A/N - So, this is sort of Blackwater pairing, sorta not. Make of it what you will. One shot.

EDIT: no longer a one-shot. Lol. Now a... potentially multi-chapter fic.

"PLAY PRETEND WITH ME"

I had my back to her while she dressed. I didn't mind running with Leah so much anymore - she was strangely... comfortable compared to the rest of the pack - but that didn't mean I wanted to see her naked. There were boundaries with Leah I wouldn't have to worry about if she had been a guy. But she wasn't. She was a girl - Sam's girl once upon a time.

"You can turn around now, Jake," she told me, a hint of humor in her voice. "I'm decent."

I rolled my eyes at her. That was the thing between Leah and me - we liked busting each other's chops. Maybe I kind of liked that, too.

Turning around to face her, I was slightly startled to find her standing so close to me. I backpedaled a bit, putting a couple of steps between us. Her eyes glittered in amusement - and something else. The same something else that always shone in Leah's eyes: sadness.

At least, I'm pretty sure that's what it was. It's always hard to tell with Leah.

I cleared my throat and made to push past her. "We should head back."

But I didn't get very far. She always had been the fastest in the pack and before I could take more than a few more steps away from her, she was standing right in front of me, closer than I felt strictly comfortable with. Her lips had been curved into a smile, but it had faded. Now they were somber, parted slightly.

Frowning, I stared at her. What was she doing?

"Leah...?"

I didn't really get the chance to ask, because without warning she launched herself at me, throwing her arms around my neck and dragging her lips across mine. To say I was startled would be the understatement of the century. I was floored.

What. The. Hell.

Her body - lightly clothed as it seemed she always was in a thin tank-top and tiny cotton shorts - was pressed up tightly against mine, and I couldn't deny it: there was attraction.

I should have been paying attention, with the head on my shoulders, but I wasn't. She felt too good pressed against me, her tongue running along my lower lip, her fingers digging into my scalp.

She had never been a slouch, I conceded. Leah was pretty, possibly even beautiful, beneath all that exterior hostility that made you think she was going to rip your eyes out and play marbles with them. She was tall for a girl - just an inch or so over six foot - with lean muscle everywhere. No wonder she was so fast. Her skin was a deep golden brown, smooth and virtually flawless. The swell of her chest and curve of her hips made her feminine, while the length of her hair - short by necessity - gave her a bit of an edge.

I'd never really taken the time to examine Leah's female qualities - never wanted to, for reasons ranging from the constant beating I would get from her to the fact that Bella was all that I wanted.

Bella.

And that would be the driving force that got me to push Leah off. I didn't want her; I wanted Bella. And she would just never be Bella. No one would.

"What the hell, Leah?!" I demanded, coming back to myself and putting some much needed distance between us.

I saw her eyes flash with something akin to hurt, but it was quickly replaced with the familiar sardonic look that usually accompanied a none too friendly insult.

"What?" She questioned, a smirk on her lips.

Swollen, soft, moist—

"Like you didn't enjoy it?"

There was a big part of me that was angry as hell with her right then. Was she trying to make my life more awkward and difficult? Was this some sort of game to her? Her newest brand of torture for the rest of us poor schmucks who just happen to have the unfortunate genetic trait that meant we could turn into wolves at will?

My eyes narrowed. "Leah..." I warned, but I could already tell she wasn't listening.

"I want you Jake."

And that probably floored me more than anything else that had just happened in the last few moments. I held up my hands suddenly in a "whoa, back up" motion, while doing just that myself: backing up. Away from Leah. Not that it was doing much good as she seemed to be following me.

"Hold on, no, Leah, wait, seriously."

She wasn't listening.

"Leah, stop." And I stopped moving back. And she stopped moving forward. We stood there together in the middle of the woods. She had just tried to kiss me - pretty successfully, if I was willing to admit it - and now she had this look in her eyes that was either 'I want to take you now on the forest floor' or 'I'm going to murder you then bury the body so deep they'll never find it'. I wasn't sure which I preferred at the moment.

"Why, Jake?" She demanded. "We're perfect for each other."

Perfect? Was she out of her mind?! The answer to that was becoming pretty damn obvious and it was none too comforting. "In what world are we perfect for each other?"

She frowned. "This one?"

Whatever this one is, I added silently. Shaking my head, I ran a hand through my short hair.

I missed long hair. Bella had liked my long hair. Did Leah miss hers, too? Had Sam liked her hair? Did that make her miss it more or less?

"Leah..."

She was just not interested in letting me say more than her name, was she?

"I want you Jake," she repeated huskily.

Frowning deeply, I shook my head once, firmly. "No," I told her. "You don't."

She looked about ready to rebuttal, but I wasn't interested in hearing it. "I'm not Sam," I told her bluntly. "I'm not Sam!"

Her eyes shone and shimmered - tears? anger? hatred? fear? embarrassment? who could tell at this point? - and she swallowed heavily.

"I'm not Sam," I repeated, because it seemed to be the only thing getting through to her. "And that's the only reason you want me: because I'm not, and because maybe I could be."

She wasn't looking at me anymore. Her eyes were downcast and her fists were tight, shaking at her sides. I couldn't tell if she was going to cry or just go wolf and attempt to rip me to shreds. Again, I wasn't sure which was preferred.

"And I'm not Bella, right?" She finally whispered hoarsely.

No, she wasn't Bella, my Bella. She wasn't so tiny that she disappeared in my arms, so pale that we looked like night and day, so timid and shy sometimes that she looked like a deer caught in the headlights. She wasn't everything I wanted that would never want me back.

And for a split second, I almost understood what Leah was trying to do. To get away from Sam, she would spend her time with me. To get away from Bella...

But the second was gone and I knew I could never do that. It didn't matter if Leah was or wasn't physically attractive. If I didn't mind running as a wolf with her. If she understood the sort of heart-ripping pain I was experiencing.

She wasn't Bella, she never would be, and that meant anything that happened with her was betrayal.

"That's why it's so perfect though," she continued, still not looking at me. "You and I... we get it. Sam doesn't love me-" her voice broke, though I could tell she tried to stop it. "-and Bella will never choose you. You'll never have to lie to me, never worry about hurting me. We fit." She ended in a whisper and I wonder whom she was trying to convince.

I didn't really know how to respond. What was I supposed to say to that?

"Would it really be so bad to be with me?"

Her question surprised me, and it must have showed in my expression, because she laughed humorlessly at me. Leah had a reputation as being... well, a bitch. There was little other way to describe her. She knew that, knew what we thought of her. It wasn't like we could really hide it from her, although I tried to keep my thoughts from focusing too specifically on anything about her.

So would it really be so bad to be with her? I was tempted to say "no, so long as you don't mind a summer or two in hell" but that seemed unnecessarily cruel at the moment. I'd save it for another day.

"I know... that somewhere deep, deep down inside of you, beneath all that vindictive bitch exterior that maybe there's a decent person in there." She was staring at me now, finally. I frowned at my words. "Maybe really deep down."

She laughed a bit.

"But it's there, and that's the point." I paused, taking a breath. "If we did... this," I gestured between us, the idea making my stomach do weird uncomfortable things. "It would destroy whatever's left of that decent person. And I dunno, I don't think the Pack can handle a full-blown Leah bitch." I grinned at her.

Folding her arms across her chest and setting her hip, she narrowed her eyes at me, supposedly in anger, but I could see the amusement hiding beneath the mask. And it made me realize something: I was right. Leah still did have something in her that wasn't hell-bent on making Sam's life - and ours by extension - miserable.

She flipped a hand through her hair. "You're right. You're not really my type anyway," she conceded, looking at her nails in boredom. "You're too much of a lovesick idiot."

I narrowed my eyes at her. Maybe I had thought too soon. "Yeah, and you're a crazy vindictive bitch," I countered, annoyed.

She merely shrugged her shoulders and together we began to head back, as though we hadn't just kissed in the woods, spilled our guts and admitted that in some weird, twisted, really messed up way that neither of us were particularly fond of, we had a connection.

At least we'd managed to agree it wasn't a romantic one. That was something.

"Leah?"

She hm'd in response.

"I think we should never speak of this," I told her straight out. "Ever."

For once, she didn't argue or give me some smart-ass comment. "Good idea. In fact," she added. "Lets not even think about it."

And I knew exactly what she meant by that.

I was not looking forward to having the pack in on this.

"Lets get the hell out of here," I told her suddenly. "La Push is making us all nuts."

She didn't argue when I started running in the opposite direction, and swiftly she followed behind.