Chapter Text
Initially, Jotaro just gets the job to get his mom off his back. He does a lot of things to get his mom off his back – like actually showing up at school and taking vacations with his grandfather to Egypt. It’s not really what he wants to be doing and to be perfectly honest they have more than enough money for Jotaro to spend his free time studying, alone, in his apartment.
“But that’s not the point!” she told him, as she pushed the job application into his hands two weeks ago. “You need to get out of the house and make friends! You can’t spend your whole life sitting in your room reading manga.”
He wanted to argue that he could, in fact, do just that; or maybe argue that that wasn’t the only thing he did – but she gave him these big, sad eyes that made him flash back to the time he was in high school and she got really sick, and he felt the guilt swell up. She didn’t even need to say anything – he grumbled the words good grief under his breath and begrudgingly filled out the paperwork.
She rewarded him with a kiss on the cheek.
He hadn’t actually looked at the paper to see what he was applying for, and he regrets it almost as soon as he walks in. It is, of all things, a florist.
This is the last thing Jotaro wants to be seen doing. He already has a swarm of girls who follow him around campus, who see him as a mysterious, tortured soul they can figure out or fix. He has no customer service aptitude and no desire to develop one for the exact reason that he doesn’t want to give them any reason to start stalking him at work.
But it’s already too late. The owner of the shop toddles out when he steps in, takes one look at him, and tells him that he’s hired. It makes his whole soul cringe to think her hiring him might be some kind of pathetic attempt at flirting with him – but when she leads him into the back, he sees why she hired him on the spot: his employer, Enya, is about a hundred and two and maybe five feet tall, and the shelves on which the boxes are stacked reach almost to the ceiling. There is a ladder, but Enya walks with a cane.
“My son was helping me,” she explains, “But he got himself arrested, and I can’t afford bail.”
He’s dreading a long sob story (and she does, indeed, sob sometimes, stopping immediately when he walks into the room) but it doesn’t come. He spends the first week of his employment in the back, moving boxes around and cleaning up. Enya doesn’t comment on whether he’s done a good job or not, and he kind of prefers it that way.
On the first day of his second week, she tells him to watch the counter as she runs an errand, and leaves without giving him an explanation of what he’s supposed to do.
I have a college degree. I’m going for my masters. I can figure this out.
There’s a notebook on the counter flipped open to a page of orders, describing in short chickenscratch paragraphs what each customer wants. And Jotaro doesn’t understand a word of it. He hasn’t even heard of most of these kinds of flowers before.
Luckily, someone who called in for a bouquet is just as clueless on the subject as he is, putting in a request for certain colors and specifying a price range, but nothing else. It’s enough for Jotaro to work with – probably the only thing Jotaro can work with.
Which is exactly how he spends his time until Enya gets back. Exactly when she gets back or how long it takes, he’s not sure. He notices her watching him out of the corner of his eye and turns to look at her as he finishes arranging the flowers in his hands.
“How long have you been standing there?” he asks.
She doesn’t answer. She pushes him out of the way with a surprisingly strong punch to the gut, moving around to inspect his work. “I didn’t ask you to do this,” she said. “I just wanted you to watch the counter.”
He scowls. “Nobody came in,” he says. She gives him a blank stare and he actually looks up and around the now-crowded store. “Oh.”
“This is the most customers I’ve had two months,” she says, and hides a snort behind her hand when a couple of teenage girls pretending to look over gift prices manage to make eye contact with him and burst into giggles.
Jotaro lets out a sigh and just barely represses his usual good grief. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
“No, no,” she cuts him off. “This isn’t bad. You’ll be fine with a little bit of practice.”
And that’s how he starts managing the counter all by himself. Because a little bit of practice apparently means stand there and look pretty, you’re drawing customers in. Enya does have him fill a few orders, but she never gives him any kind of guidance on what makes a good bouquet, just fusses over the arrangement and occasionally shrieks and grabs a flower he’s using and runs off with it. Business is – not quite booming, but doing better than usual. Which is just great – for his boss, anyway, who works in the back of the shop and doesn’t have to talk to anyone, let alone six different girls who came in with fake interest in the flowers and a real interest of coyly leaving Jotaro their numbers.
He throws them all in the trash. On his employer’s request, he waits until they leave.
“So how’s your job going, honey?” Jotaro hasn’t spoken for most of dinner. He’s always loved his mother’s cooking and with his grandparents in town, he’s been allowed to focus on his food while his grandparents and his mother talk. It’s the first question they’ve asked him tonight that’s required more than a yes or a no.
“It’s fine,” he says, looking back at his food.
“Where are you working?” his grandmother asks.
“A florist.”
“And what do you do there?” his grandfather contributes.
“I ring up customers.” He pauses. “Sometimes I arrange flowers.”
“Oh, arranging flowers! That’s so wonderful, sweetie,” his mother comments.
It’s really not, he thinks, but he doesn’t feel like getting lectured on politeness by his grandfather. Besides, it’s not a bad job. He just doesn’t really care about it.
“What about dating?” his grandmother asks, resting her chin in her hand and her elbow on the table. “Have you met any girls you’re interested in?”
“No, grandma,” Jotaro says, “I’m gay.”
He hears something like a choking sound and looks up to find his mother and grandmother staring at him with some degree of shock and his grandfather making exaggerated choking gestures. “What?” he asks.
“Jotaro!” his mother exclaims in one second, and then in the next, he can barely move from how tight her arms are around him. “Oh, honey, thank you so much for coming out to us!”
Jotaro stares at the food on his plate and says “Uh,” because he hadn’t been aware he’d been in the closet.
His grandmother pats his grandfather on the back and make sure he’s not choking for real before turning her attention back to him. “In that case,” she starts, “Have you met any boys you’re interested in?”
Jotaro shrugs, which manages to both capture his mood and push his mother’s arms off of him.
“Have you dated at all before?” his grandfather asks with some skepticism.
“No,” he admits.
And the rest of dinner goes more or less like that. He wants to tune them out, but his mother and his grandfather both keeping poking at him and asking him invasive questions like which actors he prefers and what his potential type might be.
He offers to do the dishes just to get away from them, and they finally give him some much-needed space when they duck out to watch some horrible drama in the living room. The occasional burst of laughter is irritating, but it’s not as bad as the questions aimed at him that were, the thinks, a poorly-hidden attempt to set him up with someone. He tries to take his mind off of it by scrubbing the pans, and is caught off guard when his grandfather’s voice rings in the otherwise empty kitchen.
“So, tell me the truth: have you met anyone you like?”
Jotaro almost drops the pan noisily in the sink. He looks over his shoulder to where his grandfather is standing, arms crossed and leaning in the doorway. “Come on, I know that whole ordeal must have been embarrassing. I’m just curious.”
He blinks at him, and goes back to the pan in his hands. “No.”
“Is that no, you won’t tell me, or no, you’re not interested in anyone?”
“I’m not interested in anyone.”
His grandfather hums. “And I don’t want to be set up,” he adds, just in case that’s where his grandfather was headed.
“That’s not where I was headed,” he says. His tone isn’t convincing. Jotaro only hums.
“You might not know this,” Joseph says, in a tone of voice a little too haughty for someone who has told Jotaro almost everything he would ever need to know about the man and then some, “I’ve dated men before.”
Oh. Well, that, he didn’t know.
“It was when I was younger,” he continues, to which Jotaro can only think obviously. “Back before the war started, I used to hang around Italy a lot. And before I met your grandmother, I was going pretty hot and heavy with a friend of mine –“
And Jotaro has to tune the rest of the conversation out. Anything that starts off with ‘hot and heavy’ is destined to venture into territories he never wants to think about when it comes to anyone he’s related to. Whatever comfort he might have gotten from the revelation that his grandfather wasn’t as straight as he’d previously thought was now ruined by the snippets of memory he captured when his concentration wavered.
Jotaro had been under impression that the shop next door had been closed for several years. The sign declares it to be a tattoo and piercing parlor, but he never seems to hear any noise coming from it, never seems to see anyone outside smoking – something he knows tends to go part and parcel with the subculture.
But today, walking into work, he can feel bass shaking the walls from the shop next door, and has to stare for a minute before determining that it isn’t his business.
“Well make it your business!” Enya tells him about three seconds later, “Or it’s going to lose mine!” She follows it up by shuffling into the back and slamming the door. It’s a good thing no customers have come in, Jotaro figures, as the din is now too much to hear over.
How wonders if they’re going to start a fight. He has, admittedly, never been in a tattoo parlor before, and doesn’t know what to expect. He only has what he’s seen on TV to work with, and most of what his mother watches these days is Law & Order repeats.
He mumbles out a quick good grief before he pushes open the door.
And he finds immediately that it isn’t necessary. The atmosphere is hardly imposing. There’s a beat-up leather couch just under the window and a couple photo albums on a coffee table that looks like it’s seen better days than the couch it sits in front of. The back corner has a shelf of kitschy anime and TV show merchandise, almost none of which appears to be in mint condition. Homura Akemi is pulling a gun on Dana Scully, The Creature from the Black Lagoon appears to be romancing Spock, and there’s a grow-a-dinosaur in a jar on the bottom shelf.
It’s not exactly what he was expecting. And neither was the disco music pumping through the speakers.
He takes a moment to let it settle in and heads to the front counter. The guy working it must, Jotaro thinks, be the one who does tattoos, since he’s got a sketchbook in his lap and his eyebrows furrowed as he works on what looks to be an incredibly detailed sketch of a dolphin. From the angle Jotaro’s standing at, he looks too clean-cut to be working in a place like this.
He clears his throat to get the guys attention.
The redhead startles, purple shooting widely at Jotaro. “Shit. Sorry, couldn’t hear you over – hold on.” He drops the sketchpad on the counter and hurries to a room in the back, kicking at the bottom of the door to open it. “Turn it down.”
“No!” a voice shouts back, agitated.
“I’m getting the bucket, and I’m dumping water on your head.”
“Motherfucker,” the second voice growls, but it is followed by a decrease in volume, and the redhead makes his way back to the counter, throwing a wide, pierced smile at Jotaro.
“My apologies,” he says. “What may I help you with?”
It feels a little formal for someone who has his cheeks pierced. And his eyebrows. And the middle part of his nose. And probably more. “You did,” Jotaro says.
His eyebrows furrow again and Jotaro watches the studs in his cheek pinch as his mouth turns into something like a pout. “Excuse me?”
“I just came to ask you to turn the music down.”
“Oh. Oh! You’re – you must work with Enyaba, then.” A hand draws out and flips the curled bangs in front of his face. “Guess her son’s not getting out, then. Good.”
He doesn’t really know what to say to that. He still doesn’t know what her son’s ben arrested for, only that the old woman swears he’d never do such a thing and mutters curses under her breath at the guy who called the cops to begin with.
“I’m Noriaki,” the redhead tells him, offering his hand for Jotaro to shake. “You’ll probably have to come over here a lot. Enyaba doesn’t like us very much. She doesn’t even call me by the right name.”
“Jotaro,” Jotaro tells him, wishing he had a hat on to pull over his eyes. “Why doesn’t she like you?”
“Pol-Pol got her son arrested and kicked out of college.”
“Don’t call me Pol-Pol!” the voice from the other room shouts.
Noriaki doesn’t respond to it, so Jotaro doesn’t either. “Why wouldn’t she like you?”
“Guilt by association.” He seems smug about it, for some reason. It’s kind of a good look on him, as far as looks go. Jotaro’s never really associated with anyone he could classify as punk before. But then, he really tends to avoid anything that could be perceived as social interaction, because so much of it leads down a dangerous road to people he doesn’t like taking up an interest in him.
…but there really couldn’t be much harm in getting to know his neighbors better, since they’re going to be working next to each other and all. “We’ll make an effort to keep the volume to a reasonable level,” Noriaki says, brushing his bangs out of the way, “At least, when you’re around. I don’t care much about what Enyaba thinks, but it goes against my ethics to isolate potential customers.”
Jotaro scowls at him, or he probably very much looks like he is. His face isn’t given to friendly expression, as he’s been told more than once, so when his mouth dips into a frown he’s read one way or another as being put out. “What makes you think I’m a potential customer?” he asks. “I haven’t asked your prices or anything.”
Noriaki hasn’t dropped the smug smile from his face, although now in addition to looking triumphant, he looks amused. “You wouldn’t be staring if you weren’t interested.”
It’s the first time in recent memory that Jotaro has been caught well and truly off guard. He’d always thought he knew himself pretty well, and that in his confidence as a singular person and unwillingness to compromise his personality for the sake of a relationship had, for better or worse, confined him to singleness. He didn’t think of it as much of a sacrifice. He wasn’t looking for someone, and still wasn’t sure he had a type.
The smirk the artist gives him when he pushes a business card into his dumbfounded hand tells him that he’s not just met his match, but lost the first round of a game he hadn’t even been aware he’d started playing.
When he returns to Enya’s shop, it’s with the wavering beat of ABBA on his heels, and Polnareff’s offkey warbles permeating the walls.