The Subtle Art Of Perception

A/N: Well, here's Leah's compulsory confessional chapter, hehe. And thanks for all the suggestions for swears, guys. Don't think I've managed to fit any of them in yet, but I will try. :) Righto, onwards and upwards... or, onwards, anyway.

Note; edited 28/04/2013 for corrections/general improvements.

4. I Don't Like Sharing. Period.

For a few minutes, Leah just sat, collecting her thoughts. Jasper did not say anything. The silence neither perturbed nor disturbed him; in fact, he seemed to barely notice the time passing at all. Leah thought that was one of the main differences between the cool, collected vampires and the hormonal, immature werewolves. One of the Pack would have no doubt snapped at her to hurry up and spill by now, but every one of the vampires acted like they had all the time in the world. Which they did, Leah supposed. They were eternal, after all, unless purposely destroyed.

"So..." Leah was suddenly embarrassed. How the hell did she even try to begin to articulate what she was feeling?

"I heard about the wedding," Jasper prompted quietly, looking down at his long, slender fingers. He placed his palms together, arching his fingers.

"Yeah. That," Leah said, and then exploded.

"I mean, my God! What the hell did they want? For me to fucking whoop and cheer and go fucking nuts when I heard they were finally getting married?! No! Hell to the fuck no! I mean, fucking hell! The way they both looked at me! "Leah, we're finally tying the knot! Be happy about it!" I don't fucking think so! And Sam... that assclown...! The way he looked at me when he saw I wasn't fucking smiling like the rest of those Stepford Wolves! Like all this was my fault, I mean, are you fucking kidding me?! That stupid, arrogant, poxy-eyed bastard! I wanted to punch him right in the fucking face!"

Leah heaved a sharp, but broken sigh.

Jasper just looked at her, his eyes filled with empathy. "Feel better?"

"No," Leah whispered. Her voice was hoarse. She felt her eyes begin to sting in the corners. Oh, no. I am not going to fucking cry.

"I don't know what the hell I'm gonna do," Leah admitted. "Not that you give a damn," she added, meeting Jasper's eyes. "Why the fuck would you care about my problems?"

Jasper just held her gaze. "I care."

"Why?" Leah pushed. "I don't understand."

"You don't have to," Jasper replied. "You just have to know that someone cares what you think, what you feel. Someone cares what you do with your life, Leah."

Leah didn't know what to say to that. But maybe she didn't have to know. Her brain was frazzled, and she suddenly felt a overwhelming sense of tiredness. A part of Leah's brain vaguely registered that Jasper's power was probably contributing quite heavily to this, but she didn't care. She just wanted to sleep. Her eyes were heavy, and her heart was heavy, and she felt like she was sinking into the couch...

Leah felt the barest sensation of an icy coldness on her hand, and a voice as she drifted off, "Rest well, Leah Clearwater."

Okey dokey... Leah mumbled sleepily, and she promptly complied.

When Leah awoke, Carlisle had returned from his hunt. She noticed that the gold in his eyes had intensified somewhat. He was conversing with Jasper at a volume too low and fast for even Leah's advanced hearing to make out. At the sound of her waking, Carlisle's eyes snapped towards the couch. He approached her and asked, "How are you feeling now, Leah?"

Leah groaned slightly, but noted that her headache had disappeared, and her skin was only a little warmer than usual. "Much better."

Carlisle nodded, and addressed both of them, "Right, well, my son will make sure you're feeling completely recovered before you go home, Leah, but I regret that I must leave as I am needed at the hospital. But just try and relax, at least for today, I know how restless you young werewolves are. Rest and recuperate."

Leah inclined her head, sitting up on the couch. She noticed that a soft, woollen blanket had been placed over her. She rolled it up and placed it at the end of the couch. Jasper was looking at her with slight hesitance. Leah was puzzled for a second, then remembered the circumstances of her little nap. She scowled, but not with as much hatred as she would usually imbue it with, because like it or not, the sleep had done her good. Jasper seemed to know this, and came to sit beside her.

Leah glanced at the plasma screen; the news had been switched off. The silence was a little eerie. She liked to have background noise.

"Why are you uneasy around me?" Jasper asked quietly.

"You? No, it's..." Leah gestured weakly in the way of the television, but she didn't elaborate, all too aware of how childish and random her explanation would sound.

She then remembered her tirade from before her little empath-induced kip. Leah felt a little embarrassed that she had said so much in front of him. What must he think of her now? Not that I care, Leah's mind retorted. But deep inside, she knew that a tiny, miniscule part of her did care.

She sighed deeply, blurting out; "It's just... I don't share. It's just one of those things I don't do. And... it just, it makes me feel... vulnerable, I guess."

Leah pressed a hand to her forehead as Jasper looked at her curiously. "And you fear that? Being vulnerable."

"Above everything else," Leah whispered, her voice barely audible. Then she turned to glare at Jasper. "Hey, don't go all shrink-mode on me, okay?"

Jasper held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, but he had a grin on his face. Leah gave a bitter half-smile.

At that moment, the silent ambience was interrupted by a muffled, but insistent ring from beside Leah. She glanced over, frowning. It was coming from inside the hold-all. Seth must have packed her cellphone while he was at it. Leah quickly unzipped the bag and retrieved the phone, flipping it open, groaning slightly when she saw the caller ID.

"Yo," she greeted shortly, which seemed to amuse Jasper. What? thought Leah. 'Yo.' Sharp, sweet and right to the fucking point. Sorry, Cap'n, no witty word manipulations here. Well, I'll make an exception in the case of profanities, in which I am well-fucking-versed.

"Hey, Leah." As she had suspected, it was Embry.

"What is it?"

"Uh... well..."

Leah frowned. "Out with it, Call. I don't have time for people screwing around with my mind today."

"Okay... Sam wants to know if you're coming to the wedding or not. He says you haven't RSVP'd." Embry's voice was small, but Leah was thankful at least that he hadn't beaten around the proverbial bush with the four-one-one. However, that didn't stop her being so livid she couldn't speak. She saw Jasper's features twist minutely, and he looked at her as if asking permission. Leah gave a curt nod and felt her anger draining away a little, so she could actually form a coherent sentence.

"And he was too much of a pussy to actually call me and find out himself, was he?" Leah spat darkly.

After a pause, Embry said, "Pretty much, yeah."

Leah growled under her breath, and closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. "Well, here's my answer..."

Leah promptly hung up.

She just inhaled and exhaled very noisily for half a minute, her ire creeping back up inside her again. The sheer nerve of Sam. Getting Embry to call her. No fucking pun intended. She didn't know what she was going to say. She couldn't not go to the wedding, there would be too much bad feeling. Plus, she was a masochist. Well, I've gotta be, to actually willing submit myself to this torture.

Leah just couldn't bring herself to actually commit, and say it out loud. Sam was probably expecting her to chicken out of going. Leah gritted her teeth. Had she actually just used reverse psychology... on herself?

That is a new kind of fuckwittery.

Jasper then decided that was the moment to impart another of his pearls of wisdom. "You might as well tell him you're going. That way you can prove to everyone that it doesn't bother you."

"But it does bother me," Leah growled. "A helluva lot. Times ten to the power of fucking infinity."

"Yes," Jasper said, looking down. "But at least this way you maintain some sort of control."

He did have a point, Leah had to concede. It was at that precise moment the phone chose to ring again. Leah just glared at it. Jasper sighed, reaching over her to pick it up. He held it out to her. "So, what's your decision, Leah Clearwater?"

Leah met his eyes, and perused him for a few seconds. She took the cellphone out of his hand and flipped it open.

Her anger had still not abated, and therefore her greeting was less than cordial.

"Embry. What the fuck do you want now?"

Jasper shook his head, a smile playing on his lips.

"Look, Leah. Don't get all pissy with me. What's the saying...? Oh, yeah. 'Don't shoot the messenger'."

Leah snarled, "I'm not gonna shoot the messenger. I'm gonna tear his balls off and mount them on a stick."

She heard Embry gulp on the other end of the phone. "Leah, come on... let's be reasonable about this..."

"Oh, yes, let's," Leah said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She sighed. "What exactly did Sam tell you to say to me?"

Once Embry seemed confident that Leah was not going to follow through on her threat, he answered, "He just told me to call and ask you if you were going to the wedding. I didn't want to, but then he went and got all Alpha-voice on me. Even though he's not technically the A-man anymore, he's still got that tone..."

Leah frowned. "Fine. Look. Just tell him... I'm thinking about it."

Embry seemed hesitant. "I think he wanted a definite answer, Leah."

"He does? Well, Embry, it's either that or you can just tell that arrogant asshole to go play with the fucking traffic. And you can quote me on that."

Embry didn't answer. Leah glanced up, and was surprised to see Jasper looking right at her. She remembered his advice. Take control.

She exhaled sharply. "Oh, alright. Embry, tell him... I'm going. For definite."

Embry let out a relieved sigh. "Right. See ya later, Leah."

"Yeah, yeah." Leah hung up. She put the cellphone back into the hold-all, glanced briefly at Jasper, before sighing heavily and dropping her head to her hands.

"What the fuck did I just do?" she whined pitifully.

It was at that moment that the door opened, and Jacob Black came wandering in. He looked a little angry and confused, rounding on Leah when he spotted her sitting on the couch.

"Leah, where the hell have you been? I asked you to wait for me here yesterday, and you run off home. I go home to find you and yell at you and now you're here? What's with you lately?"

Leah looked up, weary, but put on her game face, ready to dish it out to Jacob. Just as she opened her mouth to do exactly that, Jasper stood up, laying a hand on Jacob's chest in a restraining gesture. His brow was furrowed and he looked a little angry. Leah suspected her emotions were influencing him in his actions, but she couldn't be sure. He had seemed perfectly able to control his emotions around her prior to this, and she had definitely been angry around him before. In fact, she had been more than angry. She had been a vicious hellcat. So what was all this about?

"What the hell, Jasper? You've got nothing to do with this. This is Pack business." Jacob looked annoyed.

"This has nothing to do with Pack orders, Jacob." Jasper's tone was stern. "Leah has not been able to carry out your 'commands'. She has been forcibly incapacited by her health."

Jacob looked confused. Leah rolled her eyes and stood, her stance aggressive and her tone declaring her to be extremely pissed off. "He means I've been sick, you jerk-off."

"Oh," Jacob said, looking a little remorseful. Jasper took his hand off Jacob's chest, but he still looked a little annoyed.

"Leah, I'm... uh," Jacob stuttered a little. "I didn't know. Sorry. Just, call me when you feel better. There's some... Pack stuff."

Leah nodded, sitting back down on the couch. Jasper held his stance until the door closed, and Jacob was gone. Then he turned back to Leah. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," said Leah, still confused as to what exactly had just happened. She was fairly sure that if Jasper had not been there, it would have escalated into an all-out brawl between her and Jacob. Jasper was all too aware that Leah would have been far too proud to admit she had been ill, and Jacob would have just assumed she had deliberately defied him.

Leah felt conflicted, confused and just damn tired. She put a hand to her head and sighed. "I think I need to go home."

She said it mostly to herself, but Jasper heard her. "I'll drive you."

Jasper sensed she was about to object, and cut her off before she could even begin. "No, Leah. You're in no condition to run back yourself, and besides, my conscience would not allow it."

Leah decided not to pick a fight, especially since Jasper had just defended her from Jacob. What was that about, anyway? Leah pondered it as she retrieved her things, and decided she would ask him later. She didn't like to skirt around things, it just wasn't her style. Leah Clearwater wasn't built for covert ops.

"Someone cares what you do with your life, Leah."

Leah thought she might have dreamt that. But she remembered it quite clearly. Curiouser and curiouser... Leah thought. Oh, great. Things are getting so whacked out that I'm quoting Alice in Fucking Wonderland.

But Jasper had said that...

Leah followed him out of the house, suddenly glad to be out of there. He led her to an understated black BMW, but Leah recognised the model, and it was damned costly. She whistled lowly, "Sweet ride."

Jasper couldn't help a smile. "My family likes cars. Fast cars, preferably."

Leah raised an eyebrow, with a playful smirk, which Jasper returned. She got into the passenger seat, throwing her hold-all into the back. As she settled into the seat, she noticed that the scent of bloodsucker grew thicker in the air. She wrinkled her nose, and clicked the button by the door, rolling down the window with a quiet electric whirr. She noticed Jasper being a lot more surreptitious about it, but he too rolled down his window.

Leah laughed quietly, and Jasper looked over at her. She shook her head at his puzzled glance. "Never mind," she muttered.

Jasper increased the speed of the car, until they were going over a hundred miles an hour down the freeway. Leah smiled to herself.

Jasper noticed and looked at her curiously, his gaze flickering to the road every so often, though the gesture appeared to be more decorative than anything else. Leah suspected he didn't really need to look at the road at all. "What is it?" he asked quietly.

"Just... this. I mean, running as a werewolf does have a certain amount of freedom, but driving, I don't know. It feels more like you could do anything, go anywhere. Dad used to drive Seth and I down to Seattle. Before all this werewolf shit started, I mean. He used to go so fast I honestly thought we were all gonna die." Leah paused in her reminiscences to give a short laugh. She partially forgot Jasper was there at all as she looked out over the ocean as it sped past them. "Seth used to get really tetchy about it and moan at Dad to slow down, but I... well, I loved it. I kept thinking stupid things; like the car was gonna take off from the road and we'd be going so fast that we would just drive straight up into the clouds like something from the end of Grease."

Leah looked back at the dashboard, suddenly remembering that Jasper was in fact there, and listening to every word she said. She felt her cheeks flush a bright red, but Jasper seemed to be pondering what she had said. "That's nice," he murmured.

Leah rose an eyebrow. She had been half-expecting some kind of sarky comment, but then soon remembered that this wasn't Jacob Black or Embry Call she was talking to. In fact, Jasper had never said a word against her, which Leah frankly considered unnatural. She didn't have the kind of personality that... gelled. With anyone. At all.

"Huh," she said. "I always thought it was kinda stupid."

Jasper eyed her carefully. "It's very... human." He looked kind of wistful.

"Go figure," Leah said, smirking, which cleared the wistful look off Jasper's face in a second, and replaced it with an amused smile.

"Indeed," Jasper mused. "So... do you drive, then? You're nineteen."

Leah nodded, "Well, I could drive."

Jasper frowned. "You could?"

"Yeah, if I had a car. Which I don't. Mom's truck is on its last legs, and well... she had to sell Dad's car." Leah looked down, wondering why the hell she had just told him that. She didn't want anyone pitying her. Especially not Captain Peroxide. Leah scowled at herself. Seth was right. Why the fuck did she have to be so mean all the time? Jasper had been nothing but gracious towards her. She convinced herself that it was because he was a vampire, and it would be abnormal to be... well, what?

Friends?

Leah considered the word. Friends with a vampire? Sounded too Seth-esque for her liking. Acquaintances? No, that didn't fit either. Person who rescued her from random fainting spells on freeways, played on an Xbox with her, apparently cared what she did with her life and drove her home? Well, yeah. And another word for all that stuff was: friends.

Leah sighed inwardly. This was getting far too fucking complicated for her liking.

Leah couldn't place the look on Jasper's face, but she was certain it wasn't pity, which pleased her. He looked... thoughtful? Ugh. Leah promptly stopped trying to analyse what Jasper was thinking. It really wasn't her strong point, being the antisocial shrew she was. It was easier to just tell herself that she didn't give a flying fuck what people thought. But she couldn't do that anymore. She couldn't just lock away her feelings in a little metal-coated box inside her heart and pretend she didn't care about anything.

Leah hated that she couldn't do that anymore. She used to be able to. She used to be able to just stand back and look on, indifferent to the clear pain and suffering she caused with her mere presence, or a few carefully-placed malicious words at the right time to the right person.

She wasn't exactly about to become the advocate of light and happiness or anything drastic like that, but Leah found that for the first time in a long time - she wanted to change. She wanted to try and be happy.

But she knew that couldn't happen any time soon. Not while she was still dreading the wedding, not while she was still sitting under Emily's insurmountable shadow. Not while she was still so helplessly, stupidly in love with Sam fucking Uley.

"So... what was all that about, anyway?" Leah asked, partially in an effort to change the subject, but also because she was genuinely interested in knowing the answer.

"All what?" Jasper asked.

"All that... with Jacob? Why didn't you just let us have at it and fight?"

Jasper frowned a little. "I didn't think it was fair that Jacob just started picking a fight without having all the facts. Especially not with a lady."

Leah smirked. "So it was... chivalry, then?"

Jasper pondered this for a second. "I suppose so."

Leah paused for a second before she let out a loud laugh that filled the car completely. It was a laugh to rival Emmett's in volume. Jasper looked a little startled by it, and Leah whacked the dashboard, her stomach tightening with the force of her laugh. "Chivalry!" she managed to choke out. Leah wiped a tear of laughter from her eye, as the last few chuckles died down.

Jasper rose an eyebrow. "Glad I amuse you," he said in a dry voice that only hinted at joviality.

Leah's face was a little shocked. "I haven't laughed like that in ages. Really, though. Chivalry... Jesus frog-hopping Christ..."

At that, it was Jasper's turn to laugh. Leah turned to scowl at him, but he shook his head. The car slowed down as they entered La Push. Leah's house was relatively close to the border, so only a few minutes passed before the BMW was pulling into the driveway. Leah noticed that her mom's truck still wasn't there. Had she been and gone again? Had she noticed the broken window? The glass still littered the front garden.

As Leah moved to open the door, she heard the ringing of her cellphone from inside the hold-all in the back seat. She pivoted against her seatbelt to retrieve it, flipping it open. Jasper just waited patiently, his hands on the wheel. Leah briefly wondered if she should go inside and let Jasper get home, but then the rain started to spit down from the sky, and Leah thought she would just answer the phone where she was.

"Hello?"

"Leah?"

"Well, duh. What is it, Embry?" Leah frowned.

"Seth's 'round our house. He wanted to call and let ya know, but he doesn't have a cell. He said he was gonna stay the night, but only if that's alright with you." Embry's tone grew respectfully grave. "He didn't want you to worry."

"I'm not his keeper, Embry. It's fine. Just make sure to tell him to call Mom, otherwise she'll freak."

"Will do. And... Leah? You aren't still angry... about earlier?"

Leah growled. "Possibly, Embry. Possibly."

Embry sighed, "You are, aren't you?"

The ghost of a grimace touched her lips. "Fuck-a-doodle-do, someone alert the authorities because Embry Call finally grew a fucking brain cell..." Leah muttered murderously.

Embry surprised Leah by laughing. "Fuck-a-doodle-do? Haven't heard that one in a while. Anyway, see ya later."

Leah was so surprised at Embry's reply to what was meant to be a cutting insult, that she just said, "Bye," and hung up.

She threw the cellphone back into the hold-all, and looked out of the car window. It was still hurtling down rain. She looked over at Jasper. "Well, thanks for the ride, Cap'n."

"No problem," Jasper said, quietly. "See you around?"

It sounded less like a goodbye and more like a question.

Leah thought about it for a moment, before opening the car door, exposing her to the elements.

"See you around," Leah confirmed, with a little half-smile.

A/N: OMIGAWD they're friends. Or not. Either way, they both rock my socks.