A/N Stephenie Meyer owns, I just play.

I sat waiting for the meet to end like I'd wait for the A/C in my car to kick in: sweaty and cranky. Jasper sat beside me, steadily draining Powerades of their vitality.

"Alright," he drawled eventually. "Up with you. It looks like it's gonna rain, and it'll take me long enough to haul your ass to the bus as it is."

I threw him a half-hearted scowl, but held my hand out for assistance anyway. It was much easier to move with the bandage on, but it was still fortunate that Mike saw our migration and joined the cause. I got situated in the third row of seats – it wouldn't do to be too close to Coach – and Jasper ran back to get our bags.

The rest of the team slowly trickled onto the bus, giving me noncommittal 'too bad's and 'feel better's. Leah showed up with another bag of ice, which I gladly took.

"Thanks, Leah. You didn't have to do that."

"Oh, my mom gave it to me. She wanted it to last the trip home. Also," she leaned in, "she says you should have won."

"Thanks, Leah. Your mom brings ice?" I asked. It's not like Leah was especially accident-prone.

She let out a short laugh. "No, my mom is the nurse at La Push High."

"Oh! That explains a lot, then."

Her back stiffened as she stood to her full height to peer down her nose at me. "Explains what, exactly?" She raised one dark eyebrow.

"How, um, she was really careful not to hurt me?" I hedged. "And she knew my name and who Jasper was?"

Her rigid posture dipped, and her expression faded to one of nonchalance, possibly of the forced variety. "Oh, yeah. Well, I sometimes talk about the team. You know."

"Anyway, your mom was really nice. Tell her I said thanks for the ice."

She smiled and went to find a seat in the back.

The bus ride after that was relatively pain-free, despite Jas's insistence that I stay awake the whole time. He got his payback, though, when he had to drive my rickety POS Volvo back to his house.

I leaned heavily into him as we crossed the threshold to his house; I had an arm wound across his shoulders and he had one cradling my waist. A chuckle caught my attention, and my head snapped up.

"Aww," Emmett cooed from the couch, clearly amused. "Did someone take a spill?"

I blinked once, then again.

"Hello, Emmett," Jasper responded.

My eyes flickered to Rosalie beside him and I wondered – not for the first time – how tightly she pulled the strings. Had she found some nice, pliable varsity jock to jerk around and play puppetmaster with, or had she just found her other half buried under two hundred and fifty pounds of bench-pressing, geek-beating muscle mass?

"Looks like you took a dive head first!"

Before I could hiss out what's it to you? he added, "Didja lose any teeth?"

In answer, I just chose to bare my teeth in a mock-grin that really said, 'why don't you fuck off and stick it to Rosalie already so I can sit on the couch in peace?' I was in no mood to be insulted on top of everything else. I just wanted to nurse my wounds and pretend this day was over already.

Apparently, my swollen grimace was too funny though. Emmett was still chuckling, and I could swear that not only did I see the couch shake under him, but I felt the tremors through the floorboards. Jasper flashed me an apologetic sigh, but Emmett was already chattering away again.

"Man, you are so lucky!" He curled his own lips and fingered one of his front teeth, producing a slight lisp. "Dis one's todally fake. I took one wrong step and BAM—" his hands clapped out a sharp soundwave that startled us all, "total faceplant! Straight into the concrete."

I could practically visualize it – Emmett, with his nose headed straight for the ground. It seemed like there should have been a guy in flannel around just to yell Timber! I guess I looked interested, 'cause he continued to relive it for us.

"And the worst part was, it wasn't even a game! I tripped over a rock or air or some shit in front of the whole team and spent the next four hours in the hospital waiting room covered in my own blood."

He had his eyebrows raised and his eyes wide in a look of 'can you believe it!?' and the truth was, I couldn't. Rosalie's walking, talking arm-accessory was sharing an embarrassing story and I actually felt… better? If nothing else, I realized this day could have easily sucked more. Maybe everyone was asking about my teeth for a reason.

Then, Emmett did the unthinkable. He popped up from the couch, abandoning Rosalie in the midst of her eradicating-Edward deathstare marathon, and said, "I've got some cold beers for the party tonight in my trunk, if you want one. Might take the sting out of it."

Holy shit, apparently Rosalie's personal lap dog was off his leash. And, it seemed, the unthinkable was also the unforgivable.

"Emmett!" She stood haughtily, and turned her mighty glare on him. For a moment, I wondered if she would actually say Bad dog! but he failed to wither at her command. "We have to go. To help set up," she huffed.

He agreed amicably, and we moved to settle on the couch they were vacating. As we passed them, though, Emmett ended the night with, "Make sure to ice that lip too, man. S'gonna hurt like a bitch tomorrow."

Was he trying to piss her off? Didn't he know that just by speaking to me he was forfeiting any scooby snacks he had coming to him?

Jasper had deposited me on the couch and propped my leg up when he started untying my shoes. I started to protest, sure that they stank, when Esme came down the stairs chattering in her eagerness for news. She stopped abruptly, though, once she could see over the back of the sofa to my bandaged knee.

"Oh, Edward!" she gasped.

I tried to convince her not to fret, which was obviously fairly ineffective coming from me, and within a minute she was calling up the stairs for Carlisle.

He poked and prodded and, like the others before him, pronounced that it probably wasn't that bad.

"So, you landed with the hurdle between your knees?"

In all honesty, I had no idea, so I looked to Jasper who confirmed it.

"It got tangled between his feet and he landed with one leg on top. I think he hit his head too, so I made him stay awake the whole ride home."

No kidding. "He sang obnoxious commercial jingles the entire bus ride."

Carlisle checked my eyes like Jasper had done and chuckled. "That was probably unnecessary."

Jas just shrugged.

"Well, Edward. It looks like you twisted and bruised your knee pretty badly but didn't tear anything, so that's good. Do any of your teeth feel lose?"

I had to chuckle but, thankfully, I shook my head.

"Good. I do think you strained your calf, though, which is why it hurts so much more to move it. I'd say, keep the knee still with the bandage, but see if you can work out some of the knots in your calf to keep it limber, okay? For now, how about you get cleaned up and I'll see if I can pull some old crutches out of the garage for you."

I let my head loll back as I looked at Jasper forlornly. Crutches?

Together we made it to the bathroom door adjacent to his room. There was another bathroom down the hall, but this one was closer, so he left me there with a clean towel and my track bag while he moseyed to get himself cleaned up too.

It took a while to hop around and make sure I wasn't going to slip with only one foot on the slick tiles, but I leaned against the shower wall and directed the spray at an angle. It was awkward, and probably took twice as long as it needed to, but I managed to make it work.

Jas had dumped my bag near the shower stall, so I had a fairly easy time of fishing out a clean pair of boxers. I sat heavily on the closed toilet seat to get them up before I realized there was no way I'd be able to get my jeans on over a padded knee. I pulled my underwear up before making a hop/drag move to the bathroom door and pulled it open. I figured I could find some sweats in Jasper's dresser.

I didn't figure he'd be freshly out of his shower and pulling on clean boxers. I didn't bother with self-consciousness though – we had both seen the entire team in less.

"Hey Jas," I called out. "Can I borrow some sweats?"

He spun in place, looking slightly startled. "Sure thing. But wrap that knee before you walk anymore."

That was probably a good idea, so I began the slow process of hopping on one foot in a circle to turn towards my bag.

I heard a laugh behind me. "Jeez, Edward. Just don't move, okay? I swear, you're like a baby duck, all waddling and helpless."

I looked over my shoulder to raise a nonplussed eyebrow at him, which only made him laugh more.

"Shut up, Cullen, and give me some pants."

He breezed past me into the bathroom, pulling the unrolled bandage from my pile of clothes. Wordlessly, he crouched at my feet and positioned the tip of the bandage at my knee. I wobbled a little as he began to pull the cloth one way, then the other, and steadied myself with a hand on his bare shoulder.

He glanced up briefly before placing his hand on the underside of my thigh to steady me further. The skin there was so sensitive, and the pressure so subtle, that I felt a shiver ripple through me.

"Sorry, man. Cold fingers – I know."

They didn't feel cold at all. They felt soft and incredibly warm. Hot, even, like all the heat in my body was radiating from where his hand held my thigh. I wondered briefly if Jas was destined for medicine, the way his hands seemed to soothe and draw attention away from the pain. I didn't say anything though.

When he was done, he pulled a pair of dark blue warm-up pants from the counter. I quickly realized they were the kind that snapped up both sides, so I didn't even have to shift my weight. He worked on the lower snaps while I did the higher ones.

He patted my calf softly when he was done.

"Thanks."

"No problem. Mom said dinner's ready when we are."

Back in his room, he pulled two crutches from against the wall and handed them to me. I must have looked annoyed at their presence because he just chuckled and said, "Think of it as an upper-body work out."

I groaned, knowing he was right. I could feel the strain in my arms and armpits all the way to the kitchen.

Esme had, indeed, made a special dinner – a beef stroganoff that Jasper always gushed over. I found two Tylenol by my water, and quickly downed them before tucking into the food. As usual, I was starving, and from the sounds he made Jasper was too.

Instead of being appalled at our manners, which she probably should have been, Esme just seemed pleased her cooking was so well-appreciated. We filled her and Carlisle in on the progress of the meet, from all of Jasper's wins to my eventual face-dive and Black's stupid victory dance. They grinned and oohed and sympathized in all the right places, which lifted my mood a bit.

Dessert, though, worked wonders for my demeanor. We roasted marshmellows for smores – a Cullen tradition and personal favorite. It was too early in the year to start a fire , so we held marshmellows on skewers over their gas stove. We let them get all toasted and bubbly and giggled wildly when Esme would swoop in at the last possible moment with graham crackers to protect her precious stovetop.

"So, do you boys have plans for the night?" Carlisle asked, unsuccessfully trying to pull sticky marshmellow filaments from his fingertips.

"Mike's having a track party to celebrate, but I told him we had family obligations."

"We do?" I asked.

"Oh, honey, you're welcome to go as long as you're back by a reasonable hour," Esme offered.

Jasper, though, looked to me. "Did you want to go?"

I thought about it, about working my way through an over-exuberant crowd on crutches and trying to pretend I didn't care about losing to Black. "No, actually, I'm really glad we're not going."

"Exactly," he grinned. "Family obligations."

I grinned back. "Thanks, man."

Eventually I made my way over to the living room sofa while Jas collected blankets and pillows for a premium movie night, and then popped X-men 2 into the DVD player. We settled in, each with a pillow behind us against an arm of the couch, which our legs stretched over the cushions towards each other. I pulled a blanket down from the back of the couch that was big enough to cover us both.

Emse and Carlisle soon flipped off all the other lights downstairs and headed for their own room.

"See if you can work the knots out of that leg, Edward, so it's not stiff in the morning," Carlisle called.

"Okay."

"G'night, Dad."

"Goodnight, boys."

I shifted under the blanket, trying to sit up and maneuver my legs closer to myself, but with the bandage on it was impossible to bend my knee. Jasper, probably disturbed by my jostling, reached out to knock my hands away.

"Quit squirming, I'll do it."

"What?" What could he even do? I thought maybe he'd unwrap the ACE so I could reach my calf better, but I didn't relish the idea of bending my knee any more than necessary. "You don't have to do anything."

"Just relax. I can reach your leg better than you can."

With that, he plunged his hands under the blanket. I felt, more than heard, the snaps from my right pant leg being pulled apart. His fingertips skimmed over my shin and calf, and I couldn't hold back my responsive shiver.

"Sorry," he whispered, pulling back his hands to rub them together.

I still didn't have the courage to tell him his hands weren't cold. "It – it's okay."

"Tell me if it hurts."

His hands resumed their travels up the sides of my calf and down the back of it. After a few passes, he added some pressure, feeling for the tension and focusing his efforts in certain places. It did hurt but, like with all sore muscles, the pressure was overwhelming in a sort of good way.

I tried to turn my focus back to the movie, in which Mystique was currently running around in blue body paint and distracting everyone from the plot, but it was impossible to ignore the feeling of Jasper's hands.

He never even got as high as my knee but just the slow, methodical movements and the way his finger tips would trail over my skin leaving little trails of tingles in their wake was a wholly mesmerizing sensation. I glanced at him, but his eyes were on the screen while his hands worked their wonders. I couldn't tell if it was my skin or his hands that were hot, but I suddenly realized I was sweating. He was eliciting some sort of response, and I could tell I was breathing faster than normal. In my peripheral vision, I could see him occasionally look to me, but his gaze never lingered. My entire lower body, now, felt warm and tingly. It was almost as if having Jasper's hands on me was… erotic.

That thought startled me, and I glanced hurriedly at him to see if he had caught onto my new line of thinking. He was staring fixedly at the TV, but it was clear that didn't mean anything. I was sure his attention was fixed on me the way mine was on him. I lowered my gaze to see his hands moving beneath the blanket but from my reclining position the sight was blocked by my – oh shit.

I jerked my leg from his grasp and turned on my side, trying to hide my eager erection, but managed to twist my knee in the process. I let out a hiss of pain, but Jasper was still unstartled and forcedly inattentive, which I took as a sign that his focus had definitely been on me the entire time. Had he seen it? Had he known what he was doing to me?

I felt light-headed, sick even, that I had been sporting a hard-on during his whole massage and hadn't noticed it. Had he? He must have, otherwise he wouldn't be ignoring me. But he hadn't stopped…

The thought shook my mind, and I didn't know which possibility was the most likely anymore. Maybe he hadn't seen? Maybe he didn't care? Maybe he did care, but stopping and drawing attention to it would have made it even more awkward. What was he supposed to say, anyway? 'Don't worry, Edward, my massages give all men massive erections.'

Then I thought, did he even notice the size? What did he think? I suddenly wished I had checked him out in the shower, just to have some inkling of how the erection I had been waving around would compare to his own. I bet he was big.

Oh my god, I had to stop thinking like that. He was clearly uncomfortable, and I longed to diffuse the tension with something, anything. He finally turned to me, and I knew I had to say something fast. Couldn't I just tell him I was thinking about a girl? But who?

Rebecca Romijn drifted through my consciousness and, desperate to make excuses for my man-massage –induced boner, I looked up to the chicks-in-leather-suits action sequence on the TV screen and blurted, "She's got great tits."

Just as Jasper said, equally hurried, "I might ask Lauren out."

My head whipped around so fast I almost gave myself another cramp. "What?"

He had pulled his legs to his side of the couch, and was more in a crouching position than anything else. He looked bewildered. "You like Lauren's boobs?"

"No," I gestured distractedly to the TV, not even sparing the supposedly nice rack another glance. "Hers. Why would you ask Lauren out?"

He gazed around the room, looking far more perturbed than his usual west coast demeanor allowed. "I dunno. I think she might say yes." He shrugged.

Always with that fucking shrug.

Lauren Mallory was not someone to be shrugged about. I should know. Besides, he couldn't ask her out – then she'd come over when I was already here and I'd have to make pointless small talk with her.

"She's an awful kisser," I pointed out.

If I hadn't had it before, that definitely got his attention. I could tell he was still confused but mostly he just seemed shocked. "How would you know?"

I blinked and looked around a bit, speaking casually. "She kissed me." I shrugged back at him, purposefully.

"When?"

By this point we were both sitting on our own isolated couch cushions, pressing against the pillows behind us, and I had tucked my uninjured leg beneath me. I wrapped my arms around my other knee, keeping myself as far from Jasper as the furniture would allow.

"Last year."

I could just make out his lips pursing in the dim light of the movie, and I could tell from his eyelashes that he kept bringing his gaze across the couch to me before swiftly reeling it back to his own tangled hands. I couldn't tell if he was looking at my knee, or my lap. "You never told me."

"It was… awkward."

"Awkward how?"

In truth, it was awful. Lauren had cornered me against the brick wall facing the boys' locker room when I was running late for track. She swiveled her hips up to mine, one hand on my chest and the other tracing my jaw. Before I could even draw in enough breath to ask what she was doing, her lips were pressed against mine and her tongue jabbed at my teeth. I opened my mouth, since that seemed to be what she was going for, and she swirled her tongue in my mouth a bit before pulling back.

She had looked at me expectantly, but I hadn't known what to say. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, so I just said, "Okay."

Wrong thing to say, apparently. Her brows arched and she looked thoroughly pissed off. "Okay?"

I said nothing.

"You're supposed to think it's sexy."

"Alright," I agreed, "it's sexy."

Which was a whole new level of the wrong thing to say.

I was never all that fond of Lauren, but I didn't ever mean to make her cry. She looked up at me through clumped wet lashes, and I could see the tears welling in her eyes, making them wide and glossy. The longer I stood waiting for her to say something, the thicker her tears became until they finally spilled over onto her cheeks.

I suddenly knew that, even without the kissing, I was in uncharted and dangerous territory. I grasped her shoulders and asked her not to cry. She felt so small under my hands.

Of course, at that, she cried harder. Finally, she wiped the tears from both eyes with the back of her hands and asked in a small voice, "Don't tell anyone, okay?"

I felt so confused and guilty in that moment that I didn't tell a soul. No one else from Forks High, not Alice when she asked how my day went, and not even Jasper when I jogged into the locker room.

But now I figured Jasper should know.

"She kissed me but then she got upset. It was weird."

"Oh," he said quietly. "If you've already kissed her."

"Yeah, and it was pretty lousy," I agreed.

"I guess I won't then."

"Okay."

I got the impression that even though we were talking about Lauren, neither of us was really sure what the other was saying. Or maybe we weren't sure what we were saying to each other? We both turned to stare at the movie until the scrolling credits finally released us from the awkwardness that had overtaken movie night.

If I'd had my way, I would have just gone home for the night after an awkward scene like that. But on crutches driving was an impossibility, and if I asked Jasper to drop me off he wouldn't have a way home. Instead, I told myself to just suck it up, and pretend that nothing happened.

I was surprised by the end of the movie, as I'd been lost in thoughts of Jasper's hands stroking my legs and what he'd think if he could really see my hard-on, uncovered and at full mast. I decided that it didn't matter, because it's not like he ever would, but I still had to admit to myself that I hoped he'd find it impressive. Or… sexy.

Shit.

I tried to fall asleep quickly that night, I really did, but I was too lost in an eddy of inappropriate thoughts. Besides, if I slept on my stomach my hurt knee pressed against the cushions of Jasper's couch and if I slept on my back my leg kept falling off the edge. It was a really narrow couch, which I never minded, but with my leg permanently in a half-bent position I no longer had enough room to sleep comfortably. I contemplated sleeping on the floor.

Hell, I could probably fall asleep anyway if my brain would just shut the fuck up. But, no, it was stuck in an infinite loop of Jasper's fingers and the look on his face when I told him I'd kissed Lauren. It had gone from apprehensive to something like alarm. I reasoned he was just disappointed but, over what, I couldn't be sure.

My fidgeting must have been obvious because eventually his voice broke through the darkness.

"Edward?" I tried ignoring him, unsure of what he might say, but he called out more insistently. "Edward."

"Mmm?"

"Do you, um, is your leg giving you trouble?"

"It's not too bad."

"We can switch, if you want."

"That's stupid, it's your bed."

"I don't really mind. I kinda feel like an ass making you sleep on a couch you're too big for anyway."

"Yeah, and I would feel like an ass making you switch for it."

"Why don't you just sleep up here. For the night. You can take half."

I sighed. I knew I shouldn't, especially given the fact that my penis suddenly listed Jasper-ward. But I was so exhausted, mentally and physically, and the idea of a real bed filled me with such relief… Besides, it's not like we had never shared a bed before. "Okay," I said quietly.

"Okay," he murmured.

I heard him shift over, and grabbed my pillow before hopping over to the left side of his bed. I slipped in as quietly as possibly, trying to let him fall back asleep, but the moonlight coming through his window revealed his wide-open eyes. I closed mine immediately, feigning sleep, but he must have stared at me for several minutes because he whispered, "goodnight" before turning away.

Only then did I let myself relax into the bed. It was unbelievably softer than the couch, and smelled overwhelmingly like Jasper – testosterone and Old Spice. I knew I was enjoying it too much but, once again, his calming influence came over me and I drifted easily off to sleep. My last thought was a far-too-complacent, I think I'm fucked.

That proved to be true when my first thought of the morning was an alarming, morning wood! At least I was on my side, I realized, so I couldn't pitch a tent. I opened my eyes slowly, taking in Jasper's shoulder. It was tan and well muscled and much closer than I'd expected.

I leaned my head back, and was met with sleepy blue eyes. "Morning," he said softly.

I must have rolled towards him during the night, because I distinctly remembered leaving more distance between us, but was now practically touching him.

Morning wood! my mind called again. I took a sharp breath. Practically touching him with morning wood! I rolled away, trying desperately to hide my arousal, and tried to hobble to the bathroom. I thought I had nearly made it, my shame undiscovered, when Jasper asked, "Dreaming of Rebecca Romijn?"

I looked back over my shoulder, still trying to hide my hard-on, to see him smirking. His eyes glimmered, like he had a secret.

"I guess."

But as I closed the bathroom door behind me I thought, Not even close, man. Not even close.

I leaned on the counter to take a look at myself. I didn't look so much tired as beat. My elbows were bruised and my hands were still red, and my entire face was splotchy. My bottom lip was puffy and red, with a scab that had formed on it over night, and my face was contorted into a perpetual wince. I figured Jasper must not have known what he was doing last night, because who in their right mind would make a move on this?

Still though, his effect on me was indisputable. I sighed and pulled open my boxers to take a look at the proof. God, it was practically purple. I must have been hard all night.

I knew I should just pee and get back to normal living, but that was impossible at the moment. I tried to think of unsexy things, but old ladies with fugly dogs just turned into the dogs that yapped when we did runs through town, which led me right back to a sweaty and heaving Jasper. In track shorts. So of course, instead of deflating, my erection strained skywards as an eager 'yes please!' and I was only left with one choice.

I felt kind of dirty doing this in Jasper's bathroom – worse, in Esme's house – but if my dick was going to act as a divining rod, I needed to get it under control. I knew taking another shower would look weird, so I just sat down on the closed toilet seat and grabbed a hefty wad of toilet paper.

I tried not to think about anyone specific. This response couldn't be solely about Jasper, I had just gone too long without release. So I licked my hand and pictured hands, someone else's, reaching into my boxers, just like I was doing. They stroked from the base upward, with insistent pressure, before swiping a thumb over the tip.

I repeated the action a few times before realizing I wasn't getting any closer. When I first wrapped my fingers around my aching dick there was relief, but I wasn't actually getting the job done. I realized a girl's hand wouldn't be able to do what I was doing – they wouldn't have the same size or reach – so I pictured larger hands.

That helped.

I closed my eyes, mindful of keeping silent, and pictured those hands sliding up my legs, reaching for my dick from below. They swiped up the inside of my thighs, kneading and massaging, before cupping my balls.

Christ, that felt good!

Finally the large, tan hands reached up to my erection, pumping slowly and languorously. In my mind I could hear myself asking, pleading, demanding that I needed something more.

A voice from my memory answered, low and soft. "I know. I'm gonna take care of it." And they certainly did. The hands sped up, twisting over my weeping head and smearing precum over the tip.

I had to bite my own swollen lip, which fucking hurt, to keep myself silent as I came into a wad of tissues. I breathed heavily, and finally re-opened my eyes.

I had made a mess. My hands and boxers were all sticky, and the tissue was dripping. Yuck.

I grabbed more toilet paper to wrap the wad in, and dropped it in the trash. Then I hopped to the counter to clean myself up. As I did, I swore.

When I looked into the mirror, I was confronted by the face of a boy who held a secret. A dirty secret.

That fantasy – those were definitely male hands. And that voice, promising to take care of it, of me. Fuck.

I had just been scammed by my own subconscious. I had jerked off to the idea of a man-massage, from Jasper.

I was so very, very, fucked.

Oh go on, review, you know you want to. You know I want you to.

Any thoughts on what Jasper's thinking?