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In the dead of night, Giorno comes to him in loose hair and averted eyes and creaking steps. The floors of his villa aren't old but they breathe like they are: harsh and gasping, noisy, the sounds of the dying. Fugo finds solace in it, sometimes, when he's by himself. Less so when he sees that same dying reflected in Giorno's eyes.
They're quite the pair, the two of them. Fugo meets him at the doorway, eye bags matched for eye bags; Giorno's skin tone is cooler than his and it makes him almost green in the candlelight, and Fugo thinks that between them both, they must have died a half dozen deaths already.
He leads Giorno into the room, and Giorno leads him to bed. They lie there, nearly touching; intimacy spills between the two of them like wine tipped over and it's a stain he never wants to get out. He wants to wrap Giorno up in his arms and he wants to tell him it'll all be alright, but it won't and won't ever be, and they both know that. And he loves him too much, too deeply, to patronize his ears with honey-sweet lies.
For a long time, Giorno says nothing. Then: "Fugo," he murmurs, "tell me something."
The roughness of his voice could almost be mistaken for tiredness over grief, but Fugo knows better; Giorno is wide awake. "Of course, Giogio," he answers. "Anything. I'll tell you anything."
A pause comes and goes; Fugo waits at attention. Giorno lies not a foot away from him, face partially hidden by the dark. "Are you afraid of anything?"
Fugo blinks. "Anything?" he asks. "Isn't everyone afraid of something?"
"Anything in particular," Giorno elaborates. "Like — like spiders. Or earthquakes."
"Earthquakes?" Fugo asks, lips tilted up. When Giorno doesn't answer right away, he lays his head against the pillow again and considers. "I'm afraid of sickness — disease. The sudden sort, especially; it's horrible. It comes into you and eats you up until there's nothing left."
He's not sure if it’s his grandmother or Purple Haze or Angelica Attanasio that appears in his head. He decides not to think about it.
Giorno hums thoughtfully. "I'm afraid of earthquakes," he admits in a small voice.
The urge in Fugo's chest to laugh springs up, but in a far away, distant sort of way, like saying, you could make this a bit lighter, a bit less sad if you wanted to. He ignores it. "Why?"
"The ground shakes," Giorno replies stiffly. "The whole world seems to move. You can't predict it, and you don't know when it'll happen."
They're similar, then: it is not just the destruction that scares them, but the threat of destruction, the fact that even when you feel ready, you never truly can be. Fugo feels simultaneous relief and discomfort in the solidarity.
Enough time passes where Fugo begins to think Giorno may have fallen asleep before he adds, "And it affects so much. Not just a life, but thousands of lives."
Love kicks him in the lungs, squeezes at his heart, presses against the sides of his ribs until he's breaking, breaking, breaking. Of course they were never the same. Fugo focuses only on himself, on people he loves, on people he sees close enough to see the whites of their eyes — and Giorno thinks of the world.
Fugo belongs to Giorno; Giorno belongs to the world. He follows him unquestioningly.
The fan whirring against the high ceiling clicks and clacks in the summer heat. The balcony doors, while closed, let in just enough wind for the curtains to flutter like a ghost or an angel's wings. On his writing desk, his half-empty glass of water collects condensation, his pen discarded, notebook closed.
"I'm afraid of heights," Fugo says after a moment.
He thinks Giorno's mouth might twist into the smallest, slightest smile, but in the dark, he can't be sure. "I love heights."
In the morning it will be the same, orders and authority and fleeting, stolen touches. Giorno will go back to gold and Fugo will stay on the sidelines, on the ground, watching. There’s a question, a something he wants to say, lingering in a fluttering heap in the back of his throat where a virus had burned out his old life and his voice box: Are you happy, love?
But tonight, the moon is as full as his heart in his chest, and he doesn't have to ask him to know; it’s spelled in the twist of his lip, the furrow of his brow — no, he’s not happy.
Fugo watches him from across the sea of their unstated intimacy. It will all be gone in the morning.
“What’re you thinking about?” Giorno murmurs without opening his eyes. “You seem lost in thought.”
Fugo pauses, considering. “Do you believe in forever?”
There’s a hundred and one answers to it; in the silence that follows, Fugo’s brain races to predict what it will be. Giorno is confusing, but Fugo knows him well, and there’s the idealist in him, the romantic: yes spelled in conquest and glittering ink, in words that float from the top of a throne. But he’s Giorno, and he’s bright, and factual, and there’s no such thing as a perpetual motion machine: no because it’s true and no because it doesn't matter if it is — Giorno is an opportunist. Even if there isn't forever, there’s a now.
Fugo considers all of these things. Giorno opens his mouth. “Do you?”
A pause. Fugo feels his brow furrow. “I — I don’t know. I suppose so.”
“You suppose,” Giorno teases, eyes opening.
Red-faced, Fugo shrugs. “If there is a forever, it’s not as if though I’ll be in it.”
Giorno’s eyes are intent and bright. “You’re in it right now.”
Seconds tick by; Giorno is still watching him. The ceiling fan clicks and the curtains shudder and the villa sighs into settling with ghosts haunting its halls. The summer heat clings to Fugo’s skin like thin sheets of plastic, needy and constant and suffocating; old photos smile blankly in glass frames; the mirror seems to glow with the faint moonlight. At the corner of the room, the humidity bullies the plant on Fugo’s desk into wilting.
There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine — Fugo breaks first. “I suppose,” he echoes weakly, and Giorno closes his eyes, content, and Fugo realizes that he hadn't answered his question. He realizes that it doesn't bother him.
In the morning it will be the same: dodging questions and almost touches and a million words left unsaid. The summer will fade into wind and dry hands, and then that will fade into freezing — but there’s a forever in this future, if only for a moment.
Fugo waits for a cog to break, for the machine to grind to a halt; and they must have died half a dozen deaths already, the two of them. There is a right and there is a wrong and there is a forever, stretched long and thin in front of him in bright, gleaming colors: eternity is sweet on the tongue, hot coffee with too much sugar, troughs of paperwork with neat letters, and Giorno, always Giorno; there’s no forever without Giorno — but every morning, Giorno is always there, and at his feet, Fugo is always
kneeling.