Chapter Text
It isn't unusual for Bruno or Leone to be waiting in the living room for them to all get home from school - what is unusual, however, is Leone standing in the front doorway, arms folded, and a distinctly unimpressed look upon his face. As the kids herd up the driveway, Narancia trailing behind for once, Abbacchio speaks.
"Alright kiddos, hand em' over." He states, bluntly, holding his hand out. Fugo immediately raises an eyebrow.
"What?" He asks, exasperated.
"Report cards. School sent a letter, they're out today. Hand em' over."
Fugo rolled his eyes, before taking a piece of paper out of his satchel, dusting it off, and handing it over. Abbacchio took it, not even glancing at it.
"Happy?"
"Very much so. Mista?"
Fugo watched as Mista grumbled, eventually producing a folded-up piece of paper from his back pocket and passing it to Abbacchio.
"Remember how I said my Biology teacher was an asshole?"
"Don't care. Giorno?"
Giorno already had the perfectly crisp paper in hand, giving it to him nervously before moving to stand next to Fugo.
"Trish? You got yours?"
"Really?" She blinked. Abbacchio said nothing, and Trish huffed, before rooting around in the bottom of her messenger bag, producing a slightly crumpled piece of paper.
"Okay, but please remember that high school physical education isn't a real--"
"Whatever." He said, taking the paper from her.
Narancia stood with an almost defensive stance and a scowl, staring Abbacchio down, who seemed entirely unfazed by his aggression.
"Narancia?"
"What."
"Report card?"
"Lost it."
Abbacchio made a buzzer sound, before lazily raising an eyebrow.
"Try again."
"Didn't get one."
"That's bull and you know it. Give me the damn card." Leone held his hand out expectantly and Narancia held onto his bag with a fierce grip.
"Why do you even care?"
"I'd care a hell of a lot less if you'd just give me your report card."
"What difference is it gonna make? We both know I'm dumb as shit, you don't need a piece of paper to tell you that!" Narancia cried out.
"Don't swear at me," Abbacchio said calmly, which only seemed to make Narancia even more infuriated.
"I don't gotta listen to you! You're not my dad!"
A tense silence settled over the small group, Narancia immediately taking a step back, his face dropping, well aware of the bitter words that had just fallen from his mouth. Mista wondered if it was possible for Abbacchio's eyebrows to raise any higher.
"I've got a piece of paper in the filing cabinet upstairs which literally states that I am, so hand over your report card."
Narancia growled, before raking in his bag before pulling out a scrunched-up ball of paper and tossing it at Abbacchio's chest, where it bounced off and hit the ground. Mista sucked a deep breath in, as Bruno appeared in the doorway behind Leone, brow furrowed.
"What on earth is going on?" He asked, exasperated, as Leone bent down to pick up the paper.
"Narancia is going on a walk to cool off, yeah?" Leone murmured, shooting the wild haired boy a look. Narancia exhaled heavily, clenching his fists, before unclenching them and nodding shakily.
"Yeah. Yeah, I am. Sorry." He mumbled, before walking away, kicking gravel down the driveway as he went.
"What's happened?" Bruno whispered harshly, as Leone herded the rest of the kids inside.
"It's fine, just an argument over report cards."
"Report cards?" Bruno raised an eyebrow as Leone tossed him the scrunched-up ball Narancia had thrown at him. Bruno caught in effortlessly, unfurling it and frowning deeply at the words on the paper.
"... He's failing everything. How can he be failing everything? Even PE?"
Abbacchio peeked over his shoulder, ignoring the rest of the report cards in favour of Narancia's.
"I thought he was doing better with stuff, since Fugo's been tutoring him."
"So did I. Should we call his teachers? Set up a meeting?" Bruno asked, a little hesitantly as Leone shrugged, exhaling heavily.
"Up to you."
Bruno narrowed his lips into a thin line, in deep thought.
"It's probably best if we talk to him first about it. Was he upset over it?"
"More pissed off, than anything. I don't know."
Bruno gave a thoughtful hum, before heading inside. Leone gave one last lingering look down the driveway and the trail of gravel Narancia had kicked up as he left, before following Bruno back inside.
He didn't come home for dinner. None of the rest of them seemed to be particularly worried, but Trish and Giorno exchanged several nervous glances throughout the meal before Trish put her fork down with a clink, garnering the attention of all of those at the table.
"Are we going out to look for Narancia after dinner?" She asked, her voice wavering slightly. Bruno offered her a weak smile.
"It's okay, he'll be back before dark. There's a little den in the woods that he likes to go to sometimes."
"What, you're not even gonna look for him?" Bruno stopped eating, placing his fork down gently on his plate. He reached out for Trish's hand across the table, patting it lightly.
"Narancia... Is independent. Sometimes he needs his space. After dinner, we can go out to check on him, okay?"
"Fine." Trish continued eating, shooting Giorno a look, to which he raised his eyebrows a little.
The aforementioned 'den' was a a mess of old fences overlaid with heavy carpets, leaned up against a large oak tree - broken off branches and knots on the trunk making the perfect footholds. The boys had built it last summer and had furnished it with tree-stump stools and discarded curtains - it wasn't in the best condition, though it never really had been to begin with. Fugo and Mista had gotten bored of it quickly, but Narancia loved the rickety old structure - he loved just being out in the woods.
He'd grown up in an urban environment, a mess of grey streets and greyer buildings, but out in the forest, he could watch the birds and the squirrels and he could yell as loud as he wanted, and no one would give a shit (apart from the aforementioned woodland creatures). Tree climbing was another favourite hobby of Narancia's, though Abbacchio had completely forbade it after 'the incident' (a tree branch had snapped, causing Narancia to fall right on top of him, muddying his exceptionally expensive and totally impractical black velvet coat) - but what Abbacchio didn't know didn't hurt him.
Narancia felt an immense wave of guilt as he thought of Abbacchio, and how he'd yelled at him. Snapping a twig for good measure, Narancia let out a long and loud groan, causing some birds to fly away from a nearby tree. He sat himself down on one of the tree stumps, picking at the moss on the side.
He was pretty hungry - he didn't have a watch or a phone, so he didn't know what time it was, but he guessed it must be around dinner time. Narancia kicked a rock away from him, resting his chin in his hands. Maybe he had been a bit of an asshole, but they should've known not to bug him about shit like report cards - he wasn't smart, like Fugo or Giorno, or creative like Mista and Trish. Reading and writing didn't make sense to him - the letters all squiggled around on the page and mushed up altogether and refused to formulate themselves into nice sentences that could be read. He'd 'borrowed' some of the books from the shelf in Giorno's room - it had been a spare bedroom, so the bookshelf was filled with kids books, dumb baby stuff like 'Larry the lady bug's big adventure' - Spoiler alert: Larry's adventure was shit, the pictures were ugly and the font was far too difficult to read, the words wiggling around the page like the ants in the story. He was glad for Giorno's silence as he returned the books. Sometimes there'd be a comment, Giorno saying that he liked ladybugs - to which Narancia would huff and say 'Yeah, whatever, I just needed it for art homework'.
It wasn't a great secret that Narancia didn't get on with school. He liked art, but the teacher would always yell at him for going off topic - he didn't want to draw effing fruit, he wanted to draw cool shit, like superheroes! Art wasn't fun when you were being told what to do. Narancia was fast too, he was good at running, and he thought he'd like PE - but there was so much waiting around for your turn to hit the ball, it was ridiculous! Narancia would pick at the grass and make daisy chains, and then he'd get yelled at for picking at the grass and making daisy chains and he was sick of it. Fugo got to skip PE for advanced maths, and Narancia, a whole two years older than him was still stuck in baby maths, sitting in an old classroom with the other baby-maths kids, listening to the shitty teacher with the big hairy chin-mole tell them how important times tables were and how much they needed to learn them - but shit, sometimes she'd bring out the box with the colourful cubes and those were the best damn days, even though he didn't learn anything at all.
Fugo sometimes tried to tutor him - but Fugo didn't have colourful cubes, he just had a shitty whiteboard and his handwriting was all cursive and too damn hard to read, and Narancia would get distracted colouring in the squares in his maths book and Fugo would yell at him, and Narancia would yell back--
Letting out a growl, Narancia clambered to his feet, kicking away rocks and twigs. Fugo was so damn smart, he could be anything he wanted to be - Giorno too, though he always said he wanted to do something with animals, maybe like a vet. You probably had to go to the like, animal medical school to be a vet, but Giorno was certainly smart enough. Mista wanted to be a tattoo artist, and Narancia had seen his sketchbook, the designs with the flaming knife skulls were the coolest shit and he begged Mista to give him a stick and poke tattoo, but the older boy always refused, stating that his art wouldn't translate to the medium of stick and poke, and that it was 'disrespectful' to real tattoo artists. Narancia didn't really give a shit though - he used a biro and a compass to give himself a really sick skull tattoo on his knee, except it didn't really work out, looking less like a skull and more like a black blob. At least he was able to pass it off as a freckle when Bucciarati saw.
Trish was going to be a singer - there was no question about that, she was certainly good enough, and before her Mom died, she was auditioning for TV shows like Italian Idol. Bucciarati had offered to start taking her to the auditions again, but Trish refused, stating that she wanted to focus on herself for now, whatever the hell that meant. Celebrities said that kind of shit all the time, so maybe she was just practicing for that.
Narancia had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. He could dream of all the cool shit he wanted to do - like being a video games tester, or a fighter jet pilot, but the careers woman at school said that playing video games wasn't a real job, and people in the military had to do a lot of listening and following orders, and Narancia was shit at following orders, or even basic damn instructions. He cursed himself for his hubris (or rather, his kryptonite) sometimes, but he didn't see why the hell he had to listen to some musty old teacher just because they'd been to college or whatever.
Being a pilot sounded really cool - especially piloting things like air ambulances or whatever. He'd never actually been in a helicopter or an airplane before, but he'd climbed some pretty tall trees in his time, so how different could it be?
He looked up at the big oak tree with a frown. Fugo hated tree climbing, stating that the heights made him nauseous. Mista would always egg him on, but whenever he got anywhere near the top, he'd suddenly pale and completely change his tune, begging him to come back down again. Trish and Giorno hadn't been out to the den yet - Trish probably wouldn't be all that interested in tree climbing, not wanting to mess up her clothes or her makeup or whatever else, and Giorno would never want to do anything that would make Bucciarati or Abbacchio mad.
But again, Bucciarati and Abbacchio weren't here.
At least, that's what Narancia repeated to himself as he sprinted towards the oak tree, clinging onto the large trunk and clambering up clumsily, grabbing onto the sticky out bits of bark and broken branches for purchase as he hauled himself up to one of the lower branches. He perched, one hand on the trunk for support, his legs dangling precariously, maybe about six or seven feet from the ground. It wasn't that high at all - Oak trees grew to about seventy feet (A fact courtesy of Giorno) and he'd been almost all the way to the top.
Still, it was nice just being high up. The air was always a little easier to breathe than on the ground, and Narancia took in big, greedy gulps as he tried to catch his breath. His heart was pounding, and he didn't even know why. Panic? Adrenaline? Excitement? Whatever it was, Narancia enjoyed picking at the leaves on the trees and watching the squirrels hopping along the branches on the adjacent trees, so he didn't really care all that much.
It was easy for Narancia to get distracted, with yells of his name bringing him from his daydreams.
"Oi! Nara!" Mista's voice rang out through the forest, loud and clear and chasing one of his squirrelly friends away. Narancia looked down to find Mista and Fugo standing near the base of the tree, the latter with his arms folded.
"Yeah?" Narancia called down, causing the pair to look up. Mista jumped a little at the voice coming from above him, Fugo rolling his eyes and cursing under his breath.
"Dude! You scared the shit outta me!" Mista accused, leaving Narancia to shrug with a cheeky smirk.
"Abbacchio and Bucciarati are pissed at you." Fugo offered, in an irritatingly matter-of-fact tone, raising his eyebrows smugly. Narancia's face dropped.
"I don't even care."
Fugo huffed, "Yeah, totally, that's why you're hanging out in the fucking woods. Too scared to face them?"
"Wha-- I'm not scared! I don't give a shit what they think!" Narancia shot back, growing more irritated by the second. Fugo seemed to relish greatly in riling Narancia up, as the situation was usually the other way around.
"They're gonna call the school," Fugo taunted, before his face dropped.
"I can't believe you're failing everything. Have I really been wasting my time? Do you even care about your grades?" Narancia scoffed, getting up off the branch and climbing a little higher, causing Mista to bite his lip a little nervously and whisper something unintelligible to Fugo.
"Fuck off, Pannacotta!" Narancia yelled down from the tree, letting go of the trunk to flip him off with both hands. He saw a flicker of concern on Fugo's face for just a moment as he did so, but it was quickly replaced with anger.
"You're wasting my goddamn time, Narancia! It's pissing me off!" He shot back, stepping forwards and raising a fist, as if he could hit Narancia when he was sitting up so high. Mista reached out to place a hand on Fugo's shoulder, only to find his touch immediately shrugged off.
"I never asked for your help, idiot!"
Fugo scoffed, "What, I'm the idiot here? You can't even-- Jesus Christ, can you just come down here?" As Fugo had been speaking, Narancia had traversed ever further up the tree, now peeking down through the upper branches and leaves.
"I'm sick of being yelled at about school shit! I'm fucking stupid, I get it, so just leave it!"
Mista answered him with a nervous shout, as he pulled his beanie back down over his forehead.
"Dude, can you just come down? Fugo's done yelling--"
"--I absolutely am not done yelling, until this imbecile gets it through his thick skull that--"
"Shut up!" Mista hissed, elbowing Fugo harshly as Narancia stood up on one of the branches, aiming to climb ever higher, though he was already a frightening fifteen feet in the air.
Narancia could see Fugo mouthing something - probably counting to ten in an attempt to control his temper. Fugo looked up at the wild haired boy peeking through the branches, with an almost menacing smile which made Narancia feel incredibly uneasy.
"Fine. You come down, and we'll go through your maths homework, okay?"
Narancia seemed to consider his words for a moment, looking as if he was in real thought, before shaking his head, and punctuating the action with a definite "Nah."
Fugo looked absolutely exasperated, but Narancia couldn't bring himself to care, planning how he could get himself up a little higher. The branch he was standing on was kind of thin and springy, but if he headed more towards the outer end, he could grab onto the lower part of the branch above and hoist himself up--
"Dude, can you get down from there, you're freaking me out!" Mista yelled up to him, brow furrowed. He could see Fugo standing next to him, arms still folded, but looking incredibly defensive.
"Fuck that, bro! I'm quitting school and I'm gonna live in the woods from now on!" Narancia heard a shout from somewhere beneath him, as he climbed up onto the branch above. It wasn't as sturdy as he expected, making him feel a little nervous, but he could hang some blankets and shit over it and boom - instant tree home. Sounded kinda nice actually, if he lived in a tree, he wouldn't have to go to school or any shit like that. He would become a curiosity, one of those weirdos features on TLC, 'The amazing tree man! Narancia Ghirga has lived in a tree since the age of fifteen,'.
Narancia scooted back a little along the branch, trying to lean his back against the tree trunk. Fugo and Mista seemed to be talking to each other in a hushed tone, to quiet for Narancia to hear - not that he cared, of course. Huffing to himself, he picked a piece of bark off the branch, and tried to kick his legs up. Key word: Tried.
There was an awful, stomach lurching moment of nausea as his heart dropped into his stomach, and the entire thing tried to wrench its way up Narancia's throat as suddenly, and horrifyingly, he was leaning back into nothing. He could see his legs kicked up in the air in front of him - flailing and wavering madly as if in slow motion, and he somehow wasn't in contact with tree branch at all any longer. There were shouts from below, panicked and desperate as Narancia became painfully aware of the fact that he was falling.
It wasn't like in the movies; where you fall through the air gracefully, white dress billowing around you - Narancia wasn't wearing a big white dress, but he thinks it would've made this whole thing a hell of a lot cooler if he was. Instead, he felt his arm hitting branches, twigs and leaves biting viciously at his face as bark scraped along his limbs unapologetically. Things were still in slow motion as he tumbled backwards, hurtling ever closer towards the forest floor.
As he gazed up at the forest canopy, a mess of mottled green leaves blocking out the sunlight, leaving only small beams of evening light to peek through, he wondered for a split second if he was seriously going to die without passing lower secondary maths.
Then he hit the ground.