summer

okay. lord. so i was planning something COMPLETELY different for my 10th fic on ao3. and it’s still going to be my 10th fic, that’s not changing. this isn’t going to be posted there until i finish the other thing i’m working on.

but i had a sudden burst of feelings last night and hammered this out in about 4 hours. i hope you enjoy reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it.





The night is quiet. The window’s cracked open ever so slightly, letting the gentle summer air waft through the room, carrying with it the sound of crickets. The two of them sit there on the bed, as they usually do, Kakyoin with his Famicom controller in his lap, Jotaro perched on the edge with that large, soft, weighted dolphin lying across his chest. It’s not a school night, so time passes without much of a fuss, the plates that once contained sandwiches and snacks growing colder. It feels comfortable, and just fine in a way that Kakyoin can’t place.

It’s when the clock in the corner of the room reads just after midnight, (visible by the light of his game of F-Mega) that the quiet in the room is broken.

“Kakyoin.”

Kakyoin doesn’t respond for a few seconds, half-intensely concentrating on the game and half-not quite registering his friend’s voice. He lets out a small “hmm?”, his eyes remaining fixed on the CRT TV balanced haphazardly on his dresser.

“What…what’s it like to be dead?”

Jotaro doesn’t sound like himself at all. It’s the same voice, the same general cadence that he’s used to, but the question he poses is so hesitant, so odd, so completely out of nowhere, that for a second all Kakyoin can do in response is laugh.

“What kind of a question is that? We’re just sitting here in my bedroom, eating and playing games, and suddenly you’re asking about death?”

“You know,” Jotaro shifts over, closer towards where Kakyoin sits, and the latter feels the movement of his weight across the mattress, tilting slightly so as not to get thrown off balance, “You know what being dead is like. So I’m asking you because I want to know.”

“Give it fifty or sixty years and you’ll find out for yourself.”

“Fuck you.”

Kakyoin laughs, again, only for that laugh to turn into a groan when his car is sent careening off the tracks due to his lapse in attention. The game over screen pops up, and he sighs, setting the controller down on the futon and turning towards the source of the weight. He’s still sitting there, facing the wall, his feet propped up on a nearby chair. He’s always been on the subtle side in terms of expressions, so the slight crease in his brow catches Kakyoin’s attention almost immediately.

“Do you actually want to know?”

“That’s what I said, asshole,” Jotaro hisses. “Don’t make me say it again.”

“Okay. Sure. So…” Kakyoin reaches to switch the console off, not even bothering to save. “While it’s true that I was clinically dead for around six minutes, I’m not really sure if I can talk about what being dead dead felt like. But I guess you already know that, and-” He leans over, poking Jotaro’s cheek with his index finger. “I also guess you’re not going to take no for an answer.”

“Do that again and I’m biting it off.”

“Good to know. Anyway, I’m not really sure that I can say much on that subject. Truth be told…I just don’t remember most of it. I’d lost a lot of blood. I was unconscious for nearly a day. But I think there is a thing or two that I can recall?” Kakyoin lifts up the console, sliding it under his bed, then scoots over, closer to where Jotaro is sitting. “Like being punched by DIO. I remember that. I remember…all of that.”

Jotaro tenses up for a second, instinctively reaching for the brim of his hat. He doesn’t say anything, though, and Kakyoin takes it as an invitation to keep going.

“I was just blown across the city in a split second. It was like everything just happened all at once. I know you weren’t there, and Mr. Joestar probably already told you, but…yeah. I figured out what his Stand could do, sent that message, and then I just…fell asleep. I was so tired. It felt like I hadn’t slept for days on end.”

“I wasn’t there.” Jotaro’s voice is so quiet that it almost blends into the ambient noise from outside. “I didn’t even know that this was happening.”

“That wasn’t your fault, you know,” Kakyoin murmurs. “There were so many other things that you had to worry about. You were doing as much as you could.” He takes a breath, then, “Should I keep talking?”

“Mm.” Jotaro nods.

“I think the most interesting thing was…I had a dream when I was unconscious. It really was like I was just sleeping, even though by that point my heart had probably stopped. Like I said, I don’t remember most of it. But I know that I had it. And I know that in that dream, I couldn’t move.” He thinks to himself for a moment, before getting up, taking a sketchpad off of his desk. “Do you mind if I try to draw what I remember? I think it’s easier than explaining.”

Again, Jotaro nods, and Kakyoin takes a pencil from his school bag, sitting back down. He puts pencil to paper, making a rough sketch of a dark, vaguely humanoid form, its face indistinct.

“This is what I saw. I was lying down on the ground, and this person…or whatever it was, was standing over me. They were talking to me. I don’t know what they were saying, and it went on for so long that I thought I might have landed in purgatory.” It’s an attempt at a joke, but it doesn’t land. After a second of awkward silence, Kakyoin just decides to continue. “Anyway…they said one thing that I remember well. I did realize that I was dead at this point, I think. I was thinking about a lot. The fact that I was only seventeen and lying dead in a water tower. And, do you know what that person told me in response?”

“They responded to you thinking?”

“It was a dream.”

“Right, okay. Doesn’t have to make sense.”

“But yes, they did know what I was thinking. It’s not like I could talk. I was completely paralyzed. They heard my thoughts, I guess, about how I was only seventeen, and they told me, ‘no, you’re already seventeen’. I think I woke up not long after that. The next thing I knew I was in a hospital bed, more bandage and machine than human.”

Then he laughs again, but it’s so much more tense and half-hearted than ever before. He doesn’t know why, but Kakyoin finds himself touching the scars on his face, fingertips trailing across the rough, keratinized lines bisecting his eyelids; then they slide under his shirt to ghost across the jagged, round scar just under his diaphragm.

“My body’s broken, Jotaro. They got my heart beating again, they got me breathing again, they even managed to get me walking when they thought for months that I might never be able to move my legs again. But when I woke up that day, my organs were torn. My liver was destroyed. My vertebrae were in pieces. I was so scared. For the first time since I left Japan, I wanted my parents. I wanted someone near me. I was half-anesthetized, and I cried for someone, anyone to come help me, like a small child having a nightmare. It…honestly scared me, how weak I’d become. And those were just the injuries from DIO.”

Jotaro tilts his head over towards Kakyoin, eyes narrowed questioningly.

“You know how in movies they always show CPR as…easy? Clean?” Kakyoin asks, and Jotaro gives a vague nod. “Yeah. When I woke up three of my ribs were broken. They don’t care, you know. I was bleeding out and in cardiac arrest, and hell, those broken bones weren’t much of a problem compared to the hole in my stomach. Better than being dead, as far as the doctors are concerned.”

“They didn’t have to,” Jotaro suddenly says, and Kakyoin turns to look at him once again. “If I’d known about…you. I would’ve started your heart again without breaking your ribs. I’d do it for as long as I needed to.”

“I feel like there’s something I’m missing here,” Kakyoin replies. “But alright. That definitely would have helped. I know that having you around would have helped no matter what.”

Jotaro touches the brim of his hat once again, this time pulling it down, over his eyes. He’s refusing to look directly at Kakyoin, turning his body away and focusing his gaze on nothing in particular.

“I didn’t do enough,” he mumbles. “I didn’t do enough. You can still barely walk. You’re in pain almost every day. You had to be in the hospital for months. I’m not someone…worth thinking of like that.”

“JoJo. No. Look at me.” Kakyoin reaches over, grabbing Jotaro’s face with both hands and turning his head to meet their gazes - this probably isn’t the best move, but he does it without thinking. “I’m alive. I’ve always been hurting, Jotaro, ever since I was born. This is a different kind of pain, but it’s pain that I can handle. The pain that I felt when I was younger, of being alone, being worthless, being used…it’s not mine anymore. I never regretted traveling to Egypt. I don’t have any regrets, because I’m no longer alone. If I have to trade this physical pain for being known and understood, then I will.”

He half-expects Jotaro to back away, or snarl at him for suddenly touching him, but he just sits there, his eyes locked on Kakyoin’s. His face is warm. His cheeks have a slight tinge of pink that’s barely visible under the low light of the room.

“Okay,” he says, finally, eyes flickering down towards his lap.

“I’m so glad I get to spend this time with you. Being with you…it makes me happy. It’s strange, being known by someone else, but not minding one bit. It’s strange, but it’s the best feeling I can imagine. And,” Kakyoin says, trying and failing to keep the grin off his face, “I’m glad I can keep my fingers this time, too.”

“Yare yare daze.” It’s the single most insincere display of anger that Kakyoin has ever seen. “Bastard. Don’t think you’re safe just yet.”

“Wow, this is a plot twist. I survive getting impaled by a vampire, have four surgeries to fix all of my broken body parts, go through months of physical therapy and a liver transplant, all just so I can get killed by my own best friend in my own house.” Kakyoin breaks apart from Jotaro, then collapses face-first on the futon. “Wonder what they’ll have to tell my mother.”

“Kakyoin, you shit. Get up.”

“What happened to feeling bad for me? I kind of want to go back to that.”

“Nope. Not happening any more. No more pity.”

“Shame.” Kakyoin reaches over, grabbing for the remote and flicking the TV off. “Also, as long as we’re being brutally honest here, you don’t have to keep referring to me by my family name. I’m pretty sure we passed that point a long time ago. Call me by my first name.”

It’s so worth it to look up and see the flush return full force on Jotaro’s face, hear a choked, punched sound slip out of his throat. Anything even remotely resembling emotional intimacy has that effect, and as Kakyoin learned a while ago, it’s one of his favorite things to see.

Even if it comes at the cost of his own heart rate getting a little elevated, too.

“Noriaki.” The word comes out husky, yet strangely soft, in that wonderful timbre that Kakyoin finds himself wanting to listen to as long as he can. “There. I did it.”

“Good. Now say it again.”

“You are really, really pushing your luck, motherfucker.”

“That’s not my name.”

The next thing he knows, Kakyoin’s being pressed into the surface of the bed by something big and heavy sitting right on his back, the weight and texture cluing him into the fact that it’s almost certainly Star Platinum. He can barely breathe, but it’s more comforting than anything else, having his best friend in front of him and on top of him all at the same time.

Jotaro’s scowling, but much like his voice, it has that air of softness to it that makes every action of his reassuring. Kakyoin honestly wouldn’t mind being pressed into the bed for a few hours if it was going to be like this.

Yeah, this is definitely fine.

6 months ago on March 26, 2020 at 21:1120