Noriaki is called into Morioh by his reluctant boyfriend to help handle the Kira case, which is terrible timing, as their relationship is really rough going right now. Bizarrely, the whole story is told through phone calls to one Jean-Pierre Polnareff, who is traveling down the Atlantic coast on a mission of his own: attend Jolyne Kujo's eigth birthday party or perish.
Teen.
The romantic relationship is Jotaro/Noriaki (as I insist on calling him), but just as central are Jean-Pierre's friendships with Jotaro and Noriaki.
“He is not going to die,” replied Noriaki, refusing to look up from his screen.
“He might,” Jean argued, raising his eyebrows and shoulders in one expressive shrug. “He’s terribly out of practice. I tried to get him to fix a leak for me when I had him over last year, thinking he could stop time and fix it while I held it so water wouldn’t fly all over, and he admitted he couldn’t stop time for that long.”
Noriaki paused his typing. For a second. “Our friend can handle his own messes.”
Jean winced audibly. “You are broken up again, huh?”
“We have not broken up,” answered Noriaki honestly. They had not broken up. It had been a month or so of icy silence, but Jotaro would break. Eventually. He was putting it off while he ‘hunted a serial killer’ and ‘met a long-lost relative’ (whatever), but he would break.
“You two need to talk more.”
“We do.”
“You need to talk about these things more often.”
“I took that criticism under review the last ten times you said it.”
“Mais,” sighed Jean, with a shrug. “It’s your partnership, and you can handle it however you like. But I will say that I hate it when you two are ‘off again.’”
“I’m so sorry, Jean-Pierre.”
“No you are not. I mean that I have faith in you both, you got through him having Jolyne, you can get through anything, even whatever stupid thing it was that made you decide to stop speaking to him and leave him to die on mission, cleaning up a mess that really isn’t his mess, you know.”
Noriaki took a deep breath and conceded the point. “No. No, it is mostly Mr. Joestar’s mess, and last I checked he was on the scene as well, so I’m not sure why it is that Jotaro has remained active…” he turned around in his swivel chair, looking at the ceiling, pretending to ponder. The many screens around him, the clustered control panels that gave him access to every one of the machines in the chilled server room in the basement of the secretive international organization he worked for, cast blinking white light on his face. Then he snapped his fingers and said, “Ah, I’ve got it! He’s trying to avoid talking to his partner, whom he insulted and then dropped cold, because he knows he’s in the wrong, doesn’t he, but he doesn’t want to face it. That must be it.”
“Ah, fine, I will go myself.”
“Oh, no no,” interrupted Noriaki smoothly. “No, that’s just what he wants.”
Jean only sighed.
“He would love to have his dear friend come save him from whatever mess he’s made in Morioh. He can spin the story whatever way he wants to you and you’ll just accept it.”
“Jotaro covers up details when he gets embarrassed. That’s not lying—”
“It’s not being honest. No, I didn’t read his back-up request but I bet he asked for you specifically, and that is because you’ll do dirty work and you won’t ask questions about it. I’m sure he could handle whatever it is he’s gotten involved in with the assets he has already, but he’s decided he needs to do it quietly, he can’t get whoever it is he’s targeted for his skewed affection now involved—probably Mr. Joestar’s son, if I know him, and I do—so he wants you to come in, do the dirty job quick and cheap, and then excuse yourself without ever meeting his new friends. Quick and convenient and no one finds out what he’s hiding. He doesn’t need you to come help him; he just wants the convenience.”
“It is so odd,” said Jean, standing over Noriaki’s computer-desk with his arms crossed over his chest, “because Dio’s parasite did not turn me into a conniving, two-faced homme fatale, so he must have used the special one on you.”
Noriaki glared up at Jean. Jean glared back down. They held each other’s stare for three, then five, then ten seconds, then simultaneously broke into laughter.
‘Dio abuse’ jokes never stopped being funny, but Jean really needed the right audience for them. Even Jotaro would have tensed up at that one instead of laughing. Noriaki, however, looked better already.
“You got the ‘dumb looker’ parasite,” Noriaki replied, giggling; “We just didn’t have time to get your harem outfit in. You flunked out so quickly.”
“Beaten out by a far more alluring sixteen-year-old, a fate that has only occurred more often as I age. Ah, only around hundred-year-old men, though.”
“I was all set to graduate from predator school, and then that damn handsome man got in my way. Ah,” Noriaki sighed, and then stood. His cane was close enough at hand that a quick sweep from Hierophant had it put in his palm. “Yes, you’re right. I should go see what has Jotaro worked up.”
“I win.”
“Asshole. No, it’s… what was it?”
“Connard.”
“Connard. Yes, you win. I still think he must be fully able to handle whatever it is by himself, but has run into some emotional hangup, again.”
“Our friend Jotaro is only emotional hangups.”
“One hundred and ninety-five centimeters of them. I’m not happy with him; for your information, he told me that he couldn’t see me the same after learning about Mr. Joestar’s illegitimate son, and then walked out on me without clarifying.”
“...Quoi?” Jean wheezed. “What? Nani? What the fuck? What did he—”
“—Mean by that, I do not know, we would have to trace an exhausting path through a thousand unspoken worries to put the puzzle of his words together, do I think I have it sorted halfway out anyway, yes, I do. The point is that I am in the right, Jean.”
“Ah, but what did you say to him?”
“Nothing. What do you think I said? I obviously asked him what he meant by that. I didn’t get a response. I was letting him sit in it himself, but by some coincidence, before we could speak again he just had to take a long mission that led him far away from home, and me.”
“I think the coincidence has more to do with wanting to meet said illegitimate relative, but I’m splitting hairs.”
“Hm. Just a pile of coincidences.” Noriaki tapped his cane. He jammed it into Chariot’s shiny foot when the stand compulsively tried to help balance him. “Quit it, mon chevalier.”
“Habit, mon homme fatale. I can’t help a little helping.”
“I don’t need it.”
“You remind me of someone.”
“Oh, I know he means well, I know he’s not having fun yanking me around. I know he’s doing it because he feels like he has to, for whatever stupid reason. Still, he knows what it does to me. I’ll go help him, but he won’t see me happy about it.”
“Kick that Kira’s ass, then kick his ass, and then talk to him.”
“Fine,” Noriaki sighed. “Only because you asked.”
Jean-Pierre smiled a beatific smile and raised his fist. Noriaki sighed and then met it with his own. They shook on it, an ultimate, binding promise that Noriaki would never go back on, not if it meant his life. Jokes aside, Jean had seen the darkest period of his life and had been right there with him on the road to recovery. Noriaki would betray Jotaro before he betrayed Jean, though, hopefully, Jotaro didn’t know that.
“I will do all of these things,” Noriaki concluded, “though not necessarily in this order.”
“Kick his ass first if you want to. I cannot tell by your biased reporting, but he may deserve it.”
“Slander,” smiled Noriaki. He turned away, toward the threshold that marked the exit to SPW’s server room, to a lit set of stairs leading the way up, and began to mentally prepare for his return to Japan.
The sky outside the window of the SPW Foundation headquarters in New York City was struggling to let a beautiful morning in through grim, grumbling clouds. Jean had been glowering at the growing storm for nearly an hour and doing just about nothing else when he was informed there was a call for him.
He hated New York City and had been slowly constructing a plan for escape since he had been summoned there to actually work in an office for a change. He didn’t hate all of the United States, not at all, but being an Occitan himself, he felt most of the charm was around the southerly coast that Jotaro had made his home, not the chilly north that his grandfather had chosen. Hoping that this was some urgent call taking him elsewhere, he hurried over to the phone.
“Allo, c’est Jean-Pierre Polnareff.”
“Salut, Jean-Pierre Polnareff,” sighed Kakyoin Noriaki through a considerable amount of static.
“Salut! Bisou as well, bon matin —” Jean regarded once more the dismal morning outside. “—except what time is it for you right now?”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“You did make it to Japan?”
“I did. I am calling you from Morioh right now.”
“Ah bon! I really lost track of the time. I had thought you would still be traveling.”
“You’re a day off. I got into Morioh this morning, nearly fourteen hours ago. I’m calling you from a hotel room phone before I face the daunting task of going to sleep.”
“Have you already met up with Jotaro? How about—”
Noriaki interrupted him with a snort that the hotel landline, throwing the noise across oceans, transformed into a flurry of mechanical snow. “Did I meet up with Jotaro.”
“What did he do?”
“I will be frank,” said Noriaki, “It’s ‘what did I do.’”
“Noriaki,” Jean chastised him.
“I know, I know. I went all this way telling myself that he was the one that fucked this one up, he is absolutely in the wrong this time, and the minute I get here, what do I do?”
“I don’t know, what did you do?”
“Oh, Jean,” he sighed.
“Ah, Noriaki. Mon petit. Answer the question.”
“Well. I arrived at Tokyo before dawn, then at Morioh bright and early. I had neglected to inform our mutual friend about when I would be there, or even that I was going to be there. I decided I would take a look around the town for myself first.”
Naturally. Noriaki was a cautious man, in the way of large apex predators. He knew he could handle whatever it was but he wanted things set up perfectly before he struck. Though he protested, he was in Morioh to hunt and he was doubtlessly excited to do so. He had been that way for as long as Jean had known him, a slow-paced persistence hunter, someone who took his time to mark territory before he even thought about snagging prey, and that had not been just Dio’s influence. The two of them had been completely different kinds of assailants even then. Jean himself would go absolutely insane if he tried to follow Noriaki’s creeping tactics; he was charging in the van or he wasn’t in the fight. “And what did you find?”
“Hm, hm. Well, Jean-Pierre. Stand users, you know…”
“Horrible people, I cannot stand them.”
“Mm. Me either. ‘Stand users attract stand users’, they say. Maybe they shouldn’t have told me that. Or maybe they should have phrased it differently. The first thing I found in Morioh was breakfast, a newspaper, a lovely park. A few townspeople waved to me or welcomed me in. It’s a friendly town. But the first person who really caught my eye was Higashikata Josuke.”
“Non!”
“Oui. I wasn’t even looking for him. I had barely been on the ground for an hour. He had been intending to run some errands for his mother, but had run into some friends and gone off-course. The strange levers and cranks that turn the wheels of our lives, my friend, were active again.”
“You ran into the uncomfortable affair child immediately and without even trying. Yes, this is typical.”
“He noticed me right away, too. He gave me a second glance practically before he finished his first. He just knew. I didn’t have Hierophant skulking around or anything. I was only walking the opposite way. Yet he knew immediately. I did, also, because he looks quite a bit like some other men I know. In fact, he is such a dead ringer for Joseph Joestar as a young man that it is a little alarming.”
“I wish I could see that. I almost want to go over there myself…”
“Not with the way we’re acting, you don’t.”
“Ha!”
“So I couldn’t help staring at him, because really, he even has Mr. Joestar’s eyes. His facial structure, nearly everything. He asked me if I needed something from him, and you know, I had a bad idea.”
“What was your bad idea?”
“Jotaro’s reports indicated that they had run into quite a number of rogue stand users, so…”
“Oh, mon ami…”
“I hear I still have a very villainous look.” Jean could hear the smile in Noriaki’s voice. Normally, he would be happy to hear that he had cheered up, but he did not love it this time.
“The first thing you did in Morioh was fight Jotaro’s nephew.”
“Uncle.”
“Nephew, he’s a child.”
“That’s not how it works. I asked him if he was Higashikata Josuke, he said he was, I told him I had been looking for him. I suppose you could say that things escalated quickly after that.”
“Mais… mais…”
“But nothing, there’s nothing you can do about it now. He’s an intelligent young man; strong, too, just like Jotaro said. I don’t know if I was rustier than I realized or it was just the fact that it was three on one.”
“Tr—Who were the other two??”
“His friends Okuyasu and Hazamada. Neither are slouches, but Josuke outshines them easily. Despite his healing being his most impressive ability, Crazy Diamond is excellent at close-quarters combat as well. I had a hard time just keeping him at bay. I may have resorted to a few cheap tricks.”
“Like what?”
“Hm, at one point… I told him his father could have certainly beaten me by now. I may have said he was ‘as weak as Jotaro’, too… but I kept complimenting him too, you know. I told him he was phenomenal, because he was. He didn’t seem complimented.”
“How did you even get out of this?...”
“He was never trying to kill me. I can’t imagine him doing that kind of thing, honestly, unless he was really backed into a corner. He kept trying to get me to stop fighting and talk, he was more interested in how I knew his family. But I kept going on acting like a bit of a villain—”
“You are a villain. None of us have ever been fooled.”
Noriaki laughed.
“See, that was a villainous laugh.”
“It goes with the villainous look, the villainous character…”
“Chilling. So, what happened?”
“Ah, it turns out every one of them has Jotaro on speed dial and he comes rushing in to save the day whenever he’s called.” The laughter dissipated from Noriaki’s voice; it dried into melancholy immediately. “I ever heard one of them say, ‘Seriously? Jotaro-san saved us again…’”
Jean sighed heavily. “Vraiment, cet idiot…”
“Wait, what was ‘vraiment’ …”
“Eh. ‘Really?’ ‘Honto ni?’”
“That’s right.”
“This is how we know he feels guilty about something.”
“Yes, exactly,” Noriaki agreed, vindicated. “He’s overdoing it. He’s saving the world himself again. Several of them would be much stronger stand users already if he wasn’t being Superman for them.”
“And this is why I don’t think he’s mad at you, necessarily…”
“He’s internalized something. I think he is mad at me, though. Well, if he wasn’t before, he is now.”
“Right. Because he found you fighting his newly adopted teenage children.”
“Ha. The look on his face when he saw me. Saw Hierophant, really. I knew I was in for it immediately but, you know, I’m sure that, deep down, Jotaro was delighted with what he saw.” There was a thread of unpleasant nastiness in Noriaki’s voice. They didn’t call him a villain for no reason.
Jean was not intimidated. He needed to keep this idiot on track with his story before he drifted away into evasive psychoanalysis. “And what did he see, Noriaki?”
“I may have had one or two of them strung up with Hierophant. Up in the trees. But I couldn’t get a grip on Josuke at all. In terms of combat style he is quite similar to Jotaro. Though I just love that he fixes things. He fixes things, Jean. Well, as I was saying, Jotaro saw me fighting him, and I said, ‘Hello, Jotaro.’ Josuke realized we knew each other and he wanted to know how. I asked Jotaro if he wanted to tell him how we know each other. Jotaro came in for the kill.”
Jean removed the phone from his ear from a moment to sigh, and then to call Noriaki a stupid bastard while he couldn’t hear him, and amended that Jotaro was a stupid bastard as well, while he was at it. Then he returned the phone to his mouth and said “Yes, so, you started literally fighting each other again. The solution to your problems, surely.”
“Actually, no problems have been solved so far.”
“Quelle surprise! Well, who won?”
“Oof. Jotaro.” Jean could hear the wince in his voice. “He’s not as out of practice as you implied he was. I did give him a workout.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“We… might have gotten a little rough with each other.”
“Non, non, non…”
“I think we scared the ‘kids’.”
“Non, non, non—”
“I think Josuke didn’t believe him at first when Jotaro finally got me on the ground in a judo hold and then introduced me as an unfortunate ally. But then he got me back up to his feet—kept a grip on one of my wrists behind my back, though, where they couldn’t see—and I informed them that I had been Jotaro’s working partner for years. ‘I just have a few bad habits, that’s all.’ I had to pull out my ID to convince Okuyasu I really did work with SPW.”
“I wonder why they had some issues with trusting you after your stellar introduction.”
“You know, Jotaro said I was a ‘strong ally’, and Josuke responded that I had sure proven I was strong. Ah, with the Kira case, Jean…”
“Yes?”
“…I honestly had suspected Jotaro of not attacking it directly, for some reason,” he admitted, “but now I see that there really is something strange going on here. They’ve been putting their backs into it but I still have more questions than answers. I suppose I am glad I came.”
Jean turned that around in his head. The existence of the ‘stand arrow’ had truly complicated everything, and there were so many questions about where it came from, how Dio had gotten it, and how it had ended up where it was now… “Did you and him talk about all of that while just?...”
“Ah, no, we all retired to the house of a certain stand user in the area called Rohan—absolute card, I think he’s rotten, his stand ability is incredible, I could tell he hated me—and I was brought up to speed there.”
“Do you think you can handle it?”
“Yes, yes. We just have to root the man out, the rest will be easy with all the cards Jotaro has up his sleeves now. Josuke clearly just worships him, it’s appalling. Half of his friends do as well.”
“Are you jealous?”
“Hardly. Concerned, I would say. Josuke seems like a good person, I’m not sure he knows what he’s looking up to. I don’t mean that I think Jotaro is misusing that admiration. I know he isn’t. But another thing I know is that Jotaro has never had a good time being Jotaro and that he would choose to be just about anyone else if he could. I worry about a young person like Josuke admiring Jotaro’s stoicism.”
Noriaki could be harsh in his judgments of other people, but Jean knew what he meant, the gaps between words he was eliding. They both knew how much Jotaro struggled with himself. What Noriaki meant was that so many of Jotaro’s outwardly admirable traits were really harmful to himself, his wise-seeming silence, his unshakeable resolve, his relentless perfectionism, all simultaneously inward-directed, relentless, and punishing. Anything that looked cool from the outside was burning inside him.
When they were at their best, Jotaro’s firmness was a rock that Noriaki sorely needed and Noriaki’s emotive nature drew Jotaro out from inside himself. Jean had had some of the best evenings of his life drinking and chatting with the two of them, and Mr. Joestar, back before his memory started going. He had seen Noriaki practically tease Jotaro’s skin off and how lovely he was underneath it. And they were both fantastic friends, really, funny and quick to join a bit, considerate, loyal, eager to help, as dear to him as anyone else still above the ground.
God help him, they would all get back to that place. Jean decided he was leaving New York for somewhere warmer tomorrow.
Noriaki continued, “He seems to have plenty of people in his corner, though—Josuke, that is—so I’m not worried about him turning into as much of a prick as his nephew. I can’t see it. He is SUCH a sweetheart.”
“You’ve said that. You’re as enamored with him as Jotaro is and it’s not even been a day.”
“If you tell anyone, you’re a dead man,” admitted Noriaki. “After that, I let Jotaro walk Josuke home and met up with him on his way back to the hotel.”
“’The’ hotel?”
“You got me. I booked a different room in the same hotel.”
“Without telling him, and he still doesn’t know.”
“Now, how did you know that?”
“I have been your friend too long. It is affecting me.”
Noriaki giggled, airy and brief. “I did, on a different floor, and I believe he hasn’t realized yet. I pretended I had just stalked him there, which is, of course, believable. I invited myself to his room and then I tried to talk to him.”
“Tried.”
“Oh, I won’t get into the ugly details, Jean; you don’t need to hear it. He wouldn’t talk to me.”
“Not at all?”
“He told me he didn’t appreciate the stunt I had pulled earlier and I told him that if he coddled Josuke any harder he’d pop his cute little head off. I asked him why he didn’t have this Kira business in his pocket yet, he said it wasn’t as easy as I thought it was, I said it would be really easy if he stopped treating his allies like children. He got very defensive, very quickly, and informed me that most of his allies here weren’t murderers and he wasn’t going to turn them into murderers.”
Jean sucked in a breath. “Well, most of us who fought Dio, yes, we had blood on our hands to begin with…”
“…Except for him. That’s right, Jean, Jotaro was the one we made a murderer.”
“Now, I—”
“So, because I can be an idiot sometimes, I asked him what he meant by that. And I don’t know what I expected, why I thought he would say something like, ‘the way you made me a murderer, how you left me your messes and made me into the killer I am today’, because of course he didn’t say anything like that. He said that he wouldn’t allow any of these people who had so much taken away from them already to lose any more, and if that meant he had to take care of it himself, then he had to take care of it himself. I could hear in his voice that all he was thinking about was how much he cared for this pack of carefree teenagers and that accusing me of anything was the furthest thing from his mind. He wasn’t even really thinking about me at all. And then, Jean, one of my bad habits startled shifting around inside me again…”
“Ah, pauvre, doux, stupide…”
Jean continued describing Noriaki’s sorry state as Noriaki monologued over him. “Well, I felt very in love with him, for a moment, and then I felt very angry. I asked him whether he trusted a man like me around those poor little innocents. And he told me to not do this. Then I told him that he had surely hoped you would show up, you know, since you tend to look good and make him look good, and I tend to look bad and make him look bad, and he tried to tell me to stop it again. Then I asked him if he was afraid of what I could tell these people about him, you know, that he was a murderer and a cheater too.”
Jean hung up the phone. He took a deep breath. He looked disdainfully out of the wide windows at the grumbling gray sky over New York City. He picked up the phone again, redialed the number that had called him, negotiated his way through connecting to a hotel in small town Japan and paying for the call, and then waited for Noriaki to pick up again.
“Dumped idiot hotline,” answered Noriaki.
“I think you genuinely were in the right when you left here for Morioh.”
“Perhaps.”
“You are not now.”
“I am not,” agreed Noriaki, bleak. “He isn’t even a cheater, Jean.”
“Well…”
“It’s always been an open relationship. Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no. It certainly was at the time. He didn’t cheat on me with Stephanie.”
Jean made an uncertain, throaty noise.
“He cheated himself,” Noriaki sighed. “I was always more likely to wander than he was, you know that. He rarely slipped into someone else’s bed. When he decided that he had to try to be straight and married and normal, the person he deceived was himself. He’s tried to explain it to me. He had some kind of breakdown, unexpectedly. It was really bad. It was the fact that he wouldn’t talk to me for so long…”
“I was there. I remember trying to find out where he had gone after a year of not hearing from him. If he hadn’t been calling Holly, I would have thought he was dead.”
“I know why having a child made him go batshit insane. I don’t fully understand the breakdown that led him to making that child in the first place. But some of the things he said to me… No, it doesn’t matter right now. I could have called him cruel and been right, I could have said he abandoned me, but calling him a cheater was too much. I knew it was too much when I saw in his eyes that he believed me. He thinks he cheated on me. That’s not fair. I was really sleeping around for a while, Jean.”
“As I just said, I also remember the year when we could not find Jotaro.”
“I don’t need to… I don’t want to repeat everything he said about himself, then. After I called him a murderer and a cheater. He reiterated that he didn’t want any of them to have to go through what he went through. I realized I had fully fucked my chances of actually talking to him and tried to pull back, but there was no coming back from that.”
“Well, tell me you didn’t leave him drinking.”
“He wasn’t drinking when I left. It has been a few hours, though.”
“Do you think you should have stayed?...”
“I don’t know, Jean. I would like to have stayed. But I don’t know if it would have helped. He was completely shut down when I left. I’m such…”
“Eugh. Fine. Try again tomorrow.”
“Maybe the day after.”
“You have to at least work with him for this case.”
“Of course I will, there’s a man forcibly making stand users and then telling them to go kill. We could be at each other’s throats and we would still be on the case.”
It sounded like they more or less were. Maybe he should have gone. Maybe he should have told Noriaki to sit it out and let him help get Jotaro in a better mood. Oh well. “Try again. Do your best. That's all you can do.”
“Ah, no, Jean, I decided just now. I am giving up and doing my worst. I’m not trying ever again.”
“D’accord. Who am I to stop you?”
“Jean.”
“Get some rest instead,” Jean decided. “Start small, set achievable goals. Go to bed and get some sleep.”
“Oh, fine. I will do this one thing, for you.”
“Merci beaucoup.”
“You’re very welcome. Now leave me alone to rot; you go do whatever it is you do while I’m gone.”
“Eh. Baltimore first, I think,” said Jean, and smiled when Noriaki sighed before hanging up the phone.
“Jean.”
“Jotaro,” said Jean into the restaurant’s cracked white desk-phone, stunned. “How do you know I’m in Baltimore?”
Jotaro grunted in response. The hostess raised her eyebrows, looking a little more disdainful than intrigued.
“How do you know I am eating crab at this specific restaurant in the city of—”
“Jean, are you being listened to?”
“Well, yes, but just by the staff. Euh, they don’t want me to use their phone for too long...”
“I’ll make it brief, then. Can you visit Jolyne?”
“…In Miami?”
Jean visualized the east coast of the United States in his mind. It was big. He had been intending to wander southwards, but…
“I’m going to be gone longer than I intended. I called Stephanie to tell her already. Still. I meant to visit Jolyne on her birthday…”
“Her birthday! What day is that?”
“Next Wednesday.”
Eight days. In that case, he had time, even if he wanted to stay on the road instead of taking a plan. He relaxed. “Well, I was playing hooky anyway, and if it’s her birthday, I’ll do it. I haven’t visited you in Miami in… let’s not worry about how long. What should I bring?...”
“Double check with Stephanie—do you still have her number?”
“The house number? Yes—”
“Jolyne wanted the Givenchy Barbie, but make sure that Stephanie didn’t get it for her first. If she did, you could shell out for the Barbie Dream House, but if that’s too much for what you have on hand, you could get a Sky Dancer.”
Being the powerful ladies’ man he was, Jean kept a completely straight face throughout those instructions. He scribbled options down on a napkin, including better ideas as they came to him (all those dolls, why not a styling kit so she could customize them instead, or more doll-clothes? Maybe even a sewing kit?), and then said, “Got it. Should I say it was from you, or me?”
Jotaro was silent for a few seconds. “…Could you get two things?”
Jean chuckled at him. “Not a problem. There’s enough big box stores from here to Miami, I can find a few presents.” None of it would make Jolyne happy, exactly, but she was an intelligent girl. She understood adult motivations better than any of the adults around her liked. It might count for something.
The hostess was staring at him. He put his hand on the handset and said “It’s his little girl, he’s going to miss her birthday. I’m going to bring her the presents.”
“That’s nice,” she glared.
Jean returned to the phone. “You’ll have it. I’ll bring a cake, too, since Stephanie can’t bake.”
“She—”
“Don’t defend her, she can’t bake. One chocolate chip cookie recipe straight from the back of the Hershey bag is not enough for me to call someone a chef. I need to be there by next Wednesday, so, I’ll call Stephanie to tell her I’m coming today or tomorrow, I’ll stay there for a day or two, maybe take Joyne out to the zoo or a movie. I’ll call SPW and tell them I’m trailing the biggest, baddest rouge they have ever in their lives—”
“You don’t have to lie to them.”
“But I will have more fun this way. Before this lovely woman incinerates me with her eyes, Jotaro, how are things going over there?”
“Fine.”
Jean put his hand over his eyes. Fine? “Fine, fine, have you located—have you found him yet?” He nearly said ‘located the killer’ in front of the restaurant hostess. Whoops.
“No, but we have some good leads to follow.”
Should he? “Did Noriaki make it there?”
“Yes.”
“…Is he… behaving… himself? He was in a bit of a mood when he left…”
“He’s already doing a better job of it than I am, I think.”
That was an interesting thing Jotaro had just said, because Noriaki had reported that he had shown up in Morioh, fought everyone, acted like a bastard, and then tore chunks out of Jotaro’s heart which he left bloody on the floor before stalking away. “Well, good, good. If we can count on him to do one thing, it’s track down someone who needs to be put in their place. Though, I wonder—”
“I wish…”
Jean had barely heard that. He wasn’t sure he was supposed to. “What?”
“I wish I didn’t have to use him for something like that again.”
For God’s sake. “Noriaki is never happier than when he’s being a bloodhound.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“He’s great at it.”
“I wish he didn’t have to be.”
“You… two…” Jean took a deep breath. He turned to the hostess to say, “Don’t worry, I wish I would hang up on him too. Just one more minute and I will.”
“It’s good. I can seat tables whenever it’s convenient to you, Sir,” she said, with no inflection in her voice whatsoever.
Ouch. He would buy her some flowers, or something, and try to hurry them back here before the lunch shift ended. “Jotaro, you two work so beautifully together when you will just work together. Noriaki has been in a horrible mood lately. Because of this, don’t take whatever he is saying to you seriously, but you must talk to him so you can work together again.”
“He isn’t the problem.”
“Then talk to yourself, Jotaro, or if you think his head is on straight and yours has gone sideways, let him talk to you. You know how much he cares about you, he just… doesn’t… he gets scared. And you’re scaring him by shutting him out. You know what he’s so afraid of. Jotaro, this woman will eat my liver. I have to go, I will call you back in a few days once I am somewhere I can feel the sunlight on my skin again, but most importantly, please, please do not get yourself killed.”
“I won’t. You either.”
“Adieu,” he said, and smacked the phone down. He apologized profusely to the hostess before running back to his table. He did manage to pay, find a florist, and come back with a few carnations in a bouquet (he had noticed a little enamel carnation on one of her hair pins) to hand off to her just as her shift was ending.
Her name was Gloria. She was a very friendly woman, it turned out, when she wasn’t being inconvenienced.
It was a beautiful day on the banks of the French Broad, her white waters quick-running down the many slopes that led from the mountains to the lowcountry. Jean had spent the day catacombing his way through a maze of art studios set up in abandoned warehouses (stained glass, steel forges, and an oddly high number of oil paintings of aliens) before stumbling into a barbeque joint with a suspicious lack of official-looking paperwork but the most incredible Carolina Gold barbeque he had ever eaten, then into a bar or two, and finally into a motel that led him use their phone for a couple dollars under the table to check in on his difficult friends.
It was morning in Japan. No—afternoon? Some time. Jotaro would surely be long out of the hotel he had no idea he was sharing with his supposedly distant boyfriend, so he asked to be transferred to Kakyoin Noriaki’s room instead. The receptionists’ English was so fine that he was actually teaching her some French by the time the call was connected to Noriaki’s room.
“What time is it in New York?” Noriaki asked.
“New York? I left New York behind me days ago. In beautiful Asheville, North Carolina, it is the middle of the night, the moon is high over the blue peaks of the mountains, and the breeze is warm on your skin.”
“Good for you. In Morioh, we are still having a terrible time.”
“Still haven’t found him?”
“No, and Rohan’s house burned to the ground yesterday.”
“What?? Who??” Jean felt like he had heard the name before, but he remembered nothing.
“Don’t worry about it. Local petty stand villain. Ostensibly an ally, but I don’t know if he’s seen past his own nose in years. I won’t even get into it, depending on who says what the fire was either his own fault or Josuke’s fault, and I am inclined to trust that Josuke is not at fault.”
“Why would it be his fault?”
“He was in the house at the time, it’s fine, Rohan eats caviar for breakfast. He can buy another house. Jean, why are you calling?”
“My dear friend, I am a little drunk, and I got to thinking about you.”
“Well, thank you,” said Noriaki, sounding more charmed than Jean had honestly expected him to be. “What about me?”
“I was thinking to myself, I wonder—oh, thank you,” he interrupted himself, as the hotel night clerk brought him an ice-water he didn’t recall asking for. Or maybe he hadn’t asked for it, and the clerk had just made that choice himself. There was no air conditioning in the lobby, though there was in the rooms. Instead the windows were all propped open to let in the night air. The water glass was soaked with condensation. Papers rustled on the counter whenever the breeze picked up. The clerk was drinking a glass of bourbon himself. “What was I saying? I was thinking to myself, I have to see how my friend Noriaki is. He’s been doing so badly lately, and I know how much worse he can make things given only a few days.”
“It’s true.”
“I remember when you and Vanilla—when Dio had to change your roommate practically every week. I thought it would be better that you didn’t have one and I didn’t know why he didn’t just let you live on your own, but in retrospect, he wanted an extra eye on you—do you remember, I lasted the longest with you.”
“That’s not true. I lived with Enrico the longest.”
“Merde. Bullshit. It was me. That was only a technicality. It’s only because Enrico would never leave the villa and I was always out hunting.”
“You were certainly my most pleasant roommate.”
“Bien sur! And a pleasure to be him. Me, that is. Eugh. This isn’t a good topic for a lovely night out, what was I saying…”
“You were asking if I had managed to make everything worse given a few days of no one keeping tabs on me.”
“Yes, that. Did you?”
Noriaki laughed at him. Jean laughed as well; he knew he was drunk and he was perfectly aware that his primary reaction to drunkenness was being so incredibly fond of everyone he knew. But God above, he was so fond of Noriaki. He was one of his dearest friends, though they often struggled to find time to spend together between missions and jobs that pulled them to opposite ends of the globe. Noriaki had a place in his heart, a rather large place, shared by no one else. The things they had been through together—and no one else who had walked that awful road with him, wore Dio’s chains with him, had walked back out alive. They had searched for other survivors. For the longest time they thought that at least Enrico had made it out alive, since they hadn’t seen him in the villa when they raided it, but there was no trace of him. Just him, and Kakyoin Noriaki, wherever he was in the world. But thank God he had Noriaki, at least wasn’t alone with his memories. There was never a thing he had to explain to Noriaki, not once. He just understood.
When the time came, after a year of silence, that Jean finally hunted Jotaro down and found him with a new wife and infant daughter in Florida, he had spent a night with the choice between being a friend to Jotaro and keeping his secrets or being a friend to Noriaki and telling him what had happened to his lost lover.
He had chosen Noriaki. He doubted Jotaro had even been surprised.
“Oh, Jean. No, I did not make everything worse.”
“Congratulations.”
“It took monumental effort, I’ll have you know.”
“What happened? Did you make up with Jotaro?”
“Not exactly. I met up with him at Rohan’s house, just about all of Morioh came out to watch it burn down. There was some back and forth, he tried to get away, I informed him he was having dinner with me. I had a stern talk with myself about remaining level-headed through the conversation and met him at Trattoria—some time when you’re sober, Jean, remind me to tell you about the Italian restaurant in Morioh.”
“I swear it on my life.”
“Do that less often, please. Without getting into it, other than to say that it was the best damn Italian I’ve had outside of Naples and you will want to hear all about it once you’re sober again and the thought of frutti di mare won’t make you cry, I met him there, and we had a nearly normal meal. Neither of us stormed out at any point.”
“The bar is so low and you are above it.”
“Thank you. I opened in what I have already objectively learned is the correct way, which was asking him to just tell me about Josuke. I asked him to tell me why Josuke’s so important to him, in his own words.
“He loves this man so much. I get it. He’s a great guy, probably a better person than the rest of us combined. Josuke attached to Jotaro so fast, too, so he’s on edge trying to be the best example he can be, but with no idea about what that good example looks like. I know he feels responsible. The fact that Mr. Joestar clearly isn’t long for the world now doesn’t help. Josuke just met him, and he’s going to lose him soon. You know how protective Jotaro gets. He thinks everything is on his shoulders, it’s his job to keep them all alive, and any failure is his fault.
“And it is more stressful working with these good kids. With you and Muhammed and Mr. Joestar I knew I could throw anything at you. I could just toss a man at you to finish and you’d finish him. I don’t want these people to see the sorts of things we’ve seen, even though I made fun of Jotaro for saying the same thing before. I get it now, I suppose.”
Jean hummed and drank his water. The desk clerk started reading something from Time. “Well, and from Josuke’s position, he knew nothing about where he came from or any of this his whole life. And now that it’s here…”
“It’s here in just the worst way possible. As Jotaro sees it, he brought death to Josuke’s doorstep. Trouble where there wasn’t any before. Of course he thinks he needs to settle it. Though that’s not fully accurate…”
“I’m glad you had a real conversation, but did you two manage to quit talking about Josuke and start talking about yourselves at any point?”
“Yes. Eventually, I found the right time to ask him…”
“Yes?”
“I told myself again to please just keep my voice low and not freak out and asked him what the hell he had meant when he told me that meeting Josuke made him feel differently about me. Do you know what he said to me, Jean?”
“Noriaki, I have no idea what he said to you.”
“He told me that from the moment he learned that his grandfather had cheated on his grandmother to make an illegitimate son, he had been overwhelmed with guilt, because in his mind, he did the exact same thing to me. He saw how badly hurt his grandmother was by this and he felt like he couldn’t face me again after seeing the fallout around Josuke. Now, all he wants is to keep me away so he can’t hurt me again, and make sure he keeps Josuke close so he never finds out how badly we’ve all been hurt because of him.”
Noriaki had spoken all of that in a gentle, forlorn hush. Jean could almost see him winding the cord around his fingers as he spoke, like Hierophant’s coils. Jean, too, settled against the wall with a sigh. “Noriaki, no.”
Noriaki chuckled, low, only a little bitter. “We tried to unpack a little of that. I don’t know if we got very far. I know this isn’t what he really wants, this separation. He knows that too. He’s fighting himself and he’s fighting dirty. I told him I did need some time to think, but that I would rather he not drop me cold, all things considered. I reminded him that that’s all years in the past, now. He apologized, but things aren’t quite… even yet. I don’t know if an apology was really what I needed. I don’t actually know what I need.”
“I see…” Jean tilted the glass back and let the ice-water slide down his throat. He had had so much to drink that pure water felt amazing; maybe it was his imagination, but he thought he could taste the mountains. “I think you both need time, honestly.”
“I’m almost glad we’re here for such a fucked mission,” Noriaki laughed, lightly. “That’s what we have to talk about the majority of the time. We can work together in daylight hours and be completely focused on finding this son of a bitch.”
Jotaro was a raging workaholic and Noriaki genuinely enjoyed tracking down his fellow man. At this point, Jean didn’t even see them focusing on the task at hand as avoiding each other; if they could solve this case together, then perhaps they would fall back into a rhythm again, naturally, and be in a better place to broach such serious topics with each other. “And you’ll find him.”
“I almost like being back to looking over my shoulder during the day. Every time I get jumped I get excited.”
“I’m sure you do. Have you been jumped often?...”
“A few times. Once while I was having a conversation with a few of Josuke’s friends, so I got to work with their stands. Honestly, it was fun. I had to remember to not kill the guy, since that just isn’t done here.”
“What do Josuke’s little friends think of you?”
“Ha ha. ‘Jotaro’s scary friend’, maybe? With how we’ve been talking to each other, perhaps they think we’re more like rivals in the organization. The youth these days feel totally free to ask about my scars, in fact they have asked to touch the big one, which of course I let them do, so maybe they think of me like a veteran who has come back out to the field.”
“How much have you told them, exactly?”
“I answer every question that’s asked of me, and I can tell you it’s approximately 100% more than Jotaro had told them. I can’t tell you how many times one of them has said ‘What? He never told me that!’ The ones that even knew Dio’s name just knew he was obliquely related to the stand arrows, somehow.”
Jean chuckled to himself. The sound of a calling cicada rose outside the open window, and a chorus sang in response. Cicadas blooming; was it time? It was fascinating, how they slept for as long as some people were alive, but still emerged all together from the earth. How did they know when it was time? “You have probably told them in a few days more than they knew about Jotaro after a month of dealing with him.”
“Undoubtedly. I’m not telling the world all of his secrets; I say ‘that’s not for me to say’ when it’s warranted. The only one observant enough to ask if something had happened between me and him was Josuke himself. I told him he was sharp, but that I would rather keep that between us. He didn’t push it, but I noticed he’s keeping an eye on me. Perhaps he thinks I’m antagonizing Jotaro…”
“Don’t bully teenagers, Noriaki.” Those cicada calls fell, again, like they were drifting down the mountainside.
“Oh, you do not know what I’m dealing with. This is a Joestar. If he really thought I was doing something villainous, I would be the one getting pushed around, age difference nothing. I honestly think he knows.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how, but I think he knows what the nature of our relationship really is. I’ll be frank, I think he’s like us as well, and hoping he’s met someone like himself. This is why I am being extra cautious to not tell him too much, Jean, because I am not like him.”
“I would say that I think my Japanese is not good enough for this conversation, but I know you are trying to speak English.”
Noriaki laughed at him, again, that light, false laughter. “I think poor Josuke has realized he might have met another gay man for the first time in his young life, and I want to make sure he doesn’t seek guidance from a complete sadist. The sadist is me.”
“Noriaki, I have been your friend for many years, and I know this.”
Noriaki laughed, but this one was a real laugh. Jean smiled into the phone, rocking his shoulders gently against the motel wall. “But then it should be more important for one of you to connect with him. It is a lonely life, I’ve noticed.”
“I couldn’t…”
“I’m not even gay and I will do it. Just to let him talk it over.”
“Ah, mon chevalier. No, thank you. I’m going to push Jotaro into having that talk with him eventually.”
“He is also doing the exact same thing.”
“I know—”
“He is also doing everything in his power to make sure he does not have this talk with Josuke.”
“I know. I’ll set it up. An ambush. I’ll trick him into it. He’ll never forgive me. Jean, I can practically hear you falling asleep.”
“Non, non.” But now that he mentioned it, Jean had been standing with his eyes closed for a while. The warm air of the room, disturbed by only little breezes, was slowly pulling him down.
“I think it’s nearly one o’clock for you. Go to bed, I’ll talk to you another time.”
“I’m going to keep moving cities, so you know.”
“Are you in trouble?” Noriaki asked. Jean could hear steel concern suddenly clench onto his voice.
“Non. Jotaro asked me to go to Miami for him. It’s Jolyne’s birthday on Wednesday.”
“Really…” Noriaki mumbled, suddenly distant. “I didn’t realize…”
“Joyeux anniversaire, joyeux anniversaire—ouais— so in another few days, once I have some spare time, I’ll call you again to check in. Once I get to Florida, if not sooner. I’ll spend one night in the north of the state.”
“Alright, then. I think we’ve spent enough time on one international call anyway. Go to bed, Jean.”
“Ah, if you insist. Good luck to you.”
“You as well.”
He heard the click of Noriaki hanging up the phone on his end. He settled the phone back down, and then leaned onto the concierge desk.
“How much do I owe you?” he asked the clerk.
“You paid before you called,” he reminded him, barely looking up from his magazine.
“Ah. Thanks for reminding me. You could have charged me twice.”
“Eh.” He shrugged. “Listen, if you’re a straight man, how are you involved in that kind of gay drama?”
Jean blinked at the slight, uniformed man at the desk. Still he didn’t even look up from the pages.
“My gay friend and I killed a vampire together once, so…”
The clerk nodded. “That’ll do it.”
Maybe vampires were a bigger concern for the gay community than Jean had realized. “I shouldn’t have spoken so frankly, I thought this wasn’t a friendly area, for…”
The clerk looked up at him once, annoyed. “You’re in Asheville.”
“Ah. Bien.”
“Have a good night, Sir.”
“Thank you. You as well,” said Jean, rubbing his forehead and feeling the sweat on his skin. He decided it was high time to go to bed, lurched to his motel room, and fell into darkness the moment after his head landed on the pillow.
“Jotaro,” sighed Jean, leaning against the white stucco wall of an unmanned and run-down lifeguard’s station, watching the Atlantic rush and crest and sigh from its doorless front entrance, “ How do you know I’m on Tybee Island? How did you know exactly which phone I would be able to hear ringing from the shore? How did you even call an emergency phone in an out-of-service lifeguard station?”
“Why did you pick it up?” Instead of answering even one of Jean’s questions, Jotaro asked, “Are you going to make it to Miami in time for Jolyne’s birthday?”
“Yes, Dr. Kujo, I am. I still have a few days and I could get there overnight if I had to. I have already called Stephanie to coordinate presents. She was getting her the Givenchy Barbie already, I got a doll styling kit from me and the dreamhouse from you. I’ll get the cake and the balloons when I get there, I’ve already talked to the bakery around the corner. Strawberry, right?”
“...Right.”
“Right. I’m taking an overnight, I’ll get there early, probably be at the house by ten or eleven. I know Jolyne will be awake before then but Stephanie said she had already told her that you won’t make it and I’m coming to see her instead. I’m sure she phrased it better than that.”
“I’m sure she did. Do you talk to my ex-wife often?”
It was nice to hear the subtle timbre of good cheer in Jotaro’s voice, considering that he had been in a bad place for a while (most of his adult life, that is), but Jean was incensed at the accusation all the same. “What kind of animal do you think I am? I call her from time to time because I care about Jolyne, and you, and because I want to make sure they’re both comfortable where they are. She is a beautiful woman, not that you know this, but I am not so stupid that I will make life that awkward for everyone.”
“I see.”
“For your information, I had a wonderful phone conversation with Gloria last night.”
“Who?”
“The—Actually, don’t worry about it. Just tell me how the case is going instead.”
He did. To be honest, the report was worrying, even the way Jotaro told it—that was, with all the parts he thought were worrying elided. It was clear that attacks had ramped up, both in frequency and intensity, and while they had more leads to Kira’s identity they did not have that actual identity in hand yet. Jean figured that was exactly why Jotaro felt good enough to joke with him. He was on his back foot constantly and had much less time to dwell on things.
“I will be honest. This doesn’t sound good,” Jean said bluntly. “Do you want me to come o—”
“No, I want you to go to Jolyne’s birthday.”
Jean sighed.
“We’ve got this. With the people we have on the ground right now, once we find him, we can take care of him. I don’t think we’re too far from finding him either. He must be getting worried. He’s making more mistakes.”
Jean quelled the flair of wanting to be over there, wanting to join in the hunt. No bodies, Jean, he reminded himself. A whole bunch of high schoolers. The goal is to not traumatize them. Noriaki and Jotaro are both there; you showing up to lead the vanguard of the manhunt will absolutely not help anyone. “I suppose I will have to leave the grunt work to you, and focus on my idyllic road trip down the Atlantic coast.”
“As long as you get to—”
“I will. And how is Noriaki? Last I spoke to him, he wasn’t feeling so well.”
“He’s fine.”
“Fine, fine, fine, fine. Check a dictionary and make sure you know what that word means.”
“Alive.”
“You are so funny. Well, I am glad he’s alive, though whether he’s in some villain’s clutches, whether he snapped a rib and is refusing to go to a hospital, if he’s dodging law enforcement, I would have no idea of any of these things—”
“He’s hiding in the same hotel as I am and thinks that I don’t know that. He’s snatching rogue stand users off of the streets and leaving them in locked dumpsters; again, he thinks I don’t know this. He’s goading Josuke into asking me probing questions, and I think he thinks that I don’t know that.”
Well, that all tracked. No wonder Jean hadn’t been able to dredge up even an inkling of concern at all of Noriaki’s attempts at self-vilification. “Have some faith in him. He’s an evil mastermind, or hasn’t he told you that a hundred times?”
Jean heard Jotaro laugh. It was breathy, like little wings had brushed against his ear.
Jean smiled as he watched the warm, blue, southern Atlantic roll on her shores, uncovering conchs and sand dollars, causing gulls to jump up and cry. He had spent the better part of the day just idling on the shores of the island, watching the color of the waters slowly shift with the sun rolling above. He had told himself he would go into Savannah and see where the night took him, but every time he tried to put his back to the ocean he just turned around again.
Perhaps it was because he spent so much time an ocean away from the people who mattered. This Atlantic was the same one that made ships bob in the harbors of Bretange and Normandie; the shores his mother walked and his friends crossed were even further away, but still, waters creep through straight and isthmus, river and delta. The Atlantic that had been gray and punishing in the north had slowly softened as he rolled down and further down the road, and now, it was as warm as a bath when he put his feet in it. He wouldn’t go into the city, as famous as her nightlife was; he would watch the sun set on the beach and then rent one of the shoreline houses, then drive back through the swamp and down the highway again tomorrow. The waters were too sweet to leave yet.
“He’s brilliant, and if he has to think he’s evil, he can think that,” Jotaro replied eventually.
“You know what kind of things… Well, yes you do, and I don’t feel like bringing it all up again.” Dio had used Noriaki in particular for some very unsavory deeds. Being able to purpose Hierophant Green for possession and mind control was, of course, a blank check for a dictator like Dio to be absolutely abhorrent. Jean certainly couldn’t forget being used as an assassin, though those memories usually lay dormant and seemed to only ever spring up at the wrong times; he didn’t blame Noriaki for still picking at the scabs himself. If he had been forced to do the things Noriaki had been forced to do... “But what did you say about him needling Josuke?”
“Hm. I can’t prove it was him.”
“If you suspect it was, you’re probably right.”
“Josuke came to me with some very particular questions. I wondered if he had really thought up all of them himself.”
“Like what?”
“He dug into my past a little, mostly questions about his father and our relationship. He knew some details that I don’t believe that I told him. Then he tried to tell me that he thought he might be gay.”
So Noriaki had managed it, and in two days flat. “Well, is he?”
“What he is is sixteen years old. I don’t know.”
“You sure knew when you were his age. What did you say to him?”
“...I was a little taken aback to be asked so suddenly. I may have startled him. But I told him that he should be whatever he truly feels he is. Once he knows what he is and he’s sure about it, no one has the right to tell him to be anything else.”
“That’s what you told him?”
“That’s what I told him.”
Jean put a hand on his heart. That was—adorable. “Such wise words!”
“Jean—”
“My friend Jotaro could stand to hear such words of encouragement and take them to heart.”
“Jean.”
“No, I’m proud of you. Really. I think something like that will matter a lot to him, at his age, whatever he decides about himself. Ah, not that I actually know the guy in question. I’m making assumptions about the glowing reviews you both have given me.”
“So you have been in contact with Noriaki.”
“Ah—” Jean physically startled. Jotaro was only a voice on the phone, yet it felt like Star Platinum was looming behind him. “I—I checked in with him to make sure he was okay, you know…”
“Hm.”
“Merde. Fine, ask me anything.”
Jotaro laughed. Again, brief, but he could hear it. “You’re giving up like that?”
“It wasn’t a secret, exactly. I only didn’t want you to feel like I was taking sides, so I wasn’t going to tell either of you anything the other had said, which I have not.”
“I know you would pick his side if it came to it, Jean.”
“Ah. Don’t. Please, uh, don’t know that.”
“...But I also know you would rather pick everyone’s side. What the two of you share… don’t think I’m jealous. I’m glad you understand each other.”
“You saved us both, Jotaro,” Jean reminded him, opening his eyes to the slowly swelling tide. “That’s even better.”
“So, then, if you’ve both been saved, you can both stop acting like you’re always doing something wrong and need to make up for it.”
“Je n’en peux plus. Kujo Jotaro,” Jean spat into the phone, furious, “you are a very good man.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Firme la bouche. Yes, you are. I can’t take it. Noriaki loves you very much and all he wants to know is why you suddenly went so cold. He’ll be angry for a little while but if you just extend the hand he’ll take it. I don’t know why the hell you suddenly think you can’t reach out to him, but cut it out. You both want to be together and you will figure out how. If both of you keep letting the past fuck up the relationship you have right now I will not have words for how stupid you are being. You are not a cheater and you are not disloyal and you are not a bad person. Noriaki isn’t evil and he’s not tainted and he’s not a bad person either. If you are so concerned about being a good example to your nephew-uncle, even a good example of a gay man, try demonstrating being people who like each other.”
“I’ll talk to Noriaki, but—”
“Don’t even talk. Listen. Listen to him. Sit down and listen to him. Listen to his actual words. Do not make up something he hasn’t said about how you’re a bad person and bad partner. Listen to the words Noriaki actually says. Unless he’s just being mean and I know you know how to tell the difference between when he’s lucid and when he isn’t so apply the knowledge you have to the situation already. I am going to get off of this idyllic beach and drive across the swamp, I will find the stupidest bar, I will get the biggest drink they sell, I will have them put it in one of those silly glasses that light up, I will find the most beautiful woman in the city of Savannah and do whatever she asks me to, and I will not think about either of you all night. Next time I hear from you I expect progress.”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
And yet, Jean was sure Jotaro was still laughing at him, inaudibly. He sighed. “And don’t die trying to find this killer. I want you two to figure all of this out, but I want you to not die more.”
“We won’t.”
“I will hold you to that. I’ll call you when I get to Miami.”
“Alright. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” Jean sighed, and listened to Jotaro hang up on him.
He leaned against the wall of the station again and watched saffron-orange sunset creep onto the undersides of the clouds. It must have been dawn or before dawn in Morioh, on the other side of the world. He hadn’t meant to say half of that to Jotaro, but at least he knew that he had meant all of it. Jotaro didn’t mean any less to him than Noriaki did, he just… he could remember Noriaki curled onto the floor after the Master struck him, waiting to be told he could stand back up. That sort of memory alters everything.
All of that business about going into Savannah and having the time of his life was a lie. He still had no intention of getting off of the beach before night settled over it and the air turned cold. Then he would walk into whatever restaurant was open late, have whatever they served him, and find somewhere to sleep like he had intended in the first place. Then, once he was lying in that black room, with the window open—how could he shut the window, with the sea sighing so softly, so close?—he would have to make good on his promise that he would not lie awake thinking about his friends on the other side of the world, risking their lives for an uncertain outcome.
If Jotaro made him give Jolyne bad news on her birthday, he would never forgive him. Jean chose to believe that such a thought hadn’t crossed Jotaro’s mind, that he hadn’t set all of this up ‘just in case’. He would go inland tomorrow, divert himself for a day, get to St. Augustine tomorrow and Miami another day or two after that. It depended on how many diversions he found on the coast. He might call Gloria once; she really was on his mind. Perhaps because there were too many things he was trying to not think about. It wasn’t good to get too close to losing people so many times.
He wondered why they stuck with SPW and kept chasing people like Kira when they could have all settled down to a normal life ages ago. But he also thought about how hard it was to talk himself down from not going over there to join the hunt himself. He watched the colors of the sunset leak into the waves as they crept up and down, leaving blushing pink traces on the sand.
Next time. He’d go himself next time and tell them both to stay home and out of danger.
It took Jean a few days to reach St. Augustine, though it wasn’t too far as the crow flies; the rental car needed repairs after he hit an ungodly pothole around the state border and he spent a night in the state park on Cumberland Island with the horses instead. They had no working phones at all and he saw one of the blackest night skies he had ever seen outside of a desert.
Then he did finally make it to St. Augustine, the oldest European city in the United States, and spent a day feeling something he couldn’t quite put his finger on as he wandered the Spanish buildings bracketed by palms and bananas, some ruined, some maintained, some rebuilt. The image of old Europe became American rapidly, frozen in time where it died like the rings on the stump of a cut tree. He felt like he was in the exposed roots of the country, halfway home and as far from home as could be.
It was now long past dark and he had been holed up inside a whiskey distillery for several hours, but he was much less drunk but just as melancholy as the last few times he had called Noriaki’s hotel room when he borrowed their phone at the bar to do so again. Late-night patrons, mostly their regulars, talked and sighed around small tables at what felt like a greater distance than there really was. Even the bartender was slumped forward across a table to listen to a vinyl record playing folk music slow; something about the wide room swallowed up noise.
The phone rang a few times. He had picked a time he assumed Noriaki would be awake but not out of the room yet, and he slept a lot later than Jotaro did. Jean was just about to shrug and assume Noriaki had got up and left earlier than usual when the other side finally clicked open.
“Hello, who is it?” asked Noriaki, in Japanese. His voice made it clear immediately that he had actually still been asleep.
“Allo! C’est Jean —I can call back a little later when you’re awake.”
“No, no, this is a good time,” Noriaki sighed, low and languid. Jean could just hear the crinkle of bedsheets as he rolled closer to the receiver. “Not that I know what time it is.”
“Night for me, mid-morning for you.”
“Mm. Sure.” Noriaki yawned. “Where are you, in Miami, doing Jotaro’s bidding?”
“Not yet. I had car troubles. I’m in St. Augustine. I can make it to Miami tomorrow and Jolyne’s birthday is the day after that, so I’m still on schedule. If he’s bothering you about that too you can tell him that I will be there on time like I have told him five times. How’s the Kira case?”
“Oh. Well. To make a long story very short, we got him.”
“You did??”
“Mm.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. In the middle of the day, broad daylight, practically in the town square. If there had happened to be someone with a camera around the entire world would know about it by now. In my day, we did final showdowns in private homes like respectable people.”
“My God, you did it!” Jean was beaming. He took a quick glance to see if anyone in the distillery’s tavern-like tasting room was listening to him, but as far as he could tell, no one had even moved. “Well, where is he now? Were you able to get him to the organization, or did he have to go to regular police?”
“He’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yes.”
“You had to do it, then.”
“The call had to be made,” Noriaki sighed. It sounded like he rolled onto his back while speaking. “I’m just glad none of the others had to do it, though, Josuke ended up… without the details, he didn’t have to kill him with his bare hands, but he did have to set him up. If you pressed me I would tell you that Kira set himself up, but Josuke…”
“...Well, make sure you talk to him.”
“I have, and I will again. The last thing I want is for Josuke to grow up thinking he did something wrong, when in reality, this is a person who had lost his right to a place in the human race.”
“That bad? But I’ll have you give me the gory details when we’re not on the phone.” The connection was a little rough. Not every bar phone was made with international calls in mind and the employees did keep bragging on tour about how ‘old’ the century-old building was. Precious. “I’m so glad it’s over and you’re all fine. And you are all fine?”
“We are all fine. There was… it’s too much to go into right now and I’m sure you’re not in a secure location, again.”
“A bar.”
“God help you. Anyway, it was tense for a minute. Stand powers. Reality shifting around. Time. You know. Both Josuke and Okuyasu are in the hospital but they will both be fine in the end. They’re strong people. They’re good people.”
The name ‘Okuyasu’ only barely rang a bell for Jean. Josuke, however… “I assume Jotaro is still with Josuke, then.”
Noriaki hesitated. Then, “Ah…”
“...Independently hospitalized. Well, what happened? How bad is it?”
“That’s not it, exactly…”
“No?”
“Well, maybe I should have made him check in too, but…”
“But what?”
Then, so soft it was barely picked up, mere scratches on his ear, Jean heard it. It was faint, but he was sure he heard it.
“Yare, yare.”
There was a burst of static as the phone was grasped and moved. Then, into his ear, in a voice like a car crunching over a gravel drive, Kujo Jotaro growled “Jean-Pierre Polnareff, stop bothering him and go to bed.”
For a second, Jean’s face went numb. Then, he felt weightless with delight. “Oh, I am going nowhere now. You're kidding me. Kujo Jotaro, where are you right now?”
“In bed, obviously. Sleeping. I had a shitty day yesterday and my head hurts. Go the fuck to sleep.”
“Ohhh ho ho, no, my friend, you are insane if you think you are getting away with that,” Jean informed him, clenching the phone cord in one hand and a completely neglected lowball in the other. “I have been gently counseling you two on how to talk to each other all week, when did you fall into bed together??”
“That is none of your business, you French son of—”
“What, immediately after finding and eliminating Kira? That’s what it was, wasn’t it?? I know you bastards. You went right to bed after—”
“Urusai!” Jotaro barked, again in Japanese, but Jean had heard that one enough times to recognize it. “Since you won’t shut up about it, we took care of things on the scene, spun the story for the police, got Okuyasu and Josuke checked out, had a long talk with both of them, finally got to eat something for the first time in the day, and then—” Jotaro reached the moment of truth, and choked. “Then mind your business, is what.”
Jean cackled at him. “Did you even say ‘please’, or did you flash him your big baby blues and let them do the talking?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Jean kept laughing. He heard the connection get confused, softened by bursts of static, then a quick, distant argument in Japanese. Noriaki’s voice returned to his ear. “I had to take the phone back from him before he snapped it. ...Stop laughing.”
Jean could not stop laughing. They had spent the week unable to even talk to each other. Noriaki had been whining that Jotaro had actually dumped him this time. “Mais, je ne sais, d’accord, I will ask you too; did he even say a word to you, or did he just flutter his eyelashes over his big blue eyes at you?”
“He said ‘I’m sorry.’ Jean-Pierre Polnareff, stop laughing at me.”
“D’accord, d’accord, I will stop,” he said, managing, through sheer willpower, to reduce his hilarity to chuckles. He knew they were just being stubborn with each other. The record playing in the corner skipped, then started a new song, a dance. “Oh, tell me about your Josuke instead; he had to be hospitalized, is he alright?”
“Yes, he will be. Things got a little messy after we cornered Kira. Like Jotaro said, we had a long talk with him in the hospital…”
“Oh? And about what?”
“I thought he needed something to relate to, so I bit the bullet and told him pretty frankly about Egypt and Dio. And about being in a hospital for four straight months afterward. He wants to meet you now, by the way.”
“Is that so?” Jean thought. “I have been saying I’d visit Japan again for… I’m not sure how many years. Maybe I can do it.”
“If you want to. It may not be a bad idea. Assuring him that life goes on after something like this with only the two of us as examples may not have been as reassuring as I wanted it to be.”
“And I’m the picture of health?”
“...Yes, you are.”
Now, that was not true. It was true that both Noriaki and Jotaro had struggles he didn’t have and couldn’t imagine, but Jean hadn’t bounced back out of Egypt without a worry in his head. Sure, there had been a honeymoon period, where he was no longer in mortal danger and the world was beautiful, but the crash afterward had taken him low. Then again, he had one genuine suicide threat on his record to Noriaki’s… three or four?
An old gentleman, wearing a cowboy hat, got up to dance to the music, slow but steady. There was some laughter, but a few others got up to join him all the same. “Well, I’d love to meet him, anyway, just based on how you both talk about him. Witnessing the two of you become individually smitten within three days was incredible.”
“He tried to fix a decade-old busted kneecap the day he met me. He did fix something in my wrist.”
“Incredible. But was that all the three of you spoke about—”
“Yes, Jean, I did tell him that we’re in a relationship.”
“Ha.”
“I don’t know what you sound so proud of yourself for.”
“Every time I make you do something that will be good for you, I win again, and you lose.”
“Oh, you son of a bitch.”
“And you did something good for him, too; don’t bother admitting it, I know you can’t. I know you don’t want someone to have the same difficulties in life as you do, fighting a world that hates you, but mon Dieu, if he has to have them, then now he’s not alone for it.”
Noriaki was quiet, for a moment. “You are going to make me cry,” he said, sounding blunt, in fact annoyed. “I’ll hand you to Jotaro again so he can yell at you.”
He could half-hear Jotaro say “Just put him on speaker” and then quite a bit of static and tussling. Half-syllables in Japanese. The phone might have been dropped at some point. Eventually, there was a soft ‘click’ and then the soft, muted sounds of the room came over the line.
Jotaro was not particularly close to the phone, so his voice was indistinct and low, but Jean could hear him well enough to pick up “Stop doing whatever you’re doing.”
“I was complimenting him.”
“You know he hates that.”
Jean knew that perfectly well. He knew why, too. He remembered what Jotaro couldn’t, the obsessed, over-achieving, self-destructive teenager who had bent himself into shapes for Dio’s attention, so frenetic for approval that even while possessed Jean had pitied him. The person Noriaki had been in his early 20s, consumingly self-hating, quick to lash out, fluctuating rapidly between vicious and melancholy, came directly from the teenager. The man he was now, with iron-clad will and hard-won confidence but brittle in unexpected moments, came directly from both of them. Noriaki had reduced the pitfalls in his mind, filled in the edges through dedicated work, put walkways over the crevices, but none of them were gone. Noriaki was better. He was always just a little bit better than he was before. He had never become different.
A very scattered, lawless dance was now fully formed on the floor. Only four or five people were dancing, they kept wobbling in and out of time, but by God, they were doing it. “This is exposure therapy,” Jean said. “He will become used to compliments eventually. Then you will both thank me.”
“Listen, Jean.”
“I’m listening.”
“When you see Jolyne tomorrow—you will see Jolyne tomorrow?”
“Yes, Jotaro. Yes, I am in Florida now, it will take one day of driving to get to Miami, I will be there, and don’t think I am so stupid that I missed you changing the subject.”
“When you get there, you can tell her that I’ll see her the next day.”
“What, vraiment?”
“I thought I might be able to find a flight to get me there just in time, but there was no way. So you can tell her I’ll be there the day after her birthday.”
Getting to Miami from Japan in two days, considering it was the day before Jolyne’s birthday for Jotaro and he would lose half that time in travel anyway, was impressive. But if Jotaro had, for example, had three days, it would have been much less difficult. He might have taken a flight the night before, if he had been willing to spend the money and inconvenience it took, and have straggled into Miami about the same time Jean did.
But if he had done that, how on earth could he have spent last night with Noriaki?
Jean imagined Jotaro had started thinking about potential flights the second he confirmed Kira was dead. He would bet money that Jotaro had considered getting out of Japan that night to make Jolyne’s birthday on time. But, though it would be torturous to point it out to him, it appeared as if Kujo Jotaro had chosen Kakyoin Noriaki over everyone else too.
There was a reason he still got on so well with him. Jean smiled, though that smile was tinged with melancholy, as he leaned against a brick wall and watched drunks dance, completely lost in the moment. “The timing would be impossible… you’ll be practically outracing the sun to get here the day after,” he agreed smoothly. “I’ll make sure she knows you’re doing everything you can to visit her. I think she’ll be much less upset this way.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s a shame you can’t spend more time settling things in Morioh, though,” Jean subtly switched subjects.
“Ah, I’ll actually be staying for a little while.” Noriaki was much closer to the phone. Jean figured that he was holding it while Jotaro lay back on his pillow. “There are some loose ends. More than one person who helped us in this case could easily be labeled a rogue user if it weren't for the fact that they happened to be helping us this time.”
“I am not comfortable with Yamagishi Yukako just being out there,” Jotaro added.
“Oh, you think she’s the biggest problem? The number of overtly malicious stand users we have just sitting here—nevermind. I’ll handle it. As I was saying, I suppose I’ll act like a normal SPW operative for a few weeks, like I had a job I do or something.”
“I have never met a normal SPW operative,” Jean assured him.
“The point is that there are a few people I want to threaten, and frankly, it's better if Jotaro just goes home and doesn’t watch me do it.”
“Fuck’s sake,” Jotaro sighed.
“You know he actually wants to keep an eye on those young people,” Jean informed Jotaro.
“That’s what the threatening is for. It’s like neither of you know how this works.”
“I assure you, we know how it works. Listen, I’ll let you two clean up and get ready for the day. I have to go to bed so I can drive to Miami and get ready for a party tomorrow.”
“Don’t set out too early, or the highway will be murder by the time you get there.”
“Bien sur, I know, I’ll leave in the afternoon, stop for dinner, check into the hotel in the evening and be there in the morning.”
“You’re not staying in the guest room?”
“No, idiot, you are.”
“You can stay in the guest room.”
“You can stay in the house with your daughter, Jotaro, don’t be a coward. There are women who would tear your head off your shoulders with their hands for what you did; Stephanie may be a little icy, c’est vrai, but you can handle it.”
“You can handle it,” Noriaki informed him.
Cornered, Jotaro mumbled “Alright, fine.”
“Really, I’ll leave you two alone now. Catch up, enjoy your time before you split up again, and if you haven’t actually talked to each other yet, you know, with words, now would likely be a good time–”
“Goodbye, Jean,” said Noriaki, and abruptly hung up the phone.
Jean laughed at them one more time and then pushed the bar phone back into its receiver. Those bastards were hilarious. He loved them so much. He thanked whoever was listening, once again, that they had both pulled through ten hard years of being themselves so far.
God, ten years. Was it really?
He looked at the old wooden ceiling above him and let out a hard breath. It had been ten years, and they had been ten hard years. Jokes aside, being in the same room with both Jotaro and his ex-wife was always uncomfortable, as much as they both tried to put it aside for Jolyne’s sake. Hunting rogue stand users and supernatural oddities for SPW was hard, dealing with the fallout of what men like him could do unchecked over and over again was hard, worrying that he was going to lose his friends as they did the same thing halfway across the world was hard. Dealing with the dumb shit they did—him included, his past, romantic and platonic, was not spotless–—was hard sometimes.
But he could remember worse times, much worse times. He tried not to think about the past. When he did, it was to propel him into the future, ever onward. He could remember how bleak life was once, how important it was that he kept moving onwards, and upwards, and away, dragging everyone else with him through sheer momentum if he had to.
Tomorrow was another beautiful day to be in a better place than he was before.
The sun above Miami was blazing so fiercely that Jean had to wear sunglasses even while standing outside the house. Still he had to squint to make sure that there was, in fact, a car coming down the road to him, and that it was, in fact, the car he had thought it was.
Jotaro’s absolutely unremarkable, unsexy dad car turned into the driveway and parked outside of the garage (which had more than enough room for two cars, but Stephanie had pointedly let Jean put the rental in there instead of leaving it open). It was morning, but the air was already hot; in the house behind him, the faint throb of guitars could be heard from Jolyne playing her boombox (yes, she was a seven-year-old with a boombox).
As he got out of the car, Kujo Jotaro boggled the mind by being covered in a suit from neck to toe, as per usual, as if he had never felt the oppressive heat of Miami and had no idea what might have bothered everyone else about it. Jean began to walk toward him and Jotaro, after spotting him, met him halfway; they clasped hands and then embraced.
“Alright, let go,” Jotaro huffed after a second. Jean chuckled but did as bid, backing away with one final slap to Jotaro’s shoulder.
“There you are! No one would know you spent two days traveling.”
“I know.”
“Ha.”
“Jolyne must still be getting ready for school, then?...” Jotaro asked, giving the house a suspicious look.
“Yes, Dr. Kujo, it’s seven in the morning. She doesn’t have to go for half an hour.”
“Is it? I guess that makes sense.” Jotaro rubbed the heel of a hand over his eyes.
“When did you get in?”
“Don’t ask.”
“Alright, different question: Why is your seven-year-old daughter listening to hard rock at seven in the morning?”
“Is that Alice in Chains? I thought so. She got really into that album when I first played it for her a few years ago.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Thought it was funny at the time.”
“And why is she listening to it at seven in the morning?”
“Because no one tells her what to do, that’s why.”
Jean sighed, and clapped Jotaro’s shoulder again. “You are raising an amazing woman.”
“I’m not. Her mother is.”
“Take the compliment, Jojo.”
“If you say so.”
Jotaro was still looking up, to the second story of the house, at the window that opened to Jolyne’s room. At the moment it was shaded, shutting out the morning light and leaking the thumping of the drums.
“Well,” said Jean.
“Well?”
“Well, you owe me a hell of a conversation about what happened over there.”
“I do,” admitted Jotaro. “Now’s not the time.”
Jean groaned, but he was right. They were standing outside of his house, it was practically dawn, and his ex-wife and child were just inside, liable to notice that Jotaro had arrived any moment. Now was the time for coffee, small talk, settling in. Still. “Still, before we get in there, at least let me know how things left off with Noriaki. He’s my dearest—”
Jotaro cut him off with a sharp glance. “You know exactly how it left off with Noriaki. You were in his ear the entire time.”
“Hey! Don’t think he tells me everything.”
“I think he does.”
“Not everything. He certainly can’t tell me how you feel, because no one can. Except you.”
Jean watched that one smack Jotaro on the face and then sink in. He was silent for a few moments, his eyes cast down, an indefinable, subtle look on his face telling Jean that he was genuinely taking it in. Sometimes Jotaro was a brick wall, sometimes he was permeable. The states were visually so similar that being able to tell them apart had taken years of work. “I know he deals with a lot when it comes to me,” he finally said. “You all do. Don’t tell me it’s not true. I’m difficult. I always have been. I trust his judgement, so I trust him when he says that I’m worth the headache to him. But if I spend too long without him, I forget that. I forgot it. It takes no time at all. I spend too much time with myself and I forget why it is that anyone even wants me. I guess it’s a matter of trust, again, like everything is. Then I spend time with him again, and I remember I can trust him, including his judgement of me. I thought… I forgot that he’s already handled the fact that I cheated on him, that he’s strong.”
It was on the tip of Jean’s tongue to insist that there was no cheating, god damn it. They had an open relationship. Then again, they were both staring up at the window that led to Jolyne’s room now, and they both knew Jolyne was different. Just like Josuke was different to Mr. Joestar, to all of them. “You have the choice to let it be a barrier forever, or to trust Noriaki when he says you’re past it.”
Jotaro hugged his arms to his chest, very tightly, and then sighed and loosened. “I do trust him.”
“Or maybe we are both like this because we trust Kakyoin Noriaki completely and with our lives, despite him being so obviously a villain.”
Jotaro smiled. He also flushed, just a little. “Evil.”
“A ruthless individual. I knew he had designs on my dear friend Jotaro, and yet…”
“You didn’t stand up for me at all?”
Jean took in his breath, then admitted, “No, not at all.”
“Some friend you are.”
“Give me a break! He’s a very persuasive man.”
“Is he—”
“You know that.”
“Well…”
“You know, he told me—and you didn’t, you didn’t bring it up, but he told me that he introduced himself to your beloved Josuke by pretending to be an enemy and beating the tar out of his friend.”
Josuke laughed, brief, sharp, crinkling his eyes. “He really told you that?”
“Jotaro, you and Noriaki both are on single-man missions to make yourselves look as bad as possible. Talking to either of you is an effort in extracting the truth from a mound of self-hating bullshit. If it was questionable and he did it, he told me about it. He implied that he really freaked those kids out.”
“For a minute. They’re sharper than that. Especially Josuke.”
“Is that so?”
“Less than forty-eight hours later,” Jotaro pronounced, still looking up, over his head, “Josuke was asking me about Noriaki, what he’s gone through. When I asked him why he asked, Josuke told me, ‘I feel like he’s in a lot of pain.’”
Jean whistled.
“I deflected. I tried to deflect. You wouldn’t believe how much information Josuke swindled out of me.”
“Out of you both.”
“Yes. It’s your fault we had to tell him what we did.”
Jean snapped fingers on both of his hands, then spread them out triumphantly. “Yes it is! You’re welcome.”
“Bastard. I want to be a strong example for him, you know.”
“And you realized that a strong example of whatever it is you think you are can also be gay, correct? I win.”
“You prick.”
“Listen. I love you both dearly. You are my friends and always will be. And you have loved each other, essentially since you met each other. I was there when Noriaki was saying he was not going to touch you because he thought he would corrupt you. I was the first one here, or wasn’t I, when you disappeared. I was the first one who tracked you down; you saw Silver Chariot outside this very window as I looked up and saw you with Jolyne in your arms.
“You will always both be my friends. I know that and you should too. All you have to do is slow down sometimes. Remember where you’ve been and where you are now. Recognize how much better things are now from how they were, and believe, whatever it takes, that things will be better yet someday.”
Jotaro had put his face into one of his hands. “Jean,” he complained.
“I mean it,” continued Jean, unyielding. “I see what you’ve done to improve yourself. You always focus on the negatives, the problems you still have. If you would look at how much you’ve improved instead you would see how much better off you are, and you would see that you have nowhere to go but up and out. I see that. I believe it.”
Jotaro took his hand off of his face; there was the very beginning of tears in his eyes, but Jean was allowed to see it. He reached out, to the side, offering that hand.
Jean clasped it. Jotaro’s cold, dry hand clenched over his for a few moments, then he let go.
He listened to Jotaro clear his throat. “Good,” he said. “Things are good between Noriaki and me. To answer your question.”
A grin split across Jean’s entire face. “There you go.”
“Let’s go in,” Jotaro replied. As he walked forward, as he reached for the unlocked door, clasped the knob and pulled it open, the sounds of loud drums, grinding guitar, and lilting, harmonized voices spilled out much louder: “and you know you have it still,” they said; “heaven inside you.” Past it were the sounds of an average morning, coffee brewing, zippers being pulled and shoes clattering, a dog barking. Jean pulled in his breath to call out; more problems would follow, surely, but also a little girl bounding down the stairs, just as delighted now as she had been reluctant to show it the day before.
So there's problems in your life / That's fucked up, and I'm not blind
I'm just see-through faded, super jaded / And out of my mind
Like the coldest winter chill / Heaven beside you / Hell within
Like the coldest winter chill / Heaven beside you / Hell within
Like the coldest winter will / Heaven beside you / Hell within
And you think you have it still / Heaven inside you
Heaven Beside You / Alice in Chains / 1995