keptherwaiting | 1949, Prince Edward Island, Canada

Jasper peers up at her from beneath that curtain of sex-tousled curls when he feels her looking, and laughs under the weight of her stare.

He brushes back his hair.

“ - What? You keep statin’ at me like that, darlin’, and we’re going to have to go another round,” he teases, leaning forward to kiss her again.

“I love the watch. Thank you.”

“I just—“ Alice shakes her head, reaching out for him. Her fingers curl around his shoulder, tugging him forward so she can kiss him.

“I just love you,” she mumbles against his mouth, her fingers sliding into his hair, tangling with the strands. “I’m just so happy I get to spend my life with you.”

“Oh, Alice.”

She’s getting emotional, and he is too.

He pulls her into his lap and then cups her cheeks as kisses her, a brush of lips against lips, and another kiss to the corner of her mouth.

“I love you,” he whispers, “And I’m so happy to be spendin’ my life with you.”

“How can one year feel so perfect?” She laughs, a cross between helpless and self-deprecating. “How did one minute?”

Lifting a hand from his hair, Alice instead twists her fingers around his at her cheek, holding his hand as she kisses him again, and again, and again—just quick, pecks across the span of his face and mouth.

He’s grinning under all her kisses. He’s so happy, almost unbelievably so.

It really has been a perfect year.

“You’re my one, and I’m yours, and that just makes everything perfect.”

Her teeth sink into her bottom lip again, to keep it from wobbling. She’s so happy, she feels like she could be crying.

That’s never made sense to her—as someone who can’t cry, why would you cry when happy? Yet, the feeling is there.

Taking his hand from her cheek, Alice presses kisses against his fingertips, the backs of his fingers, his palm. She could map him out blindly after all the time she’s spent memorizing him. Yet, she still does it—commits each inch of him to her mind.

“I love you,” she whispers again, her lips barely moving against his fingers, her teeth nipping the tip of his thumb just barely.

“I feel it too, y’know,” he whispers, kissing her forehead as she nips at his thumb. “Not just that you feel that way, but - I’m happy too. Overwhelmingly. I’d cry too, if I could. I love you so much.”

“My life was relatively easy, before you,” Alice kisses his thumb again, to make up for the nip. “I didn’t hurt much, and I was happy. But something was always missing.

“I’d get a vision of you and this overwhelming ache would press on me. Like I couldn’t breathe without you near me. The vision would end and life would go on as normal for a while, until the next.” She’s looking at their hands, twisting and untwisting their fingers as she speaks. “Heartache, Adelaide told me. I didn’t know. It feels...almost the same as when I look at you now, here. Like it hurts to love you this much. But a good hurt.”

She shrugs, rolling her eyes at herself. “It’s silly. But I worry—that I’m gonna overwhelm you with how much I feel. I know I feel a lot...I don’t know how to do anything by half-measure, I guess.”

Jasper laughs a little helplessly as he sorts through her spew of words and feelings.

“God, darlin’, just - First? I know how you feel. I feel that too. That heartache. Any and every time I look at you, even. I miss you when you’re right beside me.”

He brings her fidgety hands to his mouth, and presses his lips to them.

“Second? I don’t want you to try and hide your feelings from me, ever. I love how strongly you feel about everythin’. I’m not gonna lie and say you won’t overwhelm me, because you already have.

“I can’t turn it off, y’know. I’m always feelin’ everything, everyone. Kind of like your visions. I can only do my best to ignore it. Not let it affect me. But, I can’t always, and you’ve already seen me at some of my worst. We love each other though, right? And that’s what matters.”

“I just don’t...” Alice starts, then trails off, focusing on her fingers at his lips, the press of his mouth against them as she tries to find the right words. “I don’t want to make you feel things you don’t want to.”

Maybe she’s touched on this before—that she’s afraid that she’ll change his mood without meaning to, that she’ll use his moods against him.

She knows Maria did it; she saw it in the end.

Alice shivers a little, her lips twisting sourly at the thought of the other woman. She’s naked, with an equally naked Jasper, and she’s celebrating one year of bliss with him. She shouldn’t be bringing the mood down.

Shaking her head, Alice sighs, fingers squeezing his. “Never mind. I don’t mean to sour the mood. This is our day.”

“No, wait. We should talk about this,” he says, squeezing her fingers in return.

She’s concerned, and Jasper can’t imagine ignoring that for the sake of celebrating.

He frowns thoughtfully at her, just trying to make sense of it all.

“You’re worried about manipulating me with your emotions? Even unintentionally so?”

Alice deflates a little, even though she knew he’d not let her off the hook. “No. Maybe.

“What if I’m angry at something? And I push and push it at you—“ she bites her lip and sighs, her gaze sliding to his shoulder. “Worse—what if you’re angry and I push a different mood at you? To distract and deflect? In a way you don’t want?”

He feeds off of her emotions more than others, this she knows. They are a conduit to one another, a loop. What if she does something one day, whether tomorrow or far into the future, and reminds him of Maria in the end?

She doesn’t want to ever remind him of Maria. Not in the bad, and if she’s being honest, not in the good either.

Her fingers unwind from his to push through her hair and she shivers again, reaching for the blanket tossed to the end of the bed, to draw it around herself. It’s warm enough—not like the bath, but it serves a comforting purpose.

“I know that...Maria did that, in the end, and I can only imagine she did it before. Turning your mood to something else to serve her needs and wants.” Alice murmurs in a rush, her fingers tightening on the ends of her hair. “I don’t want that to happen and I know not wanting it means I’m not her, but if I did it, I’d still be no better.”

Jasper could be used, so easily. And to Alice, it seems like Maria did it without a second thought, whether that’s true or not.

“That’s a lot of what ifs,” Jasper says softly, not quite meeting her gaze as he toys with the edge of the blanket she’s pulled over her shoulders.

He’s not sure how else to respond. He doesn’t think Alice would ever use him in such a way, but he also hadn’t thought Maria would. And she had, hadn’t she?

Then again -

“I’ve manipulated others too,” he adds after another moment. “I worry - That is, I don’t want to do so in a way that hurts you but I can’t promise not to use my powers on you. It doesn’t excuse it but I do it to protect myself sometimes, y’know. If someone is too angry or upset, and I can feel my mood changin’ because of it.

“And I - used my powers against Maria too. Manipulated her to do something, used it to scare her, get her angry, or calm her down. I know you think the worst of her and that she manipulated me and maybe she had and maybe I’m easily fooled,” he says in a rush, “but I’m not innocent, Alice.”

It’s hard for her to believe that—he’s never given her reason to believe him when he says he hurt Maria too.

Sometimes, she thinks he’s just being hard on himself. But, then again, he lived an entire life before her, was an entirely different man.

A soldier, a killer.

Alice reaches out, her fingers ghosting over his chin and lips. “See, I brought it down—we’re supposed to be celebrating.”

She feels anxious, nervous, uneasy and she can’t pin down the exact reason, except the worry she’s upset Jasper. He’s quick to defend Maria, or rather: he’s quick to remind her he hurt Maria too, as if worried Alice will show undue hatred toward the other woman.

Alice doesn’t think her hatred is undue at all.

“Well, I guess. I promise to never change your mood maliciously. To hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you—that was the whole point of my ramblin’.”

“And I promise to never use my powers against you maliciously,” Jasper swears, frowning against the tips of her fingers pressed still to his mouth.

“Is this - Is this because I had a sexual relationship with her?”

It’s his turn to talk fast, the words pouring from him:

“I never felt an ounce of what I feel for you for her. I fancied myself in love but now I know it wasn’t that. I love you. I know it doesn’t erase the fact that I was with her first, though. That she and I were together for so long. And you - Far as you know, you’ve never been with anyone else.

“I mean, you woke up as a vampire and I was the first thing you saw. I don’t want you to be with me just because you think you’re supposed to be. Maybe you’d rather have a - a chance with someone else?”

Which, God just the thought and saying as much twists his insides and it hurts. He doesn’t want that but could he stand in her way?

“No—no—“ Alice shakes her head, almost violently, her fingers pressing harder against his lips as if she could stop the words from coming out. Her chest aches, sharp and painful. “No, I don’t care about—“

Biting down on her lip, she takes a deep, albeit shuddery, breath and tries to put her words right before speaking.

“I don’t care that you and Maria had sex. I don’t care if you had it every day, or every possible second you could. I really don’t, that’s not it. I care that she hurt you...I care that she took advantage of your powers to make you do things. I know you say that you’ve done things to her and I believe you but—“

There’s no neat way to get her thoughts into the words she wants to say.

“You are the only one I want. I know it’s cheesy, the whole ‘love at first sight’ idea, but I didn’t know anything when I woke up, and then I knew of you and I felt like I might have somewhere to belong. I wandered the country, feeling wrong and weird for so long but just thinking of you made me feel right. Why would I want to try with someone else when I know what true love is?”

She cups his face with her hands, pressing her forehead against his. “I just don’t want you to ever think you traded one cage for another, with me. I don’t want to use you, or hurt you, like Maria. And I don’t want you to hurt me like you say you did her—even though I highly doubt you’re capable of that because I mean—“

Alice pulls back to smile cheekily at him, trying to insert some sort of humor back into the air, to make him laugh or smile. “—look at me! I’m so ridiculously adorable, you can’t be mad at me.”

Jasper smiles softly. “You are ridiculously adorable,” he says, leaning forward to kiss her cheek.

He loves her and she loves him and that’s what he clings to for the next few moments.

A true love, as she says. Theirs is so strong, and he doesn’t think he’s ever felt anything stronger.

“I don’t feel caged by you,” he adds after another moment of attempting to sort through her words and thoughts and feelings. “And I trust you, more than I’ve ever trusted anyone.

“I don’t know what else I can promise you other than my love, my trust in you, and that I promise to never hurt you intentionally, though. And I don’t know how else to reassure you about the rest because - I don’t know what we’ll face in the future.

“You may, with your visions, but I just - We can’t promise to never get mad at each other or be stupid about something. At least, I can’t. I’m moody as Hell, darlin’,” he adds with with a twist of his lips, his own attempt to lighten the mood again.

She’s listening—really, she is—but that twist of his lips floods her with a sudden need to kiss him again.

“I know,” Alice whispers, shrugging the blanket off as she inches closer to him, her fingers light on his chin, moving his head so she can press her lips against his. A soft press, then a longer, deeper one.

A whiny noise leaves her when she presses her forehead against his, her words breathless. “I’m really not worried about you hurting me—you probably never will, with how protective you are. It’s me I’m worried about—I’m a mess, erratic at best. I just worry you’ll be caught in the flow of it all.

“I love you, so much,” Alice mumbles, dragging her lips across his cheek, jaw. “And I want forever with you.”

“Honey, I‘ve been caught in the flow of it already,” Jasper says with something of a laugh, following her kisses with his own.

“That first day, I was so overwhelmed by you. That night too, and days following. Maybe it won’t always be the good kind, but I’m here for it all. Not just your good moods. Like you‘re there for me.”

That said, he sweeps her up into his arms and has her back pressing into the bed as he covers her body with his and kisses her more soundly.

“I love you.”

“Jasper,” Alice whispers, her hands framing his face again, her voice soft but intense, as she implores for him to listen. “You are the best thing to ever happen to me. I know I‘ve said it before, but I need you to know I mean it.”

She slides her hands to his shoulders, swinging her leg over his hip so she can overbalance him and reverse their positions. Settling on his lap, Alice presses her forehead against Jasper’s.

“You are,” she drops a kiss to his cheek, then the other, her mouth trailing down his jaw. “The best part of my life.”

Jasper is listening, and he takes the words to heart. She means them, and he feels that heartache that they’d been talking about earlier at her sincerity. This though only because his heart feels so full and like it could burst.

“Alice - “

Something like a sob leaves him.

God, she makes him into an emotional mess with how much he feels for her, but he doesn’t care.

He cups her face, pulling her lips to his again in a kiss, pouring all the love he feels into it and her.

Shuddering under his hands, Alice makes a sob-like noise of her own. Her fingers clutch at his shoulders under the onslaught of his emotion, trembling at the intensity.

An intensity she feels from within—mirrored by his. Her love, his love, it all swirls together and threatens to overwhelm her.

“I love you,” she sighs, her words muffled and scattered across his lips. She repeats the words, over and over again, her fingers stroking his cheeks, pushing into his hair, slipping down his neck. “God-Jasper—you—“

A helpless laugh leaves her as her words fail her and Alice kisses him again instead.

Jasper follows her helpless laugh with one of his own as he props himself up on his elbows to kiss her back.

He just loves her so much, and their love makes him so happy.

Any nervousness or panic he’d felt moments ago as they talked fade as his lips slide against hers and he just basks in their feelings of the moment.

He then nips at her bottom lip - “Love you too.” - and follows it with the press of a more gentle kiss.

After a long moment, she breaks the kiss. Alice tucks her head against his neck, her arms wrapping around his shoulders in a hug.

She wishes she could come up with more words to explain how much she loves him. The three little words aren’t enough.

Trailing her lips down his neck, Alice nips at his shoulder, soothing immediately with a swipe of her tongue.

She doesn’t need to say it, though Jasper loves to hear it. Her feelings and her actions, from her lips on him to the tokens she gifts him with, are more than enough to convey it.

He nuzzles his face against her neck and breathes in deeply. She always smells so good to him. That scent of hers can calm him instantly, turn him into a puddle, or just as quickly turn him on, much like it does now.

He sometimes wonders if it’s too much, how much he wants her at times, always eager and always ready. How he can be perfectly content and then just need her in the next moment. It’s like the hunger for blood, but this burning is not limited to an acid coating his throat, rather more like a raging fire that burns through every limb, starting in his chest and erupting outward.

Edited 2020-09-18 13:10 (UTC)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject