[ Jotaro hasn't smoked in five years. When he hears the last voice mail he's gotten from Marina, he goes to the store and buys a pack. He ends up having to walk back inside for a lighter, because he forgets he hasn't owned one in years, and his hands do not shake as he hands over his cash.
He leaves and he's got a rental car today, so he doesn't smoke inside of it, and then when he gets back to the hotel and spots the little smoking area bench he can't bring himself to go sit primly in a public sphere of shame and puff away on what he's just impulsively bought. Like a goddamn teenager that can't handle their own emotions.
Jotaro thought tying down stakes via a family would help. All it seems to do is remind him how he isn't fit for it - he's too protective, too distant, too careful not to let them get too attached (he'll probably die young) or too close (most of his secrets could get a non-stand user killed) or too at-risk (he knows people who'd want to hurt him by hurting them).
He ends up crushing the pack in his pocket, but they stay there. He doesn't think about it again that weekend.
***
Rohan asked him to come over, which is unusual because Rohan hates seeing people almost as much as Jotaro does, so Jotaro takes the request seriously.
It's not about Reimi, because she's at rest now. It's actually about Hayato. Rohan peered inside of him to check on things. Rohan saw-- overlapping, interwoven, impossible stories that didn't match what ended up happening. Time repeating itself for the sake of one sick fucker's dream of dying surrounded by as many severed hands as possible.
Apparently, he'd also done that right after everything happened, and only now is when he's telling Jotaro. Maybe the story itself was eating at him. Maybe he just wanted to share the evolved stand power with someone else.
Maybe he wanted to admit he'd read about his own death, and Jotaro's. If Rohan's bothered by the story, he doesn't say so, but he looks paler than usual as he recounts it. Jotaro leaves with a polite goodbye.
But when he stops at the Rengatei cafe the next day and sits alone, and Rohan comes along by pure chance and the other tables are occupied - he joins him, and they sit in silence. Rohan draws. Jotaro pretends he's reading and stares at the table and thinks, and Rohan doesn't bother him.
It's nice.
***
Jotaro's in an alleyway that he's pretty sure was empty two minutes ago, when he caved and ducked into it and lit one of the cigarettes he'd forgotten about.
Rohan passes him and Jotaro chokes on smoke for the first time since he was literally fucking sixteen and after a moment of stunned staring, like Rohan's just watched something impossible transpire, he's got the nerve to smirk to himself.
Jotaro scowls. But he also tosses the cigarette on the ground and grinds it under the heel of his shoe and leaves the alley way. And if he walks just a few paces behind Rohan and neither of them talk, just end up with Jotaro indirectly walking Rohan home before he calls a cab for himself back to that hotel, they don't address it.
***
It's been three months and Jotaro is just one exhausting thesis defense away from an actual doctorate and he's just gotten back from signing divorce papers in America a week ago. He feels unchained and also adrift, like a ship at sea.
(He tries not to think in too many ocean metaphors, but it's hard when all he's done for a year when not risking his life or overseeing teenagers risking their lives is-- stare at fucking starfish and read books about starfish and jesus christ, he loves this stuff with a tenacity that would make most people who aren't Rohan pass out from sheer boredom but even Jotaro's getting tired of...everything in his own life.)
He isn't here to oversee hunting down serial killers now, though. He's actually really just working on his thesis, or rather now he's killing time until he gets to talk in front of a bunch of older stuffy fuckheads who are going to ask him questions he's already thought about and try to poke holes in a thesis that's tighter than their belts. He's not really looking forward to it, or the letters after his name.
He just liked the process. Something to do.
(Rohan mentioned something about understanding his drive, a month ago. They'd been at the cafe again, somehow at the same table despite there being two other empty ones that morning. They hadn't spoken a word until they'd started somehow mid-conversation and ended just as abruptly. Rohan had also paid for both of their coffees when they left, a fact Jotaro found odd but polite and hadn't questioned since.)
***
Rohan's house looks different after the renovations that followed the fire. Jotaro's sitting and has a vivid blue drink in his hand - had Rohan really called this thing a grateful dead? Rohan had offered him whiskey and he must not have liked Jotaro's lack of enthusiasm in his 'sure', because he'd stared at him dead-eyed with judgment but then sighed and demanded to know what he actually liked drinking.
'Mixed drinks.' Rohan had raised an eyebrow at that, but looked far more amused at, 'Fruity shit.' And then he'd said Jotaro was lucky he had something on hand, and disappeared.
And reappeared with this thing. It's-- actually not that bad, although Jotaro's pretty sure this is more alcohol than he'd usually bother trying to drink.
He's just finished it and they're in Rohan's...it's technically a living room, but it reminds Jotaro of his hotel's living room in the sense that it looks un-lived in. Rohan lives in his home office, clearly. And maybe his bedroom.
Jotaro doesn't blush when he thinks about Rohan's bedroom, because he hasn't blushed while thinking about someone else since he was twenty-one and still excited to get married, but maybe the flush of warmth from the drink makes his cheeks feel different.
They've stopped talking. It's nice. Jotaro doesn't mind Rohan speaking, but he thinks he likes the silences between things almost as much. When he looks at the end table on the opposite end, by Rohan's side of the couch, he realizes there's a drawing pad on it. ]
Were you using that down here before I came over? [ And he points at it for emphasis and clarity and he definitely doesn't point at it to bring his arm closer to Rohan, but that's a side effect. Rohan is slim but still manages to take up an unreasonable amount of room for someone his actual size and the space between Jotaro's arm and Rohan's shoulder seems suddenly so very small and easily-breached and--
Jotaro pulls his arm back, eyes on the drawing pad and thoughts on Rohan's shoulder. ]
( Rohan has never...done something quite like this before.
people are generally insufferable — Rohan is easily exhausted by the sensation of socializing, the small talk, the base and shallow impressions and opinions people think voicing to an artist will gain them anything, hell — the talking alone is agitating. he doesn't have the patience or the lack of respect to himself and others to pretend and play nice with vapid little lies. if a conversation isn't useful in some way, then it's a waste of time.
but people expect it, they feel the need to dump their thoughts onto someone else and rely on some sort of entitlement of others to feel validated — Rohan can't be near people for long before he's zombified by boredom or grinding his teeth in frustration. when he's lucky, he can at least observe enough to glean something interesting for consideration at a later time.
Jotaro Kujo — hasn't been any of those things since they met, with met having been an initially brief experience. even being a man of few words, he certainly had no manner of being quickly forgettable... which was good, considering his key piece in investigating Morioh's dark and gruesome mystery, being a connection to Speedwagon, and...having a legendary Stand ability.
what Rohan would give to turn but a page in that man's backstory...
but if Josuke can put him out of commission for a month, then Rohan is certain Jotaro could do him worse, which is plenty inspiration to not dare to try any tricks with him. besides — sitting in protected silence with him has been...nice. Rohan can admit that to himself because it sprouts from a root of appreciation and respect of the striving academic, sensing an unexpected kinship in him beyond their happenstance abilities.
perhaps it's the notable awareness shared toward each other in shared company; it's one thing to sit candidly within one's own privacy, but even Rohan feels the hollow air of his house from time to time, stirring a restlessness that isn't compatible with the most common solution. Rohan wants people to just leave him be, but not always — leave him alone. as comfortable as he is by himself, he eventually, despite himself...feels that same draw to connect that he hates seeing in other people. sitting in the quietude between them when it occurs has become a new luxury that...Rohan has found himself to be craving at occasional points, since it began.
Jotaro is also...intelligent, intense, and...nice to look at. Rohan might have begun sketching his image since the second café sitting. he wouldn't admit to it unless under pressure. (he studies all structures of features, of course. he catalogues all of his waking experiences for his life's work, after all.)
(totally.)
people have been telling Rohan for years that he ought to make some friends ('some friends crazy enough to enjoy your antics voluntarily,' they usually say...) and while Rohan doesn't think he would even mistakenly call Jotaro Kujo a friend... he can call him tolerable, which is as indulgent as dessert after dinner at this rate. adding to that, everything they endured through Yoshikage's reign of terror has made all of them feel a malleable sort of — bond, perhaps. something unspoken but reliable.
maybe it warrants a house visit when Rohan is finding the bottom of the barrel of his ideas, and maybe it warrants a drink with someone he finds he can put up with — or just actually like being around. this is what typical people do for socializing, anyway. he can give it a whirl.
it's nice. it might feel tense and awkward to an overtly needy and desperate socialite, but for them, it works. Rohan gets to gripe about how long the renovations took, and how difficult the contractors were being about matching the molding of the hallway, Jotaro gives a few gruff murmurs about his thesis...
now they sit in Rohan's rarely-regarded living room, Jotaro's drink defeated, Rohan nearing the bottom of his plum umeshu in lemonade (he figured he would join Jotaro in his choice of drinking palette, minus the blue curaçao) and...Jotaro probes. it's enough to give Rohan pause, looking to the other man with a perk of surprise; he's cut short by the outstretched arm with one balled fist and a singular finger extended to sternly emphasize Jotaro's question. they're — close, closer than Rohan remembers them being before... (except once at the café, walking past Jotaro to leave, through the doorway too narrow to fit two people, edging close enough then to get a sense of what cologne he apparently uses...not that Rohan committed that to memory.
or went to the department store swiftly after to sample every single option they had available, looking for a match, until he developed a headache.)
when Rohan glances, he finds the sketchpad left aside on the console table by the sofa, something he had deposited momentarily when returning from a jaunt through town to sketch that eerie boulder, the Angelo Stone. it's the same sketch pad he's brought with him out on those instances of meeting Jotaro — Rohan assumes he's observant enough to recognize, and therefore, pose his question. )
I don't draw in this room. I don't care for the lighting, and my office is where I keep my reference materials.
But I did take it with me to observe Angelo Stone this morning. I have a suspicious feeling about that boulder, and I don't recall it being here when I lived in Morioh as a child.
( Rohan takes the sketching pad, rather large, but not his most sizable book, and sets his nearly empty glass down in its place. ) I know you don't make useless small talk. Curious about it? ( Jotaro is one of a very few people in this town that has not asked to see his work, or claim to not have knowingly seen it before — but Jotaro has seen him sketch plenty enough by now. this is the first time he has made an effort to ask, and...it wouldn't be Rohan to refuse himself a little peacocking to the man more stone-like than that Angelo fixture piece downtown. )
[ Angelo Stone. Jotaro was definitely there when it was made. (And during its long monologue about DIO, a name he hadn't been sure he'd hear so soon again after going to Morioh just to inform Josuke about his inheritance and his— family ties.)
He...decides not to explain it yet, partially as intentional choice and partially because Rohan's commentary has a point it's getting to, which means it's unforgiving in its pacing. 'I know you don't make useless small talk', and it's nice to be seen without judgment, about that. Rohan's tone is simply stating facts.
The common silence between them is appreciated by both of them, Jotaro's noticed. It's still surprisingly nice to hear it implied so clearly in words. Rohan's noticed.
Jotaro nods, briefly, hand already back at his side. He's never tried to take up extra space - he takes up plenty as it is, threatens things in his vicinity simply by existing. Left to his own devices near others, Jotaro withdraws for many reasons, but some of them are the simple fact that even moving often makes him seem like he's encroaching on another's space.
But there is an invitation in the words, and Jotaro is curious, and Rohan has never once flinched from him and-- Jotaro leans in, just a little, to look at it. He wants to reach a hand out for it. He doesn't. ] Yes. [ Simple, to the point.
Maybe the alcohol, or the company, is why he keeps going. ] I've never seen what you draw when it isn't your manga. [ Truthfully, he's hardly seen what Rohan draws when it is his manga. What Jotaro means is he can't guess what it is Rohan draws when it isn't for work, and...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wait but if they're both rich...who's the sugar daddy???
He leaves and he's got a rental car today, so he doesn't smoke inside of it, and then when he gets back to the hotel and spots the little smoking area bench he can't bring himself to go sit primly in a public sphere of shame and puff away on what he's just impulsively bought. Like a goddamn teenager that can't handle their own emotions.
Jotaro thought tying down stakes via a family would help. All it seems to do is remind him how he isn't fit for it - he's too protective, too distant, too careful not to let them get too attached (he'll probably die young) or too close (most of his secrets could get a non-stand user killed) or too at-risk (he knows people who'd want to hurt him by hurting them).
He ends up crushing the pack in his pocket, but they stay there. He doesn't think about it again that weekend.
***
Rohan asked him to come over, which is unusual because Rohan hates seeing people almost as much as Jotaro does, so Jotaro takes the request seriously.
It's not about Reimi, because she's at rest now. It's actually about Hayato. Rohan peered inside of him to check on things. Rohan saw-- overlapping, interwoven, impossible stories that didn't match what ended up happening. Time repeating itself for the sake of one sick fucker's dream of dying surrounded by as many severed hands as possible.
Apparently, he'd also done that right after everything happened, and only now is when he's telling Jotaro. Maybe the story itself was eating at him. Maybe he just wanted to share the evolved stand power with someone else.
Maybe he wanted to admit he'd read about his own death, and Jotaro's. If Rohan's bothered by the story, he doesn't say so, but he looks paler than usual as he recounts it. Jotaro leaves with a polite goodbye.
But when he stops at the Rengatei cafe the next day and sits alone, and Rohan comes along by pure chance and the other tables are occupied - he joins him, and they sit in silence. Rohan draws. Jotaro pretends he's reading and stares at the table and thinks, and Rohan doesn't bother him.
It's nice.
***
Jotaro's in an alleyway that he's pretty sure was empty two minutes ago, when he caved and ducked into it and lit one of the cigarettes he'd forgotten about.
Rohan passes him and Jotaro chokes on smoke for the first time since he was literally fucking sixteen and after a moment of stunned staring, like Rohan's just watched something impossible transpire, he's got the nerve to smirk to himself.
Jotaro scowls. But he also tosses the cigarette on the ground and grinds it under the heel of his shoe and leaves the alley way. And if he walks just a few paces behind Rohan and neither of them talk, just end up with Jotaro indirectly walking Rohan home before he calls a cab for himself back to that hotel, they don't address it.
***
It's been three months and Jotaro is just one exhausting thesis defense away from an actual doctorate and he's just gotten back from signing divorce papers in America a week ago. He feels unchained and also adrift, like a ship at sea.
(He tries not to think in too many ocean metaphors, but it's hard when all he's done for a year when not risking his life or overseeing teenagers risking their lives is-- stare at fucking starfish and read books about starfish and jesus christ, he loves this stuff with a tenacity that would make most people who aren't Rohan pass out from sheer boredom but even Jotaro's getting tired of...everything in his own life.)
He isn't here to oversee hunting down serial killers now, though. He's actually really just working on his thesis, or rather now he's killing time until he gets to talk in front of a bunch of older stuffy fuckheads who are going to ask him questions he's already thought about and try to poke holes in a thesis that's tighter than their belts. He's not really looking forward to it, or the letters after his name.
He just liked the process. Something to do.
(Rohan mentioned something about understanding his drive, a month ago. They'd been at the cafe again, somehow at the same table despite there being two other empty ones that morning. They hadn't spoken a word until they'd started somehow mid-conversation and ended just as abruptly. Rohan had also paid for both of their coffees when they left, a fact Jotaro found odd but polite and hadn't questioned since.)
***
Rohan's house looks different after the renovations that followed the fire. Jotaro's sitting and has a vivid blue drink in his hand - had Rohan really called this thing a grateful dead? Rohan had offered him whiskey and he must not have liked Jotaro's lack of enthusiasm in his 'sure', because he'd stared at him dead-eyed with judgment but then sighed and demanded to know what he actually liked drinking.
'Mixed drinks.' Rohan had raised an eyebrow at that, but looked far more amused at, 'Fruity shit.' And then he'd said Jotaro was lucky he had something on hand, and disappeared.
And reappeared with this thing. It's-- actually not that bad, although Jotaro's pretty sure this is more alcohol than he'd usually bother trying to drink.
He's just finished it and they're in Rohan's...it's technically a living room, but it reminds Jotaro of his hotel's living room in the sense that it looks un-lived in. Rohan lives in his home office, clearly. And maybe his bedroom.
Jotaro doesn't blush when he thinks about Rohan's bedroom, because he hasn't blushed while thinking about someone else since he was twenty-one and still excited to get married, but maybe the flush of warmth from the drink makes his cheeks feel different.
They've stopped talking. It's nice. Jotaro doesn't mind Rohan speaking, but he thinks he likes the silences between things almost as much. When he looks at the end table on the opposite end, by Rohan's side of the couch, he realizes there's a drawing pad on it. ]
Were you using that down here before I came over? [ And he points at it for emphasis and clarity and he definitely doesn't point at it to bring his arm closer to Rohan, but that's a side effect. Rohan is slim but still manages to take up an unreasonable amount of room for someone his actual size and the space between Jotaro's arm and Rohan's shoulder seems suddenly so very small and easily-breached and--
Jotaro pulls his arm back, eyes on the drawing pad and thoughts on Rohan's shoulder. ]
maybe they trade off
people are generally insufferable — Rohan is easily exhausted by the sensation of socializing, the small talk, the base and shallow impressions and opinions people think voicing to an artist will gain them anything, hell — the talking alone is agitating. he doesn't have the patience or the lack of respect to himself and others to pretend and play nice with vapid little lies. if a conversation isn't useful in some way, then it's a waste of time.
but people expect it, they feel the need to dump their thoughts onto someone else and rely on some sort of entitlement of others to feel validated — Rohan can't be near people for long before he's zombified by boredom or grinding his teeth in frustration. when he's lucky, he can at least observe enough to glean something interesting for consideration at a later time.
Jotaro Kujo — hasn't been any of those things since they met, with met having been an initially brief experience. even being a man of few words, he certainly had no manner of being quickly forgettable... which was good, considering his key piece in investigating Morioh's dark and gruesome mystery, being a connection to Speedwagon, and...having a legendary Stand ability.
what Rohan would give to turn but a page in that man's backstory...
but if Josuke can put him out of commission for a month, then Rohan is certain Jotaro could do him worse, which is plenty inspiration to not dare to try any tricks with him. besides — sitting in protected silence with him has been...nice. Rohan can admit that to himself because it sprouts from a root of appreciation and respect of the striving academic, sensing an unexpected kinship in him beyond their happenstance abilities.
perhaps it's the notable awareness shared toward each other in shared company; it's one thing to sit candidly within one's own privacy, but even Rohan feels the hollow air of his house from time to time, stirring a restlessness that isn't compatible with the most common solution. Rohan wants people to just leave him be, but not always — leave him alone. as comfortable as he is by himself, he eventually, despite himself...feels that same draw to connect that he hates seeing in other people. sitting in the quietude between them when it occurs has become a new luxury that...Rohan has found himself to be craving at occasional points, since it began.
Jotaro is also...intelligent, intense, and...nice to look at. Rohan might have begun sketching his image since the second café sitting. he wouldn't admit to it unless under pressure. (he studies all structures of features, of course. he catalogues all of his waking experiences for his life's work, after all.)
(totally.)
people have been telling Rohan for years that he ought to make some friends ('some friends crazy enough to enjoy your antics voluntarily,' they usually say...) and while Rohan doesn't think he would even mistakenly call Jotaro Kujo a friend... he can call him tolerable, which is as indulgent as dessert after dinner at this rate. adding to that, everything they endured through Yoshikage's reign of terror has made all of them feel a malleable sort of — bond, perhaps. something unspoken but reliable.
maybe it warrants a house visit when Rohan is finding the bottom of the barrel of his ideas, and maybe it warrants a drink with someone he finds he can put up with — or just actually like being around. this is what typical people do for socializing, anyway. he can give it a whirl.
it's nice. it might feel tense and awkward to an overtly needy and desperate socialite, but for them, it works. Rohan gets to gripe about how long the renovations took, and how difficult the contractors were being about matching the molding of the hallway, Jotaro gives a few gruff murmurs about his thesis...
now they sit in Rohan's rarely-regarded living room, Jotaro's drink defeated, Rohan nearing the bottom of his plum umeshu in lemonade (he figured he would join Jotaro in his choice of drinking palette, minus the blue curaçao) and...Jotaro probes. it's enough to give Rohan pause, looking to the other man with a perk of surprise; he's cut short by the outstretched arm with one balled fist and a singular finger extended to sternly emphasize Jotaro's question. they're — close, closer than Rohan remembers them being before... (except once at the café, walking past Jotaro to leave, through the doorway too narrow to fit two people, edging close enough then to get a sense of what cologne he apparently uses...not that Rohan committed that to memory.
or went to the department store swiftly after to sample every single option they had available, looking for a match, until he developed a headache.)
when Rohan glances, he finds the sketchpad left aside on the console table by the sofa, something he had deposited momentarily when returning from a jaunt through town to sketch that eerie boulder, the Angelo Stone. it's the same sketch pad he's brought with him out on those instances of meeting Jotaro — Rohan assumes he's observant enough to recognize, and therefore, pose his question. )
I don't draw in this room. I don't care for the lighting, and my office is where I keep my reference materials.
But I did take it with me to observe Angelo Stone this morning. I have a suspicious feeling about that boulder, and I don't recall it being here when I lived in Morioh as a child.
( Rohan takes the sketching pad, rather large, but not his most sizable book, and sets his nearly empty glass down in its place. ) I know you don't make useless small talk. Curious about it? ( Jotaro is one of a very few people in this town that has not asked to see his work, or claim to not have knowingly seen it before — but Jotaro has seen him sketch plenty enough by now. this is the first time he has made an effort to ask, and...it wouldn't be Rohan to refuse himself a little peacocking to the man more stone-like than that Angelo fixture piece downtown. )
no subject
He...decides not to explain it yet, partially as intentional choice and partially because Rohan's commentary has a point it's getting to, which means it's unforgiving in its pacing. 'I know you don't make useless small talk', and it's nice to be seen without judgment, about that. Rohan's tone is simply stating facts.
The common silence between them is appreciated by both of them, Jotaro's noticed. It's still surprisingly nice to hear it implied so clearly in words. Rohan's noticed.
Jotaro nods, briefly, hand already back at his side. He's never tried to take up extra space - he takes up plenty as it is, threatens things in his vicinity simply by existing. Left to his own devices near others, Jotaro withdraws for many reasons, but some of them are the simple fact that even moving often makes him seem like he's encroaching on another's space.
But there is an invitation in the words, and Jotaro is curious, and Rohan has never once flinched from him and-- Jotaro leans in, just a little, to look at it. He wants to reach a hand out for it. He doesn't. ] Yes. [ Simple, to the point.
Maybe the alcohol, or the company, is why he keeps going. ] I've never seen what you draw when it isn't your manga. [ Truthfully, he's hardly seen what Rohan draws when it is his manga. What Jotaro means is he can't guess what it is Rohan draws when it isn't for work, and...
And suddenly, he finds himself curious. ]