wait just read the bucci gang being down bad....is it too bizarre to imagine Dio being horrendously, utterly, ridiculously down bad and pining like some lovesick idiot like the freak he is too? it's delulu that's the point anyways HAVE A GREAT DAY DRINK LOTS OF WATERR
Stop this is literally just 14 hours old but I NEEDED TO WRITE THIS OMGGGG 😶
Genuinely so scrumptious and I LOVEEEVEVE writing for the jofoes sm so I literally got right to work on this for you ☺️
Also I couldn’t decide whether I should do Phantom Blood Dio or Stardust Crusaders… so I did both 🥹✌️ and I took huge amounts of creative liberty here and it lwk turned into a mini fic rather than headcanons 💔
Tags: Gender neutral reader, SFW (kinda?)
- You are the first person Dio can’t easily intimidate, buy, or manipulate into line, and that irritates him so much it turns into fixation. He notices you the same way he noticed Jonathan: as something to conquer, but with a different kind of hunger.
- At first, he convinces himself he only wants you because you are useful: clever, socially liked, or close to Jonathan and the Joestars. Then he catches himself watching you for no reason, tracking the way you smile, and it makes him furious with himself.
- Dio is absolutely the type to realize “I like them” only after he catches a flash of jealousy - seeing you laugh with Jonathan or another suitor and feeling a spike of murderous rage in his chest. His first instinct is: remove the competition.
- He does not understand “crush.” He files it under power and possession: he does not want you to like him, he wants you to revolve around him. Having an “interest” in someone means his self-control frays any time you’re involved, and he hates that weakness.
- In public, he keeps his gentleman façade: refined, gracious, all perfect smiles and polite compliments. In private, when he corners you in a hallway or a quiet garden, his tone drops, the smile sharpens, and his eyes roam like he’s memorizing you.
- He stands too close. Not enough that anyone could call it improper, but close enough that you feel his breath when he leans down to murmur something “harmless” by your ear. He watches your reactions like a hawk, cataloguing what flusters you and what doesn’t.
- He loves to subtly box you in: hand on the wall near your head, or “accidentally” placing you between his body and a railing or a door so you’d have to brush past him to leave. He enjoys seeing you hesitate, looking for a way out.
- His eyes always follow you. If you walk into a room, Dio reorients toward you automatically - mid-conversation, mid-sip of wine, mid-scheme. People notice his gaze, but they misread it as simple interest or scrutiny, not the obsessive, covetous stare it truly is.
- He absolutely learns your schedule. When you prefer certain teas or desserts, which books you borrow, where you like to sit. He then “coincidentally” shows up with your favorite drink in hand or already waiting in your favorite spot.
- If you like flowers, he suddenly becomes very knowledgeable about them. He will pretend he simply picked what the gardener recommended, but he personally chooses varieties that match your coloring or a memory of you, like the color you wore at a party.
- He keeps little trophies: a ribbon you dropped, a glove you forgot, a book you touched. They’re hidden in a locked drawer, organized and carefully preserved, something he looks at in the dead of night when he pretends he’s just thinking about “strategy.”
- When his self-control is fraying, he might “borrow” your handkerchief, press it to his lips when no one can see, and breathe in like he’s starved for air. Then he composes himself, face blank, and returns to playing the role of the perfect nobleman.
- Dio is not just jealous; he is vindictive. If another suitor flirts with you, he smiles serenely at them in public, then destroys them socially in the shadows: rumors, financial sabotage, or arranging an “accident” in the streets or the slums.
- He doesn’t raise his voice when he’s jealous. He goes quiet. His eyes narrow, his smile thins, and his hand tightens on his cane or wine glass hard enough to crack it. Later, the person who made you laugh too hard ends up humiliated, ruined, or missing.
- If you seem particularly close with Jonathan, Dio’s obsession twists further. Jonathan represents everything he hates, and seeing you near Jonathan makes him feel like he’s losing his grip on the one thing he actually cares about. It becomes a rivalry with an emotional core he refuses to name.
- He will make cutting little comments about anyone you seem to favor, disguised as concern: “You should be careful around them. They lack…breeding. Good sense. Morals.” If you push back, his mask slips for a moment and you see something dark and furious beneath.
- He rationalizes his obsession by reframing it as your destiny: “Someone as exceptional as you should not waste your life on the weak.” In his mind, drawing you into his sphere is almost a kindness.
- If you reject him, his love turns cruel easily. He will sabotage friendships, isolate you, and orchestrate situations where he is your only source of help or safety. Then he offers his hand, soft and gentle, like he wasn’t the one who caused your suffering.
- Post-Stone Mask, the obsession intensifies. Immortality makes him view you as something he must either claim or break. If he can’t have your affection, he will accept your fear, your hatred, your tears - anything, as long as he is at the center.
- Late at night, alone, he thinks about what it would be like if you genuinely chose him: greeting him at the manor, sitting beside him in the carriage, sharing a glass of wine, smiling at him without fear. The fantasy makes him clench his teeth and look away in disgust at himself.
- He finds himself doing small, almost soft things: adjusting your shawl when it slips from your shoulders, placing a hand at the small of your back when you step into a carriage, turning his body between you and a drunk at a party. Then he ruins it with some cutting remark to regain his emotional distance.
- When you thank him sincerely, he freezes for a beat. His heart stutters in his chest, unfamiliar and unwelcome, and his answer comes out a shade too harsh or too formal because he’s trying to smother that warmth before it shows.
- If you are ever injured, something in him snaps. He becomes clinical and terrifyingly efficient, barking orders, carrying you himself, blood on his gloves. Later, when you’re safe, he lingers at your bedside longer than necessary, watching you breathe like he’s reassuring himself you’re still his to obsess over.
- His “confession” is not gentle; it’s a declaration of ownership. He corners you somewhere quiet - perhaps the Joestar library, or a balcony at night - and says, low and intense, “You belong at my side. Whether you realize it yet or not.”
- He speaks as if it’s already decided: your future, your allegiance, your heart. There is a tremor of genuine feeling under the arrogance, but he refuses to name it love. Love implies equality; he prefers the word fate.
- If you push him away, he smiles, slow and sharp, and says something like, “You may hate me today. But you will not escape me. In this life…or the next.” It’s both a promise and a threat, and he means every word.
- Once Dio decides to use the Stone Mask on himself, the thought of you staying human starts to feel intolerable to him. Mortality becomes synonymous with “you leaving him,” and he cannot stand that.
- He begins testing your limits: talking about eternity in a “hypothetical” way, asking if you fear death, if you ever wished time would stop when you were happy. He studies every answer with a quiet, predatory interest.
- As he grows more inhuman, it becomes obvious something about him has changed - his eyes too bright, movements too fluid, his presence heavier. He’s even more magnetic, but there is a chill beneath it. With you, though, he tries to suppress the monstrous edge, and that strain makes him even more volatile.
- If you express fear of him, it wounds his pride, but it also excites him. You are perceptive, and he likes that. He starts speaking in veiled promises: “There are things in this world beyond fragile human fear. You could stand above it all, if you wished.”
- He likely chooses a night when everything is already in chaos - fire, attack, Jonathan’s interference, or some confrontation where you see just how inhuman he’s become. Your world is crumbling, and Dio steps into the rubble like an angel of ruin.
- You might be injured: thrown by debris, caught in a blaze, or wounded by one of his minions. When he finds you, you’re bleeding, weak, half-delirious. For a moment, the fury in him goes silent, replaced by a cold, focused panic.
- He kneels beside you, gloved hand stained with your blood, and for the first time he drops the polished façade. His voice is low and shaken, barely controlled: “No. I will not lose you. I refuse.”
- The world around you is a blur of shouting, flames, or moonlight. Dio feels like the only stable point in your vision, and he uses that. He cradles your face with a gentleness that doesn’t match the cruelty you’ve seen him show others.
- Dio doesn’t say “I love you,” but everything in his words screams it in his own warped language. “You are mine. Do you understand? I will not allow this world, or Jonathan, or anyone to take you from me.”
- He gives you a choice, but it’s not a fair one. “You can die here, weak and human…or you can rise above it all with me. No more fear. No more pain. Only eternity - by my side.” His thumb brushes your cheek, smearing your blood like war paint.
- Even if you struggle or tell him you’re afraid, he twists it in his mind: fear means you need him, dependence means you belong to him. He murmurs, “You’re shaking. All the more reason you need my power. I will make you strong. I will make you untouchable.”
- If you hesitate, his voice hardens. “You think Jonathan can save you? He cannot even save himself. I am offering you perfection.” There is jealousy, contempt, and a desperate, hungry plea all tangled together.
- When he finally leans in, he does it slowly, almost reverently, as if he’s about to kiss you for the first time. His breath ghosts over your throat, and you feel his lips brush your skin before his fangs pierce.
- The pain is bright and sharp, but there is also a dizzying, unnatural relief as he drinks - like your fear is being pulled away with your blood, leaving you light-headed and strangely calm. He holds you firmly, one arm under your shoulders, as if afraid you’ll slip from his grasp.
- He doesn’t take enough to kill you outright. When he pulls back, there’s blood on his lips, and his eyes are dark with a mix of hunger and something frighteningly close to tenderness. “Look at you,” he whispers. “Even in ruin, you’re beautiful.”
- Then he offers you his blood. He bites his wrist or his own finger and presses it to your mouth, insisting even if you try to turn away. His voice is a low command: “Drink. Do not make me watch you die. I will not forgive you…if you leave me.”
- Your body feels like it’s burning from the inside out. Every heartbeat thunders in your ears, then slows, then stops, replaced by a different kind of thrum - something colder, sharper, less human.
- You catch flashes: Dio’s face looming above you, distant shouts, his hand stroking your hair almost soothingly while your body writhes. He murmurs reassurances not meant to comfort you, but to reassure himself that the process is working.
- When the pain finally ebbs, everything is too clear. The darkness is no longer dark. You can hear distant footsteps, feel the texture of the floor beneath you, smell blood everywhere. And the strongest scent is Dio himself.
- Your vision focuses on him, and he looks…pleased. Possessive. Radiant in a terrible way. “There,” he says, voice almost soft. “No longer fragile. No longer at the mercy of this pathetic world. You are like me now.”
- The first thing he does is test your new nature. He offers you blood - maybe from a servant or an already dying victim - and watches closely, noting every flinch, every shiver of hunger. If you’re horrified, he smiles. “You will adjust. Power demands a price.”
- He is constantly at your side in the beginning, not out of kindness, but because you are his project, his creation, his partner in sin. If anyone even looks at you with disgust or fear, he destroys them, almost idly.
- He becomes more openly possessive. An arm around your waist in front of his followers, fingers under your chin to make you look at him, an unspoken warning in his eyes that you are untouchable.
- Your former human attachments annoy him even more now. “Why do you still care?” he asks when you mention old friends or Jonathan. “They are insects to you now. Let them scurry in the dirt. We stand above.”
- In private, he softens in strange ways. He delights in showing you the extent of your new abilities - breaking stone, leaping impossible distances, healing wounds. Each time you succeed, he praises you in that low, fervent tone, like he’s proud of a masterpiece.
- Dio genuinely believes he has done you a favor. In his mind, he rescued you from death, weakness, and insignificance. Any suffering you feel, any guilt or horror, he views as a temporary flaw you will grow out of.
- He fantasizes openly now: “Imagine it. Decades from now. Centuries. Kingdoms will rise and fall, and we will remain. They will speak our names with fear and awe.” He always says “we” now, like it’s a binding spell.
- If you ever express regret, his gaze turns cold, then wounded, then angry, cycling too fast. “Regret? You regret being worthy of me?” He might grab your wrist, pull you close, eyes burning. “You will understand in time. I will make you understand.”
- And yet, when you are at your lowest - overwhelmed by hunger, memories, or the weight of your immortality - he is there. Not kind, but present. A hand on your shoulder, a whispered, “Look at me. Focus on me. The rest of the world can burn. You have me. That is enough.”
- You remember fire first. Fire, salt, and Jonathan’s silhouette vanishing into the flames with Dio’s name on his lips. You reach for him, but the chaos rips you away - falling debris, panicked passengers, the shriek of tearing metal.
- As a vampire, you don’t die. You wake up days later washed ashore, weak but alive, your body knitting itself together in the wreckage. There’s no sign of Dio - no voice in your head, no shadow at your side. Just silence and the gnawing burn of hunger.
- You assume, at first, that he must still exist. Dio is too stubborn, too arrogant to die so easily. But as weeks turn into months and no trace of him appears, the possibility that he’s truly gone slithers into your thoughts like ice water.
- You know you can’t return to normal society. You catch glimpses of what you are in the eyes of others: a monster, a nightmare in fine clothes. So you disappear - into the countryside, the mountains, wherever shadows are deep enough that you can hide and feed without drawing attention.
- Decades pass. You move from place to place whenever people start to notice you don’t age. You change names, languages, fashions. You become an urban legend: a pale figure who appears during storms, the eerie benefactor of forgotten villages, or the demon locals swear lurks in an abandoned manor.
- Sometimes you slip and feed too violently, the hunger pushing you too far. In those moments, you hear him in your head: Dio’s voice praising your strength, urging you to abandon guilt, telling you that the weak exist to nourish the strong. You hate that his philosophy still lives in you.
- Other times, when you’re staring out a window at a modern city glowing with electricity, you imagine what eternity with him could have looked like. Mansions, empires, the two of you standing at the top of some unseen world. The thought cuts you with equal parts longing and revulsion.
- You make rules for yourself: feed quickly, leave no witnesses, never stay anywhere long, never get close to anyone. These are your shields - against both humanity and the memory of him. If you never care about anyone again, there will be nothing left for him to ruin.
- History rewrites itself around you. Wars start and end. Cities fall and rise. Fashion changes, music changes, technology races ahead. You remain almost the same - dressed just modern enough to blend in, but always a little out of time.
- Stories about the Joestars reach you in fragments. You hear the name “Joestar” whispered in the context of heroism, strange phenomena, and impossible battles across generations. Each mention is a knife and a lifeline, proof that Jonathan’s legacy is still out there in the world you avoid.
- Part of you wonders if keeping away from the Joestars is cowardice or mercy. You know that where they go, conflict follows - and where conflict follows, Dio inevitably waits in the wings, whether as a ghost in your memory or something worse.
- As the years pass, one horrifying possibility becomes more and more plausible: if you’re still alive, then so is he. If you survived the ship, why wouldn’t he? That thought is what keeps you moving, never rooted, never truly at peace.
- You don’t realize how much you’ve left behind you: a pattern of incidents, bodies that look too cleanly drained, witnesses describing an elegant, ageless stranger. To you, it’s just survival. To him, eventually, it becomes a trail.
- The first sign is small. In one city, the newspapers don’t just report a strange death - they mention “a figure in old-fashioned clothes,” with details too accurate to be coincidence. It feels like eyes are on you, sharper and more knowing than human law enforcement.
- Then the world itself starts to feel off. You feel watched in crowded streets, even when no one is looking directly at you. Your reflection in mirrors seems slightly delayed. Shadows stretch toward you in ways that don’t match the light. It feels like his presence before you ever see him.
- Finally, one night - maybe in a high-rise apartment, maybe in a crumbling manor you’ve claimed as your own - you sense him before you hear him. The air goes still. The night outside the windows feels heavier. Your body remembers him before your mind catches up: a chill up your spine, a thrum in your undead veins.
- You feel it: that distinct, suffocating aura of arrogance and power. When you turn, he’s simply there, as if he stepped out of the darkest corner of the room. Tall, composed, immaculate in whatever style the era now wears like a costume on him.
- Time has only made him worse - more confident, more regal, more utterly sure of his place above everyone and everything. But when his eyes land on you, something in that carefully constructed composure cracks for a heartbeat.
- He drinks you in like a man who has finally found an oasis after crawling through a desert for a century. “There you are,” he says, voice low and almost…fond. “I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.”
- He approaches slowly, savoring every step, as if you might vanish if he moves too quickly. “All this time,” he murmurs, eyes roaming over you. “And look at you. My work endures. You are still magnificent.”
- Dio acts as if no time has passed. As if the last moment you shared wasn’t a ship on fire, Jonathan’s sacrifice, and the death of everything you once were. To him, those were mere inconveniences on the road to eternity.
- He praises your survival with a twisted kind of pride. “You hid well. You adapted. You even managed to carve out a life in the shadows without me.” Then he tilts his head, eyes glinting. “But you must have been lonely.”
- He refers to your seclusion like it was inevitable. “Of course you had to retreat. The world is hostile to those like us. Humans cannot comprehend what we are. But I can. I always could. No one will ever understand you as I do.”
- If you show anger - if you shout, accuse him of abandoning you, destroying your life, making you into this - he lets you. He watches the rage, the hurt, like he’s observing a fascinating specimen. Then he steps closer and says, almost gently, “You’re still so passionate. Good. Eternity would be dull if you faded.”
- You’re not the same frightened, newly turned creature he left behind. You’ve survived wars, famines, changing eras. You know how to hide, fight, feed, vanish. You’ve seen the worst of yourself and kept going. He notices that immediately.
- “You’ve grown,” Dio admits, a hint of genuine respect threading through his words. “You are no longer a fragile fledgling clinging to me for guidance. You’ve become something truly worthy of my side.”
- But his obsession has ripened, too. The idea that you’ve existed without him for so long gnaws at him - every decade you spent away feels like a personal insult. He masks it as amusement, but his eyes burn when he says, “How rude of you, to hide my greatest creation from me.”
- He wants to reassert control, but he’s not foolish. He doesn’t try to chain you physically, not at first. Instead, he works on pressure points: your loneliness, your guilt, your exhaustion from running, the way the modern world feels alien and harsh. He offers himself as the constant. The one familiar horror.
- Dio frames his return as inevitability, not coincidence. “You knew this day would come,” he says. “Deep down, you felt it, didn’t you? All that running, all that hiding - it was only a delay.”
- He extends a hand, just like he did when he first turned you, but this time there’s no immediate danger forcing your choice. “Come with me,” he says. “No more seclusion. No more scraps of existence in the dark. Stand beside me, openly, as we were meant to.”
- He paints a picture of a future that is both intoxicating and terrifying: ruling from the shadows of nations, bending humans and Stand users alike to your shared will, being spoken of in whispers as an immortal pair. His voice turns low and hungry when he says “pair.”
- If you hesitate, he smiles that infuriating, knowing smile. “You’ve tried solitude. You’ve tried ‘morality.’ Has it brought you peace?” He takes another step closer, close enough to touch. “You are a being of the night, forged by my hand. Stop pretending you can live like them.”
- Part of you recoils. This is Dio - the monster who shattered your mortal life, who twisted love into possession, who turned you into something you never asked to be. Being near him feels like standing at the edge of a cliff you once fell from.
- Another part of you curdles with recognition. He is the only one who truly shares your curse, your hunger, your immortality. No human, no ordinary vampire, can mirror the specific path you’ve walked: turned by him, shaped by his ideology, then left alone to wrestle with it.
- You remember all the nights you wanted someone - anyone - who understood what eternity felt like. And now eternity himself stands in your living room or your ruined hall, hand extended, eyes burning like twin suns.
- Saying “yes” is less a single moment and more a slow collapse. All the isolation, the running, the guilt - it wears you down until his offer stops sounding like pure horror and starts sounding…temptingly easy.
- He never lets you forget that you chose this time. He brings it up in that silken voice: “You came to me of your own will. You finally accepted what you are.” It’s weaponized reassurance, both comfort and chain.
- The instant you agree, even if it’s just a quiet “Fine” or a broken “I’m tired of being alone,” he moves like he’s been waiting for that line for a century. Hand on your back, guiding, claiming, already planning where you fit into his empire.
- He positions you very deliberately: not a servant, not just a lover, but something like a dark consort. You stand beside his throne, sit near his seat, walk a half-step behind or beside him depending on the show he wants to put on.
- In front of followers, he treats you as an extension of his will. If you give an order, it is as good as his own. Anyone who hesitates learns very quickly that disrespecting you is a faster route to death than defying him.
- He’s proud of you in a twisted way. When you show cruelty, efficiency, or ruthless decisiveness, his eyes light up with satisfaction. “Good,” he murmurs later, when you’re alone. “You’re finally using the strength you always had.”
- The separation years made him more paranoid about losing you again. He’s subtle about it, but he watches you constantly: your expression, your tone with others, where your gaze lingers.
- He absolutely keeps mental score of every risk you take. If you wander too far, engage in fights alone, or deliberately put yourself in danger, he scolds you in private - cold, cutting words laced with real fear underneath.
- His touch becomes more casual but still possessive: a hand at the small of your back, fingers under your chin to tilt your face toward him, an arm along the back of your seat behind your shoulders. It’s always a silent reminder: you’re his.
- Nights are spent planning, scheming, and ruling. You review information about Stand users, Joestars, and rival powers with him. He asks for your opinion more often than he did in Phantom Blood, and even when he doesn’t follow it, he listens.
- There’s a strange domesticity in the middle of the horror. You share quiet moments: overlooking cities from high towers, reading together in grand libraries lit only by moonlight, discussing art, history, and how laughably fragile humans seem now.
- He likes to show you things he’s discovered while you were apart: new music, architecture, languages, philosophies - each unveiled with a little edge of “You see what you missed by hiding?” and “Look what I can give you now.”
- The fact that you came back to him after everything that happened - after Jonathan, after the ship, after a life alone - feeds his ego like nothing else. He sees your return as proof that his pull is inescapable.
- He tests that loyalty. He may send you on missions that force you to choose between his commands and your lingering human morality. Every time you choose him, he files it away as more proof that you belong nowhere else.
- If you ever openly defy him in front of others, his reaction is icy. He won’t blow up in public, but the room temperature drops. Later, behind closed doors, the argument is intense: sharp words, cold fury, and a frightening undercurrent of hurt.
- “You are mine” takes on a new tone - less about fragile ownership, more about guarding his most prized asset. He will not let enemies so much as scratch you if he can help it.
- If you’re injured, something ancient and furious wakes in him. Even if you heal in moments, the sight of your blood is enough to send him into a quiet, methodical rage. Whoever harmed you becomes an example.
- He does not like when you downplay your pain. If you brush off a wound or act indifferent to your own safety, he narrows his eyes and says in a low voice, “Do not treat what is mine as disposable. Not even you.”
- Having you officially at his side softens the sharpest edges of his solitude. He talks more, actually explains his thinking sometimes, and lets silences stretch comfortably when it’s just the two of you.
- You become the one person who can pull him back from certain extremes - not by begging, but by a single look or remark. He hates that you have that power and yet never truly tries to take it away.
- In rare moments of vulnerability, he’ll admit things he’d never say to anyone else: fragments of his past, bitter thoughts about Jonathan, or twisted reflections on what power and eternity have really cost him. He frames it like philosophical musing, but you can feel the confession under it.
- His “romantic” gestures are grand and unsettling. He might buy an entire building just because you admired a single balcony, or wipe out a local threat in one night and present you with the sudden peace as if it’s a bouquet.
- Eternity with him means shared guilt and shared awe: the two of you standing over a sleeping city, knowing you could tear it apart together, and feeling both the rush and the weight of that knowledge.
- When he calls you “my equal” or “my partner,” it’s rare and deliberate. Coming from him, those words are more intimate than any conventional love confession, because he gives that title to almost no one.
