Chapter Text
Giorno is eight when he witnesses a shooting star tear across the daylit skies over Naples. The shooting star looms bigger and bigger, leaving a tail of fire in its wake, until he can feel the heat tickling his cheeks as a dark mass screams by him and lands less than two hundred meters away, behind a low brick wall. The hour is early and the streets of Naples are empty. He should be on his way to school by now, but Giorno has always been curious, dangerously so – without thinking twice, his feet turn from the path and he finds himself following in the fallen star’s wake.
On the other side of the short brick wall, the low morning sun casts a long wedge of shadow across dew-tipped grass. In the space within shadow a man lies, his body pressed as close to the wall as it can go. His hands, face, and neck – the only skin left peeking out from his garish yellow suit – are covered with third degree burns that remind Giorno of the raw flanks of beef he sees hanging in the butcher’s window every Sunday.
At eight years old, he has never seen a human corpse before. He understands death; on one occasion, he cradled in his hands the body of a sparrow that flew too close to the kitchen window and felt it grow cold and stiff. Yet somehow, the prospect of finding a dead man along the side of the road leaves him in a cold, clammy sweat. He can taste the sour smell of fear weeping from his pores. The man must be dead – look as he might, he never sees the man’s chest rise, not even once.
Just as Giorno stretches out a hand to feel for a pulse, the man’s eyes snap open. His irises are a few shades darker than his pale goldenrod hair, and there is a degree of hardness to his pupils that pins Giorno where he stands.
“The sunlight,” he man rasps, raising a long, hooked finger in Giorno’s direction, and for the first time, he realizes that the man’s skin is sizzling.
The man carries daggers in his mouth, two of them, and Giorno does not need to be superstitious to know what he is. As his pulse settles to a steady thrum, he realizes that he is less afraid of the creature before him than he was of the corpse he thought he was seeing moments ago – though what this says about him, he cannot decide.
He is pulled from his thoughts by the distant clacking of heels on cobblestone. From behind the wall he emerges, just as a man rounds the corner. By then, crowds have already begun to trickle into the square – children on their way to school, business owners setting up awnings and tables in preparation for the day’s business – but the man is different, and this Giorno knows instinctively. The man reminds him of a cormorant, barrel-chested and dressed in black from head to toe with his coat tails snapping behind him as he walks, the brim of his black hat casting a shadow over his eyes. The way he moves his head from side to side is bird-like too, when he pauses in the midst of the square and looks about him. His eyes settle on Giorno.
Before he can consider running, the man is crouching before him, an enormous gold chain swinging inches from Giorno’s face. Despite the intimidating the scowl the man wears, the tremors at the back of Giorno’s neck settle when he takes a closer look at the man’s features.
He’s Japanese, he tells himself, and he’s only singling you out because you’re Japanese too. He probably doesn’t speak a word of Italian.
Sure enough, when the man opens his mouth, the words that come out are spoken in fluid Japanese. “Have you seen a man recently – blonde, about my height? He’d look like a tourist.”
In the same language (albeit with a few years’ worth of rust clinging to his pronunciation), Giorno replies, “I haven’t, sorry.”
A lie – but he thinks nothing of it. The man before him is a stranger; Giorno does not owe him anything, least of all the truth.
The other man is a stranger too, his thoughts remind him. You do not owe him anything either, including protection. But the man before him has bloodshed in his eyes. At eight years old, he’s lived in Naples long enough to know that murder is a fact of life in these streets, and he knows that if he were to answer the man before him in the affirmative, he would become an accessory to whatever befalls the man behind the wall. And so, he takes the path of least resistance: he lies.
The man’s mouth flattens into a line. Over his shoulder he looks, and when Giorno follows his gaze, he sees something like a ghost, purple with black tendrils of hair, materialize at the man’s side. The man’s eyes shift back to Giorno, and Giorno follows suite without hesitation. They stare at one another, silence unbroken between them.
He’s testing me, Giorno realizes, he’s waiting for me to look over his shoulder again – he wants to know if I can see it too. His peripheral vision is enough to inform him that the men and women rushing past them do not seem to notice the ghost, meaning that he and this other man are the only ones who can see it. What signifies this apparition and his ability to see it he cannot guess, but he knows if he so much as glances at the ghost again he is done for, and so he continues to stare at the man, doing his best to affect an air of boredom.
“Is there something wrong with my face?” Giorno drawls, voice steady despite the hammering of his pulse.
“No.” The man lets out a breath and stands up, knees popping.
Giorno’s next breath falls like a stone in his lung as the man strolls up to the low brick wall and leans over it. At his height, he should easily be able to spot the man he’s looking for huddled in the corner where the shadow is thickest, but for whatever reason the man does not find him. Taking one last look at Giorno over the corner of his collar, the man stalks off, and the ghost at his back follows after.
As much as his curiosity compels him to look again behind the wall, Giorno knows that to do so now would raise suspicion, so instead he heads to the café across the square, buys himself a cappuccino and a sfogliatelle, and helps himself to a terrace seat where he can keep an eye on the brick wall. After half an hour, the man in black shows no sign of returning.
Giorno finishes up his cappuccino, but he’s lost his appetite for the pastry. Almost as an afterthought he wraps it in a napkin before crossing the street.
The scene behind the brick wall has altered since last he saw it: the wedge of shadow grown a bit shorter, and more noticeably, a new row of shrubs sprung up against the wall. Only when Giorno pushes aside a thick handful of leaves does he realize that the injured man is still there, eyes closed in imitation of sleep. With the foliage to cover him, his skin is no longer smouldering.
Of the impossible appearance of the shrubs, Giorno thinks nothing. He willed that the man in black would not find the man behind the wall, and it was made so – though he does not comprehend it, Giorno thinks it is only natural that his will should have an effect on the world around him.
Before he hurries off to class, he places the napkin-wrapped pastry beneath the bush.
***
When Giorno comes to, his cheek is pressed his bedroom floor, and his ears are ringing. Wincing, he brings a hand to his head, running his fingers through his hair. When he pulls his hand away, his fingers are covered in blood.
This isn’t the first time.
By now, Giorno knows better than to cry out. If he makes a sound, there is a good chance that the man who calls himself his father will overhear and will storm in to beat him back down again. And so, he does what he has learned to do, what his survival depends upon: he stays quiet and listens, reading the situation, and pretends he is dead.
Through the walls, he hears the muffled braying of his father’s voice. He goes still, willing his breathing to quiet, as he braces himself for the heavy, uneven thudding of footsteps to come crashing down the halls as they have done so many times before, when his father’s full of drink or anger or just general resentment toward Giorno’s existence. But the footsteps do not come. He hears instead an answering voice: deep, rich, foreign. A volley builds between the two distinct voices, and though Giorno cannot make out the words, he recognizes an argument when he hears one.
Only when his father lets out a shrill scream does he spring from his bedroom floor and ease his way out the door, stepping lightly along the hallway with his back pressed to the wall. His head is still throbbing from the earlier beating, but the adrenaline allows Giorno to press past the pain. In the kitchen, his father’s screams are cut off all once, reduced to a muffled, garbled sound – whoever is in the kitchen is holding a hand over his mouth.
Giorno intends to hang back in the hallway and assess the situation, but then a voice – foreign, but speaking perfect Italian – calls to him: “It’s alright, Giorno. You may come out.”
For a moment, Giorno is frozen in place. Every instinct screams run!, but the voice is so sincere and gentle that he cannot bring himself to feel afraid.
When he steps into the kitchen, the first thing he sees are his father’s feet dangling several inches off the ground. The man holding him aloft has his fingers around his father’s neck – no, not around his father’s neck, but in it, fingers slipping into veins like snug-fitting gloves. Though the man’s back is turned to the window, casting a shadow across his face that is relieved only by a pale sliver of moonlight that chases the outline of wild hair, proud cheeks, and a strong jaw, Giorno recognizes him immediately as the injured man who’d fallen from the sky.
The man allows his grip around Giorno’s father’s neck to go slack. As Giorno watches the man who’d beaten him senseless countless times over the years lie twitching on the floor, he does not feel the fear he usually associates with his father’s presence – only disgust, as he realizes for the first time just how pathetic the man really is.
His eyes shift to the man standing at the window. “Is he dead?” he asks in a steady voice.
“No. Would you have been happier, if I killed him?”
Giorno pauses to consider. True, he’s had fantasies in the past of all manner of violent incidents befalling his father (and his mother too, at times), but – “No. It wouldn’t change anything.”
By then, Giorno’s eyes have adjusted to the light enough for him to see the glint of white teeth – the man is smiling at him. “What a clever boy you are.”
A silence slips between them. He can feel the stranger’s eyes on him, even if he cannot see them.
“Did you come to thank me?” Giorno asks at last.
He hears a snarl. “I, Dio, am do not thank anyone.” Immediately, his voice drops back to one of gentle restraint. Giorno can tell that this man – Dio, as he apparently calls himself – has had a great deal of practice mastering his anger. “But! – I am a man of honour, and can assure you I will not forget your… charity.” Dio says the word ‘charity’ as though he has splinters lodged in his mouth.
For a moment, inquisitiveness gets the better of Giorno. He blurts out, “The man chasing you – what was he? The sunlight didn’t hurt him, he couldn’t have been… whatever you are.” He stops just short of saying the word ‘vampire’ out loud.
If Dio is taken aback by his question, it is too dark to tell by his face. His voice gives nothing away – he merely hums and replies, “You saw his power, did you? I have the same power too, although we are not the same, he and I. That same power, when you hid me in the bushes…” When the man steps closer and cups Giorno’s chin in his hand, he does not flinch away, “you’ve been able to use your powers for quite some time, haven’t you, my little one?”
Giorno blinks slowly, the dull glint of Dio’s teeth dancing before him like a swansong in the dark. “I never thought much about it,” he admits at last. “It felt… normal.”
“Of course it did – to you, such power is nothing more extraordinary than a lion born with teeth in its mouth or a snake born with poison in its fangs.” Dio steps back, leaving the warm after-impression of his fingerprints on Giorno’s jaw. “Neither the snake nor the lion thinks much about biting – it is in their nature.”
There is something vicious, but not altogether unappealing, in Dio’s choice of imagery.
“What was your name again?” Dio demands.
“Giorno Giovanna.”
He dares not mention how Dio called him by his name minutes earlier. If all that he’s suffered at the hands of his father and his peers has taught him anything, it is to never, ever let on exactly how much he knows. People are wary of being read – they are so much easier to study when they have their guard down.
When Dio speaks again, his voice is almost tender. “Goodnight, Giorno Giovanna. I hope we meet again soon.”
Before Gio can so much as blink, the stranger is gone. The kitchen is silent but for his father’s strained breathing, and the creak of the open window as the wind pushes it back against its hinges.
He feels that he has missed something significant, but what it is, he cannot say.
***
If Giorno’s father remembers anything of the night before, he does not express as much at breakfast the next morning.
For the first time in years, Giorno awakes to cornettos and jam set out on the table, the pastries still oven-warm. By then, his father is already seated at the head of the table, sipping at his cappuccino. A few minutes later, his mother stumbles into the kitchen, rubbing at the smudged mascara under her eyes from a party that ended only well into the morning.
His mother stretches languidly and yawns, exposing the pink roof of her mouth and the red lipstick clinging to her teeth.
“Mornin’ hunny,” she says, and then her eyes fall on the food and her face lights up. “Wowee! Someone’s been busy. Did you thank your papa for breakfast, Giogio?”
Giorno does not reply and his father merely grunts, but his mother is still too drunk to do anything but slump in her chair and tuck into breakfast.
Were it not for the window still swinging wide open and the bump on his head, Giorno might have concluded that the events from the night before were nothing but a dream.
Only when he excuses himself from the table and heads for the door does his father call after him: “Have a good day at school, Giorno.”
And there, just at the end of the sentence when his father says his name, Giorno detects an ever-so-slight quiver in his voice.
He remembers.
***
Giorno does not go to the cinema often. Too many of the films shown are American imports, and while they are pretty to look at, he cannot stand the jarring cinematography, the busy background noises (someone once told him that in America, they hire people to fake the sound of footsteps just so that directors could make the actors' walking louder!), or the way the localized dubbing is always just a step out of sync with the actors’ lips movements. But today an Italian film called Il Postino is playing, and there is talk of it being so good that it might even beat out Hollywood films for awards overseas. Giorno is practically obligated to purchase a ticket.
The only issue is that half of Naples seems to have the same idea.
When he walks into the theatre, it is packed from aisle to aisle. At first, he finds two seats together, and claims one for himself, until a flustered couple approaches and explains that this is their anniversary and they were hoping to sit together, and would he mind trading places with them? By the time he tracks down the girlfriend’s seat, someone else has already filled it. After going up and down the theatre twice without finding a seat, he is just about ready to give up and try his luck refunding his ticket, when he hears someone call out his name.
“Hey! Giorno Giovanna!”
A group of boys Giorno recognizes from school hang over the backs of their chairs, waving to him.
“What’s the matter?” one – the redhead – asks as Giorno approaches. He distinctly remembers the kid giving him a black eye three weeks ago. “Can’t find a seat? Here – have mine!”
The other boys all join in.
“No way, man! That seat’s on the aisle, Giorno wouldn’t want that. Here, Giorno – take my seat instead, it’s closest to the middle, yeah?”
“What, and make him sit behind the tall guy? Take mine instead.”
Giorno tries to decline their offers and excuse himself, but the boys are persistent. In the end, all four happen to remember they have other plans for that day, and they leave the theatre in a hurry, stealing glances at Giorno over their backs when they think he isn’t looking.
***
Come spring, Giorno Giovanna is the most popular kid in his class, but he knows better than to think that it has anything to do with him.
Something has changed these past several months, in the way people look at and talk to him. Whenever he goes to the café across the street the owner always slips an extra pastry in with his order. Children his age smile and greet him when they pass one another on the sidewalk. Even his mother, so accustomed to ignoring his existence, begins taking him out on weekend outings.
The only giveaway is on his birthday, when he receives an anonymous card with two thousand dollars in cash stuffed inside and a note written on the back: from a friend.
This is what he’s craved for so long, isn’t it? – to be surrounded by friends, to have a family that dotes on him. But there is something hollow in knowing that he is living in a mirage, and that all the people around him are nothing more than light bent to show him exactly what he wants to see.
Bored, he develops a habit of slipping down narrow streets and alleyways, where the sunlight doesn’t penetrate and the benevolence of his unseen benefactor does not reach. In those places he encounters for the first time the power and terror of Neapolitan crime: prostitutes and child junkies and body bags, ambition and desperation and bloodlust that feels realer than any schoolyard talk or white telephone picture.
He is nine years old and no longer shy. He looks at the world with his chin raised and his eyes wide open, without fear or distrust or resentment. But even so he feels far, far away. He is too young to put his ambitions into words, so he dreams the days away instead, and teaches himself to pick pockets and brains alike.
***
One night, he comes home late with a black eye from a would-be target and a wallet no heavier for his efforts. The house is empty. He pauses in the kitchen and listens to the gurgle of the fridge and the spray of rain against the window. The way the moonlight causes the vacant chairs to cast long bars of shadow across the dirty linoleum floor reminds him too much of that night years ago, when he was eight and the world did not revolve around him. Being in the kitchen and remembering is too lonely for him to bear, so instead he flees to the shelter of his room, where the warmth of incandescent light and a warm quilt awaits.
As he turns the corner, he is hit by the smell: a perfume, an oriental with notes of pungent myrrh, sandalwood, and warm cinnamon, livened by just a hint of waterlily. He cannot tell whether the perfume is a man’s or a woman’s – the waterlily gives it just enough of a feminine boost that it could be worn by either – but whatever it is, it has a massive silage that only a bold individual could pull off. The combination of notes reminds Giorno of sand dunes, of pyramids standing on the horizon, of bazaars and camels, of coloured silks and streets at night.
When he pushes open the door, he discovers Dio lounging on his bed, feigning interest in the glossy pages of a magazine.
“Are you coming in or not?” Dio demands without looking up.
Shutting the door behind him, Giorno approaches on silent feet. At the sound of the bed dipping, Dio sets the magazine aside and folds his hands over his stomach. He is dressed, Giorno notes, rather inconspicuously in a simple black blazer.
When it becomes clear that Dio has no interest in initiating the conversation, Giorno clears his throat. “I didn’t think you would ever come back.”
It’s true – he’s thirteen by now, and long given up notion of seeing the specter from his childhood again.
“I had other matters to deal with,” Dio says. “Planting false leads, backtracking… you’re a clever boy, I’m sure you’ve figured out by now what it would mean for me if I came back.”
He had, yet it doesn’t make the absence any easier to bear. “That man – the Japanese one – is he still chasing you?”
“Was – but we don’t have to worry about him right now.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Not yet; he’s put himself in the way of distraction. A long lost relative on the other side of the world, someone new to chase after.” Dio’s mouth hardens into a frown. “He’s making a mistake, thinking there is anyone out there that should make him worry more than I.”
Whatever Dio has done to earn himself a foe, he does not volunteer, nor does Giorno ask. He isn’t dense, after all. Whatever Dio has been through, he probably deserves – but as long as Giorno doesn’t know the details, it isn’t his business.
“From now on,” Dio continues, “moving about shouldn’t be much of an issue.” The corners of his lips quirk up, just enough to show off his fangs. “Tell me, my Giorno – did you really miss me that much?”
“No,” Giorno lies, drawing circles in the comforter with his finger.
“Aren’t you happy with the new life I’ve given you?”
This time, when he says ‘no’, Giorno is telling the truth. “What did you do to them?”
Still smiling, Dio taps the crown of his head. “I gave them a little something of myself. They still have their free will; it’s just a version of their free will that is more convenient for me.” He tilts his head, studying Giorno. “Do you understand?”
“I think so.” He lets his gaze fall to his hands, now curled in the duvet, as he tries to decide how much information he should give away. But the Giorno of now is much more trusting than the Giorno of five years ago, at least in the presence of his benefactor, so it is with relative ease that he says, “I don’t like seeing people trip over themselves for me. It’s – embarrassing.”
Dio seems pleased with what he hears. “Pathetic, aren’t they? Seeing a creature grovel at your feet – there’s nothing more revolting.”
“I don’t think they’re pathetic!” Giorno is quick to counter, feeling his cheeks burn. “I just… pity them.”
For a brief moment, hurt and then anger colours Dio’s face. And then his fists are unclenching and his whole body goes slack once more. When he speaks again, his voice is distant, as if he is somewhere far away, remembering something. “You would have pity, of course,” he mumbles under his breath. After a pause, his eyes rise to meet Giorno’s. “You’ve realized by now that you have something very few possess, haven’t you?”
Giorno nods.
“Tell me, Giorno – have you been practicing?”
In place of an answer, Giorno removes the ladybug pin from his jacket. Taking Dio’s hand, he gently sets the pin in the cusp of the man’s palm – when his own small hand pulls away, Dio is left holding a waterlily flower.
“Impressive,” Dio murmurs, thumb ever so gently grazing over a petal. “I don’t suppose you’ve been able to manifest your power yet in a tangible form – something like a spirit?”
“Not yet.”
Dio makes a fist around the flower and squeezes hard. When he hands it back to Giorno, it is a pin again. “All in good time,” he says. “I hope to be seeing more of you, now that our mutual acquaintance is busy.”
As Giorno plucks the pin from Dio’s hand, the man’s thumb grazes ever so briefly against the side of his hand. Though the touch is cold, in the aftermath he discovers his own skin is fever-hot.
And just like that, Dio is gone again, leaving nothing of himself behind but the smell of his perfume and the heat that crawls up Giorno’s adolescent skin.
***
There are only so many crimes one can commit solo without stepping on someone else’s toes in Naples, and so Giorno is forced to get creative at times. He takes to frequenting taxi stands, train stations and airports, hoping to find tourists to relieve of their belongings. Still, it’s a dangerous game he plays and he knows it, which is why his heart skips a beat when a nondescript black Cadillac pulls up beside him one day and the driver orders him to get inside.
Throughout the ride, he keeps expecting the car to pull down a side street or off onto a country lane, some place nice and quiet to finish off business (‘business’, in this case, being Giorno). No such detour occurs. Instead, the driver drops him off at the Grand Hotel.
At the front desk he gives his name, and the concierge tells him that there is a key waiting for him. As he waits for the concierge to return with the key, Giorno takes in the luxurious lobby: carved ivory chandeliers, rich Persian rugs, marble and pillars and other pseudo-Greco touches of luxury. Whomever he pissed off, Giorno thinks, must be someone important.
His suspicions are confirmed when he is handed the key to the penthouse suite.
At fifteen, Giorno is a deadly mix of poise and intent, and his powers grow stronger with each passing day, but he is still not wholly formed, and he knows it well. Serenity and grace alone are not enough to stop a bullet.
Just as he’s about to knock on the door, Giorno pauses to inhale. As soon as he does so, his fears quiet down and the stone-still look on his face dissipates in favour of a soft smile. He lets himself in and steps through the door with a light bounce to his step.
“You scared me,” he announces.
Inside the suite, the smell of myrrh, sandalwood, cinnamon, and waterlily is even more concentrated, saturating the air. Although blackout blinds are pulled shut over the windows, the bedside lamp gives off enough light for him to make out Dio’s reclined form. As Giorno enters, he turns his head to peer over his shoulder, golden eyes catching in the incandescent light.
“Did I?”
Dio pats the spot beside him on the bed. Kicking off his shoes and socks, Giorno joins him, delighting at the sensation of the supple, crisp sheets beneath his bare feet. This close, he can detect a base note clinging to Dio’s skin that he’d never noticed on any of the occasions they’ve met up before: a warm amber musk, heady and animalistic. He makes note to ask if Dio has changed his signature scent recently.
“I thought I was being assassinated,” Giorno admits.
Dio hums – from experience, Giorno knows it’s the closest sound the man usually makes to laughter. “I think this is a much better arrangement than sneaking through your dorm window or meeting in the plaza at dusk, don’t you agree?”
Giorno refrains from commenting on Dio’s over-the-top tastes or his flair for melodrama.
Tossing his head back, Dio examines him out of the corner of his eye. “You’ve been getting bolder lately, Giogio. Reading through your records was fascinating.” A flash of too-predatory teeth. “Grand theft auto… and here I wasn’t aware you’d learned to drive.”
“I assumed I would just sort of… pick it up as I went.”
“Perhaps practice in advance next time. You might not have been caught if you hadn’t ended up in a ditch.”
“Was that in the report too?”
“It was a very descriptive report,” Dio admits.
Rolling onto his side, Giorno flings an arm over his face. Of all people, he least of all wants Dio seeing him shame-faced and embarrassed. By some cruel twist of fate, however, it is only ever Dio who manages to put a dent in Giorno’s otherwise perfect composure.
Heedless of Giorno’s mortification, Dio continues, “What are we to do with you, my Giorno?” The bed creaks under Dio’s weight as he shifts. Against his ear, Giorno feels the ghost of a breath. “Didn’t you tell me once that you meant to make something of yourself? Help all those poor wretches you take pity on?”
The questions directs itself at an old sore and stings without mercy. Grimacing, Giorno rolls over, silk sheets whispering beneath him. There are many reasons, he supposes, why he opts to waste away his adolescence on cheap thrills – compulsion, the need for stimulus, the desire to be in control – but none quite seem to feel right even as he tests them on his tongue, so instead he draws a breath and mutters, “You already have your plans for me, don’t you? Why not just tell me?”
Another hum from Dio. “And what, Giorno Giovanna, makes you think I have plans for you?”
He hesitates. Seven years ago, he’d been afraid to show his hand, but over the years he’s learned that unlike the people he’d grown up with, Dio has no qualms against being read and interpreted. He seems to welcome it; he is a puzzle, and he dares Giorno to solve him.
Dio is confident, but then again, so is Giorno.
“When you met me,” he begins, “you never asked for my name – but you knew it anyway, and you knew where to find me.” He draws his legs up close to his chest, winding his arms around them. “It wasn’t chance that I met you and saved your life – you’d singled me out. Why?”
“I knew your abilities could assist me.”
“How?”
“I’ve been watching you for a very long time, Giorno.”
Giorno only just manages to swallow back a second ‘why?’. Instead, he asks, “How did you find out about me?”
A flurry of emotions passes over Dio’s face in rapid succession, too quick for Giorno to make much of it. He has realized by now that Dio is carefully schooled when it comes to his emotions – he must have had a truly spectacular temper at some point in his life. “I was acquainted with your father,” Dio replies in a level voice. Too level, in fact.
The steady clip of Giorno’s heart flutters, but only briefly. He doesn’t dare insult Dio by confirming that the man in question is not the man who raised him – not when he’d worked out for himself long ago that the numbers on his mother’s anniversary cards were several short of those on the cards he got for his birthday.
“You would have liked him,” Dio continues, a sneer to his voice, “he was just like you – idealistic, and curious about everything. He would have loved you very much, I think. A pity he – .”
“Stop.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You’re going to tell me how his not being around has something to do with you.”
Even without looking, he can tell that Dio is watching him closely – hoping to get a reaction out of him, Giorno supposes. He is already well prepared when Dio asks, “Would you resent me for it?”
And Giorno, without missing a beat, replies, “If he meddled with you, he should have known what to expect.” He’s not answering the question, not really, but if Dio picks up on this fact, he does not choose to remark upon it.
“You wanted to know why I chose you?” Dio purrs. “Very well. Jotaro Kujo, that man who was after me, I want you to help me kill him – along with the others who’ve been chasing me.”
“I refuse.”
“Why not?”
“They have nothing to do with me – besides, knowing you, the ones chasing you are probably good people.”
The way Dio shrugs his answer off seems genuine. And even if it isn’t, Giorno on his part cannot detect even the barest hint of anger. “If that’s your will, then I can’t force your hand. I’m sure you’ll find your own calling once you’ve picked enough pockets.”
Not for the first time since he’s met Dio, Giorno raises a hand to his forehead, just below his hairline. Checking. “Is there a version of my will in which I do what you ask of me?”
Dio chuckles. He shifts, resting on one elbow as he leans over Giorno’s reclined body. A wave of oriental notes washes over him, and now that the perfume’s dry-down has begun, the note of musk is stronger than ever, clinging to Dio like a second skin.
“Is that why you think I asked you here today?” Dio asks. “To plant a flesh bud in you?”
“No.”
Though he’d foreseen the direction this day would take, only now does Giorno realize that all this time, Dio has been waiting for him to come up with the answer all on his own. He wants to give Giorno the illusion of being in control of the situation, when both know he is anything but. Though he knows it’s a losing move, the sheer curiosity of what comes next overwhelms him.
“You asked me here so you could seduce me,” Giorno murmurs, surprised at how calm and even his own voice sounds.
A hum. “What makes you say that?”
“The room. The musk. You’re not exactly being subtle.”
Suddenly, those gleaming white fangs are hovering over his lips, hot puffs of air dampening his skin. “I wasn’t trying to be.”
He’s surprised that of all people, Dio prefers close-mouthed kisses. That said kisses still manage to be anything but chaste is no surprise at all.
Dio’s skin may be ice to touch, but Giorno has heat enough for them both. Sheets that were before crisp and cool against his bare feet are now humid and unbearable against his bare back, his jacket having been done away with at the very beginning to make way for lips to touch. He squirms, attempting to get away from his own body heat, but Dio pins him from his pelvis down with a firm, powerful roll of his hips. All he can do is arch his back, belly curving up and away from the too-hot sheets, but that just puts him closer to Dio and to a whole different type of burning.
When he feels his slacks being pulled down around his ankles, he means to ask Dio to slow down, and – oh God, now he’s looking for something on the nightstand. He opens his mouth, but all he can get out is a whimper.
The sound of rummaging through the nightstand drawer pauses. “Do you want me to stop?” Dio asks, from somewhere far away. He asks in the same way he flaunts his unreadable façade in front of Giorno, all smirking confidence.
This is Dio’s design – a semblance of control, a challenge he knows will be answered.
Giorno shakes his head, but then adds, “Don’t be rough – I don’t want questions tomorrow.”
Ever since he was old enough to feel the acute ache of desire, there has only ever been one face to all his fantasies. That much is familiar. It is the rush and suddenness of it all that catches him off guard. But then, the Dio he pictures in scenarios like these is allowed a softness, a selflessness he knows real thing can never have.
Dio makes good on his request, however: he is gentle, propping Giorno up on a pillow and kissing him apologetically when the pain first makes itself known.
The pain, at least, gives him something to ground himself on, sets a slow burn in his spine that keeps him attached to his body. He becomes hyperware of the buttons of Dio’s shirt pressing against him, leaving indents in his stomach (like the closed-mouth kisses, Dio staying mostly dressed comes as a surprise). He can feel the heaviness of his own head, the ache of his neck from the angle, the light teasing of Dio’s hair against his cheek as he leans in to press another apology to Giorno’s swollen lips.
But then he grows accustomed to the feeling of being intruded, and the pain subsides, and there is nothing left for him to grab hold of. He gives in to the sunbursts of heat and ache under his skin, to the roiling in his belly and the gradually building pressure that expands to fill his pelvis. Beyond physical sensation, though, there is a sense of pure, demented elation that reminds him of the incident Dio brought up earlier, from the police report. When the cops found him in the ditch, blood dripping from a split lip and bits of broken glass in his lap, he’d laughed harder than he had in all his life, laughed until tears were running from his eyes.
He is dragged from his wandering thoughts when an involuntary spasm wracks his whole body. Gasping, he pushes his heels back into the bed, trying to find some form of leverage – and then, without warning, his orgasm hits. He scrunches his eyes shut, cries out a name. The hoarseness he feels in his throat tells him he’s been screaming the whole time, incoherent and meaningless expressions of passion that he no longer remembers.
As soon as it sets in, the afterglow dissipates, leaving him too sensitive for comfort, especially with the way Dio continues to grind into him. Each thrust feels as though someone is raking their nails along his insides.
“Dio.”
In reply, Dio grunts, silencing him with a hand over his mouth.
What feels like an eternity later, Dio stills, hips making a few last shallow movements before he lets out a sharp breath.
There’s a frightening moment where Giorno loses time. When he comes to, he’s being lowered into a bathtub, water on the edge of lukewarm the way he likes it. He leans his head back against the tub, taking in the gold fixtures and the designer-name personal hygiene products sitting on the ledge.
“This place must cost a fortune to stay at,” he remarks.
Dio brings a warm washcloth to Giorno’s face, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Are you going to ask me where I find the money?”
Closing his eyes, Giorno sinks further down until the water comes up to his neck. “No. I like it, that’s all. It’s better than the dorms for this sort of thing.”
“I’m glad.”
A cool hand cups his cheek. The sincerity with which Dio proceeds to tuck a stray hair behind Giorno’s ear makes his pulse race faster than anything else they’ve done so far tonight. There is something in that one small platonic gesture he craves, but what it is, he cannot name.
“You were so good for me, my Giorno.” Leaning in, Dio presses a kiss to his forehead. “Next time, we’ll do it your way – I promise.”
Next time. The phrase makes his stomach drop – but not, he thinks, in an unpleasant way.
***
Three days later, the first few strands of golden hair appear on Giorno Giovanna’s head. Three days after that, his stand manifests itself.