Bianca makes dinner for Jotaro.
6:57 Friday evening. Jotaro would be there any minute. She thought she was being clever sending him away after classes ended and telling him to occupy himself until 7:00, but facing down a full spaghetti dinner with the meager instruments she had on hand had proved to be more of a challenge than she'd expected. If there was any solace to be found in all of this, it was that she had the good sense to make herself up before starting on the food. At least that was taken care of.
Against all odds, she managed to make a respectable dinner with two hotplates and a toaster oven as her only means of cooking. While it wasn't exactly the same as her mother's (though that might have as much to do with the difference in ingredients between the two countries as it did with her ability), it was still pretty damn good. Hopefully good enough to make that stoic giant a little less stoic.
With the precision of someone who had been standing outside the door waiting for the exact moment of 7:00 PM, three hard knocks came from outside the cramped apartment. "Be right there!" Bianca called, adding a few finishing touches to the sauced pasta so it would be ready to eat.
Instead of heading straight for the door, she made a detour to the bathroom to check the status of her makeup and to ensure nothing had splashed onto her pink blouse. Adjusting a few hair and touching up her lipstick, she darted for the entrance and unlocked the door. Taking a quick breath to compose herself, she opened it to a rather unexpected sight.
"Here," Jotaro said, holding a very simple collection of white, blue, and yellow flowers. "Someone told me to bring these. Don't know why. Not like this is a date." Despite his instincts saying otherwise, he'd chosen to trust Polnareff's recommendation and hoped he wasn't just playing a trick on him. Say what you might about the Frenchman (and there's a lot that could be said), he did have at least some experience dealing with women.
"Can I come in?" he finally asked after several seconds of stunned silence.
"Oh, uh, yeah," she finally replied, taking his gift and walking off to find something large enough to place them in. "You can hang your coat up if you like. Or keep it on. Whatever you're into." Digging through her cupboard, she managed to find a tall glass to precariously hold the flowers for the evening. "Take a seat. I'll get everything ready."
As he moved towards a small card table dressed as a dinner table in a red cotton tablecloth after bypassing the coat rack, Jotaro inspected the apartment around him. To say it was small would be an understatement, as the whole thing was nothing more than a single room and a bathroom off to the side. Be that as it may, she made remarkably good use of the space, managing to fit a convertible couch/futon, writing desk, and the aforementioned table in a space that couldn't be more than twelve feet in length on either side.
He sat down just as Bianca placed the food down in front of him. It was an impressive nest of reddish-orange angel hair covered in minced beef and pork in tomato sauce flanked by a large hunk of garlic bread, all piping hot from her impeccable (or lucky) timing. She took out two glasses, pouring some red wine and saying, "Hope it meets your standards. Haven't seen any Italian places around here, so I don't really know what those standards would be, but you get the point."
Jotaro took the glass in hand, swirling the liquid and inhaling the aroma. In truth, he knew absolutely nothing about wine. It mostly just smelled like alcohol. A sip proved it tasted alright, though he still preferred beer.
Biance moved her pasta around the plate, watching Jotaro like a hawk as he went in for a bite. Placing a forkful into his mouth, he paused, letting out what seemed to be an approving hum before continuing to eat. "Opinions?" she asked.
"It's good," he replied. "There's a lot of meat, which is good. I like the amount of garlic, too. It's not overpowering so it goes well with the tomato sauce."
"See why I needed an excuse to make some of this?" He nodded, continuing to eat as she took her first bite, impressed with her own skill now that she was able to taste the finished product. "Mind if I ask you something?" He looked up to acknowledge her. "Where do you always go when you're not in class? It's been bugging me."
"Family business," he replied, declining to explain his work for the Speedwagon Foundation any further.
"With your grandfather or…?"
"It's something else." Suddenly, he set his fork down. "Good grief," he said with a shake of his head.
"What?" A look of horror overtook her face. "Was it a tough vegetable? I knew I should have sautéed longer before I turned it into sauce."
"No, I just forgot what day it is. Or, what day it is in New York." She seemed confused by that, so he explained. "It's the old man's birthday and I need to call him pretty soon. I'll probably be asleep in a few hours and he'll pass out by the time it's morning here since he's a geezer. If I don't do it soon, I'll miss the day entirely."
She waved a hand, gesturing towards her kitchen area. "No problem. Use my phone if you want."
"It's fine. We should finish here first."
"Nah, don't worry about it. Go call your grandpa and tell him happy birthday. I want to see what you're like when you're all sweet and caring." With a grunt, he reluctantly stood up from his chair and walked to the phone, Bianca obviously enjoying the interaction she was playing out in her head.
The phone rang several times before someone finally picked up. "Hello? Hello?"
"Old man, it's me."
"Huh? Hello? Speak up! My ears aren't as good as they used to be!"
With a sigh, he had to repeat himself. "Good grief. Hey, old man. It's Jotaro."
"Oh, Jotaro. It's nice to hear from you. And on my birthday, too. That's a surprise."
"I wouldn't be bothering you if it wasn't."
"Call whenever you like," he said. "It's good to talk to you. You've been so busy ever since you started school, and all the work you've been doing on the side. Sorry we've had to leave it all to you."
"It's fine. Someone's got to take care of that stuff."
"Don't worry. They tell me they're looking for more people who can join, so we'll stop bothering you soon."
"Whatever. Anyway, I just felt like making sure you hadn't dropped dead yet."
He laughed. "I'll be around for a good long while."
"We should still probably get the inheritance figured out. You've been putting it off even though my mom keeps telling you to get that shit in order."
"We'll take care of it," he said in a way that made it clear he would not take care of it. "More importantly, how's school? Have you made any friends?"
"You talk like I'm some first grader, or something. I'm at a university, so I'm not exactly focused on making friends." A single glance towards Bianca revealed her less than enthused reaction towards that comment, prompting him to add, "But if you really want to know, I was in the middle of dinner with one before I called you. I'm using her phone."
"Oh, that's why I didn't recognize that number." He began to laugh in a way that only the uncomfortable intersection between an old man and a nosy relative could achieve. "More importantly, it sounded like you said you were having dinner with a woman." Jotaro sighed, already knowing it was a mistake to bring that up. "That's my grandson. You always were popular with the girls in high school, weren't you? You never really seemed interested in any of them, though, so we were starting to worry."
He quickly caught himself. "Not that we'd need to worry about anything," he said with a laugh. "There's plenty of men out there who aren't interested in women. In fact, back in the day, you could say I was pretty popular in that crowd. There was an old friend of mine by the name of Caesar; he was a real man's man, that one. I remember a time when-"
"Good freaking grief," Jotaro said, having no interest in listening to his grandfather's sexploits during his youth.
"Right, right," he said with a laugh.
"Anyway, how's grandma?"
"As lively as ever. She's out planning a...a, er...party. That was the word I couldn't remember. That's been happening so often lately." He chuckled to himself, evidently finding amusement in a situation that was anything but. "I think we're going to have some juicy t-bone steaks. I'm really excited."
"You know you can't eat those anymore. You lost all your teeth."
He scoffed, waving his arm in the air despite the fact no one was around to see him on the other end of the line. "I'm Joseph Joestar! I'll stop eating my favorite food the day I die! And I don't plan on doing that for at least another decade!"
"Whatever," he replied. "Just don't overdo it. It would suck for everyone if you kicked the bucket because you choked on a huge ass piece of meat."
"I'll be careful," he said. "It's nice that you called."
"It's not a big deal. I should go now before the food gets cold."
"What?" he yelled. "Holy shit! You were still in the middle of dinner when you called me? Jotaro, what's wrong with you? You can't just leave a woman at the table to go talk to your grandfather! Haven't you been on a single date in your life?" In fact, he had not.
"I'm hanging up now," he said plainly.
"Yes, get back to her! Honestly, how are you my grandson? Every Joestar man knows better than to leave a young lady waiting like that. You need to hang up this phone right now and-" He did just that.
"Sorry," Jotaro said as he returned to his seat. "That was probably rude."
"Dinner and a show," she replied coyly. "He sounds in high spirits."
"Seems that way. We almost lost him a few years back, but he managed to recover. Doesn't seem like it's affected him all that much. He probably will hang on for a while." He shook his head at the absurd luck that man possessed. "Even walked away from five plane crashes now."
"Are you sure he's not just immortal?" she asked in amazement. "How do you even get into that many crashes in the first place?"
"Hell if I know. I just try not to fly with him if I can help it since I was there for two of them."
"Are you sure you're not immortal?" It was at this point Bianca was forced to question how the man sitting in front of her...was real. He was built like a house, could magically avoid getting drenched in rain, super fussy about the particulars of things, and was apparently locked in a death match with aircrafts spanning generations.
"Immortality is overrated," he said, furthering her bafflement. "Just turns you into a pompous ass. You know, if it was real."
"You're pretty strange, Jotaro," she told him. "Is it alright for me to call you that? I know Japanese people are different when it comes to names compared to Americans."
"It's fine," he said. They were familiar enough for that by now. Plus, he didn't really care what she called him, so long as it wasn't-
"Hey, I just realized something. You're 'Jotaro' and 'Kujo'. Does anyone ever call you JoJo?"
"A few," he answered honestly. While he'd been neutral to that name in his teenage years, he'd grown far less receptive to it as an adult. At best it was passe, but as worst it sounded like he was being mocked, mostly because that's usually what people called him when they were trying to mock him and it had finally gotten old.
Thankfully, she dropped it pretty quickly. "Weird coincidence," she said before taking a bite out of some bread. The rest of the night went off without issue, the two finishing a nice meal together and sitting down on the couch to watch some variety shows on a small TV before Jotaro headed home. All in all, it was a pretty nice time.
Took a bit longer than I would have liked, but the third chapter finally happened. Had a lot of other things to worry about and didn't have the time to get back to it until now.
Joseph's starting to show his age. It's only about five or so years out from DiU, so I figure his dementia is starting to set in now. I always kind of figured it was his being dead for a few minutes during the DIO fight that caused it, since his brain would have been dying from lack of oxygen during that entire time but it just took a while to set in with Hamon propping him up. That or the newest plane crash rattled his brain a bit.
Someone got all mad at me for correctly pegging Jotaro as the weird, awkward, fussy, autistic nerd who's way too into dolphins that he canonically is for some reason. Can't really tell whether they think that's an insult or they just hate autistics like Jotaro (and me), but we'll probably never know for certain. Personally, I think a character who acts tough by virtue of not being able to properly express himself and bumbles his way to victory through a combination of stubbornness and bluffing as hard as humanly possible is way more interesting and a more true successor to Joseph than believing Araki really did just intend to play the stoic badass who's super strong, super fast, super handsome, super cool, and basically flawless trope straight all along.
Kind of makes me want to systematically dismantle all of his badass moments just to prove a point. Maybe next chapter he'll get to show how terrible he is at video games when Joseph isn't cheating for him or how he legitimately has no idea how to play poker.
As far as next chapter, it'll probably come out quicker than this one now that I've got a backlog of stuff for my other stories. Really been Rohaning it lately so I've always got things to go in advance.
Not much else to report. Next one is probably going to have something slightly more significant happen. Thanks for reading. Always remember to use real San Marzano tomatoes in your sauce whenever possible.