starmark | IC Inbox | prismatica

I didn’t want you to.

[ It’s not exactly comfort, holding his weight on the very edge of the couch and trying to find a balance, a literal balance’ that allows him to avoid touching Jotaro too much and also avoid falling on the floor. But it’s nice. Nice to be lying next to him. Nice to be close.

He slides his hand down Jotaro’s face, over his neck, lifting his fingers over the collar to avoid touching it before placing them back down again over that birthmark to start stroking his shoulder. ]

It’s worth falling a little behind. To see you like this.

[That is nice. Nicer than he'd thought it would be, to feel Kakyoin's fingers petting him again. That had been maddening when he'd been in the machine, and in the best possible way. Feeling it again is a pleasant echo, and he shivers a little with contentment.]

You can see me like this anytime. I like it. Sometimes...

[He trails off, thinking, and at length closes his eyes and rubs his cheek against the cushion beneath it.]

Sometimes I need it. You know?

Yeah. [ He says, like he understands, when all he really understands is the he and Jotaro are very different people sometimes, and that being forced into a position of not having thoughts to occupy him is as vital for Jotaro as it is horrifying to him. ]

I can’t- [ His fingers don’t deliberately graze against the collar as he says that, but he’s threading his fingers back up into the hairs at the back of Jotaro’s neck and he misjudges the distance by a fraction of a millimetre. He doesn’t look disgusted. Doesn’t recoil. Just tries not to touch it again. ]

-not like Adrian does, anyway. But I can try sometime, if you like.

Nori.

[It's a thick collar. Thick enough that he almost doesn't feel that Kakyoin has even touched it at all, except that for a second there's a hitch in the sensation of fingers in his hair, and he realizes only belatedly why that might be.

It doesn't sit right with him, either — I can't, but I can try. It's not that he thinks it would be bad. It's just that probably, somehow, it wouldn't be right.]

Tell me about what you liked. The...parts. The good parts, that you liked.

[ He has no right to be the one flushing with embarrassment, right now, clean and dry and fully clothed and only slightly incredibly aroused. Even that’s starting to fade by now, in favour of the kind of fondness that doesn’t make demands the way arousal does but that still does very much think it a good idea to let his hands wander more than they maybe should.

And yet he is. He does. Flushes and has to force himself to hold Jotaro’s gaze ]

I liked- I liked that you were making noises. And that I got to decide if you kept making them. And that I could listen and watch you- really listen and watch, without sharing that attention with anything else.

And I liked- um.

[ There’s something more, but fuck if he can figure out how to say jt. ]

I liked that you were watching me. So. We both liked that.

[He sighs audibly without really meaning to, wholly unthinkingly, and it doesn't occur to him until afterward that that's precisely one of the things that Kakyoin just mentioned — fingers gliding over his skin, exploring, tugging noises out of him, and all because of Kakyoin's decisions...

More of that, he decides eventually, and makes himself move just a little, to eliminate some of the careful distance Kakyoin has been maintaining between them, to make it so that accidents and mishaps in brushing up against each other are all but inevitable now.]

And. You started having fun, didn't you? After awhile. It was fun.

I don't want to hurt you.

[ Well. He blurts it out and it's true but it's a damning phrase in this context. So now he has to explain himself. Has to say more words as Jotaro draws closer and the fabric of his clothes brushes against his skin. ]

I just- maybe I liked that I could, even if I don't want to. That I could have turned it off and just left you stuck there. Or turned it on and never turned it back down again. Or just kept going and never let you finish until it started to fuck you up. I didn't want to, not that much. But I could have. I liked that I could have.

Does it scare you?

[It's still hard to want to move. It still feels like the most wonderful thing in the world would be to just hold still and not move an inch for a year. But he's close enough that he can tilt his head a little and his lips will find a small patch of Kakyoin's chin, near the corner of his mouth. He can reach a little and kiss him without trying too hard, and he does.]

You...when you say it like that. I think...

[And he does. He thinks. He thinks and thinks, and thinks he might know where this ends up.]

You don't like...the part that I like. I think you like the other half. The part that goes with the part I like. The part...that my part needs, to work. I think they go together.

A little. Not that I could. But that I liked that I could. And I didn't want to. But I wanted to know what would happen, if I did. If you'd stop me. If Star would, or Adrian. Maybe even if Hierophant would. And it's- funny, I suppose. That I can't manage the collar, but I can manage wanting to know what would happen if I hurt you.

[ He pauses. He shouldn't need Jotaro to talk to him about how fucked up he is right now. Except that Jotaro asked, and so he must want to know. Except that he probably wants to know that it was hot to see him get fucked a whole lot, not that it was hot to wonder who would stop him if he took it too far.

He kisses back, angling himself forward so Jotaro doesn't need to stretch to reach him. It means more accidental contact. More of the cold metal buttons of his jacket against Jotaro's fever-hot skin, of the slightly scratchy woolen fabric of it. But it means Jotaro doesn't have to move, and that's important too. ]

I don't want to hurt you. I swear I don't. That was why I had Hierophant inside you, so I'd know. But I still wanted to know. If I used Hierophant to measure how much it would take and just- left you not quite there the whole time, while I worked until you couldn't take it anymore. If I set it as high as it could go and left it there until someone made me stop. If I- fuck, just about anything. If anyone would stop me. If you'd get mad or if you'd ask me to stop or if you'd ask Star or Adrian to stop me for you. What it'd look like. I'm-

[ He doesn't know how to end that. 'Kind of messed up'? 'A fucking psychopath'? 'Okay with doing just about anything to you as long as it doesn't involve the trappings of you being something different from me'? ]

-so sorry. I love you. I swear I don't want to hurt you.

I really don't think you want to hurt anybody.

[It feels strange, tactile sensation against his skin that isn't Kakyoin's fingers. It's a lot of new things that all stand out just a little too sharp, metal and fabric, smooth and rough. It makes him squirm a little, still not ready for more than the occasional touch of it, but he's getting there slowly. That's progress.]

Just like I don't really want to be a dog. Just like Adrian didn't really abandon me in that thing, even though he wasn't right there watching. I think...

[He closes his eyes. Hums a little. Thinks about the words Kakyoin is saying between the words that come out of his mouth. Thinks about translating them, like he's so good at interpreting Jotaro's fumbling explanations himself, sometimes.]

I think maybe you get off on being trusted. That's why you think about what you could do with it. How far you could take it. 'Cause you're just...getting high, kind of, on realizing you have it to begin with.

[He licks his lips, remembering how dry they'd gotten, and how red.]

You would stopped if I'd asked you to. Right? But you loved that I didn't. You liked that it made me yours.

Of course I'd have stopped.

[ It's an exchange of roles, in a way. Jotaro forces out words that are small, folded in upon themselves a thousand times and he takes them and unfolds them, lays them out flat and smooths out the creases layer by layer until they both find out what they looked like before. This doesn't work like that. It can't, because he doesn't fold his words up small. He buries them. Gives Jotaro mountains of them so that he can dig up the ones that matter and clean them off and figure out the implications. Jotaro is an archeologist, and he is a restorer. Both working to the same end, but in the opposite ways.

He says a lot of words, and the one that he buried too deep to find it for himself, that Jotaro digs up and cleans off and tries to fit into his understanding of the world, is 'until'. Because the point at which someone stops him is the point, and the appeal is in never quite reaching it. In knowing that if he does reach it then a single afternoon has been ruined but nothing else will be wrong.

He rearranges himself slightly, still more awkwardly, to try to avoid brushing his coat against Jotaro's torso. Just his lips brushing his every so often. Just one hand at the back of his head, and the other cupping his cheek. ]

Yeah. Yeah, I- I liked that you- that you knew. I liked knowing that you knew that no matter what I did, it was because I wanted you to feel good. It was nice. Nice, that I could do anything at all and you'd know that no matter what it was, I was doing it for you.

Yeah. I...I kinda know how it feels, on your side. Sometimes Adrian needs to be on mine, and he — y'know. He can take a lot. More than I can do, sometimes, if I don't get...creative.

[Which — maybe, he thinks, Kakyoin didn't know? That he does both. That sometimes he's the one with a mind that needs to calm down, and sometimes he's the one with a needy boyfriend begging for more and wanting his limits pushed as far as they can go. When would that ever have come up, before? It's not the kind of thing you just talk about over breakfast.]

I liked it when you said you knew I could do it.

[His cheeks redden, and he glances away, bashful.]

When I get in deep like that, it's just...it's so easy to believe things. You just say them and they're true. Things happen because they feel good and you don't have to worry about anything else. I don't have to worry because you're doing it all for me.

[ He has to take a moment to process that, because it's easy for him to slip into thinking of all things as binary. People who see stands and people who don't. Perfect and worthless. Good and evil. Jotaro and Dio.

He doesn't always like the spaces in between. They're uncomfortable. He doesn't know what to do with them. But the thing is that they're all of them things that belong in the spaces between. Even Jotaro isn't all Jotaro, on a scale where the extremes are 'Jotaro' and 'Dio'. Adrian's entire life is clay built around the armature of half of one thing and half of another. And he has always been a thing that exists in the space between every set of extremes he knows, desperately trying to be all one or all another. ]

I always know.

[ His fingers fall onto the collar. Linger there, this time. ]

I don't hate this, you know? Not- not the way I think that you think I do. I don't think it's weird. Or gross. Or wrong. Or anything like that. It's not something you have to keep away from me.

The first time I tried to do your side, I didn't like it.

[That makes him stop a second and think about it, though, before finally he just sort of laughs, low and rumbling. Kakyoin is touching the collar and that feels...

He didn't even know how it feels. Just that it's better than when Kakyoin avoids it. It's better when it doesn't feel like another of those terrible Jotaro things that makes Kakyoin recoil behind a blank smile and then go run and throw up from it.]

Though, the first time I tried my side I didn't really like it, either.

[He shrugs with a tilt of his head, his hair cascading over his eyes.]

I felt stupid. And guilty. And afraid. It made me feel things that were different and things I thought I wasn't supposed to. But there was a reason I didn't stop, and it was because I knew that whatever else happened, I was safe. Nothing...was going to happen, and I could make it stop whenever I wanted.

The first time I did your side, I felt like a bully. It wasn't even that I was afraid of hurting him or anything, I just...I didn't like what it made me feel.

[He sighs a little.]

But I like that when we do that, I'm everything to him. That part feels good. And I like that I'm taking care of him, even if it doesn't look that way on the outside. And I like how he gets so clingy when we're done, and looks at me like...like, probably, I was looking at you. Before.

I like it when you're everything to me, Nori. I know when you do it you're taking care of me. You're doing it with me, not just to me, y'know? We're both in it together.

Edited 2021-03-11 14:39 (UTC)

I just don't- I just don't like the idea of you being something different to me. The same way I don't like that Adrian thinks he's different. As long as you don't make me deal with that part- it's just a stupid necklace.

[ Maybe it's weird, that the kinky sex thing and the Adrian thinking of himself as inhuman thing are one and the same to him. But they are. Things that make people not like him. He keeps his fingers against the stupid necklace.

It's strange to hear that Jotaro had ever been uncomfortable with this, when he's been his guide through it. The same way it's weird to know that there was ever a time that he didn't have Star. ]

You didn't like that I was on the floor.

[ He says it after a moment, with the sort of throughful tone that makes it clear it's not in reference to him sitting on the floor just now. But to a time in another world. The second when he opened his eyes and knew that he loved Jotaro Kujo. He didn't like that he was on the floor, except for the fact that he was there because Jotaro could save him. He didn't like the way that pushing Adrian around made him feel, until he realised that pushing Adrian around was entirely to make him happy. That's Jotaro's version of it, isn't it? He doesn't like making people into something different from him. Jotaro doesn't like people being on the floor.

He smiles. Teasing. ]

Are you going to be clingy?

I didn't like that you were on the floor.

[He echoes the phrase with almost the same inflection as Kakyoin's, call and response made concrete by their mutual agreement. That's really it, isn't it? It all always goes back to that. Why he likes being under his boyfriends when they sleep. Why it's fine when he's in the machine but less so when he's the one watching. Why he likes his collar but feels no desire whatsoever to put one on Kakyoin.

And Kakyoin doesn't like...difference. Othering. Being one thing while his boyfriends are another. Kakyoin wants things to be neat and to belong. It's no real surprise why he feels that way, is it?]

The hell do you think I was doing when Star made you pet me? Yare yare, trying to make me drink water when I couldn't stand to go another second without you touching me.

[ He puffs his cheeks out in (mostly) mock indignation, and manages to hold it for a few seconds before he laughs. Laughs and pulls Jotaro's had forward, not to kiss him but to just squash their faces together. Make it so they're close. Touching, in a way that seems not to be too much. ]

If you hadn't drunk the water first, I'd have had to stop touching you after I started. Wouldn't that be worse?

[ Then, softer, quieter. As if it's less of an admission of a mistake if he doesn't say it very loudly. ]

I'll let Hierophant deal with the water, next time. I thought it'd be weird, if he was reaching out of your mouth to hold the glass.

[ That's the point at which it would become weird. ]

That would've been weird. Is he still inside me?

[Speaking of things uttered completely matter-of-factly that really should be treated as a lot weirder than they are. If anything, Jotaro sounds a little dreamy about it, though; it's always reassuring when Hierophant is inside him, hiding and measuring and keeping him safe while his own body shelters him in return.

...

Also, knowing that at any moment Hierophant could twitch any bundle of nerves he wanted and play Jotaro's body like a finely-tuned violin. There's that too.]

You have to —

[He swallows, though, because this is another of those things that he's learned that maybe Kakyoin doesn't know, that he wants him to know because they might do this again and oh, hell, they might do this again —]

It's not just...wanting. When you're coming back up. It's easy to get kind of fucked up, if someone isn't...touching you. Um. I don't think I'm explaining this right.

Star made you do it because I needed it. Not just wanted it. It would've...I dunno. It would've gone bad if you hadn't.

Yeah. He doesn't want to come out.

[ Why would he? It's safe. Warm and dark and surrounded at every side by something he loves. The perfect hiding place. More than that. The perfect home.

Maybe it's a little weird.

and then Jotaro starts to explain, and- oh. ]

Oh. I didn't- I'm sorry. [ He doesn't often apologise. Really apologise, not just say 'I apologise' and move on. But he purses his lips and nods and considers how he'd been so concerned about hurting Jotaro with things he chose not to do, and yet he almost did fuck him up by doing something that he thought was best.

He doesn't beat himself up over it too much. He wants to, but he can't. If he does, Jotaro won't tell him next time he fucks up. He just smiles. Cranes his neck to kiss Jotaro's forehead in apology. ] -I'll do better, next time. So long as you drink the water once you're ready, I'll do better.

Good. I don't want him to, either.

[Hierophant inside him. Following his heartbeat. And perhaps more importantly at a time like this, tracking his own physiological responses so that Kakyoin knows with absolute certainty how he's feeling, how this conversation is or isn't affecting him. That his heart rate hasn't sped up. That there's no adrenaline, no nerves firing where they shouldn't be. No uptick in his blood pressure. It's all just normal, and he's all just fine.

And that he flutters a little, inside, when he takes in the sight of Kakyoin's smile. That it increases when his kiss touches his forehead.]

It's okay. I didn't know, either. I mean — the first time. That's why Star helped, I would've told you myself, but...you know.

A little distracted?

[ He teases, and- maybe it’ll be okay, to stroke a hand down Jotaro’s arm until he reaches his and and lace their fingers together, even if it means the scratchy fabric of his jacket against the bare skin of Jotaro’s arm. ]

He’d still stop me, right? [ Star? Adrian? Either. ] if I did go too far, or do something wrong. If Hierophant didn’t notice, somehow. They wouldn’t let me fuck up so badly that it’d hurt you, right?

Wasn't — ready to talk yet, I guess. To try to put them together.

[He's pleased to discover that the brush of sleeve on his skin is less abrasive than it was before. Still rough, still more noticeable than it might've been otherwise. But it doesn't make him want to cringe or thrash or escape. It's just there, and then their fingers are entwined, and he's sighing again as yet another safety net weaves snugly into place around him.]

Star would never let you fuck me up.

[It's an interesting choice of words, that. He doesn't say never let you hurt me. Because — because — there's an important nuance, isn't there, in what Kakyoin was getting at before. In craving the knowledge of how far he could go.

There's overlap in the Venn diagram of "hurt" and "what he can take". His limit creeps beyond the boundary of hurt. So no, it's not really whether Star would let Kakyoin hurt him, is it? Really it's about whether he'd let that limit be disregarded.]

I can tell you exactly what Star would've done, if you'd put the thing as high as it could go and just left me.

[He tilts his chin, dragging his tongue along Kakyoin's lower lip in an unmistakably obscene fashion.]

He would've waited until I couldn't take it, and then he would've stopped time. If I'd really needed it to stop, everything would've stopped. He doesn't need me to tell him to do it. He'd have done it on his own.

I’m glad. I like- It doesn’t scare me, if I know he’ll stop me. I don’t mind if I’m fucked up. I just don’t want to be fucked up in a way that you wouldn’t want.

[ He’d say more, but he’s busy catching Jotaro’s tongue between his own lips. Sucking at it before letting it escape him for long enough to kiss delicately against its surface. It’s nice, this part, even without the release of the part before it. Just- being close to Jotaro. Feeling his heartbeat, returning it through Hierophant. Doing stupid shit with their mouths.

He looks down at his arm, smiling a little apologetically. ]

I’d have to let go of you, to get changed.

[ He could just take off his jacket. But he’d still have to let go. And he’d be cold, which is a problem with no cuddling-based solutions. ]

Don't. It's okay. I don't want you to.

[As if for emphasis, he even manages to move a little, wriggling his other arm up between them and curling his fingers into Kakyoin's shirt. He'll be fine, with time. He's all right. Soft is better, still, but rough isn't unbearable the way it'd been when he'd just come out of the machine.]

I want something else. Something you can't go away for.

If I’d known, I’d have worn-

[ He wouldn’t have been wearing it back from class, but the thought still comes to him unbidden. If the silk of the dress would be more comfortable. If it would be pleasant, even. Something Jotaro would want to touch. Cool and soft against his oversensitive, too-hot skin. ]

-something else.

[ It’s both an end to the sentence and an indication that Jotaro should continue, tell him all about this something else. ]

IC Inbox | prismatica

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