The Morning After We Won, And Life After That
Story 1 of 3 (1 of 2 if this one goes really really long) due to Team Fiberkitty for FandomGivesBack-Eclipse.
Summary: When Edward is reunited with a former partner at a gay marriage rights campaign, will lust turn to love, or are the bittersweet embers of their parting too far gone to be fanned to an inferno? Jasper/Edward, some flashback references to prior relationships.
This is one of the chosen prompts by teamfiberkitty, given by LMGoldenEyes. Her original prompt to me was: Jasper/Edward Lobbying to legalize gay marriage. [snip out some of the plot] Just a fluffy/lemony slash fic.
Well, writing fluffy is hard for me, and TuesdayMidnight posted up this amazingly beautiful picture and it kickstarted this fic. I don't think it's as fluffy as wanted, but I think it's worth it.
Thank you to Mischief-Maker1 for beta'ing.
Despite the fact that you all know this- I do not own Twilight, nor its characters or any recognizable plot (if you happen to see any in this all human tale). No copyright infringement is intended.
The only copyright I have is on my own published novel, The Changeling's Champion.
Chapter 1: Edward's Story
He was my first. I thought he was going to be my everything, but it turned out I was just an experiment for him. Jasper was not my type at all. I did not want to fall for him, but I had, and once I did- it was only a matter of time before we ended up in bed together. Well, we fell onto his couch more than into his bed.
Jasper had this long blue couch with an old plaid blanket over it in his parents' garage. There was a floral bedspread, more threadbare than actually there, covering the seat cushions to hide the old cigarette burns from his father. Jasper and I had sat on the couch for weeks playing video games on a small black and white tv Jasper had smuggled out into the garage. It had taken him a month to ask me what had been on his mind.
I had been openly gay at school, had even had a few boyfriends despite the bullying we had undergone. Riley was the one who convinced me to help start an LGBT group at our school. Riley was quietly confident, and the light of everyone's lives. His family adored him, had accepted his "revelation" as he put it, with a nonchalance I wish every person could have regarding the person (or persons) he or she loves. When Riley left for college my senior year of high school, I had mistakenly thought we were going to be fine. I thought occasional weekends together might lead to more than making out and the hurried hand jobs we had fumbled through.
College had not been easy for Riley, and I was actually at his parents' house for Friday night supper when things went horribly wrong. I was there with my family, waiting for my boyfriend of fourteen months to pull into the driveway in his beat-up, powder blue, but mostly rusted, vintage VW Bug that he had reupholstered the seats with a hideous green zebra print. It was the loudest Beetle I have yet to hear. By six PM, he had not pulled in and didn't answer his phone when his mom called to see where he was. That wasn't like him.
Worried, I called his roommate, Emmett. My memories are something of a blur after that. Emmett had had football practice or something and was just walking back to their dorm. We kept talking all the way up the four flights of stairs as he jogged them. For a larger guy, he was surprisingly light on his feet. I heard him fumbling with his keys, had to deal with him whistling at some girl down the hall, and then the "Oh Fuck. Oh shit!" that broke me. He dropped his phone and started screaming as he called 911 on their room phone.
Riley had overdosed on sleeping pills in the late-afternoon. There was no note, nothing. He and I had spoken after lunch while he did homework for his afternoon class and he had told me he loved me and he'd see me that night. He was planning on taking a short nap so he would be fine to drive, but planned on being home by five.
His parents let me go with them when they went to identify and claim the body, or whatever it was they had to do. I got to kiss him good-bye, and while his lips felt all wrong, it was a small blessing that I could do that. Our parents took pity on me and indulged my stages of grief. His parents allowed me stay in his room at their house, with the bedding I had pulled off his dorm room bed, for weeks after his death.
It took me two months before I could face going back to the group, and when I did, Jasper was there. We knew each other from class, and we had hung out while he "felt sorry for me". All of our acquaintances had taken a turn at making sure I was as okay as I could be in the situation. He was the only one who didn't expect anything from me, though. Jasper sat as I played any number of instruments my parents had gathered for me through the years, we did our homework in a companionable silence, and sometimes, he went with my parents and me to Riley's home for Friday night supper. Eventually those stopped. His parents found a support group that met Friday nights, and after one visit, I realized that it wasn't what I was ready for yet.
Jasper coaxed me to come to his house to play video games, to break our routine- and it worked. I started pulling out of my constant daze and found myself smiling again. Part of it may have been my repressed feelings for Jasper, but by spring I was actually finding myself happy. It didn't mean that I had stopped missing Riley, but I was living again. I could miss him and still be happy with where I was. It was after a month of hanging out with Jasper that he finally did more than make small talk or sound effects from whatever happened to his character in the game.
Flashback
"How did you know you were gay?" Jasper's cheeks quickly turned a coral shade beneath his already tanning skin.
I choked on my soda. After giving his question some thought, I cleared my throat and tried to formulate an answer. "No idea, really. The same way people know if they're straight, I guess. I just knew that I liked other guys. Not that I can't admire a girl's assets, but the female form doesn't do anything for me." I thought back on my Junior year during a play rehearsal when I had to kiss the lead female. She'd tried to kiss me more than the scene called for, and nothing. "Your sister is undeniably the hottest girl in our school and when she kissed me for the play last year, I felt nothing."
A bittersweet smile made my lips curl into a smile. Riley had made a huge deal over me kissing a girl, and shoved me into his shower, still clothed, to wash off the "cooties" before he would so much as hold my hand. That was the first night we had done more than kiss and grind against one another still clothed.
"Oh. How did your parents take it?"
My shrug was well-practiced; I gave it anytime someone asked me how I was doing. "They accepted it, and when I started dating Riley, my dad gave me a long lecture that safe-sex isn't just to prevent pregnancy in heterosexual relationships." Jasper continued to stare at the video game screen which had long since flashed to the top score screen after his character ran out of extra lives. He'd been coming to our meetings without saying anything, and I knew he had gone on a few dates with the new girl, Alice, but I had not really paid attention. "Why?"
His blue eyes locked on my face, and my already building crush became a monsoon that buffeted me on all sides. The war present in his eyes was hard to view, but I knew he needed me to watch him struggle. With shaking fingers, I reached for his hand. My tentative touch turned to him clinging to me as his life-line. "Edward, I'm so confused. I don't... I don't know. I don't..." He closed his eyes, but the heaviness of his stare was still present through his eyelids.
I moved closer, so I could speak more quietly I kept telling myself, and our thighs touched from hip to knee. My heart beat so rapidly I thought it was going to burst. My vision grew spotted from holding my breath, and I could feel him quivering beside me as he tensed. "Are you feeling something for someone new and it is confusing you?"
Jasper's blond hair rustled as he shook his head rapidly. "Not just someone." His eyes opened and he looked at me with a look of such innocence it astounded me. My skin burned as his free hand lifted to touch my jaw, one finger playing with a lock of hair that was in front of my ear. "You. Edward, you've filled my thoughts, and I don't understand any of it. I think about touching you like this and it goes against everything I've ever known and had my parents tell me."
His words skipped through my thoughts, registering occasionally, as I focused on the hand that now rested on my chest, and the other holding my head with a finger below my jaw, four splayed across my cheek. I was immobile, held under the spell of what he needed from me. My eyes watched his full lips as he stumbled over rushed words, and so caught in the whispers was I that I didn't notice him getting closer, until the soft tickle of the barely there hair on his chin brushed against mine.
Warm lips were wet at the center, and I panicked as he kissed me. He might not be sure of what he wanted, but my body did. My already thundering heart seized up as I kissed Jasper back. The worst he could do was shove me away and say it was a mistake. It would hurt, but I was accustomed to living in pain. The fingers holding me captive moved into my hair and his whole body turned, one leg drawing up and then going behind me.
"What?" I asked as he pulled back but brought me with him until I was half on top of his body.
"Just shut up," he murmured against my lips. Our kiss resumed as his tongue fluttered, uncertain, at the edge of my lip as he asked permission in the only way he knew how. If he needed this to figure out what he felt beyond an indefinite attraction, I could certainly add these kisses to my future late-night fantasies.
I opened for him, and as his tongue entered my mouth, his hands stopped their frenetic movement, and he stilled beneath me. My eyes opened to slits, sneaking a peek at Jasper, and I found him staring at me. Seeing the borderline panic on his face, I pulled back, holding myself up on the couch. "We can stop, Jasper; it's okay."
His eyes moved from my face, down over my chest, and then locked where our hips were still somewhat pressed together. "I wasn't expecting, well, this." His hand reached down and pressed along the front of his jeans where a hard ridge of flesh was making its presence known.
"That can happen while kissing. It happens a lot, actually."
Jasper's answering smirk and eye rolling lightened the seriousness he had fallen into. "It didn't really happen with Alice." When I asked if he wanted to talk about that, he shook his head, a gentle smile returning to his lips. "No, I'd rather kiss you again; if you're enjoying it, that is." A short affirmation led to Jasper pulling my t-shirt up over my head and sliding his hands beneath my undershirt. "I want to feel you, Edward."
I was overly slim in comparison to his lanky yet muscled form, and hesitated as he tried to pull the ribbed tank up. "Jasper, I'm not sure about this." My experience had not gone past this stage often, even with Riley, and it wasn't far at all with him. "What do you want from me? From us?"
"Right now? I just want to feel your skin against mine and kiss you."
Kissing I could do. A little bit of rubbing against each other I could probably handle as well. "Then you should take your shirt off, too, Jasper."
We rushed from hard kisses to scratching at one another's backs and tugging on hips in a desperate need for friction between our bodies. "I want you, Edward." His groan was echoed in the lifting of his hips to rub our erections together. Only our jeans and underwear separated us. My lack of an answer besides nipping at his lips must have been taken as acquiescence. Jasper reached down to undo his belt, followed by the button, and dragged the zipper down with care, releasing his blue cotton clad flesh. His fingers toyed with the snaps holding my jeans closed and after arching one dark blond eyebrow, tugged, popping all three free. The sound was louder than our breathing as his fingers closed over my arousal.
My hiss startled him and he gripped harder. I couldn't hold back the groan. "Fuck, Jasp-er!" He fisted me through my briefs and stroked my length, squeezing at the tip before running his fingers to the base again.
End Flashback
They say a person never forgets his or her first time. In many ways, I haven't. True, parts of it have drifted into a nostalgic haze of what I wish had happened. Other parts are crystal clear. I remember the shaking hands Jasper and I had as we put a condom on him and generously coated him and me with the lube packets he had inside a hollowed out textbook in the drawer beside the couch. I remember the burning ache as he pushed his way into me, and the way I fought to hide the pain by stroking his shoulders and looking up at his face or to the cobwebbed rafters in the garage. Jasper's forehead glistened with sweat as he tried to go easy on me, but it was both of our first times. He didn't last long, that I remember, but neither did I. The sight of his face as it was simultaneously tensed in ecstasy while also the most relaxed I had ever seen him would have been enough to send me over if I hadn't been stroking myself.
Mostly though, I remember how he pulled out when finished, and sat as far away from me on the couch as possible, legs drawn up under his chin. Jasper didn't say a word for the longest time. I was naked, curled up in the corner of the cushions; my head, shoulder, and back resting on the arm of the couch, as I made myself as small as possible. I felt empty. I had been used. I was an experiment. It wasn't done out of love, not even affection; just lust and his need to find out in whom, or what, he was interested. In a broken, raspy voice, that was tight with my effort to hide the tears wanting to be shed, I had whispered that I should go. He finally turned to look at me, and there was so much remorse on his face, that I wanted to cry for him instead of my own pain.
"Yeah, you probably should. I'll see you at school tomorrow."
I did see him at school the next day, but we didn't speak. Our friendship was over. Jasper didn't come to any more of the meetings; he worked harder on the teams for football, basketball, and swimming. I focused on the arrangements for the spring musical, and getting ready for college.
In college, I was the "gay geek" as my roommate, James, had labeled me. I double majored in education and music with a minor in theater/communications. By my Junior year, most of the men I might have been interested in learned I was far too busy with my academics to be much of a boyfriend, and what needs I did allow myself to have were met with my long-term friend with benefits, Jake.
Jake was my best friend. We were like fire and ice, complete opposites, yet we worked in bed, and occasionally out of it. Jake and I had tried dating, being more than just friends with benefits, but it never lasted for long. His temper and my inability to "loosen up" limited our potential as a couple. In grad school, we were about an hour apart, and I can still remember last year when he told me he'd met someone who made him want to settle down. Demetri was... obnoxious. I did not like him, or the new interests he brought to Jake's life, at all.
One might claim it was jealousy, but I prefer to think of it as an annoyance at changing my routine. I was not one for the rallies, marches, and other events in the LGBT community. Jake and Dem dragged me to them, deaf to my complaints. Perhaps from a guilty conscience, or just a desire to no longer have a third-wheel, Jake was determined to play match-maker wherever we went, including the latest event, a party before tomorrow's gay marriage rights campaign.
Yes, I would one day like to marry whichever partner I have chosen to share my life with, but I am in no hurry for that to occur, nor am I concerned with making it legal or not. I have little interest in religion nor legal matters in regards to matters of the heart. For my friends however, I was willing to ignore my preferences to support them in their desire to join in matrimony. Besides, I had a lovely view of a half-naked man dancing to some live music.
His skin was slightly tan, dark blond hair was sun-bleached at the tips, and the dress shirt he had worn had just been tied around his hips over designer jeans. My dancer obviously came from money, but it was the comfort of old-money, not some entrepreneur or young CEO. His posture was too relaxed; he was accustomed to being under scrutiny, but not to the point of it being a reflection of his actions.
I watched in amusement as he stole a cowboy hat from a passerby, and I just caught an edge of a smiling profile. My dancer turned as if he felt my gaze, and any interest I had in him faded as quickly as it had begun. Several tattooed stars decorated his torso from the "v" of his hipbones and curve up his sides, accentuating lean muscles. They were well done and beautiful, but still a turn-off. Most men I had come across in my age-range bearing those stars were cookie-cutter copies of one another, and not what I was looking for.
"I think he likes you, Edward." Jake came up behind me and put his hands on my hips as he swayed us to the music. "He asked Dem about you over by the snack tables. He's single, you're single, and we already had reservations at that nice place over on State Street." I could feel Jake's grin as he whispered into my ear. "I already called in and had the reservations changed from three to four. You need to get laid, Edward. Since Dem won't share, we decided to make sure you get to at least have a chance. Now, let's ditch this block party, go get cleaned up for dinner, have our little date, and tomorrow we can all be back here for the real rally."
I was not pleased about the almost blind-date with Mister Star Dancer, and pouted through my shower, getting dressed, even through shaving and putting on cologne. Not trusting me to walk on my own, Jake and Demetri each took one of my arms to tug me out of the house. Instead of fighting for shotgun, Demetri shoved me in the back seat and climbed in beside me, as if I'd jump out of the car with as fast as Jake drives.
As we turned onto the side street for the restaurant's valet parking, Demetri gave me what I think was supposed to be a pep talk. "It really won't be as bad as you're making it out to be, Edward. Jasper seemed really nice."