#jasper brown.

[girlsiren]

@curseplay: i'm in your corner, champ. knock 'em dead.

“you’re not in my fucking corner, paris. you took a wrong turn and ended up at a dead end.” so maybe he wasn’t in the mood for a pep talk. jasper needed his mum to smack him across the face. he needed to lean against a wall and push until his brain popped into place like a plastic water bottle. paris harrow of lesbians and better music than him was not the cure to pathos. the stage loomed large and his forty minute opening act was pitiful by comparison. second opener, too; not good enough to open, never going to effectively hype the crowd up for the thing they came for. “nobody gives a fuck out there for this. will you slap me across the face, paris? would you? please?”

[girlsiren]

@saltwaters: you've gone soft in your old age.

jasper had a tendency to forget things like his age and birthday. he didn’t feel a day older than twenty, physical aging aside; the last birthday his parents so much as left him a letter for was his eighteenth. what did a birthday matter when every memory was antithetical to the purpose? alas, he wasn’t bothered with boring people to tears about his birthday blues anymore. maybe he really had changed.

“soft?” he scoffed, leaning down to speak in ear. “i could bend a fucking steel rod over my erection. i’m not soft, alice. i’m cool, just not so red-hot anymore.” dilf suave, hugh grant in eyeliner over here. “i’m not soft, i was just an idiot back then. who throws a tantrum over a dive bar’s sound system?” jasper brown, ages sixteen to twenty-eight. he flashed a charming grin at her, a shrug making the leather over his shoulders squeak. “this is fine. i can’t hear a word you’re saying but it’s fine.”

[girlsiren]

@joyousdefunct as nicolette: i told them if anything happened to me, it was you who did it.

sometimes jasper wasn’t sure if he was living a fucked-up watershed truman show where everyone was in on the joke but him, or if he was just fucking stupid. whether she really was or not, nico had the world convinced that she was whipsmart and better than the rest. (exhibit a, her ability to leave his jaw slack even while her clothes were still on.)

the cigarette stayed between his lips a moment longer, lungs filling with the air his cheap gunpowder-infused straights provided. it felt like he was supposed to smoke tailor-made ciggies around nico, like she’d turn her nose up at the sight of him running his tongue along a paper.

“yeah?” his head canted to one side with the corner of his lips, rewriting a worn parenthesis on one side of his face. “you’re the one inviting me to your room.” hands up. “not to victim blame or anything.”

jasper tapped his ash over the balcony edge, cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger. his eyes found nico and then stayed there, no more hide and seek around her jokes. “go on, then. what’s the story? for my court case, i’m sure the little princess will need it told her way. tell me how you want me to kill you, nico.”

[girlsiren]

@deatheless: [ 7PM ] an outdoors event as the heat backs off, full of laughter & live music.

the absence of bliss, these shitty sunglasses he couldn’t take off. constant dark. jasper could see the laughter, could feel the bodies making up for the heat the weather didn’t provide, but his skin was drawn too tight over his body. he wasn’t hiding it well tonight.

he let go of an uneasy laugh, crushing a cigarette beneath his foot. “mina?” jasper’s fingers reached out to touch her shoulder. “you haven’t got anything, have you? something. i’m a little, you know.” he lifted his cold fingers, shaking. “could do with something.” he was all moth-like through the motions of life, fluttering towards a fire in search of the moon.

sometimes the music made him feel better. other times, when the band was good, it made him feel utterly useless as a musician, and a person, and the jealousy made insecurity and he couldn’t fix the noise.

he cast a glance around the nearby crowd. it wasn’t about who was on something, that was the majority, but who looked especially generous. jasper turned back to mina, younger and more talented and full of so much life, “i’m a buzzkill. maybe we—or, i’ll—just go back home.”