Chapter Text
There is slush spilled across the road, cold and dismal; there is slush inside of Jotaro. In his tight-wound jaw, in his fingers furled around the steering wheel.
The goddamn traffic on mornings like this, sickly-warm after the snow—Jotaro can never fucking stand it. A little weather and everyone forgets how to drive, and the cars slot together static like bricks in a wall.
It gives him lots of time to think. Lots of time to think about pulling some bastard U-turn, screeching back to his apartment. Back under his blankets, and never coming out again.
Josuke said this would only take three seconds of courage.
Josuke didn’t account for the getting there.
Still, Jotaro does not turn. He does not break away.
He knows, somewhere deeper than slush—deeper than fear—that this will be worth it.
Jotaro throws the parking brake. Squares his jaw and the lapels of his graveside coat.
Worth it, worth it, worth it.
He steps out steadily onto the sidewalk, presses past the threshold of Trussardi’s. A little bell chimes his coming, cheery; it nearly throws him out of his skin.
But he’s alright, he’s alright. It won’t shake him.
What shakes him is Tonio’s face, when he looks up from his arrangement at the counter.
Disbelief colors him, bewilderment. Like he cannot believe that Jotaro is here, that Jotaro would want to be here.
“Hello,” Tonio says, his voice precisely pleasant, “can I help you?” He does not say a name. Does not know how to address him, anymore.
Something in Jotaro is already back at home, cowering under the bed. Something in Jotaro is already chainsmoking.
But this—he needs this.
Tonio needs this.
And it will be worth it.
Jotaro takes one step closer.
He lines the words up on his tongue.
“Hey,” he says. There’s almost a softness to it, like a palmful of sand.
Almost-soft is the best he can do. Something in Jotaro hates that.
Still, still. He presses on.
“I need flowers.”
Gently, Tonio nods. He works up a smile, motions Jotaro closer. “Of course,” he says. “For work? You could have just called—”
“No.”
And there’s that bewilderment again, soft on Tonio’s face. Jotaro wants—he wants to brush it away with his hand. If his touch is capable of that.
Sharpish, Tonio marshals himself. “Are they for an occasion? A particular person? Your karate queen, maybe?”
Jotaro purses his lips. Searches for something amid all the slush—what can he say?
“Just,” he stutters, “just make them nice.”
Because Tonio is good at making things nice.
Because Jotaro has never known how.
Blithely, sweetly, Tonio nods. “Okay.”
And there could be a pause, then, some microcosmic black hole of a thing, there could be some tangle to figure whether okay is the right word. Whether that’s what this is, or whether it’s been some avalanching misstep on Jotaro’s part, there could be so much slush.
But Tonio doesn’t let that happen. His smile just widens, warms, like a sunflower. He is tall and broad and vital as a sunflower, and he musters all of that rightness when he beckons Jotaro behind the counter, into the back room.
“I’ve watched you work, so you should get to watch me,” he says, and it is so calm and conversational—Jotaro has always thought of himself as a man with an ironclad facade, but Tonio’s is astounding.
Or maybe it’s not.
Maybe he never had one.
Maybe he is happy, here and now. Despite everything, maybe he is happy to be with Jotaro.
Maybe, underneath the terror, Jotaro is happy to be with him.
He stands a stiff parallel to the doorframe, watches Tonio flit about the room. It’s full of his dinged-up painter’s buckets, bursting with a kaleidoscope of blooms.
How does he work here, Jotaro wonders, without feeling miserably allergic?
But nothing about Tonio needs to make sense. He’s a wonder, that’s all, and he’s humming cheerfully as he plucks stem after stem from his buckets.
He cocks his head, he holds the burgeoning bouquet at arm’s length. He subtracts a stem, he adds one. Periodically, he explains, little petit-fours of information about plant husbandry, the antique language of flowers. His aesthetic choices.
Jotaro doesn’t parse a single fucking word of it. All he knows is the keenness in Tonio’s eyes, the bright enthusiasm of his hands.
All he knows is the bright bouquet, done up in springtime yellow and bride-blush pink, and the way Tonio brings it to him when it’s finished. The way he holds it out to Jotaro, sparkling goodwill and pride in his work.
Softly, aware of every tremor of his fingers, Jotaro takes it. The leaves are cool, the stems are wet against his skin.
“Thanks,” he says, and this time the softness comes out fully-formed, if anything, there is too much of it. A surfeit of tenderness, it makes uneven ground to stand on.
Tonio just nods. “I hope it’s to your liking.”
His voice is gentle, too, like a petal against skin, and Jotaro is stumbling, stumbling.
“It smells good,” he mumbles. “Clean.”
Clean, Jotaro wishes this could be clean. Neat, sleek, worth remembering.
But Tonio’s smile is soft enough, is safe enough that nothing else has to matter.
His three seconds of courage are beginning.
Slowly, Jotaro raises the bouquet; slowly, he presents it.
Slowly, he fumbles out his words, and they are not just as he practiced them in the bathroom mirror, and still he is sure that they are good.
Good enough?
“I needed it to be nice,” he says, “because it’s for you.”
Tonio’s tiny gasp could be the borning cry of something. Something worth having.
“It’s supposed to say… that I’m sorry. That I told you to fuck off. After everything you did for me.”
Tonio reaches out his glistening wet hands, he wraps them around the bouquet. Around Jotaro’s hands, and his body stutters with the touch. With the gentleness of it, that silent encouragement.
It’s enough to carry on.
“I,” murmurs Jotaro, voice unwieldy, “was scared.”
Those fingers clutch at him a little tighter.
“I was scared that… if I…”
Quietly, mercifully, Tonio cuts him off. “You don’t have to say anything,” he says.
A soft, slow shake of Jotaro’s head. “I want to get it out.”
And then a sigh, and then more words. Jotaro’s three seconds of courage fold into a microcosm, a tiny endless plane.
“I was afraid that if I got close to you,” he says, with hairline cracks forming in the veneer of his voice, “I’d get hurt.”
Again, Jotaro does not say.
He is watching the flowers, his eyes down; he is watching the join of their hands. Still, he knows the postcard-picture blue of Tonio’s eyes, the kindness in them.
He knows the shape of Tonio’s smile, the way it forms around his words. “I can’t promise that you never will,” he breathes.
“I-I know,” stammers Jotaro, and it is raw and right like the setting of a bone, it is hard, but he does it.
“It’d be worth it, uh, because. I like you.”
And he can look up, then; he can risk the fall of Tonio’s face. But it is worth it, worth that gamble, because Tonio beams.
He could be every flower in this place, armfuls of them, all showered in Jotaro’s lap.
Tonio’s fingers are tender when they clutch at Jotaro’s hands, at the bouquet; his voice is tender when he murmurs ”can I kiss you?”
And he can, he can, he can; and somehow there is enough breath left in Jotaro’s body to say so, and before he can close his eyes Tonio’s lips are on his, soft, soothing.
Safe, somehow.