Jasper Lucas (sinsoftheson) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2021-07-09 15:43:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | #june 2018, elodie, elodie x jasper, jasper |
Who: Elodie and Jasper
When: Late afternoon, Tuesday, 6/12
Where: Charlie’s house, car, Blackwater Woods
Status: complete
Despite having a bedroom of her own now in Dahlia’s apartment, Elodie was finding it difficult to settle in properly. She began to feel restless if she stayed in that place longer than a day or two and if anyone had asked her why, Elodie wouldn’t have had an answer for them beyond a shrug. Dahlia was fine to live with. Her aunt left her alone for the most part and never pressed or pushed for Elodie’s whereabouts or anything like that. It was probably why Elodie continued to go back there, beyond the fact that her things were there too, what little she had anyway.
She still found herself slipping into Charlie and Gavin’s house when she felt like it. If they were home, Charlie let her raid the cabinets for food. If they weren’t home… well, Elodie still raided the cabinets for food. Sometimes she watched television. Sometimes she went down into Jasper’s room to sleep. Which was where she was now. Her bed at Dahlia’s was fine, but Jasper’s bed smelled like him. It was nothing sexual or romantic. It was just some bizarre form of comfort given how often they slept next to each other Over There. It made her feel safe. Plus, his blankets were really nice and Elodie was huddled beneath them now, curled up on her side with her head buried beneath two pillows. The basement was cooler than the rest of the house, which she also liked. She had gotten stoned before walking to Charlie’s house so her sleep was dark and dreamless, just like she liked it.
It had been an emotional day, and Jasper was so tired of having those. At least this one had included some good emotions, even if they were mixed. He felt closer to his dad and relieved to have the semi-truth off his chest ... but at the same time he knew it burdened Gavin and probably made him sad in some way. Anything surrounding Joseph Lucas seemed to fuck them all up, it was probably best for them in the long run that he was dead. Jasper just wished it hadn’t been him who’d done it.
After their shooting and their talk, Jasper and Gavin had gone to the hardware store and gotten everything they needed to fix up the bathroom downstairs. He helped his dad unload the truck when they’d gotten home, stashing everything in a covered spot outside until it was time to use it. They’d exchanged one more sweaty hug, then Jasper headed downstairs. He needed a shower, but he really just wanted to relax in the cooler dark for a while. Maybe smoke another bowl or two to help him forget about everything.
Jasper stripped off his shirt as he reached the bottom of the basement stairs, not bothering with turning on the light. With a little groan, he moved to flop down onto the bed, expecting just to rest a minute before he reached for his pipe. Instead he landed on something hard and foreign hidden in his covers. Jasper grunted a “what the fuck” and rolled away.
The weight of another body yanked Elodie from sleep, causing her to yelp with surprise. The sound was muffled beneath the pillows and it took her a moment to surface from the cocoon she had made for herself. Squinting sleepily at the figure in bed with her, Elodie finally realized it was Jasper. Of course it was. Even in the dark, she could see he looked confused about her being there. Or just confused in general that there was a person in his bed. "Are we playing Wrestlemania now?" she mumbled before resting her head back on the pillows and tugging the blanket up to her chin. "Give me a few minutes to wake up and stuff first."
The little bark of surprise assured Jasper it was a person, and as soon as the covers started to move, he realized it was probably Elodie. There weren’t many other people who would sleep in his bed without him being there, and Amelia had her own bed upstairs. Blowing some air out through his lips, Jasper repositioned his flop, on his side next to her. “Didn’t that lady give you your own bed?” he grumbled, but there was no bite behind it. Jasper found himself weirdly glad that Elodie was there. She seemed like another logical person to Talk To about everything he’d been through, but he didn’t know if they could actually help each other. Still, it was good to be with someone who understood everything.
Jasper had never really complained about Elodie being in his room so she didn't take his comment seriously. They weren't super best of friends but she felt like she knew him well enough now to know when he was grumbling for grumbling sake and when he was actually pissed. "It feels weird sometimes," Elodie murmured. She stifled a yawn against his pillow and then looked at him with bleary eyes. "Where've you been? I figured you'd still be sleeping when I got here." There was a pain around her eye that Elodie had felt before in her life. It was the same pain that she'd felt when she had gotten a black eye. Without waiting for his answer, Elodie lifted her head a little to squint at him. "You got hit in the face, didn't you?" She thought she could see the purpling around his eye now. "Your ribs hurt too, huh?"
Nobody else might ever understand it, but Jasper liked sleeping with Elodie. Or just having her around. He didn’t miss being Over There, of course, he would be certifiable if he did. But they’d built a unique sort of bond, and there was something comforting about her presence. He’d been about to tell her that he was out with his dad most of the day when she asked about his ribs. Jasper assumed she could see his black eye even in the dark, and he did have some bruising on his torso, but she wasn’t looking at him that closely from her blanket cocoon. Maybe it was easy to assume that he’d gotten hit in multiple places, it was just so weirdly specific. But Elodie was weird in general, he supposed. “Uh ... yeah, got into a fight over the weekend. Looks pretty shitty, huh?” Jasper lifted one hand to gingerly poke at his black eye. It hurt, but he didn’t mind that so much.
"Doesn't look shitty. Guys always look cool with black eyes." Elodie yawned again and then rolled onto her side to face him, wrapping herself up in the blanket a bit more. "Me and this one guy I was fucking before the fog place used to beat each other up before sex. And like, during sex. Sex always feels better when there's pain involved. Why'd you get into a fight? For sex? Or just like, anger issues and stuff." That was also a good reason to hit people, she thought. Elodie didn't so much like this new ability the fog place poisoned her with because now it felt like her ribs were bruised and she wasn't even getting an orgasm out of it.
How was it that Elodie could be insane and kind of hot at the same time? Jasper had always enjoyed rough sex, though he couldn’t say he’d ever beaten up a partner. He could never hurt Jules like that, but Elodie ... not that he should be thinking about fucking Elodie, now or ever. Despite the bond they’d developed Over There, that probably wouldn’t be a great idea. She was still crazy, and Jules would probably never forgive him if he did. “Not for sex,” he assured her with a faint chuckle. “Anger issues, I guess. Me and Logan were out drinking at a club and some dude pissed me off. ... You’re really into that? Getting hit makes you horny?” Jasper told himself he wasn’t interested, he was just curious.
Elodie figured it was anger issues. Jasper had a lot of those. She kind of thought some of them were super suppressed too. He'd probably feel better if he hit things more often. Her hand snaked up through the blanket to emerge so she could rub her eye. She didn't mind the question since she brought it up. Elodie was aware of how fucked up people probably thought she was but to her, they were the ones missing out. "Yeah, I mean, it hurts, but it feels good too. Orgasms are like, ten times better. Haven't you ever had a girl slap you when you were fucking? And it's like... infuriating but really fucking hot too? And you just want to like, choke her, or fuck harder until you explode. Or both." Elodie dropped her hand to the blanket before she grinned lazily. "What two things seem to fascinate people the most? Violence and sex. People are just too fucking repressed to get that they go together."
Crazy as she personally was, what she was saying made sense to Jasper. No girl he’d ever been with had slapped him, but he still thought he knew what feeling Elodie was talking about. “I used to choke Jules sometimes,” he muttered. “Not like, super hard though. But I kinda wanted to. Sometimes.” He thought of how rough he wanted Logan to be with him, and decided he would take a good slap or two during sex if the mood was right. “We definitely liked it rough together. So I get what you’re saying.” Talking and thinking about sex was giving Jasper a lazy erection, but he didn’t give a shit. He’d been hard in bed with Elodie before, they’d slept together so many times. He shifted one leg a bit to camouflage it. “So are you and that dude not fucking anymore?”
Elodie wouldn't have pegged Jules to be into rough sex, given that prissy, popular persona she had always given off. But good for her, if she was some secret freak in the bedroom. No wonder Jasper had stayed with her for so long. She sort of figured out why Jasper had shifted his leg but she decided not to point it out. It wasn't like she hadn't seen or felt his erections before when they were sleeping. Boys could get hard just by sneezing, she was sure of it. "I haven't seen him since I got back," Elodie admitted, though she didn't sound put out or upset by it. Cam had been a good lay but she hadn't felt anything for him beyond that and it wasn't like he was the first dude to disappear from her life. "He probably graduated and took off. I'm sure there's a long list of guys just waiting to volunteer to slap me around a bit when they fuck me." Craving a cigarette now, Elodie wondered if it would be worth it to roll out of bed to find one. She was comfortable though, so she stayed put for the time being. "What did you like doing best with Jules? Like, besides choking her. Did she let you spank her and shit like that?"
Jasper knew there were tons of people out there who were way freakier than he and Jules were, but they’d always had a good time together, and fucking her had scratched an itch that had been left unsatisfied by the other girls he’d been with. She was into some stuff he hadn’t expected her to like, so he would have sympathized with Elodie’s surprise. “Honestly, there probably is a long list,” Jasper said with a soft huff. “Or would be, if you got out more. Girls who are into that shit are few and far between.” And Jasper tended to think there was a seed of violence in everyone, but especially guys their age. He didn’t know if letting it bloom during sex with a willing partner was any healthier than getting into bar fights, but maybe it was. Maybe he could talk Logan into being a little rougher next time. Jasper knew there would probably be a next time, despite how conflicted he felt about it sometimes. “She liked her ass slapped, sure,” he said, shrugging a bit. “But it wasn’t like ... ‘oooh, you’re such a bad girl, you’re getting a spanking’ kind of shit. Just in the heat of the moment. I think ... I dunno if I can pick a best. But I loved it when she would ride me in my car, all desperate and rushed, titties in my face. Or being on top with my hand on her throat. And she gave incredible head.” He sighed a bit wistfully.
Elodie didn't know the first thing about healthy sex. Or healthy relationships. Or anything like that. She hadn't grown up in a healthy household and it wasn't like her life had gotten any better. She had helped kill her mom, and she was probably responsible for her grandma dying. She had no idea where her dad was and her brother was... probably somewhere being happy and forgetting she existed. So it simply didn't compute in her mind that there could be better ways of dealing with things. Maybe that was why she was drawn to Jasper and this house. It wasn't as dysfunctional as her family had been because Charlie was like Mother Theresa or some shit, but Jasper was a mess. So was Amelia and their dad. She felt more comfortable surrounded by people with as many issues as she had. Elodie listened to Jasper before rolling onto her stomach and fluffing up the pillow beneath her head. "You sound like you miss her," Elodie said simply. "Or you miss her pussy, at least. Are you fucking anyone else now? Do you think she is?" It was none of her business, so of course, she was going to ask. Elodie found herself sort of fascinated by Jasper's life, mostly because he was as fucked up as she was.
Jasper had been surrounded by dysfunctional people his entire life too, so he would have related. Maybe that was how he and Elodie had bonded so well over There, they had a similar lens they saw the world through. Jasper thought she was crazy to some degree, but fuck, maybe he was too. Especially now. “I do miss her,” he murmured. “And her pussy. I wish that was the only thing, but it’s not.” Jasper wished it was as simple as calling Jules up and saying he missed her, he wished that would fix anything. But he was still a mess, he still didn’t feel good enough for her, he was still confused about what he wanted. Jasper hesitated over telling her about Logan, but after everything they’d been through together, he’d found that he wanted to be honest with Elodie. “I don’t think she is, but ... if I tell you about me, you gotta keep your mouth shut about it, okay? Promise?”
Her eyes lit up and she smiled suddenly, lifting her hand up and offering him her pinky. "Promise. Pinky swear promise which is punishable by death if broken." Elodie knew she had fucked around with his secrets in the past but things were different now. If she fucked over Jasper now, she wouldn't be able to come around anymore and eat their food, or sleep in his bed or stare at his dad when he was doing manual labor stuff in the yard. Plus they were kind of friends now and as far as Elodie figured, friends didn't tell each other's secrets. She knew about his and he knew about hers.
There was still a hesitation there, but Jasper didn’t take too long to hook his pinky finger around Elodie’s. There was a part of him that still didn’t quite trust her, but she already knew he was a murderer ... why not this too? He gave a soft sigh through his nose and met her eyes again in the dim light. “I think I might be bi,” he murmured. “That was part of why we broke up, I ... told her I wanted to fuck Logan. Not that I was like, about to do it or whatever, but that sometimes I wanted to, and ... I dunno, I wanted to figure that part of myself out, I guess. On top of everything else that’s wrong with me, I’m a fucking shit show right now, but it was a big factor for her. To want to take a break.” None of that probably made any sense, but Jasper wasn’t talking about this to many people, so it felt like he had a lot to say about it.
Elodie was surprised about the bi thing. Not so much that Jasper was bi, but that he considered it a secret. Wasn't everybody bi, sort of? Even if they weren't, liking the same sex didn't feel all that taboo anymore, or something that should be kept secret. But Elodie didn't interrupt, and instead listened as he explained his break up with Jules. "That's like... the smart thing to do, right? Take a break and let you figure shit out. That's gotta be better than her like, freaking out and crying all the time about it. Or making you never be friends with Logan again." Elodie tugged absently at her hair. "You both get to fuck whoever you want, get it out of your system and all that. Or maybe you'll like, figure out that you like fucking other people more than fucking each other and that'll be that. I bet you and Logan fucking would be super hot though. Can I watch when you do it?" she asked, her smile widening.
As weird as it was, Elodie did have a point about how things could’ve gone more wrong than they did. At least Jules hadn’t tried to forbid him from seeing his best friend ever again. Jasper wasn’t sure how he would’ve reconciled that. He thought she might be freaking out and crying a lot as it was, but he didn’t want to say so. Maybe she was fine. Maybe she was furious. Jasper hadn’t heard from her, so he didn’t know. He didn’t like the idea of Jules fucking whoever she wanted, but it wasn’t like he could say much about that. The last part made him laugh anyway, and he rolled his eyes at Elodie. “And they say guys are horndogs. We already did, you missed out,” he said. Jasper paused, then smirked a little. “It was pretty hot though. It was right after the bar fight, down in Portland. ... you really think it was right though? To like, take a break?”
Elodie's smiled slipped immediately into a pout when Jasper told her that he and Logan had already had sex. That wasn't fair at all, was it? Why didn't she get to watch two hot boys fucking? She deserved that much, at least. His question prompted her to sigh and she rested her head back on the pillow, still looking at him. "You really think I'm the person to ask that question? I don't know anything about having a boyfriend. I don't even know what taking a break means. Obviously it was right for you, though, wasn't it? You got to fuck Logan without it being cheating. Isn't that what you wanted? I mean..." Elodie tugged at her hair again, her nose wrinkling up in thought. "It sounds a little too good to be true though. Too perfect. Shit's never perfect like that."
She was right, Jasper probably shouldn’t have been looking to her for advice. Ruby had been supportive, at least Jasper knew she was sane. Elodie, not so much. But they were fucked up in similar ways, it seemed like, so maybe he was just looking for a perspective closer to his own. He listened to what she said, his brows furrowed a bit. “Dunno if I’d call it perfect,” he muttered. “It’s been like ... painful. Good sometimes, yeah. Like, illuminating, I guess. But bad at the same time, I dunno. Everything feels bad now, at least a little. Does it feel like that for you? Like you came back ... tainted, kinda?” Elodie definitely wasn’t a girl who was out skipping around in meadows under the sunshine, but he wasn’t sure if she felt same-shitty or different-shitty. It felt like an important distinction to make. Everyone kept telling him to talk to people who might understand, and he knew if anybody would, it would be Elodie.
"Yeah, of course." Elodie shrugged her shoulder. "I mean, we were in that place for a long time. I don't know who could come back not tainted in some way. Like... I was getting a ride home from Jules's party from this guy and after talking to him for a few minutes I knew he'd been shot. Twice. And that he had scars on his back from something with long nails, or a knife or something. I didn't see any of them either. I just knew. Just like I knew you had bruised ribs. When your dad was outside the other day working on the porch, my arm hurt really bad... he fucked up his arm at some point in his life, right? I feel it, then I know." Elodie arched a dark brow. "That's tainted, isn't it? I feel shitty and fucked up all the time, but that's nothing new. Now I have more shittiness, thanks to that place. Do you feel like an alien here now? Like you don’t really belong anymore? That’s how I feel.”
The more he listened, the closer Jasper’s brows got to one another. She could’ve just been bullshitting, but he wasn’t sure why she would about something like that. Plus, he didn’t think anybody in the house would’ve told Elodie about his dad’s arm. It reminded him for some reason of how he’d been able to find their way back to the hotel in Portland while being drunk off of his ass and freshly punched. It hadn’t even been a struggle, he’d just known where it was. Just like how he knew he could find anybody he wanted to at that very moment, if he thought about it hard enough. Especially the people who’d been Over There with them. Jasper’s heart picked up some speed. “That’s exactly how I feel,” he murmured. “Like an alien. So wait, you’re saying you feel other people’s pain? Even for like, old stuff? My dad fucked up his arm when I was a kid, it’s been years. ‘Cause I think ... I think I can do something too, that I couldn’t before.”
Elodie nodded. "It only lasts for a second. The pain, I mean. Like, I think Charlie broke her ankle at one point in her life, but I haven't asked her about it because I don't want her to freak out and make me leave. Your injuries are, like, fresher. And I think I can only do it with people I've been around for more than a minute or two. Why couldn't I become invisible or something? Although, maybe the universe knew I liked pain so it decided to give me more of it." Elodie eyed him closely, a spark of excitement coursing through her that he might be different now too. It was always easier to deal with the bullshit when someone else was right there with her. "What is it that you think you can do?"
Jasper wondered if he could somehow find out whether Charlie had ever broken her ankle or not, but maybe it didn’t really matter. Elodie had been right about Gavin’s arm and Jasper’s ribs, even if he’d written her comment off at first. It was weird to know that she’d felt it, not seen it or assumed. “I mean, it’s probably good that it’s limited, ‘cause just walking around a grocery store feeling everybody’s old injuries? Would fucking suck,” he murmured. Jasper wet his lips, unsure how to phrase his thoughts for a second. “Uh ... and I mean, I don’t know this for sure yet, but ... I think I can find things. And people. Like me and Logan were really wasted in Portland and I got us back to the hotel no problem, even found our room without looking at the numbers. And if I think about it hard enough ... I know where people are. Like my dad’s upstairs in the bathroom right now, Logan’s at home, my uncles are at the bar ... I dunno how I know, I just feel like I do.”
"So, you're like... a human GPS?" Elodie grinned. "That's freakin' cool. You'll never get lost again. We should try it! Like, pick someone and think really hard about where they are. Then we'll text them and see if you're right. No cheating, 'cause I wanna see this in action." Was it anyone? She wondered. Or only people he knew? If she showed him a picture of someone, could he find them? Elodie's eyes widened. "Oh damn, you know, if you can find like anyone, you could totally become a cop or some private eye or whatever and find missing people. You'd make so much money." She paused. "Or end up in jail 'cause they'd think the only way you'd know is if you had something to do with it."
“Probably that second one,” Jasper said with a wry smile. “Do cops even ever make tons of money?” He didn’t think so, and it was weirdly scary to think about his future at all, so he tried to push that away. He had no idea if he was a human GPS or if this was just a fluke or if it would fade away in a few months or what. He didn’t even really know how it worked, so maybe an experiment was in order. “You pick someone, just so you know I’m not cheating,” he offered to Elodie. Then, a second later, “Not Jules.” It would be just like Elodie to fuck with him like that, and honestly Jasper didn’t want to know where Jules currently was. He was too scared that she might be with Ethan, which was a fucked up worry that probably made him a pussy, but oh well.
"Fine. Not Jules. Though... it must be kind of nice to know where she is all the time if you wanted to. It's like stalking but not creepy stalking." Elodie twitched her lips to the side thoughtfully. "Okay. Charlie wasn't home when I got here and she gave me her number when my aunt came to town. Where is she now? Like, specifically. I'll text her and ask." Elodie was already reaching over to the side of the bed to find where she tossed her phone before falling asleep earlier. Charlie didn't seem like the kind of person that Jasper was super close with. At least not so close that they told each other where they were going and stuff like that.
Determined not to think about mentally stalking Jules -- because once he started that shit, how would he ever stop? -- Jasper focused on the task at hand. He closed his eyes and thought of Charlie, picturing her in his mind, her voice and her smile. If he was being objective, he understood why his dad was so into her. It was just difficult for him to be objective. As he pictured Charlie, something started to tug in his brain, and he got a hazy vision of a homey kitchen in a nice little house. He felt like he wanted to get up and walk there. The answer in words came to him in a flash. “She’s at her mom’s, on Redwood Drive,” he said, opening his eyes to look at Elodie again. They’d adjusted to the dark and the light from her phone made him squint.
"Oh man." Elodie's grin widened as she got comfortable again with her phone in hand and quickly texted Charlie, ignoring a couple of typos she made in her excitement. If Charlie wrote back that she was at the store or something, Elodie was going to be seriously bummed out. "This would be super cool. You can track down anyone. That's so much better than like, knowing about someone's stab wound. Although it would be fucking funny to freak people out with it." Like the guy who drove her home from Jules's. Her phone pinged and Elodie read Charlie's text out loud. "Having lunch at my mom's house." Charlie also asked if everything was okay but Elodie ignored that part and quickly texted back, that's cool. where does your mom live? Sometimes Elodie texted Charlie random things so she probably wasn't too weirded out by this. Charlie's response came back a few seconds later. Redwood Drive. :) "Oh my god, Jasper. You're a human GPS!"
“I dunno about anyone,” Jasper murmured while Elodie texted Charlie. He had to admit he was kind of eager to find out the answer too. Elodie’s reaction to the second text buzz made him smile, even as his stomach clenched weirdly. He’d had no idea that Charlie would be at her mom’s today, so he guessed that was a pretty big confirmation that he really did have this strange ability. A human GPS. Would it be cool, or did it make him even more of a freak of nature than he already was? At least if he was, so was Elodie. It helped to have some solidarity. “Well hell,” he muttered, still grinning faintly. “I guess I am.” He paused as a morbid desire flooded through him. Joseph was still close to the surface of his mind, mostly because of his talk with Gavin, and the shitty old man’s face drifted forward in his mind’s eye. Jasper felt that brain tug again, and his stomach gave a cold clench as he realized that he knew where Caden and Aaron had buried Joseph. “... will you take a drive with me?” he asked Elodie before he could overthink it. “I think I need to go somewhere.”
Elodie sent a simple smiley face emoji to Charlie before setting her phone back down on the bed. It was definitely cool to know she hadn't been the only one who changed Over There. What about the others? Elodie wanted to track them all down and ask. Maybe she would! That would give her something to do. Purpose. It would be like a job. One that didn't pay anything. Jasper's question drew her attention away from her own thoughts and she raised a brow before shrugging. "Yeah, okay. Now?" It didn't occur to her to ask where he needed to go, or why. But going anywhere sounded really good to her at the moment.
Jasper hesitated for a second, then nodded. “Yeah, now,” he murmured. He wanted to see if he was right, before he lost the urge, before that insistent pulling in his mind faded away. Jasper didn’t even know if it would fade, but he also didn’t know if he would be able to call it up again if he wanted to later on. This was all experimenting. And maybe trying to get some selfish closure. Jasper pushed himself up and got off the bed, moving to his dresser to find a fresh t-shirt to pull on. At least his boner had gone away, thinking about his dead grandfather was good for that. “It’s not just us, you know,” he said over his shoulder as he fished out some clothes. “You remember Greer? The lady hippie with the really long hair? I saw her again when I was out with Logan. I hadn’t like ... found out what I could do yet, but she can do something new too, she told me about it.” Maybe he was an idiot for not piecing it all together before today, but Jasper had had a lot on his mind lately.
Now worked for Elodie. She groaned as she pushed Jasper's blankets off her body and rolled over to sit up and shove her feet into her shoes. It took her a moment to remember the woman Jasper was describing. The lady in the long skirt who hung around with the one guy. Not terribly descriptive, sure, but she remembered who they were even if she didn't really remember their names. Elodie's brows shot up when Jasper revealed that Greer was like them too. That was exciting, wasn't it? "What can she do? Because if she's like us then I bet the others are like us too."
He was in the same boat with remembering names -- he could recall lots of dirty faces, the vibes their fellow exiles had given off, but not many names. Jasper felt like he could even track all of them down if he wanted to, he just wouldn’t know what to call them. But Greer had remembered him, had wanted to connect with him ... he hadn’t reached out to her yet, but maybe Elodie would push him into it. Jasper pulled a shirt on and plunked down on the edge of the bed to get his socks and shoes on. “She uh ... said she was getting visions of people’s deaths,” he said, cringing a bit as he told Elodie. That definitely seemed shittier than what either of them had going on. “Not everybody, just random ones. She wanted us to like, talk and kumbaya together or something, I dunno.”
"Holy shit," she exclaimed, her eyes widening. "That's fucking cool as fuck. Why couldn't I do that?" Seeing someone's death. Wow. It was so morbidly cool and probably totally wasted on someone like Greer. It probably bothered her more than intrigued her. Elodie would much rather have visions than feel someone's stab wound. Elodie blew a loud raspberry between her lips before grabbing her phone to shove into her back pocket. "What the fuck does kumbaya mean? Is that like, therapy speak? She seems like the type to like, give us a feeling stick to speak our truths. Do you have any cigarettes?"
“Yeah, it is like that, just like, peace love and harmony shit,” Jasper said with a faint snicker. He pulled his pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket as he stood up, dressed and ready now. “Here, you freak,” he said, offering the pack to Elodie. He wasn’t too surprised that Elodie thought that Greer’s power was cool. Jasper sure as hell wouldn’t want it, but he couldn’t judge her too hard for it. “Come on.” He turned to lead the way up the basement stairs and out to his car. There was a nervous discomfort in the pit of his stomach, but the sense that he should go where he wanted to go was even stronger.
Peace love and harmony was all really boring, if you asked her. She wanted discord and lust and violence! Well, maybe not all the time. But she doubted there was any way a group of them, all with some weird ass ability, could be harmonious together. Elodie grinned and took the pack of cigarettes from him, immediately slipping one out to put between her lips. She didn't mind being called a freak. She probably was one, but Jasper was one too, so they were both freaks together. It was nice, honestly. "Off on an adventure," she said, mumbling around the cigarette. "Are you going to tell me where we're going? Or is it a surprise?"
“We’re gonna go see my grandfather,” Jasper muttered as they reached the top of the steps. He didn’t say anything else as the two of them walked through the house and out the door. He was kind of glad that his dad was occupied and everyone else was gone, he didn’t want any questions from outsiders on where they were going. In the car, Jasper started the engine, rolled his window down, and backed out of the driveway. He tried not to overthink about where they were going and why, just letting this new instinct guide him as he drove them out of Charlie’s neighborhood. They were going to the woods, he knew that much, even if the exact location was a little fuzzy at the moment. Jasper had a feeling the pull would get stronger the closer he got. It was like having a magnet in his head that another magnet was pulling on. Not quite the same feeling as when he located Charlie ... but Charlie was alive and Joseph was not. Maybe that made a difference.
She knew his grandpa was dead, since he was the one who told her that he killed the guy. Elodie supposed he had another grandpa but she doubted it and she didn't ask during the drive. Instead, she smoked her cigarette and then lit up another as they got closer to Blackwater. "So you're tracking down his body?" Elodie asked finally, realizing that she couldn't remember if the old man had been buried in the cemetery or not. Probably not since no one was supposed to know Jasper killed him, right? "Are we going to see a dead body?"
Jasper had barely noticed the silence, focused on driving and following that pull in his gut. Elodie’s question brought him out of the zone a little and he blinked rapidly for a second. “Uh ... I don’t think so,” he muttered, his eyes still roaming the landscape as it went by through the windows. “Pretty sure they buried him.” Jasper didn’t quite know why, but he wanted to see the spot. He wanted to stand there and fully accept it for himself. A moment or two later, as the trees of Blackwater surrounded them, the direction of the pull changed abruptly and Jasper hit the brakes hard. He pulled the car over to the shoulder. “Think we gotta walk from here,” he said, reaching for the door handle.
A buried body wasn't as fun, but Elodie was already along for the ride, so she wouldn't complain about it. Squinting up at the woods, she wondered just how far they would have to walk. Jasper was already climbing out of the car before she could ask, so Elodie followed, thankful that her shoes weren’t totally falling apart yet. "So you can track down where buried bodies are too?" She exhaled some smoke into the air, more than happy to have Jasper go into the woods first. That way any monsters lurking in the trees would eat him first.
He was completely unmindful of monsters as he strode confidently into the treeline. Jasper felt like there wasn’t anything in these woods that could scare him as much as he’d already been scared. It was kind of liberating, really, facing down some of the worst things you could think of day after day. Life here was easy in comparison, in spite of his own personal drama. “I dunno,” Jasper answered absently. “Maybe I gotta know them, or ... or see a picture or something. I’m still figuring this shit out.” Joseph’s body though ... Jasper knew right where that was. It wouldn’t take them long to get there, Caden and Aaron hadn’t carried him too far into the trees.
"It's all about experimentation," Elodie mused, trying to be mindful of where she was walking. She wondered how many dead bodies were buried in these woods. Stepping over a fallen branch, she brought her cigarette back to her lips and glanced at Jasper. "What's it feel like?" she asked. "Knowing where to go and all that stuff? Is it like... you just get a place in your head? Or is it like... a magnet feeling where you're pulled there automatically?"
Jasper’s whole life was all about experimentation lately, wasn’t it? He huffed a soft snicker, too focused to even want a cigarette for himself. Now that they were close, it was like following a homing beacon, even if it wasn’t something he could hear or see. He squinted and glanced briefly at Elodie. “Kinda both? Mostly like I’m being pulled, but my brain just spit out the name of Charlie’s mom’s street too, so ... it’s not really a picture though. Just a sense of where to go. Like ... a dog finding its way home, or something, I guess? But yeah, it’s mostly a pull.” He paused, then glanced at her again. “Do you still feel my black eye? Or does that fade away after a while?”
Elodie snorted with amusement. "You just compared yourself to a dog." It was still pretty cool that everything he was experiencing seemed to be instinctual. That had to be a lot better than having to deal with visuals popping into his brain constantly. Why couldn't she find dead bodies? That was so much cooler than feeling someone else's pain. "It fades," she explained, tapping her fingertip against her eye. "Which is good, 'cause I don't want to walk around all day feeling beaten up unless it's sex beatings. And I like, know where it hurts and stuff, which would be super cool if I wanted to be a doctor or whatever, but no thanks." Elodie squinted up at the sky through the trees. "Why'd you wanna see where your grandpa is buried?"
He loved dogs and there were always a bunch of them around these days, so Jasper shrugged that first part off. Sometimes he wished he was a dog. Max and Rude had it made, and Jasper would kill for a life that simple. He snickered faintly at the idea of Elodie becoming a doctor, shaking his head a bit. Yeah, he wasn’t sure exactly how she would use her new ability either. “Maybe you need to like ... get into boxing or MMA fighting. Then you can feel their weak points and pummel ‘em there. But I dunno, you might get too horny in the ring and start humping people or something.” Jasper tossed her a teasing grin, then added an amused, “‘Sex beatings,’ Jesus Christ.” He was avoiding the question and he knew it, but Jasper didn’t really have an answer. It was just something he wanted to do. Maybe he would know when they got there, which would be ... “Just a few more yards this way,” he murmured, veering them off the path suddenly as the direction of the pull changed.
The thought of her in an MMA fighting ring and started to try and fuck her opponents made her laugh. "That sounds amazing, actually. Maybe I'll start an underground Point Pleasant fight and fuck club." Elodie finished off her cigarette and dropped it to the ground, snuffing it out with her foot just to make sure she didn't start any crazy forest fires. Licking her lips, Elodie followed Jasper in the new direction, vaguely aware that he hadn't told her why he wanted to see where his grandpa was buried. Maybe it was just morbid curiosity. She could understand that. "We should've brought flowers or something," she said absently. "I wonder if they have any of those flower weeds around here. You know, those purple-y ones? Are those weeds?" Elodie didn't know and she doubted Jasper knew either. But she started peering around on the ground they were walking on anyway, just to look.
There were worse activities in Point Pleasant to get into besides fucking and fighting, so maybe Elodie was onto something there. He’d been smiling faintly as he pictured it, but then Elodie mentioned flowers and he frowned. “No,” he said sharply, shooting her a look. “Don’t give that motherfucker any flowers. He doesn’t even deserve weeds.” Jasper sped up his pace, the answer coming to him of what he wanted to do at Joseph’s grave. It only took a few minutes more before they came upon the spot. The pull in Jasper’s head seemed to go tight for a second, putting a high pitched ring in his ears. He looked down at the ground in front of his feet, and while the makeshift grave had had time to settle, he still thought he could see where it was, a rectangle that wasn’t totally grown over yet.
He stood there, that whine in his skull and nothing else for a moment, staring down at the ground. Had they wrapped Joseph up in something? How rotted would he be? Had the bugs gotten to him yet? It had been months. Something about seeing that block of earth made it more real to Jasper. Here was what was left of his grandfather, in an unmarked grave in the woods, where nobody would ever come and talk to him, remember him, mourn him. Had Caden and Aaron mourned as they covered him up? Jasper didn’t want to think about that part. Maybe they couldn’t even find this spot again, but he could. He would always be able to find it now, but he’d be damned if he came back here to mourn. Wordlessly, unmindful of Elodie’s presence, he pushed the front of his pants down and pulled his dick out to piss on the grave.
No flowers. No weeds. That was fair. And now she didn't have to look around for something pretty to put on the grave. She did spot a little yellow flower growing up between the roots of a tree and she reached down to pluck it off its stem, shoving it unceremoniously into her hair above her ear. She had to jog a bit to catch up with Jasper, but when she did, he had stopped. Her gaze followed his to the ground and she tried to make out where the earth had been disturbed. It had been months, though she could sort of make it out. And Jasper seemed to know this was the place. There was a dead body under there. Just how far? Elodie said nothing, but glanced at Jasper's face every few moments. He seemed deep in thought. Then he was whipping out his dick and... Elodie's brows shot up and her lips parted in surprise before a grin took over her face. "No flowers. Just piss," she said, saluting the grave before flipping it off.
He’d vaguely needed to pee when they’d left the house, so it was a good hard stream, which was also what Joseph deserved. Jasper hoped it soaked down into the earth and actually got on him. Sure, Jasper had been wracked with guilt over what he’d done, but that didn’t change anything about the kind of person Joseph had been, or the damage he’d caused to the whole Lucas family. Plus countless strangers, probably. Jasper mentally dedicated the piss to his dad. He shook off when he was done and tucked himself away again, finally looking over at Elodie. “I didn’t wanna be the one to do it, but I’m glad he’s fuckin’ dead,” he told her. She probably knew that already, but it felt good to say it. “I told my dad finally. That he was dead and it was me. Only I said it happened over there, right when we first got portaled. I wanted to keep my uncles out of it, you know? They’re the ones who buried him. Dad said it should’ve been him, but ...” Jasper shook his head. “Joseph fucked him up enough, he didn’t need that too. I just want to stop feeling guilty for it.”
It was a shame when Jasper put his dick away but Elodie's disappointment dissipated when he began to talk. It wasn't all that surprising to hear he told his dad what happened but Elodie was glad he'd told her about how he changed the details. Just in case it was ever brought up. "It was a family affair," Elodie murmured absently, looking back down at the grave. And then she frowned, finally remembering her mom was dead. Elodie hadn't been the one who strangled her, but... she had encouraged it. Laughed about it too. And her mom's body was somewhere... she couldn't even remember where Cam had dumped her after it was over. Tamara Hunt hadn't been an abusive asshole like Joseph, but she had been a shitty mom. Elodie tried to feel remorse but there was nothing there but a black hole devoid of all feeling. At least for now. "Maybe... you feel guilty for killing him 'cause you feel like... you took that from your dad? Like, that would've been his like... closure. Or something. But it sounds like you did everyone in your family a favor. They'll all be happier without him around."
Jasper didn’t expect to come out here and bare part of his soul to Elodie. Hell, he hadn’t really expected to come out here at all. But if there was any time to speak openly about how he truly felt, maybe it was in the middle of the woods with nobody around for miles, to the only person he felt truly understood him now. They’d both come from fucked up families, they were both trash fires of human beings, and they’d both suffered through the same bizarre shit. Jasper didn’t even know if they were true friends, but they were definitely something. What she said made sense to him, and he nodded a bit as he looked down at the ground. Soon enough everyone in existence would forget that Joseph Lucas was buried here, and he would cease to exist too, doing the best thing he’d ever done -- nourishing the soil. That was it. Jasper wanted to leave him to it and move on. “Yeah, I think they will be,” he murmured. “And he woulda killed me first if I hadn’t won. I just wish nobody had to see it.”
Elodie often had difficulty categorizing the people in her life, so she rarely did it. She knew who she liked and who she didn't and that was good enough for her. It did feel like Jasper understood her headspace a little better now since they had both gone through the same thing. It helped that he felt as fucked up as she did. Elodie knew he wouldn't bullshit her, which was probably part of the reason why she had glomped onto him and his family for the moment. "Yeah, but... maybe it was better that they did see it, 'cause if other people would've found him, there would've been police involved and all that. It's better that there wasn't." If his uncles were anything like his dad, Elodie was pretty sure they handled it okay. Or were just repressing shit the way that family seemed to do. Elodie crossed her arms against her breasts, toeing at the ground with her sneaker. "Do you feel any better?"
Again, surprisingly, Elodie had a point. Jasper had no idea what would have happened if the cops had gotten involved in Joseph’s death. And he was glad that his grandmother hadn’t ended up being the one to find her husband’s mangled corpse, as she slowly recovered from the energy-drain coma she’d been in. So maybe it turned out as well as it could have. What if Jasper hadn’t gone with Caden that day and Joseph had ended up beating him to death? He would trade his grandfather for his uncle any day. Jasper thought about the question for a moment before he smiled faintly. “I kinda do, yeah,” he answered. Moving in closer to Elodie, Jasper slung an arm around her and pulled her into a half-hug, planting a smooch against her head. “You’re good company for pissing on graves,” he murmured with a little huff.
The hug was a little jarring but Elodie smiled at his praise. "I'm good company for a lot of stuff." She poked his side and then squinted up through the trees again. "But we shouldn't stay here super long. There're things in the woods, you know?" And she didn't want to be eaten alive. Or watch Jasper be eaten alive. Elodie was already imagining Joseph Lucas starting to dig through the ground to the surface so he could bash Jasper's head in. Point Pleasant didn't need zombies on top of everything else. Although zombies would be kind of cool. "Do you have to pee anymore or should we go?"
Jasper knew there were things out there that wanted to kill them, but he didn’t really feel afraid of them anymore. Considering what they’d endured, thinking of some black eyed child monster knocking on his window didn’t scare him. He felt ready to drop kick any demon that tried to fuck with him now. But that was probably stupid bravado that would get him killed, so Elodie had a point. “Nah, let’s go,” he said. Jasper spared one more glance at the mildly-disturbed earth, then turned to lead the way back to his car. One good thing about this weird ability he’d picked up -- he didn’t feel lost or turned-around in the slightest out there amongst the trees. He knew exactly which way to walk. That could come in handy someday, he supposed.
Elodie slipped her arm through his to keep hold of him as they walked away from Joseph's grave. "I bet the smell of your pee will attract other animals and they'll all come to pee over your pee, like marking their territory? So he's gonna get extra piss on him over the next couple of days. How awesome is that?" To Elodie, that was definitely something that would cheer Jasper up for sure. She didn't always say the right thing, but sometimes she did. "You wanna go back to your room and get super high?"
It was the perfect thing to say, and it made Jasper laugh out loud. He hadn’t been laughing much lately, and it felt good to do, even in the middle of nowhere with a girl on his arm who had tried to fuck with his relationship before. All of that felt like it was in the distant past now. He and Elodie were different, both separately and together. “Fuck yeah I do,” he told her, looking over at her with a grin. It hadn’t exactly been a good day, not much was good anymore, but it had its moments. Going back to the cool dark of the basement to lounge around and get stoned out of their minds sounded like a perfect way to cap it off.