It's a Fever Dream (feverdream) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2018-10-12 00:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | #group scene, #november 2017, amelia, gavin, jasper |
Who: Amelia, Gavin & Jasper
Where: Home, Green Street
When: Thursday, Nov 16th, Afternoon
Status: Complete
When Jasper came home from school, Amelia and Gavin were sitting at the kitchen table with a couple of Gavin's guns laid out in front of them in pieces. They both looked up when Jasper walked in, Amelia grinning over her shoulder and Gavin humming softly as he waved at the guns in front of him. "She's good at this," he muttered and it was hard to tell if he was proud or troubled. "Come sit down. We uh, we need a little family meeting, if you got time."
Amelia waved one of the cotton swabs at Jasper and grinned. "I'm better with rifles," she admitted. "But this is fun too. Dad's thinking about buying a house." She didn't think Gavin had been meaning to do any sort of big announcement and gave him a puzzled look when he gave her a pained one. "What? That's what you said."
Walking in on his dad and baby sister -- which she still was, no matter what she looked like -- cleaning guns in the kitchen had been unexpected for sure, but it didn’t throw Jasper too hard. He’d talked to Amelia a little about what had happened to her over there, and he knew that she’d had to shoot at some stuff. He greeted the dogs as they came rushing over for pets, bent over to kiss the top of Amelia’s head, and dropped his backpack off to one side as he joined them at the table. A couple of months ago, he might’ve rolled his eyes mightily at the suggestion of a family meeting, but now Jasper felt like he always had time for both of them. “Buyin’ another house, huh?” he asked, giving Gavin a faint grin.
"Nah," Gavin groaned softly. "I- That's what we need to talk about. I'm done making decisions for us and now you're both old enough..." He trailed off because that was weird and it seemed like it took some acknowledging. "So we're having a meeting and making this decision - we're deciding together." Or at least they got a say in it, he wasn't sure how this would play out.
Amelia rolled her eyes a little, smiling. "I don't know anything about buying houses," she said. "So I guess it's up to Jasper."
"No, no," Gavin hurriedly interrupted. "I'm not- we're not just buying a house, this is why I didn't want you to - There are options." He cleared his throat and grimaced a little at his kids before before focusing on the gun in his hands again. "Uhm, we're uh, the divorce is going through this week."
It was probably fucked up that hearing his father say he wanted to make this decision together, with now-both of his teenagers, was more of a surprise than walking in on a small arsenal on the table. Jasper’s brows lifted as he glanced between Gavin and Amelia. He didn’t know jack shit about buying houses either, but it felt weirdly good to be included in the thought process, at least. He nodded slightly as Gavin finished and continued to look questioning. “So ... what’re our options then?”
Gavin put the gun down and cleared his throat again, looking from Jasper to Amelia then back to Jasper. "Well," he started and hated how obvious it was how unsure of everything he was. "We can stay here and make a spare bedroom or uh, we can take the old house and buy your mom out. It's too big for her alone..." He glanced at Amelia again. "Your sister isn't... too thrilled about that."
"Do you have a lot of good memories of that house?" Amelia asked and gave Jasper a knowing look. She had some, of course, but it was also the house where she went missing. All her old - or not so old - toys were still there, she'd cringed just thinking about going to the garden.
"Or," Gavin interjected, knowing full well what the answer would be. "We sell this house and buy a bigger one." He wasn't going to suggest Jasper move out, even if he had a feeling his son would love that; get his own place and everything? Gavin didn't like it.
Jasper’s first instinct was to immediately say they needed to buy a new house. But he wasn’t so naive as to think it was that easy. You didn’t just go out and buy a house like you did a TV or something. “Can you afford to do that? Buy a bigger house?” he asked Gavin. It wasn’t a sarcastic question, he genuinely didn’t know how much money his dad even made. Weren’t divorces expensive, too? He at least wouldn’t have to pay child support, since Jasper was eighteen and Amelia was still missing, but wasn’t alimony a thing? Gavin had been giving Olivia money for years.
"You let me worry about that," Gavin muttered dismissively since his kids didn't need to know all the ins and outs of his finances. He was getting out of this marriage in far better shape than he'd dared hope and a lot of it had to do with the fact Ollie was pregnant with another man's baby. Ollie was getting the money for the old house either way and then she was getting the hell out of there, but that didn't feel like Gavin's place to say. He wondered if his kids even cared at this point. "All I need from you is... preferences."
"New house," Amelia said almost instantly. "I'm not going back." She reassembled the gun and set it down. "I can sleep on the couch, you know, until we move. I don't need to stay in your room all the time."
Jasper gave a faintly amused purse of his lips at Gavin’s response -- maybe they didn’t need to know all the financial details, but it was funny to say they were all adults and then not get into the adult stuff with them. But whatever, he didn’t really care, he had to assume his dad knew what he was doing. “New house,” he agreed with Amelia, nodding a bit. “I don’t really wanna go back there either. And if anybody’s sleeping on the couch for a while, it’s me.” He nudged his sister’s leg under the table and stuck his tongue out at her a bit. “You can have my room if you want.” It would make spending time with Jules a bit harder, but if that was just a temporary thing until they got a new place, Jasper could deal.
"Just seems like you should have your rooms back," Amelia said. "Especially since you both have girlfriends now and-" She trailed off and rolled her eyes when Gavin stuttered something about not having a girlfriend. "Okay, Jasper has a girlfriend and you have... a friend, dad. I can sleep in the living room. I can sleep anywhere."
"Just because you can doesn't mean you should," Gavin grumbled, not too fond of imagining Amelia sleeping in some creepy, cold place. "I don't mind the living room either."
"Neither do I!" Amelia protested with some exasperation. "Or I can share a room with one of you, I don't care, honestly."
Girlfriend? Oh right, Ms. Harris. Jasper barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They’d been getting along better, he needed to remember that his dad was a human and if he was finally moving on romantically, that was a good thing. Maybe he wouldn’t be such a mopey asshole if he got some ass now and then. He had to chuckle a bit at the bickering over rooms, and sat forward with an “aight” to get their attention. “Until we get a new place, you’re moving into my room with me,” he told Amelia. Somebody had to make the decision, so it might as well be him. “There’s a blow up bed in the garage, I’ll take that, you get the bed. We’ll work out some kinda ... sock on the doorknob system when we need privacy. Okay?”
Amelia broke into a beaming smile at that and nodded. It made her happy, she wanted to share a room with one of them - or both - it felt so weird to sleep alone. The dogs usually stayed with her because she needed them there, needed any sign of life near her or she couldn't sleep. "I'll try not to keep you up all night," she promised even if it would be tempting to whisper to him in the dark constantly.
Gavin would be happy to get his bed back but he was still stuck in some spiral of trying to make things up to his kids and sleeping on the couch was the least he could do. Amelia looked so happy about it though and Jasper didn't seem to mind. "We can sleep wherever the hell we want to until we get a new place," he decided. "I'll try to rush it too, grease some palms." He huffed softly and got up to make a fresh pot of coffee.
Jasper hadn’t had many normal-kid type sleepovers, just a couple back when he was nine or ten, so he didn’t have a lot of experience to compare anything to. Maybe it was weird of him to want to bunk up with his formerly-nine-year-old sister, but he thought the closeness would be nice. And that she would understand if he needed the room to himself, or to him and Jules, and he would do the same for Amelia. “You’ll be fine, I’m usually awake until late anyway,” he assured her with a warm smile. “So ... hell yeah, I guess, decision made, right?” Jasper leaned back and stretched his arms out, stifling a little yawn. That had probably been the smoothest Lucas family meeting in history.
"Decision made," Gavin agreed and laughed at Amelia's little victory cheer. It wasn't as easy as that, he had a lot to do, but that wasn't a burden he was going to share with his kids. "If you need privacy, Amelia sleeps in my room and I take the couch." He much preferred the couch to some blow-up mattress, it was like a second bed to him on nights when he drank too much.
"We're gonna be roomies," Amelia said jovially and poked Jasper in the ribs because it was too tempting not to when he was stretching like that. She jerked her hand back then and laughed, becoming guarded in case he retaliated.
All Jasper did at first was grin and bat at Amelia’s hand. He had a pervasively good feeling that they would work it all out. He wasn’t eager to fuck Jules with his dad in the living room -- she got kinda loud sometimes -- but they could always go back to parking somewhere. Or just sneaking him into her house, that seemed to be working pretty well. And if Gavin ever ended up sleeping with Ms. Harris ... well, he would have his own room to do it in. Besides, late night whispering would give him a good chance to bond even more with his sister. “Just don’t stink up the place,” he said to her, grinning. Jasper leaned over to grab one of the legs of Amelia’s chair and pulled her in closer to start tickling at her side.
Amelia didn't fight the pull and she squeed when Jasper started tickling her, trying to wiggle away. That was one moment; the next she'd scooted back in a jolt of a surprise when Jasper yelped, only belatedly realizing she'd hurt him on some weird reflex, grabbing two of his fingers and pushing them back. It was a maneuver Maggie had taught her and trained her to use if she was in trouble but she wasn't in trouble, it was just Jasper and he'd just been tickling her. "I'm sorry," she said, eyes wide and her heart drumming away at hyper speed. "I'm sorry I didn't mean to." It wasn't fair, he was just tickling her and sure she didn't much like to be tickled as it turned out but she hadn't meant to actually hurt him for it. Had she broken his fingers?
Gavin didn't know what to think when his kids went from laughing to sudden panic and Amelia looked about ready to cry. "What's wrong?" he asked, dropping what he was holding to get closer to them as his own instincts kicked in and had him moving.
The pain was quick and sharp and unexpected, and Jasper made a noise before he could stop himself, flinching back when Amelia released his fingers. It hurt a lot, but he didn’t think they were broken as he hugged his hand to his chest, still wincing. “Fuck, ow,” he hissed, though it wasn’t quite directed at Amelia. Jasper shook that hand out, giving her a wary look for a second. She looked scared and upset though, and he couldn’t really blame her, he guessed. It had seemed like a reflexive thing, and she’d just been giggling a moment earlier, so he didn’t think she’d done it on purpose. Jasper deliberately smoothed out his expression. “It’s okay,” he said as he flexed his fingers. “She just ... reacted. Look, they’re fine. You okay?”
"I'm sorry," Amelia whispered, mortified and covering her mouth before reaching down to grab Jasper's hand to look at it. She half expected to find the fingers broken even if he said they weren't, it just felt like such a fuck-up, like she'd just ruined everything. His hand looked fine but she knew it had hurt and probably felt a little weird still and there was nothing she could do to fix it. "I don't know why I did that."
Gavin was frowning softly, his worry for her stirred up in full force even if he was also proud of Jasper's reaction. "At least we know you can take care of yourself," he muttered and instantly wondered if that had been the wrong thing to say. He patted Jasper's shoulder and gave him a concerned little glance. "New rule: No tickling."
“Yeah, no shit,” he huffed his agreement. Jasper let Amelia look at his hand -- which still hurt, yes, but if anything she’d just sprained the fingers slightly. If it hadn’t been him doing it, he was willing to bet Amelia would’ve gone full force and snapped bone. It was kind of an unsurprising relief that she had those sorts of instincts, really. She’d been defending herself for half her life, and God only knew what-all she’d had to fight off. It put some sudden emotion into his chest and Jasper stood up enough to lean over and hug his sister tight. “It’s okay. I’m sorry I startled you,” he murmured, then kissed her temple.
Amelia hugged him back tightly, sniffling softly as she tried to keep from crying. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt her brother but more than that, she didn't want to worry him. What little she remembered wasn't all something she wanted him or her dad to know; it was dark and they were already so fretful around her knowing what little they did. She bit back another apology, then kissed Jasper's cheek as she pulled back and quietly demanded to see his hand again. It obviously wasn't broken but it could have been and her stomach felt heavy with the guilt.
Jasper gave her his hand with another murmured, “It’s really okay.” He glanced up over Amelia’s head to give Gavin a doubtful sort of look. What bullshit had she actually been through? She’d obviously survived it, but having that instinct to go for the fingers of someone you didn’t want touching you was pretty hardcore. Like martial artist hardcore. Did his baby sister know jujitsu now or something? It made him want to bundle her up in his arms and never let go and just bark at anybody who tried to come near her.
Gavin was frowning softly when Jasper looked at him and he shook his head, unsure what to think or say. Of course he had thought the same thing as Jasper had. A person didn't learn to do something like this without good reason and it made him want to go burn something down to the ground. It was a useless rage that wasn't directed at anything in particular but Gavin was used to that being a thing in his life. "Are you kids hungry?" he asked quietly, striving for some normalcy and thanking whatever lucky stars that Amelia had a shrink to talk to.
“Yeah,” Jasper answered, a bit relieved for the distraction. He searched out Amelia’s eyes and gave her a little smile. “Wanna have something to eat?” he asked, even though he was sure she’d heard the original question. He just wanted to direct her back to something nice, like all of them eating together. It wasn’t a bad thing that Amelia knew how to defend herself, he just wished she hadn’t had to go through shit to get there. Maybe someday she would tell them everything she could remember about it, but Jasper didn’t want to push her into that. Maybe it was better if she just let it all slip away and looked forward, as much as she could.
Amelia didn't hold that eye-contact for long but she nodded and then pulled Jasper's hand up to her face to kiss the fingers she had hurt and press his knuckles to her cheek. It was as much to comfort herself as him - if not more so - and she wanted to keep apologizing and asking if he was okay.
"You want to go somewhere?" Gavin asked, stepping back again to put away the coffee things. Coffee had definitely been cancelled, it might still be early but food would be a good distraction. "I can go get take-out too."
Amelia nodded and she had some suggestions for food whether they stayed in or not but it felt only right to make Jasper decide because she'd hurt him.
Seeing as how Jasper had just gotten home from school, he wasn’t too eager to go anywhere. “Go pick something up,” he said to his dad, since dinner decisions were apparently up to him. “Chinese sound okay? ... Chinese, then.” He gave Amelia a little smile and squeezed her fingers a tiny bit while she held onto his. Nobody protested Chinese food, so that sounded fine to him. “‘Til then, you wanna snuggle up and watch a movie or something?” he asked his sister. The guns were still in pieces, but he knew that Gavin could make short work of those. She just seemed like she needed some cuddling, and he could happily provide it.
"I need to pee first," Amelia mumbled and gave Jasper's hand another kiss before she got up and scooted past him to get out of the kitchen. She did need to use the bathroom but it was also a good excuse to compose herself and sort out her thoughts. It reminded her of typical girl behavior in some of the books she'd read, going together to the bathroom to talk and take a breather. "Just order something you think I'd like," she called back to them since she really had no idea if she even liked chinese food, let alone what to order.
Gavin grabbed the menu off the top of the fridge. "Right," he said, then glanced at Jasper's hand. "You really okay?" he muttered as he handed the menu over.
Jasper took the menu and glanced over it, though he already had a pretty good idea of what was on it from ordering in plenty of times for himself while Gavin was working. Amelia’s food taste was still developing, but he thought he could do a pretty good job guessing what she might like. Flexing his hand while he browsed, he settled on some coconut shrimp for her and General Tso’s for himself, and pointed those out to his dad. “Yeah, for real, it’s fine,” he answered, a bit of annoyance creeping into his tone at all the fuss. It had hurt, but she hadn’t actually broken anything. “I’m just ... worried about her,” Jasper added, his volume dropping a bit.
Gavin nodded as he took the menu back and looked it over to see what he might want for himself. He didn't really feel hungry but he supposed he could eat some. "Me too," he muttered. "We'll keep her safe." He wasn't sure just what he was most worried about, his daughter not being okay and maybe that never changing, or something taking her away from them again as if her return was temporary and the next time she wouldn't find her way home. Or she would but she'd be old by then and he'd have to watch her die. It was a morbid train of thought that made him reluctant to leave her side but she would get annoyed with him if he hovered too much.
“Hell yeah we will,” Jasper agreed. In his mind, that part was settled, at least. It was too terrifying to really think about what little control they actually had, so he wasn’t going to. They would just keep her as safe as they possibly could, for as long as they could, and that would be that. At least if she ever somehow got pulled back into that world, now she knew how to get out and come back to them. That was all Jasper needed to know. “I’m gonna change,” he said as he stood up. Jasper picked his backpack up to take with him. Some more comfortable clothes, some snuggly time with Amelia, then some good food all sounded perfect, and if his fingers were sore for a few days, that was a small price to pay to have his sister back and the family even more intact than they had been when she’d disappeared.