So here it is kids. WHIZ. SingleStrand wrote all EPOVs and SadTomato wrote all BPOVs, but then we dicked around in each other's boxes a bunch, so you're really getting a true combo of our awesomeness. We initially posted two chaps a day as a promo fic for the Eurofornication contest, but if you're just finding this, well, you get it all. Enjoy!
Chapter 1
EPOV
"Sixteen … eighteen … twenty. This is it," I call back to Bella, who is lugging her pack and dragging her feet.
"Oh, thank fuck. I'm in desperate need of a shower and a bed." She catches up to me just as I ring the buzzer and we wait for an answer in the hot, late afternoon sun.
"Ja." A short, friendly response comes crackling through the antique speaker, but I'd know that voice anywhere.
"Em? It's, it's Edward." I feel the nerves begin to build in my stomach, then add almost as an afterthought, "And Bella."
"Ja! Edvard! Come, come!"
The buzzer sounds and we enter the now-unlocked door to a small dark foyer. Our eyes adjust, revealing a narrow, steep staircase that leads indefinitely upward.
"You've got to be shitting me." Bella gives me the look, the one that means I'll be carrying both packs, and maybe her, too.
"Edvard!" His booming voice carries down the stairs ahead of him, and I feel it all the way down to my groin.
Suddenly, there he is. A blast from my high school past. Emmett.
The past seven years have done him well. He's maybe an inch taller – he was always so tall – and has put on sculpted muscle mass. His hair is a bit longer on top, dirty blond and curling at the ends. Twinkling blue eyes-framed now with permanent creases in the corners from his near-constant grin-are gazing at me with excitement and a hint of expectation. Just the sight of them takes me back to the year he spent living with my family.
Before I can snap out of it and formulate a response, he's pulling me into a tight embrace, and I'm a bumbling, blushing fraction of my normally assured self.
I pull back when he lingers a second too long and clear my throat to make introductions.
"Hi Emmett! It's so great to see you. Umm … I'd like you to meet Bella."
Emmett reaches to shake Bella's hand as I pull her to my side, tightly squeezing her shoulder in reassurance, but it's too late. She's looking at me with all the curiosity in Zurich. I think she knows something's up.