Chapter Text
Jasper was feeling selfishly miserable. He'd fucked up everything that had ever been good in his life and this time he truly didn't have a chance to get it back.
It was an interesting feeling, this self pity he felt. A mixture of sorrow and spite and anger.
He was nursing his broken heart with a bottle of cheap whiskey when it happened.
A bang on his door.
It was past midnight, nobody was supposed to disturb him in the small one-room apartment on the wrong side of the Thames, because nobody was supposed to know about it.
Eventually the banging returned, a little more desperate this time, and he picked up the kitchen knife and snuck towards the front door, looking through the peephole to see the one person he truly never have expected to find in a run down apartment complex with dirt and leaves lining the front door.
Technically, he hadn't even found him. Liam had come to Jasper, after all. It had to be him. Jasper had spent long enough staring at that back, the broad shoulders and the little mole in the middle of his neck to memorise it.
He opened the door to the Prince, who turned around immediately. Even in the darkness of the hall his eyes glittered with unshed tears.
"M-May I come in? I k-know it's late a-and I'm not sup-supposed to even know about this place, but can I-" a heaving sob interrupted the Prince and he held a hand over his mouth as if that could hide the redness of his eyes.
"Come in." Jasper's voice sounded pathetically cold in comparison, but he stepped aside and opened the door wide enough for Liam to slip inside before locking it behind him.
"Is this all you can get as a Security Guard of the royal family? I th-think we'll need to l-look into the r-renting market and fix it. O-or I guess ask Parliament t-to do it for us..." on any other day the joke might have been funny. On any day where Liam didn't look like a kicked puppy, with a voice chock full of tears. Jasper put the knife back into its place and sighed, "It's just the first thing I could find after I royally fucked up again. I guess not even Mr. Hill has that much patience. Do you want a cup of tea?"
He'd never offered that to anyone. The word felt weird on his tongue.
Liam looked at him just as critically, "Do you even h-have tea?"
Jasper, ever the fool, shook his head, "I do have whiskey though. Unless you want to talk about why you're here?"
Even the memory seemed to pain Liam, physically agonise him. He looked like he'd been punched, hunching over, fresh tears spilling from his eyes.
Jasper, standing in the kitchen like he'd been ordered but never picked up, didn't know what to do.
So he did what he'd seen in movies, came over and wrapped his arms around Liam. It was awkward, considering who Liam was and who Jasper was and the fact that Liam was taller than him and Jasper an emotional black hole.
But Liam seemed to appreciate it, because his arms in return wrapped tightly around Jasper's middle, squeezing until there was no air left in his lungs.
That's when the sobs began. It wasn't pretty. Crying never was as pretty as it was shown in the movies. No silent sniffles and quiet tears. Instead a bonechilling, hacking kind of sound, like Liam had been drowned and was trying to get the water out of his lungs. Then his legs simply gave in on him, sending the both of them careening to the floor, where they stayed, arms entangled, Liam's face pressed into Jasper's shoulder. He finally really cried, then, his sobs turning wet and a different kind of ugly, the multiple attempts at explaining himself cut short by overwhelmed coughs. Jasper could feel the wetness of his tears through the fabric of his shirt, felt the salty warmth seep into him like freshly cut guilt.
He didn't know what to do, felt the heartbreaking sorrow deep in his soul.
He could feel his own eyes tearing up, like the only thing to do was cry with him, cry in selfish solidarity, but they wouldn't spill. His legs started aching because Liam was sprawled out on them but suddenly letting the Prince go was the last thing on his mind, was something he wouldn't have done even if someone had pointed a gun at his head and demanded it. So he pulled him closer, until Liam's was straddling his thighs, until they could lean against the frame of Jasper's bed, until Jasper could thread his fingers through Liam's hair as he cried, humming the main theme of Harry Potter because he couldn't come up with anything better.
It took a long while until Liam could calm down. First the coughing stopped, then the sobs were replaced by sniffles. Then Jasper could feel Liam picking at a loose thread in Jasper's collar.
After some thought, Jasper whispered, "Do you want to talk about it now?"
The fiddling in his neck stopped, though Jasper blushed when he realised he himself had yet to stop petting Liam's hair, when he himself realised how they must look to any outsiders.
He decided to push that thought away for later. He might not've been the Prince's security detail anymore, but Liam still needed him now.
In answer to his question, the Prince sniffled noisily. Then, after a beat of silence, he said with a voice as quiet and much more hoarse than Jasper's own: "I just want my brother back."
Jasper furrowed his brows. To his knowledge Robert was newly alive and well in the Palace, but he didn't say. He didn't have to, Liam continued after a deep breath, all the while pushing his face deeper into Jasper's shoulder.
"Before he vanished, he was kind and caring and always joking about how I'd make a much better king than him. I never took him seriously. I thought- I hoped, he'd come back eventually. So I never had to face the possibility of having to step up and be someone, like my father. Then dad died. And suddenly I couldn't run anymore."
"You'd rather it be you than your Uncle?" Jasper prompted softly. Liam took up playing with the loose thread again, "My uncle is fun in small doses, but you can't trust him not to run the crown into the ground before the cancer takes him. I wanted to step up, to make a change, be somebody Robert would be proud of. Then he came back. And now... Now it's like he's obsessed with being king. He keeps treating me like a child, like somebody you can't put any responsibility on. And mother keeps encouraging him. Since he's been back, I barely matter to her at all. I'm okay with not having the crown, I just wish Robert would stop accusing me of trying to steal it. I wished he would just love me like he used to again. And maybe not be such a big asshole all of a sudden. Being stuck on an island can change a person, but he acts like it didn't affect him at all, even though he's..."
"What?"
Liam buried his head in Jasper's chest, making himself smaller than he was, spine a near perfect circle.
"Come on," Jasper teased, "You've already called the future king of England an Asshole, how much worse can it get?"
He wasn't sure if the sound Liam made was a laugh or a cry, but he did speak again, voice as silent as the wind, "He feels farther away from me now than when he was dead. It... It feels like my brother died in that plane crash, and whoever came back from the Island is a stranger."
...
They went to bed eventually. Liam had nothing but his jeans, so Jasper leant him a pair of checkered pj's that were too small on him. He thanked Jasper anyways, with red, puffy eyes and a weak, crooked smile. They fell asleep back to back in the bed that suddenly seemed too small. Jasper cursed himself for not having invested in a bigger mattress.
When he woke up, Liam was gone, the pj's folded neatly on his side of the bed. He'd left a note in the kitchen. It felt like they'd done something forbidden, something neither of them should ever even think of again. Jasper didn't like that thought at all, but he read the note, threw it away immediately anyways and washed the pj's without a third thought. He had his own mess to deal with, after all.