Work Text:
It was very, very late one evening, and down the Italian countryside a battle-worn car sputters along, its one flickering headlight illuminating the edge of a rocky, row-riding cliff before slowly creaking to a stop. The engine idles for a moment before going quiet.
Fugo relaxes his grip on the steering wheel and cracks his knuckles before adjusting the rear-view mirror to carefully study his face. Straightening his tie, his eyes flit over to Mista, bruised lip and black eye, shirt tattered and painted with blood, who flashes a toothy grin. He briefly sits up and places a bullet laden green briefcase in his lap on his seat. Some of the glass from the window falls onto the ground as he steps out. He stands up, stretches, carefully inspects his suit and loafers noting minimal wrinkles and scuffs, and begins to survey the damage.
Mista wiggles the handle of the back seat passenger door for a moment before repeatedly ramming it with his left shoulder; it opens with resistance. As he exits the car, he curses under his breath, tracing a finger lightly over the bullet wound in the same shoulder, before brushing the dust and gunpowder off of his pants. He shoves one pistol in the front of his pants and adjusts the two others in their chest holsters. He walks over to the trunk, knocks twice on the hood, and snaps his fingers at the other men in the car. “Get to work.”
Two men quickly exit, well tailored clothes dusty and bloody with cuts on their faces, and shuffle toward the trunk. Mista fiddles with the latch and pops the trunk open. There are two bodies wrapped up haphazardly in floor mats, blood seeping through and staining the trunk carpeting below. The men each pick up a shovel, throw an individual body over their shoulders, and slowly make their way down toward the beach.
The car is riddled with bullet holes, multiple shattered windows, and a large spidering windshield crack, the tires alone miraculously escaping injury. Dark smoke gently billows out underneath the hood of the car. Fugo crouches down to inspect the front bumper and palms the outline of a head-shaped dent. The bumper wiggles and jitters it a bit but stays put. Moments later, he hears a loud thud from the back of the car. Fugo rubs his temples and twitching eyes before standing up. He glares at Mista, who is in the process of picking up the back bumper - a fresh footprint duly noted in the metal - and attempting to make it fit in the trunk. He fails to close the hood multiple times, eventually conceding and tossing the bumper in the back seat through a broken window. The blonde reaches into the driver side window to grab his cell phone and walks over to the cliff, looking down to the beach and seascape, faintly able to see the outlines of the men below.
“Let’s go supervise this goddamn mess,” Fugo mutters after several deep breaths.
“We’re fine!" Mista boasts, approaching from behind, patting Fugo twice on his shoulder. He grips tightly, and Fugo relaxes. He starts walking down the sharp incline to the beach, his voice carrying loudly through the air. “It’s just rocks and shit here!”
Mista leads the descent to the beach where the soldiers are diligently shoveling sand, audibly struggling to create graves to match the length of the bodies laying next to them. Fugo notes the sand is coarse and rough with lots of little rocks and seashells and a rocky alcove and tide pool undisturbed by human activity. The men had argued about a proper location speeding away from the scene of the crime, but Mista’s hunch was solid - no one would find them here. Not like we would let them live if they did, anyway, he thinks. They hear the voices of the two men complaining loudly as they approach.
“Fuck man,” the Tall Man groans, slamming his foot onto the shovel to get a good grip on the sand and rocks below. "Who the fuck buries goddamn bodies out here? I’m gonna be late for my date.”
“She doesn't like you anyway,” the Short Man grunts in reply.
“Hey, my ma loves me.”
“That’s not what she said last night.”
“Why you--”
“The faster you shovel, the faster we get out of here,” bellows Mista on his approach, taking an aggressive hands-on-hips stance. The men go rigid for a moment and quickly resume their shoveling with minimal mumbling complaints. Mista then casually strides onto the beach, tip toeing away from the approaching waves and toward the rocky tide pool. Fugo, on the other hand, carefully folds the hems of his pants before choosing a nearby large rock as his perch. Only the sounds of the light crashing and receding waves, sand being shoveled, and a gentle breeze are carried through the night air.
Mista gazes blankly at the water until he catches the movement of a five-pointed starfish on the rocks crawling its way back to the safety of water. “Hey, Fugo,” he calls over, “is it a starfish, or a seastar?”
“What?” Fugo gawks.
“I mean, it’s not a fish, you know? Like, a jellyfish isn’t a fish. A cuttlefish isn’t a fish either. It’s a mollusk, and they’re all invertebrates,” he reflects thoughtfully. “So what should we really call it?” he says, poking at it with his finger. It slinks into the water and out of sight.
“You seriously want to talk about etymology and semantics right now ?” The blonde gestures the two bodies on the ground, but Mista presses on.
“Maybe when they were naming shit, anything that lived in the sea was a fish,” he continues to muse, idly searching for it in the water, ignoring Fugo’s incredulousness. “So, is a mermaid a fish?”
“Irrelevant, as a mermaid isn’t real to deserve the distinction,” Fugo replies.
The Short Man puts his shovel in the ground. He wipes a bit of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand before calling out an answer. “Twenty euro says they ain’t fish.”
“You’re on!” Mista calls over. Both of them look at Fugo with stony, expectant expressions.
Fugo groans through clenched teeth, in sheer disbelief that he is even entertaining their buffoonery, but clearly no work is to be done until he provides an answer. For several moments he is quiet. His reply is succinct and eloquent. “A fish is an aquatic based vertebrate using gills to respire. So by that definition, a mermaid is a species of fish.”
The Short Man curses, and Mista’s only reply is to hum contentedly. Moments later, the brunette moves on quickly and excitedly to his next inquiry, a pep in his step as he walks over to the losing party. “Hey, so if you were gonna fuck a mermaid, would you want the top half to be a fish, or the bottom half to be a fish?”
Scratching his chin, the Short Man replies after some thought. “Top half fish.”
“Seriously?” The Tall Man man stops shoveling, gawking at his partner with raised brows.
“Why? Because you won’t have to hear ‘em complain about how bad you are?” Mista remarks.
“Get back to work!” Fugo barks at the men, standing tall, who both cower and begin shoveling again.
The waves crash and recede, the men fall into an undisturbed rhythm, and Fugo eventually relaxes and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, the soldiers are now standing waist deep in their holes as they continue to aggressively shovel sand out. Some of the sand lands on Fugo’s shoes. Mista, having grown bored of the sea life, snickers softly from a seated position next to him. Fugo’s eyebrow twitches and he takes several deep breaths to keep himself calm and collected. He eyes the watch on his wrist, the light of the moon reflecting on the glass and making it a little bit hard to see. It’s probably been an hour, he thinks. This fiasco is taking too damn long. As he stands up to scold the men again, his cell phone rings.
“Ciao.” Fugo listens intently with a flat affect. Mista quizzically watches. Fugo looks knowingly at Mista and nods. “No. Yes. One moment.” Fugo walks away from the group murmuring into the phone, pausing to listen to directions in silence. Fugo walks back over, presses a button, then tosses the phone over to one of the mafioso. “It’s for you.” The Tall Man barely catches it, and places his ear to the phone.
“Gentlemen,” the smooth, orotund voice of their Don comes through on speakerphone. Startled, the Tall Man holds the phone out closer to the Short Man so both men can hear. “We appreciate and thank you for your efforts. Unfortunately, your services are no longer needed.”
Mista takes out the two guns from their holsters and immediately fires two headshots, silenced by the incoming crash of a wave. The men’s bodies fall backwards into their holey handiwork with a soft thud. The cell phone falls out of the Tall Man’s hand and drops in the elevated space between them.
The waves ebb and flow. On the third crash, Mista groans. “Hey, what gives? You realize there are four bodies now, right?”
Fugo finally explodes, screaming. “We were supposed to collect intel, not a body count!”
“I didn’t fuck anything up though!”
“Hey, nothing in the dossier said to take your goddamn gun out!”
“They shot first!” Mista wags his finger at Fugo.
“Technically, they shot at the briefcase full of money.”
“That you were hiding behind!”
“I was to meet with Sorenzo, discuss his concerns regarding recent investment opportunities, and scout information. You were to stay put in the car! Sorenzo and his partner were not marked men. Neither were these two!”
“Wait. Wasn’t he? Weren’t they?” Mista says with wide eyes.
“Wait, what ?” Fugo’s voice spikes two decibels higher. “What did Giorno tell you?”
“Ahem.” Mista dips his head and looks directly into Fugo’s eyes, recounting prim and proper. “‘Mista. Fugo is overseeing an internal disagreement. Please take these two men, accompany him, and facilitate restructuring.’”
“He said that?”
“In a manner of speaking!”
Fugo sighs. “And you interpreted that as…”
“Kill the guys and get his money back?” Mista shrugs. Fugo’s jaw drops. “Seriously though. Why the hell do you think Giorno would send his best gunman and two lackeys to accompany whatever the hell you are this week if he wasn’t expecting a shootout?”
“Oh my God.” Fugo groans and massages his temples. “GioGio, I can’t work with a stripped deck of cards!”
“Mista." Giorno’s voice comes through the phone, calm but commanding. Mista relaxes, Fugo stiffens. “Several lives were lost today. Quite the cleanup.”
“Right,” mumbles Mista, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m sorry for the mess, Giorno.”
“Fugo, Sorenzo owed Passione money. Now," Giorno pauses, a hint of satisfaction in his voice, "no one owes me money." There’s a creak of what Mista instantly recognizes as their mattress. "It’s late. Come home.” The phone clicks and the light of the screen goes dark.
“Fuck!” Mista growls. “I’m totally sleeping on the couch tonight.” He sighs. “Well, let’s get started.” Mista grabs the Short Man’s shovel and hands it to Fugo, who glares daggers at him. “It’ll go twice as fast if you help.”
"Absolutely not. That is your mess, and this is a five thousand dollar suit."
"Yeah, that you had the designer cut holes into, you fuckin' circus clown."
Fugo feigns disgust and goes over to pick up the cell phone, takes a handkerchief out of his pocket, and cleans off the blood splattered on the screen. He uses his shoe to push one of the bodies and it tumbles into the hole. Placing the phone and handkerchief back in his pocket, the blonde approaches Mista and grabs the shovel from his hand, and begins shoveling sand into one of the graves.
“Let’s hurry up. It’s almost high tide.”
Mista smiles fondly, pushes the other body in, and starts shoveling the sand in the adjacent hole. He pauses for a moment and suddenly jumps in the grave. Mista brushes off some of the sand, pats down the body and pulls out a wallet out of the dead man’s back pocket. He takes a few bills, leaving some behind and carefully places it back. As he climbs out, he looks back at Fugo sheepishly. “Still owes me money.”
“Just take all of it.”
“It’s bad luck disrespecting the dead! He owed me twenty euros, and that’s all I’m takin’.”
“He’s fuckin’ dead, dude.”
Mista waves his hand in dismissal. He shoves the money in his hat and returns to shoveling. After a particularly hard jab in the sand pile, Mista hisses, grimacing as he rubs his left shoulder. Nevertheless, he continues diligently shoveling. For several more minutes, there is nothing but rolling waves and metal.
“You know, I get Sorenzo,” Fugo muses while continuing, “but why did he want these two dead?”
“Does it matter?” Mista asks.
“No, I suppose not.”
“I didn’t really care for ‘em anyway.”
“Me either.”
Fugo pauses. He sticks the shovel in the ground for a moment and leans against it. Bewildered, he stares into the distant horizon. He snorts suddenly, then starts shoveling again.
“What?” Mista asks, pausing too.
“Who picks top half fish?”
“Right?” Mista replies, laughing.
When they finish, the waves crash against the beach rocks, smoothing over the sand, water resting high over the graves, covering their tracks.