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Cassius works at an independent coffee shop called Pompey's Porch and has since he was twenty. Cassius is in an indie band called Roman Conspiracy along with Casca and Decius and Metellus and Trebonius, and is worryingly invested in winning Battle of the Bands or at least destroying that awful eighties cover band The Laurels. No, he doesn’t have a grudge against The Laurels’ lead singer because Julius called him a skinny hipster that one time, no, what are you talking about.
He just has a fast metabolism, okay. Please shut up.
Cassius met Brutus in college through Portia, and they’re still friends even though they are nothing alike. Brutus is the least ironic person Cassius has ever met. But even though he buys clothes at Target and listens to whatever’s on the pop radio stations, Brutus is an amazing bassist and if Cassius is trying really hard to get him to join Roman Conspiracy it’s definitely not for personal reasons. Definitely not.
Cassius has a coffee stalker called… Titinius?… who comes to all of the band’s gigs. He’s starting to freak Cassius out actually. Casca noticed eventually and laughed really hard for three solid minutes, then sang exactly the first three lines of ‘Taylor the Latte Boy’ at Cassius before he offered to stab her if she went any further.
Cassius and Casca get along pretty well, actually. Most people think Casca got really dumb and obnoxious after she graduated, but Cassius knows better. They swap insults at other people in the dark backstage at their crappy little gigs and wink at each other periodically. Cassius takes her out to dinner once in a while, and, um, out to dinner occasionally too. Cassius has a fine sex life – he’s good at picking people up at bars – but sleeping with Casca isn’t just nice but leverage as well. He knows she likes him a lot, and he’ll work with whatever he’s given if it’s a way to keep her where he wants her. Cassius thinks of most things as ways to keep people where he wants them.
Cassius claims his glasses are ironic but actually needs them to see. Cassius got teased about his glasses all through middle school and will never, ever tell anyone about that.
Cassius really, really does not like Julius from The Laurels. He makes a point of it to eat Caesar salad whenever he’s around Julius, and stabs it violently and repeatedly with his fork while maintaining eye contact with him.
Julius never liked Cassius to begin with, because Julius and Antony aren’t stupid even if they do treat the whole world like it’s high school or some company Julius is CEO of. For some reason people buy it, because Julius has charisma and charm in bucketloads, but Cassius doesn’t. He doesn’t laugh at Julius’ bad jokes or come to his parties, and he’ll fucking stab himself (or at least someone) before he’ll let The Laurels be the one big thing that ever comes out of Republic, WA. And so Julius really doesn’t like him. He might be, Cassius thinks, a little afraid of him. And if he wasn’t too full of himself to ever act on it, Julius being afraid of Cassius might just be the smartest Julius ever got.
Julius and Antony and Lepidus and Brutus are all bros and it drives Cassius up the fucking wall. They hang out together at Brutus’ place to watch the game whenever the game is on (please, like Cassius could care less about the schedule of football) and eat pizza and shout and fistbump or whatever it is bros do. Sometimes Calpurnia and Lucius join them, Calpurnia because she follows Julius around everywhere like the trophy girlfriend she is and Lucius because his parents still aren’t letting him back in their house until he answers to ‘Erika’ again and the kid needs somewhere to stay on college breaks. Cassius gets drunk on the kitchen counter in the dark and tries to avoid Portia, because Portia is one of the few people he really respects but so is Brutus and so there are a lot of things he doesn’t want either of them to know.
Cassius doesn’t have a lot of friends.
Cassius is too serious for people. Cassius is small and intense and doesn’t pretend to like people unless he wants something from them. Cassius builds a wall between himself and the rest of the world – he is here on one side, they are there on the other. Cassius doesn’t lie to people, he just doesn’t think he ever knew how to just talk to people without working their psychological buttons while he does. Cassius observes, Cassius looks through why people do what they do and figures out the best way to force replication of the results.
Cassius knows that people know he does it, and people either don’t like him or think he’s not approachable. Cassius doesn’t care.
Much.
Cassius takes antidepressants. Brutus knows – Brutus found the bottle – and if Brutus were any other person in the world Cassius would be really honestly scared at someone holding that kind of knowledge over him. But Brutus never brings it up.
Cassius took Brutus to see The Fault In Our Stars one weekend when Portia was away on a rock-climbing trip (seriously, Portia Catonis, badass, okay). Cassius is so over John Green – he doesn’t like fiction much in general – but he does like Brutus and he would rather see mainsteam-hipster stuff than action movies. They were two of maybe ten people in the little independent theater (Cassius has refused to set foot in a non-independent theater since 2006), and Cassius put his feet up on the seat in front of him and dipped into Brutus’ popcorn. And if Brutus dozed off on his shoulder and woke up at the end of the movie because Cassius was maybe crying on him a little bit while glued to the screen, well, that is literally none of your business.
Cassius works at a coffee shop and throws anonymous but really good mixtapes in Brutus’ windows. He hopes they get listened to. Because they glance obscurely at Julius’ ambition, of course. No other reason. Of course not.