Archive of Our Own

dio sets a little jar in his hand and closes kakyoin's fingers around it. “you live in tokyo,” he asks, “yes?”

his fingertips are ice cold where they linger on kakyoin's knuckles. kakyoin nods. 

“minato ward?”

distantly, he thinks that it should be scary or something that dio knows exactly where he lives. he probably knows the neighborhood, too, and the street name, and what his parents do. he isn't scared, though. he's the sun, which reaches everywhere and sees everything and touches everything. he's dio. of course he knows everything about him. he nods again.

dio's hand tightens, bones grating together as his fingers push into kakyoin's wrist, razor-sharp nails flirting with sinking into the already plum-bruised flesh. “i want you to kill someone for me,” he smiles, tender, “and bring me back their blood.”

kakyoin smiles back at him and agrees. of course he does. 

it's pretty awful, kakyoin thinks, to spend your last day alive swarmed by annoying, pushy girls who have a crush on you. it's funny– most guys would do anything for it, but the stupid brute looks just as miserable about it as kakyoin would. 

he feels something vaguely like commiseration, washed out by a wave of how ridiculous it is to feel bad for something you’re going to kill in a couple minutes. one of them tries to touch the brat, reaching out to grab onto his arm, and kakyoin can see the way his shoulders hunch as he wrenches away from his pursuer, high and uncomfortable, how he was, before he became what he is now. before he got better.

he shouldn't just sit and watch like this, but it's not like there's any doubt in his mind that he's capable of killing the stupid brat. kakyoin can play with his food if he wants. he can do whatever he wants, he thinks with a warm, smug feeling that drips down his spine like sugar syrup, sits sweet and aching in the roots of his molars with the power he's been given, the skill he's proven. gold paint smears from the canvas to the side of his hand, catching the sunlight, and he moves his hand to let the shine of it play for a moment, mesmerized. it’s a nice day, even if he misses dio and tokyo feels strange and foreign and his vision feels like it’s lagging a couple seconds behind his body. 

the boy’s his age. he can’t be that good with his stand. another easy thing to lay at dio’s feet, dark and bleeding, and then he can stop with all the thinking and talking and planning and sunlight that gives him a headache and leaves him feeling dizzy and nauseous for another while.

when he moves again, it's to slash red paint across the canvas. his stand flies out with the motion, too, sharp and invisible, and he watches as the boy stumbles with the impact, tripping down the endless stairs. 

for a moment he hopes that maybe he'll just crack his head and die like that, easy, blood trickling down concrete and pooling dark at the feet of his admirers, but he sees a flash of his stand, blue-purple against treeless branches, catching his fall and setting him down nice and gentle. kujo’s stand must be quick, to catch him that fast, almost as fast as his own. 

it’s impressive– he’s only had it for what, a few weeks, dio said? less than that, even? no wonder the sun wants him gotten rid of. irritation rises in his throat, that this brute has it so easy, never had to grow up with the hell he did, has a stand that still acts fluid and easy like an extension of himself instead of the halting grind that he and hierophant take to get what he wants, has a cloud of classmates that adore him and a mommy that packs him lunch every morning.

 kakyoin is going to have a very, very fun time killing him. the lump in his throat still burns and chokes like a mouthful of smoke.

he sighs, directing his hierophant to shred the canvas and standing up. there's red on his fingers, sticky and bright, and it makes his stomach twist uncomfortably, hungry, homesick. the feeling doesn’t dispel as he makes his way down the flights of stairs, hands twisting absently in the light silk folds of his scarf to dispel the hollow feeling and mask the way his fingers are trembling. it’s an empty substitute for his stand, but he can’t have someone he’s going to kill seeing him hugging the weapon like a little kid. that would ruin everything.

this close, he can finally see the boy he’s killing. 

he’s his own age, despite the awkward height he hasn’t really filled out yet, cap ripped and studded with pins, hands shoved awkwardly in his pockets as he tries to avoid his loudly adoring fanclub. he doesn’t think dio’s had him get rid of anyone this young before, but, then, he doesn’t tend to remember much of what he does for dio anyway, just that it all blends together like watercolor shades bleeding into each other in vague dulled patches of blood or meat or money, and none of it is that important anyway, in comparison to the sun’s light and gold and cold heat. 

cairo is hot, a dry, crackling heat that's different than anything kakyoin's ever felt before, leaves the back of his throat aching and gives him nosebleeds that ruin his shirts and he loves it. it's a city full of loud hubbub and warm spices and sunbaked limestone, full of people so strange and interesting that nobody even bats an eye at him in the streets, and he feels drunk and delighted with the way his parents give him a room key and let him loose to do whatever he pleases. he’s an adult, all of sixteen, the world cracked open for him like a coconut shell.

he and hierophant explore. 

there are cafes with jazz music and museums and buildings so old he can't wrap his head around them, and they make each other laugh, imitating the weird poses in the art, causing petty mischief. hierophant steals figs from street vendors for him, dropping them into his palms with a delighted little smile, and kakyoin gets it to wind its way around his nervous system so it can taste the honey-sweet crunch of seeds in their teeth too. there’s gold jewelry spread out on dark cloths at the souk and camels with brightly woven blankets on their backs and hot coffee in tiny thrown cups.

this lasts for… for how long? days, certainly, weeks, maybe, but they melt and blur into each other in a glowing haze studded with laughter and spices and falling asleep with hierophant's glow melting into the light pollution filmy over the cairo stars through their hotel window.

there is one day– one night. a night when this changes. 

when kakyoin sees him for the first time, earth’s gravity field shudders and realigns.

this, the first time kakyoin sees him, this singularity point around which he's going to swing for the next… next however long he does, it's late. late enough that it's dark even in the long egyptian summer, and it's dark and quiet enough in the little sunbleached alleyway that winds back to the hotel that kakyoin is letting himself talk to hierophant, who's looped around his shoulders like a big scarf. his hands are gesticulating wildly, head fizzing on the late night and the freedom, the anonymity of being somewhere where nobody cares if he's holding a conversation with himself in public.

in between one word and the next the crescent moon falls on a pale face that catches its glow like paper over a match, and he feels the gravitational pull of the planet shifting and wobbling and decaying in the face of an angel or a devil or god, hot gold and marble. the next thing that he knows is god opens his mouth, eyes gleaming firelike in the moonlight, lips brushing the shell of kakyoin's ear, and whispers, “i haven’t seen you around anywhere. you go to our school?”

kakyoin blinks. that's not right.

the boy is standing in front of him, fingers careful on the fabric of his handkerchief, blue-green eyes intent on his face. when did he give him his handkerchief? he certainly did, since it's not in his pocket. it leaves a disconcerted feeling on his tongue.

“i’m noriaki kakyoin. yes, i just transferred here,” kakyoin's mouth says, almost automatic, and he feels very far away, like he's watching this happen to someone else, “I'll see you at school,” he finishes, knowing that the boy's going to take the coldly polite end of the conversation for what it is.

he doesn't like the boy, he thinks. maybe. there's a hot unsettled feeling sloshing around in his head, buzzing and pulling under his skin. he misses the sun. being out during the day here is nothing in comparison to his sun, it's a hollow, empty echo, and kakyoin misses cairo and dio's sweet heavy scent of burnt sugar and hot metal that would fill his lungs when his gold hair brushed against him, misses it with a kind of hungry sickness that claws at the pit of his stomach and stings like tears behind his eyes. he needs to kill this stupid kujo boy and then he will go home to cairo and then dio will run his sharp nails through kakyoin's hair and give him rich heavy wine in a glass so light and fragile it could have been pulled out of a dream, and tell him that he did a good job and he won’t have to think about any of this ever again.

it's a clear day out. he cranes his head up and stares at the sun until dark spots sink into his vision and his neck hurts, and then he finishes walking to school. 

sending hierophant green winding through the school nurse's nervous system is easy. she's not expecting it, even though it wouldn't matter if she did. there’s a resistance when he does, but it’s not from her– his stand has been… he thinks he used to be better at using it. hierophant feels like a badly weighted baseball bat in his hand, or driving a car with alignment problems. like gears just slightly mismatched. there’s something soured about it. for a moment he– it– they both are in cairo again, fig seeds crunching between molars and sun on his face and a lightness he can’t put a finger on in his chest and then ink splatters out from her pen. feels like something splatters out from him, too, with the sudden lacuna punched through the feeling as he jerks back to what’s in front of him.

the sun is bright in front of him, candlelight flickering off white skin and honey eyes. cold fingers press against the side of his face, palm against cheekbone, sharp nails running through his hair. his face tilts up towards the sun and the sun smiles at him, white-toothed, golden, cold. he could stare at him until his eyes burn out. the sun runs a razor-sharp nail featherlight down his forehead, pushing hair out of the way, resting at the fragile curve of his orbit, his cheekbone, the fragile heat of the corner of his jaw. maybe he will blind him, and the thought sends a shiver of delight through his nervous system, pooling sticky at the base of his neck, in the burning cavity behind his eyes.

there’s a dusty marionette in the windowsill where he’s sitting bored, old and seasoned with dead flies and bits of dried leaves, and he sees himself reach out to pick it up, toying with the limbs as he contorts the nurse’s limbs, sinking the pen into the eye of one of these idiots like a knife into butter. there's a hint of reaction before it sinks in, scraping against the back of the eye socket with a noise that's masked by the screams.

it's enough to send the two out of the room. killing them would be easy– more force behind the pen, scissors to the throat, a push out the window. but he just wants to get rid of the stupid thing bothering dio and go home, not bother with pools of blood and the smell of extra corpses and more effort. so they scramble stumbling out of the room with a trail of blood and ink before he tugs the nurse's body to whirl on him.

he lodges the fountain pen into the boy's cheek before he even reacts. the flesh pulls and tears, pen nib grating along the high arch of his cheekbone, the nurse still mumbling something incomprehensible and crazed even with blood splattered across her face and scrubs. god, embarrassing, to be her. black ink pours out with blood down his face when he wrenches it out, smearing. the pen is still slippery from blood and crying.

kujo looks upset, and maybe like he's going to do something foolish, so kakyoin does him the favor of sketching out how fucked he is. in nice, easy words, he thinks with a giggle. he should at least know hierophant’s name, before he dies. it’s only polite. and he should know that the whole reason he’s dying anyway is because it’s what dio wants.

then he stands up so he can kill him easier, get close to him, see his face before he dies like the rest of dio’s family does and blood rushes to his head with a ringing in his ears and he’s curled in a chair in dio's expansive library when the other boy comes in. he's mostly looking at the pictures in a big coffee table travel book, because whenever he tries to read something heavier than that the words swim and float in circles in his head, and his stand is curled around his arms and the chair back, looking over his shoulder with him. it's nice. peaceful. hierophant green hasn't been out much, which shouldn't bother kakyoin, but it has been. it's his stand. it should do what he wants it to, and it’s disconcerting, the way it hides itself and is slow to move and clumsy in use. their chin is resting on his shoulder, and they keep pointing out photos of places they like, presumably, and it's nice. 

the other boy is the american with big dark eyes and big dark clothes, the one who's always with dio. 

“you’ve had your stand for a long time, haven’t you?” the boy, an italian name, pucci, his brain reminds him with a stab, asks. 

kakyoin nods. hierophant’s coils tighten around him, like it’s bracing for a hit. or scared, maybe, but it can’t feel things like that. “ah, yeah. almost my whole life.” 

the words fall from his mouth awkwardly, insufficient, and he cringes, self-conscious of his accent and his clumsiness in front of pucci’s dark impassive eyes. nobody is like dio, but pucci comes– he comes close, somehow, a similarity that echoes deeper than their superficial differences, a harmonic resonance like they’re each half an octave. a world away from the brawling and the whining and the fighting that punctuates the rest of dio’s servants’ returns to the mansion. like he’s already ascended to a higher plane of existence than them, or something. he feels pinned like a bug.

“i’ve been curious about something. do you mind if i… you’ll be fine, of course.”

kakyoin’s head is nodding a yes before his clumsy mind even processes the words.

pucci smiles, then, a beautiful smile, and he reaches towards kakyoin’s forehead as a flicker of something pale as death and dressed like a european executioner veils and echoes him, and his cool fingertips brush kakyoin’s skin and he

pulls,

and kakyoin hierophant kakyoin hierophant kakyoinhierophantkakyoinhierophant splits, 

blooming into a terror that fractures and splinters, fragmenting dissolving into the ghost of touch memory knowledge where hierophant’s weight was heavy and comforting against him and they scream, one of them both of them scrabbling desperately for the other. there’s a wild whip-crack flash of sensationhorrorclaustrophobia and a yank like his intestines are pulling out of his stomach, something worse than pain, more total–

when he comes back to himself, he’s curled in on his knees, forehead pressed to the floor, empty like a fire-gutted house. there’s an awful incessant noise distant in his ears but he keeps– it’s like running your tongue over the gap of a missing tooth but every time he touches the gap he misses a step and crashes down a flight of stairs. the noise hitches and redoubles, gasping and wet. he doesn’t– he’s empty.

he’s alone. 

he’s never–

never–

thought fragments clash and slide off each other uselessly like waves, useless against the yawning nothing coring him through and he scrabbles for something that’s always, always been– not there. the sky could crack above him and he wouldn't notice, wouldn't be anything, wouldn't mean anything when his everything's been wrenched apart like this. where are they? oh god. the dread skitters ice cold through his yawning hollow mind that maybe this is– maybe they won't– 

alone? 

alone???

the thick dark terror chokes him past breathing. his stomach is going to fall through the floor. 

he dissolves into splinters too.

a hand grazes his shoulder, tugging him upright and he flinches like a wild animal, recoiling away as pain lances through his head. 

pucci is staring down at him. he’s holding something silver that he wasn’t before. 

“what does that feel like?”

kakyoin blinks. an awful keening sob rips out of his throat in answer. how– what– what does he fucking think it feels like???????

irritation flickers over pucci's face. “well, i guess that’s an answer,” he says, like he's talking to himself. “thank you,” and he pushes kakyoin by the shoulder so he's sitting on his knees, and his other hand– he catches a flicker of green in the silver, and he can't flinch away again when pucci is holding him still with a grip that belies his appearance, and he shoves something back into kakyoin's forehead.

then it's hazy. sensation scatters into relief like a tsunami crashing down onto him so physical he feels trembling, and hierophant holding him so tight he's filled with pins and needles and he's holding them too, sobbing ugly and awful into their half-spooled chest and one of their tendrils sharp at pucci’s neck drawing blood and a stab of pain as his headache throbs so viciously his vision fuzzes for a minute and then goes dark.

the big stand's teeth digging into hierophant scare him– not, not quite that much. he doesn't like it though. doesn't like– rancid oil coats his tongue and slides down his throat to his stomach at how kujo grabs the nurse hierophant's in roughly, a hand yanking at her hair and the other digging into her wrist, something in between fear and disgust flickering at the way he moves in to devour her before a pain that's worlds away from his usual headaches lances through his head, and he feels a pulling that's– different, it's different, it's not the same but fear pours through him as this other stand pulls hierophant out of the nurse like a magician pulling handkerchiefs endlessly out of their mouth. 

the stand has him held by the neck, choking and tight and inescapable. fingers dent into his throat and his forehead, bone creaking and screaming and keeping him pinned, trapped, defenseless, terror bleeding through the frayed edges of his mind.

he feels lost and scared. frustration wells up in his throat, threatening to choke him. he doesn’t know what to do here, clumsy and stupid and directionless. dio is supposed to help him. dio is supposed to tell him what to do here, how to stop being so fucking stupid, but everything is empty and confusing right now, and his breath is coming heavy and short, and there’s a splitting pain behind his eyes and blood on his hands and it makes him sick and–

golden intent finally snags back into his mind as clear as a fishhook through his lip. he’s being stupid. he’s going to kill this boy and bring dio a jar of his blood and never think about him again. he never has headaches like this in cairo. he’s never had to worry about anything like this in cairo. he just needs to kill him and then he can go back to dio’s dark cold mansion full of patterned silks and flickering candles and sweet, heavy smoke and the sun.

dio's mouth drags along the soft skin keeping his veins in his wrist. he's cold, and he isn't gentle, and the motion makes kakyoin's insides clench and roll with, with, with delight, must be, hazy and bubbly and icy cold like how champagne must be. the tendons in his forearm flex, shivering shuddering under the touch, and a piece of him eclipsed by the sun begs him to pull his arm back in, hide his soft insides and the pale angular lattices cut and faded across his skin that are exposed along with the blue veins at his pulse and the narrow bones underneath, hide the blood pulsing at the fragile border there.

  kakyoin was very little when his father took him to kurobe dam once, and his skin crawled with the presence of the sheer amount of power, energy caught up behind its concrete veil. it scared him beyond any rational capacity of knowing– a six year old can't understand things like that, but he had felt in the ache of his teeth the immensity and alacrity of death which would spill out if that concrete film tore.

it aches like an ecstasy when dio's teeth sink in. the pain is first incandescently bright, like a satellite flare or a shooting star, but what it resolves into is unmistakably the deep, persistent ache of something lodged in flesh. the thought that he looks stupid– vulnerable, flayed out, pinned open is batted like a fly from where it skates across his mind. all the other thoughts drain out too, swirling dizzily down the drain, out his wrist and onto dio's tongue, and he sits swaying and still against his teeth until the sun pulls away, leaves him empty with his vision staticky like a bad tape, blurred and blackspotted where his eyes are fixed on the carpet. 

kakyoin lurches with the sudden absence, almost collapsing until the sun catches him with a hand in his hair, darkness surging in front of his eyes and spinning his head with a rush like he's drunk. fingers tighten to pull him back upright, his head following with a jerk, and it makes nausea churn in the pit of his stomach. dio's so nice to not let him smack his head on a sharp table corner, and he can hear his laugh, sharp and rich and tinged with something he can't quite put his finger on echoing around between his ears. he sways back and forth, tugged by dio’s hand, and he’s too, too tired and hazy to do anything but let his head follow the motion.

 he's saying something, but it doesn't fit into words, just sounds that muddle and ring together. there's blood on dio's mouth.

 his blood. wow. weird. weird to think about his own blood in dio’s body, in his veins, sitting flush under his rodin marble skin.

 it only makes sense that his sun takes something from him, pulls something out through the angry bitemark lingering in purple bruises. he's already given kakyoin part of himself, shared flesh and blood with him, graced his tangled mess of a head with himself. settled him all aright. it's only right that kakyoin lets him take what he wants from him.

 there's green lipstick smeared across his pulse point. he wants to throw up. he wouldn't, not on dio’s carpet. when dio lets go, he falls face first into the couch instead. much better than a sharp corner. he's so kind to him.

he misses.. he misses it. his kindness, his honey-blood smile. and he doesn’t like how kujo is holding him. distantly, he thinks that it probably hurts and then hierophant is… did he tell them to… did they, on their own? when did… 

hierophant’s acid rips through the other stand before he catches the tail end of the thought, and relief floods him. that’s the end of that, then. thank god. the boy’s lying crumpled in rubble and there’s a weird, tangled feeling in his throat that he thinks is probably relief. easy enough to leave and let someone find his shredded body and never think about it again.

then his eyes open and kakyoin wants to scream and swear and cry and crush his fucking head in with a piece of rubble. he can feel the piercing headache building up behind his eyes. it's easy enough to let the anger bleed out his words. he's always been good at that, hasn't he? he's always known how to use words to get what he wants.

some of the things that fall out of his mouth are confusing him. he doesn’t– why would his stand feel things? it’s stupid. that’s not its job. but the boy’s face twists at whatever he’s saying so it must be good enough to scare him, at least, to make him start rotting in a fragment of the guilt he should feel before he dies. 

“this is your fault, jojo,” he says, words sharp on his tongue like hierophant’s edges, stirring up echoes and buried memories that push to the forefront of his mind with emotions attached. “look at what you’ve done!” 

he clenches his teeth to keep his face from wobbling, wills the heavy feeling and the snapshot yellowed memories of disappointed looks on his parents faces, anxious and frustrated, fear like nausea and guilt riding like a blanket cape wrapped around his shoulders away into the foggy haze they dredged themselves up from. “all you had to do was let me kill you,” he makes his voice soft and honey-sweet, full of venomous patience and a mean edge, dio’s voice echoing in his head, “and the doctor would have walked away unharmed!”

blood pools and spreads, reaching the soles of his shoes. he doesn’t move. psychiatrists and doctors and parents and dio with blood on his fingers and a corpse on his lap all melt and blur and push for primacy in the back of his mind. kujo is probably too strong to choke with his bare hands, but the thought of it lingers in his mind temptingly, frustrated and venomous and itching for some way to bleed it out. 

hierophant reforms next to him, putting him between itself and the corpse, slowly coiling back together, and it’s almost as reassuring as knowing that dio’s still with him.

when the boy gets up, he's saying something idiotic about morality, about how he's a piece of work himself. he snarls with his bloody teeth and spits out how evil means using people for your own gain, which is patently and obviously ridiculous because everyone does this, people have always been using other people for their own fucking benefit as long as there have been people around to think, and honestly, kakyoin doesn't really care. at least he's not the one being taken advantage of. he'd rather be the evil one than the powerless, helpless idiot who lets things like that happen to him.

he laughs at him. of course. “what, evil?” he gets out between giggles, running a hand down his face to scrub away the splattered blood. “jojo, the loser is evil. it's fate! that's how destiny is! some things,” and he hears dio's smooth voice, talking about this over full red wineglasses, a corpse dead in the corner, “are fated to happen, and some things aren't. if you survive, that's just justice!” 

kujo's looking at him with a disgusted expression as he continues. “if you lose, or, or, or, if you get fucked by something, that's just your own fault, for being someone who lets things like that happen to you!” 

he tries helplessly to wipe the laughter off his face, straightening with a smile, acid bubbling and pooling in hierophant's palms. “which is why i'm very good at winning.”

and then it doesn't–

work?

kujo's stand catches his blast? acid sizzles and drips, eating at his hands, but he doesn't– that's impossible. and then there's a hand tight around his neck again, firm enough that he chokes at it, and he feels a kaleidoscope of pain that's hierophant's, not his, and–

the first thing that dio, who makes the hair on his neck stand up on end and has his own gravitational pull like a rare earth magnet or a planet or the world himself says to him is hello, and his mouth curves in a slash of a smile and he tilts his head to say hello to hierophant too, where they're hovering in front of kakyoin like a shield, and kakyoin already knows that he's fucked.

there's a piece of him that knows very well that you should never ever accept offers from beautiful people you meet in dark alleys on full moons, when they smile at you with the sun caught in their eyes and long white teeth and invite you to their mansion. what crystallizes in kakyoin's mind is this: a bubbling hysteria, disbelief. embarrassment and delight and fear and hope are churning together in the fragile hollow of his throat. there was never a world where he said no, there wasn't even a chance of one.

it's blurry after this. he might have been scared, maybe, but it's smudged out by now. when would he have been afraid? not on the walk there, their laughter ringing from the narrow streets, dio’s eyes heavy and gold on him. after the heady sweet smoke and copper tang that clouded the mosaic floors and perfect arches of his palace? before red wine and medjool dates? he'd never gotten drunk before, never even tipsy. he would have been stupid to be scared when dio's sharp nails brushed the back of his neck. dio asked him questions and he can't remember them, dissolved like wet paper in his memory, just remembers his own mouth shaping a yes, the way his smooth low voice reverberated inside his skull, the bright flash of pain like a kiss to the forehead and the relief of weight swept from his mind is like a tablecloth full of dishes smashed on tile.

he’s hazy, drifting in and out of cloudbanks of unconsciousness. his perpetual headache has melted into a real migraine, like someone's stabbing needles through his eyes and skull and into his brain, and he can't scrape together the strength to kill the boy who's carrying him. Jotaro’s shoulder is warm, sturdy against him, and it feels illicit when he inhales the vague tobacco-and-laundry-detergent scent that clings to the wool of his gakuran. it rolls around his palate, shimmers into the incense-spice-hot-metal of dio's silk-draped palace and cold soft skin. they're probably going somewhere, and kakyoin feels a sort of petulant annoyance that someone who's not the sun is making him do something.

 who does this stupid boy think he is? he's nothing like dio.

the body the boy dumps on the floor feels like a clumsy pile of disparate limbs. like a stringsnapped marionette, tangled, useless. he couldn't move if he wanted to, and the sun wants him to, wants him to wrap his hands around the boy's neck and push his thumbs into his trachea until he bleeds–

blood runs down his wrists and the little rivulets tickle. cherry juice stains under his nails, impossible to get out, and the churning black hole feeling in his gut is hunger mixed with giddy delight, heavy and dense and eager for more. dio licks his fingers after he feeds, luxurious like a lion full on flesh, sticky with blood, and the cattle he fills himself on are so stupid and low that they don't understand the gift the sun is giving them, how their blood shouldn't even dare touch him. and Kakyoin clumsily tries to imitate him– brings his hand up to his mouth, tastes the hot iron of it, feels his vision go dizzy. he blinks and he's licked his hands clean, feels stickiness and cherry juice and acrid metal clinging to the divots of his teeth, the base of his tongue. his stomach rolls with excitement, heavier than before. blood and acid rise in the back of his throat.

he blinks and he's on the wood floor, dark hair and morning sunshine leaning over him, and he blinks again, and he's draped over an upholstered thing in dio’s chambers, clouded from opium, acrid and burnt-sugar sweet. his vision blurs, smearing like wet ink, and dio is looking down at him, smile caught beautifully on his pale face like a smear of blood against porcelain. 

his fingers push through kakyoin's hair, and kakyoin lets his head tilt back into it, throat arching, eyes drooping half-shut like they always do.

something's wrong, though. instead of dio’s cold sharp nails combing through his hair, scraping across his scalp to tug at his hair, they just. stay there? 

he's warmer than usual, and it's two hands, not one, framing his forehead, pushing his long bangs back from his face probing at his forehead and kakyoin tries not to make a noise at it– he doesn't like that, but the sun can do whatever it wants, but he's– it's– he blinks again and it's not dio, the hair is all wrong and the bones are all different and the eyes– the eyes– they're not liquid gold, are they? they're not. how could he mistake them? 

the disparate features swim and dance and resolve themselves. this face is younger, his age, softer than dio's chiseled marble, flushed warm with stress under high cheekbones and a nasty, raw bruise stretching across his set jaw. nothing cold or white here, just dark wool and darker hair and a look in blue eyes like he wants to kill something. probably him.

his palms are still sweaty and warm against the sides of kakyoin's face, though, fingers pressed tight behind his ears, and even if he's going to die like this he shouldn't let him do that, shouldn't let him disgrace where the sun’s hands have pressed icy and strong against his skin. it’s, it’s, what’s the word, it’s sacrilegious. for someone like that to pretend they’re like god. a sick roiling angry dread wells up in him, an energy coiling in his muscles. he's preparing to spring into action– jotaro's a stupid brute, but even he can't tank a sudden hit to the forehead– but then, again, he disappointed the sun. he didn't do what he wanted. he fucked up and he really really really never wanted to disappoint someone who is as kind to him as dio is and he thought he would at least just be dead by now. the boy should have killed him, it's what he would have done. it's what he'd expect. somehow there's less fear at the idea of death in his stomach than he'd expected he'd have.

but he's not. dead. he's not. yet. kujo’s bulk is pressing him into the floor and his hands are on his cheeks and– surely he's not– kakyoin doesn't even know how he's planning on finishing the thought, incredulity fraying into fear fraying into dio’s hand tugging sharp against his scalp, his carnivore look at the endless string of beautiful girls and boys that fell into his chambers and the corpses dragged out by an ankle or a fistful of hair– they're related, aren't they? dio and this boy? they could– he could– 

it's a thought that dissipates into nothing with the things the boy is saying to whoever else in the room, words that just don't make sense, jumbled out of order about parasites and surgeons and years left to live. nothing that makes sense to him, unless they're like the sun and they like watching people squirm while they're pinned, and it shouldn't make him afraid but it does.

jotaro kujo frowns at him. “stay still, unless you want your brain to get fried,” he says, voice low and rough around the edges, and kakyoin's mind reels wildly back through the past bloodsplashed hours for a moment to pinpoint as the reason why the boy he is supposed to kill is holding his face carefully in his hands. he can't think of any reason. he feels dizzy. he feels jotaro's weight heavy on his stomach. he's drowning in the pacific ocean. when his vision splits and doubles into a cloud of stars he blames it on the headache, and then there's the pain.

the pain is a clarity that cuts through his spinning mind like it's jello. words like cold come to mind, and white, and past believing, a pain that blanks out anything else fitting in his brain. like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull, he thinks hysterically with the blown-out scraps of thought that the pain hasn't wiped away.

he's incandescent with agony. he's going to die here like this but kujo's rough words are rattling around in the searing nothingness of his consciousness and something about the weight them and the hands on his face and the tossing undulating starry waves of his stand and the way his blue blue tidepooling eyes pierce through him in a sharp and scared way that even dio's haven't done before keeps him still. he doesn't want to move. and that's, that's allowed, right? if he doesn't want to do something, he doesn't have to? it's a startlingly strange thought to catch amid everything. 

are there tears running down his face? there's something wet. he supposes it's only fair of him to kill him like this, after all. but he feels something pull, horrible and wriggling and wet and the sensation makes him shudder against the hands keeping him still, and nausea suddenly surges sharp to his throat with the feeling of it, shaking and gagging through the pain as something happens, 

Morning sunlight slants through the open door, splashing across the ceiling and streaming through the windows. The rhythmic sound of a shishi-odoshi is knocking above the gentle sounds of running water. There are three different men staring down at Kakyoin with various, extremely disconcerting expressions on their faces. Or– two men and Kujo, who still has blood and ink dried down half his face. Oh god.

He’s vaguely aware of memories riffling through the back of his mind, foggy and sticky and nauseating. It’s great that he’s very, very good at compartmentalizing, because he doesn’t– should he know who these men are? He didn't– didn't know there were other people. Here. Watching this. Watching him. 

What distracts him from the writhing mass of fear and embarrassment and dread is Hierophant crashing into him so hard they both stumble. Not really, of course, but the joy and the relief that flood their mind feels like a tide of light that washes everything else out for now. Its emotions hum and tremble and overlap with his like panes of colored glass, the notes of a chord. God, how was he surviving alone, without his best friend? How– were they lonely? What did they watch him do? 

Hierophant pushes down on those thoughts. They can figure all of that out later. What matters is that it’s done, and he’s out, and he catches glimpses of their loneliness and fear and guilt and dread the past couple months before they push him away from that too. Okay. That. Later. 

He feels them, invisible and small and secret from Kujo– Jotaro? and the others, slide inside his brain. Their vision overlaps and refocuses as it curls through all twisting alleys of his frontal lobe like a weird little snake, checking and double checking every inch of him until they're satisfied that Jotaro's stand did a thorough job and there's nothing left in him, and then they shiver and settle. They intend to stay there, as close as they can get to him, so close that they're practically the same being, and it's the most comforting thing Kakyoin's felt in… oh god. Months, probably. He doesn’t– hm. He probably could remember, if he tried. That doesn’t feel like a good thing to do in front of strangers.

The relief crests again, leaves him shaking like he just crashed from an adrenaline high. There's still something warm and wet trickling down his head, and matching red wiped messily on the back of Jotaro's hand, where that– thing has tried to parasitize him. Ah, there's the nausea rising again. 

Jotaro's off him like he's been burned, now that he's. Awake? Back? Something? and all his muscles scream as he pushes himself up to sitting. His head spins at it, but it's just– normal, not a sickening drunken whirl, and his fingers come away red when he raises a hand to his forehead and then flinches at the sting. He blinks.

His vision locks onto Jotaro, who's already turned and almost out the door. There’s blood and concrete dust smeared across the back of his big dark gakuran. The words are out of his mouth as soon as he thinks them. “Why did you–” he stumbles. “Save me? You could have died.”

Jotaro freezes. He doesn't even turn around. When he answers it's awkward too, halting and careful like the movement of his fingers picking at his sleeves, arms wrapped around himself. “Dunno.”

He stays for another moment, hesitant. “I really couldn’t tell you,” he adds before he's gone.

Kakyoin stares at the space he's left, dazed. “Thanks,” he mumbles under his breath. Sorry, he holds back behind his teeth.

One of the men snorts, and Kakyoin’s attention jumps back to them. 

“That’s just how he is,” the older one says– not Japanese, in his sixties, maybe, scruffy and shaggy and grayed like a grandpa Indiana Jones, and it takes Kakyoin a moment to parse the english, another moment to ignore the way it pulls him back to Dio’s mansion. “Stubborn and rude as hell, but his heart’s in a good place. Kakyoin, right? First name, last name, that what we call ya?”

Kakyoin pauses with his tongue to his teeth, trying to ignore the sense-memory of his first name rolled around Dio’s tongue– round and sweet, shortened to the first two syllables in his smooth accent. Nori, blood-slick or rounded with idle amusement, singsong and bored and breathy in his ear. “Kakyoin is– fine, yes. And you are…?”

The man laughs, big and booming. “Oh, I forgot! I’m Joseph Joestar, Jotaro’s grandpa. This is my friend Muhammed Avdol,” he waves to the other guy– younger, dark skinned with gold jewelry and a headband pushing back bantu knots. “We came over to help Jotaro figure out his stand. He locked himself in jail once it manifested and wouldn’t come out!”

Huh. He was right about the grandpa thing.

Avdol gives him a twist of a smile while Joseph keeps laughing over what he said. “I’m Avdol. How are you feeling? Dizziness, light sensitivity, confusion?”

Kakyoin’s turn to laugh, startled and awkward. “Ah, just the, um. Normal amount of confusion, I think. I… Well, you know.”

Avdol doesn’t know, if the worry on his face is any indication. “Really. I don’t know how long you were– I know about Dio, I mean. What he’s like. Do you–”

“I’m fine, really,” Kakyoin cuts him off with a smile that comes as easy as it ever has. Avdol is very kind, and he needs him to stop talking right fucking now before he throws up the contents of his stomach onto the tatami. Oh god. When did he eat last? What– what did he eat last? His eyes catch on Avdol’s headband, what he just said. Is he… “When you say you know about…” his tongue refuses to work for a second, “about Dio, do you mean you…” 

“Oh. No, sorry. I had heard about him before we met, and I ran away very fast.” 

Kakyoin breathes a sharp laugh again, memory thick and hazy and clogging his mind. “Smarter than me!” he smiles.

There’s a knock at the open door to save the trainwreck of a conversation from whatever Avdol was going to say to that, and Hierophant is coiled tense around him before Kakyoin even registers it.

“Hello!”

It is– probably not a threat. She doesn’t look like a threat, at least– near his mom’s age (oh god. His mom.), with fluffy hair and the exact same million-watt smile as Joseph and a first-aid kit under one arm. She sits down across from Kakyoin, gives him a considering look, then turns to the other two. He lets the heavily accented english roll off his brain, closing his eyes shut against the trembling exhaustion that’s pulling through him. Hierophant nudges against him in their mind, nothing but a gesture of comfort. 

He’s jerked from his anxious half asleep by the lady– Jotaro’s mom? He tried to kill him. Why hasn’t his mom kicked him out of her house?-- saying his name. Saying it several times, probably, if the amusement in her voice is any indicator, and saying it right, even, the Japanese easier in her mouth than either of the other two. The other two are gone from the room.

“Hi,” she smiles again, “Kakyoin, right? I’m Holly, or, well, Jotaro’s mom. Do you mind if I help you clean up? I saw you were hurt coming in here, and I know how well teenage boys take care of themselves after a scrape.” It’s punctuated by an eyeroll and her brisk movements as she unpacks the first aid kit. Presumably no, and what? why? and I was trying to kill your son an hour ago aren’t responses she’s accepting. 

“Um,” he says, intelligently. “Thank you, I– you should help your son first, I didn’t… He’s probably worse off than me.” 

Holly shakes her head with a face. “Oh, that boy won’t let me near him with a box of bandaids anymore. But he knows how to take care of himself, and he’s smart. I taught him how to bandage his knuckles and get gravel out of a skinned knee. You, though,” and she levels an antiseptic wipe at him, “you look like you’ve been having a bad day.”

Kakyoin can’t deny this. “Maybe a little bit,” he allows, off balance. Her movements are deft and matter-of-fact as she takes his face in a hand just like her son did, firmly wiping away crusted blood with the other. The scent of rubbing alcohol fills his nose, and suddenly he’s aware of the ridiculousness of the situation, like a camera lens swooping out to capture a full scene. “Mrs. Kujo,--” 

“Holly.”

“Mrs. Holly, I don’t– I really shouldn’t be here any longer. I hurt your son very badly, and I–” the rest of the sentence looms like a chasm in front of him. He what? He doesn’t even– he’s said awful things, done worse, he’s killed before, probably, did anything Dio wanted him to him do, even though his mind feels like it’s stuffed with cotton when he tries to run back through the past few months. He belongs in a jail cell at best, not– getting taken care of by the mother of the person he just tried to murder. 

However he’s going to finish the sentence gets cut off by an involuntary yelp of pain as Holly pours hydrogen peroxide onto another cloth and presses it into his forehead.

“Now, Kakyoin,” she tosses the cloth away and reaches for the gauze. “I don’t know you very well, but from what Papa says, you’ve had a very bad time recently, and I’m not kicking a teenage boy with a bleeding head wound out of my house. You’re going to stay here tonight if you don’t have parents to come pick you up, so you can get some rest and  we can both make sure that whatever happened to you isn’t going to happen again. This is a big, empty house, and it’s nice to have someone in it besides me and Jotaro. Did someone make you do it?”

All of these words in the order they’re in is sort of throwing Kakyoin more off balance than anything else that’s happened today. He blinks, repeating the last question, then tenses when it sinks in. “Did– what do you mean?”

“You don’t seem like the kind of boy who likes being mean, and I’m good at judging people. You said you hurt people. Did you do it for fun, or was there somebody making you do it?”

He can’t– of course he did it. He can’t just– wave away what he did! He can’t just say oh, I’m not guilty, like he didn’t– like he hasn’t– he did it because he wanted to. Because he did. He can remember the wanting and the hunger in his gut and the magnetic pull like a moon falling into orbit and the warm blood on his hands and in his throat. He can’t just say that– It was his own fault. 

He opens his mouth to say this and then, swiftly and decisively, his body decides to betray him and he crumples into tears instead. 

Holly makes a noise of sympathy, dropping the gauze and pulling him into her arms. She’s stronger than he expected, her arms as firm as her voice when she hugs him. He chokes on a sob, and he’s probably getting snot and tears all over her blouse which is incredibly awful. He’s crying into a near stranger’s arms and she’s the middle aged mom of the boy he was trying to kill this morning and she’s rocking him back and forth a little, rubbing circles on his back like he’s a little kid, and somehow she still feels more like a mom than his mom ever has. It’s even worse that he can’t even bring himself to feel embarrassed enough to stop and politely refuse everything and leave– where, exactly? God. Somewhere that’s not– Somewhere. And deal with the still probably bleeding head wound–oh god, he’s getting blood all over her blouse too– on his own. But– he’s exhausted and nauseous and his head is spinning with the past blurring with the present and none of the past morning feels real and none of the past months feels real and this is the first time since that thing got pulled out of him that he doesn’t feel Dio’s cold breath raising the hairs on the back of his neck.

Instead he sobs until he’s all cried out, wrung out and tired and empty–feeling, and Holly holds him steady the entire time. When he finally pulls away, all she does is smile and hand him a tissue.

“Better?” 

 Hierophant shimmers into view around him, coils tight around him in his own hug. Kakyoin squeezes his eyes shut and nods. “Yeah. Better.”