Arc 2

by RoAnna Sylver

  “Can I talk to you?” he asked.

  “I wish you would.” Jasper did indeed have dark circles under his eyes and leaned heavily against the door frame, but he smiled, and the knot inside Jude’s stomach loosened just a bit.

  “Thanks. I don’t mean to disturb you or Felix, but…”

  “You’re not, believe me. We can talk in here,” he said, leading the way inside and down the short hall past the living area. Jude’s eyes were immediately drawn toward a closed door that he hadn’t seen the other side of in some time. There, he knew, was Felix. Jude didn’t expect the wave of disappointment he felt at the sight of it, and realized that some part of him had been expecting, or at least hoping, to find it open.

  “Felix is asleep—or his version of sleeping, rather,” Jasper said, clearly noticing the object of Jude’s attention and his reaction. “I’d like to keep it that way, for a few hours at least. He doesn’t really have a sleep schedule yet, and lord knows it’s hard enough for him to get there.”

  “It’s hard on you too,” Jude said. “You deserve a few hours’ break.”

  “The shop’s closed, and likely to remain closed for the immediate future. I’m only still paying rent on that place because moving everything out of there is out of the question. So I’m always on a break.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  For the first time in too long, Jude was able to see all of Jasper clearly and up close. He looked tired and run-down, even more so than Jude was accustomed to seeing him. In the early days of Felix’s return, Jasper had reminded him of a new father with a baby up at all hours, sleep-deprived and concerned but happy all the same—but right now he looked much more tired, and much less happy than he’d been at first.

  Jude could also tell this time that Jasper indeed had lost more than a bit of weight, and now he could see the full extent. Still substantially broader than Jude, but not by as much as he remembered. All of Jasper seemed diminished, but Jude’s concerned eyes went quickly to the way his shirt hung more loosely, particularly around his waist. It was unlikely to have been intentional; Jasper had always seemed right at home with his round figure and size in general. Being fat was simply part of who he was, and a good part, like the quickness of his perceptive eyes or the wry tilt of his smile when he’d just thought of something sure to make even Jude laugh. This hurt to see. The physical evidence of how great a toll the last months had taken made Jude’s own stomach feel tight and cold.

  “Does your head hurt?” Jude asked, figuring Jasper’s migraines were safer to inquire about, though just as urgent. They’d all had a lot on their minds, but Jasper maybe the most of all.

  His friend gave a completely joyless chuckle. “I’ve forgotten the last time it didn’t.”

  Jasper led him into the bedroom he and Felix shared, or had at one time, and lowered himself down to sit on the bed, slowly, as if his entire body ached, not just his head. Jude hesitated only momentarily before sitting down beside him. Once, Jude would have felt anxious and a wonderful kind of embarrassed to be alone with Jasper in his bedroom, even with Felix in the next room, but now it just felt sensible, natural. Intimate, yes, but their friendship always had been, and they were long past the point of getting worked up about little things like this, despite the distance the past months had put between them.

  “Has Felix left your place at all?” he asked, making an effort to keep his voice down, even if it was probably pointless with vampires in the house.

  “Only for the occasional flight to stretch his wings. But they’re never very long, and he always goes back to the guest room afterwards.”

  “He doesn’t sleep with you in here?” Jude asked, frowning.

  “No. I’ve tried, of course, but he just seems more at ease in the guest room. I’m trying not to read too much into that. Sometimes it feels like he doesn’t think he deserves it. He actually doesn’t sleep in a bed at all, really, unless I’m in it.

  “Then how…?”

  “Standing up,” Jasper said with an illustrative up-down wave. “Ramrod-straight, joints locked, like a… well, he’d make a wonderful coatrack. And it’s not really sleep either, more like some kind of trance with his eyes half-open. I’m not sure if that’s because of his permanently… morphed state, but it’s just how he is. Does any of this sound familiar to you?”

  “No. Pixie’s definitely never done that,” Jude said, suddenly very grateful for that. “I’d remember.”

  “Just a Felix thing, then. I thought as much. Hopefully it’ll level off with time. I’ve taken to sleeping in there with him, but it’s really not the same. I still wake up like clockwork thinking it was all a dream and he’s not there.”

  “I’ve done that a few times too.” Jude had actually done that quite a bit more than a few times, but he felt strange admitting that to Jasper. What right did he have to still be messed up about this? Jasper had the monopoly on Felix-related trauma, as much as Jude knew he’d say it wasn’t a contest. Even if it was, there was no winning here to be had.

  “So what has you so worried, Jude?”

  “What?” Jude asked, brain only catching up to the words after a couple seconds. “Oh—nothing. Nothing important, anyway.”

  “I very much doubt that. Both that it’s nothing, and that it’s nothing important.”

  “I—no, really, I’m fine. I just wanted to be here instead of…” He shrugged. Words were getting harder to come by. Wasn’t that always how it worked? The more he wanted to communicate something, the more important the words, the more elusive they became.

  “You didn’t come over just to ask about Felix… well, you might have, but I’m getting the impression that there’s something else on your mind,” Jasper said. Even if Jude lost every word in the dictionary, Jasper would still be able to read him like a book. “You and Pixie have both been through a major change. Living together is a big step. I’ve been meaning to ask, but…”

  Jude couldn’t speak and felt a painful ache creep into his tense shoulders. He didn’t know when he’d started curling his fingers into fists around the comforter but forced himself to release it. He didn’t need to add bed wrinkles to the list of Jasper’s problems.

  “Well, never mind that,” Jasper said, mercifully, and Jude’s shoulders dropped as he deliberately made himself relax. “How did your quest for spell ingredients go? Did you and Eva get the high-noon earth from the midnight circle?”

  “Yeah,” Jude said after nodding a few times. One word at a time. “Yeah, we did. She did most of the work. I just distracted the guy guarding them—that redheaded punk who likes to yell and cause trouble.”

  “Sanguine,” Jasper said with a nod, then, in response to Jude’s surprised look, “Letizia let me know about him a while ago. He hasn’t caused any mayhem at my shop, as far as I know, and she said it’s unlikely he would, but he’s always had it out for her, for some reason or another.”

  “I think I know why.”

  “Oh?” Jasper’s eyebrows raised.

  “He had blood on his neck,” Jude said, with an accompanying gesture along his own. “Punctures.”

  Jasper didn’t look surprised, more resigned. “I suspected that may be the case. Did he give you much trouble?”

  Jude shook his head. “He didn’t throw a punch or anything. Even if he had, I doubt he’d be able to hurt anyone besides himself. He looked… bad. I’d almost feel bad for him, if he didn’t have such a mouth on him.”

  “Yes, Jude, ‘almost.’” Jasper chuckled, and Jude began to feel warm inside instead of chilled with anxiety. Sometimes it was nice to be around someone who could see right through you and all the fibs you told, even to yourself. “It seems to me he’s insisting on fighting his own battle right now. But if there’s a way to help him, and he wants it, you’ll find it.”

  “I can’t seem to help anyone right now,” Jude muttered, and where his shoulders had once been creeping up to his ears, now they sagged, and he rested his elbows on his knees. “Not even Pixi
e.”

  “That’s funny, I was also just talking about him.”

  Jude shut his eyes. He couldn’t keep anything from Jasper, not for long. He’d known that when he came here. If he was being honest with himself, that’s the reason he’d come here at all. “It’s—he’s—we’ve hit a couple bumps in the road.”

  “Tell me,” Jasper said, and Jude felt the comforting warmth of a hand against his back. He leaned into it as Jasper continued. “Everything that you feel is yours to tell, anyway.”

  “Part of it’s mine,” Jude said, anxiety making his tone uncertain and halting. “Part of it, I’m not sure. I don’t know if I even understand it all. That’s why I came to you.”

  “I’ll do my best, even if my best is just to listen.”

  “Well, last night we went looking for the ‘rose-tinted memories’ Letizia told him to find,” Jude said, focusing on the words, not the emotion behind them, not the worry still clawing at him, along with the memory of how hard Pixie had been shaking in his arms. “Pixie and I went back to where he used to live. This old motel, falling apart, nobody there now. He wanted to find a time capsule type thing that he’d made with—with his old boyfriend, I guess. So, a thing made of good memories, or at least something that looks good in hindsight—anyway. It wasn’t there, and he got really upset, and…”

  He paused, taking a breath, still trying to make the events make sense in his own mind. Jasper didn’t prod or interrupt, just sat, waiting patiently. Jude felt another swell of gratitude; it was the best thing he or anyone could have done under the circumstances, and slowly Jude’s brain fully remembered how words worked again, and he made himself speak.

  “I think he got scared. Or he’s been scared. Of everything, of Wicked Gold and getting hurt again, and us getting hurt, and—and me deciding I don’t want him around anymore.”

  “I don’t think there’s much chance of that,” Jasper said with a little smile Jude couldn’t find it in himself to return.

  “No, there isn’t. At all. But he said he owed me, and that he wasn’t doing anything in return for everything I’d given him, and…” he stopped, took another breath, and pushed the rest out. “He kissed me. But not like before, and not—not the right way, this was different, he was scared, and—he wanted me to touch him, but not because he wanted it, I don’t think. It’s like he thought he needed to repay me with sex. Like that was what he owed me, and he had to do it right then or I’d kick him out.”

  “Oh, Jude. That must have been awful. For both of you.”

  “It was,” Jude agreed with a vehement nod, and he looked fully over at Jasper to see that he’d turned slightly toward Jude, holding one arm a bit out, open.

  Jude only hesitated for a moment before scooting over, not fully into Jasper’s thick (but still too thin) arms, but until their shoulders touched. He wanted more than anything to accept that embrace and the feeling of complete safety it had always offered, but something stopped him. Jasper had said part of him thought Felix believed he no longer deserved his place in his fiancé’s bed. All of Jude believed the same thing of himself. It wasn’t a refusal at all, but an inability, one that he now knew painfully well.

  “It’s not that he pushed himself on me or anything,” Jude said quickly, when the unfortunate implications of his story occurred to him. “Pixie actually asked if he could touch me, I just didn’t know what he meant at first. Scared out of his mind and panicking, he still asked.”

  “And when you said no—since I’m quite certain you did—yes, that’s what I thought,” Jasper said, smiling a bit in response to Jude’s wide-eyed, deer-in-the-headlights look. “When you said no, what did he say?”

  “Not much,” Jude said with a tired shrug. “He cried for a while. I held him and told him he didn’t have to do that—he definitely had to do that before. He said that’s what men wanted from him. Wicked Gold, and just…”

  “Worse men than you.”

  “I guess.” Jude let his head hang down, oddly tired after expressing the thing that had been tearing up his insides all night. “I took him home, and I guess he didn’t want to talk about it because he turned into a bat and crawled into one of my oven mitts. He’s probably still there. I hope he’s still there.”

  “You did the right thing,” Jasper said. “Taking care of him, and telling me about it—although I do know what you mean now about not all of it being yours to tell.”

  “Yeah. I know he hasn’t even told me the whole thing.”

  “Well, for what it’s worth, nothing you’ve told me leaves this room. But it’s good to know when a friend is struggling with that kind of pain. We can all keep him that much safer. I don’t think I need to tell Felix to be gentle with him. They probably know more about each other’s trauma than any of us could imagine.”

  “Yeah,” Jude said again. “I just don’t know what to do about it. I want to help, but I don’t know what would make it better or worse, or…”

  “It sounds like you’ve done all you can, for now at least. Sometimes there isn’t much you can do at all, except to give him a safe place to heal. I’m in very much the same boat, so I do speak from some experience.”

  “Thanks. I knew I came to the right place.”

  They sat together in a silence that would have been awkward with anyone else. Jasper did like to hear himself talk, but he also knew when to let quiet lie over them like gentle, unbroken snow. He’d always done that, known exactly when not to speak or demand anything, and given Jude a safe place to collect his scattered thoughts and fit them back together.

  Eventually, Jude turned his head to look up at his friend, whose face remained serene, despite the worrying gauntness in his once-round cheeks. “You don’t sound worried about any of this.”

  “I’m not. We’re not the innocents who stumbled in too far over our heads like when this began. We might be fumbling in the dark, but at least we’ve got a few matches this time.”

  “Fire’s pretty easy to come by in a crucible, I guess,” Jude said in a dry mutter.

  “There is that. But seriously, Jude—I’d always bet on us every time on pure principle. The difference is, this time around, I’d actually feel good about our odds.”

  Jasper had always had a way of making him see other sides to a situation. They weren’t always good sides, but it was always better than facing them alone. Jude risked a teasing smile. “‘The innocents who stumbled in,’ you said—you, innocent? I had no idea.”

  “Of course, you’re right.” Jasper smiled back, a bit quicker and more mischievous than before, reassuring in the familiarity. It had been too long since Jude had seen that private-joke smile, the one that was never laughing at him, only with, only warm. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “It’s good to talk to you, Jasper,” Jude said, and now it was relief rather than exhaustion making his limbs and head feel heavy. This was the good kind of tired, not the kind when you’re sorely missing a soft bed, but the feeling of having just climbed into it at last, knowing that, tonight at least, sleep wouldn’t be far behind. “I’ve missed you. Both of you.”

  “You have? Really?” Jasper blinked. He sounded genuinely surprised, and something about that made Jude sad. And almost as worried as when he’d noticed the weight Jasper had lost in Jude’s absence. He’d thought giving Jasper and Felix some time and space was the right choice, but how could it possibly be, when Jude returned to find less of him? When Jasper was surprised to hear Jude had missed him at all?

  “Yes, really. You’re important to me. One of the most important people I have.”

  “That’s lovely of you to say, but…” Jasper said and grimaced, as if he’d just tasted something bad. “I don’t feel like it. I don’t know how to help Felix, and that’s the only thing in my brain, it rattles around like a marble in a tin can. Which doesn’t help the headaches, let me tell you. Felix is so changed, inside and out, and I don’t know how to reach him. It feels like he’s a different person, and he is, in a very li
teral sense. And I love this new Felix, I would do anything to help him—but I don’t know how. I don’t know the things to say or do anymore, because I’m not saying them to the Felix I remember. And I know, believe me, that I’m not who I was anymore either. So we’re two—not strangers, exactly, but we’re trying to live like we’re the same people as before, and we aren’t. But I don’t know how else to be. I feel so useless, every minute of every day and night.”

  “You’re not,” Jude said, aware of how weak and hollow the words sounded. Even if he meant them with all his heart, they weren’t enough. “Far from it.”

  “Thank you, Jude. That does help.” Jasper’s words were heavy with fatigue as well, but, as always, Jude believed them. “You always do. You’re helping Felix too, just by knocking on our door every morning.”

  “God, there’s so much I want to say to him.” Even if he couldn't see the guest room door from here, Jude’s eyes went once again in that direction. “And ask him. I don’t want to pry, but...”

  “He hasn’t said all that much about what happened, no,” Jasper said, attuned to Jude’s thoughts as always. “At least, no specifics. He was made to see, and do, terrible things. He was not himself, and not in control of his actions, though he certainly blames himself anyway. I haven’t pressed him, and he seems grateful. And I catch glimpses of him being himself again, every once in a while—maybe not his old self, but he’s finding the new Felix a little more every day.”

  “That’s good,” Jude said, and meant it, though his worries weren’t fully assuaged. He paused, then pressed on with words that would have felt impossible only a few minutes ago, to say or to find at all. “I’ve… I’ve wanted to figure things out with you and Felix. Eventually. When he can—and when you can.”

  Jasper chuckled softly. “We’re not the only ones in this equation, Jude.”

  “Fine, when I can too,” Jude amended. “I want to... see where we are. I just wanted you to know I’m still thinking about that. I’m thinking about it a lot. About—what are we to each other? I mean, what am I to you? Or to Felix? Hell, what am I even to Pixie?