AN~If you haven't read my Aro/Charlie fics then the end of this will not make any sense, but you're still perfectly justified in reading it for the Aro/Caius semi-smut. Just know that the ending won't be very satisfying.

For those who have made it through the others: there is mention of Aro's relationship with Caius during the first smut scene in Me. This is that story. I am in a bit of a dark mood lately and this fic reflects that. It's a flashback which takes place while Aro and Charlie still live in Forks.

The title of this fic is taken from the Bruno Mars song "Grenade" which was the inspiration for it, and which I recommend that you listen to while reading.

Caius did not love me. I eventually found out that he didn't even particularly like me.

But I didn't know that at the beginning.

He was so pale, which maybe isn't such a remarkable thing to say about a vampire but his pallor was something more. Perhaps it was his hair—so white, and against his red eyes, a bit dizzying to look at. And he seemed interested in me. He flirted, anyway. I couldn't know more until he let me touch him which he always carefully avoided.

Until that night. And even though it ended less than ideally, the excitement and terror of maybe seeing a mind for the first time when that person's mouth was pleasuring me was something I won't ever forget. Because I couldn't know then, anything could be in there, I would know his real feelings towards me and what if they went right along with what I had been hoping? That he wanted me, maybe worshipped me the way a lot of other vampires did—that he'd imagined doing to me what he was obviously intending to do as I learned these things from him.

But he stopped before doing it.

He'd come into my room, he'd convinced me to undress for him while I tried to remain composed, smirky—like I hadn't been waiting for this to the point of near madness for months while he toyed with me.

He'd stayed clothed and knelt in front of me, he parted his lips just a little bit, just enough to show the soft, berry-stained color of the surface of his tongue, extended momentarily, so near touching me and then he pulled back and looked up at my face.

I smiled in this highly practiced way I knew looked sweetly bored and nearly always got me what I wanted from anyone who was unfortunate enough to be interested in me. It didn't seem to be affecting him, though.

But still, seeing his perfect, slightly mean-looking little face below me there, tilted up—just short of submissive in that single moment was intoxicating. Then he rose and my hand twitched out, ready to pull him into me, but he stepped back.

"Do it yourself," he said.

"Do wh—"

I couldn't very well perform the act he'd just teased me with on myself.

"Touch yourself, Aro," he said, almost sounding irritated.

I felt slightly embarrassed, and I wasn't sure why. This wasn't the usual treatment I was familiar with among lovers. They nearly always adored me entirely or at least felt a high level of lust before we got to this point. They were grateful—they showed it with their willingness to use their bodies to make me feel good.

This was different. He wasn't eager to get his hands on me. He sighed when I didn't immediately obey him and then fluidly removed his shirt and stood in front of me, only a foot and a half away. He watched me as I took in his partial nudity. I wanted to touch that extraordinarily pale skin. He was slender and just on the edge of being feminine.

I should have known then that based on the way that I was looking at him and the way he hadn't offered me the same scrutiny that he wasn't actually attracted to me. But I was stupid—crazed with want. And far too spoiled by the amount of easy attention I had always had in the past to contemplate that any of it was anything but exactly what it seemed to be: that he wanted me like the others had.

He stepped back a few more steps and darted his eyes down, reiterating his direction. I followed it this time and he didn't just leave me there hanging he made the experience fun by sliding the waistband of his pants down slightly to expose more of his lower stomach and the sharp definition of his hipbones. He passed his hand up his exposed skin, pausing around his navel and then up to his chest. I wanted to touch him and he must have known that because he did this in a way that was obviously intended to tease.

He placed two fingers close to one nipple and then waited, letting me focus on that spot before he pinched slightly and then when I made a sound he twisted in a way that I was sure would have hurt him if someone else had done it. I wanted to mark his skin with my teeth and watch it heal over before doing it again.

He smiled. Caius looked bored most of the time and the rest a little bit angry, but sometimes his smiles became delighted and he looked misleadingly sweet and innocent.

He did this now, displaying that sunshine-y grin, and stepped close to me again.

"Don't stop," he said softly, glancing down between us.

I wasn't intending to stop, I enjoyed doing this in front of people who I wanted to want me. It showed them I didn't actually need them, that I was perfectly capable of doing it myself—that to be an adequate lover they had to not only complete with my former bedmates but also with me, and I was very, very skilled so it was a challenge. It made them work harder.

"You want to come on me," he said.

It wasn't a question. It was a statement and a true one. He was so pretty and mean—I wanted to defile him. I wanted to bring him down. I wanted him to break and beg me to do all of the things I desperately wanted to do to him.

"You can," he said, leaning in close so I could feel his breath on my lips. "Go ahead."

I had wanted control, but I also did like being pushed around a little bit by certain people.

He looked down, bit his lower lip and sighed slightly, like he loved watching me do this. So I obeyed him and just as I was at the top of my climax he grabbed my face and kissed me roughly. He shoved his tongue past my teeth and he tasted so extraordinary and new and exciting for a few moments that I didn't register that I was hearing his thoughts for the first time, rushing at me, layering and being added to every second. It was interesting in itself but also terrible because now I knew: Caius did not actually want me. He barely liked me. He thought I was slightly pathetic—but he was still kissing me, making me touch myself for him, commanding me to come on him.

He didn't stop kissing me until I was finished. He reached between us and collected some of my come off his stomach and then pushed his fingertips into my mouth, making me taste it. I already knew what it tasted like but now it had picked up some scrap of his venom from being in contact with his skin and at the same time I was still hearing his thoughts—about how amused he was to be doing this to me.

I loved it in a truly sick way. No one had ever done anything like it to me. He wasn't even attracted to me. It wasn't even sexual. He wasn't aroused doing this.

And I let him do it again on later occasions—more than I could remember. Slightly different each time except for him making certain I knew of his intense dislike for me on a personal level, although, this was never spoken, but rather always conveyed through the lovely and horrible multicolored narrative of his thoughts. Sometimes he pulled up specific memories of times when he'd found me particularly ridiculous.

I was aware that me letting him do this probably made me as pathetic as he believe me to be—but it was new, and there were so few new things that I wanted to keep doing it even if it made me feel cheap and stupid afterwards.

If anyone had seen it, they would have surely thought we were involved in some kind intense mutual relationship and never suspected that he was actually just secretly humiliating me with my own unreturned lust for him.

He always made me strip naked but never removed more than his own shirt. He didn't allow me to touch him either but touched himself suggestively while I watched—more teasing, showing me what I wasn't allowed to do, to touch. It created a dim, obsessive madness that left me distracted for days sometimes afterwards. He knew that withholding was the worst thing you could do to me. I thought he would relent eventually—I was too arrogant to believe anything else—but he never did.

I didn't think about it very much now, in my quiet life in Forks with Charlie. But late at night I would recall it bleakly while I watched him sleeping and I would wonder what he really thought of me—of us together. He'd obviously had very real initial reservations about sexual contact with another male, but I had never been able to see far enough into his thoughts to see any of that. The taboo excitement of it on his part had overridden the negativity on at least a surface level, but that didn't mean it did not necessarily exist under the caring—in some deep way I couldn't see.

I was always afraid to touch him then, because while he slept his mind was more open. I didn't want to think about Charlie being disgusted by me in any way even if his love for me was stronger. It wouldn't have been cruel like Caius' feelings, it would have been something he didn't like and couldn't control but it still hurt to know it was likely there in some way still.

At the end of this line of thought about Caius—which always followed the same track and wouldn't stop until I had gotten to the end of it—was the memory of the last time we were together when I'd caught a tiny flash in his mind of something else, something more—his feelings toward me changing. A tiny movement in his heart, a slight increase in desire, not just to hurt me but to actually be with me. It was bare second of want and then it was gone, he was, and he never again came back to my room alone to torture me.

It hurt me in a way that made me grateful I knew no other beings like me who could ever see it in my mind. He hated me so much he'd rather give up his enjoyable little game than feel something for me.

Charlie was nothing like him, but I still worried. I watched him sleep and I feared seeing revulsion for me in his thoughts. That would truly break my heart, not just my pride the way Caius had done, because I didn't truly love Caius, I was insane over him, that was all. But I loved Charlie—loved him like I had never loved anyone.

And whenever these thoughts of Caius finally released me I was left with a reminder to never love Charlie too much, knowing that even the slightest touch of dislike in his mind would destroy me. I would never be allowed to love him as much as I wanted to.

It was too dangerous.

It was why I had never tried anything with Carlisle even though the signs of that advance possibly being welcome were there, and I was sure I could have convinced Sulpicia to go along with it at least one time.

It was why to the day of his death I had never touched Carlisle's skin and why when the opportunity came on the field that day, when he rushed at me, that I murdered him before I could see his true opinion of me.

I accepted I was a coward in this way and yet perversely attempted to coax and seduce Charlie into loving me how I couldn't let myself do for him.

It was terrifying—being there in the darkness unsure if I should look into his pliant, sleeping thoughts knowing that I could either see evidence of that possible discontent, or maybe that insane, absolute love I wanted but deeply believed I did not deserve because Caius was more right about me than anyone I had ever known: I was pathetic and ugly.

And I did not deserve to be loved.

END NOTES: I told you I was in a dark mood. Apparently that involves hurting the one I love best. I really enjoyed getting into Caius, though. I've never written a scene where he did more than look grumpy so this was very interesting for me. I'll have to work with him on something else now . . . in no small part because while making the cover art for this I became intensely aware that Jamie Campbell Bower has a seriously sexy mouth. *fans self*