Chapter Text
Gyro was alive.
And Johnny’s heart was, too.
It was Valkyrie who drew his attention first. Johnny was sobbing—when would the tears ever stop? —and he dug his fingers into the grains of sand. Valentine was trapped somewhere in there, the hourglass of fate finally drowning him with time. He was dead, and while his blood stained the stripes of his soiled flag, Gyro’s filtered into the crashing waves.
By any account, the string of fate woven for Gyro was cut much too short.
But Valkyrie still whinnied.
“It’s okay, girl…” Johnny carefully pushed himself forward.
Moments ago, he had walked—but time caught up to him, too. Now, he was forced to drag his body across the ground, but he was good at it. He had heaved his heart like a heavy suitcase through the dirt many times.
It was much heavier than his body ever was.
“It’s okay. I’m here.” Johnny reached a hand toward her, but Valkyrie reared up, snorted, and thrashed her head.
“I know…” Johnny replied bitterly. “I miss him, too.”
Valkyrie ran into the waves.
“Hey!” Johnny pushed himself close to the shoreline, but the crashing waves kept him at the threshold. Like all things in his life—he barely made it through the entrance before he was driven back behind an invisible line. “Valkyrie! Come back!”
He whistled for Slow Dancer, but she only whinnied pitifully.
He lost Gyro. And now he would lose the only thing Gyro really loved.
Lucy stood beside Johnny. “I think she sees something.”
Johnny grimaced. More than likely it was Gyro’s corpse. A part of him shattered with every slap of the water on the shore, each beat driving the nail harder and harder into the depths of his heart.
But the other part, the new one, the part constructed of tough, cold pieces—for the Johnny meant to live post-Gyro—was glad.
At least I can take him home and bury him.
Valkyrie dipped her snout into the water and emerged with a clump of damp wheat between her teeth.
Gyro’s hair.
Lucy covered her mouth.
“Oh…” She breathed.
Valkyrie meticulously pulled her owner from the tight knit of the sea. Gyro’s hat was gone, and his locks matted into tangles in his face. Somehow, the lipstick remained, and his dark eyelashes peeked through the curtain of hair.
It was hard to acknowledge this thing as Gyro. Gyro nyohoed and made stupid jokes. He grinned and flashed his gold grills in the light. He told stories of Naples with the dying embers of a fire sparkling in his bright eyes.
Gyro was Gyro because he was alive.
And he made Johnny feel alive, too.
“Oh my god…” Lucy whispered.
We made her do too much.
She approached Gyro and kneeled by his side. Valkyrie stomped her hooves, a silent language that did not communicate enough to Johnny’s ears. If he felt anything other than numbness, he might have more of a reaction. But it was like the very ocean had yanked him in instead, and he was drowning just by breathing.
“Johnny!” Lucy called. “He’s alive!”
Alive. There was no smile, no laugh. Gyro was not alive.
“Shut up,” Johnny snapped. “Valentine shot him in the head, Lucy. He’s gone.”
Acknowledgment. A shotgun bullet splintered Johnny’s heart into pieces, and an overwhelming pain consumed him.
Gone. Deceased. Dead.
Gyro was dead.
“He’s breathing,” Lucy insisted and pressed her platinum hair to his chest so it formed the crest of a bird’s wing. “His heart is beating.”
Fate is cruel. Punishing him for the mistake God made of taking the wrong son. His only solution was to keep taking and taking the wrong thing.
Johnny wasn’t a doctor, but he was well acquainted with getting shot in undesirable places. A shot in the head equaled death. If the ocean didn’t drown him or the bullet didn’t end it, it was only a matter of time before nature—the very thing the Zeppeli’s dedicated their lives to with the spin—would take its course.
And it would take and take and take.
“We need to get him help,” Lucy said.
“He’s going to die, anyway.”
Johnny almost flinched as he glanced at Lucy’s eyes. There was a fire burning there, and, for a moment, Johnny could feel its warmth.
“No, he’s not,” she insisted. “He saved my life. I’m going to save his. Steven!”
Steven was at her side in seconds. With the two of them, they managed to sling Gyro onto Valkyrie. Lucy mounted her and pulled Gyro onto her lap to keep him from sliding off again.
“You have to keep going, Johnny,” Lucy said. “You have to finish what was started.”
The corpse or the race? Neither, in Johnny’s eyes, was important. Let the corpse sink to the bottom of the ocean. Let someone like Pocoloco win the race.
Because for a fragment of a second, Gyro’s eyes fluttered open.
Lucy’s words were almost lost in the roar in his ears.
“Diego has the corpse. I’ll get Gyro help and then come back. For now, you have to go.”
“Lucy, it’s dangerous,” Steven warned, but the fire in her eyes burned bright, brighter than the campfires Johnny and Gyro sang around at night, brighter than the glow of Love Train.
It was hope. And Johnny was scared of hope.
Gyro was alive.
And so was a small fragment of Johnny’s warming heart.
But.
Diego turned Valentine’s hourglass right side up. It was only a matter of time before the sand swallowed Johnny at the bottom.
“I’ll get Diego,” Johnny vowed, though the pain of abandoning Gyro cracked his breastbone in two. “I’ll stop him no matter what.”
Lucy nodded and spurred Valkyrie into a gallop. Gyro’s long hair fluttered like feathers in the ocean breeze.
Gyro was alive.
Johnny had to repeat the words constantly to himself, even when he sat next to Gyro in the hospital room. For long periods, Johnny zoned out, staring at the gentle rise and crest of Gyro’s chest, only for something—the squeak of his wheelchair or the click of a nurse’s heels—to startle him from his stupor.
Johnny hardly remembered the events of the past days. He didn’t know who was declared the winner for the race he wasted months of his life on. He didn’t know what happened to Dio-but-not-Dio until Lucy explained he was gone, and the corpse was safe.
Johnny had been willing to sacrifice everything for that twisted piece of bone and flesh. Now it hardly seemed like a pin worth putting on the board of bigger concerns.
He took this all as a big joke. That fate was about to slap him in the face again by giving him this moment and taking it. Is this how his father felt after he lost Nicholas?
A squeak startled Johnny, but it wasn’t from his chair this time.
It was from the rickety old bed.
And when he lifted his gaze, Gyro’s bright green eyes stared right back at him.
“Gyro!” Johnny rolled his chair closer until the wheels bumped the frame. “How are you feeling? Hurt anywhere? Need me to get the nurse? You’re in the hospital by the way.”
A dry, raspy chuckle escaped Gyro’s lips. “Fancy… meeting you… here…”
“Glad to know your sense of humor is still intact.”
“Nyoho…”
That laugh. Just the syllables made Johnny’s heart bound, made the helium rise inside of him like he was a balloon. He blinked, and there were hot tears in his eyes—when would he stop crying? —at just the thought of Gyro’s stupid laugh.
“What’s wrong?” Gyro asked, his voice still stiff. “Am I dying…?”
“You almost did… you asshole…” Johnny glared at his lap, but it did not stop the tears. They dotted his pants like additional stars in the night.
A hand reached across his vision and grabbed his limp ones. It was tan and soft, soft even for a transcontinental journey.
Gyro’s palm was warm against Johnny’s clammy skin, and if he held his breath, he felt the little pitter-patter of Gyro’s heart.
“I’m still here,” the Italian mumbled. “I’m not leaving you any time soon…”
He drifted off to sleep soon after, and Johnny cradled his warm hand to his chest, crying softly next to his bedside.
Gyro was alive.
The doctors, shockingly, explained that the bullet didn’t even breach his skull. Johnny tried to rationalize it by saying it would be natural for a president to be a bad shot, but he knew there was more at play, whether it was Gyro’s beloved Lady Luck or something else.
Within a few weeks of the race ending, Gyro could walk. Johnny just watched him shuffle unsteadily down the hall and coaxed him with small encouragements, even as his own useless legs tethered him to his seat.
Now was Gyro’s last test, to prove he could make it down and back without getting winded, lightheaded, or wobbly. Gyro flirted with the redheaded nurse, flashing his gold grills as much as he could.
Johnny dug his fingers into his once-moving thighs.
If I could walk again, I would walk up to him and slap him for flirting.
The idea made his heart stutter. The concept that he would have the power, that sway over Gyro, was something as inconceivable as the Golden Spin to a Johnny from the first leg of the race.
But those thoughts evaporated when Gyro reached the end of the hall, pivoted on his left heel, and faced Johnny with a huge grin.
“What do you think, gremlin?” Gyro called. “I’m getting pretty good, huh?”
Johnny snorted. “Sure, but now that you said that you’re going to fall on your face.”
Gyro fake gasped. “Johnny Joestar, the audacity.”
“Uh-huh, Julius.” Johnny smirked when Gyro turned into a stuttering mess. “Hurry up. I’m ready to get out of here.”
“Hurry up, you said?”
And then Gyro was walking briskly down the hall, his heels clicking against the floor. He was heading for one thing.
Me.
“Shit!” Johnny twisted the wheels in his hands, but Gyro was already there, snatching his wheelchair up by the handles.
“You want to hurry up and get out of here?” Gyro’s hot breath was next to his ear, and if Johnny wasn’t terrified by the Italian’s unpredictable mind, he might have blushed.
Instead, he braced himself against the armrests.
“Gyro, no—”
“Gyro, yes!”
Gyro took a running start. He was a little slow from the recovery, but Johnny’s wheelchair sped down the hall at a good clip. Nurses with trays and doctors with notes jumped out of their way.
And Johnny laughed.
“Gyro don’t kill us!” he said, and luckily, Gyro slowed down before they went careening out the door and down the steps.
Gyro breathed heavily from the exertion, and he leaned his forearms on the back of the wheelchair and his chin on top of Johnny’s head.
“So,” Gyro asked, “Was that fast enough for you?”
Johnny swatted him from his perch on his head. “Ass.”
“Nyohoho~”
Johnny couldn’t suppress his smile. A few weeks ago, grappling with the idea that they would be laughing and smiling like two idiots seemed foreign to Johnny. But it was happening, and every time it did, his heart would make a new rhythm and a warmth would spread from his cheeks to his entire body.
Gyro pushed him carefully outside, singing “pizza mozzarella” under his breath. Normally, Johnny would curse and yell at anyone who tried to assist him like this. But the gentle sway in time with Gyro’s strides and the soft hum of his voice was enough to steal Johnny’s breath away.
Gyro was alive.
And Johnny was in love with him.
They stayed in a hotel for a few days. They had nowhere else to go. Johnny canceled all his living arrangements when he left for the race, and even though his father materialized like a rare fish toward the end, Johnny would be damned before he wheeled himself to Kentucky.
But when Gyro came back to the room with a boat ticket to Italy, Johnny didn’t know what to do.
So he slammed the hotel door in Gyro’s face and pressed the back of his chair into the wood.
“Johnny?” Gyro knocked. “Johnny, what’s wrong? Open the door.”
What was the point in opening it? The door to Gyro leaving was already wide open. Unlocking this simple, human door would do nothing to change the map of fate.
“No,” Johnny whispered.
He hated how weak it made him feel. Like a fish released from a line, only to find the ocean cold and unfamiliar. What was it like without Gyro?
Even though it was only a few minutes, Johnny hated the taste of losing Gyro Valentine had force-fed him.
The knocks died down, and the silence forced Johnny to acknowledge his ragged breathing.
“Johnny?” Gyro softly called this time, his voice fluttering like harp strings through the door. “Talk to me.”
“You’re leaving,” Johnny bit out. “That’s good. You’re going back to your family.”
“Doesn’t seem very good, considering I’m sitting out in the middle of the hallway.”
Johnny chewed his bottom lip, but even the metallic taste of his blood did little to bring clarity to his thoughts.
“You pissed me off,” Johnny said, simply.
As if his emotions were ever that simple.
You’re leaving me. The truth tasted just as bitter as losing Gyro. It was a mixture of tears, saltwater, dirt, and death. But those words exposed too much, opened the wounds too wide.
“You didn’t tell me you would,” Johnny eventually said.
“Well… thought it was obvious,” Gyro replied. “I have to go back… sort out everything with Marco and take my father’s job, since I’m the firstborn.”
Johnny didn’t understand it. Did Nicholas feel this way, as the firstborn? To be tied by the leads of obligation? For as long as Johnny had known Gyro, he had burned things like that to the ground.
“Have fun in Naples then.” Johnny knew he was being childish. He didn’t care. “I’m sure your family misses you a lot.”
Gyro doesn’t belong to Johnny after all. He belonged to the Zeppelis. To Italy. To something much larger and much more important than the tiny, disabled Kentucky boy.
Johnny rolled away from the door and pulled it open in the process. Gyro spilled into the room.
“Jesus, Johnny,” Gyro said. “You should have warned me. That was my backrest.”
Johnny kept moving forward, to the window so he wouldn’t have to face the object of his affection and the idea of bursting into tears again.
“Johnny~” Gyro’s heels clacked behind him, but he refused to acknowledge the Italian, even when his warm hands grabbed Johnny’s shoulders. “I know what will make you happy. Ready? Pizza mozzarella.”
Johnny felt hopeless, lost, and cold. Adrift at sea without Gyro.
“Okay, maybe not. How about gorgonzola— “
“Leave me alone!” Johnny interrupted, and the warmth recoiled from him instantly. “You’re going to leave me, so just hurry up and go!”
A heartbeat. Then two. It thundered in his ears like a storm. In the cracks of lightning, he saw images, memories. Cradling Gyro’s body in the water. Watching a bomb explode at his feet when Valentine pulled the trigger. Johnny squeezed his eyes against the onslaught, but the rain fell anyway, slicking his face in cold tears.
A thousand times he had lost Gyro.
And a thousand times he would lose him again.
Gyro grabbed the back of his chair and wheeled him around. Johnny numbly pulled at the break, but the Italian was already in front of him. He pressed his arms on either side of Johnny’s shoulders to box him in.
“Johnny,” Gyro said, completely serious. “Come with me. To Naples.”
The idea sounded ridiculous even in Johnny’s head. But still, no matter how small, it was a lifeline in the storm.
“Why?” Johnny asked.
“Because I want you to come with me,” Gyro answered simply. “You don’t have a family tying you down, yeah? Then come home with me.”
Hope. The dangerous little embers were sparking.
But Johnny didn’t want to get burned.
“I can’t speak Italian,” Johnny blurted out.
In an instant, Gyro’s seriousness dissolved, and he laughed. “Yes, you can.”
“Pizza and mozzarella don’t count!”
Gyro laughed harder now, holding onto the wheelchair more for support than to trap Johnny.
“I’ll be your translator,” Gyro managed between giggles. “You can talk to my family. They know English, too.”
A few months prior, Johnny gave up everything to follow Gyro across the continent. What was following him across the sea in comparison to the journey they’ve already had?
But still, Johnny held the reins on himself.
This journey, after all, had taught him that hope could be a dangerous thing.
“I don’t know,” Johnny finally said. “What if I… don’t fit in?”
Gyro raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure we’ll figure out the wheelchair situation. We definitely can talk to my dad about it.”
“Not that, Gyro. What if I don’t fit in?”
“Trust me, there are four little gremlins that will love you.”
Johnny frowned, kept the guard raised.
But Gyro was prepared to burn that down with the little flame called hope.
“Besides…” the Italian said, “My dad is a better doctor than I am. I’m sure he could do something for your back. Make you walk again.”
The very thing that spurred him to Gyro’s side. That pushed him up to kill the man that almost took the Italian’s life.
“You’re just saying that, aren’t you?” Johnny stared into Gyro’s green eyes.
They were like delicate petals of green, the deep contours accented with beautiful honey. Johnny could get lost in those eyes. Drown in them.
But Gyro always saved him in the end. He cast another life jacket, this time by gently cupping Johnny’s cheek and wiping the stray tears away with his thumb.
“I promise,” Gyro reaffirmed.
For a moment, they were like a picture, frozen, possessed, the only warmth emanating from the tender touch.
Johnny’s cheeks turned red, and he quickly pushed Gyro away.
“Fine! Whatever. I’ll go.”
“Nyoho, good thing I already bought two tickets.”
Johnny grabbed a nearby pillow and chucked it at the Italian, who laughed and skittered out of the way.
Johnny laughed, too.
It was moments like this that reminded him Gyro was alive.
Johnny decided that he hated boats. Had he ridden on one as a child? Yes. Had he ever wanted to kill his traveling companion, the entire crew, and then himself? No. But Johnny’s swore if Gyro so much as nyohoed the next time Johnny got seasick, he was going to kill Gyro first and toss his smug Italian ass into the Atlantic sea.
Luckily for the entire crew, they made it to Italy, although Gyro had a few more bruises then he did weeks prior.
Johnny waited patiently as Gyro led Valkyrie and Slow Dancer, and he mounted his horse with practiced ease. She huffed happily.
“I know, girl. I’m happy to be on dry land, too.”
Gyro slipped into Valkyrie’s saddle. “Nyohoho. I didn’t know you would hate water so much.”
“I’m from Kentucky! A land-locked state! It’s natural.”
“It’s unnatural that anyone would hate water as much as you.”
Johnny snorted. “Not everyone is a mermaid like you, Gyro.”
Gyro flashed his grills. “I’m not a mermaid. I’m a siren. I seduce all sorts of people. And when they get close…” Gyro leaned over and grabbed Johnny by the waist. “I drag them into the depths of the sea!”
Johnny knew his face was the color of ripe tomatoes, and people on the docks stared at them as they walked past.
“Let go, Gyro!” Johnny hissed.
“But you’re not laughing. It was a funny joke.”
Johnny smacked his hands away before the air around his face simmered. “Let’s just go, okay? Slow Dancer needs to stretch her legs.”
Gyro gave a fake half-bow. “As the Lord Gremlin commands.”
Johnny rolled his eyes and fell in step behind Valkyrie. Always the same song and dance. Always behind. Always following.
Always chasing.
What would it feel like to stand by his side? To walk with him, not after him?
To reach over and grab his soft hand?
Johnny quickly shook the thought away and focused on reliving his traumatizing sea voyage instead as Gyro led him across the countryside.
Italy was beautiful. Hills rolled and peaked like the tide of the sea. The lush green pastures expanded for miles, only broken occasionally by earth-toned houses shaped like ragged teeth and the wispy expanse of the sky. Johnny’s breath caught in his throat. The Mediterranean Sea brought a salty, fresh scent, and the air was light around him. It was nothing like the sticky fingers of Kentucky.
“Beautiful, huh?” Gyro said. Johnny’s face heated up when Gyro caught him staring. “I never really thought much about it but… after everything we’ve been through…”
Slow Dancer stopped at the hill’s zenith. The horizon sweltered with a sunset, the crimsons bleeding into the dark oranges and yellows. It painted the countryside a citrus hue.
If someone told the Johnny of a few months ago that he would make it here someday with Gyro, he would have spit in their face.
But when Gyro pulled Valkyrie to stop beside Johnny, close enough where they could touch, everything suddenly felt so real.
Felt so right.
“We’ve been through a shit ton together, Gyro,” Johnny said. “And we somehow made it out in the end.”
“Yeah,” Gyro replied. “Somehow.”
Something burned inside of Johnny, harder than the glare from the Naples’ sun. It seared his fingertips, to the point that he was aware of every crack in the leather reins brushing against his palm.
“Hey, Johnny?” Gyro said and bent his body to rest his forearms against the saddle.
“Yeah?” It almost didn’t sound like Johnny’s voice. It was disembodied. Different. Like he was a hundred worlds away from this moment.
“Would you change a thing about that race? Would you still make every decision that you made?”
Johnny’s first reaction was no. He made a lot of reckless decisions that ended up in Gyro’s injury, one way or another. He lost most of the corpse to the Eleven Men, and then the rest after the fight with Axl Ro. He couldn’t stop Valentine from shooting the almost fatal shot, either.
But it was the events he most regretted that brought him close to Gyro. They cradled each other after the pitiful loss to the Eleven Men. Johnny held his hand after he was shot. Every fabric of events sewed together to make the quilt of their experiences, the very one that blanketed their lives together. If Johnny changed one, he would change them all.
Would change Gyro.
“No,” Johnny finally said as the sun dipped into the horizon. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Gyro sat up straight, and for a moment, Johnny thought he gave the wrong answer.
Then Gyro reached over and pulled Johnny’s hands from the reins. His fingers were still just as soft, just as gentle. Gyro wrapped them around Johnny’s.
“Good,” Gyro said, and his eyes stared forward, the green colors swallowed by the ripe sunset. “I wouldn’t change a thing, either.”
And the two of them waited, hand and hand, until the sun completely evaporated in the sky, and the moon raised just enough to guide them homeward bound.