Anesthesia
-evvergreen-
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one
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Bella Swan slaps me, hard, and then she comes back to life.
Her face—wan and pale and colorless for so many months—blooms pink and red with anger, and her eyes—brown and dull and dead for as long as I'd known her—spark and flash as she scowls. Her fury feels palpable, like another pine tree looming large and ominous in the depths of the forest, needles limp and branches heavy, and the silence in the clearing is suddenly expectant.
My skin stings and my pride bristles.
Her expression doesn't falter.
I allow my gaze to trail over her slowly, from top to bottom and back again, hoping to make her nervous—she's small, skinny, fragile, and my sneer is automatic, instinctive, something inside of me recognizing her apparent weakness and equating it with prey. Her chest heaves beneath her ratty green flannel; I can hear her heartbeat hammering out a rhythm that's too fast and too desperate to last long without a fresh burst of adrenaline.
I wonder absently if her handprint will linger on my cheek, or if my accelerated healing has already taken care of it.
I study her face.
She's pretty, of course, in that bland, porcelain doll kind of way that a lot of white girls are—delicate and factory-perfect with full, rose petal lips and features so finely formed it's like they've been painted on. My disdain for her swells. Jacob believes she's different, believes she's special, but I know better.
Our eyes finally meet.
Her pupils dilate.
I stare—
And the next moment feels like eternity, feels like it stretches and stalls and my world crumples, crumbles, clears then sharpens then narrows—
"No," I say out loud, unable to focus on the background din of Jacob's grief-stricken shouting and Sam's corresponding Alpha order to stand down, Jake and Jared's swift, serious explanation of what's happening to me—imprint imprint imprint imprint—
My veins burn.
Her confusion, her selfishness, her stupidity—it's endearing, I think blindly, and I can't bring myself to look away from her, can't bring myself to step back or flee or outwardly react to anything but her, Bella, mine—
My scalp prickles.
She's blinking, glancing around the clearing and stiffening with a belated surge of fear—and that's unacceptable, I realize, because she has nothing to be afraid of, not while I'm there, no, and she should see that, should see that I would kill to protect her, would fucking die to save her, Bella, mine—
My stomach lurches.
"No," I say again, dim and desperate.
Her brows knit in a frown, and I positively ache to reach out and draw her towards me, to wrap her in my arms and keep her warm and safe and happy, to closely inspect all the parts of her that are broken and empty and fix them, fix her, Bella, mine—
My muscles quiver.
"No," I manage to whisper.
She chews on her lower lip.
"Paul?" she asks tentatively.
And I—
I want to—
I want to hurt her. I want to hurt myself. I want to yell and I want to fuck and I want to run and I want to yank out the roots of a giant, thousand year-old tree and fucking strangle someone with them, want to hit and rip and tear and bite and destroy, want violent elbow jabs and bloody fucking knuckles and the telltale crunch of fractured bones beneath my hands, want to jerk my knee into a ribcage and swing my fist into an eye socket and I want to fight, I want to win, I want to scratch and shred and shatter—
I wrench my gaze away from her, and feel like my chest has been cracked wide open.
"No," I grit out, more ferociously.
My rage soars.
I phase.
/
Sam tells me that she takes the news relatively well.
"Jake was right," he says, fidgeting with the wobbly aluminum tab on his beer can. "She's good with weird."
I squint into the blistering orange flames of the bonfire.
"Awesome," I reply flatly. "My leech-loving imprint is good with weird. Truly, she's a blessing from the gods."
He huffs and gulps down the rest of his beer.
"Look, Paul, this is a…this is a happy thing," he says, grimacing when I spear him with a withering, disbelieving glare. "Imprinting—she's what you need, and you're what she needs. That's all it is. It might not be…romantic, or sexual, or whatever—that might not be what either of you needs right now. But the imprint—it's a gift."
I snort out a humorless laugh.
"It's a curse," I correct him, tossing a squared-off wood chip into the fire. "Bella Swan, Sam. My imprint is Bella Swan. I know you remember finding her that night—after Cullen left. I know you remember what she looked like."
He winces.
"Yeah."
I dip my chin and cock my head to the side.
"I can already feel it," I sigh, leaning back on my elbows. "The separation."
He nods.
"Hurts, doesn't it?"
"Like a bitch."
"You're gonna have to talk to her eventually, Paul."
My nostrils flare.
I listen as gentle, low-tide waves lap curiously at the ridges of hard-packed sand and seaweed-slick pebbles that line the beach.
I don't reply.
/
I spend the drive to her house tapping my fingers against the worn black plastic of my steering wheel. I'd had to ask Jacob where she lived, and I still wasn't sure that he'd given me the right directions—his bitterness about who I'd imprinted on was almost as absolute as my own.
"What are you doing here?" she asks me as soon as she opens the front door; she's in what I assume are her pajamas, a pair of tiny grey cotton shorts and a v-neck white t-shirt. My dick notices how long her legs are, and I have to swallow twice before I trust myself not to say something stupid.
"Thought it'd be fun to swing by and see how my soul mate was doing," I respond dryly.
Her lips compress into a thin white line.
"You're not my soul mate," she argues, hissing out the words in a loaded, overlapping jumble, as if she can't get rid of them fast enough.
"No," I agree, upper lip curling, "I'm not. That's not—the imprint—that isn't what it is. Not…really."
She crosses her arms over her upper abdomen—uncrosses them—crosses them again—and I wonder, with a grim sort of amusement, if she even realizes how defensive she looks.
"Sam and Emily—" she tries.
"Are Sam and Emily," I interrupt, not bothering to soften my tone; I'm surprised, a little, by how freely the bond is allowing me to speak to her. Sam does nothing but pander to Emily, is too afraid to hurt her feelings after the whole Leah clusterfuck—as far as I know, they'd had the one awful fight and were now living happily ever after. It's all bullshit; fabricated, fake, forced. No one trusts it but them. "Sam is what Emily needs. Emily is what Sam needs. That's how it works, okay? It isn't always…like that. It's not supposed to be. That's the point."
Her jaw sets at a mutinous angle.
"I really fail to see how you could possibly ever be what I need."
I scoff, leveling a deliberately insulting glance at her hips and her breasts—she has to know she's built like a boy, all straight lines and hard edges where there should be easy curves and pliant flesh. I can hardly believe the savage stab of satisfaction that I feel when she clenches her teeth and tightens her arms around her body.
"Yeah, I know exactly what you mean," I say.
She clears her throat, and then she hunches forward, like she's caving in on herself. I'm irrationally irritated by the sight.
"So, what—do we have to become friends now? Hang out all the time? Will it be like getting a puppy? Are you even housetrained?" she spits the questions out rapid-fire, obviously trying to gain something like leverage over the course of our conversation, but her voice is already trembling and there is a vague sense of defeat weighing down the slope of her shoulders. I fucking hate it.
"Only if you take me for regular walks," I snap. "Better invest in a leash, sweetheart."
Her eyes narrow.
"More like a choke chain," she retorts.
I shoot her an unfriendly grin.
"There's my little ray of sunshine," I drawl. "Too bad I don't sparkle, huh?"
She slams the door so hard that I think the wood might have splintered.
/
A/N: Hi, there!
So, this is a vague New Moon AU where Paul imprints on Bella and the Cullens never come back. It's kind of a fix-it fic in that it's a total byproduct of all of my issues with the concept of imprinting and the absolute ridiculousness of Bella's fugue state following Edward's abandonment. It won't be too terribly long; I'm guessing 25k-50k words max once it's finished. I don't really have an updating schedule, although I can promise that I'll try to get chapters up every week or two. I'm pretty pathological about adhering to deadlines—I make elaborate to-do lists and get legitimate anxiety when I don't cross things off on time. Oops.
I hope you all enjoy!
Reviews are love.
xx
ALSO! This story will feature quite a bit of material that might not be suitable for younger readers. It's rated 'M' for a reason (or several, whatever, don't judge me).
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