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]

Vampires didn't sweat, but Jasper was sure that if they did his clothing would be soaked. It would be dark in a couple of hours. The heat of the sun made no difference to him--he felt the burn or sting of the elements, of course, but discomfort lost its meaning when you knew it couldn't harm you. Crysta, however, would be completely blind at night, and while the thought of testing her under such conditions was appealing, the thought of leaving her alone for indeterminable amounts of time in a dark forest was not. It wasn't even guilt, at this point. He liked her. She was interesting. He wanted to keep her safe, actively, and that included protecting her from his own aggressive curiosity.

While the human hadn't moved much all day, Japer had run a few hundred miles, and was mentally exhausted. Crysta had seen him in the sun by now, but still he wore his sleeves long, to hide the scars littering his skin from view for as long as he could manage it. This meant dirtying and tearing his sleeves, though, forcing his way through the tangled underbrush of the national park he'd driven them to. His kind didn't tire; he could run for days and days at a pace on par with human marathon runners, and as long as he fed regularly he could go on indefinitely. So although he finally returned to Crysta looking like he'd just took a tumble down a very large, very prickly hill, it wasn't his body that was bothering him.

He'd left her behind on the shore of a scenic bend in a river, where she would have something to occupy her time while she waited for him to shift positions whenever she tired of reading. The treeline nearby was lush, and he finally pushed his way out of it onto the open rocky shore with an annoyed frown. Today had not been very productive. Perhaps the park had been a bad idea; their cell phone service was spotty at best, and Crysta didn't know the land well enough to recognize much of it--but was that even the problem? Jasper couldn't tell. Damn that lovesick fool Edward, celibate for a century and now finally holed up indisposed with a girl the one time Jasper could use him!

With barely a glance in Crysta's direction, he stalked straight to the edge of the gently bubbling water with a huff, then planted his hands firmly on his hips and glared at the swirling eddies all around him as if blaming them for his own inadequacies. But there was a nice breeze here, that wafted through his hair and caught his clothes up in a gentle, soothing tease that helped to settle his frayed nerves. If only he still sweat. In a matter of moments his glare softened into a look of contemplation, then annoyance. No, he couldn't wade in. Not with Crysta here. His clothes would be soaked and he didn't have a spare set--and he was absolutely not about to reveal his battle-ravaged body to her like this, out in bright, unfiltered sunlight that caught on every one of his countless scars and illuminated them like beacons.

"That's all for today. You...did well."

Even he had to wince at the obvious insincerity of his statement, although with his gaze still leveled out on the water perhaps Crysta didn't see. It wasn't her fault she was having difficult learning to control this, and he didn't blame her. He was just...used to taking more drastic measures in order to achieve the results he wanted, in a much more timely fashion. It was a constant struggle to remind himself that there was no rush here, no deadline, no desperate battle hinging on his ability to draw out and hone this gift and hone it immediately, before they could be caught defenseless in an ambush. He sighed, and attempted to force the tension from his shoulders inch by conscious inch. Old habits died hard. At least Emmett wasn't here to gloat and laugh over his completely unfounded and pointless frustrations.

[crystamaye]

It had been a very long time since Crysta had had this sort of opportunity to sit outside, enjoy the weather, and the comfort of a book in her hands. Jasper already knew about her lack of time to do anything for herself lately, let alone take down time to read a book for leisure. But the sound of the flowing water was relaxing and so was the warm beat of heat filtering through the trees to the open area Jasper had set her in for him to "test" her abilities. But as relaxing as the environment was, she wasn't quite as...relaxed as she would have liked to be. For one, she could tell, simply by the sound of his voice every time he called her, that Jasper was growing increasingly frustrated by her failure to get any more specific in her description of his whereabouts when he asked. She just didn't know what to give him. And it wasn't for lack of trying either, she truly was, for him. Because he seemed to really want her to and well, she sort of didn't want to disappoint him. But because she had never even known about this odd ability of hers, she had no idea where to start to give him the results he seemed to want.

Unlike Jasper, Crysta was taking the nice weather for what it was and wore a tank top and shorts, deciding her overly pale skin could do for some sun as she lay back on the blanket she had brought to lay on beside the river. At least she could get a tan from this whole ordeal. The few hours she sat alone in the secluded area while Jasper ran around in circles wasn't unpleasant, considering Crysta was quite used to being alone, but she found herself...missing Jasper's presence. Something she found she did a lot of now. At least he seemed more willing to spend time with her now that he had a reason to be around her. She'd take what she could get. Not that Crysta wanted much from Jasper, no, of course not. She really just liked his company...

Crysta knew the instant he was back, hell, knew he was approaching, glancing towards the edge of the brush to watch as he stalked into sight. She had really learned to read him well in the short time she'd known him and she wasn't wrong about his mood, he looked tense and upset. Mentally she sighed for disappointing him, but she didn't understand why he seemed to be in such a rush to figure this out. The way she saw it, there wasn't exactly a deadline to get this sorted. Unless he'd like to as fast as he could and then finally be done with her. That thought brought a touch of a frown to her lips as she tracked him to the edge of the water with her eyes, noting the way he had barely even looked at her, the hard, frustrated glaze to his eyes and the rigid way he held himself. He was upset with her.

And she didn't believe his words for a second. Did well. She did the same as she did the day before and the day in his apartment. They weren't getting anywhere with this.

Slumping back against the tree she leaned back on, she cast her eyes down to her lap and her book, still frowning. "I'm sorry."

[feelingthirsty]

Her reply drew a quick glance from Jasper, closely followed by a longer look when he noticed the guilty slump curling her frame. Damn it. He really wasn't used to this. The newborns had never felt badly for disappointing him, only angry or desperate or sad that they wouldn't be able to feed that night, knowing full well that their more talented rivals were busy gorging themselves. Jasper knew this because he kept close tabs on every one of them; for decades he had allowed himself to drown in their sea of emotions, never once coming up for air lest he miss the vengeful, murderous intentions brewing in the back of someone's mind, of which there were many.

But Crysta was not a newborn. She wasn't even a vampire. She was a human that he simply could not read, which made him feel rather human himself. In the city they were surrounded by the collective aura of its citizens, but way out here in the wilderness it was just the two of them and a handful of fisherman miles downriver, well out of Jasper's range. There would be no prey to deny her tonight, nor did he want to motivate her by her greed or selfishness as he'd gotten so used to doing in the past. No. This was a friend he was helping, not a subordinate he was training. Jasper was having a difficult time reminding himself of that.

Sighing, he kicked a small rock out into the water with the toe of his boot, and tried to force his frustrations to go with it. They were doing him no good here. Rather than stand at the river's edge and brood like he wanted to, he let his hands fall from his hips and turned to approach Crysta. Human. The last humans he'd worked with had been the soldiers in his command. He didn't like thinking about those men, remembering them, but he tried to anyway, for her sake. What had he done to encourage them?

Well he hadn't berated them, for one. His status had meant nothing to him then, just a boy of seventeen pretending to be nearing thirty. What a fool he'd been. He wondered, now, how many of them had suspected the truth about him, but played along with him anyway.

Remembering them even a little threatened to open the floodgates of nostalgia, but also had the benefit of calming him down some. He let the dappled shade envelop him and then slumped down on a corner of the blanket, trying not to encroach on her personal space. He was very aware of their difference in attire. Somehow, though, he doubted the sight of all his scarred and ravaged skin would be half as appealing as hers.

"No." He sighed and leaned forward to loop his hands around his knees, shooting a glance over at Crysta now sitting beside him. "It isn't you. I'm sorry. I shouldn't be demanding so much from you."

And it wasn't her he was disappointed in, really. Not at all. Her limitations were her limitations, and he knew better than to blame her for them. It was his own failure to help her overcome them that annoyed him so much. He was supposed to be good at this--the one thing he'd always been so good at, after killing. He'd overestimated himself.

[crystamaye]

Tipping her head up, she glanced over as Jasper settled down on the edge of her blanket. At least he didn't look as tense as before. That made her feel slightly better.

She took note of his wind whipped hair and torn and dirtied clothing. It still left her in a bit of awe when she saw his skin glimmer like that in the sun, mesmerized though by almost every aspect that was Jasper. Physically and personality wise. He was just so interesting. Even though he tried his hardest to hide most everything about himself from her. She had noticed his aversion to short sleeves though and was curious if it was due to the sun thing or something else.

Giving a small shrug, his words eased her, but only a little. Still felt like she could do better somehow. "I'm just sorry for all this work you're doing and there isn't really anything to show for it." Though it seemed like they were both just blaming themselves for things that weren't their fault.

[feelingthirsty]

Jasper noticed the same thing about them, and had to shake his head at himself with a small, wry smile of amusement. This was all so silly. He was asking these things of her like she was a newborn critical to the survival of his coven, on a mortal deadline. And for what? He had no reason to push either of them so hard.

"There doesn't have to be anything to show for it." He shrugged as well, and repeated that to himself internally. It was such a new concept, easy to grasp but difficult to accept. He'd had no idea he was still clinging so firmly to these old habits of his.

"Mayhap we should take a break for a while," he sighed, looking out over the water. It was such a nice day out. He should be enjoying it, and he tried to, leaning backward on his hands and stretching his legs out in front of him. Here he was, sitting beside a pretty young girl alone out at a river's edge, thinking about bloodwars and centuries past. If Alice were here she would laugh at him.

[crystamaye]

"There doesn't?" Crysta asked, lifting a brow as she watched his lips actually twitch in a tiny smile. Sometimes she really wondered what went on in Jasper's mind. She could feel like she knew him better than she thought possible and then other times she remembered she didn't know him at all.

Nodding, Crysta was relaxing back against her tree once more, stretching her own legs out right alongside Jasper's. "A break sounds nice. Though, I would think you need it more seeing as I really haven't done much but sit here all day while you ran around." It was nice to be sitting with him here now though instead of being alone. He always had a calming

And Alice didn't need to be there at all to be laughing at Jasper's situation right now. She would have given him another call by now if she didn't think that Jasper should be going through this alone. He needed to learn as much as Crysta did.

[feelingthirsty]

Jasper shook his head, both at her question and her statement. "It doesn't tire me to run." That was a lie, but a small one. Physically, he was just fine. But he would need to hunt later. He would try his best to keep his prey from being a human.

Beside his own jean-clad legs, Crysta's skin glowed bare in the dappled sunlight. Jasper found his gaze drawn to them. She was so human looking, he couldn't quite get over it. Not like Alice at all, or even Maria. She was attractive, in a forbidden sense. He knew he could never touch her; she was too fragile, she would break beneath his rough hands. But it wasn't often that he had to remind himself of such things. It wasn't often that he thought them in the first place.

He sighed and shifted his gaze back to his own legs, where he noticed his knee was torn, the skin beneath it pale and dirty where it must have caught on whatever had ripped through the fabric. He needed older clothes for this. Nothing revealing like Crysta's, but something that wouldn't draw a sibling's ire upon him if he happened to ruin them.

"At least you can use this time to relax," he drawled idly, for conversation. "It isn't mentally straining, isn't? You need a break from all that."

[crystamaye]

Crysta noted, with mild amuesement and envy, that even with his hair torn back from being wind swept from his run, jeans frayed and dirtied from brushes against trees and dirt, shirt disheleved and torn from whips of branches, Jasper was of course as always breathtaking to look at it. How he managed to still look like some sort of greek God was beyond her, the clothes hardly changed that fact. And he didn't look particularly tired or worn out, except for the ever present almost blue black circles beneath his eyes. "Are you ever tired?" She asked, always it seemed curious about Jasper.

His study of her legs hadn't been lost on her like it normally would if it had been any other guy. But she was always keenly aware of when Jasper's eyes were on her, his focus, just like his whereabouts.

Here she sat, side by side with a vampire, alone deep in the woods, and Crysta found that it wasn't hard at all to relax with him. Jasper put her at ease, even if he tried his damndest to be surly and indifferent towards her. She knew at this point that he wouldn't hurt her and that somewhere deep down, well, he must care about her just a bit. As a friend of course.

"Not...that mentally straining." She shrugged, though honestly, with all the concentrating, she had developed something of a migrane a while ago that throbbed at her head.

[feelingthirsty]

Tired. Always, Jasper wanted to say, every minute of his stupidly long life, with no respite for such a simple thing as sleep. But he knew that wasn't the kind of tired she was asking about, and so he shook his head again, as if constant awareness was no big deal. "We don't sleep."

Her answer, however, was easily recognizable as a lie. Jasper turned to look at her with a frown that slowly deepened with his growing concern. Damn this strange mental block of hers. Not only did it prevent him from gauging her capacity for all this strain, but it also kept him from being able to help her to relax afterward. He didn't like the thought of overtaxing her. This fascination with her powers was his own, not hers; he'd definitely picked up on that during the all the time they'd been spending together. Perhaps he should lay off some, and take a step back. She had a life to live. It was embarrassingly easy, sometimes, for him to forget that.

"You need to tell me when you tire," he instructed her, though the words, as soon as he said them, made him pause and then shake his head at himself in wry amusement. He swept a hand back through his hair to keep the wind from blowing it into his eyes and sighed, reevaluating things. He'd never said those words to anyone in his life--or at least, not in his second life. He'd never before done several things that he now found himself doing with Crysta. Perhaps he was the one in training here, not her.

"I'm sorry. You're not like most people." His gaze fell to his lap somewhat guiltily, as he tried to figure out a way to work around this, a regime that would not overburden her for the sake of slaking a curiosity she simply didn't share with him. "I've never tried this with a human before, let alone one so...clouded. I can't feel your edges. You're going to have to help me out."

[crystamaye]

"You don't..." Crysta blinked, giving him a surprised look. "You don't sleep, like...ever?" She couldn't imagine what that could be like. Well, perhaps a little bit, considering she hardly had time for sleep herself these days. But to never sleep. And for however long Jasper had been alive. Unimaginable.

When he turned to frown at her, she shifted a bit under his scrutiny. She wasn't very good at lying, she knew. And now she knew for certain as he studied her that he hadn't believed her for a moment. At his insistence that she tell him when she was tired, she furrowed her brows, giving a slow nod. "Of course Jasper." But then as soon as the frown touched his lips, his expression was changing once more, the change to amusement confusing her more. His thought process was obviously much quicker than her own, because she wasn't following him at all.

As he looked down to his lap she found herself leaning in to him a bit more unconsciously. "Feel my edges...what do you mean?"

[feelingthirsty]

"We don't need it," Jasper explained, though his voice came out sounding more weary than he'd have liked. "We don't need anything at all, save the one." And he was sure he didn't have to clarify what that was. But he didn't like talking about it; not with a human, the very prey he lusted after every moment of every hour of every day. Such an urge was simply incomprehensible to a being with so many different needs. They didn't sleep, they didn't tire, they didn't even thirst; their bodies, by whatever magic, ran on one thing and one thing alone, and for as long as they were alive they would crave it.

Usually when he spoke with someone, they were a member of the family. Jasper was constantly catching himself off guard with Crysta, when he realized after the fact that he'd said something that was completely commonplace with his usual company, but of course made no sense to a human. And his gift...was not something he really wanted to get into. She would take it the wrong way, he was sure. She would consider it an unforgivable invasion of her privacy, and wouldn't quite be able to understand that he had no more control over it than he did over his vision--less, even. At least he could close his eyes when he wanted to.

And yet, he couldn't immediately come up with a spin to something like that. He hesitated, sure Crysta noticed it, which made it doubly harder to come up with someone nonchalant to say.

"Just that..." Rather than lie, he gave up and shrugged instead, plucking up a long blade of grass from the ground to carefully wind around his fingers. "Nothing. You've just got to be more vocal. I forgot to ask, sometimes."

[crystamaye]

No. He didn't have to clarify at all. Not about this at least. Even though she knew what he was, what he must do to survive, Crysta had never really put real thought into it before. The whole...blood thing. And she knew better than to ask. That was just asking for a pissed off Jasper. Or at least an aggravated one. He was so mum about who he was as a whole, she had this feeling that bringing this up of all things would be a sore topic for him.

But still, every word he spoke, the way he held himself still...she knew that he held a lot back. It was in the way he carefully picked his words. Actually, it was in the way he would slip up in his words and the look that would cross his face as he realized this. What did he think Crysta would do if she knew more about him? Be upset with him, think of him differently? He should know at this point, considering, that not much would deter her from wanting to stay in his company.

Studying his face, which was starting to remind her more and more of carved stone, Crysta still had her brows furrowed the slightest, her nose scrunched in that way she did when she was thinking about something. "Do you...not trust me Jasper?" She asked after a moment of him fiddling with a blade of grass.

[feelingthirsty]

Jasper's fingers slowed to a halt at her words. He was surprised by the way they affected him, that they even affected him at all. Did he trust her? Of course not. He didn't trust anyone; he knew better than to make that mistake, had exploited it in others more than once. And he had his reasons, and they were good ones. Most people didn't trust others because of reliability issues, but Jasper knew exactly where he stood with everyone he interacted with, and often knew their limitations better than they themselves did. No, that had never been his problem. He simply knew better than to trust anyone with himself, with his sordid history and perversions. Edward and Alice knew him better than anyone in the world, and there were things he simply didn't discuss with them, that he knew better than to even broach. It was bad enough that he couldn't completely filter his thoughts around his brother. Luckily Edward mistakenly considered it an even trade that he couldn't completely filter his desires around Jasper.

He sighed, and took a very long moment to reply. He could lie again, of course, and say something reassuring to make her feel better, but he suspected that wouldn't work on Crysta. She was too perceptive somehow. Despite how little she knew him, he could tell when he'd disappointed her with half-truths and lies. And what was the risk here, really? So he admitted the true depths of his monstrosity, and she was so horrified that she refused ever to see him again. Isn't that what he wanted? Then why did the thought of frightening her make his stomach fill with dread?

"It...isn't you," he said eventually, slowly. Even as the words left his throat he wondered if he was making the right decision in sharing even this much with her. There were some things humans were simply better off not knowing.

"There's nothing you can do to me except leave." He kept his gaze leveled downward on his hand as he admitted that, fingers tearing the blade of grass to shreds. "It isn't that I don't trust you, you're just...not a threat. I'm the threat, and I'm worse than most. I'm worse than the very worst thing you can imagine." He sighed and tossed the ruined blade aside, then grabbed another and started again, avoiding her eyes. "That, and I'm not used to this...talking...thing." He flicked his hand up and tossed the grass aside, as if that explained everything. "I don't have friends. With good reason."

[crystamaye]

Crysta took note that Jasper actually seemed to be fidgeting. It was fascinating really, to watch as pale long fingers plucked at bright green blades of grass, tore at it absently and yet almost meticulously. And it was while she took note of this that she really noticed for the first time how focused on him she seemed to always be. It took no effort on her part to notice these small details about Jasper, she just...did.

With his gaze still focused on his meaningless task, Crysta blinked at his words, a bit unbelieving for a moment of what conclusion her mind came to. Was he actually worried about losing her? She could hardly believe he cared that much. But the facts were there, laid out before her. He must care, even if he didn't want to. To put the effort into saving her, to fixing her car, to being worried about her well being. Jasper cared. How much though, she couldn't say.

But it was clear to see that he wasn't quite happy with feeling anything for her. He seemed to want to put himself in this category of someone undeserving of company or friends. He thought he was a monster.

"Well. I am your friend. Can't exactly say that I'm not anymore Jas." She gave him a small smile, even though he wasn't looking. "And, it's alright. You don't have to talk about anything if you don't want to. I just want you to know, even if you don't believe me, that you can trust me. That's all."

[feelingthirsty]

She said that now. That was so easy for her to say right now. Hopefully this "friendship" of theirs didn't end the way a few of his earlier ones had.

But that line of thought reminded him of what Alice had told him. She'd promised he wouldn't hurt Crysta. She couldn't be certain, and she'd made a lot of miscalculations in the past, but she'd never been wrong about his...less than savory impulses. He didn't know they'd simply gotten lucky, or she actually knew this one thing about him for certain, or if hearing her confidence in him made it a self-fulfilling prophecy, but he trusted her. Perhaps more than he trusted anyone.

Crysta, on the other hand...she was very different from Alice. Night and day from Maria. Jasper still seriously doubted she would want to associate with him if she truly knew him as well as she thought she wanted to, but the thought made him feel a little sad. Lonely, even. Exhausted. Perhaps it was only a sense of rebound after losing Alice to her true mate and watching Edward finally learn to care for someone of his own, but Jasper was so, so tired of being by himself all of the time. His communication skills were obviously rusty, when they weren't being used to bully or frighten or avoid. He wasn't sure he even knew how to do anything else anymore.

"You're taking a very large chance on me," he told her with a glance and a small wry twist to his lips. "I reckon I can at least try to afford you the same courtesy." He sighed then, and swept the windblown hair from his eyes before grabbing up the first stick he saw and slowly twisting it to dust between his thumb and forefinger. "All right. I'll answer your questions, as long as you promise to think long and hard about exactly what it is you want to know."

[crystamaye]

Fascination. Would it ever go away? She doubted it, at least, when it came to him. But she just couldn't help it. He was more fascinating than any book she had ever read before, more complex than any panting, just...more. So of course there were questions, tons of them that she had pushed into the back of her mind since the moment he admitted what he was to her. Well, perhaps questions she had from even before then. And that she had known better to ask. Because Crysta wasn't a fool, before now Jasper hadn't been ready to answer anything from her, she knew that. So she diligently kept most of her curiosity to herself.

She had to keep from looking much too...amazed at the way he ground that stick into pure dust between his fingertips, how easily, how strong he must--

"Really? Well...thank you." Because that was his sort of way to admitting he trusted her and that meant more to her than she would have thought. "I do have one question right now though, that I've had for a while..."