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“You have a problem,” says Trish.
Mista, who had been doing just fine five seconds ago cleaning his gun in the peaceful quiet of his kitchen in his apartment, lets the statement sit for a second. Trish is always pretty vocal about what she considers to be his various problems, so it’s not like it’s anything new. It’s just the way that she says it: intentionally vague. A very clearly laid trap.
He falls for it anyway.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Was that sentence too hard?” Trish asks. She’s lying on his couch—his couch—with one bare foot perched on her knee, reading some book. “Problem. You. Have one.”
Mista is very sure that Trish must have better things to do than sit in his apartment on a Saturday, eating his food and drinking his sodas and getting on his case. She has to have homework or singing stuff or something. Sure, it’s summer, but college kids get homework over the summer, right? Maybe that’s what the book is about.
He squints at the cover. The Days of Abandonment by and he’s already asleep. It’s definitely for school. Nobody would read anything that boring unless they had to. Mista wouldn’t even read it if he had to.
“What’s Mista’s problem?” Narancia asks from the floor—Mista’s floor—where he’s been playing something loud and annoying on his Game Boy Advance for the past two hours.
Mista shoots him a betrayed look.
Trish turns a page. “I ask myself that every day.”
“Haha, burn.”
“Assholes,” Mista says, and goes back to his gun. He should really call the Pistols out to help, but they always whine about cleaning. “I’m trying to concentrate. Shut up.”
“Concentrate on what?” Trish asks. “You’ve been wiping the barrel down for the past fifteen minutes.”
Mista stops wiping down the barrel.
“So?” he snaps.
Trish doesn’t even look away from the book. She yawns, dropping one arm to sling it lazily over her head, and says, “It’s because you’re thinking about Giorno.”
Mista only half-hears Narancia’s terrible, insinuating ooooh! because he stands up from his chair so fast that it loudly rattles the table. Bullets clatter to the floor—five, thank God—and roll under the stove.
“Why’re you thinking about Giorno?” Narancia asks gleefully, springing up to sit with his legs crossed. Mista shoots him another betrayed look. “Huh? Why?”
“I can tell you,” Trish says.
“Don’t tell him—”
“Tell me!” Narancia crows. “Tell me tell me tell me!”
Finally Trish lowers the book, just to stare directly into Mista’s eyes when she says, “Because he’s into him.”
Mista believes in living without regrets. They just complicate things, and life’s too big to get hung up on stuff that’s already happened. That said, he does have some. Three, actually. The first one is letting that kid on his street buy a kitten from a litter of four. The second one is letting Abbacchio and Narancia die, which is moot because Giorno just brought them back anyway, but if Giorno hadn’t then Mista definitely would’ve regretted letting Abbacchio and Narancia die. But maybe that one doesn’t count.
Anyway, the third one is inviting Trish over a couple months ago to make her watch Pretty Woman, getting smashed on cheap prosecco, and telling her that he wanted to get with Giorno. Wants to get with Giorno. Has wanted to get with Giorno. His boss, who the caporegimes like to call the Boy King of Passione. For like three entire, terrible years.
Joke’s on him, he guesses, for thinking that Trish Una can keep a secret when Narancia’s around, let alone that she’d do Mista the kindness of keeping it to herself even in private. It’s psychological warfare, is what it is. Doesn’t he get enough of that from Giorno?
“That’s fair,” Narancia says. “Giorno’s super cool and strong and his hair is nice. And he has this thing where he, like—makes you feel like you can do anything? Yeah, that.”
Trish nods. “I didn’t say I blame him for wanting to get with Giorno. I just blame him for not doing anything about it.”
“Oh, yeah,” Narancia agrees, pointing at her. She points back. “Lame.”
Mista kind of wants to flip the table over, especially because hearing this shit from Narancia and Trish, who spend about 50% of their time sitting in each other’s laps and staring at each other when the other isn’t looking and telling Mista all the time about the mix CDs they’re too embarrassed to give to each other, and somehow still aren’t going out, is definitely the dumbest thing that’s happened to him in the last six months. Before that, it was having to fight a Stand called Culture Club, which could make mushrooms grow on people. Because, you know, why the fuck not?
“Can we talk about something else?” Mista asks through gritted teeth, feeling suddenly hot and sweaty and like he needs to sprint directly to the top of Mount Vesuvius and fling himself into the active crater. “Forever? Like, permanently?”
“Is that Mista’s problem?” Narancia asks, completely ignoring him to scoot a little closer to the couch, staring up at Trish with wide-eyed fascination. “Is his problem that he wants to kiss Giorno?”
“I don’t want to kiss Giorno!” Mista yells. His voice definitely doesn’t crack. That would be stupid.
“Yeah,” Trish says to Narancia. “I’m surprised you didn’t know.”
Mista, I’m confused! Number 5 squeaks from the back of his brain. I thought you really, really wanted to kiss Giorno!
You do, Number 1 says confidently. Just yesterday, when he was telling us about botany, you—
Mista is going to explode. He manages to mentally slam the door on whatever Number 1 is about to say next, but he knows what it was going to be anyway. Giorno had been talking about botany yesterday, in one of his many offices—the one in the villa in Chiaia—and Mista had kind of been able to hear the ocean through the open window, and the sun had been setting, and the light had caught in some hair that had come loose by Giorno’s cheek, and watching his mouth move, Mista had thought, I’ll do it this time. I’ll really do it this time. And then he hadn’t done it.
“You seem pretty mad, Mista,” Narancia says, giving Mista a way-too-smug grin.
“Yeah, you seem pretty mad,” Trish says. She’s got the same kind of grin, but at least she’s trying to hide it.
Mista is mad. It’s bad enough that all he can think about when he’s standing in the same room as his boss (and when he’s not) are his boss’ eyes and face and hands and smile and, like, resolve. It’s bad enough that his first instinct when a gun goes off even slightly near Giorno is to jump in front of it, no questions asked. It’s bad enough that he can’t listen to sappy love songs on the radio normally anymore, without thinking of slow-dancing with his boss to them. It’s bad enough that he doesn’t even really think of Giorno as his boss, but just as Giorno.
But now two people know about it? Two?
“Wow,” says Trish.
Narancia perks up. “What?”
“It’s just crazy that he’d say he doesn’t want to kiss Giorno and then make that face. The face that says he’s thinking about kissing Giorno right now.”
Narancia squints at Mista, leaning a little closer to Trish when he does like matching her line of sight will help him and not just because he wants to be closer to Trish, which Mista knows is the actual reason. “How can you tell?”
Trish waves a hand illustratively over her own face.
“Just—everything. All of that. Sad.”
Mista is really going to explode. He’s going to take both of them down with him.
“Get out of my house,” he barks, pointing furiously at the door.
“I live here too, asshole,” Narancia retorts, and flops back onto the floor, flipping off Mista on the way. Mista is not going to say that Narancia might as well not live here because he’s constantly spending the night at Trish’s, for days at a time. Mista is not going to say anything, to either of them, ever again. “If you want to get with Giorno so bad, just say so. Giorno would probably do it, because he’s cool and nice.”
Mista doesn’t want Giorno to do it because he’s cool and nice. Mista wants Giorno to do it because Giorno wants to get with him, too, which will never happen.
He’s gotten over crushes before, but he has yet to successfully get over Giorno. And it’s ruining his life. Not that Narancia or Trish, his ex-friends, care about that part.
“I’ll get out of your house,” Trish says, and vaults herself up from the couch with a sigh. “Looking at you is making me depressed. Bye, Narancia.”
“Bye, Trish!” Narancia beams and waves at her, and she smiles softly and waves back while she takes her purse from the doorway, and it’s gross.
Mista waits for the door to close—because he’s trustworthy—and for Trish’s footsteps to fade down the staircase before he flutters his eyelashes at Narancia and coos, “‘Bye, Trish!’”
The redness on Narancia’s face is worth it only for a second before he retorts, “Go suck Giorno’s dick, Mista,” and Mista has to lunge for his throat.
Mista remembers when he got his Stand. It had hurt. A lot. In a different way than he was used to getting hurt—it hadn’t felt like getting kicked in the ribs or punched in the face, and it hadn’t felt like a broken nose. It had felt like his whole body was being pried apart, atom by atom. It had felt like he was going to die.
Liking Giorno is worse. Way worse. Liking Giorno is so bad that he’d take getting ten more Stands from Polpo any day; it’s so bad that getting the shit kicked out of him sounds preferable, sometimes. Liking Giorno sucks.
Even “like” seems like too light of a word for it. Of course he likes Giorno—he likes the way the light lands on him, like the sun through branches. He likes the different ways that Giorno says his name: sometimes brisk and commanding like the wind, and sometimes careful and steady like low tide. He likes the way that Giorno looks in blue, and he likes Giorno’s weird jokes. He likes the way that Giorno makes him feel like he can do anything.
He likes tripe, too. But he doesn’t like it like that.
Trish had called it a problem, and the thing is that it is. There’s no better word for it, in Mista’s opinion. Sure, it had been fun at first, blasting screaming dudes with ice powers off the roof of the car and talking ambitiously about offing the boss, as if that was something you could just do, without half of your friends dying on the way. And Giorno had brought them back, but they had been really dead for a while. That had hurt, too. Maybe that had been the one thing that hurt worse than liking Giorno.
Narancia, Buccellati, and Abbacchio had all backed out of Passione, and honestly Mista hadn’t blamed them then and he doesn’t blame them now. But there hadn’t been many other options for him. He could have led a quiet life, watching matinees and napping at noon, or he could have followed Giorno. The answer had been obvious.
He’d always kind of pictured Buccellati as a don, but it suits Giorno, in that way that a lot of scary things seem to suit Giorno, like there’s something in his blood that gives him power over them. And it’s not like everything’s completely different in Passione; Fugo’s still around. (Giorno had made him consigliere, even, which is pretty cool.) Giorno still calls Buccellati for advice, off the record. Mista still has his gun.
Life’s not that complicated. There are seasons, and oceans, and a sun and a moon and the stars in between. There’s a sky, and good food. There’s the body, and the blood in it. And then there’s Giorno.
“Is something on your mind?”
Mista lifts his chin out of his palm, glancing away from his view of the city through the car window. Giorno, one leg crossed over the other, looks intently back at him.
It’s a nice car, the kind with a lot of room and wide windows, and the back seats facing each other. Mista wishes that he wasn’t facing Giorno, but sitting next to him seems a hundred times worse. They’re going to meet with the Cicciano family in Pallonetto, to settle a turf dispute. Fugo’s sitting up front with the driver.
“Nah,” Mista says. “Just hungry.”
“We can get dinner afterwards,” Giorno tells him, smiling a little. “There’s a place I’ve been wanting to try.”
Now Mista’s interested. “You buying?”
“Of course.”
“Hell yeah.” Mista grins. “I’m in. Tell Fugo he’s not invited.”
“Ugh,” says Fugo, very pointedly.
“Don’t be jealous, Fugo,” Mista tells him. “I’ll bring you some leftovers.”
“Ugh,” Fugo says again, and slides the partition shut.
“You worried about these guys, Giorno?” Mista asks when Giorno has settled back into his seat with a pensive expression.
Giorno had asked him if there was something on his mind, but really Giorno’s the one who’s seemed like he’s distracted lately. Mista figures the threat of a gang war can do that to anyone, but if the Ciccianos try anything, he’ll just shoot them.
Giorno has his head propped up on one hand, watching Naples go by. The sky outside is a pale blue, and there’s not a cloud in sight. Clear skies, good omens—that’s what Buccellati used to say. He probably still says it; Mista just hasn’t been to his and Abbacchio’s houseboat since that one rainy week in April, and even then he hadn’t really been paying attention to what Buccellati was saying, because Breakfast at Tiffany’s had been on Sky Cinema Romance.
But Giorno’s looking at the sky like there’s something in it to be scared of. Mista doesn’t really know what to do with that. Giorno never looks scared. He’s Giorno.
“Not worried about them, no,” Giorno answers eventually. He sighs and lowers his arm to fold it against his chest. “It’s nothing, Mista. Just thinking.”
“You’re always thinking,” Mista says. “Be like me. Think less. It makes things easier.”
Giorno glances at him through golden lashes and stifles a laugh. “That’s good advice.”
“Of course it is!” Mista gestures with both hands, trying to play it cool even though Giorno complimenting him is always enough to make him want to do a handstand on the spot. “I know what I’m talking about! They won’t mess with us, Giorno. And if they try, we’ll beat the shit out of them. Make a tree grow out of their face or something. Easy.”
Giorno looks like he’s considering it. They pass through a tunnel, and it’s too dark to see Giorno for a second. When they come back out, Mista’s reminded of what it’s like to look at the sun on the water for too long, all at once entranced and blinded by the gleaming flecks of light.
“When you’re at my side,” Giorno says, with a clear and eloquent conviction, “I’m never worried.”
And Mista has no damn clue what Giorno expects him to say to that.
So Mista gets shot. Not his fault. He hasn’t fought any guys that don’t have Stands in, what, a year and a half? So he’s a little rusty. Who knew a gun was just as dangerous as a Stand if you aimed it right? Shouldn’t he be the only one allowed to know that?
Well, whatever. He got four (four) bullets—two in his stomach, one in his shoulder, and one in his leg—so he’s probably going to die, or Giorno’s going to die, or someone’s going to die. Because good luck can never last, he guesses. Because life might be beautiful, but it isn’t always kind.
He has no clue what Gold Experience Requiem does to the Ciccianos, if Giorno even uses it at all. He’d have thought that it could’ve easily undone the part where he got shot, or whatever the hell it is that it can do. Some bullshit. Some stupid Giorno bullshit. He passes out.
He wakes up again on the guest bed in another apartment of Giorno’s. He knows it’s the one in Sant’Arpino because the walls are orange. Giorno color-codes his hideouts. Everything hurts, in that dull, general way that he’s used to.
He blinks to get his bearings. Giorno’s face comes into focus above him.
“Again?” Giorno asks him with way too much judgment.
“I’m alive, aren’t I?” Mista coughs back.
Giorno’s brow is tense in the darkness, his face half-lit by some lamp, like the moon. He reaches over Mista’s head for something. Mista stares at the soft ridge of his jaw, the surface of his neck. He passes out again.
“Wake up.”
“Huh?” Mista says. Still hurts. Giorno isn’t wearing his jacket anymore. It’s hanging from the back of his chair. His sleeves are rolled up. His white silk shirt has blood on it. Is it Mista’s? Shit. He can’t pay to replace that. “I’m awake.”
Giorno pulls the chair closer, as close to the bed as it will come. “Are the Pistols all right?”
Don’t die, Mista!
Shut up, Number 5!
Ow! Mista, Number 3 hit me!
“They’re fine,” Mista grumbles.
Giorno breathes out, his shoulders loosening around it. He does even this quietly, like the breathing would give something away.
“Don’t talk for a while,” he says, eyelids low, mouth hard. “I can heal you, but I need to concentrate.”
“Sure, fine,” Mista vaguely answers, already feeling like he’s about to pass out for a third time. And then Giorno touches his forehead.
It doesn’t stay there very long. Mista can tell that it’s the back of his hand, can feel the indentations where his knuckles are. The hand turns over, the thumb brushing Mista’s hairline.
When he pulls back, his arm stops halfway, lingering. Mista watches it move, haltingly, back to his side, and then it’s over, and Giorno’s rummaging around in a drawer for something.
Mista thinks about what to say.
“Giorno, you seen Bridges of Madison County?”
Giorno pauses for a moment, then shakes his head. “I haven’t.”
Mista shuts his eyes, his mind lurching for a way to say it. “There’s this really good scene. At the end. With, like, the rain. And a car. And they’re just looking at each other… and she drives away.”
“I see.”
He’s really going to pass out. And maybe die. For real this time.
“First time I saw it,” he mumbles, “I wanted her to get out of the car. Go after him. They say some shit about certainty, so I’m like—what are you not certain about? Like, you’re in love with him, right? So get out of the car. But now I know why she didn’t get out of the car. I think I really get it.”
“Mista,” Giorno murmurs—the low tide voice. Mista feels a warm hand on his stomach, fingertips pushing hesitantly at the hem of his shirt. “I need you to hold still while I heal you. It will hurt.”
Mista wants to say, It always hurts, except he wouldn’t be talking about the healing.
He is not about to die with four regrets.
“Giorno,” he says, voice small.
“Yes?”
“Giorno.”
“What is it?”
“Giorno,” Mista says, and hauls up the rest with everything in him, “Trish was right. I do have a problem.”
Wait. That didn’t come out right at all.
“What?” Giorno’s brow furrows. “Trish?”
“Shut up and listen. I thought it would go away,” Mista goes on, “but it didn’t.”
“Mista—”
“What you said in the car. About me at your side.”
“Mista—”
“Wherever you wanna go,” Mista says, “I’ll go. Anywhere. I’ll go anywhere with you. Boss. Giorno. You’ve got me.”
Giorno’s hand tenses by his ribs. Mista wants to lift his head, wants to look Giorno in the eye, like that will make the rest obvious and unmistakable.
But things are always obvious with Giorno. He sees everything plainly. Maybe he had seen it from the start.
In the dark room, Giorno’s hand stays where it is, right over a wound.
Two weeks later, Mista is doing the dishes in his pajamas, and Trish is reading a different book. This one looks even more boring than the other one. Narancia is reading it too, yawning intermittently, leaning against her back like a monkey, with his chin on her shoulder.
“I don’t get it,” he says. “It’s been, like, a hundred pages. And they’re still not together.”
“It would be boring if it happened right away,” Trish replies, turning a page, but Narancia turns it back, because he reads way slower than she does. “They have to mess up a few times.”
“Hey, Mista?” Narancia calls. “How’d you mess up with Giorno, again?”
Mista scrubs angrily at a plate with the sponge.
“He started a gunfight, almost died, and then said he was in love with him,” says Trish.
“Did it work?”
“Obviously it didn’t work. He’s been wearing those pajama pants for like three days.”
Mista slams the plate down. “It’s because they’re fucking comfortable. And I didn’t say I was in love with him.”
“Fugo says you did,” Narancia retorts.
“Fugo doesn’t know shit!”
“Fugo says Giorno was going to buy you dinner at some fancy restaurant and ask you out,” Trish adds. “Fugo says he’d been planning it for, like, months.”
I want to get a fancy dinner with Giorno! Number 7 cries from right between Mista’s eyes. The food would be so good!
And he’d probably look really nice, Number 5 says shyly.
The rest of the Pistols are a chorus of agreement.
“But then Mista got shot and said he was in love with him and now they aren’t talking,” Trish finishes.
Mista whips his head around to glare at them. “Hey, Trish, that mix CD you sent me was really good. What was the first song again?” He reaches for the scrub brush and lifts it like it’s a microphone. “I hold my breath and count to ten, I’ve been waiting for a chance to let you iiiiiin—”
Trish’s eyes go wide and her face bright red. “Shut up!”
“Mix CD?” Narancia asks, glancing cluelessly between the two of them.
There’s a knock at the door before Trish can be backed into a corner. Damn. Mista tosses the brush and sponge back into the sink and walks to the hallway to answer it, scratching his lower back with one hand and turning the knob with the other.
He’s expecting a person, but what he gets is a faceful of flowers. Like, so many. White and pink and blue and yellow. He stumbles back in shock.
“Mista?” Giorno’s voice comes from the other side of the bouquet, muffled.
“Oh my God, it’s Giorno,” Trish says from the living room. “Quick, hide. Hide!”
There’s a scuffle, and a thud, and then the sound of Narancia saying, “Ow.” Mista closes the door a little further so that the view to the living room will be blocked. You know, as if the terrifying amount of flowers wasn’t already doing that.
“Gio—uh, Boss?” he stutters, frantically trying to smooth down his hair because he hasn’t combed it since Tuesday. Shit, does he smell bad? He takes a quick, subtle sniff of one armpit. He can’t tell. Should he ask Trish? Shit. “What’s up? I mean, what’s good? I mean, what do you need?”
“Oh my God,” Trish says.
(Are they in the bathroom?)
“Is this a good time?” asks Giorno’s disembodied voice from the flowers. Mista is alarmed. He sounds kind of… nervous.
“Yeah, yeah, totally fine,” Mista says, trying to lean casually against the doorframe. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Oh,” Giorno says. “Good.”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” Giorno repeats. The flowers rustle and move a little closer to Mista. “I brought you these.”
“Oh,” Mista says, like a genius. “Cool.”
“I-I had Gold Experience create each one individually,” Giorno continues a little breathlessly. “From bullets. Oleander, bluebell, convolvulus, bougainvillea—entirely self-sustaining—anyway. Here.” He thrusts the bouquet at Mista. “I also brought a vase. A large vase. An urn, really. It’s downstairs, in the car.”
Mista blinks rapidly. “What car?”
“Fugo’s car.”
That damn Fugo. “He can drive?”
“Yes, he’s very good,” Giorno says. “Very calm. Do you like it?”
“What, Fugo’s driving?”
“The flowers.”
“Oh.” Mista finally has the sense to take them in his hands, even though there are definitely way too many for him to hold, and the thought of ruining Giorno’s whole arrangement is stressing him out big time. “Yeah, uh, they’re nice.”
Giorno lets out a sigh of relief. “I’m glad.”
Down the hall, Narancia: “What are they doing? Can you see?”
“Mista,” Giorno says, in a voice different from the wind and different from the ocean. In a voice that might be just for Mista. “There’s something I want to tell you. It’s been on my mind for a very long time. Will you hear me out?”
Mista glances frantically over his shoulder. When he’d imagined having this conversation with Giorno, if indeed it’s the conversation he thinks they’re about to have, he hadn’t pictured Narancia and Trish wedged into his tiny bathroom, listening to it. But then again, he hadn’t imagined a bouquet the approximate size of his torso or an urn or Fugo knowing how to drive, either.
So maybe it’s all relative.
“Um, y-yeah,” he croaks, and then clears his throat. “Yeah. Of course. Come on in.”
Giorno does. When Mista manages to set the flowers safely down on the coffee table and straightens up again to face him, he has to hold his breath for a second. Giorno’s in a cotton shirt this time, clean white, and is fidgeting with his hands, his mouth bunched up in one corner. It’s the first time he’s ever been inside Mista’s apartment. He looks normal in it, unremarkable, or maybe he would if it wasn’t Mista looking at him. He never looks unremarkable to Mista.
“I watched The Bridges of Madison County,” Giorno begins.
“Oh,” Mista says. “Good, right?”
Giorno nods, eyes drifting to the floor. “Very. I can see why you like it.”
Mista waits for the rest. Years spent in Passione had, for better or worse, taught him how to gauge when to speak and when not to.
“What they said about certainty,” Giorno says. “I understood it right away. And I started to think about the things that I’m certain of.”
Finally, he lifts his eyes, and meets Mista’s with them. Mista’s felt this way before. He’s felt this. Looking at the branches of trees and remembering that he’s alive.
“Would you like to hear about them?” Giorno asks.
Mista thinks about summer. Things beginning to end in it, warm and green to their fullest, the sunlight off the blue water, every window open. He thinks about a boat, and a bench, and the last bullet. He thinks about Giorno’s hand on his skin.
“Yeah,” he says, and then, maybe the way he should have said it from the start: “I’ve got time.”
It takes him a month to kiss Giorno. Whatever. Trish gives him shit for it—when is Trish not giving him shit—but it doesn’t even bother him, really. They’re on a pier in Santa Lucia, and Giorno is talking about flowers.
Mista isn’t really paying attention to the words. Maybe he’s a bad boyfriend. What he’s paying attention to is how Giorno looks saying them. What he’s paying attention to is the way the moonlight touches him.
Mista has done a lot of brave things in his life, or things that started out stupid and became brave with context. It feels braver to put his hand on Giorno’s cheek and keep it there. It feels braver to step closer. It feels brave, and simple. It feels nice. Like being alive.
I’m really going to do it this time, he thinks, and then Giorno does it first.