Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight, or any of the associated characters. All credit goes to Stephanie Meyer.
Summary: Jared's imprint might have had the least drama, but that didn't mean it was easy.
KIM
When Jared Imprinted on Kim, he had been asking for to borrow a pencil while they were waiting for the teacher to show up for class. He looked at her, and saw her for the first time. Asking for a pencil had turned into asking her out for ice-cream, which had been greeted with what Jared considered far too much confusion.
To him, Kim was the most beautiful person in the world, even if he had taken forever to look twice to notice it. Kim wasn't the classic Indian beauty like Emily was, but she was still lovely in her own way, and yes, Jared did realize how sad it sounded when he made up the whole new 'Look-Twice' category for kinds of beauty.
Luckily, the teacher was known to be late a lot, so they managed to skip out for him to explain. Not so luckily, Kim was not taking his stumbling explanation very well. "So, if you hadn't imprinted, you probably would have continued not noticing me?"
If Jared hadn't been busy trying to orient himself after gravity shifted with the Imprint, he might have noticed the strong hint of frozen steel in Kim's voice. Then again, boys can be dense. "I don't know. I probably would have noticed you eventually, but – "
He finally caught on to the fact that his Imprint looked nowhere near as happy as he did. In fact, she looked downright pissed. "Um, is something wrong?"
Kim was a quiet girl, and Jared a Spirit-Wolf born to fight and protect the Tribe, but right now, she was actually a bit terrifying. "What could be wrong? The boy I had a crush on for years just admitted that if it hadn't for some mystical power forcing him to fall in love, he would have continued right on not noticing that I exist! I want to be with someone who loves me, not someone who is with me because they don't have a choice!"
When you put it like that, it did sound pretty bad. "Wait, Kim, it's not like that, I swear! Look, I don't know all the details of how or why it happened, but – "
They were passing the gym, and Kim had just reached for a cricket bat. Jared wasn't quite oblivious enough to miss the unspoken message, and backed out of range. Kim sighed. "Look, I need time to think about this. I'll talk to you at lunch tomorrow."
She left, and Jared slumped into a seated position. That could have gone a lot better. On the other hand, it also could have gone a lot worse. At least Kim didn't hate him for breaking her cousin's heart in the process.
Unfortunately, Sam agreed with the last point, and told Jared to stop moaning about it. Emily was slightly more sympathetic, but only told Jared to give Kim time, and find out all he could about imprinting and about being a Spirit Wolf.
Sam agreed with that, too. If he and Emily had known about anger being the trigger to accidental phasing, they both would have known to keep a distance in the argument that had resulted in Emily's scarring.
Kim had calmed down a little when Jared kicked the rest of the Pack from their usual table and gave her one of Emily's muffins as a peace-offering. "So, explain everything you know."
She had calmed a little, but not entirely. Having spent most of the previous night at Jacob's house, grilling Chief Black about everything he knew. "OK, so, it's a genetic thing, which activated whenever the tribe is in real danger from something we can't fight. Imprinting is supposed to be really rare, though, so there isn't much known about it. I asked the elders last night, and they told me what they could, and Chief Black is going to be re-telling the legends for the pack next weekend. Can you wait until then? I'm really not good at explaining things."
Kim nodded. "You proved that yesterday. Fine, I'll wait, and you can take me out for ice-cream, but if this turns out to be some kind of joke, I will tear your balls off and feed them to you! Is there anything else I should know before then?"
Was there anything else that he knew that wouldn't freak her out? Was there anything about being a Spirit Wolf that she might find cool? Oh! "Um, when we're in wolf form we share a sort of pack mind. It lets us read each other's thoughts, which is really useful for when we're patrolling."
Jared's heart soared when Kim's eyes grew wide, then plummeted when they narrowed again. "You read all of each other's thoughts? No privacy what-so-ever?"
Fine, so there were downsides, but it wasn't all bad. "We're working on that, but it's mostly a good thing."
Kim didn't comment on that. "Fine. But until you find a way of blocking the thoughts that you want to keep private, you aren't getting past first base."
Jared didn't get the connection at first, so Kim was nice enough to elaborate. "You might get to see the colour of my underwear one day, but the rest of your pack doesn't. Them seeing your thoughts would be worse than if you spilled on purpose, because you wouldn't have been able to control it, and the intimate details of whatever relationship we have would still be spread all over half the school."
Oh. That would be kind of humiliating for a girl who was already notoriously shy. Hopefully the Bonfire Party would give some answers, or he could just ask Sam about the best ways of not thinking about your Imprint while on patrol.
He would probably lose his Guy Card for saying it, but he could handle not going past kissing until he learned to control his thoughts.
Wait, that sounded way too much like the Jedi Master from Star Wars.
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A/N: Imprinting might sound nice, and I prefer to think of it as Nature giving a bunch of adolescent boys (who do tend to be a bit dense about these things – most of my best friends at that age were male) a metaphorical slap up the head/kick in the arse to help them along. However, Stephanie Meyer and most fanwriters seem to have missed the host of issues that would have resulted from the various scenarios. She told us about the problem with Sam and Emily, but left out everything else.
Anyway, you are all free to disagree with that. Good or bad, please let me know what you think.
Thanks, Nat