Author's Note: Sorry sorry sorry it's been so long—life came back and smacked me in the face! But I promise I'll have the last part of this collection up soon...by the way, kudos to my beta Adara for not even saying (too many) words about my drop-off the grid. Y'all should be jealous. Enjoy. And review!

I

"So if you correctly balance the ionization of iodine, then the sum of the coefficients would be…?"

Silence lingers after the question, and then a voice cracks up from nothing:

"I don't remember the number, exactly, but it's Ms. Sander's test, and I do remember the answer is always 'B.' And if not…"

"You'll just fail Chemistry?" Jasper is exasperated, Emmett realizes that, and his sarcasm is duly warranted. But come on: the two of them are studying for a test in a subject Emmett has now taken...dozens? Dozens of times. It's insane to re-tread it.

"This is insane," Emmett finally responds to Jasper's barb. He's never been one to hold back anything that pops so naturally into his head.

"This?" Jasper asks, motioning down to the books and papers between them, "Or this?" This time he moves his hands back and forth through the air between the two vampires.

Emmett is momentarily confused. Jasper does that to him sometimes.

"What?" He doesn't think that's the perfect response—and it's definitely not the one Jasper was looking for—but the quicker they finish this conversation, the quicker they finish "studying," and the quicker Emmett can get back to his Sunday afternoon.

Shutting up his brother, ergo, equals freedom in a more prompt and timely manner.

"Yeah, ergo," he mutters under his breath, realizing a little too late that he'd said it out loud.

"What?" Jasper seems no more annoyed than he was when they cracked open the textbooks, and no more bothered than when he said that out-of-left-field statement of his. Still, there is a tone to his words; and with Jasper – that's enough.

"Huh?"

"You were muttering. Under your breath. You usually don't mutter, Emmett."

"I mutter all the time."

"Examples?"

"…That time, at one of the proms at one of those schools we went to, hmm, back in the 80s maybe. They were playing Rick Springfield, and the whole night long I was muttering about it. Even with my date."

"Uh-huh: this whole time you've been a vampire, and throughout the decades we've spent together as brothers, I'm sitting here as you tell me you've only muttered once and that counts as 'all the time'?"

"Yep."

"No, it doesn't."

"Does so."

"Does not."

"Does so." With that, and as a smirk forms on the brawny immortal's lips, he thinks he's won. And then Jasper does some grumbling of himself, and in a flash he's at the door.

"This is impossible—you're impossible. All of it. God, really," a pause and an expulsion of bitter breath through chapped lips, "God. Ha. Really."

Emmett would prefer not to think of himself as "lost" after his brother's little diatribe, but seriously, ranting on such a perfectly nice day? How many of those came around? Probably a few thousand so far—

Well, that was beside the point. The point was Jasper was agitated, and it was bugging Emmett the hell out.

Sighing, and shifting within the span of a blink of an eye off the bed towards Jasper, Emmett finally responds in a manner he thinks befitting of the other vampire's current state.

"Bro, chill."

"What?!" Ok, so it wasn't the best thing to say—is it ever? But he didn't possess supernatural gifts of empathy like Jasper; he couldn't sort through stuff like this, all these messy emotions and snarls of desire, in just moments. He needed space; he needed air.

"Outside," he says. And before Jasper can let his mask of discontent drop, his brother has pushed him out into the hallway, down the stairs, and out into the cloudy light of day.

II

"There are only two reasons you're acting like this. And one of them deals with Alice…and your bed," he gulps, unnecessarily, letting that implication settle into Jasper's head, "and the other…well…you tell me."

"What?" It's apparently not Emmett's turn to be curious anymore; after his rant, Jasper has lost all his ability of exposition. Now comes the fun part – rooting out the trouble

"You're quiet, Jazz, sure, and even sometimes too stoic. But I've never—ever—seen you like this. Spill: what's the deal?"

Spinning like a wheel removed from its center of gravity, Jasper turns around and around, looking first back at the house, then at the woods surrounding them.

He keeps spinning, slowly, so it looks almost like pacing—except he just keeps turning over and over in the same infinitesimal space.

A beat passes. And then another. And another.

And another.

Finally, as a strand of sunlight alights on a nearby porch rail, a whisper through the air—not from Emmett:

"I think I'm going crazy."

"The fuck you are."

"What?"

"Why?"

"…What?" This time, Jasper's response is a little softer; his brother's passion is confusing, to say the least.

"Why?" Barely has the question paused to rest before it is repeated; a third time, Emmett opens his mouth for repetition's sake, when Jasper begins to answer.

"Hmm, I—I'm not sure, really…uhh, just, God, being like this, around you guys—my family—and still living like this. It's like a really elaborate costume party, and I'm the only one there whose seams are showing."

"Jasper. Jasper—look at me. Look." He turns towards Emmett, his eyes lifting from the ground.

"What?"

"Hello."

"Hi."

"Are you there?"

"Where?"

"Here, with me?"

"Uhh, sure?"

"Really?"

"What answer are you expecting?"

"I want the truth—you can't just freak out on your brother like that and expect nothing in response."

"This is…is a little weird, for us, no?"

"What?"

"Well: we never talk."

"Sure we do."

"No. We don't."

"Yes. We do."

"Not talking."

"What is this?"

"The exception that proves the rule."

Emmett snorts—a shot of laughter into their very odd exchange. "Come on, the sun is setting. Hungry?"

Jasper smiles, unknowingly and then he realizes: it may be a party to which he's been invited—and he doesn't really ever stand a chance of fitting in—but that doesn't mean he has to play by everyone's rules. Hell, he's already living in a pretty different way from his old rules anyhow. Break some more, wake up—it's his life, he's just living in it.

"Starving. Want to race there?"

"Heh, like I'd ever out-race you when you're stomach is growling like this."

"Fine then," Jasper turns from his brother, waving a hand behind him. "I'll see you in a few hours, if you can even spot my toothy blur."

"Hey! I can't run, but I can see!"

Into the wind, he races, Emmett's laughter falling up behind him. As he dives behind the second line of trees at the forest's edge, another Emmett-ism catches up to him from back by the house:

"Oh and next time you have a mini-meltdown, just go ahead and slap yourself in the face. Grow up bro, or the rest of us are going to be forced to grow down."

He smiles—that's Emmett for you, always innocuously shallow yet affectionate—and then a response pops into his head.

"Grow down? Ha, Emmett, can you even evolve at all?"

The only answer is a sigh from between the rustling leaves, echoed intensely along the calm surface of Jasper's mind.