Varia fic- Fran?!
So I haven't written fanfic in awhile, but the last week's chapter really prompted me to try something again, and this idea was knocking around, so I figured, why not? Go for it.
Questionable
There was a thing on Fran’s bed.
It was questionable what the thing might actually be. It looked as though perhaps it had begun life as a rather oversized plush doll, or perhaps the head of some unspeakably horrible cartoonish character from a cheesy theme park, the kind that could be seen loitering around young children frightening them with embraces that smelt of old moth balls and old men’s sweat. It certainly, however, did not belong on the pristine sheets of one of the Varia, let alone one of their elite. Even if he was newly promoted and the youngest and had to at least pretend to be respectful to the others, who would probably have insisted that there was nothing respectful about him at all, and if he wanted to show some deference he could please do them the favor of impaling himself on Squalo’s sword, thank you very much.
He could have sworn it was staring at him.
He was not in the mood for this.
Fran reached into the drawer of his nearby desk and pulled out a pair of Latex gloves from a box. Taking a firm grip on the offending object, with his usual stoic face, he calmly began to examine it for explosives, poison, knives, or any other unpleasant and nasty traps that may have been left inside it. This was, after all, the Varia, populated by strange and certainly insane men who were exceptionally talented at killing. They were the sort of people who gutted their waiter for bringing a fly in the soup- or, in the case of their extremely volatile boss, who Fran firmly believed must have a chronic case of irritable bowel syndrome or PMS to be able to constantly hold such a pissed off expression, gut their waiter, the other guests, and then set the building on fire. But even Fran was wary about saying this to Xanxus.
The rest of the Varia, however, were fair game.
Fran knew that most of his senpais, the other Varia elite, were likely to be next to useless. The old lightning pervert was an idiot at best and probably would say something inordinately banal and idiotic, and Fran, clutching the thing (because he still wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be, though his worse fears said that somebody deserved to suffer horribly for this if it really was what he thought it might be), knew he was probably the least likely out of all of them to know what was going on or have a clue how to rectify the problem. As for the “prince”, if he wasn’t out killing something, then he was probably laughing insanely to himself in some corner of the manor, and Fran disliked him anyway. Lussaria would probably insist it was cute and he would look absolutely adorable in it so shouldn’t he put it on ~<3? -If it was meant to be worn. Fran sincerely hoped not.
That left one person, save the boss himself.
“Mr. Squalo,” he said, ignoring that fact that unfortunately, the idiot, the maniac, and the flamer as well as the temperamental boss were all in the room along with the long-haired idiot. “Who has left this questionable piece of attire in my room?”
Squalo looked at him with narrowed eyes that told Fran in no uncertain terms he was considering how Fran would look with a sword through his chest.
“What the FUCK are you talking about?” he snarled.
Fran placed the frog head on the coffee table in front of Squalo.
“This.”
“Isn’t it adorable~?” Lussaria piped up, wiggling distastefully in pants that were far-too-tight and also completely inappropriate for a man was practically pushing forty, just like Fran had thought he would. “Such a cute hat. You’ll look priceless.”
“It would make small children weep uncontrollably,” Fran replied. “If that is what you meant by adorable, then yes, certainly, we can deviate from the standard definition of the word.”
“You have a fucking problem with it?” Squalo snapped, tensing.
“Yes.”
Bel snickered from another couch. Fran shot him a look that could be interpreted several ways- dislike, disapproval, or maybe just disinterest. It was hard to tell with Fran.
“SHUT IT, BRAT!” Squalo shouted at the prince, rounding on him furiously. “Who asked your fucking opinion?”
“I am not wearing that,” said Fran firmly.
The room fell silent as five men simultaneously stopped breathing. Fran glanced from face to face, noting the shocked expression on each one, and wondering what he had said this time that had been so particularly stunning. He hadn’t even been trying to be a smartass.
“You…you have to!” Levi said finally.
“Why?”
Lussaria gasped. Levi looked stricken, or perhaps he was simply constipated. Bel looked like he had just discovered all of his knives snapped to pieces (or what he would look like when it had first sunk in, in the moments before he decided to kill them all). Even Squalo looked taken aback by his refusal to wear what he now knew correctly to be a hat. Which was doing hats all over the world a grave discourtesy, and were hats able to give voice to their opinions they would certainly be screaming in protest and crying for the thing to be burned at stake. Fran would be only too happy to oblige; he would even provide the matches and wood.
“It’s tradition,” Bel continued, distressed. “All the mist users have to have a frog on their heads.”
“Mammon had an actual frog,” Fran pointed out. “It was part of his status as an Arcobaleno. This, however, is not a frog. This is a very grotesque parody of both the amphibian and the article of clothing, and I will not put it on my head.”
“You can’t not wear the hat!” Lussaria protested. “We made it especially for you!”
“No.”
“PUT THE FUCKING HAT ON ALREADY!” Squalo shouted. “It’s part of your damn uniform!”
“No.”
Silence reigned once more as the members of the Varia stared at Fran, stared at each other. He was certain that nobody before had ever dared defy them so blatantly-they were the Varia. You didn’t say no to the Varia. At least, not if you wanted to keep living and breathing and eating and all the wonderful things that came along with being alive and in one piece. Watching the clouds, flying kites, or whatever it was normal people who weren’t mafia and members of an elite assassin squad did. For the moment, they weren’t sure how to handle him-should they kill him? Should they beat him up? Should they force the hat on his head and watch him every waking moment to make sure it never left him? All of these seemed painfully inconvenient.
It was Lussaria who solved the problem.
“Boss~” he whined. “Husband, do you hear our ungrateful child?”
Several comments flitted through Fran’s mind at the moment; wisely, he chose to keep them to himself.
“Boss,” Levi picked up. “Make him wear the hat. He has to. It’s tradition.”
“It can’t be tradition if only one person has done it so far,” Fran argued, but no one was listening to him any longer.
“Boss, can I kill the froggy if he doesn’t wear the hat?” Bel pleaded; Fran was surprised he wasn’t bouncing up and down like a little kid at Christmas, he sounded so eager.
Only Squalo kept silent, an expression of profound annoyance and careful watchfulness on his face as he studied the figure of their boss, hidden in shadow. Wise of him, Fran thought; perhaps he wasn’t really as much of an idiot as he had first thought. At least he wasn’t shouting.
There was a long moment of silence as they all waited for the temperamental, the violent, the supreme avatar of wrath, the great Xanxus, to speak.
“I will not wear that hat,” said Fran in the spiraling void of sound.
Xanxus raised his glass, draining half of his whiskey in one swift gulp that would have made the Electric Gamma green with envy. Then, he threw the glass into the fireplace, where it smashed with a small explosion of glass and alcohol as the fire flared impressively for a moment.
“Shut the fuck up,” Xanxus said coldly, and Fran almost shivered to hear the weight and raw power of the anger in that voice. “And put that fucking hat on, so they’ll all shut the fuck up.”
Fran stared at it distastefully. He hated it. He hated everything about it-the large eyes, the dopey almost-smile, the color-everything. He would not wear that, he would not, he absolutely refused to. Never mind that Mammon had gone around with a live frog on his head; his predecessor would never have been forced into such a monstrosity as this. At least, thought Fran, not without substantial gains in return, and probably he would have killed whoever it was as soon as the money had been transferred to his account. And nobody else had to wear clothes that even a clown would scorn to touch. Levi’s stupid pseudo-bullfighter mustache was his own choice, his own voluntary decision to look like something out of an outdated and poorly written Spanish soap opera.
He sighed heavily, and picked up the hat. Slowly, Fran put it on, and it settled down with a ridiculous weight as though trying to swallow his head whole in its goofy, cartoon-like mouth.
“There you are~” Lussaria cooed.
Fran bit back his commentary, feeling the bile rise in his throat. If they wanted to make him look like an idiot, than he would make them all look like fools-not that they needed his help with that. There would be plenty of time for his half-displayed insolence and smartass remarks in the future, away from the boss’s foul temper.
Oh, yes, plenty of time.
However long they made him wear this stupid hat.
Notes: Oh my god, Varia, why were they so difficult to write? I don't know, always found them difficult, and I'm so out of practice. Also, I suspect as we learn more about Fran this might be OOC, but I reread the chapter 20 times trying to get him as near to what we've seen as possible.
Anyway, it was fun to actually write again.