hierophany | Inbox

...
i'll never understand how you do that
how you just figure things out and make it seem so easy

i think you're right
i think he is scared of you

listen
are you still scared of vampires

So the first thing you need to do is spend seventeen years being profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of not knowing things. 🐸

I'm not going to be weird about it, if that's what you're asking. He seems nice. You're capable of taking care of yourself if I turn out to be wrong.

fuck off then i don't have that kind of time

that isn't what i'm asking though
i'm asking if you're afraid of vampires
still
right now

I mean.

What the fuck are they going to do to me? I'm kind of.
Out of good reasons to be concerned.

It's fine, I guess. They're fine.

oh
i mean

yeah i guess that's true

anyway listen
sometimes this place does...weird things
like turning you into a bird

well
it looks like for a little while um

alucard has star
and i have his uh
fangs

Oh. That's

Certainly a thing that seems to have happened.
Thank you for clarifying that it isn't a him turning you into a vampire thing.
I would have been angry.

[ 7FFF00 is typing... ]

Do you.

Need anything?

he wouldn't
listen
i know this is just my word and nothing else but
he could never hurt me
especially not like that

...
did he
tell you about why he can eat ice cream
i mean what happens if he does

I believe you.
I am trying to believe you, and I'm mostly succeeding.

I assumed that vampires consume things that aren't blood for the same reasons that humans eat things with very little nutritional value.
Because they like them.

i'm not being sentimental
it's just complicated
i'm never any good at explaining things anyway
i'm not you or avdol

but yeah
blood is the only thing that um
makes him stop being hungry

i'm so hungry

Let me try.
You love him. But if you didn't, you'd still trust him. And even if you were his worst enemy, you know he wouldn't fuck your life up just for its own sake.

Come home.

no
i mean
you're not wrong but no that's not

it's not about my feelings
it's not about whether i trust him

i know he can't hurt me
and right now i couldn't hurt him either

you don't really want to see me like this do you
i told you i don't want to upset you
don't make me come home if it's going to upset you kakyoin

Because of Star?

I said come home.
I don't know if I'll get freaked out. But you already did the big reveal. It's not like I can get caught off guard.

You're more afraid of me than I could ever be of you.
You're kind of alike like that.

Big dogs don't get spooked because they think something'll hurt them, you know. It's because something's a threat to their family.

[And all of a sudden he understands. He understands what Adrian means when he says that sooner or later, he'll always give Jotaro anything he asks. All of a sudden he gets it because Kakyoin says come home, I said come home and Jotaro knows he's going home because that's what Kakyoin wants.

You still love him. Don't you? Adrian had asked.

He's half a vampire today, and wanting Adrian consumes him like nothing he's ever felt before, and Kakyoin said come home, and he's already going.]

ok i'm coming

i'll be a wolf so you might have to open the door for me

Yeah.

We can figure things out. The blood thing. Or the everything thing. Or we can just
Be a dog and bird.
Watching bad television.

I think that'd be okay, too.

[He comes home.

He's so fast as a vampire, even if it feels strange to move so quickly under his own power rather than calling on Star to assist him in it. Star isn't there, no matter how many times he calls, and sometimes that leaves him feeling lonely and hollow in a bittersweet way he can't quite articulate, but he knows his Stand is in good hands anyway. Adrian loves Star as much as he does. Star's okay. He's just not with him, but that's fine.

And fortunately he's made enough of a study of Adrian that he knows already what sort of powers he's got at his disposal. It didn't take him altogether long to figure out how to change into a wolf, or how to fly. He's already sort of familiar with his heightened senses because of Sanguis. He wasn't ready for the overpowering depths that his desire runs, but he was at least aware of it, capable of identifying it when it hit him.

He keeps scratching open his lip on his fangs. It keeps healing. It's strange.

He bounds up to the front door of their apartment in Lunatia and paws at it, as long and as heavy as an animal as he is as a human being, bumping and rattling at it just out of pure canine mischief until it's opened for him.]

[ Shirts really have been the most difficult part.

Doorways were tricky, too, and moving around without knocking things about, but he's used to having extra limbs waving around needing to be carefully manipulated lest they knock against things. It's been second nature for a long time. If he extends Hierophant's reach just beyond his wingspan, he can tell if he's in danger up bumping into things. But Hierophant can pass through cloth and the wings can't.

In the end he put on a button up backwards, doing the top few buttons and leaving the rest open. He still has the flesh-coloured band wrapped around his abdomen beneath it, but it's still- awkward.

Hierophant opens the door, because of course he does, but Kakyoin is still standing behind it, all feathers and slight bemusement, staring down at an actual fucking wolf that is apparently Jotaro. ]

I wouldn't have used Dog metaphors if I knew. Somewhat tasteless in hindsight.

[Here's the funny thing: at full extension, even like this, Jotaro is still a good half-foot longer than Kakyoin is — which means that when he primly gets up onto his hind legs, rests his forepaws on Kakyoin's shoulders, and bumps his furry head against the underside of Kakyoin's chin, it's just a reinforcement of how astonishingly big he is.

But it doesn't last long; he drops back down to the floor and trots inside without further implicit comment, hopping up onto the couch and settling down into a relaxed dog position like he owns it.

Which he does.

His eyes are still green, at least. And from the way that he's watching Kakyoin, it almost seems as though he's staying this way until he can gauge out Kakyoin's current feelings before shifting into something he expects to be more jarring than a friendly, albeit incredibly fucking large, canine.]

[ It's probably fucked up that instead of being alarmed, instead of questionning anything, he just leans his head down, resting it against Jotaro's stupid wolf head for the few seconds that he stays. Like he's so touch starved and pathetic that he's devouring everything he's given, even though he's had more human contact in the few weeks he's had here than he has in his entire life. It's not even probably fucked up.

But a lot of things here are fucked up and this doesn't even make the top ten, so he proceeds to begin the work of navigating how to use a couch. Sitting on it normally isn't happening, so he thinks for a moment before sitting sideways. Small of his back against the arm of the couch. Big stupid wings trailing off the side, knees tucked to his chest and arms wrapped around them, staring at Jotaro.

He doesn't seem entirely comfortable, but the bulk of that seems to come from his needing to arrange himself differently to account for being a swan. ]

I think it fucks me up more that it's possible for you to lose Star, to be honest. That seems like it shouldn't be able to happen.

[What a parody they make, the two of them. Kakyoin with his white wings and Jotaro with his black fur, gazing awkwardly at each other without knowing quite what to do. It's tempting to just stay this way, maybe put his muzzle down on his paws and just go to sleep, but he doesn't want to ignore Kakyoin when it feels like he's really talking, without pretenses and formalities.

And he can't talk while he's like this, so...

He's still not as graceful at making the change as Adrian is when he does it. Probably Adrian's had years more practice than he has, but he makes it look like an art form, a graceful leap into a transition from one shape to another. For Jotaro, it's just a spontaneous cloud of mist and a reorganizing of limbs, so that where there'd been a dog there's now a young man, still clad all in black, but now absent of fur.

He still hasn't figured out how Adrian manages to talk and smile in that way that disguises his fangs, either. As soon as he opens his mouth, they're going to show, and he sighs.]

I guess it's not as weird for me because I remember life without him. I spent most of my life without him, so it's just kind of...back to the way it was before. I guess.

[He can hear the blood in Kakyoin's veins. He can smell every bit of scent clinging to him. It's not polite to smell people but he can't help it any more than he could help hearing him without blocking his ears.]

...So.

[He says, while he's looking straight at Kakyoin, while he knows he'll see the glistening deadly fangs in his mouth.]

Are you afraid of me?

[ He looks at Jotaro, and he waits. For the taste of bile. For the air to leave the room. For the walls to close in. For his stomach to crack open and all the rotting food to spill out on the nice couch. For the chemicals in his brain to throw themselves at the wrong receptors and for the thing in front of him to be something more horrifying than a graceless collection of limbs and anxiety with too much bone in its mouth. He waits for memories to rush to fill that hole that's been left since the flesh bud was removed because maybe that's what will happen. Maybe he'll remember the things Dio said to him, remember what it feels like to be happy to act as fuel for the fire of something greater than you.

But it's just Jotaro with extra teeth, and he doesn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. His heart races when the change begins and then it starts to slow again. ]

Bet you can't do the cigarette thing with your mouth like that.

Bullshit. Just watch me, I'll —

[But then he stops, because he'd instinctively already turned over his hand like he'd expected something to happen, except that he doesn't smoke anymore and Star isn't there to fetch anything he asks for on an instant's whim, and it only just hits him afterward.

He can't blush, not without blood in him, but there's something sheepish in the way he turns his hand back over and tries to hide that he'd ever done it to begin with.]

...Sorry. Forgot I gave up the habit a while back. I don't have any in the house.

[Kakyoin's heart is beating. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but steady. He's alive, by some measure of aliveness. The sound reassures him, like a lullaby.]

So you can't do it, is what you're saying.

[ He leans forward as much as he can while sat like this, chest pressed against his knees. And he's smiling, and this is somehow the most normal that things have been in a while. As if things got so fucked up that it cycled right back to normal. ]

Sorry to disappoint you, but you're just you with weird teeth. I'm not scared.

[He smiled. He made Kakyoin smile. He can still make Kakyoin smile.]

I'm not going back out. Besides, the smoke probably smells horrible when I'm like this.

[...]

You are too, you know. Still you. Just weird.

It always smelled like shit.

[ That's a lie. He misses it, the smell of tobacco permeating fucking everything. It'd get into his clothes and make them feel like armour. It's probably best for Jotaro's lungs that he stopped, but it's bittersweet. No more stupid tricks. No more smoke particles getting stuck in things and turning them into steel. ]

'Weird'. Wearing odd socks is weird. I look fucking ridiculous.

[ But he sounds like he's already accepted it. He's a swan. That's a thing that's happening. He's a swan and Jotaro's a vampire and sometimes also a dog and Star's off stealing things for someone else for a while. ]

So. The- blood. Thing. Or I can explain- Okay, so I can't explain the plot of Moonstone Days to you, but I can tell you the parts I understand. It's the worst.

I'm — I'm not going to drink your blood.

[A normal person wouldn't notice it, but Kakyoin will, because he's Kakyoin, and Jotaro knows it. There's a very significant verb choice there, even if it's not overemphasized in any way — he's not going to, which is very different than whether or not he wants to.

Because he wants. He wants, he's so hungry, but it isn't even about the food because what it's really about is him. He may be a vampire now (or half of one) but it's not as though all of his memories of before have vanished, and he remembers exactly how it feels when Adrian's teeth sink into his neck. He remembers how he'd asked him for it, again and again. How he'd had to press and press and even then he still only got away with it once a month, and in moderation.

He doesn't have nearly the control that Adrian does. That didn't come with the abilities. And he doesn't know how to do it and be careful. He doesn't know how to do it and make it feel good.

And he won't do it because it's Kakyoin, and there are ten thousand other reasons why something like that is so egregiously off-limits. There's Adrian. There's Kakyoin. There's him. There's — Dio, Cairo, everything. He won't. He won't risk it.

But that doesn't mean he doesn't want to.]

I can go a month without needing it. It's — annoying, s'all. I'm not actually going to starve or anything.

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