Chapter Text
Narancia thinks about an old friend.
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“Try it again.”
“It isn’t working!” Margherita snaps at him. “You think I’m not trying? What else would I have been doing for the past hour?”
Narancia bites back a few choice words and scratches his head instead. It’s not like Margherita is the only one frustrated here. “Well, all you can do is try again,” he says. “Or we can have someone try to kill you. That’ll summon your Stand for sure.”
She eyes him coldly. “That isn’t funny.”
“Maybe I’m not joking.”
She sneers, turning on her heel and crossing her arms in a very stand-offish and elaborate manner, as if inviting him to comment again. But he doesn’t. She’s acted like this every single time he’s tried to help her, and he’s tired of it by now.
Narancia doesn’t hate her or anything, but she’s really only got one personality trait to show off, and he’s had his fill of incendiary comments for the day. So he takes the passive aggressive way out - surely the way she would have wanted it - and simply goes into the house, shutting the door behind him. It’s mean, sure, but it kind of makes him laugh… though he does feel bad about it.
He fetches a cold soda from the minifridge next to the bar, popping the tab and taking a long drink. He could probably screw around for a good twenty minutes before Margherita even turned around and realized he was gone. But he won’t. That’s a level of pettiness he reserves exclusively for Mista.
What he does do, however, is take a seat on the couch and put his feet up on the ottoman. It’s amazing how exhausted he is when they didn’t actually practice sparring at all. This was… what, his third day of training her? It felt like he’d been doing this for lightyears.
... Which isn’t a measurement of time, but distance, Narancia mouths to himself, taking another sip of cola. Fugo sure drummed that one into his head.
The room suddenly feels quiet, and a little cold. Narancia sits up and leans forward, resting his elbows on his legs. He swirls the can around gently.
Was it fucked up for him to miss Fugo so much? They weren’t really friends. They were friendly, but they had never clicked like Narancia had with Mista. Fugo never ‘clicked’ with anyone. The closest he’d ever seemed with anyone had been with Abbacchio, and Narancia was sure he only felt that way because they sounded nearly identical when they got mad at him.
Yeah, he thought to himself. All Fugo ever did was get mad at him. And for stupid reasons. Taking the last soda out of the fridge without telling anyone, kicking his shoes off in the middle of the hall instead of putting them where they were supposed to go. Never cleaning his room - like that was his business? Come on.
But that wasn’t really true, was it. Fugo had plenty of legit reasons for getting mad at him. Never listening when he should have. Ignoring his advice and then getting hurt because of it. Acting like a stupid little asshole instead of appreciating the time Fugo took out of his day to sit down and try to help him learn.
Narancia smiled to himself. Trying to teach something to somebody was hard. He had never really thought about it before, or tried to put himself in Fugo’s shoes. He was always just frustrated at his own lack of understanding and he wanted to blame it on somebody else.
He sighs. The fact that he’s thinking about this so heavily is probably a sign that he’s got to step up.
The door slams open, thrown open wide as Margherita marches into the room. Narancia downs the rest of his soda and leans over to set it on the coffee table.
“Do you think that’s funny?” Margherita asks, her hands on her hips. She stands over Narancia and bends at the hip to look down at him scathingly. “Just running off like that?”
“I did, yeah. A little,” he says. But he shakes his head and drops the smile. “Sorry, I won’t do it again.”
“You better not,” she says, and straightens back up. But she doesn’t say anything else. She looks a little surprised that he’d apologized, and now it seems like she doesn’t know what else to say besides another biting comment. She’s stuck.
Narancia takes the high road for once. He pushes himself up off the couch, taking and letting out a long, deep breath. “Well, back at it.”
“Huh?”
He offers Margherita a nonchalant smile. “You still want to learn to use your Stand, right? We can’t get anywhere until you can summon it when you need it.”
She swallows, still stuck in place like a deer in the headlights. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”
Narancia walks to the door and opens it for her, letting in a gentle breeze and the scent of flowers from Giorno’s garden. “Trust me, you’ll get there,” he says, and it surprises him to find that he really means it.
Margherita takes a hesitant step, then, as if picking up on the change in Narancia’s tone, she meets him at the door. She still has a hint of a glower to her gaze, but his demeanor has her off-kilter enough that she can’t manage one of her signature bratty comments.
“Yeah, if you’ll actually teach me,” is all that she can mutter. But it doesn’t have her usual bite, and - as if she’s embarrassed by her own tone - she ducks her head to one side and storms out into the garden.
Narancia can’t help but laugh - just once, lightly, but he laughs nonetheless, and he feels a strange sense of fondness for the girl. He shuts the door behind him and wonders if Fugo had ever looked at him the same way.