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“Congrats to Don Giovanna, for getting rid of all drugs in Italy,” Mista crows to a crowd. He’s standing on the steps of a large, grandiose staircase that swoops down to the main floor of Giorno’s manor. Everyone who means anything within Passione is dispersed within the busy sea of people over the main ballroom floor. It is a lovely evening to have a celebration.
The crowd cheers. Mista makes a point to clink champagne glasses with every person in his vicinity, just to piss Fugo off, who’s already rolling his eyes beside him.
“Thank you, Mista,” Giorno says graciously. “I must say, though, that we simply dismantled a notorious drug trafficking caporegime. Impressive in its own right, of course, but not quite ridding Italy of all drugs.”
Giorno is quickly drowned out by the sounds of Mista and Fugo shushing him.
“Pshaw,” Fugo says.
“Puh-shaw,” Mista imitates.
“It is a momentous breakthrough,” Fugo says proudly. “We’re one step closer to achieving your dream. Let’s celebrate it.”
Giorno smiles pleasantly. “Of course, forgive me. Cheers, all around.”
The crowd of partygoers swirl around the room. Mista, who normally would be more than happy to mingle and chat up cuties, makes sure to stay near Giorno at all times, keeping a respectful distance from him while keeping a wary eye out for anyone suspicious. Besides, there’s no one in the room cuter than Giorno. Mista keeps this thought to himself, though.
As the night progresses, he sees the telltale signs of exhaustion inch on Giorno’s face, from his slower blinks to his yawns disguised as sips of champagne. He waits as long as he can, until the early hours dwindle into the early morning before stealing a moment to whirl Giorno away from the never-ending line of simpering and power-hungry subordinates trying to get an ‘in’ with the Don.
“Important bodyguard business, yep, yep,” Mista says over his shoulder to no one in particular as he drags Giorno up the manor stairs and into Giorno’s bedroom. He shuts the door behind him and brings him out to the balcony, nodding almost imperceptibly to let Giorno relax. Giorno sighs and rests his weight on the bannister, letting the fatigue of the evening get to him.
“You saved me just in the nick of time,” Giorno massages his temples. “I wasn’t sure how much longer I could listen to Capo Carpaccio ramble about the former glory of his narcotics team. He seems to think the longer he talks to me, the more lenient I will be on drugs in his territory. But never mind that.”
He turns his head to look at Mista. “Thank you,” he says softly.
“Yeah, of course,” Mista says hurriedly. “Anything for you, boss. In fact…” He reaches behind his back to pull out a very nice bottle of sweet, white wine, purposely meant to appeal to Giorno’s infamous sweet tooth. He snagged it from the pile of overly expensive and flashy wine bottles that every attendee for some reason felt obligated to bring.
Giorno’s eyes lit up. “Mista, you didn’t,” he teases.
“Just a sip,” Mista says. “Just to loosen up, get the party spirit going.”
Giorno raises an eyebrow, but nods, and takes the bottle from Mista. Mista turns around to grab some glasses, but when he turns back, Giorno is chugging from the bottle.
“ Boss!” Mista says in mock-astonishment. “You dog.”
Giorno has a glint in his eyes as he sets the bottle down. “When it’s just you and me, Mista, you don’t have to call me boss. It makes me feel stuffy and formal. We’re famiglia.”
“Gotta set a good example for the subordinates,” Mista says. “They gotta know who’s boss.”
Giorno smiles. “Tell Fugo to shoo away the rest of the attendees,” he says, taking off his suit jacket to reveal a half-unbuttoned white dress shirt underneath. Mista tells himself not to stare at the exposed sliver of skin.
“Yes, sir,” Mista says, giving Giorno a half-salute before leaving to find Fugo. He finds him leaning against a wall with swagger (or rather, whatever Fugo thought swagger was), and chatting with one of the subordinates.
“Consigliere,” Mista says formally, “Operation GTFO is a go.”
Fugo motions the subordinate away before rolling his eyes. “That’s the name you came up with?”
“It works, doesn’t it?” Mista says smugly. He doesn’t wait for Fugo’s inevitable jab at his IQ before disappearing into the increasingly waning crowd. It’s been a few years since Fugo’s defection and then reentry into Passione, and while initially, Mista had difficulty trusting Fugo again, they’ve grown into a somewhat easy companionship. It doesn’t come as easily as before, but they’re both trying, which is all they can really do at this point, anyway.
He returns to Giorno’s room to see the man himself leaning against the bed frame, dress shirt fully unbuttoned. He’s loosening his braid as Mista walks in, running his fingers through long, curly hair to slowly detangle it. He’s gorgeous. Mista needs to get drunk right now.
“Where’s the bottle at?” Mista asks, surveying the room.
“Drank it,” Giorno says, with a little goofy smile. “Could use another, though.”
“Love it, love the party spirit,” Mista grins. He takes out another bottle of wine that he swiped on the walk over and pops the cork off. He takes a swig, mimicking Giorno from earlier, before feeling a sharp pain on his bottom lip.
“OW!” Mista winces, rubbing the wound. He glares at the offending bottle, which has a jagged glass edge on the mouth of it.
“Here, let me look at it,” Giorno says. He grasps Mista by the cheek to get a better look at the damage.
Giorno is really close. Mista prays he doesn’t look as red and flushed as he feels, when Giorno has his intense gaze pinned on his face, on his lips. It’s an image way too similar to other dreams he’s had, and his mind is flooded with Giorno closing the gap, Giorno reaching into his lap, and doing absolutely sinful things while whispering into his ear-
Mista whimpers. Giorno, real life Giorno, stills abruptly. His eyes widened.
“Um,” Mista flushes. “It hurts.” He curses himself internally - he was a suave player, goddamnit, not a virgin in high school.
Giorno turns before Mista can see his reaction. “I need an object to heal you with,” he says, muffled. Mista uses the opportunity to pinch himself to get a grip.
When Giorno turns back, he has a napkin in hand. He must be starting to feel the effects of the alcohol, Mista thinks, dazed, because his cheeks look the slightest shade of pink.
Giorno rips a small piece of napkin, and then gently takes a thumb to pass over the wound.
“Brace yourself, Mista,” Giorno says, as he summons Golden Experience. “This is going to hurt.”
Stoically, he transforms the napkin into skin and tissue, reconnecting nerve endings and touch receptors. It hurts like a motherfucker, but Mista manages to hold in his cries in pain by gritting his teeth.
Giorno’s thumb makes one final pass over his mouth before he says, softly, “All done.” Mista rubs a finger on his bottom lip. As usual, there is no wound, not even the raised skin of a scar.
“Jesus, Giorno,” he groans breathlessly. “Could you be more gentle next time?”
He hears Giorno strain, with a sharp intake of breath so quick that Mista wonders briefly if he left the balcony door open and a breeze passed by. Giorno coughs.
“You’re a top mafia underboss and bodyguard,” Giorno says. “Surely, you can handle a little pain. But maybe I didn’t do as good of a job as I thought.” He frowns and leans in even closer to Mista’s lips. Mista barely holds in another whimper.
“You know,” Giorno says self-assuredly. “I read in a recent scientific paper that human lips are more sensitive than fingertips, due to it being an erogenous zone.”
“That explains why it hurts so bad,” Mista grumbles.
“Yes,” Giorno says, notably less self-assuredly. “So, perhaps it would be best for me to examine your injury with this, more...accurate instrument.”
Mista’s brain does the Windows dial-up sound effect. Then, it clicks. “Oh, you want to kiss me?” Mista says without thinking. “Like, for science?”
Giorno gives him a tiny nod.
“I mean, sure,” Mista blabs, in a terrible attempt to hide just how okay he was with this idea. “Anything for the boss, obviously. To heal me, and for science, which are noble goals. We gotta mack lips platonically. Yeah. I’m going to shut up now.”
Giorno smiles with a tinge of nervousness. He leans in and closes his eyes. Mista braces himself, telling himself to just be cool about it, but to no avail. When their lips contact, he squeaks.
It’s just a chaste kiss, honestly. Giorno pulls away before Mista can even fully mentally process that, holy shit , his boss and object of his wet dreams for an embarrassingly long amount of time, was kissing him.
“Feel anything?” Mista says as Giorno pulls away. He watches as Giorno delicately touches his own lips, as if to feel for the residual kiss on it.
“No,” Giorno says with a furrowed brow. “Perhaps the paper was not as scientifically legitimate as I thought. I’ll have to have Polnareff email the authors about it.”
“Well, hold on,” Mista interrupts. “That was barely a kiss. You got to give the authors some slack, you felt my lips for like one second. I don’t know how anyone could feel anything.”
Giorno seems to mull over this idea. “Right,” he nods slowly. “So we should do it for longer, this time.”
Mista nods seriously. “Absolutely. For science.” Mista was a goddamn saint, honestly. He was willing to submit himself to this for the betterment of humanity, and he probably deserves a medal for going through this.
This time, Mista takes the lead, ignoring the rapid beating of his heart in his chest, to cup Giorno’s cheek and place a hand on Giorno’s waist, all in the pursuit of steadying himself in preparation for a longer experiment. He’s not just copping a feel, he tells himself.
They kiss again. Giorno lightly moans against his lips, which doesn’t affect Mista at all, obviously. Mista takes it as an opportunity to deepen the kiss. His brain is short circuiting trying to focus on the beautiful specimen and his wet, hot mouth on him. Mista moves closer, desperately trying to get closer and closer and feel more .
Giorno breaks apart from the kiss. “Are you trying to take my shirt off?”
Mista freezes. He looks down at his hands, which are frozen in place, gripping Giorno’s bicep with a handful of his white, dress shirt in his fist.
“...No?” Mista tries.
Giorno raises an eyebrow. “If I said I was okay with it, would that change your answer?”
Mista narrows his eyes, trying to gauge Giorno’s expression. “Mayhaps.”
“Okay,” Giorno smiles easily. “Let me help you out.” He leans back in to reconnect with Mista’s lips, and in one swift movement, the white shirt disappears into the bedsheets. Mista’s hands roam across his chest, with desperation, with need as he reaches his hands lower and lower. And then-
Mista’s eyes shoot open. Christ, he is hungover as hell. He grimaces as he feels his throbbing headache, groaning as his brain tries to split in two out of his skull. He focuses on the ceiling light above him, or rather, as two blurry lights swim in and out of each other.
He’s in a room, but not his room. It’s morning, if the soft daylight streaming through the balcony windows is any indication. He’s in a bed, but not his own. A really fancy one, too, because the pillow is heated or something, with how warm and firm it is. Did pillows normally have heart beats too, though?
Mista’s eyes widen. He slowly turns his head to see that his pillow is actually the surprisingly buff and bare chest of none other than Don Giorno Giovanna. As in, the Don of the Passione mafia. As in, the most powerful man in Italy.
He leaps off the bed, scrambling to put as much distance between him and the bed as possible. Unfortunately, he gets caught in the bedsheets, and when he feels the cold morning air hit his ballsack, he realizes he’s naked.
Mista starts screaming along with the morning birds outside the window.
The screams wake up Giorno, who blearily opens his eyes and wipes the sleep from them. He’s clearly just as hungover as Mista, if not more so. Mista thinks in the back of his head that he’s never seen Giorno wake up, much less wake up beside him naked, and under any other circumstances, he would give his past self a congratulatory clap on the back. The thing is, he doesn’t know how he got here.
“Good morning to you too,” Giorno mumbles, clearly not fully present in reality. He turns away from Mista to rise from the bed. Mista whimpers when he realizes Giorno is also very much naked, except for a singular sock on his left foot.
Mista scrambles to his feet to step in front of Giorno, wrapping the bed sheet around himself like a toga on a Roman emperor. “Giorno,” he hisses, “why the fuck are we naked?”
Giorno blinks, then looks down at Mista’s bare shoulders and barely covered body.
“We are naked,” Giorno says, and Mista knows they’re fucked in that moment because Giorno hates repeating information.
“Boss, focus.” Mista whispers, panicked. “Did we, you know, do anything last night?”
He mentally checks his asshole for soreness. There is none.
Giorno glares at him, half-lidded, with a slight pout. It’s almost cute if Mista wasn’t freaking the fuck out right now.
“Okay,” Giorno says, tiredly. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to hand me my pants,” He points loosely at the edge of his bed, where pants are indeed present. “And then I’m going to the bathroom.”
Mista dutifully edges towards the bed to grab Giorno’s pants.
“Why?” Mista starts to ask before Giorno puts them on in one fell swoop and then dashes out into the bathroom. The sounds of retching and vomiting answer his question.
Mista takes a deep breath. He is of no use to anyone if he panics right now, so he needs to be at the top of his game right now.
Clothes are a good idea. He searches for his tiger print pants, which thankfully are intact, but he can’t find his cashmere sweater. It’s not in the pillows, or the blankets, or under the bed, or strewn across the floor. Well, he’s not leaving this room shirtless, so he opens what he thinks is Giorno’s closet, and begins rifling for an old T-shirt or something, just something to tide him over until he can get back to his collection of patterned and animal print cropped sweaters.
Giorno’s closet is full of ornate and beautiful suits and high-fashion clothing. Mista tries to be gentle as he sifts through clothes that probably were each worth more than him. He wonders briefly if Giorno even owns chill, comfy clothes, but when he finds a grey touristy hoodie with a cartoon pizza folded neatly in the back, he gets his question answered. Where had Giorno even gotten this?
He hears footsteps pad towards the door. He moves the closet door to get a better look at whoever’s coming, but when the morning light catches the mirror on the closet door - has that always been there? - he stills and gets a good look at his reflection. Holy shit, he’s covered in bruises.
Or not bruises, really. They’re hickies, on closer inspection. His eyes widen in surprise as he examines his chest, and then, his shoulders and neck, to see that there are angry, purple love bites all over them.
He closes the closet door shakily. To his surprise, Giorno is standing silently on the other side, dressed, and looking a little freshened up. Mista yelps and jumps back.
“Jesus, Giorno, you scared me,” he breathes. Giorno’s not looking at him, though, or rather, he’s not looking in his eyes. He’s looking at his hickey-covered chest.
Absentmindedly, Giorno lifts a hand to trace Mista’s shoulders and chest and abdomen.
“Did I do this?” he asks in a distant voice.
“I don’t know,” Mista answers honestly. The thought that he’d let anyone else do this to him besides Giorno is nonsensical, but he can’t remember, which is infuriating.
“This is why I never drink,” Giorno says frustratedly. “I hate not being able to trust my own mind.”
Mista places two hands on Giorno’s shoulder to steady him. “Okay, deep breaths,” he says, closing his eyes and inhaling, waiting for Giorno to follow suit before exhaling.
“The first step is to ask Fugo to do a sweep of the perimeter for any signs of enemy intrusion, making sure everything’s okay.” Mista says steadily. “Before we do anything else, though, is it okay if I wear this?”
He holds up the pizza hoodie. Giorno almost imperceptibly smiles.
“If it fits,” Giorno says. “You are quite a bit bigger than me, though.”
Mista flushes at the unintentional innuendo, but he hides his red face by putting the hoodie on over his face. It fits him fine, though, which means it definitely would swallow Giorno if he wore it. Mista tries not to think too hard about how cute Giorno would look bundled up in an oversized hoodie.
When Mista looks back up, Giorno is staring at his phone, jabbing his fingers on the keyboard. “Okay, now that’s settled,” he says, as he flips the phone shut. “Let’s think together. What happened last night?”
Mista thinks hard. “We were at the Passione party, and I took you to the balcony for a breather. And then we drank wine, and then...I don’t know.”
“We must have kissed, my lips are too bruised for it not to be that. We must have at the very least fooled around, because, well, your chest is evidence of that. But the details, what happens next,” Giorno lets out a sigh. “I am just in the dark about it as you.”
Giorno looks really shaken, or rather, as shaken as he can be. His face still carries calm with it, but his fingers are twitching slightly. Mista reaches out a hand to grasp his hands and still them.
“Look, we don’t have to freak out about this,” Mista says. “People drunkenly make out all the time. Abbacchio and Bucciarati do it. Hell, I did it at parties before I joined Passione. It’s not a big deal, okay?”
Giorno gives him a strange look. “It’s not?”
“Well,” Mista says nervously. “Alcohol makes people do things sober people wouldn’t do. It doesn’t mean anything. This doesn’t change anything about us.” The words that go unspoken is an assurance that the situation would not jeopardize Giorno’s reputation or Mista’s trust in him. Mista would never hold this experience against him - hell, he’s probably going to be thinking about this for a long, long time.
Giorno’s face remains impassive, but Mista can see that his knuckles are white. Shit, he said the wrong thing.
“Of course,” Giorno says smoothly. “Like a ‘one night stand’, yes?”
Yeah, the most powerful man in Italy and a bodyguard with the biggest unrequited crush on him in Italy had a one night stand and neither of them remembered it. This was fine. He hadn’t and shouldn’t have expected anything more to come out of it. Still stung like a motherfucker, though.
“Okay,” Mista nods. Before Giorno can leave, he asks quickly, “We’re good though, right? Awkward accidental one night stand aside?”
Giorno’s back is turned away from him as he pauses by the doorway, one hand on the doorframe. “Of course,” he says simply. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
Mista is still on edge since the one-night-stand-that-shall-not-be-named. He holds his breath for a few days for signs of suspicious activity, but when Fugo finds nothing, he reluctantly relaxes. Plus, Giorno seems less than inclined to investigate further. Slowly, the incident fades in his mind.
Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Sometimes, when Giorno is working, Mista will look at his lips and think about what it would be like to kiss them again. Or he’ll find another hickey in a weird spot and think about how Giorno would have been able to place it there. The thought makes his face red. But he respects Giorno and his position enough that he doesn’t dare ruin it with his stupid feelings. So he keeps his inner thoughts to himself, and to his right hand late at night. Giorno didn’t have to know.
Giorno, for the most part, has resumed normal operations, with a few key differences. For one thing, Giorno no longer has him stationed by his side while he’s working. When he’s in a meeting with other Capos or outside the manor, Mista is still with him bodyguarding as always. When it’s just them in the office though, Giorno hands Mista a stack of paperwork and tells him to look through them and draft a report for an upcoming Capo meeting. Mista grunts under the weight of all of the paper, but takes it dutifully, even if it confuses him why he got demoted (or promoted? He’s not sure) to essentially the role of an office worker.
For another, Giorno no longer feeds Sex Pistols when Mista isn’t looking, a fact that his stand made very apparent to him when they started complaining about their empty stomachs for the sixth time in the row one evening.
“You don’t even have stomachs,” Mista grumbles. “No one else feeds their stand, except me.”
Three tugs at Mista’s hat. “Salami, prosciutto, whatever you got. Now.” The little shit demands. The others agree in unison.
Five even appears more distraught than ever. “Is Giorno mad at us?” he says with wet eyes, pleadingly.
“No,” Mista says defensively. “He’d tell me if he was mad. Right?” he says, more to himself, than his stand. Or well, since stands were a manifestation of his soul...yeah, that was a skull too tough for Mista’s metaphorical bullet to pierce.
Sex Pistols turns to look at each other in confusion. “We don’t know,” they shrug. “If you don’t know, how would we?”
Mista frowns. Sighing, he leaves to head to the kitchen. He wasn’t going to get through the stack of paperwork Giorno left for him, anyway.
He makes a beeline for the refrigerator and opens it, searching through plastic-wrapped takeout containers and random vegetables Fugo made them buy before finding a leftover charcuterie board.
“Eat up,” Mista barely says before Sex Pistols dives in. He blocks a punch from Three meant for Five, and lets Five go ahead and eat.
He looks back in the fridge for something for himself and Giorno to eat for dinner - God knows if Giorno has eaten something all day if Mista didn’t remind him to eat. There’s some leftover pasta from when Fugo tried to cook that was probably edible. Mista grimaces. He probably should just get take out at a restaurant or something. He’s about to close his door when he spies something in the bottom of a fridge - an unopened bottle of wine. It was a bottle of sweet white wine, not unlike the one that Mista gave Giorno during the...night that shall not be named.
It might be just what Giorno needs to cheer up. Mista tucks the bottle under his arm, and heads back upstairs to Giorno’s office, ignoring Sex Pistols’ protests about still being hungry. For how little they were, their metabolism was insane.
He lightly raps his knuckles against Giorno’s office door and sees the boss hunched over at his desk, still working endlessly at a stack of paperwork. Mista glances over at the grandfather clock to see that it’s 11 PM, far later than Giorno had initially promised him he would leave work.
“Uh, I was planning on going to the new restaurant that just opened here, Trattoria Trussardi, or something,” Mista says. “What do you want?”
Giorno twitches. He shoots his head up, with an alarming amount of energy to stare at Mista with bloodshot eyes. “I’m fine, Mista. I ate in the morning.”
“This morning, or yesterday morning, when I spoonfed you soup?” Mista asks, his arms crossed.
“Was that not this morning?” Giorno asks. Mista gets a good look at him for the first time in a while and he realizes with alarm that Giorno looks pretty worse for wear. His concealer doesn’t do enough to hide dark bags under his eyes, and the clips that pin his victory rolls are hanging loose. He also looks really tense and jumpy, which is so unlike the normally relaxed posture Giorno has around him.
“Boss,” Mista says slowly, peering at Giorno’s pale face. “It’s late. You need to leave work for the day, alright?”
“No need,” Giorno says quickly. “I just need to finish up this report, and then I only have five more,” he nudges a looming stack of papers and manila folders, “Before I’m done for the night.” He smiles sharply.
“How many cups of coffee did you have?” Mista says, like a parent disciplining their child. “Don’t lie to me, Giorno.”
Giorno doesn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed. “Zero. I didn’t even bother with brewing coffee, I just ate raw coffee grounds.” He actually looks proud of himself as he says that last statement, like he outsmarted Mista somehow, instead of fueled his workaholic tendencies in the worst way possible.
“That’s enough,” Mista says, gently taking Giorno’s pen out of his hands and closing his laptop. These late nights were becoming more and more frequent, and it’s clearly taking a toll on the boss mentally and physically. Mista never sees him anymore not working.
Giorno whimpers when their hands brush. “But I’m so close,” he whines near pornographically. Mista prays that the looming stack of paper hides at how his dick twitches in interest.
Mista spins around so Giorno can’t see his bulge. “Okay, I’m getting you a drink,” he says over his shoulder, more to buy himself time to calm his dick down than out of any real desire to get Giorno inebriated. At the very least, the alcohol might cancel out the effects of - god, did he say raw coffee grounds? Jesus.
He pours the wine into some glasses. When he turns, he finds Giorno typing furiously into his laptop. He groans. “God, boss, take a break, will ya?” he says unhappily.
He hands him a drink. Giorno sips it hesitantly, before downing the whole glass in one gulp. Mista follows after, once he’s sure Giorno isn’t feeling any adverse side effects.
“First,” Giorno grins. He sets the glass down on his desk.
“I didn’t know it was a competition,” Mista complains. “Plus, you’re all caffeinated, you’d get disqualified at the Olympics in a heartbeat.”
Giorno giggles - like, full on giggles. It was cute, but Giorno only giggles when he’s exhausted, which means that he needs to get Giorno to sleep, stat.
“Okay,” Mista smiles tiredly. “Let’s get you to bed, boss.” He places two hands over Giorno’s, and gently guides him away from his desk and out of the room. While Giorno is jumpy, he seems a little more mellow from before, which Mista counts as a success.
When they reach Giorno’s bedroom, Giorno jumps onto the king-sized bed and spreads out like a starfish. Mista laughs. Giorno puts on a tough mafia boss front so often that Mista forgets he’s still young. It was cute.
He feels for the light switch on the wall beside him and shuts off the light. “Night, boss,” he calls out, and turns to leave.
“Wait,” Giorno says. Mista stills. “I need to say something to you.”
Apprehensively, Mista steps towards the bed and sits down by the foot of it. Giorno motions for him to get closer, until he’s lying across from Giorno on the bed. He gets an overwhelming feeling of deja vu.
“What is it, boss?” Mista says nervously. He’s trying his best to focus on Giorno’s voice, but he can feel his mind start to become soft and numb. The alcohol must already be starting to take effect. Jeez, he’s such a lightweight.
Giorno whispers something that Mista can’t make out. “What was that?” Mista asks, edging closer to Giorno to hear better.
Giorno’s breath is hot and wet against his ear. “I have so much energy,” he says quietly. “And nowhere to put it.”
Mista laughs. “That alcohol not tire you out yet?”
Giorno shakes his head.
“I can get you another drink, boss,” Mista says. “Just give me a sec, I think I left it in the other room.” He sits up to get off, but Giorno reaches an arm out to clamp him on the bed.
“And since you refuse to let me work, you need to help let out that energy.”
Mista swallows. Hard. Giorno tracks the movement of his Adam’s Apple bob in his throat. “What do you mean by that, boss?” Mista asks, deciding playing stupid is the smart move here.
“Remember our one night stand?” Giorno says spitefully, like the words seem to physically burn his mouth.
Mista nods. “It’s pretty unforgettable. The parts of it I remember, anyways.”
“I think about it all the time,” Giorno says honestly. “When I’m in the office next to you, when I’m eating dinner with you, even when it’s just me alone at night.” He leans in closer to Mista’s ear. “Especially alone at night.”
Mista is dead. Mista is dead. He has died, somehow, during this conversation, and his soul has ascended to heaven and now he is in heaven, getting to fulfill all the fantasies he never got on Earth.
There’s a couple things wrong with that theory, considering Mista has killed ten too many people without remorse to be let into heaven. Plus, his heart is pounding so hard in his chest he can hear it in his ears, which would suggest he’s alive.
“I saw you earlier, in my office,” Giorno continues in a low voice. His hand runs from Mista’s chest and then begins its descent down. “I saw this,” his hand reaches Mista’s crotch. “All nice and ready for me.”
Mista’s heart is racing. Holy shit, this was the Giorno he missed out on when his stupid amnesiac mind got wiped? Fuck his lightweightedness, man, this was mind-blowing.
“Your marks are fading,” Giorno says, slowly grinding against Mista’s thigh. “I can tell when you stretch your arms and your midriff shows. I put one right here,” he sucks a piece of skin right on Mista’s abdomen to prove his point. “Just so I could see it. So everyone would know you’re mine.”
Mista whimpers.
“You want me,” Giorno says, almost pleading. “Why won’t you admit it?”
Mista acts on instinct and crashes his lips against Giorno’s. He snakes his hands up to Giorno’s cheeks to close all the distance between them. He only separates when his lungs force him to.
“Because it’s obvious,” he says huskily, and then moves his lips lower. Giorno groans deliciously and then-
Mista wakes up with a start with a pounding headache. Jesus, what did he drink last night? This hangover was almost as bad as the one after the Passione party. He blinks unsteadily, and then the deja vu hits him like a bullet.
Once again, he’s not in his bed. Once again, morning light is filtering through the balcony windows. Once again, he feels a warm presence beside him. He feels like he knows in his bones what he’s going to see when he turns, but he turns anyway, and, yep, his arms are wrapped around the sleeping form of Giorno Giovanna beside him. His abdomen feels sore, and he looks down at his bare chest to see it, once again, littered with purple love bites.
He sits up and buries his face in his hands.“How does this keep happening?” he whispers desperately. If he gets to sleep with the living god that is Giorno Giovanna not once, but twice, what kind of cruel fate is it that he doesn’t remember it?
He thinks hard. Giorno was overworking himself to the bone again, so he got him a drink to calm him down and brought him to bed. And then… and then… fuck. His mind draws a blank, refusing to let him remember anything past that point.
He feels gross. Giorno didn’t deserve this, Giorno deserved a suave, perfect person who he would have sex with when sober. What if Mista took advantage of him? Why can’t he remember?
He wants to bolt out of the room, but Giorno would kill him on the spot if he did, so he reaches over and nudges Giorno on the shoulder sharply.
“Giorno,” he hisses. “It happened again.”
Giorno rustles. “Five more minutes,” he mumbles into his pillow. And by pillow, he means Mista’s chest.
“Boss,” Mista says, shoving Giorno harder. “Get up. It happened again.”
Finally, finally, Giorno opens his eyes. He groans and sits up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and yawning. “Coffee,” he mumbles sleepily. “Mista.”
Mista’s heart skips a beat hearing his name be canonized in Giorno’s sleepy voice, and then he tells himself to get a grip because he needs to fucking focus. He needs Giorno to be working with him right now. He grabs Giorno’s chin and jerks it downwards to stare at the hickies on his chest. Giorno freezes.
“Do you remember anything?” Mista whispers frantically.
Giorno, now fully awake, rubs his temples. “No,” he says hollowly. “No.”
He sits up and untangles himself from Mista. Mista’s skin feels achingly cold without his touch. “I know I was working, and you got me a drink so I would calm down,” Giorno says slowly. “And now we’re here.”
“And now we’re here,” Mista repeats. He looks at Giorno, who’s hunched over in himself, like he’s trying to hide within himself. It’s not a good look. Mista feels a wave of guilt crash against him for making Giorno look like this.
“I know the first time, we thought it was a drunken one night stand,” Giorno says in deep thought. “But perhaps we should consider that we’re operating with an enemy Stand user.”
Mista pales. “No, no, it can’t be,” he grimaces. “That means we have to-.”
Giorno nods gravely. “Yes. It’s the only way.”
Mista closes his eyes and prays that he will be smited by God before he has to go through with this. He opens his eyes.
“Giorno and I hooked up twice and we don’t remember it and we think it’s a Stand user,” Mista says quickly, trying to squeeze the whole sentence in one breath.
Fugo chokes on his coffee. Polnareff snorts in uproarious laughter.
Mista sits down in the kitchen chair and sighs, bracing himself for Fugo and Polnareff’s reaction. During the subsequent five minutes, Fugo desperately tries to regain his breath, while Polnareff manages to calm himself down, only to immediately succumb to another fit of laughter once he makes eye contact with Mista.
“This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell them,” Mista hisses at Giorno.
Giorno squeezes Mista’s hand reassuringly, before clearing his throat. Polnareff and Fugo immediately are silenced.
“I realize the humor in the situation,” Giorno says solemnly. “But this is serious. We have reason to believe we are working with a Stand user that preys on our memories, which means it can be utilized against us as Passione leaders.”
Polnareff nods, back to business. “Please, tell us exactly what you remember happening, and spare no detail.”
“Spare some detail,” Fugo grimaces. “For my sake, and my ability to make eye contact with you in the future.”
Mista rolls his eyes, but he dutifully catches the two of them up. “Each time, I can clearly remember us talking, having a drink, then we get to Giorno’s bedroom, and then…” He wrinkles his forehead in concentration. “It’s like there’s a gap in time, or a mental block in my mind. I can’t remember anything until the next morning, when I wake up beside Giorno and we both realize what happened.”
“And you know for sure you had sex?” Fugo says, strained. Under any other circumstances, Mista would relish in how uncomfortable Fugo looks, but he’s not feeling it today.
Mista wordlessly lifts his sweater up to show the two the patchwork of hickies on his chest, courtesy of the artist Giorno Giovanna. Polnareff looks vaguely intrigued. Fugo shuts his eyes tightly, at least having the decency to look embarrassed.
“This had to be a Stand,” Giorno says. “We know for sure that it would affect our memories. It’s unclear, though, how it operates in terms of desire.”
“Yeah, what if I end up accidentally sleeping with some rando enemy?” Mista says blithely. “That would be bad. Good for them, but bad for Passione.” Giorno tenses just the slightest bit.
“If Mista’s memories are to be trusted,” Polnareff muses. “Then the most likely culprit in both instances is the wine you drank. You said you got it at the party?”
Mista nods. “Yeah, some sweet white wine. It was in the stack of bottles that everyone brought as gifts. That must mean someone at the party planted it there, right?”
Fugo hums thoughtfully. “Maybe. Do you still have the bottle?”
“Should be upstairs,” Mista says. “I’ll go grab it.”
“Excellent,” Polnareff nods, then continues as Mista leaves. “We should send it to the Speedwagon Foundation. Their labs are much more suited to analyzing Stand and magical objects. They’ll also likely have more information about if anything like this has happened before.”
Polnareff’s voice disappears as Mista heads up the stairs and ducks into Giorno’s bedroom. Just as he suspected, the wine bottle is still perched on the nightstand. He grabs it and heads down the stairs, noting with some suspicion that it feels heavy, as if still full. He realizes, as he approaches the table, that the cork is still there, as if never drunk out of in the first place.
The three peer at the bottle in interest as Mista sits down. Mista can’t focus, though, and he can’t tear his eyes away from the bottle. Even as Polnareff extends a hand for him to set the bottle onto, something tugs at his mind to open the bottle and drink out of it.
Come on Mista, drink it. Drink it. A voice chants in his mind.
He can’t think of anything else. Everything sounds like he’s hearing it through a swimming pool. His hands move without his knowledge to pop the cork and inch the mouth of the bottle towards the lips. He takes a sip.
He can see in the corner of his vision that Giorno is summoning Golden Experience, but even as a flash of golden light hits the bottle, it remains untouched. Mista gurgles, trying to stop the liquid from reaching his throat, but he is like a man possessed. He swallows.
The table erupts into chaos. Mista finally is able to regain enough control to drop the bottle, which crashes against the floor. Giorno leaps by his side, while Fugo grabs Polnareff to examine the broken bottle.
“Mista, what the hell were you thinking?” Fugo says angrily over his shoulder. “Are you out of your mind?”
Mista is breathing heavily as he leans against the chair. When Giorno moves to touch his face to examine him for injuries, he jumps back.
“Don’t touch me. Don’t touch it,” he says shakily. “I don’t know what happened, but I couldn’t stop myself from drinking out of it. We don’t know for sure what this will do to me. Or how contagious it is.”
Giorno pulls back reluctantly.
“It is unfortunate that Mista became our unintentional guinea pig,” Polnareff says with a knitted brow. “But now that he has been influenced by the Stand, this would be the perfect opportunity to see how he is affected, and deduce what’s going on.”
Mista bristles at the implication that he is a guinea pig.
“I’ll observe him,” Giorno says instantly. “I will have the best understanding of what is normal and abnormal behavior for the drunk version of Mista. I also need answers about this whole ordeal.”
Polnareff sends Fugo a knowing glance. “That might not be the best idea, Don,” Fugo says nervously. “He may try to hurt you-”
“Or seduce you,” Polnareff mutters.
“And that would hurt our ability to observe him neutrally,” Fugo finishes. “Or observe at all, since...well, you know.” He coughs, his face turning slightly red.
Giorno levels an unimpressed glare at the both of them. “We’ll set up cameras in Mista’s room. If we must do shifts, we’ll do shifts, but I’m doing the first one. We have to act quickly, since the effects likely will set in soon.”
Fugo turns to look at Mista. “Are you able to walk to your room on your own?”
Mista nods. “Yeah, I still have legs, man. Have you never gotten drunk before? Jeez.”
Fugo rolls his eyes, but he seems relieved that Mista is still throwing jabs. It was probably a good sign that the drink wasn’t totally affecting him.
With as much dignity as one can have while being under the influence of a possibly magical amnesiac aphrodisiac, Mista sits up and walks towards his room. Fugo trails behind. Once he opens the door, he sits down on his bed, and Fugo sets up several cameras on the ceiling, on his shelf, and by the window. Mista yawns, still a little tired from waking up abruptly hungover.
“Pretty brave of you to want to be near me. You’re not scared I’m gonna try and fuck you?” Mista says casually, leaning against the bed frame.
“You know I’d sic Purple Haze on you, 11th plague of the world be damned.” Fugo retorts. “Also, you’re too whipped for Giorno to try anything.”
Mista freezes. How does Fugo know? “Those cameras don’t have mics, do they?” he whispers.
“They do, but they’re not on yet.” Fugo says.
Mista slumps against the bed frame. “Is it that obvious?”
“It was a suspicion,” Fugo says lightly. “That you just confirmed.”
Mista groans. If even Fugo could tell, then there was no way Giorno didn’t know, right? Not that Fugo was stupid or anything, but Mista spent nowhere near the amount of time he spent with Giorno, with Fugo. This was bad.
“It helps that you two did have drunk sex twice,” Fugo adds. “Polnareff and I both knew that you two have been dating for a while now, though.”
Mista chokes. “What?” he splutters. “We’re not dating!”
“You’re not?” Fugo says, arching an eyebrow. “I just assumed, since you two were so alarmingly okay with the hooking up aspect of all this.”
That was a good point. He and Giorno both have a surprisingly high tolerance for ‘magical bullshit’, considering they’re both magical Stand users that operate as teenage Mafia bosses and underbosses, so he subconsciously must have attributed it to that. But, Giorno never seemed to have been that surprised or offended about the whole ordeal, just put off that he didn’t remember it. What could that mean? He struggles to think. His brain feels tired today.
He turns to ask Fugo, but the consigliere is already out the door, leaving the room without much fanfare. Mista sighs. He might as well watch some movies while he waits for the effects of the Stand to settle in. He tries his best to focus on thinking of a movie to watch. Beautiful Lady was good. Wait, that wasn’t the title. Stunning Girl? Lovely Female?
His brain is sluggish. His limbs feel slow and lethargic. He knows he just needs to think, goddamnit, think, but the thought of thinking suddenly feels like running a marathon. He wants to sleep. His eyelids weigh him down.
He sleeps.
He wakes some unspecified amount of time later to Giorno standing by his bedside. His mind feels hazy, but he tries to focus on the words that are coming out of Giorno’s mouth.
“...you feeling?” Giorno says quietly.
How is he feeling? “Tired,” Mista says simply. “I want to sleep. Want to go back to sleep, too.”
Giorno nods precariously, and then sits in silence, as if waiting for Mista to do something. Mista doesn’t know what, though, and he really wants to sleep. That would probably seem disrespectful to say to the boss, but it’s like the alcohol loosens his tongue, because he can’t stop himself from speaking his mind.
“Are you going to stop staring at me now?” Mista slurs. He flops his head back against the pillow. “‘m trying to sleep.”
Giorno huffs quietly. “I’m only saying this because you’re not going to remember this in the morning, but you look cute like this. All sleepy. None of that usual mafioso swagger, although I like that too.” Giorno tucks a curl behind Mista’s ear.
Mista hears maybe five words of that, but he can vaguely discern the fondness and domesticity in Giorno’s tone. That seems like a target for Mista to shoot in the morning, though. They should sleep right now. Mista is sleepy. He grabs Giorno by the waist and drags him down into Mista’s bedsheets, and nuzzles into Giorno’s neck.
“Night, GioGio,” he says tiredly, snaking his hands around Giorno’s waist. His mind pulls him back to sleep. The last thing he hears is a quiet sigh beside him.
You know the drill. Mista wakes up hungover, although this time, he’s in his room and his bed feels empty. He feels thankful when he notes that he doesn’t have hickies all over him this time, which means he probably didn’t jump anyone’s bones, but he still had a killer headache.
Fugo bursts through the door. He’s holding a glass of water and some painkillers, which Mista takes gratefully. He downs some water and then the pills (which is the correct order to take pills, because he’s not a heathen. But that’s neither here nor there).
“Okay, lay it on me,” Mista says once his headache starts to subside. “Did me and Giorno make a sex tape or what?”
Fugo rolls his eyes. “Surprisingly, no. It was actually super boring watching you snore for eight hours.”
Mista wrinkles his nose. He absentmindedly wipes drool from the corner of his mouth before taking a sip of water.
“Of course, excluding the part where you cuddled for Giorno for a couple hours.”
Mista spits out his water. “What? I don’t remember that at all.”
“Well, that confirms we’re dealing with a memory-erasing stand,” Fugo says carefully. “Which lines up with what the Speedwagon Foundation told us. But first, let me disable these cameras.”
He stands up to do so. Mista reaches down to grip Giorno’s hand for comfort, only to look down at his bedsheets and realize the blond isn’t there. Jeez, he got Pavlov’d into thinking Giorno was lying next to him. He really couldn’t get used to waking up next to him.
Fugo interrupts Mista’s train of thought to perch on the bed next to him. “Okay,” Fugo starts. “What do you remember before you passed out?”
Mista thinks hard. “I took a drink from the magic bottle,” he says. “Then you brought me here. And that’s it. Wait, you set up cameras in my room?”
Fugo waves his hand dismissively. “Do you remember Giorno coming into your room during your nap?”
Mista shakes his head.
“This is a little strange,” Fugo says. “But, you essentially forced the Don into cuddling with you as you slept. Thankfully, you didn’t try to sleep with him - I would not have been able to recover from that - but still, that was a weird one to try to rationalize with Polnareff.”
Mista groans. “Fuck off, I can’t believe I did that. Jesus.”
Fugo nods. “Which brings us to our theories. What do you think about a theory that the stand has a way of sort of amplifying your desires so that you act on them?”
“Oh,” Mista says slowly. “That...that could make sense.”
Fugo hesitates before further elaborating. “The idea is that the stand basically heightens only existing desires. I personally believe the user can’t choose the desire itself at all, especially because that seems far too powerful for a remote controlled stand. Instead, it chooses your greatest desire to act on. Polnareff and Giorno are skeptical, though.”
A beat passes, then Fugo seems to take a shaky breath. “Mista, how badly do you want to sleep with Giorno? Or to even just sleep with him...non-sexually?”
Mista chokes on the sip of water he was taking. “Sorry?” he splutters. “I don’t wanna sleep with Giorno, it just happens, I mean that’s ridiculous and unprofessional, I’ll have you know. Frankly, how do I know you don’t want to sleep with Giorno?”
Fugo levels an unimpressed gaze as he cuts off Mista’s rambling. “That bad, huh?”
Mista debates fighting back, but it just feels like a waste of energy. He slumps against the bed frame. “You don’t even know.”
Fugo gives Mista a comforting punch to the bicep. “Good, because I really don’t want to know,” he says honestly. “But it would provide evidence to my theory.”
“So you’re saying that the greatest desire in my mind was to sleep with Giorno and not, I dunno, do literally anything else?”
“Your words, not mine.” Fugo shrugs. “Anyways, Polnareff should be finished briefing Giorno now. We forced him to take a break when he passed out from staring at you sleeping for too long.”
Mista’s heart stutters. He foolishly hopes for a brief moment that he looked hot sleeping.
“Wait,” Mista says as he follows Fugo out the room. “So, under your theory, does that mean Giorno’s greatest desire was to-”
“Ask him, not me.” Fugo interrupts before shuddering. “I don’t want to think about it.”
Giorno and Polnareff are seated around the gallery of monitors, whispering furiously, before abruptly stopping once Fugo and Mista enter the turtle.
“Ah, Mista, my boy,” Polnareff says grandly, clapping a hand on Mista’s shoulders. “We very much appreciate you for submitting yourself to experimentation for the purposes of this investigation. It was very helpful.” He punctuates the thought with a wink, which sends an uncomfortable shiver down Mista’s spine.
He nods, then glances at Giorno to see his reaction. Giorno seems normal, but under closer inspection, his eye bags seem a little darker, and his hair seems a bit more disheveled than usual. A pang of guilt stabs through him for making Giorno look like that.
“So what now?” Mista asks, tearing his eyes away from Giorno. “What’s our next move?”
“We have to identify the Stand user. Luckily, I found footage from the party of the gift table to get everyone who brought a bottle of wine,” Polnareff says, pulling up a video on one of his monitors. Mista moves in closer to take a look.
“We should also be looking for a motive,” Giorno says levelly. “Who at that party would want the Don to forget something during that short period of time?”
“Someone must have let something slip during the party,” Mista muses. “Or they just wanted to mess with you.”
The footage comes to a still, so Mista presses the arrow key to fast forward. Suddenly, he notices a sudden movement across the screen. “Wait,” he says sharply. “Why did that person drop off a bottle so late into the party?”
Mista inches closer to examine an older man with close cropped hair and conniving, beady eyes. “That Capo Carpaccio, right?” he says hesitantly, as Polnareff zooms closer to the person’s face. “I recognize him from the Capo meetings we have sometimes.”
“Carpaccio,” Fugo says thoughtfully, running the name through his mouth. “I know he’s from the old guard. He leads the narcotics team on the edge of Naples.”
“They must feel threatened by our aims to get rid of Italy’s drug trade,” Giorno says. “That would explain the motive.”
Polnareff nods. “Perfect. We’ll send a team to incapacitate him for questioning. It shouldn’t take long.”
“A team is dangerous,” Giorno shakes his head. “Too many unaccounted outside factors. Mista can handle this.”
He rests a hand on Mista’s shoulder. Mista pretends that his heart is not pounding faster in his chest.
Fugo coughs “With all due respect, boss, ingesting the stand for this many doses could be very dangerous, especially f-o-u-r doses. We don’t know the effect it will have on Mista. At the very least, we can warn a team-”
Mista stiffens. Giorno cuts Fugo off. “On the contrary. Mista knows best the effects of the stand and how to avoid them. He won’t take another hit from the stand. He’ll be fine, right?”
“Four is a bad omen,” Mista says nervously. “If I get hit again, that’s going to be a disaster. I’m not sure this is a good idea anymore, boss.”
“Guido,” Giorno says softly. “There’s no one else in the world that I trust more than you for this mission. I recognize the risks, but we’ll bring Fugo and Polnareff and I will be monitoring the situation from the base. You can do this.”
Mista smiles at Giorno. Before he can think any romantic, gushy thoughts about Giorno’s trust in him, the boss leans in and whispers, “Do this, or I tell everyone you’re the little spoon in bed.”
Mista turns bright red.
“Now,” Giorno says professionally. “Sheila E and I will have a plan of attack for you by nightfall. Carpaccio will rue the day he tried to cross us.”
Capo Carpaccio is a simple man. Every morning before he heads to work, he enjoys a nice pastry and cappuccino from the local cafe. He sits inside the cafe and rolls open the newspaper to keep up with the daily news. It gets harder and harder every day to keep up with the news considering his advancing age, but he handles it remarkably well.
This is the routine that he prides himself in. However, his routine is interrupted today when a young man with an obscene and obnoxious outfit casts a shadow over his newspaper. Carpaccio looks up unamused to give him a once over. The man’s got a look to him that screams ‘street thug’, although his clothes look strangely expensive for someone like that.
“Can I help you, sir?” Carpaccio asks calmly. He sees no sense in aggravating random thugs unless given due cause. So far, the man is just staring intently down at him.
“Yeah,” the man drawls. “I’ve been itching for a drink, but I seem to have forgotten mine at home. Do you have one on you, by any chance?”
Carpaccio narrows his eyes. This man couldn’t know about his stand, One Night Stand, right? He didn’t seem smart enough to, but well, it never hurt to be careful. He forces his voice to stay calm. “There’s a bar down the street,” he says coolly. “You’d have better luck there.”
“Ah, you see,” the stranger says slyly. “I am an impatient man. Why walk down the street when I would very much like a shot right now?”
He wraps an arm around Carpaccio’s shoulders and cocks a gun against his stomach. None of the surrounding cafe patrons seem to notice the sound.
Carpaccio’s eyes widen. “Don’t you dare, boy,” he hisses quietly. “You may be a thug, but I’m a member of Passione. Ring a bell?”
Rather than strike fear in the stranger, his words seem to actually amuse him. “What a coincidence,” he says lightly. “I am too. Guess we’ll have to take this up with the boss then, huh?”
Carpaccio huffs. “Like the boss could do anything I couldn’t. What would you know-”
Without warning, the man shoots a gun into Carpaccio’s chest, a silencer muffling the sound. Carpaccio widens his eyes, but before he can react, he slumps over the stranger’s shoulder. To any other surrounding people, it would seem merely like an old man being caught from his fall, rather than an attempted murder.
“We got ‘em, Fugo,” the man whispers into his earpiece. “Bring the car around.”
“On it, Mista,” a crackly voice says. Carpaccio’s world fades into black.
Mista is cleaning his gun when he hears a light tap on the door. He had just finished feeding a very self-congratulatory Sex Pistols (despite the fact that they didn’t do anything besides eat Carpaccio’s pastry. They don’t seem to care). He wipes salami grease off his hands on his pants when he opens the door to see Giorno standing in front of it.
“How’d interrogation go?” he asks, sitting back on the bed, where the pieces of his gun lay. Giorno is shrugging off his suit jacket and loosening his tie to reveal a white dress shirt. Mista tells himself not to stare. Why does that thought feel familiar?
“Well, Carpaccio cracked quickly,” Giorno says. “He confessed to giving us a drugged, self-replicating wine bottle. Apparently, it’s a remote controlled stand, like Fugo thought, that induces whoever touches it to drink it. And it indeed wipes the memories one has over a short period of time. A very effective tool to have for interrogation and dealing with enemies.”
“You know he calls it ‘One Night Stand’?” Mista laughs. “So lame. It’s kinda ironic though.”
“That’s the thing,” Giorno says in quiet concentration. “The drink has alcohol that is especially potent, so the effects of it are heightened, such as a lack of filter or impaired decision making. However, it’s not an aphrodisiac, as evidenced by Carpaccio’s total confusion when I brought it up.”
Mista jabs an elbow at Giorno’s side playfully. “Hey, if he can’t remember it, he can’t blab about it to anyone else. He’ll sleep it off and be none the wiser in the morning.” He waits for Giorno to laugh along, but instead, he has a distant expression on his face.
“What’s wrong?” Mista asks, concerned.
Giorno looks down at his hands. “If it’s true that the stand did not cause us to have intercourse,” he says stiltedly. “Then, it must be the case that the alcohol must have encouraged me to have forced myself upon you. And for that, I deeply apologize.” He refuses to make eye contact with Mista. “If you see this affecting our work relationship, I would be happy to make accommodations-”
“Woah, woah, woah, slow down, tiger.” Mista interrupts. “Who said anything about that? If anything, I feel guilty because you had to sleep with me, not the other way around.”
Giorno wrinkles his brow in confusion. “Why wouldn’t I want to sleep with you?”
Mista turns bright red. “Well, you know,” he stammers. “Just ‘cause you’re the Don of Passione, and I’m just your bodyguard.”
Giorno searches Mista’s face. “Besides that. You, of all people, should know that workplace one night stands happen all the time. If I remember correctly, you were the one explaining it to me that Bucciarati and Abbacchio had a relationship of that sort. There’s another reason.”
Mista waits for a sign that Giorno is mocking or psychologically torturing him with this line of questioning. To his surprise, Giorno seems genuinely curious. “Please don’t make me say it,” Mista pleads.
Giorno sits patiently, owlishly blinking at him as if he’s genuinely hanging on to every word that comes flying out of Mista’s mouth. Shit, he really has to say it.
“Because you’re- you’re gorgeous,” Mista says as quickly as possible. “And I’m- well, I do fine, but you know, us hooking up was kind of a fluke, you know? If we were both sober, you would totally be out of my league.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Deadly,” Mista nods. “I mean, you’ve got the whole smart, scary, dominant badass vibe that weirdly turns people on. And your eyes and hair are pretty. Not that I would know, it’s just a neutral observation.” He hastily tacks on. The flush in his cheeks reveals the truth behind his words, though.
Giorno is smiling at him, but not in a cruel way. “What about the rest of me?”
“Huh?” Mista says dumbly.
“Is the rest of me pretty too?”
Mista knows he can’t lie, because Giorno would see right through it, instantly and one shot him into oblivion. Instead, he chooses the quicker death and nods tightly, apprehensively. He closes his eyes, waiting for rejection, or Giorno to get uncomfortable and leave. When he peeks his eyes open, instead, Giorno looks relieved and hopeful. This was not the rejection Mista was bracing himself for.
“So you’re saying you wanted to have sex with me,” Giorno says hesitantly. “Sober, drunk, or otherwise.”
“Yeah,” Mista says, like it’s obvious, because it kinda was. “Wait, do you want to sleep with me?”
Giorno nods quickly, eagerly. “Yes, since I touched your dick when I was healing you.”
Mista’s heart is doing a weird fluttering thing in his chest. “Oh. Uh, wow . What the hell what have we been doing this whole time, then?”
“I don’t know,” Giorno says honestly. He lifts his hands and lets them roam across Mista’s shoulders and chest. “You know, it’s a pity we can’t get our memories back, because I would really like to have been able to remember being with you.”
Mista rushes to kiss Giorno and lets his hands finally, finally run through those golden locks like he’s wanted to the moment Giorno stepped into the room. “That’s okay,” he mumbles into Giorno’s mouth. “We’ll make new memories.”
Giorno separates. Mista whimpers at the loss of contact. “You haven’t touched a drop of Carpaccio’s stand, right?” Giorno says sternly.
Mista shakes his head.
“Neither have I. Let’s make this unforgettable then, shall we?”
Mista ducks his head to meet Giorno’s lips once more as an answer. They could talk later. They had a lot of time to make up for.