A/N: Thanks for the support guys. Enjoy the chapter!

Disclaimer: I haven't a beta, so all errors, be they factual or grammatical, are my own.


Edward Masen

Jasper's basement, picking at the label of his beer bottle


Radiohead's 'Jigsaw Falling into Place' is blaring through the speakers of Jasper's stereo system, through the walls of his basement, right up and through to the once silent street for the third time in a row, but Alice Evanson oversees the playlist and since she's lip locked with the host of the get-together the song plays on and on and on. No one apart from Edward has noticed, because if he isn't focused on that his mind strays to the girl sitting on a giant putrid yellow beanbag on the far side of the room.

Swan is quietly chatting away with Rosalie Hale, or perhaps a better way of describing that interaction is a measuring-up. Rosalie was poorly the first week of school, but it was inevitable that she would catch wind of the chatter surrounding the new girl. It's all anyone talked about. The moment Swan sashayed down the stairs, Rosalie had levelled her with a look, calling her over to the corner, patting a space on the beanbag beside her in a disinterested way that screamed anything but. Today Swan wore a skin-tight jersey dress in a heather grey, but Edward couldn't look at it for longer than a few seconds at a time.

The girl only said a couple of words here or there, Rosalie carrying much of the conversation, but they had been inseparable for hours. Edward wished he were the butt of that blunt which now passed between their lips, so he could hear their sacred tête-à-tête, know their secrets. Instead, he looked down at his lap where he picked at the label of a beer bottle, the sensual crooning of Thom Yorke and the marijuana smoke lulling him into a mellow high. He wondered who was brave enough to invite her to this small gathering of seniors, or whether she had heard it through the grapevine and invited herself; asking anyone would be divulging too much about his curiosity and his infatuation.

Emmett Cullen, another close friend of Edward's came and sat beside him on the lonely loveseat. He was all muscle, all jokes, all too obsessed with Rosalie.

"You know what they say about label-pickers," he says, giving Edward a lazy dimple-full smile. Edward placed the bottle at his feet and lit up a cigarette all the while giving Emmett the stink-eye.

"Jessica's not … doing the job well enough these days," Edward replies through a mouthful of smoke, regretting the words as soon as they passed through his lips, as soon as Emmett's brows shoot up.

"No way…" he gasps.

"Way."

"Have you and her ever—"

"Had sex?"

"Yes."

"No."

Emmett looks to his left where Jessica is sat on Mike Newton's lap, whispering into his massive fleshy ears, and Edward too looks in that direction but Swan and Rosalie reflect back at him in a dirty mirror beside Mike and Jessica. The girls' heads are resting on the wall behind them, as they stare at the ceiling, as they still talk.

"On Monday morning, she kissed Tyler straight after she had my dick in her mouth," Edward says. "Nothing new, but . . . I turn my back to the east, from whence comforts have increased; for light doth seize my brain with frantic pain."

Emmett rolls his eyes, and simply asks, "English?"

"If William Blake isn't English then"—he shakes his head. "What I'm implying, my uncultured friend, is that though I may have had my fun with Stanley, I don't want to sully my opinion of myself by associating with her anymore."

Emmett is quiet for a long while, contemplating Edward's words, and by the time he has stubbed out his cigarette into a nearby ashtray, Emmett had formed a somewhat coherent response: "This has everything to do with Isabella, doesn't it?"

"Who?" Edward asks, feigning puzzlement.

"Isabella Swan, you tosspot. Y'know the girl you think everyone doesn't know you've been staring at." Emmett chuckles darkly and slaps his pal on the back good-naturedly.

"I'm not staring at—"

"Her in the mirror? Or are you checking out my Rosie?" Emmett laughs quietly, leaning back against the cushions as if he's won this clandestine battle of intellect— though there wasn't many he did win against Edward.


Five songs pass before Rosalie and Bella grow quiet and make their way over to where Alice is discussing possibilities of games to engage in.

"Twister?" Mike suggests, blatantly eyeing Swan.

"Monopoly?" Angela counters quietly, and Edward smiles at her indulgently, recalling how much he liked her.

"Too basic," Lauren Mallory yells in the only way semi-paralytic people can.

Alice huffs and rolls her eyes. "How about dares?"

There's a murmur of agreement, and even the stragglers like Ben Cheney and Austin Marks who are half-heartedly playing with a deck of cards make their way over to the centre of the room, and Alice rushes to the stereo and switches the song to some more eerie techno-rock. Edward catches Swan rolling her eyes a little at the situation she finds herself in, and after a little hesitation, she takes a seat between Edward and Jessica on the grey shagpile carpet. Like clockwork, Edward's eyes are drawn to her legs, and then up to her face: she's looking as disinterested as always, as if her very presence here is causing a huge discomfort, but the ghost of a smile, the crinkle of her eyes, the all-too-brief meeting of their eyes, tells Edward a different story.

Jasper throws an empty beer bottle to Alice, and she gives it a spin, and spin it does, on and on until it lands on Mike.

"I dare you to send a dick pic to your mother," Alice shrugs, but Mike's face grows pale and ashen immediately. There's silence around the circle, a kind of appreciation for the genius of the girl, the ingenuity of the dare, an acknowledgement that there would be no pussyfooting tonight.

Mike huffs, and then to everyone's amazement, he pulls out his phone. Seconds later the deed is done.

Emmett's the first to laugh, and through the rapturous sound, Edward makes out, "You already had one saved on your phone?"

Mike's cheeks are pink, but he does nought but roll his eyes.

Jessica's dare involves her eating two raw eggs straight from the shell, Ben licks his own discoloured sock, and Tyler begrudgingly twerks for three minutes.

"Oh fuck," Mike says to himself as his phone is ringing, and he gets to his feet waving goodbye to the assembled few, and the sound of his mother's yelling streams into the deadly silent room as he leaves.

"Well then," Alice says, "let's continue."

Round and around the beer bottle goes. Jessica gives herself a wet willy in both ears, Emmett drinks two bottles of apple cider in a minute, and when the bottle faces Alice she accepts Jasper's dare of skinny dipping in his neighbour's pool—it's poorly concealed foreplay, and seconds later, in the wake of giggles and catcalls, they're gone too.

"Right, I'm in charge," declares Emmett to much derision, but they allow him or else they'll never hear the end of it.

After a ten-second twirl it lands on Swan, and Edward sees the impish glint in Emmett's eye cut to him and then Swan. His eyes light up, and he looks to be bursting out of his skin with glee. Swan shuffles a little beside him, her hands clenching and unclenching but she's staring directly into Emmett's eyes, awaiting his orders that she would take without question, he was sure of it.

"Make out with"—Edward's heart, Edward's breath, both stutter—"Rosalie."

"You can't ask her to do that!" Angela gasped, outraged. Edward, bewildered, still had enough mental capacity to acknowledge that Angela's Catholic tendencies apparently did extend to insignificant instances of pseudo-homosexual behaviour, but not to other aspects of existence here at Forks. His estimation of her faltered a tad but was still heads and shoulders above their peers.

"Oh my god yes," Tyler hisses under his breath, and Edward elbows him a little to both keep it down but also in friendly banter. Ben and Austin too shift in their seats a little, their eyes darting between the two girls in question as if watching the final of Wimbledon.

"Emmett," Lauren slurs in her nasal way, "Rosalie is not gay."

"You don't have to be gay to kiss another girl, Lauren," Jessica chides, but the way she says it us sodden with deceit. "Isabella can kiss Rosalie, and no one will judge her."

Swan's head snaps to look at Jessica beside her, and though Edward can't see her expression he sees Jessica's face falling.

Somehow it feels odd to him that no one is coming to support Rosalie, tell her she doesn't have to. It looks like Swan has a lot more to lose.

"The greatest way to live with honour in this world is to be what we pretend to be," Edward utters a tad too loudly, and once again silence permeates the room. Swan turns her head to look at Edward so achingly slow, and then arches a single brow. "Wouldn't you say, Swan?" he goads, knowing he's backed himself into a corner and the only way to win this exchange is to come out fighting.

She smiles, shaking her head a little, and on her hands and knees, crawls over to the other side of the circle where she practically crawls into Rosalie's lap. The image of her ass in that tight dress would never leave Edward for the rest of his life. There was a pregnant pause where every person in that room (besides the girls themselves, of course) doubted that the two would have the gumption to go through with it, but as soon as Rosalie latched her lips onto Swan's it was mayhem.

Jessica and Lauren burst into a fit of sniggers, whereas Angela crosses her arms over her chest in outrage, giving Emmett the evil eye for telling the girls to go through with such ludicrousness. However, every red-blooded male in the room dared not breathe, dared not blink, for a fantasy they thought would never materialise beyond the screens of their phones and computers was playing out before them with some enthusiasm.

Before they know it, it's over. The girls break away with a final wet and lingering kiss, and Swan gets to her feet and struts her way to the stairs that lead up and out of the basement, shoulders back, head high, as if she has not just committed social suicide. As she gets to the foot of the stairs she looks over her shoulder to the silent room.

"Can you drive me home?" she asks. She made no eye contact with anyone in the room, staring off into a space in the corner which Edward suspected was the yellow beanbag, yet, he knew she was speaking to him. He lived next door. It made sense. So he quickly got to his feet, giving a customary nod to everyone, and followed the enigma up the stairs, through the silent house, and into the night.


It's an easy fifteen-minute drive from Jasper's home to the outskirts of Forks, but Edward, with his hyper-focused mind on driving makes it there in ten, cutting his close-quartered time with Swan down by some three hundred seconds. Even if he elongated the route, even if he was caught in a rare spot of traffic, it would do him no good: after he had opened the door for her to sit in the front seat of his spanking new Volvo, she had rested her head against the seat, eyes shut, hands wringing themselves constantly. She did not make a sound; she did not open her eyes.

Edward pulls into his driveway and cuts the engine, and Swan is still in her meditative trance.

"Did I make a huge mistake tonight?" Swan says, making Edward almost jump out of his skin. He turns to see her looking at him. "They're going to make my life hell, aren't they?"

A random line of poetry is on the tip of his tongue, but he knows this neither the time nor place. "You're not in Phoenix anymore, Swan," he says. "Jessica and Lauren will suck a cock in a parking lot, but—"

"This is a step too far?" she asks, incredulous.

"Yeah." Edward clears his throat, wondering whether he should ask a question that's been pestering his every thought since the two girls touched lips, touched tongues. "Are you gay?" he asks, not knowing when he'll get a chance.

She smiles. "What would you say if I was?"

"It has nothing to do with me," he lies. It has everything to do with him. "Nothing Nothing at all."

She considers him with perceptive eyes, and he clears his throat. "I'm not."

"That's not going to matter anymore," he sighs. "They're—Lauren and Jessica—are going to make your life hell."

"I'm sure I can take a little teasing," she laughs humourlessly, her eyes are pained, and Edward's at odds: there's an obvious buzz of physical attraction, of sexual tension, between the two, but Swan's emotions are quickly overriding all recognition of her physical attributes. He wants to hug her, to console her fears, and yet he believes that he is not capable of platitudes and platonic touches.

"Fucking Emmett," Edward mutters, recalling how he had thrown Swan into this tangle of Forks High politics. "It's all his fault."

"And yours," she amends, and his eyes widen. "If you hadn't taunted me…"

"Each man lives his own life and pays his own price for living it," Edward replies vehemently, rewording an Oscar Wilde quote.

His words have the same effect as a slap, and she recoils. It's only then that Edward registers how close they'd come, how his words were said inches from her mouth. She undoes her seatbelt, and for all of Edward's protests, she's out of the car and jogging to her own home before he makes it out of the car.

He kicks at the pebbles lining the drive and lights up a cigarette.

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple," he hisses, turning his face up at the mist of rain.


A/N: What was your first 'pseudo-homosexual' experience?