An Exploration of the Senses Contest
Voting will begin September 1st and end September 15th.
Title: Well, He Was Just Seventeen…
Pen Name: edward-bella-harry-ginny
Sense: Touch
Genre: Romance/Comfort
Characters: Edward/Bella
Thanks go again to Justine Lark, who gave me the heads up on the contest. She and I also had a conversation a ways back regarding Edward's potential ticklishness...I'll let you read more to answer that question... Gleena also deserves a mention and my thanks, for being all kinds of awesomeness :) They are both excellent writers; check out their stuff!
I cannot be remiss in thanking ebhg's personal edward (aka the hubby) for betaing this extremely last-minute entry:) He really is my personal Edward;)
And of course, Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight.
Well, He was Just Seventeen
The morning sun had yet to rise. Renesmee still slumbered in her bed, dreaming of the hunt we had come home from the previous afternoon. Bella curled more snugly into my side, tracing the length of my collarbone with just her fingertips while simultaneously running her toes lightly over the top of my foot. The sensation was curious; I couldn't remember being ticklish as a human, though the input that my brain was processing was something that I had not felt in all my time as a vampire.
For eighty-seven years, I despised the feeling of tactile stimulation; I avoided it as a general rule. I stiffened with each restraining touch from Carlisle in my first year as a vampire. He had been alone for so long, he craved the sort of physical connection between father and son that I had known with my human father. It pained me to hear his hurt thoughts when he felt my body involuntarily reject his touch, though I could not move past it enough to embrace the man that I now saw as father.
Waking up to this existence had caused my senses to flare to a flashpoint as I was suddenly able to take in a broader spectrum of stimuli. While I had been amazed by my sharpened eyes and my acute ears, nothing had prepared me for the constant feedback that I felt from my now-hypersensitive nerve endings within my skin. The tactile torment became second only to the torture of the mundane thoughts that inundated me at every moment.
Though my skin was now hard and impenetrable, it was absolutely tingling under the cotton hospital-issue pajamas. The homespun fabric had felt soft and comfortable when I had pulled them on just days before my change, but to my newly transfigured skin, they felt rough and abrasive.
I was momentarily distracted from my musings as Bella shifted her fingers from my collarbone to my sternum. She was tracing words and intricate designs across my skin, invisible to all but her. The silky texture of her fingertips juxtaposed the memory of the rough pajamas. Bella's ministrations reminded me just how far I had come in accepting physical affections.
As my newborn period faded and I became more accustomed to the heightened sensations, I was more readily able to tolerate more tactile input. Then, Esme had joined our family. If Carlisle had been disappointed by my lack of physical affection, Esme was devastated. When I could no longer stand to overhear her morose thoughts, I would allow her a hug, fighting the impulse to stiffen and run the entire time.
I couldn't remember being held and loved by Elizabeth Masen, though I was sure that it hadn't been a strict Victorian upbringing that caused the lack of memories; they had faded far too quickly after my week-long fever-induced delirium ended in three days of pure hell. The images that Carlisle had thought of at my request showed my human mother lovingly tending to my wasted body, though I could not remember the feel of her touch, nor could I remember enjoying it.
Rosalie never dared to touch me; not after our disastrous first meeting. The only thing she touched me with was the vitriol of her thoughts. Emmett, on the other hand, never took no for an answer. He was determined to grab me in a brotherly bear hug every time he set eyes upon me for the first year, which often led to wrestling matches that destroyed the furniture as well as the house we lived in.
I was certain that it was a product of Emmett's having grown up in a household with many siblings, but I had been an only child in an upper-middle-class family. I was neither prepared for it, nor accepting of it. My never returning the gesture didn't have any effect on my boisterous brother, and I suspected that he had taken it upon himself to get me to "loosen up" as his thoughts often confirmed.
Jasper was always the most understanding of my desire for distance. Having a difficult and often invasive gift of his own made him appreciate my longing for solitude. Rarely did he ever initiate our occasional wrestling match; Emmett was generally the instigator and willing sparring partner.
Alice was never one to give heed to my preferences. She grabbed, pulled, hit, shoved, and hugged me without hesitation. Strangely enough, she was the closest to me of all my siblings, regardless of her issues with personal space.
Thankfully, humans instinctively shied away from us. Though Jessica Stanley and Lauren Mallory had not been the first to fantasize about running their hands through my hair and picturing me in their lewd fantasies, never had any female been brave or foolish enough to actually make physical contact.
Except one.
Bella had awoken a side of me that I had not known I possessed. The urge to touch, caress, and feel her silky-smooth skin had been so foreign to me in those first weeks of knowing her, I couldn't place what it was that I was feeling until Jasper had to take Alice hunting alone three times in one week. Alice's smug thoughts at my realization of those impulses had made me consider moving into Bella's room permanently.
Alice's resultant vision had certainly cleared my mind of that thought.
Feeling Bella's touch, lying in her embrace and enjoying her kisses had given me new perspective in my existence; I could no longer get enough of the tactile contact that I had scoffed at and ridiculed my family for. I understood what it was that kept them continually seeking their mate's physical presence.
Now that Bella was my wife, my mate, and the mother of my child, I sought her every moment that she was away. I yearned for her touch and her gentle caresses every time she was separated from me. I became more irritable and jittery when Bella wasn't in touching distance; more than any of my brothers or my father had been when they had been in the same stage with their mates. Carlisle had originally surmised that my youth had made it impossible for me to bond with a mate. Now, my father jokingly theorized that my age was adding to my extreme need for physical contact with my mate. That fact was something that Emmett gleefully teased me about every time Bella and I were parted.
Thankfully, he never subjected my Bella to half of what went through his head. Just last week while my brothers and I had been hunting, Emmett had pondered aloud how much more active his physical relationship with Rosalie would be if he had been just seventeen when he was changed.
Emmett and the forest would eventually recover from my very physical response to his goading, but until that time, there would be a new meadow north of Forks. And Emmett would invariably demand a rematch when it had.
"What has your brow so tensed-up this morning?" my Bella asked, breaking into my thoughts.
"Emmett," was my only explanation. Bella's eyes grew wide, and she instantly sat up and looking for her clothes.
"Is he coming here? Can you hear him? How long till he gets here?" Bella was frantically searching the pile next to our bed, only to discover that her clothes were no longer wearable. A brief glare in my direction for my impatience earlier caused me to chuckle. My laughter finally broke through her frenzy.
"What is so funny about Emmett bursting in on us? Do you want to give him more ammunition?" Bella demanded with a quirked eyebrow. Level-headed newborn she may be, but her moods were still easily shifted.
"No, Love. I was just thinking about touch, and how much I love to caress you, and hold you, and how much you've changed me, and it reminded me of a moment with him last week." Bella snorted.
"Your new meadow, you mean?" My rueful expression gave her all the answer that she needed. "Well, you are seventeen, love. Can you imagine Emmett and Rosalie at that age? We'd never be able to live in the same house as them, not unless we wanted to give Ness the Talk at two years old…" Bella laughed as she said it, then trailed off at my shocked expression.
"How did you know what Emmett had said?" I spluttered.
"Alice."
Her one word answer was all I needed.
"Esme agreed with her though…apparently you are much more affectionate with your mother and sisters than you ever were before you met me."
"Esme was there, as well?" I asked, mortified. Bella bit her lip sheepishly, and then she lifted her shield and showed me the whole embarrassing conversation. I growled, thinking that I'd have to have a talk with Alice before I grabbed Bella and began tickling her mercilessly.
"I'll show you how affectionate I can be, Love."
And I did.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Any Beatles fan worth their salt should recognize the title;)
Voting for the contest is September 1-15, on Helliex88's profile: www. fanfiction. net/u/1779141/helliex88 (Remember to remove the spaces)
Please review; I do reply:)
ebhg:)