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Cesare peeked one yellow eye out from behind the slab of Brimstone they were perched in back of. He mutters something under his breath, something that sounds a bit like muffled calculations, but Steve couldn't imagine why. They'd gone over the plan five times already, a plan which had less than three steps, mind you, and their target didn't seem intent on changing locations any time over the last week they'd been scouting him. Belatedly, Steve realizes that Cesare is speaking, though it's unclear if its aimed in his direction, or done solely for his own benefit.
"I'll have to act dumb so he'll feel compelled to help me, and he won't feel like his masculinity is threatened by me being smarter by him. I'll have to be the honeypot and while I'm distracting him you'll-"
Steve blinks. Cesare must've added another part to their plan again. Steve wanted to keep it simple, but Cesare can't seem to refuse a single dramatic impulse.
"You're mean you're going to seduce that?" Steve timidly butts in through Cesare's pep talk-cum-monologue, indicating the Buick-sized magenta and gold crustacean keeping gaurd before them, "Do you think you could even do something like that to a crawdaddy?"
"Oh, what, and I bet you think you're a better candidate for the job?" Cesare snipes, missing the point entirely, poking a finger into Steve's belly for emphasis. He lets out a cruel laugh, resting his hands on his hips.
"My legs are long enough to fit on the cover of three Vogue magazines, and one is the swimsuit edition! With a centerfold!" Cesare counts off each point on his fingers, "I am irresistible to all sexes, the dead, and the living!"
Cesare steps back, pointing one finger into the air assertively.
"I am hot shit and champagne! Being seen in public with me would elevate you to another social strata and a level of public scrutiny the mind was never meant to endure. Honestly! The nerve!" Cesare gets in Steve's face again and shoves futilely at his shoulder with one hand, "And to think I'M the one helping YOU! If you don't want me to ditch you right here, you're going to say that I'm hot shit and that you'd die to get with someone as cunty as me, capiche?"
Cesare's hands have seized around the sides of Steve's shouders, crushing their chests against eachother. It's a stalemate for a moment, both inhuman strangers sizing eachother up, before Steve finally relents with a sigh.
"Alright, alright," Steve's eyes dart away as he continues in a grumble, "You're pretty."
Cesare stares at him for a moment, face scrunched up, head tilted back. Finally, he scowls and dramatically rolls his eyes.
"That's not what I said," he snarks, "but I guess it'll have to do. Now, enough chit chat. Let's go get that lobster tail."
The heist almost goes tits up due to Cesare's many dramatic additions, but somehow his honeypot idea is the one that brings them to victory. Who knew demonic crustaceans were so easily besotted by old, dead brunettes? Steve congratulates him on such but Cesare just sniffs in response, crossing his arms and looking away from him. Steve has never been able to puzzle out Cesare when he's in one of these moods. One minute he was discretely and maniacally leaving tangles of carniverous flowers in Steve's sleeping bag, and the next, he was in a complete tiff refusing to speak to him after Steve had started using the flowers to lure out and befriend the local hell-deer who enjoyed nibbling on them. No matter how he tried, Steve just couldn't quite figure him out. Steve had accepted Ceaare's unpredictable nature by now, though. He knows he must come off as somewhat strange by human standards, and figures such strangeness must come with existing so long in comparison, so in that way, him and Cesare are the same.
After setting up a fire, Steve settles on top of his sleeping bag (after thoroughly checking it for any infernal foliage). Unable or unwilling to sleep, Cesare is staring at him, silent and unblinking, sitting across from him some ten feet behind the fire just on the edge of the encroaching darkness . Steve has had to learn not to mind that too, as falling asleep under the watchful gaze of jaundiced, undead eyes has also become a nightly occurance. Steve used to wonder if Cesare broke his vigil at all during the night, ever got up to busy himself with some other task, as he was often in the exact same position when he woke up hours later. He finds it useless to question it anymore. That night, Steve falls asleep and dreams about stray black animals fighting for scraps, and of being watched by a crowd of one.
When Steve finally wakes up, the first thing he sees are two wide, predatory yellow eyes staring unblinkingly into his. He instinctually shuffles back for a moment in shock, a muffled grunt of surprise escaping his throat, but Cesare just scoots after him locking his hands around his ribs so the distance between them remains the same.
It seems Cesare has finally decided to reposition his nocturnal vigil for once, as he's laying parallel to Steve on his sleeping bag, facing him to watch his every movement as closely as possible. Lips pressed into an unreadable line, Cesare openly gawks at his face for a moment longer.
"You think I'm pretty?" Cesare blurts out finally, half a question and half an accusation.
Steve huffs out, shifting between indignant and flustered at the unexpected proximity, the tips of his ears going hot. He tries to squirm away, but the death grip Cesare has around his chest doesn't let up.
"You said I'm pretty!" Cesare accuses again, something almost distraught creeping into his voice, sounding somehow more unhinged than ever, "Did you mean it? Do I look pretty to you?"
Steve grumbles under his breath, avoiding Cesare's gaze.
"Yes?" He finally grinds out through gritted teeth, eyes anywhere but his face.
Cesare gasps like he's been burned, but doesn't let go. In fact, it seems as if his grip has tightened somehow.
"I think you're pretty!" he blurts, accusingly, but upon seeing the surprised look on Steve's face continues, "I mean, handsome! I mean, no I don't! Shut up! I didn't say that! Stop touching me, you sick freak."
Cesare still doesn't let go. Steve realizes, belatedly, that Cesare has started doing something he's never seen him do before- he's started breathing. Hyperventilating even, as he stares owlishly, unblinkingly, expression almost angry in its concentration, into Steve's face from mere inches away, buffeting his nose with cold, stale air.
As he watches, through his labored breathing, Cesare's face contorts into something more familiar- a shadow of a smug grin.
"Aww Steven," Cesare laughs, regaining some semblance of his icy facade, "I'm sorry, babe, do you like me?"
Cesare giggles lowly under his breath.
"Do you have a big fat crush on me, Stevie?" he continues in a baby voice.
Steve sucks his teeth and rolls his eyes at the suggestion.
Cesare huffs.
"Don't roll your eyes at that like its fucking impossible! It could happen!"
The next sound out of Cesare's mouth is a small breathless moan, surprising even himself, as Steve's hands have come up to bracket his face on both sides.
"I didn't mean to make that noise," Cesare insists, frowning in his embarrasment, "That was a... belated death rattle. It happens sometimes."
"I think you're very handsome," Steve rumbles, slowly turning Cesare's face to one side and then the other in his hands as if to get a better look at it, face splitting into a jovial smile as he does, "Like a young Conrad Veidt. I expect I will have defended you from an army of harpy suitors before the end of our time together."
Cesare laughs glibly at the compliment in spite of himself, gaze never breaking from Steve's eyes.
"I think I can manage," he mumbles, almost too low to be heard, the heat of leaning into the hands on his face feeling almost entirely like the memory of a blush.
The moment is over too quickly, however, as Steve's hands have pulled themselves away from his face and are now instead being used to haul him up into a sitting positon with a heave. Cesare takes care not to pout to obviously at the sudden loss of contact. Rolling onto his stomach, he watches coolly from under his eyelashes as Steve stretches his arms above his head with a few cracks and pops and an exaggeratedly large yawn that ends in a suspiciously honk-like noise. Steve stands, and with a snap, the sleeping bag disappears from under Cesare's prone form and reapears rolled up into a pack on Steve's back. Propping himself up on his elbow in the dirt, Cesare fixes Steve with a glare, but its lacking its usual heat, and Steve isn't even paying attention to him anymore anyway. After covering what remained of the fire pit with dry dirt to avoid being followed, Steve sits cross-legged out in front of their little campsite, laying his map of the underworld out in the dirt and holding the dowsing pendulum above it just like Cesare had shown him.
"If you wanted me to not suck your dick so bad, a simple 'no thank you' would've worked," Cesare hisses to himself under his breath, curled onto his side away from Steve as he stares out at the murky, cavernous walls of the abyss. He jumps as Steve materializes in the air in front of him, wearing his stupid Steve Irwin safari hat.
"I'm sorry, my boy, were you saying something?" he intones politely.
Cesare rubs furiously at his eyelids with the heels of his hands.
"I WAS SLEEP TALKING!" Cesare grouses, entirely too loud to be saying anything honest, and then continues to lie, "I don't try to psychoanalyze the subconscious ramblings of your archaic demented psyche, do I?"
Steve's eyebrows go up at that.
"Ah, do I talk in my sleep?" he asks, head tilted to one side, a bashful note creeping into his question.
Cesare pretends to mull it over, rolling onto his back, hands steepled over his stomach and knees rubbing together in thought. Despite his efforts, Steve's eyes remain on his face.
"Mostly just honks in varying keys. Bits and pieces of show tunes on occasion," he attests after a moment. And a lot of giggling, he notes, but doesn't say that part. What does this motherfucker have to laugh about while trekking through the bowels of hell itself? Fucking clowns.
"Fucking theater majors," he says instead.
Now he just has to find a way to trick Steve into admitting something else he likes about him, Cesare thinks to himself with a grin as Steve busies himself with the map again. What a total schmuck the legendary, unconquerable Steven has turned out to be, like putty in his hands. If only he'd had known it sooner. Maybe it would help if he found some sort of underworld flora that Steve wouldn't notice until it was too late this time. That would do it, wouldn't it? Get him one step closer to sealing the deal on this whatever-it-is of emotional warfare that they've apparently started waging on each other? He might not know exactly what' happening, but he knows he's going to win. If Cesare is anything, it's confident in his abilities. He's the best at what he does. He's a professional; a veritable bait and trap mastermind. He's a crafty, cunning, inveterate manhunter. He knows what he's doing. He does!
It's only a matter of time before Steve knows it too.