[o8] FANFIC: Happiness Is A Warm Gun
title: happiness is a warm gun
author: proboscus
rating: r
pairing: xanxus/squalo
summary: They walked the dog around the neighborhood, Squalo tugging impatiently on the leash whenever it stopped to defecate every ten minutes. In the afternoon, they sat side by side on a park bench, under the shadow of trees, watching the dog dine on the leg of a wailing paper boy. Such was the life of retiring mafiosi, domestic and uneventful.
misc: standard disclaimers apply. written for lycorisc ♥ again, while this song from the beatles was on loop; hope you get better soon, dear. loosely inspired by a conversation i had with sesshounokon about old people and a gentlemen's club; crack, among other things.
will you still feed me when I'm sixty-four?
- when i'm sixty four, the beatles [download]
fifteen: At fifteen, Xanxus' goals in life had been pretty simple: land the perfect girl, secure his position as the tenth Vongola boss, and should the situation call for it, maim any useless trash standing between him and the pursuit of his goals.
Of course, the perfect girl had to meet his list of criterion, and securing his position as the tenth Vongola boss had to be executed with flair, fancy, and the least possible amount of effort and movement. But they were, in themselves, goals any foolhardy man could accomplish even with one arm tied behind his back and a severed limb.
The girl, while notoriously skilled in hand to hand combat, only had to be able to protect herself from swarms of elite assassins armed with deadly pitchforks and weapons often banned in many landlocked countries. She also had to look good in a two piece bathing suit and be able to work a sharp pointy sword.
Then there was becoming the Tenth Vongola boss, but everyone knew that was well under way. Xanxus was, after all, the only next of kin worthy of securing the title, unlikely as it was that the ninth chose to live forever; his pallor had been unhealthy as of late and his indiscretions were no secret. Who knew what sort of diseases he’d managed to pick up over the years? It was high time they caught up to him.
For all intents and purposes, Xanxus was what laymen liked to call "one lucky bastard" and his list of goals was simply something he'd laid out beforehand so as not to lose sight of where he was and where he was headed.
He needed perspective, something to ground and remind him of his purpose in life and the bigger picture there was in relation to that purpose. While the fools around him dreamt of lesser things, Xanxus went for the cake and ate it too; he dreamt, and dreamt out loud and set his mind to singlehandedly achieving his goals in life. Allies would merely slow him down, and friends, while temporary, were only good if they were female and didn't complain about his sexual whimsies.
But then two things happened that was not part of the plan: Xanxus had come across a mouthy swordsman, and he'd learned his mother named him after a brand of soup out of morbid fancy. Also, she had lied to him about being a woman of easy virtue.
Far from living a life of sodomy, she sold cigarettes at the local pub, losing most of her good sense after inhaling an inordinate amount exhaust from the glue factory that stood next to the ramshackle hut Xanxus had once called home. She'd built it herself out of straw and used cardboard, taping the walls to withstand sleet and snow, but one wintry day, the house fell apart, and on the same day, she'd lost her good humor.
In addition to having been deceived all his life, a capricious loudmouthed swordsman appeared out of nowhere, showing up at a party Xanxus was pretty sure was members-only. The swordsman then made it a point to attach himself to Xanxus’ person, and while he might look good in a two piece bathing suit, he sadly lacked what Xanxus often liked to call “the necessary parts for conception”.
His mouth, while highly proficient when he set it to work, often spouted out nonsense only very few people could lend an ear to; he was going to stand by Xanxus’ side, forever and a day, and should they come to it, feed him even when he turned sixty-four. Also, he harbored plans of world domination via defeating every swordsman alive. Xanxus simply didn’t have time for that.
The stress of being a teenager, and the added weight of experiencing wet dreams and pimples for the first time were wrought with momentary bursts of anger, sadness, and grief. Here he was, fifteen years old, and already a suspicious wide-eyed boy who could work a sharp pointy sword was pledging loyalty to him.
To the death, the boy promised, and looked as if he were truly in it for the long haul, his eyes taking the glossy sheen common to drug fiends and nervous psychotics.
Had Xanxus been the type easily moved by half-assed displays of affection, he would have taken that boy's hand, gripped it tight, and promised him a job as "bedwarmer" shortly after he reclaimed his rightful title as the Tenth boss. But Xanxus wasn't easily moved by displays of affection, half-assed or not. He did take the boy's hand, and he did grip it tight, but towards which direction, well, he'd have to take that to the grave.
twenty five: But things refused to work in his favor, and it seemed life only looked up for those who truly had the blood of the upperclass. After being frozen in ice by the adoptive father he once believed was his salvation, Xanxus had, as people often put it, “his ass handed to him” - and by a whiny effeminate kid with mittens for weapons too no less, while the kid’s equally whiny, pubescent team of guardians defeated Xanxus’ supposed elite team of assassins.
It was pretty aggravating to say the least, especially since the kid even sent him to anger management classes and paid for his therapy. There were of course those monthly trips to the spa which he too paid for, but Xanxus didn't need them; he didn't need to relax. What he needed instead was to reclaim his birthright, something which his therapist said he needed to work on.
“Your list of long term goals is grossly out of touch.”
Xanxus had trust issues, on top of a towering list of other issues. He needed to regulate his breathing, said his shrink. He needed to find his inner peace.
Inner peace his scarred dimpled ass! What the fuck did that shrink know? Psychology wasn't even a real practice, and he wasn't even a real doctor!
"Kind of how you aren't a real Vongola, I suppose," said the shrink, sipping calmly on his mug of tea. Xanxus picked up a ballpoint pen and stabbed him in the leg. They put him in a straitjacket afterwards.
Still, if there was something that gave Xanxus these days, it was the visceral pleasures of movement and the bottles of whiskey Squalo smuggled over whenever he came to visit. Squalo also brought with him a basket full of poorly-picked grapes and oranges, along with reel-to-reel tapes of battles he’d won after Xanxus’ incarceration - all documented for Xanxus’ viewing pleasure and labeled appropriately in angry red marker. Lussuria did the voice over for most of them; the word “fabulous” was said a total of ninety six times.
Using only one hand, Xanxus crushed all sixty tapes and threw the basket of fruits at the back of Squalo’s head. Squalo gaped at him, his left eyebrow twitching as he hauled Xanxus out of the shoddy old wheelchair Xanxus found himself rather fond of lately. It gave him a kind of relief, throwing things at Squalo and pissing him off until the vein in his left eyebrow snapped.
It had come up last week in passing; his shrink had suggested maybe he should stop throwing things at people and referring to them as "useless trash". He should take up a hobby like collecting used bottle caps or try knitting with the old folks down at the second floor. He threw a bowl of candy at her and she nursed a broken nose.
But it had to be said, even though Squalo was trash just like the rest of them, he was a different kind of trash, and did have a few good uses to him.
Xanxus almost looked forward to Squalo’s visits, almost because when Squalo wasn’t running his mouth, it was wrapped around elsewhere. His hair was longer now and grew past his hips. It made him look like a fucking pansy though Xanxus already pegged him as Lussuria’s type a long long time ago.
Squalo walked funny, spoke funny, and kept his nails obsessively free of blood after a match. And his hair, it trailed on the floor now as he knelt between Xanxus knees, soft like threads of silk. Squalo licked his lips clean, teeth sharp and gleaming against the light. Xanxus thumbed the corner of his lip and Squalo bit down on the pad of his finger, the touch of tongue and teeth familiar.
Squalo’s eyes were clear though the ferocity in them never wavered; he was still the same boy he’d met all those years ago, still the same guy who would not shut the fuck up about Xanxus’ sexual whimsies and his aversion to knifeplay.
Xanxus’ hand tightened into annoyingly soft hair, and he yanked Squalo up to growl into his ear. “You’ve got ten minutes left before your visitor’s privileges are up; you better make it worth my fucking while.”
Squalo slapped his hands away before pushing him down his seat. With the grace and agility he put into skewering a potential enemy, he slithered up Xanxus' lap and sat precisely on top of notable areas of concern. Ah, the visceral pleasures of movement. Xanxus chuckled.
Less than five minutes later, security carted Squalo off mid-coitus and he was denied visiting privileges for a week.
thirty five: He'd considered it several times before: the world must have hated him as much as he did the useless people in it and their softheaded ignorance.
In the aftermath following the battle with Millefiore, a certain calm had washed over the rolling hills of Tuscany and the wildlife they had disturbed with needless explosion and gunfire. Birds flitted over the trees once more, peace was a little bit restored, and Squalo started wearing bobby pins in his hair to keep it out of the way.
Life was good -- not to the extent that Xanxus had reclaimed what to this day he maintained was his rightful position as the tenth Vongola boss -- but nothing of consequence had followed Byakuran's sophomoric attempt to shake the very foundations of the Mafia world as they knew it, and his highly disorganized team of wily Mafiosi were simply that: a highly disorganized team of wily Mafiosi. Xanxus didn’t even bat an eyelash. He was glad to wash his hands clean of the likes of them.
Besides Lussuria giving free Muay Thai lessons to young boys and Levi growing more facial hair than was necessary in the spirit of any true Italian gentleman, there were no pressing matters to attend to, and the list of people to kill were growing shorter by the day.
There had been times when Xanxus didn't have to leave his seat anymore, the stuffed armchair molding to take the shape of his curves; Squalo would take care of everything that needed to be taken care of - he’d pay the bills, hire maids to keep the courtyard clean, and twist his hair over his shoulder, grown longer over the span of twenty years, to refill Xanxus goblet of whiskey while going over a list of possible menus for dinner.
Beef was a top priority, and he didn't want any fucking tuna carpaccio sullying his immaculate dinner table. Cheese was also out of the question though Squalo claimed they had longer shelf life than most and was in fact good for the body.
“I think you're growing old.” Squalo said, fucking flicking him - him! - on the forehead. “That’s why you don’t want any cheese, your stomach can’t handle it! Ha ha ha!” He’d laughed in Xanxus’ face and heckled him, and Xanxus threw the contents of his bejeweled goblet at him in annoyance. The whiskey burned Squalo’s eyes and they turned a curious shade of red, but he manfully restrained himself from throttling Xanxus until Xanxus threw his goblet at him, though he was considerate - highly unlikely - enough to miss Squalo’s face.
Xanxus grabbed him forward by the hair so that Squalo was very nearly sprawled on his lap. And Squalo smelled uniquely of a combination of these things, now: whiskey, sweat, leather, blood. He had half the mind to scream in Xanxus’ face - would he ever stop yanking him around by the hair, Jesus, it was painstakingly hard to maintain with bottles of horse conditioner, but Xanxus’ eyes were dark and unreadable, and Squalo shut his mouth for once, and he shut it good.
“Ch’. I’m not growing fucking old! And cheese has nothing to do with anything!” Xanxus licked the whiskey off Squalo’s face, and he licked it clean off his eyelids. He trailed his tongue down the bridge of his nose with the carelessness of something like a cross between a toddler and a basset hound. Squalo blinked at him, crinkling his face miserably as he scoffed, face completely wet with saliva, which was, unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He had blood spewed in his face before, someone else’s tears and semen, but saliva - he made a disgusted face. “What the fuck are you doing you stupid stupid -” but he’d done worse things before, terrible things, especially to Squalo. They didn’t involve knifeplay though they were, you could say, “some heavy next level type stuff”, but this took the cake of his sexual whimsies - facelicking, of all things. Facelicking! What a creep.
Xanxus threw him down the floor, on top of the Persian rug, where they argued, hit, clawed at and very nearly killed each other. Squalo was the victor this time, and he sat on Xanxus’ hips, naked from the waist down, hair spilling over one shoulder.
“You are getting old,” he snorted in disgust, and was rewarded with a stinging open-palm slap on his hip as Xanxus rolled them over, a gesture that signaled the end of an era - an era of none-too-gentle forces and mafia men with guns strapped at the hip, of good marinated beef and old fashioned mafia knowhow. It was the end of good things, and the beginning of something much much worse.
forty five: Had Squalo been a woman, he would have made the perfect wife. Take away his obnoxiously throaty voice, his inability to shut up completely, his lack of moral code and the weird way his hips often swayed when he walked, and he would have been perfect. Well, there was also how he often slept on the left side of the bed, and how his hair kept getting everywhere while he slept. It breached the imaginary boundary they'd silently agreed upon and claimed territorial rights over, spilling over Xanxus' side of the bed and filling his nostrils with the urge to sneeze.
Squalo's hair had a life of its own, and though Xanxus had kicked him out of bed too many times to count, he always seemed to find his way back again, crawling under the covers discreetly, his arms and legs and hair splayed everywhere in the morning.
Squalo was loud, annoying, and devoted a lot of time to cleaning his sword and challenging people to duel, though it was an era of guns and psychological warfare now and nobody paid attention to the angry man in the leather suit wielding a sword. Not one to be disheartened, Squalo challenged Xanxus out of lack of a more enthusiastic opponent. These were more peaceful times when, new neighbors often stalked their lawns to invite themselves over for tea and crumpets, bringing over their own brand of tea and a plateful of baked goods. Of course, after Belphegor very nicely showed them his collection of knives, they moved away after a week, but the sentiment was there -- the Italian mob was, in fact, getting soft, all because that whiny brat had taken over, though Squalo, it seemed, still hadn’t lost sight of his pledge of loyalty.
Xanxus' relationship with him had mellowed out over the years though often times Xanxus preferred to think it had only worsened. Squalo had a talent for argument and negated most, if not everything, Xanxus would say. He treated Xanxus the way wives often treated their ailing degenerate husbands: without remorse and consideration. Had they been truly married or in a sitcom, Squalo would have brandished a cooking utensil, not a sword, and pressured Xanxus into getting a dog because those nice people next door had one and it was rather upsetting to not have the kids around to play with anymore.
But they weren't married, and they weren't in a sitcom, and were it left to Squalo to conceive, he would have given birth to peevish ill-nurtured little brats who shitted on the carpet and demanded to be fed every five minutes -- the kind of children you had nightmares about and wish never to babysit.
“YOU FUCKING SHITHEAD OF A BO - NO BEEF, I SAID. IT'S HIGH ON CHOLESTEROL! GET YOUR FUCKING TEETH OFF THAT STEAK!”
But rather than be the supportive right hand man or left hand man or middle man or whatever it was that they called it these days, Squalo had made it his life mission to ruin everything Xanxus' derived pleasure from: sex, his steady diet of meat, sleep.
“Trust me, ten years from now, you’ll fucking thank me for this, you stupid son of a bitch, and I wouldn’t hesitate to rub it in your face, no fucking way, you stupid son of a bitch.”
Squalo was giving him heartburn, causing him considerable grief, hiding his bottles of whiskey and signing him up for Lussuria's Muay Thai classes. He claimed it was for Xanxus' own benefit, and that no good would come out of simply sitting on the same stuffed armchair for hours on end, awaiting his meals.
There were names for lazy people like Xanxus, and they weren't very nice to hear. Lazy people also happened to live very short lives from lack of blood circulation, and Squalo had neither the time nor patience to deal with a piece of machinery, a mentally unstable prince, a sexual offender, a boy in a frog suit, and a man with more body hair than anyone knew what to do with. He’d rather Xanxus dealt with them, himself.
And then one night, Squalo muttered, “You’re getting thick!” with his face wrinkled with something like worry. Or maybe those were just the lines around his mouth and his eyes, visible proof of stress and age.
Xanxus sneered, slipped between Squalo’s knees in one fluid motion and adjusted his legs in an obtuse angle. “I'm just broad-shouldered and big-boned.” he said, snapping his hips up until Squalo’s bark of laughter dissolved into series of soft moans.
In the aftermath, Xanxus chewed gum as Squalo confiscated the tobacco. They lay side by side, under the covers, neither touching nor speaking, and covered in each other’s spunk.
“I should be on top next time,” Squalo said, then threw him an irritable look between the strands of hair over his eyes. “You’re getting heavy, and crushing my windpipe when we fuck.”
Xanxus stared at him for a moment. Then spat his gum at him.
“Mid-life crisis is what you often call it, Xanxus-sama,” said the shrink whose job it was to check on his mental stability every month. “I suggest you and your wife buy a dog.”
fifty five: The passage of time was as unforgiving the way Xanxus’ arthritis was unforgiving. He slept more in the afternoon, drank less wine and less whiskey. His beef was served saltless now and tasted like something moldy and often found at the bottom of a trunk. But as always, Squalo was a useless piece of trash, and didn’t cater to Xanxus’ tastes.
Like any good woman of the house, Squalo derived immense pleasure from reminding Xanxus that, were it not for the new diet he’d prepared for him, he would have probably been grossly overweight and unable to look polite mafia society in the eye by now. Also, like any good woman of the house, tired of the mundane simplicities that a life with Xanxus and the Varia entailed, he’d gone and left for a week during which Xanxus had to live off Lussuria’s bad cooking and baked beans. He’d come back of course, after having wound up at the other “camp” and caught challenging that Japanese swordsman to a match to the death. Life went on in all its mundane simplicities after that, thought that didn’t necessarily mean that life was good.
It was a marriage of minds, of hearts, of bank accounts and shared property, though who were they fucking kidding? - there was no marriage to fucking speak of, and Xanxus sometimes slept in his chair whenever Squalo and his hair couldn’t be pried off the left side of the bed. When provoked by outside forces, they bickered, hit each other, and Xanxus threw Squalo down the mattress because Squalo often complained about the floor hurting his back whenever Xanxus threw him on it. At fifty-six, Squalo was as lean as ever though there were lines around his mouth and wrinkles around his eyes.
“You need fucking botox.”
“I’m beautiful, and you’re just jealous because you’re fat!”
Belphegor had gone off with that strange boy in the strange frog hat, Levi had finally found out about Xanxus’ ‘relationship’ with Squalo and after briefly penning his heartache on embossed stationery, left a note taped on the door explaining his desire to move on. Lussuria, accompanied by a newly revamped Gola Mosca, had settled down with a loud and equally campy boxer. They adopted children, last Xanxus heard, and following his shrinks’ advice, Squalo had finally gotten them a dog, a male Rottweiler that remained unnamed because Xanxus wasn’t the type to name animals.
They walked the dog around the neighborhood, Squalo tugging impatiently on the leash whenever it stopped to defecate every ten minutes. In the afternoon, they sat side by side on a park bench, under the shadow of trees, watching the dog dine on the leg of a wailing paper boy. Such was the life of retiring mafiosi, domestic and uneventful.
Sometimes, Squalo tipped his head back, face turned up to the sky, and let his head tilt sideways so that it lay almost on Xanxus’ shoulder. Together, they admired the youthful vigor with which their dog tried to sever a stranger’s leg, Xanxus too tired, too used to their proximity to complain, and Squalo quiet for the first time in many years though his mouth remained unoccupied.
Life was, it was... fuck, there were simply no fucking words.
author: proboscus
rating: r
pairing: xanxus/squalo
summary: They walked the dog around the neighborhood, Squalo tugging impatiently on the leash whenever it stopped to defecate every ten minutes. In the afternoon, they sat side by side on a park bench, under the shadow of trees, watching the dog dine on the leg of a wailing paper boy. Such was the life of retiring mafiosi, domestic and uneventful.
misc: standard disclaimers apply. written for lycorisc ♥ again, while this song from the beatles was on loop; hope you get better soon, dear. loosely inspired by a conversation i had with sesshounokon about old people and a gentlemen's club; crack, among other things.
will you still feed me when I'm sixty-four?
- when i'm sixty four, the beatles [download]
fifteen: At fifteen, Xanxus' goals in life had been pretty simple: land the perfect girl, secure his position as the tenth Vongola boss, and should the situation call for it, maim any useless trash standing between him and the pursuit of his goals.
Of course, the perfect girl had to meet his list of criterion, and securing his position as the tenth Vongola boss had to be executed with flair, fancy, and the least possible amount of effort and movement. But they were, in themselves, goals any foolhardy man could accomplish even with one arm tied behind his back and a severed limb.
The girl, while notoriously skilled in hand to hand combat, only had to be able to protect herself from swarms of elite assassins armed with deadly pitchforks and weapons often banned in many landlocked countries. She also had to look good in a two piece bathing suit and be able to work a sharp pointy sword.
Then there was becoming the Tenth Vongola boss, but everyone knew that was well under way. Xanxus was, after all, the only next of kin worthy of securing the title, unlikely as it was that the ninth chose to live forever; his pallor had been unhealthy as of late and his indiscretions were no secret. Who knew what sort of diseases he’d managed to pick up over the years? It was high time they caught up to him.
For all intents and purposes, Xanxus was what laymen liked to call "one lucky bastard" and his list of goals was simply something he'd laid out beforehand so as not to lose sight of where he was and where he was headed.
He needed perspective, something to ground and remind him of his purpose in life and the bigger picture there was in relation to that purpose. While the fools around him dreamt of lesser things, Xanxus went for the cake and ate it too; he dreamt, and dreamt out loud and set his mind to singlehandedly achieving his goals in life. Allies would merely slow him down, and friends, while temporary, were only good if they were female and didn't complain about his sexual whimsies.
But then two things happened that was not part of the plan: Xanxus had come across a mouthy swordsman, and he'd learned his mother named him after a brand of soup out of morbid fancy. Also, she had lied to him about being a woman of easy virtue.
Far from living a life of sodomy, she sold cigarettes at the local pub, losing most of her good sense after inhaling an inordinate amount exhaust from the glue factory that stood next to the ramshackle hut Xanxus had once called home. She'd built it herself out of straw and used cardboard, taping the walls to withstand sleet and snow, but one wintry day, the house fell apart, and on the same day, she'd lost her good humor.
In addition to having been deceived all his life, a capricious loudmouthed swordsman appeared out of nowhere, showing up at a party Xanxus was pretty sure was members-only. The swordsman then made it a point to attach himself to Xanxus’ person, and while he might look good in a two piece bathing suit, he sadly lacked what Xanxus often liked to call “the necessary parts for conception”.
His mouth, while highly proficient when he set it to work, often spouted out nonsense only very few people could lend an ear to; he was going to stand by Xanxus’ side, forever and a day, and should they come to it, feed him even when he turned sixty-four. Also, he harbored plans of world domination via defeating every swordsman alive. Xanxus simply didn’t have time for that.
The stress of being a teenager, and the added weight of experiencing wet dreams and pimples for the first time were wrought with momentary bursts of anger, sadness, and grief. Here he was, fifteen years old, and already a suspicious wide-eyed boy who could work a sharp pointy sword was pledging loyalty to him.
To the death, the boy promised, and looked as if he were truly in it for the long haul, his eyes taking the glossy sheen common to drug fiends and nervous psychotics.
Had Xanxus been the type easily moved by half-assed displays of affection, he would have taken that boy's hand, gripped it tight, and promised him a job as "bedwarmer" shortly after he reclaimed his rightful title as the Tenth boss. But Xanxus wasn't easily moved by displays of affection, half-assed or not. He did take the boy's hand, and he did grip it tight, but towards which direction, well, he'd have to take that to the grave.
twenty five: But things refused to work in his favor, and it seemed life only looked up for those who truly had the blood of the upperclass. After being frozen in ice by the adoptive father he once believed was his salvation, Xanxus had, as people often put it, “his ass handed to him” - and by a whiny effeminate kid with mittens for weapons too no less, while the kid’s equally whiny, pubescent team of guardians defeated Xanxus’ supposed elite team of assassins.
It was pretty aggravating to say the least, especially since the kid even sent him to anger management classes and paid for his therapy. There were of course those monthly trips to the spa which he too paid for, but Xanxus didn't need them; he didn't need to relax. What he needed instead was to reclaim his birthright, something which his therapist said he needed to work on.
“Your list of long term goals is grossly out of touch.”
Xanxus had trust issues, on top of a towering list of other issues. He needed to regulate his breathing, said his shrink. He needed to find his inner peace.
Inner peace his scarred dimpled ass! What the fuck did that shrink know? Psychology wasn't even a real practice, and he wasn't even a real doctor!
"Kind of how you aren't a real Vongola, I suppose," said the shrink, sipping calmly on his mug of tea. Xanxus picked up a ballpoint pen and stabbed him in the leg. They put him in a straitjacket afterwards.
Still, if there was something that gave Xanxus these days, it was the visceral pleasures of movement and the bottles of whiskey Squalo smuggled over whenever he came to visit. Squalo also brought with him a basket full of poorly-picked grapes and oranges, along with reel-to-reel tapes of battles he’d won after Xanxus’ incarceration - all documented for Xanxus’ viewing pleasure and labeled appropriately in angry red marker. Lussuria did the voice over for most of them; the word “fabulous” was said a total of ninety six times.
Using only one hand, Xanxus crushed all sixty tapes and threw the basket of fruits at the back of Squalo’s head. Squalo gaped at him, his left eyebrow twitching as he hauled Xanxus out of the shoddy old wheelchair Xanxus found himself rather fond of lately. It gave him a kind of relief, throwing things at Squalo and pissing him off until the vein in his left eyebrow snapped.
It had come up last week in passing; his shrink had suggested maybe he should stop throwing things at people and referring to them as "useless trash". He should take up a hobby like collecting used bottle caps or try knitting with the old folks down at the second floor. He threw a bowl of candy at her and she nursed a broken nose.
But it had to be said, even though Squalo was trash just like the rest of them, he was a different kind of trash, and did have a few good uses to him.
Xanxus almost looked forward to Squalo’s visits, almost because when Squalo wasn’t running his mouth, it was wrapped around elsewhere. His hair was longer now and grew past his hips. It made him look like a fucking pansy though Xanxus already pegged him as Lussuria’s type a long long time ago.
Squalo walked funny, spoke funny, and kept his nails obsessively free of blood after a match. And his hair, it trailed on the floor now as he knelt between Xanxus knees, soft like threads of silk. Squalo licked his lips clean, teeth sharp and gleaming against the light. Xanxus thumbed the corner of his lip and Squalo bit down on the pad of his finger, the touch of tongue and teeth familiar.
Squalo’s eyes were clear though the ferocity in them never wavered; he was still the same boy he’d met all those years ago, still the same guy who would not shut the fuck up about Xanxus’ sexual whimsies and his aversion to knifeplay.
Xanxus’ hand tightened into annoyingly soft hair, and he yanked Squalo up to growl into his ear. “You’ve got ten minutes left before your visitor’s privileges are up; you better make it worth my fucking while.”
Squalo slapped his hands away before pushing him down his seat. With the grace and agility he put into skewering a potential enemy, he slithered up Xanxus' lap and sat precisely on top of notable areas of concern. Ah, the visceral pleasures of movement. Xanxus chuckled.
Less than five minutes later, security carted Squalo off mid-coitus and he was denied visiting privileges for a week.
thirty five: He'd considered it several times before: the world must have hated him as much as he did the useless people in it and their softheaded ignorance.
In the aftermath following the battle with Millefiore, a certain calm had washed over the rolling hills of Tuscany and the wildlife they had disturbed with needless explosion and gunfire. Birds flitted over the trees once more, peace was a little bit restored, and Squalo started wearing bobby pins in his hair to keep it out of the way.
Life was good -- not to the extent that Xanxus had reclaimed what to this day he maintained was his rightful position as the tenth Vongola boss -- but nothing of consequence had followed Byakuran's sophomoric attempt to shake the very foundations of the Mafia world as they knew it, and his highly disorganized team of wily Mafiosi were simply that: a highly disorganized team of wily Mafiosi. Xanxus didn’t even bat an eyelash. He was glad to wash his hands clean of the likes of them.
Besides Lussuria giving free Muay Thai lessons to young boys and Levi growing more facial hair than was necessary in the spirit of any true Italian gentleman, there were no pressing matters to attend to, and the list of people to kill were growing shorter by the day.
There had been times when Xanxus didn't have to leave his seat anymore, the stuffed armchair molding to take the shape of his curves; Squalo would take care of everything that needed to be taken care of - he’d pay the bills, hire maids to keep the courtyard clean, and twist his hair over his shoulder, grown longer over the span of twenty years, to refill Xanxus goblet of whiskey while going over a list of possible menus for dinner.
Beef was a top priority, and he didn't want any fucking tuna carpaccio sullying his immaculate dinner table. Cheese was also out of the question though Squalo claimed they had longer shelf life than most and was in fact good for the body.
“I think you're growing old.” Squalo said, fucking flicking him - him! - on the forehead. “That’s why you don’t want any cheese, your stomach can’t handle it! Ha ha ha!” He’d laughed in Xanxus’ face and heckled him, and Xanxus threw the contents of his bejeweled goblet at him in annoyance. The whiskey burned Squalo’s eyes and they turned a curious shade of red, but he manfully restrained himself from throttling Xanxus until Xanxus threw his goblet at him, though he was considerate - highly unlikely - enough to miss Squalo’s face.
Xanxus grabbed him forward by the hair so that Squalo was very nearly sprawled on his lap. And Squalo smelled uniquely of a combination of these things, now: whiskey, sweat, leather, blood. He had half the mind to scream in Xanxus’ face - would he ever stop yanking him around by the hair, Jesus, it was painstakingly hard to maintain with bottles of horse conditioner, but Xanxus’ eyes were dark and unreadable, and Squalo shut his mouth for once, and he shut it good.
“Ch’. I’m not growing fucking old! And cheese has nothing to do with anything!” Xanxus licked the whiskey off Squalo’s face, and he licked it clean off his eyelids. He trailed his tongue down the bridge of his nose with the carelessness of something like a cross between a toddler and a basset hound. Squalo blinked at him, crinkling his face miserably as he scoffed, face completely wet with saliva, which was, unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He had blood spewed in his face before, someone else’s tears and semen, but saliva - he made a disgusted face. “What the fuck are you doing you stupid stupid -” but he’d done worse things before, terrible things, especially to Squalo. They didn’t involve knifeplay though they were, you could say, “some heavy next level type stuff”, but this took the cake of his sexual whimsies - facelicking, of all things. Facelicking! What a creep.
Xanxus threw him down the floor, on top of the Persian rug, where they argued, hit, clawed at and very nearly killed each other. Squalo was the victor this time, and he sat on Xanxus’ hips, naked from the waist down, hair spilling over one shoulder.
“You are getting old,” he snorted in disgust, and was rewarded with a stinging open-palm slap on his hip as Xanxus rolled them over, a gesture that signaled the end of an era - an era of none-too-gentle forces and mafia men with guns strapped at the hip, of good marinated beef and old fashioned mafia knowhow. It was the end of good things, and the beginning of something much much worse.
forty five: Had Squalo been a woman, he would have made the perfect wife. Take away his obnoxiously throaty voice, his inability to shut up completely, his lack of moral code and the weird way his hips often swayed when he walked, and he would have been perfect. Well, there was also how he often slept on the left side of the bed, and how his hair kept getting everywhere while he slept. It breached the imaginary boundary they'd silently agreed upon and claimed territorial rights over, spilling over Xanxus' side of the bed and filling his nostrils with the urge to sneeze.
Squalo's hair had a life of its own, and though Xanxus had kicked him out of bed too many times to count, he always seemed to find his way back again, crawling under the covers discreetly, his arms and legs and hair splayed everywhere in the morning.
Squalo was loud, annoying, and devoted a lot of time to cleaning his sword and challenging people to duel, though it was an era of guns and psychological warfare now and nobody paid attention to the angry man in the leather suit wielding a sword. Not one to be disheartened, Squalo challenged Xanxus out of lack of a more enthusiastic opponent. These were more peaceful times when, new neighbors often stalked their lawns to invite themselves over for tea and crumpets, bringing over their own brand of tea and a plateful of baked goods. Of course, after Belphegor very nicely showed them his collection of knives, they moved away after a week, but the sentiment was there -- the Italian mob was, in fact, getting soft, all because that whiny brat had taken over, though Squalo, it seemed, still hadn’t lost sight of his pledge of loyalty.
Xanxus' relationship with him had mellowed out over the years though often times Xanxus preferred to think it had only worsened. Squalo had a talent for argument and negated most, if not everything, Xanxus would say. He treated Xanxus the way wives often treated their ailing degenerate husbands: without remorse and consideration. Had they been truly married or in a sitcom, Squalo would have brandished a cooking utensil, not a sword, and pressured Xanxus into getting a dog because those nice people next door had one and it was rather upsetting to not have the kids around to play with anymore.
But they weren't married, and they weren't in a sitcom, and were it left to Squalo to conceive, he would have given birth to peevish ill-nurtured little brats who shitted on the carpet and demanded to be fed every five minutes -- the kind of children you had nightmares about and wish never to babysit.
“YOU FUCKING SHITHEAD OF A BO - NO BEEF, I SAID. IT'S HIGH ON CHOLESTEROL! GET YOUR FUCKING TEETH OFF THAT STEAK!”
But rather than be the supportive right hand man or left hand man or middle man or whatever it was that they called it these days, Squalo had made it his life mission to ruin everything Xanxus' derived pleasure from: sex, his steady diet of meat, sleep.
“Trust me, ten years from now, you’ll fucking thank me for this, you stupid son of a bitch, and I wouldn’t hesitate to rub it in your face, no fucking way, you stupid son of a bitch.”
Squalo was giving him heartburn, causing him considerable grief, hiding his bottles of whiskey and signing him up for Lussuria's Muay Thai classes. He claimed it was for Xanxus' own benefit, and that no good would come out of simply sitting on the same stuffed armchair for hours on end, awaiting his meals.
There were names for lazy people like Xanxus, and they weren't very nice to hear. Lazy people also happened to live very short lives from lack of blood circulation, and Squalo had neither the time nor patience to deal with a piece of machinery, a mentally unstable prince, a sexual offender, a boy in a frog suit, and a man with more body hair than anyone knew what to do with. He’d rather Xanxus dealt with them, himself.
And then one night, Squalo muttered, “You’re getting thick!” with his face wrinkled with something like worry. Or maybe those were just the lines around his mouth and his eyes, visible proof of stress and age.
Xanxus sneered, slipped between Squalo’s knees in one fluid motion and adjusted his legs in an obtuse angle. “I'm just broad-shouldered and big-boned.” he said, snapping his hips up until Squalo’s bark of laughter dissolved into series of soft moans.
In the aftermath, Xanxus chewed gum as Squalo confiscated the tobacco. They lay side by side, under the covers, neither touching nor speaking, and covered in each other’s spunk.
“I should be on top next time,” Squalo said, then threw him an irritable look between the strands of hair over his eyes. “You’re getting heavy, and crushing my windpipe when we fuck.”
Xanxus stared at him for a moment. Then spat his gum at him.
“Mid-life crisis is what you often call it, Xanxus-sama,” said the shrink whose job it was to check on his mental stability every month. “I suggest you and your wife buy a dog.”
fifty five: The passage of time was as unforgiving the way Xanxus’ arthritis was unforgiving. He slept more in the afternoon, drank less wine and less whiskey. His beef was served saltless now and tasted like something moldy and often found at the bottom of a trunk. But as always, Squalo was a useless piece of trash, and didn’t cater to Xanxus’ tastes.
Like any good woman of the house, Squalo derived immense pleasure from reminding Xanxus that, were it not for the new diet he’d prepared for him, he would have probably been grossly overweight and unable to look polite mafia society in the eye by now. Also, like any good woman of the house, tired of the mundane simplicities that a life with Xanxus and the Varia entailed, he’d gone and left for a week during which Xanxus had to live off Lussuria’s bad cooking and baked beans. He’d come back of course, after having wound up at the other “camp” and caught challenging that Japanese swordsman to a match to the death. Life went on in all its mundane simplicities after that, thought that didn’t necessarily mean that life was good.
It was a marriage of minds, of hearts, of bank accounts and shared property, though who were they fucking kidding? - there was no marriage to fucking speak of, and Xanxus sometimes slept in his chair whenever Squalo and his hair couldn’t be pried off the left side of the bed. When provoked by outside forces, they bickered, hit each other, and Xanxus threw Squalo down the mattress because Squalo often complained about the floor hurting his back whenever Xanxus threw him on it. At fifty-six, Squalo was as lean as ever though there were lines around his mouth and wrinkles around his eyes.
“You need fucking botox.”
“I’m beautiful, and you’re just jealous because you’re fat!”
Belphegor had gone off with that strange boy in the strange frog hat, Levi had finally found out about Xanxus’ ‘relationship’ with Squalo and after briefly penning his heartache on embossed stationery, left a note taped on the door explaining his desire to move on. Lussuria, accompanied by a newly revamped Gola Mosca, had settled down with a loud and equally campy boxer. They adopted children, last Xanxus heard, and following his shrinks’ advice, Squalo had finally gotten them a dog, a male Rottweiler that remained unnamed because Xanxus wasn’t the type to name animals.
They walked the dog around the neighborhood, Squalo tugging impatiently on the leash whenever it stopped to defecate every ten minutes. In the afternoon, they sat side by side on a park bench, under the shadow of trees, watching the dog dine on the leg of a wailing paper boy. Such was the life of retiring mafiosi, domestic and uneventful.
Sometimes, Squalo tipped his head back, face turned up to the sky, and let his head tilt sideways so that it lay almost on Xanxus’ shoulder. Together, they admired the youthful vigor with which their dog tried to sever a stranger’s leg, Xanxus too tired, too used to their proximity to complain, and Squalo quiet for the first time in many years though his mouth remained unoccupied.
Life was, it was... fuck, there were simply no fucking words.