Chapter Text
Mista's daily schedule goes something like this:
6:45-6:55 AM: Wake up to soothe the sound of one of the kids’ crying — usually Five, but sometimes Six when she’s feeling feisty, or One, when he thrashes so hard in his crib he falls on to the floor (of course giving them separate cribs was a bad idea, Narancia).
7:00 AM: Run back to his room to slam the far-too-optimistic alarm clock on his bedside table quiet. Somewhere in between the chaos of adjudicating whatever inevitable squabbles arise between the kids, change into a suit and tie and eat something vaguely resembling breakfast. On good days, half a slice of toast. On bad days, a spoonful of mayo. Today is a bad day.
7:45 AM: Force-feed baby formula to the kids and inevitably have to change the suit because there’s too many weird stains on it from Three spitting it out on him (How is one baby so goddamn fussy? Can’t have been Mista’s DNA, for sure).
8:30 AM: Get the kids into clothes and out the door so Auntie Trish can get them to daycare. Even if he doesn’t fully trust her expired license and flashy sports car to keep them safe, his other option is Narancia, and he’ll take aggressive driving over manic driving any day of the week.
8:45 AM: Sigh in impatient relief when the Uber driver finally shows up (because his car is in the shop, of course it is) and then immediately hit the worst traffic jam the world has ever seen. Ignore the flood of emails in his inbox — he refuses to work while not on company time, mind you — to scroll on Facebook and angrily like his friends’ cute, collected, calm baby pictures.
9:29 AM: Show up to work breathless, drained, and very, very late. Run up ten flights of stairs because the elevator is busted. Pray no one notices. Groan when someone does.
“I think that’s a record, Mista,” says the sour-faced secretary seated by the front desk. “A whole forty five minutes late, completely unexcused.”
Mista trudges past that mess he does not want to put up with right now and straight into the break room. “‘S fine,” he says, more for his own benefit than Abbacchio’s. “Not like anything important happens during the first forty five minutes of work anyways.”
“There’s no more mugs,” Abbacchio says flippantly, right as Mista comes to the exact same conclusion with his own eyes, thank you very much. “And I think you would be surprised.”
“Blegh, surprise, schmurise,” Mista says eloquently, before deciding yes, he is in fact that desperate and ducking his head under the coffee maker to pour it directly into his mouth. He is wholly unsurprised by the disgusted noise Abbacchio makes immediately after.
“Christ, Mista, you pig,” Abbacchio sniffs. “I could’ve gotten you a styrofoam cup from the office downstairs.”
Mista takes a generous swallow of black coffee before he responds. “Psh, as if. I could threaten to fire you as your boss and you still wouldn’t do it.”
Abbacchio snorts. “Bucciarati is my boss and also yours. If you tried to fire me, he’d have your ass.”
Mid caffeinated gargle, Mista mutters, “He already has your ass.”
“Excuse me?”
To summarize his point, Mista flips Abbacchio off once again, right as Bucciarati’s voice says, from around the corner, “And of course, you will be working with the Chief Financial Officer of the company, who should be clocking in today right about…”
Twin pairs of footsteps indicate two people are stepping into the breakroom. Alarm bells start ringing in Mista’s head. It was one thing to disappoint Bucciarati, who, despite being Certified Head Boss around here with no need to put up with Mista’s antics, still does. It was another thing altogether to disappoint whoever Bucciarati was trying to impress, the kind of people who usually fall along the spectrum of stupidly rich investors and stupidly rich higher-ups; A.K.A., the kind of people who should not be seeing Mista right now. He widens his eyes.
“...now,” Bucciarati trails off, just in time to catch Mista choking over the sink, hands gripping onto the countertop like a lifeline. Goddamnit, he should never have let his hubris ingest more coffee than he could swallow. He was going to die with his two coworkers and possible local Bruce Wayne as witnesses, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Except, right around his third or fifth sputtered hack, Mista feels arms gripping around him and then thumping his chest — one, two, three times. His lungs constricting in one last final effort, Mista manages to choke out the last bit of coffee grounds from his throat.
“Fuck,” Mista wheezes, feeling his head swirl with vertigo as he tries his best to regain his breath. Distantly behind him, he can hear choked laughing and a small tone of disapproval, likely Abbacchio and Bucciarati, respectively. Fuckers. But since there’s still a pair of arms wrapped around him, that means it wasn’t either of them who arrived at his rescue. Wait.
Mista whips his head around to see a tall, boyish-looking blond with donuts for hair and razors for eyes. “Hello,” the stranger says. “My name is Giorno Giovanna.”
“Sweet,” Mista should have said, was probably going to say, before what actually comes out of his mouth is a truckload of vomit right all over Giorno Giovanna’s shoes.
“I am so sorry,” Mista says for the seventh time in the row as Giorno methodically wipes his Oxford loafers down with break room paper napkins. “I’m having a terrible morning — really, a series of terrible mornings, and I have barely eaten anything so that’s probably why I’m all queasy. I was planning on throwing up into the sink, but then I realized you were new around here, so I got caught off-guard when you introduced yourself. Not that it’s your fault, since you didn’t deserve any of that; honestly, I feel so bad that this is how you’re introduced to the office-”
“It’s fine,” Giorno interrupts, voice more clipped than a white suburban lawn. “Really, I should be grateful all you ate is expired mayo and not a lasagna dinner.”
Mista’s stomach rumbles at the mere suggestion of actual food. He winces, although Giorno very politely does not comment on any of those things.
“I still feel awful,” Mista says, scratching the back of his neck. “Let me buy you a new pair of shoes as a replacement.”
Giorno’s brow furrows as he shines a particularly muddy looking spot. It’s the first change in his expression Mista has seen since he met him. “These shoes were hand-me-downs from my father,” Giorno says eventually. “Really, I think this is a fitting way to honor his memory.”
Mista scrunches his face, peeking his head around to try and judge what Giorno is feeling. It’s impossible to tell; the guy’s face is like a freaking Greek statue. “I can’t tell if you’re joking.”
The blond pauses, but only for a moment. “I am not,” he says flatly, before returning to the task at hand.
“Okay,” Mista manages. “Then let me buy you dinner. Or lunch. Or really, whatever food or beverage you’re feeling right now, I will use my own money to pay for it. I mean, I don’t blame you if you’ve lost your appetite at this point, but-”
“Sir,” Giorno says patiently. “I can get myself something to eat while I take your coffee order. How does that sound?”
Huh? Mista’s brain helpfully responds with. His mouth fills the blanks with, “But that’s like unpaid intern shit.”
Giorno finally, finally, looks up from his shoes. Mista, for all his social ineptitude, can at least recognize when someone looks pissed off. Attribute it to years of practice.
“My position here at Passione Inc. is as a personal assistant working under the Chief Financial Officer of the company,” Giorno recites matter-of-factly. Then, with a pointed look and a raised eyebrow, he adds, “Which is you.”
Ah, fuck. This is what Mista gets for not reading Bucciarati’s end-of-day emails. “Yup,” he says weakly. “That’s me.”