Please Choose Me

I Chose This

He found that the air was still pleasantly warm and much needed after so long of being trapped inside. He would linger and appreciate it, but he didn't want to be caught before he could even begin, so he started his trek down the busy roads. His body was still a little tense, all of his muscles felt too tight on his body and sometimes his skin would pull where it was scarred over making moving an all-around unpleasant experience.

But he would rather feel this pain, to revel in it and know he was alive , than to drown in those pain meds they pumped him full of. He didn't like the feeling like he was barely treading water, his head a million miles above the clouds and his tongue too heavy for his mouth that the pills gave him. It made him feel weak, and if he was weak then he couldn't protect anyone.

"Josuke?" A familiar voice made the boy turn around, long blond hair and green eyes invading his line of sight. "It is you! I doubted myself because of your hair."

Josuke huffed, the brush of air blowing his long bangs a little in the wind. Nervously, he pushed the hair away so he couldn't see it and noticed Mikitaka curiously watching him.

"Why...isn't your hair in its usual updo?" The alien threaded his words carefully, his jewelry jingling in the wind. His eyes scanned over the boy for a moment and just when he noticed the wrapped bandages peeking from Josuke's collar and down his arm, the other teen decided to intervene.

"I ran out of hair gel. Y'know how it is." The shrug of his shoulders almost made him cringe, the action tugging at the scar tissue on his abdomen. Josuke did his best to ignore it, leveling his eyes on a rock just a few inches from his shoe. It was scuffed and stained with dried blood, making the teen remember that no one had brought him clean clothes his entire stay in the hospital. They hadn't expected him to wake up as quickly as he did, and his mother wasn't there with her optimism. So, Josuke would have to hope that the jacket he stole from the nurse's station would cover up the month-old blood stain. Or that Mikitaka knew to leave well enough alone. "Why are you here?"

"Oh. Mr. Jotaro said that you had finally woken up. Okuyasu and Koichi were both in bright spirits in class today." The boy pressed a pointer finger to his chin, his eyes studying but his smile as pleasant as always. "I wanted to see if you were okay, Josuke. I was worried about you."

Mikitaka's bluntness was much different than Rohan's. Rohan's honesty always had a bite to it, the cold hard truth. It hurt to listen to, and it often caused more harm than good. Rohan's bluntness was born from facts, while Mikitaka's was born of the heart.

The alien was blunt, not because it was the truth, but because he cared. He loved all humans, all life, and he wanted it to be known. He wanted his truth to be heard, not the facts that Rohan read in books, but his truth. Mikitaka's truth. And, most often than not, it always took Josuke off guard.

The only people in his whole life that spoke with that kind of truth, one born from the heart and soul, were his mom and his grandpa. They were the only people who doubted his ability to protect himself, not because they thought of him as weak, but because they loved him. They were the only people who looked Josuke in the eye and worried for him. At least until he nearly had his whole digestive system stabbed out of him by a serial killer.

Now, suddenly, everyone was worried about him. Hell, even Mr. Joestar looked at him like the boy would float away at any second. Apparently, all it took to lose the respect of everyone around him was to lose a huge fight with Kira. Now everyone saw him for what he was, a child. A weak, useless, child.

"I'm fine, see?" He lifted his arms up and did a little twirl, showing Mikitaka just how 'fine' he was. "They're even letting me go home."

A white lie, they were letting him go home, but only if his guardian signed off on it. But that was where it got muddled. Who was his guardian now? His mom was gone–