Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They met in a haze of hate and disaster, every consecutive moment seemingly spinning further and further out of control until it consumed them.

Joseph reflected, numbly, staring at Caesar’s slack face, that he’d probably loved him the instant Caesar had first called him an idiot. He’d hated him with such intensity that when there was nowhere for the hate to flow, he’d just begun to love him, pure and simple, with just the same fervor.

It was not a realization but rather an acknowledgment, and Joseph settled into his own skin with a slight decrease in discomfort, ever-watching for a hint that Caesar would wake up, but he remained still as the dead.

“Any update?” Lisa Lisa asked, and Joseph startled, only just noticing that his mother had come into the room.

Joseph forced a smile that he hoped didn’t look as brittle as it felt. “I think I saw his left eyelid twitch a few hours ago.”

“Vigilant.” To practically anyone else, the word would’ve sounded like a monotone, lifeless statement, but Joseph saw the slight tilt of her head that meant she was teasing him, and his smile softened into something slightly more genuine.

“Doctor said not to expect anything,” Joseph added, more serious, as Lisa Lisa settled into the seat next to him. It wasn’t new information, and Lisa Lisa hardly reacted, instead inspecting Joseph with calculating eyes.

“And you?” she demanded, leaning forward and grabbing Joseph’s undamaged wrist.

“Oh, I’ll be fine.”

“Your arm—”

“I’m not going to…” Joseph trailed off, gently pulling his wrist out of her grasp so that he could tug the sleeve of his sweatshirt over his ruined hand, away from Lisa Lisa’s gaze. “Unless I need to—”

“Okay,” Lisa Lisa said placatingly, and Joseph realized that his breathing had grown harsh in his own ears. “Okay.”

Joseph’s face crumpled, and he turned away. “Mom, I’m—” scared, he wanted to say, but his throat closed.

Lisa Lisa rose from her seat so that she could pull Joseph into a hug. Joseph numbly recalled an argument he’d had with Caesar a few weeks ago in which he’d insisted that Lisa Lisa gave the best goddamn hugs in the world while Caesar maintained that she’d likely never hugged a single person in her life. He wanted to say, Told you so, but Caesar was unconscious, would maybe be unconscious forever. Lisa Lisa stroked a hand through his hair, and for a moment, Joseph was five years old again and everything was going to be okay because his mom was here.

“Thanks,” Joseph said, voice cracking, when Lisa Lisa pulled back to thumb a stray tear from his cheek.

“Joseph, I’m not going to press the issue of your arm. You will make your own decision about it, and I will support you regardless.”

“Thank you.”

She brushed a few strands of hair off his forehead. “Caesar will wake up. I know him too well.” Her lips twitched upwards. “He’s as stubborn as you.”

As she settled back into her chair, fishing through her bag for a magazine, Joseph said, “Hey, mom?”

“Hmm?”

“Love you.”

Lisa Lisa didn’t look up as she flicked open her magazine, crossing her legs. “I love you too.”

Joseph dreamed that Caesar had shoved him out of the way of the stupid fucking truck again, but this time when Caesar lunged and fell, the tires split Caesar’s skull, and the blood went everywhere.

He woke up gasping, in tears, his broken ribs stabbing him with each breath.

“Jojo.”

Caesar’s voice was raw as if he’d been screaming all this time he’d been unconscious.

Joseph jolted into awareness and scrambled to Caesar’s bedside, his knees hitting the ground with a painful jolt. He grabbed Caesar’s hand with his good one and squeezed it. Caesar squeezed back weakly, looking confused.

“Jojo, where—”

“The hospital. Naples. Wammu and Kars are gone, don’t worry. They won’t come after us anymore.”

“Gone?”

“Gone.”

Caesar’s eyes roved over his face. “Thank god you’re not dead.”

“Me?” Joseph sputtered, aghast. “You’ve been in a coma! For a week!”

“Then it’s a wonder you survived that long without me.” Caesar smirked, and Joseph’s heart cracked wide open. He felt like everything that was him was pouring out of him, into the open, until all that was left were the tears in his eyes and the pained smile on his face.

“Jackass,” he choked out, overwhelmed, dropping his forehead onto the bed. Caesar took the opportunity to card a hand through his hair, and Joseph went absolutely boneless. He tilted his head to look up at Caesar, catching the fond tilt of his mouth. “I’m supposed to call the doctor.”

“Okay.”

“They weren’t sure you’d wake up,” Joseph admitted, and the words sounded so desolate to his own ears that he nearly winced.

“You know me better than that.”

“I do.”

Caesar grinned. “I feel like absolute shit,” he said cheerfully. “What did they have to do to me?”

“You look like fucking Frankenstein,” Joseph whispered, unable to keep from returning Caesar’s grin.

“No way.”

“Way. I saw. They had to basically rebuild your whole torso. It was nasty.”

Caesar tried to shift to peak under his hospital gown and seemed surprised as the shiny slash of new scar tissue already visible crawling up his collarbone. “Oh,” he said. “I can’t feel it.”

“Probably the morphine.”

“Huh.”

The doctor rushed in soon after—she’d apparently been alerted by some brain activity monitor—and started asking Caesar questions. Joseph reluctantly settled back into his seat, tucking his knees into his chest and drawing close. He hid his hand between his legs and stomach. His eyes roved over Caesar’s newly animated face, and something in him unraveled helplessly at the sight.

His life could be divided into Before Caesar and After Caesar. The moment they’d met, Joseph had known that nothing would ever be the same, although at the time he’d considered it was because he’d maybe decide to devote his life to making Caesar’s life more difficult. He settled his cheek against one knee and fished out his phone with his working hand, tapping out a message to Lisa Lisa on the perpetually cracked screen.

ME: he’s awake

MOM: On my way.

Doctor Quatro was telling Caesar more about his injuries and the extent of a potential treatment plan. Or, at least, Joseph thought that was probably what they were discussing in rapid-fire Italian. Study abroad in Italy, Lisa Lisa had said, It’ll be fun, she’d said. He couldn’t bring himself to be too upset about the decision, though.

“And you,” Doctor Quatro said, eyes aflame as she turned her attention to Joseph. Joseph’s jaw went slack in shock at the intensity of the sudden attention. “Remi’s furious that you missed your appointment yesterday. She knows you were here. She promised to take vengeance on me if you skip out again. She’s got you scheduled for 4:15 today. Please show up.”

“Oh,” Joseph said softly. He’d honestly forgotten about it entirely.

Caesar frowned at him. “You’re hurt?”

“Barely.”

Doctor Quatro shot him an incredulous glance, but Joseph just shook his head. He wanted to delay that conversation as long as possible. Doctor Quatro rolled her eyes but returned to her discussion with Caesar without comment.

Joseph took the opportunity to stare at Caesar—the stupid way that his hair went all flat and gross after so many days in bed, the faint birthmarks on his cheekbones, the slight knit of his brows as he concentrated on what was being said. Joseph knew—he’d seen—that his hospital gown hid the majority of the horrific state his body had been in after the accident. He wondered if Caesar would be able to run again.

Joseph blinked, and they were alone in the room, and Caesar was watching him with a strange little frown, quiet and far too still. Joseph rubbed his good hand over his face, wincing. “When did she leave?”

“Half hour ago.”

That—that was— “Oh.”

“Jojo, are you… alright?”

Joseph forced a smile, wide as he could manage it. “Less so now that you’re awake to bother me again.”

Caesar’s stiff shoulders relaxed a little bit, and he smirked tiredly. “That’s what I thought.”

Joseph was staring again. His fingers twitched. He wanted to grab Caesar by the shoulders and press his face into his neck and feel his heartbeat and live there. He settled for winding his good arm around himself.

“Come here a second,” Caesar said, and his voice had gone serious.

Joseph rose shakily to his feet, keeping his hand in his hoodie pocket. He hobbled over to Caesar’s bedside and stood there awkwardly for a moment as Caesar glared up at him in the unflatteringly harsh light.

Caesar finally reached up and grabbed Joseph’s wrist, tugging him down. Joseph sat easily enough on the edge of Caesar’s bed. He inhaled shakily, and he didn’t realize he was crying until Caesar reached up to touch his cheek.

“I—” Joseph began, voice raw, but any coherence of thought died on his lips. He tucked his chin into his chest, shoulders hunching. “I’m glad you’re awake, C.”

“What really happened after the truck hit me?” Caesar was definitely still glaring, expression at odds with the gentle press of his fingertips against Joseph’s wrist, idly feeling his pulse.

“I took care of it.”

“You’re going to have to tell me some day.”

“Why?”

“Because I almost died, you idiot.”

Joseph looked away, feeling as though he’d been punched in the throat. He couldn’t breathe.

“Oh, you infant,” Caesar snapped, tugging sharply on Joseph’s wrists. “Jesus, come here.”

Caesar pulled Joseph into an embrace, and Joseph gave into the urge to press his face against Caesar’s neck, just for a second. He made sure not to let any of his weight fall onto Caesar and hunched fearfully in the cage of his arms. He was alive, but he almost wasn’t. Because he’d pushed Joseph out of the way.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know.”

“Save you? Please.”

Joseph withdrew, anxious of Caesar’s injuries, but Caesar kept his grip on Joseph’s good hand. Joseph’s chest ached. “You didn’t have to.”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“Unlikely,” Lisa Lisa said, and Joseph turned to see her standing in the doorway. He hoped to god she’d just gotten there. “I’m glad to see you awake, Caesar.”

Caesar dropped Joseph’s hand, straightening as best as he could. “Lisa Lisa—” He actually smiled, a surprised little expression that was so genuine that Joseph had to take a deep breath. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Lisa Lisa returned, bestowing her own tiny smile. “Did I interrupt anything?”

Joseph scowled. “Mom.”

Caesar, either unaware or unbothered, only said, “Jojo and I were just—” and then he trailed off, frowning. “Is your research safe?”

“Yes,” Lisa Lisa said, sounding fond. “It’s safe.”

“Thank god.”

“Joseph, why did three different doctors beg me to make sure you made your appointment today?”

“I may have accidentally forgotten about one I had yesterday.”

Lisa Lisa gave him a severe look. “I see.”

The layers behind those two words. Joseph shoved to his feet. He needed to breathe. He needed a second. “I’m going to go get some coffee. Either of you want any?”

Caesar gave him a look that may have been concerned if Joseph bothered to analyze it, and he ducked out of the room, trying to hide his limp, as quickly as he could.

He blindly shoved his way through the hospital until he’d reached a courtyard that he thought must have been there for the children’s ward. He collapsed heavily onto a painted bench and finally took his bad hand out of his pocket. He breathed in the sticky-hot summer air, feeling like he was going to inhale the entire atmosphere, run out, suffocate.

The unnatural, forever-frozen asymmetric curl of his fingers, as if he’d eternally just hit his funny bone hard would have been enough, but the skin was also mottled by severe burns. He didn’t have to look to know how high the damage extended. He’d been told. He knew.

He didn’t want Caesar to know.

Now that he was awake and alive and would be okay, probably, eventually, Joseph wanted to keep him separate from this thing. If he could bisect his life into the good and the bad, he would shove Caesar and everything about him into the deepest corner of the good where the bad could never touch him, and he would keep his ruined arm behind his back, one foot in the bad, leaning into the good.

He put his head in his hands, remembered that one was useless only when he felt the strands of hair against only one of them, and he felt so, so stupid.

Lisa Lisa found him—he didn’t know how much later—and put a delicate hand on his shoulder. He flinched anyway. “Let me take you to your appointment.”

Joseph sagged within himself. “Okay.”

Caesar was dozing when Joseph and Lisa Lisa returned to his room in silence. Joseph felt raw and exposed. Lisa Lisa didn’t try to pry, and Joseph was grateful.

“You can’t hide an entire limb from him,” she’d said on the way to the appointment.

“Watch me,” Joseph had snapped, and they’d barely spoken since.

Joseph felt the need to apologize now, but he didn’t know what to say.

Caesar blinked groggily as they settled back in their spots, and he had a moment of sleep-soft vulnerability where he just smiled simply at them, uncomplicatedly glad to see them, and Joseph swallowed with some difficulty.

“When can I leave?” Caesar asked. “Hate hospitals.”

“I bet we can swing for tomorrow if you’re chill in a wheelchair for a few days.” Lisa Lisa nodded in agreement.

“Oh, good.”

“I have to go,” Lisa Lisa said after a few minutes of comfortable silence. “I’ll be back to pick you up at nine.”

The end to visiting hours. Joseph thought of them with dread now that his doctor had officially released him after their hour-long argument. “Okay,” was all he could say.

When she’d gone, Caesar looked at him for a moment before saying, “You were gone a long time.”

“Got lost trying to find good coffee.”

“Hilarious. You don’t need to tell me the truth, but don’t lie to me.”

Joseph squeezed his eyes shut, just for a second. “Fine.” He moved to hesitantly sit again on the edge of Caesar’s bed, and he frowned, thinking.

Caesar flicked his brow. “Stop making that face.”

“Do you like Italy?”

Frowning at the non-sequitur, Caesar said, “Yes?”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

“I was going to—” he cut himself off.

“What, Jojo?”

“I have to be back in New York in two weeks. For Fall semester.”

Caesar’s eyebrows shot up.

“I was going to ask if you wanted to—I don’t know. Forget it. It was—forget it.”

Caesar stared at him in silence for long enough that Joseph started to squirm. He was considering making a stupid joke when Caesar finally said, “It’s funny.”

“What’s funny?”

He huffed a laugh to himself. “I guess I sort of thought it was a given. That we’d stay together after this whole thing. I’d already…” He shrugged helplessly.

Joseph felt breathless. He leaned forward, just a little bit. “Come back with me.”

Caesar rolled his eyes, but the gesture was fond. He flicked Joseph’s forehead again. “If you insist.”

Joseph must have fallen asleep as they’d watched bad TV. He woke with a start, shaking off the bad feeling of some nameless nightmare, and then settled back to where he’d been, next to Caesar.

Caesar was staring at his hand.

“Does it hurt?” was all he said, quietly, as Joseph felt the ground yanked out from under him.

He cleared his throat. “I can’t feel anything at all below here,” Joseph whispered, touching the inner crook of his elbow.

“Who did that to you?”

“Kars did the burning. I sort of fucked up the rest of it on my own.”

Caesar reached out, skimming fingertips over the raw skin on the back of Joseph’s hand. “Did you feel that?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

The world reoriented itself, and Joseph felt nauseated as the good and the bad swirled together in a dizzying mix. He absently tugged his sleeve down, and Caesar said, “Kind of badass,” and Joseph bit back a sob.

He really hadn’t kept this secret long.

But he could keep another with minimal difficulty.

“Like a badass supervillain?” Joseph finally managed.

“The sidekick to my Frankenstein.”

“Aw, C, don’t be ridiculous. You couldn’t pull off Frankenstein—he has a much bigger dick than you.”

“Dickhead!” Caesar crowed, whacking the back of Joseph’s head.

“Oi, that reminds me of this meme I didn’t get to show you.”

“The one benefit of being comatose,” Caesar groaned as Joseph fished out his phone, already dropping his head onto Joseph’s shoulder to better see the screen.

Joseph let his bad hand stay in his lap.

That night, he paced the halls of Lisa Lisa’s apartment, picking things up and putting them back down, an aimless trek that circled and circled until Lisa Lisa pushed on his shoulders so that he sat heavily, crisscross applesauce, on the floor. She sat across from him, and he scratched fingernails along the floorboards in silence until the sun came up.

Joseph had wanted to push Caesar’s wheelchair down the hall as fast as it could go once they argued their way into an early release, but when he moved to grasp the handles, he went quiet. Lisa Lisa grabbed the handles instead, and Joseph trailed behind, feeling oddly disoriented.

“Pasta,” Caesar was saying, adjusting the collar of his favorite jacket, which Lisa Lisa had procured for him along with some of his clothes. “I would love some pasta.”

“Let’s get burgers,” Joseph said, just to be antagonistic, just to see the enraged flare of Caesar’s nostrils.

“I just came out of a coma, Jojo. I think I get to pick our meals for the next two years. At least.”

That was fair. But Joseph put on an exaggerated pout anyway and said, “You suck.”

Caesar stuck out his tongue like a five-year-old, and Joseph gasped.

Likely rolling her eyes behind her sunglasses, Lisa Lisa said, “The two of you really bring out the dumbass in each other.”

“Mom,” Joseph complained while Caesar straightened and murmured, “Sorry.”

Lisa Lisa brought Caesar to a stop and said, “Joseph, take Caesar outside. I’ll meet you there. I’m going to speak to Doctor Quatro.”

Joseph swallowed against the lump in his throat, grabbing one handle and awkwardly pressing his elbow against the other. It was stupid and drew an inordinate amount of attention to his mangled hand, but it got the job done.

A horn honked distantly as the doors opened, and Caesar did a full-body flinch. Joseph, pained, paused to touch his shoulder, trying to be comforting.

When they pulled to a stop by the curb, Joseph walked around the wheelchair to see Caesar’s face. His expression was predictably stoic. “I have a cousin in New York. He may even go to your university. I don’t know.”

“Oh. Neat.”

“He’s in med school, I think. He may know some good physical therapists.” Caesar, pressed a hand against his own sternum, wincing. “I’m going to run again.”

“I know you are.”

“Will you play? In the fall?”

It hadn’t even occurred to Joseph that he wouldn’t. “If they let me.”

“They will. If they don’t, I’ll raise hell.”

Joseph smiled a little bit. “Hey. Remember how we met?”

Caesar rolled his eyes. “I try not to.”

Joseph snickered despite himself, thinking of the fury in Caesar’s face the instant he’d realized he’d been struck by the soccer ball. “I didn’t mean to hit you.”

“Because you’re such a bad player?”

“You distracted me! With your stupid running and yelling and whatnot!”

Caesar smirked. “Hey, Jojo?”

“What?”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Hah. Whatever. At least I’m a hot idiot.”

“Bit of a stretch.”

“Cae-sar,” Joseph whined, drawing out his name.

“I’m not taking it back.”

“You’re a cruel man.”

Caesar landed a light kick to Joseph’s knee. “I live to torment you.”

Joseph could only laugh, too loud and maybe a touch hysterical.

Two weeks later, Joseph was trying to jam Caesar’s crutches underneath the seat in front of them while Caesar hissed embarrassed insults.

“You’re going to get us in trouble.”

“No, this is totally how it’s supposed to go. See? Perfect.”

Caesar groaned, collapsing back in his seat. Joseph clambered over him to the window seat and peaked outside, stomach already churning.

“What’s wrong with you? Are you afraid of flying?”

“What? No. Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t have a comically horrific track record with air travel or anything. Don’t be an idiot.”

Caesar levelled him with a perplexed look. “The fuck are you talking about?”

“Nothing!”

Joseph dragged his nails down his thigh, jiggling his leg apprehensively.

Caesar elbowed him. “Order a drink if you’re so nervous. Jesus. I can’t be expected to baby you for the next million hours.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Joseph missed his mom already. She’d be staying in Italy for the rest of the year, pursuing a thread of promising research regarding the discovery of some new mineral. This would be the longest they’d gone without seeing each other since Joseph was four and Lisa Lisa had gone totally off the grid for nearly a year. What was more, she knew how to deal with Joseph on planes. She’d been so nice to him when they’d flown over to Italy together at the start of the summer, and she didn’t even make fun of him when he’d grabbed her hand at the turbulence.

Anyway, Caesar was sitting on the side of his bad arm, so it wasn’t like Joseph would even be able to grab his hand, even if he’d wanted to.

“Are you excited to finally see New York?” Joseph asked, changing the subject with only a slight desperation.

Caesar rolled his eyes. “Yes. You talk about it nonstop, you know. I’d like to see the hype around these bagels you’ve been worshipping all summer.”

“C, they’re so fucking good.”

“Breakfast tomorrow?”

If we survive the plane ride. “Fuck yes.”

“Finally.”

“Are you going to miss Italy?”

Caesar frowned, mulling the question over. “I have my whole history here. Good and bad. I’ll always miss it.”

Something in Joseph’s stomach coiled over in unease, but he just nodded.

“At any rate, once you’re done with school, I’ll pick where we go next.”

“That’s only fair,” Joseph conceded.

It only struck him a few minutes later that they’d both operated on the assumption that they were going to stay together for a long, long time. Joseph wondered if Caesar was experiencing their whirlwind of a friendship in the same way he was—if Caesar’s whole body thrummed with the fire of this intense, all-consuming devotion. His love for Caesar had settled into his bones in an inescapable, unimaginable way. Joseph wondered—

The plane started to take off. Joseph gripped the seat’s handle as best as he could, unable to draw in an even breath.

“I’m great,” Joseph choked out at Caesar’s alarmed glance.

“Idiota,” Caesar muttered, hooking his arm around Joseph’s neck and pulling him away from staring out the window. Joseph breathed shakily against Caesar’s shoulder, trying not to think about the crashes and just how long he was going to be airborne. Caesar rested his chin on top of Joseph’s head and whispered, “Like I’d let anything happen to you.”

In that moment, Joseph almost believed that Caesar would be able to defy gravity and physics, bad luck and destiny, and even heaven itself to make them safe.

Exhausted, Joseph clumsily jammed his keys into the door, missing the mark a few times before managing to wrench it open. He staggered into the dark apartment, and Caesar hobbled in behind on his crutches.

Joseph flicked on the lights and gestured around. “Welcome home.”

It wasn’t much. Lisa Lisa had refused to pay rent for a nice New York apartment while Joseph was in college, which was entirely fair, so he’d made a home for himself in the small one-bedroom with a view of a particularly dirty alley. It wasn’t as messy as it usually was considering he’d actually cleaned up before leaving for the summer, but things were certainly still strewn about in a haphazard way that he suddenly noticed. Dust covered every surface, but that was to be expected due to his long absence.

As he saw his apartment through Caesar’s eyes, it dawned on him that it was a one-bedroom.

He blanched.

“Uh,” he said, picking up Caesar’s duffle from where he’d dropped it when opening the door. “I forgot that it’s a one-bedroom.” He walked into the room to peak at the single large bed that took up most of the space and winced. “You take the bed for tonight. We’ll figure something out tomorrow—I’m too wiped to think about it now.”

“Thanks,” Caesar said, tossing his crutches aside to crawl into Joseph’s bed without even removing his jacket. Joseph shook his head fondly and bent over to take off Caesar’s shoes. Caesar wiggled his toes when Joseph finally freed one foot, and then nudged Joseph in the nose just to be an asshole. Joseph batted the offending appendage away, wrinkling his nose.

“You’re gross.”

“You’re gross,” Caesar mumbled, face half-smashed into the pillow.

Joseph hid a smile. “Go to sleep,” he said, voice horrifically soft.

Caesar hummed, his eyes already closed. Joseph leaned over and took off his jacket. Caesar was sleepily pliant, and immediately curled his way under the covers when Joseph was finished.

“Sleep well.”

“Mhmmm.”

Joseph dropped his own suitcase in the bedroom before closing the door. He drank a glass of water, and then sat down on the couch he’d found on the curb outside (which still smelled suspiciously like gasoline) and ran his hand harshly through his hair. He dragged the thick blanket he kept on the couch over himself and fell asleep miraculously quickly.

“Jojo?” Caesar cried hoarsely from the room over. Joseph felt instantly alert, springing off the couch, already panicked as he threw the door separating them open.

Caesar was sitting up in Joseph’s bed, looking sleep-ruffled and confused, one hand pressed against his side. “Caesar?”

“Where—”

“My apartment.”

Caesar relaxed, if only a little, still looking a little bit lost. “Oh.”

“Did you… have a nightmare?”

“Yes.”

Joseph wondered if he dreamed about being hit by the truck. He dreamed about it. He hesitantly walked over to the bed, straightening the sheets and smoothing Caesar’s hair down where it stuck up. “You’re okay.”

Caesar swallowed visibly. Before Joseph could withdraw, he grabbed his arm and yanked him down so that he landed at Caesar’s side. “Just until I fall asleep,” he mumbled, tucking himself into Joseph’s side.

“Big baby,” Joseph whispered, throat tight. Caesar made a quiet noise of protest but didn’t move, and Joseph wound his bad arm around Caesar’s back to keep him in place.

He must have fallen asleep embarrassingly quickly, because when he next opened his eyes, he was still in his bed, and Caesar was snoring into his chest. Joseph looked down at him, aching all over. He would have felt guiltier about staying here the whole night, but there was something so simple about it that really had nothing to do with the longing in Joseph’s chest.

When Caesar began to stir, Joseph jammed his cold nose against Caesar’s forehead, who groaned in irritated protest. He muttered something unflattering in Italian, pushing Joseph’s face away.

“You promised me bagels.”

“Shutupdidnotlemmesleep.”

Joseph poked Caesar in the cheek with one of his bad fingers, knowing the skin probably felt really weird and gross. Caesar groaned again, turning his face so that it was pressed entirely against Joseph’s chest. Joseph poked him in the back of the head, snickering when Caesar made a slightly more aware noise of rage.

“Wake up. I want a bagel, C.”

“I hate you,” Caesar said, finally propping himself up on his elbows to glare down at Joseph. He jabbed Joseph in his still-healing ribs, and Joseph squeaked in more surprise than pain.

“You hate me?” Joseph gasped in mock-outrage. “Sir, I protest.”

Caesar blinked at him drowsily, then collapsed back down on top of Joseph’s chest, knocking the air out of him for a dizzying second. “I hate that you’re a morning person,” he said, muffled.

Joseph rolled his eyes. “I’m getting up.”

“Nooooo,” Caesar whined, winding both arms around his middle, and Joseph sighed in defeat, reaching into his jeans pocket (they’d both slept in jeans—Joseph was not a fan) to fish out his phone, thumbing through his notifications. He had a few texts.

MOM: Glad you’re home safe. Give me a call when you’ve recovered from travel.

Joseph smiled. God, he really missed her. He tapped out a quick, emoji-laden response with lots of hearts and exclamation points. He frowned at his other text.

JOTARO: are you back

JOTARO: i’m coming over later

Joseph stared at this in confusion for a few minutes.

ME: ??????????????????????????dude I thought u were in Miami

JOTARO: heard you got in some dumb shit in Italy

ME: LMAO did u fly up here hahahaha

JOTARO: i drove

ME: okay damn ily too <3 <3 <#!!!!

JOTARO: whatever.

“Hey, you remember how I was telling you about my favorite cousin?”

Caesar peaked up at him out of one eye. “The mean one?”

“He’s not mean, just quiet. The really mean one is Johnny.”

“You have too many cousins.”

“Anyway, he’s coming over. At some point today. He didn’t really specify when.”

“Fuck.”

Joseph beamed. “Oh my god, Caesar. Do you know what this means?”

Caesar glared at him, staying silent.

“We can all get bagels together!”

With only token protest, Caesar ended up convincing Joseph that they should get bagels on their own since they didn’t actually know when Jotaro would be showing up. Caesar then convinced Joseph that they should eat on the dingy sidewalk bench outside the deli.

Caesar sat with his legs tucked under him, crutches carefully leant up against the side so that they wouldn’t fall or get in anyone’s way. Joseph, for his part, had one foot planted on the ground and his other knee digging into Caesar’s thigh. They sat in comfortable silence as Joseph tore into the much-anticipated bagel, feeling, for the moment, like everything was as it should be.

“What do you think?”

“It’s alright,” Caesar said dubiously. “I honestly don’t understand why it’s different from a regular bagel.”

Joseph blinked at him, aghast. “You’re beyond my help.”

Caesar smirked as if he’d been gifted with a pleasantly expected reaction, and Joseph couldn’t help but scowl in response. “Hey, Jojo.”

“What.”

Caesar leaned into his space and whispered, “I don’t like cream cheese.”

Joseph pushed him off the bench.

When they returned home, Joseph spent a good hour cleaning up the apartment to the best of his ability while Caesar watched the second Die Hard movie on daytime television. Joseph had never been the tidiest person in the world, and he honestly had never given a lot of thought to the merit of cleanliness, but Caesar loved it when everything was clean and in order. Joseph figured that the least he could do to make him feel more comfortable in this alien space would be to clean up the dregs of his last messes.

Joseph awkwardly swept the floors with one hand, deliberately trying to stand in Caesar’s line of sight as obnoxiously as possible.

“You’re so childish,” Caesar snapped, finally breaking his frayed composure to deliver a sharp kick to Joseph’s ass. “I can’t see the movie with your big fat ass in the way.”

Joseph laughed. “You’re just staring at my ass because it’s a good ass.”

Caesar aimed another kick at him, which Joseph easily sidestepped. “I would rather stare at anything else.”

“Are you challenging me to a twerk-off?”

“Jesus. No.”

“Sounds like you’re challenging me.”

Thankfully for Caesar’s pride, a perfunctory knock interrupted the argument before it could spiral into something truly ungodly. Joseph perked up immediately, dropping the broom with a clatter to rush for the door.

Jotaro stood on the other side, and Joseph immediately tackled him in a bear hug. “Good grief, get off,” he muttered darkly, winding his arms around Joseph and hugging him back tight enough to make Joseph’s healing ribs tweak in pain. Joseph ignored this in favor of pulling back just enough to beam at Jotaro.

“I missed you!”

“Okay,” he said, which essentially amounted to a weeping declaration in Jotaro-speak. He withdrew with a little shake of Joseph’s shoulder, looking down to try to hide his pleased little smile.

Joseph dragged Jotaro inside, kicking the door shut after them. “Jotaro, come meet Caesar.”

Jotaro’s attention immediately zeroed in on where Caesar was frozen on the couch, Die Hard 2: Die Harder still playing just too loud in the background. Joseph imagined that Jotaro’s intense glare would probably be fairly off-putting for anyone, but he knew Caesar would be more than happy to match that intensity.

True to form, Caesar’s jaw clenched with a visible flex, and he leaned back to better appraise Jotaro with such a detached, clinical glance that Joseph almost swooned a little bit. Jotaro, to his credit, didn’t shift in the slightest.

“Hello,” Caesar finally said.

“Hi,” Jotaro responded flatly.

Joseph felt inordinately ecstatic. “God, I love the both of you so much.”

Both of them flicked Joseph a quick glare. Caesar said “idiot” in that exasperatedly fond tone that Joseph was forever chasing while Jotaro tugged at the brim of his hat.

Joseph draped his good arm across Jotaro’s ridiculously broad shoulders and dragged him over to the couch. “How long are you in New York?”

Jotaro slowly sank down to sit between him and Caesar. Caesar watched Jotaro coolly, hitting the mute button on the TV without looking. “Class starts on Monday, so just until tomorrow.”

Joseph beamed. “Aw, you really drove all the way up here just to check on me for two days? You do care.”

Jotaro kicked him, and Caesar tried to disguise a laugh in a very fake cough.

“Is there anything you wanna do while you’re here other than chill with your favorite relative?”

Jotaro rolled his eyes. “I texted Jonathan. We’re having lunch with him before I leave tomorrow.”

Joseph’s stomach dropped.

“Which one is Jonathan?” Caesar asked.

“My half-brother.”

“He texted me, like, five hundred times asking about you,” Jotaro added, scowling.

“Yikes.”

Jotaro glared at him, and Joseph looked away. In all honesty, he just didn’t want to see Jonathan’s pityingly devastated face. They weren’t that close. They’d only discovered they were related a few years ago, and they’d never really settled into a comfortable relationship. Jonathan was absurdly nice, but it was difficult for them to be on the same wavelength. So, maybe Joseph tended to avoid him. So, what?

“Can I bring Caesar? To lunch?”

Jotaro glanced at Caesar, frowning. “I guess.”

“I don’t want to intrude,” Caesar said, uncomfortable.

“You’re gonna have to meet the rest of my lame family at some point, C.”

“I am?”

“Yeah, man.”

“What were you watching,” Jotaro interrupted, drawing Caesar’s attention.

“Die Hard marathon.”

“Turn on the sound.”

The three of them sat comfortably for a while, letting the movie play out. Towards the end of the movie, Caesar got up to go to the bathroom, and Jotaro turned to Joseph, snatching the wrist of his bad arm and rolling up the sleeve to get a better look at it while Joseph tried to feebly pull away, feeling inordinately weak.

Jotaro dropped the arm after a long moment, finally looking up at Joseph’s face. “It’s not as bad as I thought.”

Joseph blinked once. “What?”

“Aunt Lisa Lisa said they want to cut it off. I thought it’d look worse.”

Joseph shushed him violently. “Don’t say that. Caesar doesn’t know about that,” he hissed.

Jotaro arched a brow. “Is he your—”

“Don’t finish that sentence.”

“Whatever.” Jotaro tugged his hat down. “I don’t care anyway.”

“Yeah, right.” Joseph nudged him with his foot. “Softie.”

“Don’t think just because you’re down an arm I won’t hit you.”

Joseph grinned. “Sure.”

Caesar returned from the bathroom to find Jotaro repeatedly whacking Joseph with one of the couch’s mismatched throw pillows, Joseph not bothering to hide his giggles as he theatrically cried for mercy and Jotaro unable to completely tamp down his slight smile.

“Can I sleep on your couch,” Jotaro said after they’d had dinner.

Joseph shot Caesar an anxious glance, thinking about the logistics of the sleeping arrangements. Sure, he and Caesar had managed sleeping in the same bed last night, but Joseph didn’t know if that had been a one-time thing or not. Caesar met his gaze with a mild expression, seemingly unbothered.

“Uh. Yeah, dude. ‘Course.”

“Thanks.”

When he and Caesar were rummaging around, getting ready for bed, Joseph gathered his courage in scraps as he finished brushing his teeth. “So, uh.”

“Yes?”

When faced with Caesar’s sleepy, unimpressed face, Joseph faltered, shuffling over to the bed in silence. He cleared his throat. “You don’t have an issue with, uh…” He gestured lamely at where Caesar was already tucking himself under the covers.

He was greeted with an eminently blank stare. “With what?”

“Never mind,” he mumbled, crawling under the covers in slight mortification. He pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt, trying to cocoon himself.

“You’re so uptight,” Caesar complained, kicking him in the shin.

“Am not.” He turned on his side, ready to launch into an argument, but Caesar was watching him with that open, soft expression that made Joseph’s chest fold inward like a wet house of cards.

Caesar laughed quietly at him, leaning over to press his forehead against the ball of Joseph’s shoulder. “You’re stupid. Goodnight.”

“Night,” Joseph said, voice cracking, feeling like the world began and ended with the point of contact between them.

Jotaro put his car into park and turned to look at Joseph, gaze critical. He arched an eyebrow, a silent inquiry to his wellbeing. By way of answer, Joseph unbuckled his seatbelt and clumsily clambered out of the car, staring up at the hulking mansion of the Joestar residence.

Caesar climbed out of the backseat to stand next to him. “Your half-brother is rich,” he observed.

“Yes,” Joseph agreed. It wasn’t that he and Lisa Lisa had been wanting of anything, but they were in a comfortable middle-class zone, while Joseph’s father had, evidently, been rolling in it.

“You’ve never mentioned him,” Caesar said, somewhat accusingly.

Joseph shrugged. “We don’t have a lot in common.”

Perhaps sensing his apprehension, Caesar elbowed him gently. “You mean he’s not a rude, disrespectful, crop-top-loving asshole?”

“Hey!”

“Good grief,” Jotaro muttered from where he was standing at the other side of the car. “Let’s go already.”

They shuffled a few paces behind Jotaro, and then came to a stop at the porch where Jotaro rang the doorbell once. Joseph quickly, without thinking, grabbed Caesar’s hand. Before he could properly realize he’d done so and pull away, Caesar gave his hand a squeeze and laced their fingers more comfortably together, just for a moment.

Then, the door swung open, and Jonathan looked them over with such an authentic expression of delight that Joseph nearly looked away. Instead, he shoved both his hands deep into the pocket of his sweatshirt and smiled up at his brother sheepishly.

“I’m so happy to see you,” Jonathan said, embracing Jotaro, who didn’t even protest, and then Joseph, who awkwardly gave him a little pat on the back without removing his other hand from his pocket. “I don’t believe we’ve met! I’m Jonathan Joestar,” Jonathan said, turning to Caesar, not yet removing his hand from Joseph’s shoulder.

“Caesar Zeppeli,” he said extending his hand for a firm shake.

“Zeppeli? Are you by any chance related to a William?”

Caesar frowned. “I think I have an uncle named William.”

“I wonder if they’re the same,” Jonathan said with a bright little laugh. He glanced back at Joseph, the unmistakable gleam of concern in his eyes intense as he gave him a proper once-over. “Please come in side. I’ve just finished cooking, and Erina should be home any minute.”

Joseph cautiously stepped through the doorway, paying too much attention to Caesar as he tentatively maneuvered inside with his crutches. He tried not to look around, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d only been here a few times, but he could see that the west wing was still quartered off, damage from the fire still largely unaddressed, although a stranger wouldn’t know it just from looking at the heavy locked doors that separated that part of the mansion from them.

Jonathan must’ve noticed his attention because he said, “I haven’t gotten around to renovating yet.”

Joseph nodded. “It’s okay.”

Jonathan offered him a tense smile, shuffling awkwardly. Joseph tried to give him a reassuring grin, but it came out more of a grimace. Jotaro, either oblivious or disinterested, made no move to break the tension, instead wandering over to inspect some gaudy display case. Nerd.

“How is Erina?” Joseph finally managed, a touch desperately.

“Great!” Jonathan exclaimed, eagerly latching onto the thread of conversation. “She’s started working at this new place that’s much closer. Her old commute was dreadful.”

“Oh, good.”

“What does she do?” Caesar asked politely.

“She’s a social worker.” And then Jonathan was off, gushing enthusiastically about his fiancé to a defenseless Caesar. Joseph loved Erina to death, so he was content to listen absently to her praises while shuffling behind Caesar on their slow trek to the dining room.

Joseph’s phone started buzzing with a flurry of incoming texts. Normally, he would’ve ignored it, but he was off-balance enough to take a peak at the screen, and when he saw the ID of the messenger, he nearly dropped to phone. “Sorry, I’ll be right back. I have to—”

Jonathan waved off his apology, but Caesar frowned skeptically. Joseph ignored them and practically ran to the nearest empty room, which ended up being a coat closet. He shut himself inside and opened the texts with shaking fingers.

UNKNOWN NUMBER: I thought you may want to see this

UNKNOWN NUMBER: www.news.com/suspected-international-terrorist-acquited/

Joseph read the article with dawning horror. Kars was going totally free. His whereabouts were currently unknown. His lawyer’s statement—

Joseph stopped.

Read the line again. Stopped again. Read it again.

The defendant’s lawyer, the infamous Dio Brando, had this to say on the subject: “My client was absolved of all charges, and I would ask you to treat him as an innocent man. His current location is none of your concern.” Mr. Brando declined to answer any additional questions.

Joseph stared blankly. This could not be happening. It could not have happened. His head was spinning.

ME: thank u man

ME: are u gonna be okay

ME: like. is he coming after u

UNKNOWN NUMBER: If he does I’ll be okay. Thanks though

ME: okay dude stay safe

“Fuck,” Joseph whispered, thunking his head against the door. He took several deep breaths, trying to wrap his head around the idea of Kars showing up in his calculus lecture to gloat about how awful Joseph’s hand looked before killing him, finally. Despite everything, he hoped that Kars wouldn’t enact his revenge on Wammu. He didn’t even want to touch the idea of Dio Brando. Not now. Not ever, maybe.

After several minutes, Joseph gathered up the pieces of himself and returned to the dining room, only to be met with Caesar and Jonathan chatting with Erina.

“Joseph!” she exclaimed, the first to notice his return.

Joseph, feeling very fragile after the phone call, didn’t bother holding back his relief at seeing her. She met him in a tight hug, and Joseph took a moment to sag into the embrace, feeling a little bit like a child. “Hi,” he croaked.

Erina drew back, smoothing his hair back from his face. “You look tired.”

“Jet lag?” Joseph tried.

She rolled her eyes, leading him over to the table, not even glancing towards his bad arm. “Caesar was just telling us that he has no idea what your fall schedule is.” She managed to sound both amused and accusatory at once.

Joseph frowned while Erina pushed him gently into a seat, racking his brain. “I should probably speak to Coach Loggins about—” he cut himself off, forcing a grin. “Class should keep me pretty busy, but I managed to clear my Fridays.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Jonathan said, smiling. “What classes are you taking?”

Jonathan had always taken a weirdly intense interest in Joseph’s studies, which he supposed made sense given that Jonathan was a post-doc student who’d probably stay in academia for his entire life. “Oh, you know. A couple math classes, a couple electives.”

Joseph recalled the day that Caesar had found out that Joseph was majoring in math. He’d sat down next to Joseph at the side of the track, glancing at his notebook where he was scribbling homework. His astonishment had been, frankly, offensive, but it hadn’t bothered Joseph as much as it should’ve. “Why?” Caesar had demanded, and Joseph had only shrugged, leaning back to tip his face towards the sun. “I like math. It makes sense to me,” he’d said.

Jonathan and Erina had never voiced their own skepticism at his major, but Joseph didn’t really care. He enjoyed math in such an uncomplicated way that nobody’s opinion really held any weight for him. If Lisa Lisa had disapproved, maybe he would’ve cared, but fortunately, she seemed pleased enough with it.

“What about you, Caesar?” Jonathan asked.

“I’m taking the semester off,” Caesar said quietly. He and Joseph hadn’t explicitly discussed this, but Joseph had assumed as much anyway.

The table lapsed into a slightly awkward silence until Jotaro wandered into the room, gaze distant. “Did you find the Panama collection?” Jonathan asked, slightly too loud.

“Yes,” Jotaro said. “I can’t believe you have a sea cow fossil.”

“Sea cow?” Joseph exclaimed, smirking.

To his dismay, Jotaro didn’t rise to the bait. He was already deep in nerd-mode. “Yeah, they had tusks. Did you know the sea cows were the oldest marine mammals in Central America?”

Joseph resisted the urge to bang his head on the table when Jonathan responded with reciprocal enthusiasm. He met Caesar’s eyes across the table, and he looked a little bit lost. Joseph arched an eyebrow in question, and Caesar offered a little shrug.

They ate lunch mostly washed in the glow of Jotaro’s intensely specific facts about ancient sea creatures, which Jonathan seemed all too happy to encourage. Caesar was either too polite or too intimidated by the conversation to contribute, Erina was forever guilty of getting all moon-eyed when Jonathan rambled on, and Joseph was trying so hard not to think about the texts he’d received that he actually listened.

At least they weren’t talking about Italy.

After they finished eating, Jonathan dragged Jotaro off to show him some part of his current research, and Erina gave him a fond look before refocusing her attention on Joseph and Caesar. “Do you boys want to see the garden?”

“Yes,” Joseph said, relieved. He fucking loved the garden here.

Erina led them outside to a gorgeous sitting area adjacent to the greenhouse, which was already surrounded by vibrant flowers, trees in bloom, and a row of tomato plants. Erina sat casually on a bench next to Caesar, and Joseph threw himself onto a nearby hammock, relishing in the beauty of the day and the smell of jasmine.

“I would apologize for Jonathan getting carried away with the conversation, but you know how he is,” Erina said to Joseph.

“It’s fine. He likes his nerd bullshit. Jotaro likes it too. It was funny.”

“He’s worried about you, but he doesn’t want to show it,” Erina added.

“I know.” Joseph felt especially uncomfortable, knowing Erina’s eyes were on him. “Tell him I’m good.”

“Tell him yourself.”

“I will if he asks.”

“Joseph.”

“Erina.”

“Are those sunflowers?” Caesar asked after a slightly tense pause.

“Yes. You can have one if you like.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Caesar looked kind of flustered by the offer, rubbing the back of his head. “And thank you again for having me for lunch.”

“Well, any friend of Joseph’s is always welcome here,” Erina said. “He doesn’t have very many.”

“Oh my god,” Joseph whined, face heating in embarrassment.

Caesar perked up at that. “Really?”

“Don’t look so surprised,” Erina said, grinning. “You’ve met the guy.”

“Oh my god. You guys are so mean to me.”

Delighted, Caesar said, “He is so annoying.”

“I’m leaving,” Joseph shouted, not moving from his sprawl on the hammock.

“I’m glad the two of you get along, though. It’s nice to see Joseph have someone in his life.”

“I have plenty of people in my life! I hate you guys, oh my god.”

“Name three,” Caesar said. “Besides me.”

Joseph counted off on his fingers. “My mom, my friend Smokey—don’t give me that look, study buddies count as friends—and Avdol.”

“Isn’t Avdol your pen-pal from middle school? That barely counts. And your mom’s pushing it, sweetheart,” Erina said.

“You guys suck,” Joseph said lamely. “They so count.”

“It’s okay, Jojo. I never had a lot of friends either,” Caesar said, looking amused. “Mostly because I’m too good-looking and mysterious, which tends to intimidate people, but still.”

“I’m gonna kill you,” Joseph said with false gravity. Caesar laughed, tipping his head back to expose the line of his throat. Joseph wrenched his gaze away.

Erina was watching him with an odd expression. She glanced to Caesar and back at Joseph, and then gave him this sad, knowing little smile that made Joseph want to disappear into the growth around them.

Joseph sprang to his feet, feeling a little bit frantic as he reached for Caesar. “C, you gotta see the greenhouse.”

Caesar let himself be pulled along, casting an exasperated look at Erina that Joseph pretended to ignore.

As they were leaving, Jonathan pulled Joseph aside and put both his hands on his shoulders, looking at him seriously. “Promise to call if you ever need anything, okay?”

“Yeah,” Joseph said after a confused pause. He remembered what Erina had said in the garden and whispered, “Look, you don’t need to worry about me. I’m all good.”

“Jotaro said—”

“Jotaro wasn’t there. He doesn’t know everything,” Joseph said, trying not to feel annoyed. “Look.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket, finally letting Jonathan see it. “It looks ugly, but it doesn’t even hurt. It’s okay.”

Jonathan, in a strangled tone, said, “Fuck, Joseph, the burns—”

“I can’t feel it. It’s fine.”

Meeting his eyes with noticeable desperation, Jonathan said, “Please call. Just every now and then. I know you say not to worry, but I just can’t help it. After everything with Dio, I—”

They fell into a clanging, haunted sort of silence, and Joseph squeezed his eyes shut. “Okay. I’ll call.” He tried for a grin. “Jeez, dude, you should’ve just said.”

Jonathan shoved him halfheartedly. “Dick.”

“Oi, I thought you were supposed to be nice and shit.”

“For you, I can be mean,” Jonathan said, looking horrifically pleased with himself.

In the car, Jotaro turned up the radio, blasting classical music as if it were heavy metal. Joseph felt looser than he had in a while, unmoored by Wammu’s messages and by Jonathan’s unrelenting care. He met Caesar’s eyes in the rearview mirror and felt something that had been wavering within him go steady. He latched onto it.

“That went better than expected,” Jotaro said, belatedly, after they’d been in the car for twenty minutes, and Joseph punched him hard in the bicep.

Jotaro left with minimal fanfare, promising to text them when he’d arrived safely in Miami. Although he was such a quiet guy, he left a strange silence in his wake, and Joseph struggled to think of what he could say to Caesar about—about everything.

“I really should go see Coach Loggins,” he finally mused, putting together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “What if he says I can’t play?”

“Then he’ll be an idiot,” Caesar said. “I’ve seen you. You’re really fucking good.”

“Did you ever talk to your cousin about physical therapists?” Joseph asked, curious.

Caesar sat down across from him. “I messaged him telling him I moved here. We’re going to meet up in a few days at his place.” He hesitated a moment, looking darkly at the table. “Would you want to come along?”

“Fuck yeah, dude.”

Caesar visibly relaxed. “Alright.”

“What’s he like?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met him.”

Caesar was super weird about his family. He tended to get overly defensive and especially mean if there were ever any even obliquely offensive comments, but he also seemed to know almost exactly nothing about them. Joseph decided not to press. “Sweet.”

Caesar was frowning, lines etched deep into his face. “He’s from the reputable branch of the family,” he added.

“You’re not?”

Caesar slowly shook his head. “No.”

Joseph had to tread lightly here. Lisa Lisa had alluded to Caesar’s fucked up past, but only as sparingly as possible. He decided to wait it out, knowing that if he said anything, he’d make Caesar clam up.

“My father was disowned when he was pretty young, so I don’t know. I’ve never met my uncles.”

“But he kept the last name.”

Caesar offered a grim smile. “Names are powerful.”

“Yeah,” Joseph agreed. He wanted to know everything about Caesar. He wanted to turn his past inside out and live his present and exist in his future. He ached with it, and he dug his nails into his thigh underneath the table.

“At any rate, I can’t imagine Gyro’s father is too happy with him being in the states, so maybe we’ll get along.” Caesar stood, conversation evidently over. “Where’d you get the peanut butter?”

Joseph squirmed into his track pants and made sure the sleeves of his sweatshirt were long enough to cover up his hand before heading over to the university alone. Caesar had still been asleep when he left, snoring a little bit, face smashed inelegantly into the pillow, and Joseph had taken care not to disturb him. If all went well, he’d probably be back before he woke up.

It wasn’t a long walk, but it was long enough for Joseph to despair against his outfit choice. It was still hot, but the thought of wearing anything other than a sweatshirt had made him feel dizzy and nauseated, so he persisted grimly until he reached the athletics building.

Loggins was sitting at his desk, jotting down some notes. “Come in,” he said without looking up when Joseph knocked at the open door.

“Hey, coach.”

Now, he looked up. “Joseph. How was your study abroad?”

“Fine,” Joseph said, sitting down. “I trained with the team there.”

“They give you any trouble?”

“No. They weren’t bad either.”

“That’s good to hear. What can I do for you?”

Joseph took a deep breath, amassing every ounce of courage in his arsenal. “Well. I was injured. A little bit. In Italy.”

Loggins gave him an unimpressed look. “Where?”

Shaking only a little bit noticeably, Joseph rolled up his sleeve and put his arm on display for Loggins to see.

To his credit, Loggins only reacted with a slight frown, leaning forward to inspect the appendage. “What’s the damage?”

“Well, I’ve lost mobility below the elbow. Can’t feel a thing. The doctor said…” Joseph’s voice cracked, and he took a moment to compose himself. “She said the nerve damage could spread, but I can’t—” He shook his head. “I can’t.”

Loggins nodded slowly, turning the arm a few ways to see the extent of it. “Well, we’ll need to figure something else out for weight training,” he said pensively. “I’ll consult the med staff. You should be fine to play, though.”

“Thanks,” Joseph rasped, feeling a good half of his anxiety slowly melt off his shoulders.

Loggins released his arm, leaning back in his seat. “I expect you at practice tomorrow. Are there any other injuries I should know about before then?”

Joseph shrugged. “I broke some ribs and sprained my ankle, but I think those are fine by now.”

Loggins looked unimpressed. “You’re seeing the med team at six in the morning tomorrow.” He jotted down a note. “Don’t be late.”

Joseph felt so fucking relieved that he nearly burst into tears. “I never am.”

When he returned to the apartment, feeling more exhausted than he had any right to be, he was greeted with Caesar grabbing him by the biceps and snapping, “Where were you?”

Joseph blinked in surprise. Caesar looked terribly disheveled, dark circles under his eyes, hair sticking up everywhere. “I just swung by Loggins’ office.” He reached out, touching Caesar’s jaw briefly. “Are you alright?”

Caesar clenched his teeth and released him, taking a few steps back. “I didn’t know where you were,” he said lamely, and then collapsed into a kitchen chair with a creak of protest. He looked away.

“Sorry,” Joseph said, still a little bit shocked by Caesar’s intensity. “I didn’t think you’d…”

Caesar inhaled sharply, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t mean to react so poorly,” he said, tone stiff. “I apologize.”

“Don’t,” Joseph said. Distantly, he’d known that everything had affected Caesar just as much as it’d affected Joseph, but Caesar was always so put-together that Joseph had assumed he’d been handling it all better. “I get scared when you’re not around too.”

Caesar looked at him sharply at the admission, expression critical. “I wasn’t scared,” he lied.

“Right.”

Caesar crumpled a little bit, burying his head in his hands. “The traffic was so loud when I woke up, and I—”

Joseph hurried to his side, kneeling by the chair and grabbing one of Caesar’s hands, running his thumb over the knuckles. “I get it,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Caesar took a shuddering breath. “I thought—I don’t know what I thought.” He squeezed Joseph’s hand hard and visibly tried to compose himself. “How’d it go with Loggins?”

“It went well. I’ll still be able to play.”

“Oh. Good.”

Joseph watched Caesar tense at the distant sound of a truck backing up, heart clenching in pain. “Come sit on the couch with me. We can watch one of those romantic comedies you pretend to hate.”

“I do hate them,” Caesar said weakly, allowing Joseph to tow him over to the couch, where Caesar immediately tucked himself into Joseph’s side, breathing harshly against his shoulder. Joseph stayed still, flicking the TV on to an appropriate channel while Caesar pushed Joseph to lie down and then nestled his way between Joseph and the back of the couch, pillowing his head on Joseph’s collarbone.

Joseph fell asleep not five minutes later, lulled to unconsciousness by the warmth of Caesar’s presence and the feeling of his heart beating relentlessly, purposefully, against his side.

“I’m going to practice,” Joseph whispered to Caesar, absently smoothing a chunk of hair away from his forehead.

Caesar cracked an eye open at him. “Die,” he croaked, and then immediately returned to sleep while Joseph tried not to giggle too audibly.

“Mom, I feel amazing,” Joseph gushed into the phone as he left the field with a noticeable spring in his step. “God help me, I missed them.”

“You were barely gone for two months,” she said. “How are your ribs?”

“Fine. Coach had me mostly doing set pieces. They say I can probably start running again in a week.”

“And the arm didn’t give you any problems?”

“Nope,” Joseph said. He did not bring up the fact that he’d kept his sweatshirt on for the entirety of practice, avoiding some of the perplexed glances his teammates shot him. “I’m still as insanely talented as ever.”

“Doubtless,” she deadpanned, and Joseph barked a laugh. “Is Caesar well?”

“Yes, ma. Call him yourself if you want to hear his voice. He’s a pain in the ass, but that’s his baseline.”

“Glad to know everything is normal, then.”

“How goes the rocks?”

“Joseph, how many times to I have to say this? These are not merely rocks—”

Joseph only half paid attention to the familiar lecture on the intricacies of geologic field research. He used the opportunity to swing by his favorite coffee shop and snag two lattes on the way home, asking annoying questions every now and then to keep Lisa Lisa just irritated enough to keep the lecture rolling.

“I know what mica is, mom, relax,” Joseph finally said once he exited the coffee shop, awkwardly balancing the coffee carrier in the crook of his arm and holding it in place with his good hand, phone jammed against his shoulder.

“Don’t lie to me,” Lisa Lisa said, but Joseph could tell she was teasing now. “Classes start on Wednesday?”

“Yep! Two days after Jotaro, so I basically win.”

“There is no winning.”

“Obviously, there’s winning.”

“I spoke to Jotaro on his drive home. He mentioned something about a visit to the Joestar mansion.”

“Ah. Of course.” Snitch. “We had lunch with Jonathan and Erina.” He paused, frowning. “Hey, why do you talk to Jotaro more than me?”

“I don’t, and you know it.” She hummed thoughtfully. “Nice that you’re getting along.”

“Mom,” Joseph complained. “You know I get along with everyone.”

There was a muffled commotion on her end of the line. “That was an intern. They need me to take a look at some diagrams. I’ll speak to you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’ll call around the same time.”

“I look forward to it. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

The line went dead, and Joseph awkwardly guided the phone to drop into one of the empty coffee cup holders. He was nearly home anyway.

“I come baring lattes!” he announced a few moments later. Caesar groggily emerged from the bedroom, a little bit wobbly without the crutches, and snatched the beverage with a quiet mutter of thanks.

“You’re in a good mood,” Caesar said accusatorily as he nursed his drink on the couch.

Joseph smiled. “Practice was good.”

Caesar came a little bit more alert at that, fingers curling tight around his cup. “It was?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, babe, I still got it.” He realized the slip of endearment an instant too late and naturally tried to steamroll over it. “I’m extremely talented and charismatic, as you know, and not even falling off a building could take that from me!”

“You fell off a building,” Caesar said flatly, and Joseph froze a little bit, cursing every god under the sun. “Jojo, you fell off a building?”

“It was more like a…” the lie died on his lips, and all the enthusiasm of the morning drained out of his form as he collapsed onto the couch next to Caesar. “Yeah, I did.”

He gave Caesar a moment to stew, taking a sad sip from his coffee. Caesar was going to find out everything, eventually. He would tear snatches of information out of Joseph’s sternum bit by bit until Joseph had bled out everything all over his hands, and he wasn’t sure if Caesar would ever even notice when he held Joseph’s heart, still beating, still bleeding.

Joseph was resigned to his grizzly fate, but that didn’t mean he had to expedite the process. He’d make Caesar work for every fragment of himself, so that one day, when he knew all the pieces, he’d have earned them. He knew Caesar wouldn’t want it any other way.

“Did Kars push you?” Caesar finally asked. He looked upset and angry and tired. “I’ve been trying to piece together what fucking happened after I—after—well, you know.” He dropped into silence for a moment. “I can’t make any sense of it.”

“He didn’t push me,” Joseph said. “I slipped. He was done-for by that point.”

“What do you mean, you slipped? Mister Grace Incarnate? Mister ‘I Could Be A Fucking Olympic Figure Skater’? You?”

Joseph offered a brittle smile. “Alright, you caught me. I suppose not even defeating an arch nemesis could make me lose my cool. I may have fainted, though.”

“Fainted.”

Joseph tugged down the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “I may not be able to feel it anymore, but right after it happened, this hurt a lot.”

Caesar reached for him, and Joseph went willingly enough. He shook Joseph’s shoulders, hard, glaring at him with that single-minded intensity that made Joseph want to sink into nothingness every time he witnessed it. “Merda. You idiot.” He slid one hand to the back of Joseph’s neck, gripping him fiercely. “Next time I sacrifice my life for you, don’t be so reckless with yours. It kind of defeats the purpose.”

“I thought you were dead, C,” Joseph choked out, only just realizing how near he was to tears. “I thought you were dead.”

Caesar’s jaw clenched in understanding. “Porco Giuda,” he muttered, and Joseph knew he was really upset because he almost never collapsed into Italian. He tugged Joseph forward until their foreheads were resting against each other. “I’m alive, dickhead.”

“But you almost weren’t,” Joseph said darkly. “Caesar.” He pulled back so that Caesar would meet his eyes. “You can’t do that. You can’t decide which of us should get to live.”

“If it’s a choice between you or me—”

“No. You can’t do that. It has to be you. How can you not see that?” Joseph felt himself getting hysterical, but he could only reach out and put his hand on Caesar’s arm, a little bit clumsily. “You can’t do that to me.”

“I’d do it again.” Caesar looked almost enraged by Joseph’s words. His grip on his neck had turned painful. “You can’t ask me not to.”

Joseph jerked away, shoving to his feet, trying to put as much distance between them as possible, breathing harshly. “I’m not doing this. I’m not playing this game or who’s more self-sacrificial. I won’t do it.” He began to storm away, vaguely towards the door, and then whirled back around. “If you can never run again, will you hate me?”

Caesar looked gut-punched by the question. “Excuse me?”

“No, no, don’t look at me like that. Follow the fucking hypothetical. Say you pushed me out of the way of the truck, and it knocked out your mobility below the neck. It nearly happened, and you know it. Say you could never run again because you decided to save me. What then?”

Caesar slowly rose to stand, staring at Joseph as if he were a stranger. “I’d deal with it.”

Joseph shook his head. “How? Running is your life, C. How the fuck would you not hate me for it?”

“You are such an asshole sometimes, Joseph,” Caesar said quietly, furiously. “Why are we even talking about this? I’m going to run again. I will.” He wrapped his arms around himself. “Fuck you for even—for even—”

The fight abruptly drained out of him, and Joseph sagged against the nearest wall, knees buckling, and slid to sit on the floor. “Of course you will. I know you will.”

“I will,” Caesar repeated, and Joseph watched him blink away furious tears. “Fuck you, Joseph. God. Fuck you.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, and you know it,” Joseph whispered.

Caesar scoffed, turning his back. “What-fucking-ever. I’m going out. I can’t look at you right now.”

“You can’t go out alone. You’ll get lost,” Joseph said, panic shooting through his chest so quickly that it physically hurt.

Caesar glared at him. “If you try to stop me, I’m going back to fucking Italy, Joseph.”

Joseph stayed deathly still from his place on the floor, watching mutely as Caesar stalked into the bedroom, slamming drawers for a moment and emerging in track pants and a T-shirt, noticeably forgoing the crutches. He snatched his phone and didn’t once look in Joseph’s direction as he left.

Joseph pressed his face into his legs and wondered how the conversation had spiraled so quickly.

He didn’t notice time passing, but he seemed to blink, and it was dark out, and his back ached from sitting against the wall for such a long time. He blinked a few more times, trying to find the agency to move. He slowly reached for his phone, checking the time. Nine at night. Jesus—Caesar could be dead in a fucking ditch by now, and he was just sitting here for hours—

He finally gathered the wherewithal to check his texts.

CAESARINO: Crashing at my cousin’s place don’t worry I’ll be back tomorrow

Joseph despaired over the message at the same time as he let out an explosive breath of relief. At least he was okay.

ME: be safe

Without thinking about it too much, he scrolled through his contacts and called Avdol.

“Do you know what time it is?” Avdol grouched on the third ring.

“And yet you picked up.”

“You sound awful.”

Joseph cleared his throat. “Can I talk to you about something stupid for a second?”

“Everything you say is stupid,” Avdol said. “Go on.”

“So, I told you about Caesar, right? I’m in love with him, and he’s mad at me.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Don’t you ‘oh, dear’ me.”

“I’ll ‘oh, dear’ you as much as the situation warrants.”

“Avdol, he reacts so intensely to everything. And usually it’s kind of, like, sexy or whatever, but I don’t know if you know this, but I may have, on occasion, been known to say the wrong thing.”

“Really,” Avdol deadpanned.

“So, he’s mad at me,” he finished lamely.

“That sucks,” Avdol said.

“You suck at advice.”

“Oh, you want my advice?”

“Not anymore. I think I just needed to hear myself talk anyway. What’s up with you?”

“You sure?” Avdol sighed explosively, and Joseph gave a fond roll of his eyes. “There’s this really annoying French exchange student in practically every single one of my classes. Joseph. I can’t stand him.”

Joseph snickered. “Why?”

“He has no eyebrows!” Avdol despaired. “That alone should be enough justification!”

“God. It is. You don’t have to defend yourself to me.”

“And he’s so loud—”

Joseph contentedly encouraged Avdol’s pettiness for the next hour, delighting in hearing his friend’s voice. He was still anxious about his argument with Caesar, but the feeling slowly receded to a background hum in his mind.

“When are you going to finally visit me?” Avdol demanded after a while.

“My winter break. You know this. We made plans for this.”

“Oh, yeah. Your boyfriend’s invited too, if he wants to come.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Joseph said, kind of crankily. “He’s, like, my fucking soul-bond best friend.”

“Ouch,” Avdol said, falsely wounded.

“Oh, please. Just you wait. By the time I visit, you’ll be claiming a soul bond with No-Eyebrows-McGee.”

“I’d rather die.”

When they’d hung up, Joseph was still feeling sort of unraveled. He had yet to move from his slump against the wall, and he didn’t foresee himself moving any time soon. He briefly toyed with the idea of calling Lisa Lisa before discarding it. He scrolled through Twitter for about two minutes until he got frustrated with it and tossed the phone aside. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes. He’d get a few hours of sleep, drag himself to soccer practice, and then apologize to Caesar, and everything would be alright again.

After Joseph got back from practice, in much worse spirits than the day before, he forced himself to briefly check in with Lisa Lisa without getting into the details of his argument with Caesar. Then, he cleaned the apartment, figuring that was the proper thing to do. At a loss, he scrolled through amazon for a while, idly trying to find some sort of gift that would make Caesar feel more at home.

At two in the afternoon, the door opened softly, and Joseph went very still from his spot on the couch, afraid to look back.

“Hey,” Caesar said, sounding tired.

“Hi,” Joseph said. He took a deep breath and turned around. “I’m sorry for what I said.”

Caesar looked exhausted. His clothes were disheveled, and his hair was more out of place than normal. “It’s okay.” He took a few steps inside, and Joseph noticed that he was limping badly. “Sorry I stormed out.”

“It’s okay.” He swallowed with some difficulty. “How did it go meeting your cousin?”

Caesar frowned. “He’s—weird.” He shot Joseph a tentative glare. “I still want you to meet him tomorrow. You’ll see what I mean.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

Joseph wondered if they should talk about what had been said yesterday, but he would honestly have rather died than bring it up, so instead he stayed quiet, watching Caesar rummage around the kitchen for an apple. “What’d you do while I was gone?”

Joseph shrugged. “Not much.”

Caesar limped over to the couch and sat down heavily on the far side. The space between them felt insurmountable. “Did you mean what you said?”

“About?” Joseph prompted, apprehensive.

“About thinking I’d hate you if I couldn’t run again.”

Joseph paused, confused. “Wouldn’t you?”

Caesar stared at his knees, silent for a moment. “No.”

“Oh.” Joseph dug his fingernails into his thigh. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

Joseph spent a minute turning that information over before saying, “Did you mean what you said about going back to Italy?”

Caesar cocked his head to the side. “Not really. Maybe in the moment.” He sighed, leaning back into the couch cushions. “Jojo, you have to understand that this isn’t my home yet. You’re the only thing I have here.”

“I’m pretty great, though,” Joseph joked hollowly.

“You’re a lot. I can’t imagine just—going back to Italy, no sweat. I came here for a reason,” he said significantly, unwilling to rise to Joseph’s bait. “But this place isn’t mine.”

“What can I do to change that?” Joseph said, a little bit desperately.

“I don’t know. Let me think about it.” He gave Joseph a tired smile. “Thank you. I know you care.”

Joseph wanted to say that Caesar had no idea how much he cared, but his throat was dry. He took a shaky breath. “Caesar, I really fucking missed you.”

“I was barely gone a day, you idiot.”

“I know you needed space, but I just…” Joseph lifted a shoulder helplessly. “I don’t know. I missed you.”

Caesar rolled his eyes. “Dickhead. Come here.”

Joseph let himself melt into the hug, and he swore he wouldn’t ask about Caesar’s limp or why he looked like he hadn’t slept a single minute. He swore he’d let himself be content with just this moment, this concrete sign of reconciliation. He held tight and made himself believe that all was well, and all would always be well.

“What should I wear?”

“What do you care? Are you trying to seduce my cousin?” Caesar demanded, lounging in a grumpy lump on his side of the bed.

“Is he hot?”

“Ew.”

Joseph continued digging through the closet. “Skinny jeans? Yea or nay?”

“Good lord, you’re hopeless.” Caesar stumbled out of bed, taking the entire expanse of the comforter with him to flick his eyes over the contents of their closet. “Unfortunately, that may actually be your best option.”

“Score one for skinny jeans.”

Caesar flicked through the hangers, snatched a piece of fabric too quickly for Joseph to identify, and then chucked it in his face. “This, too.”

Joseph, when he recovered, stared down at the item of clothing. One of his most flattering crop tops. He swallowed with some difficulty, shooting Caesar an uncertain look. “Uh. Really?”

“It looks good on you,” Caesar said simply. “You can wear a jacket with it if you want.”

Joseph relaxed a little bit at that and moved to change. He stared at his reflection in the full-length mirror that was attached to the door of the bedroom, feeling vaguely blank. He did look good in the shirt, which was dark green and all kinds of flirty, but he couldn’t help but stare at the full expanse of his arm, ugly, crying for attention, damaged.

Before he could fully zone out, Caesar threw a light jacket at his head, and Joseph loved him so much that he could barely breathe against it, grinning against tears as he slipped it on. It complemented the outfit perfectly. Of course it did.

Caesar, for his part, dressed at his non-athletics baseline, which was to say that he got overly fancy for Joseph’s taste, wearing slacks and a short-sleeved button-up. Joseph rolled his eyes at him and chose not to comment when he didn’t take the crutches with them.

“His place is in walking distance. Turns out you two actually do go to the same university.”

“Oh, lit.”

When they arrived, Caesar stopped Joseph before he could knock by putting a hand on his chest. He gave him a serious look. “Don’t ask him about his beard.”

With that odd preamble over with, Caesar knocked. There was the sound of something crashing on the other side of the door, and then a few frantic-sounding footsteps before Gyro Zeppeli threw the door open, looking harried. “Hello!”

Joseph blinked at him, more surprised by his appearance than he’d thought he’d be. He took a moment to take in Gryo’s long, soft-looking hair before Gyro flashed a smile and he had to wrap his mind around the fucking grills. He didn’t even want to think about the beard.

“Hey,” Caesar said, much more casually. “This is Joseph.”

“Nice to meet you, dude,” Gyro said, clapping Joseph on the shoulder as he ushered them inside. “Caesar talks a lot about you.”

“Hope he didn’t defame my character,” Joseph said, only half-joking.

“I didn’t say anything that you don’t deserve,” Caesar muttered, kicking off his shoes. “How’s it going?”

“Fine—there was a mix-up with some of my textbooks, but I’ll sort it out. Oh! I have your list.” Here, he brandished a sheet of paper with overexaggerated movements, handing it magnanimously to Caesar. “I listed them in order of who I think is best.”

Caesar scanned the paper, and Joseph peaked over his shoulder to see that it consisted of names and phone numbers. Physical therapists. Something in Joseph uncurled at the realization, and he flexed the fingers on his good hand. “Thank you,” Caesar said quietly. He folded the list into a neat square and put it in his back pocket.

“No sweat.” Gyro sauntered over to what must have been the living room and collapsed into a big, comfortable-looking chair so that his legs were thrown over the side. Caesar grabbed Joseph’s wrist and towed him over to sit with him on the sofa, which looked much nicer than the one in Joseph’s apartment. “I’m happy you two made up.”

Joseph shifted in discomfort, facing the knowledge that Caesar had talked to Gyro about their fight. “Caesar can’t stay mad at me,” he joked when Caesar didn’t immediately respond. “I’m too cute for that.”

Gyro gave Joseph a lazy once-over. “You’re not that cute.”

“Says you,” Caesar said, arching a judgmental eyebrow at Gyro. Joseph didn’t even have time to bask in the glow of Caesar defending his cuteness before Caesar added, “Your beard disqualifies you from making any statements about cuteness.”

Joseph shot Caesar a look. Caesar stared back at him unapologetically.

“My beard is actually very complex and sexy. I have that on good authority.”

“Yeah? Whose?”

“Classified information.”

“Do you live here by yourself?” Joseph asked curiously. He was looking at the cluttered albeit insanely nice apartment. New York housing, especially for college students, was usually pretty low-bar.

“Yep,” Gyro said, popping the P. “Although I do have people here a lot of the time, so sometimes it doesn’t feel like it!” And then he laughed this odd, very loud, strangely nasal laugh.

“You throw parties?”

“Hah, not really. There are, like, four-to-six people who are just here a lot. They fuck it up like it could’ve been a party, though.”

“Sounds fun.”

Caesar had been squinting at Gyro’s TV stand for the duration of the exchange, but then he looked up and said, “Is that Mario Kart?”

“You have an excellent eye, my estranged cousin!” Gyro offered a devious smirk. “Y’all wanna play?”

“You two play—I can just watch,” Joseph said, trying not to sound too hasty.

Gyro shot him a look that shocked Joseph into a brief swoop of vertigo—the weight of his gaze held the same intensity that Caesar’s almost always possessed, and Joseph was unnerved by how exposed it made him feel. Gyro’s attention flicked from Joseph’s eyes, down to the hand Joseph had forgotten to stuff into a pocket before nonchalantly returning to his face. Gyro smiled a bland smile that didn’t reach his eyes, which still held an air of scrutiny. “Sure thing,” he said.

Joseph shivered.

Zeppelis. He wondered just how much Gyro and Caesar would end up having in common.

Gyro booted up a truly ancient Wii, and Joseph watched as they prepared for their race. He almost cried from laughing when Caesar chose Baby Mario because come on—sometimes he made it way too easy. Gyro chose Yoshi because he “liked the green,” and then they were off in competing in the most horrifically mediocre race Joseph had ever seen.

“You two,” Joseph gasped between giggles, “are so bad at this.”

Caesar took a break from being in last place to punch Joseph hard in the side, and Joseph just collapsed into further inconsolable giggles, turning to let his head rest against Caesar’s shoulder.

“I’d like to see you do better,” Caesar snapped, using unnecessarily exaggerated movements to turn his cart in the hopes of dislodging Joseph from his position.

“I would do so much better,” Joseph despaired. “I used to be so good at this game. This one time when I was visiting Jotaro—my cousin—” he added for Gyro’s benefit, “—me and his roommate played this game with him. His roommate is actually really good, but Jotaro is almost as bad as you guys.”

“That’s an insult,” Caesar said helpfully in Gyro’s direction. “Jotaro was here a few days ago. He knows jack shit about video games. Joseph showed him a meme of Mario, and Jotaro didn’t even know who it was.”

“Sounds lame!” Gyro said cheerfully. “My friends always beat me at video games, especially this one, but it’s not fair because they’re literal professional racers.”

“Really?” Joseph said. “That’s so fucking cool. What do they race?”

“Horses!”

“I don’t see why that gives them a Mario Kart advantage.”

Gyro shot him a glare. “It just does! They know how to keep their cool.” Almost on cue, a red shell knocked him off the stage. “God FUCKING dammit!”

They contented themselves with the game for a while until the front door swung open as melodramatically as possible, and one of the shortest men Joseph had ever seen in real life sauntered inside, looking theatrically miserable until he saw the strangers on Gyro’s couch, and he settled into a much more defensive look. “Zeppeli. Who are these people.”

Gyro shot Caesar and Joseph an apologetic yet exasperated look. “This is my cousin and his best friend.” He pointed. “Caesar and Joseph.”

“Oh.”

“Caesar and Joseph, this is one of my alleged friends, Diego. He has no sense of respect or boundaries and will not apologize for intruding without warning, so I’ll apologize for him.”

“Whatever!” Diego announced, throwing himself onto the only empty chair left, which happened to be a rocking chair. “I was bored, and Johnny is so annoying when I’m bored.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Joseph said, unsure whether to be amused or not.

Diego flicked him a lazy look. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Hey,” Caesar protested, and Joseph felt more than saw him tense at his side.

Gyro put up two pacifying hands. “Alright, don’t piss them off. I want them to like me.”

Diego scoffed. “You?”

Gyro, seemingly unbothered by Diego’s overt rudeness, just nodded. “Yeah, dude.”

“Boring. Pass me a controller. I want in on the next round.” Diego rolled his head so that he was looking at Caesar and Joseph again. “Johnny refuses to allow me to purchase a Wii.”

“Who’s Johnny?”

“My terrible, awful roommate.”

“I have a cousin named Johnny,” Joseph said after a belated pause.

“Wild,” Diego deadpanned while Gyro said, “Oh, awesome! I love Johnny. Your cousin is in good company, name-wise.”

“How many cousins do you even fucking have?” Caesar muttered under his breath.

Joseph shrugged. “Another one turned up a few months ago with amnesia.”

“I hate your fucking family.”

They finished their current round, and Diego idly joined the group as Dry Bones. “Why aren’t you playing?” he asked Joseph, sounding a little bit overly confrontational.

Joseph shifted his weight in discomfort. “I’ve only got one good hand,” he finally managed.

“Oh. Lame.”

Well, that was one way of putting it.

Caesar gave his forearm a comforting squeeze.

Diego soundly trounced Caesar and Gyro over the course of the next half hour, cackling madly each time he won. “Is this one of your racer friends?” Joseph whispered loudly to Gyro after one of the rounds.

“Yes, unfortunately,” Gyro said mournfully. “At least I can content myself with my memories of Johnny destroying him.”

“Johnny has never once destroyed me in Mario Kart or otherwise!” Diego shouted.

“I have video evidence, Diego Brando!”

Joseph’s brain short-circuited, and he looked at Diego with newfound alarm, eyes roving over his features, looking for similarities. “Brando?” he echoed numbly.

Diego went still. Gyro went still. Caesar furrowed his brow in confusion.

Diego was the first to unfreeze, and he let out an explosive sigh, turning to face him. “I don’t care if my dad or my half-brother fucked you over. I don’t want to hear about it. I haven’t spoken to either of them in years, so you can shut up.”

“Diego, chill.”

“How about you chill!”

Joseph ran his hand tiredly over his face, and then forced a smile. “It’s cool. Sorry I brought it up.”

“As you should be.”

Caesar gave him a questioning look, but Joseph shook his head. God, if he could keep Caesar separate from any baggage within his family, it was going to be Dio Brando.

“It’s not like I’m an outlier here, anyway,” Diego grumbled. “Zeppeli clams up every time his dad gets mentioned.”

Gyro scowled. “Dude.”

“What?” Diego protested, feigning innocence. “What did I say?”

“You are so annoying. Go bother HP or Johnny.”

“Johnny said he’d strangle me if I came back before,” he checked his watch, “seven. And HP’s mad at me because I said their shoes were tacky yesterday.”

“Unbelievable.”

“They were tacky.”

Diego and Gyro lapsed into what appeared to be a very natural and well-traveled argument. Joseph checked out after a few seconds and looked at Caesar. “Having fun?” he murmured.

“Yeah,” Caesar said slowly. “You see what I mean, though?”

Joseph smiled. “I see what you mean.”

Leaning towards him, Caesar whispered, “Are you getting bored? With the Mario Kart? I don’t want you to feel left out.”

“I don’t feel left out. I like watching you have fun.”

Caesar offered that soft, private little smile that seemed reserved for Joseph alone. “You always—”

“GOOD LORD,” Gyro screeched, and Joseph and Caesar snapped out of their sidebar to see Gyro looking at the screen of his phone in revulsion. “Johnny claims you purchased a GIGANTIC LIZARD?”

Diego appeared unruffled. “His name is Scary Monsters, actually.”

“I’m gonna kill you, if not for Johnny’s benefit, then for my sanity.”

“Don’t be a fool, Zeppeli. God won’t let me die—I’m too handsome.”

Gyro gagged.

They spent the next hour or so mostly tossing insults by each other, which seemed to delight both Caesar and Gyro, although Gyro’s glee was more outwardly visible. Eventually, Caesar seemed to decide that it was time for them to go back home, and they bid their farewells.

“Y’all’re welcome here any time,” Gyro said, seeing them to the door.

“Y’all’re,” Diego parroted. “You sound like—”

Gyro cut him off smoothly. “It was super nice having you over. Sorry again about him.”

“No worries. We had fun,” Caesar said. “Thank you.”

“Any time!”

They walked home in comfortable silence, and Joseph breathed in the night air deeply, unconcerned by the yuckier undertones to the city’s atmosphere. “They were so weird.”

Caesar snickered. “I know.” He nudged their shoulders together. “Gyro in a good way, Diego in a bad way.”

Joseph laughed. “You’re right.”

“I liked them fine, but I can’t imagine hanging out with them on a regular basis.”

“Diego’s poor roommate,” Joseph despaired theatrically, and they both smiled.

Joseph dreamed that Caesar pushed him out of the way of the truck, except when he normally would have whirled around to watch the crash in numb, dawning horror, his foot slid in the sticky, slick surface covered in blood, and suddenly, he was pitching forward, falling head-first off the roof, and he could see the sunset over the water, but he wasn’t going to hit the water—he was going to hit the side of the street just adjacent to the water, and he thrust his arm out to blindly try and slow his momentum, terror coursing through his body, and—

He sat up, breathing hard, cradling his arm against his chest. He bowed his head, tucking his chin into his chest to try and stave off the fear of the nightmare.

A hand tentatively placed itself on Joseph’s back, and Joseph hunched in on himself and felt Caesar sweep his hand in light circles while Joseph struggled to collect himself.

When he finally looked up, Caesar was watching him, looking tired but alert, and his gaze was intense enough to crack Joseph wide open, but it wasn’t prying. Joseph took a shaky breath and thought about all the ways that a look could break a person, and he thought that Caesar’s look could maybe break anyone. But Joseph wasn’t just anyone, and he broke easy.

“I’m sorry,” Joseph said, nonsensically.

Caesar didn’t respond. He woke up with nightmares more often than Joseph did, so it was strange to be on the other end of this sort of attention. He slowly reached out and grabbed Joseph’s injured hand, looking down at it with a gentleness it didn’t deserve. Caesar held it in both his hands, then leaned down to press his mouth against the knuckles for an instant.

Joseph didn’t feel it. He wished he could feel it.

“It’s not ugly, you know,” Caesar whispered.

Joseph didn’t know what to say to that, so he just sat there for a moment, watching Caesar watch him. “I usually dream about the crash.”

“Me too.”

Joseph tried for a pathetic little smile. “Took me off guard a little.”

Caesar pulled him forward and arranged them so that Joseph was tucked in his arms, and Joseph finally understood why Caesar seemed to like being on the other end of this position so often. He felt like the whole world was being blocked out by the steady beat of Caesar’s heart. “I’ve got you,” Caesar whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

And, miraculously, Joseph did.

The first few days of class were always a combination of underwhelming and off-putting, but at least Joseph had soccer practice to keep him from feeling it too much. It was strange spending so much of his day alone, but when he spotted Smokey in one of his math lectures, he felt a little bit less so.

“Hey, dude. How was summer?”

“Good. I had that internship, and it turned out really well,” Smokey said, smiling. “Didn’t you go to Italy?”

“Study abroad!” Joseph confirmed.

“How was that?”

“It was good. You ready for the semester?”

Smokey laughed, semi-hysterically. “Nope!” He lifted up his notebook, which looked distinctly worse-for-wear. “I forgot to buy new notebooks. This is from last semester.” He flipped open a page to showcase the book’s near-full notes, much neater than Joseph’s.

Joseph laughed. “I’ll swing by Target with you after class if you want.”

Smokey looked pleased. “Fuck yeah, bro.” He grinned, nudging Joseph with his elbow. “Hey, listen. I know you don’t go to parties often, but I need you to come with me to one this Thursday.”

“As in tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Robotics club gets really out of hand sometimes, and I need you there as a buffer from the engineers.”

Joseph frowned. “Don’t your robotics club parties usually just mean a lot of nerds yelling and playing drunk Super Smash Bros for four hours?”

“Fuck yeah.”

“I’m in.” He smiled. “I got no class on Friday, so I’m free to drink as much as I want.”

“God, I hate you so much. How did you manage that?”

“Student athletes get early enrollment, bro.”

“End me.” Smokey narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you have practice on Fridays anyway?”

Joseph shrugged. “Details.”

Their conversation was cut off by the lecture beginning, and Joseph sat through the hour and a half of hurried syllabus discussion followed by the complex sprawl of the semester’s first proof across eight chalkboards.

Afterwards, as he and Smokey strolled to Target, they sulked about the professor’s broken microphone and complained about his confusing use of notation—it was a comfortable conversation that they’d likely had before in some echoing fashion, and Joseph was shocked at how much the sheer normalcy of it relaxed him. He’d thought that coming back to New York and getting in the flow of soccer practice would be enough to make him feel like himself again, but he’d forgotten the other half of him—the half that doodled in the margins of sheets of math problems and who had once talked to Smokey for three hours straight about revolving surfaces. It was a part of himself that he’d always been slightly uncomfortable sharing with Caesar, and he finally felt a little bit like he was settling into his skin. Smokey didn’t even notice his arm.

It was incredibly nice.

“Dude,” Smokey said, interrupting their idle reflections on class as he was occasionally wont to do, “There’s this girl in robotics club who I need to impress tomorrow.”

“Ah, so you’re asking for my help in love tomorrow,” Joseph crowed happily. “You’ve come to the right place! I’m a master wingman.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. You know how to dress like a thot, at least.”

Joseph barked a surprised laugh. “Hey,” he complained without heat.

“Don’t even try to deny it.”

Joseph was already moving on. “Are we gonna have to do a wardrobe montage?”

Smokey grimaced. “Maybe? What time do you get out of class tomorrow?”

Joseph consulted the schedule on his phone, not yet familiar with it. “Uh…five.”

“Do you remember where my place is? You should come over after then and help me figure out what to wear.”

“Deal,” Joseph agreed. “Text me your address again. I forgot it.”

“Of course you did.”

Joseph eventually made his way home and was surprised to find an empty apartment. Unsure of what to do, he opened his laptop and started compiling a list of upcoming assignments until he remembered that he’d forgotten to search for his textbooks. He spent a good hour intently scouring the internet for usable PDFs, so focused that he nearly forgot to be worried about where Caesar was.

Caesar came home just as Joseph found a decent download for his last textbook, looking tired, but there was something different about it that almost glowed with pride, and Joseph cocked his head curiously at Caesar’s smug little smile when he sat down across from him at the kitchen table.

“I was at physical therapy,” Caesar said, falsely casual.

Joseph beamed. “How’d it go?”

“They said I’ll be able to run again, eventually.”

Joseph stood up in delight, leaping to Caesar’s side and dragging him up from the chair to spin him around. “I knew it!” he cheered while Caesar weakly protested his manhandling, laughing a little bit.

“Careful with the goods!” Caesar snapped good-naturedly, whacking Joseph lightly on the chest. He was still smiling.

Overwhelmed, Joseph just enclosed Caesar in a bear hug. “You’re back in business, babe.”

Caesar hugged him back just as fiercely. “I will be.”

“Which crop top should I wear to the party tonight?”

“I hate you,” Caesar said. “The pink one.”

“Excellent choice.” Joseph stashed the change of clothes in his backpack and dug out his slides for the walk to practice. “I’m not sure how late I’ll be back, but if you get worried, just call me. I should answer.”

“I’m not worried,” Caesar said, rolling his eyes. “It’s a nerd party. What could you possibly get up to?”

By the time Joseph and Smokey arrived at the spacious apartment where the robotics party was taking place, Joseph was already a little bit excited. He gave Smokey a final, approving once-over. He’d taken a page out of Caesar’s book and had decided that flattering beat slutty every now and then, so Smokey was wearing a mostly flattering outfit with just a hint of flirtiness in his shorts. If this woman had any taste, she’d appreciate the look.

Smokey noticed Joseph’s gaze and grinned, and his confidence was intoxicating. “Shall we?”

“After you!”

The robotics club greeted Smokey enthusiastically and welcomed Joseph easily enough. He recognized some of them from a few of his prerequisite math courses, and Joseph felt mildly relieved that he’d have back-up conversation routes if Smokey wanted to hang out mostly with his crush.

Joseph watched Smokey make them each a drink and accepted his gladly. It’d been a while since his last party. He thought back to the end-of-the-year athletics banquet and its less formal afterparty last May. He usually didn’t particularly enjoy partying with his teammates, which was why he didn’t do it very often.

Smokey led Joseph towards the living room, where a gigantic TV displayed an intense match of Super Smash Bros in perfect graphics. They watched for a moment, mostly impressed, and traded snide comments about each player’s intermittent fuck-ups.

“There she is,” Smokey whispered, nudging Joseph and subtly nodding to where a woman sat perched on the arm of the sofa. She took a Wii remote from one of the previous round’s losers and settled into her game face.

“She’s pretty,” Joseph said.

“And so fucking smart,” Smokey added.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Joseph prodded Smokey lightly in the back, pushing him in the direction of the sofa. “Get in there. Face her in battle and prove your worth.”

“Oh, god,” Smokey said on a nervous laugh. Joseph followed him to hang on the edges of the group, close enough to offer support but far enough to suggest that he wouldn’t be playing. Smokey shot him a hesitant smile before he asked one of the players for the next turn. Joseph gave him a big thumbs-up.

“My money’s on Lucy,” someone said next to him, and Joseph turned to acknowledge the man’s presence. He thought he recognized him from one of his previous classes. “She’s a fuckin’ prodigy or something.”

“Keep your money. Loser has to chug.” He held up his drink. “I bet on her,” he said, nodding towards Smokey’s crush.

The guy laughed. “Nice choice.” He grinned, and his teeth were really nice. “I’m Poco Loco.”

“Joseph.”

“Linear algebra, right?”

“Hell yeah.”

“That class almost kicked my ass!” Poco Loco declared cheerfully. “Are you an engineering major too? I haven’t seen you in robotics club.”

“Nah—I’m a math guy.”

“Oh, RIP.”

“It’s not too bad.”

They chatted idly as the match played out, and Joseph wasn’t too upset when Poco Loco’s pick, Lucy, won. He chugged his drink good naturedly and cheered too loudly at the hand-off where Smokey got to enter the game.

The night devolved quickly. Joseph and Smokey were quickly separated, but Smokey seemed to be having a great time, so Joseph stuck with Poco Loco and his friends, who were all hilarious. It didn’t take long for the alcohol to really kick in.

“Y’know, for such a tall dude, you sure are a lightweight!” Poco Loco laughed when Joseph stumbled a little bit.

“Hey! I’ll have you know, I don’t drink very often! Not my fault!”

“Awwww, we got ourselves a nerd.”

“This is robotics club!”

“Yeah, whatever. Joseph, come meet my BFF. Soundman!”

Another guy turned around from a small crowd around the dining room table and arched an eyebrow. “Are you drunk already?”

“Nope.” Poco Loco slapped Joseph on the back. “This is Joseph!”

“Heyyyyyy,” Joseph said, feeling loose and happy.

Soundman grinned. “Y’all want a refill?”

They cheered.

At some point, Joseph’s sector of the party devolved into truth or dare, and Joseph ended up drinking a truly horrendous shot of vodka, rum, and tequila mixed together, and then at some point wound up kissing Poco Loco for a hot minute, and then things started to get a little bit blurry, and a little bit out of hand for Joseph’s liking. He staggered to his feet, leaving the circle he’d been a part of with a few boos, and found Smokey, who was still taking to his crush.

“Hey! I’m headed out,” he said, slurring only a little.

Smokey smiled. “Text me when you’re home safe. Take an uber or something, dude.”

“Yep!” Joseph promised, and then tripped on his way out the door.

He immediately forgot his promise to Smokey and hummed a half-forgotten tune on his walk home through the cold-ish night air. Unconcerned, he took off his hoodie and let the light breeze cool his skin enough to eventually raise goosebumps. Since it was Thursday, the walk home was much more subdued than a Friday night would have been, and he took his time strolling through the dark streets.

He jammed his key into the doorknob several times before it actually managed to work, and then staggered through the door. “Heyyyyyy,” he called. “I’m baaaaack.”

Caesar looked up from where he’d been reading on the couch in his pajamas and glasses. He looked vaguely blurry and amused. “Oh?”

“Yes!” Joseph announced. “I missed you at the party.” He made his way over to Caesar and threw himself across his lap, grinning at Caesar’s surprised little laugh that he tried to turn into a noise of outrage. “Always miss you when you’re not there,” he added, closing his eyes. “Hm. World’s spinning.”

“Oh, boy,” Caesar muttered, slapping his cheek lightly. “Have you had any water?”

Joseph opened his eyes and tapped Caesar on the nose with his index finger. “Have you had any water?” he demanded as seriously as possible.

“Yes.”

“Yay,” Joseph said happily. He reached up, grabbing Caesar’s glasses and putting them on his own face. “I ever tell you I like your glasses?”

“Yes. No, I’m not getting rid of my contacts.”

“Aw. Too bad. They’re sexy.”

Caesar rolled his eyes, plucking the glasses back to return to his own face. “You’ll get a headache.”

“Hey,” Joseph protested belatedly. He smiled, sitting up a little bit to get closer to Caesar. “Hey, C.”

Caesar arched an eyebrow. “Yes, Joseph?”

“You’re my best friend.”

Caesar smiled fondly. “I know, you idiot.”

“And! I love you.”

Caesar shoved his shoulder gently, still smiling. “I know that too.”

Joseph hummed noncommittally. “You know what! I am sleepy!”

“Let me get you some water, Jojo.”

Caesar gently arranged Joseph on the couch so that he could stand and headed over to the kitchen to presumably grab a glass of water. Joseph stared at the ceiling, feeling dizzy and pleasant and blank. “Hey, Caesar?” he called.

“What’s up?”

Joseph grinned dumbly at the ceiling fan. “I’m really happy you’re here.”

Caesar returned to the couch, putting Joseph’s head on his thigh and handing him the glass of water. “Me too,” he said.

Joseph stared at himself in the mirror. He’d very publicly sworn to never wear a long-sleeved shirt under his uniform again after seeing Antoine Griezmann do it so often during the last World Cup, so he’d known this had been coming for weeks. And yet, the sight of his arm exposed against the vibrant fabric of his jersey was enough to set his breathing on edge.

He wasn’t worried about how he would play. When Joseph stepped on the field, everything stopped at once, and the world seemed to click, just like when he saw the logic behind a proof. He was worried about everything in between, though. He was worried about how his teammates would look at him. He ran his hand along the scars, down to the unnatural twist of his fingers, and he shivered.

“You gotta go, Jojo,” Caesar shouted from the kitchen. “I’ll meet you there!”

Joseph cursed and threw on his warm-up jacket to delay the inevitable a little bit longer. He rushed out of the door, pausing to give Caesar a good luck high five, and then he was off, jogging to the field, thanking god that they were home this week.

Coach Loggins gave him a disapproving look when he jogged to the bench where the rest of his team was idly lacing up their cleats. He gestured at the jacket with his clipboard. “That needs to go before the game starts.”

Joseph grimaced, reading between the lines. Loggins didn’t want his teammates to be shocked by the sudden revelation of his injury, so sooner was much better than later. “Coach, I—”

Something in Loggins’ expression softened just slightly. He lowered his voice. “It’s best to get it over with. It’ll be two minutes of questions, tops.”

Joseph swallowed with some difficulty. Feeling as though there were rocks in his throat, he stared at the turf and slowly pulled off the jacket. When there was no immediate exclamation, he sat down by his backpack and started to tape up his socks, staring hard at what he was doing and trying not to think about anything else.

“Dude,” one of his teammates finally said, and Joseph forced himself to look up. His eyes flicked to the arm. “The fuck happened?”

Joseph dredged up a smirk, noticing the way that everyone else was pretending not to listen. “I tripped.”

His teammate didn’t seem to know what to do with that other than laugh, which sufficiently dissolved the tension. Joseph buried his nose in the arduous process of lacing up his cleats single-handed.

As they headed to their warm-up, the goalie, Tim, elbowed Joseph good-naturedly and offered him a smile. “It doesn’t look too bad.”

“Really?” Joseph deadpanned, but he was smiling a little bit.

“I’ve got worse.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

Joseph grinned, feeling a little bit less freaked out. He knew that his team was hyper-chill about most things that didn’t pertain to soccer, but now he began to actually feel it.

He settled into his skin, and he couldn’t feel the breeze on his arm, but for once, it wasn’t bothering him.

Loggins, predictably, had Joseph on the wing for kick-off, and Joseph settled into place easily, bouncing on his toes in preparation. He quickly scanned the dismal crowd and found Caesar sitting forward on the bleachers with his elbows on his knees. Joseph waved, shooting Caesar a grin, and Caesar waved back.

The whistle sounded, and Joseph ran.

It didn’t turn out to be the best game he’d ever played—he was still recovering, still getting used to his body—but in the end, they won 1-0 off of one of Joseph’s corner kicks, and Loggins seemed pleased enough as they stalked off the field.

Tim hooked his arm around Joseph’s neck while they walked and laughed. “Good game!”

“You played like a demon,” Joseph said. “Great shut-out.”

“Thanks! Excellent corner kick.”

“Aw, y’know,” Joseph said, pretending to be bashful. He hesitated but still shrugged on his jacket, lifting a shoulder at Tim’s questioning look.

“Are you guys ready for pancakes?” Loggins asked the team and was greeted with a cheer.

Every year, after their first game, the team all went to get pancakes together. It was tradition, and it was one of Joseph’s favorites. Caesar had even agreed to come along.

When he met Caesar at the bleachers, he hopped down to greet him, expression soft. “You played well.”

“I’ve played better,” Joseph said. “But today wasn’t bad.”

“No,” Caesar agreed, reaching out to (deliberately, Joseph thought) grab Joseph’s bad hand for a moment.

Tim jogged up to them. “Oh, hey,” he said, looking between them with a huge smile. “Joseph, is this your—”

“FRIEND, yes,” Joseph interrupted in sudden panic.

Tim looked at him with wide eyes, pausing a beat too long. “Right! You’re coming to pancakes, right?”

“If it’s okay,” Caesar said, wary now.

“Always! A bunch of people bring dates.”

Joseph was going to kill him. “Hah,” he said weakly.

“Come on!”

Joseph and Caesar walked a good few paces behind the rest of the group on the way to the shitty diner. “That was your goalie?” Caesar asked quietly. He was frowning a little bit.

“Tim, yeah. He’s a good dude. I like him.”

Caesar hummed. “He’s kinda cute,” he said hesitantly.

Ice lodged itself into Joseph’s throat, but he ignored it. “Oh? You want me to set you two up?”

“No, you jackass,” Caesar snapped, elbowing him hard. “I thought maybe you—”

“Oh.” Joseph laughed hollowly. “I’m not interested in any of them like that.”

“Alright, I was just asking,” Caesar muttered, looking more annoyed than Joseph thought he really had any right to be.

At the diner, Tim sat across from him and Caesar, and when Caesar stood to refill his glass of water, Tim leaned across the table to hiss, “What’s the deal? You sure he’s not your boyfriend?”

“He just asked me if I was into you,” Joseph replied sourly, stabbing a pancake with some gusto. “I’m sure.”

Tim blinked in surprise. “Hah. That’s hilarious. Bet I could make him jealous.”

“Please don’t do that.”

“I’m down to pretend to be your boyfriend anytime, Joseph.”

Joseph scowled at him. “Don’t be an asshole.”

Tim just grinned. “Can’t help it!” His expression grew slightly more serious. “You like him, though?”

Joseph sagged within himself, just a little bit. “Yeah,” he agreed quietly. “More than anyone could know.”

Tim gave him a consoling pat on the arm. “My condolences, dude.”

Joseph wasn’t upset at the unrequited nature of his feelings, though. Anything Caesar gave him was already more than enough. Caesar could have still hated him. He could have been dead. He could have stayed in Italy. Instead, Caesar was alive, he was his best friend, and, perhaps most shockingly, he was still here.

He didn’t say this to Tim, mostly because he knew Tim wouldn’t get it. He was probably Joseph’s closest friend on the team, but he didn’t know him that well.

Caesar returned, glancing between the two of them but clearly not saying what was on his mind. Instead, he said, “This place is obnoxiously American.”

“Don’t worry, C. I’ll treat you to a nice pizza for dinner.”

Caesar glared at him. “Thanks.”

Tim shook his head in silent amazement.

Sometime in the middle of October, Avdol called Joseph for one of their semi-regular skype chats. Joseph was tucked into the corner of the couch with his earbuds in while Caesar was boiling some pasta in the kitchen, humming to lame instrumental music.

“How’s Frenchie?” Joseph asked. Avdol was in the middle of scribbling some notes on a lecture he’d missed, and he and Joseph were mostly just talking idly as they did various other tasks. Joseph had already finished his problem sets for the week and contented himself with scrolling through Twitter as Avdol worked, but he was bored now.

“Jean?” Avdol asked absently, wrinkling his nose.

“Oh, so he’s Jean now?”

Avdol looked up sharply. “He is not Jean now!”

“Seems like he is.”

“You’re absolutely insufferable. You’re just projecting because you’re pining.”

“Am not,” Joseph answered.

“You’re the definition of pining.” Avdol jabbed a pencil in his direction, then frowned. “Something kind of odd happened the other day, though.”

“What?” Joseph prompted, expecting Avdol to casually throw in the fact that he and his annoying classmate had made out in a broom closet or something along those lines. Avdol tended to mention things like that as if they were minor, if odd, occurrences.

Avdol was frowning. “We had this guest lecturer in our criminal psychology class, and he asked Jean and I if we wanted to intern at his new law practice.”

“You’re not a law student,” Joseph pointed out in confusion.

“I know. He said he wasn’t picky, though. I did some research on him, and he’s apparently been disbarred in the US, although I suppose he still has some firm locations in Europe.”

Joseph frowned. It would be too big of a coincidence. He shouldn’t even ask. “What’s his name?”

“Dio Brando.”

He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth. “Are you fucking with me?”

Avdol stared at him. “You know him?”

“I know of him.” They’d never met, but— “He ruined Jonathan’s life. Briefly.”

Avdol was quiet for a long moment. “I’ll have to try harder to convince Jean not to intern with him.”

“He’s working for him?”

“He hasn’t applied yet. If I talk him out of it, he won’t.”

“Stay away from him. I don’t know what he’s doing in Egypt, but it really can’t be good. He’s…” Joseph shook his head. “He’s not a good dude.”

Avdol nodded, frowning thoughtfully. “I’ll make sure we steer clear.”

This time, Joseph didn’t try to tease Avdol about his inclusion of Polnareff. He thought about how Dio had gotten Kars off the hook and thought about how he was in such close proximity to one of his only friends. It had to be coincidence. “Just be safe.”

Avdol offered him a small smile. “I will be.”

“Pasta?” Caesar said, leaning over Joseph to make sure he noticed him.

“If you’re offering,” Joseph agreed, pleased.

“Only this once.” Caesar was moving easier now that his scar tissue had mostly healed, but he still was noticeably stiff-limbed, at least in contrast to how fluid his movements used to be. “Hi, Muhammad,” Caesar said, peaking at the screen.

“Hello.”

“He says hello.”

Caesar waved and retreated back to the kitchen.

“He made you pasta,” Avdol cooed. “That’s adorable. I hope you two get married.”

“I hope you die,” Joseph snapped at him.

Avdol shrugged. “Whatever. Go eat your pasta. I’ll talk to you next week.”

“Okay. Stay safe.”

“You too, Joseph.”

“I’m going to die,” Joseph said, face-planted on their library table. “What even is a matrix?”

“Death brackets,” Smokey answered, somewhat nonsensically, but Joseph nodded against the table in understanding.

“I have a game tomorrow.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“And math sucks.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Okay,” Joseph said, raising his head finally. “Let’s go through the theorems again.”

Smokey groaned. “Fine.”

When Joseph finally dragged himself home close to midnight, feeling bleary and utterly exhausted, he found Caesar in the middle of redecorating the living room. They offered each other cursory greetings, and Joseph went to immediately collapse into bed, face-first.

Caesar joined him sometime later, roughly yanking Joseph’s shoes off before crawling under the covers himself. “Are you ready for your exam tomorrow?”

“No,” Joseph said, muffled, into the pillow.

“I know you are. Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m really not.” He refused to turn his head and hoped Caesar could still understand him. “I don’t know if you know this, but I’m kind of stupid.”

“Not at math, Jojo.”

“Liar.”

Caesar ran his hand lightly up and down Joseph’s spine, and Joseph tried so hard to smother a shiver and failed just as thoroughly. “You’re going to be fine, idiot.”

Joseph finally turned to look at him out of the corner of his eye, suspicious. “If I fail, you have to keep my Wham! poster up in the living room.”

Caesar gave him a considering look. “If you pass, I’m replacing it with an ABBA poster.”

“Deal.”

Caesar leaned over and pressed a little kiss to the top of Joseph’s head. “Drama queen.”

Joseph grinned.

He didn’t fail.

Joseph watched Caesar take a slow jog around the track, feeling so apprehensive that he bit down hard enough on his thumb to draw blood.

Caesar passed him once without stopping, and then broke into a sprint. Joseph startled, jumping to his feet to watch him run, body thrumming with tension.

The first time Joseph saw Caesar run, he’d been so transfixed by his grace that he’d hit him in the face with a soccer ball. He moved like he considered running a ballet, all fluid limbs and powerful strides and lovely lines of motion. Joseph thought that Caesar ran like he’d never touch the ground again.

Now, Caesar’s stride seemed comparatively robotic. His arms and legs moved jerkily, and his body refused to curve into his movements. Joseph’s chest ached. Caesar ran like he had something worth running from.

His foot caught on something when he was halfway around the track, and Joseph watched in horror as Caesar fell. He was rushing towards him before it even registered.

Caesar pushed him away furiously as Joseph moved to help him up from where he’d been on the ground in a shocked sprawl. He shoved to his feet, body thrumming with clear frustration. He’d skinned his knees and elbows badly.

“I hate this,” he said, voice thick with grief and fury.

Once upon a time, Caesar Zeppeli had been an Olympic hopeful. Now, he stood on a near-empty, run-down track with a body that didn’t want to run anymore, and Joseph couldn’t even imagine how he felt.

Caesar tipped his head toward the sky, and Joseph watched a few tears escape down his cheekbones. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be,” he said, and his voice cracked.

Joseph stepped forward and circled his fingers around Caesar’s wrist, feeling relieved when Caesar didn’t immediately pull away. He didn’t look at him either, though.

Joseph thought of all the poetry he could’ve written about the way Caesar ran. He wished he could express how he thought it was such an incredible thing to watch, and how, even now, with so much changed, he was still utterly transfixed by the way he moved. He wished, for the first time, that he were a poet—because that seemed to be the only acceptable avenue to tell Caesar that he still ran like the world should tear beneath his feet.

But he wasn’t a poet.

“Race me to the lamppost,” he whispered instead.

Caesar stared at him uncomprehendingly for a long, agonizing moment. Then, he choked on what seemed to be half-laugh, half-sob, and he gently tugged his wrist out of Joseph’s grasp. “Yeah. Okay.”

When Caesar beat him, grinning through tears like he’d just won a war, Joseph didn’t even stop at the lamppost, using his momentum to tackle Caesar to the ground, laughing or crying or maybe both. Caesar wound his arms around him and held tight, and Joseph could feel him trembling. “I lost,” Joseph said against his collarbone.

“You never stood a chance,” Caesar whispered, voice raw.

At the season’s first snowfall, Caesar pretended to be annoyed while Joseph dragged him to a non-touristy ice-skating rink.

“Lisa Lisa warned me you’d do this,” Caesar groused, tugging at his scarf in irritation.

“It’s tradition, and since she’s not here, you’ll do.”

“I’ll do?” Caesar repeated, enraged. “I am more than an adequate substitute!”

Joseph thought it was incredibly endearing when Caesar’s phrasing was just awkward enough to remind him that English wasn’t his first language. He grinned, reaching out to wind the end of Caesar’s scarf around his finger. “No, you’re not.”

“I’ll fucking show you.”

Joseph loved when Caesar allowed himself to be baited by his antagonism, which was, frankly, almost always. He felt like the world would split his chest open if Caesar kept looking at him like a challenge for a single second more, so he looked away.

“Come on,” Caesar snapped, grabbing Joseph’s hand and dragging him along.

Joseph laughed. “You don’t even know where we’re going.”

Once at the ice-skating rink, Caesar proved his word by being the single most hilariously awful ice skater that Joseph had ever seen. Joseph nearly collapsed from laughter every single time Caesar fell on his ass because he always had the audacity to look shocked by the fact that he’d fallen, and it was so amazing that Joseph had to physically restrain himself from blurting out, “I’m in love with you,” at least nine separate times.

“I hate you,” Caesar despaired, clinging a little bit to Joseph’s sweatshirt as they glided along the rink, only remaining upright through Joseph’s incredible balance. “Why did you make me do this?”

“Tradition,” Joseph said. “And it’s fun.”

“You’d think partaking in a death match would be fun.”

“Maybe it could be!”

“Asshole.” Caesar’s skate caught on an uneven patch of ice, and he wobbled and staggered precariously. “Jesus!” he shouted, pinwheeling his arms for balance. Joseph reached out to catch him this time before he could fall on his face and potentially break his nose, and he held tight so that Caesar could take a minute to recover.

Caesar had his hands planted on Joseph’s chest, and they were practically nose to nose. Joseph felt his face start to heat after a second of the close contact, and then Caesar glared at him, and his breath caught, and—

Joseph slipped for no good reason, and when he fell, he took Caesar with him.

Caesar laughed uproariously after he landed on Joseph and knocked the wind out of him. “That was well-deserved!” he crowed, still half on top of him as Joseph laid back on the ice, wanting to disappear into the ground.

“Hah-hah,” he said weakly.

“I’m buying us both hot chocolate after this,” he declared happily, pushing himself unsteadily to his feet while Joseph let himself lie there in shame for another moment. Caesar reached out a hand to help Joseph to his feet, but when he pulled him up, he lost his balance and fell on his ass yet again.

Joseph giggled uncontrollably. “You’re incredible,” he said, a touch too genuine.

“Die,” Caesar snapped.

Joseph cradled his arm to his chest, blinking snowflakes out of his eyelashes. He was lying on the insanely uncomfortable turf, letting the snow fall on him. He shivered. He was wearing only a crop top and jeans, and he raked his nails down his bad forearm, wondering why he’d thought it’d been a good idea to go out bare-armed today.

He supposed he hadn’t been thinking, and he’d been late for lecture, and he’d forgotten his jacket on the kitchen table.

He hadn’t realized his mistake until he’d reached campus, and instead of heading for lecture, he’d swerved to mechanically find the soccer field, and he’d sat down, and then he’d laid down, and now he’d been lying here for hours maybe, staring at the darkening sky without registering it, shuddering with cold.

He gasped in pain as he tried to move his fingers, and a bolt of agony ran up his bicep.

The nerve damage will spread, his doctor had said, We really should remove the arm before the damage can get worse.

And Joseph had refused. He’d refused to even think about it for all these months, and then he’d hit campus and tried to remove an earbud with his bad hand after forgetting, and the pain had been so blinding that he’d actually stopped in his tracks.

He didn’t want it gone. It was ugly and a constant reminder of terrible, terrible things, but it was his.

Joseph put his hand just above his elbow. He could still feel the warmth. Was it fainter than before? He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t fucking tell.

Panicking, he called Lisa Lisa.

“Joseph, could you—”

“I don’t want it gone,” Joseph interrupted, and his voice sounded scraped raw and pathetic. “I don’t want them to take it.”

Lisa Lisa said nothing for a moment, and Joseph listened as the background sounds in the call faded away. She must’ve moved to another room. “What’s happening?”

“It hurt today. The arm. Past my elbow. It really hurt.”

“Joseph…”

“I don’t want them to take it,” he said again.

“I know.” Her voice was gentler than it had been for years. “And it will always be your choice, but wouldn’t you rather have half an arm than no arm?”

“I—I don’t—”

“There are no good options,” Lisa Lisa said softly. “But there are worse options. All I can promise is that I will be there for you, no matter what.”

Joseph swallowed with extreme difficulty. “Mom, I’m so fucking scared. I don’t want any of it.”

“I know, Jojo.”

Joseph’s breath hitched, and he shoved down the tears that threatened to overtake him. She hadn’t called him Jojo for years, and now the nickname made him feel so goddamn vulnerable that he nearly shattered around it. Instead, he felt himself go entirely numb, felt himself shut down. “I really have to let them cut it off, don’t I?” he said hollowly.

“I think you should,” Lisa Lisa said, never one to shy away from her honest opinion.

“I don’t think I can do it without you here,” he admitted, monotone.

“Okay,” she said after a pause. “That’s—okay. We can arrange for it to happen over the summer.”

Joseph shut his eyes. He nodded mutely, knowing Lisa Lisa wouldn’t be able to know that he’d agreed, but he was unable to make his throat work.

“Jojo, where are you? It sounds like you’re outside.”

“I’m at the field,” he managed. His breath quickened, and his panic rapidly returned. “I can’t move. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I can’t—”

“I’m going to call Caesar and tell him to come get you. I’m not hanging up. I’m just going to keep you on hold for two seconds. Okay?”

Joseph squeezed his eyes shut. “I—okay.”

The line was silent for what felt like less than an instant before Lisa Lisa’s voice came back. “He’s on his way to you, alright?”

“Did—did you tell him about—”

“No. That’s not my information to give.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m going to keep talking until he arrives. Can I tell you about my day?”

“Yes,” Joseph managed.

He tried his hardest to listen to what Lisa Lisa was saying, but the words kept sliding out of his head like sand through cracked fingertips, and all Joseph could think was that his arm was still somehow burning, even all this time later.

It wasn’t long before Joseph felt more than saw Caesar kneel next to him. He gently extracted the phone from Joseph’s clenched fingers and spoke quietly to Lisa Lisa for a moment before hanging up and slowly manhandling Joseph into a sitting position.

Joseph blinked at him lethargically. “Hey,” he croaked.

“Hey,” Caesar said, gaze intense with something unnamable. “Can you stand?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can,” Caesar said quietly, and he slowly took them to their feet. Joseph wavered, and Caesar quickly stepped in to hook his arm around Joseph’s waist. He grabbed the wrist of Joseph’s bad hand and tugged his arm into place across Caesar’s shoulders. Joseph whimpered a little bit as a shock of pain went through his triceps, and Caesar froze.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Joseph said tightly.

“I’m gonna call us an uber,” Caesar said after a moment.

Joseph tucked his chin against his chest in shame. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” Caesar said sharply. “Don’t.”

Joseph blinked, and they were huddled in the backseat of an uber, and he was shivering violently.

Caesar had his hands clasped between his own, and he was looking at them darkly. “Your fingers were turning blue,” he whispered. “How long were you out there?”

“I don’t know,” Joseph answered, voice cracking. He kept losing time, over and over again, and he felt like he was losing his fucking mind.

Caesar released Joseph’s hands only to grab his face, and Joseph couldn’t have looked away even if he hadn’t kept him there. “We’re gonna be okay.”

Joseph wanted so badly to believe him. He pitched forward, tucking himself into Caesar’s chest and breathing unevenly. He couldn’t seem to dredge up any sort of response.

Caesar carded his fingers through Joseph’s hair a few times. “We’re okay,” he whispered every now and then.

When they were back home and Joseph was covered with every single blanket in the house and held a cup of tea in his hand, he came back to himself a little bit. “What did my mom say to you?”

Caesar had been reading next to him as Joseph had spaced out. He put his book down and frowned. “Just that you were at the field and really out of it and that I needed to come get you.”

“Oh. Alright.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not now.”

Caesar looked away. “Alright.”

Joseph put down his mug and wiggled his way over to Caesar. “Lie down.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Caesar said, lying down. Joseph tucked himself under Caesar’s arm and finally felt the cold start to abate. “Will you tell me someday?”

Joseph imagined what it’d be like if he just came home with half his arm gone one day, and he smiled grimly at the black humor of it. “Yeah,” he said. “Not today, but yeah.”

Caesar let out a breath. Joseph felt some of the tension drain from him. “Good.”

The week before finals, Joseph absently picked up the phone to receive Jotaro’s call. “I’m dying. Sup.”

Jotaro was eerily quiet for a moment. “We need to do something,” he finally said.

“Oh, yeah? Like what? Disney World? I can’t—Remember I’m going to Egypt? Maybe for Spring Break. Caesar would look hella cute in the Mickey ears—”

“No,” Jotaro interrupted. “He sent my mom death threats.”

Joseph collapsed into silence, feeling like an exposed nerve. “Who?” he said, even though he knew the answer.

“Brando.”

Joseph was silent for a long time, trying to digest the new information. He recalled a conversation he’d had with Avdol several months ago. “I think I know where he is,” he said quietly. “I’ll track him down over the break.”

“I’m going with you. Where.”

Joseph thought briefly about protesting, but he discarded the idea almost immediately. He didn’t want to confront Dio Brando alone. “Cairo.”

Jotaro didn’t even ask how he knew that. “I’m buying a plane ticket.” The line disconnected.

Joseph finished packing his suitcase while Caesar watched silently. “It’s only for the first two weeks,” he said. “I’ll send you a million selfies.”

“You better,” Caesar said. His arms were crossed, and he looked awfully disgruntled. “The apartment’s too quiet every time you’re away. I hate it.”

“You can always go stay with Gyro.”

Caesar wrinkled his nose. “I think I’d go crazy after a single night.”

Joseph grinned. “He’s not that bad.”

“You haven’t heard him sing.”

“Touché.” He frowned at the suitcase. “Am I forgetting anything?”

“Your dignity?”

“Oh, hah-hah-hah,” Joseph deadpanned.

“I think you’re good,” Caesar said.

“Alrighty, then.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. This would be the largest stretch of time they’d be separated since Caesar’s coma. Joseph wasn’t looking forward to it, but it was infinitely preferable to dragging him into this whole thing with Dio Brando. Caesar deserved better than to be yanked into crisis after crisis just by virtue of exposure to Joseph.

Caesar stood and made his way over to him, enclosing him in a quick, fierce hug. “Please make sure to text me at least once a day, just so that I know you haven’t been murdered.”

“Hilarious,” Joseph said, rolling his eyes as he hugged Caesar back. “Of course I will.”

They watched each other for a moment longer, and Joseph tried for a smile. Caesar just shook his head and started to push him towards the door, claiming that he’d be late if he didn’t get his ass moving.

“Hey,” Joseph said once Caesar had successfully pushed him to the outside of the front door. “I’ll miss you.”

Caesar’s expression went soft, and Joseph couldn’t help but sway in his direction like a stupid orbiting satellite. “Get out of here, you dickhead.”

Joseph grinned. “Love you too, C.”

He forced himself not to look back while he made his way for the stairs. He’d be home again in two weeks, and maybe have one less item of emotional baggage to keep away from Caesar. The thought bolstered him, and he jogged down the stairs.

He had a plane to catch.

Chapter Text

After three full days of variously ridiculous selfies sent at relatively consistent intervals, Joseph’s communication became much more intermittent before coming to a stop entirely.

Caesar stared at the screen of his phone, hoping it would refresh. He scrolled upwards to the last few texts, which included a selfie of Joseph, Avdol, and Avdol’s eyebrowless friend smiling and holding up peace signs while Jotaro and his roommate were struggling to help each other climb onto a camel in the background. Caesar had sent back a text properly indicating his exasperation and amusement, and Joseph had just sent back a string of different heart emojis.

This morning, there had been a single broken text.

JOJO: hey wh

After twenty minutes of no elaboration, Caesar had responded with a few question marks, but there had been no response.

He chewed on his lip in agitation. Joseph was probably fine. He’d likely gotten drunk or something and had forgotten he’d texted Caesar at all. There was no need to freak out.

Caesar spent the day researching the newest release of running shoes, trying to figure out which pair would suit him best now that the equilibrium in his body had changed. His current running shoes weren’t doing his knees any favors.

His phone buzzed pleasantly just around the time he had started to consider dinner, and Caesar dove for it so frantically that he pushed it off the table. He cursed to himself and leaned down to retrieve it, heart pounding hard.

But it was only Gyro sending him a screenshot of a random funny tweet.

Caesar thunked his forehead onto the table and breathed through his nose. He decided that he was past the point of trying to play it casual and opened his conversation with Joseph.

ME: Are you ok?? Haven’t gotten a terrible selfie in a while ://

He lasted maybe five minutes with no response before he started typing again.

ME: Look you don’t have to say anything just let me know you’re alright

He dropped his phone face-down on the table, changed his mind, turned it face-up, and glared at it.

“It’s fine,” he said to himself, out loud. Maybe Joseph was sleeping. Maybe he’d lost his phone.

It occurred to Caesar that Joseph wasn’t in Egypt alone, and he opened up a conversation to Jotaro asking if everything was alright.

The message delivery failed immediately.

“Alright,” he said faintly. He finally called Lisa Lisa.

“Caesar,” she said, sounding pleased, when the line connected. “I didn’t expect to hear from you until Thursday.”

“I apologize for calling unannounced,” he said hastily. “It’s just that—that—” He took a deep breath and began again. “Have you heard from Joseph today?”

Lisa Lisa paused. “No.”

“He’s not responding to any of my texts, and I tried Jotaro, and I think something’s wrong.”

Lisa Lisa was quiet for a long time. “He’s probably fine. You know how he can get about texting.”

It was true. Joseph either responded immediately or never. But he hadn’t ignored one of Caesar’s texts for such a long time, and it left him feeling unmoored. He didn’t want Lisa Lisa to hear him freak out, though, so he bit down hard on his lip and forced himself to stay quiet.

“I’ll give him a call in a few hours. I wouldn’t start to get worried until tomorrow morning. You really should get some sleep tonight, Caesar.”

Caesar closed his eyes, chest aching. He tried so hard not to take the comfort from her words but still found himself collapsing into a slump on his chair, unable to argue with her. “Okay. Thank you.”

“I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything, okay?”

“Thank you,” he said again.

“Sleep well,” she said in Italian and hung up.

Caesar rubbed his eyes in defeat, staring blankly at the table. He should go lie down soon. His body ached, and his physical therapist loved badgering him about how terrible his posture could be.

But the idea of crawling into bed made Caesar feel physically ill.

Caesar remembered, shivering, the first time Joseph had needed to leave for the night because of an away game. He’d gone to bed without any qualms, but when the emptiness of the room pressed in on him, he could only hear the distant sounds of traffic clashing against his heartbeat, and he thought that if he closed his eyes for one second, he may never wake up again, this time.

He never slept when Joseph was gone.

These past few days, he’d operated on exhausted fumes, passing out for a few snatches of hours every now and then when he could no longer shrug the need off.

Now, he felt his heartbeat crawling up his throat, and he felt more alone than he had felt in a very long time.

Caesar forced himself to make his way over to the couch and turned on the TV loud enough to block out the noise from outside. He didn’t sleep, but he did fall into a cross-eyed daze that left him out of commission for the full expanse of the night. When the sun started to rise, he felt so tired that he could barely move, but the building thrum of panic in his veins kept him alert. His eyes watered in protest.

Lisa Lisa called again a little bit after nine in the morning.

“My call has gone straight to voicemail several times,” she said, tone curt. “Something may be wrong.”

Caesar inhaled sharply, head spinning. He couldn’t do this. When he’d woken up in that hospital bed and finally started to understand what had happened, he’d been so relieved that he never had to do any waiting himself. He’d wondered how Joseph had stayed sane just waiting for Caesar to wake up. He would have never been able to do the same if their roles had been reversed.

His mind quickly jumped to the worst conclusions. Joseph was dead, somewhere in Egypt. Kars had climbed out of the void where he’d disappeared into and found him and killed him, and Caesar would never find his body, never get to bury him, never—

“Breathe, Caesar,” Lisa Lisa was saying. “You have to breathe.”

“Sorry,” Caesar gasped, fisting a hand in his hair and yanking, trying to keep himself grounded. He got his breathing back under control ruthlessly, feeling humiliated. “Sorry,” he said again.

“Don’t,” she replied, and Caesar noticed that her own tone was thin with poorly concealed tension. “I’m going to try to figure out what’s happened. Don’t panic yet.”

It’s a little bit late for that, Caesar noted with some hysteria. “Okay,” he said anyway. “I’ll be—here.”

The silence in the apartment felt like it was tearing into his skin, so Caesar hastily grabbed his phone, wallet, and keys before staggering outside, feeling like the day would swallow him whole.

He found himself at the track and didn’t put too much thought into it before he started a warm-up jog, shoes crunching against the frost. His old trainer would have said it was dangerous to be running in this weather, but his old trainer didn’t really have a say in what he did or didn’t do anymore.

After his warm-up, he did a few cursory stretches because he knew Messina would notice if he skipped them. He always somehow seemed to know.

Then, he started to run.

Before everything had changed, Caesar had been a force to be reckoned with. His event had been the 400-meter sprint—the most challenging but most rewarding event, in Caesar’s opinion. Keeping your speed for that long, lungs burning, legs on fire, heart pounding, was the closest Caesar had ever come to understanding how the universe operated.

His body didn’t work the same anymore, though.

He couldn’t keep sprinting for the full loop of the track without something giving way, whether it be his breath or his muscles or his willpower. This time, his breath gave first, and he slowed to a jog two thirds of the way around the track, gasping. He came to a stop a few moments later, winding his arms around his chest as the pain started to overtake him.

Sometimes, when Caesar took a deep breath, it felt like something was crushing him.

He pressed a fist against his sternum and hoped he was just imagining things when something rattled in his chest. It felt like they’d put him back together wrong, like he was a puzzle cursorily completed by a toddler. Nothing worked the same. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t run.

Caesar sat down heavily in the middle of the track and buried his face in his hands. He missed Joseph.

Just as the cold was starting to get to Caesar, his phone started to buzz in his pocket.

It was Jotaro.

He had never answered a phone call so quickly.

“Hey,” he said. “Is everything okay? I keep texting Joseph, and he isn’t—”

“He’s,” Jotaro began, and his voice sounded absolutely wrecked, “fine.”

Caesar felt cold all over, and not just from the flurries drifting onto his face. “Are you okay? You sound—you sound—”

“I’m okay.” Jotaro took a deep, shaky breath, and then said, “They’re hurt. All of them.”

“All of who?”

“Avdol. Kakyoin. Polnareff. Joseph.” Jotaro’s voice cracked, and he didn’t even seem to notice it. “They’re all hurt.”

Caesar’s heart was going to beat out of his chest. “What happened?” he demanded.

“I don’t know—everything was going fine, and then all of a sudden, it was all fucked up, and—”

“Hey, they’re fine. They’re fine. Calm down, Jotaro.”

Jotaro took another few audible breaths, and when he spoke again, his voice was dull and monotone. “They’re in the hospital. They’ll all be fine. Joseph got stabbed, though.”

“He got stabbed?” Caesar said thinly. He felt light-headed.

“He’ll be fine.”

Caesar dug his knuckles into the side of his head, trying to push away the panic. “Are you still in Cairo?”

Jotaro paused. “Yes.”

“Tell him I’ll be there as soon as I can. Tomorrow.”

Jotaro, thank god, didn’t try to argue with him. “Okay.”

“Are you going to be alright until I get there?”

Jotaro was quiet for a long time. “I’m fine,” he finally said, shortly. “I’ll text you the hospital’s address.” And then he hung up.

Caesar took a moment to compose himself before looking up flights.

Caesar was experiencing the world through a veil of unawareness that only stemmed from severe sleep deprivation. After he’d slunk his way off the plane and hailed a taxi, he slumped in the backseat. There was a ringing in his ears that wouldn’t go away, and his eyes watered involuntarily.

He met Jotaro in the hospital lobby. Jotaro looked nearly as exhausted as Caesar felt, which was truly saying something. “Hey,” Caesar said.

“Hi.”

“You doing okay?”

“Fine.”

He turned and led Caesar down a hall. “He and Avdol are sharing a room.”

“What happened to him?”

Jotaro cast a wary glance at him, then tugged at the brim of his hat and looked away. “Hurt his arms.”

“And the others?”

Jotaro flexed his jaw. “Polnareff has a concussion, and Kakyoin—” he cut himself off. “They’re going to be fine.”

Caesar decided not to press for the time being. He felt a strange sense of vertigo, remembering waking up in the hospital and demanding details on what the fuck had happened and getting none. He had stitched together a patchy picture of the events, but it had taken so much time. He didn’t know if he had the energy to do it again.

Jotaro walked inside the open door to a nondescript room. Caesar saw the vague light drifting through a window, and took a deep, fortifying breath. He could do this.

He walked through the door and saw Avdol first, recognizing him from his video chats with Joseph and from Joseph’s selfies. He had one arm in a cast and the other heavily bandaged and was quietly drinking a smoothie that Jotaro had presumably procured for him.

He looked up at Caesar, blinking a few times. “Oh, Caesar. It’s nice to formally meet you.”

“You too,” Caesar said quietly. “Are you alright?”

Avdol smiled grimly. “I’ll be fine.”

“Good,” Caesar said, nodding a few times, rapidly. “Good.”

“Joseph is sleeping.”

Caesar nodded again and took the invitation to finally look towards Joseph.

He looked entirely normal except for the neck brace, which seemed to be padded with a lot more gauze than Caesar would have expected. “I thought you said he got stabbed?” Caesar asked quietly, migrating slowly to Joseph’s side almost without realizing he was moving at all.

“In the neck,” Jotaro said.

Caesar inhaled sharply, dropping down to sit on the edge of Joseph’s bed. He put a hand on his chest to feel his heartbeat, and Joseph shifted a little bit, murmuring something unintelligible in his sleep. Caesar reached up with his other hand to smooth Joseph’s hair off from his forehead.

“Do you want to come with me to get dinner for them. Later,” Jotaro said to Caesar.

“Yeah,” Caesar said, finally looking away. “Yeah, of course. Just come get me.”

“Cool,” Jotaro said. “I’m gonna go check on the others.”

“Tell Jean that his taste in smoothies leaves something to be desired,” Avdol said, then took an entirely contradictory sip.

“Fine.”

Jotaro left in a swish of his black coat, and Caesar looked back to Joseph and felt like sinking into the ground forever.

At least he was okay. Relatively speaking.

“Will you tell me what happened?” Caesar asked Avdol, feeling small. “Jotaro’s not telling me anything, and I know Joseph’s going to be cagey as fuck.”

Avdol frowned, thinking. “Joseph and Jotaro wanted to confront Dio Brando.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar, but Caesar couldn’t place from where. “Who’s that?”

Avdol shrugged. “He’s a lawyer who has apparently not been kind to their family in the past. I couldn’t drag many details out of them, but I think he sent Jotaro’s mother some pretty serious death threats.”

“Jesus,” Caesar said.

“It took us a few days to find him, and when we did, things just went wrong.”

“How?”

“The man was unhinged,” Avdol said, looking disturbed. “And violent. He didn’t appreciate us coming to confront him, and he attacked us.”

“Oh,” Caesar said.

“I’m not sure what Jotaro did to get us safe. I was—uh—hurt. He refuses to tell anyone either.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“Of course.” Avdol hesitated. “I know Joseph isn’t always the most forthcoming in regard to bad things that have happened to him.”

Caesar smiled without humor. “Yes.”

“You have to be patient with him.”

Caesar really thought that he had been. He’d at least been as patient as he was capable of—it wasn’t his biggest virtue. He let out an explosive breath and slumped forward a little bit. “I guess,” he said.

Jotaro swept back into the room. “Polnareff says that you have no taste.”

“Tell him—”

“Good grief. I’m not being your messenger all day,” he snapped, then muttered, “It’s not like you can’t walk,” as he left the room.

“I guess he’s right,” Avdol said, cocking his head slightly. “Would it be okay if I went to go speak to them?”

“Sure,” Caesar said. “I’ve got him.”

“I’ll be back soon.”

Caesar watched as Avdol slowly stood from the hospital bed, a little bit unbalanced. He steadied himself before heading for the door, flashing Caesar a reassuring smile.

When he’d left, Caesar took a moment to allow his eyes to rove over Joseph’s face. He seemed calm, or at least not unhappy. He looked okay, if a little bit ashen, a little bit pale. If not for the neck brace, Caesar could have convinced himself that Joseph was just taking a nap.

Joseph stirred after a few minutes and cracked an eye open. When he noticed Caesar, he blinked lethargically, confused for a moment before smiling a little bit.

“Heyyyyy,” he murmured, voice thick with whatever medication he must have been on. “When’d you get here?”

“Just now,” Caesar whispered, grabbing Joseph’s hand. “You idiot.”

“Hah. You came to visit me. All the way over here.” Joseph shut his eyes for a moment, still smiling. “Careful, C. One of these days, I may get the idea that you actually like me.”

Caesar felt overwhelmed by… something. He couldn’t identify the big, all-encompassing feeling that unfurled in his chest like a parachute, and he didn’t care to. He squeezed Joseph’s hand. “You scared me.”

“Sorry,” Joseph said unapologetically. He tugged at Caesar’s hand. “Hey. C’m’ere.”

Caesar allowed Joseph to tug him onto the hospital bed so that the were crammed in there together. Joseph tried to pillow his head on Caesar’s collarbone but was inhibited pretty effectively by the neck brace. He muttered irritably to himself and settled for tucking himself against Caesar’s side as comfortably as he could.

Something taut within him relaxed as he felt Joseph breathe against him, already back to sleep. He pressed his face to the top of Joseph’s head and took a moment to breathe. The exhaustion of the past week was catching up to him horrifically, and he fought as hard as he could to stay conscious but ended up falling asleep anyway, holding Joseph close.

He didn’t know how long he got to sleep, but it certainly wasn’t enough time before Joseph was nudging him awake.

“Caesar,” he was saying, sounding slightly more alert. “Wake up. What’re you doing here?”

Caesar glared at where Joseph was staring at him in blank confusion, poking him repeatedly in the sternum to try to get him to wake up. “Jotaro told me you got stabbed. What was I supposed to do? Sit at home and wait for you to come back?” he grumbled.

Joseph’s brows knit together. “Yeah, dude.”

“Well, obviously I wasn’t going to do that.”

“The plane ride must have been expensive,” Joseph noted faintly, thoughts clearly elsewhere.

“I have savings,” Caesar replied anyway.

“Oh, god, did you tell my mom?” Joseph demanded, sounding vaguely frightened by the prospect.

“Jotaro did.”

“Fuck.”

“Cool it. You don’t get to complain about shit for scaring us like that.”

“I didn’t even get hurt the worst,” he grumbled. “I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of it.”

Joseph had been unavailable for all of three days, and Caesar had somehow forgotten how fucking annoying he was. “I’m gonna kill you,” he said, not even sure if he was kidding.

Joseph poked one of the dark circles under Caesar’s eyes. “Damn, are those bruises?” He sounded mildly fascinated.

Caesar scowled. “Shut up. You’re so annoying.” He reached out and wound his arms around Joseph’s torso, pulling him into a hug. “I hate you.”

“Love you too, C,” Joseph said, muffled. Then, much more quietly, he added, “Thanks. For caring.”

Caesar rolled his eyes at the ceiling. This idiot. “I’m leaving,” he said, not moving a muscle.

Joseph drew back to look at him. “Do you think I’m gonna get a badass scar?”

Caesar arched a brow. “You already have one.”

“Yeah, but another.”

“Maybe.” He knew that Joseph was going to get weird as soon as he asked, but Caesar couldn’t help it. “Jojo, what happened?”

Joseph looked away. “I guess I have to tell you about Dio Brando,” he said after a very long pause.

Shocked that he was actually getting a response, Caesar said nothing.

“My father raised him and Jonathan together. They were brothers in everything but blood, at least according to Erina. They get a little bit weird about the details, but I think he may have had a hand in my father dying so young. I don’t know. Maybe.” Joseph paused, wincing. “Anyway, there was this whole thing about his will, and there was some sort of fight, and Dio ended up burning down the west wing of the mansion before disappearing altogether. To Europe, I guess, and then to Egypt.”

“He was in Europe?”

Joseph clammed up. “I guess,” he said.

Caesar sighed, feeling resigned. “Alright. Thanks for telling me.”

Joseph nodded a few times. “Where’s Avdol?”

“I guess he’s still hanging out with your friends.”

“Oh.” Joseph sat back and looked at Caesar guiltily. “Is—is Kakyoin okay?”

Caesar lifted a shoulder. “I think so. Jotaro seemed shaken up about him.”

“He got shot. With a gun,” Joseph said quietly.

Caesar’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

“I couldn’t—” Joseph cut himself off. Shook his head. “I want to see them.”

“Are you allowed to move?”

“Who gives a fuck?”

“You, for one, should.”

“Steal me a wheelchair if you’re so paranoid, you nark.”

“I’m not a nark,” Caesar snapped. Normally he’d be fine to run with the banter with mostly theatrical irritation, but Caesar was so worn out and so exhausted that it was getting to him. He took a deliberately slow breath. Joseph must have noticed how frayed Caesar’s nerves were because he stayed quiet and then just reached out to gently touch Caesar’s cheek, guiding him to look at him.

“I’m worried about them,” he said softly. “Please?”

Caesar deflated, leaning into the touch a little bit. “Alright.” Joseph smiled a little bit. “But we’re doing this my way.”

Before Joseph could even consider protesting, Caesar hit the button to call the nurse, feeling vaguely smug at Joseph’s betrayed look.

The nurse, thankfully, spoke English, and she and Caesar argued for a moment about Joseph’s ability to move while Joseph sulked in silence. Finally, the nurse relented and went to retrieve a wheelchair where she could hook up Joseph’s IV.

“You suck,” Joseph said feebly, and Caesar just rolled his eyes. “Have I ever told you that you’re a terrible flirt?”

“Me?”

“You were totally just flirting with the nurse.”

“Was not.”

Joseph laughed, and then leaned forward. He must have done something that aggravated his injury because he stopped, wincing. “Hah. Ow.”

Caesar stared at him in utter exhaustion. “Maybe we should just stay home next vacation.”

“Fuck that. We’re going to Disney World.”

Before Caesar had a chance to properly address that, the nurse returned to hook Joseph up to a wheelchair. Joseph’s movements were shaky and entirely unstable, and Caesar took a moment to congratulate himself on pursuing the wheelchair idea.

He grabbed the handles and steered Joseph down the hall to the room he vaguely remembered Jotaro mentioning. He knocked once before opening the door.

Inside, Avdol and Polnareff were huddled on one hospital bed, looking at a phone screen and sharing earbuds. On the other side of the room, Jotaro’s roommate, Kakyoin, was looking pale and exhausted while Jotaro glared into space from a chair at his bedside. They all looked up when Joseph and Caesar entered.

Polnareff yanked out his earbud and shouted, “You’re awake!” He glanced up at Caesar. “Oh. Hello.”

“This is Caesar.” Joseph said. “How are you guys feeling?”

“I feel great, except Mo won’t let me watch TV.”

“You have a concussion.”

“Details.”

Caesar chose not to point out that they’d clearly been watching something on that phone anyway.

“Hey,” Kakyoin said, and his voice was hoarse. He tried for a tired smile. “I’m doing good.”

Jotaro tugged the brim of his hat so low that they could barely see his face.

Joseph sighed with theatric gusto. “Thank god. I can’t remember shit from the past couple days.”

“You’ve been high as hell,” Avdol said. “Kakyoin still is.”

“Not,” Kakyoin mumbled. “Totally… alert.” He pointed feebly at Jotaro. “Could kick your ass.”

“I know you could,” Jotaro said.

“Could kick all your asses.”

“I know,” Jotaro said again.

Avdol and Joseph shared a concerned glance that the rest of the room seemed entirely unaware of. Caesar parked Joseph’s wheelchair in a spot across from both the hospital beds, just beneath the TV, and dragged the empty chair by Polnareff’s bedside to sit next to Joseph.

“I can’t believe you flew all the way here,” Polnareff said to Caesar, looking mildly perplexed. “It’s such a long flight, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Caesar agreed, shrugging in discomfort. “I don’t know. There wasn’t really any other choice.”

“It’s because he likes me,” Joseph stage-whispered, and Polnareff laughed loudly.

“Joseph, have you shown him the picture we took of Jotaro and that gambler?”

Joseph’s face lit up. “No.” He reached for his pocket, realized he didn’t have any pockets, and then frowned. “Where’s my phone?”

Jotaro silently fished into one of his many pockets and extracted Joseph’s phone with its signature cracked screen. “It’s dead.”

Joseph pouted. “Booooo.”

“I’ll plug it in,” Caesar offered quietly, just remembering that he had a backpack with all of his stuff with him.

As he tried to find an outlet, he listened to Joseph’s friends talk to each other. They all seemed to have gotten really close over the past week or so. They cracked jokes and teased each other as if they’d been friends for years.

Something uncomfortable built up within Caesar’s lungs—something ugly and jealous and possessive. He shoved the feeling down ruthlessly, swallowing roughly against the nausea that it caused.

“What do you want for dinner,” Jotaro said to the room at large, and Caesar tuned back into the conversation.

“I want—” Polnareff started, but Avdol physically clapped a hand over his mouth to cut him off.

“Don’t listen to him.”

Polnareff evidently licked Avdol’s palm, and Avdol withdrew, making a soft noise of enraged disgust while Polnareff glared at him.

“Whatever’s easiest for you,” Avdol said to Jotaro, wiping his hand off on Polnareff’s arm while Polnareff tried to unsuccessfully squirm away.

“Whatever,” Jotaro said, getting to his feet. He made eye contact with Caesar, and he stood up as well.

“You’re going?” Joseph asked, sounding betrayed.

“Yes, you dick,” Caesar snapped. “I’ll be back.”

Joseph pouted. “Okay.”

Jotaro and Caesar left the hospital in silence, walking aimlessly down the street to head towards downtown where they could presumably find an adequate restaurant.

“He doesn’t shut up about you,” Jotaro said out of the blue, glaring towards the horizon. “It’s annoying.”

“He’s annoying all-around,” Caesar agreed, not sure what exactly he was supposed to do with the first statement.

Jotaro grunted in affirmation, conversation evidently over.

Caesar wasn’t necessarily one for addressing his issues head-on, but it was almost painful to watch Jotaro visibly sink into himself. He tried to bite back the question but was only successful for about two minutes, after which he said, “…Do you want to talk about it?”

Jotaro cast him a skeptical look, gaze evaluating Caesar like a scientific diagram. Caesar refused to waver underneath the scrutiny and merely scowled back.

Jotaro sighed, looking away.

“I just…” He sounded lost, and Caesar watched him hunch his shoulders. “Feel stupid. For bringing everyone into this. They all got hurt.”

“It was much more their choice than yours,” Caesar said, thinking of the few times Joseph had voiced his clear guilt over the crash. He tried not to betray his shock that Jotaro had said anything. Something must have happened over the course of this trip to make him a little bit less stoic, less remote, almost like his harsh lines had all softened a little bit.

Jotaro frowned. “You think so?” he asked flatly, although he sounded like he genuinely wanted to hear Caesar’s answer.

“I know so. I’ve lived my fair share of disaster, Jotaro.”

Jotaro tugged at the brim of his hat. “Right. Thanks,” he muttered. “Let’s go in here.” He turned abruptly into the restaurant they were passing, not even looking at the sign.

“I get it,” Jotaro said idly while they were walking back to the hospital with arms full of take-out. They’re been in a surprisingly comfortable, companionable silence for most of the trip.

Now, Caesar looked at him curiously. “Get what?”

Jotaro arched an eyebrow, lips twitching upwards wryly for an instant. “Why Joseph likes you.”

Caesar felt inordinately embarrassed by this, and he felt his face heat up. He ducked his head. “Oh. Hah.”

Jotaro rolled his eyes. “Good grief,” he muttered, but he didn’t sound irritated.

When they got back to the hospital room, Joseph was leaning into Kakyoin’s space to show him something on his phone while Avdol and Polnareff had returned to whatever they’d been watching. They all perked up at the sight of the food, and Kakyoin even propped himself up on his elbow before making a face and collapsing back onto the pillows.

Joseph awkwardly wheeled over to Caesar, using his left hand as best as he could to move. He reached for the take-out bag, but Caesar held it out of his reach. “Patience,” he said.

He dug through the bag and passed the meal he’d chosen for Joseph to him before distributing the rest of them.

They ate together, all semi-transfixed by the too-quiet run of an Egyptian soap opera on the TV. As they were wrapping up, a voice crackled to life over the intercom and said something in Egyptian.

“Visiting hours are over in fifteen minutes,” Avdol translated.

Caesar, perhaps impulsively, grabbed Joseph’s hand.

Joseph looked at him, smiling a little bit through something grave, and squeezed his hand once before letting go.

Sometimes, when Joseph looked at him, it was like he was staring at the apocalypse, fascinated and surprised and maybe even horrified by it, all found somewhere in the lines of Caesar’s face.

Caesar never knew what to do with it.

Jotaro kicked open the door to his shitty hotel room and gestured lamely at the empty bed before collapsing face-first onto his own, asleep instantly.

Caesar didn’t think he was going to get any sleep. He tiredly got ready for bed, crawled into the covers, and stared at the ceiling, heart pounding so hard that he thought he was going to die, a little bit. He rubbed his eyes, and his hand came away wet, not because he was crying but because his eyes were watering involuntarily.

God, he was so fucking tired. His body trembled against it. He knew it wasn’t rational or practical or healthy, somewhere deep down, but if he closed his eyes, he was never going to wake up—he’d gotten lucky, and luck didn’t strike like that twice.

So, he stared at the ceiling, not sure if he’d ever been this goddamn exhausted in his entire life.

Morning came, and Jotaro grumbled something to himself as he climbed out of bed, casting a glance at where Caesar was lying, prone, awake. He went through his morning routine and then returned to sit on his bed. He hesitated for a moment before asking, “Did you sleep?”

“Uh,” Caesar said, and his voice didn’t work right, so he cleared his throat. “I, uh—”

Jotaro frowned at him. Caesar didn’t know what to say. He sat up slowly, head splitting with a migraine. “Do you want me to… call Joseph?”

Caesar shook his head slowly. “No. I’m good.” He stretched, and his vision went blurry for a moment as a spasm of pain went through his chest at the movement. He gritted his teeth against it. At least that was normal. “Are we going back to the hospital?”

“Yeah.”

Thankfully, Jotaro didn’t press anymore, and they got to the hospital soon after Caesar dragged himself out of bed.

Joseph was groggy and still kind of high from the pain medication when he strolled inside. Avdol was sleeping, and Joseph put a finger to his own lips when Caesar entered.

Caesar felt like he was past the point of reservations, so he just silently shoved Joseph to one side of his bed and climbed under the thin covers, putting his head on Joseph’s chest so that he wouldn’t aggravate his neck brace.

Joseph carded his hand through Caesar’s hair, and Caesar’s eyes fluttered shut. “Go to sleep,” he whispered. “I’ll wake you later.”

Caesar took a shuddering breath. Sometimes, Joseph could only seem to say the worst possible thing to escalate a situation beyond belief. Other times, he knew exactly what to say. Caesar twisted his fingers into the fabric of Joseph’s hospital gown and took a moment to feel incredibly grateful before he fell into unconsciousness.

“Babe,” Joseph said hours later. It was certainly dark out, and Caesar felt incredibly out of it. “You should eat something.”

Caesar muttered something unflattering under his breath, glaring up at Joseph, who was looking down at him with that strange expression that made Caesar feel so incredibly unmoored.

“You slept for, like, ten hours,” Joseph said.

“Sorry,” Caesar croaked, unable to move for the moment.

“Jotaro said you didn’t sleep at all last night.” His tone was mildly accusatory.

Traitor. “Maybe.”

“He brought pasta. You should eat some.”

“I will. Gimme a minute.”

Joseph, for once, didn’t question him, idly running his hand up and down Caesar’s spine. Caesar shivered a little bit. He took a moment to let himself really, truly reacclimate to Joseph’s presence. He was here. He was going to be fine. He wasn’t going to leave him.

“Hey, Jojo?” Caesar said into the quietness of the room after a long, long moment.

Joseph hummed in question.

“I don’t like it when you’re gone.”

The admission took something palpable out of Caesar, and he didn’t know if he felt better or worse for saying it. He stared ruthlessly at the wall as Joseph’s hand paused its movement down Caesar’s back.

“I didn’t want to get you involved in this,” Joseph finally admitted, almost at a whisper. “You deserved better than to get dragged into all of my disasters.”

A bolt of anger ran through Caesar’s body, easy, familiar. “Okay, fuck that.”

“I swear I’ll be more transparent. I don’t want you to worry about me.”

“I always worry about you. You’re a fucking idiot—how can I not?”

Joseph snickered weakly. “I don’t know, C.” He resumed his hand’s movement down, then up again. “I missed you too.”

“Have you spoken to your mother yet?” Caesar asked, changing the subject, unsure how to feel about what had been said.

“Yeah. Last night. She’s good.” Joseph jostled Caesar a little bit. “She honestly seemed more worried about you, which just seems rude.”

Caesar shifted a little bit. “Why was she worried about me?” He felt sort of perplexed by the notion.

Joseph sighed. “Babe, you literally flew across the entire world just because I got nicked with a knife.”

“Okay, hold on—”

“I’m just saying, she wanted to know if you were alright!”

Caesar rolled his eyes, annoyed enough that he finally pushed himself into a sitting position and leaned away from Joseph, glaring at him. “It was a perfectly rational thing to do.”

Joseph nodded and seemed to be entirely sincere when he said, “I would’ve done the same.”

Looking away, Caesar considered keeping his thoughts to himself. Even as he convinced himself that there was no need for Joseph to know what he was thinking, he found himself saying, “I kept wondering about how you dealt with it when I was in the hospital and you didn’t know if I was going to wake up.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t have done that.”

“It was worse than that,” Joseph admitted quietly, and Caesar looked back at him just to find Joseph staring down at his hands. “Didn’t even know if you were alive for a while.”

This was news to Caesar. He perked up a little bit. “Really? I thought—”

Joseph made eye contact, and Caesar caught a glimpse of the wall of half-truths he put up. Caesar had been clawing at that wall ever since he’d woken up, and every time he thought he had the full picture, Joseph seemed to have another place to retreat to. For the first time, Caesar got the impression that Joseph was considering this wall from Caesar’s perspective, maybe.

Caesar curled his hands into fists, waiting.

Joseph offered a wry smile and shrugged. “I went missing for a few days. I don’t like to dwell on it. Mom was super mad when I showed up at the hospital, though.”

Sometimes, Caesar didn’t know if he wanted to hit Joseph or hug him. He settled for standing and making his way over to where the pasta take-out was. He didn’t know what to say, so he just offered Joseph a fork as he returned to his seat.

“You alright?” Joseph asked, looking wary.

Caesar didn’t know whether to be frustrated or resigned. Joseph held all the pieces of himself so tightly in his own fists yet seemed to want Caesar to give up every single part of himself without reservation or protest. He was frustrated because that wasn’t fucking fair, resigned because of course he’d give his pieces to Joseph. Any day of the week.

“I’m fine,” Caesar said. “I just hate you, a little bit.”

Joseph stabbed a piece of Caesar’s pasta. “I can live with that.”

Caesar contemplated catching the next flight back to New York.

Polnareff and Avdol were released from the hospital first. Their injuries were serious, but they didn’t need to be kept for supervision any longer.

As they were out at breakfast the day after their release, Caesar reflected that maybe Joseph had had a point when he had suggested that Avdol and Polnareff should just “make out already.” Polnareff was leaning across the table, grinning with a bit of his omelet on his fork as he tried to get Avdol to taste it, Caesar watching in morbid fascination while Avdol clearly pretended to protest before taking the bite anyway. The eye contact as he did so was enough to make Caesar stand up to get a refill for his water, face hot, feeling like he was somehow intruding on something.

He’d have to tell Joseph that he was right.

When he returned to the table, Jotaro had pulled Avdol into a conversation about something nerdy that Caesar didn’t bother trying to follow. Jotaro had this deceptive way of talking to people wherein he spoke in the most minimalistic way possible but still seemed to have a lot to say, and Caesar was usually kind of entranced by it, but now he just stared at his breakfast plate.

Polnareff elbowed Caesar. “Nerds, huh?” he whispered.

“Yes,” Caesar had to agree. “So lame.”

“What do you study anyway?” Polnareff asked curiously, taking another bite of his omelet.

Caesar’s first priority when going to school in Italy had been in finding a place to cultivate his running. His studies had been an afterthought, and it was still strange to consider his major the most important thing about his university career. Still, he said, “Geochemistry.”

Polnareff’s eyes widened. “Huh. Did not expect that.”

“I was going to do geology,” Caesar admitted. “But I was sick of the ‘rocks for jocks’ jokes.”

“’Rocks for—?’ Oh, that’s fucking hilarious.”

“Exactly. What about you?”

“I am but a simple communications major.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“It is!”

Their small talk was interrupted by Avdol turning to them and saying, “Back me up here.”

“On what, Mo?” Polnareff asked, tone of voice incredibly sickly-sweet.

“You weren’t listening?” Avdol looked vaguely betrayed.

Caesar decided to tune out and fished out his phone. He had a few messages from Joseph.

JOJO: u have to break me out of here

JOJO: c i’m so fckin BORED without avdol :(((

JOJO: oh my GOD icant change the tv channel c i’m gonna DIE here

ME: Should’ve thought of that before you got stabbed maybe

JOJO: BABE UR SUPPOSED TO AGREE W ME !

ME: Why

JOJO: wHY?!?!??

JOJO: because!!!!!!!!!!!!

Caesar turned on his read receipts and put his phone down, smiling a little bit.

“Is he alright?” Jotaro asked, looking at Caesar while Avdol and Polnareff discussed something relating to one of their mutual professors.

“He’s cranky,” Caesar said, amused. “Bored without Avdol.”

Jotaro rolled his eyes. “Figures.”

“Want me to ask him to check on Kakyoin?”

Jotaro frowned for a moment. “No. It’s okay. We’ll be there soon.”

Caesar gave Jotaro a reassuring pat on the hand.

“Good lord,” Avdol said, interrupting Caesar’s train of thought. “Don’t tell me that you microwave your tea.”

Polnareff laughed loudly to Avdol’s despair, and Caesar thought, as he and Jotaro exchanged a glance, that maybe Joseph’s friends could be his friends too.

When Joseph finally got cleared for release, it was under strict instructions to not remove the neck brace for at least a week and to keep a very regulated consumption of pain killers.

“Keep yourself mostly on bed rest with minimal exertion. Got it?”

“What if I have to fly home?”

The doctor looked pained. “Just… keep the neck brace on.”

Joseph and Caesars’s flight was scheduled for Sunday night, so they had a few more days in Egypt. Since the main purpose of the vacation had been for Joseph and Avdol to finally hang out in person, Joseph spent most of the rest of the days at Avdol’s apartment.

Jotaro and Caesar were still sharing a hotel room. Caesar still hadn’t been sleeping well, but it had been a little bit better than the week before. One of those nights, Caesar asked how long Kakyoin was going to need to stay in the hospital.

“They’re saying at least another week.” Jotaro shrugged, carefully removing his hat as he got ready for bed. “It’s fine. The semester doesn’t start for another three weeks. We don’t need to rush back home.”

Caesar hesitated. “Would you want us to stay here? While Kakyoin recovers?”

A flash of something fond and grateful flickered through Jotaro’s gaze before it was gone. “No. Avdol and Polnareff are still here anyway.”

Caesar took comfort in that as Sunday approached. He’d come to really like this odd group of people, and he found himself reluctant to leave them.

Joseph was feeling the same, if much more loudly.

“It feels like I’m never gonna see you again,” he despaired, sprawled across Avdol’s couch. “I can’t believe I spent, like, five days of our vacation together high.”

Avdol rolled his eyes, perched delicately on the arm of the couch. “Don’t be a drama queen. I’ll come visit New York.”

Joseph perked up immediately. “You will?”

“Oh, me too,” Polnareff piped up from where he was trying to find the orange juice. “I’ve always wanted to visit America.”

Avdol rolled his eyes. “If we can convince Jotaro and Kakyoin, maybe we can have a reunion.”

Joseph actually visibly teared up a little bit. “That would be nice,” he said, grinning.

When it was finally time to head home, Avdol pulled Caesar aside while Joseph was sharing a tearful goodbye with Polnareff. They’d already visited the hospital to say goodbye to Jotaro and Kakyoin, but Avdol had driven them to the airport.

“I wanted to thank you,” Avdol said, “For coming out here. You really helped make things better.”

“Of course,” Caesar said, slightly uncomfortable. “It wasn’t even a question.”

“Well, I appreciate it anyway. And I know Joseph does too, even if he is kind of an asshole.”

Caesar grinned. “Thank you, Avdol. I’m really happy I got to meet you.”

“Me too.”

“I hope your arms heal swiftly.” Caesar hesitated. “Keep me updated?”

Avdol’s expression softened. “Of course.”

And then it was time to leave.

Joseph moped while they boarded the plane, and Caesar let himself be mostly amused by it. “Here. Let me sit on your right,” he said when they reached their seats.

Joseph frowned. “Why?”

“So you can hold my hand if you get nervous, dick.”

“Oh,” Joseph said, ducking his head as best as he could around the neck brace (and was that a blush?). “Thank you.”

As they took off, Caesar watched the horizon fade, shifting his grip on Joseph’s hand so that his bones wouldn’t grind together as much. “Are you feeling okay?”

Joseph turned to him and offered a small, sad smile. “Yeah. I think I am.”

“I think Loggins may actually murder me. He barely agreed to let me leave for two weeks, and that was only after I periodically guilted him over a two-month period.”

“Sounds like a ‘you’ problem,” Caesar said idly. He kept his eyes on the pages of his book, but he wasn’t reading it.

Joseph continued, unimpeded. “I’ll probably be able to go back to practice by the time the semester starts back up, but maybe Loggins will just cut me from the team before then.”

Caesar rolled his eyes, finally putting his book aside. “Look, Jojo, you’re too talented to just be cut like that. Plus, it’s not like you wanted to get stabbed, right?”

Joseph frowned at him. “Right.”

“He’s not going to cut you. He may get angry at worst, but I honestly doubt even that.”

Joseph sighed explosively, leaning against Caesar’s side. “What about you? Have you had any luck with the track team?”

Caesar had successfully transferred his enrollment to Joseph’s university (with the help of an astonishingly glowing recommendation curtesy of Lisa Lisa), but he had yet to charm his way into the athletics department. He’d gotten a pretty generous financial aid package from the university, but it was still going to cost a lot of money unless he could fenagle his way into an athletic scholarship like Joseph had.

“I’ll try tomorrow,” Caesar finally said. He’d been putting off his visit to the track coach, mostly because he knew he couldn’t run like a professional anymore. What was he supposed to say? Hi, I’m Caesar Zeppeli, you may recognize me from my prodigal running career that is entirely irrelevant as of now. Please let me be on your team. He winced at the thought.

“What did Messina say?”

Caesar rubbed his eyes. “That I’m not ready yet.” Which wasn’t a lie, per se, but it was not something Caesar felt inclined to listen to. Messina said that full-body recoveries like Caesar’s took time and patience, but Caesar’s patience had been wearing thin since day one.

Joseph reached over and patted his knee. “You’re Caesar Zeppeli,” he said, simply. “You’ve got this.”

Caesar stayed quiet.

Sometimes, Joseph said things that made Caesar’s chest ache worse than his sporadic spasms of pain. He said these things, seemingly, without even realizing how much they affected Caesar, how deeply they cut.

Caesar didn’t know whether to dread these moments or to wait for them in dizzying, intoxicating anticipation.

“Look, I’m sympathetic,” the coach was saying. “And obviously I’m familiar with your talent. Hell, I use your race from Prague a few years ago as an example to freshmen just getting started. But if you’re still injured, I really can’t help.”

Caesar curled his hands into fists under the table, trying to keep his devastation locked down tight. He took a moment to make sure that he would sound calm before he said, “Just let me train with you. I don’t need to race. Not yet. I just…”

The coach gave him a pitying look, and it took every ounce of Caesar’s composure not to stand up and leave right then. “We have a running club at the university,” she said delicately, writing something down on a post-it note. “Your injury is serious, and there’s no guarantee that you will recover enough to compete. I can’t contribute resources to helping you out if that isn’t the most likely outcome. Budget here is tight.”

Caesar worked his jaw. “Thank you for your time,” he said stiffly, getting to his feet. The coach held out the post-it note, and Caesar nearly ignored it out of the spiteful hate building in his throat, but he was so fucking desperate to find any place that he could run. He took the note, making sure that the coach didn’t have an easy out in avoiding eye contact. He caught the genuine regret in her expression and felt sick.

“For what it’s worth, I do hope you get better.”

Caesar slammed the door on his way out.

He felt too raw and fragile to head back to their apartment and felt too humiliated to try to go to the track, so he found himself standing in front of Gyro’s door. He stood there for a long moment, trying to make himself feel like a rational person, before knocking.

Gyro did not open the door.

Instead, a blonde guy in a wheelchair glared up at him from beneath a ratty-looking beanie. “What,” he snapped.

Caesar blinked at him in surprise. “Uh—”

Gyro walked into view of the door and beamed at him. “Yo, Johnny, that’s my cousin. Let him in.”

Johnny scowled at Caesar but rolled back in his wheelchair far enough to let Caesar pass. Once he was inside, Johnny shut the door and made his way over to the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee.

Meanwhile, Gyro approached Caesar to give him a quick hug, grinning. “We literally just got back from Long Beach Island—it was lit. How’s your vacation?”

“Fine,” Caesar said. “I went to Egypt for a few days.”

“Oh, shit. Sounds lit as fuck.”

“Stop saying lit,” Johnny said from the kitchen.

“Don’t be rude,” Gyro shouted back cheerfully. “We were just thinking about playing cards. Want to join?”

“Sure,” Caesar said. “Sorry for coming by unannounced.”

Gyro waved a dismissive hand. “No need to apologize. You’re family.”

Johnny was tapping at his phone. “Should I invite the others?”

“Nah,” Gyro said. “Don’t want to overwhelm my baby cousin.”

Caesar scowled. “’Baby’—?”

“Great. Diego was getting on my fucking nerves anyway. Remind me to never sit in a car with him for more than a half hour ever again.”

“Deal.” Gyro made his way over to his crammed bookshelf, supposedly to find the cards. “Hey, where’s your boytoy?” he asked Caesar.

Caesar thought about protesting the label but figured it was more trouble than it was worth. “He’s got a soccer thing.”

“I always forget that y’all’re jocks.”

Caesar wondered how that was something Gyro could forget when Caesar’s entire life hinged on the fact that he was a runner, but he could only shake his head in disbelief.

“Do you want coffee,” Johnny said flatly, coming up to Caesar’s side with two mugs in hand, already holding one out to Caesar.

“Sure,” he said, taking it delicately. He was usually more of a tea person, but a coffee every now and then was nice.

Gyro emerged from his bookshelf, triumphant, with two decks of cards in hand. “Disney princess cards or Star Wars cards?”

“Disney,” Johnny said.

“What are we playing?”

Johnny and Gyro exchanged a look in which they seemed to have an entire argument within the span of two seconds. Gyro looked away with a sour expression, and Johnny glanced at Caesar to say, “Slap Jack.”

Caesar hadn’t played Slap Jack since he’d been, like, four, but he sat down on the other side of the coffee table without protest.

The game turned out to be surprisingly fun, and Gyro and Johnny’s weirdly intense dynamic just served to make it more interesting. By the time they’d played four and a half rounds, they’d mostly stopped playing and had shifted into mostly just chatting.

“N-G-L,” Gyro said to Caesar after a while. “You looked pretty pissy when you came in here.”

Caesar sighed. “They won’t let me try out for the track team. Said my injury’s too serious.”

Johnny looked at him sharply, his expression going from half-bored to extremely critical as he swept his gaze over Caesar. After coming to some sort of conclusion, he leaned back in his chair and said, “Our school fucking sucks at accommodating injured athletes.”

Caesar’s interest piqued very quickly. He returned Johnny’s gaze. “Are you an athlete too?”

Johnny smirked at Caesar’s use of the present tense. “A jockey.”

Like Diego, Caesar recalled distantly. He leaned forward, across the table. “Are you still racing?”

“Workin’ on it,” he drawled, grinning this sharp, mean grin that made Caesar feel a thrill of excitement, like there were possibilities still open to him. “Got a horse, a place to train, and a lot of fuckin’ time.”

“Johnny skips all his classes and rewatches his lectures at night,” Gyro whispered loudly.

“Do not.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I would never.” Johnny’s attention was still on Gyro, though. “The track team isn’t gonna help you with shit. These departments only want bodies they can mold into tools to get the most recognition and money they can.”

Caesar nodded slowly in agreement. “I think you’re right.”

“’Course he’s right,” Gyro said.

Johnny rolled his eyes fondly. “Anyway, if you want to compete again, you gotta get creative. Work to figure it out as best you can, and hope you get good enough to be functional again.” His expression was cynical and bitter but so fucking determined, and Caesar felt breathless against the force of it.

“Thanks,” he said, feeling like he’d just finished a sprint. He grinned sharply, all teeth. “I like you.”

Johnny picked up his empty coffee mug to clink against Caesar’s. “You don’t suck either.”

Gyro looked a little bit delighted. “I love you both!” he announced.

“Ew,” Johnny said, smiling.

Caesar took a deep breath and felt the intensity of the beginnings of a future light up within him.

“Hey, you’ve got a text from,” Joseph frowned, picking up Caesar’s phone and squinting at the screen. “Why are you part of a group text called, ‘JOJO HATE CLUB'?”

Caesar took his phone. “It’s a group chat where me, Avdol, Polnareff, and Kakyoin complain about you and Jotaro.”

“Really?” Joseph asked, sounding morbidly fascinated. “Can I see?”

Caesar held his phone out of Joseph’s reach. “At this point, it’s mostly just Kakyoin sending unflattering pictures of Jotaro and us roasting him.”

“Please let me see, oh my god.”

“No.”

“Why not?” he whined.

“It would compromise the integrity of the group chat’s mission statement.” Caesar shoved Joseph away so that he could read his new texts and snickered.

“You’re killing me, C.”

Joseph threw himself at Caesar’s back, winding his arms around Caesar and picking his feet up so that Caesar had to support their weights. Caesar hissed in surprise, dropping to his knees. He elbowed Joseph lightly in the ribs. “Get off.”

“I want to see,” Joseph said, trying to get a peak of Caesar’s phone over his shoulder.

“I’ll show you one picture, and then you have to drop it forever.”

“Only one? Can it be the best one?”

“It’ll be a random one.”

“Okay. Fine. Deal.”

Caesar shook his head and angled his phone away from Joseph to select his favorite picture that Kakyoin had sent. It was a blurry shot of Jotaro who looked to be in the middle of tripping over a DVD. His hat was off, and his hat hair was legendary. Caesar smirked a little bit before selecting the image and showing it to Joseph.

Joseph stared at it for a long time. “Caesar,” he said urgently. “I offer you my first-born child in exchange for you adding me to this group text.”

“No-can-do. Keep your stupid future baby.”

“My future babies are going to be angels. Please?”

“No.”

Joseph groaned, burying his face in the back of Caesar’s neck for a minute before finally releasing him. “This is the worst day of my life.”

“You’re an infant,” Caesar said.

“Do you send bad pictures of me?” Joseph asked curiously.

Caesar said nothing, tapping idly at his phone without looking up.

“Oi! Caesar!”

Caesar hummed, arching an eyebrow.

“I have a right to know!”

“Why ever would I do something so childish?” Caesar asked sweetly.

“You demon,” Joseph said in disbelief, and then he laughed. “Hey. Wanna go see a movie later?”

“Sure.”

“You may want to try long distance,” Messina suggested after a particularly disastrous session. “Your muscles aren’t working quite the same anymore, and a different type of running may prove more successful.”

Caesar fumed in silence, rejecting the idea almost immediately. “I’ll think about it,” he lied.

“I’m so fucking excited to get this thing off,” Joseph said, scratching at his neck while they waited in the lobby of the hospital. “I want to see the wicked scar.”

Caesar sighed. He reflected that it would be nice to return to their normal sleeping routine. Joseph had slowly stolen all of the pillows because he couldn’t get comfortable otherwise, and Caesar had needed to pilfer the dumb throw pillows from the couch. It had even been uncomfortable when he’d tried to use Joseph as a pillow because he’d practically slept sitting up these past few weeks.

He was also anxious for Joseph to be healthy again—or at least as healthy as Joseph could get. He got so restless and irritating when he couldn’t play soccer regularly, and Caesar was almost at the end of his rope.

Once the doctor removed the gauze and stitches, Caesar and Joseph examined the long gnarly scar that seemed to have just missed his jugular.

“You were very lucky,” the doctor commented.

Jotaro had told Caesar that Joseph had lost a lot of blood after Caesar had done some pressing, and Caesar distantly considered the fact that he nearly lost a lot more.

“It looks badass,” Joseph said, pleased.

“You should be mostly okay now that the wound has totally stitched itself closed. Don’t overdo it, but I’d say you can resume normal activity.”

“Thanks, doc,” Joseph said, beaming. “Caesar, wanna go kick a ball around in the park or something?”

Caesar rolled his eyes but gave a fond smile. “Yes.”

“Don’t overdo it,” the doctor warned mildly, but Joseph clearly wasn’t listening anymore.

“He won’t,” Caesar promised anyway.

They swung by the apartment so that Joseph could grab a soccer ball and headed to a park that Caesar had never been to. Joseph took a few minutes to show off by doing some overly fancy juggling before Caesar got impatient and tried to steal the ball from him, but Joseph just laughed and shielded him off easily, clearly in the best mood he’d been in since—well, since a long time.

“Pass me the ball and quit showing off,” Caesar snapped.

Joseph did a showy little trick. “Oh, you’re not enjoying yourself?” he teased, then finally passed Caesar the ball.

“I hate you so much,” Caesar despaired, receiving it a little bit clumsily. It had been a while since he’d played. He tried to chip the ball back to Joseph but just ended up nailing it so that it sailed towards Joseph hard, but Joseph didn’t even blink, receiving it with his laces and bringing the ball gently down to the grass.

“Nah,” Joseph said. “That doesn’t work on me anymore. You showed your cards. I know you care now.”

“What gave me away,” Caesar deadpanned.

“Oi, cut the sass. Can you aim for my head? I’ve been thinking about doing headers for literal days.”

“Think I’ll just throw it and save us both the misery,” Caesar said, leaning down to pick up the ball.

Joseph gasped. “Card him, ref!” he cried theatrically, and Caesar lobbed the ball at him in hopes to catch him off-guard, but Joseph just happily headed it back to Caesar.

Later, once Joseph had gotten bored of the limited skillset that Caesar could offer him, they sat on the grass in a comfortable quiet. The day was, predictably, cold as fuck, but it was bright and lively and nice.

Joseph dropped his head on Caesar’s shoulder. “This is more like it,” he muttered to himself, and Caesar just shook his head, smiling.

Sometimes, being around Joseph made Caesar feel like the world was about to split apart at the seams and burst, like there was something between them that made the universe stretch to accommodate—something secret and lurking and terrifying.

Caesar refused to investigate it, afraid that he’d make something integral break.

On the first day of class, Caesar was surprised to find himself happy to start learning again. His professors seemed interesting, and even though he didn’t know anyone in his major, it was a pretty small field, so he would probably make some friends soon.

He met up with Joseph and his friend, Smokey, at a café just off-campus for their lunch break.

“I can’t believe I didn’t know that Joseph had a roomie,” Smokey said after they’d introduced themselves. “And you haven’t killed him yet.”

“Oh, hah-hah.”

“Every day is a trial,” Caesar said with false gravity.

Joseph pointed at him. “You’re supposed to defend my honor.”

“Why?”

“Dick.”

Caesar grinned, taking a sip from his drink to hide it.

“Maybe he’ll defend your honor if you ever gain any,” Smokey added after a minute, and Caesar laughed.

Joseph stood, looking betrayed. “I’m going to the bathroom where I’ll be more appreciated!” He turned to walk away, hesitated, and then said, “I meant that in a less weird way,” before continuing on his way.

“What an idiot,” Caesar said fondly.

“Y’all are cute. How long have you been together?”

Caesar furrowed his brow. “Uh.” He frowned, but his brain seemed to have ground to a halt. “We—uh—how long have we what?”

Smokey stared at him. “Oh, sorry, dude. I thought you were Joseph’s boyfriend. My bad.”

Caesar blinked once, then a few more times, not sure what to make of that. “Hah,” he said once. “We—uh—I don’t—I guess—” He trailed off helplessly. “Yeah.”

Smokey’s expression shifted to one of concern. “You okay, dude?”

Caesar shook his head. “Yes.”

“Okay. Sorry, again. Didn’t mean to assume.”

Caesar nodded a few times. “It’s good.”

He felt perplexed. He didn’t know why the assumption left him feeling so unsettled, but he ended up staring into space, feeling confused and a little bit embarrassed, until Joseph returned.

“Did you break him?” Joseph whispered, waving a hand in front of Caesar’s face. Caesar snapped back to reality.

“No,” he said at the same time that Smokey said, “Maybe?”

“Alright,” Joseph said, laughing a little bit. “Weirdos.”

Caesar took a sip of his drink and tried to put the whole thing out of his mind. “How’s your sandwich?” he said.

Caesar was lying down on the track at midnight on a Wednesday.

He’d gotten through a few sprints without anything catastrophic happening, but his chest was filled with misery. He was never going to be as fast as he had been. He could run, sure, but he was getting less and less sure that he could ever be a runner again.

“Hey,” Joseph said, and Caesar turned his head to see a pair of adidas basketball court shoes.

“What’re you doing out here?” Caesar asked.

“Late night futsal scrimmage,” Joseph explained. “What’re you doing?”

“Petitioning the running gods for an audience.”

“Oh, fun,” Joseph said, laying down next to him. “Have they gotten back to you yet?”

“I’m on hold.”

Joseph smiled at him, and Caesar felt some of the tension in his shoulders uncurl. He reached over and grabbed Joseph’s hand, threading their fingers together.

“Thanks for chillin’ with me.”

“Always.”

Caesar looked back at the sky, stewing in his morbid thoughts while Joseph stayed quiet at his side.

“Have you given any thought to what Messina said about trying long distance?” Joseph asked hesitantly.

Caesar frowned at the sky. His whole life, he’d been a sprinter. Long distance running had been for warm-ups and training, but it was a means to an end, not the end itself. He’d never necessarily looked down on long-distance runners, but it wasn’t the fucking same. At all.

“I’m a sprinter,” he said, and his voice sounded dead to his own ears.

“Well, I dunno, C. What if you try the eight hundred? It’s kinda like the four hundred. You’ve gotta keep a fucking religious handle on your pace, and your endurance has to be top-notch. It’s just a little slower.”

Caesar cringed. “I guess.”

“You know what I think?” Joseph demanded, propping himself up on his elbow and leaning over him. “I think you just like the attention of sprinting. Long distance doesn’t have enough glory for you.”

Caesar felt cold. “Are you calling me a—a narcissist?” he said furiously, incredulously. “Seriously?”

“The thrill, then. You know what I mean.”

Despite his anger, Caesar knew exactly what Joseph meant. The thrill of the sprint meant the race started and ended before you could blink, and there was that incredible rush that Caesar couldn’t imagine ever lasting longer than a moment. Maybe he wasn’t out to seek glory anymore—his pride had been docked enough by the accident that he could relinquish that now. But it was about that horrifically alive feeling that pulsated through his entire body when he ran like the devil was at his heels.

Caesar deflated, feeling more defeated than he had in a really long time.

“I guess I can try it,” he whispered hollowly.

“It’s not less, you know,” Joseph said. “It doesn’t have to be.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” He pushed himself to a sitting position. “Can we go for a walk?”

“Yeah.”

They wandered around campus for a while, saying nothing. While they were passing the art school, they walked past this cute painted balsa wood sign that said PUBLIC ART, the letters individually spread out in the lawn in front of the building, and Joseph walked over and kicked the L over. He snickered to himself inconsolably for the next five minutes straight.

“It really wasn’t that funny,” Caesar grumbled.

“It really was.”

Caesar shook his head and reached over to grab Joseph’s hand again. “You are so annoying. You’re going to be the death of me, you know that?”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Joseph said, wrinkling his nose. “Jonathan has invited us to stay over at his mansion for the long weekend. I tried to decline, but—”

Caesar really didn’t understand Joseph’s discomfort around his brother. Sure, he had issues with his own family (which was maybe putting it lightly), but Joseph seemed to dislike Jonathan for really no reason. “Don’t decline. It sounds fun.”

Joseph nodded, frowning. “I guess. He invited a few of my other family members in the area, too. So. It’ll be a party.”

“Like who?”

“Like my cousin, Johnny. I think he invited Jotaro even though he’s in Miami, and the wildest part is that Jotaro may come anyway. And I think some of his friends. I don’t know. It won’t be crowded, but it won’t be empty either.”

“It’ll be fine,” Caesar said.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Why are you so weird about him?”

Joseph sighed. “It’s a hard thing to live up to,” he admitted quietly. “I guess.”

Caesar didn’t really know how to respond to that. “You don’t need to compare yourself to him.”

“Maybe, but if I don’t, then other people certainly will.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t find you disappointing.”

“Thanks,” Joseph said dryly. “At any rate, at least Johnny will be there. He’s the rudest of us, and any time he and Jonathan are in the same room, Jonathan either reverts to some kind of twelve-year-old or assumes the role of a mother. It’s fun to watch.”

Caesar could only imagine. He wished that he knew his family this well, but he reflected that having a good relationship with Gyro was good enough at this point. “I’m excited to meet him.”

“I think you’ll like him. You’re both mean!”

“I resent that,” Caesar said without heat.

“Are you ready to go home? I’m cold as fuck,” Joseph said. “I can’t feel my other hand.” He grinned.

Caesar tried not to falter. This was the first time he’d ever heard Joseph make a non-self-deprecating joke about his arm. He smiled, hoping it didn’t reveal all the genuine warmth that he was feeling. “Yeah. Let’s go home.”

“Alright, let’s roll. Jotaro and Kakyoin should be here in, like, five minutes with their car.”

“I’m ready,” Caesar said. He was extremely anxious to see Kakyoin now that he was mostly back on his feet, and so was Joseph, if his constant updates throughout the morning were anything to go by.

“Sup, nerds!” Joseph shouted when Jotaro’s car pulled up to the curb outside their building.

Kakyoin got out of the passenger’s seat to throw his arms around Joseph. “Sup, asshole!” he shouted back.

“Get back in the car,” Jotaro said.

Caesar smiled. He’d missed them.

Caesar put their suitcase in Jotaro’s trunk, and they climbed into the backseat.

“Are you guys ready for the Joestar President’s Day Weekend 24/7 Rave?” Kakyoin asked.

“You’ve been to this thing before?” Caesar asked, curious.

“Yeah. It was awesome last year. Jonathan’s best friends shotgunned an entire wine bottle.”

“Told you this wasn’t going to suck,” Caesar whispered to Joseph.

“How was your flight?” Joseph asked loudly, ignoring Caesar.

“Fine. A little bumpy,” Kakyoin said.

A song that Kakyoin liked came on the radio, and he turned up the volume.

Caesar turned to Joseph. “Do all your cousins get plus-ones?” he asked.

“We all get plus-fives. I just don’t have enough friends,” Joseph said. “And neither does Jotaro.”

“What about your mean cousin?”

“I honestly have no idea. He’s kind of an enigma.”

Caesar rolled his eyes.

The ride to the mansion was comfortable. Joseph and Kakyoin held most of the conversation, talking about some video game that had been released recently. Caesar realized that this was the first time he’d gotten to see Kakyoin speak lucidly, and he found himself surprised by how much he spoke and by how articulate he seemed to be. Over the group chat, he mostly just sent pictures of Jotaro and memes.

“I’m excited to see everyone again. I love your family,” Kakyoin said as they pulled into the driveway.

“I know,” Jotaro muttered.

Caesar glanced at the lawn and was surprised to see a guy in a weird checkered top hat and another guy with a hairstyle straight out of an eighties rock band lounging on what looked to be beach chairs, passing a bottle of red wine back and forth. They waved cheerfully at the car.

“Oh my god. Is that Speedwagon?” Joseph said, sounding delighted. “I didn’t know Speedwagon was coming!”

“Then you’re an idiot,” Jotaro said, but Joseph wasn’t listening. He’d already launched himself out of the car and was running at the blonde guy. Caesar watched as he tackled him in a hug that made them topple out of the beach chair.

Caesar shook his head fondly and got out of the car more slowly, grabbing their suitcase as he did so, before making his way over to where Joseph was chatting happily with the two men.

“Oh my god. You guys have to meet Caesar,” Joseph said when he noticed him approaching. “Caesar, this is Speedwagon and William, Jonathan’s best friends.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” William, the man with the weird (but kind of stylish) hat, said, extending a hand. Caesar shook.

“Absolutely,” Speedwagon agreed, giving Caesar an enthusiastic clap on the back. “So glad to see someone’s keeping our boy in line.” He gave Joseph’s hair a ruffle, and Joseph pushed him away, but he was smiling.

“Nice to meet you too,” Caesar said.

“Wine?” William offered, passing Caesar the bottle.

“Oh… thank you.” He took a small sip and handed it to Joseph.

“Hey,” Jotaro said as he and Kakyoin walked past. “We’re going inside.”

“Meet you in there later,” Speedwagon shouted. “Why don’t you two get settled in too? We’ll catch up more later.”

“Okay,” Joseph said. “C’mon, C.” He grabbed Caesar’s hand and dragged him along.

They bid a brief hello to Erina and Jonathan in the foyer, but because they were in the middle of talking to Kakyoin and Jotaro, Joseph took the opportunity to drag them upstairs. He seemed to know where he was going and led Caesar into a stately-looking bedroom, where Caesar dropped their suitcase.

Joseph froze. “Oh. Did you want your own room? I didn’t even think about—”

“No,” Caesar said, thinking about the last time he’d had to sleep alone. “No.”

Joseph gave a hesitant smile. “Okay.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “I guess we should go back downstairs.”

“You love these people. I don’t know why you keep pretending that you don’t.”

Joseph rolled his eyes. “Shut up,” he said. “Just gimme a second to acclimate.”

Caesar realized that Joseph was wearing a T-shirt that left his arms bare, and that may have been the source of some of his reluctance to go downstairs. “Okay,” Caesar said, sitting down next to him. He put his hand, deliberately, on Joseph’s forearm, and Joseph stared blankly at the point of contact.

Caesar felt a little bit fascinated by the contrast of Joseph’s burnt skin against his. He knew Joseph didn’t necessarily feel self-conscious about it around him anymore. At the very least, he’d stopped wearing sweatshirts literally every single day. But he still hoped that Joseph knew that Caesar didn’t think anything bad about it. It was part of Joseph.

Joseph sniffled a little bit, and Caesar was surprised to look up and find Joseph staring at him with that unmooring expression, eyes a little bit teary. “I’m really happy that you’re here,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Me too.”

They returned downstairs a few minutes later and were happily embraced by Jonathan and Erina. Erina inspected the admittedly badass scar along Joseph’s throat with the care of a mother, and Jonathan hugged Joseph like he thought he’d never see him again. Caesar felt secure that these people loved Joseph, and he felt content for just a moment.

“Johnny and his friend should be here by dinner,” Jonathan was saying. “We’re having brisket.”

“Oh, delicious,” Joseph said.

They chatted for a while, and then Speedwagon and William returned with their beach chairs folded under their arms.

“Oh!” Jonathan said. “Caesar, did you meet William yet?”

“Yes,” Caesar said, shooting William an uncertain smile.

“You’re both Zeppelis. I don’t know if you’re the same Zeppelis, but I just thought that would be a really funny coincidence.”

Caesar felt cold staring at William. God, he hoped not. He hoped—

William cocked his head to the side. “Are you—are you one of Mario’s sons?”

Caesar clenched his jaw. “Yes,” he finally said.

But William only stepped forward to embrace him. “It’s so good to finally meet you.”

Caesar was frozen for a long moment before finally returning the hug, feeling shocked. He’d always expected—he’d thought—

But William was just looking at him warmly, uncomplicatedly. It wasn’t the same as being accepted by Gyro, since Gyro was in the outs with the Zeppelis, too. It was… unexpected. It was really nice. “You too,” Caesar managed, throat tight.

Joseph was staring at him, looking shocked and slightly delighted, which was kind of exactly how Caesar felt.

The chaos of having eight people in the foyer eventually pulled everyone towards the dining room, where they all helped set the table for dinner.

“Johnny just texted me,” Jonathan said, glancing at his phone. “I think he’s here. Can someone go get the door?”

“Oh! Me and Caesar can go,” Joseph said, grabbing Caesar’s hand and pulling him along.

They arrived at the front door, and Joseph pulled it open to reveal—

“You two,” Caesar said, surprised.

“Gyro?” Joseph said.

“Caesar?” Gyro said.

“What,” Johnny said.

They all stared at each other in shock. Joseph seemed to get over himself first. “How do you two know each other?” he said, confused, gesturing between Gyro and Johnny.

Johnny frowned. “Gyro’s my best friend.”

“Oh my god. Your cousin Johnny is my Johnny?” Gyro said.

“And you two have met?” Joseph complained, gesturing between Caesar and Johnny. “No fucking fair. I wanted to introduce you.”

“Well. Sucks to be you,” Johnny said, pushing himself inside and rolling over Joseph’s foot. Joseph squeaked in pain.

Caesar blinked a few times, trying to consolidate the two spheres of his life. “Okay. This is weird.”

Gyro laughed. “Impromptu Zeppeli reunion at the Joestar mansion?”

Caesar’s eyes widened. “Shit. You have no idea.”

When Gyro saw William a few moments after that, he stopped in his tracks and actually collapsed into stunned, ecstatic Italian, seemingly without noticing, and there had been the general chaos of realizing that there were somehow three Zeppelis here, none of whom had had any idea that the others were going to be there. Dinner was an overwhelming, hectic affair. Caesar hadn’t felt this deep in a family gathering since he’d been ten years old, before his father had left.

Caesar stayed mostly quiet, sitting between Joseph and Jotaro and watching the conversation flow easily. I could get used to this, he thought.

Eventually, they all retired for the night with promises of the great things they’d be doing tomorrow. Caesar was excited despite himself. Erina and Speedwagon had promised they could go jet-skiing in spite of the cold weather.

“That was insane,” Joseph said, stripping down to his boxers. “I’ve never seen Jonathan get that loud.”

Caesar bit back the passive aggressive suggestion that maybe he should visit more often. It really wasn’t his place. Instead, he changed into his own sleeping clothes and climbed into the bed, waiting for Joseph to finish getting ready.

“Do you like them? My family?”

“Yes,” Caesar said. “I do. And for what it’s worth, I do really like Johnny.”

“I still can’t believe you’d already met him.”

“I dropped by Gyro’s one day over the break, and he was already there.”

“That’s so weird,” Joseph said, crawling under the covers. Caesar rolled over across the expanse between them to put his head on Joseph’s chest. It was, he found, the easiest position for him to fall asleep. Listening to Joseph’s heartbeat somehow made the idea of never waking up more remote. Joseph stroked a hand down his spine once. “I can’t believe it, honestly.”

“It was a freakish coincidence,” Caesar agreed. “How do you think he and Gyro met?”

Joseph laughed. “Who knows?”

“I’m glad we came here,” Caesar admitted. He shifted a little bit, getting more comfortable.

“Yeah. I think I am too. It’s just a lot.”

Caesar sometimes forgot that Joseph only grew up with himself and Lisa Lisa. They’d been a unit, but a small unit. Big family gatherings must be overwhelming for him. “I know,” Caesar whispered.

Joseph pressed a small kiss to the top of his head. “Okay. I’m tried. I’ll wake you up in the morning so that we can go see the sunrise. The view from the rooftop is absurd.”

Caesar laughed quietly. “Fine.”

Caesar had not considered the implications of waking up for the sunrise, but it turned out that it meant Joseph annoying him awake at five in the goddamn morning.

Caesar groggily checked his phone. “Sunrise isn’t for another hour,” he snapped. “Why are we awake?”

Joseph grinned at him, having the gall to display zero dark circles under his eyes. “I thought you’d want a cushion of time to actually get up.”

“Oh, fuck you.” Joseph was, of course, correct.

While Caesar was stewing in general displeasure of being awake at this hour, Joseph silently left the room. He returned twenty minutes later to find Caesar sitting up, glaring into space.

Joseph gave him a mug, and Caesar was mildly pleased to find he’d made tea. As soon as Joseph had his hand free, he used it to smooth down a stubborn strand of Caesar’s hair. “Come on,” he whispered.

They eventually made their way up to the roof with their teas and a big heavy blanket. They huddled together against one of the chimneys with the blanket draped over their shoulders and sipped their teas in silence as the sun slowly crept over the lake that Caesar hadn’t noticed before.

“It’s beautiful,” he murmured, looking at Joseph. The glow of the sunrise cast these gorgeous shadows across his face. “Thanks for waking me early.”

Joseph offered him this soft, sweet smile than made Caesar’s heart jump in his chest. “Of course.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, and Caesar’s heart wouldn’t stop hammering. He swallowed with some difficulty, and Joseph’s eyes tracked the movement of his throat before flicking back to his face, gaze going serious.

But then a bird squawked noisily from what seemed like five feet away, and Caesar yelped, jumping about three feet in the air. “Jesus!” he shouted, and Joseph laughed loudly.

“Okay. Who wants to go jet-skiing, and who wants to stay here and make pies?” Speedwagon asked. He was wearing aviators inside as he paced in front of the breakfast table, expression severe. “Jet-skiing squad will not be fucking around.”

“Language,” Jonathan said mildly, and Speedwagon apologized.

“William and Jonathan will be here to supervise the pie-making, while Erina and I will supervise the jet-skiing. We will reconvene here in a half hour to get started.”

“Jet-skiing, obviously, right?” Joseph said.

“I didn’t think that was a question.”

Kakyoin and Jotaro opted for pies pretty easily, and Johnny and Gyro got in a pretty heated argument about what they were going to do. They finally settled on jet-skiing.

“How are you going to do it?” Joseph asked, a little bit insensitively.

Johnny only glared, though. “You don’t need your legs to ride a jet-ski, dipshit.”

Speedwagon had claimed they didn’t need bathing suits for the activity, so Caesar and Joseph just dressed in their athletics-wear, arguing about who would get to drive first.

“Okay: question,” Joseph said as they approached Erina in the foyer, who was wearing a full-body wetsuit. “Are we going to attach one of those tube things to the jet-ski? Because that changes things.”

“Who do you take us for? Of course we are.”

“Oh my god,” Gyro said, thrilled. “Johnny. Please let us go tubing first.”

“Sure,” Johnny said.

“Please, can I drive first?” Joseph begged.

Caesar rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

Once Joseph sat down, though, his enthusiasm dimmed. “I forgot,” he said numbly, staring at his hands.

Caesar put his chin on Joseph’s shoulder. “Do you want to figure it out, or do you want me to drive?”

“You do it,” Joseph said. “I don’t think it’d be safe otherwise.”

Caesar pressed his lips briefly to Joseph’s shoulder before switching positions. Joseph wound his arms around Caesar’s waist easily enough.

Erina gave them a talk on jet-ski safety before they were off. The motor was loud in his ears, but it wasn’t loud enough to entirely drown out the sound of Gyro yelling behind them. Joseph’s presence at his back was warm and inescapable, and Caesar realized, for perhaps the first time, that Joseph was just a little bit taller than him. The idea made his face feel hot.

After a while, Johnny got bored of tubing. He had ridiculous upper body strength, and it proved impossible to knock him loose, whereas Gyro got flung into the icy waters of the lake at least seven times.

They switched, with Johnny slated to steer. Joseph was less mopey than Caesar had expected him to be after such an abrupt reminder of his paralysis, and he only clung to Caesar a little bit as they made their way to the tube.

“How am I gonna hold on?” Joseph wondered idly, although he didn’t seem super distressed about the question.

“I’ve got an idea.”

They got themselves positioned on the tube, and Caesar made Joseph hook his left arm around Caesar’s waist. “You realize this means that if I go down, so do you.”

“We’re in this together,” Caesar said solemnly. “Ride together, die together.”

Joseph smiled, eyes crinkling.

They got flung off the tube a few times, and each time it was with a shocking soak in cold-as-fuck water.

After they got tired, Joseph and Caesar huddled together on the bank, shivering as they watched Erina and Speedwagon take their turn. Gyro and Johnny sat a few feet away from them, pointing at the way Speedwagon got thrown off the tube and snickering.

Caesar curled himself into Joseph’s arms. “Hey,” Joseph protested without heat. “You get two minutes, and then we switch, okay? I’m cold, too.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Caesar muttered, all-too happy to be in the warm cage of Joseph’s body heat. Joseph didn’t end up asking to switch spots, even after way more than two minutes had passed.

Caesar was lounging in the garden, enjoying the sway of the hammock, when Gyro and Johnny found him.

“So, Gyro and I have an argument we need you to settle,” Johnny said.

Caesar arched an eyebrow. “Okay?”

“Are you and Joseph dating?” Gyro asked. “Or, like, fucking?”

Caesar blinked. Why did everyone keep— “No,” he finally managed, feeling flustered.

“Damn, okay,” Gyro said.

“Told you so.”

“Why did you think that?” Caesar blurted out, unable to keep the words in.

Johnny arched an eyebrow at him. “For one thing, it’s clear as fucking daylight that Joseph’s in love with you.”

“Don’t meddle,” Gyro said, shushing him. “You may ruin their friendship!”

Caesar was staring blankly at Johnny. “You—I just—you mean—uh—what?”

“I’m not getting involved in this,” Johnny said. “I already regret saying anything. Don’t think too hard on it.”

“No, wait—”

“How about those pies, huh? They smell delicious,” Gyro steamrolled over him, and Johnny seemed happy enough to help. They left a few minutes later as Caesar continued to stew in confused silence.

The idea of Joseph being—in love with him—

It wasn’t—

It just—

He didn’t—

The notion wouldn’t flow in his head, but this time, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t block the thought. He couldn’t tell if the idea made him angry or upset or—or—or something else entirely, but although he didn’t think he could process the idea in any meaningful way, it stuck around in his head like nothing else.

He wandered around the house aimlessly, dazed, and after a while ended up bumping into Jotaro, who was working on his laptop.

Jotaro glanced up at him. “You look weird.”

“I think—” Caesar frowned. “I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

Caesar found himself slowly walking to the bench that Jotaro occupied. He sat down next to him. “I have a weird question.”

“Okay.”

“Do you think me and Joseph are dating?”

Jotaro hesitated visibly before saying, “No.”

Caesar cocked his head. “Why?”

“Maybe you should ask Joseph.”

The thought sent a thrill of panic through him. “Johnny thinks Joseph’s in love with me.”

“Maybe you should ask Joseph about that, too,” Jotaro said, looking definitively uncomfortable.

Caesar mulled that over for a long time. He supposed that Jotaro was correct, objectively speaking. His thought process stopped after that, though.

Jotaro gave him an awkward pat on the shoulder.

Caesar found himself staring at Joseph like a fucking mineral under his microscope, trying to find a sign of what Johnny had said was obvious.

Joseph gave him a questioning look. “You good?” he whispered.

They were all watching a movie and eating pies, but Caesar hadn’t absorbed a single second of the movie. He wasn’t even sure what they were watching. He squinted up at Joseph, but he looked normal. “Yes?” Caesar said after an entirely too-long pause.

Joseph clearly didn’t buy the answer and hooked his arm around Caesar’s shoulders, pulling him in close. “Have some more pie. It’s good,” he said, offering Caesar a bite, which Caesar took warily, barely tasting it (even though it was good).

It was all normal. It was normal. Johnny didn’t know what he was talking about.

Still, the thought wouldn’t leave him alone, and Caesar started to think, halfway through the movie, that he’d probably die if he didn’t know for sure.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Caesar found himself asking the second that the movie finished.

Joseph, looking a little bit nervous, said, “Alright.”

They walked through the grounds aimlessly in the dark for a while, not speaking. Caesar was still staring at Joseph, and Joseph seemed to be trying to pretend that he didn’t notice that Caesar was staring at him. They both had their hands shoved in their own pockets, and Caesar wanted, badly, to reach for Joseph’s hand and grab it, but that could wait until later.

In the end, it wasn’t difficult. He merely stopped walking, made sure that Joseph was looking him in the eye, and said, “Are you in love with me?”

There was the barest breath of a pause in which Joseph seemed to register the question, but he didn’t look surprised. He only said, “Yes,” and Caesar watched in removed fascination as something visibly unweighed itself from Joseph’s spine. His shoulders relaxed, and he straightened a little bit. He smiled without feeling. “Yeah,” he said again, softer.

“Oh,” Caesar said, dazed.

“I promise I never thought about doing anything weird, though. I’d never want to make you uncomfortable, Caesar, I swear. And I wouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t want to make it an issue, you know? I don’t want you to have to deal with it, too, not that it’s something to deal with—not like I don’t enjoy being in love with you—I mean, I do, but, like, again, totally never going to do anything about it! Of course, I—”

Caesar couldn’t take the word vomit anymore. Joseph seemed like he was never going to stop rambling, and he didn’t bother to think on it too much before stepping forward, bridging the gap between them. Joseph faltered, and Caesar cupped the side of his face before leaning in to kiss him, just once, gently, but Joseph made this impossible, desperate noise in the back of his throat, and then they were kissing. Joseph wound his arms around Caesar’s waist to bring him closer, and Caesar put his other hand in Joseph’s hair, and then Joseph bit his lip, and god this was a real kiss, wasn’t it?

Caesar pulled away after a moment, and Joseph subconsciously followed the movement, eyes still closed.

“Oh my god,” Joseph whispered.

Caesar ran a thumb under Joseph’s eye. “Hold on. Sorry, just. Hold on a minute.”

Joseph withdrew immediately, taking a step back and shoving his hands deep in his pockets. “Right! Sorry.”

“Wait,” Caesar snapped, frustrated. “Wait, I just—” He reached out, grabbing Joseph by the shoulders. “Let me just—”

Joseph looked up, and the eye contact was fucking dizzying. “What is it?”

“I need a minute,” Caesar finally whispered. “Okay? I just—I’m not saying I don’t feel the same. I just need to think. I need to think. Would you—would you be okay waiting for that?”

Joseph stared at him for this long moment in which Caesar felt like his entire heart had been laid bare for Joseph’s gaze alone. “It could never feel like waiting, with you.”

Now, what was Caesar supposed to say to that? He took a shaky breath and let his forehead thunk onto Joseph’s shoulder.

“I can stay with Smokey, probably, if you need me to—”

“I said I need time. Not space,” Caesar said, a little bit irritated. He glared up at Joseph. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Joseph swallowed roughly. “Alright,” he said faintly. “And it’s okay if the answer is no. You know that, right?”

“Dickhead,” Caesar whispered. “Yeah.” He straightened, clearing his throat. “Let’s go inside.”

They bumped into Erina on their way to the staircase. She stopped them with a look of concern. “Are you two alright? You look a little shell-shocked,” she said, touching Joseph’s cheek.

“We’re great!” Joseph said a little bit too enthusiastically. “Amazing!”

Caesar rubbed the back of his neck. “It was cold outside,” he offered as a weak explanation.

“Well, there are extra blankets in the hall closet. Get some sleep, boys.”

Joseph opened the door to their room and stopped in his tracks, staring at the bed for a while. Caesar decided not to press the issue as he got changed and brushed his teeth, but when he was finished, he came to stand next to Joseph, feeling weird.

“You know,” he said eventually, “I can never sleep without you.”

“Really?” Joseph whispered.

“Really,” Caesar said. “So shut up and don’t overthink it.”

“You know, that’s kinda codependent,” Joseph pointed out, forcing some bravado into a grin as he followed Caesar in getting under the covers. “Think that’s supposed to be unhealthy or something.”

“Whatever. It’s not like you deal with everything healthily.”

“Fair, I guess.”

They laid in the dark side by side, and Caesar had never felt so awkward sharing a bed in his entire life. “Jesus, get over here,” he finally muttered, and Joseph curled against him willingly enough.

“It feels weird,” Joseph admitted, “to do this if you’re not…”

“Don’t think about it like that.”

“Okay, fine.”

Joseph fell asleep quickly, but Caesar stayed awake for a long time, his thoughts crawling forward.

Why had he never considered this possibility?

He combed over every possible reason for how he could have never seen this coming, but he came up blank. The truth was that Joseph’s “confession” (if it could really be called that) had taken Caesar entirely off-guard. He felt like the entire axis of his world was shifting.

He wasn’t averse to the potential change. That, at least, he was certain of. And of course he loved Joseph. He tried to figure out a way to determine if he was in love, but he couldn’t think of anything. He’d enjoyed the kiss, at the very least, and he thought he could probably imagine them being romantically intimate, but he didn’t risk pursuing those thoughts while Joseph was asleep on his chest.

But was that enough? Was that the same thing?

Caesar felt frustrated with his own inability to identify his feelings. All he knew was that he wanted to keep Joseph close.

And, if they ever started dating, there was no way in hell Caesar would ever allow them to start with him a step behind. He had to get a handle on how he felt.

He finally drifted off sometime around three in the morning, turbulent thoughts turning to turbulent sleep.

Joseph approached their morning by pretending that everything was normal, so Caesar decided to follow suit. They sat next to each other at the dining room table during breakfast, quieter than usual. Caesar listened to Jonathan and Johnny argue about the safety of “Nail-Gun Paintball,” something Caesar was fairly certain that Johnny had made up just to see Jonathan get worked up about it.

“It’s Kentucky tradition,” Johnny insisted.

“It can’t be,” Jonathan said, pained.

“Well, have you ever been there?”

Kakyoin arrived, sitting across from Jotaro and next to Caesar. He reached for some toast first and glanced at Caesar. “You look like shit,” he noted.

“Thanks,” Caesar said dryly.

“You have insomnia?”

It was honestly not an absurd assumption. “Don’t know. Maybe.”

“It’s a vibe,” Kakyoin said, touching the faint rings under his own eyes. “That’s for sure.”

“What’re we doing today?” Gyro asked once Johnny seemed to be done with antagonizing Jonathan.

“Well, there is a paintball place pretty close by,” Jonathan said with this mischievous glint in his eyes.

“Oh my god. I am so in,” Gyro said, grinning.

Four hours later, they had all successfully turned against each other at least once (Caesar and Gyro had betrayed each other no less than six times), and they were exhaustedly eating pizza, still covered in paint.

Joseph had flopped down next to him. He’d predictably been a shitty paintball player and had more paint on his clothes than almost everyone except Speedwagon, who William had decided to mercilessly target even when they were on the same team. “I sucked at that,” Joseph said cheerfully.

“My hands sting,” Caesar complained. He could already see the welts rising.

“Sucks to be you,” Joseph said, holding up his left arm to show off the two splats of paint on his hand that he certainly couldn’t feel.

“Damn.”

A few feet away, Kakyoin and Gyro were being celebrated as the most talented paintballers that the world had ever seen, gaining extra slices of pizza for their merits. Caesar finished his slice and laid down next to Joseph, staring up at the sky.

“Hey,” Caesar said after a minute, turning to look at Joseph, only to find Joseph already looking at him.

“What’s up?” Joseph asked.

Caesar suddenly didn’t know what to say, but he couldn’t seem to move either. He wanted to reach out and drag Joseph closer, but he knew that he shouldn’t, so he stayed frozen, whatever words he’d been about to say dying on his tongue.

Joseph didn’t actually seem to mind, contentedly tracing his eyes across Caesar’s features. Something within him had relaxed, just a little bit, Caesar was certain.

Caesar had to get away from this. For a minute. Just for a minute.

He stood up while Joseph watched curiously. “I need a minute,” he said, walking away and forcing himself not to glance back. They were a little ways away form the paintball arena, but it was a pretty rural, wooded area, so Caesar didn’t have a lot of difficulty finding a quiet place to sit down.

He called Lisa Lisa.

After a few cursory greetings, Caesar said, “I have a personal question.”

“Alright.”

He took a deep breath, fortifying himself. “How do you tell if you’re in love with someone?”

Lisa Lisa was silent for a long moment. “There’s no handbook on that sort of thing,” she said, tone curiously somber.

Caesar felt a little bit stupid. “Right.”

“For me, it felt like my lungs would split open every time he looked at me, but he also made me feel calm. It seemed to be a balance between earth-shattering and grounding.”

Caesar felt his face get hot. He hadn’t expected Lisa Lisa to be so forthcoming in providing an answer. “That’s…”

“That’s how I felt it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

He hesitated. “What if I already love this person? I just don’t know if—if I’m—”

“Oh, Caesar,” Lisa Lisa whispered. “I don’t know. The line can be so faint.”

Despite the non-answer, Caesar somehow felt so much better. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to define it a certain way if that’s not what you want. A bond between two people can surpass the definitions of friendship or romance.”

While he appreciated the sentiment, he didn’t think he’d be able to let himself get away with that. “Right.”

“And Caesar?”

“Yes?”

“I consider you family, but that will not give you any leeway if you break my son’s heart.”

Caesar felt weak, light-headed. “Did—did Joseph tell you?”

“He didn’t have to.”

“I see.”

“I wish I could help more, but I’ve only been in love the one time.”

“No. You helped. Thank you, Lisa Lisa.”

“Always.”

Back at the mansion, Caesar found himself sitting at the edge of the lake. He’d originally intended on relaxing in the garden, but he’d seen Joseph having an intense-looking conversation with Erina and had pivoted, uncomfortable with the knowledge that they were probably talking about him.

“You alright?”

Caesar turned around to watch William approach and sit down next to him. “I’m good.”

“Would you like to talk about it?” William leaned in, whispering, “I’ve been told I’m a decent listener.”

Caesar cracked a smile. “I just find myself in need of some self-reflection,” he said vaguely.

“Ah. I know that game.”

They sat in silence for a while. Caesar had talked about his feelings more in the past twenty-four hours than he was comfortable with, but he didn’t want to make his uncle feel as though he was alienating him.

In the end, he just said, “I think I kissed Joseph.” He sounded horribly confused to his own ears, and he winced.

William arched an eyebrow. “You think?”

Caesar scowled. “I did. I definitely did.”

“Was it any fun?”

Caesar blinked a few times. Yes. “What?”

William shrugged lazily. “Just making conversation.” He grinned a little bit. “Is that what had you all shaken up?”

Caesar narrowed his eyes. “Yes,” he finally said to an unruffled-looking William.

“Ah, to be young,” he said.

Caesar whacked him in the arm. “Hey. Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not, I swear! Zeppeli honor.”

Caesar rolled his eyes. “Your definition of Zeppeli honor may be different from mine.”

“Oh? How so?”

This was not the topic Caesar had wanted to get into. “Never mind.”

William backed off easily enough. “Did Joseph reject you?” he asked. There was a furrow of confusion in his brow.

“What? No. He’s—” Caesar cleared his throat, and then gave William a perplexed look. “You think I’m the one who came onto him.”

“I feel as though that was implied.”

“No. I kissed him to shut him up.”

“I see.”

“He was being annoying,” Caesar snapped, frustrated by William’s mild commentary. “He was going to keep going on forever about not freaking me out, and I just couldn’t—” He cut himself off. “Stop doing that.”

“Stop doing what?” William said innocently.

“Pissing me off so that I say more than I want to!”

“Sorry,” William said, sounding genuine. “Didn’t realize I was doing that.”

Caesar sighed. “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted.

“Well, self-reflection sounds like a pretty good place to start.”

Caesar nodded, feeling annoyed. He dropped into silence for a while before whispering, “He’s stopped putting his arm around me.”

Caesar hadn’t realized it until the words were out of his mouth. Joseph had been walking on eggshells around him all day, never once initiating contact between them, and Caesar felt so alone.

He buried his face in his knees.

William put his hand on Caesar’s back, and Caesar tensed for a moment before forcing himself to relax. “Talk to him.”

Miserably, Caesar said, “Okay.”

Instead of talking to Joseph, Caesar made an obnoxious point of snuggling up against him during the movie they were watching that night, which Caesar was now lucid enough to pay proper attention to. Joseph didn’t draw away from him either, which certainly helped him relax.

He didn’t know how to say, “Please keep touching me,” to Joseph without it sounding like a seduction tactic. And that wasn’t what it was. They were both tactile people, Joseph more than most, and half of their communication was body language. Caesar felt like he was shouting in the dark.

“You’re being weird,” Caesar declared on their way upstairs, heedless of Kakyoin’s curious glance back at them.

“I’m trying not to be weird,” Joseph said defensively. “How am I being weird?”

“You’re not—” Caesar made a noise of frustration. “You stopped—” Why couldn’t he make himself say it?

Joseph was watching him with this deer-in-the-headlights expression that made Caesar want to throw something.

“God, okay. Forget it. I’ve gotta go for a run.”

“Caesar,” Joseph began, but Caesar was already turning around.

He ran for hours.

When he finally crept back up the stairs, he felt exhausted and defeated. He’d jogged down the road until he’d reached a 7-11 a few miles away from the mansion and had bought some ice cream to eat in the parking lot because it had felt authentic. He’d waited for himself to digest a little bit before jogging back to the mansion, and then went on a few laps around the property before he felt like enough of a person to stop.

His chest ached. He wondered if he’d ever stop feeling like a jigsaw puzzle.

He froze when he opened the door to their room. Joseph was still awake, staring up at the ceiling. He didn’t glance over at Caesar.

“Joseph,” Caesar said.

“Yeah?” His gaze darted to Caesar and then back to the ceiling, and he bit down on his lip as if preventing himself from speaking.

Caesar had rehearsed the words over and over in his head for the past several hours, but they still came out slightly different. “I need you to be normal with me right now.”

“I’m trying,” Joseph said. “I’ve been—”

“No,” Caesar said. “You’re trying to act like you’re not in love with me. That’s not normal,” Caesar said, marveling at how his voice didn’t waver. Joseph turned to stare at him, jaw slack with shock. Caesar walked over to Joseph’s side of the bed and grabbed his hands. “I need you to be normal if I’m going to figure this out.”

Joseph swallowed visibly, his jaw working. “Okay,” he finally said. He cracked a humorless smile. “I won’t try to kiss you again, though.”

Caesar cocked his head. That was an interesting idea. Maybe Caesar had been going about this whole introspection thing the wrong way. “What if I tried to kiss you?”

Joseph blinked once. “You…” He flushed. “I, uh—I mean, obviously, uh—”

Caesar arched an eyebrow.

“Yes,” Joseph finished lamely. “That would be—yes.” He reached out and tugged a strand of Caesar’s hair. “You smell like sweat.”

“Is that good or bad?” Caesar said, fascinated by how flustered Joseph was getting.

“Definitely not bad.” Joseph returned his hand to Caesar’s and tugged lightly.

Instead of just climbing into bed, Caesar decided to roll with his instincts for a moment. He delicately climbed over Joseph so that his knees bracketed Joseph’s hips.

Joseph stared up at him, propping himself up on his elbows. “What are you doing?”

“I’m trying not to think. You’re ruining it,” Caesar muttered, and Joseph shut up. He ghosted his fingertips over the side of Joseph’s face, and Joseph shivered a little bit. He tilted Joseph’s chin up and slowly leaned in, tracing the line of his scar with his lips before pressing a soft kiss to the base of his throat, right where his scar came to an end.

Joseph gently took Caesar’s hands and pulled away, looking wrecked and delicate and ready to be consumed.

“Okay,” he whispered, voice shaking a little bit. “I know I said I’d be okay if you kissed me, but I think I need to change my mind.”

Caesar froze. “Oh.” He felt… embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—can I ask why?”

“I don’t want to start to get my hopes up,” Joseph confessed. “I love loving you. I don’t want that to ever change, okay?”

Caesar stared at him. “So you need me to be sure first?”

“As sure as you can be. If that’s okay,” Joseph whispered. “Sorry.”

“No. Don’t apologize. I wasn’t thinking,” Caesar said, climbing off of him. “I should shower.”

“Shower in the morning. Stay here.”

Caesar relaxed a little bit. “If that’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want.”

Jotaro and Kakyoin had to leave relatively early to catch their flight back to Miami, but Gyro offered to drive Caesar and Joseph back to their apartment, so they stayed a little bit longer.

They spent the day doing much more low-key things than the previous few days. Gyro, William, and Caesar went on a Zeppeli Family Grocery Run, which turned out to be a lot more fun than Caesar had expected, while the others hung back.

They returned sometime around midday, just when Jotaro and Kakyoin were getting ready to leave. Joseph had jumped onto Jotaro’s back and was holding on comfortably while Jotaro tossed suitcases into his trunk, completely unbothered by Joseph’s not insignificant weight.

“You can’t leave,” Joseph said.

“Shut up.”

Kakyoin rolled his eyes. “Aren’t you coming to Florida over Spring Break?”

Joseph cast Caesar a look, and Caesar glared at him even as he said, “Fuck yeah. Disney World.”

“Then, you’ll see us in literally barely more than a month.”

Joseph pouted. “Too long.”

“Good grief,” Jotaro muttered. He locked eyes with Kakyoin and arched an eyebrow before stepping back to stand on the lawn, and he trust-fall-style fell on his back, landing so that Joseph took the brunt of the damage with a truly impressive shriek.

Caesar ignored them, turning to Kakyoin. “You’re gonna be okay managing him alone?”

Kakyoin snorted. “I don’t manage Jotaro. But, yes.”

As they drove off, Joseph dropped his head onto Caesar’s shoulder from where he was standing next to him, and Caesar smiled fondly at him. “We’ll see them soon.”

Joseph sighed. “Yeah,” he said. He lifted his head and grabbed Caesar’s hand to drag him back towards the house.

Caesar and Joseph helped make lunch, and after a drawn-out meal, it was time to go home.

Caesar was happy they’d spent the weekend here. He thought it had probably been good for Joseph and Jonathan’s relationship, and Caesar had, by and large, enjoyed his time here, too. He’d met his uncle, he’d gotten along well with Joseph’s family, and he’d found out that Joseph was in love with him. All in all, it had been kind of a fucking whirlwind.

“That was fucking lit,” Gyro said, tapping on the steering wheel to a song that hummed too quietly in the background as they drove back towards the city. “Thanks for inviting me, Johnny.”

“Yeah, well. I wasn’t gonna invite Diego.”

Gyro laughed his loud, stupid laugh. “Oh my god. Diego would suck at paintball.”

Johnny hummed thoughtfully. “We should play paintball with the squad sometime.”

“You just want to shoot Diego.”

“My motives are transparent.”

“Why do you hang out with him if you hate him so much?” Joseph asked.

“He won’t leave me alone,” Johnny said solemnly at the same time that Gyro said, “Oh, we like him sometimes.” They glared at each other for a second.

After a few minutes of relative quiet, Johnny twisted around to look at Caesar and said, “Hey, I didn’t want to ask in front of all those assholes, but how’s your running going?”

Caesar shrugged, very conscious of Joseph’s sudden intense attention. “It’s slow.”

“Yeah, I feel you. It took me a ridiculously long time to be able to even get on a stupid horse.”

Caesar cocked his head. “Really?”

Johnny grinned his sharp, humorless grin that always made Caesar feel like he was going to do something dangerous. “I also fucking impaled myself on a shard of wood and didn’t even notice until, like, four hours later when I started getting dizzy.”

“It was kind of sexy,” Gyro admitted. “But also highly medically unadvisable.”

“You saw this?”

“A bit.”

“Anyway, point is,” Johnny said, not one to be sidetracked, “feeling like you’re going anywhere when you can barely move is fucking difficult.”

“Yeah,” Caesar agreed. “I feel like I’m never going to push past this—this—” Unable to express himself, he closed his hand into a fist and thumped it against his chest once.

Johnny nodded. “Thing is, you probably are. It’s just tough to see.”

Caesar, despite himself, believed him. “Thanks, man.”

“Any-fuckin’-time.”

Joseph was still staring at him when Johnny and Gyro started their own conversation about why riding a horse while impaled by a wooden stake was “medically unadvisable.” Caesar forced himself to return Joseph’s gaze, raising an eyebrow.

Joseph shrugged. “I like hearing you talk about running,” he finally said, slightly uncomfortable.

Caesar rolled his eyes and leaned against Joseph’s side, dropping his forehead on his shoulder. “You’re stupid.”

“You should apply to join this lab with me,” Caesar’s lab partner, Mark, was saying as they jotted down notes on crystalline structures. “If you’ve got the time, that is.”

Caesar mulled the idea over. The only reason he’d applied to intern at Lisa Lisa’s lab over the summer was because his trainers hadn’t thought it would be a good idea for him to focus on running every second of the day, thinking he’d burn out quickly. Because there had been no classes to distract him, working in a lab had seemed a good alternative, and it had been. Despite all the grief that had come with meeting Lisa Lisa, he would never change his choices.

Now, Caesar instinctively wanted to reject the idea, but it wasn’t like he was even on a team. All of his training was on his own or with his weekly appointments with Messina, and Caesar still had a reasonable allowance of free time.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, surprised that he sounded genuine.

Mark smiled at him. “Well, you’ll get in if you apply. I can’t believe you worked with Elizabeth Joestar.”

Caesar flashed a smile. It was always kind of gratifying when people understood just how incredible she was. “There are more factors to applying than mere credentials.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mark said, waving a dismissive hand.

On his way home from lab, Caesar took off his jacket. The weather was getting nicer. The semester was going by much faster than it had any right to. Sometimes, Caesar felt like he barely had any time to think.

He felt a little bit guilty about not having gotten a handle on his feelings yet, but Joseph really didn’t seem to mind. They’d settled back into a much more comfortable normal where Joseph didn’t feel like he was hiding anything and Caesar didn’t feel like he was under any pressure.

He thought about mentioning the lab thing to Joseph as he swung open the door, but he tabled the thought for later when he found Joseph spacing out in the middle of stretching his quad. He looked a little bit precariously balanced, so Caesar stepped forward and gently worked Joseph’s hand open from where it was holding his ankle, and Joseph automatically came to stand on two feet, eyes still glazed over.

The first time Caesar had noticed Joseph just sort of… going absent was right after he’d woken up in the hospital, and Joseph had stared at some point vaguely near Caesar’s knee for nearly a full half hour despite Caesar’s attempts to get his attention.

Caesar never really liked to see Joseph like this, but it had gotten a little bit easier for him to function around it. He wasn’t usually doing anything super dangerous when it happened, so Caesar mostly just tried to make sure that Joseph was comfortable until it passed.

He reached up and tentatively brushed some of Joseph’s hair back. Joseph’s gaze lethargically flicked towards him, and he seemed to register Caesar’s presence to an extent. “Hey,” he mumbled distantly.

Caesar guided Joseph to sit down in the nearest kitchen chair and pressed an unthinking kiss to Joseph’s forehead. “Come back when you’re ready.”

“Mmkay.”

A little while later, Caesar was typing up a lab report and eating some cereal, and Joseph leaned forward, running his hand through his hair and letting out an explosive sigh. “Hello,” Caesar said mildly.

Joseph groaned. “When’d you get back?”

“Little while ago.”

“Oh.”

Caesar stopped typing for a second, watching Joseph frown at the table. “Where do you go? When you zone out like that.”

They’d never talked about it so plainly before, and Joseph winced. “Nowhere,” he said. “I just… stop.”

“Oh. Alright.” Tentatively, he smirked and said, “You turtle.”

Still a little bit disoriented, Joseph just blinked at him. “I what?”

“Y’know. Turtles go into their shells like you go into your brain or whatever.”

Joseph let out a surprised laugh. “I guess so.”

“Do you think I should apply to join a lab on campus?”

“Yeah. You liked it when you researched with my mom, didn’t you?”

“I guess I did,” Caesar said, genuinely a little bit stunned to realize that he hadn’t merely been breaking up his runs with Lisa Lisa’s research.

“You’ll go brain-dead without getting to argue about sample sizes or whatever.”

Amused, Caesar echoed, “Sample sizes?”

“Shut up. My brain is broken, and I only know math. I haven’t had to do lab work since high school.”

Caesar snickered. “You’re the stupidest nerd I’ve ever met, Jojo.”

Joseph gave him an offended look. “I’m a jock!”

“Things can be two things.”

“Your cereal’s getting soggy,” Joseph muttered, slouching into a sulk while Caesar hid a grin behind his laptop.

Caesar had ran the eight-hundred meter race before, but it was usually an idle, half-hearted warm-up exercise.

Now, he laced up his spikes and breathed out evenly, staring at the breadth of the track before him. He wanted this to work. He wanted it to work so badly.

Joseph’s team would be out to practice in twenty minutes, so Caesar figured he had twenty minutes to figure out if this was a colossal mistake or not, but he couldn’t make himself stand up right after he put on his shoes. He spent a few minutes tracing his fingertips over the spikes, frowning, thinking about how much he already missed running the four hundred.

It was really a beautiful day, though—a day that was just begging to be torn up by a race.

He didn’t quite know how to pace himself at first, and he went too fast, muscles spasming a third of the way through his second lap. He stopped. Breathed through it. Stretched like Messina had taught him. He tried again.

The third time, he finished the race and collapsed to one knee immediately after. His lungs were acting up. He’d been too fucking slow, probably. He raised his arms up until his breath came back normal. He walked around the track for one lap. He tried again.

At around the sixth time, he started to enjoy it, just a little bit.

At around the ninth time, he’d lost himself in it, gritting his teeth against the force driving his feet forward. He knew he could do better. He knew he had yet to reach his limit.

He hadn’t even noticed the soccer team start practice, but during what was probably their water break, Joseph found him as Caesar finished another couple of laps, breathing heavily and baring his teeth in a sharp almost-grin that must have made him look half-murderous.

But Joseph was looking at him like he’d set the world on fire and had been burned up by the blaze. “You look incredible out there today,” he breathed.

“I’m running right?”

“It’s not the same as you used to,” Joseph said, sounding a little bit mystified. “You run like—like—like you’re going to tear the world up.”

“I want to kiss you,” Caesar blurted out, face going hot as he realized that he really, really did.

Joseph only looked away, smiling a little bit sadly. “Really?” he said, wry.

Caesar faltered. “I—”

“Think about it, okay?”

Caesar reached out, and Joseph gave him his right hand, and he pressed a kiss to his knuckles. Some of the intensity of that sudden impulse died a little bit, or at least mellowed out to a manageable level. “Kick ass.”

“Get running,” Joseph said, withdrawing with this stupid grin on his face that Caesar wanted so badly to kiss away.

He started running again, and the pain in his muscles seemed better and sharper than before.

Later, he still wanted to kiss Joseph, but he understood what Joseph had meant when he’d asked Caesar to think about it. He knew that he wasn’t ready to admit anything further than that, so he stayed quiet when they walked home together, and when Joseph grabbed Caesar’s hand and threaded their fingers together, he only took it as the simple, uncomplicated gesture that it was.

“Hey,” Caesar said from the couch as Joseph entered the apartment. “You’ve got a letter from the doctor on the kitchen table.”

“Hey,” Joseph said, attention already on the letter. Caesar pretended not to be interested while Joseph read over the letter a few times and then stared at it for a full minute. He finally put the paper down on the table and turned to Caesar, looking distinctly nauseated. “I have to tell you something,” he said, voice hoarse.

Caesar frowned. “Okay?” He stood up and walked around the couch but stopped before he got into Joseph’s personal space. “Everything alright?”

Joseph wasn’t looking at him. He was taking these big, shaking breaths, harsh through his nose. “I, uh—” He cleared his throat. “Don’t be mad.”

Now, Caesar was even more worried. “Jojo, what did you do?” he said, hoping his antagonistic tone would pull Joseph out of his mounting panic and into some banter, but it didn’t.

If anything, Joseph looked more panicked. “They’re cutting it off,” he finally managed. “The arm.”

Caesar stared at him uncomprehendingly for a very long moment. “What?” he whispered eventually, feeling faint.

“The nerve damage has been spreading, I guess, and they have to cut it off so that I don’t lose full mobility everywhere, and I didn’t want to tell you because—I don’t know—I couldn’t find any words, and I guess I thought if I could keep you away from it, it would maybe go away, and that sounds so stupid, but it’s what I thought, except it didn’t go away, and it kept getting worse, so I—” He took a deep, thin breath. “They’re cutting it off.”

Caesar took a minute to internalize Joseph’s rambling before stepping forward and taking his hands. He ran his thumb gently along the unnatural curl of Joseph’s paralyzed fingers, even though he knew that Joseph couldn’t feel it. “When?” he asked, not looking up.

“This summer.” He felt more than saw Joseph look away. “But they want me to come in for preliminary appointments, and I just—I just can’t do it alone. I can’t.”

“Of course I’ll come with you,” Caesar said fiercely, looking up and grabbing the back of Joseph’s neck to force him into eye contact. “Of course.”

Joseph deflated, leaning in and pressing their foreheads together, just for a moment. “Thanks,” he said, voice raw.

In that moment, Caesar understood that, if needed, he’d break the very laws that governed the universe for Joseph.

“It’s gonna look sexy,” Caesar said solemnly as they got ready for bed later that night.

“I could be Captain Hook for Halloween,” Joseph joked back with a weak smile.

“Think bigger.”

“What’s bigger than Captain Hook?”

“I don’t know.

“Frodo Baggins?”

“He’s only missing a few fingers. We obviously need to re-watch those movies. What about the Black Knight?”

“From Monty Python?”

“Yeah. That guy.”

“He loses all his limbs.”

“Well,” Caesar said, at a loss. “You could be him, like, in progress.”

Joseph rolled his eyes. “I still think Captain Hook.”

“Who would I be, then?” Caesar demanded.

“I dunno. Smee?”

“No way.”

“You’d look sexy in that striped shirt.”

“I would not and you know it. I’d rather be the crocodile.”

“The crocodile that eats me?” Joseph gasped, offended. “Babe, that stings.”

Caesar briefly toyed with the idea of making a dirty joke but discarded it immediately. “Maybe I’ll be Tinker Bell.”

Joseph laughed. “I’d die to see that.”

“You will.”

“Aw, don’t be like that.”

The atmosphere in the apartment relaxed noticeably, and they finished getting ready for bed in a comfortable quiet.

It was past six, and Joseph wasn’t home.

Caesar double-checked Joseph’s google calendar for the eighth time. His last class supposedly got out at five, and he’d had soccer practice this morning, so by all means, he should be home.

He could have been in office hours, but what self-respecting professor had office hours this late in the day?

Feeling a little bit nauseated, Caesar texted Joseph asking him if he was heading home anytime soon. Casually. He tried not to think about the last time he’d texted Joseph to no response and shoved away the clawing imagery of Joseph getting stabbed, again, somehow.

After twenty excruciating minutes passed with no response, Caesar gave up waiting and checked Joseph’s google calendar again for where his final class of the day had been. He’d search the whole fucking campus if he had to. He was not going to go through this again.

It took a little bit of digging to find the lecture hall because most of Caesar’s classes didn’t touch this side of campus, so it was akin to navigating foreign territory. Thankfully, this wasn’t one of the buildings that seemed to have been designed by an overly creative six-year-old, and the room numbers followed each other in as logical of an order as he could have asked for.

The lights were half-off when he found it. Half of his anxiety sluiced off his shoulders at once when he saw Joseph’s familiar shock of hair. He was sitting towards the back of the lecture hall, facing forward.

Caesar approached him, trying to be calm, but Joseph was totally checked out when he got close enough to sit in the seat next to him, giving the chalkboard a glazed-over hundred-yard-stare.

“God, what am I going to do with you?” Caesar murmured, reaching out to touch the side of Joseph’s face.

Joseph turned to look at him easily enough, and he blinked very slowly, then offered him a tired smile. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Caesar managed. He didn’t move his hand. He didn’t think that he could. He ran his thumb across Joseph’s cheekbone, and Joseph leaned into the touch a little bit, evidently coming back to himself enough to react.

“Did I scare you again? Didn’t mean to,” Joseph said, eyes fluttering shut as he turned a little bit more into Caesar’s hand. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. You can’t help it. I’m just glad I found you.”

Joseph sighed, opening his eyes. “Hey, C? I love you.”

Caesar bit back the sudden, odd urge to cry. “Yeah, I know.” He took a surprisingly unsteady breath. “Jesus, Jojo. Sometimes, you make me feel like the whole world’s gonna break apart.”

Joseph clearly didn’t know how to react, and he just shifted to drop his head onto Caesar’s shoulder. “Can we stay here for a few minutes?”

“Sure.”

Underneath the soft lighting of the empty lecture hall, something slotted into place in Caesar’s chest, and he pressed a kiss to the top of Joseph’s head, hoping that the uncertain, quiet affection of the moment could stretch out forever.

“Wanna go for a run with me?” Joseph whispered, poking Caesar in the side to wake him up. Caesar looked up at him through one cracked eye, glaring. Joseph was already wearing his stupid running get-up of extremely short shorts and his stupid hoodie even though it was getting ridiculously hot in the city. “Come run with me.”

“God. Fine. Gimme a minute.”

Ten minutes later, after a lot of really annoying prodding from Joseph, Caesar was ready to roll, running shoes untied as he trailed behind Joseph down the stairs. Joseph waited for him to tie his shoes in what had been called by some people “an irritatingly and unnecessarily elaborate way,” happily humming an incorrect rendition of a top-40 song.

“What’s your route?”

“I dunno. I usually just run until I get tired or see a good spot for breakfast.”

“You are, unequivocally, the worst.”

“You always say the sweetest things, C.”

Despite his extreme reservations, Caesar decided to go along with Joseph’s routine (or lack thereof) and ended up paying more attention to trying to memorize their stupidly haphazard route than on keeping his breathing correct.

In the past few months, jogging had become a source of great enjoyment for Caesar. He didn’t worry as much about the threat of collapse, and it always served to get him a little bit out of his own head. He was starting to really see the draw of long-distance running, and the thought only terrified him a little bit now. He’d already drafted an email to the cross-country coach requesting a meeting (although he wasn’t quite ready to send it yet—it would mean that everything was so final, and relinquishing his hold on the sprint would maybe take his whole life).

Joseph sped up a little bit so that they were side-by-side. Caesar had unthinkingly been going faster than Joseph was usually comfortable with, and he forced himself to slow his stride a bit. “Hey, check out that pigeon trying to drag that pie. It’s fucking—”

Joseph cut himself off when his foot caught on an uneven piece of pavement, and he tripped onto the sidewalk, looking shocked at himself.

Caesar burst into laughter, skidding to a stop a few feet in front of him. He leaned over to pull Joseph to his feet, but Joseph grabbed his hand and yanked him down with him, laughing when Caesar lost his balance and fell, too.

They sat on the ground for a minute, grinning at each other, and it seemed so obvious and so strangely uncomplicated that the words came out without any trouble at all.

“I’m in love with you.”

Joseph cocked his head to the side. He blinked a few times, and then smiled this endearingly uncertain smile, looking stunned and confused and heart-wrenchingly hopeful. “You are?”

Caesar had thought that, if he ever came to this conclusion, the realization would hit him like a—well, like a truck. But it had always been there, and he’d just spent the last few months slowly uncovering it until the truth was so clear that even he couldn’t deny it anymore. He smiled back, perhaps just as uncertainly. “Yeah.” He pushed himself up into a sitting position, though Joseph remained frozen, just propped up on an elbow. “Can I kiss you now?”

“Um. Yes. Definitely.”

Because they were in public, Caesar leaned in to press a chaste, soft kiss to Joseph’s lips, withdrawing immediately but slowly, letting his fingertips linger at Joseph’s jaw. Joseph stared at him, breathless, and laughed a little bit. “Oh my god,” he whispered.

Caesar pulled him up to his feet. “Let’s get lattes.”

Joseph laced their fingers together. “It’s a date?”

Caesar ducked his head. Good lord. Trouble was only just beginning, wasn’t it? “Yeah, Jojo. It’s a date.”

There were some days when Caesar’s entire body seemed to protest his existence, making everything so incredibly painful that he had to spend the day lying down, trying to breathe without fire roiling through his chest, and, unfortunately, the day after Caesar and Joseph started—dating? the term seemed way too simplistic to describe their relationship, and Caesar wrinkled his nose at the thought of applying it to them—Caesar found himself awake at two in the morning, blinking away tears as his body revolted against him.

Joseph was a pretty light sleeper, and Caesar must have made an involuntary noise of pain, because he woke up pretty soon after him, seeing Caesar’s gritted teeth and knowing immediately what it meant.

“I’ll go grab you some painkillers,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“Thanks,” Caesar rasped.

It had surprised Caesar, at first, that Joseph seemed to be good at taking care of him. One of Joseph’s more deceptive qualities, though, was that he seemed to really enjoy taking care of other people in general. He’d probably make a really good dad, Caesar thought idly before startling at himself in surprise because where the fuck did that come from?

Joseph returned a moment later with Caesar’s painkillers, and about twenty minutes later, they started to kick in, making the world go numb and hazy if still distantly uncomfortable to the extreme.

“What d’you want to do?” Joseph asked. “Watch a movie?”

“Let’s do that Lord of the Rings re-watch today,” Caesar mumbled. He reached out and grabbed Joseph’s hand.

“Okay. Sounds great.” He got up to grab the DVDs because he was an old man who streamed movies as infrequently as possible, and then turned on the subtitles as the extended edition started playing.

Not a lot had changed in the past day, truth be told, but the kissing privileges were extremely nice. Caesar reached out for Joseph, and Joseph laid down next to him. Caesar shifted as much as he could to curl against Joseph’s side, and Joseph gave him this brief, soft kiss that made Caesar want to go boneless, but then Galadriel started talking, and they both turned their attention to the tiny second-hand TV that they rarely used.

They spent the day in a haze. Joseph got up sometime during the Rohan plot to make them breakfast, but other than that, they really just laid down and watched the movies.

Lisa Lisa called Joseph, conveniently, a few minutes after they finished Return of the King.

“Hey, mom. Me and C are having a lazy Sunday.”

“Put me on speaker, then,” Caesar heard her say.

Joseph did, and Lisa Lisa and Caesar exchanged greetings.

“I figured it out,” Caesar said through the haze of his painkillers, hoping that he made sense.

“You figured—? Oh. Oh. Congratulations to the both of you, then.”

“What just happened? What did you two communicate there?”

“Love,” Caesar said distantly.

Joseph shot him a strange look. “You talk to my mom about love?”

“We talk about a lot of things,” Lisa Lisa cut in. “I hope you two will make each other happy.”

“Mom,” Joseph complained covering his eyes with his left hand in clear embarrassment. “Oh my god.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Of course.”

Joseph and Lisa Lisa talked for a few more moments while Caesar absently played with one of the strings on Joseph’s sweatshirt, pulling it so that it was as long as it could be, and then reaching for the other string to do it again. After they hung up, Joseph said, “You’re high, babe.”

“A little.” He glanced up at where Joseph had the hood over his head. It had shrunk down comically, and he snickered. “Your hoodies are dumb and lame. Crop tops are sexier.”

“So you do like my crop tops?”

“This was not a secret, Jojo.”

“I’m gonna milk it anyway.”

“Ew, what?”

“It means that I’m gonna, like, pull all I can from it.”

“Gross. Americans are so crass.”

“Whatever. You like it.”

“You should tell Avdol that I’m your boyfriend. It may make him get jealous and finally make a move on Polnareff.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Joseph said, digging through his hoodie pocket for his phone, jostling Caesar enough that he hissed in pained protest.

Joseph opened up a group chat called “STARDUST CRUSADERS!!” and sent a text that read, “ya boi is officially OFF THE MARKET!!”

POLNAREFF: WHOS THE LUCKY FELLA

AVDOL: If it isn’t Caesar I’ll let you cook me dinner

KAKYOIN: ??thought u and caesarhad been dating 4 like three years or something

POLNAREFF: nO way are you FOR REAL

ME: yeah it’s caesar lol <3!!

AVDOL: CALLED IT!

JOTARO: how do you leave a group chat.

KAKYOIN: sdlkjfhsdlkjfh u CANT

Caesar snickered at the texts, though they were a little bit blurry without his glasses, and buried his face in Joseph’s collarbone. “Hey, Jojo?”

“Yeah?”

“Are we gonna be okay?”

“I don’t know. I hope so,” he said honestly.

“I really, really love you.”

Joseph wound his arms around Caesar and pulled him close. “I love you, too.”

“Well, I know you’re a sprinter, but you’re qualified as hell, injury notwithstanding,” the cross-country coach said, leafing through some paperwork. “I think you should try out in the fall, but let me see you run, just so I know where you’re starting from.”

Caesar sagged forward in relief. “You want to see me run right now?”

“Yeah, if that’s not a problem.”

“It’s not a problem.”

“You don’t even have to run like you mean it, honestly. Just jog a lap or so around the track so I can see if your injury has screwed up your form.”

Caesar took a deep breath and glanced at the coach one more time. She gave him an encouraging nod, glancing down at her clipboard for a second. Caesar returned his attention to the track, rolling his shoulders.

He could do this. He was a fucking runner.

He remembered that Joseph said he ran like he was going to tear the world apart, and he hung on to that thought as he started to move, not easily, not simply, but through the constant pulse of pain that lived in his chest. He’d clawed his way to fit in a body that didn’t feel like his own anymore, and he’d fucking made it his.

The press of the ground against his feet synced with the beat of his heart, and he ran.

Chapter Text

Although the year had been immensely important for her career, Lisa Lisa was relieved to finally return to New York. She’d gotten so much accomplished in Italy, but she missed being close to Joseph. The separation reminded her of things she wasn’t very proud of—things she’d try to keep secret from Joseph until she went to her grave—and she was happy to relinquish those feelings.

Joseph and Caesar met her at the airport. Joseph tackled her in a hug that would have knocked a lesser woman on her back, but Lisa Lisa only held him tight. “I missed you,” Joseph whispered.

“Me too.”

Caesar approached more sheepishly, looking oddly embarrassed until Lisa Lisa embraced him as well, and he crumbled into the hug. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“My boys,” Lisa Lisa said, putting one hand on each of their shoulders. Joseph ducked his head, smiling, and Caesar stared at the ground, blushing a little bit. “Let me take you to dinner.”

“It’s lunchtime.”

“My dinner. Your lunch.”

They took the subway towards Lisa Lisa’s favorite restaurant, and she watched Caesar and Joseph lean against each other as they shared a handrail. They weren’t acting so differently that she would have been able to detect a concrete change between them, but maybe that was just a testament to how comfortable they’d always been around each other. Lisa Lisa remembered the previous summer with a small smile, recalling how much they’d complained about one another at first.

“Stop staring,” Joseph said, nudging Lisa Lisa with his foot. “You’re embarrassing me.” But he was grinning.

“Maybe you could use a little bit of embarrassment.”

“I second that.”

“Oh, don’t think you’re safe either, Caesar.”

Caesar gave her a betrayed look. “What did I do to deserve that?”

Lisa Lisa rolled her eyes, grateful for her sunglasses. “Where do I begin?”

At the restaurant, Caesar looked a little bit uncomfortable in his track pants when he saw that the dress code was a little bit higher than average, but Lisa Lisa took his arm and guided him to their table, feeling him relax slightly while Joseph remained entirely oblivious to their surroundings.

“So,” she began once they’d all glanced at the menus, “what have I missed? Besides the obvious.” She gestured between Joseph and Caesar.

“Well,” Joseph began, “I guess Caesar knows about the—uh—the—” He made a vague chopping gesture towards his left arm.

“Oh?” She tried to hide her surprise. She’d truly thought that Joseph would have put off telling Caesar about the amputation until the literal night before.

“Yeah.” Joseph rolled his shoulders, the anxiety palpable in the motion. “So, uh. No need to keep that on the down-low.”

Caesar rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, scowling.

Well, it was nice to see that they still pissed each other off. Lisa Lisa would have been concerned otherwise. “When is it happening?” she asked, entirely too aware of the date’s fast approach.

“Two weeks,” Caesar said while Joseph stared at the table.

Lisa Lisa only nodded, not sure what other response she had been expecting. She took a delicate sip of her wine. “What else?”

“We talked, like, yesterday. You know everything that’s going on in my life,” Joseph said.

“I’m trying out for the cross-country team in the fall,” Caesar muttered, looking entirely too self-conscious. It was strange to hear him be so hesitant about running, but she supposed it made sense.

“That sounds wonderful.”

“He’s also totally applying to join some lame rock lab.”

“They’re not lame,” Caesar said at the same time that Lisa Lisa said, “They’re not only rocks.” They glanced at each other, and then turned back to glare at Joseph, who was laughing.

“You guys are so easy.” Joseph leaned forward, grinning. “Mom, did you see my scar?” He tilted his chin up, and Lisa Lisa leaned forward to inspect the uneven line down his throat.

Lisa Lisa tensed and forced herself to stay present in the moment where her son was fine (relatively speaking), and they were all there together. “It looks lovely, dear.”

Joseph beamed at Caesar, who just shook his head.

“You look happy,” Lisa Lisa found herself saying. “Happier.”

They both got a little bit embarrassed at that, and Lisa Lisa watched in fascination as her son cast Caesar this shy, tentative smile, and Caesar’s lips twitched upwards fondly. He reached over and grabbed Joseph’s hand, just for a moment, and Lisa Lisa’s chest ached, just a little bit.

“I guess so,” Caesar finally said, and they both turned their full attention back to her, and Lisa Lisa was so grateful for them both.

The day before Joseph’s amputation, Caesar dragged Joseph to Lisa Lisa’s apartment, looking panicked and miserable in her doorway.

“He’s freaking out,” he said.

Joseph was sitting on the ground next to him, face in his hands, breathing harshly.

“Jojo,” Lisa Lisa murmured, crouching down next to him.

Joseph looked at her. “Mom, I’m freaking out.”

“Caesar, help me get him inside.”

They sat Joseph at her kitchen table, where Lisa Lisa had to remind herself not to give him water. “I’m here,” she said, pulling him into a hug. “It’s going to be okay.”

Joseph was shaking, just a little bit. “I don’t want it. I don’t.”

“I know.”

Caesar hovered nearby, looking like he was at a loss.

“Dear, would you grab the red blanket from the hall closet?”

“Of course, ma’am,” Caesar said, and Lisa Lisa tried not to wince at the reversion to formalities.

Lisa Lisa pulled away a little bit so that she could look Joseph in the eye. “You’re ready for this.”

Joseph shook his head. He was gripping his left bicep in a white-knuckled grasp. “I don’t want to be.”

“I know.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled, hunching his shoulders. “I thought I could handle this.”

“You’re handling it just fine.”

Joseph offered her a grim smile. “Liar.”

Caesar returned with Joseph’s favorite blanket, looking a little bit frantic about it. Lisa Lisa offered it to Joseph, and he wrapped himself up in it like he was six years old again. She felt a sudden pang as the past tried to intervene on her present. “You’re so grown-up,” Lisa Lisa whispered, touching his face for a moment.

Joseph’s face crumpled. “Can we sit on the couch?”

“Of course.”

Caesar remained frozen in the kitchen until Lisa Lisa beckoned him to follow. Inwardly, she flailed. She had no idea how to deal with them both panicking at the same time. Joseph’s panic was, perhaps, slightly more urgent, so she figured she’d calm him down first.

Joseph was mostly fine once he’d curled into the fetal position, wrapped in the blanket like a cocooning caterpillar and staring blankly at the movie that Lisa Lisa put on in the background. Lisa Lisa ran her fingers through Joseph’s hair, hoping to lull him into a calmer state, which worked surprisingly well, and he fell into a doze shockingly quickly. He must have been exhausted.

Caesar came to perch on the arm of the couch, arms wrapped around himself as he stared down at Joseph.

“I can usually calm him down,” he whispered, hoarse. “Or at least bully him into it. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“He’s not your responsibility, Caesar.”

“He takes care of me. I feel like I can’t—” He cut himself off, frustrated.

“You take care of him, too. Just not in the same ways.”

She felt completely out of her depth, but then again, if she knew anyone well enough to bullshit her way through some advice, she knew her son.

Caesar looked at her, defeated. “Sure,” he said hollowly.

“This is a very big thing,” Lisa Lisa said, gesturing for Caesar to come sit next to her, which he did, albeit slowly. “You can’t be expected to hold back Joseph’s extreme anxiety about his arm by yourself.”

“I guess.”

“And, honestly, neither can Joseph. It’s a very big thing.”

“I know that.”

“Don’t look so miserable. He’ll be okay, and so will you.”

Caesar narrowed his eyes at her. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“I know.”

He dropped his head onto her shoulder, and Lisa Lisa took a moment to be content with Joseph and Caesar on either side of her.

“We’ll be okay,” she said, more to herself than to them.

“Mama?” Joseph slurred, reaching for her through his haze of anesthetics. “Oh, wow.”

Lisa Lisa grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. “How are you feeling?”

“Floaty. Gross.” He blinked lethargically. “Glad you’re here.”

Her heart squeezed. “Me too.”

Joseph hummed. “Is Caesar here, too?”

“Yes. He’s just outside the door.”

“He likes me,” he whispered as if sharing a secret, grinning. “Don’t tell him.”

Lisa Lisa bit back the smile that wanted to surface. “It’ll be our secret.”

“Hah.” He glanced over to his left side and raised what was left of his arm to wave it around a little bit. “Looks funny.”

“It looks fine.”

“Feels like it’s still there.”

“I know, Joseph.”

“Can I come in yet?” Caesar asked, peaking through the door. His hair was so ruffled that Lisa Lisa was nearly surprised at it even though she’d seen him run his hands through it for the past several hours.

“Yes.”

He rushed to Joseph’s side. “Hey. You good?”

“You’re good,” Joseph parroted, taking his right hand back from Lisa Lisa to clumsily tap Caesar on the nose. “Hey, babe. Did you fall from heaven?”

Caesar rolled his eyes, leaning down to press a quick kiss to Joseph’s mouth. Lisa Lisa looked away, and looked back to see Joseph’s eyes flutter open, smiling widely.

“Told you he likes me,” he whispered to Lisa Lisa. “Shhhhh.”

“Idiot,” Caesar muttered.

“Tired,” Joseph declared.

“Close your eyes,” Lisa Lisa said, her tone gentler than she’d heard from herself in years. She smoothed some hair off of Joseph’s forehead.

“’Kay,” Joseph murmured, falling asleep the instant his eyes slid shut.

“He’s fine,” Caesar said, staring at him. “I guess he’s fine.”

“He will be.”

“Pros of wearing a crop top to your fancy banquet: I will look incredible,” Joseph was saying, lounging on Lisa Lisa’s bed while she dug through her closet.

“You cannot wear a crop top to my fancy banquet.”

“What if I cut off the bottom of a dress shirt? Then, it’s a formal crop top.”

“Joseph, I refuse to take you if you wear a crop top.”

Formal crop top. She shook her head in disbelief, pulling out one of her favorite dresses and showing it to Joseph.

“I love that one,” Joseph said. “You should wear it.”

Lisa Lisa put it on the “maybe” rack and continued digging through her clothes.

“Okay but, and hear me out here, the con of not wearing a crop top is that I will have to pin my sleeve up, and it looks dumb with suit jackets.”

“You’re not wearing one of my dresses.”

Joseph pouted. “Aw, c’mon. Be a little open-minded.”

“I am. You just wouldn’t fit in my size.”

Lisa Lisa watched out of the corner of her eye as Joseph gestured around with his left arm, noting that he already looked a lot more comfortable in his own skin than he had several weeks ago. “Ugh. Fine. I’ll figure out the stupid suit thing, but I get to bring Caesar.”

“Caesar was already invited. He’s more invited than you are.”

“Details.” Joseph perked up. “Hey, mom, when Caesar and I get married, can I wear a formal crop top then?”

Lisa Lisa barely stopped herself from dropping the dress she was holding. “You two are getting married?”

Joseph blinked. “Well, not now, obviously. Later. In the future. I figure I’ll propose sometime after we graduate.” He frowned. “Is that weird to be thinking about?”

Lisa Lisa took a pause to compose herself. “No.” She recalled her own Vegas shotgun wedding from so long ago, figuring that she was probably not the best person to ask. “I’m just surprised, is all.”

“I guess it’s weird,” Joseph said pensively. “I dunno. I guess he could dump me.” He frowned. “I am kind of annoying.”

Oh, good lord. “He isn’t going to dump you,” she said, feeling exasperated. “Unless you pull another stunt like, for instance, hunting down Dio Brando without telling him.”

Joseph winced. “Right.”

Lisa Lisa sighed, feeling inordinately exhausted. “I can’t stop you from wearing a formal crop top at your own wedding.”

Joseph beamed.

“But Caesar can.”

“Not if we don’t tell him.”

“Joseph.”

“Fine, fine. Try on the purple dress.”

Caesar stood next to her, taking tiny sips from his drink while they watched the crowd mingle. Lisa Lisa thought that she could probably take Caesar to every single social function she’d need to attend for the rest of her life and die happy. He was just the perfect combination of charming and antisocial, and she felt more comfortable at the banquet than she had any right to.

“He’s making a fool of himself,” Caesar noted absently, and Lisa Lisa watched Joseph while he spoke to one of the most decorated researchers in her field, who looked distinctly unimpressed. “Do you think he’s pretending to be a geophysicist again?”

“I hope so.”

She glanced at Caesar while he watched Joseph with this fond almost-smile. She’d been thinking about Joseph’s comments about marriage a lot more than she should have been, and she came to the abrupt conclusion that she would do just about anything to see Caesar become her son-in-law, some day.

“You love him,” she found herself saying before she even registered the decision to speak.

Caesar startled, looking back at her with a serious expression. He squared his shoulders. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Enough with the ma’ams, Caesar.” She nudged his elbow. “You’re planning on staying together?”

Caesar’s gaze flicked in Joseph’s direction. He swallowed visibly. “Until he gets sick of me.” He shrugged helplessly.

Lisa Lisa nodded, satisfied. “Good.”

Joseph strolled up to them. He’d taken off his suit jacket almost immediately, and Caesar grabbed him to fix his sleeve, which was starting to fall from where they’d pinned it at the beginning of the evening. “I totally pissed off whatshisname. Sorry, mom.”

“It’s okay. I don’t like him very much.”

“Would you like to dance with me?” Caesar asked Joseph after a moment.

Joseph gave him a weirdly bashful look. “Sure.”

Lisa Lisa sipped from her champagne, watching them step onto the sparsely crowded dance floor. She hadn’t given a lot of thought to Joseph getting married or even dating, which was probably extraordinarily short-sighted of her. She hadn’t known how to feel when Caesar had called her several months ago asking how he could figure out whether he was in love, even though she knew exactly what it meant.

She found herself grateful that this was the way things had turned out. She loved Caesar, and he and Joseph worked well together.

She snagged another glass of champagne.

Joseph had invited Lisa Lisa to watch Caesar run. He’d rambled on for nearly ten whole minutes about how talented Caesar was and how great his form was, and Lisa Lisa found herself growing curious. She’d never had the time to see him race before the accident, and, as she understood it, that had changed things a great deal.

She sat delicately on the bleachers next to Joseph, wishing he hadn’t worn these pants. She’d forgotten how dirty these bleachers could get after her year of absence.

Joseph was jiggling his knee. “Oh, check it out. He’s about to really get going,” he said, nodding towards the track.

Lisa Lisa, watching Caesar make his way around the track, recalled her own days as a student athlete. She’d been a figure skater, once upon a time, and something about the way Caesar ran reminded her of it.

“He’s excellent,” she noted, not sure why she was surprised.

“I know,” Joseph sighed, practically swooning as he dropped his head onto her shoulder. “He’s really nervous about tryouts. I caught him waking up before me to go practice.”

“And that’s a big deal?”

“He rarely wakes up before ten.”

“I see.” She watched for a moment longer before saying, “Well, he clearly has nothing to worry about. I don’t know how talented he was before, but he’s certainly talented now.”

“He runs different,” Joseph murmured. “Before, it was like he barely even touched the track. He ran like he was flying.”

Lisa Lisa frowned a little bit. “I see.” Joseph was reading poetry into Caesar’s movements, and it made her feel a little bit lost. “He’s very good.”

“Yeah.”

Caesar finished his lap, and Joseph leapt to his feet, swaying only a little bit. His balance was getting better.

“Okay, don’t look, I have to kiss him.”

“Joseph,” she complained, rolling her eyes but looking away regardless.

A moment later, they jogged up to her spot on the bleachers. Caesar was grinning, still breathing hard. “Hi,” he said.

“You’re very talented,” Lisa Lisa said.

“Thank you.” He ducked his head. “I’m working on it.”

“I’d like to treat you two to ice cream,” she declared, standing and dusting off her pants as delicately as she could. “It is summer.”

“Mom, you’re the fuckin’ best!” Joseph shouted, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek.

“Thank you,” Caesar added, smiling.

They walked to the nearest ice cream shop, Caesar and Joseph loosely holding hands as they talked to her about the upcoming season. “…and then Caesar’s gonna qualify for the Olympics,” Joseph declared.

“Jesus,” Caesar muttered, pressing his free hand to his forehead. “Don’t be a dick, Jojo.”

“I’m not! You totally will.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“I’m happy that you two have each other,” Lisa Lisa said abruptly, feeling as though if she didn’t convey this immediately, it would somehow be too late.

Joseph and Caesar paused, looking at her in varying degrees of surprise. Joseph recovered first, grinning. “Don’t tell me you’re getting sentimental on us, mom.”

Lisa Lisa shoved his shoulder. “Go pick your ice cream.”

Joseph rolled his eyes, tugging Caesar through the doorway while Lisa Lisa hovered outside, hesitating. The day yawned open behind her, and as she listened to Caesar and Joseph argue about the merits of various ice cream flavors, she felt, somehow, at home. This was her family.

She took off her sunglasses and stepped inside.