Chapter Text
“Didn’t you say that you hated reading?”
Giorno watched Fugo’s slow reaction to the question. It was the proper witching hour, and while it had been a surprise the first time they’d run into each other this late at night or this early in the morning, they’d established something of a tentative ritual. This was the first time Giorno had found Fugo in the library, though. He watched a furrow appear between Fugo’s brows, and he said, “I just don’t know how to read casually.”
“What fun is casual reading?”
“No, I mean…” Fugo trailed off, watching Giorno approach the armchair he occupied, blanket draped around his shoulders like a cape. “Critical reading takes a lot of energy.”
Giorno hummed in non-agreement, shoving Fugo aside so that he could drop into the minimal space next to him. Fugo shifted so that their hipbones weren’t digging into each other that much. The closeness was unbelievably cozy. “Well, what are you reading right now?”
“Henry James.” He passed Giorno the thin book, and Giorno read the title. The Turn of the Screw.
“What’s it about?”
“It’s a ghost story.”
Giorno smiled. “I see. I never imagined that you would willingly read something as implausible as a ghost story.”
“Hey,” Fugo protested weakly. “I’ll have you know, ghost stories are my favorite genre of literature.”
“Why?” Giorno said, bewildered.
“There is,” Fugo began, and he paused when he noticed Giorno’s attention. “There is an inherent poetry to a ghost story that I find… inescapable.”
“That’s a pretty sentiment, but I’m not sure I follow.”
“I’m bad at explaining it,” Fugo said. “Why don’t you just read it with me?”
“Right now?”
“Yeah. It’s a novella. It should only take about three hours.”
“Alright,” Giorno said, mostly because he wanted to see where this went. He wiggled a little bit to get more comfortable. “Start from the beginning.”
Fugo shot him a little excited smile and flipped back to the first page. He began in a soft, familiar whisper, “The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless…”
“So, there are two ghosts,” Giorno interrupted.
“Yes. Quint and Jessel.”
“This is a story about classism.”
Fugo grinned at him. “Yes. But I think there’s more to it. I don’t know how to articulate it, but… I don’t know. You’ll see what I mean soon enough.”
“Henry James should write shorter sentences,” Giorno said as Fugo tried to find his place again.
“It’s part of his style. He delays the end of a sentence by dumping in incomplete clause after clause.”
“Gold Experience Requiem style.”
“Not exactly the first comparison I’d draw, but sure.”
Giorno rolled his eyes. “Accept my stand as a literary device.”
“No.” Fugo found his spot. “Shall we go on?”
“Please.”
Giorno was feeling drowsy as the story progressed, but the tension of the slow-building horror kept him awake. He interrupted Fugo to whisper, perhaps only semi-coherently, “Why is she more afraid of Miss Jessel than Peter Quint?”
Fugo stopped. “How did you come to that?”
“I don’t know, I think it’s pretty obvious. Go back a page, look at that.” Giorno cleared his throat, thick with sleep, to read, “Tormented, in the hall, with difficulties and obstacles, I remember sinking down at the foot of the staircase—suddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then, with a revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where more than a month before, in the darkness of night and just so bowed with evil things, I had seen the specter of the most horrible of women.”
“Huh,” Fugo said slowly.
“Quint is out there to deliberately frighten and antagonize her, but that doesn’t scare the governess. If anything, it forces her into a sort of reciprocal antagonism that makes her brave. Miss Jessel never even tries to confront her, and instead of seeming scary, she just seems kind of sad. And yet.”
“And yet,” Fugo echoed. They were maybe two thirds of the way through the book, but Fugo put it aside, turning to face Giorno better. “There is something unsaid regarding her fear of Miss Jessel.”
“Perhaps, it comes from a place of identification. She was her predecessor, after all.”
Fugo whispered, “I think that they are ghosts you fear because of what they mean for you. The Quints show you the evil that you could represent to those you love, and the Jessels show the futility of your efforts to save them.”
Giorno closed his eyes and, after a moment, pushed himself upright, further away from Fugo. “I think I’m done with ghost stories for tonight.”
“Oh,” Fugo said. “Sorry.”
“It’s just—”
“I know.”
“When you said there was an inherent poetry…” Giorno trailed off, and Fugo kept his gaze on him, intent, waiting. “I don’t want to think about our ghosts.”
“A ghost doesn’t only need to be the dead,” Fugo said. “A ghost is something lost, and that doesn’t need to be people. Sometimes, it’s a goal, or an object, or who you used to be.”
Giorno shook his head. “Why, then aren’t we just filled with ghosts,” he said with a cruel, morbid little smile. He shifted, dropping his head onto Fugo’s shoulder. “Finish the story. I’m not going to be able to go to sleep with this rattling around in my head.”
“It doesn’t have a happy ending.”
“What stories ever do?”
“I don’t understand. Were the ghosts real or not? Did the main character kill the little boy?” Giorno mumbled, glaring blearily at the last page.
“It’s deliberately unclear.”
“You have an opinion on everything, Fugo. What the hell happened?”
Fugo sighed. “People will try and tell you that the ghosts weren’t real and that the story is about the governess’s slow descent into an obsessive madness.”
“People,” Giorno echoed, rolling his eyes as if he’d ever encounter another person who had concrete opinions on this novella.
“This interpretation sucks,” Fugo said, and Giorno huffed a laugh. “It misunderstands the nature of the governess’s misinterpretation of the nature of the ghosts. Miles wasn’t being haunted by Quint. He was being haunted by Miss Jessel. This is a much more interesting reconfiguration of the events of the plot than the governess’s supposed madness.”
“So, moral of the story is that you shouldn’t assume you know other people’s ghosts?”
Fugo shrugged. “If you like.”
“I think our ghosts are the same,” Giorno offered. He finally let his eyes shut, trying to get more comfortable against Fugo. “Maybe I’m wrong.”
“Maybe.” Fugo set the book aside and put his arm around Giorno and, oh, that was infinitely more comfortable. He sounded equally exhausted when he said, “I wouldn’t try to save you from your ghosts, though.”
“So, chivalry is dead, I see. Perhaps that’s just another ghost to add to the collection.”
Giorno felt the breath of Fugo’s exhale. “It’s not a question of chivalry.”
“I know.” Fugo dragged the blanket from the back of the chair over them. “Who says we have to fight the ghosts, anyway? Maybe I’m friends with my ghosts.”
“There’s a poetry to that, too.”
With a mild pulse of irritation, Giorno said, “I’m not conducting myself for the sake of poetry.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Giorno tugged the blanket closer. “Fugo, you are surprisingly comfortable for someone who is so skinny.”
“I’m not sure whether that was a compliment.”
“Me neither,” he admitted. “I think I am going to fall asleep now. Is that okay?”
Fugo was silent for a long time, and Giorno braced himself for the need to drag himself out of his half-asleep haze, but Fugo only said, “Yeah, it’s okay.”
Giorno wanted to tell Fugo that they shouldn’t live their lives for the sake of entertaining an audience of bored, rich vacationers gathered around a fire. He wanted to say that ghost stories were beautiful only before the point that they became fatal. He wanted to say that he wouldn’t ever presume to save Fugo from his own ghosts, but that he could help him face them instead, befriend them, know them, love them. But the sleep was too thick in his mind and mouth, and he could only give a quiet little hum.
They fell asleep as dawn descended on the world.