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“I’m just-“ Jotaro chews on his lip, looking for the right phrasing. “I’m worried that I’ll try... and I won’t be able to.”
Kakyoin, perched in front of him, smiles softly. They’re both sat on Jotaro’s bed. He’s glad that Kakyoin doesn’t pay attention to the dirty plates piled up on the floor, and all the clothes and empty cans strewn about the room. Whatever Star brings him is either neatly organised in one corner, or if it’s something worth consuming, emptied and crushed flat against the floor, then chucked somewhere Jotaro doesn’t have to think about it. Unless it’s in a bottle.
“Try it anyway,” he whispers.
Jotaro reaches out his hand, flat, and leans towards him. Before he touches the boy, he pauses. Swallows. Forces himself to move, and his fingers go right through him.
It’s a weird feeling, throwing him off balance. He can see the silhouette of his hand inside Kakyoin’s chest. Kakyoin glances at him, eyebrows creasing.
Jotaro yanks his hand back. Lies down. “Shit.”
“I’m sorry.”
Not your fault. “Mm,” he manages in response, pushing all his thoughts to the back of his brain and electing to stare at the mosquitoes outside his window. They move in a Brownian motion.
Kakyoin crawls over next to him - he doesn’t feel it, he senses it - he’s weightless, lying down with his head nestled on Jotaro’s chest. His fingers find Jotaro’s stomach, idly fiddling with the hem of his shirt.
It’s overwhelming, to watch Kakyoin able to barely affect the pattern of creases in his shirt, each time he tugs at the hem obsessively, yet Jotaro knows that if he tried to stroke Kakyoin’s hair his hand would go straight through Kakyoin’s head before moving even a strand.
He looks so smooth and new. Jotaro thanks whatever higher beings there are - if that, or perhaps Kakyoin’s appearance is a manifestation of his deteriorating mental state - that his face is smooth and pink, his abdomen whole. Flashes of dull, bloodshot eyes and shuddering breaths and hands covered in blood invade his mind, and he has to consciously think about dark rooms and general deep blackness to make them go away.
Thinking about nothing makes him drowsy, and eventually he falls asleep.
___
He wakes up in a cold sweat, hands shaking, with DIO’s voice still pounding in his ears and bouncing around his skull like a very evil bouncy ball. He finds Kakyoin’s presence, stood by the window, and sits up to try and fight the feeling of nausea now hitting him in waves. Good grief, he has a headache, too. Kakyoin cocks his head and smiles.
“Talk to me.”
His cigarettes are in reaching distance. He lights one, holding it between his teeth as he gets up and makes his way to the window. Instead of releasing the button, he shakes the lighter to put out the flame, letting the gas leak for a moment. He clicks it again, and the flame jumps high before returning to its normal size. It’s a trick he learnt when he first started smoking, not particularly difficult but it sure looks impressive to someone who hasn’t seen it before. He’s sure Kakyoin has.
Jotaro blows smoke out of the window. “I miss you.”
It feels weird to say when he’s standing there in front of him, but Kakyoin just nods solemnly. He can’t help but feel that the real Kakyoin would pick him up on it, or even make fun of him (do you really, Jojo?) - or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he didn’t know Kakyoin all that well, because now he can’t picture him doing anything of consequence.
He takes another long drag on the cigarette. It’s part of his backup stash, he ran out of the good ones a while ago. There’s still a pack that he has from Singapore, still in the shrink-wrap, hidden under a pile of clothes in his closet. “There was so much stuff I should’ve said to you.”
“Why can’t you say it now?” His voice is quiet, even though Jotaro doubts anyone can possibly hear him - but Jotaro himself, of course.
“Not the same.” He’s going to say it all anyway, eventually, and the thought of it makes him sick. He deserves to hold everything tight and let it burrow into his heart and rot his blood. All the words twisting around his throat, constricting, until it chokes him from the inside and his face goes purple and his eyes explode. That’s what he deserves.
“Tell me anyway.” Even the way he says it makes Jotaro think that it’s just his voice of reason, that was getting drowned out so badly by self loathing and angst that it had to manifest as the one thing he would listen to without hesitation. No, that’s sappy. He’d much rather Kakyoin’s ghost be some magical phenomenon anyway, like vampires and stands, and not the most confounding reason that he shouldn’t be skipping his therapy sessions.
He sucks in smoke too deep, and coughs dryly, lungs ejecting it against his own will. Kakyoin waits for him to finish and breathe.
Jotaro starts at barely a mumble. “I loved you,” he begins, surprising himself with how easy it was to say. “I never told you. I’m sure you had it figured out, at some point-“ his throat seems to close up, and he coughs again. Fuck, stay on track.
“I... I was obsessed with you ever since you saved our lives on that plane. You could do something that I couldn’t, and that was just... incredible to me.” He chuckles. “Well, if I was to say I admired you, I suppose it started earlier. Back when you nearly killed me.
You were so strong. I admired that. I fell in love with you at some point, then, but I didn’t realise until Singapore. I was...” he sucks on the cigarette. “In that room with you. A few feet away, and I couldn’t sleep all night. I was so nervous.”
He feels his throat prickle and ache with the force of holding back his emotions. Keeping his voice steady. “When N’Doul put you in hospital... it was just some instinct, I never wanted to see you like that again. I remember thinking: I’m going to kill him.”
“And did you?”
Jotaro realises he never told him. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “No. Killed himself.”
“That bad, huh?”
He nods, smiling through the tears pricking his eyes. He doesn’t dare look at Kakyoin’s face.
“I remember visiting you in hospital, every day for a week. And just... seeing you so helpless...” he lets out a sob before he can register it coming from him. “I don’t know. I don’t know, I always thought you were so much stronger than me, and I was scared, and you didn’t deserve it-“ he cuts himself off with a gasp, biting his lip hard and burying his face in his hands.
A wall of tight-chested, shaky agony hits him, forcing him to lean against the window frame for support. His knuckles go white with the force he grabs the frame, desperately trying not to sink to his knees and curl up into a ball. His breathing is raw as he tries to hold back sobs. I’m so sorry. I should have protected you. It’s my fault.
That’s how his mother finds him, quivering and bent over in a phantom pain, tears dripping from his nose and chin. Jotaro stumbles back as he noticed her, bracing against the wall as his eyes fly wide and he grips at his chest, on the cusp of hyperventilating, gritting his teeth as he writhes silently in his emotional torture.
She holds his wild eye contact, approaching him slowly. Pulling him down to the floor, letting him crumple into her arms, nearly crush her, soak her shoulder through with tears. Rubbing calming circles into his back as he cries shamelessly. Until his sobs turn into hiccups, and his body relaxes.
Jotaro forces his breathing to slow, the anxious hands gripping his heart to loosen and melt away. He cracks open one eye, searching for Kakyoin. His room is too dark to see anything.