“Liar.” Jasper reached over to pluck the glass from Dorian’s unresisting hand. Why was it that dealing with someone else’s emotions was so much easier than dealing with your own? “I think that’s enough for now, don’t you?”
“You’re right,” Dorian said. “We may have found Caius, but that doesn’t mean I can afford to let my guard down. There’s always the possibility that we were followed and that someone is going to burst through that door, sword in hand, eager to take him back to that monster’s clutches.” He made as if to stand up, but Jasper placed a firm hand on Dorian’s knee.
Obtuse, thy name is Dorian.
“That isn’t what I meant,” said Jasper. “I just don’t think drowning your sorrows ever really works.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from personal experience,” Dorian said.
Jasper realized then that he had been lying to himself when he imagined himself as a stranger to shame. He was indeed speaking from personal experience, but those were not experiences he wanted to share with Dorian. Despite a storied history of disdaining the good opinion of others, Jasper found himself wanting Dorian to believe the best of him, in the face of all evidence to the contrary. A strong and undeniable longing unfurled in Jasper’s stomach. He wanted so strongly for Dorian to look at him like he had hung the moon, wanted it in a way that manifested itself as an almost physical ache. More than anything, he wanted to be worthy of that look.
Jasper hadn’t become one of the most notorious contacts in Echo’s roster of criminally inclined individuals by making admirable life decisions.
“After Quinn…” The glass of whiskey was suddenly heavy in Jasper’s hand. He thought about downing what was left in it, but that would have been the height of hypocrisy. He set the glass down on the rickety end table and started again. “After I left Quinn, I was a bit of a mess.”
Dorian’s hand twitched where it rested on his own thigh, as if he were considering reaching out to touch Jasper, to offer some form of physical comfort, but the hand did not move any farther. And, oh, what torture that was. A memory came to Jasper, rendered in Technicolor clarity, of a kiss shared in the darkness of the wine cellar, of those hands in his hair-feathers, of those hands soft and reverent against his skin. One night was all they had had before the world came crashing down around them, and Jasper had played that series of moments over and over and over again in his mind to the point where he half suspected them to be the product of a painfully realistic fever dream.
“You were so young then,” Dorian said softly. “You are still so young. You’re allowed to be a little messy.”
Jasper let out a mirthless little laugh. “I was a lot messy. It’s kind of what happens after someone completely destroys your sense of self.” Another pang of shame. “But we’re not talking about me now, we’re talking about you. Don’t think I didn’t notice that you avoided answering the question.” Jasper asked again, just for good measure: “How are you doing? And no deflecting this time. I won’t stand for it.”
Dorian made a noise that was almost a chuckle but was too soft, too quiet to qualify as one. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re infuriatingly perceptive?”
“Yes, shockingly enough, more than once, but it didn’t take any Holmesian levels of deduction to see that you are very much not okay right now,” Jasper said. “And correct me if I’m mistaken, but I think you’re used to no one asking you if you’re all right. And I think maybe that question flummoxed you a little bit.”
Dorian rubbed his scars again, fingers lingering on the raised flesh as if that touch could ground him. “I just…” A frustrated grumble ate the rest of his words. “I don’t know how to talk about this. About him.”
About Caius, Jasper thought. But he didn’t push. He didn’t prod. This conversation had to happen at Dorian’s pace or it wouldn’t happen at all.
“It’s very easy,” Dorian said, “to grow accustomed to silence. If you deny yourself something long enough, you can start to ignore it, but it never really goes away. It’s just something you’ve seen so many times that you become almost blind to it. Until suddenly, something happens, and you can’t not see it. It is there, and it is undeniable, and there is no escaping the truth of it. And try as you might, you can’t hide from it. Even if you stubbornly refuse to name it, it’s there, with you, and you realize then that you were its hostage all along.”
This was getting far more introspective than Jasper had anticipated.
“You love him,” Jasper said, his voice soft in the dimly lit stillness.
The silence that followed that simple statement was complete and unyielding. The grandfather clock ticked away seconds that felt like hours. And then, the unexpected. A laugh bubbled up from deep within Dorian’s chest, a wild thing that careened into the quiet, shattering it.
“You know,” Dorian said, “I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud.”
“Technically, you still haven’t,” Jasper said.
A strange resolve seemed to come over Dorian then. He kept his gaze forward, eye trained on the slowly dying fire as he spoke. “I loved him.”
Loved? The past tense did not escape Jasper’s notice.
“I still love him,” Dorian said.
And just like that, the fragile hope blossoming in Jasper’s chest began to shrivel up like a potted plant someone had forgotten to water. Without pausing to consider that maybe inebriation was not the best of plans, Jasper picked up the discarded glass of whiskey and knocked it back, refusing to wince as the alcohol burned his throat all the way down. He was not stone. If you pricked him, he would bleed. And Dorian had just wielded the blade guaranteed to cut the deepest.
Jasper was ready to flee, muscles in his legs tensing, his brain plotting the quickest escape route, when Dorian appeared to sense the shift in his mood. With aching slowness, the hand that had refused to reach out to Jasper earlier made its move. Now it was Dorian’s turn to pluck the glass from Jasper’s hand and place it to the side. His fingers rested against Jasper’s knuckles as if unsure of their welcome. Slowly, ever so slowly, Jasper turned his hand over so that their fingers interlocked.
“I still love him,” Dorian repeated. “But not the way I used to.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR