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All Fugo remembers from that day is the pain. The pain of loss or the pain of fear. The adrenaline rush getting to be too much. The tangy taste of bile dwelling in the back of his throat. He was tired, and that’s all he remembers. He’s talked to Giorno about it, several times, the fleeting thoughts in the back of his mind, the intrusive emotions leftover from a stand too powerful to overcome.
Purple Haze’s virus left a scar.
A huge one, jagged across his mouth and up the side of his face, his cheek sunken from the impact, the near-death experience. It’s ugly and it’s big, he can’t leave the villa without getting a couple of stares, too-long looks from strangers. It’s unsettling, and Fugo feels guilty around children. Though it looks more like a stain across the rest of his face, rough to the touch but soft on the eyes. His mouth itself is the problem, sharp-angled scars sharing the diamond pattern Purple Haze wears.
“I could heal that for you,” Giorno says to him, a day or two after he settled into Giorno’s house, a room of his own, a space of his own; the first. They’re sitting in Giogio’s office, and Fugo’s helping him through paperwork, stacks upon stacks of the same thing that they’ve spent hours sorting through. He reaches for his face, and Fugo flinches, causing Gio to lower his arm instead, “It’s fine, Giogio,” He says, touching at the abrasion of flesh, “It’s just another part of me I need to learn to accept.” Giorno hums, and his eyebrows are knitted together in confusion, but he lets it go, and they continue their work.
Giorno isn’t a healer, he makes this clear every time Mista comes into his office with a stab wound, a bullet hole, “I can’t heal you, you know this,” And Mista laughs, “I don’t do this on purpose, boss.” twenty minutes later he leaves with a new scar, a new piece of flesh welded onto his own, not perfect, but it does the job. “It’s better than nothing,” Giorno says, picking up one of his pens after Mista leaves and sitting back down at his desk, “But I wish he’d stop relying on me.”
Giorno isn’t a healer, but he offers.
Every time Fugo stares at his reflection a second too long or reaches up to touch at his mouth, his eyebrows knitted together a second too long, Giorno offers, “I could heal that for you.” And Fugo knows, and he laughs when he remembers; because Giorno has a pretty little scar around his eye, subtle lines you can hardly see two feet away, but Fugo sees it. He’s observant, and his eyes always rest on the uneven healing, a result of a lonesome fight. He has a couple more, he’s seen them in passing, on his neck, around his chest, they’re barely visible, but they’re there.
Giorno kisses him in the spring.
It’s quick, nervous, irrational, and the result of pent-up emotions, too much time spent pining from a distance, but it happens. He does it in the hallway after a long day of work, the sun long set, and everyone else in the villa is fast asleep, all but them, hard-workers with slouching backs and calloused fingers.
Fugo’s too nervous, he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, but he kisses him back, and when Giorno pulls away, Fugo lets himself admire the scar around Giorno’s eye, and when he reaches up to touch it, Giorno lets him. His finger swipes at the uneven lines, and he hums, “You can’t heal me when you can’t heal yourself, Giogio.”
And everything changes, except nothing does.
Giorno is still Giorno, and Fugo is still Fugo. Despite his own need for space, despite Giorno’s own disposition to shy away from touch, Fugo still kisses his hand when he greets him, but Giorno stops offering to heal him. He touches at the lines on Fugo’s face when they kiss instead, gentle touches around the skin, murmurs of “is this okay?” and Fugo nods, of course it is, he’s learning to love himself, and Giorno’s doing it with him, dragging him deeper in love with Gio, deeper in love with each other.
Fugo doesn’t notice until summer.
The ticking of cicadas fills the office as the open window keeps them cooler, fan propped up towards them, and Giorno’s settled for a plain white t-shirt. Then he notices. The scars that he himself dons are present on Giorno’s arms, different for sure, but the cause is the same, bumps of discoloration, raised flesh, lining his upper arm, barely noticeable with the sleeve of his shirt covering it, never noticeable with his suit on.
“How far up does that go?” He asks, pausing his writing when his eye catches on it for the fourth or fifth time that day. Giorno looks up at him through his eyelashes, setting the papers down and rolling up the rest of his sleeve, revealing more little circles of uneven skin, “It goes up here,” He traces a line from his arm scars, proof of him reattaching them one too many times, and drags it up the entirety of his upper arm, following the whole thing, before the sleeve stops it. “And then there’s some on my chest,” Fugo hasn’t seen them before, but now that he has, he feels the guilt set in. “It’s not a huge deal,” He says, shrugging and picking his papers up once more, but Fugo has to disagree because it is . He did that, his stand did that. If his soul is capable of hurting the people he loves shouldn’t he feel bad about it?
In winter, cozy and warm in the villa, Fugo traces lines into the bumpy skin of Giorno’s arm.
They’re watching a movie, but neither of them is paying attention, too busy focused on other things. Fugo, for one, is very focused on Giorno’s lips against his own as he runs his finger across Giorno’s scars. The dipped ones, marred flesh connecting his forearm to his upper arm, too many times separated, too many times replaced, his other hand is wrapped in Giorno’s hair, and he loves him, loves that he loves him, loves how well they fit together.
Giorno is the sun and Fugo is the moon.
They’re perfect for each other, the two of them, Mista says it one day, unprompted. “You two are good together.” And Fugo has to laugh, because it’s so out of nowhere it’s hilarious. They’ve been reconnecting, albeit slowly, Mista is less mad, but Fugo’s sure he still blames him for not being there, they’re distant, careful. “How so?” He sips coffee from his cup, leaning forward in his chair, leaning on the table, and Mista leans back; opposites, the two of them, but not in the same way Giorno and him are, not sun and moon, more star and black hole, they don't complement each other. He’s looking into the garden, and he takes a beat or two before he speaks, maybe three, never four, it makes Fugo uneasy. “You keep each other in check, keep each other grounded, ya know?” And Fugo does, in his own way. “I think so.” And he sets his cup down, looking out into the garden as Mista turns away; opposites.
There are scars on Giorno that none of them likes to look at.
Scars not even Giorno can stand to see. The circles all over his body, proof of a short death, though not his. Mista flinches when he sees them in passing, and Giorno refuses to look at them. Giorno, confident and self-assured, the boy with the dream. Fugo himself wasn’t there, but that just makes it harder. He has no context to the grieving looks on their faces, but god does he wish he did. It’s so hard to hear them avoid their names, never speaking of them, while Fugo has forgotten their faces. He has a picture, a singular picture, cropped wrong under Giorno’s inexperienced photography, but he has to wonder about their battle scars, how they were taken out. He’ll never know.
But Giorno’s not a healer.
Fugo’s scars don’t stop just because he’s by Giorno’s side. If anything, that’s what causes it. Leaving the villa is a risk, not one he likes to take. The scars on his face get easier to look at when you’re around them, but passerby don’t know his story, and they look with curiosity and disgust. Fugo stops staring back, stops sneering at their inquisitive glances. He finds himself to be less irritable since Giorno became his boyfriend, and maybe that’s okay.
He still risks injury going into town.
One day, he goes in to buy a new book, something on history or language, something that piqued his interest in the weekly catalog, and in the town square, he gets shot in the leg. He’s not sure where it comes from, but it causes a massive panic. He ducks into an alleyway in the uproar of running people, and he gets shot in the chest, limping his way down the concrete. He’s in pain, but his adrenaline drags im into a nearby building. He curses under his breath when he sees what business he stumbled into. It’s the bookstore. Great, this will go well.
“Can you call a number for me?” He asks before he can think. And he’s sure he blacks out, or something, because one minute he’s telling them Giorno’s number, clutching his leg and his heart, and the next he’s in a car on the way home. It’s Giorno’s, but for a moment he panics and sits up too fast, his head pounding at the motion, causing him to reclose his eyes, and a hand pushes him back down, warm against his own.
“Relax,” A voice says, and it’s Giorno’s. He feels the tension melt away at the reassurance. “What happened?” Giorno grabs his hand and brings it to his mouth, pressing it to his lips before letting it rest on the seat again. “I don’t know.” He says, and he’s not lying. “I never saw who did it, but someone shot me.” He hums in response, and when Fugo opens his eyes again, despite his protesting headache, he sees Gold Experience hovering. He’s not in pain anymore, so the wounds were already fixed, new scars to get used to, he supposes. His eyes roam over Giorno’s face, concern etched into his eyebrows, eyes squinted. He’s looking at Fugo’s hand, clutching it in his own, but Fugo knows he’s trying to sense any change in life force, a loss of blood, a wound he missed. “I’m not in any pain.” He says, and then touches his forehead, “I have a headache, though.” Giorno laughs, “Don’t sit up. We’ll be home soon.”
Fugo turns his head towards the rest of the car, it’s spacious, just because it can be, but he only sees Mista driving the car in silence. “What about the attacker?” He recloses his eyes to ease the headache, and Giorno touches his face, traces along the scars, lingering on the ones on his neck, “I sent Sheila to look around.”
Giorno isn’t a healer.
His method of healing is more of a replacement. It hurts like all hell and it leaves an ugly scar. It’s new flesh in place of the lost. He’s not a healer in the emotional aspect either, he can’t heal life, he can’t replace it. But he does a good job of aiding a grieving Mista, healing Fugo and Mista’s relationship, though they do that on their own, and he’s good at bringing people together, what with his golden dream and his charisma like liquid chocolate, flowing from his lips like perfection.
Giorno isn’t a healer, but he helps. He aids in recovery.
Giorno didn’t make Fugo like himself, didn’t make him grow used to the scars on his face, running along his neck, didn’t make him grow used to the ones scattered over his shoulders and his stomach from close calls and risky trips, but he helped, with his kisses and his words, and that’s really all that matters.