Work Text:
Jotaro's email arrived the last day of classes, and was - at least to Josuke's eyes - practically begging. Okuyasu couldn't believe him when he said he was leaving Morioh for the first half of their spring vacation, but after reading the email he and Koichi had seen their friend off with a smile. Plus, when it came with an expenses-paid vacation to Florida? And apparently all he had to do was watch the house while Jotaro was checking on rumors of one of the Stand Arrows.
He stepped off the plane into a muggy, oppressively hot atmosphere. Compared to the beautiful seaside weather of Morioh, it was...well, it was still seaside, and that was something. But it was so humid he could feel his shirt starting to stick to his chest, and the air felt heavy to breathe. He followed the crush of people into and through customs (nothing to declare, just visiting family, first time here, yes, yes, there's a passport, okay) and then down to the luggage claim, where Jotaro's white coat and ever-present hat stood out among the dark crowd of travelers like the full moon on a winter's night.
The two of them waited silently, Jotaro towering over the crowd and Josuke not far below him. It was anything but a peaceful silence - though surrounded by the joyful hubbub of far-flung lovers and reunited families, they stood there amidst the chaos in a sort of contented quiet. Eventually, the pause was broken by Josuke's half-mumbled "My bag," as he stepped away to pick up the bag.
He turned back, seeing Jotaro already moving towards the door, and half-rushed to keep up. Jotaro was covering entirely too much ground with those damnably long legs of his. He slung the straps of his overstuffed bag across a shoulder, pushed his way past a crowd of tourists, and then nodded to Jotaro as he caught back up.
"Hair looks nice," the older man said, instead of a greeting, and Josuke finally smiled. There was Jotaro, always forgetting to say hello.
He nodded to the line of taxis, only for Jotaro to shake his head as they turned the opposite direction, crossing into a parking garage. The trip to Jotaro's home was...tense, at best, and conversation was stilted, but they did talk, and it was hard to stay distant with someone after taking nearly an hour to go five miles.
Jotaro stepped in front of Josuke, pulling keys out of his pocket to open the door, and instead of being greeted by the silence of an empty house, Josuke heard an excitable young voice through the door while Jotaro fumbled with the keys. Jotaro shot him an entirely undecipherable look, and Josuke replied with a confused shrug before the door's locks turned from inside and he was practically sucker-punched by a tiny form.
"Dad!" the …child? yelled into his leg, "I missed-" the voice stopped suddenly. He looked down at the young girl, who stared back up at him, face frozen in shock. He looked over at Jotaro. Jotaro looked back at him. He looked down at the girl. The girl looked over to Jotaro, and with no loss of enthusiasm, leapt at him, managing to wrap her arms around his neck and repeat what she had been saying earlier. "Dad! I missed you! You were gone forever this time!" The fluent Japanese from her surprised Josuke, but he looked to Jotaro-
Jotaro hugged her close to him, and Josuke just about fell over. Honestly, he was so shocked that his knees went weak, but he stayed standing through sheer force of will. Jotaro's "Missed you too, little one" did what the hug hadn't, and Josuke found himself leaning on the door frame to stop his legs from giving out on him.
"Are you staying long, Dad?" the girl asked, and Jotaro smiled sadly at Josuke, picking her up by her armpits and standing her back on the ground. "Please please please say yes!"
Jotaro shook his head, and then nodded to Josuke. "I have a very important business trip, little one, but Josuke here is your uncle!” Josuke was astounded to hear the emotion in Jotaro’s voice, so unlike his days in Morioh. “He's going to take care of you for a couple days, okay?"
Josuke smiled, a little sick to his stomach and entirely uncertain all of a sudden. "I'm Josuke Higashi-" he began to introduce himself, but was cut off.
"My name's Jolyne! It starts with a Jo too, just like your name and dad's name and great grampa's name! Dad said he didn't do it on purpose, but I think he did and he's just trying not to tell me! You should call me Jojo, though." She reached for his hand, grabbing it off of where it rested on the door frame and beginning to pull him into the house. Josuke stumbled along, unable to resist, and Jotaro followed him with a cough that Josuke swore was actually a suppressed laugh.
A few minutes later, they were all seated on tall chairs around a granite-topped island in the kitchen, eating tiny bowls of ice cream on Jolyne's insistence that they should celebrate 'her meeting Cuz Jojo'. Josuke was pretty damn sure that Jotaro was spoiling her because he had to leave soon, but he wasn't about to stop him - he knew he would have been just as happy, if his dad had been around. All too soon, the three of them had finished, and while Jotaro whisked the bowls away into the double sink, Jolyne rested her elbows on the stone countertop and rested her chin in her hands. "Dad's not around much," she said sadly. "I hope you can stay for a while."
Josuke saw Jotaro slipping out of the kitchen over her head, and nodded, trying to buy time. He was stunned, and stumbled over his words, saying quietly "I, well, you go to school, right? I've got to go back to mine in a bit, but... I can... I'll stay as long as I can?" He was already thinking of the e-mail he could write to Okuyasu, trusting his best friend to explain it to Koichi and his mother, who had practically adopted Okuyasu by now.
Jolyne beamed , and he couldn't help but smile as well. "Good!! I'm glad! We can be best friends, then! And you'll have to keep talking to me once you have to go back to school, but I can help you with your homework, so it'll be fine." She finished her statement off with blind certainty, and Josuke had to smile at the unshakable faith that the world worked How She Saw It.
Jotaro nodded to the two of them as he came back into the room, rolling a luggage case behind him. "I've got to go now, Jojo. You be good for Josuke, okay? I should be back soon, and I'll remember to call you at night, so don't worry." She looked over to him, slipping off of the tall stool and jumping into the same hug as when she first greeted the pair, clinging to his chest. Jotaro huffed out a breath as she collided with him, but caught her in a hug of his own. "You're getting big! Soon you'll be too tall to do this!"
Josuke looked away, the scene somehow a shade too intimate for him to feel comfortable spying on, and missed what Jolyne said in the rush of water as he rinsed out the bowls of melted ice cream and reached for a sponge, but he definitely didn't miss his new cousin..? Niece? Grand-niece? (No, he was just going to call her a cousin) jumping up on the counter next to him, kicking her legs against the cabinets while he finished drying them.
"Sooooooooo Jojo! What're we gonna do today?" she asked him, and Josuke realized that he might be a little bit in over his head.
Hours later, hands on his knees as he pulled in deep, gasping breaths, Josuke corrected his earlier thought. He was definitely in over his head, and it was not just a little bit. How an eight year old girl had more energy than any of his friends back in Morioh was entirely beyond him, but it’s not like his poor lungs were comforted by that.
He was, currently, taking a break from chasing after the miniature devil that somehow convinced Jotaro she was family. Supposedly, they were playing tag - more realistically, this meant that for the past half an hour, Josuke had been chasing after her through the twisting halls of the house. Crazy Diamond floated over his shoulder, hand pressed to what looked like (but couldn’t be) a priceless set of Egyptian canopic jars, recently returned to a whole state instead of the shattered mess they were after he skidded into them coming around the corner.
Then he heard a gasp of surprise, and saw Jolyne’s face from around the corner. “You’re a wizard! Just like dad!” She charged around the corner, half-pausing before hugging tight to his leg. Josuke’s breath caught, and before he could respond she had already danced away a handful of steps, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Dad can make stuff float, and catch stuff without looking! I’ve never seen him fix something like that, though, where’d you learn it?”
Entirely blindsided, Josuke opened his mouth to respond, but couldn’t get a word in before her questions began again.
“Can you teach me? Dad says he couldn’t, but I think he’s lying ‘cause I’m still a kid! I’m gonna grow up to be the best wizard ever , then he’ll see. You can teach me, right?”
Josuke thought, and then came up with what he thought was an entirely acceptable response. “Well… you see… it’s a family thing, right? Your dad and I both learned it from his grandfather. He’s going to teach you, but… it has to be…” Josuke trailed off, seeing Jolyne’s crestfallen expression, and changed tacks. “It’s a special power that’s only for us JoJo’s, okay?”
A watery smile pushed its way onto her face, and Josuke hurried to smile too, crouching down to rest on his heels and carefully reaching out to brush away a couple of burgeoning tears from her face. “I can’t teach you how to do magic on your own, not without your dad here, okay?” He waited for a shaky nod, and then continued. “Buuuuuuut… We could use my magic to make him a present for when he gets back, right?” Another quiet nod.
“Okay!” Josuke stood back up, channeling every ounce of exuberant Okuyasu that he could. “For my first trick, I will need a volunteer from my audience!”
He pointed at Jolyne, who managed a quiet “I volunteer?”
Crazy Diamond reached out from behind him, stepping forwards to carefully lift her up and spin her around him. “Wonderful! Alright,” he said as Crazy Diamond put her back down. “For my second trick, I’ll need… Well, I’m not actually… entirely sure! What should we make your dad?”
Jolyne looked back at him in confusion, before thinking for a moment. “He likes… fish?”
“Fish, huh..?” Josuke thought. “Well, my St- magic can combine things, not just repair them, so maybe we can make him a sea monster?”
“A real one! We can put it in the pool!”
Panicked, Josuke said the first thing that came to mind. “No! Not a real one! Sea monsters love to eat little girls like you, and I’m sure your dad would be really sad if he came back and had a monster instead of you!”
Seemingly not hearing him, Jolyne ran off, shouting over her shoulder, “I’m gonna go get some toys to squish together I’ll be right back bye!”
Left with only the echo of her voice, and hopelessly turned around by the game of tag, Josuke slumped against the wall. “Don’t look at me like that,” he muttered at Crazy Diamond, who faded into nothingness.
Jotaro, three days after leaving, looked up at his house from the front door. He was… well, surprised would show a lack of faith in Josuke, but he had half-expected for the house to not be standing when he returned. Jolyne could be a handful to deal with, and Josuke hadn’t known in advance. He knew that the pair of them were doing okay from text messages he had gotten from Josuke - mainly pictures of Jolyne laughing or being disgusted by his attempts at cooking.
He dug into the pockets of his coat, and put the key into the lock, before pausing. Star Platinum shimmered into existence at his side, and nodded to him. He did hear laughter. It was muffled, but it was the exact laugh Jolyne always had when she had spotted him through the picture window and was hiding behind the door to ‘ambush’ him with one of her trademark jumping hugs.
But then… where was Josuke? He knew the troublemaker would be prepared for some sort of revenge about the surprise of dealing with his daughter. He braces himself to stop time, hoping that it would be enough to avoid whatever laughable fate his relative had planned.
He turned the key in the lock, opened the door, and stepped backwards, reaching out to catch- nothing? More muffled giggling, but nothing he could see in the entryway. He stepped in, taking off his shoes, and shouted, “Jojo? I’m home!”
Even more giggling. Definitely from the left this time. He warily eyed the entrance to the living room, and then stepped around the doorframe, freezing in shock.
More accurately, everything froze in shock, as The World activated. He had barely a second to take in the absolutely massive shark sitting where his coffee table should have been, before everything started to move again.
“Raaaaaaaaaaaaah!” He heard Jolyne yell, from inside the shark, and it’s jaw opened - not in quite the right way, he was pretty sure, although his focus during his degree hadn’t been on sharks - to reveal his daughter using it like a huge puppet. The shark charged towards him, rolling on the undeniable squeak-squeak of furniture rollers, and he spotted Josuke’s coat flapping as he shoved into it, Crazy Diamond right behind him and pushing as well.
With a shuddering thud, the shark’s teeth slammed into Star Platinum’s hands, inches away from his body, and then he doubled over as Jolyne launched herself out of the thing’s mouth to headbutt him in the stomach with an overenthusiastic hug. All of the breath left him in a single sickening whoosh , and Star Platinum faded away. Josuke, hearing that thump over Jolyne’s squeals of excited “We got you! You were so spooked!”, fell over onto the couch, laughing.
Jotaro steeled himself and stood up straight, struggling to take a deep breath while he wrapped an arm around Jolyne. “I guess you did, at that. Good job, Jojo, but maybe I shouldn’t let you hang out with Josuke…” Jotaro looked over at him, pinning him with a fierce glare. “It seems like he was a bad influence .”
Josuke’s face switched gears, abruptly going from hysteric laughter to undeniable terror, but Jolyne piped up with a “No! I’m the bad influence!” She pulled out of the hug to put her hands on her hips and frown - rather adorably, Jotaro thought - at him. “He wanted to make you a little thing to go on the table, and I made him change the table instead!”
Jotaro’s look at Josuke revealed just how much he believed that, but it was only for a moment before he looked down at Jolyne with a smile. “If you say so, Jojo. You had fun, then?”
Jolyne nodded excitedly, and he looked back at Josuke with the same smile, and an approving nod. “He’ll have to come visit both of us more often, then. And bring his friends.”