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Yasper is picking at the wall. It’s a habit he’s taken up recently, scraping his short nails against the grout in his cell—because that’s where he is now, in jail —and when he does it, he thinks about how when Vogue does his 73 questions, they’ll ask about his time in jail, and he’ll laugh and say “oh, I was so bored I was climbing the walls!” and they’ll laugh and ask about his time in gymnastics because they’ll have gotten that from Danner and he’ll—
“Would you shut the fuck up?”
That’s his roommate. Cellmate. Whatever he’s supposed to call him. Yasper won’t regale Vogue with the details, when the time comes, will hardly even remember he even had a cellmate, because the guy is just plain rude. He’s so rude, sometimes, that Yasper imagines putting his hands on the guy’s neck, and just squeezing and squeezing until— well, Vogue doesn’t need to know about that. Anyway, the grout is looking pretty scratched down, so he pulls his hand away and lays back on his bed. Cot. Mattress. Whatever. It’s night, which means Yasper thinks of song lyrics and interview answers for a few hours while looking up at the ceiling, and then drifts off for a few hours before being rudely awakened at dawn. He’s trying to think of a rhyme for “addicted” but he can’t think of one that fits, so now he’s going for a slant rhyme, which he tries to avoid but it’s not like they let him go on Rhymezone here, so it’ll have to do. He feels sleep creeping up on him, which he normally does this time of night, but this time he fights it, trying to parse out that one lyric, that one last piece he needs—but it’s so very late and he’s tired. Sleep takes him. He dreams of warm water and nothing.
He wakes in a closet. He doesn’t realize this at first, only wincing at the pain in his neck. His first thought is that he’s slept at a weird angle again, and he’s going to have to deal with both his cellmate’s bitching and this all day, which really isn’t fair. His second thought is that this absolutely, definitely isn’t his cell. He opens his eyes to near darkness, the only light being a sliver shining in from the bedroom where the closet door is open just a crack. He squints, and sees Chelsea, and—is that—Xavier? Chelsea is leaving, and he’s getting to his feet before he knows what’s happening. Then Xavier is alone in the room, and Yasper is standing in the closet, and—for a moment—everything is still. Yasper does not consider if this is real. He doesn’t consider if it’s a dream, or a second chance, or something else. There’s something in him, a pull or something, that tells him to stay in the closet—-to wait here until Xavier leaves and then just go home to his empty house and stupid fucking A/V business. But he slides open the closet door, and Xavier sees him, and he knows this is it. The hair on his arms stand on end, his mouth grows dry, and the familiar burn of anger buzzes under his skin. He does not talk this time, only smiles and strides towards Xavier with long paces, reaching him and placing his hands on the lapels of his suit, pushing him back gently but insistently, until he is backed up against the balcony’s railing. Xavier is talking, but Yasper hears none of it—only the rush of his blood as he raises his hands to cup Xavier’s face, bringing his thumbs to rest below Xavier’s eyelids, feeling that anger spark and sputter, and the urge to bring his thumbs over his eyelids and push and push and push until he sees blood and a flash of pearly gritted teeth and—god, would Vogue like hearing about that? How it feels to hurt? To maim? The public would devour it—is so overwhelming that he nearly listens to it. He laughs instead, and pushes Xavier to his death again.
He jumps down from the balcony again, making the same damn mistakes, even though something in him thrashes and kicks with the desire to run and adapt and win. The detectives come again, because of course they do, and Yasper plays the same role he always has—exaggerates his story, helps Aniq scheme, tells his jokes at all the right (and wrong) times. Everything plays out exactly as it had before, and he finds himself wondering about the butterfly effect, but there’s no time to really think before Danner is back and talking about Brett and he knows his time is near. He thinks about clapping when she figures it out, but that seems gauche. He settles for sitting down so his trembling isn’t as apparent.
She accuses him, again, unsurprisingly, and, when all the evidence is out on the table, Yasper runs his hands through his hair and smiles. He’d kind of thought he’d laugh in this moment, something crazed or charming—a real murderer’s trademark—but he doesn’t. He smiles quite placidly, and his gaze bypasses Danner to rest on Aniq.
“I am sorry, Aniq,” he says, and means it, “really. I mean, if I could go back in—”
And he really does laugh at that.
“I’m sorry you got involved. But you understand, right? You get it.”
Aniq is staring at him like he’s a puzzle he can’t crack. A rat waiting to be dissected.
“I mean, I guess you can’t. Not really. You took a baseball bat to his car. But did you ever think about hitting him with that bat? Or someone? Anyone?”
He wants to say more—he wants to talk about the anger he felt, how quick it consumed him, crackled like a livewire and caught a spark on his skin until he didn’t know where he ended and it began, he wants to talk about fame and fortune and love and all the things Xavier was allowed but he wasn’t—but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know how to push the words out of his mouth. He wants to say there’s some thing —some delicate, irreplaceable thing inside him that broke the moment Xavier fell; but how do you say that to someone?
He watches Aniq recoil. The rest of them do too, but his eyes never leave Aniq.
“You’re sick,” Aniq says. His voice is shaking.
Yasper wants to cough. Or scream. He’s tired of laughing.
He lets Danner cuff him without running, screams his claims to fame to the awaiting masses, and climbs in the back of the police car.
Between one blink and the next, he’s gone again.