driftfleet | three ○ video / action

[He knows this. He does. And yet.]

Fine, then. If it's that important to you.

Excellent! [Now the competitiveness is getting very apparent on his face.] Be ready in five minutes.

[He hangs up and will be by to pick Caesar up. ...Probably before five minutes.]

[Joke's on you, motherfucker, Caesar was born ready. . . . By which I mean he spent forty-five minutes getting himself to look this presentably ridiculous, but that was this morning. Now he's waiting in the bay and looks up when Joseph arrives with a bored expression.]

What took you so long?

[Joseph ain't bovvered by your bored expression in the least bit, Caesar. If anything, he's looking more smug because the harder you try to act like you don't care, he's pretty sure you do.]

Uh-oh. Are you starting to look forward to it? You know, if you watch me close enough, I'll let you have a turn flying it.

No, thank you.

[Very prim and polite. He does not want to be in charge of this mess at all. It's just that he has things to do. Stuff and things.]

I'll mostly be watching you to make sure you don't steer us into any planets we happen to pass.

Fuck you. [But he isn't even a little bit mad. He's still smiling and motions for Caesar to follow him back onto the shuttle.] You're gonna feel really stupid when you see how good I am.

[God, stop being so good-natured, it's super annoying. He sighs, long-suffering, and follows after, slipping into the front seat of the shuttle while wondering to himself how the hell he got talked into this.]

I'll honestly be grateful to get out of this with all of my limbs still attached.

[See how good he's being? He didn't say get out of this alive.]

[It's so much better. But, of course, because he doesn't make that particular joke, Joseph doesn't notice that restraint on a conscious level. He plops down in the pilot seat.]

Keep talking shit, Caesar. You're just gonna end up eating all of it.

[And Joseph does actually have a handle on operating the shuttle. Aside from the racing around, he has been committing himself to practicing every now and again. He hates hard work, but this is something he wants to do, not something he has to do. He can put the time into it and it's paid off. It's almost like he's been doing this his whole life.]

You really don't need to be that disgusting.

[But he is relaxing a little bit, now that he's getting some evidence of the fact that Joseph probably won't crash them before even leaving the the hangar. It stands to reason, probably; even Joestar-level incompetence can't withstand the mental adjustments of an augment glitch.]

[He does see, too, that Joseph has clearly practiced. But he's not going to mention that. Joseph's ego is already dangerous enough.]

[How dare you, Caesar. Flying is in his blood. You know, as far back as his father anyway. Point is, he'd consider himself a natural at this. The augment just gives him a leg up is all.]

[He looks over at Caesar with a crooked grin.]

Sorry, I don't know where the limit of what you'll put in your mouth is after the pigeon. [BECAUSE HE HAD SUCH A CHOICE IN THE MATTER??] Would you put that above or below the bug?

[The look Caesar gives him is so dirty it's buried underground.]

I don't want to hit you, Jojo, because I'd prefer we fly straight. But I will.

[He will turn this shuttle around, he swears to God.]

[Joseph tries hard not to laugh at the face he's getting. He purses his lips as tight as he would if he'd been made to pop a whole lemon in his mouth. But he snorts and then it's all downhill from there.]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. [He shakes his head and gives more of his attention back to what he's doing.] You're so full of shit sometimes.

[It's going to be a few minutes probably until they receive a hail to start a race. So, Joseph, naturally, fills it with chatter, saying more or less whatever comes to mind without thinking much about it.]

You know, I'm serious, Caesar. If you ever wanna learn how to fly one of these things, I can teach you. It's not that hard. If I can do it, you can. I don't think you can technically take these things off autopilot yourself, but it could come in handy to know how.

[He's not trying to bring the mood down, but shit can happen. They both know that better than most people. At least most people where they're from.]

If I'm honest though, space is neat and everything, [he shrugs a shoulder,] but I think I like flying planes better still. I always loved 'em as a kid. I had a ton of toy planes and books about them. Not that I actually read them much. They were boring as hell, so I just liked looking at the pictures.

I probably get all of that from my father. He was a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force, [he looks over at Caesar,] did I ever tell you that?

[It's true. He's completely full of shit. No matter how much Joseph irritates him, he's happy to be with him. More now, maybe, than before, even though there's no way to explain why, and he's perfectly (mostly perfectly) content to keep everything about the shift to himself.]

[The offer . . . he doesn't entirely know what to do with it. He's not wholly comfortable with the idea of flying one of these things, sure he'd feel entirely oh of his element. But talking with Ino made him think a little bit about taking advantage of opportunities when they're offered, when you're not confined by your own capabilities. Besides - he'd offer to teach Joseph how to use the weapons he's found himself able to use thanks to his augment. In fact, why hasn't he?]

[Well, that answer's easy, anyway. He's been very distracted.]

[He glances up when Joseph starts talking about - things Caesar didn't know, things he feels he should've. He finds he's able to envision Joseph as a child very easily, a big book on his lap, flipping through the pages in search of illustrations and the rare photograph. He can't imagine Joseph's father: there are too many gaps in his knowledge there, he has no idea what the man might have looked like, acted like, sounded like. But he can imagine Joseph idolizing him. Boys and their fathers are always boys and their fathers.]

You never told me that. [His voice is quiet, a little curious.] But I'd like to hear about him.

[Joseph would probably continue with or without prompting. But Caesar wants to be sure he keeps hearing his voice.]

Edited 2015-08-31 06:50 (UTC)

Ah, I never really knew him. I mean, I know him better than I do my mother, but he still died when I was a baby. Granny had a few pictures of him, but she didn't like to talk about him much. [Which may actually be half-true, so Joseph corrects himself.] I didn't really ask either. I think Speedwagon would say more if I ever asked even if Granny couldn't, but...I didn't.

[And it was more complicated than he could really explain as to why he never asked. On the one hand, Joseph never knew the man for himself and doesn't have any memories of his father that belong to him. It was easier in some ways to just not worry about it and be satisfied with as little as he was told. Besides, his grandmother always looked a little sad whenever the topic came up. Even as self-centered as Joseph can be, he never wanted his grandmother to be sad. On the other, the Joestar legacy has been hanging over Joseph's head possibly since before he was even born. Why would he want a part of that when he knows what happens? He doesn't want to die. He's not prepared to die. He doesn't want to be yet another, he just wants to be Joseph. Whatever that means, he wants to be that. And from that angle, it's even easier to look the other way and ignore his family's history as being selfish is something Joseph can be exceedingly good at when he puts his mind to it.]

Granny always used to say he looked a lot like my grandfather. [He's not sure if that's true or wishful thinking. He could see the similarities now between himself and the few pictures he has of his father, so it was certainly a possibility.] He was a lot more like my grandfather than I'll ever be, I know that for sure. Granny raised him to be a perfect gentleman. They always told me that he was the sort of person who'd go out of his way for other people, always did the right thing, and was really brave. That's why my mother fell in love with him, anyway. They were really happy together from what I've been told.

I used to think that was all just crap they'd tell me to get me to stop being such a brat since it's all stuff you'd assume a fighter pilot would be, but... But I don't know. [He shrugs a little. It was always a nice thing to aspire to. Even if he didn't want to be most of what his bloodline had decided he ought to be, that didn't stop Joseph from wanting to be that brave and that good a person as his father was always described to be.] It's a not a bad lie if it is one.

[He hesitates to say what he's about to next. He knows Caesar's feelings when it comes to Joestars and generally anyone connected to them. An open invitation to talk about what little he knows about his father isn't really the same thing as pointing out that he's been connected to the Joestars at least tangentially through Lisa Lisa's connection to them, whatever that connection may be exactly. But he presses forward because maybe Caesar will just think it's an abrupt change of topic.]

Caesar... How well did you know Lisa Lisa?

[He watches Joseph out of the corner of his eye, trying to seem as though he's focused on what's happening ahead of them. He's not, though, not even a little bit. It's - honestly kind of fascinating, Joseph talking about all of this. He's never been closed-mouthed about his family, exactly, but he only ever really talked about Erina and Speedwagon. Not his father, not his mother. Caesar wants to know all these things about him. He's not kidding himself, at this point. He wants to know everything about Joseph, even if that's all that ever happens. He wants to know him like he's never known anyone else.]

[When he smiles, he faces front very deliberately, sitting up straight in his seat.]

I don't think it was because of that. Nobody would be stupid enough to think talking up your father would change you into a gentleman. It's got to be true.

[His smile doesn't exactly fade at the mention of Lisa Lisa. Missing her is . . . different from missing his siblings. He knows she can take care of herself, is taking care of herself, and it's honestly a little insulting for him to worry about her. But he does regret not being there for her; he regrets leaving her behind, almost as much as he regrets leaving Joseph. She's been a part of his life for so long now, being without her is strange, confusing.]

Lisa Lisa was . . . hard to know. Every time I had questions about her past, she dodged them and then threw me into harder training. Which I didn't mind, it's just . . . I could read her moods, I could predict what she was going to say sometimes, but I could never really learn anything about her.

That's . . . I think that's part of why I never - with you. I got used to not talking about it.

[He glances sideways at Joseph, looking a little worried.]

Sorry. That's not a very good answer.

[Joseph shakes his head.]

Nah, it's alright.

[And then he falls silent because he doesn't know how to say why he was asking about Lisa Lisa in the first place without just saying it. Maybe it's really the only way. It certainly seems like it. Joseph's a little slow to start, words falling out first in uneven succession until periods find their way at the ends of his sentences rather than in the middle.]

I think. I think Lisa Lisa...knew my parents. Maybe. I don't know. She didn't say. She just said our roots were connected. [He lets out a breath.] Cars and Wham kept Lisa Lisa while I went back with Messina to get the stone. I was looking for it in her things and found pictures. One of them was recent and the other was 50 years old.

[That's not exactly how it happened, but Caesar doesn't need to know he was being invasive, nosy, and a teenage boy at the time. It'd just distract from the point anyway.]

The recent one was of Granny and the older one was Uncle Speedwagon, Granny Erina when she was pregnant with my father, and Straits holding a baby. She was that baby, the one Granny Erina rescued from the ship my grandfather died on. Straits raised her like she was his own, I guess.

[Which he now finds it incredible that Lisa Lisa managed to not say or do anything to Joseph when he turned up. She knew what he did, that he had been the one to kill Straits, and yet she said nothing until Joseph forced it out of her. And even then, it was calm. Neutral. Not as though she didn't care, but still without a lot of emotion behind it.]

Straits wasn't all that close to my family. I don't really have that many memories of him anyway until he turned up in New York trying to kill me. But Lisa Lisa is the same age my parents would be if they were still alive, so there's still a chance, I think. And she said we'd talk. After everything was finished.

I guess I was just hoping...

[Hoping something completely foolish. Of course Caesar doesn't know anything. Why would he? Lisa Lisa was an incredibly private person and she only spoke when she had to. It's not that she didn't care about people, she did in a much deeper fashion than Joseph ever would have predicted, but she was still reserved and focused on the task ahead. She was simply driven, bound by duty. Although where that duty comes from remains a mystery to him. Maybe that's what she was talking about.]

I don't know, [he admits after a long pause.] It seems like all of us are connected somehow. I just want to know what hers is to my family.

[This is all a hell of a lot to take in. That Lisa Lisa knew the Joestars - maybe even knew them well - makes Caesar suddenly, rigidly embarrassed. When he first came to her, he had just found out everything there was to know about his legacy, about what he perceived the Joestars had done to his family, and he was furious. Not even just furious, he was out of control, flying out into rages until she beat and wore it out of him, still going out looking for trouble in the middle of the night until it became obvious to him that doing that and training was unsustainable, that he'd have to pick between the two.]

[He'd badmouthed the Joestars a lot. And she never let on, not once. He feels like he should go back and apologize to her now, but even if he could go back, he doesn't expect she'd take his apology. He'd been a punk, and he should have acted better, no matter how angry he was.]

[His fingers flex into fists, then relax as he gets control of his frustration, his shame. When is he going to stop realizing mistakes he's made?]

I can't believe she's fifty years old, [he mutters to himself, for something to say (and it really is surprising and makes him feel a little gross, because he's only human), and then--]

You don't still have the picture, do you? The older one?

Not here. [Joseph shakes his head a little.] I put it in my coat before fighting with Wham and that didn't come with me here.

[It's a decision he regrets a little. Not that keeping the photographs on him would have been anything but likely to get in the way in the middle of a fight, but it'd be nice to have something of his grandmother here even if it doesn't technically belong to him. But then again, he thinks, maybe he shouldn't complain. At least he has things that indisputably belong to his family back home to remember them by. Extended family didn't pick everything apart the way Caesar's did. He probably doesn't even have pictures of his father even if he remembered what he looked like enough to find him again.]

[He realizes he's been looking at Caesar a little too long without saying anything and finds somewhere else to look to hide what he was thinking about. He doesn't pity Caesar even if he's more aware of what Caesar doesn't or hasn't had in a very long time, but he knows it could be misconstrued to be pity. It's something else though. He doesn't know what to call it. Maybe it's empathy or something close to that.]

[He can feel Joseph looking at him, and only resists turning towards him for so long. Just as Joseph moves to look away, he glances sideways, catching the tail end of his gaze. It's not as though Joseph's expression was particularly telling, but - Caesar isn't stupid, and anyway, sometimes he understands Joseph so effortlessly it's as though they're thinking the same thing at the same time.]

[His fingers curl in his lap. He wants to reach out and touch Joseph, but it seems like every time he does that he gets a different reaction, and this subject is already fraught enough without him adding more tension on top of it.]

[So he just looks, wrapping the fingers of his right hand around his left wrist, and his lips turn down a little at the corners, pinched and uncertain.]

. . . What is it?

[He shakes his head a little.]

Nothing.

[He doesn't entirely dare even do so much as glance at Caesar, but after a few seconds he does just out of the corner of his eye. It's just long enough to see his expression. Joseph feels a small pang of guilt for lying, so amends his answer even if he doesn't tell the whole truth.]

I guess I was just wondering about your family. [He shrugs a shoulder.] I only know what Lisa Lisa told me.

[And Joseph's willing to bet that was limited.]

Mm.

[Caesar isn't even slightly surprised. Honestly, it's more surprising that it's taken this long for it to come up. He isn't sure why that is - whether Joseph was just too angry until now to even entertain a conversation about it, or whether his own homesickness made it too hard to bring up anything that might remind him of his grandmother.]

[Whatever the reason, Caesar is glad it's at least starting to come out in the open now. It's a strange feeling, knowing that half of what your best friend knows about you comes from an outside source. It makes him feel guilty, too, as though he's lied, even though he never did, not really.]

[He catches Joseph's eye, shrugs one shoulder.]

I don't know how much she told you. But you can - if you want, you can ask me things.

[A short pause, and then, as though it's being dragged out of him:]

I'm sorry I didn't tell you.

[He looks at Caesar at the apology. And... Well, he honestly appreciates hearing it. It's hard to say if Caesar actually owed Joseph an apology or not. Or rather, Joseph doesn't know if he has the right to feel entitled to one. He doesn't try to figure it out though because what he does know for certain is that Caesar's been apologizing to him a lot lately and he doesn't entirely like it. He likes it better when Caesar is just himself. Unapologetic.]

[But he doesn't want to throw the apology back at Caesar's face either, so instead,]

You had your reasons for not saying anything.

[Whether they were good or bad ones doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter how Joseph felt about it at the time when he realized how much Caesar had been holding back. They're getting the chance to do things the right way now, aren't they?]

Your brothers and sisters. What are they like?

[It seems the safest thing to ask right now. Caesar had at least acknowledged their existence when they first ended up here even if he didn't talk about them in great detail.]

[Oh. That's a good question to start with, so good and so careful that Caesar can't help smiling, ducking his head in an attempt to hide how grateful he is. He can talk about them with pure, unmuddied emotion, at least for the most part, because he loves them and they've never hurt him, and more than that, they never would. This is perhaps the strangest thing about Caesar: he believes without doubt that his family would never cause him pain, despite past evidence to the contrary.]

[He straightens up a little in his seat, looks at Joseph again, because he wants to know what Joseph's thinking as he says it, and sometimes just looking at him is enough to sense it.]

Nicola's the oldest after me, then Marcello and Benito, and Maria's youngest. We're all about a year apart, except Maria - she's six years younger than me. So fourteen, now. She's smarter than the rest of us, more like our mother. [What he remembers of her, anyway.] And a good cook. She used to help me with dinners when I was still at home - I taught her when I was ten and she was four, and none of the others took to it like she did.

Nicola . . . always helped me a lot. She's very responsible, was better with the boys than I was, especially right after my father-- you know. So I put a little more on her than I should have, maybe. At least at first. And then she didn't really let it go. But she taught Maria how to read, too, and they're very close.

Marcello's hardworking. He used to help Nicola in the house, but she didn't really have the patience for it, so he'd go out and do odd jobs in the neighborhood to bring in extra money. Or just - to fill time, I think, because we didn't have much space and there were so many of us. And he was always trying to make me laugh.

And Benito's. [His expression goes a little pinched, although he doesn't notice that it is.] He's a lot like me. [In very specific, not very adaptive ways, things that Caesar hadn't wanted to pass down but did by accident.] He's . . . he gets into a lot of fights, and he doesn't listen. Doesn't go to school most of the time. He used to bring home animals all the time - snakes and things - and get mad when I wouldn't let him keep them in the house.

[A tight shrug, then. He misses them, and he doesn't know how to hide that he misses them; and maybe, after all, he doesn't want to.]

[Joseph has a hard time trying to imagine what it was like growing up like that. Or perhaps more accurately that quickly. It's not that Joseph's never had responsibility, he's just never had responsibility that mattered like that. He's always been able to walk away from anything he didn't want to deal with because it was taking up too much of his time. But Caesar's never had that luxury. His childhood got cut off early to look after three younger sisters and brothers that needed someone. What else was he supposed to do?]

[But even then, those weren't the parts that Caesar talks about. He mentions it in vague passing because they're still important, they're still a part of his family whether any of them like it or not. But they're not the focus. The focus is on who each of his siblings are, their relationships to one another, to Caesar. And how much he misses each of them.]

[As Caesar talks, Joseph scoots a little closer. Not close enough to touch, but close. He does so without realizing it, but it seems like the right place to be when Caesar's talking about something so important, so close to him.]

It sounds noisy. [But he says this in a soft way that sounds like it's good. Because what isn't good about a family that loves one another and looks after each other?] They sound like good kids though. To be honest, I never really wanted brothers and sisters, [something he thinks most people expect only children to say, but Joseph was glad in some ways to be the only child since it put less on his grandmother; he was certainly a handful enough all on his own,] but I wouldn't have minded having any of them, I think.

[He hesitates a little because maybe he doesn't have the right authority to say this, but...]

Your father and mother would be proud of you for taking care of them. For doing what you did. [Even the parts that don't sit well with Joseph.] Your grandfather, too, if he ever had the chance to know you.

[Joseph might not realize what he's doing, but Caesar definitely does. It's distracting, very distracting, and he has to look away, out the windshield, just for a moment. It is important, though, he thinks, to be close when they're talking about this - it's not something he'd share with just anyone, and definitely not in this detail. It feels a little bit like a relief, actually, to just talk about them, not even really important things, just things he knows about them that no one else does, things he loves about them.]

[He shifts slightly in his seat, then, a little closer still, and his hand comes to rest on the seat between them. He won't move further than that - he's still leery of a repeat of what happened last time, and now he couldn't escape even if he wanted to - but he doesn't want to seem like he's ignoring Joseph, either. And he does want to be closer, very much so.]

[Maybe Joseph doesn't have the authority to say that. But it feels good anyway, especially after Joseph's been so angry for so long, to have approval directed his way. He doesn't know when that became so important to him, especially from someone like Joseph, but - well, no, he knows. It was right around the time he started loving him.]

[He laughs, a soft sound in his throat, and closes his eyes for a moment, overwhelmed.]

Oh, don't say that. You don't know-- [And then he stops himself, forces himself quiet for a moment, and continues:] Thank you. That's - it means a lot.

[He's quiet for another moment, then, looking at Joseph out of the corner of his eye, feeling a little uncertain.]

They're good kids. They'd like you. I think they would.

. . . You did that, too, didn't you. Brought things inside you weren't supposed to. I can see you doing it.

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my math in here may be weird but you have to love me anyway

fine, i will

good!!!!!!!