Work Text:
"I don't know, I just…"
Julie's voiced trailed off into a whimper, and she swallowed the sob that crept up her throat. Jade stood next to her in front of the bathroom counter, watching her stare at her reflection with a mix of anger and grief. Her face was piping hot with embarrassment, and she couldn’t stand to look up at her own reflection.
It was stupid, she thought, to ask Jade for company while her mom and brother went out to Colony House for the day. It wasn’t like they hadn’t invited her, but she couldn’t bear to leave the house right now. She didn’t want to face all those people with their hushed whispers and pitying looks, unable to leave her alone to grieve even after a month. She’d handled those looks before when Thomas died, but this was different. Jim’s death was worse. So much worse, in fact, that she was pouring her heart out to the town drunk (and, she suspected, her father’s replacement). She heaved over the bathroom sink, trying not to let her choked breathing turn into tears.
"I can't deal with it," she finished. The tightness in her chest strangled her, and she felt a tear, stinging and wet, roll down her cheek. She wiped at her face roughly, quickly, hoping that would be the last of it. There was no point, though. Her eyes burned as grief streamed down her face, and she couldn't wipe all them away no matter how hard she rubbed. A gentle hand grabbed her wrist, and she looked up to meet Jade's eyes.
"You don't have to," he said. "Not alone, anyways."
There was no pity in his eyes, she thought. Just sadness. Understanding. It was quite uncharacteristic based on her interactions with him. He nudged her hand down from her face and moved behind her, running his hand through her hair as he did. They both stood for a moment, looking in the mirror as Julie's mind swirled. Jade held out his other hand to her, asking for something on the counter.
"Hand me the brush, would you?"
If she had been more pieced together, Julie might have questioned this request. Instead, she obliged, handing Jade the blue marbled hairbrush she'd packed for the trip to Colorado. The trip her father had insisted on taking, that he was sure would bring them closer together as a family and save his marriage. The trip that brought them to the place where he'd eventually end up dead beside the RV that took them there. She felt more tears well up in her eyes.
Gently, Jade gathered Julie's hair to her back and began slowly brushing- soft, rhythmic strokes that were followed by fingers through her hair and a quiet sigh. She couldn't help closing her eyes to the soothing feeling, no matter how much they burned when she did. The stinging persisted, but her headache lulled a little with each brush, and her muscles relaxed as her hair untangled alongside her thoughts.
At first Julie was confused at how easily Tabitha seemed to gravitate towards Jade after her father's death. She remembered hearing the door to Jade's room creak open the night they found Jim’s body; she could hear her mother's frantic mumbling as Jade shushed her, the bed slowly creaking as he rocked her to sleep. She knew they’d fallen in love just like she knew her parents had fallen out of it, how the divorce was imminent and irreversible no matter what Jim tried to tell them. Julie was too smart to let their body language slip past her. She couldn't ignore the stolen glances and reassuring touches Jade and Tabitha shared like Ethan could. Ethan probably hadn't even noticed. Last week, her mother had sat her down and explained everything- the children she’d been seeing in the forest, her and Jade's past selves, the bracelet weaved a hundred times in a hundred different lives. Still, it wasn't as natural for Julie to accept Jade filling in Jim's empty chair at the dinner table. It was alarming how she thought of her dad every time Jade offered comfort she was never given with Jim.
"Are you really in love with my mom?" she burst out, voice clogged from a snotty nose.
Jade's hand twitched, but he kept brushing, eyes locked on her hair. Brush, brush, brush.
"Are you always asking questions you already know the answer to?" he replied. A light chuckle escaped him.
"You really are just like your dad sometimes. I should start calling you Teacup Junior."
Julie stiffened back up again momentarily, causing Jade to pause and look at her through the mirror.
"Sorry. I know you didn’t like me calling him that. I didn't mean to… well… you know."
“It's okay.”
"No really, I'm s-"
"Do you know how to braid?"
Julie grabbed a piece of her hair and brought it in front of her face. She pushed her fingers to the very end of the strand, and brushed it against her cheek, a thousand prickly needles soothing her like a dry paintbrush. It was really dry, actually. She wondered when was the last time she used a hair masque? She'd have to ask Fatima if she knew any natural remedies for dry ends.
"Yeah, I know how to braid," Jade said, sectioning Julie's hair into even parts and draping it all over her shoulders. He clapped his hands together, sending a jolt through Julie, and they locked eyes in the mirror. A wry grin was plastered on his face.
"Would you like a free hair styling complementary of the Jade Salon Suite?"
He waved the hairbrush around with a twirl of his wrist, and dragged it in elegant waves through the air. Julie giggled and nodded, crossing her arms and shifting her weight to one hip.
"Jade Salon Suite, huh?“
“Of course! We’re a very new establishment, so you may not have heard of us. Let me introduce myself.”
He cleared his throat dramatically.
“I’ll be your stylist today, Jade Hair-era,” he bowed.
Julie giggled, and covered her mouth with her hand before returning to cross her arms. A nervous habit, but a familiar one.
“I’ll gladly take a complementary style,” she said. Jade raised a wild brow and squared himself, nudging Julie's head straight towards the mirror again and gathering all of her hair up in his hands. When he spoke, his voice was dripping with a horribly exaggerated accent, consonants all lined up at the front of his mouth like he was auditioning for Fromville's Got Talent.
"Great! For whom am I performing this style?"
"Teacup."
Julie smiled and uncrossed her arms, leaving them to rest at her sides as she faced herself in the mirror. Though Jade didn't drop the persona, his eyes softened.
"Mrs. Teacup?"
"Oh no, Mrs. Teacup was my father. I'm Miss Teacup," she said. Jade chuckled, then scratched lightly at her scalp, thinking through the motions.
"Do you want two braids or one?"
"Can you do a crown of them?"
"Sure thing kid."
It was the most relaxed Julie had been in a long time, closing her eyes and feeling her hair be smoothed out and separated and intertwined. Jade took his time, slowly picking out just the right-sized sections and carefully parting her hair as he went. For a moment, Julie pretended that it was her dad who was braiding her hair.
Jim had never even brushed her hair, much less styled it. She never fell asleep to him braiding messy pleats as he read The Cromenacle to Ethan for the millionth time. Julie hated that book. She'd hated her dad for not listening to her, for not giving in when she would beg him to dress up with her and put her hair in ponytails, 'even if it looks bad!'. But that didn't mean she didn't still love him. She just resented his standoffishness. And in the end, that was mainly what she remembered of him.
"Hey, Jules?" Jade said.
"Yeah?"
"You know, your mom and I..."
He sighed. Julie waited, watching the gears sputter and turn in Jade's head as he figured out what to say. Julie knew what he was going to say, though. It was just a matter of how he was going to say it.
"I won't treat you like you're a little kid. I know Tabitha's told you about the children and about... us."
He grabbed an elastic off the counter, and held the spares in his teeth as he tied up the ends of her braids. He stole a glance at Julie as he did. To him, her expression was almost unreadable- full of confusion, or maybe she was getting ready to be angry with him. Julie wasn't sure how she felt either.
"I know it's crazy to hear," he said, tangling the first hair tie up in a ponytail.
"Trust me, I think your dad would beat the living shit out of me if he saw me right now. Fuckin'... sleeping with his wife and taking care of his kids."
He paused to take the elastics out from his teeth, and looked into the distance for a moment. "I mean, she was mine first, but... you know. You're not mine. Ethan's not either. I'll be ghost-fucked if he ever decides to haunt me."
Jade returned to the second braid, tying the next elastic at the end and twirling it up around Julie's head in the most complete circle he could make. Julie sat, tracing Jade's hands with her eyes as he worked. She understood, somehow, that it was hard for Jade. She had gotten the whole spiel about what it felt like to string up a symphony and have your centuries-dead child approach you, reminding you of all the lives you'd lost. She couldn't fathom it- but she also couldn't stop thinking of her parents' wedding pictures hanging in the hallway of their house, staring back at her for seventeen years. Was all that for nothing? Was it never real?
The front door opened, and Ethan's chipper voice babbled from downstairs. Jade stoped to look towards the hall, and fiddled uselessly with the extra strands of hair he hadn't placed yet.
"Guess our party's ending early," he said, quickly leaving two strands to frame Julie's cheeks and placing the hairbrush back on the counter. He opened the door, inviting Julie to leave with a nod of the head. She approached, but stopped before leaving.
"I'm not mad at you, you know."
Jade opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a raise of Julie's hand.
"I know you know that, I just needed to say it. I think I'm just..." she frowned at her loss of words, and Jade waited as she found them. Her breath rattled through her as she prepared herself.
"It's kind of scaring me how quickly I've gotten used to you. I guess I was already preparing to have a stepdad before, with the divorce happening and stuff, but this is different. It's only been a month since… It's only been a month."
She looked intently at Jade, not letting him escape her gaze. She needed him to scold her, to tell her that it was wrong for her to move on so well. Moving on was destroying her. Instead, he smiled.
"You shouldn't beat yourself up over it. Humans are weird. We're all just a bunch of meat with magic wires in our heads that give us emotions. Sometimes the wires get tangled, and that's okay."
He tapped a fist against her skull, and pat her shoulder, brushing reassuringly.
"Don't blame yourself. Blame the wires."
Before she could stop herself, or think what she was doing, Julie rushed into him, grasping him into a hug that startled him backwards into the doorframe. She squeezed him tight like he was the last shred of her father, and the first shred of her new family. It was a hug that washed her clean, that would renew her. Jade cemented it by wrapping his arms around her, and Julie knew then that she would be alright. No matter what monsters tapped on their windows at night, no matter what men spoke over the radio and foretold their undoing. Their family would make it. She was sure of it.
Julie let go first, and wiped her eyes dry to look up at Jade.
"After you, Teacup," he said.
And they made their way downstairs, two parts of a whole joining to face the world.