Chapter Text
Mista’s nudged awake with a stiff neck and a wet patch under his cheek. He groans, opens his eyes - he doesn’t even remember falling asleep, but he obviously did at some point, seeing as his surroundings are much brighter now than they were just a minute ago. It was a little past 1 AM, the last time he actually looked at a clock, and considering the way the room around him is lit, he must’ve been out for at least six or seven hours.
His boots are lying in a pile on the floor, the only article of clothing down there that belongs to him, since he apparently passed out fully clothed on top of the sheets. There’s an aching dent on his skin from where Giorno’s spare brooch, the one he keeps pinned to his jacket, was pressing into his chest. His hat seems to have slipped off his head while he was asleep, and it’s a rumpled mess, half-trapped under his face - oh, that wet spot he noticed is definitely drool, awesome. Gonna be real fun waiting for that to dry.
“Good morning,” Giorno says to his left, and Mista looks over. It looks like he only just woke up himself. He’s still wearing nothing but the bedsheets, his hair a thick, loose golden mop spilling over his face and shoulders.
“Mornin’,” Mista yawns, forcing his heavy, drowsy body to cooperate with him and let him sit up. His gun’s lying on the bedside table next to him, and he doesn’t think he’s the one that put it there. He rubs at his eyes, cracks his neck, and picks his hat up before turning back in Giorno’s direction. “You sleep okay?”
“Surprisingly, yes. I think our talk last night - or earlier this morning, I suppose - helped quite a bit on that front.” Giorno brushes his unrolled bangs from his eyes, and a faint, affectionate smile crosses his face. “It looks to me like you slept well too. I almost didn’t want to wake you, but…we have that meeting with Provenza in an hour and a half.”
“Oh, shit. Right.” He’d completely forgotten about that. Honestly, considering everything that happened the night before, he’d have been pretty surprised if that meeting crossed his mind even once. Good thing Giorno’s got such a tight handle on both of their schedules. And that he’s freakishly good at waking up on time without even having to set an alarm. “Yeah, I got it. Just lemme go grab a bite and I can be there whenever.”
“You don’t need to rush. We have time.” Giorno leans in, laying his fingers across the back of Mista’s hand. Mista’s eyes travel down his face - from his own impossibly pretty eyes, half-hidden behind a curtain of blond, to his sharp jawline - and then they fall on the faded, finger-shaped patches of yellow and purple that still dot his neck. They only linger there for a second before he forces himself to look back up.
Giorno’s asking him to stay. He wants him here, by his side, for just a moment longer. He doesn’t have to verbally tell Mista that for him to understand.
Mista takes his hand and squeezes. Who is he to say no?
“So, uh…” He still doesn’t know exactly how to preface this question without sounding like an insensitive idiot, and some part of him wonders if he’ll ever figure it out. “How’re you…y’know, holding up? You doing any better now?”
“I think so.” Giorno nods, slow. “I actually feel rested, for once. …Thank you again for everything you did for me last night. I’m sure I wouldn’t be nearly as refreshed as I am right now if it weren’t for you.”
If it were under any other circumstance, Mista would have latched onto that - grinning and asking teasingly if the sex they had was really that good, pouncing on him and peppering his face and neck with kisses and bites and offering to fuck him again before the meeting. But he doesn’t. He stays right where he is, rooted in place next to Giorno, watching as he chews his lip and turns away to face the half-open window.
A moment goes by, brief and painfully drawn out at the same time, where neither of them speaks. The room is so quiet that Mista can hear his own pulse. It’s suffocating. He feels like he should say something. He knows he should say something. He can’t even begin to think of what.
God, he’s fucking useless.
Giorno is the one to eventually break the silence. He lets out a long, shaky exhale, head sinking down. His hand tenses in Mista’s grip, and Mista opens his mouth to ask what’s up, or- or to at least do something instead of just sitting there like a stupid jagoff, but Giorno doesn’t give him the chance to.
“I still feel it,” he blurts out, sudden and hasty, like the words themselves are corrosive. Like holding onto them is hurting his mouth. “The way he was touching me. His hands on my body. I- I know it was foolish of me to think that it would go away after a single night of consensual sex, as much as I hoped it would.” He shudders. He’s breathing hard through his nose. “It…it makes me want to take a ball of steel wool and use it to scrub my skin off. To replace every last bit of it with Gold Experience. I don’t know what else I could do to fix this.”
“Dude, no, don’t-” Mista swallows. “Don’t say shit like that. Please.” He lets go of Giorno’s hand, grabbing onto his shoulder instead. Giorno doesn’t look at him, his line of sight still fixed on the window, but he doesn’t need him to. He just needs him to listen. “Even if you don’t actually mean it, and you’re just saying whatever’s on your mind, I…I don’t wanna hear you talk about fucking your skin up. You’ve cut your own limbs off before, and- and I watched you do it. If- if you really wanted to hurt yourself-”
“I’m not going to.” Giorno shakes his head. “I know it would be a terrible idea. It’s a ridiculous fantasy of mine that won’t solve anything. Please don’t misunderstand me. I meant what I said a moment ago, I am feeling better, I just- I don’t want to lie to you. Not anymore. Not when I’ve already tried and failed to hide…all of this.” He ends his sentence with another hitched, trembling breath. He sounds exhausted.
Mista believes him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his jaw clenching. Something smolders in his chest. “I- I’m so sorry that…that that worthless piece of shit did that to you. I’d kill his ass all over again if I could.” He reaches for Giorno’s hand again, the same one he’d been holding a minute ago, and isn’t met with any resistance as he takes it and lifts it gently to his lips. He hasn’t done this himself in a long, long time, not when his Don also happens to be the dearest friend he’s ever had in all his twenty-one years, but he knows in his gut that, right now, it’s exactly what he needs to do.
He closes his eyes and kisses Giorno’s hand, trying to channel all the devotion and fealty he can muster into it. His lips linger on his knuckles for a long while, way longer than is strictly necessary - because now that he has him in his grasp again, the last thing he wants is to let go.
“Boss, GioGio, I…I’m not gonna let anything like that happen to you ever again. I swear.” He murmurs it into Giorno’s skin, and Giorno curls his fingers around his hand in return.
“...I’m glad you’re here with me.”
He straightens up a second before Mista does, turns to face him again - and right then, something peculiar happens. His body falls in front of the window in just the right way, directly in front of the sunlight that manages to slip through the half-drawn curtains, and Mista freezes right where he is. He stares. He can’t stop himself.
It…it looks like-
It looks like Giorno’s glowing. Like the sun itself is seeping into his hair, setting it aflame. His silhouette is sharp against the morning sky, shoulders back and head held high, face in shadow but haloed in light. Nothing like the man who lay stripped and bleeding and mutilated and trembling on the floor, or the one sitting in the bathtub, curled up and small, or the one from the night before who’d clung to Mista’s back with shaking fingers, hard enough to leave bruises. He looks different.
He looks…victorious.
Mista suddenly feels like he’s eighteen again, his sweater soaked through with blood and his lungs barely working, filled with so many pieces of lead that it’s a miracle he’s still alive, much less conscious. His surroundings are hazy, like he’s stuck in a dream, the world around him spins - and he’s watching the sun come up, a sun that just a moment ago he was sure he wouldn’t live to see, looking through heavy, unfocused eyes at the figure kneeling on the ground and cradling his spent, broken body.
The boy wearing a crown of sunlight. The boy he’s only known for a few days, but feels in his bones that he can trust with his life all the same. The boy who was always strong enough to stand against anything and come out the other side.
Who still is.
Was that when he first noticed it? Was that when he fell for him and never recovered? It might have been. He doesn’t know. Does it even matter?
And as quickly as it came to be, Giorno shifts in his seat, and the moment is broken. The light from the morning sun moves across his skin, and becomes just that once again. He’s back to being tired, and vulnerable - and he’s looking straight at Mista now, his brow furrowed, his lips slightly parted.
“Guido, are you-?”
Mista blinks, opens his mouth, then suddenly realizes that his cheeks are wet. He can’t see clearly anymore. Is he crying? Fuck, he is. How could he not be, though? He sucks a breath in. His diaphragm is shaking.
Without saying a word, he acts entirely on impulse. He throws himself forward, right into Giorno, and hugs him tightly to his chest like he wants desperately to absorb him into his own skin. Giorno jolts, but then relaxes after a second, hugs back - and when Mista’s brain finally has the chance to catch up with his body, he finds himself hunched over Giorno, arms locked around him in a vice grip while he sits there and full-on bawls into his shoulder.
“You- you’re squeezing me too hard,” Giorno gasps, slightly winded. “The bruise on my abdomen.”
“Sh-shit, sorry, sorry,” Mista half-sobs, but also kind of laughs, because of course that would be the first thing out of his boss’s mouth. He loves him. He loves him so much that it hurts. There’s a crushing weight inside his chest that he wouldn’t trade for the world. He tries to ease his hold a little bit, tries to stop his whole body from shaking, but he has no idea how successful he’s actually being. “S’this better?”
“I…yes, but- what’s with the sudden change? Are…are you okay?”
“Y-yeah, yeah, I’m okay, man, I, I- fuck, I’m s-so damn okay right now, I-” Mista chokes on his own words, his throat so dry and tight he can barely use it. He squeezes his eyes shut and buries his face into Giorno’s neck. He cries and cries, his face streaked with tears and snot, his back and shoulders heaving, unable to stop now that he’s started. Everything comes spilling from him at once, rushing out, four days’ worth of fear and rage and guilt and worry that built up inside him like pressurized air in a now-punctured can - and the irony of that shitty number’s involvement isn’t lost on him.
Giorno reaches up the back of his neck to tangle his fingers in his curls. He doesn’t say anything, and once again, Mista doesn’t need him to. Everything Mista needs is already right here in his arms. Besides, it’s not like he’s much of a conversationalist right now either, not when all that’s coming out of his mouth is a load of half-coherent word garbage broken up by deep, uncontrollable sobs.
Behind his closed eyelids, he sees the scene on the other side of that office door again, as fresh and painful as it was when he first stumbled across it. A scene he understood as soon as he laid eyes on it. A scene he’s unfortunately all too familiar with. His hands are trembling with memories. Dropping his empty gun, hearing it clatter to the floor, after putting every single round into the rat fuck who’d had his best friend pinned down and helpless. Fumbling with the buttons on Giorno’s suit jacket and the zipper on his pants like he’d never seen them before in his life, trying desperately to get his fingers to work as he rushed to cover him back up.
Giorno’s eyes were wild and startled, his whites shot through with tiny spots of red. He lay there, shivering and panting with sharp, out-of-rhythm breaths like some kind of terrified, injured animal, even as he tried to force a mask of composure onto his face. He started closing his wounds as soon as he was able - replacing the chunks of his body that had gone missing, redoing everything the heap of human-shaped bullet-riddled flesh on the floor had undone, grabbing for random pieces of paper to fill in the gaps carved into his chest and Achilles tendons. Fixing himself up, like none of it ever happened, while Mista sat there on his haunches and panicked.
But right now, he’s here and solid and whole against his body, breathing slow and steady, radiating warmth from his core. He smells like sweat and salt and something sweet and vaguely floral. And he’s alright.
They stay there like that for a while, tangled together in a knot, unclear where one body ends and the other begins. Time passes, and gradually, the shivers wracking Mista’s chest begin to fade before vanishing altogether. Even after his tears dry up, he doesn’t let go, not until Giorno clears his throat and nudges him sharply between the ribs with his thumb. Right. Right. They’re still on a time limit here.
Reluctantly, he pulls back. Giorno turns, rummages through the drawer in the end table, and produces a half-full packet of tissues. Mista winds up using almost all of them, because he really doesn’t need to show up to that meeting looking like he was just crying his eyes out, thank you very much.
As soon as he’s got his face cleaned up, there’s a brief flash of gold, and the pile of crumpled, wet, snot-covered paper on the bed becomes a flock of glittering blue and dark brown butterflies. Giorno opens the window to let them out, and both he and Mista watch as they fly off and disappear into the distance.
Then Giorno looks back over at him, pressing a finger to his cheek like he’s contemplating something. When he speaks again, for the first time in what feels like forever, his tone is measured but blunt.
“Guido. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but…I think you need to take a shower. You’re a little on the pungent side.” He pauses, then glances down at his own thoroughly disheveled hair and runs his fingers through it. He sighs. “...And now that I think about it, so do I. I’m not exactly at my most presentable right now either.”
“Oh. Yeah. Will, uh…will do.” Yeah, okay, Giorno definitely isn’t wrong about that. Aside from that one brief period of an hour or so, Mista’s been wearing the same musty, wrinkled, sweat-stained clothes since yesterday morning.
“You’re welcome to join me if you’d like,” Giorno says, sweetly, and the soft little smile that appears on his face is the most beautiful thing Mista thinks he’s ever seen.
He can’t help the grin that twists his lips in return.
“I meeeaaaan,” he coos, scooting closer and leaning in until their noses are a couple centimeters apart. Giorno’s smile only grows wider. “Y’know, if you’re offering-”
“Wait, wait, hold on a sec! Mista, you promised we were gonna get something to eat!” Sette just about shrieks it into Mista’s ear, and the latter startles so much that he almost falls out of bed. He whips around to see all six of the Pistols hovering just past his shoulder, six tiny pairs of eyes looking at him expectantly - and as soon as said eyes make contact with his, they all start yammering at once.
“Yeah, I’m hungry! I want some’a that bresaola in the fridge before somebody goes and eats all of it!”
“No, no, I wanted the capocollo! Mista, can we have the capocollo?”
“Shut up! We can just get both, stupid!”
“Mista, didn’t Vanny say she was gonna show us the knife thing today? C’mon, c’mon, I wanna see it!”
“Wh- hey, guys, come on, this was supposed to be private!” Mista’s face is hot. It’s far from the most embarrassing moment they’ve decided to show themselves in all the time he’s had them, but this is still not at all the time or place. “You’re getting your breakfast, and all that other shit, just…just give me a damn second, okay?”
“It sounds to me like you have a lot on your plate today.” Giorno reaches over and tugs at the collar of his jacket. At least he sounds amused. “Get rid of these so we can go get cleaned up. You heard them. We shouldn’t keep them, or Provenza, waiting any longer than we have to.”
“Yay!” Uno beams and throws his hands up. “You’re the best, Giorno!”
Yeah, Mista sure as hell ain’t gonna disagree with that. Never one to disobey the boss, he strips, tossing his clothes in the same heap as Giorno’s. Somebody’ll get around to throwing them in the laundry later. Mista’s got some of his own extras lying around in Giorno’s closet, so it’s cool.
“Let’s go,” Giorno says, pushing the covers aside and getting to his feet.
And they do.