quiet when i'm coming home | jasper & liv

[gamemaker kelsier]

o b l i v i o n .

"Don't you know I'm no good for you?
I've learned to lose you, can't afford to
Tore my shirt to stop you bleedin'
But nothin' ever stops you leavin'"

Four years, two months, one week and four days since he last saw Jasper.

And he wishes he could stop counting the days but he can't, it doesn't work like that for him, never has and it was always Jasper who knew how to turn his brain off with one gentle tap on the shoulder. He could always bring Oblivion back to the present moment and without him it's all too easy to drift away, forehead resting on the glass panel of a barrack window for too long. Water still clings to the pane, a recent rain giving the district a much-needed rinse.

"Hey yo Newbie, you're patrolling the South end with Tizzy tonight, got it?"

He looks up, his lieutenant giving him an impatient look. She's five-foot-eleven, from District Two and has chosen to despise him on principle. That's kind of new for him, he'd always been easy to love by most, but he doesn't hate the concept of being hated. It feels kind of good and a little deserved. "Come on, get your gear, kid, haven't got all day," she says. He's pretty sure they're near the same age but Oblivion knows better than to correct her, since arriving in Nine a week ago he's already seen her beat three different foot soldiers.

He still hasn't seen Jasper.

Tizzy smells like cigarettes and is disinterested in general about having Oblivion with her. She doesn't hate him as far as he can tell but she probably doesn't like him either, she's from One. Tizzy is pretty, manicured and out of place on Nine's streets, like a hedge of roses in a desert and Oblivion isn't much better. He's short for a Peacekeeper and feels as fresh as he looks.

Hazing's a thing and Liv is kind of expecting it so when Tizzy tells him to split off he shrugs and goes along with it, not like they're gonna kill him. If the worst he has to go through is a beating, then that's fine.

He breathes deeply, the fresh rain gave everything a clean scent. A memory tugs at him, teasing, some rainy afternoon in a small café off style street with Jasper but he doesn't follow it, not out here in a place that doesn't want him despite the curfew-deserted streets. If he doesn't stay alert he might get himself killed, he was given a whole briefing about Nine's gang culture before his arrival.

He doesn't want to die right now, which is nice.

Dark clouds drift above Oblivion's head cutting out the stars and he doesn't see another living soul for a long time. At one point, something moves in the street in front of him but it turns out to be a large rat dragging something bloody into a gutter. Nine continues to be an odd place.

Despite himself, his mind begins to drift and he draws things out of the shadows that are meant to stay there. An urge, searing and out of nowhere claws into him and Liv stops, eyes squeezed shut tight, the want to be numb dragging at him. It always sneaks up on him when he forgets to concentrate and Liv knows he could probably score here if he wants to, which is the bad part. It would not be hard to find a drug dealer in a district full of gang members, he wouldn't even have to look far. Maybe there was even something in the Evidence locker he could get his hands on, it'd be so ea-

A door swings open down an alley to his left and Oblivion's eyes snap open. Whoever's breaking curfew has just saved him and he can't help feeling grateful. It's probably just Tizzy anyway, back for that hazing and if this makes his squad like him at least a little, it's worth it, so Liv enters the alley, a hand on his gun.

"Hello?" he calls out softly, "There's a curfew in effect, you need to go back inside." The light fades behind him as he walks deeper in and he knows he should feel some sort of apprehension but there's only quiet acceptance.

[[nyte]]

j a s p e r .

"The future can't
be real, I
barely know how
long a moment is"

He could be better. That used to be an insult, a poisonous thought that lingered in the back of his mind and seared itself into the bone there. Whenever he lost himself within the bottom of glass bottles it served as an anchor, the chains around his wrists that somehow kept him grounded in this terrible downward spiral. It's not much of an insult anymore.

Of course, Jasper Fenwick could be better. He was born and bred for greatness, the spoon shoved down his throat was not made of silver but of platinum. A trophy was meant to represent the hubris of others, to sit pretty with a mouth sewn shut; even the stitches were made of woven gold. It was that very thing, the perfection that he should have been, that breaks him over and over again.

He shouldn't have his title. That much is starkly apparent as he stumbles through his third bar tonight. This is beyond drunk, his vision is blurred around the edges, tilting on a peculiar axis as it purges every new memory his eyes strain to make. His hand trails along the grime-ridden wood panelling of some shit bar deep in the underbelly of nine. He's here to indulge, not to work, shedding the angelic white of his uniform in favor of tight-fitting blacks and navy blues. No one here looks at him as anything but another stain upon the yellowing carpet.

Thank fucking god.

He'd given himself the night off, one had the freedom to do that when the Captain was too scared of pissing off your family to dare reprimand you for it. What with all this bullshit going down he figured they'd need his presence more than ever but that was exactly why he made himself scarce. He liked feeling worthless, it was safe and familiar.

There was a certain amount of arrogance that came with this bitter self-disdain. Ambition had festered, becoming rotten and unreliable but not completely dead. A part of him, a part he'd tried to drown in poison and pain, still sought out praise. That was a need far easier to ignore when he distanced himself from it - it was merely a matter of choosing to do that with lies or whiskey.

It'd been four years, maybe five, since he'd come home, if he could even consider the Capitol anything close to it. He kept in contact with Copernicus when he had the presence of mind - their bond ran deeper than the diluted blood running through their veins. He was his best friend. Even if he knew he was making a burden of himself by slurring half-formed thoughts into his com unit at an ungodly hour. His cousin was the only thing that kept him tethered to reality, even if that rope was terribly frayed.

Oblivion was what kept him away. Like a curse or a bad omen he could not shake. The memory of his first love was one he'd tried and failed to forget a thousand times over. It made him feel weak, a shame as deep and dark as ink spilled across parchment paper, it took up every inch of his mind. The finer details had faded over the years, he hardly remembered the sound of his voice or the upward slant of his lips whenever he saw something that sparked that overwhelming passion of his. Oblivion represented the ghost of every good thing he could have been. Surely that's why he couldn't bear to forget him.

And maybe that's why he sees him here, outside in the bite of evening air. The alley smells of something rotten but it hardly registers. His vision keeps on swimming, he's a hundred miles away from the cold brick grating against the skin of his back. His knees gave out halfway to freedom, shirt riding up as stone bites into the freshly exposed canvas. He wonders if it's drawn blood.

He blinks through the hair matted with sweat and falling into his eyes, arms too heavy to reach up and brush it away. "'M fine." The stranger looks like Oblivion, but this isn't the first time. Ghosts were always at their strongest when he was so fucked he couldn't make sense of the world.

It hurt that he still missed him. Jasper should have been stronger than this.

"Leave me alone. Nothing can hurt me 'nyways."

And he believed that. He really did.

[gamemaker kelsier]

o b l i v i o n .

"Don't you know I'm no good for you?
I've learned to lose you, can't afford to
Tore my shirt to stop you bleedin'
But nothin' ever stops you leavin'"

He'd put so much thought into just getting to Nine to see Jasper again and so much effort into finding him that he'd never actually thought about what he wanted to say to him. Maybe he'd thought that it would all kind of just fall into place. It always had before, being with Jasper had been easy because it wasn't necessarily a choice, it just was what they always had been.

But even just the sound of his voice has Oblivion's heart rate speed up for what feels like the first time in forever.

It's deeper, words strung together in a broken kind of way but that inflexion, that tone, Liv would know it anywhere. His eyes adjust to the semi-darkness slowly but there's a man. He's slumped against the wall, legs buckled and shirt riding up against the building behind him, and head hanging low. Liv can smell the alcohol on him from ten feet away. Tizzy would have called him a 'live one', whatever that means.

And maybe he's wrong, maybe it's not Jasper. He never drank, not even at parties. He'd told Liv that he didn't like it but this man's obviously drunk out of his mind, he can't even sit properly. It's been four years, he can't be sure.

Then he looks up and Oblivion sees those eyes and he knows it's him, he just wishes he doesn't. He's never seen eyes filled with so much sadness and he knows what he's done to him, that this is his fault. Looking at the mess he's made threatens to break him and he falls to his knees slowly in front of Jasper. He feels the dampness of the alley floor soak through his pant legs slowly but it hardly matters.

"Leave me alone. Nothing can hurt me 'nyways."

"You're not fine," he tells him firmly but gentle, voice calmer than he thought it was going to be. Oblivion from four years ago would have been too upset at finding Jasper like this, he'd probably be crying right about now. But all he does now is rest his hands on his knees and restrain himself from touching him. He wants to brush the hair out of his eyes but that seems dangerous, sort of like a line he shouldn't cross.

It doesn't feel quite real, being here like this with him and it's far from what he wanted their reunion to be. Maybe he'd been certain he'd find the Jasper he'd always known, a calm but goofy giant. The jasper in his dreams had remained the same for so long, unable to grow because Liv had nothing to go off of for so long.

And Liv had figured Jasper would hate him, that was given. He'd been expecting it to be difficult and maybe even impossible to be close with him again but he wasn't expecting this.

"Hey, you drink a whole bar?" he asks quietly and he has to bite his tongue before tacking on babe. The whole thing doesn't feel quite real.

His hand leaves his knee, unable to contain himself around his ex-lover even after all these years. Liv brushes Jasper's hair back carefully, fingers barely touching his skin in the process but it's enough. He blinks hard, drawing his hand back carefully and he thinks about the way his hand always fit Jasper's cheek so easily before.

"I've been looking all over for you," he tells him and his hand falls back on his knee, afraid to accidentally take advantage of him.

But this isn't the boy he always put on a pedestal, his knight in shining armour and somehow that feels fitting. He knows he spent years ignoring the way that Jasper sometimes looked at things like he wasn't even there. "My fault," he says too softly to be heard but something falls apart inside of him, the tower rebuilding and crumbling again and again. Any out of left field hopes of Jasper somehow still loving him die, he's ruined him.

He's ruined him and he feels a little drop hit his forehead, probably just the rain back for round two. But it's over.

"Come on," he says, "I'm taking you home before you get wet."

But he doesn't stand up yet, can't figure out how to. His knee almost touches Jasper's and the space between them seems so tiny but so large all at once.