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lesbruabba · 11 months

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More Than Skin Deep

A conversation about old wounds; written for @fugio-week0 day 4: Healing

"Does it still hurt you?"

The question could have referred to any number of things, none of which he was prepared to think about, let alone answer. Having startled in response to the voice that asked it, despite its gentle tone, Fugo blinked while looking up from the array of papers beneath his fingertips, scattered across the surface of the desk. Financial information on a variety of Passione-managed businesses; the kind of thing he was good at managing.

The kind of thing he'd decided the young man before him shouldn't have to think about.

Giorno Giovanna may as well have appeared out of thin air – or maybe Fugo had just been distracted. It always amazed him how Giorno could manage to have such a large amount of presence, but still somehow go unnoticed until the very moment he wanted to be and finally drew attention to himself. There was no missing him now, standing with his hands folded before him and eyes fixed on Fugo with a strange intensity that caused him to force back a shudder.

"Huh?" Was Fugos first, incredibly intelligent response, but as he cleared his throat and awkwardly raised a hand to scratch it, it became painfully clear what Giorno was referring to. The skin there was raised beneath his fingertips, a raw and still unfamiliar texture that somehow seemed to crawl beneath Giorno's searching gaze.

"Oh – no. No, don't. . .don't worry about it," he muttered, tacking the sentence on in a futile attempt to not look like an idiot while looking back down towards his papers. For some strange reason, his heart continued to race, and he found himself incapable of focusing on the numbers on the page.

No longer unnoticed, Giorno's quiet steps drew closer as he approached the desk where Fugo worked. With every inch that closed between them, he could almost feel the distance shortening, something about that causing his breath to catch and hold in his chest. Why’s he doing that? Coming closer, asking questions – surely the young mafia boss had more important things to worry about than him. Unless he’d done something wrong – shit, Fugo hadn’t managed to fuck up somehow, had he? Fingers tightened around the pen in his grip hard enough to cause it to bend beneath his fingers, threatening to snap. Where it brushed the paper, the nib shook, leaving behind jagged and messy purple lines Fugo would later have to frustratedly try to cover.

The footsteps stilled, just on the opposite side of the desk. Then, a shuffling sound, and a quiet disturbance as something nearby shifted just a fraction – He’s sitting on the desk. Swallowing hard, Fugo finally pried his eyes from the paper in order to slowly look up. Giorno had indeed settled lightly on the desk in front of him, facing away with his legs crossed and one hand resting on a knee. The other was braced against the desk beside him, and his face was turned in Fugo’s direction, slightly tilted to the side as eyes that were too bright and unreadable looked directly towards Fugo’s face. Immediately, he looked back down, only for his gaze to flicker back to Giorno’s face in the very next moment as he began to speak. “You were touching them – your scars, I mean. I couldn’t help but notice. You do it a lot.” Shit, did he? Fugo didn’t think so, but he couldn’t deny having had to suppress the immediate urge to reach for the network of scar tissue around the corners of his mouth. It stretched from there down the underside of his jaw and partially down the expanse of his throat, and it took every bit of self control not to press a palm against his neck out of desire to hide even a small fraction.

“Sorry,” he said reflexively, then immediately grimaced and looked away. “But – no. No, it doesn’t hurt. It feels . . . weird, sometimes, like any scar does. But it doesn’t hurt. Not since you . . . healed it, anyway . . .” His voice had trailed off into a mumble, then cut off completely as Giorno’s hand suddenly removed itself from the table and reached out. Not only out, but towards him – Part of Fugo wanted to lean back and away. Another, one that would have been louder had he been speaking to anyone else, wanted to snap that hands should be kept to themselves if their owner wanted to keep them.

As it was, he simply sat stock-still as Giorno’s fingers moved, quickly and confidently, to brush against the side of his face. Right on the edge of the scarring, they lingered for several moments as their owner’s brow furrowed. “. . . I’m sorry,” he murmured, to Fugo’s complete surprise, and he felt a muscle in his cheek twitch. “I wish I’d been able to do a better job.” “What the hell are you talking about?!” the words escaped from his mouth in an immediate rush, and Fugo’s face immediately went red as he clicked his jaw back shut. Emotion had reached a boil quickly and escaped his chest before he could contain it, and it took a few moments to fight back even a fraction. “S-sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. But. . .saying that. . . just doesn’t make any sense.” As he’d spoken, he’d looked briefly back to Giorno, but grimaced while looking again towards his hand. The pen had fallen at some point from his hand, which remained half-clenched into an angry claw. Ink droplets trailed across the paper. “Not when you’re . . . the only reason it’s as healed as it is already. Which is more than . . .” Giorno hadn’t allowed his hand to fall. For what reason, Fugo didn’t know, other than perhaps an awkward lack of understanding of the definition of personal space. He was quiet for a moment, then frowned while prompting “. . . More than what?”

Pulling back a fraction, Fugo shook his head. “Nothing. It’s – it’s nothing.”

Slowly, Giorno’s hand lowered, bracing against the desk once more as his torso turned further in Fugo’s direction. The look in his eyes was – strange, to say the least, and incredibly disconcerting. Fugo didn’t like to think about what it might be seeing.

“. . . What you deserved? Is that what you were going to say?”

Disfigured lips pressed into a thin line, Fugo swallowed. His hand had clenched into a fist. “. . . Just – it was more than you had to do,” he finally muttered. “Fixing my side and my mouth . . .I didn’t know if I was going to be able to eat or smell normally ever again, and if I did, how long it was going to take. So . . .”

As if it meant anything, he finished his statement with a shrug. With any luck, Giorno would just let it go and walk away . . .

But that incredibly perceptive, curious look remained fixed upon him, and with that same gentle persistence Fugo had come to both admire and detest, he said “so you think I shouldn’t have bothered.” “No –” Mouth open, Fugo hesitated. “. . . You think that I should think it wasn’t worth the effort or time?” Shit, he was doing it again. That same, disorienting deconstructing of an otherwise spiraling thought process that put thoughts into words that Fugo never would have been able to parse out on his own. It was like being laid bare – dissected – and he couldn’t help but shift awkward and uncomfortably in place. Letting out a rush of air, he found himself asking “. . .Well? Why don’t you?” For once, Giorno looked taken aback. “I should want you to be in pain?” he shook his head, brows knit together as his shoulders slumped ever so slightly downwards. “Why?”

Their hands were only a matter of inches apart on the desk. It wouldn’t be hard for Giorno to reach over and press his hand over Fugo’s fist – of course, doing that might cause him to lose his balance and fall over, so obviously he wouldn’t. But – well. It should be easy for Fugo to unclench his fingers and reach out to do the same. Shouldn’t it? He didn’t. “. . . Shouldn’t I deserve it? Wouldn’t that be . . . common sense? After everything I did – or, I guess, didn’t do.” His voice was stronger than he’d expected it to be as he lifted his head and managed to meet Giorno’s eyes. What he found there, though he couldn’t name it, stole the air from his lungs just as much as always. The vision of Giorno before him was perfect, also just as always, save the little detail of his expression.

He was frowning, but the expression wasn’t tense or angry. Tilting his head again to the side, he lifted his hand, and reached once more for Fugo’s face. It didn’t so much as occur to him to pull away this time, already prepared for the feeling of fingertips or the brush of a knuckle across the raised, scarred skin. What he felt, instead, was the length of Giorno’s palm, settled against his cheek as he held it. Neither avoiding nor focusing entirely on the scars, he brushed a thumb just barely across them.

Giorno’s lips parted, but at first nothing came out. Something flashed in his eyes that might have been a kind of panic, if Giorno were capable of feeling things like that. Like flashes on the surface of water, his emotions were too difficult for Fugo to read – so what was the point of trying? “. . . Do you really think so?” he asked, and something in his voice was pained. Shaking his head, he was quiet for another moment, then said simply “. . . I don’t.” Pressing ever so slightly against the touch of that warm, gentle hand, Fugo felt his lip begin to tremble. Shouldn’t I? He didn’t manage to say, words sticking in his throat along with emotion. It was all he could do just to breathe. Yet, somehow, the effort not put into speaking allowed him to convince his hand to move. Slowly uncurled, leaving the indentation of nails against his palms, he reached up and gently laid his hand over Giorno’s where it rested on his face. “. . .Then . . . I don’t, either,” he mumbled, though it made no sense at all. There were no powers being used, but a warmth spread nonetheless from everywhere Giorno’s fingers touched, sending life and drive throughout his entire body. In that moment, he wanted so badly to tell him. Maybe one day, he would. He would tell him just how much more he’d been able to heal than skin.

#jjba pt 5 #jjba vento auero #giorno giovanna #pannacotta fugo #fugio #fugio week 2023 #purple haze feedback #zero days since i last went insane about purple haze feedback

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