Work Text:
Joseph doesn’t know the first time he saw Erina looking too frail and too weak than she was supposed to. His grandmother was always strong, a pillar of harsh discipline that hit his backside with a ruler whenever he was rude and brash and skipped school.
She wasn’t supposed to look like that. She wasn’t supposed to be hunched over in her rocking chair, an old photo clasped tightly in her grip, listless eyes staring blankly out the window, seeing something far in the past. That just isn’t right.
For now, Joseph slinks back, and pretends he didn’t see anything. But he just can’t, because it’s his grandmother, you know? It’s for this reason that later that night he tip-toes his way into her room and pulls out the photo.
The boy has black hair and kind eyes, a big frame but a gentle smile. Jonathan, it reads, and he has the brief memory that that’s the name of his grandfather.
-
When she’s with Speedwagon, and Joseph is peering from behind a barely-open door, she doesn’t look so sad.
If an old bond breaks, you just have to build another, don’t you? If a bridge caves in, you just have to construct another. Then, you can cross whatever river just like before. It makes sense, he thinks.
-
The first time Joseph jokes about Speedwagon and Erina having an affair; it’s just the small voice that speaks that small line of thought. And it was kind of funny to see Speedwagon sigh in disappointment and lower his hat as his grandmother promptly goes red in the face from anger and whacks her cane.
The bruises don’t answer the small, barely there, question of why, though.
Sure, he knows why, he isn’t stupid. Erina is too loyal and Speedwagon has no interest, they’re just friends, he knows this.
But it makes sense, doesn’t it? If his grandmother is sad because her lover is dead, she should find another one, right? Because if love made her sad, love also made her happy. She should just find love again, right?
-
The first time Joseph’s wriggling eyebrows and pet-peeve smile feels less like a joke and more like a desperate wish is on the streets of New York.
It’s a joke, of course, but he’s only half joking and that small seed has already grown into a flourishing tree.
-
Caesar turns form everything Joseph hates to everything Joseph loves in the span of just a few weeks.
It feels so alive and so in-the-present and mid-kiss he chokes on his own breath coughs and hacks and blabbers out a quick; “I guess it really isn’t like the movies, huh!” in the face of Caesar’s extremely un-amused expression.
“This is why you’ve never had a girlfriend before.” Caesar says, grimacing in disgust as he wipes Joseph’s spit of his face.
Joseph, unfazed, sees an opportunity. “Sure I haven’t got a girlfriend, but I got you, and that’s better!”
Caesar goes red in the ears and forces a quiet ‘dumbass’, and Joseph loves it. He feels the wind on his skin and the stars on his back, and thinks he’ll never be able to forget the way Caesar glows in the moonlight.
He wishes the moment could last forever.
-
It doesn’t last.
-
Suzie is cute, and spunky, by all means, just Joseph’s type. But there’s something wrong in the way her lips fit into his, an uncanny valley, a feeling that’s just-right but a little not-really. Like a puzzle-piece that just barely fits.
Not wrong, he reminds himself, just different.
-
It terrifies him that he sees himself in Erina.
-
One day, Holly comes up to him and asks him something that makes him nearly choke.
“Hey Papa?” She tilts her head. “Who’s Caesar?”
Joseph spits out his coffee and takes too-long to re-collect himself. “Where…where did you hear that name?”
She frowns. “You were talking about him, in your sleep, you know.”
-
When Joseph comes back, tired and worn, Suzie is there.
He loves her, he really does. But there’s still something wrong in the way she clasps him tight and holds his hand. The lines on her palm just don’t match up to his.
But he gives her a kiss on the lips and it doesn’t feel wrong, just different.
-
Caesar wouldn’t approve, he knows Caesar wouldn’t.
But the bridge he built with Suzie just wasn’t enough. And even Joseph knows that cheating—God he doesn’t want to call it that but that’s what it was—was wrong.
He builds another bridge, shaky on it’s foundation, and it doesn’t help in the slightest.
-
Coming back from the crusade was tiring and taxing and he wants to see Suzie but it’s a lot to handle, trying to make their lips line up perfectly and their lines meld into each other.
It doesn’t take so much effort, now, though. It doesn’t take any at all. Because different isn’t exactly wrong.
It seems like the first time Joseph can really, truly, rest.
He loves her and for the first time, it doesn’t seem to strange on his tongue.
-
Suzie is mad, really mad.
Joseph regrets it, he does. He never wanted to have an affair, but he was younger and stupider and their lines still hadn’t run parallel.
“Suzie I’m sorry.” He stresses, and it takes a while, but she forgives him. Doesn’t forget, but forgives.
-
Josuke, his son—(the word is still strange)—is kind and gentle and less of a delinquent than Joseph was at his age.
Joseph, now old and frail but very much alive, builds a new bridge. But the stones used on the foundation aren’t old and stolen from the build of another bridge, they’re new and they’re not a replacement for anything.
He builds a new shiny bridge, strong and sturdy, and it’s new, not a replacement for some other. It does a better job bridging that gap than any knock-off.
-
The stars race across the sky too-fast and too-sudden and Joseph thinks of his wife, his daughter, his son, his grandson, his great-granddaughter—and loves them.
They’re all new bridges, even Suzie who’s stopped becoming a not-right replacement for an old love, and became her own love.
He loves them, and wishes the world didn’t end so quickly.
-
“Heyyyy…” The teen drawls.
“Mm?” The girl hums.
“Yeah, what is it this time?” The blonde responds, stretching out on their shared bed and sending a look that screamed that if the other brought up one more useless subject—
“Soooo, I think I found a really good spirit animal for this guy, here,” he jerks a thump at the blonde, “a porcupine, they’re prickly and mean and sometimes adorable!”
The girl giggles, high and delighted. “Hey! That’s a bit mean!”
-
He loves them, again.