bakerstreet | ( picture prompt meme )

[And he almost didn’t have the sense to say something cutting in return, old habits from before flaring up for a moment...it could be a good sign, Caesar supposed. He was stitching himself back up, enough so they could move on and away, bits and pieces of himself being glued back together, if he wasn’t so tired of it Of himself. Poison in human form. He felt like he was constantly being reminded of his own shitty personality, drowning in it, and the only person who was helping him piece himself back together was also the person he dragged back against his will. And that stilled his tongue.]

Besides the obvious? [And, just in case Jojo didn’t know what he meant…] From Russia with Love. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy? I don’t know if you know about this, but back in the sixties Europe produced a lot of spy movies. I grew up watching reruns of those.

[ This is one emotion he can largely keep under wraps - the rising push of more, uncanny discomfort, surprise and immediate sadness as light as a spring rain as he realizes that there was yet another sticking point he never would have anticipated. Something bittersweet and unbearable, and now the tables were turned and it was Joseph who, in secret, could stand this no longer.

He manages a smile, shrugs casual as you please. ]

Found a few old tape recordings belonging to my old man when I was maybe eight. It was awhile ago, but I think a few of those might have been old Euro spy flicks. Gran never liked me watching them. You know, on account of all of the violence and titties involved in spywork.

[ He smooths himself over. It's always been something that he showed promise in.

And here he steps backward, lets his stiff old hands slip from Caesar's shoulders as he moves backward toward the mouth of grey sunlight marking the little alleyway's entrance. ]

We've apparently got a lot to do today, so tell me about your favourite of the bunch in the car - but first, I really must know. What have people been saying about me?

I think I’ve actually got it downloaded to my phone, so you can-

[He doesn’t. Caesar purged everything that wasn’t work (and Joseph, and even Joseph was safely sealed away where he couldn’t accidentally stumble across a reminder at the worst time, at least up until the point Joseph opened it up and he did) from his phone weeks ago. His voice falters. His feet move. Joseph asked a question.

It was, remarkably, safe.]

I didn’t know it was you. At the time all I knew was that there was someone who sounded remarkably like you who used to be a regular. You apparently made an impression. Well, assuming it was you that they were talking about. I’m pretty sure it was.

[…and this time he had the sense to still his tongue and leave off the description, which was, boiled down, laughing, happy brunet who told jokes and has a great smile and an incredible ass. Even now, even after all of their…broken mess, their everything, death, undeath, vengeance, and the broken ruin of his life, there were a few things Caesar would never admit to Joseph, ever, and one of them was that he heard ‘incredible ass’ and immediately went, “I know someone who that sounds like.”]

They said you laughed a lot. They missed having you around. One of them wished she’d gotten your number.

Edited (SEVERAL HOURS LATER: wait i wonder if i wrote...) 2017-11-02 06:18 (UTC)

[ He doesn't. After a full and lonely night on his phone, Joseph knows better than to think that he does, and from the sounds of things, he knows it before Caesar himself does.

Joseph couldn't say that the hole his killing had left in the lives of those who'd known him was something that he'd given much consideration to. Nor had he, despite their chosen occupation, considered too substantially just how easy it might come to extinguish him, to tear him from this life and to leave something tattered and empty behind. That he wouldn't become empty space, but the physical absence of a man, had never been something that he put considerable thought into.

Now that he's had no choice but to confront exactly what it is he's left behind, the reminder of that absence presented as starkly as Caesar presents it - in a group of strangers who laughed at him, laughed with him, missed his presence even before it was well and truly gone - makes something distant squeeze at his chest. He wonders if they know he's gone.

He backs further into the light, and hopefully that'll be enough backlight to hide the cringing sorrow in his face as he tries to make that smile sound as light as he can; ]

Told you people laugh at my jokes.

[He’d never been the most adept at reading Joseph in life.

In life, Caesar had tried very hard to ignore Jojo. He tried to put Joseph out of his mind at every possible moment, very deliberately ignored him during those unavoidable moments in which they shared a room. Caesar had never been very good at it: Jojo had a way of catching- no, demanding his attention, of, when he was fixed on Joseph, slowly dominating his world until it was just him and Joseph and everything else could go to hell. And then they inevitably ruined things, and no, it was better if they ignored each other whenever possible. So Caesar never learned how to read Joseph. He knew he’d hate what he’d learn if he did.

Death was a little different. Not very, but a little. Caesar had thrown away everything but Jojo. If, if he survived this he owed a lot of people a lot of apologies for the lies he told everyone to justify him vanishing, the excuses, the explanations. And so Caesar’s attention was fixated on Joseph (always the star out of his reach, always) and there was nothing else that could even compete with Joseph’s presence, and both of them too tired to be excessively cruel to the other, to the point of driving the other off. And something felt…

...just off enough that Caesar frowned, brief, momentary, before his expression smoothed over to something approaching neutral. It was nothing. It had to be nothing.]

You did. [And he stopped, arms crossed, and leaned against the wall for if but a moment. He needed to-...something. Breathe. Make sure he hadn’t left anything too important behind. That was Caesar’s excuse for why he hesitated.] I wondered for a while if we were thinking of the same person, but the more they talked the more it sounded like you. Enough that I started to wonder if it was you or if you had a twin. And then you just...well. [He gestured, vague, a wave of his hand in Joseph’s direction: you answered that.] Honestly, I’m a little envious.

[ Joseph steps back; Caesar stays where he is. He can't articulate the creeping nervousness, nor why he feels it - but it's there as he watches Caesar stand in place, further inside of the alleyway.

Caesar crosses his arms, rooting himself somehow further in place in the shadow of the alleyway, and he continues. He had believed that this mysterious streak of brightness had been him, and he hadn't. He couldn't reconcile it - which is no surprise. Caesar had never quite been mature enough to understand that the Joseph he'd lived around was a product of them, that he was capable of laughing and joking and making connections. Joseph had always chalked this to objective foolishness. He hadn't considered that Caesar had, perhaps, wanted to experience the public Joseph for himself. He'd always chased that Joseph away.

And then, he finishes out with the most confusing sentiment yet. Envy. ]

Envious? [ He would like to sound happier than that, but not plunging his voice as low as he does risks cracking it. Still, for as low as it is, he does manage to inject some approximation of bemusement into it, a cadence that he would hope says distinctly that he shouldn't be shedding tears right now. ] What of?

[Immediate:] You. [And then Caesar amended that with a little bit of a laugh, a rueful shake of his head.] Obviously, recent events aside. [Then:] Them. [He doesn’t know.] I’m not really sure.

[This should be the point in which he pushed himself off of the wall, gathered himself, his thoughts, his feelings, his things, and went off to the rest of the- his life, took a diversion to ground himself, find a motel room close to where it happened. Sleep. Wake up the next morning confident, ready to do what must be done.]

Maybe I’m envious of how you could escape me for a while, but I never could escape you for long. Even when we weren’t around each other, I found traces of you here and there. Or maybe it was the fact they all love you. I don’t know. I do know that if our positions were reversed I’d still be in the ground because you had too many people and none of them would let you…you know. [Crumble.] And don’t misunderstand. I wouldn’t want you to…have…this. You deserve-...deserved, I suppose, better. [And now he pushed himself from the wall.]

Escape.

[ It's chuckled out before he can help himself, made rough and raw by the rot in his throat. Escape. To him, this was escape. As though it would be so easy for Joseph to do - leaving the apartment and going downtown for a few hours. As if he would completely have forgotten their situation after a few hours of being divorced from their living space, or as if he didn't see happy couples and desperately project their images against them until it became reality. That Caesar could talk to Joseph about being able to escape is a laugh. He wonders what Caesar would think of his real attempts to escape - but then realizes that he really doesn't want to know.

But - Caesar shoves away from the wall, and that's their queue to rejoin the civilized world. Joseph shucks himself back against the other one to let him pass. ]

So, where is it we're heading?

[That wasn’t a question he wanted to answer, given that he didn’t really have a satisfying response to give. Caesar didn’t have anything more concrete than-]

Away.

[So, that.] I don’t know. The longer we stay here the longer we’ll… [He stopped, he gestured - the walls, the shadows, the waterfront…] I don’t think I can spend another night here- no, rather, I don’t think I should. It’s too easy. So, away. [He could pretend to have plans.] Towards your forest. Find a motel along the way. Stay there for the night.

[Good enough. And Caesar started walking again. Whatever his mouth said could be stitched together to form a plan later.] We can find the place your body was left, tomorrow. Proceed from there.

[Then, the echo.] Escape.

[ Away.

Caesar was trying to sound like he had some direction to go in - and Joseph supposes he does, if away counts as a direction. But it is a direction and it isn't. They can go away, certainly they can, but that doesn't leave them any less directionless than they had been already. He simply wanted to divorce from the waterfront as soon as he could.

Joseph can't say he blames him.

Caesar struts out of the alleyway, somehow in that distinctly Caesar way that he'd always had, readable even here and now, and Joseph lurches out after him in that distinctly un-Joseph way that he'd been saddled with.

His forest. He guesses it makes sense that Caesar would already know the circumstances, but it's still a strange thing to be able to consider now. ]

It was Chimney Rock. That's where I died. You probably know that already.

Of course I do. [It was drawled out, a sharp declaration. Of course I do, idiot. Of course I know where you died. As if he had fire and fury and a real direction besides away. Of course he didn’t. It felt like so long since he had felt something besides…empty, hollow, what fire he had enough to illuminate his empty inside. And the light from that fire played tricks with his sharp edges and unfinished corners and made it seem like, sometimes, there was something more besides emptiness inside of him. There wasn’t, of course. There was only empty. Raw, hollow, sharp, unfinished empty.

But he had a revenge mission and could pretend, just as he could pretend like he had more of a direction than just away.]

I went there twice after…it happened. I think the most insulting part was that it was nice, in its own way. Pleasant. Remote.

Not the words I would have used.

[ This is said as they cross the bustling pier, Joseph tugging Caesar closer to the back-ended walls of the warehouses as forklifts whizz by. After he gets over the slow sharpness of that confirmation, as though he'd asked about the colour of the sky, as if the site of his expiration was as obvious and unquestioning a certainty as anything else present in Caesar's life. Of course he knew. Of course he knew. Why shouldn't he know?

And this astonishment turns out to be twinned with another, and that is that Caesar had known it well enough to have been there, and to have been there several times. Joseph hobbles behind Caesar as they close the rest of the distance across the pavement slab, through the working crowds and toward the road. ]

Glad you didn't have to know it like I knew it.

If I knew it like you knew it, Joseph, then at the very least I could have spared you the trip and things would have been easier for the both of us. That said: I'm glad I didn't either.

[But was he really? If he knew it like Jojo knew it, then...it was fucked up that he was thinking this, really, but at least he'd know what Joseph had gone through, what he had driven his idiot ultimately to. Penance, in a sense. Avenging Joseph's death would be best: experiencing something similar a second.]

I can't do anything for you if I died as well. Hold still-

[That was a car passing by, but...it was nothing.]

You're actually the only one besides, well. [The people behind them.] Them who know I'm still in town.

( picture prompt meme )

gdit I did research and now I want to marathon Eurospy movies

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