A/N:

First thing off, my vampires are not Meyer's. I'm not going to outline their anatomy and physiology here; not only is it unimportant to the story-line, you'll see it in the reading.

As for the dialogue, Alice speaks In Capital Letters for a reason. (She's a bit on the dramatic side.) Anytime that Edward is going over something that has been spoken in the past, it will be in italics and quotations. His thoughts, and the thoughts of those around him, will be in good old-fashioned italics. I think that's it.

Oh, and for those of you who are unaware:
Thirsty = desperate
Bluenose = 1920's era slang for "prude"

Trigger Warning: Assault


"God, Edward. Could you at least look like you want to be here?"

Alice turns her silky black head to face him. Her golden eyes look large and demanding on her small face. The high pitch of her voice, coupled with the reverberating music, is as grating as nails on a chalkboard. The air surrounding him is heavy with the smell of sweat, vomit, sex, and alcohol (as well as another less reputable choice of drug). The room is crowded beyond belief; they all are. He has been assailed all night with dizzy, writhing bodies – sometimes by accident, more often in proposition.

Edward Cullen does not want to be here.

"I don't want to be here, Alice. We don't belong here. We should be – "

"We should be Having Fun, Edward. We never see or talk to anyone outside of the family. It's Antisocial, It's Stupid, and I Don't Like It."

"Well of course, if you don't like it Alice," he says wryly.

Rosalie snorts.

"Don't be such a bluenose, Edward. If anyone needs to get out, it's you."

A smirk slithers across her flawless face, and his stomach jumps at the sight of it. A smirking Rosalie is a dangerous Rosalie.

"I heard dear Little Mia Cuzco offer you head a minute ago. Usually, I don't condone fraternizations with the eternally thirsty, but maybe a little action will do you some good. How long has it been since you've gotten some? Forever, isn't it?"

He feels his face heating up at her jibes, and it only worsens when he hears the snickers from the other three. Even Jasper is having a hard time holding in his amusement.

"Shut up, Rosalie."

"There goes that rapier wit of yours again."

The snickers turn into outright laughter. He stands up, furious. "I'm going out to the car. We shouldn't be here. If Carlisle found out – "

"Oh sit back down," says Alice. "Carlisle isn't going to find out. I've checked every possible vision. He and Esme won't be back until Wednesday morning." She runs her hands through Jasper's hair and he hums in response. "You just want an excuse not to enjoy yourself. Well there isn't."

"I guess you're not considering the stick lodged in his ass."

He doesn't bother to respond to Rosalie this time. He just makes his way through the mass of slowly gyrating bodies. He's halfway through the crowd when he sees her. They lock eyes, and he wishes, not for the first time, that someone would put hers out.

Isabella Swan.

The grin she gives him is so beautiful and dangerous that he aches.


Carlisle says that hatred is too strong an emotion for the human mind to handle.

"It corrupts them more easily than it does us, Edward. They do not know how to bear fire as we do."

Even so, Edward likes to think that he is careful with his hatred. That he gives it out as thoughtfully as he does his love.

There are only three things in this world that he does hate. Only three things that he truly despises with all of his being.

The first is being vulnerable. If asked, Edward would not necessarily label himself as strong or weak or anything in between. He would certainly never consider himself an anal retentive perfectionist whose defensive behavior bordered on paranoia (his sister Alice's words, not his). He is simply guarded against those things that might interfere with what he considers his optimal performance. Those things are, upon contact, to be removed or combated appropriately.

The second is disappointing the family. Disappointing the family could actually be simplified to disappointing Carlisle. Carlisle Cullen was Edward's sire, and the self-proclaimed patriarch of one of the largest vampire clans in existence. It isn't that the other five vampires with whom Edward lives with are not important. It's just that Carlisle is the only father Edward has ever known – in his human life and the one that followed. He acts as a sort of God figure: strong, commanding, compassionate, ever-merciful and never faltering. The sense of duty that Edward feels towards him is indelible. To disappoint him is to bring immediate and excruciating pain upon Edward's person.

To most of the family, the first two items on his list of loathsome things made perfect sense. They could sympathize with or understand the motivations behind them (or pretend to). But the third…Oh, the third was something of a running gag within the Cullen household. No one was quite willing to voice their speculations about what lay behind Edward's adulterated hatred, but everyone was well-acquainted with the object of it:

Isabella "Bella" Swan.

So far as the other Cullen's knew, Edward's loathing of the police chief's daughter was as instantaneous as it was extreme. Edward, Alice, Jasper, Rosalie, and Emmett Cullen had been enrolled in Forks High School for the first time as sophomores when she transferred from Phoenix. Forks was a small town, and news that the result of the chief's failed marriage to the infamously flighty Renee Swan spread like wildfire. The gossips had been salivating for months before the girl's feet even touched the ground of their hallowed home.

And oh were they rewarded.

Isabella Swan was Delilah incarnate. Beautiful and charming and wily as a fox, she was a bigger handful than anyone expected. Charlie Swan had had to beat the high school boys away from his little girl with a night stick. Only while he was fending off one, three others were coming in from the side. Poor Charlie eventually came to the conclusion that the only way to protect was to threaten – constantly – but he was never quite as successful as he hoped.

Because there was just something about Isabella Swan that invited destruction and recklessness in the men around her.

There was some siren song of hers that led them to places that they should never, ever, have been, and could never remember coming to.

Edward had watched that first day as they flocked to her, watched her inebriating Mona Lisa smile fell the brightest and the cockiest, watched her brown doe eyes sweep down and up again in a demure attempt to hide the fact that she enjoyed it all. And that was all he could do – watch. Because for the first time since Edward was turned into a vampire, he could not read another person's mind.

It baffled him, enraged him, made him want to tear the hair out of his head, made him want to tear the hair out of her head. Where he should have heard petty, conceited, poisonous thoughts, there was nothing. A wall of silence. An anomaly.

He hated anomalies. As a matter of fact, he'd add them to the list.

Vulnerability, disappointing Carlisle, anomalies, and Isabella Swan. Fucking Isabella Swan. He hated how she got to him. He hated that she made him say things like the word 'fuck' – things he'd never say otherwise. He hated that he hated her. Hated that she, a mere slip of a girl, occupied his thoughts more than anything else ever had. If only someone else, someone with no conscience or sense of morals would just end her. He'd be forever grateful.

She is suddenly swallowed by the sea of people. It gives him the chance to regain focus. He should leave. He shouldn't have been here in the first place. None of them should have, but him more than anyone. Carlisle would be especially disappointed in him.

Carlisle Cullen enjoys mindless, teenage debauchery about as much Edward does. His disapproval of those who participate in such scenes is just as strong. It is doubtful that he would be won over by Emmett's claim that Chris Erdman's birthday party was to be the "best fucking party this town's seen in years, man!" He and Alice agreed that they would all be fools to miss it. Emmett won Rosalie over by buying her yet another outrageously expensive designer bathing suit, and Jasper simply went along with whatever it was that Alice wanted. That left him, Edward, the odd man out once more. He still wouldn't have budged on the issue at all if:

A. Alice had not pleaded with him

B. Alice had not annoyed him

C. Rosalie had not crudely referred to him as a certain "street" term for an unmentionable part of the female anatomy

D. Carlisle had not been out of town with Esme

When he reaches his secluded car, he almost tears the door off of it in frustration. He knows that these reasons are not good enough; he knew it before.

He has disobeyed Carlisle. Even worse, he has disregarded one of his sire's most important rules:

No unnecessary intermingling with the humans.

"We are not like them Edward. We will never be like them. They would treat us like gods if they knew, which is why they must not know. We must never give them the chance to know."

It was foolish of him to forget that, foolish of him to allow some misguided attempt at…assimilation to taint his flawless record for obedience.

He smashes his head against the steering wheel before remembering that he is no human. Vampires do not vent in such a manner. He and his siblings have all let their little act grow roots where it should not have. They are beginning to forget who they are. They are beginning to forget what they are. Tonight is evidence of that.

He resolves to correct his behavior immediately. For the rest of the night, he will not move a fraction of an inch. He will not breathe and he will not blink. Perhaps he will even refrain from blood for a few extra days.

Or at least, that's what he would have done if he hadn't heard Isabella Swan screech like a madwoman:

"Get your hands off me!"


It is a good thing that he was just schooling his body into a state of immobility. Otherwise, he might have done something foolish.

Like jump out of the car to help the person he hates most in the world.

Carlisle insists that they not interfere with the order of things. They must not think of themselves as vigilantes or superheroes. They must not stop muggers or murderers or frauds. They must not warn Mrs. Slattern that the home nurse that has been taking care of her for the last five years is embezzling money from her Social Security Check. Such behavior is reckless and it is wrong.

"There is a fine line between co-existence and fraternization, Edward. Everything has a balance. While we have surely earned our place in Paradise for our abstinence of human blood, we must remember that the obstacle we have overcome is most unnatural. There is nothing more abominable than the unnatural, Edward. But such would be the results of our interference with human affairs. The course of human history must continue as if we had all died long ago. Remember that."

Now Edward takes refuge in the words as Isabella's screeching continues.

He repeats them to himself, the voice in his head getting louder as hers does.

"There is a fine line between co-existence and fraternization, Edward."

"There is a fine line between co-existence and fraternization, Edward."

He grips his head in his hands, trying to block the girl out. He doesn't know why they bother him so much. He has heard humans scream for help countless times – often right before they drew their last. Many times he didn't so much as look in their direction.

"Get off of me!"

"There is a fine line between co-existence and fraternization, Edward.

It's just that he's never heard her sound so desperate and crazed. Not her. Usually her voice is carefully modulated and warm. Usually it wraps around you and squeezes you and makes you think of things that you should not

"There is a fine line between co-existence and fraternization, Edward."

The sound of her screaming seizes his limbs in a vice grip and he trembles with the effort to restrain them because –

"There is a fine line between co-existence and fraternization, Edward."

"There is a fine line between co-existence and fraternization, Edward."

His head pounds terribly. He doesn't understand. This time should not be any different. He has witnessed a thousand crimes and done nothing. He will do nothing now because –

"There is a fine line between co-existence and fraternization, Edward."

"There is a fine line... There is a fine line between – between – "

"Get off! Get off! Get off!"

He breaks the handle when he opens the door this time.

It takes him no time at all to find her. She was forty-five feet and three inches away.

Chris Erdman has her body pinned against a tree with his.

She is wriggling, writhing like a wild thing. She is screaming in his face for him to, "Get off! Get your fucking hands off of me!"

Chris seems to be extremely intoxicated. He looks as confused as he is irate, and his thoughts are no better.

Fucking tease…Always being a fucking tease…Always…Haughty and shit…Ordering people around…

"Get off of me, Chris! Get the fuck off now!"

"Shut the fuck up, Jesus! Be still!"

The two of them are struggling and have not noticed Edward yet. He clenches his fists so hard that he hears a few bones break. He can't allow himself to do this, can he? He can still walk away from this. He can still let nature take its course. He can still –

Rosalie appears out of nowhere.

She throws her right fist in a perfect, swooping arch. It lands in Chris Erdman's face with a crack!

The boy drops like a rock to the pavement.

Edward could not be more stunned if God Himself had come down and dragged them all away.

Rosalie pants heavily. It isn't from exhaustion, he knows. It is from restraint.

She wanted to kill the boy.

After a few moments, she looks at Isabella.

"Are you okay?"

Isabella takes a step forward and spits on Chris's face, then brings her heel down hard on his nose. There is silence for a long while. All three of them examine the horrible new slant of the unconscious boy's nose. The bruising will be bad. The pain will be worse.

"I hate them," she says finally.

Rosalie nods. "Me too."

The siren tilts her head in response. She examines Rosalie as if she's trying to determine just what it is that she's looking at.

"I'm going home now. My dad's going to be back from the late shift in about an hour. Would you like to come?"

This is the question that finally thrusts Edward back into reality.

This is a big mistake. All of it. This should never have happened. It cannot go any further.

He runs over.

"Rosalie? Rosalie, what are you doing?"

Isabella turns her narrowed brown eyes on him like a set of headlights.

"Cullen? How long have you been out here?"

He flinches.

"I – I just left the party."

"Oh."

Rosalie's mouth screws up in disgust.

You coward. I should tell her. I know that you just stood there, Edward.

He doesn't know why, but the thought of Rosalie doing that kills him. He always has cared an awful lot about what people think of him.

When Isabella turns back to face Rosalie, he shakes his head at his sister in an odd moment of supplication.

I said I should, I didn't say that I would. You aren't worth the trouble.

"Yeah, I'll come with you. Edward, tell everybody that I'll get home on my own."

Despite the fact that he is well acquainted with her petty rebellions, he is stunned at the audacity she now employs.

"Rosalie, you can't. Carlisle will be furious."

He realizes as soon as he has said the words that it was the wrong thing. Rosalie's eyes narrow into slits and her lips curl into a vicious snarl. Edward knows that, although she gives her hatred out almost indiscriminately, she harbors a special sort of abhorrence of her sire.

"Will he now?" she spits.

"Rosalie, think about – "

"Fuck you Edward. Carlisle has never been my master."

Then they both leave him.


Alright guys. That's the first chapter. If I were you, I'd review.

But that's just me. :)

No really. Come on. I worked like a madwoman on this.