Chapter Text
Joseph breathed in. He shifted under the duvet, adjusting his arms to pull himself closer to the man he was holding. Feeling Caesar’s warmth more intensely, Joseph smiled and buried his head in the nape of his neck. He caught the familiar scent of Dove soap on Caesar’s skin and was filled with a fluffy sort of feeling, as though white, puffy clouds were changing shape in his stomach. He suppressed the urge to kick his legs like a teenage girl.
Of course, Caesar was oblivious to Joseph’s fawning — his day had been arduous, peppered with angry bosses and piles of paperwork. When he’d seen the text from Joseph asking him to stay the night, he breathed a sigh of relief. Crawling into bed with Jojo would be a much better end to a horrible day than a night spent staring at the ceiling in dead silence, processing the numerous catastrophes he had endured. Hence, he was unconscious practically the moment Joseph pulled the covers over them.
And so Joseph lay with Caesar between his arms, poring over the details of their relationship as he felt messy blonde hair between his fingers. They’d been friends since high school, in college they’d both experimented separately and came out to each other, and in the most recent development, they’d realised that they had developed feelings for one another, and were testing the waters of a relationship. It had come about in a rather awkward (and rather drunken) phone call from Caesar one night, and Joseph had chosen not to address it until the next morning, though he wished he’d had the self-discipline to hold off for at least a day longer. It was one hell of a conversation to have with a guy that was constantly complaining of a headache and took at least 15 seconds to respond each time Joseph asked a question over the phone.
And so they were dating — had been for a few months, and it’d been smooth sailing so far. They’d been on a few nice dates, had sex a few times, spent the night together a few times. And it was great, really, but when they’d started dating Joseph felt something shift when they were together. When they were just friends they’d slept at each other’s places many times, and while they didn’t always, they were never averse to sharing a bed. But being in the same bed as Caesar felt different now. He didn’t know if it was a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ different, but he knew there was more tension now. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Caesar, of course. He’d spent close to a year’s worth of nights wondering if he’d made it obvious enough, if he’d really seen blush bloom around the triangular birthmarks on Caesar’s cheekbones, banging his head on his desk doubting that he was even Caesar’s type.
Now he finally had Caesar, and he was second guessing everything he said in hopes of not fucking up. That was the biggest pitfall of dating your friend. Everything you’d done with him before had to be reassessed before you did it again. He was amazed he’d managed to get this far, but knowing himself, it wouldn’t be long before he got too comfortable and said something he’d regret. Both had agreed that taking it slow would be best (minus the sex; the sexual tension that had built up between them over the past year or so was too much to bear for both of them) but Joseph had trouble walking at a slow pace — taking it slow in a relationship was far easier said than done.
Especially when he found the sentence I love you, Caesar resting on his tongue almost every time they were together.
He turned his face from the back of Caesar’s head to the ceiling. He thought it was probably the right time to say that sort of thing as he traced cracks in the white paint with his eyes. Was there a rule about that? When he’d asked the internet for advice on other things to do with Caesar, he found that there were a bunch of rules he didn’t know or understand. He figured he would probably end up breaking them, but what if Caesar cared about that kind of thing? What if he broke the possibly-existing I love you rule and years of friendship came crashing down, along with the prospects of a future with Caesar? Since they were teens, he’d loved Caesar platonically and he’d expressed it so freely. Was he supposed to withhold that now that those feelings were romantic?
He gripped fistfuls of his own unruly hair, deep in thought. Goddamnit, he loved Caesar. With the soap-scented, heat-radiating, softly-breathing man in question lying right next to him it too much to bear.
And so he let himself say it. A gentle ‘I love you’ slipped out, and he let it float up for only the peeling paint on the walls to hear. A few more came; they drifted about and combined to make soft puffs that clung to the ceiling. And then, like a balloon deflating, he let them ooze out of him, and soon a heavy cloud hung in Joseph and Caesar’s atmosphere. Joseph felt so light he could have floated up to the ceiling and slept on it. But on the mattress was where he stayed, and as he wrapped his arms around a sleeping Caesar once more, he thought that there was no place he’d rather be.