This oneshot is for the Slash Backslash contest. It's Edward/Jasper, rated M. If you don't like slash, don't read.

You can read the contest page here: http:/www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/u/2110516/

SHIFTER

Sterile. It's the first word that comes to mind when my eyes scan the perimeter of the drab, grey room. Desolate, depressing, and bereft also come to mind. The acrid smell of antiseptic and linen are the first indicators of where I am, without even needing to open my eyes to the sight of the sparse furniture and four, bare, white-washed walls. Sitting up in the bed, I stretch my legs and groan at how tight the muscles are and the way my joints ache. They need movement, they need to run, but they can't. They are captive in this oppressive cell.

The metal of the bed squeaks as I rise up from the thin mattress and shuffle toward the door. There's a mirror to my right but I don't bother to look at it. I don't like what I see when I do. Vibrant, sea green eyes are dull and grey, matching the sheets, the walls, the floor. My dark, auburn hair is shorn, and my head is all but bare except for the soft fuzz of the regrowth. Dark circles ring my eyes as if I've never slept, maybe I haven't, but what sickens me the most is the way my lean, muscular body has shrunken to no more than an emaciated skeleton.

Last time I was here, I broke the mirror. I found strength in the weakened arms I dared not think of as my own, and shattered the reflective glass with my fist. When the bright crimson of my blood ran down my injured hand I smiled. Finally. Colour.

I can't help but glance over, wondering if the mirror is still gone, but I can see it's there. A close inspection of my hand reveals that there are no scars, no wounds and no blood, only pale, grey, flawless skin. I scratch my chest, hating the way the stiff fabric of my grey linen uniform chafes.

I walk further and lean against the glass door and grin crookedly at the sight that greets me. No matter what, he's always there for me. Unchanging and ever present, he is like the stone that anchors me to reality, when I no longer understand the meaning of the word.

I wave at Jasper. He doesn't wave back from where he sits on the edge of his bed, but nods in acknowledgment. His cell is identical to mine, but he's pushed his bed against the far wall so that he can see my door from it. Maybe I'll do the same, but a part of me enjoys the anticipation of the walk and the much-needed exercise.

His head is shaved too, but I still see him as he can be – with wavy, blonde hair that rebels against convention and refuses to be tamed. His skin has taken on the same grey pallor as the rest of us, but I can image the sun-warmed gold it often is.

He is the one constant in my life and I can let out the breath that I'm holding, knowing that he's still there.

Day passes and I wait. The one meal comes – colourless sludge as bland and flavourless as the paint on the walls – the one meal there ever is, and I eat, having nothing better to do. I pace the cell, sometimes stopping to look over to Jasper's room, sometimes stopping to press my hands against the cold, cement wall and wonder what the sky would look like if there was a window.

I hate this place. Of all the places I go and all the places I've been, it's the worst. The only thing that makes it bearable is Jasper's presence. He reminds me that there is another world outside of these confines and all I have to do is close my eyes.

Finally, the lights flicker off and my time of waiting has come to an end. I lay down on the unforgiving mattress and close my eyes, hoping I don't come back here.

I've been coming here more often and I don't know why.

~~~
I squint my eyes against the harsh, bright lights, sensitive after the bleak surroundings of the cell world.

"Earth to Cullen," I lean back from the hand that waves in my face and smile as if I've been here the whole time.

"Sorry, guys. I was just a little distracted," I shake my head to clear away the cobwebs and sigh in relief at where I've arrived. I used to think this place was boring and longed to get away from it, but after some of the places I've been, it was like paradise.

Yes. Even high school can become paradise, but right now it burns too bright and the scents are overwhelming with their strength and variety. I reach into my bag and take two aspirin, swallowing them without water. The first thing I learned after visiting the cell world was to have aspirin at hand in any other place I went. Senses were too strong in comparison to the blandness of the cell.

"Distracted by the new girl," Jasper laughs, nudging me in the side and looking pointedly at a slender brunette sitting at the table across the cafeteria from us. I consider her for a second before shaking my head, enjoying the way my hair feels as it moves against my forehead and ears from the motion.

"That's the Chief's daughter," I protest. "I wouldn't dare sully her with my scandalous ways."

"Whatever, Cullen," Mike Newton rolls his eyes at me and throws a fry at my face. "It didn't stop you from deflowering Angela Weber and her dad's a fucking priest. The chief of police's daughter hasn't got anything on the purity of a priest's girl."

My eyes flicker to where Angela sits, three tables to the left of me, and I can't help the guilty twist of my stomach. It wasn't her fault, what I did. She was just a casualty from the period where I began experimenting and pushing my boundaries, seeing how far I could go before the world turned to flame and ash, burning me to the ground with it. I wish there was some way I could apologize and explain to her my reasoning for my actions, but it was impossible to do without telling her who I was. What I was.

It started on my thirteenth birthday. I went to bed that night, expecting nothing more than a few cake fuelled, crazy, sugar dreams. Instead I opened my eyes here, in this reality. It wasn't too drastic. Almost everything is the same here. Esme is still my mom, Carlisle is still my dad, Alice and Emmett my brother and sister, Forks my home, and I was the same age. It was little things that were different – my house was bigger and newer. There were more windows. It was always sunny here, something that never happened in the usual Forks, and I was inexplicably talented at attracting the attention of girls and playing basketball. And doing fractions. For some reason, 13 year old dream me could do fractions like nobody's business even though real me had to bring them home and ask my dad for help.

When dream-me finished the day and went to sleep, I woke up as real-me and life continued as normal. I never slept in mind, though my body appeared to sleep in the world I was not inhabiting.

It didn't happen for a few nights and I chalked it up to a crazy dream, until it happened again. My eyes closed as real-me and I simultaneously woke up as dream-me in the sunny version of Forks.

It was only the two places at first for the entire year I was thirteen and part of my fourteenth year. I didn't really know what to do about it, there was nothing I really could do, so I lived both existences to the best of my ability until I began to lose track of what was reality and what was dream. Sometimes I'd slip up and make a joke that only real-Jasper would get, and dream-Jasper would only give me a weird look like I'd hit my head or something. Sometimes I think I can tell him about the different places I go, in some places I already have and in some I haven't – some, like the cell world, I can't. I think he knows and the way he's looking at me now is like a question.

Is it you? His eyes ask. The real you?

I smile widely in answer and he relaxes. The aspirin begins to kick in and I can allow myself to relax as well, no longer overwhelmed by the heady scents of meatloaf Wednesdays, teenaged bodies, and boys' cologne.

"I think I need to get out of here." Standing up, I shove my tray aside and move toward the door without looking back to see if he follows. I know he will. The others will stay – they always do. I'm even more certain of this today because Lauren Mallory and Jessica Stanley are sitting at our table and Tyler and Mike would do just about anything to keep their attention.

Dark firs and cool shade border the school yard and I walk several feet into the woods before collapsing at the base of my favourite tree. I lean back and let the warm air and the scents of fresh earth and greenery wash over me and invigorate me while I wait for Jasper to catch up. He decides to sit down in front of the tree directly across from me today, and our legs are stretched out, almost touching my right side to his left because of the close proximity of the firs.

"Where were you really?" Jasper asks suddenly, fixing me with a dark blue gaze that's impossible to escape. His brow is furrowed and storm clouds rage above the seas in his eyes, daring me to lie to him when I know he sees straight through me to the writing of my soul.

"You won't believe me." It's true. This Jasper is very similar to my closest friend, real Jasper, who was about to have my parents commit me when I told him about the dream world. Maybe he succeeded because I began to visit the cell world within days of telling him the truth. It took months for him to accept my truths and act like my friend again. I couldn't risk losing dream Jasper like that. Not when I saw him and needed his companionship now that there were worlds so much darker and frightening than the original few.

"Try me." He has a slight Texan drawl to his voice in this world that never ceases to make me smile. It suits his sandy, sun-streaked hair, bronzed skin, and faded, thread-bare jeans.

"Some sort of prison. Maybe a mental ward or a hospital – I'm not sure, to be honest."

His reaction isn't what I expected. He didn't cuss me out like future world Jasper, or ignore me for weeks on end like glass world Jasper. He didn't laugh in my face like real Jasper. Instead, he raises his eyebrows slightly but says nothing, choosing to gaze up at the green canopy the trees created far above our heads.

"You're different sometimes, you know?"

"Hmm?" I watch him carefully to gauge his expression while he speaks, not really knowing how to handle this reaction.

"Most of the time you're this regular guy who's into girls, especially Bella Swan, baseball, school and parties, but sometimes you look around like you've never been here before. Like last week when we went with Mike and Lauren to Port Angeles for a movie and you couldn't remember where the theatre was, even though we've been there a hundred times. It was the first place we drove when you got your license for fuck sake but there you were, genuinely lost as we drove around in circles, waiting for you to remember."

"I didn't get much sleep that night," I murmur defensively, but curious to hear more. I remember that night.

"That's the thing, though. You came back to school the next day, the same way you've always been and I'm left wondering what the hell happened. Half the time I can't decide if you've gone insane or if I have. Especially since I prefer the you that got lost to the one who acted like it never happened."

"What do the others say?"

"Nothing. I don't even think they notice. Maybe I am fucking insane."

"I don't think you are," I answer softly, nudging my leg reassuringly against his.

Silence stretches between us for an indeterminate amount of time and I'm content to bask in the sensations of nature in quiet companionship. It's the changing of the birdsong that first alerts me to how much time has passed and I realize it's going to be dark soon.

"Where do you go when you're not you?" Jasper asks suddenly.

My mouth is dry and my throat is paralyzed. I don't even know where to begin to respond to the question.

"I mean, right now you're you and I get this weird feeling that tomorrow it's going to be the different you, but he never seems as real as this you. Where do you go when he's here?"

"I go a lot of different places," I reply, hesitant to reveal the truth even though my heart is racing with adrenaline.

"You can tell me," Jasper insists, nudging me with his leg and letting it rest there. "You can tell me the truth. I swear I won't tell anyone else. You can trust me."

"I know," I answer earnestly. "I don't really know where I go though. There's a few different places."

I explain to him about the cell world, the first alternate to dream world and one that was a bigger shift to handle. For instance, I'm always twenty there, years before I turn twenty in the real world. I don't think I'm twenty yet in the real world. I think I'm only seventeen there. I tell him how I only used to visit this world and the cell world in alternation with the real world, as if I was living a second and third life while I slept. He asks me if he's in those worlds and I answer truthfully that he is. He is in every world and the only common denominator in them. He fixed me with an odd look when I tell him this, but doesn't recoil, doesn't smile, doesn't say anything. He just nods, so I continue.

The next world to appear was night world, which was one of the most terrifying worlds. The earth is boiling with rage and rebellion, nothing is safe, and war is destroying everything and everyone bit by bit. During the day the survivors and refugees hide in bunkers deep beneath the earth's surface and emerge only at night when the soldiers and their fighting machines have returned to their stations. That Jasper was the first I told about the worlds and the only one to accept my words without question or doubt. Most people in the night world found ways to escape reality in order to cope with the unbearable circumstances of their life.

Future world entertains him the most because I talk about things that he can't even imagine. Inventions beyond what our reality can even consider possible because the technologies don't exist, but I can describe them with such detail and consistency that he knows I'm not making it up. Besides, dream-me is terrible at creative writing and he knows that. Fabrication isn't my forte.

Glass world is also impressive to him, because the world of sky scrapers and magnetic trains screams of the city that is so much in opposition to the rural area of Forks. I don't tell him how poorly glass world Jasper reacted to my parallel existences. The way I heard the cartilage give way against his fist or the way his rejection pained me far more than my broken, bleeding nose. I don't tell him about the bizarre, confusing world where I inhabit a girl's body. I try not to think about that one at all. I barely ever go there.

There are other worlds, countless oddities that I've only ever visited once or twice. The same ones keep recurring, the original ones: dream world, cell world, glass world, and night world. They used to always occur after a full day in the real world, but then even that began to change. I would shift from dream world to glass world, night to cell and back again, until I lost contact with the real world completely. I couldn't remember how many days I had lived since I'd last been there.

"I call it shifting," I end, my voice hollow as I wait for his judgment. I start when he moves himself closer and I can smell the mint of the gum he had chewed earlier on his breath. His eyes search mine, looking for something, an answer or a question that can fill in the pieces I've given him to help make the picture whole. "I shift through different realities, but they're all real."

"Am I real?"

He reaches out and grasps my hand. His guitar calluses feel rough against my skin and his grip is borderline painful, he's holding so tight. He's daring me, begging me to counter him and tell him he's not real, but he is. All of these worlds are.

"Of course you're real," I say through clenched teeth. There's something about his posture that makes me respond like this. I'm aggressive and through with explaining. I'm through with being rejected by Jasper time and time again. He can't deny the truth in this world. I won't let him. "Everything is real."

He lets go of my hand, but grabs both my shoulders instead, gripping tight enough that I can feel the bruises beginning to form beneath them. I don't worry – they won't be there when I come back. The only place where there are long-lasting consequences is the real world, and I haven't been there for quite some time. A nagging voice at the back of my head tells me this is something I should be concerned about, but I push it down and bury it.

"Lay off, man," I growl, and push his hands away, but he responds just as aggressively, pushing closer to me. I can feel the heat radiating off his skin as he glares at me, his face only inches from mine.

"Prove that you're real."

"I don't know how."

"Tell me something that you couldn't possibly know about me."

"How does that prove I'm real?" I raise my eyebrows in genuine frustration and confusion.

"I don't know. It just does!" His exasperation is clear in his voice and he pushes me back against the tree.

"You're left-handed."

My smartass answer earns me another shove into the tree. "C'mon, man. Take this seriously. Prove it."

"Alright, alright. Just lay off, okay? I can't think of something genuine when you're crushing me into the fucking tree."

"Sorry." He backs off and I rub my right shoulder which is throbbing.

I wrack my brain and try to think of similarities between all the different Jaspers, but can't find one solid trait that would be considered unique. He plays guitar in all the realities except the cell world. He loves my sister Alice in all worlds but this one. He has shaggy blonde hair in all realities but cell world.

I finally come to one similarity that I know will pinpoint the truth, but I don't want to say it. It means admitting to something I shouldn't know here. Still, it's the one thing I can think of that proves I know him outside of this world that will still make sense to him in this world. Briefly, I wish that I could do this as simply as I had in the night world where telling him I knew he could play guitar was a revelation. Music was banned in that world and admitting that I knew he could play would be drawing attention to his treasons.

"You have a birthmark shaped like a spade on your upper right thigh," I sigh and brace myself for the beating that's sure to follow.

"What the fuck?"

"Birthmark," I mumble, not wanting to repeat the whole thing.

"How do you know that?"

"Please don't make me say it."

"How do you know that?" His words are ice and I don't blame him because we both know what my observation means. "When have you seen me naked?"

"Night world," I answer shortly, feeling my stomach churn at the admission.

"What?"

I shrug, not really knowing what to say.

"Why have you seen me naked in night world?"

I raise my eyebrows. I don't want him to make me say it.

"You've slept with me in some of your other worlds? What the fuck, man?"

"It's different there," I hiss. My hands clench into fists at my side and now it's my turn to be outraged, to feel the blood coursing through my veins. "I was there and you were you, and I needed something to ground me because it's fucking terrifying there. You offered comfort and I took it."

"And we slept together?"

"Yes," I admitted, my voice hoarse. "It's the only world that we... I don't know. It's fucked up, okay?"

"Do you think of me like that here?" he asks, his eyes studying me with a look I can't decipher.

"I don't like to think about it," I answer, honestly. I beg him not to ask me why.

"Why?"

Shit.

"Don't."

"Why?" He asks, and his words and determination to find the truth are sandpaper, wearing down my stone resolve.

"Please, Jasper."

"Why?"

"Because even though I'm here, I'm still me. I'm always me, with all the emotions and experiences of the other worlds. With you, I'm still me, even if you don't remember or know what you are to me."

He steps back and leans against the tree as if gravity is too much and he needs the rough bark to hold him upright. I can barely stand and I know I'll stumble if I walk, so I remain where I am.

"How do you feel about me, really, here?" His words are barely above a whisper, raspy and low. I say nothing so he repeats it again.

"You're my best friend."

"Do you think about me, now, the way you think about me when you're there?"

I glare at him because I don't want to admit to it. I don't want to say the words because that makes it true. My silence is his answer.

"Jeez, Cullen." He slumps to the ground. "In other worlds are we...?"

"Just the night world," I answer roughly. It's all I can say. I can't tell him how I never feel safe there until his strong, sinewy arms wrap around me and ground me to the earth. I don't tell him that he is my anchor to reality and that arriving in a place where he doesn't exist would shred what's left of my weary soul because a world without him was not a place I was able or willing to exist.

"Fuck."

"I'm sorry."

"Edward-"

I don't hear any more because I'm already gone. The random shifts started recently in the approximate time surrounding my seventeenth birthday. I no longer had to sleep to wake up somewhere new. I would just be. The only place that this didn't happen was the cell world. I don't want to think about what that means either.

I can smell gunpowder and the smoke in the air burns my eyes and lungs.

"Shit!"

"What?"

I turn, startled, to see Jasper sitting on the edge of my bed. His position is so similar to cell Jasper's that my head reels and I have to sit down. The bed is the only furniture in the underground barracks, so I'm sitting next to Jasper. Whereas dream Jasper is always warm, radiating heat like a child of the sun, night Jasper is cool and calm like the moon. He accepted my insanity without question, accepted me and I did the same for him.

"What's wrong?"

"I told you the truth," I grind out, finding it difficult to breathe. Night world has a way of getting soot and ash into your lungs and your very soul. I feel blackened here.

"Where?"

"Dream world."

"How did it go?"

"I thought it was okay, but then..." I can't speak with the anger that flooded my system. Instead I throw my fist into the wall, thrilling in the pain as it crunches against the metal wall and drives out my emotional scarring. I punch again and again until I can move no more, my arms restrained at my sides.

"Breathe."

His lips are at my ear and his body is pressed flush against my back. I struggle, but he tightens his grip and I give up.

"Breathe," he repeats.

I take and deep breath in and exhale slowly, feeling the slack in his arms when I convince him I'm calm. That's when I jerk my body, trying to escape, but he tightens his grip again and bites down into my shoulder. I shove the entire weight of my body backwards, knocking him down onto the bed and move to escape, but he pulls me down with him and rolls on top of me so I'm pinned beneath his weight.

"Breathe," he orders. I do.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

The aggression with which he's pushed my back onto the bed makes me react in a way I desperately want to hide, but don't stand a chance of concealing and I know he notices. He notices because he pushes back, increasing the friction and I can't stop the groan that tumbles past my lips.

My erection digs into his hip and when he shifts his weight minutely, I buck my hips against him instinctively. My entire body is tense, waiting for this, trying to anticipating his next move to prepare for the overwhelming sensations, but he never does what I expect him to do.

I ground myself against him, shameless as I seek out my own pleasure, and I feel my cheeks heat with embarrassment of the whimper that escapes me when he pulls away. The void that exists without his touch quickly disappears when his hand cups me, rubbing and stroking me through the course denim of my jeans. I arch my back, wanting more, but it's not what he wants for me. He's prolonging it, taking his time in bringing me to my end. I moan and curse as he moves along my neck, alternating rough kisses with gentle nips and bites, and a few that are not so gentle. He's leaving marks, but nobody cares about these things in night world.

I need more. I want to feel him so I drag his hips back to mine until my full length is pressed into his hips and I can feel his against mine and I tug, and grind, and push and pull until I feel the steady build. I can feel my blood draining and centralizing as we groan and take from each other. My hips rock faster, needing this, needing nothing more than this. The pleasure full pain increases and I need release and I rock harder, faster, rougher. I need this. I need this. I arch.

I scream in frustration at his sudden absence. I'm alone here. The glass world with its dark rooms and neon lit nights. Jasper isn't here but my need still throbs painfully against my leg. A sound of desperation escapes me and I fumble with the button on my pants, hissing when I grab hold of my cock with my own hand. I tug and pull but it's not the same. Jasper's hands are larger and rougher. I can't replicate his feel, but I pump faster and harder, aching to reach my climax. Almost there.

A sharp bite on my neck and Jasper is rubbing my cock furiously. I don't care where I am or how fast I'm shifting. I need this. My movements are increasingly erratic as I grind my way towards oblivion. I'm on fire, burning with need and desire and I'm so close it's nearly crippling as my muscles tense. Jasper can sense I'm close because he moves harder, more aggressively, and I'm crushing myself against him with all the strength I have.

My hips jerk and my body twitches as I come against him, still grinding as he finds his own release in the thrill of getting me off. We collapse onto the bed, spent, our laboured breathing the only sound.

I blink and it's gone.

I feel empty as though my very life has been taken from me and I don't know where I am.

The walls are white, the covering on the bed a rich gold and I blink in the dim, grey-green light, dazed. My cock still throbs with the residual waves of my recent orgasm, but Jasper is nowhere to be seen and it fucking hurts that he's gone.

He won't be here though. Not in this bed.

I look at the stacks of CDs pushed against the far wall next to the expensive stereo system my father bought me on my fifteenth birthday and narrow my eyes at it, wondering if it's really there.

I think I know what this world is, and I'm not ready to face it yet. I dump my clothes in the hamper, not caring if my mother sees the sticky, white mess I've made, and I stand under the warm water. I don't lift a hand to wash, I just stand there, staring at the pale blue tile.

"Edward, honey? Are you okay?" My mother knocks on the door.

"Yeah. Fine," I answer and briefly wonder what time it is, how long I've stood beneath the running water.

The shifting is getting out of control, happening so fast, without warning, without sleep. It scares me and I lower myself to my knees before vomiting into the draining water and am left shivering despite the warmth of the shower.

When I feel strong enough to stand, I do and towel myself off, taking time to breathe carefully. I haven't been here in so long, I have to open several drawers before I find the one that contains my boxers and I dress quickly.

"Edward, Jasper's here?" My mother calls from the downstairs as I finish pulling on my t-shirt.

With a quick glance in the mirror, I'm off, running down the stairs, coming to a dead stop when I see him.

Jasper. Real Jasper. Real world with real Jasper.

"Dude, you're looking at me weird. Like you haven't seen me in years or something."

"I haven't."

Jasper laughs. "Be serious. We played basketball yesterday."

"No. We didn't." I answer, happy my family is occupied and not observing my conversation, not seeing the way the knowledge of truth dawns on Jasper and changes his eyes into a look of understanding. "I haven't been here for so long, I thought I'd forgotten how to come back. I never thought I'd see you again."

"I told you," he replies solemnly. "I'll always be there for you. Always."

"I know. You are."

He studies me then, with my odd words and choked voice and nods. He knows. He accepts.

"Let's play ball," he offers.

I accept.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews and concrit are always welcome and remember to vote for your favorite entries in the Slash Backslash contest!