Work Text:
Pannacotta Fugo thought that finding the root of his bad traits would give him more ammo with which to counteract them; to diffuse them.
That, as he quickly discovered, was apparently not the case.
Knowing the cause just makes him monumentally more angry at himself.
He knows that his stupidly intense desire to keep the group the same size forever is because they’re the only he’s ever had; but knowing doesn’t make it stop.
Fugo looks around at the team as it is now, the team that he wishes will never part, and he knows that it’s just going to collapse in on itself at some point.
With all these new people who have joined the team, it’s inevitable that Fugo will stop being useful, but at least he’s content with the group size for now. Bucciarati has Abbacchio, for whatever the fuck that guy does (Fugo has decided that he doesn’t want to know), and then there’s the matter of Narancia and Mista, who maybe he cares for a little more than he’d like to admit.
“It’s the three of us against the world,” Mista said to the two youngest team members once. “The Three Calabrios.”
To which Fugo corrected him by telling him the actual title was the Three Caballeros, and Narancia asked if they could just be the three musketeers instead.
Fugo, teeth grit, didn’t point out that there actually ended up being four musketeers in the Three Musketeers, and they didn’t remain together, either—
Because that’s not the point.
The point is that they could never be the three Caballeros or any number of Musketeers because their group is less like Narancia and Mista and Fugo and more like Narancia and Mista! (and Fugo).
He sees how the other two interact: playfully hitting each other, stealing each other’s food, sitting on each other’s laps for the fun of it, and he knows that he wants that, he wants something like that; but he keeps telling people not to touch him and how is he supposed to get it if that’s the wall he’s already built for himself? You can’t just fucking ask for that.
They’d just laugh at him. Because Fugo already has all that he should want.
They sit together sometimes, the three of them; Mista and Narancia as a unit and Fugo all alone and he can’t help but feel that they’re going to leave him someday. They don’t need Fugo; they already go out together and party and leave him behind because he says he doesn’t want to go but really what he wants to do is have them here listening to him; paying attention to him.
Sometimes, he wishes that Narancia and Mista would go back to being strangers to each other so that they’d just be his friend. He wishes that Narancia will never learn math so he’ll keep having to come to Fugo for help and then he’ll keep having a purpose.
But that’s fucking selfish of him, isn’t it?
It’s not their problem Fugo has this stupid need for attention. It’s not their fault he’s a fucking baby who can’t go a day without having his work be validated; without being told he’s loved.
And the fact that he knows his need for attention comes from what all the adults gave him as a child doesn’t sate his fucking need for it.
Nor does it suddenly give him the ability to articulate his gratitude for those who do give him the attention he requires, and he’s just waiting for the day that they all inevitably stop because Fugo can’t fucking reciprocate what he desires most.
So he sits at his desk and does work or reads a book or something to keep himself occupied as he drinks shit that’ll inevitably leave his mouth tasting horrible for hours afterwards and tries not to think of all the things Mista and Narancia are doing without him; all the stupid inside jokes they’ll chide each other about later or how they’ll come home at 1 am and inevitably fall asleep on each other on the fucking living room couch and he’ll have to look at that when he walks down at 8 am for breakfast and eats it alone .
Because in the grand scheme of his friends’ lives, Pannacotta Fugo does not matter. He knows that one day, this little group will break up and someone will die and then he’ll be alone again, so why not prepare himself for that emptiness before it hits?
Even so, that day in Venice, he felt the dread settle deep in his stomach as the boat set off without Narancia on it. Because this is it; he’d done all he could, and he knew that Narancia was too fucking attached to the group to stay with him.
And as the man jumped into the canal, yelling about some girl he met two days ago, Fugo knew this was it.
He’d been replaced.
It was only a matter of time, after all.
And so what if his breath hitches a little as he walks away? So what he finds his way back to somewhere to call home and curls up in a ball and punches the fucking bedframe so hard it leaves his knuckles numb?
It doesn’t matter how much he racks his brain for what Trish Una has that he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter that Narancia has known him for so much longer and they have much more in common. The others are gone now, chosen their path, and there’s nothing that Fugo can do about it.
The others have found their new spot in the world, and he should be happy for them.
Congratulations. You’ve ascended above the thing that most pulled you down. Your newfound vigilante aspirations have left him in the dust.
Narancia and Mista must be loving this; their new companion in Trish. They can be the real Three Musketeers now, with Giorno as their D’Artagnan leading the group to whatever fucking dream he claims to have.
And the rest will just die on the way.
Fugo gets only the consolation prize; the little ribbon that says You Did It! that bleeds purple ink into his good white shirt; ink that won’t come out no matter how hard he rubs and leaves a huge fucking stain to remind him of his failure.
But it’s what he deserves, after all.
Knowing why you want gold won’t make you a star athlete.
Knowing why you want love won’t make your friends think of you any higher.
Knowing why you hate yourself won’t make the residual anger go away.
And all Fugo fucking does is know why.