Disclaimer: I don't own the guys and dolls of the Twilight series any more than I owned the brothers of Supernatural.As usual, I just bring them out to play. Oh, and par for the course – I also don't own the title, chapter headings, etc. They all belong to far more talented people.

I

It was a sunny, blue-skied day.

No, actually it wasn't – it was a dark and stormy night.

No, it wasn't that either – it was just a gray, middling day in Forks. There was a slight chance of rain, and an even slighter chance of sun.

Now, normally, very few of the Earth's inhabitants would relish such a day as this – humans being first and foremost to count themselves in this group. But humans weren't the only sentient things alive in Forks, Washington. There were also vampires.

(And the occasional werewolf, but that's another story…)

So, yes, the humans despised the dreary weather that made the small town of Forks rather infamous; but the vampires? The vampires, not so much.

And yet where were the vampires on this enjoyable day? Certainly not in Forks…no; of the seven members of the Cullen family (the current clan-in-residence), five had gone away for the afternoon. Plans had been made, checkbooks had been pulled out, credit cards gotten at the ready, convertibles gassed up, and then – whoosh. They were gone.

Well, all but two of them.

Alice had gone off with Rosalie. Something about the mall. Esme and Carlisle had left the night before, their destination being a medical conference the hospital had insisted on sending the eldest Cullen to. Emmett, well, sometimes one just wasn't sure where he went. But he did, and they never stopped him.

Left standing (stranded?) were Edward and Jasper.

That morning, the sun's light broke upon a day especially drizzly. And the brothers didn't have a single other soul (no pun intended) to share it with.

"What a great day this is going to be," Edward muttered as he rolled away from the window in his room, attempting, though he had no physical need, to sink deeper into sleep. The quicker he could shut his eyes and force his uncooperative body to shut down, the quicker time would slip away, and the more likely it would be that when he woke up again it would be tomorrow – and thus more likely that Bella would be available. (She currently wasn't: something about girl time and reconnecting to people who had pulses. Bleh.) Or, at the very least, when he woke up again it would be later in the day, less time for him to fill awake.

Three minutes and seventeen seconds later, his eyelids were no heavier, and their owner had begun to fear they weren't going to shut anytime soon.

"God," he spat, attempting in his curse to relieve some frustration, and propped himself up against his headboard, frustrated and dead-set against not getting out of bed unless he could help. Getting up would only indicate that he had some intention, some course of action. But on this most conducive of days to vampiric activities, Edward wanted to do just the opposite.

"Let's just...let's just entertain the idea that I had anything to do. I'm not saying I want to, I'm just saying this is getting me nowhere. And it's not exactly like I'm not without options. Really, I've got…umm. No, Bella is out. I already knew that. I could test drive one of those new cars of Emmett's. But he didn't leave a key…I could always hotwire it, haven't done that in awhile – and I don't want to go rusty. Maybe Jasper? But he's not really...I mean, without Alice he tends to hole up in their room like I've been trying to do in mine. Ugh. This is too frustrating."

Throughout his inner diatribe, it never occurred to Edward to wonder at just who he was speaking in his head; that wasn't the point to him. Boredom was the point. And it was being some sort of implacable bitch today.

"Edward?" a voice asked.

"Uh, yeah?" Edward called back.

"It's Jasper." Well duh. Though he should have been quicker to figure that out, it was his brother's voice after all. But it was so unlikely to hear him about like this…

"Could you come out here?"

"Yeah, just hang on one second…"

Edward, at once curious at Jasper's intention and curious as to whether he himself might be going a little crazy (seriously, Jasper asking him to – gasp, could it really be? – hang out? Puh-leaze), eased himself off the bed and walked to the door.

For all the perceived lack of activity available to him, Edward thought he could just about see the very air outside his door buzzing with energy. It only worked to further dampen his mood – if even the freaking air wasn't bored, then why the hell was he?

"You rang?" he asked Jasper, raising one eyebrow and injecting the perfect balance of sarcasm and curiosity into his statement; at this point he wasn't sure whether to lighten the mood or take it seriously, so he opted to do both.

"Yeah, umm, can I come in?" Jasper responded.

"Sure, not like I was doing much of anything, anyway."

"Tell me about it—"

"Wait. What?" Edward couldn't help himself: the idea that his older brother could have just been sitting in his room, bored out of his mind, was too much. Jasper was stoic; he made others' feel emotions. He didn't much feel them himself.

"Boredom? You know, that thing that happens to normal people – and normal vampires – who don't have anything to do? Am I ringing any bells?" Jasper's slightly exasperated question didn't exactly reach Edward's ears, so busy was he processing the idea that, well, Jasper was pretty much just like him. In one respect anyway.

"No, no, I know what it is. Just not that it…well, frankly Jasper, I didn't think you got bored." Edward finally answered back, after what seemed several minutes.

As soon as he said this though, he noticed something. The buzzing air had followed them in from the hallway. And then it clicked: it wasn't the air. It was Jasper. His brother was practically thrumming.

"Edward, let it just suffice to say that I do and I am. And when I say I am, I mean I am."

A beat, "Oh man, no – I get it now…so, umm, you got anything in mind to do?" he offered lamely to Jasper. Realizing they shared a problem, and then doing something about it, were two very different tasks.

In response, Edward got two things: a fresh thought from his big brother, and a fresh wave of exasperation.

"How often do I come knocking on my little brother's door for entertainment?"

"Point taken. Well, let me think here for a second…" He really wanted to help Jasper. Really, he did. But just because someone else now needed him to come up with an activity didn't suddenly make a plethora of them appear.

"Hunting! I got it: we'll go hunting! I mean, you haven't eaten in – what, three days?"

"Four," Jasper tersely replied (Apparently the thrumming from his body was making him cranky. Perhaps the boredom had a hand in that.) "But yeah, yeah that'd be great. It'd be something to do—"

"Which is even better," Edward finished, a smile breaking out for the first time since the day broke above them, empty and boring.

II

Deep in the woods, not much could get to them. And that included the specter of emptiness the brothers had been battling since the morning. No, here amidst the verdant trees and moss and grass and dirt and animals, there was only instinct and desire fulfilled – blood.

The creature – Jasper couldn't quite make it out yet – was quicker than he'd expected. But that was a good thing, now. Not normally, true, but then normally he was just looking for a minor bit of a hunt, and a major bit of spurting red substance – preferably spurting straight into his mouth. Now though he was looking for a bit of sport to go, a spot of entertainment on the run; his appetites this afternoon weren't physical – or at least not in the sense of hunger. He could have easily gone another day or even two without the necessary accompanying rape and plunder of the forest. He couldn't have gone, however, another single solitary second in that house like he was.

This is what he needed, and it made him really, really, grateful to Edward for thinking it up.

"I really should tell him that when we meet up in a bit; he'll probably even think it funny, you know, him helping me out like this." His lips curved up in mirth, exposing the very weapons his prey was running so speedily from.

Jasper hadn't worried about thinking so openly inside his own head – or rather, hadn't then directed his thoughts straight to his brother – because said vampire was at this moment otherwise occupied roughly, oh, two miles away, downstream. Jasper thought he could remember Edward saying something about a wolf pack moving in this winter that he wanted to check out before he darted off on his separate way. (Whatever his younger brother may have thought of his socializing skills, the irony of Edward investigating a wolf pack was not lost on Jasper.)

Fifteen minutes later the hunt was over, and Jasper thought he might be entitled to take a little breather. It was a silly habit, admittedly, but not one he easily gave up. Just because he didn't need to take a small break after a normally exhausting (normally exhausting for a human, anyway) hunt didn't mean he felt he shouldn't. Besides, to him the idea of a break wasn't exactly what anyone would call the norm. To Jasper "taking a breather" still involved running through to the woods at his vampire speed, still feeling out the forest critters. In fact, the only thing he forewent when he "took a break" was the actual act of hunting itself; not any other perks of his current race. Never those.

"I'll just circle back to Edward, see how things with the wolves went, maybe congratulate him on an afternoon well spent," Jasper thought as he grew closer to what he thought was Edward's location. Another few seconds and he began to call for him – albeit not verbally.

"Edward?" A pause, another pause, a beat or two, and still no outward return that he'd been heard. Jasper increased his speed by barely perceptible degrees. He called again: "Edward?"

Nothing – curiouser and curiouser.

Five minutes later, Jasper had arrived at what he thought was where his brother had been. In fact, he'd arrived there seven times, with steadily decreasing returns of optimism about his own ability to locate Edward.

"He's just one vampire. And he's fast, I'll give him that, but he told me where he'd be, and now I can't find him? Oh, oh just great. Come on Edward, where are you…"
As if in response to his internal utterance, the seemingly impermeable grey block above his head broke, for a fleeting second, and a shaft of light fell into his eyes. Jasper was blinded for just as long as the light remained – which is to say, not long as the clouds regained their briefly-lost territory. But once he had his sight back, suddenly it was like he had his ears too.

"Jasper?" a voice questioned from somewhere nearby.

He turned to look, around and around, but was met only with green and green and green. His eyes didn't fall on anything even vaguely pale or humanoid.

"Jasper?" again it called – and again he spun with greater urgency and force.

There. Behind a bank of trees, another bank alongside a small stream. That was where the voice was coming from.

Moving towards, and then through, the trees towards the body of water, he called back, "Edward?"

"Yeah?" His brother's answering tone was nowhere what Jasper had let himself believe it should be: fearful, frantic, a tad disturbed in some way. Accordingly, he felt quite foolish, and looking back he winced at what he already perceived to be, on his part, a rather – oh, how to say this? – silly tone.

"He's just fine. Fine. So you can stop freaking out now, Jasper," he chided himself.

"I can hear you, you know? And you're right, I am fine. Good to know you care though." Ok, so now his little brother's tone was really starting to bug him…

"You're bleeding." He couldn't help himself – it'd been a wild last few minutes, and emerging on the bank of a creek to find your younger brother is, in fact, hurt in some capacity was a huge validation. For Jasper at least.

And then the validation wore off, and a small part of his panic seeped back in. This time though, he contained himself.

"Yeah, it's nothing though, really. Just one of the wolves got a little…testy; I wasn't expecting it and then bam! Really," Edward stressed to Jasper as the latter moved forward to inspect the former's wounded appendage, "it's fine."

"Funny thing about that word fine…" Jasper muttered as he turned Edward's hand, and the cut placed firmly across it, this way and that.

"Is that sometimes it's accurate?" Edward filled in.

"Sometimes it isn't," his older brother corrected. "You might want to wash it, and then wrap it up…" Jasper trailed off once more, this time too absorbed in tearing off the bottom of his shirt. Once he had a sizeable bandage, and once he was certain his little brother had cleaned the cut sufficiently he brought the fabric around it.

So close as he was to Edward's blood, twin thoughts occurred to him: why was it that vampire blood didn't inflame him the way the blood of humans still did? And how on earth did a wolf cut a vampire?

And just as quickly as Jasper thought the questions, answers popped into his head – or one did, at least: maybe it wasn't vampire blood in general. Maybe it was just Edward's. Maybe it was just the blood of family.

As for the wolf thing? Well, there had to be some curiosities in life, Jasper thought, and besides: they'd had quite an active day already.

"You know, if I were still human, I'd be freaking out right now, screaming and crying and all 'Brother, I'm dying!'" Edward joked, looking up at Jasper – who was just finishing his makeshift bandage – and smiling.

It was odd to see Edward in such a joking mood, especially without Bella in some close proximity, but then again, it was an odd day,

"An odd day, but no longer boring," Jasper thought, and unleashed a wave of gratefulness and calm for both of them.

Smiling back at Edward he asked, "Want to go home now, Bear Grylls?"

"Sure," the younger vampire answered as he got up. And then he turned back to Jasper, who was still on his knees on the bank.

"Race you."


Author's Note: Well, that was Part One – or rather, the first one-shot. I've got the next few all planned out to add in the next week or two, so stayed tuned. And read and review!