Private Jasmine 2.0

Kada

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She'd been dreading this talk for the days since Eric had texted her the time and place. Part of her wondered why they couldn't have just talked right then and there, but whatever. He was busy. He seemed to be busy a lot; probably with football and making friends. Like she should have been. But she'd been holding onto this vain hope that she'd wake up or find a way back home and she could forget all the awfulness that had happened to her here. So not a lot of friends. Just Arianell and Bel and Jae. Good people, to be sure.

But Jasmine still felt like she was lagging behind. Like she was hanging onto frayed threads of what she'd had before.

And now here she was, doing something that she was pretty sure would push one of the strongest threads she still had away. She loved Eric. She was attracted to him, she knew that much. But she had also been having thoughts that she was only very slowly starting to consider maybe weren't as unnatural or bad as she had been taught. And how could it be bad, to have her heart flutter every time Arianell walked in the room or smiled at her?

Jasmine checked her watch again, looking at the time. Waiting for Eric in the meeting spot they'd decided upon. Would he be mad that she'd spent her birthday alone, away from him? She hoped not, but she had a feeling that that would be the least of her worries.

 

Kait

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Eric had been dreading this talk for days.

He had already decided that he would come out to her when they had this talk, but he kept putting it off. And he told himself that this was for her sake - she was in a fragile place. It might send her over the edge to learn that he was gay, if he did it too soon. Yes, that was it - that was why he couldn't say it yet. She needed time to heal from the last thing.

Or maybe he was just terrified. He didn't want to say it out loud again. He didn't want to make it real. He was still shaken from his conversation with Jae.

Finally he bit the bullet. They would meet at those benches halfway out to the lake. There usually weren't a lot of people hanging out around there, he thought, so if there was any shouting involved in this conversation there wouldn't be as many people getting curious. And even though he didn't expect any shouting - well, he couldn't rule it out either.

Soon, Jasmine would see him down the trail, walking closer. "Hey Jasmine. Um... how are you today?"

He'd hug her if she let him. He still loved her, he realized - even if it wasn't that way. It was almost familial.
 

Kada

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She did let him hug her, and hugged him right back. It was warm and firm and soft all at the same time. He felt safe, both because she'd known him her whole life and because he was just so huge compared to her.

"Hey. I'm... feeling a bit better today. The medicine seems like it's starting to do... something. I dunno, I don't understand the mechanics of it. The doctors tried to explain, but-"

She shrugged, letting the unspoken uncertainty of the sentence hang in the air between them.

"Ah, I know that the whole 'we need to talk' thing was probably kinda scary. I just wanna clarify that it's not like... I mean you haven't done anything. I've just had a lot of time to, ya know, think about stuff. Me, especially. And I figured, ah, that we should maybe talk about it?"
 

Kait

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Eric nodded at all of that. He didn't know anything about psychiatric drugs, or, really, what exactly was going through her head this past year. He did know that he wanted the best for her. That was one of the reasons why they needed to break this off.

"Yeah, that was kinda scary," he chuckled. "But... I actually, uh, kinda have something I want to talk about too. It can probably wait until after you're done though." He sat down on one of the nearby benches. They probably both needed to be sitting for this.

He had no idea what Jazz could be getting ready to tell him. A part of him hoped that she would be breaking up with him - that would make this a lot easier.
 

Kada

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So Eric had something to tell her too? Well if her heart hadn't been already racing, it certainly was now. She took the seat next to him and rifled through her pockets to find the thing that she needed for this. A piece of paper, folded up so many times that there was a rip in it and the ink was a little smudged.

Notes on what she wanted to say, written in a flow chart format that Eric would recognize but probably not be able to decipher entirely just by looking at it. That was how she worked, how her weird brain functioned.

"Alright so. My thing first, I guess. Ah. I love you Eric. A lot. Like, you make my heart flip in my chest. All butterflies and lightheadedness when I'm around you. But I have to be honest, I ah..."

She paused, feeling her throat close up a bit. She couldn't do this. She couldn't break his heart like this, let him know that she'd even been thinking about kissing someone else. Especially another girl. No. She had to. She owed him that much. She'd put him through so much recently, with all the hospital and doctor stuff.

But for now, a tangent. She needed to contextualize things so maybe it would make sense to him.

"I've been... hoping that we could go home. But I don't think we can, ever. I think we're just... stuck here, ya know? And ah, I think I'm starting to accept that. And accept some stuff about myself that I used to push down and hide back home..."
 

Kait

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Well... this wasn't off to the kind of start he was hoping for. He knew she had been crazy for him, but... it hurt, thinking about how he had to ruin that. How he was going to have to hurt her - or, in a way, how he had already hurt her, and how this was all going to catch up with them both in a matter of minutes.

But he wasn't going to dwell on that now. The conversation continued. He got a little hopeful with that 'I have to be honest.' And as she continued, as she started talking about how they couldn't go home and she was accepting things about herself, he started to get even more hopeful. At the same time he was afraid, because this could also be something bad, and he didn't even know what that could be.

The anticipation was killing him a little bit.

"You're probably right," he agreed somberly. "I've been dealing with... getting used to that too. Sorta." Their lives as they could have lived them back home were lost, and there probably wasn't any way to change that.

He was still awaiting her bombshell. He couldn't dare to hope that she was coming out as a lesbian.
 

Kada

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Jasmine nodded. She couldn't really keep putting it off. She was here, in the moment, and yet she was still dragging her feet. She didn't want this to go on any longer, the fear and anxiety was starting to swell and she was already imagining the scenarios where he got angry about this.

"Right. Ah, sorry. The point though. Something I haven't ever told anyone before here... I like guys. And girls. It was easy to ignore that last part back home: Risky was really the only other girl our age who was even remotely interesting and, well... she's Risky."

They both knew Risky, Marissa. Knew how she was, how she'd ended up being. The scrunched up face Jasmine made even thinking about it made it clear that that was not an ideal thing for her.

"But here, ah... it's a lot harder to ignore. And there's this one girl in particular-" Jasmine cut off mid-sentence and course corrected, stringing her words together hastily. "-I haven't cheated on you, I promise. But she's been a really good friend and... my heart kinda flips when she's around the same way it does when I'm with you..."
 

Kait

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Jasmine was bisexual!?

"That's great!" Eric said. And he immediately realized that was a weird response to have, so he backpedaled a bit. "I mean... it's great that you were able to accept that about yourself. I thought you were going to tell me something really bad. This is..."

Eric didn't really know the right stuff to say to be accepting for something like this, but he went ahead and hugged her again.

He kind of wished Jasmine was just a lesbian. Maybe she still could be - he didn't really know how this bisexual stuff worked or how real it was. It was hard for him to believe, with the kinds of feelings he had been having romantically.
 

Kada

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Wait. Something was wrong here. That wasn't a normal response to this kind of admission, was it?

As Eric hugged her close, Jasmine felt herself shift uncertainly in his arms. She still hugged him back, almost out of habit. "You're not mad? Or upset? I-"

Had she just been silly this whole time, worrying over nothing? Maybe she'd just been worked up over nothing and Eric was an even better guy than she'd originally thought.

Leaning her head against his chest and sighing with something like relief, Jasmine tightened her arms around him and just held on for a moment.

"You don't have to worry though, I'm not going to leave you for her."
 

Kait

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"There's no way I would be mad at you for something like that," Eric said. "I might not really... understand it yet, I guess, but, I'm not mad about it."

They took some time to hold onto each other, and Eric took a deep breath. He needed to gather his strength for this. He was almost about to chicken out again - especially after how she said he wasn't going to leave him, and all that.

He could start by softening the blow.

"So, Jazz... you know how, I care about you more than anyone else in the world?"

Eric pulled away from the hug, so they could make eye contact.

"There's, ah, something I've gotta tell you about, too. But... It's one of those things that you don't find out about yourself really easily back home. And I'm still kinda scared to tell you about it. Which is kinda stupid when you think about it. I'd jump out in front of a bunch of zombies to protect you, but I can't... get a few words out." He laughed at himself a little, growing more and more nervous.
 
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