Chapter Text
Jotaro cocked back his fist and punched Kakyoin right in the face so hard that if he hadn't rolled with the impact, the blow might have broken his jaw. For a split second before his brain caught up to what his body was doing, Jotaro expected his fist to sink into an amorphous mass of gold-tinted ectoplasm. Then he remembered Yellow Temperance was currently lying in a wailing pile of broken femurs on the shores of the lake below. Kakyoin sailed through the air and collided with the wall of the Singapore sky tram with a sickening thud and did not get up.
“Jotaro, have you lost your damn mind?!” Joseph's bellow made Jotaro's ears ring as usual, but the sheer disdain in his voice made him wince. His fingers were halfway to the visor of his cap before he noticed blood dripping from his still clenched fist. The old man turned his back to him and knelt beside Kakyoin, giving his shoulder a little shake. It only made his head loll unpleasantly. Avdol thankfully swooped in and re-positioned Kakyoin's limp body on his side, dabbing at the welt on the back of his head with his sleeve.
"Mr. Joestar, I'd highly advise against moving him. He could have a neck injury." Joseph, who looked as if he were about to sweep Kakyoin up bridal style and carry him to the nearest hospital, rubbed his neck sheepishly. Avdol gave Jotaro a rather pointed look. "In the future, Jotaro, how about if we refrain from doling out head trauma to the one person here besides me with a functioning brain?"
"Oh, don't even try to play it cool," Joseph rolled his eyes when Jotaro opened his mouth to protest. “You can't just go clobbering people half your size just because you let your paranoia get the best of you!”
Jotaro was just about to say something he would no doubt have regretted later when Kakyoin's eyes fluttered and he gingerly rubbed his jaw, which now sported an ugly red imprint of all four of Jotaro's knuckles. With a pained grunt that made everyone wince, he struggled onto unsteady feet with both men's hands on his broad, bony shoulders.
Jotaro braced himself for a reaction before he realized he had no idea what to expect. Every would-be tough guy Jotaro Kujo had laid out flat with a haymaker had practically pissed themselves in his presence after they checked their sorry asses out of the hospital. But this was Kakyoin—the real Kakyoin, who most certainly did not perform back-breakers on random pickpockets or slurp down beetles with his coconut juice. He'd no doubt gracefully brush off any fumbling apologies, not that Jotaro was about to make one. But then his treacherous mind dredged up memories of Holly Kujo's face the day he had fired a loaded pistol inches from his temple, when the gods had smiled on him with a few precious minutes away from Joseph's overbearing presence. It was the same sorrowful look she always gave him after he dealt out pain and destruction, to others or himself. It was all too easy to imagine his mother's face overlapping with Kakyoin's, staring up at him with wide eyes full of hurt and betrayal.
“I, er...”
Kakyoin's steady gaze flicked from Jotaro's face all the way to his shoes and then to his face again, and then he kicked him squarely in the shin so hard Jotaro hopped on one foot with a started yelp and nearly toppled over backwards onto his ass.
“Apology accepted.”
***
As he sat on the rattling passenger car barreling out of Singapore, temples throbbing and shin aching, Jotaro began to realize something after several mornings of waking up to the meticulously mitered corners of Kakyoin's empty bed from across their shared hotel rooms. Namely, he didn't know Noriaki Kakyoin at all. Well, perhaps just a tiny bit. He knew Kakyoin was smart, one of the smartest people he had ever known, but everyone knew that. And good fucking grief did Kakyoin want them to know it.
Jotaro thought back to when had been hunched over his desk at home, the heels of his hands boring into his cheeks, trying to shut out the dull hum of his fish tank and Joseph’s distant shouting about chopsticks. He had long ago given up calculating chemical reagents in favor of glowering at the meaningless smear of numbers and letters as if he were willing his biochemistry workbook to burst into flame. He crumpled up a sheet of scratch paper and tossed it over his shoulder.
“Stoichiometry, huh?” came a voice from behind his desk chair, smooth as a blade leaving its sheath. Jotaro whirled around to find Noriaki Kakyoin lingering in the doorway like a wandering spirit barred from the afterlife, the paper ball he’d thrown floating amid a sea of gently undulating tendrils. Uncrumpled.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jotaro roared. A now familiar burst of oxygen swirled around his head and shoulders, as if some enormous shape had displaced all the air behind him. Power surged through his veins as a massive figure coalesced into being, the one that Egyptian fortune teller or whatever he was had dubbed a 'stand', fist clenched and ready for a fight.
“Your mother wants to know what you want for dinner.”
Oh.
Kakyoin’s eyes never left the scratch paper, brow furrowed in concentration. Jotaro’s hands, which were about to seize him by the collar, fell to his side. “And just what do you think you’re doing with these unbalanced equations? You haven’t even taken the ideal gas law into account. If you do it like this you can cancel out the Torr units and multiply by standard atmosphere-”
“What the hell business is it of yours?” Jotaro snatched the paper out of Kakyoin’s hand.
“You nearly nailed me right between the eyes with this thing, so I have a right to look at it.” Sure, why not. That made about as much sense as Kakyoin scribbling death threats on a handkerchief and trying to assassinate him with a marionette. “So on to oxidation states. Look at your periodic table. Alkali and alkaline metals are more stable without any electrons in the s-orbital. Electronegativity decreases as you go down a group.”
“So, are you some kind of honor student when you’re not an assassin?”
“Is that so hard to believe?” Kakyoin returned Jotaro’s scowl with a raised eyebrow. He looked like he wanted to take a step inside but couldn't work up the nerve. Instead his eyes drifted to Jotaro's beautifully planted 150 gallon fish tank as a school of neon tetras swam by. Jotaro was suddenly very aware of the band posters from middle school he still had tacked up and the Shonen Jump magazines strewn about the floor amid his dirty socks and gum wrappers. How long had it been since someone aside from his mother had crossed that threshold?
“Er, perhaps I could offer my assistance? As a sort of thank you for saving my life,” Kakyoin finished with as much dignity as he could muster while wearing the pajamas Holly had bought for Jotaro when he was in sixth grade, posture ramrod straight and hands behind his back.
“You wanna make up for trying to kill me by helping me with my chemistry homework.”
“...Yes?”
“You know what? Fine. Pull up a damn chair, make yourself comfortable. At least I’ll know you’re not sneaking off to report to that Dio bastard or something.” Kakyoin seated himself primly on Jotaro’s foot locker, graphing calculator in hand and an oddly wistful smile on his face.
At first, their impromptu tutoring session proceeded exactly as Jotaro expected. Kakyoin moved from equation to equation with clockwork efficiency, plucking a seemingly endless stream of theorems and formulae out of his head as rhythmically as a metronome. He bounced his knee, barely resisting the urge to jump in with corrections every time he relinquished the pencil to the other boy, but with every right answer from Jotaro, his thin lips curled upward, eyes shining. Then, yet again, he somehow caught Jotaro off guard.
“Do you know how to make black fire?”
“What?”
“So, fire is a basically a plasma made up of ionized gasses, right? Every time they regain their lost electrons, they generate light in the form of a photon. Regular fire doesn’t cast a shadow even when exposed to a brighter light source. But you can create black fire with a low pressure sodium lamp and a sprinkle of salt. The lamp is filled with neon gas and little balls of sodium. When you expose the gas to a high voltage current by turning the lamp on, it produces light in a very specific wavelength of about 589 nanometers. The light is completely monochromatic, so everything lit by the lamp looks like one of those old sepia toned photos. Just in shades of yellow. Turn on a Bunsen burner and add sodium atoms from, say, a cloth soaked in salt water. The fire absorbs the light from the sodium lamp. The flames are pitch black instead of yellowish white.” Kakyoin’s eyes bored into his own as he paused for a breath, making him feel as if he were under a microscope.
Jotaro knew he looked hopelessly confused because Kakyoin's face fell, leaving him feeling oddly guilty. Odd. Everything about Kakyoin was odd, from his name to his too-pretty face to his absurdly colorful hair. It reminded him of the brilliantly colored discus fish in his prized aquarium. He really should get around to naming them. "But the flames aren't actually black, they just look black," he countered.
"Well, color is all about perception. Color is basically different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation reflected from or absorbed by the surfaces of objects that we can perceive due to the photoreceptor cells in the human retina. Issac Newton demonstrated how white light is a combination of colors by using a prism to separate them into a rainbow, while what we perceive as black is the absorption of all colors. Nocturnal animals like owls and cats have fewer cones and more rods, so they can see fewer colors but their night vision is better than ours. Then you have stomatopods like the mantis shrimp who have about 12 different types of photoreceptor cells compared to our three, so they can see colors we can't even imagine..."
"Did you completely forget you were supposed to be helping me with my chemistry homework and instead of rambling about prisms and shrimp?" Kakyoin's mouth fell open in an 'oh', and he looked away, absently running his fingers through a long red curl of the nearly touched his shoulder.
“S-sorry, I just thought you might appreciate a more practical application. Of...of balancing reactants and products, I mean. It's a simple combustion reaction, but an interesting one.” Seeing such a haughty bastard stumbling over his words felt wrong somehow. And Jotaro had to admit, it actually was sort of interesting. With his hulking build and taciturn nature, Jotaro was used to everyone at school assuming he was all brawn and no brain. He secretly delighted in the baffled looks on their stupid faces when the teacher called on him last and he nonchalantly answered whatever question that had stumped everyone else. What intrigued him most was not just Kakyoin’s oddly infectious enthusiasm for Jotaro's most hated subject, but how he genuinely expected Jotaro to be just as fascinated by it as he was. He handed Jotaro back the scratch paper on which he'd written the equation, and for the briefest moment, their fingertips brushed, sending tiny shocks of electricity though his nervous system. He'd never felt so acutely aware of the presence of another living creature before. Kakyoin's cheeks pinked, but he did not pull away.
Earth science, history, English, and trigonometry proceeded much the same way. Kakyoin effortlessly glided through every worksheet and reading assignment while Jotaro redirected him every time he started gushing breathlessly about whatever random factoid struck his fancy like an overly helpful encyclopedia set come to life. Jotaro was particularly impressed by how Kakyoin somehow managed to work the Hadeon Eon into the chapter on logarithms. Then Holly knocked on the door and announced that since Jotaro couldn’t decide, they were having salmon.
“Alright, pack this shit up, if we're not at the table in five minutes she'll have a fit,” Jotaro grumbled, stretching his back with a satisfying crack. Getting stiff from hours of studying was an improvement over fending off a possessed doctor with a bloody syringe.
“We?” Kakyoin was peering up at him through long auburn lashes, eyes wide. It made a curious picture after an afternoon of lecturing and peering over Jotaro's shoulder to check his work.
“You're really gonna turn your nose up at Mom's cooking?” Jotaro grinned before he could stop himself.
“I don't want to impose-” Kakyoin's words were cut off by a decidedly indelicate growl that Jotaro wouldn't have believed could originate from his personage until Kakyoin clutched his concave belly and hid his face under a curtain of hair, which now perfectly matched his flushed skin. It made his whole head look like a ripe tomato.
“Sounds like you could use a good meal.”
“Is...is it ok? With Mrs. Kujo, I mean, because-”
Was that a hint of a plea in his voice? “'It's no big deal. Mom always cooks too much anyway.” He propelled the now strangely quiet Kakyoin into the hallway with a light cuff on his arm. “After you, egghead.”
A few minutes later, Jotaro, Kakyoin, Joseph, and Avdol were all seated on embroidered cushions around the Kujo family's beautifully polished traditional Japanese dining table, much to Avdol's delight and Joseph's sputtering outrage.
“Holly! Don't you have any normal chairs in this oversized matchbox of a house? This is how you get rickets!” Joseph huffed, slapping the tatami mats and making Kakyoin jump.
“Oh, hush.” Beaming with pride and humming a little tune, Holly adroitly ladled out dish after piping hot dish until the table groaned under the weight of the food: koji-cured grilled salmon, bitter melon stir-fry with tender pork belly and eggs, and miso dengaku with konnyaku especially for Kakyoin, who she insisted needed the vitamins and minerals. The daikon was so crisp and the mirin so sweet even Joseph had to work hard to pretend he didn't like them. Yet Kakyoin, now buttoned up to the neck in his freshly washed olive green uniform, nibbled on his food like a gerbil. Holly pressed a cup of hot ginger tea in his hands and told him to take his time.
Jotaro, meanwhile, stared darkly into his cup. Goya champuru was Dad's favorite, ever since he got his first gig in Okinawa before Jotaro was born, though he always preferred his with spam. Why did she have to serve it every time they had company? Why did she have to dredge up those memories? Why was she so-
“Kakyoin, are you alright, dear?” Holly whispered so softly Jotaro wouldn't have heard her if Kakyoin hadn't been sitting right next to him.
A single tear rolled down Kakyoin's cheek. He inhaled shakily and swallowed a tiny mouthful of umeboshi with a sniff that of course drew all eyes on him. His eyes closed in resignation, letting moisture bead on his lashes, the color drained from his face instead of reddening with embarrassment as Jotaro would have expected. Joseph let the fork he insisted on having clatter onto his plate, and Avdol looked up from his rice, thick brows knitted in concern. Holly wiped her hands on her flowered apron and leaned in with a gentle touch on his shoulder, as if she was trying to shield him from their prying eyes.
“It's nothing, it's just...thank you for the meal, Mrs. Kujo. Please excuse me.” His eyes were shimmering with nothing like the bright, wide-eyed enthusiasm Jotaro had seen earlier. Jotaro knew at once which he'd preferred. Whatever impression Kakyoin had been trying to make with his careful calculations and dry academic lectures, the image of him crying quietly while chewing on a pickled plum lingered in Jotaro's mind long after he'd forgotten every equation and study question.
***
Holly Kujo was lying on a bed of writhing vines and berries. Thorns dug into her ghastly white skin, beads of blood glittering like eldritch jewels, but she did not stir. Her chest was as still as stone, or perhaps the elaborately carved lids of sarcophagi he remembered from the museums he'd wandered as a child, each little hand tucked in Mom and Grandpa's larger ones . Sickly yellow flowers opened to the lightless air, germinating from dead flesh. Her flesh. He had seen death in the past few days, so much death, but he had never been forced to stare into the glazed, sunken eyes, and the mangled corpses had never belonged to someone he loved. Her withered lips twitched, and for a brief moment he expected her to sit up and ask him what he wanted for breakfast. But her mouth opened wider and wider, impossibly wide, until he could make out the waving antenna of countless mottled carrion beetles.
Jotaro burst out of a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets with a scream on his lips that died somewhere between consciousness and waking. He doubled over as if he’d been punched in the gut, tasting bile. Tears pricked at his eyes. Then the air itself seemed to shift around a coalescing presence, enormous yet weightless, and a firm, warm hand touched his shoulder. He peeled open his red, swollen eyelids to meet a pair of fathomless blue eyes framed by impossibly dark hair that swirled in an invisible wind. Star Platinum. The guardian spirit's irises were brilliant, clearer and bluer than anything he had ever seen or even imaged. The Stand's searing gaze penetrated him, searching into every blackened recess of his soul. He couldn't meet its—his—gaze for more than a few seconds.
Could Star see his mother's corpse-blue lips, peeling back from her teeth in a rictus grin? Could he smell her?
Calm down.
The voice welled up from somewhere deep inside him. It was both his and not his voice at the same time. He felt disoriented, as if he was trying to exist in two places at once. Gradually, Jotaro learned to breathe again, and the clean white walls of the hotel swam into focus. He was lying in a bed that was not his own for the first time since he and his mother had visited the masterfully restored Joestar estate that had been Joseph's childhood home. Holly had been dabbing her eyes as she watched Michael Crawford sing “The Music of the Night” in West End a little over a year ago and now she was going to die in forty-nine days.
Blind terror turning to embarrassment, he turned hesitantly to see if Kayoin had been watching him thrash in his sleep, but the bed next to his was empty. He fucking knew it. He knew from the beginning that the bastard was nothing but trouble. Strangely furious, he leapt to his feet but stopped short at a light beneath the bathroom door. Jotaro hesitated. He had never caught Kakyoin unawares before. The other boy always seemed to know where every member of the Joestar group was at all times, and yet he seemed to disappear into the woodwork whenever it fancied him. Not exactly the most trustworth habit if you asked Jotaro. So he willed Star Platinum out of wherever he existed when he wasn't smashing Jotaro's enemies to a pulp, and the stand floated silently toward the door, those eerie blue eyes phasing into and then through the wood itself until he could see inside.
He found Kakyoin seated in front of a brightly lit mirror, attending to his pores with a cotton ball lightly spritzed with something that made Star’s—and by extension Jotaro's—nostrils tingle. He splashed what looked like water but smelled of flowers on his pink cheeks before finishing up with a dollop of pale cream under each eye. Beauty came at a price, it seemed. Kakyoin jerked his head up in surprise when the door swung open and Jotaro’s face appeared in the mirror, like he’d walked in on something taboo.
“Well, you know my secret now, I suppose,” Kakyoin said lamely. Jotaro wanted to laugh or scream or both. He would have taken catching Kakyoin reading comic books on the toilet over this.
Despite his extensive list of suspensions and minor brushes with the law, Jotaro was a dreadfully pragmatic individual. He knew what he liked, and what he didn't. He'd been sneaking behind the gymnasium at fifteen, shoving his tongue down other boys' throats from his huge height and grinding against their thighs, quick and rough, heated but not passionate. And here he was, yet again, alone with the first boy he would have ever called beautiful.
“I just--why bother with all this crap while we’re on the road?” He could have easily turned on his heel and collapsed into bed. But he was curious. Isolated as he was by his towering height and a blonde, American mother, glimpses into the lives of others were rare. “D’ya think the psycho dickheads we’ve been fighting care if you’re exfoliating properly?”
“I don’t like it when people touch my hair.”
“Huh?”
“I...I started cutting it myself a long time ago. It grows so fast, you see. I started reading fashion magazines to learn how to do it properly, so it was only natural to begin experimenting with make-up and skin care. There’s so much ugliness in the world, why not make what little we have control over beautiful? The human body is a canvas.”
Beautiful, huh. Someone with a more elegant vocabulary might have described Kakyoin as an imperfect beauty, every graceful feature contrasted by an ungainly one. A light dusting of freckles across a long bony nose. Blue-violet eyes framed by long lashes above a too wide mouth. Creamy skin prone to turning an unflattering brick red under the sun or Joseph's crude jokes. What he felt wasn't lust, exactly. There was no desperate yearning to know what Kakyoin's lanky adolescent body looked like underneath that neatly buttoned uniform. Jotaro told himself he knew every corner of his heart, and he never thought there would be room for the quiet appreciation of beauty, until now.
“That’s a pretty fancy philosophy for a guy who just doesn’t want to talk to a gossipy hairdresser. Who are you trying to impress by putting eye cream on every night?” he kept poking and prodding at Kakyoin with his words, hoping he’d lose his temper and reveal some secret part of himself.
“If you’re hoping to hear about some secret paramour, I don’t have one." Kakyoin replied with an edge of irritation in his voice. "I have my books and my art and that’s all I need. As the song goes, I touch no one and no one touches me.” Kakyoin collected all the bottles and tins and tweezers and returned them to a little silk bag as if he were bagging evidence from a crime scene. "Excuse me.”
He somehow slipped through the tiny sliver of doorway that wasn’t occupied by Jotaro’s bulk. Instinctively, Jotaro caught his arm, but Kakyoin reared back as if he’d been burned. Jotaro let go. It was the closest he'd come to actually holding the other boy since Jotaro had slung him over his shoulder like a fireman climbing down a ladder with a cat that had gone limp with terror. He’d felt so light. It was hard to imagine how so much power could be contained in such an insubstantial body.
In spite of his best efforts, Jotaro's eyes kept settling on Kakyoin's narrow back long after the other boy retreated to his side of the room with a selection of magazines. The old man had bought them for him as a sort of reward for kicking the shit out of that old geezer with his disgusting beetle stand, Jotaro remembered. The only one he was familiar with was Scientific American.
The following day, Jotaro spotted Kakyoin sitting in the early morning sun beside the hotel's outdoor fountain, a slice of buttered toast and a cup of tea at his side and an unassuming three-ring spiral notebook in his hand. Unassuming, that is, until Kakyoin lifted the dull brown cover, revealing page after page of impossibly delicate drawings in charcoal and colored pencil, each signed with the thin, spidery kanji Jotaro remembered from Kakyoin's handkerchief. Fireflies at night, a half-finished sketch of a round-faced bespectacled girl about Kakyoin's age, a moth with a strange skull-like pattern on its wings, a patch of red flowers in a cemetery. Kakyoin flipped through them absently until he found a blank sheet and began to sketch, his expression achingly soft.
An artist, eh? No surprises there. Everything from that stupidly long scarf to his glossy, manicured nails screamed 'sensitive thespian' type. Still he wondered where Kakyoin had stood when he drew all these peculiar, beautiful things, what adventures he might have had.
Kakyoin's expression changed to utmost concentration bordering on reverence, and with starling speed, an outline began to emerge. It was a man, easily as tall and broad as Joseph but with a long flowing mane of pale hair. A face took shape: high sculpted cheekbones, a chiseled jaw, full lips curling into a pouty smile, sharp eyes that reminded him of the chips of polished flint at the natural history museum. Even rendered in charcoal, the man's gaze crackled with elemental power. He radiated a hypnotic sensuality that stirred something dangerously close to desire in Jotaro's heart. Then he noted the fangs protruding from that otherwise inviting mouth, as well as the hard, vicious strokes of the charcoal pencil as Kakyoin filled in the white space. The longing look vanished, and the other boy's lip was curled into a sneer, eyes narrowed in silent fury. Then he leapt up with a startled gasp, clutching the sketchbook to his chest as if it was his first born son.
“What the hell, Jotaro?!” Kakyoin snarled, and Jotaro barely stopped himself from rearing back in shock. He was a full head taller than Kakyoin, but at that moment, he felt as if he were about two feet tall.
“You were spying on me with Star Platinum? Can't I have a few moments to myself without you all acting like I'm going to murder you in your sleep?” It was then Jotaro realized his stand had been floating closer and closer to Kakyoin without him even realizing it. No wonder he was able to see every detail so perfectly. He'd been looking at Kakyoin through Star's eyes.
“Who is he?” Jotaro knew excuses would only make him angrier. He had opened this door and there was no closing it now.
“You know who he is,” Kakyoin snapped. His tone was haughty but there was a haunted look in his eyes that reminded him of the night they had all eaten dinner at the Kujo residence.
“You want us to trust you and you're sneaking off by yourself to draw portraits of the bastard who put my mom in a coma? What's next, are you gonna write him love letters?” Jotaro hadn't meant to lace so much venom into his words. He knew he'd violated Kakyoin's privacy twice on the flimsiest of pretense after he'd saved all their lives, and he had a right to be angry. But something about Kakyoin's endless secrets rankled him, like sand in his eye. He couldn't sleep next to someone for the next two months whose every interaction with him left Jotaro feeling like he was trying to open a puzzle box with his elbows.
“Fuck Dio, and fuck you.” Acid green tentacles burst out of Kakyoin's sleeves like a nest of cobras, and a low rattling noise filled the air. Star's frying pan-sized hands balled into fists, both stand and user ready and willing for a rematch. But Kakyoin merely plucked the exquisitely detailed portrait with all its savage beauty right out of his sketchbook. Hierophant Green's fingers became whips, lashing again and again at the sketch until it fluttered to the elaborate stonework in unrecognizable tatters. He stared balefully up at Jotaro, wrath and naked hurt all over his face.
Some truly regrettable words were about to be exchanged when Joseph's cheerful voice bounced across the stones of the courtyard like a rubber ball with an excitable dog after it. “Kakyoin! What are you taking your tea out here for? Come and join us! You too, Jotaro. It's a continental breakfast, so help yourselves!” Jotaro grunted in response. It felt like whatever fragile peace had existed between him and Kakyoin had shattered, and he had no idea how to fix it.
Kakyoin pocketed his toast in a napkin and was in the process of scurrying off before Joseph steered him by the elbow through the open door, whispering conspiratorially about how Holly had said he was a growing boy and needed proper nutrition. They were once again crowded around a table with Avdol holding court about the finer interpretations of Bushido, Joseph rambling about how none of these modern singers could compare to Bing Crosby (despite the fact that he had been loudly singing along to 'Papa Don't Preach' on the drive to the hotel), and Kakyoin picking at a handful of berries as his stomach grumbled. Joseph managed to coax him into trying a scone, which he didn't seem to like.
Two attacks from enemy stand users later and the four companions were whisked off to a new foreign city with the setting sun behind them. When the two boys opened the door to yet another hotel room, neither of them spoke.