Work Text:
“What do you mean you don’t know long division?”
“Why don’t *you* try to put together what it means, since you’re the genius here.”
Fugo scoffed, raising a hand to his temple to massage them. He wasn’t expecting Narancia to know some things; correction, a lot of things, but long division was something that was taught in fourth grade! He knew Narancia had left school, but had he been out for that long?
“Do you *know* basic division?”
This time it was Narancia’s turn to scoff.
“Yeah. Do you think I’m stupid or something?”
“Well you don’t know long division.”
“I didn’t know that was what made someone stupid or not. Fugo, are you telling me all those pre schoolers that don’t know long division are stupid?”
“No, of course not. Because they’re not 15.”
“I don’t even see why this is such a big deal,” Narancia said, looking away at a waiter bringing food to another table.
“It’s not like I’m going to need to know this if I’m gonna be in a gang.”
He paused, thinking.
“Unless we meet a stand user whose ability has to do with that. But you’d be there.”
It was a ridiculous argument, but Fugo went along with it.
“Hypothetically, though, what if I’m not? Besides, learning basic math like that can just help you out in life. Say you’re ordering food, and you need to divide the bill among four people—“
“Calculator.”
Fugo bristled a bit at the sudden interruption, turning to face his new co worker.
“Hmm?”
“I’ll just bring a calculator with me. Easy.”
“What if the calculator breaks?”
“I buy a new one.”
He was getting angrier, rising to his feet now. A small part of him knew he was causing a scene, but he could only focus on this current predicament.
“Someone steals your money. Then what?”
“I *steal* the calculator.”
“What if you’re in a… a desert. You can’t buy a calculator?”
“Then I just don’t pay. Fugo, your face is all red.”
Fugo touched his face, and found it was getting warm. He sighed, and sat down. To release the anger, he picked at his skin, scratching along the inside of his wrists.
“It’s still helpful to know. Knowledge is a form of improvement, after all.”
“So you really don’t have anything to say after that?” Narancia said, laughing a bit.
“I can’t believe I beat an argument with someone who went to lawyer school!”
Fugo grabbed the fork.
…
It took a few stitches, but by the next time they met, Narancia’s hand was covered in bandages. The two of them had both been punished, with Bruno shaming the duo for causing a scene at the restaurant. They’d argued, claiming the other started it, but no amount of imploring could change the man’s mind.
As it to add insult to injury, Bruno had assigned Fugo to teach Narancia twice a week, for an hour and a half each day. He’d said that even if Narancia had left school, he should still learn basic things.
This was why Narancia was back at the same table the incident had occurred, holding a crumbled up piece of paper in his good hand.
Fugo was sitting in the same spot, and when he saw Narancia, just gave a blunt acknowledgment to his presence. Narancia sat across from him, laying out his crumbled paper on the table. Fugo stared at it like Narancia had laid out roadkill.
“What’s wrong?”
“Your paper is wrong,” Fugo replied, as though it were obvious.
“What? Oh, should I have gotten college ruled? I didn’t think we’d be starting college stuff.”
“No, it’s all crumpled. How are you going to work on paper like that?”
“Like this,” Narancia responded, writing his name on top.
“See? It’s easy Fugo, you try to write your name—“
“Did you at least being a folder.”
“Huh?”
“How do you intend to carry around your paper?” Fugo questioned. “In your hands?”
Narancia looked at his hands, and presented them to his ill-tempered tutor.
“Well, *hand*. You kind of stabbed my left hand.”
“Here,” Fugo said, presenting him with a green folder. Narancia looked at it, blankly.
“What’s wrong now?”
“Nothing. It’s just that math isn’t green.”
Fugo looked like someone had walked up to him and slapped him with a fish.
“Huh.”
“It’s not green. It’s like a red.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Like colors. Like science is green, math is red… you know?”
“That’s synesthesia.”
This time it was Narancia’s time to go, “Huh?” Fugo shook his head, and lowered a hand to his wrist. Using his free hand he pushed a book towards Narancia. Narancia looked at the title, but the cartoon mouse on the cover told him all he needed to know.
“This is for babies!” Narancia exclaimed, pushing the book back.
“I’m 15, not like… 9!”
“Clearly you have the knowledge of one. We’re going to start with some basic concepts.”
Fugo opened the book, but Narancia quickly closed it.
“I’m not doing that. I’ll do… math, but not in a book meant for kids.”
Fugo seemed a bit puzzled.
“But I’m still going to be pulling questions from the same source material.”
“But it won’t have like… the mouse on it.”
“What’s wrong with the mouse?”
“People are going to think I’m stupid,” Narancia said, as if he had to explain it to Fugo.
“No one else is here, Narancia. They won’t see.”
“But like…” Narancia tried to argue, but he had a feeling Fugo wouldn’t get it. Not Fugo, the child genius. He looked down at the smiling mug of the mouse, and opened it again.
“Fine. Whatever.”
“Wonderful. So let’s start with… basic division. Here.”
He splayed open a page. Narancia saw the same cartoon mouse and wished he could summon Aerosmith to blast the stupid grin off the thing.
“You know division, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Surprising,” he heard Fugo mutter.
“I heard that.”
“Good, I wanted you to. Regardless, let’s start with this: 104 divided by 8.”
Did they have to start with such a big number? Narancia stared down at the page, watching all the numbers blend into one big number. He swallowed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just can’t write anything since my hand is.. you know.”
“I don’t think you know the answer,” Fugo guessed, leaning back into his chair.
“No I just need to think about it first,” Narancia said, hearing the own venom in his voice.
“Just give me a minute!”
“It’s *been* a minute Narancia, you’ve just been staring at the whole page!”
“Well there’s a lot of numbers! And my hand hurts!
“Fine let’s,” Fugo said, flipping some pages back. “Let’s stay with more basic concepts. 4 divided by 2.”
“That’s easy, 2,” Narancia said. “That’s wayyy too easy.”
“Well you were struggling with the other ones,” Fugo argued, as he flipped another page. His eyes skimmed over the page, as they tested on an activity.
“How about this. A speed round for math.”
“Sounds fun,” Narancia said sarcastically.
“I’ll time it,” Fugo said, taking out an hour glass. He flipped it, and tapped Narancia to start.
Narancia did the first two problems, and his eyes flicked to the hour glass to check his pace.
There sure was a lot of sand going. How much time did he have left? Actually, how could you calculate how much sand needed to be in an hour glass to begin with? And, further, He wondered blankly how many sand kernels went down at a time, and how many there were in total. He figured Fugo could probably figure that out: he was smart.
“Times up,” Fugo said, grabbing the book back. He scanned at Narancia’s work, or rather, lack of it.
“How did you get the only two you did wrong?,” Fugo almost demanded, staring at the mostly blank page.
“You spent three minutes on it!”
“Well there were a lot of problems!” Narancia defended.
“There’s only 15! That’s not a lot.”
“Maybe not for you, but for me it’s a lot.”
“Maybe I should’ve started with easier problems,” Fugo muttered, aggressively drawing a frown face over the two problems. Even if it was wrong, Narancia felt a sinking feeling in his stomach watching Fugo scribble out the work.
“You shouldn’t have given me a baby book,” Narancia exclaimed, angrily. “I don’t want to have to carry this around!”
“But is it really wrong to give you one if you can’t even do the first problem?”
“It’s just embarrassing. It’s like you’re.. treating me like a kid.”
“I’m infantilizing you?”
“I don’t know what that word means,” he sighed, feeling frustration creep up. He wondered if he was going to cry, and realized he very much did not want to do that in front of Fugo. So he looked downcast.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Narancia couldn’t really think of anything to say: he was scared if he did his voice would crack.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… treated you like that. You’re not stupid.”
“That’s bullshit. I know you think I’m stupid.”
Fugo paused, obviously because he had to come up with a lie.
“No, you are smart. Just not… book-smart. The other day when we went to assassinate that drug dealer you did that one maneuver that I never would have thought of.”
“Huh?”
“With Aerosmith,” Fugo clarified. “I uh… well you saved my life.”
“I did?“
“Yes,” Fugo said, lacking any sort of emotion in his face. He seemed tense.
“So you’re not stupid, you’re just… you’re not suited to book study.”
“So then why are you trying to teach me math?”
“Well Bruno ordered me to,” Fugo clarifying, speeding past what could be seen as a potential compliment. “And as I said, any sort of knowledge helps the brain.”
“Right. But if I’m not suited to book study stuff how am I gonna learn anything?”
“…I’ll figure something out.”
…
They met a few times over the next few weeks, with little progress being made on Narancia’s end. For almost every meeting, either Fugo or Narancia had ended up leaving in anger. There were no more gory stabbings, largely because Bruno had ensured only plastic sporks be used at the restaurant during that time.
However, that wouldn’t matter today. Their meeting was not at the restaurant, but Fugo had taken great pains to make sure Narancia didn’t know where the meeting would be. Fugo was a bit nervous, and he found himself reciting what Mista had assured him earlier.
‘Narancia is going to love this,’ he’d said, to assuage Fugo’s worries. Still, Fugo worried, scratching at his wrist.
He was pacing too, thinking about all of the possible factors that could happen. What if Narancia thought it was stupid? What if he left in anger? There were too many possibilities and he was making himself sick.
He checked to make sure everything was in place. They would be having their meeting near the Naples International Airport. In about an hour, the US military would be doing an air show. Fugo had waited in the area for hours to find the perfect spot, protecting his spot from errant tourists.
“So we’re meeting here?” Said a familiar voice, and Fugo almost jumped. Narancia had appeared in the doorway, looking as apprehensive as Fugo felt.
“Oh, uh yes. Um …”
“I decided to try something different.”
“Different, huh? Outside learning?”
“Partially. I’ve been doing some reading on pedagogy and I’ve found that, rather obviously, learning can occur better with a reward in sight. Previously I just ordered you to do math problems with no real goal.”
“So my reward is… being outside?”
“Well— not exactly. You’ll find out.”
He sat them both down on the blanket, making care to straighten the blanket of any wrinkles before sitting down. Narancia huffed.
“You’re only going to make it more wrinkled when you sit on it. Just sit.”
“Hold on,” Fugo replied, trying to not launch into an explanation of how he wanted to ensure the blanket didn’t wrinkle permanently, and how it would ensure the longevity of the blanket.
“Just sit,” Narancia urged, grabbing Fugo’s wrist to sit him down. Fugo almost recoiled at the sudden touch, especially since it was where he tended to scratch at his skin. His skin tingled at the touch, but he didn’t know what it meant.
So they sat. And perhaps it was the outside air, or the weeks, no, months of learning, but the frustration was kept at a minimum for once. Which didn’t mean that Narancia got all the questions right, or that Fugo didn’t chastise him at all. It just meant that things seemed less tense between the two of them.
“That’s the most questions you’ve gotten right so far,” Fugo responded, grading Narancia’s paper. He tended to grade them in red ink, now. Red ink that matched the folder Fugo had bought him. Like the color of his suit.
“It’s probably luck,” Narancia added, relaxing back onto his wrinkled side of the blanket. Fugo resisted the urge to straighten it.
“How do you mean?”
Narancia shrugged.
“Luck that I did so well.”
“Don’t say that,” Fugo corrected. “It’s obvious improvement.”
“But aren’t you the one always saying not to draw conclusions from like… one findings? Like the scientific method and all that.”
“Nonsense,” said Fugo, waving one hand. “I’ve been plotting your recent scores and have found an upward curve with a p value of less than 0.01.”
“Penis value,” said Narancia.
“Probability ,” Fugo said.
“It’d be funnier if it was penis value,” he muttered, looking out over the field.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re not a very good liar. Your ears always get red at the top.”
Narancia covered his ears, turning away.
“Nothing,” he said, louder.
The refusal to talk was a bit annoying, especially since it was quite obvious something was bothering him. And, furthermore, if he was bothered then they wouldn’t get much done with their lesson. Either he could continue with the lesson and get agitated, or come clean.
“Narancia.”
The boy sighed, turning to face Fugo again.
“I just feel bad that you’re wasting all your time on me.”
“How so?”
“Well,” Narancia said, almost laughing. “I mean… you spend, what? Two or sometimes three hours a few times a week just… trying to get me to learn anything? And it’s taken me like two months to make any progress! We should just quit.”
“I doubt Bruno would allow that,” Fugo pointed out.
“We’ll just say I’m unteachable .”
“Impossible. No one is unteachable; you can train even spiders to respond to Pavlovian triggers—“
“Ohhhh my God you don’t get it,” Narancia said, raising his hands to his hair in frustration.
“Yeah like… that b value may say I’ve improved but it’s taken way too long for me to learn these things. And…”
He lifted up the workbook, showing the problems marked out with an x.
“I still got so many wrong! It’s just… dumb. I’m just a waste of your time.”
“Of course not,” Fugo said strongly, thereafter coughing into his fist.
“I don’t consider teaching to be a waste of time.”
Narancia rolled his eyes.
“I figured you’d say that.”
He got up.
“I think I want to leave early.”
Fugo looked to his wristwatch. They still had a few minutes before any planes would show up.
“You can’t. We haven’t… we could still go over some stuff—“
“What part of I want to leave early do you not get?” Snapped Narancia, causing Fugo to snap back.
“I understand it perfectly fine. The issue is I set up this whole nice lesson for the two of us and you’re throwing a fit over me complimenting you!”
Narancia placed his hands on his hips, and adopted a high pitched, posh sort of voice.
“ ‘But I complimented you Narancia! I said anything could learn, even dumb spiders! ‘ “
“I don’t sound like that!,” Fugo retorted, now standing up.
“Well that’s what I hear. I’m going.”
“You can’t go,” Fugo demanded.
“I’m the teacher, I dismiss class.”
“Watch me leave,” Narancia said, making the slow trek back to the base. Fugo grit his teeth, and followed, unsure of what Narancia wanted to be told. He was never good at these emotional sorts of situations: Bruno was suited for that. Unfortunately, Bruno was off with Abbachio on a coffee date.
“What do you want me to say? I apologize if the spider thing came off wrong.”
“If you don’t know what you should say you should just let me go back.”
“We can’t go back,” Fugo said.
“Why?,” Narancia demanded, turning around, his purple eyes shining brightly in the sun.
“Right, I forgot. Because your OCD needs you to have a perfect schedule or else… I don’t know, someone falls off a cliff.”
“That’s not how it works, and it’s not that.”
“What is it?”
A gasp from the crowd, and above them, two fighter jets rolled above. Fugo covered his ears, as loud noises always tended to disturb him. Narancia looked upwards with a sort of awe.
“I wanted you to see the air show,” Fugo said, not daring to remove his hands from his ears.
“WHAT?”
“I WANTED YOU TO SEE THE AIR SHOW!”
“OH!”
More jets appeared overhead, doing maneuvers that made Fugo’s stomach churn even on the ground. Narancia sat down where he was sitting, not caring to check for any bugs.
“Oh shit that’s a Convair F106!” Narancia said, pointing at one.
“They’re longer than the F102s— see?”
Narancia pointed to another jet making a circle.
“Ah.”
The jets all looked the same to Fugo.
They were quiet as they watched the air show. It seemed as though the previous argument had been brushed away with the roaring of the jet engines. Occasionally, Narancia would make a comment about the planes. Fugo listened, and was surprised to find that there were many facts he didn’t know.
Narancia had never been more focused than he was watching those jets.
“So this was my reward?” Narancia asked, quietly, at a break in the performance.
“Hmm? Oh, yes,” said Fugo.
“They’re showing off them and some older planes after the show, if you’d like to… explain them to me.”
Narancia turned to look at Fugo.
“You want *me* to explain something?”
“I don’t know much about planes, regrettably. It’s not my forte.”
“Well it’s my forty,” Narancia said proudly.
“I know a lot about planes and like… their engines, supersonic flight… anything.”
“I know a bit about supersonic flight,” Fugo admitted. “I’m quite interested in hypersonic flight—“
“OHHH MY GOD don’t get me started,” Narancia said, excitedly. His eyes lit up, as he started to gesticulate as he explained.
“I hope I’m still around when they figure that out for everyday use. Can you imagine that?”
“I can. I imagine my ears would need to stabilize quite a bit.”
“Yeah,” Narancia said, laughing. Fugo felt a twinge at his heart.
“Um. Narancia.”
“Yeah Fugo?”
Fugo paused, mulling over his words.
“You said earlier that you didn’t want me to waste my time with you. And I have a proposal to eliminate this problem.”
Narancia seemed to become tense all over again.
“Well what is it?”
“That for the second hour of each lesson, you teach me about anything you’re interested in. Planes, for example. That way it won’t be a waste of either of our times if we’re both learning.”
“Oh. Um… alright.”
“You seem hesitant—“
“No it’s just… uh. I didn’t think you’d do that.”
“Why?”
“Uh well… you… this is rude but it’s true. You can kind of be an asshole.”
“I’ve heard,” Fugo replied, reminiscing about the times his classmates had groaned whenever Fugo corrected or commented on things they had said.
“Right. But uh… I think I would like that.”
“Wonderful.”
Their eyes lifted off of each other, moving to the planes above.