A/N Alrighty. Everything Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer, but I may have some different plans in mind for them...


We laid on our stomachs on Jasper's bedroom floor, our laptops before us.

I groaned, "I don't know!" and smacked the lid of my computer closed, with maybe a bit too much force, before rolling onto my back to let out a sigh. Like most things that mattered, the idea of applying to college had my logical thoughts worked into a frenzy.

"One essay." I ranted to the ceiling. "That's all I get. How will one page convince the application committee that I'm better than everyone else applying? " Key phrases from the pre-college meeting with my guidance counselor flitted through my head. Motivated. Leadership-oriented. Well-rounded. Well-angular. What the fuck did that even mean?

Out of my peripheral vision I saw Jasper, true to form, shrug.

I turned my head slowly, in my ire, to stare at him. "This is important, man. College decides the rest of our lives."

Again he shrugged that calm, imperturbable shrug. I hated it. I hated it because it was his answer to everything. Because it came so easily to him. Because he could stare at five hundred words that would decide the rest of his life and just fucking shrug.

And I couldn't.

I turned my gaze back to the smooth, white expanse of ceiling and listened to him press the keys at an even, measured pace. Even his soul-searching was methodical, seeming to take no effort at all. I sighed more loudly.

But, no, I shouldn't take my aggravation out on him. I was probably lucky we were still friends, what with my spazoid tendencies. Usually, I was a pretty quiet guy. Minded my own business, spoke when spoken to, blabbity blah blah. Around Jas, though, my stream of consciousness jumped the tracks before reaching my brain and just came straight out of my mouth. It was like for every word I wished he'd say, I said two.

No surprise there, though. We'd always been polar opposites. Where he was self-assured, helpful and relaxed, I was anxious, awkward and, if I'm being honest, a little anal-retentive. Looking at Jasper he just seemed… bright. Calm and happy, with eyes the same blue shade as nearly-transparent glacier ice and wavy blonde hair that caught the sun. In comparison, I was sure I seemed somber. I often had to remind myself to smile back at people, my brown/red/who-the-hell-knows hair clashed with my dark green eyes, and when people thought of Edward Masen, they sure as shit didn't think of me in a sunny way.

Then again, if he didn't fault me for my flaws, I certainly couldn't fault him his perfection.

"Hey." That smooth voice broke my daze. "You're doin' it again," he said softly.

I gave him an apologetic glance. "Sorry."

"Look, Edward." He pushed off with his hands to sit up beside me. "We all know how this is gonna go down. You apply early to Princeton, I apply early to Cornell, and then we ride out the rest of the school year on a breeze. But first we have to write an essay, so we'll just do it and not look back, kay?"

Oh, well, obviously. When he put it like that.

I nodded and tried to smile and mean it because, really, I knew he was just appeasing my inner freak-out champion, and I was grateful for it. I was equally grateful that I was crashing at the Cullen's. Jasper had long since figured out that when I was all stressed out, going home was the last thing I should do.

"Yeah, okay."

He placed his palm on my chest to push himself off the ground, effectively knocking all the air out of me. I let out an airless groan and curled up into my tried and true dead-bug defensive position, but he was already across the room digging out a blanket for me.

While he did that, I stepped into the hardwood hallway of the Cullen house – mansion, whatever – and pulled out my phone. Ali was speed dial two.

"Hey Teddy."

"Hey," I answered, trying to keep my voice low so none of the Cullens would hear me. "You going home tonight?"

She sighed a little sigh, the one that was halfway between avoidance and defeat. The one that reminded me she was my little baby sister and needed someone to look out for her.

"It's okay if you're not," I said quickly. "I'm not. I'm staying at Jasper's again."

"Yeah," she hedged. "Bella already pulled out a sleeping bag for me. Do you think he'll mind if neither one of us comes home?"

"I'll call him. And if he's pissed, I can always drive back," I offered.

"Okay. Thanks." She perked up a bit, back into the chirpy Alice most people knew and loved. "See you at school?"

"Yup."

"Okay, love you."

"Love you too."

That just left the phone call to Dad. I let it ring six times. Then I hung up, and called again. Still, no one answered, so when it finally went to voicemail I figured that was as good as anything.

"Hey, Dad. I'm just calling to tell you that I'm staying at Jasper's tonight, and the Swan's invited Alice to stay over. We both have our cells." I paused with my thumb over the red button before pushing the phone back to my ear and saying, "This is Edward, by the way."

I hung up and slipped the phone back into my pocket before turning back into Jasper's room. As I crossed the threshold, my senses were immediately affronted. With a whooshing smack to my face, my vision whited out and I couldn't breathe through my nose or mouth. Then, quickly as it had come, the barrier slipped away and I was left with a view of an eyebrow-waggling Jasper with a thick down pillow in his hand.

Ah. The manliest way of all to deal with foul moods: physical assault. Unfortunately for Jasper, I was just as tall and strong as him, so he had no leverage here.

With a quick glance around the room, I spotted another pillow on his bed. He must have been holding the one he got for me. I faked to my right before darting toward his bed and ran across it, heedless of my socked feet on his covers, and grabbed my fluffy weapon with a victorious laugh. He approached me slowly, circling around the bed frame until it was between us. We both stood poised, waiting for a slip in the other's attention, pillows at the ready.

"Boys."

Both our heads snapped towards the door to see Jasper's mom. The only difference was that Jasper chucked his pillow as he did so that it knocked me upside the head with a rather anticlimactic 'poof'. I tore my eyes from Esme just long enough to launch mine at the back of Jasper's head, which it hit before sliding noiselessly to the carpet at his feet.

Esme had caught us 'roughhousing', as she called it, too many times to be surprised, so instead she just clucked and turned her eyes to her son.

"Jas, honey, your father is trying to sleep. Can you two quiet down and make your way towards bed?"

He nodded, but didn't drop the ear-to-ear grin that made me wonder if I should sleep in a different room. With the door locked.

When Esme looked at me her eyes were softer, kinder. "Do you have everything you need, Edward dear?"

A quick look at the couch in the corner of Jasper's room confirmed that his weapon of choice had come from my makeshift bed. There were already sheets and blankets laid out on the cushions.

I nodded. "Yes, thank you Esme."

"Alright, you boys sleep well." She quietly let the door click shut behind her.

I eyed Jas warily, just as he eyed me, but we managed to slip off to bed without further incident. I swapped out my contacts for glasses, we brushed our teeth and Jasper clicked off the lights before we shed down to our boxers and slipped under our respective covers.

The moon shone in through a huge picture window that nearly took up an entire wall, and lit up the room enough to make finding my bearings easier.

"So." Jasper's voice meandered through the darkness, quiet and unobtrusive. "Alice isn't going home either?"

He'd heard that, huh? I grunted out a negative.

"Do you want to swing by in the morning to put in some face time before school?"

That caught me slightly off guard. While he had never said so – because, of course, he wouldn't – I was pretty sure Jasper felt uncomfortable at my house. Hanging out at his place was the standard, and he rarely offered to change that. I'd always been glad of that too, because it meant I didn't have to make up excuses to keep him away.

"Uh. No. That'd just raise more questions. But… thanks."

There was a brief silence. Maybe he was just nodding in acknowledgement.

"Night, Edward."

"Night."

Morning in the Cullen house came quietly, starting with a gentle knock from Esme and a "Boys? Time to get up!" through the door. Unfortunately, it ended with Jasper's sister being a royal pain in the ass.

She was sitting at the center island in the kitchen, nibbling at a piece of whole wheat toast. Her long, straight blond hair was pulled back into a tight pony tail that made me think only of the word 'efficiency', and she was glaring at me. When my eyes met her, she snapped her view to Jasper and said loudly, "I'm not driving you two to school."

I paused midstride at the inanity of her declaration, but momentarily continued toward the cereal boxes.

"We didn't ask for one, Rose," Jasper said calmly. "Edward has his car."

I always had my car.

Rose perked up in her seat. "Exactly, and when that tin wagon rusts solid at a stoplight, I'm not driving you the rest of the way."

Ignoring. This is me ignoring. See the grace with which I ignore her rude, skinny, meddling ass. When I placed the milk carton back into the fridge, I noticed the dents on either side looked shockingly like my handprint.

I didn't face her to acknowledge her impressive ability to ruin my day before it had even begun, but I pictured her in my mind's eye. It wasn't hard to see her as Jasper must have seen her in that exact moment. Tall, confident and haughty, with silky hair and eyes just a slightly less shocking blue than his own. She was wearing a light purple camisole with a deep V that did nothing to merely 'hint' at her attention-capturing breasts. Then again, I highly doubted Jasper wanted to acknowledge that his little sister was a Bond-girl in the making.

Intelligent and successful, she was technically every bit as perfect as Jasper. It was as if the Good Fairy of Social Inequality had come to Forks and blessed Esme's womb, saying, "Thine children shall be beautiful and praiseworthy, never burdened by the curse of self-doubt," just so all the other resident teenagers had someone to feel self-conscious next to.

"Rose, when will you remember that your opinions on cars don't mean squat?"

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her huff and turn on her stool to look out the curtained kitchen window at her newest favorite toy: a deep red Corvette. It wasn't her preferred car, a fact she had made widely known, but as her first set of wheels from Mom and Dad Cullen for her recent sixteenth birthday, she was ready to sing its praises to anyone foolish enough to ask. Or not ask.

I had been speed-eating and so with a nod from Jasper, he grabbed a Cliff Bar and our lunches, and we were out the door. Good riddance.

I never really spoke to Rosalie, directly, and I certainly didn't want to stir up shit in the Cullen family, but she had to know the distaste was mutual. She had to. I just… wasn't entirely sure why it was there in the first place. Carlisle had once explained that being a teenage girl was an incredibly taxing experience that often took someone's worst qualities and projected them onto everyone else until the threat of pimples and parental groundings had passed. He had explained in (overdrawn) detail the hormonal and mental change taking place, but Jasper had later said his dad's explanation was just a drawn out euphemism for the word Bitch.

My dad's wheezing 1993 Volvo managed not to accumulate too much rust on the drive to Forks High, and we were soon walking leisurely to our first class. People waved to us but, as I assumed the attention was mostly for Jasper, I merely nodded back.

"Hey guys."

Jessica Stanley suddenly popped into my line of sight. She had light brown curly hair, a penchant for flowery skirts and a profile that spoke of her Jewish ancestry. She was genuinely good spirited though, so I smiled back at her.

"Hey."

"I hear you guys are racing the Quileutes this weekend."

Jasper nodded.

"I'm trying to convince Coach Clapp to let the Cheer Squad come. Maybe if some of you guys mentioned that it would be nice?" She tilted her head to the side, looking hopeful but somewhat helpless. "Please? We never cheer for track, and I know you guys are pretty good and all, so it's pretty bad school spirit of us to never show. I wanna show those Wolves who they're dealing with."

Ahhh, the truth comes out. Forks and the Quileute Wolves had an ongoing rivalry in baseball, and I guessed Jessica wanted to broaden our intimidation tactics.

Cheer had never bothered to show up for track before but, I shrugged, whatever.

"Sure, Jess."

"Thanks Jasper." She looked directly at him and gave him that smile that all the girls seemed to be throwing at him these days – wide eyed and hopeful – before rushing off to whatever her first class was.

Jasper tossed me a glance, so I shrugged again. He shrugged back, and we let it go. AP Lit, here we come.

Teachers and lectures came and went and, soon enough, I spotted Alice bounding across the quad, trailing her backpack and wailing, "Guess what, Edward! Edward! Guess what!"

When she skidded up to me, I placed my hands firmly on her shoulders and pressed her down into the earth, lest she achieve escape velocity.

"Guess what, Edward, what?" I asked calmly.

Bella, her shy but compassionate best friend slid up behind her as she resumed bouncing under the pressure of my hands and took one lung-bursting gulp of air.

"Forks Drama! They're doing a play! And there's auditions and it's Shakespeare and Bella said maybe I should and they're doing Midsummer Night's Dream and there's Puck and I could be him!" She was waving her hands wildly, uninhibited by my purposely-blank stare. It wouldn't do to laugh in her face, especially when she was so clearly into the idea. One thing to say for Alice, she never did anything half-assed. "He's tiny," she continued. "And mischievous! And I think I'm gonna try out, and I just might be able to pull it off and auditions are today and I'm really excited. I just have to learn some lines!"

Bella had one hand over her mouth behind Alice, trying not to giggle audibly while she whispered, "Alice, breathe."

Jasper, on the other hand, had completely lost any sense of composure. He had turned away to spare her, but the tremors of his back gave away his laughter.

Alice, of course, stamped her foot into the ground and began talking even faster. "It's not funny! I could get it, I know it. Don't you think I could? Teddy?" Her eyes were on me, hard and fast. Petite as she was, she was practically staring vertically into the (cloud-hidden) sun above me to deliver her menacing stare. I couldn't even take the time to remind her about childish nicknames in public because it was clear that one answer, only one, was acceptable.

"Of course Ali. We, uh," I glanced at Bella, hoping for some clue on how important this was. "We didn't know you were considering drama. But of course, you're a natural for Puck."

And she was. Energetic, check. Tiny and troublesome, check. Comfortable under the weighty stares of the entire Forks High student body, double check.

I tried to picture her up on a stage. Her hair was identical to mine, a rich cherrywood with a hint of red that would be just visible under the stage lights. Our mom's hair had been the most mesmerizing shade of bronze, but Dad's straight dirt-brown coloring had muted it for us. We both bore the distinct shade of green her eyes had been though, like moss on the poorly lit side of forest trees, and those too would give Alice a striking appearance on stage. Her hair was long and wispy around her face, also like Mom's had been, and I wondered if she'd have to cut it to play a sprite.

Jasper finally turned around beside me, trying to pass his grin off as encouragement. "Good luck, Alice."

She threw her hands up in the air, giving him a forlorn look. "Ughh! No, you have to say break a leg!"

"Break a leg," I said compliantly, and managed to hold back my laughter until Alice had grabbed Bella's hand and was dragging her towards the library, no doubt in search of some Shakespeare to memorize.

Jasper and I turned to head towards the lunch tables, needing the cover to shelter us from the impending afternoon storm.

He shook his head, still laughing. "She is so much like you, it's ridiculous."

I quirked an eyebrow in his direction. Was he kidding? "Seriously, man?"

He raised an eyebrow right back, as if wondering why I was even questioning him.

"How can you say that? Alice is…" I mimicked her by waving my hands frantically around my head, and wondered what the most polite way to say 'a chaotic mess' was. "She's like a Tasmanian devil, spinning furiously until she's gotten what she wants. She gets an idea in her head and won't ever let it go, like it's the new most important thing in the world."

He nodded. "Exactly."

Exactly? How could he say that?

By this point, Jas and I had reached our usual table and were pulling sandwiches out of the brown paper bags Esme had written our names on. But I just couldn't let this drop.

"Alice is like a miniature force of nature, indestructible and bending the world to her will. Nothing is ever the same after she gets there." I shook my head at the thought. I loved her, and wouldn't have her any other way, but I could never be like her. Ever. I barreled ahead to prove this to Jasper. "I'd rather just do my own thing and stay out of people's hair. I could never make a scene or draw attention like she does. Jeez, Jasper. You know me." I tapped my own chest emphatically. "I am never as loud and destructive as she is. I'm the quiet one."

Jasper, the bastard, was laughing again and put up a hand to stop me. "What?" I ground out, annoyed.

"Well," he grinned a toothy but mesmerizing grin. "If you're done ranting about how low-key and quiet you are…" He paused. "Breathe, Edward."

I realized I hadn't taken another breath after my long-winded bout of self defense, and did as he said. It was a reminder I seemed to need frequently around him.

Just like Bella reminded Alice.

Oh.

I felt my ears turn red under his pointed stare, and focused my attention on the sandwich I was currently ripping the crust off of. "Yeah, well," I mumbled. "That's just around you."

"I know," he said quietly. Almost… gently. "But I like it."

That caught me off guard, and I quickly looked up to study his face. It revealed nothing but his serene nature and sincerity. "What? Like having a spaz for a best friend?"

He held my gaze as he answered, "No. That there's this whole other Edward Masen that only hangs out with me."

I blinked at the thought. A whole part of me only for Jas. The idea didn't seem as foreign as I thought it might. When I thought of the two of us together, just lounging in his room, I certainly didn't feel like the moody, sullen boy I tended to be at school. I felt… safe, and content. Free to let out my anxieties and worries. And loved.

I gave my head a quick shake. Sure, I decided, that was another side of me, but I didn't need to dwell too meticulously on the differences.

"Anyway," he spoke up loudly, all calm and casual again. "I heard from Mike in History that practice will be easy today."

"Good. He's been working our asses for the Wolves meet. I could use a break."

Jasper began chatting easily about the other endurance runners at La Push High, and who would be the hardest to beat.

I felt fairly confident that whoever Jasper was supposed to be worried about, he would approach them with good sportsmanship for a fair race, and then promptly leave their ass in the dust.

Even voicing his concerns over the competition, he exuded an air of tranquility and success. Jasper's personal bubble must be a wonderful place to spend time, I decided.

As that thought evolved, I was struck with an urge to get as far into that personal bubble as I could. I didn't know how – I practically lived at his house, how much closer could I get? – but it suddenly felt very obvious to me that the closer I could get to Jasper Cullen, the happier I would be.

Ok, I know most slash fics are basically smut. And I'm not saying Edward doesn't like lemons, I'm just saying he has to work for them, ya know?

Reviews give me the courage to keep writing!