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There's something about breaching the subject of Jotaro Kujo's hatー immovable and impeccable, the closest anyone can get to having an impenetrable fortress on one's headー that feels like something bordering vaguely on sacrilege. Josuke thinks about how his nephew (calling Jotaro that in his mind still feels incredibly weird, and that's a generous assessment) wears it with such conviction, as if he emerged from the womb fully equipped with his headgear and his stoic, contemplative smolder, and Josuke's prospective request regarding taking said hat off to see what's underneath ends up feeling ludicrous.
So what if he's never seen what Jotaro's hair looks like?
So what if the guy never takes that thing off?
So what if, okay, it's a little strange that that hat refuses to budge an inch, even when Jotaro's busying himself with rigorously beating a guy's face in? Come on, even his own pompadour gets a little mussed when he's fighting, and Josuke knows more than anyone how much product he puts in his hair to keep his updo looking perfect.
But, okay. Sure. So what? So what if it's unnatural? So what if it's weird? Everyone's entitled to a quirk, that one thing that might be a little questionable. Especially Jotaro Kujo, with his stupidly-chiseled features and his secrets and his enigmatic profile, the guy that girls fawn over (not that Josuke doesn't have that going for him too) and boys look up to.
Jotaro is too perfect for his own good, anyway, and one or two things about him that's strange makes him more personable. One of us, Josuke thinks. Normal.
Right?
Besides, there's something about breaching the subject of Jotaro Kujo's hat that feels like something bordering vaguely on sacrilege.
Josuke still contemplates it anyway.
***
"Maybe he's going bald," is the helpful advice that Okuyasu gives Josuke during lunch the next day, his eyes fixed on beautifully cooked egg rolls, his mouth full of food. Josuke gives Okuyasu an incredulous look, first aimed towards the handsomely packed bento box that Okuyasu is stuffing himself fromー "oh yeah, Tonio made me this, he's a really nice dude" "yeah, right"ー and then another for the comment in question.
"Are you serious? You can see Jotaro's bangs peeking out from under his hat. And like, his side hairs and stuff." He makes the motion with his hands, swiping to the right, swiping to the left. "And come on, if you're gonna hide a bald spot or something, you'd get a wig, not a hat."
"Aah, I dunno. Like, doesn't Mario wear a hat and shit because he's bald? Works for him."
"No, man, are you serious? Mario takes his hat off when he's embarrassed, or when Princess Peach leans in to give him a kiss. He definitely has a full head of hair."
"Whoa, what, really? Damn, I always thought he was bald. Or, like, at least had a comb-over." Okuyasu actually looks severely disappointed by this revelation. "Damn."
"What? Come on, Okuyasu, how the hell do you not know this about Mario?"
An accusatory point with his chopsticks, and Josuke shovels a piece of lukewarm rice into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. This seems to happen a lot, this business of illuminating Okuyasu in the process of trying to figure something out for himselfー and it'd be easy to say that Josuke should have seen this coming, but Okuyasu has the tendency to be unpredictable. It's what Josuke likes about the guy, along with his simplicity and his easygoing acceptance of most everything and anything.
He opens his mouth to segue back into the main topic, but Okuyasu interrupts with an urgent:
"Yo. So does that mean Luigi's not bald, either? Come on, that guy even looks like he'd be bald."
Something that looks like a croquette disappears behind frowning lips, and Josuke decides to ditch the original inquiry for now, electing instead to give his friend the entire history of Nintendo during their precious thirty-minute lunch break. It makes Josuke feel wiser when he's done, which isn't half bad, and as a reward Josuke gets half of Tonio's famous tomato-and-mozzarella salad and a suggestion that maybe they should ask Rohan after school for help (primarily from Heaven's Door) to find out what's underneath Jotaro's hat.
Josuke grimaces.
"There's no way we're asking that guy for help."
***
"I can't believe we're asking this guy for help," Josuke says through grit teeth and a stiflingly forced smile.
"Aah, it's no big. Do what Koichi does, that works out for him." Ever the purveyor of good advice, Okuyasu crouches down to approximately Koichi's height and pretends to shuffle his feet and scratch the back of his head, in a hilariously accurate rendition of Koichi's usual 'timid high-schooler' routine. If Josuke'd been drinking, he'd have spat it out at how ridiculous Okuyasu looks ("shit, man, you look like a constipated gorillaー").
Incidentally, if he had been drinking, he'd have spat said drink right in Rohan Kishibe's face, so there's that for small favors. The front entrance swings open just as Okuyasu finishes the tail end of his imitation routine, and Josuke has to physically catch himself from toppling over backwards down Rohan's porch in surprise when he hears Rohan clear his throat to announce his presence.
The look on Rohan's face is disdainful, and that's a generous assessment.
A moment of awkward silence ensues in which Josuke seriously contemplates the pros and cons of just turning and leaving without another word. Pros: he won't have to deal with anything about this situation (he's pretty sure Rohan heard that last bit about someone looking like a constipated gorilla, that's charming), and he gets to go home and pretend none of this ever happened. Maybe play some video games until his mom nags him to stop. Good. Cons: there's a one in a hundred chance that Rohan will cooperate, which means that he'll maybe actually get to see what's under Jotaro's hat, which is, consequently, the whole point of this entire expedition. Josuke tends to get a little sidetracked, but he hasn't forgotten the overarching mystery that strings the events of his day together.
Which brings him to the conclusion that he's going to do thisー no more setbacks. No more obstacles. He's a guy with a goal, and if one sour-faced mangaka with impolite nausea written on his face could turn him off from seeing what's under Jotaro Kujo's hat, well, that would make him less than a man. It'd make him a dog. Or even a turtle. Okay, maybe not a turtle, that's a little harsh. But it would make him disappointed, and that, objectively, would suck.
So, up goes Josuke's hand in an amiable wave. His right eye twitches with the effort.
"Yo, Rohan, I was just wonderingー"
Rohan takes one look at the two of them, his eye-level dipping down to the absent space where Koichi's head would be if the third party were here, and upon reaffirming that the one person he could reasonably have a conversation with isn't here, slams the door in Josuke's face.
"Asshole," Josuke mutters.
***
Their last resort comes in the form of one Mikitaka Hazekura, who the pair stumble across on their way home from a Baskin Robbins. They'd tried and failed to get themselves each a can of beer at the nearest Seven-Eleven, so naturally, the next best thing was to get themselves each a Rocky Road and Mint Chocolate Chip from the pretty girl that works part-time at the store. Never has Josuke felt manlier than now, with the sun setting gloriously over the peaceful horizon of Morioh, nursing a forest-green dairy product wrapped in an adorable waffle cone to patch his injured pride.
He's had better days.
But like a convenient and utterly confounding answer to their prayers, it's Mikitaka who perches on Okuyasu's shoulder in the form of a sparrow, sticking his beak into an overflowing marshmallow and stating simply:
"I've never eaten this flavor before."
Josuke has to physically restrain Okuyasu from using The Hand to carve out the shoulder that Mikitaka is sitting on. It's when he reminds Okuyasu that Crazy Diamond can't fix things that aren't there anymore that Okuyasu finally stops screaming like a baby and throws his Rocky Road into the nearest ditch, watching Mikitaka flutter after it with his chest heaving.
"Holy shit, holy shit, I swear to god, he needs to stop doing thatー"
"Yeah, well, the guy's not that big on social skills," Josuke offers, making sure his ice cream doesn't drip onto his fingers as he watches Mikitaka transform back into a human, getting himself stuck in the ditch during the process. Okuyasu stares, and then swats the waffle cone out of Josuke's hand in silent retaliation.
***
"Alright, so here's the plan. I call up Jotaro, tell him that there's a wounded dolphin in the harborー that's you, Mikitakaー and that we need his help. We wait for him to come, and then youー that's you, Okuyasuー go check on dolphin Mikitaka, where dolphin Mikitaka pretends to go crazy or something and drag Okuyasu into the water. I tell Jotaro that I can't swimー spoilers, I canー so he'll go in after you and dolphin Mikitaka to save your ass. I'll offer to take his hat so it doesn't get lost at sea, and great, we'll get to see Jotaro without his hat! Shit's foolproof."
Okuyasu raises his hand. "What if he doesn't let you take the hat?"
Josuke scoffs. "Why wouldn't he? But alright, Plan Bー if he goes in the water with the hat on, Mikitaka, let go of Okuyasu and take Jotaro's hat."
This time, Mikitaka raises his hand. "What if Jotaro dodges?"
Josuke's voice is muffled, words spilling between fingers pressed firmly onto his face.
"Listen, who the hell expects a dolphin to steal your hat? It's gonna be fine."
***
In a way, roadblocks are roadblocks precisely because they're unexpected. This is what flits across Josuke's head as he watches Mikitaka move through the water, distant voices obscured through the thick splashing of beating miniature fins and inappropriately adorable beady eyes.
"I've only seen dolphins in toy stores," dolphin Mikitaka explains as he tries to sidewind through an incoming wave, sweeping himself closer towards the shoreline in the process. "And by principle, I can't turn into anything that has a greater physical capacity than me. Will this work?"
"I called Jotaro already," Josuke replies flatly, watching mini-Flipper struggle to keep itself belly-down on the water as it attempts to dive. He decides that that's not doing anything to ameliorate his rising blood pressure (whoever said that animal therapy is good for you is clearly bullshitting), so he takes a seat on the edge of the docks, legs swinging and feet grazing the surface of wavering blue-green, thumbing the outline of his cellphone that he's secured in his pocket for a sense of order. There could be a lesson in all of this, something about the best-laid plans of mice, or the fallibility of mankind, but he prefers to think of it as a challenge before he thinks about the prospect of having lost before he's even had a chance to fight.
There's always a next time, he muses to himself as he watches Okuyasu busy himself with removing his various pins and emblems in anticipation of his eventual dive. Josuke'd say something about that being suspicious as fuck, but the situation is surreal enough already that he thinks that it doesn't even warrant a comment.
"Yo, Okuyasu", he calls instead, resting his chin in his hand, elbow planted on a raised knee. "You actually know how to swim, right?"
"Ehh, bro took me to the pool a couple times when I was a kid. It's cool."
"Yeah, but did you actually go into the deep end or whatever? There's a big difference between going to the pool and actually, you know, swimming in one. Just saying."
"Bro took me to the pool a couple times, alright? Man, you really gotta calm down with this planning shit."
Jotaro'd mentioned to Josuke on a few occasions that every plane that Joseph Joestar's ever been on has crashed and burned.
Josuke wonders now if he's somehow managed to metaphorically inherit that trait.
***
"Where is it?", Jotaro asks the moment he steps out of the taxi, hat tipped up above his browline and his customized jacket billowing like a white pennant of machismo in the ocean breeze.
"Uh," is all Josuke manages to say when he makes eye contact with his 20-something year old nephew, his nerves tangibly shrinking and turning into something with a distinctly gelatinous consistency. It's almost as if he can feel his thought processes sinking in mental quicksand while the rest of him manages to be alertー if his vision'd been kind enough to have abandoned ship with the rest of him, he probably wouldn't have noticed the vague look of quiet, calm inquiry in Jotaro's expression.
This makes everything approximately 10,000 times worse.
"Uhh," he repeats, just in case Jotaro missed it the first time around. "It's over there." A point in the general direction of the harbor, where the miniature poodle equivalent of a dolphin is lying on the docks with an exaggerated quality of illness, if dolphins could actually properly emote that quality.
Jotaro squints. "It looks like a toy."
It's an apt assessment, and Josuke is hard-pressed to refute it. But for the sake of effort, he continues: "I think it's a baby. It was breathing and everything, so. Yeah. I think you should take a look at it, since you're the great marine biologist and everything. You know. Leave it to the experts, right?"
Josuke scratches his chin, feigning a perfect look of sincerity that consequently prompts Jotaro to take a second look at the beached animal, sigh, and pull the brim of his hat over his eyes in a staggeringly perfect display of a world-weary dandy.
"Come with me. If it's hurt, your Stand'll do a better job of fixing its wounds."
It takes physical effort for Josuke to not assume the guise of someone who is both incredibly surprised and relieved that his bullshit wasn't immediately called out on, but herculean will (it's what Joestars are apparently known for) reels it in to a subdued sort of half-smile as he trots after Jotaro towards the edge of the coastline. Okuyasu is squatting there, a stick in hand that he's using to poke their bait, and Josuke stands at a forty-five degree angle to the left behind Jotaro to signal furiously that they should probably get their plan into motion before the guy in question can get a good look at Mikitaka's Toys R Us rendition of a Pacific White-Sider.
"How's it lookin', Okuyasu?" Josuke curls his hand into an arc, diving it under his opposite arm in a silent get in the damn water already oh my god.
"Huh?" Okuyasu frowns, mimicking the gesture before he realizes that it's a cue and not Josuke doing an impromptu rendition of 'rolling with the homies'. "Oh. Right. Man, it's looking pretty bad..."
He knees Mikitaka in the stomach, which, to Jotaro, would look like Okuyasu is kneeing a dying baby dolphin in the gut. It hits Josuke then that even after all of their planning and all of their talking, they've never established a clear signal for when to set all of these things in motionー there'd been a silent understanding that there would be a silent understanding, a faith placed in a nameless deity that's now being revealed as the god of bad decisions.
"Uh. It's still alive, right?" Josuke tosses a pebble at Mikitaka's prone form.
"Yeah. I wonder if it, you know. Wants to go back into the fucking water or something. Right?" Okuyasu follows up with a sharp jab to the grey-blue lump's snout. The look of abject incredulity that flits across Jotaro's face while all this is happening doesn't go unnoticed by either party, but Mikitaka is famous for his complete lack of understanding verbal hintsー this obviously should have been factored into their original course of action, but now the two of them have to improvise. They do say that sometimes it's more difficult to catch onto something bizarre if it's right in front of your nose, after all, and Josuke fervently hopes that this is the case as he tosses another pebble at sea-creature Mikitaka, clearing his throat loudly and trying to ignore the piercing looks of judgment that's stabbing him from his right.
"Josuke. Is this some sort ofー," Jotaro begins to say, just as Okuyasu discreetly steps on Mikitaka's flipper to drive the point home. It prompts a short cry of pain (one that Josuke disguises with a loud yell of his own, pointing to a seagull nearby that's fluffing its feathers: "ーwhoa, that seagull is fat as shitー"), followed by a loud splash as Mikitaka practically launches himself away from Okuyasu, catching his tail against one of Okuyasu's belt loops to drag him into the water.
"That works," Josuke mutters as he watches his friends sink.
Clearly (and fortunately), none of this is managing to make an iota of sense to Jotaro Kujo, whose expertise lies in dealing with matters that, while they aren't less preposterous, are certainly less idiotic. With his hands in his pockets, Jotaro jerks his chin towards the myriad of flailing limbs and comments upon it with a dry coolness that suggests that he's seen this kind of thing before and he has little to no desire to deal with it.
"Aren't you going to go help him," he says, which sounds less like a question and more like a suggestion.
"Uh." Josuke realizes with mounting self-awareness that perhaps the issue of his friend drowning should warrant a little bit more than an 'uh'. "Oh shit, Jotaro, that's right! I can't swim!!"
Jotaro stares. This is something that happens regularly with Josuke's stoic nephew, who prefers to talk more with his silences than he does with actual words, who makes sure that his pauses speak for themselves. This one, this particular instance of awkward silence (punctuated regularly by garbled 'help's, both from Okuyasu and Mikitaka, desperately in the process of trying to drag each other under to prevent from drowning), is the look of a parent who's caught their child with their hand lodged firmly not in the cookie jar, but the bowl of cookie dough that hasn't even had a chance to be made into their baked counterpart yet. In short, it's a mix of 'what the hell are you doing' and 'why'.
If people could wilt, Josuke might have done. Timidness isn't something that comes to him naturallyー because really, look at his hairー but guilt is something that hits even a 16 year old badass, something that comes in piercing bolts when Jotaro heaves another sigh, tosses Josuke his jacket, and gets ready to dive. It's not the fact that he's fooling someone that gets to him as much as the fact that it's Jotaro, and that Josuke's doing all of this just to see what's under that hat; which strikes him now as something that might be private (god, what if he really is going baldー) and none of his goddamn business.
Jotaro's jacket in hand, Josuke shuffles his feet and watches Jotaro remove his shoes. The exasperation is gone from Jotaro's expression, replaced by an uncanny seriousness that he always assumes when he knows he has to fulfill a duty, no matter how small or insignificant.
Josuke momentarily considers the thought of defaulting on his plan.
Unfortunately, the moment passes more quickly than he thought it would when he realizes that Jotaro is, in fact, not removing his hat as he's doing with the other bits of his attire. All thoughts of personal redemption are replaced with the singular curiosity regarding the case of the hidden coif, which gives Josuke a newfound, strange courage.
"Hey, Jotaro. Want me to hold on to the hat?" Josuke suggests, as cool as butter and as smooth as ice.
"No," is the simple answer that follows. It's the verbal equivalent of a guillotine.
Alarms sound when Jotaro toes the water and spares one last glance backwards before launching himself into the waves, beelining for Okuyasu and a now human Mikitaka (who's decided that being a dolphin is detrimental to the effort of shoving Okuyasu's head under the water for his own survival). There are moments in life when doing something seems like a good idea as opposed to knowing that it actually is a good oneー Josuke is acutely aware of the fact that announcing his inability to swim is in stark contradiction to what he's doing right now, but the scales have tipped in the favor of desperate action in the face of mission completion. The gig is up, the dolphin is gone, and what's left are three teenagers making an ass of themselves in an attempt to do something incredibly trivial, and if Josuke is going to have to explain himself later, he might as well do it with a sense of lingering victory rather than crippling shame.
So he jumps. He jumps, making a spectacular show of it, a lone 'doraaaaa' echoing through the abandoned docks, whistling through the ocean breeze like a warrior's call to arms.
Jotaro stops. So do Okuyasu and Mikitaka, who forget their endeavor to kill each other as they watch Josuke cannonball gracefully into the air, creating a tidal wave of water as he lands and then hits his head, hard, on a half-finished segment of the next dock over as he unfurls.
The world stops, and Josuke's wet pompadour rises to the surface, unmoving. No one says a word, and Jotaro calmly muses upon the fact that this is probably the first time he's seen anyone freeze time without using a Stand.
"Yare yare daze."
***
When Josuke wakes up, he's lying on his back on a bench. The option of sitting up to get a handle on his bearings seem like a good one, but Josuke thinks he's had enough of good ideas for a lifetime, and decides instead that staying down until his head stops pounding is passable.
"You're awake," is the first thing he hears after he spends a few moments appreciating the dryness of land and sweeping his undone hair away from his face. Identifying the voice isn't an issueー it's having to carry the conversation after the events of the day that promises to be a challenge, but at this point, Josuke is too tired to dodge and too stubborn to hide. He quirks a dry smile.
"Where's Okuyasu and Mikitaka?" Not dead, he hopes.
"I sent them home," Jotaro answers, generously. Josuke cranes his neck back, squinting to see the older man sitting a few inches away from him, straight-backed and with Josuke's wet shoes perched on his lap. There are some things about Jotaro that Josuke will never understand.
"Sorry about the dolphin thing," he manages, as if the disappointment about not seeing a real Pacific dolphin is on the forefront of Jotaro's mind.
"It wasn't a funny joke," Jotaro says, calmly. "You shouldn't have bothered."
There's an air of finality to it, those words, requiring acknowledgement and little else.
Josuke shifts onto his side to get a better look at Jotaro. The other man, his nephew by bizarre twists of fate, is as stolid and unshakeable as ever, his gaze fixed on somewhere over the horizon that Josuke doesn't bother following (ironically, a respect for the other Joestar's privacy). The brim of Jotaro's hat is flipped upwards to let his dampened hair breathe, and at the angle he's in, Josuke can see the faint outlines of brightly-colored crayon marks on the underside of the fabricー something he would never have been able to catch if things didn't pan out the way things did.
Under the brim of Jotaro's perfectly-positioned hat is one word scribbled in layers of waterproof wax crayon, in a child's hand:
'Jolyne'.
Josuke would ask, but he decides against it. There'll always be things about Jotaro Kujo that'll remain a mystery, and like the lack of reprimand and Josuke's drying shoes in Jotaro's hands, the name hidden underneath Jotaro's hat will probably always be a testament to his silent brand of kindness. That's Josuke's reward for the day.
***
"ーAnd these are the math notes for the segment we covered today. Are you sure you're okay, Josuke? I heard you hit your head pretty hard yesterday, and now you've got a fever..."
"Nah, don't worry about it, Koichi. I dunno, I feel pretty great, all things considered."
Koichi takes a moment to process that, and laughs.
"Well, if you say so. See you tomorrow, Josuke."
Josuke waits until Koichi leaves his room and he hears the front door close to start singing Dolly Parton's 'Jolene', his voice cracking with every effort he makes to hit the high note, humming the foreign tune outside his open window into the sky.