the cruel prince.

“I am tired of caring,” I say. “Why should I?” “Because they could kill you!” “They better,” I say to her. “Because anything less than that isn’t going to work.”

[jamesonward]

ofkatherinebishop‌:

“Stop screaming?” she repeated, asking the question incredulously though she didn’t stop and her voice didn’t lower when Jamie commanded her in a manner that she found offensively audacious. “There is a man I don’t know trying to beat my door down, Jamie, I’m going to call the police if you don’t do something,” she informed him, though she wasn’t even sure where her phone was at the present time. 

“No,” she protested, pushing the back of Jamie’s shoulders when he nudged her, “Stop touching me,” she demanded, hysterically, throwing her hands into the air again, feeling trapped by the two males that stood between her and the courtyard outside of the girl’s dormitory building. 

She was silent for a moment as she watched the door, the muffled discussion taking place in the hallway, hopefully, Frank was being removed from the premises as swiftly as possible. Kat yelped and practically jumped out of her skin at the sound of something or someone colliding with her dorm, “Oh my God,” she said again, the air whisked out of her lungs with fright. “No, I don’t want to meet anybody, I don’t want any of this,” she told him, the words falling out of her mouth one after the other before she could actually think them through, she just wanted this to be over, she just wanted to go back to her Netflix show and she wished she’d never bothered opening the door up for Jamie in the first place. She placed her hand flat against her stomach, feeling as if it was going to fall out of her at any given moment, “Fix it,” she practically barked with half a mind to attempt climbing out of her dorm room window if she was stuck for any longer than this.

“Do not call the cops,” Jamie snapped after Kat pushed him away, growing irritated with her inability to stay calm under duress. He had his own fair share of irrationality, but none of it consisted of so much screeching. Frank was a frightening thing, sure, but Jamie had grown so accustomed to his aggression that him banging on a door didn’t spook him nearly as much when he knew what the man was really capable of and what the absence of him meant. 

Frank in jail meant that one of them would be left with the responsibility of keeping their ugly trailer in Princeton as Mom’s endless number of kids were filtered through there like items on a conveyor belt waiting to be finished with a dash of trauma. As horrible as Frank was, he was a name to put down on paper and food on the table, as meager as it was.

He waited, watching the door as if he were expecting Frank to burst through like a horror movie monster. Sweat beaded between his shoulders and glued his t-shirt to his body the longer he stalled. He knew what he had to do to save his uncle from spending a night in Nighmore county jail, even if it meant he had to go back to Princeton and submit to his fate. Kat’s screaming only further convinced him that he should’ve just gone away silently into the night instead of caving to sentiment. He hadn’t been able to say what he wanted, now wondered if it’d have been worth it to wring one last teenage thing out of high school with how much Kat was yelling at him before he had to commit to a life of delinquency.

“So much for goodbyes,” he muttered, shouldering his bag. Jamie looked uncertain but resigned as he went to unlock the door, opening it slowly and peering out. Frank was further down the hall with a brigade of staffers who seemed like they were doing their best to be civil in hope of containing a man who was more tornado than person.

“Hey,” he said. “Looking for me?”

[jamesonward]

ofkatherinebishop‌:

“Yeah- probably, I don’t know,” she didn’t feel like arguing semantics with Jamie, the fact of the matter still remained; Katherine Bishop was not prepared to fill the role of the surrogate father at the tender age of seventeen and she wasn’t going to just because Jamie had suddenly decided to skip town and become a drifter.

“No- You ask for help,” she argued, thinking that it was utterly ridiculous that of all the millions of possibilities in the world, of all the resources they had available to them, this was the most reasonable solution Jamie had come to. She was starting to think that Jamie’s intelligence was limited almost exclusively to his ability to complete math homework sheets if he couldn’t see how absurd this all was.

Before she could say anything else, however, she was forced into her own room in the wake of “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, what the fuck?” Katherine squeaked impulsively, unable to keep the words in her throat as she threw her hands into the air in surrender as if she was about to be arrested by the man with the booming voice outside her door. She’d felt breathless as she turned her back on Jamie, she’d never been spoken to like that before, not even when her parents or teachers were at their most angry with her did they speak with such disdain and she was terrified by it.

“Fuck this,” she spat out at Jamie when her door startled to rattle as if the handle might drop to the floor at any given moment, angry at him for dragging her into yet another situation that made her want to cry. Her stomach was sick as adrenaline coursed like electricity through her veins and unsure of what to do she shuffled around almost in a complete circle, like a dog chasing its tail. “What are you going to do?” she asked Jamie, wishing she or her roommate played softball or any sort of sport that produced a weapon of sorts like a baseball bat or really anything other than the basketball she kept on the top shelf of her wardrobe next to her violin. “Open it” she demanded, pointing at the door, “He’s going to get angrier, open it,” she continued with more emphasis, she didn’t want to get in trouble for having her door knocked off of its hinges when she had nothing to do with any of this. 

The horror that reverberated through him had less to do with the fact that Frank was outside and more to do with the fact that everyone had seen him. Or heard him. Acknowledged that Jamie hadn’t been spat out from a tear in the universe and actually had real guardians somewhere in the world. Admittedly, Kat’s panic reduced his and Frank’s voice activated the part of his brain that had fallen victim to maudlin ideas of leaving.

“Stop screaming,” he demanded when her voice reached a pitch that made his ears pop. He stared at the door, his expression shuttering and blanking like a stone slate. Broadripple wasn’t Princeton. There were real people at the school who cared enough to hire an onslaught of rangers to keep guard for a bear he still wasn’t entirely certain had gotten in the way they said it did. If no one came for Frank making a scene in the girl’s building, he had another thing to tack onto his mystery board regarding the school’s consideration for safety.

Still, even as Jamie rationalized himself out of a catastrophic landslide, he edged backwards towards the furthest wall from the door and nudged Kat behind him.

Jamie looked at her. “He’s not angry--”

“Oh, you’re too good now, are you? Boy, you better come out here and face the music!”

“--He’s not that angry,” Jamie corrected. The door stopped vibrating as a series of muffled voices could be heard arguing on the other side of the door, peppered with the occasional loud profanity from Frank’s side as his frustration mounted. Another loud bang rattled the door like someone’s fist had made contact with it, sending a ripple of shock through him. Then, it was quiet again. 

“You wanted to meet my family,” he said, pointing at the door. “You still want me to open it?”

[jamesonward]

ofkatherinebishop‌:

“No,” Katherine protested. She was equipped to take care of her house plant, barely equipped to take care of herself and surely not equipped to take care of any of her friends, not that she even really considered Clussy one of them. “Not like me, I don’t know how to be a Dad,” she wasn’t really thinking her words through and while the syntax wasn’t entirely correct the sentiment was just as she’d intended it to be, she wasn’t prepared to fill Jamie’s role and she didn’t want to, she wasn’t the one that had gotten Edwina pregnant. Thankfully. 

“That’s not an answer, that’s dumb” she argued bluntly, “You can’t just go out there-” she waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the main door, “It’s cold and it’s raining all the time and you have to go to school,” she added as if that was the most important thing in the world. “The police will look for you and then what are you going to do?” she asked with an eyebrow raised, finding it hard to believe that the school wouldn’t enact and APB for the junior once they realized he was missing. “- cos I’ll tell them,” she added, she didn’t mean for it to sound like a threat but maybe it was. She wasn’t going to play any role in Jamie’s corpse being found frozen in the woods if she could help it.

“You did what?” her heart skipped a beat at the mention of forgery. That was illegal. Like stealing a car was illegal. Like gambling in a hotel room and making off with other people’s money was illegal. She felt sick, “Jamie,” she spoke, scolding him without saying any more than his name. “Oh my God,” she groaned again, feeling like a rat in a cage with Jamie dumping all of this on her so suddenly. She didn’t know whether to worry about him or smack him or call out to the supervising staff to help her stop him from running away and the conflicting feelings that flooded her all at once made her stomach sick. She pressed her shoulder against the frame of her door and closed her eyes for a moment, silently hoping that by the time she opened them up again Jamie would be gone and she’d realize that this was all a stupid fever dream, brought on by the fact that she’d fallen asleep watching a creepy movie in her dorm room. She opened her eyes again and he was still there and Kat sighed, “Jamie, don’t be stupid, please,” she practically begged, watching with doe eyes as he wiped at his face.

Jamie didn’t have much of an argument for Kat’s protests, couldn’t manage to scrape up enough moxie to fuel a lie even before disappearing into the abyss. He shrugged and offered a half-hearted, “Does anyone?” before dropping the subject.

He flinched when Kat plied him with excuses and threats and stuff that only served to feed his mounting paranoia. In his right mind, he might’ve been incensed by the thought of having to do anything or complying to someone else’s rules and threats but he was feeling hopeless, defeated, frustrated and wanted desperately to believe that there was some way out that didn’t leave him slinking into shady nooks for a nap and eating expired buns out of a grocery store dumpster.

“It was the only way,” he reasoned after hearing the exasperation in Kat’s voice. He didn’t expect anyone to understand why he did the things he did, only trust that he did them for a reason that wasn’t to hurt anyone. Jamie waded between making a break for it while Kat closed her eyes and taking a moment to explain that his life at school made life at home feel like a dream despite all the horror that happened in each. He stared at her at a loss for an explanation as she wrestled with all the new information.

"Kat...” Jamie stepped forward, returning to where he’d started once he met her gaze like a meteor getting sucked into orbit. The irony of opening up during the eleventh hour wasn’t lost upon him and he realized he’d made a grave mistake not leaving Louie on the steps of the chapel.

He dropped his bag. Took another step. “I--”

“BOY!”

Jamie nearly jumped out of his skin as he whipped around, at the too-familiar sound of Frank booming through the hallway.

“Sir, you can’t go in there,” he heard someone say. 

“What, is God gonna stop me?” Frank sneered, marching towards Kat and Jamie. “There you are. I came all this way for you, you ungrateful little rat. Do you know how many voicemails they left your mom and I?”

The family resemblance was uncanny between the two of them, even at a distance. Frank was a tall man who looked like he had as much difficulty holding onto weight as Jamie did, only fleshed out by a beard and leathers that made him look like he belonged in a gay bar than a school. There wasn’t anything particularly gay or jovial about him though, his expression was dark and angry, knotted in ways that look like it’d been permanently etched into his features years ago.

Jamie shoved Kat into her room in a panic as Frank neared, sliding in after her and yanking the door shut with a slam. He flicked the lock on before the door vibrated violently on its hinges as Frank tested the knob. 

“James, you goddamn brat,” he yelled through the door. “Open this door right now.”

Jamie looked mortified.

[jamesonward]

ofkatherinebishop‌:

“Okay,” Kat said again, relatively unconvinced by Jamie’s denial, though he seemed certain enough. She still couldn’t understand why he was instructing her to put water out for a plush toy, nor why he was handing off the plush toy to her at all. The whole thing reeked of unreasonable weirdness but it was too early on a weekend for her to react appropriately to the fact.

“What?” she asked again, realizing as Jamie continued that nobody was holding Jamie’s family hostage, the school had simply made contact with them. Far less dramatic than she’d initially assumed. “Oh my God, stop, hold on,”  Kat instructed, a budding headache forming in her temples as she tightened her jaw momentarily, trying to catch up with everything Jamie was saying. She could take care of the stuffed shrimp without too much of an issue but she was supposed to be responsible for Edwina now too? Jesus Christ, she wished she’d had somewhere to be in Eden Prairie that weekend. “What about the-” she paused, lowering her voice, “-Babies?” she’d sort of hoped to be crowned god-mother of the Clussy-Ward twins but she didn’t want to be their surrogate father.

She clicked her tongue and sighed at the gratitude, it seemed out of place for something as simple as opening the door to somebody. She’d open the door for anybody, maybe even Damian if he’d showed up in Jamie’s place, Kat didn’t consider it a virtue, much less something to be grateful for. She set Louie down on her desk inside the doorway and brushed her hair out of her face, “Are you out of your mind? Where are you going to go? Do you even know how stupid that is?” she asked bluntly, maybe a little harshly but the thought of anybody, much less a scrawny kid like Jamie who was still recovering from his injuries, wandering out into the abyss to find a new home for himself was ridiculous to her. If Kat had attempted to do the same she’d have expected to last no more than a few days, if that, “You’ve got a backpack now you’re going to drop out of school and just live on your own somewhere with no plan? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard in my entire life,” 

Jamie stared blankly at Kat when she mentioned babies, having had forgotten all about his fake children with Edwina. He figured she’d have aborted them already after months of the announcement before she’d have to start faking a bump but it was her lie to live now. He’d done enough damage to her reputation by just existing around her, like he did with almost everything.

“Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a father to succeed in life,” Jamie said. “They’ll be okay. She’s got friends who are better equipped to take care of her, like you.”

Despite his sudden sentiment, Jamie felt a little uneasy saying that Kat was better equipped than him to take care of kids when she could barely handle her math grade but Kat didn’t have half the school baring down on her or a strange affliction with death. The kids weren’t real anyway, he reminded himself. They’d have been a problem if they were.

He inched back a step when Kat ducked behind the door to put down Louie, taking advantage of the opportunity to detach himself while she wasn’t looking at him. A part of Jamie really thought he’d have the nerve to touch her, but he supposed it was a lot to bear on the road knowing that he was a super coward for stealing what he wanted and fleeing from the responsibility. Kat didn’t seem like she was about to let him scrape her off on the door frame either and maybe he kind of didn’t want to.

“I don’t know, anywhere else,” he said, swallowing his resolve. “No stupider than going back home, that’s for sure. Frank’s always hated that I went here. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s gonna tell them about how I forged the signatures on all the papers and forms for admittance.”

His voice sounded empty as he explained, but he didn’t stop wiping furiously at his eyes as he did. “Relax, the weather’s getting better. I’ll be fine.”

[jamesonward]

jaysster‌:

There was nothing about Jay’s character the gave off even a minute insinuation that he was ever timely or organized, ( in fact, his blog literally declares the opposite ) and Wednesday morning was no different. He didn’t believe in the church’s God, but man, if he did, he was sure the big dude knew what was up because his sudden tiny academic uplift in his World Culture class that morning was enough to make the teacher pull him aside and give him a congratulatory speech that honestly lasted way too long.

Normally, Jay wasn’t pressed for time. In fact, it was just another conceptual rule he liked to break by being an idiot instead. Class in five? No biggie, he could definitely cram in an episode of Rick and Morty and not be late, why stress? Who had time to stress?

Well, now he did. Not because he thought he owed it to Jamie if he didn’t help him with his current predicament, but because he was sure something grossly strange and weird would happen if he didn’t. Like, maybe Jamie would pop out with another recording that made no sense or he would hold hands with Kat in public and Jay would have to stab his eyes out with a fork at lunch because of it.

“Thanks. Thank you. Yeah, I’m like… super focused, really trying, yeah…” The automatic replies just kept falling out of him like a tap running on full blast, waiting for the teacher to end the little pat-on-the-back session and just let him go. Jay didn’t even look at the clock, he was afraid it was going to melt into Jamie’s scowl and yell at him. Instead, he just pursed his lips together, nodding without listening, eyes glazing over as the teacher went on about good behavior and great opportunities.

“Sorry, I like - really have to bounce.” He suddenly interrupted, which wasn’t great, his teacher didn’t look impressed by it but enough was enough. He hadn’t even gotten the marks himself, it was Jamie’s essay, the look on the teacher’s face when they’d handed it back with better grades than usual was just undeserved and Jay didn’t have time to feel guilty about it right now. “Thanks though. Appreciate it, really do, you’re the bomb.” He finger-gunned, walking backward out of the classroom like a fucking idiot and swirling in the hallway to give himself the biggest mental kick in the face for acting like a Grade A loser. But he needed to get out. Like a dog in a cone of shame, he wriggled his way out of one panic moment to the next.

Now where the fuck — oh.

Okay, maybe God wasn’t mad at him, because just as Jay went to dart down the hallway, he cast a look to his left and stared right at the back of Sister Yohn’s head. Freezing in place, his eyes dropped to Jamie who was sat in front of her, a look on his face that made Jay’s palms sweaty again, probably because he’d never seen it before but he already knew he hated it and never wanted to see it ever again for as long as he lived.

Panic set in again. Small window? Try fucking minuscule, Jay thought as people brushed by him and bumped shoulders, making him feel like an object in the road. Swallowing, he tried to remember that word that Jamie had used, already realizing he was running out of time and that he had to act now or else—

“ORDAINED.” 

He blanked. He didn’t even know what had happened. One minute, Jay was standing in the middle of the hallway and the next, his hands were on both sides of the door to Jamie’s classroom and the word had just… fallen out of him. Except loudly. Like… embarrassingly loudly. If Jay had felt sweaty before, he was probably going to be soaked by the end of this. 

“I mean,” He cleared his throat, straightening himself into what he hoped looked like a normal and very casual posture. Then he decided to add a hand back to the doorway and missed, grabbing at air before he finally found a perch too late. “I’m…. looking for… no, I want one. I think.” If it was ever going to be obvious that Jay was bad with words when shit counted, then now was his moment to really shine. He swerved quickly, “Uh, Sister, could I like,” He pointed behind him, “Could we chat?”

Jamie was halfway through an argument against Spinoza’s application of the scientific method in support of God and nature when Jay’s voice boomed through the classroom and drew both his and Sister Yohn’s attention to the door.

“Oh my heavens,” she exclaimed, looking relieved as graciously excused herself and fled to the door like God had personally thrown her a lifeboat. Jamie batted his eyes, bemused at how graceless Jay was and still managed to pull favor with the most stuck up teacher he had. He supposed he didn’t have a lot of room to complain when Sister Yohn was out of the room and chattering away at Jay with double the intrigue in hope of avoiding any additional comments about existentialism and the big bang.

He waited a beat to ensure that she was invested in converting Jay before slipping out of his seat and crept around the desk, extracting a pair of bobby pins he’d stuck into his coiffure that morning for the very purpose of lock picking (and maybe a poor attempt at taming his mane too). 

The desk lock was nothing out of the ordinary, nor did it look as medieval was Jamie expected it to be at the school. He’d picked a number of locks like it before while trying to snatch something out of lockers or find a cozy janitorial closet to lay in. The trying part was having to overhear the conversation going on just outside the door.

“Firstly, you’ll need to have a statement of faith we can look at. Perhaps a copy of the Constitution, Bylaws, and Church Covenant of your previous church. We just want to ensure that all pastoral candidates are committed to both the Lord and the job,” said Sister Yohn. “What are some of the most important ideas and practices that you think cultivate health in the local church?“

Jamie cut a look at Jay from over her shoulder. He could practically see the gleam of sweat on his pretty brown forehead.

‘INT-E-GRI-TY,’ Jamie mouthed, craning his neck up to see if he could catch Jay’s eyes. He mouthed it again before trying ‘BIBLE’ and ‘WORSHIP’ next like he was trapped in a stupid game of charades while conducting a bank heist.  The lock opened with a click after a gentle jostle, but the drawer remained shut. Jamie stared at it in bemusement, trying the drawer with a little more effort before checking on Jay again. He tapped on his wrist to signify that he needed time before gesturing wildly at the stuck drawer. 

[jamesonward]

ofkatherinebishop‌:

“Yeah, I know,” Kat confirmed, her voice soft as she offered Jamie a sad smile. She was painfully aware that Jamie had been having a hard time at school, in fact, it was her opinion that she was to blame for a large part of it, namely the fact that Jamie had been beaten into a pulp in his own dorm room, seemingly out of the blue. Her chest tightened at the thought, as if a vice had been momentarily placed around her heard but when she caught Jamie starting at her chest, she stopped thinking about it.

“Okay,” she agreed, folding her arms across her chest self consciously. She furrowed her brow at his instructions, unsure of how to receive them, “What-” what the fuck is what she had wanted to say but she left that part out, mostly because of the sorry expression on Jamie’s face, “Are you making fun of me?” she wondered if this was about Richard, the way she anthropomorphized her plant. She wasn’t being serious even if she was sincere about keeping Richard healthy, did she think she was stupid for talking about it in the way that she did? 

When the PA chimed, Katherine’s eyebrows lifted and the situation suddenly seemed a lot more serious than it had just moments beforehand, “Are you in trouble?” she asked, recognizing that this seemed a lot like a goodbye now that she had taken the context into consideration. “More time for what? Why don’t you have time? What’s going on?” she asked more assertively, tired of Jamie’s roundabout way of saying what it was that he meant. She wanted to know what the hell was going on and why the hell he was acting as if he was about to drop off the face of the earth, never to return again.

“No. I mean, no,” Jamie replied, looking bewildered, then serious, then uncomfortable unknowing which one was the lie and which one was the truth.

Jamie shifted his weight between his feet, eyes anchored in the ground by the burgeoning realization that he was at a loss for words. For all of his impromptu sermons about being brave and righteous, Jamie found himself floundering helplessly in a sea of his own panic when indignity and fury wasn’t there to propel him 3/4 of the way.

There were reasons he didn’t say goodbye, and the longer he remained under Kat’s scrutiny, the more grateful he was that he decided to skip Edwina’s room altogether because he didn’t know if he could leave if she just dug a little finger in. He was softened and afraid of his own future, looked hesitant to even consider telling the truth. It didn’t feel unlike the first Autumn he left for Broadripple, only that he liked it at school for the most part. Scrutiny and rumors and bullies aside, it was the only place that gave him the tools to carve out what he wanted.

“To be friends,” he repeated, pink dusting his nose. “They got a hold of my family so I’m leaving before they make me. I don’t want to go back to West Virginia with everyone knowing I failed at everything I tried to do.”

Jamie sniffed and steeled himself to look at her even though his lashes had grown wet and clumpy. He scanned her face, her eyes, her lips like the last photo he’d ever take of her. He felt inexplicably sad. “Look, just take care of Louie, okay? He just acts like he’s happy all the time but he’s got sensitive stitches. Edwina too. A lot of people bully her so you have to be vigilant. Don’t let anyone give her shit, no matter how small it is.”

It was strange that he was talking about Edwina, but looking at Kat but Jamie lacked the self-awareness to analyze what that was supposed to mean. He thrummed with nerves, his limp hand at his side twisting and turning like it was trying to find the gall to move as he watched an errant lock of hair that strayed from her bun to kiss her cheek.

“Also... thanks. For always opening the door.”

[jamesonward]

jaysster‌:

He wanted to ask; what spirit? Because it wasn’t like he was jumping up and down with pomp-pomps or anything. In fact, one more special circumstance and he was going to tell Jamie he was on his own. Instead, the junior just answered his question and thank god that weird up-lift of his lips was gone because it almost looked like a smile and Jay didn’t like the idea that Jamie had gone from being blatantly rude to smiling at him in just a matter of months. Nothing overtly good had happened between them recently but he supposed it was nice he wasn’t yelling about Kat anymore at Jamie and Jamie in return, wasn’t being shitty about her to his face. See, progress.

“Ordained?” He was going to ask what that was, given that for someone catapulted into a Catholic school, he sure knew Jack-Squat about the religion as a whole. He’d been training himself to fall asleep in Mass with his eyes open, and he couldn’t say he remembered much from the white man’s Bible. “Sure. Alright, if you think it’ll work, I’ll trust you. Just… don’t make me regret it, yeah?”

Jamie made the smart choice and decided not to answer Jay right in the moment, figuring that he’d catch on real quick once he mentioned the word to Sister Yohn. It wasn’t like he was instructing him to tell her that he’d opened the fifth level of hell and released Phlegyas onto school property so he didn’t feel particularly guilty about taking Jay’s trust and stashing it away before he could take it back. All he needed was thirty-something seconds and he’d be out with the phone and what he needed to build his case.

“It’ll work,” he assured. “It’s foolproof.”

--

Wednesday morning, Jamie sat primly in Sister Yohn’s class like he hadn’t been involved in, like, ten altercations in the past month. He wasn’t a troublemaker during school hours, finding that learning took precedence above all paranoia and outside curiosities about the current status quo. He took notes, asked fewer questions than usual, and acted like an A student should hoping that it’d alleviate any concerns Sister Yohn might’ve been having about him returning to class after getting caught in a room with Damian.

His act might’ve been too smoothly because at one point, Sister Yohn stopped to ask him if he was feeling alright.

“You haven’t decided to dominate the class discussions today,” she said smartly.

Jamie stared at her and asked, “Do you want me to?”

Sister Yohn made a face and hummed before moving on without answering. Jamie took it as a no and glanced at the clock, counting down the minutes until the bell rang and released them from their seats. It only occurred to him then that he hadn’t asked Jay where his class was that morning and whether he’d make it on time to distract her. Shit. He had to think of a plan b in case he had PE or something. The heist could wait, really, but he didn’t trust Damian not to come and try to weasel in and snatch it first when his entire entourage played in favor of the religious sect at Broadripple. There was no doubt in his mind that one of his cronies could get right into the classroom without problems if he asked them to.

Jamie tapped his pencil against his notebook, looking between the board, the clock and the locked drawer at the head of the classroom. Time was running out and his brain was cycling through various means of property destruction and kidnapping teachers for an afternoon like all he had left in his repertoire of skills was vast amounts of criminal activity. 

Then the bell rang. Shit. He looked at the door, then at Sister Yohn. 

“Excuse me, Sister Yohn-- actually, I do have a question.”

Sister Yohn hesitated before turning like she was hoping that his voice had just been part of her imagination. She looked reasonably pleasant despite her obvious displeasure in engaging in conversation with him. Most of the Sisters and Fathers knew that talking to Jamie about religion was a little bit like trying to put out an oil fire but they all did their best to soldier through his rhetoric and skepticism.

“What is it, child?”

Jamie looked at the door again.

“Most organized, monotheistic religions posit the existence of some type of personal interaction between God and humans whether it’s inspiration, during life or judgement and punishment and reward in the afterlife and I was just wondering, if persona, anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism are removed as features of God, does anything remain?”

Jamie opened his eyes as wide as they could go, trying to sell young and curious as he exchanged stares with Sister Yohn.  He just needed to buy time for Jay to arrive and he didn’t think it’d hurt to make it so Yohn was ready to eject herself from his inane rambling in favor of literally anything else by the time he did.

[mctionsick]

open starter

[jamesonward]

margotdillon‌:

As they rounded the corner Marge felt a sense of relief wash over her, like she was finally free from the watchful disparaging gaze of the school faculty.  She knew it was a false sense of security, anybody could round the corner at any moment, but she trusted Jamie wasn’t setting them up to get into any trouble.  Even if they wound up getting caught she wondered if they could weasel their way out of it like old times.  

Marge stood opposite him and dug out a pack of cigarettes from a hidden pocket in her backpack.  She ignited the end and wasted no time taking a puff.  As she closed her eyes for a moment she could let herself believe they were just a couple of dumb kids smoking stolen cigarettes for the aesthetic out behind one of their trailers.  

She ashed the end of the cigarette and brought it back to her lips as Jamie asked his next question.  Deep down she was thankful she could answer this one honestly and not complicate her web of lies further just yet.  Marge put out the cigarette and flicked it into a nearby trashcan as she took a seat next to him on the table, “I never bothered finding out where you went.  I just knew you were better off.”  Her gaze flickered from her shoes to Jamie, “I think part of me didn’t trust myself not stealing your uncle’s bike and tracking you down to make a break for it.”  The other part of her just simply didn’t want to know.  She didn’t want to know what the life was like that he chose over her.  

Margot scanned his face trying to decipher who this Jamie was, just being across from him, he seemed a little less rough around the edges.  She found herself wondering what his friend group was like.  Were they a bunch of misfits like themselves or was he playing social chameleon?  How did she fit into this new life of his, and more importantly: did he want her to? She swallowed thickly, he was right, this was exactly what she wanted, but it wasn’t supposed to be like this.  

“At least you got out on your own terms,” she huffed, starring down at her nails that looked bare without their usual black nail polish.  “All this polyester might as well be an orange jumpsuit.”  With even a hint more self awareness, Margot would realize how easily that could have been her reality.  

“I really did miss you, ya know.”

Jamie didn’t know what kind of response he wanted out of Margot, only that she hadn’t provided anything but hurt with her answer. He knew exactly what he was doing when he applied to the academy. Had made up his mind by the 3rd grade that he was getting out of Princeton whether it by scholarship or in a body bag and the scholarship had come first, even if he was still undecided on whether he was glad about it. He wanted to think that leaving Margot behind was difficult, but the truth was that his fondness for her had diminished the further he got from her and put their friendship into perspective.

They were just two lost souls, bobbing in a pit of waste and trying to survive while hanging onto remnants of each other’s humanity until the weight became too much to bear. It wasn’t supposed to be anything more than that until one fateful summer where everything spun out of control. A can of gasoline, some matches and indignant fury ignited an altar that gave birth to a monster that devoured every bit of happiness they’d scrounged up in the pit of despair they called home. He knew then he’d made the right move.

“Good thing you didn’t,” Jamie said, toying with his lighter. The flicker of flame illuminating a faded memory of a phone call where he tried again to save her. Jamie wasn’t entirely sure it’d worked with all that he heard afterwards circulating the lot when he came home to nothing. The thought of it soured him and their reunion, leaving him hollowed as she continued talking.

He looked at her, expression unreadable in the face of her speculative gaze and timid confession.

“So I heard,” he said. “How was it? Johnnie told me everything.”

[thefalloutkid]

young and menace // fall out boy

[jamesonward]

elizald‌:

Eliza blinked, taken aback by the sheer abruptness of Jamie’s retort and feeling personally attacked by it. By all of it. How could someone so bitter suck the marrow from life and just be okay with turning it into poison? It left Eliza wondering what on Earth it was that he and Damian were really fighting about that made him so vile to her. Perhaps it really was something serious, something worse than just a chip on one’s shoulder. She hadn’t wanted to get involved with it, particularly once their parents had gotten involved first, but now she wondered if perhaps she should. Morally speaking, of course. Personally, she didn’t want to go within a ten-foot radius of other people’s problems.

“Actually, you don’t know. That’s just your perception. You’re not always the most correct person in the room.” She bit at him, though it was more of a tired response than anything aggressive. Everything was objectively observational when it came to looking from the outside in. Eliza wouldn’t agree with Jamie on anything that had to do with her, Damian or the rest of their family because how could she? Just because he’d read a book, or watched an over-dramatized TV show, didn’t mean he knew anything true about their family dynamic.

“Say whatever you like, Jamie. Kindness doesn’t cost anything.” She deflected, looking at him with a gaze that showed she knew she was just wasting her time now. So with that, she finally gathered the courage to just walk past him, ready to put this God awful interaction behind her.

Jamie looked unperturbed by her discomfort, sinking comfortably against the pews as he kicked the back of another row of seats, teetering precariously on the edge of his own. He had evidence. It was stamped all over his face, in his phone, on his medical records. He wasn’t sure what kind of point Eliza was trying to hammer him with but he was impenetrable, least of all by Damian’s family members whose idea of making amends was denial, denial, denial.

“I bet you think voting for Trump is okay just because you’re not racist,” he sneered. “Newsflash, you’re endorsing what he believes in by giving him the vote. Just like how you’re endorsing your brother’s behaviour by taking his side and how your family’s trying to cover it up. It’s not perception, them’s the facts, sugar.”

He batted his lashes at her when she met his gaze. “Neither does checking your privilege but it looks like neither of us are getting what we want.”

Jamie watched her as she scurried away, looking neither amused nor impressed. At least she wasn’t violent, he supposed. “Maybe it does cost something,” he called after her. “You’d know if your family paid me.”

[jamesonward]

ofkatherinebishop‌:

“Oh my God,” Kat groaned when she heard Jamie’s voice summoning her on the other side of her door. All she wanted was a morning of peace to lie on her bed and watch Netflix on her laptop, drama free. Was that too much to ask? Apparently. She dragged herself off of her mattress and to her door after combing her hair gently with her fingers to make sure she didn’t look like a complete slob when she appeared in front of her uninvited guest.

“Hi,” she greeted as she pulled the door open, Jamie launching into his affairs without so much as drawing breath or taking a moment to apologize for his sudden appearance. “Okay,” she said, drawing the word out as she processed the randomness of the announcement, taken aback by the request before she’d even really registered what Jamie was saying or why he was saying it. She held a hand open to accept Louie, though her brow furrowed a moment later, “Why is this?” she asked skeptically, it felt like another spontaneous movie night or fleeing from the elevator in Stowe; a random, problematic encounter that Katherine would be unwillingly dragged into and unable to escape from once she had, “Since when do you call me Katherine?” she noted a moment later, leaving out the ‘it’s weird’ part that she was definitely thinking because it was the first thing that had made her think that something strange was going on with Jamie, aside from him appearing at her door out of the blue after abandoning her on the grass in the night days prior, of course.

Jamie made the mistake of looking at Kat before handing over Louie because it was then that reality bulldozed him with the thought that he might never see her again. Self-doubt set in like bricks, laying a wall up that kept out the rational thought that he was wily enough to slip in and out of anywhere he wanted if he just tried. He dropped Louie into Kat’s hand, his own lingering for longer than necessary as his palms grew sweaty at the notion of disappearing into the ether, to be forgotten and dug up months later in a ditch somewhere as long as it wasn’t West Virginia. 

“I um, I know it’s been tumultuous since we’ve known each other. I’m just-- I’ve been having a rough time at school and...”

He swallowed, eyes flitting between the floor and halfway up Kat’s body, never quite making it to her face nor recognizing what that must’ve looked like in front of a girl in her lounge wear. His heartbeat reached a tempo in his ears that was almost impossible to focus around, his fist tightening on the strap of his backpack.

“I just want you to know that... He gets really needy after 3:30AM. It’s good to leave him water when you go to class, in case he gets thirsty. And he likes it if you play Handel’s Passacaglia at night.”

That really wasn’t what he wanted to say, but the panic had nested in his chest like a swarm of bees, making it hard to breathe and everything he wanted to say got jammed in his throat while nonsense was pushed out like vomit. Jamie stood there awkwardly for a while, looking like he was about to give it another go when the PA system chimed in again, beckoning him to the office.

“I’m sorry I didn’t make good on what I said,” he whispered. “About, you know. Friend stuff. I thought I’d have more time.”

[jamesonward]

jaysster‌:

“That one.” Jay thrust a finger at Jamie quickly, glad that the junior had known what he’d meant, even if he was too stupid to come up with it on the spot. If he’d been a bit smarter, maybe Jay would have reconsidered helping out the sole reason his hand was even in a splint to begin with. But with everything so up in the air lately and a whole bunch of weird questions floating around in the back of his head, he supposed he didn’t have any reason not to trust Jamie yet. Maybe not fully, but on a base level, or something at least. There definitely was something whacky going on between him and Damian, and so far, all the stuff about Kat had checked out too. He didn’t know when he’d started to feel like maybe he didn’t mind helping Jamie, but he supposed, what harm was there? It was just a phone, anyway. Not like a dead body or anything like he always sometimes expected it would be.

“Look, don’t worry about it.” He ended up deciding, taking a moral moment to weigh the positives and ignore the negatives. “Just… when?” He sighed, figuring he’d have to make up some excuse annoying enough to keep a Sister interested for more than, what did he say? 30 seconds?

It became evident that his usual stoicism was a trait plastered on top of a very expressive face. When Jamie wasn’t making an effort to look like a hard ass, it became very apparent what he was feeling and he was looking like he was ready to outsmart the devil with the delight that stretched across his face when Jay agreed to help. Jamie didn’t often praise himself for his own choices, but Jay was proving to be a risk that was worth taking for how easily he conceded to plans, much like his friend.

“I like your spirit,” he commented, flagrantly ignoring Jay’s exasperation. He’d find a reason for him to be thankful later when he was able to text him the answers to SAT vocabulary. “Tomorrow morning after first block. I’ll already be in the classroom so it’ll be a cinch as long as you draw her out of it. Try not to make too big of a commotion or admin will get involved and no one wants that.”

Jamie’s eyebrows rose as he was hit with a bout of genius. “I know: ask her about getting ordained. Easy, harmless, and I’m sure she’d have plenty of enthusiasm about a prospect.”

[jamesonward]

edwinaclussy‌:

If Edwina smoked, then she’d be rubbing her temples and taking out a cigarette right about now. Every time Jamie got into some sort of altercation or pissed someone off, it made her realize why her dad spent his money on coffee and Newports every morning while her mother liked to drink alone every once in awhile. “What were you even fighting about?” she asked, now just as unamused as he was before. “I’m glad you guys made up though. Kat’s actually been really really nice to me lately. I think it’s mostly because she thinks I’m pregnant, but I might milk this a bit.”

She expected this kind of resistance for him to open up. They were close, at least Edwina liked to believe Jamie thought so too, but that was a deeply troubling thing for anyone to talk about out loud. “I don’t mean those, Jamie.” she said, pointing to the yellowing black and blues covering his face or the scabbing over reminders of what Damian had done. “He said…” ‘Down the road, not across the street.’ She doesn’t let the words get past her lips, but Dylan’s voice saying it plays in her head rather clearly. It’s been playing like that since the conversation. “He said that it looked like you were hurting yourself on your arms… Dylan said that he thought I knew. Just… look, I know that life hasn’t been, or is, peaches and cream for you. It’s totally unfair and you know I think you deserve better than everything that’s been thrown at you, but I’m just really concerned about you, Jamie. We can get you help.”

Jamie throwing her own issues back in her face caught her off guard. Edwina looked at the floor to avoid his eyes. She felt a lot shame for 1) not noticing Jamie was hurting himself and 2) that Raquel ODing was essentially her fault. She’d been a pretty shit friend. “I’m trying to fix it. I swear I’m trying. When I see her it’s like she avoids me and it’s because we both know it’s my fault.” She still couldn’t bring herself to look back up, but her hands motioned to the boy to let him know she was going back to him, “I can help you too though. You’re both my friends. I can’t lose you both. Look, I promise you guys I’m going to be more observant.”

“I panicked. It’s nothing to worry about,” Jamie replied plainly, like that was all there was. He didn’t have the wherewithal to dissect his feelings on a matter that had been promptly overshadowed by everything else that followed it when it didn’t grant him any more clarity about Kat.

Jamie tilted his head the other way, expression softening the more Edwina spoke, turmoil written in all of her features. He wanted to reach out and scrub them all away, assure her that the whole world was still spinning and okay even if he didn’t believe it. Dread draped over him like a wet blanket the longer he listened to her go on, her brittle face and guilt-laden speech igniting every scar that ran up the inside of his wrists like strips of gasoline. He was a weakling. A pitiful fool. A tragically cliche caricature of a boy. Jamie accepted the role as he slid out of the chair and rounded the desk to put a placating hand onto Edwina’s shoulder.

“I don’t need help,” he said, ducking to look her in the eyes. “Dylan’s just trying to start shit. I’ve no idea why but it’s nothing new. I’m fine, okay? Everything’s fine.” He’d say it until everyone believed it, including himself. For Edwina’s sake.

Rubbing circles into her shoulder with his thumb, Jamie sighed. He wasn’t so obtuse that he couldn’t see what was happening in front of him. A club of misfits was nice in theory but they were all so broken that he couldn’t see the upside to having all of the pieces in one bin with one piece that was still whole. It felt a lot like dead bodies piled up onto one surviving life raft. It was petty.

“It’s not your responsibility, Edwina. All you can do is talk to her and let her know how it’s affecting you. If she cares about you and this club, she’ll stop but she clearly has no respect for me and my rules so I can’t do anything about it.”

He tightened his lips, hesitating before saying, “I think maybe we should disband the murder club.”

[jamesonward]

edwinaclussy‌:

Straddling a nearby chair like she was a hip youth minister, she frowned as her chin rest on the chair’s back. “You certainly know how to rain on my parade.” she sighed, “I’m just teasing you, Jamie. You don’t have to take everything so literal… HOWEVER.” She sits up straight and is ready to debate. Eds had to admit that she missed fighting with him the most when he was out of school. “However, I still find your behavior suspicious. Care to explain the pictures you supposedly have of her? Why you’re asking everyone and their mother about her?”

Edwina thought Dylan was a pain in the ass and terrifying, but she wasn’t sure if he was a liar or not. She had a hard time trusting everything he told her, but some of the darker bits did not seem stranger than fiction. She wanted to pretend like he hadn’t told her Jamie was hurting himself, but maybe she was just making it worse by avoiding it. “Alright well…” she started, chewing the inside of her mouth a bit as she watched Jamie, “If he’s a liar then I shouldn’t have to worry about the story he told me that he saw cuts on your body…?”

Jamie stared blankly at Edwina’s disappointment. What was it with teenage girls and everything amounting to romance? Jamie liked an artfully crafted happy ending riddled with cliches now and again, but in movies. Real-life wasn’t a movie and it was pretty clear that if it was one, he wasn’t the protagonist of it. 

“Not really in the mood to be joking around,” he told her, though whether he was ever in the mood for such a thing was to be found.

“I offered to take photos of her for her Instagram and it turned into a fight so I was just wondering if she was...” Mentally scarred. “Doing alright. It’s fine, though. We made up.”

Did they, though? Everything that followed his impromptu apology was a blur. From Kat’s guilt at the hospital, then their moonlit photoshoot that only illuminated how different they were, Jamie still had no idea where they stood with each other if anywhere. He hated thinking about it as much as he hated being questioned about his motives like he should just instinctively know what he was doing just because he could do long division in his head.

Jamie gave Edwina a withering look as her expression grew worried and pensive. It was his best mode of defense in a losing situation when he bore evidence so boldly under his clothes, in his personality, in his head. If being caught in a constant stream of trouble had taught him anything, it was how to lie to the faces of people who gave a shit. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m covered in lacerations,” he said, gesturing to the remnants of bruising and cuts on his cheeks.

“There are other things you should be worrying about, like your BFF partaking in illicit activities. You need to take care of that.”

[jamesonward]

edwinaclussy‌:

With only a sliver of vague information Dylan had given Edwina about Jamie’s fascination with Kat, Edwina had deduced that it must be infatuation. It was less about facts that she had on the matter and more about how Edwina gets excited over romance. It was really no wonder why the Murder Club had yet to get any promising leads on their investigation considering Edwina only heard things she wanted to and just made up the rest (like in the case of Jamie’s love life). 

Practically kicking in the yearbook office door, Edwina honed in on her fake bae like she had some sort of Terminatoreque Jamie-Vision. 

“JAMIE WARD.”  she called out, sounding as if she was about to challenge him to a YuGiOh battle or some other made up game from a Saturday morning cartoon. “Do you have a crush on Katherine Bishop and didn’t tell me??” Edwina was mostly teasing, but to quote the great philosopher Sammie Lewis, she wanted the ‘mother fuckin’ tea’. “What’s the deal?”

//@jamesonward​

Coming back to yearbook had been a trial with his sudden abundance of regulated tasks to do following the beat-down and what felt like a whole day of panic attacks after the school had gotten a hold of Frank but it was nice to return to some semblance of normalcy. The Murder club was reduced to rubble after the discovery of the bear, but it wasn’t a horrible thing. Jamie was getting a taste of what it felt like to be a real teenager and not a clumsily written detective in a YA novel for kids and while it was enlightening, he was more than happy to return to being reclusive under the warm glow of his laptop. 

The peace didn’t last long, but he’d grown accustomed to Edwina’s loud entrances. Missed them, even, during all the time he’d had to take off.

Jamie’s eyes flicked up at her from behind the screen, unimpressed. “First of all, at which point in time would I have told you? Between getting hospitalized and forced into mandatory check-ins with Erlandson? Or maybe after dodging everyone who wants a piece of me all of a sudden? Secondly, I don’t have a crush on Katherine Bishop, so there wouldn’t be anything to tell.”

He typed a few more lines before lifting his head, cocking it as he leaned onto his elbows. “I saw you talking to Dylan Thompson. Don’t believe anything he says, he’s a liar.”

[jamesonward]

jaysster‌:

Jay squinted even more at the junior, perplexed by the apparent fact that he was just waltzing up to Damian and striking a conversation when Jay was like, pretty damn sure they were supposed to keep at least a ten-foot radius from each other at all times if they were made to share a room. He didn’t really know what the stakes were, more or less the details of their punishment or whatever, but he was pretty sure if he was asking to get his phone taken back then hanging around Damian was not at the top of the list of things he was supposed to be doing either.

He didn’t like the way Jamie started to sound like a mini con-artist, in fact, it made Jay’s palms sweat, causing him to wipe them on his trousers under the table with casual ease. “Oh. Great.” He deadpanned, clearly unimpressed by the fact he was the chosen bait of the day. Classic. If this was some kind of plan that Kat had come up with or Drea even, Jay would have agreed and even done a backflip, had they asked him to. But this wasn’t that, and Jay wasn’t even sure if he should be hanging so close to Jamie. Not after the conspiracies he and Drea had come up with lately.

“O…kay,” Jay responded slowly, getting the gist of the heist quickly, unlike long division. “But what happens when she goes to check one day and it’s not there? They’ve gotta give shit back eventually and if she finds out you’ve already got it back before she intended to give it, they’ll probably just take it again. Feels kind of-” He tried to think, “What’s the word for stupid because it just lands you back in shit?”

Jamie smirked at the first sign of Jay caving, bypassing the skepticism on his face in favor of the smallest affirmation. A tiny crack was all he needed to start burrowing. “Counterproductive? Let me worry about the aftermath. A phone’s just an overpriced of plastic without the SIM.”

He figured after he got his hands on the thing, if Sister Yohn and the school wanted to go after his property for ‘devil whispers’, they’d have to tell that to some kind of authority that didn’t exist in a religious bubble and secondly, he’d have a chance to dismantle the thing and keep what was important: Damian’s second, unrepentant confession. At the rate they were going, he’d have a whole mix tape to mail to Harvard.

“I’ll knock off a session if you help,” he added, to sweeten the pot. “I have her tomorrow morning. Let’s try and get this over with as soon as possible. My billing cycle ends soon.”

[jamesonward]

benmartos‌:

Ben blinked. In truth, it was often difficult to even imagine Jamie outside of the four walls they were forced to share. Or as a person that existed before Ben met him. Their room itself took on the shape of a dank cave in his mind’s eye when he pictured Jamie there by himself, the kind from which some cryptid would crawl out of to terrorize the nearby village. Sort of like that witch chick in that long-ass poem Beowulf he had to read in English. It didn’t help that on the off chance that he did see Jamie around campus, it was usually in the dining hall shoveling mass quantities of food into his mouth. Agile wasn’t a word or phrase he would have instinctively associated with Jamie. Muscle atrophy, maybe, or binge eating. Soul-sucking.

“So what, you’re one of those people who won’t do something unless they’re the guaranteed best at it?” Ben asked, taking a seat on his bed then maneuvering back until he made contact with the wall. They weren’t even in the same grade but it didn’t really take insider knowledge to know Jamie was competitive as fuck academically. Ben wasn’t entirely dissimilar in the general competitive sense, but it mainly pertained to track for him. Sometimes orchestra. He kind of wished it were his grades instead.

He slumped when he leaned back against the wall and picked a piece a lint off his t-shirt, which was damp in spots where he didn’t fully dry himself after his post-run shower. He had just grabbed hold of his backpack—now with a plan to pretend to read more of King Lear or maybe to actually get through Act One, which he was meant to have done as of last week—when he noted that there was a vital piece of information missing from Jamie’s story. Vital enough at least for Ben to, like, fully get it, now that he was sort of attempting to understand the guy a little.

“I don’t get it,” he started, echoing aloud his thoughts as he pulled out a bulky volume of Shakespeare’s tragedies. He crossed his legs, his elbows dropping to rest on his thighs. “You lost some footrace at the barn party and you just, like, vowed to let it never happen again or something? That’s—” dramatic “—cool, I guess.” Really, it sounded like one of those cheesy flashbacks in a biopic. He flicked his finger against the cover of the book just to hear the dull thud. “You could still train without track when you’re not so fucked up, you know. The shorts wouldn’t be mandatory.” He paused. “Showers too, technically, but—uh, still preferred. I’ve got to share a room with you, so.”

Jamie didn’t have to peek to see the skepticism in Ben’s eyes but he did anyway because he enjoyed it when he surprised people and needed the fodder to bolster his ego after it’d been deflated under Damian’s fat fists.

“Obviously. I don’t need to give anyone more reason to make fun of me,” he said, and it was true. Looking at Jamie’s chosen listen to electives and hobbies, he excelled at just about every single one of them whether it by natural talent or by bloody dedication to the craft. Choosing the things he liked and pouring heartfelt dedication into them left little room for criticism and made him seem far more competent than he was. Jamie doubted that there was anything he couldn’t do as long as he put his mind into it. (Except shower in public, he wasn’t about to do that again unless he got a lifetime’s settlement.)

“I didn’t lose a footrace,” he interjected, incensed by the suggestion of losing anything. “I was hunted in the woods by your psychotic friend and drowned in the creek. Most people try to get laid while smashed, not Damian though. Apparently he prefers murder.”

The story was easier to tell now, like it was just something that happened and not a huge scar on his psyche that he was still trying to patch up to no avail. The fear had been filled in with indignant fury at Damian and himself for being ashamed of it for so long. Even then, the fact that he needed the veritiable proof that Damian was capable of doing something cruel and heinous before admitting it aloud made him feel some kind of way. Weak, alone, cowardly.

Jamie fell quiet for a while, picking at Louie’s feelers until he decided he’d had enough of looking at him and tucked him into the crook of his arm, closing his eyes. “I’ll think about it. I need something to fill my resume with during my senior year and it’d be good to get on top of it if I’m going to join the team. Track is a solitary sport with no balls involved, which is a plus.” No bodily contact, no 45 minute games, no referees to pick a bone with.

He cracked open an eye when Ben mentioned showers, giving him a critical look. “And?”