Chapter Text
He wasn't human. Not to any of them, even if they were looking him straight in the eye. Like he wasn't real, something that they could just walk on past without ever seeing.
Indeed, a job in food service had never been Dio Brando's ideal career to begin with, never would be, and it killed him to stand behind that counter every day, but it wasn't pride that paid the bills. The occasional sacrifice was required to live the sort of long and fruitful life that he planned to live, and, in that vein of reasoning, sometimes you had to work as a barista at a pathetic café in order to afford your swanky, 70 square metre flat. Luxury came at a price.
“What size coffee would you like?” He asked the customer at the counter, who wasn't even looking at him, engrossed in whatever was on his phone. Pathetic. Those who couldn't bother to pay attention to the specifics of their coffee didn't deserve a drink in the first place.
Nonetheless, he asked again. Patience was the key to success. “Small, medium, or large?” Luckily, this time the customer looked up.
“Oh. Large, large,” saying it twice as if Dio was the type of idiot to forget instructions.
He filled up the cup, and grimaced at the thought of the next round of questioning.
“Would you like milk with your coffee?” Dio stared at the man whilst holding a cup of liquid that was entirely too hot for comfortable human consumption, who had in the meantime retreated back to his phone.
“What? Uh, yeah. Skim.” Well, at least that saved him a second question about what kind.
Dio hauled out the milk carton, poising it above the cup of coffee. A single drop fell, sending the dark liquid in ripples out towards the paper edge of its container. “Tell me when.” The customer was still not looking at him, despite being right there. He started to pour regardless, figuring that if this man could not be bothered to care about the percentage of milk in his coffee he would have no right to complain if it ended up being too much.
Cool white continued to fall into rapidly lightening brown, the milk churning and falling over itself on its way to the top of the beverage—yet Dio heard no sign to stop. Just as the cup was about to spill over, Dio looked up at his inattentive customer with a mixture of anger and raw desperation, who, then, without breaking eye contact with his phone, said the one magic word:
“When.”
“That'll be £1.25.”
“Thanks, mate.”
Dio truly despised his job.
It wasn't, however, until someone finally did treat Dio Brando like a human being one afternoon that he understood exactly how much potential hatred could course through his body.
Three things immediately stood out about this particular customer: he was the largest man Dio had ever seen (and he wasn't exactly small himself at 6'1), he was built like a brick shithouse, and he'd started off their transaction with a smile and a “Hi, how are you today?”.
Niceties such as this were so foreign to Dio that he almost didn't hear what the man had said—and he would be lying if he said he hadn't also been distracted by the thick body in front of him—so he stood there, waiting for him to make a purchase. A moment of silence passed between them in which they both locked expectant eyes, and it wasn't until Dio mentally backpedaled, wondering if he had missed something important, that he realized that he had been asked a question.
“You want to know...how I'm doing?” The blue-haired man bobbed his head energetically, as if this was an incredibly exciting conversation that he desperately wished to continue. Dio felt his face flush in a sudden wave of irritation, the source of which he could not exactly pinpoint.
It dawned upon him that he was not entirely sure how to answer the question. All his instincts were urging him to lie, lie as he always did in every unfamiliar situation—he was an aspiring lawyer, after all—but something unknown was causing Dio to hesitate. Assuaging words tripped over one other on their way out of his mouth, producing stuttering sounds that scarcely resembled speech. Yet it didn't seem to bother this man, still waiting patiently like a stupid, faithful dog. After several half-starts, Dio finally managed to spit out, much to his own frustration, an answer very far from what he had originally intended.
“I could be better.” Though the four words hardly betrayed any of his true feelings regarding his current situation, incessant alarm bells rang through Dio's mind, worried that he'd said too much. Unhappiness was a sign of vulnerability, especially when displayed in front of a customer, who, by definition, held power over him.
But this man, this strange, massive, blue-haired man with his infuriatingly kind doe eyes simply contorted his handsome features into rugged sadness over a stranger's plight, and said two words that Dio felt throughout his entire body.
“I'm sorry.” It was the kind of apology that implied sympathy rather than culpability, which was generally not the way in which Dio had always wanted to hear those words from a customer. But he nodded absently, willing himself to shut up before he gave away any more intimate details, since, apparently, he could no longer control himself before this giant.
The man bent over to grab from the refrigerator area below the counter a sandwich and then placed it in front of Dio, looking at him yet again with those big blue eyes that could do no wrong.
“Sorry, I didn't catch it, what's your name?”
No one on the other side of that counter had ever bothered to ask his name.
“...Dio Brando.”
“Well, Dio, I hope you feel better soon. Things might not always go the way we want at first, but I like to believe that everything always works itself out in the end.” He smiled brightly, and Dio felt all of a sudden very heavy.
The rest of the transaction passed in a blur, fingertips brushing as credit card changed hands, patient, measured breath as the machine whirred and connected—a receipt to sign with a still faintly warm pen, a mechanical “have a good day” and a heartfelt “thank you”.
It wasn't until the giant was safely out of sight and out of earshot but certainly not out of mind that Dio felt secure in ripping back open the register tray to read the name on the receipt, printed in blocky letters: Jonathan Joestar.
Luckily enough, this Jonathan Joestar, or Jojo, as he was apparently called by his friends, was the type of idiot to have his entire Facebook profile set to public, his life on display within seconds after a single search for such a distinctive name. Through some simple analysis of his page, Dio could figure out a number of things about the man: first, that he was disgustingly rich; second, that he somehow was truly just that compassionate and outgoing of a person to want to strike up a conversation with his cashier (he'd replied personally to every single message on his last birthday); and third, that he looked very good in a form-fitting, tight-thighed rugby uniform.
Yet several years worth of timeline content later, Dio honestly still wasn't sure exactly what he had planned to accomplish by cyberstalking Jonathan Joestar. Knowing where he lived or who he spent time with was in no way useful to him, yet he'd inexplicably now committed it all to memory. The man didn't deserve this much. They'd barely interacted for five minutes, had exchanged no more than a few sentences. Jonathan probably didn't even remember his name.
So why, then, did Dio keep mentally replaying that scene over and over again, as if the memory would happen differently the next time? It all meant nothing, yet, judging by the amount of valuable brainspace this was occupying, it meant everything. The repeating process made him want to tear his own face off in frustration. Thousands of “how are you?”s were tossed around thoughtlessly every day like they were nothing, but this was different from all that somehow, if only because it was so clear now that Jonathan Joestar had actually meant it. Within the span of that simple question, he had seen Dio Brando as his equal.
But all the same, that fleeting moment of humanity the two had shared must have been something that everyone else who met Jonathan Joestar every single day also felt. After all, his sheer amount of Facebook friends mandated that Dio's was not a unique experience. The knowledge that he was just one member of an entranced crowd made his fingers curl, nails digging into palm.
How surely exhausting it was, being so many strangers' life-changing ray of sunlight. If everyone in the world was at least half as frustrated with their lives as Dio Brando was (though he found his own situation hard to top), Jonathan Joestar must have been doing the exact same thing to at least fifty new disenfranchised persons per week. Assuming that perhaps half of those people got Jonathan's name after the fact and kept in touch, desperate for a fix of that morphine-like kindness, he'd be making 25 new lifelong friends each week. By the end of the month, it would hit a hundred. One hundred people to occupy your thoughts, to constantly demand your time each month. Twelve hundred a year.
Yes, you'd either have to be incredibly stupid or good-hearted to put up with it all—but he knew now that Jonathan Joestar was both. Dio didn't even want to think about what that made him, then, as the one who couldn't stop thinking about this beautiful, kind imbecile.
Perhaps if Jonathan had actually come by the café again, had apathetically ordered a coffee just like all the rest of his idiotic customers, had refused to look him in the eye and only spoke when spoken to—maybe, if he could reveal himself to truly just be a normal human being, worth every bit of Dio's contempt, he'd let it all go. All this pining, bitterness, hatred; whatever any of it was. But not even that could be allowed to happen.
Because, as time continued to flow and one reasonable business day became two, a test of will at three, jumping up to an excruciating five and then a hopeless seven, Jonathan Joestar failed to ever show up again at the café.
Dio felt anger creep up his spine every time he felt a customer's eyes glide right past him, every time he spotted a blue head that wasn't the one he was looking for. But, most of all, it came because he knew that this absence was perfectly reasonable. A week was nothing to Jonathan Joestar, active student, friend, athlete, and son. He had other, better places to be than some dinky on-campus café that didn't even serve frappuccinos. Dio had always thought that he himself was too good for the place, but the idea that perhaps Jonathan did as well was somehow now unacceptable.
Yet again and again he etched the humongous blue man's features into his brain, scanning each and every member of every crowd that passed by for the slightest resemblance. It seemed pathetic now, but just you wait, Jonathan Joestar, Dio thought to himself.
When I finally see you again, I'll make you regret you ever made the mistake of treating me like a human being.