Jasper—drunk and dizzy—vomited over the railing.
—
“Where did you go?” Edward asked as she took her seat. His hair hung in his eyes. Flopping down. Wide eyes. He picked at his chicken and avoided anything outside his bubble of perfection. He wasn’t oblivious to Jasper’s cutting stare. He was just ignoring him. Jasper wished he could ignore Edward, too.
She grinned. “To the lady’s room, of course.” Her hand sought his, wrapped it up tight, held it down and locked it away. Their fingernails were bright and entwined and laying atop the Cullen family dinner table like the prettiest picture. Everyone was smiling. Jasper inspected her fingers and, against his will, envisioned them wrapped around Edward’s rigid cock.
Jasper ground his teeth and tapped his boot, shoved the food into his mouth.
“Your home is so lovely, Mrs. Cullen!” Bella exclaimed like screeching chimes that made Jasper cringe. Eyes bright like headlights scanned the walls, and she gushed, gushed, gushed. Jasper felt sick again. The pleasantries swelled around him. “Everything tastes delicious! I love that painting! Your pearls are gorgeous!”
And this was the most horrific thing about this Bella fucking Swan. She hadn’t an ounce of malice in her. She was polite and kind, attractive and sensual, sweet and sugary, intelligent and strong-willed. And she was genuine in her care for Edward. When all pretenses were stripped away, Jasper could only come to one conclusion.
Jasper hated Bella most because he had no logical reason to.
Esme beamed with pride and joy. Carlisle was engrossed in a newspaper. Edward was nodding along and eating small, menial bites. Shoving them down the hole. Holding her hand. Grazing her shoulder. Smiles so crooked and bizarre were flashed and disarmed her anxiety.
Jasper fucking hated that smarmy, crooked smile of his. He shouldn’t be smiling like that—teeth and pink and bright green eyes, seeking brown. Every time he saw the smile—the one meant for Jasper—he wanted to stand and scream and toss his chair about like a petulant child. Didn’t they understand anything?
Edward was his.
Edward kissed Bella goodnight in the foyer as Jasper passed to climb the stairs. Hands on hips, thumbs on cheeks, and tender whispers. Edward stared after her form with sparkling eyes and a thrilled stare. He probably liked watching her ass sway, Jasper seethed. Then the door was closed, and Edward was trodding away. Bounce in his step.
He never looked at Jasper anymore. It felt as though Forks was a chasm below him and he was falling. He was a weightless, yet somehow swollen mass that kept dropping. He waited to hear the final “crack” of his landing. Waited to feel the pain of his ending. Waited for the ground to finally give way to nothing.
He had nothing.
Jasper’s fingernails penetrated the flesh of his palm, and when he finally, finally bled, his lips twitched like a dying body.
—
The stale linger of its taste in his mouth was the worst.
It was bitter, with an edge of saccharine, like blood and candy. He could feel it’s violent dance on the tip of his tongue with every passing day. It never waned. Like a ghost, it haunted his empty halls, floating through the vacant rooms and searching for tattered toys and discarded, broken soldiers. How he wished he could give it back, shove it into his arms and laugh, laugh, laugh.
He could taste it the strongest at midnight. Could smell soapy hair and feel damp breaths against his neck. He could hear soft breathing, see twitching-dream fingers. Could feel hot, tender flesh beneath his eager fingertips.
Jasper had always been such a weird, dark little shit.
Jasper still found himself waking at the twelve chimes of the hallway grandfather clock. He’d forget the betrayal, and his feet would take him through the house, up the stairs, and to the door he was once welcome to enter. It wasn’t until his hand wrapped around the brass knob that he’d remember.
It would wrap its bony fingers around his throat and squeeze until he’d gasp in the darkness. He’d stagger back and let the handle go without really meaning to. He’d feel Edward’s words every night, thick like cold venom coating a candied shell.
“I don’t sleep with fags.”
And there—in front of the entrance which was once a soothing balm to his wounds—Jasper would cry.
He wouldn’t sob. Jasper wasn’t a sobber—he refused. But the tears would trail down his cheeks like searing tracers, regardless of his efforts to disallow them. He was always so weak like this—tired and scared and utterly fucking alone. Where was their compassionate fucking boy now?
And then Jasper would go back to bed. He would remove his boxers and lay naked beneath the covers. He would grab a white down pillow and shove it between the sheets, turn on his side and grip it between his thighs. He would move his hips against the smooth coldness, releasing a sigh. He would smash it against his throbbing erection.
His hand had always been lacking, so cold. Had felt so clinical and to-the-point. He’d wanted to imagine a pale, lanky body beneath him as he came. He wanted to feel above it, in control of it. He wanted to dominate it. This is the method he still preferred. Jasper couldn’t even jack-off like a normal boy. But though that sickened him, made him feel shame, he continued.
He’d eventually turn to lay on top of it.
He would prop himself on his elbows and tuck his chin to his chest so he could watch himself fucking it. The tip of his cock would slide against white, peeking out from between his stomach and cotton. He’d imagine a little tuft of coppery hair, a trail from a belly button, hot breath on his face.
He would thrust urgently against it, the blankets on his back rising and falling with quick, sharp bounces and falling off his bare shoulders. His mattress would squeak, just like he always knew it would. He’d stare at himself moving against it and talk as if Edward were there, beneath him, writhing. Jasper had a vivid imagination and he’d say the most disgusting things to Edward’s effigy.
The most disgusting, horrible, honest and arousing things.
At first he’d whisper sweetly, softly, tenderly to his absent lover, secret and gentle as he bucked into the pillow. He would shift his knees and he would push harder, offering husky praise to vacant space as he lifted his stomach for a better view.
He imagined Edward being so tight…
And then he would fall and writhe and rock into the bed with a pleading, begging groan as he came. Shuddering, he’d call his name as if Edward might hear him from across the house. He wanted him to rush through his door and swear that he’d never leave him again. He wanted to feel his sinewy arms encasing him yet again, holding Jasper’s sweaty head to his chest.
Instead, Jasper would lay his cheek down, staring at the door and panting as he pressed his dick into the soiled pillow, just a few more times. It was so much easier this way. He’d forget the pain of standing before Edward’s door—too exhausted and breathless to think. And then he’d fall asleep, sticky and empty.
Jasper did his own laundry now.
—
He’d waited for this moment since Junior year. It was the best fucking day he could remember having since Edward had kissed his wrist. Jasper walked on air through the halls of his high school, a secret grin on his face as he drifted from class to class, sticking to the shadows and the crevices of classrooms.
The girls were more chatty than usual and this… this pleased Jasper. The guys weren’t much better, their whispers only minimally softer but ultimately decipherable. He’d lean in over his desk to catch their phantom and intangible murmurings, wanted to pluck them out of the air and shove them in his pocket for safekeeping. His hidden smile grew wider with every second.
Edward had stayed home today, as had Bella.
If it weren’t for the school gossip, Jasper would have never recognized his fortune. For in the hallways and the stolen seconds before and after classes, the student body was abuzz with particularly satisfying information.
Bella Swan kissed one of the Quileute boys. Edward found out.
They were no longer together.
Nothing could dampen Jasper’s high spirits. Not even when the assistant principal cited him for dress code violation because his pants had fallen too low on his hips. Not even when Mr. Berty informed Jasper of the possibility he might not graduate, due to his laughable GPA. Not even when he missed the bus and had to walk home, the rain already beginning to fall.
Jasper was positively soaked to the bone by the time he reached the large white mansion in the forest. Esme and Carlisle’s cars were both absent from the garage. He checked. The house was an eerie kind of silent, as if maybe a calm after the storm.
Jasper went straight up the flight of stairs and passed his own room. Edward’s door was closed, as he’d expected it to be. Internally, his heart was fluttering wildly in anticipation, all abuzz like the campus had been. He didn’t even bother knocking.
But he wasn’t prepared for what he saw: Edward curled up on the bed beneath his sheets, staring at the far wall with vacant, bloodshot eyes.
Jasper inspected him with much misery, the buzz in his chest subsiding to a deep aching that he never wanted to experience. Edward’s pain was Jasper’s pain.
In that moment, Jasper realized that he’d been so very wrong about Bella Swan. He had ample reason to hate her, every fiber of her being. She possessed Edward’s heart, his perfect, flawless, fragile, delicate heart. Jasper had never entirely realized the depths of Edward’s feelings for the girl, but there was no denying them now. She’d had his heart, and Jasper knew this with certainty, because clearly, she had crushed it.
Jasper knew how that felt, could see the symptoms and signs miles away. If ever he were doubtful of this fact, all he had to do was look in the mirror.
He felt no sense of vindication. There was no glory for Jasper in seeing Edward like this: crumpled and discarded and empty. There was only a deep sense of empathy, an impossible longing to comfort and soothe, a craving to absorb as much of that ache as he possibly could.
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