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Apart from their country mansion and city apartment, Giorno and Mista owned a small home in the hills above Naples. Designed for getaways, it had a pool and a beach view, two terraces, and an outdoor kitchen. And sometimes, it was exactly where a Don and his right-hand man needed to go to catch a break.
Of course, the couple didn’t manage to visit too often. But when they did, they spent long nights sitting together, holding each other close and only speaking as much as they wanted to.
Tonight was one of those occasions: they were out on the lower terrace, lying side by side in comfortable deck chairs as the sun set into the sea. Mista was thinking about Giorno; he wasn’t sure what Giorno was thinking about.
After all this time together, Giorno continued to mystify his boyfriend in some ways. His mind was elusive, his heart forever shying away from scrutinizing eyes. It wasn’t as if Mista felt left out or rejected: he knew Giorno trusted him with far more than just his life. And by now, he knew that Giorno didn’t have to share every nuance of his thought process. He’d always inform Mista of the conclusion his mysterious mind took, and that was almost always enough.
Still, that didn’t mean there weren’t times when Mista wished he could print Giorno’s thoughts out on a piece of paper and read them like a mission report. Seeing as he didn’t have any technology or Stand ability capable of doing this, though, his next best option was to ask Giorno directly.
“Why did you join Passione?”
“What?”
Giorno looked confused. Okay, so maybe Mista wasn’t always the best at asking questions, either. It wasn’t his fault that these things were hard to time, or that he had a habit of asking questions as soon as he thought of them!
“I know it’s random, but I was—”
Giorno’s face softened. “Don’t worry about it. I just wasn’t expecting the question. What’s on your mind?”
“I was thinking about the week we met, and how you became Don,” Mista explained. “Sometimes I forget how young you were then, and how new you were to Mafia life. I can’t help but think about how quickly you committed to your dream and were lead to us by fate.”
Giorno hummed in amusement. “You’re making it sound like I was completely virtuous before joining you.”
Mista rolled his eyes. Since he and Giorno had begun their relationship, he had gotten a fairly good idea of Giorno’s youth, and knew that the younger man had been anything but pampered or even innocent. He was going to speak to this, but Giorno continued first.
The Don’s eyes were far away, as blue and green as ever, even as they reflected the warm tones of the sunset. “Anyway, my past is far from the only reason I became Don. I also happened to be one of the few left over, and was left to carry on the wills of those who were lost.”
Oh, Mista registered. Giorno was talking about their dead friends.
Mista looked down at his drink, at the ice cubes which were slowly starting to melt. He suddenly had the distinct feeling that one of them had made it into his lungs. Could he have inhaled one without noticing? Why else would he feel so cold, why was it getting harder to breathe?
He watched as a hand came to rest on his thigh: a hand adorned with thin golden rings— Giorno’s. He began to remember what it was to feel warm again and looked up.
Giorno’s eyes were swimming with tears, and Mista set aside his own grief to make room for both of theirs.
“Come here,” he murmured. Their deck chairs were already practically touching, but Giorno moved onto Mista’s anyway and curled into him.
“I miss them,” he confessed. “And I feel as if I came to possess too much power, too late.”
There was not much Mista could say to soothe these feelings: he knew Giorno was just as aware as him that nothing could have gone any differently. They had all fought until the bitter end and won, even some of their friends hadn’t lived to see their victory. The life expectancy of a gangster was never high, but they could die fulfilled as long as their missions and wills were upheld.
Both Mista and Giorno knew this well, and yet they still had to suffer the losses they had endured.
“Do you want to see them?” Mista asked.
Giorno gave him a look, the tears in his eyes glinting fiercely. Abbacchio, Narancia, and Bucciarati’s graves were in a small graveyard on the land belonging to Giorno and Mista’s mansion, so he knew Mista couldn’t be talking about that.
Still, he didn’t ask what Mista did mean. He simply trusted him, and nodded shortly. “I’d like that.”
Mista stood up, then helped Giorno do the same. A breeze came blowing from the horizon, and Mista saw Giorno draw his arms around himself. He seized a shawl that had been hanging on the back of one of the chairs and gently wrapped it around the smaller man’s shoulders. Giorno thanked him with a look and then they set off, holding each other’s hands as they walked.
Their weekend home was near the top of a hill, and there was a hiking trail directly behind their yard that led further up, winding through the brush and bracken which dotted the slope. It was gravelly and quite steep, and Mista took extra care to guide Giorno as they walked. Also, because the breeze from off the sea far below was picking up now, he walked on Giorno’s left, shielding him from the cooler air to the best of his ability. Of course, it wasn’t as if he believed Giorno to be fragile: quite the opposite, he had thought of Giorno as being stronger than him for a long time now. But that was exactly why Mista felt the need to protect him. Strength was cruel, and it wore on a person’s soul, forcing them into solitude or pain. So for this reason, Mista prayed that the fates would allow his weaker self to always support Giorno and stay by his side.
(Not that he was weak, either, of course. He was Giorno’s bodyguard for a reason.)
After about ten minutes, they made it to the top of the hill. Mista had already come up there on one of his runs and knew exactly where he wanted to take them. Giorno followed his lead as they stepped off the path and onto grass, kept short and thin by the lack of moisture and nutrients in the soil.
The ground rose more sharply from here, but only for a short distance until it dropped back down towards the sea. This meant that they couldn’t yet see the view, but Mista was determined to get them there. They scrambled up the headland, momentarily abandoning their dignity and poise as the fresh air and rugged surroundings captured their sensibilities.
Finally, they made it up: Mista guided them towards a large and flat rock sitting right at the highest point of the hill, which was still warm after being shone on by the sun all day. Once they sat down, they could finally take in the vista spread out before them.
All of Naples was in their sight: the bell towers and highrises of the center city, the tall hotels craning above the other rooftops in order to be able to advertise coveted ocean-view rooms, the cranes standing at attention in the harbor, the residential neighborhoods extending their glowing streets into the surrounding hills. And before it all lay the Mediterranean, its colors deepening as night fell, reflecting the lights of Naples and creating the illusion of a city under the water, perhaps even greater than the one on land.
This was Mista and Giorno’s home, but it was also the home of their friends. This territory had once belonged to all of them. Abbacchio had patrolled these streets, keeping them from harm; Narancia had roamed them, looking for food. Bucciarati had spoken to anyone who needed him and found every member of their group that way. A gangster’s home turf meant more to him than a house meant to an ordinary man, and even if they passed away, their presence never truly left the streets.
The maritime breeze was calm that evening, but the storm of emotion and memory that overcame both Giorno and Mista was not. They sat and remembered mercilessly.
The sea was as wild as their grief, the sunset as red as the blood that had been spilled for them, the city lights as bright as their future together. The evening air brought out the tears lurking in their eyes, and the chill breeze prompted them to hold each other through it all.
“When you first asked me to see them, I didn’t know what you meant,” Giorno said. “But I understand now. They’re here.”
“Yeah,” Mista nodded. His eyes stayed fixed on the view, but he wrapped his arm more tightly around Giorno’s shoulders.
There were still tears stinging their eyes, being forced out by the wind and streaking down their cheeks one by one, but the initial rush had settled, and now they felt closer to the clouds: long and languid puffs that lined the horizon in every shade a sunset could paint itself.
When Mista squinted with his blurry eyes, he thought he saw three figures lying amongst those clouds, and gasped.
“Do you see them, GioGio?” he asked breathlessly.
Giorno’s reply was low and steady. “I do.”
Mista could see them even more clearly now. They really were still in their home of Naples: in the streets below and the skies above.
Oh, they had mourned for their friends already, and they had buried them in the Earth (or at least a representation of their bodies), but thanks to their lifestyles they rarely had the time or energy to simply remember their former companions. All of their strength went into furthering the wills of the three they had lost, and that’s what made this night special, even more than three years after that time.
At the bottom of the cliff, waves of seawater rolled onto land. At the top of the cliff, their human grief rolled off of them in waves. Mista was glad that he could accompany Giorno and face these two seas together.
Giorno shifted, wrapping an arm around Mista’s neck and tucking his golden head against the broader man’s chest. “Thank you,” he murmured. “For letting me see them with you, and for holding me when it hurts.”
Mista wanted to tell him that of course he would, he always would, he wanted to support him, but wasn’t sure how to phrase it just then; words hadn’t been on his side that evening. So he just held Giorno tighter, making sure he was comfortable, and murmured “ GioGio” against his forehead.
They stayed like that until darkness had almost completely fallen, contemplating the city which housed their living selves and their dead companions, and comforting each other through the realizations they made. And if anyone had come across the two of them there on that rock, they might have mistaken them for a usual pair of lovers: yet if they bothered to watch them for a few more moments, they would notice there was more to the couple than that. There was unmistakable grief in the way Giorno and Mista were positioned; their bodies spoke of a vigil rather than a tryst. Similarly, there was something about them that implied more knowledge than common men, even if nothing about the way they were dressed implied that they were part of any sort of organization, let alone the Mafia.
And so to passersby, they would remain a mystery. The fact that they were a mystery would perhaps be picked up on, but not even a single clue as to how to solve it.
That was their romance, that was their grief, that was their life. And they were sure to live it as long and as fiercely as they could.