Archive of Our Own

Johnny gasps, a sharp inhale that burns his lungs and leaves him lightheaded. He squints against the intense shine of the mid-day sun hovering in the cloudless sky above him. A gust of cool air washes over him, followed by the gentle sound of rustling leaves and chirping songbirds. The smell of dust and horsehair rides with the breeze, familiar in a way that should be comforting, but feels strangely out of place. Something shifts beneath him, and Johnny tenses and tightens his grip on the…reins in his hands. He looks down, and there’s Slow Dancer beneath him; she shakes her head and nickers, her ears twitching.

Is he…dreaming? He doesn’t dream much these days. When he falls asleep it’s almost like being smothered by a weighted blanket: too dark to see, too heavy to move, nothing to hear but his own heartbeat. On the rare occasions he does dream, everything is dull, and fuzzy around the edges, as if he was trapped in a photograph he couldn’t remember posing for.

If this is a dream, it feels…off, somehow. Everything’s too bright and focused, and he can remember what he was doing before this. He remembers chasing after Diego, remembers the stampede of hoofbeats, remembers—

Johnny’s heart skips a beat. He slaps a hand against his neck where something had punched straight through him and left him bleeding out on the pavement. His fingers stick to his warm, sweaty skin, but it’s unbroken. When he draws his hand back, there’s no blood.

“...secrets? You’ve gotta have something you hide from everyone, right?” someone says.

Johnny jerks his head toward the source.

“I’ll go first.” Gyro flashes an easy smile and the sunlight catches on his golden teeth. Go! Go! Zeppeli! “Gyro’s not my real name.” His grin turns sheepish. “It’s more of a petname…or a nickname, really.”

Johnny stares. He stares and stares and stares because that’s Gyro sitting atop Valkyrie right next to him. Gyro, who Johnny had seen go down in a spray of blood and gunfire, whose body had vanished beneath the tide of the ocean. Except he’s here, upright and talking and looking like none of that had happened at all. No blood, no bullet holes.

“My name,” Gyro goes on. “My real name, I mean. The one my father gave me…”

Gyro’s name…his big secret. Johnny furrows his brows; he knows what Gyro’s going to say, can remember him saying it with a clarity that shakes the lingering haze from his mind. It’s what he told Johnny just before they’d gone chasing after the train, but why…

“It’s Julius,” Gyro says, the exact same way he’d said it before. Begrudging. Embarrassed. “Julius Caesar Zeppeli.” He spits the full thing out in a rush, and his face turns pink—the same pink from Johnny’s memory. “There! It’s out there. Don’t you dare tell anyone, Johnny. Not even my siblings know that name, so keep it to yourself.”

“You…” Something sticks at the back of Johnny’s throat. “What?” he manages, voice small.

“No way,” Gyro says with a stern shake of his head. “I’m not saying it again.” He jabs a finger in Johnny’s direction, eyes bright. “It’s your turn.” The grin returns, bigger this time, and Gyro waggles his eyebrows with it. “And it better be something gooood.”

“I…” Johnny tries to form a single thought beneath the dizzy spell that’s been cast on him. Why are they back here? Why are neither of them hurt? If this isn’t a dream, then… “Am I dead?”

“What?” Gyro barks, half a laugh. “What are you—?” His eyebrows nearly disappear beneath the brim of his hat. “Wait, are you trying to distract me to get out of sharing something?” Eyes crinkling with mirth, he leans forward. “It must be something really juicy then, huh? Come on, spill it. It’s only fair.”

“What?” Johnny says in a daze. “No, no, I mean…”

Is this death? Are the two of them sitting around somewhere in the afterlife? Johnny hasn’t been to church in years; the grand halls and confessional booths only ever made him think of Nicholas, and the burden of that guilt never weighed so heavily as it did inside a church room. Johnny’s never gone looking for salvation because he knows he’d never find it. He’s mean, and he’s selfish, and he has a capacity for cruelty that surprises even himself sometimes. Quick to anger, he holds onto grudges with both hands and would rather shoot first and ask questions never.

There’s nothing kind or righteous or self-sacrificing anywhere in him. He knows he’s not getting into heaven, if there is such a place. But this clearing, the birdsong, the gentle breeze rustling the leaves above them—like a perfect moment held in the palm of someone’s loving hand—couldn’t possibly belong anywhere in hell, could it?

“I saw you die,” Johnny says, voice caught by the tightening of his throat. “You fell…” Johnny sees a vision of it in his mind, as clearly as if it was happening now, right in front of him. Valentine cutting Gyro down. “And he shot you…” The pop of gunfire, a full clip emptied into Gyro’s chest. “So.” Johnny sniffles. A fat tear drips down his cheek, and then another, until his face is wet with them; he’s surprised he still has some to shed, didn’t think there was any misery left to wring out of him. “So,” he says again, bottom lip wobbling, “if you’re here, I reckon I must’a died too.”

When Gyro says nothing, Johnny chokes out: “I’m sorry.” He scrubs at his face in an attempt to wipe away his tears, but they won’t stop. “I’m so sorry, Gyro. I should’a—” He swallows harshly. “Should’a got there sooner, should’a watched my back better so you wouldn’t have to. Should’ve—fuck, I dragged you into all this bullshit and you’re the one who ended up paying for it. I’m so fucking sorry.”

His father’s voice echoes in his head. The only thing he’s ever said to Johnny that’s stuck with him, the one thing he’ll never be able to shake off.

God…you took the wrong son.

“...hnny. Hey, Johnny, hey, hey.” Gyro’s voice parts the curtain of despair hanging heavy around Johnny’s shoulders. He’s nothing but a wet blur of purple and green and brown when Johnny peers up at him. “What are you saying?” Gyro asks. The softness in his voice makes Johnny’s chest hurt, like something had crawled up inside him and was trying to eat its way out.

Something comes to rest on the top of Johnny’s head. Gyro’s hand, he realizes, when Gyro starts petting him like a house cat. “Johnny,” he says again. His accent softens all the consonants, like he’s sanding down their sharp edges so he can say his name without getting splinters. Gha-nnee. It always sounds nice coming out of his mouth.

“Did you…did you hit your head, or something?” Gyro asks.

“What?” Johnny’s head snaps up.

“I don’t feel any bumps,” Gyro says, and he’s not petting Johnny at all, he’s looking for injuries. “But brain damage is no joke. You should have said something earlier.”

Johnny smacks his hand away. “I ain’t brain damaged!”

“Bad dreams, then?” Gyro offers with a tilt of his head. “You were looking pretty pale when I sewed you up earlier.” He gestures toward Johnny’s face, to his cheeks where…Valentine had shot him straight through, hadn’t he? Johnny feels the rough, ridged texture of the stitches against the sides of his tongue all of a sudden, as if they hadn’t actually been there until Gyro pointed them out. How had Johnny forgotten that? It’s impossible to ignore now. “Did you black out or something?” Gyro’s still talking. “You seemed aware the whole time…you sure you didn’t hit your head?”

“I didn’t hit my head, and it wasn’t no damn dream!” Johnny shouts. But…Gyro’s questioning sows the tiniest seed of doubt at the back of his mind, and waters it too. That’s…that can’t be right. “It happened,” Johnny insists. “It just happened.”

It did happen…right? It had to have happened. It wasn’t anything like a dream or some pain-induced stupor, it had been far too real for that. “I want to believe you.” That's what Johnny had said to Valentine, after Gyro was dead and all the light had gone out from the world, when he offered Johnny a deal to bring him back. “Please.” Johnny remembers how he’d begged Valentine, begged the corpse, begged God. “Please make me believe you.”

“It happened,” Johnny says again, voice hoarse, the words forced out of him like someone scraping the scales off a fish. “And now.” He swallows and tries to get ahold of himself. “Now we’re back here.” Johnny flings his arm out. “Like we’re still waiting for that damn—”

Five hundred tons of screaming metal rushes by and drowns him out. The back of Johnny’s neck prickles with sweat as he whips his head toward the sound. The image of Gyro falling from his horse flashes across his vision again. His breath quickens, his hands start to shake, his heart pounds quick as a rabbit’s and loud as a drum.

“Train,” Gyro finishes for him. He takes up Valkyrie’s reins with purpose. “Let’s get after it.”

“Wh—no, wait—” Johnny reaches for him blindly, and a sense of impending doom engulfs him like a tornado. What’s happening? Is this really the same day, the same train, the same chase? Why, why, whywhywhy—

“We’re gonna lose it if we wait any longer.”

Gyro doesn’t know, doesn’t remember. Does that mean it really didn’t happen? Was it a nightmare? Was Johnny just having some hyperrealistic, fucked up hallucination? He feels like he’s going to be sick.

“We can talk about this later,” Gyro says, shooting Johnny a backward glance. “After.”

“Gyro—!”

Gyro spurs Valkyrie into a gallop and they’re off, leaving Johnny behind. “And don’t think you’re getting out of telling me that secret!” Gyro shouts to the wind.

“Goddammit!” Johnny curses, and hurries after him.

He and Gyro catch up to the train in no time and meet the engineer, just like they’d done before, or Johnny dreamt they did. They ride alongside the traincars and that window, the one in the middle—Johnny sees a glimmer of light, a pink and yellow abstraction against the glass, for a fraction of a second, there and gone before he can blink. He’s seen that, too, just before—

Valentine appears from the side of the train, encased in that blinding light. Johnny’s whole body seizes up just as D4C catches Slow Dancer in the side and sends both her and Johnny crashing into the ground. He cries out when he lands hard on his side, the same side, when he cuts his arms on the gravel, the same way, he could swear, the exact same—

Johnny screams when Valentine’s Stand slices straight through the tendons, the muscles, the bones of his left arm. It’s the same! his mind screams just as loudly. Whatever happened before, if it was real or not, this, here, now, is playing out the exact same way. Everything down to the last detail, from losing his hand to choking around D4C’s grip on his throat, and then—Johnny sucks in a sharp breath when that pressure vanishes. Gyro…Gyro saved his life. He did, he threw a steel ball, and Valentine—

Valentine gets pulled back toward the train, back toward Lucy, and Johnny scrambles to get up. The ball, the steel ball, he has to find it, because it hadn’t just saved Johnny’s life before, had it? No, it did something else, too. He spots it there in the grass, shining in the light and stained with fresh blood, and reaches for it with the shaking hand he has left. Johnny’s entire world shrinks down to a single point when he sees what’s next to it: Valentine’s ear, sliced off by the spin. It’s the reason he figures it out, the reason Gyro isn’t able to kill him, the reason Gyro dies.

It’s going to happen again. It is happening again. Johnny snatches the ball and rushes to his feet; he needs to get to Gyro now.

With a dry sob, he stumbles beneath his own weight; his legs are shaking too hard to support him. He crawls the rest of the way to Slow Dancer, drags himself back into his saddle and spurs her on before he’s even seated properly.

Slow Dancer runs hard and fast, foaming around her bit. He feels it as they ride, as the wind rushes against his face: the rotation, the golden rectangle, perfect and powerful as it surges through Slow Dancer and into him, up his legs, around his chest, his arms, his hand. He knows it. It’s real and he knows how to use it because Gyro’s already taught him. Johnny digs his heels into Slow Dancer’s flanks and they close the distance, Gyro and Lucy and Valentine growing larger by the second.

But it’s still too slow. The rush of the tide coming in is deafening, and it’s already circling Gyro and Lucy. Valentine raises his hand, and D4C mimics the movement.

“No!” Johnny shouts as Gyro’s blood sprays out of him in an arc.

Gyro slides off of Valkyrie’s back to the tune of Lucy screaming and collapses in a heap on the ground. Valentine makes sure he stays there with a full chamber of bullets.

In an instant, Gyro’s gone. Gone, again, the same as before.

Johnny’s breath catches, ragged and wet, as the ocean water swirls around Gyro’s still form and pulls him beneath the tide.

Why is this all happening again? If Johnny really is in the afterlife, why is he seeing this, doing this?

Valentine attempts to make a bargain—that same fucking bargain—his life for Gyro’s. He uses all the same honeyed words, tells Johnny the story of his father, how he’d gone looking for him in every universe, promises so sweetly that he’ll bring Gyro back. “Just reverse the spin, Johnny.” Johnny barely hears him. He knows better this time, knows Valentine doesn’t intend to deliver anything. Johnny’s hands shake, but his aim is true, and he doesn’t wait for Valentine to reveal the gun he has hidden behind him. He just puts a bullet through his head.

When Valentine falls to the ground, all Johnny can do is sob at the unfairness of it all. Is this the corpse’s power? Did it do something to him?

The corpse. It’s there, lying abandoned on the ground now that Valentine is gone. Johnny’s body goes through the motions of gathering it up. He feels the squeeze of Lucy’s skinny arms around him and hears her voice, but her words are muffled and he can’t understand what she’s saying.

He wants to find Gyro. If he couldn’t save his life—again, he couldn’t save him again—he needs to at least pull him out of the water, he can’t leave him there, he can’t. But that, too, is snatched from him. The corpse vanishes the second Johnny looks away from it, right from under his nose. Johnny needs to…he needs to chase Diego down, doesn’t he? He needs to stop him, so the corpse can’t be used to hurt anyone else. Except he’d failed last time. He hadn’t been able to catch Diego, just like he’d never been able to beat him in a race, and if everything is set to go exactly the same way…he’ll fail again. What should he do? What is he supposed to do?

Lucy’s hand is gentle on his shoulder, and the way she looks at him, face open with a kindness Johnny doesn’t deserve, is enough to yank him back into his body with a shudder. Whatever happened before, whatever will happen now, if it’s the same, if it’s not, Johnny has to try. He owes her that much.

It takes everything he has to get back in the saddle and chase after Diego again. Johnny tries to think ahead, tries to remember exactly when and where Diego had done this, or done that, when he’d thrown those lit matches, when he’d stopped time, but his head is still swimming and it feels impossible to keep up. He makes the same mistakes he made the first time around, maybe more, and when the finish line comes into sight, when he’s so close to finally catching up, the air shifts around him. Johnny knows what’s coming next. He closes his eyes just as Diego’s bullet rips through his throat, knocking the air from his lungs. He hits the ground and chokes on his own blood, and then—nothing.

–

Johnny blinks against the blinding light of the overhead sun. Birds chirp somewhere behind him and there, far off into the distance, the blue of the ocean sparkles in the sunlight. There’s something soft in his grip and he looks down to see his fingers wrapped around the leather of Slow Dancer’s reins. His thoughts feel clouded and hazy, like being caught in a thunderstorm, unable to see an inch in front of his face. It takes him a moment to part the rainfall, to remember what he’d been doing before…before…

“I was thinking we should tell each other secrets.”

Like a weathervane struck by lightning, Johnny’s head spins. He looks up, seeing clearly now, and his heart threatens to tear its way out of his chest when he meets Gyro’s eyes. Slow Dancer shifts her weight beneath him, as if she can sense his discontent. The train, the corpse, Valentine. Johnny reaches for his neck, expecting to find blood, a bullet hole, but his fingers graze nothing other than the smooth column of his throat.

Secrets, Gyro said. It’s the last real conversation he had with Gyro—will have?—before everything goes to shit. Again. Maybe this isn’t the afterlife after all. Torture in hell always sounded more straightforward than this, burning for all eternity in a literal way. Maybe this is something worse.

Could Valentine’s Stand have evolved somehow? Maybe he created this…loop. Maybe he’s dragging Johnny through all these separate universes while he searches for a way to free himself from the Infinite Spin. Looking for a world where he wins and Johnny loses.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t got any,” Gyro says, mistaking Johnny’s silence for hesitance. “Because I won’t believe you, nyoho.”

Gyro…he has no idea, does he? He’s repeating this day, same as Johnny, same as Valentine and Lucy, but…is Johnny really the only one who remembers? Is this Gyro not actually his? Is it some other version of him, from somewhere else, like a stand-in actor in a play? He shoves the thought violently aside. No, this is Gyro, the real Gyro, it has to be; Johnny needs it to be. They’re just…stuck on repeat.

“I’ll even go first,” Gyro offers. “Since I brought it up. Gyro’s not—”

“Gyro!” Johnny can’t hide the desperation in his voice. Maybe he can jog Gyro’s memory; the days have to be in there somewhere, right? “Doesn’t this feel familiar to you?”

Gyro frowns. “What do you mean, familiar?”

“I mean,” Johnny urges, “don’t you feel like we’ve done this before?”

“Hmm.” Gyro rubs his chin thoughtfully and casts his eyes skyward. “Nope. I think I’d remember if we shared our deepest darkest secrets before.”

“No, that’s not what I—”

The rush of the train going by draws both their attention. It’s here already? Johnny swore he had more time before. He turns back to Gyro, who’s already sitting up straighter, a serious expression taking over his face.

“Listen, Johnny,” Gyro says, looking past him. “What I wanted to say—”

“No, you listen!” Johnny snaps. He grabs Valkyrie’s reins with a sweaty hand to make sure Gyro doesn’t even think about galloping off without him. “Something’s wrong. We’ve done all this before. I—I think I’m stuck, we’re stuck.”

“Stuck?” Gyro finally looks at him again, brows low, a wrinkle forming between them. “What are you talking about?”

“This, here. The train!” Johnny gestures towards it with his free hand. “We sit in this clearing until the train comes, and the earth, it…” The longer Johnny talks, the more insane it sounds, even to his own ears. “It follows us! Like it’s getting sucked in toward Valentine—and then! There’s the engineer trapped halfway inside a mirror, and Valentine has the corpse, and it keeps anything bad from happening to him, like a shield or something. And—and you get Lucy from the train, and the ocean starts to come in—”

“Woah, woah, woah.” Gyro holds his hand up like he’s trying to calm a wild animal. “Slow down! Jeez, never heard you talk so fast—”

“This is serious!” Johnny barks. “I don’t know what’s causing it, but we’re reliving the same day, and I know what’s going to happen if we follow that train.” An image of Gyro, bloodied and dying, splashes across Johnny’s vision. His eyes begin to sting. “We’re not,” he stammers, “you’re going to—”

“I’m taking it seriously.” Gyro says. “If you say something’s going on, I believe you.” He glances toward the train. “But we don’t have time to sit around and talk about it right now. We have to save Lucy, right?”

Johnny follows Gyro’s gaze; the end of the train is coming up fast. “We’re going to miss it if we don’t hurry up,” Gyro says, and he’s right. They can’t leave Lucy to Valentine. Johnny doesn’t know how the loops work, if anything from them will actually stick in the end, if there is an end. What if not saving Lucy here means she’s gone forever? Johnny can’t add that weight to his conscience; it’s too heavy as it is.

“Shit.” Johnny clenches his jaw hard enough to ache. When he turns back, Gyro’s staring at him like he’s a puzzle he can’t find the last piece to, and maybe that’s what Johnny needs to do. Maybe there’s some piece he needs to find, something he needs to do differently to get a better outcome. He doesn’t have to follow what he’s done the previous times; he has free will. He’s already used it to talk to Gyro about the loop itself, something they’ve never done before. And Gyro…he’d said things differently too, with a different cadence, looked left instead of right when he laughed. Small, nearly imperceptible differences, but Johnny’s always noticed everything about Gyro, and maybe he can use this.

He already knows how to unlock the Infinite Spin. Slow Dancer is still upright, unhurt, strong and quick beneath him. He doesn’t need to wait for Gyro’s fifth and final lesson; all he needs to do is get in range and kill Valentine with his first shot. Johnny will be able to save Gyro and Lucy in one go.

“Johnny,” Gyro says, dragging Johnny from his thoughts. “If we’re gonna go, we need to go now.”

Johnny swallows hard and nods. He lets go of Valkyrie’s reins and grabs Slow Dancer’s instead.

“Guess we’ll have to share those secrets afterwards,” Gyro says.

“After,” Johnny promises. There will be an after this time. He’s going to make sure of it.

The land and the trees draw in behind them as they hurry after the train. They reach the car with the engineer, but Johnny doesn’t bother stopping to chat this time. He spurs Slow Dancer forward and readies a nail bullet. It’s difficult to get the right speed, ride the right way, to create the rotation on horseback, but Johnny knows he can do it. Has to do it. Now, before it’s too late.

There! Valentine appears from the side of the train, haloed by that golden light. Johnny fires, and he feels it, that tingling sensation running along his skin, the rush of power that surges through his entire body and out through his index finger like a bolt of lightning. The Infinite Spin.

The bullet soars toward his target. Johnny’s filled with dark satisfaction as Valentine realizes what’s coming at him, his eyes widening. The last expression he’s ever going to make.

A cacophonous sound, like a thousand people yelling, screaming, singing, laughing, erupts. The golden glow around Valentine burns even brighter, blinding like a solar flare. Johnny turns to shield his eyes just as something strikes his chest.

“Johnny!” Gyro shouts.

The force of the blow sends Johnny flying backwards onto the ground. The world spins around him in a whorl of color, until he can’t tell up from down, left from right. A guttural sound escapes his throat as he chokes on the taste of copper. It takes everything in him to grasp at his chest with his shaking hand, to feel the slick, hot wetness of a bullet hole.

“Oh fuck, Johnny! Johnny, get up!”

Gyro’s voice is the last thing Johnny hears before everything goes dark.

–

Johnny gasps. In a blink, the darkness is gone. His hand flies to his chest, right over the raucous pounding of his heart, but there’s nothing there, no bullet hole, no blood.

“You alright?” Gyro asks from his saddle.

“Fuck!” Johnny curses, tightening his fist in the fabric of his shirt. The urge to rip it to shreds pulses beneath his skin. What happened? Valentine was right there. There’s no way Johnny missed his shot. It should have killed him, even if Johnny himself had been shot with…

The realization hits him like a pillowcase full of bricks. The light, that stupid power Valentine gets from the corpse that deflects anything that tries to hurt him. Johnny’s only ever seen that bad luck get sent somewhere else, to someone else, but this time Johnny had been that someone.

“Hey.” Gyro’s voice cuts through his swirling thoughts like a knife. “What is it?” His hand hovers over his holster.

“How do you not remember?!” Johnny shouts. “The train, fighting Valentine—none of it? Are you messing with me or something? Now isn’t the time for one of your stupid gags. It’s not fuckin’ funny, Gyro!”

Gyro just stares at him. Then: “What the hell are you talking about?” The concern is gone from his face, replaced with something harder. “I’m not making any jokes! You’re the one going on about—I don’t even know what.”

He really doesn’t remember. It’s all gone, everything Johnny said to him last time, everything that happened. Johnny’s skin prickles with heat, every fiber of his being screaming at him to do something. But what the fuck is he supposed to do? Gyro believed him before, but it didn’t matter, nothing changed, Johnny still lost. Johnny digs his teeth into his bottom lip and tries to think. Gyro believed him, but…he didn’t really understand what Johnny was telling him. He needs to make him understand.

“You wanted to share secrets, right?” Johnny says, pulse pounding in his ears. “Well, I know yours already. Your real name—”

Gyro’s eyes widen.

“It isn’t Gyro. It’s Julius. Julius Caesar Zeppeli, and none of your siblings know it,” Johnny says in a rush, his voice wavering. “And you made me swear not to tell anyone.”

“How the hell—”

“Gyro,” Johnny cries miserably. “You have to believe me. We’ve done this three times already and I don’t—I don’t know what to do, I can’t figure this out on my own.”

“What the fuck,” Gyro mutters under his breath, so low Johnny nearly misses it.

“Gyro, you—”

“I got it,” Gyro says sharply. “Just—give me a second.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes closed, brows furrowed. He takes a breath, then drops his hand. “Okay, I believe you.”

Relief floods through Johnny, and he lets out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

“Don’t say that name again, though, for the love of God,” Gyro says, his cheeks blooming red. He pushes up the brim of his hat and rubs his forehead. “So, when you say we did this before…are you talking about time travel, or something? Like with Ringo Roadagain?”

“I don’t know.” Johnny wipes his eyes with a sniffle and shrugs. “Maybe? There’s no…I don’t know what’s doing it, or who. It just happens, after…”

“After…?” Gyro presses, raising an eyebrow.

Johnny swallows around the lump in his throat. He doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t want to be the one to put it out into the universe, the reason it comes true. But Gyro’s expecting an answer, and if he doesn’t have all the pieces, how are they going to figure this out?

“After you die,” Johnny mutters, doing his best to keep the emotion out of his voice. “After I die.”

“After we die?” Gyro hisses. “You’re telling me we fucking lose?”

Johnny says nothing.

“Shit.” Gyro scrapes his hand down his face and frowns. “How?”

The sound of gunfire rings in Johnny’s ears. He shakes his head to dispel the image of Gyro’s body, lying broken and bloodied on the ground, from his mind. “Valentine,” he says with venom. “He kills you. He killed me once, too, but Diego’s the one who got me the other times.”

“What? Isn’t Diego…?” Gyro glances back toward the train tracks, where they’d just seen this world’s Diego get cut in half—shit, probably less than five minutes ago. Gyro sighs and tips his head back. “Alright. Start from the beginning.”

So Johnny does. He tells him about the train chase and the engineer in the mirror. He tells him about Valentine’s golden shield and how the only way to get past it is by getting Lucy as far away from him as possible. He tells him about the ocean coming in, the Infinite Spin, Valentine’s handkerchief; he tells him everything, and he talks fast, knowing they’re short on time.

When he’s done, Gyro looks troubled, mouth set in a deep frown that pulls all his features down with it. He crosses his arms and looks to the train tracks. “Okay,” Gyro says. “We’ll figure this out.”

“Lucy’s our key to winning,” Johnny says with a nod. “So that’s probably where we ought’a start. If we can get to her faster, maybe…I think we could save at least a minute if we ignore the engineer. You’re the one who’s been getting her away from the train, but it could be me this time.” It could be enough of a change to make a difference; if Johnny’s the one stealing Lucy, it will take the crosshair off of Gyro. Valentine won’t have as much reason to go after him. He’ll chase after Johnny instead. Putting him down with the Infinite Spin should be easy then, whether it’s Johnny or Gyro that ends up doing it. “We have to be careful,” Johnny says. “I don’t think Valentine’s Stand has a lot of range, so make sure to stay out of it.”

“I don’t need to get in too close.” Gyro rests his hand on the steel ball in his holster. “Just need a clear shot.”

The confidence in Gyro’s voice is enough to instill it in Johnny as well. It can be that easy. Get Lucy, keep their distance, shoot to kill. They’ll end it this time, together.

The train comes.

They ignore the engineer and ride up alongside the traincars. Johnny looks through the windows as he passes them, trying to spot any sign of Lucy, but the glare from the sun makes it nearly impossible to see inside. He’s going to have to board the train to look for her. There’s no time to find a door in. Cursing, Johnny readies a nail bullet.

The window shatters and explodes outward before he gets the chance to fire. Shards of broken glass slice through his skin like knives. He cries out and moves to shield himself just as something slams into his side, ripping him from his saddle.

“Johnny!” Gyro’s voice is faint under the roar of the train.

Johnny hits the ground hard. He hears something crack and tastes metal. He chokes on a cloud of dust as he skids to a stop. A bruising grip on his upper arm forces him to roll over onto his back. His leg twists and fuck—the pain shoots through him, making his whole body throb in time with his pulse. A shadow falls over him; Valentine and his Stand block out the sun, bright against the pale blue of the sky. D4C wraps its hand around Johnny’s throat and squeezes tight. Johnny frantically claws at its skin, but his hands shake violently, his vision growing dimmer by the second.

Valentine leans closer, his lip curling. “You’re done getting in my way, Johnny Joestar.”

A sharp whistle pierces the air. The pressure around Johnny’s neck vanishes. With immense effort, Johnny forces himself onto his side, swallowing a scream of agony. Everything hurts. Blood drips into his eye and mixes with the tears already wet on his face. Arms trembling, Johnny drags himself up on his elbows.

A glint of metal catches his eye. One of Gyro’s steel balls, half-buried in the dirt beside his head, probably the only reason Johnny’s still breathing. Shit. It’s just like before. Gyro had to save him, again, even though they’d done things differently. If the loop is going to repeat itself…

Johnny clutches the steel ball to his chest and turns to look behind him, back toward the train.

Valentine blocks his view, but he’s not looking at Johnny. He’s focused on Gyro, who’s riding towards them like a bat out of hell. What is he doing? He needs to stay far away from Valentine, back where it’s safe, near the train like he’s always done before. Johnny’s eyes flick from Gyro to Valentine. There’s something else: Valentine’s clutching the side of his head, right over the spot where his ear should be, but isn’t, because it was torn off by Gyro’s spin.

A chill runs down Johnny’s spine.

Valentine’s fingers are bloodied. He’s already noticed.

“Gyro!” Johnny shouts. His name is swallowed by a cacophony as the holy light surrounding Valentine surges forth. It makes Johnny’s ears ring and he has to shield his eyes. Valkyrie rears up in panic as an arc of red paints the sky. Gyro falls, a gash in his chest like an axe through firewood.

“No!” Johnny screams.

Valentine, the corpse, the train, everything falls away in the face of Gyro lying motionless on the ground. The rugged terrain scrapes Johnny’s skin raw as he drags himself to Gyro’s side. The pain barely registers anymore, a dull point at the back of his skull, like it’s happening to someone else.

“Gyro,” Johnny whimpers when he reaches him. He grasps at Gyro’s shirt and a horrified sound leaves his mouth at the sticky, wet feel of it, as his fingers catch along the deep wound across his chest. “Why.” Johnny’s vision blurs. “Why did you do that? You were s’posed to…that wasn’t,” he hiccups, “part of the plan!”

Gyro doesn’t answer him, just stares up at the sky with dull, empty eyes. Johnny crushes his forehead against Gyro’s shoulder and sobs, his entire body shaking with the force of it. Stop leaving me, he wants to scream in his face, stop doing this to me.

“It’s a shame,” Valentine says. A cold sweat breaks out on Johnny’s skin. “But it didn’t need to end like this. You should have gone and finished the race while you had the chance.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Johnny shouts, twisting around and readying a nail bullet. It spins violently, his fingers stained red with Gyro’s blood. “Stay back!”

Valentine tsks, his bored gaze flicking from Johnny’s hand, to his face, then to Gyro. Johnny bares his teeth and moves to shield Gyro with his body, like a rabid dog protecting its territory.

“That spin,” Valentine says, his gaze finding the steel ball still trapped in Johnny’s other hand. D4C looms behind him like a shadow, its eyes piercing and cold. “Very clever. If it hit directly, I might not be standing here.” He takes a step forward.

“I said stay back!” Johnny fires. The bullet hits Valentine, phases through him, goes through the throat of someone else, somewhere else.

“We both know that was the only real shot you had,” Valentine continues, taking another step towards him. “So let’s end this now.”

He’s right. There’s nothing Johnny can do. He has no horse to kick him this time, no way to use the Infinite Spin. He fires a second bullet, a third, a fourth—and they all bounce off Valentine and disappear to end the life of someone much less fortunate.

Johnny spits out a mouthful of blood. “I’m gonna to kill you,” he promises. “I’ll kill you as many times as it takes.” He finally drops his shaking arm, too exhausted to hold it up any longer, and catches a flash of hesitation on Valentine’s face. It doesn’t stop him from closing the last few feet of distance between them. He presses the barrel of a gun to Johnny’s forehead, and then—nothing.

–

Johnny blinks. Sunlight, birdsong, a cool breeze.

“I was thinking we should tell each other secrets,” Gyro says.

Relief crashes over him like a wave in a seastorm. Gyro’s alive. Of course he is. Johnny failed, the day reset again, and he’s never been more glad that it did. How did that go so wrong? Getting Gyro to believe him was supposed to help things, not make them a hundred times worse.

Why did Gyro ride towards him and Valentine at the end? He’s never done that before. Johnny told him to keep away, but he didn’t listen. He never fucking listens when it matters. Johnny thinks back to their talk in that clearing—this clearing, again—and tries to figure out where he messed up. Gyro was unsettled, sure, but enough to divert from their plan like that? Was it because Johnny told him they were going to die? Maybe he thought he could save himself and win right then.

“...sar Zeppelli, and you better keep it to yourself.”

Stupid. Stupid. Maybe Johnny needs to be more vague when he explains it this time; time travel (or resets or loops or whatever the fuck it is) is probably more complicated than he originally thought. Maybe giving Gyro all the details was a mistake.

“Hey, are you even listening?” Gyro snaps.

Johnny looks at him.

Gyro frowns. “I said it’s your turn to share a secret. I know you’ve got some, Joekid.”

“Don’t call me that,” Johnny says, frowning right back. This damn conversation again. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Oh, come on! I bare my soul and you just—”

“Gyro, shut up for a second! We’ve done this before, and I need you to…”

Gyro’s face, slack and empty, blood leaking from his mouth and dripping off his chin, floats across Johnny’s vision like a phantom. It covers this Gyro’s face, like a sheet pulled over a corpse.

Johnny’s pulse spikes. What if…what if he’s not supposed to tell Gyro anything? He’s never died so fast, so horribly close, as he did in the last loop. Gyro never would have come riding over to them if Johnny hadn’t opened his mouth. He must not have been thinking clearly, which makes what happened Johnny’s fault, completely.

Johnny shuts his mouth. If he tells Gyro again, will something even worse happen? He swallows and tries to shake off what worse could look like before it has time to take shape in his head. Even if he’s expecting a reset, Johnny doesn’t know how to get free of this. What if that worse thing happens, and it sticks? No, he can’t tell Gyro again. He’ll have to figure this out on his own after all.

“Hey!” Gyro snaps his fingers in front of Johnny’s face. It shocks him back to the present. “You gone stupid, or something?”

Johnny’s first instinct is to bite his fingers, but he thinks better of it. “Not as stupid as you,” he says instead. Trading insults is easy. It loosens the tightness in his chest, just a little.

“You fucking brat—”

The train screams by. Gyro turns to look at it, and his scowl deepens. He looks back at Johnny and takes up Valkyrie’s reins. “You’re not worming your way out of it. You’d better tell me later, or I’m gonna make one up myself.”

“Knock yourself out,” Johnny says, and they get after the train.

Johnny didn’t have any time to plan, so he just does his best to anticipate what he knows is coming next. Valentine appearing from the side of the train, his Stand’s attack, Gyro throwing his steel ball. It doesn’t really matter. Johnny’s not quick enough, not smart enough, and it all ends up the same way as before. Gyro still dies, but at least he’s far away, where Johnny doesn’t have to see his face.

He doesn’t pay much attention to Valentine after that, already thinking about what he’s going to try next time, what he can change. Valentine moves to finish him off, and Johnny thinks okay, let’s try this again, as everything goes dark.

–

Johnny tries again. The train, the corpse, Valentine. He runs through different scenarios, trying to see just how far he can push the course of the day. He tries heading after the train earlier, later, riding to the front instead of hanging at the back. Little changes, but they end up making big waves.

In one instance, Johnny manages to avoid getting caught by Valentine, so Gyro never wastes one of his shots to save him, but they can’t find Lucy anywhere. Without their sliver of an opening, Valentine is too strong and he cuts them down quick.

In another, Johnny boards the train to try to find Lucy and ends up with a body full of splintered wood and broken glass before he can so much as call her name.

Another time, Gyro is the one who ends up caught by Valentine. Heart in his throat, Johnny thinks it’s his chance. The train, and Lucy, are getting further and further away; the gap should be there. He readies a nail bullet and lines up his shot—carefully, he doesn’t want to just blast Valentine’s ear off, he wants him dead in the ground—and he feels it, the spin radiating through his body. Johnny takes a deep breath, aims, and fires.

And misses.

He misses.

The shot veers off to the left. While Johnny’s scrambling to redirect it, something slams into him and sends him flying. He hits the ground headfirst and then—nothing.

Johnny runs through it again, and again, and again, until he’s lost track of how many times he’s died or Gyro’s died or Valentine’s told him about his father and his goddamn handkerchief. No matter what he does, what he tries, how differently things go, nothing works. It always ends the same way: in complete and inescapable darkness.

–

Johnny’s tired. For the first time since the race started, since he touched that steel ball and stood on his own two feet…he’s beat down, and feeling like he should stay there. What’s the point in following that train again and again if he’s only going to end up back here at the start? He’s tired of watching his best friend die, he’s tired of listening to Valentine go on about his inflated sense of patriotism, he’s tired of chasing that fucking train. He’s tired. He would take the fire over this.

It would be easier, maybe, if Gyro remembered anything, if he was really here with him. Back when they fought Roadagain, they were both trapped, not just Johnny, going round and round again. Easier because they were together, and Gyro knew just as much as he did.

Johnny still can’t shake that feeling of dipping his fingers into Gyro’s wound, a mess of meat and exposed bone. He can’t bring himself to tell Gyro again, but he’s gotten so used to having him around these last few months, being able to talk to him about almost anything and feeling understood, that the isolation is crushing. It’s almost worse than the loops themselves. Gyro is here, physically, but Johnny feels the disconnect between them. Like they’re both stuck on either side of a locked door, and Johnny doesn’t have the key to open it.

“I was thinking we should share secrets,” Gyro says for the tenth, twentieth, hundredth time. “Everyone’s got something they hide, right?”

Johnny says nothing, lets him get on with his big reveal. There’s comfort in the conversation at least; he gets to hear Gyro talk, somewhere where he’s safe, at least for a little while.

“My real name’s not Gyro,” he says, and he flushes red, all the way to the tips of his ears. “It’s more of a nickname. My real name, the one my father gave me…”

“Julius,” Johnny mutters under his breath just as Gyro says it, their voices overlapping. Gyro doesn’t notice.

“Julius Caesar Zeppelli. You better not tell anyone, Johnny, I swear.”

There’s no one to tell. There might never be anyone to tell. “Like that Roman dictator,” Johnny says, just to fill the space. He thinks back to his eighth grade history class, where they learned about the rise and fall of Rome, and the most famous assassination in the world. Julius Caesar had been betrayed by his closest friend, stabbed to death by someone he loved, someone who loved him. Et tu, Brute?

Johnny’s not holding the knife, but he didn’t throw Danny onto the horse track either. He’s the reason Gyro died, is dead, will die again, and there’s nothing he can do to fix that.

“Hey,” Gyro says. Johnny glances at him. “Fair’s fair. You have to tell me your secret now.” His mouth curls upward, his embarrassment forgotten for the moment.

A secret… Johnny hasn’t shared one since that first time. He’s usually too wrapped up in figuring what he’s going to do this time, what he did wrong last time. God, and he’d shared his bugbite fetish, how humiliating. It’s kind of a relief Gyro doesn’t remember that. What else can he say, though? He thinks of Danny again, and Nicholas, and his father, and discards them all just as quickly.

The only other thing Johnny holds so close to his heart is not something he’s prepared to share with Gyro either. That’s been locked away ever since he exchanged the corpse pieces for that shitty bottle of wine, when Gyro had looked at him so warmly it’d been enough to make him forget the cold around them. We should make a toast, he said, even though by all rights what he should have done was get up and leave Johnny in that snowstorm. He should’ve hated Johnny for how close he came to letting that tree keep him, forever.

But he hadn’t, and Johnny can’t ruin his one good thing.

“Uh…Johnny?” Gyro says. “You doing okay?”

Johnny drags his eyes up to look at him, hadn’t even realized he’d been staring at the ground. Looking at Gyro’s face, open and relaxed, smiling—it makes him want to cry. For once, the tears won’t come.

“I guess not,” Gyro says with a quiet sigh. “Not much to be okay about now, is there?”

Johnny drops his eyes again, finding it unbearable to look at him.

“None of this has been easy,” Gyro goes on, sounding strangely serious. “And we’re about to face the worst of it.” He reaches over and squeezes Johnny’s shoulder. “But hey, we’ve gotten this far together. It’s only a little more, one last fight. We’ll save Lucy, deal with Valentine, get the corpse back, then cross that damn finish line. Me in first, you in second, just like we planned.”

We won’t though, Johnny thinks. Even the times he’s gotten that far, he’d never made it across on his own, not once. Diego always beats him. He gets away with the corpse, and leaves Johnny bleeding out on the ground, and sends him right back to this clearing. Johnny frowns. That fucking corpse…if they never came across it, none of this would be happening. They would just be running the race. The finish line is so close…if they didn’t have the corpse to worry about, hell, they’d probably have crossed it already, together.

Johnny jerks his head up. The train, the corpse, Valentine. Everything resets when they chase after them, when Johnny dies, but death is so, so painfully avoidable if they don’t. If he and Gyro just…leave. It seems so obvious that Johnny feels stupid for not thinking of it sooner. Maybe they’re not supposed to go after Valentine at all. Maybe the only way to win is to lose.

“Forget the corpse,” Johnny says, his pulse thundering in his ears. “Fuck Valentine. Let’s just finish the race now.”

Gyro’s hand slides off his shoulder like a lead weight. He stares at him, the green of his eyes clear and bright in the midday sun. “What?” he asks.

“Are you deaf?” Johnny snaps. His skin prickles with heat. They can leave, they can get out, Johnny can make it stop. “Let’s just leave it alone. We shouldn’t even be in the middle of this shit.”

Gyro's quiet for once, stunned into silence.

“Don’t you have some kid to save?” Johnny says with urgency. “Can’t do that if we don’t finish the race.”

A deep wrinkle has made itself a bed between Gyro’s eyebrows. “We have time for this first,” he says, and gestures toward the train tracks. “We’re way ahead, no one’s going to—”

“How do you know?” Johnny pushes back. “How do you know someone ain’t gonna overtake us? This is a hell of a detour. If you don’t come in first, then all this was for nothing, right?” Winning the race is the entire reason Gyro’s even in America, the only reason Johnny got to meet him. “We should just—fuck, let’s just go.” He pulls on Slow Dancer’s reins and urges her to turn around, away from that damn train.

“Wait, wait, Johnny, hold up!” Gyro snatches Slow Dancer by the bridle before she and Johnny can go anywhere. She whinnies and shakes her head, but Gyro holds tight. “What the hell has gotten into you?” he demands. “You want to let that asshole have the corpse? Lucy’s as good as dead if we don’t go after them!”

Guilt nips at Johnny’s skin like frostbite, but it’s easier to shake off than ever. “And if we do go after them, you can kiss the race goodbye!” Johnny argues. He doesn’t know why he didn’t expect Gyro to fight him on this. Gyro’s never been shy about arguing his point. But this time is different; he doesn’t even know what’s going on, he shouldn’t get any say in the damn matter. “Since when do you even give a shit about Lucy?”

Gyro stares at Johnny like he’d just slapped him across the face. “Jesus, Johnny,” he snaps, eyes narrowing. “You think that little of me?”

The look on Gyro’s face is enough to make Johnny’s stomach flip. He swallows, still prickling with irritation, but it’s not because of Gyro, not really. He’s just saying shit to get his way, to get them both out of here; he didn’t expect Gyro to take it to heart. Johnny couldn’t think lowly of him if he tried.

“She’s your friend, isn’t she?” Gyro says, his voice a little softer. “Of course I give a shit.”

That makes Johnny’s stomach flip for an entirely different reason and he has to jerk his chin to the side and look away. “Let go,” he says, because he can’t say anything else. They don’t have time for this. Slow Dancer’s getting agitated, stomping her hooves like a kid on the brink of a temper tantrum.

Gyro leans closer and tightens his grip on her bridle. “No.”

“Gyro—”

“You were ready to chase that train to the end of the line ten seconds ago, and now, what? You’re too scared?”

“I ain’t scared!” Johnny shouts, whipping his head back toward Gyro. His eyes start to sting with tears; about to cry now, of fucking course. He blinks rapidly, but Gyro’s already turning into a blur in front of him.

“Then what?” Gyro demands.

“I don’t want to watch you die!” Johnny shouts, and the dam breaks. Tears spill down his cheeks, his chest heaving. “I can’t do this anymore,” he admits with a hiccup. “I’m sick of it.” He wipes his face, tries to smother himself, but all he can see is Gyro falling off his horse, Gyro bloody and full of bullet holes, Gyro staring empty-eyed at the sky.

“Well, that’s stupid,” Gyro says. “Is that really it? Johnny, come on. That shithead isn’t going to get one over on me. I’m not dying any time soon, and honestly I’m a little offended you think I’d get killed off so easily.”

Johnny barks out a humorless laugh. “That’s why you wanted to share secrets, huh? ‘Cause you’re so sure you ain’t gonna die, that I ain’t gonna die? You knew. You know, or at least got some kind of idea. You saw what his Stand can do. There’s no way…no way we’re walkin’ away from that fight like it’s nothin’.”

Gyro goes quiet. Probably thinking up a million ways to call Johnny an idiot or a scaredy cat or whatever other insult he can scrounge up. Johnny doesn’t give a shit; Gyro can call him whatever he likes so long as he doesn’t go chasing after that train.

“Yeah.” Gyro sighs like the wind’s been taken out of his sails. “Alright. The stakes are high, I’ll admit that, but we can’t just let him win. After all the people he’s killed? You think that corpse is going to do any good in his hands?”

“I don’t know.” Johnny shakes his head. “He’s got good intentions.” Better intentions than Johnny ever had, anyway.

“Oh, come on—”

“Yeah, okay!” Johnny snaps. “Maybe he’ll do some real shitty, fuckin’ awful stuff—more awful—but…I just. Maybe I ain’t willing to trade you—” He cringes, knowing he sounds exactly like the selfish brat he is, like Gyro is something that belongs to him. “Your life. My life—just to beat him. It’s not worth it. Let him keep the damn thing.” I don’t want you to die, he thinks. I don’t want to die, he thinks for the first time in a long time. I don’t want to die right when I just found something worth living for.

“...What about Lucy?”

Johnny ducks his head. He’s a horrible, selfish excuse of a person. Lucy’s only fourteen for fuck’s sake, and she doesn’t deserve anything that’s happened to her. It’s their fault she’s in Valentine’s clutches to begin with. Johnny should feel worse about that, bad enough to be willing to risk his and Gyro’s life for her sake. But he doesn’t. He’s not willing, not this time.

“I can’t,” he says, voice small. Defeated. “I can’t.” The tears return full force and he chokes on his words. “I can’t, I can’t do it again. I can’t keep doing this, I can’t, I can’t.”

He hears it then, the screeching sound of metal on metal, wheels chugging along as the train passes them by. It smothers the birdsong and the wind, and Johnny’s terrified that when he looks up again he’ll find an empty spot where Gyro is meant to be, that Gyro will chase after Valentine on his own.

“Okay.”

Johnny looks up and stares at the blurry version of Gyro—still here, he’s still here—in front of him. “What?”

“I said okay.” Gyro uncurls his fingers from Slow Dancer’s bridle. He hesitates for a second before pulling his hand away entirely. “Let’s forget it,” he says. “Let’s finish the race.”

“Really?” Johnny asks in disbelief. He was so sure he was going to have to fight tooth and nail over this, maybe even drag Gyro to the finish line by force.

“I said so, didn’t I?” Gyro mutters, clenching his jaw. “If you really wanna give up on the corpse…” On Lucy, he doesn’t say. “I mean, you’re the one who wanted it so damn badly.”

Johnny had wanted it, so obsessively he would have done just about anything to get it. But he got what he needed out of it. He can feel things beneath his waist now, he can move his legs, can even put some weight on his feet and walk, just a little, like a newborn fawn. Maybe it’s not…zero, exactly, but it’s more than enough. The only thing he cares about now is getting Gyro out of this alive and in one piece. Giving up the corpse in exchange for him, again, is the easiest decision in the world. He can’t think about Lucy now, or what Valentine might do with the corpse; it’s not his problem anymore.

“Yeah, well.” Johnny chews his lip and casts one more look at Gyro, who isn’t looking at him, instead gazing over his shoulder, back toward where the train has gone by already. “Let’s go then,” Johnny says, before Gyro can change his mind.

Gyro’s gaze lands on him again. He nods, and takes up Valkyrie’s reins. “Let’s go.”

–

Running away has never felt so good.

They ride back toward the city. The more distance they put between them and the train tracks, the lighter Johnny feels. Free, he’s free. Free from the train and Valentine and the corpse and this fucking day. He did it, he found the way out.

They cross the finish line in no time. Johnny pulls back just enough to let Gyro take first place by a nose and comes in second, just like he promised he would. The roar of the crowd is deafening as they win, they win, all cheering Gyro Gyro Gyro Johnny Johnny Johnny. It makes Johnny’s chest swell with pride and relief all at once. He smiles so hard his face hurts, even when they get pounced on by journalists all desperate for a quote from the first and second place winners. It makes Johnny think of the day he’d won the Kentucky Derby. When he looks over at Gyro, though, he knows this is so, so much better.

First place suits Gyro, and he seems happy enough to answer the pushy questions and demands for commentary, as he regales the press with a sanitized version of what they’d gone through in the race. Johnny leaves him to it, glad to be out of the line of fire.

“Johnny!” A familiar voice breaks through the noise of the crowd. Johnny jolts in his saddle and swivels his head toward it. It takes him a second of scanning the sea of faces before he spots him—it’s his dad, squished right up against the barricade, and he…he’s holding Nicholas’ riding boots in his arms. The ones Johnny had tried to borrow when his own had been ruined.

God…you took the wrong son.

The air leaves his lungs all at once like he’d been sucker punched. His dad is all smiles and glassy-eyes; he looks aged, there’s more gray in his hair then there was the last time Johnny saw him, three…or was it four years ago now? Why is he here? He doesn’t look ready to start an argument. There’s no way he’s here to cheer him on, is there? The roar of the crowd drowns out as Johnny stares at him, feeling like someone had taken a knife to his chest and cut out something vital. He tightens his grip on Slow Dancer’s reins until he can feel the bite of his nails against his palms and turns away.

He loses time for a while after that, going through the motions of getting officially announced as the second place winner, accepting the bank note for his prize money, being told to smile as someone counts down for a camera flash. It isn’t until he and Gyro are led to their lodgings for the night that he really comes back to himself. They’re ushered into the fanciest hotel Johnny’s ever seen, a serious upgrade from their months of hoofing it through the wilderness and sleeping on hard ground.

Steven and Lucy are nowhere to be seen, and Johnny tries his best not to notice.

When they’re finally, finally, left to their own devices, away from the crowd and the press and the race officials, they head straight for the hotel bar. It’s a rustic space with a modest stage for performers and lit candles glowing warm on every table. He and Gyro grab one near the back and out of the way. They’re not the only ones here, but it isn’t overly crowded. It seems the hotel had done some diligence to keep their guests from getting overrun by the fans outside.

A waitress comes by and sets down a few glasses of beer. “On the house,” she says with a smile. “But let me know if you boys want anything else.”

“Wine?” Gyro asks, sounding a little desperate. “Something imported,” he clarifies before the waitress can walk away.

Johnny thinks he’d like something stronger too, but can’t bring himself to ask. He grabs a beer and sips at it. It feels nice going down his throat, refreshing after the long, long day he’s had. Silence settles between them and Johnny busies himself with dragging his thumb through the condensation sticking to the glass.

The waitress comes back with Gyro’s wine (“leave the bottle,” he says), and then it’s just the two of them. They drink and don’t talk, and drink some more. It might be the longest stretch of time Gyro’s ever kept his mouth shut, and Johnny thinks maybe he should be the one to say something in his stead. But what is there to even say? He can’t help but think of Lucy, her name heavy on his tongue, so he says nothing.

Inevitably though, Gyro seems compelled to break the silence: “Thought this would be more of a celebration.”

And he’s right. It should be, would be, under different circumstances. They’re free, and safe, and millionaires now, but Johnny doesn’t feel much like celebrating anymore.

“We could head back out,” Gyro offers. “Bet there’s plenty of pretty girls who’d wanna hang out with us winners.” When Johnny doesn’t answer him, he flicks his middle finger against Johnny’s beer with a clink. “Hey, quit looking so gloomy. Your face is gonna stick like that if you keep it up.”

“S’just my face,” Johnny mutters.

Gyro hums, then flashes a smile. “Hey, I got a new joke for you.”

Johnny glances at him. “Alright.”

“A man said to a preacher,” Gyro says, not deterred by Johnny’s lack of enthusiasm in the slightest. “That was an excellent sermon, but it wasn’t very original. The preacher was surprised to hear it—he was the only preacher in town, so it wasn’t like he was copying someone else’s sermon. He asked what the man meant and the man said he’d show him, that he had a book at home with every word the preacher used and he’d bring it the next day.”

Gyro pauses, as if for dramatic effect. “So the next morning,” he goes on, “the man brings the preacher a dictionary.”

“Wow,” Johnny drawls. “That’s a good one.”

“Nyohoho,” Gyro laughs and downs the rest of his wine glass. “You think so? Maybe you should write it down so you don’t forget it then.”

Johnny rests his chin in his hand and drops his eyes to the woodgrain of the table. How can Gyro sit here making jokes, after what they’d done? They left Lucy…Steven…let Valentine win without a fight. Now that everything’s said and done, it’s hard to ignore the guilt stewing in the pit of his stomach. It’d been so easy to shake off earlier, when adrenaline was running high, but now that he’s sitting with it…

“Do you think…” Johnny clears his throat, trying to find the right words. “Do you think we did the right thing?” He feels stupid as soon as it leaves his mouth. He doesn’t need Gyro to tell him it wasn’t right, that it was a bad, wholly selfish choice to make.

Gyro sighs. “Depends on who you’re asking, doesn’t it?” The table creaks as he rests his elbows on it and leans forward. “I don’t know. Not much point in dwelling on it now, but…”

Johnny glances up at him.

“If you’re asking me if I regret leaving Lucy to Valentine…” Gyro meets Johnny’s eyes across the table, something inscrutable in his gaze. “Yeah, I do. I feel bad about what happened to her. But I don’t regret that we both walked away from the race with our lives. I don’t regret crossing the finish line with you, ‘right’ thing or not. I can live with that.”

Thump. Johnny’s heart pounds against his ribcage. He feels caught out, like an ant beneath the stare of some giant who’s just lifted the rock he was hiding under. With you. Johnny’s head empties itself of all thought and he’s left with nothing but a surge of fondness for the man sitting across from him. Gyro’s got a good heart, and a near bottomless well of empathy compared to Johnny’s puddle, but he’d been willing to abandon their mission, their chance to save Lucy, just because Johnny asked him to. Fuck, he’s such an asshole. Why is he happy Gyro would do that for him?

He stuffs the feeling down as far as it will go and smothers it with another swig of his drink, just to be on the safe side. Change the subject, something else, anything else. “So…what are you gonna do now, then, Mr. First Place?”

Gyro hums theatrically and leans back in his chair. “Gotta head back home, finish what I started.”

Right. Gyro’s reason for gunning for first place this whole time is back in his homeland. He has that kid to save, an entire life back in Italy; there’s nothing left in America for him to stick around for. How long until he’s on the boat back to Europe? A few days, if that? Grief strikes him at the realization that this could be one of the last conversations Johnny ever has with him, the last time he ever sees him.

He tries to feel good about the fact that Gyro’s alive, that he gets to go back home. This is what he’s been trying to accomplish all this time, a good ending for Gyro. He just never thought about how that ending doesn’t include him.

“You been missin’ it?” Johnny asks. He barely knows anything about what Gyro left behind, has never brought it up because talking about home and family has always been complicated for him.

“Yes, and no.” Gyro pours himself a fresh glass of wine. “I don’t miss work much. Helping people at the clinic is great and all, but…”

That’s right. Gyro's a real doctor, with a practice and everything. Johnny always forgets, because Gyro is just so…well, Gyro. He can’t picture it at all.

“I don’t always agree with the things I’m told to do.” Gyro takes a sip of his wine, looking thoughtful. “I usually don’t,” he amends. “So running around in the wilderness has been kind of a nice getaway.”

“You callin’ gettin’ hunted down by a buncha terrorists a vacation?”

Gyro snorts. “It’s a refreshing change of pace, actually.” He takes another drink of his wine, bigger this time. “I do miss my siblings, and my mother. I even miss my father. Like something’s missing from my day when he’s not breathing down my neck, you know?”

Johnny doesn’t know, but he wants to. “Tell me about ‘em.”

“Where to even start?” Gyro laughs. “My dad’s a hardass. His entire life is work, no time for fun, or—” He lowers his voice, like he’s doing an impression. “Sentiments. Duty to the fatherland, above all else.”

Johnny tries to picture what Gyro’s father might look like. Tall, same straw-blond hair, but much older, wrinkled except with no sign of smile lines, no humor on his face. Gyro if he never cracked a joke in his life. Weird.

“He taught me the spin, though,” Gyro says. “Taught me just about everything I know, and I’m sure when I get back there, he’s gonna teach me just how stupid I was for leaving in the first place.”

“You left to save a kid from execution.” Johnny frowns. “How’s that stupid? Just makes you a good person.”

Gyro waves him off. “I’m supposed to do my job, not worry about—” He sighs. “You don’t wanna hear about any of this.”

“Yeah, I do,” Johnny says. He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. “What are your siblings like?” he asks, offering Gyro an easy out. He’d rather cut his own arm off than talk about his dad; he’s not gonna make Gyro do it if he doesn’t want to.

“Annoying,” Gyro says with no heat behind it. He smiles, fond. “Less so now that we’re all older. But as kids, they were always sneaking into my room, breaking my stuff, pretending to be scared of thunderstorms just so they could crawl in my bed and steal my blankets.”

Oldest brother, Johnny remembers with a pang. Gyro’s siblings must love him to pieces; Johnny did all that and more when he was a kid, when Nick was still alive.

“My sister’s finishing up her last year of college,” Gyro goes on. “Actually,” he scratches his chin. “Shit, I think I missed her graduation. She’s gonna be pissed.”

“College? Damn, she must be real smart,” Johnny says.

Gyro scoffs. “Not as smart as she thinks she is.”

“What’d she go for?”

“She changed her mind a few times,” Gyro says. “She isn’t interested in the family business, so law first, I think? Then chemistry.” He counts each one off on his fingers. “Finally settled on botanica at the beginning of last year.”

“Botanica…?”

“Plants,” Gyro explains. “More palatable than cutting people open, I guess.”

“Oh, botany,” Johnny says. “That’s the same thing Lucy…” He bites his tongue, remembering the brief exchange they’d had, however many weeks ago now, on that stormy night. Lucy had seen him chewing on a handful of chamomile and said he should consider trying some lemon balm with it. She even told him what it looked like and how to differentiate it from mint. It’s still the best mix of herbs he’s found for regrowing his nails.

That was right before they sent her back to Valentine.

“Ah, well enough about my family,” Gyro says, cutting through the uneasy silence that had settled over the table. “Let’s talk about something else.” He grins, too wide. “Like what you’re gonna do with all that money you won today.”

Johnny stares into the depths of his half-empty beer, and then quickly downs it. He wipes his mouth and shrugs. “I dunno, haven’t really thought about it,” he says, honestly. The alcohol sits heavy in his stomach, which feels like it's twisting over itself. He flags down the waitress and orders a bourbon; it won’t be near as good as the stuff back home, but the taste isn’t what he’s after.

Gyro raises an eyebrow at him from across the table, then says “make that two.” When the waitress walks away, Gyro clears his throat. “Good call on the bourbon. This wine’s barely a step up from swill.”

Johnny says nothing, staring hard at the table, and they lapse into silence until their drinks arrive. He grabs his glass and lifts it to his lips.

“Wait, we should make a toast,” Gyro says, before he can drink any.

“To what?” Johnny rasps, a sense of deja vu taking hold of him.

“To crossing the finish line, of course,” Gyro says quietly. Clink. He taps the edge of his glass against Johnny’s. “And to whatever comes next.”

“Sure.” Johnny downs his drink and tries not to think about snow storms, or race tracks, or the empty apartment waiting for him after this.

“Hey, actually, I thought up a new gag,” Gyro says. “Look at my hand real quick…”

They spend the next few hours there. One bourbon turns into two turns into three, and Johnny forgets about how soon Gyro’s leaving. He forgets about the corpse and Valentine and Lucy. Gyro makes his stupid gags, ones Johnny’s already heard a dozen times, and tells funny stories until Johnny finally cracks and laughs. The alcohol warms him from the inside out, like a fire set beneath his skin, head full of campfire smoke.

At some point, the stage is taken over by a group of musicians who draw in a crowd. It isn’t long before the whole room is full to the brim with people, all cheering and clapping along to an upbeat set fit for a party, which is when Johnny and Gyro decide to call it a night.

When Johnny tries to lift himself into the hotel’s rental wheelchair, he realizes he’s more drunk than he thought. His hands are clumsy, and when he drops his full weight into the seat, it makes his head swim. “Shit,” he says, grabbing the wheels so he doesn’t go rolling off into the crowd.

Gyro bends down next to him, his hair falling like a curtain around his face. “What?”

“Drank too much,” Johnny mutters.

Gyro laughs. “Good!” He says, sounding more than a little tipsy himself. “Means we celebrated right.”

They make their way out of the bar and back to the hotel lobby, where the sound is dampened. It’s deserted except for a bellboy behind the front counter. He doesn’t lift his head when they pass him by, just says “enjoy your night” around a yawn and rubs his eyes. Is it that late? Johnny didn’t realize just how much time had passed, but all the lamps are lit and the windows are opaque with darkness.

“Let’s see…” Gyro mutters to himself. Their hotel keys jingle as he drags them out of his pocket to inspect. “Six…oh four, and six oh five. Right next to each other! And on the top floor.” He grins and waggles his eyebrows at Johnny. “We’re special.”

Johnny believes him until they come to the foot of the grand staircase. The amount of stairs it’ll take to get to the top floor makes him a little dizzy. The idea of crawling his way up there in the state he’s in has him tempted to sleep on the floor by the window instead. You’d think the people running the race would have a little more foresight, but Johnny can’t say he’s surprised that they didn’t. He sighs and grips his armrests so he can slide out of the seat.

A warm hand clasps his wrist and stops him. Johnny stares at it a moment, then lifts his head to look up at Gyro, who’s attached to it. Tall. Why is he so tall? He towers over Johnny like…like a…statue. Or something.

“Want a ride up?” Gyro asks.

“I don’t need help,” Johnny snaps, bristling.

“I know you don’t need it,” Gyro says. He tilts his head, and the flicker of lamp light dances across his face. It catches on his smile, which is soft, his cheeks ruddy with alcohol. “But I want to.”

That smile is enough to make Johnny’s stomach swoop; his face feels hot enough to burn. “You’re drunk too,” he mutters.

“Maaaybe a little.” Gyro pinches his fingers together. “But hey, just think of it as one drunk friend helping another. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna drop you or anything.”

“...Well I wasn’t worried until you said that.”

“Nyohoho!” His smile gets bigger. Stupid. “I promise. Cross my heart.” He makes an ‘x’ over his heart with his finger. “You’ll make it up the stairs in one piece.”

“That ain’t the same as not droppin’ me,” Johnny protests, but it sounds weak even to his own ears. If it were anyone else, he wouldn’t even entertain the idea, but it’s Gyro offering. Not because he feels bad for Johnny, but because he’s drunk, and that’s just what you do when your best friend is drunk—you help him get back to his room.

“Alright,” he concedes. The word’s barely out of his mouth before Gyro bends down and lifts him into his arms with ease, like a groom sweeping up his bride outside a church. The world spins and Johnny throws his arms around Gyro’s neck and—oh, his face is really, really close all of a sudden. He smells like alcohol and beneath that, dirt from the road, sweat from a long day of riding, horse hair. It’s a good thing Johnny’s not so drunk he’s lost all sense, because it’s the only reason he doesn’t shove his face into Gyro’s neck and take a deep breath.

“Next stop,” Gyro says, adjusting Johnny in his arms like he weighs nothing. “A real fucking bed.”

Gyro nearly misses a few steps on the way up, and his shoulder hits the wall a couple times, but he keeps his promise and Johnny makes it to the top floor physically intact. Their rooms sit opposite each other down a long, sparsely lit hallway. There’s a struggle getting the keys from Gyro’s pocket, and he almost does drop Johnny then, giggling stupidly in his drunkenness.

Finally though, he gets the door open and they stumble into the pitch-dark room. When they move towards the bed, Gyro trips over a floorboard, or maybe his own feet, and they crash onto the mattress together. Johnny squawks as his spine twists uncomfortably and he’s partially crushed beneath Gyro’s weight in a tangle of limbs.

“Augh! Get your ass off’a me!” Johnny huffs.

Gyro clumsily gets his elbows under him and laughs, his bourbon breath hot against Johnny’s skin. Gyro tilts his head up. His face is so close that their noses bump. Johnny goes still beneath him, eyes wide, heart skipping out of rhythm. He digs his fingernails into Gyro’s shoulders—oh God, he’s still got his arms around him—and drops his eyes to Gyro’s mouth, his lips. It would be so easy to close the distance, to pull him into the kiss Johnny’s been craving for a long time now. He swallows, and dares to look up, and finds Gyro staring back at him.

The air goes still around them and for a second, Johnny thinks Gyro might be the one to cross the threshold and kiss him.

But then Gyro blinks, slow, drunk. “Whoopsie,” he says, sing-song, and starts to pull back. “Mi spiace. At least I dropped you on the bed.”

Johnny’s heartbeat pulses in his ears, louder than anything, and he shoves Gyro away. Gyro sways with the force and slides off the bed and onto the floor with a drunken giggle, thankfully turning his attention elsewhere. Stupid. Johnny’s never touching alcohol again. If Gyro hadn’t said anything—fuck, he nearly ruined everything.

“You almost killed me,” Johnny complains, grasping at normalcy.

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

The rip of a match strike makes Johnny flinch. A tiny flame flickers in the dark, lighting Gyro’s face for a split second. “Cazzo!” He swears, and the light goes out.

Johnny takes a deep breath to get his nerves under control and rolls onto his side to face him. “The hell are you doin’?”

“What’s it look like?” Gyro asks, affronted, as if Johnny can see what he’s doing in the dark. “I’m lighting this stupid lamp.” He strikes another match and this time seems to go better for him, because a moment later, the warm glow of a kerosene lamp illuminates the room.

“M’just gonna put it out again in a minute,” Johnny mutters, even though he’s wide awake now.

The floorboards creak, and Gyro leans against the bedframe, his back to Johnny. The light catches on his cheekbone and turns his straw hair amber. Johnny’s fingers twitch with the urge to reach out and touch him, to yank on his hair like a little kid desperate for attention. He curls them into his palm instead and clenches his eyes shut.

“Hey Johnny,” Gyro says, after a minute.

“Hm?”

“Thanks.”

“What for?”

Gyro lets out a breath. “I dunno. I just have this feeling like…I wouldn’t be sitting here if it weren’t for you.”

Johnny’s heart thumps against his ribcage. Oh, hell, the reminder is like a bucket of ice water. He tries to stop himself from picturing the many versions of Gyro who didn’t make it, who were riddled with bullets or drowned or bled out into the dirt, but it’s impossible. Forget it, he thinks. He made it this time. The only time that matters. He swallows and says: “Yeah. You would’a come in last place if it wasn’t for me.”

Gyro laughs. “In your dreams! I was always going to win.”

“Whatever you say, man.”

Gyro snorts and says something in Italian.

“English, asshole.” Johnny huffs. “If you’re gonna insult me I wanna know what the hell you’re sayin’.”

“Maybe you should learn Italian and get some culture,” Gyro says with a sniff.

“Yeah, right.” Johnny opens his eyes just to roll them. “The hell am I gonna do with that? You’re gonna fuck off back home and I’m just gonna talk to myself?”

Gyro doesn’t respond.

“And I’m plenty cultured,” Johnny grumbles. “You Europeans think you got the market cornered on culture, but I bet you ain’t never even had barbecue, or listened to blues—”

“Why don’t you go with me?” Gyro says.

“Huh?” Johnny asks. “Go where?”

Gyro turns and rests his chin on his arm at the edge of the bed. “Napoli,” he says, eyes shining in the lamp light. Then he scoffs. “Idiota. Where else?”

The closeness has Johnny’s heart fluttering again, and he pulls himself inward. He blinks at Gyro. “What?”

“What, what?” Gyro parrots. “Come back to Naples with me,” he says, clear as day. “We could…fuck off back there together. It’s a whole ocean away from anyone Valentine might send after us. If he’s holding a grudge, you know.” The corner of his mouth turns up, not quite a smile. “It’s beautiful this time of year, too. And not so…” He gestures to their room, their hotel, the entire city. “Industrial.” He pauses, then says: “I think you’d like it.”

There must be something blocking Johnny’s ears, or maybe he hit his head, or maybe it’s an effect of the alcohol in his system, because there’s no way Gyro just asked him to come back to Italy with him. Right? Right? Johnny stares at him. It’s one thing to give up on chasing the corpse, something Gyro never wanted to do in the first place, and another thing entirely to ask Johnny to go home with him. No one has ever said anything like that to Johnny. No one ever actually wanted him around after he lost his ability to walk, lost his fame, all his money.

“Jeez, quit looking at me like I shot your dog.” Gyro grimaces.

“I ain’t lookin’ at you like nothin’,” Johnny breathes, almost forgetting how to.

“Yeah, you are,” Gyro says. There’s a tension in his body that wasn’t there a minute ago, his shoulders hunched. “It was just an idea. A stupid one, I guess.”

“What? No, no, it ain’t stupid. I just…” Johnny shakes his head. “Don’t you have like…” A whole family, a whole career, an entire life to get back to. Johnny doesn’t know where he’d fit in, if he could, if he even should. “Why…what the hell would you want me hangin’ around for?”

“Well, you are pretty insufferable sometimes,” Gyro says, even as he relaxes visibly. He smiles. “Infuriating most days. Downright unpleasant the rest of the time, but I’m used to all that by now.”

Johnny frowns. “You’re about a hundred times worse than me.” He looks down at his hands, at his chipped nail polish, and thinks about how hard it had been to get here. “Are you serious?” he asks. “Cause if this is some stupid gag—”

“Yes, cuore mio, I’m serious,” Gyro says, sounding exasperated. Then he shuts his mouth with an audible click and turns away, but not before Johnny spots his face blooming red from all the alcohol he drank.

“Quit callin’ me names,” Johnny says with a frown. “Just said I don’t speak any of that Eye-talian, how am I s’posed to get around over there?”

Gyro clears his throat. “All this time together and you haven’t picked up even a little bit?”

“Not like you were teachin’ me nothin’,” Johnny says, feeling overwarm. “Idiota.”

“Ahh, but you’re a fast learner.” Gyro taps his finger against his temple. “You’ll pick it up. Your pronunciation is terrible, but you’ll have me. I’m not going to leave you to fend for yourself.”

“Why?” Johnny asks, before he can think better of it. What does Gyro get out of bringing Johnny along with him? Johnny’s got nothing to offer, especially if they don’t have to worry about enemy Stand users trying to kill them every day.

“Why are you always asking stupid questions?” Gyro rolls his eyes. “We’re…friends,” he goes on, gaze sliding off Johnny and then back again. “Aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” Johnny says quickly. “‘Course.”

“Right,” Gyro nods. “So…just because the race is over doesn’t mean we have to…go our separate ways. At least not right now. If you want—or don't want. To.” Gyro looks pained and rolls his eyes up toward the ceiling. “You get what I’m saying, right?”

“Sorta.”

“Good enough.” Gyro lets out a deep exhale, as if he’d been holding his breath for the past ten minutes. “So, what do you say?”

Johnny chews on his bottom lip. He wants to say yes. He wants to say yes so badly, fuck everything else, but…does he even deserve a chance like that? Gyro’s a good person; even if he can be brash and rude, underneath all that is someone who genuinely cares. Someone not like Johnny at all. What happens if Johnny takes him up on it, goes back with him, just for Gyro to realize how rotten he really is? He already said he regrets leaving Lucy. He argued so hard against it, had only begrudgingly agreed in the end because…because Johnny told him he’d lose the race if he didn’t.

And that’s not even taking into account how Gyro might feel if he found out what someone like Johnny has been thinking about him, all this time.

“Can…” Johnny swallows. “Can I think about it?”

Gyro stares at him in the dim light. “Oh.” He pulls back and slides his arm off the bed. “I mean—fine. Yeah, that’s. Fine. Take all the time you need.”

Silence settles over them. Johnny keeps his mouth shut, expecting Gyro to say more, but he doesn’t.

“Okay,” Johnny says, finally, looking away first. His skin prickles beneath the heat of Gyro’s gaze still on him. “Should probably get some sleep.”

Gyro exhales. “Yeah. You’re right. It’s late.” He gets to his feet, adjusts his hat, clears his throat. “I…guess I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

It’s only then that Johnny remembers that they aren’t sharing a sleeping space. Gyro has a whole room to himself. Two doors between them. He’d gotten so used to sleeping beside Gyro, their bedrolls just a few feet apart, that it’s weird to think about sleeping without him. It must be strange for Gyro, too, because he just stands there for a second before he remembers himself and starts toward the door. He opens it and looks back, the light from the hallway obscuring his face completely.

“Goodnight, Johnny,” he says, and then he steps through the door, and closes it behind him.

Johnny stares at the closed door. Then, he leans over and blows out the lamp. He yanks his hat off and tosses his boots somewhere before burying himself beneath the blankets. He shuts his eyes and tries to get some sleep. He needs it, he really does, but his heart’s still going a mile a minute. That soft look on Gyro’s face when he asked Johnny to go home with him burns the back of his eyelids

He tries to picture the two of them in Italy, walking down a narrow cobblestone street in some crowded market. Maybe they’re buying groceries for dinner. Gyro’s going to cook him some proper Italian food, and—he racks his brain, trying to remember what little he knows about the country, what it looks like. There’s boats, aren’t there, the little ones in the canals? Maybe they’d take one, go slow along the water and watch the waves of the ocean sparkle beneath the…

The vision of Italy vanishes, replaced by the tide coming in too far, seafoam lapping at his feet. Johnny looks down. He’s standing up, his toes buried in the sand. Something catches his eye, and when he looks, it’s…a person, floating face down in the water. His body moves on its own and a creeping dread follows him into the shallows. It’s not Gyro, his mind echoes, it’s not, he’s fine. Whoever this is is much smaller, dainty, almost like…Johnny reaches for them before he can stop himself, rolls them over in the water, and his stomach drops.

It’s Lucy. Her eyes are wide and blue as the sky, and her stare cuts into him like a knife.

Johnny jerks into awareness and sucks in a ragged breath. Every inch of his skin is damp with sweat. His clothes stick to him, suffocating. He must have fallen asleep, but it couldn’t have been for very long. It’s still dark, and the smell of the snuffed out lamp lingers in the air.

A dream. Just a dream—except it wasn’t just a dream. Lucy’s dead, and it is his fault. Just like with Nick, just like with Gyro, never holding the knife but always there, always the real reason, in the end. He’d been so desperate to free himself from the loops, to save Gyro, that he threw the only other person who gave a shit about him to the wolves. Was it worth it? He wanted to think so, all day he’d been hoping it was worth it. Gyro’s voice drifts through his head. Come back to Naples with me.

“Fuck.” Johnny hides his face in the pillow. It had to be worth it, didn’t it? It’s too late to take it back. It has to be worth it.

Sleep doesn’t come back easy as he lays there and tries to convince himself. He’s too hot, the blankets are too heavy. Each time he tries to get comfortable, he just can’t. It must be hours before he drifts off again, finally, and there’s nothing peaceful about it.

–

A warm sunbeam hits Johnny’s face and pulls him from the dark. He keeps his eyes shut, shielding himself from the brightness; he isn’t ready to get up yet. His body feels heavy in a way that makes him want to stay in bed, like he hadn’t actually slept at all. And why shouldn’t he stay put? For the first time in a long time, there’s nowhere to be, no bad guys to fight, no finish line to get to.

“Hey, Johnny.” Gyro’s voice, just as rich and warm as it had been when he’d sat by Johnny’s bed last night. He sounds close by and far away all at once. There’s a hazy sort of softness around the edges of his words, like he’d followed Johnny out of a dream.

“Mm?”

“I was just thinking,” Gyro says.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Johnny mutters.

“Ha ha, you’re a real comedian.” He can practically hear Gyro rolling his eyes. “Cacacazzo.”

Johnny snorts.

“What I was thinking,” Gyro goes on, “is that we should share secrets.”

Johnny squints one eye open, then the other. The sunlight catches on his eyelashes and turns the world briefly into a kaleidoscope of colors: green, purple, blue, brown. He blinks, and everything comes into focus. Gyro looks at him with mild annoyance.

“Everybody’s got some, right?” he says.

It’s like getting tossed into a lake in January. A cold shock, ice in your veins, lungs constricting like you think you might drown. Johnny’s fingers tighten around Slow Dancer’s reins instead of a blanket. His ears ring, muffling whatever Gyro says next. He’s back here again. The train, the corpse, Valentine. The decisions he made yesterday—not yesterday, not any day at all—changed nothing. Abandoning Lucy, the finish line, the hotel bar, Gyro’s offer to take him to Naples…none of it…none of it happened.

Some vile combination of horror and self-pity crawls up the back of his throat like nausea, and for a second he thinks he really is going to be sick. He made the wrong choice. He always makes the wrong choice. Giving up wasn’t a way out, it was just a longer detour back to the start.

“...well, I said it. You’d better not tell anyone.” Gyro’s voice comes back to him in a rush. “I mean it. Not even my siblings know that name.”

“Julius,” Johnny says vacantly.

“Don’t say it!” Gyro yelps. “And don’t make fun of me. It’s not like I had any say in the matter.”

Gyro has no idea what he just lost. He hasn’t won the race, he isn’t going home, he has nothing to look forward to except an execution by Valentine’s one-man firing squad. At least Lucy’s alive, Johnny thinks, somewhat hysterically. The only bright spot.

“Quit holding out on me,” Gyro whines, oblivious to Johnny’s turmoil. “I know you’ve got something good, come on.”

A secret. Johnny’s got lots of those by now. Where to even start?

I’m trapped in the same day watching you die over and over again.

I tried to leave Lucy to die just so I could get out of it.

My brother died because of me.

I was being a stupid asshole when I got shot and I deserved it.

I deserved to end up like this.

I deserve every bad thing that’s ever happened to me.

I deserve this.

He meets Gyro’s eyes and another secret crawls up the back of his throat like bile, more a surge of feeling than anything—he hasn’t brought himself to say the actual words, even in his head—but they’re there now, rushing through him like a torrent. I like you, he thinks. I really like you. Gyro sitting across from him at their campfire. I always want to be around you. Gyro breaking silences with his stupid gags and the way he looks at Johnny afterwards, like a dog wagging his tail, hoping he did good. I love your stupid jokes and tacky gold teeth. Gyro, holding Johnny’s jaw with all the tenderness of a lover, as he sews him back together. I love that you whistle in the morning and that you’re particular about your coffee and you always make enough for me too. Gyro, last night, carrying him up the stairs and to bed and asking Johnny to come home with him. I love you. I love you I love you IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou—

“Well?” Gyro drawls, one eyebrow quirked. “I’m on the edge of my saddle here.”

“I…” Johnny starts, finding it impossible to look away from him. “I really…” The rush of metal, steel against steel, Gyro’s alcohol-red face smiling stupidly at him, Gyro’s body lying limp and bloodied on the ground, Lucy overtaken by the corpse, Valentine pulling an old handkerchief from his pocket. Johnny laughs, a wet hiccuping sound. “I really fucking hate trains.”

–

Johnny goes through the motions of chasing after Valentine. He follows Gyro down the tracks and he shoots when he gets the chance and shouts when he ought to, but his heart’s not really in it. It’s like everything is happening to someone else, like Johnny’s not really there.

He can feel his body tire as he rides hard. He feels the sharp, sudden pain of losing his hand, and the dull throbbing of his body as he chokes on his own breath, but it’s like there’s a sheet between him and the experience that keeps it from being real. At least until they get to the part where Valentine cuts Gyro down. That doesn’t hurt any less. No, it’s a gaping, festering wound, the kind you’d see on an animal who needs to be put out of its misery. The pops of gunfire are louder than ever, even from a hundred yards away.

The spin, the deal, the hidden gun, the end, it all goes by. The tide goes out and Gyro’s gone, and Johnny just…sits there, staring at the water as if in a trance. Lucy’s voice hovers around his peripheral, but he can’t understand what she’s saying.

What now?

What is he supposed to do now? Johnny didn’t think he could get any lower, but this is a canyon and he’s trapped at the bottom. He feels like he’s back in the hospital room right after he’d been shot. Helpless and useless and worthless and like he wants to die just to make it stop make it stop make it stop.

On the damp ground lies the corpse, abandoned in all its tarnished glory. Complete now, it looks less mysterious and more like what it is: a dead man who belongs six feet under. That fucking thing. What did Valentine say they were chasing in another universe? Diamonds? Johnny wishes he were there instead, anywhere that corpse wasn’t. None of this would have happened if that fucking thing didn’t exist.

The deep, yawning misery turns icy, all jagged edges stabbing at his insides like daggers. Johnny claws at the earth, feels it jam beneath his fingernails, and rushes forward. He trips over his wobbly feet and lands in a heap beside the corpse.

“What fucking good are you?” he hisses, shaking it with force. “Worthless,” he spits. “Useless.” Johnny’s eyes burn as his vision turns blurry. “What am I supposed to do?” he asks as tears spill down his face. “How do I make it stop?”

The corpse doesn’t answer him. It doesn’t move. It doesn’t glow with some otherworldly light or envelop Johnny with its protection. It just lays there like the dead thing that it is.

“Aren’t you supposed to help people!?” Johnny shouts. “You helped him!”

He curls inward and sobs. “I don’t care,” he cries into his hand. “I don’t care about this.” He digs his fingernails into the meat of his thigh. “I don’t care anymore! Take it back if you have to—just make it stop, and bring him back. Please, please, bring him back. Let me keep him, please.”

The air goes still, and all at once Johnny is plunged into darkness.

If your heart is wavering, Johnny Joestar…do not shoot.

Johnny blinks.

Warm sunlight hits his face. Birds chirp somewhere above him. He’s back in the clearing again, unsure of what, exactly, had sent him here this time. Maybe Diego snuck up and killed him, or maybe the corpse decided it’d had enough of his complaining and sent him away. Not that it really matters. He’s back, and Gyro’s alive, and the train is on its way.

“I was thinking we should share secrets,” Gyro says. He shoots Johnny a golden smile, charming and disarming all at once, like he’s fully prepared to convince him it’s a good idea. “Everyone’s got something they hide from people, right?”

He sighs and lifts his head. “Why?” he asks. What’s the point? He’s got an idea, but realizes he hasn’t actually ever asked Gyro about it. Didn’t really seem important before, probably isn’t now, but he wants to hear it; it’s not like they’ve got anything better to do.

Gyro opens his mouth and takes a breath like he’s about to speak, then closes it again. It takes him a second to try again. “Well, I…” He scratches at his jaw, at those dumb little squares of facial hair he’s trying to pass off as a real beard. “This is kind of like…the end. You know? Chasing after the corpse, finishing the race…it’s all over after this.”

“Yeah,” Johnny says. “I know.”

“However it turns out,” Gyro continues, “I guess I just want something to remember. Something…” He looks away, oddly reserved. “Important. I don’t know, it just feels like a good moment to get it out.”

While you still have the chance, Johnny thinks.

“You Americans are capable of sharing, right?” Gyro asks with some levity.

“Not really.”

Gyro scoffs. “I’m clearly asking the wrong person. You wouldn’t know how to share if it bit you in the ass.”

“Wouldn’t feel it if it did.”

“Ha!” Gyro laughs. “Johnny Joestar, was that a joke?”

Johnny bites the inside of his cheek in an attempt to keep his mouth from curving upward, but Gyro catches it anyway.

“Nyohoho! I wasn’t sure you had it in you.” He grins.

“Shut it,” Johnny says. “Get back to…whatever the hell you were goin’ on about.”

“You shitty brat,” Gyro mutters. “All I’m saying is there’s no fun in having secrets if you don’t have someone to share them with.”

“Not much of a secret if you go around tellin’ everyone.”

“I’m not telling everyone, I’m telling you,” Gyro corrects him. “And you’re gonna tell me something too. On the off chance that this all goes horribly wrong and I have to write your obituary, I’m gonna need something juicy to put in there.”

“Oh, so you’re gonna tell everyone my secrets?” Johnny raises an eyebrow.

“Only if you die!” Gyro says. “Then you’re not around to know that I told anyone, are you?”

“Asshole.”

Gyro grins again, like he’s proud of it. It softens after a moment though, and his expression settles into something a little more serious. “I guess I just don’t want any regrets. Don’t want to…” he trails off and looks away, his brow wrinkling. “Leave things unsaid.”

“Well go on, then,” Johnny urges. He’s lost track of how many times Gyro’s told him his real name, but it’s one of the few good things from the loops; a piece of Gyro just for him. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of hearing him say it. “You brought it up, so you go first.”

Gyro rolls his eyes. “Now you’re interested. Fine.” He takes a breath and fiddles with the brim of his hat. “Gyro’s not my real name. It’s more like a pet name, or a nickname. My real name, the one my father gave me…” He looks to the side, away from Johnny, his face turning the same shade of pink as every other time he shared this, the same as when he’d drunkenly told Johnny to come back home with him. “It’s Julius,” he says, looking pained. “Julius Caesar Zeppeli.”

“Like that Roman emperor,” Johnny says with a nod. Then: “Your dad named you after a guy who got stabbed to death. Like, famously.”

“He was a very important military and political figure!” The mock irritation melts away in an instant and he laughs. “Before the stabbing! Don’t ask me. My father is a very serious man and a strong lineage is important to him.” He looks at Johnny again. “Look, not even my siblings know that name, so you’d better not tell anyone, alright?”

“It’s nice,” Johnny says, when Gyro doesn’t immediately press him for a secret of his own. “Your name.” It doesn’t really suit Gyro—the man is way too eccentric to fit such a stern name—but Johnny likes the way it sounds. Likes that Gyro’s real name starts with a ‘J’, just like his. “Julius. I like it.”

Gyro’s eyes widen, like he can’t tell if Johnny’s being serious or just yanking his chain. “I—” he stammers, “I think you’ve got terrible taste. But that’s nothing new.” He clears his throat. “We’ll agree to disagree then. Promise you won’t tell anyone.”

There’s no one on earth Johnny wants to share his piece of Gyro with. “Scout’s honor.”

“Alright, quit stalling,” Gyro says. The corners of his mouth turn upward. “Quid pro quo. Let’s hear it.”

“Lemme think a minute,” Johnny says, even though it doesn’t really matter. Gyro won’t remember after the loop plays out. Johnny could…well, he could say anything. Do anything.

I guess I just don’t want any regrets.

Johnny rubs his suddenly sweaty palm against his thigh. He looks at Gyro then, really looks at him, as he exists in this exact moment. His eyes are bright, and green, but the sunlight reveals shimmering flecks of blue that you’d never notice if you weren’t looking for them. His hair is the longest Johnny’s ever seen on a man, shiny and yellow as a wheat field; he can picture Gyro sitting by their campfire and combing out the tangles with his fingers. He’s tall, and strong, as he sits atop Valkyrie—and it’s hard, then, to remember how small he looks when Valentine cuts him down, how weak.

Johnny swallows as his pulse quickens. I could, he thinks. He could. He wants to, even if it’s just the one time. At least once. If it turns out badly, if Gyro hates him for it, it doesn’t matter because they’ll be back here in no time and Gyro will be none the wiser. He won’t have to know, not ever.

“Earth to Johnny,” Gyro says. Johnny’s eyes drop to his mouth, his lips, his faded green lipstick. “Are you trying to come up with a lie?” He sounds annoyed. “That’s not really in the spirit of—”

Johnny grabs him by the front of his shirt and yanks him into a kiss.

Gyro’s lips are warm and soft, and a little chapped, but most noticeably, they’re not moving. Johnny pulls back just as quickly as he’d dragged Gyro in, pushing him away instead of pulling him closer. His heart’s in his throat, and it’s not like he’d expected anything, obviously, except maybe a punch in the mouth. The lack of any response at all feels so much worse.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand—a smudge of blue and green—Johnny turns away before he can see the look on Gyro’s face. The train is close enough to hear now, and that’s as good a distraction as any.

He clears his throat. “Don’t put that in any damn newspaper.”

Gyro doesn’t say anything. The train comes.

“We should go,” Johnny says, readying to spur Slow Dancer on.

“Wait.”

If your heart is wavering, Johnny Joestar…do not shoot.

It plays in his head like an echo (why, why is he remembering that now). If your heart is wavering, Johnny Joestar…do not shoot. If your heart is wavering…do not shoot. Do not shoot.

Do not shoot.

But Johnny’s heart isn’t wavering. He’s already taken the shot. He has to shoot.

He glances back at Gyro, just long enough to catch the wide-eyed, stunned expression on his face. Johnny has to shoot, but Gyro doesn’t. “Be careful, alright?” he says, even though he knows it won’t matter. “D4C is no joke. Saving Lucy is our main goal.” Johnny won’t leave her behind again, no matter how many times this day repeats. “Don’t do anything stupid. If Valentine gets in close…”

Why is he even bothering? After that kiss, he hopes their reset comes, and it comes quick. It’s like a compulsion: he always wants Gyro to be safe, will always try to save him, or at the least, hope he saves himself. “Protect yourself first. Don’t throw your steel ball unless you know you can kill him,” he says. “Unless you’re one hundred percent—no—one hundred and one percent sure.”

“Johnny—”

“Only if you know you can, okay?” Johnny presses.

“Wait a minute, dammit—”

Johnny digs his heels into Slow Dancer’s flanks and she breaks into a run. The wind whips against his face as her hoofbeats pound the earth, with Gyro and Valkyrie right behind him.

It goes the way Johnny expects it to, the way it always does. Johnny loses his hand and Gyro throws a steel ball to save him from losing his life too. At least he can put that in his back pocket: Gyro doesn’t hate him enough to let him die. Valentine gets pulled toward the train and Johnny gets back on his horse, holding the steel ball against his chest.

There’s Lucy, a splash of pink against the landscape, already on the back of Gyro’s horse. He’s got her, and he’s making distance, as much as he can. There’s something different this time, though. He stops and turns, long before the ocean starts to come in, long before Johnny can close much distance himself. Johnny can’t hear what he and Valentine are saying from so far away, just sees Gyro’s mouth moving, and then—there it is. Valentine cuts him down for what must be the hundredth time. A numbing cold builds in Johnny’s chest and spreads to his limbs, all the way down to his fingers and toes. He knew it would turn out like this, doesn’t know why he thought it might not, even for a second.

He could give up then, let Valentine send him back early, but—this time, Johnny wants to finish it. Maybe he needs to figure out this half of things first. Maybe Johnny’s meant to keep going alone, to find a way to beat Diego, to get the corpse back for good, before he can even think about saving Gyro. No one will ever be safe if he doesn’t, Lucy will never be safe, and it was stupid of him to think he’d ever be okay with that.

Johnny faces off with Valentine, hits him with the Infinite Spin, and when he comes back from whatever universes he’d been crawling through, Johnny doesn’t hesitate to put him down.

And when Diego steals the corpse, Johnny chases him down with a fire he hasn’t felt in some time. He’s faster than he’s ever been as they race through the streets toward the finish line. When they’re nearly there, Johnny readies a nail bullet and gets in close. The Infinite Spin courses up through Slow Dancer and into him, and he takes aim, fires—but Diego’s ready for it. Time stops, and a bullet punches through Johnny’s neck. He loses his grip on Slow Dancer’s reins and crashes into the ground behind her, spits blood onto the pavement, but…his vision isn’t darkening just yet. Johnny still has some fight in him.

Then, Diego turns the Infinite Spin back on him and it’s nothing like anything he’s ever felt. The world spins and so does he, like every bone, every muscle, every atom of his being is twisting in on itself. Diego leaves him there, and Johnny thinks, is this it? Is this the end? He has no way to reverse the self-inflicted spin. Is he going to spiral out of existence, just like Valentine, not even a soul left behind? Would he still get a reset, or was this his last chance to make things right…? He closes his eyes and thinks about Gyro; at least he knows this time—knew—how Johnny felt, before the end.

“Johnny!” someone shouts his name over the thunder of hoofbeats. Through his dimming vision, Johnny sees Steven Steel riding straight towards him. He furrows his brow, unsure if he’s imagining him at first. Wasn’t he back on the train…? Steven’s hand, though, is warm and solid when he reaches for Johnny, when he grabs on tight and hauls him onto the back of his horse. The sudden vertigo makes Johnny’s head spin, worse than before, but—it’s enough. The golden rectangle shows itself, in the clouds, in the movement of the other horses, in the crowd around them.

Johnny spins up another bullet and puts his fingers to his own heart.

–

Sunlight hits Johnny’s face. It burns against his closed eyelids, which are heavier than ever. He clenches his eyes shut to try and keep it out. His head feels like it’s stuffed to the brim with cotton, smothering his ability to think straight. He isn’t ready to face the day, this day, again. Not yet. Not ever. So he stays still and hopes the universe will let him float here in the darkness for a little while longer.

A creak cuts through the haze Johnny’s trying to hide himself in, like someone stepping on a squeaky floorboard. Then, slow and measured footsteps, the click of heels on wood. Muffled voices, someone coughing. Johnny furrows his brow. Is he hearing things now? As if he doesn’t have enough problems. He notices then, that there are sounds missing, too: the birdsong, the gentle rush of the wind, Gyro’s voice.

Johnny pries his eyes open and finds himself staring at the dusty wooden rafters of a ceiling. No trees, no grass, no train tracks. Sunlight shines through a cracked window, framed by dark blue curtains swaying gently in the breeze. What the hell? Where…?

“Oh, you’re awake! Good morning.”

Johnny whips his head toward the unfamiliar voice. A woman in a long dress and apron steps toward him, carrying a small metal tray. A nurse, he realizes as his chest seizes with panic. He bolts upward and nearly tumbles off the rickety little bed, his legs tangling in the thin sheet covering him. There’s a whole row of empty beds beside him. Hospital? His pulse spikes.

“Stay away from me,” he says—or at least, that’s what he tries to say. It comes out raspy and makes his throat ache like he’s fresh off the worst coughing fit of his life. He slaps a hand against his neck and—ow, fuck—finds the scratchy material of a bandage wrapped tight around it.

“Mr. Joestar, please lay down,” the nurse says as she sets her tray down on a nearby table. “You're going to upset your injuries.”

“I said,” Johnny wheezes, “stay the fuck away from me.” He grips the side of the bed so he can drag himself out of it; he needs to get out of here, back to the clearing, back to Gyro. He needs to get back, so he can try again to get it right.

“Johnny!”

Johnny freezes. The nurse, the hospital room, the desperation to run, it all falls away as Gyro steps through the doorframe.

“Mr. Zeppeli,” the nurse says, annoyed, turning her attention toward him. “You should definitely still be in bed.”

Gyro steps past her and waves her off. He’s not wearing his usual get-up, instead dressed in a plain, loose-fitting shirt and a pair of trousers; even his hat’s missing. He slides into the chair beside Johnny’s bed. So close, all of a sudden. Johnny’s breath hitches, and he gets a whiff of antiseptic and medicine and sick. Gyro’s hair is lank and dull, tangled noticeably in a few spots, like he hadn’t had a chance to brush it in days. There are deep, purple bags beneath his bloodshot eyes, and yet…he’s smiling, no, grinning, as brightly as Johnny’s ever seen.

“Mr. Zeppeli,” the nurse says again. “I need to—”

Gyro shoots her a narrow look over his shoulder. “I got it, just give us a minute.”

“The doctor said—”

“I don’t care what the doctor said. Get out,” Gyro snaps.

The nurse huffs and stalks out of the room, and then it’s just the two of them.

“Morphine,” Gyro says.

“Huh?”

Gyro points toward the tray the nurse left behind, the needle and glass vial sitting on it. “She was going to give you another dose. You need it?”

Johnny drops his eyes and catches sight of a scab in the crook of his elbow, where that nurse must’ve stabbed him while he was out. He shakes his head.

Gyro nods and sinks a little into the chair. “You,” he says, “were damn lucky.” He gestures toward Johnny’s neck. “That bullet didn’t hit anything vital. A centimeter over…” He pinches his fingers together, barely a hair’s width between them. “And you wouldn’t be sitting here.” His smile returns, tight around the corners. “Guess you have someone watching out for you.”

The corpse, Johnny can’t help but think, but no, the corpse isn’t his ally. He swallows and feels the ache in his throat. “What…what’s going on?”

Gyro drags a hand down his face and then pushes his hair back with a sigh. “We’re in New York, at the hospital, but I think you figured that much out already. Valentine’s gone. Dead. Diego too. Both of them, uh—the other one, and this one.”

Johnny frowns. “How?” That last thing he can remember is…is shooting himself, to try and stop the spin.

“Lucy, if you can believe it. She’s clever. You remember how the stuff Valentine drags in from other universes can’t touch?” Gyro doesn’t wait for Johnny to answer. “Well, Lucy followed the other Diego to that,” he waves his hand, “underground safe, and she brought a piece of this Diego with her. So, you know…” He mimics an explosion with his hands, sound effect and all.

Johnny presses his hand to his temple as a wave of dizziness washes over him. Is that true? Is Diego really gone? Is it…is it over? He’s alive, Gyro’s alive, Lucy’s alive, and waking up in the hospital is completely new, like time is actually moving forward again. Johnny glances at Gyro; at his eyes, his hairline, the curve of his mouth, like he might find something off about him, something that will break the illusion. But he looks the same as always.

“Are you real?” He rasps. His hands begin to shake, and he fists the sheet in his lap.

Gyro barks out a laugh, then groans and clutches his chest. “Ow. What the hell kind of question is that? Of course I’m real.”

“I saw you die.” Johnny grimaces. “Valentine killed you. He sliced you open. I saw it, over and over again.”

“Tch.” Gyro rubs a thumb across his collarbone, over the bandages that peak out from beneath his shirt collar. “It was a near thing, yeah, that fucker. Only the one time, though.” He quirks an eyebrow. “You did hit your head pretty hard on the pavement. Hey, how many fingers am I holding up?”

“He shot you,” Johnny snaps. He smacks Gyro’s hand aside; his heart thumps at the solidness of it.

“Hurt like a bitch, too. Look at this.” Gyro yanks up the hem of his shirt to show off his stomach. Johnny winces at the sight of the deep, purple bruising spilled across his skin like an old wine stain. “That bastard. Kinda wish we could bring him back just so I could kill him again.”

“Don’t say that,” Johnny says, his heartrate skyrocketing. Don’t put me back there. Gyro’s alive, he’s alive, and solid, and real, and…oh, God. This is the Gyro Johnny kissed, isn’t it? It just had to be this time, didn’t it? When Johnny had gone and done something so fucking stupid.

Does Gyro hate him for it? Is he building up to telling Johnny to fuck off? Thanks for the help during the race, but you crossed a line and I never want to see your face again.

Gyro drops his shirt and looks contrite. “Sorry. Shit, Johnny, I thought you were a goner. When they told me Diego shot you in the neck…” He swallows. “Figured the next time I saw you would be in a coffin.”

Or…maybe Gyro’s just going to gloss over it and pretend it didn’t happen. Maybe he’s giving Johnny an out and allowing him to keep at least some of his dignity. Johnny should…should probably take it; it would be the easy thing to do, the smart thing.

“I…” Johnny hesitates. “I still don’t understand how you’re alive.”

“It’s because of you,” Gyro says.

“What?” Johnny furrows his brow in confusion.

“What you said, you know, before.” Gyro clears his throat. “When we were waiting for the train, after…uh.” His face goes a little pink.

Johnny’s chest tightens. A million excuses sit on the tip of his tongue: tensions were running high, I thought we were going to die, I wasn’t thinking clearly… But ultimately, he can’t bring himself to say any of them. Back when he thought everything was over, Johnny had been glad he kissed Gyro, relieved even. He wanted him to know how he felt. He doesn’t want to make excuses. He doesn’t regret it; whether it was the right thing to do or not, if Gyro hates him…he won’t take it back.

“You said not to shoot Valentine if I wasn’t sure I could kill him,” Gyro says. “So I didn’t, at least not the second time.” He grins. “He caught me by surprise, for sure, but when he pulled out that gun, I still had a steel ball to protect myself with—and look! No holes! No organs spilling out! Just some bruises and a few cracked ribs, and those will heal up in no time.”

Thinking back, Johnny can’t actually remember if he’d seen any blood spray when Gyro went down. He hadn’t really been in the best state of mind, so he could have missed it, but…

Gyro pats Johnny on the arm, then wraps his fingers around his wrist. “You saved my life, Johnny. Thank you.”

Johnny's pulse jumps. He swallows, and his eyes start to sting.

“And I’m damn glad you did,” Gyro says. “Because if I kicked the bucket before I got to do this, I would’ve been pissed.” He cradles Johnny’s face in his hands, brushes his thumbs over his wet cheeks and kisses him.

Johnny’s eyes widen. Gyro’s lips are soft and warm against his, but it’s nothing like that awkward kiss Johnny had forced on him before. For one, Gyro is doing the kissing this time—returning Johnny’s kiss—and that alone has Johnny struggling to breathe. Johnny clings to him and kisses back. Every moment of every day they spent together over the last few months, Johnny had been thinking about this. After every hard-won battle and devastating loss, Johnny had wanted to do this. After Sugar Mountain, when they’d shared that toast in the snow, he wished they could do this.

Johnny feels Gyro’s mouth curl upward and licks his way inside, unable to swallow the needy sound that falls out of him. Gyro sucks on his tongue and stabs Johnny’s cheek with the sharp point of his nose in their attempt to close any and all distance between them. It’s not enough, not for Johnny; he wants to break Gyro’s ribcage wide open and crawl inside him, build a nest around his heart and never leave.

When Gyro goes to pull away again, Johnny tries to chase him, is stopped only by Gyro’s hand on his chest. His face is flushed bright red, breathing coming out more like a wheeze and—right, he’s hurt, Johnny shouldn’t be pushing him so hard. Johnny stays put and sucks in a breath of much needed air himself; he swallows the spit in his mouth, Gyro’s spit (which should be disgusting, but isn’t), and finds himself staring into those bright green eyes again.

“You…” he starts. His skin is on fire, burning him from the inside out. “You…?” It feels so stupid and childish to ask if Gyro likes him but that heat has cooked the sense right out of him.

“Me.” Gyro waggles his eyebrows. His lipstick’s smudged all over, what was left of Johnny’s mixing with it to make a muddy turquoise. “I think that was better than our first kiss, don’t you? It’s actually embarrassing how bad that was. I just sat there like a dead fish! But I couldn’t believe you did that. I was in shock, so forgive me, okay?”

Gyro doesn’t hate him. He’s just stupid. They’re a pair of idiots. Johnny sniffles, and realizes he’s crying again, big fat tears dripping onto Gyro’s hands.

Gyro winces. “Oh shit, was it bad? Worse than the first one?”

“No,” Johnny mutters and wipes his eyes. “That ain’t it.”

“What, then?” Gyro brushes Johnny’s hair back, tucks it behind his ear. Johnny can’t help but lean into his touch.

“It’s just…” Johnny laughs, half a sob. “It’s been a really long fuckin’ day.”

“Johnnyyyy,” Gyro whines. “It’s like eight in the morning, what the hell are you talking about?”

Johnny shakes his head. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Johnny,” Gyro says, sounding a bit more serious. “Amore mio, we’ve got all the time in the world.” There’s a beat of silence. “You can tell me if the kiss was bad. I promise I won’t be upset.”

“Pfft.” Johnny snorts. Then: “what the hell, did you just call me an eel?”

“What?” Gyro looks like Johnny had just insulted his mother. “I said amore,” he says, laying his accent on real thick. “Not moray, you fucking neanderthal.”

“The hell is the difference?”

“It’s a whole world of difference!”

“Uhmoreay,” Johnny says.

“Amore,” Gyro insists.

“Ahmorahy.”

“A-mo-re.”

“Aymoray.”

“Now you’re doing it on purpose!”

Johnny bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. “Alright,” he says, “what’s it mean then? I thought I told you to stop callin’ me names I can’t understand.”

Gyro gives him a look like he’s the stupidest asshole on the planet. He sniffs and turns his nose up. “You’ll just have to figure that out on your own,” he says.

“And just how the hell am I supposed to do that?” Johnny drawls, raising an eyebrow. “You’re the only Eye-talian I know.”

“Neapolitan,” Gyro insists.

“And there ain’t exactly a boatload of foreigners hangin’ around in Kentucky.”

“Johnny—”

“Pretty sure the only book we got that isn’t in English is a copy of the bibl—”

“Johnny!” Gyro slaps his hand over Johnny’s mouth. “Shut up for a minute!”

“That’s real rich, comin’ from you,” Johnny says, muffled.

When Gyro doesn’t move his hand, Johnny bites him.

“Ow!” Gyro yanks his hand back and shakes it out. “What are you, some kind of animal?”

“Some kinda,” Johnny agrees.

“Well behave for five seconds, alright?” Gyro rubs his palm with a wince. Big baby. Johnny didn’t bite him that hard. “I’m trying to—to say something and you’re really shitting on the moment, asshole.”

“Go on then,” Johnny says. “You started it, but whatev—”

“Come to Naples with me,” Gyro says all at once.

“Oh.”

Gyro leans in. “It’s a pretty fast trip now,” he says. “Two weeks by boat, if that. You could come for just a little while, like a vacation, and then if you hate it, get on another boat back here, no big deal.” He’s talking fast, like he doesn’t want Johnny to get a word in edgewise. “Although, if you come away from Naples hating it then I don’t know if you can be helped. And it would make me look like an awful host. They’d probably take away my citizenship—”

“Gyro.” Johnny grabs his hand. “Stop.”

Gyro shuts his mouth. His eyes drop to their hands and flick back up again.

“Ask me again,” Johnny says.

“Johnny.” Gyro breathes his name out like he’s been holding it in all this time. He turns his hand palm up and laces their fingers together, runs his thumb across Johnny’s knuckles. “Come home with me.”

And Johnny smiles, and squeezes Gyro’s hand, and says: “Yes.”