Work Text:
Talking, talking your way out
But he’s still on the lookout
I lose my voice, I think I’m cursed
We make love as we rehearse.
--
The wind shakes rain off the maples and the autumn damp seeps through Joseph’s flimsy jacket. The older he gets the harder the cold bites. It’s almost enough to make him miss the Egyptian sun. Almost.
He follows the sulphur smell of a fresh-lit cigarette to the other side of the porch. “Don’t let your mom catch you smoking this close to her house.”
Jotaro tips his head back and releases a breath, smoke drifting in phantom tendrils across the garden. “Do you need something?”
Joseph ignores the twinge in his back as he sits down. “Can’t a guy just hang out with his grandson while he ruins his lungs?”
Jotaro’s eyebrow is the only part of him that responds. He’s wearing a t-shirt with a logo Joseph doesn’t recognize--probably some Japanese band. At first he’d thought his grandson’s tendency to dress hideously inappropriately for the weather was an element of his Stand, then he’d written it off as teenage petulance. Now, he frowns as the wind creeps gooseflesh across Jotaro’s arms. Joseph has never understood why so many people feel the need to punish themselves when life has such a hard-on for doing it for you.
“Your mother told me you’ve been picking fights.” Smalltalk is worthless with this kid. “And she says you aren’t eating.”
Jotaro flicks ash into the wind. “You flew all the way across the Pacific because I haven’t been eating. That’s not very responsible.”
“Hey, smartass.” Joseph jabs a finger at him. “I can do whatever I want. I’m retired!”
“So you’re here to, what, force-feed me? Set me on fire again with--.” He breaks off and crumples the empty packet of cigarettes.
Joseph sucks in a cold, woody breath. The air here is better than in New York City, at least. “Look, you shouldn’t expect yourself to just fall back into routine, okay? It’s only been a couple months.” A couple of months since sand in his eyes, a knife in his throat, his blood in someone else’s body. “Going from that to just being a high school student--.”
“It’s more than some people get.” Jotaro lights another cigarette. His last one, unless he’s got another pack somewhere. He’d smoked much less on the trip after Kakyoin had given him a stunning smile and said, politely, that it was disgusting habit that would end up ruining his good looks.
“Losing friends when you’re young, I know it isn’t easy. Losing people you’ve fought alongside, comrades...is even worse.”
“Are you talking about your dead boyfriend? Something Zepelli?”
The blow is so low and so unexpected that Joseph actually feels Hermit Purple coiling around his arms. Anger crashes through him, following the familiar pathways through his body. If he’d had a camera to smash, the photos would show a trampled snowscape, a heap of blood-spattered rubble, a ring and a final sacrifice.
He opens his mouth. Forces it shut.
Jotaro’s upset, Joseph tells himself. He isn’t the type to show his feelings, but he isn’t all right. He’s just a kid.
“It doesn’t matter who it was. Just that the sort of pain is hard to endure, but you can do it.”
“So you’re telling me--.” Jotaro tips his chin up, the weary afternoon light catching on his earring, a little red sphere. “That I can endure it.” The last time Joseph had seen that earring it hadn’t been a stud. “That I’ll get over it. Like you got over Caesar.”
“So you do know his name! You’re just trying to piss me off--.”
“--By marrying a blond Italian and then never using hamon ever again? Is that how you got over it?” Jotaro’s voice gets louder with every word; Joseph hopes Holly isn’t anywhere nearby.
“Don’t bring your grandmother into this!” he roars back. “I have never once regretted marrying her!” Except on days he does, when he knows they were too young, too stupid. Except when he’s sure she deserved better, or he did. When he can’t resist the wanderlust, can’t forget all the other men and women he has fallen in love with throughout his life.
He had come out here to help, but how could his words be anything but empty assurances from an old man who has made as many mistakes as he has drawn breaths?
“Being a Joestar is like…” He grips his fingers in his hair. Shit, he’s terrible at this. “It’s like being a match, alright? As soon as there’s a little friction you burst into flames. And now you’re going to say ‘I’m not a Joestar’.”
“I’m not a Joestar.” A glare. “Fuck you.”
“You know the name isn’t important,” Joseph says. “It didn’t matter with Dio, or with your Stand. Blood matters. And Joestar blood catches on fire. It has a tendency to burn down everyone around it!”
Jotaro stares at him a little more, then cracks up into his fist. For Jotaro, that means he chuckles. Once. “Profound.”
Joseph’s body makes a perfunctory attempt to hold onto his irritation, but it dissolves with the next puff of Jotaro’s smoke. “Hey, I’m trying! Not all of us are naturally surly and thoughtful.”
Jotaro says. “I’d talk more if your Japanese wasn’t so terrible,” but his hand is covering his smile. He rubs his mouth with his knuckles, like the expression has taken him by surprise. “Did Grandma Suzie know?”
“That my Japanese is terrible? Hers is a lot worse, believe me--.” A jolt of anxiety blooms up Joseph’s spine. There is no fucking way that Jotaro knows about his affair, right, his grandson is impressive but he isn’t a goddamn oracle--
Jotaro rolls his eyes. “About Caesar.”
Joseph cringes. “Oh, she knew alright.” By the end of that month in 1939 he doubts there was anyone in the whole castello who didn’t know. Being fucked discretely has never been one of Joseph’s talents, restrictive breathing devices or not.
That is not the sort of anecdote one share’s with their grandson, but he’s grinning at the memories now, instead of letting them scratch him raw. He inhales cold air, imagining it blooming all the way to the tips of his fingers, the base of his spine. Filling his old, sluggish blood with potential and nostalgia. He’s never been able to flush the touch of Caesar’s hamon out of his body--it still burns. Quietly.
He breathes out. “You’re gonna be alright, kid.” He doesn’t quite clap Jotaro on the shoulder. It’s more an awkward swipe of knuckles against his upper arm.
Jotaro’s eyebrows go up. “All right like you’re all right?”
“Hey, ‘all right’ isn’t fantastic.” Joseph snorts. “It isn’t even average.”
Jotaro’s gaze lingers across the dripping garden; it’s raining again, gently. His last cigarette has burned out halfway to the filter. He drops it into the ashtray. “Comforting.”
“You want to be comforted, try being less of a snide little asshole sometimes,” Joseph suggests with genuine affection.
“Good grief,” Jotaro says, and he tips his head back to look at the evening sky.