[Okay. Okay, well . . . okay. So he is allowed, and Fugo is moving to make it happen. That's good. That's very good. And since Fugo is doing that for him (or for both of them? since he said he wanted Giorno to play with his hair? what?), it's Giorno's job to get them back on track. He didn't mean to get them so off track, either, but oh. Just oh, at all of this.]
[He bites his lip again. Focus. They are Conversing about Emotions. He can do that. All right. He shifts and reaches, a little tentatively at first, for Fugo's hair, carding his fingers through it with something approaching reverence. It's easier to focus on that than on Fugo's face for a moment, anyway.]
. . . I was thinking the same thing. I have been for a while, actually. Not just today, although it's clearest today, I suppose--less diluted by other things. But I'd never think of just telling someone all of this normally, only with you it just feels--difficult, but not dangerous. And I was a little sad afterwards, but not very sad.
I feel like I spend so much time hiding, but I don't have to with you. Even if what I show is all the knots in my heart that I don't think will ever be untangled, you won't think it's bad or strange or stupid. You just listen. And--sometimes get angry for me.
[A beat, maybe two.]
I'm still not used to that. It feels strange. Good strange, though. Do you ever feel good strange?
[He's made it through the hardest part of all of this: first asking Giorno if he wants to play with his hair and then admitting it's something he wants. He still feels off-kilter and flustered, but he can lean in towards the touch he's becoming more familiar with. Most days, Giorno reaches for him with airy and effusive confidence; but some days, like today, he reaches as if part of him is certain that Fugo jerk away if he's not careful enough.]
On the first day I came here, every time you and Buccellati said something about-- "we can talk about it at home" or "I'll see you at home"... [Fugo draws one bony hand over the place underneath his ribs where his heart should be.] It hurt to hear that, because it wasn't something I thought was possible. In a good way, though. Like you pried my fingers off of something I was holding onto too tightly.
[Because it hadn't been obvious to him on that day that he could just go back home with the two of them. That there was nothing between them that Bruno needed to forgive. How they were still friends, they were still family. It still hurts to think about, but the thought has lost its most jagged of edges. He turns a thought over in his mind, dropping his hand into his lap. His hands come together and he restlessly starts to fiddle with and twist his fingers.]
Most of what I feel seems like it should be strange. It's ... too much, or not enough, or too many things all at once. That's what being happy feels like most of the time. Strange, but in a good way.
[Fugo's hair is soft. Not as soft as his own, nor quite as curly, but more than soft enough that he can run his fingers through from roots to ends. Normally he goes into playing with anyone's hair with some intention, some end product in mind--just as he does with conversations, meetings, relationships. But with Fugo it's so much less difficult, for some reason, to relax. Even when talking about things like this, he doesn't come into it wanting to resolve something and then stop. It's fine to just . . . talk.]
[Fugo smells like coffee. Giorno blinks a little, slow and almost sleepy, trying to process all of this.]
I sort of hate it that most of the time you have to hurt before you feel better. Hurting hurts too much. I don't like it . . . especially not when it's someone I love.
You're right, though.
[He curls a lock of Fugo's hair around his finger, then leans in and brushes his hair away from his face again. His eyes are so solemn, so open.]
Sometimes I feel like every time I'm happy, I'm stealing it from someone else. Sometimes I can forget that. But that hurts, too. And then . . . being happy when you haven't been for so long is like trying on clothing that fits after only ever wearing clothes that are too big your whole life. It feels tight and wrong and overwhelming and strange, but everyone is telling you it's good.
[Fugo doesn't think much about his hair, other than it exists and he likes it to be combed in a particular way. And that he really, really needs to go at it with a pair of scissors, because all the pieces that should be shorter than the rest are longer than they should be. And it's getting to the point where it's easier to just tie it back off of his neck rather than pin it up when he's playing the piano. He needs to find a headband.
Whenever they speak this personally, Fugo finds himself at war between his instinct to look away yanks against his desire to put everything about Giorno and what he's saying to memory. The way Giorno's mouth moves, how Giorno blinks to collect himself, the light touch of his fingers in his hair. For how difficult he is to look at, sometimes, Fugo gets the feeling that he'd be content just to watch all the little ways Giorno's face changes.]
[Not so long ago, the words someone I love in relation to himself would have been too painful, too overwhelming to hear. They still hurt, in their own way. They're still a lot: hearing them makes him feel a sunburst of gladness, a quaking sense of relief, and a sneaky sense of guilt slithering underneath. But the idea that Giorno cares about him strongly enough to use the words ti voglio is another thing he's getting used to, every time he hears it and every time he observes it.]
That's... very apt. [Giorno doesn't frame it the way Fugo does, but it feels wrong is very close to--] ... it feels unfair.
[To let himself feel happy. To let himself be comforted. To let go of some of the ugliness he carries with him, in the presence of people he loves so much it makes his heart ache.]
Have you ever felt like you don't need to be as happy as you are? That-- even just the little bit of happiness you had was more than enough, so you don't know what to do with the rest of it.
[It's not a sound made in pain or even upset; just comprehension. His fingers slow in Fugo's hair because--it's true, isn't it. It's so accurate, the best and most precise way of explaining it. Not wrong but unfair, a matter of incorrect attribution.]
[Absently, Giorno begins to braid the short, loose hair at the nape of Fugo's neck into something resembling a loose, lopsided French braid.]
That's really what it is, isn't it. Being overwhelmed by something that so many people take for granted simply because--for me, anyway . . . even a tiny amount is more than I know what to do with . . .
[He sighs softly, blinking up at Fugo again.]
Most days I want to learn what it feels like to be hungry for that. I want to convince myself that I deserve it. But some days I just want to . . . stop searching and fighting so hard. You know? It's exhausting.
[Has his hair really gotten so long that Giorno can make something out of it, however tiny? He keeps thinking it needs to be trimmed in odd moments and forgetting about it when he has the free time. It feels odd. His hair growing out means that time is continuing to pass and he's still here. He's not in the hospital, he's not in the bar, he's not in an apartment that he lived in for six months but found nothing personal to fill it with. He's here with Giorno in a bedroom of a house that, although he can't bring himself to think of it as home, feels homelike. It feels like home because Giorno and Buccellati are just a few doors away on either side.]
Happiness keeps sneaking up onto me. [His hands slowly open and close in his lap, trying to hold onto thin air.] Sometimes I want to hold onto it, for as long as I can. Try and make the most of it. But usually it just feels like too much to hold onto at once. Because it's more than what I should have.
[Rationally speaking, he knows that happiness is something intangible and personal. It can't be traded back and forth. But sometimes, he wistfully wishes that it could be. That way he could take what he didn't need and give it to someone who did.]
[God, and it hurts to say. But it's true, isn't it? He feels the same exact way. And he's horrified and offended and broken-hearted to hear Fugo say it, but he's not shocked. They're too similar in too many ways. He wants to take it away and hold it in the cup of his hands until he crushes it into dust, but he can't. It doesn't work that way.]
I don't agree with you. Not about you, but--you probably don't agree about me either, right?
It's hard. To care about yourself even a little bit as much as other people love you.
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no subject
[He bites his lip again. Focus. They are Conversing about Emotions. He can do that. All right. He shifts and reaches, a little tentatively at first, for Fugo's hair, carding his fingers through it with something approaching reverence. It's easier to focus on that than on Fugo's face for a moment, anyway.]
. . . I was thinking the same thing. I have been for a while, actually. Not just today, although it's clearest today, I suppose--less diluted by other things. But I'd never think of just telling someone all of this normally, only with you it just feels--difficult, but not dangerous. And I was a little sad afterwards, but not very sad.
I feel like I spend so much time hiding, but I don't have to with you. Even if what I show is all the knots in my heart that I don't think will ever be untangled, you won't think it's bad or strange or stupid. You just listen. And--sometimes get angry for me.
[A beat, maybe two.]
I'm still not used to that. It feels strange. Good strange, though. Do you ever feel good strange?
no subject
On the first day I came here, every time you and Buccellati said something about-- "we can talk about it at home" or "I'll see you at home"... [Fugo draws one bony hand over the place underneath his ribs where his heart should be.] It hurt to hear that, because it wasn't something I thought was possible. In a good way, though. Like you pried my fingers off of something I was holding onto too tightly.
[Because it hadn't been obvious to him on that day that he could just go back home with the two of them. That there was nothing between them that Bruno needed to forgive. How they were still friends, they were still family. It still hurts to think about, but the thought has lost its most jagged of edges. He turns a thought over in his mind, dropping his hand into his lap. His hands come together and he restlessly starts to fiddle with and twist his fingers.]
Most of what I feel seems like it should be strange. It's ... too much, or not enough, or too many things all at once. That's what being happy feels like most of the time. Strange, but in a good way.
no subject
[Fugo smells like coffee. Giorno blinks a little, slow and almost sleepy, trying to process all of this.]
I sort of hate it that most of the time you have to hurt before you feel better. Hurting hurts too much. I don't like it . . . especially not when it's someone I love.
You're right, though.
[He curls a lock of Fugo's hair around his finger, then leans in and brushes his hair away from his face again. His eyes are so solemn, so open.]
Sometimes I feel like every time I'm happy, I'm stealing it from someone else. Sometimes I can forget that. But that hurts, too. And then . . . being happy when you haven't been for so long is like trying on clothing that fits after only ever wearing clothes that are too big your whole life. It feels tight and wrong and overwhelming and strange, but everyone is telling you it's good.
no subject
Whenever they speak this personally, Fugo finds himself at war between his instinct to look away yanks against his desire to put everything about Giorno and what he's saying to memory. The way Giorno's mouth moves, how Giorno blinks to collect himself, the light touch of his fingers in his hair. For how difficult he is to look at, sometimes, Fugo gets the feeling that he'd be content just to watch all the little ways Giorno's face changes.]
[Not so long ago, the words someone I love in relation to himself would have been too painful, too overwhelming to hear. They still hurt, in their own way. They're still a lot: hearing them makes him feel a sunburst of gladness, a quaking sense of relief, and a sneaky sense of guilt slithering underneath. But the idea that Giorno cares about him strongly enough to use the words ti voglio is another thing he's getting used to, every time he hears it and every time he observes it.]
That's... very apt. [Giorno doesn't frame it the way Fugo does, but it feels wrong is very close to--] ... it feels unfair.
[To let himself feel happy. To let himself be comforted. To let go of some of the ugliness he carries with him, in the presence of people he loves so much it makes his heart ache.]
Have you ever felt like you don't need to be as happy as you are? That-- even just the little bit of happiness you had was more than enough, so you don't know what to do with the rest of it.
no subject
[It's not a sound made in pain or even upset; just comprehension. His fingers slow in Fugo's hair because--it's true, isn't it. It's so accurate, the best and most precise way of explaining it. Not wrong but unfair, a matter of incorrect attribution.]
[Absently, Giorno begins to braid the short, loose hair at the nape of Fugo's neck into something resembling a loose, lopsided French braid.]
That's really what it is, isn't it. Being overwhelmed by something that so many people take for granted simply because--for me, anyway . . . even a tiny amount is more than I know what to do with . . .
[He sighs softly, blinking up at Fugo again.]
Most days I want to learn what it feels like to be hungry for that. I want to convince myself that I deserve it. But some days I just want to . . . stop searching and fighting so hard. You know? It's exhausting.
no subject
Happiness keeps sneaking up onto me. [His hands slowly open and close in his lap, trying to hold onto thin air.] Sometimes I want to hold onto it, for as long as I can. Try and make the most of it. But usually it just feels like too much to hold onto at once. Because it's more than what I should have.
[Rationally speaking, he knows that happiness is something intangible and personal. It can't be traded back and forth. But sometimes, he wistfully wishes that it could be. That way he could take what he didn't need and give it to someone who did.]
no subject
[God, and it hurts to say. But it's true, isn't it? He feels the same exact way. And he's horrified and offended and broken-hearted to hear Fugo say it, but he's not shocked. They're too similar in too many ways. He wants to take it away and hold it in the cup of his hands until he crushes it into dust, but he can't. It doesn't work that way.]
I don't agree with you. Not about you, but--you probably don't agree about me either, right?
It's hard. To care about yourself even a little bit as much as other people love you.