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It was a slow spring day, verging on summer, with the sun starting to beat down on the pavement, and the streets overwhelmed in green. Not that it mattered much when you worked with Don Giovanna and his eternal garden of earthly delights. Everyone had long since adjusted to the sight of the courtyard in full bloom in the dregs of winter, often complete with Giorno himself in the thick of it. It was a familiar sight, seeing him kneel on the earthen soil, getting stains on his personally tailored suits.
Now though, the boss himself was at his desk, wreathed in plants while he did his paperwork, the perfect anachronism for the summer of 2004. He paused to put his fountain pen in its holder, turning to the keyboard of the iMac G4 Polnareff had insisted on getting him for Christmas. He’d pouted as much as Giorno Giovanna did pout when they’d hauled out his old G3 with the shoal of fish stickers, at least until it’d been relegated to a solitaire machine in the quote-unquote games room. Fugo watched him surreptitiously over the top of his reading.
“Do you need help Giogio?”
Giorno pursed his lips. “I just need to print this again, there were a few errors and I need to redo it.”
“Just email it to Polnareff, he’ll take care of it.”
“Mista took Coco Jumbo,” airquotes, “‘out for a ride’ in the convertible.”
Fugo stared at him blankly, before scrunching up his face. “Is that safe?”
Giorno shrugged. Even that simple motion looked elegant somehow. “He bought a helmet. And a seat.”
He sighed, suppressing the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. This was clearly nothing Giorno had managed to convince Mista out of, which is to say Fugo wouldn’t be convincing Giorno out of it. “Send it to the printer, I’ll go get it.” Truly, being the Don’s right hand man was taxing work. Fugo marked his page and got up from his plush chair, and made sure to straighten out his back.
The printer just had to be several doors down, in their makeshift server room. It was kind of sparse, really, since half of their computer equipment lived in the turtle with Polnareff, and the other half was Fugo’s personal fax machine which had the convenience of occupying his office. Only a minute or two of whirring machinery, but it was all that minute or two too long in Fugo’s opinion. The convenient inconvenience of modern technology was generally a blight upon Pannacotta Fugo’s existence.
But then it all earned him a soft smile from Giorno, a gentle “Thanks,” as he neatly set the papers down, and he could curl back up in his chair satisfied.
It was easy to resume an idyllic silence, All the scratch of Gio’s pen and Fugo’s turning pages. An easy, yet unfamiliar atmosphere that Fugo still hasn’t gotten used to filled the air. ‘Idyllic’, truly.
He’d never had the chance to consider what an ideal life may be for him, but it was hard to deny that these easy days were close. Something about forever in a moment.
Regardless, he managed to make it through a few chapters before Giorno opened his mouth.
“Do you ever consider going back to school, properly?”
Fugo glanced over the top of his copy of La Peste . “For law?”
“For anything, really,” and Giorno looked at him with his big round eyes, twirling a loose strand of perfect corkscrew curlicue hair around one finger.
Fugo shrugged. It comes out angular, janky. “It might be fun to do a science, like mortuary.” He kept his answer noncommittal, and Giorno’s responding hum stayed noncommittal, because anything more decisive might land Fugo a spontaneous notice of acceptance into the most prestigious school in the country. Giovanna was almost laughably predictable that way when it came to some of his whimsies. He didn’t say anything further and Fugo looked up again, almost suspicious. “Not in need of a lawyer, are you Giogio?”
“Oh! No, not at all,” but even with his earnest face his gaze was wandering, somewhere over Fugo’s shoulder. Even after some time, it could be (was) hard to tell when Giorno was being evasive, or if he was just being Giorno. “I was just curious. Those medical journals you asked about should be in tomorrow, and I was just thinking.”
“Oh. Right. Thank you.” The you didn’t need to do that was unsaid, because he knew, and he knew Giorno knew. Money was no object and time–well, it was, but over and over again Giorno would spend all the time he deigned to on Fugo no matter the protest.
“Is there anything else you’d like?”
“Not particularly?”
It was hard to tell whether Giorno meant more books, or more scientific journals, or even a proper university education. Talking to Giorno was often more of an elaborate puzzled thing, one that operated on multiple planes simultaneously. Yet Fugo wouldn’t have him any other way.
Part of him really would like to go back to school, someday. Mostly because it was fun to entertain the idea of having a doctorate, or having the responsibility of being Giogio’s lawyer (as anything you wanted to be done right, you should do yourself), or even just to prove something. Some kind of vindication. It wasn’t like he needed a degree for a job; Fugo made more money than most people would see in their lives, and Giorno was still buying him designer watches for Christmas.
He didn’t necessarily need the schooling either. He was already in charge of Passione’s finances. (Technically, he had been doing this on a smaller scale for years, ever since Bruno had convinced Polpo he was right about restructuring a few things in Naples. Their profits had gone up a solid five percent that year.) Pannacotta Fugo was a polyglot, a mathematician, he ate Giorno’s twice-removed cousin’s marine research papers for breakfast, and he didn’t need an institutional piece of paper to prove that, but–
Well, it would still be kind of nice. But it was hard to justify, because once you were working for the most powerful criminal in the country, was there anywhere place upwards to go? Not to mention one that considered you worth his considerations. Maybe it was another boost in status that Giorno was his nebulous something ; something undefined in its magnitude, because someone like Giorno Giovanna felt impossible to put into any box. He would joke that he could be his academic trophy wife, someday, but Giorno was so earnest, he knew he would take him by the hands and tell him that he valued him more than that in that way that broke Fugo’s heart every time.
It put some kind of twist in him just to think about it. He turned the page. Back to the good doctor’s harrowing struggle.
Several minutes passed before the scratching of Giorno’s fountain pen paused again. He hummed a little before he spoke, like an odd warning. “You know, Fugo, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you much about books. I’ve seen you read that one a few times, is it a favourite?”
Fugo didn’t even look up this time. “No. But it is a good book.”
“Mm. And if I may guess, it’s about the plague?”
That made Fugo crack a smile. “Yes Giogio. The bubonic plague to be exact.”
It was silent for a moment. When he glanced up, Giorno was stretching his arms, like an oversized cat. He tilted his head down and blinked open catlike eyes to smile at Fugo, right on cue. “I may be overdue for a break, if you’d like to tell me about it.”