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“Fortune-telling?”
Despite his best efforts, Fugo couldn’t keep himself from wrinkling his nose with incredulity as he spoke. It was lucky for both him and Mista that his niceness wasn’t what was keeping this friendship afloat. As it was, the teenager didn’t seem bothered at all.
“Yeah, man! A girl in my class got a reading from him and she said he’s like, the best at it. You should get him to do a reading for you!”
Fugo wasn’t sure what kind of insight Giorno Giovanna and his playing cards could provide, but he wasn’t about to start another argument with Mista about this. They’d already talked, more than once, about how dumb it was (in Fugo’s opinion) to think that one’s future could be determined by inconsequential things like what month you were born, the shape of your palms or how many slices of cake you were made to choose from when you were hungry. They’d already come to the conclusion, more than once, that they were both stubborn as they could be, and any attempts at arguing would be futile.
“I think I’ll pass,” he said, and on his defense he tried not to sound dismissive, but he evidently failed. Mista gave him a good-natured eyeroll and a “whatever” and, with that, they parted ways.
He thought that would be the last of it.
Except it wasn’t, because suddenly, everyone seemed to be going on and on about how great this Giovanna dude was. It was, Fugo had to admit, a little frustrating. After the first time he’d asked Fugo to come with, Mista proceeded to go to Giorno pretty much every day of the week, undoubtedly spending a good part of his part-time job’s salary in the process. Narancia didn’t go nearly as often, but he did, however, not shut up about how well Giorno had predicted the way his following days would go. Every now and then he would hear one of his classmates mention the fact they were going to see if they could catch him after school and he would have no choice but to stare off into the wall, amazed at how this one guy with a deck of cards seemed to be drawing in everyone like it was no big deal.
---
The last straw was a week and a half after Mista first asked him to come with, when Sheila E came to have lunch with him later than usual.
“Sorry for being late,” she said, not sounding sorry in any way, shape or form. He tried, against all hope, to swat her hand away before she got to steal anything from his plate. But he was up against a professional, after all. It had been over before it even begun.
He gave her a curious look. “What kept you?” Usually she was always there almost as soon as the bell rang, which was shocking considering Fugo had never seen her run or even get up earlier than anyone else in the year where they’d had class together.
“Got a tarot reading done.” Despite himself, Fugo could feel his jaw drop. Sheila E looked at him. “What?”
“Et tu, Sheila?”
She seemed to take a second to process what he meant before rolling her eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot Mr. Smart Guy over here thinks he’s above everything.”
Fugo frowned. “Sheila E. You’ve made fun of horoscopes with me. More than once.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. He stuck his tongue back.
After a beat of silence, she sighed. “We’re in the same class and he’s like, besties with Trish, okay. I got curious.”
Ah, so that explained it. Sheila E had not, for months , shut up about this very cute girl she ran into on the hallways a lot and shared gym class with. Said cute girl was, of course, one of the most popular people in the whole school. No big deal.
Fugo rolled his eyes. “So? Did he say anything interesting?”
Sheila E did not dignify that with a response. When he turned around to face her, she was blushing.
And that was it.
Next time he knew it, he was waltzing into their classroom right at the start of recess, his friends in tow. (He had not asked them to come with, quite the opposite actually, but they were all assholes who never listened to what he asked of them, ever.)
The moment he stepped a foot in there, it almost felt like the world had stopped. The rest, he saw in snapshots.
Trish Una with her hip against Giorno’s desk, one of her hands delicately covering her mouth, shoulders shaking with laughter. A student he’d never talked to leaning back on his chair, seconds away from falling back. Giorno Giovanna looking up at him. A bird flying past the classroom’s window. Giorno Giovanna looking up at him.
A little dazed, Fugo took another step forward, then a third one. Deep blue eyes followed the movement carefully.
“Pannacotta Fugo,” Giorno said. Fugo blinked. He did not recall having had any meaningful enough interaction for Giorno to know his full name by heart. “Glad to finally see you around here.”
Fugo decidedly did not stare at the way Giorno’s lips curved upwards. What he did do was raise an eyebrow.
“You’ve been waiting for me?”
“Of course,” Giorno said, looking far too regal for someone sitting with his legs crossed in front of a high school desk with penises pretty much engraved into it. Then, to add insult to injury, he propped his elbows up on said desk, fingers intertwined gracefully. “For a long time, as a matter of fact.”
Had it been anyone else, Fugo would have laughed at the unnecessary drama in the way the boy was carrying himself. As it stood, he felt like he’d been knocked off balance.
Trish rolled her eyes. “Your friend Mista mentioned wanting you to come?”
As if on cue, Mista waved from behind him. With a small smile, Giorno waved back.
Fugo huffed. “Right, of course. He’s been trying to get me to come to you for ages.”
Giorno tilted his head and smiled up at Fugo who, in turn, gulped in air more than he inhaled. “What changed?”
“... I don’t know,” he admitted. Giorno nodded.
“Well, I’ve already promised my time to a few other people today,” he said. He then stuck his hand into his pocket and took out a small piece of paper, numbers written into it with a green, glittery pen. “But if a tarot reading is what you want, feel free to text me later.”
Fugo took the paper in his hand and blinked.
“Uh, okay,” he said, smooth like butter.
Then someone tapped him on the shoulder and before he realized he was standing aside, watching Giorno shuffle a deck of cards in front of a fidgeting blonde. Taking that as his cue, he walked away.
Narancia whistled.
“Shit, man, guess he got even more popular since last time i asked him for a reading. Now you have to take a fucking appointment to go see him?”
Mista gave him a look that Fugo could not quite understand. Instead of trying to unpack that, he looked down at his hand. He’d wrinkled the paper slightly, with how strongly he was holding onto it.
“... His pen is scented,” he said.
Narancia snorted. Mista nodded sagely.
---
Against all force of reason, he texted Giorno that afternoon.
“hey,” he texted, and it was as dumb and uncertain as he felt.
“Hello,” spoke back his phone.
Fugo blinked. He hadn’t expected to get an answer so quickly.
“so, about that whole reading thing”
“About that. I do hope you realize it’s Friday”
“oh.” Fugo paused. “so should i like, schedule an appointment to see you on monday or”
“No, please, no need. I would hate to keep you waiting for that long. Why not arrange to see each other outside of school? It’s been a while since I’ve gone out for coffee.”
With a pause, Fugo bit his lip. Then, he texted Giorno a time and address.
And with that, it was arranged.
---
“Lovely place,” said Giorno. Fugo made a noncommittal sound.
Bruno’s coffee shop was, indeed, a lovely little place. Not particularly big, but big enough that even with a decent amount of regulars it rarely felt crowded. Usually, he and Narancia worked there part-time, but today he was there on his day off, wondering why he’d gone through all this trouble to arrange for a tarot reading that he didn’t even believe in. He’d even dressed up like, slightly nicer than usual. It was weird.
Giorno was weird, too, in his pastel pink button-up and rose-colored lips and his dumb, cute ladybug hair clip holding back his neat blonde braid and- oh, even his perfume was lovely. Fugo felt almost dizzy experiencing this. The whole situation was just weird.
“Do you have anything in particular you’d like to ask about?”
Fugo blinked. “Uh.” He really hadn’t thought about that.
Giorno chuckled. “That’s okay. Let’s do a small past-present-future reading then, what do you think? See what the cards think you need to pay attention to.”
Fugo kept himself from rolling his eyes at the “what the cards think.” They were cards, what could they be thinking? Still, he couldn’t be rude - it was him who asked Giorno for this, the least he could do was play by his rules, regardless of how ridiculous he might consider it.
With an elegant flourish, Giorno set three cards down on the table, then turned all of them around. Suddenly, he looked focused. Impressively professional. It was hardly the look of a fifteen years old boy staring at cards with a sweet-looking pink drink on his table. Somehow, if even for a second, he managed to make the cafe look ethereal.
Or maybe Fugo was just too taken by the way he looked with his brow slightly furrowed.
“You messed something up,” Giorno spoke up. His voice was soft and smooth. “Hurt somebody else. In the moment, you didn’t want to admit something was wrong. But it’s eating at you now - you’re certain that this person is greatly angered by this, may hate you even.” He gave him a small smile. Fugo felt his throat dry. “The cards want you to know you’re probably overthinking it. Try to talk things out. You’ll find that things will resolve themselves much smoother than you fear.”
Fugo blinked. “That’s what the cards say?”
When Giorno nodded, it was almost solemn. Then he smiled and, as he took a sip of his smoothie, the spell was broken.
“Thanks for this, by the way,” said Giorno, tapping the half-empty plastic cup with his pink fingernail. “It’s the tastiest smoothie I’ve had in my life.”
“Oh, don’t mention it. The things Bruno makes are just like that. Narancia says that if everyone came here at least once in their lives, the world would be a better place.” A fond smile made it’s way into his face without him meaning to. Giorno’s gaze was curious.
“You’re on a first name basis with the owner?”
Fugo scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, he’s- my adoptive dad, actually. Mine and Narancia’s.”
Giorno blinked. “Really? He looks so young.”
Fugo shrugged. “He is young. I don’t know how he does it, honestly.”
He did know, however, that he owed his life to that man. Just the thought of him made Fugo’s chest a bit warmer - though both of them had, at first, had a pretty rough time externalizing these feelings to each other.
Giorno hummed thoughtfully and took a sip of his drink.
“I suppose I can’t say anything - they’re clearly not as young as him, but both my fathers are barely past their thirties themselves.” Fugo felt something unnamed inside of him squeeze his chest with joy as details of who Giorno was as a person came into view.
“You have two fathers?”
“Ah, yes. One of them is the one who taught me card-reading, actually - he’s a magician and fortune teller by trade.”
Before Fugo could realize, the afternoon had gone by with both of them chatting idly in front of empty coffee cups.
---
That night, before stepping into the hallway to his room, Fugo hesitated. Behind him, Narancia was tapping his knee along to the rhythm of some song Fugo would probably not recognize even if he’d gotten told it’s name multiple times in the past. They had both long ago given up on trying to decipher the other’s music test.
“Hey, Narancia.”
By some miracle, the boy reacted without Fugo having to call his attention in more drastic ways.
“Yeah?”
Fugo bit his lip. “I’m sorry for breaking your Xbox controller the other day. When we were playing.”
Narancia blinked, then smiled. “Aww, were you worried about me being mad at you?” Fugo felt himself blush violently at the mockery in his tone. Narancia paid this no mind. “Dude, it’s no big deal. I already yelled at you, you’re gonna have to buy me a new one, it’s all Gucci.” He tilted his head a bit and damn, now the smile was genuine and Fugo couldn’t bring himself to be mad at him anymore. “Thanks for apologizing, though. I appreciate it.”
With a weight lifted off his shoulders, Fugo told himself that he had absolutely not just done that because Giorno’s cards had told him to. Tarot was dumb and irrational.
---
Giorno was a regular at the cafe, after that, with Trish Una often tagging along. Every once in a while she would shoot him a weird look, turn to Giorno and smirk, but aside from that despite her tough demeanor she was surprisingly nice. (They both also left really good tips, which he greatly appreciated.)
(Sheila E started coming over too, sometimes.
“I just want to see my best friend more often,” she’d said, as though they weren’t always around each other in other contexts and her having never showed a particular interest in seeing him at his place of work. This got her a raised eyebrow from Fugo.
“You sure about that? This doesn’t have absolutely anything to do with you wanting an excuse to hang out with Trish?”
Sheila E didn’t even have the decency to pretend to be scandalized. “Shut the fuck up and make me a coffee, gayboy.”)
Little by little, Fugo and Giorno started to learn more about each other. Giorno acted like he had no preference for anything but whenever he felt like getting a dessert he always asked for pudding. One time he accidentally texted Fugo a picture of a frog he’d meant to send Trish and, since then, they’d started randomly sending each other pictures of creatures they saw when going around. Coffee made him sleepy as opposed to energized, which he’d learned the hard way on a particularly tough to get through school day.
“We were in the same class, actually,” he brought up one day. “Last year.”
“Were we?” Fugo questioned as he mindlessly cleaned a just-emptied table.
“Yeah. I don’t think you ever noticed I was there, though.”
“Oh,” said Fugo. And then something in the way Giorno had said that compelled him to add, “I’m sorry.”
Giorno smiled. “I’m glad I get to talk to you now.”
Fugo swallowed and, with heated up cheeks, looked away.
Giorno kept just. Doing that, and it caught Fugo off guard every single time. He didn’t know why the boy insisted on being so nice to him specifically. Trying to make amicable conversation whenever he got to. Smiling oh so brightly when they ran into each other on the hallways at school. Hell, he brought Fugo a lunch box on a Saturday once. With home-made food. Which was delicious. He did that. Fugo had stayed baffled over that for the rest of the week.
Narancia, of course, had an easy answer to his predicament.
“He has a crush on you,” he proclaimed one day over dinner. Fugo nearly choked on his spaghetti.
“Wha- No he doesn’t!”
Narancia grinned. “Yes he does. Dude, it’s so cute. You guys are adorable. You should totally date.”
Bruno, who was eating with them because he was their father and they shared a house, decided to add to Fugo’s misery by both reminding him of his presence and contributing to the conversation.
“Are we talking about that boy who keeps coming to see you at the cafe?” Judging by the lack of sound, Narancia had probably nodded in response, but Fugo was too busy hiding his face in his hands to see. “He seems really sweet. I’m happy for you, Fugo.”
“He’s not my boyfriend!” He yelled.
Both Bruno and Narancia blinked.
“None of us said that, Fugo.” Bruno’s smile was amused. Narancia chuckled and started to sing.
“Panni and Giorno, sitting on a tree, K-I-S-S-”
Fugo wanted the earth to swallow him right then and there.
---
He texted Sheila E that night.
“do you think I have a crush on giogio?”
“read that twice and ask me again.”
“what?”
“youre literally the only person who calls him giogio you massive dork”
“what? no
he told me everyone calls him that”
“.”
“oh my god”
He had a crush on Giorno. Giorno very possibly liked him back.
Fugo felt himself sink into his mattress.
---
When he asked Giorno to see him at a nearby park after school a few days later, he’d spent all that time practicing a fake shuffle with a recently-acquired deck of tarot cards he’d bought on impulse. He had a whole plan. He’d talked to the mirror an embarrassing amount of time. He had this under control, he told himself.
Giorno was wearing a ponytail today, long and curly hair shining golden under the sun. Fugo did not have this under control.
“Hi, Giogio,” he greeted. He hated that he was a little proud of himself for not letting his voice crack.
Giorno smiled. “Hi, Fugo.” A beat of silence followed. He tilted his head. “Did you call me here for any reason?”
Your words, Fugo, use your words. You’ve been practicing. “Yeah, I. Bought a tarot deck. You know, for fun. I wanted to test it out with you.”
Giorno blinked. When he smiled again, he did it with his eyes. “I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff.”
He still didn’t. “Yeah, well. It doesn’t hurt to try, you know.”
Giorno nodded sagely before sitting down cross-legged on a patch of grass. “Well, then,” he said, in a mockery of seriousness. “I’m in your hands.”
Fugo sat down in front of him and shuffled. In his mind, he knew what he was doing. He had planned this out very carefully.
With a slightly trembling hand, he pulled out The Lovers.
Giorno looked up at him, mouth slightly agape, and oh, there went all of Fugo’s words. He mourned his careful rehearsing in silence as he threw out the window any attempts at smoothness and said, instead:
“Will you go out with me?”
Giorno chuckled. Fugo felt his stomach sink.
Before he had any more time to feel embarrassed, he felt two arms circle themselves around him and oh, there went all his cards, scattered on the grass. Despite knowing he should, Fugo couldn’t bring himself to mourn his twenty dollars.
Because Giorno said “Yes” and, suddenly, everything else stopped mattering. Because Giorno said “Can I kiss you?” and all he could do was nod, enchanted. Because they leaned into each other and Fugo found that he didn’t care much about what the cards had to say about his future.
Why would he care, after all, about what came next, when what was right in front of him was as sweet as this?