hierophany | Inbox

[ 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.

More blood for me, then. Tell me if you have a change of plans.

[ He doesn't force the issue, because it's 'not going to', and there are forces in the universe that aren't worth fighting. Not wanting to or needing to, he would challenge. But Jotaro has declared the way that things are going to be. When that happens, that's how things are. ]

It's a trashy soap opera, but they're all foxes. Except for this one bear who lives on the outskirts of town - I think he's played by a famous actor? - he's also a fox, really, but he has a fat suit and one of those big rubber masks.

Yeah, well.

[He hesitates a moment, abruptly holding his breath, because something crossed his mind and in the old world, in the pre-Cairo world, he would've said it without hesitation but now he doesn't know, isn't sure, he's so afraid —

But Kakyoin isn't afraid of him, right? Kakyoin...Kakyoin wants it to feel like the old times, too, doesn't he?]

...Try keeping it inside you for a change. You're pretty shit at that.

[He sucks his lip behind his front teeth, biting it without letting his fangs get in the way, and hopes.]

[ He's taken aback, just for a second. He had his own safe backup conversation topic prepared and everything, but Jotaro just-

He laughs. Not the quiet, rehearsed, pleasant one but the stupid ugly one that feels like it comes up from parts of him that don't exist anymore and sounds like there should be some vocal sac under his chin expanding and contracting to shove out horrible noises. It's not even particularly funny. It'd have got a chuckle at best before Cairo. But right now it's-

-everything he needed. Because he can't pretend it didn't happen, not with Jotaro here. And the next best thing is to accept it. And this? This is the least painful way to accept anything. ]

Didn't Mr. Joestar say that it was unhealthy, keeping things bottled up inside you?

[ Okay so he PROBABLY didn't mean blood. ]

[It's the kind of joke they would've made back then. Maybe after Wheel of Fortune, when Jotaro'd left half his blood spattered all over the desert. Maybe after he'd taken a sword to the gut or Kakyoin had been slapped around by the High Priestess's tongue or any one of a million other ways they'd taken a beating and survived.

It's the kind of thing they'd say in the backseat of a car as they were falling asleep on each other. It's the kind of thing they'd say with fireglow warming their legs and knees.

All those times, they survived, and they'd made jokes about it. And Kakyoin didn't survive Cairo except here he is, breathing, alive enough to hear one of those same jokes and laugh.]

If Jiji said it, that's how you know it's wrong.

[But his lip trembles, behind his teeth, and after a second he's snorting a strangled laugh, too.]

[ Laughter releases endorphins. Painkillers. It forces the body to acknowledge that a situation is safe and triggers an end to the fight/flight/freeze impulses. It normalises a situation, makes it easier to acknowledge and then set aside the absurdity of the fact that events are happening and instead focus on dealing with them. It was the best thing any of them could have done for each other, back then.

It’s still the best thing, probably, and for a moment he’s laughing too much to respond. Laughing until his stomach hurts and he has to choose between calming down a little or curling around it in a way that- will probably seem alarming from the outside. Instead, he watches Jotaro’s mouth, the teeth inside it, and carefully tries to poke at himself to find where his boundaries actually are. ]

Not sure I’d- biting. Wouldn’t have been okay. In case you do change your mind.

[He doesn't get it at first, not for a minute. He's too busy laughing and then being delighted about the way Kakyoin is laughing, and then realizing offhand that he's too delighted about the way Kakyoin is laughing, and oh, there it is again, the vampire thing.

It's less that he actually feels the emotion and more that it surges through him like a torrent past a burst dam. He did good, he did good, look at him, he's happy, Kakyoin is happy, Kakyoin is laughing, he did that. It's euphoric and he wants to just — roll around in it, wrap himself up in it, he did good.

He feels so much when he's like this. Luckily he's able to come down from it quickly, too; he assumes that's the still-human side at work.]

...But you would've done it anyway. Biting. For me?

[It's not hard to guess; all of a sudden, he's sober again, and the emotion starting to build up behind the dam is concern.]

You would've done it anyway. If I wanted it. Because I wanted it.

There are other ways of getting blood out of people. I assume.

[ Except he’s second guessing himself now, because he doesn’t even remember how it worked for Dio and what if the biting part is important? ]

I- yeah? I mean, I can suck it up and deal with it if it’s important. You wouldn’t want it if it didn’t matter.

Yeah. You could cut your finger. It doesn't matter where it comes from.

[His gaze flicks briefly to the side, halfway between sheepish and bashful. The vampire healing hasn't washed away the scars that were already there, and he's got a few shaped like teeth in...interesting places.

Also: heh heh. "suck it up". yeah he sure can.]

What part of it scares you?

[ He runs a finger down his arm, picking at one of the stupid feathers. ]

Wouldn’t even need to do that, right now. Pin feathers contain blood vessels. I could pluck one easily enough.

[ But he doesn’t, even though it has been very tempting to pull them all out. It’s like trying not to pick at scabs but multiplied a hundred times.

And he thinks, even if he’s not sure he wants to. Because that’s probably worth examining. ]

I don’t know. He didn’t bite, not like you see in comics. He did this- thing. With his hands. Like the roots of a tree. Like you’re dirt and he’s some kind of megalomaniac sunflower that’s finally making something worthwhile out of you. And I shouldn’t know that, I don’t know how I know that. But I do.

[ He huffs out a breath, and maybe he shouldn’t be talking about Dio but this is kind of unavoidable. ]

I don’t want you to make me feel like that. Because I think you’d get pissed if you knew that you did.

...I know how he did it. I saw him do it to Jiji.

[Of course Kakyoin couldn't have known about that. Kakyoin wasn't there. Kakyoin was dead by then.

I've already killed Kakyoin.]

I meant what I said. I'm not going to do that to you. But it's...different, when it's teeth, and not his hands. It just hurts a little, and then all of a sudden it doesn't anymore.

Oh.

[ It’s quiet. It’s solemn. And he wants to ask. But he mentioned Mr. Joestar earlier and Jotaro didn’t say anything. Surely if something had happened-

Mr. Joestar is okay. He’s probably okay. He isn’t going to ask any questions that would result in him potentially learning that it’s okay, because he’s learning that when it matters he’s a fucking coward even now. ]

I don’t mind. Really. If it hurts. It’s- ugh. You’re going to think it’s fucked up. You’re going to think I’m fucked up, you know.

Kakyoin.

[He doesn't want to get into what happened to Jiji, not because of that in and of itself, but because it happens after Kakyoin died. And that seems to be the rocky terrain, the acknowledgement that at some point along the timeline, Kakyoin just stopped, and everyone else didn't.

So he focuses on the other part instead. This one is more embarrassing, more subjecting himself to the mortifying ordeal of being known, but that doesn't matter. It's worth it.]

I don't mind it either. Sometimes...it feels good, that it hurts. I know I'm fucked up. But you're not. You're not, okay?

I don’t get off on getting hurt, Jotaro.

[ He laughs, but it’s not the stupid uncontrolled one. It’s not the polite rehearsed one, either. It’s the one reserved for those moments when someone mistakes Hierophant’s body for its true form and rushes into its web. For when they’re completely and utterly fucked and haven't realised it yet. Its cruel, and he’s not sure if it’s aimed at Jotaro or himself. Because of course that’s what Jotaro would assume being fucked up was. Because Jotaro’s understanding of fucked up has not been influenced by a lifetime inside the brain of Noriaki Kakyoin. ]

If you bite me, then there’s less of me. And there’s more of you. Some part of me stops being me and turns into someone else. Someone better. And it’s fucked up that I’d want that from anyone and it’s more fucked up that I’d want it from you and it’s not fair to drag you into it.

[A knot lodges in his throat, and Kakyoin's laughter feels like a slap in the face, but Jotaro manages not to let it show on his expression. He can't tell whether that's an accusation or not. If there's supposed to be an unlike you tacked on to the end of his name. It makes him wish he could stop time long enough to breathe, but Star is gone right now, and he couldn't bring himself to stop time around Kakyoin, anyway.

So his expression simply goes blank, from the way he's holding it rigid, and a non-thing shouldn't be a thing in and of itself, but maybe it says it all anyway.]

Why would you want there to be less of you?

Have you met me?

[ It's the polite laugh, this time. And he wants to say more. He could tell Jotaro that he's disgusting. That vile people have vile stands. That he's been stalking his boyfriend for the last week because he was bitter about being dead. That he's too selfish to be happy for any of them. That he can't even do being dead right. That there's a months long hole in his memory that he knows was filled with- fuck, he doesn't know what it was filled with. Blood, probably. Not his, probably. ]

I told you that you'd think it's fucked up.

I didn't say that.

[It's defensive, immediate. He doesn't like the way Kakyoin's laugh is changing; each one is like a new checkpoint along a path of regression back into his shell, and Jotaro hates it.]

I just don't understand. You're part of me whether I drink your blood or not. I...thought you knew that.

[ He opens his mouth. He opens his mouth to say that no, Jotaro didn't say that. But he thought it. Of course he thought it because who the fuck could not think that's fucked up? That any part of him isn't?

And then Jotaro says that. ]

...that's the cheesiest fucking thing you've ever said.

Shut up!

[There's no fresh blood to make his cheeks flush, but all the other reflexes are the same — the way he looks away, the way he yanks the brim of his hat down over his eyes. The way his lips press together, except that like an idiot he's not careful with his teeth and the edge of his fang slits his lip for about the nineteenth time today, and a thin line of red appears for a few seconds before closing over and disappearing again.]

You're the one who said it like that first, so —

That's not what I-

[ He catches himself. He doesn't need to convince Jotaro that he's awful. And Jotaro's just said the must stupid, sincere thing and- ]

-that can be what I meant.

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