A/N: This takes place after Breaking Dawn, still within Bella's first year as a vampire. It's a little serious at the beginning, a little lemonade-ish toward the middle, and just a little ridiculous at the end:)
Boredome Becomes Her
While having an unbeating heart is a bit of a downer, Edward was learning that some of the perks help balance it out.
This was one of those things.
Standing in a rain that couldn't make him cold, in the arms of his wife who he could no longer hurt, was almost painfully magnificent. If humans could experience this, it would be the stuff of art. It would be love ballads with sweeping notes that makes the chest swell and the eyes close. It would be paintings of bright colors that practically pulse and leap off the canvas, the sort you look at a second, third time. It would be a book so painfully sweet that your teeth hurt and your chest aches, or a quote so provoking you couldn't get it out of your mind.
She would be the object of those things.
And with her standing there, looking up at him with the brightest smile he had ever seen, he would also be part.
For all he worried she wouldn't think he measured up after she had known him for years, her mind told him she found him every bit as glorious as the first time she saw him in the meadow, even more so. To her, he was still perfect.
To him, she always would be.
"Why are we standing in the rain, Bella?" Edward questioned after a few moments of silence. She had drawn him from the main house where he was reading with Carlisle without a word.
Sometimes not reading her mind was so difficult.
"I wanted to talk to you," she shrugged. "Without anyone hearing us. I'm a little nervous."
His mind's first reaction was sheer panic. His muscles clenched and his mind quickly rummaged through a hundred scenarios. Visions of love more beautiful than art could so easily be forgotten when faced with the slightest chance she didn't want this anymore. She didn't want him anymore. She wasn't happy. She wasn't satisfied. He had been so foolish to think that they were going to work.
"I'm bored," she said simply, and his heart made the only move it still could: it plummeted.
Edward looked down into Bella's nearly golden eyes, waiting for the rest. He wasn't exciting enough anymore, now that he was no longer dangerous. She would leave him for awhile, looking for something new. That was reasonable. After all, he had rebelled from his creator, wanting to experience another lifestyle. Edward had been bored and determined he was missing out on something he deserved. It hadn't taken her as long as it had him to feel that way.
He closed his eyes for a moment, unable to look at her. How foolish he was to think he would ever be enough for her.
Edward, stop being ridiculous.
At the sharp call of her mind with her shield down, he looked at her again. She didn't look as if she was ready to deliver a death blow.
"I'm not bored with you," she said somberly, reaching her hand to his face, the one she had loved when she was just a human girl. "But I'm bored here, and I don't know what to do."
Renesemee is always with another family member; I don't go to school anymore; it takes me only a few minutes to do the things I normally do for Charlie. Esme gardens and runs the house. Alice shops for everyone. Rosalie fixes cars. I don't like video games as much as Emmett. I've already read half the library.
"What am I supposed to do now?" she asked blankly. I don't have anything to do.
Of course. She needed something to occupy her endless amount of time. He knew from his own decades that that could be a rather tedious task at times. Eternity was a gift and a curse.
"Anything you want, Bella," he answered. "If there's anything you want to do, anyplace you want to go, just let me know."
He would give her anything, do anything for her. His life was to make hers happy. After all, it was the least he could do for ending her humanity.
"What did you do as a newborn?"
"You're not really a newborn anymore," he countered. And she wasn't. Her control was as faultless as his.
The strength with which she abruptly picked him up, tossed him in the air, and then caught him in her arms showed him otherwise. Show-off.
Maybe he felt a little emasculated, but he was also more than a little liberated. Edward no longer had to worry his caresses would send her flying across the room or that his grip would be a little too tight.
"Well, I can tell you I didn't throw Carlisle around. Much," he amended. "I guess for a long time I just talked with him. I still do regularly. I didn't start playing the piano until Esme came along, so he was busy with her. Later, I started learning languages, and then-."
"Why Carlisle?" she interrupted, absently smoothing his windblown and now soggy hair. For all her strength, she had quickly mastered the art of feather-light touch.
"I've always thought that since he made me, he must have some special knowledge. Besides, he's ancient," he laughed, knowing humans would scoff at the thought of the young doctor being considered anything other than in his prime.
"Ok, so let's talk," Bella said, sinking to the ground and then watching expectantly. "Creator, teach me."
"Bella, don't be ridiculous."
"Edward, you're ancient compared to me. And my creator. So teach me your ways." She lay down with a smile, closing her eyes at the sensation of the soft ground at her back and the rain on her face, and rather than talking, he just wanted to watch her.
"You know my ways," he replied, staring down. Sometimes, despite all his skills, Edward felt that he got into the stupidest situations with her. It's almost as if her vampire talent was making him feel like an idiot.
"Not all of them."
"The important ones." He gave up and settled next to her in the mud. He hated the mud. "Lounging in the mud certainly is not one of them."
"Do you ever think it's unfair that you can read other's minds, but we never know yours?"
"You know the important things." Where did she get these things? "I think about you and Nessie. I try not to think about Rosalie and Emmett."
"But do you feel bad for intruding on people's thoughts? It's hard enough to get privacy around here, but the others can't even get it in their minds like we can."
Bella rolled over to lean over him, blocking the rain from his face. He suspected she tried to dazzle him, and it worked a little, because for just a moment, he couldn't remember her question.
"I don't do it on purpose. You know that. I guess it's the price we all pay for the convenience of me being able to hear others we don't know are safe."
When he lifted his hand to her tangled, sodden hair, she sighed.
"Edward, will we ever get tired of each other? After we've been together for a hundred years? Will we get bored of each other?"
He would never be bored of her.
"Are you bored right now?" He casually ran his hand down her back. His ego probably couldn't handle the wrong answer to this one.
"No. But if we do this for a few hundred years, don't you think we'll get bored of this?" she reasoned, gnawing on her lower lip. "The same thing, over and over again."
"I imagine we'll pick up a few new tricks somewhere along the way." Edward nuzzled her teeth away from her lip so he could bite it instead. "But I think I'll be happy if we're doing this a thousand years from now."
"A thousand years is a long time. Listen, Rosalie told me about some of the stuff she and Emmett do, and-."
He should have known one of his siblings was behind this. Edward had heard more than he wanted to know about the both of them for the past seventy years and knew exactly what they did in digital detail he preferred to forget.
"Bella, I really don't think you should compare our relationship and Rosalie's and Emmett's. I've heard their minds."
If Bella got into her mind to do half the things Emmett was interested in, Edward was sure he would spontaneously combust, mud or no mud.
"My point is, if they have to do such outlandish things to stay interested in each other, and she's Rosalie, then what am I going to have to come up with?" she muttered, rolling back onto her back. If she was still human, she would be the deepest shade of red possible.
Edward couldn't help but laugh, and then at the thought of Bella and him crashing through walls, he stopped abruptly. Not all of their ideas were bad.
"Um, Bella, I don't really think it's a matter of staying interested for them. It's….like a game to them. They play a lot."
"Maybe we should play."
There was a part of him that wondered whether she was manipulating him, that thought this was part of some dastardly plan she had concocted in that mind of hers. The much larger part couldn't care less and was rubbing its mental hands together. This was his reward for a century of celibacy.
"Perhaps it would be wise to give it a shot," he allowed, running a few alternatives through his mind before deciding his next move.
"Now," she demanded, and at his questioning look, she shrugged again. "I'll still be bored if I go back and don't do anything."
He told her to run back to the main house to shower where he was sure Alice would have some clothes now that he had made a decision, and he ran to the cottage to do the same. When he met her in the living room just a few minutes later, Alice's mind was carefully blank, while Jasper's and Emmett's were barely restraining their mirth at Bella's obvious disappointment in her jeans and sweater.
I thought we were going to play, Edward. Rosalie doesn't wear a sweater when she and Emmett do special things. Maybe you could just ask Emmett about it.
"That won't be necessary," Edward said in a low voice, grabbing her hand to lead her from the room.
Of course, things couldn't work out that easily.
A sweater, Edward? Emmett thought a split second before saying, "Real exciting, man. Good luck, Bella."
"Want me to drive?" she asked hopefully in the garage. Her family's daredevil ways had rubbed off on her.
"Just sit back and enjoy the ride," Edward answered, opening the Volvo door for her just as he had when she was a human.
Bella was a little curious, when he pulled out of the Cullen drive and directed the car out of town, and she felt the anticipation build as he slowed in the dark, expertly swinging the vehicle into a wooded cove the overlooked a valley.
"There aren't any animals around," she murmured after inhaling deeply. "We're not here to hunt."
"No," he agree, smirking.
Bella thought for a moment, and one of her fuzzy human memories was triggered. Lauren had gushed over a place that sounded remarkably like this one. She had come here with one of her boyfriends.
"It's where kids come to make out!" Bella laughed, a clear sound her human self would have envied. "But we never came here, did we Edward? I would have remembered."
"No, we never came," he sighed, and there was regret in his eyes. "Another human experience you didn't get."
"Am I going to get it now?" she asked with a grin, popping open the seatbelt she still buckled from habit.
"If you want. I couldn't bring you when you were human. It would have been too dangerous."
"Yes, I'm sure you would have mauled me beyond recognition and tossed my body beside the road," she said wryly.
"It would have been much more dangerous than your room," he protested.
When he leaned over the console to press his lips against hers, Bella quickly understood why. The dark, close quarters of his car brought back enough human emotion as it was. She would have exploded had she still been the silly girl who forgot to breathe.
To her, the gentleness of his kiss was painfully teasing, and when he didn't lean further over the console, she pushed him back so she could climb over it to straddle his lap.
"I think I would have liked it very much if you would have brought me here," she assured him, sliding her mouth over his jaw and to his ear.
"Bella, you liked everything," he laughed, then groaned when she nipped his neck.
"Are you saying you wouldn't have liked it, Edward?" she teased while working the top button of his shirt free.
"When did you become so dangerous?"
"I think it's always been lurking under the surface, waiting to come out. Come on, Edward. Let go. It's time to play."
At her giggle, he leaned forward, pressing her back against the steering wheel. Her golden eyes glowed in the moonlight, and he was lost as quickly in the vampire Bella as he had been with the human Bella. Only now, he could let himself be free.
He ran his teeth along the base of her throat, feeling her breath catch at the feel of his fingers under the edge of her sweater.
When she crushed her lips to his, pushing his tongue with hers, she kept her eyes locked with his, daring him to do all the dangerous things she'd always wanted but been denied as a human.
The Volvo rocked dangerously when he tossed her from the front seat to the back, nearly pouncing after her. Bella could feel the low growl building in Edward's chest when she licked his skin just below his navel, and her sweater flew off so quickly she barely realized it.
Their skin didn't sparkle in the moonlight, but their bare chests seemed to glow from it, and she studied it with a small smile from above him.
"I do love it when you growl, you know," she whispered in his ear, dragging her nails up his side.
Quickly, she was flipped under him, she looked up into vibrant eyes, and her own growl rumbled when he playfully snapped his teeth at her.
When he had brought her out here, Edward had meant for this to be the harmless necking that humans do at make-out spots, enhanced by the idea of sneaking out and being forbidden. They were both forever teenagers, after all, and what a shame it would be to live hundreds of years and never try this. It quickly became apparent, though, that it was a shame to go a single year without trying this.
At the joking snap of his teeth, their kisses turned to bites and moans to hisses. It was the most primal activity for vampires with the more human restraints lifted. There was no need to be gentle, and neither wanted it. It was about speed and trust. Their sharp teeth could give pleasure and end existence with equal ease.
It was exactly the sort of thing Edward had never dared to dream of when he changed Bella. When he heard similar goings on between the other couples, it seemed so degrading, so animal….but so erotic.
Edward was just deciding this was exactly the sort of thing the Volvo couldn't withstand when Bella's skin adopted a strange, mottled color. It took fraction of a second for the both to realize the colors came from the flashing police light from behind his car.
They shared a moment of looking at each other with disbelief before darting back into the front seat at the same time, causing the Volvo to rock back and forth even more. While he meant for this to be amusingly human, the amusement had definitely ended with this guest. Edward swore lightly under his breath, torn between frustration and humor as he pulled Bella's sweater over her head as she batted his hands away..
"I'm not an idiot, Edward," she muttered. "I can't believe this is happening. This is so embarrassing. I hope Charlie doesn't find out about this."
"It's about to get even better," he said when he tuned into the officer's reluctant thoughts.
This can't be the Cullen car. Why would they come out the make-out point when they have that whole house to do God knows what. That's the car that the one who married Swan's daughter always drove. I hope to God it's not her. What do I say to Swan? Do I even say anything? He'll be pissed either way. Damned if I do for snooping. Damned if I don't for keeping things from him. He'll already know it's them from the plates I ran. Maybe better them than that big one. He scares the crap out of me.
"It's not Charlie," Bella said after sniffing. "I don't recognize the scent."
Edward was laughing when he rolled down the window, and Bella didn't need his mind reading skills to clearly see the young officer's horrified expression upon seeing them, and the strangled sound he made while gathering his thoughts made the married couple smirk.
"It's, uh, sorry about this," he said with surprising sincerity. "We're just supposed to check in on anybody up here and, you know, break things up."
"Of course," Edward said, and he couldn't help but flash a bright smile. "We all feel safer because it."
"Right, well, er, I know you guys aren't kids sneaking out or anything, but do you think you could take this, well, someplace else?" The officer shifted from foot to foot, obviously wishing to be anyplace else. "Policy, you know."
"I believe we'll be able to find a new location," Edward chuckled.
"I, uh, Bella, I don't see any need to mention this to your dad. I, um, already ran the plates, but he may have missed it over the scanner."
Edward was sure that was a fat chance, but kept the thought to himself as Bella murmured her thanks and the officer left. When it was over, she leaned back in her seat with a sly smile on her face.
"I had no idea you took playing so seriously. Very authentic, I think."
He watched her with narrowed eyes, fairly certain she was joking. He would have to be out of his mind to have wanted someone to interrupt them.
"This one will be hard to top," she laughed, leaning over to kiss him.
Edward was fairly certain he could get used to this. What were the chances of striking a deal with Jasper to make boredom a regular occurrence?
