Eloquence

Jojo and Kakyoin Both Like Cherries

"Can you teach me?"

Jojo glances up from the bowl of cherries. "Teach you what?"

"That thing you do. With the cherry stems. I'd like to learn that."

"Now?"

"I know, I know. We just saved the world and only barely kept Avdol and Iggy and your grandpa and I guess me alive and the first thing I want to do is learn a party trick."

Jojo fixes Kakyoin with a look. Kakyoin studiously ignores this.

"But I'm no weirder than you are. Come on. We just saved the world and everybody and the first thing you do when you come in here is start pawing my cherries." Kakyoin flushes. "Sorry. That sounded wrong."

Jojo lets the corners of his mouth twitch. "Alright."

"Huh?"

"I'll teach you."

Kakyoin had not considered the possibility that Jojo would actually agree. He'd just... asked, had seen Jojo's eyes drop to the cherry bowl and had flashed back in his mind to the first time Jojo had done that, all the way back in Miss Holly's house before everything in the world had happened all at once.

"... on both ends. Kakyoin, are you listening?"

"Hmm? Oh. Sorry. I'll pay attention."

Jojo starts over. "You need to get one that's long enough and has a knob at both ends. This one, see..."

"Like this?"

"No. You can't have that on it."

"Wouldn't that-"

"Gets in the way. Try this one." Jojo shoves a cherry at Kakyoin, pulls out a second for himself and talks around it. "Sho da shing ish you hafta get da sherry off of da shtem firsht."

Kakyoin giggles as he attempts to separate cherry and stem. "Dish'sh hadder dan it looksh, Jojo."

"C'mon, that's the easy part." Jojo's cherry disappears down his throat, leaving his lips unnaturally red. He flicks the cherry stem between his teeth at Kakyoin, who glares mutely and continues to struggle with the fruit.

"'Ow do you grab dem bosh?"

"Bite it. That'll help."

After a minute of nearly choking himself to death on a cherry stem, Kakyoin thinks he's managed to separate the elements of the cherry.

"That's it. Now normally you have to suck on it for a bit to soften it up, but I think you've already done that." Jojo's voice drops flat into the air.

"Right."

"Then you form it into a loop... Kakyoin?"

Kakyoin is hunched over, retching. "It went down my throat," he says miserably.

Jojo laughs. "Yeah, it'll do that. Kills your gag reflex after a while."

"Better teach it to Pol!"

"No, he might be good at it. He can do my cigarette trick. And remember-"

"when he-"

"and we all stuffed our stands up his nose"

"and he's standing there with his eyes crossed and Hierophant and Hermit Purple crawling down his throat"

"and his lip bleeding 'cause the Priestess was chewing on it"

"that was disgusting"

"and awesome!"

"Now that I think about it, he showed some pretty impressive self-restraint. I couldn't have held still for that."

"You could have. You didn't flinch when I was dragging the flesh bud out of you."

"Yeah... but... that was out. And not so squirmy."

"It was pretty squirmy."

"Not as bad as Hierophant."

Jojo smiles and tilts his head back. "Yeah, he's squirmy. It is a he, right? Or can't you..."

"I always figured. How do you know how squirmy he is?"

"Just watching him leave that nurse. Pretty squirmy. Star Platinum could barely hold his head still."

Kakyoin laughs. "You couldn't have pulled it off if it hadn't been so unexpected. No one had ever kissed Green's vessel before. You know, foaming at the mouth and screeching. Not exactly the most attractive qualities in a girl."

"I had had my Stand for less than a month. It was all I could think of in the moment."

"It worked, didn't it? I'm lucky you were such a natural. Broke my concentration and everything."

"I'm just so good at kissing." Yes, he is, thinks Kakyoin. "It's the cherry stems." Jojo winks, a boyish smile stretching across his face. No, it's probably the other way around, thinks Kakyoin. Then he wonders what that says about his own kissing skill. Not that he's kissed a whole lot of people.

"Who have you been kissing, Jotaro-chan? It better not be one of those desperate schoolgirls. When are you going to get a girlfriend, anyway?" Kakyoin hadn't even noticed Miss Holly enter the room.

"No one." Jojo pulls his hat down over his eyes.