Chapter Text
When Mista said, no problem, go ahead, he didn’t imagine that he would be the one dealing with the aftermath of Giorno’s carelessness.
He was thinking that there’d be some torture. A sprinkling of public humiliation, show the old boss’s face in front of the whole of Passione to reinforce your power and all that. When Giorno told him Diavolo had been pushed out of the death loop somehow by the inclusion of another person — that freak priest from America, apparently — and that he wanted to mess with Diavolo a bit, Mista hadn’t thought it would be anything like this.
Blood pooling in a crimson circle around the prone body of Diavolo, thinned out and broken in every way possible. Mista can tell he’s still conscious from the way his fingers twitch with every squeak of his shoes on the stone, but he’s clearly not in any shape to physically retaliate. Or move at all, if the unnatural angles of his limbs are any indication.
Once he’s close enough, he nudges Diavolo’s hip with a careful toe, thanking god that he’d listened to Giorno when he advised him to get water (and blood) proof boots the last time he got his shoes ruined.
“Yo. You still awake in there?” Mista knows the answer already, but he’s trying to get a verbal answer out of the guy. Make sure his brain’s not too damaged, assess if he’s on the verge of death or he’s just being dramatic and all that; it’s a song and dance he knows well as Giorno’s resident bodyguard/operative/interrogator.
The only thing he gets in response is a rattling groan, so he takes that as an affirmative. He crouches next to Diavolo, noting each injury as his eyes pass over it.
Mista whistles. “Man, he really did a number on you, huh? I didn’t think he’d go that far, but I guess he wasn’t joking about being pent up,” he remarks. He’d thought it was a prank the first time Giorno brought it up – something about the stress starting to get to him, needing an outlet. Mista had thought it to be some kind of awkward attempt to spice up their sex life and whatnot, but no.
Giorno was being completely, one-hundred-percent serious when he said he wanted to keep Diavolo, the great ex-Don of Passione, as a pet. A punching bag of sorts, except Giorno didn’t call it that; he called it a means of exercising some of my more private desires. Dressed it up in fancy language like he always does, but Mista can get the gist of it now.
Giorno likes beating people up. Likes it enough to get off on it, apparently.
Not that Mista’s judging! He has his fair share of weird kinks that he will never, ever, share with Giorno even on the threat of death, but he’s never actually acted on them. He knows they’re strange, and impossible, and Giorno definitely wouldn’t agree to them.
But even then, that might just be the reasoning behind what Giorno’s doing now, seeing as Mista hasn’t seen a single lick of physical violence during sex in the five-something-years they’ve been together. He doesn’t even know if this is a recent thing, or if it was just repressed all this time because he truly had no inkling of it whatsoever.
Giorno likes to get rough sometimes, sure. He likes to be in control, probably something about the unpleasant childhood that he refuses to talk about. But he’s never expressed the desire to like, spank Mista while they’re fucking or anything like that. He’s been perfectly courteous if a little inexperienced, sweet and gentle and almost scientifically focused on making Mista feel good that’s kind of cute in a strange way.
Point is, this came as a surprise, but Mista’s not going to act like he has the moral high ground here. They’re in the mafia, they’ve both done plenty of worse things than smack around a guy who tried to murder his own daughter and also nearly killed half of their team. Mista won’t judge, but he can still think to himself that it’s kind of surprising that Giorno still holds this level of animosity towards Diavolo.
It’s been ten years, after all. Plenty of time for them to move past that week of excitement and danger, re-establish their own lives and find new paths. Mista doesn’t even think the name Diavolo had left his lips in years before Giorno informed all of them last month that he’d returned from wherever he was for a decade and had to be dealt with.
Apparently, Giorno’s idea of ‘dealing with it’ involves stripping Diavolo naked and beating him half to death. And leaving Mista to clean up the mess.
Mista groans. “Alright, come on. We gotta get you out of here.” He crouches down, ignoring pained moan coming from Diavolo’s general direction. When he slides a hand under Diavolo’s shoulder, though, the labored breathing turns into gasping, sharp intakes of breath that Mista can tell Diavolo is choking on.
“Please,” Diavolo is gasping, almost inaudibly. Over and over. “Please, I don’t – please, please. Stop. please.”
“Oh, don’t be such a big baby,” Mista grumbles. He hefts the guy up before promptly freezing where he stands when Diavolo bursts into tears. Literal tears, fat droplets running down his cheeks as he wheezes and sobs and makes all sorts of gross noises that really make Mista want to drop him.
“Jesus, fuck,” Mista curses, trying really hard to ignore the obnoxious crying while he hoists Diavolo up into a proper hold. He’s not going to ask why the fuck Diavolo’s sobbing like a newborn infant. He’s not wondering whatever the hell happened to make him like this, an incomprehensible mess, when he used to be one of the most fearsome Stand users Mista knew.
He really doesn’t want to know what happened to Diavolo. He asks anyways.
“Man, what happened to you?” Mista kicks the cell door open, wondering at how surprisingly light Diavolo is despite his height.
He isn’t expecting a response, but somehow Diavolo is still conscious and capable of speaking. “I don’ remember,” he mumbles, shifting slightly in Mista’s arms. “There were a lot of. People.”
“People? Not Giorno?” Mista had been under the impression that Giorno would be the one doing the stress-relieving, not somebody else.
“Mm,” Diavolo agrees. “Don’t — I didn’t see their faces. Don’t know them. Where’s Giorno?”
Hell he knows. Mista hasn’t even seen Giorno since last night. Their bed was cold and empty by the time Mista woke up, the only indicator of Giorno’s presence being a lukewarm bowl of porridge waiting for Mista at the table.
Mista shrugs, then remembers that Diavolo can’t see him do that and says, “I don’t know. Meeting somebody, probably.”
Diavolo makes a noise in the back of his throat, distinctly unhappy. “He said. He said he would come back. After.”
“Did he?”
Diavolo nods, his head lolling on Mista’s chest. Seriously, what happened to the guy? Last Mista checked, he was the fearsome villain, evil incarnate. Not some broken, weeping mess of a man. Mista doubts a bit of physical torture could do that to him, but maybe his current state has more to do with whatever was happening in the last ten years.
“He said he’d come back,” Diavolo repeats, sounding utterly miserable. His speech has a strange lisp to it, a whistle in his voice that Mista can see now comes from the conspicuously missing right canine. He wonders if he should have looked for it back in the blood pool, but whatever. He’s lazy, and Diavolo deserves to have a few teeth knocked out.
“When did you last see him?” Mista’s a little miffed about that, honestly. Giorno can’t give him a goodbye kiss if he’s leaving early in the morning, but he can spare the time to torment Diavolo and give him orders?
“I don’t know,” Diavolo says again, and Mista doesn’t even know why he bothered. He wonders, idly, if Diavolo’s been drugged. That would certainly explain the unnatural docility, the brief fits of panic that seem to disappear within seconds.
“Okay, then. Do you remember who I am?” The way Diavolo’s acting right now, Mista’s willing to bet he doesn't, which would actually be kind of insulting considering that Diavolo was piloting his body around like a robocar the last time they met.
To his surprise, Diavolo nods. “Mista,” he says, Lingering on the last syllable until his voice trails off. “Guido Mista. Giorno talks about you.”
Involuntarily, Mista tightens his grip on Diavolo and promptly loosens it when the man moans in protest. “Seriously? What does he say? Is it good things? Does he complain about me?”
Giorno certainly does that enough to his face, always nagging about deadlines, his recklessness, his habit of leaving his underwear hanging off their dressing room chair.
“I don’t know,” Diavolo says for the umpteenth time, and Mista is tempted to shake him until he gets some answers before he’s interrupted. “He said he feels guilty. Bad. He wants to, to, share everything with you. But not this.”
‘This,’ as in what Giorno’s doing to Diavolo? The whole torturing thing? That can’t be it. If Giorno felt guilty about showing him, he wouldn’t have texted Mista to ask if he could pick Diavolo up on the way back home. He wouldn’t have proposed the idea in the first place, open and honest about his intentions; he would have been better off just hiding it from Mista entirely.
If he looks at it from this angle, he should be glad that Giorno was being honest with him. But gratitude is the last thing he’s feeling for Giorno right now with blood and unmentionable fluids dripping down his pants from Diavolo’s curled-up body.
“Ugh,” Mista says. “Whatever. Giorno’s got his own fucked-up logic and I know I won’t understand it even if he explains it to me. Guess you’re just collateral damage then, huh? Giorno’s little chew toy?”
“Maybe,” Diavolo says unhappily. “But he said he’d come back. He said there’d be a reward.”
Okay, scratch that. He’s Giorno’s dog, more like. A beaten dog, collar sealed shut around his neck and teeth all pulled. Mista finds that unreasonably more funny than he should, thinking of all the comparisons people have made around the years of him as Giorno’s guard dog.
This is what a real dog looks like, he wants to announce. This is what Giorno’s dog look like when he’s done with it. Broken in, tamer than a newborn lamb. For all his plays at a gentle demeanor, Giorno’s made of harder stuff; he’s the thorns on a rose bush, beautiful and sharp and deadly.
Maybe that’s why Diavolo seems so intent on being with Giorno now, even after everything. It’s certainly the reason why Mista’s still here, a decade longer than he’d ever thought he’d last. He can’t get enough of it. Even if every fight they have feels like the last, like their relationship has been stretched too thin, Mista still comes back.
He’ll come knocking on Giorno’s door soon enough, driven by duty if not sentiment. Giorno will open the door for him if he’s in a forgiving mood, or call for Mista to come in if he’s not.
Sometimes it’s even Giorno who will come apologizing, a bursting bouquet of flowers waiting for Mista in the morning, a surprise day off with a ticket to a movie that he’s been looking forward to. It works. They work, and it would be ridiculous for Mista to have stayed this long if he didn’t trust Giorno’s judgment wholly.
Which is why he is presently carrying the man who punched a hole through his gut ten years ago, trying not to jostle his injuries too much as they make their way up the stairs to the hidden elevator that goes directly to Giorno’s private rooms.
He trusts Giorno more than anything. That’s why he dumps Diavolo in their spare bathroom with a towel spread out over the floor to prevent the blood from sipping in between the porcelain tiles, wiping away at the man’s wounds.
He trusts Giorno. Loves him, even, quiet confessions said in between the sheets late at night. He loves Giorno. That’s why, when the suns has long since burned low and Mista hears the elevators ding! open once more, he leaves the bathroom where Diavolo has passed out and goes to kiss Giorno hello.
Mista loves Giorno. That’s why, instead of asking him if he’s tired of this, if that’s why he went and got Diavolo to entertain himself with, if he just doesn’t like the fact that Mista doesn’t want to get his goddamn bones broken while getting fucked – Mista only asks him how his day went.
Then, after Giorno’s put away his coat and changed into his silk night clothes, Mista leads Giorno to the bathroom and presses the muzzle of his old Beretta to Diavolo’s unmoving head.
Then, he finally asks: “Why’d you bring him back?”