Chapter Text
Beyond the headlight’s rays of the rental car, the long driveway is well lit, the lights of their mansion perched on the hill still on at three in the morning. Lining the winding road to their home are the peach trees on the cusp of blooming, the leaves soon to fall when they’ll walk beneath them in the thick summer air. The ocean breeze nearby. Though tonight, his headlights smear them into a muted pink blur.
When he’d called Mista on his drive to Amanti’s jet hanger in Croatia, the gunman updated him on the situation. While he had been chasing the sniper, Mista had witnessed Trish secure the transition of power to Amanti, but then a split-second later she stood and shot Horvat dead. His body slumping and Amanti struck with pure confusion as Trish had ordered him to come with her.
When Mista had asked Trish why, she had given him a nonanswer.
“Did you tell her to do it, Gio?”
Giorno had balked, the information fresh, though he was still able to summon an explanation for her, “Amanti made a deal with Horvat to have her killed at that lunch. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was her acting on impulse after finding out.”
Mista hadn’t seemed convinced, and Giorno picked up the tone that said his friend wasn’t telling him everything. Though the way Mista moved on suggested it wasn’t an urgent danger as much as just an addition to his confusion, so Giorno allowed it for now. Deciding that he had to address the larger issues first, he could untangle the smaller knots after.
The death of the Croatian gang’s leader meant a massive power vacuum that explained why Amanti had been at his office collecting up what files he thought confidential before fleeing the country. A small glance to Giorno’s right shows the computer bag the old capo had mostly filled with files before being interrupted, in addition to some other pieces that had been important enough for Giorno to grab. A deadman’s last worries now turned into Giorno’s weekend plans. He exhales with an odd relief at the man being gone, despite all the paperwork now added on to his workload to organize replacing him. Along with Horvat.
He hadn’t lied to Mista. Killing Horvat simply because the man crossed her isn’t unbelievable, and he himself had done something similar to Amanti not hours later. Though, the old capo’s long-lasting use had begun crumbling, and he couldn’t afford pawns breaking when he needed them at their sturdiest. Horvat, on the other hand, had been a fresh piece to rope and use, despite whatever split-second decision that led Trish to shoot. And besides, the image of her making that decision––of her pulling a trigger impulsively––it bothers him.
Trish isn't slow to anger... but she isn't quick to kill either.
Giorno rubs his face. Though, he wasn’t tired with the need for sleep, a sensation he didn’t realize he would miss this much. The relief that comes after a long drive home, a long day’s aching limbs salved with a hot shower and his own soft sheets and pillow. Trish half-waking to wrap an arm around his waist, tangling her legs in his until they were an impossible knot of bramble.
He focuses on that. Remembers falling asleep to her heartbeat.
Curving into the circle of the driveway, gravel crunches under the tires as he rolls the car out back, deciding to go in through the agreed entrance for late nights like these.
“If we’re under threat of intruders,” Fugo had stipulated so long ago, “any of us will use the westside back door and announce ourselves once we enter, if we think it’s safe to.”
After slipping past the creaking door, Giorno kicks it closed behind him. His shoes echoing way too loud as he walks down the tile hallway. Though, there’s really no reason to announce himself. Seeing as how, firstly, no one could hurt him on accident. It was just plain impossible at this point, unless maybe silver bullets could kill him. He makes a mental note to add that to his growing list of morbid things he had to test.
But, most importantly, he had called ahead, told Fugo there were no raids planned by Amanti’s men (he wasn’t sure about the Croatian gang’s intentions, but he thinks it’s a safe assumption that they would be self-consumed at least for one blood-filled night) and that he was headed home.
“Trish made it back ok with Mista about an hour ago. Do you want me to find her for you?”
When Giorno reaches the lit kitchen, he stops in the shadow of the doorway.
Lost in humming to herself, her back is to him as she dusts flour off the marble countertop, putting away some stray ingredients, a tray of what seems to be scones lying in wait on the kitchen island.
Openly she’s fought over the radio rights in the kitchen, the car. Anytime Giorno pops in one of his opera CDs in front of others, she makes an open show of hating that droning sleep fodder. Only when they’re alone does she sing Phantom of the Opera with a knowing smile, twirling and prancing about as his Christine.
She hums it softly now, Masquerade specifically, singing a verse here and there as she dumps the mixing bowl in the sink to “soak”, leaving probably Fugo to clean it in the morning.
The oven beeps that it’s preheated, and she goes to slip the oven mitts on, spins to pick up the tray on the kitchen island and notices him.
“Oh! You’re back!” She practically drops the tray, tossing the mitts as she rounds the island for the shadowed threshold, throwing her arms around his neck.
When his returning embrace is rigid, concern dips into her tone, “I wasn’t worried but, you’re ok, right?”
“I am,” Giorno murmurs, before summoning a better tone, “Sorry. I am alright, genuinely. It’s just been a long day.” He bends and plants a kiss on her lips.
Happily she returns it, but the worry doesn't leave. “Alright. Well, it’s fair. It has been a day.” She squeezes his hands, tries joking, “So, how did visiting old Uncle Aldo go? You didn’t eat him, did you?”
It earns a small morbid grin from him, “No, I didn’t eat him.”
She clicks her tongue. “Didn’t bring him back either, apparently.” She strolls back to the scones, “It’s a shame, if you had I would’ve made him into a fine meal, beaten and tender, you would’ve loved it.”
He hums in wry amusement. “Sorry to disappoint.”
Sliding the oven mitts back on, she says, “Well, either way, is he somewhere I can visit to beat him up, or did you kill him?”
As she turns around with the tray to bend down and carefully guide it into the oven, he slips out of the threshold’s shadow, saying, “He was unsalvageable. The man didn’t deserve how quickly death took him.”
“You mean you didn’t kill him slow enough?” She tells the scones, closing the oven door.
“More or less.”
After she rises to face him, she startles. “Christ–– Giorno.”
Oh, right, the mass of dried blood in his hair from his brains being blown out. A pull, and he’s crunching some of it between his fingers. “Seems like I forgot to clean that up. Sorry.”
Trish huffs, grabs the hand towel from beside the sink and wets it. “Well, I’m glad it’s not yours at least.”
The truth would make such an insignificant difference in this situation that he decides not to correct her.
“Go on, sit down.” She practically shoves him into sitting on the barstool so he’s just barely above her eye-level, and she leans in to rub the towel in his red-crusted hair.
Her touch is kind, her face focused and close enough he can make out the bow of freckles over her nose. Recently showered, she’s cleaned her face of make-up, ready to go down for the night, his favorite version of Trish. The one he reads next to, the one he gets lost under the covers with.
The towel slows, concern threading her limbs still, “Giorno?”
His voice finds him smaller than he’d like, “Trish, I...“ When he reaches up to touch her cheek, he sees the blood dried under his knife-like nails and hesitates, looking away.
“Here,” Trish says. “I had a thought I wanted you to try.” Putting the towel down, gently she takes his hands in hers, bringing them up before noticing, “Jesus, your pulse is still pounding.”
“It usually does when you’re this close,” Giorno says, trying to summon that teasing tone.
Despite how the tease falls flat, Trish rewards him with a kind smile, “Well, I want you to try calming down.”
“Calming down?”
“Yeah, just close your eyes and breathe—”
“I am calm though.”
“Yeah, ok. Just close your eyes, Giorno.”
He closes his eyes obediently.
“Now breathe.”
Following her, he inhales deeply, holds it in, and then exhales long.
“Maybe think of something peaceful, too.”
His first thought is lilacs, which has the opposite effect on his heartrate.
“The maple tree,” Trish offers. “That picnic blanket with lace on the corners.”
Her fiddling with it. Telling him there was dirt on the edges. Him telling her there were bits of grass in her hair. “You managed to get bits of grass in my hair?!” She’d squealed and hurriedly brushed the grass from her hair before shoving him.
And gradually, like how wind releases a field of wildflowers from bending over, performing, Giorno feels the tension ebb from his limbs. He winces at the sensation like a digging insect crawling through the top of his mouth, and his fingertips pinch with that nettle’s sting like before, but it’s only a couple seconds before it’s gone.
“Whoa,” Trish says, and he opens his eyes.
Relief floods him as he turns his hands over, the nails back to round and normal and when he flexes his fingers they don’t reactivate or—
“And your teeth?” Trish prompts.
With his fantastically normal fingers, Giorno feels for his top canines just to find the tips are sharper than he’d remembered, but—
“They’re not long anymore,” Trish says excitedly.
“Like they can retract at will.” The thought that he has control over at least how he looks takes over and he asks eagerly, “And my eyes? Are they still red?”
She shared his joy a moment ago, but when she examines him, it fades, and Giorno’s heart sinks a bit.
“Well,” she says, “Honestly it’s not as bright. Like an amber, and if I look at you from the side, it’s more of a dark burgundy. But,” she takes his hands, “at least you can tie your own shoes now.”
Giorno huffs a chuckle, berating himself for sinking back into despair when she’s been trying to keep him above the waves. “I’ll definitely like tying my own shoes now, thanks for the trick.”
“You’ll have to thank Polnareff. I talked to him and it was his idea, actually.”
“Then I will. Though, I have you to thank for more than just that.” He rubs her palms with his thumbs, suppressing the hazy and horrible memory that broils up of the hotel room, “Again... I’m sorry about today. That was...” he cringes, “I don’t have the words. But you have my word that nothing like it will ever happen again.”
She grunts, “I know. And you’re fine. And you know we’re fine, Giorno. In fact, you say sorry after every dicey mission that I’m almost tired of hearing it.” Straightening up, she walks to toss the towel by the sink in a ruddy crumple and lean over it. Her head sinking past her shoulders from the weight.
Rising, he walks to wrap his arms around her waist, to tell her softly, “You’re too good for any of this.”
Trish murmurs, “You shouldn’t have to deal with it either.” With a sigh, she leans back into him and melts with a lighter tone, “We’ve been through a lot of shit, but the vampire shit beats it all out.”
“It does. Thank you for your patience with it.”
“You’re welcome but— why does it have to be vampires?”
“I don’t know,” he places a kiss on the crown of her head. “Ask my father.”
“Your— what was it— a thousand-year-old dad?”
“A hundred.”
“Your mom was fucked in the head.”
“Yes, she was.”
“Did you at least get what you needed from Amanti before not eating him?”
He thinks about how his forearms thrum with the small heartbeats in her wrists, how he can hear the air push in her lungs, the scone dough moving in her stomach beneath his palms. Her body so delicate in his grasp, a single twitch and he could scar her.
“I did,” Giorno says.
“And?”
He says it into her blow-dried fluff of hair. “Nothing helpful.”
“Nothing? No accomplices or anything? But he couldn’t have known about you being at the hotel unless there was someone on the inside.”
Giorno closes his eyes, thinks of her wearing her sunhat last summer on the coast, how the wind blew it off and she didn’t chase it down, knew he’d do it for her.
Giorno says, “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”
“Well, that sucks.” Trish slumps further against him, “I guess we’ll just have to fly blind, then. My money's on Russo though. Oh— do you think we could get Fugo to bet money this time? Maybe we can nab him instead of just Mista.” A chuckle threatens her tone, “God, that was fun last month.”
It leaves her lips so easily, so free and flying that it sings in his ears, despite how it draws his brows as tight as the knot in his chest.
He thinks to hold it in, but remembers the evening. What she went through just for him to understand why he shouldn’t lock away the keys to his chest anymore.
“Trish,” he starts.
“Hmm?”
“That saying, about the lilacs.” He fights biting his lip. “Aldo knew it. I was wondering if you knew why.”
In his arms she turns, his hands sliding on her waist making him think of potters and clay as she stills there to look up at him. Her brows furrow, her eyes casting lines into memory. “I...”
Red pools under Horvat’s head, the gun wound fresh and weeping.
“Get up,” she says.
Aldo Amanti’s stare hardens, “The hell are you playing at, girl?”
“I said up,” she snaps.
Amanti stands, Mista cawing confusion in her ear. She’d planned for this moment. Needed Giorno off the comms, and the gunman wouldn’t understand the significance to report back to his Boss on this specific detail.
A half-smile finds her. Everything really was falling into place. “Aldo, sweet uncle, I told you already. Lilacs change color in the rain.”
Amanti’s expression shifts from perplexed to bewildered understanding.
A full smile reaches her split irises.
Finally, some recognition.
Trish’s brows press close. “I’m not sure. Though, he did walk by our table at dinner that night before the meeting.”
Now it’s Giorno’s turn to crunch his brows in memory, until he remembers, “Ah. The napkin.”
In the hotel’s dining hall filled with clinking utensils and fluttering conversation— while Mista had been fully submersed in a monologue about tomatoes being a fruit— Giorno’s gaze had wandered, and Trish had noticed.
The night was heavy on his chest, his head, until a small tap found his elbow.
He looked down to see her perfectly done nails placing her napkin beside him, the lilac montra written out in pen on it.
He smiled smally at the warmth in his chest. A second later, Amanti had chosen to stop by their table for a passing goodnight.
Trish says, “Amanti could have seen it then. Bastard probably mentioned it in desperation. I’m assuming he’d reached the desperate stage?”
“Something like that.”
“Then that could be it.” Her eyes soften in worry, her hand finding his cheek. “What else did he say?”
Realizing he had been sinking, Giorno pulls himself back to the surface. “Nothing more than a deadman’s pleas.” He thinks for a moment, asks her, “You thought up the lilac saying on your own, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
“What does it mean?”
“Can’t a poem stand on its own?” Her worry melts and she pouts, “Really, Giorno, I know you’re smart enough to figure it out. I handcrafted it just for you.”
He loves it when she pouts. It’s adorable, and, no matter what’s heavy in his mind, it melts him every time. “’Lilacs change color after the rain.’” He huffs a sigh, “I watched you glance to the flowering bush in question when you said it, like it was on the spot.”
“It was so not on the spot!” She whacks his arm.
“Inspiration strikes at the right moments, then?”
Trish smiles, “When it earns me a kiss like I got on that July afternoon, then yeah.”
Giorno holds her closer now, says softer, “If I offer you another, will you answer my question?”
And she returns the pull, her arms around his neck and warm breath up his neck, jaw. “Make the offer then.”
A slight tilt, a small hush of air, and he pulls her bottom lip in, presses his fingertips over her neck’s pulse.
Breath hushes between them for a timeless stretch. When her fingers pull in his tangle of hair, he separates only enough to ask softly, “What does it mean? Why do lilacs change color in the rain?”
Her body goes rigid, like an electric current seizes her.
A spike of worry pulls him back enough to see—
—her smile settle. Her eyes open with light flutters like butterfly wings and she sighs dreamily.
“I’d wondered what that kiss would taste like in the kitchen. Now, what’s your question?”
The lights flick on.
“Oi! Guys!” Mista cringes from the doorway in his sweatpants. “We agreed to no making out in the kitchen! T-To you not! To you two not doing it in the kitchen! I mean— Agh!”
“Oh, and you’re the one watching!” Trish throws her hands on her hips. “Grow up, Mista!”
Squinting to adjust to the bright overhead lights, Giorno watches Fugo in his watermelon green nightclothes push past the taller to spout, “Giorno, y-you’re—?!”
“Shit, he’s walking!” Mista grabs the green shoulder and points.
After slapping the hand off, Fugo turns back to ask, “What happened?! You look...well...”
And Mista doesn’t say anything, just watches the other with a patient grin.
“Shut up!” Fugo shoves his face away.
Laughing, the mess of brown curls nods, “Ok, to be fair, you did come back ripped, Gio. You’ve gotta explain it, man.”
Giorno drops his shoulders with a sigh through his nose. Trish’s hand slips into his. With a reassuring squeeze and smile, she says she’s there with him, says maybe this conversation will go better than the nightmare version that’s haunted him for months.
“Let’s head to the roof,” he tells all of them.
---
“So, being a vampire—”
“Dhampir,” Fugo corrects.
“Being a damn creature of the night,” Mista glares at the other before continuing, “Can you turn yourself into a bat?”
Sighing, Giorno answers, “No.” It’s the twenty questions game he had been so looking forward to. Though, he can’t complain too much. The prodding grins and laughing at his expense comes through like sugar after the bitter medicine of telling his friends he wasn’t a member of their species anymore. Or, maybe, that he never was to begin with.
With a settling grunt, he lays his head on his forearms against the barrel tiles of the roof, half-listening to the debate over whether all vampires can turn into bats. Overhead, the night sky spreads glittering seeds, cloudless and he thinks of what a good harvest the farmer in the sky could reap— or lose, if he’s reckless.
It’s the end of the night, he reminds himself, morning surely promising to flush the horizon a stark pink.
“Can you eat garlic?” Mista asks.
“We haven’t tried that one,” Trish points with one of her scones fresh out of the oven. She’d gotten Mista to go get some a couple minutes ago.
Giorno frowns, “Didn’t we have Libeccio’s last week?”
“Oh, right,” Fugo nods and takes a bite of scone.
“What?” Mista asks.
“I always get their Margherita pizza. It’s loaded with garlic pieces.”
Leaning back on his elbows, Mista says, “Shit, you’re right.”
“What? Were you planning to kill me with garlic?”
“Nah, it’s just— not a lot of vampire things about you. It’s kinda disappointing.”
“He has fangs.”
“Trish.”
“Well you do! Fugo, check!”
“Why me?”
“You’re closest and I’ve already seen them— just get him to smile big and you’ll see!”
“You’re making shit up!” Crumbs fly as Mista accuses, “He’s definitely grinned in the past fifteen minutes and I haven’t seen anything!”
Giorno sighs, sitting up because this isn’t going away until he settles it. “Alright. Everyone look.”
They do, and Giorno opens his mouth wide, closes his eyes to will the unseen muscle to tense, and his sharp teeth slice into the air.
“Jesus Christ!” Mista flinches.
“I told you.”
“Retractable?” Fugo muses, “That’s not like a bat at all.”
“Right?” Giorno starts eagerly. “And that was my first thought too. In fact, the teeth are more snake-like actually, with a sheath in the gums and a canal that runs up the middle of the tooth similar to one that a snake uses to distribute venom into a wound, but instead of being open-sided, it seems that they’re sealed for better suction or a more careful distribution of...” He realizes what he’s saying and just stops.
So absorbed in the biology of it—the one thing that was interesting and that he had never been able to talk to anyone about—he hadn't noticed the concept dawn on each of their faces.
Shifting forward, Trish is about to speak when Mista just blurts it, “You’ve drank blood?”
The words hit and lodge in his throat, chilling his lungs. Abruptly he feels bare in front of them, like another monstrous tell and another word from them about it could slice his chest open.
But Trish’s gaze catches him, like a warm press on his forehead. With a small inhale, he holds his head a little higher, “Yes. Earlier today, actually, for the first time.”
The air is heavy. After all the years of being in meetings with hostile politics and people, he feels like he should be so much better at handling a room with air this thick. But it’s so much harder when it’s them, always has been. So, he swallows and waits.
After the pause, Mista shifts, says, “Well, damn. Did it taste good?”
Giorno blinks, “What?”
“First time, right? Wha’d’you think of it?”
Despite the ice in his gut––despite the damn hot needles he’s had in his stomach for months about this––he fights to keep his tone level and serious only to find he can’t, “How’d it taste? That’s your first thought?”
“I mean, yeah. Did you want me to pull out a wood stake or some shit?”
It earns a crack in his face, a chuckle, and then Giorno’s breaking down laughing. Holding his forehead in disbelief as it pours out of him. Everything like murky water finally spilling out of him.
Fugo punches Mista’s arm, “You insensitive asshole.”
“The fu––?! I’m the asshole?! He’s a vampire now and––”
“Dhampir,” Trish interjects over Giorno’s laughing.
“Shut up,” Mista throws over his shoulder. “Point is, he’s stuck like this now, so how the hell am I supposed to help anyway?!”
“Maybe by not asking him how fucking humans taste?!” Fugo points to stop the other from starting, “Don’t act like you weren’t!”
Mista shuts his mouth and frowns heavily, “Ok, alright, but it wasn’t going to be that blunt though!”
Fugo grins wide and wickedly.
“Shut up!” Mista shoves him, goading the other into smashing a scone into his face. Consequently, the two devolve into the usual bickering and mocking of each other, but not without some intermittent grins.
From the sidelines, Trish sends Giorno a soft smile and mouths, I told you so.
Finally catching his breath, Giorno waves her off with the expression to say, Fine, so you did.
There’s a simpleness to Mista he never expects, a welcome surprise that hits him like a freight train every time he turns his back. Even Fugo, as self-regulated and scheduled as he is, can still surprise him with his adaptability and kindness, things Giorno has watched his friend grow into.
And Trish...
Pushing Fugo’s shoulder with her own, she joins laughing to peg the remains of her scone at Mista. Dusting her hands of crumbs, she finds Giorno’s gaze on her and meets it warmly, knowingly.
Maybe that’s what he loves about them all. That, even after years of living under the same roof, he still can’t predict them.
They would be ok, he thinks. Just so long as they could come back to the roof at the end of each night like this.
The moon crescents like a weeping sun, light apparently only thought of as something that could trickle from it until it was drained. The rim of a cup poured out into the sky. The stars just scattered ice remnants.
Warwick sits in the office the Foundation furnished for him in south Napoli. The second floor of a financial building, he goes downstairs for the cafe’s coffee in the mornings.
Yanking his eyes from the cheap plastic phone, he checks his watch. It was nearly dawn, far longer than the agreed upon time, and he was never good at waiting a full night like this.
He sets his eyes back on the moon, tries to put himself back on his boat on the Capri coastline and––
Buzz buzz––
He has it by his ear in an instant. “Warwick.”
The other side stays silent for a moment, before a tired sigh draws out. “Is everything in order for the pick-up and drop-off?”
“Yes. Although––”
“And the legwork to guarantee my un-involvement?”
“Yes, but we still have to discuss what happened today with––”
“I expect a full report on how the securing of the package goes, along with––”
“You listen to me,” he stands, “I will not give you anything until you explain your intentions by offing Horvat.”
A disgusted and bewildered pause, then, “I don’t have to tell you shit! You are nothing, understand?! Your fucking use is about as long as a rat’s tail stained with piss, so get this now–– I will kill you. Tomorrow. If you don’t give me what I want. Your people will give me another scarred-ass face that will be more cooperative, and it sets me back by just a week––while your malfunctioning dick behavior sets you back with your brains splattered on the sidewalk like a fucking Banksy!”
The phone shakes in Warwick’s grip, wrath clutching him by the neck and he fights to unclench his jaw at this whore excuse of a tool he’s roped himself into using, fucking foolishly. “What I mean to get through to you is, Horvat dead makes the entirety of Croatia a lake of thin ice. The Foundation’s movements will be indefinitely harder to hide from the remnants of the Croatian gang scrambling to maintain their territories. And because of the changeover of overall leadership, Passione will be able to read into their newly loyal Croatian members on where we take any suspicious packages.”
“Yeah, and?”
“You’ve made it quite fucking difficult for us to accomplish our goals there, and I was hoping you had some plans to make it easier.”
The voice sweetens falsely into a tease, “Nothing I can do about Croatia, sweetheart, though I think you’ll find the cargo will go unseen by the eyes up here in Heaven. They’ll be a bit distracted for the next few months, pretty sure there's some big wedding happening soon. And hey, lighten up. A couple more steps after this waiting period, and you’ll have your prize.”
It does provide some comfort. The assurance of an evening where the prize in question will be truly ripe for picking. And then he can be rid of this ridiculous partnership that, if it were found out, he would be practically court-marshalled for enabling.
Warwick takes in a long breath, sowing the calm in his lungs to release out his nose slowly.
“So, I can trust you’ll everything ready for when the time comes?” The other side prompts.
Warwick eyes the ground, looks to the moon to find it still weeping. “I won’t fail, Signora.”
From her place in the darkened office with her nine-inch crimson-soled stilettos up on Giorno’s desk, she lets her smile draw wide, lipstick a piercing violet.
“I know.”
A click, and the call ends.