Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tuesday, 2:30 A.M

Giorno rolled over in bed as loud music blasted into the night.

“Cioccolata…”

His upstairs neighbor had been nothing but annoying and disruptive to his sleep schedule. The next song started, “Iron Man”, by Black Sabbath. Giorno was about to cry, this madness started at 9 P.M and it never stopped. Everyone was far too terrified of Cioccolata and his roommate, Secco, to say something about his listening habits, even the landlord.

*zzzt*

Giorno checked his phone to see a text notification.

“WILL THAT FUCKING IDIOT EVER STOP IM TRYING TO SLEEP?? JFC??”

It was a message to the group chat and it was from Fugo.

“You can hear it all the way down there?” Giorno replied. Giorno was on the 4th floor, Cioccolata and Secco on the 5th floor, and Fugo on the 2nd floor. So, it really was that loud and Giorno wasn’t losing his mind.

*zzzt*

“Oh good, I wasn’t the only one kept up. “I couldn’t fall asleep in the chaos.” Sent by Mista, floor 4, same floor as Giorno. Mista hated the fact that he lived on the fourth floor. He said it was a bad omen and that the number 4 brought nothing but misfortune. Personally, Giorno never understood why Mista would fear a literal number, but ok…

“HaS hE LOst HiS miND??? cAN hE sEe oR iS HE BLinD???” Sent by Narancia, floor 6.

“Is Trish up?” sent from Giorno.

… Radio silence.

“Trish?” sent by Giorno.

“Snack break, yea im up” Sent by Trish, floor 3.

A new song, “Disturbia” by Rihanna started.

“I LOVE THIS SONG” sent by Mista .

“SAME” sent by Narancia.

“That’s one diverse playlist” Sent by Trish.

“Do you think someone could get him to play Imagine Dragons after this?” Sent by Giorno.

“Lmao npc” Sent by Narancia.

Suddenly, loud stomping from a floor above drew Giorno’s attention away from the group chat. A few minutes after the loud stomping stopped, so did the music. And then it was quiet. Giorno’s attention went back to the group chat.

“The music… it stopped” sent by Trish.

“And I was enjoying it too” Sent by Mista.

“Did someone seriously stand up to those two?” Sent by Narancia.

“Successfully no less” Sent by Giorno.

“WHO IS THIS MYSTERY HERO?” Sent by Fugo.

“THE MUSIC IS OFF! WE HAVE SCHOOL TOMORROW! GO TO SLEEP!” Sent by Fugo.

“Guys we have to go to sleep, mom says so.” Sent by Mista.

“Good night” Sent by Trish.

“GN” Sent by Narancia.

“See you guys in the morning” Sent by Giorno.

“Night!” Sent by Fugo.

And finally, at 2:37 A.M. Giorno could get some sleep.

*The next morning*

It was 7:00 when Giorno’s alarm went off. Honestly, he was expecting to be kept up all night by the music, so managing to get over 4 hours of sleep was actually a pleasant surprise. He got up out of bed and headed to the bathroom to get ready. He re-braided his hair before putting on his school uniform. He headed to the kitchen and started making breakfast. As he was halfway through cooking the sausage and frying the eggs there was a knock at his door, he quickly left the food to go answer it, and sure enough…

“Giorno! Is that food I smell?!” Narancia greeted him ever so politely at the door. It was his friends or the “Groupchat Gangstars” as they called themselves.

“Come on in guys.” Giorno said. He had expected this to happen. Why? Because it happened literally every morning. Although, usually they didn’t come all at once, they trickled in one-by-one and usually in a specific order too. Narancia was always first, because, well, free food. Fugo was second, he enjoys being punctual, sometimes a little too much. Trish, third. And finally, Mista, he was always late, and therefore, always the fourth. It’s almost poetic how much the number 4 plays itself into his life, despite his being a tetraphobe.

“So… Is breakfast ready??” Narancia asked excitedly.

“Narancia! That’s rude!” Fugo reprimanded. “Hey Giorno, if you need help with anything just ask us alright?”

“Thanks, but I’m alright. Breakfast is almost finished.” And almost like clockwork, as soon as those words left Giorno’s lips, his father stumbled out of his room.

“Ugh, Giorno, how many times do I have to tell you, keep these curtains closed. You know I’m very allergic to sunlight.” As Giorno’s father, Dio, looked towards the kitchen, he saw the other teenagers sitting at the table.

“Oh, the parasites are here.” he said, words dripping with sarcasm.

“You mean my friends.”

“Just because they’re your friends, doesn’t mean that they’re not parasites who come by to eat our food every morning.”

“Uh, I’m sorry sir, we’ll start bringing our own breakfasts when we pick Giorno up for school…” Mista said half-heartedly. As if he could make his own breakfast, he set fire to a kitchen whenever he tried to boil water, therefore, he was banned from setting foot in a kitchen.

“Oh look, the little boyfriend is talking. Gonna eat all my food and my son?” Dio shot back.

Shock, silence, a bright redness struck both Mista and Giorno, as their necks, then their faces, and then their ears turning red. Mista’s jaw hung like an open fly trap, while Giorno struggled to get a single word out before just yelling, “DAD! WHAT THE- WE’RE NOT- WHY WOULD YOU–”

“Relax Giorno, it was just a joke.”

“Just a joke??? Just a Joke??? I’m pretty sure you sent Mista into shock!”

They looked over at the table and sure enough, Mista’s face continued to hang open, unmoving, as if he were dead. Honestly with that remark, he might be.

“Well, at least your friends seem to have a decent sense of humor.” Dio gestured over to Narancia, Fugo, and Trish, who were trying so hard not to fall on the floor laughing. Fugo twitched as he tried to cover his laughter, while Narancia and Trish kept looking down whenever they couldn’t keep a straight face.

Eventually Mista regained cognitive function, and ate his breakfast in a very red, and very embarrassed silence. Giorno did the same.

“So um, we’re gonna go to school now.” Giorno said awkwardly. Normally he could shake off his dad’s inappropriate comments. Just not this one though.

“Well. ummmm, is everyone ready for the school day?” Fugo asked awkwardly, trying so hard not to fall over laughing.

“The more important question is, is everyone ready for tonight?” Trish said excitedly. Giorno had almost forgotten between Cioccolata’s loud music into unholy hours of the night and literally everything that came out of his dad’s mouth, Giorno almost entirely forgot about the meet-up at the beach tonight. Trish had been planning it for at least 2 months and everyone was getting pretty excited. A party on the beach, she managed to snag a rental of a cozy trailer too. Trish claims that she planned and acquired everything all by herself, but Giorno was more than sure that her dad’s money had something to do with it.

“Ok yes, that too, but first our classes! Now is everyone ready to go to school?” Fugo once again, redirected the group to academics. He did that very often. Just as Narancia finished shoveling food into his mouth, a muffled “ye- yea- les go” managed to break its way through all the food. Giorno could only assume that it meant “Yeah, yeah, let’s go.” The five got up and got ready to leave, but then…

“Hey Giorno!” Dio called out. “Come here, I wanna talk to you.”

“Seriously dad? What now…” Giorno replied as he walked over to his father. It was 7:20 already, if they were gonna walk to school and make it there on time, they needed to leave soon.

“About that beach party tonight-”

“Dad, really I’ll be fine-”

“I know that last time you went to a party that Trish planned, well-”

“Dad, please do not bring that up again.”

“I’m trying to make compound sentences and you keep interrupting! Will you let me finish Giorno??”

“Yeah, sorry”

“If you need me to come pick you up, I will. Just remember the code word.”

“Dad, please not the code word”

“If you don’t use the code word, then I won’t think that it’s serious.”

“Can we at least change the code word?”

“Hell no.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Beyonce is a perfectly fine code word to let me know you’re in danger, or you just want to be picked up.”

“Fine. If something goes wrong at this party, which it won’t-”

“What was that young man?”

“-I’ll use the code word, Beyonce…”

“That’s more like it! Alright, have a good day at school! And Mista, keep your hands out of my so-”

“ALRIGHT LET'S GO, COME ON EVERYONE WE DON'T WANNA BE LATE FOR FIRST PERIOD! GO GO ALREADY!!!

Dio chuckled as the teenagers left the apartment to get to school.

“That never gets old.”

Chapter Text

Giorno’s first class was Science, then Math, then English, Lunch break, then Art, then History, and then he ended the day with the evilest class known to humankind, P.E.

It wasn’t P.E. itself that sucked, but it was his classmates. His obnoxious evil classmates. But first, was Science. Although, it wasn’t like Science was much better. His teacher… to say that Giorno had a light beef with him would be an understatement.

“You little shitstains better be ready to learn today!!!”

That’s right. His science teacher was none other than his inconsiderate, terrifying, and ANNOYING neighbor, Cioccolata.

“You think he’s mad because someone got him to turn that music off?” Mista asked, in a hushed whisper though, he didn’t dare to invoke the wrath of Mr. Cioccolata.

“M-Mistaaa, no talking!!!” Mr. Cioccolata’s equally creepy assistant, Secco, had seemingly materialized behind Giorno and Mista. For the second time today, Mista nearly had a heart attack. And it wasn’t even 8:10 A.M. yet.

“We’re sorry Secco. We’ll stop talking alright?” Giorno, equally as disturbed, tried to get Secco to go away.

“Alright… But, I better not catch you boys talking again.” He paused, for dramatic effect? Giorno wondered. “Otherwise I’ll tell Cioccolataaaaaaa” He got up and left after that.

“That’s a fate far more terrifying than death.” Mista wrote in their shared notebook. Giorno and Mista had figured out a system to talk to one another without incurring Cioccolata and Secco’s rage. Because Science classrooms had small tables for two, rather than individual desks, passing notes was a thing of the past. At least in Science class. Mista and Giorno had a notebook that they placed in the middle of the table, then with things like textbooks and pencils in front of it, it was difficult to tell they were writing in the same notebook. It looked like they were taking notes, but in reality, they were talking in a different way.

“Yeah, at this point, I think Secco wants to put our heads on stakes and use them as classroom decor.” Giorno wrote on his page. Mista read over what he wrote before smiling and replying.

“Fr! My soul was about to fall straight from my ass” Giorno was about to reply to Mista’s creative comment before being so rudely interrupted by the teacher and his lesson plan.

“Today we begin our mold-growing labs! While I would’ve preferred we begin our anatomy unit today, the principal said it was ‘UnEtHiCaL’ to have students dissect human remains.” Cioccolata huffed. He was still pretty pissed about that veto. Secco was too.

“Exactly! How are these brats supposed to learn anything with that prude in charge!?”

One of the students sitting at the front of the class stood up before shouting out, “I agree! Talk about incompetence! I mean- do they even care about our education? What idiots!!”

“Formaggio- If you don’t shut your fucking, pussy, brown-nosing ass the hell up, I will personally throw you straight from this classroom and then have Secco shove your entire backpack up his ass. Is that understood?”

Formaggio looked shocked, disturbed, and overall scared shitless. Mainly because he knew Secco would actually do it. They all knew. “Yes- yes. I’m sorry sir.” He stuttered while sitting back down. Damn, sucking up to the teachers usually worked. He failed to consider one crucial aspect, and that was that Cioccolata and Secco were so far from “usual” or “normal”, one might doubt if you could even consider them human.

Mista wrote another message in the shared notebook. “Oh. My. God. this is smth that you see in those ‘teachers gone cray’ videos on youtube.”

Giorno replied, “Do you think this notebook would suffer the same fate if Cioccolata ever realized it didn’t have any real notes?”

After reading it, Mista didn’t laugh the way Giorno thought he would. Instead, he got a semi-serious look on his face and wrote back, “Nah, I’d never let him take it. Too much history.”

Giorno was surprised to read this and Mista took notice, he tried to lighten the mood by quickly writing an extra note. “I mean, we’ve had this notebook since last year! It practically qualifies as an ancient artifact right?”

Giorno smiled and was about to reply, but then a gut-wrenching scream came from the front of the classroom. It was Secco. When everyone was looking at him, he turned to Cioccolata, smiled, and said “Alright, they’re all paying attention now.”

Jesus, this class was insane.

Mista and Giorno got up and went to one of the stations at the back of the class. They gathered the following materials that Cioccolata had quickly scribbled down while contemplating strangling a student he caught with their phone out. A glass jar, soil, wet leaves, and some scraps of bread.

“If I see any dry leaves in your jar I will fail you on the spot!!” Cioccolata shouted from the front of the classroom.

“Hey Giorno, why do we need wet leaves again?” Mista asked.

“Because they help speed up decomposition, allowing the mold to grow faster,” Giorno replied.

“Um, e-excuse me, sir?” A student sitting 3 tables down from Giorno and Mista got up to ask a question. As they got up, half of the class began silently praying for their safety.

“What?” Cioccolata and Secco replied in unison.

“Well, it’s just… now what are we going to do with the lab experiment? There aren’t any further instructions on the board.”

Oh, that poor, sweet, stupid soul.

Cioccolata looked at them as if they had lost all remaining brain cells before just saying, “Get the fuck out of my class, dumbass”

“What?”

“You heard me! Out!!”

They got up, walked out, and sat outside for the rest of the class, which wasn’t that long. But still.

“Class! Why was that a retarded question?”

Silence

“Well?? One of you has to know the answer!!”

S i l e n c e

“Oh my god, It’s because there’s nothing you can do to speed up the process of mold growth after you finish this lab!! It’s that simple!!”

Once Cioccolata was finished screaming at the class, he checked the clock hanging over the room’s door frame. Class was almost over and soon it’d be time for second period.

“Ok, class is almost over. Just, I dunno, go already.” Cioccolata casually dismissed his class. However, much of the class remained seated, while some slowly got up, unsure of whether this was just another test or not. When Cioccolata saw his students, still in his classroom, he flipped.

“I told you all to go! SO THAT MEANS GO DAMMIT!!”

After that, they all quickly got up, grabbed their backpacks, and headed out. Once they reached the corridor, Mista and Giorno went their separate ways for classes.

“Alright, see you at lunch?” Mista said.

“Yeah. See you then.” Giorno said.

And then they went off to their next classes. Art class for Mista, and Math class for Giorno.

Chapter Text

Up next was Math class. On his way to the classroom, Giorno ran into Fugo and Narancia. The three of them were lucky enough to get this class together.

“Hey Giorno.” Fugo greeted him.

“Yeah! What’s up Giorno?!” As did Narancia.

“Hey guys. Nothing much really. Just Mr. Cioccolata being deranged as always.” Giorno replied.

“Oh god, I forgot you had him,” Fugo said. Fugo and Narancia were lucky enough to get a different Science teacher. Mista, Trish, and Giorno weren’t so lucky.

“Yeah, today he threatened to have his assistant shove a student’s backpack up his ass if he didn’t sit down,” Giorno said. When he looked over, Fugo and Narancia’s faces were wide with shock. They didn’t know half of Cioccolata and Secco’s insanity in the classroom. They walked into the classroom for Math class and took their routine seats. As they were getting their notebooks and textbooks out, Fugo looked up and noticed that their teacher wasn’t there yet.

“That’s weird. He’s normally here by now.”

“Hmm… Wait! Not again!” Narancia immediately looked up towards the vents for their teacher.

One time, during finals, their teacher stepped out of the classroom right as the test started. Half of the class took that as a green light to put their desk dividers away, share answers, and copy off others’ tests. Narancia was about to do the same before Giorno and Fugo stopped him.

“This has got to be a trick. Whatever you’re tempted to do, I wouldn’t do it if I were you, Narancia.” Fugo warned him.

“Um… okay? If you say so Fugo…” Narancia responded.

He decided it would be best if he listened to Fugo. They kept their desk dividers up, didn’t talk to each other, and just did their own tests, convinced that something was up. And sure enough, about five minutes in or so, Giorno looked up and nearly jumped out of his skin. There was their teacher, up in the vents, staring at them like a goddamn vulture.

“What the fuck-” Giorno gasped. Fugo and Narancia followed in looking upwards to find their teacher’s beady, reflective, raccoon-like eyes staring down at them from the vents. Needless to say, he failed half of the class for cheating. He was a special type of strict.

“He’s not up there… thank god.” Narancia breathed a sigh of relief. Which left the question, where was their math teacher??

2 minutes after class started, he rushed late, an ultimate-level first.

“Sorry, sorry I’m late.” He said, rushed and out of breath. He looked around the classroom to see which of his students were there when he saw Giorno sitting with Fugo and Narancia.

“Well, I’m sorry to everyone except Giorno.” He rephrased his apology.

“Seriously?” Giorno sighed. He never understood his teacher’s strange hatred of him.

“Mr. Abbacchio? Will we have both quizzes today to make up for no school on Monday?” Fugo asked, trying to distract their math teacher from picking on Giorno.

“Yes, we will have both quizzes today. So, I hope you’re all ready.” He replied.

“Hey, Mr. Abbacchio?” Narancia raised his hand and asked a question.

“Yes, Narancia? What is it?” Abbacchio responded.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” It was always best to take respectful formalities with Mr. Abbacchio, “Why were you late today, traffic jam in the hall or something?” Now, had Giorno asked that question, Mr. Abbacchio would’ve cursed him out for asking such a disrespectful question. Then, he’d give him 2 weeks of detention, before sending him out to the principal's office for the rest of the class period. Or, his feral side might get the better of him and he might just slam Giorno’s face right into the desk and leave it at that. However, Mr. Abbacchio seemed to have a soft spot for Narancia, so instead of a detention slip or face to the desk, Narancia actually got an answer.

“Oh- Uh, I was in a meeting with Mr. Bucciarati, and it ran a little long…”

The entire class went silent when Mr. Bucciarati was mentioned. A few students even moved to the edge of their seats. Anyone who had Abbacchio for Math class and paid attention knew that he had the biggest crush on one of the English teachers, Mr. Bucciarati. While no one ever talked about it openly, knowing that Mr. Abbacchio wouldn’t hesitate to hand them detention for the rest of the year, students always find efficient and silent ways to communicate. It started with a student body council meeting, in which Mr. Abbacchio and Mr. Bucciarati were both supervisors on, and the council noticed some more-than-suspicious behaviors on Abbacchio’s part. Fugo’s on the student body council and he was at that meeting, he was also the first to tell Giorno, Narancia, Trish, and Mista.

“No way! You’re lying, dude!” Mista said, while Trish did a near-perfect spit take and Narancia choked on his food.

“I’m not lying Mista! Seriously!” Fugo pushed back. “I’m not joking! And Mr. Bucciarati was so insanely oblivious to what was happening, it was actually painful!”

“Hold on, hold on, hold it. I need you to retell the story again, like right now.” Trish said, while staring straight at Fugo so intensely, you’d think he was like a grandpa with all of his grandchildren around, as he was recalling stories from the war.

“Okay. So, we have snacks and drinks at these council meetings. Mr. Abbacchio and Mr. Bucciarati go for the same orange on the table, and they accidentally bump their hands against one another.”

“Oooooooooh” Narancia and Trish were acting like this was the hottest gossip they’d ever heard in their life.

“And then Mr. Bucciarati was just all like ‘Oh, sorry about that Leone, here you can have this one.’ But Mr. Abbacchio is completely red in the face and it looks like he’s short-circuited. It took him like 10 seconds to get back to earth and respond.”

“Oh my god…” Mista’s voice trailed off, Giorno could tell he was slowly starting to believe what Fugo was saying.

“And stuff like this keeps happening, all meeting long! And on their way out of the meeting room, Mr. Bucciarati- get this- trips and falls on a chair that wasn’t put away, but Mr. Abbacchio catches him.” Rather than use words to explain what came next, Fugo merely mimicked an explosion, followed by what could only be interpreted as a heart attack or possibly an aneurysm. Hell, maybe even both. The group instantly understood what he meant. Giorno hadn’t said anything the whole time, he was still in too much shock from the idea that his Math teacher from hell had feelings for his English teacher. Trish was covering her dropped jaw with her hand. Narancia was almost squealing. And Mista was just eating his lunch while processing everything he had just heard.

Soon, the news spread like wildfire. Pretty much everybody, except for Mr. Oblivious Bucciarati himself, knew what had gone down at that council meeting. Even the principal knew.

The class was still on the edge of their seats waiting to hear anything else about this so-called “meeting” that Abbacchio had.

“Well? What are you waiting for?! I told you what kept me waiting! Now take out your desk dividers and get a pencil! I’ll be coming around with the quizzes soon!!” He yelled at the class after seeing all of their damn eager faces.

Narancia sighed. “Oh well, so close, yet so far.” He said.

By the time they were done with their quizzes, the class was pretty much over. Mr. Abbacchio was collecting the quiz papers. He was glancing at the answers on the front of the page and making faces according to them, it was a big indicator of how you did on the quiz. When Mr. Abbacchio got to Narancia, he picked up his quizzes, looked at them, and cringed. Poor Narancia. For Fugo’s quizzes, he smiled. It was probably an A, as always. For Giorno’s quizzes, he scowled. That meant he scored 100%, Mr. Abbacchio always hated it when he succeeded.

“Whatever. Class is over for today. Get to your next class, and get there fast.” Mr. Abbacchio said before sitting at his desk as the bell went off, his class vacated themselves from his classroom. They all went off to their last class before lunch break.

Chapter Text

English class was the only class that Giorno didn’t have with any of his friends. If it weren’t for the fact that his teacher in this class actually liked him, it might be impossible to survive. And it wasn’t because the bullying was so bad that he felt unsafe or depressed. No, his “bullies” didn’t make him feel like that at all. The reason it was so difficult to make it through this class was because of how… special they were.

Giorno walked into the classroom and took his seat right by the front of the classroom. Right as he sat down, a crumpled piece of paper hit him in the back of the head. ‘Teacher’s Pet’ was scribbled all over it. He looked back, and who else could it be other than Prosciutto, Pesci, Melone, and Illuso.

“Hey assface!”

“Ready for another day of sucking the teacher’s dick?”

“Where’s your merry gang of idiots now?!”

“Hehe- yeah, where are they shithole?”

An awkward silence settled upon the table after that last “insult”

“Goddamn it Pesci, who said you could talk?”

“Sorry Prosciutto, I just,”

“No, it’s asshole or shitface, while assface is acceptable, shithole is not!! No matter how many times I try to teach you to swear, you just never catch on…”

“I’m sorry big bro, I really am.”

“Just whatever, the moment’s been ruined. Get out your books or something.”

Giorno’s “bullies” in this class were just so weird and stupid. As much as they annoyed him, they didn’t hold a candle to Cioccolata and Secco. No one could.

“Alright, calm down over there.” Mr. Bucciarati said as he started writing the class period’s agenda on the whiteboard. “I hope everyone has finished the last few chapters of ‘The Great Gatsby” because today you will all be starting your final paper on the book.”

A loud groan came from a lot of the class. Illuso, Melone, Prosciutto, and Pesci included. Giorno was one of the few who didn’t, there was nothing to be surprised about. All year long, you got 2 weeks, 3 if you really needed them, to read the book, and then you got 2 weeks, 3 if you really needed them, to write a paper on the book. The workload in this class really wasn’t bad at all. If there was any class to groan in, it was Mr. Cioccolata’s science class or Mr. Abbacchio’s math class. But, if you audibly groaned in their classes it would probably be the end of your life, so maybe those weren’t the classes to groan in after all.

“Settle down, settle down. I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet. Once you’re all done with your papers, we’ll watch the movie in class.” Mr. Bucciarati announced in front of the class. A few cheers erupted from some of the students. That was a fun thing about Mr. Bucciarati’s class. Whenever the class finished a book and the paper that followed, they got to watch the movie adaptation. Compared to his first two classes, this class was so normal and chill, you might even call it heavenly.

“Oh, Giorno, can I ask you to stay after class?” Mr. Bucciarati asked. A not-so-quiet round of “oohs”, giggles, and snickers came from Illuso, Melone, Prosciutto, and Pesci. Giorno rolled his eyes, seriously, what was up with these four? Mr. Bucciarati thought that the eye roll was directed at him and quickly tried to mend the situation.

“Oh, it won’t be long at all, barely even 5 minutes. I just need some help wiping down the desks and whatnot, it won’t take up all of your lunch break. I swear.”

“Oh yeah, I don’t mind helping, really I don’t at all.”

“Thank you, Giorno.”

“You’re welcome, no problem at all Mr. Bucciarati.”

Mr. Bucciarati turned back towards the board to write the words “Turn to chapter 8 of your books!” in bold black erase marker. While he did that, Giorno made the mistake of turning his head in the direction of the idioquad (Idiot-Squad? Quad of idiots? He really needed to work on that name.) to see that Melone had a poorly drawn stick figure picture depicting Giorno on his knees, sticking his face up Mr. Bucciarati’s ass. At this point it wasn’t even bullying anymore, Giorno was damn near sure that they hardcore shipped him with his English teacher. Hadn’t they heard about the underground unrequited love going on between him and Mr. Abbacchio?

Giorno got out his book and flipped to chapter 8. It didn’t really matter if he followed along with the teacher and the class reading of the last 2 chapters, he had already finished the book. Spoiler alert: It’s got a pretty fucked up ending.

The class followed a technique that Mr. Bucciarati liked to call “Tag Reading”, basically, it’s like playing a game of tag, but with choosing who will read a collection of certain paragraphs. Whoever was “it” had to read 3-4 paragraphs, and then when they were done reading, they’d get up, walk over to someone else’s desk, tap it, and now whoever was sitting at that desk was “it”. Then they’d go back to their desk before the reading would resume. Pretty simple. You couldn’t pick yourself, nor could you go back and pick the person who had just picked you, and you couldn’t pick the teacher.

By the end of class, they had miraculously managed to finish the book. Pesci was in tears, Prosciutto was shaking his head, so obviously disappointed in Pesci’s “emotional weakness”. Illuso’s jaw was on the ground, and if Giorno’s eyes and senses deceived him, which he hoped to God they did, it looked like Melone was getting horny. Giorno was now more convinced than ever that Melone seriously needed a therapist.

“Pesci, will you just shut up?!” Prosciutto snapped.

“I just can't believe it, is love not real? Does true happiness not exist?” Pesci said through his tears.

“It’s a fucking book written by some old, whiny, white dude back in the 1920s!! It’s not worth crying over!” Prosciutto was starting to lose his temper with his younger brother.

“If he’s still like this when we all meet up for lunch, Ghiaccio is gonna lose his mind,” Illuso warned.

“GoD FUckiNg DaMn iT ProSCiUttO! GeT PeSci tO SHuT hiS PusSy ASs uP!” Melone said in a very mocking tone of voice.

“Whatever, Let’s just go,” Prosciutto said while getting up from his desk. He saw Giorno standing by Mr. Bucciarati’s desk out of the corner of his eye. He had wet wipes in his hand and was ready to wipe the desks down as his teacher asked him to. He scowled at Giorno. First Mr. Abbacchio, now these guys. What exactly about Giorno was such a hateable quality? He needed to know. Once the class was empty except for Giorno and Mr. Bucciarati, they began wiping down the desks. After a minute of silence or so Mr. Bucciarati asked a question.

“So, Giorno. You have Mr. Abbacchio as your math teacher right?”

“Oh, uh, yeah I do,” Giorno replied. While he kept a calm demeanor as he answered the question, although, on the inside, he was freaking out. ‘OH MY GOD- HOLY SHIT- Ok, ok, calm down, think rationally, maybe Mr. Bucciarati isn’t as oblivious as we thought he was? I have to tell Fugo and the others about this when I'm done with these desks.’

“I recalled that last week Narancia mentioned that Mr. Abbacchio was being quite rude to you in class. When I asked him for more details, he said that he’s mean to you very often in class. We didn’t have school yesterday, so I almost forgot to ask you, but is this true?” Mr. Bucciarati asked in a cautious tone.

“Oh yeah, I don’t know why, but he singles me out more often than he does anyone else in the class.”

“Well, that’s unacceptable. I’ll have to talk to him and get him to stop that. If it continues tomorrow, you let me know, alright?”

“Wow, thank you, Mr. Bucciarati.”

“Of course. Wiping down the desks was just a ruse to ask you about that. Go on, have lunch with your friends.”

“Yeah! And, thank you again, sir.” Giorno said as he put down the wipes. He grabbed his backpack and then headed out the door.

“Any time, Giorno.” Mr. Bucciarati said as Giorno left to go get lunch with his friends. “Now, to get some sense into Leone…”

Chapter Text

Lunch break, the only break during the day that students get to breathe and recover from the day’s events. They get to congregate and share the drama and day’s events with one another. And eat, yeah, that too.

“So, I thought that it might be related to-“ Giorno quickly looked around just to make sure that any teachers, especially Mr. Abbacchio, weren’t within earshot. When he saw that the closest teacher was easily 5 meters away, and nowhere near close enough to hear them, he continued speaking, although in a hushed tone. “Mr. Abbacchio’s colossal crush on Mr. Bucciarati.”

“Holy-“ Narancia began.

“Shit” Fugo finished.

“But, it was just about him treating me like shit compared to everyone else. But on the bright side, he might actually start treating me like a human being in math class. Think about it, the only person in this school that he’ll listen to is about to go to bat for me! This could be pretty awesome-” Giorno was about to continue this excited rant when someone tripped him, and he fell face-first into the ground and his lunch.

“Whoops, my bad…” the taunting voice from above. Oh shit, not this again…

“Tell me, Giorno, what’s dirt taste like?” A different voice, a worse voice. Giorno looked up, and sure enough, Risotto and Formaggio looked down on him like he was a literal piece of dog shit in their path.

“Assholes…” Giorno muttered under his breath. He looked down at his uniform, now completely covered and stained in his own lunch.

“What the hell?! Shit! Giorno, your uniform!!” Narancia exclaimed. He rushed over to grab some napkins, attempting to wipe away the stains on Giorno’s white button-up shirt and navy blue sweater, but to no avail.

“Narancia, it’s fine, really. I’ll just run by the front office and ask if they have a spare uniform set.” Giorno said. However, he didn’t care about his uniform, he didn’t even care that Risotto had tripped him. What he did care about though, was who he did it in front of. And he did it-
Right. In. Front. Of. Fugo.

Giorno looked over to see Fugo, shaking and seething, eyes turning red with rage, practically oozing bloodlust. He began his murderous advance toward Risotto and Formaggio. Narancia finally saw it too. Both firmly began to panic.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Narancia said while Giorno rushed up to stop Fugo from walking any closer to those two.

“Come on dude, they aren’t worth even a second of our time!” Giorno tried to reason with Fugo, trying to take the higher ground, and Narancia nodded in agreement. But Fugo wasn’t buying it.

“Quit trying to stop me you two! This- this- THIS FUCKING DOUCHEBAG’S HAD IT COMING FOR A LONG TIME!!” Fugo practically screeched. After hearing Fugo's declaration of war, Formaggio backed up. Just like Prosciutto, Pesci, Melone, and Illuso, Formaggio was all bark and no bite. When push came to shove, he would back out of a fight. Whether that was cowardly or smart was in the eye of the beholder. The ringleader of his little gang, Risotto, was the complete opposite. Quiet, cold, calculated, and always lurking in the shadows. Always waiting to strike. He didn’t earn himself the title of “boss” among his friends just by existing. He earned both that title and their respect by showcasing his natural talents as a borderline psychopath. But none of that mattered right now. Right now, what mattered was defusing this ticking time bomb of a situation and meeting up with Mista and Trish at their usual lunch spot.

There were few people, 3 to be exact, in this world who actually scared Giorno. One, his crazy-ass dad. Two, Risotto Nero (that monumental prick). And three, his own dear friend, Pannacotta Fugo.

When Fugo got angry, Fuck, he got ANGRY. Giorno had bore witness to multiple incidents of Fugo losing his temper and the chaos that undoubtedly followed. While Fugo could keep a lid on his emotions a lot of the time, thanks to the intensive therapy he was in, there were still times when he couldn’t control it. Fugo once actually got arrested after getting into a fight at a restaurant with his own damn grandmother. While Giorno wasn’t there to see it, Narancia and Mista were. They even managed to snag a picture of Fugo’s mugshot and they sent it out to the whole group chat. That was how Giorno and Trish found out about it.

“Seriously Fugo, just leave it be!!” At this point, Giorno was practically begging Fugo not to fight Risotto. Narancia was holding on to Fugo’s side for dear life, trying to halt his advance toward Risotto. Like some kind of desperate wife in those stupid soap operas his dad loved to watch, clinging to her unwavering husband while on her knees, begging him not to go. Yep, that was pretty much what Giorno and Narancia looked like right now. But like the hulk, when Fugo got angry he also got unexplainably strong. So strong that Giorno and Narancia could only delay the inevitable by trying to stop him. This delay was about to run out in 3, 2, 1…

“EAT FUCKING SHIT RISOTTO!!!” Fugo screamed as he rammed his fist straight into Risotto’s face.

“Oh fuck-” Narancia whispered under his breath. Fugo and Risotto were fighting now. It was officially time to run for the hills. Narancia was faster than Giorno, plus he also had the advantage of being farther away from Risotto than Giorno was. By the time Narancia deemed he was a safe enough distance away from the fight, he looked over to his side, expecting to see Giorno standing there. When there was no Giorno to be found anywhere near him, he looked back towards the warzone that he had just escaped, only to find Giorno in the crosshairs.

“Hey Giorno, you never answered my question. What’s dirt taste like?” Even after being punched in the face, Risotto never lost his calculated and cruel nature. To Narancia’s horror, he realized why Fugo hadn't thrown another punch yet to shut Risotto up. It was because Risotto had Giorno by his braid, and was holding a switchblade against his throat. Fugo stood in equal horror at the sight. After all, Risotto didn’t build up a reputation as the school’s resident psychopath overnight.

“What the hell are you doing?! Leave Giorno out of this!!” Fugo kept screaming, but Risotto paid him no attention.

“Well? I’m waiting for an answer to my question.” Risotto said in a completely calm and level-headed manner. He was entirely unfazed by everything that had happened within the last minute, an advantage he had over Fugo.

“It- It um, tasted like, like… dirt?” As the blade was only pushed further against his neck, Giorno scrambled to think of an answer. It wasn’t the best answer. Scratch that, it was probably the worst answer out there.

“Ha- hahaha! AHAHAHAHAHAHA-” Risotto began to laugh like a madman. Apparently, he found Giorno’s answer amusing.

‘Alright. Thank god, it looks like that bought me some time. Now, think back to all things self-defense that dad taught you…’ Giorno’s face might’ve given off the impression that he was nothing more than a frightened freshman being subjected to the violence of a junior, but that was the furthest thing from the truth. He just put on that face as a front, when in reality, he was just as calculated and level-headed as Risotto was.

“Holy shit! Dirt tastes like dirt, why didn’t I think of that huh? HA! You’re really bold Brando-” Risotto was cut off before he could say anything else by Giorno’s hand grabbing his wrist, then using his own weight against him to break his grasp on Giorno’s hair. While he was in the process of breaking free from his assailant, Giorno had also planned to kick Risotto in the crotch as hard as he possibly could, but Risotto recovered quicker from the initial counterattack than anticipated.

“You dumb fuck.” Risotto’s voice was just as hard and cold as his next punch. Giorno felt a horrible pain shoot up his torso and a warm, salty substance made its way to the back of his mouth. Blood. Then, A slash to his left shoulder. That same warm, salty substance now dripping down from the cut on his shoulder. More blood.

“GIORNO!!” Fugo rushed over, determined to beat the shit out of Risotto after he hurt Giorno. Blinded by rage, as soon as he got over to Giorno and Risotto he began wildly throwing punches. Risotto managed to dodge, but Giorno was still recovering from that punch to the rib cage that Risotto so kindly gave him. Rather than Fugo’s punches hitting their original target, they hit Giorno instead.

“FUCK! Fugo stop!! Goddamnit!!” Giorno had finally lost his temper. The blood that was pooling at the back of his mouth now spilled from his mouth as he screamed. He possibly had a broken rib cage, the cut on his left shoulder was too deep to simply be patched up with a bandage, and now he probably had a black eye because of Fugo’s unintentional beatdown.

“Holy shit-”

“He actually did it…”

“Boss is totally fucked now…”

Risotto looked towards the cafeteria door to see his friends all standing there, in pure shock. They knew that he liked to resort to violence, but this was overkill. This was too much. Formaggio had run out to tell them about what happened, but now they had missed most of the fight.

“Giorno- Giorno I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to…” Fugo’s rage had been temporarily quelled with his shock and guilt. His apology was cut short when another party burst into the room.

“What the hell!?” Narancia’s voice rang out. He finally returned with Mista, Trish, and two teachers, Mr. Cioccolata and Mr. Bucciarati.

“Giorno!” Trish called out.

“Mr. Brando, are you alright?” Mr. Bucciarati did the same.

But one voice rang louder than any of the others.

“GIORNO!!” Of course, it was Mista’s voice. He ran at Giorno, faster than the speed of light. “Why- How-? Nevermind that! We need to get you to the nurse’s office now!!” Probably the most panicked person in the whole room, Mista nearly had an aneurysm when Giorno stood up and began to walk toward the office.

“THE FUCK?! Hey hey! What are you doing? You’re injured, at least let me carry you!” Mista rushed to Giorno’s side again to catch him, but Giorno never faltered.

“I’m fine. It looks a lot worse than it actually is.” Giorno replied. He could hold his own head up high, even after all of this. He didn’t need some Mista in shining armor to save him and heroically carry him to the nurse’s office. He. Could. Handle. This.

“No, seriously! Let me help you Giorno!” Mista protested. Giorno kept walking towards the office as everyone stood in amazement that Giorno could even walk after all the damage he sustained.

‘Calm down, calm down. Don’t lose your cool Giorno. Just make it to the office and call dad. Cross one bridge at a time..’ Giorno thought to himself.

“Giorno, what the hell is up with you?! Let me help you!” Mista continued his pleas of protest.

‘Ignore it, he means well. He always means well, just ignore it..’

“Will you just drop the tough guy act already?? I know you’re in a shit ton of pain, so just let me help alread-” Before Mista could finish that last sentence, for the second time in a day, Giorno lost his cool.

“For the last time Mista! I am not weak! I-” he paused. Giorno knew he shouldn’t say anything else. He knew he should keep his mouth shut. That he shouldn’t start another fight with Mista. But he was just so fucking sick of this!

“I can hold my own in a goddamn fight!! And I can shoulder my own pain! Will you and your savior complex just give it a rest already?! This is why-” Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it-

“This is why I should have dumped you when I had the goddamn chance!!” Giorno snapped and yelled. He instantly felt guilt and regret. The heartbroken look on Mista’s face only made it worse.

“No… Mista I’m so-” He tried to apologize, but he was cut off before he could continue.

“Mr. Brando!” Mr. Bucciarati ran out to him and in between him and Mista. “You’ve bled out quite a lot already, no more of this nonsense! Nurse’s office now!” Mr. Bucciarati commanded.

“But…” Giorno sputtered.

“No buts! Let’s go!” Mr. Bucciarati reprimanded.

The rest was a blur. A long, confusing, painful blur, where the last thing he saw was Mista’s face with that horrible look on it. From the time the nurse gave him a fucking ice pack, to the time they called his dad to tell him about what happened and that he needed to come and pick Giorno up, to the time that Mr. Bucciarati said that a hospital should be contacted and the nurse said no, all the way to when his dad got there to pick him up and chewed the staff out for not calling the hospital. It was like he was watching it entirely in 3rd person. Like he wasn’t actually in the room. The blur finally seemed to come to an end in the car with his dad.

“Giorno!? Are you listening to me? Tell me what happened now so I can sue someone’s ass!!” His dad demanded. Giorno opened his mouth to relay the lunch break’s events to his father, but all that came out were tears and choked sobs.

“Oh Giorno…” Dio pulled his son in for a hug. Comforting him in his rare vulnerable moment. He may have looked like a parent entirely preoccupied with caring for their child, but the only thing running through his thoughts was: ‘I am gonna kill whoever did this to my baby boy.’

Chapter Text

Dio was about to lose his mind. This day had just been testing his patience nonstop. First, he gets a call from the school saying that Giorno was in a fight and had been badly hurt and that he most likely required medical assistance. Then he had to get his colleague, Pucci, to cover for him for the rest of the day. THEN he got to Giorno’s school only to find out they had only given him a fucking ice pack instead of taking him to the hospital to receive medical assistance like they said he would need over the phone. After all that, Giorno broke down into a bawling mess the second they got in the car and he just tried to ask him about what happened. And he kept crying, all the way to the godforsaken hospital. And to top it all off like the cherry on top of the sundae of bullshit-ry, the bitchy receptionist told them it’d be an hour wait at the fucking Emergency Room.

“Listen! I came here because my son needs medical attention NOW!” Dio pointed at Giorno, who was starting to look pale from all of the blood loss thanks to that cut on his left shoulder. The blood was beginning to drip and pool on the floor. The bitchy receptionist made a face when she saw the pool of blood. Dio nearly lost it.

“If you don’t want blood on your precious floors, GET MY SON A DAMN DOCTOR!” Dio turned around and whispered, “Giorno, if you have to bleed out, do it on their floor.”

“Ugh, alright…” The receptionist picked up a phone and muttered something before hanging up, looking at Giorno and saying, “Alright, you go head on back, a nurse will take you to a room. And you,” she then turned to Dio, “You need to fill out some paperwork.”

“Thank god…” Dio muttered. Before turning back to his son and saying, “Giorno, head back, I’ll be there soon.”

Truth be told, Giorno barely processed what he said before a much nicer and much more worried nurse came out to bring him back. He had lost so much blood that it was starting to affect his basic cognition.

“Oh my god!! You’re so pale! Come on, let’s get you patched up.” She guided him towards a room, with how out of it Giorno seemed, she knew that he had probably been untreated for a while now. After about 30 minutes or so, Dio stumbled in from the waiting room.

“So… much… fucking… paperwork…” Dio groaned, but seeing the state that his son was in made him shut up. Hooked up to an IV, fresh stitches in his shoulder, his black eye had spread halfway across his face, but worst of all, was the fact that looked sad. Like, actually looked sad. Giorno never looked sad, even if he was.

“Giorno, are you okay? I’m being very serious right now.” Dio asked with extreme caution. Giorno looked at him, but just as quickly looked away. Dio walked over to see what Giorno was trying to hide from him. Giorno was crying, again. Far more quietly this time compared to in the car, but still. Dio was absolutely shocked. Before today, it had been years since he’d seen his son cry. While in such a shocked and frustrated state, Dio had a thought, the first one that could be considered relatively good today.

‘Wait. He’s crying, does this mean? Does this mean that he’s finally recovering?! Holy shit!! No, wait, don’t get carried away just yet. Wait until Giorno calms down and tells you what happened. I mean, as horrible as this whole situation is, it’s progress right?!’

Before Dio had full custody, Giorno lived with his mom most of the time. He only stayed with his dad every other weekend, despite the fact that his dad fought tooth and fucking nail to get at least 50/50 time. And every weekend that he had Giorno, Dio only got more and more concerned for the boy’s wellbeing.

“Why the hell does he have so many bruises?! His arms, back, legs, HE’S COVERED!!” Dio nearly roared at the end.

“Don’t you dare yell at me! Look, he’s an eight-year-old boy, he rough houses with his friends at school. That’s what eight-year-old boys do!” Giorno’s mother, Shiobana, snapped back. Dio always worried about what happened to Giorno when he wasn’t around. Especially with that smarmy, slithering new husband of hers.

The next weekend, when Giorno was over at his father’s house, he denied any sort of help from his father.

“Here let me help with that.” Dio offered help to his son, who he noticed was struggling to put on a button-down. He kept getting stuck on this one button.”

“No. I got it.” Giorno quickly turned his back to his father and tried to finish the last few buttons. Which he did eventually. At the time, Dio just chalked it up to the fact that not only was his son pretty shy, but he was also fiercely independent. But as this kept happening over and over and over again, Dio got suspicious.

‘What the hell has been up with Giorno these past few months?’ As “The incident” that awarded Dio full custody crept closer, Dio wondered this question on a daily basis. Giorno would both lock and barricade the door when he bathed, he always wore pants and long sleeves even if it was the middle of summer, and he had completely stopped crying. When Giorno had to get shots at the doctor's, he used to sniffle and cry a little bit like other kids, but now he wore a stone mask that Dio couldn’t believe was actually his face. No tears, no noises, nothing. By this point, Dio knew that there was something going on at his mother’s house that Giorno felt he couldn’t tell him about, and he was going to find out what, even if it killed him.

Sunday night, Dio was taking Giorno back to his mother’s house when he pulled into a parking lot. He got out his phone and texted “hit some traffic, going to be a few minutes late” to Shiobana. All he got back was “Read”

“Giorno.”

“Yeah, what is it Dad?”

“You know you can talk to me about whatever’s happening to you.”

“...”

“Giorno, I-”

“But you wouldn’t be able to help.”

“What?”

“I rarely see you. And no one listens to you. So you wouldn’t be able to help.”

Giorno's helpless words were actually starting to break Dio’s heart. This is how his son has felt this whole time?? Fuck…

“Giorno, I can help you. I would move heaven, earth, and hell to protect you. So please, tell me what’s wrong okay?”

“You promise?”

“I promise.” This was the one promise that Dio would rather die than break. And what Giorno told him made him see red. After that, Dio was quickly awarded full custody when he presented all the evidence Giorno gave him to the courts. His mother lost all custody and visitation time. Soon after, Dio and Giorno moved far away and started a new life in some small coastal town. When life here settled, Dio did everything to try and help heal his son’s wounds. Therapy, support groups (After 2 weeks, Giorno’s introversion won him over and he stopped going), and he even homeschooled him for 2 years. But in the end, even as his therapist said Giorno had made amazing progress in recovery, he could never bring himself to be as open or expressive as he once was when he was little. That was something that Dio always had such a hard time bringing himself to accept.

But now, in the midst of a horrible situation, a small new hope for Giorno bloomed in Dio’s heart. Maybe, just maybe…

“What happened in there Giorno?” After his son was finished crying, something he rarely ever did, Dio wanted to know what happened in the cafeteria since the teachers couldn’t tell him exactly what happened.
“I fucked up. I fucked up so badly dad…”

“How so?”

“Mista, I said so much that I shouldn’t have. I just want to take it all back…”

“Wait- Mista did this!?” This was officially Dio’s excuse to beat the fuck out of that annoying shitstain. As far as Dio was concerned, not only had he been shamelessly putting the moves on his son and coming over nearly every morning and eating THEIR food, but now he beat Giorno up all because of some off-handed comments. Dio was ready to call up some dangerous friends and doxx that brat when Giorno piped up and clarified.

“No, Mista didn’t do this. He tried to help me, he tried… but I just said awful things. He was being so thoughtful and kind…” Giorno hung his head low, he needed to make this up to Mista. He needed to rekindle whatever he might’ve doused. He needed to apologize. Dio on the other hand just rolled his eyes in frustration. Goddamn it, why did that twerp have to be such a good kid? It made Dio’s endless annoyance with him a lot less justifiable. Dio would have to shelve the beatdown and doxxing for now. But for now, Dio had to put aside all of his reservations to help his son.

“Giorno. I’m sorry that all of this happened to you, and I want to help you in any way I can, but first, you have to tell me about what happened and who did this to you.” Dio said sternly.

“This prick from school, Risotto. Risotto Nero. He’s the one who did this.” Giorno replied. Never mind, Dio had a full name now, the beatdown and doxxing didn’t have to be shelved.

“Continue.” Dio wanted the full story, and he had yet to receive it.

Giorno proceeded to recall the lunch period’s events in full. From the time Risotto tripped him, all the way up to sitting in the nurse’s office in a total haze. Dio wrote everything down like some kind of detective.

“And… that’s pretty much everything that happened,” Giorno concluded the recollection of the day’s events.

“Thank you, Giorno. Now I finally know what the fuck happened today…” Dio breathed a sigh of relief. He was still livid and pissed as hell about what happened to Giorno and the fact that he didn’t even get a single detail until 2:15 P.M. or so. And yes, he was aware that waiting two hours wasn’t even that long, but when it was about Giorno, Dio couldn’t help but want to know right away.

Just as Giorno finished telling his dad about what happened. The nurse walked in to tell them some good news.

“You are a very lucky young man, I'll have you know. The X-ray results just came back, your ribs are nor bruised or broken.” She smiled. “I know I already said this, but seriously, count yourself lucky.”

“No way…” Giorno raised his shirt to reveal a large bruise that spread pretty much across his entire stomach and part of his chest. “Even with this?”

“Even with that,” she nodded. “So naturally, we’re going to run a few more tests, and if everything comes back all clear, which I’m sure it will, Mr. Dad over here will fill out your discharge papers.” She said.

Discharge papers? Giorno was going to go home so soon? He wasn’t as injured as he thought he was from that fight. After all, it was only two massive bruises, a black eye, and 6 stitches. He was practically fine.

But right now, only one thing was on Giorno’s mind.

‘I’ll definitely be home by evening. Which means that I can still make things right. I can still fix this!’ Giorno thought.

“Hey Dad, when we get home, can you do me a favor?”

Chapter Text

Tuesday 7:37 P.M

“I can’t believe this is the favor you want…” Dio groaned. Sometimes, he just couldn’t believe his son.

“My terms and conditions are pretty agreeable right?” Giorno asked although it was more of a rhetorical question. He had a smug hint in his tone of voice, and Dio could see the beginnings of a shit-eating grin. He knew that he had won him over with these rare and valuable terms and conditions.

“Alright, fine!” You can still go. But if you break one of our agreements, I’ll be there faster than you even have time to pray for Mista’s safety.” Dio said sternly.

“Wait, why Mista?” Giorno asked, somewhat confused.

“Because you’re my precious baby boy and my only goal in life is to nurture and protect you. But Mista… Well, Mista can suck it.”

“Dad!” Giorno exclaimed, he was never going to be able to make his dad like Mista.

“Giorno! Get going before I change my mind damn it!” Dio yelled. Giorno had managed to convince him to still let him go to Trish’s party tonight. His selling points were 1. It's no more than 5 people because no more than 5 people knew about it. 2. There would be no alcohol, Trish’s dad may be really cool but he’s not that cool. 3. He would be super careful and even bring a first-aid kit. 4. Giorno, for once in his life, was going to enable the tracker on his phone. That way his dad would know where he was, well at least he felt like disabling it again and lying to his dad about how phones work. This last one was the golden ticket for Dio. This was probably one of the best deals his son had ever presented him with. And in the end, he accepted.

“Okay, I’m going!” Giorno yelled back, before going to open the door. The second he opened the door, he nearly jumped out of his skin. Trish was standing there, waiting for him. She was all dressed up, as expected. In a knee-length skirt that had a slit starting at her right mid-thigh, a cropped halter top, and to top it all off, a leather jacket that she very clearly stole from her dad.

“I know what you’re thinking. When is Vogue gonna hurry up and hire me already?” Trish said voice saturated with her usual snark. Trish was pretty much a fashion icon. She had cracked the code on how to make their boring school uniforms “aesthetic” as she called it. Some students paid her to tell them how to do it without getting in trouble. She knew the dress code handbook like the back of her hand, her father did write it after all. Her very own underground fashion advice black market.

“Ready to go? I know I look pretty rough because of earlier today but-” Giorno’s sentence was interrupted by Trish’s stroke.

“Ready to go?! READY TO GO?!?! Looking like that!?!” Trish had to cover her mouth to keep from screeching. If there was one thing Trish was ever serious about, it was fashion.

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Giorno asked. He was wearing dark blue jeans, and a long-sleeved band tee-shirt that said “The Golden Wind Experience Tour”. All light and hope drained from Trish’s eyes.

“Look, we have to get going soon, before my dad freaks out and changes his mind about letting me go,” Giorno whispered.

“Okay. I know, I know,” Trish peeked behind Giorno and saw his dad on the phone in his own bedroom. The door only open a crack. Trish glanced at Giorno before quietly dashing in like a mad woman.

“Trish!” Giorno urgently whisper-shouted. It was already 7:45. If they were gonna make it down to the beach to meet up with their friends on time, they needed to leave about 5 minutes ago. Less than a minute later, Trish came back with a spare backpack full of, what Giorno could only assume were more acceptably stylish clothes.

“Okay! Let’s go now!” Trish said before dragging Giorno out the door.

“Ow, Trish, my injuries, remember?”

“Oy my god, yeah,” She dropped Giorno’s arm like it was a radioactive nuke. “I. Am. So. Sorry.”

“It’s no problem. Just, damn…'' Giorno wasn’t used to feeling so vulnerable. Knowing that just a tug on his arm could send pain shooting down the side of his body, made him feel weak and wide open. It made him feel weak, like being vulnerable was a horrible thing.

‘No.’ Giorno thought to himself, ‘Feeling like that is what got me into, well, at least half of this mess in the first place.’

As Giorno thought quietly to himself, Trish rifled through the bag of clothes she grabbed, searching for the best outfit that she could possibly whip up in such a short amount of time. Suddenly and unbeknownst to Giorno, her face lit up. She had found it.

“We’re taking a quick detour dude.” She said, this time making sure to lightly tug Giorno in the right direction. Towards her apartment.

“308, Why are we stopping at your apartment, Trish?” Giorno was starting to get worried. It was now 7:49, if they were to make it on time, 9 minutes ago was the ideal departure time.

“Relax, I already texted them that we’re gonna be late. Just change,” She shoved some clothes into his grasp, “And then, I swear we’ll finally get going.”

As Giorno went to change, Trish went and put his other clothes in her room, just until they got back. And then she went to let her dad know she was leaving.

“Giorno and I are about to head out,” she kissed her dad on the cheek, “sound good, dad?” Trish asked.

“Yeah, just be back sometime before 1:00 A.M. got it? It is a school night after all.” Trish’s father, Diavolo, the principal of their High School, was a far more laid-back dad than you’d expect him to be. As long as her grades stayed good, and she came back safe and sober, he never saw much to protest about.

“Thank you, love you, dad.”

“I love you too sweetheart. Oh, can you tell Giorno that his little bullying situation has been resolved. Tell him that he doesn’t have to worry about Risotto anymore. He won’t see him for a very long time.”

“You make it sound like you killed him, dad.”

“Maybe I did,” Diavolo said with sarcasm dripping from his voice. Wonder where Trish got it from?

And almost as if on cue. Giorno walked out of the bathroom, a completely changed person. Now, he was wearing ripped jeans (the only pair he owned), A black tee shirt, and a zip-up hoodie from the same band. Unlike the tour shirt, it just said “Golden Wind Experience”, with the band’s decals below it. And the special touch that Trish was probably the proudest of, red converses.

Squealing with delight at yet another masterpiece of her own creation. Giorno silently agreed with Trish. Her choice of outfit was far better than what he had picked for himself. Although, he did kind of look like a skater boy.

“Okay, we’re gonna get going now! See you later, Dad!”

“Have a great time sweetheart. Stay safe.” Diavolo said. His nonchalant attitude never ceased to surprise Giorno. Especially since he was the principal of their high school, usually they were supposed to be all uptight and strict, well, at least according to the movies.

“Bye Dad!!!” Trish yelled as she and Giorno were leaving the apartment.

The walk to the beach wasn’t too long, but since the sun had already set, it was a little chilly. Luckily the cold never seemed to bother Trish or Giorno. Narancia was a different story, He probably had 3 different sweatshirts and jackets on, in addition to stealing all of the blankets. Trish looked down to check her phone, she saw that she had 5 different notifications. All of these were from Fugo because she had messaged him directly instead of using the group chat.

They read:

“Mista just got here, just waiting on you now.”

“Gonna be late? Ok, No problem.”

“Wait- You said ‘we’ is giorno coming?!?”

“TRISH IS GIORNO COMING OR NOT!? IS THIS WHY YOU’RE LATE!? TRISH!?”

There was a break in the barrage of messages sent.

“can you tell him i’m really sorry?”

Trish smiled before replying, “You can tell him yourself when we get there lol.” Even if he fucked sometimes, and even if sometimes was more frequent than ideal, Fugo really did care. Like, a lot, everyone knew he cared so much, even if his anger would get the best of him. Even if he could better express himself by screaming and punching a hole in the wall than he could with words, they’d never leave him behind. And there was also no question that Giorno would forgive him, in fact, Giorno had already forgiven him. Trish just smiled to herself, It would take a lot more than what happened at lunch today to ever break up their friend group.

About 5 minutes into the walk down to the beach or so, Giorno broke the silence.

“Hey Trish, I have a question.”

“Alright then, hit me with it.”

“I know I need to apologize to Mista, about earlier, but I’m still not sure how…”

“Can I ask what you mean by that?”

“I mean, should I pull him off to the side? Should I make a grand gesture? Should I be chill and discreet about it? Or should I treat it like a big deal-” Giorno could’ve droned on for hours with his various apology ideas if Trish hadn’t interrupted him.

“Oh my god, Giorno. Okay, you know Mista, right?”

“Yes, I know Mista…” Giorno, now even more confused than he was 30 seconds ago, didn’t really understand the question. Trish picked up on this and half-sighed. Trish knew how bad with feelings Giorno was, why was she even surprised?

“I’m going to spell this out for you, so please stay on the same track as me.” She said. Giorno nodded in response.

“I know you know Mista. But you don’t just know him, you KNOW know him. And well, Mista’s kinda a dumbass. He has big emotions, big feelings, and big reactions, and he wears his heart on his sleeve. You need to take all of these factors into consideration when you do things for other people, this includes apologizing. ‘Treat others the way you want to be treated’ is too vague for its own good. The way that someone like you, Giorno, would want to be apologized to, is not the way that someone like Mista would want to be apologized to.” When Trish finally stopped talking to take a breath, she looked over at Giorno, who appeared to have just had a lightbulb moment. Trish could almost hear the ‘Ding’ go off in his brain.

“Hey, Trish, can we stop at the convenience store off of Westline and Shoreside? I need to get some things.” Giorno said.

Trish’s smile morphed from a pure ‘I’m happy to have been an assistance to a dear friend of mine.’ to a smug ‘I just saved your relationship and your ass, you owe me big time.’

“Of course, we can Giorno, of course we can.”

After grabbing what they needed at the convenience store, plus some extra snacks, Giorno and Trish were in the home stretch of their route to the beach. It was already 8:01, and they would be there soon enough.

“Can I ask you something now?” Trish asked Giorno.

“Yeah, sure.” He replied.

“How do you do it? Controlling your emotions, I mean.”

“Oh, well I-”

“It’s just that you seem soooo…” Trish searched for the right word before just making up some weird flatline gesture with her arm. “You just seem so chill with everything that life throws at you. I mean, the rest of us, would’ve lost our fucking minds if we had to go through what you did. I would’ve been so pissed, I probably would’ve gone for the crotch and bitten his dick off. But you didn’t. You just got up and went to the nurse’s office, and even after Fugo gave you that black eye too…” Trish said, once again only stopping to take a breath, when Giorno responded to her observations.

“It’s not that I was chill. I was mad, I was really pissed.”

“Not to be rude but, why don’t you show it? Seriously not trying to be rude or anything! I just, wouldn’t it feel better to get it all out?” Trish asked.

“It probably would, yeah, that’s a good idea…” Giorno slowly got quieter as his answer progressed on. He thought back to his mother, his stepfather, how he used to be expressive and even reactive, the way that Trish described. Deep down, he still wanted to be. But how? How could he go back to the way things were after his mother and stepfather had-

“Okay! That was not a good topic to bring up! You were going all Vietnam flashback on me, Giorno! I’m really sorry I asked that though, It wasn’t my place. Like at all.” Trish’s ringing voice pulled Giorno away from the depths that were his thoughts. His memories.

“Oh yeah, that. It’s alright. I mean, I did try to answer you instead of just shutting it down.”

“No more sad, heavy talk! Tonight's gonna be fun DAMMIT!” Trish exclaimed, just as the beach came into view. They could see the rented trailer down by the sidewalk and the small moving dots that could only be Narancia and Fugo, Mista must’ve been in the trailer.

“FUGO! SORRY WE’RE LATE!!” Trish yelled as she rushed down the road, soon becoming sand, as she headed over to her friends. Giorno trailed behind her, no way he was running for at least another week and a half.

“Hey, guys!” Trish said excitedly.

“Dude! Did you seriously just abandon Giorno!?” Fugo yelled, traces of worry audible in his voice.

“Come on, Giorno’s tough, he’ll be here soon enough,” Trish said back.

“That’s not the point!!!” Fugo’s voice, as loud as it may be, faded from Trish’s ears as he ran over to Giorno. Trish’s smug smile came back into view. Her strategy worked.

“There’s one relationship fixed, one down, one to go” She muttered to herself.

“Hmm, what did you say just now, Trish?” Narancia asked.

“Oh, nothing.” She replied. She then held up a paper grocery bag, “I also got some snacks at the convenience store, can I put them in the trailer?”

“You got even more snacks!?! Awesome!! Yeah go ahead! Also, Mista’s in there sulking, make sure not to get any of his emo on you.” Narancia’s enthusiasm for snacks had no end. Before entering the trailer, she could see Fugo and Giorno in the distance, it looked like they were talking.

‘Fugo, I was right as always, you were worried over nothing.’ She thought to herself.

“Hey, Giorno, I just want you to know that I’m so sorry… I started a stupid fight when you told me not to, and then you got hurt… I’m just really sorry.” Fugo tripped over his words here and there throughout his apology and his voice progressively got quieter as he did. After all, vocalizing his feelings into words was probably the furthest thing from his strengths. “So, yeah, just… really really sorry… oh um, will you forgive me? And we’re still friends right…”

“Of course, we’re still friends, Fugo. And I forgive you, 100%.” Giorno said without an ounce of doubt or hesitation in his voice.
“Really?”

“Oh yeah. Even if I’m still mad about what happened today, you’re one of my best friends, I’m not going to lose you over something like this.” Giorno said. A look of relief and joy swept through Fugo’s face.
“Thank you. Really, thank you, Giorno. I’m so lucky to have you as a friend.”

“Yeah.” They moved in for a half hug, which just resulted in a shoulder-to-shoulder pat. Giorno’s right shoulder of course. But still, it was more about what it represented, Giorno’s seemingly unbreakable bonds with his friends.

But now comes the more serious matter at hand. Mista.

“Hey Fugo, is Mista in the trailer or something? I don’t see him outside.” Giorno asked.

“Yeah, he’s in the trailer. Please go talk to him. Not just for you guys’ sake, but for mine too. He’s been rotating inbetween moody and inconsolable all fucking day. It’s starting to get on my nerves.”
“Well, I did say some pretty shitty stuff…”

“I know. He won’t stop crying about it. If we don’t handle this in a timely manner, he might become a Lana Del Ray fanboy.” Fugo groaned. He then very lightly pushed Giorno in the direction of the trailer. “Now go, I believe in you, Giorno!”

Having finally reached the trailer, Narancia greeted Giorno and hit him with a barrage of questions like “Are you okay?”, “Does it hurt?”, and “Do you need any help with anything?”, but of course, it sounded more like,”Areyouokay- doesithurtdoyouneedanyhelpwithanything?”

“Yes, I’m okay, and yes, it hurts. And, no, well at least for right now.”

“Okay if you say so,” Narancia said, well technically it was more “okayifyousayso”

“Narancia, no more caffeine for you. Got it?” Trish chimed in from the side.

“Aw man.”

Giorno’s friends all looked at him eagerly as he approached the trailer door.

“Don’t forget this,” Trish handed him another paper bag from the convenience store. “And if locking the door for unknown reasons is necessary to repair the relationship, we encourage you to do so.”

Giorno rolled his eyes. “Unknown reasons” sounded suspiciously suggestive. He headed inside the trailer and closed the door behind him. He could hear ‘oohs’ and ‘awwws’ from outside the trailer. He felt tempted to roll his eyes yet again, he had just closed the door because this was a private conversation!

“Mista. Hey,” Giorno started. “I just have to say-”

“GIORNO YOU CAME!!” Mista jumped off the couch and sprang to his feet. Giorno could see that his eyes were slightly puffy and still a little red. So, Fugo wasn’t lying about Mista being really upset about this.

“Yeah, and I have to say-”

“I’m so sorry!” Mista yelled.

“Wait, wait, wait, Mista, I’m the one who’s apologizing. Those things I said to you earlier today, I didn’t mean them, not at all.”

“Wait, you’re apologizing? But what you said earlier today,”

“Was completely right,” Mista said at the same time as Giorno.

“Was so wrong.” And Giorno said at the same time as Mista.

“Wait, what?” Now Giorno was so confused. “Just let me do my apology first, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I know it sounds cheesy and stupid or whatever, but I really don't want to be without you Mista. Friend or…” Giorno paused. They never really did figure out a label for what they were, or hopefully, what they still are. But it didn’t matter, because right now, Giorno was taking a risk. “Friend or Boyfriend. I still want you there. You were just trying to be kind and I was taking my frustration out on you. So, I’m incredibly sorry, and I really hope that you can forgive me. And I hope that we can keep seeing each other… because that’s one of the greatest things about my life right now…”

There was a pause of silence between the two. Giorno felt like he had just bared his soul and feelings to Mista. That might have been a little bit of exaggeration, but still, he did it. He left his comfort zone and was open about his feelings, something he could almost never bring himself to do.

“Giorno… that was so fucking poetic... “But, still, some of the stuff you said earlier was right. I do underestimate you a lot, and when I’m around, you never really get to speak up for yourself. I never let you shoulder your own burdens, even when you want to. It’s not because I think you’re fragile or weak or anything! I just… I just really want to protect you. Seeing you safe and happy, just makes me so happy. So, I guess the stuff I’ve done is pretty selfish.” Mista took his turn to spill his guts very seriously.

“If you’ll have me back… I swear I’ll be a much better boyfriend.” Mista said, the word boyfriend felt a little weird coming off of his tongue, they had gone so long without picking some kind of description for their relationship, it just felt a little weird. But it felt right, Mista wanted to be Giorno’s boyfriend. Yeah, he was going to be the greatest boyfriend ever!

“Of course, I’ll be a better boyfriend too.” Giorno may have sounded calm at the moment, but he felt an uncontrollable joy rising in his chest. Things between him and Mista weren’t over! He never realized how much he took him for granted. Never again.

“Oh! and I, uh, I got you a gift to make up for everything.” Giorno grabbed the paper bag from the convenience store and gave it to Mista. “I hope you like it.”

Mista opened the bag and looked inside as a look that could only be described as pure love spread across his face. “Giorno… this is my favorite kind of strawberry cake…”

“And I made sure that the employee got rid of the fourth slice and only gave me three.”

“Giorno…” Mista was nearly in tears. His boyfriend even went out of his way to make sure that the accursed number 4 was nowhere near his precious cake slices. Mista practically threw himself at Giorno before quickly stopping, remembering that his boyfriend was injured. He really liked that, Boyfriend.

“Oh my god, did I seriously just forget about everything that happened at lunch today? I can’t believe that I was actually about to do that…”

“It’s okay. Was there something that you wanted to do?”

“Oh um, I mean yeah, but you’re still hurt so it’s gonna have to wait.” Mista blushed. Oh, he wanted to do something like “that”. Giorno thought about it for a quick second before quickly walking over, locking the trailer door, and hurrying back to Mista, who was back to sitting on the couch.

“We can still do ‘that’, you know. Just, be gentle, okay?” Giorno whispered into Mista’s ear. No way in hell was he taking any chances that his friends would be able to overhear what he and Mista were about to do.
Mista quickly nodded. For god’s sake, they were just talking about this. Giorno was tired of being treated like he was so delicate when he wasn’t. Of course, that would apply even now!

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Then what are you waiting for? Come at me.” Giorno whispered into Mista’s ear, this time, almost like some sort of dare.

‘Please god, don’t ever let Mr. Brando find out about this, he’ll kill me!!!!’ Mista internally prayed.

“Hey, I said what are you waiting for?” Giorno said, quietly, but not in a whisper. Even though he was just doing something as simple as slipping his hoodie off of his shoulder, Mista’s brain completely short-circuited. All thoughts of Mr. Brando absolutely murdering him for what he was about to do, were thrown out the goddamn window by his second brain.

“Yeah, let’s do it!” Mista had never been so excited for something in his life. His excitement kept growing as Giorno climbed onto his lap and straddled him. He then brought Mista’s hands up by the hem of his shirt. Mista was about to push it upwards when Giorno interrupted him.

“Oh um, I should warn you, I’ve got a huge bruise, it’s pretty nasty.”

“It’s okay. I’ll be really gentle then. But it won’t bother me.” Mista said, completely underestimating just how big and discolored this bruise would be, pushed Giorno’s shirt up past his stomach and nearly passed out.
“OH WOW- uh, yeah, that’s really big…” Mista didn’t even know it was possible for a bruise to be this big.

“Look, I warned you.”

“It doesn’t gross me out or anything, just kinda shocking, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess I can understand that.”

“Anyways! We’re getting off-topic here…” Mista lowered his voice after that last outburst and then got to business. He pushed his hand up Giorno’s back, reaching his neck before he pushed them back down again. Retracing every path they took, all the way down until they were tugging at Giorno’s pants. Giorno let out a little gasp that, to Mista, could only be described as perfect. Giorno wrapped his arms around Mista’s neck as Mista moved in to bite down on the skin on his neck and even his collarbone.

“Oh my god, Mista…” Giorno said, sounding breathless. He removed one hand from around Mista’s neck, and moved it down south, grabbing Mista’s thigh. He moved his hand to the side back and forth a few times before bringing his other arm down and putting his hands to work trying to unbutton Mista’s pants.

“Giorno I-”

“I know, Mista. I-” Giorno was cut off by his phone going off in his back pocket. Annoyed as hell, he went to check it, and to say it was one of the biggest cockblockers ever wouldn’t be an understatement. It was his Dad.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, I have to take this,” Giorno said, picking up the phone. “Hey, what’s up dad?”

All color drained from Mista’s face. All of his fears of Mr. Brando came rushing back all at once. Oh god, one of these days he was gonna be a goner.

“Yes dad, I’m fine. Yes, everything’s going well. Yes, I know I can’t swim. Yes! I know what time I have to be back! Uh, No, Mista hasn’t tried anything!! No, I’m not lying! Okay. Okay, yes. Alright, I’ll see you in a few hours. Bye, dad. Okay yeah, I love you too, bye.” Giorno finished the phone call and hung up, put his phone away, and looked at Mista.

“So… that was pretty bad timing huh?”

“No offense Giorno, but after that, I’m completely turned off. I don’t get off to fear and that’s all I feel when your dad is mentioned.”

“Yeah, that’s totally understandable. Well, we should probably stop hogging the trailer.”

“Yeah, let’s go get some fresh air.”

5 Minutes Earlier

Trish, Fugo, and Narancia were sitting outside, passing around a bag of chips that Trish grabbed at the convenience store. A ‘click’ alerted their attention toward the trailer.

“One of them just locked the door didn’t they?” Narancia observed. Fugo got up and walked over to the trailer, he lightly turned the door handle, trying to open it. It wouldn’t budge.

“Yep, those horny fuckers locked the door.”

“Well, maybe they just wanted some privacy for their chat?” Trish suggested.

“They’ve already been in there for a few minutes.” Fugo brought up.

“Yeah, but what Trish said makes sense. It’d be pretty awkward if someone just interrupted their conversation.” Narancia said.

“Bold of you to assume that they’re conversing in there.” Fugo refuted.

“OH WOW- uh, yeah, that’s really big…” Mista’s muffled voice could be heard from inside the trailer. The three left outside were struck with utter silence.

“You know, It’s uh, a really nice night to go walk by the waves or whatever,” Trish suggested.

“Yep, Trish is completely right, I say we go do that, like right now,” Narancia said in total agreement. Fugo got up and followed the other two in stunned silence before breaking it, “I mean, I know I called them horny fuckers or whatever, but I never thought that they’d actually do it…”

“God I want a girlfriend…” Trish muttered under her breath as the three approached the sea.

Chapter Text

Earlier that evening…

“Holy shit! How are we only halfway done??” Abbacchio groaned at his desk. “Why are there so many damn tests to grade?!“

“Seriously, we need to get TAs.” Bucciarati chimed in.

“Yeah, but then they’ll have access to the answer sheets in my desk. No way in hell are any of those little shits getting access to those.” Abbacchio nearly growled at the thought of it.

“You’re way too distrusting, Leone. There are good students out there, like that kid Giorno.”

“Ughhhhhhh, not Giorno!” Abbacchio groaned for the second time in a minute.

“Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is that you have beef with a 15-year-old?” Bucciarati laughed at his own rhetorical question while Abbacchio scowled.

“Whatever, these tests won’t grade themselves, let’s get back to work…”

After another 2 exhausting hours, Abbacchio and Bucciarati finished grading all the student work they had to take home. A means for celebration one might think, however, it had taken far longer than previously expected and it was now 12:45 A.M. A time much later than any underpaid high school teacher should ever stay up to keep working even after their workday ended. They seriously needed to consider those TAs.
“12:45 already? Shit, the buses have stopped running. I'm gonna have to walk home…” Abbacchio groaned. It seemed to the average observer that well over 50% of Abbacchio’s expressions consisted of groaning and complaining. Abbacchio got up from his desk while he assembled his papers.

“Well, I better get going. It was nice to have someone to suffer through grading papers with. Oh, and thanks for dinner by the way.” Abbacchio said his farewells to Bucciarati in a calm and composed manner, but his true inner composure couldn’t be farther from it.

‘Holy. Fucking. Shit. I need to get out of here now!! Alone with him after dark?!? His whole house smells like him! I can’t even believe I’m in his house! Why did I even say yes to this idea?! Now I’ll never be able to get over-’ Abbacchio’s racing train of thought was interrupted by Bucciarati.

“Oh, leaving so soon?” He said. Abbacchio froze in his tracks.

“W-what do you mean?” Abbacchio was on the verge of a stroke. It was 12:45 A.M. Did he really want him to stay even later? And to do what exactly!?

“We just finished all of that work, don’t you want a drink to celebrate?” Bucciarati asked.

“It would be a really bad idea to walk home drunk though…” Abbacchio put up a slight protest.

“Who said anything about going home?” A blush crept across Bucciarati’s face as he asked the question.

“But, where would I sleep? I don’t want to take up your couch, that’d be rude-” Abbacchio’s sentence was interrupted by Bucciarati. He was closing the gap between himself and Abbacchio.

“I have a queen-sized bed, I’m sure it wouldn’t be too tight of a squeeze, right?”

Bucciarati’s seduction attempts were rudely interrupted by Abbacchio’s stroke.

“I- uh, well you see- I…” Abbacchio ran through the kitchen, through the hallway, and past Bucciarati’s bedroom, before he tripped and fell face-first onto the hardwood floor.

“Oh… shit…”

“Leone!! Oh my god, are you okay?!”

“Yeah, I’m fine… I think.”

“I’m really sorry, that was so inappropriate of me. I shouldn’t have-”

“Bruno. Look, I don’t know if you’ve even noticed but…” Abbacchio sighed as he thought, is this really how it’s gonna go down? Is this really how I’ll express my feelings for Bucciarati? On his floor after tripping over a non-existent rock? This is a new level of pathetic…

“I’m in love with you. It’s not just some crush or light-hearted feelings. I’m intensely in full-on love with you. So when you say stuff like that, when you joke like that… I just can’t handle it.”

“Oh, Leone I-”

“I don’t expect you to return my feelings, And I’d understand if you stopped wanting to be around me too. But, I just can’t keep holding it all in!”

“Leone,”

“Please forgive me for everything!”

“Leone!” Bucciarati spoke up and gained Abbacchio’s attention. “That offer, it wasn’t a joke. I meant it.” He held Abbacchio’s face in his hands before leaning in and doing, in at least Abbacchio’s mind, the unspeakable. He kissed him. Giving Abbacchio his second stroke of the night, his life was easily cut short 10 from the wonderful, glorious, shock of it all.

When Bucciarati pulled away he made an offer that Abbacchio couldn’t deny.

“I have some wine, red wine, and chardonnay, to be specific. Not to beat around the bush but, do you want to come get really drunk with me?”

“Yes please.” Abbacchio’s answer was instantaneous, not even a millisecond of hesitation in his voice.

“Well then, get off my floor and I’ll take you to the kitchen, and then… the night will take us where it wants, hmm?” Bucciarati’s voice, although it sounded teasing and inviting, there wasn’t a trace of mockery to be found. He really wasn’t kidding.

“Yeah, I’m coming.” Abbacchio got himself up off the ground and headed over to the kitchen, where Bucciarati was already standing with two wine glasses out.

“What would you like first?”

“Hit me with the red wine. I’ve had enough of grading these bullshit quizzes. Who the fuck actually needs to know when to use a semi-colon?”

“That’s not very English teacher of you Abbacchio.”

“I’m off the clock, practically not even an English teacher at this point.”

“Well then.” Bucciarati handed Abbacchio a glass of red wine filled to the brim, his was a glass of chardonnay, filled to the same extent. “Cheers to being off the clock!”

“Cheers!”

And with their first sip began a long, very R-rated night. The first of many “grading nights” at Bucciarati’s humble abode.

The next morning, Abbacchio woke up to a 6 A.M alarm going off, a very hostile way to start the morning. He reached over to the nightstand and turned it off. He then rolled back over to see Bucciarati lying next to him, peacefully in bed. He wasn’t wearing any clothes. Abbacchio came to the realization that he wasn’t either. It took him a few minutes to recall the night’s events, but it wasn’t very difficult. He used to have a serious drinking problem, he had built up an insane tolerance to the stuff. He was pretty much immune to blackout drinking. It all came back to him, the grading, the face plant on the really hard floor, the kiss, the drinking, and then what came after. It was all too amazing to be true, and yet, it was. It had all happened. Abbacchio sat up in bed and a slight pain came washing through his skull. Welp, guess he wasn’t immune to hangovers. He paused before he whispered,

“Thank you for everything, Bruno.”

This was like a dream come true for Abbacchio. No one had ever accepted his feelings before, other than a shitty girlfriend and stupid brute who used him for a one-night stand. Scratch that, no one had ever truly accepted his feelings, with the intention of reciprocating them, the way that Bucciarati did. It made him want to let go of everything he knew to be true about his past, his damage. For once, he had hope about the way another person could see him. Maybe, love him even? Abbacchio was well-aware of how utterly dramatic his internal monologue sounded, but after 32 years of rejection, toxic relationships, and meaningless hook-ups that left him feeling empty and worthless, this newfound spark was a new pace that he wanted to treasure. Bucciarati kept sleeping, even after Abbacchio took him up in his arms.

‘His hangover’s probably a lot worse than mine,’ Abbacchio thought, ‘We might have to call in sick to work today… Hmph, whatever, the school can deal.’

Chapter Text

Today had been an extremely weird day so far. And it wasn’t because his dad didn’t bitch at Mista and his friends when they all stopped by for a snack before taking off for school. He still needed to figure out what that was about. It wasn’t because Cioccolata and Secco were absent from class and they had a substitute. Or Abbacchio, or Bucciarati. Principal Diavolo must have had a lot of fun scrambling to find substitutes. No, the thing that made this day extremely weird, was the fact that Trish was flirting with another girl in their art class. And that girl was the infamous troublemaker Jolyne Cujoh! She got into so many fights and told off so many teachers, that she got held back twice. Meaning she was two years older than everyone else, meaning she could drive. Meaning she could get into twice as much trouble as before. Meaning Trish, was into bad girls? Oh, the group chat was so going to hear about this. Giorno watched as the two girls conversed with an unhealthy amount of interest.

“Giorno!” A voice snapped Giorno out of his mental investigation of his dear friend and her potential girlfriend candidate.

“You’re almost out of blue paint, if you’re going to continue your ocean painting in class today, you should probably go get some more.” The voice was his art teacher, Mr. Doppio.

“Oh, yeah, I probably should huh?” Giorno said as he got up to go get more paint. The paint cabinet was oh so ever conveniently placed right next to Trish and Jolyne’s desks. Thank you, lord. This meant while walking over he would be able to overhear more of their conversation. More fuel for his investigation. Hey, what kind of friend would he be if he didn’t spy on his friend’s love life? It was completely justified too, after all, Trish got involved in his last night, so it’s only fair he spied on hers. As he got more blue paint, he overheard something that could only be described as a red flag.

“Nah, my old man probably wants to put me in the ground at this point. One time, when I was being held in jail, still waiting for that old fart to pay my bail. One of the guards caught me masturbating, And I came this close to beating the shit out of him, if only those damn bars weren’t there.”

“Are you kidding me? That’s insane!! Why were you even in jail?” Trish asked back in pure amazement.

“Underage drinking and all of that bullshit. It's not like I was driving or anything! I was just hammered in the back of a sedan, nothing more.”

“That’s crazy, I wish I could say I did cool, fun stuff like that.” Trish was absolutely captivated by this walking red flag, tiger king character of a human being.

“Oh please cutie, I’ve seen your rice purity test score, you’re about as innocent as they come,” Jolyne said, before reaching out and pinching Trish’s cheek. Maybe I could show you a thing or two if you’re willing to head out with me and my gang tonight?”

“I’d love to! I don’t have much going on, plus my dad’s pretty chill. What time?”

“Woah, you’re an eager one. I really like that in a girl.” Jolyne teased, and Trish giggled in response.

Giorno couldn’t believe his fucking ears. First of all, jail, need he say more? But no, it kept going, getting caught whilst masturbating, getting hammered in the back of a car, and in a sedan of all cars too. And Trish thought that was cool? No, that’s illegal and dangerous! Giorno knew this made it seem like he was a prude, but Giorno was far from that. He knew when fun and risky turned into, as stated earlier, illegal and dangerous! It was a very fine line but he still knew where it fell. And the things that Jolyne was talking about, 100% crossed that line. Giorno had now been standing at that cabinet for a long time. Too long. He grabbed his blue paint and headed back to his desk. He already heard everything he needed to hear.

Giorno’s next class, History class. Overall it was a pretty boring class but at least it was a boring class that he got to share with Naranica and Mista. Mr. Tiziano was the class’s instructor. Mr. Tiziano was overall pretty decent as teachers go, However, there was a catch. You never wanted to end up on his bad side, he would ruin your entire class period for the rest of the year. He was a professional gaslighter. He could twist a person’s words like you wouldn’t believe, if someone gave a definite Yes or No as an answer to a question, He could figure out a way to make it seem like they said the opposite of what they meant. As the teacher who oversees the debate club, he likes to keep his skills sharp. Debating high schoolers wasn’t a bad way to accomplish that. Giorno hadn’t gotten on Mr. Tiziano’s bad side, nor had Mista, Narancia on the other hand…

“Good afternoon Mr. Tiziano,” Giorno said as he walked into the classroom.

“Good afternoon sir,” Mista said to his teacher as well.

“Ah yes, Good afternoon!” Narancia said, similarly greeting his teacher as his friends did.

“Ah yes, Good afternoon boys. And it’s not morning right now Narancia. Try to keep track of the time, it will do you well.” Mr. Tiziano said back to his students.

“Did you seriously say ‘Good Morning’ Narancia? Ha! It’s like 1:15 in the afternoon.” Mista teased Narancia.

“No, I said good afternoon like you guys did.” Narancia protested.

“I thought you said ‘Good Afternoon’ like us, but now I’m not 100% sure…” Giorno wondered. He thought back on what Narancia said when he greeted the teacher, but he couldn’t remember if Narancia said ‘Good Afternoon’ or ‘Good Morning’.

“Seriously, I did!” Narancia was actually starting to get pissed off. The most annoying thing about it was the fact that it didn’t really matter. Who cares if you said ‘Good Morning’ or ‘Good Afternoon’ right? But still, when you know what you said, and everyone doubts you, it’s one of the most frustrating things in the world, regardless of whether it's considered important or not. That’s exactly what made being on Mr. Tiziano’s bad side such a living hell.

“Boys, it’s inconsequential, I’m sure next time Narancia will remember to compose himself more intelligently when greeting others. Now take your seats.” Mr. Tiziano said, with such a calm and composed (And let’s all be honest, pretty smug) air surrounding him, it made Narancia’s blood boil. As Narancia went to take his seat, he saw Mr. Tiziano shoot him a look, one he was all too familiar with. A look that screamed “This is what you get for shooting me with a water gun outside of the post office last year! YOU LITTLE SHIT!!” Narancia had already apologized for that a million times. He could’ve sworn that Mr. Tiziano was that shitbag upperclassman who stole his stash of lunch money from his locker. It seems that he would never get over that.

“I totally said ‘Good Afternoon’ you guys…” Narancia brooded at his desk.

“Yes, I’m sure you did, after all, you know how Mr. Tiziano has it out for you.” Giorno tried to coax Narancia out of his brooding so that he could share his exciting Trish news. “But we have bigger things to discuss.”

“Hmm? What do you mean?” Mista asked.

“It’s Trish, I saw her flirting with Jolyne Cujoh in art class today,” Giorno whispered to his friends. Reactions between Narancia and Mista differed. Mista’s jaw dropped and simply hung there for what seemed like all eternity, and Narancia choked on his own shock.

“You mean, THE Jolyne Cujoh??” Mista said once he seemingly relocated his jaw.

“But Jolyne’s like, two years older than us,” Narancia said after he finished choking on his shock. "Plus, she's certifiably crazy!"

“I know guys, I know.” Giorno had once watched her get into a fistfight with one of his dad’s coworkers, Enrico Pucci. And she almost won too. “The craziest part, I overheard Trish say that she’s going out with Jolyne and her ‘Gang’ tonight.”

“Are you shitting me?!” Narancia exclaimed.

“Dude, Trish is gonna get arrested or killed!” Mista exclaimed with equal excitement and worry as Narancia.

“Or worse, she’ll start…” Giorno took a deep breath. They had to face the potential damage that they could be facing for their dear friend.

“God, what’s worse than being killed??” Narancia said with dread hanging off of every word.

“Under Jolyne’s horrible influence, she’ll start listening to Machine Gun Kelly,” Giorno said in a grim tone to match the dire situation that they were in. Narancia nearly burst into tears at the thought of his long-time friend, listening to such garbage. Mista put on a face ready to save his friend, a face ready for war.

“Alright Giorno, how do we stop this? How do we save Trish?”

“Well first we have to get through this period, but then, get Fugo. In gym class, we’ll come up with a plan to stop this madness once and for all.” Giorno said, determination ringing in his voice.

Chapter Text

The last period of the day, and the most evil, cruel, unnecessary class known to mankind, P.E Class. Now, Giorno had nothing against physical exercise, what he had a problem with was the generalized regime that was high school P.E. The expectation that every person in the class was capable of running an entire mile without stopping to catch their breath. If they needed to walk for a minute before they started running again, they weren’t trying hard enough. If they couldn’t do the standardized amount of push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups, then they were lazy and too sedentary for their age. It drove Giorno insane, It drove Fugo pretty insane too. they had long preached the message amongst their friends that standardized expectations for physical activity were unrealistic and unimportant. That people had their areas of strengths and their areas of weaknesses. The idea that they should all meet a certain fitness standard that most adults couldn’t meet was asinine. Narancia couldn’t do a push-up to save his life, but he was one of the fastest runners in the class. But his inability to do push-ups would bring his grade down, even though he tried twice as hard as everyone else. It was something that would forever eat away at Giorno and Fugo’s sense of faith in the public school system. As Giorno, Mista, and Narancia all walked out onto the school’s field, Fugo and Trish ran to join them.

“Hey guys! Last period before we can go home!” Trish exclaimed with joy. Pure utter, unbridled joy.

“Hell yeah!” Narancia exclaimed with an equal amount of joy in his voice.

“All right, calm down you two, we still have this period to get through.” Fugo brought them down from their high. He always liked to keep his friends in reality, sometimes it was a good thing, other times it just kind of sucked. But for now, they had other things to worry about.

“ALRIGHT GUYS!” Their gym teacher, Mr. Sqaulo ran to greet his students on the field as the school bell rang, indicating that class had begun. “You all know the drill! You have five minutes to get to the locker room and change! Then, meet me back on the field again!” He yelled to the students on the field.

Trish went into the girls locker room to change, which gave Giorno plenty of time to debrief his friends on their dire situation without her overhearing.

“You’ve got to be shitting me!” Fugo practically screeched. “Jolyne fucking Kujo?!? She’s the student council’s worst nightmare!! Do you have any idea how many school wide events we’ve planned that she has PURPOSELY ruined or tried to ruin?!”

“Yeah, we know, you’ve told us many times.” Mista said.

“6 to be exact,” Narancia added on.

“And Trish likes her?!” Fugo said loudly in pure disbelief.

“Yep, and we need to put a stop to it. Or else, when the inevitable happens, he’ll have our heads.” Giorno said seriously. Jolyne would break Trish’s heart with her “live fast (go through boyfriends and girlfriends even faster) die young” way of living life. And then Trish’s father, principal Diavolo would get on all of their asses about “What happened?!”, “Did you do this?!”, “Do you know who did it?!”, and “What sort of trouble are you all getting into?!”. It would be never ending. One year ago or so, Trish came home with a black eye. It was because she got hit in the face with a basketball during gym class (yet another example that fueled Giorno and Fugo’s crusade against standardized fitness in schools, large classes of often unsupervised teenagers and their grudges or prejudices, left alone with sports equipment). When she got home that day, she tried to explain to her father about what happened but he wasn’t buying it, and he was convinced that Giorno, Mista, Narancia, and Fugo were somehow involved. So he gathered them from their respective apartments and questioned them for 2 whole hours. It was living hell on earth. Since then, Giorno and his friends have been vigilant in protecting Trish and making sure she was always okay. The last thing they wanted was a repeat of THAT.

“You know, Jolyne is in this class with us and Trish. Maybe we don’t have to wait until after school. Maybe we can get her to leave Trish alone right now.” Fugo suggested.

“Holy shit! Yeah, that could totally work! Fugo you’re so smart!” Narancia exclaimed.

“Thanks, I know.”

As the five minutes was nearing an end, the boys finished putting on their gym clothes and putting their backpacks and normal clothes in their lockers. As they headed out, back to the field, they ran into none other than Jolyne and Trish. The situation had progressed much faster than they anticipated, Jolyne had her arm around Trish’s shoulder and was playing with her hair. Trish was blushing and giggling so hard, you would’ve thought Jolyne Kujo was actually Pedro Pascal.

“Oh hey guys,” Trish said, noticing her friends heading out to the field. “Gonna head over to the field? Wanna walk together?” She asked.

“Um, sure. Yeah, let's do that.” Mista replied.

“Trish, are these the guys you’ve been telling me so much about?” Jolyne asked.

“Yep, that’s them. Almost as cool in person compared to the way I describe them.”

“Are you kidding? Not nearly half as cool.”

“Well… I am an indulgent storyteller…”

As Trish and Jolyne continued on with their banter, Giorno, Mista, Fugo, and Narancia all just stood off to the side. Unsure of whether they should feel insulted, complemented, both, or neither. In the distance, a loud whistle rang out, bringing everyone’s attention to the field.

“Your five minutes are up!! Begin heading back to the field so we can begin exercises now!” Coach Sqaulo shouted from across the pavement and field. The 6 of them walked back out to the field. Jolyne excused herself and walked to the back of the group, towards Giorno.

“So, I’m gonna cut straight to the chase. You were spying on me and Trish’s conversation in art class weren’t you? I’ve got to give you props blondie, you always came off as a prude to me.”

Giorno was surprised by Jolyne’s direct approach. “Oh you noticed, and why do I come off as a prude to you?”

“I dunno, it just seems like you don’t know how to have any fun or take risks. At least from what I’ve observed and been told by Trish.”

Giorno, a prude who didn’t know how to have fun or take risks? Giorno was surprised by how much offense he took from that. He knew how to have fun and take risks, after all, he nearly gave his boyfriend a handjob in a trailer while his friends waited outside, if that wasn't fun and risky (and very sexy), then Giorno didn’t know what it was.

“Look, I get it, you think I’m wild and a bad influence. So does everybody else.” Jolyne said, kind of defeatedly. “But the truth is, Trish and I have been talking for a while now. We have a few other classes together and well… The truth is she’s so cute, and fun, and, and… Yeah, she’s just so everything and I love it. I think she’s actually changed me already.” Jolyne said in a hushed tone. It was clear she wanted this conversation to remain between her and Giorno. “The last thing I want to do is hurt her. So please, if you’d allow me to have Trish, I’d treat her better than you could ever imagine.”

This was all so unexpected. Jolyne was so earnest right now, Giorno didn’t even think this was possible. But, she seemed better than Giorno originally judged, and she and Trish really seemed to make each other happy.

“Ok fine. I’ll tell the guys to call off the missile strike on your date location tonight.” Giorno said, completely deadpanned.

“Thank yo- Wait what?!” Jolyne shouted in surprise.

“I’m kidding. I’m totally kidding. Although, why did you ask me for permission to date Trish? You didn’t need my permission, or you could’ve asked anyone else, so why me?”

“Well, you seem to be the leader of your group. I figured it was better to ask you, and I’ve found that relationships usually start off on better footing if their friends are okay with me dating them. Trust me, I’ve got plenty of experience.”

“Oh yeah, that makes sense I guess.” Sometimes Giorno forgot that Jolyne was two whole years older than them.

“I’m glad we had this chat prude! See you out on the field!” Jolyne yelled before running ahead to join Trish and everyone else. She made some joke that Trish giggled at before smacking Fugo right on the ass. Enraged, he began to chase her around and around trying to land a punch on her face. Giorno felt a sudden surge of doubt about what he gave her permission to do.

Chapter Text

“Nope, I can’t do it, I’m going to nap on your couch now.” Mista said, fake yawning, before rolling over and pretending to go to sleep. Giorno threw a pillow at him and hit him square in the face.

“I am not doing your homework for you again. Do it yourself dumbass.” Giorno said, the last part was affectionate, believe it or not.

“But I’m so stupid and you’re so smart. Come on, please?” Mista said in a whiny tone that made Giorno snap. They had been sitting in Giorno’s living room, “doing homework” for the past hour! And Mista had nothing to show for it, other than a pissed off Giorno. Giorno was going to do something about this. And he was going to do it using his seductive boyfriend charms.

“Come on… Seriously,” Mista tiredly groaned, as if he had even done any work so far. “Let's take a break and do something fun?”

“Hmmm, okay.” Giorno “hmmmed” in agreement. He had a plan, an evil one, but still, a plan. He was going to do whatever it took to get his boyfriend to finish his fucking homework. Giorno quickly got up from his spot on the floor by the coffee table, over to the couch where his lazy boyfriend was lying.

“Oh, so we’re gonna have fun?” Mista said in a smug, yet excited tone.

“Mhmm, yeah, I’ll take you up on that.” Giorno said. He then got on top of Mista. He could see the very horny light in Mista’s eyes. He was on a one-way trip to horny jail as far as Giorno was concerned. Giorno lifted the hem of his shirt, before looking at Mista and saying, “Hey, wanna help me out with this?” Mista’s heart skipped a few beats just from the thought of it. He had seen Giorno shirtless countless times, but it never ever got old. Mista was sure that even if he and Giorno grew old together and became old, miserable, wrinkly prune, Mista would still find Giorno just pretty and handsome as he did right now. Mista shot his hands up and almost tore Giorno’s shirt off within the span of a few milliseconds.

“Well… Damn.” Giorno was a little thrown off by how having his shirt nearly torn to shreds made him feel. A warm, overwhelming feeling rose up in his stomach, almost making him abandon his original objective.
‘You have to stay focused Giorno!’ He internally said to himself, ‘Mista will pay! And he’ll do his goddamn homework!’

“Hey, Giorno, come on, you have to admit that this is way funner than doing homework, right?” Giorno asked in an annoying tone of voice that radiated arrogance. Giorno smiled. He was going to put Mista in his place so hard, no more Mr. Nice Boyfriend.

“Yeah, but, you wanna know what’s more fun?” Giorno leaned down and whispered in his ear. He was pretty much laying on top of Mista, one hand was working it’s way up Mista’s shirt, and the other hand below the waistline of his pants. He could feel something hard press against his leg, Perfect, it was time to go in for the kill.

“What?” Mista asked.

Giorno pressed a kiss against Mista’s jawline, before moving up to his ear, and he whispered, “Graduating high school. Which means doing your homework.”

He got up, grabbed his shirt, put it back on, and walked back to the coffee table, where Mista’s neglected homework was.

“Come on, finish this and we can go back to what we were doing.” Giorno firmly stated before looking at Mista, almost daring him to start whining again.

Mista was sitting up on the couch with a shocked and betrayed look on his face.

“You- I-” Mista stuttered, he looked down at the situation Giorno so graciously provided him with. “Did you just- Giorno…”

“Yeah, I sure did. I’ve been pestering you for the last hour to finish your homework. Now, if you want your pants to stop feeling so tight, get over here and do the goddamn algebra. I mean it.” Giorno firmly stated. It was clear from the tone of his voice that nothing would get him to budge. Mista pissed him off and now he was going to pay the price.

“But Giorno-”

“If I hear one more ‘but’, I’m showing my dad the hickey you gave me last night-”

“So if X squared plus three X plus four is equal to zero, then I need to solve for X, but there are two solutions, right? I think I remember that from math class.”

“Yep, that’s right.” Giorno had the world's smuggest look on his face. Every time Mista saw it, he couldn’t help but roll his eyes.

‘Whelp’ He thought, ‘This is what I get for dating a Brando of all people. Love him though.’

After another two hours, Mista’s completed homework lay before them.

“IT’S DONE! THANK GOD!” Mista cried out with joy. There were few dark tunnels in life that Mista felt he would just blindly wander around in forever, math being one of them. If he didn’t have his light to help guide him through, he probably would’ve just stared at the page while his brain short-circuited and his neurons begged for rest, for mercy. But ever since Giorno began tutoring him, albeit cruel and unusual, his grades had managed to climb from Fs and Ds to Cs and Bs. Something that he couldn’t have done without his light. He turned to look at Giorno, who now wore a softer smile, rather than that smug grin.

“Thanks again for helping me. And, sorry, I was a shit earlier. I mean, don’t get me wrong, what you did earlier was fucked up beyond belief. But still…” Mista said. Giorno spoke with a suggestion of his own.

“So, remember when I said that we could finish what we were doing if you finished your homework?” His hand crept towards his boyfriend’s, and Mista instantly sprang into action. He swept Giorno up in his arms and headed for Giorno’s bedroom. When they got there, Mista shut the door while Giorno sat on the bed, taking his shirt off. Mista quickly ran over and nestled himself within Giorno’s arms.

“So, what do you wanna do first?” Giorno asked, he never got tired of laughing at his boyfriend’s stupid suggestions.

“Wow, such creative freedom! Let’s see, first I wanna-” Mista was about to make a very long list of things that he had seen off of a subreddit dedicated to weird NSFW commission requests when his bliss was ever so rudely interrupted.

“Hey Giorno! I’m home! Did you finish your homework on the coffee table? You have a desk you know!” Dio shouted from the living room.

“Oh shit.”

This was the second time Giorno had been cockblocked by his father’s bad timing in a week. He had a theory in the works. And that theory was that his dad had some kind of unconscious alarm in his brain, and every time Giorno was about to get some with Mista, it went blaring off and he would come in at the worst time possible. He needed to gather scientists together and run a trial to test it or something. Giorno and Mista had never put their clothes back on so fast before. As silently as they possibly could, they formulated a plan, Giorno would distract his father while Mista quickly escaped out the front door, and back over to his apartment unit.

“Okay, ready?” Giorno whispered to Mista.

“Yeah, I’m ready.” Mista whispered back. They nodded. Giorno left his room and went out towards the living room.

“Oh hey, what’s up Dad? How was work?” Giorno asked very nonchalantly, as if he and Mista weren’t about to create a new urban dictionary definition that would scar millennials when they searched it up.

“Oh, it was alright. Pretty much just work being work. Although, when I tried to apologize to Pucci for asking him to cover my shift yesterday, he kept going on and on about how I didn’t need to thank him, and how ‘it was his heavenly duty as a child of god to help his neighbor and fellow man’ before giving me these.” With a strong tone of annoyance in his voice, Dio pulled an entire box of pocketbook mini bibles off from the shelf he put them on.

“Wow, did- did he want you to hand them out or something?” Giorno asked.

“No, he just gave them to me, told me that he hopes I’ll read them all. He better not get his hopes up.” Dio scoffed. As if his coworker really expected him to read over 50 identical versions of the same religious text.

“Huh… that’s weird…” Giorno tried to keep this conversation with his dad going, with an occasional glance over his shoulder. He could still see Mista hiding out in his room, waiting for the perfect moment to book it for the front door. Now he was starting to worry, he needed to get Mista out of there and fast.

“Hey dad, I know you don’t want to hear this, but uh… well…” Giorno dragged the sentence on. ‘Come on, think! Think of a lie that Dad will believe!!’

"What is it Giorno?” Dio asked.

“It’s the air conditioner, I heard it making really weird noises when I was doing my homework earlier today. Just thought I should tell you. You can take a look at it if you want.” Giorno lied through the skin of his teeth. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that his dad bought the lie and Mista could get out of there safely.

“Are you serious?! I just fixed that fucking thing yesterday! Hold on, I have to go look at that piece of shit now.” Dio went into the bathroom to grab his toolbox and Mista took that as his cue to run for his life. He reached the door and ran down 3 units, to his own.

‘Thank god,’ Giorno thought, ‘We’re in the clear and Mista lives to see another day.’

A loud thumping at the door snapped Giorno out of his thoughts, could Mista have forgotten something? Couldn’t he just wait until later? This was risky, but not the fun risky, it was the stupid ‘are you trying to get caught by your boyfriend’s psycho dad?’ risky. Giorno quickly ran over to the door and opened it. To his surprise it was not Mista, but rather a tall, muscular, angry looking man in black undershirt and a white trench coat, he was wearing a white and gold hat with, hold on, there was no way Giorno was seeing this right, dolphin pins on it??

“Are you Giorno?” He asked.

“Uh, yeah I am, why?”

“Are you friends with a girl named Trish Una?”

“Yeah, shit, did something happen to her?” He knew it, all the red flags were true, something happened to Trish because of Jolyne!

“No, nothing happened to Trish, but-” The strange man was interrupted by Dio, who was less than thrilled about some random man asking who his son and his friends were.

“And just who the hell are you, coming up to my door and talking to my son?!”

“Oh, good grief, my name is Jotaro Kujo, and I have some questions to ask you. Can I come in?”

Chapter Text

“Hold on, who the hell are you?” Dio shoved Giorno aside. He blocked the door frame to keep this “Jotaro Kujo” guy the hell away from his son.

“Are you Giorno Giovanna Brando?” Jotaro Kujo asked. Giorno pushed his way past his father so he could see the man in the doorframe again.

“He’s not, but I am.”

“Giorno! This man could be a Jehovah's Witness, or a Russian spy, or worse…” Dio leaned down to whisper to Giorno so that the man at the door couldn’t hear what he said. “He could be from the IRS. Do you really want me to pay taxes, Giorno?”

“He’s not from the IRS and he’s not a Russian spy, dad. His last name is Kujo. That’s the last name of one of my classmates, Jolyne Kujo, this is probably her dad or something.”

“Yes, that’s right. I have some questions about what happened to my daughter earlier today.”

“Did something happen to Jolyne earlier today, Mr. Kujo?” Giorno asked, concerned if something happened to Jolyne and Trish. “Is she alright?”

“I’m sorry, who the hell is Jolyne?” Dio asked, confused as to why the father of a girl he’d never heard of before was suddenly at his apartment door. Giorno and Mr. Kujo ignored Dio completely and continued their conversation.

“No, that’s not it. I need to know what the hell it was that you did to her.” Mr. Kujo said sternly, looking at Giorno.

“What I did to Jolyne? Did I hear you right?” Giorno repeated his question.

“I’m sorry, what did Giorno do?” Dio chimed into the conversation, once again to be completely ignored.

“You, are you some kind of master of manipulation or hypnosis or something like that?”

“Why would you think something like that?” Giorno asked.

“Yeah, why would you- you know what, you’re just going to ignore me. I give up.” Dio began to ask a question to Jotaro, before giving up and going to the kitchen to fix himself a sandwich.

“My daughter took one of your friends out, I think her name was Trish. She took her to a coffee shop. For. A. Study. Date.” Jotaro Kujo pronounced each word of that last sentence very slowly and very loudly.
Needless to say, he was still in shock that it happened. And as of that most recent moment. It seemed that Giorno was in shock as well.

“That’s, that’s impossible.” Giorno said shakily. There was no way that the Jolyne Kujo who he had met earlier today would ever willingly go on a study date to a coffee shop.

“It’s true, kid.” Jotaro took out his phone and opened the photos app. He scrolled to the most recent photo, and sure enough, a picture of Jolyne and Trish drinking iced lattes with classic literature, textbooks, and notebooks filling the empty space on the table. Giorno couldn’t believe his eyes. After all, what happened to all of the, “I’ll show you all sorts of things if you come out with me and my gang tonight…”. Was it just a front? A persona to pick up on girls? No, that’s impossible, Jolyne’s reputation precedes her in ways so unfathomable, they haven’t even yet been documented by mankind.

Now, Giorno wasn’t one to commonly intrude on his friend’s love life, but this was just ridiculous. Any sane person would have agreed that this situation was most certainly an exception.

“I have to go downstairs. Trish lives beneath my apartment. I kinda need to talk to her now.” Giorno stuttered. Now this was messing with his ability to form cohesive sentences? Okay, now he really needed to get to the bottom of this. Jolyne Kujo and her seemingly split personalities were officially like some horrible itch within Giorno’s brain. He needed to scratch it and figure out what the hell was going on.

‘There is no way that the person in that picture with Trish is the same person who called me a prude, before slapping Fugo on the ass.’ Giorno thought. Maybe it was her twin sister, Holyne or something.

By the time Giorno reached Trish’s apartment, he had managed to collect his thoughts. The initial shock had worn off. Also, now that he was thinking about it… wasn’t his dad still in the room? Was he trying to say something or-

“Oh Giorno, It’s you. What can I do for you?” Trish’s dad, Diavolo, swung the door open while Giorno was still trying to recall was his dad was doing while he and Mr. Kujo were talking. As Giorno looked at his principal in the doorway, he noticed a familiar look of shock that seemed etched into the man’s face. Did that mean that…

“Hello, um, is Trish home right now?”

“She certainly is. And she’s brought her friend with her. Her… well-behaved friend.”

Giorno walked past Principal Diavolo and entered the living room. And sitting there on the couch were Trish and Jolyne. Trish looked fashionable as always, a small black V-neck T-shirt and pink, yellow, orange, and black overalls that were rolled up to her mid-calf. It would have looked like a trainwreck on anyone else, but Trish just always made these things work. As for Jolyne and what she was wearing, A SWEATER VEST WITH A WHITE BUTTON-DOWN UNDERNEATH IT!?!

“Oh, hey Giorno. What’s up? Jolyne and I were just finishing up on our,” Trish’s sentence was interrupted by a giggle, “Our date.” Which was followed by even more giggles. Jolyne simply sat there, smiling at Trish with affection. They genuinely looked like some kind of domestic couple.
"Oh hey guys, I just wanted to swing down and ask about some... wait, hmm..." Giorno quickly pulled out his phone and discreetly took a picture. He knew he needed evidence because Narancia would hit him with the “Pics or it didn’t happen” argument again. He then pretended like his father was calling him to cover.

“Oh crap, sorry guys, I know I just got here, but my dad just got home. And from grocery shopping too. He wants me to go back upstairs and help him put them away.” Giorno lied so naturally even he might’ve been convinced that it was the truth.

“Of course! You can always come down later if you want. I’m not moving anytime soon you know!”

“Sorry about just dropping in like this, see you tomorrow!” Giorno began walking towards the door, after having secured his evidence that proved that there was indeed a glitch in the matrix.

“Bye!” Trish and Jolyne bid Giorno farewell at the same time.

“Have a good night Giorno.” Diavolo also bid Giorno a farewell while he held the door open for him.

“Good night Mr. Diavolo!” Giorno bid both goodbye and good luck to his principal. As soon as the door closed and he was in the hallway, he opened his phone and made a new group chat. He added Mista, Narancia, and Fugo. Trish wasn’t yet ready to hear that her new girlfriend was simply an anomaly in the space-time continuum. He sent the picture he got with the caption, “dude”. As he headed back up to his apartment, he felt a buzz in his pocket. It was probably the new group chat, one of them responded. It was Narancia, he sent the message, “bitch you photoshopped that fr, no way”

Chapter Text

“bitch you photoshopped that fr, no way” Sent by Narancia.

“It’s real dude, this is way more complex than we thought.” Sent by Giorno.

“That is not the same retarded and pathetic bitch from earlier today. Must be her good twin or something.” Sent by Fugo.

“Someone’s still salty lmfao” Sent by Mista.

“I AM NOT STILL “SALTY” SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Sent by Fugo.

“Ur just mad she made ur ass her property” Sent by Narancia.

“I WILL LEAK YOUR IP ADDRESS ON THE DARK WEB!” Sent by Fugo.

“Pffft as if youd even know how” Sent by Narancia.

“IP 167.498.734.89. Don’t test me.” Sent by Fugo.

“Um, guys can we get back on track and stop leaking IP addresses?” Sent by Giorno.

“Lmao he’s bluffing.” Sent by Mista.

“Holy fucking shit- I just checked, thats my actual ip adress.” Sent by Narancia.

“Fugo im sorry. Fugo im very sorry please forgive me.” Sent by Narancia.

“Fine, I forgive you, Narancia.” Sent by Fugo.

“Guys, the issue at hand please.” Sent by Giorno.

“Oh yeah. The clone.” Sent by Fugo.

“Everyone pay attention to Giorno now!” Sent by Mista.

“simp” Sent by Narancia.

“I am not being a simp, I’m just telling you guys to pay attention to Giorno because he has an important reason for making this groupchat!” Sent by Mista.

“nahhhhh u down bad” Sent by Narancia.

“That’s it, nothing’s getting done on the groupchat. Everyone meet at Narancia’s in 10 minutes.” Sent by Giorno.

“See you there in 5 minutes, Giorno.” Sent by Fugo.

“imma punch narancia when I get there” Sent by Mista.

Giorno rolled his eyes, he put his phone away and headed to the nearest elevator. When he got in he hit the floor 6 button. Narancia’s apartment was a pretty cool place to hang out, mainly because it had a really good view of the beach near their apartment. Out of all of them, Narancia lived on the highest floor out of the apartment’s 8 floors. Well technically, 7 floors. The 8th floor was closed for renovations about 15 years ago, according to Mista, who lived in their apartment building since he was a baby. From what Giorno had heard from Mista’s parents and some of the other long-term residents, around 18 years ago, a family was murdered in their apartment at night. Always preferring to be called a family of four, it was Mr. and Mrs. Sugimoto, their daughter Reimi, and her dog Arnold. It was a horrible tragedy and people began wondering if the killer would come back. Although, from what Giorno heard, with the sheer amount of police officers that they had roaming around the building, it would be next to impossible. Somehow, by pure chance and an ungodly amount of luck, a group of teenagers managed to find and catch the killer. Fixated on hands, he had others that he was planning to kill, but this murder spree was put to an early end. After this, people felt a lot safer knowing that he was behind bars, but soon, the 8th floor was practically abandoned. No one wanted to live on the same floor where a family was brutally murdered. One resident even moved down from the 8th floor to the 5 floor, in one of the open units. Eventually, the building’s owner went in to go do some renovations, tear everything down, build it back up, make it shiny and new. But soon after tearing everything down, they realized that even if it was built up and new, most people really wouldn’t want to live in a unit where something like that happened, and not even that long ago either. So, they dropped the whole project. It’s been abandoned ever since. And yet still, to this day, Giorno and Narancia try to convince the others that it would be a good idea to go up and explore it. So far, Trish is down for it, Fugo thinks it’s stupid and that the floor is abandoned and blocked off for a reason, and Mista says as long as they don’t make fun of him for pissing/shitting his pants if he hears so much as a creak then he’ll go.

As Giorno heard the elevator ding, his thoughts faded away as he stepped off the elevator and headed to Narancia’s unit. As he got closer he could hear rapid electro synth beats, he was pretty sure it was the start to Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face”. He knocked on Narancia’s door and Narancia came to open it.

“Oh hey Giorno! Come on in.” Narancia greeted Giorno enthusiastically. It'd been a while since his friends had come over to his apartment, so he was a little excited. And in a very Narancia-like fashion, he had put on his best playlist to greet them.

“Thanks, uh, did you put on a 2010’s hits playlist or something?” Giorno asked, curious for the reasoning behind his friend’s choice in music.

“Nope, it’s better. It’s so much better.” Narancia said with a hint of excitement in his voice. As the chorus began, Giorno realized why Narancia had that hint of excitement in his voice. It was not the original “Poker Face” but rather a very popular cover on the internet. Fugo and Mista both arrived next at the same time. Once they heard the song they both began laughing ridiculously.

“IS THAT THE BEAUTIFUL, MELODIC VOICE OF ERIC CARTMAN?!?!” Mista practically shouted.

“Yep, it sure is! I personally think that it's better than the original!” Narancia exclaimed.

“You know, I can’t believe I’m saying this but, I think I agree with Narancia.” Fugo said, with a small laugh that he tried to contain. He always tried to maintain a calm, steadfast face, but sometimes other expressions slipped through.

“Guys, we didn’t come here to listen to the glorious voice of Eric Cartman sing Poker Face. We came here to discuss the bodysnatcher that Trish is dating.” Giorno reminded his friends about why they all met up at Narancia’s in the first place.

“Oh yeah that.” In the span of 5 minutes, Narancia had almost forgotten why they even met up at his apartment in the first place.

“Guys, I have something to say about this whole situation.” Mista spoke up and gained the attention of everyone in the room. “Regardless of Jolyne’s weird personality change or whatever, but maybe, just maybe, it’s not that big of a deal?” Mista said cautiously, mostly trying to avoid Fugo’s spontaneous, unbridled rage. He failed.

“NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL?! THAT BITCH SLAPPED MY ASS AND NOW SHE’S ACTING ALL-”

“NO, No, no, no- that’s not what I meant Fugo. What I meant to say was, maybe Trish is actually rubbing off on Jolyne instead of the other way around. Even if it was less than 24 hours, maybe Jolyne’s changed? Kinda like I did?” Mista quelled Fugo’s temper before explaining his side and the logic behind it.

“Ok, go on…” Fugo was open to listening to Mista’s logic and reasoning now, thank god.

“Remember when Giorno and I started “dating” or whatever you wanna call it,” Mista began his train of thought to his friends. “You guys freaked out so fucking much. It was unbelievable. You said that I was too lazy, careless, and weird to be with Giorno, and that any kind of relationship that we had would crash and burn because of me. And I was lazy, careless, and weird, and if I didn’t change the way I did, the relationship would’ve crashed and burned because of me. But just being with Giorno and the idea of losing him made me wanna be better. It made me want to improve myself and become the kind of person that he could be with without his asshole friends screaming at him about his ‘horrific, tragic, dumpster fire train wreck taste in men.’” After finishing his sentence, Mista shot a dirty look at Fugo, who rolled his eyes. Okay, so he may have said something along those lines when they first broke the news, but it was a knee jerk reaction. He really thought that they were over this by now.

“Anyways,” Mista continued on. “My point in all of this is, what if Jolyne is just a super sped up version of me? What if just a single date with Trish has gotten her to change for the better?”

Now that Mista had laid that theory out on the table, it seemed a lot more likely than a secret good twin, or a rip in the continuity of space and time as we know it, or a personality disorder. Maybe he was right. If someone thought Mista was careless and lazy now, they should’ve seen him when Giorno first started hanging out with them at high school. Often, He couldn’t even be bothered to get up and get lunch at break. Narancia or Giorno would always bring his lunch to him while he started up at the clouds or when he slept beneath them.

3 years ago

“Narancia you idiot, you do know that when you bring him his food like he’s your master or something, the more of a lazy, spoiled, arrogant prick he becomes?” Fugo scolded, reprimanding Narancia, the short boy that carried two lunch trays almost daily because one of his friend’s was too lazy to get it himself. It was Giorno’s first day really hanging out with his future friend group. He had only greeted them cordially in the hallways before. But Giorno and Fugo shared a history class, and got paired together for a group assignment. While talking, the boys realized that they had a lot in common. Fugo took a liking to Giorno and decided to invite him over to his friend group for lunch. Giorno had seen Mista in a few of his classes before, he was always sleeping or messing with scraps of paper or metal that he’d found in the classroom. And he was always, without fail, pissing the hell out of his teachers. Not that he ever seemed to care though. As they reached the spot in the field that Fugo, Narancia, and Mista usually hung out in, They could see Mista just laying in the field, reading a motorcycle magazine, seemingly without a care in the world. As the group drew nearer, Fugo shouted at Mista, “Hey asshole! Narancia grabbed your lunch again! You better thank him for being nice enough to not let you starve!!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah whatever-” As Mista was about to hurl a sarcastic remark back at Fugo, he looked up and saw the newcomer that Fugo and Narancia had brought along with them. The green-eyed blonde-haired boy from his class! The boy that he just happened to have a massive crush on.

It all started when he stood up to a teacher who everyone hated. She was bad-tempered, and she liked to mistreat her students left, right, and sideways. One day after she screamed at Mista and called him a “failure whose only destination in life was the soup kitchen and the homeless shelter”, Giorno got up from his seat and told her to apologize to Mista. That it didn’t matter how annoying he was being, that she couldn’t say that to a kid. She obviously lost her temper again and sent Giorno to the principal's office, but word of what he did spread like wildfire and soon Giorno was a hero to his fellow 7th graders everywhere. He was especially a hero (a very pretty hero) to Mista, who had never had anyone go to bat for him before. He was hopelessly head-over-heels for Giorno after that.

Mista quickly stood up, walked over to the other boys, grabbed Fugo and walked far away enough that Giorno and Narancia couldn’t hear him whisper-shouting at Fugo.

“Dude?! Seriously?! Giorno Giovanna Brando?! He’s like the- like the-” Mista stuttered at the end, unable to bring himself to say what he truly thought of Giorno to another human being yet.

“He’s like the what?” Fugo asked, annoyed that Mista dragged him over towards the fence when he just wanted to eat his lunch.

“He’s like the- the school’s biggest tryhard! I- I mean- he actually studies in the library with his free time, and- uh, who actually does that? Nerds and tryhards-” Mista wanted to kick himself. He could only bring himself to insult Giorno? What the hell was wrong with him!?

“Okay, well you’re gonna need to get over it, because he’s gonna start hanging out with us more often from now on.” Fugo said bluntly. Mista’s amateur attempt to cover up his feelings with a feigned wall of dislike had gone over Fugo’s head. He still had no idea of his friend’s poorly disguised feelings for his new friend. And he would remain so unaware of these feelings, that he was actually the last one to find out, when Giorno and Mista announced that they were together. Everyone else had either already guessed by then, or had been told. Even Mr. Brando was even told before he was. It was something that he was still slightly bitter about even in the present time.

Present Day

“I still can’t believe that Mista had liked Giorno from even before day 1. I mean, you guys were so subtle about it!” Fugo exclaimed.

“We were the opposite of subtle, but okay.” Giorno responded.

“Yeah, what can I say? I’ve always worn my feelings on my sleeve. It’s kinda a weakness of mine actually.” Mista chimed in.

“I still can’t believe you guys waited until halfway through the 9th grade to get together. For the longest time, I thought you two got together at the end of 8th grade. You know, at the graduation ceremony.” Narancia recalled being quite shocked when Mista and Giorno revealed that they had only gotten together within the past month and waited to tell everyone. He was so sure that they began their relationship 7 months before that at the very least. But he must’ve ben wrong. Or was he? Narancia’s head hurt whenever he thought too much about Giorno and Mista’s relationship, it was too complex. His small brain couldn’t comprehend it all.
Mista and Giorno suddenly went a little quiet when they were reminded of 8th grade graduation. An incident that Mista and Giorno didn’t like to talk about much. Even Mr. Brando avoided talking about it. After seeing the tension that filled the room suddenly, Fugo shot Narancia a look that said “dude, shut up now.”

“Yeah, no, that’s not when we got together. Not even close to it. But, Mista and I did get a lot closer that day, so I can see how you thought we might've gotten together then.” Giorno said before shooting Mista a knowing look. Out of all of his friends, Mista was the one who knew the most about Giorno’s past, because he was there with him when his mother and step dad decided to show up uninvited to his 8th grade graduation.

Chapter Text

3 Years Ago-

8th Grade Graduation

“Holy shit, I can’t believe that you weren’t held back.” Giorno chuckled as Mista struggled to button up his shirt. It was the first, and probably only time that Giorno would ever see Mista in such formal wear. And by formal wear, he meant black jeans with no holes, and a half-ironed button-down shirt. They were graduating today, albeit from middle school, but parents always felt the need to make a big deal out of everything. It was more for them and less for the kids. So that dads who barely said two words a day to their kids could drink beer with other dads, and when their kid walked across that stage they could say “That’s my kid” as if they did anything to help parent their pet sperm. So that moms could silently make jabs at one another through their children’s accomplishments. Or through the other child’s failures.

“Oh, Little Timmy didn’t make the honor roll like my sweet Sarah did? Well, that’s too bad… Maybe one day he’ll find something that he shines at.”

“What’s important is that Timmy tried his best, always persisted, and never gave up. There was never one test that he didn’t study for. He never quit! And I think that that’s what matters in the end. Oh, by the way, why did Sarah quit the basketball team again?”

“Oh, the poor girl had an… unexpected procedure done halfway through the year-”

“Oh right, she quit because she’s a little slut and had to get an abortion.”

And next thing you know the police have been called because two white women are duking it out on the field, pulling each other’s hair out, and they’re both screaming about how their husbands are lawyers. Or at least, that’s how last year’s 8th grade graduation went. Giorno could only hope that something as interesting as that would happen today. But the fact that Mista was actually graduating was shocking enough in and out of itself. Giorno was 100% prepared to face the reality that his good friend was going to be held back from high school for another year.

Mista chuckled along with Giorno. Although, he couldn’t act like the blonde had nothing to do with it, “It’s only because you tutored me and helped me study for tests and shit. Without that, I would’ve failed this year.” The idea that he would actually be going to high school this year, after nearly 4 months not doing a single homework assignment, skipping out of class 90% of the time, and not even touching a single test. It came as a bit of a shock to him too. But nevertheless, Giorno came along and whipped him into shape, and now he's going to high school with him and his friends.

“Well, how do I look?” Mista turned around to face Giorno. Giorno’s first instinct was to say “Handsome. You look really handsome.” But he decided against it. He knew Mista liked him, as he wasn’t exactly subtle about it, and Giorno was still confused about his own feelings for Mista.

“You look good. Really cleaned up this time.” Giorno settled on saying. But then he realized that Mista’s shirt was buttoned up wrong. The bottom buttons were misaligned, therefore, the rest of the shirt was misaligned. Giorno walked over to Mista to fix it.

“Dude, you buttoned your shirt wrong.” Giorno held the hem of Mista’s shirt. “Look at this.”

“It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Not that big of a deal? Principal Speedwagon is gonna have an aneurysm if you walk up on stage looking like that.” Mista couldn’t argue with that. He had become quite acquainted with his principal during his middle school years. One might argue that the lobby of the front office was like his second home. But one thing that everyone knew about Principal Speedwagon, was how seriously he took appearance and overall “gentlemanliness”.

“Alright fine-” Mista was cut off by the sensation of hands fumbling with the buttons on his shirt. Giorno was unbuttoning and re-buttoning his shirt so that they were correctly aligned this time. Mista appeared calm and unassuming on the outside, but on the inside he was, to put it quite plainly, going feral.

“There,” Giorno finished fixing his shirt. “All better. Now you look like a true ‘Gentleman’”

“Thanks.”

Before the graduation ceremony started, the two boys decided to wander in the field that they had met in 6 months prior. It felt strange, they hadn’t even been friends for that long, yet they felt like they had known each for a much longer time than just 6 months. Mista and Giorno decided to sit in the shade, near their usual lunch spot. Or, their former usual lunch spot.

“Are you nervous about high school?” Giorno asked Mista, looking at the school in the distance.

“Nah. How about you?” Mista threw Giorno’s question right back at him.

“Not really, no.”

“Yeah, that’s fair.”

A brief period of silence ensued between the two. Before Giorno spoke up again.

“Do you think we’ll actually stay close friends, the way that we said we would?”

“Yeah, I think so. Giorno, do you plan on abandoning us for other lamer friends?”

“Of course not. I just… I guess my mind was wandering.” Giorno leaned into Mista. Resting his head on the other boy’s shoulder. “I was mostly thinking about us. I mean, It’s not that hard to see that you and I have a much deeper relationship with each other than we do with the others.”

Mista was somewhat shocked by these words. It wasn’t that he didn’t know that, but to hear Giorno Giovanna Brando, one of the most emotionally reluctant people he had ever met, talking about their relationship so casually, it wasn’t something that he was prepared for.

“Maybe, with a new start in high school, you and I can have a new start.” Giorno reached over and held Mista’s hand. Before Mista could even begin to process this new development, trouble just had to come and find them.

“Giorno?” An unknown voice came up from behind them. When Giorno heard it, he seized up. As if his mind was just thrown into his fight or flight instincts. Mista turned around to see who called out for Giorno. The person standing there was an Asian woman, with long brown hair and brown eyes. She was quite beautiful, although ancient by Mista’s standards (She was in her mid to late 30s). She was standing with a balding, overweight, white man. Mista couldn’t help but cringe at the sight of his gut hanging out from under his Hawaiian tee-shirt. He turned to look at Giorno, who hadn’t moved an inch since he heard the woman’s voice. Mista looked down at the hand that Giorno was now gripping tightly. His hand was… trembling? Now Mista was concerned. Who were these people? How do they know Giorno? And why do they seem to scare him? The man then spoke up.

“Yeah, I’d recognize that blonde hair anywhere. HEY KID! DON’T IGNORE US!!” He shouted. Giorno only trembled more. Mista decided to speak up for him.

“Hey, screw off! This is a school event; you have to be a parent in order to attend. And even if you are, you can’t just go around harassing other students!” As Mista tried to get these weird assholes to fuck off, Giorno suddenly stood up. He turned around and faced them.

“Oh, Giorno-” The woman began to say before Giorno cut her off.

“Go away mom. You’re not allowed to be here. I don’t want you to be here. So leave.” As he stated his commands, he kept gripping Mista’s hand, a sure sign of fear, yet he looked unshakable. Mista never once let go of his hand, but this was another big shock that Mista experienced today. Did Giorno just say “Mom”? Giorno always told Mista that he didn’t have a mom. But, from how he was acting around her, that might’ve not been entirely wrong either. He still had so much to learn about him, just when Mista thought he had a grasp on Giorno, a new detail emerged, and he realized that he was wrong. If there was anything that he learned from dating Giorno, it was that appearances could be so deceiving, it made Mista wonder if he could trust anything.

“Giorno, please just hear me out. Your father and I have come to take you home. We got a court order to do so.” Giorno’s “mom” just dropped a nuclear bomb on her son with that news.

“That’s not my father! T-There’s no way. You have no custody, or visitation time. There’s no way that you would just suddenly get it back.” While Giorno was speaking, he slowly took steps back and away from the strange, and possibly dangerous people. Mista walked back with him.

“Well, it’s true and you need to come with us now.”

“You’re fucking lying.”

“Hey! Don’t speak to your mother like that you fucking brat!”

“You don’t get to talk to Giorno like that either you fatass!” Mista yelled at the duo in front of them. Now, his instincts were screaming to pull Giorno along and run away as fast as he could. They, regardless of whether they were related to Giorno or not, were dangerous. Maybe they were trying to kidnap Giorno? Oh shit, that’s probably exactly what they were trying to do. Now Mista was freaking out, but he had to keep it together.

“Why did you bring him here?” Why would you do that? You know what he-” Giorno’s voice broke as he asked his mother a series of questions. He took a deep breath before his words went in an entirely different direction.

“When dad finds out about this, he’ll kill you. He’ll fucking murder you! Do you hear me!?”

“I don’t intend for your father to find out.” She looked at Giorno’s stepfather and whispered, “Just get this over with, we only have so much time…”. The man began running at the boys. For a man of his overweight build, he was surprisingly fast. Giorno finally let go of Mista’s hand before yelling at him to start running. And Mista obeyed, he began sprinting with Giorno across the field. Trying to outrun the predator that trailed not too far behind them, they ran for the school’s main building like their lives depended on it. And it was probably because to some extent, they did. By the time they almost reached the main building, they could see people gathered by the auditorium. This nightmare was almost over! However, they forgot one crucial thing. The ground of the field by the main building was muddy and slippery as hell, from the malfunctioning sprinklers. Mista managed to catch himself and keep running, but when he glanced to the side, he saw that Giorno lost his balance and fell. By the time he managed to get back up from the mud, his stepfather had caught up with him. He grabbed Giorno by his hair and one of his arms before trying to drag him off. Mista had never pivoted so hard in his life before, bolting towards Giorno. Trying to free him from the evil man’s grasp. Giorno used his remaining free arm to try and get his hand off of his wrist. Eventually, he just gave up and resorted to biting down on his attempted kidnapper as hard as he possibly could. By this point, some parents had noticed that two middle schoolers were fighting a middle-aged man out in the field. As Giorno fought for what he thought was his life and his freedom he heard and familiar voice call out, and a wave of relief washed over him.

“GIORNO!” Dio shoved past all of the other parents, even throwing someone’s grandma to the ground because she wouldn’t move out of his way fast enough. Once he got to the field, he threw Mista aside and nearly beat Giorno’s stepdad half to death. The police, for the second year in a row, had to be called.

“You- have the FUCKING nerve to come- back! After what you did!!” Dio beat his face to a pulp, cursing his name, swearing to make him suffer. Eventually, he was torn away and didn’t get to finish the job. But at least his son was safe. Those restraining orders were getting filed, now.

As police questioned potential witnesses, took Giorno’s stepfather to jail, and searched for his now-missing mother, Giorno felt a wave of overwhelming emotions, ones he couldn’t even describe. Just all of his negativity gathering at the pit of his stomach, making him feel numb and sensitive at the same time. Feeling nauseous. But then, Mista returned.

“So much for graduation huh? But this definitely topped what happened last year right?” Mista tried to make some humor out of the situation, before realizing that it was too soon. Way too soon.

“Yeah, I guess.” Giorno mumbled in response.

“So, can I ask? Yknow, what was their deal-?” Mista’s cautiously asked question was cut off by Giorno’s sharp and short response.

“Their deal was that he liked to hit me and touch me, and she liked to watch and laugh about it. That was their deal. Can we please not talk about it anymore?”

Mista was stuck silent. No wonder Giorno seemed so scared and shaken. To think that they had the audacity to show up, demanding Giorno come with them, after what they did? Some people just made Mista want to become a mass murderer. After a minute or two of awkward silence, Mista reached out and took Giorno’s hand. He gave it a gentle squeeze before saying.

“I know this sucks. But there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. And I want to be with you while you look for it.”

Chapter Text

“SILENCE!!!!” Secco’s screeching voice broke out across the class. The two girls who he screamed at sat completely stunned. Unmoving, frozen, and in fear. So much fear that if they suddenly shit themselves right in front of everyone, Giorno couldn’t blame them, or even make fun of them really. He would’ve done the same thing. Giorno felt a subtle tapping on his hand, he looked over and it was Mista. He had a message for Giorno written in their notebook. It read: “one of these days, secco’s vocal cords are gonna rupture in front of everybody”. Giorno smiled and wrote something back, “I don’t think that’s how it works, but yeah. They can only take so much damage.”

Mista smiled when he read it. His smile and his shared moment with Giorno were once more interrupted by, you guessed it, Secco’s screeching. And a knock on the door interrupted Secco’s screeching.

“Is everything alright in here?” It was Mr. Bucciarati. “I just wanted to check in, I heard a young girl screaming and couldn’t help but wonder if everything was alright in here?”

The whole class slightly snickered at that. A young girl screaming, when in reality, it was just Secco. Mr. Cioccolata’s neck snapped around to shoot draggers of rageful, hateful, vulgar, madness at his students who dared to make any noise. He might’ve actually gotten whiplash from how fast he turned his neck, Giorno thought to himself. He looked at Mista, they seemed to share the same thought. Both waited for Mr. Cioccolata to move his neck and hear his spine either readjust itself or snap in two. A silent giggle arose from the front of the class, it was quickly silenced, but not soon enough. Secco and Mr. Cioccolata both began to screech, “FORMAGGIO! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING!?!” They screamed in simultaneous tandem.

Mista and Giorno had to try so unbelievably hard to not laugh. Unless they wanted to suffer the same fate as Formaggio. They watched, completely entertained, and even slightly terrified, as Secco long jumped through the air and right onto Formaggio’s desk. Knocking everything on it off and putting Olympic jumpers to pure shame. He truly was as feral as they came.

“I- I’m so sorry s-sir! It was just a nervous tic! Nothing more I swear!!” Formaggio desperately pleaded his case, but Secco was having none of his bullshit.

“Nervous tics, huh?” He began to bore a hole through both Formaggio’s head, mind, and soul with the rabid chaos in his eyes. “Why aren’t you having them now?” He asked in a demanding tone of voice. Suddenly, Formaggio began hiccupping and twitching like tomorrow didn’t exist.

“S-see sir, nervous tics, I have plenty!”

“LIAR!!” Secco screeched.

“I’m sorry, but seriously is everything alright in there? May I come in?” The voice at the door distracted Giorno from the psychological trauma that was being inflicted on Formaggio at the front of the classroom. Mr. Bucciarati was still at the door of the classroom. He hadn’t left yet. Odds were, he heard the majority of what just happened. Giorno felt a tap at his hand. It was Mista. He looked over towards him and made eye contact with Mista. Mista looked down, signaling that he had written something in the notebook. As Mr. Bucciarati tried to get into their science classroom in hopes of saving a few students from the pair’s unending wrath, Giorno read Mista’s message, “holy shit, this just keeps getting better and better and better.”

The door opened and Mr. Bucciarati walked in.

“Hey! I never said come in, you know!” Mr. Cioccolata protested.

“When I hear screaming coming from your class, I can’t help but think someone was killed. Or worse…” Mr. Bucciarati retorted.

“More importantly,” Mr. Cioccolata interrupted him, “Why are you in my class, when you should be teaching one of yours? It’s the middle of the period.”

“Well, I was. Or… I was trying to. So was Mr. Abbacchio. And all of the other teachers within a 100-meter radius of your classroom.” Giorno and Mista looked at one another and almost laughed, but that was a death sentence, so they quickly stopped it. Mr. Bucciarati said that all teachers within a 100-meter radius were disrupted by the maniacs. But this town was small, therefore the high school was also small. A 100-meter radius of Mr. Cioccolata and Secco’s classroom was pretty much the rest of the school. Meaning that Mr. Cioccolata and Secco were a schoolwide disturbance on the daily.

“But the obvious distractions kept us from teaching.” Mr. Bucciarati quipped back. He was getting fed up with this. This was not an uncommon occurrence, once a week at the very least, a teacher coming into Mr. Cioccolata’s classroom, thinking that a student had been murdered, or a young girl was having a horrific psychotic episode, when in reality it was just Secco screaming. The teachers had a small weekly chart, each week meant a new rotation for the teachers. This week it was Mr. Bucciarati’s turn to handle all disturbances. If Giorno remembered the chart correctly, it would be Mr. Tiziano’s turn next week.

“Look, it’s just that this needs to stop.” Mr. Bucciarati bluntly put it as it was. “All of the teachers are sick of this. And the students are too.” Mr. Bucciarati looked at the class for help, reassurance of these statements but he got none. A lot of the students in Mr. Cioccolata’s class may have been academically stupid, but they weren’t stupid stupid. They weren’t about to join someone standing up to Mr. Cioccolata. Not even Principal Diavolo would stand up to Mr. Cioccolata and Secco. They lived in the same apartment building, so he knew where he and his daughter lived. Nothing scared him more than that. So the idea that Mr. Cioccolata and Secco would ever get fired was nothing but a pipe dream.

As Mr. Cioccolata and Secco argued back and forth with Mr. Bucciarati for the rest of the class period. Mista and Giorno exchanged several looks and notebook messages while they did.

“When was the last time we ever actually learned anything?” Giorno wrote on the heading of a new page. They liked to use as much of the paper as possible, so as not to waste any of their precious communication.

“I dont know when did we get here '' Mista wrote back.

“I’ve learned no biology in my time in this classroom.” Giorno wrote.

“this is biology class??” Mista wrote.

“What did you think it was?” Giorno wrote.

“chaos management” Mista wrote.

The bell rang, alerting them that this class period was over, and that it was time to go to their next class period. Mista and Giorno began to pack up their things like everyone else in the class, while Mr. Bucciarati and Mr. Cioccolata went at each throats while Secco cheered on from the side like some kind of demented cheerleader.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you at lunch.” Mista smiled at Giorno. He really wished that they shared more classes, but alas they only shared 3. If Mista had it his way, Giorno would be in every single one of his classes. Actually, if Mista had it his way, school wouldn’t exist, and he could just laze around in his apartment all day with Giorno and his friends.

“Yeah, I’ll see you then.” Before walking out the door to head to Mr. Abbacchio’s classroom, because his class after science was math, he gave Mista a quick peck on the cheek. A goodbye kiss of sorts. One that left Mista with an ecstatic feeling.

“Was Giorno? Was he?” Mista thought excitedly to himself. “No, it couldn’t possibly be… Is Giorno finally coming around to PDA?!?”

Chapter Text

The next class for Mista was English. He had this class with Trish. Almost made it bearable.

“Hey dude!” Trish greeted Mista at the door enthusiastically.

“Ayyyyy! My favorite lesbian!” Mista greeted Trish with equal enthusiasm. They walked into the classroom and took their assigned seats, which just so happened to be right next to one another. Trish just so happened to be one of Mr. Bucciarati’s favorites. The sheer number of times that Trish and Mista ended up “coincidentally” sitting next to one another in Mr. Bucciarati’s class was almost comical. The favoritism was blatant to say the least. As they settled into their seats, taking their textbooks and notebooks out, Trish began asking questions.

“So, what was up with everyone yesterday?”

Now, Mista had a dark little secret. A second life if you will. He was a double agent. Trish’s informant of sorts. He informed Trish of everything that happened in the friend group when she wasn’t there. This includes all of the meetings and messages that they had about Jolyne.

“They were convinced your girlfriend had been taken up by a body snatcher.” Mista said, dead serious. Trish began to giggle. While she loved all of her friends to death, good lord they could be over dramatic.

“I planted the rational idea in their heads that maybe meeting you made her feel like she could change. Kinda like how I did when I met Giorno. Just like you told me to.” Mista smiled, it was thanks to him, that this sudden wave of madness had settled down.

“And they’ve calmed down?” Trish inquired.

“Not 100%, but a noticeable amount, yeah.”

Trish smiled. Now that they were thinking rationally thanks to her spy, Mista, she would finally be able to properly introduce Jolyne to her friends, seeing as how Jolyne’s self-introduction didn’t go over well at all. She could still remember how, in the girl's locker room, Jolyne insisted that she could introduce herself to her friend group and get along with them just fine. And Trish believed her. That was of course until she singled out Giorno as the “group leader” like he was a wolf pack’s alpha or something, and then slapped Fugo’s ass so hard that Trish was convinced that in those next few moments, had heaven and hell switched places and fire began raining down on the world, it would’ve been solely because of his rage. And then, in a partly desperate attempt to make up for what happened in P.E, she promised to take Trish out on a nice study date, where Trish could continue tutoring Jolyne to help her get her grades up. She promised to be the ideal girlfriend and student and stay out of trouble for Trish’s sake. Just for this one date of course, she couldn’t promise much beyond that though.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Mista’s question interrupted Trish’s recollection of events from the previous day.

“Sure, let’s hear it.”

“Seriously though, what was up with Jolyne? I mean, a sweater vest? A study date? You are actually dating the infamous Jolyne Kujo and not some doppelganger, right?” Mista asked, dead serious.

“Oh my god! Of course, yes! I’m dating the real Jolyne. I think…” Mista’s eyes widened at Trish’s last remark before she burst out laughing. His gaze returned to normal when he realized she was joking with the last part.

“Okay, so the thing is, this whole thing is basically just a big case of miscommunication.” Trish started to explain, “So earlier this morning when you and I were texting, I didn’t have enough time to tell you how Jolyne and I met and all of that. So basically, we met a few months ago-”

“A few months ago!?!” Trish was interrupted by Mista’s shocked outburst. A few months?! A few weeks, maybe he could understand, but a few months? Was Trish going to keep this a secret from him? Her secret informant?! It just didn’t seem right.

“Yeah, Trust me, I would’ve told you sooner. Yeah, I know, I just saw that ‘how dare you’ look in your eye,” Mista had never had a good poker face, not once in his life. He just wore his emotions on his damn sleeve too much.

“Anyways,” Trish continued, “One day she hit me up because she wanted tutoring. Yeah, that’s right, tutoring.” Trish looked over and saw that Mista’s jaw was practically halfway to the ground. No one had ever heard about how she and Jolyne met before, and the story was a tad shocking to say the least.

“I guess she realized that it was time to stop fucking around and actually start taking high school seriously, if she wanted any chance of getting into college. But then, she tried to start taking shit seriously before realizing that she was kinda, please don’t tell her I said this, kinda dumb. But like only academically, she’s super smart in other ways, you know?”

“Yeah, I know, not that book smart, but really street smart.” Mista added.

“Exactly!” Trish carried on with her story, “But at first, I was totally like, holy shit, no way, girl you’re gonna get me arrested! Or expelled! And my dad’s the fucking principal! But then she kept asking, saying that she needed to turn it around now, or that she’d be stuck working at MacDonald’s and taking night classes just to be promoted to MacDonald’s manager for the rest of her life. And let’s be honest, that’s sad, so I kinda caved and agreed to help her." After that, we’d meet up in different spots around town from tutoring. And…” Trish made a face, one that said, “I didn’t even know if there was any hope left.” Mista cringed in pity before saying,

“That bad huh?” He asked, even though he knew the answer.

“Like, even worse than your grades.” Trish responded. They both responded with a mandatory cringe of pity and “oooh that’s bad…”.

“But then, we started seeing some gradual improvement. Fs became Ds. Ds became… higher Ds. But then by the third month, Jolyne managed to end the first quarter with 4 Cs, and 2 Ds. It took a lot of work, but we got there.” Trish smiled and so did Mista. It was always so depressing to hear about the droves and droves of students who thought that they were trapped. That their grades were so long that it was just pointless. That they stopped trying because they would never get it, they would never catch up, and that they were just lost causes in school. But, sometimes, there were a few who tried so hard, despite the odds, and more often than not, their hard work paid off. In Mista’s experience, these were some of the most inspiring stories out there. And now to hear that Jolyne had been one of the inspiring few, it made him like her even more.

Trish then began to blush a little bit, recounting a certain memory. “And then, when we found out about Jolyne’s now passing grades… Well, she kissed me.” Trish’s ears started to go red just thinking about it. Goddamn, she really liked this girl. “It was only after she kissed me that she asked me out. And I mean, I sorta had a tiny crush on her when we began tutoring, but when she kissed me, I mean… I was over the moon for her, you know? So obviously, I said yes.”

Mista’s jaw was once again halfway to the ground. “And long ago was this? Like, was it a few days or a few weeks after the end of the quarter?”

“It was about a week after the quarter ended. You know how long it takes the school to get the damn report cards out to students.” Trish replied.

“And you two have been a thing ever since?”

“I don’t know, it was weird for the first few weeks. We didn’t really have a word for what we were. We only recently decided that we were a ‘thing’. And by recently, I mean yesterday.”

Now Mista and Trish had been talking for quite some time now, and while Mr. Bucciarati was usually quite lenient with them talking in class. He was starting to give them “okay, seriously you dumbass kids, it’s time to quiet down.” look. Mista and Trish took the hint and piped down. But before they started to actually take notes on what Mr. Bucciarati had up on the board, they gave each other a look of “we will be discussing this further”, as they had only taken the top off the whirlwind romance between Trish and her now “girlfriend” who once photoshopped the principal’s face onto a picture of one of the Kardashian’s asses and put them up all over the school. Mista was sure that Principal Diavolo absolutely loved his daughter’s taste in women.

Chapter Text

There was a student council meeting after Mr. Bucciarati’s class. It would be a “very important meeting” as Mr. Abbacchio had worded it a week earlier. What very important things would they be discussing? Would they finally discuss the hot disaster that was Secco and Mr. Cioccolata's classroom? How about the psychopath who would be returning from suspension next week after he STABBED Giorno? Or maybe the sexual harassment that poor, unsuspecting guys like Fugo faced from sickos like Jolyne?

“Today’s very important meeting,” Mr. Abbacchio announced as the meeting began, “The planning for the school dance in 2 months. We’ll be discussing color schemes, ticket prices, food, location of the dance, etcetera.”

Nope. Why would they ever discuss actually important things? Why not spend the WHOLE FUCKING MEETING TALKING ABOUT USELESS SHIT!?!? Fugo thought to himself, pissed off as usual. Couldn’t they spend at least 5 minutes discussing the school’s actual problems?

Fugo took a few deep breaths. He needed to calm down, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to contribute anything to today’s meeting, which would get him in serious trouble after his fight with Risotto. The day after the fight with Risotto the psychopath, Mr. Abbacchio had pulled him aside personally to tell him that he needed to give his absolute 100% for these next few meetings; otherwise, he would have to be removed from the student council. So now Fugo was on his best behavior.

Now, the school dance in 2 months. It would be in December, meaning it would be in winter, therefore, winter and possibly even holiday themed.

“Well, it will be in December, so what about a winter themed dance?” Fugo raised his hand and spoke up, time to contribute with good ideas to cover his ass.

“Yeah that’s what I was thinking.”

“We still have all of those snowflake decorations from last year that we can reuse!”

“That sounds good to me.” Other student council members seconded Fugo’s amazing, totally original and creative idea.

Mr. Abbacchio glanced at Fugo with a smirk. The kid who had never come up with a single idea in a student council meeting before, only ever building off of other's ideas. The kid who just wrote everything down and more or less followed what his fellow student council members did. Mr. Abbacchio couldn’t help but be a little proud of the kid. Plus, now that he knew that Fugo was capable of more than note-taking, he was going to be a lot harder on him from now on. Helping him to live up to his potential and all of that crap.

“Okay, it seems that we’ve all agreed on a winter theme, but now for the more specific and minor details. Any ideas?” Mr. Abbacchio asked the council. A few hands went up and the members shared their ideas.

“How about an original color palette instead of the stereotypical blue, white, and silver?” One suggested.

“Like…?” Mr. Abbacchio prompted. He hated it when students would drop an idea and then not finish it. Fugo hated it too. Come on man! What kind of color palette!? Don’t just trail off in the middle of your fucking idea and expect someone else to finish it for you.

“Well, um… how about, um, like orange and purple?”

Silence struck the room. He could’ve at least suggested the school colors, Pink and Yellow. But no, the two most random colors he could’ve pulled out of his ass.
“How about we stick with the traditional blue, white, and silver?” Another student suggested it from the other side of the room. Another round of

“That sounds fine.”

“Yeah, I like that.”

“Here here.” filled the room. So, 10 out of the 30 minutes reserved for the student council meeting had passed and all they had accomplished was the theme and the colors. This was gonna be yet another last-minute, rushed school event. Fugo could tell with the rate of planning that they were going at. This meant that once again, every day for a whole week before the school event, Fugo and all of the other student council members would be at school from 8:00 A.M until 8:00, 9:00, shit, even 10:00 P.M. Dinners consisting of hot dogs, energy drinks, chocolate, and anything else that the errand runners bought from the nearby convenience store. It also consisted of everybody walking on eggshells 24/7 because of the demented, walking, talking beast known as Mr. Abbacchio. Every time he had to stay past the last school bell, he turned into a vengeful demon. Every time he had to stay hours upon hours past the last school bell, well… Satan walked the school grounds. The only thing that kept him from unleashing his rage upon the students, the school, and his fellow staff was Mr. Bucciarati. And this year he was only a part time supervisor for the Student Council. Meaning he would only be there every other night. A feeling of dread rose in Fugo’s chest. They needed to plan this timely and efficiently for once, otherwise they were all dead.

“Okay, time for the specific’s people! What food will be available for purchase? What kind of music will we play? What hours will we be open? Come on, ideas? Anyone?” Fugo spoke up. Making eye contact with some of the other student council members, they seemed to get his message of “We need to do this quickly unless we want to die.” They began coming up with ideas really fast after that. The room was soon filled with discussions of what they should plan for the event.

“How about instead of a set playlist from Spotify or something, we could take student requests?”

“That’s a good and bad idea though…”

“How?”

“Think of all the stupid or inappropriate requests we might get from some trolls trying to be funny. I mean, you all remember what happened at Battle Tendencies High School last year.”

How could they possibly forget? One idiot who fancied himself a class clown decided to troll their school dance by tricking the DJ into scanning a QR code that rickrolled the entire high school. It ended up with three angry buff dudes from their wrestling team burning the school down. It even had one fatality, a senior named Caesar Zeppeli. ‘What was the idiot’s name?’ Fugo thought to himself remembering the tragedy. ‘I- I think it was Joseph Joestar or something.’

“Nevermind, screw that. Let’s just pull up a party playlist on Spotify instead.”

“Yeah, that's a good idea.”

“Why can’t we use pandora?”

“Because pandora fucking sucks dude!”

“WATCH YOUR FUCKING LANGUAGE!!” Mr. Abbacchio roared out from the other side of the classroom.

“Okay, and what about snacks for sale?”

The sense of dread in Fugo’s stomach began to calm, maybe just maybe… They’d be able to get this done on time for once and avoid becoming one of Mr. Abbacchio’s various victims.

Chapter Text

Today was so crazy boring. Narancia could barely stay awake. It was Mr. Tiziano’s History Class and Narancia would rather play Russian Roulette than have to spend one more minute listening about how some cruel Chinese emperor came along after they finally had a good one and undid everything they had done. Although, it was both interesting and disturbing how there were parallels between leadership now and even thousands of years ago. You know, in the times before modern civilization and toilet paper, shit, even before toilets. But the History Class textbook’s mind-numbingly boring way of explaining it, made pulling out his own eyelashes seem more appealing than sitting in this class everyday for 50 minutes. Narancia’s foot was bouncing, his fingers were fidgeting with each other, his eyes were darting to the clock every 5 seconds, and deep inside he was praying that every time he looked at the clock, that weird thing would happen. The weird thing would happen when he was either really really bored, or really really overstimulated. Basically his brain would be going 10,000 miles per hour, and then it would just stop. Everything would be really numb, time just kinda melted, and it was next to impossible to concentrate on anything. Eventually Narancia would snap out of it, his memory would be hazy, he wouldn’t know what time it was, and it was still impossible to concentrate. He would usually be fine the next day. He looked at the clock again, only 3 seconds had passed. His foot kept tapping, seemingly all on its own, he waited for another few seconds. Nope, his brain wasn’t doing the thing. That meant sitting through another 15 minutes (10,000 years in Narancia’s History Class Brain time) of looking at the whiteboard as all the words Mr. Tiziano was saying went into one ear, failed to process in his brain, and just went out the other ear. Fugo kept telling him that he should really get evaluated for ADHD and consider medication, but as far as Narancia was concerned, people with ADHD liked to run around and jump up and down a lot. He only liked to jump up and down and do backflips SOMETIMES. So as far as Narancia was concerned, he was perfectly fine. Every time he used that argument, Fugo would only ever roll his eyes.

“NARANCIA!” A loud voice snapped Narancia out of his trance. It was Mr. Tiziano.

“Are you even paying attention at all?” He asked. Narancia quickly glanced at the clock, 2 whole minutes had passed.

“Uh yeah, totally.”

“Can you tell me about Sui Yang Di and his many cruelties committed under his reign?”

“Uhh… Lots of people died.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, lots of death.”

“What dynasty followed the Sui Dynasty?”

“Uhh…”

“I don't believe there was ever an Uhh Dynasty in recorded Chinese History. The correct answer is the Tang Dynasty. So if you’d all turn to page 168, we’ll finish today’s class with an overview of the Tang Dynasty before starting the chapter tomorrow…” Mr. Tiziano’s voice faded out as Naranica’s mind went into overdrive again for no apparent reason. He had something to distract him, a conversation with his bitchy teacher, that conversation had now ended. So it was back to fingers fidgeting, feet tapping, and glancing at the clock every two seconds. Maybe even throw in some hair and fingernail biting while he was at it. Anything to keep moving and to keep busy.

When the bell finally rang and Mr. Tiziano dismissed the class, Narancia shot out of his seat and out the door like a cannon. It was time for his favorite class. Which, it was still school so that list had incredibly low standards. This was the class that let him move the most, so while he did have a list of complaints, it was a much shorter list than his grievances about his other classes. Giorno and Fugo followed after him, debating about how much Narancia would benefit from Adderall or Ritalin.

“I’m serious, if he would just listen to me, Meds might actually help him concentrate.” Fugo said.

“Adderall is a amphetamine-based stimulant, his brain is already on meth 24/7, I think a dopamine-production stimulant like Ritalin would work better.” Giorno responded.

“If you say so.”

“HEYYY GIORNO, FUGO!! COME ON HURRY UP! WE’LL BE LATE” Narancia shouted at them from across the school field. He was already by the gym building on the other side of the school.

“We better start running if we wanna catch up to him.” Giorno sighed. Fugo merely “mehhed” in agreement. They started jogging to catch up with him. By the time they arrived at the gym building, Narancia was already talking to Trish, Jolyne and Mista. He had to leave history class halfway through. Something about guidance counseling. When Trish looked over and saw Fugo she squealed before running up to him. Narancia followed solely because he just wanted to keep moving.

“Soooooooo-” She started.

“Please don't,” Fugo interrupted Trish’s buildup. “Just, just don’t. Get to your point.”

“Ok fine asshole.” Trish responded in a more annoyed and serious tone. But that tone soon went right back to high pitched and excited. “I heard the preparations for the school dance have been started in the student council??” She asked, not really asking though, because she already knew the answer. It was yes.

“Yes, we have started planning for it.” Fugo said back. He wanted to give as little details as possible. Couldn’t have students making up rumors before any plans were even finalized.

“Is there any room for creative suggestions?” Narancia asked cautiously.

“Depends.” Fugo replied sharply. Narancia had never been good at reading inbetween the lines. There was just so much else happening in a conversation that his brain would focus on and jump from one thing to another constantly. By the time subtle sarcasm or subtext had been dropped in the conversation, he totally missed it. He was just too busy thinking about other things while having the conversation. However, he had known Fugo long enough to have almost a sensor of sorts in his brain. Whenever Fugo said something that had obvious subtext and possibly even violent and threatening connotations like “Waste my time and I’ll stab you in the face with a fork.” Narancia’s little theoretical brain sensor went DING DING DING.

“It’s not stupid I promise!” Narancia exclaimed.

“Alright let’s hear it.” Fugo said, surprisingly allowing for Narancia’s idea to be heard.

“Okay. So we all know the traditional Prom King and Queen right?” Narancia start his idea. Trish, Jolyne, and Mista all liked where this was starting. Fugo and Giorno were a little more suspicious.

“What if we did something like that, But, and hear me out guys…” Fugo rolled his eyes as Narancia spoke. He could already tell that this was something that Narancia’s crack mind came up with whilst he was probably in the middle of dumpster diving for pet rats or whatever it was that Narancia did in his free time. “What if we had a Rizz King and Rizz Queen?” He finished his idea.

Trish, Jolyne, and Mista were cheering in support of the idea. Fugo was about to beat Narancia within an inch of his life for wasting one whole minute of his time with this idea.

“No please! I’m Sorry!” Narancia shouted. “Mercy!! MERCY!!” Fugo chased him down across the courtyard.

“I’LL SEND YOU STRAIGHT TO THE BOILER ROOM OF HELL NARANCIA!! YOU CAN RIZZ UP SATAN WHILE YOU’RE DOWN THERE ALL YOU WANT!!” Fugo screeched as he attempted to catch Narancia and strangle him. However, Narancia was much faster than Fugo, eventually class began and Fugo gave up the chase. Jolyne nearly had an aneurysm laughing while the whole ordeal went down.

“Holy shit babe,” She said, crying with laughter, “Why didn’t you bring me around your friends sooner? These guys are fucking awesome!” Jolyne clutched her stomach as they walked into the girl’s locker room to change for Gym class. Giorno, Mista, a terrified Narancia, and a seething Fugo all walked into the boy’s locker room. In an attempt to get Fugo’s mind off of murder, narancia’s murder specifically, Giorno decided to ask him about the upcoming dance.

“You said that the student council has begun planning and discussions of the upcoming school dance. What do you guys have so far?” Giorno asked.

“Oh nothing much. Just color schemes, themes, location, time and date. Only the basic easy stuff really. Next meeting we’ll discuss some of the harder stuff.” Fugo responded.

“Harder stuff? Like what?” Mista chimed in.

“Music, dress code, and food options. You wouldn’t believe how much fucking controversy that shit can stir up.” Fugo said bitterly. “Swearing in songs, inappropriate attire, allergies,” Fugo listed sarcastically with air quotes.

“All of that bullshit that Karens love to over-exaggerate so they can have something to do with their life, and make mine harder.” He continued.

“Wait hold on Fugo, I think allergies are actually pretty real and serious.” Giorno interrupted.

“Allergies are for the weak!” Fugo shot back. “Imagine trying to live a respectable life and then meeting your untimely end all because you ate a peanut. You died at the hands of a literal nut.”

“Damn, F in the chat.” Narancia spoke up.

“Would it kill you to speak real English for onc-” Fugo’s remark was cut off by the sound of a whistle that signified “get your asses up and moving out into the gym”.

“Alright! Let’s go!” Narancia whooped as he ran into the gym, still completely full of high energy even after a full day of school. Fugo and Giorno looked at one another.

“I’m telling you man, ADHD meds.”

Chapter Text

It had been one month since the student council’s meeting about the school dance and Fugo’s worst fears were beginning to come true. After that first meeting, they were going absolutely nowhere with the plans for the school dance. This was going to be done completely at the last minute, in the last week before the dance, with Mr. Abbacchio (Satan) ready to go in for the kill if a student so much as coughed. They had accomplished next to nothing; every week’s meeting went a little something like this:

“We know what color palette we’re using right?”

“Yeah. Stop asking.”

“We haven’t decided on the location of the dance right?”

“Nope, nothing yet.”

“So um, how about we have it in the gym?”

“Yeah, that sounds good to me.”

“Cool.”

And then nothing for the rest of the meeting. It was like they had completely exhausted all of their brain power within 5 minutes of the meeting beginning. As much as Fugo tried to come up with ideas of his own, he had to admit, his ideas kinda sucked ass. That was why he was always the one who organized shit and made other people’s ideas happen. With every passing meeting, Mr. Abbacchio grew more and more impatient. Like Fugo, he knew what the lack of productivity in these meetings meant. He was gonna have to stay late, much much later than he would ever want to stay at this job. The mere thought of it made him sick.

“LAZY, WORTHLESS NOTHINGLINGS!!! THAT’S WHAT YOU ALL ARE” A hideous voice screeched from across the room. Fugo knew that voice all too well, it grated on his nerves and nearly made him lose his temper just from hearing it. It was the disgusting, repulsive voice of Mr. Cioccolata. If he was there, then that meant a certain equally disgusting someone was also there.

“WE LISTEN TO YOU BRATS EVERY TIME YOU HAVE A COUNCIL MEETING AND WE LISTEN! AS! YOU! DO! NOTHING!” The sound of Secco’s grating voice bounced off the walls of the student council classroom. Which just so happened to be placed next to Secco and Mr. Cioccolata’s classroom. The room was fearfully quiet, but eventually one brave and courageous soul stood up and spoke out.

“Okay… but why are you here? If you hate our inactivity so much why didn’t you just go straight to Mr. Abbacchio?”

Now the room was deadly silent. Talking back to Mr. Cioccolata and Secco? One can only hope that they had enjoyed the short life they lived, because now it was about to be over. Secco’s screeching, grating voice rang out like a symphony of nails on a chalkboard.

“AND THAT’S DETENTION FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR YOU LITTLE- YOU LITT-”

“Enough Secco!” Mr. Cioccolata interrupted Secco’s pre-rampage speech. “You remember the reprimands we got these last weeks? Look I hate these little brats as much as you do but we can’t get fired! This school is the only place left in town desperate enough to hire us!” He angrily whisper-shouted.

“Wait, wait, wait, not even the shitty sandwich shop on the corner of Steel Street and Ball Run Drive would hire you guys??” A voice broke out in disbelief.

“Nope, we got fired from there as well…” Cioccolata said in an agitated voice.

Fugo’s jaw hung in shock and awe. That place had a “C” rating from The Department of Food and Safety. The Health Inspector came, was served half raw chicken, got bitten and chased out by rats, and was told by the owner herself to “take her clipboard, break it up into small sections, and jam it up her baby-maker”. It had a perfect, exact 1 star rating on Yelp. How they hadn’t been forcibly closed down yet was a mystery, although Narancia swears to god that he saw the owner making a pact with the devil to keep her shop open.

“REGARDLESS, we’re here to…” Mr. Cioccolata stopped talking for a split second, struggling to get his next few words out.

“We’re here to he… we’re here to hellllll… we’re here to-”

“Help?” A voice filled with disdain rang out. An annoyed Mr. Abbacchio put his magazine down to finally address the unwanted guests in his classroom.

“Oh thank god, I don’t think I could’ve actually said it. It’s just such a disgusting word.” Mr. Cioccolata sighed in relief.

“Why are you here to help?

“Because we wanted to?”

Mr. Abbacchio cocked his eyebrow and tilted his head before letting out the most sarcastic “Really?” ever spoken into existence by a 28 year-old man who spent his days teaching teenagers math, asked god each night why he chose this over policing.

“No, Principal Diavolo is making us do this as punishment for Secco throwing a chair at a student.” Mr. Cioccolata more than willingly admitted. Students all silently murmured in agreement, Principal Diavolo forcing them to do something nice seemed a lot more fathomable than them helping the student council of their own free violation.

“As long as this thing gets done well and ON TIME!” Mr. Abbacchio glared at his wards for the last part of his sentence, “Then a little extra help shouldn’t be a problem.”

“But Mr. Abbacchio please, they’re, they’re insane!!” A frightened member of the student council protested but to all the members of the student body dismay, Mr. Abbacchio simply shot them a cold look that said “Well, maybe if you did things time-efficiently and effectively like I requested of you, this wouldn’t have to happen.”. Everyone quieted down after that. Fugo was the first of the members to accept his fate. He got up, walked over to Mr. Cioccolata and Secco as if he were approaching a rabid beast (Seeing as how Secco had bitten other students and teachers, not once, not twice, not even thrice, but 4 times, it wasn’t entirely wrong to approach them as such). He handed them a notebook full of ideas he had jotted down after listening to other student council member’s suggestions.

“Well sirs, should we start now?” He asked.

For the first time in his life, Fugo watched as Mr. Cioccolata smiled normally, not in a deranged way, or a sadistic way, or in an evil way that he usually saw Mr. Cioccolata smiling in, but in a calm, normal way. It terrified him more than anything, even more than that stupid fucking movie with the stupid fucking clown and stupid fucking kids that stupid fucking Narancia and Mista had made him watch.

“Let’s get this party on the road!” Secco exclaimed, or growled, maybe half hissed half cheered? Fugo legitimately couldn’t tell the difference.

Chapter Text

It had been four weeks since Mr. Cioccolata and Secco signed on to help the student council with the school dance, and while they had been four of the loudest, most irritating, weeks in the entire history of the student council, they were also four of the most productive weeks the student council had ever seen. Plus, Fugo had come to realize that as feral as Mr. Cioccolata and Secco were, they had human sides. Dark, evil, strange, human sides, but still, human sides.

Fugo was in the gymnasium, decorating the walls with balloons and streamers. Three of his fellow student council members were all struggling to hang a huge, shiny, plastic multi-colored disco ball that they found in the school storage room. With how dusty (and hideously outdated) it was, Fugo guessed that it hadn't been used since the 70s. But, “waste not” was the motto that Principal Diavolo pounded into their skulls after he was forced to cut nearly half of whatever already meager budget that the student council had, so they found use for it. They decided to wash all the decades of dirt and dust that had piled up and found that it still had a little bit of shine left to it. One member volunteered to take it home and finish fixing it up there, when he brought it back the next day, it was way shinier and he even took the time to color in each of the little squares as another update. All of the student council members, including Fugo, were impressed with how good it ended up looking. Mr. Cioccolata and Secco only screamed at them once after they saw it. Even the dead-inside Mr. Abbacchio was impressed. As Fugo watched them struggle to hang it up he couldn’t help but think to himself, “I should probably go help them.” But then, as he looked and saw Mr. Abbacchio stand up to go talk to them (berate them) he then thought, “Hahaha, fuck no what was I thinking?”

“Oh my god, it looks amazing!!” Trish’s distinct high-pitched voice rang through the gymnasium. Fugo turned around to find Principal Diavolo and Trish standing by the entrance to the makeshift dance room. Trish ran over to Fugo while Principal Diavolo went over to talk to Mr. Abbacchio. Fugo stepped down from his very wobbly, and very tall ladder that was probably a safety hazard if he thought about it. Better not to think about it then. As soon as his feet hit the ground, Trish went in for a hug. Fugo went in for a fistbump. It ended in an awkward half-hug, half-punch in the stomach.

“Well, uh, anyways,” Fugo muttered.

“When are you free to go?” Trish asked.

“It depends on when we’ve gotten enough work done for the day in Mr. Abbacchio’s eyes.” Fugo groaned. There really was no way of telling when Mr. Abbacchio would declare that they were done for the day. If he was just his normal grumpy self, then he would normally let them off at a reasonable time, like 4:00 or so. If he was tired then he might let them all go a little earlier, like 3:00-3:30ish. But if he was in a bad mood, then he’d make them all stay until 7:00 or even 8:00 at night. Fugo and the other student council members knew from experience.

“I mean, Mr. Abbacchio seems chill enough today…” Fugo’s voice trailed off, trying to estimate when Mr. Abbacchio would set them free for the day. It was already 3:30 and Mr. Abbacchio didn’t seem any more peeved than normal…

“I think we’ll be allowed to go home in around 30 minutes or so.” Fugo guessed. The truth was, Mr. Abbacchio had been in a really good mood these past few weeks, maybe even sooner?

Just as Fugo was contemplating what time he’d get to finally go home and catch up on episodes of that soap opera that he totally didn’t actually like, just watched it because it was the first thing that was available– It was his only singular guilty pleasure– Mr. Abbacchio came walking over.

“Hey Fugo, how are those balloons and streamers coming?”

“Oh, hey Mr. Abbacchio, uh, they’re coming along just fine.”

Mr. Abbacchio looked at the gymnasium walls, they were covered in perfectly twisted streamer ribbons and balloons that were blown to just the right size, not too big, not too small. He chuckled, Fugo the perfectionist, as always. He had covered most of the wall space of the gymnasium, which meant he actually did his job right.

“Is there anything else you need me to help with sir?” Fugo asked. Mr. Abbacchio shrugged, there was technically other work that he needed done before the dance, but unlike these other chumps, Fugo actually did good work in a timely manner. A trait that made him one of Abbacchio’s few favored students.

“Honestly, not really. Why don’t you get going for the day, Fugo?”

Fugo’s jaw dropped and Trish’s face lit up.

“Really sir?”

“Why not? These walls look great, just show up for maintenance tomorrow so the room still looks good for the dance later that night. Sounds good?” Mr. Abbacchio said nonchalantly. Fugo couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Yes sir! Thank you sir!” Fugo exclaimed. He put his jacket on, went over to the lockers in the corner of the room and pulled his backpack out. While he was busy doing that, Trish went over and talked to her dad.

“Hey Dad! Sooo, real quick question, what time is my curfew for tonight?”

“Going out again?”

“Yep, with Jolyne and the guys.”

“The dance is tomorrow night and we still-”

“Don’t have anything to wear?”

“Well… yeah…”

“Trish, you have an entire closet full of things to wear.”

“But, I’ve worn all of those things to events before, and-”

“You can’t be caught dead wearing the same thing to an event twice in a row?”

Trish sheepishly looked at her feet. “Yeaaah…”

“Alright, 11:00 P.M.”

“THANK YOU SO MUCH DAD!!” As Trish celebrated her win, Fugo walked over with his backpack. “It’s gonna be so much fun dragging them all to the mall!” she giggled. Fugo stopped dead in his tracks.

“Wait, we’re gonna be what?” Fugo asked. Before he could say anything else, Trish grabbed his arm with her killer grip and dragged him out of the gymnasium. Fugo’s futile protest could be heard as he was pulled out to the parking lot and eventually drowned out by the distance between the gym and the lot.

Later at the mall, Trish practically dragged Fugo to each and every store she wanted to go to. Narancia was just happy to be out and about with his friends, Giorno was tolerant of Trish’s mall trips. Mista actually enjoyed it when Trish dragged them to the mall, not because he was a big fan of clothes shopping or anything, but because he had a system. If he slipped Trish a little extra cash before they went out, she would assemble a somewhat tight and revealing outfit for Giorno to make him try on. He had slipped her an extra five bucks before they had arrived so Mista was going to get to see Giornio in whatever (sexy) outfits Trish assembled for him. He couldn’t wait. Meanwhile, Jolyne couldn’t wait to shoplift from the Claire's.

“Ok we’re here! Time for the next store!” Trish exclaimed. With the groan that Fugo let out you’d think he was dying. Jolyne was out somewhere, she said she had to go to the bathroom, she was probably stealing something by now. Narancia saw something shiny and like a moth to a flame. Giorno merely rolled his eyes and with a tired smile, kept walking. Mista nearly shit himself from excitement when he saw what store they were going into. The Black Rage Palace, a small alternative fashion business that had one of the most successful online shops in the region and would occasionally bring customers from hours away. The home ground, the mecca for goths, metalheads, punks, really anyone with half decent fashion taste actually. Trish truly was a woman of her word when bribed with money.

Trish shot Mista a wink before grabbing Giorno and dragging him off to the dressing rooms while she grabbed some clothes she saw along the way. While he waited for Trish to work her magic he went to talk to Fugo.

“Hey man, you holding up well?”

“This is such a waste of time, why do we have to come to all of these places? There were plenty of nice clothes at the Macy’s we were at like 30 minutes ago.”

“I mean there are a lot of cool and cheap clothes here.”

“I swear to god, this better be our last stop. We’ve been here for nearly 2 hours! Does nobody else have homework to do?!”

While Fugo was ranting about how the invention of capitalistic malls was murdering small towns across the nation, Mista found some halfway decent clothes.

“And any business enterprise that ‘downtown’ might’ve once had is just- what the hell are those?”

“Dude, I think we may not have to go to any more stores once we show Trish these.”

They picked up all the clothes they found off the rack that Trish might approve of and went off to the back to show her.

“HEY TRISH! Check out what we found!” Mista exclaimed.

“Hey Mista!” Trish eyed the clothes they were holding and her pupils expanded thrice their original size. “GIVE ME THOSE!” She nearly squealed. She laid them all out on a bench as she went through them. “These are amazing! Perfect even! Where did you find these??”

“Over by that rack over there.” Fugo pointed.

“Oh my god!! This is why I love this store so much!!” She ran over to where Fugo had pointed to continue her search.

*Knock, knock* came from inside the dressing room that Giorno was occupying. “Hey Trish, I finished putting all of this on… Are you sure this is the right size?”

“Yes, Giorno for the 100th time, I’m completely sure that those clothes are the right size!” Trish shouted from across the store.

“Really? These seem really tight…” Mista’s ears perked up at that last bit. Giorno stepped out of the dressing room and Mista thanked God for his daily bread. Trish had selected a tight black crop top that had an intricate chain pattern across the chest that wove across his torso to his back where the pattern continued. Mista looked down and nearly wept with joy, Trish had selected even tighter black pants with tears from the knees all the way to the inner thighs.

“This is ridiculous, I look deranged.” Giorno said annoyed.

“NO- You look- uhm, great! You look great!!” Mista nearly choked.

“Nah, you look deranged.” Fugo agreed with Giorno.

“I’m not wearing this in public under any circumstances.”

“But you’re still open to wearing it?? In private??” Mista asked hopefully. Giorno shot Mista a death glare so powerful that Mista could’ve sworn he saw lasers coming directly from Giorno’s pupils.

“Okay, I’ll take that as a no…” Mista sulked off in the distance.

“Hey guys!” Narancia bounced over with Trish behind him. , “I finally found something to wear that Trish approves of!”

“Hell yeah I do! This is gonna look great!” Trish exclaimed. She had a dress folded up in her arms, she seemed to have found something that she wanted to wear as well.

“OH THANK GOD!” Fugo groaned, all he wanted to do after being freed from the slaving grasp of Mr. Abbacchio was to go home and do homework (Maybe watch a little bit of that soap opera…), but instead, Trish’s shopping addiction had dragged him to the mall for two full hours and now he was tired. Really tired. And hungry too, in the full two hours that they had been in the mall, they didn’t stop at the food court once! Fugo had wanted to go earlier but Trish said that they would come back later. Tragically, at least to Fugo’s stomach, “later” never came. He made up his mind, later is now.

“Hey guys, I’m getting really, really hungry. So whether anyone else likes it or not, I’m going to go get in line for the checkout, buy these, head to the food court, and then absolutely demolish a pizza.” As Fugo said the word “pizza” all of the other boy’s stomachs began growling. Turns out they were all hungry, figures.

“You seem really eager to eat Fugo,” Giorno spoke up, “So why don’t you, Naracnia, and Trish head down to the food court while I change out of these ridiculous clothes. Also, can you try and find Jolyne while you’re out?”

“Yeah, that sounds good to me.” Fugo replied.

“Heeyy, wait a sec, how come I don’t get to go to the food court with everyone else?”

“Because dumbass, I don’t think I can get out of these pants without assistance. So you’re going to help me out, got it?”

“YES SI- I mean, uh, yes, of course dear boyfriend of mine, I’d love to take off your pants.”

“Oh jeez, you two,” Fugo rolled his eyes so far back into his head that he might’ve actually seen his own brain, “Mista, can you keep it in your pants until we’re at least out of earshot??”
*Later At The Food Court*

Fugo finally had his pizza and peace was restored to the seven kingdoms. Trish and Naracnia found Jolyne after she had finished her shopping, she had two bags full of clothes and accessories and yet, Narancia noticed that Jolyne’s wallet was still completely full. Giorno and Mista had not yet left the Black Rage Palace and met up with the rest of the group. “Those pants must have been really tight…” Trish thought to herself.

“Hey babe?” Trish looked up as Jolyne spoke to her, “I take it that you’re really excited for tomorrow night?”

“Oh absolutely! It’s gonna be amazing! Especially since I know that our awesome one and only Fugo was on the student council!” Trish exclaimed, she leaned over and kissed Fugo on the cheek, to which he made gagging noise and recoiled so hard that he nearly fell off his chair.

“EW AUGH, DON’T TOUCH ME YOU- YOU- YOU HARLOT!!”

“Aww, come on, you know you love me.” Trish teased.

“GET AWAY FROM ME, DAMN YOU!!” Fugo yelled, while Trish and Jolyne kept teasing him.

Meanwhile, back in the dressing room, Giorno had gotten out of the outfit a while ago, but there was something else holding them up.

“Seriously Mista, how long do we have to wait here?” Giorno asked frustratedly and Mista replied flustered, “I’m sorry Giorno, it just kinda happened… you know, I was helping you get out of those pants and my mind just kinda wandered, y’know?”.

“It’s already been 10 minutes, how much longer are you going to pitch that damn tent?”

“Well, I mean, if you’d help me out…”

“If you think that I’m going blow you, let fucking alone hand stuff, in a goddamn dressing room, you’re delusional.”

“Alright, that's fair…”