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Chapter Text

PROLOGUE - 5 MONTHS PRIOR

Giorno lifted his head, trying to focus, as he heard the sound of a key sliding into the lock of the room - cell, really - where he was being kept.

He had been an unwilling 'guest' of the newly traitorous Risotto Nero for almost two days, enduring various indignities in stoic silence. No, he wouldn't tell  what had happened to the old Boss; no, he was absolutely worthless to Don Bucciarati and no one in the Don's team would bargain for him; no, he wouldn't tell Nero anything about the new Boss. He told Nero, bluntly, that he'd made a stupid mistake. Abducting Giorno was a useless waste of time that would only lead Nero to a dead end, for Giorno had nothing to say.

For his stubbornness and silence Giorno had been locked in a small room and nailed to a wall - literally. Risotto Nero's Stand, Metallica, had ripped three huge nails from the iron in his cephalic and basilic veins near the join of each of his wrists, and crucified Giorno by them. His hands nailed to the wall near his shoulders, Giorno had been left to bleed. His ankles were also sprouting several mean nails blooming horrifically from the fibular vein and the malleolus, hard ends crammed deep into the fibulae. The nails physically blocked part of the interior structure of his foot from flexing. And here and there, in his shuddering chest and throat, the sharp, mean ends of razor blades had been pulled out at hard angles from inside his skin - one even sat coldly gleaming out from within the center of his right nipple. It bit sharply into him every time he inhaled and exhaled. His tattered jacket sleeves, once a soft pink, were soaked deep red, and because the nails and sharps were made from the materials of his own body, and maintained by another Stand user's power, Gold Experience could not remove them; Giorno'd already tried. More than once. God, he missed having a Requiem Stand. Giorno was in so much pain he'd gone blank, and cold and hard. In a way, it made it easier. Only death could break Giorno Giovanna's resolve now.

Risotto had sent photographs of him, by email, to the new Don. Giorno could imagine the looks on their faces at home. (He was never going to hear the end of it from Abbacchio, he already knew.)

Gold Experience hung angry beneath Giorno's skin, close and ready, eager to strike back at the slightest opportunity. Giorno didn't just want to barrage Risotto though - he wanted to kill him, needed to eliminate this threat to Passione for good. Giorno'd already examined the walls around him that he was nailed to, and the floor - there wasn't much to use, nothing he could convert. Any living things he could generate would have to be ironless or nearly so in order to bypass Nero's Stand. He'd had enough time to think of several creatures through the pain, and all he needed was for Nero to make the slightest mistake - just to come close, to touch him, just once. That was all Giorno needed.

He waited, breathing hard, bloody and patient, for the opportunity.

Nero's body was huge, almost filling the doorframe. He was backlit and the light from the door obscured his features.

Giorno's eyes locked on the jester-cap that Risotto wore, the heavy, dangling golden metal ends that sat around the assassin's shoulders. He looked up, managing a black grin. "I have some feedback on your accommodations," he rasped. "The bed's too hard, and the service is lacking."

Nero snorted, black sclera eyes with their red cores fixing on him. "I admire your resolve," he replied. In other circumstances, Giorno would have enjoyed hearing that rich, dark timbre speak such praise to him. "You are clearly an opponent of worth and truly loyal to the new Boss. It seems like a waste that he has chosen to leave you to die. I've received his answer. No one is coming for you. He told me to dispose of you for him."

Giorno wasn't surprised; he'd expected that response. Even if Bruno had sent Mista, Narancia and Abbacchio out to rescue him, he certainly wasn't dumb enough to say he was going to do so to an enemy.

"I guess you get to decide if... being a traitor to Passione means you let me live or not," Giorno replied, as he felt more blades forming within his skin, starting to emerge from his chest. He stared down, mouth open. They were wriggling in him, wriggling back and forth, slitting his skin, drawing more blood out. He let himself scream. He needed Risotto to get closer. "Do you plan... ghh!... to deface my body... just to send a message... to someone who doesn't care anyway?"

He was arching his hips up, tilting them from the floor, straining. He just needed Risotto to cross that gap. His chest shook from the pain of the sharp metal edges moving in him, slicing, slicing. New trails of blood slid down his skin, pooling down and curling around his hips. He saw Risotto's eyes moving from his chest downward to his pelvis. There, he thought, there. Look there. The pain was real and so was the groan that emerged from Giorno's mouth. "Or ... are you .. just doing this... for your own satisfaction?"

There, that was the look he wanted, the slight flare before the narrowing of the assassin's eyes as his words struck home.

Risotto stepped a pace or two closer. "What if I am?"

"I'm dead anyway," Giorno gasped out, straining his neck. He felt a hard edge forming at the base of his throat, under his skin, knew it would stop him from speaking soon. "Tell me."

"My Stand lets me control the iron in your blood," Risotto crouched down, still not as close as Giorno wanted, but closer, a little closer. "I feel the throbbing of your body around my hard blades and nails. It is exquisite for me to kill this way. I can make it take hours." He drifted his hand up, forward, still not touching, but Giorno felt the blood in his body change direction at Risotto's command, and flood downward into his cock, flooding his spongy tissue and pushing him into a full, hard, sudden erection that was almost explosively painful.

Giorno cried out, panted as his body went hard hard hard, throbbing violently, his cock pushing up against his pants like a needle drawn toward Risotto's outstretched hand, as if he were a compass needle trying to point north. He heard the assassin chuckling at him.

There was a light tearing sound and the blades that emerged from inside Giorno's thighs slit open his pants, making short work of them. The shreds fell away around his hips and left him further exposed, his cock red and pulsating. He had a couple of terrifying images of what Risotto could do with nails and sharp edges and opened his mouth. "Please, no."

"No," Risotto sounded amused. "I won't dishonor your body that much. But you will suffer for me."

Giorno shuddered as he felt something hard, thin and cold - not sharp, but mean and unforgiving - forming up inside his cock, filling him in a way that he wasn't meant to be filled. A flat metal nub formed inside the slit of his dick. He throbbed around it, his senses swirling and his breath sticking in his throat.  He panted down over his chest, punctured by iron edges, wet with blood. He almost forgot everything, all his plans, in his shock, in the alien terror of the hardness inside his dick that he couldn't get out, and the way his body pulsed and clamped down around it. He truly felt nailed down then, truly helpless; a few tears trickled into the corners of his eyes.

Risotto looked like the cat that ate the cream. "Exquisite." He moved a little closer, starting to crawl over Giorno. Giorno's heart was already hammering inside his lacerated chest. Risotto's black and white striped leg pushed between Giorno's legs and pushed his left thigh wider, making him cry out again. But Gold Experience had been waiting for their bodies to connect, to touch finally, and as soon as Risotto's knee pushed against Giorno's thigh there was a flare of yellow fire from the Stand, and a high, thin, twisty squeal.

All at once Risotto wasn't wearing a black jester cap - the fabric whined and whirled, and suddenly the assassin was wearing, instead, a translucent jellyfish -a  sea wasp, to be precise - with a thousand thin, pale, wriggly tentacles. A jellyfish that panicked at its sudden existence out of water and began to sting instantly, its myriad tendrils piercing Risotto's neck and jaw and delivering a massive dose of toxins straight into the assassin's jugular veins.

Giorno wheezed, hot and airless. "t-there's no iron... in a jellyfish. The most toxic jellyfish," he rasped, "has enough poison to kill a man with an amount the size of a grain of salt. You just got... a lot more than that single grain."

Risotto wheeled back, fell hard to the floor beside Giorno, screaming in agony and clawing frantically at the gelatinous thing atop his head. He was burning, burning, burning, and his heart was pounding so ferociously that it felt about to burst. The clawing of his hands only caused the panicking, dying jellyfish to sting him harder. He lost control of his Stand, and the nails and blades in Giorno's body - and, thankfully, the sounding rod in his penis - all evaporated at the same time, allowing the young underboss to free himself from the wall and push away, stagger upright.

Giorno staggered toward the door, naked and bloody. His eyes were merciless as he watched the assassin writhing around, frothing at the mouth and juddering in unbearable agony.

"But you'll be dead before the poison has time to finish."

He sent Gold Experience out to deliver the killing blow, to the roar of a hundred cries of mudamudamuda.


___

NOW

It had taken Risotto a long time to recover from his injuries after Giorno Giovanna had barraged him and poisoned him with toxic jellyfish venom. Most of Risotto's bones had been broken, and his nervous system had been inflamed. Risotto had only managed to survive the ordeal by using his own ability, Metallica, to form iron plates inside his neck and shoulders to repel the jellyfish’s lethal stings. He stopped his own heart for a few seconds, just long enough to trick Gold Experience into sensing death.

It worked, because Giorno was exhausted. Soaked in his own blood, Giorno had been too eager to escape. He didn’t think to take the precious few extra seconds to confirm Risotto had been destroyed. Through his Stand, Giorno sensed death, and all he saw on that dingy closet floor was a puddle of twitching, frothing flesh. He believed his eyes and trusted Gold Experience. 

Anyone could have made such a mistake, but for Giorno Giovanna it was going to prove a fatal error. 

For Risotto Nero, the former capo of La Squadra di Execuzione, was nothing if not determined - and he had survived. 

---

Risotto suffered. Where his limbs had been shattered, Metallica restored them, slow and burning, craquelure-patching bone with stainless steel. Risotto lay motionless for a month, fixing gaps and fractures a few tiny drops of silver ghost at a time, ejecting bone shards too small to be useful through his skin. Metallica wove soft webs of metal mesh to reconnect marrow where it was needed, and fine steel threads replaced spongy tissues. It was an excruciating process, one that gave Risotto nothing but time to luxuriate in his anger, his hunger, and his bile. This fury burned cold and clear, allowing him unfathomable strength. After that it took him another three weeks of tooth-gritted persistence to learn to move with his new, enhanced bones. 

Once Risotto was assured of his physical competence he began to stalk Giorno. It wasn't hard to track down Passione's underboss.  

Giorno Giovanna was gold and fearless under the strong Italian sun. He was the face and mouth of the new Passione, using his innate beauty and charm to win allies and smooth away conflicts. And he liked his job, liked to spend time talking to all kinds of people. He stood out in every crowd, radiant and serene, and it made him easy to track.

Risotto lingered in his shadow. The assassin crept around the edges of Giorno's glow, watching him from dark corners, crouching in alleys as he passed not four feet away. Wrapped in Metallica's light-bending invisibility, Risotto studied his prey, salivating at the thought of sinking his teeth into the young man's soft throat. 

He took endless photographs through telephoto lenses. He took careful, detailed notes on Giorno’s movements in tiny handwriting in a battered little notebook. The single notebook soon became two, three, four. Risotto printed his photos and pasted them up, constructing a huge collage on his wall of the dingy warehouse he used for his current base of operations. Giorno's glossy smile was a light among concrete fixtures and mean, thin furnishings. 

With patient observation, Risotto mapped Giorno’s visible life. The places he went by habit, the restaurants he frequented, the stores he shopped in. The acquaintances that Giorno kept were, of course, the same powerful Stand users that had annihilated Risotto's team in the first place, and they all circled around their Don, Bruno Bucciarati. Most of the time the group moved in twos, threes or more. So Risotto knew that he had to catch Giorno at some moment alone where his friends couldn't help him. Somewhere in Giovanna's routine, there was a weak spot, some moment he could be isolated and pulled down.

Risotto sat up late trying to find it, strung out on espresso and Adderall, carefully correlating his notes while Giorno's smile gleamed down on him from above. Risotto ground his teeth through three different pencils, leaving marks in the yellow painted wood as he searched for the pattern, the crack in Giovanna's defenses. 

He found one. There was a consistent gap, small but workable, a pattern rising out of the notes. On Sundays, around 7 or 8 a.m., Giorno had a fondness for going to a certain cafe for a certain treat. He almost always went there alone - perhaps an early riser compared to his friends? 

He’d found the when , but Risotto also needed the how . 

Gold Experience was the real problem of how . Risotto was confident he could control Giorno’s body - no human with red blood could resist Metallica - but it would be useless to try and capture him until he could also control Giorno’s Stand. Risotto slapped his gnawed pencil against the desk, irritable, shoving a hand through his thin silver hair.

Passione’s rivals were still dealing street drugs. A strong dose of MDMA or GHB might work, but he didn’t know how Giorno’s system would take it, or if Gold Experience would let him route around drugs. It just felt too risky. He needed a clean, overpowering capture and there was no margin for error.

He was so close to a plan, but after a bit Risotto realized he was thinking in circles. He pushed away from his desk with a snort. He rubbed at his eyes, felt the weariness in his face. His gaze lifted to the mosaic of photographs. He looked for a while, drinking in Giorno’s bright aquamarine eyes which seemed to both judge him and beckon to him. 

"Soon," he promised the pictures, before crawling off to his creaky old mattress to collapse in a jittery haze of exhausted dissatisfaction. 

---

Because his daytime thoughts were obsessed with Giorno Giovanna, his night time thoughts followed: Giorno crept, shining and torturous, into Risotto's dreams. 

He ached with the recollection of feeling his will penetrating the younger man's body. The pleasure of feeling Giorno's blood swirling under his command as he forced an erection on Giorno. He was so unfairly beautiful, even more so stained red with blood. Then the shocked, dazed look on the blond's sweating face as Risotto filled that unwanted erection with unforgiving steel, sounding him, fucking him from within. The memory of Giorno’s lips and eyes going wide in fear made Risotto hurt .

He dreamed about cupping his rough palms to Giorno's soft strong cheeks, kissing those plush lips - and then forcing a gag between them, or his cock. He wanted to smooth thick black tape over and over that sweet mouth while those gorgeous eyes pleaded for mercy, then loop a hard cord tight around Giorno's neck and pull and pull and pull until those pretty cheeks discolored and those thick golden lashes slid closed for the last time, forever. 

It was going to feel so fucking good to kill him. He was going to take it slow, drag it out, make him come a hundred times, break him.

Risotto's body burned, his broad chest and sharp cheeks hot with lust, his thick pierced cock sliding wet against his own fingers as he spread his big legs wide and stroked himself off over a pillow, imagining Giorno writhing underneath him, legs up over his shoulders, stuffed full and moaning. He shot his load, envisioning Giorno’s pretty face dirty with cum, with a defeated groan. He turned his head, flushed, gasping into the darkness, and his gaze went back to the wall. The collected mass of images seemed to be glaring at him rather than smiling - as if they knew what he’d done. What he was thinking of doing.

In a rush of heat and sullenness, Risotto swirled out of bed and tore the pictures down off the wall, ripped them into smiling golden fragments. He wouldn’t be judged by Giorno Giovanna . But one image survived, and he picked it up from the floor with shaking hands. He took it back to bed with him and shoved it under the pillow.

--- 

It was still longer before Risotto was ready to strike. Obtaining the drug he needed - he’d remembered one that would suit the situation, but it was rare and difficult, and obtaining it had required a lot of legwork and a few killings besides - had only been part of the delay. The rest of the time was spent preparing the location, hours away from Napoli, where he would take Giorno to die. 

He went back to stalking Giorno in the meantime, making sure he hadn’t changed his Sunday habits. To his relief, Giorno seemed to be enough of a creature of habit that he was still making that early morning run by himself.

Risotto, out of curiosity, went into the cafe himself on an off day and tried out the little treat he so often saw Giorno walking away with. He identified it by its distinctive black hockey-puck chocolate shape and frilly doily-wrapping. The cafe called it a Ministeriale .

It wasn't bad - orange liqueur cream wrapped in a thick layer of dark chocolate - but sugary for his taste, so bright and sweet. He supposed it made sense someone like Giorno would still have a longing for it. How old was he now anyway? 18? 19?

He imagined how it would taste if he stole Giorno's lips after eating one. 

He imagined it’d be delicious . 

He spent most of the final week leading up to Sunday thinking over his plan and his route, working the timing over and over in his head. He packed the supplies he needed into his car, into the backseat - a heavy blanket covering duct tape, handcuffs, zip ties. Charged up taser in the glovebox. Pre-loaded needles tucked in a plastic box under the seat. Food and water in the trunk - enough for two, for about two weeks, but he planned to starve Giorno to keep him weak. 

Saturday night, he lit a single candle in his dark squat, and he fished out the two photos he kept in his pocket. Staring at the first - a photograph of the whole Hitman Team, flopped together in a feral pile around their couch, and the last trace of them - Risotto silently offered prayers to his team. 

“A little longer,” he said, to the flame, to the photo, to his memories, his voice heavy and hard to hide the pain. “Not until they’re gone. Once they’re gone, then I’ll catch up with you. Keep an eye on me until then.”

The prayer in his heart was beyond any words he could speak, and didn’t match what he did say.

He gazed on their faces for a while, recommitting himself to their memories, before tipping the corner of the photo into the candle flame, allowing the last image of the Hitman Team to begin to crinkle and wilt. He held it as long as he could, watching the chemicals of the print bubble into distortion, before flicking the burning image to the ground. Soon there was nothing where it crumbled but black, unrecognizable ash.

Risotto was left with the photo of Giorno. After a long, silent stare he also fed it to the candle.

“You’re going to burn,” he said, a soft, grim promise. “But don’t worry. You’re just the first. The rest of your friends will follow soon after.”

The flame moved and licked over Giorno’s cheeks, his eyes, searing through them, then Risotto tossed the photo down to the floor as well. It landed near the other pile, and in a few moments it too was nothing but ash.

---

At 5 am on Sunday Risotto was up, sober and steady. After a few early morning exercises to limber up and warm up, he got into his car and slipped the key into the ignition.

Today, if possible. If not, he could try again next week, but his plan was now absolute and everything was in place. There was nothing left to do but just take Giorno, now.
He started driving, following the same road he’d taken so many times that it was almost automatic. 

His destination was the Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, where Giorno’s Sunday craving took him to that little cafe. Driving was easy, only a handful of pedestrians and a few cars beside his own slowly circled the Piazza. Risotto eased around the loop of the Piazza steady and careful - which made it easier for him to eye the crowd, thin despite the bright morning, and look for Giorno among them. 

He spotted Giorno moving down Vico San Domenico. The blond braid could have been a mistake, but not the hot pink suit. Who else would dare that combination? Even better, Giorno appeared to be alone, as expected. 

Risotto eased his car into the narrow side street. To either side, the apartment walls and windows loomed high, creating a one-way canyon. On one side of the old cobblestones, big concrete planters were spaced to keep vehicle traffic slow and protect pedestrians. It was tight. There was just enough room to maneuver. The wheels ground soft and slow over the stones, tires crunching.

Risotto activated Metallica and wrapped himself in his light bending ability, disappearing from view behind the wheel. Better that random strangers imagine a ghost car than recognize him - better still to hide from Giorno Giovanna, as well, until the last possible moment. 

It was Giorno, he could tell now. He was maybe a block ahead of the car, with a paper tucked under his arm. He was on his phone, talking to someone. Risotto pulled the car to the left and parked it between two of the planters, shut off the engine, unlocked all the doors with the master switch. Reaching into the glove compartment, he took the taser out, slipped it into his right hand. He pulled the blanket down off the back seat with a quick tug, baring the tools underneath. Invisible, he eased out of the driver’s seat, opening and closing the door as soft as he could.

Risotto's lips drew back into an anticipatory curl, baring his teeth, all but licking his lips. He was patient, not nervous, but dammit, he needed Giorno to end his call. In a few more seconds, Giorno would reach the outermost edge of Metallica's range.

Risotto slid into a low, slow lope, walking after Giorno, keeping the blond in front of him and himself under wraps, waiting for his moment. He just needed Giorno to put the phone away. If he got too far from the car, it would add some difficulty in getting him back to it; Risotto didn’t want that. The farther he had to drag Giorno back the more the danger increased.

Get. Off. The. Phone, he growled in his head.

He could not afford impatience, but to come this far, be this close, and if Giorno managed to get out of range…

Finally! The blond started to pull his phone down. Risotto darted forward a few paces on his longer legs and slammed Metallica into life, focusing on building a small bead of iron inside Giorno’s neck - intending to block an artery to the brain. Risotto shaped the little bead up. He let it go and move with Giorno’s blood, felt it as it traveled and lodged into place. He moved faster and got closer to his victim, thumb sliding over the power button of the taser.

The strike was brutal and effective. As the clot of iron formed and hardened, blocking blood flow to the brain, Giorno went into a transient ischemic attack, just as planned. Enough to cripple him, not kill him or destroy his mind. Too soon for that. 

Risotto saw Giorno wobble, and fall out of his easy, confident stride. The blond lurched hard to the left, stumbling like a drunk until his shoulder ground against a bit of crumbling grey stone wall covered with graffiti at the intersection. He clutched to his head with his right hand. The phone fell out of his left hand, clattered and broke apart on the ground.

He stopped moving, panting with pain, and Risotto cleared the gap between them. He got close, closer, and then right on the blond. He pounced at once, pushing into Giorno from behind, slid one arm around his waist and his other hand over Giorno’s mouth, folding his lightbending particles to envelop the blond as well. Risotto added insult to injury by shoving the taser into Giorno’s ribs in the middle of his seizure, slamming him with 10,000 volts. Giorno was blasted unconscious, his shocked cry smothered under Risotto’s palm. 

Risotto snatched him up as he collapsed. The assassin said nothing; no one was there to hear or see what was happening. The situation was all in Risotto’s favor.

Giorno was dead weight, but Risotto had no problem just lifting him up a few inches and carrying him the twenty or so feet back to his vehicle. Keeping Giorno under cloak and muffled, he pulled one hand free to open the back door of the car. 

Risotto forced Giorno’s limp body into the back seat, climbing in after him, moving on top of him. He grabbed Giorno by the forearms and wrestled him around by them until he had him face down and his wrists pulled up behind his back. He snapped handcuffs on Giorno, ratcheted them good and tight, then pushed his legs up and in, and ziptied his ankles and thighs together. Giorno was silent beneath him, helpless and numb.

Last, finally, Risotto pulled the plastic box out from under the seat and drew up one of the pre-loaded needles. He leaned in again, and pushed the needle into Giorno’s neck, shooting him up. Risotto let out a small, black chuckle. Kid was in for a hell of a headache when he came back around. He licked his thumb and pressed it against the tiny dot of blood that followed his removal of the needle.

Satisfied, Risotto threw the thick grey blanket over Giorno, covering him up head to toe. Then he clambered back and out, slamming the back door with a thump that rocked through the whole car. 

A clean, simple catch. Couldn’t have gone better. He’d done his team and their brutal standards proud. He let Metallica release; the bead blocking Giorno’s artery disintegrated, and his light bending effect dropped too. It hadn’t been long enough to do him real harm; Giorno would be dizzy and numb for a couple of hours, and carry a big bruise and muscle aches from the taser. That would cover their drive pretty well, and keep Giorno from getting too feisty in the back seat. 

Contented, relieved, Risotto got back into the driver’s seat and turned the car back on. He pulled back into the little lane, calm and easy, and started maneuvering toward the freeway out of town. He tried to tamper down his excitement, but the awareness that Giorno Giovanna was bound and helpless in his backseat had his blood thrumming with satisfaction.

Risotto also realized he was hard as a rock, dick aching with anticipation of all that he was going to be able to do to Giorno. He chuckled again, giving himself a quick squeeze for pleasure as he adjusted himself in the driver’s seat and settled in for the long drive out of town.  

Chapter Text

Giorno came back to himself in dry heat and disjointed pain and blankness. He tasted rough fiber in his mouth, but it gave way - he wasn’t gagged - and as his blurry vision refocused he realized he was covered by a thick, scratchy blanket. It was hot from his breath and body heat.

He couldn’t feel his left arm or leg, couldn’t sense them as part of himself, and his right side was registering unusual pressures here and there. He tried to move his legs a little and found them heavy, unresponsive. The blanket blocked him from seeing or smelling anything, but he could feel vibration against him - he thought he was in a car, the vibrations were steady, only an occasional amount of jostle. Was he in a trunk? He couldn’t seem to pull himself together enough to kick, and his legs seemed to be stuck together, folded up close against his chest.

He was tied up, he figured. Even guessing this, Giorno wasn’t yet afraid, more frustrated and confused. Everything felt blurry, off-center, out of focus. 

He had no memory of what could have landed him here, and every breath he drew sent white hot twinges through his ribs - the ones he could feel , at any rate. He wondered if he’d been hit with a Stand. His last clear memory had been chatting with Bucciarati over their plans for a meeting later in the day.  

Giorno reached for Gold Experience, and to his horror he found that there was no answer. All he could manage were a few weak moments of spark and tingle at the base of his spine - and then his headache doubled. Tripled .  

Huffing in frustration, teeth pressed tight against the roll of pain, Giorno decided that he needed to at least try and get out from under the blanket. It took what felt like a Herculean amount of effort to move his head enough to dislodge it, but he was determined. After trying hard he managed to somehow wriggle and push himself around just enough to pull the blanket off his head. He gasped in a clear breath and saw what was around him.

A car; he was in the back seat. They were on the Autostrade, he thought. Nothing passing by the windows looked recognizable, just blurs of green and brown. He squinted as his eyes adjusted to the change of light. He needed to put his head back down, dizziness surging and making it impossible to hold his head up. He let himself sink back into the car seat as it rumbled against him. His throat ached, dry and rattling as he rasped, “ Who ?” He meant to say more, demand an explanation, but he was so damn tired.

The driver sounded amused. “You used to be more eloquent, Giorno Giovanna.” The voice was deep, basso profundo, a certain register that crawled into the back of Giorno’s mind and itched in a familiar way. It was never, ever a good thing when people with those kinds of voices called him by his full name. 

"Stay down,” The driver warned, “For your own sake.” There was no overt malice in his voice, but a cold, calm authority. Giorno wished his head wasn’t so fuzzy so that he could connect the familiarity of the tone to a name. He was sure he’d heard the voice before, somewhere. He frowned. 

The driver spoke again. “You've had a mini-stroke. You’ll be dizzy and weak for a couple of hours, though I should have figured you’d recover faster than expected. Pretty and tough.” 

Giorno focused his blurry attention onto the driver. He watched the driver shifting gears of the automatic, saw a gold band around the wrist and a long black sleeve. He followed the sleeve up to the shoulder, and caught something that registered. Golden spheres, dangling from a black cowl-like shroud. A ridiculous hat.

Cold dread dropped into Giorno’s stomach, along with recognition. And disbelief. “Risotto Nero.” This was bad . 

It must have shown on his face, because Risotto glanced over his shoulder for a split second and shot him a chuckle before he turned back to the road. “You remember me.” 

Giorno worked a dry tongue over dry lips. “How ?”

“The how doesn’t really matter as much as the fact your kill was sloppy,” Risotto told him, focused on the road and not on Giorno himself. Giorno realized, with bitter clarity, that Risotto wasn’t concerned about him for one simple reason - Giorno couldn’t do anything to him. 

“Assassination 101, gorgeous: Always make sure the man you kill is really dead before you leave.”

Giorno squirmed, became more aware of the chain of the handcuffs brushing against his right hand’s fingertips, the hard plastic line biting his ankles. His heart started to twist inside him. His Stand wasn’t working, so he couldn’t free himself or heal himself. And Risotto Nero was supposed to be dead. Was dead. Gold Experience had sensed death. Worst of all, Giorno knew that his body was betraying his panic to his captor, who could read and control his blood.

Giorno shut his eyes, tried to push himself back to calm. He focused on the emptiness he felt where his left hand should have been and let that hollow sensation wash over him. He sank into his exhaustion, cheek sinking deeper against the vinyl seat. It stilled him, slowed him, and he felt his panic recede. His headache carried on. 

He heard a soft grunt from the driver’s seat, confirming that Risotto was watching his pulse.

Giorno gathered up his saliva, swallowed it, spoke again. "I'll be missed. I was supposed to be at a meeting today." 

"Tough shit," Risotto lifted a hand from the gearshift, gave a dismissive flap of his hand. "How exactly do you expect your friends to find you? No one saw me take you. Even if your friend Abbacchio uses his Moody Blues, all he’ll see is you stagger, drop your phone, and be dragged away. It won't give them my plate number. Your other friend, Narancia - his Aerosmith can only pick up generalized breathing, and nothing about your breathing is special enough to pick you out of a crowd at any time. Unless you have any other friends who can track you by some other method I should know about?" 

Giorno answered, “No,” soft and grudging. He was not about to reveal Bucciarati’s Requiem to an enemy. He figured it wouldn’t be long before Bruno put two and two together and started looking for him. Giorno hoped so, anyway.

"I didn't think so," Risotto nodded. "So you may as well rest. Conserve your strength. You’ll need it. You owe me. All of you owe me. For myself and my men.” 

“Killing me won’t accomplish anything,” Giorno said, still soft, looking for an angle of attack, some way to inject reason into the situation. “You’re starting a war you can’t win alone. Killing me will just infuriate my friends, and it won’t bring your men back, either. You’re escalating things. You must realize this.”

Risotto’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. Hard frown lines formed around his eyes, his mouth, his features sinking into shadow. Pain crept into his voice, a raw note under the dark tones. “I don’t care if what I do is justified. It’ll let them rest .” 

He seemed to pause and gather himself; when he spoke next, his voice was cool again, bleached of feeling. ”Spare me the lecture. When the Hitman Team targets someone, they fall. Your life is already over.”

Then why am I still alive? Giorno wondered. He focused on his breathing and thought as best he could around the steady pounding crushing his skull and the backs of his eyes.

Honor, tradition. Mafia justice had its own brutal logic. Giorno knew, without needing to ask, that he was being taken to the place where he would be killed. The “last ride” was an old Mafia tradition, after all. But Mafia justice should have left him dead on the street as a clear, unmistakable message to Bucciarati and the others, along with some form of call-out to what the honor killing was for, and who was responsible. Under the traditional logic, taking him alive didn’t make sense . 

Hostages were taken for ransom, leverage, or bait, but Risotto didn’t claim to want any of that. He said his men needed to ‘rest’. So why go out of his way for this kill?

Giorno squirmed, but he couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. Risotto was playing under some other set of rules, and his survival - not to be hoped for, but still to be tried for - would depend on learning those rules. If only Giorno could get his head clear. 

He accepted the premise that he was already dead. That was Mafia logic he did understand, and there was no point in resisting it. If he died, then he died. So be it. The miracle of crossing worlds had never promised him anything but the chance to exist alongside his family, not any assurance that his life there would be long.

If he was already dead, then he had nothing to defend and nothing to lose. Accepting this set him free to just react, to move inside this scenario without expectation of a hopeful outcome. And that in its own way set Giorno’s heart into resolve. 

He had not survived three years as the Godfather in his own world by refusing to accept the obvious. 

He ran back through his previous experience with Risotto. Risotto had a cynical sense of humor. He liked to drag things out, liked to go low and intimate, deriving pleasure from the punishments he dished out. He was a meticulous man, but could be egged into taking impulsive actions with the right words. There was a seed there that Giorno could nurture if he was very, very careful.
He was going to have to play on impulses and do the best he could. 

Mind made up, Giorno then decided Risotto’s advice was worth following. He did need to conserve his strength. He let go of further thought and sank away into his exhaustion, let the steady thump of the car wheels against the road and the hot blanket lull him into a doze. 

Risotto felt Giorno sliding into sleep by the slowing of his pulse. The kid was no fool. He remembered from when he’d held him before: Giorno was wily enough to lay low and hold himself in check, building up energy until the precise moment when he could spring his real attack, in one overwhelming push, like the snapping of a steel trap. Of course he’d be doing the same now. That was an admirable trait but it also complicated things.

Risotto needed Giorno broken , but he wasn’t quite sure how to do it. Pain hadn’t worked on him before, and he was difficult to terrorize - apart from that adorable little dread he’d shown at the threat of having his cock mutilated. That had made him sweat  - good to remember - but for the most part, Giorno seemed to transmute his suffering into resolve. Risotto thought that Giorno was just a hardcore masochist who hadn’t realized it yet.

Hm, maybe. Risotto tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. Maybe the play here was to strangle him with self-doubt? Crack into his head and dig out the shit inside? Masochism often constellated with internal guilt and a need for doing penance for imagined or self-perceived failures. A failed Catholic himself, Risotto had recognized that self-punishing aspect of Giorno’s persona right away, but he hadn’t had enough time to work through it before. What would Giorno Giovanna feel guilty about? Could he find it and drag it out of him? 

If he could crack Giorno’s iron will, he needed to do it as fast as possible. Infecting him with despair and hammering on his guilt - yeah, that would have to be the way to go. 

Risotto felt a wicked smile moving across his lips. 

If he could get Giorno to beg for his own torture - that would be even better. 

----

Risotto pulled off the Autostrada and followed a long, winding road into the countryside, which led to a particular side road poorly maintained, and an abandoned parking area where the concrete was overgrown with weeds pressing through cracks in the lot. Dark, unkempt and decaying concrete structures rose up around them to the north, east and west.

Home sweet home , Risotto thought with a bitter snort, turning off the car. He liked driving, but that was almost three hours and he looked forward to standing up and stretching his legs. He glanced into the back seat again - his prize was still asleep, or pretending to be. 

Taser back in his pocket, Risotto got out of the car and slammed the door hard- he wanted to startle Giorno. He rolled his shoulders and stretched out a bit of stiffness, then went to open the back door on the passenger side at Giorno’s feet. 

He saw the blond lifting his head - good, awake. Risotto tugged the blanket away and grabbed at Giorno’s bound ankles, pulling hard on his legs and yanking him over the vinyl seat, dragging Giorno closer to the door. He let the blond’s strapped legs dangle out of the car. Giorno grunted, and Risotto expected to be kicked, but Giorno stayed quiet and watchful instead. 

Risotto pushed himself into the back then, looming close over Giorno. "How's your head?"

Giorno’s eyes rose, dark green, his voice pitched toward sullen. “ Throbbing .”

Giorno’s curls were starting to unravel, golden strings falling loose across his face. His lips were shaping into a delicate, frustrated pout. His chest was rising and falling, as if he were holding down anger, but Risotto could feel that Giorno’s pulse was still steady and calm. 

Giorno was fishing . 

Risotto chuckled, amused by this malicious compliance, and reached down to smooth the loose hairs from Giorno’s forehead, a little fake-moue of sympathy accompanied by a low, inauthentic “Aw”. Poor baby. Giorno’s hair was soft, a little sweaty. It stayed down when he slid it back.

“Still no Stand?” Risotto pressed closer, leaning more of his weight into Giorno, pushing his pelvis down into the blond’s. “That’s a shame. I expected you to be tougher than that.”

He saw Giorno’s eyes narrow and focus tighter under him. His breath grew choppy, and so did his pulse. Oh, he didn’t like hearing that. Good. Risotto had the moment. He pushed harder, petting Giorno’s forehead, continuing to smooth at his hair. He spoke with a low, implacable tone. “The fact is, it was easy to beat you. And it’ll be easy to kill you, too.”

The green in Giorno’s eyes darkened to an impenetrable shade, but he didn’t turn his face away. A twitch at his throat- not a swallow but a flex of a muscle in his jaw as he tensed.

Risotto lowered himself closer to Giorno’s mouth, the mouth he had been fantasizing about tormenting for so long. He stroked his long fingers slow along Giorno’s jawline, tracing it. He touched Giorno’s mouth then. Giorno’s lips were so pretty - perfect lips, softer and thicker than a girl’s, and so warm . Risotto felt like a snake toying with a mouse. Their gazes held. 

His mouth almost touched Giorno’s. “You’re ordinary now.”   

Risotto pulled out the taser and pressed the sharp, cold metal tines against Giorno’s neck, above the top of his collar. The blond flinched around the eyes, but gave no other reaction.

“Let’s talk rules. It’s simple enough for even you to follow. Just like before. You’re going to do everything I tell you, or I’m going to hurt you.” 

Giorno’s pupils dilated. Perhaps he was remembering nails and razors blooming out of his body. Risotto aided this with a threat - letting Metallica start building up clumps of weight inside Giorno here and there, in his upper arms and cheeks, around his ribs. Not enough to sharpen into actual forms and pierce through, but enough for the blond to feel it happening and know it could happen again.

Giorno swallowed. His face grew hot. That luscious mouth opened, but whatever he was going to say died unspoken. Risotto schooled his face to a careful coldness. He didn’t want Giorno to be able to see how eager he was to make his next move.

“Stay still.” He pushed the taser harder into the line under Giorno’s jaw, on the right side of his neck. Then he bent in, pressed his mouth to Giorno’s.

Giorno didn’t fight it. His mouth quavered a moment before he gave in, melting with a soft and hurt little moan in his throat that shot straight through Risotto’s spine to his balls. That was good. Giorno tasted good, smelled good, felt good. The reality of having him was so much hotter than his fantasies. Now that he had a taste of the real thing, he wanted more. 

The kiss grew intense, tight and hard. Giorno was yielding, and Risotto took advantage, pushing his greedy tongue in, forcing Giorno’s lips further apart. He half expected to feel Giorno’s neat white teeth clamping down on him.

He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or not when Giorno didn’t bite him.

Risotto idly rolled his finger around the fire button of the taser while he kept its tines pinched into Giorno’s neck. He pressed more of his weight down, his free hand folding over Giorno’s forehead. The car seat creaked beneath them as Giorno was pushed deeper into it. Small sounds passed between them, soft huffs and unfinished murmuring.

Giorno’s mouth felt so good that it was some minutes before Risotto surfaced for air. When he did, both of them were out of breath. Giorno’s eyes opened again, currents of darkness swirling around what Risotto interpreted as more wary scrutiny. Giorno was trying to think ahead, brace for whatever was coming. But the captive blond said nothing, only panting up, bursts of hot air leaving his wet, kiss-puffed lips. His cheeks and the tips of his ears were flushed. 

He hadn’t been kissing back , but he hadn’t fought, either. 

Risotto wondered if Giorno could feel him getting hard - but he thought he could feel Giorno’s dick throbbing, too. He pressed his hips in against Giorno’s, felt a low shift from the blond’s blood in answer. Giorno was feeling it, then.

Giorno found his voice, lifted his eyes. Keeping his head still against the taser, he only whispered, “Are you sure you want me dead ?”

The hitman held down his own flinch at the question, instead pushing the taser harder into Giorno’s neck. He touched his lips to Giorno’s cheek, moved to his ear to counter, “I never said your death would be easy .”  

Risotto pulled back, stabbed at the taser’s trigger. Giorno jolted, gasping as the taser pumped voltage into his throat with a loud, hot snapping sound. Giorno’s muscles pulled tight as he spasmed under the hitman’s weight, then blacked out again. His head rolled limp to one side, a dark bruise forming and spreading fast under his high pink collar.

Risotto pulled back, watching Giorno’s body jitter with residual shocks. He felt his own chest tighten, as if the breath had been knocked out of him instead. 

Giorno’s question stuck to him in an irritating way: he couldn’t just shove it aside like he wanted. He tried to, but he found himself just staring at Giorno instead, studying the tilt of Giorno’s gold eyebrows and the trapped, minute movements of his eyes beneath his eyelids. 

All his, now. Bound and helpless. Defeated. 

So why did it feel like Risotto had somehow lost the moment, even for winning?

He shook his head, sucked in a breath. Enough . He needed to get Giorno inside and set up. He took a few seconds more to collect himself, swiped his hand over his face.

He pulled out of the car, and pulled Giorno with him. He picked up the blond, hefting his bound body up over one shoulder with a grunt, and turned toward the shadowy ruins.

Chapter Text

The steelworks factory had lain rotten and abandoned since the end of the 60’s. It was a sprawling snarl of decaying buildings and frozen machinery that covered fifty acres. 

Risotto had found it by pure chance years ago. It’d proven a useful staging ground to test out and refine his control over Metallica, providing plenty of raw material to practice sculpting his Stand into knives and sharps. Later, as Risotto established his career as a top-level Mafia hitman, it also proved a perfect place to kill. The factory’s sprawling grounds, full of wild weeds, rough pits, and overgrown grasses, hid many bloody secrets.

He already had a spot in mind for Giorno’s corpse. There was a shallow passageway nestled between two of the factory buildings that had a large tree grown big and tough between them. The grass was long and wild, with white flowers growing in clumps at the foot of the tree. He’d wire Giorno’s body to the branches, and stuff his lifeless mouth and eye sockets full of Queen Anne lace and feverfew. It just felt appropriate to leave his body to rot in nature.

Risotto’s grip on Giorno’s hip tightened. 

That was a few days down the road, though. He planned to enjoy himself first. 

Carrying his prize, Risotto plunged on into the hollow darkness of one of the factory buildings.

Dusty shafts of grey light streamed in through broken, glassless window frames, providing ghostly illumination over the dirty floor. Dead leaves and glass fragments cracked and snapped under Risotto’s thick boots. He stepped over piles of wire and heaps of forgotten steel cables and chains. Big old machines, mechanisms for smelting and shaping metal, were now frozen silent, stuck open, encrusted in rust and cobwebs.  

At the back of the building was a short metal stairwell. The paint on the stairs, once dark blue, was flaking off. They led up to what had once been the overseer’s office suite - a handful of small boxy spaces interconnected, with large dirty windows that looked out over the factory floor. Risotto had a rough squat prepared there, but that wasn’t where he was going to take Giorno right away. 

Instead, he turned to his left and moved deeper into the shadows, where thick chains dangled from old high runner tracks in the ceiling. One of the chains still had a big industrial hook on it. Risotto set Giorno down on the floor to reach for the chain - he had to jump a bit to grab the hook and pull it within his reach. The pulley holding the chain squealed, a bitter sound resonating off all the hollow tubes and metal guard rails around them.  

Risotto crouched and uncuffed Giorno’s hands from his back, but only so he could flip him over to chain his wrists again from the front. He hooked the chain between Giorno’s wrists over the hook, and let the unconscious blond hang limp from it. He paused in the middle of stepping away at a thought, turning back. He took out a narrow roll of bondage tape from his pocket, and wrapped the gumless plastic around Giorno’s head, over his eyes, for a quick blindfold. He’d be disoriented waking up without sight. 

Finished, the hitman stepped aside to grab the other end of the chain and start pulling it back up. A few hard tugs pulled Giorno up, his arms straightening and being lifted above his head. 

Up, and up again, Risotto kept ratcheting the chain through its pulley until Giorno was lifted off the floor. Then he locked the chain into position and went back to Giorno, taking his limp body by the hips for a few more adjustments and to test the balance of the chains.

Risotto crouched and tugged Giorno’s loafers off, wanting to see where his bare feet were in relation to the ground. Just right - Giorno’s toes and the pads of his feet just scraped the floor. He could maybe try and hold his own weight when he was conscious again by straining his toes to cling to the ground, but it wouldn’t be easy for him. There was also a good chance he’d dislocate one or both arms, or break his wrists if he struggled too hard when he came to. 

Satisfied so far, Risotto took out a knife and slit the white zipties around Giorno’s thighs and ankles, tugging them loose and throwing them away. There wasn’t much left to do except to wait for him to wake up again, so Risotto left Giorno to hang, and turned around to go back to the car and bring in the rest of the things in the trunk.

---

Giorno woke up feeling worse than before. He figured out the trap. Grimacing, he felt his toes around beneath him and splayed them against the concrete to try and spare his racked arms. He managed to catch some of his own shaky weight by straining his calves. His legs still shook, bad. 

His chest felt tight, breathing was hard, and the burning ache behind his eyes that hadn’t gone away was amplified by the tension in his shoulders radiating into his neck and spine. Over his head, his fingers were numb, and his wrists felt pinched and sore. 

And he couldn’t see . He rubbed his head against his arm and heard crackling - there was something plastic stretched over his eyes, tight, dry and staticy. He didn’t think he could dislodge it so he abandoned the effort.

On the plus side, he was no longer numb to half his body. He could feel all of himself again, so even though it hurt more, he felt some relief for the discomfort, as illogical as it might have been.

There was a musty, ashy smell around him, oil and dust hanging strong in his nose as he tried to get his bearings amid the absence of light. His ears quirked, trying to hear better over his own stressed exhalations. Large space, he thought, empty from the sound - only some distant wind hissing - and the way the air moved around him, there didn’t seem to be walls or structures close to him. He might have been in a warehouse or parking structure - the metallic smells, the dirty wind and the rough floor suggested the latter.

How long had he been out?

He tried for Gold Experience again, and received another sharp backlashing pulse across his temple that hit so hard it made him squeeze his eyes shut under the plastic and gasp for air.

“You’re ordinary now,” Risotto had told him. Giorno felt the insult rattling around in his head - ordinary, useless - and he shoved it away with effort. He couldn’t let Risotto’s words take root in him. The hitman was trying to undercut his sense of self. 

Sweat pooled at the base of his neck. This was impossible . He couldn’t keep himself steady, he couldn’t see, and he hurt. He had to focus everything into the pads of his feet and toes to keep his shoulders from pulling apart, but all he was doing was shifting the agony in his muscles from one place to another. His breath turned into huffing, thick and wet. He jittered with tension, straining in place. 

Caught up in his struggle, he didn’t realize Risotto was moving behind him until the hitman was on him, pressing up against his back and folding thick arms around his waist. Giorno bit his lip, to hold down the startled yell that wanted to blast out of his throat, but he knew Risotto could feel him struggling.

“Comfy?” the hitman purred. Giorno could hear the smug smile in his voice.

Giorno grimaced, calves aching. He felt a change of tension in his clothes and realized Risotto had taken hold of his zipper, starting to pull his jacket open. Air moved in cold against his overheated skin.

“Is it too late to ask for a change of venue? Couldn’t you have killed me just as well in a nice hotel?” There was a tug at the loosened collar at the back of his neck, and all he got for his snark was a chuckle in return. Giorno’s open jacket shifted along his shoulders, and he felt breath brushing the fine blond hairs on the back of his neck. 

“Do you think you deserve a comfortable death?” Risotto paused. “Try not to move too much.”

Giorno felt the lightest prickle of sharp, cold metal at the back of his neck. He felt more tugging of his jacket around him, more air on his skin. Then he heard thick, sawing snipping, the sound of heavy scissors slicing through cloth just at the base of his neck. He felt the scissors opening and closing, bumping his skin as they moved, though he wasn’t cut by them.

“Your collar’s in my way,” Risotto said. There was a rough, hard sensation and then a firm tug, and Giorno struggled to keep his delicate balance on his toes. He realized that Risotto was cutting off his jacket’s collar along the seam. His suspicions were confirmed a moment later when he felt Risotto pushing his thick braid to a side and mouthing at the back of his then-bared neck. 

The mouthing was accompanied by Risotto’s hands curling under his jacket to drawl up and down his shuddering ribs and abdomen. The touches were soft, delicate, cruel teases. Risotto’s palms were warm and moved along the shape of him, up and down his ribs, feeling all across him. Exhausted and yearning for relief, Giorno would have sank into the touches - if not for the stressed position he was trapped in.

Risotto rested his hands on Giorno’s hips, pressing his palms down and amplifying the stress on Giorno’s shoulders until Giorno let out a protesting huff.

“I like you racked and shaking,” Risotto told him, “But here. I’ll help you.”

A searing stabbing pain shot through Giorno’s heels, and he felt and smelled them slicing open. He cried out, startled. He felt hot blood splurting out, rolling down his stressed arches and making the ground he struggled to keep wet and slick. Then he felt a hardening, the broken skin of his heels being pressed against by something thin, metal, hard. The crawling, icy sensation moved further, following the flow of blood down the back of his arches and moving up toward his ankles at the same time. 

Something wrapped around his ankles - formed and pressed in, metal, coiling like vines, cold . He felt his skin pulsing back against the tightness. Giorno realized that Risotto was using Metallica to wrap his feet in elaborate formed high heels. Hot iron torn from his blood hardened into a metal spike between Giorno’s lacerated foot and the ground and formed a thin layer of steel that molded to his feet. 

The pain in his calves was now added to by the hard thrum of the gashes in his heels, but the modifications did steady him against the floor, giving him balance and releasing some of the stress on his shoulders. It also hobbled him. He was only fine as long as he stood very still.

Still, it was a small mercy. He panted out, “Thank you,” even as his ankles pulsed.

“Thank you, sir ,” Risotto corrected him.

Giorno growled, but nodded his head a little. “Thank you, sir .” He laid a sharp, venomous edge in the final word, and behind his left arm he heard Risotto’s small snort in answer.

Risotto went back to his slow fondling, and Giorno fidgeted against him, body pinging and throbbing in so many places. It was almost - almost - soothing, a slow and heavy set of movements, Risotto’s palms gliding in regular rhythm over his tense abdomen and ribs. He felt the spell trying to be woven into him through it, felt the stroking as an attempt to calm him and lower his guard. Risotto pressed heavy against his back, keeping Giorno close with his hands, not letting him squirm away. 

He knew it was a feint, a trick, and in the touches, Giorno also felt himself being appraised. Like a new horse, like livestock: the potential strength of him being felt out and tested by possessive hands.

“You’ve gained weight since the last time I saw you,” Risotto commented. The hitman gave Giorno a pinch in the bruise left from the taser at his ribs, and Giorno hissed and twisted. “Spoiled life as the underboss, mm?”

Giorno tasted sweat in his mouth. “No,” He huffed, “My friends… keep pushing me to eat. I,” He hesitated but then confessed, “Forget to, otherwise.”

Risotto made a noncommittal sound, one Giorno took as indifferent but still judgemental. His hands slid up, and cupped against Giorno’s chest. Stern fingers moved inward and pulled and twisted Giorno’s nipples until he started to feel sore. Giorno tilted his head toward his right arm, unable to stop the flush spreading over his face and neck and chest. His jaw tensed, and a bolt of pain from the pull at his bruised neck followed.

“Ah, your friends.The same friends that touch you all the time, I suppose.”

Giorno frowned under the plastic blindfold. Before he could speak Risotto continued. 

“I watched you for a long time before I took you, you know. I watched you alone and I watched you with them,” Risotto went on. “I followed you for months. And I saw how you let them handle you. They were always pulling on your arms, your wrists, hanging off you.” 

The hitman’s voice grew darker as his hands slid down, away from Giorno’s chest toward his waist, reaching around him to pull his belt off. “Tell me. Be honest.” Risotto worked Giorno’s belt open and eased it away from his slacks, then breathed into the back of his neck. “Do you let them fuck you, too?” 

Giorno’s gut went spiraling. His face was burning - he could feel it, couldn’t stop it - and the metal heels he was trapped in clicked against the floor as he fidgeted, helpless, air catching fire in his chest. That was none of his business, none of his business! He pressed his mouth closed to stop himself from shouting something stupid, even knowing that every reaction was betraying him to his captor. 

“You aren’t struggling much,” Risotto pressed, voice inescapable, biting into Giorno’s burning throat like a bitter winter wind. “You knew to try and balance yourself. You didn’t try to pull your arms loose.” 

Risotto brought Giorno’s belt up and slid it around his neck, pulling the buckle right to the back of Giorno’s neck. He gave the dangling end a sharp pull, cutting off Giorno’s air for a long hot second. He let go. Giorno dipped his head forward and gulped air back down, knocked off kilter.

“You’re used to being tied up. Aren’t you? Is that what your friends do with you? Is that how you got to be the underboss of Passione? By being the Don’s hot little cocksleeve?”

Giorno’s throat rattled - he flushed at the accusation, his heart hammering and body pulsating head to toe. No, I gave up being the Don because it hurt too much to do it alone. I ruled for three years, but you don’t know that because you don’t know me! Pain, confused and hateful arousal, guilt and frustration all swirled around within him, making him feel like he was boiling within his skin.

“Stop it,” he rasped, a weak order, even though he knew it was a mistake to respond at all. He was strangled again for speaking- another sharp jerk of the belt around his throat. 

Risotto wasn’t letting up. His words fell in Giorno’s burning ears like splattering drops of icy rain. “Do they all fuck you at once, or does it go in turns?” He pulled on Giorno’s pant zipper, opened his cherry-colored slacks, and though he didn’t touch Giorno’s cock, the movements were still vibrating into him from being so close. Giorno choked down a moan.

“Passed around from one to another, like a toy . That’s how it is, isn’t it? Everyone wants a piece of you. Did your friends take your virginity, too? Because it’s obvious you’re not one. A virgin wouldn’t wear hot pink and strut around showing their body off in such tight clothes like you do.” 

Giorno felt his open slacks being pushed down off the ridge of his hips. Air flushed over his sweating skin. His knees quaked inward, and he realized he was clicking his right foot, with its bloody metal heel, into the ground underneath him in a regular rhythm. He hadn’t been aware he was doing it. 

“Who popped your cherry, Giovanna? Was it Bucciarati? Narancia? Abbacchio?” Giorno tried to not respond to any names, he knew Risotto was trying to fish for a reaction - but he still went tight when Risotto dared to rumble Mista’s name against his skin. 

He did not want to think about any of them, not right now, not trapped in this. He did not want to think about the looks on their faces when they found his body. He did not want to think about Narancia sobbing, or that cold, hard way Abbacchio’s face turned when he was too wounded to speak, or Bruno’s biting his lip until it bled. 

He did not want to think about the look on Mista’s face.

Risotto’s scissors - not Metallica, just thick normal ones - scraped against the soft part of Giorno’s thighs. His slacks were spared, but Risotto slit away the briefs underneath and tugged the scraps off him, leaving his cock and balls bare to the cold air and his pants rumpled around the middle of his shaking thighs. Giorno was ripped back into the moment. 

“You’ve gone quiet,” Risotto’s mouth was at his shoulder, at the join of his neck and left shoulder, near his star birthmark. Giorno hated how smug he sounded. “I’m right, aren’t I?” 

Giorno felt Risotto’s thick arm crossing his chest, moving down between his legs. He felt the flat, cold side of the scissors scrape along his cock. His breath stopped.

He hated that he went so hard so fast, in a rush of terror and arousal. He hated the moan that trickled out of him before he could catch it, before the belt around his neck went tight again with another tug. He gave a throttled rattle, and Risotto’s hand shifted from the belt to his thick golden braid, yanking Giorno’s head back by the hair, arching his body back, adding a new knot of tension into his already overstressed spine and shoulders. Giorno couldn’t hold back another groan.

Risotto’s mouth came to his ear. Close, intimate and cruel. He spoke on. “The slut of Passione. If you were a woman, you’d be dripping wet right now. You just want to be used. You don’t even care who pulls the ropes. You’re a slave .” 

The words punched into him harder than fists. Giorno vibrated, shaking from head to toe, every muscle pulled hard and thundering with the singular throbbing of his erection, his racing heart.

He felt Risotto’s fingers push into him, mean and strong, two of them sliding into his ass and curving, seeking for his prostate. They found it, and jabbed in. Again, and again. The stimulation made Giorno’s vision go white. He felt primal grunts bursting out of his mouth, pushed out from some deep place in his chest.

“ Sensitive ,” Risotto teased into his neck. He mouthed at a bead of sweat that rolled down Giorno’s throat. He let go of Giorno’s braid to instead curl his free hand over the blond’s mouth and press down tight, keeping Giorno’s head pulled backward. “My fingers have you mewling.” Lips touched Giorno’s damp forehead. “Your body has already betrayed you.”

Risotto kept going and going at him until a knot built up in his guts that grew tighter and tighter. Giorno moaned into Risotto’s palm, smothered cries trickling out hot between the assassin’s fingers. He was glad he couldn’t speak, couldn’t start begging - because he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself if he did. He was so helpless to what was being built inside him from the unforgiving friction.

The pressure in him built and built, then burst all at once. He came while Risotto’s fingers were still pushed deep in him, an orgasm that felt more like a punch in the intestines than pleasure. His body clenched around Risotto’s hand, and the tightening of his body in his stressed posture set off a fresh wave of explosive pain behind his eyes. He felt his cock shake as he spilled wild into the darkness surrounding him, a loud ‘nnn!’
rattling his throat.

Risotto’s fingers withdrew. 

“Your friends trained you well. I should thank them. It’s going to make this all so much easier for me.”

Giorno tottered in a daze, weak on his chains, knees wobbling, a sweaty and panting mess. His arms were numb. It took him a few long seconds to realize Risotto had pulled away.

There was a thick, metal rattle behind him, more clothing sliding away in a rustle. Giorno realized why when he felt the hitman’s thick, hot erection pushing against the base of his back. Risotto took him by the hips and pulled them back toward himself, making Giorno arch and take a step backward on the heels. He gave into the manipulation in silence, thrumming with the remnants of hateful afterglow, as Risotto’s hands moved him how he wanted.

Risotto did not penetrate him. He stroked himself with one hand and rubbed himself against Giorno’s cleft and the curve of his lower back for additional stimulation. Giorno heard the wet, heavy slick sounds behind him and felt Risotto’s fingers digging harder into his hips. The hitman gripped the soft pads of Giorno’s ass, pushing his butt together and then pushing in to ride against him. Risotto’s cock was pierced, and the hot metal added a weird extra sensation to the experience, smooth beads in a ladder on the underside of his cock rolling back and forth over Giorno’s skin.

Giorno bit his lip when he heard, felt Risotto coming on him. Marking him. Risotto yanked his braid again as he did, bending Giorno further while splattering his skin. Grunting with pleasure, Risotto kissed Giorno’s damp neck, lips pushing into the brown bruise left by the tasering in the car.

“Your friends won’t find you.” A horrible pause. “Maybe they won’t even look for you. The mob never runs out of pretty little blond boys to fuck, do they?”

Stop it . 

Giorno was left dangling in his peeled-apart clothes, belt-choked and dirty with cum. He felt torn open and rotten , his emotions smashed and scattered like a soft fruit hit by a hammer. Risotto’s leavings dripped down his spine and the inside of his bare, tight-ratcheted thighs. The sour scent of cum mixed with the tint of blood and metal surrounding him. 

He could still feel the ghosts of hard fingers inside him, Risotto’s palm pressing over his mouth. His thoughts spun as his body heaved, as he gasped wet and tried to breathe himself back to some powdery semblance of self-control. But the hook set in his heart held strong, and dread crept into him.

He had never felt a real sense of sexual shame before, but now it pulled at his throat and clumped up inside his chest. Was he really... were they...

Was Risotto right ?

They will look for me. They will.

Please...

A thick plastic bag slid over his head and pulled tight. Giorno strained for air, his chest burning, body heaving in place against Risotto’s hands - but as his thoughts sank into a black, ever tightening spiral of panic, being forced unconscious again was a relief . 

Chapter Text

Hff. Hff. Hff. 

The sound of his own breathing was amplified in Giorno’s ears as he rose out of unconsciousness again. The unending blackness around him had taken on a steamy, crinkling quality. He could feel that his eyes were still taped over, and the thick bag that had been used to knock him out was still over his head, only now it was loose. He was getting fresh air, for now, from the open end of the bag, but his exhalations were bouncing back off the plastic across his face, mixing fresh air with used. He felt the bag shrink against his nose and mouth as he inhaled. 

He struggled to push aside his anger, his dread. Wild emotions could not help him. Blacking out had, at least, allowed Giorno to reboot from panic, back to a clear head. 

He was ashamed of doubting his loved ones. If he was compromised by his love and willingness to let others into his body as well as his heart, that was only his own fault, not theirs. They would look for him, and though Risotto's caution made it likely they'd fail to find him, he believed – he was certain – that they would still try the best they could. To think otherwise was completely unworthy of the loyalty and love they had already shown him - unworthy and unfair.

He only regretted that their efforts were likely to lead them to a corpse. 

Giorno shook it off, focused on the rest of his body to re-center. He was lying on something hard, now. Thin, cold, and a bit rickety - he thought maybe a table. His skin was bare; the tabletop was icy against his shoulders, and his jacket was gone. He still felt his pants. There was a soft lump under his neck, which felt too uneven to be a pillow. His ankles felt heavy - the heels? He could still feel metal around his ankles, but there was something more now, an extra weight. He tried to move his feet and felt a heavy counter pull stopping him. So, his ankles were chained or tied down.  

He tried moving his hands. To his surprise, he could. He supposed that made sense; he wasn’t getting off the table if he couldn’t move his feet, after all. 

Wary, he tried to push himself upright, and he managed to do so, sitting up on the table. He waited for a reaction; there wasn’t one, so he lifted his hands to the plastic bag. No reaction. He took it off, and the cold air of the wherever-he-was replaced the wet heat across his face, making him shiver. He touched his face, felt that the blindfold tape had been reinforced. He couldn’t find the ends and it felt tighter than before. Not a shard of light reached him, even around the edges of his nose.

It was hard to control the dread he felt of being enveloped in darkness. He was an adult now, not a helpless child, but anxiety writhed deep down behind his ribs. He still remembered quivering in a cold crib under slotted shards of icy moonlight, chewing on his fingertips in a dirty, empty house. He wrestled the dread, and his memories. He reminded himself: he'd already survived so much worse. 

Being able to stretch and touch himself was calming, though. He rolled his sore shoulders against his neck and pressed a hand to the small of his back, then pulled his arms across his chest, trying to relieve some ache and stiffness. He still had hot areas of bruising at his throat - worse now from the strangulation - and at his side, from the taser. His shoulders were still complaining from being racked, but he was able to move them and they hadn’t come out of joint. 

Giorno leaned forward, reaching his hands down his legs, wanting to feel out what was happening at his ankles. His fingertips found metal, padlocks - so, definitely chained, strong links. He wished he had a pin or a sliver of metal; he could have picked the locks, not that it would have done him much good. The Metallica-created 'shoes' were gone, but he felt throbbing at the base of his feet and discovered hard wire sutures binding the gashes in his heels closed. It would be painful just to stand, let alone try to walk or run; he was sure that was going to come up again later. Nasty and subtle, he thought, Risotto's efficient cruelty. The part of Giorno that had ruled as Don Giovanna couldn't help but approve. 

He had to find a way to turn this around, save both of them. Somehow.  

Feeling around more, he discovered the soft ‘lump’ under his head was his jacket - he recognized it by the feel of the distinctive alternating triangular and circular studs around the chest. He pulled it back on, careful around his aches. The zipper was broken for good, he could feel the jeweled tab had been torn off, and his other ornaments had also been stripped as well. Still, he felt better with the jacket on - at least less cold. 

For whatever reason, he had been given a small respite, so he continued to try and rub and soothe at his stiff spots and stretch himself out while he waited to see just what was going to happen next. He was sure it wasn’t going to be anything good. 

“Ah. Good. You’re awake.” Risotto’s voice sounded from his right and Giorno turned his head, even though he couldn’t see. A heavy object clattered on the table near his side: rattling, metal. His first thought was a tool box. 

Giorno took a harder breath. He didn’t need to see to gather where this was going. He probed for his Stand and got the same backlashing shot of pain to the head as before. There was no cover for this. Wherever this was heading, there was nothing he could do about it.

Something light, plastic tapped at his mouth. “Water,” Risotto told him, and he waited until Giorno lifted his hand, felt the bottle before letting it go. 

Giorno inhaled, drank it. Nothing tasted wrong with it, but if it was drugged he couldn’t do anything about that, either. He was thirsty and the water was cool, relieving his aching throat, stomach, and dry lips all at once. He said “Thank you, sir,” when he was done and the bottle was empty. The empty was plucked from his fingers and he didn’t try to cling to it.

“Good boy. I’ll give you a few more minutes to prepare yourself.” 

Stripped of all his other weapons, Giorno still had one thing left to try – his voice. Giorno leaned backward, bracing himself on the palms of his hands over the table. “Can I ask you a question?” 

The answer came back neutral, cautious, from above him to the right. “I suppose.”

“Have you decided how you’re going to kill me yet?” Giorno moved his head toward the direction of Risotto’s voice. He needed to pry at the sliver of hesitation he’d picked up in the car.

A chuckle and a fast riposte. “Why, do you have a preference?” Firm fingers pinched around Giorno’s chin, moving his face. There was a creak, leather material shifting, and Giorno felt breath against his cheek. Risotto’s voice lowered to a murmur, finger moving idly against Giorno’s skin in small strokes. “Maybe if you ask me very nicely, I could be convinced.” 

Giorno felt heat crawl into his face. He swallowed it down as best he could – a tell he couldn’t help - and pushed his words out, “I don’t want to be bled out, or shot, or poisoned. Those are impersonal deaths. Any thug could do that. Make sure I know who’s defeated me. Use your hands on me. Strangle me.” 

He felt Risotto’s fingers pause, and then clench in for an instant. Giorno knew he’d struck close to his target. Risotto was a predator – he wouldn’t be satisfied with a clinical kill, after all. 

It seemed to take Risotto an extra moment to reply, and when he spoke again there was a new tension in his voice, a thickness with dark edges. “I was going to hang you,” he answered low, fingers moving, brushing Giorno’s forehead. Giorno thought Risotto’s fingers might have trembled, but it could have been his own jittering as their skin connected, too. 

“Have you ever been hanged before, Giorno?” Risotto continued, in that same thick tone. “The rope goes around your neck.” His finger traced a line from the divot beneath Giorno’s right ear to the left, an imaginary line dragging along the blond’s skin. “The knot of the noose rests on the back of your neck, above the spine.” His fingertips pressed in, feeling and digging into the space, a hard weight, pushing forward. “The rope goes through a pulley.”

Giorno’s breath caught in his throat. He tipped his head forward from the pressure of Risotto’s fingers, chin tilting toward his chest. Chills rolled down his spine. He was caught in the dark, trapped in the images Risotto was invoking. 

“I’ll pull. It’s tight. You go up off your feet, but not all the way. Your head starts to spin. Breathing is a strain. The rope hurts as it presses into your throat, presses on the veins you need to send blood and air into the brain. Your brain starts to swell.” Risotto continued to speak, dragging his hands along Giorno’s throat and arms.  He’d moved behind Giorno at that point and reached over him – his arm briefly sliding against Giorno’s side – to something on the table. 

Something slapped against the table behind Giorno. A softer thump. He felt his hands being seized, pulled together. Risotto spoke again. “I’ll let you strain for a few moments, and then I tie your hands behind your back.” Giorno’s wrists were tied, quickly, tightly. His mouth opened, his breath shifted toward fragmented gasping. The actual and the image were blurring together as Risotto slung more rope around him, locking his arms to his body, creating a ‘handle’ between his elbows. The ropes were knotted, and Risotto murmured in his ear. “I’ll get your ankles too.” he purred. “There’s nothing you can do. The best you can do is wriggle, like a worm on a hook.” His nose grazed at the side of Giorno’s neck, lips ghosting along Giorno’s hammering jugular vein, feeling the blond’s racing pulse. 

Risotto’s arm slid around his waist, and Giorno felt himself being pulled closer to the hitman, tugged up along the table a few inches. He felt a deadly resonation, his body shivering at the closeness, the distortion of intimacy. 

“And then my vagal reflex stops my heart,” Giorno whispered back, voice fluttering. “And I start to suffocate. But I’m already unconscious. I won’t feel anything when I die. All you’re doing is watching my body fail after that.” 

“Is that so?” Risotto countered, purr turning molten. He shifted his right arm around Giorno and pushed down, rubbing his palm against the visible rise in Giorno’s slacks. Giorno felt the hitman shifting power into him, playing with his blood again, pushing him toward hardness. Giorno bit hard into his own lip to try and stop himself from moaning, but he couldn’t stop the way that Risotto’s fingers teased and stroked at him, the way his blood went strange in his veins. “Something here tells me you don’t want it to go so easily. Something here tells me you want it to hurt, and you want it to take a long time.” 

Giorno squirmed but couldn’t do anything; the ropes around him were too tight and his ankle chains didn’t let him turn his legs away. His muscles tightened as he struggled to hold himself still. 

The hitman’s hard fingers were drawling, pressing, too knowing, too overwhelming.

“Am I wrong? I don’t hear you denying it.” 

“I think you’re looking for an excuse not to kill me,” Giorno managed, though his tone was fluttering and lacked authority. 

Giorno was glad, so glad when Risotto lifted his hand away, but he was left with an agonizing, pulsating erection and a renewed frustration at the way he couldn't resist Metallica's influence. He huffed out a sharp sound through his nose, venting, while his cheeks prickled and stung.

He felt Risotto mirror the sound – a sharp, hard exhale - above his left shoulder.  “You’re wrong about that. You will die. I’ve killed a hundred men at least. You’re no different.” But Giorno felt Risotto’s cheek pushing against his, the flush of their skin in contact, and for a long, quiet moment neither of them did anything but rest against each other.

“The moment that you kill me, you lose power over me, forever,” Giorno then spoke soft, delicate, his heart throbbing as he tried to pry the moment open with nothing but naked words. “I’ll be beyond your reach, beyond any place where your vengeance can hurt me.” He nudged his cheek against Risotto’s. “I don’t deny I deserve to be punished for many things, but there’s only so many ways you can flog a dead horse.” 

"And a living horse?" Risotto's voice trailed low, with the faintest note of uncertainty. 

"Can be punished indefinitely," Giorno answered. He expected Risotto to turn away from the conversation soon, move to silence him. Before that happened, he had to get his point across, because he didn't know when – or even if – he might be able to speak again. "Is your outrage toward me something that can be satisfied with a few days of torture and then my destruction?" 

Silence, almost too long. Then Risotto gave a sound Giorno couldn't clearly interpret, a kind of sighing growl. A shake of his head, one of the balls at the end of his hat thumping against Giorno's shoulder. "You're promising something you have no intention of delivering," the hitman replied, and pulled away from Giorno. His voice came from the right again, a step to the side, and Giorno heard metal rattling against metal, clinking and digging of tools inside the box. "You have friends, lovers, a place in this world. Your only thought is to survive and return to that place." He seemed to find what he was looking for; the rattling ceased. 

"I have nothing to return to," Risotto said, calm, colorless. "You and your friends took my place from me. It's too late for you to try reconciliation now." 

"It's not," Giorno said, stubborn, a little desperate. "It's not if you listen to me." 

"Even if I did," Risotto sighed, "Even if I wanted to. You have no authority to strike a deal for all of Passione." A black chuckle fell out of him. "And once I return your corpse to your Don, there will be nothing left to bargain about." There was the loud sound of duct tape coming off a roll, a harsh unzipping of plastic that echoed in the dark.  

Giorno shook his head; his gut started to plummet. "But-" 

"Enough." Risotto grabbed Giorno's head and taped Giorno's mouth shut with a few sharp, harsh motions. Giorno let out a grunt, shaking his head again, but then he yelped as Risotto grabbed his hips and tugged him down toward the end of the table where his feet were chained. 

He felt his slacks being ripped off his hips, tugged down toward his knees, heard the fabric shredding as it was cut through so his legs could be pushed further apart. What was left of his pants slid over his knees and pooled around his chained ankles.

Here we go, Giorno thought, grim and blunt to himself, the back of his head sliding against the table as he was pulled down a few more inches, Risotto's hands gripping him by his bare hips. He'd known this was coming, knew it as soon as Risotto kissed him in the back seat, knew it when he felt Risotto's cock grinding on his back. Giorno's battle instincts screamed at him to detach, slide away from his body before the pain started, so he could survive. He was so good at compartmentalizing, rationalizing, powering through. But this was too important to run from. Everything, even this, could be turned, if he was there in that fraction of a second where something shifted and he could grab hold of it. 

Giorno struggled against his urge to depersonalize, told himself he needed to be present even though he was unable to protect himself, trying to stay even as he heard Risotto grunting at the end of the table, even as he felt his body being jerked and maneuvered into the angle the hitman wanted him. 

In his blind and bound state, everything was a startle, a jolt, impossible to predict even though everything also felt inevitable. The chains came off his ankles, Risotto holding one of his legs up away from his body, making it difficult to consider kicking out. Risotto's fingers pressed wet into him, withdrew again curt, and Giorno wished he could see the hitman's face, wished he'd say something. He was desperate for any scrap of context, any clue to go on. A small part of him squirmed and thought: not like this.

Giorno lifted his head, lunging up in the dark, neck feeling the strain. He made a loud demanding noise in his throat, trying to draw a response out of his captor. He shifted his weight against the table. "Mmn!" 

Even being hit would be better than jumping a moment behind every touch. 

He thought he was prepared for anything – he was, to a certain extent – but Risotto’s response to his muffled complaint was a heavy snort, and then a sour-sounding, “No.” 

And then, all at once, Risotto let go of Giorno’s ankle and shoved him off the table with a shocking strength. Giorno yelped under his gag and went spinning into the oily concrete floor. Even though the fall was only a couple of feet, Giorno was too tightly bound and he couldn’t catch himself. He landed hard on his already bruised ribs by bad luck. Bright sparks of pain shot through his head, and for a second he just lay where he fell, gasping through his nostrils in bewilderment and pain, curling up while his bruises grated against the rough ground. His nostrils filled with dust and oil and he swore he felt tiny sharp shards of metal prickling against his naked thighs and side. 

There was a metal clatter and crashing somewhere a few feet behind his back – he could only guess, but his impression was that Risotto had kicked the table over. Giorno lay breathing dirt and trying not to cough, waiting for the pain to dull back. Anger flushed through him, but he tried to let it flare and pass through rather than hold on to it. 

Risotto’s foot thumped into Giorno’s shoulder blade, pushed at him. “Get up.” His voice was raw, almost a snarl. 

How? Giorno wanted to yell, and would have if he hadn’t had his mouth taped shut. He wanted to be stubborn and lay still, a part of him eager to resist even if just in such a petty way, but after a moment of indulging his anger he decided it was better to try and comply. He wasn't sure what had shifted Risotto's mood and he had no desire to feel Metallica's edges slicing through him again so soon. 

It was harder than he thought, trying to even get up onto his knees. He fumbled, scraping his thighs and knees against the concrete, feeling the scrapes and bites from something scattered across the ground cutting shallow stinging lines across his naked skin. They stung and bit, the air irritating every scrape. Death of a thousand paper cuts. He grunted, wishing he had his hands or even his elbows, that they weren't frozen in place against his back. It took all he had to move with his core and thighs, and though Giorno was certainly no bloated old Polpo, he'd been living softer for the last few years as Don Giovanna and then with few actual fights needed to drive Passione forward in this world. 

He knew he was making a humiliating wreck of himself, squirming and wriggling in the dirt like a useless worm, and he was sure Risotto was laughing at him. His face burned, breathing a struggle between his efforts compressing his abdomen, and the restriction of the tape. 

By sheer force of will, over an amount of time that felt far too long, he somehow managed to pull himself up to his knees, feeling awkward as a newborn fawn and gasping through his nose. The effort had drained him, and the little cuts all over him prickled. He drew his shoulders back and let out as haughty a 'hmph' sound as he could manage in his throat, before letting his weight settle on his ankles. 

Giorno only had a moment to catch his breath, though, as he felt something start to sting and prickle at his ankles and knees from underneath him – like a rising, sinuous wave of sewing-needle sized pokes. He heard Risotto say, from somewhere he thought was a few feet from him and toward his right side, "Keep moving." 

A rude sound rattled out of Giorno's throat – how? -  but he received a sharper set of prickles  for that. It was annoying and shocking but not yet more than swift thin pinches through his skin. Unhappy about it, Giorno grunted and managed to somehow wobble a few inches forward on his knees. He didn't want to get on his feet because he knew he couldn't stand on the sutures in his heels, but the knee-walking pulled on every muscle in his chest, including his still searing ribs. He felt it through his entire torso, all the way to his armpits, pulling and tearing his sore body into fresh, renewed aching. His body wanted to use its arms to balance, but he couldn't. 

Within a few more unsteady inches his forehead was slick with sweat and he was so, so angry. But the prickles – Metallica, it had to be – kept rolling against his unprotected skin, and if he slowed for more than a few seconds to steady himself, the prickles grew harsher. He was getting more thin cuts as he felt himself egged on over the sandpaper-concrete floor, through bits of broken glass and mean coils of discarded metal shavings. Behind his back, his fingers clenched in and out of fists. He vented his frustration through the motion but it wasn't enough to cool his outrage completely. 

Giorno had no idea when it would stop, or if Risotto intended to make him slow march over bits of debris until he slowly bled out from a million cuts, but there did come an end at last. His shoulder bumped into something thick and solid, and he heard a low sigh from immediately above him. 

He felt hands moving through his wet bangs and cupping to his flushed cheeks, picking individual strands of his disheveled hair away from his face with delicate motions. "Very good," Risotto told Giorno, deep and soft, almost tender. 

For half a second the praise warmed Giorno, exhausted and sore and starving, before the dissonance of it all caught up to him and confusion flooded in. He made a low uncertain noise in answer, brows furrowing above the blindfold. 

Risotto's fingers continued to touch Giorno's face gently here and there, but he left the tape binding Giorno in place, drawling his fingers over the edges. "You made me angry," the hitman said after a few moments, a low sigh. "I didn't want to fuck you angry." A low laugh. "At least, not the first time." 

So they'd had the same thought, the not like this, Giorno realized.

Risotto's forehead touched Giorno's, and the hitman rolled his head slightly back and forth against Giorno, a slow 'no' motion, then their noses touched as Risotto exhaled over Giorno's gagged mouth. "You were dull on that table. But now you're awake, mm? Skin flushed, nerves firing, blood roaring… stressed and tired already but your whole body is ready for something now. A fight or a fuck or another beating, your body doesn't care."

Giorno could only manage a low, shuddering exhale in response. His heart pounded in his chest, steady and hard. He wasn't sure - wasn't sure at all - if it was Risotto manipulating his blood to agitate him, or if he was just that keyed up from being marched and pinched and humiliated. He was still angry, and his head was flush with frustration and shame. But the hitman was right – his body was throbbing and every part of him felt . 

He was hyperaware of everything: the stinging cuts in his skin, the ache of his torso, the tension in his elbows and wrists from his bonds, the dull steady throb in his heels, the smell of Risotto's leather cap and smoky breath. Even with his own Stand smothered and trapped in the dark, Giorno felt Risotto's weight, his presence bearing down on him like a radioactive black sun. 

And the small part of him that had said not like this before said like this now, a low ripple rattling through Giorno as he recognized the irrational longing opening up within him. He mmf'd softly, pushing his taped mouth against Risotto's cheek, shaking his head just a bit, not sure if he was trying to protest or encourage, not sure what he would have said even if he could have said anything.  

It no longer seemed like it mattered what he wanted one way or another. A sense of inevitability folded in around him, pressing his body as tight as the ropes binding him in place. Risotto was going to take him, and he was going to let it happen. Risotto's smug smile was something Giorno felt through the blindfold. His hands moved, slid up Giorno's shivering hips to press up the small of his back, underneath his roped hands and under his broken jacket, to grab hold of him. Giorno felt low trembling in the hitman's fingers and was sure it wasn't just his own jittering then.

Giorno pulled in air and let go of choice and consequences. He would just have to see where it lead by going through it. 

Risotto lifted Giorno, just with his hands, settled the blond into his lap. Giorno rumbled in his throat, and let the hitman handle him how he liked without resisting. They were clearly sitting on something broad and sturdy, but Giorno didn't know what it was, and it didn't get in the way of Risotto pushing the last little bits of Giorno's ruined slacks off over his ankles and bare feet with a couple of strokes of his hands. The hitman played with Giorno's legs a little more, pulling Giorno to the position he wanted in his lap, arranging and stroking Giorno's thighs and cut-up knees. His mouth went to Giorno's chest, licking and biting at his left nipple, and his other hand slid around Giorno's hip to bring him closer in. Giorno flushed, lowered his head, panting wet through his nose. His head was spinning. 

Giorno, naked in Risotto's lap except for his jacket then, still jumped as he felt Risotto's hot, heavy cock being held against his, both of them gripped together in Risotto's large right hand. 

Risotto said "Move" again, voice thick. His free hand moved to slip across Giorno's right nipple and then up further to grip firm into his shoulder below his jacket. His fingers petted Giorno’s cock as he held them both together. 

Giorno grunted something and flexed his aching thighs, huffed as he began to push himself against Risotto’s hand, against his cock. They were not the same size, Risotto twice Giorno’s girth and longer, but as he started to grind himself into Risotto’s fingers, as their balls pressed together, he heard the hitman let out a soft curse. It didn’t take much of that before the skin-to-skin friction had both of them hard, gasping, sweat-slick. 

Risotto’s hand slid away from Giorno’s shoulder and to the back of his neck. Giorno felt the increasingly familiar sensation of his blood being twisted inside him, Metallica’s brutal control flashing through his flesh. For an instant it felt like every drop of his blood ran to his dick, his erection instantly pumping so hot and so bright that it almost seemed to burn. Giorno let out a cry the gag couldn’t contain as his chest and cock flushed hot red from the shift of blood and Risotto laughed in satisfaction. 

The very air itself felt tormenting to Giorno’s overstimulated cock. Risotto let go of them both to  slap Giorno along the center of his dick, and Giorno nearly came from the blow. His body juddered with the pleasurable pain of it, but Risotto was not letting up on him.  

“Get up,” Giorno heard him rasp through the shock of pleasure. His hands moved hard, shaking, up the outsides of Giorno’s thighs toward his waist. The hitman’s commands were undercut by the almost desperate need Giorno heard warbling at the edges of Risotto’s low growling. ”On me, or I’ll slit your fucking throat.” 

Giorno moved to comply, trembling and almost out of breath. His thighs shook as he lifted himself up with aching muscles and cut knees, the lacerations in his skin grinding against the solid platform they were sitting on. He leaned forward, barely breathing, shakily trying to find his way to Risotto without his eyes or hands. There was no help from Risotto, who growled again as Giorno fumbled blind, trying to find the hitman with his pelvis and thighs, bumping their damp skin together without success. 

He was trying his best, but at such a disadvantage Risotto finally had to intervene, grabbing himself and Giorno and pushing them into alignment. Giorno had only the space of a few moments before Risotto was thrusting into him, and then grabbing his hips to pull Giorno down. 

Giorno, not used to such a girthy cock, shook all the way through penetration, his thighs spreading to try and open himself up. It hurt. It hurt like no sex he’d had before – and Giorno was used to being used. It felt more like being fisted than fucked, and Giorno’s muscles cramped, seizing up even as Risotto’s breathing went harder under him and his pace increased. 

Risotto’s thrusts were deep, heavy, metronome-steady- and Giorno’s pain built, built, crested to a point he was sure his body was going to split open from his ass to his throat… 

And then it shifted, somehow. It shifted and flipped over, and the pain twisted into pleasure. Suddenly it all became good, too good, and then not enough. The ladder piercing along the base of Risotto’s cock went from an agonizing punishment to an amazing stimulation as the hot beads slid back and forth, in and out of his loosened hole. Giorno’s muscles went taut and then released, like the collapsing of a bow, and instead of the agonizing screaming of his muscle fibers, he felt heat and a softening rush, and the sweat on his skin pooling and shifting around his thighs. He came – hard – spilling cum in a rush, and he heard Risotto grunt beneath him. 

In the afterglow daze of his orgasm Giorno felt as if his bones had turned to light, and his body had extended into an elongated wave, rising and falling. He gasped through it and waited for his head to clear.

He heard another curse under him as he shifted his weight and his thighs over Risotto to bear down on him, now intending to give back as good as he got. His body ached hard, but it all felt good. Risotto’s fingers gripped with steel strength into Giorno’s hips. Their fucking went harder. Faster. They bounced against each other, grunting and gasping, no human sounds coming out of either of them. Risotto held him with one hand on his hip, and slapped his ass and the outside of his thigh with the other, like he were a horse, a riding beast, and Risotto wanted him to run faster. 

He did as he was told, straining himself to comply.

Giorno could feel the assassin’s pulse speeding up through their skins. Risotto’s cock started to pulse inside him. All at once, Giorno felt the hitman freeze and come, felt the two hot bursts that Risotto pumped into his body through long throbs of his suddenly motionless cock. 

Giorno's chest tightened. His bound hands clenched behind his back. That was it. That was the point he couldn't walk back from. The pleasurable aching tangled with a rising sense of guilt. As he shuddered to breathe around his gag he felt the truth of the situation come crashing in on him. 

He was attracted to Risotto. That was a hard truth that sat heavily in his stomach. He was drawn to power and strength, and Risotto had both in spades. He was a brutally efficient and clever weapon that Giorno wanted to pull into his orbit and polish to mirror finish, then launch directly into the faces of his enemies. 

But Risotto had sworn to kill him. And Giorno belonged to someone else. 

Risotto held his position inside Giorno for a few long moments, not softening up right away but keeping them locked together with his hands heavy and damp on Giorno’s back. Both of them were panting, sweat-soaked from exertion and pleasure. 

Giorno was unable to speak, and Risotto said nothing, only keeping his hands on Giorno’s back until he slid out at last, softening. Giorno gave a small moan as he felt the backed-up cum starting to trickle out of his body. The hollow sensation that washed through him after Risotto pulled out unsettled him, even though it was also relief to be freed of the girth. Giorno let out a low sound, somewhere between a protest and a sigh.

The hitman chuckled and pulled Giorno closer, holding him and resting his forehead on Giorno’s as they had been before. They slowly cooled down against each other, breathing flattening and steadying as their adrenaline faded down. Finally Risotto muttered, "Unfair," against Giorno's gag. 

Giorno made a soft questioning noise through the tape, trying to encourage Risotto to talk to him. One word wasn't much to go on, but he guessed that Risotto was going through the same spiral of ambiguous emotions he was. Were they still enemies, or not? It seemed like neither of them knew for certain. Giorno had known all along that sex would unsettle the whole thing, but now that it was done, and they'd actually crossed that line, he wasn't sure how to turn it in his favor.

After a moment, Giorno felt Risotto picking at the tape over his mouth. He pulled it off with a quick motion, and it didn't hurt. His palm flattened over Giorno’s lips before the blond could get a word out, though. “Say anything, and the tape goes back on,” the hitman warned. “I want your mouth, but I don’t want to talk. You can nod or shake your head if I question you, but that’s all. Do you understand?” 

Giorno swallowed a breath and nodded his head. He kept quiet when Risotto lifted his hand away. He didn’t have much chance to speak anyway, as Risotto’s hand was immediately replaced by his lips. He was pulled close, Risotto’s fingers pressing to the back of his head to keep him in the kiss and quiet. 

As in the car, the kiss went for a long time. Giorno let himself fall into it. His cheeks flushed fresh as Risotto’s tongue pushed between his lips. The hitman’s thumbs stroked slowly along the apples of Giorno’s cheeks and down toward his jawline. It was so gentle, and so easy to forget those hands were also made to kill. 

Giorno sighed against that delicacy, sighed with low yearning into Risotto's mouth – was that Risotto's true nature, hidden under the weight of contradictory impulses, or was it just a ploy to soften him and get him to put up less of a fight before his death? 

Risotto’s voice was gentle again after he finished. He bumped Giorno’s forehead with his. “Tired?” 

Tired hardly began to describe how wrecked Giorno felt, inside and out. He nodded. 

“I bet,” Risotto patted Giorno’s shoulder.  With a hard grunt, he somehow stood and picked up Giorno at the same time, all in one motion, with a careless ease of force that startled Giorno. He found himself slung over Risotto’s shoulder, his head dangling down, disheveling braid bumping against the back of his head. 

Risotto’s hand was on his ass, bracing him and rubbing a circle against his skin. "We can take a little break." 

He started walking, carrying Giorno somewhere, and the blond just hung off his shoulder, and wondered where they were going. 

Chapter Text

Risotto carried Giorno over his shoulder and strode out of the dark factory into the day. He squinted, shocked by the change of light. The sun was warm and bright in the sky, a dry summer heat accompanied by a thin breeze. Risotto hadn't realized how little time had passed since catching Giorno in the morning. He guessed it was about 1 or 2 in the afternoon, off hand. Seven, eight hours? Being wrapped up in the factory gloom, with Giorno under his control, had uprooted all other awareness and driven all sense of time out of his head.

He took his captive to the stretch between buildings where the dogwood tree grew gnarled and defiant, where the overgrown grass was peppered with tiny white flowers – the place Risotto intended to leave Giorno’s corpse at the end. The tree's branches were wreathed in thick green leaves that rustled along with the overgrown weedy grass as the breeze shifted. Its brief time of flowering was over – now fallen faded pink petals with brown rot biting at their edges lay scattered across the ground near its roots.

Risotto flipped Giorno around in his hands and knelt, lowering the blond to the grass with a soft grunt. He sat down next to Giorno, leaned back on his hands and stared up at the clear sky.

Giorno let out a weary sigh. He pushed his cheek against the grass, breathed in deep, and sank into the earth with a brief stretching of his lanky, naked, bloodied legs.

As the sun washed over them, Risotto turned his attention back to Giorno. There was a huge difference between fucking him in the shadows and seeing him in the broad light.

He spent a little time examining Giorno in detail. His knees were bloodied, pink-red, a mess of open, crisscrossing cuts and missing slivers of skin. His calves were blotched too, pierced with an even pattern of polka-dot punctures– the marks left by the needle-bites that had kept him crawling forward on the dirty floor. There were finger mark bruises on his thighs, his hips, near his soft cock and balls. He had fine blond body hair at his pelvis but seemed to lack it almost everywhere else. The bruises from his neck and ribs were deepening into brown and purple patches. Rope burns were visible across his torso in the places where his jacket wasn't protecting his skin.

Giorno's golden curls were unraveling across his tape blindfold and the bridge of his nose. His hair stuck to his forehead, limp with sweat. The pink jacket’s metallic threads and the lacework of gold embedded in Giorno’s bruised chest glinted as his chest rose and fell. Several dying petals from the tree above stuck to his naked skin, tossed onto him by wind shifts.

Risotto reached over and plucked one of the fallen petals out of the grass. He picked a spot to apply it and tucked it in Giorno's hair, near his left temple. The effect pleased him.

You’re so stupid, he told himself.

The sun was making him foolish, he supposed. Too warm. The heat of the day had already crept under his leathers and hat, making him feel his body, feel the weight of his clothing in an odd way. He decided to remove it all, stripping out of everything he was wearing and letting the sun and wind land on his raw skin, pocked and streaked with white scars across tanned tissue. He felt better afterward, stretching.

He placed a hand on Giorno's abdomen, unable to tell from Giorno's breathing if the blond was asleep or just being still. He ticked at one of the ropes across Giorno's chest with his finger, making sure the bonds were still tight. Then he probed into Giorno's body through Metallica, curious. At the same time, he asked, "You asleep?"

"No," Giorno replied, careful.

"You were being so quiet I couldn't tell."

"You told me not to speak."

"Oh, now you're following instructions?" With a chuckle, Risotto rolled inward and over, moving on top of Giorno and settling his weight into the blond. He enjoyed feeling Giorno's tension increasing, the heat trapped between their skins, and the way that Giorno's pulse fluttered. He pressed his naked pelvis against Giorno's hip, letting his cock rest in the divot between Giorno's left hip and thigh. "Well, now I want you to talk."

Giorno let out a low huff against the larger man's weight constricting his chest. Or maybe it was just frustration. "I thought we were taking a break. Now you're going to interrogate me?"

"No, we are," Risotto answered, bringing a hand up and pushing back Giorno's hair from his forehead. "I'm taking a break from beating the shit out of you."

Giorno's dark snort was almost a laugh, and Risotto almost laughed too.

They were still, quiet again against each other, the sun washing down over them and bringing sweat out of their skins. Giorno pressed his dry lips flat for a moment, then opened them, a signal Risotto was starting to recognize meant that the blond was picking words with caution.

"What would you like me to say?"

The hitman considered. "There is something you can explain. You should be 15. And dead. You don't seem to be either."

"I'll tell you how I did it if you tell me how you did it."

Risotto smirked, though he knew Giorno couldn't see it. "Are you trying to negotiate with me, Giorno?"

Giorno gave a shrug of his shoulders, as much as he could manage, a small dry quirk of a smile on his mouth. "You have me completely cornered. You can humor me, can't you?"

"I've heard that from you before." Still, Risotto couldn't help but feel amused. This was more like it - it felt better, more natural. He liked keeping Giorno locked down, but he liked it when Giorno pushed back, too. It made things more interesting. "There isn't much to tell. You were sloppy, and I'm patient. My Stand did the rest."

"I injected you with enough venom to kill fifty people," Giorno insisted, frowning behind the tape blindfold. "I felt your heart stop."

"I solidified plates under my skin. And I can manipulate my own blood as well as I can yours. You did poison me, just not as much as you thought. Still hurt like hell. Be satisfied with that."

Giorno sighed, head tilting back against the grass. "Well, I suppose now I know what not to do next time."

"There isn't going to be a next time." Risotto's fingers drawled along Giorno's forehead. "There's whatever time I decide to give you now, and then there's when you die. I'm not as careless as you."

Giorno's opened, then shut his mouth again. It was clear he had something to say about it but swallowed it back down in favor of a different reply, the frown behind his taped eyes intensifying. "Putting that aside, as far as my own death is concerned - you're not wrong. The Giorno you expected to find did die, quite a while ago. I replaced him."

Risotto frowned then, confused. "You're not making sense."

Giorno inhaled. "If I say 'my Stand did it', does that confuse things more?"

"Hm. That Stand of yours gets more ridiculous by the minute. Go on."

Giorno turned his head, exhaling heavy into the grass. "I came here from another world. I wasn't happy where I was."

Something about the set of his mouth spoke to Risotto of pain, and he could tell that Giorno was leaving something out. He felt the urge to dig in and pull the rest out. He lifted a hand, pulled on the air with Metallica. Threads of iron from the air and ground around them shaped up into a small knife in his hand. Risotto brought the blade to the bruise at Giorno's neck, holding steady just shy of nicking the blond's jugular vein. He pushed his weight down into Giorno at the same time. "And?"

Giorno's breath froze, his body tightening against Risotto from the threat of the blade. "And," he continued, a little shakier, "My friends here needed me. So, I came."

Risotto scraped the knife against Giorno's throat without slicing in, moving the blade up and down at an angle, just to keep Giorno unsettled. "That's not the whole story, is it?"

The blond squirmed. His blood was throbbing now, throbbing hard enough in his chest that Risotto felt the thumping through his own skin. "I don't know what else you want me to say," he tried to evade.

"Why did you come here?" Risotto demanded.

The blonde stayed quiet a few beats too long before he whispered up, under tension, "Because in my world, my friends were all dead. Coming here let me be with them again."

It was Risotto's turn to freeze. His hand went heavy, and a bitter pulse passed through him. For an instant, his vision went white; when he came out of it, he found he'd driven the knife in his hand down into the muscle of Giorno's shoulder, just shy of the dark red star in his skin. His throat felt brittle, his breath turning coarse and sharp. If Giorno had the power to move between worlds at a whim...

He ignored Giorno's shocked, wet gulping under him, the gush of hot blood sliding between their bodies. He grabbed Giorno's chin, and ground his fingers in. "Your Stand can just take you wherever you want?" Risotto snarled, narrowed his eyes.

"N-not any more," Giorno gasped. "I can't do it again," he protested around the pressure and pain. "My Stand collapsed..."

Risotto pulled back and slapped Giorno across the mouth. It was an irrational response to having his hopes raised, just for even a moment. For just a second, he'd imagined he could force Giorno to move him, to find his men... somehow... and the crash of that delicate, painful hope hurt. "Liar!" he roared. "You still have a Stand or I wouldn't have had to drug it out of you!"

"It's not the same!" Giorno cried back, even as he bruised from the blow to the face. Stress clotted his voice. "I'm not as strong as I used to be!" His face flushed at the admission. He panted up under Risotto, angry and humiliated, his chest pulsing with ill-contained fury. Then he twisted his head hard to a side, pushing his nose into the grass as if it could somehow hide him.  

Risotto glowered at him, speechless in his anger, and lifted his hand to hit Giorno again - but he stayed his blow when he noticed something alarming. The edge of Giorno's wound was glimmering with a faint golden light, just visible under the blood.

Risotto's mood twisted from anger into alarm.

Not as strong, he said - and Gold Experience was starting to manifest when the Standkiller wasn’t even halfway through its expected dose time? He wouldn't even have noticed except for the shadow of his own body blocking the sunlight from hitting Giorno's shoulder.

He pulled himself off Giorno as if the blond was burning him. Risotto stared, and as he narrowed his eyes he saw the proof of it - all over Giorno's body, tiny flickers of gold were licking across the raw edges of his wounds. They weren't healing - he could tell they weren't - but the presence of the shimmer was unnerving enough.

Risotto needed to stop him. Instinct moved him more than conscious thought. He stepped forward and reached down, grabbing Giorno by the throat and hauling the bound blonde up off the ground. Ignoring Giorno's rattling noises, Risotto stomped on, dragging Giorno with him, then shoved him up against the trunk of the dogwood. He held Giorno down with one hand, Metallica tightening around his other as he lifted it.

He punched his fist into Giorno's stomach and slammed two thick, heavy iron spikes through Giorno's shoulders at the same time, pounding Giorno into the tree and nailing him down. A third spike slammed through his abdomen.

Giorno had no time to cry out, the breath knocked out of him as he was hit with the triple blow all at once. His head drooped forward, the shock of the spikes blasting him out of consciousness. Blood burst from his mouth, and gushed into his jacket, dripping down over his chest. Red soaked into the ropes binding him, and began to trickle down the ridges of his naked hips.

Risotto heaved in air. Risotto already knew that Giorno couldn't free himself from another Stand's effects. Even if Gold Experience resurfaced Giorno wouldn't escape Metallica's spikes...

Then, in a flash of horrible clarity, he realized just what he'd done.

Anger, satisfaction, and self-justification rolled over Risotto in a tsunami of contradictory feelings as he stood, chest heaving, glaring at the aftermath of his instinct. His fists clenched, opened, and he breathed too fast and too shallow.

Killing was as natural to him as breathing. He told himself that he should have done it hours ago. It was stupid, amateur, getting feelings for the target.

I didn't mean to.

He deserved it.

Risotto stared at Giorno's limp body for a few seconds, eyes wide.

Risotto's hands - his whole body - began to shake.

The hitman forced himself to calm down. He ground his bare toes deep into the grass to steady himself. By the force of his will, the shaking receded.

But he still couldn't move. Why couldn't he move?

He stared at Giorno's limp body, dangling dull from the tree with no hint of life in him.

But then it wasn't Giorno there. Instead, as he blinked, as his vision blurred, he saw Ghiaccio, dangling dead from a lamp-post with a rusted-bloody spike burst through his throat.

He blinked and it was Proscuitto, shot full of holes and dangling from the side of the train he was killed on, hanging dead, blood smeared down the outer wall of the train.

He blinked and it was Melone, strangled by the gear chain of his own motorcycle, wrapped around his neck, his face puffy with the bloat of death and disfigured by burst pustules.

He blinked and it was Pesci, his head snapped around backward on his shoulders, strangulation lines around his throat, everything else that used to be him floating as blood red chunks in a thin puddle of mud.

He blinked, and though his vision blurred more and more, he couldn't deny what he'd seen. For that one painful instant everything snarled up inside him twisted into a painful new shape.

Unwanted, unwelcome, the understanding came.

Nothing could bring them back. Revenge just made another corpse.

He was alone.

Everyone he loved was dead.

Giorno was dead.

The realization twisted hard, twisted around Risotto’s gut and squeezed.

He -

His paralysis broke, and he moved back to the tree. Risotto unravelled Metallica and freed Giorno, catching his body as he fell. He held Giorno close and sank onto his knees. Giorno sprawled empty across his lap, reeking of blood, bleeding everywhere.  

Risotto didn't notice a transparent shape of pale blue and silver forming above them in the branches of the dogwood. His eyes were downturned, attention focused on Giorno's bloody wounds. Risotto pushed his hand to the side of Giorno's throat and hoped for a pulse. Even a weak one.

There wasn't one.

A rush of bile and disbelief rose up in his throat, almost choking him.

He was always too late, always showing up just to find the body, just to be left with a corpse and the weight of inconclusion, and no answers.

His cousin. His men.

How could you go so easily? From this? You’re stronger than that.

He remembered pulling Ghiaccio off the light post just like this. Remembered thinking the same words. His arms remembered the hollow feeling of lowering a discarded corpse to the ground. The unwillingness to understand, to accept that they would never speak again.

No.

An irrational idea struck him.

He could control Giorno’s blood, his pulse. Maybe, if he moved fast enough…

Risotto formed another blade with Metallica, grasped it, and slammed it hard into his own arm, grinding his teeth as he sliced a long line into his own flesh. Blood flowed, hot and wild, and he moved his arm toward the hole in Giorno's abdomen. He squeezed his limb, forced a splash of his own blood into Giorno's wound, then called on Metallica again. Swaying silver beads emerged from the torn edges of Giorno's wound where Risotto's blood had landed in his flesh. Metallica's swarm moaned a silent lament, tiny segmented arms swaying, tiny toothless mouths screaming without sound.

The silver swarm turned golden before collapsing into shimmering beads. The beads formed strings, and they started to pull on the damaged flesh, started to knit it all back together.

There was still no pulse.

Risotto squeezed more blood into Giorno's shoulders. Blood from a stone, he thought. This is my blood, he thought. He was starting to feel light headed. But he gritted his teeth and kept going.

He would make a pulse. Risotto extended his will through Metallica and demanded Giorno's heart move. Through his Stand, he forced blood to push into the chambers of Giorno's heart. Forced it out again. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.

He started to sweat, his skin turning clammy, palms wet.

He's been dead too long; even if I get this to work he'll have brain damage, he won't be who he was, it's too late...

Shut up.

He continued to force Giorno's heart to beat, kept it steady. His lips were in Giorno's hair, his hands bloody on the blond's damaged chest.

I need him to breathe, how do I get him to breathe?

Metallica couldn't activate the lungs - they didn't require blood to move. But something was happening to Metallica; happening to him. Metallica had never been a healing Stand - and yet it was performing healing, knitting skin and flesh at his command with effortless ease. He could feel it happening, feel Giorno - not just his blood, but muscles and organs and bones - with a clarity that dazzled him. But he didn't know how.

Giorno's lungs twitched. Risotto grabbed onto the twitch and tried to encourage it, without knowing what he was doing. Metallica obeyed and did something Risotto didn't understand, and Giorno's mouth parted. A low kind of zombified breathing, thin and shallow, seemed to begin then. His chest didn't move much under Risotto's hand - but it was no longer motionless.

The autonomic nervous system?

By then Risotto felt more like he was hanging on to his Stand by his fingernails rather than controlling it. It was doing things he had never dreamed it could. He tasted a strange heat in his mouth, a sensation of shimmering on his tongue.

He guessed that Metallica had somehow become Gold Experience, or the two Stands were entwining in a mysterious way. It didn’t match anything he understood about Stand behavior.

But a Stand couldn't function if its user was dead, could it?

There was a stutter within Giorno's heart as Risotto thought it, a sudden wobble in the pulse he was trying to keep steady. Not of his doing.

Risotto felt the stutter and pushed harder. He could no longer seem to guide the Stand. It didn’t seem to matter. All he had to do was point, and suggest. The sparkling life on his tongue was churning and frothing, a torrent of deep energy that needed just the vaguest of directions to act. And when it acted, it acted with shocking precision and force.

Giorno's pulse fluttered again, stumbled, then solidified. His heart began to beat on its own. He began to breathe deeper, and steadier.

Risotto let out a relieved sigh over Giorno's scalp. But understanding could wait; he still had work to do.

He refocused on directing Metallica - or Gold Experience? - to continue pulling Giorno's body back together. Golden wires and staples drew up and formed across Giorno's wounds, pulled broken skin tight, then vanished to leave scarless, perfect skin.

Something had shifted inside Risotto. His Stand had found a new aspect, fueled by his high emotions, his grief and will. He felt stronger than before, a transcendent buzz humming inside his skin, body full of juice despite his mental and emotional exhaustion. Deep down within him, Metallica cried: Master of Puppets.

Metallica had infused itself into Giorno's blood, into every place that his blood touched. Giorno's body had been colonized with it. Risotto could now feel every vein in Giorno's body as an extension of his own. Their hearts were beating in steady time, one pulse echoing between two forms. Risotto realized with awe that he had total control of Giorno's body. It was a dreadful and wonderful feeling. If he wanted to, he could command Giorno to move in any way he desired. He could stop or start Giorno's heart at his will. He could even control Giorno's Stand.  

And if he had Gold Experience under his control, he had Giorno's very soul to command.

But was Giorno alive again? Actually alive?

The blue-white form in the dogwood tree dispersed, the faintest sound of a zipper's purr buried in the shift of the wind.

Wake up and tell me you're yourself again, Risotto directed.

And Giorno moved. Giorno stirred in his arms and took a sharp, strong breath, then coughed out a small amount of blood. His skin was intact but his internal organs were not quite finished.

"I killed you for a minute. I'm fixing it. Don't try to move."

"Risotto," Giorno tried to speak, sounding dazed. Could he feel what was being done to him?

"Don't talk." Risotto murmured into Giorno's scalp. He shifted his hand instead and folded his palm - gentle, now - over Giorno's mouth. "I've got you."

---

Grass blades raked his skin as he was dragged across the ground by the neck. Giorno's throat rattled; the grip on his voicebox crushed speech out of him and he couldn't see, but he knew that something was going very, very wrong. He felt a rough texture slamming against his back and then there was a bright, unbearable punching through his skin. He heard his flesh tear, felt the cruel weight slice through his upper intestine, slamming all the way through him and just missing crunching through his spine by a few degrees.

He tasted blood, for a few seconds, as it burst up into his throat and over his lips.

Then he felt a strong sensation of wrenching, as if something reached into his chest, grabbed hold and pulled.

After that, Giorno felt nothing.

His awareness stayed with him, easing as he was lifted away from pain, and his vision shifted from the infinite black void of the blindfold to a kind of hazy and crystalline blue glow. The vivid color dazzled him after hours of darkness. He narrowed his eyes, lifting a hand to try and shield his eyes.

Nothing appeared within the blue glow, but he felt a warm, enveloping sensation.

Wait. He knew this feeling. This state of existent nonexistence. He'd been here before.

"Requiem?"

Then Giorno felt the blue turn, cosmic and indescribable, and look on him. World-encompassing blue eyes turned a crushing gaze toward him, a gaze he only could withstand in his current state of elevated suspension. The entirety of the world was pouring over him, swift as a river. Raw and unfiltered existence, the intense immensity of life, pushed down over his shoulders and flowed molten down the curve of his spine.

The Requiem spoke, infinite in grace and terror.

WOULD YOU DIE FREE, OR LIVE AS A SLAVE?  

Giorno lifted his head, hearing a question inside the question. He remembered his own words to Risotto: A living horse can be punished indefinitely. For him, both questions were easy ones. Years ago he might have given a different answer, but now he straightened his back against the flow of the Requiem and spoke with serene assurance.

"A slave can struggle toward freedom or try to change the heart of its master. The dead just die, and their wills are abdicated to the whims of those who survive. As long as life exists, opportunities for change exist. I would rather live."

Giorno tried not to think about it, but it still rose up: the memory of final words and golden winds, an irony that curled the edge of his mouth when he considered just whose Requiem he was talking to.

YOUR HEART REMAINS STEADFAST. SINCE YOUR OWN WORDS JUDGE YOU, I WILL RETURN YOU TO THE CAPTIVITY YOU HAVE CHOSEN.

Giorno inhaled, feeling the Requiem's will shifting around him, both savage and tender. He was going to be thrown back, he knew. Like a fish plucked from the river and then released at the whim of the fisherman.

He pushed forward, "Just…please, one question first. I may never get another chance to ask." What one question could answer everything in him? "You rebuilt me. I remember that. What is it you want me to do?"

He sensed, without seeing, a smile. Molded from his memories, warm, and tender, and so familiar it ached.

I WANT YOU TO LIVE.

Then he was pulled and dragged and pushed all at once, and the blue lifted from him. Giorno saw, just for an instant, a silver feather edged in blue. Darkness and heaviness closed around him. The world seized him, and tightened its grip around his consciousness.

He came back to his body, to darkness and a dull, hot pain resonating out from the center of his solar plexus. He coughed and tasted blood again, and there was a warmth now against his back that he recognized as the feeling of another body, bare skin pressed against his. There was a hand pressing over the center of his pain. His heart felt like it was beating too hard, too heavy. His blood felt thick and his muscles felt like they were being pulled too tight. It didn't hurt, but it was alien, like all his veins had been replaced by fine, thin wires. There was an odd coolness across his tongue, evasive and silver, refusing to settle into a recognizable flavor.

He heard Risotto speak to him, and in a daze he tried to reply, but Risotto's hand went over his mouth and stopped him from speaking. He slumped into the hitman's grip, too tired to argue, too sore to struggle, full of new questions. Whatever was happening, he was too weary to resist it.

It was easier, for the moment, to do as he was told.

---

Some time passed; Giorno wasn't sure how long. He drifted in and out under the warmth of the sun, bound tight in blood-soaked ropes and Risotto's hard grip.

In his uncontrolled drifting, he had a dream: he went to Bucciarati's villa and told him that he had to move out for a while. Bruno just smiled that tender smile of his and said, "I know." He clasped Giorno's hands and said, "Do what you have to do."

The dream left Giorno aching and pierced by fresh guilt. Requiem might have forgiven him, but he doubted the others would. And Mista, Narancia... they'd take it the worst, he knew.

The grief of separation rolled through him for a while, and his thoughts went far, back to Napoli. He just wanted to see them for a minute and tell them it was going to be okay; that he had to fight his way through this and that he was trying his best. His bound hands twisted behind his back and he tried for Gold Experience again, but his struggle was pointless and it all just ended the same - a bright, stabbing headache and renewed exhaustion.

Along with the headache the questions filtered back in. How was he even alive? Even if he assumed Bucciarati’s Requiem had intervened and saved him (again?) he couldn’t rationalize the process by which it was done. He could feel that he’d been healed, feel the residual glamour of Gold across his skin, but how had it been done? If he couldn’t control his Stand… did that mean Risotto had?

Would you die free or live as a slave? Had he misinterpreted the question? Requiem Stands never said anything in a straightforward manner…

It was even more than that. It seemed as long as Requiem was content to, it planned to use him for something… but what? Was it acting on its own, as Gold Experience Requiem once had? Did Bruno know what his Stand was doing? Did its forbearance of him come from Bruno’s care of him, or was it something separate and distinct, acting from its own objectives? Why did it want him to live, and what did it expect him to do with the life it kept preserving?

If only he could connect with Gold, even for a few moments…!

Giorno found no answers, just deepening confusion, and his recovery had drained him. The more he struggled with his thoughts, the more they exhausted him. Combined with the heat of Risotto’s body against his back, and the heavy sun over both of them he was left feeling sluggish, snarled in abstractions.

Giorno couldn't seem to keep himself awake. He sank into dozing a while longer, haunted all the way down. All he could hope was that somehow Bruno knew from Requiem that he was still alive, and that he was able to convince the others it'd be okay.

After some time his strength returned, and he awoke to clarity. The strange sensation of heaviness had eased out of him and his body felt more natural, more his own. Guilt and confusion still sat in him, but he tucked it all away as something too big to deal with where he was right then. In survival mode, mixed feelings were just distractions.

Right now, he had a murderer to deal with. Giorno pushed his head against the palm over his mouth and squirmed free of it. Risotto was asleep against his shoulder, so he didn't have to fight very hard. He found his voice again.

"Risotto."

A sleepy, dazed-sounding reply came back. "Mm?"

It was as if both of them had been flattened by exhaustion and had lost their places in the world; Giorno pressed his back into the assassin, squirming to try and stir Risotto's attention. "You should move me. We've been in the open a while."

Risotto nuzzled his nose against the side of Giorno's neck, groggy and sounding it. "Who's going to find us?"

Giorno had no answer for that. He shifted arguments. "I'm soaked in blood and I can't feel my hands any more."

"Poor baby." Risotto laughed in his ear, but after a moment he gave a soft grunt and pushed himself and Giorno upright. Giorno heard him yawn. "If you're always this bitchy when you wake up, I'm going to start taping your mouth shut at night." Still, he kept a hand on Giorno's shoulder and pressed down on him. "Don't make any sudden movements."

A few moments later Giorno felt the wet ropes holding him sag and pull free. His hands tingled, blood getting back into his fingers. The release of the pressure across his chest, elbows and wrists brought new pings of sore, sullen compression pain. He ignored them, exhaling. His arms were still feeling alien and rubbery so he let Risotto finish stripping him. His damaged jacket was pulled away and, he presumed, discarded.

The sun and wind touched his back. Giorno moved his tingling arms forward, working them with small slow movements, using his fingers to rub at his wrists until they stopped crackling and complaining. The blindfold was still on him, but he had gotten used to the lack of sight at that point. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Risotto murmured, before huffing out a breath. The grass rustled, and after a moment Giorno felt a tug on his upper arm. "I suppose now I have to figure out what to do with you."

Giorno went along, standing up. "Killing me didn't work, did it?"  

A resentful growl came from the hitman, the closest thing to an admission that Giorno thought he was going to get. The grip on his arm tightened. "I'm not letting you go, either."

Giorno stumbled as his arm was pulled on, but he did his best to keep up with the assassin's pace, blind and barefoot. After a few moments he heard Risotto scoff. Giorno was picked up then, pulled off his feet and hefted back over Risotto's shoulder.

"I can walk," he huffed, pushing at Risotto's shoulder with his hands to lift himself so he could breathe again.  

"It's easier," Risotto muttered back. His arm curled up around the small of Giorno's back.  

After a few moments Giorno could tell they'd moved back inside as the heat of the sun fell off him, replaced by the smell of dust and coolness, and Risotto's footsteps echoing in emptiness.

Giorno was dropped onto a thick, slippery-feeling plastic surface. It creaked under him, and stuck to his skin. He guessed he'd been dumped on some form of wrapped mattress. 

Some of the sounds around Giorno were unidentifiable at that point. His best guess was boxes opening and closing, and maybe he thought a fridge door opening? He pushed at the plastic, struggling to pull himself free of it so he could sit up. Risotto's silence was giving him little to go on, though he could tell the hitman was moving around wherever they were.

Giorno tried to keep his tone as light and unchallenging as he could. “If you’re truly not willing to release me, then I need to know what you plan to do instead.”

A low laugh came back to him. “I don’t have to tell you anything.” 

Weight crunched down into the plastic beside him, and there was an abrupt grab at his hair. Giorno gasped as his hair was pulled, his head yanked hard to one side, and he felt the bite of a needle sliding into his neck. "N-" Before he could finish his protest the syringe was in and out, and his hair was released. He pressed his hand against his neck, a protective, too-late gesture. He felt a faint sense of betrayal. "That wasn't fair, I'm cooperating."

"Not about fair." The sound of a box closing, and Risotto peeled away from the mattress. There was a click, and Giorno smelled lighter fluid, then a waft of tobacco smoke. "Get any ideas of equality or fairness out of your head right now. Fairness is for equals; you’re a fuck toy. If I feel like shooting you up I will.” 

Giorno rubbed at his arms. Insulting a term as ‘fuck toy’ was no doubt intended to be, Giorno found himself unable to process how he felt about it; it felt like trying to stare at the sun to look at the ambiguity of intentions that were building up between them.

Would you die free, or live as a slave?

He huffed, redirected. "Don't try to turn me into a junkie. I don't think you'd like it."

There was another chuckle. "If I was into that, I'd have pumped you full of heroin the minute I got you in the back seat. That or coke. You're built for it. Gay, blond, gorgeous, half-starved and half feral, likes to get tied up and fucked. I can see you putting thousands of dollars up your nose with a rolled 500 Euro just to get a rush when you're not bent over someone's desk."

Giorno lifted his head, hardened his back and shoulders. His cheeks flushed, and he pressed his hands over his knees, squeezing them for some degree of self-comfort. "That's a needless insult. Passione doesn't do drug trafficking, and I need my head clear for work."

Risotto snorted. "Are you actually in the Mafia? Don't be naive, it sure the fuck does." Giorno heard him move again, and smelled Risotto stepping closer. The blond felt fingers sliding into his hair, Risotto petting him, separating sticky gold strands. "Where do you think I got the Standkiller from?"

For a second, Giorno swore that he felt time stop. Or maybe it was just his own heart. He pulled back from Risotto's hand and scowled up toward the direction of his voice. "What?"

"Mm, are we surprised?" Risotto's hand went back into Giorno's hair again. "Sounds like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Even before the new Don took over, it's always been like that. The units do whatever they want unless Unita Speciale is breathing down their necks. You can disband the drug unit, but that doesn't do shit when half the units are just dealing under the table. Or are your friends keeping something else from you?"

Giorno raised his hand to try and swat Risotto away, even knowing it was a bad idea. "I don't believe you."

As he expected, Risotto caught his wrist, squeezed it hard enough Giorno felt his bones ache. "Proof's in your neck right now."

Giorno's breath went thick in his throat. He pulled his hand free, "Risotto, you have to let me go. You can't tell me this and not want me to do something about it, I'm the Do-" But he broke off, stopped himself, because he wasn't any more, was he? And his face turned a harder, flustered red.

Risotto leaned closer, until his nose was just shy of Giorno's right cheek. "You're the what, now?"

"I'm the Don's second," Giorno finished a little too quick and a little too shaky. "You know that, Risotto. You knew that when you kidnapped me the first time. And I still have nothing to say about him now."

"That wasn't what you meant to say," Risotto hummed. "I think you just gave yourself away." His lips feather-scraped along Giorno's skin. "We've been wondering where all the crazy new ideas came from, and half the people who meet with the new Boss don't come back. The ones that haven't been killed outright. We're used to never seeing the guy, but it's all kind of curious."

Giorno shook his head, a tiny bit. "You're wrong. I'm not."

"Then why are you bright red right now?"

The blond sighed, lips flattening. He tipped his head forward. There wasn't much for it, Risotto'd already gotten too close to the mark, and he'd blown it himself. "I'm... I used to be. I was, before I came here." He sighed a second time. "I ran Passione for three years before I came here, Risotto. I was the Godfather. So."

"You had the throne."

"Yes."

"And now you're at its foot instead."

"Yes."

Giorno could feel Risotto's smirk against his skin. The hitman's voice dropped to a sinuous, teasing rumble. "I bet that stings. And now you get to listen to other people tell you what to do, when you probably know just as well or better than they do. And you can't do anything about what I've told you. You can’t tell anyone and you can’t protect yourself from me, either. I bet that makes you feel so frustrated." He started sifting Giorno's hair again. "Come all this way. Give up your throne, give up your Stand, all for the sake of seeing your friends again. And it gets you a silver medal instead of the gold. Is that why you just shut your brain off and let yourself be fucked by whoever’s closest?"

Giorno fought back the urge to squirm. He hated how easy it seemed for Risotto to lance into him and dredge up things he didn't want to see. "I'm not unhappy now," he said, but he wanted his voice to sound firmer than it did.

"You're very unhappy," Risotto countered. He kept moving his fingers, drawling through Giorno's hair. Giorno felt hypnotized by the motion, unable to pull free of the hitman’s touch. His breath seemed too loud in his ears, his heart thumped too hard, and an artificial stillness and tension sat in his neck, like his veins had thickened. 

"You don't know how to let go of what you used to be, and all the killer instincts are there, but you think that being a 'good friend' means your ambition should just melt away. Fuck, I've had you less than a full day and you're trying to boss me around, and I fucking kidnapped you with every intention to cut your throat and leave you hanging."

"Don't tell me how I feel. You don't get to do that." Giorno dug his fingers harder into his knees.

"No, you need to get out of your feedback loop and wake up. Passione is a mess and you're a mess. Loyalty counts for something, but not when everything else goes to shit in the process. If you need your fucking enemies to tell you that, you have the wrong set of friends, Don Giovanna."

The mockery in the last two words was apparent - but Giorno thought he heard something more genuine hiding underneath, something unfulfilled. He had the thought that somehow he was disappointing Risotto - though Giorno banished the thought as ridiculous and unfair. 

They weren't equals, after all.

Giorno turned his face to the side, frustrated, drawing in his lower lip. A part of him - the very part Risotto was dragging out to mock - had to agree with Risotto. He would never have tolerated this a year ago, would never have allowed things in Passione to slide out of control and would have crushed under the table actions. Not in his world, and not in his Passione. Except that it wasn't his anymore, by his own choice. Still, Giorno hated that it was somehow so obvious; that he was obvious, and to someone who only knew him from a handful of days.

Risotto's fingers settled against the side of his neck. His fingertips were warm, heavy, and Giorno felt a slight dip against his jugular vein, a mild disturbance of his pulse. It was a threat, but a low-key one. Risotto didn't need to threaten him very hard now, did he?

"Lucky for you," the assassin said, "You have more pressing issues to deal with now."
 
Giorno gave a sour half-smile. An acrid sensation pooled in his throat, resistance to voicing what he couldn't deny. "Like you?"

"Like me." Risotto moved behind him, the plastic mattress squeaking, and Giorno felt the hitman's hands on his elbows. He sighed, letting himself be bound again - this time it was handcuffs, closing cold and heavy around his wrists and above his elbows. Giorno flexed his fingers and tried to ignore the renewed protests of his shoulders and back - and the rush of heat back to his face.

There was a low murmur of "Good boy" against the back of his neck. Giorno's lips parted, a pop of breath slipping out of him as Risotto's arms slipped forward, around him, encircling his waist.

"You just worry about me now," Risotto breathed against his neck. 

And, a little later when Giorno found himself being pressed face-down into the slick plastic with Risotto's hands on his shoulders, and the hitman’s cock grinding into him, he sucked a fold of the material deep into his mouth to quiet himself, trying to stifle the moans he couldn't keep in his throat.

Afterward the alien flavor of the plastic lingered on his tongue and lips, and Giorno thought: so this is what defeat tastes like.

---

Risotto stirred away from Giorno after a while. He pushed his nose against Giorno's neck, inhaled, filling himself with the blond's low scent, a mix of fading florals and the ambient factory oils and musk of their fucking.  It still felt strange waking up next to a warm body whose contours he could feel inside and out, but Risotto was starting to enjoy it.

Naked, he peeled himself off the sticky, too-warm plastic mattress and stretched; he still needed to make up his mind what to do with Giorno.

Giorno’s breathing was low and steady; he was hard asleep. It seemed safe enough to go outside and leave him alone for a few minutes. Risotto needed air, and a piss, and some time to think without being distracted by Giorno's irresistible gravity.

Moving back outside, Risotto guesstimated it was now early morning on the second day. There was dawn glimmering red-gold at the distant horizon, and just enough light available to see by. Risotto relieved himself against the side of the building with a low huff, swiped himself clean with a fallen leaf, and then turned to continue on a short walk.

The narrow green space with the dogwood ran 200 more feet or so to the east before opening up into a small courtyard with a handful of metal tables. Old and beaten by the weather, the clearing had probably once been a lunch area for the factory's workers. Risotto hopped up onto the top of one of the tables and then stood there for a while, gazing at the sky and at nothing in particular. Birds were moving high above. He let his thoughts drift and wander, brooding on the question before him: what was he really going to do with Giorno?

He sat down on the table, eyes closing, arms crossing over his chest. He'd failed his promise to his men. Giorno had died to him, but that was an accident and not of his will. He had promised revenge, and he couldn't deliver it. That sat bitter and sour in the base of Risotto's stomach, a dull and steady frustration that warred with the small but persistent golden thread of desire he couldn't cut away.

In his thoughts, he travelled back, settled into the memory of La Squadra's safehouse, into one of the old, off-green leather chairs at the head of the tight table. In his memory, he called the others of his team to him, envisioning them filtering in and populating his imaginary meeting. This was just too much for him to take on by himself.

He spread the problem out before them - Giorno, sprawled naked and silent like a strange offering on the table, blond hair spilling off one edge, limp-limbed.

"I need suggestions," Risotto said to his assemblage of mental images. "Don't bother lecturing me - I already know I've blown the original mission. Take that for granted. Help me move forward."

The memory-forms shifted in their chairs, frowned, examined the body on the table. Ghiaccio crossed one leg over the other, scowling into nothing; Melone leaned forward and picked up some of Giorno's golden hair, twisting it between his fingers in thought, murmuring something under his breath about 'compatibility'. Proscuitto leaned back and draped his arm across the back of the couch, while Pesci looked awkwardly at his knees or feet. Illuso leaned over one of the couch-ends, humming, fingers linking together.

"Sell him," Proscuitto spoke then, blue eyes hardening. "Take the opportunity to get some profit out of this. If he's that dear to his friends, they'll pay for his return. If they won't pay for him, sell him to people who will."

"They were willing to leave him to die before, even saying as much," Risotto countered. "Things may have changed with the passage of time, given the way he seems to believe they cherish him, but I don't think Don Bucciarati will go for that."

Illuso nodded. "Plus, they'll just try and kill Risotto at any exchange point anyway. Waste of time."

"Then one of the other gangs," Proscuitto continued. "Between his looks and his ability, if kept under control, I'm sure there's some capo somewhere that can find a use for him and would be happy to buy. Then it's out of your hands. You can disentangle yourself."

Pesci turned his head and looked at Proscuitto, mouth opening, the beginning of a frown, but he still seemed unwilling to speak, or that he wasn't quite sure what to say.

Melone had moved on from fingering Giorno's hair; he had taken Giorno's palm in his and had turned it over in his hands. His long violet-gloved fingers rubbed down the center of Giorno's hand and tapped at his wrist, clinical and curious. "It's a bit hasty to get rid of him when you haven't explored everything you can do with him yet," he noted. "You must be quite compatible if he triggered a new ability in you. What were you calling it, Master of Puppets?" He glanced up, purple hair shifting against his cheek. "Stands just don't combine like that. The fact that yours have is very unusual. Who's to say you can't take it further?"

Risotto rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "I'm not sure what happened back there. I don't know if I want to know."

"Don't you think you owe it to yourself to find out?" Melone countered. "Don't be a coward. You can only benefit from increasing Metallica's strength and utility. If using him gets you there, don't hesitate. Discard him when you're done with him, but only after you're certain there's nothing more to be gained."

Ghiaccio was still sulking. He raised a foot and kicked it at the table Giorno was slopped across, pushing it a few inches across the floor. The kick wrenched Giorno's hand from Melone's grasp. "I don't know why we're doing this. He's a killer and the second he gets the chance, he'll fucking murder you. What's the point?"

Melone scowled over. "The point is that you don't throw away a valuable commodity just because there are feelings involved."

"Fuck feelings," Ghiaccio retorted. "Look, Risotto, if you wanna get hot over him, if you wanna fuck him, whatever, but don't bullshit yourself or us that there's anything tactical or noble about it. You're just looking for a fucking justification right now to ease your mind about what you've already done. Yeah? Right? We all know I'm fucking right!" His voice rose, agitated.

"Yeah, and? What's wrong with just keeping that pretty thing around to fuck until he gets bored?" Formaggio walked in and perched on the arm of Risotto's chair. "Look at that ass. Straight from fucking god. I'd fuck him until his pelvis snapped if I had the chance. Why's it gotta be deeper than that?"

Ghiaccio swung up to his feet, fists clenching, "Because he already killed us ONCE, you asshole!"

Formaggio snorted back, a snide fuck-you grin. "He didn't kill me."

"Fuck you!" And that prompted an explosion of arguing from all sides; the unity of the memory shattering into cross-yelling, wild curses and accusations flying, recriminations about the past and present actions, and Ghiaccio advancing on Formaggio with teeth bare. Risotto pressed his hand to his forehead. Even his imagination leapt too quickly toward violence.

While everyone else yelled and argued, Pesci screwed up his face and gulped big and visible, then leaned toward Risotto's chair. His eyes were wide, and nervous. His hands pressed onto the other side of Risotto's chair, gripping hard at the green leather.

"Uhm, okay, so I know I'm just a mammone and not very tough and all that but…" the younger gangster began, hesitant, "But…if you feel like you like him….isn't that what matters?"

Risotto blinked, and found himself rendered speechless by the question.

He blinked again, and his imagination shattered. He came back to himself, to the living world, tasting salt and the dry morning air in his mouth. It was sour to return, his chest thumping and tugging as he forced himself to push back the conjuration of his friends. They were still alive in him, ghosts he could summon on command, but such self-delusions gave him only the coldest, thinnest kind of comfort. 

In the end, he was still just talking to himself, after all.

Risotto sighed and slid himself off the tabletop, grimacing and slipping a hand through his hair. The sun had moved a little above the horizon, and the sunrise was golden.

At least he understood the angles of his problem more clearly. Any further woolgathering about it would just lead him into deeper circles of frustration. He knew he was not willing to free Giorno. He knew he couldn't kill him, either. That left him only the option of keeping him.  Everything else was logistics.

The factory was a place for killing, not storage. He needed to come up with somewhere he could keep Giorno isolated and managed - ideally with easy access to food, plumbing, and electricity. Taking him out of Italy would be ideal in the long term, but would require setup and preparation. He would not be able to keep drugging Giorno forever. The Standkiller was also too expensive and too bothersome to obtain to rely on, long-term. And even if Master of Puppets gave Risotto new powers to control the blond, it was too early to know the range, extent, and limitations of that ability without further testing.

Using Giorno's money was out of the question; it'd be one of the easiest ways Passione could track him. So there was a certain logic to pimping Giorno out for funds, but every stranger that came into contact with them was a potential hazard for identification later. Although, he thought, there were ways around that.

So, perhaps. In which case, he needed to also get Giorno somewhere where if he did want to whore him no one would ask questions or be concerned about it.

Risotto could already hear another question from the piece of him that was reflected by Pesci's soft, hesitant voice: is that really okay to do to someone that you like, though?

And he didn't know how to reply to that, either.

It'd been a long, long time since Risotto could remember feeling anything other than a blunted, functional emptiness, or low, cold-smoldering anger. He remembered that Sorbet and Gelato's persistent public displays of affection had left him restless and uncomfortable but also that he'd been too numb and too empty to do anything to try and discourage them. He didn't give a shit they were gay. It was the smug, closed, nothing-exists-but-us attitude they oozed around with that made him feel jealous, and then dirty for the jealousy, and then annoyed at himself for feeling anything at all about it.

It was the fact they were so clearly happy.

And then they'd died, in a vicious way, murdered by the Boss, and a bitter little part of Risotto had murmured deep down: You deserved it. You brought it on yourselves. You can't snatch happiness in this life and expect to be allowed to keep it.

He couldn't remember the last time, if ever, that he'd actually been on a 'date' that wasn't really just him riding along with whatever plaything one of the others brought back to the hideout. Quick fucks and disposable pleasures.

He couldn't remember ever really being happy. Just numb. Killing. Hungry. Letting one day melt into the next.

He heaved a sigh. But Giorno. Giorno had managed to invoke something alien and terrifying and treacherous in him, heat and desire and a wanting that scared the shit out of him for its intensity. He thought it was just a manic phase, just the result of the obsession of the hunt, something he could temper with a couple of rounds with Giorno’s ass before the kill; he wished that'd been all it was.

But it wasn't. Watching the golden boy writhe in suffering was entrancing. Being inside him felt like relief. An easing of a pain that Risotto had been carrying so long he'd forgotten its shape and its name until it was thrown into sharp relief by fucking Giorno. 

Risotto snorted at himself. Getting such romantic thoughts. He really was a pathetic failure.

Just as pathetic as Sorbet and Gelato. And he'd probably end up the same way.

He supposed he deserved it.

----

Stepping back into the factory, Risotto found Giorno just where he'd been left. Satisfied, he turned his attention to other things. He was hungry, and it was time for breakfast. In the battered and dilapidated fridge by the door, Risotto had stashed a small amount of perishables. He drew a portable stove and some utensils to go with them.

Enjoying the quiet, he started cooking himself breakfast. Soon the broken old office was full of a pleasant scent of sizzling bacon and burbling eggs frying. The smell seemed to reach Giorno, and the blond stirred along the sticky mattress. His throat rumbled, and his chained hands fluttered a bit.

Risotto chuckled, turning down the burner, prodding gently at the eggs curdling in the bacon fat. "Good morning," he called, knowing full well Giorno couldn't answer. "Since we'll be staying together for the foreseeable future, it's time to establish some new rules. First rule: I like a quiet morning. You are not to speak to me until after breakfast."

Giorno struggled in place, managing to flip himself from his side onto his back, the plastic squeaking against his skin. The tape over his mouth held, suppressing any reply. He emitted a loud grunt in his throat, a frustrated sound that made Risotto smirk as he heard it.

"Complaining like that counts as speaking. If you complain about a rule you earn a punishment."

Risotto felt the annoyance resonating through Giorno's body, and he closed his eyes to savor the reaction before continuing. He finished his cooking and dished out his meal onto a spare plate. "I know you can't control your mouth, so I'm going to control it for you. When we go to bed at night, you'll be gagged, and in the morning after I eat, I'll ungag you and feed you. On the condition that you behave properly. This rule goes into effect immediately, and lasts until you learn to keep your mouth shut on your own. Nod so that I know you understand."

Giorno went still and stiff, and Risotto could nearly taste how grudging the blond's one brief nod was.

He took his plate and fork with him and climbed back onto the mattress, straddling Giorno, sitting on his abdomen and squishing the blond's thin frame tight between his thighs. Gazing down at his captive as he ate, Risotto occasionally took a forkful of warm food and wafted it just above Giorno's nose, taunting him with the scent of what he was missing. He alternated this teasing with hard pinches of his fingers, trapping Giorno's nose shut, blocking him from breathing for longer and longer stretches. One second, two, three…twelve… fifteen…

Giorno's heart pumped wild as he was stripped of air, and Risotto drank up the sensation of feeling Giorno jittering between his thighs. His cock grew hard against Giorno's abdomen as Giorno's stifled rasping grew more desperate.

"Frankly, this is not a good start for you," Risotto grinned over his captive. "Try to do better." He held his hand down firm over Giorno's nose and mouth until he felt the blond rattle and go limp underneath him.

He went on to finish his breakfast, still straddling Giorno's unconscious body, and sank back into thought.

-----
Shortly after Giorno revived and started squirming under him again, Risotto also heard the blond's stomach growling. It was so loud and clear he couldn't hold back a laugh. He pulled Giorno upright, rearranging them on the loud mattress, and kept an arm around his waist. He unbound Giorno just enough to carefully hand-feed him a few cold spoons of leftover eggs.

Giorno thanked him in a small, tired voice, and then sighed, letting his weight sit against Risotto's chest. Risotto put his chin on Giorno's right shoulder, and his other arm tight around the first, holding Giorno still. He held on, resonating, quiet, feeling Giorno's steady pulse through his skin, getting lost in the sensation of following the blood pulsing through Giorno’s veins, through his heart, and fingers, and toes. Metallica had never felt so real to him, and Giorno’s body was warm.

"This isn't sustainable," the blond murmured, after a little while, not moving, not fighting Risotto's grip on him. "You have to know this."

Risotto knew it. He didn't like hearing Giorno echo his own thoughts, but he couldn't deny the truth, either. "Give me an alternative," he countered. "Because I haven't changed my mind."

"There's a safe house - an apartment - on the far north edge of Napoli," Giorno offered. "I know the security code to the lock box. It's not monitored, rarely used. It's just a tax write-off and a crash space for emergencies."

Risotto hummed into Giorno's shoulder, considering. "Secure?"

"It's an apartment, not a fortress," the blond countered. "But I'm sure you could tie me to the bed or a chair or something. If you're that determined to go on with this. And I suppose being back in town would make it easier for you to buy more drugs."

For that, Giorno got a pinch on his left nipple, and his yelping mouth was quickly sealed up by Risotto's hand again. "Mind yourself, fucktoy."

Huffing as the hand was removed again, Giorno's nostrils flared. "It's better than this."

Risotto huffed out a small laugh at that. "Maybe. We're both starting to stink." He supposed it was an answer, at least a temporary one. The idea of using one of Passione's resources to keep one of its upper echelon hostage tickled him. Giorno hadn't been able to communicate with anyone, so the likelihood of it being a trap was marginal. Still, doubts sat in him. "Cameras, remote surveillance?"

"I don't know. There's always the possibility of bugs, but I suppose you have ways to deal with those."

"Hm," Risotto willfully dug his chin hard into Giorno's shoulder for a moment, listening to the soft 'mmph' of his captive. Metallica could certainly handle a few wayward electronics. "If you're lying about this, you'll regret it."

"I know," Giorno breathed, "But I'm not lying. I have every incentive to make it easier for you to keep me alive, don't I?" His head tipped against Risotto's neck.

"You certainly do." Risotto considered a little longer, and decided it was worth the risk. He gave a soft grunt, and let go of Giorno, unwinding from him. "All right. Stay quiet while I pack up."

Risotto moved around, cleaning up his squat and taking his drug box out of the fridge, putting it back in his duffel bag. It didn't take him long, and he moved back to the bed, reaching for one of Giorno's bound arms. "Up. Can't forget the most important piece of baggage."

Giorno struggled off the mattress, clumsy without hands or sight, relying on Risotto's help to get on his feet again. "I suppose I get to ride in the trunk."

Risotto chuckled. "Well, that is the proper place for baggage. But I need you to give me directions, so you're being temporarily elevated to passenger."

"What would I have to do to get into first class?" Giorno mused.

Risotto, amused, picked him up off his feet and hefted him over his shoulder. Giorno yelped with surprise, and Risotto smacked him hard on the thigh. "I don't know. What are you willing to do that I can't just make you do?"

---

They were back in the car, back on the Autostrada, driving, the long road back to Napoli. The sun was behind them, bright at mid-day. True to his word, Risotto had placed Giorno into the passenger seat, after adding zip-ties to his handcuffed wrists and ankles too, and covering his body from the neck down with the scratchy grey blanket from before. With his prisoner bound tight and held down by the seat belt, Risotto was confident Giorno wouldn't be able to disrupt the drive.

The blond was gazing wearily out the passenger side window, and had been quiet the whole time. Risotto reached over and brushed the back of his hand against a bruise on Giorno's left cheekbone.

"Thoughts?" As much as Risotto appreciated Giorno's compliant silence, part of him also wanted Giorno's conversation, his attention.

Giorno shook his head. "Just…" He shrugged his shoulders under the blanket, aquamarine gaze sliding over Risotto. "Trying to process all of this. You killed me, but then you brought me back. I can feel your Stand squirming around inside my body. The last person that had such complete control over me was one of the Boss' elite men, a long time ago."

"You don't take losing well, do you?" Risotto shifted his hand to cup over the bruise instead of brushing against it.

"I'm in danger, definitely. You've taken me hostage and made me dependent on your whimsy. But have I actually lost? I'm not sure we've settled that yet." The blond shot Risotto a strange, ambiguous smile.

Their gazes met, green and red, and Risotto was surprised at the flush he felt crawling into his own face at the intensity of Giorno's level stare. There was something frightening, something alluring about the expression Giorno wore - subdued, but still calm. Like he knew something Risotto didn't. Risotto felt Giorno's smile crawling under his skin, making his chest hurt, a subtle and secret infiltration. He felt the pulsation of the gravity between them, thick as the blood moving through their veins.

"You've lost," Risotto insisted, but he felt the weaker man for saying it somehow, and the smile under his skin made him doubt his own words even as he said them. "You said it yourself. I control you now. Completely."

He lifted his hand from Giorno's cheek, and turned his attention away, back to the road. "Tell me about the last person."

Giorno settled back against the seat. His eyes closed. "I don't know his name, actually. A lot of the people we fought and killed back then were people whose names I never learned. But he had an armored shark for a Stand. Its teeth clamped onto my neck and burrowed into my shoulder. I blacked out. Every now and then, I would awaken for a few instants to find myself being held underwater. I should have drowned. I assume the shark somehow breathed for me, but I know the user wanted me dead. He just had to keep moving me to try and evade Narancia. He failed in the end. When I could breathe on my own again I woke up in the middle of some plaza I didn't recognize."

"That would probably be Squalo," Risotto mused, lifting a hand from the wheel to touch his chin. "Not one of mine, but I've heard of him. His Stand was either Clash or Crash - heard it both ways, don't think he ever settled on it."  He remembered that Squalo had a rumored partner, whose name Risotto also hadn't learned. The rumors said they were like Sorbet and Gelato.

He certainly was being reminded of partners all of a sudden. Risotto frowned, and adjusted his fingers along the steering wheel in a flex of his hand to release some nervous tension. "It's pathetic that your team was so bad at intel it didn't even know its enemies' names."

"Would it be better if we were friends with everyone we had to kill?" Giorno countered. "I don't know about you, but I prefer fighting strangers. Then they're just … obstacles to be cleared. And I don't have to waste any time feeling remorse. If they didn't get in my way, I wouldn't have to kill them."

Risotto glanced over at his hostage again. "You realize you've just admitted you have a problem fighting people you know. That's a weakness."

Giorno's bruised lips pressed together. Risotto felt Giorno's pulse flutter, an indication of suppressed emotion. He was still staring away from Risotto, out the window. "I suppose I did." 

"I suppose you'd fight me now, if you could." Risotto reached down and shifted the car into higher gear.

Giorno shook his head. "It'd be pointless," the blond sighed, and Risotto didn't miss the way that Giorno's pale, bruised face began to heat. "I can't."

"If you can't fight me, then what does that mean?" Risotto teased, a smile tugging on his mouth and his low voice darkening into coy, smug amusement. "I already know the answer. But I want to hear you say it."

Giorno squirmed against the seat, chin shrinking toward his chest and shoulders rising. This only lasted a moment as he seemed to force himself to pull out of the impulse. He straightened then, pushed his chin back up. "I can't fight you," he finally said, quiet and serious, "Because I don't want to. I keep hoping to find some other way out of this where I won't have to."

"Because you know me."

"Because it'd be a waste," Giorno replied, settling back again, eyes shuttering. "All the people I killed before - they died because I needed to live, and I had a mission to complete, but those battles were ultimately pointless. They didn't make anything any easier for me after the fact. If they had survived, I could have used their abilities. Passione gains nothing from your death."

Risotto raised an eyebrow. "Put that idea out of your mind. I won't work for your Don. You I can keep around to fuck, but the rest need to be killed." He shifted gears again as the road changed, the engine giving a soft clunk. But his gaze drifted over Giorno, tired and yet still clinging to hope even in his bruises and his bonds. “Your compliance doesn’t change the past.”

"I wish you weren't so stubborn about this," Giorno grumbled, face turning away. "The only one keeping this vendetta alive now is you, Risotto. I tried to kill you and failed. You tried to kill me and failed." He looked back, green eyes widening, trying to find Risotto's attention. "As far as I'm concerned, that makes us even. Call it off. Please."

Risotto meant to laugh, but it came out as more of a haggard bark, pain in his throat. "I can't."

"You won't."

"No, I can't."

"Why?" Giorno craned toward Risotto as best he could.

"Because I don't want to. Can’t you understand?" Risotto growled, face darkening, a flush crawling across his cheeks. He reached out his free hand and pressed it over Giorno's mouth for a moment. "Enough. I'm this close to stapling your mouth shut but I still need you to give me directions to the safehouse."

Once the hand came away, Giorno said softly, “I know how much it hurts to lose people."

Risotto raised his finger, a harsh and choppy gesture.

Giorno felt sharp metallic edges crawling at the edges of his lips, needle-sting pain pinching at the corners of his mouth. He could just see thin silver glints entering the lower edge of his vision. He stiffened. “Okay, okay.”

The threat of the sharp edges melted back, and Giorno breathed hard, wrestling with frustration and the lingering sensations of needles biting at his lips. He turned his head and glowered at Risotto for a few moments before venting all his irritation in one pointless lunge of his body against the seatbelt holding him down. A low hard grunt burst out of his throat. Then he sank into a smoldering silence.

"Maybe I can still get you mad enough to want to kill me after all," Risotto mused through a bitter smile.

Giorno snapped his head up and stared at his captor, but Risotto refused to meet his eyes, and kept his attention on the road.

Chapter Text

The only warning Giorno and Risotto had was a brief flash of something Giorno spotted in the passenger side mirror. He could barely get his mouth open to sound an alarm before the back windshield of Risotto’s stolen car burst into shards and showered the backs of their necks with bits of safety glass and a sensation of wet, icy cold splattering. Risotto cursed and twisted the wheel sharply to one side, staying calm under the sudden assault, but frowning with narrowed eyes. 

Giorno twisted as much as he could, green eyes wide, and heard more than saw a loud flutter of wings behind them, heard the cry of some kind of huge bird with a wingspan that cast a shadow into the vehicle. The bird screeched and, as Risotto jerked the wheel again, sent another large ice spike forward through the broken back window, the spike embedding itself hard in the dashboard where the car radio had once been, filling the front of the vehicle with sparks and smoke. 

Risotto reached a hand over and shoved it at the back of Giorno’s neck, growling, “Head down,” as the tires whined against the road; he hit the gas and steered with one hand while the bird punched into the car and started flapping and pecking wildly at both of them amidst the smoke. Risotto's eyes were watering but he steadfastly held out against panic. He had not been expecting an attack, but it certainly wasn’t his first fight, either. 

Giorno, heart thundering, made a quick and desperate decision. He could feel Metallica reflecting Risotto’s anger within his own body, feel their deep, locked-in energy connection, and instead of reaching for Gold Experience, he tried to grab hold of that power instead, grabbing for Risotto’s Stand infesting him, and co-opted the silver invaders in his blood by sheer force of will. There was an indescribable thump in the back of his head, a brief flicker of shock he felt rolling back from Risotto as he took control – but Giorno also felt power build in his grasp, and he was quick to turn it. Little gold creatures welled out of his skin at his throat and cheeks, wavering and crying their weird hollow cries. The overridden Metallica made quick work of the cuffs, seat belt and zip ties, releasing Giorno. 

Risotto, bewildered, felt his control shift, felt Giorno’s immaculate will punching back hard into his own body and blood, gripping at his chest and the base of his skull and pulling, and was too dazed by the impact to react for the moment.

Giorno had a few precious seconds. He wasted no time, twisting fully around in the seat, finally able to get a good look at the enemy attacking them – it was indeed some kind of gigantic bird, with a purple scarf around its neck and an ornate golden helm on its head. They locked eyes for an instant and Giorno, dripping gold ghosts, quickly formed the beads ‘sweating’ from him into thorned vines, whirling them at the bird’s beak and eyes. 

The bird yelped and hopped back, preparing another large ice spike from its beak, but Giorno quickly built a net of golden thorns between the front and back of the car, and the bird’s next chilly blast hit the thorns and bounced back against the bird, clipping it near the top of its left shoulder. With a screech, the bird darted sideways, broke one of the back door windows with its beak and fled the vehicle. 

They had a moment to exchange a sharp look. Risotto’s eyes widened as he saw Giorno’s face dripping gold, a sharp, hard smile on his lips. 

But neither of them had another moment, because something moving too fast to see came down hard and punched straight through the engine block, sending hot oil, metal shards and fire flying in multiple directions. The windshield shattered as the car buckled and shook, as the car began to tear itself in two around the seemingly immobile and invisible object that had thundered down into it.

With a shower of sparks and horrible rending sounds, the car burst at speed. Giorno was thrown sharply to the left and partially out of the debris to scrape and snag on the road, while Risotto, still belted in, cursed again and clung to the steering wheel. But his reward was searing pain from burning engine oil splashing over parts of his face, his right eye, his chest, and bits of twisted metal stabbing into him here and there, in his arm, chest, and throat.

Giorno measured the next few breaths in a slowed-down daze – the explosion and splitting of the car seemed to be happening in an eerie, extended lag, giving him enough time to see and feel all that was happening while being fully unable to affect it. 

He saw that the thing that had split the car was a beefy golden figure tall and motionless in the middle of the road with its arms crossed. A Stand, he was certain, bigger than any Stand he’d ever seen before. Giorno was lurched sharply to the side and his vision became, mostly, a blur of motion and grey stripes as he went spinning on and against the road and then, all at once, even that motion ceased and he was enveloped in terrifying stillness. 

He could not feel his heart beat; he couldn’t feel air in his lungs, but he was still conscious, and the world had gone grey around him. He was able to move his eyes and see he was about a hair’s breadth from his head slamming into the road, an impact he was sure would be fatal. Then he heard a voice, deep and heavy, chuckling, somewhere nearby. He saw a gold blur move toward him, grip him by the back of his neck, dragging him up through the grey. 

The golden thing that pulled him up hit him in the midsection with a fist that felt like a tree trunk, and then a boom registered that sounded through his bones and muscles and made every part of him ache at once. The only thing he could relate to it was the feeling of King Crimson, and it was far more powerful than even that terrifying Stand had been.

He vaguely saw something shining, something gleaming a lurid bronze-gold, with broad pale skin, moving toward him. He felt a burning ache build in his left shoulder.

You...

But then Giorno’s mind swirled away into nothingness. 

---

A soft chuckle left the lips of Dio as Pet Shop, wounded, returned to his shoulder, blood in its feathers and glowering. Dio rewarded his ally with a brief pat on the head.  The bird had provided the necessary distraction, and would be easily healed by Enya once they returned to Cairo with their prize. The World held Giorno’s slight weight easily over one shoulder, a firm hand still gripping at the back of his neck. 

Giorno Giovanna was theirs; Dio had never doubted it would be otherwise. He did spare a glance toward the driver in the vehicle; debated if killing him was worth the extra few seconds of effort. 
Risotto was bloody and still against the seat, head bowed and motionless, breathing choppily. 

It was untidy to leave a witness, Dio thought. Pet Shop fluttered his feathers on Dio’s shoulder, and, making his decision, the vampire murmured, “Go,” to the bird with a flick of his fingers. 

Pet Shop launched from his shoulder, flying back toward the wreckage of the car where Risotto lay, and shot him through the remains of the windshield with a large ice spike to the abdomen. Satisfied, the falcon kack-kacked a smug bird-laugh under its breath, then returned to its master. 

It was only a couple of minutes later that a small plane came down from above, using the road as a runway, and halted, opening its door to allow Dio, Pet Shop and The World to enter. They were wheels up and off the ground in another couple of moments, leaving the burning, twisted wreckage they had made behind. 

Dio did allow himself one quiet exhale as he stepped back into the cool dim interior of the plane, its window shades all pulled down against the daylight. It had been a calculated risk, exposing himself under the open sun, a dangerous sort of experiment, given he had spent decades avoiding the light even after availing himself of the power of the Red Stone of Aja. For the first time in memory, Dio had left his hidden stronghold to act, compelled by the visions of the Joestar Stand and the momentary glitter of his soul resonating with this boy’s some months back. As the World deposited Giorno’s unconscious form into one of the seats, Dio mused on the nature of curiosity, temptation, and whether his action had been wise. 

That would, of course, depend entirely on Giorno.

--

Risotto spat up blood and oil and freed himself with a shaking hand from the seat belt. But it was all he had strength to do, for the moment. Underestimated, again, the hitman thought in a dizzy way, using what little energy he had to stitch his punctured midsection and his more serious wounds closed with Metallica. Another sloppy kill. He broke down the metal stabbing into his flesh, let Metallica melt it into healing wires. Metallica was no longer golden, no longer saturated with Giorno’s stolen power, and the pain was intense, but it would do. 

He could no longer feel Giorno at all. It must have been because their bodies were out of range to each other. He struggled to remember what he’d seen, who the attacker was. All he remembered was the bird, and something eye-achingly golden; he’d actually thought it was Gold Experience for a moment, but Giorno would not have attacked himself, would he? And it was too big for Giorno’s Stand. 
He was tired. The temptation to shut down and just let death wash over him was incredible. But deep down that wasn’t who Risotto Nero was. 

Somehow his cell phone had survived the wreck and was still in his coat pocket. Fumbling, his fingers sticky and slippery with blood, Risotto put out a great effort, and managed to retrieve the phone, and then dialed a number he’d long prepared for another use. He pressed the phone to the side of his face that wasn’t drenched in blood and ichor and peppered with broken glass. Breathed hard, and waited for an answer on the other end. He huffed and coughed, tasting metal as he waited. 

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Don’t let this call go to fucking voice mail.

At last, the phone answered, a younger man’s voice. Risotto thought it might have been Narancia; he vaguely placed the voice from what felt like years prior, when there had been discussion of placing the boy in the Hitman Team. “Uh, yeah, s’up?” 

Risotto struggled to push words through his exhaustion. “I had Giorno,” he rumbled, without prelude. “But he’s been taken from me. If you want him back, you need to come to me.” 

Mentioning Giorno’s name did the trick, although Narancia immediately began to screech, and Risotto heard him screaming off the phone for the Don’s attention, “BUCCIARATI!? PHONE?! THAT GUY WHO TOOK GIORNO BEFORE!!” A second later, a different voice – deeper and cooler – took over the phone. 

Risotto knew this voice. It was stern, business-like, and cold. “Where are you, Risotto?” 

Risotto coughed out his location – he saw a mile marker on the Autostrada. “Make it quick,” he advised. “I may be dead before you get here.” 

“We’ll come,” was the only answer, and then the phone disconnected. 

Risotto let out a small weary sound, and let the phone slip from his bloody hand to bounce into the remains of the car flooring in front of him. He tipped his head back against the seat, and pressed a hand to the center of his still-knitting-together chest. He tried to shore up his collapsed lung with more wires. Breathing hurt.  

Stupid. So stupid. He’d caught feelings, and tried to go off script with it… tried to chase happiness… and now… 

He closed his good eye and waited, wondering which of Bucciarati’s group was going to be the first one to shoot him in the head. 

---
 
All of the group were now piled into one of Passione’s delivery vans, breaking traffic laws with Mista gripping the steering wheel so tight his hands were turning white, and Aerosmith buzzing high above them to watch for further enemies. In the end, even Abbacchio had insisted on coming along; they would need Moody Blues to get any real answers and, once again, Giorno was going to owe them for a bail out.

Trish had joined too. She’d come to comfort Narancia and Mista after the disappearance of Giorno, and as soon as they filled her in on Giorno’s previous history with Risotto, she had glowered, pushed up her pink Gucci dress sleeves and plopped herself into a corner of the back of the van, her jaw firm and set, refusing to move from the spot. 

The mood inside the van was grim. 

“Are we gonna kill him?” Narancia asked, his voice low and clotted, dark with anger. He was thinking about those pictures that Risotto had sent before, Giorno nailed down and bloody. He could not handle Giorno dying again. Giorno had promised he wouldn’t! Narancia’s left leg bounced; he wanted to shoot, he wanted to do something more than just let Aerosmith fly overhead.

“Not until he tells us what he knows,” Bucciarati shook his head, blue eyes iced over and his voice frigid and tense. “At least we can now confirm Giorno was alive as recently as an hour ago.” 

“Don’t say was,” Mista hissed, jerking the wheel to wind around some traffic. His teeth ground together, black eyes almost watering from the intense stare he kept locked to the road ahead. “Gio’s alive. If he died, I’d know.” 

“I think we’d all know,” Trish replied, pink lips pressed flat, slowly closing her hand into a fist, and feeling Spice Girl’s hand emerging to cover that fist with its own cool fingers in an attempt to comfort her. Trish had briefly met the Giorno that the others said had come from the other world with Mista; she wasn't sure she entirely understood how that worked, but she also didn’t care. Her memory was of the younger Giorno that had died in her arms shortly after their miserable encounter with her father’s Stand at the church of San Maggiore. The thought of any Giorno being hurt infuriated her now. 

Bruno shoved his hand over his face. “Damn it, I should have realized it was Risotto again.” He bit hard into his lower lip, grimacing as he tried to control his emotions. He thumped his hand on the car dash. “Why didn’t I see it?!”

“Stop it,” Abbacchio lifted his head and bellowed from the back. “All of you. Blaming yourselves is stupid. Risotto was the leader of the Hitman Team. He survived longer than the rest because he obviously had a plan, which is why we couldn’t find him until now. He’s good at this. Be glad he didn’t take the brat out right off the top. Clear your fucking heads and focus, or stay in the van when we get there if you can’t.” 

Although, Abbacchio grimly wondered, why hadn’t Risotto killed Giorno? Giorno was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid - what had he managed to do to stay alive until now? Maybe he didn’t want to think about that too closely. The investigator shook his head hard, purple lips tightening, hand moving across the lower half of his face as he gazed thoughtfully into nothing. And what the hell had gotten on top of Risotto Nero enough to force him to call the people he surely wanted dead?

They’d find out soon enough, even if all they arrived to was a corpse. Moody Blues would show them the way. Abbacchio would make sure of that. 

“Heads up,” Mista announced. “Getting eyes on it now. There’s a car splattered all over the other side of the road. Hang on!” He twisted the wheel sharply, causing everyone to yelp as he slammed the van across lanes and pushed through a gap in the center divider. The van bounced hard as he scraped it against the edge of some obstructive green bushes and skidded, shooting a few sparks from the undercarriage as he forced it into a turn, bringing it up a few yards from the crash. He wrenched the van into a parked position blocking both lanes on that side, and pulled on the emergency lights. 

After everyone caught themselves up and got their breath back, Bruno turned to Narancia. “Breathing?” 

Narancia focused, pulling up his radar module and examining it while Trish and Abbacchio pushed open the doors at the back of the van and hopped out, shading their eyes against the sun.  “Yeah, lots. Small readings, I think critters mostly?”

Mista and Bruno followed the others out and Narancia scrabbled out last. They began to close the distance to the wreckage. 

“Shit,” Trish murmured, giving voice to the mood of the group. Narancia dropped his radar and darted forward toward the left side, while Mista yanked his revolver out of his waistband and went right, toward where they could see a pale human figure in the wreckage. Narancia crouched, sniffed about, kicked at some stuff with his loafer and shook his head. “Just junk over here!” He was hoping for a piece of Giorno’s clothes or something, and was disappointed to find no trace of the blond there- only a few smatters of blood, which he desperately shoved out of his thoughts as fast as he could. 

“MotherFUCKER!” Mista yelled, gun rising as he ran. “Hey, asshole, can you fucking hear me?” 

Risotto, half-embedded in the crumpled wreckage to the right and too weak to move, opened his good eye and rasped out, “Present,” with a splutter of fresh blood on his lips. 

Mista pounced, putting his revolver straight to Risotto’s head. “Don’t FUCKING move,” he barked. 

Risotto let out the blackest, thinnest chuckle and replied by weakly spitting blood toward him. “Do I look like I can?” 

Bruno hung back next to Abbacchio, murmuring so that just his investigator could hear. “Moody Blues can't do vehicles, correct?” 

Abbacchio shook his head. “No, but we should be able to recover the attacker. I just need a time frame.” 

Bruno quickly fished out his phone and checked the clock on screen. “Start two and a half hours back,” he said, and then turned his head and called to Narancia. “Narancia! Cover for Moody Blues!” 

“Right!” Narancia got up from his crouch on the left and moved back near them, while Bruno broke off and caught up with Mista instead. Abbacchio turned his back and summoned his Stand, which promptly began to frizz and glitch as it rolled backward through time in the empty road in front of the wreck. 

Trish closed in with Bruno and all of them tightened in around Risotto and the wreckage, gaping at how bad it actually was up close. Mista was trembling to keep himself from just blasting away, but Bruno put a hand on his arm. “Easy.”  

Meanwhile, Trish was examining the debris carefully. She drew out Spice Girl, the feminine Stand appearing in a shimmer of pink and red, and had it strike once at the wreckage, softening it; the metal went bubbly and fluid as mercury, and she and Bruno reached in to tug Risotto free. Mista kept them covered with the pistol. The hitman’s legs slid loose over the softened metal, and they were able to see that one of his legs had been broken, badly; they both had blood on their hands. Trish wrinkled her nose in dislike of the sensation, but said nothing, and Risotto wearily let them do as they pleased. 

They set him down on the concrete in a clear space and Bruno silently generated Sticky Fingers Requiem to apply zipper-seals to the worst of the visible wounds he could find, stopping Risotto from further bleeding out. “I’m not healing you,” Bruno explained, without warmth. “I just need you to stay conscious long enough to tell us what happened.” 

Risotto heaved in a wet, awful-sounding breath. “Bird and two Stands,” he finally managed to reply. “Big bird from behind, ice shooter. Another from the front. It was fast. Huge. Yellow.” 

He had their rapt attention. Mista circled around from the side of the wreckage and came in closer, still with gun in hand. “Ice bird and a yellow Stand,” he murmured, then refocused. “Where were you taking Giorno?” 

Risotto’s eye closed. “Doesn’t matter.” 

“But he was alive.” Bruno repeated. 

“Yeah.” 

Trish had to ask. “It wasn’t Gold Experience? Giorno didn’t rescue himself?” 

Before Risotto could reply, Abbacchio’s voice sounded out. “He didn’t. I’ve got it. Come look.” 

Moody Blues had found its target, frozen in place with a slow roll of static over its motionless form. The Stand had morphed into Risotto’s ‘huge yellow’ Stand, and the others were able to perceive it. Bruno shot Trish a look, then flicked his gaze over Mista, before he rose away to go see what Abbacchio had found. 

Mista took the opportunity to move in, looming over Risotto. He spun the revolver’s barrel out for a click, showed it was loaded, then shoved it back into place with a furious gesture. “I want to know exactly what the FUCK you were doing with Giorno out here in the middle of fucking nowhere,” he began, taking aim at Risotto's head again. “And why the fuck he LET you.” 

Risotto gave a grim laugh. “Didn’t give him a choice.” He locked his good, black-sclera red eye on Mista and a weird smirk crossed his bloody mouth. “Maybe he liked my dick better.” 

“You son of a-” Mista lunged, and was about to pull the trigger, but Trish shouted at him to stop, and used Spice Girl to buckle the concrete between them into a bouncy rubber, pushing Mista back a few paces. 

“Trish!” 

“Stop it, Mista!” she yelled back. “I’m pissed off too but this isn’t helping!” She turned her glare on Risotto. “You want us to take you out? Is that what this is all about? Is that why you called us?”

With a sudden burst of strength, or maybe desperation, Risotto reached out and grabbed at Trish's arm, an urgent grip, fingers shaking as he locked his good eye to her gaze. "I want you to find Giorno." 

Trish, initially startled, met Risotto's gaze and looked back at him for long moments. She searched his face. Whatever she read there seemed to soften her, and she exhaled. "Okay. Can you stay on your feet?" 

Risotto grimaced. "With help." 

Nodding, Trish used Spice Girl again and buckled the ground under Risotto's back, using it to ramp him up, slowly, until he was on his feet. "Don't be a piece of shit," she warned, "Or Mista won't have time to shoot you, because I'll take you out myself. And I'll make it hurt. Got it?" 

Risotto blinked once at her. "Understood," he answered, quiet. 

Mista opened his mouth to complain, but Trish shot him a hard look. "No. Shut up. If he wants to find Giorno, that's what we all want. Deal with it." Trish slung her arm under Risotto's shoulder and let the hitman lean on her, then started leading toward Bruno and Abbacchio. "Let's go see what Moody Blues got." Risotto went along, limping and quiet.

Mista, grumbling something about 'since when did you become the boss?', followed them, but he kept his revolver ready in his hand, and his glare on Risotto's back. 

Chapter Text

The group moved and formed a loose horse-shoe circle around Abbacchio, gazing at the otherworldy image the frozen and transformed Moody Blues presented. The Stand they saw was a beefy humanoid with lemon-yellow armor, a heart-shaped helmet, intense eyes and some kind of structure on its back that resembled a breathing apparatus used by divers. 

Narancia gave an appreciative whistle, circling around closer to look at the Stand from multiple directions. "This guy's HUGE! He looks like he could benchpress a cargo ship!" 

"It does sort of look like Gold Experience," Trish pointed out when she and Risotto arrived a moment later. "But it's more like a vibe than anything else."

"Anyone getting anything useful out of this?" Abbacchio asked, frowning. "So, we have the evidence of the Stand. We don't have a name, or what it can do apart from splitting a moving car in half. That makes it stronger than your average Stand, but not necessarily unique." 

There was a general murmur, a lot of shaking heads. Bruno's eyes were veiled, and Mista scrunched his face, trying to remember if he'd ever seen a Stand like it before in the previous world. 

Risotto gazed on at the thing in silence, and continued to try and take in details. This was the thing that had pulled Giorno out of his grasp, but its lack of evocative details didn't clarify much of its purpose or utility. "User?" he finally rasped. Mista shot him a dirty look for speaking.

"Maybe," Abbacchio replied, too focused on his investigation to be concerned about Risotto's presence in the moment. "Let me try and switch perspectives. Now that I have a time stamp, I'll look for other forms that might be present on the scene close to the same time." 

"Do that," Bruno added, "And someone keep an eye out for police or emergency heading our way. Traffic's picking up on the other side and someone's surely going to call this all in if they haven't already. We'll need to move quickly if they appear." 

Narancia nodded, peeled off from the group and clambered up onto the top of Risotto's wrecked car, shielding his eyes and looking around in several directions. He craned forward. "Yeah, fuck, guys, seeing some traffic coming our way!!" 

"Shit." Abbacchio grimaced, sweat forming on his brow. "I need three minutes to finish the scan." 

"Got it," Trish said, and summoned her Stand once again. She projected the Stand forward to the other side of their parked van and had her punch the ground several times, creating a four-foot high barricade between the incoming cars and the van out of softened concrete. "Hope that's good enough," she muttered, licking her lips to self-soothe a spike of anxiety. 

"Narancia, Trish, get in the van now," Bruno said, "We need to get set to pull out. Mista, stay with Abbacchio and keep an eye on the playback." 

He glanced over Risotto, as the hitman was still leaning on Trish, and he hadn't been part of the conversation with Mista. He knew the assassin was weak, still covered in blood and held together mainly by willpower and Sticky Fingers Requiem's zippers.

It would have been smart to leave him behind, dead. They certainly couldn't leave him alone - that much was clear. In the weight of it, they didn't really need him one way or the other, but dead would have been better than alive and unaccounted for. Risotto had already proven he would come after Giorno again and again, an existential threat to Passione's very core, but something in Bruno still balked at killing someone who couldn't defend themselves in turn. Risotto was not putting up a fight, and the Requiem whispered that Risotto was still alive for a reason. There was something playing out between Risotto and Giorno that Bruno could sense the shape of without fully understanding, and frustrating as it might have been, he knew in his heart it was ultimately Giorno's will at work.

Bruno thought they could still question Risotto further on the road, and he could easily take him out by withdrawing his Stand if the hitman decided to be a fool and try and attack them. Risotto couldn't possibly overpower all five of them at the same time in the condition he was in. Bruno was sure he knew that too. 

Very well. 

To Trish, who Bruno trusted explicitly, he asked, "You'll be responsible?" 

She nodded, then tugged gently on Risotto and they both started for the van. 

Risotto stumbled along, good eye closing for a few moments. It was hardly mercy to end up in the hands of his sworn enemies, too weak to fight back or take his promised revenge, but he tasted the irony in it. It was as if the universe was maneuvering him into positions he craved only to then mock him for his inability to turn them to his advantage. 

Passione gains nothing from your death.

Risotto wearily scrambled into the back of Passione's van, the axles of the vehicle bouncing slightly under the weight. He decided the best plan, for now, was simply to recover as much strength as he could, listen in on the group's planning and intel, and then make his escape later. Some clue would come forward, and he could use that clue to track down Giorno again. 

He still had unfinished business with the sottocapo, after all. 

Narancia, across from Risotto, let himself flop all the way over onto his side on the floor of the van and rubbed his hands in his hair, whining, "This suuuuucks. How the fuck are we gonna find Giorno? We're flyin' blind." 

Bruno got into the driver's seat and revved up the van's engine. The vibration of the vehicle was felt by all inside, a low and steady rumbling. "Abbacchio will uncover something," he replied, with an assurance that felt more like a prayer. 

"Hurry up," Mista urged Abbacchio. His hands were sweating and he swiped them irritably on his orange tiger-striped pants.

"Quiet," the silver-haired investigator shot back. "Let me work." His brow shimmered with beads of sweat, and the ombre shade of his eyes had darkened to a low, sour purple. He tried to drown out his awareness of the impatience of the others. Moody Blues was flickering and glitching wildly back and forth, in and out of sight across the concrete and wreckage as it searched for another form to connect to, and the clock on its forehead rolled back the seconds. 

Finally, there was a click, and Moody Blues found its mark. It froze and then reformed into a tall, broad-shouldered blonde man with amber-colored hair, heavily lined eyes and black and gold clothing. 

Mista narrowed his eyes. Now, finally, he felt a tug of memory as he looked on the replay. "That's... shit. I know that guy. Who is that guy, FUCK." He ground his teeth and his fingers into his blue and white cap. "I've seen him before, where have I fucking seen him?" 

Abbacchio rumbled, "He looks like the brat. If the brat was actually a man." Then it struck the investigator. He remembered a conversation from what felt like long ago, the conversation in Libeccio after Giorno had returned to the land of the living. Something about a huge blond bodybuilder, something about a Stand... 

He knew, with a sudden gasp. "It's Dio Brando," he rumbled, mouth turning down. "It's Giorno's father." The conversation came back to him in more detail, and he quickly shut off Moody Blues and whirled to move back toward the van, silver hair twisting around his shoulders. "Come on, Mista!" 

Mista blinked twice, then black eyes widened. "DIO? Oh, FUCK." He followed Abbacchio. 

As they hurried into the van, Abbacchio climbed into the passenger seat and announced, "Cairo. Giorno has to be in Cairo. The perp is his father."  

Risotto was feigning sleep but paying close attention. Giorno has family in Cairo?

Narancia sat bolt upright. "Whoa. DIdn't he say the guy was a vampire or something?"

Bruno had already pulled the van out and forward, away from the scene, and was glowering into the windshield again. "I remember. Giorno warned us about this possibility in Napoli not too long ago." He was speaking more for Trish's benefit than anything, as the others had been present for the conversation. 

Trish had long since learned to roll with the crazy, and didn't even voice the brief thought that flittered through her head - why would a vampire hang out in a sunny desert clime? Instead, she huffed a soft breath through her nose. "Okay, so we're going to just... what, fly in there with no other clues or anything? It's great that we know where and who, but without a how we're just going to be wandering around like idiots. We don't even know what this guy wants with Giorno." 

Risotto bit down the urge to smile, keeping himself still and silent with an effort. Now this girl, he was starting to like. 

"She's right," Abbacchio agreed. "We need some way to triangulate on Giorno's position and we need more information." He paused, feeling his next thought was ludicrous even as he spoke it aloud. "Do we know any fortune teller or remote-seeing Stand users?" 

Bruno shook his head. "Not currently. But I do have one idea. When we get back to town, I'm calling Jean Pierre Polnareff. I meant to before, and got distracted by other matters. He may be able to advise us." 

---

Giorno was surprised to be met with hospitality. 

He'd come around slowly and found himself on a soft red chaise lounge in a darkly furnished and candle-lit room scented of a strange, potent incense. A large, broad-shouldered man with waved brown hair and golden heart accessories introduced himself as Vanilla Ice, and had offered Giorno three gifts, courtesy of 'Lord Dio'.

First, a chance to wash up - a good hot bath to get the blood and grime off and soften his aching muscles. He took that gratefully, tired of being sore and filthy, although he had to ask for help to reach the tub, and gave a cry when he slipped into the water, since the gashes Risotto had cut in his heels and arches were no longer stapled closed, and were now hanging open and raw. Vanilla stayed near, both to guard him and assist him as necessary. 

Second, a small meal of grapes, figs and cheese accompanied by a strong English tea, all exquisite in flavor, and served on antique silver. He'd tried to share some with Vanilla, but the man had chuckled, shook his head and said he appreciated the offer, but had no need of such food as humans ate. 

Thirdly, the softest dressing gown and lounge wear Giorno had ever worn - white with gold details, frictionless on his skin, made of a silk as light as spiderweb but comforting warm and covering him from neck to ankles. 

Giorno had accepted each of these gifts - indulgences from his ... host? captor? father?...  with quiet gratitude on the surface and a mingled dread and curiosity beneath; he was sure the gifts had strings attached, even if he couldn't see them clearly at the moment. 

After Giorno was bathed and dressed, Vanilla Ice bound Giorno's lacerated feet in clean linen bandages. Giorno still couldn't walk well even after that for the pain, so the big vampire just carefully picked up Giorno and began to carry him where they were meant to go. 

Vanilla Ice maneuvered through a series of dark stone passages toward the library, where Dio waited. The air smelled thickly of dust and spice, and Giorno also noted a heavy musk on his companion's clothing and skin. They spoke little, as Giorno was focused on getting his bearings and noting where the tunnels turned and the lit chambers he caught glimpses of as he was carried by. 

So:  He was in Cairo or somewhere near; the deep desert he had seen when he first entered this dimension and had been wandering wide under Requiem's eye. In his father's house, the dark pit of dust somewhere beneath the sands. A small burst of pain at the thought: he just kept getting farther and farther from home. 

He still couldn't access Gold Experience; the Standkiller was still blocking him from accessing his ability, and he wondered if his 'host' knew about it or not. In any case, he was not going to be able to use his Stand for a while. He remembered that Dio was said to have a time-controlling Stand, called The World, thanks to Polnareff. It must have been that power that crashed Risotto's car, of course. There was literally no way they could have seen it coming. 

He wondered if Risotto had been killed. Giorno no longer felt the squirming of Metallica in his body, the needles-and-thread sensation in his skin faded away. He wondered if colony Stands infecting the user could persist in the blood even out of range of the original operator. There was so much about Stands they didn't know. He'd been able to 'hack' the connection Risotto had forced into place between them, which went around the Standkiller to let him hijack Metallica, but now he wondered if Gold Experience would be changed afterward as well. 

He wondered how he felt about the idea of Risotto being killed, and once again he found he had to push aside the tangled emotions within him in order to deal with his situation of the present.

It had been, at the very least, a hell of a week so far. 

And that was on top of the 50 other things boiling in the young sottocapo's mind as he was brought into the library, announced by Vanilla's booming voice calling out to "Lord Dio" that they had arrived. 

Dio was sitting in a chair with his back to the door, a large book in his lap that had yellowed pages. Giorno supposed he had nothing to fear in his own domain, after all. He simply lifted one hand, golden bracelets jingling around his wrist, and gestured toward the chair opposite him. "Bring the boy here." His voice was cool, commanding, and calm.

Giorno's heart began to hammer. This was really happening. He was placed into the chair - no dust there - and wrapped his arms around his chest for a moment, knowing it was a revealing gesture but unable to stop himself from attempting to self-comfort. 

"Leave," Dio said, without looking up from his book. "Close the door when you go." 

The vampire servant bowed at the waist and backed away. Soon there was just the candle light, the drifting incense smoke, Giorno trying not to panic in his chair, and Dio ... casually turning a page in his book and reading it, apparently paying not the slightest heed to the fact that his long-lost son was sitting there not five feet away from him, separated only by a small round wooden table. 

Silence lingered, broken only by the soft sound of pages turning as Dio read. Not even a sound of acknowledgement now. 

Giorno sat in his soft soft robe and burned with questions, screaming deep inside his skin while his shoulder star spasmed and itched as if it were ready to burst free and crawl up his neck. After a few more seconds of awkward stillness, Giorno recognized the situation for what it was - a power play, a test - and he decided in a flare of stubbornness to try not to be the first to give in. He turned his attention to studying Dio carefully, shoving down all his other feelings for the moment, as if he were back in his original world, facing down an unfriendly capo at negotiations. 

Dio was big, big as he remembered from the vision, with a pale and largely faded scar around the thick base of his throat. He wore golden loop earrings and one of his ears had three dotted birthmarks. His hair, unlike Giorno's, was in the candlelight more of a bronzed gold and gave an impression of wild motion. He wore a sleeveless black turtleneck, torn and ripped in places,  and golden bands across his biceps. The matching birthmark star on his shoulder was a dark, clotted red. His shoes were curled, middle eastern in style, and he wore something like harem pants - light, silk, golden toned. 

Even with his face in shadow, his head lowered and his body unmoving, Dio radiated serenity and stillness. Old and unbothered, Giorno felt. Dio felt somehow more real than anything else in the room, a being around whom all the objects in the room gave silent obesiance. His gravity, his personal magnetism, was as intense as being pulled down into a lightless well.

Giorno also felt observed in turn, even though he could not see Dio's eyes. He wondered what Dio saw in him. 

He wished Dio would say something, for God's sake.

Dio turned another page. 

Giorno turned to slow and deliberate breathing, shifted his position in the chair to appearing more relaxed and casual, moving one leg over the other. He turned his head to look at the rest of the room. The library was lit only by candleabras and old-style yellow-tinted gas lights. So many shelves of books, and the titles that he caught were in a number of languages. Giorno was sure the books were expensive, and some quite old. 

He felt a pang at the sight of them, as he had been denied having many books as a child and never had time while running Passione to build up his own collection. He had always wanted to, though. Books had been a friend when he had no other friends in the world, and if he had been able to get up and walk on his own without pain, he would have gotten up from the chair at that point and gone to examine the shelves. 

No, that was what he would do, he decided. The hell with this, if Dio didn't want to talk. Giorno had already lived 19 years without a father, after all, and he was not a helpless child any more. He rose from the chair. The bandages helped dull the pain somewhat, but the floor was still cold, and his arches and heels were still quite raw. He felt scrapes of the stone tiles under the pads of his toes. He bit into his lip to avoid crying out, and carefully began to limp away from Dio toward one of the shelves. Every instinct in him said stay still but he resisted those instincts, fought that gravity; each step felt like he was trying to cross the desert in lead boots. He had to prove he had his own will outside of Dio's. 

And it hurt. His eyes clenched, watered. But he kept limping on. 

After he made it about halfway to the closest shelf, he heard a low chuckle, and heard the sound of the book Dio was reading thumping closed. 

In an instant, Giorno found himself off his feet, being picked up and cradled by The World in bridal-style, with his bandaged feet dangling in the air off one of The World's armored forearms. Dio was up and there, next to him, having moved without sound or sign, face no longer shadowed. 

He looked amused. His face was both familiar as Giorno's own, and beautiful, with only the slightest wrinkles in the temples and at the uptilted corners of his eyes. His amber eyes glittered. 

Giorno wondered if that meant he had passed the test. 

Dio reached out and lifted one of Giorno's damaged feet into his hands. His thumb roughly stroked along the linen covering the arch of Giorno's foot. It caused a dull shock to lance up through Giorno's leg, and he pressed his mouth closed again, refusing to cry out, instinctively sensing that Dio was probing him for signs of weakness. 

"Do you not have a healing Stand?" Dio finally rumbled, amber gaze rising from Giorno's foot to his face.  

"It doesn't work like that," Giorno lied, voice thick. He didn't want to admit he was locked out of his Stand, or how it had been done. The fact that Dio had some knowledge of his ability unsettled him; he wasn't sure how deep that knowledge ran and wasn't about to give himself away if that knowledge was shallow.

"Hm." Dio gave absolutely no warning as he pushed two fingers into Giorno's foot, his hand sliding through bandage and skin and entering Giorno's flesh. Giorno's eyes widened, and he began to sweat with pain, his mouth dropping open. It took his entire will not to scream. Dio was twisting his fingers around within Giorno's skin, tugging and shaping; some part of Giorno's brain broke off in terror, depersonalizing, and started reciting the names of the muscles of the foot he'd learned as a child. He's going into the metatarsal, he's pulling on the flexor digitorum... 

And just as the pain reached an unbearable crescendo it stopped, Dio withdrawing a strangely bloodless hand to go after Giorno's other foot, where it all started again. Giorno endured, sweat running down his neck, eyes squeezing closed and his breathing turning sharp and choppy. 

Dio's fingers withdrew, and the pain also receded, leaving Giorno shuddering wordless in The World's grip. He risked flexing the toes of one foot, but was surprised to find the movement painless, and Dio confirmed this by removing the bandages from his feet. 

Giorno was set down carefully on his feet by the Stand, and he blinked up in breathless surprise at Dio, gasping out a thanks. 

Dio gazed down over him, unreadable as a mountain. "I won't have a cripple to my name," he said, and went back to his chair and his book. 

Giorno blinked in complete astonishment. The situation was bewildering, and not at all what he had envisioned for his first encounter with his legendary father. But he could stay on his feet, so after a moment to collect himself, he made his way back to the book shelf, and began to indulge his curiosity about the books and their titles. 

Most of them were strange to him, unreadable gibberish. He felt certain though that Dio could read them, and that his own ignorance of languages other than Italian, school-grade French and a fading level of preschool Japanese could become a problem in his current situation. Dio and his minions could talk around and over him, and he would not be able to use his eloquence to defend himself.

Giorno knew he was not particularly learned or well-read; despite a ravenous curiosity, and an innate fascination with all aspects of nature, he had focused on survival on a day to day basis, let his friends handle business aspects he didn't understand, and relied on what he had absorbed from primary and secondary school. 

Risotto's earlier mockery about Giorno needing to get out of his feedback loop came back to him. The hitman was right; Giorno had neglected too much outside of his insular circle of friends and routines. 

Compared to the obvious scholar that was Dio, Giorno was a provincial country bumpkin, and he didn't like the realization. He was grateful to discover some books in Italian, however, and he selected and drew down one: Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco, in a handsome hardbound edition. He brought the book back with him to the chair opposite Dio, and settled down, and opened the novel, and it caught his attention.  

Everything else fell away as he lost himself in the reading: his lingering pain, his fear, his questions and schemes, Risotto and Napoli, and Gold Experience and the Standkiller. How long had it been since he could just stop and read? For pleasure? Years, at least. In the timeless stillness encircling Dio, Giorno found a rare moment of true peace, as if he had entered the eye of a storm. 

He lifted his head out of the book only when Dio asked, "Coffee?" and simply answered, "Yes, thank you." and returned to the novel, fully absorbed and self-forgotten.

He missed the amused quirk of Dio's mouth.  

And, unknowing, passed Dio's second test.

Dio got up again, and appeared behind the back of Giorno's chair, startling him out of his reverie by placing his large hands on Giorno's slimmer shoulders. The vampire leaned down, resting his chin atop Giorno's head. "I wonder if you think me cruel, Giorno," he said, soft and sibilant, rolling the R in Giorno's name on his tongue. "Holding you at arm's length instead of embracing you as a father." He slipped an arm forward, catching Giorno's neck in the crook of his big elbow.

Giorno closed his eyes, hands resting in place in the book in his lap, going very still. "Did you ever even want a son?" he countered, low, unable to keep the bitterness from lacing his voice even as he felt the slight twitches of Dio's muscles against his throat. He realized that his question could not truly be answered by this man, who resembled his father only by coincidence, an equivalent being of a parallel world. In a certain way, they were not flesh of flesh, and yet...

"By the time I learned I had one, he was already dead," Dio lifted his arm away, shaking his head and raking fingers idly through Giorno's clean golden hair. "You have yet to prove yourself a true son of Dio." He hooked a finger under the collar of Giorno's white robe and pushed it down off the teenager's left shoulder, then scraped at the red star in Giorno's bared skin with his sharp black fingernail. He spoke more to himself than to Giorno. "But, you can't know what you don't know," as he ticked at the star again. "And which of us gets to you first..." 

Dio slid his thumb down through the star, steady and level, deep into Giorno's shoulder, and wrapped the other fingers of his hand around Giorno's slender neck. He pressed his lips to Giorno's left ear as Giorno's breath froze in his throat. 

"Tell me, Giorno," The vampire purred, feeling Giorno's heart clattering. "What would you be willing to do to convince me to claim you as my own?"

Chapter Text

With Dio's hand pressing deep into his veins, Giorno struggled through his fear to speak and pushed out willful words. 

"What will you do to convince me to let you be my father?" 

And Dio surprised him again, by bursting into loud laughter. "Very good, Jojo!" he barked with approval, before catching himself. "Giorno." He withdrew his fingers from Giorno's neck. As if nothing else had happened, he reached and placed Giorno's displaced robe back up over his shoulder, hiding the red star. 

Jojo? Giorno wondered, exhaling as Dio's hand left his flesh. He watched Dio's movements closely as the vampire moved away from the chair, his back to Giorno - clearly, still unconcerned about exposing himself. Every movement told Giorno that Dio did not consider him a threat. Dio turned his head and fixed his eye on Giorno with a hard amber glare over his right shoulder. The edges of his vampiric fangs glinted as he smiled.

"Defy me. Excite me with your determination. Show me the strength you have inherited. If you cringe in my presence, you can never be of my blood. Nor Jonathan's!" He stroked his hand over the star on his own shoulder. Smoke coiled about his body, and the candle light formed a dark halo in his hair as Dio's back flexed with his movements. "Jonathan Joestar defied me. He was brave and righteous." His hand moved over the star again, a slow and affectionate motion. "He fought with all his might for his beliefs, and in opposition to me." 

Giorno felt a twinge of pain return to his shoulder. He leaned forward, eyes wider, not just drawn by the pull of Dio's gravity, but the intensity of his words. 

Dio continued. "He was a fool. This body I wear, this form which I have since perfected... it was once Jonathan Joestar's! He lives on in me, and held within my immortal flesh, can never truly die!" Dio's voice rose, echoing off the dark stone walls. "This is the reward I granted him for his bravery, but it also proved to be my curse, Giorno. Even now, he haunts me. This body cries out to the descendants of Jonathan. Its cry drew us together as well." 

The younger man frowned in memory. The way that his mind had been pulled into this dark place, that Dio had seen him, and known his name. The way that his body even now was being pulled toward Dio, compelled toward him as a compass needle moving toward the North. Giorno felt a pressure in his chest as if the air in his lungs were being sucked away, toward the vampire. Everything bent toward Dio. 

Dio turned and held out his hand toward Giorno. His voice was low, sinuous, but alluring. "Come, Giorno. If you truly want to know your place, if you wish to be of Dio's blood, come. I will give you the answers you crave, and perhaps the knowing will bring you peace." 

Giorno rose. He moved and placed his palm into the vampire's broader hand, with a slow exhalation. As their hands touched, the pain in his shoulder evaporated. Instead, he felt a terrifying kind of ease, something washing through his muscles and sloughing off all the tension in them, leaving him once more standing relaxed in the eye of the storm. "And if I decide after hearing you out that I'm going to follow Jonathan's path?" he asked, a little dazed, as they started to walk toward the library doors. 

Dio chuckled. His hand clenched down around Giorno's. "Then that, also, is fate." After the slightest pause he added, with a glance down at the younger man and a wistful tone, "It might not even disappoint me." 

---

They retreated to a drawing room, moving down a stairwell, the new space as dark as the library. It reeked of old powers and, to Giorno's nose, a slight note of rot that he picked up occasionally under the intense incense that seemed to wind its way through every passage in Dio's home in currents thick enough to chew.

The drawing room was furnished with old Victorian wood furniture, a couple of classical statues in white marble, some dried flower arrangements featuring pomegranates, lotus pods and rose hips, and a set of immensely comfortable long dark green chaise lounges that matched the damasked wallpaper, so deeply green as to almost be black, only showing flashes of color when one moved around the room and the light splintered off the patterns, refracting as if off a dark jewel. A full length standing mirror was propped up at one corner of the room. The chairs and lounges were set up around a table, on which was a huge crystal bal. 

That coffee service Dio had mentioned earlier had arrived and was waiting for them: thick, heady Turkish coffee, fragrant and smooth on the tongue.

They sat and talked for a long time - long enough to go through three rounds of coffee, a flat bread and spiced lamb entree for Giorno's benefit, and a bottle of wine Giorno was careful to take only a small quarter-full glass of. Dio openly drank blood and wine, and occasionally a skewer of lamb for the flavor alone. Even if the food might have been doctored, Giorno considered the risk, and still ate; he was hungry and tired from his time with Risotto and the lamb practically melted across his tongue. The flatbread was nutty and of a pleasantly warm texture, filling him up well. 
He told himself he had to be careful still, and watch his words, but the longer he spent in Dio's close presence, the more the strong and steady resonation between their bodies became a comforting sensation. Some part of him that had been howling in emptiness as long as he could remember suddenly found itself complete.  He knew it could have been a vampiric effect, or a Stand, but Haruno Shiobana had been starving, banished to the desert for his entire life, and suddenly he'd been tossed into an oasis full of sweets and secrets. 

Dio was not withholding anything, and he was brutally honest; he told Giorno that he believed that the woman Giorno had known as Haruko Shiobana, his mother, had once been known to Dio as Midler, the user of the shape-shifting Stand High Priestess. At the time of their tryst, Dio had been experimenting purposefully, to see if he could create human offspring as a vampire, and if those offspring would inherit an evil nature or a Stand power; she'd volunteered, but afterward had taken some treasures from the fortress, and disappeared from Dio's sight. Dio shrugged his shoulders at the recounting, remarking that perhaps he'd simply been too much for her. 

"You didn't even try to look for her?" Giorno asked softly, rubbing his hand over his face. 

"I didn't care," the vampire replied, matter-of-fact. "What matter is it to Dio if a bought woman flees? Those who serve me, Giorno, are either those whose love is absolute beyond purchase, or those who are temporarily bought with the coins of their particular desire. I bought Midler at the price of her infatuation with me. That price was cheap."

Giorno wrinkled up his nose for a second but nodded. He'd certainly had that experience in Passione. Men you trusted, and men you had to keep an eye in the back of your head for at all times. The difference between Mista and Risotto. 

He exhaled. "I can tell you what happened to her after she left." And he recounted it as he knew it - the birth in Japan, the hasty relocation, the cold empty nights, the beatings from his step-father, and the mysterious gangster who had given him enough hope to survive. He watched Dio's face especially closely as he recounted his early life, but Dio remained as implacable as ever. Only there was the slightest tightening of the skin around his eyes as Giorno spoke about his stepfather's belt. Then, in a carefully edited summary, Giorno continued on about his rise in Passione to its highest level. 

But Dio laughed at the end. "Giorno, your story is not a tragedy. You turned your will against the world and defeated it! You might be worth something."

Giorno shook his head, mind drifting away to images of his past battles. "So many people died," he replied, softly. "Some were necessary kills, and I don't regret them, but my friends..." 

Dio hummed and twirled the wine in his glass for a moment. He speared Giorno with a firm gaze. "How many?" he asked finally. "How many have you killed, Giorno?" 

Of course, the vampire would be primarily interested in his body count. Giorno sighed, closing his eyes. "Three friends. Seven enemies. More than that once I became the leader of Passione, though I would say most of those kills were only indirectly on me, because others performed the actual executions." And then there was Risotto... 

He opened his eyes as he heard an odd sound, a crackling sharp sparkling in the air. Dio had leaned forward and placed his hand to the big crystal ball, activating it. Pale white light flashed through the room, and Giorno sat up. Dio's wrist was wrapped in a Stand vine of purple thorns, and the incense had seemed to enter the crystal ball, swirling until it became an image. 

Giorno craned forward. What he saw in the crystal flickered between, briefly, the images of his friends at home, and then wavered and turned into Risotto in the driver's seat of the car he'd been in when Dio had caught him. 

"Your heart is preoccupied with this man," Dio noted. "Tell me, Giorno. What hold does he have on you?"

"We have... history," Giorno replied. He supposed as much as he had asked of Dio for information, he now was obliged to return in equal amounts. "He kidnapped me for information about the new Don of Passione. I refused to tell him. I gave him what I thought at the time was a lethal dose of neurotoxins. I failed, and he came after me a second time, intending to kill me, but only after he took out his revenge for the deaths of his execution team on my body first." 

"And?" Dio probed. 

Giorno rubbed his upper arms. There were things he did not want to say - not about Requiem, not about his transition from the other world, not about the fusion of his Stand with Risotto's into a strange new structure he was sure neither of them could fully understand without each other. "I want him for Passione. I could use his abilities, but he's dead set on his vendetta, so I was basically just hanging on to the situation by my thumbnails and trying to figure out a way neither of us had to die. I don’t want to lose him to one of the other families." 

"Not mercy, then?" Dio's amber eyes narrowed again at Giorno, a crackle moving along the purple vine that Giorno interpreted as a warning sign.

The young mobster shook his head, his tone turning serious. "It'd be a waste," he repeated, echoing the justification he'd given Risotto earlier. "Why should I destroy something I think I could make use of? He just needs taming, not killing, and he’s looking for a purpose now that he’s lost his previous life. I know I could give him that, if he would just...”

Giorno broke off though, as the image in the crystal ball shifted. He leaned sharply forward as he saw something that horrified him - the image was incomplete, too close and vague, but he saw Mista putting his revolver to Risotto’s bloodied head, and pulling the trigger. Before he could stop himself, a cry burst out of his mouth. 

---

As the van sped back toward Napoli with Don Bucciarati's team surrounding him, Risotto Nero feigned sleep and debated plans with himself. Now that he knew Giorno was in Cairo, and potentially in the hands of someone else, one play might have been to go and try and infiltrate that organization himself. Risotto knew his worth: any smart organization would be able to make use of his abilities, and if it got him back within range of Giorno, then he could take the blond back.

The only problem with that was that he was a wreck right now, with no good chance of healing in sight. He was a pile of battered meat held together mostly by stubbornness and his own Stand's inner wiring, a stapled-and-zippered-together Frankenstein trapped in the center of a group of hostiles. 

If only he wasn't so damn exhausted, he could have clotted up the Don's blood, caused another wreck, and then used Metallica's iron dust coating to camouflage himself and escape in the confusion. Unfortunately, he needed every last drop of Stand power he still had to keep his lungs intact and his shattered leg from splintering into several useless pieces. 

There was a light touch on his hand that startled him out of his thoughts, and the pink-haired girl at his side spoke softly in his ear. "How are you feeling, Risotto?" 

The hit man opened his good eye to look her way. "Wishing I wasn't here," he muttered back, more honest than he meant. Still, he had taken a bit of a liking to the girl, and she had been the most useful for him out of Bucciarati's group so far.

Trish lifted her voice then, to be heard over the engine and the low chattering back and forth of the other members of the group. "Guys, I really think we need to take Risotto to a hospital. Unless one of you magically got a healing ability in the last ten minutes, he's just going to slow us down and waste everyone's energy when we really need to put our attention into finding Giorno." 

Risotto's eyebrow quirked. What was she...

Bruno frowned too, glancing up for a moment and catching Trish's glance in the rear-view mirror. "I agree with you, Trish, but he's too dangerous to just be left alone. The minute he's healed, he'll just go after Giorno again." 

"He's not a fan of us either," Abbacchio chimed in from the passenger seat, an unhappy rumble. 

"No joke, most of you would be dead already if I had the strength," Risotto reminded them, a black smile on his bruised mouth. He couldn't fight, but he could at least register his dissatisfaction at being stuck in their midst with snark. "I have enough information to go after Giorno; what do I need you all for now?"

Trish made a low, irritated noise to herself and pushed up to clamber across the van and lean between the driver and passenger front seats. "Listen," she said to the Don in a low voice, switching her attention from Bruno to Abbacchio in turn. "Being in intensive care would slow him down. He's going to need major surgery and recovery time as it is. That should be more than enough to give us the time we need to find Giorno." 

Mista, who had been sulking at the other side of the van and glaring at Risotto the whole time, flexed his hands open, closed, open, and jumped back to his feet as much as the van let him, revolver back in his hand. "Bucciarati, just let me fucking SHOOT him," he demanded, "Let's shoot the fucker, kick his worthless dick to the dirt and get on with it!" 

"Do it," Risotto sneered back at him. "I dare you. Do you think you can actually manage to do what Giorno tried and failed to do, twice?" 

"Whoa!" Narancia yelped, yanking his arms out of the way as Mista practically bowled him over and lunged for Risotto with a yell, exploding into violence and grabbing at Risotto's collar, slamming his head against the back of the van and letting loose a blistering string of gutteral curses as he rained uncontrolled blows on the already wounded assassin. 

Trish turned around and yelped, "Mista, NO-" but before anyone could react the gunner had put his revolver to Risotto's head and blasted away, point-blank, twice, the sound explosive as a cannon inside the small confined space. 

Bruno was so startled he slammed on the brakes in reaction to the sound; Abbacchio winced and shoved a finger into one ear, and barked, "Thanks for making us all deaf, asshole!"

Only there was a loud metal clunking sound under both shots, and the bullets crumpled up just under the surface of Risotto's head after punching red holes in the skin above his right eyebrow. 

For a second there was just shocked silence from everyone in the van. Mista and Risotto glared into each other's faces, huffing out harsh and hot breaths, nearly nose to nose. 

Slowly, Risotto reached up with a shaky hand, plucked the crumpled bullet-rounds out of his head, and flicked them right back at Mista's face, with the bloodiest of smirks. They bounced off, ping, ping, and made small coin-drop clinks as they tumbled to the van floor. "If you fuck like you shoot, no wonder Giorno's so thirsty for dick." he coughed out, voice raw. Risotto had sacrificed some of his lung-wiring to generate the inner skull plating, and he tasted fresh blood backing up his throat, but the shocked, white-faced, uncomprehending look on his would-be killer's face was just about worth it. 

Narancia struggled not to bust out laughing, even though it wasn't at all funny, but it kind of totally was at the same time. His face contorted into a strange expression from the effort, eyes wide and hands toward his mouth. He couldn't believe the balls on Risotto to just say something like that! 

"That's enough!" Bruno yelled, and he retracted the zippers he'd connected to Risotto earlier. Now it was Risotto's turn to go pale, and pain exploded up and down his body, especially in his leg. He fought to stabilize, Metallica emerging and frantically drawing new lines to hold himself together, but the wires were almost as thin as embroidery thread in places, and he struggled to stay conscious afterward as fresh blood burst from his chest and leg and splashed about from a renewed bout of coughing. 

Bruno contained his fury with visible effort. "We'll take him to a hospital, yes. Trish, Narancia, I want you to keep watching him and make sure he stays there. Abbacchio, Mista and I can handle looking for Giorno for a while ourselves."

Risotto thought to himself: this is the boss Giorno was willing to die for? and couldn't keep a sneer off his wet lips. Pathetic.

Trish returned to sit next to him, stone-faced. She then turned and slapped Risotto very, very hard on the side of the head, enhancing her slap with a burst of Spice Girl's energy, her hand glowing soft pink. Risotto felt his head balloon and swell, the softening effect making his already wounded head puff and warble in a distorted physical response to her hit, as if his skull and jaw bones had been turned to gum; his whole head stretched and warbled like hot taffy in a hurricane for a few seconds, his vision going absurd and smearing into dark and discolored slivers, and the anatomy of his mouth was too distorted to let him make a single sound. "I told you not to be a shit," she warned, and he somehow heard her in his mouth and teeth, not his ear. "Don't fuck with us."  

After a moment the effect faded and Risotto's head wobbled back into its normal shape. The snapback was hard as being hit with a rubber band, only the rubber band was his entire consciousness; a bright, blinding, sharp burst. Agony bloomed behind Risotto's eyes and ears from multiple angles, his brain feeling like it had split apart inside his skull. The last thing he saw for a while was Trish's unamused green glare. 

The same color as Giorno's eyes.

--- 

Shaken by the vision, Giorno stared blank-faced at the crystal ball for a few seconds, the blood draining from his head. He struggled to collect himself against Dio’s detachment, and finally managed, "That... was not an optimal outcome." He rubbed his hand against his temple.  Then he pursed his lips, huffed out another breath. 

“I need to work on Passione,” Giorno lifted his head, gazing at the dark ceiling, at nothing. “It’s weaker than it should be. Risotto told me this while he was torturing me, and I’m ashamed to admit that he was right. I need to reassess everything from head to toe, rebuild the whole organizational structure, and bring it back under a strong hand. I have to start thinking better.” His hands clenched in the silk robe over his legs. 

Dio’s mouth slowly began to curl; his eyes crinkled. The vampire’s expression morphed from implacable to hungry, and a gleam of cold light entered his eyes. 

“If I could alter the outcome of this vision, would you want me to?” Dio asked, and Giorno looked up, met his eyes in surprise. 

“What would it cost?” the younger man asked in a voice he hoped sounded steady. His heart jumped a beat. He tasted danger in the moment and thought: here it comes. The strings that had been attached to Dio’s ‘gifts’. 

The vampire grinned, fangs glinting pale yellow in the candlelight as his lips drew back. “Now you talk like a son of Dio.” He lifted his head, tilted it back. “I require blood, Giorno. Your blood, to be precise.”

Chapter Text

"What do you want it for?" Giorno leaned back against the chaise lounge lifted a knee to cross over the other while he adjusted the soft white robe over his leg neatly. "I'm not saying yes or no, until you tell me what you want to do with it. I assume it's not out of basic vampiric thirst, or you would have been dead a long time ago. So this is about something to do with me in particular. My body." 

Dio returned a smirk. "You would be correct. Dio has no shortage of common blood to sustain himself. In the past, I thought that I might need the blood of a Joestar descendent to complete my control over Jonathan's body, but I found alternative options that required less... entanglement with the Joestar line." He turned his half-empty wine glass around in his hand, then set it down next to the crystal ball on the table. "Simply put, I am curious. I want to know what a son of Dio and of Jonathan might taste like." 

The big vampire rose and left his chair, moving toward the mirror in the corner of the room, where he pressed his hand gently against the glass, and gazed into his dim reflection for a moment before speaking. "I am not human, Giorno. I abandoned all human feelings hundreds of years before either version of you was born. Without fear, without shame, with pride. To consume flesh of my flesh fascinates me conceptually, and I must follow that desire. So, to Dio you are conditionally of interest. But that interest will soon wane. If you want to keep my attention, give me what I ask."

Giorno let silence build between them for a few long moments, as if he were struggling with the decision, although in truth he had already made it almost immediately. Dio was something almost completely other; something alien and powerful, beyond anything he could have anticipated or expected from vague ideas stirred from a fading image carefully tucked away first in his wallet, and then his heart. What he was discovering was that what he had hoped for all his life was a pale, almost pathetic image, a cliched and childish fantasy compared to the living truth of Dio.  

What had he really wanted, apart from someone to pick him up, wipe his face and carry him off to a life he'd never bothered to envision past his initial desperate hope of rescue? Everything had been fuzzy in his head after 'my real dad will come for me someday'. Now this being that Giorno knew without question was his father had indeed come for him - but he no longer needed rescuing.  

What did he want of Dio now? 

"You can't have it yet," Giorno finally replied, mouth twitching on one side as he was forced to admit something he didn't wish to. "I'm still under the influence of something Risotto gave me that might be dangerous to you. I don't know how long it'll take to clear out of my system." 

"I've consumed almost every poison and drug to be found on this Earth, Giorno," Dio grinned dark. "These halls are saturated with opium even as we speak. Do you think Dio weak?" 

"No, but I think you like your Stand enough to not be deprived of it," Giorno shook his head fast. "That's how Risotto was controlling me. Some kind of street drug that I didn't know about exists that can suppress a user's Stand entirely. He gave it to me I guess..." He paused to think; he'd lost all sense of time between his conversation with Dio and the dark, lightless walls around him. "A couple of hours before you came to get me. It may be close to done by now, it may not, but I'm honestly not sure how long it's supposed to last." 

"And yet you still want this man to stay alive." Now an amused skepticism entered the vampire's tone. 

"I already said I have use of him," Giorno replied, irritated at being forced to repeat himself. He crossed his arms over his chest. "Anyway, he's the coin you buy me with, for now." The other feelings, his own curiosity, dread and even awe, were not on the table for this particular negotiation, no matter how strongly Dio's gravity tugged at Giorno's blood and soul. He fought against all other emotions except the need of the moment. "Bring me Risotto Nero alive, and you can have what you want of me." 

He knew he was still improvising, trying to stay one step ahead of disaster, but what else could he have done? 

Dio, for his part, simply nodded. "My network is already in motion to fulfill your desire. And in the meantime, while we wait...you can fulfill mine." 

Giorno found himself before the mirror in the blink of an eye, Dio standing close behind him; the edges of the robe were still fluttering around his body from the movement he hadn't known was happening. Dio snaked an arm about Giorno and took his chin in one hand, lowering himself so that their two faces were almost side by side in the mirror. "You have Jonathan's eyes," the vampire murmured into Giorno's temple, as he used two of his fingers to force open Giorno's left eye,  pressing on Giorno's eyelids as wide as they could go. "I never liked the way he looked at me." 

"Did you hate him?" Giorno murmured back, trying to stay as still as possible, an instinct he couldn't override and desperately hoped wouldn't turn Dio against him. His eye began to water as he couldn't blink with Dio holding it open. His whole body felt cold, cold as ice. He realized Dio's fingers were also cold. 

"Too simple," Dio's voice was low, soft, and for a moment distant. "Without Jonathan, I would not now be Dio." He clenched his fingers slightly, making Giorno's green eye water harder. "I would have preferred a son of Dio to resemble Dio more explicitly." But he shook his head and released Giorno's eye, a rumble in his throat. "I suppose this is the best I can get." 

"They used to be gray," Giorno let out his breath. He felt a bizarre fluctuation between feeling safer the closer he got to Dio, and more and more tense the closer they got. It was as if his body felt one way, and his heart another. He was terrified, and yet he also felt an uncontrollable fascination all the way to the marrow of his bones. "My eyes. When I got my Stand, they changed. I also used to have dark hair."  

"Ho?" Dio's sound of surprise was genuine, his eyebrows rising. "Did you." His hands moved again and came to rest at Giorno's hips. While the younger man spoke, the vampire began to slowly pick apart the tie holding Giorno's robe together, while the mirror continued to reflect their actions to each other in the dim light. 

"I was 14," Giorno continued, trying not to shiver at the way Dio's touch stole the heat from his body, like he'd felt sometimes when handling snakes he'd made. Cold-blooded, the vampire. Dio was undressing him, large hands moving and pushing back the robe. Giorno stared into the mirror, into his own bruised and slender body as it was uncovered. Risotto's marks were all over him, still ugly purple and brown and dully painful. The golden traceries inlaid from the puncture point of the Arrow wound through his skin, glinting in the thin candle light as he breathed unsteadily. 

"When it happened. It felt like a sign that things were going to change for me." Giorno felt like he'd begun to babble. He wasn't sure what he was trying to express. or if he was trying to use words to stall himself from taking in what was really happening.

The white silk fell off his shoulders and pooled down around his feet, soft material bumping against the backs of his ankles. Dio made a soft acknowledging noise, and his lips came to the right side of Giorno's neck. He nudged aside Giorno's hair with his nose, and hummed against Giorno's skin. "This is also a turning point, Giorno. You can feel it, can't you?" Dio's hand lifted, and his palm rested above Giorno's heart, above the Arrow-shaped filigree in his skin. He pressed down, firmly, and Giorno felt the cold all the way to the center of his thrumming and jittering heart, felt himself pulled back against the vampire's massive chest and left thigh. 

"Look at the two of us," Dio said, still so soft. "Beautiful. But too late," he continued, as his other hand moved to curl around Giorno's slimmer throat, "Joestar blood runs too true in you." In the mirror, Dio's face had completely disappeared into shadow. "I could break you by force, reshape you into something truly Dio's own, but that would ruin everything I find interesting about you. So endure me," the vampire purred. "My wandering star." 

Dio's hand moved away from Giorno's chest and down to cup at the silk loungepants, finding Giorno's cock and rubbing the soft-soft silk into the younger man's skin. His hand at Giorno's neck tightened down, sending red to the younger man's face, and the tips of his fingernails ticked down into Giorno's flesh, drawing small red beads of blood that speckled down across the hollow of Giorno's neck and the curve of his shoulder.

Giorno's breath froze, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn't help himself from letting out a groan, as the soft material and Dio's strong, cold hand rubbed the silk into his balls and teased and stroked him to a brutal, thundering erection. He trembled hard, but could find no will at all to try and resist or escape. The soft fabric and the hard, steady grip working together on his dick was an unfamiliar pleasure that overrode his self-control almost completely. Mouth open, gasping, he raised a hand and gripped into the forearm of the vampire's hand clutching his throat.   
The vampire stroked him harder and harder, and Giorno felt his legs shuddering underneath him and his knees losing strength. He was pushed against the mirror, his cheek and chest and balls to the icy cold glass, and the old glass started to crack beneath his head as Dio's full weight went against him. Time blipped; Giorno knew it by the sudden coldness he could now feel between his thighs; his lounge pants had been torn off and his overheated skin was flush to the air. 

There was a soft grunt into his hair, and no other warning before Dio was in him, all at once, thick, hard and deep. Giorno's huffed breath fogged the mirror beneath him, so thick that the condensation trickled across his mouth in wet droplets. Each deep thrust made the mirror crinkle a little further, the sound and feel of glass splitting under his skin adding to Giorno's stress, dampening his skin with sweat. 

Dio wound his fingers into the crown of Giorno's hair and yanked at his head, making his neck ache, and forcing Giorno to look at his reflection again in the splintering mirror. He never broke his pace but kept thrusting into Giorno, kept punching his thick vampire dick against the human's prostate. Giorno's hair had collapsed, sank into long, golden strings around his neck and cheeks and brow, bloodied here and there. His face was deeply red, and his mouth was straining, wide with pleasure and shock alike. 

"Look at yourself," Dio commanded him. He was not sweating, seemed to be exerting very little, while Giorno shook and strained against him. "Look at the pretty little Joestar in such disarray. How your mouth shapes for Dio, and your body trembles against my massive cock. Shall Dio give you more?" 

"Too big," Giorno panted in a rough and raw and feral voice he didn't recognize as his own. His inner thighs and his ass were aching from the stretch, from the weight pushing through his previous injuries. Bursts of pleasure were sending white flares through his vision, along with dark, bitter spots of searing pain. "It's too big. I can't..." 

Dio chuckled. "Oh, you can. And you will." He swatted the fingers of his free hand against Giorno's thigh, leaving a bright red mark three inches wide. "You came to Dio to be claimed, so Dio has decided to claim you." His eyes gleamed in the dark above Giorno's head, in the spiderweb cracks of the mirror. "And don't you dare disappoint me for my choosing to do so, Giorno." 

There was a brief flare of Stand energy, and Dio took his prize away to another place in the frozen  stillness of The World. A piece of the cracked mirror slid away and shattered against the stone floor in a splatter of silver shards. 

Chapter Text

Giorno woke slowly and when he did, he felt like he'd been flayed. Fresh cuts on his skin, raked into his body by the vampire's sharp black nails, burned in contact with the chill air. His body ached from throat to thighs, a punishing throbbing hurt that flowed through him inside and out. Some of the spots Risotto had attacked on him had been reattacked by Dio over the course of the night, and had darkened and turned mean, almost black. 

A thick miasma was all about. He was on a cold floor, naked and sticky between wine and come drying on his back, between his legs, down his ribs. His head had been resting on something at an angle that had left him with a neck cramp; when he managed to push himself up on shaky arms, he found he'd been sleeping against a corpse. He'd apparently been dropped across a dead body, his head settled just under her firm right breast. Her body was cold, and she bore three coin-sized finger-wounds in her neck, bloodless. The dull pallor of her skin told him she'd been dead at least a day. Giorno pushed himself away, eyes wide, and glanced around himself in a state of rising alarm. 

He did not remember women being present at all; he remembered Dio, the vampire absolutely crushing him into submission, and a bed, and hands around his neck choking him in and out of awareness while he was fucked beyond an inch of his life. The World had been used on him as well, not just to stop his heart or breath but to penetrate his body with its massive, ethereal grip. He'd never been fucked like that before, and he knew he should consider himself grateful Dio had left him alive. 

Giorno didn't have any strength in his legs to get up from the floor. When he glanced down, he saw that Dio had embedded something around both of his thighs in a wrap-around strip just below his hips. Wide plain gold letters, DIODIODIODIO, on dark brown. Metal inlay or some kind of scarring or tattoo; Giorno wasn't sure. Requiem, Dio, Risotto - everyone seemed to want to leave their marks on him, as if his body was just territory to be sliced up and colonized.

There were at least three more women's bodies in various states of discard and decay about the dim chamber. At least those that he could see in the poor light and fog. The smell of them hit Giorno then and he put a hand up over his face while he tried to keep himself up on one arm, struggling not to vomit. 

I have more than enough common blood, Dio had said. Now Giorno understood just what that meant. He also remembered that Vanilla Ice told him he didn't eat human food. Had he been thrown away into Dio's abbatoir for his minions to feed on, sloppy seconds for the loyal dogs? He had no doubt that there were others in the shadows waiting and ready to slurp up Dio's discards - and that there was no real protection in being 'a son of Dio', claimed or not. 

Common blood. Had the vampire already gotten bored of him, then? 

You're ordinary now, Risotto's mockery came back to him.

Giorno felt his breath stuttering out of him and his whole body shook against the icy stone. Gold Experience, I need you. Please, please, please. He reached for his power in desperation, anticipating the backburst of pain across his temples again, but instead, he felt heat in his veins, and light in his mouth, and the familiar bubbling glitter rising out of his skin. 

His Stand was working again! Gold Experience formed in a flutter of bright golden sparks. The Stand's wide purple eyes swirled to fix on him without blinking. Giorno reached out his arm, and the Stand quickly knelt beside him, its arms crossing over Giorno's back as it pulled him further from the corpse so he could rest his head on its lap. He curled in around the Stand, his body going fetal, eyes squeezing closed. The Stand's metal fingers carded through Giorno's damp hair, pushed strands away from his forehead and cheeks, comforting its user. 

It's okay now, the Stand whispered, tender in his mind. I'm here for you as I always will be. I may not be of Requiem any more, but I still won't let you die. 

Giorno allowed himself a few more moments to cling to the Stand, taking comfort from its warm metal against his cold bruised skin, but only until the surge of panic clawing at his chest began to recede. He was alive. His Stand was free. Feel it all later, he told himself. He forced himself up after too short a time. Gold Experience gave him support to lean on and helped him get back on his feet, staying tightly pressed against his back with an arm around his waist.

How much do you know about what's happened? Giorno asked. I missed you so much.

I know what you know, now. We need time to process and recover, but we can't do either of those things until we are safe. Gold Experience turned its head, its unforgiving gaze sweeping about the dark room. We are obviously not safe here. 

"Can you see anything we can use?" Giorno slipped back into soft, low speech. 

Yes, but you may find it distasteful. These corpses - they are no longer animate objects, so a bone or two would suffice for our needs.

"It's that or nothing, right?" Giorno replied, eyes shadowed and mouth set grim. 

Unfortunately. Have I permission? 

Giorno sighed, touching his hand to his chest for a moment. "Yes." 

Gold Experience left Giorno and drifted into a corner of the darkened room. There was a loud and echoing sound of tearing meat, and Giorno fought not to imagine what he knew the Stand was actually doing - ripping apart one of the corpses for parts. For some reason it brought him back a flash of memory of Mista feeding salami to the Sex Pistols; a morbid intrusive thought inspired by the surroundings to consider Gold Experience not just tearing at flesh but actually consuming it. 

That would truly make him a son of Dio, wouldn't it? Giorno shook his head to shake the image off.

The Stand shortly returned with bloodied fingers, clutching two long pale bones drawn from rendering a dead victim's arm. Gold Experience pressed the bones against Giorno's chest and they melted into a warm yellow glow that washed through Giorno. His cuts and gashes closed and smoothed over into clean, flawless skin, and he felt strength returning. 

The fog around him was growing thicker, and he was suspicious of it. The blood on Gold Experience's hands had vanished. His eyes narrowed. 

At that moment, he heard a loud coughing sound from his right, followed by a woman's moan of pain. His heart sank. He saw another form moving and struggling to right itself amongst the fog; feminine and gasping; it must have been another of Dio's victims. Giorno was ready to go to her, though what he could have done to aid her was another question. 

But Gold Experience close at his shoulder quickly gripped his arm, and the Stand shook its head. Hold. I sense no strong life energy here except yours. Don't be fooled. 

"Are we under attack?" he breathed. 

I think we are. 

The woman (or corpse?) across the fog was still sobbing softly, despair that made Giorno feel sick inside to hear. "Wh-where am I?" she cried. "My neck hurts... Can anyone hear me? Dio?" The fog had begun to swirl, and Giorno felt it pushing at his body, curling and clotting on the backs of his legs, as if to aim him in the direction of the crying woman. 

Giorno was already out of patience for whatever game was being played on him. He shut his eyes and ignored the cries, and drove Gold Experience's fist hard into the stone by his feet, sending a surge of energy down into it, looking for roots, threads of natural elements, anything he could coerce to come alive and break apart the area, throw off the rhythm of whoever was doing this to him. 

He jerked sharply, eyes opening wide, as Gold Experience found... nothing to grasp onto. The stone itself, which he should have been able to alter into something living as a last resort, did not respond to his Stand. 

"That's not possible," he felt a cold sweat beginning to bead on his forehead.  

Unless it's not stone...? Gold Experience seemed equally puzzled, and swiveled around Giorno to stand in front of him, taking up a protective stance between him and the zombie and raising its golden fists. 

Amidst the fog Giorno saw other figures starting to move. The other bodies. The hysterical wailing was intensifying, and the third body - the one that Gold Experience had torn the arm bone from - was becoming visible. The women had horrifying rictus expressions and weird, lurching gestures as they started toward him. Zombies or vampires, Giorno couldn't guess which, but Dio could have turned any or all of them. Dread grasped at Giorno and he fought to keep his head clear. 

"If it's not stone..." Giorno closed his eyes and crouched quickly, and felt at the ground with his own palm. Everything he'd seen of Dio's fortress construction so far was stone, so it was what he expected to feel. But with his eyes closed, he felt something different against his skin. A rough texture, something wound... woven? Natural fibers...? 

A wooden mat! 

His understanding and Gold Experience's reaction were simultaneous. Illusion! The Stand punched down again, but now it followed Giorno's touch and he felt the threads of the rug begin to spin, twist, unravel and then to crackle into bright, thick green sprouts. The sprouts grew rapidly, blossoming into thick, strong roots that unfurled wildly from the point of contact and lashed out like whips. Giorno kept his eyes closed and kept pumping the tree full of energy. It grew around him, thick branches surrounding and cradling Giorno's nude body to protect and uplift him, and the other branches shot out, skewering the shambling corpses on sharp wooden points and knocking them backward and clear of his immediate range of influence. 

He heard a startled old crow-bark of a laugh, and all at once the fog dropped away, as well as the woman's screams. He was in his tree, barely ten feet from Dio's bed, still in Dio's bedroom, near the ceiling in a corner of the room. The corpses he'd attacked were pinned to the walls of the bedroom by his branches. There was a little grey woman clutching a walking stick and wearing strange jewelled rings and pendants, with a huge shock of white frizzy hair, a cloth hat and layered robes; her face was riddled with brown liver spots, and her eyes were bright and cruel as a predatory bird's. 

"Oh, your boy is a clever one, Lord Dio! Gyeheheheh!" 

Giorno craned forward, hands gripping the branches of his tree. "What?" 

Dio was sitting on the edge of the bed, smug, slowly clapping the fingers of his right hand into his left palm. "Well done, Giorno!" He glanced at the woman. "Allow me to introduce you to Enya the Hag. She suggested this little diversion for us to assess your Stand. Do show her respect," he added, with a warning smile, "You will find none more versed in the secrets of Stand abilities." 

Gold Experience clung to Giorno's waist, and Giorno scowled at the vampire and the witch, his eyes shuttered. "You were testing me," he repeated, flat and unamused. He felt no inclination to leave his protective branches, though he retracted the ones attached to the corpses and let the bodies fall. They crumbled first to skeletons and then to ash, almost before he could even blink twice.

Dio was still smiling out of one side of his mouth. "I expected you to be lured by the cries of the woman with that sentimental Joestar blood, but you turned the trash to your use without a thought. As I would have." 

Giorno bit down the urge to let out a bitter laugh. And the urge to take a swing at both of them with Gold Experience. He knew, though, that he couldn't yet find a way around The World's time freeze, not as he was, so trying to fight would only net him punishment he was already too wrecked to handle. He leaned back in his nest of tree branches just shy of the room's ceiling, and scowled. "And if Gold Experience wasn't free, you could have killed me," he snapped back. 

"Let me see it again, boy," Enya called. "And you, Lord Dio, you as well. I wish to examine their traits side by side." 

"Do as she says, Giorno," Dio warned. "Be a good boy."

Giorno inhaled, exhaled, willing himself to calm, and then did as the witch asked, letting Gold Experience form on the floor before Enya. Dio shrugged and flicked a hand with indifference, as if he were throwing away something of little interest; The World also materialized. Gold Experience, reflecting Giorno's unease, glowered sidelong at the other Stand, while Enya tutted and walked circles around each of them. 

"Gyeheheh! Yes. Very interesting. I see! This one," she stopped and pointed her walking stick toward Gold Experience, "Is underdeveloped, Lord Dio. Notice the helmet has an incomplete inscription of the Golden Rectangle, and the general shape of a beetle with closed carapace! I believe these are signs that this Stand has potential not yet manifested." She circled then around The World and beamed, arms wide. "Of course, The World is perfect! Its power is without limit, without end!" 

Incomplete? Giorno frowned. He knew, of course, that Gold Experience had reached its Requiem once, and wondered why The World was not on that level itself. But he was not going to breathe a word of his thoughts. Do I know something about Stands they don't? he wondered, and his thoughts immediately turned to the Arrow that he knew Bucciarati still had.

"Scarab beetles," Dio murmured, ignoring Enya's effusive praise. He too now stood and circled Gold Experience. "Not rhinoceros beetles." A strange light entered in the vampire's eyes, then, and he turned aside, his demeanor changing as he was clearly sinking into thought. 

Giorno pulled Gold Experience away from Enya and released it, paying attention to the change in Dio's expression, and noting the murmur but holding it away for later consideration. 

Enya came and waggled her walking stick at Giorno's tree but was careful not to make contact with it. "Come on down, boy, you've earned a bath and some tea. I don't want to stand here looking up at you all day, it is too rough on my old neck! Heeheee!" 

Dio seemed to no longer be paying attention to them, almost fully disappeared into his musing, and Giorno pressed his lips together before deciding to go along - if nothing else, he did want the bath. With sullen compliance, he let the life energy slowly fade from his tree and lowered himself back to ground level. 

Enya gave Giorno a hard swat at the back of his thighs with her stick. "Thought you could get me with the rebound effect on those branches, I bet? Gyehehehe, not a chance, little boy! Seen that one before!"

"I saw through your illusion," Giorno pointed out, ignoring the sting from the staff as best he could. "It can only trick people who rely on their sight as their primary sense and can't sense energy."

"And how many of those do you know, boy?" Enya cackled, tap-tapping her cane along the floor as she walked. "Do not underestimate my Stand, Justice! I went very gently on you only by Lord Dio's command! In a serious battle I could easily take your life and there would be nothing you could do about it!" 

Giorno said nothing to that, but frowned to himself as they walked. She was right. He had no idea how many of Dio's followers there were in the fortress, or how many of them were Stand users, vampires, or both. No wonder they weren't trying to do anything to suppress Gold Experience. They were holding back on Dio's whim. Which meant... Giorno breathed in slowly. He needed to keep Dio happy. He needed to be careful what he said to Enya, as well. 

Even with his powers returned, about the only thing he could think of for an escape would be to collapse the fortress walls and let in sunlight - but he wasn't sure if that would actually work on Dio, and even if he did escape, he'd be trying to cross a desert who-knows-how far with few resources. It was, at least, too early to try for that approach without knowing more. 

He needed to wait at least to see if Dio delivered Risotto. And then, perhaps.

Adrenaline had driven back the pain Dio had given him, but Giorno was starting to feel it again as he calmed down. He had the sense he was in for as long a day as the previous night had been. He missed home, he missed his friends, and he ached for time alone enough to rest. But he had Gold Experience back at last. He could take anything as long as he had his Stand working.

"Enya," He said then, as he followed her through the stone halls. "You said my Stand was incomplete. Why would you think that?" 
 
"Metaphors," The witch responded in a rasp, one arm behind her back and the other continuing to taptap her stick against the floor. "Every Stand is a metaphor that represents the inward soul. Much that is hidden from men is written plain to see on a Stand. For example! Your Stand shows tears on its cheeks, meaning you mask some inner regret. Its eyes are open, not veiled, meaning you have a particularly strong will. Enya can read your Stand like a book, she can, gyeeeheee! But fear not, boy. Submit your heart to Lord Dio, and he will surely enable you to reach a higher level!"  

"Did he give you your Stand?" Giorno asked. 

Enya shook her head, crow-eyes glittering. "No, boy. I gave him his."

Chapter Text

Risotto looked down on his body from high above himself, drifting in an induced coma, somewhere between a dream and an out of body experience. He was a pathetic pile of rotting meat, for sure. A ventilator in his mouth, a patch over his eye, a cast and multiple pins and braces in his leg, his chest wrapped in bandages, IVs in his arms. Blipping monitor machines, ticking out the pulse of his life. Nurses that came and gave him more sedatives, changed his dressings, wiped his ass.  They couldn't see the Stand that wriggled and cried from every pore in his body, Metallica's silver ghosts moving low and constant, waving up and down out of his skin in regular fluctuations, like the tides of the sea. Metallica was endlessly seeking, seeking, seeking, hoping to find a way out. 

His colony Stand had quickly come back to full strength, repopulating with the infusion of several units of clean blood and the surgeries closing his wounds- that wasn't the problem. His Stand was why he was aware of anything at all at the moment. His Stand was still at work within him, of course, forming mesh and knits and knots, trying to hasten his recovery. 
Risotto truly didn't care about the meat in the hospital bed. A body was a body. What he needed was a way to escape the broken meat and the occasional check-ins from Trish and Narancia and all the doctors and nurses and machines monitoring him. He had managed to put together an escape plan in several slow starts as his consciousness fluxed in and out. 

What he needed was an open cut touching his skin. It couldn't be even an inch above him, it had to be directly against his skin. Metallica could then surge into the cut and infest the blood of the person who had the cut. And then, possibly, with his Stand extending into another body, multiplying within the new host, Risotto could move away from his useless meat into controlling that body in whole. Just as he had infested Giorno. If he was fast enough, if Metallica was strong enough, if he could stay focused long enough. It would let him leave the hospital, let him get back to his mission. And it would be an escape no one could see coming, because his body would still be exactly where it was, as useless as the day it was brought in, while he travelled free with a new and unexpected face. 

He would need to create the tiniest of blades when a hand touched him, just enough to get a drop of blood to move between his skin and the cut. That was all. He was often touched, especially when the nurses had to turn him over. Jumping at that point seemed the most plausible.

Complications, though: The day shift nurses wore gloves. The night shift nurses were less conscientious. So it was going to be one of the night shift. 

If he was at all alert then. 
If they weren't gloved. 
If he had the brain and the strength to pull his plan together with the kind of timing he would need while he was awake enough to act. 

Anyone else would have despaired, but Risotto simply followed his Stand in and out of his body, in and out of darkness, keeping his thoughts fixed on the plan as he went down. In the meantime, Metallica still wove slow and steady within him. One way or another, he would not be staying long.

Wait for me, Giorno.

--- 

“Trish, whyyyy,” Narancia griped to his friend as they sat in the grass of a small garden on the hospital grounds, eating bad sandwiches from the hospital’s cafeteria, “This is stupid and BORing! He's pretty much dead already, why can't we just go finish him off and go home?” He pulled out his butterfly knife and flicked it open, the blade glinting silver in the bright overhead sun. His voice darkened to a rough murmuration, "All we gotta do is cut a couple lines and pull a couple of plugs. I could do it easy." 

Trish frowned, leaning back in the grass and gazing up at the sky, blue eyes narrowing against the light. She watched a small white plane land on the hospital roof, tracking it for a few moments; probably a life flight. “I know, Narancia, but I told Bruno I'd take responsibility for him and ... it’s wrong. I just… it feels wrong.” 

Her pink lips went taut, and her fingers dug into the grass around her, not paying much attention to what she was doing, frustrated at the way her thoughts were running in circles. If she said yes, she knew Narancia would act, and she knew she should say yes. She kept thinking about the aching, desperate look in Risotto's eyes; not the look of a hateful man, but one in pain. That look was what had convinced her to take responsibility and see Risotto spared in the first place. Still, everything cold and rational in her was crying out that this was the right time to end his threat for good. 

"I think he loves him, Nara. I think he does and just... okay, look at it like this. You ever have really strong feelings you don't know how to deal with and they come out all fucked up and weird?" 

Narancia replied, "Yeah," in a wary tone; sure he had, and he never liked it when they did. He tilted his head, but he let his friend continue without interrupting. Trish and Giorno had had a curious understanding of each other and thought in similar ways; something he'd only started to notice too late, after their loss at San Maggiore. So it was almost like hearing Giorno talk when Trish did, and he sat up straighter in the grass and tried to pay good attention to her now. 

"I'm not saying what he did to Giorno before is at all forgivable. I'm just saying... look, he's lost everything, right? We wiped out the Hitman Team. Except he didn't die. And he's their leader. So he feels like he has to avenge the rest of them AND somewhere along the way, he picked up an idea that going after Giorno would bait the rest of us out to fight. So he grabs Giorno. And then he finds out Giorno is amazing, like we all already know. And maybe because he's got nothing left he sort of ... fixates on Giorno, right? It gives him something to shoot for. Even if it's messed up." She tipped her head. "Couldn't we find a way to use that?"   

She sighed, though, leaning back on her hands, feeling the grass crinkling under her palms. "Or maybe I'm just reaching really, really hard. I don't know, Narancia. Is there a point where we stop killing everybody we come across that we disagree with just because it makes things more convenient for us?" 

Narancia spread his hands, rocking back and forth in the grass for a second. "Shit, I 'unno. Kinda not my department?" he shrugged, then crossed his arms over his chest, frowning to one side. "He's an enemy, Trish. He hurt Giorno." Narancia turned his head back, sought to find Trish's gaze, and he leaned forward, trying to show how serious he felt about the idea of Giorno being hurt again. "If we start feelin' sorry for every dumbfuck asshole that comes along, we're gonna get our house wrecked," he warned, "Nobody ever got into the thug life to be forgiving. And if Giorno keeps gettin' hurt because of this guy over and over, then I'm gonna kick his ass, 'cause I like Giorno way, way more than I like him." 

Even if, Narancia had to admit to himself, the dude had a killer sense of comedic timing. 

"I guess you're right." Trish let out a long exhale. Something about the decision still didn't sit right in her, her heart heavy and her thoughts feeling cold and cruel to herself. She didn't really want to take another person's life, not like that, at least. "I guess we should get-" She trailed off. As she started to fold up what was left of the sandwich in her lap into its plastic, a tiny dot of a red ladybug landed on the back of her hand. She blinked at it, startled, as it scuttled for an instant along her skin, then popped open its wings and zipped away. It seemed too perfectly timed to be a coincidence, and its appearance further unsettled her already uneasy instincts. Her brow furrowed. Giorno...?

Then they heard the muffled sound of gunfire rising from inside the hospital.

Narancia swore hard and leapt to his feet, Aerosmith roaring out of a fling of his arm, moving high and fast. Trish was only a pace behind him. They darted back toward the entrance to the hospital.

-

They raced up an interior stairwell, against the flow of panicked strangers trying to get down and out of the building as quickly as they could. Narancia moved fast on his flat sneakers, jumping two, three stairs at a time, half his face covered by Aerosmith's radar. He was physically shoving people to the side to get out of his way if they didn't get out of his. He wished Mista was there, just so he could get some eyes on target; there was too much panicked breathing for the radar to be useful, but he kept it on just in case. He'd sent Aerosmith around the side of the building, wanting to get it in position from the other side of the window in Risotto's room as an ambush for any enemies they found in there. 

"Too much of a coincidence!" Trish yelled at Narancia's back. "It's got to be someone coming after Risotto!" 

"Yeah," Narancia shouted over his shoulder as he run, breathless, "But who even knows we're here?" 

That was a damn good question, Trish thought, her eyes narrowing. Something was adding up bad here, and it was adding up to 'our movements are being tracked by someone'. She pushed the thought that it might have been Mista off the moment she thought it; he wouldn't have come shooting in so loud if he really just wanted to get at Risotto, anyway. Not his style. 

Okay, so, somebody who wants revenge on him? she thought to herself as she and Narancia pushed onto the hospital floor where they knew Risotto's room was. They had to dive for cover at once as a shower of big, sparkling green gemstones came flying at them, shredding the door they'd just entered from with hand-sized holes and pits, thunk-thunking into the walls around the door. They were too busy dodging to get a clear shot or a clear line of sight to the attacker.

Narancia's eyes were wide and sweat rose on his forehead. "What the fuck?!" he barked, and was promptly forced to throw his arms over his head and crouch down as another spray of jewels were hurled in his direction. "Great, some asshole throwing rocks at us," he groused, even while he sucked in his breath and started to focus on what the scanner was telling him. A lot of hard breathing and a lot of dots, but most of them not moving. Okay, some people in beds and people hiding from the shooting. Parse out everybody not moving and everybody breathing way too hard. Leaving... two big calm not-so-hard-breathing blips. Okay. Where had Risotto been in relation...? Okay, yeah. 

"Two perps, shooty guy is 15 meters!" he yelled to Trish. "Second perp 35 with third weak breathing moving same time!" So number two bad guy was moving Risotto in his bed? 

"Copy!" Trish immediately switched to the group's hand code, gesturing sharp with one pink-nailed hand - cover me, I'm going for number one, you go for number two. 

As Narancia nodded, Trish broke cover in a run so low she was almost crawling, summoning Spice Girl and striking the floor with her Stand. The hallway in front of her elongated and rippled up into a protective rolling 'dune' that bulged forward of her. Stone-shooter tried to hit her but his attack bounced off Spice Girl's softened ground and richocheted wildly. Now Trish could get a glance at the guy.
He wore all green, a long green coat and pants, and had red hair with a long forward swoop. Huh. Would have been handsome if he wasn't trying to shoot them. She pushed more energy into Spice Girl, destabilizing the ground some more and hoping to knock the stone-shooter off his feet, but he shot a hand out to one side and used some kind of rope or vine to pull himself to the right of her, at an angle she wasn't shielding. Trish threw herself the opposite way and rolled by a desk, tumbling and scrambling for cover past a very startled looking nurse who was hiding nearby. Trish grabbed the desk chair and shoved it toward the girl, hissing, "Stay down!" 
 
Spice Girl formed up next to Trish, strong and ready, crouching beside her. 

"Can you beat this guy?" Trish asked, watching the situation carefully. Down the hall, she could hear the 'second perp', the gunman, and Aerosmith exchanging fire. 

Maybe. We're inside his range, but I think I might be faster, judging from the speed and timing of his projectiles. 

Trish bit her lower lip. She was sure that since this guy was taking time to lay down suppressive fire, he was probably the backup man, and Aerosmith was going to need help soon. Spice Girl's softness could soak up a lot of stones before it rebounded to her directly. She needed to take the stone-shooter out as fast as possible. She nodded to her Stand.

"I'll take the chance, Spice Girl! Go get him!"  

The pink Stand nodded firmly, got to its feet and darted out into the hall, racing toward the stone-shooter with a proud cry. 

- 

Narancia shot out the window in front of Aerosmith and sent the plane swirling back into the building, chasing after the farther target, keying in on the breathing he was tracking and opening fire on the larger of the two blips. If he happened to hit Risotto - well, oops. But he was aiming for the other guy. 

To his surprise he felt his left shoulder erupt with a hot, searing punch pf pain, and blood flew. Narancia gritted his teeth, and felt Aerosmith wobble in mid-flght; what the fuck, the fucker just shot him in the wing!? He could still fly, though, so he hunched forward, hand pressed to his bloody shoulder, and concentrated harder. 

Wanna play like that? Fuck you, shoot this!! he thought, and promptly launched Aerosmith's undercarriage bomb. Unfortunately, though, he lost their breathing at the same moment he fired; they slid off his radar for a few seconds and then his own smoke obscured them. 

The hallway rocked with the sound of the explosion, and the smoke going off set off the hospital fire alarms, causing shrill noise, overhead sprinklers to go off, and additional emergency lighting to flash around them.  

Narancia cursed again, and scrambled up to his feet, almost slipping over himself on the suddenly wet tile in his haste. He had to get actual eyes on target and figure out what happened! He broke into a run down the hall, aware of but ignoring Spice Girl tussling with the stone-shooter on his right. 

- 

Spice Girl was, in fact, faster than Hierophant Green - but not by a lot. The Stand softened itself as much as possible to avoid passing impact damage back to Trish, and crossed its arms over its head to endure a rain of green stones from the stone-shooter that hit her in the arms, chest and upper thighs. 

When that didn't work to stop Spice Girl, the stone-shooter switched tactics and sent out his Stand, a white and green armored humanoid, to tackle Spice Girl directly. The two Stands traded blows and knocked each other into and over desks, throwing flurries of punches and jabs. Here, Spice Girl had the upper hand, and when the other Stand started to try and pull back and retreat, its lower half melting from legs into long white strings, Spice Girl was able to grab hold of those strings. With a proud yell of "Wannabe!" Spice Girl hurled the enemy Stand by its tail into a wall, then pounced on it with a followup barrage of blurring fists. 

This was too much for the enemy Stand, and its pain went back to the user; both collapsed and slumped to the floor. Spice Girl's lip curled in prideful disdain, and she ripped away some phone and computer cables from a nearby desk, elongating them into long twists of rubber. Spice Girl made quick work of binding the stone-thrower's hands and feet, then bounced backward to rejoin her user. 

"Target neutralized," the Stand said, and held up its hand; she and Trish did a quick grinning high-five of triumph under the shower of sprinkler-rain before hurrying out to catch up with Narancia. 

-

Narancia shoved away the smoke of his own bomb with his hand and coughed and growled, spinning in place and trying to look in all directions at once. "Where the FUCK did you go," he snapped, eyes wide and teeth bared. He was so pissed off; hurt, wet, and didn't even make the kill! 

Trish caught up to him, pushing damp pink hair from her face, and Narancia hurried to her; he pounded his good hand on her shoulder in a sign of comradeship and frustration and yelped, "I fucking LOST them!" Aerosmith was hovering near, with a thin thread of black smoke from its injured wing, now sprouting a large black bullet-wound.

Trish took it all in stride. "Where, here?" She gasped in a breath of smoggy mist to clear her head, and then she noticed the elevator. The pieces clicked together. The plane she'd seen earlier landing on the roof! That wasn't a life flight, that was an enemy coming down to retrieve their target; to get Risotto! She pointed to the elevator doors. "Wanna bet?"

Narancia grimaced, mouth twisting. "FUCK. Yeah." He darted to the elevator and stabbed at the "up" button several times, "Come ON you stupid piece of shit, they're getting AWAY!!" The elevator started coming down to them, but every second felt like an eternity to the two. 

- 

On the roof, a very annoyed cowboy in brown and yellow leathers - the Stand user Hol Horse - was loading Risotto's hospital bed into the back of the plane. This was supposed to be an easy in and out. Fly to Italy, snatch the guy, fly back to Egypt, get a sweet stack of cash, and then go have a good time far, far away from Dio.  How the fuck'd two other Stand users just happen to be around? And why did they give a shit about this guy? The whole thing was going tits up, and Hol Horse was pissed that Dio hadn't given him enough information before the mission.

"Damn thing singed my hat," he muttered to himself, pouting, as he pushed the medical bed up the ramp and secured it in place. He shot a thumbs-up to the pilot, who just asked, "Kakyoin?" 

Hol Horse shrugged. "Think he's downed. Reckon we don't have time to wait and find out. This train's going off the rails as it is, let's mosey before those kids get up here and punch more holes in us."

"You called it," the pilot replied, with an indifferent underlying tone of You can explain this to Dio, and started raising the plane's cargo door and initiating lift off procedures. 

-

Trish and Narancia, wet from the sprinklers and angry from everything else, were all but boiling by the time they managed to reach the top floor, stumbling out and looking around frantic for signs of roof access. Narancia spotted it and pointed, and they raced as fast as they could, bursting breathless through the access doors to the rooftop landing pad side by side... 

Just in time to see the white plane already moving and far away, turning to the southeast. 

Chapter Text

While Narancia raged wild and launched Aerosmith to try and get after the rapidly dwindling plane carrying away Risotto and their enemies, Trish just sighed hard and pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. Holding her hair back behind one ear against the wind, she dialed Bucciarati and relayed the situation to him. 

To her surprise, though, Bruno sounded more than calm; she thought she could almost hear him smiling on the other end. 

"It's all right. Actually, this is ideal. I took the liberty of including a tracking device inside his body when I first zipped his wounds. He was going to lead us to Giorno one way or another." 

"Oh, shit," Trish laughed back. Then she covered the bottom of her phone with her hand and yelled for Narancia. "Hey, Nara! Calm your tits! I'm on with Bruno. There's a plan." 

Narancia swirled and glowered at her, one eye larger than the other. "Heeeeh?" he stomped back over and grabbed at her arm so he could hear their boss talk as well, bringing their heads close together and twisting the phone. 
 
"I'll send a car," Bruno said. "Clear out of the hospital right now. Dodge police if you have to. We'll pick you up at the hotel we booked." 

"Hey, boss, what about the guy we grabbed?" Narancia wanted to know. "We got one of them. Well, Trish did." 

There was a pause, and Bruno hummed thoughtfully. "Do you think it'd be worth bothering to interrogate?" 

Trish bent the phone back her way. "Honestly? Probably not. If he's a cultist he won't tell us shit, and I can't imagine anybody else but Dio made off with Risotto, because nobody else knows what's going on. I bet Giorno's got something to do with that. Don't you think?" 

"I wouldn't be surprised. All right, leave it. Go to the hotel and we'll debrief fully when you get back." 

"Copy. The only thing I'm worried about..." Trish began, nibbling on her lower lip. She glanced sidelong at Narancia, and spoke just loud enough to be heard between them and the phone. "I think somehow we're still being watched. Maybe a long-distance Stand or something, but there's literally no way they could have known Risotto was here unless they had a direct line to us or have been watching our movements the whole time." 

"I don't like that," Bruno said. "That implies a network we haven't fully seen in play." 

"And new Stand users too!" Narancia added, wanting to prove he was paying attention. "Green guy and the other one that shot a hole in me." Oh yeah, shit, he was so mad he'd forgotten about his arm! 

"Abbacchio is huddling with the Intelligence team right now, perhaps they can turn up some useful information. Right now let's get you two home," Bruno decided. "Be careful. And if anything happens, call me again immediately." 

---

"Are you trying to make me hate you?" Giorno asked, lying face down and huffing into the crumpled sheets of Dio's bed as he recovered from another punishing round of enduring the vampire's sadistic pleasures. His head was thick with the scent of sex and opium, and he was too weary to bother trying to hold any facade in place. Too weary to hold back his frustration and the thread of grief in his heart that he couldn't even name or define clearly.

Dio, lying on his side, turned toward Giorno, made a low, thoughtful sound, reaching his hand and stroking his palm slowly down the line of Giorno's bare back, over the claw marks and fresh wounds he'd left on the human's body. "Perhaps," he admitted. "I take pleasure in purposefully destroying that which is beautiful, and you are beautiful." Then he paused, as if his own words struck him fresh. 

"Perhaps I do want your hatred," he continued, more softly, "Love is weakness, a pathetic thing that clings and demeans. Hatred is the force that greases the wheels of fate, Giorno." 

Giorno tried to hard not to warm to the touch, but he found the low, steady movements of Dio's icy hand on his back soothing. He reached for one of the pillows, using Gold Experience to tear it apart into fragments and heal his cuts and gashes again. Soft glitters moved across his skin, and he winced as his healing burned through him, a castigating golden flare, pain and pleasure twining as they seemed to do constantly now in Dio's presence. 

Dio observed this with fascination, continuing to rub his hand along Giorno's spine, unaffected by the small Stand burst. "Are you angry, then?" he asked. He sounded unconcerned with whatever Giorno's answer might be, but his focus never left the human's body. The glitters of Giorno's power refracted in the vampire's widening amber gaze. Jonathan, do you see this? He shines the same golden light as you. How proud you'd be.

"I don't know how I feel," Giorno propped his chin on a fold of sheet. "I don't know how I feel about anything right now," he confessed, eyes closing. He felt heat rushing to his face at the admission. "I'm so tired, padre." 

The word slid out of his mouth without friction, and he could not take it back, and found he didn't really want to. He had, for better or worse, accepted Dio into his heart, even as tangled as his emotions were. The lonely part of him that Dio's physical presence made whole, the aching and angry boy who had been left shaking in the dark, could not be pushed back now.

"I cannot be gentle with you, Giorno," Dio replied calmly, and it was about as much of a confession as Giorno thought the vampire was capable of making. "I cannot be anything but Dio. I can move my world enough to allow you to exist within it, but I will not change who Dio is." He rested his hand on the back of Giorno's head, tangling his fingers into the human's mussed blond hair without malice, petting him. "If you accept me as father, then you must accept that Dio will always be Dio." 

He withdrew his hand from Giorno and pushed off the bed, moving away. He lingered just beyond the footboard, with his back turned. In the dim light, only his shoulder and his stolen star and the outline of his broad back were visible. "For what it's worth," he said, his tone strange and thick, "I despised my own father, and all that he stood for. And that hatred made me strong enough to overcome all obstacles."  

Before Giorno could get a word out in answer to that, Dio shook his head and moved to the door. "You've earned some rest. Take it, while you can." He left the bedroom, closing the door behind him, and Giorno was left stunned in the darkness by Dio's admission.

After a pause he flipped himself over and spread his weary limbs wide over the mussed sheets, pushing a hand up over his face, shoving back his hair. He stared up at the canopy, aquamarine eyes wide and seeing nothing fully. He had the bed to himself, and he was so wrung out, and his heart so raw and cluttered, he didn't want to think or feel any more. He only spared enough energy to generate Gold Experience to stand guard over him. It formed to his right, in the cushions near his head, and its legs didn't appear - only its torso, head and upper arms. 

The Stand pulled Giorno up and close, wrapping its arms around his battered body in a protective grasp. Then it sealed them both behind a quickly formed cocooning web of bright green vines twined with lavender and purple hyacinth. Anyone who tried to move the plants would suffer Gold Experience's vicious rebound effect; no one would be able to disturb Giorno until the Stand allowed it so. 

Only then, at last, did Giorno feel safe. Exhausted, he rested his head against Gold Experience's shoulderplate, and quickly slid into sleep. 
 
-

"He disturbs you," Enya noted, as she walked beside Dio and they moved toward the loading dock. The report had come in that Giorno's 'coin' had been brought in by Hol Horse, and they were moving to see the situation and take control of the newcomer. "The boy. Your aura is troubled." 

"He disturbs me," Dio confirmed to his witch, with his lips turning down. His face was deep in shadow. "It frustrates me. I feel him tugging at parts of me I do not want to allow to awaken. I feel his desire to change Dio for himself, and I do not want to be changed." The vampire crossed his arms over his chest. "At the same time, I feel perhaps this change is also fated. I avoided the Joestars for so long, and they come to me now in a form I find challenging to resist."

Enya chuckled, tap-tapping her walking stick along the floor. "Parenthood should disturb. If a child can be nothing but a clone of its parent, it is a useless thing fit only to be destroyed. Only weaklings and purposeless trash allow their parents to dominate their destiny."  The hag glanced up at Dio then and all hints of amusement faded, her face turning serious and her sharp eyes a stiletto. "My love for my son overpowers all reason in my mind. That struggle is the point, my Lord. To stay yourself and yet see yourself echoed in another. Your mistakes! Your triumphs! How fearful! How strange! There is no other experience in life to match the pride and the rage of it!" Her arms went wide, her eyes too, as she reached toward the air, her strange hands fanning out.

She brushed her hand over her face for a moment, bracelets jingling, drawing a breath, calming herself. "And, certainly he represents the next obstacle you must overcome in your evolution toward total supremacy." 

"Perhaps," the vampire mused, touching his chin, then flipped a hand in the air, a quick dismissal. "Or my plans will simply have to change to fit him, I suppose. Perhaps it is nothing more than a delayed movement of fate in the end. Giorno will decide." The vampire rolled his head on his thick neck, feeling a faint pop, pushing thoughts of Joestars and Jonathan and Giorno all aside. "I will discuss it no further. Let's greet Hol Horse."

- 

Dreaming, Giorno found himself entering Libeccio, back home in Napoli. The restaurant was deserted, and no one answered as he called out, "Hello?". The silence disturbed him, but he tried to throw it off as he moved through the stillness to go to Bucciarati's usual table in the back. The table was white-clad and set for five, and Giorno took one of the seats and slumped into it. 

"I miss you all," he said, to the empty table. "I know it hasn't even been a week, but I feel like it's been so much longer. I keep getting taken farther and farther away from you."

And from yourself. 

Giorno startled, as Gold Experience Requiem appeared to the right of him, in one of the other seats. The elevated Stand had a severed human forearm on its plate, and blood dripped onto the table. As Giorno watched in horror, the Stand picked up a golden knife and fork, and calmly sliced into the arm, cutting loose a large, square chunk of wet meat with a sick, squelching sound. 

The Stand held out the bloody chunk toward him. "You need to eat. It's the only way to get back." 

Giorno shook his head, pulling back from the chair in a panic, the chair clattering to the floor behind him. "I can't. Why are you... no! I don't want to!" 

He realized the silence was because all of his friends were lying dead on the floor, around and under the table. Abbacchio, slumped in a corner with a massive gaping hole in his chest. Narancia, distorted and twisted around with his head backward of his body, and metal tines driven through his head and chest. Bruno, pale and white-eyed with a void in his abdomen and rotten-to-the-bone fingertips. 

Giorno clutched at his chest and stumbled back another step, only to bounce off another body. He whirled. Mista was there, beloved Mista, but the gunner's face was flushed and his eyes were full of tears, his nose wet too. He lifted the gun to his own head. "This is what happens when you leave us behind." 

Before Giorno could do anything, Mista shot himself, and slumped down at his feet. He heard a terrible wail burst out of his own mouth, and he dropped to his knees and grabbed at Mista's body, then turned his head toward his former Requiem in a flurry of bright-eyed panic. "Help me. You have to help me save him!" 

The Requiem took its time getting up, moving, and it turned its back on him, holding the fork with the bloody human chunk  up in its left hand, near its face. "I don't know. Do you still care?" The Requiem wavered away, and standing in its place was a copy of himself. Himself in the black, severe suit that he'd worn on the day of his ascension to the throne; the self with a thousand-yard stare, gazing at the fork in his hand like it was from another planet. "Wouldn't you rather just stay home and play with daddy now? It's so much simpler." 

Dio appeared at his back, a hand on his left shoulder. He was smiling. There was blood on his lips. "This is my son, in who I am well pleased," the vampire announced, before he grasped the dark-suited Giorno's head by the braid, and pulled it back hard, twisted the dark Giorno's throat in his big hands. The head detached and came off in his hands in a spray of red, and the vampire giggled and put his blood-stained fingers to his mouth, licking them clean. 

"You're getting lost in bullshit," came a voice from his right, as his own head landed in his lap in a splatter. Giorno twisted again, and it was Risotto coming out of the shadow, idly spinning a surgical knife in one hand and fixing Giorno with a dark red glower. "We're distractions, and that's all we are. If you want to get back home, and keep your friends alive, you have to eat." He moved closer, closer. He stuck an arm out in front of himself and used the scalpel to carve off a piece of his own scarred forearm. A little silver ghost wailed from it as it was stuck to the end of his scalpel.  

Giorno was frozen, and felt unable to move; he stared at Risotto like a rabbit in headlights, until the assassin had him by the chin in his other hand. He brought the meat toward Giorno's mouth, holding Giorno's head in place. "Complete the metaphor. I'll kill them if you don't." 

Miserably, Giorno gave in and opened his mouth. Risotto gently placed the cube of himself across Giorno's tongue. It tasted like the spicy, melting lamb he'd eaten with Dio. He swallowed, unhappy, and his clothing warped, darkening until he was wearing black again, the delicately inlaid vines in the design of his suit tightening in around his skin like steel bands and the sounds of locks snapping closed, making him wince with pain.

"No more hiding," Risotto said, brushing his hand under Giorno's eyelashes and lifting away a tear that shimmered gold, that seemed to be wavering and weeping, with tiny arms flailing toward him. "Wake up, Don Giovanna." 

-

Giorno jerked upright with a gasp, back in the quiet bedroom, still hidden behind his web of flowers and vines. His heart was pounding, and he was drenched in sweat. Gold Experience was still near, and spoke quickly to calm him. You had a nightmare. It took him back in its arms, pulled him back toward the cushions. 

Gathering his breath, Giorno shook his head in answer, pressing his hands down over Gold Experience's arms. "I think I had a truthmare. Is that a thing?" 

It is if you say so, the Stand laughed. They rocked back and forth together, until Giorno's heart rate came back down to normal. He reached a hand up above his shoulder and pressed his hand to Gold Experience's cheek. He spoke his next words to his Stand only in his mind, wary now after the dream. 

I saw you as Requiem again. I've wanted to know for a while now. Why didn't you come back as that form? Why the older one? 

The witch Enya spoke truthfully. You are incomplete, therefore I am incomplete - as you are, we cannot reach Requiem. A part of you felt power to be a burden, more grief than joy. You did not want it so it was not given to you.  It's as simple as that. 

So when Bruno's Requiem brought us back...
 
It judged and built our soul accordingly to what it found in our heart. But we are not complete. There is a void in you that no friend, no father, no lover can ever really fill. That gap is your relationship to power, my master. You can try to deny it, but you want the throne. Over time, you convinced yourself you could not have the throne and your family, that it was one way or the other, but that is an erroneous assumption based on faulty evidence. Bucciarati has told you many times the throne is yours. You've only avoided taking it back because you fear the end result will be the same as before. 

Giorno nodded. I've never been able to forgive myself for the mistakes I made that got them all killed. I made an ignorant, childish wish, pretended the consequences didn't matter, and it ruined everything. I broke the world, just like I was afraid I would.

You're not 14 any more, the Stand gently chided its master. You've lived through those mistakes, and you've learned from them. Few people get second chances on the scale you've been granted; a chance to relive their life, knowing better than they did the first time. The situation is not the same. You have support now. And Risotto was right about us. We have been sleeping too long. 

I suppose we have. 

Giorno breathed in and out and in again, and then pressed his shoulders against his Stand, cuddling closer in fondness. "Risotto," he sighed, "Is going to be a problem. The rest of the group won't take him, but I still want him. I think this just proves how much we need him. If I make that my first call though, it's going to start a riot." 

Dio as well. 

The human pushed idly at the sheets with a bare foot. "He'd probably just let me go now if I asked. I don't think we're prisoners. He wanted to figure me out and I've been going along because I wanted to figure him out too. Now I have. We could maybe just ignore each other's existences for a while, but..."

But you don't think that's a safe assumption. 

"He has his own network. If I'm not tapped into it, he'll use it against me. Sooner or later, one way or another. I think he wants a fight with the Joestars, and if it's not going to be me that does it for him, he might find an excuse to pick on someone else. Technically, that's not my problem, but since he's my father, it becomes my problem in a big way, because I'll be pulled into it and I need to focus on Passione." 

Giorno twisted around in his Stand's arms, turning to look Gold Experience in the eyes. Can you still connect to Bruno's Requiem like you did when we came here, or was that a unique event?

The Stand shook its head. If I could, I would already have done so. That Requiem is ever-watchful, but it moves on its own whims. We cannot short cut our way out of this through him. 

The young gangster shrugged his shoulders, admitting defeat. "It was worth a thought." Then he stretched his arms and legs, and let out a yawn. "I guess it's time to get up." 

If you still want to rest, we can. We're safe for the moment. And you are still exhausted.

"No," Giorno answered with a firm frown, "I've slept enough." He reached forward and pressed his hand against one of the sprigs of lavender forming his protective web, willing it to dissipate. The vines melted away, and he pushed himself off the bed and stood and stretched out again, rubbing at a few of his sore bruises. Then he looked around the room and found the robe he'd been wearing earlier crumpled up on the floor. He put it back on. 

Gold Experience only chuckled at him, and rose and vanished from the bed at the same time, returning to rest inside Giorno's skin with a steady, reassuring thrum. Giorno swept his surroundings with his ability, finding only the kind of life he'd expect in a place like this - insects, rodents, creatures that fed in dark places. There was a cluster of energy in a different level of the fortress. That had to be worth looking into. 

Bracing himself for what he could, Giorno left the bedroom and started down the dark halls, padding softly along the cold stones in bare feet, quiet and determined. 

Chapter Text

Dio arrived with Enya in the loading bay. This was as dark and cheerless as the rest of the fortress; the ground was covered in a thin layer of sand that had blown in from the bay door opening and closing, and the lighting in the walls and ceiling were cold blue LED bars. The small plane carrying Hol Horse and Risotto had landed in Cairo and then transferred cargo into a large covered truck; it was this that had arrived and parked in the dock, engine still warm and ticking. 

Hol Horse and the pilot, Steely Dan, a man with shoulder-length black hair and plain clothing, were pulling the medical bed out of the truck and wheeling it forward. 

Risotto made a soft grunt as he was hustled around; he was conscious at the moment, but just barely so. His vision in his good eye was blurry, and the dim lighting didn't help. No one in the truck or plane had said a word to him, except to move the bed he was in, and he hadn't been able to focus well. In and out, he'd been aware of being moved, the vibrations of travel, but not much else. 

Enya, moving in advance of Dio, went to see for herself, and took hold of one of Risotto's arms, noting the ebb and flow of Metallica swaying in its low silver tide in and out of his skin. She pressed at his skin with an old and withered hand, then uttered a derisive snort. "Colony Stand. Normal range. Viral-type or something to do with metals or blood chemistry." before turning away with a shake of her head. "Half-dead, Lord Dio." 

"Three-quarters dead," Risotto rasped, trying to focus on his surroundings and largely failing. Hearing was the only sense that seemed to work perfectly for him at the moment. Dio. Giorno's father.

Dio nodded. He could smell Risotto's blood from his half-treated wounds and surgeries, and it was easy to read. Thicker than normal human blood; a distinctly heavy-metals tang that the vampire found very interesting, if unbalanced. Any thoughts of having a nibble of the man that so fascinated his son was out of the question if he had an infection-type Stand, however. Disappointing. 

Hol Horse came around the side of the bed and touched his finger to his singed hat-brim, acknowledging Enya - she was a woman, after all, no matter how wrinkled and crude and unfriendly - and then looked to Dio. "We had a little bit of trouble, 'fraid to say. Lost Kakyoin to some Stand users nobody told us about." He tried to keep his voice as calm as he could; Dio scared the piss out of him, frankly, and he just wanted to get paid and get out. 

Dio scowled, his expression darkening. "There should not have been interference," he noted, "And even if there was, I expected you should have been able to handle it, Hol Horse, with your sterling reputation. Perhaps I should cut your reward in half, since you came back with half the equipment I sent you with?" The vampire tossed it off airily, but the threat in his voice was deep and serious, and his amber eyes had turned icy as he gazed over the yellow-clad cowboy. 

Enya sniggered. "Gyeheheheh! That would be a wise decision, Lord Dio!" There was no love between her and the cowboy; she just thought his squirming in the face of Dio was pathetic and hilarious. 

Hol Horse nervously shifted his weight to his other foot, frowning. "Or you can give me hazard pay for dealing with somethin' I wasn't expectin' and nobody told me jack shit about and still bringin' home the bacon." His forehead began to sweat under the brim of his hat, but he hoped he looked like he was presenting a firm stance against the vampire. 

Giorno, meanwhile, had been following Gold Experience's life-markers through the fortress, and now was just at the turn to the doorway before the bay. He heard several voices, and was tempted to hide and listen, but thought better of that after a moment. It was entirely likely Dio could probably smell him coming, as he hadn't been able to bathe or anything, and that was if the vampire couldn't sense his energy. So, no point in trying to pussyfoot around. He nodded to himself and advanced to the doorway, stopping right next to Dio and taking in the scene for a moment. 

He saw Risotto's body on its rolling bed, and his eyes tightened. That was not what he expected, and much worse than he'd already been afraid of. That was going to take several passes to heal properly, for certain; he would have to redline himself right to the edge of his strength to do it, as worn down as he already was. So be it. Risotto would finally owe him one and the balance between them could start to shift in his favor. Just as he started to move out and toward the bed though, Dio reached out and stopped him with a hand. "Not yet, Giorno," he sternly noted. "There is a matter of payment to resolve." 

Giorno countered, "I want to heal him first," and at the same time, Hol Horse nervously brayed, "I just want what's fair pay for a fair day's work." 

Irritation flashed across the vampire's face at both their complaints, and he huffed at Enya. "Pay him." A glance at Risotto's weakened body. "Two-thirds our agreement, and that is my only offer. Do not test my patience." He meant it as a warning to both of them, and Giorno felt Dio's fingers clenching down on him.

Enya, meanwhile, noticed something - a glint from Risotto's silver Stand - that caught her attention. She noticed that the flow of the Stand had changed. All of the little beings of the colony Stand were now wavering tiny arms and wordless moans in Giorno's direction, every single one of them turned to face his way as if swinging on a compass toward North, making 'come here' gestures and seeming to move with more agitation now that the boy was present.

This was curious to her. She hummed under her breath and moved between Risotto and the boy as she fished out a bag containing a number of golden Sovereigns. While she was plucking out a few with her strange hands, part of her was watching to see how the bed-bound man's Stand reacted. It was as if she were interrupting a flow of water with her presence - the little silver beings parted to either side of his body to continue to wobble in Giorno's direction. 

Very interesting indeed. Something to pay attention to. She finished counting out the coins and told Hol Horse, "Hold out your hat," in a snide smirk. 

He, clearly trying to suppress another complaint, did so, and Enya's old brown hands dumped three gold coins into his hat. "Beggars can't be choosers!" she noted, with nasty little laugh for emphasis. 

Dio smirked. 

Giorno, watching silently from under Dio's hand, thought: this is how you get people to hate you. It solidified his earlier impression that, in some ways, Dio seemed to be trying to pick fights. As if he needed to be challenged. His attention moved back to Risotto, and he could see Metallica beckoning to him, and yet he couldn't feel the resonance they'd had before when their bodies were in close contact. So, the colonization had died when they were separated. He could expect Risotto to try and colonize him again, almost certainly. 

That might not be the worst outcome, considering. 

He glanced up at the vampire and called on his Boss voice, his authoritative tone used for intimidating lower capos into doing his will. "You can get my blood any time, but I need to start working on him now, padre." He jerked his arm, attempting to free himself from Dio's grip. 

Dio raised an eyebrow at his son, but lifted his hand. "Do as you please. Enya will remain. Hol Horse..." Dio lifted his hand and beckoned imperious to the nervous cowboy, who was at that moment carefully eyeing the golden coins in his hand as if he thought they might be fake. "Come. We have further business to discuss." 

Giorno could feel how badly Hol Horse did not want to do that, but he found little sympathy in the situation. He dismissed the man from his thoughts as Dio oh-so-casually draped an arm around the cowboy's shoulder and walked away with him. 

Once they were gone, Giorno turned to Enya, tarnished robe flicking with his motions as he walked closer to Risotto. "I don't care if you watch me heal him," Giorno told the witch, "I don't know what else you could see out of my Stand that you didn't already perceive before. But if you want to see my power at its best, give me something I can use to heal with. Cloth, scrap, anything. It just has to be something that isn't alive."  

Enya cocked her head and thought. After a moment she chuckled to herself and tossed her coinbag Giorno's way. "Here, boy. There's plenty." 

Surprised, he caught it, blinking at the weight and finding it still stuffed full of old gold - he took one of the coins out, eyeing its face, and found it to be a British coin minted in 1887. I'm holding at least a couple of million dollars worth of bullion, his gangster-brain noted.  If Enya was throwing around ancient gold from centuries ago, paying mercenaries with it, did that mean that Dio was ... he had to be. Absurdly so. Giorno supposed with a good two hundred year lead and vampiric abilities plus a time-stopping Stand, wealth would be very easy for Dio to obtain. He shook his head sharply to clear his thoughts, and also dismissed Enya from his awareness. None of that mattered right now. 

He bounced the coin bag around in his hand as he walked up to Risotto and took a good long look at the battered man. Metallica was reaching toward him, yearning and silent. He saw that Risotto was awake, and dimly looking his way with his good eye. 

"You look like shit," Risotto rasped, a weak smile on his dry lips. 

Giorno let out a dark chuckle in answer. "I wonder who's fault that is." He walked a slow circle around the bed, trying to decide where to begin. The bad eye, most likely. Risotto's good eye watered and failed to fully track Giorno around him. 

The blond took out one of the coins from its pouch and toyed with it in his hand, rolling the coin deftly between his fingers in an airy display of indifference. "I'm willing to heal you," he warned Risotto, "To the utmost of my ability. But my healing can't do anything about the pain it causes while it's fixing you. Frankly, it's going to hurt a great deal. It'll burn, it'll ache, and it'll make you want to scream. I don't intend it as torture, but it'll feel like it. I just want you to know that before I start in. You can refuse to be healed, but if you do..." 

Giorno locked his fierce green stare into Risotto's good eye. "You should know my father is a vampire, we're currently located underground within his nest, and I'm certain he and his thralls can find highly creative things to do with your body while you're still alive that you will not enjoy." 

Enya giggled loudly at that moment. "The boy speaks truth! The zombies always need more flesh to chew!" 

Risotto blinked once. He was too startled to have anything smart to say about that. His tongue ran over his dry mouth, good eye wide. Zombies. What the fuck. It was an easy decision when those were the options. "Heal." 

Giorno nodded, and gently placed the coin in his hand over Risotto's bad eye. "I truly don't enjoy causing pain." Maybe in your case, though, I will let myself have this, he added to himself. He summoned Gold Experience to his side, and had the Stand begin its work. 

Risotto Nero spent the next hour screaming. 

- 

"I hate your Stand," Risotto rumbled, drenched in sweat. He was immaculately healed by Giorno's ability, every bone and sinew restored, every organ purified. The lingering energy of Gold Experience glittering through his body made him feel like he'd been washed clean of a lifetime of backed up shit and sewer water under his skin; he felt well and whole in a way he wasn't sure he'd ever felt before. But his whole body shook like a leaf, and Giorno had, if anything, undersold how much the healing process would hurt. 

Giorno only smiled the smile of a soft golden angel - one who was, nonetheless, visibly exhausted. His hair lay in ragged limp lines around his neck, dark bags and bruises under his eyes and along his face; most of him bruised somewhere. "You're welcome," he said, and craned down and over, cupping Risotto's face in his delicate, brutality-inducing hands, touching his lips to the assassin's. 

He shifted his hands, using them to shield his mouth from view as best he could, and whispered to Risotto. "Recolonize me," he said, so thinly audible Risotto wasn't sure he was hearing correctly, as if Giorno was making words out of his breath rather than sound waves. "Quietly."

He didn't question Giorno for an instant - getting control of the blond again would only be a nice bonus after that session on the rack of Gold Experience. 

He slung an arm around Giorno while they performed at kissing for Enya's sake as the witch was still lurking near. And, if they were honest, actually kissing because Giorno was drained and Risotto was the closest thing he had to comfort at that instant. The hitman pulled the blond up and closer to him, and carefully, discreetly slit a small cut in Giorno's skin under his hair near the back of his neck, with a razor blade emerging from his own forearm. He pressed the two wounds together and pushed Metallica in and through. It wasn't a deep cut, and it didn't take but a moment to slip into the blond's blood. Giorno only reacted to the invasion of his body with a small huff of breath, and he sealed the cut again over again swiftly with Gold Experience before drawing his mouth and hands back, his aquamarine gaze finding Risotto's red, and holding calm and steady as Metallica blossomed wild under his skin. 

Risotto savored it for several moments, eyes slipping closed. He had Giorno again. He could feel the blond's life pulsating in and against and within him. He felt better.

He really, really wanted to fuck Giorno right then and there. No, he needed to fuck him. He locked his arm around Giorno to stop him from moving away, and leaned up and looked past Giorno's shoulder to the old woman. "Fuck off. I need some private time here," he commanded. 

Enya shrugged. She'd seen what she wanted to see, though she was still curious about the way Risotto's colony Stand had leaned so hard toward Giorno. She supposed they were lovers, which explained the boy wanting him there. It was fine, considering.  With a smirk, she flapped a reversed hand at them. "Can't stand an audience, eh? Gyehehehe. Enya won't watch, but someone will be! Keep it in mind, boys!" She also noted, toward Giorno, "Don't take too long. Lord Dio will want to meet when he is done with Hol Horse, to collect his payment." 

Anything Giorno might have replied was drowned when Risotto started kissing him again. "N-mmph." He swatted at Risotto's shoulder, giving a muffled and half-hearted noise of protest. Risotto just grabbed his wrist and bent it back behind him, keeping tight hold. 

Enya rolled her eyes, turned her back and left, taking her coin bag with her. 

- 

A moment later, Giorno was down on the floor, robe open under him, a beautiful wreck with hands cuffed together behind his back in iron chains, and his father's name wrapped around his thighs. Risotto grinned dark and bloody over him, straddling his waist. Giorno's cheeks were flushed, his lips were slightly parted, and he didn't struggle. Even if he had wanted to, he couldn't, as Risotto was holding him motionless through Master of Puppets. But his eyes were calm and steady, a small glint of expectation in the deep lagoon-green depths of them as he kept his focus on Risotto's face and red-black eyes.

"Healing me was a mistake," the hitman said, drawing back and pulling Giorno's legs apart with a hard grip on his ankles, pushing them up, toward Giorno's shoulders. "You keep wasting your kill shots." He stroked his hands down Giorno's thighs, past his knees, noting the new lines of bruising along the blond's creamy skin and curious about the inlay. A competing mark. He'd have to do better. He licked his lips, eager, shifting his position and dropping one hand down to bring his erection into line with Giorno's body. 

A smug little glint passed through Giorno's eyes then - oh, really? We'll see, they seemed to say.  

He tipped his head back, letting out a gasp as Risotto pushed into him, hard and slow and steady. The muscular assassin gave a muttered curse of pleasure, eyes closing as he settled inside Giorno, pushing balls-deep and feeling immense satisfaction from the way Giorno's inner muscles tensed around him hot and close, and his blood shifted and sped up in his senses. Inside and out, Giorno was his.

As his fingers gripped into Giorno's legs he released his Stand hold. Giorno's neck muscles went taut, breathing hard from his pretty mouth as they started to thrust and push against each other. It was half fight and half fuck, with Giorno pushing his hips and pelvis up and in as firmly as Risotto ground down and deep into him. Neither of them letting the other have the edge. Pressure, release, pressure. Wet, hard slaps of flesh into flesh over heated silk and rough stone. 

Risotto reached down and took Giorno by the throat, his thumbs resting just above the blond's Adam's apple, though he didn't squeeze hard enough to cut off Giorno's breath. He was liking the harsh, regular panting Giorno was making as he was fucked too much to cut it off for the moment.  

"You're so fucking naive," he rumbled, trying to adjust mid-thrust to hit into Giorno even harder, his glutes tight with his efforts. "I swear to God I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life beating it out of you." 

Giorno shifted his alluring, humid green gaze right back into Risotto's. "Swear it," he rasped back, voice raw and rough from the fucking and the tension in his throat. "Swear to me." His words were a melting smear of pleasure and raw, feral greed. He canted himself up into Risotto with a forceful movement and clamped down hard on his cock, "For the rest of your life." 

Oh, the things those words did to Risotto's dick. He swore he got harder just from the sound of them. He wanted to punch Giorno right in the face and he wanted to kiss him until they both ran out of breath and melted together into the darkness forever. He settled for digging his hands in at Giorno's neck, to hear him gasp for breath and cut off that breath at the same time. "I swear," he growled, the words coming out of him from some deep, primal place just inside his pulsating cock. 

Fuck, he felt so good, he couldn't hold it. He brain went blank and spiraled into a long shot of release that washed up from his balls to the top of his head, making his whole body tense stiff and then unstring a moment later. He kept his grip on Giorno's throat as he came, blissfully shooting his shot deep up the blond's ass, and dimly heard Giorno's answering moan behind the roar of blood to his head. 

"hh. Fuck." He let go of Giorno's neck and sat back, still in the blond and wet, feeling himself start to slip out and really not wanting to. He used Metallica to restart his erection, going stiff again so he could stay in, pushing himself down and forward, resting his chest over Giorno's, who slowly moved his legs up to accommodate the hitman's weight pressing down on him, and crossed his ankles over Risotto's back. 

Giorno had a look on his face like the cat that ate the cream, a smug little moue on his pink mouth, and Risotto was confused about that for a second until his brain finally caught back up from the daze of heat in his head. "Did you just fuck me into-" 

The blond's grin was big and bright as the sun. There was a small twisty glimmery sound, and a golden flare under the small of his back; the iron chains he wasn't supposed to be able to undo came undone, as he pushed back on Master of Puppets with a commanding impulse that echoed in the back of Risotto's neck. Giorno's arms went up around Risotto's shoulders, fingertips stroking into the hitman's short silver hair. "Mmhmm." He brushed the tip of his nose and lips against Risotto's flushed cheek, a delicate kiss. "One until death. I've straightened you out." he replied with dangerous sweetness, and the velvet and steel in his voice sent a bright chill of delight down Risotto's spine. 

In the code of the mafia, Giorno meant Risotto had been inducted back into Passione - his Passione.

Risotto's eyes hooded, and gradually a side of his mouth lifted into a dry smile. "Well played." Still, he put a hand on Giorno's ribs and used Metallica to burst through the blond's pebbled nipples with silver barbells, just as a way to vent after Giorno's 'trick'. "Don Giovanna, I presume," he said, and enjoyed hearing Giorno's soft whimpering as he reached and toyed with the blond's bloody new jewelry in strong mean flicks, using Metallica to enhance the blood flow to his chest and thus, making Giorno sore and sensitive to his pulls and twists. 

Giorno sweated through it, letting Risotto have his sounds, before he heaved out a deep breath. "You only have... yourself to blame," he chided, between groans. "You told me... to wake up." 

"I suppose so." Risotto gave Giorno a few more low thrusts, and nearly set them both off again, but Giorno gave a small cry as those lazier thrusts and the chest tweaking pushed his overheated body over the edge. Risotto felt the blond starting to come and quickly shot his hand up to clamp his fingers over Giorno's nose and mouth, cutting off Giorno's oxygen, waggling his free hand in warning, "But I can still put you down any time I want." 

Giorno's pulse went berserk, and he mmfed and twisted his head, pushing his lips against Risotto's palm, coming hard and abrupt with a long struggling shiver passing through his body, and pearly cream spluttering between his hips and Risotto's. The hitman lifted his hand, letting Giorno breathe again. Giorno gasped thick, going soft and boneless under Risotto with a deep groan. Dizzy on the floor, his eyes dropped half-lidded, and he just laid against the cool stone and breathed for a few seconds until he felt capable of thought again. Risotto settled in over him, finally withdrawing from Giorno's body with a low huff that was half frustration and half relief.

"Plan?" Risotto asked him, after he saw Giorno's breath slowing back to normal. 

"I don't know," the blond confessed. He licked his tongue over his lips. "I'm improvising. I just want to get everyone out of this alive. After that, we go home, and I take back Passione and onboard you as capo of my Unita Speciale." And try and figure out how to explain this to everyone without causing a mutiny.

"Weak plan," Risotto noted, then tipped his head to the right and spoke softer. "There is that truck right there next to us." 

Giorno shook his head. "No idea how much fuel there is, or how far we are from Cairo. Unless you know?" 

"I was out cold most of the time. Thank your father for that one." 

The blond grimaced. "I was unconscious when they brought me here, too. I don't want to end up stranded in the desert without resources. Gold Experience can help in a pinch but I don't want to rely on just that. For right now, until I talk to padre again, we have to play it his way." 

Giorno pulled Risotto closer, voice lowering. "Don't try to be smart with him, please. He's stronger than both of us combined, I don't know all of his powers yet, and I don't think your sharps will have any impact on a dead man. I don't know the number of men he has here, and the witch, Enya, who you saw earlier, is also a powerful Stand user. There may be more." 

Risotto grumbled back, over Giorno's shoulder. "Everybody has something that can make them bleed. Don't underestimate Metallica." 

"I'm not." Giorno's eyes darkened. "I'm counting on it." 

Chapter Text

Risotto pushed up on his arms, regarding his prize; now, apparently, his Don. At this point, he had no real will left to resist Giorno's gravity, especially not with Giorno's brilliant, scouring light still reverberating in a slow-fading glow beneath his skin. Maybe it had been what he wanted all along; just to come home and be fit back in; maybe not. Nonetheless, he knew he was made, as it went.

He still thought it was going to end in pain, and probably soon. 

Giorno was almost asleep; those lagoon-green eyes were hidden under long closed golden lashes; his breathing and pulse steady and slow. Risotto brushed aside bits of Giorno's loose curls from his brow with his fingertips and sighed above him. "You really do look like shit," he said, softly. And he did; Giorno looked like he'd been getting more and more injured since their separation, and some of the bruises were turning very ugly. 

Giorno stirred underneath him, warm and weary, and admitted, "It's been a rough few days." A thin smile touched his bruise-edged mouth. 

"Who did it?" the hitman asked, feeling himself frowning down. He didn't want to care. Giorno was strong and didn't need the concern, and Risotto knew that. But the blond looked faded and drawn, tarnished in a way that Risotto didn't like, because he hadn't been the one to do it. 

Giorno just shook his head. "Some are yours, some are Padre's." An indifferent shrug of his mouth and shoulders.

The hitman stared at Giorno, then deadpanned, "Your father's been hurting you." 

Giorno's expression turned very strange; somewhere between frustrated and grieving. "I didn't have much else to bargain with." He turned his head, gazing into the shadows with his face turning grim. "Padre gave up on all pretenses to human niceties somewhere in the late 1800's, when he ripped off his adopted brother's head and seized control of his body as a vampire. He has no concept of family. Even if I'd been able to use my Stand, he's still much stronger than I am. And the cost of getting you here so I could heal you was giving him my body and blood." The young Don inhaled. He brought his gaze back to Risotto, calmly collected once more. "I'm paying that price willingly, and I hope now you understand why."  

Risotto wasn't sure if he was more outraged or offended, and he shifted uncomfortable above Giorno, and rumbled. "I would have found you again on my own," he said; 'you didn't need to go that far' was what he meant, but didn't say.

"No, you wouldn't have," Giorno said. It was the very gentlest rebuke, and his voice was not cold, but it was firm. "My friends would have made sure of it after this time, Risotto. There would be no way you would ever have been able to reach me or touch me again under normal conditions." 

The hitman couldn't help but snort at that; he still had nothing but the lowest opinions of Giorno's inner circle, and his short time among them hadn't really changed his mind. Perhaps the girl, but the rest were not worthy of consideration. "They're as bad at sparing enemies as you are. They took me to a hospital instead of killing me." 

He wanted to add something crude and vicious about Mista's failure to shoot him, but broke off short on the way Giorno's face turned openly grieving on mention of his friends. It was clear that seperation from his inner circle was hurting Giorno, and probably impairing his rational judgement as well.  He settled for a sigh and continued to pet Giorno's brow, "They're your biggest weakness. You're too attached and too trusting. You know that." 

Giorno was silent for a moment, and then nodded. "I know," he smiled, sad and fond, remembering all that the group had endured together in two different worlds. Then he reached up and rested a hand on Risotto's cheek, under his freshly remade black-and-red eye, soft fingertips pressing to tan skin. "That's also why I want you."

His touch was so gentle, and yet in it somehow Risotto felt such intense pressure, a hook snagging in his skin. His hands went to the back of Risotto's head, and he pulled Risotto down again until their mouths were just shy of touching. 

"You're not like them. You're a weapon," Giorno continued, low and soft, "My weapon. You'll hunt where I want you to hunt and kill who I want you to kill. You'll be the knife in my hand when flowers aren't good enough to keep things in order. I know what you are, and I want you exactly as you are."  

Risotto shuddered despite himself, a shudder of thrill, of being known. He felt Giorno's breath and drawled his lips against Giorno's for a taste of his skin. "Even if I hate all your friends and think you'd be a better Boss without them?" he murmured in challenge.

"You won't touch them," Giorno brushed lips back, "Because I'll never give you that order. And if you break your sworn oath to me now and try to harm them, I promise, as your Don - I'll kill you myself." 

Risotto had no doubt of that; he only nodded.

They broke off into silent kisses after that. Giorno's fingernails raked along Risotto's back, drawing thin pink lines over shivering skin, and he shifted his hips underneath the hitman's weight with a soft and needful huff. Giorno made alluring little noises, and Risotto found himself struggling to resist them. 

"All right," Risotto decided; as much as it pained him, they needed to stop fooling around before they both went over the cliff again and ended up in another tangle of fuck. They were in unknown territory and Giorno had already made it clear being related to Dio was no protection. "Enough."

He used a corner of Giorno's robe to clean them both off, with an appreciative hum at the softness of the material; something he intended to keep in mind for later. Pushing back on distracting thoughts of Giorno bound in silk, he ordered, "Up," and got to his feet, pulling on Giorno's arm as he did. "Get your head back in the game, Boss."

Giorno looked saddened for a second, hating the emotional shift, then rose to his feet. He rubbed at the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders out of stiffness from the cold hard floor. He knew Risotto was right. 

Metallica began buzzing in his blood, and he glanced at his hand, wondering what Risotto's Stand was doing. From his perspective, he saw nothing new. Curious, he summoned Gold Experience. Instead of its usual humanoid form, a clump of bright gold writhing creatures welled up from his palm and the pads of his fingers. He already knew he could still access his life-giving and generative abilities from their earlier battle in the car, but it appeared his own Stand's regular humanoid form was suppressed during colonization. 

He needed more time to experiment with it, which he just didn't have at the moment. He released his energy with an exhale and glanced up at his taller companion with a questioning look. 

Risotto smirked back down to him, red eyes proud. "Can you feel Master of Puppets writhing within your flesh? I have your Stand as well as your body to use as I please." He shifted his hand onto the small of Giorno's back, over the robe, and moved his attention toward the door, keeping his voice very low. "Tell me what you know about this place." 

The blond shivered at the hitman's confident words and touch, and tried to overlook the steady thrumming in his veins and the dark ache it invoked. "I've seen some of the facility, but I'm sure there's a lot I haven't seen as well. I've been kept to the personal suites and accompanied under guard the whole time. Drawing room, library, kitchen, bathroom on this floor. Upstairs, master bedroom, master bathroom. Padre conducts most of his business in the bedroom." Giorno frowned. "I haven't seen windows of any kind in any room so far. All the lights are artificial or candles."

"That means a generator, piping and wiring, basement," Risotto mused, thumb to his chin. "We could sabotage it, or start a fire." 

Giorno shook his head, thoughtful. "I think it would be more of a problem for us than them. They don't need light to see. They can smell us and probably sense our energy, and other vampiric powers may also be at play." 

"They left us alone together," Risotto countered. "If they don't consider us worth guarding as a pair, they're sloppy and overconfident. That's valuable knowledge. We'll explore and see what we find. Your bad habit of not gathering full intel on your enemies is just one more thing I have to beat out of you." He reached out and gave Giorno a sharp pinch on the cheek.

Giorno's cheeks flushed, both from the pinch and the accusation, but he didn't try to argue the point. He didn't want Risotto in his arsenal just to have the hitman kissing his ass, after all. "Fine. I'll take point. The library is the farthest point from here, we can at least aim that way." He gestured, and began to move, pulling his now crumpled robe around him and tying it closed as he walked. 

Risotto stayed close behind him; the assassin was naked and seemingly unconcerned about it. The stone floors absorbed their sounds, and no steps echoed back to them from any direction. The depth of the silence was eerie, and the feeling of the closed, cold hall was oppressive; the lighting left too many shadows, and there seemed to be a number of nooks and crannies along the hall for who-knew-what to hide in.

"Between here and there, it's mostly halls with locked doors and some offshoot stairwells going up and down." Giorno explained, watchful for sudden movements.

"Did you try any of the doors?" the hitman prodded. Giorno's tension was bleeding back into his senses, making him feel wary as well. 

"Only one. There wasn't anything I could sense behind it anyway. I was more interested in following the life signals I was picking up, assuming one of them might have been yours." 

"And now?" 

Giorno stopped just short of the turn-off entrance to the loading bay. With a deep breath he sent out a pulse through his Stand to sweep for anything living he could pick up. From his initial scan, he detected some energy, and he lifted his head, green gaze slipping out of focus as he pushed his awareness farther, wider, in an expanding sphere. "There are scattered amounts of strong life here and there on this level," he announced. "Three, no, four strong enough to be probably human, or at least larger living creatures than insects, mice or pets. But if there are more vampires, I can't detect them." Mista would call it bad luck, that four. 

The energy shifted around him, clarifying, and Giorno snapped back to full attention, backing a step into Risotto. He shifted from speech to hand gestures - freeze, there's one, close, over there. 

They heard footsteps. 

Chapter Text

Giorno's hands closed into fists. Enya won't watch, but someone else will be, he remembered the witch saying. Maybe this was their 'observer'. He knew it wasn't his father; there was no soft jingle of the chimes dangling from his belt or the metal tick of his curled shoes against the floor, and the ambient smell was wrong. Besides, Dio had left with Hol Horse. These were just ordinary steps, and a cologne that contrasted sharply with the low level threads of musky opium smoke that drifted through the air - too bright, too citrus. 

He felt Risotto kicking Metallica into higher gear. Dust and sand from the floor rose up and started to spin together into glinting silver scalpels in a midair cloud around them; Giorno saw them lifting up at the edges of his vision. Giorno reached up and snatched one, hearing a slight grunt from Risotto; the blond imbued the scalpel in his hand with life, directing it to take the form of a black sugar ant that he sent to hide behind his ear, under his hair. 

He'd just finished doing that when the owner of the footsteps emerged into the dim light of the hall. A man in a white tunic over black pants and a raised black collar, with a shoulder-length fall of layered black hair and shaved eyebrows appeared. He would have been handsome if not for the malevolent smirk on his lips, and an object in his hand that Giorno first took to be a switchblade. The man flicked the switch of the object in his hands, and it turned out to be a comb, which he dragged through his hair with arrogant, preening body language before he gestured with it toward the two. 

"Touchy!" he said, noting Risotto's aimed-and-ready cloud of hovering blades and Giorno's tense and wary posture. His tone was mocking, and his Italian had a sharp accent. "And touching. Look at the two of you, like two mismatched peas in a pod. Let me guess," he gestured toward the naked and looming Risotto, "You're the big spoon, and you," turning his attention to Giorno, "Are the little spoon." 

"The big knife, actually," Risotto said, calm and cold. "State your business with us or move on." 

The man snickered. "Business? I have none of that. What I have are orders. From Lord Dio." He waggled his comb at them in a little flourish before he put it away with a sleight-of-hand trick that Giorno recognized as that of an accomplished thief. 

Giorno lifted Gold Experience to just below his skin, body enveloping in a bright yellow glow, showing a portion of his true power as his eyes narrowed into a hard glower at the stranger. Padre, is this another test?

"You've gotten your only warning," Giorno said, steady and imperious, his head lifting as he tilted his head to look down his nose at the stranger. "I don't care what 'Lord Dio' told you to do. I'm telling you to back off. Now." 

"Or what?" The stranger moved forward. He pointed at Giorno, challenge in his eyes. "What are you going to do, little spoon?"
 
Giorno replied, "Risotto?" He lifted a hand and snapped his fingers. 

Risotto launched his 15 scalpels directly at the stranger. Giorno's hair rustled a little as the blades whipped past his shoulder and raised arm. All but three found their mark, narrow blades stabbing inches deep into the stranger in his face, neck and chest, drawing blood from the man. 

What neither of them expected was that in the exact same instant, something happened to Risotto that splattered bits of bright blood onto Giorno's head, hair and shoulders. He blinked in shock, turned around, and saw wounds opening up across Risotto's skin, saw the assassin staggering back from him a few paces and bumping back against the stone wall behind them with an expression of surprise. 

While he was turning around, the stranger brushed off most of the scalpels in a quick motion, then lunged across and grabbed Giorno by the arm, yanking him back and away from Risotto and, in a deft and quick movement, bringing one of the scalpels to Giorno's throat. 

Giorno responded by calling the little golden creatures that were his infested form of Gold Experience to create several four-inch thorns from his skin that stabbed hard into and through the stranger's hand and wrist, and though he received a nick at his throat for the action and more blood splashing on him, it made the stranger drop the scalpel and give a yelp of pain.

Risotto's matching hand also burst into blood. He gripped at his hand and glared up at them as red splattered to the floor, his teeth baring, clenched as he held back from crying out. Giorno grimaced at the sight, freezing for a split second, which was enough time for the stranger to grab him again and pull him back. 

"You get it yet?" the stranger hissed in Giorno's ear. "Anything you do to me happens to him seven times over. You like hurting your man, little spoon? You just ease down and do what you're told, now."
 
Giorno dropped his Stand aura with a pained expression; he stayed frozen while the mocking stranger pulled his hands back and pulled the belt off his robe to tie his hands. He was ignoring his body for the moment, trying to grind through options in his head, and he didn't like any of the ones he was coming up with. He could have transferred the insect in his hair into the stranger, but there was no guarantee destroying his brain could kill him faster than the enemy Stand effect (what else could it have been?) would also destroy Risotto's brain in response. He couldn't allow that to happen. 

The hitman straightened up and used Metallica to form up a silver handled butcher knife, its keen edge glimmering in the cold blue light. "Let's test that theory. If I chop my fucking head off, do you die?" he addressed the stranger. 

Giorno craned forward, opened his mouth to say "Don't-" 

And a shot came out of nowhere, the echoing sound of a pistol firing, and it punched into Risotto's forehead. He went down in a spray of red, collapsing to the floor, blade clattering next to his limp body. Giorno tried to lunge away and forward, overwhelming fury swirling in his head, but the stranger grabbed him with a strong hand at the back of his neck and wheeled him back, locking a strong arm around his midwaist. 

Outraged, Giorno looked for the source of the shot, and saw Hol Horse on an upper balcony nearby, holding a smoking gun in one hand, at an angle that shouldn't have been able to hit Risotto at all. Giorno gnashed his teeth, vowing silent revenge.

But he also realized one thing that the enemies didn't. Risotto was not dead. He could tell from the feel of the buzzing cells in his veins. Risotto was only playing dead; if he had actually fallen, Master of Puppets would have gone cold inside him. 

Knowing better than to give Risotto away, Giorno let out a genuine scream of rage - it required no acting, he was still very, very angry - and fought the stranger the whole way as he was dragged back and into another dark passage. His legs strained and he tried to stick his bare feet to the floor, struggling wild. He knew his job was now to make the loudest, messiest distraction he could, keep the stranger from focusing on feedback from his Stand, while Risotto took advantage of the confusion to work out the enemy's Stand and,  hopefully, kill it. 

Risotto was on his own for a while, but if Giorno knew one thing for certain, it was exactly how hard the hit man was to kill. He clung to that knowledge while he was forced backward into the shadows.

-

Risotto lay still on the floor, on his side, tasting his own blood in his unmoving mouth. He laid still as Giorno was pulled away screaming; he knew damn well the blond could and would take care of himself. He had more urgent problems, getting rid of whatever Stand was in him.

Giorno was not yet out of range, so while he could, Risotto quickly accessed Gold Experience through Master of Puppets, closing the head wound that the bullet had inflicted before hitting Metallica's internal block, with a dizzy little thrill of pain and glee at the golden power under his command. And if Giorno hadn't figured out he was still alive by then, using his ability surely would have tipped him off. 

Master of Puppets did its work, a tiny tinkling chime that vanished all evidence of the shot, and Risotto folded his iron-particle shield around himself to disappear himself from view. He didn't want to move much more, not yet, in case the enemy Stand was still active in him and movement would tip off the hostile. 

Instead, under shield, he sent Metallica seeking anything not of himself or it. The Stand swayed through him, humming in his veins in a flow fast and swift, and soon found the problem and reported it to him in its strange and wordless way. There was an alien intrusion deep inside the center of his brain. Yes, the enemy Stand too, but it had brought something else with it, something alien that it had implanted inside his flesh, and that something else was growing at a terrifying speed. 

The usual rule was 'kill the Stand, kill the user', but he had to be careful. There was no value in lobotomizing himself; he needed to remove the alien growth very, very carefully. And from Metallica's report, he didn't think he had much time left, maybe only minutes, before the invader overtook his Stand. 

-

Giorno made every movement a fight, but eventually he was pulled through the passage toward a downward stairwell. The dark man holding him sneered and grunted at him the whole time, only stopping when they were on the edge of descending. 

"Who are you?" Giorno demanded, eyes flashing as he glared over his shoulder. 

The man grinned at him, "Name's Steely Dan, little spoon. And my Stand's The Lovers. Bet you'll fall for me real soon." He lifted a leg, lashed out and kicked Giorno hard in the back of the thighs, knocking the blond off his feet and sending him into an uncontrolled tumble down the stone stairs. 

Giorno was taken off guard and couldn't get Gold Experience into a state to catch him as he fell, striking his shoulders and knees a couple of times on the hard stone steps. His bound hands made it impossible for him to catch himself until he thudded to a stop on the small landing below where the stair went through a 90 degree turn. Panting, he struggled to get his feet back under him while Steely Dan lazily descended the stairs above him, hands in pockets. Before Giorno could fully manage to get himself right, Dan reached him and kicked him in the head with a snort, knocking Giorno into the wall. 

Giorno's vision went white. He tasted blood across his lips and stumbled as Dan yanked him up by his hair and back onto his feet, then maneuvered him to the next edge of the stairs and threw him down again. 

For a second time, Giorno went tumbling and reeling, gaining new bruises as he fell and crunched into the next landing. This time he felt a distinct snap inside his nose as his face glanced off the edge of a stair, and tasted much more blood. The dazing tumble kept him off-center, and by the time he caught his breath through the blood, he was being pulled up a second time, and then hustled toward a doorway.

It was all too quick. Struggling to breathe, he was tossed into a small dark room that had no furnishings except for a small cabinet to the left of the doorway. He thought he saw a tangle of chains hooked to the wall and he thought: no. He crashed to the floor and spat up a puddle of blood, gasping for air. At that point he was trying to rally through his dizziness enough to tap Master of Puppets and free himself. Before he could fully focus, Dan crouched over him and slapped down something wet and heavy over his nose and mouth that not only blocked his air but smelled horrible and sweet and seared his lungs when he tried to breathe through it. 

No, no, no, he thought again, twisting and bucking under Dan's weight as his senses started to slide out from under him.

Chapter Text

Giorno was getting tired of waking up in pain. He bared his teeth and coughed up old blood that had pooled in his throat while he was unconscious, and spat it on the floor. His nose was still stuffed, throbbing, and presumably broken. He felt nauseous and dizzy from the kick to the head. He was on his knees, with his hands and ankles manacled to the stone wall behind him, and his robe had been removed; the cold floor was biting into his bare skin. His vision wasn't clear; it kept fluxing in and out of focus along with the dull, steady noise in his head.

The air around him smelled strange; not the omnipresent opium haze or the old musty dust smell of empty passageways, but something fruity and false-sweet that made the pulsing in his head four times harder to think through, and made his lungs feel itchy and raw inside. His stomach churned, full of blood and this sickening gas. Master of Puppets was still alive in him, and squirming and roaring with both his rage and Risotto's. 

There were black leather shoes in front of him; he presumed they were Dan's but he was too exhausted to try and lift his head with his arms pulled back in a strappado position. He didn't have to try; the man grabbed him by the hair again and forced his head up, so he could smirk at him in person, eyes to eyes. His shoulders and scalp screamed in protest. 

"Welcome back, little spoon," Dan grinned at him, lifting a foot and putting it down over the strip of DIODIODIO on Giorno's right thigh. He didn't kick, but he pressed hard enough for it to hurt. "Someone's been having fun times with daddy, I see." 

Giorno grimaced and tried to get Master of Puppets lined up to cut himself loose, but he couldn't make the final spark of connection. He was too tired, too dizzy, too gut-sick to focus, and dread joined the rage and bile in his gut as he realized this. He'd known he was going to redline healing Risotto; he just hadn't expected to be attacked again so quickly afterward. There was nothing he could do about it for now except power through and hold out until he had just a little more strength.

"Did my father tell you to do this?" he ground out, voice thick and smudged through the blood. He knew the answer already - of course he did, he wants to goad me into fighting him - but was trying to stall for time. Even another minute or two might give him just enough time to muster a spark. 

"Not as such," Dan replied, a mocking little tap at his lips as if he were considering it. "He did tell me to plant his vampiric cells in your big spoon's brain when we picked him up at Cairo. Don't worry, he'll just die. In, oh, maybe ten minutes? That's about how long it usually takes for the flesh bud to mature." His brown eyes glittered with sadistic amusement. "It won't hurt much - until the final minute or so when his brain shreds itself apart inside his skull." He lifted Giorno's chin and tilted the blond's head a bit, seeming to revel in the naked rage flaring in Giorno's eyes. "I'm just surprised he didn't have me do it to you. Wonder if he took care of that himself...?" 

"You're sick," Giorno snapped, trying to pull his head away. He lurched forward from the wall in his chains, really only managing to make his shoulders scream at him again. 

"I'm not the one fucking my own dad!" Dan laughed, and drove his knee into Giorno's face again, knocking the blond back against the wall in a rattle of chains and a fresh explosion of pain. 

Giorno was gasping for breath, chest heaving with unrestrained fury, a long string of blood flowing from his nose to splash over his thighs and the stone floor between his legs.  How did he still have so much blood left, he vaguely wondered, as the dizziness ramped again. He was too woozy to react properly even as he saw Dan opening his dark pants and pulling out his cock while moving toward him. 

He shook his head no, spat out no while his vision spasmed and focused and unfocused and kept coming back in on the dick moving closer and closer into his face. Any further attempt to resist was broken when Dan grabbed hold of his broken nose, pinched it shut, and pulled it upward, causing such a spike of pain that Giorno cried out, leaving his mouth open to be stuffed full of the man's soft-flaccid cock. Choking around the blood and pain and airlessness, Giorno gurgled, but he couldn't do anything more than just take it. 

Dan got hard in Giorno's mouth and gripped into his hair, huffing with pleasure. His eyes closed in satisfaction as he fucked his captive's face. Dan pushed past shaking teeth and tongue to hit against the back of Giorno's throat as he got stiffer, choking him, making the blond cough and struggle. Ugly, throttled growls and wet glrks from Giorno filled the cell as his head was thumped back against the stone from one punishing thrust after another. 

"No- no wonder your father gets off on you. Such a cute mouth, little spoon." 

Giorno's whole body quaked with anger but the chains still held, and for a few minutes there was just grinding and thumping, Giorno's rattling, frantic attempts to breathe through half-clotted-closed nostrils and whatever thin bits of poisoned air he could pull in around Dan's dick. 

The gas lingering in the room sat in a heavy cloud around Giorno's waist and stung at his lungs; his eyes were watering, gold lashes wet, and he was starting to feel himself brown out. Dan pulled back and let him grab a few desperate gulps of foul air. 

Dan put his hand on Giorno's fevered brow and smirked again, using his other hand to stroke himself lazily. "Fun fact. Anything I feel your big spoon feels. So you're giving him a nice little send off while he dies. I think that's just so lovely to think about, really." 

Giorno felt a black spiral of hate roiling through him - not just hate, but contempt and disgust. He hadn't felt such an overwhelming rage since Cioccolata, since Rome, and it built and built and built behind the dizziness and the nausea into something vast and horrible within him. The rage lit the spark. 

He was so, so angry underneath it all. Tired of being beaten, tired of being used, tired of being played with, tired of getting the ground ripped out from under him over and over. Tired of being away from his friends, tired of pain, tired of being forced into doing what he had to instead of what he wanted to. 

He moved the tiny little black ant still nestled in his hair to his mouth, under his tongue, in the second he had of gasping air; he hoped Dan would not notice it. The rage gave him fuel and he unraveled his transformation on the bug. The ant reverted to a small liquid pile of ash, iron and dust that Giorno tasted in his mouth and struggled not to swallow while he was being forced to give head again. 

It didn't matter. The ash taste went with the rage. He had just enough, and he'd had enough. Gold Experience twisted the bits of iron and ash in Giorno's mouth into a small creature. It formed beneath Dan's hardened cock and Giorno's tongue, and squirmed, a silk moth caterpillar with deadly, venomous spikes, Lonomia obliqua, whose panic at being awakened and crushed in Giorno's mouth at the same time caused it to expel every ounce of poisonous toxin it held in its spines into the skin it found itself rolling against, and Gold Experience's knock-back effect kicked in at the same time.

The shriek that Dan gave as he felt his dick being punched full of sharp, venom-laden holes and all but crushed inside Giorno's mouth was a sound Giorno knew he would cherish for a long time. The taste of the insect dissolving in his mouth was bitter, and he spat it out as Dan jerked back, hands flying to his dick and howling with agony. Some of the poison he knew was going into his own body, but he blocked it easily enough in his rage.

The immense blackness coiling up in Giorno revelled, and its lashing out gave him enough power to cut through the chains holding him down. They shattered, falling into a spray of little ants that fell around the floor by Giorno's freed ankles and crawled in all directions. 

Giorno brushed his hand over his wet face and felt a vicious grin moving his lips; he wasn't supposed to enjoy this, but he was going to, oh he was going to. It no longer mattered to him if Risotto was still under Dan's Stand influence or not; either the assassin could take care of it himself, or Giorno would find a way to put him back together somehow if he couldn't. Or he would die. At that moment, Giorno didn't care.

Giorno craved only revenge, and hate filled him, wild beyond his control. His whole body sang with it, and Master of Puppets answered; a vibration burning in his veins that screamed 'loadloadload'; he heard it in his own voice but he knew it was Metallica's keening wailing, perhaps even the same inner scream that had driven Risotto's vicious and stubbornly held vendetta past its due. 

Metallica wanted blood.

He crawled across the floor on his hands and knees and sat back on his haunches, watching Dan scream and writhe on the floor. His sneering face had burst into blood as well, eyes and mouth flooding with brilliant red bursts. Oh, so Risotto had managed to pop his Stand, then. Good, Giorno thought distantly. He shakily drawled his hand over Steely Dan's bloodied face and his fingers came away wet. He put them almost absently, almost childishly, into his mouth, suckling on the redness until his fingers were clean. 

Giorno tasted the metals, the life and strength in it. 

Metallica pleaded to him, 'loadloadload'. It wanted more. He was so tired, so weak from everything piling up on his head. He needed energy to heal himself, didn't he? 

He shoved his hand into Dan's mouth, muffling his yells, and he pulled down too hard with his fingers and ended up shattering Dan's mouth at the jawbone, pulling his jaw out of true. There was a loud and sickening snap. The screaming man stopped screaming and went blank and limp under Giorno, and he pulled his hand back again, staring at it like it wasn't even his own hand. Red. He only saw the red. He put his fingers back in his mouth again. 

It tasted horrible, and it tasted like survival. 

Master of Puppets whispered "Eat." Metallica wanted blood. He wanted blood.  

Giorno drew back and Master of Puppets built a golden knife in his shaking hand. Half-mad, his Stand howling in him, he grabbed at Dan's arm, lifted the lifeless limb in his other hand, and carved out a small jagged chunk of raw human meat. Muscle and skin and sinew, dripping red. Metallica vibrated with brutal black joy. 

He put it in his mouth, chewed on it once to draw out the blood, and swallowed the blood he squeezed out. He was unable to care enough about the inhumanity of it to stop. He chewed and chewed for every last drop of blood, gasping around it, until there was nothing but dull tasting grey meat the texture of old gum, and then he spat it out again. Metallica seized on the fresh iron and transformed it into more of itself, more life in tandem with Gold Experience, and Giorno started to feel just a tiny bit better. Just strong enough then that he could move away from Dan's body and crawl toward the closed door of the cell. 

He reached out from the floor and pushed his hand at it, tips of his fingers glowing white-gold. The door unravelled, with a flutter, into loose hanging vines. The air mixture changed with fresh air flooding into the cell, and the thick gas about the floor started to dissipate, allowing Giorno's mind to begin to clear. 

He got up, slow and dizzy, leaving bloody marks on the stone as he pushed from the floor, then gripped at the door frame and finally through the vines to let himself out of the cell. Shaky, shivering all over, feeling grotesque and horrific, almost at the point of vomiting, but still alive. He stumbled, caught himself, and moved in a shambling way back to the stairwell he'd been thrown down earlier. 

One step at a time. Slow. Aching. It felt like the longest and hardest walk he'd ever made, even harder than walking to the Colisseum knowing Bucciarati's dead body waited inside. 

Somehow he wasn't surprised when he finally made it back up the stairs and back into the main hall and Risotto wasn't there, but Dio was. Giorno stopped his shaky, stumbling walk and stared hard into the vampire's amber eyes with primal fury for what felt like a long, long time. "Don't... test me... again," he managed to choke out. Just as his legs started to slide out from under him, he felt The World grasping him and picking him back up again, a thick arm around his waist keeping him steady and holding him just a bit off the floor, tucked tight to its massive ribcage. 

Dio gazed on with a slight tilting of his head. He could tell so much just by the smell of the human's body, the pheromone-stink of fear and anger and human sex-musk boiling in him, by Giorno's furious but increasingly colorless face, by the shaking of his body and the new injuries all across his flesh. 

"No," Dio responded, and though he actually meant by it Yes, I no longer need to, he felt the ambiguity of the response more appropriate, more exact to his feelings. He turned his back, made a 'come' gesture with a raise of his hand and the slight flick of a finger, and began to move away. The World moved behind him, bringing Giorno along. 

Chapter Text

Risotto lay very still on the floor against the wall, wrapped in iron particles and smelling blood from the burst wounds that had come open from Steely Dan's rebound attack and being shot in the head from somewhere. Metallica had protected him from the shot, but it was to his advantage to let himself appear to be downed, for the moment. 

He had his eyes open, in case someone came near, but he wasn't really paying attention. There was a desperate battle taking place within his own brain, one that he could only track by impressions and Stand feedback, and he could not hesitate for a moment. 

Deep inside his brain something awful was growing. A pulsating blob of alien flesh, implanted by Steely Dan, was advancing fast. It was already into his parietal lobe, and starting to impact his senses of touch and temperature. He had lost control of both as the creature, the alien thing, wound down. He'd lost feeling in his limbs already. Soon he wouldn't be able to move even if he wanted to. 

The enemy was a tiny Stand, and from what Metallica could tell, the Stand had brought in this alien intruder, and both needed to be conquered. He was fighting on two fronts. Metallica didn't care; it had more than enough to handle both fights, but Risotto was consciously focusing on the intruding growth and using part of his ability just to keep the other Stand walled off and away from the implantation. That seemed to be working. 

He tried cutting the blob, using Metallica's swarming cells to create sharps that hacked and tore into the tentacles of the intruder. That didn't work. It just grew back, pulsating. As it grew, it started giving him a headache, which made it harder to focus his Stand. Dammit. He did not have time for this bullshit. 

Risotto tried directing Metallica to swarm and suck out the iron from the intruder. It was some kind of flesh thing, so it had to have some of the weaknesses of flesh, or so he thought - hoped. 
Metallica flooded out from the writhing flesh thing, silver ghosts that waggled and moaned as they did their master's will. But the thing wasn't impacted by iron loss. It didn't have any iron of its own to extract. It was trying to extract his. 

As far as he could tell, the blob inside him was dead; it was taking life energy from him through his blood to sustain and grow itself. It it were dead his connection with Gold Experience could be brought into play - but Risotto didn't know enough about the transformation process, was not a finessed user like Giorno, and turning something dead into something alive inside his head when it was already growing wild seemed like a very, very bad idea. 

The thing was growing with pulling on his blood. Like a vampire. He was in a house of vampires. Okay. 

He would deny it all access to his blood by using Metallica to cut off the individual capillaries it had tapped into. 

On the floor, as he lay twitching in this intense struggle for his brain, Risotto began to sweat, his eyes now sliding closed. Concentrating through the warping and jolting pain in his head as best he could in a desperate bid to free himself. He wasn't sure how many of these he could block before he had a stroke, but it was preferable to being colonized by this thing. 

One capillary closed. Another. 

The thing tried to pierce and reach in another direction. Metallica walled it off. 

Another. He was isolating it. 

He felt the enemy Stand trying to multiply now and attack Metallica, kicking through the wall he'd built up, but he had literally millions of soldiers to throw at it, and no matter how much it multiplied, he could trap and isolate them as Metallica outnumbered the copies easily. There was an intense swarming, buzzing feeling coming back from Metallica as Lovers fought back at the same time as he was trying to isolate the alien matter. 

Weirdly, he was picking up some kind of ghostly echo of something wet and tight moving on his cock. A distraction. He tuned it out. 

A pitched hand to hand battle raged within his brain, secret and silent with a thousand men on either side, chopping, stabbing and piercing each other for temporary kills on either side before the soldier melted and another grew to replace it. 

The vampire flesh was almost fully isolated. As Risotto kept depriving it of new blood, it was starting to sicken, to weaken. He could block it faster now. Metallica did not tolerate any threat to its dominance of the blood.

He tried cutting the intruder again, and this time, it worked. The thing was reacting slower and slower. There was a kind of 'pop' that he felt, subtle and sure, as he managed to fully isolate the clump of intruding cells and detach it from his brain. That isolated clump was immediately swarmed and encased, and chopped down finer and finer, from solid evil cells into broken, decayed particulates. Metallica began shoving the particulates out of his brain through the perivascular system. Fully engulfed and isolated from each other, wrapped up within Metallica, the fragments could no longer hook in and grow. They would just wash out of him with the rest of his neurological protein wastes in the normal manner.  

His headache eased and he felt sensation returning to his fingers and toes. 

In effect, he'd flushed the damn thing, which left only the enemy Stand itself. He was lucky; the Stand was not able to re-implant him with another growth, and did not seem to be trying as it was too busy fighting against Metallica, so that meant he could focus all his attention now on kicking out the Stand. 

And in that, it was so much easier. Metallica swirled and stormed, raging silver beasts with hollow eyes and gaping mouths washing over the enemy Stand and its attempts to clone and dissemble itself, flowing in a blue and silver tide; all of Risotto's rage flowed with his Stand, and his will was no longer divided. He wanted it out. Metallica wanted it out. 

He cut, and chopped, and swarmed, and stabbed, until finally he had the thing down to its core, a whimpering and weak Stand trapped on all sides in a seamless sphere of Metallica. The enemy Stand screeched, and clawed, and found no escape in the smooth interior. The sphere shrunk and shrunk, and soon closed in tight, coating Lovers with silver. Then the interior turned into an iron maiden, the inside forming spears and stabbing objects, piercing Lovers from three hundred angles at once. 

The Stand screamed, and shook, and died, withering away to nothing. Metallica reported total victory to its master. 

As Risotto's head cleared up, so did his vision, and his ability to move. 

He picked himself off the floor, panting hot, sweat running down his face. Now where had that fuckhead taken Giorno? He thought it was across the hall, in that... 

The passageway was gone. There was only smooth wall and black stone. 

Risotto's dark eyes swept up and down the hall. There was another passage very close, but it wasn't in exactly the same position. Was someone toying with the structure of the hall, another Stand in play? If so, it was subtle, and he couldn't easily detect any additional Stand energy. It would not have surprised him. 

Master of Puppets was giving him a vague sense of Giorno's location, but it was only 'downward', no clearer. 

Fuck. The hitman grimaced to himself and spared a second to debate what to do. 

He decided following the tiny tug of Master of Puppets toward Giorno would have to be good enough for a compass. He darted across the hall and went down into the dim, open passageway, on alert for another jump, more fired shots, or a trap in general. 

He heard the familiar twang of a bullet bouncing off stone as he started to move and pressed himself into the corner of the dark passageway, eyes widening in the dark. A second later, despite his shielding and being deep in shadow, he felt a hard strike in his shoulder, and knew he'd been hit again. This time the bullet punched through his flesh, drawing a splatter of blood down his arm and a hard, spiraling pulse of pain through his neck and shoulder. 

How was the guy hitting him? It must have been a Stand that could control and home bullets, like that asshole Mista's ability. He waited to see if another shot followed, but apparently the guy was only shooting because he saw something in motion. Risotto's lightbending shield had a particular flaw in that a sharp-eyed person might notice the duplication of elements around him as he changed positions. The shooter might have been changing position as well to chase after him. Dammit. 

He gripped hard into his red-stained shoulder as he peered out around the stone corner, and activated his access to Gold Experience to heal himself. It was a vague command, just 'fix this', but Master of Puppets seemed to understand, and a new searing hot pain and golden flare opened within the wound. The bullet melted into replacement muscle tissue and skin, flowing through him to close both entrance and exit wounds. Gritting his teeth through the pain, Risotto started moving again. 

He hurried down the dark hall, finding himself in a downward stairwell. There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary. He jumped down the short flight, landed on the turn below, then continued down the stairs, long legs eating up ground fast. 

What he could sense of Giorno was down further still, and at a lower angle to the right. The stairs were turning leftward, and when Risotto hit the bottom there was only one path to go through, a doorless exit also moving toward a leftward path. He lifted his head and looked back up the stairs. No pursuit. But Giorno's signal was getting thinner and farther away from him - and it seemed to be moving up now, instead of holding in place. Not good. 

Risotto froze, turning. His intent was to follow the stairs back up and try and hook to Giorno's ping again. He got up exactly one small flight of the stairs to the next landing - where there was no further progress he could make. The stairs beyond that point had completely vanished, replaced by another wall. 

His eyes narrowed. He was not only being disoriented by the enemy Stand, he was being herded farther and farther away from Giorno. It was likely the disorienting room shifting was happening to the blond as well, especially if he was trying to get away from that asshole Stand user. 

Well, so be it. Now he just needed to play along with this stupid shapeshifting fortress until he could find, isolate and destroy the Stand user animating the walls and passageways. Fine. This was a mission Risotto Nero had no trouble accepting immediately. 
 
He formed up a long bright silver knife in one hand. Then he went back down the now truncated stairs to the only door available to him, and entered.