Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bruno Bucciarati really needed a break. 

He sighs, pressing into the gas pedal. The stolen car shudders and protests as Bruno urges it to accelerate without much luck. It wheezes a dying breath as it speeds down the road, bringing Bruno closer to his next victim. The final one for the night , he hopes.

He had been sent out to collect money from a low-level gangster, a middle-aged man by the name of Giovanna, Bruno recalls. He had a reputation to be a wild card when it came to his drug trades. Some customers would report him to be hostile and brash, quick to use his fists at any back-talk or complaints. Others claimed that he was a friendly, relatable guy who would give them quality products for reasonable prices. 

He doesn’t know what to make of the guy.

By the look of the grainy photo that was paperclipped to his file, he had an unkempt, rough appearance. Folds and grime painted the skin around his sunken eyes. His greasy hair was sloppily slicked back in a way that made Bruno want to grimace; the slightly smug expression tacked onto his face gave Bruno the impression that Giovanna would be one of those arrogant bastards that he loathed dealing with. 

Bruno pulls up to the man’s neighborhood, easing the car to a stop with a last agonizing rattle. He climbs out and hastily glances around the immediate area. The buildings are small and rickety, worn from time and lack of management; ivy and grass had started sprouting in the cracks of the plastered road and crumbling walls. In all honesty, Bruno doesn’t know what else he was expecting.  

As he walks to the doorstep, Bruno collects himself. He slips into his best authoritative, somewhat intimidating persona. Usually, with the cocky ones, he’d have to use a bit of fear and force to finish what he came to do. 

He curtly raps on the door before stepping back. Inside, there’s a small ruckus. Bruno hears a crash, a thump, and a subdued curse before stumbling footsteps approach. The door is forcefully flung open, and Bruno finds himself face-to-face with Giovanna. 

The overwhelming stench of beer is what Bruno notices first, followed quickly by a faded white shirt stretched over the man’s burly, muscular frame. Worn, loose pants rode low on his hips, barely held up by a gaudy belt. He was exactly as repulsive as his picture made him out to be.

At first, the man regards Bruno with an accusatory glare before seeming to realize who Bruno was. His face fell. The man steps back a bit, gesturing lazily to the living room with a gruff “Come in.” 

“I assume you know why I’m here.” Bruno takes a seat and watches the man slump onto the couch across from him. He grunts before turning to nonchalantly face Bruno. 

“Passione sent you, right?” Giovanna’s hand moves to harshly drag down his face. “Look, I’m a bit short on cash right now, but I got some valuable antique shit. Family heirlooms from my wife’s side. It should be worth a hefty amount. What d'ya say?” 

Bruno inspects him carefully, staring into the other’s beady eyes. He knows for a fact that Giovanna has enough money; Bruno had seen his plump wallet and plenty of white envelopes of cash scattered across tabletops. He tried not to think too hard about where the money came from.

“If you want to sell your drugs on Passione’s turf, you must be willing to pay for it. If you fail to do so, we can easily eliminate you. I’m sure you’re well aware of this,” Bruno says coolly. Giovanna scowls at him, heaving himself to his feet. He trudges over to a nearby cabinet, rummaging around for a second before retrieving a few objects. The objects are dumped unceremoniously into Bruno’s lap before Giovanna collapses back onto the ratty couch behind him. 

Bruno carefully traces the object’s surface. They appear to be a few ladybug-shaped brooches. The body of the ladybug is made from a deep blue gemstone that Bruno suspects to be sapphire. It’s nestled in a frame of gold, and a delicate black arrow shape is set into the center of the ladybug. They were… beautiful.

 Bruno considers the three brooches and their value. They seem to be authentic. He wonders briefly why Giovanna would want to get rid of them when he so obviously has enough money to pay Bruno with cash. Besides, he hadn’t missed the way Giovanna quickly discarded the brooches onto Bruno’s legs, as if it physically pained him to be holding the objects. 

“Pretty, aren’t they?” Giovanna’s restrained voice breaks the silence. Under normal circumstances, Bruno wouldn’t accept this form of payment without further interrogation, but he’s tired and irritable; he really doesn’t want to be around this sleazy man longer than he has to. It’s been a long day. Definitely too long to be dealing with a greasy bastard like him.  

Gathering the brooches and zipping them into a pocket in his jacket, Bruno stands to leave. He can’t help but notice Giovanna’s apparent relief at his departure, so he pauses and turns back around. His eyes narrow in suspicion.

“Just a small reminder. If you sell outside of your designated areas or fail to pay next time, there will be consequences, Giovanna .” 

Bruno sees himself out the door before the man can realize that his wallet—which had previously been securely tucked into his pocket—was now laying innocently on the coffee table. 

Franco Giovanna practically deflates with relief as soon as Bucciarati left. He tries to ignore the small jolt of dread he feels at the sight of his wallet on the table—how had Bucciarati gotten hold of it?!—and reaches for his half-empty bottle of beer instead. The man had unnerved him to hell and back, and Franco could only pray that he hadn’t let it show. Now that Bucciarati had left, the ache of unease in his stomach slowly began to recede. Fucking Passione bastards and their creepy aura.

Franco has heard the rumors about Bucciarati; he was incredibly observant and strong, and he had a mysterious, horrifying ability to move things in ways that shouldn't be possible. Groaning slightly, Franco snatches the wallet off the table and shoves it back into his pocket. Bucciarati was no doubt a force to be reckoned with, and Franco hopes that he won’t have to deal with that prestigious bastard again. 

“Who was that?” Franco’s head snaps up to find his wife, Simona, entering the room. She’s in a form-fitting dress, complete with heavy makeup and her hair twisted into an elegant up-do. Franco narrows his eyes. 

“Where are you going?” 

“Out.” Simona returns his glare while sliding on a pair of bright red high heels. She makes a big show out of it as if to punctuate her point. Spiteful bitch. “You didn’t answer my question. Who was that?”

Franco bites back a sharp reply, instead opting to toss back the remainder of his beer before responding. “Some bitch from Passione. Came to take the payment.” 

Simone scoffs. “Franco, you know how I feel about collectors coming to our house—” 

“I got rid of the brooches.” He smirks, watching as Simone whirls around and finally gives him her full attention. 

“You what ?” 

“I gave him the brooches as a payment. They’re gone.” Franco pauses. “ He’s gone.” 

Simone’s face is unreadable. There’s a hint of relief with an underlying note of something Franco can’t quite place—if he didn’t know any better, he might think it was akin to sorrow. 

She stands still for a moment longer before straightening and draping a fur coat across her shoulders. Simone places her purse on her shoulder and reaches for the door. 

“I’m going with some friends for a couple of drinks. Don’t wait up for me.” Her eyes bore into Franco’s, daring him to stop her from leaving. There’s a pregnant pause before she steps outside and slams the door behind her. 

Franco wants to go after her and slap that pretentious look right off her pretty little face. How dare she act like that?! Franco provides everything for her, and that little bitch acts like she can come and go as she pleases—as if she hadn’t walked into his life, dumped a sniveling little brat on him, and stolen half his income. Sure, he wasn’t stupid, and he knew that she was only using him for his bank account, but at least in the beginning, she had given him a run for his money. 

Whatever. He won’t let her ruin his good mood. After all, tonight was a night for celebration! Bucciarati had just taken care of the little... problem that Franco and Simona had been trying to get rid of for five whole years. Franco chuckles to himself and gets up to retrieve another alcoholic beverage. 

The Giovannas had finally disposed of the wandering soul of Haruno Shiobana. 

“I’m home!” As soon as Bruno steps inside his gang’s current safe-house, he’s met with the mouth-watering scent of whatever Mista had made for dinner. The group had decided that living together would be the safest and most convenient option. Not only were they able to communicate about missions easily, but it was great for bonding as well. 

Bruno smiles to himself as he slips off his shoes, placing them neatly among the messy pile by the door. When he comes home, it feels like his team of misfits has become a nice little family. 

He walks into the kitchen, where the rest of the gang was gathered. Fugo and Narancia are quarreling over something—a science question, Bruno guesses, as he glances at the open textbooks littering the worn kitchen counter. Mista is scooping food into mismatched serving dishes and taking them to the table where Abbacchio is already sitting. Abbacchio takes a sip of tea before noticing Bruno. One side of his purple mouth quirks up into a small smile, and Bruno can’t help but melt a bit. 

By now, the others have noticed him. 

“Oi, Bucciarati’s back! Welcome home!” Mista’s loud greeting catches Narancia’s attention. The small teen ignores Fugo’s retort and slams into Bruno with a giant hug, leaping at him with such speed he almost loses his balance. Bruno laughs and ruffles Narancia’s hair. 

“Hello, everyone. Thank you for making dinner, Mista.” Bruno helps the gunslinger take the rest of the plates to the table, and everyone sits down. The swell of chatter resumes after they’ve all gotten situated, now joined by the Sex Pistols’ squealing as they fight over food. 

It’s delicious. Bruno and Abbacchio do the dishes together when everyone has finished. As he finishes drying the plates, Bruno’s mind drifts back to the brooches. He still has them, tucked safely in one of his many hidden zippers; he wanted to check their credibility before sending them in as payment. Unconsciously, his brows lightly furrow. If the brooches turn out to be imitations, Giovanna would have absolute hell to pay. 

“Bruno? Is everything alright?” Abbacchio’s voice carries a worried note to it, though anyone who didn’t know him as well wouldn’t notice on account of his usual gruff tone. Bruno is shaken out of his thoughts and turns to Abbacchio with a gentle expression. 

“Yes, I’m alright.” He pauses for a moment to place the last glass in the crowded cupboard. “Hey, Leone, are you good at distinguishing real gemstones from imitations?” 

Abbacchio hangs up the damp towel before turning to Bruno. “Yeah, I’m not too bad at it, had to do it sometimes back in the force. Why?” 

“Got some ‘valuable’ brooches as a form of payment today. The man was acting a bit strange during the payment, so I wanted to make sure that the gems were legitimate.” 

Abbacchio nods. Bruno leads him upstairs, into his study, and places the brooches onto his desk. Abbacchio drops a small suitcase with magnifying glasses and similar utensils down on the wooden tabletop.

 After a thorough inspection, the two decide that the brooches are, in fact, authentic. Stepping away from the table, Bruno regards the objects with furrowed brows. He still didn’t feel like he could trust the jewelry... Abbacchio studies his face but says nothing as he waits for Bruno to speak. 

“Why would he pay with the brooches instead of money? He’d obviously had enough in cash… Something isn’t adding up.” 

Abbacchio hums and tucks a stray strand of pale lilac hair behind his ear. “This is indeed an odd form of payment, but I think you’re reading too much into this. People do unpredictable things while under the influence of drugs. Besides, there may be a bad memory associated with the brooches.” 

Bruno considers this for a moment, then slowly nods. The room settles into a contemplative silence for a little while, and then Abbacchio starts to move to the door. 

“I’m going to do some reading in the living room. Get some sleep, you worry too much. Goodnight, Bruno.” He reaches for the doorknob. 

“Goodnight,” Bruno says, watching the other open the door. “And… Leone?” 

The other pauses in the doorway, turning his head to look at Bruno. 

“Thank you.” 

A shy smile dances across Abbacchio’s lips before he disappears down the hallway.

Bruno is getting ready for bed when he first feels... it. The back of his neck tingles with the sensation of eyes on him; it causes his stomach to sink in the way that it does when a mission starts to go south. It’s unsettling, but the gaze doesn’t feel hostile. This leads Bruno to assume it’s one of the younger team members searching for comfort. 

He turns to the door, expecting to see Narancia or Fugo trembling in the hallway, ready to console either boy after a nightmare, only to be met with…

Nothing. 

Bruno freezes in his place by the dresser. What the hell? He still feels like he’s being watched, potentially from a corner, or even from outside, so he slowly scans the room. It doesn’t seem like anything is out of place, but this wouldn’t be the first time a threat wasn’t so obvious 

He cautiously moves to check any potential hiding spots he knew of. Bruno even pokes his head into the hallway, only to find it dark and quiet, eerily so. Finally, he steps back into his room and shuts the door behind him, feeling... unnerved. A sigh escapes his chest. 

It’s probably nothing. As Leone said, I worry too much. I suppose I’m more tired than I thought. 

Bruno tries to ignore the sensation of those same eyes boring into him as he attempts to fall asleep.

Chapter Text

The next incident occurred a few days later. 

Fugo groans groggily, bringing a hand to his head as he sits up in his bed. He blinks a couple of times, eyes bleary and gaze still unfocused, and leans over to click on the lamp at his bedside table. It feels way too early to be up yet. The house is still silent and dark; only the creaking of the wooden window covers shifting against a slight breeze outside verifies that this isn’t some kind of dream. A glance at his alarm clock confirms Fugo’s suspicions—it’s barely past three AM. 

Yawning a bit, Fugo swings his legs over the side of his bed, bunching up his heavy blanket against the drywall in the process. If he’s up, he might as well get some water. His throat is  parched. A small chill shudders through his tired limbs, so Fugo tosses on a well-worn sweatshirt before shuffling down the wooden stairs. 

To his surprise, Bucciarati is already stationed at the counter, nursing a cup of tea, both of his hands hugging the warm porcelain. He looks up when Fugo pads in, offering an exhausted smile. 

“Seems like I’m not the only one who can’t sleep tonight, Fugo. Would you like some tea?” Fugo nods absentmindedly, and Bucciarati stands to get out a mug and a teabag. The faint scent of chamomile wafts from the small paper box in Bucciarati’s hands. As he turns the kettle back on, he gestures for Fugo to take a seat. Fugo complies. 

“Is everything alright? It’s quite early.” Bucciarati’s tone is gentle. He pours some steaming water into the mug before sliding it to Fugo with practiced ease. The lamp overhead flickers faintly as it sways.

“Yes... I just wanted something to drink. Too cold to fall back asleep.” Fugo accepts the mug gratefully, cradling it in his hands to savor the warmth. Despite the sweatshirt, he’s still freezing, and a small shiver runs through him. Subconsciously, he wishes he had put on some warm socks as well.

“The house has been fairly frigid lately. I should turn the heat up,” Bucciarati muses with an apologetic smile. He takes a sip out of his mug, appearing to be lost in thought. 

The two of them sit in silence for a few more minutes, occasionally drinking their tea. Fugo takes comfort in Bucciarati’s silent presence. It’s soothing, a quality rarely found from anyone else on their team, and soon Fugo finds himself trying to stifle a yawn. 

Bucciarati chuckles, lightly placing a hand on Fugo’s frigid shoulder. At first, he stiffens at the touch, but then he relaxes and leans into it. Bucciarati looks at him with a caring gaze. 

“You should go to bed if you’re tired, Fugo.” 

Fugo hums a bit in response, then downs the rest of his tea. He stands up and places the mug in the unusually dish-free sink. 

“Goodnight, Bucciarati.” 

“Sleep well, Fugo.” 

When Fugo gets back to his room, something catches his eye. One of his precious botany textbooks lays at the foot of his bookshelf. It’s face-up and opened, removed from its usual space in-between the law and calculus books he’d kept from his time in university. Fugo stares at it for a bit, eyebrows bunched up with confusion, before leaning down to pick it up. 

Hmm, that’s... odd. Did I forget to put it away? No, that couldn’t be right. Fugo hadn’t recently read any of his botany books. Did it fall because of the wind?  

Whatever. He slides it into the small gap between two other plant-related books where it had previously been. He was too tired and too damn cold to care. 

Fugo searches for another blanket and dumps it on his bed with a yawn. He gingerly crawls under the covers, and within minutes he’s fast asleep again. 

The next day, Mista and Narancia had been sent out to track down a small group of guys causing trouble in an elderly neighborhood. It wasn’t a big deal, but one of Bucciarati’s patrons had called him and expressed their concerns with a teary voice—if there was one thing Bucciarati couldn’t resist, it was a person in need. There was a reason he had such a positive and trustworthy reputation, after all. 

Bucciarati himself had holed up in his room to do some paperwork, leaving Fugo and Abbacchio to have a rare quiet afternoon in the living room. Abbacchio is sprawled across his favorite armchair, engrossed in his book. Fugo mirrors him on the couch, relishing in the silence.

Eventually, he gets up for some water, dog-earing the page he was on, and quietly stands. Abbacchio doesn’t even glance at him, and Fugo fights back a small smile. The older man seems almost peaceful, completely taken in by his book. 

Fugo has just finished filling a cup with water when Abbacchio calls out to him. 

“Fugo?” 

The boy in question returns to the living room, peeking around the corner. “What?” 

Abbacchio has brought the book away from his face, eyes settling on Fugo. He has an odd expression on his face, lipstick-lined lips curving into a frown. 

“What is it?” Fugo presses. That odd expression lingers for a moment longer before Abbacchio shrugs, shakes his head, and returns to his book. 

“...Nothing. Could’ve sworn you were standing behind me.” 

Fugo grunts a bit, snatching his book off the coffee table. 

Abbacchio doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the afternoon, but Fugo catches him glancing over his shoulder every once in a while. 

When Fugo wakes up the next morning, he’s feeling pretty good. He can hear the muffled sounds of conversation downstairs in the kitchen, mixed with the promising crackle of dough in a hot pan. When he creaks open his door, the sweet scent of pancakes greets him. 

However, his pleasant mood is instantly soured when he gets downstairs. 

Two of his textbooks about types of wildlife are stacked on the coffee table. Not even just one, but two. And they’re not the light kind, either. Irritation begins to boil under his skin. How many times does he need to tell the gang not to touch his books without permission?

Not to mention that the books definitely weren’t there last night. That means that someone must have gone into his room—without his knowledge—and taken the books without asking him. Whichever fucker moved them didn’t even have the decency to put them back like a sensible person.  

The irritation swells into a simmering rage. He bursts into the kitchen, expression dangerous as he scans the room for his suspect. At this point, he’s practically ready to explode.  

“Who the hell was reading my books?!” The room falls silent as everyone’s eyes turn to Fugo. The attention makes him twitch a little with discomfort. 

Narancia rolls his eyes and stuffs a monstrous bite of pancakes into his mouth. Fugo locks onto his new target, storming across the room. On his way to Narancia, he snatches a fork off the table. 

“Narancia, you bastard! How many times do I need to drill it into your tiny ass head to ask before using my things?!” 

Narancia bristles, shooting out of his seat within seconds. He jabs an accusatory finger in Fugo’s direction and yells to defend himself. 

“I didn’t do shit to your stupid things, Panini-Head! Stop being such a paranoid asshole and get someone else to blame your shit on!” 

Fugo actually growls. “Like hell, you didn’t! Two of my books are sitting on the damn coffee table! Who else do you suppose would put them there, huh?!” 

"You know I can't read, bitch—"

Narancia yelps a bit as Fugo snatches him up by the collar of his shirt, kicking and pushing in a fruitless attempt to free himself. Fugo draws back his arm to plunge the fork into Narancia—

—and is stopped by Bucciarati. 

Fugo lets the older man take the fork out of his grasp and lets go of Narancia. The boy scurries back to his seat, glaring at Fugo as he crams another giant bite of pancake into his mouth. Fugo flips him off. 

“Fugo, calm down. The books were already there when we woke up, we thought you left them there last night?” Bucciarati’s attempt to diffuse the situation fails miserably. Fugo whirls around to him with a murderous glint in his eyes.

“I did nothing of the sort, Bucciarati,” he spits, “which means that one of you touched my books without my permission. Stop playing devil’s advocate and at least let the fucker own up to his stupid mistake! ” 

Narancia mutters something under his breath, and Fugo immediately turns to attack him again. The squabble continues for a few more minutes. Somewhere along the line, Mista is dragged into the fight, and soon all three of the youngest members are shouting at each other relentlessly. Bucciarati is trying desperately to break it up, and Abbacchio stays seated, scowling as he cranks the volume in his headphones up another couple of notches. 

When a pancake becomes airborne, Abbacchio draws the line. He stands up and slams his hands on the table. The silverware clatters. A plate comes dangerously close to toppling off the table. 

“ENOUGH!” His booming voice immediately quiets all shouting. “ Shut UP! Can’t I just eat breakfast in fucking peace?!”  

The room freezes—Fugo swears that he can see his next inhale come out as a white cloud—and Fugo can’t help but feel a sense of dread settle in his bones. Everyone begins to guiltily sit down, careful to be as quiet as possible. The tension in the air is so thick that you could cut it with a knife. 

The rest of breakfast is eaten in uncomfortable silence. Fugo finishes hastily and cleans up his dishes. He immediately heads for his room, pointedly ignoring Narancia’s accusatory glare on his back. He only stopped briefly to grab the damned books on his way…

But the books aren’t there. 

Fugo’s eyes widen and he frantically searches the living room for any trace of the books—to no avail. He can’t find them anywhere. Eventually, he gives up and returns to his bedroom with his hands curled into fists. 

When he enters his room, however, low and behold, there on the bookshelf, in their proper places, are the two books. Fugo stops in his tracks and stares at them in disbelief. 

What the hell?! Was he imagining the whole thing? Fugo tugs at his hair a bit desperately, unable to find a way to make sense of it all. Am I going insane? 

No, Bucciarati and the others saw it. Then… how could they have gotten there? Fugo groans. Either way, he owes everyone an apology now. Great.

After the fight in the kitchen, the botany books remained untouched. 

Chapter Text

Mista is bored out of his mind.

As much as he dislikes getting shot by his own bullets, at least those kinds of missions were action-packed and exciting. Today’s mission was a far cry from the usual interesting missions—really, it was more akin to paperwork than anything else; Bruno had sent him and Abbacchio to deliver the protection money that they had collected this past week. 

He absentmindedly pats the outline of one of the brooches in his pocket, tracing along the rim of the intricate golden metal that encased the precious gemstone—an odd payment indeed. 

What kind of idiot would give something like this away instead of paying upfront?  

Mista suppresses a large yawn and kicks his feet onto the dashboard while trying to ignore the constant chatter of the Sex Pistols. After all, it wasn’t his place to decide about any old payment anyway. If Bucciarati approved of it, they might as well hand it over.   

Next to him, Abbacchio looks as if he were mere seconds away from committing deliberate vehicular manslaughter. Sure, the two of them normally got along okay, but they were both feeling irritable due to the insignificant mission. Of course, the Sex Pistols’ ear-splitting quarreling in a confined space wasn’t helping. 

“Christ on a bike, Mista, could you recall those little gremlins for five damn minutes?” Abbacchio’s hands clench the steering wheel with an iron grip. He’s trying very hard not to punch Mista, but the patience required to suppress that urge dwindles by the minute. 

Mista rolls his eyes. “Nah, it takes too much work. The bastards throw a tantrum when they’re recalled.” 

The grinding of Abbacchio’s teeth was audible. Mista winces slightly. 

The rest of the drive is spent in silence—at least from the two men. Abbacchio whips the car to the side of the road in a way that may have been on purpose, throwing Mista into the window. The car is forcefully parked, and Abbacchio steps out before Mista can even begin to yell at him. 

Mista leans casually against the trunk of the car as they wait for the person who was going to meet them. They’re in the middle of a busy shopping district, and people swarm around them. Some walk briskly, with purpose, while others lazily stroll around to waste time. Lucky bastards; none of them are stuck with this boring mission.

With the help of the Sex Pistols, Mista discreetly scans the area for any signs of threat. Sure, Passione’s funding team was trustworthy, but it wasn’t uncommon for members of a rival gang to try to attack during a money exchange. 

Ugh, this sucks! I wish I could do something more productive, like, I dunno, target practice? Anything but this. 

With a sigh, Mista begins to daydream to occupy his mind, unconsciously leaning more weight onto the car’s dusty hull. Huh. Have my arms always felt this light? It’s like they’re not attached anymore… Weird. Did they fall asleep or something?

“Oi, Mista. You doing alright?” Abbacchio’s voice snaps him out of his daze. He sluggishly turns his head to the older man, feeling his brows furrow into an odd, confused expression. The way his face warped felt almost unfamiliar, strangely distorted as if he were looking at a stranger.

“Yeah, I… uh—” Mista cuts himself off as his legs give out. First, a tingling sensation swallows his legs. Then it turns into a sharp stinging, burning away at every muscle he tries to move on his own accord and he feels like he’s going to faint from the unexplainable pain. What the hell?!

He opens his mouth to yell something at Abbacchio—to ask him for help, to do anything—but a chill sweeps over his entire body and he’s gone. 

Leone watches as Mista’s lips part, then lunges forward as the gunslinger’s eyes roll into the back of his head. Luckily, the older man is able to catch Mista’s body before his head connects with the hard concrete below.

“Mista? Hey, Mista! Can you hear me?” Leone refuses to admit that he’s worried. More tenderly than he’d care to acknowledge, he lowers Mista to lay on the ground, cradling his head. Moody Blues phases into existence behind him in an attempt to survey the area for any potential threats. He fishes for his flip phone in his pocket to call Bucciarati. 

It only takes a couple of rings for Bucciarati to pick up. 

“Leone? Is everything okay?”  

Leone grits his teeth, feeling around for Mista’s pulse as he spoke. “Mista passed out. It was out of the blue; he seemed completely fine earlier. I’m pretty sure he’s not badly injured, but we might be back a bit later than expected.” 

“Shit, alright. Do you need one of us to pick you up?” Leone could tell that Bucciarati was seconds away from grabbing car keys and speeding to them like a madman. Because nobody else was around to witness it, he allows his lips to curve into a fond smile. 

“No, we should be fine.” As if to prove his point, Mista begins to stir. “He’s waking up now.” 

“That’s good. I trust you to handle the situation.” 

“Of course. I’ll call if anything gets fucked up. Goodbye, Bruno.” 

“I’ll keep my phone nearby. Goodbye, Leone.” They hang up, and Leone fixes his attention back to the man squirming in his arms. 

Mista is staring up at him with wide, blank eyes. He promptly shoves himself away from Leone, standing up and swiftly brushing himself off. 

The movements instantly set off alarm bells in Leone’s head; they’re far too... graceful and elegant for this stupid brute. 

Mista doesn’t say anything. Instead, he tilts his head toward a nearby alleyway, squinting into the shadows with clenched fists. 

A few dark forms are walking deeper into the alleyway. From the size of their silhouettes, Leone assumes them to be two adults and a child. Considering how common drug trades with minors have become, Leone can guess why they’re in the alleyway. It’s a shame, but Leone doesn’t move. It’s not the reason they came here. 

However, Mista seems to have different sentiments about the situation. He takes off in a dead sprint towards the figures. It’s so abrupt that it takes Leone a moment to comprehend what had happened before he, too, is chasing after Mista’s shadow. 

It takes a few minutes to catch up to Mista. Leone rounds the corner, unprepared for the sight in front of him. 

The taller man holds the child—who is letting out muffled whimpers—at knifepoint, taking small steps deeper into the alley. Mista and the other man are both pointing guns at each other, fingers on the trigger. Leone sucks in his breath, preparing to shout something at Mista to snap him out of it—

—BANG!

Smoke curls out of the end of Mista’s pistol. The man with the gun immediately crumples to the ground, lifeless. Without wasting time, Mista rounds on the tall man holding the knife. A high-pitched squeal from the child escapes into the air, and a thin line of blood trickles down their neck. 

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Mista riddles the man’s face full of bullets, and he, too, collapses to the brick floor. The child trembles in fear for a split second before turning and scurrying away, tripping and stumbling as he goes, not once looking back. 

Mista briskly walks up to one of the dead bodies and begins to kick it. Leone is stunned. What the actual fuck just happened?!

The sound of fists hitting flesh brings Leone back to attention. 

Mista is straddling what remains of the tall man, pummeling its face. Leone steps forward and catches Mista’s wrists. He thrashes as Leone pries him off the body. 

Leone’s breath catches in his throat when he turns the boy to look at him. There’s pure hatred swirling in Mista’s deep brown-black eyes, and his malicious aura almost causes Leone to take a couple of steps back. 

Almost.

Instead, Leone begins to yell at him. 

“WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?” He shakes Mista by the shoulders as if for emphasis. “ We’re on a mission, damnit, and you should know better than to get involved in random shit that isn’t even our business!” 

Hold on, is that blood? Leone is snapped out of his rage when he notices a gash on Mista’s cheek. Damn, the knife bastard must have clipped him. 

He reaches out a hand to wipe away the blood…

…and Mista flinches.  

As if burned, Leone quickly removes his hands and steps away from Mista. He’s speechless. Mista and Narancia had always been the more touchy-feely members of the gang. They were always quick to dish out a pat on the bag, a hug, or even just lean into someone sitting next to them on the couch. Mista has never, ever flinched at anyone before. 

Mista watches him with wide, anxious eyes. He stares at Leone’s hands as if expecting to be hit. Leone’s heart clenches. Mista’s never shown any fear towards me before. Then why..?  

He watches, stunned, as Mista passes out again, tipping into the wall as his knees buckle under his own weight. 

Fuck.

Leone heaves the gunslinger into his arms and heads out of the alley. 

He shuffles back to the car in silence, leaving the corpses for the next unlucky bastard to find.

As he leaves, a pair of invisible eyes bore into his back. 

This is not the way Leone was expecting the morning to go. 

Once he had managed to carry Mista’s dead weight back to where the car was supposed to be, he realized that there was no car anymore. The collectors had probably gotten tired of waiting and took the payment, car and all. This left Leone standing in the middle of a busy street with an unconscious teammate and no way to get back to the safe house. 

I deserve a glass of wine when I get back. He looks down at Mista drooling all over his sleeves. Make that two.  

A few minutes and a stolen car later, Leone is on his way back to the safe house with Mista sprawled in the backseat. Bucciarati is on his way with one of the team cars to meet them halfway in order to shake off any potential unwanted pursuers. 

Despite Mista still being out cold, Leone can feel a set of eyes boring into his back. However, every time he checks behind him, there’s no cars or anything there. By the time they’ve reached the meeting place, Leone’s unnerved and just ever so slightly paranoid. 

He pulls up parallel to the white van (dubbed the Buccimobile by Fugo, surprisingly enough) and immediately gets out to transfer Mista into the new vehicle. Leone all but dumps Mista’s long, listless limbs onto the seat before slamming the door and climbing into the shotgun seat. 

Bucciarati takes off without warning, and Leone’s head is slammed into the headrest. He’s not sure whether he wants to laugh or start praying for his life. It’s comedic how horrid Bucciarati’s driving skills are; considering his gentle personality and bleeding heart, one would never expect him to be the type to nearly get into at least five car accidents on a daily basis. 

Despite flinging the van into a sharp U-turn at a lethally fast speed, Bucciarati looks relaxed (albeit worried.) He doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t need to. How tightly he grips the steering wheel says enough. Leone sits wordlessly as Bucciarati jerks the car, soaking up the reassurance that Buccciarati’s companionship provides.  

He gazes lackadaisically out the window, watching the city blur outside out the window. As the city bleeds into terracotta-colored suburbs, Leone begins to get distracted because of the occasional bright flower bed behind the glass. 

Leaning his chin onto the palm of his hand, he closes his eyes and sighs lightly. Bruno’s driving actually isn’t that bad. It’s kind of like a rocking chair…

“...ne. Leone, are you awake?” 

“ Hrrngh ?” If Leone was more aware, he’d be embarrassed at the noise that escapes his throat. As his eyelids flutter open, he’s greeted with the sight of Bucciarati leaning over him. Bucciarati is clearly trying to suppress laughter. 

Sensation returns to Leone’s body and he realizes two things: One, that his face is smushed against the window in a way that is not only incredibly uncomfortable but also very stupid looking, and two, Bucciarati has a hand resting on his shoulder. 

Stifling a yawn with the back of his hand, Leone sits up and glances into the backseat. 

Mista’s still dead to the world, snoring slightly. 

Leone grunts slightly, nudging Bucciarati out of the way of the open car door so he can get out. He yawns again as he stretches his arms above his head. Bucciarati still has an amused, slightly amazed expression dancing across his face.

“Leone,” he breathes, and Leone thanks the stars above to hear his own name falling off of Bucciarati’s tongue like a prayer, “ Only you would be able to fall asleep in a car with me driving, not to mention in a position like that .” 

Leone’s heart stutters.

Bucciarati’s delight is contagious, and soon, Leone feels his own lips quirking into a lopsided grin. 

However, the moment is short-lived as Leone catches himself. He schools his expression into neutrality and busies himself by dragging Mista out of the backseat without breaking his arms. Distraction, he needs a distraction. Anything to take his mind off the near-painful flutter in his chest.

Leone tries not to focus on how a brief crestfallen look flashes in Bucciarati’s eyes before he, too, regains control of his composure. 

“If you take him to his room and fix him up, I’ll explain to the others. I didn’t have time earlier because I left so quickly.” Bucciarati gestures to Mista’s cheek, which is still sluggishly bleeding. It adds to the endless mixture of unidentified stains seeping into the fabric of the bench-style seat.

Nodding, Leone hoists Mista into his arms. Bucciarati shuts the car doors behind them and leads the way into the house. 

It takes all of three minutes for the two younger boys to realize that something is wrong with Mista. Leone doesn’t stick around long enough to deal with them, but as he carries Mista into his room, he can hear Narancia’s shrill voice demanding information from Bucciarati through the walls. 

By the time Leone has patched up Mista’s cheek, Bucciarati has most likely finished debriefing the situation to Fugo and Narancia. 

As if they’d really listen to anything Bucciarati is saying right now. 

That means that Leone has roughly twenty seconds to prepare before the little goblins raid the room and pester him with unnecessary questions. 

As if on cue, Leone hears a flurry of footsteps rushing down the hallway. The door is flung open. 

“HOLY SHIT, IS MISTA DYING?” 

Leone has to close his eyes and take a couple of deep breaths to restrain from punt-kicking Narancia back out of the room, but he doesn’t want to have to fix up another senseless wound today. Fugo hovers behind him in the doorway, staring holes into Mista’s unconscious form. He wrings his hands slightly, shifting from foot to foot. The form of Bucciarati appears behind him and lightly places a hand on Fugo’s shoulder. 

“No, rat, Mista is not dying. You’d know this if you’d actually finished listening to Bucciarati.” Leone doesn’t even try to keep the exasperation out of his tone. He massages his temple. A headache presses painfully at the back of his eyes because apparently, his day wasn’t bad enough already. 

“Well, I know that Mista isn’t dying and I really did listen to Bucciarati, but just look at him! He’s all pale and shit and you brought him in looking like a corpse with blood all over his face and—”

“Narancia. I think we should let Mista rest. You can see him first thing when he wakes up, okay?” Bucciarati places his other hand gently on Naracia’s head (he has two hands for a reason, after all) and motions for them to go back into the living room. 

Narancia shoots Mista’s sleeping form one last, forlorn look before drooping slightly and following after Bucciarati.

Make that three wine glasses.

“He’s gone.” 

“He’s… what?”  

“He’s gone!”

Leone bolts upright from his spot on the couch, gaze snapping up to meet Fugo’s. The teen’s eyes are wide and slightly panicky, causing Leone to swear softly under his breath. The man gently slides Narancia’s head off his lap, replacing his legs with a pillow as he stands. 

It had taken a while to calm Narancia down after bringing Mista home. The kid had major issues with people as close as family getting sick or injured, and reasonably so. Leone knew enough about Narancia’s past to deem the borderline irrational fear as valid. 

To top it all off, Bucciarati had to leave to get groceries due to the fridge being more empty than Leone’s wine bottle after tonight. Fugo had been in charge of watching over Mista, and Leone had sat at the couch to comfort Narancia. 

He knew that he wouldn’t be anywhere near as good at calming hysteric children as Bucciarati, but Leone would be damned if he didn’t try. 

(Although he would rather be shot dead before admitting it, Leone did see Bucciarati’s little team as his family.) 

“How the hell is he gone?” Leone is already on his way to Mista’s room, Moody Blues’ power already thrumming under his skin. 

“I don’t know! I went to go to the bathroom and when I came back, he was just gone!” Fugo is on his way to becoming an anxious mess, his speech growing erratic just as much as his feet were becoming restless, so even though Leone wants to yell at him more, he simply scowls and heaves a long, agitated sigh. 

As soon as he reaches the bed, Moody Blues bursts into existence and immediately begins to rewind, whirring and occasional beeping noises filling the room. Its body mass morphs and stretches to fit the other’s proportions seamlessly as it shifts into the form of Mista’s body on the bed. 

Not-Mista twitches, then sits up, bringing a hand to his head. He looks around the room for a short while—probably finding it deserted—before heaving himself to his feet and stealthily creeping out the back door.

Leone and Fugo follow Mista’s replay as it sneaks outside, into the… garden? At this point, they don’t need Moody Blues anymore, because the real Mista is crouched by a dead rosebush, inspecting the branches. 

There’s a displeased pout tugging at the gunslinger’s mouth as he mournfully scoops up the decaying remains of the bush’s singular rose that had blossomed. An almost anguished veil fell over his expression as his thumb gently traces one of the fallen petals.  

It’s much more ominous than it should be. Leone inches toward Mista, carefully, preparing himself for either an attack or to catch him in case he passes out… again.

When Fugo hesitantly calls out Mista’s name, Leone instantly realizes that it’s going to be the latter. Mista turns to them in a daze, swaying as the whites of his eyes show. Leone grabs one of Mista’s shoulders at a breakneck speed to prevent him from falling into the thorns. 

He doesn’t completely pass out; just as soon as he begins to collapse, he flings out an arm and steadies himself against Leone’s grasp. 

Mista looks around, then at himself, confused. “Abbacchio? Why the hell are we in the garden at the safe-house? What happened? Why the hell is there a bandage on my cheek?” 

Leone can’t help but feel relieved. He doesn’t know what the fuck has been wrong with Mista today, but at least it seems like he’s back to normal.

 Fugo appears at their side as Leone helps Mista stand. (Leone can’t help but notice that Mista’s clumsy, stumbling actions are back, and it feels like a weight has been lifted off his chest.) Mista extends an arm across Fugo’s shoulders, leaning slightly into him for support. 

“We’ll explain in a minute. Fugo, help Mista inside and sit on the couch. Get him some water or something while I call Bucciarati.” 

The boys nod, hobbling back into the house. Leone watches them go as he brings his flip phone up to his ear. 

Out of the corner of his eye, something blue sparkles on the ground, right next to where Mista had been crouching, partially obscured by a few blades of grass. 

Leone raises an eyebrow and leans down to get a better look. The phone rings again as it waits for Bucciarati to pick up. 

There, on the ground, were the two brooches.

Chapter Text

Leone should really go inside. 

The others are waiting in the living room, and Bucciarati is on his way home from the grocery store. As soon as Leone had called him to tell him that Mista had finally woken up, the sharp clicking of Bucciarati’s shoes became audible over the phone as Leone assumed he sprinted to the checkout.

The team desperately needs to talk about what the fuck happened to Mista today. Leone had only told Bucciarati about Mista’s little… episode in the alley because he didn’t want Fugo or Narancia to worry about something that may turn out to not be that big of a deal, though the worry about the higher-ups suddenly missing a couple of men nags at his conscience. However, there was no way that he could deny that Mista sneaking into the barren wasteland that is the garden to crouch by a goddamn rose bush was not normal. 

He’s currently kneeling by the “goddamn rosebush,” inspecting the two brooches laying innocently in the dirt, tucked between yellowing blades of grass. What the hell? Weren’t we supposed to use these as part of the payment earlier?

Then, he remembers seeing Mista shove them into his front pant pockets earlier as they rushed to get out the door on time—Leone may have made a crude crotch joke or two as they left the safe-house. 

Of course, since Mista ran off to pull his little alley stunt before they could meet the collector, the brooches never got a chance to leave Mista’s grimy pockets. Leone was decidedly not looking forward to any calls from the finance division that loomed over the horizon.

Leone stares at the brooches, mind reeling with the desire for a proper explanation. They seemed to be responsible for most of the bullshit of the last week anyway. Running his fingers lightly over one of the brooches, an idea pops into his head and he jolts a bit, immediately jerking his hand away. 

Could this be a stand attack?

As much as he wishes it wasn’t, the idea could make sense. There have been plenty of occasions where Bucciarati’s team has found themselves as a target of a long-range stand user, not to mention the amount of work it usually took to find the users of object-bound stands. 

It was a massive pain, especially if the user wasn’t part of Passione or registered by the information division. It would take some time, and a whole lot of whining and frustration from all parties involved to track them down. After all, nobody knows how many innocent people have fallen victim to Polpo’s rabid stand. Black Sabbath would attack anyone and anything that witnessed the lighter being re-lit, which has resulted in the occasional bystander gaining a stand. 

Leone glances down at the brooches, which are cradled in his hands— when had he picked them up? —and sighs. They really are beautiful. The deep, royal blue of the sapphires is stunning, and Leone finds himself fascinated with the clean-cut and surprisingly undamaged detailing. 

Somehow, they have an elegant look to them, reminding him of a clean white suit with black details, a tattoo of a lacy sigil spreading across a toned chest, deep azure eyes peeking out behind long lashes—

“Shut the hell up!” he roars at himself. He smacks his temple with the heel of his hand as if it could physically remove any… unsavory thoughts about a certain team leader out of his mind—not like it has ever worked before. Then, he loosely wraps his arms around himself because it’s cold as balls out here. 

Has it always been this cold, or did the temperature plummet now that the sun is starting to set? 

In a feeble attempt to distract his mind, Leone picks at the dirt by the base of the rosebush. He pokes at some of the fresh sprouts peeking out from under their blanket of soil, and… 

… Wait a fucking minute. Sprouts?

Those definitely weren’t there a second ago. 

Leone feels his stomach twist with cruel uncertainty. Could it… be the stand user?

Though the air in the garden is calm and serene, he shivers. Without his permission, Leone’s body slumps forward with unprompted relief. Mentally, he bristles, because relaxing at a time like this feels so wrong, and he’s never been the type of sap to take comfort in the beauty of nature or some shit. Without warning, he’s reaching out a hand towards the rose bush, and fuck he’s not controlling it, he can’t mOVE HIS ARM—

The dread stirring in his stomach is shoved out of the way by sudden amazement. Under his hand, the dead branches of the rose bush are gradually... reviving ; it’s like watching a timelapse of a decaying plant in reverse.  He can do nothing except simply spectate as the small plant breaks the rules of time and space in front of him. 

Dainty blossoms of blood-red roses unfold across the formerly barren branches, and Leone is taken aback by the sheer purity of the flowers. 

Leone’s mind is a whirlwind of so many different emotions—confusion, fascination, fear—and he abruptly notices that half of them aren’t his own. 

They incessantly press at the back of his mind: Excitement for the brand-new rosebuds, grief because he can’t stay in the peaceful garden for as long as he wants to, despair because nobody cares enough to save him from this hell, and suffocating anxiety because oh, God, he’s stayed outside for too long and he’s going to come out and he’s going to be so, so mad —

At some point, Leone has fallen back onto his ass. He’s confused, scared, and frustrated because he doesn’t even know what the fuck he’s so afraid of. Trying to control his frantic breathing to no avail, he hunkers under the rose bush, hugging his knees to his chest and cowering. The brooches are held tightly in his shaking fists. 

Logically, he knows that this is just the work of a stand. This is nothing new he needs to be afraid of. He only needs to calm himself because he doesn’t know how the stand works, and this irrational, childish panic could end up injuring him… or worse. 

His body doesn’t seem to care much for his rational thinking though. Tremors wrack his entire frame, and Leone can hear his pulse pounding like a giant bass drum. Even so, he’s determined to regain control of the situation.

It takes a couple of minutes, but eventually, Leone is able to reign himself in enough that he’s not wheezing and struggling to breathe anymore. The trembling has subsided, minimized to a subtle shiver. Taking a deep breath, Leone prepares to stand up—

—and everything goes to shit. 

The sound of a door opening stops his heart. Pure terror slams into his mind with so much intensity that his lungs stop working. Leone begins shaking again, and it’s so violent that he thinks that he might cause an earthquake. 

This couldn’t possibly get worse, he thinks. 

He is so, so wrong. 

Shoes come into his field of vision and suddenly, Leone’s world is pain.

Aches of countless bruises hit him all at once, and he physically cannot breathe because there’s a weight on his trachea— holy fuck he’s being choked — and his back burns, burns, BURNS.

A whimper escapes his throat and he covers his head with his hands (as if that would really help) and cries. The rose bush swallows him whole and he can’t see the shoes anymore, but now it’s too dark and somehow being alone is even worse, and his back is still smoldering like he’s laying on sharp, hot coals—

Help me! he screams, but no sound comes out. 

Help me! he cries, as if anyone actually cares. 

Help me! HELP ME! he sobs, but he’s completely and utterly alone. 

Useless. 

Useless useless useless USELESS—

From the void, a hand clasps on his shoulder. Touch means pain, and he’s already in so much agony , so he lashes out. He throws the nearest thing with all the strength that he can muster, and it must have connected because he can hear the telltale cough of someone getting the breath knocked out of them. 

Still, the touch doesn’t go away. Arms wrap around him and pull him into a warm chest, and he thrashes hysterically because everything hurts. To his dismay, the grip does not loosen. 

All of the struggle abruptly leaves his body and he deflates. He simply sobs silently and braces for impact, preparing for the inevitable pain. 

But… a couple of minutes pass, and there’s still no pain. 

He’s cradled in someone’s lap, his head tucked into the crevice between their neck and shoulder. Strong, steady arms envelop him, and when he sniffles, the faint scent of seawater and an expensive sandalwood cologne surrounds him. 

A few more moments come and go, and though he anticipates it, there’s still no pain, no bruises or threats. 

He slowly cracks open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is white . 

Azure eyes meet bicolored gold-lilac. 

Looking directly into Bucciarati’s stupid, concerned, gorgeous face, Leone can only think one thing:

Fuck. 

Bucciarati had left to get some tea for the two of them, graciously giving Leone a moment to compose himself. 

He sits on the stone bench in silence, tugging a hand through his hair. A couple of thorny branches and crimson petals are removed by his trembling fingers. 

A few moments ago, he had literally been dragged out from inside the rose bush by Bucciarati. Leone had thought the rose bush swallowing him had been his imagination—as it turns out, the bush had suddenly flourished and grown around him like a protective dome. 

Burying his head into his hands, Leone isn’t sure if he wants to scream or sob out of frustration. His emotions feel like they’ve been stripped and scrubbed raw, leaving him with whiplash. At this point, he’s mostly just ready to sleep for the rest of the week. If he’s lucky the rest of the team will just forget about this little… incident while he hibernates. 

Apparently, Bucciarati decides that this is the perfect time to make a reappearance. 

He quietly sits down next to Leone, passing a steaming cup of tea into his hands. By the smell of it, it’s lavender with honey. 

Leone faintly thanks Bucciarati and stares at the cup in his hands. He still doesn’t trust his stomach to handle any of the beverage yet. Clearing his throat, his raspy voice breaks the silence. 

“I’m sure you’d like to know what the fuck just happened.” His voice is hoarse as if he had been screaming. Grimacing, Leone remembers that he most likely had.

Bucciarati hums lightly. “Well, yes, but I don’t want to stress you out. Panic attacks are not something to be taken lightly.” 

Leone can’t help but twist his face into a scowl. God, this is humiliating. 

They lapse back into a somewhat tense silence. Leone feels his mind drift back to his little… episode. 

I’ve never broken down that badly. Those emotions almost felt like memories… What the hell happened to me? Why was there so much pain ? 

Leone is fairly sure that it wasn’t him who caused the breakdown—No, he’s positive. Of course, he had his own decent share of trauma, but it didn’t feel like that .

 His was more of a crushing guilt or an endless abyss of depression, not some type of… childish panic . Besides, he had no way to explain the phantom pains that he could still feel tingling on his back; after all, he’d never had a serious injury on his back before. 

It had to be a stand. There was no other reasonable explanation. 

God, he was ready to just go to sleep and forget about this whole mess already.

“A penny for your thoughts?” Bucciarati’s gentle voice pulls him out of the hellhole that currently is his mind. “How are you feeling?” 

It just now seems to register in Leone’s mind how close Bucciarati is sitting to him. However, instead of going into overdrive as it might under normal circumstances, Leone found himself savoring the comforting warmth of another’s body. 

His stomach has now settled enough for Leone to trust it to handle the tea. He takes a long sip of the vaguely sweet, floral beverage and sighs, exhausted. There’s a contemplative silence as he tries to focus on the fading warmth in his throat, choosing his next words carefully. 

“I feel scared,” he admits quietly. Bucciarati places a reassuring hand over one of Leone’s own hands. The solid weight of Bucciarati’s palm over the backs of his own makes the ex-cop realize that his hands are still trembling.

 If Leone leans into Bucciarati’s side, seeking more physical contact to keep him grounded, neither of them point it out. 

“It was such intense… raw fear, but like nothing I’ve ever felt before. The closest thing I’ve felt to this was when I was in the force and my partner—” He cuts himself off and focuses on the way Bucciarati is encouragingly massaging the back of Leone’s hand with his thumb.

“The fear… It wasn’t my own.” Leone takes another sip of the tea, the feeling of Bucciarati’s colder skin over his own keeping him calm enough to speak. Peering over the rim of the mug, he inspects Bucciarati’s face. He had turned to look at Leone, dark eyebrows furrowing and lips parted with confusion. 

“What do you mean?” 

Leone pauses and takes a breath before responding. 

“I’m under the influence of an enemy stand. I must be. There’s no other cause for all this… nonsense that I can think of.” 

Bucciarati exhales, a bit forcefully, pinching the bridge of his nose. Leone shares the sentiment; enemy stand users are annoying and could potentially result in a lot of damage. Not to mention that if the user could track their stand, they were in possible danger already.

Then, Bucciarati begins to huff with light laughter. “That would certainly explain our new garden, wouldn’t it?” 

When he looks up, for the first time, he fully registers how much the former barren wasteland had flourished . 

The places where weeds and cracked soil had once been was now replaced by bright, delicate flowers, and healthy grass. Fireflies even began to blink from deep within the dense growth, reminding Leone that the sun had already set. 

In all honesty, it was… beautiful. There was a sort of ethereal feel to it, making the fact that Leone sat, leaning into Bucciarati’s side, feel all the more intimate. 

His chest aches with a fond emotion with such fervor that it nearly suffocates him. Leone almost goes to mentally beat it down, locking it away because there’s no way in hell that he should ever deserve to love anyone as angelic as Bucciarati, but… 

Fuck it. 

Leone can’t imagine anyone else better qualified to entrust his frozen, shriveled, battered heart to than Bucciarati. The man had saved him from the lowest point in his life. There was no doubt in Leone’s mind that if Bucciarati hadn’t found him that day, that he would certainly be dead, having drunk himself to death. 

Even if Leone wasn’t worthy of Bucciarati’s love, he owed it to both the man and himself to at least stop shoving his feelings away, to be honest . 

Leone leans over and plucks a daisy from its stem. He inspects the flower for a moment before reaching out and tucking it behind Bucciarati’s ear. 

Bucciarati freezes when Leone’s hands reach to his head. His mouth drops open into a surprised “O.” 

Leone cracks a small smile, inspecting his handiwork. He wants to take a picture to preserve this moment forever. (As he remembers Moody Blues, he realizes that he can .)

Bucciarati looks so damn pretty in the dim lighting, with his face tinged pink and a daisy tucked against the backdrop of his black hair, lightning bugs blinking behind him. 

It nearly makes Leone want to cry. 

Instead, his face splits into a wide grin. 

“It’s beautiful,” he breathes. 

Something unnamable flashes in Bucciarati’s eyes. Leone has a feeling that Bucciarati knows that he wasn’t talking about the flower. But then...

“Yes, the flowers are quite pretty.” And Bucciarati’s flushed face breaks into a grin of his own, and suddenly they’re beaming at each other, and one of them starts to giggle at the sheer absurdity of the situation and now they’re both laughing and Leone feels bubbly like a bottle of champagne. 

For just a moment, the panic of the day is forgotten. For just a moment, they’re just two twenty-somethings enjoying themselves in this paradisiacal garden.

Eventually, they’re able to collect themselves. Leone extends a hand to Bucciarati, helping him stand from the bench. They collect their teacups. 

“We should go in and talk to the others about the stand attack,” Bucciarati says. Even though there’s still some remaining mirth in his tone, the words are sobering. Leone nods curtly. 

Before they step inside, Leone pauses at the door, gripping the handle tightly. 

“Thank you,” he breathes. Bucciarati simply smiles at him. 

“Always.” 

With that, they step inside, walking to the living room. The three younger boys are sprawled across the couch, watching some sort of loud action movie. (Hopefully, the sound effects were so deafening that they hadn’t heard Leone screaming earlier.) 

Leone can feel Bucciarati stealing a couple of glances as he smirks to himself. He knows he’s being uncharacteristic, but he’s too tired to care.

Besides, Bucciarati still has the daisy in his hair.  

“Mista, Narancia, Fugo, can you pause that for a moment? There’s something we need to talk about.” There are a couple of groans at Bucciarati’s words, but they comply. 

Even if this stand user does end up putting the gang in peril, Leone knows that they’ll pull through. 

After all, they’ve got Leone, and he won’t let anything stop him from protecting his family.

Chapter Text

“So, what’s all this about, Bucciarati?” 

The whole team is gathered in the living room; Narancia is sandwiched between Mista and Fugo on the couch, with Bucciarati and Leone situated on the loveseat across from them. The two older men were acting kind of strange, and Narancia had a feeling that whatever Bucciarati had called them here to tell them was going to be bad news. 

Bucciarati heaves an almost inaudible sigh, glancing at Abbacchio. The other man is slumped against the back of the couch, frankly looking… exhausted as shit. Narancia would giggle at the way Abbachio’s eyeliner is smeared across his cheeks, but it almost appeared as if he’d been crying. The thought was worrying. 

Abbacchio gives Bucciarati a slight, jerky nod, and Bucciarati turns back to face the rest of them. 

“For lack of better wording, I’ll be blunt; I think we are under the attack of an enemy stand user.” 

The responses are immediate. 

Next to him, Mista heaves a loud groan, and on his other side, Fugo bolts upright in his seat. Narancia simply sits there, dumbfounded, unsure of how he should be reacting. 

Sure, enemy stand users were dangerous, and if they’d found the safe-house… But Bucciarati didn’t look too concerned, so maybe it’s not too bad? 

He’s about to open his mouth to ask if they want him to scan the area with Aerosmith when Fugo begins to frantically talk over him. 

“What information do we already have? What events have happened that made you come to this conclusion? Do they know where we are? Do we need to find a new safe-house—”

“Calm down, Fugo. Breathe.” Bucciarati doesn’t stand from his spot next to Abbacchio, but his voice is soothing and his gaze is comforting. 

“Leone and I think that it’s a long-range stand. Most likely, the user doesn’t know where we are yet, so we still have time to get to the bottom of this before any serious harm can be done.” 

Fugo shakily sits back down. Narancia turns to him, unfurling an arm with the intention of slinging it over Fugo’s shoulders. He silently asks for permission with his eyes, only finalizing the contact after Fugo gives him a small nod. (It makes Narancia kind of sad that Fugo is still hesitant with physical contact; after all, hugs are awesome! But if Fugo isn’t ready yet, Narancia will continue to ask before touching as many times as Fugo needs.) 

Now that Fugo has been pacified, Narancia can finally ask his question! ...wait, what was he going to ask again? 

Oh, yeah! 

“Hey, Bucciarati! Do you want me to scan the area around the house with Aerosmith for any potential creeps?” 

Bucciarati hums thoughtfully. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. Go ahead, Narancia. Thank you.” 

Narancia excitedly detaches himself from Fugo and excitedly bounds to the door. He throws it open, then extends his arms to make a runway for Aerosmith. The plane erupts into existence, soaring into the sky while the sound the door makes as it hits the wall slowly echoes away. 

As he settles back onto the couch, Narancia lowers the monitor over his eyes to check for any suspicious amounts of carbon dioxide. 

Ever the optimist, Mista finally decides to speak. “Cheer up, guys! With Narancia’s tracking abilities, Fugo’s intelligence, Bucciarati’s level head, and my Pistols, we’ll be able to take out this guy in no time!” 

“What about me, brat?” Abbacchio shoots Mista with a lethal glare, and Mista throws up his hands in surrender, practically sweating bullets. 

“Sorry man, but until we get a better lead, your Moody Blues won’t be able to do shit—” 

As Abbacchio moves to stand up, growling threats at Mista, Bucciarati immediately cuts the two off.

“It would be a good idea to share any information that we have so far. From there, we can start to do some research.” He turns to Abbacchio, gaze unreadable. “Since you’ve been there for both of the... events , would you mind sharing what you know?” 

Abbacchio clears his throat slightly before recounting Mista’s odd behavior that morning. When he reports how Mista had ran off into the alleyway and killed two men, Mista pales as if he’d seen a ghost. 

“H-hey, are you sure that was me?” His face had fallen from his usual carefree expression, worry and fear instead creasing his features. “I don’t remember any of that, and I’m pretty sure that I would have remembered fucking shooting two guys. The last thing I can recall was feeling all light-headed and tingly before there was a stinging pain and I passed out.” 

“Well, if a stand forcibly took control of your body, it certainly wouldn’t be painless ,” Fugo muses. Narancia stands up to recall Aerosmith, having found nothing worth raising suspicion on the small screen in front of him. He’s already tuned out the conversation. 

Jeez, what a snoozefest. I don’t know why I still have to be here, it’s not like I’m actually going to be able to help with the research. That’s Fugo’s specialty. All I’m good at is hunting down the damn guy… 

Narancia is about to call out to Bucciarati and ask if he can go get a snack when something Abbacchio says catches his attention. 

“It felt like, for a moment, I was someone else . There were emotions so strong that they were almost memories , and the most predominant one… was fear. ” 

If Abbacchio’s face showed any emotion or discomfort, nobody pointed it out. 

“The plants in the garden began to flourish without explanation. I think it would be pretty safe to say that the enemy stand’s power is to blame.” Abbacchio slumps back into the couch, crossing his arms over his chest. It was obvious that he was done talking. 

“Wait, do you think that this has something to do with my books?” Fugo asks, eyes wide. There’s a tense silence in which everyone contemplates the idea. 

“I thought that stands only had one power?” Mista finally huffs. Narancia sits uncharacteristically silently, most of the conversation going over his head. Even so, Abbacchio’s words had triggered a thought, nagging at the back of his mind… Restless, he keeps fidgeting with his hands. 

“Well, yes. But we might be thinking too hard about the individual effects, instead of the big picture…” Fugo’s face lights up. “I know what it is! The stand’s power is manipulation!” 

Understanding dawned on Bucciarati’s face. 

“That would make sense. It can move small objects, manipulate the growth cycle of plants, manipulate a person’s mental state… You’re on to something, Fugo! Great work!” Fugo preens under Bucciarati’s praise. 

But… 

Moving small objects? Feeling memory-like emotions, projected into your brain with seemingly no explanation? 

To Narancia, it feels eerily familiar. Something like this has happened to him before, when he was in jail with an infected eye and burning with a fever… 

He was so, so cold and lonely. 

The jail cell was cramped, dark, and damp, which only added to Narancia’s complete misery. He felt weak and exhausted all the time, and he had no appetite for the slop that the wardens had given him for “food.” 

With lots of time on his hands and no blanket to block out the cold, he used fond memories of his mother to chase the chill away. 

A sense of love so strong washes over his trembling body, filling him with a comforting warmth. It’s the kind of love that only a mother caring for an upset child can provide. 

This doesn’t make sense, Narancia is neither a woman nor does he have a child of his own—or even a sibling, for that matter. 

He wraps his arms around himself, and instead of his arms, he feels his mother’s. 

“Mio passerotto, my sparrow,” he whispers to himself, repeating the affectionate nickname that his mother had murmured in his ear countless times before. 

At the time, Narancia had convinced himself that it was all just a cruel fever dream; some desperate attempt his brain had made to distract him from the isolated shithole he was stuck in.. He wouldn’t dare let himself hope that it had been his mother’s spirit, watching over him… 

When he had woken up, his mother’s favorite silk handkerchief was clutched to his chest, slightly torn and muddy. 

This situation felt all too similar. 

Narancia clears his throat. 

“Uh, guys? I have an idea.” Uncertainty is laced into his tone. 

“Oh? Let’s hear it,” Bucciarati says. 

Narancia pauses, bouncing his leg. Everyone had fallen silent, their eyes boring into him. 

“I… think we’re dealing with a ghost.” 

Within seconds Abbacchio wheezes with laughter. Mista joins him, clutching at his belly to stabilize himself. Fugo looks at him, dumbfounded, and Bucciarati frowns slightly. 

“Dude, spirits aren’t real,” Mista chortles, trying to catch his breath. Abbacchio wipes his eyes slightly. Narancia bristles. 

“They are real! The ghost of my mother—”

“Mista’s right. Ghosts haven’t been proven to exist, Narancia. It’s a stand attack.” Fugo’s voice is calm, patient, similar to when he’s trying to explain a math problem to Narancia. 

“Shut up! I know what I’ve seen! Bucciarati?” Narancia turns to the man, hoping that he would back him up. However, Bucciarati simply sends him an apologetic look. 

They... don’t believe me? Narancia’s face falls. He understands that it’s a natural reaction for the team to be doubtful—after all, they’ve never experienced what Narancia had in the jail cell—but it still kind of hurts. I’m probably overreacting. Of course it’s not a ghost, that’s stupid.  

Memories of his childhood friends sending him looks of pity and disgust flashed through his mind. They didn’t believe you either when you told them you were framed. 

Dejected and watery-eyed, Narancia stands up abruptly. He turns his back to the team, trying not to wipe his eyes in an obvious motion. 

“I’m going to bed. Tell me when you guys need my help, ‘kay?” Narancia is already halfway up the stairs, tears spilling over, before anyone takes the chance to tease him. 

He shuts the door to his room and leans his back against it, listening to his own shaky breaths in the otherwise silent room. He can hear the faint murmur of the others’ voices echo from the stairwell, reverberating through the floorboards. 

  That was pretty childish, he chides himself. He slaps his face into his hands, muffling a quiet groan. Narancia sniffles slightly and roughly scrubs at his cheeks, smearing away the wetness welling in his eyes. 

God, I hate crying. He hates the feeling of tears clinging to his face. He hates the way his eyes get all raw and puffy and how his nose begins to run. He hates how his throat stings and closes up and forces him to gasp in shaky, stupid breaths. He hates the vulnerability, the shame, and the humiliation that he feels afterward.

He’s not some little toddler who needs to be coddled after he trips or a kid who lost his favorite toy. He’s an adult, a dangerous mafioso. He isn’t weak like that.

More than anything, he hates how there’s nobody but himself to wipe away the tears. 

Narancia flops face-down into his bed, not even bothering to change into his pajamas. Shoving his face into his pillow, he allows himself to cry. 

He’s lost track of how long it’s been when his eyes finally start to dry. A dull, tired ache settles over his body like a depressing blanket. His mouth feels like sand, and he knows that he’s dehydrated, but he doesn’t care enough to get up for some water. Maybe he just doesn’t want the others to know. Instead, he rolls over, resting his cheek on a small patch on his pillow that isn’t wet, and tries his best to fall asleep. 

The cold is the first thing Narancia notices when he shuffles awake. Although his blankets are still tucked up carefully around his shoulders, he shivers underneath them. He can feel goosebumps all over his body. Reaching up to rub at his eyes makes him wince. His fingers feel like ice. 

The next thing he notices is Mista towering him over, trying to conceal laughter behind a hand. Narancia sleepily blinks up at him for a moment before Mista pats his shoulder. 

“Morning, sleeping beauty. Abbacchio told me to wake you for breakfast. He made frittatas, and they’re actually not half bad. If you don’t hurry, I’ll feed your plate to the Pistols.” This is enough motivation to get Narancia scrambling out of bed, the cold quickly forgotten. Mista snorts as Narancia chases him into the hallway, tripping over his blankets. 

“By the way, nice flower crown,” Mista teases, reaching to ruffle Narancia’s rat’s nest of hair. 

Narancia sends him a confused look. 

“Haah? Flower crown?” He brings a hand to his head, feeling the telltale tangle of stems and the smooth texture of flower petals. When did that get there? And who would even… 

They round the corner to the kitchen and it dawns on him. It was Abbacchio! He must be trying to apologize about last night. (God knows that the man would rather be shot dead than caught giving a verbal apology, so he makes up for it with kind gestures instead.) Narancia doesn’t know what put the man in such a generous mood, but he wasn’t about to complain. 

Abbacchio is sitting at the table, across from Fugo, sipping at his coffee, nose buried in a newspaper. When Narancia barrels into him with a hug, it’s a miracle that none of the scorching hot liquid spills on either of them or the paper in his hand. 

“Abba! Thanks for the flowers!” However, all Narancia gets for his efforts is a hand crammed into his face and an annoyed grunt. He whines as he gets pushed unceremoniously onto the floor. 

“What the fuck? Get off of me, rat. I didn’t make you a flo—” Abbacchio is cut off as Bucciarati rounds the corner into the kitchen. He scans the scene, eyes hovering over Abbacchio’s outstretched arms and Narancia sprawled across the floor with orange flowers in his hair. 

“Leone, play nice,” Bucciarati sighs, resigned, before sitting at the table and digging into his breakfast. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. Fugo and I have narrowed down a list of about 20 suspects; we’ll investigate the first ten today, and the rest of them tomorrow. Eat up, it will be a long day.” 

The flowers don’t even cross Narancia’s mind again until hours later, when he’s walking into some type of apartment building, trailing after Abbacchio. The gang had split up to track down all the remaining suspects before the day reached its end. 

So far, they’re on their seventh suspect, and they’ve had no luck. Sure, all the people had some sort of debt to Passione, and so now they didn’t have to be dealt with later, but it was still tedious. 

“Hey, Abba, did you really not give me the flower crown this morning?” 

Abbacchio peers into an elevator before stepping in and motioning for Narancia to follow. 

“Of course not. You’re still thinking about that? Focus on the job,” he grunts, jabbing at a button. 

Narancia groans, consciously resisting the urge to press all the other buttons. “But the job is booooriiiiiing.” 

“Better than waiting around like sitting ducks for the stand user to kick our asses while we sleep,” Abbacchio retorts. The elevator dings softly as if to punctuate his point. 

Narancia doesn’t even have time to think of a reply before Abbacchio steps outside. 

As they walk down the dimly lit hallway to their next target’s door, his ghost theory drifts back into his mind. A flower crown would be a small enough object for a spirit to be able to move… 

The idea doesn’t seem quite so far-fetched anymore. 

“Ready?” Abbacchio asks, stopping in front of a particularly inconspicuous metal door. Narancia nods at him, and Abbacchio raises his fist to knock. After all, they should at least attempt to be civil before beating up the guy. The door is flung open unceremoniously, and a bellowing clash resounds through the building. 

But instead of being met with a man, as they expect, they’re met with a gun. 

The man’s stand has something to do with x-ray vision, so he already knows Narancia and Abbacchio’s positions. If they don’t act fast, they’re going to be absolutely riddled with bullets. 

Abbacchio thrusts Narancia to the floor seconds before a slew of gunshots ring out into the air. The gun withdraws into the darkness of the room, presumably to reload, and Narancia stands up. 

He looks at Abbacchio with sheepishly excited eyes. 

“Permission to turn him into swiss cheese?” 

“Sure, gremlin.” 

Narancia unleashes a wide, feral grin and extends his arms into a runway. 

“Blow him to hell, Aerosmith!”

If Narancia had been uncertain earlier, he sure as hell was positive of it now. 

There was a ghost haunting them. 

Flowers are scattered across Narancia’s bed and floor, and his breath puffs into the freezing air as tiny clouds. His conversation with Abbacchio from the day before flashes through his mind; the older man obviously isn’t the culprit to these floral gifts. 

Narancia can’t help but grin as excitement bubbles up in him. This is awesome! Am I some kind of ghost magnet or something?  

It’s not his mother, this much he can tell. Half of it is a gut feeling—this flower-bearing presence feels different, more… masculine but it also simply wouldn’t be possible . After all, Narancia watched her move on into the afterlife. 

“No, Mama! Don’t leave me again! Please!” A whisper of an icy hand brushes across his cheeks as if to wipe his tears away. 

“Narancia, you know I can’t stay. Even so, remember that I’ll always be with you. With this,” a breeze ruffles the orange scarf in Narancia’s hands, “ and in here.” 

There’s a light tap on his chest, just above his heart. 

“Now, mio passerotto, I must go. I love you.” 

Narancia’s breath catches in his throat while tears like heavy raindrops dripped down his cheeks. There’s still so much he wants to say! He wants to find a way to keep her here, to keep talking, to feel her affectionate touch… 

But deep inside, he knows that there’s no time. 

“I love you too, Mama. I’ll never forget you. I promise!” Although there are no windows or openings in the jail cell, a breeze swirls around Narancia’s face. It’s so, so cold, and the wind bites into his skin and his bad eye and he shields his face—

And it stops. 

He falls to his knees, suddenly feeling way too warm. She’s gone. Narancia wishes that she’d said something else; it feels too sudden. 

The fabric in his hands slips to the floor, and he drops his gaze to it. With a trembling hand, he picks up the handkerchief and begins to carefully roll it up. 

He blinks back tears as he ties the orange handkerchief in his hair. It feels foreign, an odd weight pushing his hair out at odd angles, but he leaves it because it reminds him of how his mother used to fondly ruffle his hair. 

Narancia wouldn’t have it any other way. 

As he stands from his bed, he peels off the topmost blanket and shakes it free of petals. Swiftly he drapes it around his shoulders in a fruitless attempt to battle the cold. 

“Thank you for the flowers,” he breathes into the empty room. His eyes scan the corners and shadows for any type of movement or sign that the ghost had heard him, a sign that he wasn’t just making this up in his head . 

To his disappointment, there’s nothing. Even so, Narancia isn’t ready to give up yet. Maybe the ghost is just shy? 

“I’m Narancia Ghirga! I’m seventeen, and in the mafia! But I won’t hurt you, promise!” He announces the words boldly into the frigid air and tosses in a wide smile for extra measure. 

But still, there’s nothing. Narancia settles on the floor, sitting cross-legged.

“If you’re shy, that’s okay. I’m going to keep talking, and if you want, you can stay and listen! I bet it gets pretty boring being a ghost.” It’s awkward to be talking to himself at three in the morning, and Narancia has to keep volume-checking himself so he doesn’t wake the others, but it’s actually kind of fun. Plus, the cold never goes away (which, with his mother, was the biggest indicator to tell if she was in the room with him) so he’s fairly sure that the spirit must be listening. 

For what feels like hours, he talks himself hoarse, telling stories about missions and his team, and by the time he starts to tire out, it’s almost five o’clock. He can still get at least some sleep. Narancia yawns loudly, standing up from the icy hardwood floor. His bones creak slightly as he hobbles back into bed. 

“I’mma go back to sleep. G’night,” he slurs as he slumps to his pillow. 

As he drifts off, he can swear that there’s a pair of eyes watching over him, like some kind of guardian angel. 

He doesn’t actually see the ghost until a couple of nights later. 

During the day, he was occupied with the wild goose chase that Bucciarati sent them on, investigating people he found suspicious and occasionally beating them up. When they got back to the safe-house, Narancia would bug them to quickly eat dinner, and then he’d hole himself in his room to try to talk to the ghost. 

Last night, he’d even pestered Bucciarati into letting him get a picture book, which he’d left at the foot of the bed. In the morning, the book was neatly closed, a daffodil resting innocently on the cover. 

Narancia’s room was now filled with flowers. He’d smuggled any type of vase or cup that he could find from the kitchen, filling them with the numerous bouquets that had appeared each morning. A half-finished game of checkers lay scattered on the floor, where Narancia had tried to coax the ghost into playing the game with him. It was kind of unsuccessful; the most he’d got was a plastic chip sliding a couple of inches across the board, but it still excited Narancia regardless. 

Tonight, when he had started to retell the Sex Pistol’s antics from lunch, the lights flickered. Narancia had frozen in place, confused, as the cold gradually faded away, leaving Narancia sweating under a comforter on the floor. 

Now, he’s running through the house like a madman, trying to frantically search for any cold spots. When he sprinted through the living room, where Abbacchio and Bucciarati were sitting on the couch with paperwork spread across their laps, the ex-cop mutters an off-hand comment, comparing Narancia to a frisky cat with the “zoomies.” 

Within a few minutes, Narancia has covered the entire property, and he still can’t find anything that might suggest where the ghost had gone. 

His mother had done this sometimes—disappearing without a trace, leaving a confused Narancia alone in his jail cell. Slightly dejected, he decides to just go to bed, figuring that sleep would be the best way to kill time as he waits for the spirit to return. 

After a quick goodnight to the team, he crawls into bed. For once, he doesn’t need the extra three blankets that he’d piled on top of the others, so he kicks them to the foot of the bed. 

He doesn’t realize that he’s fallen asleep until he wakes a couple of hours later. 

It’s just after midnight, and as the groggy haze of sleep clears from his mind, he realizes that something feels off.  

It’s cold again, and as Narancia reaches for the extra blankets, he feels the prickle of a gaze watching his movements. This in itself isn’t new, but right now, the gaze seems more… tangible?  

Narancia’s eyes strain in the dim moonlight as he blindly swats around his left to turn on the lamp residing on his cluttered bedside table. 

The first thing he notices is that the flowers are wilting. 

What was once a bundle of roses in a plastic cup is now a tangle of limp, browning stems. Decaying flower petals litter the surface surrounding the cup. 

What the hell..? 

Slowly, Narancia scans the room, finding that the rest of the flowers have found the same fate. A light dread seeps into his stomach. 

He sniffs slightly, noticing the stench of what seems to be cheap beer and toxically potent liquor. Narancia's eyes narrow.

And then, he sees it. 

There, in the corner by his dresser, is a small, child-shaped shadow. 

Anxiety suddenly floods through Narancia’s entire system, as if he had been caught doing something very, very wrong. (Somewhere deep in his consciousness, Narancia realizes that this isn’t his emotion.) 

Horror mixed with wonder and curiosity blooms in his chest. Half of him wants to walk up to the shadow, but the other, more childish half urges him to call Bucciarati. 

Eyes glued to the silhouette, Narancia feels around for his flip phone on the table behind him. Bucciarati had recently given the entire team flip phones, informing them explicitly that they were only to be used in absolute emergencies. 

Narancia figures this ought to be important enough. 

His trembling fingers dial Bucciarati’s number, and he raises the phone to his ear. The shadow is still standing, unmoving and small in the corner. 

“Narancia? Is everything alright?”  Bucciarati’s voice is rough with sleep. 

“I—” His voice feels weak. Narancia swallows, trying again with a tiny nervous chuckle. “Can you come to my room? There’s something you need to see, like, now.” 

Over the line, he can hear hurried rustling as Bucciarati gets up. 

“I’ll be right there.” Within seconds, the sound of light footsteps padding down the hall filters through the closed door. 

“Is it safe for me to open the door?” Bucciarati speaks in a low tone, but Narancia can still kind of hear him from where he speaks in the hallway.  

“Yes,” Narancia whispers into the phone. 

The door creaks open, and Bucciarati cautiously steps inside. He eyes the wilted flowers for a moment and looks around the room. His eyebrows furrow with confusion as he slowly steps closer to Narancia. He can smell cheap booze permeating the room. Is Narancia drunk?

“Narancia, what did you call me here for? I don’t see anything—”

“There.” Bucciarati is cut off as Narancia thrusts out an arm. He’s pointing to his dresser… 

Oh. 

Bucciarati’s eyes widen as he stares at the shadow of a child. 

“What the hell is that?” He breathes. Beside him, Narancia shivers slightly. 

“A ghost.”  

Bucciarati is too stunned to say anything. They turn their eyes back to the shadow, which is still standing lifelessly… 

BANG!

The drawers to Narancia’s dresser fly open and then slam shut again with an emphatic bang. The shadowy figure drops to the ground like a bag of bricks, and the two gangsters can see a flicker of black hair against pale skin. 

Its arms wrap around its stomach as it curls into a ball on the floor. The apparition now looks more visible, albeit a bit translucent. Slightly tattered, oversized clothing hangs off the child’s underweight frame, and dark splotches of what could be bruises litter its arms, legs, and throat. It shivers. 

Narancia and Bucciarati have to cover their ears as it lets out an ear-splitting shriek, like nails on a chalkboard. 

“PAPAAAAA!”  

Chapter Text

Ever since he can remember, Haruno has loved nature. 

The cheery colors of flowers and careless hum of insects have always been a nice constant, something that Haruno can rely on in his unstable world. No matter what kind of hell he endures in the evening, he knows that there will always be crickets and lightning bugs to soothe him to sleep, at least until the inevitable beginning of winter. 

Haruno hates the cold. 

Cold has always signified loneliness, pain, and heartache. The bugs and animals retreat into hibernation when it gets too chilly outside, abandoning Haruno until springtime, when flowers peek their delicate vibrant heads out from under their blanket of snow again. 

Cold signifies the shivers that wrack Haruno’s tiny, brittle frame, from malnutrition and fear, with ill-fitting clothes that are tattered from years of wear. Cold describes the way that Haruno’s mother looks at him with disdain when he’s crumpled in a bruised and battered heap on the living room floor. He doesn’t cry. Crying is worthless; this is a lesson he learned the hard way, even before he had been forced to learn a new language and move far, far away from the apartment that he had formerly dared to call home. 

Haruno and Giorno are one and the same. Like a phoenix, Giorno rose from Haruno’s corpse. Death should have been Haruno’s escape from his pitiful life, from the pain, the fear, the looming shadow of powerlessness that clung to his features; instead, his departure had gone... awry somewhere along the way, trapping him in the wretched limbo between life and death, somehow leaving him even weaker than before.  

The morning after he finally broke his tethers to his despised physical form, Giorno woke up, alive but not quite. When he padded over to look at himself in the mirror, an unfamiliar shimmering semi-transparent boy with locks like spun gold peered back at him with those same sea-green eyes that he was used to finding beneath a greasy curtain of raven-black hair. 

He shouldn’t have been as disappointed as he was to find out that his soul had somehow been bound to the very house that had caused his demise. After all, no matter where he goes, he can never escape the fatal bite of his step-father’s belt.

“PAPAAAAA!” 

Bruno winces at the ghost’s deafening wail. The sharp, childlike voice rang painfully in his ears, echoing in a seemingly endless stinging sensation.  I’ve got to make it stop. 

His eyes flit to the spirit, who is still huddled on the floor.  It doesn’t seem too dangerous, and if it wanted to attack us, it probably would have already… 

With a bit of determined curiosity, Bruno inches closer to the translucent body. It pays no attention to his approach, continuing to caterwaul and shiver. Slowly, he crouches down by the dark mass, extending an arm… 

His hand passes right through the meek outline of its body. An icy chill settles in the bones of his fingers when he pulls back. 

“What happened to you?” Bruno muses, slightly breathless. The ghost seems to react to this, and Bruno is roughly shoved away from the shadow by a drawer violently flinging itself open. As he collides with the opposite wall, the plaster cracks from the force of his body. Feeling small bits of the wallpaper crumble on and into his nightshirt, he can hear Narancia frightfully yelling his name. His ragged breaths leave faint clouds in the air.

Stunned, Bruno leans against the wall. Luckily, it doesn’t feel like anything is broken or bruised, at least in the moment. Whether the adrenaline dampens his perception of pain or not, there are more pressing matters at hand. He turns his attention back to the shadow, whose broken sobs are muffled by the shaking hand it had pressed against its mouth. 

“We aren’t going to hurt you,” Bruno murmurs gently. He has no idea how to deal with ghosts, but it’s dangerous in this state and needs to be pacified in one way or another. His best bet is to treat it as he normally would treat a hysterical child.

“What’s wrong? Do you want us to leave? Do you need help?” His only reply is more echoey whimpers. 

Leaning forward slightly, Bruno goes to ask another question—

—only to be cut off by the door to Narancia’s room flinging open with a loud bam!

“Bruno!” Abbacchio’s voice is booming, and slightly frantic, and its effect on the spirit is immediate. The ghost releases a blood-curdling howl of pure despair, and the overwhelming scent of alcohol increases so abruptly that it causes Bruno’s stomach to turn over. 

A sudden pressure encircles Bruno’s throat, throbbing painfully. A quick brush of fingers against the skin of his nape confirmes that it’s bruised. 

Ruffled with sleep and adrenaline from having woken up to the bloodcurdling screams of a child , Mista and Fugo crowd the doorway a safe distance away. With almost instinctual motions, Mista draws his gun while Narancia gestures frantically for him to put it away, that it’s worthless in a situation like this. Fugo is yelling and pointing at the apparition, who only screams louder in response, and Abbacchio is running across the room to Bruno’s side—

The screaming stops. 

The absence of sound is so sudden that it leaves a ringing in everyone’s ears. Bruno gapes at the empty spot on the floor where the ghost had once been—where it had disappeared without a trace. A spontaneous warmth floods back into the room, and Bruno feels a cold sweat break across his forehead from the long exposure to the freezing temperatures.

“What the fuck was that thing?!” Mista demands, finger still resting on the trigger. Bruno wants to answer but realizes he’s at a loss for words. The other members of the team find themselves in a similar state. 

Leaning against Narancia’s cupboard for support, Bruno begins to piece things together. With every passing second, some of the past few day’s activities are starting to make sense; being haunted by a ghost would certainly explain the cold spots, the sensation of being watched, the books, and Abbacchio and Mista’s odd behavior. Something to do with the garden and flowers, too, he thinks, glancing at the wilted mess in—a plastic cup? 

“...A ghost,” Narancia finally responds, breathless. Mista barks out a dry laugh and tugs his hat slightly with exasperation.  

“You’re shitting me, right? Now’s not the time to joke around, Narancia—” 

“He’s serious.” Bruno cuts in. Mista and Fugo whip their heads around to stare at him in disbelief, but Abbacchio simply rests a steady hand on Bruno’s forearm. Bruno leans into the other man slightly, bumping their shoulders together—a sign of silent support.

“I’m not sure exactly how I know, but whatever we just witnessed was the work of a spirit.” 

An indescribable feeling festers right beneath Bruno’s skin. He didn’t question the undeniable truth that… whatever he just saw was a ghost, similar to how nobody questions that grass is green or the sky is blue. Ever since his hand passed through the space where the apparition’s body should have been, it simply became a fact. 

With another glance in the direction of the corner by the dresser, Bruno sighs. “We’re going to have to change our plans.” 

Even though they had all gone back to their respective beds after the commotion in Narancia’s room, none of them had gotten any sleep. 

Around six-thirty, the sound of Narancia’s lopsided footsteps begins to rouse the team from their rest as they finally give up on the remaining hopes of rest. Narancia has various cups and flowers scattered in groups across the entirety of the kitchen counter. 

“I could have sworn those flowers had died,” Bruno murmurs, entering the kitchen. Narancia startles a little, turning around with a guilty grin, looking like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar. 

“I did too, but about an hour ago, it got really cold and they started blooming again!” 

Bruno hums with contemplation as he slides onto one of the barstools, as gracefully as he can in his sleep deprived state. Picking up a stray tulip, he inspects it carefully. Nothing seems too odd about it… 

“Narancia, you don’t seem too worried about this. I’d like your opinion; do you really think that this is a ghost?” 

Narancia’s head bobs in an enthusiastic nod. “Yup! I’ve experienced this sorta stuff before, y’know, when I was in jail!” 

Faint memories of stories Narancia must have told a while ago about seeing his mother’s spirit resurface in the back of Bruno’s mind.

“It was your mother’s ghost, wasn’t it? How did you know it was her?” 

Bruno can’t help but crack a small smile at the way Narancia’s eyes glimmer in the dawning sunlight. The boy looks overjoyed to talk about this topic. 

“I just sorta knew. She left me this—” with one hand, Narancia gestures to the headband on his head, “—and I would always get a feeling when she was with me.” 

He pauses for a moment, grasping for the right words to convey his thoughts, and haphazardly places a cup brimming with water onto the counter. 

“It felt like she was giving me a giant hug! But also not, because nobody was actually there.” Narancia begins to thoughtfully cram some flowers into the cup. “Whenever she was around, it would also get really cold.” 

This catches Bruno’s attention. “Cold, you say? Do you think the freezing temperatures could indicate the ghost’s location?” 

“Hell yeah!” Narancia shimmies into the seat next to Bruno. “I think we should get some ghost-y things. Stuff to communicate with it and see what it wants!” 

Oh no, Bruno definitely doesn’t like Narancia’s impish smirk . 

“Absolutely not, rat. You aren’t going to buy an ouija board. I’ll put up with all this other paranormal shit, but this is where I draw the line.” As Abbacchio groggily walks behind Bruno, his fingertips lightly brush Bruno’s shoulder in a silent gesture—good morning. 

A tingle climbs up Bruno’s spine when the hand leaves. 

“Aww, c’mon, Abba!” Narancia whines. 

“What’s Abbacchio prohibiting?” Fugo mumbles sleepily, shuffling into the room not far behind the older man. Bruno takes this as his cue to start making breakfast. He may not be that great of a cook, but he can at least make scrambled eggs. 

“I wanna try to communicate with the spirit, but Mr. Grumpy over here has a stick up his ass!” 

“Now listen here, you little—” 

Sensing a conflict, Bruno interrupts Abbacchio as he cracks an egg into a skillet. 

“I think Narancia’s on to something. The only way that we can find out what the spirit wants is to ask it directly, and we’re going to need any tools we can get. Unless you want to find a new safe house, hiring a paranormal investigator is out of the question. I don’t know about you, but personally, I don’t know too much about ghosts or how to communicate with them, so we’ll need to try to find as many tools as we can get our hands on.” Abbacchio grumbles slightly as Narancia whoops in excitement. The eggs in the pan sizzle quietly, returning some semblance of normalcy to the room.

“Fugo, would you be able to do some research on methods of contacting ghosts? I have a feeling that we’ll need a lot more information involving our little… guest.”  

At the mention of research, Fugo’s eyes shine. The boy’s complete hunger for knowledge still sometimes astounds Bruno. It reminds him of what caused Fugo to catch his eye in the first place. 

“After breakfast, we should all do our own investigation about spirits. Leone, I’d like you to do a replay of the room to see if you can get a better view of the spirit. Let’s meet in the living room to share our findings at noon.” Swift fingers turn off the stove. “Should someone get Mista?” 

By now, the eggs are done, and Bruno has scooped them onto plates. Fugo snorts slightly. 

“He’s brooding in his room, don’t bother.” 

“Maybe he would change his mind if I allowed you guys to go on a shopping trip…with my credit card.” 

The effect is immediate. Narancia shoots up and to attention, and although subtle, Fugo perks up a little bit. Bruno turns his back to hide the grin on his face. 

“Well, you coulda started with that!” Narancia cries. He practically soars out of his chair and into the hallway to rouse the sleeping boy, eager to spread the good news. 

“But what’s the catch?” Fugo asks, narrowing his eyes slightly. Ah, they know me so well. 

“I’m only going to pay for any equipment necessary for communicating with spirits. Any costs for extra items will be taken directly out of your next paycheck.” 

Fugo sighs, poking a piece of egg with his fork. “I knew it was too good to be true.” 

“I can’t believe that he would trick us like that!” Narancia groans in exasperation. Mista’s spoon strays into the vicinity of Narancia’s orange sorbet, only to be slapped away. 

“Hey, don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” Fugo replies, gesturing to the frozen treats that they all held. “Literally. We both know that he could as well have decided to make us pay for our own lunches.” 

“ Shut up, Panini-head! I know that! It’s just that shopping for ghost hunting material is so boring! And how does he expect me to focus when the video game store—with the newest Playstation release, I might add—is right there!” He points emphatically at the store’s cardboard display front and pouts. “What good is all this spirit stuff anyways? We already know there’s a ghost, so why do we bother with all this…” He gestures with his hands for a second. “Pseudo-sciency stuff?” 

“Well, you wanna talk to the spirit, don’t ya?” Mista asks, shoving the remainder of the gelato into his mouth. In response, Narancia rolls his eyes. 

“I already found a way to talk to the spirit, dipshit. Where else do you think all the flowers were from?” 

“Well, then what’s the spirit’s name? Why is it still here? Besides, wasn’t this all your idea?” At Fugo’s words, Narancia’s eyes grow wide. Caught. When Fugo’s face splits into a giant shit-eating grin, Narancia reaches over and yanks him into a headlock. 

“Alright, fine! But we can’t even get an ouija board because Abba’s got a stick up his ass!” 

Suddenly, Mista freezes. He turns to face the two younger boys, and the glint in his eyes is hellishly devious. 

“Who said we were the ones buying it? It is Bucciarati’s credit card, after all.” 

The words sink in, and Narancia begins to vibrate with excitement. 

Oh yeah, this is gonna get good. 

Thank god Bruno’s jacket had a high collar. 

Leaning closer to the mirror, Bruno examines his reflection. Gingerly, he reaches his hand up to brush his fingertips across the circle around his windpipe. The skin was deeply bruised, tinted a sickening color combination of maroon and purple blotches. 

Well, if he didn’t believe in the supernatural before, he certainly did now. I suppose if stands are real, ghosts aren't too far fetched...

Sighing, Bruno straightens again, sliding off the loose casual shirt that he had been wearing during the night. He had a meeting in less than an hour with Capo Polpo. Even with the rest of the team absent for the meeting, he couldn’t afford to get careless with his squad’s appearance to the rest of the gang.

A sharp twinge of pain shoots across his neck when he zips up the collar of his suit. Because nobody else is around, Bruno allows himself to wince slightly. God, these are going to take a long time to heal… 

“I’m sorry.” 

It’s less of a voice and more of a rustling, a whisper that easily could have been wind if not for the hissing articulation of the words. 

The hairs on the back of Bruno’s neck instantly stand up, and he bristles. 

What the hell was that?! 

Once again, he can feel a pair of eyes boring into him. Unconsciously, Bruno’s hand drifts back up to his throat. As soon as his fingers make contact with the skin, the voice responds. 

“..sorry…” 

Holy shit, was this the ghost?! 

“Hello?” Bruno calls. There’s an anxious urgency in his voice; he’s not entirely sure if he actually wants someone to answer. 

He waits for another tense, silent moment, straining his ears for any sign of another person around. Alas, the bathroom remains wordless, and Bruno slouches slightly. He can’t tell if it’s from relief or disappointment. 

Maybe all this ghost stuff really is getting to me… 

Bruno grabs a comb and turns back to the mirror, about to re-do his trademark braid—

—and sees another figure in the reflection. 

The comb loudly clatters to the floor. 

It’s a bit shorter than Bruno, and its expression is shrouded by the poor bathroom lighting. Golden curls spiral around its shoulders, and a ring of bruises perfectly identical to the one circling Bruno’s throat is looped around its otherwise flawless neck. Its bony frame is hidden under sheer billowy white sleeves, legs accentuated by form-fitting dark pants that fade into nothing. 

The apparition is... angelic . 

Bruno whirls around, staring at the space in the doorway that the spirit had occupied in the reflection. There’s nothing there. Yet when he turns back to the mirror, the figure is still there, standing dutifully. 

“What are you?” Bruno breathes. There’s something ethereal about this being, and its angelic appearance is drawing him in like a sailor to a siren’s call. The spirit’s blurry mouth opens, and there’s a slight inhale, and Bruno sways closer to the mirror—

“Bruno! What’s going on? Who are you talking to?” 

Abbacchio’s voice instantly snaps Bruno out of his spell. With a quick glance to the mirror, his stomach sinks—the figure is gone. 

Was it ever there in the first place? 

“It’s nothing! I’m just talking to myself!” Bruno calls back, heat rising to his face as he leans down to pick up the comb. How embarrassing. He caught you talking to thin air. 

As he stands up, a slight flare of color instantly catches his eye. 

There, on the counter, lies a small bundle of purple hyacinths— another apology .

“Okay, okay, we got the candles, the board’s set up... do we need some sort of blood offering or something? That’s what they always do in the movies. Here, I know my knife was in here somewhere…” Fugo and Mista groan and look away as Narancia emphatically shoves his hand down his pants. “Hey! Don’t act like that, Mista! You keep your freaking gun in your pants!” 

“Yeah, but guns have safety locks. Knives do not. How do you manage to like... not cut yourself?” 

Narancia waggles his eyebrows. “Maybe I’m just built different—” 

“Will you two shut up and focus?!” With a groan of exasperation, Fugo looks at them with the type of agitated expression that usually results with a fork in someone’s cheek. “I think everything’s ready. We just need...to start.” 

All three of them suck in an inhale; anticipation festering thick in the air. Fugo readies his journal, and Narancia and Mista place their hands on the planchette. Fugo clears his throat and begins. 

“Is there anyone here with us?” 

A tense moment passes, then two…

...nothing. 

Mista groans and removes his hand. 

“Ugh! This was anticlimactic. Maybe Abbacchio was right; an ouija board wasn’t the way to go. I don’t wanna be waiting around all day for a ghost that may or may not even exist! Besides, the Pistols are hungry. Tell me if anything happens.” He’s halfway up the stairs when Narancia suddenly squeals. 

“Mista! Get your impatient ass back over here! It’s moving!!” 

Sure enough, on the board, the planchette is slowly gliding to YES. Once it reaches YES, it settles there, and Narancia vibrates with excitement. 

“It said yes! Fugo, it said yes!” 

Fugo’s eyes bulge slightly and he leans in close to inspect the board. His eyes narrow suspiciously at Narancia. “Are you sure that you didn’t move the planchette?” 

To this, Narancia solemnly places his hands over his heart and shakes his head. “Nope. It 100% was not me.” 

“Keep your hands on the planchette! I get your point!” 

“Oops.” Narancia quickly puts his fingers back onto the planchette. “Okay, but ask another question! C’mon, Mista! ...Mista?” 

The teen in question is standing, clinging onto the stair railing, looking very pale. 

“If there’s a ghost here, then that means there’s four people. I don’t want to be in a room with four people.” 

“Don’t be stupid. We’ve already been in the room with four people for a while now. And besides, I don’t think a spirit is technically a person?” Fugo says, tapping his notebook with his pencil slightly irritably. Premade charts and space for lists are already etched onto the neatly formatted page. “Either way, we’re going to continue. You can either join us or not.” 

“...Alright.” Mista finally caves, going back to his place across from Narancia and settles his fingers on the planchette. 

“What is your name?” Fugo asks. Once again, there’s a pause, but then the planchette slowly begins to slide across the rows of letters. 

G. I. O. R. N. O. 

“Giorno?” 

YES. 

As Fugo scribbles the name frantically into his notebook, Narancia cheers. 

“Giorno! Nice to meet you! How did you di—” Narancia is cut off by Mista’s hand clamping over his mouth. 

“Dumbass! That’s rude! You’re supposed to ask questions like ‘are you going to hurt us?’ Because you need to find out the spirit’s intentions or someth—hOLY SHIT!” 

The planchette jolts to life under Narancia and Mista’s fingertips, sliding over to the NO. There’s a pause, and then it slides over to YES. 

“So… a maybe?” Fuge murmurs to himself before scribbling down another note in his notebook. 

“Giorno, is there any other way that you can communicate with us? Could you try flickering the lights or writing something in my book?” Fugo sets his notebook onto the table, opened to a blank page. He lays his pen across the page in an inviting manner. 

The lights flicker on and off again once, twice, three times. When they settle, and the notebook is basked in flickering candlelight, there’s a tiny scribble in a corner of the previously empty page. 

“Woah!” Mista exclaims. Leaning in close to inspect it, he realizes that it’s a little illustration of a ladybug. 

“You must really like nature, don’t you, Giorno?” Narancia beams as the planchette jolts to life underneath his fingertips. 

YES. 

“Suh-weet! Keep asking him questions, Fugo!” 

“Giorno, do you know how old you are?” 

1. 0.

A pause. 

NO.

1. 5. 

“You’re fifteen?” 

YES. 

Suddenly, the lights flick on, forcing the boys to blink as their eyes adjust. 

“What are you gremlins doing?” A deep voice echoes throughout the room. The three boys pale considerably. 

“Uhoh. Abba. Run.” In the blink of an eye, Narancia bolts out of the room. (Mista could have sworn that he left a Narancia-shaped dust cloud in the spot where he had been sitting.) Mista is about to follow suit, but Fugo roughly grabs his wrist. 

“We have to say goodbye,” he hisses. Mista looks between Fugo, the board, and back again. With a shout of “goodbye!” he shoves the planchette onto the GOODBYE and moves to hightail it out of the room. 

Unfortunately for him, Abbacchio catches him by the back of his sweater. 

“I thought I told you brats not to get an ouija board!” 

“Well, technically we didn’t buy it, Bucciarati did,” Fugo pipes up matter-of-factly from where he still sits on the floor. 

Abbacchio stands perfectly still for a moment, the information sinking in. Finally, he grits his teeth and shoots the two teenagers a murderous look. 

“You have ten seconds to run.” 

“So you three were able to successfully contact the spirit?” Bucciarati stands leaning slightly on the wall as he looks over the three teens sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the couch. From the corner of the room, Abbacchio eyes them from his perch on his armchair. 

“Yes,” Fugo responds. “I took notes, if you’d like to read them.” 

He gestures to the notebook that lays innocently on the coffee table between them. Bucciarati smoothly walks over, picking up the small journal and flipping through a couple of pages. 

“Giorno, 15, likes nature. Is this all you got?” 

“Yes. I had many more questions planned, but someone decided to interrupt our little seance.” Fugo’s eyes flick over to Abbacchio, who meets him with an equally aggressive glare. 

“Alright. And since you got a positive response from the ouija board and ghost writing, you’d like to try this ‘spirit box?’” 

“Exactly. The spirit box may be an extremely easy and efficient way for us to speak with the ghost. It should be able to convey its responses through the spirit box faster than with writing or an ouija board.” 

“Hmm.. let’s try it.” Bucciarati confidently strides over, focused on the small box on the coffee table. It looked like a hybrid between a walkie talkie and a radio. “How do you turn it on?” 

“Here, let me just—“ Fugo leans forward to fiddle slightly with the knobs. The spirit box comes to life, making a jarringly loud broken static noise. 

“It flips through radio channels really quickly. This allows the ghost to manipulate the static into words.” He clears his throat. “Is there a spirit named Giorno here with us?” 

「 Hi. 」 The word is barely there; it could have easily been mistaken for an odd lapse in the static. 

“WOAH! Did Giorno just say hi?!” Narancia shouts. Before anyone can stop him, he lunges forward and snatches the spirit box. He yells into it. 

“Are you in the room with us?” 

「 Yes. 」 Again, the robotic voice chimes from the spirit box. Everyone’s attention is fixed on the small device—four with amazement and curiosity, one with distaste. 

Abbacchio scowls. “I think the thing is fake and a waste of money. It’s only answering with short, too-simple answers.” 

He outstretches his hand. “Narancia, give it to me.” 

Reluctantly, Narancia surrenders and hands over the spirit box. 

“Alright, ‘spirit’, I’m giving you one chance to prove yourself. You better give us a good sign otherwise I’m putting a stop to this bullshit once and for all.” Abbacchio’s tone is threatening and deep; clearly, he doesn’t find the idea of communicating with the dead entertaining. “So tell me. Where are you?” 

There’s a tense pause, filled only with the crackle of the static. Then, an answer. 

「 Here. 」

Abbacchio scoffs. “Alright, this thing’s fake—“

「 Behind you. 」 

Everyone freezes. 

「 Top of… stairs. 」

What?

Abbacchio feels his stomach sink for a reason he can’t place. Slowly, cautiously, he turns around, dragging his eyes up the staircase…

Holy shit. 

There, at the top, stood a translucent figure. Bruno recognized it immediately. The spirit box crackles once more.

「 Nice to meet you. I am… Gio..r..no. 」

Chapter Text

Name: Giorno [Unknown last name].

Age: 15

Dead for: About 5 years? 

Has a stand?: Unknown

Effective forms of communication: Notepads, spirit box, moving items, manipulating surroundings (including temperatures), ouija board

Notes: Appears to be a teenage boy with flowing golden hair. Might have a stand–ask more later. No information about “Giorno” in the civilian database, living or deceased (research more). Connection with the brooches? 

Coming to terms with a ghost living amongst the team has proven to be a bit of a challenge. Various emotions greet the presence of their new guest; wariness, curiosity, confusion, and a little bit of excitement.

Narancia, of course, is ecstatic. 

He sits alone in his room, communication tools scattered across his bed. Obviously, he isn’t really alone. 

“Giogio! You here?” His voice cuts through the choppy static of the spirit box. Out of Bucciarati’s team, Narancia has been the first to warm up to this “Giorno.” He refuses to show any sign of caution towards the new roommate, unlike the other members of the team. Narancia’s pretty sure that Fugo still thinks it’s some sort of stand. 

「 I’m here, 」 a warped voice chimes from the spirit box. Narancia turns towards the device, a grin splitting across his face. Over the past few days, the two have formed a sort of routine, with at least one communication session per day. It seems as if it’s easier for Giorno to communicate using the tools, allowing for faster and more in-depth responses. Sometimes, the other members of the gang decide to step in to listen, or even add their own bit into the conversation. However, Narancia’s noticed that the more people in the room, the more clammy and close-lipped Giorno is. He wonders if the ghost is scared of the others. 

Today, however, it’s just the two of them. Narancia settles into the routine, flopping back on his bed and diving into his retelling of the day’s mission. Nothing too hectic, but he got to blast someone to bits with Aerosmith, so childish excitement creeps into his voice as he gets more into the story. 

A sharp breeze whips through the room and Narancia pauses. 

“Sorry, Gio. Noise check, got it.” 

Although the ghost hasn’t acted hostile towards anyone since the first apparition… situation … Giorno seems to respond negatively towards loud voices or noises. Narancia has learned to pay attention to Giorno’s warnings, doing his best to create a mutual respect with the other. Fugo sometimes ridicules him for this, but the way Narancia sees it, it’s already tough enough to be stuck haunting people as a ghost. Giorno doesn’t need any extra shit from Narancia on top of it. 

“Does it suck being a ghost?” The question slips out of Narancia before he can think twice about it, more of a thinking-out-loud than an intentional question. 

「 No. 」 The spirit box responds immediately. Narancia hums, swinging his feet over the side of the bed. 

“Really? Don’t ya miss tasting things? Or touching things?”

「 It’s not horrible…How can I miss the things…don’t remember how to enjoy? 」 It takes a bit of effort for Giorno to get the sentence out of the box, with large shuttering pauses as he tries to loop the proper words together. 

Narancia picks up the spirit box, absentmindedly running his fingers along the grooves. “That sounds super depressing, dude. But you can still touch things and stuff, right? You’ve moved around Fugo’s books before.” 

「 Sort of…Takes a lot of focus…move things…Can feel the pressure…weight…of the object…but I can’t…really feel…It’s sort of like… 」 The static resumes as Giorno trails off, searching for a good analogy. Narancia wonders what the ghost looks like now, if he’s idly twirling his hair or dangling his legs off the side of the bed, too. Looking over to the window, cracked open to let the warm summer breeze in, Narancia can almost imagine the ghost leaning against the windowsill. 

「 When your arm…falls asleep…grab something…you know you’re holding it…but doesn’t feel like…your arm…It’s like that. 」

This makes sense! Opening and closing his hand, Narancia tries to imagine the sensation. “That’s weird as hell, dude. What about the flowers? Where do those come from?” 

Scribbles and doodles appear on one of the open journals flung haphazardly on Narancia’s desk, and Narancia tries not to make his interest in the doodles too obvious. However, his ogling doesn’t go unnoticed by the ghost, and a soft huff of a laugh is concealed in a gust of wind. 

「 To be honest…don’t know… They appear…when emotions are strong…Just part of being …a ghost…I suppose. 」 The two trail into silence, punctuated by the rustling of Narancia’s obnoxiously orange curtains. 

If there’s one thing Narancia hates, it’s the quiet. 

 “Hey, GioGio, what do you remember about your life…before?” Narancia decides to press his luck a little; Giorno’s past is usually an off-limits topic, one of the fastest ways to effectively end a communication session. Almost immediately after the words leave his mouth, he regrets them, mood already dampening at the prospect of Giorno leaving. 

However, to Narancia’s surprise, the spirit box responds. 

「 Not…that much…memories fade…the longer I stay. 」 A chill settles in the room, although Narancia knows better than to think that it’s the open window. When Narancia doesn’t press, Giorno speaks again. 

「 I don’t miss it…if that’s why… you ask…My death was my escape. 」 A few white flower petals flutter across the open journal, scattering across the doodles of frogs that Giorno had just drawn moments before. A soft shimmering outline of the boy leans over the pages, translucent fingers tracing over the lines. 

Without saying a word, Narancia slowly reaches out his hand, mesmerized at the ghost in front of him. Giorno turns and Narancia’s certain their eyes meet, but there’s no hostility in Giorno’s expression. In fact, Giorno even lifts his hand, raising it to mirror Narancia’s own small fingers. 

Their fingertips brush, and a soft energy thrums through Narancia’s hand. The contact is abruptly broken as Giorno turns away, outline lost in the billowing curtains. A flat stream of static drones from the spirit box, an indicator that Giorno is no longer using it to communicate, so Narancia turns it off to save himself from the jarring noise. 

The pages of the journal flutter, and Narancia peers at the writing. 

Tell me more about these ‘Stands’.

The request is an obvious attempt at continuing the conversation, and reassures Narancia that Giorno isn’t mad. His boundaries were pushed a little, and he allowed it, but the effort to change the topic is clear. 

Still, Narancia feels as if they’d just crossed a big milestone, and he grins to himself. 

“Sure, Giogio! Usually, we don’t share this kind of information to normal people, but you don’t really count as ‘normal people’, so I’ll tell you everything I know!” 

And he does. 

“Narancia, did you seriously bring the spirit box with us? On a mission?” Mista stares, bewildered, from his seat in the back of the Buccimobile. Narancia responds with a razor-sharp, shit-eating grin. 

“Sure did, Mista! I thought it would be exciting for him to get out of the house with us, and plus, I thought he could help us win with the surprise factor! Those thugs aren’t gonna be expecting a ghost! ” By now everyone is watching him, even Bucciarati, who’s supposed to be driving. Everyone talks at once, voices overlapping each other.

“Narancia, you’re such a dumbass–”

“Are you fucking serious? What good is a GHOST going to do–”

“Oh my god, you seriously brought the spirit box!” 

“SHHH!” Narancia swings out his arms to clap a hand over Mista’s mouth to stifle his laughter, not-so-accidentally whacking Fugo in the process. Abbacchio is turned around in his seat, arms outstretched to pull Narancia into a chokehold. Bucciarati slams on the brakes, sending everyone tumbling into a big mess. The spirit box falls out of Narancia’s pocket where it had been concealed, resting innocently on the car seat. There’s a moment of silence before Bucciarati calmly turns around, picking up the spirit box with delicate ease. 

“Narancia, you do understand that our missions are supposed to be confidential, right?” 

Narancia has the decency to look guilty, even if it’s just for a moment. 

“Well, it’s not like he’s gonna tell anybody, since he’s…y’know…”

“Dead?” Fugo finishes in a monotone voice. Narancia isn’t discouraged by the bland stares the team gives him, instead taking the opportunity to dive for the spirit box.

“Yup, exactly! You won’t tell anyone, right Giorno?” Any protest is drowned out as the loud shuttering static of the spirit box fills the Buccimobile.

「 I will…take the secret…to my grave, 」 Giorno responds. A moment of stunned silence settles before Mista honks with laughter.

“Holy shit! I didn’t know Giorno was a comedian!” The backseat devolves into cackles, and even Bucciarati can’t help but smile with a fond sigh. Watching Bucciarati’s expression, Abbacchio’s lips twist into a scowl. 

“That’s enough! I refuse to let our mission be compromised in any way because of a ghost,” Abbacchio spits out venomously. “Do you know how stupid you brats sound? We’re mafiosi, for fuck’s sake! Wake up, a ghost isn’t going to be able to do shit–WILL YOU TURN THAT DAMN THING OFF!?” 

The spirit box is quickly silenced and a deep chill settles over the van. Abbacchio is still turned around in his seat, looking like he’s approximately three seconds away from strangling Narancia. Although Bucciarati agrees that bringing the spirit box was a foolish idea, he can’t help but cave to the kicked-puppy look on Narancia’s face. 

To diffuse the situation, Bucciarati reaches over and places a hand on Abbacchio’s shoulder, stilling him. 

"Abbacchio’s right. I don’t want the spirit box to become a distraction. However,” Bucciarati holds up a finger to silence the cheers before they start, “I will allow you to bring it just this once. If it causes difficulty in any way, shape, or form, you will never bring it again. Deal?” 

Narancia nods eagerly, appeased by these terms. “Deal!” 

Abbacchio slouches, clearly pissed at the new arrangement. “Bucciarati, for your sake you better not make me be around the rat longer than I have to.” 

“Don’t pair me with him either, Bucciarati. I don’t want to be known as the Static Boy,” Fugo quips. Narancia shoots up in his seat, baring his teeth.

“Hey, you little–”

Bucciarati slams his foot on the gas and the van jolts to life. 

The change of scenery is nice, but Giorno can’t help but be reminded of how useless he is in his current state. 

He was originally just planning to tag along for the ride, but quickly changed his mind when he realized the nature of the mission; Bucciarati’s team was assigned to eliminate members of a rival gang overstepping their drug trade into Passione’s turf. 

The thought of drug trade was enough to make Giorno’s blood boil. After all, it’s what tainted his childhood and ultimately led to his untimely death. 

He’s further motivated by the memory of Abbacchio’s scowl and Bucciarati’s warning. He wants to prove to them that not only can he stay out of the way, but he can also contribute to the team. Giorno at least owes it to Bucciarati, eyeing the man as his fingers self-consciously drift up to touch his eternally bruised neck. 

The team is currently gathered outside of a storage unit wedged amidst a neighborhood of crumbling houses. Every once in a while, someone will duck into the entrance, returning a couple minutes later with their hands stuffed in their pockets. They all have the same kind of jerking, paranoid movement, a telltale sign of their addiction. 

Giorno watches with interest as Narancia spreads his arms, creating a pseudo-runway for a small plane to launch itself off from. As a visor settles over his eye, Giorno decides to express his fascination by ruffling Narancia’s messy hair. To Narancia, it will feel like a soft breeze on  his face.

Narancia picks up the sign and grins. “Pretty cool, huh, Giorno?” 

Fugo quirks an eyebrow. “Giorno can see stands?”

“Focus on the mission, brats,” Abbacchio mutters curtly. Giorno inspects the older man, weary of his hostility. The rest of the team doesn’t seem bothered by it, however, so Giorno forces away his anxiety. 

Giorno? I’m scared.

I know, Haruno. Giorno holds his hand out to the side, pointedly fixing his gaze on the entrance to the unit. Small fingers interlace with his own.

(Giorno knows that if he looks to his side, he will see a small child of darkness, and will be swallowed by a void of memories with pain, fear, agony–)

“Now.” 

Bucciarati gestures, and suddenly the group is moving, splitting off one by one as they enter the storage unit. Abbacchio, Mista, and Fugo head off to the back entrance, leaving Narancia, Bucciarati, and Giorno to duck under the partially raised garage door. 

It’s pretty easy to track down the dealers once they’re inside. With the help of Aerosmith, Bucciarati and Narancia easily navigate through the lattice of furniture and boxes. They pause outside of a small alcove, silently gesturing at each other. 

Giorno silently rounds the corner, figuring that he can get a scope of the situation. He’s not sure yet how he’s going to communicate to the others what he finds, but–

Holy shit.  

There’s four of them. Two are stationed in front of a wall full of monitors. Giorno realizes that it’s live video of the warehouse; on one, he can see Bucciarati and Narancia crouched, just around the corner; on another, he can see the rest of the group. Mista’s in the lead, pistol cocked and held in front of him. Giorno can barely discern some type of insects swarming around the pistol. His stand, perhaps?

The third is positioned with their own gun aiming through a gap in the barricade, trained directly at Mista’s torso. Mista is none the wiser, scanning the pathway instead of the shadows of stacked furniture. 

The fourth has their unlucky customer, a girl who Giorno wouldn’t expect to be older than 13, held hostage with a dirty syringe aimed at her throat. 

There isn’t enough time to warn them all. 

A glint of gold catches Giorno’s eye, and to his surprise, he watches the wall behind the gunman start to… unzip? A hand peeks out, then an arm, covered by a familiar white dotted suit, and before Giorno can fully comprehend it, Bucciarati is stepping out of the wall. A blue figure lurks behind him like a bodyguard. 

Everything happens simultaneously. 

Bucciarati lunges for the gunman, yanking him back by his shirt.

The gunman fires a shot out of surprise, which hits Mista in the leg.

In reaction to the gunshot, Mista fires his own gun, and the insect-like creatures kick the ricocheting bullet back and forth until it passes cleanly through the gunman’s head.

The man holding the hostage starts shouting, causing Bucciarati to freeze and redirect his attention to the girl.

Narancia runs in and is immediately tackled by the two gangsters watching the monitor. 

“Don’t move or I’ll kill the girl!”

Bucciarati stands still, chest heaving wildly as he faces the captor.

“I’m a mafioso, stronzo. What makes you think that I care about an insignificant girl?” Even as Bucciarati says it, Giorno knows that it’s a bluff. He didn’t miss the way that Bucciarati’s eyes widened at the track marks on the girl’s limp arms, nor how his body stiffened as he complied to the command. 

The captor’s hand holding the syringe twitches; they’re running out of time before the girl is killed, regardless of Bucciarati’s compliance.

They need a distraction, and fast. 

Giorno stands behind the captor and shoves .

It’s strong enough to throw the man off balance, and as he falls, he tries to plunge the needle into the girl’s neck. It grazes the side, tearing a shallow gash. Bucciarati’s stand pounces on top of the captor and begins to beat the living shit out of him, its fists a blur.

One of the men pinning Narancia to the ground shouts, summoning his own stand, a misty gray figure that releases a thick cloud of smoke. 

When the smoke starts to clear, the men are gone. 

“Damnit!” Bucciarati curses. He glances over to the monitors, noticing Fugo running towards the hideout, and reaches over to help Narancia to his feet. Abbacchio stays behind with Mista, who is propped up against some dusty boxes, pressing into his leg to staunch the bleeding. 

“Bucciarati! What happened?” Fugo, Narancia, and Bucciarati circle up around the monitors. The gunman’s body is lackadaisically kicked to the side. “Where did they go?” 

“I don’t know, one of their stands summoned smoke and I couldn’t see where they ran off to…” 

Giorno crouches down next to the girl, who was forgotten about in the excitement. The cut wasn’t deep enough to kill, but they still needed to stop the bleeding.

Giorno scans his surroundings, scavenging for anything that could be used as a bandage or suture. His eyes land on Bucciarati’s stand, who waits idly behind the man, waiting patiently for its next orders. An idea sparks in Giorno’s brain. Narancia said that stands were a physical manifestation of the power of a soul, right? So would Giorno be able to fill it with his soul?

Giorno reaches out to the stand, hand phasing through its chestplate. Just like with other living animals, its body felt like a container; all Giorno needed to do was momentarily fill up the space within.

Excuse me, Bucciarati.

Giorno seeps into the stand, feeling his body solidify into the shape of the stand’s. It’s different from the time he possessed Mista. The stand’s body was less grounding, and Giorno didn’t have to push a preexisting soul out of the way to make room for himself. It was almost as if the stand was an empty glass, whereas Mista’s was full of water, which Giorno had to drain before entering. 

Giorno watches Bucciarati for any sign of discomfort; he still feels bad for the pain he caused Mista. Yet Bucciarati remains unbothered, not even noticing as his stand sneaks away to kneel by the girl. Perhaps this is because the stand is already 'empty'? 

It takes Giorno a minute to grasp the power of Bucciarati’s stand, but it feels similar to the way that he can make creatures or flowers. He ever-so-carefully creates a golden zipper on the girl’s neck, connecting the gap in her skin that the gash had created. She watches him cautiously with big, terrified eyes, stifling noises of pain as Giorno tenderly zips the wound closed. Then he gestures at the exit, silently urging the girl to slip away unnoticed. 

“Sticky Fingers?” Giorno looks back, meeting Bucciarati’s confused gaze. “What are you doing?”

Narancia and Fugo turn to him as well, suspicion in their eyes. 

Sorry, Bucciarati, Giorno tries to say, but Sticky Fingers doesn’t have any mouth to articulate his words. Instead, it feels like he’s trying to connect with something faraway, like two magnets slowly drifting together until they collide with a sudden snap .

“Giorno? Are you in my stand?” Bucciarati hesitantly asks. He almost feels foolish for the notion, but…

Yes. Please excuse the intrusion.  

Bucciarati tries not to gape at his stand. His reaction alone is enough to answer Fugo’s questioning eyes.

“Giorno’s possessing Sticky Fingers!?” 

After using Sticky Fingers to reveal a system of secret tunnels beneath the pavement, Bucciarati, Fugo, and Narancia finish up the job pretty quickly. Exhausted from the possession, Giorno’s concentration slips and he is promptly rejected from Sticky Fingers. 

After collecting Mista and Abbacchio, the group piles back into the van to head home for the day.

As he drives, Bruno’s mind is reeling. He’s so lost in thought, replaying the sound of Giorno’s voice in his consciousness, that Abbacchio has to reach over and yank the wheel to prevent the van from driving off the road. 

Bruno’s still deep in thought by the time they arrive at the safe house. He sits in the driver’s seat, seatbelt still on, long after even Abbacchio had abandoned the van to return to the house. 

Giorno…

What are you up to?

At last, Bruno snaps himself out of his daze, deciding to take a refreshing shower. That’ll clear his head, right? 

Yet his mind keeps drifting back to that angelic apparition with the flowing hair and billowing shirt. 

The kid isn’t your average ghost, that’s for sure (although Bruno hasn't really met any other spirits before). He thought that if anything, Giorno would give them the classic haunting experience and yet…

As weary as he is to admit that Narancia might be right, the ghost did help with their mission. 

Bruno sighs, stepping out of the shower and tying a towel around his waist. 

There’s only one way to find out.

“...and then he was like, ‘ I’ll kill you bastard!’ and I was like, ‘Not if I kill you first!’ So then I let Aerosmith loose on ‘em, and I turned him into swiss cheese! Ha! And then–”

Narancia is cut off mid-story, hands animatedly imitating an airplane, by a gentle knock on his door. He sits cross-legged in the middle of his room, surrounded by open notebooks with doodles, the scattered pieces of the checkers game, and stray flower petals. 

“Yeah?” Narancia calls. The door cracks open, and Bruno politely pokes his head in. 

“Hello, Narancia. And…Giorno?” he tacks on at the end of his greeting, taking in the sight before him. “I was just wondering if I could borrow the spirit box?”

Narancia perks up at the mention of the spirit box and scrambles through the mess on his floor to grab the device. “‘Course, Bucciarati. Hey Giorno, mind if this guy has a chat with you? He’s really nice, I promise!”

After a moment of silence, or at least no clear objection, Narancia tosses the spirit box to Bruno with a wide grin. Bruno catches it effortlessly with a smooth motion.

“Bring him back when you’re done, ‘kay? I still gotta finish telling him about that mission last week when I blew that guy’s fingers off!” 

“I will, Narancia. Thank you.” Bruno can’t help but smile at the teen’s enthusiasm. 

Bruno takes the spirit box back to his room, where he had already closed the curtains and lit a few candles. He feels silly at the notion, uncertain of whether the “seance” feel to the room actually helped Giorno, but that’s what they did in the movies. Frankly, Bruno has no idea how to interact with ghosts. The whole concept is kind of new to him. 

Bruno sets the spirit box on the bed, turns it on, and then retreats to his arm chair in the corner of the room. He wants to give Giorno a respectable amount of space. Pushing aside the voice in his head that tells him he’s being stupid, Bruno takes a breath before speaking.

“Hello, Giorno. I am Bucciarati. Are you there?” 

The static shudders. 

「 Hello…Bucciarati. 」 

“I wanted to start by thanking you for your help in the mission today.” Bruno feels awkward without knowing where Giorno is to direct his words, so he settles his gaze on the spirit box. 

「 My…help? 」 Because of the monotonous nature of the spirit box, it takes Bruno a couple moments to realize the intonation of Giorno’s voice, posing it as a question. 

“Yes, Giorno, your help. You assisted in the escape of an uninvolved civilian, and you led us to where the remaining men were hiding. Thank you.”

The static becomes choppy as Giorno frivolously attempts to respond. Unsuccessful, a puff of frustrated air rustles Bruno’s bangs. Bruno feels a twinge of sympathy. Poor boy, it must be difficult to communicate through this thing.

He recalls the events of the mission. 

“Giorno, would it be easier to communicate through my stand, Sticky Fingers?”

「 Yes…more tiring…but accurate. 」

Sticky Fingers erupts into existence and waits obediently by the bed. Bruno watches intently as he waits for Giorno to enter the stand. He can almost tell the exact moment that Giorno succeeds; now that he’s paying attention to it, he feels a little lighter, as if his entire body just finished a really good stretch. Sticky Fingers’ hand twitches, then flexes, before reaching out to silence the spirit box.

It’s surreal to watch Sticky Fingers move, seemingly on its own accord. Bruno feels as if he’s peering into a mirror to discover his reflection is making a different expression. 

Sticky Fingers perches elegantly on the edge of Bruno’s bed, legs crossed. Its blank face stares into Bruno’s, and the familiar feeling of piercing eyes emulates from the stand’s expressionless face. 

Bucciarati. Please keep this brief, as I do not know how long I will be able to occupy your stand. It takes quite a bit of energy and focus.

“Of course. Without trying to be blunt...why are you here? What do you want?” 

Well, as I'm sure you've realized by now, my soul is bound to those ladybug brooches you collected. As for what I want? 

The stand’s head tilts away, averting its gaze. 

I want a lot of things. I want to pass on from this hellish limbo. I want my body back. I want answers to questions I can’t even remember anymore. But above all…

Giorno trails off. Sticky Fingers turns to meet Bruno’s eyes head-on once more. 

Bruno, you’re different. I saw the way you hesitated when you realized that girl was a victim of addiction. I’m sure you’re aware of how many other children in Italy are resigned to the same fate. 

But you’re part of the mafia. Your boss is responsible for most of the drug trade. Why are you still emotional? 

Bruno fights to keep his expression neutral, but he can’t help raising an eyebrow in surprise. Giorno has him pinned down with deadly accuracy, based on his fleeting observations. 

Bucciarati, I am going to use you and your gang to overthrow the Don, and take back this city for the people.

Now this catches Bruno off guard. He openly stares at Sticky Fingers, wondering what the hell this kid could be thinking. He can almost envision Giorno’s golden hair, his angelic features closely observing every cell and fiber of Bruno’s existence. A breeze offsets the closed curtains just enough so that the setting sun casts a glow over the room, backlighting Sticky Fingers. 

I am going to rid the streets of drug-dealing and child-abusing mafiosi. In order to do so, I must become one myself. 

Bruno swears he can see a halo of light around Giorno’s head. 

You see, I, Giorno Giovana, have a dream.