He flinched.
Edward rolled his eyes, his hair shining in the sunlight with flecks of ruby red. A drop of sweat trailed from his ear and pooled into his collarbone. “Don’t you want to make your own friends?” he asked meaningfully, eyes alight with irritation, cheeks flushed with fury. His nostrils flared and Jasper had always thought Edward adorable when angry.
Of course, now, Edward was angry with him.
Jasper opened his mouth but couldn’t speak. He didn’t understand having anything of his own. Jasper shared with Edward and Edward shared with Jasper. There was no one thing owned solely by the other. They’d shared clothes and shampoo and candy bars and ice cream and soda pop and toys and… everything. He couldn’t fathom the line required to sever that concept.
What was the point in having anything if he couldn’t share it with Edward?
They could hear the voices of the other guys around the corner, and Edward shifted impatiently. Without waiting for an answer, he spun on his heel and loped toward them, so graceful as his muscular body moved. Jasper was still stuck in his awkwardly skinny body, all twiggy limbs and too tall to know what to do with them. Edward’s hair stuck to his sweaty neck and Jasper memorized their curly Q’s and matted O’s.
And then, because he simply didn’t know what else to do, Jasper followed.
Edward stepped right. Jasper stepped right. Edward stepped left, Jasper stepped left. Edward curved his path, Jasper curved his path. It was customary by this point. They even walked the same now. Talked the same. Used the same taboo language in private and liked the same junk food. Edward had adopted a fraction of Jasper’s odd, southern accent, and in return, Jasper had adopted Edward’s sharp annunciations, their speech becoming one, fused drawl unique only to them. Edward was an extension of him—a dual part of Jasper’s body that he had no choice other than to accommodate.
But then the guys’ voices got closer and Edward’s fists curled at his side. Jasper furrowed his brow at them, tilted his head and pondered their meaning.
And then Edward spun.
Jasper flinched.
Edward put his palms to Jasper’s shoulders and shoved him with an angry growl. Jasper watched his face as if in slow motion—the furling of his pink lips, the forward sway of his messy hair, the darkness of his eyes, and the creasing of his pale forehead.
Jasper—shocked and puzzled—tumbled to the ground and landed on his bare elbows with a blinding “crack.”
He cried out in pain, could feel the course pavement below him scrape his skin away from bone and burn. It reminded Jasper of that excruciating moment when leather had met his flesh as a child. It wasn’t the pain that hurt. Jasper found the pain to be oddly stimulating and, though the sensations burned, the throbbing made him acutely aware of his every nerve ending.
Jasper liked that.
No. The pain did not hurt Jasper.
Jasper was hurt by the persons who intentionally inflicted it.
His watery gaze was trained on the figure above him, and Jasper whimpered. Even though his elbows bled, it was his chest that ached. Jasper found it difficult breath. Edward’s face was pale now, not flushed. His green-apple eyes were wide and aghast, and he staggered back, mutely shaking his head from side to side.
Jasper felt a tickle of pleasure from the remorse and horror that covered Edward’s face like a tragic mask. Jasper was so weak physically, so vulnerable, and he hated feeling that way. This guilt was his only power over Edward. His perfect lips parted, and he did apologize, but when the guys grew nearer, Edward did not offer Jasper his hand. He hung his head and his remorse transformed to pity. Then Edward’s face was blank, and he was turning to the others with a small, guilty shrug.
Blood trailed down Jasper’s arms as he stood, using his blonde hair to veil his humiliating tears. He dusted the dirt off his back and when he extended his arms, a smatter of pain speckled his sensitive and raw skin. The guys all shot him odd looks and continued their laughter and walking.
Edward followed them, but Jasper followed nothing.
—
Esme and Carlisle were beginning to worry about Jasper, and he knew it. He hid away in his room for the remainder of the summer and spent his time dreaming and sulking. He only came out for dinner, never capable of containing his bitter tears when Edward would return home at twilight, flushed and sweating and exhausted from a long day of playing baseball with the other guys.
Jasper hated baseball—not that he was ever invited to play, of course.
One evening while the two were washing dishes, Jasper heard Esme asking Edward why he was never invited. “It’s just a little odd that you were so attached at the hip, and now you won’t even take him out to play with you,” she wondered aloud.
Edward lied quite easily, “I asked him to come and he said ‘no.'”
This produced a term from Dr. Cullen when Esme went to him, concerned: “Social dysfunction.”
Jasper balked at these words, infuriated at Edward. He wasn’t certain how, but he made a plan to get back at him—to make Edward feel as excluded as he did. He began listening to music that he knew Edward would loathe. He chose the loudest, heaviest, most obscene and frowned upon songs and played them whenever he was certain Edward would be home. He was always quite pleased whenever he’d catch a glimpse of Edward’s face, wrinkled in distaste.
But Jasper actually found himself relating to the words of the songs—angry and withdrawn.
Before school began again, Esme took Jasper out to buy his own clothes, since Edward’s bedroom—and consequently, his closet—were now off-limits to Jasper. He chose clothes that were the farthest from what Edward wore.
Edward liked blue and green and yellow, and so Jasper chose black and white and grey.
When school started again, Jasper found it difficult to watch Edward with the other boys. He had to sit at his own table Sophomore year, exiled from his usual spot at Edward’s side. Outwardly, Jasper remained emotionless and numb, but inwardly, Jasper was anguished with every moment that he had to watch Edward’s smile from across the room.
Jasper stopped caring about his grades, found it difficult to remain focused on the boring material. He’d spend his afternoons gazing out windows and concocting fantasies of Edward’s ultimate absolution. In his daydreams, Edward would come to him, remorseful and pleading, and Jasper—never capable of saying no to him—would accept him with wide, open arms and a joyous grin.
They’d kiss in Jasper’s fantasies.
It wasn’t always on the mouth.
On Halloween that year, Edward took Tanya Denali out on a date, to a costume party that Jasper hadn’t been invited to. Tanya went as Marilyn Monroe. Edward went as John F. Kennedy. Jasper went to the Cullens’ liquor cabinet when they fell asleep and got drunk for the very first time.
He vomited in his closet.
When his “parents” had found their liquor missing that Thanksgiving, they’d punished Jasper—a first. He was prepared for a myriad of methods used to accomplish this. Jasper knew by then that Dr. Cullen would never strike him. Instead, they grounded Jasper to his room, where he had round-the-clock access to a brand new computer, high speed internet, and websites where he could watch men do what he always wished Edward might.
As if he went anywhere else.
—
The numbness never came. Jasper always read and heard about people becoming numb to this kind of pain, but he wasn’t so lucky. Rage filled Jasper like a violent waterfall, brimming over the edges and threatening to spill over at any given second. Whenever it did, he’d be forced to lock himself away like a volatile prisoner, too afraid of his flagrant transparency to simply… snap.
God, how he wanted to snap.
Now, Jasper was watching by the ledge, his ribbons of smoke twirling like a zephyr toward the night sky as it twinkled. He tucked himself away in a dark corner of the balcony and watched. He was always watching. Two glowing eyes in the darkness of the forest. Something’s off, but you don’t know what.
He flicked his cigarette and narrowed his eyes—his jasper-colored eyes.
He hated that fucking gemstone. He hated the humid breeze, caressing his flesh with nothing but chill. He hated the sounds coming from below him and the rattling of the windows like monkeys in cages. He hated so much these days.
He hated himself. He hated his scars. He hated his blonde hair and it’s course curling. He hated being sober, and he hated lying to his “parents.” He hated them. He hated his red bedroom and the cold floors. He hated the memories—and—he—fucking—loathed—Bella—Swan.
Edward looked so strange now, sitting on the hood of his new car and laughing. He threw his head back, and his abdomen tightened with the chortles. Jasper could sense its dishonesty in the oddest way. He wanted to be there to look a little closer. He wanted to set his jaw and narrow his eyes and peer into that bizarre sound. He dissected it with careful incisions. High. Low. Deep. Repeat. Bounce of the diaphragm. Tosses of bronze.
So few could see his strangeness, really comprehend or grasp its existence.
To Jasper it was a flashing billboard on a crowded interstate. It reminded him of little bugs, teeming beneath tree bark and gnawing until nothing was left but a hollow stump. Slender fingers. Animated as they waved. Words spoken, vibrations of sound that twisted and distorted through a crooked smile. Edward brushed her hair back from her neck. Fingertips grazed her skin, and she smiled, smiled, smiled.
He blew his smoke into the air slowly, allowing the noxious cloud to obstruct the view of lips touching. Hands on backs. Whispers in ears. More laughter, stretching wide around the space and calling, “Look at me! Look at me! Aren’t I so motherfucking divine?”
Tiny, tiny hands, grasping and clutching as their lips glistened under the pale moonlight. Her fingers trailed his shoulders and sank into the blue fabric of his shirt. She hooked her knee around his hip and moaned against him. She reached down and cupped his groin, and he shoved his fingers into her hair with a fevered grunt.
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