Jasper ceased, pulling away and panting as Edward simply stared at the wall behind him. Edward’s hand fell away from Jasper’s bulging crotch with a listless sway. Whereas Jasper’s chest rose and fell with labored and excited breaths, Edward’s remained calm and shallow.
“You should really think about painting,” Edward droned, flopping onto the bed with those eerily cadaverous eyes. He murmured, “It seems so dark in here.”
Instead of answering, Jasper’s face contorted into a raged grimace. He approached Edward at the edge of his mattress, reached down, and grasped his denim covered crotch. Jasper had fantasized about this too, but it wasn’t quite the same either.
Because he was only partially aroused.
Edward’s erection was fragmentary. Incomplete. Jasper searched Edward’s eyes, finding only green mixed with confusion and an elegant oblivion. Then Jasper pulled away and wondered whether or not he could possibly settle for partial perfection.
“Fuck it,” was Jasper’s response. “I like it dark.” He removed his shirt and descended upon Edward’s submissive form. He remained silent as Jasper straddled his lap, took a thick fistful of Edward’s hair, yanked his head back, and engulfed his lips. His hips pressed into Edward’s stomach and drew back, repeating and mimicking the dive and retreat of his tongue.
He flattened Edward’s hands to his chest and forced them to feel and stroke and caress. Edward’s palms were so warm, so soft. Jasper’s active imagination aided him in believing that his hands traveled trails of Edward’s creation. He imagined that they way in which they circled his waist and embraced him was solely of Edward’s volition, and not his own.
Since Jasper could only stomach forcing Edward’s hands to do so much, he finally rose, his hooded eyes watching Edward as Edward watched him. Jasper reached for his belt and unfastened his pants. He shoved his hand inside, palming himself with a grind of his teeth. He continued doing so, up and down, grind and stare, until he spilled across his wrist, shoulders jerking inward. Edward held his gaze without watching.
Jasper’s hands felt so cold.
—
Edward looked better today, and Jasper was especially uplifted by the sight of him in the hallway. It had been nearly two months since his breakup with the Swan girl. It was about fucking time. Edward loped between the rows of lockers, headed to the lunch room like the rest of the Senior class. His lips were pulled up into a small grin that made Jasper’s chest feel airy and light. Jasper intercepted him with a smile and clap on his back.
Edward seemed to stiffen at the contact, his smile withering ever so slightly.
“Wanna’ go see a movie tonight?” Jasper asked as he sat. It was a Friday and he figured, given Edward’s good mood, that maybe a night out might do them both some good.
Edward rested one arm on the table and looked away, muttering, “Not tonight.” His eyes were glued to the large doors of the room, watching the people swarm their way through.
“That’s cool,” Jasper supposed, a little disappointed.
They never went out.
“We could go down to the river or something, Or Port Angeles?” Jasper suggested with a hopeful shrug.
But Edward didn’t answer because, at that moment, Bella Swan walked through the doors, met Edward’s gaze and began walking to their table with a timid smile. Jasper’s eyes narrowed as his hand sought Edward’s beneath the table. He grasped it possessively, his malignant stare cutting and obtuse.
Edward jerked his hand away, straightening his back as he greeted, “Hey, Bella.” He smiled at her. It wasn’t a small grin or hollow or forced. It tucked inward and curled around his face, lifted his cheeks and brightened his eyes.
“Are you sure it’s okay to sit here?” she asked Edward, biting her lip anxiously as she regarded the seething form before them. Clearly, Jasper made absolutely no attempt to hide his ire.
“No. It’s not oh-fucking-kay if you sit here. Get lost—” Jasper snapped, feeling quite pleased at her obvious flinch.
“Shut up, Jasper,” Edward warned in a hard voice. “I asked her to sit with me. If you don’t like it, then we’ll go somewhere else.”
As Jasper moved his stare to Edward, Bella slowly lowered herself to the seat beside him. Edward’s face was a facade of calm, but Jasper could sense the anger that brewed just beneath the surface.
It was the most emotion Edward had shown in months.
“Why would you do that?” Jasper breathed, his throat unbearably tight. He wanted to match and exceed Edward’s anger with his own, but found himself incapable. He was much too afraid to feel anything else.
“Because I want to eat lunch with my girlfriend.” Edward’s jaw was taut and defiant, his eyes challenging and yet final. When he turned to Bella, every inch of him softened and glowed.
Jasper simply couldn’t believe it. “Wh—What?” he stuttered, incredulous. “You’re calling this… this… slut—” They both winced. “—your fucking girlfriend again?” Beneath Jasper’s skin, his blood boiled. It simmered and scorched until his fingertips felt numb.
Edward’s fist came down on the table with a blunt “bang” that drew stares. “Don’t you talk ever about her like that,” Edward spat, lips curled back into a daring sneer.
Jasper removed his gaze from Edward, locked his jaw, and turned it on Bella. His jasper-colored eyes narrowed. “Whore, slut, bitch, cunt, ugly fucki—” But Jasper did not finish, because Edward had a healthy fistful of Jasper’s shirt, yanking him forward.
“I said, don’t you ever fucking talk about her like that!” The entire room seemed to be watching now, Jasper’s face only inches from Edward. He stared at him blankly as Edward smoldered and puffed. His green eyes were so enraged, nearly murderous. Jasper had never seen anything like it, simply sat, gaping at the image of utter vehemence before him.
Jasper wanted to kiss Edward in that moment, more than any other. He didn’t want a partial Edward. An empty Edward. An Edward who kissed him while wanting her. Jasper licked his lips instinctively, feeling an impossible draw to Edward’s seething mouth, longed to steal a little portion of passion that was intended for Bella, not him.
“You promised,” Edward forbade with a flash of alarm.
Jasper felt so sick.
So quickly was Jasper’s anger disrupted and swallowed by a tidal wave of grief that it stole his breath. “You never—” He gasped for air, licking his lips furiously. “You never care when they talk about me. You never say a fucking word, and I don’t even deserve it, like her… You never—” And Edward’s eyes dimmed, so trivial a gesture as he released Jasper and looked away, a flicker of shame.
Jasper had been abandoned by Edward before, but this felt so much worse. In the recesses of his mind, Jasper wondered why? Hadn’t he been preparing himself? No, he realized. These last months with Edward had given him the falsest sense of security. With every kiss that Edward didn’t deny him, Jasper had unknowingly fortified a counterfeit niche in Edward’s heart. Seeing the contrast between this Edward—Bella’s Edward—and the Edward Jasper had been with for weeks was undeniable proof.
“We should sit somewhere else,” Edward eventually whispered to Bella, who sat staring back and forth, confused and stricken.
“You never—” Jasper repeated, still incapable of concluding his thought, of speaking the words aloud, of making them tangible. But Edward and Bella—his girlfriend—were already rising from their seats and turning their backs on him.
He could hear the two walking away, could discern the soft, quiet tenor of their voices as he sat motionless, staring unseeingly at the table. After a moment, his chest felt so tight that he thought he might suffocate. He pulled air into his lungs in starved gasps, felt his lips tingle with numb and cold and the memory of Edward’s never-sincere kisses.
No, Jasper reminded himself. They were never Edward’s kisses. They were always Jasper’s. Edward just accepted, but never took and never gave. With every passing second, Jasper’s quiet wheezing grew louder, sharper, until he heard an alarmed voice.
“Oh my God! Are you okay?” He didn’t know whose voice this belonged to, didn’t care.
He didn’t regard them as his hand clutched his chest where Edward’s had, his stomach doubling over as his eyes grew warm, blurry. There was something of a twisting within, the room seeming to spin around him as the cacophony of lunch room voices invaded his head and distorted into indecipherable chatter. Still his eyes grew warmer, fuzzier as he struggled for air. He wondered if he might go blind.
When the tears fell, Jasper was shockingly startled. They dribbled onto the table inches from his face like awkward and fat raindrops, spattering and swelling. Jasper felt hands on his shoulders and knew they belonged to Edward, could smell his cologne and hear his rushed questions, could feel his sheer lack of affection.
“Jasper? What’s happening?” Edward’s asked, shaking his shoulders.
But Jasper did not answer. He could only repeat the same two words, over and over and over, like dark, jagged hymn.
“You never—” loved me.
When he stood, it was oddly, physically painful and he groaned in discomfort. He didn’t want to be standing straight like this. It sent shockwaves of pain down his chest and stomach and he simply had to escape. He had to put as much distance between himself and his own unutterable words. He hoped the farther he got, the less true they’d become.
Jasper wasn’t that stupid.
He shrugged himself away from Edward, could see the look of panic mingled with pity in his expression as Jasper fled the room. The image of Edward’s face as Jasper clamored through the double doors would be forever etched into Jasper’s memory as the moment he realized exactly what he was to Edward Cullen: a discarded toy, a boyhood pet, a bygone, a stigma. His dirtiest little fucking secret.
Jasper didn’t stop. Instead, he ran the entire way home. When the rain came, it penetrated the cotton of his shirt, the denim of his jeans, and the fragility of his flesh. He felt translucent, crystalline. His tears came in short, errant surges that he could find no rhyme or reason to.
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