Chapter Text
The cabin was nothing short of perfect.
When Caesar stepped in out of the frigid air of a winter day in Switzerland, he’d fully expected it to be at least a little chilly inside, but lo and behold, the air was perfectly toasty. Not only that, but everything was pristine. Not a speck of dust to be found anywhere. The hardwood floors gleamed as if freshly waxed, and Caesar took care to not track too much snow on it. It was a small, intimate space, perfect for a couple’s retreat or a businessman who had work in the area. Or, Caesar thought as he uncoiled his thick scarf from around his neck, a writer in need of a fresh space and new inspiration.
Dragging his luggage up to the loft where a lavish king sized bed awaited him, Caesar blessed the day his grandfather met Robert E.O. Speedwagon, a man so unfailingly loyal that decades after William Zeppeli’s death, he sought out the rest of his family, leading him to connect with Caesar about two years ago. When Caesar, during a lunch with Speedwagon about a month prior, had mentioned that his editor suggested he needed a new perspective, Speedwagon had eagerly offered up this private cabin he owned in the Swiss country, completely free of charge.
Caesar smiled as he flopped backwards onto the bed, finding it just as plush as expected. Sunlight streamed in through massive windows, and all was silent. It was almost a bit too quiet for Caesar, who was too used to the busy, bustling streets and canals of Venice where he made his home. There was a gaggle of old ladies who took a stroll together every day, chattering away as they did, people with energetic dogs that barked at everything that moved, kids darting up and down the sidewalks and shouting all the while. All right under Caesar’s window.
The quiet was a bit unsettling, but one thing was certain as Caesar peeled off his many, now stifling layers: There was nothing here that could stop him from writing his next bestseller. With that encouraging thought in mind, Caesar burrowed under the downy covers for a well-deserved nap, fully intent on beginning his work in earnest once he woke.
Almost as soon as Caesar closed his eyes, however, it felt like he was snapping them open again, to the alarming sound of the door slamming open. He threw back the covers, every muscle in his body taut and ready for a fight. Speedwagon being the eminent entrepreneur he was, whoever was barging in was no doubt more than just a squatter.
“What the fuck?” came a British-sounding voice from the entryway, sounding perplexed rather than threatening.
Cautiously Caesar approached the edge of the loft to peer down at the front door, where a massive man with an obnoxiously bright green scarf stood staring where Caesar had placed his shoes. Despite his incredible bulk (or was he just that bundled up?) the man didn’t seem like he was on a mission to demand ransom. Indeed, he looked just as confused as he’d sounded. A look at the front door, still open but undamaged, confirmed to Caesar that this man, whoever he was, was not here with ill-intent.
“Excuse me,” Caesar called from atop the loft, still tired and not wanting to trudge all the way downstairs to clear up a small misunderstanding. “But I’m afraid this cabin is already booked.”
The man jumped, dropping the backpack that had been hanging by his side to the ground with a loud thunk! After a brief second of surprise, the man had the audacity to look irritated.
“Already booked? By who?!”
Caesar blinked. Was this guy serious? “By me.”
“No it’s not!” the man insisted, turning to grab his massive suitcase and dragging it further inside so he could kick the door closed. “I have the cabin booked, you’ve got the wrong dates.”
“I do not!”
“Uh, yeah, you do, sorry to say,” the man continued. “Cause this cabin is owned by my uncle and he lent me this cabin for the next couple weeks, so you’re going to have to pack up and leave.”
Now it was Caesar’s turn to be petulant, especially in the face of what was obviously some rich brat. “Oh, sure, your uncle owns the cabin, how convenient. As it happens, the owner of this cabin is a close friend of mine that is letting me use this cabin for the next couple of weeks, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a nephew.”
Much less such an ill-mannered one, Caesar neglected to say as he watched the man tromp across the floor, tracking snow everywhere.
“Pretty sure, are you? What, you got his full family tree or something?”
“Speedwagon never mentioned having a nephew, though I can’t say I’d blame him if he had a nephew like you,” Caesar said venomously, leaning against the railing of the loft to scowl down at this jackass.
“Yeah?! How about you come down here and say it to my face!” the man challenged, already throwing off his hat and coat, revealing that, in fact, much of his bulk was pure muscle and not just winter padding.
Caesar rolled his eyes and went to get his phone. Hopefully Speedwagon was available to clear up this issue, and hopefully it would end in Caesar’s favor. He didn’t envy the idea of catching a train all the way back to Italy when he’d only just arrived.
“Ah, Caesar, wonderful to hear from you!” Speedwagon cheerfully greeted. “How can I help you? It’s not usual for you to call.”
“I’m sorry to bother, but--” Caesar began, only to be cut off by the sound of the other man, spitting mad and tromping up the stairs in search of a fight. Caesar spoke quickly, ready to throw away the phone at a moment’s notice. “Do you remember how you lent me that Swiss cabin for the holidays? Well--”
“If you’re going to talk shit you’d better be ready to back it up!” the man roared as he reached the top of the stairs.
“Oh! Is that Jojo I hear?!” Speedwagon exclaimed.
“You know him?!” Caesar demanded, immediately putting the phone on speaker so as to hopefully stay the other man’s advance.
“Of course, I’ve told you about him before! His grandfather was a great friend of yours,” Speedwagon fondly informed him.
The other man’s eyes widened, and then he shouted at the phone, “Speedwagon, tell this joker that you lent me this cabin for the holidays and that he needs to scram!”
“Jojo, please--”
“I got here first, there’s no way I’m leaving!” Caesar shot back.
“Caesar--”
“I’m not staying here with you!”
“Both of you, if you could just--!”
“Then by all means, leave!”
“You leave!”
“No, you!”
“You!”
“Enough!” Speedwagon shouted as well as he could over the phone, sounding unusually stern. “Both of you, please, calm down and we can figure it out. I’m pulling up my planner right now to see who should stay and who should go.”
Caesar huffed, placing his free hand on his hip while the other man crossed his arms with a deep frown. Paper could be heard shuffling on the other end of the line, but otherwise the silence that had earlier been unfamiliar and slightly unsettling had now become electric and tense. The smallest spark would send them flying at each other, which was a shame because the last thing Caesar wanted to do was to put a dent in the wall with this guy’s head. It was such a nice place, and he wouldn’t want to inconvenience Speedwagon more than he already had.
“Here it is!” Speedwagon declared. “Oh, I see… I see what’s happened…”
“What is it?” the man demanded from where he stood, leaning forward on his toes but apparently not wanting to get any closer to Caesar than was absolutely necessary.
“Well,” Speedwagon began slowly, in a way that told Caesar there was bad news to follow. “It seems that when I originally wrote the note for when Caesar would use the cabin, it was on a sticky note--I must have intended to write it down properly when I had the time, and then forgot.”
“Sticky note means it wasn’t set, so I get the cabin!” the other man triumphantly declared.
“It does not! He obviously knew I was going to be here!”
“Gentlemen, please!” Speedwagon begged, though Caesar would never in a million years consider the other man a gentleman. “Yes, I wrote Jojo’s reservation properly in my planner, but where it’s written doesn’t make it any less valid. The main problem is deciding who gets to stay, because--well--”
“Well?” the obnoxious man demanded when Speedwagon faltered.
“It seems that you’ve both reserved the cabins for almost the exact same dates.”
“What’s ‘almost’?” Caesar asked with rising dread.
“You booked it for one day less, but otherwise, you were both supposed to arrive today, so I’m afraid we can’t decide based on dates alone…”
The one consolation was that the other man faltered slightly, his face falling when it seemed that he might not get his way. While there was no guarantee it would turn out well for Caesar, that, at least, gave him some satisfaction.
Speedwagon sighed deeply over the phone. “Can I ask a favor of you both?”
“Yes,” Caesar answered at once, although he wasn’t sure he was going to like what Speedwagon was going to say. Maybe one of them would spend half the time in the cabin, while the other got the other half of the time? Not ideal, but at least it would give Caesar peace.
“No,” the other man said almost at the same time. Caesar scowled at him.
“Joseph, please,” Speedwagon begged, sounding tired.
The man, Joseph, was still frowning, but softened a little, grumbling, “Fine.”
“Could the two of you share the cabin?”
A long pause befell the entirety of the cabin then as both Caesar and Joseph stared at the phone. Speedwagon wanted them to do what now?
“No way!” Joseph decided with a stamp of his foot. “Absolutely not, there is no way I’m sharing this cabin with this stuck-up, prissy--!”
“Who do you think you are, making assumptions like that?!” Caesar snapped.
“You’ve made plenty of assumptions yourself!”
“Only because you’ve shown me everything I need to know, which is that you’re a spoiled brat who’s going to throw a tantrum if he doesn’t get exactly what he wants!”
“That’s it! You’re leaving if I have to toss you out with my own two hands!” Joseph screeched as he charged at Caesar.
In the midst of Speedwagon’s most sincere pleads, Caesar dropped his phone to the floor and yanked the blanket off the bed to toss it at Joseph, who caught it with splayed arms as it fell over his head. Caesar only intended to push Joseph to the floor, maybe get in a solid punch to his gut in the process, while his vision was blinded, but Joseph kicked out through the blanket. He nearly got Caesar in the groin, but Caesar moved just in time so that the blow landed on his thigh with bruising force.
The kick to his leg made Caesar lose his balance, so that his momentum carried him into Joseph, who threw a wild flurry of punches through the blanket that Caesar had no choice but to answer with jabs of his own. They carried on this way for some time, until they finally heard Speedwagon shouting over the phone that if they didn’t stop at once he’d send his people to drag them both out of the cabin.
“Share it with each other, or don’t use the cabin at all, unless one of you willingly leaves. That is my offer,” Speedwagon told them resolutely.
“Well I’m not leaving,” Joseph said.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no way I can stay here with this guy,” Caesar relented, much as it made his blood boil. “I came here to work, and he’d just get in the way!”
“I understand,” Speedwagon sighed. “But before you leave, may I have a private word with you, Caesar?”
Caesar eyed the phone warily. Joseph sat on the floor, arms crossed with the blanket pooling around his legs. He made no sign of moving. Scoffing, Caesar took his phone and coat (and the key to the cabin, lest Joseph get any ideas), and headed back out into the bright winter without.
“Alright,” Caesar said once he was outside, taking the phone off speaker. “You know I have great respect for you, but I really don’t know what you could possibly say in his defense that would make me willing to share a cabin with him for several weeks.”
“He’s really a much better person than you think,” Speedwagon attempted. “He just has a short temper--not unlike yourself.”
Caesar bristled at that. “I am nothing like him.”
“No, of course not. In any event, I didn’t ask for a private word to try to convince you that Jojo is a good man. I wanted to ask you to stay, as a personal favor to me,” Speedwagon said.
“You said earlier that we could leave willingly,” Caesar reminded him.
“I know, and I can’t force you to stay, but,” Speedwagon faltered. “I’m worried about Joseph. I don’t want him to be alone. I’d come to stay with him for the holidays, but he only decided quite recently that he wanted to go to the cabin, and I can’t make time in my schedule to fly out to Switzerland.”
Caesar twisted his mouth. Speedwagon was making it very hard to refuse. Several spots were still sore with soon-to-be bruises where Joseph had rained his temper down on him, making a tempting argument to leave. If there were separate bedrooms it would be easier to deal with, but it was an open floor plan. The only really private area was the bathroom, and Caesar didn’t want to have to slouch on the toilet for hours at a time just to be able to get some work done.
“Please, Caesar, I promise that if you still find him unbearable within a week I won’t ask you to stay any longer, but if you could just keep him company for a little while…”
“Fine,” Caesar finally said, though he did not envy the prospect of going back in and telling Joseph he was staying after all. “Alright. I’ll do this for you.”
“I’m so very sorry about all of this, Caesar,” Speedwagon apologized. “I had one day hoped to introduce the two of you under much better circumstances, but I really hope you can see at least a part of who Jojo really is. He really is an upstanding young man--”
“Speedwagon, I already said I’d stay, you don’t need to try and convince me anymore,” Caesar said.
“Yes, of course. Thank you, Caesar.”
“You’re welcome.”
After ending the call Caesar found that his suspicions had been correct, and Joseph had endeavored to lock him out of the cabin. Thankfully he hadn’t barricaded the door, but the sight that greeted Caesar when he walked in almost made him dial Speedwagon again to inform him that, no, actually, he couldn’t actually spend another minute with this absolute child of a man.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Caesar shouted when he saw his suitcase flying down from the loft to bounce off the conveniently located couch and burst open as it crashed to the floor, shortly followed by the sweater, hat, and scarf he’d left up in the loft as well.
“Helping you leave!” Joseph called from upstairs.
“You’re doing a shit job of it,” Caesar called as he hurried to his suitcase. Thankfully it didn’t look like the clasps were broken, otherwise he might have had to clobber Joseph over the head with it. “And I changed my mind.”
Joseph poked his head over the railing of the loft. “You changed your mind. About what?”
“I’m staying.”
“The hell you are!”
“And I’ll be staying in the loft.”
“Horseshit!”
“I got here first, and your luggage is still down here,” Caesar argued. When Joseph continued to kick up a fuss, Caesar added, “I’ll gladly beat your ass again for it.”
Joseph made a face at that, muttering under his breath. Caesar, meanwhile, closed his suitcase, gathered up his things, and went upstairs, where Joseph still seemed to be contemplating Caesar’s threat. He scowled when Caesar resolutely set his suitcase atop the bed, but made no move to toss it down again.
“What? You scared of a good, honest fistfight all of a sudden?” Caesar mocked.
“Hardly,” Joseph snorted. “But I actually want to stay here, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Speedwagon sent someone along to make sure we’re not throttling each other.”
Unfortunately, he had a point.
“I’m still not sleeping on the couch,” Caesar insisted.
“Right, right,” Joseph conceded. “How about we play for it?”
Caesar raised an eyebrow. “Play for it?”
“A game of cards. You do know how to play, right?”
“Of course I know how to play card games,” Caesar snapped. “And I’m not going to play you for something that I claimed first.”
“Come on, you know it’s not going to be as easy as that. We’ve known each other for all of, what? Half an hour? And we’ve fought the entire time. At least this way we could settle it without drawing blood,” Joseph reasoned, which made Caesar suspicious.
“So you’re saying if you lost, you’d let it be?” Caesar asked.
Joseph raised a hand as if swearing an oath. “You got it.”
That made it all the more suspicious, but, after all, Speedwagon had been so insistent that Joseph was a better person than he seemed. Maybe this would be a way to dig a little deeper. The only drawback would be that it would take away from precious working time. Caesar didn’t want to waste a minute, but he'd get even less work done if Joseph was making his life a living hell every opportunity he got.
“Fine,” Caesar said curtly. “One game.”
Joseph grinned and flew down the stairs three at a time to dig a pack of cards out of his massive, stuffed-to-the-brim suitcase. Caesar followed slowly, watching to ensure that Joseph didn’t tamper with the deck before they sat down to play. Sure, Caesar was planning on cheating, because there was no way he was going to spend even a single week destroying his back by sleeping on a couch, but if Joseph was going to cheat he wanted to know about it right off.
“No cheating,” Joseph said as he sat down at the quaint wooden table and began to shuffle the deck.
Caesar narrowed his eyes at the rapid movement of Joseph’s hands. “Speak for yourself.”
“What do you mean?” Joseph asked, an uncanny picture of innocence.
Caesar’s hand shot out and grabbed Joseph’s wrist, where he felt the undeniable stiffness of cards tucked expertly under the sleeve. If he hadn’t been watching so intently, Caesar would have surely missed it, such was the deftness of Joseph’s hands. With his free hand he reached into Joseph’s sleeve and pulled out several choice cards that no doubt would have turned the game in Joseph’s favor.
“Guess that’s an automatic forfeit,” Caesar decided.
“We didn’t even start!” Joseph objected.
“And you couldn’t even get to the beginning of the game without being caught. Pathetic.”
“Come on! I won’t cheat this time!”
With a pointed glare, Caesar released Joseph’s wrist and sat back in his seat. “I won’t be so forgiving a second time.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Joseph said airily, shuffling and dealing the cards much more slowly than before.
Unfortunately, cheating wasn’t the only problem they encountered. No matter what game they tried, there was always some house rule that one played by that the other had never heard of, declared was made up, and decided was just as bad as cheating. Twice they nearly reached over the table to strangle each other, only barely managing to restrain themselves. It wasn’t until Caesar noticed that everything had grown dark that he realized how long they’d been trying and failing to play a civil game of cards.
“Okay, how about a simple game of Go Fish,” Joseph was suggesting as he shuffled the deck again. “It’s so simple, there’s no way we could play differently--”
“Absolutely not, we’ve been going in circles for hours. Let’s just flip for it,” Caesar said wearily.
Joseph paused, one half of the deck in each hand, giving the idea some thought. Finally, he shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”
From his pocket Caesar dug out a coin and flipped it high into the air without delay.
“Give me head!” Joseph cried as the coin twirled on the way down.
How crass, Caesar thought, the coin dropping neatly into his palm. With an air of finality, Caesar slammed the coin against the table in between them so that there could be no denying the outcome. He removed his hand, heart pounding, realizing that he really had just left it up to chance, and there was a very good chance that he was going to end up on the couch for the next few days. Together they peered at the side that was facing up.
“Son of a bitch!” Joseph shouted.
Caesar swiped the coin and dropped it back onto the couch with a triumphant smirk. Finally, the issue was resolved.
“Have a nice night on the couch,” Caesar said as he sauntered back up the stairs to where the most luxurious bed he had ever slept in awaited.
“You know what? I will--!” Joseph stopped short of whatever taunt he was about to make. “By the way, what’s your name?”
Feeling a little petulant himself, Caesar almost didn’t answer, but then considered the childish nicknames Joseph might come up with in place of a proper name. With a scoff, he answered, “Caesar Zeppeli. Good night.”
Joseph blinked as if surprised--what, was he really so shocked that Caesar didn’t feel inclined to have a cozy fireside chat after the day he’d just had? But then he grinned, a huge, boyish grin that might have been charming were it not for his personality.
“Right then, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite!” Joseph said with a cheeky two-finger salute.
Without another moment of hesitation Caesar hurried upstairs and threw himself into the bed. Normally he’d wind down, brush his teeth, change into pajamas, but the day had left him far too exhausted. He just wanted to sleep and hope that when he woke up, it would turn out to have been a bad dream. If that were the case, Caesar thought to himself, maybe he could use it as a springboard for a new novel. Who wouldn’t love two perfect strangers that hated each other at first sight, who had no choice but to share a small, intimate space?
The real trick would be getting them to fall in love.
The first night, however, was a constant reminder that this was no mere dream. Just as Caesar was about to drift off into a peaceful slumber, he heard the sound of something heavy being moved downstairs. Scowling, Caesar got up and looked down into the living room, where Joseph had tossed couch cushions haphazardly around the floor to make way for a pullout bed. With a small huff, Caesar returned to bed, grateful that at least it meant Joseph would be quiet for a while.
Apparently, that had been too much to hope for. Once Caesar had settled down a second time, having found the perfect, most comfortable spot on the bed, the sound of obnoxious laughter floated up into the loft. This time Caesar didn’t even bother leaving the bed.
“Hey! Keep it down!” Caesar shouted.
No response.
Anger overtaking fatigue once more, Caesar threw back the covers and grabbed an extra pillow from the closet. Looking down, he saw Joseph cozied up with a book, the title of which was facing away from him. No matter, it was probably something obscene anyways. He was wearing headphones--at least he wasn’t flat out ignoring Caesar. All the same Caesar launched the spare pillow at Joseph, hitting him square in the face and causing him to drop the book.
“What the hell?!” Joseph screeched. “I wasn’t even doing anything!”
“You’re being noisy!”
“I was not!”
With this Joseph hurled the pillow back up at Caesar, who caught it with his hands only to get clobbered by a much heavier couch cushion seconds later.
“You were too!” Caesar retorted, sending both the pillow and the cushion back at Joseph, who rolled out of the way before throwing two more couch cushions at Caesar.
“So get some earplugs, princess!”
The ensuing pillow war, which happened to be the least sexy one Caesar had ever experienced, lasted a whole half hour, only when they were simply too worn down to continue. Caesar flopped back onto the bed, not even bothering to climb under the covers, breathing hard. Sleep quickly crawled into the fringes of his consciousness, and he gladly welcomed it, relishing in the peace.
That was, until a third interruption came in the form of Joseph’s horrendously and comically loud snoring. By then though, Caesar didn’t even have the energy to be irritated. He merely gathered what pillows and cushions had remained up in the loft and buried himself under them. Even then Joseph’s snores were deafening, but such was the downside of an open floor plan. Caesar could only wait until he was so tired that nothing could stop him from sleeping. Not even a rude, annoying, spoiled brat that snored like a damn elephant.
When Caesar awoke the next morning and found that the nightmare was, in fact, real, he did everything in his power to avoid Joseph while at the same time not giving the illusion that Joseph had somehow won--he hadn’t. As such, Caesar remained upstairs as much as possible, hunched over the tiny desk the space allowed and staring at the blank screen of his laptop for hours at a time. Even then Joseph managed to be a pain in the ass.
Part of that was the fact that there was only one bathroom in the cabin. During his shower, Caesar had been rudely interrupted by Joseph pounding furiously on the door and yelling about how badly he needed to take a shit. For that Caesar took his sweet time, until the water suddenly went ice cold moments later. Apparently, Joseph had found the water heater, and was pretty handy. Freezing cold and spitting mad, Caesar emerged from the shower moments later and whipped at Joseph with his wet towel, chasing him around the confines of the cabin until Joseph took refuge in the bathroom.
Caesar considered turning off the hot water when he heard Joseph turn on the shower, but decided that he’d wasted enough time on Joseph’s foolishness. He had work to do. He’d wanted to take advantage of the temporary peace he would have, but as soon as he’d opened his laptop, Joseph was already lumbering out of the shower, having been so quick that Caesar had to wonder if he’d actually washed himself.
There were more nuisances throughout the day. It turned out Joseph was shit at cooking, and set off the fire alarm just trying to cook his breakfast, singing or whistling obnoxiously all the while. After realizing that his eggs and sausages were burnt beyond saving, he tossed the dishes in the sink with a noisy clatter and ordered take out. Even a pair of headphones and some loud music couldn’t drown out how annoying Joseph was being. It was like he was doing it on purpose!
As such, when Caesar made it to the end of the day with not even a single word written, he blamed it on Joseph and took it as further reason to dislike the man. The next couple days were much of the same. Noisy Joseph. Unproductive Caesar. A general, unspoken agreement to avoid each other as much as possible, despite the fact that the size of the cabin made that next to impossible.
It wasn’t until four days after arriving that Caesar got the chance he’d been waiting for. Joseph traipsed out of the cabin around noon, presumably to go to the town that was about half an hour away. Relishing in the quiet he’d been seeking all along, Caesar went downstairs with his laptop, eager to finally, finally put some words on paper (in a manner of speaking).
At the quaint table, his laptop displayed a blank page full of potential. Caesar sat straight, hands poised over the keys. There were many paths to take in making a story. A blank page, in spite of its appearance, was brimful with infinite worlds, people, and the truths they carried.
Ten minutes later, Caesar was slouched over his laptop, head leaning on one hand while the other tapped idly at the wooden surface of the table. The page of possibility was still blank. A warm-up, he decided. He just needed a warm-up. Setting his hands against the keyboard again, Caesar prepared to let words flow without restraint.
“To tell a story is to tell of love, in some way--”
Delete.
“What does it mean to love someone--”
Delete.
“Science tells us of many constants, but rarely does it speak of the constant of love--”
Delete.
Caesar repeated this process for twenty minutes before putting his face in his hands. This, he knew, called for drastic measures. Namely, his most romantic playlist that never failed to spark some sense of artfulness, some vision of beauty within him. With Joseph absent, Caesar didn’t bother with headphones, instead hooking up a speaker and blasting the music until it filled every corner of the cozy space.
As all manner of love songs flowed through one ear and out the other, Caesar paced, waiting for that inevitable spark that would get things going, that would make him invincible even against the rudest and most obnoxious of people. There were songs about physical passion, of one night stands that bloomed into more. So too were there songs of a gentler love, of a pining hidden by a veneer of politeness demanded by society. Songs of jubilance in romance, songs of heartbreak, songs of yearning.
Eventually Caesar sat back down at his laptop, certain that something had caught in his brain and he was ready to get to writing. An ambitious young man, he decided, who was an incessant flirt, but valued the sanctity of real love, surprising another man that unwittingly falls for him. But how, he wondered, to start? Whose perspective did he tell this story from? And why? Whose perspective had more weight, a more significant truth to tell?
All these questions and more had Caesar running in circles in his mind until his screen timed out, forcing him to confront his own reflection--and someone else’s as well.
“Can I help you?!” he demanded, startled as he was by the fact that he hadn’t heard Joseph return.
Joseph, who had undoubtedly been staring directly at Caesar, at least had the decency to look a little abashed, but only for a moment. He tucked his hands in his pockets and made a face.
“You want to turn off this music? Or at least turn it down?”
Caesar didn’t see why he should, but it was awfully loud. He turned it down. Joseph didn’t budge. “What?”
“What are you even doing?” Joseph asked.
“Trying to work,” Caesar said curtly. “Which I’d be doing if you weren’t being so obnoxious all the time.”
“Me?! I was gone for three hours and you want to blame me for you not getting your work done?!”
“I was about to get something started when you decided you needed to hover behind me like a lost dog!”
“Of course, it’s all my fault, it has nothing to do with the fact that you’ve obviously got an oak tree so far up your ass it’s crushing your brains and giving you writer’s block!”
Caesar stood so abruptly that the chair he’d been sitting in toppled over. Joseph took a step back, but squared his shoulders and balled his fists, ready for another fight.
“What the hell do you know?!”
“I mean, if you can just know that I’m a spoiled, pampered rich boy, then I can know just as well that you’re a washed out writer that can’t seem to fathom the fact that the problem isn’t where he is or who he’s around, but himself,” Joseph retorted with a self-satisfied look that made Caesar want to punch him that much more.
Rather than do that, however, Caesar turned to snap his laptop shut and tucked it neatly under his arm. By the time he got upstairs, he was already on his phone looking for the next train out. He’d make it up to Speedwagon somehow, but he was clearly blinded by affection if he thought Joseph was somehow, someway, a decent person. He was a jackass through and through. Not even in one of his novels could Caesar fathom that there was anything more to such a man.
“You won’t be finding any trains going out any time soon,” Joseph called up to the loft.
Caesar scowled down from over the railing.
“Blizzard’s rolling in,” Joseph continued. “Figured you were too caught up with your writerly passions to notice, but a shitton of snow has fallen already and it’s not likely to stop anytime soon.”
Caesar didn’t think it was possible that he hadn’t noticed something as significant as that, but indeed, when he whirled towards the massive windows that seemed to make up one entire wall of the cabin, snow was falling so copiously that none of the idyllic scenery was visible beyond. It was a total white-out, and Caesar had been blind to it.
Worse still was when he looked back downstairs and saw groceries on the kitchen counter, a pile of wood by the fireplace. The most immature person Caesar had ever had the displeasure of meeting, and he was far more prepared than Caesar himself. Retreating away from the edge of the loft, Caesar desperately checked the trains anyways. All cancelled. So too were any flights he might have taken out of desperation. Driving was out of the question.
With Joseph’s smug words still ringing in his head, however, Caesar was not yet prepared to give up. He dialed up Speedwagon, hoping beyond all hope that the old man would have some rich man’s way of defying nature itself to get him the hell out of here. The line rang. And rang. And rang and rang and rang.
It went to voicemail.
Caesar tried again.
The line was busy.
He tried a third time.
Voicemail again.
Over and over until Caesar caught sight of the storm outside again, fat flakes falling against the window and piling on the ground so rapidly in such high mounds that eventually Caesar had to accept the fact that he was well and truly stuck. He was stuck in a double-booked cabin with perhaps the worst person imaginable to be stuck with. Yes, that took into account the fact that Joseph was actually prepared for the blizzard, thank you very much. No amount of preparedness would stop Caesar from going stir crazy and possibly beating Speedwagon’s nephew to a pulp. And, Caesar considered, with the blizzard effectively blocking anyone from getting to them, there would be no way for Speedwagon to stop them this time.
“Don’t you worry Caesarino,” Joseph said loudly as he rifled through the groceries he’d gotten. “I’ll take good care of you while we’re stuck here!”
Caesar threw a pillow down from the loft, hitting Joseph squarely in the back of his head. Asshole.
Somehow, knowing he was truly trapped made everything worse. Joseph would do something as mundane as opening a snack, something like a bag of chips, and he didn’t even have to go out of his way to be annoying about it for Caesar to start grinding his teeth. Every little shuffle of movement, every prolonged sigh, every soft hum grated on Caesar’s nerves so harshly that he simply gave up on writing for the day. Unfortunately, he hadn’t brought anything else to do, having not planned on doing much else.
“Hey,” he called down to Joseph, who was watching something on his phone. “What was that book you were reading the other day?”
Joseph looked up at him wide-eyed, as if caught by surprise. “Why?”
“I want to borrow it.”
“I don’t know if you’d like it,” Joseph said with a shrug.
Caesar scoffed. “It’s not about liking it, it’s about having something to do. Let me borrow it for the night and you’ll have it back by morning.”
“Sounds like someone didn’t come prepared to be snowed in.”
“Correction: I didn’t come prepared to be snowed in with a complete jackass.”
“Not my problem.”
“Just let me borrow the book, or another one, if you brought more.”
“No way.”
Caesar slouched against the railing, not quite ready to give up when an idea struck him. “Let’s play cards.”
“What, to see if you can borrow my book?”
“Sure.”
“You must be really desperate if you want to get your ass beat again--”
“Neither of us actually won.”
“I would’ve if you knew how to play right.”
“So prove it.”
Joseph didn’t move from his spot on the couch, face turned away from Caesar as he contemplated the challenge. Caesar smirked.
“Unless you’re too much of a coward to try.”
Without delay Joseph sprang up from the couch and dug out his deck from his belongings.
“You are so going down!” Joseph declared as he raised the cards aloft.
Bingo.
The game they settled on was so stupidly simple it was hard to have much of a dispute over the rules, although there was a bit of a spat over the value of the ace. Once that was settled (by another coin toss, which decided it would have the highest value of all the cards), and the deck divided in two between them, the game commenced. Each player slapped down the top card of their half of the deck. Whoever had the higher value card took both cards and added it to his half of the deck. The player who ended up with the entire deck in hand won.
It relied more on chance than Caesar would have liked, but he’d won the coin toss. Perhaps fortune would favor him again today.
The first few moments of the game were silent, focused only on slapping down cards as quickly as possible. Eventually though, Joseph couldn’t help but open his mouth.
“So,” he started, his eyes still on the game before him. “Why come here to work? Can’t you work just as well in Italy?”
“None of your business,” Caesar said curtly as Joseph claimed several rounds in a row.
“I mean, it kind of is,” Joseph retorted. “If it weren’t for your writer’s block I’d have this place all to myself.”
“I don’t have writer’s block,” Caesar snapped.
“Sure you don’t.”
“Here’s a question,” Caesar began, watching with disdain as Joseph’s half of the deck continued to grow. “I imagine you could’ve gone anywhere in the world and gotten yourself a private cabin easy. Why are you so insistent on being here?”
Joseph scrunched his nose as Caesar started winning the rounds. “None of your business. And don’t say it is, cause it isn’t.”
“Yet my business is yours?”
“Only cause you make it so damn obvious.”
“Whatever,” Caesar scoffed with a roll of his eyes. His half of the deck was growing quite hefty in his hand. “If you’re so certain that I’ve got writer’s block, would it kill you to give me peace enough to work through it?”
“As far as I’m concerned, the last thing you need for a writer’s block is more writing,” Joseph stated as he started to take the lead again.
“Are you some kind of professional?”
“If you’re asking if I’ve published anything, no.”
“Then what the hell do you--”
“More than you’d think, obviously.”
They slapped down cards simultaneously, revealing a tie for this round. Another round commenced atop the last. It was another tie. A third and fourth tie had Caesar growing suspicious, but when he put down an ace and claimed all the cards, he couldn’t bring himself to care whether it was coincidence or a scheme of Joseph’s gone wrong. Either way, Joseph didn’t look happy about it in the slightest.
“So then what would you recommend, supposing I actually was experiencing writer’s block?” Caesar asked smugly.
“Living,” Joseph said simply, his scowl deepening with every round he lost. “Having more experiences to draw on so that your writing feels fuller--like, if you want to write more romances, you could try falling in love.”
“Yeah, cause falling in love is something you can do just like--” Caesar stopped short, his hand pausing over his deck. “I never told you I write romance novels.”
“You didn’t have to,” Joseph said quickly. “Come on, the game isn’t done yet.”
“In fact, I don’t think I ever mentioned anything about being a writer at all,” Caesar continued, his suspicions rising exponentially.
“Well, obviously I was right, so what does it matter?” Joseph asked as he looked askance.
Caesar glanced at where Joseph’s suitcase was lying, open and overflowing, the book lying face down in the midst of the mess like a precious egg in a nest. He looked back at Joseph, who was staring him down intensely now. A long, tense moment ensued. Slowly, Caesar put down a card, as if to continue playing the game. Joseph reached to claim his victory for this round, taking his time sliding the cards towards him, his eyes on Caesar all the while.
It was hard to say who moved first, but move they both did, in such a flurry that the poor, abused chairs were knocked over without care. Joseph slammed into Caesar’s side before the latter could even make it two steps towards the book. They tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs.
“You didn’t win so you don’t get the book!” Joseph shouted, completely and unnecessarily right in Caesar’s ear.
“Get off!”
“No!”
“Then tell me what the book is!”
“No, no, no!”
Left with no other alternative, Caesar began pinching mercilessly wherever he could reach. There was the delicate skin all up and down his arms, foolishly left exposed with short sleeves. Joseph yelped and scrambled to pin Caesar down, only to keep jumping anytime Caesar reached to pinch him. In the kerfuffle, Joseph’s shirt rode up, giving Caesar more flesh to attack.
“Ow, ow! Quit it!” Joseph shrieked.
“Then let me go!”
Of course, Joseph refused, making it all the more imperative that Caesar get that book, not to read it, no. That stopped being the point long ago. No, this was some much needed, revenge-fuelled stress relief. After all, Caesar could have very well just read something on his laptop, but what was the point of that if he likely would have just as much peace as when he was trying to write?
Joseph threw his entire body weight onto Caesar, and though he was strong enough, Caesar had a hard time pushing him off. This called for especially drastic measures. Quickly feeling through the thin fabric of the t-shirt, Caesar found a nipple, pinched and twisted hard. Joseph all but screamed and flew off of Caesar, giving him just the chance he needed to get on his feet again and sprint to the book.
In spite of the brutal attack from Caesar, Joseph was up and hot on his heels, tackling him from behind just as he got within arm’s reach of the book and flinging him face down into Joseph’s clothes. Caesar practically choked. The smell was nothing short of rancid.
“What the fuck, did you even do your laundry before coming here?!”
“What about it?!”
Trying his best not to inhale too much of the smell, Caesar fished the book out from under him, holding it up in front of him like a trophy while Joseph tried ever desperately to swat it out of his grasp. When Caesar saw the cover properly, seeing not only a familiar title but a familiar name as well, there was no helping the grin that split across his face.
“Don’t,” Joseph warned from behind Caesar, having stopped his grabbing now that it was too late.
“Well, well, well,” Caesar began triumphantly. “It looks like we have here a very well-used copy--”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Joseph screeched, resuming his grabbing as if that would make Caesar stop.
“--of Hearts of Glass and Stone --”
“I swear you’d better stop now or I’ll--I’ll--!”
“--the debut novel of the one and only--!”
Caesar was cut off abruptly as Joseph shoved his face down into the horrid-smelling laundry. Clutching the book tight in hand, Caesar kicked out wildly behind him, eventually connecting with something that made Joseph let go so that Caesar could get up and away from the suitcase that was certainly festering with something. He stood, holding the book in hand and cackling at the gaudy colors, the cracked spine, the wrinkled corners.
“You’re a fan,” Caesar taunted, waving the book at Joseph, who was still curled up on the floor reeling with the pain of Caesar’s blow. Without warning, Caesar’s glee soured, and he hurled the book at Joseph. “You’re a fan, and you were going to kick my ass the instant you saw me?! Where the hell is your respect?!”
“I didn’t know it was you at first!” Joseph wheezed. “Not to mention you were being a huge prick!”
“You were rude first!”
“Even if I had known it was you, what did you want me to do, suck your dick?!” Joseph demanded as he slowly got back up on his feet, picking up the book as he did.
“No, but--!”
“But nothing,” Joseph said. “Just because I like your writing doesn’t mean I have to like you. And anyways, I don’t know if I can be counted as a fan if this is the only one of your books that I actually like.”
Whatever Caesar had been planning on saying next, it caught in his throat. Instead, he asked, “That’s--why is my first book the only one you like?”
“I don’t owe you squat” Joseph replied, gesturing with the book.
“Seriously, I want to know,” Caesar prodded. “That’s probably my least successful work--”
“Only cause the publishing company got shut down shortly after they picked you up,” Joseph added.
“Well, yes,” Caesar granted haltingly. “That was part of it, but there’s no denying that it’s not on the same level as my more recent works.”
“More like your more recent works aren’t on the same level on this one.”
“And why’s that?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Yes, that’s why I’m asking.”
“Could it be,” Joseph started with a raised eyebrow that implied impending fuckery. “That you actually are in the midst of a writer’s block, and you want to know so that you can go back and try to replicate what worked?”
Caesar frowned. “You know what, forget it.”
“I’m right.”
“Figures you’d be into second-rate stories,” Caesar said as he stalked back up to the loft, resigning himself to an early night.
As he was marching up the stairs, however, he heard Joseph say, so quietly that Caesar almost missed it, “Honesty isn’t second-rate.”
Caesar almost stopped to ask what on earth that meant, but decided that he’d had enough of Joseph for the day, even as curious as he was turning out to be. Besides, Joseph wasn’t a professional--was he? Not that Caesar wanted to know more about Joseph, but he was just a reader with tastes. Tastes, Caesar thought as he slipped into bed, that surprisingly included one of Caesar’s books. Sue him for judging a book by the cover, but he never would’ve thought that Joseph had romantic tastes of any sort.
Turning over in bed, Caesar decided that while it was surprising, it didn’t mean all that much. It was his first book that Joseph liked, after all, and that was all he needed to know about his so-called tastes. Unrefined and impossibly idealistic.
With that, the matter was settled. Caesar closed his eyes, ready to sleep for the night. Only sleep didn’t come. Instead his brain kept repeating, over and over, “Honesty isn’t second-rate,” in that uncharacteristically soft tone Joseph had spoken with. It whirled in his head ceaselessly, a never ending waltz of one. His first book was… honest? What an utterly bizarre thing to say about a book!
Yet try as he might, Caesar could not set the thought aside. He tossed and turned and kicked and thrashed, but no amount of fidgeting could make this luxurious bed feel comfortable anymore. Eventually he sat up with a huff and grabbed his laptop, opening it right there on the bed when normally he was very strict about not working in bed. But this wasn’t work, he reasoned to himself as he dug through his files for the manuscript of that first book. This was simply an investigation to set his mind at ease.
The harder the heart, the worse it breaks, Caesar read, cringing at such a straightforward and explanatory opening. Still, he had a curiosity that needed sating, so he read on. A stone heart is fixed and immovable until someone else finds the miniscule cracks, drives a wedge in, and then takes a hammer to shatter it to pieces. Certainly a glass heart breaks easy, but glass has fire, a fire that ensures the pieces can be melted down and reformed into something just as, if not more beautiful than before…
Caesar had intended to quickly glance at a few parts of this fairy-tale fantasy (for that was indeed what it was) in order to see what it was that Joseph saw in it, but something about the long-winded sentences, the way he wrote as if he had to get this story out as quickly as possible--it drew him in. He read the entire thing from start to finish, and so wasn’t surprised when he looked at the time and found it was four in the morning.
Unfortunately, it didn’t completely clarify what Joseph had meant. The Caesar that had written this book had been younger, and earnest, for sure, but his stories now weren’t any less honest just because he’d changed as a person and a storyteller. He told his stories just the way he wanted--for the most part.
Joseph was snoring again, although not as loudly as he had been. An outdoor light was shining over the smooth, downy cover of snow that had fallen over the hills around them, and revealed that this blizzard wasn’t quite done yet. For the first time in the entire week, the cabin had the sense of peace that Caesar had been desperately craving all week. It was in that moment, watching the snow fall, listening to the sounds of Joseph sleep, that inspiration struck, and struck hard.
Without delay, without question, Caesar opened a blank document and began to type.
Once there was a young woman as gentle and peaceful as the falling snow, for indeed she was the patron of such. Because of this, the time that she walked the earth was limited, and she melted away just as easily as the snow she brought when the warm breath of spring tickled her cheeks. Every return was a new beginning for her, with no memory of the previous snows, of the previous lives, of the previous loves. Yet every year, one human woman, growing older with every passing season, waited eagerly for the first snow nonetheless…
It was the inspiration and motivation Caesar had been craving and searching for in coming here in the first place. His fingers hardly stopped moving, even when he made typos or contradicted himself. All that mattered was getting the ideas down, like throwing a shapeless lump of clay onto the table before he could sculpt it into something magnificent. If he could at least have something to work with, he’d be satisfied.
Caesar hardly noticed the passage of time. It hardly brightened outside, with the blizzard thick in the skies. The wind picked up enough to rattle the windows. The temperature began to drop. Joseph woke up. None of these were enough to get Caesar to stop now that he’d started.
Fatigue, however, was more than enough, and after several hours of hard work (and the fact that his laptop battery was almost dead) Caesar finally set aside his laptop and flopped back against the pillows, sinking into a deep sleep before he could even think about whether what he wrote was actually any good or not.
When he next awoke, groggy and bleary-eyed, everything was dark and utterly freezing. He curled into a tight ball under the thick comforter, but the cold had already sunk deep into his inert bones. How had it gotten this cold? Caesar reluctantly crawled out of bed, thinking that Joseph had left and turned off the thermostat beforehand just to spite him. A particularly fearsome lash of wind against the windows reminded Caesar that no one was going anywhere. So then, what was the problem?
It was then, as he was pulling on a second layer of socks to protect against the iciness of the hardwood flooring that Caesar noticed a soft glow coming from downstairs. Poking his head over the railing, he saw a fire in the fireplace and just a few feet away from it was Joseph’s stark, shadowy figure sitting at an angle so he could properly read his book. Caesar’s book, he remembered with a slightly more genuine smile.
“I can’t imagine it’s very warm up there,” Joseph called up, startling Caesar a bit. “Power went out a few hours ago. You should come down--unless you’re so delicate that you’ll melt if you get too close to the fire?”
Caesar shot him an acid look and retreated away from the edge of the loft. The last thing he wanted was to put himself within close proximity of Joseph (by choice--the kerfuffle of the other day didn’t count), but the loft was nothing short of a wintry tundra. Even pulling on layer after layer of warm clothing didn’t do much to stave off the cold, and he still wanted to build off of what he had going in terms of work.
Only when he opened his laptop, intending to endure the cold for as long as possible, he found, to his horror, that he’d forgotten to plug it in. The battery was completely drained. He thanked whatever universal power that put auto-save into existence, but then stood pondering awhile as to what to do next. He had a notebook and pen specifically for occasions like this, but there were two issues with that.
Firstly, there was no continuing directly from where he left off. This could also work to his advantage, because he was just putting down material to work with later. If he could work with it at all, anyways. But that still left the second issue.
If he was writing in his notebook, he’d need light, and the only source of light in the entire cabin was just a few feet away from Joseph.
“I mean, if you want to freeze that’s fine by me, but I figured you’d be able to work better if you’re comfortable,” Joseph added, as if sensing Caesar’s hesitance.
Caesar scowled, though Joseph couldn’t see him, and after another moment of considering in the cold, he grabbed his notebook, pulled the comforter from the bed, threw it over his shoulders and proceeded downstairs like the king of coziness.
“Man I was wondering when you were going to wake up,” Joseph remarked when Caesar settled himself on the farthest end of the couch. “I was getting so bored, I was about to wake you up myself.”
Caesar frowned at him. “I’m not your entertainment.”
“Your published book begs to differ.”
“What, you want me to tell you a story?”
“Sure!”
“No.”
“Aw, come on!” Joseph whined. “Just one little story?”
“I’m a writer, I don’t do oral storytelling,” Caesar said, flipping through his notebook and skimming over entries that were months old with months between.
“You don’t do oral? Your dates must be so disappointed.”
“At least I get dates.”
“What do you know?!” Joseph squawked. “You probably--!”
“My dating life aside, I’d like to work, and I can’t do that with you yapping incessantly in my ear,” Caesar abruptly interrupted. “It was your suggestion that I come down here to work in the first place, remember.”
Joseph slouched in his corner of the couch as he crossed his arms and pouted, sinking into the veritable nest of blankets he’d made for himself. Caesar could understand being bored during a power outage, but had Joseph really not brought anything to entertain himself besides a single book?
“Why don’t you read my book if you’re so bored?” Caesar suggested with a wry smile.
Joseph hummed. “I’ve already read it a million times.”
“So read it again, if you think it’s so good.”
“Cause I want something new.”
“Not my fault you couldn’t be bothered to pick up any of my other works,” Caesar said as he turned to a blank page in his notebook and wrote in the date--just a few days before Christmas.
“The others aren’t worth reading.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re telling me you think everything else you’ve written is better than your first book?” Joseph demanded.
Caesar briefly considered the fact that he’d stayed up all night reading the manuscript of his first book. “What do you think makes it so good, anyways?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, according to you, I don’t know shit.”
“Fine! Forget I asked then!”
“Fine with me.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
With a huff, Caesar put his pen to the paper and began writing, but not of the fleeting snow maiden and the human lover that waited to love her anew every year, no. Instead he took up a new line of inspiration that had suddenly struck him as he’d been bickering with Joseph.
There was once a man who burned like fire, consuming everything in his path. Certainly he might have fallen victim to the tragic curse of never feeling a lover’s touch if he had fallen for a human, but in fact he took for a lover another man of fire. Their love was such that they could be seen burning for miles around--
“Oh, so you did get over your writer’s block!” Joseph exclaimed, crawling across the couch towards Caesar to rudely peek at the notebook. “What are you writing?!”
“Butt out!” Caesar exclaimed as he held Joseph back with a foot and held his notebook well out of reach.
“This is payback for finding out what book I was reading!”
“It was lying out in the open, I would’ve found out sooner or later!”
“Just let me read, come on!”
“No!”
“Then tell me a story!”
“No!”
“Just one?”
“How many times--!”
“Just a little one!”
“I said--!”
“A little itty-bitty story!”
“For the last time--!”
“Please?”
Caesar paused. For some reason, Joseph having manners and using them made an impression. The pitiful attempt at puppy eyes detracted from that, but it got Caesar’s attention all the same. That didn’t mean he was going to give in though, especially as Joseph gained a hopeful gleam in his eyes.
“Definitely not. Now get off me,” Caesar grunted with a forceful shove against Joseph’s chest.
Joseph flopped back to his end of the couch looking utterly dejected. Caesar paid him no heed and turned back to what he’d been writing. He tapped the end of his pen against the paper, now a bit agitated thanks to the interruption. Sometimes a flow was hard to get back into once stopped. Sure he had an idea and he thought it was interesting and unique, but what was the conflict? These men of fire, they could love each other without restraint, so it wasn’t an issue of wanting to love each other but being afraid to do so, but rather…
“Well,” Joseph declared suddenly. “I guess it’s up to me then.”
Caesar slapped his pen against his notebook. “What, exactly, is up to you?”
“Telling a story.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“What, afraid of the legal ramifications that will come from hearing my brilliant story and wanting to use it for your next novel?” Joseph mocked.
“No, it’s because I want to work on the ideas I already have, which you keep interrupting,” Caesar said crossly.
“What are the ideas?”
“Fine, you want to know so bad? I’ve decided to change genres. My next book will be a tragedy about a writer whose career fails because one unfortunate winter he got stuck in a cabin with the most annoying guy ever,” Caesar told him.
“I don’t think that would sell very well,” Joseph replied airily.
“No shit.”
“Anyways,” Joseph went on. “I think I could do a much better job of telling a story than you just did.”
“Yeah, right.”
Joseph cleared his throat dramatically, sitting up straight as if in preparation of a grand oration. He paused, suddenly thoughtful and tapping his chin. He looked up at Caesar. “What sort of story should I tell?”
“None.”
“I’m going to tell a story whether you want or not,” Joseph threatened. “Best choose before I do.”
Caesar rolled his eyes. “Fine, romance.”
“Oh, Mister Big Shot issuing a challenge, is he?”
“I’m really not.”
“Just you watch, I’ll tell such a great romance that you’ll be half in love with me by the time I’m done.”
“I promise I won’t be.”
Joseph cleared his throat again, with far more pomp and emphasis this time. “Once upon a time, in a kingdom far from here--”
“What a lame start.”
“Hey, how about you let me tell the story or else tell one of your own.”
Caesar huffed. There was really no escaping this, was there?
“Ahem, as I was saying,” Joseph resumed with a pointed look. “There was a kingdom, way far away from here, a super long time ago, and… of course there was a beautiful princess--”
Of course, Caesar thought.
“And she… uh, well she… well, obviously she was so super hot that everyone wanted to marry her, right? She had a long line of suitors that went out the castle door every single day, and one after another she turned them all down flat--”
At that, Caesar couldn’t help but snort. “What kind of a process is that?”
“An efficient one,” Joseph retorted. “So anyways, this hot-as-tits princess--”
“What a romantic way to describe her,” Caesar interjected.
“Oh, yeah? How do you think I should describe her then?” Joseph challenged.
“That depends,” Caesar began, closing his notebook and setting it aside for the moment. “What’s the standard for beauty? And within that, what makes her so incredibly beautiful? Classic western fairy tales always like to talk about princesses with hair like spun gold and eyes like the blue sky above, but there’s more to beauty than that. So tell me, what does she look like?”
“Well, I do fancy myself a blonde,” Joseph mused. “But I prefer green eyes to blue.”
“Okay, what else?”
“Uh…”
“And you can’t just say ‘she had blonde hair and green eyes’ and think that people will assume that’s beautiful. What is it about those qualities that are so incredible? Is her hair so pale a blonde and done in curls so that she seems crowned with clouds? Do her eyes glimmer like an emerald, shimmer like a spring meadow?” Caesar continued.
“Um… yes?”
Caesar shook his head. He’d known all along that Joseph didn’t know the first thing about storytelling. “Anyways, why was she rejecting all her suitors?”
“I would’ve gotten there if you hadn’t interrupted me!”
“Then tell a good story!”
Joseph paused a while. “Actually, I hadn’t thought up a reason.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Caesar sighed. “She’s obviously in love with someone that she’s unable to marry, for one reason or another.”
“What makes you think that?”
“If you thought about it for two seconds, you’d remember that princesses can’t always marry for love--their marriages are typically for political gain. I’m assuming that she’s the only child of the reigning monarch, so whoever marries her--likely a noble from within the kingdom--will gain more than they give,” Caesar explained.
“So then who is she in love with?” Joseph asked, eyes wide and inquiring.
“I’m going to say it’s someone from outside the kingdom,” Caesar decided. “Perhaps a prince--a prince from a rival kingdom.”
Joseph uttered a small gasp, and drew his knees to his chest. It was the most attentive and quiet that Caesar had seen him be thus far. At least he knew the right times to react. That made for an ideal audience.
“Right, so, there were two kingdoms, both alike in dignity, and--hey, wait a second!” Caesar exclaimed suddenly as he realized he’d been had.
The sheer expression of glee on Joseph’s face confirmed everything Caesar needed to know. He grabbed a couch cushion and began to beat Joseph mercilessly with it.
“I--can’t--believe--you--tricked me--into--telling--a story!” Caesar shouted, punctuating his words with the couch cushion.
“I can’t believe you fell for it!” Joseph laughed, barely making an effort to fend off Caesar’s attack.
Caesar sat back with a huff, throwing the couch cushion in Joseph’s face for good measure. Joseph was still cackling bemusedly, a far cry from his usual quick temper.
“You’re still going to tell the story, right?” Joseph asked once he’d collected himself. “I mean, you already started, so…”
With a resigned sigh, Caesar supposed that he was going to give Joseph a story, one way or another. “I may as well, but it’ll only be the one story, got that?”
Nodding eagerly, Joseph shuffled closer to Caesar, his attention rapt. It was almost endearing.
“Now, as I said before, these were two kingdoms alike in power and dignity. Although neither had ever openly declared war on the other, tensions were always high, and disputes at their borders were many. Each kingdom had to it one heir: one kingdom had a magnificent prince, charming and affable, as well as strong-willed. The other kingdom had a princess, who, in addition to being uncommonly kind, was also clever, and had a will to match that of the rival prince. For their entire lives, the prince and the princess never once met each other, and so harbored hatred based on ideas alone. However, all that changed, when one day…”
By industry standards, the story Caesar ended up telling wasn’t worth much. Indeed, although he’d started strong, he was much more used to writing as opposed to telling stories aloud, and so ended up faltering whenever there was a junction in the story. Joseph jumped in at those points, usually with some off the wall path for the story to take, but that made it that much more fun for Caesar to craft. In that way, it was something of a collaborative effort, something Caesar would have never dreamed of trying before, much less with someone like Joseph.
The story went on and on between the two of them, the fire waning substantially before Joseph thought to tear himself away to feed it more wood.
“And so through their union,” Caesar finished about an hour later. “The prince and princess not only proclaimed love as paramount, but also brought peace to the two kingdoms that were now one. They, and all the people of the land, lived happily ever after, to the end of their days. The end.”
“Aw,” Joseph whined, looking disappointed.
“What?”
“I didn’t want it to end.”
Caesar laughed aloud at that. “All stories have to end eventually.”
“Yeah, but like, romances… the love keeps going after the story ends, doesn’t it? And if the love keeps going, why shouldn’t the story keep going?” Joseph asked.
“Romance as a genre isn’t necessarily about the love itself,” Caesar said. “It’s more about the journey the characters undergo to be with one another.”
“But what if--what if the princess had to go on a diplomatic mission to another kingdom or something and she never comes back? Or, or, there’s that giant they tricked and escaped from, what if he comes back with a vengeance and kidnaps the prince? What if--” Joseph rattled off.
“Whoa, whoa, easy there,” Caesar interrupted. “Sure, those could keep the story going, but those stories would have to end too. All things have to come to their proper end.”
In the low light of the fire, Joseph looked positively miserable all of a sudden. He slouched back against the couch, gazing aimlessly into the fire.
“Yeah,” he muttered, crossing his arms. “I guess they do.”
The ensuing silence felt different from the silences that had fallen between them before. Usually they were taut with anger, inciting them to ensure they had the last word, inflaming their passion until they were ready to pummel one another for the sheer relief of it. This, on the other hand, felt downright… sad?
Caesar shifted where he sat. Sure, he’d gone up to complete strangers in the past and talked to them about whatever happened to be bothering them (usually women, but that was irrelevant, really), but it felt more invasive to just up and ask Joseph what was wrong. After all, they’d physically fought with each other multiple times in the past week--hell, until just an hour ago, Caesar was positive that he hated Joseph’s guts. Now, well… he didn’t hate him (not that he would ever admit to that), but they weren’t exactly best friends either.
“Look,” he started with uncharacteristic uncertainty. “I know we haven’t really seen eye to eye the entire time we’ve known each other, but, uh--if something’s wrong--if I said something I shouldn’t have, you can tell me. More so I’m surprised you haven’t punched me outright for saying something you don’t--”
“It’s not anything you said,” Joseph cut in with a dull, flat voice. “I mean, it is, but--but it’s nothing you have any control over, so…”
“So… what’s wrong?” Caesar asked.
“I’ll tell you if you tell another story.”
“What? No, I told you, I--”
“It’s a huge bummer,” Joseph clarified. “So if you don’t tell a happy story afterwards, we’re both going to be bummed out for the rest of the night, so I’ll only tell you if you tell another story.”
“Alright,” Caesar agreed, wondering what on earth could get Joseph so--so… un-Joseph-like.
Joseph took a deep breath. His arms weren’t so much crossed anymore as they were tightly wrapped around his body, hugging himself for some small comfort.
“I think,” he began slowly. “It would be easier for me to start with some context. It won’t make sense at first, but bear with me, okay?”
“Okay.”
Another deep breath. “So. You’ve probably been wondering why a guy like me would pick up a novel by you, right?”
Caesar blinked. This was not the direction he’d been expecting this to go in. “Right.”
“The truth is, I never would’ve picked it up myself. I prefer comics and thrillers and stuff. See, uh--my grandmother. She was the romantic, and loved reading every romance novel she could get her hands on. Only a while back her eyesight started getting real bad, so she had me read these novels to her out loud. I always told her she should just get audiobooks, but that sentimental lady always said she preferred to hear me and not some stranger,” Joseph explained.
Already Caesar had a sinking feeling in his heart, the anchor being the way Joseph spoke of his grandmother.
“I really, genuinely hated just about every book I had to read for her. They were all super cheesy and over dramatic and a lot of the plots just blended together for me. Eventually I’d read through her entire collection, and she wanted me to get some new books. I still think I could’ve just read her the same books and just changed the names and she wouldn’t have noticed--hell, I wouldn’t have noticed--but it didn’t sit right with me to do something like that to her. So I went, grabbed a few books at random, and came right back home,” Joseph went on, shrugging.
The fire was getting low again. This time Caesar took it upon himself to feed a fresh log into it, letting Joseph collect his story in order to tell it.
“So it was really by chance that I ended up with your book. I figured it was going to be more of the same, and I think my granny did too. Only when we started reading it, she stopped her knitting to listen, I mean really listen. And I’ll admit, I was surprised by how much I really enjoyed it. It was cheesy, don’t get me wrong, but there was an honesty to it--like, you were telling the story you wanted to tell, basically,” Joseph said, finally answering the question that had been weighing on Caesar’s mind.
“It became her favorite,” Joseph continued. “We read your other books, but none of them compared to the first. I’m sure we ended up reading it at least twice a year after we first discovered it.”
Joseph fell silent for a long while then. Caesar braced himself. The wind continued to howl outside and the fire crackled enthusiastically, but all felt silent within the cabin as Joseph prepared his next words.
“I’m sure you’ve guessed by now how this story ends,” Joseph said softly. “She died. Peacefully, thank goodness. It’s been about two years now, and it was around Christmas time that it happened, so…”
He shrugged again, the firelight just barely revealing his misty eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” Caesar offered genuinely, instinctively placing a hand on Joseph’s shoulder to give him a reassuring squeeze.
Joseph’s hand found his and held it in place for a while. “It’s not like you knew.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t be sorry.”
“Yeah, well,” Joseph said in his best attempt at a steady voice. “After two years you’d think I’d be over it by now.”
“Joseph--”
“Jojo.”
“Huh?”
“Call me Jojo. It’s what my friends call me.”
Friends, Caesar thought wryly. Was that what they were now?
“Alright, Jojo,” Caesar continued. “I may write about romantic love, but I know a thing or two about other kinds of love as well. I know that love, in any form, runs deep, such that it’s not something you can just ‘get over.’”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Joseph snapped, although he did not yet release Caesar’s hand. “But--but I still have Speedwagon, and my mother, and they’re just as torn up about Granny’s passing as I am, and I should be there for them, especially during Christmas, but I just--I just can’t.”
Tears were openly streaming down his face now, but he made no effort to hide them. Caesar moved to sit a little closer. It always felt odd to be at a loss for words, being a writer and everything. By now Joseph definitely knew all the logic, but that never stopped emotions. Sitting there wondering what words would offer the most comfort, Caesar suddenly remembered Speedwagon’s insistent plea that he stay with Joseph, at least for a little while. Why hadn’t he thought it odd that Speedwagon, the CEO of his own massive corporation, couldn’t make time around the holidays to be with his nephew?
“Speedwagon didn’t tell you all this, did he?” Joseph asked.
“No,” Caesar answered honestly. “But I think… I think he understands. Even if he wants to spend time with you around the holidays, he gets that you need time.”
Joseph gave a half-laugh. “Time with a stranger, apparently.”
“Hey, I thought you said we were friends?”
“A strange friend.”
“You’re one to talk.”
They chuckled a little at that. After all it was strange, but then, it wasn’t so strange, was it? They were simply being practical, in laying out the worst of themselves right off and fighting straightforwardly and honestly whenever they lost their temper with one another. Now they could sit together by the fire and decide they were friends. Easy.
“Would it make you feel better if I told you you were right?” Caesar asked abruptly.
“About what? I’m right about a lot of things,” Joseph said.
“About me having writer’s block.”
Joseph offered a watery grin. “That does make me feel a bit better. It’s not often people actually admit that I’m right.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
“So do you know what was blocking you?”
“You say that like there’s always a reason,” Caesar said. “Sometimes it’s burnout, sometimes you lack inspiration, sometimes it’s the pressure of having to write something new and fresh every year, and sometimes… sometimes it’s knowing you can’t tell the stories you really want to tell.”
Joseph was looking at him now, not having bothered to wipe the tears from his face yet. Frowning, Caesar grabbed the corner of the nearest blanket and dabbed at Joseph’s cheeks.
“What am I, a baby?” Joseph objected, trying to turn away.
“Yes, now stay still,” Caesar said.
In fact, Joseph did not stay still, but he didn’t squirm too much either. Why Caesar bothered to do this was beyond him--he was probably just tired because his sleeping schedule had been thrown all the way off.
“So, like, what was it for you? Or, what do you think it was?” Joseph asked, rubbing at one of his cheeks as if Caesar’s ministrations had stung.
“Probably the last one,” Caesar sighed. “You already know that the company that published my first book went under shortly after it was published. The new company that’s picked me up… well, they have very particular standards for the novels they’ll publish. I’ll admit, my technical skill has improved with them, but only because that’s the only area where I can change and grow.”
“But you’re out of it now, right? You were up early writing something, and earlier you were writing something in your notebook,” Joseph pointed out.
Caesar shook his head. “It’s nothing I can use. They want passion and drama--and at least two sex scenes.”
Joseph laughed heartily at that, such that Caesar couldn’t help but laugh as well. The fire was getting low again, but neither of them cared to move. Still, the cold was creeping back in, so Joseph dragged over the blankets from his side of the couch and spread them over both of their laps, while Caesar grabbed the comforter he’d brought down and threw it over their shoulders. Thus settled, Joseph leaned over and rested his head on Caesar’s shoulder.
“You owe me another story now,” he reminded Caesar in a voice laden with sleep.
“What kind of story?”
“I told you, a happy one. One that you want to tell.”
“Alright then,” Caesar said, an idea already formulating in his brain. “I think I have just the thing for you. In a world not too unlike ours, there was a human who was hopeless with romance. He craved love more than anything, and although all other areas of his life were to his liking and quite fulfilling, there was a void left empty by the absence of love. Seeing this, a cupid came down to Earth, disguised as a human, determined to find out what was preventing his arrows from taking hold, and how he could possibly help this man find love…”
The story went slowly, with fewer interruptions and suggestions from Joseph. Indeed, Caesar’s eyes were starting to feel heavy, even as he kept plodding through the story. He focused less and less on the conflict, and focused more on the idyllic moments--the tender moments of friendship between the human and the cupid, the times they laughed together, played together. So too did he linger on the moment the cupid began to realize that his feelings for this human were starting to blossom into something more than friendship, something altogether familiar and unfamiliar to him.
“What do you mean falling in love is unfamiliar for a cupid?” Joseph yawned.
“He may be an emissary of love, but he doesn’t have much time to be falling in love himself,” Caesar explained.
Joseph hummed, tugging the blankets more tightly around his shoulders. “Sounds familiar.”
“Really? What book is it from?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Joseph mumbled. “Just keep telling your story.”
Curious, but too tired to prod, Caesar continued, even as he began to sleepily stumble over his words, pausing for moments at a time and coming to with a start, realizing that he was falling asleep. It wasn’t long before Joseph was snoring lightly against him. In theory, Caesar could try to slip out from under him, or shake him awake so that he could pull out the bed and allow Caesar to retreat upstairs, but it was so comfy and warm down here--he wasn’t ready to leave just yet. He tried to continue telling his story, if only for himself, but eventually succumbed to the soft blanket of sleep himself.
When he woke next, Caesar was lying flat on the couch, comfortably warm inside and out. The fire had either gone out completely, or had been put out by Joseph at some point, because all that was left in the fireplace were dull ashes. Light was streaming in through the windows; the storm had finally broken. What Caesar registered first and foremost, however, was the weight resting upon his chest.
He blinked the sleep out of his eyes and looked to find Joseph still fast asleep on top of him. He wasn’t snoring now, only breathing deeply, lips slightly parted. His messy mop of hair stuck out at odd angles, some of it falling over his eyes in such a way that Caesar couldn’t help but brush it aside, marveling at how soft his hair felt. His eyelashes were long, something Caesar hadn’t noticed before. They fanned delicately over his cheeks, which were a dusty red from how warm he must have been. Caesar absently continued running his fingers through the feather-soft hair, simply staring at Joseph for a full five minutes before he stopped with a shock.
He stopped, not because this was weird or awkward--quite the opposite. It was how natural and right it felt that gave him cause to pause.
This was not something that friends did, even strange ones. The warmth within was not mere coincidence.
This was bad.
And yet, oh, so good.