YOU GUYS ROCK! I can't even imagine a better welcome back after not posting anything for a while. I can't thank you enough! Your reviews made me smile so big. :))
For this fic, I took a little bit of creative license with the way first-person shooter games work, and I'm only throwing this in for those who might notice. And let's pretend Port Angeles has a Chipotle (poor things).
Any changes in tense are intentional. Right now, she's going through what led up to the first chapter. Once we get there, it'll switch back to present tense.
The fic I wrote for Fandom For Mental Health Awareness, which I will post when able, was on the heavier side, so this was a way to lighten things up for me a bit. If it's not your cup of tea, it's more than okay to move on. There are plenty of amazing fics to choose from!
SM owns all things Twilight. No copyright infringement intended.
This chapter should answer the age question that came up in some reviews. :)
Chapter 2 - Deal
I've always been one of the guys. As an only child, I ventured out to find playmates, and I ended up finding five brothers in the neighbor kids. I proved I could hang by picking up a snake they'd found in the woods and lunging at Brady, making him scream like a little girl.
From that day on, they took me with them to play in the creek behind Jasper's house. We climbed trees, chased and caught frogs, and dug for buried treasure together. I went home each day with dirt on my clothes, scrapes on my skin, and a smile on my face.
My mother would fuss over me and buy me frilly dresses, but it was futile.
I never could relate well to other girls. When I was a kid, they wanted to play princesses, and I wanted to play pirates. As I got older, they talked about painting their nails and highlighting their hair, and I wanted to talk about the latest first-person shooter for XBox.
We just didn't mesh, so I stuck with my guys. And since they stuck with me too, as we got older, the prissier bitches hated me simply because of that. I have no doubt there are girls out there I could get along with, but none seem to dwell in the relatively small town of Port Angeles.
"You're one of a kind, B," Emmett said to me once, offering me a noogie as he held me in a headlock.
"Thanks," I replied drily. "Now, let me go before I junk-punch you."
He chuckled and released me, only to throw me over his shoulder like I was one of the burlap sacks he hauled around at his parents' feed store. That was one thing that sucked about being the only girl in our group of friends. They could easily toss me around once we got older and they outweighed me by fifty pounds or more.
I could pretty much hold my own, though.
One afternoon during the summer after Edward, Emmett, and I had graduated, we were all hanging out in Jasper's basement, playing Halo 4. I'd just sniped Jacob's character, and he threw his controller down onto the coffee table with a loud curse.
"Pussy," I muttered.
He shot me a hostile glare, but then I bumped my shoulder into his massive arm, and he just laughed it off and picked his controller back up. We got back to the game, and all was good.
And that's why I liked having guy friends. Uncomplicated. Some say guys and girls can't just be friends, but I call bullshit on that little theory. Having grown up together and been there to witness all the embarrassing shit that goes on, there's no way any of us had the slightest inclination to fuck each other.
We talked and joked about sex in a general sense, and I'd heard about some of their hook-ups, but that was it.
There was also a lot of just… boy stuff: bodily noises and smells and… yeah. Hygiene didn't really become a priority for any of them until about freshman or sophomore year, about the time they realized no girl would come within a hundred feet of them, much less ever touch their incessant hard-ons if they didn't start showering on the regular.
Edward, Emmett, and Jasper came in the door after going for a food run, laughing and razzing one another. Cullen's face was crimson, and this intrigued me. I'd never seen him get truly embarrassed, except for that one time he spilled Sprite down the front of his pants in third grade and everyone pointed and called him Eddie Pee-pants for the rest of the day.
Otherwise, he was the epitome of cool confidence most of the time, especially once we hit high school and he made the varsity baseball team as a freshman.
"You know it's true, Eddie-boy," Emmett said. "All the girls cream their jeans for you."
I snorted. Loudly. Couldn't help it.
I had so many memories of all of them, but Edward was my next-door neighbor, so I'd hung out with him the most. I'd seen him cry when his little colony of sea monkeys died. I'd seen him faceplant on the sidewalk after tripping over his own two feet. I'd been there when he first discovered one single hair at the base of his penis, and we'd both stared at it like the alien thing it was to us. It was nothing sexual. We were only eleven, and being the oldest out of our group of friends, he was the first to get any.
The other guys were so jealous, and I thought it was hilarious. I called him Harry Henderson the rest of that summer. (Yes, my parents gave me a proper '80s movie education, which I lovingly and sometimes forcibly passed on to the boys.)
"What, B? You don't think so?" Emmett asked.
"I wouldn't say all the girls," I offered with a raised brow. "And cream their jeans? Gross." I gave a dramatic shudder as our Halo round ended. Most kills: Killer B.
I grinned as Jacob and Brady stalked off to the kitchen.
"You should let them win every now and then, B," Jasper chided.
"The fuck I should."
Edward laughed, plopping down next to me on the couch and slinging a leanly muscled arm around my shoulders. "This one doesn't give an inch. Trust me. I know."
I rolled my eyes and pinched his side, making him jump away from me with a girly squeal that made me snort again.
"Anywaaay," I said as Edward sent me a mock glare but then moved back to my side with a smirk. "What were you guys talking about when you came in?"
"All the pussy Edward's gonna get when you two go to UDub this fall."
A pang hit my chest out of nowhere. What the fuck?
"Uh-huh. E wouldn't know what to do with a pussy if it fell right on his face," I said out of habit of giving him shit. I really had no idea if he did or not. He'd dated here and there, so maybe he knew a lot more than I gave him credit for.
There was that pang again.
As much as Emmett, Brady, and sometimes Jake talked about their hook-ups, Jasper and Edward were usually pretty tight-lipped, so it was hard to gauge their level of experience. Jasper was just chill about everything in life, and I had no idea why Edward didn't kiss and tell, but I'd never questioned it before. The confidence they both exuded around girls in general, though, hinted at them not being amateurs in the least.
"Want a bet?" Edward retorted without missing a beat, leveling me with those pretty sage greens of his. There was one brown fleck in his left eye, right by the pupil. Huh. Never noticed that before.
I gulped but recovered quickly. "Right, Cullen. Like you could handle this," I replied with a smirk that rivaled his.
The other boys ooohed and snickered around us.
"Handle what?" Edward said, pinching my shirt at the shoulder and giving it a tug. "Can't even tell what you've got under those baggy clothes."
This was sadly true. Being comfortable was all I really cared about as far as "fashion" went. I pretty much wore shapeless t-shirts and basketball shorts in the summer and shapeless sweatshirts and sweatpants the rest of the time, much to my mother's disappointment.
I hadn't even gone to prom, so her dreams of coercing me into wearing a dress for one night were dashed.
"Oh, you wanna see what I got?"
He tilted his head and squinted, perusing my body with his gaze, which almost resulted in making me squirm. Almost. "Eh," he finally uttered with a nonchalant shrug. "Whatever."
Jasper laughed. "He does. Trust me."
Edward shot him a death glare, and I glanced back and forth between them.
Jasper bailed and went upstairs, laughing softly.
Weirdness.
Ignoring that, I asked, "And what exactly would the terms of this bet be?"
His cocky smirk scared me a little. "If I win…" His tongue peeked out to swipe across his bottom lip. "If I get you wet…"
Oh, God.
"...you go on a date with me."
"A date?" all the rest of us in the room asked at the same time, which now included Jacob and Brady, who'd come back from the kitchen with beer for all of us. Jasper's parents were cool with us drinking at their house as long as we didn't drive.
"Jesus," Edward muttered. "Is it so hard to believe I'd want to go on a date with Swan?"
"Uh, yeah," everyone but me said this time.
Rude. It's not like I was repulsive. I'd had guys interested in me before.
Okay, one guy.
"She's…" Brady said, trailing off with his hand extended toward me.
"She's what?" I asked through clenched teeth.
"You're like… our sister. You're one of the boys," he said nervously as I scowled at him. "I don't…" He trailed off, eyes darting around for back-up, but he was shit out of luck as our friends looked anywhere but at him, letting that bus run him right over.
"Which is it?" I asked, eyes narrowed at Brady. "Am I your sister, or am I one of the boys, thereby making me your brother?" My head-tilt was menacing, and he knew better than to answer. "Besides, I'm not gay," I continued. "Not that I've never considered hooking up with a girl..."
"Hot," Emmett interjected.
"Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I've dated a guy before."
"You have?" they all asked. I noticed Edward's brow wrinkle, and I had this weird urge for a second to smooth it out with my thumb.
Rolling my eyes, I huffed and stood up, jutting one hip out and folding my arms across my chest. "Yes. I dated Garrett Sutherland for like a month last year, not that I would've told any of you."
"Yeah, because we'd beat the shit out of any guy who messed with our Killer B," Emmett said proudly, puffing out his chest.
"Stand down, Tarzan. I messed with him more than he messed with me. Trust."
"I don't doubt that," Jacob chimed in.
I narrowed my eyes at him, and he threw his hands up in surrender before snagging a beer bottle off the table.
"And if I win?" I asked, turning my attention back to Edward.
"Same thing. A date with me," he said, propping his feet up on the coffee table and making a show of crossing them at the ankles, then putting his hands behind his head like he had this date thing in the bag.
I happened to glance at Emmett just as he lost control of his snickering, and he and I both started donkey-laughing. The other guys, sans Edward, who was still in his Mr. Confident pose, laughed quietly to themselves. Jasper came back downstairs, looking at Edward and shaking his head. Emmett and I couldn't stop laughing, and when we looked at each other again, our laughter only grew louder and uglier. I was still standing between the couch and the coffee table, bent over at the waist and trying to catch my breath.
After getting myself under control and wiping the tears away, I asked a frowning Edward, "So anyway, seriously, what would I get if I win?"
His mouth tilted back up at one corner, and I'm pretty sure my nipples tightened.
Fucking asshole nipples.
I pushed my folded arms harder into them so they'd get the message to turn the damn high beams off.
Didn't work, as Edward had decided to run his big-ass hand through his riotous hair.
Goddammit.
I seriously had no idea what the fuck was happening to me. I'd never entertained the thought of hooking up with any of these guys. That's just not how it was between us, and I didn't want to throw off the dynamic of our group. It's not that I didn't think any of them were attractive. They all were, in fact. But I loved my brothers like… well, brothers.
And Edward had never, to my knowledge, looked at me like he was looking at me now. Like he could see right through my arms and my Gamers don't die. They respawn! t-shirt and easily see my hard as fuck nipples… and like he liked what he saw.
I swallowed against the dryness in my throat.
"Seriously. A date. With me."
I blinked at him for a second and then threw my head back, cracking up laughing again, as did everyone else in the room. Again.
Except Edward. He flipped us all off. Both hands.
After I calmed myself down, I said, "No, for real. What would I get?"
Edward cleared his throat and sat up, looking flustered. I guess he'd expected me to jump all over a date with him. But really? This was so bizarre.
And if we did end up going on a date, was he going to expect me to wear a skirt or some shit?
Fuck. That.
Although… if I had on a skirt, that would be easy access. That's why some girls wore them on dates, right?
He does have some long-ass fingers.
Fuck my fucking body for clenching in all the wrong—right?—places at that thought.
"Okay, wow," Edward said, exasperated. "Uh… I'll buy you Halo 5 when it comes out in October?"
"Already pre-ordered."
"Shit, of course," he muttered. "A little help, guys?" he pleaded, looking around the room.
The peanut gallery was being uncharacteristically quiet during our exchange.
All he got were shrugs.
"Doesn't matter," he said, reclining back and propping his feet up on the coffee table, the picture of cool once again. "I'm going to win anyway."
"Pffft," was my intelligent reply. "You think I can't resist your charms? You forget I've seen your scrawny little body in all stages of its awkward glory—when you had chicken legs, when your head was too big for the rest of you, when you had two left feet. I can channel all sorts of embarrassing memories while you do your worst, like that time you sprung a boner while you were writing on the board in algebra freshman year."
"My worst?" he shot back. "Ha! You have no idea..." He shook his head, and the smug face returned. "And if you're thinking about my boner, I'm gonna go ahead and say I have this in the bag."
"Uh-huh. Slow your roll there, smart ass. I know what I want if I win."
"Doesn't matter. You won't get it."
"Will too."
"Will not."
"Will."
"Won't."
"Oh, would you two just bone already and get it the fuck over with?" Jasper shouted, his own eyes widening at his outburst.
After we all stared, open-mouthed at Jasper for a good ten seconds, I recovered and said, "Chipotle. Any time I want it. For a solid month."
"How's that equal?" Edward asked.
"You're so confident you'll win. What do you care?"
A deadly grin spread across his face. "You know what? You're right. Deal."
Thanks so much for reading! xoxo
Huge thanks to Sheviking, Sophiacorgi, and Twilly!
