Chapter Text
Fugo couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it started, but if he had to, he’d say it was after Giorno almost died.
They’d been fighting a cell of dissenters in Passione for a while now, all formidable stand users, and struggling pretty badly. Giorno’s control over the Requiem power had improved a lot since the first few times he’d tried to use it, at least according to Mista. Especially after nearly killing himself trying to resurrect the dead. Somehow it fucking worked, too. He’s not yet convinced that Buccellati, Abbachio, or Narancia were ever dead, because he’d honestly rather it be a stupid joke than have to wrap his head around that level of power.
Fugo doesn’t know exactly what the hell that stand does when it transforms into that thing with eyes too bright to be just a human soul, but he knows nothing stands a chance against it once it's out.
The issue is that it's not always out, and Giorno doesn’t tend to unleash it unless he has to. Fugo has to assume it’s either some sort of pride or lack of control that keeps him fighting with Gold Experience alone. The latter, at least, Fugo can begrudgingly understand.
Gold Experience Requiem was not out in their last fight, when one of the enemy’s stands took Giorno down faster than Fugo could blink.
None of them are even sure what happened, just that in one moment, Gold Experience disappeared. In the next, the barely humanoid enemy stand made of sickly green flesh and wires coiled up like springs launched itself at Giorno, who froze, and then blew up.
That’s the best way to describe it. Narancia was closest, and recounted unhelpfully that it looked like Giorno had been shoved full of fireworks.
Buccellati had to zip him back together after tearing the stand apart—which wasn’t difficult since it had been stunned and damaged from the explosion as well.
They all really thought that was it for Giorno until he started breathing.
It’s been a little less than a week since then. A week of trying to keep Giorno stable until he recovers his healing ability (or any of his stand ability at all) and running defense against the dissenters that are still vying for control over Passione.
Fugo, mostly, is the one staying behind to make sure he doesn’t die.
It’s unfortunately a hideously boring task, involving trying to get Giorno to not throw up everything he tries to eat (he always fails), and inbetween that, picking up some boring fucking clerical work none of them want to do.
Of all the treasures, riches, and ancient fucking artifacts they’ve found when uncovering the old boss’s safehouses, the most important thing has been these filing cabinets. Some of the files might be encoded, and some are definitely encoded, which is complete bullshit.
With all the free time Fugo has while Giorno’s out for hours like a coma patient, he’s going through these dusty bricks of paper with a pen light and trying to decipher codes that might not even exist.
The one he’s looking at now is much older than the rest. Its torn corner caught his eye from the very, very back of one of the drawers, half crushed by the line of folders and almost impossible to extract.
It’s written in pencil and unless the date is made up, it's from the early eighties. The rough edge and size of paper makes him think it might be torn from a journal.
He’s pouring over the smudged words, trying not only to pick up on any code that might be in this page, but to decipher the barely visible pencil marks, when he hears Giorno coming down the stairs.
Fugo stops, whipping around to see him descending the final steps. He’s clutching the rail with one hand, his other arm wrapped around his middle, but he shouldn’t even be walking.
Fugo decided to stop asking questions a long time ago. Giorno shouldn’t even be alive right now, so of course he’s up and walking three days after being blown up and put back together with zippers. Naturally.
His hair is loose, but pulled back like normal. The bandages covering most of his body are probably going to need to be changed soon. That’s a problem for later, though.
”Do you need something?” Fugo tries not to snap, turning back to the page and pretending to read it. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Giorno hesitate. There’s an odd beat of silence.
“Yes, sorry if I’m interrupting you,” he replies plainly, and Fugo freezes.
He’s gotten the impression, over the few months since he’s met him and especially since he’s been trying to drag him from the brink of death, that Giorno is the type of guy who would be stranded in the desert for months and still wouldn’t ask for water.
“What is it?” Fugo abandons the files and begins scanning Giorno for some grievous injury.
“It’s nothing like that, don’t worry,” he says, dropping his arm from his midsection and revealing no injury, as if to reassure him. “I just have a question.”
Fugo blinks. He may not be injured, but something is still off.
”About what?”
Again, Giorno hesitates. It’s almost imperceptible, but Fugo catches it.
”Have you studied much about teeth?”
Fugo blinks again. Giorno stares back, stone faced. If this is a joke, he isn’t showing it.
”Why the fuck would I know anything about teeth, do I look like a dentist?” Fugo graciously decides to respond. “I thought biology was your thing.”
”I figured I would ask, just in case you did. Sorry for the trouble.” He turns, slightly, and Fugo watches as the movement makes him wince. “Is there a computer here?”
”Yes, but—“ Giorno nods and begins to move away, but something’s weird.
“Stop,” Fugo snaps, jumping from his chair. Giorno freezes as he grabs his arm. “Why are you asking? What’s wrong with your teeth? Show me.”
”I don’t know,” Giorno replies, and Fugo takes advantage of his closer position to start examining his teeth.
“Well they’re all there, so what’s wrong?” Giorno’s face does something strange. He moves his arm, the one Fugo has him pinned by, between them, and it takes Fugo a moment to realize he isn’t being thrown off.
He opens his closed fist and Fugo freezes.
“Okay, well, maybe you don’t have them all. Which ones are those? How’d you knock them out?”
”They’re my canines,” Giorno says slowly. “They fell out. Sort of.”
Fugo looks at the four bloody teeth in Giorno’s palm. He looks up at Giorno, who obediently bares his teeth, revealing none missing. He looks back down at the bloody teeth.
Fugo ignores his own squeamish protests and picks one of the teeth up, wiping some of the blood away to confirm that, yes, these are undeniably canines.
“I think these,” Giorno motions to the canines currently in his mouth. “Grew in and pushed the old ones out.”
“It has to have been Gold Experience, right? But why?”
Giorno shakes his head slowly, looking half as lost as Fugo feels. “I don’t know.”
Neither of them speak for what feels like years. They both just stare at the teeth and take turns glancing between each other.
“Well,” Fugo finally says. “You have all your teeth, so it doesn’t matter.” He drops the tooth back into Giorno’s palm with the others and steps around the counter to the sink. Giorno doesn’t move as he scrubs his hands clean, and he’s still rooted in the same spot when he turns around.
Belatedly, Fugo realizes that he’s still missing something. If it were that simple, Giorno probably would have ignored it, too, without ever bothering to mention it to anyone.
“What is it?” he demands, suddenly feeling very tired.
“These are a lot different from the old ones,” Giorno admits. “They feel…different.”
Fugo holds back a sigh and steps back over to him. His failing patience has him grabbing Giorno by the chin and peeling his lips back.
For some reason, Giorno doesn’t flinch. He lets the manhandling happen and bares his teeth under Fugo’s examination.
Is he serious? If Fugo had done this to anyone else, they’d be fighting already. This is weird now. Giorno’s making this weird.
He refuses to let it bother him, so he focuses on the subject of the top and bottom canines.
Which are… really sharp. The bottom pair are sharp, and the top are even sharper.
He’s not sure how he hadn’t noticed before, likely because it’s not immediately obvious and Fugo had previously only been concerned with the fact that they were there at all.
The oddities throw his hesitation out of the window, and he’s forced into a full examination because Giorno was right, these are not normal—
He grabs Giorno by the face, twisting him to see the teeth from all sides. It’s when he tilts his head up that he sees something even stranger.
”No way,” he mutters, pinching one of the top canines between his thumb and forefinger, ignoring how Giorno seems to have gone very still.
There’s a pinprick hole, barely visible, near the unbelievably sharp tip. He can barely see, but if he’s right—
He pulls away, darting to grab the pen light he was using earlier so he can confirm what he’s seeing.
Except when he turns back around, Giorno’s moved too.
He’s closer by half a step, and hunched over like he’s curled in on himself. It takes Fugo half a second more to register the hand clamped to his mouth, and the way he’s trembling when his wide eyes meet Fugo’s gaze.
It doesn’t take long for Fugo to put it together.
”Did you just lunge at me?” he blurts, mind still reeling. Giorno blinks up at him stupidly, and glances down at his own hand, hovering over his mouth.
”I think so,” Giorno confirms, sounding just as surprised as Fugo at the prospect. He’s still blinking oddly, like there’s something stuck in his eye. He presses his open palm to his teeth for a moment, face twisting in confusion, before finally looking up.
Fugo’s eyes snap to his teeth.
Dropped to their full length and shining like daggers, Fugo can no longer avoid calling them fangs.
He curses, and ignores how Giorno startles.
“Fuck,” he says again for good measure, trying to wrap his head around this.
Mind reeling with whatever explanation he can think of, he steps backwards to the counter without turning his back to Giorno. To his credit, though, he doesn’t move. His bright eyes never leave Fugo’s.
He grabs a random dishtowel and a scarf that’s probably one of Trish’s. She better not bitch at him for this.
”Go to the stairs,” Fugo directs him, and Giorno obeys, letting Fugo follow from several feet away.
It’s slightly useless, and Fugo knows that they both know it.
He’s injured, and can’t even summon his stand. If this came to a fight, it wouldn’t be a lot of trouble.
Honestly, though, if he pointed that out Fugo would lose his fucking shit. So maybe he knows that, too.
He just needs to get a closer look without being bitten.
Giorno stops at the bottom of the stairs.
”Put your back to the column,” Fugo tells him, and Giorno does, pressing back against the solid wood column that connects to the railing, reaching from the floor to the ceiling as some sort of architectural support.
Fugo doesn’t even have to yank his arms behind the column to tie him up. The stab of annoyance from that has him throwing the scarf around Giorno’s neck and practically strangling him as he secures it around the column with more force than necessary.
He hops down from the stairs and turns back to Giorno.
He’s breathing shallowly and awkwardly past the restraints, but there’s nothing but a grim look on his face as his eyes once again settle on Fugo.
“I know you can get out of this,” Fugo admits. “But if it’s really reflexive, it’ll stop you until you come back to your senses.” Giorno nods, and says nothing.
”So control yourself,” Fugo adds, marching forward as he clicks the pen light on.
Giorno watches his approach with wide eyes, peeling back his lips at the last second, his jaw tightly clenched.
The fangs looked a little longer before. They’re only a few millimeters past the rest of his teeth now.
”Open your jaw,” he mutters, shining the light at those pinprick holes. Giorno tenses beneath him before very slightly shaking his head.
“Do it,” he snaps, pulling back. He grabs Giorno’s bandaged arm and tears off a section of gauze, balling it up.
Giorno obeys after a long few seconds, prying his jaw open slowly, millimeter by millimeter—
The instant that there’s enough room, Fugo shoves the gauze under those fangs.
They snap shut in an instant, dropping to full length and brutally piercing the cotton. Fugo watches, darkly satisfied at having his observation all but confirmed, watches as the fibers saturate completely with venom.
The terrible, empty look in Giorno’s eyes clears with a single blink. For a split second, Fugo worries he’ll startle and drop the gauze, but he just stares at Fugo, so impossibly still that he wonders if he’s even breathing.
“You grew snake fangs,” Fugo tells him, probably too bluntly. “Did Gold Experience do this?”
Giorno shakes his head.
“If it wasn’t Gold Experience, it was one of the enemy stands you were hit with,” Fugo thinks aloud, mainly to himself. “There are still at least two members of the group we haven’t seen the abilities of.”
Giorno nods slightly. It’s likely the only reasonable conclusion, even if Fugo is still considering the possibility that Gold Experience went haywire. It wouldn’t be out of line with the rest of his abilities, and although Giorno hasn’t been able to even summon his stand, much less use it, his stand could be reacting erratically to his injured state.
Fugo’s never seen anything like that happen before, but he can’t honestly put anything past Giorno.
He darts back into the kitchen to grab an empty jar.
“Drop it in here,” he instructs him, holding the jar out to Giorno, who cranes his head as far forward as he can past the restraints and lets his jaw go lax. The gauze slips from his teeth, heavy with venom, and drops wetly into the glass jar.
Fugo screws the lid on and sets it on the edge of the stairs.
When he turns back to Giorno, it becomes obvious that something is wrong.
He’s trembling, and Fugo realizes that he’s worryingly pale. There’s a sheen of sweat forming on his face, which is twisted in what looks like pain. His fangs, which Fugo can see as he tries to draw in shaking breaths, have not sheathed.
Carefully, Fugo approaches him, pressing two fingers to his bound wrists only to feel his heartbeat fluttering wildly.
“What is it?” he questions, dreading the answer.
There’s a tight, uncomfortable feeling in his gut. It’s not hard to guess what’s wrong.
“It’s so much worse now,” Giorno forces out, his teeth roughly grit. “I feel—“ he chokes, breaking off.
”I’m not letting you chew on my arm, so figure something else out.” Fugo turns, tearing his hand through his hair as he tries to think of what to do.
He ends up just watching uselessly as Giorno suppresses everything. His breathing becomes measured, and Fugo watches as he clenches his jaw even further, sealing his fangs behind the tight line of his lips. The tremble is reduced to only the occasional twitch that manages to escape.
“Do you need to eat people or would a really rare steak work?”
Giorno pauses, craning his neck towards the door. His lips part for a moment before he speaks.
”They’re back,” he remarks. Fugo, vaguely wondering if Giorno’s dodging the question, peers around the corner to see small shapes approaching through the frosted glass.
He abandons Giorno and steps out, leaving the door cracked behind him as he stands on the porch to meet them. They approach, walking quicker when they see him.
“What’s wrong?” Buccellati wastes no time in asking, clearly picking up on something abnormal. It's not like Fugo usually meets them outside after they’ve been out.
Fugo doesn’t feel like wasting time either.
”Giorno’s either been affected by one of the stands he was hit with, or Gold Experience is affecting him outside of his control.”
”How so?” Buccellati demands.
“His canines were pushed out by fangs. Like a snake’s.”
”No way,” he hears Narancia exclaim. Buccellati blinks, and Fugo can tell he’s putting effort into keeping his expression still.
“Also, don’t get too close to him.”
That’s the last straw for Buccellati, who pushes past Fugo into the house. Fugo darts after him and the others follow, all stopping as they catch sight of Giorno restrained to the column.
Fugo watches as Buccellati takes in the scene, likely coming to the same realization that Giorno could not actually be restrained by a scarf and a dishtowel if he didn’t allow it. He then turns to Fugo expectantly.
He grabs the pen light he’d stashed in his pocket and clicks it back on, approaching Giorno.
His face is still deathly pale and his expression seems to pinch further as Fugo approaches. But he lets him, and once again pulls his lips back to show his teeth.
The fangs have mostly receded, but it’s clear how much sharper they are.
“Do you see that?” He glances back to Buccellati, shining the light directly on the pinprick holes that mark the end of the venom canals.
“Yeah,” he replies lowly, and they both ignore the clamors behind them, demanding to know what they’re talking about.
“There’s also this,” Fugo takes Giorno’s face in his hand, pressing his thumb to pin his upper lip in place above his left fang.
“Careful,” Buccellati warns, giving Fugo a sharp look that he only returns.
”I know,” he snaps.
Giorno trembles beneath his hand and Fugo can feel the cold, clammy sweat on his face. His eyes are screwed shut and he drops his head back against the column uselessly.
It’s uncomfortable to see him like this. Fugo’s stomach twists.
“Sorry,” he mutters uselessly. ”Just think really hard about biting me,” he tries, and Giorno’s only answer is a shuddering breath.
It works.
Slower than before, almost sluggishly, his fangs drop, and Fugo watches as they unsheath from his gums, becoming twice as long. A bead of venom forms at the tip before becoming too heavy and dripping past his lip.
Fugo feels Giorno’s jaw clench impossibly harder, and that’s all the warning he gets before Giorno tears his head away, slamming it into the column.
”Okay, that’s enough,” Buccellati decides, yanking Fugo away by the collar with a grave look of contemplation. “None of you ever do that again.”
“This is the venom,” Fugo pulls away and grabs the jar.
“Venom?” Mista and Narancia shout simultaneously. Abbachio looks revolted.
“We need to figure out what it does. If we had the right equipment, I could examine it, or we could send it to a lab, but that would probably take too long.”
Buccellati considers the scene with a still expression. Giorno’s head hangs limply, dazed from his self-inflicted blow to the head.
For all matters concerning Passione, Buccellati tends to look to Giorno, and so do the rest of them. But for all matters concerning Giorno, they look to Buccellati.
”It would be easier and more effective to just find someone for him to bite,” Buccellati decides. “I can zip his mouth shut in the meantime.”
He turns to the others. “Go grab one of those men from the warehouse operation we took down. One that’s still alive.”
”Dude this is insane,” Narancia exclaims, tearing at his hair.
”Should we try to guess which one will taste the best?” Mista laughs before Abbachio pushes him roughly towards the door.
“Don’t waste time,” Buccellati replies, summoning his stand and briskly zipping Giorno’s mouth firmly shut. Fugo ducks behind the column and unties him.
Without the restraints pinning him to the column, Giorno drops limply into Buccellati’s arms.
Fugo’s finding it hard to not feel a little guilty at the sight of him.
There’s still not a hint of color in his face as they carry him upstairs.
“I can see how this might be an evolution of Gold Experience,” Buccellati comments as they deposit him back in his bed. Fugo hums.
”I’ve seen some stands that operate with the aim of supplying their user with energy or nutrients. His stand could be responding to his state by adapting some way to recover, and it might be…this.”
”Eating people?” Fugo asks and Buccellati’s brows furrow slightly.
”If it is, this would be the best case scenario. All he would have to do is fight the urges while he recovers. Once his body is back to an acceptable state, he’d most likely return to normal.”
”You think it’s more likely than an enemy stand?”
“I wouldn’t write off the possibility, but I would think this is more likely than the effect of a stand, whose user is probably dead, only beginning to activate several days after contact.”
“Not impossible,” Fugo points out.
”No,” he agrees. “It’s definitely not.”
”Giorno didn’t seem to think it was Gold Experience.”
Buccellati hesitates. Fugo knows exactly what he’s going to say.
”I’m not saying it happened with his knowledge, and Giorno may not know every aspect of his stand anymore, not since—“
”—Requiem, I figured,” Fugo finishes, but Buccellati only turns, meeting his eyes with a grim look in his eyes.
”Our first encounter with a Requiem stand, Silver Chariot Requiem, transformed people too. It slowly mutilated everyone under its control.”
Fugo’s heart drops.
“Worst case scenario,” he guesses, and Buccellati only nods, turning back to Giorno with that still expression.
They’re both quiet for a while, watching the steady rise and fall of Giorno’s chest, who seemed to promptly fall asleep the moment they’d put him in bed. Eventually, Buccellati sighs and drags a chair from the corner of the room to drop down into.
Fugo considers copying him before hearing voices begin to clamor downstairs. The front door opens and he can hear the others arguing as they drag someone in. Buccellati stands and leans out of the bedroom door.
“Bring him up here,” he calls, and the order is answered with the sound of a body being thrown up the stairs, one step at a time.
”Delivery’s here,” Mista crows as he drags the guy by his bound feet into the room. He’s thoroughly bound, gagged, blindfolded, and probably unconscious. “Is he asleep?”
”Yeah,” Buccellati confirms. “Just drop him here.”
“Damn. Well come get me when he wakes up, ‘cause I need to see this,” Mista laughs, turning to call to Narancia. “Imagine if he just rips into this guy like a pitbull.”
Buccellati doesn’t tell him off like Fugo half expects him to. Instead, he turns, looking between Giorno and the guy on the ground.
“Yeah, this probably isn’t going to tell us anything about the venom,” he concludes. Fugo freezes, following the logic, and curses.
“What, is he actually?” Mista demands.
”Yeah, he’s probably going to kill this guy,” Fugo admits. He remembers Giorno’s eyes: empty, and unrecognizably bright as those fangs snapped down with dizzying force. He imagines those fangs tearing into flesh instead of that gauze.
He feels lightheaded.
Mista lets out a low whistle. “I probably shouldn’t still want to see that.”
”Go clean up the kitchen,” Buccellati orders. “And close the door behind you.”
Mista curses under his breath on the way out. Fugo can hear the three of them downstairs, the regular distant noise of their presence in the house making this scene feel jarringly normal.
”You can leave if you want,” Buccellati tells him, but Fugo shakes his head.
”The more we’re able to observe, the better,” he argues, and Buccellati nods.
They wait a couple of moments for nothing in particular, just continuing to watch Giorno’s sleeping form. Part of Fugo is hesitating to set in motion what he knows is going to happen. Maybe Buccellati feels the same.
Whatever the reason, Buccellati conquers it faster than Fugo, stepping forward and beginning to rouse Giorno from his sleep. He realizes very belatedly that they probably shouldn’t have let him fall asleep after a blow to the head anyways.
Eventually, his eyes crack open. Buccellati props him up against the wall and Fugo hates the sick, twisting feeling taking over his chest.
It’s worse than how he usually feels when one of them is hurt. Maybe because he’s somewhat responsible for worsening his condition.
Giorno’s eyes look dead, and Fugo is forced to remember that only three days ago, he basically was.
He decides to stop thinking about that.
“We got someone for you to bite so we can test your venom,” Fugo offers, watching as awareness seems to come back to Giorno with each blink. Despite not actually knowing who they dragged in, he assures Giorno, “Total piece of shit, don’t worry.”
He looks at Buccellati for confirmation, who just shrugs.
“Help me put him on the floor,” Buccellati says, and Fugo grimaces.
”We should have put down a tarp or something,” he complains as they move him.
“Too late.”
They set Giorno in front of the guy, who seems to also have woken up and become appropriately alarmed by their conversation. He’s twisting slightly, failing with no lack of effort to move in his bindings.
Giorno’s eyes lock onto the man, and they go empty.
Buccellati releases his stand, and Fugo can see the glint of fangs as Giorno’s lips part.
This is so weird.
Fugo steps back, biting at his nails and trying to ignore the way his stomach is turning into knots.
”Go for it,” Buccellati tells him, and as if he was waiting for permission, Giorno lunges.
He’s crouched over the man before Fugo even registers that he moved. His hands are digging like claws into the man’s scalp and side, pinning him to the ground. The man shouts, and bucks with renewed effort before an odd tremor runs through him.
Giorno is completely still as the man’s limbs gradually loosen, falling limp. Fugo blinks, throat feeling oddly tight. Giorno is still locked in place, jaw presumably buried in the man’s bicep.
He looks at Buccellati, who spares him an equally tense glance as they wait for Giorno to begin tearing off pieces of this guy’s flesh.
The guy who isn’t protesting nearly loud enough for having been ripped into by those fangs.
Fugo cranes his neck, peering for a better view, and abruptly realizes the same time Buccellati does.
He claps a hand to his mouth as his jaw drops, and whips his gaze to see Buccellati’s eyebrows raised high with an equal level of shock.
He’s fucking drinking.
Jesus Christ.
He glances back to Buccellati and mouths, should we stop him?
Buccellati shakes his head slowly, but it turns out that they don’t have to wait any longer, since Giorno finally moves.
His hands, which are no longer clenched with any force at all, drop lax from the man’s form. They both watch, frozen, as Giorno lifts his head, sluggishly tilting his head to try to dislodge himself when the man’s sleeve catches at his fangs.
Fugo watches, hardly daring to breathe as he falls still again. He only has a brief moment to wonder if he gave up before Giorno pitches forward, slumping completely.
He doesn’t even think before rushing forward, and he grabs Giorno’s limp form by the shoulders as Buccellati unzips the part of the sleeve he’s caught in. They lower him gently onto his back, and Buccellati makes quick work of freeing each fang from the scrap of cloth.
He’s no longer pale. His skin is flushed and there’s an unmistakable smear of crimson coating his lips.
Neither of them know quite what the fuck to say.
“Alright, well,” Buccellati starts eventually, unzipping the floor and dropping the scrap of cloth into the space. It drips with dark blood.
”Stop using the floor as a trash can,” Fugo snaps.
”I’ll clean it up later,” Buccellati so obviously lies, not even looking at him. He pulls Giorno’s lip back, seeing the fangs fully sheathed, and pokes his reddened cheek. They both watch as the pressure brings back the light color of his skin before the red rushes back to cover it.
He must have drunk at least a liter of blood.
Fugo’s back to feeling lightheaded.
Buccellati stops poking Giorno’s cheek and stands.
”Help me get him back to bed,” he says, sounding so completely calm that it pisses Fugo off. He holds his tongue and follows, grabbing Giorno’s legs as Buccellati grabs his shoulders. They hoist him back into his bed, and—is he imagining it, or is he heavier than before?
Fugo shudders.
”Okay, now let's move him to the basement.”
The guy is twitching a little bit, like he’s coming out of paralysis. Fugo wordlessly grabs his legs and they carry him down the stairs.
Their procession attracts the attention of the others, who scan the guy curiously for injuries.
“Wait, did he not do it?” Mista asks. Fugo huffs.
“He did,” Buccellati confirms, twisting his hold on the guy to expose the barely bleeding gashes in his ghostly pale arm.
Everyone sucks in a breath at the sight. The four weeping punctures are unmistakably a bite mark.
”So he only bit him?” Narancia asks. Mista frowns, considering the wound, but Abbachio grimaces.
”Fucking hell,” he curses, scrubbing a hand down his face and turning away. Clearly, he’s guessed what happened.
“Let me know if he wakes up,” Buccellati replies instead, turning to Fugo and motioning towards the basement. They continue on their way, dumping the guy on the ground as soon as they make it down.
They turn back, locking the door tightly behind them and return upstairs.
“He’s a vampire?” Mista is on them immediately, Narancia not far behind. “Does he burn in the sunlight?”
”No,” Fugo barks.
”Maybe,” Buccellati replies simultaneously, only shrugging when Fugo rounds on him for entertaining this.
“Just keep an eye on his breathing,” he adds to Narancia who nods and pulls up Aerosmith’s radar.
“Wait, Giorno, or that guy?” Narancia questions.
”Both,” he replies after a moment of quick consideration. “But I’ll be going back up to watch Giorno and see how he is after he wakes up.”
”He’s already breathing a lot better,” Narancia remarks.
“Good, we’ll have to see if this helped any.”
He turns and heads for the stairs, leaving Fugo to scramble after him.
They enter Giorno’s room, and upon seeing him still out cold, Buccellati settles into the chair he’d pulled to his bedside. There’s no other chair, so Fugo just decides to keep standing.
”I’d guess that his venom paralyzes whatever he bites. That guy was awake the whole time, but clearly not able to move,” Fugo reasons. Buccellati hums.
”He barely reacted to the bite, too. I don’t think he felt the pain.”
“Part of the paralysis, I guess. If he doesn’t start seizing and going into complete nerve failure then we can probably assume it’s just that.”
”Well see,” Buccellati replies, adding, “I don’t think he’ll die.”
”The guy?”
”It wouldn’t make much sense. If his ability is to recover his body from drinking blood, its goal is to siphon life, not end it. Unless I’m wrong, the venom surely just helps him feed.”
Buccellati unsympathetically ignores each of Fugo’s winces.
”You don’t have to stay any longer,” he points out, but Fugo’s shaking his head before he can even think why.
”It’s fine,” he insists, and Buccellati glances back at him oddly.
“If you’re sure, I might take a minute,” he sighs, standing tiredly. Fugo waves him off, already planning to take the chair.
“Call me back the moment he starts waking up,” Buccellati orders, deadly serious. “If he’s still hungry, I’ll need to zip his mouth back up, but otherwise we shouldn’t obstruct his breathing.”
”I don’t think he will,” Fugo says, which does nothing to sway Buccellati.
”You don’t know that, so call me.”
He’s right, unfortunately, and they both know it. Even if, for some odd reason, Fugo has a weird amount of faith in Giorno’s control.
Buccellati senses his agreement and steps out of the room, pulling the door just to the frame and leaving it cracked.
Fugo drops down into the chair.
Giorno is still sleeping, breathing quietly but steadily. His skin looks less flushed and Fugo assumes it won’t take very long to return to normal.
It doesn’t take long for watching Giorno sleep to get boring. He grabs a random textbook from the desk to occupy himself with. Once his legs start getting tired, he scoots the back of the chair against the wall, side against the bed, so there’s enough room to cross his legs.
He realizes his mistake too late, when movement catches in the corner of his eye, and he’s too close—
Giorno turns over in his sleep, arm flopping stupidly onto the bed. Fugo lets out a breath, grabbing the bottom of the chair to scootch away from him—
The arm grabs his wrist, and Fugo freezes. His heart drops to his feet and he opens his mouth, ready to call for Buccellati.
Giorno clings to him aimlessly. His face is pressed halfway into the mattress, still dead asleep. His breathing stutters strangely.
Somehow, despite everything, Fugo doesn’t feel like he’s in danger. The idea that Giorno would hurt him seems so far away.
But he doesn’t know that, so he calls for Buccellati.
He tries to straighten up more, make it less obvious that his predicament is completely his fault, but he’s not sure he succeeded. Buccellati looks at him reproachfully before slowly approaching.
”He’s still asleep, but I think you’d better go ahead and zip him up,” Fugo bites out through gritted teeth, and Buccellati does, quickly sealing his closed mouth.
He tries to dislodge his arm from Giorno’s grip, but he freezes at the noise Giorno makes. It’s hardly even a noise, more like he’s vibrating from his chest. It’s absolutely inhuman.
Buccellati blinks, and Fugo turns his gaze desperate.
“Get him off of me,” he pleads.
”He’s not going to bite. I don’t see a problem.”
”I can’t do this—this is so weird.”
“He’ll let go eventually, and he’ll probably be just as embarrassed,” Buccellati replies, as if that solves anything. “Let me know when he actually wakes up.”
Then he leaves, even shutting the door behind him this time. Leaving Fugo absolutely fuming.
Before he manages to start shouting after him, another soundless noise from Giorno yanks his attention back to the awful situation at hand.
Is he growling? It doesn’t quite sound like that, but who fucking knows?
He tries to slowly draw his arm back, hoping that his wrist will slip from Giorno’s deceptively lax-looking grip, but it doesn’t budge.
Fugo knows they’ll both be embarrassed. Just like he knows how revolted Giorno will be once he wakes up and realizes what he’s doing. He’d rather spare Giorno that horrifying realization, and himself the humiliation.
Without thinking, he begins trying to pry Giorno’s fingers loose, and realizes only once Giorno’s other hand lightly grasps his own that all he’d done was offer him another arm.
Miraculously, though, his grip doesn’t tighten, and Fugo snatches it back. It takes a stutter in Giorno’s weird breathing for Fugo to realize that the noise he’s making hasn’t really stopped. It’s like it comes from so deep in his chest that he can feel it, rather than hear it.
It has to just be the weirdest, lightest snore he’s ever heard.
He still can’t move away, and there’s nothing to do except stare.
Nausea crawls up his throat.
The strongest person he’s ever met—ever even seen—is half-curled-up in front of him, clinging to Fugo’s arm like it’s the most important thing in the world. His arms are stretched out to reach him and keep a hold of his wrist, but he never tries to pull him closer.
It looks so desperate. Like he can’t bear to let go, but can’t even hope that someone might let him pull them closer.
For Giorno’s sake, Fugo hopes he’s imagining it all, and making up stupid assumptions.
But since he’s somewhat resigned himself to being stuck here all night, he figures that he’s already not making it out of this unscathed.
He lets his side slump over the side of the bed, giving Giorno even more access to his arm as he lays down.
There’s another stutter in his freakish breathing, and he curls a little tighter around Fugo’s captured wrist, but that’s all the movement he makes.
Fugo lets his eyes close and decides to fully blame this on Giorno when he wakes up.
____
When he wakes up, he realizes his arm is free.
His mouth tastes like cotton and his eyes feel welded shut, but he manages to open them groggily to the darkness.
Giorno is stirring somewhere in front of him, which is what snaps him to awareness.
He sits up, watching as Giorno pulls his arms back from where they’d been clinging to his, and tries to say something.
When it doesn’t work, and Giorno’s jaw doesn’t even manage to move, his hand flies up to run across the zipper sealing his mouth shut. Fugo watches as things click in his head.
He cringes, not entirely sure how to handle this. For some reason, he hadn’t realized Giorno wouldn’t be able to say anything upon waking up, so maybe he should just go ahead and leave.
Fugo turns away, already scrubbing this from his memory and resolving to never speak of it again—
Giorno catches his arm. Fugo whips back around. He’s definitely awake, this time, because the second he realizes what he’s done, he drops it.
He tries to speak, fails, and then simply bows his head.
Fugo understands what he’s not saying, even if he can’t wrap his head around it. He can’t even remotely understand why—
Feeling like his brain is on fire, he lays his head back down on the bed, dropping onto his side and returning to the position he woke up in.
Pretending he never woke up at all.
In front of him, he can feel Giorno do the same. He feels Giorno’s hand just barely ghost over his wrist before his fingertips come to rest, one by one and featherlight against his skin.
The room is dead silent, and Fugo’s entire face is on fire. All he wants is a blow to the head to knock him fully out, and hopefully wipe his memory of the past day, too.
He lays there in that dead silence, with Giorno’s hand wrapped so loosely around his wrist he can’t even feel that it’s there, and he knows that Giorno isn’t asleep either.