Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jotaro knew that the moment he opened up the door, someone would be waiting for him at home, and he dreaded that fact more than anything else. He’d become used to Joseph sitting awake in the kitchen, reading a newspaper or pulp novel, or Holly falling asleep on the sofa, where she would wake up easily as soon as she heard the latch open; they each pretended that there was a different reason that wasn’t just concern, but he knew better.

What he was not expecting was for it to be Kakyoin Noriaki waiting for him this time around, sitting on the couch with immaculate posture, one ankle resting on his other knee, doing schoolwork.

That wasn’t going to stop him, though. Jotaro saw his friend and schoolmate look up, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kakyoin raise an eyebrow, waiting expectantly for any kind of greeting or justification. Instead he was met with silence as Jojo hung up his jacket on a coat tree. Star Platinum shamelessly rested a hand on Jotaro’s shoulder as if to steady him. Jotaro shrugged viciously, but Star didn’t move.

Kakyoin scoffed, shaking his head. Jotaro didn’t so much as glance his way. He turned instead to the kitchen and took a set of slow, deliberate, but also somewhat unsteady steps.

“Where were you?” Kakyoin asked, voice low. “You said you would be back three hours ago.” 

Jotaro turned his bleary-eyed gaze on a clock and realized that it was, in fact, nearly four in the morning. Time certainly had slipped away from him, ironically as anything else. “Good grief,” he muttered under his breath. “You all worry like a bunch of old hens.”

“We don’t know if there are still enemy Stand users out there,” Kakyoin reminded him patiently, though there was no need for it—they’d had this disgruntled conversation before, as much as it could be considered a conversation, since Jotaro steadfastly refused to actually engage to any significant degree. “They could still be looking for us.”

Jotaro just huffed in response and turned his head down, eyes shaded in the dim light. Star Platinum’s grip on his shoulder didn’t ease.

“Just because we’re in America now—” Kakyoin began, but Jotaro waved a hand to cut him off, before jamming his fists back into his pockets. The wallet chain attached to his belt jangled with every move he made.

Jotaro knew that his friend was patient—though friend was perhaps pushing it as of late—but even Noriyaki had his limits. He felt Hierophant Green weave its way around his ankles, and he shivered at the feeling of the tentacles on his bare skin.

“Jotaro.” Kakyoin stood up, placing his workbook on the couch, and started to walk over to him. The light flashed in his violet eyes in a way that told Jotaro that he wasn’t playing games—he was going to do what he had to in order to be heard. Hierophant Green pulled itself taught around Jotaro’s ankles, both a binding and a tripwire if he tried to get away. “Listen to me. You need to stop fucking around and yanking everyone else along with you, or else—are you drunk?”

“Star,” Jotaro said, though he didn’t really have to say anything out loud. His Stand gave him a disapproving look, but knew what to do. When it brought forth The World, Jotaro gingerly stepped out of Hierophant Green’s grasp, careful not to accidentally kick or tread on it, or to hurt Kakyoin in any way. When time resumed, he was nearly at the top of the staircase, and looked back down it at his friend. “I have schoolwork to do.”

Leaving Noriaki standing there, gaping, glowering, Jotaro stepped into his room and locked the door behind him. He didn’t bother turning on the lights, instead kicking off his shoes in the darkness and following a familiar path to the washroom. Still in the darkness, he turned the shower on cold, retrieved a flask from his pocket, had a sip of vodka, and then clambered into the shower, still clothed. He stood there in the dark, shivering under the water, for god-only-knew how long. Star Platinum stood watch by the door, keeping its back turned to Jotaro, but he could still feel his Stand’s disapproval. He sat down on the shower floor after a moment, had another drink, waited for the warmth to make its way up his chest, through his shoulders, to his skull, to burn his ears. A cold shower wouldn’t sober him up and he didn’t want it to; Jotaro wanted his arms to freeze off at the elbows, and his legs too, and maybe everything else while he was at it.

He heard Kakyoin’s footsteps down the hall, heard a door close, and despite the fact that no one could see, a slow smirk spread across his face at the though of just how irritated the young man must be. He would have thrown his books down on his bed, let out a long-suffering sigh, glared out the window, at a mirror possibly, at the door, in Jotaro’s general direction; he would turn and have a long, angry conversation with Hierophant Green, and eventually fall asleep just as grumpy. He would probably wake up in a few hours from the nightmares, which wasn’t the world’s worst timing, since that would mean he would wake up in time for school, courtesy of going to sleep so late. Jotaro, on the other hand, had absolutely no intention of actually going to sleep. What he’d said to Kakyoin was true: he had schoolwork to do. Going out and getting plastered, or staying in and continuing to maintain a piss-drunk state, was no excuse for that.

Besides, if he slept, the nightmares would creep in.

The water turned off seemingly of its own accord, and when realization crept in, Jotaro opened his eyes to meet Star Platinum’s concerned gaze. It reached out a hand to pull him up, muttered a single “Ora” full of consternation, and handed Jotaro a towel.

“Stop it,” he snapped at his Stand. Star didn’t look swayed by his words. Jotaro spoke to it more than he did anyone else, which was good for him in that he could actually talk to someone about what he was feeling at any given time, and also not good, since it meant his words had no effect on his Stand, unlike everyone else, it seemed.

He dried his hair off. Peeled his wet shirt over his head. The floor swayed beneath his feet; the vaguest hints of movement reflected in the mirror, despite the darkness, and he turned away from it.

He hadn’t been lying to Kakyoin: he was absolutely going to do schoolwork, as much as he was able to at least. The two of them had a chemistry exam the next day, and he was determined to do as good as he was physically able. It would have been much easier if he didn’t also have a lab report due for biology as well. Neither were horribly difficult, admittedly, but they would have been a lot less effort if he weren’t drunk still.

A dry pair of pants. Star turned the light on for him, and Jotaro sat down at his desk. The little bit of moonlight pouring through his open window highlighted the scars across his bare skin.

He ignored it. Star did too, retreating to let Jotaro do his homework. Perhaps he would be sober in time for class.

Perhaps he didn’t want to be.

A dream: he knew that it wasn’t real, but he couldn’t do anything with or about that fact. Jotaro was hanging upside down from his left ankle, chains wrapped around his legs. The chains were ever so slightly off, in the sense that he was pretty certain they had never been chains to begin with, but they appeared to him to be chains, and so he took that for the fact that it must be.

But everything was wrong. A man looked over at him and smiled; it was taunting and clever, and at the same time there was something in his eyes that said that nothing was wrong at all. “Have you ever sailed to the edge of the world?” he asked.

Jotaro said nothing.

“It’s fascinating, really,” the man said. His words were wrong, too. Jotaro knew what he was saying, but they sounded nothing like the things that he meant. “Are you going to try to stop time?”

The words left his mouth not of his own volition; he had no control over himself. “Give me a watch.”

The man laughed with delight, an unnervingly pleasant laugh. He pulled a pocketwatch out of his jacket and tossed it to Jotaro. It hung in midair in front of him like a challenge and a taunt. There were twenty-four hours on the watch face, still with divisions of sixty seconds. It was half past ten at night. The windows shone with daylight.

“Thirty seconds,” the man said. Jotaro tried to respond, but when he did, found that for some reason his mouth was full of oatmeal. He couldn’t speak.

Awake: the clock on his wall said that it was eight in the morning. But Jotaro knew that couldn’t be true; the light had been the same in the dream, and there, it was night time. He had missed everything, he knew it: he had missed everything from the day, and now it was night, but the sun was still shining. The watch on his bedside table also said that it was eight, but the hands were wrong. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real and he couldn’t move.

He had missed it, and someone had gotten hurt because of that; he just knew it; he couldn’t let it happen but he already had, and now it was night time and now the sun was still up and the chains that weren’t chains had to have gotten to someone else. And if, after all, the clocks were lying, if they were saying that it was a time that it clearly wasn’t—because it had to be the night, there was no other possible explanation—then everything else was the same. Or, more accurately, everything else wasn’t the same.  

He didn’t know what was what. It felt, though, like he couldn’t move. There wasn’t really much of a point, if he didn’t know what was and what wasn’t. The clocks were lying and he didn’t want to know if the chains were true or not. So he lay there, staring at the wall, unable to bring himself to do anything at all.

“Jojo!”

A voice on the other side of the door—his mother. Jotaro blinked, shook his head. He had no idea how long he had been lying there for. He refused to look at the clock face, but—but if Holly was there on the other side of the door, then things were real. Things were alright. They had to be at least somewhat normal, and if they were normal, then that meant…

“Jojo, sweetie! You slept in, I have breakfast ready for you! I don’t want you late to class again.”

When Jotaro rolled over, he heard his mother walk away from the doorway, presumably having heard him. It was a moment longer before he sat up again, but at least he could do that much. His arms felt attached to him; there was no chain around his leg; the clock read a reasonable hour. Thankfully he had an empty block in his schedule, one that allowed for enough wiggle room after nights like this.

(Had he really only been asleep for less than two hours? He didn’t even remember climbing into bed. He hadn’t meant to go to sleep.)

Silent as ever, Star Platinum handed Jotaro a shirt, freshly washed and folded. Its hand lingered for a moment on the scars across the young man’s arm, and Jotaro was hyperaware in that moment of all of the other ones that crisscrossed his body—that covered Star’s body as well. All injuries reflected on the both of them. Even self-inflicted ones.

Jotaro pushed Star’s hand away and pulled the shirt on over his head. “You’d know if there was anything,” he muttered.

“Ora,” the Stand replied.

If Star Platinum was there, then it probably wasn’t a dream. He could bet on that, for the most part, and that would keep him grounded during the day. Kakyoin would be in their second class together, and then they would get back home and Holly and Jiji and Baba would be there, all safe and alright. All he needed was to stay grounded until then.

Jotaro prepared to float through the day, but when he pulled on his jacket and stepped out the door, he at least felt ready for it.

(No one needed to know that he had a flask tucked away in his satchel.)

“Are you going to tell me what was going on last night?” Kakyoin asked with something almost resembling a scowl. It was unlike him to be so bitter, at first glance, but Jotaro supposed that it wasn’t exactly unwarranted. He doubted that Kakyoin had ended up getting any sleep at all, based on his schedule. There had been dark rings under his eyes for quite a while, but now his eyes themselves were significantly bloodshot. The teachers at this school refused to let him wear the sunglasses he used to keep on. Though he had them on now, going back home, it was almost strange at times to see him without them in class.

After everything that had happened, teachers trying to dress code one of them was comic at the absolute worst. It was a miracle that Jotaro showed up for class at all at this point. Kakyoin expressed some similar thoughts, though never in so many words.

“No.”           

“Your mother worries about you.”

“That’s her problem.”

“Didn’t anyone teach you to respect your elders?” Kakyoin chided him. His voice was singsong and still deep and dangerous, hinting openly at his obvious irritation.

“Well, Kakyoin, I don’t think that you have a leg to stand on there, considering you just left your parents on the other side of the world,” Jojo said, cold and even in his words. A chill ran down his neck the moment he said it—it was a low blow, and Kakyoin would be within his right to retaliate however he saw fit. There was nothing that he could say that would hurt him then, and Jotaro could win in almost any fight now that Star could use The World, but driving his friend away?

But instead of apologizing, he turned his head down ever so slightly, his eyes hidden behind the shade of his hat, though he could feel a piercing violet gaze boring into him.

“Fuck you, Jojo,” Kakyoin snapped. Jotaro heard his sharp footsteps walk abruptly away from him, down a side street instead of the most direct route home.

Shit.

Jotaro continued walking in his own direction, back to the house, even as a pit began opening its way through his stomach, filling his chest with hollow nothingness. It spread one breath at a time and took up more and more space with each passing second, with each molecule of his body inverted and turned to its own nonexistence. He couldn’t breathe, or at least, he couldn’t feel himself breathing, though he knew that he was. He couldn’t feel his ribs, but he was hyperaware of the blood running beneath his skin. The nothingness made its way up his throat, up his skin, until it pushed at his collarbones. His arms between his shoulders and elbows felt all-too-there, while from his elbows to his fingertips were nonexistent as far as he was concerned. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to punch something. He wanted the nothingness to be gone.

He didn’t break his stride.

“Star Platinum,” Jotaro said after what was likely a few blocks—he wasn’t totally sure; his surroundings were melding together in his mind. All that existed were his words and the nothingness. “My flask.”

The Stand gave him a very long look that Jotaro felt more than actually saw. It didn’t move.

“What, do you want me to beg?”

Still nothing from Star, except for that gaze that seemed to burn straight through his hat.

He sighed, far louder than he needed to. “I have to do everything myself.” He reached into his bag to dig around; it had to be in there somewhere. Of course he could have done that from the beginning, at least that’s what he wanted to tell himself, but Jotaro knew that with the way that his hands felt disembodied from the rest of his form, he wasn’t going to have much luck. His fingers fumbled across what had to be a book, what was probably a pen but he wasn’t quite certain about that.

Purple fingers closed tight around his wrist, pulled his hand out of the bag. Jotaro stopped walking and looked up to meet Star Platinum’s eyes. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to accomplish,” he snapped. “You are me.”

The Stand’s face filled with disapproval. It was then that Jotaro noticed that its hand, though gripping his arm tightly enough that he was aware that his wrist was actually attached to his body, was trembling.

“Don’t be like that.” He didn’t want to know what the scene looked like from the outside; anyone walking past would think he was a lunatic talking to air. But that wasn’t what mattered right then. A small laugh slipped past his lips, but it was slightly unnerved. “Star, don’t be like that.”

Because if his Stand was feeling unhappy enough for that… It would be fine, though. Star Platinum had always been more expressive than Jotaro. Of course it would feel the stress of that brief spat more than its user. He wasn’t going to stress about it.

He wasn’t going to stress about it.

Jotaro yanked his hand away. If Star wouldn’t let him have a quick drink (and he didn’t want to think too hard about the implications of that right then), he would at least have a cigarette.

Smoke curled in front of his face as he resumed walking. One hand shoved in his left pocket, the other holding the cigarette. He flicked the lighter in his pocket a few times, though he didn’t let it properly light; ideally he wouldn’t need to again. Jotaro was determined to make this cigarette last the whole way home.

But that evidently wasn’t going to happen. Before very long at all, ashes crumbled onto his hand, and the heat of the ember kissed his fingertips. All he needed was the nicotine, something to curl around his brain and hold it tight, keep it from the outside world, but if one wouldn’t cut it then so be it.

The thought occurred to Jotaro then, the one that had been lingering all day. A dream, or waking. Which was this, right now? He hated not knowing. He hated that this had been getting worse.

He pressed the cigarette butt against his exposed wrist and waited for the burn to set in. It didn’t take long before his fingers twitched and tried to pull away, but Jotaro forced himself to keep it there as long as he could. Only when he heard a small but distinctly pained “Ora” did he release the cigarette, letting it fall to the pavement. He ground his teeth together and was aware of Star doing the same.

“I know,” he muttered, clutching his wrist in his other hand. God, it hurt, but at least that meant it was real. That was good. Real was good, and at the same time, real meant that his words to Kakyoin would also be real, and would also have an effect of some kind.

Kakyoin would get over it eventually.

Despite Star Platinum’s agitated gestures, Jotaro pulled out another cigarette and lit that one too. This time, he had the rest of the carton at the ready, because he knew he would need them.

“Let’s just go home.”

The only time for the rest of that week that Kakyoin spoke to him was when he needed to borrow Jotaro’s chemistry textbook for an evening, since he’d forgotten his own at the school. Jotaro gave it to him wordlessly, and he found it outside of his door later that night. Kakyoin didn’t acknowledge it, or him, after that.

On the fourth day, Jotaro overheard a snippet of a conversation between Joseph and Suzie Q while he was passing through the hall.

“I just don’t understand,” his baba said, words slipping beneath the crack in the door. Star Platinum stopped alongside Jotaro, doing his best to remain undetected. “They were as thick as thieves!” She laughed gently, and he could hear the smile in her voice, but the strain still took priority.

“They’re just kids,” Joseph muttered. His voice was low and gruff but irritated; he had the tone that Jotaro knew so well from all of Joseph’s discussions with Polnareff, the tone that meant that they’d been having this conversation in circles. “They’ll sort it out, whatever it is.”

“Poor Kakyoin,” Suzie Q continued, barrelling straight on as if her husband hadn’t spoken in the first place. “His health has already been so poor…”

Jotaro couldn’t stand to hear anything more. He pulled his hat down over his eyes, stalked the rest of the way down the hall. But he was so distracted, it wasn’t until he nearly ran into him that Jotaro realized Kakyoin was standing there, leaning on a pair of crutches. Jotaro startled, grateful that his face was shaded enough in the dim light that Kakyoin hopefully couldn’t see whatever was showing in his eyes. But Kakyoin didn’t say anything, hardly changed his posture, just waiting for Jotaro to pass him.

So he did, letting out a single irritable huff, opened the door to his room, and closed it firmly behind him.

“Stop giving him sad looks whenever you see him,” he snapped at his stand. Star Platinum stared back impassively, arms crossed over its chest.

Jotaro lit a cigarette and only managed to relax when he heard Kakyoin’s distinct step-step-click gait retreat down the hall.

Chapter Text

The way that the students at this school dressed to attend classes never failed to amuse Jotaro to some small degree. For him, the concept of not having to wear a uniform was extremely novel. The boy next to him had long, greasy hair and a Def Leppard shirt; the girl in front looked like she was trying to imitate a uniform, but in neon colours. There was bright blue eyeshadow everywhere.

He was surrounded by those colours, and jeans, and bubblegum everywhere. It was doing numbers to his patience, and he could feel the constant stimulation wearing at his brain. With every passing day, Jotaro wanted little more than to use Star Platinum to cause a commotion and give him some peace. After all, no one else would be able to see it, so it wouldn’t matter that much.

But he didn’t want the attention at that point. He was just so, so goddamn tired.

“Jojo,” one of the girls called out, quick-stepping her way down the hallway to fall in lockstep with him. “Jojo, I missed history class, can I get notes from you?”

It was a fucking joke. Everyone knew he didn’t take notes. They were lucky if he was half-awake through classes at this point; all of his proper learning happened on his own time.

“You could help me catch up over coffee,” she suggested.

Jotaro probably should have known her name. She did sit two rows over in class. The only reason he knew that properly was because her hair made her as tall as he was, and she had a wild leopard-print blazer that she wore at least twice a week.

“What do you say, huh? My place, after class?”

Exotic, he had heard some of the girls whisper behind their locker doors, when he and Kakyoin first showed up. A bad boy and exotic, still wearing his gakuran out of a sense of stubbornness—a troublemaker who hadn’t hesitated in dealing comprehensively with the first group of jocks to go after himself and his friend for their accents. Apparently, the girls liked that kind of thing.

The girl grabbed his wrist, running a manicured finger over the tendons visible past the cuff of his sleeve. “We could—”

“Shut your fucking mouth already, woman,” Jotaro snapped at her at last, yanking his hand away. He didn’t shout, but his voice carried nonetheless. Before she had a chance to respond in the stunned silence that circled them, he picked up his pace just a bit, and for good measure had Star Platinum push her just off-balance enough that she tumbled to the floor. Shocked shouts rang out behind him. Jotaro turned a corner instead of turning to look.

“Kinda fucked up of you to just do her that dirty,” a woman’s voice called from the end of the hall. “But she did have it coming.”

“Hmh.”

Of all things to deal with them, more people sat at the very bottom of Jotaro’s list. But caution ranked high. Through Star Platinum’s eyes, he saw very quickly the details of the young woman speaking to him, despite the distance down the hall. It was empty, aside from the two of them and his Stand. The woman wore small, round sunglasses despite being inside, with thin gold chains hanging from the bottom rims and brushing her cheeks.

“I swear to Christ, she’s a walking STD clinic,” she continued. “Can’t wait to see her get into nursing school and abuse some poor amputee just because she can. Cigarette?” She pulled a carton out of her pocket as Jotaro passed, shook two out, offered one to him.

Well.

He took it and kept walking, reaching into his own pocket and drawing out his lighter. She walked alongside him, both of them out of the doors. Jotaro flicked the lighter four times, lit his smoke and then hers. The sunlight blinded him after the dim hallways, but it was a welcome change from the perfume-filled air and neon all around.

She didn’t try to say anything else to him, and Jotaro was grateful for that. He shoved his hands back into his pockets, flexing his fingers for the sake of something to do. They felt stiff.

When he finished the first cigarette and ground out the butt beneath his shoes, she passed him another one wordlessly, doing the same herself. They repeated the process. Their fingers brushed together. Her hair was bleach blond and feathered in a mullet.

“Your friend’s a real piece of work,” she said eventually.

“Oh?” Jotaro said. A part of him didn’t care. A part of him very much did.

The girl clicked her teeth together a few times as if thinking. “Nearly went ballistic in calc today. Couldn’t tell you what did it, but he nearly throttled Jason. You know—the one with the yellow jacket?”

With a yellow jacket and wild blond hair. Jotaro knew him. He knew why Kakyoin had lost his cool.

“Took six people to pull him off, it was like they couldn’t even get close to him. He’ll be suspended, maybe even expelled.” There was no judgement in her words, just waiting to see what his response would be.

Jotaro scoffed at that. “They can try.” He took a step away.

“Be here tomorrow?” she asked.

He turned to glower at her. “You saw what happened to the other girl.”

“Yeah, well, she didn’t have Marlboros and she isn’t a big fat dyke like me, so I think I’ve got a few points on her. Ask for Lilian.”

He didn’t respond. But maybe he would consider it.

Kakyoin was given a stern talking to and a few days of suspension. The school was willing to let this incident slide, Joseph said to the rest of them, courtesy of a couple of greased palms and the excuse that something had severely triggered a traumatic response from Kakyoin. In the same breath, Joseph announced that he, Suzi Q, and Holly would be taking a trip to Hawaii for a week. “To catch up on some family bonding time,” Suzi said to them with a conspiratorial wink and a somewhat forced smile. Jotaro suspected that it had more to do with Holly’s pending divorce, though he technically wasn’t supposed to know about that.

Either way, his mother and grandparents certainly needed a break. It was stressful, living with the two of them as they learned to recover from Dio, though worse for Kakyoin than himself, Jotaro thought. The nightmares, the physical therapy, the cruelty of his family when they had returned from Egypt. Jotaro might have been an asshole and a nuisance to his family and local law enforcement, but it was Kakyoin who needed more time and help out of the two of them. Jotaro would confront his mother about the divorce after they got back. After he had sorted things out with Kakyoin.

“We fly out early tomorrow morning,” Holly told Jotaro. She pressed up on the tips of her toes to kiss his cheek, one hand on his shoulder. “But we’ll be back before you know it!”

He didn’t respond to her, but he didn’t push her away either, though everything in him still said to. It was taking time and work to unlearn that. Harshness and cruelty weren’t what he wanted to give his mother anymore. If neutrality was the best he could manage right then, it was better than nothing. He’d hurt her enough already, in more ways than one. Her affection was much louder than he liked sometimes, but this—

This wasn’t about him anymore. Maybe it never had been.

Holly knocked on his door later that night. Jotaro was in the middle of a series of complex calculus problems, meaning that his first response was clear irritation at being interrupted. “What?” he snapped.

“Jotaro,” she sang as she pushed open the door, hands full with a tray. “I brought your favourite!”

Though he loved his mother’s cooking, the lack of any substances in his system killed his appetite; the strong smell turned his stomach. He’d wanted to get through this set of questions before having another drink, just to get them out of the way.

It wasn’t going too well for him.

“Have something to eat, Jotaro,” she coaxed, “you’re working so hard. You need it.”

“I’m fine,” he said.

Holly sighed and put the tray down on the little side table in his room, sitting down on his bed. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap. Jotaro could see how tightly she gripped the fabric of her skirt. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Oh, Jojo,” she said after a moment. “I’m sorry for the short notice, sweetie, but Papa got such a good opportunity from a friend on such a short timeline that we just couldn’t say no. Are you angry at me?”

I just want you to be safe, is what he wanted to tell her, but she knew that already.

“We could cancel it if you need, stay here,” Holly said, though Jotaro could hear the hesitation in her voice. “I know that things have been rough since…the changes, and the move out here, and your father staying in Japan…I wish we could have told him about the Stands too, but…you know he just wouldn’t understand. It wouldn’t be safe for him.”

“Is that why you’re filing for divorce?”

He didn’t mean to say it, and he certainly didn’t mean for it to sound so harsh. Of course Jotaro understood—even though his father was rarely around, he didn’t want him to get hurt, or to get mixed up in the Joestar family disaster. But Holly still visibly startled, and recoiled. Immediately Jotaro felt guilt lodge itself in his throat, making it impossible to breathe.

“I—I didn’t want you to have to worry about that, Jojo…” his mother whispered. Three tears dripped onto her skirt in rapid succession. “Not until everything is sorted out more.”

He didn’t respond. He couldn’t.

“It wasn’t just the Stands or Dio, though, it wasn’t that and it wasn’t you, Jotaro, I promise.” Holly turned her face to him. Something behind his sternum cracked at that—she was straining to keep a strong front and straight face, despite the tears cutting through her makeup. “I didn’t want to do it sooner, you know how custody laws are. I—I wanted you to still be able to see him regularly, not to be cut off.”

He tensed briefly when she laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I hope you don’t resent him,” she said after a moment, voice fragile and wavering. “He wanted to be a good father to you, but he was always trying so hard to support us.”

His hands clenched into fists, fingernails digging deep, burning crescents into his palms. It wasn’t about him anymore. Maybe it never had been. Sadao had left her alone day after day. Never around.

“You should have told me,” he snapped. A deep breath in, a deep breath out. He tried to relax his hands, unclench his fists, but it wouldn’t happen. He wasn’t angry at her, it wasn’t fair to get mad at her for his father’s shortcomings.

“I’m sorry, Jotaro,” Holly said softly, shrinking in on herself. Further tears dripped down her face; she pulled a tissue out of her pocket and dabbed furiously at her eyes. When she tried to speak again, her voice broke.  “I—”

He didn’t apologize to her. Instead, Jotaro stood up and wrapped his mother in his arms, pulling her close to his chest in the most horrifically awkward imitation of a hug that he could manage. Comfort was not his strong suit. But this was about Holly, not him.

He let go far too quickly, but his mother still looked up at him with a teary-eyed smile. “My Jotaro,” she whispered.

“Hmh.” He just huffed in response. But she knew.

When he retreated to his room later that night, after having said lengthy goodbyes to the rest of them, Jotaro pulled out the bottle of vodka tucked into his desk drawer. He drank, and drank, and drank, staring out his window. At some point in time, he put on a record, though he didn’t exactly remember doing so.

Do you understand? were the words spoken to him so long ago. He didn’t, no, and he didn’t know how to handle that. He didn’t know what to do next, when the line between real and fake was blurring so quickly and readily. Do you understand?

Be kind to Noriaki, was the last quick message Holly had for her son. He wants to help. He just doesn’t know how.

Right, Jotaro thought, taking another drink. Like I’m the one of us who needs help more. Jotaro wasn’t the one who had almost died that day.

In all fairness, Kakyoin hadn’t had to see the mangled wreck that his own body was after that battle. He hadn’t heard his own awful screams when he came to consciousness, ever so briefly, like Jotaro had heard them. He still heard them. Kakyoin didn’t remember coming around at all before waking up days later in hospital.

That was probably for the best.

As Jojo drank and became more sluggish, hazier, so did Star Platinum. He watched as his Stand became just as fucked up as him, until it was sitting on the ground in mild confusion. Jotaro had to laugh at that image. Star smiled, though it didn’t seem to know what it was smiling at. It turned the record over. Jotaro took another shot. He kept going. The memories of seeing his best friend’s innards become his outards eventually become too blurry to see properly, and that was what he wanted. He wanted also to forget the awful words he spoke, and that looked more and more like a possibility with each drink he took.

It wasn’t until he was lying in bed that the feeling of complete unreality took him over again, overwhelming his body one limb at a time until his arms felt like line drawings, between his wrists and the middle of his biceps this time. Jotaro fumbled for his pocketknife on the bedstand, flicked it open, drew an experimental line across his bicep to see if it would help. If the feeling of pain would bring him back out of that awful half-dream state.

It did.

Part of him resented how coldly clinical it was at this point. Less desperate, less driven by an emotional need. Much more out of a sense of procedure, or grounding, or somehow like he was filling in space, completing a job not yet done. Star Platinum was too inebriated to try and stop him effectively, though it looked at its own bleeding arm in dismay and reached out a hand to him. “Ora?

Jotaro could almost hear its voice in his head. Stop. Please stop. But that wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t going to make a difference. He made another cut, a third one, and then put the blade away. His arm was back to normal; it felt like a part of his body again. Or, at the very least, he felt the pain like it was a part of his body again.

There wasn’t always such a clean excuse. At least Star could try and understand this one.

Blood dripped down his arm. He had cut a bit deeper than he meant—not enough to be dangerous by any means, Jotaro knew that immediately, but it would probably scar.

He didn’t care. He was too drunk to do anything, and so it was like that, with blood dripping onto his bedsheets, drunk out of his mind but with one foot in reality, that he fell asleep.

When he woke up in the morning, he couldn’t move.

Jotaro stared out the window, at the sunlight creeping in through the curtains. It was the wrong angle—it was far later in the day than it should have been. His alarm should have gone off; he should have been up and awake already.

The same as the morning before, he wasn’t quite able to convince himself that this was the morning, or daytime, or real world at all. Afternoon shadows could still happen in the morning; this was the same world, as far as he was concerned, where the sun still shone at midnight the same way it did at noon.

So he just laid there, staring at the clock on the wall, watching the seconds tick past. Soon that became minutes. Jotaro was outside of himself, and all too aware of every inch of skin that he owned. His spine felt like lead, weighing him down when he tried to move.

Movement caught his attention, just in the corner of his eye. It was then that he finally managed to move his head, to see Star Platinum staring at him from across the room. His Stand’s face was littered with concern. It masked the general despondency that Jotaro knew it was feeling right then anyhow.

“I’m fine,” he said, voice hoarse and scratchy. Fuck. He’d been lying there for long enough that whatever hangover he would’ve had was gone, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t desperately need water. Still, he said it again, though it wasn’t Star Platinum alone that he was talking to then. “I’m fine.”

Jotaro twisted and rolled out of bed. His spine still felt heavy in an increasingly vivid way; that was a hyperawareness that he hadn’t experienced before. He made a note to self not to go so hard with this brand of vodka again.

(A cursory look around the room showed that the bottle was well empty.)

More importantly, though, his bicep felt stiff when he moved his arm. It took a moment for Jojo to recall just where the cuts on his skin had come from, dried blood crusting over and cracking. He knew he ought to have cleaned those the night before—hell, even pouring the vodka over them would’ve been better than nothing—but somehow he still couldn’t be bothered to. It was fine. An infection was unlikely. Even if it happened, it was manageable.

So he threw on a sweater, gold chain accents along the tight-knit cables, and walked out to the kitchen. Kakyoin sat in the middle of the lounge room doing homework. He glanced up in order to give Jotaro an unimpressed look while he passed through, but said nothing. Something close to guilt pressed against Jotaro’s stomach, cementing it to his iron spine. That weight in his back seemed to spread in tandem with it. Everything became mildly worse when he realized that he had slept through classes, and on a day with a massive biology exam. Normally he and Kakyoin swapped notes whenever either of them missed school for any reason. Kakyoin’s various appointments and recurring health issues, the kind that happened when half of your internal organs (let alone external) were replaced with cybernetics, meant that more often than not it was he who stayed back and caught up with Jotaro’s notes. He always returned the favour for Jotaro.

But today they were both out of classes for different reasons. Today was an exception, and, Jojo supposed as he drank three glasses of water in rapid succession, a karmically deserved one for him.

It was with a heavy heart and head that Jotaro sat down at the desk in his room and stared at his unopened biology textbook; he tried to figure out the argument that he would use to convince the teacher to let him take the late exam. After so much time fighting Stands, it seemed like he needed to walk himself back from strongarming his way out of everyday situations. Surely, though, the teacher would see how remorseful and sincere he was; it would probably still be obvious then.

He cracked his fingers and waited for the stiffness to go away.

He picked up a pen and tried to recall the feedback loops that he would need for the exam. His mind was frozen and refused to follow suit.

He grabbed the flask from his bag and had a drink.

The weight in his torso didn’t ease, but he did feel a slight bit less tense, and he knew that would improve given a bit more time.

Everything around him was mechanical. That was ok, then, he would be too for a bit. Just to get by.

He had passed the biology exam with ease; Jotaro didn’t need to wait for a graded confirmation to know that. If he didn’t, it was just because the teacher was unimpressed with him all in all, and that was something he could manage with ease.

There was a strange weight in the air as he walked out of the classroom. Jotaro tried to crack his knuckles, as did Star Platinum standing at his side, and both hissed when they were unable to.

Lilian stood at the end of the hallway, like she knew when he was going to come around the corner again, a different time than the other day. She didn’t say anything to him, but she quirked an eyebrow and turned to walk outside. Today, she had no sunglasses on, and Jotaro didn’t miss the mischievous sparkle in her eye.

Her own cigarette was already lit and hanging from her lips by the time they stepped outside, and she shook another out of the carton for him as soon as he stood next to her. While he took a breath on the smoke, Jotaro pulled his flask out of his bag and offered it wordlessly to her. But Lilian just waved a hand at him, reaching into her pocket.

“If you wanted something stronger, all you had to do was ask,” she said. “Where were you the other day?”

Jotaro just took a drink; the last one was wearing off just enough to set him on edge. When he saw a joint between Lilian’s fingers, covered in car oil and with grimy and bitten nails, he reconsidered and put the flask away, opting instead to finish his cigarette quicker than intended. Cannabis hadn’t been so popular back home, and painfully expensive for those who cared. But the free-floating feeling it gave him was, as far as he was concerned, well worth it.

Half an hour later, Jojo was walking back home, keeping a very close eye on his footsteps and where exactly they landed. Despite having a Stand who specialized in precision and speed, it turned out that Star was just as susceptible to substances as Jotaro himself—not a surprise, considering the Stand was an extension of the self, but a relief nonetheless, considering the little ways in which Star liked to, and managed to, fight back against Jotaro.

Kakyoin wasn’t anywhere to be seen when he finally pushed open the door, trying to orient his hands and his force with regards to the rest of himself. Jotaro supposed that his friend was probably off studying, or sulking; it could be hard to tell either way. Regardless, he reached into his bag and pulled out a pile of note paper covered in chemistry and English notes from class, and dropped them on the table. If Kakyoin saw them, they were all his.

Holly had left a voicemail informing the boys that they had landed safely in Hawaii; apparently neither of them had checked the answering machine for a day or so. After that was another one checking in on the both of them, and enthusiastically letting them know that she had forgotten to tell them, she had left some pre-prepared meals in the fridge for both of them, though they would do well to get comfortable with cooking for themselves for the future. Her voice was light as ever, hardly serious, and in his intoxicated state it even made Jotaro smile a bit.

One thing that he had never really paid attention to about the suite was just how many stairs there were. At least, not until today, when his knees and ankles felt like they were made out of plywood. He needed to get new shoes, since these ones didn’t seem to be doing him any favours. His hips felt out of joint as well. Frankly, everything did.

He sighed. “Star, did anyone teach you how to be a chiropractor?”

His stand just stared back at him impassively. Of course it hadn’t; it knew what Jotaro did, and he sure as hell wasn’t acquainted with the practice. He’d have to figure something else out, or just tough it out.

But when he pushed open the door to his room and tried to sit down at his desk, Jotaro realized that he couldn’t quite bend his knees properly to do so. It seemed like whatever he’d smoked with Lilian, it was way stronger than he had thought. Possibly had something else laced into it, that would explain his lack of coordination, and the dissociation wasn’t exactly abnormal right then.

He stepped back, stumbling over his own leaden feet, and heard a small thud behind him as Star Platinum did the same, running into something else in his room. But when Jotaro tried to turn his head, he couldn’t quite see all the way behind him, not like he normally would have. He swore beneath his breath, tried to stretch out and turn around.

What the fuck was in that joint? he wondered. This wasn’t anything he’d experienced before, and that was frustrating.

“Ora,” Star said behind him. Its voice was sluggish and slurred, tired and wrapped up in concern.

“Fresh air,” Jotaro said, half to himself and half to his Stand. “I just…fresh air will help.” His lips were heavy and it took so much work to enunciate, his leaden tongue swollen and too unwieldy for words. Slowly, careful steps guiding him across the carpet, Jotaro walked over to the window and cranked it open. A cold breeze immediately blew in.

The drug was getting worse; everything was so much harder to do. Jotaro stretched his hands out in front of himself and stared at them. He wanted to check his heartrate; something was wrong—but when he pressed his fingers to his wrist, trying to find his pulse, he found something else entirely. His skin was ice cold to the touch, even according to his own fingers, and more concerning, it felt hard to the touch.

“What the fuck…?” he muttered. Something that might’ve once been concern bubbled in the back of his mind, starting from his neck and tugging tension there, but he was far too gone to feel it properly, anything more than a warm buzz. This was not a good situation, he knew, but—

(But right then, a part of him almost couldn’t be bothered to care.)

Jotaro tried to bend his wrist and heard a grinding noise, though it sounded vaguely underwater. And was that his imagination?

No—

No, he wasn’t imagining things. Cracks were beginning to spread up his wrist, along his fingers every time he flexed them. Cracks, like a marble statue.

Chapter Text

It was the third day of Kakyoin’s suspension, and so when Jotaro put another set of notes down on the table for his friend, he was expecting it would be the last time for a bit. Kakyoin had taken the last set that he’d received, though they hadn’t spoken to each other; Jotaro was expecting the same thing this time.

Lilian had made fun of him once she realized. Apparently she had a friend in the same calculus class as Jotaro and Kakyoin, and that friend had been curious about why Jotaro was breaking his truant patterns. Jotaro, for his part, was uneasy about the idea that there was a network of people asking about him, or that anyone had realized that Lilian could be a vector of information.

Not that he ever said anything to her, really. Not that she said anything of consequence to him, either.

“How was the last one?” she had asked, lighting another joint and passing it to him. “Go over alright with the rum you’ve got? I’m trying something new, wasn’t sure what it’d be like.”

Jotaro had just shrugged, thinking of the way that the cracks had spread up his fingers and hands and wrists, and then how they climbed back down and disappeared as he sobered up enough. The stiffness didn’t go away, but that was a constant these days.

“I don’t like this stuff,” Lilian had said when he got up to go. She was wearing a drastically oversized denim jacket that was held together with safety pins, makeshift patch-pockets all over. Out of one of them, she procured a tin and tossed it to him. “All yours.”

He hadn’t been quite sure what to say. Hadn’t thanked her. Had been grateful, sure, but gratitude was obvious in and of itself, and it would be better to pay back in kind. But he had tucked it into his own pocket and gone on his way.

Kakyoin emerged from a hallway, headphones on and—based on the surprise on his face to see Jotaro standing in the middle of the room—apparently blasting music. After a moment he pulled them off, though sound leaked across the floor towards Jotaro.

“Jojo,” he said, cautious like he would be with a wild animal. Testing the waters to see how Jotaro would react. “How was class today?”

Equally tentative, Jotaro shrugged and pulled off his jacket. For a moment he wondered where the coat rack had gone, and then realized that it was never there to begin with—he was in the kitchen and had passed the front entry, and the coat tree that stood there. Attempting a quick recovery, he hung his coat over the back of a chair, where the hem brushed the ground. “Your groupies keep asking me where you are.”

“Be nice, Jotaro,” Kakyoin chastised, a contagiously amused smile fashioning itself onto his lips. “They’re not groupies, they’re friends.”

“Do friends normally neck in the storage closets at school?”

“Why, feel like you’ve been missing out?”

And against all of his best efforts, Jotaro felt himself going red from collar to forehead at the comment. The sight caught Kakyoin off-guard, apparently, because after a brief moment of shock, he started laughing. That just made Jotaro feel even more self-conscious. His face was burning hot, and he imagined he looked like a lobster with a hat. He hid his face behind the brim, trying to keep his blush out of sight.

“Goddamn, Jojo,” Kakyoin wheezed in between cackling fits, “you’d almost think you’re a queer, you look so fucking bothered.”

Normally, Jotaro would try to have a snappy response or one-liner. Normally, that wasn’t a problem for him. But maybe it was the weed, and maybe the stiffness in his limbs had spread to his brain, and maybe it was that Kakyoin had just given him the image of the two of them with bruised lips and tangled together, back pressed so hard against a shelf that it hurt, in a tiny, dark room; and maybe it was the fact that Jotaro couldn’t tell if he was imagining the sneer in Kakyoin’s voice when he said queer. Whatever the reason, the result was still the same: Jotaro had nothing to say that didn’t lay all of his cards on the table.

“Fuck you, Noriaki,” he muttered, and then, like a mirror to their last conversation, Jotaro slunk off instead of Kakyoin. He stalked up the stairs, and he couldn’t tell if it was with a soft snick or a rattling slam that he closed the door to his room behind him. Everything felt like it was underwater, floating, unreal in a way that had nothing to do with the weed and everything to do with whatever daily fucking dissociations he was having.  

Star put a hand on his shoulder again. His shoulder didn’t feel like it was there. It wasn’t his it wasn’t attached to his arm it wasn’t a part of him and if it moved it wasn’t quite him moving it. And that touch left his heart pounding in terror ten times the speed it normally was. He(not-him-not-his-movement-his-shoulder-his-movement) shrugged his(not-his-attached-unattached-not-him) shoulder so violently that his Stand staggered backwards, tripping over a series of beer bottles. One broke as it spun across the floor. Star Platinum stuck out its hands to catch its fall, and winced as shards of glass embedded themselves in its palm. Jotaro turned as he felt, still as if from outside of himself, the puncture wounds on his own hand, the blood dripping suddenly from his fingertips.

“Star,” he said, his voice just as distant as all of the other sounds, and just as numb as his own skin. Guilt stung his stomach far more sharply than the glass did. “Are you alright?”

The Stand looked dazed and confused, but nodded after a moment. Its eyes held no resentment towards Jotaro for his outburst—only concern as it extended its own bleeding hand. With his uninjured fingers, Jotaro held it gently, watching the way that the glass was already being forced out of its skin. He felt the pain too, but simply ground his teeth, trying to use the sensation to stabilize him. But while it did, it also brought back that feeling, that fear, that he couldn’t move again. That the chains from his dream were holding him, keeping him bound so tightly that he couldn’t even turn his head to see what the chains were made from, or if they were really chains at all.

Was Kakyoin the kind of person to be disgusted by a queer friend? Was he the kind of person who would put two and two together and figure out why Jotaro disliked the girls who fawned over the two of them? The kind of person to realize that Jotaro disliked the ones who hounded only Kakyoin, for a completely different reason?

A queer. Was that disdain? Loathing? Disgust? Mockery? Was that impending rage, violence brewing in a toxic concoction with prejudice? Jotaro heard Kakyoin’s voice saying those two words over and over again. The longer it repeated, the less it sounded like a word, and the more it sounded like wordless distrust, anger, repulsion.

Star tugged on Jotaro’s hand, yanking him out of his motionless reverie. He could move.

With this newfound knowledge, he stumbled his way to the armchair, pulling a variety of items from his pocket though his fingers felt numb: switchblade, lighter, Lilian’s tin, cigarette pack just one smoke left one smoke one fag one faggot and a fag-basher possibly? Those all went onto the table next to him, and with feelingless fingertips he pried the lid off of the tin. This revealed a selection of already-rolled joints, and three light purple pills next to them. A sticky note read “Something a little stronger” in spiky, nigh-unreadable pencil. The paper was stained with grease and traces of car oil.

A queer.

She isn’t a big fat dyke like me.

Faggot-Fag-Fagbasher.

Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Star Platinum reached out a hand, and Jotaro pulled the tin back to himself. But Star was a Stand known worldwide now for its speed, and even though Jotaro experienced time slowly enough to keep up with his Stand, that didn’t mean that he could slow time enough to avoid it.

When Jotaro looked down at his hands, the tin—the pills—were still there. It took his mind a moment to fill in the image that was missing: the switchblade on the table.

He scowled and stood up, fighting off the panic that came on at the idea of having to move at all, for fear that he wouldn’t be able to. “Give me my fucking knife back, Star.”

“Ora,” Star Platinum said, stepping back.

Fury boiled up in his veins. “If I want to hurt myself,” Jotaro said, voice low and clear and deadly, “I have the goddamn right to do that, and I intended for my switchblade to be the tool for the job. The two options are that you give it back to me, or if you want to hold onto it, then you do the job for me.”

There was pain in the Stand’s eyes.

“Star.”

With a pitiful sound, it handed Jotaro’s knife back to him. He slipped it back into his pocket. Reached out and grabbed one of the pills. Washed it down with rum.

Faggot-Fag-Fagbasher.

It was a fair while before before the cracks returned to Jotaro’s fingers. It took longer still for him to notice.

They spread across his skin, forming boundaries around the still-bleeding punctures from the bottle.

“Fuck.”

Within a heartbeat, he had his switchblade in his other hand, though he felt the way that the motion tugged at the cracks in those fingers as well, tearing his skin open against the stiffness. He slashed at his wrist frantically, trying to drag himself back to something approximating reality. Something that felt real, something that he knew. A little patch of safety, of responsive feeling on his arm, enough to hold onto so that he could find his way out of this. The cracks avoided the injuries—he just needed enough of that to stop their spread.

The cracks leapt across the gash in his skin, little fractures spreading like a delta up the edges of the wound.

“Shit!”

Star reached out as if to help at first, but after a moment it simply held up its fingers in clear view. They, too, were cracking, hairline faults forming mandalas on purple skin. It, too, was bleeding from the wrist. Jotaro made another deep incision farther up his arm, and the wound appeared on Star’s arm as well.

Still not enough—the cracks continued to spread.

Painkillers, he thought belatedly. It’s the pain that grounds me, and whatever that pill was...I can’t feel it. It doesn’t hurt.

The cracks in his good hand were slower to progress. He had one more shot before his hand seized up for good and he couldn’t hold his knife. Jotaro switched it to his injured hand, and though he wasn’t very dexterous with his non-dominant side, he didn’t need to be for this. With all of his willpower, Jotaro carved into his forearm, and while he bit down on his shirt collar to muffle his yell it wasn’t enough to dampen Star Platinum’s agonized “Ora,” alloyed physical pain and emotional betrayal.

The cracking slowed, reduced to a creeping around the now-gushing wound, and then after a moment that decrease spread further through his body. It worked, Jotaro thought with a second’s relief, before he realized that it was continuing anyhow. The heartbeat of relief that this gave him was washed away immediately as the drug continued to take hold.

He staggered backwards, limbs creaking with every movement he made, and fell into his desk chair. Star collapsed alongside him, and together they watched the cracks climb up their limbs, as they felt their fingers seize up completely, Jotaro’s around the still-open switchblade. Together they felt numb as they stared at their bodies, unable to move.

Chapter Text

One hundred thirteen minutes.

That’s how long it had been since Kakyoin had last seen or heard any indication that Jotaro was in the house, and that last indication had been nothing more than a loud thump and the sound of Star Platinum bellowing. And of course that wasn’t in and of itself noteworthy; sometimes it seemed like Jotaro would get his Stand to do things just for the amusement of it all.

But there was a silence that followed, which had been weaving its way around Kakyoin’s spine, his wrists and neck, forming a tightly-knit net of dread.

He’s fine. Hierophant Green coiled around him, offering quiet reassurances. This is Jotaro. He’s always fine. That’s what he always says. He doesn’t need our help.

They could both hear in its voice that the platitudes were as much for the Stand as the User.

After completing a few calculus worksheets without hearing so much as a footstep upstairs from Jotaro, Kakyoin put down his pencil. “How much trouble do you think he’s in?” he asked his Stand.

Hierophant just tilted its head without answer, before spiralling up along the banister to look for any missed signs of their companions. Kakyoin rose to his feet and picked up his crutches, followed Hierophant up the stairs. Readied himself for a fight, either with a Stand User or with Jotaro himself.

“Jotaro!”

Kakyoin’s voice accompanied a knock at the door, far louder this time than the last. He felt like he’d been patient, at least up until that point. It had been five minutes. No response

“Jotaro, open the door!”

Jotaro, for his part, didn’t respond.

“I swear to god, if you don’t at least make a noise letting me know you’re alive, I’ll get Hierophant to pick the lock, and if that doesn’t work I’m just breaking down this door.” He pounded on the door again, more for effect than efficiency, and also because he felt like if he didn’t move forwards, if he didn’t break down this door and make sure Jotaro was alright, he might just implode.

But there was still silence. Kakyoin nodded at Hierophant Green, who had been hovering awkwardly near the door without anything to do. It picked the lock dextrously with its tail, and within seconds was able to push it open. Kakyoin placed a hand on the door, opened it further. “If you’re asleep and I went through all this trouble for nothing, I’ll—”

The moment Kakyoin stepped inside the room and scanned it, his stomach bottomed out:

Jotaro. Sitting in his desk chair. Right arm resting on the desk. Head resting on right forearm. Hat crooked. Brim tilted against desk.

Jotaro, eyes closed, looking towards the door.

Jotaro, left arm extended, palm upwards. Blood trickling down his arm, two deep gashes at angles across his skin. Both with long trails of blood dripping down from them, indicating just how long they’d been open for, both still wet.

Jotaro, not moving.

Whoever did this is going to die.

Kakyoin swung himself across the room, Hierophant Green at his side, ready in an instant to attack or defend. Standing next to Jotaro, Kakyoin saw a figure out of the corner of his eye sitting on the bed. He whirled around and prepared Hierophant’s Emerald Splash, but pulled back just in time as he realized—it was Star Platinum, defenseless nearly identical to Jotaro, but propped up against the wall. Its chest was soaked red with blood where its left arm crossed it, and it too had its eyes closed.

This was good news, at least: if Star was still around, then it meant that its User wasn’t dead.

Yet.

“Jojo,” Noriaki said, turning back to his friend. All he could hope for was any kind of response. “Jojo, what happened?” His tone was harsh, colder and more demanding than he meant for it to be, but with his heart in his throat Noriaki couldn’t find the time to correct it. Instead he reached out a hand, pressed it to Jotaro’s wrist. Blood-soaked fingers searched for a pulse anywhere along his skin, which they found eventually—weak, but not undetectable. Too slow to be good. The skin was still warm, though, and with his head this close to Jotaro’s, Kakyoin could tell that he was indeed still breathing.

“Jotaro!” He grabbed Jotaro’s shoulder and shook him aggressively, body rattling like a ragdoll. “Jotaro, wake up and tell me what the fuck happened!” Kakyoin could hear the desperation in his own voice, though it felt detached, not his own. Surely he was better under a crisis like this, better than to show his own fear. Right?

If he doesn’t wake up. If he stays like this, how will we know what happened to him? How will we know who did this? And what will I tell Holly, and Mr. Joestar, and Polnareff, and Suzie Q?

And what will I do?

“Goddamnit!”

Against his better judgement, Kakyoin pulled Jotaro’s head back so that he could see his face. But if he has spinal damage, this could make it worse.

Where, he would wonder shortly after, did he get the idea that this fight, whatever it had been, would have given Jotaro spinal damage?

Regardless—Hierophant Green dragged itself along Jotaro’s sternum, an already-painful friction multiplied by the Stand’s scales. It’ll make him wake up. Right?

And with the tenor of a brief miracle, Kakyoin saw Jotaro’s eyes open, heard him gasp—though notably, his lips didn’t seem to part, his chest didn’t rise and fall like it ought to, seeing as he was breathing properly again.

“Jojo!”

Jotaro didn’t move, though his eyes flicked to Kakyoin, meeting them. They were unreadable. Kakyoin couldn’t tell anything more than the fact that Jotaro was at least conscious, pupils wide, confused almost. The fact that Kakyoin was able to identify that, that Jotaro wasn’t able to hide his disorientation, didn’t ease the fear that clutched his throat still.  

“What happened? Who did this to you?”

No response, just Jotaro looking back and forth, back and forth. Eyes on the clock and then on the door and then Star Platinum, but his head, his neck, didn’t move a millimetre the whole time.

“Can you talk?” The desperation was back in his tone, though this time with Jotaro actually awake, he did his best to mask it.

Jotaro met Noriaki’s eyes, and what Noriaki saw took him too long to understand, to actually recognize. The confusion was still there, but there was fear mixed with it, naked terror. He decided that this meant No, Jotaro couldn’t speak in any case.

“What was here, are we in danger right now? Is there a Stand User?” It certainly seemed like there was something supernatural at work.

Jotaro looked back and forth between the door and the window, the clock and Kakyoin, disconcertingly slow. After a moment settled he on his friend’s gaze, calm enough that Kakyoin decided that that also meant No. Hoped it meant no, at least. They were probably safe, then.

Well—as safe as one could be when one’s friend was apparently bleeding out and in paralytic, catatonic shock.

Kakyoin fought to keep his voice steady when he next spoke. This was a routine he wasn’t unfamiliar with. He knew how to handle a crisis like this. He knew how to keep his head on straight when helping someone. You can do this. You do this all the time.

“I’m going to clean and bandage your arms,” he explained to Jotaro. “You’ve been bleeding for a while, and I want to make sure that doesn’t get any worse before whatever comes next. Can you move?”

No response, hardly even the slow eye movement this time.

“I’m going to move your arms, while Hierophant gets the gauze. Scream if it hurts too much.” He couldn’t imagine waiting to bandage up those wounds, not when Jotaro was already so vulnerable and confused and out of touch. Had he really lost so much blood?

Hierophant disappeared with that, on its recovery mission. Kakyoin pulled Jotaro’s left arm gently, extending it so that it was in better light. Next was Jotaro’s right wrist, which he moved tenderly, despite his urge to seize Jotaro in a bone-crushing hug. This time he followed the long gash that extended up along Jotaro’s forearm, an angle across from elbow to wrist. This one looked worse than the others, and that worried Kakyoin. But what worried him more was what had slipped his attention previously:

A switchblade in Jotaro’s hand, clutched in a death grip, blade open. Blade stained red with dried blood, blade pointed towards Jotaro’s own arm.

“Jojo…” Kakyoin whispered, his voice suddenly choking his breath. Hierophant Green returned, arms full of disinfectant and antiseptic and bandages. Kakyoin immediately soaked pieces of gauze in dilute Dettol, dripping it along his friend’s right arm. He daubed the dried blood off of his skin, dried it, cleaned it again and again. And as he did, every cycle, the pit in his stomach grew. The disinfectant was doing an expert job of revealing a picture.

All along Jotaro’s right arm, and—Kakyoin paused to clean his left, and check that as well—yes, both arms, were a patchwork of scars, of cuts and burns, of still-fresh and newly-infected scabs and blisters. These weren’t from getting into fights, or training; these were too new to be from Egypt. These were deliberate.

Since when?

Noriaki felt nauseous. At the idea of Jotaro hurting himself like this, so badly, for so long. The infections blooming under his skin were testament to how little his friend tended to himself, cared for his own state of wellbeing. Both actively self-destructive and passively neglectful.

“Jojo, why? What’s wrong?”

But Jotaro still hadn’t moved, except for his eyes, which were staring at Noriaki with that same naked panic and anxiety. Noriaki knew what that meant almost immediately, all of a sudden. All of a sudden he could put the puzzle pieces together. Of course Jotaro was panicked—this was something he had been keeping secret for obvious reasons, and now Noriaki was finding out about it in a situation where Jotaro hadn’t intended, and particularly a situation in which he had next to no control.

“Are…you drunk again, Jotaro?”

His voice this time was tentative. The last time he’d been in and drunk hadn’t gone particularly well for either of them, and he didn’t want to aggravate Jotaro in an already tense state.

This time teal eyes deliberately pulled themselves away from Kakyoin’s gaze. That was answer enough right then.

He felt himself deflate, felt some of the panic leave his body. And while it didn't assuage his anxiety wholeheartedly, it clarified it. Jotaro was having a panic attack, it seemed. Catatonic, sure. Bleeding, sure. And Kakyoin was certainly worried enough about Jotaro's drinking that this opened up an entirely separate barrel of anxious monkeys. But, and this was what Kakyoin decided he would focus on, it wasn't a Stand attack. This was a manageable issue at hand. Even if Jotaro was slashing his wrists in his spare time.

“OK,” he said eventually. “So, I’m going to bandage these up. I don’t know what’s happening inside your head, Jotaro, but I’m going to stick around here until you tell me to leave.”

Perhaps it was a bit entitled. But Kakyoin felt certain that he would know when Jotaro wanted him to leave. And he felt certain that, right now, whatever was happening, it was best not to leave him alone for the time.

And so it was that Kakyoin was sitting in the chair next to Jotaro, now with wrists cleaned and wrapped in layers upon layers of gauze, reading a book and waiting for any change, any motion. When a deep voice shattered the tense silence, he nearly jumped out of his chair.

“There are cracks,” was all that Jotaro said at first. Noriaki closed his book and turned to face his friend. For his part, Jotaro hadn’t moved, but there was now more clarity to his eyes, and when he spoke again his lips moved; his chest rose and fell visibly, like it hadn’t before. He stared intently at the wall. “On my skin. It’s—turning to stone.”

The words seemed impossible for him to say. Kakyoin hadn’t been expecting any sort of explanation in the end; perhaps Jotaro was drunker than he had initially thought. But he waited in silence, empty space, to hear more.

“And I don’t want…to even try to move, because.” His voice caught in his throat visibly, and Jotaro seemed to grind his teeth together for a moment before continuing, words still slurred and running into one another. “Because I don’t know if I can. If it’s real. If I don’t try then I—”

He closed his eyes and sighed.

When Kakyoin was certain that he was finished speaking, that this thought was going to be left to hang between them, he leaned back slightly in his chair. Not looking at Jotaro. Not an examination or interrogation.

“Has this happened before?” he asked.

“Does it matter?”

“So that’s a yes.”

“Do you see them?”

This gave Kakyoin pause. “The cracks?”

It seemed like Jotaro was about to nod, but caught himself. He’ll speak, move his eyes, but not anything more than that. “Yeah.”

Kakyoin shook his own head in response. “No, as far as I’m concerned your skin is well-moisturized and very un-statuelike.”

Jotaro didn’t answer. The clock on the wall ticked out seventy three seconds before he spoke again. “So I’m hallucinating.”

“What were you drinking?”

Again, met with silence. While he didn’t drink much, Kakyoin wasn’t a teetotaller by any means, and he was pretty sure that alcohol didn’t cause hallucinations, unless you were already fucked up.

Speaking of which…

“What else were you doing?” he asked.

The same stony silence from Jotaro.

“There are chains, or…or something on my wrists. Handcuffs. Do you see those?”

“I probably would’ve tripped over them already if I knew they existed,” Kakyoin said dryly. “Another recurring hallucination?”

“Tell me what time it is.”

“About half noon.”

“Not three in the morning.”

“Not for a few hours more. Jotaro. Have you taken anything else? Not just whatever’s in that damn flask of yours?”

"Yeah,” Jotaro said. Kakyoin waited for an elaboration. Jotaro offered none.

“What was it?” Kakyoin prompted. His hands, he realized, were tucked into the pockets of his jacket (and when had that happened?), and his fingers were curled into claws, digging into his thighs. Releasing that iron grip took all of his focus. When his question was met with silence, Kakyoin gave up on that Promethean struggle. He was certainly going to be left with fingernail-shaped bruises after this. “Jotaro, what the fuck else did you take?”

Still mum.

“Kujo!”

“Kakyoin, tell me,” Jotaro said. His eyes flicked open again, though he still refused to look in friend’s direction. “Is it normal to not be able to really feel your limbs? Or should I blame that on DIO, or one of the other Stands we ran into?”

“Like…they’re numb? That sounds like it might be nerve damage,” Kakyoin answered. Playing along with this, it seemed, was the only way he was going to get any information at all from Jojo. And while his pride normally would’ve stopped him long before, the stakes were raised a little bit compared to normal.

“Like they’re not yours.”

Noriaki was suddenly extremely grateful that Jotaro wasn’t looking anywhere near him, because he very nearly flinched at that answer, and immediately had to start making a list in order to keep his heart from bursting out of panic.

1.  
2. Limbs not your own.
3. Ergo, limbs moving on their own.
4. Someone else moving them for you.
5. Like moving someone else’s arms for them.
6. Strange marionette.
7. Limbs not your own.
8. Like you’re standing two feet behind yourself.
9. Noriaki, you’re not standing two feet behind yourself.
10. You’re sitting in a chair.
11. You’re sitting in a chair that you can’t touch with your hands.
12. You can’t touch it with your hands because the texture is awful.
13. If you touch it, you’ll have to get up and count.
14. Jotaro needs you right now so you can’t get up and go.
15. So, breathe in, you’re fine, you’re at fifteen.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Yeah, that happens sometimes.” Another Herculean task: keeping his voice steady.

Jotaro let out a huff that was somewhere between thoughtful and irate. Probably both at the same time. He was expecting something, Noriaki could tell. Something from him, but he couldn’t pin down just what.

“What a pain,” Jotaro muttered.

Another heavy silence threatened to blossom across the room, and before it could take hold Noriaki asked, “Do you think you can move right now?”

He received no answer.

“Jojo. Listen to me. I moved your arms for you earlier, right?” Despite the lack of a reply, Kakyoin was acutely aware that Jotaro was paying terse attention, and so he continued. “And that didn’t cause you any problems, right?”

Jotaro hummed something akin to agreement.

“So I think that you can probably move. You should try.”

Jotaro opened one eye again and looked at Kakyoin. “Have you heard anything I said?”

Kakyoin didn’t reply.

Despite his resolute stiffness, Jotaro seemed to sigh once again. “Give me a break.”

“If you don’t try to move, I’ll just get Hierophant to do it for you.”

Immediately the atmosphere became twice as thick and twice as heavy, pressing down on Kakyoin’s shoulders. He hadn’t used his Stand to puppet anyone since their first confrontation, with him under DIO’s influence; Jotaro was still the only person who knew about that particular ability of Hierophant Green. It had only come up in conversation once before, and neither of them seemed particularly inclined to return to that.

“Give me a break,” Jotaro repeated, more weighted this time.

“You can move your eyes and mouth, try moving your head.”

They remained in impasse as the clock ticked past them. Not three in the morning, Kakyoin thought, trying to get a handle on Jotaro’s questions. He lost track of how many seconds he was waiting, for anything at all to happen.

Jotaro waved a hand at Kakyoin dismissively. “Go back to your book.”

This time, the relief that flooded Kakyoin’s body was nearly overwhelming, and he slumped back in his chair for a heartbeat. He can move. It’s fine. Likewise, he realized that Jotaro’s pupils had returned to a somewhat normal size, certainly better than they had been when Kakyoin had first seen him there.

And just as quickly as the relief swept away the fear that had plagued him, that space filled right back up with the anger that had been bubbling just beneath. “You can’t fucking do that, Jotaro,” Noriaki said as he rose to his feet. “Just get high like that, not say fuck all, leave yourself to—what, to bleed out here on your goddamn writing desk? So things get bad. You think I don’t know that? But just because I’m popping pills to make sure my spine doesn’t feel like it’s on fire every day, doesn’t mean that you have to do the same fucking thing.”

“Since when did you start worrying like my mother?” Jotaro snapped. It only held half his usual vitriol, but that half was still sharpened.

Your skin was cold when I touched you. There’s still blood on your desk. I thought you were dead for a moment there. Your eyes were closed, I thought you were dead.

“Do anything else, Kujo,” Kakyoin snarled. “I don’t care what that is. Just not this. Whatever you took, don’t take it again.”

“What difference does it make to you?”

Do you have to ask?

Jotaro twisted and stared, waiting for Kakyoin to speak. But he didn’t answer. Instead, he pushed open the door. Hierophant followed him into the hallway. “I’ll see you in class tomorrow,” Noriaki said, before closing the door behind him.

Chapter Text

Jotaro stared across the room at the man. The man simply stared back. Neither of them seemed inclined to move. 

“Weren't you supposed to leave hours ago?” Jotaro asked. “It's ten at night.” 

“It's still daylight out,” the man replied. Jotaro stared out the window to meet a midday sun. “We'll be fine to drive.”

“Are you sure you've got everything?"

Polnareff walked into the room. “Yeah, we're all set.” Together he and the man left the room, carrying two suitcases each. 

Someone had left one of the kitchen cabinets open, and water was dripping slowly but surely from the top of the cabinet, pooling on the highest shelf. The water had nowhere to come from and nowhere to go. Jotaro wanted Polnareff and the man gone already. Everything in him was itching with them in the house endlessly. 

He tried to move, but something bound his wrists and ankles tightly; he thought he heard chains rattling but couldn't turn his head to see. 

“Aren't you going to try to stop time?” the man's voice called out from across the house. Jotaro tried, but the leather bindings on his ankles prevented him from bringing out Star Platinum to use the World. 

People played video games and talked about jazz in the living room. Jotaro didn't live with anyone, let alone three roommates. 

A voice on the television caught his attention. “—twelve first responders on scene have died due to the virus. Those identified are Andre Black, Nnedi Osondu, Noriaki Kakyoin, Gene—”

Anything else that the newscaster said became static in Jotaro's ears. 

Jotaro lay in bed, staring out the windows. The sun made the edges of the curtains seem to glow. No clocks sat in his line of vision. 

Am I still dreaming? he thought. The light was the same. It seemed like the only logical thing to do was to get out of bed. 

And yet—the bindings on his arms; hanging upside down with a mouthful of applesauce, a house leaking from places that had no right to leak. His neck frozen, staring forwards with no recourse to look away. 

Trying to move carried the risk of failure. And if it was still a dream, if he was functionally immobilized—well, what then? Worse yet, Jotaro realized, being able to move or not held no promises of being awake either way. That was paralytic in and of itself, despite how heavily his heart hammered 

Where did the dream end? Was Kakyoin alive? What time was it? 

Every minute he didn't try meant another minute of not having to find out. Of staying in limbo where he wouldn't have to know if Noriaki was dead. 

A wasp flew in front of his face, and in a rare moment of panic, Jotaro swatted at it. It hit the wall with a small snack and fell to the floor. 

He couldn't hear the wasp approaching, Jotaro realized, because it was on his right side, and ever since nearly shooting himself in the head, he'd hardly been able to hear anything out of that ear. No one knew about this, as far as he was aware. And as far as he was concerned, they wouldn't, provided they stayed on his left when talking.

But more importantly—he'd been able to hear out of both sides in the dream, and now he couldn't. He could move. How long had he been lying there for? 

Jotaro was awake. 

As he pulled his arms through his coat sleeves, Jotaro heard the sound of Kakyoin's steps from down the hall. Instantly he wanted to leave; instantly he felt nearly sick to his stomach with concern. Kakyoin had an early class again, and it was well past first bell. 

But when Kakyoin came around the corner, Jotaro got his answer to the silent question hovering between them. Dark ringed eyes stared half-blankly at Jotaro, bloodshot, almost looking as if he'd been hit in the face. But everything else about Kakyoin offered a much simpler explanation than a fight: hunched shoulders, slightly too-slow steps, bent slightly at the hip when he stopped and leaned on his crutches. Jotaro smelled the telltale eucalyptus of a topical painkiller Kakyoin used on particularly bad days. It was strong enough to dull any pain, either from the injuries or prosthetic connections, but everyone in the house knew just how much it took out of Kakyoin when he used it. The Speedwagon Foundation were working on perfecting it, and each batch was better than the last, the side effects not lasting as long. Nonetheless, the pain had to be significant before Kakyoin would take it and deal with the full-body numbness it caused. 

“Is there any chance I could get notes again from you today?” 

You don't need to ask. You never need to ask. 

Jotaro nodded, briefly meeting Kakyoin's eyes. There was nothing there but exhaustion, and Jotaro wanted to do anything but get chemistry notes for his friend. He wanted to make it all better. Make the pain go away. 

“Go lie down,” Jotaro said instead. “If you faint it'll just be embarrassing for both of us.”

Kakyoin didn't muster up so much as a nod in response, just turned back the way he came, eyes glassy. Hierophant watched over him as he walked, exhausted as well but still determined to make sure its user made it to bed safely. 

Jotaro stared after his friend for a moment longer, and nearly doubled over when a stabbing pain arced through his chest—an ice pick behind his sternum, there and then gone just as quickly, leaving him alright but unable to breathe. 

He's alright. Kakyoin is alive and alright. 

Jotaro slipped his shoes on and walked out the door. 

He was halfway to school when a car pulled up next to him, and Lilian stuck her head out the door. “Need a ride, jackass?”

“Since when do you drive this way?” he asked. 

“Since all the lesbians live down south,” she replied. “Get in.”

He did as told. 

“I don’t drive with women,” Jotaro told her with a confidence that stood completely at odds with the fact of him sitting in her car. “They’re terrible at it.” 

“Yeah, well, if you’re a dyke like me you hardly count as one,” she snapped back. “Also, you’re wrong.”

They sped off with squealing tyres and the scent of burning rubber in a cloud behind them. 

“I got this car from the repair yard my last girlfriend worked at,” Lilian explained as they drove. “The owner thought it was past saving, but he didn’t know shit about cars, and also I think was just looking for an excuse to get rid of it.”

Jotaro, who also knew shit about cars, opted to stay silent while she explained. 

“Sure, the insides were a mess, but that’s not a fucking excuse. It’s still in garbage condition, but it’s still probably running better now than it ever was when he owned it.” 

She handled the car in a way that he’d only seen from hashiriya—too stylish for regular street driving, tight and controlled, as easy as breathing. 

“One of these days I’ll actually have the money to get this thing shiny and good again, but Christ, have you seen the way landlords are fucking going? I’ll be happy to go three months without getting my power cut off. Fuck, I bet you don’t have to pay rent, do you? Prettyboys here, all the same.” She flicked open the cigarette lighter and procured a dart from somewhere unknown, an elegant slight of hand without so much as taking her eyes off of the road. Lilian handed that cigarette to Jotaro before repeating the process for herself. 

“Parents kicked you out?” he asked, and then took a deep drag. It wouldn’t surprise him; the same had happened to enough of his peers back home. Fell in with Bōsōzoku and next thing were all living together in the worst parts of town. 

“Four years ago. I got held back a few grades and when I turned eighteen they told me to go find a different place to live.”

“Kind folks,” he muttered. His own words to Kakyoin rang through his head like a bell, and he wanted to hurt. “You’ve got a job, why stick around school?”

“Why do you?” Lilian challenged. Before giving him a chance to answer, she spun around into an alley and parked the car. They were behind a restaurant of some kind, but he wasn’t familiar enough with the area to say which. He hardly knew where they were—had been too out of it while they were driving. Were the cigarettes laced? 

She got out of the car and promptly pounded on the back door. It was covered in grease, dust from the alley clinging to it. Lilian wiped her fist on her jeans, adding to the myriad of oil, grease, and paint stains. 

Jotaro climbed out and stood next to her. “What are we doing here?” 

“Just because you interrupted a perfectly functional morning routine doesn’t mean it won’t continue,” she said to him. After a moment of no response she kicked the door with her heavy boots, and it slammed open. A thin woman with an aggressively shaved head leaned against the doorframe. 

“You’re late, Spike,” she said. 

Lilian sank back against the wall, hands shoved in her pockets. “And I’m gonna make it worse. A coffee for this one too.”

The woman looked Jotaro up and down, and then over at Lilian. “Since when do you go for the gents? Goldilocks spent too much time with the bears and became a fag hag?” 

Jotaro pointed at the woman; though he didn’t say anything, the look in his eyes said it all—a warning. 

“Don’t be such a fucking cumsock, Mel,” Lilian said. 

Mel disappeared back into what Jotaro could see to be a kitchen, the door slamming shut behind her. 

Lilian sighed and shook out a tin of cigarettes, tucking two behind her ear and handing one to Jotaro, a fourth in between her own fingers. “Fucking Mel’s the worst of them, surprised she hasn’t gotten the crap kicked out of her yet. God willing, she’s fired this week.” 

Jotaro lit his own and realized that what he’d thought was a fourth cigarette was in fact a blunt tucked behind Lilian’s ear. He itched for it, take it between his teeth, nip at her ear. Light it up, burning skin, a spark in her eyes. To let himself fall back into himself. 

Mel opened the door again holding three cups of coffee. She handed one to Lilian in exchange for a lit cigarette, and another to Jotaro with a slightly chastened look. 

He drank the coffee, and it was good, but Jotaro still didn’t have a clue what was happening as they stood there in silence. Mel kept blowing her nose into a bandana. Lillian toed the ground. They drank their coffee, then Lilian passed the blunt to Jotaro, lit but untouched. He offered it back to her after a moment, instead being met with a dismissive wave. Mel did the same, tapping her nose and nodding at the door. He realized after a moment that she was a line cook there. 

When they were all finished, cigarettes ground out and coffee cups stacked, Lilian leaned towards Mel. “Give this to Andy for me,” she said, and then kissed Mel behind the ear. Jotaro felt his stomach leap. He wanted to tuck a cigarette behind his own ear. Mel socked Lilian in the arm, hard. “Hey!” 

“She told me to “give that to Spike” for her.”

Lilian grinned. “Good.”

“Come by again, Jojo,” Mel said to him, and the door cut off the conversation with a slam. 

“Spike?” Jotaro asked, amused. 

“We’ve all got our names, JoJo,” she said mockingly. 

“And Andy?”

“My girlfriend.”

They clambered back into the car and headed for the school. Jotaro felt his head far more than he thought he ought to, and regretted taking that joint, if only because he wouldn’t be able to take notes that he’d feel good about giving to Kakyoin. 

“Do you go out to the clubs a lot?” she asked. 

He shrugged a nonanswer and tried to flex his fingers. Stiff again. Always stiff. 

“Not really my scene,” he told her. 

“Gay clubs?” 

“Still not my scene.” 

“Too gay?”

“Too many people.” The answer came easily, though in any other time and place he was sure it would have been impossible to articulate, let alone actually share. “Never seem to understand what I want.”

“And what’s that?” 

“Peace and quiet. To be left alone.” 

Lilian laughed at that, a great witch’s cackle. “You must be great fun at parties.” 

He’d tried that before. Often those nights had ended in brawls with someone who didn’t know what was good for them, and wouldn’t stop pushing buttons better left alone. 

Jotaro did try, for the most part, not to start fights himself. He had no qualms about finishing them, nor did he hesitate in poking his nose around where it didn’t always need to be. And none of that was to mention baiting fights when it so suited him and he’d exhausted all other options. 

But since Star had first shown face, he’d tried to hold back. Certainly, Jotaro had gotten better at controlling his stand, though it still had a bloodthirsty streak. Even so, he couldn’t forget the sound of bones breaking from the first fight he’d had with Star on his side. He hadn’t meant to—hadn’t known how to stop it. While it wasn’t more than the man’s hand, Jotaro had still spent the rest of the night throwing up. 

The times after that had only continued to escalate. Before Star, he’d had issues controlling himself in a fight. That was too much for him to manage. A life spent in prison, unable to hurt anyone else, had seemed genuinely better than having that risk constantly hovering. 

“I haven’t gone to any lately.”

“Well,” Lilian said, “you should come to one of mine. Some other queer freaks are gonna be there tonight. Bring your friend, only if you both change out of those fucking uniforms.” 

Jotaro couldn’t promise that he would manage that. 

“He doesn’t know,” he told her. 

“He knows,” she said. “You just haven’t talked about it.” 

The pit in his stomach opened up again; his organs cemented themselves against his spine. His hands froze. “How would he know?” 

“How did I know?” 

“Give me a break.” But his pulse was pounding in his ears. “...What makes you so sure?” 

Lilian gave him a sidelong grin. “Can’t tell you that, but I’ve got it on good authority.” 

“Lilian.”

But she didn’t look at him. Just pulled into the back lot of the school and slammed on the brakes. “Get to class.” 

He looked over the car’s shiny roof, meeting her eyes behind her sunglasses. “Jellyfish,” Jotaro said after a moment. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

He simply shrugged. “Pretty rough not knowing things, isn’t it?” 

She didn’t follow him. 

It seemed that both he and Noriaki were both aggressively set on not discussing the previous night, and for a moment, Jotaro was unsure whether it had happened at all. He wasn’t sure whether he was sober or not right then, let alone awake or dreaming, but when he felt the bandages on his wrist he had something akin to an answer for at least one of those questions. 

“You’re home early,” Kakyoin said. 

“Didn’t feel like being there very long,” Jotaro said. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was being evasive about the fact that Lilian had driven him home. “Here. Bio notes. Test next week.” 

Noriaki nodded, not saying anything at first, and the silence inspired—not fear, not anxiety. No. The silence left Jotaro with the weight of dread on his shoulders, that maybe Noriaki wasn’t so content to let the previous night lie untouched, after all. 

After a moment though, he snickered, looking at the notes in his hands. “Who wrote this page?” he asked, glancing at Jotaro. Amusement shone in his violet eyes, danced on his lips, and for a moment, it felt to Jotaro like forgiveness. 

He snatched the paper from Noriaki’s hands and stared at the offending page. The words swam in front of his eyes for a moment, but they turned into a lead weight in his stomach as they came into focus.The telltale grease marks on the edge of the paper, the smell of her cigarettes specifically (Jotaro still didn’t know which brand, but he’d know the scent anywhere).  

“Lilian,” he muttered. Against his best wishes, the corner of his lips turned up. The look in Noriaki’s eyes told him that it was his trouble grin. 

“The lesbian?” Kakyoin asked, taking the paper back. Their fingers brushed together, Jotaro’s reflexes slow and stiffer than normal. He startled at the warmth in his friend’s touch, and at the same time, Kakyoin shivered. “Jojo, you’re freezing ,” he said,

Jotaro started to pull his hand away, trying to shrug his friend’s attention off, but Noriaki snatched his fingers back. His hands were ungodly warm. Jotaro wanted to leave. 

“Were you drinking again?” 

“I’m not doing this today.” 

Kakyoin’s eyes hardened. “You were with Lilian. What did she give you?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jotaro could feel his expression ice over, becoming impenetrable. 

“Don’t play games with me, Jojo, I know you’ve got a revolving door of hallucinogens and uppers and downers going through you these days, and Lilian is so ‘generous’ with her supply that I don’t trust her.” 

“How do you know?” Jotaro turned to leave again, to avoid this conversation successfully and mark one more day off of the calendar, but he hadn’t been paying attention. Hierophant Green snapped out of the floor, wrapping itself so tightly around his legs that he couldn’t so much as bend his knees. 

He was intoxicated and slow, and Star Platinum took a moment to respond. That had to be the reason for why Hierophant had managed to bind him so successfully. 

So successfully, in fact, that even though he was sitting in the dulled space between seconds, Jotaro couldn’t get out—at least, not without doing severe damage to Hierophant and Noriaki. The snakelike stand was coiled too tightly, flush with his skin, so that even if his fingers didn’t feel like blocks of ice Jotaro would have struggled to coax it away. 

And, on the other hand, it wasn’t just his fingers that felt like ice. Every bit of him was delayed, struggling to hold onto the moments that stood still. Star’s grip on time slipped so much quicker than it should have. 

By the time the large grandfather clock ticked another second, Hierophant had restrained Jotaro’s hands as well. 

“When I opened your door yesterday,” Kakyoin said. His voice was a rasp, his face mere inches away from Jotaro’s, and despite what looked like fury in Kakyoin’s eyes, Jotaro could see, could hear, something far more than just that. “When I opened your door yesterday, I thought you were dead . You could have been, fuck, what if Hierophant and I weren’t there?” 

“The cuts weren’t that deep,” Jotaro tried to say, but Noriaki spoke over him without raising his voice. 

“Every time you’re out late, and you’re out drinking, or you’re high, or no one knows where you are—what if a Stand User comes after you, what then? You can’t even deal with Hierophant right now, let alone someone who actually wanted to hurt you. Are you suicidal, or just stupid?” 

Maybe I am.  

“What does it matter to you?” Jotaro snapped. What reason do you have to care?

The anger melted out of Noriaki’s stare, though the intensity didn’t waver. “You’re all I have,” he said flatly. “You’re my friend.”

For a moment, Jotaro had felt the rage rising in his chest, an icy burn that threatened everything it touched, that felt like it was going to bleed straight through his wounds and bandages and melt everything it touched, but with those words, everything in him collapsed. It took all of his energy not to do the same physically. His hands were numb in Hierophant’s grasp, but he was painfully aware of the cracks spreading up his skin. They were moving so slowly, and at the same time it was the speed of light. 

All I have. Whose fault was that? A cosmic exhaustion roared behind his eyes, the weight of the World on his shoulders. Avdol, Iggy. Polnareff back in France and nigh impossible to contact. Kakyoin's parents, so distressed by the changes wrought by the prior months, so afraid of how inaccessible their already-withdrawn son was, that it was an evident relief to them when he left again.

Noriaki himself, lifeless body splayed out—once on the hood of a car, once crumpled in a water tower. (Jotaro never wanted to think again about how hard it had been to untangle his closest friend from the broken, twisted metal. Never wanted to think about how when Star Platinum first tried to pull him down, Noriaki’s eyes had snapped open and he had screamed , and then went unconscious again. Never wanted to hear that sound. Never wanted to see that much blood, red on green fabric, again in his life.)

“What do I need to do to make you stop worrying?” 

Kakyoin looked surprised at this answer. Jotaro was surprised himself, and moved to shadow his eyes, but stopped before he could. Their eyes met again, and Jotaro wanted to look away, felt he might crawl out of his skin if he didn’t. But he needed this. Kakyoin needed this. 

“Tell me what happened last night,” Noriaki answered after a moment. Hierophant Green loosened its grip, falling into coils on the floor at Jotaro’s feet. “Tell me where you’re going when you leave. Let me go with you once in a while, so you’re not alone when you do stupid things.” 

The ground felt like it tilted under him at the prospect, but that also might have been a rush of relief. Dread at the prospect of Kakyoin seeing him outside of that control, and gratitude that he hadn’t asked for Jotaro’s sobriety. But Noriaki had never asked anything of Jotaro that he couldn’t deliver, and Jotaro supposed that he should have had faith that he wouldn’t request this either, to save them both the pain of saying no. 

“The first, I’ll tell you tomorrow,” Jotaro said. “And the second—” He tried to move his left arm, to finally turn away and shade his eyes from Kakyoin’s blistering gaze, but he couldn’t bend his elbow in the first place. Jotaro’s throat tightened, cutting off his words for a moment, and he forced himself to breathe. In. He lifted his right arm to his hat, hiding behind the brim in a last-ditch effort to keep Noriaki from seeing in his eyes any of the panic that Jotaro was doing his best to quash. “Tonight. A party that Lilian invited me to.” 

Though he couldn’t see his friend’s face, Jotaro heard the iron in his voice when he spoke—not directed at Jotaro; much more like he was steeling himself for something. “Well, Jojo, I’m your plus one for the night.” 

Jotaro stopped at the base of the stairs and turned back to look at Kakyoin. “You said you don’t trust her. Why?” 

Kakyoin waved a tired hand. “I’ll tell you later,” he said, voice singsong and dancing on the tightrope between exhausted and sardonic. “I’m going to lie down and then, apparently, get ready for this party tonight.” 

Jotaro couldn’t bring himself to protest, but the knot in his stomach was almost heavy enough to make him forget about his paralyzed arm. 

Almost, but not quite.

Noriaki had proven to be the one person who, eternally and without fail, left Jotaro alone about perpetually wearing his gakuran . Certainly, it helped that Noriaki wore his regularly as well, almost as consistently as Jotaro, but he’d still never so much as asked, even out of genuine curiosity—though Jotaro knew he wondered. 

Perhaps that was part of why Jotaro felt so at peace around him: a lack of interrogation, an open silence that allowed for but never requested, never demanded, conversation or answers. Noriaki asked about a great number of things, but the uniform and all it entailed—those, he left alone. 

Well. Jotaro adjusted the collar of  his coat and stared dispassionately at the mirror. At peace may have previously been the best encapsulation of his feelings around Noriaki, but that had been oft-disrupted as of late. 

Peaceful wasn’t supposed to be full of constant questions. It wasn’t meant to leave a person feeling like they’d been stuck under the sea for days and could only just breathe for a moment before being pulled back down. Peaceful was supposed to be something other than head hot with anticipation. 

He kept tugging at his collar almost pathologically before he realized what he was doing. 

Noriaki was notably not wearing his gakuran this time around. He was evidently feeling better, using a cane rather than crutches, and instead of his usual ensemble was wearing a short blue jacket with abstracted faces printed on it. 

“And who painted that?” Jotaro asked, prepared to be fully unfamiliar with whichever artist Noriaki would name. It was going to be some Expressionist, he was sure of it—Kakyoin had talked about going to study art history, possibly work in curation. It would be something strange and avant garde as usual. 

“I did,” Noriaki answered after a minute of looking Jotaro over. “I haven’t had a reason to wear it for a while.”

The truth was, Jotaro had never seen his friend paint. He had confessed one night in Egypt that he hadn’t been able to make any art since meeting DIO. Even after his recovery, Jojo hadn’t seen any indication that Noriaki was getting back into his old hobbies. 

He looked over Kakyoin’s jacket with a new appreciation, a new eye—with Star’s eyes, too. “It looks good,” Jotaro said after a moment. 

“Thank you.” Kakyoin did up the buttons and glanced at the grandfather clock by the door. “Didn’t Lilian specifically make a request not to wear that uniform?” 

“That doesn’t mean I have to do it.” 

Noriaki simply looked at him unflinchingly. Jotaro found himself conflicted. Kakyoin too found comfort in the routine and familiarity, a solid sense of identity, of their uniforms. He wasn’t asking Jotaro to sacrifice that if he didn’t want to, particularly around strangers. And at the same time—

Noriaki was stepping outside of that comfort. Jotaro would be able to as well, if he so chose. Perhaps he could even provide his friend some companionship in that discomfort. 

He changed into that thin sweater. It would do.

The two of them were about to step out the door when Kakyoin grabbed his wrist, gently, firmly. "Be careful tonight," he said. His voice was low but it carried with ease within the house's silence. It wasn't going to be difficult to ignore anything that he said. "I don't trust her, and I don't know if I trust her friends either."

Jotaro wanted to be oppositional, if only for the sake of it in itself, bit he couldn't shake the feeling that Noriaki was right. Lilian he trusted, at least enough to get them there. Everyone else though, they were strangers. And if nothing else, Jotaro did not like trusting himself to strangers.

“Don't take anything she gives you tonight," Kakyoin said. 

“Yare yare ,” Jotaro muttered. 

“I’m not joking.” His grip tightened. “Please, Jojo.” 

Jotaro’s pulse slipped and skipped a single beat before it leapt to triple digits. Sweat slicked his skin within a moment. Star Platinum’s invisible grip on his shoulder did nothing to steel him—Kakyoin held one arm and his own Stand held him trapped by the other. At least, Jotaro couldn’t feel it as anything else. 

Don’t make me promise that. I can’t promise that. I don’t make promises I can’t keep. 

Star and Noriaki both seemed to realise what was happening at the exact same time, and they both released him. But Noriaki gripped Jotaro’s hand instead, despite how clammy it was. He caught Jotaro’s eyes as well for a brief moment, and Jotaro saw instant understanding, and instant frustration and guilt. 

“I’m sorry. That’s unfair of me. But I…please, just try your best, and let me know if you do. If you need…”

The offer hung unfinished in the air between them. Did Noriaki think him too pathetic to bother? Afraid of offering? Too afraid of having to follow through? Or did he maybe regret offering to be a babysitter? 

After a very, very long moment, Jotaro nodded. “I'll be careful. I'm going to have a drink, if nothing else."

Noriaki relaxed quite visibly. “Yeah. Me too.” Jotaro felt something twist in his stomach at the look in Kakyoin’s eyes, the purple beneath them, the worry lines already etched deep into his forehead. 

“Then let’s go.”

Chapter Text

So it was that Jotaro found himself standing on the fire escape of a shitty brownstone, chain smoking his way through the haze of chatter that surrounded him. The view from up there looked nice, or at least, as nice as New York City could be. As beautiful as he could find anything these days: blurry, indistinct, covered in a grey cloud of smog. It may have been there. It may not have been. It could have been a Stand, for all he knew, but right then he didn’t particularly care. 

He was surrounded by women and men and people who seemed to be neither and people who seemed to be both. There was leather and long wigs and hairspray and the rattle of keys and chains and heavy jewellery. People laughed and shrieked and shouted with glee, both out on the fire escape and inside, the noise filtering out through the open windows. 

It was so loud. Jotaro felt like his head might explode.

Someone leaned against the railing right next to him, the lights from the windows catching the body glitter on their dark skin, every line and curve of their visible body illuminated in strokes of silver. 

“Can I bum a smoke off you?” they said, tapping their foot rhythmlessly during the long moment it took for Jotaro to realise that he was the one being addressed. 

“Who, me?” he said somewhat mockingly. His cigarette rested between his teeth, lips moving around it to speak. 

The stranger startled slightly, their slightly taken-aback twitch made all the more visible in the darkness by the shining silver. Their eyes widened minutely, momentarily, before they crossed their arms and tried again. “Well, I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.”

He shrugged and turned his head away, hat obscuring his face. “Next time bring your own.”

Someone above them guffawed at the comment, and Jotaro couldn’t quite tell if it was in outrage or amusement. 

From the window, a familiar voice spoke: “You could stand to be a little nicer to people you just met, Jojo,” Noriaki said, clambering out to join them. “They might not be all that bad. Who knows—you might even make some new friends.” 

The delicate teasing in his tone left Jotaro’s knuckles turning white as he gripped the railing. He sighed, tried to release that tension. Getting angry would just prove everyone right—too aggressive, too violent, don’t invite him to a party if you don’t want fights to start, don’t get involved or piss him off. “Everyone wants anyone else to be a charity. Next thing you’ll be wanting a smoke too.” 

“I wouldn’t mind.” 

Jotaro raised an eyebrow in mild disbelief, but when Kakyoin didn’t back down, he handed him a dart and a lighter. Kakyoin passed that cigarette to the stranger and held his hand out for another one, which Jotaro only gave him after a hard look. 

Noriaki lit up both of their cigarettes on the same light, the flames illuminating both of their faces, deep brown eyes lined with gold, lavender eyes rimmed with alcohol. Each of them inhaled, twin cherry glows showing every line of the smoke that they breathed out. The stranger laughed and took the lighter from Kakyoin, passed it back to Jotaro and then leaned over and kissed Kakyoin. Their cigarette dangled from their right hand, their left brushing hair away from Kakyoin’s face. 

Noriaki in turn laughed in a way that Jotaro had never heard him laugh before, and kissed the stranger back, just as—if not more—passionately. 

Jotaro’s head grew hot—his skull filled up with white noise, and radio crackles, and television snow, roaring panic filling his ears so that he couldn’t so much as think—and he turned and climbed back through the window without a word. Invisible to everyone else, Star Platinum followed him. 

He stepped through the first door he could find, mostly closed and with smoke leaking through the narrow opening. He closed it behind himself likewise and sighed deeply as the cannabis hit his nose. It was a tiny room, and it was full of people, and there was strange music on the speaker, and yet none of them were speaking, just lounged back against the walls and various scrappy chairs and cushions. One of them smiled slowly and lazily at Jotaro, his—her—his beautiful eyes hazed over, and after a moment offered Jotaro a very brightly patterned sheet of blotter paper. Jojo took it. The woman gave him a slightly wider smile, and then her eyes closed. 

And though his heart was pounding in his ears, and his fingers were already peeling up a tab, Kakyoin’s words rang through his head: Don’t take anything.

The blotter sheet was crinkled in his hand, his teeth were grinding together, but he shoved the paper into his pocket, swearing low so that he wouldn’t irritate the trippers. He did, however, see a set of blunts already rolled sitting in the middle of the room, presumably with intent that was forgotten when the psychedelics hit. Jotaro grabbed those, and lit one, and smoked it as if it could cure the panic in his chest. It wasn’t until his vision began to change colours that he even considered what else might have been rolled into those. But it was too late, and there were more in his pocket, and a handful of acid, and he stumbled his way out of that door, holding onto the wall to keep his sense of ground and sky. 

Jotaro didn’t think that anything, not even DIO, had hit him so hard and fast as this. Time was already strange during his best days; this only made every step become both an instant and an eternity. He was being spoken to by people. He was doing his party tricks with cigarettes. His hands were stiff but still nimble enough to deal cards in his own favour, to silently win another carton, and then another, and then another. He was on the other side of the house. His body became harder to move. It had been hours and it had been seconds and Jotaro found himself sitting out on the fire escape once again with a group of femmes and queens, and when the rest of them went inside, Jojo realised that it was just him and Lilian and the woman from the other day—Mel, was it?

“And then,” she was saying, “like I hadn’t had a long enough fucking day, I open the door to the fucking freezer and get two steps in, and what’s there? A massive set of goddamn ice crystals, just appeared overnight on the back wall. And sure, I didn’t have time to deal with it then , because if I took too long then Ray would serve my tits to me on a silver platter, so I just kept going, but when I was closing and went to get rid of ‘em and clean it out, the fucking things grew! ” 

Lilian just laughed, and Jotaro did too, mostly because he felt it was expected of him. Mel gave him a weird, sidelong glance, and then kept telling her story. As she spoke, Lilian handed Jotaro something, which he placed under his tongue and kept listening. 

“But when I tried to take some hot water to melt them, it didn’t do shit. Nothing at all, and when I touched them they weren’t even cold, which is just stupid. So I grabbed a cleaver, because nothing else was gonna fucking work for something this big, and I wasn’t about to take twelve years to get rid of it. And when I broke ‘em off, they were—more like crystals , you know?” 

Lilian cackled again, and patted Mel’s shoulder so hard that it sounded painful. “Maybe someone mixed something in your nose candy, honey, because it sounds like you were out of it. Crystals in your walk-in freezer. What did your boss have to say?”

“You think I’d tell him? Figured it could just be someone else’s problem the next day but no one said anything, like they were gone.”

“So you were hallucinating.”

Mel scowled and hissed something at Lilian in a language that Jotaro couldn’t understand, but it only made Lilian laugh louder. “I’m going to go find Andy,” she said. “Coming?” 

Mel stood and stretched, her thick, strong limbs trembling ever so slightly—from the cold or the cocaine, Jotaro couldn’t tell. 

“You wait here,” Lilian said to Jotaro. “We’ll be right back.” 

And so they walked down two stories of the fire escape and slipped back through the window. Jotaro waited there; he couldn’t do anything else. He couldn’t move. Despite his vision blurring and wobbling, the cracks spreading up his arm were clear to see. But when Lilian had touched his hand she hadn’t said anything, and he knew that he was hallucinating again. Kakyoin had warned him to not take anything she gave him, and Jotaro couldn’t even do that much for his friend. Couldn’t keep himself away from the unreal, the colours that tinted everything, the freedom of stepping outside of time for a few minutes without having to exhaust himself and Star Platinum in the process. 

If he could move, he would be shivering. He should have been—everything about him was freezing cold, and the wind was biting straight through that thin sweater of his, rattling the little gold chains where they fell loose from the knit of it. Star Platinum emerged, wrapping itself around Jotaro’s shoulders as if it could do anything to keep the chill at bay—as if it had any warmth of its own, as if it weren’t also borderline immobilised. 

Between his feet, Jojo saw a figure stumble out onto the balcony, immediately distinct from everyone else at the party. Though Noriaki was swaying with intoxication, immaculate posture crumbling ever so slightly, hair dishevelled in ways that Jotaro had never seen before, it was undoubtedly him. 

Despite the cold cutting through him, Jotaro felt his head grow hot and tight once again. The silver-red collage of Noriaki and the stranger was burned onto the back of his eyelids, and it made him feel like he was choking. He wanted to leave and never have to see Kakyoin again. 

He wanted to slide down the stairs to stand next to him. 

Noriaki looked from side to side, as if he were looking for someone. The stranger, perhaps. But— 

“Jojo?” he called out after a moment. 

Jotaro wanted to run down to him. 

He couldn’t move. He could hardly breathe. 

The jealousy that had torn into Jotaro so fiercely was now gone, replaced only with something akin to panic. The return of roaring blood in his ears, the need to run and yet he was stuck quite literally inside of his own skin, inside his own mind, inside his goddamn horrible hallucinations of statuesque immobility, because no matter how bad they were it apparently wasn’t bad enough for him to take Kakyoin’s advice, to stay away for a bit, to be safe. Be careful. 

Yes, so much for that. Careful. 

Noriaki looked around for a moment longer but when he couldn’t find anything, he turned and went inside again, presumably to look for Jotaro elsewhere. I’m right here , he wanted to say, to scream , but he couldn’t do anything. 

If you’d been paying attention to yourself instead of Mel’s story, he chastised himself. It was a fruitless endeavour whose only real outcome was making him feel worse, but it succeeded in that, if nothing else. 

He was so cold. 

He was so scared. 

Dying by frostbite on a fire escape, despite all of the things that he had survived. It was almost embarrassing. 

Time passed around him, without him. All that he could think about to try to keep himself attached to his body, to the world around him, was the cold. If he could still feel the cold, he could still be cold, and he was still alive. If he started feeling warm—he knew the signs of severe hypothermia. So he focused on the fact that he was cold, and tried to be aware of the fact that time was passing, because it must have been passing. 

It might have been hours before he saw Kakyoin return. The young man stepped out onto the fire escape once again, still visibly unsteady, but this time he immediately looked up at where Jotaro was, and immediately climbed up to him. 

“Jojo,” he said with audible relief, though his words slurred into one another. “I thought you might’ve left.” The light shone off of his eyes, and Jotaro could see just how bloodshot they were, how dilated Kakyoin’s pupils were. Jotaro wasn’t the only one of them so severely intoxicated. When he didn’t reply, Kakyoin began uncharacteristically babbling to fill the silence. “It’s so hot inside, I had to step out and take a breath, but I missed you every time I did! How long have you been up here? I’ve been looking for you, anyone inside who saw you had no idea where you’d gone, but I finally found Lilian and she didn’t tell me because she said she didn’t think you’d still be here, but Mel did, and—have you met her? There are so many people here, it’s absurd, and it’s so hot inside, did I say that already?”

If Jotaro could have smiled, he actually would have right then. Among the many other things that the two of them didn’t have experiences of that other teens might, Jotaro had never seen Noriaki drink. Despite his words, Jotaro had almost doubted that he did: Kakyoin, the ideal honours student, kind but all too stern for liquor and drugs. And as it turned out, Noriaki did indeed drink, did indeed dabble in various substances, and was extremely endearing and earnest when he did. No wonder the stranger had laid claim to him. 

“And it’s cold out here! I forgot about how cold this place can get sometimes, I did not dress for the weather and I feel like there’s someone standing behind me and telling me that I should have brought a coat. You must be cold too, but at least you’ve got a sweater.” He took Jotaro’s hand in his own, and shivered theatrically. “You’re freezing again! Let’s go inside, before you get frostbite.”

He tugged on Jotaro’s hand, pulling him forwards a bit, and Jotaro found that he could move again with prompting. When he tried to move of his own volition, he found that he could, though the stiffness hadn’t disappeared. But the delusions of immobility were gone, and that provided him a moment’s respite. 

There was another issue at hand, and that was that he was beginning to come down from whatever that most recent high had been. And that was the thing that Jotaro wanted least of all. 

He lit up one of the stolen blunts from his pocket, and took a deep drag before offering it to Noriaki, who took it in turn. The cannabis hit quickly, as did whatever else was in there—though much more mildly this time around—and he felt like he could begin to rest again for a moment, mood buoyed by Kakyoin’s stream-of-consciousness monologue as they walked down the stairs. 

Jotaro’s amusement was very quickly tamped when Noriaki’s tone changed, and the mindless chatter disappeared, replaced by a stern sobriety.

“Jojo, there are cracks on your hands.”

Jotaro didn’t bother to look at Kakyoin. “You’re high.” 

“There are cracks on your hands. Like you said the other day.”

“Yeah, just like I said. You’re hallucinating, and you’re suggestible to what those hallucinations are.” He was pretty sure that there was some French phrase for when two people were sharing a hallucination. Kakyoin would know it if he were sober. Polnareff would wax poetic about it if he were here.

Noriaki grabbed Jotaro’s hands again and held them up in the windowlight. “What’s going on?”

In the light, Jotaro could also see the cracks; they hadn’t disappeared even when the immobility had, though they had reduced. It seemed that he was falling back into it a bit more after that joint, the cracks spreading up his arms slowly. But he could move right now, and he would work with that for the time being. It was fine. He simply wouldn’t get as high as he had been, and it wouldn’t get that bad. 

But his fragile self-assurances shrivelled when Noriaki traced a finger up those cracks, following one from Jotaro’s fingertips to his elbow. He wasn’t marking an arbitrary path: the cracks that he was seeing were the same that Jotaro was. And that meant…

“We need to get home,” he said, flexing his fingers as best as he could. The stiffness was returning, and he didn’t like that thought at all. 

Noriaki turned to face him, pulling his hand away. “Is it a hallucination?” he asked, voice firm and not brooking any room for falsehood. It wasn’t punitive, it wasn’t desperate, and the trust in it just made Jotaro want to walk away. 

“We’re seeing the same thing,” he said in reply, which was as certain an answer as he could give for any of what was happening. “We need to get home before it gets worse.”

Noriaki caught his eye, and after a moment nodded gravely, resolutely. 

Getting anywhere was going to be an ordeal.

Chapter Text

Jotaro and Kakyoin managed to make it halfway home without issue. The first train was late, but that was nothing surprising, and even then they didn’t stand out among crowds of drunk New Yorkers running around on a Friday night. It was almost a relief. 

But Noriaki couldn’t bring himself to relax at any point, watching Jojo flex his fingers into a fist, curling his hands slowly and methodically. Was it to keep them mobile? To prove to himself that he still could move? Noriaki wasn’t going to ask, but he kept watching nonetheless. 

It didn’t slip his notice that Jotaro moved slower and slower each time he repeated it. 

The real trouble started when they went to transfer trains: “Incident on the tracks,” an old man told them when they approached the platform. “Probably won’t be up and running for hours yet.” 

Jotaro swore. They both looked at his hands, at the marks running up under his shirtsleeves, and then met eyes. Noriaki wasn’t in the business of diagnosing friends, but even with the world tilting around him in his drunkenness, he could see that same look in Jojo’s eyes that had been there yesterday. Jotaro was afraid. Well, that made two of them. 

“We’re going to have to walk,” Noriaki said after a moment, forcing them to confront the truth that both of them knew and neither wanted to have to acknowledge. “Will you be alright?” 

“Will you?” Jotaro asked pointedly, though Noriaki didn’t know what exactly that point was. “I’ve been through this before, I’ll be fine.” 

Now is not the time to yell at him about his martyr complex, Kakyoin reminded himself, taking a deep breath. Get home first, safely. “We can get a cab instead,” he suggested, but Jotaro immediately shook his head. 

“If this gets worse, I don’t want to be stuck in a taxi.” 

Noriaki had to admit that he had a point.

"Besides,” Jotaro continued, “it’s only a half hour walk from here.” 

A half hour walk for two people drunk off their faces, one of whom was gradually stiffening to the point of immobility and the other of whom was only being saved from chronic pain by the varying drugs in his system. It would probably take them closer to an hour. 

They didn’t have another choice. 

Against all odds, they were making good time. Any lingering brio from the party had worn off long before the drugs still pumping through his veins, courtesy of the situation at hand, and so the two had been walking side by side for nearly a half hour in silence. 

Noriaki was busy contemplating the nature of that silence, and whether he was paranoid, or if the drugs were leaving him in thought spirals he wouldn’t otherwise take, because he couldn’t tell if it was companionable or not—if Jotaro was focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, or was too intoxicated to speak, or felt that he couldn’t move his lips. Perhaps he felt there was nothing that needed to be said, and this was just their usual comfortable quiet, familiar after seeking peaceful moments with one another during the hectic (and often horribly loud) journey to Egypt. 

Perhaps Jotaro was upset to find out that Noriaki was gay. This seemed to be the most likely outcome, the one that Kakyoin couldn’t make himself let go of. The speed with which Jotaro had stormed inside when Mduduzi had kissed Noriaki was certainly impressive, considering Noriaki hadn’t noticed the use of his Stand in the process. 

He wouldn’t be mad, he’s friends with Lilian, this was a very queer party. But maybe it was different when it was Kakyoin. Maybe Jotaro would feel lied to. Maybe he felt preyed upon. Noriaki’s mind filled with endless scenarios, being confronted in a million different ways by Jojo, none of them ending pleasantly. 

So it took Kakyoin a moment to process what was happening when he heard someone shout, “Stop, or your friend gets it!” 

He turned back, and when his vision focused, his stomach leaped into his throat. A woman stood behind Jotaro, impossible to miss for a number of reasons but first and foremost her height; she must have been seven feet tall, and wore no shoes at all. But more importantly than that—she had a knife pressed up against Jotaro’s throat. 

Norikai was immediately torn, instantly of two minds: on the one hand, Jojo—his Jojo from before Egypt—would have been instantly fine. Would have already been out of this, would have used his Stand or his own abilities to escape and get the upper hand. But the Jotaro who stood in front of him was a very different Jotaro, in a great many ways. 

This Jotaro stared at him, and he looked afraid. 

“Your wallets,” the woman demanded. Her very big, very pink hair made her look even taller than she was, and made Jotaro look far shorter than he was, standing in front of her as little more than a dark silhouette against a Day-Glo backdrop. 

Noriaki held up his hands placatingly. He caught Jotaro’s eyes, which were simultaneously narrowed and impossibly wide. You’re going to be fine, he wanted to say, already sending out Hierophant through the cracks in the pavement. 

But as Jotaro simply stood there, stock still, Noriaki realized with mounting horror that—

You can’t move, can you?

“Hurry it up!” the woman demanded, and from the distance he was at, Kakyoin couldn’t see her dig the blade in, but he could see the blood that trickled down the side of Jotaro’s neck, and how his eyes widened; he could hear the suppressed yet tense gasp from his friend. 

“Hey!” Kakyoin shouted, unable to stop himself despite his intention to not do anything to provoke the woman yet. He lurched forward and immediately encountered a breeze so strong that he stumbled back, tripping over his own shoes in the process. It shrieked its way through the New York buildings, louder than any wind he’d ever heard before. 

More blood dripped down Jotaro’s neck, and this time the noise that he made wasn’t quiet. Star Platinum was nowhere to be seen, and Noriaki could only assume that it too was frozen and suffering the knife. 

“Who are you?” Noriaki demanded, scrambling back to his centre of balance. 

The woman laughed, visibly tightening her grip around Jotaro. He didn’t say anything, but everything in his face screamed. “Siouxsie,” she said, with too much grandiosity for someone holding a rusty switchblade. “Remember that name, prettyboy, because it’ll be the last your lovely lover ever hears.” 

“I thought you wanted money,” he said quickly. All that Kakyoin could hope for was to stall for long enough that he could get Hierophant into the right place without getting blown over. 

This time, she twisted the knife. Noriaki’s heart lurched. Not the throat, not the carotid. 

“That’s just a bonus,” she said with a grin. Yellow lips peeled back to reveal sharp, shiny teeth. 

“What are you looking for, then? Is this how you get your rocks off?” he snapped, twisting his hands into fists within his pockets. He couldn’t look at Jotaro; if he did he knew he would be too angry to not act rashly. But he could hear Jojo’s ragged breathing beneath the blade. 

“I’m—”

But he didn’t give Siouxsie a chance to finish that sentence before Hierophant’s tentacles wrapped around her ankles and yanked, at the same time that another set pulled the knife away from her hand. Three noises happened in succession:

First, Siouxsie wailed as Hierophant pulled her down to the pavement.

Second, there was an awful sound, and Kakyoin realized that Siouxsie had still managed to drag Jotaro down with her. 

Third—that same wind whipped up again, so fierce that it shrieked with a human voice. But now Noriaki realized his crucial mistake: it was a voice, and it was so loud that it hurt. 

He pressed his hands to his ears, trying to block out the shrieking, and blindly threw out another set of projectiles. Noriaki even squeezed his eyes closed as if that would help at all with the noise that was making his teeth rattle in their sockets, and so he had no way of knowing whether he hit Siouxsie or not. 

The wind let up as soon just a moment after, and Noriaki once again lost his balance without the sudden resistance that he had been leaning against. Everything around him sounded fuzzy in the silence. He shook his head, like he was trying to get water out of his ears after a bath, but there was no difference. 

Kakyoin whipped around, trying to catch sight of their assailant, but she had vanished from view. She hadn’t retreated, he knew that immediately, and it was with no small effort that he kept his attention on finding her instead of running to Jotaro’s body, sprawled out on the ground. He could only hope that Jojo had been able to cushion his fall. 

Siouxie laughed behind him. Noriaki unleashed a flurry of emeralds in her direction as he turned, but found them driven into the ground by a wind that proceeded to slam into him once again with the force of a train. 

He was ready this time, and as he was hurled backwards, threw out a hand. One of Hierophant’s tendrils snapped out from where it was wrapped around a lamppost, and Kakyoin grabbed hold of it, using the momentum to whip himself around the lamp. Siouxsie’s wind screeched as it tried to whip around to match him, but he was a step ahead of it still. Before his feet hit the ground Hierophant sent another mighty volley towards where he’d last heard her voice. 

Siouxsie yelped. Her silhouette leaped across a building’s canopy to the next one over, visibly bleeding from her left leg. 

The wind shrieked at his back. He turned to see what horrors it would bring. Kakyoin threw himself to the side to avoid it, and wasn’t fast enough to avoid getting clipped in the side by—

A whirlwind of what appeared to be glowing bats flew past him at such speed that his entire body screamed in pain, through it wasn’t enough to match the screaming of the wind—the bats—Siouxsie—ringing in his ears, so loud that he was sure something in his brain would snap. 

Just as he sent out Hierophant for another assault on the Stand user, the bats swung upwards towards her, and then promptly flew off, carrying Siouxsie on their wings. 

Or at least, that was what he thought he saw, through the whole world swimming around him. 

Kakyoin staggered over to Jotaro, who seemed to be trying to peel himself off of the pavement where he had fallen. One hand cradled the back of his own head, while the other one had traces of blood on it, matching the red smear across his neck. 

“Are you alright?” Noriaki asked. He dropped to his knees and put a hand to Jotaro’s shoulder to get him to lie down again, not move yet until he was fine to. Jotaro shrugged him off and sat upright, his hand still pressed against his head. He stared at Kakyoin.

“Jojo?” he asked again, receiving no response or recognition in Jotaro’s eyes, only a faint frown. Dread settled in his stomach. 

“Can you hear me?” he asked after a moment’s hesitation. 

Jotaro frowned deeper at him still. “What?” He was speaking too loudly. Noriaki’s heart dropped. He repeated himself, much louder this time, to which Jotaro’s brow crinkled even further. Jotaro raised his left hand to his left ear, touching it gingerly. 

Star Platinum appeared immediately next to Jotaro, cupping a hand around its own ear. Jotaro gestured for Noriaki to try speaking again. 

“Can you hear me now?” he asked again.

“Yeah,” Jotaro replied after a moment, though he gave his bloody hand a second glance. His voice was still too loud, and he turned to Star Platinum. “Yeah,” he repeated, more quietly this time, and then nodded to himself. “What was that? Deafening wind?”

“She summoned some kind of bats, or something, that screamed like hell,” Kakyoin explained, realizing that Jotaro had actually had no way of seeing what had happened around him. He pulled a bandana out of his pocket and handed it to Jotaro, who pressed it to the wound on his neck and then after a moment tied it tightly around his throat, both keeping pressure on it and hiding it from anyone who passed them on the street. 

Jotaro grimaced. “Loud enough that it’ll take a minute for me to hear again without Star’s help,” he muttered. “Give me a hand up. We need to get home.” 

“Are the cracks still there?” 

But Noriaki didn’t really need to ask: he could see it himself. Apparently the paralysis was gone, but that didn’t make him feel much better.

“Then we need to get home.”

The slow, trudging return continued, with Kakyoin standing between Jotaro and the road, in case…in case anything, really. The cracks continued to spread, following whatever brief retreat they’d undergone. Neither of them spoke until they were at the Joestar house, the door safely locked behind them. 

That was when Noriaki began to tremble.  

“They’re real?” he whispered, staring at the cracks on Jotaro’s hands, the cavernous patterns they wove. Jotaro could not move his fingers, and his skin was not only cold to the touch but incredibly hard and incredibly rough. And the cracks—well, they were not just visual, carved deeply into his skin, brittle along their edges. Kakyoin traced them with the faintest touch. 

Jotaro could hardly feel it. 

“Not to say I told you so, but…” he replied, and was grateful when Kakyoin seemed to take it in good faith rather than as a clumsy jibe. 

“They weren’t there yesterday.” 

“Not for you they weren’t.”

“Exactly—not for me, but now for some reason they are.” 

Jotaro nodded. “So the question is what’s causing them.”

“You don’t think…”

“An enemy Stand user? Yeah, I do.”

“But what makes it start? Or stop, for that matter?”

“If I knew that we wouldn’t be here,” Jotaro snapped. “I can’t use my right leg below the knee. Do you have a spare set of crutches I could use?”

“We have to figure this out right away,” Kakyoin protested as Jotaro limped towards the staircase. “It keeps getting worse.”

“I’m going to sleep on it,” came the curt reply. 

“And what happens if it gets worse while you’re sleeping? What if what happened out there isn’t the end of it?” Noriaki demanded. His voice brooked no room for argument. 

“Then set a watchman, see if I care. I’m going to sleep.”

With his head still spinning, and his hands still shaking, Noriaki turned off the lights behind them and followed Jotaro in his tedious trek up the stairs. 

"We need to figure out who keeps sending Stand users after us," Noriaki reminded him. "That will help with all of this."

Jotaro was silent. 

"I will," Noriaki said a few slow, laborious steps later. "Keep watch, I mean. Since you don't care."

Despite Jotaro facing away, the force of his glower was palpable; it wasn't until he was nearly at the top of the stairs that he looked back at Noriaki, halfway down. "You can stay if you're quiet." 

"What does that mean?" Kakyoin asked, before immediately turning red in the ears—he knew full well what the response was going to be. 

"Yare yare daze," Jotaro muttered. "I hadn't meant to say absolutely silent, but maybe I should have." 

Noriaki, wisely, chose to remain silent. He hadn't frankly been expecting Jojo to permit him to stay with him at all. Nor had he expected to himself feel so overwhelmed by that fact. The same argument as before—"you don't need to treat me like a child"—"then stop acting like one"—rehashed to the same non-result. But Jotaro stood at the top of the stairs, a dark silhouette haloed by the hallway lights; but Kakyoin stood near the bottom, face turned upwards to the light. 

Noriaki almost hated Jotaro in that moment. For the fact that he had saved Kakyoin from DIO's flesh bud, had been kind enough that Noriaki wanted nothing more than to help the Joestars, had been willing to uproot his life—to nearly die—to abandoning his family, who had tried so hard until that point to accept and sometimes even accommodate his strange ways—all this and more for a delinquent he wouldn't have given a second glance. After all, it was only out of revenge on the Joestars that DIO had sought Kakyoin's powers in the first place; and yet he was insane enough to have wound up here with them? With a delinquent who hardly now gave him a second glance?

Noriaki made his way to the top of the staircase. 

"I'm not sleeping on your floor if this keeps up all night." 

"I don't expect you to," Jotaro replied. 

They entered Jotaro's room, and the bright overhead light made the cracks on his skin look far worse than before—deep, dark, dry, almost as if his arm was crumbling to pieces at these faultlines. In fact—

"Jojo, your hand!" Noriaki exclaimed, looking about for the bandages he had left there the other day, but his eyes were drawn back to the sight that stopped his heart. The tip of Jotaro's ring finger, which had been perfectly normal before, seemed to have broken off at the top knuckle, leaving a jagged edge where it had been. 

Jotaro stared at it impassively and eventually shrugged, tucking it into his coat pocket and turning away. 

But Noriaki was tired of this game. 

"No," he snapped, grabbing Jotaro's arm and pulling his hand out of his pocket. Too late, he realized that was too aggressive a move to make when Jotaro was literally falling apart, but no pieces flaked away from his hand under Noriaki's grip. "You don't get to just hide this like it isn't happening." 

Jotaro tried to pull away. Kakyoin only tightened his hold. A flash of purple appeared behind Jotaro, but Kakyoin was prepared, and Hierophant Green sent a barrage of tendrils towards Star Platinum before Jojo's Stand could do anything. 

But that wasn't quite true, because in the blink of an eye Jojo and Star were both standing behind Noriaki, and Hierophant's tentacles only collided with one another. 

Noriaki's chest tightened as if a drawstring had been pulled. Another staircase, another dark mansion that seemed empty except for him and the other man in the room—another man with a star-shaped birthmark on his neck, another man who could walk in between seconds without anyone else noticing, only to appear behind you with your shoulders wrapped in a vice grip and him whispering in your ear. Noriaki's breath froze in his chest. Dread coursed through his veins instead, because he wasn't drawing enough oxygen, he knew that, but oh, it was just like Cairo all over again—the first time around. The stairs, the wrongness that stretched the air around him to a breaking point, the dark lighting, the same star-shaped birthmark—! 

You are here with Jotaro, in America. There are no vampires here. You are safe here. Jotaro is not blond. Jotaro is not him. Jotaro will not hurt you. 

And yet it was not enough; he couldn't breathe, could hardly move. His blood pounded in his ears and immediately the thought of blood made everything worse, knowing that the vampires would be delighted by his racing pulse: invisible hands closed around his neck—fingers pressing on his pulse points—and he couldn't breathe and he couldn't breathe and he couldn't breathe and he couldn't—

His vision was darkening. 

Immediately Hierophant drew close around its user, a protective webbing forming around Kakyoin. In their delicate green glow, what happened next was crystal clear in spite of how quickly it proceeded: the webbing split itself into two identical nets, one thicker and below the finer one. The lower net began to shrink, wrapping itself around Noriaki, before its strands began once again to broaden.

The gentle pressure it exerted on him, the way that Hierophant shaped itself to become a second skin—a ghostly suit of armour—ensuring no one could touch him—. Noriaki closed his eyes. 

Hierophant squeezed his arm, once, twice, three times, and Kakyoin exhaled. Three more times and he forced himself to breathe in despite the ice picks in his chest, one huge, ragged inhale. Three more times and he exhaled with a sob, another three and this time it was easier to breathe in; three more and there was no longer a vice around his chest. 

They did this thrice more, and it was only after the fourth round of repetitions—60 squeezes, a lovely number, full of threes and fives and twos and twelves that couldn't be shaken—that Kakyoin was able to convince himself to open his eyes. 

When he looked down at himself, at the armour that Hierophant Green had woven around him, he saw green spikes extending from his body. Arms and legs alike were wreathed in emerald clusters, and when Noriaki touched one of them experimentally, he pulled his finger back and swore: they were razor sharp, and he had narrowly avoided slicing his finger open. 

"Hierophant," he whispered with awe, "how did you do this?"

His Stand simply pulsed once, which Kakyoin could see as well as hear, because Hierophant Green's tendrils continued to float around him in a protective netting, waiting to alert him should anyone approach. 

But no one had, thankfully, because Noriaki was overwhelmed by his Stand's new strategies. After all though, there was only one other person in the room, and he was—

Oh.

When Noriaki turned around, Kujo Jotaro was himself kneeling on the floor, arms lying in his lap. His hat was knocked askew on his head, and without the shadows it provided, Noriaki could see that his pupils were blown wide. But Jotaro didn't move to look up, eyes locked on his hands. 

"No, no no no," Kakyoin whispered as he followed his gaze. "You're alright. Jotaro. Look at me. You are alright." 

It was just like the other day, it was worse than the other day, because then, Jotaro had been witnessing this exact thing happening, and Kakyoin hadn't believed him, damn his skepticism! Hadn't he been targeted by a Stand in the same way, cursed to not be believed about it? Had he not carved his own skin open in response, same as JoJo? 

It didn't matter right now. He couldn't change what had happened. 

Jotaro's fingers were grey and cold to the touch, solid as stone. The cracks along his skin dug deep, weathered and feathering at the edges. The rough edges of his missing knuckle stood stark against the black of his pants. 

"Can you move?" Noriaki asked, resting his hand on Jojo’s arm above the elbow. There, even through his sweater sleeve, his skin still felt like skin. Though he said nothing, Jotaro responded by reaching for the hem of his sweater. 

Kakyoin realized the issue immediately—while Jojo could move his arms, his hands were likely frozen—and gingerly helped his friend to pull his sweater over his head. From there they could see clearly the progression of this strange transformation: while his fingers were solid stone, his hands and forearms, though bearing cracks, were normal. 

“What do you want to do about this?” Noriaki asked quietly. He knew nothing about what was going on, and now that they were out of the cold, now that the panic had passed, he was aware of just how drunk he still was, just how fuzzy his head was in spite of all that had just happened. 

“Don’t tell Jiji ,” Jotaro said quietly. “Please.”

“You can’t just keep this from him!” Noriaki exclaimed, startled by how quickly Jojo suddenly needed to say this. “He might be able to help.”

Jotaro snorted. “That old geezer? He’s still caught up in his glory days of hamon battles. I don’t want to worry him, though…or my mom.”

That, Noriaki understood. The Joestars needed a break, and while that included Jotaro, he also knew that having the entire family hovering frantically around wouldn’t help anyone. Right then as well, it was obvious to him that as intoxicated as he himself still was, Jotaro was doing just as badly if not worse. That on top of that, he may have a concussion from the fight with Siouxsie. That Jotaro was just as at a loss as Noriaki was, and it was he who was freezing up regularly.

“Fine. But I am calling Polnareff in the morning.”

Jotaro heaved a great sigh, but nodded after a moment. “I’m…going to lie down.” 

The same as the other day, Kakyoin settled himself in the armchair in the corner of Jotaro's bedroom. He picked up the same book as before, opened to the spot he had been at before, and read in the lamplight while Jotaro laid on his bed staring at the ceiling. Only once Jojo's breathing settled into a sleep rhythm did Noriaki put the book down, at which point he just watched his friend, who had fallen asleep fully clothed, hat and all. "Oh, Jojo," he whispered sadly, and turned the lamp off.