He was very good with the delicate glass—meticulous, holding lightly, focusing carefully. He placed the baubles up high where she couldn't reach, and hung crystal snowflakes that she didn't want to know the price of. He had an eye for it, of course, and while the lower part of the tree, where she worked, was a little off centre, patchy in places, pretty—beautiful even—but in a rough, imperfect way, the top of the tree glittered and sparkled and shone in a perfectly balanced explosion of colour and light. Unsurprising. He had an eye for everything.
And then he whispered to her, velvet low, and she blushed a pink that made him burn and he smirked in his usual, smug way. She threw him a typical Bella, slightly eccentric, not-really-resentful, only-nearly-defensive retort to his grin, and he laughed louder, and his whole body shook. And she pouted an attempt at sulking, and his muscles tightened a fraction, involuntary, unnoticeable, in some mix of amusement and desire, and before either knew what had happened, the sparkling, sun-splitting, hand-sized crystal snowflake had shattered to dust between his fingers.
Bella's eyes widened only a moment before she carefully hid away the jolt of surprise. The fragility of everything in his hands. And her brittle bones, no stronger than a shell of glass, or a fine cut web of crystal. The ease with which she, too, could shatter…she kept her face carefully composed. It didn't matter.
"Sorry." His fingers pressed the bridge of his nose, pushing down the anger, struggling for calm. The laughter was gone. Finally, the tension dissolved. He exhaled slowly, deeply. Too deeply. Bella frowned. The catch in his eyes was wrong. It took her a moment to place it. Longing. She bit the inside of her lip. She had seen that look too many times this summer. Longing and frustration and an ancient sadness. Longing for his muscles to soften again into the human weakness that would free him. "Perhaps I should let you finish. I'm obviously incapable of being around something so fragile without destroying it." His voice had dropped to nothing. He began to turn away, stopping with his shoulder to her, just far enough to avoid her eyes. Bella knew she saw his lips moving in the dim room, too quick and too low for her human hearing to follow. She also knew he wouldn't tell her if she asked. She had come to know this mood—Edward's guilt and his sorrow and his silent longing—too well.
For a moment, she watched him watching their half-finished effort. The shattered crystal sparkled like a million more starry lights than they could ever afford on Charlie's silly Christmas-in-July tree. Or Renee's, it should probably be called. Renee calling with her promises of Christmas-in-July parties and sunny beaches and presents and punch in an attempt to lure Bella to Florida for the rest of the summer. Charlie's awkward assurances that she could go if she wanted, or that they could have a party here if she liked. Which she didn't, of course. The tree was entirely at Alice's insistence. She received enthusiastic support from Charlie, who was eager to prove himself as much fun as Bella's mother. The snowflakes could have been Edward's or his sister's, though Edward feigned innocence, but Bella had to admit they made Charlie's meagre collection of decorations look a lot more festive. She eyed the glittering mess contemplatively, watching Edward out of the corner of her eye. Stupid paranoid vampire. Carefully steadying herself, she bent forward from the waist, folding in half down to the ground. The blood rushed to her head as her hands fumbled and she swayed a moment before finding her balance. She frowned at her clumsiness. The crystal wasn't quite dust – he hadn't squeezed it tightly. Just tensed. Just enough to shatter the snowflake into a thousand pieces. She picked up one tiny fragment between her fingers. It glittered in the light, a flickering shard of rainbows. The miniscule pieces rested on the branches and scattered at the base where snowdrifts or presents should be. The white pricks of the fairy lights danced on them and between them, starlight on snow, moonlight on carved up ice.
She shook her head, smiling weakly, the glimmering fragment still resting on a fingertip. "I'm just as likely to break these as you are. You know perfectly well that the more breakable something is, the more likely I am to drop it. And these are valuable too, I'm sure." She made a face. "That makes it almost a guarantee." He didn't move. She sighed, giving up the attempt at humour as she took the smallest steptoward him. "Besides." She lifted the fingertip to the white skin of her other wrist and watched the rainbows play across her canvas. "You didn't destroy anything." Another person would not have caught the way his eyes flickered up, confused, curious, and full of sadness. She smiled as she crossed the small space between them. He did not move as she stood close. "Look, Edward." Golden eyes flickering up again, too brief to track. Slowly, carefully, she raised one hand toward his face. On one fingertip, the shard glittered and split the light, and the shattered rainbows shattered again on Edward's skin into a thousand more. Shimmering, insubstantial slivers of light and colour dancing and reflecting and re-reflecting. A thousand glittering facets of his marble, crystal skin. A thousand glittering fragments of shattered, strewn crystal. His eyes rested warily on her hand, so fragile, ashamed of the dancing array of light. Broken and surreal. Cold and inhuman. She brought her other hand up to his cheek. "It's beautiful, Edward. Like crystal snow. Like glittering rain." Something flashed in his eyes at her hand on his cool skin. Something moved behind his sadness. The same electric shocks she still felt every time they touched. She grinned. "You're good at this even when it's an accident, damn it. Why can't I accidentally make the tree look like a million dollar window display?"
At last, the shadow of a smile flickered on his lips. He raised his face the fraction needed to meet her eyes, and she felt the butterflies tickling in her belly.
"I'm sorry." His voice, rougher than usual, was still more musical than any human voice.
For a moment, she considered laughing it off, calling him stupid and stubbornly shoving the next decoration at him until he obeyed and hung it high on the tree. But his eyes were too deep, his sadness too real, and his fear too obvious where it hid in those depths, and she couldn't laugh. "You're not going to break me, Edward." Quiet and intent. Steady and sure. Her eyes locked with his like one long channel—invisible mind to his all-seeing, unsteady heart to his unbeating, soul freely given to his perhaps, maybe soul.
When gazing into each others eyes came too close to kissing, and Edward's sadness did not want to kiss, she took the last step forward to lay her head against his chest. Slowly, lightly, cautious—like the first time, like the first afternoon in the sun, in the grass in their meadow—he wrapped his arms around her. For minutes they held each other, long minutes that passed like hours, and as she hugged him tight, he held her closer and slowly, they wrapped themselves together. His arms were cool and tight and glittering dimly around her. She smiled at the shimmer of crystalline dust on their ridiculous tree, just visible out of the corner of her eye. He drew back enough to meet her smile, and squeezed just once, so lightly.
"See?" She grinned, just a little. His lips rested lightly on her forehead. Somehow, this he did not destroy. Somehow, miraculously, she was right. Where all else turned to dust beneath his fingers, she did not break. He wasn't going to break her. Perhaps, just maybe, though he barely dared believe it…perhaps, just maybe, his love was enough. Enough to protect her. Enough to protect them both.
"It's not as beautiful as you are." He smiled the words against her lips.
She laughed, breathless in his arms. "Stupid vampire."
And even as he kissed her, even as he pressed his closed lips gently to hers and wound his fingers loosely in her hair, even as he savoured the softness of her fragile body against his own, still she did not break.
Miracles, he reflected as he drew her down into his lap at the base of the fairy-lit tree, were certainly on their side.