"Love for the Unloved" Contest Entry

Title: The First Five Times

Your pen name(s): Stretch

Featured "B-list" Character(s): Leah Clearwater & Embry Call

If you would like to see all the stories that are a part of this contest visit the "Love for the Unloved" C2 Community:

http:/www(DOT)fanfiction(DOT)net/community/Love_for_the_Unloved_Contest/72809/

A/N: Both the inspiration for this story, as well as the title itself, come from the song The First Five Times by the band Stars. I don't own anything.

Seth imprints.

Seth imprints on a sixteen year old girl he bumps into at the Port Angeles Mall.

Seth imprints and brings her home, along with that look of utter joy and pure devotion, that look that Leah has been running from for the past three years.

That look that now drives her out of the house and into the pouring rain – away from the Eskimo kisses and the batted lashes and the adoring proclamations of never-ending happiness.

That is not her world. The never-ending part, yes. The happiness part, not so much.

She wants to run, desperately wants to run. But she doesn't want to be in their heads, and she certainly doesn't want them in hers right now. So she runs on two feet, pounding the pavement until her pitiful human lungs can't take it anymore and she's forced to slow down and examine her surroundings.

Part of her wants to laugh when she looks up and sees where she is, but she doesn't have the energy. It's too exhausting being miserable sometimes.

And yet, as she knocks on the door to his apartment, some dark and twisted part of her can't help but think that it's fitting how her feet have led her here.

After all, there's only two of them left now.

The bitch and the bastard child.

Fitting.

The first time it happens outside.

They'd been running, racing. Embry's idea. They waited until everyone else was asleep, then decided to go take a patrol. Completely unnecessary, there haven't been vampires here since…well, since.

(Not since that Swan girl and her big brown eyes and her plaintive wish to die as quickly as possible.)

But it's an excuse and Leah revels in having the forest to herself. Themselves (Embry's so quiet that it's easy to forget he's there). And if he can hear half the tormented thoughts rolling around in her head, he doesn't say anything.

When they're done he phases first, after she's beaten him around the course and back again. And Leah's too lazy (too tired, too disinterested) to bother finding someplace more private to make the change herself. It's not like either of them has anything they haven't seen before.

But his eyes linger on her body just a second too long, on the swell of her hips and the curve of her legs, and she notices.

She wants to be angry with him, but it's been so long since she's had someone look at her that way, and a lifetime of regret seems like a small price to pay for an evening of carnal pleasures to chase away that empty feeling echoing behind her ribcage. And so she backs him up against a tree and takes him.

He's not gentle with her, but only because she's rough with him. Her teeth leave red little half-moons all along his neck, payback for the way her pushed her off and threw her to the ground. And when she pulls him into her hand and squeezes, he grabs her ass hard enough to leave bruises, but that's the way she wants it.

After all, they're not making love.

It's just fucking.

And her moans are guttural and feral, more animal than human, as he parts her legs and drives into her, before pulling all the way out again and leaving her empty throbbing for more. With each thrust she claws at his back, drawing blood from wounds that have healed themselves before he can even enter her again.

The buildup is as harsh and sudden as their encounter, and Leah swears as she clenches around him. But there's no cuddling afterwards, no pillow talk. It's all she can do to grab her pants and her top and run away into the night, before he even has a chance to protest.

Embry watches her go, and lies there in the leaves for a long time.

Leah climbs in her bedroom window like a teenager breaking curfew, and doesn't phase for the next four days. But it doesn't matter. Everyone already knows.

She bumps into Quil at the supermarket and he just glares at her from across the aisles. She smiles back sweetly, thankful that she's deaf to all the hateful things in his head. As if he has any right, as if any of them do.

Their perfect futures are all accounted for.

No one ever promised her a happily ever after, though.

The second time is an accident.

Sort of.

"We need to talk about this," Embry says as he opens the door. But the way he says it has all the earmarks of Sam telling him they need talk about it.

Leah's not that inclined to do what Sam wants anymore.

"What's there to talk about?" she asks, trying to keep things nonchalant. "We had sex, big deal."

They're sitting on the threadbare couch he stole from his mother's basement. He's got a coffee table fashioned out of plywood and cinderblocks sitting in front of them (it matches the TV stand) onto which he's placing shot glasses.

Three for her.

Four for him.

They both know the drill (stupid healing factor). He fills hers with whiskey, his with tequila – both cheap and bought from the drug store, but that makes it all the better. It actually burns for an instant as they fire off the shots in succession. Embry racks them up again.

If they keep going like this maybe they'll actually manage to get a little tipsy.

"I get that it's just sex," he finally says, though there's a mournful quality to his voice that Leah can't quite place. "Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to oblige but…"

"But what?"

He eyes her cautiously. "You can't keep doing this to yourself, Leah." And he says it like he knows, like he actually understands. "You have to let Sam go."

It takes all the will in her body not to throw the shot glass against the wall and watch it shatter into a million tiny fragments. But it's full, and that would be a waste of perfectly good liquor. "It's. Not. About. Sam," she explains when it's empty once more.

He just gives her that knowing stare, and she withers beneath it. "Okay, it's not just about Sam."

He accepts the truth with a nod.

"You want to tell me what it is about, or you just want to keep using me for my body?"

Leah desperately wants that to be a joke, but the longer the seconds drag on she begins to realize he's actually serious. "I don't really want to talk about it, no."

But they keep up their marathon drinking, and a few dozen shots later, after the fire has gone out of her mouth, she puts her hand on his thigh and starts talking. She tells him that she let Sam go years ago (it's almost the truth) and that it's more about what he took from her anyway. Her love, her innocence, and that belief in forever and always. Then she tells him about what he doesn't know, about losing her humanity. Then losing her Dad. And now losing her brother.

She tells him she's not normal, and how she doesn't think she will be ever again. She talks about the babies she can't have, and how that probably means there's no imprint for her either, no place in this world. And that in the end she knows her pack is going to leave her the same way all the other men in her life have.

He let's her talk until her mouth is dry, and when she's done he looks at her like he's seeing her for the first time. Leah wants to grab all the words and stuff them back into her mouth, switch off his tiny smile, and run from the room.

But she can't, so instead they fuck right there on the couch. Before she can even get fully undressed he's inside her, pushing with a force that would've broken any other woman.

She digs her nails into the small of his back and makes him do it even harder.

And somewhere between the pleasure and the pain, Leah looses herself. And she'd be lying if she said that wasn't the point.

"Fuck!" she screams, as the world explodes. He milks her orgasm a few moments longer, until the way she throbs against him has drawn a climax from him as well.

He tells her she can spend the night here if she wants, and have his bed.

Leah sleeps on the couch.

"Maybe this is what's supposed to happen for us," he jokes weeks later, while they're sharing popcorn and a movie about the undead and the apocalypse and other cheery subjects. Leah's taken to spending a lot of her free time at his apartment now. She says it's because she needs to get away from her brother, but it's really because she's got no place else to go. Embry is good enough to pretend like he doesn't know that's the case. "Maybe we can't imprint cause we're, you know, supposed to be with each other."

She just sighs and hands him the bowl. There's no humor in this. At least, none that she can see.

"I'm tired of things happening because that's just the way it's supposed to be," she mutters bitterly. "Don't you miss having a choice?"

"Okay, what if we choose to be together?" he asks, his voice nothing but serious this time.

Leah doesn't want to think about that. "We'd just wind up hurt in the end."

"Why?"

"Because," she says. "That's how it's supposed to be."

The third time they should've seen coming. It was the night of Jared and Kim's wedding, after all.

And Leah knows its going to suck from the moment she gets out of bed.

But she puts on her dress and smiles and stands next to her mother as they watch the vows and the "I dos."

The reception is worse. Everyone's got a someone. Even her little brother (he's talked whatshername into coming, and she's done up like a prom queen, and looks like she's already planning their own wedding from the moment she arrives).

After dinner the dance floor is full. Embry's twirling with the same bridesmaid he walked down the isle next to, one of Kim's friends from high school. Each time the music stops he tries to politely get away, and each time it starts up again she keeps him locked in her grasp.

He looks at Leah for help, pleading silently with his eyes.

Leah just continues to drink heavily. And the next time he looks up to find her, she's gone.

She always slips out before him. He always loses the race.

When he finally catches up with her she's sitting on her own front porch, chain smoking a box of Parliaments that she stole out of Sue's purse, and staring off into the distance.

"Thanks for all the help back there."

"You're a big boy, Call. I thought you could take care of yourself."

She goes to take a drag, but he swipes the cigarette from her hand and crushes it beneath his heel before she can get it to her lips. "What, you didn't want to dance with me?" He's teasing her now.

At least, Leah hopes he is.

"I'm not really the dancing type." She gets up to go inside, and he follows without being asked.

"You'll find him, you know," he says from the doorway. "One day, you'll find the right guy Lea-"

"Don't," she interrupts him, slumping against the wall in the hallway. "Please, just don't. Don't be nice to me right now, don't be that guy. I'm not sure I can handle it."

He doesn't listen (he never does). Instead he picks her up, stands her back up on her feet. "You'll find him," he says again.

Leah reaches out and pulls his face to hers, parts his lips, shoves her tongue down his throat. She peels off his tuxedo jacket, and rips his shirt open when her thick fingers can't make the buttons go through the holes. She rubs her hands up and down the tightly wound muscles in his chest, his arms. Leans into his neck. Leans on him for support.

And he lets her.

She's using him, and they both know it.

He lets her do it anyway.

And when she hikes up her little black dress, and guides him into her depths he moans like he doesn't mind.

He pins her to the wall and she wraps her long legs around his waist, drawing him into her again and again and again. She doesn't swear this time, she doesn't scream. Leah's silent as that fire builds in her stomach and rushes out in every direction – into her fingers, her toes, the backs of her eyes. He's there with her a second later, erupting inside her, and stretching out both their highs until he can't hold them both upright anymore.

They break apart, collapsing on opposite sides of the hall, staring at each other until Embry regains the feeling in his legs (it doesn't take that long, but he pretends like it does). She walks him to the door, and before he leaves he asks if she'll be alright.

"Yeah, why?" she demands skeptically. As if she wasn't a wreck, as if she hadn't just used him for pity-sex moments earlier.

"Cause this isn't healthy," he tells her. "For you, I mean."

She wants to yell at him, say something scathing in response, but the wedding has drained her of most of her energy, and he just took what little reserves she had left. "Why do you even care?" she mumbles, and the door closes softly in his face.

Embry spends the entire walk home wondering the same thing.

Sue cleans the house a few days later, and finds four men's buttons in the hallway.

She doesn't say anything.

There's nothing left to say.

You know, I'm not him.

They run together, veering towards a nondescript location they know only by scent. The first time they raced, Embry let her win (he thought it would make her feel better).

The second time he realized he didn't have to; she'd beat him anyways.

Leah laughs silently, bitterly. I never said you were. I think I know who I'm fucking.

Fucking. Nothing more.

She darts into his line of sight, then vanishes again, a gray missile through the trees.

I didn't mean it like that.

Leah is tired of playing games, but she's even more tired of going into his head and finding the answers herself. Everyone's entitled to their secrets, after all. It's a frustrating two way street. Then what did you mean, Call?

I meant I won't ever hurt you like he did.

This time she laughs aloud, and the barking echoes through the miles and miles of green around them. Don't make promises you can't keep.

Her thoughts get away from her. Thinking about how they all promise that, they all promised that. But Sam can keep his wife and her muffins and her damn little pink plus signs. She's just half of another, pointless whole. The whole pack is.

And Leah's the remainder.

She wins again. But by the time Embry gets close enough to realize it, she's also long gone.

The fourth time something goes wrong.

Back in his apartment. Back on the couch. She's back after a particularly bad shift at work. And, like always when things are bad, she uses him.

But things are happening that she can't comprehend, like the fact that he's carefully pushing up her shirt rather than tearing it off.

Like the fact that he's kissing his way up her neck rather than biting it.

Like the fact that his fingers are combing through her hair rather than pulling it.

Like foreplay, or the smile on his face, or the way he's pulling her closer without breaking any ribs.

She pushes against him harder, trying to draw the fight out of him. Her mouth is rough against his, biting at his lower lip. But his tongue is soft as it strokes against her own, and his hands are soft as they trace the paths up and down her back. And Leah closes her eyes for a second and it feels like another person in another place, from a time she's tried too hard to forget.

And she knows it then, without asking or having it said. A switch has flipped, the scales have tipped, and they're no longer balanced.

She pushes him off of her with all the force she can muster. He rolls onto the makeshift coffee table. The wood cracks under his weight as she scrambles to find something, anything. Her underwear, the exit.

"You asshole," she whispers bitterly, clutching her clothes to herself and lurking in the doorway. "You just had to do it. I told you not to...but you went and did it anyway!"

He tells her not to be a hypocrite. "After all, you fell in love with me first."

She leaves him lying there.

Leah's standing on his doorstep in the driving rain, acting like she doesn't feel it. She probably doesn't. Her tank top and cutoffs and the dark circles under her eyes betray the fact that she's been running all night.

He opens the door before she even gets there, like he was expecting her. Like he knew she was coming.

"I can't do this," she tells him (but what she really means is I can't do this again).

"Yes you can," he assures her (but what he really means is it won't be like that with me).

Embry pulls her inside and she lets him. He pushes the hair out of her face with his big hands, and she lets him. He presses his lips softly against her own.

And she lets him.

He smells like pine trees and he tastes like honey and sweat, and his warm skin against her own threatens to make them both smolder until they're nothing but ashes. Still, when his hands begin to peel off her wet shirt, she shivers.

"We've done this before," he whispers in her ear.

"Not like this."

"You've done this before."

Leah shivers again, only it's not his fingers this time, but the ghost that's always at her back. "Not in a long, long time."

She raises her arms like a little girl, and pulls the wet shirt off and hurls it into a corner. A heartbeat later he's got her pulled up against him, bare chest to bare chest. "Then we'll take it slow," he promises.

The fifth time they don't have sex.

They make love.

And it's different from before in that it's slow, achingly slow. He takes his time, explores every inch of her damp skin – with his hands, with his lips, with his tongue. He finds that spot in the crook of her neck with his mouth and Leah just moans, toes curling into the tangle of sheets.

And sometimes it feels so much like before, so much like a different time, one with cooler bodies and warmer hearts, in the back of a truck parked down by the river. But Leah doesn't want to remember that – she doesn't want Sam here, not now – so she keeps her eyes open. And Embry's soft smile and high cheekbones and tickling fingers are a constant reminder that something has changed. That something is different.

And after a while she doesn't have to remind herself anymore.

From her neck his lips travel down. Down through the valley between her breasts, down across her ribs and the flat expanse of her stomach. And from resting casually on her knee his hand travels up. Up, traversing the dark flesh of her leg, leaving a trail of goose bumps in the wake of its soft caress.

Hands and lips collide somewhere in between, at the apex of her legs, and when Leah feels Embry's warm breath as he plants a kiss atop her soft curls, it suddenly becomes so much harder to breathe.

His fingers graze the inside of her thighs, coax her legs apart, and with the lightest flick of his tongue he reaches into her for a taste. He practically purrs into her depths, a low vibration that sets off a spark at her very core. Carefully (and slowly, oh God so slowly) he trails upwards and when his mouth finds her clit it's entirely too much and not enough.

Leah swears softly to the ceiling, and finds herself arching into his touch, so close to the edge and yet desperate for more. More touch, more heat, more…him. And like he knows what she's thinking, like he can sense her aching need to be filled, he pushes a finger into her. Then another, exploring her soft folds with gentle strokes, as if she's a place he's never traveled before.

Teeth bite down on her lip as Leah finds herself beginning to push up against him, rising to meet his movements. With his free hand Embry traces patterns and shapes across her skin. He draws circles around her nipples. He draws wolves on her hipbone. Birds on her elbow. Writes his name above her bellybutton. And all the while she's giving herself up to him, more with each thrust, each lick.

Finally, when the stars are glowing behind her eyes, his lips abandon her clit and press against her ear. "Let go, Leah," he whispers throatily. "You have to let go."

He pushes into her one final time and she curves up to meet him, capturing his lips against her own as her body explodes into a million, white hot particles.

She's not sure how long she lays there, but when her breath returns and the room comes back into focus, Embry's looking down at her with a satisfied smile on his face. "You okay?"

"I don't know yet," she mutters, but there's something close to a grin working its way over her lips. "Help me up?"

He gets to his knees, and pulls her up beside him. "Why?" he asks, as she steadies herself against his shoulder.

"So I can return the favor." In their rush to the bedroom, in his insistence to remover her clothes first, his jeans are still miraculously on. Leah thinks it's a little unfair, as her hands run up the inside of his legs, brushing against his crotch and the tell tale bulge there. "Feels like I'm not the only one who enjoyed that."

He traces the same pattern on her own legs, thumbing her tender clit in retribution. She hisses, to his obvious delight. "Of course – do you have any idea how hot that was? How hot you were?"

She fumbles with the button (as if they were never meant to be undone by her) and Embry covers her hand with his own before she can rip the denim apart at the seams.

"I'm running out of clothes," he teases. So they compromise, and she does the zipper while he does the button, and beneath the jeans he's as naked as she is.

"Laundry day?" she teases back. With a grin he tries o push her back onto the mattress, but she stops him. He looks different now (or maybe it's just that she's finally taking the time to really look). But she gently drags her fingers down from his shoulders, down across the planes of his chest, down to the tops of his hipbones. She drinks in his body with her eyes, and when that doesn't prove to be enough, she drinks him in with her mouth.

He's salty and sweet and absolutely searing against her lips as she kisses his neck, his nipples, the space between his ribs and the muscles rippling over them. Instead, she pushes him down, tackling him in a heap.

"So I take it you want to be on top this time, huh?" Leah steals a move from his playbook, reaching between his legs and silencing him with a squeeze. He pushes up into her touch, and she does it again.

"Do you want me?" she asks, the sudden sincerity catching him by surprise. She moves her hips down against his own. "I mean really, not just like before?"

He rubs her arms gently, up and down, and with all the assurance he can muster says, "do you really need to ask?" With steady hands he guides her down his shaft, and the feel of him filling every inch of her almost sends Leah reeling.

"You are so tight," Embry hisses, flexing his hips to go as deeply as he can.

She rises up, only to bury his length inside her again. She loves the look on his face, devours it. Something about knowing that she can twist up the corner of his mouth and wrinkle his brow, and bring that devilish look into his usually patient eyes…it makes her feel powerful. It makes her feel beautiful. And she likes it. "And whose fault is that, huh?"

"Mine. Abso-fucking-lutely mine."

He pulls her down against his chest, capturing her mouth, moaning into her each time she moves across his body, each time she takes in his length up to the hilt. The friction is glorious, the feel of his slick skin against every inch of her own sends Leah spiraling back towards that place full of stars and fireworks and that oh so beautiful burn.

"I…oh," she babbles wordlessly against the side of his face, tangling her fingers in his hair. "Please…"

"Say it," he begs her in return. The scent of her is thick on his breath. "Please Leah."

"Embry." Lightning shoots down her spine, and she clamps down on him harder than ever before. Her body pulses, pounds. And for the first time since it all began, she breathes his name aloud against the skin of his neck, whispering it like a prayer. "Oh, Embry."

His world explodes at the sound of her voice, like it's the most seductive thing she's ever said.

In his mind, it is.

"I told you it would be okay."

Even in the post coital haze, Leah can't help but chuckle (just a little). "It's only been an hour. Give it time - I'm sure something will go wrong."

"And what then?"

She buries her head deeper into the crook of his neck. "I don't know. I guess we'll just have to see."

But that night she stays in his bed.