Chapter Text
Getting all of his children together at short notice had not been one of Dio’s best ideas, but after he found out his youngest child had risen to the rank of Don in the span of a week, he had to invite them over. Unfortunately, this had gotten (perhaps intentionally) misconstrued and the six other members that were closest to Giorno were also coming. He had not planned for the extra guests and the rest of his polycule were busy getting the massive castle cleaned up and ready for 10 more people than it normally held, so it was up to him, DIO, to grocery shop. Now, normally he would have made a much fancier dish but with such a short time until they arrived and there being so many people, Dio had no choice but to make both chili and a cookout. How was he supposed to know what his children would eat and surely they would all enjoy that, and if they didn't, then they would not eat (until dessert). He wasn't cruel enough to starve his children or the six mysterious strangers that were tagging along, unless they were rude. Giorno hadn't told him too much about the people coming along, unless Dio had talked over when Giorno was trying to explain. He grabbed the car he had (maybe illegally) obtained recently and reversed out of the driveway, not bothering to look behind him. If one of the other residents was there then so be it, he could just turn them into a vampire like he had Vanilla Ice. Dio didn't necessarily believe the polycule members were disposable but he also would not hesitate to accidentally run someone over because he refused to look over his shoulder. It made his neck decapitation wound hurt and it was not worth it.
At the supermarket, Dio pulled the recipe card out of his crotchless pants pocket and examined it. Stealing the Joestar's family recipes was truly the best way to take revenge on not getting the inheritance and the recipes were rather good. When guests who weren't used to the absolute atrocity that was Hol Horse's cooking wanted some actually edible food, they often would go right to the Joestar family recipes for food ideas. The shopping cart wheel turned backwards and if Dio wasn't a 195 cm (height stolen) hunk of a man, he would have lost the war with the shopping cart then and there. But he was burly so he was able to get over the minor inconvenience and continue on with his shopping. The store had no ground beef so he whipped his Nokia out from his other pant pocket as he didn't dare to wrinkle the recipe. He texted the only competent cook in the household, Enrico Pucci, with the question and no context other than he needed to know as soon as possible. Enrico, for his part, seemed to get back relatively quickly with an explanation that must have taken at least 5 minutes to type. That was something Dio appreciated about him, he was punctual and good with the level of strange trivia that he knew. It seemed easy enough, so Dio picked up the first piece of meat he could find that seemed to be around 1 kg and tossed it in his cart over his shoulder to impress the cashier who had been staring at his very well put together outfit. The rest of the recipe seemed easy enough and they had some of the ingredients in the cupboards, or at least he believed so. Now, for the cookout, he planned on making hotdogs and burgers and picking up some fresh produce. One of his favorite parts about living in Egypt is the watermelons often were the best from here. Watermelons and cookouts went hand in hand and Dio wondered if anyone truly hated watermelon. He was making pretty much all of the stereotypical cookout foods that he had learned about through the parenting magazines he had imported from the United States. If the kids were coming over, he, Dio had to be prepared for when they inevitably ran through a DIY sprinkler system together in Dio's back garden. That's what teenagers liked doing, he was sure. He hadn't seen any of his children in so long, since he would classify not knowing his kids existed until recently, as a long time. To be entirely honest, he didn't entirely expect to have at least 4 kids out in the world, much less all of them being around the same age range. Surely, they wouldn't be as bad as him and Jonathan were until he had properly won the battle against the Joestars by snatching Jonathan's body right under his nose. But he was prepared to deal with any in fighting since he had 5 partners to deal with it, and most of them were buff so Dio was confident that between them all they could break up a fight between a few teens.
Dio realized he had been staring at the watermelons for a few minutes, still unable to pick one as he mused over what his kids might be like. He really had no idea what personalities he would be bringing into his home, as he planned on illegally gaining custody of them forever in order to grow his family a bit more. He wasn't the biggest family man, but after the experience he had with his father, he wasn't too sure who would be. But he had many years to realize that being surrounded by people was a nice feeling and one he wanted more of, and having some of his kids there was a part of that. Plus, they had more than enough room with the recent basement renovation they did, so it made sense. The only thing that was a small problem was the 6 people Giorno was bringing, but Dio was confident in his charisma that he could show he was a good parent and would take good enough care of Giorno well enough that they would leave him in his care.
He checked out without a glance at the amount and headed back to the castle, driving through only two stop signs, which he did not want to admit was a new low record. Dio felt his phone buzzing against his leg, the pocket fabric far too thin for him to not feel it. He might have not been the safest driver but he did not have time to respond to what was presumably a very long text from Mariah about how he used her lipstick before going out and how that was only for special occasions. It was not his fault that her lipstick made his lips feel silky smooth and moisturized, plus he bought it for her, so he had rights to use it. When he actually had time to look, Dio couldn't contain his gasp as he read the caller ID, which was the name of his arguably most successful child.
“Hello, child of mine,” Dio gave a one second pause for Giorno to respond, and Giorno got out a small “h-” before Dio continued. “There was this absolutely puny human woman at the grocery store that was about to steal my watermelon. She had the very faulty idea that she had seen the watermelon first and was reaching for it before I used The World to steal the best watermelon out from the pile. She didn’t realize she was dealing with me, the genius, talented and buff Dio, and wasn’t even able to react before I had the watermelon. The watermelon is perfectly ripe, just right for you, small human. Speaking of which, your brothers will be here later than you, so you’ll have to help out by setting the ice cream bar up.” Dio heard a hard thunk from the phone and a loud yell and proceeded to ignore it as it was not his problem. They were more than likely just using the canoe paddles to whack the sharks on the head that were probably there.
Giorno was not having a good time and was not in fact fending off sharks. Instead, he was fending off his fellow canoeist who was having a rather good time pretending the head whacking was an accident. The sheer mistake of deciding to climb into the canoe with Leone, Bruno and Pannacotta instead of the slightly more calm one with Narancia, Guido, and Trish was very apparent to him by this point. Despite Narancia’s best efforts to act as if the rest of the canoe he was in was not in fact fighting, it was clear to everyone, but most of all to Bruno. Bruno was in the back of the canoe with the other canoe behind theirs and his head was having to whip around every other second to make sure the younger half of the group wasn’t committing murder, then having to whip back around to stop his partner from murdering Giorno. Their family was a tiny bit dysfunctional but Giorno much preferred this to his mom and stepdad or whatever hell was sure to come with how Mr. Dio seemed to act over the phone call.
Using his shoulder to press the phone up to his ear as Bruno helped him back into the boat, he made a small noise of agreement, not sure how exactly to respond to Dio’s speech about the watermelon. What was Giorno even supposed to say to that when he was given approximately no room to talk? When he was properly sat back on the boat, he didn’t miss the very pointed look that Bruno gave Leone, presumably because he had “accidentally” tipped the boat over a few times in the nearly 4 day long trip. At that point, Giorno had blocked out most of the phone call that was going on because Dio had been raving about how awesome he was for getting the watermelon, and Giorno’s priority was not falling into the water. He glanced back at Narancia, who was making his 164 cm frame count for every centimeter as he tried to hide from Bruno the fact that Trish and Guido were arguing over something, or maybe they were laughing, he couldn’t tell.
They had been on this canoe trip for four solid days because the last time they were on a plane, they were attacked, and no one wanted to experience that again, and taking a commercial boat was a bit too obvious for the Don of Passione and the rest of the group who would not blend in. The alternative options were brought up after an hour or two of brainstorming between Narancia and Pannaccotta, the latter looking immensely distraught with Narancia whipping the easel pad out from behind his back. The options were illustrated by Narancia and Mista, and were a duck paddle boat that sat 4 people per boat practically or two canoes. Both of them would involve way too many people on one waterbound vehicle, but the plan made the most sense. So, four days ago, they had set out in Bruno’s car with Giorno behind the wheel,namely because Bruno did not trust anyone else to drive safely. The car had two stolen canoes strapped to the top, and the group was on their way to Porto di Crotone to abandon their car and start on the journey.
Unfortunately, the canoe pairings had not in fact been a good idea and with each hour of Bruno making eyes at Leone and Pannaccotta figuring out how to navigate to Egypt with just a paper map and a compass, Giorno felt his sanity slipping a bit. It would have been potentially worse in the canoe with Narancia, Mista, and Trish, as they were energetic at all hours until around day two when they realized just how long they would be canoeing. It had certainly been a way for everyone to get to know each other just that much more, although Giorno still felt a bit odd when people were bringing up stories that he hadn’t been there for.
Dio coughed, a semi polite reminder that Giorno should have been paying attention to his watermelon rant, and waited for him to reply with the necessary praise he should have gotten for his feat of bravery. But there was no audio for a few moments until Giorno let out a slightly agreeing noise before elaborating a bit. “We’re a few hours away from reaching land, then we’ll be driving for a while.” Giorno’s voice sounded rather exhausted, although Dio had never really let him talk enough to actually hear his voice. This was only the second time that they had called, the first being when Giorno had found out through his father’s apparent arch nemesis (Jotaro Kujo) that he was Dio’s kid. It wasn’t the most awkward conversation he had had in his life but it was certainly up there, although all the kids calling at once was also awkward. He didn’t mean to be the transmasc absentee dad that he was, but it was how things were. Dio was determined to fix that problem by proceeding to illegally kidnap and adopt them all, even if it did cause an Italian crime syndicate to crumble down.
He had gotten home in a decent amount of time, although Dio knew he could have made it in a couple minutes if he had truly ignored any and all traffic laws, but if he had gotten arrested it would mean he would have to wait a few more minutes to start on the chili. It would only take a few minutes because he could and would commit murder of anyone stopping him from having the perfect dinner. Dio was determined to make sure that his kids had the best dinner possible and had a great time at his house. Now that he thought of it, he hadn’t told the kids how long they would be there, and he would need a cover to hide the fact that he wanted them to move in forever. It was for slightly nefarious reasons but Dio would never admit that to anyone including himself. Dio would admit however that he ran over a few cops on the way back solely because they were trying to stop him from plowing through many stop signs and Dio would not stand for that. If he wanted to commit traffic violations, then no one could stop him.
Giorno had finally set the paddle aside as they got on shore, his hands feeling like they were actually splitting apart from the calluses due to him paddling for a lot of those 4 days, but finally getting on land felt nice. They gathered up all the luggage that they needed for a week long stay, although most of it had gotten soaked with how many times the canoes had tipped over (whether it was Abbacchio doing it on purpose or if it was one of the two with a bit too much energy flipping the canoe over on accident). The canoes were just pushed out to sea despite multiple people protesting, as it was either that or try and catch them on fire, which arguably could spread really easily and probably get them in trouble with the law. Giorno wasn’t really sure if being the head of Passione would excuse them from setting fire to half of Egypt, but he would try. The canoes safely were out to sea, and they headed into the nearest parking lot to get a car. This time, Giorno was not going to try the 100 cars frog trick, although he was very tempted to do so, instead let someone else take care of the car hijacking. Sure, they could get a rental car but they realized that it would actually make things extremely dangerous for whoever would be driving them to Dio’s mansion. They didn’t know a lot about their dad, but had a feeling that he would murder literally anyone if they looked at him wrong. At least, based off of what Mr. Kujo had told him about their final fight in Egypt around 20 years ago, he was pretty sure Dio was violent. If he was honest, he also trying to ignore the potential that it could end up how it did with his stepdad.
Giorno wasn’t allowed much time to get too deep into their thoughts as Bruno walked up to them and just his presence snapped them back to reality. The car that had been the easiest to hotwire was a rather small 5 person one, which was most certainly not ideal with there being seven people and there being absolutely no safe way to drive unless either people were crammed into the backseat or 2 people were risking sitting on other people’s laps. Giorno knew for a fact that they would be forced into driving since no one else had their licenses and despite Giorno’s lack of drivers license, he was always thrust into the driver’s seat. But finally, after 4 long days of rowing and getting tipped into the water way too many times, they were driving to Dio’s house.