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Mista loves to dance.
As a little child, he spins around wildly to the love songs his mother plays on the radio, laughing gleefully, getting into his siblings’ faces. He jumps frantically. He stomps his feet on the kitchen tiles. He dances thoughtlessly, in every direction; a flurry of jabbed elbows and bent knees, bound by nothing, beholden to no one, a small hurricane tearing its way through their small apartment.
Eventually, exhausted by his boundless energy, his mother enrols him in dance class. It doesn’t take. He makes a face whenever she drags him there, pulling at her hand with a sour expression; he ignores the instructions of the teachers, though he relishes the music and dances to it as he pleases, feeling each note from the tips of his fingers to the ends of his toes. Everything is done at his own rhythm, to his own beat. His movements accompany the song at times and diverge at others; he breaks free from the trappings of one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight and finds his own count, his own pace, his own flow…
It isn’t long before Mista is kicked out of dance class.
To the immense gratitude of his entire family, Mista learns to stay in his own room once they get a bigger apartment. There, he dances alone; there, he revels in the music, in the woosh of air as he leaps to and fro, the wind he stirs up kissing his bare skin. After a long day of school, it’s what he looks forward to; and he is content with it, not needing to share it with anyone else, not needing to make it anything more than a hobby. It is what it is. It is a simple delight, but it is his, and no one else’s. He does it for himself. The world fades away around him as he dances, laughing giddily, spinning around…
And so Mista dances on, alone in his room, as his childhood slips away.
Mista loves to dance.
Now that he’s a teenager, he doesn’t do it alone as often, though. Nowadays, he goes to parties with his friends and matches the beat of whatever’s playing, bobbing his shoulders to the rhythm, clicking his tongue as he moves towards a pretty girl. Today’s girl is especially pretty—he’s seen her in a few other parties, and thinks her name is Aurora or Arianna or something like that—and when she steps towards him, her long blonde hair swaying as she moves, he winks at her and begins to dance in earnest. He spreads his legs and shifts his feet, moving to the left as he snaps his fingers; coming to a stop, he rolls his body, carefully maintaining his flow to make the movement as smooth as possible. A playful expression livens up her pale green eyes, and that is the sign of his victory; he grins at her and offers her his hand, and she takes it with a smile, her short black sequinned dress glittering under the yellow lights.
An hour later, they are kissing frantically against the bathroom wall, and one of her thin spaghetti straps is slipping off her rounded shoulder. Two hours after that, they are at Mista’s apartment and he’s cuddling with her in bed, his left arm snug around the dip of her waist. He closes his eyes, satisfied. Life is good. His parents have pretty much given up on him, and he’s living in a cheap rented apartment on his own, but he gets to do what he wants, like invite a pretty girl into his bed. That’s all he needs. That’s all he needs to get out of life. He doesn’t require anything more than that; this is good enough, and there is no thirst in his heart that needs to be quenched. He is a simple man. He is content.
And so Mista presses his face into the girl’s hair and breathes in, deeply, as he drifts off into slumber.
Mista loves to dance.
But now that he’s been sentenced to fifteen years in prison, it seems like he won’t be dancing any more. He sits in his bed, his face buried in his hands, despondent; the jail cell he’s being held in is dark and damp, and his sole comfort in the long nights is a small square of moonlight shining in from the window high up on the wall.
Now that he’s been sentenced, there isn’t much time before he’ll be sent to prison. Mista tries not to imagine it—after all, by scaring himself, as he’s just making himself suffer twice—but the shadows cast themselves over his mind unbidden, and he can do little but allow himself to sink into the darkness. Is this truly his fate? Is there no way out of this hell? He had always been content with his life, and even when he’d been standing in court, being accused of crimes he didn’t commit, he’d assumed it would all work out somehow, that the hands of fate would move in his favour. Now he sits there, his heart pounding, his stomach turning, scarcely able to believe what has become of him. The darkness swallows him whole. It consumes him, dissolving his skin, corrupting his flesh, penetrating bone…
But the sweet strains of an old love song float through his mind, and he raises his head as the weight suddenly slips from his shoulders.
One step, then another. Mista walks into the patch of wet moonlight, drenching his body in its silvery glow. He bends backward, arching his back, extending his arms towards the ceiling; slowly, tremulously, he moves his left arm downwards, his warm feet shifting silently on the cool floor. He dances in that luminous square, suspended in a dreamlike state, the moonlight rippling around his tingling skin. He sweeps his arms through the night, his breath catching in his throat, his eyes lingering on a point beyond his seeing. For a few minutes, everything is beautiful again. For a few minutes, everything makes sense again. He is at peace. He is at peace, and spring will follow winter and come before summer, and the world around him is the world he knows, the world he was born into…
Yet, the song dissipates in his mind like mist from a time gone by—and so Mista collapses on his bed once more, his chest heaving, resigning himself to a fitful slumber.
Mista loves to dance.
But since joining the mafia, he hasn’t danced for some time. He goes on missions; hangs out with Narancia and Fugo; eats; sleeps. That’s his life now. He doesn’t really have the extra energy to party. It’s what he’d signed up for when he’d followed Bucciarati out of Libeccio, and he doesn’t regret it, so he isn’t about to complain.
But one day, the urge to dance sparks to life in Mista’s body once more. They’re returning from a mission. Narancia is blasting music on his radio, and the beat is bouncing off the walls of the train carriage, and the countryside is flashing by as Mista stares out of the window; then the song changes and an electric guitar rips through the cool air, and all of a sudden a wild energy crackles through him. He gets to his feet. His nerves are alight. He stamps his left foot on the ground and slices his arms through the air in time with the shredding of the electric guitar, and then he spins around and kicks high with his right leg, and then…
The end of the song is heralded by Narancia’s furious applause. Mista bows to him, grinning, and raises his head to see Narancia staring at him with wide eyes. “Holy shit, dude!” exclaims Narancia. “That’s incredible.”
Mista laughs. “Thanks, thanks. Sometimes you just gotta dance, y’know? You should join me sometime.”
“Holy shit.” Narancia hits his palm with a fist, sitting bolt upright, his expression gleeful. “I have it. I know what we should do!”
And that’s how they end up choreographing a dance together. Between the two of them, Narancia is more in tune with music, so he points out accents in the song that they should hit; Mista thinks of the dance moves themselves and aligns his choreography to Narancia’s suggestions. It’s a ton of fun. As a child, he’d rejected any kind of planning, preferring to live in each electrifying moment; this is different, but it’s a good different, an interesting different. It mirrors his situation, really. Now that he’s joined the mafia, he can’t do whatever he wants anymore. Granted, being in the mafia is what he wants to do, but now he has to follow Bucciarati’s orders to the letter. Mista’s great at that. And he’s great at this too, this new type of dancing.
Eventually, Narancia ropes Fugo into their little project. He grumbles about it, and pulls a long face, but Mista catches him secretly practising the choreography in the bathroom at Libeccio. They go over the moves together in Mista’s apartment, rehearsing whenever they’re free; eventually, they show it to Bucciarati and Abbacchio, and Bucciarati hums thoughtfully and asks a few technical questions while Abbacchio shoots them an impressed look before turning back to the book in his hand. All in all, it’s a really fun experience, and Mista is glad that they ended up doing this. It’s great. He loves dancing with his friends, and he’s happy to do it again whenever the mood strikes them.
So, when Narancia begins to dance when they’re torturing Zucchero, Mista doesn’t hesitate to join him. The cool sea air kisses his face. The wooden boards ring out under his feet. Fugo joins as well, and they go through the choreography with ease, perfectly in sync.
Mista doesn’t think more of it until he and the new guy Giorno are standing in front of the fish Giorno made, trying to figure out how to have it pull them to Capri. He squats down to examine the fish. “Guess we could tie some rope to it and have it pull another buoy.” Mista turns. “Whatcha think of—”
He raises an eyebrow.
Giorno’s eyes dart upward from the spot where they’d been lingering—Mista’s ass. “I agree,” he says calmly, his face impassive. Mista almost laughs at his sheer audacity. “I’ll get the buoy. I assume you know where to find rope?”
After he walks off, Mista thinks for a moment and vaguely remembers Giorno staring at him as he’d danced, his gaze weirdly intense. Well, he hadn’t really been trying to put the moves on anyone, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little flattered. Damn. Now, if only there were some girls on this boat…
Once everything is in place, they fumble around for a while as they try to figure out how best to position themselves on the buoy. Giorno suggests lying on it side by side, but Mista points out that there isn’t that much space; in the end, Mista lies partly on top of Giorno, one arm crossing over Giorno’s back to grip the left side of the buoy, one of his legs resting between both of Giorno’s.
For all of Giorno’s shameless staring—Mista is beginning to suspect that he hadn’t intended to be spotted and was just playing it cool, actually—his entire body goes stiff when Mista climbs on top of him. The fish falls into the water and they fall with it; the minutes drag on as they discuss their plan, pulled towards Capri with surprising speed. Ten minutes or so into their trip, Giorno’s body is still rigid, and he tenses up further whenever Mista shifts on top of him in an attempt to find a comfortable position. When Mista glances at him, he sees that Giorno is determinedly looking into the distance, his ears a little pink. Mista chuckles. So, Giorno has a bit of a cute side. If Giorno were a girl, he’d be tempted to tease him a little. But Giorno isn’t a girl, and Mista can be dense at times but he does know that guys usually aren’t open about being into other guys, so he refrains.
Yet, out of nowhere, a strange and wholly random sense of disappointment settles in his stomach. Mista frowns. He really wants to tease Giorno for some reason. Something just tells him that it’d be really funny and really cute, and he really wants to see Giorno react to being asked if he’d enjoyed his dancing. Mista opens his mouth; closes it; opens it again. He scrunches up his face. This is confusing…
“I was surprised when the three of you started dancing,” says Giorno suddenly, and Mista is startled by how pleased he feels that Giorno brought it up himself.
He adjusts his grip on the buoy, his arm moving slightly lower on Giorno’s back; Giorno swallows and tightens his jaw in response, and Mista is sorely tempted to laugh. “Oh, yeah,” he says, “we choreographed that a month ago. It wasn’t really meant for, uh, passing time while torturing people. It was for fun! But Narancia started dancing, so Fugo and I just followed. Gotta back up your buddy, y’know?”
“I suppose so,” says Giorno a little awkwardly. Huh. Mista wonders if the guy has friends. “You all danced well.”
“Yeah, you seemed to be enjoying it, seeing as how you were staring at me and all,” says Mista before he can stop himself.
Silence. The fish continues to pull them towards Capri, their bodies bouncing a little against the waves, the salty breeze slightly painful against their skin. “Well,” says Giorno at length, his head turned away and his voice quiet such that Mista has to strain to hear it, “you danced the best out of them. That’s why I was looking.” He pauses. “I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable.” The words are spoken a little rapidly. “I apologise if I did. That wasn’t my intention.”
“Nah, it takes a lot more than that to make me uncomfortable,” says Mista. He considers bringing up the ass-staring incident, but directly calling out Giorno’s attraction to him is going a little too far even for him, so he stops himself reluctantly. “You should join us, actually. I mean, I guess it’ll take a while for the other two to warm up to you, but once they do, we can choreo…oh, wait, fuck, there’d be four…”
“I don’t dance,” says Giorno, blissfully interrupting Mista’s horrific train of thought.
Even though Giorno not being into dancing should be a good thing, considering the cursed number, Mista feels another strange pang of disappointment. “Aww,” he says. “Pity. You’d look good doing it.”
“Oh.” Giorno finally turns to look at him; his expression is slightly bewildered. “I…see.” He wets his lips. “...Thanks, I suppose.”
They don’t speak of dancing for the rest of their adventure. Mista observes silently as Giorno’s attraction to him continues to flourish, and eventually begins to suspect that it’s blossomed into a crush. After all, Giorno pays a weird amount of attention to him, seems to seize any excuse to touch him or stand close to him, and at one point shoves his fingers into Mista’s pants for absolutely no reason. Perhaps the most incredible thing is that Giorno himself seems amazingly oblivious as to what he’s doing—well, that, or him being flustered on the buoy is a fluke, because he does all these things with such nonchalance that he can only be either supremely confident or supremely blind to his own feelings.
It’s strangely endearing. Mista’s grown pretty fond of Giorno over their adventure; he’s his lucky boy, a bright star shining in the night sky that calls forth Mista’s own light. One thing becomes clear, however—there’s no way that he’ll ever choreograph a dance with Giorno. He knows that to be true when Narancia is lying dead in front of him, for there is no way that he can do that again when the person who sparked his love for dancing once more will never dance with him again. His brief love of choreographing has died with Narancia. And he and Fugo will never dance that choreography again; it would be incomplete without Narancia, and no one can take his place, not even Giorno…
And as Mista stands before Narancia’s grave, he pictures the three of them dancing together, laughing in his apartment, all those days ago.
Mista loves to dance.
Since losing Narancia and becoming Don Giovanna’s right hand man, however, he hasn’t danced for some time. It’s just like before—he spends the day guarding Giorno or doing missions or interrogating people, and by the time he gets home, he’s exhausted. His social life is dead. Partying is a thing of the past. He relishes his work, but that’s pretty much all he does now; well, it’s what he signed up for, and he’s fine with this.
Mista had expected Giorno to move on from him eventually. After all, who can sustain a crush for years without getting anything in return? But in this thing, as with many things, Giorno proves him wrong. He gets better at hiding his feelings, sure, but when they’re alone he seems to melt a little in Mista’s presence sometimes. He smiles frequently. He actually laughs a little. And sometimes he gazes at Mista with such affection that it seems to shock even him, for he will quickly avert his gaze, and when he looks back his expression will be serene once more.
Well, Mista figures that it makes sense for someone so single-mindedly dedicated to his dreams to also be rather single-minded in affairs of the heart. What surprises him the most is his own reaction to Giorno. At first, he’s flattered and vaguely intrigued; but as time passes and Giorno’s features sharpen and grow more handsome, as they spend more time together and he watches Giorno feed the Pistols and tend to a baby bird with injured wings, he finds himself increasingly drawn to him as well. Giorno is a man of many faces. He is hard with the capos and harsh with his enemies, but he is soft when he’s with Mista. He is quiet when he is angry; he is loud when he fears for Mista’s life. He is inexpressive at times during difficult meetings, all the better as to maintain his composed, impassive mask; he is inexpressive at times when he’s speaking of his difficult childhood, even though Mista can tell that it hurts, because he copes with his pain by detaching himself from it. The more Mista knows him, the more he feels for him. The more Mista sees him, the more he’s attracted to him.
And so he asks Giorno out on a cool spring morning five years after it all began—and then they are kissing, and a few months later Mista is moving in with Giorno, and a few weeks after that they are making love for the first time, slowly, tenderly exploring each others’ bodies.
It’s incredible. Loving Giorno is exhilarating, and even as the giddiness of new love dissipates like sea foam dispersing into blue waves, there’s something innately comforting about their relationship that Mista has never really experienced before. If there’s one complaint that he has, though, it’s that Giorno really spends way too much time working. It comes with the territory of being the Don of Passione, of course, but it’s gotten worse recently. Mista never thought he’d feel lonely living with Giorno, but he is; and he doesn’t know what’s less sexy, empty beds or Giorno trying not to fall asleep during sex.
So, one warm July night, a week or so after this behaviour worsened, Mista decides to do something about it. It’s eleven o’clock at night. He mulls over his plan for a while, weighing this and that, considering—but eventually he remembers how he first realised Giorno was attracted to him, chuckles to himself, and decides to proceed.
Mista makes his way to Giorno’s study. He places the radio on the floor outside, knocks, and opens the door. “Babe? You free yet?”
He watches Giorno, dressed casually with his hair loose, raise his head from within a mountain of books and papers. “Sorry, Guido,” he says, his expression apologetic. “I’m still trying to figure out how we’ll counter Spettro’s stand. I’ll be a while.”
“Aww, really?” Mista leans against the doorframe, taking care to stretch himself out, displaying himself. “He’s still gonna be there tomorrow, right? And we can’t do anything about him right now, ‘cause we don’t even know where he is?”
Giorno’s eyes flit over his body. “I…suppose so,” he says thoughtfully. “But I still think it’s better if I—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Mista flashes him a grin, bends, and clicks play on the radio.
The warm chords of Close to You float through the open door. Why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near? Mista seeks out Giorno’s eyes—which widen a little in surprise—and walks in slowly, his eyes never leaving Giorno’s, circling around his desk and pushing back his rolling chair. He sits down resolutely in Giorno’s lap, straddling him; he runs a hand through Giorno’s loose hair and pulls him into a kiss, gentle, sweet, as the music drifts around them. “C’mon, babe,” he says, his voice husky, when they finally draw apart. Giorno is looking deep into his eyes, breathing shallowly, his lips slightly parted. If Mista really wanted to, he could probably start unbuttoning Giorno’s shirt right there, but that’d be a waste of a good song. “Wanna dance with me?”
Giorno blinks suddenly, as if he’s been startled. “You know I don’t dance,” he says. His voice is calm, but Mista knows him well enough to pick up the slight trepidation in his stiff jaw, in his tight shoulders. “I’ve told you before.”
Mista kisses his cheek. “You don’t really have to do much,” he says. “Just lean on me, and I’ll lead.” He blows lightly at Giorno’s forehead, his breath parting the strands of golden hair resting there. “Please?”
And so Mista climbs off Giorno’s lap and takes his hand, gently pulling him to his feet, slipping another hand around his waist, pulling him close. Carefully, he manoeuvres them to a spot in the room clear of furniture; there, they move together, Mista leading, Giorno following a little hesitantly. Outwardly, he seems composed, but inwardly he’s probably slightly nervous. Mista is vaguely reminded of the first time they’d slept together; he shakes off the memory because this isn’t the time for that, though the idea of him taking Giorno’s dance virginity as well makes him want to laugh. “I got you,” he murmurs instead, repeating what he’d said back then. “You good?”
“Yes,” says Giorno softly, visibly relaxing a little. “I’m good.”
And so they dance together, slowly, in Giorno’s study under the yellow ceiling lights. Mista looks deeply into Giorno’s beautiful turquoise eyes, and his heart skips a beat. He smiles as his favourite part of the song begins to play. “On the day that you were born the angels got together, and decided to create a dream come true,” he sings. “So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair of gold and starlight in your eyes of blue.”
Giorno, who had been listening intently, chuckles and leans in to rest his head against Mista’s neck. “I was dark-haired when I was born,” he says.
“But you like being blond, don’t you?” replies Mista. “Blond and blue-eyed. This version of you was born when you fully manifested Gold Experience, so it still counts in my books.”
“I suppose.” Giorno adjusts his grip on Mista’s upper arm. “This isn’t too bad, actually. I like this.”
Mista laughs. “Knew it.”
He closes his eyes, savouring this moment, savouring the warmth of Giorno’s body against his. Close to You is his favourite song. He’d danced to it as a child, spinning wildly around his apartment; he’d danced to it in his jail cell, escaping his predicament for a moment to float in joyful memories. Now, he’s dancing to it with Giorno, the man he loves—someone he’d never have expected to love as a child, but someone he loves with all his heart nonetheless. Just like me, they long to be close to you. He won’t pretend that everything is perfect. In fact, Mista knows that he needs to have a serious conversation with Giorno about feeling neglected in their relationship. But he can do that tomorrow; he will do that tomorrow. Right now, he can only think of happier things. Right now, he can only think of Giorno’s hand in his.
“Guido.”
Mista opens his eyes to find Giorno smiling at him, clearly enjoying himself. “Yeah, babe?”
“Can I lead?”
“By all means,” replies Mista, grinning.
They switch hands, and Giorno begins to lead them around the room, conservatively at first, then more adventurously. Now that he’s relaxed and having fun, there’s a natural grace in his movements that makes Mista’s heart race; at one point, a mischievous gleam shines in his eye, and he steps to Mista’s side and promptly proceeds to dip him. It’s clumsy, and features questionable technique, but both of them are strong enough to prevent the move from sending them tumbling to the floor; they laugh together, breathlessly, as the song begins to end. Ah…close to you. Mista sweeps Giorno up in his arms and kisses him hard on the lips, and Giorno throws his arms around Mista’s neck and returns the kiss with such passion that Mista almost falls over. They are still in that position when the song fades out; reluctantly, Mista lowers Giorno to the floor and walks over to turn the radio off. But he doesn’t have to wait long. He’s barely turned around before Giorno has pinned him against the wall, his eyes blazing, his pupils blown—then they are kissing again, and pulling at each other’s clothes, and stumbling into bed…
And though things between them aren’t perfect, Mista snuggles a little closer to Giorno and thinks that they can make things right, one dance at a time.
fin.