Work Text:
They're somewhere in Michigan when Gyro reaches over and tugs on Johnny's sleeve and says, "This sucks, let's stop for the night."
Johnny looks around, squinting against the fat swirling snowflakes, and figures here is probably no worse than anywhere else, so he says, "Yeah, okay." They haven't come across anything resembling a clearing in hours, but the trees are big enough and old enough here that there's marginally less bullshit undergrowth that they need to beat down. The ground seems to be mostly firm loam under the thick layer of snow: better, at least, than the rocky sand they slept on for weeks in the desert. Not as good as, like, a bed, but you do what you gotta.
They slide off their horses, and Gyro tosses his saddlebag over to Johnny so he can poke through it and see what they can eat. He's gotten a lot less bothered about Johnny going through his stuff; they've been living out of each other's pockets for so long now that neither of them really have any possessions that the other one hasn't at least seen, if not used himself.
As Johnny tries to decide whether he wants to deal with canned beans or some sort of stew tonight, Gyro wanders around gathering kindling. The snow isn't particularly wet, thank God, so hopefully they won't have too much trouble getting a fire going. Johnny squints around at their campsite, trying to decide if there's anywhere that's optimal for a fire pit. He thinks it's probably all pretty much the same.
"Aa-ah-ah!!" Gyro yells suddenly, and Johnny whips around, heart already kicking into high gear-- but Gyro seems fine. Well, he's pinwheeling for balance, but like, that's not exactly unusual for him. Johnny watches as he falls backwards onto his ass, kicking snow up onto his lap.
"Uh, hey, Gyro," Johnny calls. "You okay over there?"
Gyro flops backwards to look at him upside-down. "I'm just sublime," he replies. "It appears there's a-- a crack in the ground here and the snow-- fell in. Made it flat."
"That's called a snowdrift," Johnny says helpfully, and Gyro gives him a gloved thumbs-up. The fact that he knows the word sublime but doesn't know what a snowdrift is called is completely unsurprising to Johnny.
Gyro heaves a sigh, and then sits back up and scoots back onto the flat ground to stand up, his back to Johnny once more. His whole back is covered in a layer of crunchy top-snow now, even the brim of his stupid-looking hat, but he seems unconcerned. Johnny turns back to the food, and decides that stew might be the way to go, even if it's more effort. They've been having beans for the last couple nights, and he's ready to not eat beans for the rest of his life.
"Hey, Johnny, you know what we oughta do tonight?" Gyro calls, followed by a crack of breaking wood.
"What," Johnny grunts, drawing a big circle in the snow around himself. He has to reach as far as he can in order to get the circle big enough to put a fire in.
"We oughta make, like-- an ice house. You know, like how people do way up north here? I don't know what you call them in English, but they're called iglù in Italian."
Johnny shoves snow away from himself until he's cleared the circle. "Yeah, they're called igloos in English too. I dunno how to make one, though. It seems like it would take a while."
"Eh bbuno, we wouldn't make a real iglù, they're too big and permanent." Gyro dumps the wood he's gathered next to Johnny and helps him out of the de-snowed circle, then turns to gesture at where he'd slipped in the snowdrift. "But I reckon we could hollow that snowfall--"
"Drift. Snowdrift."
"Snowdrift, and sleep inside it like foxes. It would stop us from getting snowed on." He turns back to Johnny, grinning big and golden. "What do you say?"
Johnny raises his eyebrows. "If you can dig a hole in the snow big enough for two grown men to fit in, then sure. I dunno how much I can help."
"Leave it to me, star boy," Gyro says cheerfully. "Go catch us some rabbits or something, I'm sick of beans."
--
Johnny feels bad, making Slow Dancer take him everywhere, but it's not like he can walk. He has a little flat-bottomed sled that he can push himself around on for short distances, but anything farther than, like, twenty feet is just kind of undoable. (The 'sled' isn't even that; it's just a slab of thick birch bark strips glued together with tree sap and laminated with old newspapers. It does the trick, but it's not exactly high-tech.) He and Slow Dancer make their way back to the campsite after forty-five minutes with a brace of skinny hares, and he dismounts clumsily. He wishes he had carrots or something fun to give her, but no one's eating well tonight.
"God, I miss real food," he says to Gyro in greeting, tossing the hares over to him. Gyro is sitting crosslegged in front of the fire, alternating between blowing on the embers and sticking more wood on. Johnny pulls himself over next to him and sticks his hands out, hoping to catch any of the heat.
"Me too," Gyro moans, but he grabs his knife and starts skinning and gutting one of the hares anyway. He continues, "You Americans don't even have a national culinary tradition yet. You're too young. I miss Napule. I miss pasta e ragù napulitano… See, this? This is nonsense," he tells Johnny seriously, gesturing with the weirdly naked-looking hare. He adds, "Put it on a stick and put in the fire. God, we don't even have spices."
"Uh, this isn't exactly high American cookin'," Johnny points out, but he does as he's told. He wasn't heartset on stew, so this is fine. "You shouldn't let the food we eat on the road color your whole image of American food."
Gyro looks unconvinced. "What do you think of as 'high American cooking,' then?"
"Barbecue," Johnny says immediately, "Really, really good barbecue. With vinegar sauce. And hush puppies."
Gyro squints at him. "Barbecue sounds like a fake word."
"It's not!" Johnny protests, twisting the hare over the fire. "I got no idea where it comes from, but I swear it's a real word. Barbecue is stuff you cook slow, with smoke. It's great. When this is over I'm gonna make you come back to Kentucky with me so you can have real barbecue." He pauses, then adds, "And mint juleps. I bet you'd like mint juleps."
"Johnny, you keep saying words at me and I'm almost entirely certain they're fake," Gyro complains, starting to prepare the other hare. "What in the hell is a julep?"
"A mint julep is a cocktail. It's got bourbon in it, and sugar and mint. I dunno what a plain julep is," he admits. "I guess probably just the kind of drink."
"Hmm," Gyro says. "I'm gonna hold you to this promise. You, me, good food, alcohol. Sounds like a date."
Johnny is almost certain that that's not quite the sentiment that Gyro's trying to convey, but he doesn't bother correcting him. He just blushes stupidly and hopes it's gotten dark enough that Gyro can't see.
They eat in relative silence, both of them staring into the crackling fire. Snowflakes hiss as they hit the flames. The hares are stringy and dry, but they're not fucking beans, so it's fine. It's incredible how low Johnny's standards for yes, I would put this in my mouth and eat it have fallen, frankly; when Gyro scrapes the fat off the skins and uses it to fry the hare livers in, Johnny isn't even fazed. It's not his thing, but it's honestly not bad.
Gyro has already left to toss the hare skeletons away ("Bear etiquette," he'd told Johnny seriously, weeks ago, and Johnny hasn't asked since) when it occurs to Johnny to wonder about the igloo/foxhole situation. He's still seated at the fire, though, and it's fully dark by now, so he can't really see if anything looks different. Gyro hadn't immediately bragged about it to him, though, so he kind of assumes it was a bust. He's only just started to unpack his bedroll for the night when he hears Gyro and Valkyrie coming back.
"Hey," he calls over his shoulder, "What's the deal with the igloo?"
"Oh! It is a stunning success," Gyro enthuses, dismounting Valkyrie and giving her the customary post-ride kiss on the snout. He kisses Slow Dancer, too, which is disgustingly endearing. "Give me a sec to take care of the ladies and then I'll show you what I did." By take care of the ladies he just means take the horses' saddles off and put their blankets on, another activity Johnny can't really help him with. He joined the Race on a whim; he's suddenly so, so glad that that whim was Gyro, because there's so much about dealing with horses that he can't do by himself anymore.
"Okay, that's done with," Gyro says, "Let me present to you: ll'iglù Zeppeli." The language rolls off his tongue, somehow more fluid than he sounds in English. Johnny heaves himself onto his piece of shit sled and lets Gyro pull him by the hands over to the snowdrift, which is more visible now that he's not fighting the glow of the fire to see it. It looks like Gyro packed it down and then hollowed it out, leaving an entrance at one end of the ditch.
"How'd you manage that?" Johnny asks, gesturing at the entrance.
Gyro throws himself onto the ground next to Johnny and pats one of his steel balls. "Friction," he says smugly. "I melted it all out and the sides re-froze, so it should be nice and sturdy."
"Nice," Johnny says, genuinely kind of impressed. Gyro preens. "Isn't it gonna be cold inside though? Since it's all ice…"
Gyro shrugs. "Ground's no colder in there than it is out here. And the air will warm up because it'll be stuck in there with us."
"Huh," Johnny says. "Neat. Okay."
They have a bit of a time stuffing the bedrolls inside and making sure they lay relatively flat, but they manage eventually. The inside of the-- ice hole? It's really, really not an igloo-- isn't super roomy, but it's wide enough and tall enough that it doesn't feel like a coffin, and that's really all Johnny asks. He's not claustrophobic, so it's whatever. They get ready for the night separately; Gyro takes longer, because he insists on melting snow down, washing his hair in it, and letting his hair dry by the fire. He doesn't use soap in it or anything, but he does stick some cedar in the hot water to make it smell nice.
"It makes me spicy," Gyro explains with an eyebrow wiggle. Johnny just laughs at him, and watches as he combs his fingers through to detangle it. His hair is golden like his teeth like this, wet in the firelight.
Once Gyro's hair is dry enough that it probably won't freeze, he braids it messily, jams his hat back on, and pulls Johnny back to the snowdrift. "You should probably go in first," he decides. "Otherwise you might kick me in the face."
"Okay, but you saying that means that if you kick me in the face I get to punch you," Johnny says. Gyro laughs at him, his weird nasally chuckle warm in Johnny's ears as Johnny scoots himself feet-first into the little cave. It's pitch-dark inside, but he can feel all the walls in a reassuring way. Once he feels more-or-less secure where he is, he calls out, "You can come in now," and Gyro wiggles in too. He manages not to kick Johnny in the face, and he reaches up to stick his stupid hat over half the entrance like some sort of stopper.
"There, now even less heat will escape," he says.
"Or passing travelers will think the hat is abandoned and they'll steal it and it'll finally be out of my life," Johnny suggests. They're so close together that their upper arms are touching, and Johnny can smell the cedar in Gyro's hair.
Gyro gasps. Johnny can't see his face, but he imagines the O of horror he's making. "What?! Johnny, how could you say that, don't you like my hat?"
"It's hideous," Johnny says flatly. He's teasing, of course; it's a stupid hat, but he does like it. It's-- very Gyro. He's just gotta give him shit about it, is all.
"Unbelievable," Gyro mutters, but he's laughing. "I dig a hole in ice for him and he tells me he doesn't like my amazing and stylish hat."
"It's got holes in the brim, Gyro, what the hell are you gonna do with a hat that's got holes in the brim?"
"Uh, look incredibly beautiful and start a fashion revolution, Johnny, duh," Gyro tells him, prodding him in the ribs. "Sometimes you must suffer for beauty. And it's not like your hat is more practical either, you have hair sticking out like a little spaniel."
"I have to do that or else the hat's too tight!" Johnny explains, trying not to laugh.
"Then get a bigger hat!" Gyro half-yells. "There are solutions, Johnny!"
"Sh-sh," Johnny gasps, laughing after all. "Not so loud, your voice bounces off the ice, oh my God."
Gyro takes a deep breath and then just yells wordlessly, for all of the split second it takes before Johnny slaps his hand over his mouth, and then both of them collapse into helpless tired laughter.
"Sssshhhhhut the fuck up, Gyro," Johnny wheezes. Gyro licks Johnny's hand, and he pulls it away with an Augh! of disgust.
"Now who's yelling," Gyro giggles.
"You're so revolting, oh my God, I'm going to sleep," Johnny snickers. He wipes his hand on Gyro's shirt in revenge and pushes himself onto his side, facing away from Gyro. "Goodnight, Gyro."
"Uh huh," Gyro says, "Goodnight, you fuckin' Judas." He pats at Johnny's shoulders blindly. "I hope you sleep well on your bed of lies, Johnny."
Johnny just fake-snores loudly, to another fit of quiet giggling from Gyro.
--
He's not sure what woke him up at first. He blinks into the darkness, slowly becoming aware of his surroundings; he's warmer than he's been in weeks, but he can't see for shit. After a moment he realizes two things: first, that Gyro's got his face pressed into Johnny's chest and his arms wrapped around his waist like a little kid, and second, that he's awake because he heard something howling.
One of these realizations takes immediate precedence over the other. He breathes as quietly as physically possible, straining to listen to whatever's outside. Another howl rises through the air, atonal and lonely and absolutely fucking terrifying. It's joined by another, and another-- Johnny loses count. One of the horses wickers quietly in unease. No, Johnny thinks forcefully at them, shut up!
He's sort of on his side, sort of on his back, and one of his arms is asleep under his and Gyro's weight. The other one is working just fine, though, so he pushes at Gyro's shoulder. "Wake up," he whispers. Gyro just nuzzles into his solar plexus. "Wake the fuck up," he hisses.
"Mmnngh, che cosa, cor mio?" Gyro mumbles.
"English, Gyro," Johnny whispers, pushing at his shoulder again. "Wake up."
"Che cos'é?" Gyro tries again, pulling away a little. "O… eugh, what is it? Is morning?"
"Finally," Johnny breathes. Patchy English is better than no English. "No, it's still nighttime, but Gyro, there's coyotes. I think. Maybe wolves."
There's a moment of silence, punctuated by another howl. It sounds like they're getting closer. "Shit," Gyro says eventually, barely giving it voice.
"Yeah," Johnny agrees quietly. "Shit is right."
Gyro pushes himself up a little, so their heads are more even. So that he's closer to the entrance of the ice-cave than Johnny is. "Okay," he breathes, his mouth right by Johnny's ear. "Okay. What do you want to do."
"I don't know," Johnny admits. He feels even more immobilized now than he normally does, like his stomach turned into a fifty-pound weight while he slept. "If they try to attack us or the horses, we gotta fight, but… I don't wanna risk drawing their attention if they're just passin' through."
"Okay. That's sensitive," Gyro says, and then he corrects himself, "Sensible. English."
Johnny kind of pats him, like, it's fine. He gets it. If he had to do this whole race speaking Italian he wouldn't be so great half-asleep either.
Something howls again, and this time it's incredibly close-- probably within twenty feet of them. He and Gyro both stop breathing. He can feel Gyro's heartbeat against his chest. The night is so quiet that they can hear the wolf-- coyote? Whatever it is-- crunching through the snow. It's walking slowly, like it's being careful where it puts its paws. They listen, tense, as it walks literally over them. Johnny's not religious, but he sends a quick prayer up to whoever might be listening that the thin ice roof doesn't collapse and send a wild animal crashing on top of him and Gyro.
It doesn't, but that doesn't mean the danger's over. The wolf (?) is nosing around at the entrance now; Gyro grips at Johnny's shoulder, preparing to launch himself out. Johnny grabs at his collar, breathes Wait as quiet as possible. Gyro makes a tiny, wordless hiss of disagreement, but he stays.
A howl comes from farther away, and the wolf (?) investigating them howls back. God, I hope it's not calling the others back, Johnny thinks, and then his hopes are confirmed: there's the unmistakable sound of piss hitting the snow (a sound Johnny is deeply familiar with by now), and then the sound of piss hitting a leather hat (a sound Johnny's never heard before, but has imagined at least a couple times).
"Nooo," Gyro breathes. Johnny is shaking with the effort to stay silent. The pissing stops, and the wolf lopes off to join the others. They stay quiet and frozen for another couple excruciating minutes, listening to the howling get farther and farther away, and then finally Johnny can't keep the laughter in anymore.
"It pissed on your hat," he gasps. "Oh, my God, I thought we were gonna die."
"It's still not too late for you to die," Gyro growls. Then he exclaims, "You planned this! You called those wolves here and told them to piss on my beautiful hat! Ah, it's ruined! Johnny!"
"Oh, honey, no," Johnny chokes out between gales of laughter. Laughing when you're lying on your back always feels so different from laughing when you're upright. "I'm sure that hat has seen worse. We can wash it off in the morning."
"Don't you honey me," Gyro grumbles. "My poor hat ."
"Uh huh," Johnny says, still giggling. "My heart bleeds for you." Now that he's not literally about to get mauled by wolves, the adrenalin is wearing off and he's suddenly tired again. God, it's probably like four in the morning. He heaves a slightly-hysterical sigh, and then he just bites the bullet and pulls himself closer to Gyro, tucks his face into the space between Gyro's neck and his shoulder.
At some point in their relationship they crossed a line; this is new, but it feels like the tide of their them-ness has been pulling them towards this. It feels like his whole body is saying, of course. Of course this is where we are.
"I'm understanding this as your apology for getting my hat peed on," Gyro informs him, but he wraps his arms back around Johnny's waist and tugs him closer anyway. Johnny can feel him move his hips in a way that suggests he's just done something with their legs, but he can't really tell anything other than that. He wiggles a little to get more comfortable, and Gyro hums happily into his hair. "Bonanòtte, Johnny," he says quietly. "Again."
"'Night, Gyro," Johnny says into his clavicle. Gyro smells like cedar, and sweat, and horses. Like something Johnny wants to breathe in for the rest of his life.
--
Johnny blinks awake, bleary and warm. His face is still smushed against Gyro's throat. Watery grey light filters in around Gyro's hat and through the silly holes in it; Johnny can't wait to see if the wolf piss left a stain. He pulls gingerly away from Gyro, trying not to wake him up, but then he sees that Gyro is in fact already awake, watching him with a weirdly gentle expression on his face.
"Uh," Johnny says. His voice is all scratchy and dry with sleep, so he clears his throat. "Good morning."
"Bonnì jurnàta," Gyro says, boh- nee yur- nah- tuh.
"Okay, what is that? I'm almost certain that's not Italian," Johnny says. He doesn't know really any Italian, but part of his rich-kid education growing up had been a kind of survey course of Romance languages. He's pretty sure it's not Italian, anyway.
Gyro grins at him. Their faces are still so close together, and he still has an arm around Johnny's waist even though Johnny moved away a little. "It's not Italian, you're right. It's close, but not the same. It's napulitano, the language of my home. Napoli is part of Italy now, but that's very new. We used to be a kingdom all our own."
"Huh," Johnny says. "But you do speak Italian?"
Gyro nods. "Yes. But less well than napulitano. If my napulitano is here," he says, gesturing with a hand in the air by the icy ceiling, "then my italiano is here--" his hand drops maybe four inches. "-- And my English is down here," he says, dropping his hand another four inches. "And my French is down here," he adds after a moment, dropping his hand all the way to his chest. "French sucks, don't learn it."
Johnny laughs. "If this is how you talk in English, I wish I could understand you in--" He stops, flounders a little. "Napolitano?"
"Napulitano," Gyro corrects him. "I'm glad you think I speak English well. I can teach you a little napulitano, if you want."
"Okay, yeah," Johnny says. "That would be nice."
Gyro grins at him, gold teeth flashing in the early morning sunlight. He's so pretty that it almost hurts to look at him. "Okay."
They stare at each other for another couple beats, smiling doofily, until Johnny finally wrenches his gaze away. "We should get up. Get breakfast started, or whatever. Check on the horses-- and your hat." His voice cracks in laughter on the word hat.
Gyro's expression goes from contented to outraged. "God! My hat! Aaahhhh!" He sits up and wriggles up out of the ditch, only to sit with his legs still in the entrance as he examines his poor pissed-upon hat. He wails again, so Johnny pushes himself into a sitting position and hits the sole of Gyro's booted foot.
"Move, I wanna see the damage!" he calls. Gyro shuffles up and to the side, and Johnny pulls himself out so he can sit next to him. He hooks his chin over Gyro's shoulder and peers at the hat.
It looks totally fine, if a little oily. It smells awful, though, worse than normal human piss. "Yeah, that's gonna need soap'n'hot water, hun," Johnny diagnoses.
Gyro tilts his head against Johnny's. "You keep calling me that," he says.
"Hm?" Johnny asks. He needs coffee.
"'Honey.' 'Hun.' Is it because you're tired?" Gyro's looking at Johnny from the corner of his eye.
God, this boy. Giving Johnny an out. Johnny hums, pretends to think. "Yeah," he says, and Gyro's face falls, just a little bit. "Y'gotta make me some fancy Italian coffee before I start breakin' out the sweethearts an' darlins."
Gyro looks at him blankly for a second, and then the meaning catches up to him and his face splits slowly into a big grin. "Okay," he says happily. "Okay, yeah, coffee, coming right up. And then we deal with the hat." He scrambles upright, and Johnny can hear like eight different joints popping as he does. Then he seems to change his mind; he drops back down next to Johnny and leans forward. "Wait, can I just-- I want to--"
"Yeah--" Johnny starts, and then he just grabs Gyro's face with both hands and pulls him forward to kiss him. Gyro makes a pleased sound and pushes his hands into Johnny's hair, his hands big and warm in the cold air. He pulls away only to immediately come back in, pressing half a dozen more little kisses onto Johnny's mouth, chin, cheeks.
"Here's lesson number one," he says breathlessly. "This is nu vaso. A kiss." He kisses Johnny again. "Voglio te vasà. I want to kiss you."
"Well shit, Gyro, I ain't stoppin' you," Johnny says, so Gyro kisses him again.
He gets his coffee eventually.