Eloquence

Understanding

Important Author's Note: I have improved this chapter and moved it from its previous location to here, where it definitely works better. 

Figured it out yet? says the angle of Jojo's body and the quirk of his eyebrows.

"But you never did finish explaining."

"No." Simple, as if it's its own explanation. No could be No, I didn't or No, and I won't. Here all No says is No.

His hand talks instead. It says, sorry, we were interrupted. Sorry, I really did mean to show you. It dips into the cherry bowl.

It grazes a perfect stem, hesitates: This one is for you. It finds another.

Kakyoin takes the one left for him.

Jojo's neck turns sideways, displays his jaw over the barrier of his coat's collar. Look, it says. This is how.

Then it bobs to accommodate the cherry and says watch, pay attention.

Kakyoin follows every movement of that beautiful mouth, but of course he doesn't think "beautiful," who would...

well...

he does...

but only in an artistic sense, of course.

Jojo's elbows touch the table. Come closer, they say, you can't see from all the way over there; this is a lesson, not a performance.

Kakyoin is suitably chastised.

He leans in, just close enough to feel the warmth that radiates off of Jojo's skin, and focuses.

Jojo's eyes squeeze shut, like a cat's, a slow blink of irritation. But Kakyoin doesn't know what that means, doesn't know how to interpret the dip of the other's eyelashes, with the fluttering candlelight casting a haze over everything Jojo says.

Jojo sighs. "With your Stand." And he leaves his lips slightly parted.

Kakyoin is almost sure of what Jojo is asking, but not quite, so Hierophant pauses at the edge of that inviting mouth until the man's eyes lock with Kakyoin's, go on echoing in his gaze, Don't sit there waiting, so Kakyoin slips his stand past Jojo's lips and tries not to think of kisses.

Hierophant Green is Kakyoin's opposite. Kakyoin loves the openness and light of a blank canvas, loves a near-empty room with a window and white walls and all of his art supplies. He is strong, and knows it, but he is also gentle. Kakyoin's hands are meant to create art. He hates the assumptions people make, thinking that Kakyoin's gentleness makes him submissive.

Hierophant is destruction and darkness and bloodlust. He craves shadows, confinement, violence. He is as delicate and as sharp as thin fishing line. He is never happier than when he rips through living flesh, feels the warmth of death rushing over him. Hierophant loves to be underestimated, so that the shock of destruction tearing through a victim's body is all the worse.

Kakyoin and Hierophant Green need one another. Kakyoin remembers Avdol's quiet declaration: My spirit, my guardian. Kakyoin's worst enemy, and his closest ally.

And so, Kakyoin must think of neither kisses nor violence, must restrain both himself and Hierophant Green, and if he does a subpar job at one of those tasks, well, he can be excused on the grounds that it is an overwhelming situation. Jojo's mouth is so very warm, so dark, that Hierophant keeps trying to wriggle further in, maybe run right down into Jojo's gut and posess him, puppet him, from the inside out.

And that simply would not do, would it. So no, Kakyoin does not entertain himself with the dark pleasures of sinking the essence of his soul into a living thing and controlling it, but he does think a little bit (and only a very little bit) about how the soft muscle of Jojo's mouth would feel against Kaykoin's own lips.

Then, there is the cherry stem poking against Hierophant, and it is dead and small and shuts off the urges to kiss and to kill both at once.