Disclaimer: Sadly I do not own any of the Twilight characters, they are Ms Meyer's creation. However, there will probably be a few of my own added eventually, I usually make a few up to fill things out. I'm rating this 'M' as usual for language, violence and sex and it's slash, people, so if that's not your thing, turn back now :o)

This one is slightly different to my previous Twilight fics in that I'm writing from two different points of view, rather than sticking with just the one. So I hope I can do them both justice at the same time! The first chapter introduces you to both of my 'outcasts' and as usual, I appreciate you all reading and reviews are very welcome! :o))

CHAPTER ONE

Paul's POV

I was born on the La Push reservation on 8 March 1990 to Mick and Julia Lahote. I didn't really remember the place because we left when I was four years old, before I had chance to go to school or make friends. Dad always told me we left because of the problems he and Mom were having, which he blamed totally on her, but I found out much later he cheated on her with another woman and leaving La Push had been a last ditch attempt to save their marriage after Mom threatened to leave over it.

We wound up in Tacoma in a two bedroom town house two blocks from the steel factory where Dad found a job. Mom waited tables in a diner and a few months later I started at the local school. I hadn't had the opportunity to interact with other kids in La Push and had no idea how to make friends, but even if I had I wouldn't have had much chance. The white kids in Tacoma hated me on sight, calling me names like 'Redskin' and other insults that even at five years old stung like hell and made me feel like an outcast.

I didn't bother my parents by telling them what was going on; they already had enough problems trying to patch things up and even at that young age I was aware that me whining and complaining would only make things worse. I put up with it for a couple years, during which time Mom and Dad's already volatile relationship didn't improve, going from endless charged silences to screaming matches and smashing crockery where I would slink away to my room and clamp the headphones to my CD player over my ears, blasting my eardrums with rock music to block it out.

When I turned eight I decided enough was enough. It was a rare occasion when I ate lunch at school because the band of little white thugs who had followed me from my first day usually lay in wait for me to steal my money with the use of threats or sometimes punches and kicks. There were five of them, led my a tall boy a year older than all of us. His name was Freddie and the other four looked up to him like he was a god. Anything he said the others did and more often than not their favourite pastime was picking on me.

That Friday I knew they would be waiting for me at the school gates when I arrived and I purposefully went early, telling Dad I was working on a project with some other kid and needed to see him before school. So that day I was there first. I waited behind the big tree just outside the gates until I saw Freddie approaching, alone. Apparently his little gang got together right here before I arrived each day. As he drew closer I walked out from behind the tree, dropped my backpack on the ground and stood waiting for him, my fists clenched and my legs trembling, determined he wouldn't see anxiety in my face.

"Lahote! What are you doing here this early? Shit the bed, did you?" Freddie sneered.

"I just thought I'd catch up with you before your buddies get here to do your dirty work for you, you cowardly piece of shit," I said, hoping my voice wasn't shaking. He was about six inches taller than me, but thin as a rail.

"We'll see who's cowardly, dirty Redskin bastard!"

Freddie advanced on me quickly and I summoned up as much strength as I could manage and directed it down my right arm and into my fist. As I flung it out in his direction, angled slightly upwards, I was somewhat amazed when the fist crashed into his jaw and threw him backwards and off his feet. I stood there, rubbing my hand, eyes wide as I stared at Freddie, coughing and spluttering blood, tears spurting from his eyes. He didn't get up for a couple minutes, by which time two of his cohorts had arrived and my surprising success filled me with bravado.

"Hey, dickheads; want some more of what I just gave him?" I growled.

"You hit Freddie?" one of them said in disbelief.

"Yeah. Want me to hit you?" I took a few steps towards him and he immediately backed away, ignoring Freddie who was now on his feet, blood still dripping from his mouth.

"Paul Lahote! What do you think you're doing?" Mr Brown, my tutor demanded as he charged out of the gate at that moment. He grabbed me roughly by the collar of my jacket. "My office, now. Move it!" He called out for another teacher to attend to Freddie and then marched me away so quickly I was almost dragged off of my feet.

Mr Brown, to put it mildly, was not impressed by my efforts to stop my bullying and explanations that I had been trying to defend myself and was actually outside the school grounds at the time made no difference. I was sent home with a flea in my ear, accompanied by a note to Dad explaining my arrival and instructions to return on Monday with an improved attitude, otherwise suspension would be considered. I thought this was pretty unfair, given that Freddie and his pals had gotten away with kicking the shit out of me for almost three years, but I supposed it was my own fault for never having said anything.

I walked home slowly, ripped up the letter and tossed it into the garbage, then spent the rest of the day in my room listening to music and watching television. Mom and Dad were both working until into the evening and even at eight I already had my own door key and was expected to get myself home and help myself to dinner – usually sandwiches or a microwave meal. I relished the day out of school and only wished I had taken a swing at Freddie sooner.

When I returned to school on Monday, no one waited for me at the school gates, I bought lunch from the canteen and walked home unmolested afterwards. If anything, some of the other kids looked at me warily and I felt somewhat smug that I had gone from being the victim to the bully with a single punch. However, when Dad came home from work I discovered he had received a call from Freddie's father who had apparently been trying to reach him since Friday, telling him to keep his little thug of a son in line otherwise he would be forced to advise the police that I had knocked out two of Freddie's teeth. When I thought about it, I was a little surprised he hadn't contacted the cops already.

I almost expected a punch from Dad, or being sent to my room at the very least, but I got neither. To my amazement he listened to my side of the story first and seemed proud of me for standing up to an older kid. He told me I'd been pretty grown up about the way I dealt with it; giving the kid a taste of his own medicine rather than running home whining like a baby.

Over the next few years, I consistently got myself into fights and became known as one of the kids to be avoided. I had my only little gang of bullies just like Freddie had done, only mine were tougher and would never have fallen on the ground crying if one of them lost a few teeth. My behaviour stemmed a lot from seeing Mom and Dad yelling at each other at home and Dad praising me for using my fists and I thought it was cool that most of the other kids were scared of me. As I grew older, I only got worse.

Dad gave me the customary birds and the bees talk when I was eleven, but he had his own take on it. It turned out he was hugely homophobic; not that I had a clue what that meant until he explained and suggested my fists be put to good use should I catch boys looking at me inappropriately, particularly in the sports block changing rooms. I couldn't imagine that ever happening, but at that stage I couldn't really imagine girls looking at me either. All I thought about was rock music, violent computer games and motorcycles. But puberty followed eventually and along with it, the horrifying realisation that it was boys I was noticing. Dad's views had been so well drummed into me with his frequent yelling at the television whenever he accidentally flipped channels and caught an image of two guys kissing or the news reporting on the activities of a local gay judge or something similar, that the thought I may be turning out like that sickened me and I began to hate myself.

It was only a matter of time before I did get one of those 'looks' Dad warned me about. I was fourteen and had just finished changing into my football gear in a corner, my back to everyone else so I wasn't tempted to let my eyes land on any other boy's half undressed form. I turned around and there was this blond kid, who I knew to be called Gene, staring at me like he wanted to take a bite out of me or something. A couple of other boys were watching him watching me and I went cold all over.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" I demanded.

"Um...n-nothing," stammered Gene, flushing scarlet and taking a couple of steps backwards.

"Yeah, he was, he was getting an eyeful of your ass," Dave, one of my gang, said from behind me.

"Fucking little fag!" I snarled at once and automatically launched myself across the changing room at Gene, my fists leading the way as usual. The first punch knocked him down and then I dropped to one knee, pinning him by the shoulder while I slammed my other fist repeatedly into his face. His turquoise blue eyes stared up at me in pain and fear as he choked and sobbed and the quick pang of sorrow and empathy I felt for him only served to mortify and enrage me further. Dave and my other two friends, Harry and Chris, cheered me on, but the football coach appeared and dragged me off before I could do any serious damage.

I was expelled from school over it and told by the head teacher that I should expect to be arrested as soon as Gene's father had reported me, but curiously nothing ever came of it. I was enrolled in a new school and that was all. It was several weeks before I found out by overhearing one of Mom and Dad's fights, that Dad had been to see Gene's father and threatened him into keeping quiet.

That fight was the last one I ever heard Mom and Dad have. She packed up and walked out two days later with barely a goodbye. For a while I thought she simply didn't want me, but Dad told me she had been all set to take me with her until he had said in no uncertain terms that I was to stay with him. He didn't want me growing up with no father and running the risk of turning into a little fag myself.

With Mom gone, Dad saw no reason to continue living in Tacoma and in less than a year we had packed up and were on our way back to La Push, which he said he wished he had never left. He had already got a job waiting for him there, had rented a house for us to live in and enrolled me in the reservation's high school starting the third week in August, which gave me two months to do whatever the hell I liked. We would be back with our own people and I would no longer be an outcast at school. But it didn't solve that one other problem that still bugged me on a daily basis; my sickening and persistent longing for another boy.

Embry's POV

I had spent my whole life in Neah Bay so far – except for a week long trip each summer to Seattle to visit Mom's sister, my Aunt Tanya, who had married a white boy when she was seventeen and escaped their parents' traditional values and way of living.

Mom never married and fifteen years later still suffered the shame of having given birth to me without even a boyfriend being in evidence. She never told me who my father was, only that he wasn't around and hadn't wanted to support her when he found out she was pregnant. Even my grandparents didn't know who he was – or if they did, they weren't telling me. So I grew up with the stigma of being the bastard child of the Makah tribe and was mostly shunned by the other kids because of it. Everyone else my age had a Mom and a Dad who were married properly before they came into the world, but me...I was mostly ignored and blamed for the fact that my unknown father hadn't been able to keep his pants on and Mom hadn't cared enough for the tribe's traditions to say no to him.

I had another problem that I knew would only make matters worse for me if anyone were to know about it. Gramps had given me the facts of life talk when I was twelve, deeming it unfitting that Mom should take it upon herself to do it, but even then I'd known that what he was telling me wasn't for me. I liked boys; there was no two ways about it. Over the next couple of years I hoped fervently that I would find someone else who felt the same; somebody I could talk to, maybe even be with, but as far as I was aware no one on the reservation was gay and if they were, they were keeping it to themselves the same way I was. From the very little it was spoken about, if I were to let slip I would only bring more shame on the Call family and turn myself into a complete outcast.

I didn't really have any friends and I was a pretty lonely kid. Mom did her best to get us invited to barbeques and outings to the beach with other people with children, but because of her history she had few friends herself and her efforts were usually in vain. It was only when I turned fifteen in May 2005 that things began to change, and not for the better.

A new family had recently moved onto the reservation. At least they were new to me – Mr and Mrs Lucien and their fifteen year old son, Will, were Makah and had lived in Neah Bay some years before when I was too little to remember them. They'd been living in Portland, Oregon as Mr Lucien had found a higher paying job there, but it had recently come to an end and they had decided to return so that Will could go back to his roots. Having been away so long, he was immediately considered an outsider by the other kids at school, despite the fact that he was part of the tribe and came from a decent hard-working Makah family. Having been there my whole life, I knew exactly how he was feeling and befriended him on his first day in school, when he had to share my desk in most classes due to the other kids having always avoided sitting with me.

Will and I hit it off from the first few moments and finally I found I had a friend – someone I could talk to about anything, confide in and trust with my deepest thoughts. Someone who told me within a week that he was gay. Living in Portland, no one had cared how you behaved or what your preferences were, although he hadn't actually come out to his parents yet and dreaded doing it, particularly now they were back inside the rather more narrow-minded boundaries of Neah Bay. But in the meantime, he and I grew closer and closer.

A couple weeks later he was over at our house studying. Mom was out and had said she wouldn't be back until the late evening so we had the place to ourselves. We helped ourselves to food out of the refrigerator, studied for about an hour and then shoved the books aside and began talking.

"Em, do you like me?" Will asked me suddenly.

"Huh?" I stared at him. I did, but I hadn't had the guts to say so. He was gorgeous; russet coloured skin, chiselled face, glossy black hair hanging past his shoulders, deep brown eyes...

"'Cause I like you. And I was hoping you might want to go on a date with me."

"Sure," I said and then thought I'd sounded as if I didn't care one way or the other. "I mean, yeah, I'd love to," I added and gave him a wide grin.

He smiled at me and kept on staring back into my eyes for a minute; then suddenly he leaned in to kiss me. His lips were firm and warm as they caressed mine and when his tongue slid tentatively into my mouth I began to melt. Somehow we were lying on the couch clinging to each other, his body pressing me down into the cushions, his erection straining against his pants and grinding against mine, his hands in my hair and my arms around his waist as we kissed breathlessly. I moaned into his mouth and the sound clearly encouraged him further. He slid one hand down my body, tucking it under my butt, his knee pushing my thighs apart so he could rest between them. I knew I was going to come in my pants - there was no way of stopping it – and as he broke the kiss and pressed his face into my neck instead, his deep groan and the shuddering of his body indicated he had done the same. We lay holding onto each other, panting for breath for a few moments and then his lips returned to mine and kissed gently once again.

"Embry! What the hell are you doing?"

I imagined Mom's scream was loud enough to be heard throughout the reservation and Will catapulted off of me and off the couch, red-faced and clearly not knowing what to do with himself. I sat up, mortified, hanging my head so I didn't have to look at either of them.

"Will Lucien, get out of here this minute!" Mom shrieked. "Wait till I tell your parents!"

"Don't, please, Ms Call, my Dad'll probably thrash me," Will said in a small voice.

"It'll be nothing to what I'll do to you if you don't get out of this house and keep your dirty hands off of my boy!" shouted Mom, her eyes popping, face as red as Will's.

"Mom!" I protested. "You don't understand. Please..."

Will fled, slamming the door behind him and I had to sit and listen to Mom telling me I was lucky she had turned up when she did and saved me from the disgusting little pervert she had allowed me to be friends with. For several minutes I couldn't get a word in and when she finally paused for breath, I said what I had been longing to say for years and hadn't felt able to.

"Mom, I'm gay."

"Don't be ridiculous, Embry! You don't know what you're saying. That boy's filled your head with his sick ideas. All you need is to meet a nice girl..."

"It's nothing to do with Will!" I interrupted. "I knew before he even moved here. Long before."

She wouldn't listen to me. Everything I said she argued with, telling me I was too young to know anything; I'd been influenced by Will or someone else at school or the awful programmes they showed on television these days which weren't fit to be broadcast. When she eventually did accept that what I was saying was true – or at least in my own mind – she was filled with renewed horror at what her parents would think if they found out; what everybody on the reservation would think. She had no intention of telling the Luciens when she had thought about it a little, not wanting to give them something to worry about and spoil their time in Neah Bay. Instead, she would take me away so that I didn't bring any more shame on the family than I had already done by being born.

It was that last comment which hurt me more than anything else. In my fifteen years she had never once indicated that she regretted having me and she had comforted me when I returned home from school countless times as a child, crying because I'd been called a bastard or whatever other insult the kids had thought up. But now it seemed that even she didn't want me; the only person that did would probably be too scared to come near me again and in any case, I was about to be taken away from him.

Mom kept me away from school for the next two weeks, making up stories to her parents and the school that I was sick with a severe bout of influenza and couldn't get out of bed. In the meantime she made rapid arrangements for a job transfer, the insurance office she worked in having other branches around the country with one in a small town named Forks having just had a member of staff quit without notice. Forks was close to the La Push reservation where the Quileute tribe lived and Mom rented a house there, deciding even another tribe would be better than trying to settle amongst whites.

Just three weeks after she caught me kissing Will, we were packed into the car, a U-Haul trailer hooked up to the tow bar, driving out of Neah Bay for the last time to find a new life in La Push where I was under strict instruction not to do anything to cause Mom further embarrassment in front of a people who may be a little unwilling to accept us to begin with.