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Jotaro knocked on Rohan’s front door five minutes after the first thunderclap and ten minutes after the rain started pouring down. He looked smaller when he was wet, but that wasn’t saying much; he was shorter by only his doffed cap and the lost height of his sodden shoulders on his jacket.
“Sorry to intrude,” he said, ducking his head, “it’s lashing rain. Koichi said you lived near here. My name is Kujo Jotaro.”
“I know who you are,” Rohan said. Jotaro looked down at him, head and shoulders shorter than him, where he stood leaning in the doorway. It was nine or ten in the evening, he wasn’t sure, but Rohan was still wearing lipstick. His hair was perfect in a way Jotaro didn’t even understand, and he was wearing a cropped sweatshirt and suspenders holding up high-waisted, baggy jeans. “Jotaro,” he said, honorifics and everything, and Jotaro’s eyes snapped back up to his face. “You can come in.”
Jotaro dripped rainwater on the floor and Rohan shut the door behind him and locked it.
“Koichi told me about you,” he said, because it was true. “It’s no trouble.”
“Thank you.” Jotaro shook his hat out and the rain inside it went splat on the floor.
“What were you doing out? The forecast said it would rain all day.”
“I was at city hall looking through the archives,” Jotaro said. “I didn’t think about it.”
Jotaro had heard enough about Rohan from Koichi to know that he had little patience with anything that didn’t benefit him, and Jotaro assumed that he himself fell into that category.
“You can stay until it stops,” Rohan said, “but I have a chapter due at ten tomorrow morning and I have to finish it tonight.”
Jotaro toed his shoes off. “That’s alright. I can just sit.”
“You’re soaking wet, you can’t sit anywhere.” Rohan eyed Jotaro’s wet black socks with disdain. “I’ve got a dryer in the back, I'll see if I’ve got something you can wear while your things go through.”
“You don’t have to.”
“What else am I gonna do? I can’t send you back out in the rain. I wasn’t raised in a barn.” He looked him up and down, clinging shirt and misshapen hat and wide-legged trousers. “Hold on. I must have something that fits you.”
Rohan disappeared upstairs and Jotaro silently took in his opulent foyer. Morioh was full of money, but there weren’t many houses like this. Not for the last time, Jotaro wondered what someone so young and successful was doing in a strange, sleepy place like this.
Rohan came back downstairs holding a big, ratty sweatshirt, which he handed to Jotaro. He held it up: Hokkaido University. Rohan would have been swimming in it.
“It’s not mine,” Rohan said, with thinly veiled disdain. “I don’t remember who left it here, to be honest.”
“Thank you,” Jotaro said, bowing his head. Rohan waved his hand at him.
“Don’t thank me, I don’t have anything for you to put on the bottom. You don’t seem like the type to be put off by sitting around in your underwear, so—you’re going to have to.“
“That’s fine.”
“The dryer is in a cupboard in the bathroom, down the hall to the right. There are towels in the cupboard above that one.”
“Thank you,” Jotaro said again. Rohan looked him up and down.
“My study is at the top of the stairs. I have a couch and books, you can sit and read as long as you don’t bother me. Are you particularly bookish?”
Jotaro had no idea how to answer that. He turned the sweatshirt over in his hands. “Yes.”
“Okay, good. I don’t have much else for you to do. I’ll be up there.”
Rohan turned on his heel and left, climbing the stairs. Jotaro shuffled into the bathroom on the main floor and dropped his heavy, wet coat into the dryer, and then his shirt and pants and socks. He left his hat sitting on the edge of the bathtub, sure that the dryer would warp its shape. He tousled his hair dry and looked at himself in the mirror, prodding at the shape of his bare stomach. The sedentary days and restaurant food that came with being away from home wasn’t doing him any favours, but he was trying not to think about it. He considered bearing the awkwardness of asking Josuke where he went to the gym.
He pulled on the sweatshirt and it fit well enough, even if it smelled musty, like a shut-up closet. His boxers were damp from the rain but not wet. He remembered to take his wallet, keys, lighter, smokes, notepad and pen from his pockets before he turned the dryer on, and left his things on the bathroom counter.
The stairs creaked under his bare feet. He crept into Rohan’s study, which was lit only by an incandescent lamp on his desktop, leaving the rest of the room bathed in shadow. Rohan didn’t look up as he entered, and he shut the door quietly behind him. He ran his fingers over the spines of the books on shelves set into the wall; art history, biographies of great dictators and businessmen, Japanese history, mangaka reference books, an entire set of encyclopedias. Jotaro chose a clunky book about the Battle of Vimy Ridge and sat at one end of the stiff loveseat behind Rohan’s desk. The shape of Rohan's bowed back was silhouetted by the light and Jotaro kept pausing in his reading to glance up, distracted by the movement of his shoulders and the scratch of pen on paper as he drew long, sharp lines.
There was no clock in Rohan’s study and Jotaro had no idea how much time had passed by the time Rohan dropped his pen, straightened up and cracked his neck. He looked over his shoulder and saw Jotaro on the far end of the couch.
“You're still here.”
Jotaro closed his book. “Yeah. Clothes, rain storm.”
“Right, that.” Rohan yawned and stretched, his skinny wrists arching back towards the ceiling. “I had eight more pages to do, and I hate working in the morning, so.”
“It's fine. I didn't expect to be entertained.”
Rohan tapped his stack of papers into order and slid them into a Manila envelope.
“Well, now you can be. Would you like a drink? I've bored you with—” He stood and peered at the cover of the book in Jotaro’s lap. “—the Battle of Vimy Ridge for long enough.”
“I like reading about the World Wars. The advancements in technology at the time were amazing.”
“God, I'm sorry I asked. Come downstairs, I must have something.”
Rohan’s kitchen was modest for a house of that size, tucked away in a back corner under the stairs.
“I don't cook much,” Rohan explained, opening the fridge. “It's easier to order in.”
“I'm sure it is.”
Rohan side-eyed him. “Koichi says you've been living in a hotel, don't play like you're poor.” He ducked into the fridge and emerged with a bomber of Asahi. “Do you drink beer? I also have wine. Only red.”
“Beer is fine, thank you.”
Rohan poured some into a tall glass for him and set it on the table before pulling a mostly-full bottle of wine from the pantry.
“I prefer wine, myself,” Rohan said, as if he were a wine connoisseur and not newly-legal. “I love how much there is to know about it. Wine has its own entire dictionary of terms, more or less.”
Jotaro nodded and watched Rohan pour himself a glass of wine was so dark it looked nearly black. He sat in a straight-backed chair at the table next to Jotaro and fixed him with a disinterested look.
“So, you’re related to Higashikata Josuke, I hear. His… cousin?”
For the first time that evening, Jotaro smiled. “Josuke is my uncle.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. His father is my grandfather. My mother would be his half sister.”
“Lord. So what’s the rule with that? How do you refer to him? I’d kill myself if I had to speak respectfully to that brat.”
“He’s not a bad kid. I remember being his age. Head full of Gucci and Ferragamo.” Jotaro ran his thumb down his glass, swirling a pattern in the condensation. “He’ll grow up.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it. With a stand like that, he could do serious damage if he doesn’t shape up.”
“He will.”
“You really believe in him, huh?”
“He’s family. I try.”
Rohan set his glass down. “Speaking of stands, it must run in the family—Koichi tells me yours is the strongest stand in the world. Star…”
“Star Platinum.” Jotaro looked down. “We have no way of knowing that.”
“The strongest you’ve encountered, anyways.”
“Maybe.”
“You’re modest.”
“It doesn’t pay to be anything else.”
Rohan had a loud bark of a laugh for someone so waifish.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “I'm Kishibe Rohan. If I'm not impressed by that, why should anyone else be? Isn't that all anyone is here for?”
“No. Why does it matter if anyone is impressed?”
“Because we don't exist in a vacuum,” Rohan snapped. “I want something here after I'm gone. If people don't know my name, I'm just—” He twiddled his fingers in the air. “Ghost dust.”
“I'd like to be ghost dust someday. It doesn't seem so bad.”
Rohan sat back in his chair. “You’re interesting, aren’t you? Jotaro...”
“Kujo Jotaro.”
Rohan stuck his hand out towards him. “Kishibe Rohan. Nice to meet you. Formally.”
Jotaro shook his hand and nodded, a smile playing over his lips. They both went quiet. Jotaro felt Rohan’s eyes on him, but he was looking out the dark window above his sink; he was endlessly surprised by how dark a small town like Morioh got at night, with so few humming electric signs and street lights to keep it going. He finished his beer and Rohan motioned for him to get another, so he did, pleasantly buzzed. Rohan seemed as content as he was to speak little, which was rare and welcome. After spending as much time around high school students as Jotaro had been, the silence was nice.
“You’re here researching Morioh’s serial killer, are you not?”
“Yoshikage Kira,” Jotaro nodded, his brow drawn. “It’s been… challenging.”
“No doubt. He’s a stand user?”
“Yes. He has—well, it seems like he has—two stands. One comes off the other. The other day…” And he told Rohan all about Killer Queen, and Rohan listened, pausing to bring his bottle of wine to the table. He told him about finding the button from the coat, dealing with the bomb, being nearly killed and then saved by Koichi. Rohan expressed surprise at Koichi being capable of doing something right. Jotaro finished off another beer.
“And you came here by yourself?” Rohan asked. “Do you not have a job?”
“I conduct my own research,” Jotaro said. “There’s a timeline, but the grant money will wait. I teach, sometimes, but I don't have any classes this spring. I’ve been in contact with students whose theses I’m supervising, but.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know how long I would be here. It’s all been fine.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a marine biologist.”
“Interesting.” Rohan raised his eyebrows. “And, about the—You must have a wife, a girlfriend at home…”
Jotaro scratched the back of his head. “No. Not really.”
“Fascinating.”
“It’s hard to connect with people, who aren’t stand users. I’m sure you know.”
“Stand users attract each other,” Rohan said. He uncrossed his legs. Jotaro’s eyes flicked to his, and then away, just shy of skittish. “I do know,” Rohan went on. “It’s like hiding anything anything else. Like hiding the fact that you have a child. Or that you speak a second language. It’s a part of you.”
Jotaro nodded silently.
“Tell someone that you have a magic ghost who fights for you and all of a sudden you’re crazy,” Rohan said, earning a smile from Jotaro.
“Right.”
They lapsed again into silence, but this time Jotaro held Rohan’s gaze. He couldn’t tell what colour his eyes were in the low light; some kind of green. His face was angular and fine-boned, his lips still perfectly painted at nearly midnight. He had lines under his eyes, smudges of tired blue in the corners that, Jotaro thought, might have been half-covered by makeup. For one reason or another, Jotaro couldn’t imagine what Rohan would have looked like when he was younger, as if he’d just sprung to Earth looking as he currently did, fully formed.
Rohan interrupted his reverie.
“Do you ever use your stand to jerk off?”
Jotaro’s knee banged on the underside of the table. Rohan held up his hands.
“You don’t have to answer. I just mean like, with that speed and precision. It would be jerking off, you know, he’s part of you. Or—do you call him it? I always refer to Heaven’s Door as he, he’s rather humanoid, but I suppose others might… not.” He paused. “Not that I’ve ever masturbated with him. I feel like that goes without saying.”
Jotaro squinted at him. “Can I ask how old you are?”
“I just turned twenty.”
Jotaro almost, almost smiled. “I figured.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I don’t know anyone my age who would openly ask about masturbation.”
“Oh, please, you can’t be that old. We all do it, I don’t see why anyone has to be so uptight.”
“How old do you think I am?”
“You can’t be more than twenty-five.”
Jotaro definitely smiled. “I turn twenty-nine this summer.”
“Interesting. I would’ve lost a bet.”
“People usually guess older.”
“Only because you’re so tall, I’m sure. You have a… youthful face.”
Rohan was looking at him again. Jotaro let him, not sure of what to say and, at the same time, not sure that he had to say anything. Rohan didn’t seem to expect much from him, or anyone.
“I’d like to draw you,” Rohan said suddenly.
“What?”
“I don’t have a chance to draw grown men often. Pink Dark Boy is very much for a younger audience, so… men aren’t my strong suit. I want to practice.”
“Is this payment for the beer and the dryer?”
“You can think of it like that if you want.”
Jotaro didn’t know what to think. Rohan was uncharted territory, through and through, but he’d never been afraid of that. It was still pouring rain, he could hear it on the window. He raised his glass and finished what was left of his beer.
“Yeah. Sure.” He pushed his chair back and stood. “Let me use the washroom.”
“I’ll meet you in my study. I’m not bringing everything down here.”
Rohan climbed the stairs and Jotaro went to the bathroom. He took a piss and washed his hands, then checked his clothes in the dryer. They were perfectly dry. He closed the door and set it for another sixty minutes, then joined Rohan in his study. Rohan was rifling through a case of pencils and pens and didn’t look up as Jotaro entered.
“Are your clothes not dry?”
“Not yet,” Jotaro lied, shutting the door behind him. Fresh bottles of wine and Asahi sat on the edge of Rohan’s desk next to their glasses from the kitchen. Rohan turned around with a wide, thin sketchbook in his hands.
“Sit where you were before, on the far end,” he said, then tipped his desk lamp to shine at the floor near Jotaro’s feet. “Good lighting, angle.”
Jotaro sat where he was told and Rohan handed him his beer and glass, which he took, nodding in thanks. Rohan sat at the other end of the loveseat, in reach of his pencils on the edge of his desk.
“You don’t have to do anything,” he said. He put his sketchbook down to crack the bottle of wine and pour himself a glass. “I’d just be upset with myself if I missed an opportunity to improve as an artist. I hate going to those open-class life drawing sessions—the models never know what they’re doing and the lighting is dreadful and no one ever stops talking, I swear.”
“I’ll try not to bother you.”
“No, I was going to say—” Rohan paused mid sentence to sip his wine and Jotaro smiled at the subtle betrayal of his inebriation. “You should talk. Entertain me. Koichi’s hinted at this whole stand-bow-and-arrow-almighty-villain thing in your past, but he’s a terrible storyteller.”
“I’m not much of one, either.”
“Bullshit.” Rohan set his glass down, picked up his pencils and started to sketch, his workbook resting on his bent knee. “You’re twenty-nine. From what I’ve heard, you’ve travelled. Tell me about it.”
Jotaro sighed and rubbed his still-damp hair, and hesitated. But then he started to speak, starting with his mother and grandfather and Star Platinum and the Joestar legacy and Dio and all of it, talking for longer than he had in months, stopping only to work on his beer, and Rohan bent over his sketchbook and traced the lines of Jotaro’s face over and over again, at first with great concentration but then with casual ease as he got used to it. He talked about the near-death battles and sailing across the ocean and camping in the desert and Rohan drew portrait after portrait of him, all sketchy lines and shadow. Once in awhile he’d stop to ink one, if it was one he liked, and Jotaro became progressively more animated as he spoke.
“And you were seventeen, ” Rohan kept saying, now halfway done his bottle of wine.
“Seventeen,” Jotaro agreed. “Halfway to eighteen.”
“Unbelievable. Unthinkable. When I was seventeen I had OCD and asymmetrical bangs. I'd never fought anyone in my life.”
“But you're an artist.”
“Well, yes, that's true. I did already have four volumes of Pink Dark Boy under my belt at seventeen, you're right, that is impressive.”
“It is,” Jotaro agreed. “I've never been able to draw. I don't understand it.”
“Oh, bullshit, everyone can draw. Not everyone is Kishibe Rohan, but everyone can draw. Here.” He thrust his notebook towards Jotaro. “Doodle me something. A stick figure. A dog.”
Jotaro chuckled and took the notebook. He flipped it around and was poised ready to draw, but stopped when he saw Rohan’s drawings of him. They were all in light pencil but with sharp, confident lines; some of his profile, his jawline in stark relief, some of him speaking, some from the bust up, others including the pint glass in his hand. As the drawings moved from left to right, Jotaro’s wet hair dried, becoming frizzy, curly ringlets that brushed his forehead and curled behind his ears.
“What's the matter? Don't be afraid, there's nothing wrong with being bad at drawing," Rohan scoffed. “I can be an insufferable prick, but I'd never mock your artistic prowess.”
Jotaro shook his head. “Your sketches. These are amazing.”
“Oh.” Rohan all but preened, like an ornate bird. “Well, thank you. They're nothing. Chicken scratch, really.”
“They're good.” Jotaro flipped the page over and found more; it was funny to see himself in Rohan’s style, real but not real, a manga character. He reached up and brushed at a curl hanging over his forehead. “Does my hair really look like that? I should get my hat, it's probably—”
Rohan leaned in and snatched Jotaro’s hand away from his hair. “No. It looks good. It dries so curly.”
“I know.”
Rohan was closer than he'd ever been. Jotaro blinked at him, Rohan’s hand still closed loosely around his, hanging between them. His eyes were almost green, almost blue, and his eyebrows were immaculate. Jotaro held his breath.
“So, your pilgrimage, ” Rohan said, more quietly than before. “You couldn't have been alone for all that.”
Jotaro knew, instantly, that alone didn't mean alone. Rohan had been listening, he knew who else was there, and that wasn't what he was asking. Jotaro made a series of quick decisions.
“I… My only boyfriend was killed there. In Egypt.” His voice had dropped to match Rohan’s, hushed as if they were sharing secrets, and he supposed they were. “But I don’t know. We were seventeen.”
“You don’t know if he was your boyfriend?”
“It was the eighties. You didn’t really talk about it.”
“You still don’t,” Rohan said, and there was a spark of understanding. Neither spoke on it. Rohan let Jotaro’s hand go and sat back.
Jotaro looked down at Rohan’s sketchbook, said, “Well,” and started drawing in an empty corner of the page. Rohan leaned back and stretched an arm across the back of the sofa, one hand around the stem of his wine glass. After a moment, Jotaro straightened up from where he was hunched over the sketchbook. “Do you mind if I smoke in here?”
“Not at all. I find smoking extremely attractive.”
Jotaro looked at him, long and level, and set the book on the arm of the sofa.
“You’re pretty blunt, huh.”
“I don’t like wasting time. I want to know what people are thinking, and I let them know what I’m thinking. It cuts down on needless small-talk, which I don’t have time for. Or any interest in.” Rohan waved his hand at him. “So, please, be my guest.”
“Okay.”
Jotaro padded out of the room and down the stairs on bare feet, got his smokes and lighter from the bathroom, and came back. He knocked a cigarette out of his pack and lit it, watching Rohan the whole time. He sucked on it until it caught properly, then sat back watching Rohan, amused.
“I’ve never met a guy like you,” he said, and Rohan looked pleased.
“If I had a hundred yen for every time someone told me that…”
“How much would you have?”
“Enough for another bottle of wine, at least,” Rohan said, looking at the empty bottle on his desk with disdain, as if its emptiness was its own fault. He pointed at Jotaro’s cigarettes. “I'd like one.”
“Do you smoke?”
“I do whatever I want.”
Jotaro rolled his eyes and lit a cigarette for Rohan, who took it.
Rohan said, “I've never seen you smoking, either.”
“I don't smoke in front of kids,” Jotaro said, bent over his drawing again. “Josuke’s got enough bad habits.”
“Were you young when you started?”
“About his age.” Jotaro looked down and back up at Rohan, still spread over his half of the loveseat. Rohan smoked like someone who read fashion magazines, loosely held, his mouth pretty and open. When he held the cigarette between his fingers, his hand balanced on his knee, Jotaro saw his jade green lipstick left on the filter and want panged low in his gut, catching him off guard. He kept drawing.
“You're talking a lot,” Rohan said. “Koichi thinks you're intimidating. He says you've only said a few words to him.”
Jotaro shrugged and the hulking movement of his shoulders made the couch creak.
“It's like you said about small talk. It's nothing personal, I just have no interest. It's a hassle.”
“But you're talking to me.”
Jotaro glanced up, his blue eyes flashing in the light, cigarette smoke a garland around his head. He ashed into his empty glass. “I'm allowed.” He scratched his pencil on the paper hard enough to be audible. “You're pretty nosy.”
“It’s my thing. Koichi must have told you what I can do.” Rohan leaned towards Jotaro and he sat up. He could smell wine and smoke on his breath. “I could open you up and read you like a book. See all the things you don’t tell anyone. Steals gum from Family Mart… Pisses in the shower… Likes to get spanked during sex…”
“So why don’t you?”
“Well, people lie, obviously. That’s why Heaven’s Door is so amazing—you get to see who people really are on the inside. It makes for great stories, but it makes people-watching pointless.” Rohan moved back. “Lying is part of a person, too, that’s life. The faces we put on. So I’m trying this new thing where I talk to people.”
“Daring.”
“Thank you.” He took a drag and breathed out long and luxurious and slow. “I didn’t do anything to earn Heaven’s Door. There’s a lot more to be said for convincing someone to admit that they like getting spanked.”
Jotaro almost ran his pencil through the paper.
Rohan smiled. “Are you done yet?”
Jotaro held the book at arm’s length, squinted at it, then shrugged. “I guess so.”
He handed it to Rohan and Rohan barked a laugh. Jotaro had done a little drawing of him, Rohan, a stick figure with a rectangular body, holding a glass of wine in his stick fingers. His hair was a wavy scribble of black, his headband a series of triangles, his face a lopsided frown with two little black eyebrows.
“It’s beautiful,” Rohan said, laughing and laughing. “Is there anything you’re not good at?”
Jotaro ducked his head. “Shut up.”
“Well, I’m glad you did it. People are so afraid of doing things they’re bad at. That’s no way to live your life.” Rohan carefully ashed his cigarette into the neck of his wine bottle. “Here, look at me straight on, that’s the hardest—doing an interesting portrait from this angle.”
Jotaro turned in the seat and Rohan turned in his until they were facing each other, one of Jotaro’s legs drawn up between them, Rohan drawing with his sketchbook resting on the back of the couch. Jotaro watched his eyes flick up and back down at his paper and from this angle he could see the way Rohan drew, the shapes he blocked in before adding detail, smudging pencil with the side of his hand to soften shadows, which left his skin covered in graphite, gunmetal grey and iridescent.
“It’s hard to unlearn the way you draw things,” Rohan mumbled, more to himself than anything. “Your nose is very… Roman. I’m not used to it. Where are your parents from?”
“My father is Japanese. My mother’s European.”
“Interesting. And Josuke…”
“The same, but backwards.”
“I see. You look alike.” Rohan’s eyes flit over Jotaro’s face and back down to his sketch, over and over again. “I’d kill for those features. A nose like that. You could be the Statue of David. I mean, I know I’m good-looking, but it’s in a bit of a plain Jane kind of way, don’t you think? When I was in my teens, I wanted to get the bridge of my nose reconstructed, you know how people do.” He frowned down at his page. “I grew out of it, I suppose.”
Jotaro rolled his eyes. “As if you don’t know you’re gorgeous.”
Rohan looked up. Jotaro sat perfectly still, not even daring to breathe. Rohan put his pencil down.
“I’m what?”
“You’re…” Jotaro’s eyes raced over Rohan’s face, uncharacteristically quick and raw and frantic in his own quiet, private way. “Gorgeous. Young. I don’t know.” His eyes lingered on Rohan’s jade lips and they both noticed, and noticed the other noticing.
Rohan laughed his strange, breathy laugh. “Okay, you got me. I know. I just wanted to hear you say it again.” He placed his sketchbook on the edge of his desk and slid towards Jotaro until their knees were touching, and when he spoke, he all but purred. “Has anyone ever called you powerful before? Because you are. You're so impressive. I want to climb you like a tree. And you're very quiet. You’re smart. You’re hot. I can’t imagine men like you don’t hear that all the time. You should—”
Jotaro kissed him to shut him up.
In the seconds before he did it, he thought, this is a bad idea, but he thought that the first time he kissed Kakyoin, too, in the glow of a campfire at the edge of the Sahara, which felt like a lifetime ago. Taking risks had never steered him wrong before. Rohan’s lipstick tasted like wax and flowers, like the aisles of department stores that he never went down. Forbidden, but somehow comforting. Like women. Home.
Rohan kissed him back.
He moved carefully, but he wasn’t timid. He wasn’t new to this. His fingers slid up Jotaro’s arm and pushed the sleeve of his sweatshirt up so he could feel the cords of muscle in his forearm. Jotaro cupped his face and his hands felt unimaginably big and clumsy, and he tried to be careful as he ran his thumbs along Rohan’s high cheekbones, as if he might shatter.
Rohan pulled back and whispered, “I knew it. Do you ever feel like you have a special sense? For men who are like you?”
Jotaro kissed him again and again, because he could, because he realized about an hour ago that he genuinely enjoyed Rohan’s company, and nothing mattered anyways. This didn't matter in the way that, logically, Jotaro knew that nothing mattered in his twenties and life still sprawled impossibly long in front of him. He wasn't going to marry Rohan but he was allowed to like him, and the world wouldn't collapse inwards and all living things wouldn't come to an end, it was just—nice. He’d never had nice. He’d never lived somewhere like Morioh or met someone like Rohan, who didn’t mind silences and was just the right amount of cynical and had the nicest mouth he’d ever seen.
Rohan slid closer and Jotaro—ignoring the grown-up voice in his head that told him to communicate and set boundaries in favour of the reckless, bratty voice that wanted every part of Rohan touching every part of him—pulled him into his lap. He wanted nice things. He spread his hands over the warm bare skin in the gap between his jeans and his sweatshirt and Rohan arched into palms and he felt slow and stupid and needy, just trying to keep up.
Rohan tipped his head and breathed hard against his cheek. Jotaro tried to slow his thundering heart.
“My bedroom’s down the hall,” Rohan said. Jotaro shook his head.
“This is fine.”
“Are you serious?”
“I’m not going to—Yeah, I’m serious. Let me buy you—” Rohan kissed him and cut him off, and for a few long seconds, Jotaro let him. “—dinner first, at least.”
“It’s two in the morning, don’t be stupid.”
“Another day. Jesus Christ.” Jotaro flattened Rohan’s hair with one massive palm on top of his head. “You’re the dumbest smart guy I’ve ever met.”
“Hey!”
Jotaro kissed him. His eyes fell shut.
“Let’s stay here,” he said, and it was enough. Rohan let him roll over him and stay braced above him, one hand on the back of the couch, the other stroking the soft planes of his throat, dipping into the collar of his sweatshirt. Time got slow and gooey and Jotaro couldn’t remember ever having done anything that didn’t involve Rohan’s tongue in his mouth or one of his thighs between his. Rohan threaded his fingers through his curls and it was like a drug.
There was a loud crash downstairs.
Rohan froze. “What was that?”
The unmistakable sound of footsteps thundered up the stairs.
“Yo, Rohan!”
Josuke.
Rohan squeezed his eyes shut. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“It was fuckin’ pouring out there and we can't go home lookin’ like this, we came to hang out!"
Jotaro scrambled back just as the door opened and Josuke burst in.
“Sorry, man, we know you stay up late, I hope we’re not—”
Rohan pointed at him and hissed, “Your face—” and Jotaro saw the jade lipstick smudged across Rohan’s mouth, and knew what his own must have looked like.
He stopped time.
Josuke froze halfway through the door with Okuyasu pawing at his soaked jacket, the rain water flicking from their sodden hair hanging like diamonds around them. Rohan was pulling his shirt down, hissing through his teeth, extending a finger at Jotaro’s face. Jotaro had enough time to wipe frantically at his mouth with the inside of his shirt sleeve and sit on the other end of the loveseat. Then time resumed.
“—interrupting anything but what do you have to do, am I right?” Josuke finished. He screeched to a stop and Okuyasu ran into his back. “Jotaro? The fuck are you doing here?”
Okuyasu roared laughing and clung to Josuke’s shoulders. “Rohan, man, your face! Your make-up’s fucked, what did you do?”
Josuke squinted at Jotaro, who absolutely did not squirm. He squinted at Rohan, who squinted back at him.
“I got caught in the rain,” Jotaro said. “My clothes are in the dryer. They’re done now. I’ll..." He stood, nodded at the three of them and headed downstairs. He changed back into his own clothes and left the borrowed sweatshirt on the bathroom counter, and when he came out, Josuke and Okuyasu were banging around in Rohan’s kitchen looking for tea. It's freezing, dude! Gotta warm up these extremities! Jotaro stood in the doorway watching them, quietly pleased that they still got to be kids, despite everything.
“Hey,” Rohan said softly, coming up behind him with a hand at the small of his back. “Here.”
He pressed Jotaro’s smokes and lighter into his hand. Jotaro smiled down at him; he hadn't fixed his lipstick. “Thanks.”
Rohan wouldn't look right at him. “Thank you for the modeling.”
“I’ll come over next thunderstorm.”
“Consider it.”
Jotaro’s shoes were still full of water when he left, when Rohan was in the kitchen running damage control. It had nearly stopped raining and the street smelled warm and wet like peat and ozone, and Jotaro took off towards his hotel. He opened his pack of smokes and as he pulled one out, a neatly rolled scrap of paper fell to the sidewalk. He picked it up. It was his clumsy drawing of Rohan with his glass of wine, and at the bottom, something had been quickly written in scratchy script.
ROHAN 3-6447-2813 YOU OWE ME DINNER