When Jasper woke up, Emmet was leaning over him with an easy smile on his face.
He immediately shut his eyes and pretended that he was still asleep.
“I know that you’re awake. I saw you open your eyes. You need to eat again. Lila’s memo says that you can start eating more solid foods, so she’s got vegetable soup for you,” Emmet crooned lovingly.
Jasper didn’t need to open his eyes to see the smirk on Emmet’s face.
“I don’t ever want to think about that,” Jasper replied, doing his best to supress the blush on his face.
“You don’t want to think about what? Corn and broccoli?” Emmet teased.
A relaxed silence fell down on them when Jasper turned his body inwards to place his head onto Emmet’s stomach.
“We’re going to have supper in the garden. There’s lots of colours in there and it’s sunny outside. It’s a little windy too, but it’s going to be nice,” Emmet tried to encourage, stroking over Jasper’s curls again.
Without a w
“So, you said that you didn’t want to talk about it?” Lila attempted to broach the topic of Jasper's drunken speech, not looking up from her bowl as he sat to the side of her and continued to laxly mix his bowl. Emmet looked over to the other man, waiting to eat after Jasper first started. “I said that I don’t want to talk about it. I’m used to not talking about it, and it feels strange to. I’ve never felt the need to think about all the bad things that have happened in the past. They’re all things that have happened to me, just things,” Jasper elaborated,” Once I’ve got my strength back, I’ll be fine again.” Lila looked down into her bowl again, and ate another spoonful of her soupy rice. “It’s not… we don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. We don’t want you in any discomfort and we don’t want to pry-“ Emmet began. “Well I do,” Lila interjected. “Well, I don’t to pry, but bottling things up won’t help anyone, and we don’t want you to g
Taking Emmet’s hand, Jasper let himself be led inside the building and into somewhere that was much warmer. He looked down at the floor, thinking about all the little, long kisses that he and Emmet shared. It felt nice, if a little restraining. It made him feel a tingling warmth, but he still felt like he wanted to go further. A tingling sensation was left in his lower stomach and he felt like if they went any further, then they were probably going to make a mess of Lila’s garden. If they did so, then she would never let them hear the end of it. A small part of him remembered the violence and harm that she had wreaked on her bedroom when faced with the possibility of leaving with him and then being rejected. She hadn’t done anything particularly violent in their entire stay, but it was still a tool that she could wield with a large potential of doing some actual harm. But it did look like that she had largely settled down temper wise, she didn’t so mu
“Are those the nanobots that I made for the assassination operation?” Emmet asked, his eyes wide and spooked. He leaned forward, ready to take the purple gem, but Lila yanked herself away, scooting backwards before fiddling at the back of her neck and unclasp the necklace. She let it drop down into her lap and unthreaded the chain out of the little hole at the top of the gem, before throwing it over to Emmet. It bounced off of his hands and he scrabbled around trying to catch it, before he managed to get a good grip of the little casing and managed to cradle it in his hands. He stared down into it for a moment, before taking a gulp. “We have to destroy this,” he whispered, gazing down with something akin to terror in his eyes,” We have to destroy this.” “Don’t you fucking dare! If I didn’t have this, then I would never have remembered that I met Jasper. I would have been gaslighted to hell and back and I would think that Jasper was never real!
“So you actually did make it out of there alright, then?” Jasper asked Lila, looking her in the eyes. “Yes, after a long, long time. Nobody actually came to help, so I had to help myself…. In a roundabout way,” Lila explained, breaking eye contact with him to look down at the floor. “Do we want to address the fact that she stole a significant amount of money just before its needed?” Emmet chimed in from the side, sitting upwards and still cradling his knee. “No. I told you that I killed someone in my escape?” Jasper answered him, looking over at his injured knee and trying to appraise how much damage Lila had done. “You killed someone!” Lila screamed, jumping up to her feet and taking a step back. “Yes, I did it before I met you. Unless you try and force me to make something that forces me to hurt innocent people, I won’t do it again,” Jasper levelled at her, a hardness in his eyes that Lila had never seen before. She matched it, widen
“You were just a child. You’re still a child. I shouldn’t have put so much stress on you, or expected you to be at the same level as I am about it all,” Jasper whispered into Lila’s hair, stroking over the top of her head. He continued on holding her, even as his knees grew tired and he sunk down into the plush carpet that was the floor. She continued on hiding her face from him, and as the sun sank below the horizon, Emmet left to bring the remains of their outdoor meal inside. As soon as he left, Lila spoke. “I knew that you were right,” she mumbled out, revealing a face that was completely and totally blank. Her eyes were watering, but her voice and expression were completely level and calm. If it weren’t for her tears and what she had just done, Jasper wouldn’t have known what she was feeling. “And I knew what my family were doing. They weren’t nearly as subtle as they thought that they were, and I… too wish that I could have at least murd
“Are you okay now?” Emmet asked Lila, after he placed everything that he was carrying on the floor first, before sitting down himself. “As okay as I think that I’m capable of being right now?” she answered him, looking down at the floor again. Her face was shiny with tear tracks that had been wiped away, and Emmet noticed the wet spots on Jasper’s crumpled sleeve. He poured out a glass of juice for Lila, moving one of her surprisingly warm hands to take the cold glass from him. He poured another for Jasper and handed it over to him easily, before making up a glass for himself last. He swirled his cup around for a moment, before taking a sip. “This juice is good. Did you make it yourself, Lila?” Emmet tried to encourage, a smile on his face. He looked over at Jasper, who nodded at him, and took a sip of his own. He too nodded in agreement and turned to Lila. Her cheeks began to pinken, and her face scrunched up in someth
Lila could hear the two men discussing their feelings in her office. She sat there in the hallway after righting where Emmet had put the table that had been outside, considering that he had literally brought it inside the building and left it in front of the open door. He at least had the sense to put the uneaten food upstairs, but Lila couldn’t help but be annoyed that he hadn’t shown the same dedication to her much more valuable table. She dragged through the hallway and lifted it up over the boundaries and the main counter of the café, crawling underneath the lift up flap to get to the other side, before pulling the table down. Wiping off all the dust and dirt, repolishing the surface and laying the appropriate table cloth on top, Lila prepared it for the next day of work, before checking the clock and seeing that it was now half past eight. The new enough light fixtures that she and Kai had both worked on were doing extremely well for the café, and lookin
She let them continue hugging it out and left the bowls of food in front of the TV. Jasper had crawled his way to sit on the entirety of Emmet’s lap, and had his hands wrapped around Emmet’s back, his fingers tangled up in the trails of the other man’s long dark brown hair, the colour of it identical to Lila’s own and just as wispy when it came to the ends. His hair might even be longer than her own, which she was aware grew extremely slowly compared to seemingly everyone else’s hair. Emmet was leaning over Jasper, as if his body was enough to shield him from all the cold and harshness of the world, and his head leaned over the back of Jasper’s own, hovering just over Jasper’s own overgrown, bushy ginger curls. His body was subtly shaking, and Lila saw tears fall down from his face and onto Jasper. Jasper too shook within Emmet’s grip, and she heard a choked sob and an almost aborted whimper. Lila decided to leave them behind, seeing as the is
“Why’re you sleeping on the floor like that? Come on, get up. You’ll hurt your back doing that,” Doctor Marigold chided, dragging all her bits of heavy machinery around the office space to prepare for her demonstration.Behind her, Lila remained still.“I know that you’re not dead. Come, get up already,” she called out, stepping over a few sheets of paper that she had laid out to grab Lila by the shoulder and heave her up into sitting.The stubborn girl just flopped down again, not opening her eyes.“If you get the fuck up, we can move the flight a week forward so you can stop worrying about it,” Lucy Marigold shouted across the room.Like a rubber band, Lila snapped back up and finally opened her eyes.It had been harder to see the bags below them when they had been closed and Doctor Marigold wondered if she should buy the girl some sleep tablets.“I’m awake,” Li
Yolanda seemed to understand that she needed to back off and stop teasing Gretel, when the other woman's eyes suddenly misted over, and it was if she was no longer a part of this world.She kept the bubbling annoyance within her away from her face, putting on instead a mask of concern as she reached out and poked Gretel's arms, trying to maybe prod her out of her stupor and bring her back from the recesses of her mind.Yolanda had never actually seen somebody collapse inwards to a catatonic state over her own actions.It was interesting to see it all happen and fold out in front of her.She poked Gretel again, touching her in the face lightly to see if that would possibly work to pull the other woman out of her mind and back into the world where she was needed proper.It wouldn't reflect well on her if Gretel didn't wake up within the hour.It didn't feel as
When she awoke, she was sat ready to eat and was dressed just like her mother, in a pastel blouse and a lungi down to the floor.Lila looked down at herself and jumped when she heard rattling, noticing the ten, or so, bangles on each arm and the lines of mehndi that ran down all the way to the hems of her sleeves, resting halfway between her shoulders and elbows. A pin held her blouse shut at the top and a quick once over of her hair, with one of her hands, revealed that it had been styled in a simple bun and adorned with flowers.“This is weirdly romantic,” Lila commented, staring at the lit candles nestled in the variously sized candelabrums set around the circular room.There was no door, but a giant window which led to a balcony outside. There was no ceiling but the walls reaching upwards, all the way up, until they formed a dome in the same shade of dull brown that coated the floor and the giant, round table in the centre.The only dishes
“So, is she finally asleep?” Emmet asked the boy stood behind the counter. He was exceedingly slim for someone surrounded by sugar all day and Emmet could make out the outlines of his spindly elbows through his shirt. His face held a no nonsense, blunt, and almost bored expression. “Yeah, she is. She’s been knocked out on the sofa since I sent her back there,” Kai answered the long haired man in front of him, his hair pulled back by a ribbon matching his eyes before being pulled over his shoulder once more. He looked vain. “Oh good. Don’t tell her that I was involved,” the man asked, putting both his palms up to face Kai. “I’m telling her that you’re a fucking weirdo for that,” was the scowled answer. “No. Seriously, don’t tell her. She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her. She’s known my partner for longer that I’ve known him. She doesn’t trust me with him. Why’re you making that face?” Emmet tried to justify himself before giving up
“Are you sure that you’re getting enough sleep?” Kai asked Lila, watching her sway on her feet and clutching the front counter.“Yes,” she gasped, dropping her head into her hands, elbows on the table.“Go and lie down on the sofa. Go to sleep for a bit. I’ll wake you up when I have to leave for college,” Kai instructed her, tapping her on the shoulders and shepherding her towards the office.“… fine,” she conceded, letting Kai move her along towards the back.“You know that this just proves my point,” Kai pointed out, pushing her through the boundary of the door and closing it behind her.“Fine,” she whispered back to him, talking into the silence of the office.She let herself fall over the sofa, draping her upper body over the arm rest and letting her head be cushioned by the pillows. Shuffling a bit over to put her body entirely on the sofa, Lila f
“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now again!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now keep on going!”Lila landed each punch, timing her breaths to the count as she moved her fists, dodging underneath the swing that came towards her head, before blocking the second hit that came to her and moving along with the force of the fist that hit her arm.The swinging punching bag forced distance between Lila and Tweedle Dum, and she stepped back to where she was stood before, within the path of the moving bad, to put more distance between him and her.“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!”Lila punched the bag once more, landing all of her hits.“Okay, time for a break,” Tweedle Dum announced, grabbing the punching bag and pulling it back to him as Lila moved away from the centre of the room, sitting down on one of the rickety plastic chairs at the side of the room.She took of
“Bitch! Why’d you run off and abandon me like that!?” Lila shouted from behind the counter when Kai finally walked back into the store.She was waving her hands about and wore an apron covered in flour as the single customer in the store, an old man precariously balancing on his cane, slept whilst leaning on the radiator.“I thought that you wanted some bonding time with your family so I left you to do that it private!” Kai answered her, tiptoeing past their unconscious patron, in a combination of whispering and shouting.“They’re hardly my family and you left us in the middle of a public café!” Lila cried, not modulating her voice at all.In the background, the old man began to snore.“But you still talk to them a lot like you do to me, so I let you, and besides, I got about fifty more pages of Good Omens done in Waterstones,” Kai appealed, finally at the counter and opening up the
Gretel and Silver had their fun as he continued to teach her how the interface worked and how he had managed to figure out that the system was an older model from the lack of integration between the screen and the touch pad, and explaining how easily it would potentially be to do so once the technology, as displayed in this device, had been demonstrated and established to work in a functional product."We were working on something like this as well, back in the workshops back home for the company that I was in the research and development department for. We were trying to get our motion sensors to be as small as possible for more commercial and personal use of technology that we could sell to the public and those who couldn't afford the contact computers.We had no idea on how their tech worked, because of trade and company secrets and all, but we managed to piece together a few things by looking at the patents and when we bought a few and m
“Alright, the shop’s free. Why are you actually here?” Lila questioned, crossing her arms and staring down at the tablecloth of Jasper and Emmet’s table.“I’ve got lesson now. I’ll be back in a few hours,” the teenage boy behind Lila announced, picking up a bag that had been hidden behind the counter the entire time and rushing outside.Lila continued to stand there, waiting for a reply.Jasper couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t meeting either his or Emmet’s eyes.“Are you planning to leave us?” he asked her back.Lila’s fingers dug into the creases of her shirt,” I’m going to be leaving for a trip soon, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. Kai’ll be running the shop and will be looking after things, broadly. He lives here now and I scheduled my leave for when his school term ends so he can take care of things.”“On thi