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Now, Avdol cannot be called an expert at interpreting the complicated feelings of others. He can interpret the cards, he can interpret the motivations, and he has a script of possibilities he easily falls back on. He’s a genius, and he is very good at pretending, but he is often caught completely off-guard. Such as now.
While Giorno, Bucciarati, and Polnareff are speaking in hushed whispers in the side room, Avdol has been sat at a lovely table between two equally lovely couches. Guido Mista, who he saw perhaps twice on his strange travels and has seen literally every time he’s left the turtle since, stands at attention at the door. The feral child (named for oranges) is stalking the perimeter, only swinging back in to eat some of the snacks laid out on the table, give Avdol a stinkeye, and leave. (They seem nice.) And then there is the… well. Rather dour figure, he’d say.
They’re quite tall - as tall as Polnareff used to be, at least - and their hair is a striking cascade of silver. He figures that they would fit well as an illustration on the tarot. High Priestess, perhaps. Their laced coat leaves them formless, but still clearly sturdy, and Avdol is a big fan of the shoes. Their name is Leone Abbacchio and they do not get along with him, but he doesn’t mind.
He tried to tell them so, but they just glared at him.
“May I have something to drink?” Avdol asks. It could be a power-play, but he’s attempting to be polite. He did just walk in without explanation. He’ll allow them to be hosts, gracious or otherwise.
There is complete silence. Avdol drops his smile and tries his best not to roll his eyes.
“I would not stand a chance against your boss, and my Stand wants nothing to do with him or you. I’ve said my intentions, and I am very tired - it has been a long road getting here,” and Avdol just barely keeps from laughing at his own joke. “And if I wanted to strike, I would have done so weeks ago, before you knew of me. So I would appreciate something to drink, if it isn’t trouble. I can even get it myself.”
“... You like tea?” asks the feral one from behind him, and he turns his head to address them. Behind him, he hears tea being poured.
“Oh, I do very much!” He cocks his head. “Of what kind? Eastern or Western?”
“Uh…” He watches Narancia’s delighted little eyes slide over his shoulder, probably seeking input from a superior. He watches them instead of looking back because the face they’re making is very interesting. “Abbacchio makes it, so I think it’s Western?”
“Italiano style,” says Abbacchio, and Avdol turns back to look at the person addressing him. They slide a teacup over on a coaster. Now, where did that come from?
He leans to take it, and the cup is halfway to his mouth when he realizes its contents.
…
This is piss.
There is piss in this cup.
It takes him several seconds to get past the mental roadblock of why is there piss where piss should not be before he manages to get to the second step, they want me to drink this piss. Now, Avdol’s made a couple people drink piss in the past, mostly when he was young and stupid. But it was never in a teacup.
Just for a moment, he feels his temper flare, and then he stomps it down. No. He is here to cooperate and get these silly mobsters to allow him into their circle.
Now, why make him drink piss? This is the question of the hour. A few seconds pass as he considers it, his eyes on the unfortunate yellow concoction in this very nice teacup. Is it because he’s disliked? Perhaps, but he already knows that. If that was it, the social pressures inherent in drinking something given to you would not apply, and he could just get mad and not do it.
So if he’s supposed to pay attention to the social pressures and drink it, but it’s piss, then...
… Oh. Oh! He’s being hazed!
Avdol can barely keep himself from snickering. It’s so stupid. It’s stupid, it’s incredibly insulting, and it’s the funniest fucking thing he’s ever seen. It is so quintessentially malicious. Yes, of course this Abbacchio doesn’t trust him, but if he’s being hazed, that means this is a test, and all tests can be passed (such is the nature of tests.)
His temper is not to be trifled with, but the best way to cut off Avdol’s temper is to give him something to outsmart, and Avdol has found the hell out of that something. He’s never been hazed before. He’s kind of excited.
It’s very clear that everyone else in the room is, on some level, aware of the ritual unfolding before them. The feral one (he’s been calling them a child, but Narancia is clearly older - they have a child’s spirit and grace, however, which does trip him up) is struggling not to laugh. Mista, who wears very nice cashmere in very bad patterns, has his eyes on Abbacchio. He’s stern, but has no consternation there. Matching it to his mental directory, Avdol would call it the same kind of face Jotaro used to make when Kakyoin was about to make Joseph eat shit on the pavement - not disapproving, but acting tough. It isn’t a complete match, but it’s as close as he’s got.
And Abbacchio… oh, Abbacchio looks like the cat who’s got the cream. The human mouth doesn’t generally go up in the middle like the bisection gap in a cat’s palate, but Abbacchio is doing it anyway, and his lips curl up, too, making him look like the most self-satisfied man Avdol’s seen since DIO. Abbacchio, however, is not his enemy. He is simply a roadblock.
Avdol loves getting through roadblocks.
“If you make this yourself,” he says, beginning to gesture with the too-full cup of Piss Tea, “then it must be loose-leaf!”
“... Yes,” drawls Abbacchio, crossing his legs at the knee. His right foot ticks in the air, the flicking of the very tip of a kitten’s tail. “It is.”
“You know, fortunes can be read with loose-leaf tea. I happen to be a very astute fortune-teller.”
“Do you,” says Abbacchio, clearly uninterested.
“Would you like me to tell your fortune?” He sets the teacup down, gently, on the table. All eyes are on him now - he can feel them. Even Narancia has stopped pacing, creeping instead behind the couch he’s sat on to peer over its back. It is a very comfortable, white couch. Narancia is wiping crumbs on it.
Pannacotta Fugo, a man who has, in Avdol’s experience, only ever done paperwork and snarled in the middle of the night at his Stand, pauses in the doorway. He looks upon the strange scene, and then he says, “Hey.”
“Hello,” says Avdol. “Abbacchio just made me a lovely cup of tea!”
He watches Fugo struggle to keep a straight face and he pretends not to notice, in deference to his feelings.
“As I was saying,” he says, rubbing his hands together as if to warm them up, “loose-leaf teas can be used for readings, and have been for thousands of years. It started in China, as that is, you know, where tea was first made.”
“So ever since tea?” Mista asks from his position by the door. He is aching to come closer. Avdol smiles, kindly.
“Exactly! Now, you can’t do this while there’s tea in the cup, as it’s too dark to see and make out any shapes in the leaves. It’s best to do with the residue after the cup has been drank.” Avdol cups his hands around the cup. “However, I prefer a different method.”
He waits, and the room holds its breath with him. This is a feeling he’s used to - keeping a room full of people, usually kitschy white people, on the edge of their seats as he builds suspense to an unknown end. Even Mista leans in from his position by the door, and Fugo takes up a spot next to Narancia, newspaper in hand, but unread.
“Magician’s Red,” Avdol cries, and his Stand cries, too, overlaying his body with its great wings curled in a halo around his head. The tea - the pee - heats, and boils, and then is vaporized under intense heat. The teacup almost glows, the clawed hands of Magician’s Red curled around it like a nest to an egg.
His stand coos, shifting to the side of him to nuzzle his neck, and he dismisses it after a brief thanks in his native Arabic. Abbacchio is staring at him.
Avdol leans over the now-empty teacup. He pretends to consider its contents, which are almost nothing. He purses his lips, nods once, and then, ever so slowly, drags his eyes up to meet to ombre of his opponent’s.
“You have kidney stones.”
Narancia loses their mind. Avdol feels them topple over to land chest-first on the couch, their legs kicking in the air as they shriek with glee. Abbacchio himself has turned red almost instantly. He doesn’t slouch, but he hunches a little, a hand pressed to his forehead. Behind Avdol, Fugo snorts.
“He got you!” howls Mista, leaning on the doorframe that protects the Don and his consiglieri from this nonsense. “He got you so fuckin’ good -”
“He got me,” Abbacchio admits, defeated. “He did get me.”
Avdol can’t help but grin. It’s nice to be appreciated, even by young mafiosos who don’t know sense if it shot them in the mouth. They seem nice. He’s… a little nostalgic, for simpler times. For a moment, this could be a hotel room, with two beds pushed to the side so they can sit in a circle and play cards with stupid bets, a gang of young men and their would-be chaperone that Avdol had to chaperone, laughing in the darkness until they woke the dog.
“I like him!” cries Narancia, who then flings their arms around Avdol’s waist. “That was sick!”
“Yes, but now it smells like piss in here,” Fugo hisses, pinching his nose shut. “I should never have come in here. You’re always doing this.”
“Me?” Avdol asks innocently.
“You know damn well I’m not talking about you,” snaps Fugo, in a way Fugo never would have before, and Avdol knows he’s passed the test. He’s delighted, and claps his metal hands together to show it. Narancia bats at them like a cat.
Giorno pokes his head out to investigate, a moment later, and is confronted by the shaking back of Mista. He’s still laughing. Bruno peers out over him, for a brief moment, their heads stacked like the two cookies in a maracon. Polnareff looks out from underneath. He is either the mysterious third cookie or the plate.
“What are you all doing out there,” says the Don, trying not to be affectionate and failing.
“Trying to steal my man,” Polnareff guesses.
“It smells like piss.”
“It does.”
“Leone,” Bruno scolds suddenly, and Avdol gets to watch Abbacchio go even redder. “You didn’t.”
“He did!” Fugo rats him out as he leaves the scene, drawing a swear from the piss culprit. Fugo narrowly avoids a grab on his way out the door once more, having given up the room as a lost cause. “He did it again!”
Avdol hasn’t felt so at home since the last time he saw the Crusaders. Well before Knight of Wands, well before his travels (that he’ll think on another day). He thinks the rest of this rather rag-tag group will eventually learn to feel the same. Their standards can’t be too high. After all, they kept Polnareff.