Chapter Text
Caesar opens the door to his car again that afternoon, emerging from the vehicle exhausted and emotionally drained after the five-hour drive. He’s tired and hungry and all he wants to do is go into his apartment, eat, shower, and collapse into his bed without another thought. Joseph had already texted him twice, and all Caesar wants is to get clean of him. There’s still fucking dried lube around his ass and he feels disgusting.
After turning off the engine, Caesar leans over the center console to retrieve his bag and phone (he had thrown it away after reading Joseph’s message). He then begins the arduous process of getting back into the apartment. He feels so weak and exhausted and it’s more effort to move than it should be. He shouldn’t be this drained, and he shouldn’t be so upset, but he is.
It takes too much work to start walking towards his apartment, digging through his bag to find his keys as he goes. His head is down and he is distracted and nearly trips onto his face when he misses sight of the curb step up.
“Oh, you’re back earlier than you said you would be.”
The voice of his neighbor startles Caesar into a more awake sense of consciousness and he blinks. Jotaro tilts his head curious when Caesar doesn’t respond right away and lowers his hands from Caesar’s biceps where he had caught him.
“Are you okay?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry. A-A lot of stuff happened in two days and I’m just kind of exhausted after driving so much, too,” Caesar mumbles softly, reaching to rub at his eyes and then cover his mouth as he yawns.
Jotaro grins and chuckles, “I can see that. Someone went to town on you,” he teases.
Teasing seems uncharacteristic of him and Caesar blinks and squints a bit before Jotaro snorts and rolls his eyes. Caesar realizes he’s talking about the hickeys Joseph had left on his neck and his face instantly heats with red. Jotaro thinks he had gone to see a lover, a boyfriend, and here Caesar is, returning home to show off the fact his grandfather had been the one who had left those marks.
Caesar laughs uncomfortably and shrugs a little, rubbing his hands together a bit. “Y-Yeah, you know how it is…”
“As long as you enjoyed yourself,” Jotaro says with a smile, making Caesar flush even more. He is clapped on the shoulder and patted once. “Go get some rest. See you later?”
Caesar nods tiredly, thanking Jotaro for his well wishes before continuing to plod towards his room. Jotaro is nice and weirdly similar to his grandfather in a subdued way, but definitely just as attractive. He groans mentally; what had he done in a past life to deserve getting tangled up in this weird ass family that was super hot? No, he doesn’t need to deal with that thought right now.
He pushes open the door to his apartment easily and shuts it with a thud as he leans back into it. It’s hard and solid against his back (much like Joseph had been, he thinks somberly) and Caesar struggles through his exhausted state to move away from it, leaving his bag by his door. He manages to throw himself onto the bed before grabbing up one of his pillow and pulling it to his chest.
It doesn’t smell like anything but his own laundry detergent.
Caesar ducks his head to his chest and lifts the collar of his shirt to his nose. It smells distinctively like Joseph. He promptly rips the shirt from over his head and presses it to his face, inhaling sharply. It is then that the tears prick his eyes anew and he throws the shirt as far as he can; not very far with how the material doesn’t really have any aerodynamics to it.
He finds himself then shucking himself of all of his clothes, throwing them around his room like a child having a tantrum. Tears flow freely down his cheeks and he screams and cries with frustration as he rips the rest of his bag of things apart. They end up scattered about the room, his underwear and pants and shirts discarded all over the place. Eventually, Caesar drops to his knees, sobbing into the carpet over a few articles of clothes that smell like a man who has his entire heart and will never be able to take it.
Caesar thinks himself a fool and an idiot for evening thinking this would have worked. And yet, he’s angry, not with himself, no, but with Joseph. Had he been led on? Had he been promised unrealistic things? No, he supposes, but Joseph had still brought him to this state. It is his fault for allowing this to continue to such a state. It is Joseph who should have been the smarter of the two parties and denied Caesar permission to visit and cut all ties.
His phone chimes across the room on his bed and Caesar lifts his head weakly. His face is red from crying and rubbing it into the scratching carpet; if Joseph wants nudes, he won’t be including his face in them.
“sorry about Suzie again.” Joseph’s message reads.
“when can i see you again” is Caesar’s immediate response.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Caesar.”
“why not. you said if i left i would see you again”
It takes Joseph a few minutes to respond and Caesar knows he’s right. But the fact that Joseph is not responding immediately or allowing his request makes him even more agitated; he wants to start crying again, throwing things—he still hasn’t gotten it all out.
“can i call you” Caesar taps out.
His phone buzzes and rings in response, signaling that Joseph had taken the idea to call Caesar himself.
“Hi,” Joseph hums softly.
Caesar’s chest aches and he spits out, “I love you,” before he can even have a second thought to prevent it.
There is silence on the other end.
“Caesar—“
“Say it back.”
“Caesar, come on—“
“Don’t you love me, too?”
“I don’t.”
Caesar is throwing the phone away from himself before he even presses the end call button, instantly breaking down once more. He is sure Joseph can hear him if he is still on the line, and the thought only makes Caesar sob more. He finds himself curling in on himself on the bed, crying irrationally. It doesn’t make sense, even to himself, why he is so upset. He saw this coming, didn’t he? Being in love with a married man doesn’t work outside of fiction.
He is not the hot, young blonde (he is, but Joseph married one already) who will steal Joseph away from his aging wife. And because this is not a movie, and Joseph is not the infidel who is so easy to leave his wife, Caesar finds himself unable to pull him away. He will never win. He may be able to tempt him with fruit more ripe, but he will never pull the old man away from his devout faith.
Caesar wants more than to just use Joseph for his money and give him sex in return like all of those girls in movies. Maybe if he could handle having just that, Joseph would be his a little longer. Caesar could have tricked himself into thinking what they had was something, and he would have never had to suffer this heartbreak. But he is not the girl from the book or the movie or the fantasy he had pictured, and he will not win Joseph’s heart.
For all his cheating ways, Joseph is still in love with his wife. He will not leave her for anyone.
Caesar’s phone rings again loudly and he refuses to answer it. It continues to ring and ring and ring and Caesar finally, only out of annoyance, decides to answer it.
There is a woman’s voice that greets him.
“Now you see, I met Joseph’s last affair, too, so I think it would only be proper if I got to meet you, too, don’t you think?”
Caesar doesn’t respond.
“Joseph caves under pressure you see, and I suppose whatever you told him was enough to trip his guilty conscious into telling me all about your weekend. And what he’s been spending all of his money on.”
She doesn’t even sound angry, bemused even.
“I don’t expect you to repay him, honestly, it was his own mistake. But I would like to see this all sorted out.” There is a laugh. “Thank God you can’t produce his bastard child, yes?”
Caesar makes a weak attempt at speaking and when his voice gives he is met with a motherly coo.
“Oh no, did he upset you? I’m sorry, sweetheart. He did this to Tomoko, too… Come now, it’s okay, yes?”
“I love him,” Caesar finally spits out, rather aggressively.
“As do I,” she chuckles. “Well, most of the time, I suppose. Joseph is a simple minded, one track man,” she muses easily. “And I seem to be that track for him. You would think that would prevent this kind of thing, no? But his impulse control is lacking.”
Caesar takes this moment to realize he’s being spoken to in Italian and wonders how much of their conversation Joseph understands. He seems to have a basic grasp of curses and common words, but would he understand all of what Suzie was telling him?
“Come see us again,” she says finally, after Caesar goes unresponsive. “We’ll sort this all out. You’re welcome to make Jotaro drive you,” she adds in.
The line goes dead a moment after that and Caesar drops the phone to his lap, still speechless.
Suzie, Caesar has just found, is an amazing women. To handle the knowledge of her husbands affair with such grace and ease is something Caesar definitely did not do. He takes another look around his room before sighing.
She’s right; this needs to be sorted out.