Joseph Joestar barged into the room with a crash, a trail of blood, and a scent of alcohol. His forehead slamming into the corner of the mantle, he put up his fists to fight. "You too, huh?" he growled through clenched teeth. "I just can't get a break today..."
Caesar Zeppeli leaped out of a nearby armchair and across the room as if it was a ravine he was saving JoJo from. Taking a deep breath, he raised two pairs of glowing fingertips into striking position. "JoJo, what's happening?" he plead with tightly strung intensity. "What got in?"
JoJo swung a punch at a picture frame setting atop the mantle, knocking both it and himself over in the process. Caesar moved quick, catching something in each arm. Despite the frame not hitting the floor, Caesar still had something to growl about: A crack in the picture covering his shoulders and an unknown woman's face. "Joestar, what the hell!"
"I didn't..." Joseph interrupted himself with a hiccup. "Like the way it was looking at me."
In his next Hamon breath, Caesar caught whiff of JoJo's breath, light and dry from booze, in contrast to its usual heavy and humid texture that resulted from Joseph's negligence of personal hygiene.
"Are you drunk?" Caesar interrogated, setting the cracked picture back on the mantle as JoJo weakly tried to swipe at it again. "Where did you even get alcohol on this island!" Joseph rolled out of Caesar's arm and completed a full spin on foot before finally finding a stance.
"Don't underestimate me, Caesar-kun," JoJo snarled, pointing a challenging finger. There was a stretch of silence as the strength in JoJo's outstretched arm wavered and Caesar remained in a tense stance, ready to deal with the situation in any way he might have to. Joseph eventually collapsed to his knees for no discernible reason. Caesar, left without words, could only think to try to get some out of JoJo.
Relaxing his stance, Caesar made his way over to JoJo and tried to lift him from the ground. "Come on, what the hell are you doing?" With a firm grasp on JoJo's wrist, Caesar pit his weight against JoJo's, making his words come out strangled and rough. "We're here to be training."
"I am – Hic! - training, you idiot," Joseph said as Caesar draped him over his shoulder. The words – and all sorts of unpleasant drunken sensations – dropped from his mouth as Caesar, fake gagging to make his disgust plain as day, dragged to where he'd been sitting prior.
"What are you talking about?" Caesar said with narrowed eyes as he dropped Joseph into the armchair, where he slumped down like a sack of loose change trying to disappear between the cushions.
"I'm – Hic! - fighting 's hard as I can, here."
"Against what, hostile photographs?" Caesar mocked with crossed arms after swiping the picture frame from the mantle and shoving it in JoJo's face. JoJo snarled at the image, so Caesar withdrew it before he could lash out again. "What's the problem here?" He asked, his expression softening only slightly.
"What pro – h-hic! - blem?" JoJo challenged. Caesar rolled his eyes. "There's no problem," Joseph insisted, retrieving an unopened bottle of champagne from the folds of his scarf. Caesar opened his mouth to protest, stepping towards JoJo to take the bottle from him. Before he got a word out, though, his nose was suddenly smashed in by the bottle's cork, loaded and launched with Hamon.
Joseph, smirking, took a swig of booze before delivering his one-liner: "Who here needs training, Caesar?" Caesar held his hands over his wound for only a second before he lunged at Joseph, prying the champagne from his hands as he was trying to chug it.
"Hey!" JoJo protested, reaching for the bottle like a kid reaching for the cookie jar as Caesar held it only inches above JoJo's head. Caesar reached for the window next to the chair and flung it open, chucking the bottle outside. No more words were exchanged until the two of them heard the glass shattering against the rocks a couple hundred feet down. "What the hic, 'ell was that for!"
"What's the problem, here, JoJo?" Caesar repeated.
"There is no – Hic!" And then suddenly there were tears on JoJo's face. Caesar wasn't surprised.
"Get some rest, Joseph," Caesar said, briefly putting a hand on JoJo's shoulder as he prepared to donate his room to the drunken Joestar for the night. However, before he could step away, JoJo grabbed his wrist and started talking.
"Easy for you – hic – to say," he grumbled, ignoring a lot of things, the blood and tears on his face and Caesar's wrist in his hand among them.
"What's this? A bum like you doesn't want to kick back and relax?" Caesar questioned, refusing to take the condescending note out of his voice.
"How can I?" Joseph questioned in return. "One month! One month before I die..." Caesar paused at his comrade's dilemma. He glanced down at the napkin he'd taken out to hold to his bloody nose and only somewhat reluctantly offered it to clean up the wound JoJo'd given himself upon his clumsy entrance.
"You're worried about the 'wedding rings?'" Caesar assumed. JoJo nodded. "All we have to do is beat them," Caesar reminded him. "Not that hard if we actually train for it."
"Me? Hic! Train? Work hard? Ha!" Joseph laughed bitterly. "I have no idea how I could possibly get better..." He lamented, bending over his lap, shaking his head with his fingers tangled in his hair. A moment of silence.
"Focus your Hamon more," Caesar eventually grumbled.
"Huh?" Joseph whipped his head up.
"You always release your Hamon in a burst from the palm of your hands. Try focusing it through your fingertips. Joseph raised his hands to examine them, confusion scrawled on his face and his mouth moving to form the first sound of "how" - but releasing a hiccup instead. Caesar sighed. "Here – get rid of those tears, first of all," he commanded, using JoJo's scarf to wipe his face dry. He grabbed Joseph's right hand and placed his thumb in his palm as if trying to communicate an instruction manual through their touch. "Breath with me," Caesar recommended, starting a rhythm of slow, deep breaths. JoJo blinked a couple times, wide-eyed with curiosity as Caesar sat down on the arm of the chair, before trying to match his flow.
"No, not like that," Caesar growled. "You're breathing too shallow; expand your diaphragm." With that remark, Caesar put his hand on JoJo's exposed abs to monitor his breathing. Half carelessly, half sarcastically, Joseph silently offered his leg for Caesar to sit on, seeing that the reach was a somewhat awkward position. Caesar, mostly carelessly, took the offer, not taking his eyes off his spread hand on JoJo's gut. He suddenly scoffed. "Not bad."
He moved his hand to JoJo's chest to monitor his lungs. Shortly after he did, Joseph gently put a hand over Caesar's wrist, staring intensely at Caesar's eyes, which were focused elsewhere for only a few more seconds. His gaze eventually wandered up, meeting the vibrant seafoam of Joseph's. The rest of the world seemed silent in lieu of Joseph's life: their synchronized breathing. The steady pounding of his heart, so slightly restrained by the wedding ring that no one would've been able to pick up on it without being told. "...I think you'll be fine." The words eventually seemed to speak themselves, well aware that Caesar wasn't saying anything any time soon.
"I hope so," Joseph replied simply, his grip on Caesar's wrist softly intensifying, his eyes already half-lidded in preparation for sleep lulled on by Caesar's presence.