Who: Amelia and Jasper When: midday, Tuesday, June 19th Where: home
Jasper woke up late and feeling kind of crappy and hungover. He’d gotten home from Logan’s late the night before, probably way too high and drunk to drive, but he had made it, like he always did. His best friend had been on a binge the day before, and while Jasper had tried to keep some moderation since he had to start working soon, it was hard not to join in and fully enjoy himself. Especially when the sex started.
He desperately needed a shower, so that was the first thing he did when he trudged upstairs. Jasper couldn’t wait for Gavin to finish the shower stall down in his basement, because climbing the steps really sucked when he just wanted to be soaking in hot water. He took his time getting clean, and felt marginally better when he got out. Jasper pulled on fresh clothes and shuffled his way to the kitchen. He needed food and caffeine, then he might feel slightly human again.
Amelia wasn't expecting anyone to be home - or awake - so she swung by from work to let the dogs out and have a snack. Lunch had been weirdly busy with people calling in to report weird things from the day before so she was late for that, tutting soft apologies to the three dogs as they crowded her in the entryway. "Yard," she told them after cuddling them a little, herding them to the back of the house to get them where they wanted to be. She heard Jasper before she saw him and for a split second she was startled by his presence, some old paranoia making itself known. She didn't let it show, smiling at him as soon as she saw him. "Hey," she said cheerfully. "Are you waking up or going to sleep?" It was hard to tell these days but she couldn't blame him, everyone in the house seemed to be trying their best to make things easier for him and she was no exception.
The dogs were a dead giveaway that someone had come home, and Jasper wasn’t too surprised to hear his sister’s voice floating through the house while he poured cereal into a bowl. He realized that he had no idea if anybody else was even home, but it didn’t seem to matter. They all came and went as they pleased, including him. He looked over as Amelia came into the kitchen and his lips quirked up in a small smile. “Hey,” he greeted. “Waking up.” He let her get on with letting all the animals out the back, then lifted the milk jug in his hand up in offering. “You want some cereal?” It was probably lunch time, Jasper hadn’t paid much attention to the clocks he’d passed yet.
She'd been worried he was about to trot off to go to sleep, not that it really mattered since she'd be leaving again soon, but for his sake it was better to turn his hours around - he had a new job to start. She'd been planning on grilling a sandwich for herself but cereal sounded nice and simple so she nodded and grabbed a bowl and a spoon before joining him at the table. "Nervous about tomorrow?" she asked, reaching over to gently rub at his head. It had become almost like tradition after he shaved his hair off, rubbing his head for good luck or something, also it just felt nice, all that short hair tickling her fingers.
Jasper splashed milk over his flakes, then set the jug down within Amelia’s reach. The head rub made him smile crookedly, like it always did. Sometimes he really missed his hair, but he really liked how much everyone touched his head these days. “A little, I guess,” he admitted as he scooped up a spoonful of breakfast. “Like I’ll get there and forget everything I’ve ever known or some shit.” Jasper chuckled faintly and crunched his cereal. He wasn’t too concerned about starting the new job, but he did want to try not to fuck it up, at the same time. “How’s it going at the station?” he asked once his mouth was clear again.
"It's usually really nice," Amelia replied as she poured milk over her own cereal. "Yesterday was crazy though, so busy. They had to bring in more people and even then I was alone at the station for a little bit which was kind of creepy. It's like people just went nuts, speeding and drinking and acting like it was a Friday night." There had been theories flying around that this was a town thing, one lady that came in kept saying something about star alignments but Amelia knew the town thing was likelier. "Did you get in any trouble?" she asked, cocking a brow at her brother. "At least you didn't get arrested."
Huh, that was interesting. Jasper thought of how much Logan just wanted to drink and smoke and get fucked up and fool around, like he was insatiable. That kind of attitude wasn’t too far out of the ordinary for them when they were partying together, it had just seemed like a random day to do it, he supposed. Jasper hadn’t felt desperate to indulge anything himself, just the normal amount, so maybe he’d gotten lucky. Amelia’s question made him feel a tiny bit awkward and he laughed a little and shrugged one shoulder. “Not in any real trouble, no ... yeah, glad I didn’t. Were you feeling okay? Like no burning desire to live fast, die young?” he asked, smirking at her a bit.
"I did have an intense urge to strangle the guy who keeps coming in to report mundane and stupid crap," Amelia said thoughtfully. "But not to that degree, no." She paused, then smirked. "Don't tell my boss that, I don't think he'd appreciate his assistant fantasizing about murder." She was pretty sure even Grady fantasized about that sometimes when people were obnoxious and this particular idiot was grating on everyone's nerves.
Jasper chuckled. “You know he does it too,” he said. Didn’t everyone want to kill someone else, at some point? Hopefully not in any serious way, but to some extent. “But your secret’s safe with me.” Speaking of secrets ... there was a lot he wasn’t telling Amelia, and it weighed on Jasper suddenly. Everybody kept suggesting that he talk to her, even though their otherworldly experiences had been very different, and apparently that Never Speak Of This dam inside of him had broken now. Or it was cracking, at least. “So hey, uh ... can I talk to you about something? And you won’t say anything to Dad?”
Amelia's brows furrowed in wary curiosity. She already kept a lot of secrets, she just hoped this wasn't a bad one. "I don't exactly have a shitload of heart to heart conversations with dad," she murmured with a faint smile. "So I won't tell him anything you don't want him to know." She didn't tell her family a whole lot in the first place, whatever memories surfaced of her experiences stayed unspoken or only talked about with her therapist. It was mostly that feeling that everyone was already dealing with too much and she didn't want to pile on, especially when it was all in the past for her.
The bitch of it was, Jasper wasn’t even sure where to start. It felt like he was keeping so much under wraps these days ... did he tell his sister that he was bisexual? Or that he was still having panic attacks and feeling like an alien? Or that he was apparently a human GPS now? He nodded a little in appreciation as he poked at the cereal with his spoon. “There’s kind of a lot, actually,” he murmured and huffed a humorless laugh. Jasper took a drink of orange juice. “Since you came back, did you ever ... feel like you didn’t belong anymore? Not like ... yeah, you pretty much grew up there, of course everything is unfamiliar, but more like ... you maybe don’t even belong with the human race anymore?”
For a second, Amelia went cold because the words were too accurate and she had to remind herself he was going through the same thing and not interrogating her. "All the time," she replied after a momentary pause. She'd missed so much growing up, her life experience mostly from a variety of books she'd found along the way, not all of them great. "My therapist says a lot of people feel like that, even if they didn't grow up in another dimension." She smiled faintly, grateful she could say shit like that to Jasper without feeling like she sounded insane. "I often wonder if I came back to the right place," she admitted quietly. "Don't tell dad."
It was both reassuring and sad to hear that Amelia felt the same way. She’d spent so much time over there, she probably felt it even worse than Jasper did. He felt vaguely guilty that it took him going through something similar for him to ask her these questions, and Jasper suddenly didn’t want to talk about any of his bullshit. He knew he needed to, but ... fuck. “All of this is just between us,” Jasper murmured, reaching out to give Amelia’s arm a gentle squeeze. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. It really fucking sucks to doubt yourself like that.” Hell, Jasper couldn’t even say for sure that Amelia had come back to the right place. There were apparently tons of dimensions and worlds out there that they had no fucking idea about, what if this was some other version of his sister? It was enough to make anybody feel crazy.
Amelia's paranoia about it all had only been made worse by having a mother who didn't believe she was who she was. Ollie had flat out rejected her and refused to talk to her which was a whole other set of issues Amelia had been working through. "It really does," she replied with a wry smile and rubbed Jasper's hand gently. "Dimension hopping is weird, if that's even what it is. You're feeling it too, huh?" She didn't think that was what he was trying to tell her, it didn't seem like the sort of thing he needed to worry about her telling Gavin so she gave him a curious look. "What's going on?"
Whatever it was, all of it was weird, so much so that it was hard to know where to start talking about it all. “I dunno, I just ... feel like I’m losing it a lot of the time,” Jasper mumbled, still feeling guilty for having problems when Amelia surely had more of them. He knew that she wanted him to talk to her, though, and he’d already started. He wet his lips and met her eyes again. “I don’t wanna dump on you if you feel like ... I dunno, not being dumped on. I know I haven’t been like, very there for you, and ... you know. I’m sorry.” Not that he had any idea of how he could’ve helped her before going through his own version of hell. Sometimes Jasper missed being an idiot teenage boy. Life was a lot simpler.
"You accepted me right away," Amelia reminded him. "I was terrified of coming home and you made it easy. Don't sell yourself short." She knew what he meant, of course, but she hadn't exactly let people too close - even him. There was so much to deal with and she hadn't wanted to share the burden, but now he was carrying one that was all too similar and that made it easier to talk to him about it. "Please dump on me, if you stop talking now I'll be so frustrated," she murmured before munching on some more cereal, giving him an expectant look.
That was true, Jasper had never doubted that Amelia was his sister. Maybe he’d been wrong about that, and this was some other version of Amelia, but if he started wondering about that, he would fall down some rabbit hole, so he tried not to think about it. She wanted to hear about what was going on with him, and there was so much. “I mean, besides the panic attacks and like ... me wondering if I’m even home or just having some long-ass hallucination ... you know how me and Jules broke up? Well it was for a couple different reasons, but ... I think I’m bisexual. I mean like, I pretty much know it now, yeah, but on top of everything else, am I like, just having a crisis? Or is this like a permanent thing? I felt it before everything, but then it was like strong, because what if I died and never got to know for sure, you know?” He was rambling now, and Jasper made himself stop, heaving a sigh. “It seems stupid and small compared to everything else, but ... yeah. I dunno.”
Amelia had been pretty 'woke' about sexuality from an early age, mainly thanks to the media and her friend's cool older sister. And yet she never could have imagined her brother saying those words to her. It was about as outlandish as her dad coming out as anything but straight or asexual and she'd never thought of anyone in her family as anything but straight. Her eyes widened a bit at the admission and as Jasper kept talking she tried to keep up. "It's not small or stupid," she started by saying. "But it's so not something you have to figure out right now, it's not set in stone. You can be bisexual now and whatever else later." She put her spoon down and got off her chair to move closer to him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders for a little hug. "It's not stupid and small."
The validation wasn’t exactly unexpected -- Jasper had known in his gut that Amelia wouldn’t judge him for not being straight -- but the way it suddenly made him feel certainly was. His throat was suddenly tight as Amelia put her arms around him, and Jasper lifted both hands to gently grip her forearm. Working out his sexuality didn’t honestly feel stupid and small to him, but he kept thinking over and over that it was and he should push it aside and worry about more important shit. He just couldn’t. His foundation of knowing himself had been shaken in so many different ways, figuring out who he liked to fuck and how was one of the only things he could wrap his head around and explore on purpose. Everything else felt so far out of his control. Jasper swallowed thickly and closed his eyes, leaning into his sister a bit. “I do, though,” he murmured, a tiny waver in his voice. “Jules said I have to know what I want, or she won’t take me back.”
Amelia swallowed down the first things she thought to say about that. She liked Jules just fine and she didn't want to be a bitch in case Jasper got back together with her, but what he was saying pissed her off. "She can't really demand that of you," she said with a frown she was glad he wasn't seeing. She'd meant for the hug to be brief, just a small show of support and solidarity, but it felt like he needed it, so she didn't let go. "You can't rush stuff like that. It's stupid." She couldn't really give him any advice, she had a hard time imagining falling in love with someone, letting someone close like that and she obviously had no experience with romantic affairs. She barely had experience with friendships beyond her childhood and what she'd read, what could she have to offer in the way of advice.
Maybe Amelia had a point, but Jasper knew that Jules wouldn’t wait around for forever while he figured his shit out. He couldn’t ask her to, either. Eventually she would move on and go marry Ethan or whatever, and he would lose her for good. Jasper was on a time limit if he wanted to be with her again -- and he did. None of it was very fair, it was just a sucky situation all around ... and that was his fault. Thinking about it all with Amelia hugging him made him want to cry, but fuck, hadn’t he been doing that already? Jasper sniffled and squeezed her arms, then let her go. “There’s other stuff too, like ... she’s the one who sent me away, and I don’t ... I don’t know how to process that. And stuff is happening to me -- to us, all of us -- like something’s changed, and we’re all finding we can do stuff nobody should be able to do, I’ve talked to some of the others and shit’s getting real weird, and I’m so fucking scared, Ames, what if it’s not over, what if we have to go back --” Jasper’s breath hitched. He was rambling again.
Amelia ended up crouched next to him because while she wasn't hugging him anymore, it felt hard to pull away completely. She took Jasper's hand and squeezed it almost hard enough to hurt as she shook her head firmly. "You're never going back," she told him. "I don't care what is happening, you're staying put and I'll burn the world down before I let you go again." She tried not to touch on that part of his relationship with Jules; that was too complicated and painful for anyone to deal with and sometimes she wondered if he'd be better off if he got over her and moved on but that wasn't for her to decide. "Tell me what's changed, we can figure it out."
Jasper hadn’t meant to say some of that out loud, but he was already glad he did, like purging it out of his mouth lightened the load inside of him a bit. He squeezed Amelia’s hand back tightly and looked into her eyes as she told him he wasn’t going back. There was something comforting in her fierceness, and the thought of her going nuts if he went anywhere again made him smile faintly. He felt the same way about her going anywhere again. Jasper sniffed and rubbed at his nose with his free hand as he tried to drag his thoughts away from Jules. “I can ... I can’t get lost anymore, I always know what direction to go in. And I can find people. Like, if I concentrate, I just know where anybody is. It’s so weird but I’ve tested it a few times, and it works. And mine’s not even the weirdest thing,” he said, wrinkling his nose a little.
Amelia's frown faded as he spoke, replaced with wonder at what he was telling her. It was a little scary, of course, but it also sounded amazing and she couldn't find the downside to this ability at all. "See? You won't get lost again," was the first thing she thought to say and that seemed like the obvious thing to latch onto when she really was scared of losing him again. "And neither will I, you'll always find me." Did it work with other dimensions? She hoped they'd never have to find out. "What's the weirdest thing?" she added, tilting her head at him, not moving from that spot on the floor just yet.
Jasper had no idea if his newfound ability would work in other dimensions, or from their side to another side or what. But what Amelia said made him hope so hard that it would. It occurred to him that maybe he could find Jules too, if she ever got lost on the other side of one of her doorways. Jasper didn’t really want to be in the position to find out, but he could still hope. “I’ll always do my damndest to find you,” he murmured, staring at her intently for a beat. Then Jasper focused on her question and furrowed his brow in thought. “The weirdest is probably ... one guy named Sage, he can turn invisible. He just has to keep his eyes closed to do it. I saw it, it was the craziest shit. And Elodie, she can feel other people’s injuries, even from like, years ago. And Greer’s getting visions of some people’s deaths if she touches them ... it’s all so fucked.”
"Yours is kinda nice in comparison," Amelia said with a little frown because none of those things sounded nice. Even turning invisible seemed a little scary somehow, like the guy might get stuck that way - and if he had to close his eyes for it to work it wouldn't be much good in a scary situation. He'd second guess himself and if he really was invisible, he'd be unable to see the danger around him. It just wasn't practical. Feeling other people's injuries obviously hurt and seeing people's deaths had to be traumatic. "If I had to choose, I'd choose yours," she said and hoped it didn't come with some awful conditions Jasper wasn't telling her about.
Jasper huffed out a laugh. “Yeah ... me too, I guess,” he agreed. He wasn’t sure what was happening with the others, maybe somebody had something better than he did, but out of what he knew so far, being a human GPS was the most useful and least pain in the ass, so he was lucky there. If there were awful conditions, he hadn’t discovered them yet. “I didn’t wanna freak Dad out about it, so I haven’t said anything.” There was a lot he hadn’t said anything about, obviously, and it felt good to entrust these things to Amelia. Nobody in his family knew his full truth yet, and he considered confessing to her about Joseph too. Telling Gavin had been one thing -- Jasper had felt like he had to tell his dad, and he’d still lied about the circumstances -- but telling his baby sister that he was a killer? It was a terrifying prospect. She was the last person Jasper wanted to look at him differently, but at the same time maybe she would understand better than anybody else. “It just makes me worry, you know?”
"I know," Amelia said softly. "But I'm not gonna let anything happen to you." It was probably dumb, considering she'd been helpless to stop him when he nearly killed her and she hadn't been able to save him from everything that followed, but maybe if she just believed in it hard enough, she could prevent something like that from happening again. "I know shit keeps happening to us, but we're still standing. We're fighters, Jasper. We've both survived shit most people wouldn't believe was real. Whatever this is, we'll figure it out too." She gave him a crooked smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "At least you've got something useful going. You're like a superhero."
Jasper didn’t honestly think anybody could protect him like that, but it still made him feel warm inside to hear Amelia say it. He felt the truth of what she said about them being survivors down to his bones. Life just kept throwing shit at all of them, it was like a family curse. But they were still standing. Whatever came for them next, they would go down fighting. The last bit drew a watery laugh out of him and he rolled his eyes as he twisted and bent a bit to hug her again. “Shut up with that, no way,” he muttered, though he was still smiling. “I love you. And whatever weird mutant shit I end up with, I’ll use it for us.”
Amelia hugged him back harder than she had before, like she could squeeze the fear out of him if she tried hard enough. He'd been her life line throughout all these years she'd been away, much more than her parents or friends and it was easy to see why. She'd idolized him, put her big and somewhat mysterious brother up on a pedestal, but even now that they were more equals than ever before, he was still that beacon of hope for her, especially after surviving something so similar. They were both freaks now, for better or worse. When she finally let go she moved back to sit on her chair, crouching wasn't comfortable for long, but she grabbed hold of his hand to cling for a moment longer. "Can you find things too?" she asked. "You could become a detective."
The hug felt good and needed, and Jasper returned it firmly before Amelia pulled away. He’d always felt close to her, even when she was still his much younger sister, like they needed to be a team to survive their parents. Even though she had grown up Somewhere Else, Jasper still felt that kinship to her. Now even more so. He squeezed her hand back, wanting to hold on just as much as she did. “I dunno, I haven’t really tried it with objects,” Jasper murmured thoughtfully. Did Joseph’s corpse count as an object? Maybe. Jasper didn’t really want to tell her about that though. “Though when I was really wasted with Logan in Portland, I found our way back to the hotel with no problem, so ... maybe? Have you lost anything recently?”
Amelia shook her head with a little smile. "No, but it would come in handy if you can do that too. You could still be a detective without it, though. A lot of people go missing - or you'll know if someone's having an affair because you'll know exactly where they are without having to trail them. What does it feel like? Do you know what they're doing too? Can you name the street they're on even if you've never been there?" It would be easy enough to test the object thing and she tried to think of where she'd left her work ID, just in case she'd ask.
The detective part finally really registered, and Jasper had to laugh a little at the idea of him becoming some sort of cop. Maybe he could be a private investigator and make a ton of money or something. “It’s kinda hard to describe, it’s like ... a pull, in my brain. But I’ve got this internal map now, so yeah I know street names and shit. I can follow the pull with my feet or find it on the map, kinda,” he explained, hoping that made some sort of sense. So far it was just something he did without thinking too hard about it. “But no, I dunno what they’re doing, just like, where.” Jasper shrugged a shoulder like it wasn’t that big of a deal, but he knew better. He had a superpower now, like Jules did, and so far he hadn’t found any downsides to it.
It made sense and Amelia was impressed and maybe a little jealous. She sure as hell hadn't come back with any gifts - although judging by what the others got, she wasn't so sure she'd want them. "Okay, where did I leave my work ID?" she asked now that she remembered. It was probably easy to guess but she knew he wouldn't do that. Either he knew, or he didn't. It was very possible this thing only worked with people, a hotel was a location and like he'd said - he couldn't get lost so he'd found his way.
It was a good test, and Jasper squinted as he thought about it, trying to picture an ID card with Amelia’s face on it. He’d never actually seen her work badge, so he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it right, but that didn’t seem to matter because the answer came to him in a flash. “It’s at your work, top drawer of your desk,” Jasper declared, grinning automatically. It didn’t feel the same in his head as tracking a person, more just a burst of knowledge than any tugging in his mind, which was interesting. “Right?” he asked
"Oh my God," Amelia blurted out. "You can do it with things too!" She laughed, amazed and even more impressed now. "This is going to come in handy, I hope you don't get sick of me bugging you every time I put something down and forget where. Does it have to be a specific thing? Or could I ask you, for example..." She trailed off, furrowing her brows as she thought about it. "Nearest dollar bill lying on the ground? Dropped money?" She doubted that, it seemed too vague, but then again who the hell knew! This wasn't exactly a normal thing to suddenly be able to do, why should it make sense?
Jasper couldn’t help but grin at her enthusiasm -- he hadn’t been that excited about it yet, but seeing Amelia be so amazed at something he could do was pretty fun. Maybe not everything surrounding this horrible event in his life would turn out to be negative. He closed his eyes and tried to think about money on the ground, bills and coins both, but nothing happened. Then he tried to picture which tree was closest to their house, and came up with nothing. Jasper frowned a bit and shook his head as he looked at his sister again. “Nah, I think it’s got to be specific,” he said. “A place to go, or someone or something to find. Which ... yeah, I guess would make me a badass detective.” He tittered a bit.
"You've got your career path all laid out for you," Amelia said and grinned back at him. "Man, Grady would kill to have you on the force with that gift." Funny how that worked, she knew her family had a bad rep with the cops though she never fully understood why, now she was working for them and she could easily see Jasper do the same, full time. "Oh God, you're gonna be the local psychic who assists the police, aren't you." She was sure her tone said she was joking, he probably didn't want anyone to know what he could do - it was just safer that way.
“Ugh, that sounds cheesy as fuck,” Jasper said with a laugh, wrinkling his nose. It felt so good to be light about it, making jokes. They weren’t exactly real-feeling career plans, but thinking at all about the future without that anxious weight on his chest felt like an accomplishment. Progress, maybe. “Really though, don’t tell anyone, okay? I don’t want anyone to like ... freak out and come for us with pitchforks, you know?” Jasper didn’t want to give anybody any reason to lock them away again, in any dimension. “I wanna talk to more of the others, see what else we can do. I feel like it’s all gotta mean something, but I dunno. Nothing about any of it makes sense.”
"I won't tell a soul," Amelia promised him, her expression softening as she looked at him. It was just another secret to keep, they really were a messed up little family. "Be careful with who you tell too, and don't go looking for something dangerous, okay?" She didn't know what that could be but detectives and cops had dangerous jobs so it was easy to go there. "If you have to do it, take me with you. I'll help you kick ass." She was joking again - but at the same time she really wasn't. She didn't want Jasper to wander off by himself to figure something out, just to become another statistic.
Her concern was cute, and Jasper smiled as he reached over to tug at a strand of her hair. “Promise I won’t go crime solving without you,” he murmured. “Go Team Lucas.” He wanted to hug her again, tight and for a long time, but Jasper already felt like he was being sappy. He still hadn’t spilled everything to her, but he wasn’t sure he could bring himself to talk about Joseph right then. His little sister had called him a superhero, and Jasper wanted to hold onto that for a minute. “Thanks for listening to me and like, being amazing,” he added quietly. “I’m here for you too, okay? I wanna be. We can help carry each other’s loads.”
Amelia nodded and smiled warmly at him but truthfully she didn't want to burden him right now. She was healing, his wounds were still raw and the last thing she wanted to do was add to his burdens. It did feel weird not to share anything at all so she sat up straighter and cocked her head to the side. "I might be bisexual too," she announced. "I'm not sure, but girls are really pretty." Her grin grew and she glanced at the doorway as if Gavin or Charlie might show up to overhear this conversation. "Dad was always so homophobic when we were kids, I remember bitching at him for it. I haven't heard him say anything lately, do you think he's better about it?"
Jasper’s brows raised, but he honestly wasn’t incredibly surprised. He couldn’t even say why not, maybe his mind was shifting out of thinking everyone was straight by default, but it just seemed to fit who his sister had turned out to be. “Girls are really pretty,” he murmured, giving her a lopsided grin. That was one thing they definitely agreed on. Jasper shrugged a shoulder at her question. “I don’t think he’d be an asshole about it, especially not to you. But it’s like ... more okay for girls to be bi than guys. He might just be real quiet and awkward ... extra awkward, for Dad, you know.” Jasper chuckled faintly. “Have you ever even fooled around with anyone? You don’t have to tell me, I’m just curious.” She wasn’t a kid anymore, that had been made clear a long time ago.
Amelia pursed her lips and shook her head. This was not something she wanted to talk about with her brother but no, she hadn't. She wasn't even sure if she wanted to yet, it was hard enough to relate to people in general. "I remember dad saying stuff like, I don't wanna see that," she said with a roll of her eyes, mimicking Gavin's grumbly drawl. "Like when there were guys kissing on TV, you know? I can't remember what I told him but I told him something and he got kinda sheepish. I remember making him awkward all the time. Go me. He made that face, you know." She tried to mimic that face too but she had a feeling she was nowhere close to the crumpled up grumbly frown their father was so good at. "To be fair I don't think he liked to see men and women kissing either, especially if I was watching with him."
Jasper got the point that she didn’t want to talk about her private life. He guessed that was understandable, even though he wanted to be there for her if she had any questions or anything. Not that he was the best person to give advice, but he at least had a lot of experience with sex. He just wanted her to be safe and happy with whatever she was doing. Which seemed to be nothing at the moment, so whatever. Amelia’s impression of their dad made him laugh, then Jasper did his best to mimic that constipated expression too. He favored Gavin more than Amelia did, so he thought he was pretty good at it. “I think anything like ... romantic or sexy makes him uncomfortable, period,” he said. “When he gave me ‘The Talk’, all he said was to use condoms. So.” Jasper snickered a bit. “Good for you for calling him out though, he needs to cut that homophobic shit out.”
Jasper did get the expression far better than Amelia could and it was almost eerie, making her laugh more. The men in her family and their damn scowling, this was probably the only time it would ever make her laugh. "He's never given me the talk," she mused and the thought of Gavin even trying made her want to roll her eyes. He'd probably explode from embarrassment if she asked him about sex. "I think if I need to talk to someone, I'll talk to Charlie. I'll always call dad out though, I kinda like to think maybe I made some difference with him. Nothing changes if you don't say anything." She paused, quirking a brow at Jasper as she realized how that sounded. "I'm not saying you should come out to him, you really don't have to. We just have to call him out on his bullshit if he says anything."
Jasper wasn’t really surprised that Gavin had never talked sex with Amelia. She’d been so young when she’d disappeared, it hadn’t been necessary yet, and Gavin had probably been hoping that their mother would take care of all that girl stuff. But now Olivia had fucked off and Amelia was a full young woman, and Jasper couldn’t picture his dad trying to look her in the eyes to tell her about sex. “That’s probably smart,” he told her with a smirk. “Talking to Charlie, I mean. She’s a teacher and all ... and y’know, a female, so more help than me, probably.” Not that Amelia wanted to ask him questions anyway. “But yeah, I’ll call him out. I dunno about coming out to him ... I kinda already told Uncle Caden, when I wasn’t myself. Didn’t think a thing about it, except I wanted to shock him.” Jasper huffed and shook his head a little.
Amelia bared her teeth in a mild 'yikes' expression. "Caden knows?" she asked skeptically and that seemed weird. She was sure he'd be worse about it than their dad, that was for sure but maybe the men in their family were full of surprises. "And did it? Shock him, I mean. Was he okay with it?" Out of everyone related to her she always felt like she knew Caden the least. Aaron had been her cuddly bear uncle, Kat had been her cool aunt and Caden was the mystery uncle she always felt a little shy with as a kid. She remembered thinking he was really cool but not approachable and that hadn't changed all that much now.
He didn’t blame her for that face, that was how he’d felt about it when he realized. Of course, dropping that bomb on Caden had paled in comparison to what happened shortly after. Jasper had cared so little at the time about his opinion, it was hard to remember exactly what Caden had said, so he shrugged again. “He was surprised, yeah,” he said. “He wasn’t a dick about it, though. We were doing something else, so we didn’t really talk-talk about it. He just told me to keep it to myself, I think. I don’t remember it real well, it was such a weird time.” That was a massive understatement for that day, but Jasper hoped it didn’t show too much. “Pretty sure he hasn’t told Dad or anybody, so that’s something.”
"You were kinda under an evil spell there," Amelia said and wrinkled her nose. "So that's not weird." She did not want to bring up how he had almost killed her, that hadn't been him and she didn't fault him or fear him for what had happened. He was Jasper and the whole thing had hurt him more than it had hurt her. "I get the feeling Caden just keeps his mouth shut about most things, but I don't really know him at all. He and Aaron are so different." She might not know much about Aaron but she knew him well and felt at ease around him. He always seemed happy to see her, he always gave the best hugs and often made her laugh. She didn't need to know all about him to love him. Caden felt like family but far more distant.
An evil spell was one way to look at it, Jasper thought of it as more of an infection that spread to his brain. Some kind of parasite infecting his thoughts. He’d read about that kind of shit happening to ants or something. Or maybe it was fungus? Whatever. “Yeah, Caden has a smart mouth sometimes, but he seems to keep secrets,” Jasper murmured. “I’m closer to Aaron too, it’s just ... easier. And Kat’s not like any of them either, it’s funny how a group of siblings can be so different, you know?” He paused and half-smiled at his sister. “I think you’re different than me in like, good ways. But I wanna stay closer than they are.”
Amelia smiled at that and nodded. "We'll always be close," she promised. "You know- you were my lifeline growing up. I didn't wish for mom or dad to find me, or even the cops. It was always you." She'd always hero-worshipped her big brother while her parents had been kind of a mess, so it wasn't that strange. She still felt it though, even if she now knew Jasper as more of an equal and not that infinitely wise and super grown-up cool guy he'd been when she was a kid. She knew more of his flaws now and more of his fears - but that just made him more human to her and she loved him more for it.
Mildly embarrassed but mostly touched, Jasper felt his cheeks flush a bit. He reached to take his sister’s hand again and squeezed it, emotion making his throat feel tight. Thinking about the little girl she used to be, in a Different place, just hoping and waiting for her big brother to come to the rescue ... it was heartbreaking. “I would have come for you if I could’ve,” Jasper mumbled. He knew Amelia wasn’t blaming him for anything, but god, if he’d known how to get to her then, he would’ve done anything to accomplish it. “I thought about you every day while I was gone, I was so scared you didn’t wake up and it was my fault ... not that-- it wasn’t me, you know? I’d never hurt you like that.” He looked a little helpless and pained.
"I know," Amelia said and then said it again, with more feeling as Jasper went off on a tangent. "That wasn't you. You were no more in control of that than I was." She gave his hand a squeeze, then let out a little laugh. "You've made my cereal get all soggy. We're so sappy." She smiled at him warmly, obviously not minding that at all. "Thanks for confiding in me, it's cool. I like knowing your secrets." Like friends more than just siblings. "You promise you won't get weird and overprotective if I get a boyfriend, right? I think dad could be bad enough." Or he'd just be awkward. It was hard to tell with Gavin, but it still felt a little overwhelming to think of all the men around her and how they would probably not be welcoming of anyone getting too close to her. She wasn't ten anymore, but it was obviously hard for everyone around her to think of her as a grown up when it hadn't even been a year since she was literally a child.
Jasper huffed when she called them sappy -- he couldn’t really deny it. Especially since he’d gotten home, he felt full of sap and ready to cry at the drop of a damn hat. Jasper hoped he would even out eventually, because it was exhausting. His own cereal was a mushy mess, but he’d at least eaten most of it, so he was okay with that. He got a flash of guilt that he was still keeping one big secret from Amelia, but Jasper really didn’t want to tell her about Joseph. Especially not right then, when he was feeling connected and warm. Her question made him laugh softly and he squinted one eye at her. “Promise I won’t get too weird, but I do want to meet whoever you date,” he said. “Make sure they’re good enough for you. ... which I promise doesn’t mean I’ll say nobody is. If they’re cool, they’re cool. You got your eye on anybody?”
"No, thank God," Amelia said with a roll of her eyes, still picturing her overprotective men interrogating some poor sucker. "It's hard to relate to people my age and the people who are supposed to be my age are still in elementary school." That was still tripping her up, seeing kids she used to know, still little. She'd felt like they were so grown up when she was their age and now they just looked like babies to her. "It's nice to have a job and stuff, I'm still trying to settle in." Most people her current age also had some history, friendships or bad blood with her brother so that didn't make things any easier. She doubted she'd ever meet someone in Point Pleasant she'd feel comfortable dating.
While he couldn’t exactly relate to her situation, Jasper could very much understand the dating pool feeling way too small in this town. Especially for someone who hadn’t grown up with a peer group. “No rush,” Jasper told her with a faint smile. “I won’t say you’re not missing anything, because it can be like, amazing to be with somebody. But it can also hurt like a bitch and really suck, so ... just let it come when it comes.” That was probably shitty advice, but it was pretty much all he had. Jasper stretched a bit and stood up to collect his cereal bowl. He pointed at Amelia’s too. “You want a fresh bowl? Since I wouldn’t shut up and shit.”
"Yeah, you gonna shut up now?" Amelia asked with a snicker. She wouldn't worry about it, but she was running out of time and she was still hungry. Of course she could deal with it herself but he had offered so she handed him her bowl with a teasing, pointed look. She didn't need him to shut up, she could eat and listen - and talk between bites - but she'd been too busy hugging him to eat so that was on her. "What are you doing today?" she asked then since her first question didn't require an answer. "Gonna go anywhere?"
Jasper just smirked at the first question -- him shutting up anytime soon was unlikely. All of this openness and honesty with people, even though a lot of it was selective honesty, was pretty new to him, but he didn’t seem able to stop doing it. Maybe that was good. He took Amelia’s bowl and started to prep her another serving of cereal. “I dunno yet, really,” Jasper answered. “Last night with Logan was pretty crazy. I might just relax as much as possible, since tomorrow’s my first day at the shop. Really hoping it doesn’t suck.” He was a bit nervous about having responsibility, and whether he could remember all of the mechanics he’d learned over the years. Getting there and just blanking out on everything would be a nightmare. Jasper put some fresh cereal down in front of Amelia and plopped into his chair again.
"God, you're gonna be so wasted on that shop," Amelia said after cheerfully thanking Jasper for the cereal. "You're gonna be the guy who always knows where everything is which will be super handy if someone loses a screwdriver or whatever, but oh my God the things you could actually be doing with that." Like being a detective. She had no idea if he needed some degree to actually be one, she only knew the stereotype from movies and they always seemed to be ex-cops or just total losers.
He chuckled at her enthusiasm on his behalf. “Lemme make sure it’s not a fluke first,” Jasper said, wrinkling his nose a bit. “It might go away as randomly as it came, I dunno yet.” He knew Amelia was enjoying her job at the police station, but she was definitely more innocent than Jasper was and the idea of working around a bunch of cops made Jasper nervous. He’d killed his own grandfather, and he’d helped Jules cover up the death of her stepdad ... not to mention all of the underage drinking and drugging he did. “I just wanna work on cars and earn some money and not have to think about dark shit for part of the day, y’know?”
"You do anything that makes you happy," Amelia murmured between bites of her cereal, wagging her spoon at him. Maybe she should be doing the same thing, work somewhere sweet and cuddly, where she didn't have to hear about the horrors of Point Pleasant that had nothing to do with her. It was hard for her, however. She wanted to know, she wanted to be prepared and she wanted to fight it. She couldn't do that while dressing up cute as a secretary or working at a playschool or whatever else there was for her to do. She'd gotten this job and she loved it.
There was that mysterious ‘do what makes you happy’ command again. Jasper never quite knew how to respond to that. He still didn’t know what made him happy these days, beyond getting stoned and getting laid, and he definitely wasn’t going to tell his sister that. “If I figure out what that is, I’ll be sure to do lots of it,” he murmured with a half smile. For now he wanted something simple -- a job he could do with his hands, something he’d always enjoyed tinkering with. He just hoped Mr. Fox would be patient with him if he started to freak out or something. “Does working at the station make you happy?” he asked.
"Yes and no," Amelia said with a shrug. "It's kinda intense sometimes but I feel good there. It's nice to work for someone who knows who I really am." That was what a lot of it boiled down to. She wasn't happy with her pseudonym, the girl they'd created to make her presence in the world make sense to the uninitiated. There were days where she wanted to say fuck it and just go by her own name, tell everyone her true story even if it made them all label her as psychotic. "And happy is probably a pretty high goal post right now. Let's go for content. Content is good."
That sounded like a reasonable goal, and Jasper huffed out an understanding noise. “Content sounds nice,” he muttered. He didn’t feel like he’d accomplished that either, but maybe he would one of these days. “I’m glad you found something that makes you feel that,” he told her sincerely. “Hope I get that lucky too.” He didn’t have the same sort of identity complications that Amelia did, so he doubted he was going to be telling everyone at the shop about his experience and what he could do now ... though he did expect some of them to be curious and ask, so he probably ought to think about how he wanted to answer. It was a relief to know that Amelia knew part of it now, and that his dad mostly knew the other part. He was gradually getting somewhere.
"Honestly it's my therapist who's helped me get there," Amelia murmured with a knowing smile. She wasn't going to harp on Jasper to go to therapy but it had helped her a lot and she's learned more than just self help from her therapist. It was nice to talk to a woman who could fill her in on some things she didn't understand or recognize in the world, being able to ask questions without worrying about looking insane or naive. "I know I'm not okay though, I might never be okay, both us, you know, might never be okay. We can just strongarm our way through the bad shit and enjoy the good shit."
Jasper put in the effort not to roll his eyes at the mention of a therapist -- it was something he could probably benefit from, but he had no desire to go spill his guts to some stranger every week. At least not some stranger who had no idea where he was coming from but was going to try to tell him what to do and feel anyway. The rest of what Amelia said made his chest hurt with a yearning sort of sadness, but it resonated as the truth too. “Yeah, I know,” he murmured. Jasper reached out to tug a tiny bit on a strand of Amelia’s hair. “‘Okay’ or not, I’m always here to try and help you do that strong-arming, you know? I might just stick a joint in your mouth, but ...” He shrugged and grinned at her a bit. “I’ll do my best.”
"Just stick around," Amelia murmured and that reminded her of how upset she was knowing Jasper was going to move out and live with Logan. She hadn't been ready at the time, everything had been too raw, but things were different now. "I mean, just stay in touch. If you end up moving in with Logan or something, don't go too far away. I can handle driving out to Bangor or something to visit you but not much further than that." She didn't think Jasper was going anywhere just yet, but she was more at ease with letting go now. She'd lost him twice, moving out was no big deal in comparison.
He shook his head a bit. “I just got a job, we’re gonna look at apartments around here,” Jasper assured her. Even though sometimes he wanted to run away for as far as a gas tank would get him, he knew he wasn’t permanently leaving Point Pleasant anytime soon. Especially not now. “Don’t worry, I’m still gonna be hanging around town to annoy you for years to come, probably.” He gave Amelia a wry smile. “You can come hang out in our stinky bachelor pad very soon. Bring your boyfriends over so me and Logan can make sure they don’t suck before you introduce them to Dad.”
Amelia feigned a shudder at the thought of introducing anyone to her dad, even friends which she hadn't exactly made many of. It didn't help that she kept most strangers at an arm's length at best, not eager to let them close. "I'll come hang out all the time," she promised. "Logan is gonna get sick of me." She smirked and nudged Jasper's foot with her own. "You won't though, you couldn't ever, you love me too much." He probably could, and would if she was there all the time but she had a job so there wasn't much risk of that.
Jasper chuckled. “That is correct,” he informed her with a lopsided smile, nudging her foot back. “But don’t worry, if Logan could get sick of anyone, he would’ve been sick of me by now. And you’re much more charming than I am.” Jasper stood up and moved closer, slipping an arm around Amelia’s shoulders and gave her a hug, planting a kiss against her temple at the same time. “I love you, dork. Have a good day at work. I’m gonna go smoke a bowl and be an unemployed bum for one more day.”
"Go enjoy your last real day off," Amelia tittered and it was just as well, she needed to finish her food and get the hell out of dodge so she wouldn't get into trouble at work. Or more accurately - so work wouldn't get into trouble without her. They were chronically understaffed, she'd felt that on her own skin now, and they really didn't need one of their desperately few deputies to be filling in for her because she was running late. "I love you too, dork," she murmured as he left the kitchen and now she could really think about what they'd been talking about. It was pretty wild that her own brother was bisexual. Jasper, of all people! It made her feel good in that way where she felt less alone. They were so much more alike than she'd thought.