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Spending more time with Eva leads Jasper to learn things he never thought to consider before.
Despite knowing her feeding preferences and even watching—with a little more fascination than he'd like to admit—as she drank from Bailey's wrist at the Maharani, he’s never paused to wonder how she procures her meals when she stays in Griffith Park. The first night Jasper spends at her haven—staying over long past midnight for one of their occult study dates—he learns how she usually feeds. She has a well-stocked and well-organized fridge of bagged blood: both clean and drugged, for feeding and ritual purposes alike, each plasma bag neatly labelled and lined up on the metal shelves. Eva tells him that she has a supplier in the city, that she knows people who can help her get what she needs.
On a work table in one corner of her haven, she’s made a makeshift kitchen with a hot plate and a kettle positioned right alongside her silver cauldron and ritual tools. She always reheats her blood before drinking it. She drinks out of delicate floral patterned tea cups and old coffee mugs and when Jasper asks her why, she simply shrugs.
“It helps me feel alive,” is Eva’s only answer.
He learns over time that that’s why she does a lot of things. It's why she takes drugs; why she bothers to change into pajamas before climbing into bed when the sunrise approaches; why she still listens to her favorite songs on vinyl records; why her haven is decorated with string lights and potted plants and plush carpets.
It’s why she walks in the rain.
And he learns slowly just how much she loves the rain. She’s grown fond of Los Angeles during her many years here and she loves her home in Griffith Park, but sometimes she talks about missing New York, about missing the rain and the snow and the sounds of the city.
And once—just once—Eva mentions dancing in the rain at Woodstock, when the skies opened and shut down the music for hours. Jasper doesn’t ask who she danced with, though he has a decent guess. She’ll tell him about Katya when she’s ready and he won’t push her for answers before then.
After a particularly bad night out with the coterie—one that leaves her feeling small and desperate and hopeless—Jasper pulls up a soundscape on his phone. He put it together as a gift for her, another secret project he could work on until it was exactly right. The final mix is rain on pavement and rooftops and windows, blended with the faint noise of traffic and steady footsteps, all underscored by an occasional rumble of distant thunder. He plays it for her, letting the ambient noise fill the room, and Eva nearly cries when she realizes what he’s given her. She lies curled up in his arms on their shared bed in the basement of the Maharani and they listen to the soothing rhythm of the rain until they fall asleep together.
It’s saved in his phone as “Eva’s New York” and he pulls it up whenever she feels overwhelmed and helpless. It can’t replace the rain—the smell and the chill and the sensation of water on skin—but the sound still helps drag Eva out of the darkness on her worst nights, especially when it's paired with his hands stroking her back and his voice whispering reassurances in her ear.
Over time, Jasper also learns the little quirks and changes in her behavior that signal when she’s high—she talks a little faster than normal, the words falling more freely from her lips. She leans into him and plays with his hands without thinking about it, a dreamy look in her eyes and an ease about her that always makes him smile.
Jasper learns that Eva is a cuddler and a hand-holder and a generally tactile being, even when she’s sober. She loves sharing his space and playing with his hands. When he sheds a layer of his armor for the first time in front of her, she does not shrink away from the dark veins that crisscross his pale gray skin. Instead, she traces each line, pausing when she reaches the sleeve of his t-shirt, to look up and press a tender kiss to his lips as her fingers trail across his arm. She’s fascinated by all the angles of his body and loves exploring them, loves finding every spot that makes him sigh and growl at her touch.
And Jasper discovers, almost by accident, that he loves it, too.
He’s grown to hate his body over the past five years, learned to avoid touch and intimacy before they were even offered—those things aren't what this body was built for, after all. This form was meant for violence and terror and secrecy, not gentleness, not affection. But through Eva's eyes and hands, he learns to hate himself a little less. Her soft curves somehow think his sharp edges are something beautiful and he's never enjoyed arguing with her judgement.
As they grow closer, Jasper slowly learns just how much he craves her touch. Once Eva adjusts her wards to let him in—an honor that he does not take for granted—he finds himself wanting to reach out to her for no other reason than to feel her skin against his. He wants to hold her hand, run his clawed fingers through her soft hair, envelope her in his long arms and never let her go.
He feels as close to blessed as the damned ever can when he realizes she wants him even closer than he dared to hope.
On the first few nights after their first kiss, they meet up to keep researching the ley lines together. Their study sessions start with each of them on opposite ends of the couch in his haven, but they creep closer together over time—always under the thin pretense of looking more closely at a detailed illustration or needing help with a difficult translation—until they eventually end up nearly on top of each other, two bodies sharing one space. Eva is the best kind of distraction, and at her prompting, their books end up abandoned on the floor, left half-read as they tumble into each other.
When they don’t forego their books in favor of making out on the couch, Jasper learns practical things, too. Eva teaches him basic rituals and magical theory and the general principles of how the ley lines work. She helps him study languages and he learns that she knows far more than him, but that she is very willing to share her knowledge with such an eager student.
Along the way, he somehow learns that Eva loves his hands, too. She takes every opportunity to touch them—reaching out to lace her fingers through his as they both lean over his desk to read an ancient tome together or pressing a kiss to his knuckles after they get bruised in another fight. She loves letting him run his fingers through her hair; loves reading the lines of his palms when she’s high; loves the way he touches and teases her in bed once they take that step. She loves his hands and everything they still seem to know how to do even after he thought his body had forgotten long ago.
And his hands learn new things as well. She teaches him how to draw some of the more basic blood sorcery runes, ones for protection and security, ones to keep him safe. And after spending time in Eva's haven, he unconsciously starts to pick up on how she prepares her meals, mimicking the steps he witnesses her perform with the practiced ease of decades. For her, it's simple muscle memory, but he has always been a quick study.
He learns how to braid hair, too, somewhere along the way. He looks at it like a puzzle—one where his reward for solving it is a soft smile and a kiss on the cheek—learns the right sequence of deft movements to turn all of Eva’s flowing white hair into neatly woven designs. She reads aloud as he works, her voice lilting around Latin and Greek and ancient Sumerian, translating as she goes. He loves the way she hums her approval—lighter and smoother than his own gravelly purr—as she sits with her back to him, her body cradled between his legs as he stretches out on the couch.
Eventually, he learns about her past in bits and pieces, left like precious bread crumbs for him to follow over time.
She loved strawberry ice cream when she was still alive. She was in the Peace Corps once, a lifetime ago. She saw so much at Woodstock as she swayed and cheered along with the crowd at a music festival that no one in attendance knew would go down in history. She even plays her favorite songs for him on the tiny record player she keeps in her haven, her small vinyl collection stacked carefully in an old milk crate that's tucked in next to her bookcase.
Jasper tracks down some of his old favorites on newer vinyls—songs he listened to in life, but hasn’t sought out in years—just so he can share them with her, too. She treasures each gift and they listen to them together, sprawled out on the floor of her haven, letting the music wash over them in the still pre-dawn hours.
On one memorable evening, he learns in rapid succession that Eva likes to dance, that she likes to dance with him, that he still can’t dance, and that she doesn’t really care. So Jasper dances, poorly and with a lot of awkward fumbling, but Eva laughs and pulls him close for a kiss and he decides it’s not so terrible, after all.
But even with everything he learns, there are still obvious questions he cannot bring himself to ask—when and where was she turned? Was she alive when she went to Woodstock? What did she look like before her curse? When did she come to L.A. and where was she before? Where did she grow up? Does she miss it? Why “my crimson petal?” Why Katya? Why… a lot of things?
Jasper has guesses for some and no idea on others, but he does his best not to pry. He leaves some things as puzzles to unravel over time and waits for her to offer up the solutions at her own pace. He's sure she'll guide him when she's ready. Until then, he'll wait and wonder. After all, he’s never been one to ask for hints when he could spend hours untangling the knot on his own.
Still, even as Eva teaches him about herself and her past—through words and looks, through soft caresses and unconscious habits—Jasper comes to better understand not only who he is now, but who he could be in the future.
He’s spent so long alone—five years of lonely nights curled up like a feral animal, licking his wounds and snarling at anyone who came near. Now he’s learning just how much he likes waking up next to someone when the sun finally sets, how much he likes seeing signs of her presence dotted around his formerly empty haven. Eva is a patient teacher—full of forgiveness and encouragement and gentle reassurance—and each night he spends with her reminds him that perhaps, with time and work and her hand held tight in his, he could learn to be better than the monster he has always been.