A/N: This idea has been rooting around in my brain for years - I've had a segment saved on my phone since fall 2015 - and just over a month ago while I was studying for my finals Paul and Rachel started bugging the hell out of me. I couldn't sleep some nights because they wouldn't shut up. So I finally put in the work and this little thing started to take shape.

Characters belong to Stephanie Meyer but I'm doing my own thing with them. I think it's tragic that the Blacks as a family unit got such little airtime and I just want to do the twins justice.

So this is my take on how Paul and Rachel would have settled into their imprint (or, rather, me trying to reconcile the concept of imprints in my own head, because I still resent the direction that SM took them in). This takes place right after Eclipse, so it's summer 2006. Title inspiration from the Ed Sheeran song, but I decided on it after listening to the Alex G cover non-stop so you should go give it a listen too. Enjoy!

My brother didn't come to my graduation.

Dad said he had a minor motorcycle accident but what worried me more was how blasé he was about it all. Any little scrape or headache was enough to get Sue Clearwater on the phone when we were growing up, especially after Mom died.

The car ride home (though I hadn't been back in over a year, it hardly felt like home) was long enough for me to come up with any number of explanations for Jake's absence. It was probably a dumb high schooler thing, I thought, he just didn't want to make the drive up and maybe it served me right for staying at school over Christmas break.

The guilt I still felt over that was enough to keep me from going into a panic on the spot. I was the most careful driver I knew; I didn't even listen to music unless it was full daylight and I knew exactly how to get to my destination.

I was able to keep my cool until I realized that not only had Jake actually broken several ribs, but he hadn't even seen a proper doctor. Then I went into a full on panic.

I couldn't tell you now what I was thinking when I heard our back door swing open. I remember my dad trying to talk me down, and I was standing by the sink, and then I heard my dad sigh.

A lot of that day is a blur to me now but I remember, in that instant, feeling like I hadn't come back to the same place. I felt out of place in the home I had grown up in.

I had known him in passing when we were kids—even as a middle schooler, his reputation had preceded him—but it wasn't until I heard my dad say his name that I was able to place him. He was bigger, like Jake, who in the last six months had somehow outgrown the twin bed he'd slept in since he was a toddler.

He looked me in the eyes and I felt the earth drop out from under me.

Paul.

I knew coming home would be hard, but holy shit.

The rational part of my brain knew that this was a dangerous path to be going down. From the little I could get out of Jake, I knew that this all had to do with Sam Uley (asshole) and that was all I needed to hear to know that it wasn't worth getting involved with. I wanted to make sure he healed, that he and my dad were eating well, and of course spend time with them. I had missed them, but I also needed to start apartment hunting in Seattle. I didn't plan to stay.

Paul started coming around more, saying he was there for Jake, but from the look on my brother's face I didn't believe that was true.

And—shallow, I know—but he was a handsome guy. He looked at me like he gave a shit and wasn't pushy, which surprised me because with that face I didn't think he had heard the word 'no' very much. Jake was in a constant bad mood and bedridden, but Paul was patient with him. As someone who had been a target of Jake's occasional outbursts going up I knew that was no small feat.

But it just wasn't rational to entertain any kind of thirst towards someone who had barely been going through puberty when I was graduating high school. Who was…one year older than Jake? Seventeen. Damn. He didn't look it, and I knew that seventeen was technically of age in Washington, but even those thoughts made me feel like a creep.

I was an adult. I knew what I was supposed to be doing, and that didn't involve back-pedaling to chasing high school boys. I had my degree a year early, I had a job lined up, and now…this. Of course, I didn't know exactly what 'this' was for a few days, until the supernatural bomb was finally dropped on me.

Those few days between me meeting Paul and him explaining why his mere presence made the pit in my stomach disappear were some of the most confusing in my life. I didn't know why his smile or his stupid jokes felt like a reason to stay in La Push forever.

"I know you're a big college grad now and everything, but you seem different."

Leah had been one of my best friends growing up but I had neglected her while I was at school, like everything else. My dad had insisted that I come to the bonfire planned for a few nights after my return. I suddenly felt like a little bit of an outsider and it was clear that Jake (who was feeling much better, apparently) hadn't expected me to tag along but everyone seemed so happy and carefree that I actually enjoyed myself.

"I seem different?"

Leah had had such pretty hair when we were little—it took me years to figure out how to deal with my waves, but hers was pin-straight and Becca and I had always been jealous. Now it was cut short, to the bottom of her ears.

She rolled her eyes. "No, like…"

At that moment Paul walked behind us, and though we had only exchanged a few words since that earth-shattering feeling I still turned and smiled. I felt delirious, he was gorgeous and I didn't how the wall I had built up against boys who were hot and knew it and would use it to get what they wanted had crumbled down so easily.

"…Oh."

After that, Leah closed up again and left without saying goodbye.

I only heard about her and Sam's break-up secondhand, and at this point it felt like too little too late to ask even if Sam was at the bonfire too. They seemed cordial even if their dynamic was of course totally different from what I remembered. I had spent a lot of late nights during high school hanging out with them and my sister and of all the things that had happened over the last few days, that they were no longer together made the least sense.

It took me until everyone was packing up to realize that Sam was there with another girl, and he had put a ring on her finger just like he had with Leah.

We had stilted conversations. I learned that he was born in Tacoma (a plus), that his parents were divorced and his mother had remarried. She called him on his birthday but he hadn't seen her in four years. Without even really meaning to, I told him more about my mother than I told most people (which admittedly wasn't much at all).

Something was there but I couldn't pinpoint it. I felt inexplicably drawn to him, but it was different from previous crushes or mere attraction—I felt like there was something in him that understood, that would understand, like he contained depths that I wanted to know and would never tire of.

Although we didn't touch, I felt like there was a persistent buzzing anytime he was close. Talking got easier. I wanted him to be close. He looked at me like he genuinely wanted me, as I was, and so I began to trust that he was good and good for me even though I didn't understand why.

After I had been back in La Push for a week, I was sat down and told that the legends I had heard as a child were all true.

"Who else?"

Quil. Sam. Embry. Jared, who I had only recently met but had heard a lot of from Paul. Seth. Leah. Paul.

"Why didn't he tell me?" I blurted out. My father and brother exchanged a look.

"Wait, Leah?"

I only realized later that perhaps the only thing keeping me from being another female shapeshifter was the fact that I had gone away. Leah obviously thought of all of this as a curse. For some reason, I had been spared. She was colder than I remembered her to be, but over time things became easier. I genuinely wanted her happiness, and though it took her a while to come around I understood why my involvement in the Pack – "with all the perks, but none of the drama" – would be jarring to anyone in her position.

I had a lot of questions but after a while both my dad and Jake insisted that I go to Paul for more answers.

He gave them, and afterward the first words out of his mouth were an apology.

I hugged him because I didn't know how else to respond. I told him that it was okay, it explained a lot of things and really I just wanted us to be on the same page. I couldn't promise anything more and he didn't want me to.

I didn't want him to be forced into anything, but he assured me that that wasn't the case. That he had seen me around as kids and had a feeling about me ("Weird. But good. You were cute."). He had heard my father brag about my success in college and seen me through Jacob's childhood memories and though the imprint didn't force love he didn't need to be forced to genuinely like me.

I'm not an Emily or a Kim.

"Well, good, because I don't want either of them. It was you for a reason. It's about you and who you are and who I am, it doesn't have any guarantees about the future. We don't think it has to be romantic, that's just how it turned out with them because some feelings were already there."

"Neither of them are delicate little angels, you know. Emily's like the nicest person I've ever met but she can be scary. And Kim's wicked smart. She has a bunch of little siblings and she can hold her own, she's tough. They're good people but they're also what the guys needed-what the Pack needed. Which is part of why that love's so easy, we all need each other even when we butt heads, which we do because there are a lot of different personalities."

What was it like? To phase.

"Shock of my damn life. I, uh, thought I had gotten slipped something extra."

I genuinely liked Paul. I had liked him before I had understood the implications of what truly knowing him would entail. Knowing that he could burst into a giant furry wolf at will didn't change that.

I liked being able to talk about my mom to someone whose own emotions about her weren't so complicated. I had gotten almost too good at avoiding a lot of talk about parents at school, but he listened and asked questions and smiled over old pictures and let me take my time.

He didn't have a mother either, not really, and while his was a different kind of loss, one marked by another person's selfishness rather than a complete and unfillable void he didn't have to try very hard to draw up sympathy. When he did, it wasn't cloying.

"She'd love you," I said breathlessly when I saw him draw for the first time, and when his warm arms came around me it was all I could do not to cry.

He's there, he's almost always there but he doesn't smother me.

Despite my best efforts to take it slow and rationalize every step of what this was, I realized that I was already halfway in love with him. And suddenly the rest of the world could wait.

"Sam is worried that I'll hurt you."

I had heard he had a temper, but he hadn't given me any reason to be afraid of it yet. His bitterness had never been directed towards me.

"You wouldn't hurt me." He winced. "What? Why would he even think that?"

"Emily's scar."

"No."

"He didn't mean it, though, that's the thing, he doesn't know if I'd be able to help it—"

He grabbed my left hand but had already turned it over before I could pull away.

"Oh, Rachel." He whispered, and as he hugged me I understood that he couldn't hurt me anymore than I had already hurt myself. Staying in La Push was healing. I needed my family, and that now included the Pack.

I could see how he held his own with Sam and called Jake out on the constant moping that isn't all like my brother. Even Emily held a unique respect for him (all of them, she loves all of them but Paul is the only one who jokes with her like he isn't worried about his overly protective Alpha). I liked seeing his overt physicality and how that bled into his interactions with his brothers, leaning on the back of Embry's chair as he ate and constantly challenging Seth to race, usually stopping only once the youngest of the Pack has won.

They've each settled into their roles since the trouble last spring, he tells me. It's been a quiet summer and they've all felt better able to breathe. He's calmed down too, he's slower to phase and the fights with Jake had all but stopped until I came back.

I couldn't even be angry with my brother. He had changed. I didn't know how to bring the smile back to his face, it was hard enough when we were eight and twelve. I tried to tell him that there are some people who will never leave him but I have struggled with believing this myself.

I wanted him to know that I would stay if he or my dad asked, that it wasn't just Paul and that they would still always matter more. Even so, I couldn't help but think that they looked at me and already considered me gone.

He had never been on a plane before but Dad had bought my ticket months ago as a graduation gift and I couldn't see myself leaving him for five whole days. Not with things as they were. It was too early to put a name on it, but when I told him I would be flying to visit Rebecca in Hawaii he started shaking. He had gotten so good at keeping that under control in the short time we've known each other that it scared me. When I offered to loan him some money to pay for his own ticket it only took a little bit of convincing.

Sam needed more convincing, but considering that I didn't really care what he thought and they had never had the opportunity to test the power of the Pack bond across miles of open water, Emily had a fairly easy job of it as well.

"You know he only looks at you like that," Emily had whispered in my ear the previous weekend when we were all eating pancakes. If any of the guys besides Jake heard they didn't let on, and when he muttered something that sounded rude I gleefully used up the last of the syrup and passed him the empty bottle.

The idea of giving myself over to someone fully, which I felt was inevitable at that point, scared the hell out of me but when the plane took off Paul held my hand without saying anything. He was constantly showing me that he cared without drawing attention to it or making me feel like I owed him anything in return. He was different. Everything about this was different.

It was important to me that my family like him, and if I couldn't get that from my dad or Jacob then I needed it from my twin.

A/N again because I don't shut up: Originally this was going to be a four-parter but it will probably end up being somewhere between five and ten now.

Also, I did the research and math only to find out that Meyer didn't, I guess? Because apparently Rachel and Rebecca were born in 1988, but for Rachel to graduate college in 2006 she would have had to finish college in two years. Bless her. That isn't how it works for normal people. So I'm making the twins a year older than Sam/Leah/Emily. Also, if Paul and Jared were the same age as Jacob/Quil/Embry, they would have had to have phased at 14 (since they were both already phased when Sam imprinted in 2004). So I made them both a year older as well - born in 89 instead of 90.

Sorry for boring stuff but I couldn't deal with the mental anguish of trying to figure out different birthdays to fix SM's math for her and not share.

Feedback makes me want to update faster! :)