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Shitty gas station coffee. 7-11 dinners. The way it feels, seeing Noriaki's hair fading from its signature red to something browner, not having the courage to say, I can help with that, I can dye it red for you if you really want.
Not when he curdles everything he touches. Cursed with hands made to punch.
"You look morose, tough guy," Noriaki says, nudging Jotaro.
Jotaro sighs, huffing at one of his Marlboro Reds. The cigs he actually wanted were out of stock, and maybe he didn't want to smoke something gentle anyway. This was gentle, compared to the way Dio's hands had felt around his throat. Tiredly, he slips another two into his mouth, lights up three cigs all at once.
Noriaki looks at him, concerned, but doesn't say anything. There's no room for protest from him anyway, not with the cherry vape pen he's holding.
The gas station's rest stop slash parking lot is a depressing hangout, but it's the easiest. Noriaki's wheelchair on the gravel, Jotaro's college dorms just around the corner. They can sit by the rest stop, study together. There's something comforting about a 24/7 shop made to be everyone's journey and nobody's destination. At least, that's what Noriaki always says.
"Exam season's been rough," Jotaro says.
Exhales. It feels like grit, like venom, like being sixteen and hissing at people like a feral cat. It feels like being reckless, feeling free, unafraid because you don't know what danger is.
He takes another breath. Thinks about Cairo streets, about a broken and bloody nose that was never quite fixed right, perpetually crooked. Knives embedded in volumes of manga. His mom's cooking and his lack of appetite.
How is he supposed to explain, it makes the breathing easier? Calms him down from panic attacks? The rush to his head the closest thing to contentment, to inner peace?
Noriaki isn't asking for justification though. He's just demanding the truth, the way he always does.
Deadpan. To the point. No sugar coating.
"Somehow I feel you're not telling me all of it," Noriaki says.
"I don't know that it'd help either of us," Jotaro says.
But when Hierophant tugs him down, smacking the cigarettes out of his hands and pushing him towards Noriaki instead, Jotaro kneels and lets his best friend kiss him. And Noriaki doesn't even recoil or make a face at the taste of the cigarettes, coating the inside of Jotaro's mouth with poison.
Almost everyone looks at Jotaro and sees a ticking timebomb - Jotaro included. Noriaki seems to be the exception, looking at him and seeing only tenderness.
He kisses back. Doesn't know what to do with the feeling, so retaliates by snatching Noriaki's vape pen out of his hand as he pulls back, raising it to his lips instead.
"Jotaro, you fucker, give that back!" but Noriaki's eyes are gleaming anyway, like amber. Warm and amused.
"It's not good for you," Jotaro says, with a little grin. Exhales a cloud of cherry flavoured smoke, and sits down on the road proper.
Noriaki could take the pen back with a tendril of Hierophant, but he doesn't. He just watches Jotaro, a small smile on his face. The wheelchair gives him a vantage point over Jotaro, who's sitting on the ground, and he uses this to pat Jotaro on the head, on top of his hat, as if he's a golden retriever or some other large, friendly, cute-and-mostly-harmless creature, instead of what he actually is.
He doesn't deserve any of it. He sighs, leaning into Noriaki's touch. He exhales more cherry smoke, eyes closing, unaware of Hierophant coiling into his jacket pocket, sneakily confiscating his cigarettes.