Author's Note: fuck this ship, man.
especially jasper and his stupid tear. kill me.
this fic has been weeks in the making, since the premiere and since my girl kris has finally spiralled down into the insanity that is this stupid show with me. I love her endlessly. thanks show, for forever killing my heart with that james bay song I love so dearly. h8 you.
and because of how late this is, have a 90 percent compliant up to date with canon fic - because jasper can only stare at eleanor from a distance for so long.
or not, because jasper.
(spain)
len
Tiesto's show is exactly what she needs: overflowing with people, hazy with sweat and sweet smoke, and so mind-numbingly loud that even she is lost. The beat thrums hard behind her ribs; she can't be heartbroken if she can't even feel her heart anymore, right? And it works.
For a while, anyway.
But then someone recognizes her, impossibly it feels, and then Eleanor is being pulled onstage and fuck – she does not want thousands of eyes on her sweat-streaked, messed ass self.
Eleanor is too tired to pretend.
But she is nothing if not a deceiver of others, so she lets Tiesto make her a beat that smashes the demons from behind her eyes, lets a boy drag his hands over her hips and his lips over her shoulder. He offers her molly too, through his impeccably straight white teeth, but as contact high as Eleanor is, she will not accept drugs from a stranger at a music festival.
That is just asking for trouble.
Eleanor has a stash in her pocket, anyway.
When she sees him, stoic faced in a white t shirt and dark jeans despite the stifling heat, she blames it on the drugs.
Eleanor leaves the nameless boy in the crowd; she's so uncomfortable, suddenly.
He's gone when she looks again.
(greece)
jasper
Getting into some guy's private villa is surprisingly easy.
For her, at least.
All Eleanor has to do is smile (he has the thought and then promptly feels badly for it) and she's in. Jasper has to linger for an unlocked door, but he finds one eventually. He wonders, not for the first time, how exactly she's been able to make international flight after international flight completely unnoticed. What the princess does upon arrival is a different story, but the part of Jasper that isn't constantly analyzing threats to her safety is marvelling at her ability to blend into a crowd.
This is what she needs, Jasper knows, as he watches her slide fresh drugs and a bottle of tequila into her bag – to be no one for a while.
He can't fault her for needing to escape (he can be pissed at the people who thought it wise to let her disappear alone), so he doesn't reach out to the palace about her location, though he probably should.
Especially with the way the villa's owner keeps looking at her.
Jasper tries not to think about how lovely Eleanor looks, crossing the sand of this private beach with her shoes in one hand and the moon high in the sky. She's as breathtaking as she ever was, but there is something gut-wrenchingly lonely about her figure on the edge of the shore. It's a selfish thing, he knows, to trail in her footsteps when she doesn't want him to – his head says he's protecting her but his heart knows better (fucking liar) –
(that doesn't stop him from enjoying stopping the villa's owner from following her either).
(brazil)
len
There comes a point at which she can't pretend anymore.
Eleanor schmoozes on auto-pilot. She tries to lose herself again in the press of bodies and the almost darkness of the rave, but her mind is tired even when the rest of her is still strung too tight. So she goes. It's a relief to not have to be anything – not a party girl, not a princess, not an orphaned child whose father is gone and whose mother was never there at all.
It's too hot; Eleanor throws all the windows of her rented room open, but even the clean night air can't cleanse the guilt and the grief that has settled like ash in her lungs and leaves no room for breathing.
She's too weak to hold it in any longer – or maybe she doesn't doesn't want to.
Through her tears, Eleanor can just make out shadows beyond the door, flickering like candlelight.
They are familiar in a way she can't place, oddly comforting even though she knows she should probably feel something (other than this terrible numbness) at the thought of someone lurking outside her space.
No one tries to enter though, so Eleanor figures she's safe enough.
The image of him rises up behind her eyelids; if she finds a kind of solace in it, no one will ever know.
She doesn't leave her room for two days.
But she keeps the light on.
(paris)
jasper
The press catches up, as they somehow always do.
Jasper takes a terrible, perverse pleasure in decking two guys who lie in wait beyond the party's service door, the door that Eleanor is due to slip out of any minute. He has gotten better at reading her over the past seven months; Jasper takes an odd, silent pleasure in that, too.
Three minutes later, Eleanor appears. He has to throw himself into a corner (did she see him? he isn't sure – his heart hammers hot and painful) when she double checks the door before stepping through it into the dark of the night.
He has to take a deep breath before he can follow.
She doesn't stumble, which is a good sign. The stone of the streets is damp from earlier rainfall, petrichor in the air, and lamplight is hazy and warm. Jasper has never seen Paris before.
It's beautiful. He allows himself one second out of every four to admire the historic grace of one of the world's most beloved cities, but his eyes keep lingering on the gentle swing of Eleanor's hips, the slope of her neck, the tumble of her dark hair.
She's beautiful.
It's easy to be her shadow in the dark of late hours; even the Eiffel Tower is still and silent. They pass a throng of tourists and find their way to La Seine, where Eleanor finds a quiet bench and looks (pensively, thoughtfully, sadly?) out at the water. Jasper thinks of the shores of the Thames and feels suddenly, oddly, rushingly homesick (he can't settle on the thought that London is home now, lest he allow it to be true, lest he accept that this girl has fundamentally and irrevocably taken what he'd thought of his life and pulled it into her orbit).
God, he's so fucked.
It's absolute insanity – he'll be the first to admit it – that he'd rather follow her across all corners of the world in secret rather than face her anger and mistrust and rejection (rather than face not being able to see her face at all). But Jasper has long since accepted (probably on a plane somewhere over the sea) that the desire to protect and keep Eleanor safe will likely outweigh everything else.
Even the bitter taste of regret.
Jasper can't wear his jack cufflinks anymore.
(home)
len
When she finally steps foot on English soil again, part of Eleanor is tempted to just turn right back around keep on running.
But she can't run forever; she owes her dad this, at least.
That thought, as all thoughts of her father tend to do, requires at least half a bottle for her to be able to stomach. Eleanor hasn't told anyone she's back yet, and has so far managed to avoid being recognized in crowds and by anyone with an enormous camera. There are small miracles, still. She finds a hole-in-the-wall pub as far away from anything as she can physically manage, relatively empty but large enough that sitting at one corner of the bar still feels enough like hiding.
Eleanor isn't proud enough not to know that it's what she's been doing all these weeks.
The bartender is old enough to be– to be an uncle (not that uncle, she thinks venemously, but an uncle who is gentle and wise and has kind eyes). He doesn't seem to recognize her, makeup-less and mussed hair as she is, and that too, is a minor miracle. He just pours her drink after drink and doesn't ask questions, allowing Eleanor to concentrate on nothing else but the burn of alcohol in her throat and the white noise in her head that she tries to crank up with every swig.
Soon, she thinks.
She'll go back soon.
Eleanor does not feel quite brave enough; she's afraid, in the dark place she's been running from all these weeks, that she'll never be.
(home)
jasper
About seven drinks in, the bartender starts cutting her glass with water.
If Eleanor notices or cares, she gives no sign - not even one that Jasper can see. He's been slumped low in a booth at the farthest corner from her for the past hour; the bartender had caught his eye about ten minutes in and tracked his gaze – he hadn't said a word and Jasper is so grateful that the feeling gets stuck in his throat. He can't lose sight of her now.
They sit long enough that they are the last two people in the pub.
"Last call, your highness."
Jasper sits up sharply. Eleanor's spine has gone stiff. He prepares to shift to avoid her glance around the room, but she doesn't move. Eleanor keeps her eyes on the bartender, who pours her one last shot before pulling out a glass for himself and lifting it towards her.
"To your father. May he rest in peace in his place among the greatest of kings."
Jasper can't breathe, suddenly.
From this angle Jasper can just catch the side of her face; there is something so stricken in her gaze that he has to hold down the part of him that needs to physically get up to make sure she's alright.
She isn't alright. Jasper's eyes linger on the way Eleanor's fingers tremble as she silently raises the glass; the man across from her says nothing else, just clinks their edges together and takes the shot in a fluid, practiced motion. He lifts his hand as Eleanor pulls out a handful of notes – more than enough. "Your money's no good here, child."
She slides it across anyway. "Please," she says, something very small in her voice that makes Jasper's chest ache. The bartender must hear it too, because he accepts the money with no further argument.
"Be safe now, princess."
Eleanor gets up; Jasper shrinks into the shadows until she reaches the door. The other man's gaze follows him across the bar.
"Keep a good eye on her."
Jasper nods, feeling a weight in what he's doing that he hasn't before.
But he loves her (something else he accepted, somewhere along the way).
That will always make him strong enough.
(before)
len
She doesn't mean to go looking for darkness and smoke and the deafening thrum of music.
But that bartender had shaken something loose inside of her that Eleanor is afraid to hang onto; the only thing left to do is to drown it. She makes for a club filled with people too drunk and too high to realize she's even there, checking every entrance three times for men lurking with flash bulbs before nodding to the familiar bouncers who let her pass on the edges of a large group.
An hour later, Eleanor isn't even sure how she'd gotten here.
That's when she sees him again.
He appears so much more solid than last time, though Eleanor is nearly so far gone that she can't even be sure of that.
"You're not here," she tells not-Jasper, mirage-Jasper, desperate figment of her blissed out mind-Jasper, who keeps moving towards her and not disappearing like Eleanor thinks he ought to. "You're can't be here."
Something flickers across not-Jasper's face, illuminated sharply and strangely in pulsing club light.
"I'm not," he says, reaching for her. Eleanor figures she should probably move, try to escape him, but none of her limbs get the message. "I'm not here, okay?"
His fingers circle her wrist, his other hand sliding around her waist. The solid warmth of him is so familiar that she leans into it instinctively. "Come on, Eleanor." He sounds like his false self; that's how she knows this is a dream. He hasn't used his accent with her in a long time.
"Where are we going?" she asks, surprised and unsurprised at once at how her legs don't seem to want to cooperate anymore. Not-Jasper doesn't hesitate – just sweeps her up into his arms like he's done it a thousand times (she gets this feeling in the pit of her stomach that she can't remember the name for) – and carries her out of the club, avoiding as if by some magic (or dream state) the usual hordes of paparazzi.
His heart beats hard and strong inside his chest; the sound is calming and grounding in a way that the beat of the music wasn't.
"We're going home," not-Jasper says. Outside, the air is cool. He sets her down onto her feet; Eleanor sways, but his grip is tight and she doesn't even stumble. "It's time to go home."
She should protest, she thinks. She's not ready.
But Jasper is warm and he seems so sure; the least she could do (high and drunk as she is) is pretend to be sure, too.
A car appears, almost out of nowhere.
The interior is dark and warm.
And Eleanor doesn't remember much after that.
(after)
jasper
In the moments before the cufflinks slip from his hand and he has his face pressed into the carpet, Jasper is sure that there couldn't be an expression on Eleanor's face that would ever make him feel worse.
That is probably one of the biggest lies he's ever told himself.
Following after Mandy is stupid, but the foolish, cowardly parts of Jasper were too weak beneath the pain in Eleanor's eyes. You can't fix this. There are no amount of 'sorry's that will make up for withholding the truth; somehow, without asking, Jasper knows this betrayal to be worse than the one before.
Because she was happy.
And he, despite all his best efforts, fucked up.
What's that expression about the route to hell?
When Jasper finally summons enough courage to go back into the palace, the sight of Eleanor soaked and sprawled in the ruins of her birthday party stops him abruptly in his tracks. Anger and shame and guilt well up so hot and painful in his chest that Jasper doesn't have room to spare to hold back a tear or two – not that it matters, because Eleanor is the only one here.
And she will likely never look at him again.
Jasper is more afraid of that than he's ever been of anything.
He stands there watching her for what feels like both a second and a lifetime. Objectively speaking, Jasper is Liam's detail now; Eleanor can't fire him or send him away, but Jasper will never stay if she doesn't want (or accept or tolerate) him here, and Liam would never allow it, anyway. Jasper isn't sure what it's like to have a sibling, let alone a twin, but every so often he is aware of this quiet, tempered jealousy in his heart – no one has ever loved him so freely, or with the unbreakable promise of forever.
It's probably this, along with a terrible kind of near-desperation that he is afraid to acknowledge, that propels Jasper forward. He can't look at her forever, no matter how much he wants to – nor can she sit like that much longer. This is more for her than it is for him, he tells himself.
(He is being selfish again.)
When Eleanor looks up Jasper nearly freezes; he has never been so unseen, before.
"You left," she says, tonelessly. It's almost worse than venom and barb. He wants to recoil but forces himself not to.
Eleanor's gaze is guarded, distrustful. He can see her gearing up to eviscerate him – the fault lines between are so sharp and so long; they seem permanent and irreparable – and the words leap out before he can think to clamp down on them, that desperation from before crashing up into his throat to choke him lest he speak.
"I'm not here."
The dawning in her eyes is as painful as it is a salvation. Eleanor opens her mouth, but Jasper rushes on, spurred by the urgency in knowing that this is probably his last chance, his words raw and unfiltered through the lies he no longer keeps. "Please. Just..." There is no point in hiding, anymore. "Please just let me not be here."
He can't read the look on her face.
Jasper wants to sink into the floor. He wants to disappear, he wants to rewind the last hour, the last day, the week, month, year. He wants to drag Eleanor to her feet, his mouth to hers, to lay claim on her skin as the only person person besides Liam who will love her enough, forever.
Jasper wants.
The worst part of all of this is knowing that it all started in the wanting of what he couldn't have.
Yet the naive fool with a heart reaches out his hand anyway.
Eleanor looks at him. Jasper is fairly certain he isn't breathing anymore.
She takes his hand and lets him help her out of the bumper car (the dodge 'em, he thinks fondly, painfully), onto her feet. He tries to memorize the feeling of her hand in his but doesn't quite get long enough. She lets him fall into step the standard three paces behind. She lets him follow their familiar path to her room (he could do it sightless, soundless, from anywhere, always) and lets him take up his old post just beyond her door.
James is nowhere to be seen.
He thinks, look at me, look at me please.
Eleanor doesn't look at him.
He should say something. He shouldn't say anything.
Eleanor disappears inside; Jasper stands a little straighter, as if he's supposed to be here (as though she wants him there), and no one comes to pull him away.
It's all that's left.
And that's enough.
More Notes: because she had to get to her room somehow and there were too many opportunities for pain.
I finished this at 1:43 am on what is technically now christmas day and I am too many emotions.
fucking jasper.
merry christmas, everyone.
Annie