#taking a break from my Wylan wip to bring you a Jesper pov about Wylan

[jazzythursday]

Jesper doesn't understand how he holds it all in there. Wylan’s brain is like a squirrel. Packing nuts into expanding pockets for the long winter. He knows everything.

He lights up with it. Like he constantly wants to share the fruit of his labour. Like the knowledge he collects needs to be poured out in bits before it overflows. He talks and explains and it’s fast and free and it’s so Wylan, through and through— and then it’s like he catches himself. Like he dims once he realises what he’s done.

Jesper doesn’t want to think of the implications of that look. Because it makes his chest tight and puts a bad taste in his mouth. He’s happy to reassure Wylan that he likes when he talks as much as it takes for him to believe it.

But that look— right before. Like he’s so happy to be telling him, like he’s happy to be listened to. Then the split second of frozen fear. The pinched lips, tense jaw, widening and then squinting of those big, big eyes. The part where he huffs that short, horribly self deprecating little laugh. The part where he looks down, and when he looks back up there’s something stiff in his smile, false in the upturn of his lips. Eyes like cut glass shining in the light. The crest of an eagle, mid flight, shot down. 

“Sorry,” he says. “Um— I’m probably boring you. I’ll stop.”

You could never bore me, he thinks. Keep talking forever, he thinks. Tell me who made you think your words weren't worth anything to anyone so I can make them taste the blood on their own tongue.

Wylan and boring are not two words that Jesper can even fathom placing in the same sentence. Wylan is like lightning in a bottle. Like a spark personified.

Jesper isn’t sure how much he’ll accept. He doesn’t want a repeat of Shu Han if he can help it. Jesper hates disappointing people, hates being anything other than exactly what they want— expect— out of a good time with Jesper Fahey. He isn’t sure what he’s allowed to argue for or against when it comes to Wylan. What they have— This thing between them— is still so terrifyingly new.

He’ll put himself out there for this, though, as much as he dares, to make sure Wylan knows that he’s listening.