Title: Disillusioned

Genre: romance / hurt / comfort

Pairings: alice/jasper, edward/bella,

Warning: i'm in crisis, but also a sore throat

Edward has taken to walking her to her door when he drops her off after dates or school. Probably more of a protective gesture than romantic one, but Bella leans into his touch, swaying with his voice as he carries on the tune of the last song they heard on the radio. Even though it's mid-afternoon on a Wednesday, it still feels like they're floating through a park on a velvety evening.

He has a beautiful voice.

They're standing under her porch light, Edward's fingers in her hair, and he's smiling because Charlie is going on an internal monologue about Bella not using her truck as much these days and—hadn't she just come from Jacob's?

"I'll say we were all hanging out." Bella says smoothly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Her heart is clenching and restricting and twisting when he leans in and presses a kiss to the crown of her head, his nose touches her hair. "You smell like sugar," he murmurs, and she shivers, his cool breath traveling the synapses and byways of her down her spine. "Sugar and flour, chocolate and vanilla." He leans back appraising her. "I have to thank that baker."

"I like Emily's brownies." She mumbles, heart still wrenching for a kiss when he smiles, bright and dazzling, and just as he's leaning in again to give her what she wants—

Charlie opens the door.

She's early for curfew.

Again.

Yay.

"So, kid," Charlie says when Alice bounds up the stairs to grab her bags. "I'm going to let you spend the night at the Cullen house, but if I see hide or hair of your boyfriend, I'm going to very disappointed in you. And I will ground you again."

Bella summons an apologetic smile. "I promise, dad. Edward and Carlisle are going camping. It's just going to be me, Esme, and Alice having a girl's night." And Rosalie, but no one in town has seen her and Emmett yet, so Bella doesn't deign to mention.

Charlie nods once, and takes a sip of his decafe. "I think it's good what you're doing." Bella stares at him, brow lifting. Charlie lowers his voice and mouths, "How's Alice?"

She stares at Charlie for a confused moment before it clicks.

Oh. Bella can feel the nervous prickle of embarrassment and guilt clawing up the back of her neck. The official story around town is Alice needing time off of school for mental health reasons. Noble reasons, but still ones that have led to quite a bit of confusion and rumor around town. And although Alice has been putting on a brilliant front, it seems as though it is not brilliant enough.

In truth, it's been hard. Trying to be a good friend to Alice or trying to be a good girlfriend to Edward.

After Italy, the reveal, and the fallout, their relationship has been on rocky grounds.

Alice regulated to Bella-pick-ups and appearances with Charlie, but never more than the fifteen-minute drive from one house to another to fill in the gaps sinking between them.

She remembers, suddenly and with teeth, how Alice had once told her that she saw that they would be great friends.

She wonders how to answer.

"She's doing her best." Bella says softly and Charlie nods again.

It is all, of course, a logical ruse.

When she arrives, the Cullen clan are still bustling around the house, waiting for nightfall to take off on a hunting trip. The slowly darkening of their irises accompanied by the bruised shadows under their eyes.

Alice disappears the moment they clear the threshold, murmuring something about a fort before she is nothing but a vague memory in the air.

The sharp clack of heels alerts her to another Cullen. Esme? Rosalie? Emmett?

"Hello Bella!" Esme greets her pulls her into a hug. "I went to the grocery store today," she announces, leading Bella in through the newly renovated kitchen. "And I picked up the funniest thing."

One of the skylights above them is tinged a bit darker than the others, breaking the harmony of the open concept kitchen. "What happened there?"

"Oh, Edward was trying to make brownies." Esme says and she looks a little embarrassed by it. Bella keeps staring at the darker glass panel, hoping her genuinely confused expression conveys the question she wants to ask. Esme presses her lips together. "Emmett . . . tried to help."

"Well, that makes sense."

"My mother used a wooden spoon, not that whisk everyone thinks is so chic!" Emmett's voice booms down from the floors above. Open concept, open airways. Also, vampire hearing. Bella could only imagine what it would be like to live here for real.

No privacy.

"But, anyway, I wanted to show you these." Esme crosses the floor to a sleek white cabinet and folds it open. Bella catches sight of the food storage the Cullen's have been building up, and winces. A lot of food to go to waste.

She leans against the grand marble island, complete with a sink and a glass pedestal filled with burnt brownies, the condensation sticking to the edge of the glass. Edward tried to make me brownies. She thinks, tapping her finger against counter.

Gingerly, as Bella is with all things in this house, she lifts the lid and sets it aside. The brownies are moist, but not appetizingly so, they are left under a glass lid damp with just enough edge of burnt underneath.

Despite the effort, she really wishes he had just bought Emily's brownies.

Unsure of what to do with the edge, Bella chews, swallows, and sets the other piece of the brownie back. Carefully resetting the lid.

"What do you do with all the uneaten food?"

"Oh, we donate the canned and boxed things. For the perishables, we try to make compost for Rosalie's garden. It's been easier in recent years because I can claim we don't buy sugary things because we're health nuts." Esme's answer is instant, as she kneels, sensible heels shifting across the tile as she tries to find whatever it is that she wants to show her. "Emmett put these away."

Bella shifts. "Do you think—I mean, if it's not too much," She pauses and Esme's inquisitive dark eyes peer over the counter. "The pack is really growing lately because of Victoria and they're having trouble feeding all of them. Do you think we could maybe give some food to them?"

Esme smiles, a beautiful genuine thing. "Of course, honey. I think that's a great idea."

Bella feels a brief tinge of joy as the praise when Esme tosses a bag of chips onto the counter.

"Found it!" Esme picks up the bag again and turns the label to face her. "These are new, so I'm not very used to the scent yet, but I saw them in the store and I thought 'oh that's so funny'."

Bella stares.

It's a package of Slap Yo Mama chips.

Esme is beaming.

"Oh, I love those."

Twenty minutes later, Bella sits with her hands tucked between her knees on Edward's bed. She is still not convinced that she washed out all the spicy goodness from the jalapeño chips and she is suddenly very hungry for some good fajitas. All the food her and her mom gorged on for girl's nights in Arizona.

In fact, part of her wishes she is actually having a girl's night.

Not—

Well, not whatever this is.

She bounces herself slightly, feeling the spring of the mattress under her. "New bed?" Edward casts a glance behind him, smile evident. The iron-wrought monstrosity takes up much more of Edward's once "spacious" bedroom then Bella thought possible. She suddenly feels very guilty.

He bought a bed so I don't have to sleep on the couch. He tried to make brownies because I said I liked them.

Her stomach clenches. "You didn't have to."

"Oh, Bella, I wanted to."

Which is just—

It's fine.

Edward wants to buy a bed? He'll buy a bed. Edward wants to make brownies? He'll do it.

"Do you think we can go to the beach on Sunday? I know, you're not supposed to, but I was going to talk to Jake and ask if it would be okay." She slots her fingers together between her knees. Her breath smells like jalapeños. The spiciness masking the sweet burnt scent of the chocolate.

"I'll think about it." Edward says, sliding another stack of CDs into place on the shelf that made up one of the walls. "I let Emmett help me put these away and he forgot the system I laid out."

Bella thinks she can hear a thump through the house, as if Emmett needs to let them know he hears what's going on and wasn't scared to break through Esme's open floor plan to do it.

"But you will think about it?"

"Yes, of course." Edward says, but his back is still to her.

Bella sighs.

That means no.

Oh well.

She sits, leaning into a sea of composed music that Edward has laid across the bed. Some are classics like Mozart, Shubert, and Tarkovsky, but there is some newer generations mixed in. She taps on a Nirvana album, smiling to herself. "My mom loves 'Heart Shaped Box'." She says, smiling. "She hate, hate, hates Courtney Love, but she loves this song."

"That one was a gift." Edward says, glancing at the CD case in her hand.

"Oh, who?"

"Hmm,"

That means Alice.

Bella sets the CD down and begins stacking the cases, in alphabetical order, one by one, the sharp clanks almost music to her ears. She stacks them up again and sets them down on the end table by the bed when a little velvet box catches her attention.

It's velvet. Black velvet, Tiffany blue ribbon, tight closed box that would give a satisfying snap when shut.

It's—

It's not gaudy.

But it's the kind of thing that's there for presentation.

Bella suddenly feels light-headed and robotically sets the CDs back down onto the bed, letting them scatter where they fell, and shifting further and further up. Edward continues shelving his CDs with unbroken efficiency.

Her stomach twists so hard it cramps.

"I think I wanna go home," she says quietly, but she knows Edward can hear her. He can hear the panic under her voice, feel the shift in the air, and scent her anxiety that beads against her neck. "I'm really not feeling well."

Edward looks at her, his eyes full of laughter. "Wouldn't you be better off in a place where no one else can get sick?"

"I don't think Rosalie would like it if I vomited in her bathroom." She says, her hands turning clammy at the palms. She wants to press them between her knees again, but before she can do anything, she's crossing Edward's bedroom and into the adjacent bathroom. Edward is at her heels. "Give me some space."

Okay, okay, oh-kay. Bella taps her nails along the edge of the sink, stomach still in knots. Alice has been cryptically hinting at something like this, talking about jewelry and asking Bella questions about dresses and flowers. "Oh boy," she mutters and quickly presses her lips together.

She is the only human in the house. She is the only one without superpowers.

She needs to stay calm.

Edward raps at the door and the handle turns half an inch before Bella catches it, but it's useless, the door is opening and there is her boyfriend—

Edward's face is pinched in concern. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, but could you just—you know, not stand outside the bathroom? It's a little embarrassing."

"I want to be here if you need me."

"I need to pee and I can't if you're standing out here. Could you please?"

Edward slips back into his room and shutting the door behind him with nary a sound. Bella goes back into the bathroom, slashes water on her face, towels her neck off, and slips back out again and down the hallway.

The only door open door other than the bathrooms is a lone bedroom down the hall. Bella doesn't have to look to know it's Alice and Jasper's room, but she does anyway. She finds herself caught on the threshold, looking in.

She can see Alice's makeup table, the edge of the bed where the sheets have been torn off, and a closet that looks like it's been gutted, but—

It feels wrong. It feels empty.

It feels like a graveyard.

It feels like a bastardization of everything Bella has built up in her mind. The marriage bed, the marriage bond, broken for a mate bond. The clothes, the shoes, the makeup, all these things her mother and father had, that Alice and Jasper had, torn to pieces, left abandoned in boxes, and Emily's voice in her head saying: you found your niche, but you can't go back. Things change, people change, you're changing.

She turns back down the hall, down the stairs, and goes to sit in the kitchen, staring at the window and the brownies and the empty chip bag in the empty garbage can, trying to remember a time when this pleased her.

Edward is standing at the top of the stairs when she circles back. "Where've you been?" She forces a smile, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "C'mon, I want to show you something." His hand locks around hers, cool fingers threading through her own. Normally Bella would have delighted in the change of temperature, the feeling of his cold perfect hands in her own, but now—

"Edward."

"Hm?"

"Everyone's . . . downstairs."

He leads her past the landing to his room, not checking his stride. "No, everyone's gone out." Bella peers over the railing down into the living room that has been left barren and untouched as an open house. "They're going on a hunt."

She hears a door shut, softly, somewhere in the house.

What follows then is an awkward twenty-minute argument between the two of them about marriage and commitment and rings and family. Bella feels like she's putting up a good front, dragging out her parents' marriage and all its petty inconsistencies. Then Edward counters with the less likely rate of divorce among vampires when—when—

Bella sucks in a quick breath. "Well, that feels like too much commit—" She tries to stop the words coming out of her mouth, but once they eek, she knows a line somewhere has been drawn. She can see it in Edward's face.

"Too much commitment?" He repeats, the glass edge of his voice seems to cut against her, holding her insecurities to the blade. "It's too much commitment to marry me, but you would become a damned creature like me for all eternity?"

And that's—

That's the thing.

It's because it's what Edward wants. What Edward wants, Edward gets. He'll buy it, sell it, make it, or manifest it as it pleases him. But for her? It's conditional. A bed for her to sleep on. A kiss on the forehead instead of mouth. A plate of brownies he made. A future he maps out.

What Edward thinks is best is what Edward wants.

"It's not what I want."

"We have to do some give and take, Bella. That's what partnership is." Edward says smoothly. Cool, like an adult explaining something to a petulant child. Like he is above screaming and yelling, but not the cool darkness that slides over him. "Look Bella, I'm not saying we won't have our fights. We're having one now, but we can work through them and—"

"It's not what I want." Bella says, tears building heavy and salty on the back of her tongue. "I don't—I don't want any of this."

The annoyance in Edward's face flickers for a moment to concern. "Bella. . ."

"I just, I don't want any of this." She repeats, a web of ugly, salty thing building up inside of her, dressing the walls and burning her throat. "I just, I just don't want anything."

Edward pulls her into a too tight hug that crushes her jaw against his collarbone, his forearms into her shoulder blades, his chin into her shoulder.

They just don't fit together anymore.

Bella watches the rain pour down and pulls out her phone.

You (11:30 pm): hey alice?

Alice (11: 30 pm): hi bella what's going on?

You (11:32 pm): did you see that?

Alice (11:33 pm): yeah

You (11:40 pm): is there anyway we can have a real sleepover at my house, right now?

Bella wakes up to the smell of eggs burning in the kitchen. She blinks up over the back of the couch into the kitchen to find Alice sitting at the table, doodling in a journal while Charlie scrapped at a frying pan. She cringes. I'm going to have to clean that later.

"G'morning Bella!" Alice chirps and bounds over, slinging herself across the back of the couch and landing in a graceful pile on one of the cushions. "Okay, so we finished the first season of Twin Peaks last night, but I think we should start on two and keep the party going."

Bella yawns, remembering last night, filling up a basket of snacks from the Cullen preserves before driving back to her house, making a camp on the couch and just watching a TV show with Alice. The most normal thing in the world.

She looks over to see Charlie plating eggs in the kitchen. "Dad, is it okay if Alice stays over?"

"Sure. Hey, Bells, give me a hand with these, hm?"

Bella kicks off her afghan and Alice kneels down in front of the TV, setting up the next episode. Charlie is plating the eggs and toast he made, which smell burnt, but then he hands her two plates. "One for you and one for Alice."

"Oh, dad thanks."

"Eh, don't worry about it." Charlie's gaze flickers into the living room where Alice is sitting, turning up the volume on the television. "So, what happened last night?"

Bella pauses a moment, feeling herself beginning to shrink. "Oh, uh, Edward and Carlisle came home because of the rain, so . . . I asked Alice if it would be alright if we had our girl's night here."

Charlie stares at her a second, as if accessing her answer.

"I'm proud of you, Bells." He drops a kiss onto her forehead and circles around her, pulling on his sheriff's hat. "I don't want to hear any spoilers Alice. I'm going to watch this show all on my own."

"You got it Charlie." Alice calls as Charlie ducks through the door. Alice turns over her shoulder to look at her. "So, do you want to talk about last night?"

Bella stands there—pajama pants, messy hair, and two plates of eggs—and shakes her head. "I would much rather hear your theories on who shot Detective Cooper." She swings around the couch again, setting one plate on the coffee table and then easing back. She pulls the blanket over her and nestles in.

She really just needs a girl's night.

hello! how's it going? what do we think of this?

But really, do you think Bella and Esme ever had any of those awkward mom-girlfriend talks? I remember prattling on with this Guy I Was Seeing's step-mother and just awkwardly talking about male strippers. In my defense, it was a weird fuckin' family.

Also, I happen to love, love, love me some Courtney Love, so this is just a character thing. And "Heart-Shaped Box" is a song near and dear because it was my first Nirvana song and a pleasant memory of my childhood. It also happens to be about Courtney Love's vagina. So, have fun with that knowledge, I guess.

I really needed Bella and Edward to argue (bc this is becoming a THEM fic) but I promise Demetri is coming.