Title: Asylum
Author: wrldpossibility
Fandom: Twilight
Characters: Bella, Jacob, mention of Edward
Word Count: 350
Summary: On days like this, it's easy to forget Jacob has an agenda. She likes to think it may even be easy for Jacob to forgot Jacob has an agenda.
Asylum
First Beach is, as usual, deserted.
Beneath her, their tangle of tree roots, stained russet from a near-constant dousing of rain and salt water, soak Bella's jeans. Above and around her, dark clouds threaten, as always. Wind whips their hair, and spray intermittently hits her eyes.
She knows that for Jake, this is home base. He sits beside her with a certainty born of familiarity, assumption…birthright. For herself, she's not sure what this stretch of sand represents. Friendly territory, certainly, but not the neutral ground she'd like it to be. She doesn't want to say sanctuary, but it's come to mean something like it.
They get up, Jake's extended hand hot in hers, and walk slowly, shoulder to shoulder. After a moment, she disentangles her fingers from his and stuffs her hands deep into the pockets of her parka. The short sleeves of his thin t-shirt ruffle against his bare skin in the breeze. She shakes her head as he delivers a ridiculous joke, and he grins, his smile dazzling in this landscape of muted grays and browns lapping the steel blue of the water. She wonders what he'd think if she told him what it reminds her of: a meadow, bright sunlight, skin like diamonds.
Of course, she has no intention of going there.
On days like this, it's easy to forget Jacob has an agenda. She likes to think it may even be easy for Jacob to forgot Jacob has an agenda.
And so she throws one shoulder into his rock-hard chest in mock retaliation to his most recent words, some dig questioning the health and sanity and basic badassness of anyone needing a winter coat on the beach. She listens to her own laugh carry across the sand, but even after she's sobered, a nagging irony lingers: Edward may offer her eternal youth, but it's only with Jacob that she truly feels eighteen.
