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"You said we were going to the library."

A long, grating silence, the kind that followed 'it's not porn, mom, it's a visual aesthetic' or 'he only does crack sometimes' stretched over the family Falls as the Liberty Center Daycare came into view. Jasper, all bewilderment and rage, crossed his arms over his chest and swaggered back, tripping his brother backwards before releasing their hands; holding hands was gay, anyway, especially holding hands with your already gay brother. Grace shoved her hands in her pockets and skipped a step to the side, her shoulders shrugging upwards.

"This is real life, kid. Everyone lies."

Jasper pulled moodily at the sleeves of his faded sweater, his too-loose jeans scuffing underneath his heels and his too-loose frown tightening. It wasn't his mother's response that had aggravated him, however. No, what aggravated him was the fact that he had actually fallen for her ruse. What aggravated him was that he was still wearing hand-me-downs that far surpassed the normal confines of generational gaps. What aggravated him was that he was quite obviously a notchild and notchildren didn't go to Daycare Centers. Fixing Grace with a cold stare, Jasper folded his arms tightly in front of his chest and screwed his mouth up a little before loudly declaring:

"I am not going in there!"

To say Lucien looked scandalized would be as much of an understatement as calling Jasper 'simply a difficult child'; his mouth and nose had scrunched up terribly, much like someone who was trying very hard to suppress a sneeze, and his eyes had become absurdly wide. "They didn't need improving," he decried with a slight arm flail. "They're pretty as they are."

There was a loud, tasteless guffaw from behind him. Jasper clicked his tongue casually at Lucien, deeply amused by his displeasure; it didn't surprise him, really. Most children's short-term goals were to make friends and be merry and tralalala. Jasper's goals were the opposite, and if there was anything Jasper loved more than antagonizing the people around him, it was antagonizing his brother, and better yet antagonizing both. Shifting his gaze from Fish to Lucien, Jasper grinned a humourless, ugly, ill-bred grin.

"Well hey," he began, plucking a loose thread from his unraveling sweater. "Look at it this way, Lucy. You've found yourself a girlfriend."

"I don't even know what you're trying to say," said the raven-haired boy meditatively, leaning forward to pluck the black crayon from between Fish's fingers. "And they don't need improving."

Jasper rolled his eyes and began taking his heavy knot of white hair out, flicking the yellow band at Fish. "I was im--impl--, saying that you two are le--" he frowned a little and puckered his lips, "Lezz-bans. You know, two girls together instead of a boy and a girl. Lezz-bans. You, you're colouring in Princesses," he looked to the wounded boy pointedly. "And you're just a girl, Lucy." He shoved his hands in his pockets and tutted, looking Fish up and down very slowly.

"Who are you, anyway?"

Jasper smirked the smirk of a child destined to rise the ranks of school bully and gestured an unlovely hand towards his brother. "She's Lucy," he began, pseudo-oblivious to Lucien's protests, "and I'm Jasper."

Now, Lucien was trained against his brother's insults which had, in time, cruelly evolved and solely pertained to him being a girl -- and he might have even been impressed by the boy's ability to jump from basic sentence structure to educated gibes if, you know, he wasn't the butt of every droll wisecrack. Shoving Fish's crayon into his pocket, Lucien's face rolled hideously, his teeth pulling up over his top lip and his eyes squeezed shut; he took a moment for the image to have its full aesthetic affect before nleeehhing at Jasper.

"My name's Lucien. And I'm a boy."

"Colouring is for --"

"-- girls, we know." Not so fascinatingly, Lucien reached forward and took the upper most colouring book from the pile with a sort of a pleased smile. The boy was so instantly distracted by the enormous pile of stationary and endless pages of uncoloured lines that he had already shuffled himself onto the table and hijacked the box of crayons, an odd gurgling noise crooning from his nose.

"SIMBA! ILOVESIMBA."

Jasper, slightly perturbed by his brother's excitement over colouring a cartoon lion, gave Fish a bored look and clicked his tongue. "You don't really like colouring, do you? You're too old." He didn't wait for any form of counterargument; he just rolled his eyes and placed his hands on his hips. "Colouring is boring and ju--juu-- juvajanile. It's for little people."

Jasper gave him a look that screamed duh.

"Then sneak out," he said conversationally. "We'll ditch Lucy and sneak around anyone who doesn't want you going on the 'ground without looking sus-- um, sushpishos." The fact that Jasper was willing to actually go on any sort of adventure with Fish was a compliment, really. It meant one of two things: he found the boy interesting enough to humor him, or he was bored. In the end it was probably a mixture of both.

The boy looked down at the conceptual designs of what were once two very conventional Disney princesses and snorted. "Well it's a 'provement. The one who doesn't have a tail looks hot with a mushtash."

Jasper's face darkened. "You're just scared," he said matter-of-factly. "Chicken." He had opened a rare window and had it shut in his face: he was not pleased.

"Done," Lucien announced suddenly, more a deterrent than a fact; he held the book up and pointed an index finger to his traditionally coloured Simba, clearly proud of his effort. Had he have been paying more attention to his surroundings, perhaps he would have noticed his brother scooping copious amounts of crayon into his hand. Unfortunately it wasn't until a barrage of crayons smacked him in the face and defaced his work that he was brought to any sort of harsh and sudden reality.

"Warg! Yoo er suff a --"

"Crayon in your mouth, Lucy."

"-- jerk." Lucien finished with an almighty hurl, a wad of green shooting from his mouth. He ignored the spit-crayon at his feet and moved to sit back at the table, his arms crossed angrily over his chest. Being trained against Jasper's insults was one thing -- being trained against his instantaneous and nameless physical attacks was damned near impossible.

"I heard mum say something about Gerry Butter being hot ago, so I guess it's good." Jasper responded belatedly to Fish's question, smiling the smile of a satisfied criminal at his brother.