Work Text:
Joseph knows from a young age that he is filled with fire.
He can feel it in his blood, rising up at the drop of a hat to become white hot lava that spills from his lips and his fists. Even before he has strength in his limbs he cultivates the sharpness of his tongue, so that it can cut lashes deep enough to burn, and when he can add in his fists he becomes an untouchable column of flames. He can close his eyes and see bright red at any given moment, never a moment when he isn’t prepared to spit sharp wit lined in white hot fire.
Confidence is bright and hot and only graced upon those that are too young and dumb to know any better, but Joseph doesn’t think that until much later on.
He’s eighteen years old when he first feels acutely the ice cold spike of fear in his veins, and realizes that he is hardly a half step into adulthood and he doesn’t want to die. No matter how much passion he puts into his training, the icy hands of death that hover over his shoulder scare him, and he isn’t ready to face that.
Time ticks down days on the calendar, and despite his exhaustion Joseph finds himself more frequently visited by bouts of insomnia, wandering the halls until he has every nook memorized. The last place left is outside, and that’s where Joseph learns he can find Caesar on the black nights illuminated only by the stars and moon.
Joseph clenches his fists and feels the frozen fire stir in his blood at the calm façade that is schooled onto Caesar’s profile, cigarette at his lips as the flash of his eyes lets Joseph know he’s been seen. Joseph can’t quite pin Caesar down, and it infuriates him to not get a solid read, because if there’s one thing he shouldn’t be confused about it’s this. Not when there’s so much more at stake than their few hours in the protective cloak of darkness, whispered words transpiring over too short a time to set more than a slow burn in motion.
“That’ll kill you, you know,” Joseph nods at the ashes falling from the cigarette perched delicately in Caesar’s hands as he steps fully out into the moonlight. Caesar is curious, and Joseph thinks that if there was ever such a thing as cold fire, Caesar would be overflowing with it. His eyes are like chips of ice when they slide over to him, but Joseph has had two weeks worth of learned cues to recognize the softness around the edges, letting their shoulders bump as he passes and makes a weak pass to grab at the cigarette.
Caesar dodges deftly, blowing out a stream of smoke in Joseph’s direction instead. It curls around Joseph like a caress, and he doesn’t bother to hide the grin on his lips.
“Idiota, if smoking is what kills me, I’d be thankful,” Caesar scoffs, tapping out more ashes against the railing, Joseph watching them carefully as he leans over the balcony to look down at the sea. The ashes are invisible in the darkness beyond a meter, but Joseph knows they’ll eventually hit the water and be swept away by the tides. Proud embers burned to the end of their life and lost to the annals of time, and Joseph’s lips quirk when he thinks that at some point he began to think of those ashes as himself instead. “I can see the steam coming out of your ears, don’t hurt yourself now.”
“I don’t want to die,” Joseph confesses instead, for once ignoring the slight that perhaps a month ago would have him aiming for Caesar’s heart with more than just his fists, hot blooded words that would send them tumbling to the ground in some kind of pseudo rage. He trades jabs with Caesar to pass time now, to trade out fear for something more familiar, but in the midst of sleepless nights devoid of pretenses Joseph finds that honesty may chip at the ice clustering in his blood.
Caesar eyes him for a moment before sighing and dropping his cigarette to be crushed under his boot, turning to let his back rest on the railing and tipping his head back to better see the moon. Joseph keeps an eye on Caesar’s profile, the way the light hits the hollows of his cheeks and thinks that Caesar isn’t that much older than he is.
They’re playing in a game thousands of years older than they are, and Joseph is afraid that they’re fighting against a checkmate that’s already been called.
Joseph fills the silence of Caesar’s thinking with thoughts of his own, that no matter how hard they train there are certain limits that can’t be surpassed. They’re both human, whatever might come, and while he will have to succumb to death in this life he just doesn’t want to yet. But the fires that burn the brightest historically have ended up snuffed out the quickest, and Joseph is afraid that may just continue to ring true for him.
Even more, he is afraid for Caesar, but he doesn’t think it will ever be dark enough for him to let that secret pass his lips. They can have what they have, but Joseph while Joseph is young and foolish he isn’t yet ready to grasp on to anything more serious aloud than Caesar is willing to give.
“You won’t,” Caesar says simply, not missing a beat when Joseph’s hand seeks, out his, letting him hold it loosely to keep him grounded because Caesar always just knows. Something that would have driven Joseph up the walls if he hadn’t accepted that this wasn’t going to go how he planned the moment Caesar pulled him up from that ledge. “I won’t let you.”
“You’re not omniscient, Caesar,” Joseph snorts, digging his nails into Caesar’s wrist, hard enough to mark but not to draw blood. He wonders if Caesar’s blood would be as red as his, would that chill he thinks he can feel on fuel him to burn hotter or consume him entirely. “You shouldn’t make those kinds of promises when you can’t keep them.”
“Don’t go judging my capabilities for me, Jojo,” Caesar quirks an eyebrow, daring Joseph to challenge him. Joseph doesn’t, but he does wince when Caesar grips his wrist twice as hard, tinge of accent slipping through to his speech like Joseph knows it does when Caesar gets frustrated. He heard it in his ear that very morning when Caesar kicked him out from under the covers, murmuring sbrigati against his neck in a way that gave Joseph no encouragement to move at all. “We’ll give ‘em hell, and if you don’t think you’re up to the challenge then it looks like I’ll have to thrash you until you do.”
“I worry my fire has gone out,” Joseph finally confesses, like a sigh into the breeze, but he knows Caesar hears it from how he stiffens up. Joseph’s fingers fall from his, and Joseph wonders what Caesar is thinking, if he’s finally realized what a lost boy Joseph is in all of this after all.
Instead Caesar clicks his lighter open thoughtfully, raising the flame high enough that it sits between their eyes. Joseph isn’t sure how the mask and insomnia have effected his dashing good looks, but he rather hopes that Caesar would still find him artfully handsome. He thinks about saying it aloud, but has the feeling he might be setting himself up to ruin a moment, in which case Caesar may actually toss him over the rail.
“Then let me be your fire,” Caesar says with an air of seriousness so thick that Joseph can’t help but laugh, the tinge of hysteria just barely detectable at the edges. It doesn’t stop Caesar from trying to deck him, and Joseph grins when he catches Caesar’s fist, thinking that cold as he might seem his blood might catch fire even faster than his own.
“How romantic of you. But you’d better save some of that boasting to protect yourself, then,” Joseph teases, but there’s a certain lightness he feels that takes root in the cracked loneliness he’s felt ever since he was a child, someone to share his torch. Caesar rolls his eyes and mutters something in Italian that Joseph feels he doesn’t really need the grasp of the language to understand, lips warm and fleeting on Joseph’s forehead before turning to go back inside and drag Joseph with him.
This memory stands out among a score of others, so densely spread across such a short span of time where Joseph felt himself burning brightest, the ice nearly welcome to quell the passion in his veins that was brought about by the lightning quick stamp in his life that was Caesar Zeppeli.
Yet Caesar’s headband is cold when he ties it around his forehead, his blood is liquified ice on Joseph’s hands, and Joseph has no choice but to catch his extinguished flame and nurture it with his own.
...
Years past spreading Caesar’s ashes into the sea, Joseph finds himself in Egypt chasing after the loose ends of his grandfather’s death, and marvels that their family is one made up of so much destiny intertwined with history and the world itself.
His grandson might not be nearly as fiery as Joseph was in his youth, but Joseph sees specks in himself in Jotaro sometimes, in the way he exchanges those quiet looks with Kakyoin. Sometimes he thinks he sees them in his grandson and his friend, albeit a quieter version.
He remembers in nights around the fire those days, when the bare trails of lava flowing through his body were alight with heat, and maybe this glimpse into the foolishness of his youth is what drives him to bet his soul, to feel reality slip away when he loses and wonder if this is finally his death.
“You didn’t need me after all, fifty years and that fire of yours hasn’t dimmed at all, has it?”
Caesar’s voice echoes in his mind, and Joseph nearly throws out his back turning around, nearly off the balcony if not for Caesar’s quick hand grabbing onto Joseph’s forearm.
In the blink of an eye, Joseph is young again, like the annals of time haven’t aged him into a grandfather and he’s back on the balcony with Caesar. He blinks hard, because he’s had these dreams before but they’ve never been this vivid, and he knows in his aching heart that something is distinctly different.
He thinks that this must be limbo, and hopes if this is the end of the line then this vision of Caesar is real and come to take him to wherever their path leads.
“Some help you were with that, could have stuck around a bit longer, don’t you think?” Joseph doesn’t mean for his words to be biting, and knows he should have an apology on his lips instead, but Caesar has always known how to make his blood boil in every way. Caesar simply grins in response, and Joseph pretends he can’t see the sad edge to it because he’d much rather grab Caesar’s scarf for leverage to yank him in with.
Caesar tastes like cigarettes still, like red wine and what Joseph would imagine to be sin incarnate because nothing else could explain how easily Joseph would always give into him, and still would if he was able. Joseph, for all these years, is still horrible with Italian, but in that moment he could swear he was fluent for all the murmurings Caesar let slip between them.
Joseph feels a distinct tug in his chest as he pulls back abruptly, tightening his grip on Caesar’s jacket as Caesar makes a frustrated sound, pulling Joseph’s hands from his clothes and pushing him back gently.
“I can’t take you yet, but I’ll be waiting,” Caesar’s eyes crinkle up, and Joseph raises his hands to smooth his thumb over the marks on Caesar’s cheeks out of habit, small noise of surprise slipping out when he just touches air. “They all still need your fire.”
Joseph almost wants to protest, ironically feeling more alive than he has in years, but Caesar is already fading, letting go of Joseph’s hands last as he fades back into Joseph’s mind.
Joseph blinks awake to renewed heat in his veins and a small smile on his face, and when Jotaro questions him he just laughs.
He takes a cigarette from Jotaro that night and smokes for the first time in years, ash on his tongue not quite tasting the same but he decides it will do.
He watches the embers burn out at the end and disappear into the sand, pretending for a moment it’s the sea, and thinks that he can wait a bit longer before he lets the current pull him along.