—On the Ferris Wheel—
by
Children's screams could be heard all over. They wrapped around me like a blanket. Flashes of colour, smells sickeningly sweet yet so thin from their flakiness.
I couldn't pay attention to it. Any of it. The fact that he stood, with his grey shoulder next to me, just an inch away, was enough to take my breath, all of it, away.
Something in me kept wanting to ask why I was here, with these people. They, so much more than I could ever be, seemed to find me worth a time. And I couldn't fathom why.
We walked slowly, like in the movies, and people stole cautious glances. I heard Rosalie flicking her long blonde hair over her shoulder in her 'look at me' way. I couldn't be sure she did it, but I daren't tear my eyes from his angel's face.
Either he didn't know I was staring, or he didn't care.
I wondered whether his hand itched like mine. Itched to touch his perfect face, his long-fingered hands. It was all I could do to keep from twitching.
As we reached a central point, marked by a cotton candy stand, they discussed meeting points and times in voices so soft that I couldn't hear them for the most part. He stood there, staring into space and seemingly not listening to any of them. He appeared to be in deep concentration but at the same time, his face was completely blank, and not in a covered up way but more of a clueless fashion. Considering that we were talking about a mind-reader, he knew exactly what was going on in their minds, and all the minds around us. Everyone but me.
After a moment, he turned his head, his determined gold eyes drilling right into my skull, and jerked his head so infinitesimally to the right.
With that we slunk off, just the two of us. At first we were slow, deliberately taking our time, hiding in plain sight. But we casually sped up, and it felt less like a game and more like we were on the run, being chased by an unimaginable threat.
His athletic body overtook my small frame. Leading, as was his habit. We ran through a hall shaped like a maze and filled with wacky mirrors to distort your form into every extremity.
I tried not to think about the fact that I couldn't be trusted to run without causing definitive harm to myself and everyone around me. I thought only of him, that I was running with him, doing this with him. For him. For me.
It seemed like a year . . . or a century — forever — when we came to a halt at the giant wheel. Pairs lined up, filing into the old-fashioned, stiff red chairs with gold tape lining the edges.
My heart leapt into my mouth and stayed there, pulsing like thunder.
"Who's going to find us thirty feet up?" he asked me with a grin.
I realised my mouth was open, and shut it quickly, before remembering he'd asked a question, and opened it again only to gape at his beauty while my heart hammered at my tonsils, making desperate bids for freedom with every pounding beat.
His smile stretched, delving into his beatific eyes as he grabbed my arm, just above my elbow, and tugged me closer.
I slid into the seat beside him, awestruck at the proximity I felt, and watched him pull the bar across our laps. It gave a groaning squeal of protest before locking into place.
My heart seemed to swell, threatening the expanses of my head itself, as I waited for the heights to grow and the sights to widen while others piled on behind us.
Ten feet up and I felt cold marble envelope my hand, skin smooth and impeccable.
He was holding my hand!
I concentrated on the metal restraining device, memorizing every single scratch and patch of rust it had, and tried to relax my hand in his, so my eagerness wasn't quite so blatant.
I couldn't tell – not through the pounding in my ears – that he was actually speaking to me.
The only way I could get any kind of hold on my pulse was to pull my hand from his and stare as far away from his face, particularly his eyes, as humanly possible. The proximity was still there but as I tried to sink into the surroundings, I felt a little closer to myself, as opposed to some lost soul floating above the constraints of time on a high from his very company.
After a moment he would later tell me lasted far too long, I turned to face him.
"I'm sorry? I couldn't hear you."
And those words must've been the first I'd spoken in months.
For a second he stared, his eyes not quite burning but there was energy in them that felt like friction, before his face broke into a hundred smiles and his laughter trickled into the air around us.
"No one else in the world is quite like you are," he explained, for all the good it did.
It seemed like he wanted to go on, so I said nothing and tried not to think about what I was doing because my mind can take over, and, before I can control it, I'll be back to the non-speaking mess of five minutes ago, and coherent conversation will be a myth long forgotten.
"In all my time no one has affected me the way you do. Since you, I can't hide what I think and feel any more than you can, which is saying something."
This must have been written so that I had no lines, but at least I could listen to his velvet voice.
"You mean too much to me now, more than anything the world has to offer. This is more than anything I could ever have imagined. It's beyond soul mates. It's everything in nothing, and about as natural as existence."
What was I supposed to say to that?
I tried to open my mouth but he covered it with his own.
The kiss was like poison, intoxicating but addictive. It was a drug beyond imagination, an experience I couldn't exist without, not after the first dose. But it was fulfilling and final, with a new beginning on the horizon.
A beginning with him.
XXX
A/N: This used to be an original fic but I'd always written it for Edward and Bella's sake. Now I finally got around to make it official.