LOG oo1; Jasper and Crysta...wherever they happen to be.

[feelingthirsty]

Who: Jasper and Crysta
What: discussing Beowulf in class
When: ...you know, I'm not actually sure
Where: a university classroom in Chicago
Info: In which Crysta is nearly late to class and, Jasper is a grumpbucket, but he could be worse.

Who: Jasper, Crysta, and a very foolish mugger
What: a mugger has a very bad night
When: later that night,

Comments

[feelingthirsty]

It was impossible not to notice when Crysta entered the classroom; she was a big blank void of emotion, a blurred patch of near nothing enveloped in the bubble of everyone else's collective aura. Jasper didn't look up when she passed, didn't so much as lift her eyes when she sat in her seat with her envelope. It wasn't until confusion bubbled up strongly enough for him to catch that he risked a glance in her direction, and left it there when he realized she wasn't looking back.

Perhaps he shouldn't have given her the money back, but he'd been reluctant to withhold it from her, knowing she was struggling. He shouldn't have asked about her the other day. He should have kept to himself, and then he wouldn't know nor would he care, and then he wouldn't be sitting here right now second-guessing himself over a human who, in the long run, meant absolutely nothing to anything anyway.

Sighing heavily, Jasper closed the book and scooted it aside so that he could cross his arms and lean back in his chair, and wait for the professor. This was silly, and he was finished. What was done was done. He wasn't wasting his time worrying about it any further.

[crystamaye]

Crysta sat facing forward, not sure if she was capable of processing so much odd, broken information. She could always ask him, but something told her Jasper wouldn't be very willing to tell her anything. She could picture his eyes, dark, a mix of strange colors as he stared at her, willing her to go home before he did lord knows what.

And she could still feel him behind her. Feel was the best word her mind could come up with, she didn't know how else to explain it. It was like after that night she had some sort of connection to him. She furrowed her brows, concentrating on her thoughts instead of the professor who had long since walked in to start talking about Beowulf again.

She wondered if he felt the same connection or if it was just her slowly going mad. Crysta was seriously starting to worry about the well being of her mind. She had never encountered a feeling like this before. She bit her lip, wondering. Her thoughts turned solely to Jasper then, focusing all of her curiosity on him as she tried to figure things out.

[feelingthirsty]

Class wasn't so bad. Although significantly muted, Jasper could tell Crysta was curious about him, to the point of distraction. But she didn't sit there and stare at him accusingly--nor, in fact, did she really glance back at him at all. If only more humans reacted this way; perhaps he wouldn't be so loathe to interacting with them.

But that was as much wishful thinking as the runaway thought that perhaps he would make it through this class--and others?--unscathed. There were still twenty minutes on the clock when the professor suggested they break off into partners again, this time to discuss the role of women in the poem. Jasper felt his frustration return from before, the bottomless seething kind that took hold when nothing seemed to go your way. That was it; he'd had enough. Id the professor wasn't going to bother teaching the class anymore today, then Jasper wasn't going to bother playing the student anymore today. Amidst the bustle of the other students lazily rearranging themselves throughout the room, he stood up and turned to leave. This gave him an hour and a half before his psych exam. He felt like taking a walk.

[crystamaye]

Crysta seemed to come aware when she realized people were moving around her. What had she missed? She looked around, piecing together from the looks of it that they were partnering up again. Her eyes scanned the crowd, automatically searching, landing on Jasper's back as he turned to leave.

Something compelled her to stand once he slipped out the door unnoticed. The professor had disappeared into his office for a moment, so it wasn't like he would notice her slide through the room after Jasper and out the back door as well.

The night air was oddly refreshing, not too cold like it tended to be. She paused, looking around and wondering if this had been a smart idea.

[feelingthirsty]

Jasper wasn't surprised to hear Crysta following after him, though he didn't exactly welcome the idea. Unfortunately there were students around, and while it might have been doable in a pinch to disappear from the stone steps leading down to the quad, exercising such speed now, for so silly a reason as to avoid a simple harmless little girl, seemed excessive and ultimately not worth the risk of being noticed by anyone else.

So he tucked his book beneath his arm and trotted down the shallow steps, in a manner more befitting of I have somewhere to be than I have someone to get away from. With any luck, the girl wouldn't be able to pick him out from the throng of students milling about, and he could disappear around the side of the building as naturally as possible, no harm done.

[crystamaye]

Jasper walked with purpose and she bit her lip, trailing after him. It wasn't hard to keep her eye on him, that odd link still keeping her well aware of his movements. She slid her bag up higher on her shoulder as she picked up her pace before he turned a corner, almost close now.

"Jasper!" She finally called out his name, pausing as she turned the corner after him. No one else seemed to be around out here and she looked after him as she slowed down her steps. She wasn't going to go chasing him around. Though, she had just followed him out here from class. She slid her hand through her hair, sighing to herself.

[feelingthirsty]

If there was anything Jasper had grown so unaccustomed to in his long life, it was the sound of a strange female calling his name. There was nothing especially unusual about her. She wasn't panicking, as far as he could tell, nor was she especially frightened of him. There was nothing about her that that he found curious or interesting. She was just an average American girl trying to pay her own way through college, who...had been mugged and nearly raped, then saved by someone who was obviously a little more than human, and who still hadn't gone to anyone about it.

Against his better judgment, he found himself stopping where he'd managed to dart out of sight, just around the next corner. This was stupid. He was being stupid. He didn't want this, some human trailing after him like a lost, excited puppy. But he'd been by himself for years now, all the more so these last few months here in Chicago, while the rest of the family was away. He'd brought that on himself, he knew; he'd done it on purpose, because he liked it that way.

So why had he paused?

He rolled his eyes at himself, annoyed. But when all was said and done he trusted his own instincts above all else, even when those instincts were pushing him back a step so that he could glance at Crysta from around the brick corner, an eyebrow raised expectantly. He was going to regret this later, he knew already. He wished he could blame Alice. He wouldn't be acting this way if she was still around.

[crystamaye]

Crysta had to admit to herself, she was surprised. By a lot of things. The way she was acting for one, the way she stood there staring back at Jasper, who she hadn't expected to stop at all, let alone turn to her. He stood a good distance from her, somehow managing to get to the other end of the building before she had turned the corner. But there he stood, a perfect brow arched in her direction.

She took one step forward, hesitant. She didn't know what to say, she hadn't exactly planned anything out. "I...I just wanted to thank you. For helping me the other night." She looked straight back into his gaze, somehow she couldn't help it. And her voice was oddly clear in her ears.

Crysta was thankful, of course. She could be dead right now or...still alive and traumatized for the rest of her life. Yet Jasper had been there, rescuing her from a situation that could have gone very bad for her.

[feelingthirsty]

When Jasper realized there was no more coming, he sighed, his gaze returning to the empty path in front of him a moment before he glanced back a final time at the human. He shouldn't acknowledge her, but he did; he nodded, just once, then gave her a final glance before continuing around the building and out of sight.

Not a total waste of time, then, and at least he wasn't dreading his next class with her, let alone the remainder of the semester. Sighing, he shook his head at his own foolishness. He could have chosen a much more troublesome person to stick his neck out for. He'd gotten lucky this time, but he wasn't going to chance something like that again any time soon.

[crystamaye]

Now that didn't surprise her at all. She watched him walk away, long after he was out of sight. Oh, that didn't even make sense, she scolded her brain and turned away after a few moments of just standing there looking like a fool. Crysta hardly wanted to stick around the campus in the dark anymore and she headed for the nearest crowd flowing into the building for her next class.

The next few days were stressful. She worked entirely too many hours that allotted her almost no time for sleep if she wanted to get her assignments done in time for class. And when her mind wasn't focused on a current job related task or typing papers, she was thinking of Jasper. If she admitted it to herself, she was always thinking of Jasper, his face always in the back of her mind. And it was frustrating. To think about him so much and not know him. He was a total enigma.

Crysta sighed, sitting in a plump chair tucked away in the back of the book store. Her back was sore from reaching up to slide all the new books on the shelves and it was time for her break anyways. Her eyes began to drift closed and before she knew it she was nodding off.

[feelingthirsty]

Jasper spent the next few days in relative peace, although that same peace came hand in hand with boredom. He read his course books, he finished his coarse work, he made sure to speak with his professors before and after class about all the things they hadn't included in the syllabus, and in the off hours he spent a lot of time reading--on his computer, from the selection of books he'd stacked beside his couch in the small apartment he'd rented just off campus, from anywhere he could get his hands on something. Except that the books, unlike the computer, were not inexhaustible. The problem was in finding a bookstore that stayed open for very long after dark. Usually, the solution was waiting for a rainy day.

The hood of his jacket had caught most of the water, but Jasper still had to shake a bit out of his hair after he'd stepped into the little store on the corner. He hadn't actually been to this one yet before, though, so it came as a surprise a short while later when he caught onto a familiar scent, and followed it curiously to the back. The redhead was there, Crysta, fast asleep in a comfortable-looking armchair. Jasper had to bite back a small smile. What a coincidence.

He could simply leave her like this, and she would probably be none the wiser. But she hadn't done anything stupid these last few days, like try to seek him out or follow him anywhere after class, and for that he was grateful. Or, if not exactly grateful, then relaxed, at least. Unopposed to speaking to her again. With an entire Saturday to kill and nothing immediately pressing to fill it with, he found himself settling into one of the chairs opposite her with one of his new books, amused and curious to see how long it would take her to wake.

[crystamaye]

Crysta exhaled, shifting slightly as she felt a prickling familiar feeling. Her eyelids fluttered open and she blinked as she stared into Jasper's face. "Oh." She sat up straight, looking about her, noticing that she was indeed still at work. Then she turned back to him.

"Uhm, how long have you been sitting there?" She asked, somewhat embarrassed as she reached up to smooth down her hair.

[feelingthirsty]

"'Bout five minutes," Jasper drawled as he turned the page in his book, with an amused glance up at her from beneath his hair. "You make it a habit of falling asleep in book stores, or did you figure I'd be coming in here sometime today?"

[crystamaye]

Crysta felt a flush working up her chest and stood up. "I was on my break actually, I should probably get back to stocking..." The twang of his words made her heart give an odd beat and she turned back to her half empty forgotten box of books. "You make it a habit of watching sleeping girls?" She couldn't help but retaliate, lifting the box up against her hip and glancing back at him. The banter came easily, even though things should have been...weird. But who was she kidding, they were both odd anyways.

[feelingthirsty]

That little jump in the girl's heart made Jasper wonder what he was doing here, initiating a conversation like this, encouraging something he had absolutely no interest in. It didn't take much, with girls, he'd learned. Especially when your very scent was biologically designed to attract them to you, no matter how uninterested you were.

Even so, his amused look turned into a small smirk, and he closed his book on his thumb to look up at her as she stood. "Only the pretty ones," he said easily, thinking of Edward's recent antics. It wasn't until afterward that he realized it might sound a little more flirtatious than he'd meant it, and to counter he pushed himself up to his feet and lifted his eyebrows at the box under her arm.

"Anything good in there?"

[crystamaye]

Crysta looked away from him once his lips curled up in that way, eyes scanning the shelves in fake interest as she pretended to figure out where to put the books. His words echoed in her ears though and she had to focus on what he asked after he may have called her pretty.

She shrugged, looking back down into the box and reaching in. " 'The History of Crocheting' " She rose a brow over at him, waving the book. "Something that interest you? You look like the crocheting type actually." She tilted her head, giving him a once over as if he really did look like he would do such a silly thing. He didn't of course. He looked lean, well muscled, and entirely good looking to be standing in front of her.