quiet when i'm coming home | jasper & liv

j a s p e r .

"The future can't
be real, I
barely know how
long a moment is"

He could be better. That used to be an insult, a poisonous thought that lingered in the back of his mind and seared itself into the bone there. Whenever he lost himself within the bottom of glass bottles it served as an anchor, the chains around his wrists that somehow kept him grounded in this terrible downward spiral. It's not much of an insult anymore.

Of course, Jasper Fenwick could be better. He was born and bred for greatness, the spoon shoved down his throat was not made of silver but of platinum. A trophy was meant to represent the hubris of others, to sit pretty with a mouth sewn shut; even the stitches were made of woven gold. It was that very thing, the perfection that he should have been, that breaks him over and over again.

He shouldn't have his title. That much is starkly apparent as he stumbles through his third bar tonight. This is beyond drunk, his vision is blurred around the edges, tilting on a peculiar axis as it purges every new memory his eyes strain to make. His hand trails along the grime-ridden wood panelling of some shit bar deep in the underbelly of nine. He's here to indulge, not to work, shedding the angelic white of his uniform in favor of tight-fitting blacks and navy blues. No one here looks at him as anything but another stain upon the yellowing carpet.

Thank fucking god.

He'd given himself the night off, one had the freedom to do that when the Captain was too scared of pissing off your family to dare reprimand you for it. What with all this bullshit going down he figured they'd need his presence more than ever but that was exactly why he made himself scarce. He liked feeling worthless, it was safe and familiar.

There was a certain amount of arrogance that came with this bitter self-disdain. Ambition had festered, becoming rotten and unreliable but not completely dead. A part of him, a part he'd tried to drown in poison and pain, still sought out praise. That was a need far easier to ignore when he distanced himself from it - it was merely a matter of choosing to do that with lies or whiskey.

It'd been four years, maybe five, since he'd come home, if he could even consider the Capitol anything close to it. He kept in contact with Copernicus when he had the presence of mind - their bond ran deeper than the diluted blood running through their veins. He was his best friend. Even if he knew he was making a burden of himself by slurring half-formed thoughts into his com unit at an ungodly hour. His cousin was the only thing that kept him tethered to reality, even if that rope was terribly frayed.

Oblivion was what kept him away. Like a curse or a bad omen he could not shake. The memory of his first love was one he'd tried and failed to forget a thousand times over. It made him feel weak, a shame as deep and dark as ink spilled across parchment paper, it took up every inch of his mind. The finer details had faded over the years, he hardly remembered the sound of his voice or the upward slant of his lips whenever he saw something that sparked that overwhelming passion of his. Oblivion represented the ghost of every good thing he could have been. Surely that's why he couldn't bear to forget him.

And maybe that's why he sees him here, outside in the bite of evening air. The alley smells of something rotten but it hardly registers. His vision keeps on swimming, he's a hundred miles away from the cold brick grating against the skin of his back. His knees gave out halfway to freedom, shirt riding up as stone bites into the freshly exposed canvas. He wonders if it's drawn blood.

He blinks through the hair matted with sweat and falling into his eyes, arms too heavy to reach up and brush it away. "'M fine." The stranger looks like Oblivion, but this isn't the first time. Ghosts were always at their strongest when he was so fucked he couldn't make sense of the world.

It hurt that he still missed him. Jasper should have been stronger than this.

"Leave me alone. Nothing can hurt me 'nyways."

And he believed that. He really did.