Bella's not in her right frame of mind and Jasper's not exactly winning any Rorschach tests these days, either. In a way, they are well suited to this sort of perverse parody of intimacy.
Jasper's always appreciated the more tangible aspects of beauty, finding them in women's faces, in their hands and smiles rather than in the dusty, earmarked pages of poetry books. It's not that he doesn't appreciate a pretty turn of phrase - he's Southern, after all, which practically makes it a prerequisite to knowing at least one Tennyson work - but if he's honest with himself such pursuits have always struck him as a little pretentious. It's why he left a comfortable career as an idle plantation's son to enter the War. He wanted to do something. Maybe even, God forbid, important.
And he did. Not on the fields, granted, but when Providence answers it's not expedient to question the form it comes in. Back then, that answer came in the form of a woman. Or that's what he thought she was. At the time.
For all her clumsiness Bella is a girl of small details. She will never be as aggressively sensual as the Amazonian Rosalie, or have Alice's French-like flare for style and an ability to always be charming. Bella is, frankly, a mess.
Jasper's not terribly surprised to find her in this situation, it's just that he'd rather imagined himself as one of the sideline observers than a participant. Good thing she doesn't seem to care much for his company, anyway, or this might be awkward. Good thing.
Jasper scrubs a hand over his mouth. "Bella," he says.
As a response, Bella hums and makes another snakelike undulation against his body. Deceptively pliant, her fingers curl into skeletal white claws around his biceps. If he were human he'd have marks.
Trying for focus, Jasper reaches out for Bella with his thoughts. If he can find any coherency, then he'll have a guide. To his disappointment, though not to his surprise, what he finds is, dominantly, hunger. It's a familiar sensation, not a feeling, more concrete than, say, sadness. It's based on the body. Bodies get hungry, they require matter for energy, they long; instinctive, it's the mind and all its mazelike circuitry that interferes with these very simple messages.
Bella is operating on a much simpler level. Want, so close she can taste it, feel it, almost the completion her body and the spell demands. Jasper is not wanted for his own self, and probably any one would do at this point. He's not offended. This is something he can understand, and really it makes it easier. What Bella needs he has. Infectious, Jasper cues into Bella's experiences and allows them to filter a little into his own. The assault of such simple, clear-cut demands makes it possible for Jasper to do what he must.
It was like that in the War, too. Both Wars. Men are buoyed up by other men, their strengths and doubts shared as though, in such extreme circumstances, a thread were created and on that thread a series of necessary emotions. Anger and fear, of course, but also - and this one Jasper never understood - lust. Some were satisfied with blood, others needed something else.
Struggling to find his own thoughts amongst the assailment of Bella's, he is relieved to find that he doesn't really want to hurt her more than he has to. His body responds, but whether that's influenced by Bella or his own less-than-noble desires, he can't tell. Glad that he can't tell, it will be easier to lie later.
Jasper tries again. "Bella."
He flicks hair off her face and is met with hot brown eyes. For a heart-flipping moment she almost seems to register him, and what Jasper sees in her face is nothing short of terror. For what's happening to her, the not knowing, how confused she must be; but she's also scared for him - scared because of him - above her and so close.
Then the spell reasserts itself and her gaze turns unfocused and glassy. She plucks restlessly at the buttons of his shirt before thrusting her hand through an opening and popping one loose. Her hand is aggressively exploratory and she presses and pinches at his skin, trying to get him closer.
He pulls the hand out from under his shirt and places it around his neck, encouraging her to do the same with the other. "This is what you want, isn't it?" he says. "Touch."
"Yes," Bella says, sounding grateful to be understood. How frustrated she must have been once the curse took hold, unable to articulate what she wanted, unable to just take it. She squeezes her legs tighter around his waist, almost in thanks.
Jasper analyzes his next move. It's been awhile since he's had to practice the art of objectivity. To do this, to actually do it, and achieve anything approximating a survivable outcome requires somebody to keep their head about them. Right now it seems a little unfair to expect that from Bella.
Stalling for time, Jasper absently makes shushing noises and runs his hands along Bella's sides. Relatively innocuous touches, and he knows they'll only satisfy for so long, but it quiets Bella for enough time to let him think.
This requires a level of control he's never really had. Only the notion that failure isn't an acceptable outcome - and that is familiar territory for him - keeps him from just walking out of the room.
In a detached curiosity, he watches his own hand travel back up to Bella's face, watches her turn into it, her eyes slitting closed in what deceptively looks like bliss.
Jasper knows how to make someone feel good. Again, it's not vanity that gives him confidence in his abilities, merely straightforward facts. It's a gift anybody could have, if they chose to exercise it - the gift of paying attention. He listens and watches to what his partner wants, what they like and what's better left for another night, for someone else. Everybody's different.
It's a paradox of his vampiric gifts that, granted unprecedented access to another creature's emotions, he inevitably winds up ignoring his own. So, while he's been told he's good at it, and seen the evidence of such praise for himself, he's never felt like a genuine participant in the act. He approaches any overture of intimacy with a combination of reflexive alarm at a potential threat allowed in the kill zone, suspicion of their motives, and analytical interest.
He has been told repeatedly by countless different people both human and not that his skills require little critique, but that he's a little cold, a little dull. No passion. To this he has no response other than polite agreement and a promise to do better. A virgin when he was turned, Maria taught him many things, but how to feel without the crutch of another body beside him was not one of them. What use was that?
Bella's just a girl, though. Jasper has thankfully not reached a point of such decrepit paranoia that he flinches in the face of someone who probably still has a Backstreet Boys poster tacked to her wall.
Although, it bears remembrance that Jasper carries more than a few scars from just such fresh-faced dolls as this. With vampires, size is no determination of strength or ability.
All this runs through Jasper's mind with enough time for him to come to and accept two conclusions. One, Bella will die, and soon. Two, he's just stupid enough to not let that happen.
Keeping his voice calm and soft, Jasper says, "Listen to me, Bella. Focus on my voice. I need you to do that. Do you think you can?" As he speaks he lowers his face so that his mouth is almost brushing her ear. She shivers and her chest rises up in an unreleased breath.
Nodding so vigorously she almost head-butts him, Jasper draws away to look at her. To say this is any form of consent would be a gross bastardization of what it means to make a choice, but it's good enough for Jasper.
"Good," he says. "I'm gonna help you out, make all the bad feelings go away."
Bella's eyes snap open like she's been slapped awake. "It hurts," she rattles out, paler now and shaking. "Oh God it hurts! Why -"
"I know," Jasper says. "We're gonna take care of that, and then you'll feel just like you again."
Lies, every word. He doesn't even know if it's himself he's trying to reassure or her. From his mind he takes an image - Alice, not standing behind him wide-eyed and stricken, smelling almost as heavily of fear as Bella, but Alice in a summer dress and sunbonnet, one hand on the brim to keep it in place as the wind tries to sweep it away. She is laughing at him, he doesn't remember what he said but it was probably something he didn't mean to be as funny as she's finding it. This image gives him an illusion of warmth, and from that enough clarity of thought to soothe Bella.
There are not many of these memories, and like a miser he keeps them close, never sharing. But 'desperate times' and all that trite. He lost the right to his own secrets a long time ago.
Jasper lets her draw him back down. His lips contact with her skin and he closes his eyes. Behind him, Alice slowly retreats, the door closing discreetly behind her to mark her absence. He half-wishes she would stay. Just to have somebody in proximity who is not entirely repulsed by him has been a nice change of pace these last few years. But if he wants to keep it that way, it's probably better if she stays away.
"Just us now," Jasper says. "You don't got to hold back."
With that license, Bella grips a fistful of his hair and redirects his mouth to hers. He's doing her more damage than she is him, but it's not for lack of trying. Her unskilled mouth presses against his, seeking admittance, teeth biting into his lower lip.
Palm flat against her cheek, he gently redirects her to a more moderate force. She's going to come out of this damaged enough, he'd like it if she doesn't look like she caught the bad end of a sledgehammer.
Despite his efforts to remain in the dubious safety of logic, it's hard not to be at least a little affected by her enthusiasm. If he couldn't feel her confusion and pain he might have even believed she actually wanted it. Which, of course, is part of the nature of the curse. It is a joke, a bad joke, and whoever did it isn't terribly bright.
For a few minutes she struggles along, trying to get him to match her pace tooth for tooth, but when Jasper proves resolute, she allows him to take over. "There now," he soothes, kissing the corner of her mouth. "No sense in making it worse than it has to be."
"Hmph!" Bella says. Somehow he suspects that would be her response were she fully in possession of her faculties, too.
He strokes her belly and the delineation of her ribs. He kisses her mouth, her throat, and if he lingers overlong on her pulse point, well, no one's going to accuse him of it tomorrow. All the while he infuses Bella with as many good feelings as he can, as he many as he has. It's not enough, but it takes the edge off.
Slipping down so that his knees rest on the floor, he hooks his hands around Bella's knees and pulls her towards him.
"What -" Lulled by Jasper's ministrations, Bella snaps back to attention, lurching up in cartoon fashion, eyes wide. Despite the circumstances, Jasper can't not find it endearingly comical. Not much in the way of experience, then, if she can't figure out what he means in this position.
"What are you doing?" Bella pushes the curtain of hair off her flushed face and looks down at him, blinking owlishly.
With one hand Jasper pushes her back onto the bed. "What I said I'd do," he says, kissing her stomach. He runs his hands down her thighs, up and down, up and down, until his touch brings drowsy compliancy to Bella again. Unfair, but then Jasper's never scrupled to take advantage when it's presented to him. How else do you become the right hand to the victor of the Vampire Wars? Or do anything else, for that matter. No partnership is ever truly equal.
Bella writhes under his hands. Jasper watches her closely for any sign of discomfort or shyness. She would be shy, if he were dealing with a Bella operating under her own mind. If this were another time, if he were someone else, most of the work would be in getting her to open enough to actually enjoy what was being done to her.
But then perhaps not. She has surprised him enough times - no easy feat with more than two civil wars and 160 years under his belt - for him to have sufficient respect for her ability to keep men guessing. There's a talent in that, though with Bella it's mostly artless.
This is not the 'real' Bella, of that he's sure, for the simple reason that she'd never be caught dead in his bed, promise of an afterlife on earth or no.
As Jasper tastes her for the first time she falls stone quiet, ramrod still, reminding Jasper of a rabbit when the shadow of a hawk flies over. Given the amount of urgency she's been telegraphing with her body for the last half hour, it's an unexpected about-face. But it's too late now.
Jasper kisses the inside of her thigh and breathes her in. She's delicious, as the last feast is to a condemned man, and the knowledge that she is literally seconds away from death makes for a disturbing attraction. Jasper might walk and talk like a man but he isn't one. All the tiresome charades, the self-edifying rituals he goes through each day to employ a convincing act - that of Jasper Whitlock-Hale-whatever-they-want-to-call-him-this-year - seems to fall away in the light of something so basic and necessary as Bella's life.
It's just the two of them. And a very thin line.