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December 24th, 1957: Danville, Kentucky
Soft footsteps thumped against the floorboards of the Joestar household.
Yet in the stillness of the night, there was a quiet, slow creak of a bedroom door. A soft beam of light from the open door streamed into a room. Twinkling yellow string lights bounced off the walls from the small silver Christmas tree that stood soldiered in the corner. In the doorway was a figure, hesitantly, silently observing.
Johnny gently knocked a small fist against the door frame.
“Nick?” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“...Jojo?”
“Are you awake?”
The boy in the bed threw off his blankets and sat up, quickly slipping on the red slippers that laid at the edge of his bed.
“Of course, I’m awake!” he whispered, softly approaching the other boy. “Santa’s coming!”
Johnny stepped into his brother’s room, beaming.
“I brought us some Christmas cookies from the kitchen,” Johnny said. He reached into his pajama pockets and took out a few broken pieces of frosted sugar cookies, laying them out in his hands one by one. He offered them to Nick, palms extended.
“Sorry, I kinda had to break them apart. These pockets don’t fit too much.”
Nick grabbed one of the fragments and popped it into his mouth.
“Mmmm,” he said, mouth full of cookie. “You’re not gonna be able to sleep tonight if you eat all this sugar.”
“Then why’re you eatin’ it?” he responded with a pout, shoving what appeared to have been a snowflake shaped cookie into his mouth.
“Hmm…because,” Nick replied matter-of-factly. He smiled mischievously before grabbing the rest of the treats from Johnny’s tiny hands.
“Hey!”
Nick leapt up onto his bed as the younger boy chased after him. Johnny grabbed onto his legs and let go with one arm, only to grasp for the cookies with all of his might.
“Shh! You’re too loud!” Nick chastised, giggling softly. He grabbed a pillow from behind and shoved it into Johnny’s face with his free hand.
“Don’t eat ‘em all, dummy!” he persisted, his voice muffled from the pillow.
They both tired out quickly, resigning from their conquest. Nick sat up against the bedframe and offered Johnny a cookie in respite. The younger boy furrowed his brow as he accepted the treat, climbing up to sit next to him.
“Thanks for the cookies,” Nick said, ruffling Johnny’s hair. “Ya didn’t steal these from Santa’s plate, didya?”
Johnny sat back, visibly offended.
“I’d never do that! Those are his cookies, Nicky. It's the rules.”
“Mmhm,” Nick said, licking his fingers of the powdered-sugar frosting. “I dunno Jojo. You love sweets.”
Johnny nodded earnestly as he chewed, crumbs all over his face.
The two sat in silence for a moment as the cold December winds battered against the window from outside. It whistled through the trees, chiming its haunting winter melody.
“Nicky, will Santa be able to get down the chimney if there’s a blizzard tonight?” Johnny whispered, blue eyes full of legitimate concern.
“‘Course so. He always finds a way to our house. And he’s got Rudolph, remember?”
“Oh. Yeah,” Johnny relaxed. “Hey, will you play me a song?”
“I can’t. Dad’ll get mad if we wake him up.”
“I don’t think he’s home right now…” Johnny said quietly. “He wasn’t in his room with Momma when I walked by.”
“Oh,” Nick responded, looking distant. “Well, maybe I can play somethin’ then. But we don’t wanna wake up Momma, either, so I’ll be soft.”
Johnny grinned.
Nick reached over to the opposite side of the bed and grabbed his guitar off of the stand on the floor. “I was workin’ on a Christmas song tonight actually. You wanna hear it?”
“Yeah! Or, yeah,” Johnny responded, lowering his voice the second time.
“Okay, here goes. I haven’t finished it yet though.”
Nick strummed a gentle melody along the strings. It was warm, quiet… It sounded like the same feeling Johnny got when he came inside to warm his hands at the fireplace after spending hours playing in the snow.
Johnny sat in awe, his eyes sparking from the dim light of the string lights.
When the soft snow is falling,
Each roof becomes a dome.
Then you’ll hear your heart callin’,
“There’s no place like home”.
There’s no place like home,
That’s when you must believe.
There's no place like home,
Especially Christmas Eve.
Nick went on to embellish the rest of the song with more of the same melody he had been playing at the beginning.
He smiled at Johnny.
“You like it?”
“Nicky,” Johnny whispered earnestly. “That was the best thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Haha,” he said, nudging his shoulder with the head of the guitar. “You say that to just about everythin’ I play.”
“I’m being truthful! That sounded like... I don’t know a word to say it,” Johnny sat up on his knees, facing Nick. “It sounded so good, I thought I was about to start cryin’.”
“Don’t cry!” Nick laughed. “It is real pretty, though. We should try playin’ it together tomorrow. How ‘bout it?”
Johnny laid across Nick’s legs, extending his hands to the ceiling, envisioning a piano.
“Will you play it again? I’ll imagine-practice with you.”
“How do you do that, your imagine-practice thing?”
“Hmm, I don’t know that either,” he responded factually. “I can just imagine playing it and I hear it all in my head.”
“Wow. I wish I could hear your songs.”
“Yeah,” Johnny said quietly. “I wish you could hear ‘em too.”
“Are your thoughts always pretty sounding?”
“Sometimes. Not all the time,” he started. “But tonight, it's even more than pretty.”
“I know!” Nick said after a pause. “You must’ve gotten this trick from eatin’ all of Santa’s cookies.”
Johnny giggled. “Not Santa’s!”
Nick started playing the song again and Johnny followed along, his foot bouncing up and down with an invisible pedal as his fingers danced along an invisible keyboard.
Johnny could hear the chorus, the orchestra, the echo of his piano in a great big hall.
Nick made up more melodies as he went. It was fascinating watching his brother make up a song in real time, his eyes burning with deep focus.
He really was amazing.
~~~
A while later, Johnny’s mother peered into Nicholas’s room from the cracked door.
Her two boys were fast asleep, snuggled together, Nicholas’s arm still slumped around his guitar. She gave them a quiet smile as she closed the door with a silent turn of the knob, tip-toeing away to tuck small gifts into their stockings.