AU: Lay on the Horn [Jesse]

[Clement Evans]

It had been a little over a year since Jesse had appeared on the national news buck naked after accidentally crashing a birthday party, and unfortunately things had not changed all that much. Except, Clement now had a job. He'd gotten it shortly after that ridiculous affair under the advice of the school's administrators, who thought it would do him good to get away from his feisty little brother for awhile.

His job was at a stable just outside Pilot Ridge, and the fact he shifted into a rather large silver timber wolf didn't affect things. He knew the horses probably smelled something off about him, but it bothered them no more than the farm horses around them all the time. Clement shifted sometimes and ran with them.

Knowing how to deal with horses also came in handy when dealing with Jesse, who was also a shifter. A baby unicorn shifter. Glossy, almost shimmery white coat, enough long white mane for five horses, and large luminescent blue eyes. He was straight off a 12-year-old girl's notebook. Clement had heard that his little brother was cute "even when he was biting the shit out of that eleventh grader on Wednesday".

Well, yeah. They could have their cute. Clement just worked his job, part time during school, full time as much as possible on vacations or on weekends. In the short year he'd been employed, he'd tucked a healthy chunk of change away, a pseudo-nest egg that was still growing, and had bought a beat up 1965 VW Beetle. Some work, new tires, and a replacement red door for the driver's side that clashed with the green body, and the thing ran just fine. Clement was inordinately proud of it, and he knew the staff at Hammel was also grateful that he often used it to tote his angry flail-y brother off campus to cool off.

It was the weekend, but his car was still parked near the school in a spot he rented from a nearby local. He was working, but Ms. Morgan had a show and he was there helping present her horses.

In hindsight, it was probably best Clement was several hundred miles away.

[Jesse Adams]

One year since his ill-fated running away-turned national news spectacle, and one would think the little unicorn shifter might have learned a thing or two about appropriate behaviour. Which... was true. Sort of. Slightly. He wasn't quite as quick to fight, but if the right buttons were pushed he was often being hauled off of other students and presented for detention.

It was actually easier when he unicorned-out when he was mad. Fits of anger still drove him to unplanned shifts, and while it was annoying as hell, it also made him faster, and therefore harder to catch.

Until he tripped all over his too-long legs or a power suppressor was near. Either way, he'd still get caught. And often in more trouble for running in the first place.

Clement having a job was a double edged sword. On one hand, Jesse could get away with more behind his brother's back and didn't have anyone to remind him to act more like a human being and less like an angry bee. On the other... it was kind of lonely. Clement had been his constant for so long, and he didn't really have many people around he could call friends. When Clement worked, Jesse tended to do one of two things.

1) Hole up in his room or watch TV until Clement came back

2) Get himself into trouble

He'd been trying to stop going down option 2's road for the weekend. He knew Clement was not only working, but out of town, and he wanted to prove he could be Good. Especially because he'd been angling for Clement to teach him how to drive. He was totally old enough for his learner's license now! But nooooo. Clement wouldn't let him touch the car beyond being a passenger.

But maybe. Just maybe if he was Good for a whole weekend, his brother would reconsider.

Tired of being cooped up inside, he grabbed his beat-up backpack where he kept a spare set of clothes just in case he had a unicorn incident, and headed outside. He didn't really know what he wanted to do once he was out, but it was better than being inside times ten.

The only problem was that on nice days outside, there tended to be more students inside than outside. And a lot of them were well aware of his little stint on the news. Nothing said 'Sudden, Bad Popularity' like appearing naked on the news surrounded by screaming girls in Frozen dresses and angry parents.

Keeping his head down, he headed to a quiet corner of the courtyard. If he just went fast enough, maybe he could cruise by the other students and -

"Hey look it's the Baby!"

Jesse froze in his tracks and hazarded a peek at the student who had yelled. It was one of the older students, who had clearly paused his impromptu basketball game with his friends just to pester him. Gritting his teeth, Jesse swallowed the colorful swear streak he'd mentally prepared and instead kept marching towards his destination.

"Hey Baby! Why don't you go crash another baby party?" Raucous laughter followed.

"I'm not a baby!" The young shifter hissed the words, dropping his bag on the ground.

"Oooh we're so scared. The baby's coming after us!"

The funny part about baby unicorns were that they were cute when they were calm. They were cute even when they were biting.

They were not cute when they came running at you, horn down, and making angry-sounding bleating noises.

Jesse delighted in chasing the older boys around, kicking out when they got too close, but eventually he got tired and his legs started to wobble. Knowing what was coming, he turned tail, picked up the strap of his bag in his mouth, and ran for cover.

A few painful moments later he emerged from behind a set of trees, marching angrily toward the panting boys. "I'm not a baby," he repeated, now-green eyes blazing. One of the boys stood back up properly and eyed him before smirking.

"Oh yeah? Prove it, Baby."

Most sane fourteen year olds would stop even before this point.

Jesse wasn't most fourteen year olds. Still glaring, he marched right over, staring up at him.

"I'm an adult. I can... I CAN DRIVE A CAR."

That was the most adult thing he could think of. It was... kind of true. He'd watched Clement, he'd started studying the driver handbook. He could totally do this.

The older boys didn't think so. A ripple of laughter sounded through the group.

|Right. Prove it, Baby."

Most logical fourteen year olds would not march right up to their dorms and swipe their brother's car keys.

Most logial fourteen year olds wouldn't hightail it to the parking lot where said brother's car was kept.

Most logical fourteen year olds would not do what Jesse was about to.

Now he had an audience and something to prove, he unlocked the door and hopped in. It couldn't be that hard. He'd watched Clement drive a million times. Turn the key, find the gear... okay, lurching was probably normal...

This. Was. So. COOL.

Grinning to himself, he took it for an experimental spin around the parking lot before testing his non-existent skills. He didn't think it was a great idea to hit the road, but the parking lot? Game on. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, a lot, actually. As he quickly found out in taking a corner too fast. He clipped the back end of a parked car, heard a solid clunk in Clement's car, saw what looked like red glass on the ground...

Ohhhhhhh shit. Oh shit shit shit.

Scrambling now, his heart beating a million miles a second, he wrangled the car back into it's parking spot and slunk out to assess the damage.

... Well there went any chance of Clement ever teaching him to drive. Biting on his lower lip, he did the only thing he could do. He shut the door, locked it, and booked it back to the school to hide in his room and try to figure out what to say to his brother. Sorry probably wouldn't cut it. Clement didn't respond to groveling.

Running away wasn't an option.

But maybe hiding was.

He kept his eye on the clock, trying hard to predict when it would be close to Clement coming back to the school. As it neared close enough for his liking, he disappeared back outside, shifted, and ran like hell into the thick brush that grew near the training field. Hiding probably wouldn't work forever, but maybe at least until Clement cooled off?

He could hope.

[Clement Evans]

He couldn't believe he had to explain it, but as a baby unicorn, Jesse had an advantage over human bullies. Stronger jaws and bigger teeth, four hooves, and a horn that while blunt, still had incredible powers of dent. He could run faster (when his legs cooperated) and do more damage and oh my god he had to stop before he could actually impale someone. Assault charges could still be pressed if the weapon was attached to your head.

Clement knew the second the car came back to Hammel with him, Jesse would want to drive it. Positions reversed, so would he. But one, Jesse was Jesse and couldn't seem to keep his behavior together enough to merit anything like test driving Clement's car, and two, it was so very illegal. Even if his little brother's executive functioning did work the way it was supposed to, Clement wasn't about to risk it. Neither of them was exactly clean in the delinquency area and the older brother wanted to keep up the goodwill. Or, his own goodwill. He was pretty sure golden behavior out of Jess for the next decade would only bring his attitude marks up to slightly below normal.

Part of him, a very dark part of him, half expected the little butthole to take a joyride. It seemed like something Jess would do. Dark though, because if he did, Clement would skin his little unicorn hide.

So when he saw the police in the school's drive and assumed his brother was part of it, he was right, but when he saw that it also involved his car and the school psychiatrist's car, he began seeing red. Apparently, in full view of several dozen witnesses, Jesse had (badly) driven his car, Clement's car, his gateway to freedom and most of a year of his life in labor, into Dr. Neville's. Taken out the man's left taillight and left a streaking dent that perfectly matched the blunt scratches in his VW's front fender, trailing glass from the beetle's bubbled headlight protector all the way back to the parking space.

It was like the little shitstain had written a signed, notarized statement declaring he didn't want to live anymore.

After filling out paperwork with gritted teeth, so fast the pen almost burst into flame, Clement found the nearest door and shifted. Baby unicorn had a distinct smell, and Jesse wasn't hard to find. Lips baring teeth, after flushing the unicorn out of hiding, the big wolf took a mouthful of that long, trailing hair and began to drag his little brother back to the dorms, legs flailing and mouth bleating and Clement not caring at all.

[Jesse Adams]

Jesse quite wanted to live, thank you very much. He just didn’t tend to think about consequences. Especially when he didn’t know enough about his transgression to realize what he’d just done to his brother. Pride over the car aside, things like insurance just didn’t enter into his head.

But really, it had been an accident. He hadn’t meant to break anything! Clement couldn’t be that mad, right?

Wrong, little unicorn. So very, very wrong.

His plan to let his older brother cool off had seemed like sound logic. What he hadn’t expected was for Clement to conduct an immediate search and destroy mission. As a young unicorn he retained a lot of sense when it came to prey vs predator reactions. The sudden scent of wolf, regardless of familiarity or not, made him run.

He wasn’t all that coordinated when running out of sheer fear, and as such had his fair share of stumbles and missteps that ultimately ended with a giant wolf with a mouthful of mane.

He squealed loudly as he came crashing down to the ground, legs flailing. The logical part of his brain recognized the wolf as his likely angry brother, but his fight or flight reflex was still screaming at him to fight. Kicking out, he thrashed against the ground and tried (and failed) to twist out of his brother’s grip. Loud bleats left his mouth, but as they got closer to the school he knew damn well he wasn’t getting out of this.

At least not alive.

With less fighting and more occasional yanks when he thought Clement’s guard was down, he let himself be dragged. Pleading wouldn’t work, but maybe if he just explained why he’d done what he’d done, Clement wouldn’t be too mad.

It was an accident, after all.

[Clement Evans]

What really chapped his ass about this (besides the whole brother stole his car and rammed it into another one), was that Jesse was going to twist things into him being the victim here and how dare Clement be angry. The kid would have a laundry list of excuses, of perfectly good reasons, of things that made total sense in his own tiny blond brain. Or maybe in his tiny blond dick. Clement wasn't sure how much his brain got used.

The whole incident was a nightmare of paperwork and twisted legal proceedings. Jesse had stolen a vehicle, driven it without a license, run it into another car, and then fled the crime scene without notifying the other car owner. The last one was a felony in most states all by itself. Additionally, there was an alleged charge of not wearing a safety belt, and of speeding in the parking lot, which could be proven by the amount of damage to the cars. Given his age, Jess would be sent to a juvie facility at the very least, which, given his power, would be karma as far as Clement was concerned. But Hammel overruled such things. Unfortunately. So now it was just filling out mounds of paperwork and hoping his insurance took pity on him.

Such was Hammel life that a large wolf dragging a squealing baby unicorn across campus was not all that notable.

Finally they were back in Clement's dorm room, and he shifted back and closed his door. Without bothering with clothes, he looked down, feeling quite stormy, upon his dead younger sibling and said, "SHIFT. RIGHT NOW."

[Jesse Adams]

Of course Jesse was going to make himself the victim, because it was his default setting. It was why he acted the way he did with authority figures and back at the foster homes. It was why he acted out in class. It was why he got himself into scraps with other students.

And, apparently, it was why he had borrowed Clement’s car.

He really didn’t know the depths of how much trouble he’d racked up for himself. Okay, so he wasn’t quite old enough for his license, no, but that was because the laws were stupid in Vermont. And maybe fleeing the scene had been a bad idea, but that was because he was already in trouble, and he didn’t know what to do. He’d hoped that beyond the few students that had been teasing him, no one had seen.

Right. Because that worked.

When the made it back to the dorms, Jesse stared up at his brother as he shifted, knowing full well what he expected, even without the yelled instructions. The problem was, when he was scared or angry, he often got himself stuck in unicorn mode for longer periods of time. Yelling didn’t help matters. Besides, the faster he shifted, the faster he had to actually talk to Clement about this.

… Maybe it would be easier when he stopped yelling at him.

Flinching at the yelled demand, he squeaked out what he hoped came across as an ‘I can’t when you do that’, which was really just a sad, squeaky bleat. But the look he got made him scramble up to his feet. There was nowhere to run with the door closed, so he did the next best thing.

He gathered himself and hopped up into Clement’s bed. Not thinking about the countless pine needles and leaves stuck in his lengthy mane and tail, he dropped to his side and rolled up onto his back in a very animal way of saying ‘I give up, don’t kill me.’ Dogs did it, so why couldn’t unicorns?

[Clement Evans]

If Jesse was the victim of anything, it was his own series of increasingly poor life decisions. The problem with this (besides the obvious) was that his brother's life was as often disastrously affected as the boy's own. When it didn't have to be. If Clement had at any time asked to be placed in a separate foster home as Jesse, no one would have questioned it. Because Clement was doing his damned best to improve his life and plan for the future and his little brother was not only not interested in doing either of those things, he seemed bent on destroying Clement's progress. It was days like this when the shifter thought his presence was hindering Jesse's growth. Not to mention his own. And that it was time to get serious about things, and that separation for both their sakes was necessary.

Especially when apparently crashing his car was not enough, Jesse the baby unicorn needed to fucking break his bed.

A vein in Clement's neck that was usually hidden under clothing started to pulse, outlining itself neatly in reddening skin. The beds at Hammel were sturdy, they had to be, to accommodate term after term of growing students, but they had not been built to hold up under flopping horned equines. The legs of the bed nearest the wall broke off at their bases, the legs opposite bowing to half their height, and the bedframe itself cracked in back and warped in front. And a great deal of the forest litter picked up in that fabulous mane and tail shook out, rendering his bedding unusable.

Clement was so angry at that point that the only thing he could think of to do when presented a belly was to slash it open. So he took many deep breaths and turned his back to dress. When he was finished, he turned back but didn't look at the unicorn. If he did he might be tempted to put out one of those big blue eyes with a pencil. So he just leaned against his door and waited.

[Jesse Adams]

When the bedframe cracked, Jesse nearly shot off the bed in fear. Instead, he hunkered low with his tail tucked under him, trembling. As if this day could get any worse. Clement was going to skin him alive, whether he shifted back or not, and now he'd unintentionally broken his brother's bed. Not the best impression to make when you were about to beg for forgiveness.

His comically large blue eyes widened as far as they could go as the vein popped out of his neck. Ohhhhhh hell. He was mad. And there was going to be a unicorn throw rug on the floor of his dorm in a matter of minutes if things didn't change, and fast.

Laying his head down and staying as still as possible, he watched Clement from the corner of his eye as he changed. He really didn't want to shift back, because he didn't want to talk to him when he was angry. But he also couldn't lay on the bed forever as a unicorn.

Closing his eyes, he braced himself and focused. He gritted his teeth as he felt his body shift back to its' smaller, more human form. Once he was done, he burrowed into the forest littered bedding and peered out at Clement. "I'm sorry Clement..." Asking him not to be mad was going to be fruitless, and he knew that. But apologizing right out of the gate? That had to mean something, right?

[Clement Evans]

To the casual observer, there was no difference. It was an imperceptible change, but one that Clement recognized from long practice. The very moment Jesse stopped being angry at the injustice of it all to being afraid for his continued existence. Clement could also see the point at which his baby brother knew he had to get with the program or become a gallon of sparkly unicorn glue.

Watching dispassionately as the bundle of wand cores became what was likely much more forbidden wand cores, Clement's iron gaze focused in on the big blue eyes trying to better his odds of leaving the room alive.

"I'm sorry Clement..."

No, he wasn't. He was saying that so he didn't die right away. The second Jesse thought he began to hear acceptance he'd double back to IT WASN'T MY FAULT. But big brother wasn't going to stymie progress. He counted to ten and then said, "Keep going."

[Jesse Adams]

If he could help it, Jesse was going to keep from becoming a decorative throw rug for their common room. Clement was scary when he yelled, but he was almost scarier when he was quiet. Like now. Slowly breathing in and out, Jesse watched his brother from the middle of the cracked bed, waiting for what was either going to save him, or condemn him. He was pretty sure it was against dorm policy to murder your roommate, let alone your brother, but... rules were often made to be bent.

And he'd been thrown a lifeline! Still unmoving, afraid that any sudden movement might set Clement off again, he carefully began to string together some semblance of a response that was less likely to get him killed.

"I'm... really sorry?" That was not what he'd meant, and he knew it, but it was worth throwing in. "I didn't mean to hurt it. I just... I wanted to drive it. Just a little. And then I hit the other car and I panicked and didn't know what to do..." Yes, he'd conveniently left out that he'd been being teased before that had taken place, but that wasn't really important information. "I'm really, really, really really really sorry."

[Clement Evans]

Though Hammel rules did not state it explicitly, murder on campus was unacceptable. However, if the administration had found out it was Jesse taken out by his own older brother, and overwhelming majority would just nod and call it fair.

That baby brother clarified his apology in the form of a question made a second vein on Clement's forehead start to pulse. One of the reasons (amongst a great many, to be sure) that Clement did not let Jesse drive his car was the exact scenario the boy laid out. Like, almost word for word from Why You Do Not Touch My Car On Pain Of Death.

With a bro like Jess who did shit like run away and get on the news and receive detention for biting almost half the male population of the school, one could not stay as tremendously angry as Clement was all the time. He'd probably have to triple his caloric intake to keep from passing out by ten a.m. And the older shifter had too logical a mind to not start thinking about what to do, and he'd learned very early that thinking logically and being ball-bustingly angry were not mutually exclusive.

Obviously from Jesse's apology, he had not figured out how problematic his actions were, nor had he suggested any form of compensation. This wasn't unusual, but in this case, Clement felt he'd had it. This was the straw, the line had been crossed, the ship had sailed. He'd done his best for seventeen years, but it was now time to think about himself, his own future, and what was best for his sanity. He only had a year left of school, was obviously not going to go to college, and had to start saving like a madman again to fix his car and build his down payment on an apartment back up.

Without acknowledging his brother's apology, because it wasn't an apology, he started packing. The brunet didn't have much stuff. His laptop went in with his school books, and that backpack got thrown into his laundry basket, under the rest of his clothes. After he picked it up, he turned back to Jesse, and his expression was one of pity.

"I tried, man. I thought if I kept dragging your ass out of trouble, told you, showed you, how you were supposed to act, loved you as hard as I could, you'd figure out how not to be total douche. You'd start thinking about other people and not just about yourself, you'd take responsibility for your actions, and you'd stop fighting everything that looked at you funny." Clement's expression went flat. "You didn't. I really tried, and now I give up. I'm tired of your bullshit, and I won't let you wreck my life while you wreck yours." Before he walked out the common room door, he added, "You steal my car again, I'm pressing charges."

~

Of course, Clement didn't leave Hammel. But he did change to the co-ed dorms. Life among the high drama, illicit hookups, and illegal contraband of mixed genders was actually very relaxing.

[Jesse Adams]

Balled up in his brother's sheets, Jesse watched as his apology went unanswered, save for a quick packing job. The blond clutched at the sheets around him, watching with wide eyes. He'd seen Clement mad before. He'd yell sometimes. But that wasn't the scary part. Clement was scariest when he was quiet, and this silent packing was freaking him out. He'd said sorry, hadn't he? What more could he do to prove he was sorry? Get on the floor on his knees and plead?

He was frantically trying to think of a way to fix this when his brother's voice made his chin snap up. Each sentence made his stomach twist up in uncomfortable knots, and he swallowed hard. He'd really, really, really screwed this up, and there was no obvious way out. He didn't even know what to say to keep Clement in the room, because it wasn't like he could actually deny any of it. Instead he looked at the floor, his fingers clenching tighter and tighter in the sheets.

The door closing, leaving the unicorn shifter all alone, made it all really sink in for him.

Jesse hadn't often been a crier growing up. He was more likely to scream if he was upset, and any tears that happened to fall were more often than not angry tears rather than sad ones. Once that door closed, a small piece of him broke. After throwing a pillow at the door, he burrowed under Clement's sheets to actually cry. Not because he was mad, no, not this time. He was upset, and he was scared. He'd never seen Clement that mad before, and he was terrified he wouldn't come back.

After a few days, it was clear he wasn't. After some desperate pressing of the dorm monitors, he found out where Clement had gone, and in a wise decision he ditched out of his afternoon classes and sat outside Clement's dorm until he was found and moved out of the hall by bodily force.

Well. It was easy to move a skinny fourteen year old.

It was significantly more difficult to move a roughly six to eight month old (it was hard to tell, okay?) unicorn foal. This time he slipped out of his dorms at night, snuck up to the co-ed dorms, shifted, and lay in the hall with his chin on the floor. Ears flopped, tail curled against him, he looked the picture of Sad Baby. Skipping classes wasn't helping anything, no, but he wasn't going to give up on his brother. He had to take him back. That was what brothers did, right?

He didn't even care that girls would stop to pet him, or take pictures. He didn't even kick out or snort or jab his horn in their directions. He would just sigh and stare at the floor.