Chapter Text
It was a quiet night in the desert when Polnareff’s ability to keep his mouth shut finally seemed to fail him. Kakyoin wasn’t surprised–he was shocked Polanareff even lasted as long as he did. Mr. Joestar was asleep on the opposite side of the fire, snoring loud enough to alert any stand user of their presence, and Jotaro was standing a ways away from the rest of the group, shrouded in partial darkness. Kakyoin could just make out the way his back muscles shifted as he lifted a hand from his pocket. The contour of the fire against his jacket seemed to playfully hint at the musculature underneath as he put the cigarette pinched between his fingers up to his lips.
Jotaro never offered up much information about himself, and likewise Kakyoin never asked. Occasionally, though, he’d find himself wondering about the boy who’d saved his life no more than a month ago. On those long nights in the desert, he wondered why Jotaro smoked so far away from the fire. Perhaps he was musing to himself; thinking about the day that passed, the day ahead, or, maybe, his mother back home. Then again, maybe he was trying to decompress alone, away from the rest of them. That, or it was too hot to smoke by the fire.
Either way, Kakyoin ached to know. He’d never ask, though, so instead he watched as Jotaro flicked open a lighter with practiced ease, lit a cigarette, and took a nice, long, drag.
“Soooooo…” came a sing-songy voice from behind Kakyoin, quickly accompanied by a rough poke to the back. “You and Joooootaroooo, huh?”
Just behind Kakyoin, crouching in a way that was reminiscent to the posture one might assume when talking to a rather small child, was Polnareff, who was supposed to be sleeping on the other side of the fire in the now-empty sleeping bag next to Mr. Joestar. His lips were pursed and his eyebrows were raised as though he were asking an innocent question to a friend as opposed to his being in his mid-20s pestering a highschooler.
“Polnareff,” Kakyoin coughed out, trying to conceal his alarm. “I thought you were asleep.”
Polnareff sidled up next to Kakyoin, propping his chin up on his palm and grinning in a manner that made Kakyoin’s eye twitch. “I was, but Mr. Joestar’s snoring kept me awake.” He raised an eyebrow. “And anyways, you’ve been ogling Jotaro every night for a while now. As your best friend, I think I deserve to get the scoop here.” His last statement was punctuated with another poke.
“Who decided that?” Kakyoin retorted, smacking Polnareff’s hand away. Of all the people to have figured him out, it had to be the guy with the biggest mouth in the entire desert. He could feel his face getting warm, and he knew Polnareff wouldn’t buy it if he blamed it on the fire.
Kakyoin’s retort earned a scowl from Polnareff, but there was no venom behind it. “Well, as your traveling companion, I deserve to know that you have a–” poke “--big–” poke “--fat–” poke “--crush–”
Frantically, Kakyoin shushed Polnareff, slapping his hands over his mouth. He glanced around with such solemnity that Polnareff would’ve thought that there was a stand user around, if it weren’t for the strikingly apparent redness in Kakyoin’s face. “That’s none of your– eww!”
By the time Kakyoin registered the warm, wet sensation dragging across his palms, it was already too late. He ripped his saliva-covered hands off of Polnareff’s mouth, frantically searching in his pockets for a handkerchief.
Polnareff, for all the germs he probably had on his tongue, seemed rather proud of himself. He playfully shoved a still-fuming Kakyoin as the boy in question furiously scrubbed at his hands. “So I’m right! You do!”
Ignoring this, Kakyoin chucked the dirty handkerchief in Polnareff’s direction, making a point to turn away from him.
When had the two of them become so comfortable? When he’d first met Polnareff–the real Polnareff, not the one that was under Dio’s control–he didn’t think they’d get along. Kakyoin pegged himself as a somewhat meek person, and Polnareff was so loud and pushy that he was certain they wouldn’t mesh. Yet, he found himself scolding Polnareff for his thoughtlessness with practiced ease, and Polnareff always somehow found a way to make him laugh.
Kakyoin remembered how he felt when Polnareff ran off on his own to exact his revenge on the man with two left hands. The empty seat at the dinner table, the lack of any noise from the hotel room next door, and the way Polnareff seemed almost eager to die–Kakyoin was gripped with an unfamiliar fear, one that kept him up that night.
Even on that night in the desert, as Polnareff grinned smugly, waiting for an answer as if he had some god-given right to know all of Kakyoin’s business, Kakyoin felt happier than he’d ever felt before they’d met.
So Kakyoin relented. “Fine,” he said. “I do.”
“Super!” Polnareff exclaimed, not even having the decency to act surprised. He leaned forward to place himself comfortably in Kakyoin’s peripheral vision, batting his stupidly long eyelashes. “So… when are you gonna tell him?”
“Tell him…” Kakyoin whipped around, eyes widening. “Tell him!?”
Polnareff actually had the gall to roll his eyes. “Well, yeah. I’m surprised you haven’t already.”
Clearly, Polnareff was attempting to get a rise out of him. As far as Kakyoin was concerned, the Frenchman was a pervert with no dating history to speak of, and he was trying to screw Kakyoin over.
“You say it like it’s simple,” Kakyoin said, trying to remain level-headed.
Polnareff’s blase expression didn’t move an inch. “Well, yeah, it is.” To Kakyoin’s horror, Polnareff seemed to be struck with an idea. He straightened up, pointing a finger in Kakyoin’s face. “All you have to do is walk riiiiight on up to him and say–” it was at this point he took on a mocking disposition, raising his voice 3 octaves and putting both hands under his chin in a way that might’ve been cute if he was 15 years younger. “Je t'aime, mon chéri!”
Kakyoin was horrified. Suppressing the instinct to scream, he instead reacted physically, shoving a self-satisfied Polnareff to the ground. “Quit joking around!” he hissed, cursing the way the corners of his mouth seemed to quirk up on their own.
“I’m not!” Polnareff retorted, sitting up, but the remnants of his shockingly girlish giggling gave him away. He wilted slightly under Kakyoin’s half-serious glaring, sighing deeply. “Okay, fine, I was joking just then.” He nudged Kakyoin. “You have to do it in Japanese, not French!” He struck up a pose again, staring at Kakyoin as though waiting for his approval. Despite himself, Kakyoin snorted and lightly smacked Polnareff on the arm.
“Cut that out,” he said, smiling fully. Polnareff obliged, pretending to look disappointed. He leaned back on his arms, and with a large sigh that shifted his entire frame, his cheeky grin turned to a tight-lipped smile that seemed to age him.
His voice was hushed. “I'm serious, though. You should say something while you have the chance.”
“While I have the chance?” Kakyoin raised an eyebrow. “You're saying it as though Jotaro’s leaving us anytime soon.” He smiled playfully, but there was a certain glint in Polnareff’s eyes that made his expression falter.
“It’s not like I’m counting on it,” Polnareff said, voice reduced to a mumble. “I never am. But it happens anyway. It can happen to you, too.” He looked at Kakyoin with such earnestness that it seemed to root him in place. “You know that, right?”
Those words were piercing. Any half-joking retort Kakyoin had worked up got caught in his throat, strangled by the look in Polnareff’s eyes. Neither spoke for a while, the would-be silence taken up by Mr. Joestar’s snoring. Very distantly, Kakyoin could hear the sand shift under Jotaro’s foot as he snuffed a cigarette out on the ground. Shakily, Kakyoin opened his mouth and spoke.
“Yeah, I know that.” He averted his eyes. “Of course I do.”
“There are a lot of things I wish I said to people before they left,” Polnareff whispered. He sounded less like he was speaking to Kakyoin and more like he was reminiscing. “My mom, Sherry…” he swallowed thickly, “...Avdol.”
“Avdol…” Kakyoin winced, averting his gaze as though Polnareff could read his thoughts through his eyes. Then… “Avdol!?”
Polnareff nodded. “Yeah… Avdol.” He seemed to grow sheepish all of a sudden, a small, weak smile gracing his face. He gave Kakyoin a half-hearted little nudge. “That’s what I mean,” he said. “You can never be sure when your last chance is. I just don’t want you to regret anything. As your, uh…” a smirk, “traveling companion.”
Kakyoin managed a weak chuckle, but both he and Polnareff knew his heart wasn’t in it. Polnareff made a big show of stretching and getting comfortable in his spot next to Kakyoin, as if to say, take your time, so Kakyoin looked back out at Jotaro.
At the very least, amidst all the chaos, Jotaro never really seemed to change. He was smoking yet another cigarette, planted firmly in the exact spot Kakyoin had left him.
It wasn’t the mystery and intrigue that made Kakyoin like him. It was that steadfastness of his, the way they could be in any kind of predicament and Kakyoin could still say with any kind of certainty that Jotaro could find a way out of it, the way that, no matter what happened during the day, Kakyoin could always rely on the fact that, when night came around, he’d find Jotaro some distance away, smoking a cigarette. He hadn’t cared much for smokers before, but, at some point, the smell of smoke became soothing, just another reminder that there was always someone there he could rely on.
“I never thought I was the type of person to do something like this,” Kakyoin said. “Every time I get backed into a corner, it always seems to take me back to when I met Dio. How I acted back then… it’s embarrassing to think about it now.” He peeked at Polnareff out of the corner of his eye. Instinctually, the Frenchman was pressing his fingers to his forehead, grimacing. “I submitted to Dio’s will back then because I was a coward.” He clenched his fists. “That won’t happen again. Not this time.”
With a click of his tongue, Polnareff lowered his hand from his forehead. “Yeah, I get what you’re trying to say. Basically you have to defeat Dio first, right?” He gave Kakyoin a hard look, furrowing his brows. Kakyoin drew back, alarmed, until Polnareff cracked a smile, becoming mock-stern. “Don’t get killed on purpose just so you don’t have to do it, okay? I’m onto you!”
Kakyoin cracked a smile. “Then, how about this? If I die before we defeat Dio, you tell Jotaro for me.”
“Ewwww!” Polnareff exclaimed, looking down at his hand as though he were about to deliver a soliloquy. “Meddling in teenagers’ love lives… no thank you.”
“You just were!” Kakyoin smacked Polnareff on the back of the head.
Defensively, Polnareff fixed his hair. “Nope. I don’t remember doing such a thing.” To Kakyoin’s horror, he seemed to be struck with an idea, a large grin taking up the majority of his face. “Besides, I don’t speak a lick of Japanese!” he just about shouted. “Even if you told me what to say, my pronunciation would be all off! So, instead I’d have to say something like…” he struck up a familiar pose. “Je t'aime, mon chér– OW!”
And with a swift kick to the shin, he was down for the count. “I’m serious, though.” Kakyoin said, voice carrying over Polnareff’s probably-dramatic groans of agony. “If I can’t say it, someone has to.” He glanced over. “As my best friend, the job should go to you.”
Polnareff groaned. “Who decided that?”
“What happened here?” muttered a deep, gruff voice.
Like two schoolboys goofing around during detention, Kakyoin and Polnareff both snapped to attention. Standing before them was Jotaro, who looked as if he really didn’t care about the answer to his own question.
“Nothing,” Kakyoin said, recovering a lot more gracefully than Polnareff, who looked like he was already struggling to keep a secret. “He was being an idiot, so I dealt with him.”
Jotaro glanced between the two for a long while, then grunted a response before skulking towards his sleeping bag. Kakyoin stared at the way the firelight moved against the back of his jacket, and opened his mouth to speak.
“Why do you smoke so far away from the fire?” It came out innocuously enough, but Kakyoin felt the almost irresistible urge to curse himself for asking something so stupid. He avoided looking at Polnareff, who was probably making a stupid face at him.
Jotaro glanced back at Kakyoin, expression as unreadable as always. It took every ounce of strength in Kakyoin’s body to keep a straight face. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Jotaro shrugged.
“I like looking at the stars.”
“I see,” Kakyoin replied. “Well, good night, Jotaro.”
To Kakyoin’s chagrin, Jotaro turned back around. “Yeah, g’night.”
Kakyoin couldn’t help but smile.