A/N: As usual, I come bearing no excuses.

Disclaimer: No rights, no nothing. SM can keep her half-baked bloodsuckers.

Warnings & Guidance: Unedited one shots. Bad language, happiness and unhappiness, anger issues and maybe some fluff. Maybe some crack!shots (I'll give another warning but no apology for those). Some prompts may have to be hosted on my LiveJournal and/or AO3. Updates will have no pattern to them. Story will never be marked as 'complete'. You're welcome to make suggestions, if you'd like, or take the prompts for yourself (and let me know, so I can have some good reading).

These Days

Jacob saves Leah, but Leah doesn't need to be saved.
(expanded from my one shot 'Take Everything from the Inside' — set after the newborn battle in Eclipse)

Doctor Fang has overdone it on the morphine again, Leah thinks, when Jacob greets her with that wide, sunny smile and those shining eyes.

(Again, because she'd been there the first time the bloodsucker had injected him — Jacob had been comatose by the time their brothers had gotten him through the front door, and if she hadn't been able to hear his heartbeat she could have sworn he was dead. She knows that for a moment, Billy thought he was.)

She's not been in his bedroom since Rach and Becca dared her to put sand on his sheets and the underwear in his drawers. It had been worth Sarah shaking her head with quiet disappointment (which, somehow, had always been worse than her own mom's anger), and it had even been worth her dad cutting her allowance. But she'd gotten her own back on Rach and Becca by daring them to eat a worm each (because playing Truth or Dare with them as separate people could never happen).

Only the posters on the walls and the books on his bedside table have changed, as has the boy who the room belongs to. His nearly seven foot frame is sprawled awkwardly on his bed, his legs too long and the rest of him bruised but floating on cloud nine.

But Jacob is still a boy, sixteen years old and dealing with more shit than even she is.

"Leah," he says happily after he sees her leaning against the door frame. "We kicked ass today, huh?"

She nods, because she's not getting in the whole I had it, you moron! argument with him right now, nor the fact that the whole kicking ass thing turned a little bit scary for a moment.

She only wanted to check in. Annoying little brothers might be the only thing she has in common with Rach and Becca these days, but she has a lot more in common with Jacob than even he's willing to admit. Also, his tolerance of her is a lot higher than a lot of the others.

Besides, it wasn't like anyone else had jumped in between her and that feral newborn — whether she needed the help or not. Which she most certainly did not, thank you very much.

And she was not feeling guilty.

Jacob pouts. "You are unhappy. Why are you always unhappy?"

She just nods again, because she is and because she can't tell him that she's unhappy he almost died on her. That she'd felt his pain as vividly as if it were her own, and that she's particularly unhappy there's a strong stench of leech and Bella lingering in his tiny bedroom.

"What about you?" she asks before he can prod at the things she doesn't want to talk about. She forces her lips to pull into a tiny smile. "You look like you're having your own party in here."

For someone who has convinced the Pack he has a death wish, Jacob's not doing so bad. He's got the good stuff.

"Not so much." Jacob rolls his head on his pillow, turning his eyes back on the ceiling. "Bells—" Leah tries not to pull a face at the name, she really does try "—came by. Did some ass kicking of her own."

Well, it's about time. She's saved me a job, Leah wants to say. "How'd that go?" comes out instead.

He huffs loudly and closes his eyes, giving her his answer, which will be something else completely once he's up on his feet again, she's sure. Hopefully, he won't remember the leech lover breaking him into pieces again, and with a bit of luck maybe he won't remember her coming by and trying to be nice to him either.

Maybe he'll tell her why he put himself between her and that baby bloodsucker.

Jacob's eventually breathing turns even, and Leah wanders over to pick up his battered copy of Christine by Stephen King from the bedside table (trust him to own a horror novel about a damn car) before she makes herself at home on the end of his bed, careful not to jostle him or his mangled bones.

"Ge'rroff," he slurs half-heartedly, drugged up to his eyeballs.

"Sorry, no can do. Here I don't have to listen to Seth moon over Edward fucking Cullen," she tells him, although there are many other reasons she could give, but his broken-heart doesn't need to them hear right now.

Jacob mumbles incoherently, even to her own ears, but it's something furious and probably contains a few death threats towards his leech-lover's boyfriend. Sorry — fiance.

They'd all heard about that while they'd been tearing their teeth into marble and ice.

"Go to sleep, Jake," she says, leaning her back against the wall and opening the book. He's dog-eared the chapter where Arnie meets that high-school beauty.

Typical.

Jacob mumbles what could be another death threat — for her, this time — and is asleep within seconds.

Leah stays until Doctor Fang visits again, at which point she climbs out of the window rather than summoning the courage to walk through the house. That would mean she'd see Sam, who is escorting the parasite around their reservation.

Yeah. No, thanks.

She takes the book with her.