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It is difficult to love someone when you are not even sure that they feel things, while you feel everything with the volume cranked up to ten. It’s difficult, but Fugo does it anyway, because he can’t help himself.
At this point, he has decided, Giorno must feel things. Sometimes he smiles when his caterpillars turn to butterflies or when a particularly stubborn enemy is finally offed. That’s feeling. Joy, even if he can hardly muster a smile wide enough to show his teeth. Other times, he gets a crease between his brows, looking at the overlapping notes Fugo makes for him in his planner. Stress and distaste are feelings, too.
But what Fugo has never seen- has yet to see, he’s hopeful- is love cross Giorno’s face. Not for his flowers, not for his butterflies, and not for Fugo, either.
Which is frustrating, because he'll say it, once in a while. I love you. On New Years Eve, on Fugo’s birthday, like it’s a gift reserved for special occasions. When he says it, Fugo can see in his eyes, on his face- nothing. Stillness. The same empty, placid look he gets when he reads off lists, recites instructions, eulogizes at funerals. Like he's drawing it from memory. I love you. Only because he has to.
It’s frustrating. Giorno thinks he’s the only one who notices things.
...
Fugo thinks maybe he shouldn’t care about it, that its a non issue. He shouldn’t care, but he does. It doesn’t look like love, and he can’t seem to find it, even when Giorno’s face is hanging inches away in the air above his. He knows his own face is full to bursting with love, love, love. Mista told him once - yeah, dude, it’s totally obvious. You get, like, starstruck. He can’t help it.
And Giorno’s is the same as always.
When he starts to kiss Fugo’s neck- in that too-gentle way he knows Fugo can barely handle- his face is out of sight. Fugo thinks it shouldn’t matter, then, what expression he has on. This is what love feels like, isn't it? Giorno knows him, knows how deep the collars of his shirts are, which marks will show and which won’t; knows when and how to slide his hands down to Fugo’s hipbones, which buttons to press now and which to leave for later.
Being known and being loved are next door neighbors. It isn’t such a big deal.
...
Giorno buys him things. Fugo doesn’t care for gifts- at least, not from him. It reminds him too much of his parents, buying him pastries for getting a good report card, and of Buccellati, rewarding him with three course meals for being such a good, reliable right hand man.
He does not want rewards for being a good, reliable fuck.
But he says thank you anyways, and lets Giorno clasp a silver Rolex onto his wrist.
He picks up a Cosmopolitan magazine from the grocery store, the front of which shouts Find out your Love Language! It seems like pop psychology bullshit, but he's in love and desperate, and temporarily banned from the library for quote unquote causing a disturbance. Which means serious psychology is off the table, for now.
Giorno’s love language is gifts, he decides. He takes ten-question personality quiz- thank god he doesn't have to do any real self reflection- and discovers that his own love languages are Words of Affirmation and Quality Time. If he flipped to page forty of the cosmo he could find out which celebrities he has this in common with.
He buys Giorno a vase. He already has enough flowers, and never enough pretty things to hold them in. It is crystalline, with looping roses carved into the sides. The design reminded Fugo of his hair.
“Oh,” Giorno says when Fugo sets it down on his desk the next morning. “My. Thank you.”
He takes a handful of pens from a drawer immediately and makes them into a bouquet for the vase. When he looks up, he’s smiling. Soft and small, no teeth. Fugo can’t help but feel he is smiling at his own handiwork, rather than at the gift.
“It’s very pretty.”
He gives Fugo a peck on the cheek.
And that’s it.
...
Fugo is trained, now, to not hurt any living thing around Giorno’s villa. Not the ants, not the flowers, not the beetles; he avoids stepping on the grass if he can help it. Lest the damage come right back at him. Lest Giorno tell him off for it.
He drives somewhere far, far away from anything Giorno owns in order to pluck the petals off a daisy. Picking, he loves me, he loves me not.
It’s simple and its dumb; of course a flower can’t tell him how Giorno feels. But then, maybe it can. Giorno can say how a flower feels, can’t he? Who's to say the same won’t work in reverse?
It’s more of a nostalgic comfort than anything. Back before Giorno, Fugo would compulsively tear and pick at the plants around him. Pulling up the grass where he sat, plucking leaves off bushes as he walked by, snapping sticks and branches just to hear the crunch. To say he left a trail of destruction is...true, but an overstatement. It was only human nature that made him do it, not a blind sense of rage. Narancia liked to rip up grass, too. Mista liked to pick flowers.
Now- because all the plants are Giorno's, and hurting Giorno is simply off limits- he has nothing but himself to pick and pull at. The skin around his fingernails, the inside of his lip, the hair on the nape of his neck.
The first daisy said, loves me, the second said, loves me not. Fugo realizes that he made the stupid decision of gathering four flowers, and this could very easily peter out to a draw.
Mista would scold him.
The Rolex shines hard and unnaturally polished in the sun, silver glint against the matte white of the daisy petals. He is alone, sitting on the grass. Halfway through the third flower, he begins to feel guilty.
Giorno’s love language is gifts, and he buys Fugo things. By all accounts, that should mean love. Whether his face says it or not, whether Fugo can see it all the time or not. Maybe his feelings aren’t readable through his eyes, but he speaks it through the fancy watches and nice restaurants. That is how it works, right? Was that not good enough for Fugo?
He leaves the last two flowers in the grass, one intact, one half plucked.
(But the third flower would have said loves me, he calculated ahead, and that makes it easier to stop)
His arms get itchy as he drives home. He doesn’t even swat at mosquitoes anymore.
...
He’s crying. He does this sometimes- cries in front of Giorno. He can't help it. Usually he tries to get somewhere else before it happens, before the tears start falling, but Giorno will follow him. Fugo suspects, cynically, that he likes to see the spectacle of messy human emotion. Then feels guilty for thinking that a second later.
He is curled in on himself on one end of the couch, hiding his face, trying and failing to catch his breath. The living room of the villa is so big and so empty, the sound of his wet hiccups echo back at him, as if he is entirely, totally alone.
Giorno is on the other end of the couch, sitting quietly, not touching him. Fugo doesn’t even have to see his face to know what it looks like.
“Dammit,” Fugo mutters, and his voice is so high and silly sounding with tears. He sounds like a leaky faucet.
Giorno ought to know what’s wrong, because he knows everything. He shouldn’t have to ask, but he does, anyway. Because he’s a sadistic prick. “Would you like to talk about it?”
Fugo gathers together some pride and stands to leave, his face all hot and splotchy and undoubtedly bright red from crying. “No.”
Giorno grabs his wrist before he can take a step. It is the first time he has touched Fugo since he started crying.
Maybe it wasn’t really all that obvious this time, Fugo thinks. All that had happened, from Giorno’s perspective, was Fugo gave him a desk clock and then broke into tears. He could see how that might be confusing.
But for Fugo, it hadn’t just been the gift. It had been Giorno’s face when he got it- barely even a smile this time. And it was Giorno’s face over dinner the night before, and in the morning, in bed, and over coffee on Tuesday- always the same. Fugo could make a flipbook of his expressions, and it would look like a still image. A feather-light smile and sparkless eyes. He was reaching for something that wasn’t there, chasing something that may very well be unattainable. It was frustrating and it hurt, and he kept going despite it.
“Fugo,” Giorno says, and it's a command. When he asked to talk about it, it wasn’t so much a suggestion as an order. Orders are what Giogio gives when he has nothing else.
Fugo stands there a second, weighing his options, considering whether Giorno’s face would contort if he ripped his hand away. He is immune to orders, usually.
“Do you love me?” he blurts out, and it sounds so reedy and weak and nothing like he intended, when it bounces off the walls back at him. So he swallows, takes a breath, and says again, quieter, “Do you love me?”
Giorno’s face actually shifts at that. A raise of the eyebrows, a parting of the lips. The natal stage of surprise. For a moment, Fugo thinks he might get something- some feeling- out of him.
And then his eyes soften back to empty. Back to zero. “Yes,” he says. His voice doesn’t echo like Fugo’s does. “You know I do.”
Fugo takes his hand back gently. He does know that, but he doesn’t feel that. Which is where the problem lies; love, he is pretty sure, is more about feeling than knowing. Feeling- something they are both unskilled at in different ways.
He wipes his face and the watch scratches his skin. He leaves the room and his footsteps echo back to him.
...
Giorno sends him a gift within a few days. Gets it delivered to his apartment. Express shipping.
It’s a shiny, gold astrolabe with a note atop the packing peanuts.
I do love you
-G
Fugo assumes that the astrolabe is meant to finish the sentence- as much as all the stars in the sky. He just knew Fugo would be able to figure that out on his own.
He puts the note by his bed and the astrolabe on his mantle. It sparkles in the morning light, but he cares more about seeing the note, handwritten in blue ink and torn at one edge, taped up on the wall. First thing in the morning, last thing before sleep. If not in Giorno's voice, then at least in his hand; I do love you.
...
If there was ever a person who was better at feeling than knowing, it’s Mista. When Fugo gets a chance, he pops the question to him, “What does love feel like?”
He is the control group.
Mista doesn’t even hesitate, doesn’t even ask why he’s asking, “Like your heart’s on fire, I heard that in a song once.”
Fugo rolls his eyes. “What do you actually think, though?”
Mista rubs his chin. “Like the other person is your home.”
“...Did you hear that in a song, too?”
Mista laughs. “I did, but it’s true, isn’t it? I think love feels like you’re a magnet, like you always wanna be together. How does it feel when you’re with Gio?”
Magnetism is one way to put it. On fire is another. Really, it feels like Giorno has the entire world circulating around him. Beyond his pretty face and his sweet voice, it always seemed like to love Giorno was to love life itself, something Fugo had never been capable of before.
And life was staring him in the face, incapable of loving him back.
Mista doesnt seem to mind when he can’t come up with a response. Instead, he sits Fugo down in the kitchen and plays him a Carpenters record. “This’ll explain it,” he says. And then, “Listen, are you listening?” he’s getting all misty eyed and it’s only the second song, “you can hear the love and the heartbreak in her voice, can’t you?”
Fugo says nothing. He can hear it. He can even hear the mimic of it in Mista’s voice when he sings loudly and roughly along. It’s more love than he hears in Giorno’s voice in a whole month.
When tears start to prick up in his eyes, too, Mista spins over and rubs his shoulder, eyes shining for a whole different reason.
“Yeah,” Mista sniffles, “you get it.”
They stay there in the kitchen until the entire record plays through. Mista dances and sways on the tile, crooning along with Karen Carpenter. Fugo watches idly from the table, wondering how it can be possible for someone to have so much love within them they can pull it out just for a song.
...
He waits a while before he asks Giorno. It’s nighttime when he does. The clock that he bought is displayed on the desk, porcelain and hand painted, inlaid with gold. It reads 11:36.
He has stayed late, late enough that he’s likely going to sleep over, so it is probably not a great time to go asking uncomfortable questions. But he does anyway. Head rested down on his arms on Giorno’s desk in an all-too-unprofessional manner, he asks, “What does love feel like?”
He is the experimental group.
Giorno pauses. Or rather, his pen does, for just a second. “One of life’s great mysteries,” he says to his planner, and the pen resumes.
“What do you think? If you had to explain it?”
Giorno puts the pen down. Turns to look at Fugo head on. “Are you asking how I feel about you?”
Fugo sits up straight, then. He has to; there is a challenge in the question. “No. I’m asking what love feels like. To you.”
Giorno looks at him for a long moment, something alight just behind his eyes that makes Fugo much too excited.
Maybe his heart is on fire. He thinks. And then, maybe he’s angry.
Either way. There is feeling there. Perhaps not love, but feeling.
The clock ticks between them, one second then five, and Fugo begins to feel the same way he does when he nears the end of a complex equation.
“...do you know?” he asks.
Giorno turns away, shuts his planner with the messy notes, and stands. “Let’s discuss this later.”
It’s enough of an answer. Fugo feels victorious regardless.
They go to bed, Giorno leaves darker marks underneath where Fugo's collar starts, and they don’t discuss it. Not then, not later, not ever.
...
“What do you think it feels like?” Giorno asks him, weeks later, when they are in the car together. Blissfully and assuredly alone, for once. “Love.”
Fugo sighs. He wishes he had Mista’s Carpenters CD to play. He doesn’t know, either.
“Comforting, supposedly,” he stares at the lights of nighttime traffic illuminating the steering wheel, his hands, his watch, “frustrating in reality.”
“I frustrate you?” Giorno asks beside him. He’s not even phased, just amused.
“Endlessly.”