A/N I'm going to mark this as complete but if people want more I'll add to it, I made a list of 'things that you can say if u want to murder someone that also work as come ons' so –
It wasn't the first time he had been killed; he was shot in the head at 4 years old by his mom's boyfriend in the backwoods of his cabin. Black Sabbath was playing. It was an accident. He just got back up, asking his mom what was wrong. The music was so loud but he hated it when she cried . Her eyes pinpointed to the hole in gaping horror, so when fingers came up to his forehead ( redredredred), she was hysterical when the wound started to close. The music was still cracked and she was sobbing and HE didn't know what to do, so he told her it was okay. That she would be okay.
He went to school the next day.
He was fine .
His mom didn't want to bring it up ( ohmybabyimsosorrybeau) and he hardly understood what the problem was.
Obviously – his story didn't end there.
The first time Beaufort Swan met Jasper Whitlock, he was lying in the middle of a parking lot at midnight. He was 17. The flickering from the street light was pouring down in the way that only small towns could do. It was like something from out of a budget horror movie. He thought it was fitting. Eerie and odd and uncomfortable was the perfect place to lurk when the teen angst hit harder than a white girl puffed nicotine. Beau believed that small towns could feel abnormally large when you found spaces without sunlight or people. Without words and gossip. They ran on their people, but without people, everything just looked like a ghost town in the middle of the forest. Big. Unmapped. Unknown.
That was it. You could be unknown in the unknown. Big cities didn't take effort to go unnoticed, but a place like this? It only worked out when there was nobody around.
And there wasn't anyone around on nights like this.
Besides Beau, obviously. But that was what he had intended in the first place. He had just arrived in Forks that evening, had the scheduled awkward dad talk ( nowsonitsgoodtoseeyouaftersolongletstalksports) which was customarily awkward and horrible, followed by being introduced to people he didn't remember and ending on more tense conversation. Hi I'm Beau, no – I don't remember you, no – I don't care too, no – I don't want to continue this lovely conversation. And a truck. The truck still ran? Sorta. So there was that.
It wasn't particularly hard to climb down his window and drive out to a deserted lot. He really was a fucking flight risk – it would have been so easy to just keep driving and not look back. His car wouldn't have been the first to pass the 'you are now leaving Forks' sign and rid himself of a small town mentality attached in sunless territory. For fucks sake – the town was called Forks. Nobody wanted to live in a town called Forks.
Beau sure as fuck didn't.
So yeah, he was laying in fuck-no-where, half hoping somebody ran him over and half hoping nobody bothered him for a good long while. But he knew what they said about wishes, and he hadn't ridden since he was a kid anyways, so this beggar was SOL. Renee would have moved everything out by now; she'd store some ( Beau's baby socks so cute and precious and tucked away) and throw some out ( Beau's half eaten pizza experiment. The experiment was if the germs from one slice of pizza would cannibalize the germs from the other. The experiment was so far inconclusive.) and maybe mail some stuff back ( Hopefully Beau's books. They didn't fit in his carry on.). But until then, he was stuck with whatever a town called, Forks, could give him. Maybe a guilt complex and some soggy boots.
A prickly at the back of his head alerted him to the fact that he might now have been as alone as he assumed –
Cool – time to get run over apparently.
– only to hear the sound of footsteps on wet concrete.
Oh, fuck me, his mind ground to a halt.
Did random nighttime lurkers have to be so fucking distracting looking? Look – Beau was 89% sure he wasn't gay. Probably.
But fuck. He looked like he was on the prowl. He resembled a big cat on Nat Geo Wild in the best of ways. This man was – shit he couldn't explain it. It was like gravity. Like the world could have just been this man and he would have stood with steady feet. But at the same time, he made everything off balance – like earthquakes and raptures and Beau's heart beating too quickly for him to count the beats.
"Yo." Beau greeted, in a perfectly normal, perfectly relaxed, perfectly non-panicking voice.
The man stopped. He seemed to observe Beau like he was a really well trained talking parrot.
"Hello." The man greeted Beau. Oh shit, oh fuck, that voice, oh my god that voice, it's like leather and cigarettes and bottled James Dean.
"You – uh, you come here often?" Beau's single brain cell spit out.
The man paused. His eyebrows raised. Fuck he even had nice eyebrows. Who the fuck has nice EYEBROWS. That isn't fair.
"I live here." The man responded like he had explained everything.
"In the parking lot?" Beau dazed back.
"...in town."
"Oh. Yeah. Yeah – no, that makes more sense."
"Uh huh."
Beau wondered what he was doing out here at this hour. He didn't look much older than Beau, so maybe he was sneaking out? It was a very teen angst thing to do but – well Beau just thought the man might look closer to 20, so, college term off? College dropout? Young father who got their teenage girlfriend pregnant and she left him for a richer man but the richer man doesn't actually like the child so he's now been saddled with this kid who's already a toddler and he has no idea how to be a father so he likes to walk around and think about the life he left when he gets off his late shifts? Mass murderer moonlighting as high school student?
Probably not.
He should say something.
"You – like it here?" He internally cringed.
"The parking lot ain't too bad." The man drawled. "The company is practically delectable." He chuckled to himself.
Was this flirting? Oh shit, he didn't know how to do that. Was there a book on it? There had to be a book on it. But then he would look like the biggest fucking loser at the check out, he didn't know if he could genuinely handle that level of cringe.
"I'm – well – I'm new here. I'm Beaufort Swan. How'd you figure?" Beau endeavored to focus on where he is. On what's currently happening. On not passing out.
Please fuck – don't pass out.
A burst of cold air hit his side. Where Beau had been gazing at the moon before, or more so just the clouds filling up the sky somberly, there now stood the man. He looked at Beau from above, at an angle that made Beau feel like he was upside down. It was a fitting sentiment. He certainly hadn't felt right side up.
"Do you have somebody waiting for you back home?" The man's eyes felt pure black ( darkdarkdark and peering into Beau in a way he had never been seen ), a chasm of endless night, leering directly into his soul. Beau knew – or thought – fuck the guys eyes hadn't been black before – had they? Did they change just for Beau?
"Nobody of relevance." Beau responded, thinking about his mom who wouldn't notice him gone for a month as long as the bills had been paid and a father he hardly knew. No, Beau settled, there was nobody waiting for him. Was this how tristes happened? Was it really this easy?
"What a shame."
"Yeah –" Beau swallowed thickly, "a shame."
The man's hands were close, so fucking close, no less than an inch from Beau and all Beau wanted to do was nod and say yes and he couldn't help but wonder what the meant but he knew, fuck he KNEW, that something beyond what he had ever lived would happen.
Something more incredible than death
than what he saw when he closed his eyes.
Something beyond the beyond.
Before skin could meet skin, the man stilled ( like a corpse, so cold, so without movement, without heart, without heat ), and rose to his feet in one single action. Beau had seen the same motion in the hunting birds, the scavengers scouring over the dry lands, when they found their choice of prey. He had seen it when they dropped from the air. But the man's ability had worked in reverse.
He hadn't seemed happy with it.
"I'll see you soon." The man told him.
Beau hoped he did, because there was something he had never felt when in the presence of those spilled ink eyes –
his knees were weak before hallowed ground and Beau was willing to pray.
Willing to beg the divine for another taste of his presence.
Blessed be the eyes of a man unwound and Beau was down to his last thread.
The stranger had gone in a blink.
Beau laid alone.
He realized he had never gotten the man's name.
X
Jasper Whitlock was of the opinion that Beaufort Swan would be better off dead. He was scarred – scarred like Jasper. That was the first red flag. Nobody with that many scars meant good news.
He knew this instinctively. He wasn't like most teenagers where a plethora of scars could be abuse or suicidal ideation – these were odd scars – scars in strange places with non-coherent explanations to them that went against everything he knew about humans. Which could only spell trouble.
It wasn't just that – he acted strange. Wrong. Humans didn't like him, scratch that, humans were instinctually terrified of him—for good reason. He might have been a…vegetarian…at current, but that was in no way a good benchmark for her personal beliefs and abilities. He didn't like bunny food. Half the time he didn't get why he even ate bunny food.
It was disgusting.
Humans seemed to know, in comparison to the rest of the coven, that Jasper did not have the self control — not — to murder someone at a miniscule hair-trigger problem. He was not predisposed to the diet; it was something extremely noticeable when observing his siblings in juxtaposition to himself. Jasper Whitlock had a dry spell of a few decades, but in relation to almost 200 years? He hadn't been veggie for half of it.
He hadn't even been NICE about it for half of it like Peter and Char. Food was food.
But after living with the couple for years after Maria, he had gotten twitchy. Living with married folk could get real weird, real quick. It was almost as if the second he had wandered off and enevidably gotten lonely, the pixie popped up. The thing about Alice to an empath, was that the girl was literally fucking crack. She was always happy. Fuck - he had seen people die brutally in front of her, and she still had some happy juice buzzing around her little pixie head. He traded one addiction for the next. It would have been fine if not for the Cullen coven and their judgy looks – seriously you kill like what, 5 people, 7 people, who knows it doesn't matter, and then they get all holier than and rude?
THEY WERE LITERAL VAMPIRES. They ate people.
What did they expect from him?
My babysitter's a vampire?
HE WAS A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER.
And then a psychopath warlord's second.
HE HAD LITERALLY STOLEN CANDY FROM CHILDREN.
AFTER EATING THEIR FAMILY.
Nothing about him was supposed to be kid friendly. What the actual fuck did they think of him? Alice dressed him in for the sake of 'fitting in', but lately? Lately Alice's happy juice had been running low. For the first time in fucking ever, she had been getting surly. Something about her visions had been bugging her, but shit if she told him anything. He was just there for the high and avoiding Peter and Char just a bit.
That kid in the parking lot though? He was an opportunity.
He smelled fuck-all-divine like the thickest ambrosia, and hell if Jasper had ever had self control.
Beaufort Swan would die for his hand. He was certain.
He just had to figure out a few logistics first.
X
When Beau got home, he pulled out the chair at his desk and started the computer up.
It was 2 in the morning but Beau was on a mission.
He pulled up the internet; he had research to do if this was going to work out.
He had a man to woo. No – that sounded shitty. 'Seduce'? 'Fuck'? 'Stare into his eyes while he desperately tries to remember the poetry he memorized sophomore year'?
Maybe he should start with a sexuality quiz or something.