Chapter Text
Pannacotta Fugo had recurring dreams at an age when he was too young to remember. It stopped once he got old enough to retain full memories, but his mother—or more often, nanny—would frequently deal with scares wherein he’d wake up screaming and thrashing for no apparent reason. The reason for this behavior was a nightmare, where Fugo would be unable to move, throat closed up and unable to speak out, call for help. He’s still in his large bed, splayed out like a wounded animal and at the mercy of the thing that wants to hurt him. It stands just out of view, aware that Fugo can’t turn his head far enough to look. It breathes so loudly, rasping and gurgling. It always ends with Fugo startling awake and crying.
Imagine a butterfly, dead wings suspended with needles for observation, for beauty. Do you ever think about how common that imagery is with the orientation of science?
Imagine a popular biologist. Or a chemist. Or a physician. He has a polished, clean, and expansive office. The floor to ceiling windows and large sitting chair denote a certain level of wealth and notoriety. You’re watching a movie or reading a comic book, and the scene cuts to a smart-sounding pudgy man, who confirms the story’s worst fears, that some strain of virus has come to fruition. If you look in the corner, inexplicably, there will be an array of framed insects, pinned to cork and lifeless. It doesn’t matter that insects are not his area of study, because the imagery is an indication of ineffable intelligence. Look how smart this man is, he has a monarch pinned to his wall, for some reason. He is in control of destiny, has death figured out. He is not immortal, but equipped to face the greatest fear with an understanding of what death truly is, what it means to himself. It’s stupid as fuck.
Fugo lays spread eagle in his unmade queen bed. His alarm clock on his nightstand emits a near-imperceptible white noise, five minutes to 8:00 AM. Fugo tries to ignore it as he stares at the patchy ceiling, cracks in yellowed plaster spreading out like tree roots. Fugo swears the roots are growing day by day, branching just the tiniest bit farther when Fugo looks away.
(Schrodinger’s cat is a thought experiment that posits a state of being as existing in two exclusionary states at once. The cat is both dead and alive until you open the box. Please put the knife down, Narancia.)
(In this framework of thought, the cracks are both stationary and growing at once, dependent on your perception of it.)
It’s not a bad white noise. Or a bad alarm clock, at that. The digital clock was a housewarming gift from Mista, actually. Fugo has no ill will towards it, and yet the silver box just feels so flimsy. The idea of sounds, textures, visuals of his alarm clock hitting the wall repeatedly are alluring sensations. How nice it must be when the object is broken down, destroyed beyond function and recognition. It’s not a hard impulse to resist, nor is it anything new. Fugo must’ve gone through some late puberty—or maybe it’s just the grief of his idyllic badass gangster life falling apart—but he doesn’t have enough energy these days for anger. From his perspective, the shift in Passione from BG (Before Giorno) to AD (After Death) felt like when–
Have you heard of the Godfather?
Of course you have, this is an Italian gangster story we’re talking about. In case you haven’t had the privilege of seeing a masterpiece committed to Technicolor, here’s a quick run-through of the plot line wherein one of Don Corleone’s sons flees New York.
Michael, young and inexperienced, lands in Sicily to hide from his father’s enemies. He meets a beautiful and good Italian girl named Apollonia, and falls in love. Cue romantic montage. Cue picturesque wedding scene. Cue Appollonia waving to Michael from a new car, smiling in her beautiful good Italian way. Cue bomb, that immediately wrecks the car and kills beautiful good Italian girl Apollonia. Cue grieving Michael.
The shift from Fugo meeting Giorno Giovanna to delivering a teenage girl to a church is the equivalent of his life’s car bomb, just as jarring and chaotic.
Fugo clicks his jaw, and the stretch of skin reminds him how new his injury is. Scars snake up his cheeks and clump in ugly patches around his windpipe. The evidence of those napkins Giorno breathed life into and pressed delicately to Fugo’s feverish skin exist long after their served purpose. Giorno had apologized that he couldn’t make the skin look seamless on his first go. He’d offered to do it again, another round of caressing Fugo’s face and neck to iron out the folds. Fugo refused, of course, because really .
Having a physical manifestation of this internal, deep injury should be nice. Gratifying, even. And maybe it was, in the beginning. But Giorno looks at him every day and Fugo feels phantom questions in his stare, the golden boy who exudes perfection wondering why anyone would want scars. Passione used to be ugly, a loud secret filled with murder and lies. Under Giorno it’s… something else. Something reformable. Something worth saving.
His alarm clock bleats, loud and insistent. Fugo rolls over, and lets it run. After three minutes of the wailing, Purple Haze materializes, pulling away from Fugo and crawling off the bed to softly press the snooze button. It looks back at Fugo through it’s tinted visor, questioning.
That’s something new with his relationship to his stand (himself). Purple Haze Distortion changed on the surface just as Fugo did—instead of accumulating a myriad of puckered scars, it no longer has stitches keeping it’s mouth shut.
Purple Haze Distortion doesn’t use it’s newfound freedom often. Fugo really doesn’t tell it to shut up anymore, or only let it out as a last resort for combat. He’s found some morbid comfort in reaching a silent agreement to what he now feels is more a child than anything. It acts in a juvenile way, miming what it wants to do and eating all of his Biscotti.
It certainly isn’t a noisy stand either, though Fugo’s experiences with the Sex Pistols might leave some bias. All in all, Haze is, emotionally, much more tolerable to live with than it used to be. Fugo can’t fully decide if that’s due to any significant change on Haze’s part or Fugo’s positive reframing (Giorno’s words) of his relationship to the stand (himself).
It’s not good. It isn’t even better. It’s just different, in a way that makes room for his other problems.
He tried to kill his stand().
Well, effectively, he was trying to save someone else, a girl he barely knew and shouldn't have been risking anything for. A girl whose music taste he didn't even know. There isn’t much lower one can go, and Fugo found himself, purely by chance, in a position where he had nothing to hate Purple Haze for anymore. He was tired of looking in a mirror and willing it to shatter.
Sheila E listens to latin pop, in case you were wondering.
Purple Haze Distortion whines, shaking Fugo’s side, maybe to prompt a reaction. Maybe it wants Fugo to slap it’s hands away, like he used to.
“Okay. Okay, I’m up.”
The doorbell rings and Haze startles, making some metallic, filtered version of what Fugo might sound like if he were held at gunpoint and told to impersonate a zombie. Fugo has heard it enough times to know that it doesn’t mean anything immediately bad is about to happen. Fugo’s toothbrush stalls. Mostly everyone he knows would just walk in, he doesn’t bother locking the door anymore. Anyone stupid enough to think Fugo would have anything worth stealing deserves to have a limb rotted off by Purple Haze.
He waits. No agitated knocking. Fugo shrugs, ignoring it. Purple Haze, still corporeal, peers around the bathroom door frame. Their gazes link within the bathroom mirror as it waits, silently asking, mimicking Fugo’s stare with a startling accuracy through glass.
The doorbell rings once more and Fugo grimaces, still looking for a pair of pants in his hamper. Purple Haze makes another noise at him. He wishes Haze would ever bother trying to write down whatever it’s trying to communicate instead of vaguely gesturing, but he gets the message.
Tugging slacks on, Fugo finally answers the door, bracing for a hammer to the face from a stupid burglar.
“Good morning, Fugo.”
“Giorno?” The boy—Don, stands primly in the apartment hallway, all pressed suit and ladybug pins.
He respects Giorno immensely, don’t misunderstand this point. His Don, the person who held out a guiding hand to keep him from drowning in a sea of grief. The problem is, he’s still in the water. The threat of sinking is ever present, and even just that fear is enough to feel like he’s already lost. Every interaction with the other boy leaves him flustered and wrong-footed, like choppy waves that threaten to bowl you over.
“Are you ready to head out?” Fugo steps to the side instinctively, holding the door open more to let Giorno in. Giorno has never been to his ‘new’ apartment before, it’s a surprising show of casualness from his boss, especially without his shadow (Sheila E) who takes her bodyguard work a little too seriously. It’s not a bad apartment, especially for a seventeen year old living alone with no job.
Saying that Pannacotta Fugo is a part of Passione is a complicated and loaded topic. It’s also not true, to many people in the organization, on some technicalities.
First: This is no longer the Passione he knew, where he actually did grunt work and was asked to use his stand. Fugo hasn’t been tasked to kill anyone in the time he’s been back with the organization, and Giorno’s opinion of his worth to Passione is infuriatingly blase. Buccellati had taken one look at Fugo and deemed him unfit for society, chained him to the idea that he can’t have dreams, that anyone part of his world is beyond reformation.
(It made Fugo angry that, when Narancia had joined up, Buccellati was so protective and righteously furious over a child entering this world. He wished for a second that Buccellati felt that way about Fugo, or himself. That he viewed Fugo as a child, as well. That he viewed himself differently.)
The other technicality is his position—originally the lowest of the low, he served under a foot soldier, barely an information gopher. Passione only gave any of them power through purpose with Buccellati. Destructive stand powers notwithstanding, they were all a part of something, of a famiglia. Now he spends afternoons helping the Don with his homework. Compared to before, when he’d kick someone’s kneecaps in for no reason other than a man he respects said so, Fugo feels unmoored and without purpose.
“Ah- mostly. I thought I was going with Murolo?” Giorno doesn’t move from his spot. “... You can come in, I’m not done packing yet. I was expecting him a little later.”
Giorno’s shoulders twitch, settling quickly and quietly as he promptly follows the other to a sparse living room slash kitchen slash storage room with a mountain of unpacked boxes. Giorno stands next to the couch and peers at cracked wall paint, but Fugo knows his attention is on the boxes in his periphery. He doesn’t ask, because Giorno Giovanna is the kind of person who knows how to be tactful. And how to leave well alone.
“Busy. Last minute mission. Time-sensitive information, you understand, I’m sure. He sends regards and apologies.” Giorno holds out a flower, pulled from nowhere. A bright yellow deep in the center, the color fades to white, with purple veins and edges. It’s a very… sparse flower, nothing like the decadence of a rose in full bloom, or the grace and elegance of a lily. It’s beautiful anyways, though Fugo would say this about anything Giorno brought to life.
Fugo snorts, taking the proffered flower delicately by it’s stem. “Sure he does. What flower is it?” Giorno’s attention strays somewhere behind, and Fugo looks over his shoulder to spot Purple Haze—who quickly ducks behind the door frame.
Giorno smiles, his cheek dimpling in a rare show of emotion, and Fugo quickly pulls the stand out of reality. A blanket settles over his mind, the feeling of breathing in too much steam, or a feeling of lightheadedness.
“There’s a car outside, whenever you’re ready.”
Fugo packs a bag half-heartedly. He has a few clothes and books, hastily taken after… after, but nothing with enough sentimental value to miss on a short trip. He thinks about the picture taped to the inside of his kitchen cabinet (the one with a jar of peanut butter he’s vaguely aware might be expired but refuses to check—Schrodinger’s chunky spread) and yanks the zipper closed.
How many steps would it take to kill a grown man? I don’t mean dying of starvation, or illness, or old age. How much would it take to die from exhaustion?
The distance from Naples to Rome is somewhere around 220 Kilometers. It would take fifty-one hours to walk that far, provided you never stop to eat, drink, or shit. Surely a nonstop walk for two days couldn’t physically kill someone. What is there to say, however, of the mental effect of the journey?
Jesus Christ committed himself to many pilgrimages, one being over 170 Kilometers. Buddha walked the span of 560 Kilometers many times. The journey is of selflessness, of giving. Not of taking, of running. Commitment requires mental fortitude, which requires a strong soul, which requires a sound mind.
It sounds exhausting.
“How much farther?” A sigh. Buccellati walks ahead, all squared shoulders and shiny zippers despite the gash in his side. Fugo’s jacket is pressed between the man’s side and elbow, tweed failing to stem the slow dye of red on white.
“My physician is just a few more blocks away.”
“Why couldn’t we hail a cab? You got stabbed .” Fugo tugs a duffel bag along, sagging under the weight of it. Buccellati’s wound is surely the most pressing issue here, but besides that, Fugo’s shoulder is starting to sting, and his feet hurt.
Buccellati is silent for a minute, gathering patience as his even stride carries them past lit street lamps and dark alleys. “We need to be discreet. We’re mafia, remember? You’re not a newbie anymore, you need to act like it.”
“And we can’t just bribe a measly cab driver with some of this?” He slaps the bag for emphasis. It makes a soft, anticlimactic noise–perfectly undermining his point.
Buccellati stops, and Fugo almost bumps into his back in the losing battle against the mighty weight of millions of Lira.
“Do you think this is a game? We kill a few evil men, bribe witnesses, go for a smoke after? You’re already fourteen, Fugo. You know now, that’s a fantasy. Wake up.”
Fugo is too embarrassed at being scolded to fight as the duffel bag wins, slipping off of the young boy’s shoulder and hitting pavement with the destructive sound of metal on metal, a car crash in sound only. What could’ve been a navy blue in the shadows, the bag is now dyed maroon in the pale light of a lamp as the zipper splits open. A foul smell hits Fugo so bad he freezes, unable to move even as a mass slips out of that red, red duffel bag, inching more and more into the pale yellow light of a street lamp.
It’s a small animal. Fugo stares, horrified, at the maggots infesting it’s eyes, ears, mouth, wounds. The disgusting bruising, struggle evident with how protruding bones lay broken, inert under fur and skin. It’s a baby deer. Or, it’s supposed to be a baby deer, though Fugo can barely tell, with how disfigured it is. With shaking hands, Fugo reaches for the matted hair, revolted even as he presses down on it’s stomach. It elicits a wet noise, and the legs kick out. He keeps going, morbid curiosity taking over as he starts to pull the pelt away, fingers wrapping around a lip of the stomach wound and ripping. His hand catches on zipper teeth.
“Keep going.” Buccellati’s voice echoes in front of him, though Fugo can’t bring himself to look away, to check if he’s actually still there, the hot breath on his ear enough to deter him from looking.
Something brushes against Fugo’s hand and he screams.
A gentle touch shakes Fugo awake.
“We’re here.” Giorno stands in the train aisle. Fugo flinches when he’s awake enough to notice the snake coiled around Giorno's forearm. He stumbles after Giorno out of the train car, and watches curiously as the snake’s scales smooth and brown, becoming a shiny suitcase in the step between train car and solid ground, where a perilous gap in footing resides.
“Thank you for coming with me. It’s short notice, but I had to take over.” Fugo shrugs as they maneuver crowded streets.
“Of course, Giogio. I’ll always follow you.” Fugo knows he’ll always follow Giorno’s lead. What he doesn’t know is whether to be happy or sad about this development. Murolo is a bitch to travel with, but he’s a familiar pain, someone he can push back against. Giorno is still uncharted territory, and Fugo is afraid and awestruck all at once at his Don’s presence.
“Are you hungry? We could get gelato before the meeting.”
They get gelato because Fugo can’t say no.
Or, well. He could say no to Giorno if it came down to it, but he doesn’t really want to. It’s nice to do what he wants, almost like they’re friends. Only, Fugo is unwilling to see Giorno as something so trivial.
They go to a nearby church to sit and eat, two teenagers in the back pews watching as tourists frequent the space. The Beloved Son looks down at them, and Fugo feels a little silly for feeling as if he's been caught doing something he shouldn’t be.
Fugo grew up averse to looking directly at depictions of Jesus, something about the pageantry of religion, how Christ is everywhere, drawn and sculpted in the most painful moment of his life, of his mother’s life. What is it about his sorrow that’s so captivating to everyone? He never understood. Fugo always felt too embarrassed to look at this man, unclothed and injured and vulnerable. Now it’s as if Fugo can’t bring himself to look away, to shy from uncomfortable feelings. It feels better to poke at old wounds. To sit with grief. To watch someone suffer and know, he did that for me. For me.
The sculpture itself is technically beautiful. He’s all frail ribs and delicate features, hair rippled and tangled in a way that’s pretty, for a man. He avoids looking at the loincloth like a child. Fugo’s face heats up.
“Uh- Murolo didn’t brief me on what we’re doing here…”
“Ah.” Giorno stops licking his gelato (chocolate) and pulls his gaze away from a group of students taking a picture with the altarpiece. “You both were supposed to be on standby here, waiting to see if any correspondence from the Speedwagon foundation would come in.”
University age students, tourism leaking off of their forms, smile into the camera as friends take turns being in the picture. Fugo’s sitting too far away to hear most of their conversation, but the English that makes it to the back pews consists of admonishments to hold the camera straight. He feels painfully reminded of a boat. His gelato (melted, flavorless, a waste of money) is forgotten.
Fugo hums, “Why not send Sheila E with me, then?”
“It’s more strategic for me to finally make contact with them on my own terms. Dr. Kujo has been playing phone tag with me for weeks.” Fugo doesn’t ask who Dr. Kujo is. “If they even show.” The last part is whispered, and the bitter edge to his words catches Fugo off-guard.
“Everything alright, Giogio?”
“I should be asking you that.” Giorno crosses and uncrosses his legs, he’s wrinkling his suit pants (dotted with chocolate gelato.) “You haven’t shown up to the estate in a while.”
The students walk out, chattering away and planning their next stop, presumably the Colosseum. Il Colosseo , they butcher. Giorno notices their topic of conversation, and seems almost annoyed. Fugo wouldn’t have bet money on him being a nationalistic type that dislikes tourists and sanctifies Italian cuisine. Sure, Giorno obviously cares about the people of Italy—enough to want to build a future for children with nothing to their name—but really .
“I’ve been tired.” It’s a stupid excuse, but he has no other justification for avoiding the mess of emotions that have been sitting at the base of his stomach, a rock of something that sounds like metal on metal, keeping him bloated and sinking.
And, he has been tired.
Giorno’s gaze is on the altarpiece itself now. He’s had an interest in art history recently, studying paintings and frescoes and their complexities. Where Fugo now looks at the protruding centerpiece, a sculpture in the round, the realistic and the beautiful and the shameful, Giorno wants to read the storytelling, the implied. Fugo feels something stir, in how Giorno looks at other people. In how he connects the dots.
Maybe Bruno finally felt seen—not as a suffering idol but a nuanced person.
“I miss our tutoring sessions.”
Fugo’s thoughts halt. That was the last thing he’d expected to hear from his boss.
There’ve been more days where Giorno sits, hunched over that big oak desk struggling with his homework. Simple things that Fugo would finish in a fraction of the time that Giorno takes to give in and ask for help with. Fugo would be offended if he didn’t know Giorno’s aversion to asking anyone for anything.
Fugo is well aware of the prideful types, men who view emotions as weak-willed, feminine. If Fugo ever thought of his father anymore, he’d picture him right now. Giorno’s issues are not with pride. He deals in something much more visceral, much deeper. Something an armchair psychologist would probably have a field day with.
“Did you bring your homework?” Giorno doesn’t really attend school anymore, he mostly just pops in once a week to receive lesson plans and worksheets to pore over after dinner, or more recently, with Fugo over lunch.
Giorno’s gaze zeroes back in, surprised. Or, as surprised as Giorno Giovanna can ever look, which is not that much if you’re a normal person. Though, Fugo can acknowledge (with a hint of self awareness) that he may not be the best judge of appropriate emotional reactions. Giorno tilts his head, “I did.”
They sit by the Tiber river, waiting for an agent to approach or make some sign. An English textbook is splayed between them on the bench as Fugo coaches him through pronunciation. The Colosseum’s shadow looms heavy, and Giorno almost shivers under the shade. Fugo is aware enough that this situation, if they were completely different people and maybe not two boys, would look pretty romantic to an outsider. Or maybe they just look like two friends studying, which would also be wrong. Fugo’s eyes trace the path of a ladybug on the ground, aware that it’s natural habitat is nowhere near Rome. Ladybugs are supposed to be lucky, Mista has said as much, yet another way Giorno is a walking good luck charm. Fugo think’s it’s pseudoscience that helps people in distress sleep at night, though he’d always tried to entertain Mista’s fears and help him logically work through them. It never worked, obviously.
“Assochi-”
“The c makes an s sound. Ah-so-sea-ashun. Try again.” Giorno is performing worse than usual, his English has been coming along. It might be the environment, sitting next to a monumental image of the archaic, or waiting with the fear of an uncertain future, Fugo can’t fully tell. He feels out of the loop in a lot of things.
“Did you learn English in school?” Giorno does this thing where he changes the subject in conversation if he isn’t in the mood to talk about himself, which is often. It’s really not subtle. He’s lucky Fugo likes talking to him so much.
“Kind of, my parents got me tutors. They got me to learn some basic Latin and French, too.”
“How scholarly.” Fugo laughs, and Giorno starts turning the pages of his textbook into butterflies when Fugo isn’t looking. He only starts to notice when a monarch gets close enough to his face that he reads the words ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ on one wing.
“Do you think they’ll show?”
Giorno sighs. He stands up abruptly, gathering pages and butterflies in his hands. Fugo struggles to catch up.
“They’re all cowards, the lot of them. The Speedwagon Foundation don’t like me, but they don’t even have the guts for an all-out confrontation against Passione. It’s disgusting.”
Fugo knows his situation is different—that he wasn’t a coward for staying behind. He’s been told so, many times, by Giorno himself. It still hurts. Hit dogs holler, and all that.
“Should we head to the hotel?”
“... I forgot to book any rooms.”
Fugo just stares, his eyebrows climbing high. Giorno stares back, unwilling to even appear shameful. It’s kind of funny, how confident Giorno is about everything, how he can admit with a straight face that he came up short in any way. It’s so funny, Fugo laughs, and that perplexes Giorno even more.
“What?”
“Pfft.” Fugo walks ahead, scanning the buildings nearby. “Your face.”
“What about my face?”
“Ah! Nothing, really. I don’t mean any offense.” Giorno doesn’t look like he’ll drop it, so Fugo continues, “You always look very serious. When most people would smile or frown or look embarrassed, you kind of just- face it head on. Your body language is somehow straightforward yet gives nothing away.” Giorno surely must show emotions sometimes, maybe in the proverbial space between the train and the ledge, where Fugo can’t see for himself to confirm. Just staring into the abyss.
“...”
“I’m sorry, Giogio. I didn't mean anything negative by it.”
“Thank you for being honest with me.” As per usual, Fugo struggles with Giorno’s tone. He used to bristle at the evenness of it all, project some level of hostility into this boy Buccellati picked up off the street. Now he wonders if Giorno has simply forgotten how to be honest.
Long after dusk, Giorno finally worms their way into a hostel with his snake oil (literal snake oil, Giorno's luggage slithers under his coat) charm. Fugo mostly devotes his energy into staying quiet the entire time, not wanting to fuck with Giorno’s obviously practiced game.
It’s a real piece of shit, on the fourth floor (sorry, Mista) with a stained carpet and one solitary, also stained bed. The couch has some sort of blotchy pattern, or that might just be the clean sections of couch cushion fabric peeking through. Giorno, despite his clean and prim affect, wastes no time putting his things down and getting comfortable. Fugo, who forgot to brush his hair this morning, has more reservations.
Giorno looks back at him in between setting various night creams on the bathroom countertop. The attention forces Fugo into motion (Schrodinger’s polite guest) and he gingerly places his bag on the couch. The right-most cushion lets out a pitiful hiss of air at being disturbed. Fugo silently apologizes for disturbing it.
This was the only room available on such short notice in a place like Rome. Figures. Fugo bit his tongue from asking why Giorno didn’t call on his large network to pull some strings and get a livable place. He’ll follow his lead no matter what. Giorno’s way of doing things is highly atypical and fully rooted in his own complex logic, and if his decisions seem stupid, that’s only because Fugo hasn’t figured out his angle yet. Maybe he hadn’t expected to be here long after the meeting time. Then, why pack a bag in advance? Maybe the Speedwagon Foundation wants to wait them out, and a less conspicuous arrangement favors their stand-off.
The shower turns on and Fugo decides to search the room, knees and cheek to crunchy carpet as he peers under furniture and into light bulb sockets. He inspects the grimey trash, startling away at the sheer volume of old condoms, and finds a half-finished beer in the mini fridge. The bathroom door opens while Fugo looks between dusty curtains, spying on the windows adjacent to theirs, looking for any binoculars or other questionable objects pointing towards them.
To Fugo’s knowledge, there’s nothing in the room with them.
“You can use the shower now.”
He really doesn’t feel like it, but the thought of sitting in this room alone with Giorno right now makes him break out into a sweat.
Fugo didn’t know what caulk rot was until he moved in with Buccellati. He lets mildly cold water seep into his hair and neck, cursing the blemishes and discoloration lining the tub and forgiving Giorno for using all the hot water. It disgusted him, a measly four years ago. A lot of things disgusted him. A lot of things made him angry. He feels Purple Haze under his skin, asking to be let out onto rotting tile along with the contents of his stomach. There’s a persistent whistling emanating from the bathroom door, something in the wooden frame giving out.
The day after Fugo was christened with an arrow, he heard Buccellati’s fridge hum nonstop for three days straight. He pulled all of the kitchen drawers out to throw at that fridge in frustration, at his wit’s end. That explosive anger wasn’t new, so he hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. Fugo had no way of suspecting his stand to be involved in his heightened senses.
Buccellati had no way of warning him of the sensitive parts of a stand. Buccellati had no experience with the sensitive parts of a stand, his Sticky Fingers a compliant, easy, and quiet soldier. What that said about the both of them, he doesn’t like. Now, with enough years holding onto the reins of Purple Haze, Fugo understands much more deeply how complicated a stand user’s relationship to themself can be.
He breathes in steam, letting it cloud his mind and body into a state of numbness. It isn’t until Fugo’s toweling off that he realizes Giorno is speaking in a low tone in the other room. He tentatively presses his ear to the whistling door, feeling guilty for whatever it is he’s trying to do.
“We found a place to stay. I got some homework done.” A pause, presumably for whoever he’s on the phone with to talk. “I can’t neglect schoolwork, though. And we went sightseeing, too.” Giorno almost sounds his age, talking excitedly about his day. “Alright, I’ll try. Please keep me updated.”
Fugo moves away from the door, feeling annoyed at how little he could glean from one end of the phone call. The wood leaves the skin of his cheek itchy and irritated. When he comes out, Fugo beelines for the couch to pull cushions off to rearrange them.
“We can share-”
“No. Just give me a pillow.”
“... Alright.”
There’s a small cross hanging over the couch, and Fugo feels pinned down by it. He irrationally braces himself for it to fall, impaling Fugo straight in the heart. His blood would camouflage immediately in the ugly brown-maroon of the couch fabric.
He has little hope of getting any sleep tonight. He usually can’t even manage it in his own bed, but after walking around so much today, there…
There might be a chance. Even on a sofa too short for his legs and only just wide enough that one arm hangs off the side. Noises of the city and the rattling, barely-functioning air conditioning periodically shutting off lull Fugo into a sleepy trance. It’s some hours later when a voice punctures the rhythmic noises.
“Fugo. Are you awake?”
Fugo says nothing, eyes wide on the ceiling and breath forcefully even. Giorno must notice something in the dark that gives him away, because he continues. Or maybe he continues because he’s falsely assured that Fugo will not hear it.
“The flower I gave you this morning, I never told you what type it was.” The flower lays on Fugo’s bag, migrating from being tucked in his pocket all day. Saying it only looks mildly wilted would be a kindness to it. “Do you still want to know?”
Fugo says nothing. He stares up at the bottom of the cross.
“It was a Freesia.”
Though Giorno does not say, because his throat closes up at the thought of bringing to light his fears and his hopes, he intends for the message to be a reaching hand; a letter of friendship and thoughtfulness, of keeping you in his thoughts, of how he knows everything is difficult for you right now and that he is a willing ear and a lended shoulder. Giorno intends for this flower to be a fresh start to what is hopefully something new gained, born from the ashes of grief and loss.
Fugo does not know what a Freesia means. “It’s beautiful. Everything you make is.”
“Are you calling all life beautiful? I didn’t expect such a romantic sentiment from you, Mr. reality.”
“What, you of all people don’t think so?”
Some shuffling, presumably Giorno rolling over onto his side. “I think all life is precious , which is very different. But not all life is beautiful. Ascribing worth to beauty is evil. Beauty is a transient concept that should be morally neutral.”
Without the visual of Giorno’s ever-present blank stare to balance it out, his voice sounds much more emotional than it might otherwise. Fugo recalls every joke Mista’s ever made about sleepovers unlocking a new level of friendship and digs his face deeper into the couch cushion, unwillingly inhaling the smell of cigarettes and musk. His eyes sting.
Giorno continues after a beat, breath even once more. “Things that are ugly deserve to live, too. I have a lot of experience with people who think otherwise.”
Fugo says nothing. The air conditioner whirrs to life once more.