Warning: Okay, this chapter contains non-explicit references to self-service. If masturbation offends you, don't read. Or just skip the scene, it comes up pretty late in this chapter and you'll be able to see it coming. I don't think it's graphic enough to change the rating, but I thought it would be polite to give a heads up. All right. Here we go. Because you can't climb back up until you've hit rock bottom...and it wouldn't be fair if I didn't spread around the misery...

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Part IV: Did the tension just turn sexual? Or I am just about to get fucked?

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Jacob wakes up and sits right up off his bed, unsure why he's not still dreaming. A quick glance shows his room is empty. There is no threat, but his heart is pounding and his senses are alert, even as his brain is demanding he go back to sleep.

A sound erupts in the darkness. A normal human probably wouldn't have heard anything, but Jacob's already at his window, gazing out. There's a full moon out, so he doesn't really need his super wolf eyes to make out Leah right outside. He opens the window. She is up in a flash and Jacob hopes there aren't any scratch marks on the side of the house. His father won't be happy about that. Leah is pulling herself inside his room, looking like hell. He hasn't seen her in a week and it's obvious she hasn't been taking very good care of herself.

"What happened?" he demands.

"I need your help."

He goes to lie back down, knowing this is going to be unpleasant, gesturing for her to say whatever she has to. Leah perches on the edge of the bed, staring down at him carefully. He wishes he had bothered to clean up a little more—Leah's seen too much of him already, she doesn't need to see his dirty laundry.

"Nothing's working."

He figured as much, what with her being completely nonexistent the past little while. People have seen her, but all they say is that she doesn't look well. She looks worse than that. She looks exhausted and lost and he feels guilty for not doing more.

"What have you tried?" he asks. Sam wouldn't tell him, only that it was private, and Leah never did bother filling him in on her plan.

"You're not going to like it."

"That's never stopped you from talking before."

Her face doesn't seem to want to stretch into a smile. It comes out as sort of a grimace and then she's lying down beside him. Ever since he became a heating blanket, Jacob hasn't used covers but for some reason he longs for a sheet to cover himself. This doesn't quite feel right. He should at least put on a shirt, but he doesn't want to see Leah rolling her eyes about his modesty issues either.

"Quil's memories were useless," she begins. "Except for the guilt, which did nothing, he didn't do much to try and get away from Claire. Sam was a bit better. Most of the time it was the same thing, the same sort of overwhelming obsession that we all seem to have going on. But sometimes...sometimes when he was kissing me he would forget about her...just a little bit." She forces out a few barks of laughter. "Not often, mind you. But sometimes. That's sort of what I based my current strategy on."

"Sam's married," Jacob says. The thought of Leah kissing Sam pisses him off—he doesn't like the idea of her ruining a marriage, no matter how much she hates imprinting.

"I didn't kiss Sam," she snaps. Then sighs. "Maybe I should have. It would have been easier."

"I don't get it."

"Right. I forgot you were a eunuch now. I went and had sex, Jake."

He wonders at his sudden need for violence, but knows it's not fair. Did she really have to be so close when she told him the damn news? The forced intimacy of the bed is making his skin itch. But he's trying to be a supportive friend, so he tries to ask casually: "With who?"

"Guys. At first, I just thought it just had to be sex so I went to that bar in Forks and just picked up some guy. I'm pretty sure his name was Mack or Mike or something like that. But when that didn't seem to work I tried some people I was friends with."

"Like who?"

Not that he's going to beat them into a pulp for taking advantage of her like that—Jacob just needs to know so he can threaten them a bit. Right before they mysteriously disappear.

"Ted," she supplies, naming one of Jacob's fellow mechanics. "And when that didn't work I thought I'd try someone I more than tolerated."

"Who?"

"I didn't actually do it. I almost did, but I didn't."

"Who?" he repeats.

"Embry."

"Embry doesn't even like you," Jacob sputters, suspecting that he may need to get a new best friend once he kills his old one. "I can't believe he'd go near you."

"I'm not that unattractive," she snaps, glaring at him. His night vision gives him a pretty good view of her and yeah, she looks like a freaking supermodel, but so what if Leah's attractive? Jacob understands extreme measures, but at the same time, there are lines he won't cross. They are far off in the distance usually, but they are there. Embry should have known better. "Besides, he's in a pretty bad place himself right now."

"Embry? Embry Call? What's wrong with him?"

"Sheesh, Jake, I know it's hard, but try and look away from evil spawn once in a while. Everyone's imprinting around him—even me—and he's starting to feel sort of left out. You and Quil are always off with your precious baby girls and he's...he's not.

"Oh." He wouldn't dare repeat his next words to Nessie. "I can't believe I haven't noticed. I guess that makes me a pretty shitty friend."

"Just a little bit obsessed with the half-breed." Leah shrugs then returns to her story. "So we bonded over feeling left out, I apologized for calling his mom a whore all those times and then I tried to...anyway we started to...but then he helped me realize something. Just kissing him was a hundred times better than anything I had done with Ted and Mitch."

"Why would that be?"

"I think it's because we were actually close friends. I was going about this the wrong way. It's not the physical action that's the important part, it's the how I feel about that person, how much I'm concentrating on that." She turns onto her side, to better watch him as she delivers her news. "Sam loved me and that helped him fight, even if it was just for a second. I think that's the key."

Her body heat is distracting him, but not enough. It feels like he just swallowed a bowling ball, his stomach is so heavy. She can't be saying what he thinks she is. She can't be here because—Leah wouldn't do that. She thinks of him as a kid, an annoying, frustrating kid. She has to.

She licks her lips and he watches because he's frozen in place. Her hand comes to rest of his arm, so she's half lying on him and he still refuses to believe this is happening. He wishes he did drugs so he could pretend this was just him tripping out. That someone spiked his food makes more sense than Leah thinking about him in the way she just implied.

"Jake," she whispers. "You can pretend I'm Nessie. Just..."

She doesn't completely her thought, just presses her lips to his.

"Leah," he says, trying to push her off. Sort of. All he succeeds in doing is forcing her to shift so she is now laying completely on top of him. Muscular legs twine in his, thighs pressed against thighs, and he can feel her breasts crushed against his chest—even for a werewolf they feel too hot against him. She's much too warm and soft for him to think straight. And since when did Leah get soft? "If it didn't work with Embry, why even bother trying with me?"

Her eyes are burning into his, her lips still way too close for him to dare exhale. There's a little smile on her face that looks sort of sad. "You don't know?"

He can only shake his head.

"You know how you always try and do the right thing Jake, even when you have to do about a hundred zillion wrong things to do it? Let this be one of those things." She laughs, her eyes becoming warmer. "It's funny, but that's something I've always loved about you. Even when I didn't like you. And now..."

His heart is pounding now and there's no way she can't feel that. She doesn't sound like Leah anymore—her voice is melodious and uninhibited—as she continues, "Embry's my friend. You're...you're not."

And then she's kissing him again, kissing him like he's never been kissed before. He's kissed his share of girls, chaste kisses on the beach and behind the school and there were heart stopping, mind-blowing kisses with Bella...but those were children's kisses. Leah is not a child, nowhere near close.

Her tongue is in his mouth, hot and wet and hard. She wants something from him but he knows he can't give it, no matter how good she feels on top of him or how soft her skin is when he runs his hand under her shirt, along the small of her back. She smells like the forest and that's what is making it impossible to think properly, not the way her mouth his searing his.

The adrenaline that he usually associates with a run begins to pump through him. She's murmuring things between kisses, words that scare him and make him wonder how he missed all this. Nessie, he assumes, and he hates that because Leah is his beta and Embry is his childhood friend and why is he missing all these important things for someone who isn't even pack?

The first rebellious thought he's had almost makes him sick. Nessie's more than a distraction and her hold on him is absolute. His breathing is ragged but he manages to get one hand on Leah's cheek so he can gently push her away.

"I can't," he tells her, voice breaking. It sounds three octaves above normal.

She pulls away instantly, not even bothering to demand why. Jacob wants to tell her that it's his fault, but she's already not looking at him, muttering an apology. His body stays rigid, except for the part that can't stiffen, as Leah talks.

"Fuck. I should have known better. Hell, even Rosalie said—"

"You went to Blondie? You really are desperate."

Jacob finds himself more miserable than before, if that's even possible. She had to turn to a vampire to get help? How the hell is he managing to screw up so badly?

"No. I went to my human friends and asked them how I should stop my mystical werewolf servitude. Who the fuck else was I supposed to go to, Jake? The only other option was Bella and—"

"You'd rather jab yourself in the eye with a penknife. Repeatedly. I know." Jacob thinks for a second. "Since when did you have friends?"

"I know it's hard to believe, but I do have a life outside of you and the rest of the wolves. Not that you know or care, but I do. I took me four fucking years to start again and I'm going to lose it all if I can't pull it together and get rid of Drake soon, but I had a life."

"I knew that."

"Sure you did."

He did. It is buried under layers of Nessie and Bella and vampires, somewhere beside his knowledge of Embry's feelings, but it is in there somewhere. "So what did Blondie say when you had your girl talk?"

Leah actually growls then, like that was the worst thing that's happened to them all night. "It wasn't like that. I'm not the leech lover here. I was merely walking along, talking to myself, trying to figure this all out, and she came out of nowhere and stuck in her unwelcome two cents. No girl talking involved."

"You'd rather admit to being crazy than liking Blondie? What a relief."

"She said that any plan that involved you was obviously a stupid one. I should have listened to her."

"Hang on—Rosalie Cullen, vapid, evil, bitchy, shallow, scariest-Aunt-on-the-planet-Rosalie was all right that your great unimprinting master plan was basically..." The words that had come so easily when it came to insulting Blondie dry up as he chokes again.

"Jump your bones?" He can feel her shrugging, they're still so damn close. "Yeah. It's because she can't stand you, Jake. At all. Ignoring the smell, which she obviously won't, she thinks you're a crude, unfunny bore, who might just have fleas—"

"I get it, Leah."

"Right. So since Nessie's the most important thing in the world to her, she's not okay with you hanging around. If I accidently managed to throw off your imprinting, she might have given me a damn Porsche."

If Leah had accidently thrown off his imprinting...the world would have ended. Jacob Black cannot be agreeing with Rosalie Cullen. He sighs and tells himself that it's best this way.

"Why did you do it, Leah?" he asks quietly. Because he knows enough about imprinting to know if she feels something for him its just a shadow. Throwing herself at the darkness and hoping it might swallow her up doesn't seem like a good idea to him. "You had to know I couldn't—I can't—I'm useless."

Her voice is tiny in the darkness, despite the solid wall of muscle beside him. "I'm just getting so fucking scared I'm not going to be able to beat this."

"You don't have to beat it." Sam's words ring in Jacob's head. She could use the imprinting, could be happy. If he's her other option, she should just accept it, because he can't be that for her. He can't even want to. "You could just accept—"

"Or not," she snaps. "You sound like Sam."

"Do not," he mumbles, but she's ignoring him.

"Sam thinks imprinting is Destiny. That the vampires had to come, so we had to become werewolves, so we had to imprint. That everything that's happening to us is predestined. So I was never supposed to have kids, you were always supposed to keep it in the family and we're all supposed to be slaves to a grand master plan."

Leah pretends to gag. "Since Destiny seems to fucking hate me, I don't really want to be helping her out. Why should I just accept the shit that gets thrown at me?"

"It might make you happy."

"That might be your destiny, Mr-usher-in-a-new-breed-of-mythological-creatures-that-are-near-perfect. You get Bella and this gorgeous creature just for you. You're the Alpha and you get to live with the love of your life for eternity, occasionally stopping to eject super powerful children into the world. Why wouldn't you like a destiny like that?"

"It's not like I had a choice in the matter."

Leah doesn't hear. That's good because he's not sure the bitterness he is thinking is making it into his voice.

"My future, on the other hand, blows. Spend my life watching the rest of you start families, while eventually the love of my life dies off leaving me with nothing. So I have all of the rest of eternity to be alone—you probably won't even be around, too busy with the sea monster. Would that make me Alpha?"

"The thought of power making fate a lot less horrific?"

"Maybe," she cracks a smile, but it stops quickly enough. "Damn. It would probably all go to Seth, anyway. Sexist wolves."

"Don't start planning his coronation just yet," Jacob mutters. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Eventually you will. Don't worry about it, Jake. I think we'll all be glad for a break in a few hundred years."

He's never really given his quasi-immortality much thought, preferring to live in the now. He's not sure that Leah's right, that he'll be able to leave La Push and his family and friends, even for Nessie. But why would Nessie want to stay? The Quileute are not her people. It's not even safe for her to stay— Leah says the Quileute women won't stand by and let Nessie turn their sons into freaks and Jacob knows she's right. It's better for everyone if she leaves sooner rather than later. And that means he has to leave too.

What will happen to him then? Jacob imagines wandering around the globe, on icy mountain tops and arid deserts, and none of his pictures come close to his memoires of the forest that surrounds his house. Even for Nessie Jacob has a hard time imagining leaving his home.

He doesn't doubt he will go eventually, even if he can't imagine it. The imprinting makes sure that he will go wherever Nessie does and he'll enjoy it. Even if it means abadonning the place and the people he loves.

"Even if your imprint does die it doesn't mean you'll be alone."

"Isn't that the whole point of imprinting?" Leah can't stop it with the sarcasm. "Soul mates? Drake's supposed to be the center of my world...and he's got what? Max, he's got eighty years? And then what? You know, I once talked to Sam about all this."

He can't picture that, Leah and Sam talking like this. Or maybe he can. He wonders if Sam was as strangely nervous as he is.

"About the imprints...?"

"Yeah. About us losing Emily. You know what he said? He said it was inescapable—and for the good of the pack. He takes comfort in thinking that, that everything is meant to work out for the best for us."

"If everything is preordained it better be for the best."

"I think...I think Sam thinks I'm letting you guys down. That it's my responsibility to accept what is going on, for everyone's sake."

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that her preface was a formality. Sam's worry is her worry. Jacob was told over and over that he should just leave Bella to her chosen fate—there's no way he can accept Leah suffering under a fate she doesn't even want.

"If we wanted you to just give in we wouldn't be helping you," Jacob snaps. "I would be asleep, Quil wouldn't have let you invade his mind, Embry would have kept his hands to himself—"

"You're not going to make that a big deal, are you kid? Because it won't be unless you do something stupid."

"When do I do something stupid? Don't answer that."

They banter back and forth until she falls asleep. That's his contribution to her journey; he'll let her rest. Hopefully, she won't look as terrible tomorrow morning.

Jacob waits until the clock on the wall reaches a reasonable hour before he slips off the bed and heads into the hallway. There's been something that's been worrying him since Leah accidently showed it to him and he needs to examine it further or he's going to go crazy.

The bathroom is small and he has to keep his head bent now that he's reached monster heights, but he's gotten used to it over the years. It takes him only seconds to drop his shorts to the bathroom floor, but it takes a good two minutes before the water in the shower turns hot. Not that it makes much of a difference. He climbs in while the water is still cold, one of the advantages of having a temperature well over a hundred degrees. Normally he wouldn't even have bothered with hot water, but he's trying to go back, before wolves and imprinting, and back then there was hot water.

It's been a long while since he even thought about doing this; longer still since he's wanted to. It's only because he's afraid that he simply can't that he's even bothering to try. Can't is a much different (and scarier and frustrating) proposition than won't.

His hand shakes a little as he brings it between his legs. As many jokes as he's made about imprints and monks, he's never actually thought celibacy would be his thing. So he takes hold of himself and closes his eyes and tries to remember how this used to go.

If Leah can do it, he should be able to. Of course, she hasn't imprinted on a child—her sex drive might not be in lockdown. But he's thinking positive here.

Jacob casts his mind back and recalls old magazines that he swore he was buying only for the cars. He remembers women with impossible busts and moist, red lips, leaning up against ridiculously beautiful cars. Clothes seem to be optional as they arch and bend and he tries imagining the hand on him is smaller and softer. Up and down, he moves, the water hitting him gently. It's easy to pretend there's someone warm in here with him.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

With a growl, Jacob realizes he needs a new plan. Random strangers aren't going to cut it. He might have to use someone more familiar, someone who's body he doesn't have to imagine pulled up against him.

I think I was in love with you before...

He really wishes he could stop hearing Leah's voice in his head. That's not really helping to get him off. It just makes him feel guilty. He doesn't want to be someone's Bella—he knows how much that hurts. And Leah's been through enough without him ruining her life further.

But...a declaration like hers is sort of like permission, he reasons. And if Embry can almost have the real thing, he might as well put his imagination to good use.

It's the smell that comes back first…she always did smell different from anything else. He smiles before he means to...

And then she's there, water dripping down rock hard muscles, catching in her dark lashes. Her lips curl into a feral smile, one that has him quaking a little in anticipation. It feels just like before, the way her lips fall on his, so soft and yet powerful enough that he thinks of a nuclear explosion. Fingers tangle in his hair and he wraps his arms around that slender waist and pulls her flush against him; a normal girl would have been crushed but she just tightens her hold on him. It's like a fight, a fight he knows he's going to win, and the best part is that she's going to win too. She doesn't yield and they stumble backwards, hands caressing bare skin, leaving a trail of fire in their wake.

She moans against his mouth and he pulls her closer still. A thigh slips between those sculpted legs and she's rubbing against him and he finally realizes just how hot werewolves can get. How can humans stand it? He growls in pleasure when her nails dig into his back and he can feel the blood pounding in his veins. Her hand replaces his and he closes his eyes in pleasure. She presses a kiss in the hallow of his throat and his blood screams. Smiling in victory, he glances downwards.

It's a good thing the real Leah is sound asleep in bed. She wouldn't be able to refrain from making a smartass comment. As it is, the Leah figment of his imagination is rolling her eyes.

"Go away," he snaps and because she isn't real, Leah does.

Jacob doesn't want to do this. Even worse than using Leah his sort of best friend, with her unspoken consent, is his other option. But it doesn't seem he has another choice. This is getting ridiculous. It used to only take him minutes and now the water's starting to get cold.

Summoning Bella to him is harder than bringing Leah there, the memories are so faded. But they used to work so well he has to try. In that dreamlike time when Cullen was gone and he had hoped Bella might one day be his, it had been impossible not to imagine her with him.

It takes a superhuman effort to summon her now, but that's okay because he is superhuman. She's as dainty and pale as ever, with a smattering of color on her cheeks. He keeps her eyes closed even as he puts her on her knees. He won't have Nessie's eyes on him. But as he imagines her warm mouth down there, nothing happens.

An arm slams out, smashing a hole through the shower wall. His dad is going to kill him—he doesn't care. He's never reacted well to being told he can't.

Leah's voice is back in his head, again, with a much more treacherous thought. You can pretend I'm Nessie...

No.

Jacob Black has done some questionable things in the past, things he isn't proud of even if he believed he had no other choice at the time. But there have always been limits, even if he never encountered them before. He won't go that far, no matter how desperate he is. Nessie barely looks fourteen and he won't picture her grown up. He won't.

Even though he hates how she's turned him into a damn eunuch!

Not that he's ever minded before. It's been almost five years and this is the first time he's noticed he has the sex drive of a inbred royalty. He wouldn't have minded giving everything up for Nessie, but having it taken away from him like this makes him want to put another hole in the wall.

Isn't castration illegal?

To save the bathroom and his meager savings from further damage, Jacob closes the shower and hurriedly towels off. Leah isn't in his bedroom when he gets back and he lets out a grateful breath. He's not sure he could look her in the eye just now. Getting dressed in peace is the best thing that's happened to him in days.

Clothed, he heads downstairs to prepare breakfast so in case Leah did scratch the side of his house, his father might be less inclined to kill him. Leah is already there.

She's standing over the stove, cursing down at something in a pan, occasionally stabbing it angrily with a fork. She must have heard him come in, because she looks up, annoyed, and demands, "You've never seen anyone cook ham before, Fido?"

"I didn't know you did domestic," he says, slipping beside her. He tries to grab the slice of ham out of the pan, but she stabs him with the fork. "Ow."

"Serves you right. If you must know, it makes my mom happy to see me doing stupid chores. So I do them. I don't enjoy them."

"That's why you volunteered to cook?"

She glances up at him, over her shoulder. Only Leah would need to be stabbing something before she dared looked vulnerable. "I'm groveling here."

"Nothing to grovel for."

"Yeah there is. Lots of stuff since I really am an uber-bitch. So this is for the nagging and the almost getting you killed and...maybe you could pretend that last night was some sort of strange dream you never had?"

"You didn't mean it?"

"I'm getting desperate here, kid. I'm saying a lot of things I don't mean."

Even if she hadn't been a vital part of his life the past few years, he still would have known she was lying. She's not doing a very good job, but he takes a step away from her willing to do whatever she needs him to during this hour of need. That's always been his M.O.

"Okay."

"Thanks, Jake." The pan hisses and she starts pulling the ham off. "Really, thanks for listening. You should have just kicked me out."

"I wouldn't do that. You're...like my right hand."

More than friend, more than sister. The two of them need to stick together—she thinks she's not a woman anymore and he knows he's not a man. It's only together that they make any sort of sense.

"Please. I live with a teenage boy. I don't want to be a right hand, thank you very much."

If Jacob could ever chose a moment to just keel over dead, now would be it. He's bright red but their backs are to each other. Trying not to choke on his own spit, Jacob manages:

"Maybe you could be my right paw instead."

"That's incredibly lame," Leah laughs. Thank goodness they can't read each other's minds just then. "But okay. I can be the claws. Quil and Embry could be your back flanks, raw power that makes you end up in stupid directions. What about Seth?"

"Seth's the tail."

"Always wagging his stupid mouth?"

"And for balance," he says. Seth is probably the most valuable member of the pack, before Leah and Embry and Quil and even before Jacob the Alpha. Seth and his enthusiasm means there's a part of Jacob that still exists, that won't ever die, no matter how many broken hearts and mystical creatures there are in his future.

"I think I burnt this," Leah mutters.

"Is that possible?"

Their examination is interrupted by the entrance of Billy. There's a little bit of surprise on his face, so Jacob tries to intervene before his father can draw a conclusion that ends up with him kicked out of the house.

"Hey dad. Remember I told you Leah needed your help? She's came over this morning to try and bribe you."

"I can make eggs, too," Leah offers.

"Really?"

"Sort of," she shrugs. Jacob laughs behind her and grabs the orange juice.

"There's apples in the fridge," Billy offers. He wheels himself over to the table, still watching the two of them suspiciously. Leah doesn't seem to notice, or is ignoring Billy easily, as she hovers over the stove, trying to pull the ham off quickly. "I have been thinking about it," Billy says.

Jacob grabs glasses and plates and puts them on the table as Leah hurries to sit down, dragging the food with her like it's an afterthought. With practiced ease, he removes it from her grasp and immediately begins scarffing it down. Not that they'll ever admit it to one another, but Leah's a fairly decent cook. Not that he's the most discriminate judge.

"And?" Leah asks eagerly.

"There's nothing explicit on how to reverse it," Billy begins. Leah's face falls, but she distracts herself by trying to snatch the food back from him. He lets her grab a few slices, partially because he feels sorry for her and partially because she's still holding the knife. "However, there's something I have thought of."

"Yeah?"

"Have you ever heard of a spirit quest?"

"Not...maybe my dad mentioned it once or twice. I didn't really pay attention. Could it help?"

"It's the only thing I've thought of."

And Leah Clearwater—Leah who rolled her eyes at her father's stories, who teased Sam about his obsession with the past, who scoffed at tradition—Leah says eagerly, "Okay. So how do I try this?"

It's a strange and not natural, but Jacob's used to unnatural. With a sigh, he hopes that Leah manages to beat her destiny without throwing his life permanently out of whack and orders himself to stop hoping she does exactly that.

...

Author's Note: Points if you picked up on who the first guy Leah slept with was. And despite what Jacob thinks, to quote Juno, "You know it wasn't his idea..."