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When you live long enough, you slowly lose the ability to be surprised. Monochrome-grey days stretch monotonously along the line of life: no end, only a beginning that makes no sense.
Jasper doesn’t complain, of course.
He knows how to amuse himself or, at the very least, keep himself entertained.
You mustn’t let the flow of time take away taste, purpose, meaning from existence. Everything must have meaning.
What meaning there was in letting some kid with one of the dumbest names Jasper had heard in the past couple of decades crawl into his head — nobody knows.
Come to think of it, a hundred years of life has left so much useless junk in his brain that anyone who tried to get inside his thoughts would immediately sink, drown in the endless stream of memories and the regrets inevitably tied to them—endless variations of actions and outcomes that never were and never would be. Good thing Guy wasn’t particularly skilled at telepathy. Jasper would really hate to see him drown. He almost pitied him, almost in a human way, as if something human still remained in him after all this time.
As they drive home, sitting in the dim interior of the car, Jasper tilts his head slightly, resting his chin on his palm. He pretends not to feel how a pair of blue eyes follow his movements with concentrated attention. He has to force himself to push away instantly the mechanical, uninvited thought that it would take him only three seconds if he ever decided to rip those eyes out.
He would never do it.
It’s just a line of thought honed into reflex. A habit of considering all possible scenarios. A side effect of disappointments repeated over years.
Jasper knows well how to deal with people. After all, he used to be one himself. But trusting people—never. Objectively speaking, you shouldn’t trust anyone.
He always expects a knife in the back, so he’s ready to strike first at any second.
Guy, from his side, looks as though he’s constantly bracing for a blow. His whole body tenses, he listens for other people’s thoughts, his gaze is always too intent — he’s afraid of depriving himself of the chance to dodge.
Guy has the look of a beaten dog: everyone feels sorry, but no one is willing to keep him or remember him for long. Pity, but never enough for real love. And that stirs up a nearly forgotten curiosity in Jasper, rouses him in a twisted sense—even for someone who has lived more than a century—when you want to hide a thought not only from others but from yourself, pretend nothing ever happened.
Jasper is very good at pretending.
In truth, he hates circling around things, hates being patient, hates letting someone rummage around in his head. He must stay on guard constantly — the forced price for pleasant company.
The strategy is painfully simple: show one thing, hide another. Not that difficult, all in all.
The main thing is to concentrate. Not to shut down the mind, but to hold it at a single point long enough for imagination to build clear, tidy images. Decide ahead of time what the curious outsider is allowed to see and what he is not.
He recalls tending to Guy’s wound a few days ago. He throws that memory right under his nose, like a bone tossed to a obedient watchdog. Lets him believe he stumbled upon the thought on his own, completely by accident, even though all the scenery had been arranged in advance to the millimeter.
Forehead split; a drop of blood runs from the temple almost to the eye until Jasper wipes it away with a cotton pad. The sensation is as if someone had managed to melt rubies. The smell is familiarly metallic, it cools and slightly prickles the nostrils, and he so-so-so wants to know what that blood tastes like. Just a drop — just out of curiosity.
Startled, in the present Guy only swallows involuntarily, exhales loudly, presses his palms to his knees as if trying to wipe off the dirt left by someone else’s overly detailed memories.
“Something wrong?” the look is straightforward, the curiosity nearly sincere.
Details, details, details. Jasper never misses anything — his eyes cling to another’s face, trying to catch even the tiniest, seemingly insignificant changes. He wants to study the expression closely, to imprint every little line in his memory. Before cameras appeared, it was a necessary measure: to keep something in your mind, you had to strain your attention and your memory, stare without looking away until the image burned itself into your retina like an invisible stamp — and even then the memories remained subjective, unreliable, almost ephemeral. Now a couple of swipes across a phone screen is enough to keep the image until you decide to delete it. Jasper cannot shake the persistent feeling that a trinket like a phone will not be enough to capture Guy as he is now: there is too much that can be missed. He has to rely solely on his own sight.
Guy’s eyes are watery, his upper lashes are stuck together, his heartbeat ticks a little faster than usual. He tries to breathe quieter, tries to steady the unruly rhythm before answering:
“No, just thinking.” No mind-reading necessary — an obvious lie.
“Really? About what? Care to share?”
He twitches his shoulder, playing indifference while his gaze darts from detail to detail, desperate to avoid meeting Jasper’s again, to avoid brushing against another mind. He stalls for time before falling into the same trap once more. In Romania they’d say: “a cădea în aceeași capcană”; in America they’d call Guy an idiot. Jasper would call him charming.
“Maybe later,” he clears his throat, nearly choking to answer as quickly as possible.
“As you wish, I won’t insist.”
In imagination Guy is much more pliant: he looks straight into Jasper’s eyes, does not look away, does not hide. He leans closer, offers his neck so that the pulse is felt right at the fingertips, like repeated jolts of current. Jasper releases that almost tangible electric tension by running his hand through Guy’s fluffy hair. He slips his fingers into the unruly soft curls while Guy, still staring at him and with his mouth slightly open, exhales almost inaudibly: “Please.”
Guy is pathetic and sweet at the same time. He could snap his neck if he wanted, he could drink all his blood right here and now, he could give him a whole world.
“You’re terrible at begging. Not convincing at all. If you want something, you must voice your desires more specifically, you understand?”
“Please,” he leans even closer, offering his head to the palm, speaking clearer, almost sobbing, “please, bite me.”
“It’s going to hurt,” Jasper warns. Without waiting for a nod, he leans in so close that his breath brushes Guy’s skin — ticklish for a second; the instinct is to flinch, pull away, but he can’t move.
At first he only touches his collarbone with his lips, then drags the tip of his nose along the neck, still keeping his hand on the back of Guy’s head, nips the earlobe — only tasting. Reassuring.
Guy smells of dust and rain, of rides on the London Underground, of life, of something long forgotten and lost, yet profoundly important. He’s barely breathing, says not a word, as if afraid to scare the moment away, yet his whole body shows how much he wants more. He flinches slightly, leans into even the slightest touches like a stray street cat suddenly taken in, begging only to be petted.
And Jasper pets him.
He doesn’t refuse: he runs his palm down from the nape to the throat, lightly nips the skin above a pulsing vein, then draws his tongue along it. He slips his hands under the grey cotton tee, cold fingers tracing down the spine so that Guy twitches involuntarily before pressing closer again.
“Come on then, ask again.”
“Enough.” Guy breathes in ragged bursts, presses his back to the seat, his eyes burning into Jasper’s face as if he could incinerate him with a stare.
The vision, cut off by the sudden remark, collapses at once as if dissolved in the air. Only a faint sweet scent and a tingling at the fingertips remain.
“Beg your pardon?”
“That’s gross,” Jasper cuts in immediately.
Reality is even better than imagined scenes. Jasper listens to the quickened heartbeat, catches every breath, ready to break it all down into notes to compose the single symphony in the world that could make one suddenly choke.
“Is it? I thought you liked it.”
“That wasn’t me.”
“I trust I don’t need to remind you that you’re not the only one capable of reading minds, right? Before wandering into someone’s head, you should ask permission, you know? It can get uncomfortable in there.”
They don’t teach that kind of discussion in law school, they don’t put it in the books on the library shelves where Guy interned, they don’t talk about it in lectures, — and predictably, he capitulates. Exhales loudly, gives up. Now he no longer rubs the fabric of his trousers with his palms but wraps them around his elbows, as if seeking internal support. Then, turning his gaze to the window, he whispers:
“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” Softly said, almost inaudible, as if apologizing to the air, looking lost somewhere off to the side, trying to hide from Jasper’s studying gaze.
And it seems as if it becomes hard to let the air out of his lungs, because that image overlays so wonderfully, almost artistically, on the other: fragile and breakable, desperately needing someone. Desperately needing him.
Jasper will crawl into his head and his heart, slip into the deepest thoughts, sink sharp claws into the soul and take root there, wrap around him entirely — from head to toe, like ivy — because Jasper truly does know how to entertain himself, and Guy is the most fascinating entertainment he’s found in the last hundred years.