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Giorno is nervous. Not very, of course, and it thrums subtle and deep underneath his layers— tailored cream wool, light enough for the neapolitan spring heat, gauzy cotton loose underneath and unbuttoned to reveal the heavy gold stacked warm at the hollow of his throat. All of his favorites, picked up in Milan over the winter. In sunlight, the shoals of gems catch and throw light like the sun on water.
They help with the nervousness— the weight like a good uniform, the light they shed, the message that the perfectly fitted wool and 18 karat gold send. He doesn't lie, as a principle: he is, still, at the heart of it, the heart where the nervousness lives, a child from a rotting apartment in Rione Sanità. It is extremely pleasant to wear many millions of lira in topaz and emeralds.
He should not be this nervous. They've been liasoning with the Speedwagon Foundation for the past six months. He's talked privately with the director four times already. He's met his… relation, Dr. Kujo, in the past month, which, while not pleasant… they are both alive. Dr. Kujo expressed no interest in changing this. He is content to leave the matter where it rests.
This next meeting is, however, an extension of the previous ones. Giorno is not particularly sure what role Dr. Kakyoin plays in the foundation. He is not particularly sure what role he plays in relation to Dr. Kujo, for Passione's continued relationship with the foundation to be contingent on Dr. Kakyoin's approval. One would expect that authority to come from Dr. Kujo, the heir apparent to the family line for all that he prefers keeping the Japanese surname.
He is unsure if the decision is indicative of Dr. Kujo deferring to Dr. Kakyoin on the matter. The matter of… himself, and whether he should be put down for the crimes of his biological father, or whether he is evidently not the hereditary recipient of his biological father's evil and can be allowed to remain. He remains mildly convinced that nobody on the Foundation's board has heard of genetics. Possibly, they're all catholic.
Regardless, the thought unsettles him. Dr. Kujo did not seem like the type of man to defer.
The meeting will be fine. He would prefer it if Dr. Kakyoin is less like Dr. Kujo and more like the rest of the foundation's directors— affable, hostile, easily cowed, easily influenced. Unlikely, given what he's seen, but he can handle another Kujo if he must.
He sighs. Takes a moment to rest his head in his hands, carefully avoiding his coiffed hair and fresh makeup, massages the building headache at his temples. It is deeply, deeply unpleasant to be seeking approval from grown adults as to whether he should fucking be alive again. What an irony fate has.
His eyes slide shut almost involuntarily, and he lets a deep sigh gust out of his lungs as he feels Gold's warm touch against his back, arms sliding around to pull him into a hug. Their face tucks into the side of his neck and he leans into it, feeling the exhaustion licking around him slowly pushed back. They're worried about him. They're worried about this. They're always worried. There's a world where he sends Mista to shoot Dr. Kakyoin and the rest of the Foundation leadership in the head and curls up to take a nap instead, Gold tells him, eyes big and liquid.
They regard him sadly in the mirror when he pulls away, and Giorno can't help the little giggle that escapes his throat. "It's always going to be this, hmm? It's always going to be us? As long as you don't start hitting me, okay. That might be a bit more of a problem, but we can deal with this."
He gets a dirty, dirty look from where they're tucking stray hairs behind his ears and correcting the angle of each of his earrings and fixing his collar. They would never do that. They would never hurt him.
One of his alexandrite studs turns into a carrion beetle and falls from his ear to trundle down his sleeve. He brushes it off into his palm, where it continues to trundle, unbothered, and laughs again, the weight of the world momentarily dissipated in the face of Gold Experience's familiar comfort. "Alright, alright. I'm sorry. Not a very nice joke. May I have my earring back, please?"
The antennae wiggle and it shifts back into gold leaves surrounding blue stone.
"Thank you, Gold. Love you."
Cold fingers pluck the stud from his palm and slide it back through his earlobe. "Not quite."
GER fits the earring back on snugly, then unthreads a dangling drop pearl set in diamonds from its neighbor to replace it with a teardrop of sardonyx. From Venice, if he remembers correctly. He sets the original back in its velvet box and sits on the top of his vanity table, knees bracketing Giorno. Takes up most of the room on it. Looks down at Giorno, face so impassive that Giorno could still be looking in the mirror.
He doesn't let his expression change. "Thank you, Requiem. You've been well?"
GER doesn't sigh, exactly, but Giorno feels a boredom and irritation that he doesn't think is his own. "Bored, mostly. So many people want to hurt you, Giogio, and none of them are any fun. This one is good, though. I think he's nice."
Giorno blinks, disconcerted. Processes this information, ignores the automatic distress flooding through him at GER's sudden appearance, muted anxiety bubbling back up to surface-deep again underneath the new and opaque emotions he knows aren't his own for all that he can taste them on his tongue. "Thank you for your protection. You know I'd be dead without you. By this one, you mean…"
GER tilts his head. If he smiled, he'd be smiling right now. "Oh, I'm sorry. Not very clear for you, no? No, he does want to hurt you, but it'll be just fine, I'm sure he won't. He's very nice. I like him better than the other one. You'll have fun."
The anxiety congeals, thick and cold. Curdles with the humming discomfort of GER's presence and the headache-inducing feeling of the weight of unparseable thoughts tangling in with his own. He doesn't want them there, which is a useless complaint. It never stops feeling— violating. Uncomfortable. He doesn't need to think about it right now. "This… the man i'm meeting soon is the one you're talking about."
"Yes! Yes, exactly," GER says approvingly. He takes Giorno's wrists, one after the other, to slide in gold cufflinks. Giorno does not shiver at the sensation of his cold hands on his skin. "I like him much better than the other one, the all-in-white one with the big big starry night bright-eyes stand like il diavolo. He's no fun."
Giorno blinks, slowly, tucks all of this information away into respective compartments. He hasn't seen Dr. Kujo's stand. Well, apparently he has, to some extent. Fascinating.
"Thank you," he says, also slowly. "I appreciate it."
GER shakes his head. "Oh, don't be worried. You think they can hurt you? You think they can touch me?"
A note of danger creeps into his monotone voice, like the dissonant shudder of a tritone interval or a knife against metal.
Giorno's breath sticks in his throat. "Of course not. I'm simply…"
GER makes a disapproving noise. His cold cold fingers take Giorno's face in his hands again, tilting his head up to swipe neatly underneath his eyes, brush a thumb back and forth over his cheekbones. "Oh, I'm sorry, Giorno, Gio mio, Giogio. You know I'm the part of you who would never hurt yourself, really, you're more likely to bleed out with your own little knives or whatnot than ever have me hurt you. I don't mean to scare you. Come here."
Giorno's breath rattles in again at the gentle accusation, at the contradictory comfort and crawling, paralyzing need to pull away when GER gently reels him into a cold hug. He's— it's always unsettling. When Requiem knows everything that he himself knows. That Gold knows. He always should expect it and never does.
GER undoubtedly knows how terrified Giorno is by his existence. He tries not to think about it, regardless. GER is amused by the circles he thinks himself in, he knows, utterly unbothered by how much Giorno hates him.
"Of course. I'm sorry."
His heart jumps as GER lets go of him with a last brush of fingers against his face, but all he does is open his ring case where it's sitting on the counter. "No apologies, Gio, you know they're not honest when they're to yourself." he takes Giorno's hands again, meticulously slipping heavy rings onto his fingers, the cool metal indistinguishable from his touch. "And I'd never be upset at you, anyway. How could I be."
The thick gold signet pinky ring he slides on last. Raises Giorno's hand to his mouth. Presses a kiss to it. "Now, I don't mean to keep you from your work. Go on."
He takes a deep breath. Lets the weight of his office, his power, his authority settle back over his shoulders. There is nothing outside this moment, outside who and what he is now. He is the head of the Passione. There are tens of thousands of men under his control, not to mention assets which lend his enterprises certainly as much financial and political weight as the Speedwagon Foundation. He has men outside this door just as he knows they do also. This could be a sting and Giorno could be walking directly into a death trap and he would be no more in danger than if he was sitting in a garden on a beautiful spring day. He has nothing to fear.
When he pushes open the door, Dr. Kakyoin is already seated. Waiting for him, hands folded on the table, head barely tilted to one side.
Ah.
It is immediately— less than jarring, but unexpected. He had expected the doctor to make him wait. He is immediately on the back foot here, like a child coming home to a parent waiting with arms crossed.
His second thought is also immediately startled. Dr Kakyoin is younger than expected— late twenties, probably, early thirties at maximum. Again, something he could have considered, especially given that he was caught off guard on a similar manner when meeting Dr. Kujo, but it is still unexpected.
He is also dressed well: cherry red hair pulled neatly back and pinned up, save for a strand escaping it, a dark linen shirt layered over a high-collared one, a small gold ankh necklace at his throat. Narrow, dark smoked sunglasses that hide his eyes from view entirely but do not filter out his cold gaze resting on Giorno.
What he originally took for a patterned mesh shirt layered under the rest is, in fact, a heavy, intricate pattern of irezumi tattoos, covering the skin entirely to the wrists.
Ah. This is possibly why Dr. Kakyoin's approval was necessary. He was not aware of the Speedwagon Foundation having ties to the Japanese families.
It should not be a problem. Giorno has no holdings or interest outside of western Europe.
Briefly, irrationally, he considers the possibility that the foundation is intentionally sending him gay people to negotiate with, as some sort of bizarre signal. This is almost certainly not the case— far more likely is the option that, much like within his Passione, stand users are more likely to have experienced some form of social isolation.
Giorno lets the door click shut behind him and bows deeply in deference according to Japanese courtesy, hair raising at the back of his neck with the awareness of eyes on him. It is an act of politeness that he would never perform in other circumstances as someone in his position, but Dr. Kakyoin has not moved a muscle since he had entered the room and this is… the last trial with the Speedwagon Foundation. Simply the final hurdle to cross. He would rather act deferent here and clean up problems later than have to deal with blood and months of wasted time.
Dr. Kakyoin does not stand up when he enters or mirror his bow— he inclines his head at a subtle angle in recognition when Giorno raises his head again, nothing more.
Giorno takes a seat. The chair does not squeak. His jewelry softly clinks as he moves. He displays perfect, elegant economy of motion as he sits, scanning Dr. Kakyoin and the room.
His meeting with Dr. Kujo was conducted in English. Again, here, he is unsure. The polite option is almost certainly to defer to his guest.
Seconds slowly tick by in the dead silence. Dr. Kakyoin makes no move to initiate conversation. His gaze, behind dark glasses, is, presumably, still intent on him.
Giorno lets five seconds pass before smiling, easy and welcoming. "Dr. Kakyoin, yes? I'm very glad to meet you. I hope you've been enjoying my city?"
The Japanese feels strange in his mouth, familiar and foreign all at once. The last time he spoke his mother language was probably… at least a year ago, while he was still running minor cons fleecing incoming tourists at Napoli International. He doesn't tend to need it much here.
Dr. Kakyoin replies in perfect, faintly accented Italian. "I always do. Wonderful to finally meet you, Don Giovanna. Has anyone ever told you that you look like your father?"
He smiles when he speaks, voice smooth and even. The smile is impossibly perfect on his face. It does not reach his eyes.
The nervousness deep in Giorno's stomach knots and thickens into anxiety. It is not at all productive. Of course this man is better at his own game than him. He's had twice as long to perfect it. That doesn't mean anything. So what if he holds a grudge against Giorno for something that's entirely out of his control, for the fact that he's alive? His mother's husband did too, and he survived ten years of that perfectly well. One afternoon with this extremely polite Dr. Kakyoin who wants to hurt him is completely manageable.
He can't feel GER. It's not unusual— they're not like Gold, a constant steadying presence, but it is, despite his objective gratitude to not have him fucking with his head during this extremely delicate negotiation... Unsettling. A lack. He is shockingly off balance. He needs Gold Experience. This new paradigm of doing things without them always with him is not something that is good.
Dr. Kakyoin has thin, pale, faded scars in a symmetry across his face: visible above the top and bottom of his dark glasses, like something tried to cut his eyes out, and a misshapen, ragged star like a tiny bullet scar in the center of his forehead. Giorno can feel himself lagging to respond.
He nods, pleasant expression still affixed to his face. "I can't say they have, since he has been notably… not present in my life." a small laugh rises to his lips. "I'll be honest, though, I'd rather look like someone I never met than my mother."
Dr Kakyoin acknowledges the point with a tip of his head. "You aren't close to her?"
Giorno's lips are still curled into the small smile he knows is charming. He can feel the movement of his face and his body like he's piloting it from very very far away. "Ah, not particularly."
He receives this information with no outward sign of acknowledgement. Giorno tries to stifle the sting of upset that rises in his chest. Dr. Kakyoin doesn't know anything about him. He has no right to judge something he knows nothing about.
He carefully relaxes all of his muscles, shoulders slowly loosening from where they subconsciously were starting to consider rising up in discomfort. "Enough about that, though. I'm sure my unpleasant mother has no bearing on our talk today. To business?"
“On the contrary, Don Giovanna,” Dr. Kakyoin smiles, slow and precise. It feels like a viper baring venom-tipped fangs. “You are my business today. Tell me about yourself."
The air shimmers silver and sharp like a heatwave as he says it. Giorno isn't sure if it's his own accelerating heart rate causing dizziness or an effect of Dr. Kakyoin's stand, which he still hasn't seen.
"Myself… my business, my organization? I have, of course, been in my position for close to a year now, most of which time has been sent consolidating and restructuring the pre-existing hierarchy. I'm committed to a policy of transparency and open discussion towards the Speedwagon Foundation. We are focused on internal revenue and infrastructure currently, and have zero current or future interest in any kind of international expansion—"
Dr. Kakyoin's voice is soft and even. "That's not what I mean, Don Giovanna. You know that."
Giorno takes a perfectly normal breath and lets it out. "I'm sorry, it's not clear to me what you're referring to…?"
Dr. Kakyoin tilts his head in a shrug. "What do you think I'm referring to?"
There is an infinite number of ways Giorno could go from here. Instead, he bites the bullet he's been trying not to consider for days.
"You knew my father?"
This must be what it's like when other people have conversations with him. He gains a sudden and powerful sympathy for the capos he's had lovely talks with and intimidated into submission over the past months.
Dr. Kakyoin's smile is a perfect mask. Nothing shifts except the air in the room, which gains a curdled, dangerous air that makes irrational nausea rise in the back of his throat.
"Intimissimente." his voice is neutral, dispassionate. "Much better than I would have liked."
"That sounds… unfortunate, from what I've heard. My apologies."
The crack of laughter that breaks the air is harsh, unexpected, sharp-edged like glass. Dr. Kakyoin throws his head back when he laughs. It's there and gone.
"You could say so, yes. Tell me about your lack of international expansion, Don Giovanna."
The conversation ebbs and flows, never enough to leave Giorno comfortable. His posture is ramrod straight, but he startles at Dr. Kakyoin's next question out of nowhere.
"You mentioned to the Foundation that you exhibit some vampiric traits. Do you drink blood?"
Eugh. Revulsion turns his stomach at the thought of it. "Ah, no, Dr. Kakyoin, I do not. The idea of harming any creature for my pleasure is repellant enough.” he pauses. “I don't think consuming humans is considered vegan. I'm not sure I'd have the ability to if I wanted to. I'm rather light sensitive and prefer to work late into the night and sleep in. That's about it."
His tongue runs absentmindedly across the small points of his canines. That too, but he isn't about to submit his body for examination like a fucking animal bring this up. Besides, he's quite sure Dr. Kakyoin has noticed already.
"You're not a very good liar."
He notes the sick feeling of his stomach dropping in an abstract sort of way. "I'm not lying, Dr. Kakyoin. I would have no reason to, about this."
"I agree, you have no reason to. Then what are you lying for?"
He's dealt with infinitely worse. "Dr. Kakyoin, this conversation is not going to move very quickly if we can't assume a baseline of communication, here. I assure you, I'm speaking the truth. I have no interest in… experimenting with any vampiric capacities."
"Well, then of course I believe you." The words come out of his mouth with perfect sincerity. Giorno doesn't believe them at all.
They move on.
He really shouldn't. He shouldn't. He should exercise the self control that he is extremely good at and let the opportunity pass him by. At the next pause in the conversation, he makes an extremely ill advised decision.
"Could you— of course, I've heard from other members of the Foundation, and Dr. Kujo, of course, what my father did, the type of person he was. I'm sure it's unpleasant. But—"
Dr. Kakyoin's eyes blink shut in the ghost of a controlled smile behind his sunglasses. Unreadable.
"You'd like to know about him." There's a touch of irony to his perfectly modulated voice. "Are you sure that's something you want to know?"
"Why he was deserving of such hatred, yes. It would appear that I am responsible for actions I know nothing about, and I would at least rather know which sins of the father we have inherited which sins of the father I have inherited.”
His voice goes too hard as he speaks, anger and frustration bleeding out too loudly into words that are too aggressive for the placating role he's embodying. Not concealed well enough, but it's too late to change them now.
Dr. Kakyoin looks at him for a moment, doesn't immediately reply. He leans in, elegant hands folded on the table in front of him. His eyes are sharp and dark under the sunglasses, keeping Giorno fixed in place. Giorno can almost feel his breath fanning over him when he speaks.
"Your father was unbelievably charismatic. People saw him and loved him. Wanted to do anything for him. Would die for him having known him for a day. They would, frequently. He drew particular pleasure from causing the pain of exsanguination. Daily, I would see him drag bloodless corpses from his bed or his floor by the hair and toss them into the hall for his servants to burn. Men or women, he didn't discriminate, as long as they were beautiful. He was very powerful. Both physically, in terms of presence, and in the magnetic force of his personality. He could crush your bones into dust without even thinking about it. He could convince you you were nothing but a toy for his pleasure with a look. He considered himself a superior being and moved through the world as if his very existence granted him the privileges of a god and his power granted him the righteousness of one. He loved the control that gave him over the people around him, and he exploited that control in every way you could possibly imagine."
Dr. Kakyoin's eyes are still burning through their sunglasses to pin Giorno like an insect. “He was killed, his body was burned, and his ashes were dispersed into the Atlantic. We were very, very lucky.” His voice, soft and even this whole time, abruptly loses the razor edge that it had unconsciously gained. “Do you understand why I am not easily convinced that you should be spared the same fate? It would make my life much easier if you were not here.”
Giorno lets out a breath, slow and controlled. "Understood. Thank you for the honest answer. What would be necessary to convince you?"
They slide back into Passione's recent activities, net income, the cleaning Giorno's been doing not just internally to the organization but externally as well— funding to local government and organizations, the slow taper from dirty supply to clean supply to less before they can start throttling narcotics trade entirely, ties to local infrastructure. Dr. Kakyoin seems content to listen to him run through the same talk he's given twenty people already, if content is the word for how he sits still and coiled and full of menace like a cobra waiting to strike.
Giorno allows himself a moment to stare at the overhead light reflecting in the smooth pale lacquer of his nails. Allows his gaze to drift towards Dr. Kakyoin's tattoos. They're snakes, mostly, richly colored in the traditional Japanese style, and an extremely immature part of him briefly daydreams and then crushes a world where he wasn't a mafia don and Dr. Kakyoin didn't hate him and he could ask him if he actually likes snakes. They might have a pleasant conversation.
His eyes, tracing the lines, catch on something. He blinks. Doesn't let his face move at what he thinks-- what he can see ghosting under the patterns, like a seeing eye puzzle. Barely visible. Wouldn't be visible, most likely, for anyone with less sharp, half-vampire eyesight.
He wants to hurt you, GER's voice echoes.
He's dead.
He's not, really. He wouldn't be. GER won't let that happen, but it's-- he shouldn't have done this. There's no way they walk out of this meeting with this man with a peaceful alliance.
Which is honestly…probably the right thing to do. Giorno should be dead maybe. He can feel the past months he's spent constructing defenses against people who think the sins of the father are transmitted to the son and the time he's spent trying to convince himself that he's not actually evil dissolving like wet paper. Unfortunate.
Faded bite marks, light against the olive skin inside his wrists, barely distinguishable underneath the layers of swirling ink. A bite print that's distinct even though he's never seen anything quite like it, repeated over and over again in scatters, some larger than others like a wound opened repeatedly during the healing process.
The conversation reels backwards in his mind: I knew him very intimately. We were very lucky. My life would be easier if you were dead. The detached, hatred-filled description of his biological father that he'd taken for a straightforward cruelty of negotiation.
Distantly, he notes the high neck of Dr. Kakyoin's shirt, the layers, the careful posture.
This has no bearing on how he acts going forward. He cannot betray that he's seen this, knows this. He needs to file the knowledge away and forget about it until later.
"How many do you have?"
"How many…?"
"Subordinates."
"Ah, it's a bit hierarchically complicated at the moment as I clean house. There's many capos who answer to me directly, and under them… oh, around fifteen hundred, i'd say, all said and done."
"And they all work for you willingly?"
Giorno frowns. "For the most part, yes. I don't… endorse just anyone off the street joining our organization, you must understand. It is an extremely specific lifestyle choice. Of course there are many who were extremely loyal to the previous don, and I have had to do some, ah. Convincing that my leadership will be competent."
"And how many have you convinced?" Dr. Kakyoin's voice is silky smooth, flat.
"I couldn't tell you exact numbers. It's something I try to avoid. Loyalty is much more inconvenient when gained via intimidation. But you must understand, I can't simply let everyone who wants to leave instantly. It would be catastrophic, both functionally and for my authority. These people know what they signed up for, I assure you."
“Oh, I’m well aware of how it works. Don't you think you should be less forthcoming about things like this to a complete stranger?”
Giorno’s brow furrows without his input. “I-- my organization has been collaborating with the Speedwagon Foundation for months, Dr. Kakyoin. Everyone I’ve talked to has spoken extremely highly of you, and Dr. Kujo specifically arranged this meeting. Of course I'd offer you the same respect and--”
He's cut off, razor sharp. “So, of course you're not simply confident that you can exert that power over me at your will if I don't like what you're doing.”
What?
Indignation and hurt rise hot in his chest before he extinguishes it. He wouldn't do that. He wouldn't even if he could, because he is very incapable of intimidating an experienced stand user with the backing of a private occult paramilitary and NGO behind him.
“Of course not.”
He reaches for further words, explanations, finds himself mentally stumbling over excuses and apologies he hasn't needed in years, now, panic welling up in his throat. Shuts his mouth to keep them from tumbling out. That is not what this is.
Dr. Kakyoin nods slowly, face still perfectly pleasant. “Of course you wouldn't. That would not be very smart, and you are very, very smart, aren't you?”
Giorno's face burns. He folds up the humiliation, tucks it in a small mental compartment, and exerts a mild pressure with his and Gold’s ability (present, even when they aren't) to tamp down the upset blush betraying him. “That would depend on who you ask."
He can't say he's ever been threatened in a way that makes him feel like such a stupid child before. "I'm not quite clear what is meriting threats here, Dr. Kakyoin. Have I said something to offend you?"
"Oh, of course not. What do you merit by trying to convince people of your goodness, Don Giovanna? Do you think that all your donated money and virtue posturing can hide the filth on your hands?"
"I don't—"
"I would have loved to believe that nature wasn't hereditary. You should know, Don Giovanni, how much I hoped that you would be less of a monster than your father. I suppose it supports the idea that evil is genetic after all. I should have never fucking come here."
"Dr. Kakyoin, I'm not going to press-gang you into the Neapolitan mafia! I— We don't coerce anyone. I don't understand what your problem is!"
He makes a dismissive motion. " And I'm supposed to believe you just ask nicely and that's it. Do you think I'm stupid? You know what I'm talking about."
"No, I don't!"
"I really think you do."
"I really don—"
"God, you can't even acknowledge it? Stop making fucking excuses."
His voice was sharp this whole time, sharp like splintered glass or a fresh blade, but it's loud all of a sudden, loud and cracking and frustrated like it was ripped out of him. He slams a hand on the table with the outburst, hard enough to vibrate the wood and be felt in the floor.
Giorno tries extremely, extremely hard to stay still. He is someone who is like Michelangelo's Apollo. He is carved from stone. He is not a person who lets things trouble him, he is the head of a family of many thousands. He has killed easily and without remorse. He has brought the dead to life and turned stones into snakes. This is a nonissue.
When Dr. Kakyoin moves, he flinches. For the blink of an eye he is nothing at all.
Dr. Kakyoin freezes. Giorno does too. It's a strange sort of stalemate that lasts until Giorno's blood slowly splinters into floes of cold dread where it's turned to ice in his veins.
His face shifts. It is the first time Giorno has seen any real emotion from him, and he can't quite read it. He should be able to. It's what he's very very good at doing. It's how he's still alive.
Nevertheless, he can't. Dr. Kakyoin stares at him with the most unreadable face he's ever seen and Giorno looks back at him, frozen and deer caught in the headlights, praying desperately-- Bucciarati is Catholic, right, he's a bravo regazzo italiano, and neither he nor anything else has convinced Giorno of the existence of any kind of god worth caring about but he'll appeal to anything out there that Dr. Kakyoin doesn't see the pure dread on his face.
None of the possible options feel correct, though, when Dr. Kakyoin scrubs a hand down his face and curses violently to himself in Japanese. Giorno stays extremely, extremely still and doesn't breath. If he stays still and quiet—
The language Dr. Kakyoin is speaking shifts from shockingly foul Japanese to one he doesn't recognize, undulating and musical for all that he could recognize the tone of someone stringing together vicious, incentive obscenities from a mile away. It might be Arabic, he thinks dispassionately, bracing for…bracing. It sounds a little like the handful of words Mista would use in daily conversations.
He's lightheaded. He isn't sure what it's from. He's breathing, certainly. His vision isn't swimming in front of him. He is in control of his actions.
Dr. Kakyoin drags his hands away from his face and the blank mask settles back in place like a gavel coming down. The whiplash is… should not unsettle him. He's seen infinitely worse horrors.
"I apologize if i've upset you, Don Giovanna. Thank you for your time. If you have been telling the truth, the Foundation will not be interacting with you in a hostile manner going forward. I would prefer to not interact with you at all. Do not make me regret this decision."
Giorno blinks. This man did not spend the past hour steeped in neatly concealed hatred, knowing exactly where to hit, dredging up every insecurity, and meticulously holding up each one of Giorno's revolting and cruel flaws to the light only to suddenly… what, leave him be? That's incorrect. He's right. He's right, so why is he leaving?
He can't make himself believe that this would happen. Something is happening. Something is— it's nothing good. Whatever it is fills him with dread. It's a trick, and he's waiting for Giorno to fall into it. He's waiting to--
He tries to parse this, fails. His whole body feels shaking. It's so obviously wrong.
Dr. Kakyoin is standing to leave before he processes anything. Distantly, he notes a stiffness, an awkwardness in the motion that is at odds with the rest of the elegance he presents. Something crosses his face that would be more legible if Giorno's mind wasn't nothing at all right now.
He doesn't have time to do anything but file the information away before the door clicks open to signal his departure.
There's a flash of white and gold movement through the doorframe. Dr Kujo's razor-sharp gaze pins him momentarily, eyebrows drawn and face unreadable before the door slams shut behind them and he is left alone in the room.
He does not move. The room feels alien and distant around him, like something's filled with helium, like a dream. He is-- pinned, still, buglike, his body betraying him. His mind is betraying him too as Gold feels unreachable, slipping through his childish mental grasp like a fish in water, drowning in faint nausea and fear and guilt, anger frustration acidic harsh dizzying. He doesn't think about GER. He doesn't think about everything he's just learned. He doesn't-- he doesn't think.
The curtains to his balcony are blowing and ballooning in the breeze. He. Is in the middle of taking his rings off again, carefully setting them each in velvet-lined cases. The residual warmth of the metal offers no clues to the time. The ride back-- exiting the room, leaving the building, a quiet drive back to the Chiaia apartment in his chauffeured sedan… he closes his eyes for a moment. Tries to remember without pressing too hard against the soft dark of absence, tries not to be frustrated with Gold still not being here.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't! Unfair, stupid, to picture so vividly Dr. Kakyoin's face an hour ago, the conviction in his voice as he said that he should be dead, but this? This is what he forgets? Not the crawling self loathing rising to choke him? Not the dread? Not the white-blank terror of his voice loud and angry and harsh or the laundry list of horrific cruelties his father's committed?
He exhales a single long breath out through his nose and continues dismantling his jewelry. His trapezius muscles ache as he unfastens the heavy necklaces, tucks them away wrapped in cloth, runs over the conversation again and again in his mind like a river stone, like he's circling a drain.
He's sitting on his balcony, back to the sunwarmed stone of the wall. The sounds and noise of Napoli evening chime and echo up to him. Two factors are immediately disconcerting.
One: the summer breeze is warm against his bare skin-- he's in his silk undershirt, arms bare, suit jacket and gauze button down discarded somewhere. It feels obscene, even in the privacy of his own apartment, to let all his skin be visible. Or to let the patchwork of scars from fighting civilians and stand users and his parents and healing and hurting himself be visible. Embarrassing. The layers of peeling parallel scabs are even more embarrassing. He's going to have to cut his arms off soon and regrow them again so they don't look this awful.
Two: there's tear tracks on his face. This feels even more humiliating. He doesn't cry. Especially over something like this: what, someone is mean to him and he goes home crying like a baby? Ridiculous. God, everyone is right. He'll last a day here if he's this fucking sensitive to people being unpleasant. What a nothing event to make a big deal out of.
"I told you it would be fine."
GER is suddenly sitting across from him. He can't quite pinpoint when he appeared, if he hasn't been here the whole time.
He's moving before he knows it, throwing a punch like he's a brawling kid, anger and frustration and the sick feeling rising like static in his ears.
GER catches his wrist easily, clicks his non-existent tongue. “Your self-loathing is showing, Giogio.”
He feels GER raise an eyebrow at how quickly Giorno cedes to him, arm going limp in his hold, as if he doesn't know exactly how that reaction got beaten into him. Fuck him.
“I told you it would be fine! See, he was really nice, no? He didn't even hit you! And he really, really wanted to!”
Giorno doesn't answer, even when GER lets go of his arm and guides it back to where it was wrapped around his knees. Keeps his gaze sullenly fixed on the tile floor, like he's a whiny child.
GER keeps talking, but Giorno isn't listening to any of it, isn't looking up from his examination of the grout and the gap between the wrought iron balcony railing and the floor. Stands aren't supposed to exist for normal people. Maybe this is just made up. Maybe he's bored and imagining it.
It's an argument that's worn useless and smooth with years and years of pulling it out of his pocket periodically, turning it over and over like a prayer until every edge had worn flat.
By the time he fails to convince himself of this, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge GER’s presence, he's gone. The absence doesn't help him pretend he's fake, unfortunately.
The sticky tear trails are, at least, dried by now. When he drags his hands down his face, it doesn't feel hot and puffy like he's still been crying. Two major successes today: a promise that the SPW won't be taking hostile action against him in the future and also, he's done crying.
He's not sure what time it is. The summer breeze has cooled down to night, the edges of the sky past the spires and edges of buildings slowly darkening past mauve. His bones are aching where he's sitting like a weird gargoyle statue. He hauls himself to his feet and goes inside to wash his face off.
He stares at the running water, at the elegant travertine curve of the sink, the smudgeless gold of the hardware. Reads every single label on all his products while he washes his face and absently follows the steps of his nightly skincare routine and unpins his hair, shaking out the mousse and the hairspray into a wild crunchy mess.
This is when he makes the mistake of looking in the mirror.
The crumpled wallet photo of his father looks back at him. Golden hair, curling like a mane. Luminescent golden eyes, even if his own are darker in the bathroom light. If you look past the baby fat still clinging to his cheeks with the contours of his makeup wiped off and the epicanthic folds of his eyes and the shadows smeared under them and the shape of his jaw it's the same image. For a moment it's like an overlay superimposed over him, a past so close he can smell iron and expensive perfume in his lungs.
The thing is.
The thing is. Giorno has spent the past fifteen years wishing for his father.
It's a natural side effect of growing up like he did. With both a stepfather and a mother who were not very good. It's a natural side effect of looking different than everyone and speaking with a strange accent for years and having faded scars on his ankles from a glass thrown at him a long time ago and being very, very lonely for a very, very long time.
He could not count the number of years he spent curled up in the dark, playing out scenarios of his father coming back for him, taking him back somewhere to a huge castle with grounds and gardens full of plants and animals and bugs, seeing how his mother and stepfather treated him and throwing them out of the house, smearing antibiotic on the bruised-broken skin of his face, secretly watching over him as the gangster who'd saved him, buying him pistaccio gelato, a million more childish fantasies.
He'd put it out of his head entirely until his hair had started to change, and even then, it hadn't been the same daydreams about getting swept away to a loving house and a happy childhood.
It had just been… a gift, really. For all that he could spin up handfuls of arguments about how he'd caved to assimilation, or was terrible for more easily passing as not-Japanese now, or should have been more cognizant of his heritage, it really had been. Still was. You wouldn't believe how many people are more willing to trust a grinning, picture-book blonde kid than one who's visibly an immigrant. He'd moved from making centesimi to lira a week as soon as he'd cut off all the dark bits and left himself a curling golden mop.
It was a good thing. He'd loved looking more like his father. His hair had changed, and his gangster had started protecting him, people started being nice to him, he'd been able to make enough money to pay for a school and dorm and sleep on a clean mattress in a dark quiet clean room, and all those things were-- are-- tangled together, in his mind’s eye.
And now they're all rotten at the core. His entire foundation has been built on something rotting and cruel and disgusting and that's not new, even, he's always known he was, on some instinctual level, his mother's son, known it in his removed apathy to blood on his hands and the way his anger snags like a hook and tears things open and the lira he's spent on his closet and the hours he spends in front of his vanity getting ready to be seen and how he'll probably go to a hell if it exists at all.
He'd just. He'd never considered, really, that the man in his battered polaroid was just as cruel. That it would never have been an escape route, never was something that Giorno should have patterned himself after. The Speedwagon Foundation had discussed it months ago even, but silly Giorno, he’d thought, when they talked about Dio being evil, being dangerous, being important, they'd meant… like him.
Maybe they still do. Dr. Kakyoin certainly seemed to think so.
He's still looking in the mirror, barely registering how distant his gaze looks. The water is still running.
He blinks back to himself. Calculations flit across his mind for a millisecond. He leans back and then smashes his forehead through the mirror.
Into the mirror, not through-- it has a solid wood back, the impact of which travels through Giorno's head like a shockwave. The soft white sink is violently sprayed with fragments of mirrored glass, blood mixed in and splattered on the shattered remnants and washing down the drain. He can feel the blood trickling warm down his face, down his nose and cheek. There might be shards of glass lodged in his forehead. It certainly feels like it.
It's not a problem. He can heal himself tomorrow morning before he goes out in public, call the cleaning staff, and they'll have the mess fixed by the time he returns tomorrow afternoon.
He wipes the worst of the blood from his face with a hand towel, indifferent to the sensation of terrycloth dragging across glass embedded in his skin, turns off the sink and the light, and heads to bed.
Gold will be upset. It's a thought that irritates him as he folds down layers of silk sheets and Portugese bedspread and transmutes the shards of glass in his forehead into flesh, a bare minimum so he doesn't bleed over his blankets all night in his sleep as they keep irritating the wound. Gold being upset is… a nonissue. They'll be fine, like they always are. It's good to get a break from them, even.
He didn't ask Dr. Kakyoin about Dio's stand. If it was quiet, if it was clingy, if it was dispassionate and delighted by inventive violence, if it looked like Gold or not, not that he'd know. Maybe not knowing is better. He doesn't think he could bear whatever the answer was.
He curls in on himself. He does not think about the blood the movement smears over pillowcases, sticky in his hair, does not wonder if the maid tomorrow will see a bloody bed and think— think—
It is a very good thing that none of Bucciarati’s team are here. His mind conjures up Abbaccio’s long-justified antipathy solidifying into righteous loathing, a sympathy veiling disgust on Bruno’s face, Bruno with such a good father that he threw himself into Passione’s meat grinder for him, that he killed for him, that he grew up kind and generous and righteous.
Trish briefly crosses his mind; if anyone would know this feeling it would be her, but he quickly, vicious pushes her from his thoughts. Trish is performing at sold-out festivals in Spain, hasn't texted in weeks, has singles out with gorgeous photography on the covers and a smile like the sun every time he sees her. She's followed her dream, shaken off family history like a shed skin. Giorno is managing the same bloody, brutal business as always, like he always wanted to. He still loves it. They are not very similar at all.
And he can't think of her father for very long at all without nausea, Diavolo and his big-smiled other, same smile as Trish, helping Bucciarati across the street, Nara impaled on fenceposts, Bucciarati rotting, the smooth slick stuttering nothing accompanying GER--
Maybe Dio would have tried to kill him too, if they'd met, just like Trish and her father. There's a piece of him, childish and immature, that's still wailing and sobbing at the unfairness of having a stupid little daydream torn away.
Not why he's glad to be around none of them, though. Dr. Kakyoin's flat voice and cold eyes echo around in his head, same as they have since he left. His presence is the promise of harm, just like he said. He's very glad that he's not around anybody, right now, actually. They've been through enough. He's put them through enough.
It's cold tonight. Late summer is turning cool around the edges, nights dipping low. Cold and quiet should be good. He should be happy that he's a world away from his childhood home, that it's dark and quiet and not full of streetlights and fighting and screaming, that he has time to sleep at all, that he's too far away to hurt anyone. He is extremely grateful for all those things.
He brings his knees up to his chest, ignoring the feeling of tacky drying blood sticking the pillowcase to the side of his face. He's very alone. The sheets are still cold, despite how long he's been lying here trying not to think. It's his own fault, for pushing Gold away earlier, for acting on an impulse that he knew would upset them, but that doesn't make him want their warm presence curled around his back any less. They don't want to come out, though. Or at least, he thinks not, because they're not here, so he can't tell.
Napoli is loud out his window, the sprawling mess of a city that he's dedicated his life to fixing. He can't be alone if he's still here. It doesn't matter how much he deserves to be alive or not as long as he's doing this, as long as he's improving it for everyone who doesn't deserve it and couldn't bear being soaked in blood and mess to fix it. The thought isn't as comforting as it usually is, cold and tired and lonely with that voice still reverberating around in his head.
He closes his eyes. Hopefully, he'll never have to think about any of this again.