Chapter Text
Valentine is actually just fucking dead. Well, not really: D4C makes him functionally immortal, but this universe’s Valentine is super dead. Continuity, baby! Everyone agreed that this was an improvement. Due to this series of wacky shenanigans, a non-scalie version of Diego Brando was stranded. And miserable. Diego had temporarily taken over Valentine’s room, expecting to stay a week max until Valentine came back for him. It had been two months and Diego was hellbent on making everyone as miserable as he was.
Diego stayed away from Valentine’s room unless it was absolutely necessary, even preferring to sleep on the couch. Valentine’s room was awful, but the bed was probably the worst thing. It had the most embarrassing American flag bedspread and Diego didn’t want to be caught dead in it. All the other decor was a mash of antique weapons, busts of famous Americans, and various plaques Valentine had probably ordered online to make himself feel better. Lots of them simply read “Number One President” although one read “Funniest Valentine.” The whole room was a nauseating sea of bronze. Diego felt like touching anything would either break everything or turn him into some kind of patriotism fetishist. That seemed transmittable. So Diego was always in another part of the house, being in someone’s way and reminding them that he was here and he was not satisfied with the accommodations.
Right now, Diego was committing the ultimate bad roommate sin of standing in the kitchen while someone else was cooking. Two sins, actually, if you count being in a kitchen while being British. Which you should. Kira was tired of dealing with this shit. Diego always seemed to know when someone was in the kitchen and stood exactly in front of what they needed. If Kira didn’t get a spoon in the next thirty seconds he was going to blow Diego up and solve the problem for everyone.
“Do you need something?” Diego asked sharply when he noticed Kira staring at him.
“Yes. Please give me a spoon or get out of my way.”
“All you had to do was ask.” Diego turned around and pulled out a spoon from the drawer. “Catch!” he yelled and threw the spoon at Kira, who had no time to react. The spoon hit his face before falling into his bowl of cereal and splashing milk everywhere. Kira sighed and sat his bowl down. Breakfast wasn’t worth this. He was going back to ignoring the rest of the house in his room. Diego stole his Cheerios. One of the good things about not being in the fucking 1800s anymore was the cereal had so much more sugar. Diego didn’t dare touch Dio’s Froot Loops, though. There you go, there’s the Dio eating Froot Loops joke.
On his way up the stairs, Kira was stopped by Pucci. “Don’t go back to your room to organize your nail polish yet. We need to talk about the rent.”
“Is that what you think I do in my room?”
“That’s what I’m trying to think you do. Please don’t ruin art for me more than you already have. Anyways, I’m getting the whole house together in the living room.”
“Leave me alone.”
“You only need to deal with them for a short while. We’re just missing you, come on.”
Kira waited a moment, then trudged down the stairs behind Pucci. At least Pucci had already done the hard part of dragging Diavolo out of his room. That was impossible on a good day. On a bad day they had to hold Doppio hostage. The living room was dreary, since they had to block out all the windows because of the whole vampire issue. No rooms in the house had natural lighting besides the bedrooms and even then Kira wasn’t sure if Diavolo didn’t have black out curtains too. Vitamin D deficiencies would certainly explain his attitude. Kira sat down next to the grouchy bastard himself and looked over at Diego, who was still eating his Cheerios. For a second, Kira thought about planting Bites the Dust in him, before remembering it wouldn’t work because unlike Hayato none of these people had consciences and would just be ecstatic to murder each other over and over. Going back an hour seemed useful, but fate would probably decide Kira wasn’t getting breakfast no matter what he did.
“Okay, everyone,” Pucci started. “Wait, hold on. Sorry.” Instead of standing in front of everyone, Pucci went and grabbed a chair from the dining room to sit on. “I’m not trying to lecture, this is just a group meeting,” he said, more to himself than anyone else.
“Good job being slightly less sanctimonious for once, Father ,” Diavolo sneered.
“Don’t fucking interrupt him, you puddle of neon vomit and cheap cologne,” Dio snapped, before yawning.
“Someone woke up on the bitchy side of the bed today.”
“Pucci, I can’t deal with him this early. I’m going back to sleep.”
“No, you’re not, Dio. This is important.” Pucci moved to block Dio from moving out of the living room. They stared each other down, knowing that this whole thing was pointless since Dio could just stop time and move if he wanted to. He wouldn’t do it, of course, normally. Dio wouldn’t feel the need to one-up Pucci and would just wait until he agreed with him on whatever it was they were talking about. But normally , Dio wasn’t up in the morning and expected to deal with people he hated before he had even had his first human Capri Sun.
“Yeah! Go run back to your coffin, you vampire bitch!” Doppio shouted suddenly. Then he high-fived Diavolo. But it was more of a pat on the back, if you think about it. Dio’s eyes twitched and he swiveled around to face the two of them.
“Shut your brat and his helium voice up, Diavolo.”
“Listen here you second rate philosopher son of a bitch-”
“All of you shut the fuck up!” Kars’ voice thundered throughout the room, reverberating in everyone’s bones. “You did not interrupt my time with Esidisi for this pathetic squabbling.”
“Kars is right,” Pucci said, breaking the silence that had fallen over all of them. “I brought you here to talk about the rent.” Everyone groaned. Kars fished around in his hair for a bit before pulling out a fist sized diamond and throwing it at Pucci. It was heading straight for his face and as Pucci scrambled to catch it, he felt a heavy weight in his hand. The diamond was there, as well as a few of Dio’s solid gold bracelets. Dio gave Pucci a thumbs up.
“There’s rent,” Kars said. “We’re leaving.”
“Kars, I appreciate you paying on time but would it kill you to pay in actual money?” Pucci asked. He was tired of having to convert it every few months, especially when he couldn’t be sure if any of the things Dio or the pillar men gave him were stolen or not.
“I’m not stooping to your level of development.” Kars snapped his fingers and started to walk away with Esidisi and Wamuu. He looked at Tooru, who was still sitting down.
“Tooru, you sleep in the backyard. I’m sure this covers your rent too,” Pucci said. Tooru gave him a thumbs up and left with the pillar men.
“Hold on, they just get to leave? I thought this was an important house meeting,” Kira asked.
“It is. But they paid their rent and I don’t want Tooru to be a part of the real discussion. I don’t know what he would do but it would screw everything up, so he doesn’t get a vote,” Pucci explained.
“What’s the real reason we’re here then?”
“Valentine’s not coming back for a while, if ever. Diego needs to pay rent.”
“Excuse me?” Diego said incredulously. Pucci cringed, remembering that unlike Dio, Diego hadn’t lost his British accent. He had appreciated Diego at first. Seeing that Diego was another Dio, he was another potential friend in the house. But then Diego had decided to be the biggest asshole he could be until he got back to a universe where he was cool and had money to buy his own cereal.
“Diego. Please. We all have to pay rent and we’re really bad at it . Kira’s the only one with a job. We let you stay here for months waiting for Valentine, but now you need to help out.”
“I don’t think you know this, but I own Manhattan-” Diego started.
“We know!” everyone grumbled.
“It’s all you talk about,” Kira said.
“Fine! And because of that I don’t pay rent to anyone anymore. You’re all just trying to bring me down because you’re mad you’re all losers and I won .” Dio, Diavolo, and Kira all looked two seconds away from finally snapping at that.
“It’s August , Diego. If Valentine’s coming back, he’s coming back on the Fourth of July. You might be here for a year and you need to pay Valentine’s rent before we all get kicked out,” Pucci said, exasperated.
“How are you so sure? How do I know you’re not lying to me?”
“Valentine used to tell us that this was the only universe Giorno, Dio’s son, tolerated Dio enough to drop off homemade biscotti on his way to his family’s Fourth of July celebration.”
“We have a kid?” Diego looked at Dio.
“We have… Pucci, how many kids do I have?”
“You have four kids, Dio. And don’t try to change the subject, Diego,” Pucci said.
“I’m not paying rent to anyone. I told you, there’s nothing to change the subject about.”
“Then find someone who will! Either pay so we put up with your bullshit or find someone who’ll pay rent and isn’t a shitbag,” Kira huffed, throwing his hands into the air.
“That’s an option, I suppose,” Pucci said thoughtfully.
“How do I do that?” Diego asked.
Later that night, Diego sat hunched in front of Valentine’s computer with Dio and Pucci leaning over his shoulders. Thankfully, It hadn’t been password locked since Valentine didn’t want to bother with it. The real problem was Diego’s lack of familiarity with technology. He was one of those people who typed with one finger on each hand slowly, you know the type. Pucci had given up on trying to explain the Internet to him and was doing his best to get him to click on the Internet Explorer icon. Dio wasn’t helping at all and was instead inspecting all of Valentine’s statues like a point and click adventure protagonist.
After successfully giving Pucci a migraine, Diego managed to open up the browser. Valentine’s homepage was set to his boomer Facebook profile. Holy shit all this dude did was argue about politics online and get his ass kicked. Pucci directed Diego to the search bar and after a few minutes Diego managed to type in Craigslist.
“Haven’t you used typewriters? Why can’t you type faster?” Pucci asked, waiting for the page to load.
“Typewriters aren't so… flat. This feels so strange.”
“Get up. I’m not going to wait here for the rest of the night while you try and type a paragraph. Just dictate what you want me to say,” Pucci said, pushing Diego out of the chair.
“You know all the information. Just mention that whoever moves in is going to be living with a bunch of assholes ,” Diego said, rolling his eyes. Pucci sighed and started typing up a roommate advertisement and hoped he made the house sound nice enough not to attract any more weirdos.
Pucci turned around in the chair to face Diego, “Now all you need to do is come back here every day or so and check if anyone’s interested. Then tell us and we’ll give them a tour and figure things out.”
“I don’t know if I need to do that,” Diego said, pointing at the screen.
“What?” Pucci turned back around. “Oh my God.”
Their notifications were blowing up and it hadn’t even been five minutes.