Just a short little ficlet.

Disclaimer: Nope. Don't own it.


All the Hurts and Pains
by Kyuu

Adventures strung themselves like beads on a necklace in Jasper's life. Since Henry's arrival, his days were reserved for fleeing Armenian crime bosses, or finding the lost rubies of King Leopold II, or daring to see just what it would take for Maggie to skip class with them. Night—most of the time, anyway—was still the domain of rest, and for Jasper, a time for tending to wounds.

Putting band-aids on fingers and toes never ceased to be an annoyance. He had the tendency to wrap them too tight, no matter how careful he thought he was being this time, and soon enough the digit would start to turn red and then almost a little purple at the tip before he'd have to peel the band-aid back and adjust. Elbows were an interesting challenge, but he'd learned how to place them just right, so that the plastic didn't stretch or scrunch too much when you bent the joint. As for the backs of his ankles, the band-aids never stuck, not with all the running from masked gunmen, so they would probably have permanent scars from the continuous blistering.

Counting the marks on Jasper's skin was a kind of bodily archaeology, reading the material traces of mishaps, and of slips, and occasionally of triumphs, too. After the fourth time he'd hit the pavement to avoid a car trying to plow him down, he decided to invest in a gel ice-pack.

"We're actually having a three-for-one sale on these this week," the drugstore cashier had informed him laconically, scratching at his stubble with fingernails painted with black nail polish. At that, Jasper had disappeared back into the aisles mumbling something about fate before promptly returning, pushing three ice-packs across the counter sheepishly.

The cashier raised a pierced eyebrow as he passed the scanner over the boxes. "You an athlete?"

Jasper scrunched his lips before replying tentatively, "Something like that."

With that, all three members of the Griffin Gang would ease their aches together, sitting in the Bartlett living room. "Now we match!" Henry had trilled, as Jasper pressed an ice-pack to his cousin's black eye; Maggie nursed purple-blue shins on the couch, grinding her teeth incredulously at the boy's glee.

oOo


(A/N): Just wanted to write a vignette around the image of Jasper nursing some cuts.