Chapter Text
Lifestuff, is the best Joe can do to summarize the unending obstacles that are so consistently heaped onto him. He has heard life be likened to:
-a tension of opposites;
-a power struggle;
But stuff is more accurate. It is a mound of things you have to work through to keep your head above water, and then there are only ever additional things heaped on the pile. It is manageable when you are consistent. But dealing is a thing Joe has never had much knack for.
What he is not dealing with right now, is Caspar. Caspar who he loves, who is his roommate, and his best friend, who brings him back Nando's and cooks him shitty pizza in a frying pan, and who Won't Stop kissing him.
They are platonic kisses, is the best way Joe can describe them. That is strange in and of itself, so it's especially hard to justify them when they reach his mouth, jaw line, collarbone. Caspar has always been friendly. But there is something in the way he administers his affections that doesn't sit right with Joe.
Things begin to progress, sequentially. The kisses stop being sporadic and become routine - with every good morning or night, and every yelled I'm home. Joe comes to expect them, when they are bundled up in blankets on the couch, mindlessly consuming movies or games of FIFA, and Caspar crowds up a little too closely. There is always some move made, some action that teeters on the edge of more-than-friends. The most jarring of these is the time he slips in tongue.
They are propped against one another on the couch, back to back, wearing out a rainstorm. The power is vanished, and they sit in the dark, eating pork and beans from the tin. Their cameras are dead from a dayful of filming, as are their laptops, and they have no board games, or playing cards, or Oli because he has gone home. All they have in the way of entertainment is each other - the camaraderie of jokes and jump scares, heightened by the darkness. But mostly they are content with being attached, ironically, at the hip, that physical connection manifested from a wordless declaration of just being present with each other. So they are sitting, eating, quietly, accentuated by rolls of thunder, and really this is a quintessential night for some of Caspar's pseudo-kissing, Joe realizes. He is unsurprised when, upon binning his dug-out bean can, Caspar rests his face against Joe's neck and kisses.
They are comforting, lax little things, as if by and meant for two people seasoned by a thirty-year union, who have known each other far longer and experienced more together than is the case for them. Joe lets him do it, the way he always does, because if there's one thing he is for Caspar it's submissive. He is used to the pecks, the phantom mouthing that is too faint to really mean anything. And Caspar never expects him to reciprocate.
Except that this time he does - is more enthusiastic, albeit lazy, to the point where Joe has to set aside his half-eaten dinner to accommodate the ministrations. He passively lets him mouth at his neck, which tickles but is pleasant, and keeps his gaze averted. The only sounds are raindrops, lipsmacks, thunderclouds. Summer sounds, Joe thinks. But Caspar urges his face closer, so that he cannot guard himself with ignorance, and begins to kiss him at the mouth. These ones are pregnant, pointed, and Joe doesn't know what to do with that. He has always given Caspar unwavering free reign, but has consequentially cushioned himself with the reassurances of determinism. To have that comfort sequestered is unimaginably hard.
Caspar is resolute and persistent, so that Joe wonders if it is healthy for him to be friends with someone so dominant. His indecisiveness is broken by a cajoling tongue shoving up between his lips, trying to ease apart his jaws. He opens his mouth. He hadn't anticipated Caspar's knowledge of the French, which is unexplainedly thorough, would extend from language to kissing. He licks at the inside of Joe's mouth, and is as a bear tonguing peanut butter from a jar. But Joe is inert, and slightly vacant. He feels like a flower head, soft and rooted, at the mercy of its pollinator. And so he lets Caspar take.
But that is not enough to satiate him - he seems determined, for some unclear reason, to have Joe contribute. He sucks and bites and bruises him, so that Joe quells him for the sole sake of preventing any suggestive, enduring marks. Shyly, uncomfortably self-aware, Joe leans into the kisses, touches Caspar's teeth with his own meek tongue. It enthuses Caspar, so that his kisses gain momentum, and he pulls at Joe, as if trying to incorporate them into one collective thing. Joe is rattled, and a little scared. They have never progressed this far before, and at this point the friendliness feels to have evaporated. Or at least it seems so. With Caspar everything is infinitely harder, because nobody else is as weirdly affectionate. Who knows what constitutes a platonic relationship in his convoluted head? Joe isn't sure how he's supposed to work with that, the unknown. Instead he goes with what is familiar - obliging Caspar. He places tentative palms upon his chest, and hopes for some kind of good outcome.
Ideal or otherwise, it is what Caspar wanted. Abruptly he lies back, and pulls Joe on top of him. He touches his arms, waist, in eloquent strokes, heated and lazy at once, cradling him more like a baby than friend. They make out in long drawls, sleepy and content, weathering the hostility outside together. Caspar's hands are clasped behind Joe, keeping him tightly against him, so that if Joe had the gumption to leave he couldn't. They have boners, friendly ones, that Joe can feel against his thighs. It is...uncomfortable. He feels so fucked up, for having a friend with such warped ideas of friendship, but more so even because he's not entirely sure Caspar is the weird one. How is he to know whether he is misinterpreting a genuinely innocent situation? For all he knows this is how Caspar appreciates people. And yet he has never seen him this way with anyone else. Nothing else has changed between them - the way they talk or spend time together. They are otherwise so sickeningly platonic that instances like this are hard to rationalize as having actually happened. And Caspar still sleeps with girls. Joe could ask about it, should, but inertia has always been his default approach.
Caspar doesn't push him any further, is content with kissing and clutching, and keeping him there, anchored to his chest, when the cadenced lightning lulls him asleep.
He wakes in total darkness, the tea lights petered out and cooling, still atop Caspar. The thunder is slightly less. He has to pee - that's why the waking up. But Caspar is for all intents and purposes hugging him. He pulls away, which doesn't work, and pats his chest instead.
"Caspar," he whispers, even though the point is to wake him. There is literally no stirring, so that if Joe didn't know better he'd guess he was lying atop a corpse. He taps harder. "Caspar wake up."
When he does he only inhales, as if recovering from a deep snore, and tightens his arms.
It presses against Joe's bladder. "Come on, let me up. I need to pee."
"Hold it," Caspar whines. "This is comfortable."
"I don't care, I really need to go."
"You can wait a few hours."
"No," Joe pushes on him, "I can't. Get the hell off."
Caspar clamps stubbornly down on him, so that Joe has to squeeze his thighs together. His eyes are closed, as if he is resolute on falling back asleep this way. "Just stay here, please."
Joe struggles against him, tired and irritated and kind of desperate, and not super keen on being restrained. But the harder he tries to move, the more Caspar cinches him. That alone is enough to make him wet, so feeling embarrassed, and deeply inadequate, he surrenders. "For fuck sake, okay. But if I piss all over you in the night you're cleaning it up tomorrow."
Caspar says nothing, but is probably smug although Joe can't see his face to verify it. He loosens his arms, barely, and rolls them a little so Joe is wedged between him and the backrest.
"Dickhead," Joe says, trying to lie without putting pressure on his bladder. He rests his forehead under Caspar's chin, and does not sleep easily.
Grace of graces, the second time he wakes there is no piss puddle to be accounted for, although if Caspar doesn't let him up soon he thinks there will be. "Caspar," he keens. "Please wake up."
But he sleeps like the dead.
"Get up get up get up, I have to pee." He all but punches Caspar's dumb chest.
Caspar rouses, and catches his hands, and holds them to his chest.
Joe wrestles against Caspar's one, much larger hand, which holds both of his own. "You big idiot, I'm gonna piss all over you get off."
"It's like five in the morning," Caspar grumbles. "Just go to sleep."
"My bladder is literally exploding right now so I'm sorry if I'm a little restless." He shoves, and puts all his weight behind it. "Are you pranking me or something? Because this isn't funny, and unless you want to be covered in urine in a second you'd better let me up."
"You can literally hold it for another hour. Stop being stubborn."
"I'm being human. Why won't you let me go?"
"I like having you close. Just settle down. You can go at like six or something."
Joe quivers, angry, desperate, and entirely frustrated. "You're so weird and controlling." But he doesn't struggle anymore, reigns himself into Caspar's arms, thighs pressing uselessly together. Caspar is tired and complacent. His hands drop a bit to Joe's hips, and one to his thigh, and he pulls at it so he has a knee between Joe's legs.
Joe doesn't really understand. Is it supposed to be sexual? Or affectionate somehow? Or just a more comfortable position. For him it makes things that much harder. His dick swells against Caspar's leg, ballooned with blood and probably some piss. He wants to grab at it and squeeze the tip so that he doesn't leak, but touching your junk is just kind of not a thing you do in the company of friends. He spends the hour clutching handfuls of Caspar's sweater, and pulling at especially painful intervals.
At six, which he knows it is from legitimately watching the clock for sixty minutes, he has to wake Caspar again, who is no less grumpy than the first time.
"You said six," Joe reminds him, trying to be mild.
"I said six or something."
"But I have to go now, what is wrong with you? What is your fixation with putting me in compromising positions?"
Caspar adjusts them, for the third time, so that he is on top of Joe, and kisses him.
Joe turns his head. "Caspar Caspar this is the actual worst idea - we have morning breath and I'm two seconds from wetting myself, please get off."
He can feel Caspar's morning wood pressing into his thigh, and is unsure whether it is intentional. Caspar seems insatiable lately, as if there is nothing Joe can do to appease him. He tries anyway. He kisses back, desperately, holding Caspar's face, hoping that if he is enthusiastic Caspar will be quelled enough to let him go. It seems to work. Caspar is totally responsive, and pulls at Joe with just as much avidity. He kisses, tonguey and demanding, hands groping untowardly up and down Joe's body - his back and sides, and on his thighs. And subtly, he rocks, almost as if rutting. And Joe wonders how the hell he is supposed to be okay with this if all they are is friends, because humping your platonic buddy's leg? Not cool, in literally any facet.
But it has the desired effect. Caspar, probably too worked up to lie there anymore, sits them up so Joe's legs are splayed open on his lap, and kisses him, and pushes him to stand.
If his boxers have the faintest of damp spots before he gets to the bathroom, he is too impatient to notice.