Work Text:
There is a gaping hole in Kakyoin's chest.
He remembers how he got it, technically, but the exact moment - the flashbang transition of unwounded to bleeding out - he can't quite place, like it happened outside of his memory, like it was in some space between blinks. The exact way he ended up in that tower, spine dust in the Cairo water supply, blood diluting blue like ink in water, he can't quite remember; all that comes to mind is the pain, the pain, the pain.
5:15am in Tokyo. Perhaps his parents were asleep. He never bothered asking.
The gaping hole is healed over, somehow: the best medicine money can buy, stand nonsense, some mention of breathing techniques and Hierophant curled under his skin holding his organs in place, all bundled together to make a him that can just-about-walk. He finally graduated to solid food again, like some kind of much-too-tall toddler, and the new-scar pink of what's left of his sternum looks like raw meat. He feels queasy at the thought.
"Jotaro," he murmurs, stumbling into the Kujo house kitchen at who-knows-what-time (the sun isn't up, but he's not sure which side of the day he's in; is it early morning or late night? Is there any difference for him anymore?), fetching a glass with a stray tentacle. He's not supposed to reach his arms above his shoulders, lest he tear his stitches - another small indecency, a minor grievance, a monumental loss - so he allows his stand to wander on occasion, even knowing it puts him at risk. In truth, he doesn't even mean to say Jotaro's name; it comes out like disgusting blister serum, leaking like a tap. Saying his name is a habit he can't seem to kick, worse than cigarettes or alcohol or slot machines.
Staying in this house is a blessing, in truth. Any opportunity to evade his mother's questions (where were you, why didn't you call, what happened to your face) is taken as quickly as it's offered - even if staying in said house, with tatami mats and sliding doors and thank fuck no stairs, means being face-to-roughly-chest-area with Jotaro on the daily.
"Mm?" comes a deep, sleepy voice, eyes reflecting the gentle green glow from Hierophant, almost catlike in the dark. Kakyoin tries not to startle, but Jotaro clearly sees the shudder of surprise, grunting in response.
Kakyoin likes him. It was bad enough before, sat thigh-to-thigh in another car they'll destroy before the week ends or sleeping opposite him in hotel beds too short to properly stretch out in. It carried a sort of temporariness then - a need to act for fear of a story's end, a desperate ticket to prevent the inevitable. Nowadays, pervasive permanency haunts Kakyoin, forces him to acknowledge that this home is his home - he knows that actions now have consequences more than ever, unable to escape. To confess now, to touch great expanses of muscle and claw under rib bones just to feel what hides underneath, would be disastrous.
It's hard not to want, though. Jotaro stands beside his bedside - not a futon, his back can't take it, Miss Holly bought him a proper memory foam mattress - looming over him like a skyscraper over farmland. He is storm clouds on the horizon of a sunny day, the promise of deadlines, the threat that comes with checking emails; he hangs over Kakyoin like a precious, unavoidable danger, a fate Kakyoin is excited to be resigned to. His body is toned, scabbed-over barely-there stab wounds and maroon reminders of Avdol's flames around his neck. Stood there, he seems he should be some kind of harbinger, a bad omen - but if Jotaro is a typhoon then Kakyoin is a dry canal bed, aching for rain. He is desperate for as much as a touch from him, as little as a glance, as overwhelming as a whisper of his name.
"What are you doing up?" Kakyoin hisses, although the irony is not lost on him.
"Heard you in the hall."
Jotaro stalks him like his best worst memory, crawling up from cotton sheets like bycatch dragged up in a trawling net, simply at the sound of Kakyoin's footsteps: to know this, to know the inevitability of this, to know Jotaro will wake over and over and be pulled into the fishing vessel time and time again, and somehow still be unable to dig his teeth into birthmarks and scars, causes Kakyoin's heartbeat to stutter. It flutters weakly in his chest like a butterfly in a hurricane, doing its best, buffeted by gales. It rises in his mouth like bile.
There is a gaping hole in Kakyoin's chest.