Chapter Text
The ache between Jotaro’s eyes blooms wide and vibrant like a weed, bursting down his neck, his beleaguered spine. Again comes the urge to smother it with cigarette smoke, but there will be no smoke breaks today.
He’s trying to quit anyway.
Jotaro purses his lips, and boils off all his frustration in one breath. “So,” he says, cold and ragged into the receiver, “you’re telling me that a new employee left the greenhouse doors open last night.”
“Yes,” whimpers the poor girl on the other end. He can picture her, fingernails bunching in the canvas of her apron. He can almost feel the rigor clawing up her back.
“In January,” says Jotaro, flat as the blade of a guillotine.
“Yes.”
“And all the flowers froze over and died.”
“Yes.”
“Including my order. For the funeral that starts in two hours.”
”I’m afraid so, Mr. Kujo.“
“I see,” says Jotaro, and slams the long-suffering handset back into its place. His interest in hearing her ‘heartfelt,’ corporate apology is nonexistent. He is not here for bowing and scraping.
He is here for dignified, beautiful funerals, goddamnit.
Jotaro pinches the bridge of his nose between two fingertips that never stop smelling like embalming fluid. He does not think about what life would be like had he studied marine biology in school.
Then his fingers would never stop smelling like fish.
Somewhere amid all this pointlessness, Jotaro straightens his back. He sets his jaw into a perfect right angle. He steps out of the office, into the frigid back hallway.
Being a mortician, Jotaro has two pairs of work shoes. These are the good ones, without the scuffs or the stains or the thick rubber soles. They clatter on the tile, startling the life out of Josuke.
Jotaro’s eye twitches. “What are you doing?”
It’s a rhetorical question. Josuke is leaning against the wall with his thumb up his ass, doing absolutely fuck-all nothing.
“I was waiting for you to get off the phone. Abdul never lets me help with the place settings. It’s always gotta be perfect.”
This is fair. Jotaro remembers his own apprenticeship, how long it took him to learn exactly how Abdul thought those damn paper napkins were supposed to go.
Jotaro does not have the patience for fair. He does not have the patience for nearly anything, least of all this.
“Florist says no flowers,” he grinds, like gravel against skin.
Josuke cringes like he’s been stabbed with an icicle. “The hell do you mean, ‘no flowers?’”
“Don’t swear in the funeral home. I mean there’s no damn flowers.”
Josuke’s mouth falls open, and then wisely shuts again. In the weeks he’s been working here, he has learned to pick his battles. “What do you want me to do?”
“Tell the old man what happened. Don’t wait for him to finish laughing. If there’s not gonna be flowers, I want everything else spotless.”
“Got it.” He sets off at a clip, jogging awkward in his suit.
Jotaro dredges his sigh up from deep, like a shipwreck. Rust-colored, flaking apart. He curls his enervated hands into fists.
There are going to be flowers at this funeral. If he has to walk to the drugstore and buy up all of their limping tulips, goddamnit, there are going to be flowers at this funeral.
He stalks back into the office, letting the heavy door slam. He slams himself into the ancient, sagging desk chair; pulls up to the ancient, sagging computer. With his teeth grinding like millstones, with his fingers stabbing at the keys, Jotaro googles ‘florists near me.’
He calls one. He calls a few. They are all very sorry, but there’s really no way in hell they can accommodate such a tight turnaround time.
Jotaro calculates how long it would take him to drive to that drugstore. If it would be quicker to run, with the afternoon traffic. If he would slip and eat shit on the icy sidewalk. If that was just another facet of his duty.
The livid red numbers on the clock sear themselves into the backs of Jotaro’s eyes.
He reaches the end of the page.
Jotaro thrusts himself upward.
He thinks about his femur, shattering against the slick pavement, and how six weeks on crutches would probably be worse for the funeral home overall.
Jotaro thrusts himself back down, and clicks over to the second page of results.
His first thought is that it’s strange, that as a mortician there should not be a florist within thirty miles that he hasn’t heard of.
But there it is: Trussardi’s. Not far away.
It must be new. Surely, if it’s on the second page; if it had existed for any length of time, Trussardi would have had the opportunity to get their search engine optimization in order.
Jotaro checks the Yelp reviews. They are few, but they are uniformly positive on a level that almost disturbs him.
He punches the number into the dottering old phone, fingers curled so tight around the handset he could swear he hears the yellowed plastic creak.
There is one ring. Two rings.
Two and a half, and then—“Hello, you’ve reached Trussardi’s. This is Tonio, how may I help you?”
The voice is steady and practiced, but utterly free of contempt. A man’s voice, a man who isn’t yet sick of his job. No, there’s something melodious to it, like he’s been waiting all day just to answer the phone.
Jotaro kind of wants to punch the teeth out of that cheerful voice.
“Hey,” he says instead, gravely. “I need a manager.”
He needs an aspirin. He needs a cigarette. He needs a truckload of fresh white lilies, an hour and a half ago.
A disgustingly pleasant laugh floats down the line.
“What’s funny,” grits Jotaro, too quickly. It is not a question. It is perhaps more like a threat.
“Oh,” says the man, airily. As if this is some book-club conversation, held over a glass of Chardonnay. “Nothing. It’s just that I am the manager. I’m Tonio Trussardi.”
This, Jotaro supposes, is the kind of person who runs a boutique flower shop. An unmitigated fruit.
“Jotaro Kujo,” he says, instead of anything else that’s in his mind. It’s still strange to him, putting the given name first, though it’s been years since he moved to America.
It is not the strangest thing about this conversation, not by a country mile.
“I’m from Joestar and Son Funeral Parlor. My regular florist fell through.”
He thinks he lets on admirably little of how much he wants to waste his regular florist right now.
“Oh,” croons Trussardi, mournfully. He hasn’t even heard the worst part. “That is difficult. I’ve never done a funeral before, but I’ll do everything I can to help.”
Jotaro shakes his head. He’s about to shove those words crosswise down Trussardi’s throat. He wonders what unearned confidence tastes like.
“The guests are gonna be here in ninety minutes,” he says, and the words fall from his mouth like a stone. He fully expects it to shatter on impact.
“Okay,” Trussardi says, unfazed and unfliching. “What kind of flowers do you need?”
The urge to ask him if he’s fucking serious scrabbles at the back of Jotaro’s mouth. But he doesn’t. He can’t afford to. Jotaro heaves a sigh, dripping with the weight of the world, and he says “white ones.”
“Lilies? Peonies? Of course, not daisies.”
“Lilies if you got ‘em. Anything else, I don’t give a shit.”
He can almost hear Trussardi’s resolute nod. “I have a little of everything. I’ll get it all in the van and I’ll be there as soon as I can. We can work out the cost later.”
Jotaro purses his lips. His brow is creased like a cracking faultline.
“What’s the catch?” he asks, voice thick with skepticism.
“Nothing at all. You’re in a bind, I want to help you.” Jotaro believes him as far as he could throw him. Or, considering the strength differential between someone who arranges flowers and someone who hauls dead weight all day, about as far as Trussardi could throw Jotaro.
Still. Jotaro sighs. He resigns himself. His body is always making more resignation, the way that it makes blood. It is an unconscious, necessary function.
“Alright,” he mutters, and gives Trussardi the address.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” Trussardi instructs, like a lawgiver. Like this is a solemn occasion.
Like Jotaro could ever set any store by it.
An hour passes with Jotaro’s lip between his teeth, with Jotaro’s fingernails scratching at his palm. Everything is checked in triplicate. The guest book will burst into flames if Abdul straightens it one more time on its little podium.
Josuke looks as if he is about to ask Jotaro to teach him how to smoke, and Jotaro craves nicotine so badly he might say yes just for the contact high.
And Mom, who has smiled continuously since six weeks old, is humming sugary pop songs. Like she heard Trussardi on the phone, and like she really expects the bastard to pull through.
He’s about to snap at her to cool it with the ABBA when a van fishtails up to the curb outside. It’s the kind of windowless van you might shudder at if it wasn’t branded, but it is—it’s done up in sage and purple and cream, like a wedding invitation on wheels.
TRUSSARDI’S, it reads, in this curly-ass font, and Jotaro is rushing for the door when the last person he’d ever expect hops out of the driver’s side.
It’s not like he knows the guy or anything. But, like, with the slicked-back hair, the scarred-up face, the dissident stance… Jotaro half expects to get shaken down for protection money.
But then there’s the floral apron.
Jotaro doesn’t have the time to wonder about this kid—he thinks it’s a kid? Guys like him always want to look older than they are, and sometimes they even succeed. At a guess, though, he’d clock this guy at about eighteen. Same as Josuke.
But Jotaro doesn’t have time to wonder about this kid—he wrenches the door open, barrels outside.
Scarface greets him with a big old smile to give Mom a run for her money.
“You’re the guy from the phone?” His voice is rough, like he’s been eating a pack a day.
Jotaro introduces himself in the fewest syllables possible. Jotaro Kujo. Mortician.
Scarface shakes his hand like he’s trying to rip it off. “Okuyasu Nijimura. Part-time florist. We got your flowers.”
There’s barely the time to wonder wait, we? before the back of the truck kicks open.
The man who jumps out of it is Trussardi, Jotaro is certain. There’s just this… aura of calm around him. Even with his honey-blond hair in a mess, even with a painter’s bucket full of white dahlias splashing freezing water on his leg.
He’s smiling so gently, like even that is something he wants to handle with care.
He steps lightly over to Jotaro, holds out his hand. Jotaro shakes it, pretending for his life that he isn’t in some kind of daze.
And he isn’t. Why would he be?
It’s the stress. It’s that hoarfrost that creeps over him, from the innards out, when he goes too long without a smoke.
“It’s very nice to meet you.” Trussardi says this with a smile like late April, like the smell of snowmelt. Like it really is nice to meet him.
“Likewise,” mutters Jotaro, because it is the most polite that he knows how to be. He takes the bucket from Trussardi’s hand, lets that unwieldy weight draw his shoulder like a bowstring.
“Well! There’s no time to waste. We’ll help you get ready.“
Jotaro wants to protest this—good grief, how helpful can one bastard be? And really, how helpful could he be? Isn’t there some saying about too many cooks?
He’s got a perfectly good crew; they can take care of the setup. He tries to say, stammers over it, but Trussardi and Nijimura are already unloading the van, already hauling the flowers inside.
Jotaro spares a glance to the scratched face of his heirloom watch—twenty-five minutes until the guests arrive. There’s no arguing with that sort of turnaround.
He sighs, clamps his teeth down on the inside of his cheek, and hastens back inside.
When Jotaro was a dour, friendless kid, he used to watch the ants in the sidewalk cracks. The way they moved, separate creatures tethered by one purpose. If they found food, they would take it to pieces and haul it back into their home. If they found an enemy, they would do the same.
The scene inside the funeral parlor could have been like that, if Jotaro was better at delegating tasks. Really, though—it’s pandemonium. Every hand turns a different direction, and even the rustling of petals is so fucking loud that Jotaro could have a conniption.
He checks his watch every third breath, he swears on every second. His mind takes everything he has learned about flower arranging in twelve years and feeds it through a woodchipper.
Jotaro sighs, scans the room for something to be mad at. He finds it, too—Josuke, it seems, has enlisted Nijimura for help in hanging some flowers high on a wall.
Past tense. Now he’s just sat wobbling on Nijimura’s shoulders, laughing and swaying and urging don’t drop me, dude!
Like they’ve known each other for years.
Like they know that everything is gonna be alright.
It makes his lip curl. They’re not fucking psychic.
“Josuke,“ Jotaro warns. He darts a glare toward Trussardi, as if to mutter are you seeing this shit?
“Oh,” he says, “I apologize for my employee.” He ushers Okuyasu back to work with a little wave of his hand.
There is a smile, a sense of well-being underpinning it all.
Jotaro snaps the stem of an alstroemeria and growls, and then suddenly—there is a voice in his ear, a body next to his.
“Hey,” soothes Trussardi, his voice petal-soft. “We’ve still got fifteen minutes before the guests are supposed to be here. I’m sure we’ll have this place looking just how you want it by then.“
Jotaro narrows his eyes, the tension headache tightening around his brow. There’s an ache in the points of his teeth, some urge to chew Trussardi’s words apart. How can he be so sure of that? Of any of this? How can a person convince themself so completely that things are going to be okay? How is it possible to fit that much bullshit inside of one body cavity?
And what the hell is he talking about, we?
Jotaro bites hard into his lower lip, and doesn’t say any of that. He just nods, and stuffs the broken alstroemeria toward the back of the arrangement.
It could look worse. It could also look better.
It’s a crock, he decides, all of it. Everything Trussardi has said, every little move he’s made. His fearless facade, like nothing could ever go wrong.
That little leap inside of Jotaro’s lungs, that tiny optimism when Trussardi spoke to him. That’s the worst of it, and Jotaro quashes it like a centipede in his shower. He’s got shit to do.
And he does it. The flowers get out. The flowers get out, and the lights in the chapel get dimmed, and it could look worse.
It could also look better.
But it could look worse.
And no, that’s the worst of it. That Trussardi was at least half-right.
Through the stained glass, Jotaro sees the bent, distorted image of cars pulling up outside. People in black step out of them, ascribing solemnity and grace to the unwieldy process of exiting a car. As if some god is watching through the January blear.
Trussardi sees it too, as he gathers up his painter’s buckets, as he turns conveniently away from Nijimura chattering with Josuke. He straightens, sloshes a little more water onto the carpet.
There’s nothing that can be done about that now, but that doesn’t mean Jotaro can’t be pissed off about it. He tightens his brow.
Trussardi smiles anyway, approaching Jotaro like there’s no possible way he could get his nose bitten off.
“I think my number is up,” he says, a little crinkling at the edges of his eyes.
They’re blue, Jotaro notices, the color that the sea’s supposed to be in those travel commercials.
The sea doesn’t actually look like that.
Jotaro clears his throat, mutters yeah.
“I’ll be back tomorrow to work out the payment. When’s a good time for you?”
Jotaro tells him, and Trussardi nods. “I’ll be there,” he promises. And then, a little softer, “it was my pleasure to help you.“
A nod, then, and the phantom sensation of his mother poking him, whispering politeness in his ear—Jotaro thanks him, stiff and splintered as a two-by-four.
And then he’s gone, with one last smile like a little salute.
Welling up in Jotaro is the distinct feeling that he’s been working the entire day. He flicks his eyes down to his watch.
It is only half noon, and miles to go before he sleeps.
He straightens his spine, tilting back into the breach.