The heat clung to the three vampires like a silken shroud, rolling across the water and onto their faces. The air was alive with static energy– Emmett cracked his knuckles, but it may have been the sound of a strike of lightning upon a dead tree. Jasper hung back, watching warily as Edward stepped out from beneath the low-hanging branches, their leaves brushing his face like a lover's caress.
Though he'd been with the Cullens for two years– long enough to understand why they called themselves a family rather than coven, and long enough to find room in his heart beside Alice for his new siblings and parents– there were times when Jasper still felt misplaced, out of a loop that was already complete long before he and Alice stumbled across it. Or long before he'd stumbled across it– Alice seemed to fit in perfectly, her vibrant personality ensnaring them just as easily as it had him. She and Edward got along particularly well, working on a wavelength where no one else was quite able to reach them.
Jarred roughly from his thoughts, Jasper snapped his neck quickly to the side. Emmett had clapped one massive hand across his back and was grinning obnoxiously. (Or moronically, Jasper thought with a wry smile, and somewhere ahead, Edward laughed.)
"It's a spring," Edward said out while Jasper and Emmett stared unconcernedly at each other, no words stretching between them, only the knowledge that whatever was to be said was probably quite pointless.
"For swimming?" Emmett asked, his attention turned away from whatever horrible joke he was just about to make. Together, he and Jasper followed their brother's steps out of the trees to get a better view of the water before them, a grassy ring in the middle of the forest leading into a deep pool.
The three of them made a cutting image there– the dry grass as it stood limp and coarse, the milky, calm water, and themselves, more beautiful than the stars and sparkling just as brightly– all of these trembling in the immense heat, seen from a distance like ghosts at an African water hole.
Jasper inched closer, peering uneasily into the water, and he saw that Emmett did the same. He felt, rather than simply knew, that Emmett hesitated for just the same reason as he. It was true that he had been welcomed into the Cullen family as a brother, and it was true as well that he was beginning to sense that a bond as brothers in more than just name was developing.
But Jasper couldn't say with certainty that he was prepared to get naked in front of Emmett and Edward. He doubted that before he had come the other two had been going on merry jaunts in the nude as well. How often did you come across a spring in the middle of the forest, and how many times among this would you immediately think to whip off your clothes, especially with someone like Emmett around? Jasper could imagine the crude comments then, but felt immediately guilty as he did.
Jasper had come to be very fond of Emmett, but it was still sometimes hard to forget that beneath his usual rude behavior, Emmett understood the general principle of decency.
As he stared at his surly reflection, and Emmett's next to it, he heard a splash and many tiny ripples disturbed the image the way the heat did to the real things.
Both Emmett and Jasper looked to the bank a few feet away, astonished to see Edward's clothes lying there rumpled and discarded. They turned to each other with open mouths, and in that instant, it was not just in his own body that Jasper felt pride and competitiveness rise.
Neither could believe (hurriedly throwing off their clothes, fumbling awkwardly with buttons as well as shame) that Edward, Edward, the king of all asexual, prudish, uptight seventeen year old boys everywhere had just taken his clothes off before they. But it was so: Edward got naked first, and Jasper and Emmett were left to look like blushing school boys afraid to change before gym class.
Edward surfaced as Jasper was pulling his t-shirt over his head, quipping, "It's warm!" and dog paddling (faster than any dog or man) to the other side of the spring. Emmett hopped in next, followed quickly by the blond, and soon the three of them had forgotten any sense of unease or embarrassment. Spending time together as brothers had suddenly become the most comfortable thing in the world– but things never stayed that way for long when Emmett was around.
Edward had only stood up for a moment, in one of the shallower parts of the pool, when Emmett happened to turn and see it.
"Holy shit!" he all but screamed, for "it" was a massive jumble of scars, silver and shiny like hard plastic, upon Edward's already marble skin.
"Your inner thigh looks like Jasper's face," Emmett exclaimed, and Jasper scowled self-consciously, always too aware of his scars.
God forbid, Jasper thought, that Emmett might have said that to someone else. Before that day, he marked Edward as an uptight guy, but it was then that he saw a brighter side, a sharper but not cutting side, to his brother.
Edward raised a single eyebrow, only saying cooly, "My inner thigh? That's quite the place to be looking, Emmett."
Jasper laughed, scrambling out of the pool and clawing at his jeans, pulling them on as Edward also got dressed. Emmett opened his mouth mindlessly a few times, a fish who somehow found himself in water just a little too deep for him.
"I wasn't– I mean I just turned around and happened to see. Oh come, on!"
Emmett glanced furiously from Edward to Jasper, an appalled expression on his face.
"You don't actually think I was checking Edward out!"
Jasper shrugged, looking away only for the reason of hiding his smile, and he saw Edward making a similar move.
"Really! You two are so ridiculous!"
Emmett's screech followed Jasper into the forest and across the rough ground, his bare feet meeting the twigs and grass as Edward's subdued laughter met his ears.
"You're both crazy!" Emmett shouted after them, and caught up in the arid heat, the shining sun, and the infectious joy of the world around him, Jasper didn't remember until later, catching sight of his reflection in a polished window, the harsh pain of getting his silver marks, the burning, the brief moment of defenselessness, and wondered how in hell someone had gotten close enough to Edward– to his legs, no less– to give him those scars.
