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Giorno kept his head down and his body low as his fingers gripped harder into Abbacchio's dark leather coat. He continued to shield, and drag, the larger fallen goth into a safe corner of the warehouse, obscured by overturned boxes of produce that smelled of fish and cabbage.
They left a long trail of blood; Abba had been badly wounded when the enemy had caught him with a bullet in the middle of a replay while they were investigating product theft from one of Passione's shipments. Giorno, terrified and struck by horrible memory, had reacted on instinct, abandoning everything to move and get Abbacchio into cover for repairs.
Nearby, both Mista and Narancia were laying down cover fire, the sounds of Stand bullets and Sex Pistols' shrill squealing as they kicked and rebounded enemy fire back onto their opponents.
Abbacchio flailed his arms and tried to force Giorno to let go of him, but he was hampered by the young Don's unexpected strength - and the fact that the bullet currently embedded in his body had damaged a bundle of nerves that made his long legs complete deadweight beneath him. "Let go of me, brat!" Abbacchio yelled, loud and stressed over the competing roar of bullets, sweating hard. "Leave me! Go help the others!"
"Shut up!" Giorno snapped back, just as stressed, his neck veins standing out, brow furrowed and his cheeks damp with misty sweat of his own. He managed to pull them both into a place he thought was safe enough. He was struggling with fear and dread, the memory of Sardegna biting hard at the back of his neck and deep down inside his gut. He would not be 'too late' this time, damn it.
He pushed Abbacchio down, crouched over the back of the goth's thighs to keep him still, and let Gold Experience overlay along his hands and forearms as he pushed his fingers down against the blood and the wet cloth. Abbacchio's lower back felt cold to the touch. Giorno grimaced and concentrated, everything else falling away as he focused on activating his healing ability, seeking out the embedded metal cores of the bullets and melting them down into bright, liquid gold light.
Abbacchio shrieked. He'd heard stories about Giorno's healing abilities from the others, and these stories had caused him to refuse Gold Experience in the past. But this time, it was different. What had been cold, numb loss of feeling shifted abruptly into bright, searing pain as nerve bundles rebuilt and re-knitted themselves under Giorno's cruel but steady pressure. It burned like fire had been set under his flesh. "Stop, stop! Fuck! It hurts!!" he cried.
Giorno shook his head, intent. "If I have to stop what I'm doing, you won't be able to walk. I'm almost done. Stay down!" he commanded, in a voice that Abbacchio had never heard before. Not panic, but a sharp, snappy tone of control and command that belonged to a man much, much older than Giorno's mere 19 years. Abbacchio's eyes went wide, and he suddenly feared to disobey.
Why are you putting yourself out for me, brat? he wondered, but he couldn't do anything about it but scream out at the pain.
They sweated through it together, the healing. And even when Giorno jerked above him as a stray bullet bouncing around the fight punched into his own shoulder, he just ignored it. Blood ran down the inside of his jacket sleeve and coated the back of his gleaming hand as he kept pushing until he was certain that Abbacchio would be able to get up and move again.
The goth, grinding his teeth together, twisted hard under Giorno once he felt he could work his legs, throwing the injured blond and then immediately moving on top of the Don, pushing a big hand down hard over Giorno's wound. He found something in his pocket, a handkerchief, and pressed it into place. The fabric quickly darkened with blood. The ex-cop's ombre eyes narrowed above Giorno. "Hurry up and fix yourself."
"I'm fine," Giorno lied, breathlessly, the fabric already unwinding and filling in the hole with golden glimmering beneath his torn jacket.