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jojo-lane · 12 days

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NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

“You know that, right? I love you, too. Never thought I would, but I do. More than anything.”

gyro zeppeli/f!reader

word count: 11.3k (yes you read that right, I’m so sorry)

content contains: SBR SPOILERS—READ AT YOUR OWN RISK, canon character death(s), female reader with she/her pronouns, PIV, oral (m!receiving), hair pulling, enemies to lovers (more like enemies to “vaguely tolerating gyro” to lovers), canon compliant, grief, hurt, bittersweet ending, unplanned pregnancy, references to postpartum depression, dumbasses falling in love, overall it’s sad and I don’t know what possessed me to write this monstrosity, this is my gyro fucker magnum opus and I am making you all suffer through it. MINORS DNI

ao3 link

“Fine!”

You stomped off with a scowl, skulking toward the table of food set up for the jockeys to celebrate completing the first stage. You weren’t about to let him get the last word. Gyro Zeppeli. The most irritating son of a bitch you had ever had the misfortune of meeting in the protracted trial of suffering that was shaping up to be the Steel Ball Run. It had only been hours since you and the other four thousand contestants stepped into the saddle at Pacific Beach, and yet he had already became a thorn in your side. That rasping, husky laugh of his with that irritating “nyo-ho!” tacked on at the end grated on your nerves, the sight of those hideous gold teeth engraved with his own surname glinting in the light whenever he flashed that shit-eating grin enough to make your blood boil.

Now, with all the press gone and the furor in the wake of the stunt he had pulled with the champagne corks dying down, he’d cornered you. Something about your saddle and how you shadowed him too much through the tail end of the stretch; you had been trying to tune him out and didn’t catch most of it. The only way he had gotten you to pay attention was by standing in front of you to block your path, his arms crossed and his face pinched in irritation.

“Listen,” he had spat out through gritted teeth. “There’s more for me at stake in this race than there is for you. Just stay out of my way. Or go home, since you can’t race for shit.”

“I’m not in your way,” you tried to side-step him, and he moved with you. “And right now, you’re in mine. Go, I don’t know, eat pizza somewhere.”

He snorted.

“That’s all you got?” Gyro mockingly asked as he shook his head. “Come on, isn’t there anything you’re good at? Aside from staring at my ass, I’m guessing you got pretty good at that while trying to tail me back there.”

Oh my God, I already hate you.

Sighing, you collected yourself. Deep breaths. Don’t let him get to you. He’s just a self-important moron with an ugly hat. When you did respond, it was in an even, measured tone.

“Weird, since I’m trying to avoid you.”

“Not trying hard enough,” he shifted his weight to one hip. “Every time I look back, there you are, trailing after me. I’m serious. Stay the hell out of my way.”

“You stay out of mine!” There goes that, I guess. How he had managed to exasperate you so effortlessly was beyond you. “You want to say I’m following you, but you keep popping up every fifteen minutes to bother me!”

He rolled his eyes.

“Stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours.”

You groaned, throwing your hands up in defeat. Jaw clenched, you met Gyro’s condescending stare. Agreeing to his delusional demands killed you inside, but if it meant getting him the hell away from you, you were going to do it.

“Fine.”

“Fine.” Gyro smiled, shrugging, his face smug. He considered it a victory, and you knew it. You could see it in the curl of his lip.

“Fine!”

You had to get away from him at that point. Staying would end in violence. Helping yourself to the spread, you could not shake off the confrontation you had left behind. That smarmy fuckwad with his hideous wide-brimmed hat, who the hell did he think he was? He had acted like he was the Queen of England, ordering you around. As if he was someone important, someone who had been far too accustomed to being treated like everything he had done was sacrosanct. Nothing more than some Neopolitan chucklefuck who thought his shit didn’t stink. Ironic, you thought, considering he’d gotten close enough to you to where you were unwaveringly confident that the smallest whiff of his body odor could kill a lion. It was a miracle that Valkyrie hadn’t keeled over at the reek of her rider, you’d had to hold your breath because he had cowed you into a corner and you couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

Frowning, you looked down at your plate. Nothing on it looked appealing anymore. Not a single piece of food on that plate even struck you as edible. Not the bread, not the. The entire conversation had left a bad taste in your mouth, the argument with Gyro too fresh in your mind, and it had ruined your appetite.

Goddamnit.

You threw the plate away in a huff.

***

From Santa Maria Novella Church to the deserts of Arizona, Gyro took advantage of every opportunity he could to make you miserable. No matter what you did, he had an opinion on it that he never failed to make sure you had to endure listening to. There was the way you’d pitched your tent. The way you sat in the saddle. The smell of your firewood. Your riding pants. Your hat. Your hat, when that man walked around with that wide-brimmed vented monstrosity perched atop his head. Pot, meet kettle.

Not like he’d needed to protect anything from the sun in there anyway, all that dwelled in that thick skull of his was hot air and two neurons firing off for third place. Every day, there was some fresh new diatribe sitting on the tip of his tongue. By the time you could see the rugged buttes of Monument Valley, you were all but convinced only three things in life were guaranteed: death, taxes, and him making your life a living hell.

You stepped out of your saddle and stretched your legs, heading toward the line that had gathered by the water tanks set up for the racers to refill their canteens and weighed down by weariness.

It was best to put it out of your mind. Put him out of your mind. Focus on the race, nothing else. No lousy cheat with bad teeth was going to get under your skin, not with the prize money on the line.

Drumming your fingers against the smooth leather case that housed your canteen, you looked around as you filed into the back of the line, taking in the scenery and sizing up the other jockeys. Your mare had already been hitched to one of the free posts across the way, idly dragging her hoof across the burnt sienna beneath her. In front of you was Sandman, then Norisuke Higashikata in front of him. Diego Brando was further up, his baby blue riding helmet barely visible amidst the throng. The line had moved at a snail’s pace, and when you were finally next, a sharp pain in your side sent you staggering into the person behind you.

Gyro had elbowed you out of the way.

“What happened to staying out of each other’s way?” You gained your bearings, righting yourself and raising a hand in apology to the person behind you.

“I was here first,” he cut in front of you with a smirk, waving his hand to shoo you off. “Move.”

God, give me a reason, I am begging you. Please. Please let me punch this man.

“The hell you were,” you shot back, and you shoved him out of the line. “I’ve been standing here for fifteen goddamn minutes, Zeppeli, I didn’t see you come by once!”

“Why? Too busy staring at my ass to figure out where I was standing, again?”

“Oh, Jesus fucking—no, I’m not doing this. Wait in line like everybody else, asshole! You can’t cheat your way to everything, did you not learn from that penalty? Get to the back of the line, you’re not that important.”

A murmur of assent echoed behind you; it seemed some of the racers shared your sentiment. Gyro scowled, looking off to the side for a moment and running his tongue over his teeth behind his closed mouth. With an annoyed huff, he popped his hip out and pushed you back again, cutting in front of you once more. He leaned in, narrowed green eyes promising malice as he looked down his nose at you. The dig at the penalty he had incurred and the twenty places it had put him behind in the ranks had hit him deep, and that knowledge brought you no small amount of satisfaction.

“Why are you even here, mignotta?” He sneered, poking you square in the chest with his index finger. “Don’t you have some needlepoint to do or something? Some sfigato to pop out a few mistakes with? Give up and go home, you’re a shitty jockey and an even worse—”

“—Move, jackass,” you spat. Using both hands, you pushed him back hard enough to make him stumble, then moved forward. It was your turn to fill your canteen.

You had barely placed it beneath the spigot when Gyro’s hand shot out, knocking it from your grasp and to the floor. Water poured cold over your hands and to the dirt, splattering onto the tip of your boots. Gritting your teeth, you picked up your canteen and wiped it off, setting it back under the spigot before glaring over at him. That same smug grin was on his face, his hands on his hips as he watched you.

“Careful,” he taunted, cocking his head to the side. “Don’t wanna drop that.”

He smacked it out of your hands again.

There it is. There’s my reason. My prayers, answered.

You curled your hand into a fist and swung, your fist landing along the squares of facial hair that dotted his beard. Surprise colored his expression as the punch connected, his thick dark brows rocketing skyward as he swayed to the side. He composed himself quickly, catching your wrist as you poised yourself for a second hit. All lime-green lips pulled back over bared gold teeth, he tightened his grip hard enough to hurt. The adrenaline ravaging through your system at the punch now mingled with a sense of alarm; he looked ready to strike you back.

“Look,” he seethed, genuine anger in his stare. “I’m not the kind of guy to hit a lady, but you barely count as a girl. Don’t go writing checks your ass can’t cash, you don’t want to pick a fight with me.”

“You started it!” You shouted. “The hell did you think was going to happen, knocking my canteen out of my hands like that, did you think we were going to become best friends?!”

He opened his mouth to speak, but the voice of one of the aides cut through his retort.

“You two! Cut it out. Gyro, let her go and get to the back of the line! You, pick up your canteen, you’re wasting water!”

Muttering under his breath, Gyro let go and stalked off. You picked up your canteen from the dirt, whispering a few choice words at his back in kind and hastily wiping it off before sticking it back under the spigot a third time. Once it was full, you shut off the water and stepped aside, scanning the crowd. Toward the end of the hitching posts you could see him, brushing out Valkyrie’s mane and bitching to Johnny while he worked. He kept glancing over at you, stopping occasionally to gesticulate wildly with his hands and point in your direction. When he realized you were watching him, he gave you a mocking smile and waved, then scowled and quickly turned his hand to raise his middle finger at you.

Raising your canteen in a mock toast, you flipped him off in turn.

“Asshole,” you muttered as you smiled in his direction.

***

That shithead. That absolute moron. That fucking—

The idiot had gone and gotten himself wounded. Gunshot, Johnny had said. He came to your camp asking if you had any bandages to spare, all baby blues wide with panic and slumped in the saddle. He had been wounded, too, you could tell by the blood. But he was patched up just fine.

Of course Gyro had gotten himself fucking shot like a dumbass, you thought as you set off to help him. Of course he did.

By now, Gyro had become a regular haunt whenever you stopped to camp, sneaking food out of your knapsack while singing nonsensical songs to himself. Always cocky, always acting as if he was entitled to everything the world held within it. You could see it, someone getting fed up with him to the point of unloading a slug or two in him.

But things had changed, much to your chagrin. Startlingly less confrontational, you had hatefully grown accustomed to him. Tolerant, even. Enough to where the sight of him lying on his back with his eyes squeezed shut in pain and bleeding all over his bedroll had made your stomach lurch and your mouth go dry.

“Stop squirming, I’m trying to get a look at the damage!”

You smacked his shoulder and he winced, sucking in air through his teeth.

“You’re a bad nurse,” he grumbled. “You hear me? Bad. Terrible.”

You stopped, your eyes narrowed and your nostrils flared in anger.

“Why’d you even—what if you died, huh? Did you think about that? Idiot!”

Gyro opened one eye, grinning up at you.

“You telling me you’d be sad if I did, carina? Would you miss me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“He called me a conformist,” Gyro grimaced as he spoke, green eyes open and looking straight at you. “Can you believe that? That bastard. Fuck him and his “True Man’s World.” I have the determination to keep going.”

“Gyro, you aren’t making any sense.”

“You had to be there.” He looked up at Johnny. “My bag—I have a surgical kit in there. Hand it to me, will you?”

There was no way he could have asked you. Each of your hands were pressed over his wounds to stop the bleeding. Johnny reached into Gyro’s knapsack, shuffling around its contents with a hurried hand before pulling out a small leather case and tossing it your way. It landed on Gyro’s bedroll with a soft thud, and he turned his attention back to you.

“Listen to me, because this is important. I need you to stop the bleeding. There’s gauze. Bandage the wounds, don’t pack them. And keep applying pressure once you do. Use your knees if you have to, lean into it. Don’t try to take out the bullets.”

“Gyro—”

“—I’m not asking. I’m telling you. Do it.”

The look he fixed you gave no room for argument. Sighing, you moved your hands away and opened the surgical tool kit Johnny had thrown to you. The gauze was tucked neatly away in the upper left hand corner of the kit, and you grabbed it with a shaky hand.

“Okay, okay. Shut up and hold still.”

He obliged, his head tilted back on the bedroll and a low groan rattling from his chest. Unbuttoning his shirt, you pushed the fabric aside, greeted instantly by the horrifying sight of mangled flesh and bone marring his torso. He had been shot twice. Once in the abdomen, once in the shoulder. Just barely missing his vital organs, from what you could see. Without a word, you dressed the wounds while he walked you through each step, finishing by placing your palms back over each one and pushing all of your weight onto them until Gyro gave you the okay to move. He opened his eyes again after you sat back, gazing up at you with a small but genuine smile.

“You’re a terrible nurse,” he repeated, and you could swear he meant it fondly. “Florence Nightingale would be ashamed of you.”

You smacked his shoulder again, a small smile of your own creeping across your lips.

“Fine, die next time.”

“But then you’d miss me.”

The bloodloss had to have made him delusional. In what world would you miss him? Begrudgingly tolerating his existence did not mean you liked him. Tolerating him just made it easier when he would raid your camp or walk up and take a swig out of your canteen without permission. Even if he made you laugh here and there with his silly little songs or convoluted puns that made no sense, he was not a person that fell within the realm of “friends you would mourn to your marrow if they died.”

Gyro was someone you stocked up on extra food for when the opportunity arose. He was someone you once stole a roll of toilet paper from Diego Brando for. He was someone you would bandage a bullet wound for without taking the chance to ask how the hell he had even gotten shot in the first place, solely because you were certain no one else would have been able to. He was someone to placate, someone to dole out offerings to like some fey creature to negate its ire. Not someone to cry over. Not someone you would miss, not really.

He was still staring up at you with that soft smile on his face, and his blood was still on your hands. It was taking him some effort to keep his eyes open, his eyelids drooping from fatigue, but he still gazed up at you. It took you a moment to realize he was grateful you had been there, willing to help when Johnny had rode Slow Dancer into your camp and flagged you down. He was happy you had come running to save him.

You could feel your heart cracking open just enough to let him in at that. An act of treason, in your eyes; tolerating him was one thing, liking him was another. That was something you would not abide nor entertain. How dare he try to weasel his way into your good graces with a couple bullet wounds and a bright smile. How dare he smile up at you like that like he admired you.

Maybe I would, a little, you thought. But I’d rather cut my tongue out than tell you that.

***

Tensions had grown exponentially in the race before you had even reached the end of the fourth stage, an ever-growing list of fatalities already jotted down. Gyro’s impromptu haunting had come to a stop. A welcome reprieve, really, even if his absence worried you more than you cared to admit. Bloodshed seemed to follow Gyro and Johnny wherever they went, and you wanted none of it. By nightfall on the third day of him not poisoning your every waking moment with his presence, you had set up camp by a clearing, the cool night air thick with the smell of firewood carried over from camps in the distance.

It was with great care that you had chosen your place to rest your head. Safely tucked away behind a wall of shrubbery that had grown wild, distant enough from all the chaos surrounding you. With your tent pitched and your bed roll laid out, you huddled near the bundle of twigs you had gathered to start a fire, your mare hitched safely to the closest tree. The sky was clear, visible enough through the canopy above to where you could make out the Big and Little Dipper with ease. Peace and quiet. Perfect.

A crackling sound pierced the silence. A twig snapping underfoot behind you, just a few feet away. The bushes rustled and shook, the unmistakable sound of leaves and branches bending in protest from an unseen force. You jumped up from the ground, poised and ready to fight, and a voice shot out from the bushes.

“Porca madonna, perche—ma che cazzo—stupidi cespugli del cazzo!”

Groaning, you tilted your head back, your shoulders sagging beneath the weight of your irritation. What chaos was he planning on unleashing now? Another bullet wound? Maybe a jab at your general state of affairs? Your ranking? Your horse?

It bothered you that part of you was excited to find out.

“What do you want, Gyro?” You called, loud enough for only him to hear you.

The rustling stopped. Gyro’s hands emerged from the thicket and parted the bushes, his head poking through and his stare meeting yours. Frozen, he looked around, his eyes wide and his mouth set in a grimace. Confusion, fear, and embarrassment—an emotion you weren’t accustomed to seeing on him—were laid plain on his face, and the realization that this was not an intentional visit hit you with full force.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” he hastily stepped out of the bushes and dusted himself off, his words stiff and coming out in a rushed exhale. “I was looking for—firewood. Firewood, yeah.”

He rocked awkwardly on the balls of his feet, looking away and gesturing toward the desert greenery. His hands fidgeted at his sides, a short burst of air pushing past his lips as he sighed.

“Yep. Just looking for firewood. Good ol’ firewood.”

Silence hung heavy between you, Gyro’s body language growing increasingly more agitated in the quiet. One hand busied itself by rubbing at the back of his neck, his eyes drifting to everywhere but you. At one point, he had even started whistling, taking slow strides around the clearing.

“Couldn’t see you through all of that,” he explained when the silence had dragged on too long. “Didn’t know you were out here.”

“Bullshit,” you snorted, and you folded your arms under your chest. “You somehow find me even when I’m trying to hide from you. And if that’s the case, why do you look embarrassed?”

“I was in the bushes next to your campsite,” he replied in a slow voice, as if he were a beleaguered parent explaining something to a toddler. “Accident or not, you know how that looks, right? That would embarrass anyone. I’m not a nice guy or anything, but I have some sense of decency.”

The strain in his voice belied his words; he wasn’t planning on telling you what he was doing out here. For a long moment, you studied him, your head tilted to the side. He still couldn’t look you in the eye. He was back to rocking where he stood, no longer pacing around the bushes.

“What, were you crouching in there trying to take a shit? I’d be careful, I’m pretty sure there’s rattlesnakes out here. Wouldn’t want one to bite you in the ass. Or see your balls swinging and aim for ‘em.”

I would, though, that would be pretty funny.

“What?” Gyro made a face, taken aback. That, you could tell, was a new fear you had unlocked in him. “No, I—actually, yeah. I was looking for a place to take a piss. Happy?”

He’d spoken a little too quickly, that time. Still not looking at you, still rocking away. His hands fiddled with the hem of his shirt, his body subtly angled away from you. He was antsy. Over taking a piss? Why go this far out to take a piss, anyway, when he could just step a few feet away from his own camp?

Why is he—oh. Oh. Ew. Oh, I am going to make this so uncomfortable for you. Finally give you a taste of your own medicine.

Grinning, you leaned forward.

“Needed a little private time? Didn’t want Johnny to hear you? Thought the bushes would be a nice cover for you to crank your hog in—”

“—Oh, per l’amor di Dio,” Gyro snapped, his cheeks flushing into a deep shade made monochrome by the moonlight.

He closed his eyes and inhaled sharply through his nose, and he stopped rocking on his feet.

“How about this? I’m just going to go right back into those bushes, walk away, and we pretend this never happened. Capisci? Never.”

He went quiet, watching you in the dark in a silence that bordered on uncomfortably long.

“Unless you wanna help me out,” he went on, and he took a step forward. A grin split his mouth open wide, those hideous gold teeth glittering in the dark. His gaze roved over you, taking in the curve of your hips and the swell of your breasts with an air that was almost appreciative.

“You’re not the ugliest chick I’ve ever seen, you know, I wouldn’t hate the experience.”

Making a face, you shuddered and shook your head in protest. The nerve of this man. The idea of Gyro’s grubby palms anywhere near you was enough to force bile bubbling up your throat. There was also the certainty that if you touched him, you would somehow contract scabies from the grime that clung to him. Not that you were much better; racing through the desert made everyone stink like stale sweat and horseshit, and you were no exception.

But part of you wondered what it would be like.

“Not even in your wildest dreams.”

“Oh, come on,” Gyro took another step forward, waggling his eyebrows. It was difficult to tell if he was trying to make you squirm or if it was a genuine proposition. “You’re not even a little interested?”

Another step. In the moonlight, you could see him more clearly while he drew near. It colored his wheat-gold hair silver, his tanned skin muted by its shine. Without the smug condescension warping his mouth into a sneer, he wasn’t too hard to look at himself. Nice smile, despite the teeth. His jaw was a little bruised, a tiny splotch of deep burgundy and aubergine blooming between two patches of coarse blonde facial hair. Sharp, aquiline nose, long dark lashes, his full lips no longer sporting that hideous shade of lime green. If he didn’t have the personality of a sewer rat, you would have gone so far as to call him handsome.

“Back up, Gyro.”

He was too close now, you could see exactly how tightly that ridiculous purple shirt fit him. Every cut and groove along his abdomen defined, the sleeves stretched taut over his biceps. He brushed a strand of hair from your face, one eyebrow cocked in amusement.

“You sound a little breathless, babe, everything okay?”

“Yeah, because I can smell you. You could knock out an army just by raising your arms.”

“That so?”

His arm snaked its way around your waist. He was warm, his body heat radiating off him like fire. Is this man a fucking human furnace? Why the hell is he so warm?

“C’mon,” he whispered. His fingertips trailed over your cheek, his lips a touch too close to your own. “Take out those frustrations on me. Make me sorry for knocking your canteen out of your hands and calling you a shitty jockey, and all the other times I’ve been a dick to you. I know you want to.”

He has to be fucking with me right now.

“I can do that,” you smirked up at him, desperately shoving down the way your heart had started pounding. Go back to normal, go back to hating me, this is weird. I kind of like it, and I hate that. “If you don’t let go of me, I’m gonna punch you again. How’s that for taking out my frustrations?”

Gyro clicked his tongue against his teeth, and his arm left your waist.

“Suit yourself,” he shrugged. He glanced around your campsite, his eyes landing on the small stack of twigs and firewood you had gathered.

“You’re going to want more than that. That won’t burn long. Gets cold out here at night, from what I hear.”

He gave you a small wave goodbye, this time walking around the bushes.

“See you around,” he called over his shoulder. “Won’t be too hard to miss you. I just gotta look over my shoulder, and there you’ll be.”

You could’ve sworn he was flirting with you when he said that.

***

Something had happened en route to the Great Lakes. There was an old cabin you had found and sought shelter in from the snow, pelting down from the sky with unforgiving wrath. You had woken up to Gyro stumbling into your camp yelling your name, Valkyrie nowhere to be seen. He’d walked. He had trudged through the snow, left his horse behind, and walked. Not for the first time, you had wondered if he was insane while you ran outside to meet him, but those green eyes met yours and the words died on your tongue. There was a shell-shocked air about him; he had begun to grow more taciturn, more grim and more determined, but all of you had. Something, though. Something had shaken him to his very core.

Maybe it had been Sandman. His name had been added to the list, another name for someone to mourn. Dead by the Mississippi. You had liked him well enough to be sad when you found out. Quiet and kept to himself, he had helped you once. Down the line he had changed; so had Diego, so had so many others you knew.

And just like that, he was gone.

There was something different about Gyro and Johnny, though. You didn’t quite understand it. They had willfully kept you out of the loop, more so at Gyro’s insistence. His visits were infrequent, nowhere near the level of constancy they had reached toward the first three stages, but even those were different. Tense. A sense of agitation that clung to him, a Sword of Damocles hanging overhead that you never could quite see. Whenever you tried to put the pieces together on your own, it painted an abstract puzzle that vaguely pointed toward the seeds being sown in the Arizona desert. In the cursed soil of the Devil’s Palm, that blighted swathe left behind by a fallen star. You had avoided it, along with most of the other jockeys. The superstition had been something you bought into, and even at the risk of falling behind, you avoided it.

But not Gyro and Johnny. Not Sandman, not Diego, not Pocoloco, not Hot Pants. They had rode through the blight and came back different.

Gyro watched you in silence, that verdant stare bright with a feeling you could not name.

“What do you want?” You asked. The old ritual, but the question was left unanswered.

He pushed his way through the snow, stumbling to get to you, and you could see him awkwardly traipsing around the bushes and bullshitting about firewood.

That night in the plains was one you had thought about more than you cared to admit. The way he had looked in the moonlight, his hair bleached silver and his warm touch at your cheek. How he had wrapped his arm around you and pulled you close, close enough to kiss. How he had walked away and left you there with your heart racing, confused and annoyed as you watched him go. There was a loathsome little part of you that had wanted him to stay. You wanted to see what it would feel like.

Take out those frustrations on me.

He was right in front of you now.

“Gyro, what—”

His arm shot out, circling your waist and pulling you to him through the snow. His other hand tangled through your hair, settling at your nape as he leaned in. Pressed up against him, you could feel his heartbeat, a painful thrum against his sternum like a caged hummingbird desperate to break free. Time ground to a halt once your eyes met, that brief second where he held your gaze feeling like an eternity between you.

Then his lips closed over yours in a heated kiss, and the spell broke.

Everything moved too quickly between you. Desperation guided him, the need to feel, to be, to get lost in you so potent that you could taste it. His tongue glided over your bottom lip in a bid to seek entry and you parted them eagerly, your arms circling his neck. You met his kiss with fervor, his tongue twining with yours sending heat searing through your blood and quickening your pulse. The snow falling around you, so tall that it reached your knees, you couldn’t feel its cold seeping into your skin. In his arms, all you could feel was fire.

There wasn’t enough time, now. Not enough time in the world, not with the way he poured himself into you.

Gyro broke the kiss, blinking as he pulled back to look down at you. He was perplexed; his brow knotted together, the corners of his mouth tugging downward into a subtle frown. A confusion you shared, looking back up at him. You wanted this, a realization that came as a greater surprise than the kiss. You wanted it back in the plains, though you would rather die than admit it. But you were certain he knew in the way he looked at you; that confusion was stemming from the fact that you had turned him down before.

You dragged him back into you, crashing against him like a wave in an openmouthed kiss that pulled you both under. Not for a moment did he miss a beat, that desperation now mingling with enthusiastic need. One hand drifted down from your waist to your ass, giving it a rough squeeze as he pressed his hips into yours. A soft moan broke free from your lungs and you moved the kiss lower, trailing down the slope of his neck, his pulse fluttering wildly and his breathing giving way to short, ragged bursts. He groaned, pulling you back from him by the hair.

“Inside,” he managed, his voice hoarse and his cheeks flushed. “You keep this up and I’m gonna risk getting frostbite on my dick. Inside.”

The two of you stumbled through the snow hand in hand. You couldn’t get through it fast enough, both you dragging each other toward the cabin as if your lives depended on it. Not a word was spoken until you had crossed the threshold and shut the door behind you, trapped in the warmth of the fire and Gyro’s hands tugging at your shirt.

“I lost it all,” he mumbled hurriedly, tearing at the fabric like its presence had offended him personally. “I had to use it all up. The ball—I’m making it fall on my side of the net.”

What the fuck is he even talking about right now?

“You’re not making any sense.”

Gyro stopped, looking off to the side before meeting your stare. He held your gaze, the firelight reflected in his eyes and his features drawn into an expression more intense than anything you had ever seen on him. When he spoke, his voice was little more than an impassioned, rasping murmur.

“You are the most irritating goddamn woman I have ever met in my life, and you’re still somehow the first thing on my mind when I wake up. The last thing when I fall asleep. Why do you think I keep—you asked what I wanted. I want this. I want you. I’ve wanted this since Missouri.”

So he hadn’t been kidding that night.

“But—tell me to stop and I will. I’ll go back, just like last time. I told you, I have some decency.”

In the dim glow of the fire, he had never looked more beautiful to you. His clothes were soaked from the shins down from trudging through the snow, bits of it still clinging to his hat and hair. The tip of his nose and his cheeks were red from the cold, his chest rising and falling with every labored breath, his hair wild and his hat askew. You couldn’t care less that both of you reeked like horseshit and the wilderness, that your breath could fell a tree and his musk could knock out a bear. That grin on his face and the pleading look in his eye, the way his kiss had set you ablaze, all of the hatred you held for him that had gradually begun to bleed out during the race felt like some faraway dream.

You smacked his hands out of the way and he frowned, taking a step back.

“Sorry, I just thought—” he began, and when you tugged your shirt over your head and began hastily unlacing your bust bodice, he cut himself off. Beaming, he worked at the fastenings of his own shirt, the scars from the gunshot wounds you had bandaged still fresh beneath the glimpses of moving fabric.

“—Never mind,” he laughed, tossing his shirt aside without a care where it lay. “I thought right.”

His stare moved down to your bare breasts as you began unbuckling your belt, his eyes widening just a fraction and an open mouthed smile of delight stretching wide across his face.

“Eccezionale,” he breathed, still giggling and a little stupefied by the sight. He didn’t bother looking away from your chest, his hands fussing at his own belt buckle. “Le tue tette sono perfette, porca puttana.”

“I have no idea what that meant,” you grinned up at him, cupping his cheek and leaning into him. “But I’m hoping it’s a compliment, I’m pretty sure I heard pig.”

“It’s a compliment,” he nodded vigorously, his hands roving over every inch of you he could touch. “Definitely a compliment. Trust me.”

You couldn’t hold back a giggle of your own as you quickly rolled your pants and underwear down your thighs, nearly tripping and falling against him in your haste. Part of the hurry that had seized you both was desire, unbridled and unchecked lust running rampant in you, the other being motivated by a need to get out of your snow-dusted clothes and wet pant legs. Gyro was damn near kicking his off, his boots the first thing to go and flying in two separate directions with each kick, and you learned firsthand once they landed on the wood that he had made the incredibly brave choice to go without underwear when he had gotten dressed that morning.

What an absolute fucking madman.

You couldn’t look away from him either. The day he had gotten shot, you didn’t pay much attention to anything outside the bullet wounds; the fact that he had chest hair was a bit surprising. A trail of light brown hair that matched it started at his navel and traveled southward, splitting the Adonis belt of his hips down the middle; it dusted his arms, his legs. The shirt, that had been tight-fitting enough to where you knew he was built despite his leaner frame. That still had not prepared you for the sharp definition of his abdomen, the corded musculature of his biceps and the way they rippled as he moved with all the grace of a bumbling ape. With his clothes on, he looked like you could break him in half by blowing on him. Now, he looked like he could break you.

Your eyes moved lower.

Everything about him was a surprise that he was just waiting for you to discover, apparently. He was bigger than you had thought he would be, hard and thick, uncut with a slight curve that made you feel a little weak. Your mouth hung open, your eyebrows raised; you couldn’t tear your gaze away from the damn thing. How is that supposed to fit? What the fuck—

Gyro laughed, one hand idly stroking his cock as he watched you. He’d caught you looking.

“Keep your mouth open like that and I’m gonna start thinking it’s because you want me in it.”

That alone was enough to make you feel your pulse ricochet down between your thighs; his fist moving over his length made you move. Without a word, you began your descent, your lips grazing over each scar as you made your way down. The gunshot on his shoulder, the one on his abdomen, the multitude of scrapes and wounds he had accumulated in the months since the race had started. With each one, he moaned softly, taking hold of your arms the lower you got in an effort to pull you up and kiss you. Swatting him away, you knelt in front of him

Through half-lidded eyes, you glanced up quickly enough to catch him give a small start. When your hand came to rest on the base of his shaft, he groaned, his hips bucking forward involuntarily in a desperate bid to seek out friction. The tip of him was swollen with want, the cleft of his cock already beginning to bead with precum. With a teasing swipe, you licked it, the faintest hint of the taste of him falling on the tip of your tongue. Another groan, another buck of his hips as he tried to push past your lips.

“Slow down,” you teased. “We’ve got time.”

His hand tangled through your hair, grabbing a fistful to hold you there.

“Not enough. We’re still in the race.”

Oh, right. Forgot that for a second, kinda hard to think about anything else right now with your big ass dick in my face.

“Fair,” you murmured, and your mouth closed over him.

Hollowing your cheeks and relaxing your throat, you took him in. Slow, at first, each inch daunting as your head bobbed along his shaft. The flat of your tongue pressed against the underside and you moved to draw him deeper, pulling back only when his cock struck the back of your throat and made you gag. Too much. Above, he was whispering something fervently in heated Italian, his eyes fluttering closed and his head tilted back. He was still wearing that stupid fucking hat, you noticed.

“Hand,” he mumbled in English, his voice thick with lust. He gave your hair an insistent tug. “Use your hand. Easier.”

You hummed in assent and he shivered, another soft moan leaving him at the feeling of your hand pumping along his shaft. You moved in opposites; when your mouth pulled back, your hand landed at his pelvic bone, your lips and curled fist meeting at the center of his length in rhythm. A low moan of approval sounded off above you, his hips jerking forward to fall into your rhythm. His hand remained in your hair, pulling you down onto him further, the tempo of his hips quickening. You let your spit coat him, your fist dragging it along his cock in quick pumps. You wanted to see him lose himself, you wanted him to bury himself in your throat and make you taste it when he came.

Another glance upward and the way his breath was shallowing out told you he was close. He was biting his lip in an effort to ground himself, lime green smudged along the bottom of his teeth. Then he was pulling you off of him, hurriedly guiding you on your back on the floor and kneeling between your spread legs.

“Not yet,” he protested, and he fell to you. His hand shot between your legs, one digit slipping past your slick folds to tease at your entrance. “Here. I want it here. I—Christ, you’re already wet, I need to feel you.”

He was barely making any sense, his stream of consciousness leaving him in an audible string of broken English and Italian. But somehow, it made sense to you. He slipped the digit inside, then another; his mouth slanted over yours in a kiss that felt almost violent, it held within it so much need. Moaning into the kiss, you reached up and knocked the hat off his head, tossing it aside and running your hands through his hair. Soft, surprisingly so, like silk between your fingers. You could spend hours combing your fingers through it.

“Get on your back,” you whispered into the kiss. Gyro pulled back, making a face.

“What? Why?”

“Shut up and get on your back.” You smacked his shoulder twice, then gave it a shove for good measure. He didn’t budge, still making a face as he watched you.

“You know,” you began, smirking up at him. “Save a horse…”

You trailed off, your suggestive tone leaving nothing to the imagination, and he broke out into a grin.

“Cheesy,” he chuckled. “I like it.”

So quickly that it was almost comical, he withdrew from you, landing on his back with a thud against the floorboards and smacking the back of his head. He winced, swearing under his breath and sitting up just enough to rub at the point of impact. Glancing over at his hat, he looked back at you, and in one quick swipe he picked it up from the floor and placed it on your head. With a chuckle, he pulled you astride him, his legs spread and bent at the knees with his heels nearly digging into the wood.

“Go on,” he smacked your ass tauntingly, those gold teeth glinting in the orange glow of the fire. “Ride me, then, tesoro mio.”

Reaching between you, you positioned him at your entrance, your eyes locking in a heated stare as you sank down onto him. With a low moan, you took him in slowly, your walls stretching to accommodate him inch by inch. His hands settled at your hips to guide you, every second spent fighting against his own restraint; you could see in his eyes that he wanted nothing more than to snap his hips upward and drive himself in deep. He was holding back for your sake, one wrong strike and you were sure you would end up screaming from a bruised cervix.

When he was buried to the hilt in you, you moved.

Just as slow, just as tentative. He let you find your rhythm, his hands moving up from your hips to cup your breasts. His thumbs brushed over your nipples, teasing them until they pebbled, thrusting up gently into the soft roll of your hips and making you moan. For what felt like eternity, the two of you were locked together like that while you get used to him, and then his gaze met yours.

“Baby,” he groaned. “You’re beautiful like this, don’t get me wrong, but if you don’t pick up the pace I’m gonna fucking scream.”

“Oh,” you looked down at him with a grin, mockingly tipping the brim of his hat and settling your hands on his chest. You were going to anyway, used to the size of him now, but he had given you an opportunity to fuck with him and you fully planned on taking advantage. “You want me to move faster? You mean like this?”

Shifting your weight to your knees, you leaned forward, bucking into him in a wild cadence; so effortlessly, you had shifted from something careful to something near-feral. The angle you held yourself brought you bouncing furiously onto his cock, the feeling of him drawing back and slamming back in forcing a loud moan from your lungs.

“Jesus, fuck, yes,” Gyro’s hands shot back to your hips and he brought you down on him harder, his back arching off the floor as his upward thrusts gave way to rough snaps of his hips to try to meet you. “That’s exactly what I fucking meant, holy shit—”

His hand came down on your ass, giving it another approving smack. Then another for good measure, spurring you on; by the fifth he had pulled back, and you were positive there was a red mark in the shape of his hand on your skin. He brought his hand up to your neck, pulling you down to him and kissing you with enough passion and force to make your head spin. You reached for him, carding your hand through his hair and giving it a playful tug. Gyro moaned into your mouth and you paused, one eyebrow raised as your body stilled.

“Hey!” He protested, his breath falling hot on your skin. “What the hell? Don’t stop, why are you stopping? Keep—”

You watched him as you tugged on his hair again to see what would happen, another moan leaving him and his lashes fluttering. You could feel your heartbeat in your cunt at that moan, heat flaring through you while his eyelashes fluttered.

“—What?” Gyro looked up at you, his expression playful. “I’m into it. Now keep—fucking—riding me—damn it!”

He emphasized each word by pulling you down onto him hard and you laughed, tapering off into a breathless moan once he’d brought you down on him hard for a final time and swept you back into the kiss. You kept going, tension building low in your core and coiling inward, sharp whimpers and mewls bleeding into the kiss the longer you chased the feeling it promised. The kiss devolved into a sloppy battle of wills, his touch at your neck drifting down to your clit to push you over the edge. His thumb hovered over the aching bud, massaging harried circles in time with the way you moved.

“You’re so close,” he whispered against your lips, his voice honey-sweet. “So fucking close. You gonna cum for me, carina?”

“Yes,” you breathed out; if he kept talking like that you were going to fall apart any second. “Yes, yes—”

“Scream my name when you do,” he purred, and he gave your cheek a quick peck.

Goddamnit, this fucking guy.

That tension broke, the heat that had pooled deep in you now drowning you in its might. His name sailed past your lips like a prayer, a static hum drowning out the world beyond the cabin and your vision blinding white.

“That’s my girl,” Gyro laughed, drawing his hand back from you and circling his arm around your waist.

He rolled you onto your back, his hat falling off your head as he set you down. Strands of hair stuck to your face, dampened by the thin sheen of sweat that coated your skin. Above you, he smiled, moving your leg up and propping it against him, your knee bent over his shoulder. Not for a second did he hold back; he set a punishing pace the moment he was inside, his cock driving in deep enough to make you scream for him.

That hold did not last long. He let go, your leg weakly sliding down his shoulder and coming to rest at his side. Wordlessly, he tapped you other thigh; quickly taking the hint, you hooked your legs around his waist. Planting his palm onto the wood, he held himself above you, rutting into you like a beast in heat. Bottoming out with a groan, his hold on your thigh tightened, his nails digging into your skin.

“I’m gonna cum,” he warned, his voice ragged. “You ready?”

The most you could manage was a weak nod of your head and a quick “mmmh” as you arched into his thrusts.

That had been enough of a go-ahead for him. The roll of his hips became desperate and frenetic, his breath short bursts of air and quick grunts. Then his cock twitched deep within you and he pressed into you, holding himself there as he came inside you in stuttering pulses of white.

Silence hung heavy between you both as you came down from the afterglow, Gyro softening inside you before he pulled out and rolled onto his back beside you. Breathing heavily, he looked over at you with a grin.

“Knew you wanted me,” he teased. “Stared at my ass for half the race and decided you wanted a piece, huh? You could’ve just asked, I would’ve slept with you weeks ago.”

“I fucking hate you,” you laughed, propping yourself up and pointing at the door. “Get out of my cabin.”

“What, you own this shithole? You should redecorate. That stuffed deer head over the fireplace is giving me the creeps.”

He draped his arm over your waist, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead and snuggling into you.

“Don’t think you can kick me out of your scary ass abandoned cabin, I’m staying a while. I’m getting comfy.”

But he was gone when you woke up anyway.

***

Every stolen moment beneath the night sky between Mackinaw City to New Jersey kept your heart beating.

The Steel Ball Run had mutated into a hideous contest of survival. You had thought it a protracted trial of suffering, once, back when Gyro had been a thorn in your side and not someone who’s smile alone left you weak. Now it more than lived up to the moniker you had silently bestowed upon it. Hot Pants, Sandman, Mountain Tim, so many others; all of them dead and gone, all of them names you would forever remember. Only names, now. Jockeys dropped like flies, and it was a miracle you had not been one of them. Gyro and Johnny had saved your skin more times than you could count.

You knew now.

Funny Valentine, the Saint’s Corpse, the Spin, Stands, all of it. You knew. They had ridden through the Devil’s Palm and came back cursed, burdened with the mummified remains of the son of God to keep them from being used as a weapon. World hegemony in the form of divine miracles, that was Valentine’s plan. There were parts you didn’t understand, timelines where the world moved differently. Funny Valentine had killed Diego Brando between Philadelphia and New Jersey and replaced him, you had heard Gyro say. Threw him under a train that tore him in half at the waist. Your stomach had dropped to your feet at that; you were by no means a fan of his, but he didn’t deserve to die. Not like that.

Despite all the horror, love bloomed between you beneath the stars.

“Julius,” Gyro had whispered into the dark, holding you close. “That’s my real name. Gyro’s a nickname. Only you, my father, and Johnny know that.”

“Why are you telling me this?” You propped yourself up on your elbows, alarm prickling at your bare skin.

Gyro didn’t answer for a long moment. He lay on his back, one arm under his head, his other draped over his bare waist.

“When this is over,” he finally whispered, his eyes trained on the stars. “I want you to come back with me to Napoli. I want you to marry me. That’s why.”

Tears gathered at the corners of your eyes, blurring your vision. It became hard to breathe, looking down at him. The tone of his voice told you all you needed to know: he knew there was a chance that he wouldn’t make it home.

You nodded. It was the best you could manage. A simple yes felt too wrong, too cheap.

“I love you.” It was the first time you had ever said it to him.

You had no idea then, that it would be the last.

He glanced over at you, his expression darkening when he realized you were about to cry. Sitting up quickly, he brushed away an errant tear with the pad of his thumb. A rueful smile curled at the corner of his mouth, his hair disheveled and his skin still flushed. Idly, he stroked your hair, tucking it behind your ear in an effort to calm you down.

“Anch’io ti amo,” he said softly. “You know that, right? I love you, too. Never thought I would, but I do. More than anything.”

I never did, either.

When he kissed you, you could not stop crying. How had he gone from someone you loathed to becoming your everything so quickly? You let him guide you onto your back, kiss you everywhere he knew would make you fall apart until your tears subsided; the way he made love to you was like he would never get another chance. You had fallen asleep in his arms, that night, listening to him talk about his little brothers and warm summers by the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

When you woke up, he had already left you behind.

Johnny had found you hours later, sobbing and covered in blood. He was walking. He was walking. Paralyzed from the waist down by a bullet, and yet here he was. Walking right up to you and looking at you like the world had fallen down. He was leading a horse, and even from a distance you knew it was Valkyrie without her rider.

No. No—

Running to Johnny, you couldn’t breathe. Each step made you want to scream, each inhale tearing through your lungs. A stitch was forming in your side and you were stumbling, but you kept running.

“Where is he?” You gasped out, searching the horizon wildly for Gyro’s silhouette. “Johnny, where is he? ”

All Johnny could do was shake his head and point toward the Atlantic. In that moment, you could hear the sound of your heart shattering in your chest. You could feel it, a thousand little shards like falling glass flitting down from your chest and into your stomach, carving you out and leaving you hollow. They left you one by one, throwing themselves into the cold shores to be washed up on the banks of the Bay of Naples, to be picked up by the hands of his little brothers combing through sands you now would never see. And you knew.

It was a miracle your legs didn’t give out. You ran to your horse and leapt into the saddle, Johnny climbing into Valkyrie’s and leading you east toward the ocean. You rode blind, the cold wind lashing at your cheeks, icy gusts biting at the streaks of tears that had traveled their way downward. It tore through your hair, whipping it around your face while you thundered forward. You had to find him. Nothing was more important now than finding him. Not the Corpse Parts, not the race, not even Johnny’s desolation. Nothing.

His body lay broken at the shore, a trail of blood trickling down from the corner of his mouth. He still wore his hat, somehow not swept away by the tide. Without a second thought, you pulled tight on the reins of your horse and brought her to a sharp stop, throwing yourself to the sand below. Half-crawling, you made your way to him and pulled him into your arms. A cry of anguish that came from the very marrow of your bones ripped itself from your throat like a howl and you hunched over him, your forehead resting against his own.

The words that left you made no sense, and you made no effort to stop them. You screamed, begged him to wake up, begged him to come back to you. “Your brothers, what will they do? Your father, he’s waiting. Your mother, she can’t bury you, you have to wake up. Please, for me, wake up. Fucking wake up! Gyro, wake up! Come back. Come back, Johnny needs you. I need you. You have to see this through. You said you would, you said you fucking would!”

You clawed at him, trying to force his eyes open, a fresh scream tearing through your lungs when you had succeeded and a verdant green eye showed itself, unseeing and fixed on something beyond you, holding nothing of the man that you loved inside its depths. Closing his eye, you cradled him close, rocking back and forth as your cries tore through you without mercy, his wet clothes and hair soaking through you to the bone.

“Bring him back!” You turned your gaze skyward, challenging a God you weren’t sure you believed in. “You hear me? He isn’t done here! Bring him back, you fucking—bring him back! Bring him back!”

No answer. The man in your arms lay unmoving. No shit-eating grin stretched across those gold teeth, no rasping chuckle with that stupid “nyo-ho” tacked on the end rumbling from his chest before he winked and told you he was just kidding. Nothing.

“You telling me you’d be sad if I did, carina? Would you miss me?”

“Fine, die next time.”

“But then you’d miss me.”

For the briefest moment, you could have sworn you felt him. His hands gently squeezing your shoulders to reassure you, his lips pecking at your cheek, you could feel it. You could have sworn he was there, sticking around long enough to say goodbye. Then it was gone, and you could only feel how cold he was now. It was Johnny’s hand that came to rest on your shoulder as he knelt beside you in the sand, his cries now hushed whispers that you had to go. But how could you? How could you go on, how could you leave him?

You looked down, seeing him clearly. The sharpness of his features, his high cheekbones and the full, rich pout of his lips, his eyes closed as if he were asleep; his tanned skin was already growing pale. Those thick dark brows, one so often cocked in amusement, relaxed and still. His long hair like wheat dulled by saltwater, the long curl of his eyelashes now resting against his cheek. The blood. All of the blood. There was no bringing him back. He was gone.

Gyro Zeppeli was dead.

***

Pocoloco won the race, declared the victor since Diego Brando was nowhere to be found. No two copies could meet. Lucy had taken Diego’s head and thrown it at the one that had replaced him, killing him in some basement in New York City. You didn’t go with Johnny when he had taken Gyro’s body back to Naples. You couldn’t. You had already said your goodbyes at the shores of the Atlantic, seeing that wooden coffin and knowing he was inside it would have killed you too.

But you kept his hat.

It sat in a box in your bedroom, where it had laid unopened since you had come home four years ago. A memorial all your own, kept close enough to where you could find some sense of comfort in sleepless nights. You spoke to him, sometimes, in the dead of night. Always when the stars were clearest in the sky, when you were certain he could hear you.

Johnny never came back to the States. He ended up marrying Norisuke Higashikata’s daughter Rina after meeting her on the ship he had taken to bring Gyro home. Moved to a little fishing town on the northern coast of Japan called Morioh. He was a father, now, to a little boy he had named George. The two of you exchanged letters here and there. Those letters, they were a courtesy. “How are you? How’s George? What’s the weather like in Morioh? Everything is fine here.”

He never came up in those letters. Not once. The only time either of you had come close was when Johnny had written to you about the state of affairs in Italy. The King of Naples had been overthrown, and in the tumult the Zeppeli family had fled Italy.

He was there, alone, in the ground with no one to mourn him anymore. Neither of you wanted to say it. But the sentiment was there.

You could never find it in you to tell him about Juliet.

Halfway home, you felt sick. At first you had chalked it up to grief; sorrow sharpened your sense of smell, grief turned your stomach and anger left you unable to keep your food down. Your skin felt raw and tender because your nerves had been shot to the point where everything hurt. It was only at the insistence of Stephen Steel, who had personally accompanied you along with Lucy back home, that you saw a doctor. “I’m fine,” you kept telling them both. “Stop worrying. I’m okay.” The doctor had checked your vitals and given you a quick physical exam, and told you with irrefutable confidence that all of those stolen nights under the stars had given you one last thing to remember him by.

You had sought a second opinion. Then a third. Then a fourth. They all had to be wrong, and so you kept consulting doctor after doctor, undergoing test after test even as the swell of your belly grew. By fall of 1891, a baby girl with his eyes and your smile was squalling in your arms in a hospital room, adjusting to the terrifying and beautiful enormity of finding herself earthside. You had named her Juliet after her father, too overcome by the sight of his eyes staring back up at you to think of any other name.

The first months of her life were a horror you could not live with. Holding her made you want to vomit. The mere idea of looking down at her wracked you with anxiety, the thought of letting her suckle at your breast filling you with a revulsion so intense it left you gasping for air. Her voice plunged you into an insurmountable despair, her coos paralyzing you with a sadness you could not bear to try to quantify. Those first months were spent being handed off to anyone you trusted to take her. You loved her, more than you loved anything in this world; you’d give your life in a heartbeat to guarantee her safety. But her existence made you want to die.

Abruptly, it had changed one night. You never could pinpoint why, or what had happened, but it was like a levee had broken somewhere deep within you. You couldn’t put her down. No one could hold her, no one could touch her. You slept by her cradle, keeping vigil against the evils of the world beyond. The world had taken Gyro, it would not take her.

Tonight, she was with you, busily entertaining herself by searching through the nooks and crannies of your bedroom while you hastily tidied up. Stephen Steel had taken pity on you and set you up in a quiet little ranch house in Northern California, near the Redwood Forest. You were happy enough, Juliet a light in the darkness that had grown ever brighter as the years went by. The grief had become something bearable now. You had learned to live with it.

Her doll lay forgotten on the floor as she ran her tiny hands over the clothes in your wardrobe, green eyes wide and taking everything in. Only four, the world still enthralled her with a quiet wonder that had long since been beyond you. When she had found the box, you had not noticed. You were picking up a pile of shoes she had looked through, your back turned for only a moment. The soft whisper of the lid being lifted went unheard by you, unaware right up until you had heard her voice.

“What’s this?”

You turned to find her standing next to the box with Gyro’s hat on her head, nearly swallowing her whole beneath the brim. For a split second, you wanted to snatch it away from her and scream for her to never touch it again. The tiniest flicker of a moment, gone as you found yourself chuckling at the sight. You sat down next to her, flicking the brim with your finger.

“It was your father’s. Sit down, I’ll tell you all about him.”

Juliet sat down, watching you expectantly and hanging onto your every word. She had asked about her father in the past, and you could never answer her. She sat in silence, her whole short life waiting for this very moment. A smile broke out on your features at the sight, one you could not rein in. You didn’t want to try. You couldn’t even remember the last time you had smiled like that at anyone since he had died.

You took a deep breath.

“I met him during the Steel Ball Run,” you began. “I hated him at first…”

And for the first time in four years, looking at the little girl that looked too much like a man she had never met, you could say his name again without it feeling like you were drowning.

“His name was Gyro. Gyro Zeppeli.”

notes

mignotta: whore; similar to puttana, thought to stem from the legal term m. ignotae (matris ignotae, “of unknown mother.”) mignotta became “whore” because of the term “figlio di una mignotta”, which means “son of an unknown mother/son of a whore.”

sfigato: loser

carina: term of endearment similar to “sweetie”

“Porca madonna, perche—ma che cazzo—stupidi cespugli del cazzo!”: “holy shit, why—what the fuck—stupid fucking bushes!”

“Oh, per l’amor di Dio”: “oh, for the love of God!”

capisci: you understand? (aka why the word capiche/capisce exists in English)

eccezionale: awesome

“Le tue tette sono perfette, porca puttana.”: “your tits are perfect, holy shit”

tesoro mio: “my treasure”; used as “darling”

anch’io ti amo: I love you too

#gyro zeppeli #gyro zeppeli/reader #steel ball run #jjba part 7 #hurt/comfort #angst #gyro zeppeli is an asshole #but also tragic #i hate him so much 🤧🤧🤧

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