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Kujo Jotaro was a deeply serious man.
That much was easy to determine just by looking at him. Rohan didn’t need Heaven’s Door—the moment he laid eyes on Jotaro, he was sure of two things: that he was a hardass, and that there was a thick layer of armor underneath his skin that had been constructed very deliberately to keep people out.
It had taken a lot of time and a lot of trust to be allowed to penetrate that armor, and even once Rohan was past it he found that Jotaro was still often distant and cold. He was a man of few actions, and of even fewer words. It was one of the things Rohan liked about him, but it did occasionally drive him crazy.
There were things that did surprise him, though. And a great number of them came to him in the form of Jotaro’s stand.
Star Platinum had been an object of Rohan’s interest for quite some time. People talked, and all the talk that had made its way back to Rohan said that Star Platinum was the most powerful stand in the world. That Jotaro could use it to stop time, an ability that no other person alive possessed; that it was inhumanly fast; that it had immense destructive power.
After spending some time with Jotaro, Rohan came to realize that he had been interested in Star Platinum for all the wrong reasons.
Jotaro treated his stand like an extension of himself. And Star was, in a way—Rohan knew that to be factually true. A stand was a manifestation of one’s soul. But the way that Jotaro coexisted with Star Platinum was...different. He manifested him even when he didn’t need to. He would use Star as extra hands when his own were full. He would talk to him sometimes, when it was late at night and he was trying to puzzle through an issue with his thesis. Star Platinum wasn’t capable of speech—Rohan was certain of that, having watched with great interest for some time—but there was some small glimmer of understanding in his eyes when Jotaro talked.
The way Jotaro moved and interacted with his stand was as natural as if they were one being. Two sides of the same coin. The way Rohan interacted with Heaven’s Door just...wasn’t the same. Perhaps it was because he’d only gained his ability a few months ago, but he still felt uncomfortable when he moved it. It wasn’t unlike the discomfort he’d felt when he first began to draw. He could hold the pencil and drag it across the page, but it didn’t always do exactly what he wanted.
He’d tried talking to it like Jotaro did a few times, out of simple curiosity, but found the exercise pointless. In the end, he was just as stuck on the plot point he’d been trying to explain as he’d been when he started, and the little china-doll face looking back at him hopefully as if waiting for orders unsettled him on some level. He had a long way to go before he was comfortable bringing Heaven’s Door out for something as frivolous as getting something down off a high shelf.
Star Platinum, though…
As Jotaro grew more comfortable around Rohan, Star began to inhabit his personal space. Occasionally, when he was working, he would feel a hand on his shoulder and look up to find that it wasn’t Jotaro’s. Sometimes Star smiled at Rohan with surprising warmth, or reached out to carefully smooth a strand of hair that had escaped his headband back into place.
It unsettled Rohan at first. It took him much longer than he cared to admit to figure out what was going on.
Star Platinum was a mirror.
He was Jotaro. He was Jotaro’s will. He was Jotaro’s rage, but also all of the soft, caring parts of him that he’d locked up behind so many walls and spikes. It was easier, somehow, for Jotaro to use his stand to express his affection for Rohan than it was for him to do it himself.
And once Rohan understood that, it was so easy.
It was so simple to get used to those large, ethereal hands that were the warm blue of the evening sky and the soft purple of lilacs blooming in the springtime reaching out for his own. It was so normal to lean into Star’s touch with a sigh. It was so natural to accept the affection for what it was, and to appreciate it with all his heart even though its source was seated on the couch on the other side of the room.
It took a long time for Rohan to work up to doing the same.
In the end, he started with a small gesture. Something simple. Something easy.
He picked up the cup and saucer with Heaven’s Door’s small, delicate hands, concentrating very carefully so as not to spill a drop, and gripped the edge of the table tightly with his own as he maneuvered his stand across the room to where Jotaro was sitting.
This didn’t feel natural to him. It felt forced and uncomfortable, but he still wanted to try. It was important to him to try. It would never stop being uncomfortable if he didn’t try.
Jotaro looked up when the saucer clinked against the coffee table in front of him, and raised an eyebrow at the sight of Heaven’s Door hovering there. He picked up the coffee cup, took a sip, and then turned to look at Rohan.
No words were exchanged, but the warmth of the smile—on Jotaro’s face, this time, not Star’s—was the only thing Rohan needed.