A/N: Venis Envy said this morning on twitter that today needed to be a Bourbon and Tea day. Well, my love, here's the chapter, I hope you enjoy. :-)

Riri, my love, beta'd. *foozles* I made her spit out her coke at one point. I hope you didn't get your laptop sticky. *hands over a wet-one.* Hehe.


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"That's silly, Jasper. I'm fine," Bella pleaded, forever being selfless. Her stomach, however, had other plans, and growled, giving her away. I smiled. What a cute little belly.

Making sure to keep my eyes as puppy-like as possible, I asked if I could please cook for her and she relented, blinking at me with surprise.

I was out the door before she could react, running down the steps of her back porch and across the lawn to my house within seconds. I might have been a tad too eager to do this whole morning-after-breakfast cliché, but it couldn't be a cliché if the circumstances didn't really allow the title of "morning after" to actually be a legitimate morning after. Right?

I ran my hand through my hair, wondering if my last stream of thought even made a lick of sense. After mulling it over for another full second, I decided it didn't. All I knew was that Bella let me hold her, comfort her. She melted into my body on the porch and I did my damned best to reassurance her like I so desperately wanted to. She'd accepted me, and something had shifted in our relationship on that porch. That something, whatever it was, was causing this instinct inside of me that told me to feed her, care for her, love her if she'd let me.

I paused at the screen door of my own back porch, surprised by my sudden vehemence. I was walking on some dangerous territory with thoughts like those, but I shook it off. Even if my brain was throwing it out there without my say so, it didn't mean I was ready for it.

Too heavy. Don't think about the heavy, focus on the food.

Yes, food I could do. Food I could give to her. She could accept a meal. A meal was neighborly, and I was a neighbor. This all worked. Yes.

I nodded, satisfied with my own inner ramblings and opened the door, walked into the kitchen, and started rummaging through the cabinets. When I found the Bisquick, I might have slammed the door shut in a fit of joy, and I might have jumped a bit, but all semblance of triumph faded when an unpleasant moan filled the air.

Freezing on the spot, I put the box of pancake mix on the counter and turned to look out at my living room, which seemed a bit worse for wear compared to when I'd seen it last. Odd.

I realized the next second that contemplating the shambled state of the living room didn't matter when I spotted a blonde-haired, passed-out woman in the midst of the carnage.

Apparently, Rose hadn't left.

Well, fuck.

I moved closer, my eyes darting around the room as I went. It felt like a trap, but it wasn't as if the woman in front of me was going to be getting up anytime soon.

Seeing Rose like that, wasted and wrecked on my fucking futon did nothing but remind me of how pathetic I once had been. How close I'd been to waking up slumped against her in the same position. How, if it weren't for the girl who'd I just left next door, this would be my life. My sick and twisted and depraved almost life, wrapped around the long-legged devil on my futon.

How had I even been stupid enough to get involved with this tragic girl in desperate need of a z-pack of antibiotics and a 28 day stint in rehab? (She also probably needed someone to hug her and tell her she was worth more than all the shit she put her body through, but there was no way I was getting close enough to let her sink her talons into me again.)

The answer to that question was obvious. I could see it lying on the lawn just outside the front screen door—that bottle shining at me, slick in the rain; the white No.7 standing out in stark contrast to the black label. Whiskey. Plain and simple. I didn't indulge in anything worse or anything less for the most part, but it didn't matter. My Achilles heel had always been whiskey. Bourbon to be exact—Woodford Reserve was a favorite when I could afford it.

It had helped me cope, made me strong, and let me forget. The killing off of my brain's long-term memory was my ultimate goal for whenever I drank, yet, in an ironic twist of fate that occurred while staring at a dazed Rose on my futon, my memories were exactly the things that came blasting back into my frontal lobe. Assaulting me with color, sensation, taste and smell. Not destroyed, not forgotten, just shattered.

They ricocheted around my brain, bits and pieces of flashbacks to a time that seemed so far away, yet could be measured out by a separation of now and then with only mere months between them. Polaroids of images that made me cringe and still evoked a sense of nostalgia for the freedom I'd had. The total uninhibited sense of drunken clarity that only comes with a good and solid three quarters of a bottle of Jack in your stomach. That feeling is what I remembered most, and the night I'd met this damned girl on my sofa was a prime example of that clarity.

I had literally become comfortably numb...

. . .

Standing up on the small stage with the smoke stinging my eyes and the lights beating on my back, I gulped down the nerves in my gut with another swig of bourbon. The guitar was heavy in my hands and the crowd pressed in towards the platform on which I stood, waiting for what I could offer them. My fingers were slippery on the frets, my pick falling out of my hands as I played, but I recovered, and the audience loved it. Devoured it. The music pumped through me into the inebriated rats in front of me, forming a connection of rhythm and sway.

At first, I knew they were ready to destroy me if I slipped up even the slightest bit. My mistake with the pick did not go unnoticed in the slightest. They were a crowd hungry for entertainment to fuel their collective buzz, and I had been chosen as the sacrificial lamb to be led to the slaughter. After the first few strums of my guitar I could sense their acquiescence, that soon gave way to acceptance. Joy. The drunken fools loved me by the end of the first song, and I laughed out into the smoke infused light at how easy it had been to win them over. How simple it was to twist their minds into loving me, wanting me.

I played for what seemed like hours, sweat soaking my shirt, and my throat becoming raw from slinging the blues. I felt free, solitary in a world of my own making, being given reassurance by an audience I alone conducted. It was only when my knees gave out, my ass hitting the stool behind me hard as I reluctantly sat down, did I realize that my body was telling me to take a fucking break already.

Rasping into the mic about calling it quits for a few to get another drink and take a squirt, I slumped down off stage, my legs feeling like jello beneath me. I remembered sliding down against the cement wall in the back hallway, pressing hard into the cool stone. It had been painted red, the color of sin, and my eyes strained to focus on the signs of the doors above me.

Ladies.

Gents.

I reached out a hand towards the door handle of the men's room, despite it being 20 feet down the hall, wishing I could somehow Jedi-mind-trick that shit to come closer. It didn't. The image of the men's room was soon replaced by a pair of long legs that stood shoulder width apart in front of my field of vision. They were bare, tan, and stained red from the light reflecting off the walls. The devil had come to take me to hell, and apparently, he'd come in the form of a blonde femme in red heels.

The devil called me cowboy as she plucked the hat from my head and placed it on her own, pulling the rim down, throwing shadows across her face. All that I could see from my vantage point on the floor was the smirk of her cherry red lips and the swells of her breasts as she breathed deep and stepped closer, her legs taking stride over my hips beneath her.

My head fell back against the red wall, and I felt myself smile at the devil, daring her forward. My hands found her hips and pulled her closer to bury my face into the smooth, flat expanse of the skin directly above the apex of her thighs.

How'd her skirt get pushed up so far? I remembered wondering, even as my hands pulled at the small bows that held up the impossibly tiny pair of lace panties in front of me. They fell with the last scrap of my memory, and the rest morphed into red swirls of a woman crying out in pleasure and the sinking feeling of being dragged into something much deeper than what I had bargained for.

. . .

The screen door smacking against its frame brought me back to the present, and I turned to find Bella staring wide-eyed at Rose on the futon.

"My god..." she said, and I had to fight to hold back a snort of cynical laughter. I'd seen Rose like this before, and I'd been in the same exact position too many times to count, her stupor didn't shock me. Bella, however, sweet, innocent Bella, was practically shaking.

I walked over to her and pulled her into an embrace before she could object. I'd slept with her in my arms, held her on the porch, and now the feeling and the muscle memory were too strong to ignore. I liked the way she fit into me, her soft hair brushing the underside of my chin as her face buried itself in my chest, perfect and life-affirming. That's what Bella was: a reminder of a life worth living. Rose was the opposite. She was the manifestation of a life slowly rotting out its flesh from the inside.

"We should help her," Bella's soft voice said, muffled from where her face pressed into the cotton of my shirt.

"I know."

"How long as she been like that?"

"All night probably."

"Christ, I can't take this."

"You don't have to, Bella," I said, tugging at her shoulders so she'd look up at me. We exchanged a silent conversation.

Go, Bella. Go back to the porch. I'll fix this.

She stared up at me, warring with herself to stay and help, or flee and rid herself of the decay that would no doubt cling to her like cobwebs in a crypt. I nodded to her, telling her that it was okay to go, and she did. Slow but steady, she walked back out onto my porch and sat down on the swing, her eyes staring ahead of her and not back into the dim, dank light of the house.

Relieved, I went to work. Picking Rose up off the sofa and throwing her over my shoulder in a fireman's carry out the back. She moaned in a pitiful way as I carried her across the backyards to her house, hearing her mumble incoherent words as we went.

I wasn't worried for her brain function, or if she'd OD'd since the four lines of coke she'd dealt herself last night were still sitting atop the pocket mirror on the coffee table. Rose snorted coke to fuck, not to be ditched and left alone in an empty house. She wouldn't waste her powder if she didn't have the chance to use it properly. No, what Rose did last night was drink. There were little bottles strewn at her feet all along the futon. She'd must have found some hidden stash I'd forgotten about. I'd never bothered looking for bottles, since everytime I cracked and started ripping open the cabinets and searching in vain behind the appliances in the kitchen, I'd see Bella's Bambi eyes staring back at me and I'd curse, hit my head against the wall and stalk off to take a fucking shower feeling like the weakest pussy that'd ever walked the face of the earth.

I briefly wondered how Rose knew where to look, but the idea that she might have been keeping closer tabs on me than I'd suspected was just too fucking disturbing, so I ignored the temptation to dwell. My house had looked like a tornado had hit it from the inside when I'd walked into it, so I'm sure Rose did her best to leave a solid path of destruction in her wake. Something told me to be wary of going into my bedroom. The vibe in my house screamed anger; overt and seething anger. Rose might not have stormed Bella's house after I'd left, but she hadn't just sat back and twiddled her thumbs neither. No, she'd left me a war zone to come home to.

Kicking open Rose's back door, I walked down towards her bedroom, and plopped her on the bed, bouncing her on purpose. Almost immediately, she retched from the sudden movement, bending over and emptying the contents of her fermented system into the garbage pale I was quick to grab next to her bed.

"There y'are, let it out," I said, only half invested in this mess. I didn't want the girl to die in a puddle of her own vomit, but that didn't mean I was going to rub her back, hold her hair, and tell her a bedtime story after she pulled a Linda Blair.

The waste basket was no match for what Rose was giving, and I found myself dragging her to the bathroom a little while later, despite my overwhelming want to just leave her.

No, she'd gotten wasted on my property. In a sick way, this was my fault. I'd deal with the aftermath.

And I did.

. . .

Bella wasn't on my porch when I finally fled the living hell that was Rose's house. I slumped my shoulders, spent, and sickened by the turn of events of the morning. It had started out rather well, dammit.

Rose had been asleep with two Asprin and a water bottle next to her bed when I left. I'd managed to get her to wash her face, but that was all I attempted. Brushing her teeth and cleaning up would be her responsibility. At least everything that could possibly be purged from her system was now down the toilet.

God, I was tired. And I smelled like puke. And I wanted to see Bella. I'd promised her breakfast, not that she would have an appetite again anytime soon.

I rubbed my face in my hands, wanting to erase the last hour from the day, but then I heard the sound of a screen door hitting its frame and looked up. Bella was on her porch, and she looked worried. I let out a long exhale at the sight of her, and walked forward, stepping over the shrubs and herbs I'd planted to reach her. She bent over the railing and hugged my neck as I wrapped my arms around her waist. Her long hair slipped down over my shoulders, and I felt cocooned by her warmth and the subtle sweetness of her skin.

That same sense of life-affirming security filled me as before, and I held her tighter, scared to ever feel it slip away. Bella's warm hands squeezed my shoulders, and I realized then how the tables had been turned. My role as protector for the day had been exchanged for the part of the broken man once again standing at Bella's feet.

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A/N: *sigh* Jasper, I just can't quit you.

I'd like to thank the artistic director of Jackson's Vanity Fair Italy shoot for the visual inspiration in this chapter. Red walls and smoke, anyone?

Okay, serious business time. So, from July 24 - 31st I will be on vacation at a beach house with a big front porch and a porch swing. :-) Perfect, I know. If only I had a Jasper to drink tea with. But! The point is that there will not be a chapter next Sunday. I'm going to try to write while I'm gone, and depending on how much I get done with the time I can steal away, I'll get a chapter to you as soon as I can, but next Sunday probably ain't happening. I'm warning you now.

I hope you enjoyed the glimpse into Jasper's past. As much as I love him sober, he's fun to write when he's wet.

Have a great weekend y'all! *foozles*