Who: Amelia & Jasper Where: Green Street When: Sunday noon 11/19 Status: Complete
To say the night before had been weird would be an understatement. Simply meeting all these people and lying about who she really was had been weird enough for Amelia but then Jasper and Jules had been weirdly eager to tell her things that she wouldn't have thought were any of her business. Ruby had been blunt and weird too and... most of the people there, honestly. Was it the alcohol? Amelia had only had that one beer and she'd just felt sort of sleepy.
This morning her dad hadn't been home when she woke up and she'd barely had time to worry when he'd come home to hurriedly shower before going to church. So... Both he and Jasper were clearly in relationships now and she just hoped Gavin wouldn't suddenly feel the urge to start telling her weird details about his sex life. She had gone with him to church and tried not to laugh at how awkward he was around Charlie.
So all in all, Amelia had a long day before Jasper even woke up and she was making an attempt at an omelette when she heard his door open and the familiar sound of feet shuffling to the bathroom. Omelette quickly turned into scrambled eggs but at least she didn't burn it and she was damn pleased with herself. Jasper could probably use a nice lunch if he felt anything like his drinking the night before suggested he might.
Jasper had been tempted to stay once he’d taken Jules home from the bonfire, but considering how strange the night had seemed after a while, he’d decided to go home. He wanted to make sure Amelia was okay. She’d been in bed by the time he’d gotten there, and the internal debate on whether to wake her up hadn’t lasted long. Jasper had crashed out in his own bed and slept like a rock. He hadn’t even heard Gavin come home and leave again to go to church with Amelia, or the both of them come back again.
Having to piss was what eventually woke him up, and the light coming through his window suggested it was already noonish. Jasper dragged out of bed and pulled a t-shirt and some flannel pants on, more conscious about having clothes on around the house since Amelia’s return. He shuffled to the bathroom to do his business and splash some water on his face. He didn’t feel hungover, just ... strange and embarrassed.
Jasper was a little relieved to find Amelia alone in the kitchen, and he felt sheepish as he padded in and over to her. He peeked over her shoulder at the stove and gave a little grunt. “Morning,” he mumbled. “Smells good.”
Amelia glanced back at him with a little smile and that awkwardness was like a solid thing between them, or liquid at least, something she felt like she could touch. "Morning! It was supposed to be an omelette but oh well. How did you sleep?" She turned off the stove and reached for a plate to put the scrambled eggs on. She'd already eaten and this had been more of an experiment than necessity so she figured Jasper could eat it - be her guinea pig. She turned and handed him the plate without explaining it, tilting her head at him and smiling with faint amusement to combat that weirdness from the night before.
His sister might’ve been a weird sort of quasi-stranger to him now, but Jasper could tell immediately that the awkwardness from last night hadn’t gone away. It would’ve been nice if they’d both just forgotten all about it, but it seemed like that wasn’t in the cards. “I slept okay, yeah.” He took the plate with a surprised little huff, giving her a curious glance before he moved to get a fork. And some ketchup, just in case the eggs were bland. Jasper moved to sit at the table, and nudged one of the other chairs out a bit with his foot. “Come here for a minute?” he asked more than instructed. Even though he had no idea what, he felt like he needed to say something to her, maybe explain that he hadn’t exactly been himself the night before.
Amelia nodded and grabbed a juice from the fridge before plopping down on the offered chair. She opened the bottle while watching Jasper, mulling over what to say in her mind for a moment. "Last night was weird," she finally blurted out. "You were weird." She couldn't say he'd been weird in a bad way but weird all on its own wasn't great, not when she'd had more than her share of it in her life.
Jasper had been poking at his food and trying to figure out where to start when Amelia did it for him. He put his fork down and sighed, his hand coming up to pick some sleep out of the corner of one eye. “Yeah it was, and yeah I was,” he agreed. He gave her an apologetic sort of look, squinting one eye a little. “I think some of us got like, drugged at the dance. Those kinda touchy-feely everybody-wants-to-be-super-honest drugs. I heard that some stuff happened that ... I dunno, probably wouldn’t have otherwise.” Jasper ended up in a mumble, thinking of Sebastian McCarthy’s blatant coming out, then blinked and focused. “Anyway ... sorry if me and Jules made you uncomfortable. We don’t usually blurt shit like that.”
Amelia sighed a breath of relief at that. It wasn't good that everyone had been drugged but it did make her feel less out of her depth when it came to socializing, knowing that this was not normal. "Do people do that a lot?" she asked with a little frown. "Give you drugs without you knowing?" It had seemed like it affected a lot more people than just Jasper and Jules. Ruby had been a little off and a couple of people she hadn't known had talked to her by the fire and been really weird too, uncomfortably honest and happy in a way that seemed like it was too much.
The whole concept of spiking anything with anything suddenly seemed really weird to Jasper. Dumping some vodka or rum into punch was usually seen as just some harmless fun, but this had been something Else, and that felt kind of violating. “No,” he answered Amelia’s question, shaking his head a bit. “And it’s pretty fucked up, to be honest. I mean, sometimes somebody’ll add alcohol to the drinks at a school thing, to try and make it more fun and get past the teachers. This wasn’t booze though and that’s never happened to me before.” Jasper had taken plenty of drugs of his own volition, but that was different. “Just glad it wasn’t something worse, I guess.”
Amelia nodded and reached over to give Jasper's wrist a little squeeze. "I'm glad you're okay," she said earnestly because the whole thing was pretty scary. "And now I have to meet your girlfriend when she's not on drugs." She gave him a bit of a teasing smile. Drugs or no drugs, Jules had been very sweet and Amelia had liked her - especially when she wasn't talking about sex with Jasper. "Speaking of girlfriends... dad didn't come home last night."
Feeling a tiny bit better, like she wasn’t going to hold it against him, Jasper reached over to pat Amelia’s hand. “Yeah, she was worried you hate her now,” he said about Jules, giving a little huff and a wince. He knew that wasn’t the case though, so it was easy for him to dismiss. Jasper’s brows quirked up and he glanced toward the kitchen entryway like their father might appear right there at that second, back from his Walk of Shame. “Not at all? Huh.” He sounded mildly impressed. “Think he was with, uh ... Ms. Harris?”
"Mmhmm," Amelia murmured knowingly. "He came home this morning and then he was all weird around her at church." She laughed a little and shrugged. "It was really cute. I like her, she teaches you... English, right?" Was it bad that she liked her better than she liked her own mom? It felt like a betrayal, even if Ollie probably didn't deserve her loyalty much.
It still felt weird to Jasper that his dad was dating one of his teachers, but it didn’t seem to matter as much anymore. Amelia had come home, that had put a new spin on pretty much everything. Jasper chuckled a bit as he forked off a bit of scrambled eggs to eat. “English, yeah,” he confirmed. “They used to know each other, she said. Like back in high school. So I guess that’s sweet. Good for him.” He knew that Amelia had spent some time with the two of them, and that was good. Jasper just hoped they didn’t expect the same out of him.
"Aww," Amelia cooed because Jasper was right - that was sweet. High school sweethearts? She didn't really know much about her parents' past, only that they'd been really young when they got married and dropped out of school. "She has a lot of books," she commented idly. "And she said I could borrow them whenever I want. Is she a good teacher?" There was that thought that maybe Charlie could help her study stuff sometime but maybe it would be weird if she was dating her dad. Amelia honestly had no idea how that all was supposed to work.
Chewing on his eggs, Jasper shrugged. He was so new to the world of actually trying to do well in school, he wasn’t sure he really knew what a good teacher looked like anymore. That was kind of demoralizing to tell his little-big sister though, so he stalled for a second. “She’d probably be a real good teacher for you,” he said, glancing up at his sister. They were both girls, Amelia would actually try, and Jasper had always thought she was way smarter than him. “I’m just not a very good student.”
"Why?" Amelia asked bluntly because she couldn't imagine Jasper not being good at learning things. Maybe sitting down in school was boring but he wasn't stupid. He'd never really talked about his experience with school with her when she was little, they'd talked about what she was up to at school but his experience had always been a mystery to her.
The directness startled a little laugh out of Jasper. She kept doing that to him, with those sweetly earnest questions. He knew if he told her he was stupid, she would argue, but her view of him wasn’t exactly the most objective. He gave another awkward shrug instead. “M’just ... not, not really. It’s hard to pay attention, I know I’m not going to college, so I’m kind of a waste of time. I got held back a year already. I just ... want out of there, pretty much.”
Amelia furrowed her brows as she thought about it. There was nothing there she could argue with, it was all just facts and not some nonsense like Jasper being stupid or something. "There's nothing you want to learn?" she asked instead. She thought her brother was pretty damn smart but she also didn't couldn't really see him being some bookish type of professional. Jasper was more the type to fix stuff, or make stuff - but that was something he could learn too. Ollie had told her when she was little that she was going to be smarter than her brother when she got older but now she'd never know, she'd missed out on so much education, how would she ever catch up.
“I wanna learn how to be a mechanic. More than I already know, I mean. Me and Uncle Aaron work on my car sometimes, and he’s taught me a lot.” Jasper thought Amelia knew that already, but maybe she didn’t remember -- that kind of thing probably just seemed like boring adult stuff to a nine year old. And it wasn’t like they’d had a bunch of heart to heart conversations about the plans for their future or anything. “They don’t teach that kinda stuff in high school though. Is there anything you wanna learn?”
Amelia wasn't surprised by his answer at all and she laughed when he turned it back around on her even if it was a sore topic. It was all in the way it was asked, she supposed, since it didn't hurt her this time. "Everything? I mean... Yeah. Everything I can. I'm okay at fixing cars and I'm really good at climbing and shooting but... Since I'm not planning on being a criminal I guess those don't count as great life-skills or anything." She rolled her eyes and took a long swig of her fruit juice.
Jasper almost said that he’d meant did she want to learn something that could turn into a career, but it occurred to him that she probably had no idea what that would even look like. So ‘everything’ was pretty much a good answer. “Dude, those are totally great life skills,” he disagreed, giving a little snort. “Not everybody can fix a car, that’s why there are mechanics and shit. And climbing and shooting would be real handy if you wanted to like ... be a hunter or something.” Jasper tilted a little grin at her. “Just like, learn everything, like you said, and see what you like the most, y’know? Think about what you might like doing and try it.” He wished all of education worked that way, but it didn’t. Jasper knew Amelia was smart as hell and she would be good at anything she put her mind to.
"You're going to have to teach me some of it," Amelia said in a teasing tone. She'd caught a glimpse of some of his homework and a lot of it looked like alien hieroglyphics to her. "Maybe I'll learn to fix cars better and be a mechanic like you. We could work in the same shop." She was... sort of joking. Not really but maybe a little. Truth was she had no idea what she could do, if she'd ever be a functioning adult in this world she had no idea how to navigate. It was terrifying all on its own so staying close to her family seemed like the safe thing to do right now.
Jasper gave a little snort at the idea that he could teach anybody anything, but he didn’t outright argue with her. Working together in a mechanic shop actually sounded really nice, in that dreamy, probably-would-never-happen way. “Better than working at the bar until dad dies or whatever,” he said with a little huff. Jasper gave Amelia a lopsided grin. He would totally work at a shop with her, both of them bullshitting and getting greasy and working out problems together. Jasper liked to solve hands-on problems, and tinkering with cars had given him that more than anything else he’d tried so far. “Maybe we can work for Ruby’s dad, he’s pretty cool.”
She might have been sort of maybe joking but his reply still made her beam at him. It sounded good to her. Maybe it would never happen but it made her feel better to think about it now. "Then you'll have to teach me more," she told him pointedly, then furrowed her brows in thought. "Do they have a school for mechanics? Or do you just learn it from someone like... an apprentice or something." It was probably a stupid question and as soon as she'd asked she wished she'd just looked it up online.
“There’s like, trade schools and stuff,” he told her, nodding a bit. “Technical schools, they call them. None right around here, but I bet there’s one down Portland way. But I know like, Uncle Aaron didn’t go to school and he worked as a mechanic for a long time. So you can learn on the job too. Probably cheaper that way.” Jasper was sure that in big cities and stuff, an education would get you more money, but Point Pleasant was a podunk town, and if they were staying there, then he was sure an apprenticeship would do them. If they ended up actually doing it, who the hell knew anymore. It gave Jasper a bit of a sad pang, because he knew Jules wouldn’t be in that version of his future, but he had a feeling that was coming regardless, in spite of what they’d said to each other Saturday night.
The fact he used 'apprenticeship' made her happy because she'd been right about that one and it didn't feel like that happened often enough. "We'll figure it out," she told him and turned in her chair as she heard the familiar clack of nails on the floor as the dogs came into the kitchen. "Heyyyy," she cooed, scratching their heads gently. "Finally got up from your nap, hmm? No, you're not getting scrambled eggs." She glanced back at Jasper and grinned. "Those are for Jasper. Do they taste okay?"
Jasper smiled at Amelia greeting the dogs, forking some more eggs into his mouth. Max and Rude had always adored her, and it gave Jasper such a sense of peace in his chest that they still loved her. He didn’t need the proof that she was his sister, but it still felt good to have it. And he thought it was good for Amelia to have love from some creatures who didn’t question her at all. “They’re great,” he said with a grin in return. Jasper stuffed some more into his mouth as if to prove it. “You should make you some,” he added around the big bite, not bothering to cover his mouth. “Did Dad run off to work?”
"I already ate," Amelia said dismissively before sitting up straight and nodding. "All flustered and awkward. God, I don't remember him being this awkward... was he always?" She remembered her dad being stoic, quiet and distant at times but awkward? Never. It was weird to see him again now that she was grown up, there was a new layer to everyone and she was still adjusting to it.
“When it comes to dad stuff? Yeah, pretty much,” he answered, giving a shrug. “Either awkward or pissed about something.” Though Gavin had been nicer to his little girl. He’d mostly ignored Jasper when he was younger, but Amelia had been a second chance. “But today he was probably just embarrassed that you saw him being all awkward with Ms. Harris. I think like, mumbling and sweating is the only way he knows how to flirt.” He gave a little snort and ate some more breakfast.
"Well, it seems to work on Ms. Harris," Amelia said with a delighted snicker because the way Jasper put it it shouldn't work on anyone. "I always thought he was really cool," she admitted. "It's weird to see him like this, like he doesn't actually know what he's doing. I always thought he had the solution to everything ever. You and him, you could fix everything." She thought better of it and smiled wryly. "Except mom."
Jasper snorted and rolled his eyes. “Nobody can fix her,” he muttered, forking up more eggs to stuff into his mouth. He was nearly done and still kind of hungry. “That’s all part of growing up, realizing your parents are ... just people, too.” He’d been about to say ‘full of shit,’ but Jasper was very aware that Amelia had a very different experience of their father than he did -- very aware and occasionally jealous of. They were trying to be a family again, he didn’t need to go tainting her opinions on purpose. Gavin would probably do that on his own somehow.
It wasn't hard to fill in that blank where Jasper stopped himself, she might not know the exact words he wanted to use but it was obvious it wasn't anything as nice as what he ended up saying. It would have made her laugh if it wasn't their parents he was talking about because there was hurt there she was having a hard time handling. "Why is she so-" she started before realizing Jasper probably couldn't answer whatever question she might ask about their mother. Ollie hadn't outright said it but she had acted like it was Amelia's fault she'd gone missing and come back the way she was, like she'd done it just to upset her. Amelia didn't know what the hell she could do with that so she'd been avoiding her. It also didn't seem fair that she hadn't slowly learned this over the years like Jasper had, it was just a quick slap in the face, all at once. At least Jasper hadn't let her down yet - not counting that weirdness from the night before, but that was more strange than upsetting. "So guys, huh?" she said with a little smile, eager to change the subject and maybe make Jasper squirm a little at the same time. "Ever had a crush on one?"
You could fill a warehouse with all of the Issues in the Lucas family, and Olivia could definitely have a few rooms of her own. Jasper was kind of selfishly glad that Amelia abandoned her question, because he sure as fuck didn’t understand his mother. He was also perpetually pissed at her, now more than ever, because he knew she hadn’t reacted to Amelia’s coming home like she should have. He didn’t even have to know the details to know that. He cringed dramatically and groaned at the question she did ask, his cheeks going splotchy red as he rubbed his hands over his face. It was still better than talking about Olivia or their parents in general. “No, it’s not ... not exactly like that,” he muttered. Jasper couldn’t exactly tell his nine-but-not year old sister that his interest was purely sexual in very limited circumstances, and the thoughts only popped into his head once in a blue moon. He gave her a pained look. “That was an overshare, sorry. Don’t mention it to Dad though, okay?”
"I won't," Amelia replied a little sadly. She knew her family wasn't very open about these things, which was why Jasper's oversharing had surprised her so much more than it might have otherwise. She'd heard comments as a kid and it had pissed her off even then because it was such a non-issue and it was 2017 so who cared anymore, honestly! She had to grin again though because she wasn't used to seeing her brother blush in any capacity either. "No more weird drugs for you," she told him with a click of her tongue as she got up to take away his now empty plate.
Relieved that Amelia seemed to understand why he didn’t want to go around broadcasting that he’d had sexy thoughts about guys before, Jasper let out a little huff and scratched at the side of his neck. “At least not involuntary weird drugs,” he murmured. He thought maybe he could’ve handled all of that better if he’d known he’d been given something stronger than beer. He still wasn’t comfortable that he didn’t even know what it was. Clearing his throat and trying to find another topic, Jasper watched his sister’s back. It was so weird to see her with lady-hips and all; he had to wonder how many dudes at the bonfire had noticed her. “Did you talk to anybody new at the party? Besides Jules, I mean.”
Amelia made a little sound that really didn't answer his question. He was protective so she didn't really want to tell him about the guys who'd been very weird at her that night. They hadn't been awful enough to deserve Jasper's rage but they'd made her uncomfortable. Now she understood that they'd probably just been on the same drug that Jasper had been on, overly honest and a little too happy for it to be normal. "I spent most of the night with Ruby. I think she was drugged too."
Jasper didn’t read into that hum, content to assume that nobody had given Amelia any trouble. He was more than ready to stick up for his ‘cousin’ though, so the idiot males in Point Pleasant had better watch their behavior around her, as far as he was concerned. It helped that she wasn’t in school, but he would definitely be scoping out wherever she ended up working, too. At least she had Ruby to hang out with as well. Jasper gave a little huff and arched a brow. “Did she blurt out anything embarrassing too?” he asked. If she had, he was going to tease her about it, for sure.
Amelia laughed and shook her head. "I know better than to share that with you," she teased and reached over to poke him in the arm. Ruby hadn't exactly been embarrassing, she'd just been very candid. "I like her a lot, I'm glad you told her who I really am." She sat down again and rested her head on her hand, idly tapping the fingers of her other hand on the table.
He snickered and batted playfully at Amelia’s hand, then gave a little shrug. “She’s one of only like, real friends, I knew I couldn’t fake it with her,” Jasper said. “Being all tore up about you disappearing, I mean.” Ruby was also one of the only one of his friends who had talked to Amelia like she was more than just a pesky little sister. She’d deserved to know. Jasper reached out to tug on a free strand of Amelia’s hair. “You wanna ... take the dogs out for a walk or somethin’?” he suggested.
"Yeah, I was thinking about that," Amelia replied, tilting her head into the tug as if it was a lot harder than it had been, a little grin on her lips again. "Wait, are you offering to come too? You know it's cold outside, right?" She knew Jasper didn't like that, she didn't really either but for her it was a weird sort of love-hate situation, she didn't like feeling cold but when she was cold it was like a very physical reminder that she was safe.
Jasper rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’d gathered that,” he deadpanned, then grinned at her. “I have jackets and shit.” He didn’t like to hang around in the freezing cold, of course, who did? But a quick jaunt out with the dogs and his sister could be nice. Refreshing and such. And it would make it seem like he’d actually done something chore-like for the day when their dad got home. Jasper stood up and patted Amelia’s head as he started toward his room to fetch warmer layers.