Work Text:
Kujo Jotaro sits with his legs dangling -- as much as the behemoths he calls legs ever could, anymore -- in one of the open-air hallways in his family's overly large estate one morning. It is twenty days past the worst fifty of his life, possibly of all life ever, and he is smoking the last gauloise his Frenchman friend had given him before waving his goodbyes and stepping into the plane that would take him back to his home country.
The cigarette smells awful, much worse than the brand he was so accustomed to drinking in the scent of as if it were fresh-cut grass, warm bread, clean linen. In contrast, the stench he is coating himself in by smoking this shit is strangulation itself.
He smirks a little, just the hint of an upward twitch at the side of his mouth, and tugs habitually at his cap to pull it closer over his eyes. It's a little past eight in the morning and he should be drowning out the sounds of a teacher rambling on about some topic he generally was uninterested in -- so much so he can't even recall his schedule and it's almost time for him to move up a year -- but instead he is inhaling his way through a gauloise and thinking about some rat bastard of a dog, growling and scratching and glaring its way into the heart of Egypt in a beat up car with five men comparatively the size of tanks, all things considered.
His mind wanders, unsure of what topic to consider while he flicks ash off into the rock garden in front of him where the smolders won't do anything more than fizzle themselves out in a few brief seconds.
Flashes of things come to him, unlike the steady thrum of his dreams where every image superimposes itself upon the one before it until he can't disentangle the good from the bad about that god forsaken trip into hell.
First, the car breaking down somewhere in India and his Jiji meddling with it until he was all covered in grease and his gloves replaced somewhere in the nearest city they could manage themselves into on his shit job at repairing the thing.
That wasn't so bad, really. Abdul had told them something about mechanical work, then, that he had picked up from one of his customers when he was still a fortune teller. Something about always using more lubrication for a joint than you'd expected.
Jotaro finds himself frowning now, just as lightly as he had smiled. Maybe that was only some lewd joke he hadn't picked up on at the time, covered in sand and sweat and the heat of his friends' close-by bodies as they huddled under the scant hint of shade from the murderous sun.
Then, Polnareff one night after a shower in a hotel somewhere in Hong Kong, where his great mountain of hair was transformed by water into something more like a terrible wave of shock-straight white screaming around his ears and neck. He was a little sunburnt on his forehead and nose, his freckles appearing in splotches on his face and shoulders, and the miserable look of exhaustion he had given Jotaro and Kakyoin had made them cackle, uncaring and unfettered in the air conditioned room. In time, Polnareff was laughing, too, his smile stretching to fit around the laugh lines he would grow into as he aged.
And finally, Kakyoin in the hospital, the second time, after things with Dio had broken bad and then suddenly, miraculously, good again. It had been all thanks to the redhead's idiot bravery and his quick thinking, something he had in spades if his sharp tongue and encyclopedic knowledge of everything from soup labels to linguistics and back to bicycle tire sizes had anything to say about it. Kakyoin had thrown the scent off of the rest of them, had crashed his own Stand into a clock tower, had damn near killed himself in giving them the most fitting gift of all, really.
Time.
And now, almost three weeks after he had made the trip home uneventfully with Jiji in toe to deliver themselves back to Holly, as seemingly unharmed as he left, Jotaro wished he had had enough sense in him to tell that gorgeous asshole that he was in love with him before he left the hospital that day. He had been silent as ever, smoking one of the regular cigarettes he enjoyed and that Kakyoin tolerated well enough, and simply sitting in the quiet of the whirring machines and the unsteady, gaspy breathing of his friend had turned him into the happiest man in the goddamned world. If everything had stopped turning then -- the stars fallen out of the sky, the sun simply refused to shine on Earth, the planets flown in a terrible path straight into that hospital in Egypt specifically -- he wouldn't have given a fuck about it. His best friend, if he could even manage the words, hell shit fuck, was sitting there stock-still with the stupor and twilight glow of anaesthesia lingering in his ruined, perfect system.
"Jojo," the redhead moaned in something between agony and ecstasy, "did we do it?"
Jotaro wasn't sure then what the kid had meant, still isn't sure now as he sits with the last awful gauloise burning out in his hand, stinging his fingers with the flame of it sparking up in wild patterns.
"We did, Kakyoin. Of course we did."
The heartbeat monitor was even and beautiful and the clearest sign of something good that Jotaro could hold onto. It beeped in time, a holy little rhythm of life and hope, and he simply appreciated the sound of it as it echoed in the once more silent room.
Jotaro stamps out the butt of the gauloise into the crunching rocks of the garden. He supposes, faintly, that his vaguely religious father would hate to see him disrespect whatever deity was being honored there. It almost makes him smile, bright and real and as genuine as he can ever seem to manage. As he walks through the long hallway and the sun remembers it can shine into the estate, Jotaro registers faintly that in the distance, there is more noise than there should be.
Panic, hot and thick and cloying, drapes itself over him familiarly and Star Platinum makes itself known at the corner of his consciousness as if to remind him that things can go alright even if it gets tricky in the middle.
Taking a deep breath, he paces as steadily as he can manage towards the front gate where the noise is coming from and it hits him like a sucker punch straight to the dick when he sees a shock of stupid red hair falling into the most beautiful fucking face he knows he'll ever see.
Kakyoin, escorted by car and the Speedwagons, stands a little hunched over but standing. At Jotaro's house.
In no time at all, both Jotaro and Holly are at the gate and if he thought he could manage to not fumble opening the damned thing he would have protested against his mother's hands being the ones undoing the latches and locks.
She smiles maybe a little too brightly at the scene playing out in front of them, but he can leave it be. Let the poor woman have her day; he's not bothered.
He doesn't even register that Kakyoin is using crutches -- ones that only come up to a little above his hips, with support at the wrists -- to get around when he clatters the whole of his weight against the shorter boy.
"I missed you too," Kakyoin laughs, clutching onto Jotaro's shoulders if not for the embrace, for the stability.
Jotaro inwardly decides that everyone else can fuck right off, because he buries his face in the crook between Kakyoin's jaw and his shoulder and just. Breathes. It may have only been a couple weeks, but hell, he didn't know he could miss someone as much as he did.
His mom doesn't count, either, the back of his mind supplies. It wasn't the idea that he'd miss her that drove him halfway across the damn world. That was just something you did for family.
Just like this is something you do when your best friend comes home: you nearly tackle him to the ground in the most open display of affection you can remember. It is only natural, of course.
Under his breath, in half of a laugh, Kakyoin whispers something to Jotaro's hat as his hand squeezes the fabric of Jotaro's shirt. It sounds a lot like, "I love you too, Jojo."
His hold on the redhead only grows stronger, Jotaro clinging unabashedly as he smiles something fierce into Kakyoin's neck. "Welcome home" is all he manages.
It is more than enough.