That’s it. Jasper had officially woken up in the infirmary every semester. Well, it was only his second semester but it was weird that it happened twice. White sheets and overly fluffed pillows took up his immediate vicinity, and friends stared from beyond the bed.

“Are you okay?” Cody asked. Maria had a hand over Josephine’s snarky-ass mouth, and Aren was delivering cake to Jasper.

Jasper sat up and accepted the sweet gift (that he technically bought). “Yeah, I feel a little… out of body? But it’s going away by the second.” Jasper looked over at Cody. “Did you carry me here?”

“Yeah.” Cody said.

Damn. Jasper didn’t get to be conscious for that. “Sorry.” Jasper nervously smiled. “And, thanks.”

“There’s some of lunch in a container for you.” Maria motioned to a nearby table. “Are you—”

At that moment, Jasper nearly spat out his first bite of cake. “Oh my god.”

Everyone, startled, looked at him. Maria dropped her hand from Josephine’s mouth, because she’d stopped squirming.

“Ok, first, this cake is amazing, thank you Jasper, second, the bugs!”

Jasper continued in his electric realization, connecting unrelated dream bits to reality. “They came from under the school, right? I know how to get under the school now! Well, I think… by the way, has anyone heard of the Mother?”

Jasper was still playing his own mental catch-up, but he had to ask. Aren’s face didn’t react. Josephine and Maria’s looked confused, like Jasper was a crazed local personality ranting about underground cheese caves. But Cody’s face appeared to drop. Jasper couldn’t tell if it was immense intrigue or fear, but there was definitely recognition.

“Ok, sleeping gay, we can play espionage after algebra.” Josephine said. “I’m gonna go trade off Maria and Aren for Jorge and come back so we can all make it to class in our groups on time. Have fun with your prince…” she regarded Cody, “… not gay.”

Cody bemusedly creased his eyebrows at her.

“The nurse is on lunch.” Maria started as they walked toward the door. “If you’re lucky you won’t have to go to classes tonight!”

Slim chance of that happening. Aren waved as they left, and Jasper felt bad for fainting on their birthday. The cake was good though. It almost distracted Jasper from the Cody stares.

Jasper grabbed a piece in his fork, then held it up to Cody.

“I had a piece when you were sleeping.” he said.

“But buttercream.” Jasper said.

Cody sighed, but then he took the bite. Jasper decided that this action gave him just enough confidence to go for it.

“So are you gonna tell me why you were undressing me with your eyes just then?”

“W-what?!” Cody cracked a tiny smile before hiding it, but Jasper noticed.

That was enough for now.

“Ok, maybe that was the wrong way to describe it.” Jasper said. “Your stare was vaguely threatening. What do you know about the Mother?”

Cody looked to the side. Uncharacteristic for him. “That she’s as old as the planet.” He looked back at Jasper. “All sprites can be traced back to her. Some old religions believed she was a positive entity that gave birth to neutrality and peace, so that the Earth could sustain life and not just be chaos.”

Jasper adjusted the pillow behind his back to sit up all the way against the wall, but not deal with the general hardness of walls. Structure was uncomfortable.

“Where did you learn this?” Jasper asked.

“I read a lot.” Cody said. Right. “Which is why I’m curious about what happened to you. Meeting the Mother isn’t a common experience.”

“She said we could help each other, me and her.” Jasper said, taking another bite, then speaking through fluffy cake. “Oh! You might be interested in the book, then!”

“A book?” Cody shot out of his seat, startling Jasper. Something about this uncharacteristic event gave Jasper the minute inclination to be bold. If Cody was throwing chill out the window, so would Jasper. Act, don’t think.

Jasper scooted over on his bed, then patted the now open spot beside him. “Come hither, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Cody looked at Jasper’s hand and paused a moment. Oh, god. What had Jasper done? Mother, could he recover from this? Mother, was it okay that he was using her to make moves on a ‘straight’ man? Mother, why did being vulnerable in this bed make him—

Scratch that. Jasper knew why, and he needed to stop lumping an essential goddess into his hormone induced hobby thoughts.

But he was directly flirting with Cody, and Cody had to see that, right? They had been getting closer the past few weeks, but…

Cody’s weight bounced down on the bed, and Jasper nearly fell right into him during the shift. The mans was not small. Thankfully, the icing on the cake kept it glued to the plate. No frantic fluff or blasting buttercream through the air, just Jasper’s composure leaving him.

What exactly happened now that they were sitting next to each other?

Cody looked at Jasper, and Jasper looked back into those brimming eyes.

“Well?” Cody asked.

“Oh, right!” Jasper said. He then told Cody about the book the Mother wanted, ‘Mythical Vanities and Variants,’ and the information she gave Jasper on how to find it. It didn’t take him long to explain, because he wasn’t given that much information.

“And it sounded like this secret library has… guards of some kind?”

Cody listened, and his gaze had settled to something at least somewhat peaceful compared to before.

“This weekend.” Cody said. “When less people are on campus. I’m not sure we should tell many people about this, though.”

“My friends will help.” Jasper said. “But I’m calling Jorgien if anything goes wrong.”

Cody looked down at his own hands, between his jeans. His eyes dozed in a thought. “You and your friends are all so… accepting, of each other. They stayed here as long as they could, too.”

Jasper glanced over. How could Cody be… saying something, in this way, as if hiding some submerged solemness no one ever swam to retrieve. Jasper wanted to try and make that journey in the moment, or at least reach over and grab Cody’s shoulder. Instead, he took a deep breath.

“They’re your friends, too.” Jasper said. “Especially since we’re all planning to be engaged in group shenanigans together, much against my better judgement.”

Cody looked at Jasper, and the small glint in his eyes came closer to the surface. There was a questioning, a pain. A solitude Jasper couldn’t mess with, at least not yet.

“You aren’t alone in this world.” Jasper said calmly, but immediately panicked on the inside. Cody straightened up abruptly. “Sorry, wait, that wasn’t, fuck.” Jasper could feel his own face turning red as he retreated into himself. “I didn’t mean to assume anything! You just looked… sad.”

Jasper pulled his knees to his face and set the cake down. Cody was still quiet as a rock. It was an immensely awkward thing to say— he’d never heard of Cody speak of friends before, and he always seemed one step removed from everyone. This semester was an improvement to last, but…

They sat in this silence for what Jasper thought was the longest minute of his life. The hollow ticking of a clock passed through him as the warm body near settled. The awkwardness began to fade away, but it turned into a more ‘disappointing descent of a hot air balloon to a lackluster ground’ type of feeling. Could either of them handle where the conversation could go from where Jasper put it?

“I’m not used to being close to people.” Cody said.

Jasper’s heart fluttered. Or maybe it was a murmur. Wait, wasn’t that an actual medical term? Nothing serious with his heart was happening! It was starting to sink back into its rhythm already! Probably!

“This is the first time in my life I have people like that.” Jasper said between his kneecaps. “And it’s hard for me to trust.”

“The people or the relationships?” Cody asked.

“Myself.” Jasper said. “And… the world, I guess. Something always goes wrong.”

“The world is cruel. Or rather, the world people have created.” Cody said. “For me, it’s people I can’t trust.”

Jasper finally looked over. Cody wasn’t showing the slightest expression on his face.

“Doesn’t that get… lonely?”

Cody turned his head to look at Jasper, and he held that gleam, that deeper sense of desperation once more. They were close in proximity, but incredibly distant in the things they were willing to tell each other. On the surface they said superficial, generalized words. But just under that, there were stories they wanted to scream and gutted monologues that needed to be released, yet only to be acted out alone in their minds, tormenting them from solitude.

Jasper pushed back that fear, never wanting to think about or deal with it.

Cody did this with himself.

He finally answered Jasper’s question. “Hanging out… merely being in someone else’s presence… Doesn’t really feel like enough.” Cody said. “But for whatever reason, I don’t feel alone right now. There are things I can’t tell people, but…”

“I get it.” Jasper said, understanding Cody was struggling to say more. Jasper himself had never asked for help his whole life. How could he, with what his life gave him? But now, he wanted to say… something. “When I said my parents were running from the law, that was only half the story.”

“Do you… want to tell me the other half?”

Jasper sighed. “I get panic attacks when I hear chains. Because that sound usually means my life is about to be upended again, and someone might die. It’s our curse.

Cody instinctively reached for his own arm, grabbing down on it slightly. He rubbed it, looking at Jasper strangely. “Your… curse?”

Jasper had to detach himself from his feelings to keep going. He had to tell someone. He never had. He just… didn’t want Cody to fear him, or fear being around him.

“My parents took out a major entity right after I was born, but it had already killed multiple people. They got framed for those deaths. They weren’t members of the Council, and the federal paperwork became too deep. With a newborn, they decided to run.”

Jasper’s palms started shaking as tremors slowly isolated their way up through the rest of him. He wanted to itch every square inch of his skin whilst being paralyzed.

“I don’t know every detail, but around that time The Warden was created.” His voice started cracking as he remembered his aunt who was ripped apart by chains and killed, the home he once had destroyed, the sounds of clinking metal that once whipped him and continued to chase him to every land he went. Escape seemed unlikely every time, and life rarely felt like much.

So many times he thought about giving up— but his parents never did. What made them so strong? Jasper was crying now, just from saying a few words out loud. He didn’t want to live life like this anymore, to have everything he started to love ripped from him the second he experienced an iota of comfort or safety. To always be fearing for his parents or the people around him.

But an arm was now reaching around him, pulling him into Cody’s shoulder, a hand was atop his head, sending down a calmness allowing him to let everything out. Jasper hadn’t explained a single thing about The Warden, but it seemed Cody recognized the name. Jasper cried into his cradle, unsure of himself.

“I’ll be damned about what Ozu said in class.” Cody said, holding Jasper steady. “There’s a way to kill everything, and we’ll nail that fucker to its own death prison.” He sounded cold, harsh, and in that manner, also… protective.

Jasper rubbed his face on the back of his hands and waited for the shaking to settle, and Cody never let go. Here, he was okay. Here, he was good.

But Cody having his arm over and pressing him in like this felt like more than simple comforting.

Cody was far outside the realm of toxic masculinity. He could be able to do this with all his friends, just as most women could. But he also said he didn’t feel alone earlier, with Jasper…

Friendship love was a foreign concept to Jasper until recently. He was still trying to understand it. Maybe it wasn’t all that different from romantic love, and he didn’t want to jump anywhere unrealistic.

Aside from the fact he was falling over his own feet every time he thought about how attractive Cody was. How intelligent he was. How he seemed capable of taking care of any situation. The man confused the hell out of Jasper. But today, he was there for Jasper.

Maybe one day, Jasper could return that feeling for Cody, and all his other friends too.

That is, if they made it through whatever the hell they were doing this weekend, playing secret agent for mother nature and all.

But for now, he was supported. People were coming together around him, looking out for him… what was he supposed to do with these new feelings?