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Gold Experience's healing leaves a scar.
Giorno only realizes it later in the car. Abbachio is half-awake in the backseat, his stump in a tourniquet made by Fugo while his detached arm is by his side in a ziploc bag with ice. Fugo is in the passenger seat this time at Giorno's insistence. It's when Fugo hands over the keys to Giorno's hand that he finds it--a pale jagged scar circling around his left wrist.
Fugo doesn't notice it, too exhausted from the fight. Giorno doesn't want him too. He already has a grasp of his personality. The last thing he needs is for him to beat himself up over something that was part of Giorno's plan. Purple Haze may have been the cause of the virus, but it was Giorno's decision to let himself get infected.
Giorno tugs the sleeve of his jacket over the scar. Fugo lays his head in the window and sleeps as they drive away from Pompeii.
Giorno takes a stock of it. Two jagged scars on his wrists, easily concealed by long sleeves. A perfect square-shaped scar on his right eye, only a few shades lighter than his skin, invisible except under certain lights.
He notices it in everyone else. Mista has a collection of pale patches on his stomach. The lower part of Narancia's tongue is darker than the rest. Buccellatti and Abbachio share the same jagged pattern on their chests.
They don't seem to mind the scarring. "Better than staying dead," Mista said once. Mista is used to scars, Narancia shows his tongue off like a party trick, Buccellatti traces his with a farwaway loom in his eyes until Abbachio shakes him from it.
Giorno hates to think this, but he's proud of these marks. They're signs of survival, of Gold Experience's healing capabilities, of his refusal to let his friends die. Beside from the ladybug pins adorning different parts of their outfit during work, it's become a way for Giorno to lay claim on those he will protect until his dying breath. They are his marks.
Which is why it bothers him a little that Fugo is the only that doesn't bear them.
Don't get him wrong. He's glad Fugo has never been injured to the extent that he has to undergo Gold Experience's cruel healing.
What upsets Giorno is the fact that he couldn't heal him back then. In that week that the narcotics team met their downfall Fugo was whisked away by the Speedwagon Foundation to a private facility. He should've been in Passione, with the rest of his family, and under Giorno's care. The scar on his face, jagged and diamond-like, almost akin to Purple Haze's harlequin, is the result of []. It's a scar made of Fugo's volition when he bit into the virus capsule, not as an aftermath of Giorno.
Never again, he thinks as Fugo gets on his knee and swears to him, never agail will Fugo be in pain far away from all of them. As Fugo makes his vow, Giorno makes his own.
His heart, his body, his soul, Giorno vows to care for all of them hell or high water.
Something presses against his eye, feather-light and warm.
Giorno squirms, caught in the hazy space between sleep and wakefulness.
A touch on his wrist, gentle and firm, something presses against it, still light and warm. He recognizes the feeling of lips, the remnants of a kiss.
Oh. So it's that kind of morning today.
“Good morning, Cotti.”
Above him, Fugo freezes having been caught.He relaxes little by little as he props himself up on his elbows and just watches him. If it were anyone else being stared at like that would set Giorno on edge, but he knows Fugo, knows that he’s unexpectedly a morning person and that being in deep thought in the early hours is a norm for him.
“Good morning, Giogio.”
An unbidden smile crosses Giorno’s face. It always surprises him how his mornings have changed. From the mess of his early months as a don where he wakes up, startling from nightmares and dreading the day ahead, to waking up in the comfort of Fugo’s warmth.
“Any particular reason why you’re kissing me so early?”
“Not really.” Fugo’s fingers trace the expanse of Giorno’s bare arm. It’s summer and he’s taken to wearing shirts to bed instead of his pajamas. His fingers stop at the scar on Giorno’s left wrist. “I remember this.”
Giorno shifts minutely, remembering the past is always a minefield when it came to them. On the one hand, it helps them realize how hard they have to fight for the future they have now. On one hand, there are some things better left forgotten.
“I think that was the time I started to feel something for you.”
Giorno, still surprised to Fugo’s burst of affections, gazes at him wide-eyed. “Why?”
“Who knows? All I knew is you were infecting yourself with the fucking plague and jumping through the mirror to save me. My heart just followed what my eyes were seeing.”
Mornings make people oddly sentimental. That’s the only reason Giorno can think of as he shares,” I think the first time I started to feel something for you was when you got on your knee and pledged yourself to me.” He twists his hand, palm up so he can twine Fugo’s fingers with his, feel the pleasant warmth where their skin meets. “Just about stole my breathe back then.”
Fugo hides his face in Giorno’s hair, something he usually does when he’s overwhelmed by his emotions and doesn’t want Giorno to see his face. Giorno loves him for it, but he loves seeing Fugo’s face even more so with a tilt of his head he aligns their faces properly and kisses him right on his scar.
Giorno offered to have it removed back then. He can’t heal it but there are surgeries made for making skin unblemished and perfect again. Fugo refused for the same reason Mista did, as well as everyone else. Although scars are a painful reminder of hurt, sometimes people need it as a reminder that that moment has passed, that they’re alive in spite of it. Fugo told him once in the privacy of their room and in the quiet moments of the night, that he sees the scar as a sign of redemption and forgiveness, of returning home to his family.
When Giorno pulls away and meets Fugo’s eyes, they share a smile filled with unspoken words, but Fugo decides to surprise him with affection one more time.
“I love you.”
Those three words carry a heavy meaning. Giorno has kept it in his heart ever since Fugo came back. There’s a timing with those sort of things and he hasn’t found the right moment to express it.
Fugo, brilliant and fierce and oh so lovely, has apparently decided that this morning in particular is the right moment.
“I love you too,” he says, a touch too soft and vulnerable to his liking. He decides he doesn’t mind being soft and vulnerable around Fugo anyway. “How can you say that so easily? I’ve been trying to work up the courage for months.”
“Someone told me that I should listen to my heart instead of my head more. He’s very wise.”
Giorno remembers saying that to Fugo months ago. He guesses he set himself up for that one.
He peers at the clock on the nightstand and groans. He tucks his head in Fugo’s neck, feels his boyfriend start running his hands through the tangles of his bed hair. “Do we have anywhere to be today?”
“Not for the next half hour.”
“Then let me listen to your heart more.”