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When Josh and Caspar show up, halfway through Joe’s painting video, neither Jack nor Mikey even blink. Byron yells a greeting from his room, having been banished to keep the results fair, but he’s unsurprised as well. It’s easy to keep them out of frame, and they’re old pros at keeping quiet while Jack riles up Mikey on camera.
It’s easier, even, for Joe and Caspar to head upstairs when Joe’s finished with his painting. Caspar tugs off his t-shirt and flings it at Mikey as they go, laughing at Mikey’s loud protest of aww, mate! even as Joe’s tugging him up the last of the stairs by his belt loops.
Joe is towel-drying his hair and Caspar is gargling mouthwash when Jack shows up at the doorway, leaning on the frame and announcing that he’s finally finished his painting. “Perfection takes time,” he says, shrugging and then grinning when Caspar snorts, choking on Tesco’s cool mint as he does so. “How should we wake Mikey?”
“He’s asleep, then?” Joe asks, hanging his towel on a hook and pulling his jeans back on, bouncing around on each leg to get them all the way up.
“He might not like Bob’s instruction, but he seems to have found the man’s voice awfully soothing,” Jack says, “as he’s passed out in a pile on your couch.”
“Let’s go and get him then,” Joe says. Jack leads the way out, but Joe turns back. “Cas, you coming?”
“I’ll be down,” Caspar tells him. “It’s not like I’m gonna be in the shots, anyway.”
Later, when Byron has crowned Joe the winner, to no one’s surprise, Jack makes a comment about giving his painting to his latest lady friend and Joe’s grin widens with delight. He plucks the canvas off of his easel and presents it to Caspar with a flourish, the lads giggling in the background.
“Aww, buddy!” Caspar says, genuinely pleased. “I’ll put this up in the entrance.” He leans down to smack a wet kiss to Joe’s cheek and the giggling turns into crowing, but Joe’s eyes crinkle with his smile even as he wipes the slobber off his face.
They decide to play a few rounds of Fortnight before venturing out for dinner and Caspar settles into the corner of the sofa, Joe wedged into his side. Caspar isn’t playing, just trash-talking, so his hands are free to scratch through the shorter bits of hair at the back of Joe’s head while he scrolls absently through his instagram with the other.
“Oh, we should go there, next holiday,” Joe says, glancing away from the screen to see Caspar swiping through some island hotel’s feed. Josh finds his avatar hiding in a bush and offs him, ducks both Joe and Caspar’s flailing, smacking hands, laughing and still trying to build a tower.
“We’ve only just come back,” Caspar says, laughing and Joe sighs, put-out and pouting for show, lets Caspar drag him closer and get a hand in the longer parts of his hair so he can tilt his head to the side and swear in Joe’s ear that they’ll book a room at the hotel by the end of the month.
“Okay, lovebirds,” Jack says, with a significant look at Josh and Byron, “Separate. Caspar, take over for me,” Jack says, already tossing the controller over. “I’ve got to take this.”
Mikey and Josh whistle and hoot as he steps out into the garden and Jack rolls his eyes, at them, or at his phone, it’s pretty unclear.
Caspar playing means he and Joe have to separate, but it’s fine, because that means they get to be competitive, which is just as much fun.
At dinner, Caspar and Joe each order their own platter of sushi rolls and swap back and forth with ease, trading tuna for salmon and feeding each other pieces of shrimp with growing dollops of wasabi on them, watery-eyed and daring the other to take more.
Mikey says, loudly, “I miss dating,” and then yelps when someone clearly kicks him under the table and Byron changes the subject to G.O.A.T.’s newest single swiftly. Caspar sniffs, trying to avoid wiping his streaming eyes with his fingers and Joe leans over with a fresh cloth napkin, blotting at his face. Byron’s staring at the pair of them in disbelief, though he’s still talking about the music video, so maybe it’s Caspar’s ridiculous cameo that’s got him so confused.
“Maybe that’s enough wasabi for now,” Joe says, fond enough that their entire table groans.
“I didn’t think there was that much body oil!” Caspar says, and Josh blinks.
“Any amount of body oil is too much body oil, mate,” Mikey says, and the conversation devolves from there.
The boys want to go to a few clubs before the night is out and Joe and Caspar share a look before nodding in agreement. Lots of people vlog clubbing, not even just famous youtubers, which has them separating a bit more, taking separate Ubers and sitting on opposite sides of the booth their group absconds upon.
They text back and forth, Joe’s foot comfortably sandwiched between Caspar’s, and when Jack and Josh get up to head towards a group of pretty girls a little ways off, Joe waggles his eyebrows at Caspar until Caspar gets up to follow them.
Mikey knows some lads by the bar so he makes an exit, and then it’s just Joe and Byron.
Byron wants to talk about films, and has strong enough opinions about the Marvel Movie Universe that he and Joe can really get into it, bickering and slandering each other’s favourites as they knock back a few more drinks until Joe’s feeling warm and floaty.
Jack comes back to tell them that Josh might be pulling, a shit-eating grin on his face, and Joe laughs. “Shoulda done the roses for him, yeah?”
“Romantic lighting, Barry Manilow,” Joe agrees. “You think we can beat him back to the flat?”
“Only if we leave immediately,” Jack says, because he’s always down to screw with Josh and Byron groans, but he’s smiling too.
“I want no part in this,” he tells them, clapping Joe on the back in farewell before getting up to find Mikey and Caspar.
Jack and Joe eye each other excitedly and make their way out of the club, getting their Uber to stop well up the street of Josh and Caspar’s place so they can dart into an empty Tesco’s and snatch up all the rest of the bouquets the place has out for the night.
Jack leaves Joe in the line and comes back a few minutes later with a Best Hits of Barry Manilow CD and a soft back copy of a Fifty Shades book.
“Should we get him condoms?” Joe asks after they’ve added Jack’s finds to their cart and when Jack says obviously they should get condoms, Joe bends down to find a box of flavored ones.
They near-on run from Tesco’s to Josh and Caspar’s flat, using Joe’s stolen copy of the key to get in as quietly as possible and practically collapsing in relief when they find the lights still out.
Joe goes over to fiddle with the sound system while Jack starts destroying their bundles of roses so he can fling the petals overtop Josh’s bed. They’re on a serious time crunch, so Joe finishes getting the music playing on a loop and heads into the office to try and find one or two cameras they can set up in discrete places.
They lay out the condoms in the shape of a heart around the Fifty Shades and find a scarf to wrap artfully around Josh’s lampshade so the room is dim and awash in a reddish glow. Jack and Josh split up the remaining condoms between them and then the lock turns in the door and they have to run to hide.
They can hear Josh’s date laughing good-naturedly about the music, and Josh’s excuse about his ‘roommate’, and the couple waste no time in heading to the bedroom. Upon entry of which the startled gasp the girl makes is audible and Josh groans and must smack his head against something.
“I swear—” he’s saying, hurriedly, as the girl laughs a little nervously, “I had nothi—”
“Is that a camera?” The girl cuts him off, sounding horrified and Jack and Joe stare at each other with wide eyes, more gleeful than they could’ve thought was possible for a repeat prank.
There is the sound of skin hitting skin and Joe’s mouth falls open.
Did she just slap him?? he taps out on his notepad app and Jack has to press his hand to his mouth to keep from laughing.
“Call me!” Josh calls out weakly, voice further away again, and he’s nearly cut off by the sound of the front door slamming.
Josh finds them and punches them each in the arm before they can get away, because they’re too busy hollering with laughter against each other.
“You are the worst,” Josh tells them, annoyed and amused in one go. More annoyed, though, so they gather the cameras and clear out of his room. Not fast enough that Jack doesn’t get clipped in the back of the head with the book.
“Lucky we got the soft back one,” Joe says seriously, which sets them off enough that they’re still giggling as they root around through Caspar and Josh’s fridge for something to eat. Caspar gets home then, helps them find some leftover tubs of ice cream from Joe’s missing key prank, wants to know why they keep laughing and why Josh is stonily editing in the office instead of with a girl or out with them.
Jack falls asleep on the couch, clutching his phone in one hand and an xbox controller in the other, so Joe rinses off the dishes in the sink and gets the dishwasher started before he wanders into Caspar’s room, getting Netflix set up, volume way down low, but the subtitles streaming across the bottom. Caspar comes in not too long later, closes his bedroom door behind him so he can strip and shower, grinning when Joe sleepily wolf-whistles and makes some grabby hands.
“Heard you pranked Josh, for once,” Caspar says from the bathroom, and Joe makes the story sound like an epic adventure while Caspar showers and brushes his teeth, and when he comes back into the bedroom, a pair of orange briefs on, Joe flips open the duvet so Caspar can crawl in next to him and press a lingering, minty-fresh kiss to Joe’s mouth.
“You emailed the fortune teller lady the NDA form?” Joe asks between trading open-mouthed kisses and Caspar makes a noise of agreement even as he tugs Joe’s borrowed t-shirt back up over his head.
The next morning, Josh wakes them up when he sets off the smoke detector trying to make himself bacon, and Joe and Caspar shuffle into the kitchen area, hoping to convince Josh to cook them eggs.
Jack’s still passed out on the couch, sprawled on his stomach with one leg hanging off the side and an arm thrown over the back, his shirt riding up and his mouth hanging open, and Joe lets Caspar take some pictures of him for blackmail purposes before he finds a dishtowel to towel whip him awake.
“Fuck you,” Jack says after he’s yelped and shot up. He’s grinning, though, and three sets of helpless expressions is more than enough to convince Josh to embark on another cooking endeavor.
Byron gets there before Jack has to leave, and they all bicker around the table over eggs and reheated pizza about whether or not the psychic will have any legitimate knowledge.
“But did you tell her you were a youtuber?” Jack asks, and Byron and Josh laugh.
“No, I can learn from Phil and Dan,” Caspar says, grinning. “I just asked her over for a group session with me and some mates.”
“There are a couple ways we’ll know if she’s legit,” Joe muses and Caspar winks.
Jack looks reluctant to leave when the fortune teller shows up in a logo t-shirt and some skinny jeans and Caspar brings out a red dress and a strange jangly silver netted cap that she agrees to wear with a warm smile.
“Let me know how it goes,” he tells the room at large, and then he scoffs at Caspar’s wow’d expression and repeats himself directly to Byron and Josh.
She watches with amusement as Caspar films the intro and she’s a good sport about changing into the things Caspar’s bought for her, and then they get started.
“Joe actually does listen to a lot of Nickelback,” Byron says, and Joe’s protests fall on deaf ears.
“Do you want to know about your love life?” Bombayla asks, and Joe nods, doesn’t look at Caspar. She’d gotten a lot of things right about him, enough that he’s a little mystified, but he knows everything she’s said is more or less generic enough that it could be applied to a lot of different people.
“I can tell you’ve already met the person you want to spend your life with,” she says, in that same frank-but-pleasant voice she’s been saying everything else in. “You two have a lot of fun together, maybe have a lot of adventures together—”
Josh and Byron are both staring, now, and Joe laughs a little, ignores them, knows they already have to refilm this bit, so he’s unafraid about asking, “How do I keep him?” like Caspar’s not right there, arm already around his shoulders, fingers absently toying with the fabric of Joe’s Ghostbusters’ shirt out of view of the camera.
“It’s the easiest job in the world,” Bombayla tells him, her expression smoothing into something a little more personal, a little more genuinely happy for him. “Because he wants to be kept.”
*
The cameras are off and the memory cards being plugged into a laptop and the front door is barely closed behind Bombayla when Josh and Byron whirl on Joe, lounging in Grant’s office chair next to Caspar, his legs stretched out so his toes can press against Caspar’s shins every time Caspar spins towards him, the constant movement soothing and familiar.
“You’ve already met the person you want to spend your life with?” Josh recites, his voice kind of unimpressed.
“Uh, yes,” Joe says, squinting.
“He’s got to be kidding,” Byron says, to Josh, like Joe isn’t in the room at all. Caspar snorts, but doesn’t look away from pulling up all of the relevant clips into the editing software, slowly beginning to cut them into something he can smooth out later. “I live with him.”
“Yeah,” Joe agrees, bewildered. “You do. Have you seriously not noticed?”
“I told you,” Caspar says cheerfully. “There’s no way our mates would’ve just let it alone.”
“You know?” Josh asks Caspar, who finally looks up from his work, vaguely offended.
“I sure hope so,” Caspar says, and Joe presses his toes a little harder against Caspar’s shins, reassuring and settling all at once. Caspar’s expression relaxes again and he grins a little, the memory of Joe’s question still bouncing around at the back of his mind. He’s definitely going to keep that clip, though he’ll have to store it on one of his external hard-drives, where it can’t get hacked into. Unbidden, he says it out loud, while Josh and Joe and Byron are bickering. “Joe wants to keep me.”
Obviously, they hear him, and Joe knocks their knees together, eyes crinkling up at the corners.
Josh and Byron have fallen silent, and a quick glance shows dawning comprehension on their faces, but Caspar is too busy smiling stupidly back at Joe.
“Caspar wants to be kept,” Joe agrees, and it sounds like something else. Something better.