Title: One Fell Swoop
Rated:
K
Word Count:
499
Written For:
the second drabble contest at sortofbeautiful

Three years. It's been three years, and Bella Swan is returning to Forks sans wedding band, sans happy vampire clan, and sans immortality—she clings to her dignity with bloody fingers.

Her cell phone bill is riddled with the digits of a single La Push land line (That was how she knew—knew that she was in the wrong place, wrong family, wrong skin—when she realized she spent more time on the phone listening to Jacob breathe than she did watching Edward's chest rise and fall in a mockery of it.). And as her tires hit the slick pavement of the small town, she doesn't stop, just keeps driving east until she passes an invisible treaty line and until she hears the distantly familiar crunch of gravel.

Not for the first time she wishes that she still had her busted, deafening, piece-of-shit truck so that she could drown out the heady thumping of her heart against her ribs, not hear the adrenaline curling down into her toes, and be oblivious to the wa-woosh of air leaving her lungs too quickly.

She sounds like a freakin' freight train, so really it's no surprise when she hasn't even killed the engine and Jacob is already bolting from the front door of his shabby, red, tiny, perfect house.

Her clumsiness flares up as she attempts to detangle herself from the inescapable seat belt, and she's not fast enough—never has been, never will be—so Jacob has to yank her free and into his arms without so much as a 'hello.' Bella is so overwhelmed with the perfectness of it that a few embarrassing tears escape.

She wishes there were words. But there aren't enough syllables to fit together in just the right way to express the…the…sheer relief of being home and being warm for the first time in…too long. It's been too long. But at the same time, it hasn't. Because it'll never be too long when they can still fit like this, still mold to one another so perfectly that they become…"Jabellacob Swackblan" (a spectacular result of one of Jacob's four a.m. bouts of genius after several hours of draining Quil's not-so-secret stash of Rez moonshine).

Jacob's wet laughter, however, speaks volumes, and even if her sniffling giggles are somewhat less eloquent, she shares them anyway.

She's so immersed in the reassuring tightness of his large arms and the newness of a few scars on his neck that she doesn't remember ever seeing, that when she hears the screen door open and then bang close again, she absently imagines it to be Billy, or Embry, or Quil, or…

But a sharp gasp has her face whipping up and her eyes crashing into foreign brown ones that reach out for her with their intensity.

He's Quileute. He's tall, broad, angular and strong, with awareness seeping from the tautness of his muscles.

He's a werewolf.

And he's staring at her like a man who's seeing the sun for the first time.


AN: As always, I really appreciate the feedback everyone have been leaving me. I especially want to thank the anonymous reviewers who I couldn't send a personal response to. :)