disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to emily, for helping pick the title and a lot of other things, too.
notes: so who wants to share a smoke and talk about how much jonas loves alex with me

title: with different eyes and no shame
summary: Alex, stumbling through the time-stream. — Alex/Jonas.

.

.

.

.

.

As for me, I'm—

[—pause; no, no, by all means, stop, breathe. stop. breathe. try again.]

"Okay, that's it, I gotta know. Why the hell is your brother grinning at me like that?" Jonas asks when he comes to pick her up that night.

It's one of those perfectly clear summer evenings where the daytime blends into the night blue-green-yellow, and the drippy heat lingers for hours after the sun's gone down. What they really need is a storm to wash it all away, but that doesn't look to be happening any time soon—the air isn't charged enough for the kind of thunder that she wants. It's hot, so hot, and the blackening sky is sprinkled liberally with stars.

No chance of showers.

Alex grabs her jacket anyway.

It's like this: Jonas stands in the foyer, looking a little windswept and even more out of place, hair everywhere and his fists stuffed into his pockets like he drove with all the windows rolled down the whole way here. He probably did, now that Alex thinks about it. He likes the wind through his hair and the music on mute, and that never changes.

Jonas is always Jonas, whether he wants to kiss her or not.

Alex shrugs, tries very hard not to think about the fact that she still cares whether he wants to kiss her or not, and also to not go spilling her feelings everywhere. Ugh, gross, she can't even believe this is happening. "Mike is as Mike does. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. But hey, thanks for coming to get me. You didn't have to."

"What, you think that after everything, I'm gonna make you walk?" Jonas asks. They slip outside together, closing the door on Michael's manic grin. Of course her stupid brother is taking all kinds of glee in this, he and Ren are the worst. She loves them so much it's offensive.

"Oh my god, shut up," Alex says, but she smiles. "I could have just gone with Mike and Clarissa, y'know."

"And you would have complained the whole time and then gone home at ten-thirty, if you came at all," says Jonas. "You can't escape, now, you're stuck with me."

Which, okay, he's not wrong.

Because there's a party across town.

Everyone's going to be there. Ren, Nona; the entire senior class and its various hangers-on. The noise complaints are going to need their own file at police station, probably—even Michael and Clarissa going to head over there later, which Alex only knows because Clarissa had been smoking out on the deck late last night and had asked if she wanted to come along—so it's not like it's a little thing. It might be fun, even.

But the thought of going makes all of Alex's vasculars knot up 'til she can't breathe. So many people in such a small space is asking for trouble. So many bodies, so much life, so much hungry vitality…

She can already feel the ghosts pressing. Please, they murmur. Please.

No, Alex thinks in their vicious direction. She shrugs Michael's jacket over her shoulders as a kind of last defiance, the bright red fabric settling comfortably over her shoulders. For the first few resets, she could hardly stand to look at it, much less wear it. She carried it tied around her waist, its heavy weight always so close to dragging her down. She couldn't wear it, but she couldn't bear to let it go, either—it was Michael's, and he was dead and dying and drowning all the time.

But it's a comfortable thing, now. Familiar.

And that's an armour, all on it's own.

Alex climbs into Jonas' truck, forgetting to pretend that she doesn't know that you have to slam the door hard to close it all the way and that the window doesn't roll down if the seatbelt isn't clicked in. She's spent whole summers in this truck, building blanket forts in the bed and sleeping under the stars.

God, sometimes it's just so hard to pretend that Jonas isn't always her best friend. He doesn't call her on it, just stares at her out of the corner of his eye as he gets settled.

And he doesn't even ask if she wants to turn the radio on, which is funny only because it's sad. Alex kind of misses singing along except that she doesn't, really. Silence is the same shade of gold as the porch light.

For a minute, they just sit there.

"…Do you really wanna go to this thing tonight?" Jonas asks, finally. His knuckles are white around the steering wheel, and he hasn't even turned the key. The engine is silent like so few things are, and for a minute Alex just sits there with her hands in her pockets and doesn't say a word.

It would be better, to go.

Or, no, it wouldn't be better. It would be easier.

But easier isn't something that Alex is very good at. It would have been easier to let the ghosts have them all. It would have been easier to let Michael stay dead, to grow up and move on until that particular wound had knit over and scarred. It would have been easier to stop fighting and trying and living. That would be easier.

And going to the party tonight? It would keep her from having to deal with the soft blue corduroy of the seats of Jonas' truck, the dark green-grey of his eyes level on her face, the memory of the last reset. It's been like two weeks, but Alex can't just—forget about it. It's burned into her, as permanent as her name.

Alex doesn't know if this is something she's quite ready to face.

"Honestly?" she asks.

"Honestly," Jonas says.

"Honestly," she says a second time, "it's the last thing I want to do. Like, ever. Period. I'd rather eat rusted nails than go to this party tonight."

"Jesus, thank god it's not just me," Jonas says. His hands go lax around the steering wheel, tension draining out of his shoulders so the close-fitting pull of his shirt rumples down to nothing. He unwinds like a spring coiled too tight, and Alex watches the easy way he turns the engine on with a weird, desperate sense of relief.

A thousand resets, and Jonas is still Jonas. Something sharp sticks in between her ribs like a knife; she remembers not-Clarissa with her hands on his face, the sick wash of fury that had coated her tongue, and wonders if this is what everyone else feels all the time.

It's not love, not yet.

But it could be. It could.

"Where d'you wanna go?" he asks. The street splits off here

"Somewhere," Alex says, shrugs a little deeper into Michael's jacket. The road passes away beneath them as they turn onto the highway. It's not supposed to be like this. It's not supposed to be this hard. "Anywhere."

"Als…"

"You used to call me that, you know?" Alex kind of smiles out of the corner of her mouth, but not really. She runs a hand along the faded blue corduroy of the seat. It's dusty under her skin. She's spent a hundred summers in this dumb truck with this dumb boy, brother and best friend and—and something else. It's sick. It's always so sick.

"Call you what?"

"Als," she shrugs.

"I don't think I've ever called you that," he says. His eyes are on the road, but he still can't lie worth a damn. It feels like the whole world is empty, because as soon as they're out of town limits, it's like civilization dies. There's fields and then mountains and then nothing, not even the moon. Not even the stars. Jonas swallows. "At least, I don't think I have.

"C'mon, dude, let's be real here," Alex says, dropping her head back to choke on a laugh. "We both know this isn't the first time we've done this. Can we just, I dunno, acknowledge that we've been possessed like, eighty times? Just, like, for once?"

He doesn't deny it.

They're both very quiet for a very, very long time. Alex presses her forehead to the window, cool glass, radio silent. She doesn't know what to say.

Until:

Jonas pulls off the highway into an empty rest stop. The universe sprawls out above them as he kills the lights, kills the engine, kills the radio like TV killed the radio star except that it didn't, did it. Maybe none of this would have happened, if it had. Michael and Jonas. Jonas and Michael. She doesn't get to have them both.

"Explain that," he says.

Explain what, she wants to ask, but Alex isn't an idiot.

"I don't know how."

"Alex," he says, quietly, when she doesn't reply because all the words are stuck in her throat. She hates that he gets it, because he does get it. He always gets it. "Try. Please."

"…Do you trust me?" Alex asks, after a long moment.

"Sure," he says.

"No, seriously," Alex shakes her head. "Do you trust me?"

"Ghosts, Als."

"Okay," she says. Inhale, exhale. This is a line she hasn't crossed before; this is something new. Alex doesn't really know how to deal with new things anymore, when she's done the same things so many times. "Don't freak out. Put your seat back."

"That's not reassuring," Jonas says. He puts his seat back, regardless.

Clambering over the stick shift is more difficult that she'd expected it to be. Her knee crunches against the door and she probably elbows him in the kidney, and the wheel digs uncomfortably into the small of her back until she's shuffled forwards far enough that they're nearly breathing the same air.

Somehow, it's as good an explanation as anything. The physicality between them is still so easy; incarnations of touch are a known variable. Alex breathes in. Alex breathes out.

If she's going to tell this story, she's going to tell it right.

"Once upon a time," she starts, "there was a girl who made a mistake. She didn't mean to. No one means to make mistakes. They happen, right? They just—happen. So she made a mistake, and her brother drowned."

Alex swallows hard. "She didn't realize it, but her brother kept everything together. When he died, things broke. Her parents broke. Her friends broke. Everything… broke."

Her parents' divorce was such a visceral thing. Alex remembers the shatter of a plate against a wall, and has to close her eyes.

"So her brother drowned, and then her dad moved out, and—and then the girl's mother went on a cruise, and met a man whose wife had died, too, and they fell in love and got married because that's what people in love do, you know? They get married, and they mush their families together even when—even when they shouldn't be," she has to stop to cough, weird and watery. There are tears in larynx, threatening. Alex shoves through it to keep talking, because she has to get this out, she has to.

Jonas deserves that much.

"So the girl's new step-father moved in because her dad had moved out and her real brother was dead and in his place she got another brother, and like, who even does that? Who even gets a new brother like that? Who even—whatever, it doesn't matter. He was nice. A good person, even though he didn't always think he was," she says.

"Alex—" Jonas cuts in.

"Let me finish, okay?" Alex looks at him evenly until he closes his mouth, nods, and then she continues. "So the girl and her new brother end up going out to an island for a senior party because her best friend thought it would be a great idea, which, by the way, was also a mistake—" Jonas snorts, because mistake puts it so very lightly, and Alex has to elbow him again to get him to shut up, "—and they all nearly died. They all did die. Do die. Will die."

"Will?"

"I told you this wasn't the first time we've done this," Alex says.

"What happens then?"

She pulls back to blink at him. "What do you mean?"

"How do we get here?" Jonas asks. He's staring at her, focus like a laser. Just as red, just as hot, just as intense. "Your girl still has her brother, doesn't she?"

"There were ghosts on the island," Alex says. "And they let her bring him back. And it fixes things, okay? Yeah, they all die, or died, or will die, but like—they escape, they leave, they get the happy ending. And whatever, so her new brother isn't really her brother anymore, just some boy who switched schools out of North Valley, but it's okay because they're still friends even if it's not—the way it should be. I don't know. They get out, and it's good until it's not, and then—whatever."

"Not whatever," Jonas says. "And then?"

Alex sighs out this great big sound, every last ugly thing she's ever felt. And then you kissed me, and I was too dumb to let it go, and it gets worse. "And then the ghosts get bored, and reset everything because they have no morals, and the girl wakes up in her bedroom with one dead brother and one brand new brother, and everything sucks because she has to go play with the ghosts all over again."

"Wait, what," says Jonas.

"You wanted to know how we got here," she shrugs. "That's how. It keeps happening. We get out, we get free, they rewind things and we go back. And like, you know what the worst part is? The absolutely worst part? No one remembers what it was like when the girl's brother was dead," Alex mutters. "That's what hurts the worst. No one remembers, except for the girl and the ghosts."

And the ghosts have a vested interest in remembering, she doesn't say.

Alex has a vested interest in remembering.

"And, uh, this?" Jonas asks, eyeing her up and down. That's impressive, given that there's like two inches of space between their faces.

"You told me once that your type was mysterious girls in red coats," Alex says, doesn't bother explaining further. Let him figure that one out for himself; she had to do it, too. "Carmen Sandiego, actually, it was kind of hilarious."

"I did not," Jonas says, but he's grinning at her. It's weird, he shouldn't be grinning like that when she just told him that, in essence, they are trapped in one gigantic loop because Alex doesn't know how to have a stable relationship with anything, especially linear time.

"You did, too!"

"Didn't—"

Alex breathes in, gathers her courage. Alex breathes out, and suddenly they're nose to nose.

"What are you doing," Jonas cuts himself off, so quiet.

"I don't know," Alex says, but she does know, of course she knows, it's a mirror and a reverse and she thinks of that stupid soccer ball moving in that picture. She ducks a little closer, watches a weird flicker of recognition in his eyes. She might as well push it the rest of the way—they're already so far gone, and there's nothing else to lose. It'll be quick, at least. She tucks teal bangs behind her ear. "You need a haircut."

"You need a dye job," he croaks the words out unwilling, like he can't help them but wishes, god, wishes that he could. "Blonde doesn't suit you."

"Wow," Alex says, with a tinny little rumble in her chest that might be a breaking heart. She wants to say a lot of things. "Rude."

Jonas reaches up to thread his hands in her hair, pulls the ponytail out so that it falls around them in kinked-out chemical ocean waves that stain both their fingers. She's not even a little bit blonde, but hearing the words stings all the way through her.

He remembers. Oh, god, he has to remember, because there's no way he'd say the exact same thing over again when there's no basis for it, when her hair is still just fresh-dyed the colour of grief. There's no blonde anywhere, so he has to remember, and she just—oh, god. Alex cups her hands around his chin, tilts his head up, and moves close enough to watch his eyelashes tremble.

Mint and ash. Fear and want. Lightning sharp like poprocks in her mouth and just about as sweet, all laid out bare on his face. There are a lot of things that she knows, but they all wash away into white noise because there's nothing, nothing like wanting something and being scared of the things it'll change and wanting it anyway. There's nothing like the way that Alex wants Jonas.

(Yeah, she thinks, love's nice.)

Alex bends.

Kisses him.

It's such a little thing, so soft, butterfly wings or crepe paper or the softest thinnest silk. But Jonas gasps into her mouth like he's drowning, hands flexing around her thighs, all bare skin on bare skin. "Alex," he says, "I—"

[SCHTCCCHHH—oh, alex. when are you going to learn? you can't just tell him. try again. SKTCCHHHH—]

"Really?" Alex asks her empty bedroom as her knees hit the aching floor. "Seriously?"

She waits for the old call and reply, waits for the radio in her pocket to burble children screeching laughter or forced applause or the high sharp crackle of static. The ghosts are a lot of things, but never quiet.

Alex waits.

But there's nothing.

Nothing at all.

.

.

.

.

.

tbc.