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“You’re not busy today, yeah?”
Giorno blinked at Narancia over his coffee. It was a highly suspicious question, especially from someone who already knew his schedule.
“I’m busy every day,” he answered. “I’m meeting with Fugo this afternoon to discuss the Milan deal, and I still have to review the projections he gave me.”
“Okay, so you’re not doing anything important.”
“Fugo would disagree.”
“But you can see him any time. And you said the Milan thing’s probably not gonna come together anyway. So, it wouldn’t hurt to skip the meeting, right?”
Narancia took a slurp of orange juice. He was bouncing his leg beneath the table, and Giorno’s coffee shuddered in its cup.
“What’s this about, Narancia?”
Narancia wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist and pulled both legs onto his chair.
“I’m gonna kidnap you,” he said, grinning with all of his teeth.
“Oh?” Giorno wrestled his mouth into a frown. “That’s rather treacherous of you.”
“I’m a dangerous man, Giorno.”
He was. Dangerously charming, at least. Or maybe Giorno was easily charmed.
“And where will you be kidnapping me to, exactly?” he asked.
“Can’t say. You know how it is. Also, I’m gonna need you to give me your phone. Can’t have you calling for help.”
Responsibility tugged at the back of Giorno’s mind, and suddenly his frown wasn’t an act.
“But Fugo—"
“Fugo can yell at me all he wants, but I really don’t care. He’s been hogging most of your time lately, anyway. It won’t kill him to give you up for a day.”
There was a hint of real irritation behind Narancia’s bravado. It was true that he’d been leaning quite a bit on Fugo recently—he was highly competent and willing to shoulder some of the organization’s more challenging operations—but Giorno hadn’t thought Narancia minded. They were living together, after all. They saw each other every day and even slept in the same bed most nights. If anyone was monopolizing his time, it wasn’t Fugo.
But Narancia got lonely easily.
Giorno slid his phone across the table.
“One day won’t kill him,” he agreed. Narancia’s face lit up, and Giorno’s chest clenched with love.
“I knew you’d get it!” He squeezed Giorno’s hand, pocketed the phone, and hopped off of his chair. “I’ll have everything ready in thirty minutes! No, twenty! Don’t go anywhere!”
Leaving his captive unrestrained and unattended, Giorno noted as Narancia dashed out of the kitchen. Well, they could work on his kidnapping technique later.
--
To his credit, Narancia did think to blindfold him. Giorno sat unseeing in the front seat of the car for all of ten seconds before Narancia removed it, blushing and stammering about how it was a “stupid idea” and “didn’t matter anyway.” Giorno disagreed. The blindfold had, after all, allowed him the privilege of seeing Narancia flustered.
Narancia was a more considerate driver than he’d first expected. As someone who’d learned to drive behind the wheel of his illicit taxi, Giorno knew that his definition of “considerate” might be skewed, but Narancia drove at mostly reasonable speeds and even used his turn signal sometimes. The problem wasn’t with Narancia’s driving. It was his navigation.
“Shit, I think I missed an offramp.”
“I really don’t mind navigating.”
“But you’re not supposed to know where we’re going. You’re being kidnapped, remember? Also, I want it to be a surprise.”
Giorno didn’t bother arguing with him. Truthfully, he didn’t care if they got to where they were going. He was happy to just sit in the car with Narancia and watch the scenery slide by. It was a miracle that they were here at all. He didn’t take that for granted.
“You feeling okay?” Narancia asked. “You’re not carsick or anything, are you?”
He didn’t take his eyes off the road, and it occurred to Giorno that he might be driving considerately for his sake.
“I feel normal,” Giorno said. “There’s some pressure around my right eye, but no more than usual. It doesn’t hurt.”
“Good. I grabbed a bunch of your pills before we left, so if you need any, let me know.”
Giorno wondered exactly what “grabbed a bunch of your pills” meant. Had Narancia taken one of his bottles, or did he have a handful of loose pills in his pocket? Hopefully, he wouldn’t have to find out.
Tinny rap music filled the car. It was a recording of a recording, and the lyrics were unintelligible.
“Can you check who it is?” Narancia asked, tossing his cellphone into Giorno’s lap.
“It’s Fugo. Should I answer?”
“No. Actually, yeah. He’ll keep calling otherwise.”
Giorno pushed the call button, then held the phone to Narancia’s ear.
“Hey, what do you want?” Narancia flinched away from the speaker. Evidently, Fugo was not in a good mood. “Okay, first of all, calm down. Second of all, he’s not ‘missing’ ‘cause I’m kidnapping him right now.”
This time, Narancia moved his ear away from the speaker before Fugo’s voice exploded through it. He was loud enough that Giorno could make out most of what he was saying, half of which seemed to be expletives. In summary, he wanted to know why Narancia was kidnapping him and for Narancia to stop doing that immediately.
“Fuck you!” Narancia shouted back. “If you want him, come and take him! I’ve got an hour’s head start, and you don’t know where we are!”
Another flurry of expletives. Narancia flipped off his phone, which of course Fugo could not see.
“Try it, motherfucker! Aerosmith will blow you off the road! Oh, hey, that reminds me, are we still shaking that guy down on Friday? The guy from the bar. Yeah? Cool. Huh? No, you can’t talk to him. He’s being kidnapped!” A pause. “Fine, but keep it short.”
“Hi, Fugo,” Giorno said.
“This is so stupid.”
Surprisingly, Fugo didn’t sound mad. Narancia had been very efficient at working the anger out of his system. But he did sound tired.
“Sorry. It all happened on very short notice.”
“Being kidnapped? Yeah, I’d assume so.”
“About Milan…”
“We can discuss it tomorrow. I wanted to tighten up my report anyway.” Fugo sighed. “Look, the short answer is that I think it’s a bust. But you’ll want to see the numbers. Also, there are some other problems in the area we should discuss.”
“But it can wait?”
“It can wait.”
“You made it sound ominous.”
“Look, give me another day to look into it. It might be nothing. If it’s not nothing, we’ll talk.”
With the amount of work he was giving himself, no wonder Fugo sounded tired. At this rate, Giorno would have to arrange for someone to kidnap him.
“Thank you, Fugo,” he found himself saying.
“Don’t thank me. I’m a terrible subordinate who let his boss get kidnapped by a traitorous scumbag. If you make it out alive, you should probably have me shot for my incompetence.”
“I’ll be merciful. If I make it out alive.”
“Great. Thanks.”
It had been so wonderful to discover that Fugo’s sense of humor was as dry as his own.
“Good luck with the kidnapping,” Fugo said. “If you need me to rescue you, you know how to reach me.”
“Narancia took my phone.”
“Well, then I guess you’re on your own.”
“What did he say?” Narancia asked after Giorno hung up.
“He called you a scumbag.”
“Wow, name-calling?” Narancia clicked his tongue. “He’s such a kid.”
Narancia had, of course, called Fugo a “motherfucker.” Giorno decided not to mention it.
“He told me to call if I needed him to rescue me,” Giorno said, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. He supposed he thought it was a sweet sentiment, and he wanted Narancia to think so, too. But Narancia just scoffed again.
“That’s pretty stupid,” he said. “I’m the one rescuing you. Doesn’t he get that?”
--
“Oh.”
Narancia grinned as he put the car in park.
“You never been to an amusement park before?”
Actually, he had. Once. For a very short period of time after he’d turned six, his mother had made a friend at work. That friend had happened to have a son around Giorno’s age, so his mother had arranged for a playdate. She’d wanted her friend to see what a good mother she was.
“Behave yourself,” his mother had hissed as she’d pulled him through the park gates. And he had. But he hadn’t had a nice time. The other boy had mostly ignored him, and the rides had made him unpleasantly aware of his internal organs. He remembered that it had been a hot day, and his mother hadn’t thought to give him water. (To be fair, he hadn’t thought to ask her for any.) Looking back, it was a miracle that he hadn’t collapsed from dehydration, but he’d come home with a nasty sunburn. His skin had peeled for days.
His mother had had a violent falling out with her friend a couple of weeks later. Giorno hadn’t been to an amusement park since.
“It’s my first time,” he told Narancia.
“Really?”
Was his lie that obvious, Giorno wondered. But Narancia was still grinning.
“I gotta get you on the rollercoaster!” he said.
But as excited as he was for the rollercoaster, Narancia took his time. It had taken them until early afternoon to find the park, and although Giorno wasn’t hungry, Narancia insisted that they eat lunch.
“You can’t keep missing meals,” he told him. “You know you haven’t gotten any taller since we met, right? If I’m gonna outgrow you, I want it to be a fair fight.”
His logic didn’t make sense, but there was no arguing with Narancia when it came to food. So Giorno let him feed him greasy pizza and an orange flavored slush. He let him press caramel-coated popcorn between his lips, kernel shards catching in his teeth. None of it tasted particularly good, but Narancia seemed to be enjoying himself, and being fussed over wasn’t so bad.
Of course, they couldn’t ride the rollercoaster right after eating (well, they could, but even Narancia didn’t want to risk it), so they wandered around the games tent for a while. The games were all rigged, but Narancia was dead set on winning something.
“It’s a matter of pride now,” he said after losing five rounds of ring toss in a row. “It’s a matter of honor.”
That “honor” was how the park made its money. Narancia eventually won an ugly, stuffed cat, but he could have bought ten stuffed cats with the amount he’d spent to throw a plastic ring onto a bottle. It was an admirable racket, especially since Narancia didn’t even want the cat.
“Here,” he said, practically shoving the felt toy into Giorno’s chest.
“I’m sure you didn’t have to accept the prize.”
“Huh?”
“The prize.” Giorno waggled the cat at Narancia. “You can just give it back.”
“Give it…” Narancia blinked at him. Then his face turned an astonishing shade of scarlet. “I won it for you, Giorno!”
Oh?
“If you don’t like it, I’ll take it back,” Narancia said. “You don’t like useless things, right?”
“No.” Giorno gripped the cat a little tighter. “I mean, I like it. It’s…sweet.”
“Sweet?”
The cat (maybe it wasn’t even a cat?) was grinning maniacally. It had a mouth of razor-sharp teeth, and it seemed to be wearing a tiny biker jacket. It was so ugly.
“Yes. Thank you, Narancia.”
Narancia’s blush resolved into a grin. He slung an arm around Giorno’s neck, half hug and half chokehold.
“Heh. No problem!”
But god, the cat was so damn ugly.
--
“So then he said, ‘You might actually be pretty tasty.’ Isn’t that fucked up? Does that mean, like, if we were stranded on a deserted island, he’d eat me first?”
It wasn’t quite a “deserted island,” but they’d been stranded in line for the rollercoaster for over half an hour. Giorno squinted up at the twisting colossus. Anything Narancia was willing to wait this long for must have been special.
“If you were really in a cannibalism scenario, I don’t think taste would be your first priority,” Giorno said. “You should eat the person who would provide the greatest quantity of meat. Assuming there’s more than one other person to choose from, that is.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. So we’d eat Mista first?”
Giorno frowned. That was the logical conclusion, yes, but now that he’d found himself placed in the hypothetical cannibalism scenario, the thought of eating a friend troubled him.
“You should eat me first,” he offered. “I could just regrow my body parts.”
Narancia sucked in a breath through his teeth.
“I really don’t like that,” he said. “You’re always saying stuff like that.”
Like what? Offering to let his friends eat him? He was pretty sure he wasn’t “always” saying that.
“Anyhow,” Narancia said before Giorno could think too hard about it. “Why would we have to eat you at all? Couldn’t you just use your power to grow us something to eat?”
The thought hadn’t occurred to Giorno, and now that it had, it repulsed him as much as the possibility of cannibalism.
“I don’t think that would work. Living things born from my ability reflect any attacks directed at them. Also, eating something I gave life to would be like…like Saturn devouring his son.”
“The planet?”
“The Titan who ate his children right after they were born.”
So the Titan’s wife had stolen their youngest son away and raised him in secret. And when he was grown, the son had overthrown his father and cast him into hell.
What a dull story. In the animal world, mothers devoured their young more often than fathers. It was usually easier than raising them.
“Did they taste good?” Narancia asked.
“What?”
“Is that why he ate his kids? Because they tasted good?”
“Again, I don’t think taste had much to do with it.”
“But babies would definitely taste better than adults, right? ‘Cause they’re soft?”
Giorno’s stomach twisted.
“Narancia.”
“Okay, okay!”
He started to laugh, then he looked at him and stopped.
“Hey,” Narancia said, touching his elbow. “Hey, it was a stupid question, okay? You’re not like that. You wouldn’t eat your own kids.”
Why was he comforting him? What had he seen on his face?
“I don’t know why you’re so concerned about that,” Giorno said, trying his best to sound aloof. “You hardly eat meat in the first place.”
“Well, yeah. I like it, but I feel bad for the animals.”
Narancia shrugged as if his goodness was hardly worth mentioning, and Giorno suddenly felt so selfish.
“I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “I would eat you first.”
“Huh? Hey, what the hell?! Why?!”
“Mista guessed correctly. You do taste good.”
“Wh—?!”
Breath passed unintelligibly through Narancia’s lips. As gregarious as he was, he could actually be quite shy.
“That’s not fair!” he finally sputtered. “You can’t just say stuff like that!”
“Like what?” Giorno asked with malicious innocence. “What did I say?”
“Like…You…!”
Oh no. What if he became addicted to teasing him like this? What if he was no better than Mista? But the way Narancia blushed to his ears was too charming. Giorno turned away quickly so he wouldn’t catch him smiling.
“Come on, Narancia. The line’s moving.”
--
Giorno had suspected that he wouldn’t fare well on the rollercoaster, but he took no satisfaction in being right. Actually, until the first drop, it hadn’t been so bad. It had been interesting to feel the cart shudder around them, and Narancia had grabbed his hand and squeezed so hard his knuckles hurt. He’d liked that. But the rest of the ride had gone very poorly. At least he hadn’t thrown up.
“How’re you doing?”
Narancia’s voice was soft with guilt. He opened his eyes, and the world came rushing into them. He closed his eyes again.
“I’m better than I was.”
It wasn’t saying much, but at least it was true. The pills were starting to kick in, and it no longer felt like someone was trying to wring the brain out of his skull.
“I got you some water,” Narancia said, sitting next to him on the bench. He placed a bottle in his hand, cool and sweating. “Here.”
People liked to offer him water when he felt sick, although the problem was never dehydration. Even Fugo, who should have known better than to engage in irrational (borderline magical) thinking, did it. It was somewhat annoying, but Giorno had learned to tolerate it. If it made them feel even a little less helpless, who was he to take that from them?
And he was thirsty.
“Mineral water?” Giorno asked.
“Trish says it’s good for you. And I thought you might need minerals.”
Well, maybe he did. Minerals couldn’t hurt, at least.
“Thank you, Narancia.”
“…Yeah.”
The screams of children cut the air. They were in one of the few places where that was expected, but the sound still set Giono on edge. He didn’t think terror and pleasure should sound so alike.
“Sorry,” Narancia said. “This was a stupid idea, wasn’t it?”
“Not at all. I’m enjoying myself. Less so right now, but I’ve had fun overall.”
“Really?”
Narancia’s voice quivered with nervous hope. Giorno forced his eyes open, but his face was a smudge of fuzzy light.
“I’ve actually been to an amusement park before,” he said, the confession leaping salmon-like from his throat before he could catch it. Escaped, it flopped between them, battering itself pathetically against the ground and sucking in air.
“Huh?”
“My mother took me to one,” Giorno explained. “Once.”
“Your mom?”
His vision had returned enough to resolve the light of Narancia’s face into a frown. Embarrassing. This was so embarrassing.
“I didn’t mean to lie about it. It just didn’t seem worth mentioning.” Giorno rubbed his eyes. “It was a really long time ago.”
“I don’t think that even counts as a lie. And it’s not like I’m mad or anything.”
He was going easy on him. Pity for the ill, perhaps.
“You don’t talk about her at all,” Narancia said. “Your mom.”
“There’s really nothing to talk about.”
“But she’s your mom.”
“She was. That doesn’t mean there’s anything to talk about.”
There was a hiccup of silence. Narancia’s expression was pinched.
“Is she dead?” he asked.
Are we alike, he means.
Giorno was tempted to say “yes.” It would be easy to kill his mother off in the story of his life. Very little would change, and he might even like her more after she was buried. But he’d already lied to Narancia once today.
“She’s alive,” he admitted. Narancia nodded.
“It’s complicated, then.”
“Not at all. She just doesn’t love me.”
Giorno had never said it out loud before—he’d hardly allowed himself to think it—but as soon as the words passed his lips, he was certain they were true. She didn’t love him. It was just that simple.
Would he understand that? After all, they were not alike. Narancia’s mother had loved him very much.
Panic seeped between the folds of Giorno’s brain. Was it too late to take it back? To laugh it off as a bad joke? He would rather be unknown than misunderstood, especially by him.
Narancia sighed. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the bench.
“That sucks for her,” he said. “She doesn’t know what she’s missing.”
Oh. He always made things so simple.
The relief was like a knot coming loose in his brain. Giorno felt his center of gravity lurch, and suddenly his shoulder was knocking against Narancia’s.
“Whoa!”
“Sorry.”
But he wasn’t really. As boney as it was, Narancia’s shoulder was comfortable. He wanted to rest there forever.
“Just a little bit,” he murmured. “I just need a little bit longer. Then I should be ready to go again.”
“You don’t have to push yourself.”
If Giorno wasn’t so dizzy, he might have laughed.
He didn’t know how long he spent leaning on his shoulder. It might have been ten minutes, it might have been an hour. Narancia’s patience was heroic, but he should have expected that by now. He’d waited much longer on him before.
“Better?” Narancia asked when Giorno sat up again.
“For the most part.”
The world had grounded itself, and he could keep his eyes open. The worst of the pain had receded, and while he still had a headache, it wasn’t unbearable.
“Good.”
Narancia pressed his hand against the small of his back. It was only for a second, but the spot burned.
“Thanks for telling me that, by the way,” Narancia said. “About your mom. Maybe this is stupid, but I worry sometimes about how you don’t talk about yourself. I feel like I only talk about myself. Selfish, huh?”
“It’s not. I like listening to you talk.”
“You’re probably the only one who’d say that!” Narancia laughed, and the sound was like an empty can bouncing down stairs. Then he turned to Giorno, and his face was entirely serious. “I want to know you, too.”
Giorno suddenly felt chilled.
“You know me already.”
“I do, but I also don’t. I barely got you to tell me your birthday, and when you finally told me, it was only after it had passed. You don’t talk about stuff, and when you do, you act as if you’re doing something bad to me. I don’t get it.”
Then it probably wasn’t worth explaining to Narancia that he was doing something bad to him. So many of his memories were pure bile. He didn’t want any of it getting on Narancia.
“You wouldn’t like it if I told you,” he said instead. “It would only upset you.”
Narancia sighed loudly and threw his head back, his fingers tangling in his own hair.
“Gah, you’re so fucking stubborn!” he cried. “You’re not actually as difficult to love as you think, Giorno. But that part of you is a pain in the ass! It would ‘only upset me’? I’m upset now! I don’t need you telling me how I should feel about stuff. Just—”
His voice, which had been rising higher and higher, finally broke. Narancia blushed and cleared his throat.
“Just trust me, okay?”
He wished he would stop looking at him like that. He wished there was somewhere he could hide. It was ridiculous to be afraid of Narancia, but his heart was racing.
He wanted to know him. What if he succeeded? What if he looked at him and didn’t see anything worth his while? What if he opened him up and found only nothingness where a person was supposed to be? Would he still want him? Would he stay?
But he did trust Narancia. He trusted that he’d only hurt him in a way he deserved.
“Okay,” Giorno said. “I can do that.
“Good.” Narancia stood and stretched his back. “Hey, you’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
--
“I’m surprised,” Giorno admitted as he sat down. “I didn’t think you’d want to ride the Ferris Wheel.”
“They’re pretty boring,” Narancia said, taking the seat across from him. “But being with you isn’t boring.”
Giorno wondered where he got his lines from. Had he been studying Mista’s collection of romance movies and stowing the good lines in a spiral notebook for later? They couldn’t all be spontaneous, could they?
The ride lifted them into the air. When they could see the tops of people’s heads, Narancia got up from his seat and slid himself next to Giorno.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hello.”
“This isn’t weird, right?”
“It might be weird to others, but it isn’t weird to me.”
Satisfied, Narancia slid his hand over Giorno’s.
The higher they went, the wider the world grew. He could see past the park fence, past the parking lot, past the jumble of restaurants and boutiques, to the bronze-colored sea. The sun was kissing the waves. They were running out of daylight.
Giorno wasn’t afraid of heights, but he didn’t care for them much, either. He didn’t like how the people disappeared from the landscape. The view from heaven was beautiful, but lonely.
“When I was a kid, I used to imagine opening the pod door and climbing out,” Narancia said. “I thought I could climb the metal beams and swing into one of the other pods. I imagined, like, ninjas ambushing the Ferris Wheel and having to fight them off.”
“You had a pretty active imagination.”
“That’s exactly what my mom said about it.”
“I think you could make it into one of the other pods.”
“Sure, I could do it now. But back when I was seven? I would have fallen immediately. I would have died.”
Narancia squeezed his hand. There were so many scars on his fingers, his knuckles, and Giorno suddenly wanted to kiss them. He wanted to smooth the scars away. He wanted him to be okay forever.
“Tell me something,” Narancia said.
“What do you want me to tell?”
“Anything, so long as it’s real.”
It was a shame. He’d wanted to tell him something nice.
“My mother ignored me a lot.”
Giorno kept his tone flat as if he was reciting a bit of trivia. Humans have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes. There is no time zone assigned to the North Pole. I was neglected as a child. But Narancia was already sitting up straighter.
“My dad was like that,” he said. “It sucked. It made me feel crazy.”
“Like you didn’t exist?”
“Like I didn’t exist, and I was still hungry. That’s fucked up, right?”
Giorno nodded. It wasn’t fair to have to feel both. It should be only one or the other.
“I told you that my mother took me to an amusement park,” he said. “That day, we got separated. She had to use the restroom, I think, and she told me to wait outside and don’t move. So I waited. I didn’t move, and she didn’t come back. I waited, and waited, and then I thought, ‘She finally did it. She’s gone.’ But she came back, of course. She was angry.”
“At you?”
“Very much so.”
“Why?”
Giorno shrugged. “It was hot, she was irritable, and I wasn’t where she’d thought she left me. I remember her yanking my wrist so hard I thought it would pop off.”
“Shit.”
“I don’t think it was on purpose. It wasn’t that bad.”
“You wouldn’t remember it if it wasn’t that bad.”
He didn’t think that was true. He didn’t remember most of the bad things that had happened to him.
“Why didn’t you run away?” Narancia asked.
Why hadn’t he? It would have been easy. The park had been crowded, and it would have been a while before he was missed. He could have taken off as soon as she was out of sight. But honestly, he hadn’t even thought about it.
“Narancia, you’re really smart.”
“Hey, c’mon.”
“I mean it,” Giorno said. “Do you think I should have done that? Run away?”
“Dunno. I mean, you didn’t, and you turned out pretty great. I did, and I turned out…less great.”
“But I like you.”
“Yeah?” Narancia tried very hard not to grin. “Then I guess it’s okay, then.”
If it was okay, then maybe he didn’t have to tell Narancia the next part—that his mother had been angry at him, had pulled his wrist until it hurt, and he’d been happy about it. Running away hadn’t crossed his mind because, really, he’d wanted his mother to find him. He’d wanted to be devoured.
“You’re thinking something sad again.”
Narancia was getting frighteningly good at reading him. It had been a long time since he’d found himself so thoroughly disarmed.
“Can Aerosmith read minds now? I hadn’t realized.”
But Narancia didn’t go for the joke. He leaned forward, and Giorno could feel his breath on his face.
“Don’t think about that stuff. Think about me.”
Maybe if I’d known you back then, if you had been there, it would have been easier. I could have run away, if it had been with you.
Narancia kissed him, and electricity shivered up his brainstem. The world went still and velvety at its edges, and Giorno closed his eyes. He let himself fall into it, let Narancia crush his body against his and press his tongue into his mouth. Whatever Narancia wanted from him, he wanted to give him. So long as he wanted him.
Then he drew back, and Giorno’s heart lurched in panic. He was gripping the front of his shirt with both hands, he realized. But Narancia was smiling at him.
“You taste pretty good, too,” he said. “Maybe I should eat you.”
Unexpectedly, a breathy laugh tumbled over Giorno’s lips.
“Then help yourself.”