|
It starts with a text from Jane to Jack. Her Jack, not Vorpal, her twin and once her other half. if i said i have two pints of cookie dough ice cream and a 2-liter of root beer, would that be enough to get you over here?
depends on if I'm allowed to spike the root beer.
spike just yours or mine as well? A pause, a moment later: please lets do a talk
just mine unless you want some. what's your address
She texts it, and a couple useful landmarks for finding the place. see you soon?
sure it takes a while, you know how the buses are, but he sends her a text when he's standing in front of her building.
And she comes down in her pajama pants and slippers to get him and bring him up to her third-floor apartment. Her hair's mussed, and she's got a bandage on her hand (bad luck struck while cooking dinner, thanks Billie), but she seems...a little less tense than at the sandwich shop.
He's in work boots and jeans with torn knees, and his leather jacket, with a shabby backpack slung over one shoulder. He might be tenser than she is, and looks around as they go up the stairs, taking the place in. "So...how're you?"
The apartment is small, a one-bedroom little thing with lots of clutter about. There's a bookshelf with a few hardcover books on it (and a few softcover novels), none of which look like they're regularly read. There's a couch and a coffee table and a lazy-boy recliner. The kitchen smells of some sort of dinner, nothing fancy. "I'm...eh. It's been a rough sort of a day, but I'll be alright. Floats first, then we talk, or...?" Seeing how tense he is, it resonates and puts her on edge. Echoes of the past, when they shared an emotional state. Self-consciously, she picks up a sweater draped over the couch, tossing it into the bedroom before he can comment on her untidiness.
His gaze rests on the bookshelf, and then the clutter, but he doesn't comment, instead resting his backpack by the door. He takes his boots off too, if it's clear it's a 'shoes off' sort of apartment. "I'd rather just fucking get it over with, if you've got something to say."
She bristles. "Fine. Sit down, it'll probably be easier to take that way."
"Janey -" he starts, and then frowns, in concern. "What will be easier to take that way?"
She takes a deep breath in slowly, and then out again before she starts to speak. "So, when you and I were little kids, we were close. Real close. When I fell off the monkey bars and broke my arm, you felt it, even though you weren't even at the park with me. We finished each other's sentences. I knew when you were being picked on, because I felt your fear and sadness. You felt my anger. We were in tune with one another. Until Aunt Marshia decided there was something ungodly about all of that, and she and Uncle Joe worked to make sure we were...separated. Do you remember that? How it was in those days?"
"Yeah, of course." He sinks down onto the arm of the couch. "I try not to think about it too much, but...yeah. Is - is everything okay, did something...happen?" His snippiness has entirely disappeared.
She opens her mouth to speak, and then stops. Frowns. Tries again. Her voice cracks slightly. "We were psychic, back then. Telepathically linked. It was something we had that was just ours, something that they took away from us."
He jerks back, nearly falling back onto the couch. "That's...that's one way of putting it, yeah. I guess." He looks. Fucking scared. "What um...how'd you figure that's what it was?"
Jane watches his face. "Are you sure you don't want to get a drink in you before I answer that?" But really, the delay would be just as much for her. And really, that's also sort of a jab at his drinking problem. And really, if he gets a drink, she won't feel so bad about doing so as well.
"I - yeah a drink sounds great." He rubs his face and starts to stand. If they put it off for long enough, maybe they wouldn't end up talking about it. And maybe he wouldn't remember it in the morning. He shuffles to his backpack, pulling out a handle (half gone) of cheap dark rum. "Root beer or not, don't really care right now."
"I'll go get floats together. You can spike both of them." She moves into the kitchen, and there's the sound of a bottle of soda being opened, and ice cream being scooped and the soda being poured, and a cup toppling off the counter and spilling, and Jane swearing, and then grabbing paper towels, and frantically trying to mop up the mess and maybe more swearing...
He's in the kitchen as soon as he hears the cup fall, and sets the bottle on any available counter space. "You need help?" His voice is surprisingly gentle.
"...yeah. Please. I...uhm. Think I got hit with a jinx today." Which is a weird statement, coming from her, because she sounds absolutely serious about the idea of a jinx being a thing. Jack knows her as practical, level-headed, down-to-earth. Mundane.
"A what?" He laughs in disbelief and starts to clean up the mess.
When he laughs, her body language shades more withdrawn, face flushing.
"Sorry. That's just not a thing I expected you to say. Since when do you believe in jinxes?"
She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes in anticipation of his reaction to her words. "Since I learned I'm still psychic."
"Since you...what?" He breathes the last word.
And Jane flinches, and doesn't open her eyes.
"What...happened, Jane?" That gentle tone is back. He wants to hear her answer.
"It'd be easier to show you, I think. Give me your hand for a moment?"
He holds it out, hesitating. "Jesus, when you said we might want drinks you weren't fucking kidding..."
She takes his hand, and then leans down to kiss the back of it. "Don't try to stand up until it wears off." And there's a sensation of pins and needles that ripples through his whole body, like the feeling of his foot being asleep, but multiplied by the entire surface area. It's distracting as hell, and it's discombobulating. And it starts to slowly wear off, but it lasts somewhere between ten and fifteen seconds until he's back to normal.
Jack snatches his hand away, eyes wide. "What. The fuck. You...what the fuck." The funny thing is, it kinda seems like he's more caught up in the fact that it's her that's doing the weird shit. Not that there's weird shit happening in general.
"I...think you can see now, why it wouldn't be fair, for me to become a professional fighter when I can do this." She laughs nervously and then goes back to the clean-up effort.
"Can you...control it?" He opens and closes his hand for a few seconds, and shudders as if trying to make the feeling go away.
"Now I can, yeah. It took a long time before I knew what was going on with me, though. I knew...you had so much going on. I couldn't talk to you, you were dealing with coming back from the army, and you were drinking and then you went into rehab without telling anyone, and I never could tell you, so I was handling it on my own, until I met a few others like me, but even so, I wish you'd been there and that I could have actually told you, because I was so scared, Jack. So scared and so alone."
He opens his mouth when she mentions rehab, but doesn't interrupt. "...It's been that long," he finally says. He's very busily finishing the cleanup. "You...you could'a talked to me then...." it's a lie, and he's not even trying to pretend he doesn't know it.
She shrugs, her voice hollow. "If you say so."
"We...we both had our shit, okay? 'S not like you were in a place where I could talk to you about anything." Because that's the best way to go about this, lashing back out.
"You never tried." She stands up and tries to pour the soda again, veeeeeeery carefully.
He puts his hands out as he hands, instinctively going to spot her. Though when it's clear that she doesn't need it this time, he grabs the rum instead. "'Cause you don't make yourself hard to talk to, or anything." He unscrews the cap and the scent of cheap liquor fills the room. But he does find a glass to pour into, instead of drinking directly from the bottle.
"Okay, Jesus Christ, Jack. I just opened up to you about something that's been weighing on me for over three years, and you're being a dick, and now I wish I'd waited another three years."
"What d'you want me to do? 'Cause I sure as fuck don't really know what to do about the fact that my sister went and became a goddamn psychic while I was, what, too high to notice? I guess?" He throws his hands up.
"Well, now you know, there's my secrets on the table, you can quit asking what I mean about fair, now. You can quit being confused by my job at an occult bookstore where psychics tend to hang out. I've let you in, finally. Are you fucking satisfied?"
He downs his drink. "Fuck do you want from me, Jane? I'm still here, right? I didn't run screaming, or call you a witch, or try to beat it out of you."
She sighs, heavily. It's almost like she's deflating, and she drinks some of her float. "It would have been a bad idea, if you had tried to beat it out of me. I'd have won that fight."
"I'm aware. I'm not the one who broke Uncle Joe's jaw." He sniffs in amusement at the memory.
She lets out a single flat 'hah' of laughter, more out of surprise than mirth. "Look. Look, he had it coming. They both did. We deserved so much better than how they treated us. And that's...that's a lot of our problem, and not talking about any of that has been a lot of this. You can at least agree with that, right?"
"Yeah." He sighs. This is familiar territory, at least. "Yeah. They fucked us up real good. I..." he grimaces. "I wish I could'a protected you better. From all that."
"Just because you're older by five minutes doesn't mean the protecting thing was your job. Okay?" She pokes at his arm lightly.
"Totally was. Is. Even if I am a coward. And no good in a fight." He returns the poke, a small smile on his face.
"We could change that last, if you wanted to learn a little about self-defense. But I don't know how to fix cowardice." She shakes her head. "Um. So. You'll keep it a secret, what I've told you, right? I mean, there are some others in town that know--like the other Jack, for example, but I don't want it to end up, like. On the internet or the tabloids or anything."
"Who'm I gonna tell?"
"...I don't know. That wasn't me accusing you of possibly leaking, that was 'I now feel vulnerable'."
"...Got it. 'S no problem, I'll keep it to myself." He nods. "It eh...wouldn't occur to me to spread it around, for what it's worth."
"Oh. Good." She smiles very faintly. "So. Uh. Yeah. What's left to even say?"
"I. Uh." He rubs the back of his head. "Yeah. You can...keep the rum, if you want it."
She snorts softly. "Thanks. I'll keep it for the next time I have you over."
He raises his eyebrows. "I get a 'next time?'"
"You're my brother, my twin, and the other half of my self. You'll always get a next time."
He managed not to flinch too much. "...Dunno if I deserve that. Love you too."
"What does deserving have to do with it, dumbass?" She leans in to kiss his cheek.
"'Cause you gotta draw the line somewhere. If I act like a dick too much there's no point in you keeping me in your life, you know?" The casual insult makes him smile.
She laughs. "Okay, right, yes, but. I'm not sure we're there yet. You've been a dick and pushed me away, and I've kept things from you, but...it's not...it's self-protective pushing, on some level, not trying to harm, at least from where I'm sitting. We poke at the bruises and snap and snarl, and...shit, you tell me, are you going to be the sort of dick I don't want in my life, from here on out?"
"I mean I hope not. But I'd get if I was already too much. I think our points of no return are in different places."
She hums a few bars--one of the theaters he worked for did Phantom a couple years back, and the reference was not lost on her. ...her capacity to music on any sort of key, that may have been lost on her, though.
He snorts. "Dear god please no. I really should head out, though. Leaving on a high note this time, even."
"Text me when you get home, so I know you made it safely?"
"Will do." He reaches out to squeeze her shoulder, and pauses. "Can I touch you without going fuzzy?"
"Yeah. I'm not about to do that to you again, shit. Besides, it takes energy outta me to do."
He nods, and gives her a gentle squeeze. "Stay safe, yeah? Catch you later." He doesn't run out of the apartment, that would be rude. But he doesn't lace up his boots or stop to zip up his coat.
|