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When Marijo wakes up, it’s to the sound of the shower running. Noriaki’s always been an early riser, and she’s never been the deepest sleeper, so this is not a particularly new situation to find herself in.
What’s different, though, is the way she feels. Lying there in bed, she remembers falling asleep in Noriaki’s arms. And the way he’d said her name (her name, hers, now), Marijo, with so much sincerity and a quiet reverence, like he really meant it, like he could look at her and actually see a teenage girl, and not –
The water cuts off, and there’s the sound of him humming quietly, cutting off her morose thought before she can go down that line of thinking. Of course he gets it. She knows he gets it, because he isn’t a girl in the exact same way that she isn’t a boy. And she looks at him and sees a teenage boy, and if anyone sees any different, she’ll break their face.
But it’s hard to extend the same courtesy to herself. She wants to pretend to be Jotaro, a boy who doesn’t exist, a boy who’s never existed, but the longer she dwells in that space the more it feels like a cage. She doesn’t want people to look at her and see… that.
The bathroom door opens, and Noriaki gives her a little smile. “Hey, you’re awake,” he says, smiling. “Sleep well, Marijo?”
Marijo looks away from him, his radiant smile, everything about this moment too good to be true and somehow, too delicate. “Yeah,” she says.
“Shower’s yours, if you want it,” he offers.
“Mm,” she says in acknowledgement, but doesn’t move at all. “Noriaki, you won’t…”
“I won’t?” he stops in his footsteps, looking at her, almost concerned.
“Tell the others,” she completes. “I’m not sure I’m ready for them to know yet.”
Marijo’s expecting some sort of what are you so worried about, you know they’ll accept you, you should tell them, but he just squeezes her shoulder gently with a tentacle of Hierophant. “My lips are sealed. Now. I’m going to go downstairs and check out the breakfast options, would you like me to bring you up something to eat?”
She shakes her head. “I’ll join you downstairs in ten.”
Noriaki smiles at her. “Sounds good.”
Marijo watches him go, wonders at how he’s taken this completely in his stride. He doesn’t seem to mourn Jotaro the way she’s afraid that her mother or grandfather might. And it’s not like she always knew she was Marijo, either. Before she’d understood that the feelings of not belonging and the discomfort that was so pointed were all signs of something, before she’d really let herself examine all that, she’d thought that she could be whatever Jotaro was supposed to be, or she’d been okay giving it a try, even as she’d known, always known, that it wouldn’t fit.
“Yare yare dawa,” she murmurs to herself, and then she smiles just a little. That feels right, saying it like that.
Getting up from bed, she brushes her teeth and freshens up, ready to head down for a motel breakfast. At some point as she’s getting ready, Star Platinum has materialised, and Marijo looks her stand up and down. Something’s notably different about her stand, but she’s not sure what. Finally, it clicks.
“You’re wearing blue mascara,” Marijo assesses, looking at Star’s eyelashes.
“Ora!”
“How did you – never mind.” She’s not sure she wants to know the answer to that. But then suddenly her pockets are heavier, and almost as if there’s a tube of make-up in there… “You fucking kleptomaniac!”
But Marijo’s smiling, all the same. Maybe Noriaki can help her with it; she’s seen him use eyeliner occassionally, and he’s knowledgeable about almost everything, so she’ll be in good hands.
Her smile slides off her face as Joseph says, “Ah, Jotaro! So nice of you to join us!”
She’s sure her posture gives her discomfort away. She’s aware of how Noriaki seems to notice immediately, frowning ever so slightly, and stopping what he’d been saying (something about the textile industry in Pakistan?).
“Hey, Jojo,” he says to her, gesturing to the empty seat across him, next to Polnareff, who’s eating cornflakes grumpily and somehow managing to look jetlagged. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
“Wow, way to sound like a sleazy old guy, Noriaki,” she says. Marijo doesn’t think she’s said anything that weird, but everyone stares at her, and then at him, and…
“You mean your first name isn’t Kakyoin?!?!” Polnareff asks, looking horrified.
“Uh, no?” Noriaki looks like he isn’t sure whether to laugh or scream. “No, Kakyoin’s my family name. My first name is Noriaki.”
“Why do we call you Kakyoin, then?” Polnareff seems distressed by this, which is honestly kind of funny. Marijo hides her smile behind a cup of tea.
“For the same reason I call you Polnareff,” Noriaki retorts. “You can call me Noriaki if you let me call you Jean-Pierre.”
“And you boys must stop calling me Mr Joestar,” Joseph says. “It’s Joseph from now on.”
“I’m still calling you Jiji,” Marijo grumbles, spreading jam on her bread and taking an unladylike bite out of it.
Noriaki has a look on his face, like he’s going to ask if he can call Mr Joestar “Jiji” as well. She wouldn’t put it past him.
What he does, though, that takes her by surprise. “Are you sure?” he asks, tone completely sincere. “Back home, it’s… unheard of, you know. Referring to adults with first names and no honorifics. It’s disrespectful. Are you really most comfortable being referred to as Joseph?”
Joseph looks thoughtful, like he is actually considering the cultural context for once. “If it’s too uncomfortable, I won’t put you in a spot,” he says finally. “But yes, I’m more comfortable being called Joseph by my friends, than Mr Joestar.”
“Your friends,” Noriaki murmurs wonderingly, so soft that Marijo’s sure nobody heard it. She’s only aware he said it because she’s staring at his mouth, and she can lip read.
What Noriaki does say next is a bit of a surprise. “So, going forth, I’m Noriaki, and he’s Jean-Pierre, and you’re Joseph. It’s weird to keep calling Jotaro Jotaro, in that case… aren’t we trying to speak to each other with less formality? Jojo is a nice nickname; perhaps we could all use it instead.”
Noriaki’s eyes are nervous as they look at her. She doesn’t break the moment of eye-contact; he looks away first. She’s aware of everyone else looking at her, as well.
“So, Jotaro, what do you think?” her grandfather asks. She manages not to scowl.
“I think it’s cute,” Polnareff – is she going to have to call him Jean-Pierre from now on? It’s a clash of consonants and she’s worried she’ll mispronounce it. “I mean, I call you Jojo all the time anyway.”
“Yeah,” she says. Her hands are shaking, but they’re balled up in her lap where nobody can see. “Jojo is better than Jotaro, I’d like it if you call me that.”
She looks at Jean-Pierre for a moment. “Hey,” she says. “Can I call you JP?”
“Oh, everyone gets nicknames!” Joseph looks two seconds away from starting off on some embarrassing story from his youth.
Marijo stands up. Everyone freezes in their place, and she hates it, hates it so much, the way she’s seen as the aggressor simply for being 6’5” and being built and looking so fucking masculine, she hates it so much. It’s easy to resent Jotaro, the idea of a boy, the person she’s been pretending to be for so long, but it’s not Jotaro’s fault, either. Even if he were real – even if he were here – it sucked, people assuming the worst of you, just because of how you were built.
“Noriaki, can I speak to you for a moment? Alone?” she asks.
“You don’t want to do it here?” he replies, in Japanese. “Not like these two will understand anything.”
She smiles despite herself, switching to Japanese as well. “I could do it here, but you’d probably be embarrassed by it. I’m leading you away for your sake, good grief.”
Noriaki follows her, but he’s smiling as well. She can see the two older men watch as they walk out of the dining area into the reception, curious, and thinks she hears the old man say something about a “lover’s spat,” being too loud for his own good.
“I really wonder what goes on in your grandfather’s head sometimes,” Noriaki is saying, but he doesn’t look offended or upset, just quietly amused.
“I’d like to keep my peace of mind,” Marijo says, smirking. “I think we’re better off, not knowing.” She keeps walking, until they’re finally at an empty corner of the gardens.
“Hey,” Noriaki says. He looks almost nervous, for the first time. “You’ve taken me out here for privacy, and I just… I understand, if I overstepped, and you’re upset with me. If you’d rather we don’t be friends anymore, or something like that, you can tell me, I promise I won’t… make a scene.”
Marijo blinks, staring at him. She can’t help wondering where that is coming from, why that’s the first place his mind went to. Were the people who were previously in his life so awful to him that he thinks so little of himself?
“Nori, you dumbass,” she says instead, and he blinks, confused. “I wanted privacy so I could hug you.” And then she reaches out for him, giving him time to step away, but he doesn’t, so she wraps her arms around him, and he curls up against her, his nose pressing against her shoulder.
“I don’t understand,” he murmurs. “Why?”
“You saw that I was uncomfortable being called Jotaro, and you did something that ensures that nobody here will call me Jotaro ever again,” Marijo says. “And you did it in a way that was so natural, and you didn’t reveal anything I didn’t want out there, and they don’t suspect anything. That was so clever and considerate and thoughtful. I’m grateful to you. I wanted the privacy so I could say all this.”
Noriaki is quiet for a long moment, but his face doesn’t move from her shoulder. She thinks it’s a little damp, but she ignores that, despite the pit in her stomach, worry about making her best friend cry.
“You dragged me away from breakfast halfway through to say thank you,” he says. “And you just called me Nori.”
Shit. She had, and he’d never given her permission to call him that. “Noriaki, I’m sorry, it just slipped out,” she says sincerely. Her voice comes out sounding too gruff, and she hates it.
“It’s okay, I don’t mind you calling me Nori,” he says, and he moves away from her hug almost entirely, putting distance between their bodies. He doesn’t let go of her hands, though, and he’s looking at her intently now. “It’s alright if it’s you. But I still don’t understand…”
Marijo had been waiting for a moment, and she had thought the moment would feel right because it’d be romantic, would be full of candlelight and soft smiles and held hands. She didn’t think the moment would be like this, Noriaki’s eyes uncertain, his smile present but distant, the smile he had for strangers, and she could tell that he didn’t understand.
She suspects that he’s confused by how she’d refused to wait for even a second, the way Marijo knows she only does when she's feeling something really strongly, the way he’d only seen her react when she's upset or angry. She can’t risk him misunderstanding this for a minute longer.
“I love you,” she says. Her hands are shaking, but she holds on to his hands tighter. “I have loved you for a while now. Keeping it to myself was agony. I couldn’t wait any longer than this.”
Noriaki has gone entirely still, frozen with surprise. Marijo waits, giving him time to process it, trying not to jump to the worst-case scenarios. It’s alright if he doesn’t reciprocate, she knows he could do so much better than her. She’s more worried about boundaries, about ruining their friendship. It feels like he’s the most important person in her life, barring maybe her mother. If she’s fucked that up for good, she’ll never forgive herself.
Just as Marijo’s beginning to worry, he says, “You were right to ask me to leave the table, I would’ve spilled my tea all over my lap and likely burnt my thighs.”
“That’s not what I expected you to say,” Marijo says, glad that the brim of her hat hides away the tears that she knows are forming despite how much she tries to will them away.
“Marijo, sweetheart,” Noriaki says, and the use of the pet name startles her so much that she jerks her head abruptly to face him, her cap getting knocked off with the abruptness of the movement, “I love you too. I think I’ve loved you since the moment you took that fleshbud out of my head, but I wasn’t ever expecting you to have similar feelings for me.”
Noriaki lets go of her hands to touch her face, and to wipe away a single tear. They hold each other for a little longer. “So I’m your girlfriend,” she murmurs into his hair.
“Yes,” Noriaki says, and she can hear the smile in his voice without needing to see his face.
She pulls back a little, about to ask for a kiss, and then she hears Joseph Joestar’s signature yelling as he runs across the garden to ask them WHAT IS GOING ON and do they intend to eat breakfast?
“Can I tell him we’re dating?” Noriaki asks Marijo in Japanese. (He’s so comfortable switching back and forth, whereas Marijo, despite being equally fluent in both, often forgets words here and there when she swaps around.)
“He’s going to be real loud about it,” Marijo says, and Noriaki’s smile confirms that she isn’t telling him anything that he doesn’t already know. “You can. I’m okay with it.”
“So? Do you want breakfast?” Joseph sighs, having yelled himself out, Marijo hopes.
Noriaki looks at Marijo, as if wondering about her input.
“Sure,” she says. “If they’re just sandwiches, we can eat in the car.”
“And what was so important that you needed to leave in the middle?” Joseph asks.
Marijo resists the temptation to say anything, which turns out to be a good choice, because Noriaki puts an arm around her waist, giggling like he did that time they’d shared a six-pack of Hennigans (she’d drunk four, Nori had drunk two, because she was a responsible person and he was out, two drinks in.)
“I’m Jojo’s boyfriend!” Noriaki proudly proclaims.
Marijo grumbles, shifting around to pick up her hat, putting it on, and murmuring a “Yare yare dawa.” She moves to take the paper bag with takeaway breakfast from her grandfather’s hand and darts off to the car, hoping to sit in the back with Nori instead of sitting shotgun while one of the older men drive. She kisses Noriaki’s cheek and holds his hand, ushering him along, delighting in watching him go pink.
“HOLY SHIT!” Joseph yells, apparently not out of scream potential. She wonders how much yelling one man can contain, but for once, it doesn’t irritate her the way it normally would, because Noriaki is laughing softly, muffling his giggles into her shoulder. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Nori as happy as he is in that moment, and that’s enough to make all the other bullshit worth it.