Chapter Text
Ray still didn’t like being alone with Jasper. He’d been in on the secret for a few months but it still made Ray nervous. Not just nervous because the kid might spill, but because he made Ray feel like he was going to get in trouble. He had the kind of obliviously foreword personality that made Ray hyper-conscious that he was an adult man who spent a lot of time around teenagers. That wasn’t generally encouraged. Henry was a necessity, Charlotte, incidental, but now there were three of them. A crowd, one might say.
He tried not to be so harsh on the kid. Ray could tell Jasper tried and really wanted Ray to like him— and then he would say something so desperately uncomfortable that Ray never managed not to react to. Then Jasper would get quiet a moment and Ray would feel the specter of rejection cool the room.
They were in the Man Cave, now on the cusp of small talk while Henry and Charlotte worked to calm Piper down upstairs. She was having another one of her meltdowns and Jasper or Ray’s presence would have probably made it worse. In the interest of mitigating property damage, they stayed away.
Jasper was sitting across the table from him and Ray watched him look up a couple of times like he intended to speak and then decide against it. It made Ray kind of uncomfortable but he also realized this was proof Jasper could think before he spoke— perhaps he wasn’t oblivious as Ray thought. Maybe he was exactly as he meant to be.
On chickening out of conversation the third time Jasper pulled a yellow Walkman out of his backpack with a pair of headphones. Ray smiled he’d had the same one. (Actually, it might have been his, he’d have to give Junk n Stuff a look-over.) Obnoxiously, Ray waited for Jasper to actually hit play before asking:
“What are you listening to on that thing, ICP?” He couldn’t resist the judgement. As soon as it left his lips he became acutely aware that Jasper had probably had enough comparisons to honky subcultures for a lifetime.
Jasper paused the music, annoyed at first, and then gave an uncomfortable look like he wasn’t sure he was supposed to answer. “Uhm…” he started. “Depeche Mode?” He asked like he was asking permission.
“Nice!” Ray gave a subtle grin. These were the moments he understood why Henry liked Jasper. Every once and a while the kid would manage a moment of being flawlessly cool without trying— until Ray asked “What song?”
“Master and Servant! My favorite” Jasper said, with enthusiasm.
Of course.
“Jesus Christ,” Ray hadn’t meant to say that out loud. He certainly didn’t mean to sound so disgusted, but there it was again— the kid’s uncanny ability to say something inappropriate. It made Ray uncomfortable, it didn’t feel like there was a right response. He settled on “Lying wouldn’t hurt now and again.”
“You asked me,” Jasper responded, annoyed. “And it was the next song on the tape,” he waved the walkman. “Doesn’t exactly have a shuffle function.”
Ray realized Jasper was right but he wasn’t going to acknowledge that.
“Whatever,” Ray pressed the moment forward. “What other tapes have you got?”
Jasper huffed, clearly no longer excited to have any of Ray’s attention. “Hang on,” he said as he started shuffling through his backpack, pulling out maybe 20 tapes in the process. Most of them were in clear cases, either mix tapes or cassettes long-relieved of their original packaging. One of them had a mailing label covered in pink highlighter labeled “Jasper’s top 8.” Ray recognized the few still in the original cases by the artwork. Bjork’s Post, Fatboy Slim’s You’ve Come a Long Way, and Kylie Minogue’s Fever. Predictably gay, Ray thought, but surprisingly boutique. Ray picked up one of the clear cases and smiled when he saw a familiar palindrome logo. Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral.
“This is my favorite album!” Ray said, handing the tape to Jasper, so he could see. Jasper shot him a look.
“Indestructible eardrums must be nice when you listen to music that sounds like sharpening knives,” Jasper jabbed, clearly not trusting Ray to be acting in good faith.
Ray felt suddenly defensive.
“You have to really listen to it! Like you have to consider the construction….” Ray trailed off when he realized he was starting to sound like a blowhard. He decided at that moment he would try slightly harder, for Henry’s sake, he told himself. Not at all because the attention he got from Jasper was validating, even if he didn’t deserve it. Trying to regain favor he asked:
“What’s your favorite then? Talk about what you like.”
Jasper plucked the Bjork tape out of the pile. And gestured again to the Depeche Mode tape in the player. Jasper seemed to be waiting to be made fun of. Defiantly this time, like “try me.”
Ray decided to prove him wrong.
“If you like Depeche Mode you might like Nine Inch Nails’ first album better.” Ray sweetened his tone.
Jasper crossed his arms and sat back tilting his chin up but saying nothing. Ray knew he was laying it on thick hadn’t expected him to react like that. Jasper was demanding Ray try harder and Ray was impressed. He tried again.
“Why these tapes? Why the ones you don’t like?”
“This is what’s left of my mom and grandma’s tape collection once you take out all the Grateful Dead.” Jasper shrugged.
“Ha!” Ray’s laugh was quick, cutting, and a little too loud. He tried to recover but it was already done.
Jasper cocked an eyebrow, eyebrow but continued. “They were all the tapes mom kept in her car as a teenager,” he said although he wasn’t sure why he was bothering with context.
Ray vaguely recalled the release date for the Kylie Minogue album and started a judgmental calculation. Jasper must have noticed this because he interrupted the thought.
“Eighteen.”
“What?” Ray asked.
“I could tell you were doing the math in your head. My mom was eighteen when she had me,” Jasper gave Ray a cold glare, challenging Ray to say something. All Ray could come up with was
“Oh.”
“I’m also gay,” Jasper said like it was another challenge.
“Yeah,” Ray said dumbly partially because the fact was obvious and partially because he had no idea what to do in the corner that Jasper had backed I’m into.
“We’re also poor.”
Ray said nothing.
“Also haven’t seen my dad in a year. Anything else, out of my control, you’d like to judge me for?”
The distrust in Jaspers's voice made Ray give up on trying— he wanted to fight back now.
“I don’t think I’m better than you! Okay, I’m just better at… acting normal,” Ray said pedantically. “And don’t play white trash Olympics with me kid, you’re gonna lose every time,” he challenged. Ray had a trump card that he realized he could use against Jasper. He couldn’t tell the kid he was bi, or about special assignments he was sent on by the mayor, obviously. But, Jasper was more in tune with the adult world than Charlotte and Henry. Both of whom still saw systemic failings in the abstract of ‘things that happen to someone else.’ Jasper, who’d been alongside his mother as she learned to understand the adult world was just less judgmental about its failings.
“Try me,” Jasper huffed. He pulled a green Nalgene bottle out of his backpack and took a sip.
“When I was 17 my dad drove me to a brothel in Nevada, to punch it with a hooker before Captain Man hit the scene in Swellview,” Ray stated - inflectionless.
There was a razor sharp nano-second pause before Jasper cackled, sputtering water down his chin as he choked. Catching his breath he finally said, “Jesus fuck man, and you think I’m inappropriate?!” He coughed again. “Wow. That’s fucked up.” He said giving a golf clap.
Ray gave a mock bow, then got serious. Jasper straightened and looked back at him.
“You can never tell Henry about this.” They said in unison.
There was a beat before Ray said “Glad we agree.”
A silent acknowledgment passed between them, that they were both trying to shield Henry from their realities. They wanted to make him feel like he could still do something about it— change things.
“Why did you tell me that?” Jasper asked looking back to the table.
“Because it was fucked up then, and it’s still fucked up. But it’s kind of funny now. I thought you could appreciate that,” Ray said. Jasper was good at laughing at his own tragedies so Ray invited him to laugh at one of his.
“Thanks,” Jasper seemed to be turning Ray’s statement over in his head, while he turned his attention back to the pile of cassettes in front of him. “What’s the album you told me to listen to called?” Jasper was signaling a truce.
“Pretty Hate Machine. I think there’s a copy in Junk n Stuff if you want it.
The familiar clank of the elevator shook the room and Ray and Jasper looked to the opening doors to see the result of Piper’s Chaos. Charlotte and Schwoz stumbled out covered in what Ray guessed was a blue spirulina smoothie.
“The little one is gone, Henry’s watching the store, and I am going to find Charlotte a t-shirt,” Schwoz grumbled as he walked through the Sprocket.
Charlotte pulled a sheet from a roll of shop towels and started to blot the smoothie off of her sweater, mumbling thanks to a god for the goop not getting in her hair.
“I’ll go and grab the tape,” Ray said excusing himself from the table and into the elevator.
When he got up to Junk n Stuff he found Henry trying to clean what appeared to be the bulk of the smoothie off the counter.
“There’s spray cleaner and rags in the supply closet,” Ray said as he passed, not intending to explain his errand to Henry. Henry seemed miffed at the lack of attention the situation garnered from Ray.
The tape that Ray was looking for was not in fact in Junk n Stuff, it was in Ray’s personal collection in the Flat above the store he kept to maintain appearances. He ascended the stairs and stepped into the living room approaching a 19th century China cabinet now full of cassettes. He plucked out the familiar purple case and a couple of others. Daft Punk’s Homework, since the kid seemed to like dance music and a mix-tape Ray had made as a teenager, he wasn’t going to tell Jasper that’s what it was though.
Ray headed back downstairs and ignored Henry’s complaints of his sister’s mess. When he got back down to the Man Cave he and Jasper were once again alone. He figured Scwhoz and Charlotte had gone off to change. Ray once again sat across from Jasper and handed him the tapes.
“Thanks,” Jasper said, pulling the purple tape closest to him. He replaced the tape already in his walkman, put his headphones on, and pressed play.
Ray could hear the muffled beginning of Head Like a Hole. He reached over and grabbed the tape that Jasper had just pulled out of the deck, expecting it to be Depeche Mode’s Some Great Reward. A fireball of rage hit his brain when he saw that the tape was actually No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom. Ray shot Jasper a look, he hoped could kill. Jasper answered with a nearly imperceptible smirk.
Jasper had only said Master and Servant to make Ray uncomfortable. Meaning he did that shit all the time. Which was fucked up, but also kind of funny, and Ray was impressed.