Interesting: Squalo one-shot for Yukihanatora

He breathed in the salty air and watched as dust particles filtered through the cold morning light. The room around him was a box of shadow with a singular, irrelevant window that didn’t do much. It had a ceiling that seemed endless, and if he looked up he could almost imagine the sky above him, pale blue and yellow with black cloud smudges. But really there was a ceiling somewhere up there in the darkness, not a pastel painting.

Squalo grunted in frustration and stared down at his hands. His chair was metal and freezing, not particularly comfortable, and bolted to the floor. He didn’t know why it was bolted to the floor. He supposed it must have been a useful thing some time ago.

He was very cold. Squalo conceded that he didn’t usually get cold and that at present he was really fucking feeling it, and so it was a moment of weakness. A moment that, at this point, had lasted three days. Squalo hissed at himself and whoever could hear him in frustration.

He had not asked for this job.

*

Xanxus looked at him with weird glittery eyes. “It’s a special kind of mission.”

“Well, I don’t fucking want it,” Squalo said.

The Varia boss fell completely still for a moment and then sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I can’t just give this job to anybody,” he said in a strange sort of reassuring voice he did not usually use. He looked up at Squalo from across the expanse of desk. “You see,” he began, and leaned forward as though telling a secret, “I’m really fucking sick of these guys, and I want someone to just go in there and bust their asses.”

“Belphegor,” Squalo suggested.

“No,” said Xanxus, because he’d already considered that.

“Fuck,” said Squalo, who rocked back on his heels. “I’m not doing it.”

Xanxus stared at him for a very long time, but Squalo was used to it, so they both just waited in silence for something to happen. Something did happen.

“I need you,” Xanxus said through his teeth, eyes brilliant and flashing, a more comfortable departure from the glitter. “I need you to go in there and FUCKING KILL THEM!”

Squalo didn’t move and he didn’t immediately respond. “Who are they?” he finally asked after counting down from ten in his head like some idiots he knew had told him to do.

“It’s very complicated,” Xanxus said nonchalantly. He leaned back again and surveyed the other man through half-lidded eyes.

“Fine, but I want some information,” Squalo said, feeling his stomach sink as Xanxus proceeded to hand him a huge folder of papers.

“It’s in here,” Xanxus said, gesturing to the pile absently. “Whatever. All you need to do is go there and wait and kill them. ‘Kay?”

*

It was not okay, Squalo decided.

He shifted in his cold chair for the millionth time and tried to think of warm beaches. It didn’t work. He closed his eyes and thought harder, but then he started seeing images of water and water and more water, just cascading around him, crushing him, icy cold, just tons of water. He opened his eyes and thought about how stupid this was.

Xanxus had told him to come three days ago to this godforsaken warehouse somewhere miles out in the middle of nowhere. He had also told him that the targets weren’t due to be there until days later, but that he should go early, “just in case.”

“Fuck that,” Squalo snapped at the bitter air, hating everything.

But then he heard it: the soft, distant rumble of thick-treaded tires on frozen dirt ground. He listened for minutes on end as it neared, becoming a roar, bringing with it the sound of an engine and the smell of diesel fuel.

He felt all the muscles in his body slowly wind up starting at the feet and moving in a wave toward his head. He licked at his lips absently, trying to wake himself up. His vast reservoir of adrenaline thawed and began trickling back into his veins like an IV drip. Squalo could kill someone.

“About fucking time,” he grumbled, rising from the chair as shadows of men wavered closer and closer to the permanently open doorway.

When he saw the beginnings of a body in the threshold, he began.

*

It was over in a matter of minutes.

He briefly recalled the familiar push of his blade through something firm and living. And then again and again, until his vision was just red and his arm was moving on its own. He recalled looking down on the scene, at the men’s faces, with a detached sort of feeling, as though he wasn’t actually there and was instead watching someone else slice through bodies.

But now it was over, and Squalo looked around at the strewn body parts with some irritation. “Ten,” he counted aloud, but was just trying halfheartedly to pair up legs with torsos, torsos with arms, arms with heads, whatever made sense. There were probably twenty of them, but it definitely looked like ten.

He spent the next ten minutes dragging each and every limb outside and around back to where there was a flat, endless field of beige grass and dozens of tiny, hopping birds. He piled the bloody things into a multi-foot tall mass and said, “I should probably burn this,” in such a tired voice he surprised himself.

But Squalo found some propane and some matches, found a barrel to sit on since he couldn’t move the stupid chair, and found he could forget about being tired pretty easily if he watched the small, chirpy birds swoop through the bright blue sky, surrounded by wisps of thick, noxious smoke.

*

He had to wait there again, in the metal chair, again, in the cold, again. Over the phone, Xanxus had intoned that Squalo had to stay there some days more because “what if more of those bastards came back?”

What if, indeed.

He pulled off his tight leather gloves and flexed his bare hands in the cold air. The sky had gone from pale blue to some purple-blue combination, and Squalo checked his phone to see that it was, in fact, mind-afternoon now.

“Fucking hungry,” he bit out, watching his breath rise toward the never-ending darkness of the invisible ceiling. The first three days he’d eaten some weird dried meat thing Lussuria had handed him on his way out. In hindsight, Squalo figured he should have probably brought actual food and not just jerky. The jerky was nasty anyway.

He leaned back in his lonely chair and felt the freezing metal dig painfully into his shoulder blades. He thought he should stay there and keep himself awake and away from possible hypothermia-induced sleep. It, he noted bitterly, was really fucking cold.

Then he heard another car, a smaller one, coming toward him along the hardened dirt road. From his reclined position, he directed his eyes toward the doorway as the vehicle neared the building and came to a soft stop somewhere further away than the truck had been parked. Through all his hunger-and-cold-dampened senses, he reasoned that the car was benevolent and probably not full of more nameless, faceless men in matching black suits. He really hoped he was right, because, for the first time in ever, he did not want to fight anything.

An agonizing eight seconds passed before the person’s shadow fell into view. Squalo felt himself jerk and sit upright automatically. He waited and then he began to stand.

Then he sat right back down. The woman was short and dark-skinned, with some intricately curled hairdo all piled up on top of her head. She blinked at him with wide, cat-like hazel eyes before smiling and waving briefly.

Squalo took a weird, stupefied moment to observe that she was wearing a long, flowing dress in vibrant zigzagged patterns, a dress which only began to shield the fact that she was an oddly curvy creature.

Squalo thought maybe he could just pick her up and eat her like a giant dark peach. Then he thought that was crazy.

“Hullo,” she said, waving at him again, letting the wooden bracelets on her wrist bounce around loudly. “What’re you doing out here?” Her voice was rich and filled the room like syrup.

Squalo had no intention of answering. He wondered what awful god gave him a woman when he wanted food and to get the hell out of here. He couldn’t imagine what she might be doing out here, even, since it was literally surrounded by nothing but yellowing grasslands and unpaved roads. Hell, he couldn’t imagine why anyone would be out here. He thought if he said something he might explode.

“Nothing,” he found himself telling her in a low, dangerous voice. He cursed himself for responding.

The women smiled and shrugged. “That’s alright. I’m Lisa. Are you hungry?” Pause, and then she giggled a bit and shrugged again. “Sorry, it’s just I know you’ve been here for days now and –ˮ

“How do you know that?” Squalo wasn’t sure if he should be angry or confused. He did angry better.

Lisa didn’t seem to mind his interruption. “I drive by here every day and I’ve seen you sitting. Nobody really spends any time out here.” She reached up and readjusted the orange scarf acting as a headband. She seemed to wait for him to say something, and then beamed at him. “I’ll be right back! Hold on…” And she turned and shuffled away.

Squalo was so perplexed he couldn’t stand it. Who the fuck was she? How did she know he was hungry? Was she a food fairy? Did she go around offering people food out of her car? He scowled and narrowed his eyes at the doorway. No way was she going to throw him off track. He’d tell her off when she got back.

When Lisa did finally return, she was holding a black plastic container and a sealed packet of utensils. She walked over to him like it wasn’t any sort of big deal and set the box on the floor with the packet on top. Then she righted herself and smiled at him. “It’s lasagna. There’s meat in it, though, so I hope you’re not a vegetarian.” She blinked at him with her wide eyes and beamed again. “See you later…”

“Squalo,” he said, because any thoughts of telling her off had entirely left his mind. He was just extremely hungry and extremely confused and hoping to god she wasn’t some spy and the food wasn’t poisoned.

“See you later, Squalo,” she said, grinning, her teeth bright against her dark face. Then she turned around and exited the room, long skirt billowing behind her.

Squalo waited until the sounds of her car had left him before leaning over and picking up the container. Prying the lid off, he took appreciative note of the fact that it was, in truth, full of lasagna and it was hot and it probably wasn’t poisoned because she was probably a fucking angel.

He snorted and pulled the plastic fork out of its wrapper.

*

She wasn’t kidding when she said she’d see him later, because at around five that evening, she drove by again and stopped off to pick up the empty container. He hadn’t really noticed before, but she was in a perpetual state of cheer and glow, as though there were lanterns under her skin giving off soft light.

Squalo just sat there in his immovable chair and watched as she picked up the plastic box and hummed a bit to herself. “I used to grow my own tomatoes,” she said, not particularly to him, but more to the room and some other invisible audience, “but the deer would squash them when they ran through my garden, so now I get my tomatoes at my work.” She stopped, smiled, and looked at him. “I work on a farm.”

Squalo stared at her impassively, trying to figure out why he wasn’t annoyed. Any other moment, and he’d have been yelling VOI and Shut the fuck up! and other loud things. But now he just watched her, her and her flowing colorful clothing and heaps of curls and chocolate skin. He couldn’t remember the last time he’s seen an African-American woman. It was a little like seeing a real-life lion after having imagined what one looked like for years. It wasn’t really the same thing.

Lisa was humming again, watching him with a brilliance in her eyes unparalleled by the shockingly awful orange sunset behind her. Speaking of the sunset, Squalo couldn’t feel the heat of the sun, but instead saw the rays like tangerine swords slicing through the air, through the thin, chiffon material of her dress and into his eyes. He could see the outline of her body through the fabric, as though it 

were wet but didn’t cling.

He looked at something else.

Lisa giggled as she seemed to do and scratched her cheek. “Well,” she said, voice filling the room, “I’ll go now, but I’ll be by tomorrow morning on my way to work.”

Squalo wondered if he was her project or something.

In the doorway, she turned to him, backlit by the sun. He narrowed his eyes and thought how unpleasantly gooey this all was, and how he’d have to de-goo himself when he got back or he’d start having those invasive dreams again.

“Bye!” she chirped, waving at him. Then she was gone, and he was very happy for that, because now he could breathe.

*

On the other end of the line, Xanxus was rambling drunkenly about how exactly how much he hated these guys he wanted dead. It was a lot, it seemed.

Squalo sighed and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees as his boss yelled into the receiver some hundred miles away. “Okay,” he said every so often, letting his eyes flutter shut as he imagined once again what a bed might feel like.

It was eleven that night. The air was arctic and the sky was a perfect blanket of navy blue velvet and diamond stars. He could hear the crickets out in the grasses surrounding him like some tireless chorus. Squalo, not for the first time this mission, wondered exactly what made him want to join the fucking mafia.

“Alright,” he said for the twelfth time, feeling the elation within as Xanxus mumbled something about going to bed soon. “Wait here, yeah, got it.” He groaned as he hanged up and stifled the urge to whip the cell phone at the opposite wall where hopefully it would just die and leave him alone. Squalo hoped a lot of things would just die and leave him alone.

He leaned into the seat back again to keep himself awake on the feeling of metal digging into his spine. He seethed at the ceiling and muttered some choice words to whoever pissed Xanxus off and caused him to be sent out here.

But at least he wasn’t hungry, he told himself. And that was a good thing.

He shook his head and stood up, moving outside to stand in the middle of the dirt road and stare into the darkness winding before him. There was a slight breeze—also freezing—which caused him to subconsciously reach up and swipe all his silver hair over one shoulder almost protectively, as though maybe the breeze carried little scissors along with it. He narrowed his eyes against the biting air and watched as his frozen breath carried into the night.

Then he saw headlights further down the road, coming his way. Squalo shifted his weight and tried to decide what the likelihood was of it being the black woman again or the guys he was supposed to kill. He watched the car grow nearer and grow larger and larger before deciding he’d put money on the latter.

There was something about the rock of the truck and the noise of the machinery that made him think there was an army in there. That, somehow, word had gotten back that he had killed the first crew and now they were sending a second, stronger one made up of more men. That pissed Squalo off.

He glared derisively at the rumbling thing as it pulled to a slow, creaking stop twenty feet away. There was an impregnable pause and then the doors swung open and there was the sound of the pull-down door at the back sliding up, and Squalo drew his sword and waited with rising impatience.

The first to step out was a tall, bulky man with a goatee and a machine gun, followed by about six other men exactly the same. From the back, dozens of them poured out of the truck’s rectangular body, looking like shadowy bugs in the darkness. Squalo could sense them lining up in front of him like identical toy soldiers, or targets on a shooting range. He thought if he jabbed at the darkness with his blade he might kill three of them or so, they were so close and densely packed.

“What?” he said, keeping his voice as casual as he could manage. He lifted his left arm suggestively, letting the bunch of them watch the wan light from the truck’s cabin glint off the blade. There was silence.

The largest of them stepped forward. He was thick and barrel-shaped, with a trunk-like neck and shiny bald head. He pulled off his unnecessary sunglasses to reveal dark, beady eyes. “We’re here to revenge our fallen,” he rumbled, voice impossibly low. Squalo thought he sounded as though he were reading from a book; no one actually referred to it as revenging the fallen. “Stand down,” the man continued, reaching around to brandish his gun, “and we will not kill you.”

Squalo had to keep himself from laughing, the whole thing felt so ridiculous. “Yeah, okay,” he replied, keeping the tone light. He sat back on his heels and surveyed the lot of them. “But let me just say something first.”

His blade sliced through the leader’s chest like it was moving through water. Around him, the other men watched dumbly as the huge being wobbled in mid-air and then slid apart in two pieces. Squalo didn’t wait for the guns to go off.

His arm whipped out automatically and removed heads just as he could begin to see their brains working the situation through. Eventually, he heard the fire and something lit up in him like a gas flame. He laughed. “Kill me?!” he repeated, grinning around at no one. “Kill me?! Please! You couldn’t kill me even if I were already dead!”

He was angry in a way he couldn’t understand. All the frustration and numbness and feelings of uselessness and boredom exploded like thermite in his veins. He felt hot and he felt invincible. Four days of almost nothing but cold felt irrelevant as he worked his way through the trembling, fumbling mass of bodies with superhuman ease. This was what he was good at. No one was going to kill him.

Squalo laughed and swung and egged them on with a growing sense of normalcy. These men were helpless and weak; their guns couldn’t do anything to his blade—which must have seemed crazy, he thought mildly—and they just shot aimlessly as he came at them from all sides like a flash of silver bladed lightning.    

This was the kind of relationship he could understand. No African-American women to make him feel cared-for or liked or—

Blood exploded in his mouth, hot and salty. Squalo at first thought he had bit his tongue or screamed his throat raw, but that would be absurd. He looked down to see darkness blooming across his right side, like a gigantic opening flower. There was a moment where he thought he was falling, maybe dying, and the terrified, sweating faces of the opposing side whirled around in front of his eyes like skin-colored birds.

But then a bullet zoomed past his face, nearly catching his jaw, and reality came back. “VOI!” he roared at them, body boiling and hands shaking. He felt violated. Something like panic rose steadily in his chest, and he choked on his blood a bit. He felt embarrassed. “I’ll kill you!” he seethed at them, screaming, reaming the nearest body with his left arm. He spun around and ripped through an attacker’s neck before the person behind him hit the ground.

Last summer, he visited the Trevi Fountain for reasons beyond him. It had to do with entertaining some Italian dignitary or something equally unrelated to being in the mafia. Squalo remembered thinking it was an awfully huge waste of time sitting around staring at contorted naked people and water pouring out of spouts. He could go home and stare at his stupidly-carved bathtub if that’s what he wanted.

But now he knew what he was looking at. The nameless, faceless men twisted themselves in pain and slumped around half-dead. Blood sprayed around him as though it came from invisible hoses. It looked just like the fountain.

It was almost disorienting. Squalo knew he was moving through bodies like a predator through tall grass—with direction and surety. He could feel the wound in his side like a parasitic creature that had latched on and could not be shaken off. He wanted to reach over and tear off that part of him, just get rid of it and the impending pain. He had visions of the Trevi Fountain sitting against a pristine blue sky, with mangled, dead Mafioso statues, pumping out blood in showers. Squalo saw himself with that Italian dignitary watching this fountain, getting up on the wall and diving in. He saw himself drowning in waves of red; he was so livid, so thoroughly sick of it.

It was a blur.

But it was over startlingly fast. He found himself standing in a heap of torn bodies moments later, chest heaving, anger fading out of his system slowly, feeling incredibly cold all of a sudden. He remembered and clutched at his side, pulling up his layers of shirt and jacket to see the damage.

It was a single bullet wound, a perfect, tiny hole, embedded in his upper right ribcage. Dark blood seeped out of the skin, dripping down his side to soak the waistband of his pants. He ripped his glove off with his teeth and wiped his fingers through the liquid, seeing how the blood looked black against his pale skin.

He didn’t feel the pain yet. Squalo hissed at himself, withdrew his blade, and stared around at the people on the ground. He knew he had to get rid of them soon, but he didn’t want to, because it wasn’t fair that they got to get him but he had to give them some sort of proper funeral. He was too tired anyways.

“Fucking hell,” he mumbled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, trying to rid himself of the itch of dried blood on his chin. He turned slowly and weaved his way to the back of the building to find whatever propane was left.

*

Squalo sat staring aimlessly at the charred remains of the bonfire. The blaze was so huge it had lasted until morning, and now it was just a charred, unidentifiable heap of ash giving off hot, black smoke. If anything, he was glad for the heat, because the morning had brought along with it unbearably cold winds.

The little birds that seemed to live in the grasses hopped about cheerfully, poking at the ground for what he supposed were seeds. He had thought about catching a few of them and eating them, but for some reason he had decided that was inhumane, and he’d just wait.

For what, he didn’t know. He had this weird fantasy that the black woman had seen him kill all of those men, seen him drag all of them back behind the building one by one, and seen him bury all the blood under the dirt and burn them during the night, so she’d be too terrified of him to come back and feed him again. Squalo partially hoped that hadn’t happened because he was so fucking hungry and he also hoped it had, because life was so much easier when all he had to do was kill people and survive. Voluptuous black women in flowing dresses just didn’t make any sense in his life.

He thought he’d inhaled too much smoke.

His eyes followed the little brown birds up into the air and then back down into the waves of grass. Exhaustion had taken the place of adrenaline sometime during the night, and the wound in his side hurt, really hurt. Squalo couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so much pain and misery.

He felt an unfamiliar heat behind his eyes. Terror filled him. No way was he going to cry because he was frustrated and abandoned and pissed off at Xanxus—never mind that he’d never been pissed off at Xanxus ever before. Squalo didn’t cry. He couldn’t remember crying. He probably didn’t even cry when they took him from the womb.

“Probably the smoke,” he mumbled, wiping at his eyes angrily because he knew that was a lie. He successfully repressed the tears and put that moment behind him. He adjusted himself on the barrel and returned to watching the tendrils of smoke wind into the clear pale sky. It was still early, he imagined, because the deep blue that usually accompanied the times between nine in the morning and three in the afternoon was nowhere to be found. It was probably around seven.

Squalo leaned over his knees, letting his hair fall around him like a curtain. The pain in his side was irritating and unbearable. He didn’t have antiseptic or bandages or soap or cleaning appliances at all. He saw himself decaying from the inside out slowly and painfully because he couldn’t find a single fucking piece of gauze anywhere. A sad death.

After a moment, he was acutely aware of a presence near his left shoulder, some ways behind him. It was very still. Squalo sighed and turned his head in that direction. Lisa blinked back at him with her dramatic eyes, apparently thinking something through.

Squalo didn’t have it in him to tell her off.

“Hold on,” she said, voice low and soft. Squalo watched her turn and head back around the building to what he assumed was her car. After a minute or so, she returned with a white box and started to pull latex gloves on and sift through rolls of white bandage and packets of ointment. Squalo gazed at her through his hair in something akin to amazement as she knelt by his right and gingerly pulled his shirt up to get at the hole in his side.

“What are you doing?” he asked her, knowing exactly what she was doing.

She was wiping some sort of clear cream onto a piece of gauze. “I’m helping you. If you don’t clean it up it could get inflected.” She pressed the thing to his torn skin and Squalo hissed at the sting, but stayed quiet when she began wiping up the area and applying bandages.

“No. What are you doing?” he asked her again, voice dropping low, wanting to scare her off so she would go far, far away and not confuse him anymore.

Lisa looked up at him and smiled, teeth brilliant white against her skin. “I’m helping you.”

Squalo frowned. “Stop that.”

She laughed and got back up on her feet. She was no longer wearing a dress, but worn jeans and a tight t-shirt. Squalo turned his attention to an indeterminable point somewhere in the smoke when he realized he was noticing how large her breasts were. She was bursting out of that shirt. He did not 

like that he noticed that at all.

“Isn’t that better?” she asked, gesturing to his now-clean-and-non-infected side. He narrowed his eyes on the smoke and birds, trying to block her glowing, smiling, helpful presence out to no avail. “Be right back,” she chirped, exiting the scene, leaving him feeling guilty for being such a dick.

“What?” he whispered into his confusion. Since when did he feel guilty about anything? Maybe he was sick.

She returned moments later with a black plastic container identical to the one from yesterday and another packet of utensils. “It’s breakfast,” she said, handing it to him. He stared at it before taking it. Lisa smiled. “I have to go to work now, but feel better. I’ll be back later. Bye, Squalo.” And she waved and left in her small blue car.

He felt the absence immediately. Swearing at himself, he lifted the cover off the container and peered inside. French toast. He squashed whatever form of a smile was going to appear on his face. “What, does she live in a fucking restaurant?” he said, ripping the packet open with his teeth.

He was upset to find he liked it.

*

Squalo thought maybe the woman had a camera trained on him because she showed up at all the right times.

He flipped his phone open and closed, listening to the snap. He was back in his chair, in his insufferable ceiling-less room, and now it was noon. It had warmed up a few degrees, but he still cursed himself for not wearing a thicker jacket. His yellow-and-black leather thing wasn’t doing much at all, and he was already too thin to properly insulate himself. Squalo thought briefly that the black woman wouldn’t have any issue insulating herself, but then he felt like a prick for thinking that.

Squalo had had sex a considerable amount of times, and yet was probably one of the least sexual people he knew. Well, not exactly. He was too judgmental to be as much of a whore as some of the other guys he knew. That was more like it. He was too picky and had too many standards, and he’d never thought about sleeping with someone who weighed more than him because the women he ran into at bars and parties were always skeletons or similarly shaped.

They clung to him, babbled in high voices, and only drank fruity alcohol. He didn’t like them. Other guys did. Squalo thought they reminded him of the homeless prostitutes he saw working corners when he was younger back in his hometown. He didn’t like to sleep with women who reminded him of something diseased.

Bar certain situations, Squalo highly enjoyed sex. He was a grown man, a sexual creature, and could pick up pretty much any woman he wanted because, compared to most other men in the mafia, he was sexy. At least that was what he’d been told countless times. He hadn’t taken a poll or anything.

Now he thought about what it might be like to touch something soft and warm instead of something cold and bony. He was cold and bony, the women he slept with were cold and bony—he wondered how many of those skinny, pointed girls who wanted to sleep with him it would take to actually keep him warm at night. Many, he supposed. And he’d already tried sleeping with many girls at once; he’d hated it.

He was projecting. He hissed angrily at himself, shifting on the freezing metal chair to try and brush away images of bad sex. He’d had a lot of bad sex. Thinking about it put him in a terrible mood.

He looked down at the black plastic container at his feet. He didn’t like getting attached to people. Squalo knew he was an emotional person and he knew he was not the most considerate person, but he also knew he didn’t like having relationships at all. They stressed him out. He felt too much pressure. He hadn’t had a real girlfriend since he was fifteen because when she gave him the honor of taking her virginity she cried and it was stressful for him to have to deal with letting someone down when he knew it couldn’t have gone well in the first place because I mean, Jesus Christ, this was a stupid thing to think about.

Never had he felt so juvenile or wound up. He rested his elbows on his knees thoughtfully. He was never going on a mission like this again. If he did, he might actually go insane. And Squalo did not go insane.

The cell phone rang. He picked it up. “Hello?” It was Xanxus again, telling him to clean whatever mess there was up and get his ass back home. Squalo wanted to burst out laughing. “Sure, boss.”

Almost five whole days and now it was time. Squalo shut the phone with a satisfying sound and sat back and thought about how bizarre his life was. He went out to kill people his close friend and boss had an issue with, ended up meeting a curvaceous black woman who brought him food and healing at all the right times, then had weird fantasies about having sex with her. Only in his world. Sometimes he thought he was as depraved as Belphegor.

Squalo crinkled his nose and snorted.

“I should go,” he muttered, rising with a groan and stretching his arms over his head luxuriously. Every muscle was tight. He leaned over and picked up the empty container from the floor, turning it over in his hands. A pause and he tucked it under his arm, exiting the square building and getting inside the truck the first round of victims had arrived in.

It was a new SUV, huge and black, with pale leather seats and a billion cup holders. The key was still in the ignition. He turned it and felt the vehicle roar to life under his fingers. He spent a few minutes grinning and adjusting everything slowly, savoring the feeling of civilization inside the leather-scented cabin. Squalo set the container on the passenger seat, pealing out of the makeshift parking area and onto the dirt road. He checked the rearview mirror to see that the freight truck from last night still sat in the middle of the road.

In the light it looked like a hulking mass of faded metal and chipping paint. He curled his upper lip at it and rolled his eyes, driving off in the opposite direction toward what he hoped was a farm.

*

Squalo blinked blankly at the herd of cows watching him from behind a white fence. He had just pulled alongside the gate to what appeared to be a barn, the bulk of which was attached to a smaller, greenhouse-looking thing. He sighed and turned off the car, stepping out into the cold afternoon air. The cows grunted at him impassively and swung their heads. He narrowed his eyes at them.

A peeling sign read Gerrelli’s Organic Farmstead in block letters. Squalo stared at it and then beyond it at the gravel path leading to three places, because it split to head to the greenhouse, the barn and off into the fields somewhere. He moved to sidestep the half-open gate and made his way down the path, glancing around himself at the wide open space filled with cows and rows of vegetables and more cows.

He stopped and looked down at the black container in his hands. “What the fuck am I doing?” he said, without a trace of humor. He could be driving home, where there was warmth and beds and sofas and the normal noise level he was accustomed to; not this serene quiet, broken only by chirpy birds or bellowing cows, depending on where he was.

He scowled at the box and was about to turn around and go when a noticed someone was watching him. He raised his eyes slowly.

The man was short and wide, with leathery tanned skin and muscled arms, barely hidden by a red plaid shirt. “’Ello!” he half-grunted, reminding Squalo strongly of a cow. There was trepidation hidden in the man’s wide-set watery eyes. Squalo realized he must look very much like exactly what he was: a member of the mafia.

He relaxed and settled into his usual smug self. “Is there a woman named Lisa around?” he asked in much the same way someone might ask to see a dining set they were considering buying.

The man, who he assumed was Gerrelli, widened his eyes slightly and looked Squalo up and down for a moment. “Yes. Why? Do you have… business with her?” His voice was rough and deep, as though maybe he was congested.

Squalo narrowed his eyes at the smaller man, gathering that he probably looked very strange to this farmer. “I need to see her,” he said with finality, because he meant it.

Gerrelli took a slow breath and gave Squalo another look over before turning and gesturing at him to 

follow. Squalo let the man get about ten steps ahead before walking after him.

The farmer led him to the back of the greenhouse where there was a small, pale yellow wooden house-like thing, which, upon closer inspection, seemed to be a farm stand. Squalo stood in front of it, wondering what he did wrong in life to have been put in the position of going to farm to see someone he shouldn’t see at all for his own selfish satisfaction. While he was seething at himself—and pretending he wasn’t interested in what was going to happen—Gerrelli returned from the yellow house with Lisa in tow.

There was a moment where the two of them stared at each other. Squalo felt somewhere between amused and perplexed, and very uncomfortable. The woman beamed at him.

“Hello!” she said, clasping her hands behind her back. “Are you feeling better?”

He had to think about that. “Yeah,” he muttered under his breath, handing the container to her. “This is yours.”

She accepted it, never removing her hazel eyes from his face. “That’s good! Mr. Gerrelli,” she chirped, turning to the older man behind her who was peering suspiciously at Squalo. “This is Squalo.”

“Hm,” Gerrelli hummed, and Squalo imagined he was considering calling the cops or whatever rural people did when they thought they were being cased by the mafia.

Lisa shook her head and giggled at his darkening expression. She was wearing a loose canvas apron over her tight clothing, and Squalo sorely missed the sight of her accidental cleavage, though he would never admit it. She turned back to the silver-haired man and giggled again. “Was there something else you needed?” she asked him, blinking up at him with her cat-eyes. He noticed the height difference immediately and thought about how every time they’d been together he’d been sitting down. He was at least a foot taller.

He rolled her question over in his head. He decided. “Yeah,” he said, and drew his sword, “you’re coming with me.”

Gerrelli made a choking noise in the back of his throat and took a stumbling step back. Lisa had a moment of confusion and then looked extremely sad for an instant. “Excuse me?” she said in a voice that was impossibly heartbreaking.

Squalo couldn’t believe she was actually making him think twice about this. “You heard me,” he said, more to himself than her, “let’s go.” Something made him keep his voice level, since he knew how easily it could become a terrifying yell. He trained his eyes on her—he had disturbing eyes, he knew this also, because nearly everyone had trouble maintaining eye contact with him, probably because they were pale and steely and pierced like needles; also because sometimes they made him look crazy—and waited.

Lisa wavered a bit, opening and closing her mouth briefly. He had a sudden, upsetting fantasy in which he stepped forward, grabbed the back of her head and kissed her, just devoured her. He cursed a bit at himself and decided he’d lost it.

“O-okay,” she said, her voice small but maintained its richness. Squalo blinked.

“What was that?”

“Okay,” she said, a little louder.

Gerrelli hissed through his decaying teeth. “What are you doing, stupid girl?” He lurched forward and grabbed her arm roughly. Squalo could see his fingers sink into her skin. The gas flame was back.

“VOI!” he snarled, swinging his sword around to press against the man’s throat. “The only person here who’s touching her is me,” he forced out, staring down his blade into the other man’s terrified eyes. Slowly, Gerrelli released her arm and put his hands up in shaky surrender. “Good,” Squalo said, highly considering just dismembering him right there. “Now let’s go.”

Lisa looked confused and probably was. “A-alright,” she whispered, watching her boss tremble. 

Squalo wanted to just throw her over his shoulder and get a move on, but he figured it would be too cumbersome since she probably weighed twice as much as he did. He had a vision of his hands sinking into her flesh like a satin pillow, brilliantly pale against nearly black, because a woman’s skin was always softer than a man’s. He didn’t reject the image. By god, he was going to fuck her even if it killed him.

She removed the apron and handed it gently to her wobbling boss, who stared at her as though she were just as insane and inhuman as the long-haired, crazy-eyed mafia guy who had come to haul her off against her will. Squalo looked at her torso, pressing tightly against the bright pink of her shirt, trying to escape. His mouth watered and he wanted to stab himself in the face.

She shuffled past him and down the path to the black SUV, looking very small and resigned. He watched her go, snorted to himself in mirth and victory, and leered over his shoulder at Gerrelli. “Ciao,” he said, withdrawing his sword and walking off back to the car behind Lisa.

*

“You’re a fucking lunatic,” Belphegor said over speaker-phone. “I love it.” He laughed his usual, stupid laugh and Squalo glared at him through the cell.

“Shut up, bitch,” he said dully, narrowing his eyes on the highway before him. “You have no idea what I’ve been through these past few days.”

“No, we don’t,”  Mammon said in a perfectly calm voice, “but I don’t think I’d feel compelled to pick up women on a mission to kill people.” Belphegor laughed at his friend’s words.

“VOI!” Squalo shouted at the phone. “Don’t piss me off! I’m not in the mood…” He had no idea why when he called Xanxus, Belphegor and Mammon had answered the phone. But it didn’t matter, because they were irritating him about as much as Xanxus probably would have.

In the passenger seat, Lisa was sitting wide-eyed. Really, she hadn’t seemed very upset, and Squalo supposed she was one of those eternally trusting people. However, over the course of his and Belphegor/Mammon’s conversation she’d clearly come to the conclusion that her captor might rip her clothes off any moment and take her right there on the freeway.

Squalo glanced at her and waited until she noticed. If he had to guess, she wasn’t afraid but purely disoriented, because she made solid eye contact with him and asked in her usual rich voice, “Where are we going?” It was such a reasonable question, and he was so engrossed in figuring her the fuck out, he didn’t answer in time to cut Belphegor off.

“To hell,” the blond whispered on the other end of the line, following that with his signature laugh. “But we’ll be real nice to you, princess—ˮ

“Shut the fuck up, Bel,” Squalo snapped.

“We’ll show you lots of secret wonders,” Belphegor continued, audibly smiling. “Like our peni—ˮ

“VOI!” Squalo roared, reddening against his will. Lisa made a squeaking noise beside him.

“Just warning you, princess,” Belphegor cooed, giggling all the way, “because when Squalo brings a hot babe home it means he’s going to have sex with her.” Pause. “Loud sex.”

“Please,” Squalo snorted, not even angry because Lisa looked both flustered and flattered. “You don’t get any, Bel. By the way, she has a huge ass. You’d like her.”

He heard Lisa squeak again and Belphegor give a sound of genuine intrigue. “I see this may be complicated,” Mammon said wisely. “Be nice and share.”

“Absolutely fucking not,” Squalo replied, snorting derisively at the cell phone. “She’s mine and all mine, and if you lay a hand on her, Bel, I will kill you. I’m the one having sex with her, not you.”

“We’ll talk about this when you get back,” Belphegor said seriously, and Squalo grinned because now he had something to hold over the brat’s head. He hung up.

Lisa was practically the color of an empire apple. Squalo was surprised he could even see the red through the darkness of her skin. She glanced at him nervously. “I’ve never had sex before,” she whispered shyly, and that told him worlds of information.

There was a pause. A long pause. Squalo slowly let a grin drift across his face. “Don’t worry,” he said lightly, feeling every ounce of testosterone he had trickle back into his body. “I know what I’m doing.” He knew his smile was probably insane-looking right now, but he was so pleased with himself, so glad to be on his way back that it didn’t matter. He looked at her. “Lisa,” he said, his voice that unique, specific way that always got him laid—he’d never know why. “I think you’ll enjoy yourself.”

*

Xanxus glanced briefly at the invoice on his desk that said something about how the boss of the people Squalo had killed was upset about the fact that almost all his men were dead. He didn’t care, smiled in satisfaction, and lit the page on fire with his lighter.

He pressed a button on his speaker and heard someone hiss in irritation at the other end of the line. He sat back in his leather chair and stared at the carved ceiling until he heard footsteps just outside his door. Looking up, he watched as Squalo entered the office, shirtless.

“What?” Xanxus said, gesturing to his subordinate’s semi-nudity, though it wasn’t really a question.

Squalo rolled his eyes. “I was in the shower.”

The Varia boss deadpanned and took a long sip from his glass of tequila. “Your woman is distracting the rest of the men.” He looked at the long-haired man with a knowing face.

Squalo sat back on his heels and crossed his arms over his naked chest. “All she does is cook,” he said levelly, knowing where this was going because Xanxus had called him in for this conversation six times already.

“Have you fucked her yet?”

“No.” He made a face. “It’s not that simple, you know, boss. There’s a process to it.”

“There hasn’t been a process before,” Xanxus retorted, and Squalo thought he sounded almost disappointed.

“You want a turn or something?” he asked sardonically, taking the seat across from his boss. Xanxus leaned forward toward him and they held the others’ gaze for a while.

“Listen, trash, I have needs. One, I need you guys to be focused because shit’s going down; two, I need some ass, and there’s some ass around.” He narrowed his eyes on Squalo, who cocked an eyebrow in response. “So hurry up or I’ll take my turn first.”

“She’s hard to ignore, isn’t she?” Squalo asked, proud of his getting her to himself. He leaned back in his chair, mimicking his boss’ usual position of ease. “Different.”

“I’ve never wanted to have sex with a big girl before, trash. Of course it’s different.” Once upon a time, two weeks ago, Levi was being stupid and accidentally called Lisa fat to her face and it caused a mess. From then on, no one used the word because it kept everything a lot simpler. Lisa was grateful for it because, as the men of the Varia had quickly deduced, she was both sensitive and resilient and it was never clear which one she was on what day, so it was safer to be careful all the time. Obviously, Xanxus felt like an idiot using such a nice word, but she was a great cook and he loved food and he’d decided he preferred her to like him so he could use her as his personal chef. Also, he recently figured he’d like to fuck her. This was a new development.

Squalo was perplexed by it, and glad he had some power in this place. But no matter what, she was his and that was that. “Sorry, boss. She’s off-limits.” He grinned deviously and Xanxus narrowed his eyes.

“What about Bel?”

“Can’t have her either, I’m afraid.” Belphegor was a huge fan of Lisa’s and he used it to piss Squalo off daily. Lisa didn’t really know what to think of the blond maniac and just smiled sweetly as she did when he said something upsetting or inappropriate or both.

Xanxus hissed and leaned back.

No one really knew what descended upon the Varia headquarters that day a month ago when Squalo brought her back. Nothing had really changed in them, but she was so human compared to them, so pure and kind and gentle—to the point of absurdity sometimes—that it was refreshing. Also, Squalo, Belphegor and now Xanxus wanted to sleep with her, something beyond everyone, especially Lisa who was a complete virgin and didn’t know what to do with aggressive male sexuality.

As Xanxus had so neatly said, no one there had ever wanted to have sex with a big girl before. It was surprising.

Squalo uncrossed and re-crossed his arms. He waited for his boss to do something but the man just glowered at him like a child whose candy had just been snatched away. He burst out laughing. “Well, boss, if she wants to sleep with you, then I won’t stop her, but…” He leaned in and leered at Xanxus, who snarled at him. “She wants me, so…” He shrugged exaggeratedly and chuckled to himself.

“We’ll see about that,” the Varia boss replied with a smirk, leaning forward as well. Squalo raised his eyebrows. Xanxus, he knew, could be very persuasive when it came to women.

This was going to be interesting.