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When Kakyoin turns his page, he notices something large and purple in his peripheral vision. He shakes his head, rubs his eyes, and looks again. Jotaro is still sleeping, dead to the world in his futon, but, to his surprise, Star Platinum is there. Sitting. Watching. Waiting.
He blinks.
"Star?"
His presence there is inherently strange. He must’ve shared tens of rooms with Jotaro over the course of their journey, but Kakyoin can’t remember a single instance where Star ever came out uninvited. Maybe he'd just always been asleep for it? Maybe this is a new occurrence?
He can't be sure. Hierophant acted up all the time, sometimes on Kakyoin’s subconscious, sometimes, ostensibly, on his own. When Kakyoin was little, he’d constantly wake up to a rearranged room or a new collection of rocks, coins, or buttons at his bedside. Apparently, Hierophant was a scavenger. Liked to fetch offerings for Kakyoin whenever he, by some unknown criteria, deemed it necessary to.
Of course, Kakyoin doesn’t really know much about Jotaro and his relationship with his Stand. Kakyoin’s always seen Star Platinum as a separate entity from Jotaro, a sort of guardian that bends to his will, but he can’t assume that they have the same bond that he has with Hierophant. He's had him for much longer, grew up seeing him as his only friend. He doesn’t even know if Jotaro sees his Stand as another living spirit or just as a reflection of himself.
It's not something they've ever really talked about.
Star Platinum doesn’t manifest as much as Hierophant Green, but Jotaro also doesn’t appear to have the same control over his Stand that Kakyoin does, so maybe that was for the better. While Noriaki enjoyed letting Hierophant scout and explore at his whim, Star really only came out to bash in the walls of innocent hotel rooms or the heads of anyone audacious enough to stand in his way.
It’s an odd juxtaposition. Kakyoin has seen Star Platinum beat people half to death (and has, on one occasion, fallen victim to it himself), but it’s an unusually gentle Stand. He’s almost three times Kakyoin’s size, but he closes in slowly, carefully ghosts over and stretches his legs on either side of Kakyoin while peering over his shoulder into his book.
He’s awkward too. Way more awkward than a giant purple fighting ghost has the right to be. He fumbles with his arms, unsure of where to rest them, before Kakyoin grabs them himself and places them on either side of his own waist. The feeling is objectively odd— Star’s hands and arms are oversized, and the sensation of having something pressed so immediately against himself is strange, but he’s well accustomed to the phantasmic touch of a Stand. Just not this Stand.
Star settles, eventually. He tilts his head, nests it into the crook of Kakyoin’s neck, and watches him read. Noriaki is ninety-five percent sure Stands can’t read, and that Star Platinum in particular is unable to. But he still watches, curled around Kakyoin like the pillow Jotaro, even in his sleep, seems intent on strangling.
It’s surprisingly comfortable. Sort of like a personal lounge chair, sans the breathing down his neck. He almost forgets how weird it’d be for any other Stand user to see him like this, let alone this specific Stand’s user.
But he doesn’t think of that, actually. It barely even crosses his mind. He flips through his book with one hand, leaving his other to rest on his lap. Occasionally, Star pokes his spare, as if testing to see if Kakyoin would notice, but moves onto his hair when he gets bored.
And Kakyoin’s hair is naturally interesting, so it makes sense. In a crowd of black and straight hair, his is red and wavy. It’s always been the source of contention and confusion among his classmates. He’s Japanese after all, yet freckled, with red hair and purple eyes. His own genealogy is a mystery to him. Kakyoin has given up on trying to make sense of it. He likes his differences.
However, what Star seems interested in is the way he styles it. Curled in the front, straight in the back. Since it’s morning, it’s not exactly as prim or as proper as he would like it. His bang droops a little, and his mullet is wavy after a night rustling against his pillow. It curls and brushes softly against his neck, tickling him. Except it’s not just his hair, there’s also Star Platinum’s fingers, weaving a peculiar purple glow into the strands.
He’s normally a bit protective of his hair. It takes a lot of work to maintain, not to mention the fair share of burns he gets on his hands due to his straightener. But it’s morning, he hasn’t had the chance to fix it yet and he’s sure whatever damage Star does can be easily remedied with fifteen or so minutes spent in the bathroom or, at worse, a shower.
It’s a weird feeling all the same. He never really lets people touch it, despite Polnareff's many attempts. It sort of feels like a private area, like a secret garden. He tends to it carefully, everyday, for nothing more than aesthetic purposes and his own self-satisfaction. He cowers away from rain and pools and any body of water, like his hair was the very personification of his pride.
But Star’s hands are large and clunky, and muss up his hair with little more than the flick of his wrist. He seems content to just play with it, but Kakyoin is left a little embarrassed. It’s difficult to read with such a distraction, and he finds himself mulling over the same line three times. The sensation is painfully intimate, and Star doesn’t know any better to stop.
And so, he just freezes. If he tells Star off, it’ll, at worst, wake up Jotaro, which is not exactly ideal, but not much of a consequence either. On the other hand, it’s not uncomfortable by any means, and there’s no real incentive to tell him to stop anyway. It’s soothing, in a way he didn't really expect it to be.
Eventually, he decides to lean into it. His back presses slowly against Star’s sternum, and the Stand hums happily in response. The purple giant— gentle, kind as he is— tilts his head so that it presses fitfully into Kakyoin’s hair. It’s somewhat endearing how childish Jotaro’s Stand is in comparison to Jotaro himself. He’s energetic, curious, and wears his heart on his sleeve. Perhaps it's all the wonder and awe Jotaro has but keeps buried deep down. Perhaps Star Platinum is the only way it’s able to voice itself.
Kakyoin realizes, again, that he shouldn’t be thinking about this stuff. That it’s pointless to. His relationship with Hierophant Green is different from the ones the others have with their Stands. Dissecting the intricacy of such a matter, one unique to each individual user, will get him nowhere but assumptions. He doubts Jotaro would talk to him about this sort of stuff anyway. It’s impossible to know the complexity behind their bond.
He sighs. It must be almost eleven by now. He can’t remember how late they stayed up, but he knows that neither he nor Jotaro sleep easy anymore. A gift for their time spent saving the world in Egypt.
So he decides not to wake Jotaro up, for just a little longer.
Instead, he turns back to his book and spends the next half hour catching up on his reading. Time treds slowly with the warm Saturday morning, and he basks in the warm sun that streams through the shades on his window.
He barely notices how Star’s hands over his abdomen have slowly tightened over him until he sucks a breath in that feels a little squeezed.
When he checks, he notices that Jotaro’s eyebrows have knit in his slumber. That they weren’t like that before.
“Star,” he whispers, patting his hand. The scar beneath ignites with inflammation, and his skin, raw from his treatments, feels sore under his pyjama shirt. He doesn’t want to reprimand Star, doesn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable for his friendly nature, but Star Platinum doesn’t put two and two together on his own.
“Could you… loosen your grip?”
Kakyoin can recognize that Jotaro has a lot of feelings left from Egypt. They all do. It affected all of their lives, but in the end, it was Jotaro who killed DIO. He bears that weight on his shoulders, and it's a lot more heavy than what he likes to lead on.
Committing first-degree murder didn’t exactly constitute a fun winter break activity, even if it did save the world from a two-hundred-year-old time-stopping vampire. Kakyoin, a former weaponized minion of DIO’s, knew how tough it was to come to terms with.
Suffice it to say, Jotaro has a lot on his plate right now. Kakyoin does too. Neither of them are the best at talking about it, and he can't imagine that's gonna change anytime soon.
It’s just that, knowing that, Noriaki likes to tread lightly when it comes to the subject matter. He knows that Jotaro, and by connection, Star Platinum, are volatile by nature. It’s easy to piss off Jotaro, and, by extension, it’s easy to piss off Star Platinum. A reminder of that night in Cairo seems like a surefire way to do that, if not approached correctly.
But Star Platinum is large, gargantuan actually, and doesn’t seem to know his own strength. While Jotaro is all-or-nothing, Star Platinum even doesn’t know what ‘nothing’ means. He puts effort into everything he does— sees a goal, and does whatever he can to achieve it. Probably doesn’t realize he can accidentally hurt people when he’s not intending to. Consequences are lost to him, results are a straight line between motivation and action.
When he comes to, however, Star all but removes his arms from Kakyoin entirely. He looks scared, his lip is worried, and his eyebrows are furrowed in concern.
“Ora?” Star says softly into his ear. Though it’s a far cry from anything intelligible, the meaning still carries.
Kakyoin smiles, and the purple mass’ head finds home against his neck. Kakyoin’s voice is low when he speaks, and kind. Like he was talking to a big child. “It’s okay. Just a little too tight. Thank you.”
Star Platinum’s arms return with trepidation. He’s gentle, and his fingers soon glide over Kakyoin’s abdomen, hovering this time. He looks to Kakyoin for some sort of approval, some sort of acknowledgement— or at the very least, a lack of disapproval— and finds the smooth hands of Hierophant Green overlapping his own.
“Ora?” Star Platinum asks, as if to say, Here?
Kakyoin nods, though finds his breathing shallow. He doesn’t mind the scar. It isn't pretty, but it's a part of him now. It stretched across his abdomen where stitchwork was laid post-surgery.
Star presses his arms against Kakyoin’s chest instead, and hugs him tightly, head falling into the crook of Noriaki’s neck. The black curls of Star’s mane engulf his vision, and as if he was looking into the universe itself, he sees white specks in the depths and faint, glowing nebulae. Nimbus clouds between galaxies, planets circling suns, a web of life tucked away in Star’s sable locks.
They weren’t normally visible, until you looked close.
Hierophant Green had comforted him before. Possibly hundreds, maybe thousands of times over the course of his lifetime. But to see another Stand do it, to see Jotaro’s Stand do it, was unlike anything he ever expected.
It was an apology. For what, Kakyoin couldn't be sure. What did a Stand have to be sorry for? For irritating the injury? For not being strong enough to stop it in the first place?
A Stand, in essence, was its user. What lies in Star Platinum was the same as what lies in Jotaro, a myriad of contradictions and unsaid words, an enigma, down to his very molecular structure.
Whatever the apology is for, Kakyoin accepts it. Squeezes the hands of the beast no matter how small his are in comparison.
The stars in Star Platinum’s galaxy fade with his breaths, and at the seams, the blackness itself begins to come undone. Through the eyes of a god, Kakyoin watches the universe crack apart and fracture; worlds explode, stars combust, and the empty space in the in-between become occupied by his earthly room’s fixtures and trinkets.
“Ora,” And he nods his head to Jotaro’s futon, to where Kakyoin could see the flutter of his eyes underneath his lids. With Jotaro’s wake comes Star Platinum’s rest, he realizes. The Stand’s slow fade is just Jotaro regaining consciousness, regaining control.
In a panic, Kakyoin stirs upright, places his book on his lap, and crosses one leg over the other.
When he looks back, Star is still there. His ethereal glow is dimming, his luminescent skin clipping into the paint of his bedroom, his presence in this world nothing but an illusion for selective eyes. Something about his leave is bittersweet. An end to a beautiful morning. But Kakyoin knows very well that he will be back, whether by Jotaro’s command or his own.
As a parting gift, Star leans in, and presses a soft kiss to Kakyoin’s nape, before disappearing entirely.
And just like that, it’s like he was never there. It’s the same warm Saturday morning; light is streaming through his window and an open book on his lap. It’s the same warm Saturday morning, and Star Platinum, Jotaro’s Stand, just kissed him.
The illusive kiss burns into the skin of his neck. Yet before he can work through the complexity of such a simplistic action, he has to act as though it never occurred in the first place. He has to wipe the stain of red across his cheeks, rid his body of the buzz that enraptured it, and stop thinking.
Was that normal? Did Stands do that? Did Jotaro’s Stand do that?
“Mmn…” comes the blanket. Jotaro’s arm swings from under his pillows and stretches out against the floor. There’s a loud, muffed yawn. He’s face-first into his pillow. “Whaff’ime is it?”
“Eleven.” Kakyoin answers. His voice is steady. Good.
“S’too early.”
“It’s not. Get up, I’ve been waiting for your lazy ass all morning.”
Jotaro bites the bullet and turns over on his side to look at Kakyoin. Morning-Jotaro is the perfect dichotomy to every other Jotaro Kakyoin knows, clumsy and lazy and slow. It’s strange, though, how similar he looks to Star Platinum, from his thick brows to his intense eyes to his straight nose and plump lips.
Kakyoin tries not to think about Star Platinum right now.
“No offense, but you should seriously invest in a pair of tweezers.”
He huffs, and sits up in his futon. Noriaki still doesn’t understand why he finds it necessary to sleep half-naked (and how he doesn’t get cold like that), but doesn’t say anything about it. He just looks away, back to the safety of his book, while Jotaro fumbles trying to slide his tank top over his chest. It isn’t as modest of dress as he normally wears, but it at least covers most of his upper body.
“Please tell me you’re wearing pants under there.”
Jotaro snorts. What a weird, foreign sound. Oddly fond. Oddly— endearing.
“Do shorts count?”