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It’s early in the morning–the sun hasn’t quite risen yet–but Jotaro is awake. The world outside is barely stirring, the sky turning an eggshell blue at the edges, but in their shared bedroom, with the curtains pulled shut, it’s still a shade of dusk that hasn’t woken Noriaki yet.
It’s Jotaro’s favorite time of day. When he was still in high school, he liked waking up before his mother, if only for some quiet.
His reasons revolve more around a person now.
Noriaki sleeps, without fail, facing Jotaro. Their bed is against the window, and there’s a gap in the curtain that allows a sliver of light to trace across his face, highlighting his scars and traveling upwards, slowly, as the sun rises.
Jotaro can’t help but look, sometimes. Most of the time. All of the time. Before he met Noriaki, he didn’t think someone could be so beautiful, could look so ethereal. Like he’s made out of light. Like he could disappear if Jotaro reached out and touched him.
And the thing that gets Jotaro, almost every time, is that he doesn’t. And he does touch him, almost every morning–tentatively, afraid he’ll wake up (or worse, disappear like a good dream) usually to make sure that he’s breathing.
He is, the striped material of his pajamas rising and falling gently, and Jotaro lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. He feels his muscles untense, lets his body sink back into the mattress. Noriaki sighs, and for a moment, Jotaro is afraid he woke him up, but his breathing stays even and his eyes stay closed.
(Once, Jotaro woke up with his heart pounding, so hard he thought it would stop, and Noriaki wasn’t moving, or he wasn’t moving enough , and Jotaro shook his shoulder before he could help himself, and–
Most nights, he holds Noriaki until he falls asleep, but that morning, Jotaro had found himself being held, his hair stroked, his heart slowing to match the steady beat of the man pressed against him.)
Noriaki has enough trouble finding sleep that Jotaro is constantly fighting against the part of himself that wants him to stay awake, afraid he’ll close his eyes one day and won’t open them again. He’s felt that way since Egypt, even–or at least, the way back. Noriaki had been asleep the whole plane ride back to Japan, head slumped back, hands still gripping the armrests of his seat through turbulence. Jotaro had allowed himself to glance at the slope of his forehead, the slant of his eyelashes and the spidery shadow they cast on his cheek. He had let his hand rest at his side so it brushed against the green of Noriaki’s school uniform.
He had allowed himself that much.
And, well--for a minute there, it seemed like there wasn't going to be anyone Jotaro could talk Japanese to, or anyone he wanted to speak to at all. English isn't as easy as he lets on; sometimes, when he was alone, he'd talk aloud to himself in Japanese to give his mind a break.
The relief of coming back to Japan, of seeing his mother alive and well, of seeing Noriaki emerge from the guest room in the morning, school uniform carefully pressed despite everything–
It makes everything worth it. If speaking English for over a month was a constant headache, Noriaki is the opposite of that in every way. If their crusade had been a journey of sacrifices and traps, Noriaki is the only thing Jotaro can see clearly.
Jotaro knows, now, as he watches the other man breathe, and then, when he was put onto a stretcher, his only sign of life a slight twitch in his hands, that he’s living his best possible future, despite all the odds. He’d do everything a thousand times over to get this outcome.
Every day he thanks some higher god that he only had do it once.
And Jotaro can't get enough of him, can't get enough of the way he looks after a shower, or in the morning, or when he's gentle, or when he's ruthless. He loves the shine in his eyes and the softness of his lips, and he loves undoing him, and becoming undone under his hands.
Noriaki understands him when he doesn’t have the words.
(It’s a good thing, because Jotaro so rarely does.)
The light from the window has finally cut its way to Noriaki’s eyes. He stirs once, twice, and then his eyes flutter and open. Jotaro shouldn’t be embarrassed, and he isn’t, but there’s something about Noriaki’s gaze that renders him vulnerable every time, like he’s stripping back his layers.
“Were you watching me again,” Noriaki murmurs, still half asleep. Jotaro doesn’t say anything, but Noriaki smiles anyway, reaches out to touch Jotaro’s cheek.
(Jotaro finds comfort in the fact that Noriaki is checking for the same thing he always is.)
Noriaki is as much of a dream as spun light, as real as the sheets beneath Jotaro’s hands. He’s an impossibility, unattainable and yet–
He’s here, and Jotaro can touch him and hold him and brush his fingertips down Noriaki’s scars, can do all of these things–
–and so he does–
–and maybe the most impossible thing of all, is that Noriaki leans into the touch, hair curling against his cheek, wild and untamed in the early morning light.
And then he pulls away, sits up to pull back the curtain, just like he does every morning. Light streams in, and Jotaro lifts a hand to his face, squinting against it. Noriaki is back lit above him, light catching the strands of hair floating around his head, giving him a sort of halo. He can see endless mornings, just like this, stretched out ahead of them, a quiet corner of domesticity they can always return to.
And it’s perfect.