Chapter Text
“Have you ever danced before?” Fugo asks. “Like, I know you can’t really dance now, but…”
“Ever?” Giorno scrubbed at his eye again. The skin there still felt oddly thin, like the tears had worn it away. “No. I was too shy to do it at school, and doing it at home was out of the question.”
“Huh…” Fugo traced a circle around his own eye, not touching the skin but getting awfully close. “I don’t think the college I went to had any dances-- if there were any, I just didn’t go. My folks taught me basic waltz steps, though.” He spat the word ‘folks’ as if it were a curse. “Narancia’s dance is the only one I really like doing.”
“How do you do it?” Giorno leaned in. “Narancia’s dance, I mean. I saw a little of it on the boat, but it doesn’t look easy to replicate. Even if my spine wasn’t in pieces, I’d probably lose my balance and fall trying it.”
“Well, it’s not easy,” Fugo agreed. “There’s a lot of memorization involved. The trick is in the ankles-- you have to have a lot of control over them.”
“Guess that’s out of the question for me, huh?” Giorno shrugged. “Can I see you do it?”
Fugo looked away, color blooming in his cheeks. “Um… Well… I’m kind of out of practice… I’d look stupid.”
“You’d look better than me,” Giorno insisted.
Fugo turned his head away. Giorno could see his ears changing color. “...”
A sudden breeze blew through the room. A battery sitting on a shelf rolled over and tumbled down onto the dusty boombox below, hitting the eject button. The CD slot popped open. There was no CD inside.
Giorno smiled. “Looks like I’m not the only one that wants to see it.”
“God damn it,” Fugo said. He was still turned away, so Giorno couldn’t see his expression exactly. However, Fugo’s middle finger pointed at the ceiling gave him a good idea of it. “That makes me wanna do it even less.” Still, he got up and moved to the shelf, taking a jewel case off it. Giorno couldn’t see the name of it, but the pattern on the cover reminded him of saffron risotto.
Fugo popped it open, taking the CD out and looking at the back. When he was satisfied, he put the CD in and fiddled with the boombox. Before long, a loud, thundering chord came out, one that reminded Giorno of the case’s color.
Fugo sighed. “Here goes.”
“Just imagine he’s next to you,” Giorno offered.
The music paused, and a woman’s voice said something in Spanish about “our presentation” happening “soon”, and something about a message. Giorno picked up some of, but not all the cognates. Soon after that, the drum kicked in, and Fugo started.
It looked like what he’d seen on the boat, though there were parts to it Giorno realized he hadn’t quite remembered. It was all in the ankles, he saw-- at some points, Fugo’s feet looked like they were nearly 180 degrees to his torso. In any case, the dance went well with the music, hitting poses at all the right beats and generally making Giorno bounce along.
He realized too late that he hadn’t seen all of the dance, seeing as Abbacchio had cut them off before the song’s end. No, Fugo was less than halfway through, it seemed. He kept adding new moves and poses, still keeping that same clunky rhythm that almost made Giorno want to sing along. (He might have, had he known the words.)
Giorno stayed mesmerized the entire time, even as Fugo finished off with a precarious pose and an uncertain look. He broke out of it and ran to stop the boombox.
“That… was really amazing,” Giorno said.
Fugo shrugged. “Narancia made it all up. Not me.”
“Still. You dance it really well.”
“Narancia does it better.”
“So?”
Fugo shook his head and sat down with a smile he was trying hard to force down and off his face. “You’re ridiculous.”
“ You’re ridiculous,” Giorno shot back. “What song was that?”
Fugo’s eyes went wide. “You don’t know?”
“Should I?” Giorno glanced at the CD case. He couldn’t see the title, but the design was familiar in a way he couldn’t quite place.
“It’s-- Oh, my God.” Fugo got up and grabbed the case, then handed it to Giorno. “Ohhh, my God.”
Giorno looked at the case. On the right was the Love Symbol, the character that the artist formerly known as Prince had changed his name to. Below that was the album title. The Gold Experience.
“Oh, my God,” he echoed. “I had no idea.”
Fugo laughed at him. Hard. “Have you never even listened to it?!”
Giorno’s face reddened. Even still, he felt like laughing, too. “No! It was on sale in a record store, and… My Stand wouldn’t stop staring at it. I just named it after whatever it was looking at!”
“So you didn’t even buy it. You just saw it and ran.” Fugo was starting to go red in the face with laughter. He gets like that easily, doesn’t he?
“Yeah…” His shoulders were shaking, also with laughter. “Yeah, I did!”
“We gotta listen to it,” Fugo said. “Bring your stuff in here-- actually, I’ll do that. You can hit play. It’s about an hour, I think.”
It was an hour well spent, Giorno thought.
Sheila E was not having as good a time.
Apparently, the old man from earlier was feeling rather slighted that the mob boss was cutting off his business that he made thousands off weekly. Moreso that the mob boss was only 16 and clearly didn’t know anything about how the world worked, so of course he had to take action.
And the obvious course of action was to kidnap the boss’s bodyguard using his Stand, that gargoyle thing he’d affectionately dubbed ‘Jail House Rock’ (a/n: yeah i know theres already a stand based on this song. i dont care though fuck miumiu) , and then sneak into Giorno’s headquarters and kill him while he didn’t have any bodyguard to warn him of, much less protect him from, the oncoming attack.
Sheila E slammed her fist into the metal wall. It didn’t even give off an echo for her troubles. Why did she have to be so useless?!
Anger flared up in her, and she did it again. She didn’t want to. She knew damn well she’d break before the metal did. But that god damned Stand. Its ability was a simple one. It was made of a very fragile kind of stone, so fragile that anything harder than a light tap would make it crumble to pieces. Break it once, and you couldn’t do anything except act on impulse. You didn’t get a chance to think twice about what you did.
It was sitting in the corner now. Surrounded by bits of its previous iterations, it stood with that ugly leer that made Sheila E want to run over and smash it to bits.
So, naturally, that was exactly what she did.
When the dust settled, she could sense another gargoyle behind her. How could something that didn’t ever move and only came up to her shin be so infuriating?!
The door was next to her. She punched it. With Voodoo Child’s strength behind it, it was just enough to leave a small dent in the metal.
I’m gonna lose it in here. She groaned in frustration.
On the other side of the door was an identical slamming sound. Sheila E couldn’t help it. She yelped.
The door rippled, as if it wasn't made of metal at all. Sheila E scrambled back and got up, fists curled for a fight.
Fingers worked their way under the edge of the door and pulled. Slowly, miraculously, the door began to bend and warp out of shape as whoever was behind it lifted it up over their head.
Her head.
“Ah-- Trish!” Sheila E smiled. She didn’t want to. Trish was putting herself in danger for no reason. Because of her. For no reason. “You have to leave!”
“There you are!” Trish gasped. She stepped into the room, dropping the warped bottom of the door behind her. It snapped back into place, bouncing once then resting on the ground. “Jesus, I was looking everywhere for you. Did he hurt you?”
“Get out!” Sheila E said again. The smile was gone, off her face. She felt exposed, like a live wire that, while it would shock what touched it, would corrode when it was touched. “It’s not… It’s not safe!”
“Why? What’s wrong?” She looked around, eyes locking on the gargoyle in the room. “It’s that, isn’t it? Are you being attacked?!” An aura shimmered around her. Her Stand, Sheila E guessed.
“I’m-- Yes. No!” She folded her arms. “Its effect… I can’t think twice about what I do. Or say.”
Trish reared up to destroy the statue, only to be held back by Sheila E. “Don’t! That’s how its effect…!”
She wasn’t fast enough to stop Trish’s Stand, though, which kicked the statue with a resounding crack .
Sheila E waited for it to fall apart. “No!… This is bad.” Behind her, Trish flexed her hands and extricated her arms from her grasp.
A second passed. Then another. The statue didn’t fall. Sheila E turned to look at it in wonder.
Trish walked over to the statue, picking it up. “Spice Girl… That’s the name of my Stand. By making something soft and flexible, it becomes sturdier than diamond.” She squeezed the gargoyle. The material, even though it should have shattered, gave easily under her hands. “If breaking it is what activates it, then I won’t let it break.”
“You’re…” Sheila E didn’t want to say it. “You’re really amazing.”
Trish smiled at her. Then she realized what Sheila E had said, and her eyes widened. “You… You mean that.”
“Yeah,” Sheila E said. She felt something stir in her. The feeling was starting to make her ill.
“Really.”
“Yeah… I…” The words bubbled up like vomit. “I didn’t want to tell you how I feel. Because then you’d know I was attached, and then I couldn’t let you go without feeling worse about it. But I… I…” Tears were starting to stream down her face, making her scar ache. “What if you get hurt? I lost my parents and my sister and my dog because I was attached to them! I let them die! I can’t let you die!”
Trish stared. Sheila E couldn’t read the expression on her face. “You…” She clutched the gargoyle in her hands. “That’s… what you’re afraid of?”
Sheila E’s shoulders shuddered. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have come here.” She felt like throwing up.
Something hardened in Trish’s eyes. She handed the gargoyle to her Stand, then started walking towards Sheila E. Sheila E looked down and clenched her fists. She didn’t want to see what would happen next.
She felt it. Trish put both arms around her and leaned against her. “Sheila,” she said, softly but so loud in Sheila’s ear, “I don’t wanna be… just another risk . I don’t want you to be terrified of me. But… I don’t want to leave without you, either.”
“It’s Sheila E,” was all Sheila E could say. Her arms stayed frozen at her sides.
“Alright… Sheila E.” Trish didn’t let go. “I had people I cared about die, too. They all died because they had chosen to protect me. It was because they wanted to-- I wasn’t awake to tell them to run while they still could. But… even if I was… I don’t think they would have listened.” She shifted, and her hair fell over her shoulder. “I couldn’t understand how that felt. How anybody could be so willing to put their life on the line to protect someone that hadn’t meant anything to them a week ago. But… I think I do now.”
“...” Sheila E couldn’t say anything. It felt wrong, trying to say something now.
“I feel terrible for what happened to them. I feel responsible. In a way, I think I am. If it weren’t for me, they’d all still be alive. It gives me nightmares. But, even then… I don’t think I could have stopped them, no matter what I’d have done. Giorno… He was this, I don’t know, guiding force for them. Pushing them all forward. There’s no way my word would have won out against his.”
“Do you hate him for that?” Sheila E asked. Her throat felt scratchy. She was still crying.
“Sometimes. I wish he was dead, sometimes. Sometimes, I think about breaking into his office and killing him, or better yet, doing it in his room at school, while he’s sleeping. But sometimes I just don’t know how to feel. Did he take them to their deaths for me? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Life here is better, too. I don’t see drug deals on the street anymore. That’s a good thing for sure, but…” She sniffled. “Does it make him a bad person for sacrificing everyone? Abbacchio, Narancia, Buccellati… Did they have to die?” Her voice broke. She had begun crying, too.
Sheila E didn’t know what to say. Her arms came up around Trish and squeezed, holding her tight. (She was reminded of the way she had caught Fugo, saving his life. He had strangled her then… She didn’t think for a second that Trish would do the same.) “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry… You lost everyone you cared about.”
Trish sobbed into Sheila E’s shoulder. “You’re still here,” she said, so weak it would have been a whisper. “Please… Don’t leave. Don’t leave me alone.”
Sheila E didn’t think she could. Her own tears fell down and stained Trish’s sleeve. “I don’t want to leave you…” What had Fugo told her? Do what you want to do. Not what you think you have to. Yeah… It was easier said than done.
But it was doable.
It was a long time before either of them tried to separate. Trish was the first to pull back. Sheila E held on, just for a moment, then let go. “I…” Mascara was running down her face. She wiped at it.
Sheila E noticed, behind Trish… The gargoyle lay broken at Spice Girl’s feet. “You…”
Trish looked behind her, at the broken statue. She gasped. “I didn’t mean to.”
“It’s… It’s okay.” She put her hand on Trish’s cheek, wiping away another tear with a thumb. “You’re safe.”
“I--” She choked. “I’m sorry. For this.”
“For what?”
Trish leaned forward and kissed Sheila E, gripping the back of her shirt, then pulled away, so fast that if Sheila had blinked, or if that Stand that had attacked Giorno, King Crimson, had used its ability, then she wouldn’t have noticed.
No, she would have… The sensation lingered on her lips. She wanted more. More.
It was then that she realized. She should have known it all along. Looking at Trish now, she knew: She was in love.
She squeezed her eyes shut and kissed Trish back.
Trish gasped, but slowly she reciprocated. Again and again, until they were both a mess of pink and green lipstick, gasping for breath and clinging to each other like they were the last things in the world.
“I’m… in love with you,” Trish mumbled. Her face was flushed, and her eyes, averted, seemed a more vivid green than before. Maybe it was the redness surrounding them.
“Me, too,” Sheila E said. She wondered how she must look. Her own eyes were probably puffy and red, there were probably bits of stone in her hair from that fucking gargoyle… Worst of all, feeling was showing on her face. What feeling? She wasn’t sure… She had just been crying, but something warm and deep red was rising to the surface-- a feeling she couldn’t describe, but felt like mad anyway.
“We… Should go. Go somewhere else…” Trish got up, grip steady on Sheila E’s hand. Sheila E got up with her. “I mean… You did kind of get kidnapped.”
Sheila E couldn’t help a stupid grin on her face. “Oh… right. I kind of forgot.”
Trish mirrored her grin, then started laughing. “You forgot. Ha! You forgot!”
Sheila E felt… too young, giggling like this. It was childish. She managed to forget her own kidnapping, and it was worth laughing over? But even still, she couldn’t stop. It was funny, wasn’t it? She would still be moping, if it wasn’t for Trish. Trish would still be lonely, if it wasn’t for her. And yet… They were here, together, so caught in the shock of knowing one another that they’d managed to forget why they were here in the first place.
She was glad.
It turned out, Fugo realized, that he was able to get things done a lot faster with Giorno in the room with him. It wasn’t an unspoken obligation to get things done so much as it was the comfort of knowing there was someone he trusted with him.
Our Giogio… Had Fugo been a little braver, he would have said ‘ my Giogio’. The truth of the matter was that his awe of Giorno was nothing new. He had felt this way since Pompeii. And, indeed, the feeling hadn’t only strengthened since he’d met him-- really met him --it had changed. Giorno wasn’t just somebody worthy of respect and awe-- awe wasn’t a good term anymore. Fugo felt as though he was on even ground with him. Instead, he was somebody worthy of trust, too.
And… And he had kissed Giorno. He was trying not to think about that, because every time he did, his pen shook a little.
And Giorno had kissed him back. His pen slid from under his hand, leaving an indigo ink mark across the paper. “Damn it…”
“Are you alright?” Giorno asked, from behind him. “You seem… preoccupied.”
“It’s nothing,” Fugo said. It wasn’t. Behind them, The Gold Experience was still playing. It was on track 12 now, he believed. 319 . “I just… I don’t know.”
“Can I help?” Giorno asked. There was the golden question. He could, Fugo thought. But did Fugo want him to?
“Uh…” He squinted his eyes again, then opened them. “Can you tell me… what you think of me? What you see in me.”
“What I see in you…” Giorno cocked his head. “You’re trustworthy. Polpo once told me that trustworthiness is the most important thing a person can have in an organization like this. I assume he told you the same?”
“He did,” Fugo said. And Fugo had trusted him all the way through the lighter test. (He had passed with flying colors-- it was only a couple months after that Purple Haze had appeared and scared the living daylights out of him). Giorno, of course, was a different matter. He wasn’t just trustworthy, he was somebody that Fugo wanted to trust.
And Giorno thought he was the same…
“And, I said this before, when you joined. Your greatest weakness is, at the same time, your most admirable trait-- your sense of justice is unshakable. If I started to fall to corruption, you’d notice in a second. I admire that more than you know.”
“And would you want to be on the receiving end of… me?” His anger. He couldn’t imagine releasing it onto Giorno… as he was now. But if he fell to corruption, as he had said himself… It would be a different story, wouldn’t it?
“If there were any part of me that still had a conscience, that part would welcome it with open arms. As I said, I trust you, Fugo. As you devoted your body, your heart, and your soul to me…” He paused. There was a strange look on his face. But it passed in an instant and he continued. “I would trust you to defend mine. My body, my heart, my soul. I would let them all lay in your hands without hesitation.”
“What if… What if I let you die?” It was a terrible question. Fugo shouldn’t be asking it. “What if you trusted me, and I let you down?”
“Then I would go hoping you did the right thing.” The strange look returned. “What do… you think… when you see me?”
“You? I, um…“ He fidgeted. “I respect you. A lot. I know it must be strange, after everything that happened, but… You…” He stopped. Giorno seemed a little disappointed. “You’re easy to talk to. When you say something, it always seems like the right thing to say… And you never make it feel like it’s my fault… when I tell you something you don’t want to hear. Is that respect?”
“Is it…?” The disappointment had vanished. “Pannacotta… I like talking to you. Even if it’s something I don’t like hearing, hearing it from you makes it easier to bear.”
“That’s… not all. I trust you, too, Giorno.” Fugo’s face should have been flushed, his heart fast. It wasn’t. He felt strangely calm-- what he was saying was the truth. “You could ask me to follow you into hell, and I would go believing I’d come back alive. That’s how you make me feel.”
“...” Giorno’s eyes widened. It seemed like he was about to say something.
Outside, there was a gunshot. It sounded like it had come from Giorno’s room.
Fugo stood up, followed by Giorno. They both went to investigate the sound, Stands humming under their skin.
Carefully, Fugo pushed open the room to Giorno’s door. Mista was inside, leaning out the window. “I was wondering where you went!” he was saying. "Jesus!" Something told Fugo that Mista wasn’t talking about him and Giorno.
“Mista?” Giorno asked. “What happened?”
“Assassin,” Mista said without turning around. "Tried breaking into your room. Had this gargoyle thing… I shot him, but he's still alive." He gestured below the window. “Good thing you weren’t here, huh?”
Giorno’s eyes widened. “How did you know?” Fugo felt the same. He hadn’t picked up on a thing.
“Trish called me. Apparently, the guy was chatty enough to give Sheila E his whole gameplan… And lucky for us, Trish happened to be there.” Mista’s gun hand shot out. “Don’t you dare move, asshole!” He wrinkled his nose. “Jesus Christ on the cross! I can smell him from here.”
“Sheila E?” Fugo jerked, like he’d been shocked. “He fought her?”
“Kidnapped!” shouted a voice from outside. Sheila E. “His Stand is really fucking stupid!”
“Sheila,” another voice said, from outside. Trish, probably. “I’m gonna drop this on him.”
“Do not do that!” Sheila said back. “Oh my God.”
“I can’t help it! I’m gonna!”
Then, Fugo heard something that sounded like a mix of a metallic clang and a crunching noise. Mista wrinkled his nose. “That was gruesome.”
“That’s something, coming from you,” Giorno said. He moved forward to the window next to him. “Oh. Oh…”
“What?” Fugo followed him in and looked out the window. Below it was a metal door, spattered with blood on the top. Below the door was, well… the assassin. His head was totally crushed, and blood was oozing out from below the door. Fugo couldn’t help but make a face too.
Next to the door, kneeling, was Trish Una. “Is… Is he dead?” She picked up a stick and poked the assassin’s head. It didn’t move.
“Oh, definitely… You don’t just come back from a brain injury like that.” Sheila E looked like she wanted to lift up the door to check. She didn’t, then her eyes lit in surprise. “The effect’s gone!”
“It is?” She looked at Sheila E. “It is!” She jumped up with a grin. “Shit, we did it.”
“E-eh…” Sheila E nudged the door with her foot. “It was mostly you.”
“Well, Mista was the one who shot him, and you helped me carry it, and it was his ability that made me do it…”
“And it’s Fugo and Giorno that are just standing there watching us.” Sheila E glared at Fugo. “Gonna congratulate us or what?”
“Congratulations,” Giorno said. It sounded kind of pathetic.
“What was the ability?” Fugo asked.
“Does it matter, white rabbit?” Sheila stuck out her tongue. “We beat him with both of us under it. Isn’t that impressive?”
“I guess so…” He was kind of at a loss for words.
“Tough crowd, huh?” Trish sneered at him. “Come on, Sheila. They’ll just never appreciate how awesome we are.”
“I appreciate it,” Giorno said.
“I know, Giorno.”
“...”
“I know, Fugo.”
They walked off. Mista closed the window. “That was interesting.”
“Did they--” Fugo kind of gestured with his hands. “Both of them?”
“Just Sheila E,” Mista said. “Trish more forced her way into the trunk of his car than anything. I don’t think he even knew she was there. Kind of impressive how well that went.”
“It was stupid of that assassin to go in on a solo mission,” Giorno said. “Did you even know his motives?”
“No. He kind of got a door to the head before he could really say anything.” Mista shrugged. “Sad. We’ll never know what was going on in that guy’s head.”
“Well, there’s a door there now,” Fugo offered.
Giorno snickered. It was still so strange, seeing that. It made Fugo’s heart flutter. “I need to do some gardening.”
“All right,” Mista said. “I’ll leave you to it.” As he left, he mumbled, “Probably shirk off some paperwork to Murolo and the French guy, too…”
“Oh,” Giorno said. They were alone. “One… one more thing. Can you turn this way, a little?”
“Huh? What for?” Fugo blinked.
Giorno leaned in and kissed him, then pulled back with a giddy sort of smile. “That’s all.” Then he hurried off, leaving Fugo watching him go.
He never thought he’d get this far. He thought he’d spend the rest of his career leaving unsigned bouquets on Giorno’s desk, hoping the boss would turn his way and say something… Pathetic, wasn’t it? Easily, it could have been him.
It was all Sheila’s fault. And, he thought with a smile of his own, he could never repay her for it.