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Mista isn’t really positive when he actually fell for Giorno.
Back when they met, the two of them were horrible, shitty teenagers. Okay, Mista was the shittier, more horrible one. At least in his own opinion.
In his eyes at the beginning, Giorno was some kind of golden god that seemed like to be spontaneously born from a seashell like Venus. He had flawless skin, beautiful eyes that shone like the sea, and hair made of the spun gold in the museum tapestries he adored. He had the ability to make something of nothing, always with a plan to get them out of horrible situations even if it involved pain on his own part. Hell, Giorno saved his life when Ghiaccio had him like some sick, hole filled version of the pietà, complete with the blazing sunrise at his back. Okay, maybe he exaggerated that a little, but to be fair, he was in so much pain he was barely able to string thoughts together.
Everyone else who set eyes on the new don would think as Mista did when he was younger and a bit more naive.
He’s so perfect!
And though he’d blindly adored that ideal Giorno, he quickly learned that it was a facade. A shield he kept up as best as he could when his friends were dying left and right. Mista remembered the weeks after, how Giorno wept with his head in his lap, apologizing for things he couldn’t control.
It’s my fault your friends are gone. How can you even look at me?
Mista saw the sleepless nights as Giorno made his transition taking over Passione.
It was far from clean.
No criminal organization would automatically bend to the will of a fifteen year old who killed their boss, after all.
There was brutality, bloodshed, countless operatives struck down in assassination attempts.
Mista saw Giorno when he was scared, strong willed and ambitious as he was, reduced to soundless shaking late at night.
All he had left was Mista and Trish, who he didn’t want to put in further danger.
Mista may have had three years on him, but being eighteen made no difference, even as he struggled trying to act strong and avoid mourning.
They were kids.
Kids that took over the mafia, sure, but kids.
Mista thinks, looking back on it now, that he fell for Giorno some time after things fell into place in Passione.
Once things were truly reorganized, Mista became capo bastone to Don Giovanna.
A title he held with pride.
That position meant a lot of time together.
He woke Giorno up with his bowl (yes, bowl. That barely qualifies as a cup and Giorno knows it) of coffee each morning and saw how those beautiful curls transformed into a menacing dandelion after sleeping.
He knew Giorno’s love for octopus and his absolute vehement hatred of chicken.
He watched Giorno removing makeup at a mirror in the evenings while they discussed Mista’s soaps, and even when Giorno complained of imperfections, Mista gazed fondly at the Giorno only he saw and thought they made him even more gorgeous. He had dark circles and a light spattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose. His mascara was especially hard to remove, and sometimes he’d turn around and make faces at Mista while it was smeared around his eyes like a panda. He was beautifully imperfect.
Mista knows now that Giorno Giovanna is as goddamn weird as he is beautiful.
Sure, he’d always behaved like that, but Mista had never had time to appreciate how odd his best friend was until after everything was said and done.
He thinks he fell in love with that weirdness the night Giorno wore a giga pudding bucket like a helmet, or maybe when he was trying to create weird abominations against God using Gold Experience and the couch cushions. Maybe it was when he realized Giorno thought his methods of torture were cool, the way his eyes lit up when he told him he’d thought it was inventive and inspiring ever since the day on the boat when Mista held a man’s eyelid up with a fishhook.
If there was anything Mista truly didn’t know, it what exactly he did to get Giorno to fall for him.
At some point, close to his twenty-second birthday, Mista bit the bullet and asked Giorno if he wanted to go out. Not like they always did, on a real date.
All his anxiety left in the form of a laugh when Giorno’s desk exploded into a flurry of petals.
Their first date was at the same little place they met in, with the same tea and cake. Mista even managed to secure the same table, point out the place where Narancia had used his butterfly knife to carve his name into the leg and the chipping from the time Abbacchio accidentally knocked one of Fugo’s teeth out when he slapped him on the back too hard and his chin collided with the table.
They stole the table later for their headquarters and laughed together far into the night, reminiscing of friends long gone and those still remaining until Polnareff, the resident turtle dwelling mafia dad, scolded them into sleeping.
Today when he woke up, Mista would nudge Giorno with his stubbly chin, trying to loosen the koala grip he had on him. His answer was bleary, voice cracking with sleep.
“BuonGioGio, Mista….”
“Good morning to you too, Lazybug.”
“Coffee…”
“Yeah, I know. But ‘ya gotta let go of me first.”
“Questo è completamente impossibile.”
“...I think that’s the longest sentence I’ve ever heard out of you in the morning. Should I break out the celebration pudding?”
And just like that, Giorno’s head was up, blue eyes barely visible behind his mane of unruly golden curls.
“Celebration pudding?”
“Oh, Lazybug lives! È un miracolo!”
Laughing, Mista holds the undone tortellini of his everyday hairdo out of his eyes.
“You know, we should really go to church. It’s Sunday.”
“....Mista, God can wait until after celebration pudding. I’ll give him a call.”
Mista snorts, rolling his eyes.
“Next Sunday, then.”
Just like he’s said every Sunday for three years now, but we won’t dwell on that. Even if the grandmas of the neighborhood scold him like they did when he cut mass as a kid.
Giorno rubs his soft cheek against Mista’s horrible stubble, laughing sleepily.
“Don’t shave.”
“And get murdered by Trish? I don’t think I’ll take the chances, Spice Girl can bench press me.”
“You’re a weenie.”
“Yes I am. King of them.”
Giorno holds back a snicker, a stifled laugh making his lips twitch.
“My Mista, King of Weenies.”
“Yes. I’m right below Fugo, the Weenie God.”
Giorno’s laugh in front of dignitaries and politicians is silvery and like a siren.
His laugh in front of Mista is ninety percent snorting and giggling until he can’t breathe, and that’s how he knows he’s got it good.
“We should get up. I want to make breakfast before our meetings.”
“Meetings can wait. I’m comfy.”
Mista cackles that awful cackle of his, intertwining hands with Giorno and admiring the way the golden bands on their fingers shone in the filtered morning light from their window.
“You know, it’s a miracle you weren’t late to your own wedding.”