence. And his face started to get very, deeply red. The silence in the room was filled by the thoughts of understanding from the two friends.
“Hmn…” Narancia started. “I guess… I got a mission or something… Do you need anything else?” The brunette smiled innocently.
“……..No…”
“Narancia withdraws coolly, so” and the boy ran from Mista’s office, bursting into laughter.
[LA FINE]