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Giorno’s parents did not teach him much. Their lessons were inadvertent and sparing. When he reaches into his memory, the only useful skills he can pull from his time with them are how to be very good at watching and very good at listening.
As a baby, he learned to watch the light change on the walls around his crib. If he opened his eyes and saw that it was still dark, he knew that no one would come if he made noise. There was a smoke alarm on the ceiling, a tiny, green dot that blinked in the pitch dark. When his stomach ached (which was often) he would focus on the blinking light instead of the hunger, green-on-black, until the sun came up.
It was quiet all the time. He learned to listen for the sound of footsteps in the hall.
Then, he’d moved to Italy, and these sharp senses of his proved to be indispensable. He waited inside his bedroom, listening, straining, until he heard the sound of the front door slapping open and shut, and then he knew when to hide or slip out the window. He watched for that split second reaction, when calm switched to anger on his stepfather’s face. He listened to his mother’s consonants, to know when she was drunk and trying to hide it.
He watched the belt swing through the air, guessed at how many milliseconds it would take to make contact with his skin. Then, he picked a spot on the carpet or on the wall and focused on that instead of the sting. He found lots of miniscule cracks and mildew stains this way. He probably should have mentioned them to his mother, maybe she would have called someone for repairs. Probably not, though.
...
“Dude,” Narancia said once, over the roar of a motorboat engine and under the wide blue expanse of the midday sky, “you know you’ve got this crazy look to you?”
“Crazy,” Giorno repeated. He assumed this had something to do with his hair.
“Yeah, like…” Narancia waved his hands vaguely, squinting, “your eyes. You got this look. I feel like you’re staring right through me, y'know?”
Narancia was very honest like that. At his funeral, Giorno could do nothing but stare straight ahead at the fragmented blues and greens spilling from the stained glass onto the casket. He wondered what exactly Narancia thought he was seeing, and what exactly he would have seen, if given a little more time.
...
Fugo doesn't say much, but he doesn't need to. Although, yes, Giorno has grown rather fond of the sound of his voice- Fugo’s face monologues for him even when he is totally silent. There’s wearing your heart on your sleeve and then there's what Fugo does: face morphing and contorting like bubbling tar as his thoughts boil beneath the surface. If Giorno watches close enough, he can just about make out the rough shape of what Fugo is thinking.
Fugo drinks one coffee in the morning and then another directly after. His hands shake from the caffeine, but his smile is sturdy and not-forced after his second cup. He picks at his nails sometimes. He chews the skin of his lower lip raw. He bounces his leg, twists the hair on the nape of his neck. A perpetual motion machine, constantly saying something.
Giorno could sit and watch him think too hard and vibrate with coffee-shakes for eternity. But neither of them have the time for that. And Fugo is not quite so patient.
...
When Fugo does talk, it's sure and measured (which Giorno likes) and laced with literary references (which Giorno doesn’t understand).
“I’m not fully set on this,” Giorno says, surveying a map of Pozzuoli ripped from a mapbook. There’s a drug operation, here, set up somewhere inside the red lines Fugo has drawn on the map in felt-tip pen. “This is a very crowded area. There are neighbors. It doesn’t seem fair to mix them up in that sort of violence.”
Fugo shrugs, leaning over the desk, “Fair is foul,” he says, leaving the end open, as if Giorno is supposed to fill it in for him.
Giorno glances up at him, waiting. That didn’t make any sense.
“Er,” Fugo straightens out, runs a hand through his hair, and looks away, all at once, “Macbeth?”
Giorno turns back to the map. He has never read Macbeth. He hasn’t read much Shakespeare at all. He dropped out of high school at 15 (had much bigger things to worry about), in the middle of reading Hamlet, about a week before a trigonometry test. Upperclassmen were to read either King Lear or Macbeth for summer assignment, but Giorno has never, in his life, been an upperclassman.
Fugo often says things that go over his head. He does his best not to let it show. He is supposed to be on top of the world, there isn’t supposed to be anything higher than his head. Not to mention, his lack of general knowledge tends to bring his conversations with Fugo to a stuttering halt, and he hates that more than anything, more than the feeling of being outclassed
He spends that night in the nearest public library, righting this wrong, reading through Macbeth. It’s not an exciting read. He cares as much for Shakespeare as he did in high school, which is, not much. This is homework, he decides. Homework, as he spends the following night reading King Lear. Homework, as he falls asleep on his desk, over the red stained map of Pozzuoli.
He waits for Fugo to quote Shakespeare again, ready to pounce with all the fresh knowledge. He has studied for the quiz, he is ready.
The quiz never comes. Fugo stops quoting Shakespeare altogether- seemingly out of some misplaced embarrassment- and switches to referencing French Existentialists. Giorno heads back to the library.
...
Sometimes, Giorno does get the chance to do what he wants and simply observe Fugo in his natural habitat. Sometimes he stares too long and doesn’t like what he finds.
Because, for all the moments that he’s watched Fugo- sidelong hunched over a book, from behind in the garden, directly across the dinner table, dim restaurant light giving him a tan he doesn’t have- he never considered that Fugo may be watching him just as closely.
He hates that. The moments where he catches Fugo gazing at him, that look on his face like Giorno is a complex equation he is set on figuring out.
Fugo calculates at all times. Giorno does not want to be calculated. Idolization and adoration, those are just fine. He can be a golden calf, if need be. He has no interest in being watched and scrutinized the way he watches and scrutinizes others. No one looks into a telescope and expects the stars to be staring straight back through the lens.
It’s not so much discomfort that drives this- it’s that he knows Fugo will not find whatever it is he’s looking for.
There is a Giorno Giovanna. Giorno knows him about as well as Fugo knows him. He’s a shallow reflecting pool of a person. Not so much a person as he is a figurehead. Giorno is well aware that he doesn’t boil deeply beneath the surface the way Fugo does.
He has seen his face in the mirror (sometimes he thinks he is nothing more than that: a face in the mirror). It’s blank. Placid. Open, accepting- gracious, even. The way it needs to be. Giorno Giovanna is a spotless veneer. Fugo isn’t going to find any cracks or mildew stains no matter how hard he looks.
He is reminded of what kids would say to each other in the schoolyard (not to him, to each other) when they would take turns making silly faces: if you’re not careful, your face is gonna get stuck like that! Haha!
He isn’t sure what Fugo thinks he is going to find.
...
Giorno thinks love is a free seat at the movies. Love is an ice cream cone in your favorite flavor inexplicably falling into your hand. Love is safety, protection, a life free of pain.
In a word, it’s tangible.
Fugo kneels, kisses his hand, pledges his own life, and Giorno doesn’t recognize it as love.
Fugo lingers in his doorway, stays up late with him, looks at him like he’s some enchanting museum piece being kept behind 6-inch glass, and Giorno doesn’t recognize it as love.
Fugo invites him out for ice cream, pinch-faced and jittering and looking everywhere but at him, and Giorno recognizes it.
And so, Giorno buys him things. Giorno loves him very much; he buys him a watch. He buys him new clothes, sans-holes. Fugo mentions wanting to see that new sci-fi film, so Giorno rents out the entire theater.
He offers to buy him a house, Fugo politely declines.
The gifts don’t have their desired effect. Fugo is not swept off his feet, not once.
Giorno knows, on some level, that this is because the world is less tangible for Fugo than it is for him. Fugo's world is all words and symbols, obtuse references and elaborate connections. But Giorno only sees things and hears things. There are goals and there are obstacles. If it wouldn’t reflect back to him in a mirror, it may as well not exist.
Little by little, Fugo makes his intangible wants known. He wants to sleep over. That’s fine. He wants to share a latte. That’s fine, too. He wants to sit in the same room as they do different tasks in total silence. That’s...fine.
“Is that alright?” he asks, when Giorno makes it a little too obvious that he doesn’t understand the purpose of the request.
“Yes,” Giorno says, straightening his papers. He gets self conscious when his desk is messy and Fugo sees it. Not that he would ever admit that aloud. “We’re in love, you can do whatever you want.”
He knows how flat and toneless that sounded. Like he was reminding Fugo to pick up milk from the grocery store. If Fugo noticed too, he doesn't comment. Just sits in the spare chair by his desk and repeats with a lilt, “We’re in love?”
It sounds better the way he says it. “Yes.”
“Good to know.”
...
He knows better, now, after so much time together, that Fugo is not simply observing him in an attempt to collect information or fit puzzle pieces together, but really searching for something. There’s an expectation, he’s pretty sure, for people in love to constantly share their feelings with one another. Likely, what Fugo is searching for is that deep well of emotion he is meant to be sharing.
It’s not that Giorno doesn’t feel things. He feels lots of things. It's just, he can never hold onto them. Oftentimes, feelings become too strong and all at once they zero out, leaving him with nothing but what he can be sure of; that which he can see and hear. Staring at his hands, knowing that they, at least, are real, yet feeling intensely hollow on the inside. Knowing that a second ago he’d been feeling something but being unable to grasp what it was. Feelings are fickle like that. Thin balloons that inflate too fast and pop too soon. He always seems to be left stuck in the ringing aftershock.
The first time he kissed Fugo he’d been so overwhelmed with excitement and joy that he stopped feeling everything altogether. The memory makes him happy, now. It was a sunny day, they were on a balcony, soft curtains and fresh flowers all around. Idyllic in the scenery, but Giorno can't remember what it felt like. If it was soft or fast or if it tasted like mint chapstick.
He remembers seeing Fugo pull away. Still close, his face overexposed in the sunshine, taking up most of Giorno’s field of vision.
“Uh-” he’d said, and then, “Giogio, was that- are you-” stammering, his eyes flicking all over, “are you okay?”
“Yes,” Giorno heard himself say, “more than okay.”
He knew, somewhere, that he must be totally fine. He was safe and warm and comfortable on a balcony with the boy he liked. He simply didn't feel one way or another about the whole thing right then. He had made the mistake of feeling too much, and was summarily rewarded by being reduced to his senses, his tangibles.
What he did not catch onto, even as he focused, was Fugo's blatant investigation of his face. Desperately trying to find a sign or signal. As if Giorno's face is some emotional traffic light- smile means go, frown means stop.
He knows better now. He doesn’t fight with Fugo, but they have their moments.
“It’s just-” Fugo arches back, drags a hand over his face, exasperated. “You’re so closed-off! I can’t tell how you’re feeling.”
Giorno sits very still on the edge of the bed. Hands clasped in his lap. He uncrosses his ankles- he read in a magazine, recently, that crossed ankles is a sign of holding something back.
He watches as Fugo paces across the bedroom, scrubs his face, sighs. There is a lot going on, there. Lots going on under the surface. He is irritated. He is frustrated. He is tired and maybe a little angry.
There is a moment coming, Giorno realizes. Something is about to switch. Giorno finds himself caught up in the expectation of it, watching so closely he hardly blinks. Socks padding on the carpet, a hand raising to his hair, a divot where his brows are drawing together.
And then.
“I’m sorry,” Fugo says quietly. Deflating, leaning heavily against the oak wood bureau.
“No,” Giorno says, all that bloated anticipation bursting inside him. There was no switch, of course there wasn't, it's only Fugo. But still he feels empty in the wake of it. Flat, blank, hollow, sitting still in his spot on the edge of the bed. “You don’t have to apologize.”
Giorno doesn't know how to tell what he’s feeling, either.
...
Giorno understands now that it's not enough to simply be content and in love. He has to look the part, too. He watches romantic comedies with Mista.
“You’re gonna love this, trust me,” Mista says, snapping open the DVD case, “fucking timeless classic, Gio.”
On the screen, Julia Roberts smiles wide with all of her pearly Hollywood teeth, cries when she is kicked out of a store, laughs loud and tosses her head back. The business man she is in love with buys her bags and bags of expensive clothes and nice jewelry.
In the mirror, Giorno tries to smile the way Julia Roberts does. Big, wide, with teeth. He does not want to be the business man. He seemed cold, in the movie. Cold and coarse and distant, in a way. Until the end, when he showed up on the fire escape, then Mista started blubbering and Giorno stopped paying attention.
Smiling wide at himself in the mirror, he doesn't look pretty and happy like Miss Roberts. He looks like a dog baring its teeth.
He doesn’t know what Fugo is searching for, but he’s sure it's not that.
(Giorno Giovanna has a terrible smile, he decides then, and shuts his mouth. And stares at the sleek face in the glass until he is absolutely sure it’s real)
...
Requiem's face is not so much a face as it is a mask. Unmoving, still, shining in the light and staring straight ahead. There are eyes, buried deep and dark and glowing behind the stoic façade of it. Wide, alert eyes that move and bobble when they have to. But the face- the mask- remains.
The meaning of this is not lost on Giorno.
You’re supposed to bend to my will, he tells it, so smile.
It does not.
...
Sometimes Fugo gets upset and sometimes he cries. Giorno stays with him when this happens, feeling sympathetic (like how he is sure he's supposed to feel) and jealous (how he is sure he is not supposed to feel) and like a responsible partner.
The jealousy is hard to deny. Because, when Fugo feels things big and loud, he only settles more deeply into his body. Crying, hugging himself, grabbing at his hair, breaking chinaware on occasion. Giorno can't do that. He never could.
Of course, this makes sense for Fugo, who is a well-rounded person, who feels everything so strongly and so deeply, who has so many neurons constantly firing and snapping inside him that the excess sparks from the tips of his fingers. Who thinks contradictory thoughts sometimes, who quotes Shakespeare and Greek Classics and other things Giorno still has yet to read, who contains multitudes (they’ve recently moved on to the transcendentalists).
Giorno is aware of the paradox, here. The irony. That someone who can give life with just a touch of his hand has seemingly so little inside, beneath his skin. Maybe it’s that he’s given away too much. Maybe it’s that a strong will and a dream were never enough to fill out a whole person to begin with.
(Sometimes it feels like he has never been more than that: a glass half empty. Sometimes it feels like he has never been more than the glass itself.)
So he watches Fugo the way he watched Julia Roberts. In the hopes that he might learn how to hang on to the feeling long enough for it to hurt, long enough to cry.
...
There’s a café that they both like. It’s a hike from the villa, but it’s worth it for the pretty latte rosettes and the temporary pretense of being Two Normal Teenagers on a Date.
As it happens, the rest of Naples likes this café, too.
“Look at the line ,” Fugo sighs, resigned.
They’re still outside. Looking through the big, plate windows with the hand-painted signs. It’s packed.
“We can go somewhere else,” Giorno offers. Neither of them are very good with lines. Fugo gets claustrophobic and Giorno gets suspicious.
Fugo pauses, looks at the line through the window, looks at Giorno, some tiny jury making a decision in his head, no doubt. Then, “No, I’ll go in. You can- you just,” his hand is already on the door handle before Giorno can say anything, “wait here?”
Giorno blinks. “I can come in.” He really doesn’t want to, but he can.
Fugo shakes his head, glances warily into the café again “both of us won’t fit in there,” it’s a total exaggeration, but one that Giorno is grateful for, “Cappuccino? With the extra cinnamon?”
Giorno shuts his mouth and nods.
Fugo swings in the door and surrenders himself to the line.
Giorno thinks, then, that love can also be someone taking the time to memorize your coffee order. It can be someone standing in line in your place, doing all the awful waiting that you don’t want to do. It can also be- though he doesn't realize it- spending hours in the library, slogging through old literature, studying in the hope of a hypothetical conversation.
He looks in the window, and realizes that Fugo’s been watching him.
He doesn’t know what Fugo is looking for- he never has. But as he stands there and waits in the shade of the awning, Giorno figures that he must have already found it. Otherwise, he would not have stuck around for so long.
Giorno sees his reflection, translucent in the windowpane, dressed in his closest approximation of what civilian teenagers wear. He is smiling.
On the other side of the glass, stuck in line, shoulders to his ears, Fugo smiles back.