Expression

Chapter Twenty-three

a/n: we approach... the beginning of the end

Kakyoin rubbed at his eyes. He'd been looking through a directory of therapists for hours trying to find one who could refer him for top surgery. His eyes ran down the page, passing over the words but taking none of them in. I think I've gone down this one five times. It was two in the morning and there was still an untouched pile of assignments at his elbow.

He'd always pushed off his work until the last minute, but it had never been this bad. If he could do these in the afternoon instead of the middle of the night he wouldn't have this problem, but he just never could. Yet he at least could occasionally do this before, when art was nothing more than a hobby. He could never draw while he had something else to do, but he really wanted to work on his art, so he'd get his homework done before then. Now that his homework was art... what else was there? He'd known that this would happen. He'd been such an idiot to think otherwise. There was nothing to stop him from wasting all of his time.

It was rare to get more than five hours of sleep; there was no way that he'd embarrass himself by turning anything in late, but empty hours passed by idly.

Maybe Jotaro was just a dopamine fix.

Surely that was it—and he, so hopeless and desperate for something to occupy his mind and too lazy to find this for himself, had convinced himself that this was love because he didn't know what love was. So that's that. I shouldn't have let him waste his time on me. He didn't quite know how to explain certain things, such as how whenever he fell asleep he wanted to be warm in Jotaro's arms, but the mind was a mysterious place, wasn't it? Impossible to truly understand. Yet this explanation was still quite handy. The mind fixated a lot on these dopamine hits. If someone pathetic like him was too weak to find any source for himself, relying entirely on Jotaro, then of course he was present in all of his art.

He scoffed, remembering his half-assed attempt over break to get his mind off of Jotaro. To think that he could just plug in video games and cure himself of this. Worst of all, I've wasted another half an hour on this pathetic self-pity.

All of that, and he'd forgotten what he'd been doing. Top surgery. But on the other hand, do I need to? Should I? Wouldn't it be so much easier just not to? Just to live as a woman. At least then my only fear will be my voice. Once I get past that, I don't have to worry what people will think about me. It would be so much easier...

But I want to! I want this! I want to be me! What have I been struggling for all my life, if not for that? Why did I endure the isolation, the loneliness, the strange looks, the whispers? The risks of street steroids? Baring my soul to some psychiatrist who judged every word I said? Nobody does that for no reason!

What changed between then and now?

He didn't get much more sleep on most other nights, either.

Jotaro had been practicing with Star Platinum a lot lately. He'd gotten so much better at stopping time. Why didn't it make him feel any happier? There was only ever the disappointment that he wasn't doing any better, even when he looked back and saw how much he'd improved. He was twice as strong with this as he had been before, and he couldn't feel a damn thing about it.

Every new record only reminded him how much more he could have done.

The added effect of spending so much time in these frozen moments was that his days were so much longer, and his exhaustion was writ plain on his face. How many hours did he give each day to this? It took up most of his time once he was done with his assignments and had studied. To what end, he knew not.