𝑎𝑟𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑐﹠𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡

𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒐𝒅𝒖𝒄𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑱𝑨𝑺𝑷𝑬𝑹 𝑷𝑬𝑳𝑳𝑬𝑻𝑰𝑬𝑹 –––––

⧼ 𝐁𝐈𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐘 ⧽  ⧼ 𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓 ⧽ ⧼ 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 ⧽

“I’ve definitely slept with that one,” Jas says, squinting through the crowd to point at a dude who is literally just another man, with the only distinguishing characteristic being an ugly tribal-looking sun tattoo on his bicep, which is showing, seeing as he’s wearing a muscle shirt despite it being mid-November. “He was so mid. Might have slept with that one,” he points to another, this one even less distinguishable, “can’t remember for sure, though. If it is him, he kept trying to cuddle afterwards and I was so not having it.” He throws back his shot and says, “Your turn.”

Grabbing one of the cupcakes on display, Jasper says, “Logan, look at this!” loudly and, when he looks, chucks the cupcake at his chest, where it splatters and falls to the floor with a wet noise. “Sorry, it slipped!” he says, cackling, and then to the aggravated employee, “I’ll clean it, I’ll clean it!” He gestures to Logan, “This man is a rodeo clown or whatever they’re called, he can handle it, trust me.”

“Canada probably has a mafia – but it’s so polite and reasonable and they have such good healthcare and no one ever hears about it,” Rose argues, fiddling with the plachette with Dorito cheese dusted fingers. Her lips curl at his description of Mitsi’s apartment, muttering ‘Criminal Minds shit’ under her breath before his next question pauses her to pause. It takes her some consideration – she didn’t really know how much she actually believed in this kind of thing. She wanted to, though – she sometimes held a kind of envy for people with steadfast beliefs. “I hope not,” she jokes, sniffing for a second as she places the planchette back to it’s rightful position. “Otherwise my dad is gonna spring up outta this thing and have by ass for continuing to play with God and my cholesterol by making deep fried peanut butter banana bacon sandwiches.”

.

“That sounds like it would kill me instantly,” Jasper says about the sandwiches, “would love to try one someday.” He reaches down when Rose sets the planchette back on the board and wipes away some Dorito dust, as a reflex more than because he gives a shit if it’s on there. “I’ve read that the way it moves has something to do with some kind of, like...subconscious placebo effect. Where, like, we’re waiting for it to happen, so it just kinda happens? But they did all kinds of experiments and when they blindfolded people they always spelled incoherent stuff. So.” He shrugs, as if to say anything could happen, but deep down he doesn’t really believe it. “Let’s just do it, though,” he says. “Fingies on the thing.”

Harlow rolled his eyes at the other’s comment, blowing out a small stream of smoke and lowering the hand that has the cigarette placed between his two fingers. “Nice to see you Jas. You know, you may as well just say least favorite; there’s no second best when it’s a battle between two people” He says, but the corners of his mouth tweak upwards. “Now if I was you’re second favorite of the family? I’d take that as a win” Harlow joked. 

He tilts his head towards the bar, before raising an eyebrow “Having a nice night? It’s a little early to be making such good friends with the bouncer, no?” Harlow supposed it was late enough though, being just after 11. He had just come off a shift, where it wasn’t his shift but he had helped run the board for a different show before ducking out when the shows switched over. It wasn’t a bad night, and it wasn’t so cold that he had to speed walk home; hence his more relaxed walk. “Gotta say, it was fun to watch though”

“Nah, Zara’s my second fave,” Jasper says, and even has the audacity to pluck Harlow’s cigarette out of his hand and take a drag, then hand it back like it’s a normal thing to have done. “You’re probably third, though. I mean, you could never sink lower than Boyd, that’s something, right?”

“Take a look at this,” Jasper says emphatically, shoving a small clay sculpture of a grinning, animal-looking skull with horns in front of Tali’s face while she’s standing in front of the stovetop with the flame going. “I’ve decided I’m gonna start making cool keychain molds. It’s gonna look so sick when I paint it, do you want one? I can totally make you something custom too, actually.”

SOSH: GUYS I’M GONNA RENT A FUCKING CABIN AND YOU’RE INVITED / OBLIGATED TO SHOW UP AT SOME POINT otherwise i may go missing thanks :)

“There,” says Jasper, finishing off the picture on Harlow’s cheek and handing him a mirror so he can see the detailed dick he’d done instead of the ghost he’d promised. “Like it?”

For a good ten or fifteen minutes now Jas has been leading Silas on a chase through the woods — a performance piece, he would have described it as, for the entertainment of everyone else staying in a cabin tonight but mostly for themselves, because they'd gotten a little too tipsy and excited about their costumes. The problem is he'd stopped hearing Silas's deranged Jack Torrance-inspired yelling about a minute ago and that either means he's hiding or got distracted. 

Swinging his bat idly and crunching through the thick blanket of leaves underfoot, Jasper breathes in the cool night air and tries to listen for him, but all he can hear now are the muffled voices of groups of people hanging out in these allegedly-haunted woods. One trio he comes across offers him a hit from a joint they're passing around, so when he finally runs into DJ and Sawyer and realizes who he's looking at, he's not only drunk but high too. Which is probably good, because seeing them together makes his stomach fall like he's just gone over a massive drop on a rollercoaster. 

"Oh shit," is the first thing out of his mouth, and after staring in shock at DJ for a couple seconds his gaze moves to Sawyer in a silent what the fuck, what the fuck he can't verbally articulate. Because suddenly, for the first time in nearly eight years, he feels the entire weight all at once of his role as the one who'd fucked it all up. He stands there and looks at them across five feet of space that feels like five hundred, and says, "Well this is weird."

"Dude, look at this,” Jas says, beckoning Linc away from the group towards an unlocked door, on the other side of which is just some freaky-looking stairs that probably lead down to some kind of boiler room in the basement, considering how old the building is. “Let’s do it, if there are ghosts, they’re definitely gonna be down there.”

“Stick this in your mouth,” says Jasper, shoving into Orion’s hands a chocolate-covered cricket shape from one of the merchants doing some kind of try-it-if-you-dare Halloween treats. “They won’t say if it’s a real cricket in there or not. Bet it is.”

“Alien’s overrated,” says Jasper, loud enough to have a few glares directed at him. “Stuck on a spaceship with a deranged non-human monstrosity, big deal. Try being stuck on a spaceship with me, then we can talk.”

"That I'm never gonna grow the fuck up. I’ve seen a lot of people from my past recently and it’s, like...weird, I dunno, how they seem like different people in a lot of ways, like grown up and more mature and stuff, and I just genuinely feel like I’m the same fucking person I was back then. Even if my career totally takes off as an artist and I have more room to act like an idiot in my personal life, like, I can’t be thirty in a few years still battling the urge to carry around a water gun to terrorize people with and falling off cruise ships and breaking into weird dudes’ houses on a whim. But I swear at this rate I’m gonna be.”

“Realism in art. There’s a difference between like, skill and artistry. Like being able to do hyperrealistic stuff that looks like photos is obviously an insane talent and I think it’s amazing people can do that, but like I don’t think it’s interesting art. It’s really mechanical in my opinion, and I honestly don’t see the point, like, just take a picture then. I’ve never seen anything with hyperrealism that isn’t really boring. I dunno, for me there’s just nothing to think about there, you know?”