jageskro | Recent Entries

Jag didn't bother stopping by the cloakroom for his jacket; he walked straight out of the theatre, pulling his pack of cigarettes from his trousers pocket. He walked a little further still, failed to find anything on the pavement he might kick, and only just resisted the urge to create more fire than the tiny flame needed to light his fag.

Fuck everything. He'd come to the party intent on having a good time - and ignoring Will, of course. 'Having a good time' and 'everything to do with what Fin had gone through' were mutually incompatible. He hadn't expected Hex to be here as well, so the plan had switched to 'ignoring Will and Hex' when he'd first seen him. Maybe he should have walked away from the start, instead of talking to him.

Part of him had been hoping, so hard, that there was an explanation for Hex's part in this. But there wasn't, of course. What sort of explanation could there have been? He wanted to hit something. He wanted to let his fire out and wrap it all around himself. He wanted to scream all of his rage and confusion at the two guilty parties. He wanted to shake them until they understood, as if that was a possibility.

Of course, he wasn't going to do any of those things. This was Fin's party, and he wouldn't ruin it.

He sat on a doorstep, pulling angrily on his cigarette, leg bouncing, eyes too bright and hands trembling slightly, from a combination of emotions and the cold that was beginning to get to him.

After running into Val, Jag had needed a drink. It turned out that he had needed more like six or seven drinks, to be accurate, and when he came back to the squat, he was drunk. He could still talk, mostly articulately, and he could still walk. He hadn't got into a fight. So it could've been worse. But he felt like shit about everything to do with his love life, and he couldn't get Val's words out of his head.

So of course, when he managed to open the door to the squat (and only on his second attempt!), he headed straight for the kitchen to have a look at what kind of alcohol they had. If he could still hear Val's words, he hadn't drunk enough.

The truth was, he probably would still have been at the pub if he hadn't run out of cash.

When he'd come back home, Jag had put some mindless shit on the telly and rolled up a joint. Ollie had come out of his room at some point and they'd shared some of it together, but now he'd gone back to sculpting, and Jag was left on his own. Coronation Street was on, and he'd ended up on his back on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling as if it held some kind of answer. He wanted a cigarette, but couldn't be arsed to stand and make it to the window.

When someone walked into the lounge, he lifted his head to check who it was, then sat up when he saw Em. And realised how desperately he wanted to curl up with her. He buried that deep, though, so he would sound normal as he greeted her. "Hi. Good day?"

Jag woke up with one of the worst hangovers of his life, which was saying a lot. The wound in his neck itched under the dressing Em had insisted on giving last night, before he crawled under his covers and she slipped in beside him. He'd been too broken up to protest, when he really had no right taking comfort from her after the way he'd been behaving.

All of the previous night felt surreal, and it was difficult to wrap his head around any of it, when nausea and a headache seemed to be battling over dominion of his body. He felt as tired as if he'd run a marathon (or so he figured), and he'd just woken up. Em was gone from the bed, and he lay there on his back for a long while, failing to find enough energy to get over how miserable he was feeling and get up.

That was, until a particular strong surge of nausea kicked in, interrupting the way he was replaying last night's events, what he could recall of them, and agonising over them. It forced him out of bed at top speed, and he rushed out of his bedroom and to the nearby bathroom in nothing but boxers, falling to his knees in front of the toilet just in time to throw up what mostly consisted of alcohol and bile.

He didn't feel any better once he was done, a telltale sign that this was a particularly bad hangover. He remained on his knees by the toilet, fingers clinging to the edges, worried he was going to retch again.

The bruises weren't quite gone yet, a fading edge of yellow-green still marking Jag's face in places, but it wasn't the main reason why he was making such little money off busking these days. His heart simply wasn't in the performance anymore. He used to love performing for kids especially, but now children annoyed him with how loud and impatient and stupid they were. And he couldn't charm adults either; he was going through the motions of his act, and it showed.

He noticed Val about halfway through his act, and although he hadn't seen him for a few weeks, it only served to piss him off. Had he tracked him down? Wasn't he allowed some freedom? Then again, Jag had been avoiding him for a while, and so hadn't had sex in a while. Maybe this was a sign that the chastity (as if he hadn't been wanking) had lasted long enough.

Torn between irritation and horniness, Jag cut his act short, and got a few measly coins for his trouble, only looking at Val as the crowd dispersed.

Jag had only just got home, having managed to yet again stop himself before he drank one beer too many and started a fight. He recognised it as unhealthy behaviour now, and was doing his best to distance himself from it, but that didn't stop that feeling of his skin being put on wrong. So when he got home, a joint was the way to go. His leg was bouncing for most of the time he was rolling up, sitting on the edge of his bed, but it didn't stop once he'd actually lit up, smoke drifting out into the hallway through his open door.

After some time stuck in London's traffic, and a couple of hours driving just inside the speed limits along the roads of England, they'd finally made it to some small woods Jag knew not to be watched. He'd come here to camp before, although he avoided the typical Roma spots now; much as part of him wanted to check if anyone he knew was here, this was supposed to be time for him and Val. And the wolf really didn't need an audience.

Val was napping when he stopped the car at the start of a small path deeper into the forest, and he reached over to lay a hand on his thigh, squeezing gently. "Hey, we're here."

Jag had seen Em, and he felt better for it - but also more restless, paradoxically. He'd been on a holding pattern before, waiting for her to wake up, but now that she had, that they'd talked, that he knew that she would all right, given enough time for recovery, he just... really, really wished Val was here. Or something. But mostly Val, because he was doing his best to be a healthy person, these days.

It was becoming increasingly difficult after he'd put a few coins into the coffee vending machine, and it wouldn't bloody well give him his coffee. He hit it twice next to the coin slot, with the bottom of his fisted hand, as if that might help. "You bloody stupid machine," he muttered, just loud enough for anyone walking by to hear.

The circus was home in every way that mattered. They were in Bath on Boxing Day, which wasn't one of Jag's favourite cities, but it didn't matter. Everybody was here, and that was what mattered. Not the landscape, but the people. And he'd got to introduce Em to all of them. Kennick and Drina had taken to her instantly, and old Dora had taken her aside for a good forty minutes before Jag had gone and knocked on her trailer door to see whether Em needed rescuing. (The answer had been of course not.)

By the end of the belated celebrations on Boxing Day, Jag was pleasantly tipsy, had danced his fill, and felt as if everything had gone as well as it could have and Em was now part of the family, too. It was nice that what held true for him seemed to hold true for the majority of the circus people as well. (There were some arseholes, of course, but Kennick had long since taught him not to care about them and their insistance that Jag would only ever be a gadjo.)

And here, he could be fully himself without caring about anyone knowing. They could have been huddled around an electric stove, but instead, a small fire was burning, so that he had woven it as he pleased all evening long, especially for the benefit of the kids, who had missed his fire tricks. By now most people had gone to bed, and he and Em were huddled together with their backs against the trailer they were sharing, sipping hot toddies and enjoying the cold night.

"Are you sure you're not too cold?" Jag asked with raised eyebrows, turning to look at her. It could be difficult to tell for him, and he didn't want her to catch a cold.

Jag was just grabbing the old bag of peas they kept just for this purpose out of the freezer when he heard someone walk into the kitchen. He pressed the peas to his bruised cheek, then grabbed a beer out of the fridge, because one more wouldn't hurt. It wasn't like he was drunk. No, he wasn't drunk.

He turned around and smiled at the sight of Em. And no, he wasn't at all a little wobbly on his legs. "Heeey, Emma."

Jag finished his pint and took off, rather than have another. Part of him wanted to drink more, but a greater part of him just wanted to ask questions of someone who wasn't a complete pillock. That someone, of course, was Emma. He lit another cigarette as soon as he was outside, not bothering with his empty lighter trick in the mood he was in. Let someone notice. They'd just think they hadn't seen right.

It was a good question whether he smelled more of fire or of nicotine by the time he reached their squat, but a much stronger smell yet greeted him as he walked in, the smell of butter, garlic and something else. That answered one question, then: Emma was in. He stopped by his room long enough to drop his gear and jacket, leaving him in his old jeans and a worn secondhand t-shirt as he walked over to the kitchen.

He watched her for a couple of seconds, so absorbed as she was in what she was doing that she hadn't seemed to notice him. Like hell he ever wanted someone like John around her. There were so many levels of wrong to the man, and so many levels of right to her.

"Hey," he greeted her, pushing off the doorframe to walk to her side, hands in his pockets. "So I met another one of us today."

Jag was mostly on time; it was only ten past seven by the time he found the side door on Val's museum, and the buzzer to lean on for a couple of seconds. He hadn't changed, still dressed in an old, soft pair of jeans, and a plain t-shirt under his battered leather jacket. He'd argued with himself for a while about whether to bring anything, but he could hear Drina telling him about manners, respect, and hospitality.

So he had a bottle of wine in his hand, although he felt bloody ridiculous for it. It wasn't as if he could afford very good wine, and Val was apparently rich as fuck. The best case scenario was for them to drink other things tonight, allowing Val to forget to ever drink it later, and Jag was hoping for that.

As it was, he ran a hand back through his hair as he waited for the bloke to come and open the door. Hopefully it was the right place to ring? He had no idea.

A pizza box in one hand and two cans of London Pride in the other, Jag walked past Ollie's workshop and smirked at the sight of the artist in the middle of creation. Best not to bug him, then. Jake was out, so he reckoned it would just be him and Em, then. Hands full, he used his foot to knock on her door, twice.

When she opened it, he smiled at her as if he was about to offer her the meal of her life. "Traditional moving day meal. Pizza and beer. Who can say no to that?"