#I JUST WANNA APOLOGIZE AGAIN FOR HITTIN U WITH THE WALL OF TEXT

[saltine-kakyoin]

ok i CANNOT take it anymore I simply MUST know. spill the beans on the Star Catinum scene please 🙏🏼🙏🏼💝💝💝🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 I have been wondering for SO LONG and I am SO CURIOUS

OKAY SO BEFORE I GET INTO THIS, LEMME PROVIDE SOME EXPOSITION! :3 the Star Catinum Scene was heavily inspired by the one fan art of splat w the BIG dinner plate eyes, the one where’s he’s like owo and then O W O. it reminded me of a cat! and then i thought of this one post i saw ages ago about how much it’d suck if catra’s eyes went all big + dilated in the middle of one of her fights with adora, and then... the dots connected and, to quote my main man kronk, it was all coming together now :3 another big part of this is the adventure i had w coffee in ny, which we’ve talked about here in there in chat! w that said, lemme dive right in!! this might get long, so i’m gonna put it into a readmore just in case!

sO. the star catinum scene is from the sda, which means kak is roomies w camille in paris while jotaro is grappling w friend/family withdrawal in florida! Jotaro travels + visits everyone when he can, bc he is just. Mad lonely in florida. he might grump about all of the crusaders, but he really do be lovin + missing them, you know? On Kak and Camille’s end, this is normally fine! however, the visit that takes place in the star catinum scene is like. towards the later end of the semester for Kak, and inconveniently RIGHT in the middle of one of his final projects for the semester. So! Instead of trying to juggle the project + jotaro, he decides, fuck it! I’m gonna go crazy go stupid and finish it in advance so I can devote all of my attention to jotaro + what he’s been up to when he arrives. :)

nonetheless, jotaro’s visit sneaks up on him, in the way that these kinds of situations do, and he really becomes unhinged that week! He’s gone, painting for nights on end, leading up to Jotaro’s arrival + distressingly, he’s still not done the day/night before jotaro’s set to arrive! Kakyoin is normally a pretty levelheaded and rational guy, but all pretense has jumped out the window. he just Needs to finish this project at this point. SO. that night right before jotaro flies in, Kak stops by the cafe right underneath his and Camille’s apartment that’s run by a turkish and indian couple, and orders two large cups of their most intense brew. With his project and his coffee in hand, he sets off for a parisian rooftop to finish what he started, chugging the first cup as he goes. The first cup is nice, and really gets him going and in the mode! however, he gets so hyperfocused on the painting that he forgets there’s a second cup- at least, until he almost trips on it hours later! And then he’s like. Oh. Oh GOD. there’s a second cup! full of coffee! what do? The small voice of reason that’s been dwindling throughout this week is like: noriaki....whatever you Do, do NOT drink that cup. just let it go. toss it. But another, louder part of him is like: but you are getting kind of sleepy tho.. and are you done with your project yet? No? Then why waste the money by throwing the cup away? Just drink it dude...

So, he drinks it! which is fine and dandy for all of five minutes, until the caffeine REALLY begins kicking and oh, oh god. he should Not have had the second cup of coffee...Filled with regret and too much energy to handle, he feverishly finishes up the painting, slowly losing a grip on reality with each stroke! it almost feels like his body is trying to exorcise itself, which he can’t really blame it for. almost drunkenly, he stumbles back to his and camille’s apartment- thank god for hierophant catching his missteps and making sure the painting isn’t tarnished on the journey! He stumbles back into the apartment, which is pretty dark beyond the light peeking out from camille’s bedroom + the flickering glow of the flames from her new candles. she steps out of her room when she hears he’s finally home, and ooh. Kakyoin may be lost in the caffeine sauce, but he can almost Feel the concern radiating from Camille’s person. she barrages him with a bunch of questions, seemingly all at once. wherewereyou? are you okay? isitfinished? whendidyoulastsleep? Most importantly, are you going to be well enough to get pick Jotaro up from the train station in a few hours? 

Kakyoin waves these questions off as his body plummets into the wonderfully plump cushions of their sofa- painting,i’mfine,yes,idon’tknow, and Yes. just let me close my eyes for a moment...i’ll be fine just wake me up when it’s time to get jotaro. And then, he slips into a deep deep slumber. 

 (i’ve gotta get ready for work soon, so i’m gonna copypasta the rest from my explanation of it to jules!! which is grand bc i feel that explanation captures the fever dream quality of it much better than i am here!)

Camille watcches him melt into the couch + basically enter a coma with mounting anxiety. Normally Jotaro calls when he's arrived at the train station from the airport, and despite the early hour she doesn't really expect this time to be any different. However, it's normally Always Kakyoin that goes to get him. and then they go out for lunch, or dinner, or breakfast. or just a random snack run at the oddest hours of the day. Normally Camille hardly interacts with Jotaro, and she’s used to their interactions always falling flat.. she doesn't know why. Kakyoin assures her that that's just how Jotaro is: quiet, expressive in his own ways. but it gnaws at camille

So anyhow, she waits for Jotaro to call with Dread, because the situation can go one of two ways: kakyoin emerges from his like 2 hour nap after not sleeping for at least a day or two, and the entire visit is off because Kakyoin himself is off skelter. Or, she answers the phone and gets jotaro from the train station Herself + maybe makes him dislike her even more! both options make her stomach drop, and she can't stop her eyes from constantly drifting over to kakyoin, who looks a little too still, a little too cold, a lot of too worn out. She grabs her nicest, most comfortable blanket and throws it over him.. maybe it'll help him sleep better, and hopefully it'll help ease her mind

she does some meditation until jotaro Finally FINALLY calls. Kakyoin is the lightest sleeper known to man for reasons that Camille is unable to understand, so she leaps on their telephone. jotaro's voice is something that strikes fear in her, and having his voice right up in her ear at like 3 am is the least ideal thing ever. it throws all of her meditation out the window, and the harebrained anxiety is Back.

hurriedly, she tells jotaro that they'll be over to pick him up soon! and she can't help but notice the deflated, "Oh." she gets back in response, which baffles her even further. (jules said that was bc he was just waking up from his own personal red-eye flight fever dream nap, and I cannot agree more!) Sure, it's normally always kakyoin that gets jotaro, but what's so wrong with her tagging along? It's not a far walk from their apartment to the train station- what if she just wanted to get out of the house? anyhow, the thought only serves to make camille more nervous.

she decides right after hanging up that No. She is Not going to wake kakyoin up for this- he really needs the sleep, jotaro be damned. it's not like they're going to get up to anything at this hour anyways. She shimmies into her outerwear + yeehaws over to the gare du nord, where she finds jotaro pretty quickly (he’s so tall!). he's like, "Oh- you. Where's Kakyoin?" and she spitballs the entire thing to him because Camille is just a motormouth when her nerves are high

Camille is expecting Jotaro to be miffed, just a little bit, but surprisingly, he's pretty chill about the whole thing. He's grateful to Camille for coming to get him, because otherwise he'd get hopelessly lost in the maze of the city. This is where Camille begins to realize, hm.. perhaps she was too harsh of a judge..mayhaps.. jotaro really is just Like That, as kakyoin has said at least six times before.. what a concept.

They start walking back to the apartment, and Jotaro's mostly concerned about Kakyoin and why the dude's currently comatose on their couch. Camille just keeps rambling and maybe giving out more information than she should, but Camille is just like Polnareff in that regard. she doesn't notice his gaze soften at their similarity, or at the concept that kakyoin would work himself raw just to make time for jotaro's visit... (which Kakyoin shouldn't have to, not for his sake! but the concept pokes at the small beast in jotaro that fancies kakyoin, which.. ugh. that's an entire thing for him to wrestle with.)

so they make it back to the apartment, and camille urges him to be really quiet as they enter- 'did you know, kakyoin's a super light sleeper? i stubbed my toe and cursed once and it woke him up! it's a little odd, i wonder why he's like that.' but jotaro knows. he learned why early sometime in their third year, an admittance uttered in the pitch black of the ocean at an ungodly hour. death 13, a stand he never met, or at least one that he doesn't remember meeting? and yet one that had such a profound impact on kakyoin. in the present, he puts more thought into his footsteps as they cross the threshold between the apartment commons and kakyoin and camille's apartment.

And oh, there he is. buried under a heaping white blanket, with only the left side of his face poking out. jotaro grins ever so slightly, looking at the noodle strayed madly across the side of his head that jotaro can see- how intensely had kakyoin flung himself at the couch? he feels like his eyes rest on kakyoin a moment too long, and maybe camille feels it too. or maybe her mind is just buffering- kakyoin had said she was squirrel-minded sometimes. as if her brain were leaping from one thing to another at such incredible speeds that she herself struggled to keep up with it

camille whispers so lightly that jotaro almost doesn't hear her. but once he does catch on to what she is saying, something takes hold of his heart and tries to drag it under. She's afraid to wake Kakyoin up and ask him to move because he really needs the sleep, but that means jotaro's pick for bed is either her bed (sized for one petite camille and therefore most Definitely not fit for one giant Jotaro) or kakyoin's (which is better suited for jotaro's height but also DANGEROUS)

he feels her eyes upon him like a searing iron on flesh. camille means well, and camille has No Idea what feelings he has- he knows she doesn't think anything of his silence, his deliberation...but god. in this tiny apartment lit only by candlelight, it sure feels like she's peering into his soul and judging him. nonetheless, he ends up choosing kakyoin's bed. his flight was long, and camille's bed is just. not cut out for him! that, and it'sonlyonenightit'sonlyonenightit'sonlyonenight. once kakyoin is up tomorrow.. or whenever he's up......he and jotaro can just switch beds and there'll be no problems. this is what jotaro tells himself, but his mind still runs rampant as he lies in kakyoin's bed. thisiskakyoin'sbed. this is where kakyoin sleeps Every Single Night. this is where kakyoin would be sleeping Right Now if he hadn't run himself ragged in preparation for your visit. he did that for youforyouforyou! but also.. he should not have done that for you- you always have this effect. it's an endless cycle all night long- jotaro is thankful when the exhaustion from the airport finally shuts his brain up

needless to say, jotaro feels like shit when he wakes up. camille feels like shit when she wakes up. nobody had a good night except for kakyoin, and that's only if you count out his feverish journey back to the apartment as his body tried to violently keep itself from tearing apart at the seams due to drinking Way Too Much strong coffee. camille's already up when jotaro clambers out of kakyoin's room, starting the pot for the morning. she takes one look at him and empathizes, asks how he takes his coffee. they chat quietly as it brews- camille tells him that the only person she thinks got a good night's sleep is kakyoin, who is still out of it. bemused, she tells jotaro how she misjudged where the counter was earlier and accidentally ended up slamming her mug on it, which she was SURE was going to wake up kakyoin. but behold... the beast still slumbers!

this is a really pivotal moment for jotaro and camille's friendship, this quiet morning talk. they don't talk about anything in particular, just whatever floats into camille's mind. they're both too tired to really care about any preconceived notions they had about the other, which is how they both learn that they had horribly misjudged the other. huh, would you look at that!

at some point as they're chatting, star platinum peels away from jotaro to go check on kakyoin, which used to happen often, especially back in tibet. this would annoy jotaro any other time- he very distinctly remembers kakyoin harshly telling him i'mfinei'mfinei'mfine, i'm not going to break or anything. but star (and thus, by extension, jotaro..) has always been the type to Need to check. star has always been a bit more anxious about kakyoin after dio, which jotaro really thinks is pretty fair. seeing your best friend getting rolled into a helicopter with a giant gaping hole in his abdomen will do that to you!

but anyhow. star peels away from jotaro to check on kakyoin, and jotaro allows it. he is concerned about kakyoin- although jotaro's guilty of it, too, it's no good to be staying up for that long and knocking yourself straight out with old coffee. he keeps chatting with camille through all of this- star platinum is up to Risky Business, but camille can't see him. jotaro's fine

(except camille CAN see him and she's too petrified to say anything about it lmao)

so while he and camille keep chatting, star platinum hovers over to kakyoin, and really takes the dude in. admittedly, kakyoin looks worse for wear. his skin has an odd pallor to it that makes jotaro feel a little queasy, and the bags under kakyoin's eyes don't go unnoticed either. his brow is deeply furrowed, and absently jotaro wonders what's plaguing kakyoin in his sleep. it's always been like this, since death 13. since the coma. he wants to smooth kakyoin's brow out, to run his thumb along it. but that's dangerous.

instead, star acts on instinct and reaches out to push The Noodle, the damnable beast, out of his face. star moves slowly- he doesn't want to wake kakyoin up, after all. it was just in the way. Of Kakyoin, that is. Not Jotaro looking at his face. Never that.

however, jotaro gets caught up in the thought, and in the implication of the thought, and star's finger brushes against kakyoin's ear way more than he had intended to (read: he hadn't intended to!! *cue internal screaming*), and oh. god. oh god. kakyoin's index finger fidgets, and then his eyebrows relax. has jotaro fucked up. oh god. if he woke up kakyoin he might just chuck himself out the window and into the traffic below them

as jotaro's thinking this, star platinum, the fucking beast, remains firmly planted in front of kakyoin. despite all the sirens going off in jotaro's mind, it stays there. most times, he feels like star platinum and he are pretty well in sync. but sometimes, he wonders if star platinum has a will of its own- is it Really just jotaro floating around in there? he wondered this at the very beginning, in that jail cell, and he begrudingly wonders about it now. getbackinhererightnow, and Yet! star platinum remains, taking in kakyoin with wide eyes. beside him, camille takes a very long sip of her coffee.

kakyoin wakes up slowly, as if sleep is not yet done with him. when he finally does manage to crack open his eyes, he blinks once, twice. slowly. why is it so bright. why is it so Purple? once his brain finally rejoins the land of the living, he is able to discern what the purple nebula before him is- it's star platinum? looking at him with eyes the size of dinner plates? his mouth utters the stand's name before he can quite process what's going on, but the second he does, splat is gone. faintly, he hears a choke from across the room, and that's what finally wakes him up. his gaze is drawn over to his and camille's kitchen, where camille is very pointedly digging around in their fridge. but next to her is the hulking jotaro kujo, choking on what kakyoin... judging by scent alone, guesses is coffee.

the scent triggers something in kakyoin’s mind, and then it all hits him like a train- overwhelming and all at once. oh dear god, he slept for far too long. he missed jotaro's arrival completely! and now jotaro is here choking on coffee in their kitchen. Jotaro is here!! and kakyoin was only just now waking up, disgustingly sweaty, under a mountainous blanket- camille's? oh dear god. what a nightmare!

in any other circumstance kakyoin would go to hug jotaro or shake his hand, but this. this was not it. his breath smelled like coffee that was much too old and God, he was so hot! he felt like his clothes had been glued to his skin. he yells out some sort of greeting, some acknowledgement that hey!! it's jotaro! but the words are jumbled and a pretty pitiful mix of english, japanese, and french. and then he vaults over the couch and into his room, WHERE! Jotaro's suitcase is?????? he trips on it, yells out some sort of profanity, grabs some clothes, and proceeds to promptly lock himself in the shower for at least fifteen minutes.

in these fifteen minutes, it's just intense kill bill sirens on all ends. kakyoin's like FUCK MAN I MISSED PICKING UP JOTARO, I CAN'T BELIEVE I SLEPT THROUGH ALL THAT! AND WHY WAS STAR LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT? AHHHH; jotaro is just. lost in the sauce. star platinum you fucking bastard you should have withdrawn much earlier! that was too close! and camille. camille just hyperfocuses on achieving the perfect blend of coffee and creamer for her second cup while pretending she did NOT just witness whatever that super tender super intimate scene was. just smile and wave camille, smile and wave and nobody will ever know you saw a thing....

they collectively pretend to agree nothing happened when kakyoin gets out of the shower. jotaro, needing something to do with his hands before his body implodes, makes kakyoin some calming drink- something his father no doubt made often during busy tours. their fingers brush when he passes the cup to kakyoin, but you know what? we are NOT going to think about it. kakyoin nurses the cup gingerly, and camille, the saint that she is, bubbles up an entirely new conversation.

and that's basically it! jotaro falls deeper down the rabbit hole, kakyoin becomes Confused, and camille begins taking notes on the Hopeless Case of One (1) Kujo Jotaro lol