disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: i'm garbage, but this dumpster is pretty nice.
notes: so i played through the game with the new content and like. i'm still crying? that was terrifying. have some more of it, and also kids in love bc do i ever write anything that isn't kids in love.
title: on velvet ground
summary: Alex, stumbling through the time-stream. — Alex/Jonas.
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As for me, I'm—
[—play! play! didn't you hear? we said play!]
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"This again? God, don't you have anything better to do?"
Not really, the girl on the lamppost says. Jonas is frozen in the loop, and the only thing Alex can do is stare up; ghost-Clarissa sits up on the street light, and swings her legs back and forth. Her whole face is lit arterial crimson from the light pouring out of her eyes. Okay, that's creepy. The ghosts tilt their head and swing, swing, swing, I mean, who has anything better to do, really? And what's better, anyway?
"Not this," Alex says. Sighs. She waves in the universal gesture for you fucking idiot. "Get down, we both know you're not gonna hurt her."
We could, you know, she says. They say. This one, she's already ours. Ours to own. Ours to hurt. If we wanted.
"Yeah, you know what, I'm not super feeling it, actually," Alex tells them, caustic. She wraps her arms around herself. It's stupid because she's not going to give these people up—none of them, not even Clarissa no matter how bitchy she's feeling—and the ghosts know it. It's a sick little game. "Seriously, get down, you look ridiculous."
The ghosts laugh with Clarissa's mouth, their voices layered over hers. The body falls—
"Ow," says Jonas.
"Welcome back," says Alex. Clarissa's gone. The loop's broken, the wave smoothing out, turns linear again, and they're back on track. "Time shenanigans. I'm getting really tired of time shenanigans."
"So am I," Jonas mutters, rubbing his head. "Why—Alex, why do I feel like we've done this a bunch of times already?"
"Uh, because we kinda have—"
"I don't—not this," he says, gestures vaguely around them. "Well, yeah, okay, this too. But I mean—all of it, you know? The whole night. I feel like we've done it before, all of it. Not once, or twice. Ten times. A hundred times. What I was saying before, with the triangle…"
Alex looks at him for a long moment with her heart pounding in her throat.
She could tell him.
She could.
(God, this reset is going to be painful. Alex can already feel the headache pounding through her teeth: a drum, a gong, a call to war.)
"I'm not allowed to have you both," she says.
"What," Jonas says.
"You and Michael," Alex tells him. It feels like trying to pop a locked elbow, moving slow and painful but knowing, just knowing that as soon as it cracks and breaks the relief will flood in and it'll be so much better. Relief. God, relief. "I think it's a law of the universe or something. If Michael comes back, I don't get you. And like, yeah, we're friends! But it's not—it's not the same."
"O-kay," Jonas says, and despite the skepticism in the word, he's going with it. Or at least mostly he is. He's not about to call her crazy, at the very least, and that's better than what she'd expect out of anyone else. "So now I'm confused. What does—?"
"My dead brother," Alex sighs, only flinches a little bit as she says it. Nothing hurts so much, anymore, because as much as it sucks her in, she knows that they can come out of this alive. Michael grins in the back of her head. "Isn't, um, completely dead. Because you're not—you're not wrong, okay? The ghosts, and the triangle, and the—the whole thing, it's not—this isn't the first time we've done this. Might not even be the last. Probably not, even, you know?"
"Nope. You're gonna have to explain this one for me," Jonas says, voice heavy. He flops down on the curb, and waits for her to do the same.
Alex sits. She fiddles with the jacket, for a minute, hand closing almost automatically around the radio in the pocket. It's small and cold in her fist, and God, are they actually going to let her have the whole conversation before they reset? And they said they weren't cruel.
Stupid ghosts.
She breathes. "It's like—it's like kids, you know? The ghosts, I mean. They're like kids. And they're bored and this, this whole thing is just, it's a game and it's messed up and god, Jonas, I'm so tired. I'm so tired!"
Jonas is a solid warm weight at her side. It's painful familiar, and he must feel it, too, because he's slipping his arm around her shoulder in a long-forgotten instinct, and he blinks like he's surprised he gave himself the permission. "I've wanted to do this all night. I thought I was going crazy."
"I kind of wigged out the first time it happened, honestly," Alex says. She drops her head to his shoulder, closes her eyes, and hardly feels it when Jonas shifts her a little bit closer.
"The first time what happened?"
"The first time a lot of things happened," she says. Now isn't really the time to talk about the thing she really wants to talk about, his mouth against her mouth, mint and ash and want like she's never known. There are easier topics, for sure, and that—whatever that is—is probably better left for when they're not, y'know, mostly possessed. "The first time Michael came back was a freaky one, ho-man, you don't even know. I almost lost it."
"Yeah, I can see how that'd be an issue," Jonas says, mild.
"Shut up, I'm telling the story," Alex says with her eyes still closed. Bursting into tears is still usually her reaction; it's a combination of hysteria and exhaustion and fear, and seeing Michael's grin hovering above her face still sends everything into overdrive. "No one ever remembers that he was dead."
"Not even me?"
"Especially you. You never remember my version of things," Alex tries for a grin. Fails.
"So what are we, then?"
"Friends, usually," Alex says. She has to bite the words off so that she doesn't let anything else slip out, but it's hard. Tucked beneath his arm like this is a good place to be, so heavy and protected that for a minute it seems like the ghosts never existed at all, and that this night is actually what it was supposed to be. "Best friends."
"Usually?"
"You would," she says. There's a weird second where she almost shoves him away and time seems to slip, and god, there it is, it's the reset, it's happening, she can already hear the stupid laughter—
But then it's gone, nothing scratches out, and Jonas' arm is still around her shoulders. Alex feels so, so, so small.
Wait, what.
"Guilty as charged," Jonas grins out of the corner of his mouth. "So. Usually?"
"I hate you," Alex tells him, but she doesn't, really. Her elbow ends up in his side regardless, and he hacks out a laugh. The fairy lights strung up along main street twinkle more cheerfully than the stars. "Usually, I manage to talk Michael out of going out of state for school and he doesn't drown and then my parents never do the whole, y'know, divorce thing. Usually."
"What about the times that aren't usual?"
The truth, as always, hurts.
"I don't remember every single reset," she says, very quietly. She tilts her head back to look up at the greying sky. It holds no answer; it never does. The universe doesn't really care about the tiny ants walking across the face of a tiny planet in a tiny solar system. It's got better things to do. The ghosts could learn a thing or two, now that she thinks about it. "The really early ones are… more difficult, before the ghosts realized… Whatever. Not the point. Sometimes we stay siblings. Once you ended up hating me? I think?"
"Only once? Are you sure it was only—"
"Oh, shut up," Alex says, shoves him again. The teasing is always the hardest to parse apart, but she can't help herself, and it's not like he remembers the last recurrence anyway. "Your feeling is fine."
"My feeling?"
"You only have the one," Alex snickers
"Where did you get the impression that I only have one feeling," but it's not a question so much as it's a statement, like she's not wrong but she couldn't possibly know it.
"Right before you kissed—" Alex cuts herself off.
(Good job, soldier! You have taken a perfectly acceptable conversation about feelings-or-lack-thereof and ruined it! What was that about wanting to leave it for later? When you, you know, aren't about to face your worst nightmare all over again? Applause all around, everyone gets a raise, congratulations team! Or not, laugh the ghosts on the frequency that resonates through her skull. Or maybe they don't; Alex can't tell anymore.)
Jonas stares down at her for a very long time, waiting for the end of the sentence. It hangs between them like a broken thread.
Alex refuses to meet his eye.
"Als…" he says.
"Look, it doesn't matter, it was dumb. We should probably go," Alex says. Her shoulders hunch up around her ears, an uncomfortable little thrill going up her spine. That's shyness. Frick. "Ren and Nona are waiting—"
"Other me kissed you," Jonas cuts her off, very quietly. He's staring down at her, eyes a little wider than they should be, and oh, shit, she recognizes that look. It's the same crazy-intense look he'd worn when he'd been all up in her grill the first time. The little wrinkle between the eyebrows is the same. Again it hits her that no matter what universe, Jonas is always, always going to be Jonas. "That's when I said—you let other me kiss you."
"Yeah," she says, blows all the breath out of her lungs. She doesn't ask how he knows. He's remembering, too. "I did."
"Why?"
"I dunno. Because I was pressed up against the wall and you were right there and it was the middle of summer and it was so hot and—I don't know, okay! I wanted you to! You kissed me and then I kissed you and then the ghosts reset everything because they're assholes like that, and it sucks because I can't stop thinking about it even thought we have, like, a hundred other more pressing things to deal with right now!"
"Oh," he says, but the grin has turned into something stretched wider and even nerdier than she's used to. And that's saying something, because Jonas is actually a huge freakin' nerd. He's good at hiding it, good at projecting calm and cool and in control when actually he's having a complete internal meltdown.
"You've known me for, like, six hours, Jonas. Chill," Alex says. Something cold slips down her collar, hangs clammy against the small of her back. Fear, maybe. Or déjà vu. Or both, even.
(Probably both.)
"Yeah, this time around," Jonas says, and it's very even. It's like four in the morning and the sky is already beginning to turn light; false dawn peeks over the horizon and bleaches them both out into silvers and greys, a pale palette of shades that don't really have a name. Alex is kind of annoyed how good he looks like this. It's incredibly unfair, in light of everything else. Like, what, he's got to be attractive even when they're all on a crash-course to the end of their lives? What even is that?
Stupid summer. Stupid ghosts. Stupid Jonas.
"Hey," he says. "Look at me."
She keeps her chin down, lets her bangs shadow her eyes. Looking at him is not a thing she is down for, right now, because feelings are awful and hard and gross and he's—god, he's Jonas! He's her brother! No one is supposed to want to kiss their brother, that's really seriously weird and also kind of illegal!
"Alex," Jonas sighs. He's so lucky he can't hear her internal monologue, honestly. "C'mon. I'm not pissed. Why even would I be?"
When she mutters something vulgar under her breath, he just laughs.
It's a weird sound, that laugh. A little too bright, a little too big, a little too real. It's not a nice sound, either, it's this horrible raspy cough-laugh that comes from deep in his chest. But it's—it's a laugh.
Usually, they're all too busy being scared out of their minds to laugh.
But the thing is, the ghosts are quiet. The lamppost where Clarissa-not-Clarissa likes to sit and swing her legs back and forth, back and forth? It's empty. The whole town is quiet, the place is still kitschy as hell, and time just kind of—stands still. It is and it isn't.
No one is getting out of this alive.
And maybe, maybe that's the point. Maybe the point isn't getting out alive, because this is life! And no one gets out of life alive, that's kind of the whole thing, right? You grow and you bend and you break, and you just hope that it's enough. Alex never really learned that when Michael was alive, and she really hasn't learned it now. The ghosts press up against her chest, a leaden weight.
She's going to carry them for the rest of her life. For the rest of all her lives.
"I hate you so much," Alex says.
"You really don't, though," Jonas says. He's still got his arm around her shoulders, and this is a circular conversation: they've had it before, and they'll have it again. One reset, Alex had asked him what his type was. They'd been talking about Clarissa, and Michael, and dating. Which, okay, whatever, there were definitely better things to talk about than that. And probably what he'd said had been a joke, Carmen Sandiego, right, but—red jacket and mystery.
If nothing else, well, she's got that down.
Alex sighs out something like exhaustion. Mint and ash. His arm pressed to the linoleum above her head, hating the safety of the gesture as much as she wanted it. The sky above them, prickly all over with stars.
Hunger and want and fear, layered over the static.
"Yeah," Alex says. Drops her head to his shoulder because she's earned this one minute. They both have. "I guess I really don't."
She waits for the reset.
It still doesn't come.
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tbc.
