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The first time they had seen each other, before the race had even begun, the first thing that had captivated Johnny about Gyro had not been the peculiar weapon he used —those steel balls he always carried on his belt— but the way he carried himself, how every action he took seemed to have been meticulously thought out, reducing the risks to a minimum in order to reap every possible benefit.
Gyro exuded confidence from every pore, and for someone like Johnny, who had been reduced to that broken, insecure version of himself ever since that fateful gunshot, such a presence felt like a guiding star in the middle of a raging sea.
Feeling his legs after touching that green steel had been just another confirmation, one that told him this was the key to becoming who he used to be, to getting back to his old self.
Following him had come naturally, then.
Back then, Johnny had believed their relationship would remain fixed, distant, nothing more than an alliance under the rules of:
You help me and I help you, right?
After all, Gyro seemed like a reserved person, someone who valued his personal space and didn't like people meddling in his affairs.
How wrong he had been.
Because that had been nothing more than a facade, one that had slowly begun to crack, making way for Gyro's true personality.
The one who told stories that seemed to have no end, who sang stupid songs he made up along the way, and who made jokes without any kind of punchline.
Gyro had started getting far too comfortable around Johnny. That much was obvious.
But for someone like Johnny, that wasn't exactly something he was used to.
He was still unpacking the last few things from Slow Dancer's saddlebags when, from the corner of his eye, he caught Gyro kneeling in front of a pile of dry branches he had brought in from outside the cave, placing some dry bark beside them before finally dropping one of his steel balls onto them, keeping it pressed beneath his palm.
Within nothing more than a couple of seconds, the ball began spinning at a frantic pace, trembling violently as if it were trying to escape Gyro's grip, but his hand held it firmly in place, forcing it to make as much contact with the tinder as possible. Sooner rather than later, a thin trail of whitish smoke began to rise, and the smoky scent of wood reached Johnny's nose.
Just like that, Gyro had started a small flame, one that would serve as the beginning of their campfire for the rest of the night.
The sight should have relieved Johnny. After all, it meant they wouldn't freeze to death in the Wisconsin cold. But on the other hand...
"Joh-kneeeee~" Gyro hummed as he got to his feet, tucking the ball back into his belt and stretching his back. “My hands are cold,” he finally said in a completely fake tone of sadness.
If anyone asked Johnny what the worst part of Gyro's personality was, he wouldn't hesitate to say it was this.
It wasn't the stories, nor the songs, nor the jokes, but the fact that Gyro was far too touchy.
No. More accurately...
Gyro was extremely clingy.
"Don't come any closer." He warned him with a murderous glare. He knew exactly what Gyro's intentions were when he said that, and he wasn't going to put up with it. Not another night. "If you want warmth, you can wait a few minutes until the campfire is ready."
Far from discouraging Gyro, the words only seemed to amuse him more, a wide smile spreading across his lips and fully revealing the "Go! Go!" on his upper teeth.
"Don't be cruel, Johnny. I've been lighting the campfire for more than two weeks straight. Surely you wouldn't let your partner's fingers freeze off, would you?" Gyro's tone was meant to sound offended, but he failed completely. It was nothing more than another way of teasing Johnny.
"Yeah, because someone lost the damn matches back in Pennsylvania," he shot back, his brow furrowing in annoyance.
"There were only five matches left. We were going to run out anyway," the Neapolitan replied, taking a step forward. "Come on, you won't die from sharing a little warmth with me."
"Don't even think about it," he said again. "I'm serious, Gyro. Take one more step and I'll shoot you."
The threat, however, had no effect whatsoever, and Gyro took another step forward, shortening the distance between them.
"I'm not joking," Johnny insisted again, even raising one of his arms and pointing it toward the other man, but once again, he took another step forward. "I mean it, Gyro!"
That was the last thing he managed to say before the man grabbed the arm he had extended, bending it and using it to move his body however he pleased. He had tried to resist, to push back with what little strength he had, but there was none left after days spent riding for hours in the winter cold.
And there was also the fact that Gyro still had the advantage of having the use of his legs.
It was no surprise, then, that he ended up winning. Johnny had barely had time to regain his balance before Gyro pulled him down, forcing him to go down with him onto the floor. That was how he ended up sitting between Gyro's legs, his back against Gyro's chest and trapped in a firm embrace that kept him from hitting or pushing him away.
"No, no, n—!" he tried to protest, but it was useless.
Gyro's hands slipped into the space between his shirt and jacket, though there might as well have been nothing between them at all. The sensation of Gyro's freezing fingers ignored whatever layers of fabric stood between them.
Every muscle in Johnny's body tensed at the intrusion. The contrast between the warmth of his body and the cold of those hands was so stark that it made his back arch, trying to escape the sensation without managing it at all, Gyro's arms holding him firmly in place.
"God, you're like a living furnace." The words came out warm against the American's shoulder, who still kept his brow furrowed, completely indignant that Gyro had invaded his personal space like that, and even more so that he did it as though it were simply another part of his daily routine.
"You're horrible, have I told you that?" he finally answered after a few seconds, his voice full of anger.
"Only a dozen times."
"And I really mean it every single time," he doubled down, feeling the cold hands against his stomach slowly beginning to grow warm.
"And yet here you are."
"I don't have any legs to run away from you with, in case you hadn't noticed."
"Don't hate me for taking advantage of the circumstances," Gyro replied with a small laugh, though it was far from the kind of laugh meant to mock him.
Johnny couldn't help letting out a huff at those words, and for a moment he wanted to answer again, but nothing came out of his mouth. The exhaustion was already beginning to take hold of his mind as well, discouraging him from continuing an argument in which he knew he would never have the last word.
Instead, he closed his eyes, trying to get at least a little rest, to relax, even if only for a moment.
The warmth building in the body behind him and the steady heartbeat thudding against his back made that particularly easy.
It wasn't something he intended to admit, however.
The first time Gyro had done this, Johnny had remained uncomfortable the entire time, unsure of what to do about the sudden closeness of the other man. Johnny hadn't really understood why he was doing something like this. Warmth? Yes, he had no doubt about that, but pulling someone into a hug —a man— just to get something like that felt far too intimate.
But everything about Gyro was strange, and Johnny simply chose to believe it was a cultural thing. Perhaps back in Naples, doing something like this was common. Johnny had even though he remembered hearing once that people on that side of the world kissed each other on the cheeks as a greeting, didn't they?
No matter how hard he tried to justify the contact, his body hadn't relaxed at all. That was probably why it had only lasted a couple of minutes.
For a moment, Johnny had thought that would be the end of it, just a strange story he would have to tell after the race. And yet...
The second night had been the same, although this time, against all odds, his body didn't resist the contact at all. In fact, little by little, he began to find a certain comfort in being beside the other man's body, in that warmth, in the way Gyro's hands tightened around his waist to get more contact, as if he couldn't quite find a way to get any closer to him.
That time, he hadn't allowed himself to enjoy it, too nervous that Gyro would notice just how much he was enjoying the embrace.
But now... now he didn't care at all.
The feeling of having someone — a body of flesh and bone — close to him after spending two years with the bare minimum of human contact felt far too good to ignore.
But it wasn't just that.
Because Johnny would never have let just anyone do this to him.
No.
He had let Gyro do it because he was the only person who, after Johnny lost his legs, hadn't looked at him with pity. Quite the opposite, he had seen in him a potential worth bringing out. And it could have stayed at that, nothing more than acknowledging his talent, but Gyro had decided to take a chance on Johnny, taking him under his wing even if it meant an inconvenience, even when he could have continued on his own and left Johnny behind at the first sign of an enemy attack.
Gyro had been the only person since Nicholas who had decided to stay with him.
And that was why Johnny let him do this.
Because yes, he could yell and hit him, but at the end of the day, that was nothing more than an act his pride demanded of him.
One that disappeared after a couple of minutes.
Johnny didn't mind that Gyro was clingy.
No, Johnny liked him that way.
He had been so relaxed and lost in his thoughts that he had stopped paying attention to what was happening around him, letting his mind drift in the warmth of the body behind him and the crackling sound of the branches being consumed by the fire.
But even through all of that, he had noticed something.
Gyro was humming.
At a very low volume, barely audible because of how close they were, but he was definitely doing it.
That was another thing Johnny had started noticing a couple of nights ago.
Gyro always hummed the same melody, sometimes while cooking or packing, or simply while walking, and these past few nights, he always did it when they were like this.
And now he was doing it again.
"Gyro," he called, his voice low and tired.
The humming stopped immediately, and the body against his back shifted, as though the sudden call had startled him.
"Hm?"
"You're humming."
The words seemed to have an effect on Gyro, because immediately, the hands that were still resting on Johnny's waist tensed. For a few seconds, there was nothing but that, a heavy silence that made Johnny wonder for a moment if he had asked the right question.
But eventually, Gyro's voice came again.
"Sorry. Didn't even realize I was doing it. Just a habit, I guess," he admitted, a hint of nervousness in his voice.
It was something Johnny had suspected, but he didn't quite understand why it was always that same melody, where it came from, or why Gyro always returned to it.
"You've been doing it for a couple of nights," he pointed out, with no intention of sounding like a complaint, only pointing out what he had noticed. "Where is it from?"
The question had slipped out without him meaning to, his curiosity speaking for him, but now that he had asked it, he knew there was no way to take it back.
Once again, the answer took a while to come, but it did.
"Lullaby." Gyro's voice came against his shoulder, sounding different this time, as though a small melancholy lingered beneath every word. "My mother used to sing it all the time when I was little... She still does, with my brothers."
The answer surprised Johnny.
Because while Gyro wasn't exactly private about his life, he never talked about his family, his childhood, or his past.
In fact, this was the first time Johnny was finding out that Gyro had siblings.
And a mother still alive back home, waiting for him.
The answer twisted Johnny's heart with a bittersweet feeling.
There was so much he didn't know about Gyro, and he wasn't entirely sure he ever would.
"Do you miss them?" was all he could ask in return. He could have asked so much more, but he was afraid, afraid of rejection, of Gyro deciding to tell him it was none of his business, or worse, simply staying silent without giving him any answer at all.
Although this time, there was an answer.
"Very much." He said it with a kind of honesty Johnny rarely heard from him. "I'm sure they're doing fine without me, but I can't help it. I got too used to living alongside them. They're my, uh... what's the word in English? Achilles' ankle."
Those words failed to keep Johnny from letting out a laugh.
"Achilles' heel," he corrected.
"That's it," Gyro replied with a small shrug. "Anyway, I won't do it anymore. I hadn't even realized I was doing it."
Johnny couldn't help but feel those words pierce straight through his heart.
Now he realized that in all those moments when he had heard Gyro do it, not once had he thought it was annoying.
Quite the opposite. Now that he had him so close and could hear the melody reverberating through his body, he found it almost relaxing.
"It's fine," he answered faster than he would have liked. "If it makes you feel more comfortable, I don't mind you doing it."
Johnny was grateful they were in that position, because from the heat rising up his neck, he knew his face would have revealed just how embarrassed he was to say those words.
Because it was his way of saying that he wanted to keep hearing it. That he wanted Gyro to keep being himself, right there beside him.
Because to Johnny, even the things about Gyro that seemed annoying weren't annoying at all.
For a few moments, the Neapolitan didn't react, but after a few seconds he let out a small laugh, one that sounded genuinely happy with what he had heard.
And then one of Gyro's hands moved down toward the point where the fabric of Johnny's shirt ended and his skin was exposed. Once it was there, he resumed his humming, only this time, he also began lightly tapping his index finger against Johnny's waist, following the rhythm of the melody and making it reverberate throughout his entire body.
The action was nothing special, just a small bit of skin-to-skin contact, and yet Johnny couldn't help but feel a shiver run from the top of his head all the way down to the point where he had no feeling.
Being like this, with Gyro breathing against his neck and his fingers tapping in a light caress against his skin, was an overload for Johnny's senses.
That intimacy that had once felt so foreign to him was now beginning to feel like the best thing in the world, as if he had always been meant to be like this with him.
You fell in love, didn't you? The voice in his head asked, and although a thought like that would have filled him with panic at other points in his life, now he couldn't care less.
There would be time to think about those things later, more nights when he could ask Gyro more questions and perhaps hear another one of his stupid songs.
But tonight, just tonight, he could be like this.
And that was enough
With a quiet sigh, he closed his eyes again, letting himself sink completely against Gyro's body.
Johnny's eyes opened weakly in the darkness of the room. His body felt heavy and exhausted, and his head was in no better condition, filled with thoughts that were more like half-formed dreams than properly formed ideas. For a few seconds, he didn't even know where he was or what had woken him, but then he heard it.
A cry seeped through the walls of the room until it reached his ears. It was faint, but insistent, enough to pull him from his dreams and force him to pay attention.
"She woke up again." A woman's voice finally pulled him out of the dreamlike haze his mind was still trapped in. She seemed to have already been awake for a while, because her voice sounded much more coherent than anything Johnny had been thinking only a few seconds ago. "That's twice now. Do you think she's sick?" she asked, her voice worn with exhaustion.
Little by little, the American began to sit up, quickly understanding the situation he was in.
"She didn't have a fever when I went to check on her a little while ago." He answered, bringing a hand to his eyes and rubbing his eyelids. "Maybe she’s got colic."
"Could be."
Neither of them said anything for a few seconds, as though they were waiting for the crying to die down on its own, but they both knew that wasn't going to happen.
Rina let out another sigh and began lifting herself from the mattress, intending to stand, but Johnny had no intention of letting her. Not when he could take care of it himself.
He placed a hand on her shoulder and stopped her, gently pushing her back down.
"I'll go check on her. You sleep. You're more tired than I am," he said in his low voice, trying to reassure her.
For a few seconds, the woman didn't seem to react, probably just as sleepy as Johnny, but eventually she nodded, lying back down on the bed and letting her head fall against the pillow.
"Thank you."
Johnny didn't need to see her to know there was a small smile on her lips, one he would have wanted to kiss if it weren't for the fact that his daughter needed all the time and attention he could give her now.
And so he began making his way toward the room next door, his steps unsteady as he used the wall for guidance so he wouldn't bump into anything in the thick darkness, though it was a path he had walked so many times that he doubted he needed it at all.
It took him less than half a minute to reach the source of the crying.
In that small room, inside the crib Johnny had built with his own hands, lay a baby less than six months old.
The sight was not a pleasant one. The little girl seemed completely distressed, moving around and desperately trying to find a way out of the confines of the crib while never stopping her screaming and sobbing.
But despite that, Johnny could only feel his heart soften.
Every time he saw her, it did.
"What is it, princess?" he spoke, reaching his hands toward the infant, placing them beneath her arms and lifting her until he could hold her against his chest. “Having a bad night?”
Usually, the little girl was able to sleep from nighttime until the first rays of sunlight, but today in particular, she hadn't been so lucky.
Johnny completely understood her reaction.
It had to be terrifying, waking up alone in a dark room where you couldn't do anything except crawl around and cry.
He knew that from experience.
"I know, I know. You were scared because you woke up alone. I'm so sorry." He apologized as he felt tiny hands reach toward him, grabbing onto the fabric of his shirt and pulling it as hard as they could. "But I'm here now. There's nothing to be afraid of," he told her, trying to calm her down as he placed a small kiss on her head. She didn't seem to have a fever. That was good.
His words and closeness seemed to have an effect, because after a few seconds, the crying began to fade, turning into soft sobs that died against Johnny's chest until they could barely be heard.
"That's it." He praised her again. "Do you want to try sleeping again?" he asked, knowing full well he wouldn't get an answer, but it felt better than imposing his decision on her. "Let's try one last time tonight, okay?"
The baby's eyes lifted toward him again, and to Johnny, that was the sign he had needed.
Without waiting another second, he began rocking her from side to side, while using his arms to gently raise and lower her at a steady rhythm. A rhythm he had initially thought was nothing more than something his tired mind had conjured up, something natural that simply came to him when he needed it.
He had been doing it for a minute when, without meaning to, he began murmuring a melody, one that followed the same rhythm as his arms rocking her.
He hadn't thought much about it. His exhausted mind had done it completely unconsciously. But as soon as he was halfway through the melody, he heard a few words echo in his mind.
Lullaby. My mother used to sing it all the time when I was little... She still does, with my brothers.
A very familiar voice sounded in his mind, and before he could even wonder where he had heard something like that, his heart answered him, twisting painfully and beginning to beat irregularly.
Gyro.
It had been Gyro.
The blood drained from Johnny's face so violently that he almost felt like he was going to faint, and for a moment, in the darkness of that room, his mind took him back to that night.
The cave. The smell of smoke filling his senses. The way he had resisted that contact, only to eventually surrender to it completely. The warmth he had found between their bodies.
And that melody Gyro had decided to share with him.
Do you miss them?
Very much.
The words echoed through his mind again as though they had been spoken only moments ago, and for a moment Johnny genuinely thought he was going to throw up.
The memory had been nothing more than a warm moment they had shared during the race, one of so many they had experienced together, one Johnny had remembered countless times during those months when they had continued waiting to reach the finish line.
But now.
Now it felt different.
Because Johnny was remembering a man he hadn't seen in years.
Not because of distance, not because they had lost touch.
But because he was already dead.
His heart began racing frantically as he remembered the fateful day he had lost him, the day he had watched him fall from his horse into the water, watching him sink into that blood-stained sea until he hit the bottom.
His mind hadn't freed him from the memory.
It had simply hidden it away, letting it surface from time to time.
Like some kind of torture that never ended.
And one that never failed to make all the progress he had made to get there come crashing down.
His eyes began filling with tears, the muscles in his legs started trembling, and for a moment he genuinely thought he was going to fall.
At least until a blow against his chest pulled him out of his trance, dragging him from the memory and back into that dark room.
When he lowered his gaze to see what had caused it, his eyes immediately found the little girl in his arms, squirming as she desperately hit anything she could reach, demanding the attention Johnny had promised her moments ago.
Johnny didn't know how long he had been trapped in his memories, but he was grateful he had managed to wake himself before things became more complicated. His mind didn't even want to think about how badly the situation could have gone otherwise.
He let out a sigh filled with a mixture of fear and relief.
Though the bitter taste remained in his mouth.
How long had he been repressing that memory? How many more were hidden away in the corners of his mind that he was still too afraid to explore?
He didn't know, and he never would.
His mind simply wasn't what it used to be anymore.
But one thing was certain.
Now that he had recovered this memory, he wouldn't let it go again.
Gyro would never get to experience this. He would never get married or hold his own child in his arms, but that didn't mean Johnny would let his memory die.
Of course not.
If he could make someone remember him—if even a little of his presence could fill the cracks in his life left by his departure—he would seize the opportunity to do so.
That way, his presence wouldn’t be relegated to the far corners of his mind and heart.
Gyro had given him too much for him to do something like that.
Because thanks to him, he was now there, holding a being born of love.
Feeling the warmth of her body, just as he once he felt Gyro's.
Johnny brought a hand to his eyes to wipe away the tears that still threatened to fall, and letting out a sigh, he spoke again to the little girl in his arms.
“I’m sorry, I got distracted for a moment,” he said, trying to hide the sadness in his voice, though he doubted he’d succeeded. “Let’s try again, Julia.”
And he began the melody once more.