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maple-keenes · 8 months ago

Text

couldn't reply without subordinate clauses

>> READ IT ON AO3 HERE

summary: Kakyoin needs help with his English, and who better to help him than someone like Jotaro, who’s been speaking it his whole life? It’s the perfect solution. …but someone really should have warned Kakyoin about how much time he’d have to spend looking at Jotaro’s mouth, ‘cause he’s not sure how much more of this he can take. (or: kakyoin and jotaro learn to use their words.) - notes: disclaimer: i don’t speak japanese, which is why you will notice that none of this fic is actually in japanese. all references to japanese grammar and phonology are correct to the best of my knowledge but i recognize that there may be mistakes. however, i DO know a lot about teaching english as a second language and if my advisor somehow finds this, sorry for misrepresenting the field but in my defense this is anime fanfiction dedicated not only to the jojo crew (@thesmalbox and @drawbucket) as per usual but ALSO to @pechebeche for just sort of coincidentally getting into jojo at the same time as me and always being down to scream about jotakak and/or phonetics with me. all three a’y’all are awesome. title is from the collection’s “spark of hope”, which does remind me of jotaro but mostly i just like the silly pun.

Kakyoin Noriaki helped kill a homicidal vampire when he was seventeen years old with nothing but a bunch of tentacles, but looking at the table in front of him, covered in various indecipherable sheets of paper, he thinks that might have been easier than this.

He fucking hates English.

Kakyoin is, objectively, pretty intelligent, if you ignore the multiple massive lapses in judgment that have led to him a) being half-blind in both eyes, b) being maybe a little bit in love with the guy who by extension is the reason he’s half-blind in both eyes, and c) following said guy to America for college because he just does that now, apparently. Something about Jotaro makes him incredibly, impressively stupid. Stupid enough to follow him across Southeast Asia, and now, stupid enough to try and teach himself a new language because they’re so horribly codependent now that the idea of Jotaro moving to America and Kakyoin not going was ridiculous. Ridiculous enough that Kakyoin was able to ignore the fact that he barely speaks English when making the decision.

And oh, he’s regretting it now. Not enough to not go, of course, but enough that he’s given up on the actual learning bit and is now glaring daggers at the worksheets spread out in front of him, all in an easy-to-read font for his convenience.

He’s been in the public library for two hours, hiding in a secluded corner because he doesn’t need everyone to hear him talking to himself. He’s still trying to figure out what the fuck a progressive is and why there’s six different kinds of them when someone slides into the seat beside him and asks, “You still doing homework?”

His only response is a muffled groan from where his head is buried in his hands, which is thankfully met by a small huff of laughter from the boy beside him. “Yeah, kinda figured. Couldn’t find you at your place, so I thought you might be hanging out here.”

Kakyoin removes his head from his hands and offers Jotaro a pained look. “I’m fucking dying, Jotaro.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“I am not .”

Jotaro ignores that and continues to be unsympathetic to Kakyoin’s clear emotional distress. “Are you doing your English homework?” he asks, picking up one of the papers nearest to him.

Kakyoin gestures vaguely at the mess in front of him. “No, I’m doing my taxes.”

He makes a half-hearted noise of acknowledgment as he skims over the worksheet in his hand. “You got this wrong,” Jotaro says, pointing at an answer Kakyoin had written down about halfway down the paper. “It should be ‘have taken’.”

“Why ?”

“Because ‘had taken’ means it happened in the past.” Jotaro makes a mark on Kakyoin’s paper with a nearby pen.

“Isn’t that what ‘have taken’ means?” he asks helplessly.

“Yes. Well, sort of. It can be used for the past, but--”

“Then what’s the difference?” Kakyoin interrupts, his voice coming out as more of a petulant whine. Oh, if Dio could see him now. The boy so willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good, standing brave against insurmountable odds, undone by fucking verb tenses. How the mighty have fallen.

Jotaro stares at him, and he can’t tell if the blank expression is because Kakyoin’s missing something monumentally obvious here or because he also has no fucking clue what the difference is. “...One of them uses ‘have’ and the other uses ‘had’.”

Great. The second one, then.

Jotaro manages to dodge out of the way of the kick Kakyoin aims at his shin under the table, but he doesn’t manage to escape the smack to his shoulder immediately after. They’re both laughing, though. Thankfully.

(Kakyoin can’t get enough of Jotaro’s laugh. It was so rare when they were traveling, reserved only for the in-betweens in dingy hostels when no one else was listening. Something that a precious few people are allowed to hear. To be one of them is a privilege he will never take for granted.)

“I’m done with that,” Kakyoin declares, pushing that part of his homework away from him. He smiles at Jotaro hopefully. “Practice with me? I need to work on actually speaking out loud.”

"What do you want me to say?” Jotaro asks, and isn’t that a question.

“Just ask me about my day or something.” He figures this is safe territory, both because of his traitorous heart, which has started to speed up in his chest for what is truly no discernible reason, and his limited English experience. “Don't talk too fast though.”

“Alright.” Jotaro thinks for a moment, then says, "I'm just gonna ask you about yourself. That work?"

Kakyoin nods, and the other boy clears his throat and asks in English, “How old are you?”

“I am…” he trails off, struggling to remember the number. “Ten-eight--no, eighteen years. Old. I am eighteen years old,” he repeats, more confidently the second time. “How old are you?”

Jotaro stifles a laugh behind his hand as Kakyoin speaks, and he frowns. “What?” he asks, switching back to Japanese. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No, no, it’s just. Your accent. It’s cute,” Jotaro says, and oh, he’s going to be thinking about that for months now. He has a way of offhandedly saying things that lodge themselves in Kakyoin’s brain and refuse to leave until he’s properly overanalyzed every part of them, and Jotaro calling his accent cute is--he doesn’t even know where to start with that. “Here, let me ask you something else. Where are you from?”

That one he knows for sure. “I am from Japan,” Kakyoin says in English, “What about you?”

“I’m from Japan, but my mom’s from America,” he answers. “It’s pronounced ‘am’ and ‘Japan’, by the way.”

Kakyoin narrows his eyes at Jotaro. “That’s what I said.”

“No, you said it like ‘Japan’. It should be ‘Japan’. ”

“Jotaro, I promise you that you just said the same thing twice.”

He groans, hand going to tug his hat down over his face. “No, look. Watch me say it.” He repeats the words again, exaggerating the vowels. This should be exceptionally easy for Kakyoin because it’s basically just Jotaro giving him permission to stare at his mouth (a thing that he does all the time anyway) but he just can’t seem to make out the difference Jotaro’s talking about. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s half-blind, maybe it’s his unfamiliarity with the language, but even when Jotaro says it both ways again to try and demonstrate he cannot figure out why what he said was wrong. He says as much to Jotaro, who pinches the bridge of his nose and says, “Just try and do it the way I’m saying it. I am from Japan.”

“I am from Japan,” he repeats, and Jotaro sighs. “I’m trying, I promise! They just sound the same to me.”

“No, it’s--” Jotaro cuts himself off, looking frustrated. “Just--ugh. This is going to sound super weird, but it might be easier if you touched me while I said it.”

Kakyoin has to physically restrain himself from saying yeah, sounds good immediately with no questions asked. He shoves that instinct down as deep as it will go and asks, “What do you mean?”

“Like. My face.” He touches his own, as if to say, like this, and yep. Yeah. Kakyoin does know what a face is, thank you, Jotaro. “You’re not moving your mouth right on some of the words. It might be easier if you just, like, felt me do it so that you could copy it.”

That’s not the worst idea. “Like this?” he says, reaching up and bracketing Jotaro’s mouth between his forefinger and thumb, letting the rest of his fingers rest gently against his chin. Jotaro nods. It must look ridiculous from an outside perspective, but it feels so intimate and personal that Kakyoin is pretty sure he’s going to die. What a lame way to go out, he thinks. Fifty days in the desert fending off stand users and vampires and my own damn feelings are what’s gonna kill me. He hopes they lie in his obituary. Heroically sacrificing himself to save the world is much cooler than dying ‘cause he’s too fucking gay to maintain any sort of physical contact with the guy he likes.

“I’m gonna say something and I want you to try and repeat it moving your mouth the same way I am.” Jotaro’s eyes have not left Kakyoin’s this entire time and he really, really hopes his face isn’t as red as it feels right now. At least he can chalk it up to the slightly awkward situation if he gets called out on it. “That make sense?”

His mouth is so fucking dry, which is. Great. He’s literally just touching his face. Not even in a romantic way. Just super platonic, educational face touching. “Yeah. I understand.”

“Cool. My name is Jotaro Kujo,” he says in English, “I am eighteen years old, and I am from Japan.” Kakyoin is now not only watching Jotaro’s impeccable jawline, he’s feeling it work under his fingers, and wait, he was supposed to be paying attention to the formation of the words. Fuck.

“My name is Kakyoin Noriaki, I am eighteen years old, and I am from Japan,” he repeats, trying to shape the words the same way he can feel Jotaro doing. “Right?”

“Right,” he confirms, and Kakyoin can feel his little half-smile at the same time he sees it appear. “You’re actually Noriaki Kakyoin in English, though. You would put your given name first.” Kakyoin nods. Maybe he should be taking notes, but that would mean not looking at Jotaro for any given amount of time and he doesn’t know how well he can manage that right now. “English says that you ‘are’ eighteen like we do, though,” Jotaro continues, “which is nice. Some languages say you ‘have’ eighteen years.”

Kakyoin furrows his brow, confused. “Why would you say you have eighteen years?”

Jotaro just shrugs. “Apparently that’s how you say it in French. Polnareff told me.” He glances down at Kakyoin’s hand where it’s still touching his face. “You can, uh. You can stop now.”

He yanks his hand back like Jotaro’s burned him. “Sorry! I wasn’t thinking.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“...sorry?”

Jotaro huffs, rolling his eyes good-naturedly. “It’s fine. You did better that time, though. English has some weird vowels so I can’t blame you for not getting them right away.”

“I just don’t understand how you know all of this stuff,” he laments, slumping onto the table in front of him. “It’s really hard.”

“I learned it when I was a kid,” Jotaro explains. “It makes it a lot easier to pick up on the rules and stuff when you don’t have another language in the way.”

“But still,” Kakyoin protests, “you just get it. You’re so fucking smart, it’s not fair. Leave something for the rest of us.” He picks up a nearby pencil and waves it around as he gestures at the papers scattered across the table in front of them. “It’s your fault I’m doing all of this anyway.”

His brow creases and he looks genuinely confused, which leaves Kakyoin at a loss because he really thought that was obvious. “How is it my fault?”

“You’re the one who wants to go to college in America!”

“...you don’t?”

He hesitates for a moment, weighing the pros and cons of being completely honest here or downplaying the reality of it, which is that if Jotaro had decided he wanted to go to college in fucking Antarctica, Kakyoin would have started shopping for winter clothes immediately. It’s not that he isn’t interested in going to school in the United States--the school he ended up applying to is a really good one, only a 30-minute train ride from where Jotaro is going to study marine biology, and offers classes for what they call English Language Learner students so he won’t be so overwhelmed by the amount of English he has to learn. It’s a dream come true for Kakyoin that he would have never, ever thought to pursue without Jotaro declaring that he was going to America for school, but he’s not going reluctantly. Nor is he just going for Jotaro; it’s a fantastic school and he’s happy that he’s getting this opportunity.

But the two of them, there’s something tying them together. They were each other’s first best friend, the first person who really saw the other for who they were, all of who they were, from their stands to every broken piece of them that shattered off in the desert. Jotaro and Kakyoin have seen each other through so, so much that no one else will ever be able to understand. He can’t lose that, not to an enemy stand user and certainly not to anything as easy to overcome as distance.

“Originally, I only wanted to go because you wanted to go, but it’s a good opportunity anyway,” Kakyoin says honestly. “I wouldn’t have considered it if you hadn’t brought it up first, but I really am looking forward to it now. Even if it’ll be difficult.”

“You’re going because of me.” Jotaro looks lost, confused. He’s staring at Kakyoin as if he’s just now seeing him--like he’s just put the pieces of him together and something’s finally, finally making sense. “You’re learning English because of me. You--you went to Egypt for me.”

“Alright, that wasn’t entirely for you, I do actually care about the world enough to want to make sure it doesn’t get taken over,” he huffs. “There was a bit of revenge in there, too. But yeah, I’m going to America because you are. You’re important to me, Jotaro. I’d follow you anywhere.”

Kakyoin really didn’t think this was as earth-shattering of a revelation as Jotaro seems to have taken it as. He thought it was pretty fucking obvious, all things considered. It must have been. He’s never been subtle about the fact that he likes Jotaro. But Jotaro is still staring at him as if this information is news to him; as if he’s just now realizing that Kakyoin doesn’t just stick around because he’s the only stand user his age around, and oh. Wait. Jotaro totally thought that, didn’t he.

“Jotaro,” Kakyoin says, then stops before he goes any further. He doesn’t know what he wants to say next. If he wants to tell the truth, say you were the first person who ever looked at me and saw me for who I was; if he wants to tell him I think I’ve been in love with you since I woke up in your house and you told me you were going to kill Dio. He settles for something a little less dramatic. “You know you’re my best friend, right?”

“I didn’t.” Jotaro’s voice is quiet, slightly pained. “I thought you just sort of. Tolerated me.”

“Tolerated you?” he repeats, incredulous. “No. I like you, Jotaro. I really fucking like you. You’re the only person who gets me.”

He inclines his head, hiding his face behind the brim of his hat. “I like you too, for what it’s worth. You’re amazing.”

Kakyoin is grateful that the two of them aren’t making eye contact right now because he feels like everything he isn’t saying is obvious across his face right now; like his eyes and the curve of his nose and the furious blush that paints his cheeks are all screaming I love you because he can’t seem to articulate it. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he says, painfully, brutally honest. “Of course I’d follow you to America. Learn English for you. Anything.”

“That’s probably not healthy,” Jotaro mutters and Kakyoin laughs. “But I get it. I think I’d do the same for you.”

“What a pair we make. Couple of codependent bastards.” He sighs, finally looking back down at the homework in front of him. “Well, now that we’ve cleared that up, I should probably get back to--”

“Noriaki,” Jotaro interrupts, and isn’t that something. He almost never uses Kakyoin’s given name. Nobody does, really, except his parents. He’s always preferred his family name. But, hearing Jotaro say it… he could get used to Noriaki, if it sounds like that every time. “You’re important to me too. I know I’m not the best at showing it, but all the stuff you said, about feeling like I’m the only person who gets you, that’s how I feel about you too. Really.”

He bites his lip, trying to keep himself from blurting out something he can’t take back. His skin is crawling with it, face on fire and hands wringing in his lap as if every part of his body is trying to signal to Jotaro what Kakyoin can’t seem to say out loud.

But something about Jotaro makes Kakyoin incredibly, impressively stupid, and so after a few moments of awkward silence the warm, buzzing feeling coursing through his veins can’t stay down any longer and he says, voice just barely above a whisper, “I’m really fucking in love with you, Jotaro. And it’s fine if you don’t feel the same way, but I thought, you know, on the topic of feelings and whatnot…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, but there’s not much more to say, anyway. What else could he add? He’s fairly certain he’s not going to get the shit kicked out of him for it, not after a conversation on the school rooftop about expectations and did you know in America half of the states have decriminalized homosexuality, said much less casually than he originally intended. “You’re just--I said it already, but you’re the only person who understands me, and I think maybe it started in Singapore when we had to share a hotel room and I realized, like, wow, he’s really attractive. And that wasn’t me being, like, in love with you or anything, but it was the beginning of the end, and now--”

“You’re rambling,” Jotaro cuts him off gently, his hand going to cup the underside of Kakyoin’s chin and tilting his face up towards him; his thumb and forefinger are bracketing his mouth just like Kakyoin had done earlier. This is a thousand times more intimate than that, though, he realizes, as Jotaro runs his thumb along Kakyoin’s jaw. “Stop me if you’re not okay with this,” he says, and before he has a chance to ask what this is, exactly, Jotaro’s mouth is on his. It’s nothing world-ending, just a chaste press of lips, but it reignites that electricity that had been running through his body earlier regardless. Kakyoin thinks he might be melting a little bit.

It’s over almost as soon as it starts, but Kakyoin still feels breathless and giddy. From that. He’s so fucked. He is so fucked. “So, that means…” he prompts.

Jotaro laughs, and it’s just as wonderful of a sound as it is every time, made only better for the rarity of it. “It means I’m in love with you too. The hell did you think I meant?”

“I don’t know!” He buries his still-red face in his hands. “Maybe you were being nice and just trying to give me what I wanted.”

“Trust me when I say everything I want to do with you is entirely selfish,” Jotaro says, and the stark honesty in his voice startles Kakyoin a bit. “I want everything with you, Noriaki. Every moment of your time.”

“What was that about not being good with words?” he asks weakly. “You can have it. All of it. Everything. Just so long as you give me something in return.”

He smiles, and. Damn. Kakyoin’s gone. Done for. He’d do anything for this boy. He is Jotaro’s, head to toe, every part of him. He’s been Jotaro’s for so much longer than either of them were fully conscious of, and if he thinks about it, really thinks about it--Jotaro’s probably been his for just as long. “I’ll give you whatever you want.”

#jjba #jojo no kimyou na bouken #jojo's bizarre adventure #jotakak #jjba part 3 #stardust crusaders #jotaro kujo #noriaki kakyoin #jojo fanfic #fanfiction #my writing #jojos bizarre adventure #jotaro x kakyoin

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