Chapter Text
The radio host announced another song, one Giorno let slip into the back of his consciousness while he kept his nose behind the open textbook in his hands. He tapped his index idly against the book’s spine as he read on and Dio drove them through the sprawling countryside to the sound of synth, thrumming guitar lines, and a cheerful singing voice.
That was the summer he and his father took to a holiday resort together for a fortnight, the summer everybody called him ‘GioGio’ and it never occurred to him to mind. It was just when he’d begun to grow into himself, only standing on the brink of adulthood, but not yet having tasted the wilderness beyond the world Dio had kept him safely within his whole life. That was the summer he fell in love.
After some hours of peaceful driving Dio’s car - sleek and the colour of dusk – slipped through a tall gate and down the gravel path through the resort’s ground and up towards the towering main house. A small crowd split off from where they’d stood by the front entrance to greet them.
“And this fine gentleman-” a man Giorno assumed was the resort manager said as he swung his arm out to indicate the oncoming car. “This will be the renowned and honourable Dio Brando. And his family, of course. Treat him with the utmost respect. I’ll be watching every single one of you brats this week, so you better keep your act up around him.”
A metal logo sat on Dio’s car bonnet - a silver five-pointed star. Some of the resort workers eyed it nervously, squinting when the highly polished metal threw back midday sun into their eyes. The car’s windows were tinted and rolled up so while nobody outside could see him yet Giorno had a fine view of the resort people. Most were college-age kids in prim white uniforms, reminiscent of cricket garb, with neatly slicked hair and stiff faces. Some stood off the car path with trolleys, waiting for the next guest to arrive and unload their luggage. A couple were helping a larger family move their junk from their car across the rank. The engine was abruptly cut. Dio got out and rounded the car, completely ignored the manager’s offer of a handshake, paused by Giorno’s window in the back, and rapped his knuckles against the glass. Giorno rolled the window down.
“Good,” said Dio. “I thought you might have nodded off back there.”
Giorno peered over Dio’s shoulder at the staff. Some were paying an uncomfortable amount of attention to him through the open window.
Dio followed his gaze and frowned. “Prissy brats, all of them. They’ll be here because even their parents can’t keep them on a tight enough leash. I raised you better, so you’d know not to get mixed up with their kind. Isn’t that right GioGio?”
Giorno nodded. In truth he had no interest in the college staff anyway. They were ivy-league-types, but the worst of the lot. Their parents’ bank balance had most likely been their ticket into those schools in the first place. Giorno climbed out of the car and followed Dio over to a small group of resort officials, one of whom finally got his handshake and slapped Giorno on the shoulder with a laugh. The manager began listing available activities throughout the week: Ping-Pong, softball, dance lessons, still-life art, squash, croquet, the works. Dio nodded along disinterestedly. Then the manager pulled Dio away to reminisce about something that happened years before Giorno was born, something which had allowed both men to become ludicrously wealthy, but nothing Giorno cared about listening in on. He hovered by the parking bay until their car was commandeered by a young man with a staff lanyard around his neck and a glossy smile across his face, as it was driven away out of sight, and then he hovered for a minute longer.
Finally, Dio noticed Giorno standing a few feet behind him. “Go and see the main house GioGio,” he told him. “We’ll be attending the dance there tonight. But be back at our lodge on the hour.”
Giorno nodded and hopped off the gravel away from the parking rank. Dio was soon pulled away again by another wealthy-looking guest with a stiff and greedy smile, clasping his hands with something between hunger and terror painted across his face. It was a revolting sight. Giorno turned away.
The main house was a grand towering thing, red brick and ivy, crouched at the crook of a hill like a sleeping lion between the crowded woods on either side. It cast a small shadow over its front lawns in the early afternoon where some other early guests were milling around to admire the landscape. Giorno skirted the lawns until he reached the back of the building. His primary aim was to find some quiet spot he’d be able to use later in the week to escape from his father and the other guests, somewhere he could hide with a book or two without being bothered for a few hours. He’d study, and nap, and then eventually return to their cabin by the end of the day. Dio wouldn’t mind where he was as long as he wasn’t mixing with the wrong crowd or doing anything dangerous.
Giorno swiftly explored the back garden of the main house. It was less well-kept than the front lawns and littered with damp vegetation and spare plastic furniture from events gone by. He got the impression few people came back here, it was cold and uninviting and smelt strongly of rotting leaves. He’d rather keep looking for his hiding spot than linger here.
As he hopped over a low wall, he heard laughter coming from inside the building, to his left. A man said something in response and the laughter returned. Giorno crept closer. A floor-length window, with drawn curtains, stood between him and the laughter. There was only a small sliver of a gap between the curtains he could peek through and into the house.
Giorno paused – an instinctual bone-deep motion Dio had drilled into him, knowing he shouldn’t be snooping around and eavesdropping on complete strangers – and payed close attention to the voices on the other side of the curtains.
“-you’re all assholes.”
“You’re the asshole!”
There was at least two male voices and one female speaking over one another simultaneously in the room. Giorno crept closer to the window to peek between the curtains, but only got a glimpse of somebody’s elbow. He couldn’t see anybody’s faces from where he was.
“Hey, pass me somethin’ from the table, would you?” asked a young male voice.
A young woman answered him, tiredly, “This food is for the guests, remember?”
“They won’t miss one little slice of salami or some shit, will they?” There was some murmured debate. “Just gimme one, alright? I’m fucking starving.” There was some more murmuring around the room, this time a little more defeated. Then, “Wait! Shit, there’s only four slices on the plate. Fuck that.”
“You pussy!” another young male voice shouted out, cackling from a different direction than the first guy. “You’re such a fucking pussy, dude!”
Giorno crouched to see through the curtains better, hoping to see exactly what was happening indoors that would cause such an uproar.
“I’m not a pussy!” the first guy was shouting back. “I know what’ll fuck my luck up, and that’s just asking for some really bad luck. I’m not eating the fourth slice, one of you lot eat it before me instead. Shut up!” The laughter continued, the girl from earlier now finding it just as entertaining. “Fuck you guys.” Heavy footsteps approached the window Giorno was crouching by. “I’m going for a run.”
Giorno scrambled back and away from the window, over a low wall and across the back garden. He ran without looking back. He didn’t think too hard about why he ran, only knowing that he was not meant to have eavesdropped like that; it was poor manners and very unlike him to do something so rude and dangerous. He shouldn’t be here. Dio can’t find out. Nobody should see him.
As Giorno skidded around a corner and behind a wall, he heard somebody slide the French window open and stomp out into the back garden. He waited there for another moment and caught his breath.
He wondered if he could peek around the wall to see who he’d been listening to that whole time without being noticed…
But decided against it. He evened his breath, dusted himself off, and returned to the front lawns.
Giorno sat as far into the gloomiest corner of the ballroom as he physically could. If anyone had been paying attention to him, they might have seen the way he was folding in on himself. But nobody made any indication of having noticed his discomfort. He’d only escaped a few minutes earlier from the clutches of one of his father’s colleges by the skin of his teeth and an ounce of luck. Everyone wanted to speak to the son of Dio. Everyone wanted to learn about him. Or dance with him. Or take it further, to Giorno’s growing disgust. He'd spent the whole day rejecting offers from the other children of rich guests to keep him company – a thinly veiled attempt to get closer to Dio and his political ties. They’d probably only been given the idea by their own parents. Dio was notoriously rich and influential, it was no surprise to Giorno that he had been an almost equal magnet for attention that afternoon. But this evening’s event had presented him with an additional reason for rejecting each advance they made; he did not know how to dance.
Giorno sipped a glass of water and watched his father slowly waltzing across the floor at the other end of the hall with the fifth woman of the evening. At least he looked content for now. This holiday hadn’t been for the sake of relaxation since its inception; it was merely a glorified business affair for Dio. Giorno recognised almost a third of the men and women in that hall as associates of his father. This was going to be a very dry holiday. But it can’t be that bad, he was thinking, there must be something at this resort he could occupy himself with once Dio inevitably forces him to become…proactive. Maybe he’d volunteer to help with the creche or backstage with the end-of-week variety show.
Just as he was mentally planning his coming week, a man split from the crowd and tentatively approached Giorno across the floor. He recognised the man as one of Dio’s colleagues, Pucci, who’d been showing some growing interest in Giorno since their arrival. He may have been here primarily to suck up to Dio, but he’d apparently decided to also suck up to the heir while he was at it.
“Are you enjoying the evening, GioGio?” asked Pucci. He stood a polite distance from the table Giorno sat at but watched him with the same quiet eagerness of a well-trained dog.
“Yes,” said Giorno simply. He brought his glass back up to his face and stared at an oblique spot in space by Pucci’s left elbow.
“How is school? You’re starting university this year, I heard from Dio. How is that coming along?”
“It’s good.”
“What are you going to be studying there? Will you study Law like your father?”
“Economics of underdeveloped countries.”
Pucci looked impressed. “That’s… very respectable. I heard from your father that you’ve been taking some interest in charitable work as of late.”
Giorno didn’t reply and Pucci began to look uncomfortable. If he was trying to win some sort of favour from Dio through his son, things were not going to plan. Thankfully they were saved the awkward silence when somebody called Pucci’s name from across the hall and he gratefully scurried away from the table.
Which left Giorno contemplating his surroundings again. The event was miserable. It was a waste of time. He could have spent this evening comfortably in his room getting a head-start on his course books for the coming year. But instead he was watching a room full of tipsy elites swaying to off-key blues. Giorno dimly wondered if he could sneak out the fire door and back to their cabin across the resort without attracting any attention from the other guests. He could feign a stomach ache or a migraine. He could get away from this sad excuse of a dance. It wasn’t a wholly unattractive idea.
But then the music changed suddenly. It had been a slow and gratingly sleepy waltz until now, but the tempo picked up and the brass section onstage flared into life. The lights dropped. Giorno’s attention was drawn to an open door at one end of the ballroom.
A colourful pair swept through the doors and across the hall and into a wide clearing the other guests made when they pulled back to the edges to make room. A pretty young woman in a sheer magenta gown struck a delicate pose, one hand on the shoulder of a young man in a three-piece suit and the other held up into the air. The man was tall, broad, and tan, with a mess of greased and curly dark hair. He was grinning from ear to ear. Both dancers brimmed with a barely-contained energy as the mambo music trilled through its prelude.
Giorno couldn’t look away once the mambo began and the two sprung into action. The girl moved like a force of nature, bending, spinning, flitting around the dance floor with a stunning effortlessness. She twirled and hopped onto her tiptoes and flicked her arms up over her head, and then fell right back into rhythm on the next beat. There were times when Giorno was sure she should have fallen or slipped based on how she threw her weight around in those glittery high-heels she wore. But she never did. On the other hand, her partner was dancing with a real visible power. He lifted her up, spun her around, matched each of her movements with one of his own, tossing his head back and sliding across the floor with a grin, striking every beat of the mambo, snapping into every pose, with strong movements and more brazen confidence than Giorno had ever seen in anyone else, glowing and buzzing with sensuality. The dancer barely broke a sweat when he picked his partner off the ground and hauled her over his head for an unbelievable move; she stretched herself out in the air before being dipped low to the dancefloor while still keeping the same form. That man must have been incredibly strong to pull it off, Giorno thought. He must be phenomenally strong.
Giorno followed the young man’s movements as the dancers passed his table with a series of twirls and stomps. He’d never seen dancing like it before. It made his heart pound. It was mesmerising.
He watched, rapt, as the girl lifted one leg up and hooked it over her partner’s shoulder. She went limp and let her partner pull her over the floor then slowly up his body until she was almost straddling him. In a matter of a few more smooth movements, they’d rearranged themselves and the two were delicately turning to each other, placing both hands on the other’s chest, and shimmying their hips in perfect synchronicity.
But just as the dance reached the fastest and brassiest part of the mambo, the two dancers halted. They looked embarrassed. Giorno followed their gazes and found the resort manager – the one who’d greeted him that morning with an uncomfortable amount of familiarity – miming a cutting motion across his neck.
The music continued but the two dancers split apart. The young woman in pink drifted over to a group of older men and offered her hand to dance meanwhile the man found himself attacked by some women wearing silk and pearls on the other side of the floor.
Everything in the ballroom settled back into normality as if a storm had passed through. Giorno’s heart beating furiously against his ribs began to slow to its regular pace.
Soon, Giorno had lost interest in the dance and became restless. He could see another of Dio’s colleagues across the hall working themselves up to speak to him. Before he could be trapped once again, Giorno slipped away from his table and through the crowd of swaying guests. He left the hall as the mambo faded back into a sleepy waltz behind him.