Chapter Text
Instead of the solid wall the old Boss had built around himself, Giorno hides his identity in something more like a heavy fog, that radiates outwards, getting denser and thicker the closer one gets to the source. Any truth can only be glimpsed through it, vague and cloudy, so you can never be quite certain of what you’re seeing. Even when the man himself stands right in front of you.
It might be conditioned behaviour, a holdover from the old regime, but talk of Giorno still spreads in whispers, more than shouts.
“The Boss, I heard he doesn’t age.”
“I heard he killed off the entire drug team.”
“I heard he buried the bodies in his garden.”
Like many other partially-obscured truths, distorted further through multiple rounds of broken telephone, Giorno has been spoken into an almost mythic figure, a phenomenon he doesn’t discourage. It’s a phenomenon carried over to those around him, like Mista, who’s gone from ‘good with a gun’ to basically Death Incarnate at this point. A frankly ridiculous concept, for anyone who’s ever caught him on one of his confused tirades about solar-powered lamps.
Fugo isn’t given this treatment though, maybe because he’s just not close enough to the epicentre. He hears the talk, it’s always good to know what’s going on in the ranks, but Fugo never receives the same deferential awe that they have for Giorno and Mista.
“Who’s that?”
“I heard he turned traitor, but was too useful to kill.”
The thing about Giorno, is that while people still prefer to whisper, Giorno never actually keeps that many secrets. So Fugo sees it immediately, that first day he’s hauled into the office, still in the shitty polyester tuxedo he'd had to wear for his interim job as a human jukebox.
The 'Special Relationship'.
It’s the casual way Mista brushes a bit of lint off Giorno’s jacket, and Giorno’s fond smile back, which goes a tad beyond simple satisfaction at an underling doing his job. Fugo’s always known to read between the lines, and in those first ten seconds, he can already tell that a lot of things had changed since they'd left him behind on the dock that day, at San Giorgio Maggiore.
There’s a new dynamic now, and because Fugo had deliberately kept himself absent, everyone else has simply worked around his existence, building a world for themselves without factoring him into it. Fugo feels like a spare part, stapled haphazardly back onto Passione after the fact. He doesn’t know what he’s for.
Mista’s initial attitude towards him is cold at best, and outright antagonistic at worst, so Fugo doesn’t ask. But without Mista, there really isn’t anyone else to talk to. It isn’t lost on him that the rest of his team is gone.
. . .
It’s a hot summer evening in late May when he finds Mista at his door, reeking of alcohol, sobbing incoherently.
“I miss him,” he manages, slurring, “I miss them.”
Fugo lets him in. He’s not faring much better himself.
If Narancia were here, he’d be nineteen today, and laughing himself silly at the sorry state of his two friends. But then again, if Narancia were here, they wouldn't be in this sorry state in the first place.
Giorno might have been there when things got bad, but he'd barely gotten to know what it'd been like when things were actually good. He'd never had the chance to see that weird half-happy, half-furious expression on Bucciarati's face when they destroyed the kitchen trying to make him a birthday cake. It’s not something Giorno can ever fully understand.
As he’s about to fall asleep, with Mista passed out, drunk and hat-less next to him, it finally occurs to Fugo what his role might be in all this. They’re the last two left of the old Escort Team. Mista might hate him for leaving, but he can’t deny that Fugo is his only tether to the life they’d once had, and the people they’d once shared that life with.
The theory is confirmed the next morning, when he wakes up to Mista pressed up against his back, nuzzling his face into the crook of Fugo’s neck. Fugo can almost feel the low vibration of his vocal chords.
“Can I kiss you?” Said so softly. His hair tickles Fugo’s ear. He has an arm around Fugo's chest, hugging him close, like he's afraid Fugo might just vanish if he doesn't hang on tight enough.
Well. Fugo can definitely relate to that particular flavour of fear.
That being said...
“What about Giorno?” he breathes, his heart is thumping so violently it has to be audible. Mista hasn’t so much as touched him since he’d been brought back; Fugo's forgotten just how much he misses it—Mista patting his shoulder, mussing up his hair—but he won't survive a turf war with Don Giovanna.
“Giorno doesn’t mind,” Mista murmurs, so Fugo allows himself to be flipped over, meets Mista’s desperate gaze and nods, accepting this new position.
. . .
As it turns out, running an entire country from the shadows involves a fair amount of travelling around said country. Giorno’s off in Rome again, meeting some members of Parliament they’ve got in their pocket. In times like these, he tends to leave the running of the day-to-day to Mista, who in turn leaves it to Fugo, because Mista might be Death Incarnate, but he’s still hopeless around a spreadsheet.
Fugo’s answering e-mails, while Mista channel-surfs on the couch next to him. He’s just landed on a very surreal ad for a type of new, longer-lasting double-A battery.
“You’re not angry anymore,” Fugo says. It’s more of an observation than a question. The change had been gradual, but he’s noticed that Mista hasn’t called him a traitor anytime recently, even in jest.
“Nah,” Mista says, propping his feet up on Fugo’s coffee table, “it’s weird if you don’t fight back man.”
Fugo doesn’t reply. A cartoon cabbage is informing them that there’s been a revolution in lithium-ion tech.
“Also I realised” Mista continues, changing the channel to some sort of nature documentary, “you kinda knew them the longest.”
From the television, the narrator’s smooth, detached baritone details the plight of a young killer whale, who’s been dragging the corpse of her stillborn calf with her through the icy North Atlantic. Mista changes channels again. Another ad, for a pill to soothe acid reflux.
Mista handles him with a degree of roughness Fugo just cannot imagine him using with Giorno, who has that aristocratic, better-than-you edge that just demands care, reverence. There’s nothing reverent about the way Mista shoves Fugo’s face into his mattress, panting unsteadily while fucking him raw in the ass. Fugo knows Mista will only be this careless with someone like him. When the climax is finally wrung out of his body, Fugo feels momentarily triumphant.
Reality hits him hard the next morning, in the form of Mista’s absence. Fugo wakes up alone; Mista’s gone, which can only mean that Giorno’s back in Naples.
He gets himself ready to see them both at work, and feels only defeat.
Word gets out eventually. Mafiosi are a gossipy bunch.
“Who’s that?”
“I heard the Don lets his underboss fuck him when he’s out of town.”
. . .
Fugo’s hair is getting longer. He usually maintains it at just above the shoulder, but he doesn’t cut it this time. He just trims the front, and ties the rest up in a low-ponytail.
He holds a lock of it up to the bathroom light. It’s the wrong shade of blond; Giorno’s is a true gold, while Fugo’s own is dirtier, brassier, almost yellow. In the dark of a dimly-lit bedroom, though, the difference is negligible, and he lets Mista pull on it when he thrusts into Fugo’s mouth.
He’s still there in the morning this time, asleep, unguarded, drooling serenely over Fugo’s pillow, wrapped up snugly in Fugo's blanket, looking for all the world like that's where he's supposed to be, and Fugo finds with a sinking dread that this is what he wants. Every day. Forever. He quashes that thought immediately, stamps it right down into the dirt, and shakes Mista awake.
"... guh?"
“Get the fuck up. We’ll be late,” he snaps, horrified, trying to calm himself down. In hindsight, that might have been a bit rude.
. . .
“Morning, Giogio,” Mista greets Giorno with a little peck on the cheek. It’s quick and offhand, like it happens all the time. Because it does. Picture-perfect domesticity, and Fugo has to look away. Mista might be oblivious, but Giorno's perceptive, and he will surely be able to tell that Fugo is reaching for far more than what he’s been offered.
Giorno turns to him, and Fugo hastily excuses himself to the bathroom.