Chapter Text
The hotel’s bedsheets are too soft.
It’s probably not a complaint the hotel has gotten before. The sheets, like the rest of the room, are luxurious and clean. But Fugo can’t sleep.
It’s not that he’s unused to luxury. He grew up with money, and he’s lived more than comfortably since returning to Passione. But he still sleeps on cheap sheets. He’d bought them a couple of months before Bucciarati brought Giorno into their group. Five years later, he still uses them, even though they haven’t softened with age and there’s a tear in the middle the length of Fugo’s palm. They were familiar, so he hung onto them. Now, it seems he can only sleep on scratchy sheets.
(This isn’t about bedsheets. Fugo knows that.)
He can hear Giorno breathing quietly next to him. He fell asleep easily, despite everything. They aren’t quite touching, but they’re close enough that Fugo can feel his warmth in the blankets. It’s excruciating.
Fugo is finally in bed with the man he loves. He feels marooned.
--
“I don’t know what you’re waiting for,” Mista told him, practically yelling over the noise of the club. “Do you want permission?”
“Permission for what?” Fugo asked, keeping his eyes on the dance floor. Technically, they were here on business, although that hadn’t stopped Mista from ordering drinks.
“To make a move on Giorno. Honestly, the puppy dog eyes stopped being cute years ago. It’s getting insufferable. Could you do something about it?”
The dance beat throbbed through the soles of Fugo’s shoes and into his bones. It had the rhythm of a heartbeat or a headache.
“It’s not like that,” Fugo said. “I’m not going to make a move.”
“So you wouldn’t mind if I did, then?”
The air was suddenly furnace hot. Mista grinned.
“Whoa. You haven’t gotten that mad at me in a while.”
Fugo snatched Mista’s drink out of his hand and downed it.
“You’re shameless,” he snarled.
“I’m not the one with a crush on the boss,” Mista said, motioning for another round of drinks.
“It’s not a crush,” Fugo said after he’d downed his second drink.
“What would you call it, then? Also, pace yourself.”
“It’s not a crush.”
“Okay.”
Gaudy synths filled the silence between them. Mista sipped his drink leisurely, letting Fugo stew over his own answer. He’d gotten better at interrogation over the years, but Fugo knew all his tricks. He wouldn’t fall for them.
“Not that it matters,” Mista said at last. “Since you don’t have a crush. But I think you’ve got a chance.”
Fugo closed his eyes. He wouldn’t fall for it. He wouldn’t fall for it. He wouldn’t fall—
“Why do you think that?” Fugo asked.
“Well, GioGio has weird tastes, you know? Like, he thinks frogs are cute. And snakes, and bugs, and—"
Fugo shoved Mista off his bar stool.
--
Because Fugo was very clever, he’d worked out years ago that what he felt for Giorno wasn’t love, but grief. He had just returned to Passione, most of the closest people in his life were dead, and Giorno had appeared to him as a lifeline. Only a fool would fall in love with a lifeline, especially once his feet were firmly on land. However strong his feelings were, they’d pass.
And because Fugo was very clever, when those feelings did not pass, he’d worked out that what he felt for Giorno was profound devotion, or perhaps something like the Greek agape. Giorno and his golden dream had captured his heart the same way they’d captured everyone else’s. It was perfectly normal to be a little bit in love with him.
(Sheila E had just stared judgmentally when he told her this. At the time, Fugo had thought she hadn’t come to terms with her own feelings yet. He was very clever.)
He might have continued to believe that, were it not for Giorno himself.
It was a late autumn afternoon. They’d just left a meeting with a few “friends of the family” and were on their way to an art exhibition. Giorno wanted to walk even though it had rained that morning and was threatening to rain again. In his robin’s egg blue suit, he looked like a clear sky.
They were chatting, or rather, Fugo was complaining about the art dealer they were going to see. He was vulgar, unctuous, and the last time they’d met, he’d been stupid enough to make a pass at Giorno. Fugo had nearly broken a canvas over the man’s head, but for whatever reason, Giorno hadn’t seemed particularly offended. That only pissed Fugo off more.
“If that asshole tries anything…”
“He won’t. You scared him half to death last time.”
“I just don’t understand why you want to meet him again after he insulted you like that.”
“We’ve done good business together,” Giorno said lightly. “And I wouldn’t say he ‘insulted’ me.”
“You’re the only one who sees it that way.”
“If it bothers you so much, you don’t have to come. I appreciate your company, of course, but I’m sure you have other ways you’d rather spend your evening.”
The insinuation baffled him. It wasn’t a matter of how Fugo would “rather spend his evening.” Did Giorno really think he was going to let him be alone in the same room as that creep?
“What do you mean?”
Giorno smiled as if he were in on some great secret.
“You’re seeing someone, right Fugo?”
The question was completely innocent. Fugo was skewered by it.
“No,” he said hastily, surprising himself. Because he was seeing someone. He had been for a few months, and until Giorno had asked him, he’d thought it had been going well.
“Oh,” Giorno said. If he was at all hurt by Fugo’s obvious lie, he hid it well. “My mistake.”
Fugo broke off his relationship that night.
The next morning, he deliberately insulted Clint Eastwood to Mista’s face and earned a punch in the teeth. The split lip was a revelation—the kind that portends the end of the world.
--
The first time he’d touched Giorno was in Pompeii. Purple Haze’s virus had rampaged through his body, raising welts like rotten apples on his skin. Even the cure had caused Giorno to scream himself hoarse from the pain. But he’d survived.
Maybe it had started then.
Fugo had carried him to the car. Giorno had been slipping in and out of consciousness and his body burned with fever. Fugo remembered how he’d looked up at him blearily and murmured something like “thank you” or “I’m sorry.” Then his head had dropped against his chest and a hundred emotions detonated in Fugo’s adrenaline-addled brain. Respect, awe, terror, gratitude. But what floated to the top was guilt.
Giorno had chosen to expose himself to the virus. Fugo still felt like this was something he had done to him.
--
“GioGio, I need to tell you something.”
Giorno glanced up from jar of live crickets he was emptying into the dart frog tank. He’d started raising the little frogs recently, despite Fugo’s concerns about their toxicity. But the dart frog’s defensive poison, Giorno had informed him, came from their diet. Poison in, poison out. Dart frogs raised in captivity were relatively safe to handle. The real danger was to the frogs. They were delicate, sensitive-skinned creatures. Touching them carelessly could hurt them.
“You can tell me anything,” Giorno said, closing the tank. Fugo watched as the frogs, blue as living sapphires, emerged from the tank’s foliage and descended gluttonously upon the crickets.
“Promise not to let me down easy.”
“I can’t promise anything until I hear what you have to say.”
He sounded so damn reasonable that Fugo almost lost his nerve. But he was determined to say it. Better to rip the bandage off sooner rather than later. Better to learn his lesson now.
“I have feelings for you,” Fugo said, feeling like the world’s biggest idiot. “I think…I think I’m in love with you.”
Giorno didn’t seem surprised. He hardly seemed to have heard him at all. He stared at his frogs, his stillness unreadable. A minute passed, and Fugo began to wonder if he’d said anything at all. Maybe Gold Experience Requiem had done them both a mercy and had un-said his words for him.
Of course, it couldn’t be that easy.
“You’re asking me to reject you,” Giorno said at last. “Is that what you want?”
“Yes.”
“Because you think that would be for the best?”
Fugo was the one who’d asked Giorno not to let him down easy, but he hadn’t expected him to twist the knife like this, either.
“…Yeah.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe, does it? There’s only one way this can go. GioGio, you don’t like me that way.”
For the first time in their conversation a wrinkle appeared in Giorno’s expression.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t assume my feelings.”
“Am I wrong?” Fugo pressed. A bitter edge began to enter his voice. “I know I don’t have a chance. I mean, look at you. You could have anyone you want, but in all these years, you’ve never shown an interest in anyone.”
Giorno’s rage flashed like lightning, and for a moment, Fugo thought he might actually take a swing at him. And then, like lightning, it was gone. Only a vacant darkness remained.
Fugo would have preferred it if he’d hit him.
“GioGio, I—”
“I think you’re being unfair.”
“What?”
“You want me, but you want me to be responsible for why you can’t have me. You’re demanding a perfect reciprocity of feeling or nothing at all, yet you decided how I should feel in advance. You’ve paved a runway for your own disappointment because it’s easier than risking anything.”
It was a cutting assessment, as usual, and too accurate for Fugo to be offended. He stared at the frogs through the glass.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I don’t want to get hurt. I don’t want to hurt you, either. Is that so wrong?”
“I’m not afraid of getting hurt.”
It was such an earnest answer, such a him answer, that Fugo couldn’t help but smile a bit.
“I know,” he said. “It stresses Sheila E out.”
“I don’t mean to make her job harder.”
“Yeah, well. How do you feel about me?”
Giorno looked at him with such gentleness that, despite his better judgment, Fugo wanted to hope.
“You’re very dear to me,” he said. “Being with you is comfortable, even if it isn’t always easy. I trust you with my life.”
“Trust is different from love.”
“Is it? Well, perhaps it is.”
The frogs, having polished off the crickets, were returning to their usual hiding places. For such beautiful creatures, they were very shy.
“Maybe you’re right about me,” Giorno said quietly. “I don’t think my feelings are the same as yours. I’m not sure I’m even capable of being ‘in love’ with anyone. But if I could, I think it would be with you.”
Fugo’s chest hurt. Hope, it turned out, was more painful than heartbreak. He took a deep breath.
“What does that mean, GioGio?”
“It means I’d like us to find out together. I’d like to at least try.”
It was a bad idea, just the worst. There were a thousand ways it could fail, and all of them ended with him losing Giorno, probably forever. He wasn’t sure he could survive losing anyone else. That was exactly why he’d wanted Giorno to crush his feelings while he could. The longer they were allowed to grow, the worse it would be at the end.
But what if it worked out?
Fugo didn’t want to lose anything. But he was tired of living with regrets.
Giorno was waiting silently on his answer. Fugo met his gaze. It was like staring into the sun, but he did not look away.
“Okay.”