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Jude’s brow inevitably creased when Sonny brought up the bouncer, not only for the danger imposed to their most important friend in a very physical sense, but also the more abstract threat implicit in Lydia seeing it happen. “Fuck,” they uttered eloquently, the one leg that was swinging starting to swing a little faster with nerves. It didn’t slow even when they accepted the joint and took a quick, deep lungful, the smoke scraping down Jude’s throat in a much different way than their vape but not in a way they wholly minded.
It was a precarious tightrope they’d been walking for years with Lydia. Jude had been careful to follow Sonny’s lead when they met, well aware that the two of them were far too inexorably intertwined for her to believe that one would be in the business they’re in without the other. But maybe she’d be upset to know they were both in it without her. Without her even knowing.
Jude tilted his head back towards the sky, a starless backdrop thanks not to clouds but to the pollution of the bright lights all around them, and exhaled a soft cloud of smoke. “Fuck,” he said again, more subdued this time, as he lowered his gaze to Sonny’s, an uncharacteristic picture of heavy concern, and offered the joint back.
Ultimately, he shook his head. “There’s lots of people here I know. A few of ‘em even know me.” Which was the more important point, when Jude was so frequently an anonymous name behind a computer or cellphone screen. “But if they know what’s good for ‘em, they won’t be seen talking to me.” Jude shook his head again, licked his lips. This time when his scuffed-white boot swung out, it caught briefly but purposefully at the outside of Sonny’s thigh.
“Ever think too much about what’d happen if she found out?” ‘If’ felt like a lie, when it was so much more likely a ‘when.’ Lord knew Jude thought too much about it, when he so often considered himself the most disposable of the three. Lydia could hate him, he figured with an unaffectedness he didn’t really feel. But surely she couldn’t hate her brother.
—
“Fuck indeed,” he echoed the sentiment with a bitter mirth not quite present in his friend’s own delivery. Kohl-rimmed eyes lingered on Jude’s form, on the angles formed as they tilted their head to the sky, and the way the cityscape reflected off of them to create a soft diffusion of light like a pink-hued halo. Rather candidly, and likely a byproduct of the cross-fade starting to take effect in his brain, Sonny grinned, “I should’ve brought my camera. You look–” Inhale, exhale. “—too good to ruin it by gettin’ worried over my own...shenanigans.”
He shrugged at the silliness of the thought. Where Sonny’s shenanigans ended, Jude’s began, and vice versa. The world might see the Caine siblings as inexorably linked, but in the deepest sense of what the trio was truly comprised of — wouldn’t that title instead be better suited to the two who shared a secret as readily as a joint on a rooftop, as manicures and Mario Kart, as inside jokes and knowing glances? Sonny shrugged again, a half-bemused chuckle accompanying another small exhale of smoke as the other nudged his thigh.
“Well, half the reason I keep you ‘round is for the thrill of it all,” he joked in response, words bearing a certain truth — not solely in the sense of fending off any trouble that came their way, but simply because that Jude was a thrill. Beyond friendly flights of fancy, they offered something Sonny’s life seemed naturally inclined to reject: stability. Stability in the form of someone to look forward to, to even occasionally come home to, to lean against and trust even with that which was most hidden from the rest of the world. Whatever existed between them was indeed a thrill, the kind that demanded to be protected if only for its sheer rarity.
Before he could speak more on it, they were back on about Lydia — and when his sister was the topic of conversation, all other considerations fell momentarily by the wayside. “‘Too much’? How about eight days a week?” A beat, filled by a nervous chuckle, gaze clouded with a hint of reluctance. “I didn’t realize we were playing Truth of Dare, but seeing as I’ve lazily worked my way around a truth, that means you get a dare.” Those were hardly the rules, and they both knew it, but his assertion carried the undercurrent of a simple plea. “Dare you to distract me from the inevitability of my sister hating me when she finds out.”
