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It's vivid and intense, yet there are no colours. Only dark grey is visible to Jotaro here. Part of it seems familiar, like he's lived through a nightmare like this before, but he can't find the memory. All he can find is grey, figures and objects slowly forming in different tones, so he can make out the scene. When he does, he feels the bile rising in his throat.
Water. Lots of water pours through and around a body. Jotaro is looking down at a water tower from a helicopter and up against its bent, distorted shape is the body of Kakyoin. He's dead, and looks at peace but the stoic teen knows that he died full of fear and helplessly hoping for his sacrifice to have significance.
It did, but would he ever know?
His intestines fell out, little by little, dropping onto an unknown alleyway in Cairo unceremoniously. The water was a darker shade of grey in certain places; it was tainted with blood. The imperfect hole created by The World’s fist slowly expanded and became perfectly round and smooth like the canyons formed by rushing rivers he’d seen in documentaries.
Jotaro knelt down, feeling vomit rising in his throat. But he fell from the helicopter due to his foolishness, landing straight onto the redhead’s body-
He shot up in a bed, seeing saturated colours and feeling a dip to his left. A hand was rubbing his back almost immediately and when he turned his head he saw Noriaki smiling sweetly at him.
It was the hotel in Singapore, where they'd first kissed, where Jotaro knows he hadn't been in a long time.
“Sleep well?” the redhead said, but the voice did not belong to him. It was too deep and demonic, too unsettling and seductive.
Slowly, the loving smile became menacing, green with fangs protruding, and the soft violet eyes of Jotaro’s lover became amber and slanted. The hand on his back began to scratch as sharp nails pierced through his skin while they grew. His skin ripped open, and blood soaked the white sheets behind him.
Jotaro could only tremble. No scream left his lips, and no Star Platinum came to save him. His body denied movement, and he sat there, shaking and whimpering like a pathetic child.
A second hand seeped into his neck, and at an agonizingly slow pace he felt life blood leaving his body. The space around him faded to grey and black once more.
•••
“JoJo, wake up! JoJo!”
With a gasp, Jotaro’s eyes snapped open, wide and full of stress. He was panting, looking as though he was experiencing an earthquake with how hard his body shuddered. His hands were grasping the pillow beneath him like he was clinging to life itself. He was curled into a fetal position on his side, most likely looking absolutely pitiful.
A figure was kneeling on the futon, muscular and slender.
“No,” Jotaro blurted gruffly, sitting up inhumanely quick upon laying his eyes on Kakyoin, who looked nothing short of concerned and confused.
“Miss Holly let me in,” the redhead spoke slowly, unsure of what to do. “You were shaking in your sleep, so I woke you. Do you want me to leave…?”
Ever blunt, Jotaro reached out and put his hand against Kakyoin’s cheek, pressing lightly.
“JoJo?”
“Sorry,” he sighed, pulling his hand back placing it over his face in place of pulling his currently-absent hat down over his eyes. “You can stay.”
Kakyoin looked at him, as though he was analyzing him, before standing up. “I’ll be in the kitchen, we can walk to school together when you're ready.”
Jotaro let out a grunt of acknowledgement as the redhead walked out, both of them eyeing each other over their shoulders.
They both knew what the other was thinking.
•••
“Come to class, please?”
Of course, Kakyoin had to find Jotaro on the roof of the school, dropping cigarette after cigarette down onto the pavement several floors below. Time spent on his own seemed to no longer be an option for the stoic teen, though he couldn't complain when it was his cherry-haired friend. The kid was quiet and never had a friend before; Jotaro could make an exception to his distant attitude when it came to Kakyoin.
“No,” he replied blankly, tiredly, without turning his head to face Kakyoin. He heard footsteps approach him, and shuddered when a hand rested midway up his back.
“I don't feel like skipping,” Kakyoin sighed. “But I want to talk to you.”
“Just skip,” Jotaro grumbled, turning around and leaning back against the railing. The redhead was staring straight up at him, unmoving. “No one’s going to care. What do you want?”
“It's kind of stupid, but,” Kakyoin chuckled, haughty yet sweet, as it always was. But there was a high dosage of melancholy whenever he spoke. “I passed by the nurse’s office and I can't get the guilt out of my mind.”
“And?” Jotaro raised an eyebrow, tilting his head away from the redhead to keep smoke from blowing in his face. “Do I look like a therapist to you?”
“No,” Kakyoin smiled, shaking his head. “I just want to know if it affects you, too. The memories, that is. Even though it's been a while.”
It'd been two whole months since they'd come back. Holly was well, Abdul and Polnareff were in Paris, Joseph was back in America, and their lives as Japanese students had resumed. It was over, as far as they were concerned, and yet the pain still lingered like a scab over a cut. They all knew the two youngest crusaders suffered more than anyone. Their memories of Dio were the most vivid of all, their anguish outmatched everyone else’s. It wasn't fair.
“I get nightmares.”
“Was that why you were-“
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
“Good question,” Jotaro acknowledged. “Yes.”
Jotaro has had a stag beetle nearly tear out his tongue. He's been in a whirlpool of sharp scales and bound to a ship, then nearly digested by a pain-inducing yellow gel. He's been damn near burned alive, made partially into a puppet, forced to act as a guy’s slave and endure abuse, choked by his own chain, and nearly crushed by teeth. He fought razor-sharp water that left scars over his best friend’s eyes, he's been stabbed in the stomach by a close friend, and de-aged. He's had to outsmart masters at gambling and gaming without knowing a damn thing about what to do and he fought a time-stopping vampire that tried to murder his friends and family in front of him.
If Jotaro couldn't handle a few nightmares, he'd be pathetic.
“I can't even tell if that's bullshit,” Kakyoin admitted, stepping forward to stand right up to Jotaro, looking directly up at him. The stoic teen couldn't use his cigarette when the redhead was that close, unless he wanted to make him inhale secondhand smoke. He tossed it over the railing, despite only being halfway finished.
“What do you want?” Jotaro narrowed his eyes.
“I'm still having nightmares, too. About Dio, when we met and then when we fought,” Kakyoin blurted. “I want comfort, I guess.”
Jotaro stared down at him apathetically for a moment before wrapping one arm around Kakyoin’s back, pulling him in to rest onhis chest. The redhead’s hands stilled awkwardly for a moment, before he wrapped his arms around Jotaro’s back. It was silent and tense, but relaxing in a contradictory and confusing way.
“If you wanted a hug you could've just said so,” Jotaro sighed.
“It's hard to get used to.”
“I know, you told me in Singapore,” Jotaro tensed, recalling his dream in a flash. He felt sick. “Can I see your wound?
“Sure,” Kakyoin pulled away and unbuttoned his gakuran. His old one had been replaced by the standard black of this new school, and the stoic teen didn't think it suited him as much as the vivid green he always wore.
He lifted up his undershirt and Jotaro’s hands were immediately on him. You'd never guess that there were machines in him, replacing his spine and organs seamlessly. The only visible effect of Dio’s attack was the tight, dark scar of skin tissue pulled over the wound. Some of it was Kakyoin’s own reforming cells, but the grand truth made both teens sick to their stomach: the doctors had taken from the bodies of the dead women with the vampire’s mansion to replace the layers of fat, muscle, and skin that were crushed and pushed away.
It was the only way to fix him, but those who knew found it nauseating.
“It's incredible, isn't it?” Kakyoin smiled. It was bittersweet. “The skin’s tight, but other than that it feels like nothing ever happened. Sometimes I’ll get phantom pain, but overall, it's normal.”
“I know, you've told me,” Jotaro mumbled, tracing his fingers over the scar tissue. “I can't believe you're even alive.”
“You're the one that kept my heart going,” Kakyoin said, thankful and with his ever-sweet smile. However, he frowned when he noticed Jotaro tensing. “Can I stay over at your place tonight?”
It wasn't an odd question. Most nights a week, Kakyoin could be found at the Kujo residence. His parents were hung up over the thought that their son had ran away and came back simply because he couldn't survive on his own, and it was as though he was more invisible than he had ever felt. He could leave for days on end and incite no reaction. He practically lived with Jotaro and Holly.
“You don’t need ask anymore, you know.”
•••
Jotaro was not going to sleep that night, he decided. Not since Kakyoin asked to stay in his room. It would be too much trouble to wake the redhead with all his tossing and turning, maybe even screaming, during a bad dream. He'd just skip school and take naps all day to compensate for his lack of sleep. Besides, being completely awake at night gave him a good, quiet opportunity to think.
He sat, shirtless, on the edge of the wooden hallway, staring at his mother’s garden, smokeless and exhausted. The redhead was laying in the room behind him, hopefully sleeping peacefully.
Every time he heard a noise off in the distance, whether it be a person talking suddenly or a car skidding, Star Platinum would emerge for a fraction of a second. Jotaro never even called it out, it just did as it felt. It was his soul, after all, and even if Jotaro did not react to sudden happenings, his paranoia moved his Stand to action.
The trip to Egypt left him more powerful than ever, capable of extreme force and stopping time. But it left him pitiful as well, he believed. Haunted and paranoid like a superstitious freak. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, constantly convinced that someone was watching, waiting to kill him. Seeing many knives left his nerves shaking, eyes playing brief tricks on him, making him flinch and stumble because he could've sworn they just flew at him. He felt pathetic.
Something stirred behind him, and his head whipped around faster than Star Platinum emerged at his side. But he saw nothing, save for a shifting shadow behind his door. It was just Kakyoin.
But then he heard panting, the faint sound of pleading for mercy and safety, with a sob here and there. The redhead was restless, shifting back and forth, around and around with no sign of stopping. When the stoic teen heard his name mixed into the jumbled mess of frantic begging, he stood up, walking back into the room.
Kakyoin was a wreck on the futon, crying and shaking and gripping the sheets. Jotaro decided it didn't suit him, that it was too different from his polite, composed nature.
Lowering himself to one knee, he placed a hand on the redhead’s shoulder, firm with a tight grip, and raised his voice. “Wake up.”
It wasn't the most pleasant of interactions between the two, but it sufficed. Kakyoin’s eyes shot open wide, locking onto Jotaro frantically. When he realized where he was, and what was happening, he calmed down.
“You're alive…” Kakyoin sighed with relief, placing his hand over where the stoic teen’s met his shoulder. “You're unharmed-“
“There's no reason why I wouldn't be,” Jotaro reassured, kneeling completely. “Do you need-“
Kakyoin’s arms flew around Jotaro before he could finish his question, but it took no time for the hug to be reciprocated. The redhead couldn't keep his feelings in, hiding his face in the bare star-marked neck and crying.
Aside the occasional shaky breath from Kakyoin, there was no noise in the room. The tears fell endlessly and silently, without hesitation. This happened too often, far too often. Usually not in Jotaro's arms, and as a result, worse. There wasn't even any shame in crying anymore, it all fell away with the tears like droplets of rain.
“I can't stop seeing his face,” Kakyoin choked, airy and fighting for composure. “It's like the flesh bud is still there.”
“It's not, and it's not coming back. I removed it.”
“I know, I just,” Kakyoin sighed. “It's haunting. I don't think I’ll ever see roses the same way after meeting him. Or vampire costumes.”
“I saw a little kid’s friendship bracelet with a green heart on it. It made me cringe,” Jotaro chuckled, hoping to cheer the redhead up. “Seriously, did you see what he was wearing? What the fuck was that?”
At that, Kakyoin laughed, pulling away from the hug to wipe his eyes. Jotaro’s hands stayed on his shoulders, though. “He did look like an idiot.”
“Maybe one day that's all we’ll remember him as,” Jotaro suggested, smiling softly and proudly. “Just an idiot who made the mistake of fucking with me.”
“He did do some good things though, I think.”
“What?” Jotaro’s face contorted in bewilderment. “What the fuck-“
“He pushed me towards you, as cheesy as that sounds.” Kakyoin pecked the stoic teen’s lips. “I owe him a brief ‘thank you’ for that.”
“I guess,” Jotaro mumbled and sighed. “You're lucky I love you.”
“That I am. And I love you, too.”