Chapter Text
Dion liked to be at the campus at least an hour before his first class started. If he had early classes, which was almost every day, the entire area would be mostly empty, with hardly anyone having shown up yet, and there was something almost relaxing about the quiet seclusion of this place before it woke up.
None the less, the rooms would be open already, giving him the chance to get inside, take his seat, and read, or prepare for the class in silent companionship with the few other early risers spread across the space in such a way to create the utmost distance between all other living creatures in the lecture hall, unless they came as a pair. If the weather was good, Dion opted, usually, to stay outside and enjoy the silence there, and the illusion of nature the large greenery between the main buildings created inside the bustling city.
It was a habit he had taken up as a child, lingering on the school grounds for an hour before class. Often, he would do his reading there, or look at the material for upcoming subjects if they interested him. It had given him a reputation for being a very diligent student, and his teachers had often praised his studious nature before his father. He had never told anyone that this had simply been the most peaceful time of his day.
It had been ruined a bit by the way it set expectations for him, although he had never disappointed them. After starting college, Dion made sure he was seen simply wandering around or staring at the lake without a book or his laptop anywhere in sight. He wanted to be considered someone whose life was not centered around learning and success. Someone who was willing to waste time for a sunrise or a quiet cup of coffee. He did not know who would pay attention to how he spent his mornings, but if someone did, he did not want them to expect him to excel at every test just because he was in class early.
He did excel at every test. He tried to slack off once, try for a mark that was good but not perfect, and prioritize something – anything – else over being the best in the subjects his father had chosen for him. He had made it until five days before the exam, forcing himself to finish a book he had been reading, to go see a movie, to go on two dates with Terence, the friend he had been dating at the time. Terence had been delighted about the time Dion suddenly made for him. He had been less delighted about the way Dion had started to feel ill and nervous the closer to the exam they got, even though Terence assured him that his expertise on the subject was enough to pass the class with ease.
Dion had always been his father’s golden boy. The one who was good at everything. The one whose accomplishments Father could show off with. He had certainly already been planning to casually drop mention of his son’s groundbreaking results to his business partners at the summer festival…
With five days to go, Dion had given up on sleep one restless night and started learning. He had cancelled all dates if he remembered to and poured himself into his studies. He came to campus early to sit on the bench with his laptop, or take notes in the lecture hall before anyone else was even awake. All attempts by others to invite him into conversation were met with friendly rejection.
Then he had aced the exam. Father had been pleased, in his understated way that showed he had expected nothing less. Dion had finished the year at the top of his class, again, and it had felt like failure. But he had pleased his father. No, he had avoided disappointing his father. There had been so much relief in that, after he had nearly ruined it. He had proven worthy of his father’s trust and pride.
He had been a good investment.
His mornings had never been the same again. At some point, he had given up and always taken his materials with him, just in case.
Terence had amicably broken up with him during that summer break, but they shared many of the same classes and nothing at all really changed between them. It was this that showed Dion, more than any argument ever had, just how little time he had made for his partner in his life.
There had been no other attempt at a serious relationship after that. Dion simply could not fit it into his schedule. The best he could do was coffee or dinner dates, sometimes resulting in fun, meaningless sex that took the edge off. His partners were on the same page as him, never wanting more than a good time with no commitment. Sometimes he even ended up with Terence again, the two of them knowing each other well and somehow working better without the expectation of more and the pressure that came with it.
It was not bad. Dion was not, in that sense, lonely. He always managed to push away the despair that threatened to overwhelm him when he thought that this was all his private life would let him be: A footnote in the personal history of all the guys who would move on to find happiness with someone else while he continued to sacrifice any chance of romance on the altar of his father’s expectations.
Surely, father would have expected him to marry one day and continue the family line. This fate, at least, Dion had been spared when his half-brother Olivier had been born. One day, he would have to send the kid a fruit basket for that service – and Olivier would never understand what it was for or even who it came from, because it in entire three years of the boy’s life, Dion had seen him a total of two times. From a distance. While his stepmother made snide remarks in is general direction.
Dion did not know if he regretted that. Sometimes, the idea of having a sibling to care about and be adored by was appealing. But not being allowed to form any kind of relationship with his half-brother, the most he managed to feel for him was vague dread, because Olivier being there meant that his mother was there as well. So far, the boy was little more to Dion than an extension of his mother’s ambition.
She would go on and on about how her son was perfect and beautiful and blessed with the noble blood of her line and the Lesages’. Dion felt sorry, sometimes, about the pressure the poor kid would have to deal with his whole life, knowing it far too well himself. So far, however, Olivier was mostly just spoiled and prone to throwing tantrums that always got him what he wanted from both of his parents, so Dion did not feel like he was missing out on a lot by the forced separation.
When Olivier was born, Dion had been in boarding school. It had been in Oriflamme, not far from his family’s mansion, but he had been home rarely anyway, and when he was, his stepmother had made a point not to be most of the time. There had been little interaction with her during the short time between Dion graduating from school and starting university.
The University of Twinside, also known as the Crystalline Campus due to the heavy emphasis on glass and reflective surfaces in its design, offered some of the best classes for business majors in Valisthea. Not the very best – that would be the University of Oriflamme, Dion’s hometown. When he had told his father that he had wanted to enroll at Twinside, several hours of air travel from Oriflamme, it had not been because he had hoped for better results from it. It was not even because he had taken a particular liking to the place. Mostly, it had been because it had been several hours of air travel from home.
And because he had wanted to see what would happen if he told his father that he was planning to move out and spend most of his year far from the rest of the family.
His father had made a thoughtful face. He had talked about how Twinside was good, but Oriflamme was better. He had mentioned that graduating from Oriflamme would look better on Dion’s resume later in life.
Then his wife Anabella had mentioned that she thought Dion had a brilliant idea for once, and how it didn’t matter that much, since Twinside was reputable enough, and Dion was going to spend the rest of his life working for his father’s company anyway, so it wasn’t like anyone would care about his resume.
The next day, Dion’s father had organized for his move halfway across the continent. He had gotten him an apartment close to the campus but not in the dorms, even though the most exclusive dorms were so expensive that everyone had a place for themselves and room to spare anyway. The Crystalline College was a university for the very rich, after all. At least in terms of cost it was not second to Oriflamme, which may have been a factor in Dion’s father letting him go.
But even with Anabella’s influence, Dion knew it grated on Father that his firstborn would forever be soiled by the fact that he was getting his degree at the second-best university for his subject and not the best. “Second best” was not a label he usually accepted in association with his son.
Unless it was in relation to his spoiled younger half-brother.
Since Dion was here now, the only chance to avoid this bad mark was to raise the level of the institution. Twinside, although not lacking wealthy sponsors, was surely very happy about Dion’s choice to get his education there, because his father started to give generous, entirely conditional donations aimed to get it to the same level as Oriflamme. To Dion, this was just one more reason why he could never fail.
Of course, he was not the only student facing this kind of pressure. Other than Oriflamme, the Crystalline Campus was not entirely elitist, having some subjects in which the cost was not quite as high, and students were accepted on marks, not just on financial and social status – something that Dion knew bothered his father and delighted Anabella, as it put Dion closer, in vicinity at least, to the peasantry she thought he belonged to. And there was nothing worse in her mind than a peasant.
The lectures for business and politics were very much catering to the social elite, however – otherwise, Dion doubted his father would have let him study here. Because of this, he had many a classmate who never needed to bother about marks, knowing their teachers would not let them fail, but he also had more than one who had to be at the very top to satisfy their ambitions parents.
And there was only one spot at the very top. It made the pressure go up, but Dion also found that he liked the competition. He did not like winning by default. Fighting someone, even from a distance, and besting them, gave him a certain sense of satisfaction that was different from pleasing his father.
Terence had called him a show-off once. It had not been in the context of academic accomplishments, but Dion thought that he might have a point.
The first class on the second day of the new semester was Political History. It was a course Dion took by choice – all other classes he had were very much oriented on practicality. This one, he took because he wanted some additional credits, he had a time slot to fill on Tuesday morning, and out of everything even slightly related to his majors, this was the one which interested him the most. He also figured that acing the exams wouldn’t take too much time and effort, since mostly, he would just have to memorize things.
This being an early class that was optional for many, the lecture hall had not filled past half capacity even five minutes before the lecture was to start. Dion had been the third student to arrive, almost an hour early, the rain having driven him into the building. The other two had been a girl he knew from his business classes who had been sitting in the backrow with earplugs in and her eyes closed, and a boy all the way down in the fourth row, who had been sitting over an open textbook with the straightest, most proper posture Dion had ever seen on someone not currently in a meeting with his father. Neither of them had noticed him coming in and he had quietly sat down halfway up and close to the door and stared down to the fourth row endlessly until Terence came in with ten minutes to spare and pulled him into something resembling a conversation.
Dion had his laptop open, but he had not even managed to pull up the material for today. Mostly, he wanted it as a shield to hide behind should the boy below ever happen to look in his direction, which he never did.
That may have been for the best, for more than one reason. Dion may have been staring for more than one reason.
The lecture started and Dion did not hear a single word of it. Meanwhile, the boy below, now surrounded by other students, listened attentively. He took notes. He asked questions and participated in the lecture in a way that clearly pleased the professor. His hair was wavy and a different shade of blonde than Dion’s or Olivier’s or Anabella’s. His side profile, when he moved just so that Dion could see it, was very soft and very pretty.
Even from this angle, Dion could see that he was undeniably beautiful. But he wasn’t Dion’s type, and that was not the reason why he couldn’t seem to look away, or why his heart was beating like that.
The lecture ended and the boy remained to take some more notes on the papers in front of him. He left after a few minutes, and the lecture hall emptied quickly, leaving only Dion and Terence behind.
“Pretty,” Terence remarked, which was the moment Dion realized he was still there. “But I didn’t think that would be your type. You usually like your guys capable of bench-pressing you.”
“That’s not it,” Dion told him. It wasn’t. “I just happened to look in that direction. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You just happened to look in that direction for the entire lecture,” Terence told him. “Ninety full minutes. I don’t think you were the only one, so you probably didn’t stand out, but I’ve got to say, you finally managed to surprise me. I didn’t think you liked them that young.”
Dion frowned when the words sank into his mind. “Young?”
“Yeah? You didn’t get a good look at his face? And here I thought that had been his selling feature, considering he looks like a strong wind could blow him over,” Terence teased him. It was in good humor, but Dion wasn’t in the mood for it. “The kid looks like he’s fifteen at best. Must be one of those super-smart new students from the gifted program who skipped several school years.”
“He’s the same age as us,” Dion informed him. “He just looks young.”
“Hm, I see. And you know that how?” Terence still sounded like he enjoyed this decidedly too much. He didn’t seem to be jealous at all about Dion’s imagined attraction, and Dion didn’t quite know how he should feel about that. It wasn’t like they were exclusive exes with benefits. And generally, he didn’t mind Terence teasing him a bit about people he thought Dion might be attracted to. It reminded Dion that he was still a human being, and that some people did see him as one.
In this case, the teasing was misguided.
“I know that he is not only our age, but actually almost three months older than me,” Dion clarified, and when Terence raised his eyebrows at him, he explained, “I know this because we met before, just over ten years ago, when we were both children. I told him my birthday, and he told me that he should have been born on the same day, according to his due date, had he not been born prematurely. We bonded over that, as little kids do, and spend the rest of the day hiding from our parents together. I rarely had such a good time as a kid. Maybe never.” Dion couldn’t help the hint of bitterness creeping into his voice. “Then, I never saw him again.”
“He must have left quite the impression, if you instantly recognized him ten years later,” Terence mused. He seemed a bit more serious now, maybe appreciating how much that one day of companionship with someone who had been kind and compassionate had meant in Dion’s very lonely childhood.
“He did,” Dion confirmed. “I had a rather bad day back then, and he helped. We had fun. It was a somewhat unusual experience for me. I had hoped we could remain friends, even though we lived far from one another.”
“Then here’s your chance,” Terence told him. “Even if it’s a bit later than expected. You should go to him, rather than just stare at him from a distance like some sort of obsessed stalker with a crush. Maybe he’ll remember you, too.”
“Oh, I should rather think he does.” Dion laughed without humor. “He may not recognize me, but he certainly knows who I am. I do not think he would appreciate the approach, though.”
Terence’s expression turned soft and sympathetic, reminding Dion why he had fallen in love with him years ago. “Let me guess,” he said. “Your father’s company got in the way of his family’s business and ruined them.”
Dion hated that that was something that happened often enough for this to be a valid guess. In fact, there were a few of his classmates who avoided him on principle, simply because of who he was, even if they had not been personally affected by the Lesage way of conducting business. (There were others, too, who sought his presence precisely because of who he was, and it was not always easy to tell them from those who just genuinely wanted to hang out with him.)
“Close,” he said. “What actually happened was that while us kids were playing by the lake, my father and his mother were… conducting private business in the mansion’s guest rooms. Then his mother left her husband and children to marry my father and the two of them ruined her ex-husband’s business together, leaving him and their sons essentially on the street.”
“…Wow,” Terence said. “That’s… wait! You’re telling me that guy is Joshua Rosfield? Your stepbrother?”
Dion made a face. “Technically. I never thought of him that way, considering his mother cut off all connections to her first family and we never again met.”
“Well, that…” Terence shook his head. “Forgive me for my choice of words, but that sucks.”
“It does.”
“I didn’t know he was enrolled here. You would think with how much the gossip press loves your family’s dramas, word would have gotten around.”
“Give it time. It’s only the second day of the semester. I knew about it – my father warned me to stay away from him, as if Joshua would want to be anywhere near me. I’m sure father has tried to get him expelled before the semester even started. But the Rosfields were one of the founding families of this university. Clearly, his uncle knew to prevent my father from messing with his nephews’ education.”
With how thoroughly Dion’s stepmother had ruined her former husband, it was easy to forget that the Rosfield clan, as a whole, was far from poor or powerless. As far as Dion was aware, Elwin Rosfield had lost, or cut, all contact with his less unfortunate relatives after the lawsuits that had cost him his business and his reputation, but eventually, his younger brother Byron had gotten back in contact with his nephews, at least, if not with his brother. But he had used his not inconsiderable influence to keep them out of the press wherever he could, and so, to most of the population, they were something of a mystery.
It was known that Clive, the older of the Rosfiled brothers, was working at one of his uncle’s numerous businesses. There had been some talk about it in Dion’s circles that he had pretended not to pay attention to. Elwin Rosfield had, at long last, managed to get back on his feet and raise a new business from the ashes of his old one. It was doing well enough and getting stronger every year, despite having, apparently, no connection to the rest of the family. Why, then, people asked, did Clive work for his uncle and not for his father?
Dion remembered a brief article about him a year ago, when he took over as department head at the Twinside branch of Blue Phoenix Inc., Byron Rosfield’s most important company. It was, ultimately, a position that would not have been worth much attention, had Clive not been a Rosfield himself, and a rather young one at that. Many had speculated that he got the job only because of his relation to the company head, and Dion did not doubt that that was true.
It did not mean that Clive wasn’t suited for it. For all his youth, he seemed to be an intelligent man with good leadership skills and an eye for the right connections. But he would have been passed over on account of his youth and lack of experience for at least another few years without that family connection. It would cast doubt on his skills for a while, deserved or not, and he would have to prove himself over and over.
Dion knew something about that. Not so much because everyone expected him to fail, but because everyone expected him to succeed. In the end, he supposed, the pressure was not all that different for both of them.
Except that the best Dion could do was meet people’s expectations. For Clive, meeting people’s expectations was his worst possible outcome, and his best – impressing them – was not even on Dion’s table.
And Joshua? Were there any expectations placed on him at all? Or was he allowed to simply exist to any outcome whatsoever?
Probably not. And even if he did, that would change once word got around that he was here. There were too many people in this university who would know his name, if not his face, for them to not form ideas of him that he could meet or disappoint.
Dion wondered if he had friends here yet. He hoped so. It couldn’t be him.
“Forgive me saying so,” Terence mused, “but it’s kind of nice to know that there are places even your father cannot reach.”
But he was wrong. Dion’s father was right here, his hand cold on Dion’s shoulder. He had ruined Joshua’s childhood long ago and reached through time, making sure his son had to stay vigilant ten years later to make sure his path and Joshua’s did not accidentally cross any more than they just had.
Dion thought about dropping this class, just so that Joshua would never know he was even here. That was all he could do for him now.
“Do you have plans for the afternoon?” he asked Terence. “The workload for the semester hasn’t started yet. We could hang out before that happens.”
Terence looked at him far too knowingly, and Dion expected to be rejected. He would have deserved that, he thought, probably.
“Sure,” said Terence. “Why not?”
-
Most of Dion’s remaining lectures that day did little more than set a plan for the rest of the semester or hand out group projects, so it was not too much of a tragedy that Dion was distracted for the rest of the day. His final class concluded at five in the afternoon, and he returned home to his generously sized apartment where Terence was already waiting for him.
They had sex on Dion’s generously sized bed, as Dion had known they would. It was not an unusual thing to happen as long as neither of them was in a committed relationship with someone else. It was familiar, it was good, and it reminded Dion that Terence was exactly his type in all the ways Joshua wasn’t. He was taller than Dion, and while his face was pretty and soft (like Joshua’s), he actually looked his age, and the softness ended there. Once the well-tailored clothes came off, Terence was all rock-hard muscle and a broad back. He was perfectly able to, as he liked to put it, bench press Dion, although Dion did not make it easy for him and liked to give as good as he got.
If he were with someone skinny and frail (like Joahua) he would constantly have to hold back for fear of causing damage. (He would hate to be one more reason for himself to worry about Joshua and his health.)
Terence was one of the broadest and strongest people Dion knew, outside of the guys from the weight-lifer club. The fact that he looked all soft and sweet as long as he was wearing his pastel-colored silk shirts made it even more appealing. There were few who managed to look so noble and cultured that by the mere power of their manners they managed to conceal that they were also impressively massive.
Joshua’s father was one of those people – or had been, at least, a decade ago. Dion had seen Elwin Rosfield in person only once, but he remembered the width of the man’s shoulders more than anything else. He had been friendly, too – Dion remembered that as well. He used to think that men who were that strong and tall should always be warm and kind. Terence was, therefore fulfilling an ideal that Dion had already had at the age of ten.
Joshua was also warm and kind in Dion’s memory, but also small and fragile, even for a child. His older brother Clive had been a different matter even then, taking after their father color and build, and over the years it seemed he had only filled out more.
There had been a picture of Clive to go with the article about his new position at Blue Phoenix. It had only been a portrait showing him down to his shoulders, but those shoulders had been broad, and the face above had been strong and handsome, sporting a line of carefully cultivated stubble on his chin that Dion had thought was probably meant to make him look older than his then twenty-four years. The eyes had been too large and innocent to pull it off. All in all, he had reminded Dion of a big, good-natured puppy.
It was hardly a surprise no one had been willing to take him seriously when he had started his new job. But for all Dion knew, he had surprised them, and even taken advantage of being underestimated. Father, of course, mostly had scornful remarks about the young man, whereas Anabella had barely said anything about him at all the last time the topic of diner table conversation had fallen there. At first, Dion, giving her far too much credit, had thought it was unpleasant for her to hear her husband talk about her son so dismissively. But the few remarks she had finally dropped had reaffirmed that it was mainly unpleasant for her to remember this particular son of hers even existed.
It had always seemed to strange and incomprehensible to Dion how a mother could feel such disdain for her own child – especially if that child had never done anything to deserve it. Even when they had met that one time, when Clive had been only fourteen, Dion had noticed the rift between mother and son that had mostly been expressed by Clive being stiff and tense in her presence and Anabella pretending he didn’t exist. He had later asked Joshua about it and Joshua had told him that his mother simply did not like Clive, and that it was not Clive’s fault, who was, in fact, the best big brother in the entire universe and did not deserve such treatment. Having no older brother of his own to compare him to, Dion had had no choice but to take his new friend’s judgement for face value.
Now this grown-up Clive had looked good in that picture. Healthy, fit, well fed and taken care of. Even as a teenager he had been muscular and strong in a way that young Dion had found himself fascinated by without understanding why. Back then, he had believed that he simply aspired to look like that himself, one day.
It was a goal that he had accomplished, more than a decade later, he thought when he stood in front of the mirror after his shower. At least fourteen-years-old Clive Rosfield he had left far behind in the physical department. Compared to the twenty-four years old he had seen in that photograph, he might still be lagging behind somewhat. But he was getting there.
Not all of his time was spend studying, after all.
Joshua, in contrast, had been skinny then, and he was skinny now. His lean stature had not filled out with age, adding to making him seem younger than he was. He simply did not have the strong build his brother had, but Dion also knew that he was sick, which might have gotten in the way of him building up any significant amount of muscle. Dion had not mentioned it to Terence even now, because he was sure that it was not common knowledge, and he would rather not have word get around because of some careless remark overheard by the wrong person.
When they had met as children, Dion had noticed nothing of it. If Joshua had been coughing every now and then, Dion had put it down to a common cold, and it may well have been. The main reason why Dion knew that Joshua’s health was fragile and always had been was because just a year or two after his father had married Anabella, he had overheard a fight between them in which she had mentioned her “darling boy” being in the hospital and demanded once again that they get custody for him. Dion remembered his heart beating faster at the prospect. But Father had shot her down, as he had before. It was the only matter in which he ever got his will against her, and the only time Dion had wished she would win. But in the end, she had simply given up and it was never mentioned again. Any attempt of Dion’s to ask how Joshua was doing had been blocked off by both of them.
Anabella’s son had been in the hospital, gravely ill from what Dion had understood, and then she had simply stopped talking about him like it no longer mattered. In Dion’s young mind, this could only mean that Joshua had died. Why else would she stop trying to help him, regardless of whether he lived with them or not?
It had only been nearly three years later when a frustrated remark of hers about Clive picking up her last call and refusing to let her talk to her son had told him that Joshua was, in fact, still alive.
And then Dion had continued to not hear his name spoken in their house for several more years. Not until the celebration of his half-brother’s birth, when a friend of his father’s mentioned Byron Rosfield having gotten into another fight with his brother over trying to get involved with his nephews’ education. Clive had been in his early twenties then, and the associate had claimed to know that Elwin had rejected his brother’s involvement because Clive had forgone college in order to work at his father’s ever-growing new business and did not need it. Joshua had been barely seventeen at the time, and still in school. Apparently, Byron had wanted to take him to Port Isolde for some sort of special program, but Elwin had not allowed it, and told his brother not to contact him again.
Dion, acting as disinterested as his father would expect him to be, had asked about the special program mentioned, but no one had known anything about it. Speculation was that Joshua was not doing as well in school as his uncle would wish for someone carrying the family name and needed special tutoring. But that had only been a guess – it couldn’t be a gifted program, they said, since for all anyone knew, the younger Rosfield brother was not particularly gifted in anything. Clive was athletic and strong and had been in several sports clubs as a teenager. His brother simply sort of existed, with no particular accomplishments or promise. Perhaps Byron Rosfield had been trying to change that.
Then Anabella had walked in, her newborn son proudly pressed to her chest, and the topic had been dropped quickly. Dion had not been able to find out more.
He had Joshua’s mother as his stepmother, and yet he had no source of information. Dion had learned early that Anabella’s former family was only to be talked about when she brought it up herself.
By that time, it had been eight years since he had last seen Joshua, and it would have been difficult to justify why he even cared. Maybe it was guilt, Dion thought when he could not think of any better explanation himself. His father had ruined his once-friend’s family and childhood and Dion felt guilty by association. His family got even more wealthy through the betrayal while Joshua’s lost everything, and Dion felt guilty for being one of the people profiting from it. It would have eased his mind and his conscience to know that Joshua was at least alright and doing well. But all he could do was imagine the other boy freezing on the streets while Dion lay in his bed that cost more than most people’s cars, or die in a hospital bed from a disease his family did not have the money to treat.
Then there were the years when he had been convinced that Joshua was dead, and Dion’s family was to blame. When he had learned that Joshua was alive, he had been be so shocked and relieved he had felt like crying, but he hadn’t been allowed to show any reaction at all.
The only place where Dion ever found any proof that Joshua even existed were gossip magazines. Byron Rosfield, once he got his nephews close to him through means those papers loved to speculate about, managed to keep them out of the respectable press, but gossip magazines always found something to write about, and if they didn’t, they would make it up. Therefore, Dion was well aware that he had to take everything he found in such publications with more than a grain of salt.
He still felt relieved whenever he found mention of Joshua as someone who existed and was alive, and decided to focus on the things that indicated he was healthy and happy, ignoring everything else those articles ‘reported’ about in order to find a reason to mention him.
Dion owned a stack of magazines and papers, carefully hidden in a box under his bed underneath a pile of bedsheets and towels that were no longer in use. They were his most shameful secret. Even looking at such magazines in shops made him feel guilty, and nervous for fear of being recognized. And yet he ended up buying any that he found mention of the Rosfield family in while quickly skimming the contents. It was a habit he had picked up when he was a teenager, briefly after learning that Joshua was not dead and desperate to learn more.
Now Terence was lying on his bed, flipping through those magazines, because he was the only one who knew about them, even if he had never actually seen them before.
Most of them did not have anything to do with the family’s youngest generation at all. And those that did were usually about Clive Rosfield – about the alleged “dark past” from his youth spend in poverty that his uncle was trying to cover up (mostly consisting of drugs, drug dealing, prostitution, murder, and/or time in prison for any combination of the aforementioned offenses), or the numerous women he had impregnated, which his uncle obviously also tried to cover up. When they remembered Joshua at all, the stories usually got even worse, with the magazines trying to come up with explanations for him rarely being seen in public with the rest of his family.
The most common theory was that Joshua was addicted to all sorts of hard drugs, which explained his often sickly appearance whenever he was spotted and recognized, and that his family hid him away while he went through one withdrawal after another. But he, too, was suspected to have fathered at least five illegitimate children, not counting an unknown numbers of forced abortions. He had tried to run away with the wrong girlfriend and his family had locked him up as punishment. He was involved in organized crime and his family had locked him away as punishment. And if Dion stumbled across discussions on the internet, there also was the surprisingly common belief that Joshua was actually a girl and had been the one with the unwanted pregnancy. It would explain why he was so pretty.
While Joshua was undeniably pretty, he was also undeniably male. Dion had the feeling that half of those posts were made by compulsively straight guys who refused to admit to themselves that they were attracted to a boy.
Terence had scoffed about those stories when Dion had told him about them. And then he had speculated that Joshua was simply so mind-blowingly boring that the tabloids had no other chance but to make things up to make him seem interesting. Dion hoped, even today, that that was true. He couldn’t shake the idea that Joshua had been shielded by his uncle and his brother out of simple protectiveness. Perhaps it was because of the vague tales of sickness with no details or clarification, but in his mind, Joshua had always been worryingly fragile.
There had been exactly one decent picture in the last year of – admittedly sparse – articles. It had been a snapshot of Byron Rosfield at the restaurant of a hotel in Waloed, looking jovial and drunk and talking animatedly to the two young men on the other side of the table. It had been taken last year, when Joshua had been nineteen, and Clive was just about to start his new job at Blue Phoenix. The brothers were mostly seen from the back, Joshua turned just so that Dion could see his profile. Next to his brother, he had indeed seemed pale and overly slender, but he had also looked relaxed and happy and it had comforted Dion through his feeling of guilt for staring at this photograph that had clearly been taken without permission.
The brothers had looked so comfortable and at ease next to each other, their shoulders bumping as if there hadn’t been plenty of room at the table. Dion wondered what that was like, to be so close to another person.
It was ridiculous of him to have such a need to see that Joshua was well, when Joshua probably barely even remembered Dion existed. He didn’t need that memory of their one, good day together the way Dion did. If he ever thought of him, it had to be with resentment over everything Dion’s family had taken from him. If he ever learned that Dion had spent nearly a decade anxiously seeking any proof that he was alright for his own peace of mind, he would be pretty shocked.
Or he would laugh at him.
Terence had also laughed at Dion when he first told him about his shameful gossip-collection habit. Those were certainly not the kind of magazines he had expected Dion to have hidden under his bed.
“I am so glad you have explained this to me,” he now joked, looking at an older picture of from an older magazine. This one was a still from some mobile-phone video taken more than five years ago. It showed a rather blurry image of Clive, not yet twenty years old, carrying his little brother in his arms while yelling at the person taking the video. Despite the poor quality, Dion was actually amazed that person had made it out alive, because Clive was the very picture of blurry, protective rage.
Joshua’s face was hidden from view against Clive’s chest, but he didn’t look well. Dion thought that Clive prioritizing getting help for his brother was the only reason the person taking the video had managed to get away.
The article that went with it had been short and useless, only calling Clive a “charismatic but dangerous” young man whose “violent behavior” hinted at his involvement with Rosalith’s underground, and speculating that Joshua had overdosed on drugs. Dion, shamefully, had tried to find the actual video online afterwards, but it had been taken down everywhere it had once been. Which had been for the best, obviously. He had just desperately needed some idea what had been going on with Joshua and if he had recovered.
He hadn’t gotten that information. Just a bunch of brainless discussions left over on pages where the video had once been put up, with a few seemingly genuine concerned comments lost between jokes about how Joshua (then almost fifteen) was clearly a girl after all, fainting from being pregnant, and how Clive was so pissed because that baby was his. Unsurprising, really, with incest running in their family, so to speak. There were some snide remarks about Sylvestre Lesage marrying Anabella Rosfield, nee Rosfield, and what it said about him, that Dion had found himself strangely unconcerned with. Finally, the discussion had started to dissolve into a series of transphobic jokes and Dion had given up trying to get anything useful out of it.
He didn’t like that picture. He kept planning to throw that magazine out but somehow never did that, and now Terence lay on his bed with that stupid screenshot in front of him, saying, “I’m so glad you explained this to me. Otherwise, you would seem like a creepy stalker obsessed with your stepbrother.”
He kept calling Joshua Dion’s stepbrother, as if the wanted to remind him of something. Dion did not know what. The fact that Joshua’s estranged mother was married to Dion’s father did not make them related. Dion did not consider Joshua part of his family, and neither did anyone else in the Lesage household. Even Anabella had not mentioned him once after Olivier was born.
And even if it were different, Terence needed not to worry that Dion was attracted to Joshua, because Joshua was, indeed, not his type. And now, after so many years of throwing teasing remarks in Dion’s general direction, Terence could finally see that for himself.
Terence stayed the night, and they spend the evening watching a movie and talking about inane things, after Dion had stored his stack of shameful magazines back into their hiding place to signal that this topic was not to be touched any further. It was comfortable and nice. It reminded Dion why they had been together for years, and also why they no longer were. It was easier to relax into the companionship without the pressure of having to fulfil some expectations in their relationship he was not sure he could meet.
Like prioritizing his boyfriend over the demands of his father. Dion had been especially bad at that.
Eventually, however, their conversation turned to their assignments for the upcoming weeks, and when Terence asked about Dion’s plans for the Political History lecture, Dion had to admit that he was, in fact, planning on dropping out of that one before the next class.
Terence did not ask for the reason, because he was not an idiot. He did, however, pull a thoughtful face suspiciously close to a grimace. “I get where you’re going from,” he said. “But don’t you think that is taking it a little too far? The two of you are enrolled at the same university. You can’t avoid him completely. Not talking to him will have to suffice. If you want to never even be within viewing distance, you will have to drop out of Twinside completely.” Then he pulled a stronger, more notable grimace, as if he suddenly considered that a valid possibility.
It was. Dion had thought about it, at least once, after learning Joshua would attend the same institute of learning this year. He could go to Oriflamme. His father would be delighted.
Maybe that was the reason why he had not fought harder to prevent Joshua from attending this school…
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dion ordered, feeling uncomfortable.
“You know the two of you are not in fact at war, do you?”
“Of course.”
“And nothing your father did is your fault.”
“Of course. But I am still a reminder of it, and seeing me all the time has to be… unpleasant. It wouldn’t be a problem to drop the class,” Dion argued. “I’m only taking it for extra credits anyway. Those are not important enough to risk hurting him over.”
“Hurting him?” Terence asked, somewhat incredulous. “By existing?” He snorted. “You are aware that he must know you also attend this university, don’t you? It’s not exactly a state secret. If he didn’t want to risk seeing you around, he would have gone somewhere else.”
It was a thought that had come to Dion as well, and one he had been able to find a counter argument for. “His family has a lot of influence in this university. Maybe, for whatever reason, he simply couldn’t go anywhere else.”
Terence looked at him like he had suddenly grown wings. And a tail. “Influence or not, I assure you there is not a single student in all of Valisthea for whom the Crystalline College is the only possible option.”
“The only decent one,” Dion amended.
Terence sighed. “I have spent all of ninety minutes in a lecture hall with the guy,” he said with forced patience. “And I can promise you, that is not the kind of student who needs his family’s influence to be accepted into a decent college. In fact, one lecture in, and I think the professor is already in love with him.”
There was a strange, unpleasant feeling in the pit of Dion’s stomach at the thought that Terence had apparently spend all those ninety minutes paying attention to Joahua rather than the lecture. He refused to look at it and it reluctantly went away.
“I simply do not want to make things more difficult than they have to be,” he sighed.
“You are. You are making them a lot more difficult than they have to be,” Terence told him. “Just keep going to your classes and do what you have always done. Live your life. Joshua Rosfield is not a part of it, nor you his, and the fact that you are now living in the same city does not force you to change that in any way. If he doesn’t want to see you, he’ll just look away.”
He was correct, Dion supposed. He was making too big a deal of this.
With any luck, Joshua had brushed away the memory of his mother like she had his, had forgotten all about ever meeting Dion before, and didn’t care about him at all.
-
Regardless of seeing Terence’s point, Dion was still determined to drop the Political History class. It was such a small thing to do to make the situation a little less awkward.
Maybe he would be able to find another course to replace it at the last minute. Or he could do without the extra credit this semester. It was not like he needed it…
The class was every Tuesday morning, and Dion decided to put dropping out off until just before the next one, to minimize the amount of time Terence would have to complain about it. Of course, Terence would still continue to attend that class for his own extra credits, and could spend all that time staring at Joshua and having opinions about him…
And Joshua would not care because he had no idea who Terence was, or that he had anything to do with Dion. After all, Terence and Dion had sat with each other as they did in most of their shared classes, but Joshua had never once looked in their direction.
Wednesday and Thursday passed as normal, with no sign of Joshua anywhere in sight. He was majoring in History, as Dion had learned from his father before the semester even started, which meant that most of his lectures took place in the western complex of the university. It had its own canteen, its own library, even its own park. There was no need for the paths to ever cross.
And yet Dion found himself scanning the area carefully wherever he went those two days, looking for any sign of golden-blond wavy hair before he allowed himself to settle anywhere. He felt nervous and tense and he hated that, hated himself for his irrational feelings, and cursed his father and his father’s wife for creating this situation to begin with.
Dion and Joshua could have been friends growing up. Joshua could have been his friend now, rather than someone he had to avoid so he didn’t have to remember Dion and his family existed.
Preoccupied as he was, it was hardly surprising Dion managed to accidentally overhear every conversation that happened to fall on Joshua in his vicinity. Within two days, word had gotten around that the youngest Rosfield son was attending this university, and people were talking. Dion tensed up every time they did, used to the vile comments of his father and his father’s associates, but no one he overheard here gave him reason to speak up or put his finely honed muscles to the test. Hardly anyone even tempted him to. There were a few comments Dion considered inappropriate and in ill taste, but mostly people talked about how unexpectedly nice Joshua was. And how pretty.
That was good, Dion supposed. Joshua was still kind, after everything. That was good to know. People liked him. As they should. He would make many friends here. As he should. Dion would not be among them, but he was glad many others were.
He hoped that Joshua would be able to tell the genuine ones from the opportunists. He didn’t know how he felt about those who wanted to know Joshua better because he was pretty. Attraction was a thing Dion was well familiar with. It didn’t have to be a bad starting point. He wasn’t sure why it made him so uneasy here.
What he was sure about was that it was none of his business. That was also what he communicated to those few who felt the need to ask about his feelings on the matter of his stepbrother being in the vicinity.
One, who had heard the word “stepbrother” but obviously knew nothing at all about the Lesage/Rosfield history, asked Dion if Joshua was single and if Dion would share his phone number. That was one time when Dion was tempted to punch someone after all.
Other than that, those two days were uneventful and normal. Dion went to his classes. Dion studied. Dion worked out. On Friday, during a free hour between classes, Dion went to the lake because it was warm and sunny, and he had forgotten that while the western complex of the university had its own park and recreation zone, it did not have its own lake.
There were three wooden tables with benches situated not far from the small lake’s banks, with respectable distances between them as if the person placing them had anticipated that the students wandering all the way out here would like to have some space for themselves. Joshua was sitting at the table closest to the water, the only one in full sunlight, and there were five other students sitting or standing with him, all of them giving him their full, unashamed attention.
They looked at him like he was an exhibit in a zoo, Dion thought sourly, and didn’t turn away on the spot only because that would have looked ridiculous to anyone who might have seen him. Instead, he sat at the table furthest from Joshua’s and half-hidden by tree and bush, and pulled out a book he’d had no intention of reading right now just so he would have an excuse to look elsewhere and hide his face.
Joshua looked friendly and attentive as the others surrounded him, but Dion could tell that he did not actually know any of these people. Dion wondered if they were crowding him because of the mystery and scandal surrounding his family, or because he was pretty and approachable. He didn’t know which option annoyed him more. Nor did he know why he was annoyed at all. Joshua did not look like he needed rescuing, and none of this was any of Dion’s business.
At a university so full of offsprings of the rich and famous, one should think that they would have plenty of other people to focus on…
Lunch break was nearing its end and apparently all those others had classes right after, while Joshua, like Dion, did not. He bit them farewell with a friendly smile and Dion could see his shoulders sag in relief the moment he was alone.
He opened the book the had had in his lap with his finger marking the page the entire time, and Dion could see even from the distance that it was a notebook with blank pages. Joshua started writing in it, pausing every minute or so to stare out over the lake in contemplation. At some point, he started drawing something on the opposite page, but Dion could not make out what it was.
Then Joshua, maybe searching for an alternative view to stare at, looked around, and their eyes met, and Dion realized far too late that his plan not to stare had failed pathetically and he had been staring the entire time.
Somewhere, a bird was singing. Which was perfectly natural this time of year, but to Dion, it felt like it was mocking him in the absolute silence caused by the absence of any other person he could have pretended looking at.
Dion could tell the exact moment Joshua recognized him. His eyes widened. And then his entire face lit up, like he had just spotted his best friend and not the person who was fated to be his arch enemy for at least the rest of the semester.
He left his table immediately to head towards Dion’s. “Dion!” he called, confirming to Dion’s increasingly confused perception that he had indeed recognized him rather than mistaking him for someone he actually liked who just happened to look similar. “I nearly didn’t recognize you. You look great.”
This was the point where Dion was supposed to say something in return. But his mind, the mind of a perfect, top-grades-only student, failed to keep up with the events as they unfolded, and he just stared.
Joshu’s face fell, and he stopped his approach just before reaching Dion, suddenly looking unsure. “Oh,” he said, his voice much quieter than before. “I’m sorry. You were looking over and I thought… I shouldn’t have presumed. Of course you would not care to re-acquaint yourself with me.”
A voice Dion eventually identified as his own said, “What.”
Joshua, who had been in the process of turning away, stopped only to look even more insecure. “I’m sorry for bothering you. Just forget I was here. I can go somewhere else.”
“Wait,” said the voice that was Dion’s.
Joshua stopped, and he waited. Looking at Dion with an expression that was still insecure but also kind of hopeful, he clearly waited for Dion to say something more. Which Dion would have to do now. He raked his brain to come up with something, anything to explain the staring and the lack of coherent words. Coming up with nothing and threatening to fall back into silently staring again, he had not choice but to let his mouth do the talking once more and listen to what it came up with.
“My apologies.” That was a good start. Dion wanted to apologize for so much. “You took me by surprise. I did not think you would be inclined to re-acquaint yourself with me.”
Joshua just looked confused at his words. “Why would you think that?”
“Because of everything my family did to you – to yours,” Dion’s voice came up with, and it clearly wasn’t good enough because Joshua frowned like he had said something incomprehensible.
“You mean everything that wasn’t your fault?” he asked, sounding like he genuinely wanted to clarify this. “Which happened when you were ten?”
Dion’s voice refused to be used for this any longer, so he had to employ his neck and nod his affirmation.
Joshua’s posture changed and his expression changed as well, from disbelief to something like sympathy. “Dion,” he said.
“Why would you think I would like to keep my distance from you?” Dion asked quickly, dismissing the fact that he had been trying to do exactly that. “Your family did not ruin mine.”
“True. But you had to suffer my mother all these years,” Joshua said, somewhat sheepishly. “From all I heard, that must not have been easy.”
It seemed that while Dion had heard bits and pieces about Joshua’s family life through the years, the reverse was also true. Somehow, Dion had not anticipated that.
Since his own family spend a lot more time under scrutiny of the press and the business world, Joshua had probably heard a lot more about Dion than Dion about him. Which shouldn’t have been surprising, considering that Dion had mostly depended on gossip magazines for any information at all.
He was not so much surprised that Joahua had heard about him, he realized, and more than Joshua cared.
“You are no more responsible for your mother’s behavior than I am for my father’s actions,” he pointed out.
“That is also true,” Joshua admitted. “However, I thought that you would like to keep as much distance to reminders of her as possible. After I charged at you like a brainless ox.” He gave a lopsided smile. “Not that she has spoken to me since her new son was born.”
Dion wondered how Joshua felt about that. He couldn’t imagine him mourning the loss of his mother’s affection that had been sporadic at best even before Olivier came into the world, but then, his own view of Anabella was shrouded in misery and resentment. To Joshua, she had been a mother for ten years. Maybe not a perfect, or even a good one, but still something resembling a loving parent.
…who had left him behind with the rest of her old family, pushed him into poverty, and erased him from her life completely as soon as she had a new baby to dote on. No, Dion truly did not know how Joshua felt about that, and he was not quite ready to ask.
“Speaking strictly for myself,” he said carefully, “I would not consider that much of a loss.”
Joshua smiled fully now. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t.” He gestured at the bench Dion was sitting on. “Do you mind if I have a seat?”
“By all means.” Dion hurried to scoot back a bit even though there was already plenty of room. Then he hoped he didn’t give the impression of wanting to create more space between them. He should have offered a seat before, or stood up himself. Now he was looking ridiculous, and he hoped he wasn’t blushing in shame.
If he was, Joshua did not comment on it. He gracefully climbed over the seat to sit down next to Dion. His legs were very long. Dion moved his eyes up to his face, which was very pretty. Dion wondered where he could look that didn’t come with the word “very” attached to it. His eyes settled on Joshua’s collarbones for a moment, which were barely visible above the collar of his shirt and maybe a little too prominent, and that was a terrible idea as well.
He looked back into Joshua’s face, which was the polite thing to do while talking to him. He finally was in a situation where it was acceptable to look, so he shouldn’t waste it.
Joshua himself was giving Dion’s face his full attention, too. He still looked so happy to see him, and Dion still had trouble keeping up with this reality.
“It may sound strange, but I am truly glad to see you,” Joshua confessed. “I knew you were enrolled here when I came, and I did hope to run into you. I did wonder, though – I would have expected, because it seems everyone else did, that you would chose the University of Oriflamme instead.”
‘I needed to get away from my family,’ Dion very nearly explained. Ridiculous. That was a truth he had barely even admitted to himself, something far too personal and shameful to admit to someone he had met once before, more than a decade ago.
“I needed to get away from my family,” he said, listening to his own voice in astonishment.
Joshua’s smile faded somewhat. “I had feared something like that.”
“Why would you fear it?” Dion asked, confused.
“Because it means your family is something you need to get away from.”
“My apologies. I did not mean to imply an unhappy homelife,” Dion attempted to repair his careless confession. “I merely needed to stretch my wings, so to speak, and live my life with some sort of independence.”
Joshua nodded his understanding. “I’m the one who has to apologize. I should not have presumed.” But he did not believe Dion, who felt seen in a way he was not used to and was not comfortable with. All of his life he had been careful to show the image he was meant to show, and within a few minutes of conversation with this virtual stranger, he felt entirely naked, and it seemed that he could not stop himself from taking off his armor himself.
“What brings you here?” he asked, to get the topic away from his own person, and because he genuinely wanted to know the answer. “Your own family is not close, is it?”
“My brother is,” Joshua said. “And that’s part of the reason. Aside from that, Rosalith was out of the question, and my uncle pushed for Twinside because of our family’s history with the university.”
Why not Rosalith? The University there was prestigious as well, and the company of Joshua’s father had its headquarters there. But before Dion could ask, Joshua asked, “Do you like it here?”
Dion thought about that. He never really had before. “It’s a pleasant campus,” he said. “The lectures are good. I have a good relationship to my fellow students. Yes, I do, I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“I am afraid I am not engaged much in extracurricular activities,” he admitted. “So, I cannot judge the university on those.”
“You’re not the one to ask which club best to join to ruin your reputation, then,” Joshua observed.
“Not those specifically, no,” Dion confirmed. “What university did you transfer from?”
“None. I only just started.”
Dion couldn’t keep the surprise from showing on his face. He was starting his third year himself. “We share a class,” he said, when he noticed how uncomfortable his reaction seemed to make Joahua. “Political History. I saw you there. It is not a class for first semesters.” And Joshua had not seemed like a beginner, either.
“Ah. I heard you where there, but only afterwards. Although now I guess I know why you did not approach me.”
Fortunately, Joshua had not figured that Dion had been avoiding him on purpose, drawn the wrong conclusion from it, and kept his distance until Dion dropped out of that class to seemingly confirm the wrong conclusions Joshua had drawn. It had been a very real possibility, and now Dion hated the thought, even though Joshua still looked uncomfortable and decided to turn his attention to the table when he said, “I got some special tutoring and am starting as a second year. But really, this is my first semester ever.”
“That is not all that unusual,” Dion observed. “Many first semesters are your age or older.”
Joshua kept his attention on the table, who Dion felt did not deserve it, and he realized that he was not helping with whatever made this topic so unpleasant for Joshua. “It’s fairly common to take time off after finishing school to travel and figure out what to do with your life,” he offered, trying to help and knowing the moment he spoke that he was not doing that.
Still, Joshua put his attention back on him where it was more appreciated and gave him a smile that somehow did not make Dion feel any less like he had just put his foot in, so to speak. Repeatedly.
“You’re right,” Joshua said easily. “I did not do that.”
“There is no shame in taking longer to finish school either,” Dion tried.
Joshua sighed. “I know. It’s just awkward, because everyone always assumes more of me that I can offer. I’m sorry. I did not mean to be dramatic about it.”
“No need to apologize. I meant no offense. I was merely taken by sur-” Dion stopped talking, and wondered what, exactly, he would have to do to his joints to be able to kick himself in the butt. But Joshua just cocked his head and Dion could see the exact moment he decided to pretend that entire part of their conversation hadn’t happened.
“What about you?” he asked. “You came here right after graduating, did you not? Did you have time to decide what to do with your life?”
“No need to bother with that,” Dion told him. “I always knew what that was going to be.”
Joshua looked at him with that way he had looked at him before, the way that made Dion look naked and fear that he was going to ask him if that was something he had chosen for himself or if it had been chosen for him. But again, Joshua showed mercy and did not do that. Dion thought the answer was probably clear anyway.
He had never questioned the path that had been laid out for him at birth. If anyone asked him what he wanted to study, he would still say business, because he had never considered anything else.
It wasn’t a bad thing. He was good at it. Maybe he would even enjoy it eventually.
“I suppose there’s merit to that,” Joshus mused. “It saves time, if nothing else. And insecurity.”
“Speaking from experience?”
Joshua made a vague gesture that may have been substitute for a shrug. (Dion had been taught in early childhood that shrugging was classless and disrespectful, but he had never found an alternative for it, so most of the time he simply kind of froze.) “I am not needed in my family’s business endeavors and I have no taste for them. But what I wanted to do was out of the question, so I had to actually sit down and think about it. I would have simply not gone to university, but my uncle was kind of pushing for it. My brother as well, which is what tipped the scales in the end.” He rolled his eyes, but it didn’t really look irritated. “I struggle to deny him anything, especially if it’s something he thinks would be in my best interests.”
“You study history, don’t you?” Dion knew he did. “Do you not like it?”
“No, I enjoy it. It’s something I always found fascinating. But it hardly makes any difference to anyone whether I do or not.”
Dion found himself frowning. “It makes a difference to you.”
“Of course.” Joshua smiled. “I may have found fulfillment in employment somewhere all the same. But now that I am here, I will do my best to justify that. And it got me back in contact with you, so I am glad I gave in in the end.” His smile widened and Dion had a hard time meeting it as he felt his face grow hot. At the same time, it would have been a shame to look away and he found he did not want to.
Joshua was not his type, but his smile was beautiful. Dion could appreciate it from a purely aesthetic viewpoint. And it was innocent, Joshua meaning nothing by it except that he was, for some inexplicable reason, happy to see Dion and talk to him. So, there was no risk that this would become awkward in any way.
“What are you planning to do with your degree?” he asked, hoping this wouldn’t come off wrong again. It seemed like a fair question.
Dion was studying business and he was going to work in his father’s company. There was no mystery in his own future.
“I’m thinking about going into teaching,” Joshua said. “If I can pull it off. I have to get a degree first, after all. But if I do, I think I would like to become a proper historian and spend my time between research and teaching.” He spared a glance to the sky, which was blue and clear behind the tree branches sheltering them. “That’s a rather selfish plan, however. I might simply get my degree, or give it my best try in any case, and then find some unrelated field to work in. Which would make this a giant waste of time.” He sighed. The whole situation seemed to be a struggle for him, and obviously not a new one. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I am definitely oversharing. What is relevant to you in all this is that I may not be around here to annoy you for long. My place here is somewhat tenuous.”
“You’re not annoying me,” Dion said even as he felt a frown distort his own features. “And I do not find any pleasure in the idea that you may leave. I do, however, find myself confused. Why would you think your plan to go into teaching is selfish?”
“Because it is what I would like to do, with no consideration to what would benefit others.”
“I… would think that your students would benefit from it.” Dion wished he could say something about the benefits of learning and teaching about history at this point, but he had never given them much thought. He did take the class in political history because he felt it was important to know how the current systems had developed, but mostly he had taken it because it offered extra credits, and that felt like a lame argument to offer.
“You may be wrong about that,” Joshua said easily. The thought did not appear to bother him. He did not offer any explanation, so Dion simply assumed he did not think he would make a good teacher.
Dion could not argue for that after a few minutes of talking to him and ten years of rumors, but he had noticed in the one class they had shared so far that Joshua seemed deeply invested in the subject, very knowledgeable, well prepared, and intelligent. Dion could not quite discern where his obvious doubts in his abilities came from.
“In any case,” he said. “There is nothing at all wrong with doing something simply because you want to do it. It is your life, after all. You should spend it the way you want to, not in the way you believe would most please someone else.”
“Like you with your future career in your father’s business?” Joshua asked. Dion stared at him, and Joshua winched. “My apologies,” he said, “I overstepped.”
“I am not averse to working for my father after graduating,” Dion said, somewhat stiffly. “No one forced me to major in business. I can think of no alternative I would have chosen.”
“Of course.”
Dion continued to look at Joshua somewhat darkly, even as he wished he could stop. He felt his temper stir inappropriately and knew at once that it was because he felt attacked and put in the defensive.
There was no reason to take it so personally, he told himself. The remark had been harmless enough. Joshua had apologized. Dion had clarified, and Joshua had accepted his clarification. Dion still felt the need to defend himself because the harmless remark had hit far too close to a truth he never allowed himself to acknowledge, and Joshua knew it.
He met Dion’s dark glare calmly, not put off by it in the slightest, because he knew he had been right, and now he also knew that Dion refused to.
“If you would allow me a question,” he said, very politely.
Dion took a deep breath – flatly, so Joshua would not notice. He was angry with himself, he admitted. But he was also angry with Joshua for making him so. Not angry enough to show it, however, or to end their conversation.
He wished he could shake it off. He did not know why he could not.
“Ask,” he allowed, hoping he did not sound too curtly, but from the way Joshua’s features softened further, he failed.
“I really am sorry,” he said. “Once again, I have made an assumption about you. That was not my place. I am merely curious, however: Your father’s business empire has a lot branches. Which one would you like to work in?”
“Not in trade,” Dion answered without thinking. Somehow, the question did not irk him further – perhaps because he could answer it without lying to himself. “Nor in consulting. I would choose the building sector, I suppose. There are parts of Oriflamme that need… renewing. I have done more than one internship with Lesage Properties before, and I think there are ways to rise the living standards of those sectors considerably without operating at a loss or rising the cost of living for the tenants. I would like to be able to implement that, if I can.”
Joshua’s smile was brilliant, and honest, and it blew away the last of Dion’s anger. His father would not have liked that reply, and Dion would have given to him with trepidation and careful wording. Joshua looked at him like he was the best person he had ever met and Dion felt a surge of pride and satisfaction that was different from the pride he felt when he pleased his father.
“That sounds fantastic,” Joshua declared. “The world will be a better place with you at the head of that project.”
“I wish it was that easy,” Dion amended. “I do not believe I will have much say in where I end up. Of course, my father will take my wishes into account where he can, but in the end I will be put where I am needed. And even if I get to take over that branch one day, changes in the way the company conducts business are slow and difficult to realize.”
“Which is why your father has not managed to implement your suggestions yet,” Joshua offered.
“Exactly.”
“I know you’ll do it,” Joshua said with an absolute confidence Dion was not sure he deserved. “If your father cannot make it happen, then you will.”
“It will be a long time before father steps back as company head,” Dion pointed out. He did not mention that there was a chance he would leave his empire to Olivier instead. “If he cannot do it, I am afraid those tenant will live in sub-optimal conditions for many more years.”
“Unless you create your own company and put all your skills and ideas to good use,” Joshua suggested lightly. “Who says you need your father’s permission to do good?”
“I cannot do that,” Dion said without thinking. He felt uneasy again. The thought alone felt like betrayal.
Joshua did not ask why not. But his smile turned a little sadder. “Then I hope your father is worth your loyalty.”
“He is,” Dion insisted.
“That’s good.”
Then Dion remembered that his father had been the reason Joshua had spent a good portion of his childhood living in a slum and the insistence that he was a good person felt ridiculous and borderline insulting. Joshus did not challenge him on it, however.
He did not need to.
“What was it you wanted to do?” Dion asked to change the topic. “The plan you said was out of the question earlier.”
“Oh.” Joshua looked a little embarrassed now. Dion would have felt bad, but if Joshua was embarrassed by his own childhood dreams, he was not thinking about Dion’s father and his qualities as a businessman. “It’s silly. I always wanted to become a doctor when I grew up. I spend a lot of time in the hospital, and there were some doctors who always made me feel better with their kindness. I wanted to be like them and help people as well.” He looked away, clearly uncomfortable for some reason. “There were others as well, who were dismissive or plain rude and made me feel worse. They were just as much of an inspiration. I wanted to be better than that.”
“I see nothing silly in that. It is a noble goal,” Dion said. “So, you wanted to study medicine?”
“Yes. For an embarrassingly long time.”
“What kept you from doing it?”
“Common sense. As we already covered, I lagged behind with my education. I missed too much time in school and eventually could not keep up anymore.”
Dion did not ask why he missed so much time. He tried not to stare and look for signs of the illness he knew Joshua to have suffered from all his life, wondering if it still affected him.
“You still graduated,” he pointed out instead. “There is no rule that says you can only study medicine if you start early.”
“True. The thought comforted me for a while. But I had a long talk with my father before making my choice, and fortunately he made me realize how presumptuous and overconfident I was being before I could embarrass myself trying anyway.”
Dion opened his mouth and closed it again. Finally, he settled on, “There are requirements for being admitted in medical school. If you met them, how can you believe that you would fail, without even trying?”
He did not mean to make Joshua feel bad about the path he did not even try to take, but Joshua only shook his head, looking serious. “I had to write an essay on my chosen subject before coming here skipping so many early semester classes. There was never any risk that I would be rejected, it was a mere formality. My family has too much influence in this institution. Nothing I do here will reflect my actual skills or efforts. I may not graduate at the top of my class, but they will do everything in their power to make sure I graduate. I needn’t event try. If I leave early, it will be my choice, not my failure.”
Dion knew that to be true. His situation was similar, only that for him graduating at the top of his class was very much something he had to do, and something he needed to accomplish on his own merit. “You do not think they would have rejected you even if your grades were not up to par,” he guessed.
“Yes. And it would have taken the spot away from someone who actually deserved it.”
“I see.” Dion wondered what Joshua’s brother, who had been so insistent on him going to university at all, had to say about that.
“It’s bad enough as it is,” Joshua added. “But with me coming in late, I took one of the spots left open by students who dropped out after the first year.”
“I think you’re not giving yourself enough credit. You seem like a good student to me.”
Joshua snorted softly. “I have been here for a week, and you saw me for ninety minutes of that.”
“And I could tell you are a good student. Believe me. I paid attention.”
“Oh, did you?” Joshua sounded both doubtful and teasing, as if he thought that was a joke but wanted to make sure.
“I did,” Dion confessed. “To you. Not to the lesson, to my shame. I am afraid I need to have someone else tell me what was taught if I want to continue that class.”
“I can do that, if you don’t mind,” Joshua offered at once. “Why, though? I cannot believe I offered all that much entertainment value.”
Dion had spent more time looking at much less pleasant sights. “I was surprised to see you,” he explained. “I had wondered how you were doing for many years. After a decade of that, ninety minutes did not feel like too long to observe you in the flesh.” He hoped that didn’t sound as creepy to Joshua’s ears as it did to his own. “It was good do see you well. But it was also… distracting.” Yes, good job, that was much better…
Dion looked straight ahead, trying to fight down the blush that came from embarrassing himself in a way that would make Terence laugh at him.
Joshua did not laugh, nor did he scoot away to put more distance between them. “Does that mean you will let me bring you up to speed with the lesson you missed because of me?”
Dion looked at him. Joshua looked back, giving him that brilliant smile again.
And he was not Dion’s type at all.
But damn.
“That seems reasonable,” he heard himself say. “You can practice your teaching abilities on me.”
Joshua nodded. “That sounds like a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
Dion couldn’t agree more.
2024-01-02