Chapter Text
When they reach the garage, Trish glances around before creaking the door open. Empty. She feels the brush of Giorno’s braid in her hair as he peeks in above her.
“Trish, there’s no way we can leave without being noticed. All the cars are inside and we’ll have to open one of the garage doors to get out. Unless you want to steal a Foundation vehicle, there’s no point in sneaking around like this.”
“I know. I just wanted a headstart.” Trish pushes past the door and hurriedly presses every garage door button she can. The room explodes into a cacophony of metal whirling, earning a start from Giorno.
“What are you doing?”
Trish hurries into the room and yells back over the noise, “No point in leaving quietly, right?”
She thinks she catches an impish spark in his eyes before he moves to catch up with her.
“Which one?” He asks over the noise. “They’ll all be recognized, even at night.” Shouting starts from inside, and in the middle of the room he stops to look back.
“This one!”
The two-stroke motor kicks on and Giorno snaps to look. “Mista’s dirtbike?!”
“He never actually uses it, come on!” Trish swings her heel at the kickstand over and over, but it won’t budge. “Unless you want me to drive it?”
Giorno’s expression smears with something light, and he takes off just as the voices reach the house door.
“There he is! Wait! Signore, it’s not safe!”
Trish shoves herself back to make room as Giorno throws himself on the little bike, kicking the stand up before revving the motor. Garage door just barely high enough, Giorno spins the wheels out beneath them. Trish shoves her nose against his back to bury the burning smell, holding on tight as he peels the bike out of the garage. The shouting fades behind them as the tires blaze across the driveway.
As they take in the tree-lined drive off the property, Giorno leans them into the turns, the bike rumbling underneath. Her arms tight around him, she feels his heartrate flying high.
When they clear the entrance pillars, Giorno drifts the back wheel out in an arc before revving them off down the empty road. The inertia kicks adrenaline through her system, and she hollers before falling into a giddy laugh. Giorno glances back at her, the wind whipping through his hair obscuring it but, she’s pretty sure he flashed a smile at her.
The sun just having left the horizon, the orange in the sky dips past scarlet, stars beginning to lift into the sky. As they clear the trees, the cliffside on their right drops into the crystal water, littered with crisp white caps by the crescent moon’s grin.
Wind tearing through their clothes, she presses herself tight to him for any amount of warmth. His chest seeming to catch on it.
“Where to?” Giorno shouts back at her.
As they round a corner of rock, the sprawl of Napoli’s hillside comes into view. Lights in the windows like a meadow of lightning bugs.
Trish answers, “West side!”
They dismount the bike in the alley she directs him to, the kickstand jamming until accidentally snapping off. Giorno saying something about how Mista would understand before he leaves it leaned against the old brick wall, hidden behind the dumpster.
Rounding to the front of the shop, the dove-white painted brick glints in the moonlight. Excitement sparks in Trish’s chest.
“Julia’s Boutique?” Giorno glances at the sign. “Don’t you have an appointment here tomorrow, though?”
“My shipments came in and I just figured we could check a day early.” Trish goes to the front door, finding it locked. She sighs, “Maybe the back door will still be open, Julia tends to forget about it.”
“If you have a couple pins, we’ll be able to get in through the front.” His palm appears beside her.
She can almost feel the warmth of his arm, his face as he’s leaned close, and she doesn’t turn as she nods. Reaching into her stiff bra, she produces three bobby pins from where she keeps them stashed alongside her ribs.
“Thank you,” Giorno offers a touch below his normal volume. Kneeling, Giorno gets to work curving the thin metal, and Trish gives him room to work. He says, “Shouldn’t be more than a minute.”
She thinks she counts ten seconds total before the lock clinks free and Giorno pushes the door in.
“Impressive,” Trish hums. “You do break-ins often, Don Giovanna?”
“Only when asked,” Giorno replies easily, a glint there that snags her a second longer than she might admit.
Then her eyes catch on a sign behind him, a thought popping into her head. “Well, I might have another crime for you to commit. Should be quick.”
His eyes light with a hint of that mischievous look she’d hoped for. “I’m all ears.”
The lock to the cafe next door is even easier, Giorno eagerly pushing the door open for them to scurry across the terracotta tile. After she reaches the glass casing, she points to the empty places with the nametags of the pastries she usually gets, highlighting the pistachio-filled cannoli as something he needed to try. And after a quick nod, Giorno’s swinging his legs over the counter, landing to hurry for the fridge in the back.
Following him by going through the counter’s flip-gate (like a normal person), Trish busies herself with promptly washing her hands before finding the bin of already-made icing. Popping the top off the massive container to stick her fingers in, slipping the buttercream over her tongue and sighing.
Giorno appears beside her with an armful of pastries and a cannoli already in his teeth––pistachios falling out as he leans over the container.
Trish dips her fingers in again to grab up the pistachio bits–– right as Giorno swipes a massive glob out with a croissant and gives it to her.
“You didn’t wash your hands!” She bursts.
Giorno says something through the cannoli that she translates as, “Then don’t eat the part I touched.”
The muffled speaking and cannoli in his mouth breaks her stern look, and she takes a creamy bite to stifle a giggle.
After Giorno hops the counter again, Trish catches one of the jelly-filled pastries from hitting the dirty ground and they escape out the open front door.
In the boutique, she pulls a clean tray from the kitchenette in the back for the pastries––making Giorno at least wash his hands there–– and chooses a side table for them while downing two Neapolitan cookies.
“Alright, and put this chair here,” Trish directs him with half a mouth of cookie. “Now sit in it.”
Giorno complies, taking one of the jelly-filled flakey breads to pull at. “Where are you sitting?”
“I’m not and–– Hey, don’t get any crumbs on the armchair! It’s Julia’s favorite!”
“I won’t. I’m clean.”
“Yeah, ok. Just wait here, crumbles. I’ll be right back.” And with that, she turns and hurries into the backroom. Easily, because her Julia really was the best the city had to offer, she finds the new outfits crisply ironed and dresses fresh in their plastic casings. She sniffs them for that fresh perfectly-tailored smell, and pulls them off the hangers.
She gets Giorno to put the stereo on, a disk already in. Some pop and hip-hop CD of Julia’s from over the past couple decades and something she can definitely work with. With practiced posture, Trish struts out in the first outfit and walks the length of the room.
Seeing her, Giorno’s face lights up. Eagerly he makes remarks about the silhouette and asks genuine questions about the fabric. Continuing to do so as she struts out in each new outfit, and she smiles.
One has a cropped suit jacket with shoulder pads angled at a slant, and she tells him how she’d been dying to have something that incorporated checkers into the inside, and this designer had the look perfect. Another is simple sheer falling over her torso except for crisscrossed thin silk pieces over her chest. Giorno quieter for that one, spending more time admiring before commenting on how it’s stunning. She fights blushing like she’s sixteen again.
She doesn’t know when he found the champagne bottle, but she takes sips in-between outfits and he gives her refills when she walks the empty glass down to him. A triumphant cheery flush finding her ears as she watches how his face breaks into smiles more easily. His remarks shifting more to how it wouldn’t look good on anyone else, how she could use that one pair of earrings she has and it would look even more stunning.
Trish holds her chin high and gives him a good skirt swirl at the end of that walk, nearly tripping her heels on the train. A laugh bursts from him and her face stings hotly. She snaps at him that he try strutting in these heels, to which he says that he could do it better, and she pauses to consider before agreeing that actually, yeah he could––leading them both to break down into giddy laughing.
Then she’s in another one––a flowing blouse with a patterned ascot and a matching long skirt, watercolor vines smeared across it to give the illusion of one piece, the corset in the middle tight and pushing on her exposed chest–– and he spins her in it, the song fast and she doesn’t remember how long it's been since he stood and took her hands to move them in a loose dance. Some kind of clumsy fast waltz and when he barely catches her on his arm, she laughs.
After a few more, Julia’s CD seems to run out of the faster beats, falling into older sappy songs. It takes Trish halfway through the current song to place it, I’m Not In Love by 10CC . Her limbs heavy, she has her arms wrapped around Giorno, her head resting on his shoulder as he holds her, swaying them slowly in a small circle.
Despite how she wants to bury herself in mindless world of the floral cologne clung to his neck, her thoughts wonder to the three-pronged scar on her arm. The way he’d held her like this when it was fresh, and she closes her eyes to bask in what was before, what they were before. Welcoming the small pressure of Giorno resting his head against hers.
It’s late. She realizes then that they’d been out for hours. The champagne bottle long since empty as her mind has started returning to her. But like a good dream, she doesn’t want to wake up.
His shoulders shift under her while he probably comes to the same realization. Trish feeling the roll of muscle under his shirt, the tenseness there before he settles. And she lifts her head off of him, just enough to look him in the eye.
Giorno slows their swaying to still, the hum of the song panning out long and heavy around them. Her eyes flicker to his lips right before she closes hers over them. His breath holding for a small moment before sinking between them. Giorno slips his thumbs behind her ears, pressing his fingers on her neck as she sighs into him.
Trish deepens the kiss, tasting the strawberry chapstick mixed with cannoli-filling, and begins taking larger and larger bites of him like he’s just another pastry.
Easily Giorno follows suit, grabbing at her with his mouth and pressing her against him. A hungriness growing between them that pounds her own heart fast in the soft of her arms. His hands push down her back past her hips and she bites his lip with a shiver. He picks her up.
He backs through the door to the dressing room, a couch alongside the wall facing the mirror and he brings her to it, spreading her across it like a bundle of plucked dahlias.
For a moment, Giorno just takes her in, the flowing pieces of her delicate on the cream couch and Trish warms hotly up her neck at his gaze. She thinks to tease him, to ask if this was the part where she cheesily says she’s waited too long for this. Instead she locks eyes with him, and all thought––the worries and cries of the past few months, the scar on her arm–– mercifully it all leaves her as she watches him lower.
He presses over her, his back hunched like a strung coil about to leap, and there they lose themselves in each other.
Her corset snaps free, tossed to the ground and joined by the blouse an instant after. Their chests pressing together, Trish finds the heart-shaped zipper blindly and pulls it down, peeling the top suit piece off of him like a carapace. Exposing the soft of his skin that tightens with each tidal wave he pushes over her. Her fingers bury in the divots of his hips until she can’t bear it any longer and grabs the second zipper.
When the ocean rushes through her veins, her heart pounding in her belly and her legs bending delicately at the press of him above experiencing the same, their limbs give, and they collapse on the couch together. Giorno giving her the room to lay on her back while he lays on his side beside her.
A light sweat clings to the roots of her hair, and Trish knows the dry shampoo frays in every direction with how he’d run his hands through it. She thinks of baths and running one, and how he probably needs one too.
She feels bad about the couch, she really does. Though, once she makes the mental note to have an anonymous donor buy the place a new couch, she feels a little bit better. The feeling easily drowned out by the beautiful quieting her mind does and she basks in the high.
Giorno closes his eyes to look asleep beside her, apart from the small rubbing of his thumb on her stomach, the small circles a drawing lull. Her eyes close on the tray ceiling.
She thinks she dozed, sleepily adjusting as he adjusts so that her face buries in the crux under his chin. Her eyes opening when she realizes how cold his skin is, that he’s in a cold sweat.
Giorno seems to be looking at something past her, his hand. Trish glances back just as he drops it from her view, then starts propping herself up.
“Please don’t get up,” he murmurs.
Trish blinks the sleep from her eyes. “You missed that dose from the Foundation when you should have had it, right?”
Giorno parts his lips like he might lie, before his shoulders sink. “It was worth it to be along on this... errand , if we’re still calling this an errand. Thanks for that.”
“Told you I needed you for a thing.”
“And I’m glad to accompany you, of course. But, additionally... it helped me realize something.”
“What’s that?”
Giorno meets her eyes, and she watches a part of him slip loose, “It’s only three weeks, Trish. And… it was unfair of me to spend another second of it apart from you.”
Her chest fills with hundreds of butterflies, but, in the middle of her stomach, there’s a leak filling her with cold water.
She was an idiot to think the evening had been her idea from the start.
Trish sits up, the air breathing cold across her bare skin.
“Trish?”
She twists a loose strand in the couch around her smallest fingers, strangling it, as she says, “You’re still going to ask me though, aren’t you?”
It’s an offer. He’s saying she could have him, but only until she had to kill him.
Slowly, Giorno rises to sit by her. His shoulder behind hers so that, if he leans just a bit more, he could kiss above her ear. He says incredibly quiet, “I won’t be the same, Trish. A part of you knows that too well.”
Her brows pinch. The fury to deny it rises, but then it’s the harsh memory of hooks and amber moons and a tightness closing her throat.
Giorno slips his hand into hers––the coldness in it starkly different than what his skin was on her not an hour before–– while he says soft as a cloud, “I don't want to be anything other than this to you. And, Trish,” his fingers touch like brushes of snow on her cheek, bringing her to look him in the eye as Giorno says softly, “With what we are, and what we do, I’ve robbed years from my own grave far longer than hope would give to any other man.”
She grabs behind his ears, “You’re not just any other man, Giorno. Don’t fucking talk to me like we’re already at the funeral.”
“Trish,” he holds her wrists gently, hushing softer than air, “You have to know already, this, all of this will be over.”
Her lungs press tight.
She could practically hear the music he’s asking her to dance to. That he is asking her only because he knew how hard being shut out had hurt her pride. And she has half a mind to slap him.
Though, as far as he was concerned, she’d already taken the bribe, strawberry chapstick laying smeared across the soft of her stomach. And... he is offering her a place at his side. A closer seat where she could sit and he might look away just long enough for her to grab the gun at his side and pitch it out the window.
He’d shut her out for knowing too much, until he found a purpose for her. A horrible, self-centered purpose, but something he needs her for regardless.
It’s the cardboard cutout version of what she could be for him, but it will make things run smoother. And, either way, a small part of her says he would understand soon, if she would only stay patient.
Swallowing it all down, she throws her arms around Giorno, buries the words deep in his neck, “You won’t change.”
As Giorno holds her like a delicate vase, he murmurs, “Neither of us can change what I am."
Absently she wonders how long it took him to master this manipulation dance, if he ever had to, or if he even notices himself doing it. “You won’t turn into something like them.”
“And if I’m something worse?”
The thought scrapes raw over her bare skin. She clutches him tighter, forcing out the words in a hush, “Then, yeah. I’ll stop you.”
Giorno stays quiet, seemingly lost in thought for a moment before he kisses the top of her head. “You’re stronger than the rest of us, Trish. You don’t need any of us to keep going.”
Trish blinks, her eyes pinching at him trying to push her away. She lifts her head to be level with his.
His expression determined and resigned and she can’t stand it anymore.
She ruffles his hair and sniffs. “You really never change, do you? You don’t even know what’s going to happen and here you are preparing your own fucking funeral.”
Giorno seems to watch her change her footing for a moment, entranced by the lie of it all, before he glides beside her. “I expect you to pick out some gorgeous flower arrangements.”
“Lilacs on the casket.”
“God, no.”
“Wouldn't it be poetic though?” Trish wraps her arms around his neck, smiling smally at the little mantra, “You remember I told you that lilacs change color in the rain?”
Giorno huffs, “I remember.” Leaning back on the couch, they adjust so she’s laying with her chin on her forearms over his chest, his fingers carding through her hair as he says, “Though you never explained what it means.”
“That’s not the point of a poem, you said so yourself.” Trish tilts her head teasingly, “You’re supposed to scratch your head at it.”
“Lilacs change color in the rain.” Giorno offers her a smile at that. “I doubt you even know.”
When Trish pouts, Giorno melts at the sight, a tickle of a smile finding him. “Since the day we met, you’ve never stopped surprising me.” Then softly, his smile falls, thought pressing into him and his fingers slow in her hair.
Trish aches to pry further into him, but instead she forces herself to settle for rubbing her nail into the dip of his sternum.
All in good time, the back of her mind murmurs.
Trish says, “Well, you do have a couple weeks to think about it. And my door is always open.”
“Your usual office hours?” Giorno returns with that teasing tone.
Trish smiles, pushing closer on her elbows to hush, “Whether I like it or not, Giovanna, when you knock on my door, I can’t seem to stay fucking still.”
With a soft chuckle, Giorno closes the small gap. Tenderly parting her lips and she lets herself get lost in the warmth of it.
Trish falls asleep nestled under his chin, to the rise and fall of his breathing, thinking of garden picnics they could have again when spring came and all this would be over––
––completely unaware of the way his grip in her hair slowly tightens.
---
“Irresponsible, counterproductive,” Warwick paces the foyer, “practically a walking bomb threat to any civilians nearby, not to mention the assured destruction of the girl he cares so damn much about!”
A couple lab coats and grunts loiter and talk quietly by the threshold waiting for Warwick to give further orders. Mista leans against the wall boredly, Fugo standing in front of Warwick to take the brunt of the old man’s anger in his Boss’ stead.
“Signore,” Fugo states with an incredibly practiced detachment, “there haven’t been any reports or bodies found, and we haven’t been able to locate the bike. It’s most likely that he took her into the woods knowing the danger. Why don’t you all just leave for a time and we’ll notify you when he returns––”
The front door creaks open, silencing the massive foyer as sunlight spills into the room through the opening. Entering the room, Giorno holds a hand over his eyes and squints like they hurt, while Trish comes in under his arm.
Trish stops stone-cold, grabbing Giorno to stop with her. He blinks hard before he sees the forms populating the room.
“Shit,” Giorno mutters, meeting Warwick’s glare.
“Shit is right, boy,” Warwick says with a restrained anger. “Where were you?”
Giorno stares the man down. “Not far enough, apparently.” He turns back to her, “Go on, I’ll be up in a minute.”
Trish does a small push up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “Beat his ass if you have to,” she gives before striding into the room. Thoroughly decked out in the same outfit as last night. Her hair definitely not absolutely ruined and she holds her chin high as the room full of people watching her comes to the same conclusion. Good, she thinks as she makes her way upstairs.
While Warwick turns his gaze from Giorno, begrudgingly, to tell a Foundation grunt to pull their search party back, Giorno makes his way to Fugo.
“Where the hell were you?” Fugo grits through his teeth.
“Sorry for the mess, it was Trish’s idea,” he says quiet enough to not echo through the foyer.
“The hell it was,” Mista mutters while picking some dirt out of his revolver. “Where’s my bike?”
“In the garden under the west oak. It’s not like I wasn’t going to bring it back.”
“Better not be a scratch on it.”
Giorno feels guilt start to ebb at him and so says, “The kickstand on it is shot.”
“The hell were you two using it for?!” Mista blurts.
“Giovanna,” thunders through the foyer.
On their Boss’ cue, Mista and Fugo––the gunman giving him a last glare––make their exit, leaving Giorno with the old Foundation hunter. A fierce disappointment in those old eyes enough that Giorno nearly smirks at the thought that he was about to get grounded in his own house.
Gesturing, Giorno offers the east drawing room. A tall ceilinged room with a wall of books and a piano and desk opposite a beautifully embellished fireplace dry with last night’s ashes. Giorno goes to stand and stare out a window, trying to will the burning in the backs of his eyes to stop.
Warwick clicks the door shut. “You have no idea what kind of toys you’re playing with, boy.”
“And you do, is that it?” Giorno asks blandly.
“No. In fact, none of us do. And that’s what’s so Goddamn scary to us adults.”
Giorno sighs through his nose, offers plainly, “Signore, if you’re about to lecture me about what I should be doing in my own house, I’d rather you say it so I can kick you out.”
“Oh ho, but then you wouldn’t get to know about the antidote.”
Giorno jerks to look at the man, his guard dropped for one horrible second.
A smile spreads over Warwick at it. “I will admit, it’s still in progress. But it’s showing promise.”
Giorno swallows the leaping in his throat down, tells himself the man is undoubtedly bluffing and forces himself to deadpan, “What proof do you have?”
Warwick frowns and shakes his head like it’s not a big issue, “Nothing substantial yet. Mainly because the only body to properly test it on keeps making things difficult.”
A fluttering happens in Giorno’s chest, and he notes that it makes sense now––his stomach hadn’t churned at all from the pastries or champagne. “You were testing it on me last night?”
“Oh, that?” Warwick’s eyebrows raise. “That was a dose of what Ugo’s been injecting into people.”
Suddenly the ground seems to shift under Giorno, and he thinks now he’ll be sick.
“Yeah,” Warwick nods. “Now you understand. So next time, don’t run off with your woman when we tell you you’re under close surveillance. The fact that you woke up today with all of your teeth still in place...” Warwick shakes his head, eyes crawling up him in disgust, “It’s some bastardized miracle.”
Instinctively, Giorno grabs at his sleeve behind him, tugging it down farther over his wrist.
While Trish was dozing, he’d woken up to find his forearm itching––and his fingers embedded in the skin, scratching furiously . He stopped as soon as he noticed but... he’d watched the slices he made in his arm sloppily heal in front of him, the marks left there like jagged cliffs.
When her eyes had opened, he... he couldn’t bear to think of if his mind wasn’t his anymore––
Giorno clenches his jaw, ignoring how the joints by his ears throb from the pressure, and growls, “No one felt inclined to tell me?”
“They told you only what you needed to know,” Warwick dismisses easily, poking at the dust in the fireplace with his shoe tip. “But you’re overdue for a diagnostic this morning, so, yeah, I’d get yourself to them before you sprout five arms or some shit at breakfast.” With that, he turns, throws over his shoulder, “We'll keep you updated on the antidote. But in the meantime,” hand on the doorknob, he casts a look back, “just be a good little boy at your doctor’s appointments. Or we’ll find a way to make you sit still.”
With a fast creak, Warwick throws the door open and strides out. Leaving Giorno alone with his broiling thoughts.
He tries looking out the window again, the rising sun piercing his brain in millions of tiny stabs through his eyes.
It’s been four days since he planted men in the Foundation. Meaning it would a week now before they could get discreetly back to him with a full package of information. And if there is a real antidote being manufactured––
Giorno rubs his eyes, scrunching up his face at it. It’s a false hope until proven. He can't allow himself to be led up a summit just to be pushed off. Can’t allow Trish to come with him.
In one movement, he grabs the curtain and throws it to the side, casting his side of the drawing room into shadow.
Though, the backs of his eyes still hurt.