Chapter Text
If this isn’t a kingdom then I don’t know what is.
— Richard Siken, “Snow and Dirty Rain”
*
Giorno Giovanna’s dream names itself in the hollow cold of a midwinter morning, in the middle of the shopping district. He’s never paid much attention to sports of any kind before—the stakes have always felt invented, and the aim meaningless—but when he passes the electronics store on his way home from school, his fingers wind-bitten and stiff around the straps of his backpack, his eyes catch on something. A figure, and a leap, and a ball.
And you, Haruno? his teacher asks come spring, examining his career plan form through her bifocals. What do you want to do?
Giorno does not hesitate. I want to become—someone who can fly.
“Nervous?”
The undemanding word takes a moment or two to reach Giorno. When it does, it has a glassy quality to it, utterly separate; he isn’t even sure at first that it’s meant for him.
All around him are signs and banners, logos in bright colors, promises of titles and triumphs that he has yet to earn, and through the high tinted windows, the sunlight has become shapeless. This is the largest athletic center that he’s ever been in, such a far cry from the provincial gyms and beachside courts that he’s spent the last year growing in, and it had been more than easy to let himself get lost. He assembles the strength it takes to lift his head, turning it to the right.
“Mista,” he says, and is both relieved and confused to find that he still sounds like himself. “No. Not especially.”
Mista, in his favorite loud headband, his hair still breeze-ruffled from the walk to the gymnasium, lets out a long, pensive hum. He has his hands on his hips and one ankle crossed behind the other, balancing on one foot and a set of toes. The sight of him in their team’s black-on-white uniform has always been arresting, but it’s subtler in the natural light.
“You know something?” he drawls. “I used to think you were a pretty good liar, Giovanna. But once somebody knows you, it isn’t real hard.”
Giorno frowns, standing up a little straighter, and not just at the use of his surname, which Mista has notably forgone practically from the moment they’d met. “What are you talking about? I’m not—”
“Yeah you are,” Mista says to the ceiling with a huff. When he levels his eyes with Giorno’s again, they’re half-lidded and strangely patient. “You’ve got a tell, man. It’s in your eyes.”
Before Giorno can examine the notion that Mista spends enough time looking at his eyes to spot lies in them, Mista links his hands behind his head and makes a show of yawning, filling the whole empty hallway with the sound.
“Listen, if it helps,” he says, “I’m scared out of my mind.”
Giorno blinks and chooses not to speak. Mista tends to do well in silences, from time to time, and here, in the secluded hallway far removed from the main court, there’s plenty of silence to give him. Mista stretches his arms a little, elbows pointing skyward for a moment, and makes a satisfied noise when he’s finished, dropping them to his sides again.
“I always feel like I’m gonna puke right before a match,” he says conversationally—much more conversationally than Giorno has ever known him to unpack his various anxieties. “Or die. Doesn’t matter how—have a heart attack, get hit by a car. I’m always so sure that something bad’s gonna happen. Can’t be worse than losing, right?”
Giorno nearly flinches at this—at the memory of an empty court, a mop handle in his hands, and Mista’s back to him in the gold emptiness.
“But… well, how to say this…” Mista scratches thoughtfully at his cheek with one hand. “Lately, I haven’t been as freaked out anymore. And I think it’s because of you.”
“Me?” Giorno says, breaking his silence.
Mista’s cheeks darken faintly; his mouth thins. He isn’t looking at him. “Yeah. You.”
He shuts his eyes tightly, shaking his head and throwing his hands up as if to bat something away.
“D-Don’t get me wrong; I still might puke,” he says, which Giorno doesn’t find particularly comforting. “I mean I’ll, uh, tell you—if I’m gonna. Shit. This isn’t going how I pictured. I just mean—I feel more confident with you around. I think everybody does. So if you start chickening out, we’re all gonna be totally screwed. That’s all I’m saying. It’s, uh, for the team. The whole—team.”
“Oh,” says Giorno.
He glances at his sneakers, parallel on the buffed floor. The sounds of the crowd in the gymnasium crawl down the halls even here; a steady, anticipating thrum. The match will start soon—he knows. He had come here to pretend that it wouldn’t.
Giorno has never shied from ambition nor faltered at risk. Dreams take work and wanting, after all. He had known this even as a child in the road, watching the world through a television set, when everything that he had ever yearned for could be reduced to small human shapes in a place he could scarcely imagine; and he knows it now.
But there has been a steady shifting, ever since whim and curiosity had led him to a run-down fitness club in Arenella the year before. It’s just as Mista had said, all that time ago, with his fist bunched in Giorno’s shirt and a pained resentment contorting his face: You’re not the only one with a dream anymore, Giorno. Mista has made him understand a great many things, in his way.
Mista’s face, the slopes and details of which Giorno has come to learn like a text, is different now than it had been then—warmer, and more open. In the empty hallway, in this impossible pocket of time, Giorno lifts his gaze and looks at it a while.
“Thank you, Mista,” he tells him, and searches for the right words. “I feel better.”
“Really?” Mista exclaims delightedly, and then clears his throat, wrestling his face back into a neutral expression. “I mean, uh, good. Good! Like I said, can’t have you panicking before the match even starts. Your brain’s gotta be in top condition, got it? You—”
“With you beside me,” Giorno says, and reaches up to set a hand on Mista’s shoulder, “I feel invincible.” He squeezes, just slightly, his thumb pressed to a bone. “We will win.”
Mista gives Giorno’s hand a wide-eyed look, blinking rapidly, his face coloring, and after a second he lets out a strange, hysterical laugh.
“Y-Yeah!” he shouts back, and claps his own hand rigidly over Giorno’s, shaking it so hard that he jostles their bodies. “Invincible! Right! That’s the Giorno I know!”
These are the words that follow Giorno all the way to the court’s edge, muffling even the cheering crowd, returning the sunlight to a shape that he can recognize.
That’s right, he thinks. That’s right. Whatever else he may be, he is still the Giorno that Mista knows. Mista knows him, and he knows Mista.
The rest is easy.
Giorno finds Nunzio Pericolo’s gymnasium by chance, on a day that it might rain. The air has been tense with it all morning, the clouds looming full and dark over the rooftops, and on the walk home from university, Giorno hears rubber on wood through an open door across the street.
The gym is not large, and in the gray light its flaws are more apparent: cracks in the floor, chips in the paint, a section of the volleyball net unraveling. There are only four players on the court, and no one on the sidelines save for a short older man with a beard, who calls for Giorno to come in.
“Pardon the intrusion,” Giorno says when he approaches, hoping that it doesn’t look rude when he bends down a little to speak to him, but the man waves one weathered hand and shakes his head.
“It’s no intrusion at all,” he says. “Do you play?”
Giorno glances at the players, who have all halted their practice to watch him with such palpable distrust that he almost turns around and leaves right then and there.
“Once in a while,” he answers. “Is this—your team, signore?”
The man nods. “Signor Pericolo is fine. Yes, it’s just a provincial team—Associazione Sportiva Passione. They’ve got no sponsors yet. Do you live nearby?”
Giorno starts to nod. “Yes, I go to school right—”
“Would you like to join the day’s practice?” Pericolo asks, in a way so jovial that Giorno cannot bring himself to be annoyed by the interruption. “We are short a player.”
“Like hell he can join the day’s practice,” a voice barks, and when Giorno turns his head, he sees a tall player with his silver hair in a bun scowling back at him through the net in a way he has never been scowled at in his life. “We’re full-up on twerps, Pericolo. Fugo and Narancia are more than enough.”
“Hey!” a significantly shorter player yelps from the other side of the net. If his orange headband is supposed to be holding his hair back from his eyes, it isn’t doing a very good job.
“Pay Abbacchio no mind,” Pericolo says to Giorno, smiling kindly even as Abbacchio makes an indignant noise. “He’s never done very well with strangers.”
“Don’t make me sound like a damn Volpino, old man!”
“What position do you play?” Pericolo asks over him, and before Giorno can conjure up a misdirection he adds, very patiently, “I can tell that ‘once in a while’ was humility, nothing more. It’s all right.”
Giorno is not used to being seen through. It startles the truth out of him.
“Setter,” he answers. “But I really—”
“That settles it, then!” Abbacchio interjects. “We’ve already got a setter. Just because Bucciarati’s out with a cold—”
“Huh?! Did you say a setter?!”
This is a different voice, one that bursts in the wide space of the gym like a firecracker. The player standing next to Abbacchio lifts the net with one arm and ducks under it, jogging across the court and straight up to Giorno, his face sweat-bright and beaming. He has a sweatband on whose garish red-and-blue pattern would be tacky on anyone else, but somehow suits him.
He grabs Giorno’s hand with both of his and shakes it, feverishly.
“Thank Christ!” he exclaims. “None of these dumbasses knows how to throw a toss! Plus this’ll give us five—I was definitely gonna bail if there were just four of us. What’d you say your name was, newbie?” He half-releases Giorno’s hand to jab a thumb at himself, his smile crooked and easy. “I’m Mista, Guido Mista. You can just call me the Ace.”
“Do not call him that,” calls the fourth and final player in a weary voice.
“Shut up, Fugo,” Mista retorts cheerfully without looking away from Giorno’s face for even a second. “Bastard’s just jealous because all he can do is serve and it doesn’t even work half the time. You get used to him.”
The palm of his hand is very warm, Giorno notices, and his grip is precise; it accommodates Giorno nicely. He holds onto Giorno like he’s already done it a hundred times. He has short fingernails, and some dark hair on his knuckles, and when he talks, something inside of Giorno leaps to answer before he can want for it.
“Seriously,” Mista says again, “you got a name or what?”
“Giorno,” Giorno says, and then remembers the rest. “Giovanna.”
Mista repeats it back to him with a deliberate rise and fall, but the lilt is not mocking, or at least it doesn’t sound that way. He still hasn’t let go of him.
“Nice name,” he says. “So, Giorno Giovanna, can you play?”
Not fifteen minutes ago, Giorno would have said no, and been on his way. His ambitions have always been bigger, after all, than neighborhood teams or provincial leagues. But there is something about this smile, and something about the way that Mista handles the syllables that comprise him, as if he’s describing a time of day.
He’s made stranger choices, in stranger places. This one doesn’t feel all that strange.
Gruppo Sportivo Diavolo is a strong team. Giorno is not surprised by this; they’ve advanced to Serie C, after all. Teams had stopped being weak as far back as the Seconda Divisione.
Their opponents have the upper hand from the first point: a sharp broad by one of their wing spikers, Prosciutto, that misses Bucciarati’s block with plenty of room to spare. Narancia can’t cross the court in time to save it. The match moves at a grinding pace after that, with one side earning a point by the skin of their teeth only for the other to take it back.
Giorno knows six points in that they will not win the first set. He will not tell the others—his predictions tend to be described as “spooky” or “mean” or “a buzzkill,” which he doesn’t really understand, but is teaching himself to accept. He elects to use the time to observe the other team.
Risotto Nero, the team captain, towers over even Abbacchio, and his read blocks have been compared by many on the volleyball circuit to an iron wall. Ghiaccio is a skilled libero, but not nearly as skilled as Narancia, and his quick temper makes him impulsive and careless. The setter, Melone, is conniving, but largely uncreative; Giorno’s executive decision to hate him takes about half a minute to make.
Illuso is the other middle blocker, whose technique seems to be deliberately making it appear that he’s going to block a certain area, only to change it at the last minute; read blocks that resemble guess blocks. There are two wing spikers on the rotation: Prosciutto, who specializes in cut shots and broads; and Formaggio, who has a simple but formidable straight. On the bench are three players Giorno recognizes from some of the matches he had watched online: a middle blocker and two wing spikers.
Formaggio’s shots are easy enough to predict, but the power behind them can break through lesser blocks than Abbacchio’s. In this sense, it’s fortuitous that Abbacchio is able to block nearly every one.
When his last-minute read block send the ball straight down onto the other side, pushing them two points ahead instead of just one, he cranes his neck to smirk at Giorno and says, “Bet you’re glad I’m on your team, newbie.”
“I am,” Giorno answers sincerely, and judging by Abbacchio’s expression it would seem as though this has ruined Abbacchio’s day.
It’s a combination of things that takes the set away from them, in the end: Risotto is not easy to fool, and neither Formaggio nor Prosciutto are easy to rattle. Pericolo doesn’t even have the time to change up the rotation; Trish is on the bench with Fugo the entire time.
Giorno is not disheartened. Half of volleyball, after all, is knowing the difference between when to fight and when to learn.
In the final week of November, Pericolo loads them into a rented van and drives them north to Caserta to train for a weekend in his friend’s significantly sleeker gymnasium. Giorno has had little reason over the course of his life to leave Naples, so the change of scenery is pleasant in its way.
“Did you know,” Mista says fifteen minutes into the journey, so gravely that Giorno fears he may be about to announce a death, or worse, “that Italian volleyball is cursed?”
Fugo, in the front passenger seat, gazes mournfully at the ceiling as if praying for mercy. “Here we go.”
“No, Mista, we didn’t,” Narancia deadpans without looking up from his comic book. “Please tell us everything about that for the next million hours, because we care so much.”
“You should care!” Mista snaps, stabbing his plastic spoon in Narancia’s direction over his shoulder for emphasis. He’s eating peach yogurt. “If a curse is going to influence a major part of your life, and there’s nothing you can do to fight against it, wouldn’t you want to be prepared?”
“If there’s nothing we can do to fight against it, what would we be preparing for?” Abbacchio snaps. He and Bucciarati are in the second row of seats, with Narancia squished between them. He’s gripping the coat hanger with one hand and gesturing with the other. “No one cares about this X-Files shit, Mista. You’re the only one who does.”
“I care,” Giorno says, because he does, and Abbacchio glares balefully at him. “Mista is right. The Olympic Curse. Since 1996, Italy has—”
“Been the only national team to make it to the semifinals every year, but never win,” Bucciarati finishes. “Yes. We’re familiar with the story, Giorno.”
“I knew there was a reason I liked you!” Mista yells, punching Giorno in the arm, which Giorno barely feels, so taken aback is he by the word like. “But it’s crazy, right? What the hell do people keep playing for if they know none of it matters?”
“Look who’s talking!” Narancia says. “You play, don’t you?”
“Maybe everyone likes to imagine they’ll be the one to break the curse,” Giorno muses. “To change fate, as it were. It’s a grand dream.”
“There you go with that dream shit again,” Abbacchio mutters. “Listen, newbie. I’m about to give you some advice, so you’d better show the proper gratitude. When Mista starts going off about stuff like this, you gotta just tune him out; it’s better for everybody.”
“I do it all the time,” Narancia chimes in. “It’s like one of those things they use to knock babies out.”
“A white noise machine,” Fugo fills in, already sounding drastically tried for patience. “And it’s a sleep aid, one that is not exclusive to babies—”
“We know you use one, Fugo,” Bucciarati says, straight-faced. “There’s no need to be embarrassed.”
“Okay, less about Fugo, more about what Giorno just said,” Mista interjects, swiveling his gaze back to Giorno and leaning closer until his seatbelt digs into his chest. “You think it can be broken, huh?”
“I didn’t say that,” Giorno replies with some hesitation. “Or, well—not exactly.” He turns his head away to watch the city recede into country beyond the window, buildings giving way to fences and autumn-browned trees. “But I don’t believe in fate. If anything, I think that it’s what we make of it. So if we believe we are cursed, and doomed to fail, we will expect to fail, and thus make it true. But if we believe that we can win—”
When he turns back to look at Mista, he almost wishes that he hadn’t. There’s an intensity to his expression that wasn’t there before. Giorno feels, suddenly, that what he says next will be very important.
“If we believe that we can win,” he murmurs, “then maybe we can.”
Mista doesn’t say very much to him after that, not even when they pull in to the hostel, and not even when Pericolo takes them all out for dinner—and not even the next morning, when they all convene on the gymnasium for the day’s practice. Anxiety begins to seep through Giorno’s chest by this time, and he wonders if he should apologize. While he’s wondering this, and moreover wondering what to apologize for in the first place, he misses seven tosses to Fugo in a row.
“I am begging you to let me kick him off the team,” Abbacchio says to Bucciarati. “I am begging you, Bucciarati.”
“You may not,” Bucciarati says matter-of-factly.
He, Abbacchio, and Narancia have gathered on one side of the net, while Fugo and Giorno are on the other. Bucciarati looks different now than he had when Giorno had first met him. Maybe it’s the light, and maybe it’s the assortment of colorful barrettes holding his bob back, and maybe it’s the t-shirt, which has a tiny squid on it. Giorno is still deciding.
“Is something on your mind, Giorno?” Bucciarati asks. Everyone else stops what they’re doing immediately, waiting to hear what might be on Giorno’s mind, except for Mista, who continues to pensively smack a ball against the wall a few feet away.
“No,” Giorno says, because it’s certainly better than saying that Mista is on his mind. “My apologies. I may not have gotten enough sleep.”
“Not bunking with Mista, you didn’t,” Narancia says, springing up from his hamstring stretch. “Guy snores louder than a fucking turbine.”
“Aw, did you miss me last night?” Mista coos, back to his usual self. “Were you lonely?”
“Whether or not anyone was lonely,” Bucciarati interjects, continuing over the disgusted noise Narancia makes, “we only have the gym until 17:00, so we need to make good use of our time. Giorno, if you’re tired, you should conserve your energy.”
Giorno frequently forgets that Bucciarati cares about the well-being of others, by and large, and is thus likely to compel Giorno to rest and take care of himself when Giorno would have been content to just tell a lie and get on with it. As he tries to come up with a graceful way to backpedal, Mista says, “Giorno, you any good at quicks?”
Giorno breaks his eyes away from Bucciarati’s discerning stare to blink at Mista instead. Mista’s back is to him, and he’s holding the ball with both hands. His shoulders, Giorno notices for the very first time, are wide.
“Pardon?” Giorno asks, even though he’d heard him just fine, because he hears most things Mista says just fine. “Quicks? I suppose so.”
Mista rolls the ball between his palms, fingers fanning out over the leather, then tosses it briefly into the air and catches it again.
“That’s good enough for me,” he says, and when he turns around, he’s grinning that same grin that snatches the air from Giorno’s chest so briskly and neatly that he can’t even bring himself to mind the absence. “Let’s give it a shot!”
Giorno blinks again, more rapidly this time. “Right—now?”
“Hell yeah!” Mista strides over to stand between Giorno and Fugo and shoves the ball into Giorno’s hands; Giorno reaches up to take it before he can think to hesitate. Mista’s smile and hesitating tend to have trouble coexisting in Giorno’s brain. “Give me your best quick toss! I’ll get it for sure!”
Mista does not get it—not the first time, not the second time, and not the third time, which is anecdotally the charm. In fact, it’s on the third try that he falls spectacularly on his back, sprawling out over the floor with a crash.
“Okay,” he says, much more thoughtfully than Giorno has known him to say anything. “I’ll get it for sure this time. For sure.”
“The fourth time?” Fugo calls boredly from the back row.
Mista lets out a strangled yell and lunges to his feet. “Hey, hey, don’t curse me, Fugo!”
“You’re not cursed, Giovanna’s just incompetent,” Abbacchio says. “No one can hit a toss that fast.”
Mista whips his head around, glaring. “Is that a challenge?”
“Can somebody just hit something?” Narancia whines. His previously alert receiving position has devolved into a squat. “I’m bored.”
“Once more,” Bucciarati says to Mista and Giorno. “Don’t write off this attack just yet. You’re still getting used to each other as players.”
Giorno glances furtively at Mista at the same time that Mista glances at him, and his fingers tighten around the ball unconsciously. That’s right—Giorno had still been tossing for an imaginary player, in his mind. He hadn’t been tossing for Mista.
Mista likes the ball high so that he can have plenty of time to think about how to hit it, and close to the net so that the other side can have less time to think about how to block it. He doesn’t move as quickly as Narancia or Bucciarati, but when it comes to instinct alone—split-second decisions—they might be evenly matched. He is trusting where others aren’t; he thrives when given freedom. Factoring in his jumping height and his reach, likely the best way to toss to him would be…
“Mista,” Giorno says, “can we try again?”
Mista’s face is loose and astonished for a moment, and then it brightens. He grins back at Giorno so fully that his eyes close to give it more room.
“I’ll try as many times as you need me to, Giorno!” he replies, and sets one hand on his hip, pointing confidently at himself with his thumb. “That’s what it means to be the ace!”
“Ugh,” says Fugo.
What Giorno does not say, and may never know how to say, is that this is the first time that anyone has tried something for him even three times. Something rushes through his chest, wild and wind-like.
While Giorno throws the ball to Fugo and Fugo prepares to send it back for a set-up, Mista gets into a spiking position. His eyes darken, sharpen. He lets out a long, slow breath. The hair at his temples has started to curl with sweat, but he suddenly doesn’t look tired at all.
After Fugo throws the ball, Giorno watches it arc through the air overhead, and lifts his hands. Sometimes he can count all eighteen sections of the leather before it comes down.
He makes it to sixteen this time. He breathes in. The weight of the ball sinks onto his fingertips, and his wrists bend gently to welcome it. His field of vision widens, and at the edge of it he sees Mista, beginning to leap, watching his hands with wide, unblinking eyes.
Those eyes call Giorno in a way that no voice ever has. He forgets to think. He tosses the ball straight to Mista’s waiting palm, and—
Mista’s hand cracks against a shot that darts between Bucciarati and Abbacchio, past Narancia’s shoulder, ruffling their hair as it goes. It lands just short of the back line, sails off again, bounces four times, and rolls to a stop next to the wall.
Giorno, panting, looks at Mista. Mista looks back. Abbacchio looks at Bucciarati, who looks at Narancia, who looks at the ball.
Narancia speaks first.
“Holy,” he says, with feeling, “shit.”
For the start of the second set, Pericolo switches out Bucciarati for Trish to give their front rotation more offensive power. Giorno decides only a few points in that he has no interest in drawing things out, so when his and Mista’s eyes lock across the court, he sends him a quick toss.
“Hm, yeah, begging your pardon,” Ghiaccio says, low and seething, and then he starts to scream. “WHAT THE HONEST GENUINE FUCK WAS THAT?!”
Mista whirls on Giorno and raises his hand for a high five. Giorno is too exhilarated to remember that Mista high-fives with the same brute force that he employs for spiking, and by the time he remembers, it’s too late to retreat.
“Oh, sorry, man,” Mista says innocently when Giorno doubles over to clutch his burning palm. “Did I get you?”
After Pericolo swaps Bucciarati back in, this time for Abbacchio, Giorno peppers in the quick with other set-ups, changing it up as much as possible. But skilled teams have always been able to adapt to it given enough chances, and Gruppo Sportivo Diavolo is no different. Ghiaccio receives one of them cleanly in due time, and even though it’s a chance ball, Giorno knows that it will have to be a while before he and Mista try a quick again.
Trish picks up the ball. “Giorno!”
Giorno tosses to Bucciarati this time; a low toss, far from the net. Risotto and Illuso are already in position for a block, but at the last moment Bucciarati hits it from the side to sweep it out of their reach.
Risotto is quick to react. He swings his arm over, connecting with the ball by the fingertips; the one-touch gives Ghiaccio enough time to pass it across the court to Melone, who tosses it to Prosciutto.
When Prosciutto spikes it, Bucciarati is already there. Giorno has never seen a joust up close before, but that’s what it becomes—Bucciarati, only an inch or two from the net, leaps to push the ball back against Prosciutto’s hands.
It looks for a moment like Bucciarati’s strength will win out, but then Prosciutto’s eyes sharpen and he twists it out of Bucciarati’s grip.
Narancia dives for it, skidding along the floor, and his fist connects, sending it flying into the air again before Bucciarati even touches back down.
“I’ve got you, Bucciarati!” he shouts, scrabbling back to his feet. “Go, go!”
Bucciarati is the type to prefer action over sentimental words or glances, so he does as Narancia commands him, and goes. Giorno sends him a toss again, this one perfect for a broad. Bucciarati smacks it over the net, and it’s in.
All told, they’re able to score 10 points on the balls that Narancia saves. Trish, who has a tendency to stall at the beginning of a set, hits her stride at the midway point, and when Giorno sends her a toss, she sprints for the net and jumps with all her might, for all appearances about to send in a vicious spike.
Giorno catches the edge of a smug smile on her face when the blockers rise to meet her. She gently bumps the ball with the heel of her palm, sending it effortlessly over the block.
Ghiaccio hollers, “Feint!”, but their reactions are too slow. The ball lands.
12 to 10. They’re ahead.
Trish comes to them in late spring. It’s a warm, blue afternoon when Giorno arrives for practice and sees a stylish pastel yellow Vespa that he doesn’t recognize parked in front of the gymnasium.
He emerges from the changing room with three questions about it already prepared, only to find the rest of the team gathered around a crest of pink hair in the middle of the court.
Mista perks up the second he sees Giorno enter, waving him over with one arm. “Giorno, c’mere, you gotta see this!”
“This human person?” the crest says acidly. “Who has a human name?”
“Oh, right, right, my bad,” Mista says, sounding as though he genuinely believes that it is in fact his bad. He waves Giorno over a little more politely this time, even though Giorno has already reached him; his hand whacks into Giorno’s chest a couple of times, but he does not seem concerned. “She’s a wing spiker. A wing spiker! Promise you won’t share our awesome tosses with her, yeah?”
Giorno doesn’t quite know what to say to this. Telling Mista that he will send tosses to anyone, provided they are capable of hitting them, seems like the kind of thing that would make Mista sulk for an hour, so he refrains.
“Hi,” the new player says to Giorno. She’s about the same height as Narancia, perhaps a little taller with the hair. She does not say nice to meet you. “I’m Trish. Just Trish.”
“You look familiar, Trish,” Bucciarati says, holding his chin thoughtfully. “Have we met?”
“No,” Trish replies. “But you might have seen my dad on TV one or five hundred times.”
“Ah, of course,” Pericolo says, seated comfortably in his folding chair, and they all turn to face him. “I forgot to mention. Her father owns Gruppo Sportivo Diavolo.”
“Gruppo Spo—your dad is Diavolo?!” Mista’s yell practically sends the roof airborne. “Why the hell aren’t you on his team, then?”
“Oh,” Trish answers, smiling for the first time since Giorno had come into the gym, “because I hate him and want him to die.”
Mista and Narancia stare back at her. Abbacchio closes his eyes and nods like she’s just made a fair point. After a second, Narancia tosses his hands up in a shrug.
“I hate my dad, too,” he says, and gives her a double finger guns, which, judging by the flush that ensues on his face, may not have been a gesture that was strictly planned or wanted. “Welcome to the team!”
“We’re fucked,” Mista announces.
Fugo has stepped up to the side of the court, holding aloft the sign with Narancia’s jersey number on it, and clearly had expected a more positive reaction. With his free hand, he gives Mista a gesture that earns him a reproachful whistle from the referee.
“Everyone cover your heads,” Abbacchio calls, linking his hands protectively just over the nape of his neck. “Newbie, feel free not to do that.”
“Leone,” Bucciarati barks, but he’s covering his head, too.
Giorno has heard about Fugo’s pinch serve, but has never seen it. According to Mista, although the serve is powerful and its path tricky to predict, most of the time his control over it is so poor that it doesn’t make it over the net; or, worse, it ends up directly hitting one of his own teammates. As far as secret weapons go, it’s hardly reliable—but with Diavolo’s team four points ahead of them in the second set, 21 to 17, Giorno suspects that they’ll take any chance that fate hands to them, and Fugo’s “monster serve,” as Narancia is wont to call it, just happens to be one of them.
“Well, Giorno, it’s been real nice getting to know you,” Mista says conversationally—he’s next to Giorno in the front row, with Abbacchio on his other side; he’s breathing a little heavily, and his eyes are gleaming with adrenaline. “Sorry that you had to die this soon.” (“I’m not,” says Abbacchio.) “Hope you’ve got no regrets.”
“All right,” Fugo snaps from behind them. “Do you mind? I need to concentrate.”
Giorno glances over his shoulder to see Fugo frozen behind the back line with the ball pressed to his forehead. His knuckles are white, and his breath moves through him rigidly, almost unwelcome. The crowd’s waiting hush is suffocating.
“Fugo,” Giorno calls, and Fugo’s eyes flash to him, already wary. “Nice serve.”
Fugo’s tension falters, breaking off from his face in fragments. He blows out a breath until none of the air remains, then nods, his fear rearranging itself into focus.
“Giorno,” he coolly says, just before he throws the ball up, “duck.”
It turns out that, despite Mista’s confidence in declaring it so, they are not fucked. Fugo gets them five service aces, until they’ve pulled ahead of Gruppo Diavolo by one point.
“Hey, Giorno,” Mista says one evening with his neck bent toward the clouds, “what made you decide to play volleyball?”
Spring will come a little early this year, and for the past few days Giorno has been enchanted by the sight of the sky as it remembers how to be blue. He has always liked the sunsets of summer the best, with all of their ardent passionate colors, but this is nice, too, in its way—something faint and yearning, growing lavender at the sky’s edge when the light retreats beyond the coastline.
In the six months since joining Associazione Sportiva Passione, Giorno has fallen into the habit of walking with Mista after practice. The route changes a bit each time, unconsciously prolonged. Giorno’s apartment is only a few blocks from Mista’s metro stop, so sometimes they meet in the mornings, too, if Mista wakes up early enough, which is rare.
Giorno prefers the evenings anyway. Mista looks nice in the nighttime, with his hands in his back pockets and his duffel bag slung across his chest, always looking upwards, toward the stars. When he laughs at something Giorno has said, it makes the streets seem boundless, full of light and motion. It makes Giorno aware of the city in ways that he had never cultivated before: aware of all of the people living and wanting in it, and aware of Mista, living and wanting right in front of him.
Giorno isn’t sure how to answer this question, which is different than the usual musings on volleyball or tripe or the incommunicable nature of love, so at first he doesn’t answer it. The two of them are ambling down a cobblestone alleyway that isn’t strictly on the quickest route to Giorno’s apartment, but Giorno isn’t about to say anything and he doesn’t imagine that Mista is, either.
He has never told anyone about the morning in the shopping center, the long walk home to an empty house, but he almost tells Mista, right then and there, without hesitation or sense. He has found himself on the brink of giving many things to Mista, these days.
“What made you decide to play volleyball?” he asks in return.
Mista doesn’t seem to notice the redirection, or if he does, he doesn’t mind it. He walks in time with Giorno, his eyes drifting to their feet. He wears his sweatband even outside of practice and is wearing it now, and his hair has started to grow out since Giorno had first met him, obscuring the pattern.
“I just felt like it,” he answers, shrugging one shoulder. “I don’t think that hard about that stuff. If it makes me feel good, I do it. Volleyball makes me feel good.”
Giorno has some trouble believing this—volleyball only seems to make Mista feel good when he’s winning at it—but he strategically withholds this opinion.
“Are there other things that make you feel good,” Giorno asks, “besides volleyball?”
“Oh sure,” Mista says. “Food. Napping. Good movies. A real nice kiss? But listen, I didn’t ask cuz I wanna talk about me. I wanna talk about you.”
Warmth seeps onto Giorno’s face from the neck up. “Me?”
“Yeah! You’re kind of a mystery, y’know,” Mista says, pointing emphatically at Giorno’s nose so that Giorno goes cross-eyed. “Not that that’s not cool and all—it is—but I don’t even know what kinda music you like. Or your favorite, y’know… color.”
“My favorite color?” Giorno repeats, eyebrows arching.
Mista’s voice had trailed off into a mumble on the last word, and his usual confidence had sputtered out. Now he looks flustered, yanking his hand back from Giorno’s face and cramming it into his pocket again, staring resolutely at the street ahead of them.
“You know what I mean,” he stammers. Giorno doesn’t know what he means. “It’s just—I don’t know. When it comes to volleyball, I—I have fun and all, but… you just seem… really different. Like, more intense? Passionate?” He grimaces. “Forget it.”
Now Giorno knows, a little bit, what he means.
He tells Mista, “I like pink.”
Mista’s pace slows, and Giorno’s with it. He stops in the middle of the alleyway, only a few more steps from the main street, and beyond the narrow darkness Giorno can hear laughter and conversations, and music underneath.
Mista’s face is half-lit by the light from a window, golden on one side. Giorno has always felt seen when Mista looks at him, but this is different and strange; the clarity all but holds him captive.
“Pink?” Mista asks, and Giorno nods, once.
“Like a bougainvillea,” he elaborates.
Mista’s confusion shifts to a faint panic. “A boug-en-what-ia?”
“It’s a flower,” Giorno says, and then, without considering the meaning at all, “I’ll grow some for you sometime. They’re very nice.”
“Grow—” Mista blinks, hard. “You—huh? You know how to do that?”
“What, gardening?” Giorno shrugs. “Yes? It’s easy.”
Mista blinks again, opening his mouth, though no words follow. His arms slacken at his sides, and he bends forward a little, gazing intently at Giorno like he’s just done something remarkable.
Mista tends to gaze at him this way often.
“As for volleyball,” Giorno says, “it’s just a dream of mine. I don’t know that I’ve ever thought much about it, beyond that. So maybe we aren’t so different.”
Mista still doesn’t speak. Giorno is beginning to feel self-conscious, so he clears his throat, shifting from foot to foot, and crosses his arms.
“Do you love volleyball, Mista?” he asks after a time.
Mista’s face reddens slightly, and his eyes go a little rounder.
“Whoa, uh, love? I mean,” he answers haltingly, “I guess I do? I guess so. Yeah.” His confidence returns to him, then, and he stands up a little straighter. “Yeah, I love volleyball.”
“Then you and I are equals,” Giorno says. “I think love makes us grow stronger, no matter what it’s for. We’re only as strong as the things we love.”
The light in the window goes out, and for a moment Giorno can no longer make out Mista’s face with such clarity. By the time his eyes adjust, there’s a smile there that wasn’t there before, and there’s a bewildered quality to it, as though Mista is surprised to discover that the day has already come to an end.
“You’re a pretty sentimental guy, aren’t you,” he asks, and then, softly, perhaps just to say it, he adds, “Giorno?”
Giorno’s heart shudders in his chest. “Is that bad?”
“No,” Mista answers before he’s even finished the last word. “No, it’s good.” He pauses for a moment, eyes wandering to the sky. “Hey, some of the stars are out.”
Giorno cranes his neck to see a solitary constellation, barely visible in the orange-tinted night, but there all the same. A moment’s walk from the rest of the city, with his elbow bent beside Mista’s in the darkness, he listens to Mista breathe out and says, “So they are.”
Giorno’s arms are sore. He has become steadily, inexorably aware of a creeping exhaustion for the past twenty minutes or so, no matter how he tries to ignore it. Their lead against Gruppo Diavolo had only lasted for one rotation after Fugo was taken out again for Abbacchio, and now they’ve been cornered again, 24 to 23: the direst point difference in the world.
One more point—one more broken block, one more mistimed spike—and it will be over. They’ll lose the match. They’ll lose Serie C. They’ll lose—
Well, not everything. But also, Giorno thinks, watching how a phantom defeat looms at his teammates’ backs, maybe everything.
Bucciarati had received Prosciutto’s serve, but it had gone back over the net, a chance ball. Risotto passes it to Melone, who sets it to Formaggio.
“Here!” Abbacchio shouts from center court. “Now!”
Trish and Giorno stride to him and leap in unison for a triple block, their one desperate defense. Formaggio’s eyes dart across their fingertips, and Giorno sees them land just above Trish’s head, in the space her hands haven’t managed to close.
“Trish, watch his straight—!” Giorno starts to shout, frantic, but it’s too late. Formaggio spikes the ball straight at her, and it ricochets off of her hands out of bounds. A wipe.
“Oh, was that a one-touch?” Formaggio goads her before they’ve even touched the ground again. “We’ll be taking this one, thank you very—”
And then, Bucciarati’s voice: “Wait!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Giorno sees a flash of color at the edge of the court: Narancia, charging to the edge and diving for Trish’s ball. His wrist connects with it cleanly, sending it back to them, and he somersaults forward the rest of the way, crashing headlong into the water table.
The saved ball goes to Fugo, who calls for Giorno. Giorno tosses it to the edge of the net, where Mista is already waiting, and Mista spikes it straight down onto an unobstructed court.
24 to 24. A deuce.
Trish is running off the court and toward Narancia before the referee even whistles for the point. The roaring of the crowd is barely audible, barely relevant. Giorno can make out Narancia’s sneakers, his ankles, his legs tangled up with the tablecloth.
“God damn it, Narancia!” Abbacchio shouts, but the pride in his voice is ferocious and undeniable. “You crazy little bastard!”
“Narancia!” Bucciarati jogs to the wreckage of the water table. “Are you—”
Narancia springs into view again, cheerful and unscathed. “I’m okay! Did we win?!”
Bucciarati, one hand outstretched, blinks down at him for a moment, and then bows his head and—laughs.
“Not yet,” he says. “But soon.”
Narancia beams at this, still beaming when Bucciarati hoists him to his feet. Trish, only a step or two away from reaching him, falters, stopping mid-step. Narancia’s eyes find her without searching.
“I said I’ve got your back no matter what, didn’t I?” he says, panting and still beaming, still brilliant. He pumps his right fist into the air, and the orange sweatband on his wrist, the one that matches the one on Trish’s left, catches the light. “I knew you would get it, Trish! I knew!”
Giorno can’t see Trish’s face, but he thinks he can imagine it.
When they win the second set, Mista flings his arm around Giorno’s shoulders, shouting and laughing and warm. You’re amazing, he says, over and over; you’re amazing, Giorno, and Giorno can feel his heartbeat through the fabric of his shirt—heedless, indomitable, alive.
Giorno discovers on a Saturday that he is in love with Mista. As far as epiphanies go, it happens quietly, with a weight so delicate that at first he doesn’t quite perceive it. The timing is not ideal—an hour ago they’d played their first provincial match against a works team from Salerno and summarily lost—but it’s not as though he can change his mind.
He and Mista had volunteered to stay late and clean up, permitting everyone else to go home. Narancia had been crying, wiping messily at his face with the back of his arm; Bucciarati had bitten his lip so hard that Giorno had been concerned it would draw blood, but it hadn’t. Things like this never do, Giorno thinks; not even when they feel like they should.
Now, Mista is standing a few feet away from Giorno, and has been mopping the same spot on the floor for the past ten minutes or so with his head sunken forward. Giorno is tired, and dimly hungry, and there’s a dull discomfort growing in his wrist from where a ball had ricocheted off of his block wrong—but he’s been watching Mista for a while, watching the way he holds himself in defeat. He’s never known Mista to be so quiet or so still. It’s difficult to look at. It strains the eyes.
“Giorno,” Mista says. His voice is hoarse, as if from shouting or crying or both—Giorno had seen him do neither, but then again, he’d been in the bathroom for longer than all the rest of them combined, and when he’d emerged his eyes had been red at the corners.
Giorno stops mopping. “Yes?”
Mista still hasn’t turned to look at him. Giorno can intuit nothing from his face, because he cannot see it.
“Tell me something about gardening,” Mista mumbles.
“What…” Giorno falters. “What would you like to know?”
“Anything you want,” Mista says. “How stuff grows, I guess. Just… I need to think about something else right now. You get me?”
Giorno curls his fingers around the mop handle.
“It depends on the plant,” he says, speaking softly without realizing it. “Some will grow in any conditions, with minimal help or intervention. Some require a certain amount of light, a certain temperature. Some hate the wind, or having too much water. Some can only grow in the company of a plant of the same species—trees, mostly. Some require pruning, and—”
“Pruning?” Mista angles his head just slightly closer, and Giorno can make out his eyelashes over the edge, but little else. “Y’know, that’s never made sense to me. Isn’t it a good thing if it’s growing?”
“Sometimes,” Giorno says. “But for many species, it’s the only way to encourage new growth.”
“That doesn’t make any damn sense,” Mista mutters.
“Maybe not,” Giorno says, even though the dismissal all but leaves a bruise. “I’ve always thought of it as… reminding the plant that it needs to continue. I think—” He swallows, quiets. “I think that they can forget, sometimes. Just as we do.”
When he has the courage to lift his eyes again, he goes still. Mista has turned fully to face him, and his eyes are lingering on Giorno with an emotion he can’t identify—some mingling of esteem and resignation.
“I don’t get you,” he says—marvels, really. “You make everything look easy, Giorno.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Giorno says, because it feels safer than admitting that Mista is the one who makes things easy, that Mista is the one who uncomplicates everything.
“Nah, it is,” Mista tells him. “Wanting stuff, getting stuff… losing stuff. Sometimes I think you’ve got it all figured out.”
Giorno wants to pull himself open from the center, wants to shout for the first time in his life that he has nothing figured out to speak of, and maybe never has.
And then Mista says, “And sometimes I don’t.”
Giorno only notices that his grip has slackened on the mop handle when it starts to tip over. He scrambles to hold it up again, staring at Mista intently.
“What?” he says.
Mista is gazing thoughtfully at the stars through the high window—there are so many more to see in summer. Giorno maps the shape of his face in profile; the bump at the bridge of his nose, the dark line of his lashes, the unbearable softness of his mouth. There are things in the cast of his face that Giorno might not have seen at a different angle, in a different light, but is grateful that he is seeing now. At this angle. In this light.
“You’re real good at using that brain of yours on other people,” Mista says, “but pretty shit at using it on yourself. You get hurt the same as the rest of us when you screw up; you’re just better at hiding it. So maybe it just looks easy cuz you’re good at hiding that it’s hard.”
Giorno doesn’t know what to say—only the intricate shape of his own heart, which is not something that can be said—so he says nothing. Mista reaches up and tugs his sweatband down so that it hangs around his neck, scratching his head in its absence with one eye squinted shut and his mouth twisted in thought.
“You’re damn good at volleyball, though,” he says, “and we’re a lot better with you around. I’m a lot better with you around.”
This is getting worse and worse. Giorno is grateful, suddenly, for the mop, so that he can have something to hold him up.
“I mean, Bucciarati’s tosses were good,” Mista continues. “Are good. Amazing! He’s amazing! But you… I don’t know. It’s like—when I hit your tosses, I’m… it’s kind of like… I can fly.”
He winces, his face now completely crimson. “How’s that for stupid?”
“It isn’t stupid,” Giorno breathes, and then returns to himself from among the stars. “I know exactly what you mean.”
Mista’s ears look a little redder than before. “Oh. Y-You do?”
Giorno has wanted volleyball—as a sport, as a concept, as a dream—for as long as he can remember. He has never made the room for anything else.
When Mista looks at him the way that he does right then—with his hair mussed and his hopeful eyes still red from what might have been tears, now forgotten—he breathes in and makes the room.
Giorno knows a second or two before the ball hits his fingertips that it will sprain something.
The pain cracks white and hot through his ring finger, straight down the bone, in one decisive bolt. He doesn’t cry out, but he comes close.
Whatever happens next in the match is muddled, a smear of motion and noise on either side of him. He thinks he hears Bucciarati saying his name, but he can’t be sure. He sucks in a breath and concentrates on pushing past the pain, on wrenching his mind away from it. When he manages, Pericolo’s called for a time-out, and someone’s sweaty hand is on the back of his neck, holding him up.
“Oi, Giorno!” Mista. It’s Mista. “What happened? Are you hurt? Let me see—”
His thumb brushes against Giorno’s ear when he lets go and gingerly takes his wrist. Giorno bites back a noise, wincing.
“Is he okay?” That’s Narancia, hovering at Giorno’s other side; then, from behind him, Trish: “That asshole Risotto, I’ll kill him.”
“Shit, it’s sprained for sure,” Mista mutters. “And you’ve got a cut.”
“I’ll get him to the infirmary,” Pericolo says.
“No—” Giorno finally has the sense to say. The pain of being taken out of the match in the third set—of leaving them—lands on him with such force that a sprained finger feels inconsequential. “Please, really, I’m fine—”
Pericolo’s solemn look silences him.
“Giorno,” he tells him, “you heal now so you can fight later. Understand?”
Giorno tries to even out his breathing. The pain returns to him, pulsing down his rigid hand—the hand that Mista is still cradling in his own.
He bites his lip and bows his head. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand. He—
“Hey, Giorno,” Mista says, gentle.
Giorno turns to him reluctantly. Mista doesn’t speak again until their eyes meet, and when they do, he says, “I’ll wait for you, okay?” Then, as if catching himself, “We’ll wait for you.”
As Pericolo ushers Giorno off the court, they pass Fugo, who Giorno knows will replace him. Pericolo calls over his shoulder, “Bucciarati—I hope you’ve kept practicing,” and Bucciarati answers, in a voice that quells each of Giorno’s fears with the ease of a breaking wave, “Don’t worry, Coach. I have.”
“Hey, Giorno. Can you help me with something?”
Giorno looks up from his cooldown stretches, heat-fatigued and sore all over. More of his hair is stuck to his neck and forehead than he enjoys. It’s been a hot, unforgiving summer; the days had grown sticky almost overnight, and Pericolo’s gym was built before the invention of air conditioning.
He’s miserable, but with Mista here, he’s slightly less miserable.
“Of course,” he says, winded just from standing up. “What do you need?”
Mista looks embarrassed, wiping at his forehead with his arm. He has his sleeves rolled up over his biceps, and there’s a darkened triangle of sweat in the fabric over his chest, and his hair is shorter than Giorno’s ever seen it. Frizzier, too. Giorno finds that he likes it.
“I think I messed up my finger trying to get Fugo’s serve,” he grumbles. “But I don’t want him to know that, cuz he’ll feel bad. Can you tape it for me?”
Giorno agrees before it can register with him that doing so will require him to touch Mista’s fingers, and by extension his hands. But there’s no going back. Because Mista wants to keep his injury covert, he makes Giorno follow him to the supply closet, which is so dark that Giorno can barely see Mista at all, let alone his hand. Still, when Mista passes him a roll of gauze and athletic tape, he doesn’t complain.
“Which finger is it?” Giorno asks, and Mista lifts his left hand, palm up, grimacing.
“The pinkie,” he replies. “Just tape it to the ring finger, it’ll be fine. It’s happened before.”
Giorno stares for a moment at Mista’s pinkie—how it’s a little crooked, and how the skin has memorized the foldings at the joints, and how there’s a small scar on the side of it, barely visible in the low light.
It’s a nice hand, he thinks, good for grasping, for carrying. It’s no wonder that the ball does as he says.
Giorno can relate.
“Here I go, then,” he says, and he scarcely gets the tape around once before Mista lets out a loud yelp.
“Giorno, be gentle!” he whines. “Gentle, damn it!”
“I haven’t even started yet,” Giorno says frankly. “Please quit fussing.”
“I’m not fussing!”
“Pain is a test, Mista. It exists to make us stronger.”
“I thought love was about making us stronger,” Mista says through tears.
Giorno says, “Oh,” paralyzed for a moment, and then tightens the gauze with more force than is strictly necessary. Mista practically howls in pain.
“I never would have thought that you’re so sensitive,” he says, shaking his head, but he can’t help smiling, a little bit. “If you want to keep it a secret so badly, you’ll have to be a little quieter than that.”
“Damn it, you’re right,” Mista says through gritted teeth, and hisses when Giorno wraps the gauze around again. His knuckles dig into Giorno’s palm. “Just make it fast, will you?”
“Of course, of course.” Giorno holds back a laugh as best he can, but some of it emerges in his voice. “I’ll take care of you, Mista. I promise.”
Mista doesn’t make a single sound after that. Giorno is too appreciative of the quiet to be concerned about it. He finishes off the gauze at the tip of Mista’s fingers, snips it off of the roll, and tapes the last of it, pressing his thumb down gently onto the middle joints.
Giorno’s stomach plunges when he feels Mista’s fingers curl around his touch by an increment. It feels as though it takes him a year to lift his bowed head, time and space receding smoothly from him until only Mista is left, looking back at him through heavy eyelids.
“Giorno,” he breathes.
Giorno’s heart leaps up his throat. “Yes?”
He feels something hovering at his arm, a touch about to alight. Mista’s face is closer than he thought it was. Mista’s body is closer than he—
“Can I,” Mista starts to whisper, swallowing, and then somebody turns the lights on.
“They were making weird noises, Bucciarati!” Narancia squawks, and when Giorno’s scorching head whips around at the same time as Mista’s, he sees the entire team crowded in the doorway; Narancia is covering his eyes with one hand and pointing vaguely at them with the other. “Tell them to stop!”
Mista hauls off toward the door and Narancia scuttles away with a yelp, ducking under Abbacchio’s arm; Trish leaps over to block Mista’s way. Giorno pays little mind to the chaos, still holding the roll of gauze.
“I didn’t know this closet had a light,” he says to Bucciarati, who is frowning back at him with something worryingly close to pity. “That will be helpful to know for the future. Thank you.”
Abbacchio pinches the bridge of his nose and mutters, “Jesus.”
The nurse tells Giorno to walk, but Giorno does not walk.
It’s a rather grand entrance, he’ll think later, when he has the luxury of laughing at himself. He comes charging onto the court again as fast as his legs will carry him, and faster still when he hears Mista shout his name as a sailor might identify land through a squall. He glimpses the score in his periphery: 23 to 22, with Gruppo Diavolo one point ahead.
A one-point difference, Giorno thinks, delirious with gratitude and pride. Just one point. This team—his team, his team from the hills of Arenella—could change the shape of the mountains, alter the wind. Maybe they already have.
Pericolo switches him with Fugo, who bumps his shoulder against Giorno’s side when he takes the numbered sign from his good hand. Giorno crosses the back line in one stride, stopping in the open space beside Narancia, who punches him excitedly in the arm, but not very hard.
“How is it?” Bucciarati asks from Narancia’s other side, leaning into view.
Giorno lifts his hand to display the ring finger taped to the pinkie, the gauze wrapped around his wrist for reinforcement.
A tension unravels from Bucciarati’s shoulders. “Good,” he says, in a way that he has never called anything good; as though he’s laying claim to the word. He faces the net again.
From the front row, Abbacchio glances at Giorno for only a moment, but his spine’s a little straighter afterwards, and his stance a little steadier. Trish’s smile is partially concealed, but Giorno sees the luminous whole of it in her eyes before she turns away.
Giorno feels someone clap him on the arm, with such force that it nearly knocks him over, though in his current state that isn’t saying much. His eyes fall, unflickering, on Mista’s, and all at once he feels clear again, alive again, and there is no normal way to say this.
“Would’ve sucked to win without you, Giorno,” Mista says, his face ruddy, beaming. His mouth is slightly open, maybe to breathe more easily; Giorno has seen this smile in so many places, in darkness and daylight, but it shifts something on its axis anew each time. Maybe this time it will make him breathe a little differently, or will make a certain color brighter. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so happy to see anyone.
“You could have just lost,” Giorno says, emboldened by the adrenaline and something else.
He’s only teasing, but Mista’s eyes soften at the corners, and he grips Giorno’s shoulder a little more firmly. Giorno’s blood rushes to meet the touch, even as Mista leans a little closer and says quietly into his ear, “I almost did.”
The referee’s whistle cuts off any response, though Giorno isn’t sure he’d have one. It’s Gruppo Diavolo’s serve, so Melone rotates into position and does an overhand, no topspin. Narancia receives it deftly, bumping it to Bucciarati, who touches his index finger to his thumb before jumping to toss it—the signal for a synchronized attack.
Giorno rushes forward with the rest of them, flock-like, craning his neck, swinging out his arms. It’s easy to be led by Bucciarati.
Their gambit works; Risotto and Illuso block the wrong side of the court, and Abbacchio gets in a spike, straight to the empty back row. 23 to 23.
He whirls on Bucciarati, breaking into a grin—and Bucciarati grins back. They’re breathing perfectly in time, Giorno notices; when Abbacchio’s chest rises, Bucciarati’s does, too. For an instant, there is something taut and alive in the empty space between their eyes, impossible not to sense. It isn’t the first time that Giorno has seen it. He smiles to himself.
Abbacchio blocks their next attack; when Ghiaccio saves it, it’s a chance ball. Just as it passes over the net, Bucciarati jumps as if to spike it back—and then executes a flawless dump. It lands next to Ghiaccio before he can get back to his feet. 24 to 23.
“Giorno,” Mista shouts, frantic—Giorno feels it, too, so wholly and lucidly that he isn’t sure how he’d ever felt anything else, before this.
Their team must sense it. Giorno will thank them later—in as many ways as he can invent—but for now, he waits for them to bring him the ball. And they do.
Giorno breathes out slowly, until all of the air inside of him is forgotten, unneeded. He watches the ball traveling above him, obscuring one of the stadium lights, and counts to eighteen.
Past the ball—past the heft of it in his hands, and the lights overhead, and the distant ceiling—he sees Mista.
It’s never been tossing, when it comes to Mista; it’s never even been giving, not really. Mista has his own current, and it pulls the ball from Giorno’s grasp each time, as the moon does with the tides, maybe—a motion so natural and ancient that the name of it has been lost to time. But Giorno knows. He thinks he knows.
“Mista,” he calls, and gives in to the current.
The referee sends Giorno back to the infirmary less than five minutes after Associazione Sportiva Passione, from Arenella, wins the Serie C championships. Pericolo barely has the time to get the medal around Giorno’s neck, and it’s difficult enough as it is, being that Giorno practically has to crouch to get it.
The nurse inspects his hand again, pressing down on certain parts to check for deeper damage. She changes his gauze, writes him a note to take some Tachipirina, and tells him to wait for his coach to retrieve him.
So Giorno waits, with his bones buzzing inside of him, with his heart wringing itself dry. In the tiny room, on the stiff mattress, he waits. It will be dark out soon, but spring is almost over; the days will lengthen in time, like always, and the heat will return to Naples, pushed in from the sea.
Giorno can’t wait for the sunsets.
He hears a gentle knock and looks up to find Pericolo in the doorway, his craggy knuckles resting on the frame. When he has Giorno’s attention, he makes his way inside, stopping next to the bed with his arms tucked behind him, stooped over.
“When will you lot learn that you can win without breaking your bodies?” he asks.
Giorno winces, just an inch. He knows that Pericolo isn’t talking about just him—he remembers as well as anyone their match this past winter, when Narancia had finished a whole set before letting on that he’d sprained his ankle on a receive. He remembers Bucciarati, playing through an injured hand, and Trish blocking a powerful spike at the expense of her wrist.
Pericolo looks weary, suddenly, in a way that can’t be disguised. Giorno bows his head respectfully.
“I’m sorry, Coach,” he says, and the strange thing is that he thinks he means it. “I’ll be more careful.”
“Make them more careful, too,” Pericolo tells him tiredly. “I know that you will.”
Giorno isn’t sure what to say to that, but Pericolo doesn’t seem to expect an answer.
“Rest for a few minutes more,” he tells him. “We’ve a long drive ahead of us.”
“Yes, sir,” Giorno replies, and then catches himself. “Coach. Signor Pericolo.”
Pericolo sets one hand over his stomach and laughs, tilting his head back when he does, as if to give it more room to fly. Then, he departs, without another word.
Only a few moments after he’s gone, there are footsteps. Giorno would not admit this to anyone, but he knows to whom they belong just from the rhythm and the weight. Still, when Mista leans into view from the hallway, Giorno feels surprised to see him, in an admiring, exhilarated way.
Mista has his sneakers in his left hand, and he’s wearing slip-on sandals with his socks, and his sweatband is gone. He has his fingers on his right hand taped. There’s a towel around his neck.
He lingers in place for a moment, casting around for something to say, and at last seems to decide on, “Hey.”
“Hello,” Giorno replies.
He starts to stand when Mista approaches the bed, but Mista waves a hand, so he sits back down. Mista kicks the nurse’s stool over with his ankle and plops down on it, setting his sneakers down on the floor. When he straightens up again, folding his arms at his chest, Giorno glimpses a strange expression on his face; not quite a frown, but close, as though he’s trying to remember the word for something.
He looks Giorno in the eye for a moment, and then smirks.
“Pain makes us stronger, huh?”
Giorno rolls his eyes. “Yes, by all means, please gloat. I’ll remember that the next time I make a toss.”
“You don’t mean that,” Mista says. If Giorno were to slide an inch down the bed, his knee might touch Mista’s; it might stay there, if permitted. “Sucks about your hand, though, really.”
“It will heal,” Giorno says. “What are you going to do now?”
Mista’s eyebrows furrow. “What d’you mean?”
“Will you keep playing?” Giorno asks. “Will you keep playing volleyball with us?”
“What the hell? Of course I will,” Mista answers, aghast. “Giorno, at this point I’ll probably die playing volleyball with you. It’s not complicated.”
“Oh,” says Giorno, faintly. He wrenches his focus back. “Mista… I’ve been thinking about what you said, before the match started.”
“I said a lot of things before the match started,” Mista says, sounding embarrassed.
“Well, yes. But I meant about—how you said you don’t fear dying anymore. Because of me.”
Mista pales. “I-I don’t know if I said, uh, that—”
“You did,” Giorno says. “A heart attack, a car wreck. But what I want to say is that—I feel the same. You’re a very remarkable person.”
“Huh?” Mista chokes on what is, in all likelihood, his own spit, and beats a hand against his chest when he starts coughing. “Wh-Where the hell’s all this coming from? I… I came in here to tell you something.”
“Oh,” Giorno says again. “Oh, I’m sorry. What is it?”
Mista is staring intently at his knees, and his face is nearly crimson. Giorno almost offers him some water, but decides against it. Mista only likes being looked after sometimes—this does not seem like it would be one of those times.
Mista clears his throat, loudly. His hands are gripping the rim of the stool, which he barely fits on at its current height.
“Y-You’re holdin’ out on me, Giorno,” he finally manages.
Giorno blinks. “I’m sorry?”
“Don’t you owe me some—” Mista winces, though whether it’s from mental effort or embarrassment is hard to discern. “Some boogensomethings?”
“I… what?”
Mista throws his hands in the air. “The flowers, Giorno! Are you really gonna make a guy ask? I wanna see your favorite color. You promised.”
“Oh.” This is fast becoming the only usable word in Giorno’s vocabulary. “Of course. I mean, they’ll take a while to grow; I’ll likely have to propagate it from a cutting, but—”
“Yeah, I don’t know what those words mean,” Mista tells him brightly, “but that sounds great.”
Giorno nods, dazed by the fatigue and the last of the painkillers and by Mista complimenting him so plainly and earnestly. He doesn’t notice Mista scooting closer, at first, but then Mista’s knee bumps into the side of the bed.
Mista drops his hand onto the mattress next to Giorno’s thigh to steady it.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, but he doesn’t move away.
Giorno feels as though he gazes at Mista for a long time, achingly aware of Mista’s hand beside him, and of the day ending outside, where they can’t quite see it. Here, there is still some light left, as if sheltered; it’s nothing like the stadium, where the light had been manufactured and abundant, hard to exist in.
Mista leans in closer, slowly.
“Hey, Giorno?” he whispers.
“Mm?”
“You know what you said before,” Mista says, his fingers curling in the sheet, “about how we’re only as strong as the things we love?”
Giorno nods, even as Mista’s eyes drift down to his mouth. “Yes.”
“Right now,” Mista says, and swallows, “I feel really, really strong.”
Giorno thinks of the others waiting for them in the twilit parking lot: Bucciarati under a streetlight, and Abbacchio at his shoulder, their silence companionable; Narancia telling Trish a story, something with gestures, and Trish listening; Fugo with one hand on the strap of his bag, watching for the van. He thinks of their gym up in the hills, with its scuffed floor, its low ceiling.
He thinks of the gardens he might grow for Mista.
Maybe it had been Mista’s intention from the beginning to kiss him, but really, Giorno thinks when their lips touch, he could have done it anytime and Giorno would have let him.
He tastes like toothpaste.
Mista isn’t strictly good at kissing—but then again, Giorno isn’t, either. His mouth sticks to Mista’s because it’s dry, and he almost pulls back to apologize, but then Mista’s hand is at the back of his neck and he decides that he wouldn’t pull back from this for anything.
Mista’s breath shakes when it hits Giorno’s mouth a minute or a year later. He presses their foreheads together.
“Was that—” He chews one side of his lip. “I mean, was it—you know—”
Giorno lifts his fingers, the ones that are not sprained, and closes them over Mista’s hand, which is still holding onto him.
“Yes,” he says, and then he smiles the same way that he always does for Mista, the same way that Mista’s heartbeat had reached him in that half-embrace after the second set: without even having to want for it. Simply from being alive. “Yes, it was. It was perfect.”