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He doesn't even remember getting back to the hotel, if he remembered to use the side door or if he went straight through reception bruised and covered in drying blood. It's a smear in his memory, one that just coalesces around him in an awful haze as he fumbles frantically with his keys, shaking too hard to fit the room key into the lock. It slips against the metal, scratching the door, and Jotaro grits his teeth with the force of how hard he's telling Star no, you absolutely fucking cannot help here.
After a few more seconds he finally gets it, stumbling in and slamming the door behind him like he's seventeen again, pressing his back against the wall to breath in big and ragged.
They've been here long enough that their room smells like them, now– the seaweed-salt scent of the ocean, Kakyoin’s warm myrrh and beeswax and tiger balm that clings to his jacket draped over the chair and their rumpled sheets, freshly printed paper and pencil lead, a weird lingering whiff of hairspray from Josuke’s last visit. Jotaro squeezes his eyes shut and tries to convince himself he's here.
Instead as soon as he shuts his eyes he feels time stretch out into unnatural stillness around him. He opens them again, frantic, but it's not– there's not– shit. He hates this. He hates this so fucking much and he's still covered in Koichi’s blood and all of his muscles hurt, even though Josuke healed him, and if he doesn't get Kakyoin to an ambulance fast he's going to die just like– just like his jiji did, but his hands are too blood-slick and he can't– shouldn't touch him, the paramedic says gently, doesn't want to hurt him more, and Avdol is just another crumpled heap in the ambulance back, and the flashing blue-red lights make him want to throw up, but he can't do that. Dio would do something awful if he puked in front of him, and he, he has to, has to tell Star to let go, let time keep spinning, and–
Fuck. Shit. Shit. He opens his eyes again, digs the heels of his hands into his them. Time isn’t stopped. He's twenty-eight years old, not seventeen, and he's not going to call Avdol, it's past ten for them in Cairo, and Noriaki is in S City for the day in meetings, looking for anything to help them find the killer faster. They talked about it this morning before he headed out and he's probably driving back right now, zero holes punched through him, zero horrible wriggling flesh tendrils in his head. The old man is in his own room upstairs, and Jotaro would really rather kill himself than go knocking on his door in tears. It's fine. It's fine. Instead he struggles to untie his boots, kicks them off roughly, dried blood and dirt smearing an arc across the white wall by the door. Stares at it for a second.
Everything does the stupid awful sliding past him thing again and he's in the bathroom. Blood. He's still covered in blood. Bits of gore. White coat. White coat and he's all bloody.
He needs to shower. If he showers he won't be covered in Kakyoin– Koichi’s blood anymore. Easy.
The water is hot, at least. Burning hot, really, and the enamel of the tub is cold against his knees through the soaking wet of his slacks, which is good because he still feels cold and shaking, and the drain swirls red, blood slowly washing out from the hem of his coat. He should scrub it. He can't move, can't do anything except listen to the white noise of the shower beating down on him. It's loud, nothing like Cairo, nothing like the muted feeling of a stopped world, but it's still– his heartbeat is loud in his ears, heaving for breath as his heart desperately tries to recalibrate, make up for lost time, and his chest feels tight like Star's still in there displacing his organs, fingers around his heart, and he doesn't have time, can't let tears leak out of his eyes, can't catch his breath or give Dio an opening, has to kill that fucking murderer.
He sobs and inhales hot water, choking on it with a splutter that turns into another stupid chest-shaking sob, sinuses burning with it, and he's still short of breath, because of course he is when he can't fucking breathe because he has to play dead and hope that Dio doesn't fucking crush through his throat with a signpole, and his shoulder and his hip and all the rest of the places where Dio’s knives are sunk deep into his muscle hurt.
The blades can't even come out yet, because the water pooling in the bottom of the tub is red and cloudy and he can't lose more blood, can't let himself feel any of it, the way the metal feels lodged in muscle and bone, because he. He needs to protect his Jiji, Koichi, protect Josuke, fuck. He can't let anyone else get hurt. They're just kids. They're younger than he was, younger than Noriaki was, they shouldn't get caught up in this stupid, dangerous bullshit.
God, he shouldn't be caught up in this stupid bullshit anymore. He did his time, he's done, he wants to be back home, sitting on the sand at his stretch of rocky beach he's been doing work at, drinking tea on the little balcony of Noriaki’s and his apartment in the dark early morning, on a research trip to the Izu islands again, throwing chunks of basalt into the waves and not having to see more than three people in a day.
His nose bumps into his wet knees as he curls forward in on himself, squeezing his eyes shut. The hot water soaks into his hair, drumming onto his scalp. It's stupid to think about that. He's here. He's not going to let anyone die again. He's not. Shit, what if they're already dead? Kakyoin is– Kakyoin is good, he's fine, the stars would all explode before he didn't trust Kakyoin with his life, the only thing he worries about for him is him fucking up his eyes even worse with all the cool bullshit in weird languages he reads all night, but the kids– he wasn't there when Jiji died. He wasn't there when. When Noriaki died. He wasn't there for his mom. Koichi could be murdered by that fucking piece of shit bastard already and Jotaro wouldn't even know, god, he's fucking being a stupid indulgent idiot letting himself wallow, and Koichi or the dumb punk or his stupid big hearted kid of an uncle could be dying to a bomb, or a knife, or who fucking knows what else that asshole has right now as he cries about nothing.
He clenches his fucking teeth. If Star tries to come out right now and hug him or something he's going to knock his fucking face in. He's fine.
It's just. The thing is. He saw Yoshikage’s fist go straight through him, all the blood spray and little ribbons of string and bits of bone, all in perfectly clear, photographic vision thanks to Star. He missed the spine, thank god, or Koichi probably wouldn't have– he's a good kid, but he's only had Echoes for a month. His stand wouldn't have been able to hold his guts together like Hierophant did for Noriaki, couldn't have wound his way through bone and tendon and muscle to hold his fucking nervous system together, if Yoshikage had shattered it.
He would have watched him die, slow and painful. He would have watched Josuke skin his knees in his hurry to reach him, watched him shaking and cradling his friend's dead body like he did with his grandpa a couple months ago, like Jotaro couldn't do ten years ago because if he had touched Kakyoin then the movement would have let half his shredded intestines slide out his stomach.
Something twists in his stomach at the thought, harsh. Maybe he has a basket star wiggling around in there or something. Or Star's big hand, poking around inside him. Or maybe it's Hierophant, winding his way through his nervous system with a feeling of relief like pressing cold ice to his temples.
That's stupid. Kakyoin’s not back yet. If Hierophant was here, it wouldn't feel bad and awful and heavy. He wouldn't be crying like a little fucking kid about it.
He just.
The thing is, he wasn't even there to see Kakyoin almost. See him get hurt. All he saw was Dio, gloved with slick blood and the cruel curve of his mouth as he told him that he'd put down his traitorous snake of a friend and then later the paramedics clustered around his crumpled body and the red smeared around the smashed-in water tower and the way he looked intubated for weeks and weeks, almost cocooned in tubes and wires and leads, his roots starting to grow in dark against the bloodstain-red of his hair, skin sickly green and almost translucent to reveal veins underneath, like when reptiles live in caves or the dark and adapt to lose their pigmentation and you can see all the bones and organs and veins pressing through. Fragile. Like a dead body.
He never. Saw what it was like. What it looked like, in real life. He was ten blocks away. He had dreams. Obviously, still does, dreams about the black hole that Polnareff jerkily described, eating Avdol whole and refusing to spit him back out this time, Jiji shriveled and dried out and dead, but most of the time it's this: Dio up to his elbow in Kakyoin's stomach, sharp nails ripping through to puncture, bone snapping white and brittle, organs tearing like tissue paper. Hierophant shattering into emerald dust. Kakyoin's sea urchin eyes dull and empty. Kneeling down in the sloshing mess of blood and water, trying to keep pressure on the wound before realizing that it's too big, too open, and all he's done is smashed his guts in even worse.
The hot water is still drumming against his ears, searing into static, and suddenly he's seventeen in the private wing of the Cairo hospital again, hunched over on a shower chair against his tears because he can't even be trusted to stand now, apparently, like getting eight knives lodged into him is something he should care about when Kakyoin is going to be dead, and he can feel his heart racing in his chest, suffocating and loud like it's finally mad about him stopping it and decided to get revenge.
He tries to slow down his breathing, force it into even timing like Avdol described a couple weeks back in the Saudi Arabian desert, but he just– he sees blood and Avdol’s severed arms and Kakyoin's blood swirling and dripping in a pool of crumpled metal and still-pouring water, and the tailor from that shop and the way his face tore down the middle as it ripped apart with the force of Yoshikage's explosion, and this fucking hotel advertised itself as fancy but it's really a piece of shit with the way the pipes are making this horrible guttural sound under the the splash of water against tile. They really should fix that.
It could be five seconds or a million years before he manages to claw his way back to a shred of control over himself, drawing a big rattling breath in to fill his lungs, coughing again on a mouthful of water, choking on it like blood or the collapsed lung he got when Dio threw him into the road. The only reason he knows time hasn't stopped again is the feeling of thousands of little water droplets beating against his shoulders in an endless stampede. He shouldn't waste water like this.
Star tugs at him again in a corner of his mind, something anxious and buzzing and sick that bleeds through only to resonate into the exact same knot heavy in the center of Jotaro's chest, and Jotaro pushes him back so harshly that the sense-memory of stumbling backward, head smacking into an alleyway wall with a sharp crack comes to mind.
Jotaro feels guilty almost immediately, the sick feeling spreading and choking. “Sorry,” he mumbles, barely audible under the white noise, repeats it until he can't say anything anymore. It's not Star's fault, Star hasn't done anything, he just– he just– he can't right now. He fucking can't.
Jesus, he even had to dig his fingernails into his palms until his knuckles started protesting earlier when Josuke and his stand arrived, and Crazy Diamond is– there's no good word for what he is other than a sweetheart, even though he'd die before he'd say that out loud. That kid’s good all the way through, and his Crazy Diamond is too, but he’d clenched his jaw and hoped that Josuke would read it as pain instead of trying to keep a handle on the fight instinct telling him to clock his stand as hard as physically possible and send him skidding across the pavement in a bloody pulp and run.
He didn't. Which is good, because there would be no fucking way to come back from hurting that kid.
God, he's such a piece of shit for thinking Crazy Diamond is anything like the World when he's the one who's first instinct is to hurt people. It's Star who can stop time like that piece of shit, and Josuke's aura is a soft bubbling plum blossom pink and it's Jotaro who's always surrounded by the same licking, golden flames that Dio was, and it's Jotaro who couldn't fucking protect a fifteen year old kid from a fucking serial killer. Again. This isn't helping the guilt.
He's just. He's wrung out, shivering with the residual exhaustion from sticking his hands into the machinery of time and dragging it to a juddering halt, and his heart is pounding and his knuckles ache and he's seen enough today that's dragged him back into shit he's spent a decade trying uselessly to forget, and the point is, he can't– can't see Star right now. If he looks at him he's going to fucking lose it. Sucks that he feels like shit too right now, but there's nothing he can fucking do about it.
It doesn't leave a sour taste in his mouth. He's not stupid and seventeen anymore, he's stupid with a decade’s more experience, and it's not like he's still convinced Star is evil or something anymore, they stumbled through that shit years ago, it's just– god, he's not fucking thinking about it. He's not fucking going there tonight. Star can deal with it on his own if it bugs him so much. His hands clench in the soaking wet wool of his pants, and the lukewarm wet of it still feels like blood on his palms, the oily slick of gasoline. When he closes his eyes again the steady shower spray turns back into the splattering drip of a crumpled water tower, and suddenly he can't fucking stand it anymore.
He reaches up to turn it off, still too worn out to think about straightening his knees right now, and the shower handle squeaks off before he touches it. He sighs, can't bring himself to care enough to rebuff his stand again. At least he doesn't want to turn their room into rubble or something.
Being soaking wet and cold now doesn't actually help. Cairo nights were cold, and his blood dried cold and sticky on him– he remembers shivering, trying to force his body to relax as he held his heart in a hand, but right now he can't even bring his shaking hands up to wring water out of his hair. Just sits there, listening to the water dripping.
Star must take the stillness as encouragement, because a second later he's mostly dry again, steam rising from his less-bloody coat with the speed with which he's dried him off, towel suddenly piled on the tub floor with him.
When did his hat fall off? He doesn't remember that. He feels like he should. It's soaking wet still. He pulls it back on anyway, tries to settle himself with the familiarity of it.
“Thanks,” he forces out, quiet and ragged. Doesn't get anything back but another soft nudge at the back of his mind, like bumping his shoulders with a friend, or a cat headbutting his curled fist. His presence feels like the weight of a heavy blanket around his shoulders, steadying, warm, same as it has been for the past ten years. It still feels claustrophobic right now, makes him want to claw his skin away a little, but he tries to push the feeling down. There's nothing he can do about it.
He makes himself breath again, conscious of the effort it takes, makes himself check his watch (a heavy Seiko diver that he has because it's sturdy and easy to read and is waterproof and not because it's his mom's name). Noriaki should be back– soon, probably, and distress curls up his throat because he can't remember when he got in, can't remember how much time he's stopped, how long he's spent in it. His brain just slides uselessly off the numbers when he tries to think about it, and he doesn't know if he'd been sitting in the shower for hours or minutes or what, can't tell if the watch face is broken like a clocktower or not, and he needs to know that, hates that his body just acts without him like this, tripping him up on stupid shit. God, what if Noriaki ran into Yoshikage on the way home. What if he–
Jotaro pushes himself up, quick, swaying at the rush of blood to his head and the way it makes his knees complain and his vision fuzz black. He needs to– he has to make sure that Kakyoin's okay. What if he–
Keys rattle at the room door, and Jotaro freezes where he's keeping himself up against the frame of the bathroom doorway. Can't bring himself to move in anticipation. If it's someone who shouldn't be here he can still hurt them, and if it's Noriaki then that's good, but he just. He can't make himself move.
Noriaki pushes open the door.
Or. Hierophant pushes open the door for him to let him wheel in before absentmindedly winding back through the spokes of his wheels. He's okay. He's fine. Shit. He's using his chair today, Jotaro remembers this, remembers him complaining about how much wandering around the city he's going to have to do, with the way parking and public transit are, saying he's not fucking walking for that, and something about the shitty uncomfortable office chairs that the SPW for some reason holds onto, and that means that he drove back here. No Yoshikage Kira. Jotaro didn't even notice his bright green Nissan not in the parking lot when he was coming back, and the sudden, dizzying relief he feels at Noriaki close to him feels like being hit by a wave. If he wasn't still leaning heavy on the doorframe he might collapse.
Kakyoin's hair is down, fine strands tangling into a waterfall down his back and shoulders, crisp buttondown collar unbuttoned and sleeves pushed up to show all his twisting snakes and patterns that curl around his forearms to his wrists to back under fabric. His hairband is on one wrist, and his glasses have slipped low on his nose, and his jacket and a manila envelope and a takeout bag are piled on his lap. His room key is still in one hand, and he's looking at Jotaro with something soft in his eyes that’s halfway through the process of turning into confusion and concern. His eyebrows furrow, eyes sharpening as Hierophant quickly wheels him further into the room.
He pauses momentarily to set down his pile of stuff on the desk, and then his eyes lock back onto Jotaro's. “Hey. What's up? What's happening?”
Fear bleeds through in a sharp edge to his voice, but he's still calm, assured as always as he scans Jotaro for signs as to what the hell is his problem, and Jotaro opens his mouth. Can't make it work. Closes it. Kakyoin's here. He's alive. He's here and everything that happened is ten years in the ground and another wave of relief that makes his head spin rolls through him.
One step, two steps, covering as much of the spinning room as possible as quickly as possible, and his knees hit the floor with a jolt of pain that doesn't even fucking matter when he buries his face in Noriaki's lap. He's warm against him, sturdy, alive, and his breath catches in his lungs, forcing its way out as a sob that’s muffled behind his teeth. He should feel like shit for fucking. Ambushing him as soon as he got in the door, but he can't even bring himself to feel anything that's not stupid, bone-deep relief.
Noriaki reacts instantly– he hears the sound of him pulling off the fingerless gloves that he doesn't even really need because he mostly uses Hierophant to propel his wheelchair, and a warm palm sweeps across his shoulders. Jotaro feels him tug off his hat and toss it onto the desk, and there's a hmm noise when he realizes that Jotaro's hair is still wet and freezing cold, and then his long careful fingers are running through his hair, pausing at the wet tangled knot of his bun to gently pull out the hairpins keeping it in place. Jotaro wants to fucking cry.
“Is anyone dead?” is the first thing Noriaki asks, voice muted as he tries to finangle all his hairpins one handed.
Jotaro shivers, fullbody, tries to swallow the nausea rising in his throat. Forces himself to shake his head. The movement is miniscule, but it's enough for Noriaki. He should at least know that everyone's okay, that this is just because Jotaro is fucking bad at being alive and not because there's something happening.
He frees the last long pin with a mumbled curse, pulling out the elastic after, and the release of pressure on his scalp makes Jotaro feel like a crumbling sandcastle. He might be crying. He can't make himself think for long enough to tell, swimming in relief and exhaustion.
Noriaki starts carding through his newly freed hair, slow and steady. His other hand is still an even, anchoring pressure between his shoulder blades, keeping him close. Jotaro inhales a shaky breath, full of the warm spice of his tiger balm.
“Is someone hurt?”
Jotaro squeezes his eyes shut again. God. He doesn't– Koichi isn't hurt anymore. Not even Noriaki is hurt anymore, but he still tastes iron in the back of his mouth. He must take too long answering, because Noriaki hums. “Oh, I forgot about Josuke’s stand for a sec. Was anyone hurt? Or, I guess, is Josuke okay?”
That’s easier. That he can answer with a tiny jerking nod.
“Both? Somebody was hurt, but Josuke fixed them, and he's okay too?”
It still feels so fucking humiliating, being fucking incapable of just. Talking like a normal person, like this. Being fucking normal. He owes Noriaki a response, though, even if he's apparently incapable of talking him through the day like a fucking adult, because he's self-aware enough to know that coming home and finding Noriaki freaking the fuck out like this and not telling him why would have him instantly running through a rolodex of the world's worst possibilities, so he makes himself nod again, even though somehow even the littlest movement feels exhausting.
“Okay,” Noriaki murmurs, petting the top of his head, and it feels like the parasite wriggling in the pit of his stomach is in its death throes. Nothing can survive Noriaki’s implacable assurance if he doesn't want it to. “Cool.”
His fingers curl around the cool metal frame of Noriaki’s wheelchair, needing to hold onto something, not willing to move enough that he can hold Noriaki himself, and the aluminum is harder to hurt by holding on too tight. Hierophant loops a coil around his wrist, and the rubber of a wheel tire is pressing into the side of his ribcage, and he sobs again, wet and gross and embarrassing, and Noriaki makes another noise, something concerned in the sound of it. He keeps running a hand through Jotaro’s heavy, damp hair, though, tugging through the few existing tangles until it feels nice and hypnotic and smooth and using his knuckles to rub little circles into his temples that turn his brain into jelly.
He doesn’t say anything else, just lets Jotaro hide, lets him slowly scrape himself back into something that's not seventeen and shaking, bloody fucking images behind his eyelids eventually fading into darkness.
The hotel windows are open, letting in the quiet noise of Morioh’s rush hour, and Jotaro can't forget that there's a fucking killer out there. There's no fucking way he can forget that there's someone out here trying to murder kids. But. But. Noriaki's hair is falling over his shoulders and brushing over Jotaro like a silken curtain hiding him, filling his nose with sakura shampoo, and his hands are holding onto him tight, and if Noriaki is here then everything is fine, because he's alive and because he's smarter than anyone in the world and if anyone can figure out how to fix this it's Noriaki, because he's already hauled Jotaro's sorry ass out of a billion shitty situations, and he's here. And he's alive.
Jotaro lets his eyes close, keeps his face hidden into Noriaki's lap as his breathing slowly evens out. He loses track of time again, but it's nice this time, to let himself drift.
Noriaki gently taps on his shoulder eventually, starting to slowly pull away, and Jotaro can't help the distressed noise that tugs out of his throat.
“Don't,” he rasps, tongue slow and clumsy in his mouth, hoping he'll understand it for the desperate plea it feels like, and Noriaki huffs, a little amused breath that he can barely hear.
“I'm not going anywhere. You really wanna fall asleep like this, though?”
He feels Noriaki brush his fingers along his shoulder, one of the god, he doesn't even know how many locations where he knows that getting the blood splatters that covered him wet just made them run, didn't wash anything out, and he is still pretty much encrusted in it, and Noriaki's been in his wheelchair all day and probably wants to be out of it, but he just. Can't move yet.
“In a minute?”
It comes out splintered and slow too, and it's probably the most he's capable of making himself say right now, and he hates how weak and immature and stupid it sounds, but he's too much all of those things to force himself back into the shape of someone who's a responsible grown adult who can do things like protect kids and process research data.
Noriaki hums, soft. “Yeah, sure.” He snorts again, fingers appearing in Jotaro's hair again, running through it to rest snugly at the base of his neck. “Oh, no, I hate that my big strong best friend wants to hug me, I hate playing with his nice hair, this sucks, I missed him all day and now I have to go home and cuddle with him, this boyfriend thing blows.”
It doesn't make Jotaro laugh, but it does make the corner of his mouth tick up a tiny bit where it's smushed into Noriaki's thigh, and he presses his forehead into him harder for a second, like the laziest headbump possible. It's been years and years and years, and it's not like he doesn't know it at this point. He'll second guess a hell of a lot of things, but Noriaki liking him enough to stick around through the shit he’s put him through isn't really one of them, anymore. It still puts something warm and glowing that wants to cry not in a bad way for once in his stomach to hear it. He still feels like shit for pulling something like this the second he came in the door, but like. Less.
He feels Noriaki lean down before he hears the telltale carefully measured breath that means he's stubbornly doing something that he really shouldn't because it hurts his back. His own breathing still hitches for a second when Noriaki presses a kiss to his hair, leans his cheek against the top of his head for a moment.
When he pulls back up, Jotaro forces himself to pull back too. His knees light up with pain as he moves, pins and needles from sitting still on them for so long, and he uses the edge of Noriaki's seat to push himself back onto his feet, swaying as he does. Noriaki's looking at him with his sharp purple eyes, concern and relief and something soft in them, and Jotaro doesn't. Want to let go. Which is stupid. Noriaki isn't going to disappear as soon as he looks away or something.
Hierophant reaches out a tendril from where they're still meshed in the spokes of Noriaki's wheels and curled around his shoulders like a big clingy octopus, wraps back around his wrist, coiling around him until they're completely transferred to him. They’re not big, unless they want to be, which they apparently don't, and don't have much weight, but they're smooth and cool to the touch like a snake, almost as grounding as Noriaki is, and they coil around his palm to squeeze.
Jotaro squeezes his eyes shut for a second to breathe, curls his fingers around Hierophant. “You eat dinner yet?”
“Mhm. Meetings got out later than anyone fucking wanted, so I got yakiudon to eat with my meds on the way back, figured I shouldn't wait an extra couple hours and forget. I brought you back okonomiyaki.” He tilts his head towards the takeout box on the desk.
Jotaro manages a nod. He isn't– he can't eat, right now, not with the taste of blood still in his mouth and Yoshikage's fist tearing through Koichi on loop in his mind’s eye. But it's a nice thought.
Instead he just stands there, clutching onto Hierophant, watches Noriaki toss his nice heeled boots against the wall where his own are already piled. He's fine. And he's normal. And he's over this shit already, so when Noriaki hauls himself up, grabbing one crutch and his neatly folded pile of comfy clothes, because he's still the kind of person who will keep a hotel room organized like he was when they were both seventeen and in much shittier hotels, Jotaro's super fine with it. He's perfectly normal with Noriaki disappearing from his line of sight into the bathroom, because he doesn't get bothered by normal shit.
Hierophant tightens its grip around him, coils moving slowly and fluidly like a snake. He exhales. Makes himself shove his coat off, leaving it crumpled in a bloody, damp mess on the floor. He can deal with it later. Stupidly, gratitude wells up in him for Josuke and his ridiculous good heart and his sweetheart of a stand. If his favorite coat (heavy, oversized, big deep pockets and seawater stains up the hem) had gotten shredded irreparably on top of all of this, he probably would have been even more upset. He pulls out a sweatshirt from his suitcase– his favorite, heavy, worn-soft cotton thing from Noriaki's undergrad that's huge enough that the cuffs bunch even around his wrists, and tries not to fucking think about anything. About wood splinters and knives lodged in his muscles and blood in water.
The problem with that is there's a million other fucking things to think about. He pulls the manila envelope over, tugs the folder out. Opens it and instantly fucking regrets it when the first thing he sees is full-color crime scene photos.
He can't fucking pull his eyes away. Sirens whine by under their window, the different unpleasant ringing of Cairo’s ambulance system clanging in his explosion-sensitive ears, and the blood in the photos is just as bright as Koichi's was. He worries the plastic retainers snug in his lip piercings– a bad habit, but he misses having his rings in, another little missing piece of home that leaves him unsettled and uncomfortable. Morioh is a small town, though, and it's just. Not worth it. There's too much shit: whoever killed Reimi fifteen years ago, and trying to keep his kid uncle from getting killed, and his lab getting on his ass about the way this quick one-week trip has extended out into whatever the hell it is now and he's already tired and stressed and straining to act like a decent person anyway. If people try to bug him about the way he likes looking, he'll only get pissed. Which would be bad. Less bad than it would be ten years ago, sure, he just… doesn't have the energy for it.
Right now, though, he wishes they were in so he could bite the metal of them– man, he doesn't even smoke anymore, even though his fingers are fucking itching for a lighter right now, and he won't mess with any of them with his hands when his hands are usually covered in fishy seawater or blood, that's fucking unhygenic, a guy has to have some bad habits, especially when there's ambulances whining in his ears, setting his teeth on edge.
He pages through to the next page– it's a close-up of Reimi's mangled corpse, vertebrae glistening and exposed.
This feels like something he can do later. Not right now. He did almost die, he deserves the rest of the evening off.
The folder stays open, though, photo frozen in his hands. Is time stopped again? He can't tell. The air feels frozen and dead and cold and the blood looks very real and then Noriaki steps out of the bathroom behind him, tired and comfortable looking now that he's out of dress clothes, and when Jotaro turns to look at him, Hierophant steals the photo from his hands, tucking it back in the folder. Closes the folder. Disappears.
Noriaki makes a face as he settles himself on his side of the bed, arranging all his pillows to support his shitty back. He curls up on his side. “If I have to fucking look at that shit for one more second today I am going to scream, probably. C’mere.”
Jotaro collapses next to him, keeping his burning eyes open so he can keep reassuring himself that he's there. Noriaki moves to pull him in for a hug, but instead he shuffles downward until he can shove his face into the soft give of his stomach, hide there right over where skin grafts and faded scar tissue are hiding under his shirt. He wraps his free arm around his waist and clings like he's holding onto a stuffed animal or a life raft.
Noriaki makes a quiet noise at it, questioning, but Jotaro just burrows in closer. He's warm and solid against him, and he surrounds Jotaro in living body heat and the heavier scent of his tiger balm now that his face is all pressed up against the warped choppy sea of skin that spans his stomach– he's always aching, and it's less of a pain remedy than a habit after ten years of it.
Vaguely, he remembers Noriaki having green apple hand cream and some synthetic-sweet scent that clung to him when they were seventeen, and he can't help an amused little exhale at the memory. God, they were both so bad at everything.
Anyway, Noriaki's ribcage and stomach move as he breathes. It's a steady rhythm that feels omnipresent here, surrounded so thoroughly that he can hardly breathe and it's so much better than having to hold his breath until his lungs burn with the effort of dragging the universe to a stop, and he realizes that his eyes are stinging again. Feels overwhelmed and exhausted and still like shit, and it's such a weird contrast that it sends him violently backsliding through memories again. Dread still bubbles up in his gut, cold and sticky, and he can't tell if it's his own or Star's leaching through him or both. Noriaki's palm slides down to rest heavy on the back of his neck, holding Jotaro to him, thumb pressing against the tension sitting at the base of his neck, and Jotaro kind of wants to unspool into a pile of nothing like Hierophant.
“I’m going to kill him,” Noriaki murmurs, conversationally. “I mean it. I'm going to send that piece of shit to the morgue.”
Jotaro lets out a long, shaking exhale. His heartbeat is thick in his throat and he can feel the old, fucked up span of smoothly moving metal and scar tissue at the small of Noriaki's back under his free hand, mirroring his front. “Yoshikage,” he makes himself say, syllables clumsy on his tongue, muffled against him.
“Hm?”
He takes another big breath. “Yoshikage Kira. His name. But he. He's. Not anymore. He stole–” he breaks off. God, when's the last time he drank water? His throat feels scratchy and dry and rebelling against him, and he has to stop himself from pushing his fingers up the hem of Noriaki's shirt to reassure himself that he can feel the sealed, not-bleeding-and-open, long-healed mess of him skin-to-skin, because Noriaki hates that. Fists his hand in the fabric instead.
“Shit. Okay, tomorrow. Not now.”
His voice is still soft around the edges, but he must be fucking exhausted too, to let himself be as blunt as Jotaro usually is. Not that Jotaro has a problem with it. He bites back the idea of a smile at the memory of the way they used to act around each other, teenage Noriaki insisting on spinning his vapid, shiny plasticky routine of pleasantries on him even in private. He punched him about it once.
Noriaki flicks him on the back of the head. “Glad something's funny,” he teases with a huff, and Jotaro frees his hand to reach up, quick, and lace their fingers together. If it's too-tight and too-desperate, neither of them say anything about it.
The TV flicks on, channels flipping until it lands on Morioh's local station. He catches enough to make him tense up, a newscaster talking about the– the tailor, his family, a catastrophic gas leak this afternoon, and they're both frozen listening for a moment that drags on far too long on before the channel changes again. Noriaki's hand tightens where it's settled back on the base of his skull, holding him tight, and he probably doesn't even realize he's doing it, know how held it makes him feel.
After fifteen channels, they land on something that sounds like a foreign-language newscast, something that Noriaki probably understands and Jotaro would at least recognize if he wasn't generally feeling like he got hit by a steamroller for the second time in his life. It washes over him in a vague wave of sound, easy to tune out.
Yoshikage's bloody hand reaching through Koichi's chest still keeps playing on repeat in his head in perfect detail though. God, he could have hesitated a second, been an inch off his game, and Koichi could have caught that explosion instead. The image of him, barely even started high school, riddled with fragments of wood and metal and splinters and bleeding out because Jotaro is built like a brick shithouse and barely survived and that kid barely squeaks past 155cm and could get blown away by a stiff breeze forces its way behind his eyelids.
He just. He hates using the World. Even now, this many years later, even when he fucking had to to keep the kid alive. It leaves him wanting to scrub his skin until it's raw, and he was too busy being an idiot in the shower to do that, and it still feels crawling and cold and itching under his skin, sick even with Noriaki solid against him. Makes him feel like– he's not. He's not. God, he couldn't even knock out a salaryman today, he's nothing like… That. He's still capable of it, though; the exact same thing, and he's curled up with his hands against Noriaki like nothing's wrong, like he couldn't do just the same–
He jumps, flinching at a sudden warmth and pressure that wraps around him like a weighted blanket, too tight and everywhere to be Noriaki, and the miserable weight in the pit of his stomach instantly slowly starts crumbling into dust against it, an involuntary chemical reaction.
Noriaki makes a noise too, something more sympathetic than before, and Jotaro slowly pulls himself up. He knows what he's going to see before he does, can feel it.
Star’s cheek is smushed against the top of Hierophant's head, eyes squeezed shut. Hierophant is mostly person-shaped for once, settled on Star's big lap in a pile of lanky melony limbs and tight coils that wrap around him where they're sitting against the wall, and Jotaro feels something unknotting and unraveling in him that he didn't even know was there.
Hierophant's hand reaches up to cradle Star’s face, swiping under his eyes, and Jotaro realizes with a weird sort of shock that he's crying too, the kind of big fat tears he hates but come so easy to Star. They're hunched over, shoulders pulled in and head down like they're trying to make themself as small as possible, a useless task when they're as big as they are, and Hierophant's arms tighten around them as he watches, like it can hide them in itself. A wave of warmth rolls through him, echoing and reverberating between them both, and Jotaro feels relief seep through him.
He pushes the feeling through to them, in the weird blurry back of his mind, that hopes they're okay, glad they're okay, sorry, sorry, didn't mean to hurt them either, and receives the sensation of a big warm hand ruffling his hair in exchange.
The last of the sick, contaminated feeling slowly seeps away, and Jotaro turns back to Noriaki, who grins, crinkle-eyed and conspiratorial as ever when he wants to gently make fun of Jotaro freaking out about Hierophant doing whatever they want to do. “They're pissed they weren't there to kill that guy,” he explains, and Jotaro snorts. Feels the phantom weight of a hand stroking down his spine.
“Glad you weren't. There.” he says, rough and wobbly. Can't make himself think about it any more than that anymore.
Noriaki makes a noncommittal sound in response, tugs him back in. Jotaro resettles himself with his face tucked back into his shirt, the quiet sounds of his body working like normal, the foreign news. This doesn't count as not wanting to see Star. He's pretty sure he wouldn't be able to live with himself even if he wanted to pull them away, but he. Doesn't. The sensory feedback of the doubled hug and the lingering remnants of distress fading into warmth and safety and Noriaki's arm across his shoulders lure him back in. They can deal with the killer tomorrow. For now, he's staying here.