Chapter Text
Whatever headache he woke with in Kaz’s office earlier has absolutely nothing on the pounding in his head when his eyes blink open slowly. Everything It feels so slow, like his brain is drenched in molasses. The ache of sleeping on the hardwood floor aches in every cell in his body, only stoking the burn of whatever injuries he’s managed to sustain - including a particularly nasty cut on his forehead - and the telltale signs of hangover. He groans, stretching out the night’s troubles, trying to blink through his grogginess. Bright light peeks through the cracks in Kaz’s blinds. Jesper sits, grunting again at the aches that rumble throughout his body. His throat is dry and scratchy. He coughs in an attempt to rid himself of the discomfort. It’s in vain, and only makes him feel worse. An indication he’s outstayed his welcome, he supposes. It takes another minute or so to get himself off the ground. He brushes his eyes over the room, checking for anything he’s left behind other than his dignity. When he’s clear, he leaves the club, sneaking out through the back doors, only under limited guard now. They let him go with silent nods.
When he reaches the Van Eck Mansion, at long last, he thanks every saint he can think of that he left his keys at the house. The cherry on top of this whole saints forsaken shit show that Jesper has created would be losing the keys to the mansion in the saints forsaken Barrel. Had the night gone according to plan, he had intended to climb back up the wall leading to his window, which was still wide open, waiting for his arrival. He contemplates ringing the doorbell or searching for a spare key. Instead, he moves to enter the way he should have done hours earlier. He flies down the side of the mansion, trenchcoat catching on the wind.
Ungracefully, he tumbles through the still-open window, biting down on the inside of his cheek hard with the impact. He falls into a dirty, broken heap on the floor, tracking mud and dust and specks of dried blood all over the floor of the carpet. Jesper rolls his eyes at himself, cursing himself for being a chronic catastrophe (Kaz’s words, long ago) and pushes himself off the ground. It’s a miracle Wylan hasn’t found him yet; he’s due back this morning, and he might already be back. Jesper hopes that he’s sleeping. He hopes that Wylan has had a far more pleasant night than Jesper has, lost to his dreams and warm sheets and the promise that the next day everything will be fine. Jesper bites back the sting in his throat at the thought of ruining it; his heart pounds faster in his chest, but a burden to Wylan, he refuses to be any longer.
Light is bursting through grey clouds that seemed to hang over Ketterdam with some kind of stubborn vendetta. Jesper knows the morning would soon be up. His time would be up. Huffing, Jesper shucks his coat off, hanging it on the door. He glances at himself in the mirror, shocked at the state of himself. Most of it is surface level upon a first real look at himself in hours, the pain in his head and legs has yet to subside and there are grazes on his arms that tingle, it’s nothing he won’t be able to hide with some carefully chosen clothing, but the mark on his head is going to be a little harder to explain to his lover. The cut isn’t deep, but it looks nasty, the chasm in his skin growing purple and blue and caked in dirt and dried blood.
He heads gingerly to the bathroom, trying as hard as he can to maintain an air of stealth and avoiding staff. He moves fast, noting to take extra care as he moves past Wylan’s room. He’ll tell him, he will tell him. But Wylan, seeing him like this, would take it more seriously than it is; he’d fuss over him, and Jesper shudders at the thought, it is anything less than he would deserve right now.
The bathroom he shares with Wylan is at the end of the corridor where both of their rooms are. It feels like a second and an eternity in the time it takes him to get from his own room into the bathroom, and the handle is just within reach when-
“Jesper?” The sound of Wylan’s sleep-addled voice sends sharp pangs straight through his heart, and he stops still in his tracks. His grasp tightens on the towel in his hands, soft under his fingers, though he is feeling anything but. Jesper inhales deeply, unwilling to let too much time pass between the words spoken. He can fix this. He can fix this, and after he fixes it, Wylan will never be left with the mess that Jesper makes. Eyes shut, Jesper exhales and hates the facade that falls over him so easily.
“Just heading into the shower, darling!” he says, desperately forcing a smile to cover his voice, “I won’t be a moment!” He doesn’t dare take a glance at Wylan.
Anything that Wylan has to say in response to him is muffled by the sharp clap of the door shutting behind Jesper. Locking the door behind him, Jesper rests on it, throwing his head back against the hardwood of the door, welcoming the dull thud of pain the impact sends through the back of his head, even as brief distraction. He inhales and exhales a bitter mixture of relief and guilt. A word from Wylan, and he is sent spiralling, saints, this is gonna kill him. He hopes his excuse is enough to tide him over for this little while, although the sting of another lie sends another pang through his heart. Half hysterically, Jesper thinks about how many more little lies like swords can push through his heart before he bleeds out at his own hand. He’s not strong enough to transform them into something else yet. Into truths.
The initial cold burn of the shower is welcome, cooling against his skin. Under the water, the night’s mistakes wash away with an ease that Jesper cannot fathom. Dirt and blood and sweat swirl down the drain, falling away as if they had never been there, and Jesper is half tempted to act as such. It’s preservation, torture of the worst kind.
He is supposed to be better now; he’s supposed to not want this. The itch under his skin drives him to want, drives him crazy, drives him to the familiarity of a feeling he has never known anywhere else. Thrill and risk and trouble and connection all wrapped up in a pair of dice, in the bullets in his revolvers. In cards and coins and chips.
He examines what tender skin the mud and blood leave behind. For the most part, grazes on his arms and legs where he has definitely suffered worse; however, the cut on his forehead is going to take a little bit more. It’s not deep, but the chasm in the skin is obvious and glaring red. Bruises, now a deep, ugly purple and black, are starting to bloom up, and Jesper truly looks how he feels. Damaged and broken. A cracked vinyl that splits layer by layer, the sour note in a flowering chord. He sinks back down against the bed, dressed in a brilliantly blue cardigan that he’s certain Wylan got for him, though he swears that Wylan must wear it more than he does at this point, and elephant trousers that his Da had brought from home, swirling patterns covering every inch of the material in all sorts of colours.
The awful feeling returns, sticking to his bones like glue, that even the most comfortable, most nostalgic of clothing would be unable to dissipate it. More often than not, Jesper notices the absence of the feeling, more than its presence. It clings inside him more and more when it is too quiet and too much, exploding out of him and yet contained more than anyone has ever realised. Before he lets himself wallow for too long, Jesper gets to work patching up his forehead. It feels like it takes an eternity. Focus has always come too slowly to him, and left too hastily, that he wonders whether it's like this for everyone. Whether anyone is truly capable of not going mad with it like he does. He hopes it’s just the cuts and bruises.
He knows it isn’t. Under the surface, they run deep, like cracks in china glued back together too many times.
Carefully, Jesper walks over to the mirror, fishing out the first aid kit the staff had insisted they kept in each room, just in case of emergency, Master Fahey. It had surprised him to be referred to as master and, in return, insisted the staff call him Jesper if they would be so kind as to share their names.
In the middle of applying the first plaster, a knock raps at the door. A rhythmic little thing that Jesper really should have recognised, but because his mouth moves faster than his brain and all his focus is huddled in the split in skin at his temple, Jesper absentmindedly says. “Come in-”
He doesn’t turn to look and see who’s joined him, because he’s almost done and he’s just cleaned it and it stings like a bitch and if he could just get-
“Hey, Jes,” Wylan starts, “I just wanted to check…you were being a bit stra-” Wylan’s breath hitches, and he sounds a bit strangled. “Jesper, what in the name of the saints happened to your face?” Wylan stammers a bit through his sentence before catching eyes with Jesper in the mirror, and the bruise that continues to grow darker where he tries to bring his flesh back together. Jesper feels his entire body go still, held in stasis because now he is out of time.
Jesper lets his hands fall from the cut slowly, the plaster flutters to the ground as the silence between them grows. Wylan’s thoughts are going a mile a minute; the air around them sounds frantic and confused. Jesper’s heart speeds up in his chest, and he finds himself struggling to keep his breath from catching. A thick lump that tastes like fear and feels like disappointment is taking up all the space in his throat. Fear, a friend no longer, perhaps.
He tries to take another deep breath. The air he exhales feels thin, as if each breath continues to feed the lump in his throat, and he is certain it is large enough to suffocate on, large enough to kill him. The speedier arrival of this particular conversation doesn’t help. Turning towards Wylan, he isn’t shocked to see worry written into every line on his face, confusion accompanying it.
“Wylan…” Jesper starts, trailing off. He doesn’t know where to begin or how to.
Wylan is striding over to him, where he is sitting in front of the vanity and falls to his knees by Jesper. His eyes are filled with stark determination, Jesper feels useless. He rests a palm on Jesper’s cheek, soft and so welcome, and Jesper melts into it, all the emotion of the past few days, the past few years threatening to bubble up and swallow him whole with it. He looks up not in Jesper’s eyes, but at his injury, assessing, worrying. Jesper watches him, not realising that he’s holding his breath. Wylan seems to notice too and locks his bright blue eyes on Jesper’s stormy greys. Hesistantly, Wylan brings his other hand up, hovering around where the cut is. It’s a question without words, and Jesper crumbles.
Let me help you.
How could he possibly let him?
“No, honestly, merchling, I’ve almost got it,” Jesper dismisses, too quickly, too much to overcompensate for what he’s really feeling.
“Almost got what, Jes? Tell me what happened,” More concern seeps into Wylan’s words, and before Jesper can realise it, Wylan is taking his hands off and away from his face and moving to the first aid box to get a new plaster for him. Painfully gently, Wylan replaces one hand on his cheek to keep him steady, and it burns. Jesper hates it. Fussed over like a child, incapable, unreliable, a liability.
There is comfort and love always in the way Wylan touches him, but everything is fast again; it feels like Jesper’s brain is trying to spread itself across the room. The pounding in his chest speeds up, impossibly faster - and much like everything else he does - Jesper does before he thinks, flinching away from Wylan’s touch. Too much, too much, too much.
Often, Jesper forgets that cause has effect. He is sent tumbling back on the chair and falls catastrophically to the ground, where he had tumbled back into the mansion not an hour before. The impact forces him to land on his side, startling the bruises on his arms and legs, sending fresh bursts of pain thrumming through him. Still fraught, he carefully pushes himself up onto his arms so he’s sitting facing Wylan, who has shuffled backwards of Jesper, still on his knees, obviously unnerved. He sits patiently regardless, still with the intent more than anything else to help Jesper.
Exasperated, exhausted, Jesper looks at him, holding back tears with more restraint than he thought he had in him tonight, today, “Wy, sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-” The words falter on his tongue, sour because he did mean to. He takes another meagre breath, but it does nothing to shrink the tension in his throat, and his heart only calms down minutely.
Wylan hums, taking one of the hands he’s left to rest on his legs, and stretching it out to Jesper, giving him a choice on whether he takes it or not. Staring at it for a moment, shyly, he takes Wylan’s hand in his and feels his pulse calm down further. Wylan shuffles towards him, close enough to comfort, but not enough to hurt.
“You’ve nothing to apologise for, my love,” Wylan assures him. Jesper bitterly thinks the opposite, and he knows Wylan will too when he finally hears what he has to say. Shaking his head, Jesper starts to turn away, and Wylan squeezes his hand even tighter. Jesper tuts because, of course, he doesn’t deserve this. The pressure is welcome, no matter how much pain it flares up once again in his wrist. The silence is heavy, and Jesper still cannot bring himself to meet Wylan’s eye.
“Jes, will you let me take a look at it?” Wylan asks gently, “Please?” The sweet tone of his voice, the genuine tone of his voice, makes whatever fight Jesper has left in him retreat, although the lump in his throat is stubborn, unyielding and present. Without meeting his eye, Jesper nods. Wylan takes their joint hands and rubs his thumb along the bone of Jesper’s cheek, and he wants to cry.
Wylan gets to work immediately, and Jesper sits in silence while he does it, letting gentle calloused hands move over the rough skin of Jesper’s face. He whispers quiet praises with each touch, apologies for where it stings, quiet curses in place of the shock he still can’t hide; guilt settles deeper and deeper in Jesper’s stomach with each one. He loves Wylan. He flutters with it. It feels like warm, bright light flooding in through an open window, it tastes of Wylan’s favourite tea and smells like smoke. It feels like hell to know he’s thrown it all away on a gambling table. That as much as he loves Wylan, it doesn’t cure the itch under his skin, all-consuming and burning and constant.
But Jesper’s hands were made for destruction, and Wylan’s were made to press love into the darkest places. How dark was too dark?
Wylan is finished before Jesper realises, placing a sweet kiss in his hair, before kneeling to look at Jesper once more. Finally, Jesper meets his gaze, and, finally, the dam breaks. Soundlessly, tears are flooding profoundly out of his eyes, and Wylan is gathering him up in his arms tenderly. Jesper presses his face into Wylan’s shoulder, sniffling and tears pouring out of his eyes like rain from a thundercloud.
He doesn’t know how long they sit there for, long enough that Jesper begins to calm down, still clinging to Wylan, grateful for the weight of him, solid and steadfast. It feels good.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Jesper whispers.
Wylan tilts his head, confused, "Hurt me? Look at me, love, I’m fine. I’m fine.” Silence drags on further between them. The room is getting brighter around them, even as clouds outside cover every inch of sky that they might set their eyes on.
“Is this okay?” Wylan asks, still holding Jesper. Jesper nods mutely, sinking into Wylan like molasses again, grateful even so that Wylan lets him. He cherishes it, feeling with abhorrent certainty that soon, he won’t get to have this. Jesper doesn’t speak yet. He shuts his eyes, but there is no comfort to be had there, none that he should continue to indulge in. All there is are flashing lights and dice, the pour of sweet, rich wine and hope in a bet.
“Jesper?” Wylan prompts.
Jesper only hums in response, terrified that letting go of Wylan leaves space for every rough sensation that drags over each thought that will take him and swallow him underneath.
“Jes, can you sit up for me?” Wylan tries. Shaking, he obliges him and puts his face in the palm of Wylan’s hand, which he takes gently. He looks at Jesper with something that isn’t quite a smile yet, but the hints of it are there nevertheless.
“Jesper, hey, look at me, please?" Jesper blinks once before staring up at Wylan with steely grey eyes, trying to hide in the cracks. Failing. "Could you try telling me what’s going on?” Wylan tries.
“Wylan, I’m sorry, it’s fine, it’s nothing,” the lie comes too easily on Jesper’s tongue without it ever meaning to slip out. He’s fully intending on telling Wylan everything, but he can’t help but try one last-ditch attempt to hide, not a long shot, but a bet on a losing dog. "Nothing, I swear." Empty promises, another in a long list of many lies that fall off his tongue too sweetly, stupidly. He doesn't care that the wobble in his voice gives him a way, Jesper is nothing if not a creature of habit.
“Jesper, don’t lie,” Wylan says dryly, “This is not nothing, and I don’t know how to help unless you tell me what’s going on”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t even know why I’m crying,” Jesper says, almost snapping, and his response almost breaks on another sob. “It’s ridiculous, I fucked up, you shouldn’t be comforting me.”
He feels pathetic. He wants to shove Wylan back for his own good and gather him up all at once, holding on tight and never letting him go.
He doesn’t even know what he’s apologising for at this rate. For being a colossal saintsforsaken mess, for being a terrible gambler who can’t help but go back high on hope, eager for a thrill or anything to come on the nights when he tries his luck. His heart picks up again, he knows he’s doing this on purpose, but he can’t help it, cannot help it. He’s not in control anymore; it’s a battle that he keeps trying to win, yet at the heart of it, any hope that he might finally wrench it back from the trouble that’s driving him will end up being the death of him.
“Jesper, stop apologising.” Another apology catches itself on Jesper’s tongue, tamped down by the slight exasperation in Wylan’s face. He needs to tell him. He can’t bear the thought of it. “What happened?”
Jesper, perhaps for the first time in his life, finally begins with the truth of it. Losing the taint of light humour and nonchalance.
“I got in a fight,” Jesper starts, “I don’t remember the details, I might have been drunk,” guilt falls on his shoulder like rain, soaking into his skin.
Jesper feels sick. Every awful feeling that he woke with comes rushing back at once, nesting in his lungs and stomach, and he is so deeply unnerved by it.
Wylan inhales sharply in front of him, stock still and processing, “Okay,” he whispers, and it’s so painfully patient that Jesper feels himself go even more manic, if that is even possible. He doesn’t exhale. “Can you remember who, or why?”
“I was, o-out,” Jesper stammers, “gambling in the barrel.” It’s out, into the world now, and there is nothing Jesper can do but face the consequences. He feels dirty, he feels wrong all over and wants, craves to fall back into Wylan’s arms again. Wylan is thinking, Jesper can see the cogs turning in his brain, but he can’t for the life of him figure out what it is. He squirms uncomfortably and keeps talking, aching to explain himself, for some grace.
“It wasn’t, it wasn’t on purpose,” he says, anxiously, too quickly. Wylan’s eyes stay fixed on him, stark blue and filled with something that Jesper can’t quite name. “I just, it was so quiet, and the house was so big, and it felt like everything was everywhere and I know I shouldn’t have and we had a deal and -”
“Jes, stop.” When Wylan cuts off his spirally, he does so with impossible kindness in his voice. Jes can’t bear the shame of it, eyes darting to the space between them on the floor.
“Jes, it’s okay.”
Jesper sobs. Then Wylan is holding him again, and he’s so broken by it. How is it okay?
“I don’t know why I can’t stop,” Jesper whispers hoarsely, “I don’t know why I can’t control it.”
Wylan smiles small, sympathetically at Jesper, “I don’t think this is something that just stops, love.” Wylan’s tone has something in it, sweet and tangible and impossible that Jesper can’t fathom. It sounds like forgiveness, given freely and without condition; it feels like maybe Wylan has known all along that Jesper was broken and that maybe he doesn’t care.
Regardless, something simmers in Jesper’s chest, akin to rage but only at himself, “So, I’m just gonna be a mess for the rest of my life? Leaving behind a trail of messes for other people to clear up because I’m too broken to?” He sniffs. Pathetic, he thinks.
“Jes…”
“I know what I am, Wy,” I am what I am, Jesper’s words echo bitterly in the back of his mind, a terrible gamble and a fantastic shot. How is it that the two can be so inexplicably linked and yet he miscalculates so poorly? Acts on instinct, impulsive for quick moments of momentary relief. “I’m broken and I should never have brought this on you, not when you didn’t know fully what you were getting into with me,” Jesper continues meekly, “you deserve better than me.”
Wylan huffs out a breath incredulously, breaking his contact with Jesper briefly, “Of course I knew what I was getting into with you, look at how we met!”
Jesper exhales, the edge of a laugh catching the underside of it. They have come a long way from that night in the Barrel, the six of them gathered and Wylan introduced as their insurance. Jesper remembers how scraggily he felt, living from one second to next, one shot to another.
“We aren’t perfect, Jes,” Wylan says, “Look at everything we’ve been through, look at everything that you’ve been through."
Jesper’s breath hitches, “It is my fault. I don’t know how to make it stop.” He feels like a broken record, saying the same things over and over, piecing them together in so many different ways and not being able to get them to fit. "Saints know that everything I've done or been through I brought on myself."
“I’m not asking for you to make it stop, Jes,” Wylan hushes, “that’s not how this works. What I will ask is that you talk to me when you feel like this...that you'll let me help you through this.”
Like this is a feeling that seems to never end. “It - I don’t want to make you put up with me, I can’t - can’t control, I can’t focus, saints.”
“Ghezen, Jesper, I am not putting up with you,” Wylan replies fiercely, and there’s a storm about to blow in those blue eyes. “We can't help who we are. I am choosing you.”
Jesper pulls up short, stunned into true stillness, speechlessness. Chosen, him, what a joke.
He shucks it off, “Wylan, I messed it all up, all the loans and the debt and everything, you shouldn’t have to comfort me, you should be telling me to go. Look at everything you’ve been through, only to trade them for my problems. You should be furious,” He doesn’t understand why, he can’t process it.
“Saints. Jes, how can I be furious at you?” Wylan asks, “You have a problem and you have been through so much, and I am not going to leave you because you think that you’re too broken to be loved.”
Jesper is silent.
“Do you love me any less? Knowing I can’t read, knowing who my father is? Would you leave me because of it?” Wylan is pushing, and Jesper squirms.
Jesper looks at him, disbelieving, “Saints, Wylan, of course not, but this isn’t like that-,”
“Ghezen help me, Jesper, if you say that you did this to yourself, I will lose it,” Wylan deadpans.
Jesper is quiet.
“Will you leave me? Knowing what you know, knowing the things I kept secret?” Wylan is fiercely intent; his blue eyes are bluer now, sharp and bright.
Jesper shakes his head furiously. “No,” he replies quietly, resolutely.
“So, don’t you dare go around thinking that I would leave you, that for a moment I am angry at you for the things that you can’t help,” Wylan is earnest, profound in a way that Jesper was unsure he would ever experience from another person. “I choose you, Jes, I choose to help you, just like you help me and help others.”
“I will not leave you,” Wylan whispers, ever earnest.
That properly cleaves Jesper’s chest in two. I will not leave you. It is a balm to the wounds inside his chest, easing them every so slightly. When he says it, it sounds brand new. They are not words Jesper hasn’t heard before; they are words spoken between every hopeful new lover, more often than not, promises too easily broken. But when Wylan speaks them, it's like gold dripping from his tongue. It holds in it Wylan’s stubbornness, his endless care, profound, earnest honesty that Jesper never in his life thought he would be able to find.
“You have an addiction, Jesper, but you also have people around you. You might do it to hurt yourself,” Jesper winces, ”but it doesn’t make you any less deserving of forgiveness.” Of love hangs in the air between them. At least, Jesper hopes it does.
He can’t grasp forgiveness this simple, that comes generously and unconditionally, with the promise of help and more where he needs it. It alleviates him. It startles him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers again, unsure of what else to say. “I want to try,” and he really, really does.
“I’m right here with you, love.” Wylan kisses Jesper’s temple, where plasters hold his skin together, and this kiss holds him together.
I will not leave you.