A/N: Twilight and its characters belong to Stephanie Meyers. This particular plot belongs to me.
Thanks and snuggles to antiaol for beta-ing and bmango for pre-reading.
In the Twilight of My Life, Chapter 9:
It was late. Too late. But I didn't care.
Edward was warm and comforting at my side, his breathing slowing and speeding, rhythmic and erratic by turns, and more than once I heard the softest sounds of snoring beside my ear. Instead of annoying me, it soothed me, making me snuggle down deeper into the perfect home of his chest and arms.
It was late enough that we both knew that he should go, only neither of us could seem to bring ourselves to say the words.
Finally, my eyes began to close again, and I shook us both awake with my own laughter, imagining us as the quintessential elderly couple, sitting on an old and tattered couch, quietly in love and falling asleep sitting up with our street clothes still on.
"Shh," he breathed, whispering softly against the wispy tendrils of my hair at the side of my face. "Let's get you ready for bed, love."
He shifted beside me, shaking me loose of his shoulder, even as I felt my old lips turning up into the smile of an infinitely younger girl, pouting pathetically as my voice darted dangerously close to the precipice of whining. "Five more minutes," I mumbled, smiling sleepily, but he wasn't having any of it.
"That's what you said an hour ago," he chuckled lightly, tugging at my hand. Finally, I gave in, grumbling and relaxing and letting my head drop to the back of the couch behind me as Edward extricated himself from my grasp.
With half-open eyes, I watched him move around my room, feeling something glowing in me to know that he was at home while he was here, even as I was slightly mortified that he was going through my underwear drawer, effectively. After a moment's searching, he pulled my nightgown out of the drawer, his fingers moving gently over the fabric as he turned and stood, grunting gently as he straightened his knees.
I was about to begin the arduous process of hauling myself into my chair, planning to go change in the bathroom like I always did, only something stopped me.
When I looked up, there was a certain hint of something burning in Edward's eyes - something warm and wanting behind the green as his hand moved distractedly through his hair.
Standing a couple of feet in front of me, he passed the gently folded ball of my nightgown to me before pausing, leaning back against the foot of the bed with his aging hip and settling the warm wood of his cane against his side.
The fabric was soft between my fingertips as I worried it slightly, fidgeting because I had nothing else to do and because I didn't know how to meet the subtle edge of hunger in his stare.
It was a new nightgown. Not the old ratty one he'd put me to bed in the first few times he'd stayed to tuck me in. The next time Carlie had come to visit, I'd shyly asked her to take me shopping again, and, raising her eyebrow, she'd agreed.
The simple sight of my blush alone, glowing crimson against cheeks that were once papery and wan, should have given me away as we'd moved through the store. Mumbling and pointing and ducking my head, I'd directed her to push my chair past the racier lingerie that I had clearly graduated past on account of my age, but for the first time in decades I couldn't help but eye it all the same.
Standing there fingering modest but still implicitly intimate garments, I'd felt like a teenager buying her first bra with her mother, standing there with my daughter eying silky looking things in ivory and pink and blue.
Fortunately, my Carlie had cut the tension for me, just when I had been about to cover my eyes and demand she take me home already.
"Thank God, Ma," she'd said flippantly, chewing her gum and rolling her eyes at me. "I swear you've been wearing the same pajamas since I was fifteen."
With my cheeks blazing hotly, I'd selected a couple pieces that seemed suitably demure, sticking with the sorts of deep blues and other colors Edward seemed to prefer on me. And ironically, I'd felt all the more embarrassed for knowing why I'd chosen the ones I had.
When Carlie had asked if I'd like to try them on, my eyes had widened, my head shaking no, my mind horrified.
No one besides a doctor and - on only a small handful of occasions - my Jake had seen me in any sort of light in ages, and the very idea of the hot halogen bulbs of a fitting room on my wrinkled skin had made me simultaneously freeze and sweat.
With that same freezing blush sweeping across my body, sitting there on my couch, I remembered myself suddenly.
I looked up from my lap then, pulling myself from the memory, to still find my Edward staring at me too silently.
And if I hadn't known better, I'd have said he was staring at me longingly.
He cleared his throat gently, licking his lips in distraction and ruffling the fall of his hair. "You don't - if you'd like ... It feels wrong of me to be making you go into another room to change every evening, my Bella."
Shaking my head, I smiled, not quite knowing exactly where he was going with this, but worrying he might be about to excuse himself, and still feeling a soft longing for him to stay. "You know I don't mind."
"But I don't either," he breathed.
I could feel my own eyes widen, finally understanding his meaning as my hand gripped at the fabric all the tighter. My breathing was coming too fast, insecurities wracking me, my skin inflamed by feeling.
Feelings like how he might not want me if he could see me.
My silence hung heavily on the air, and I could almost feel his face falling, disappointment and embarrassment as he combed his hands more distractedly through his hair.
I felt his gaze slipping from me, darting about the room, and I sensed his panic and his urge to run.
But I couldn't seem to make my eyes rise to meet him. To reassure him.
To tell him I wanted him to see me.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I didn't mean to … It was never my intention to make you uncomfortable," he rambled agitatedly, pulling up to his full height and gripping his cane in my periphery.
Only I still wasn't really looking at him.
I couldn't.
Not while I was doing what I was doing.
My shaking, fumbling fingers settled at the juncture of my collarbones, the ragged tip of a single nail slipping just beneath the edge of the fabric as I pulled at the button, slipping it from its hole, my entire being blushing, fearing, tensing.
His voice trailed off mid-thought then, and I saw the edges of his jaw tighten, the tendons beneath the folds of skin at the base of his throat moving as he swallowed, and there was something hungry about him again.
Each button gave way in turn, cool air moving against the skin that hadn't been seen in ages. Skin that shouldn't be seen. Tired and sagging, I was a husk of a woman, the faint whispers of beauty, stretched too taut and let loose to tumble and spoil.
And now the sad remnants of that springtime spent in bloom were on display, my sad winter exposed.
And Edward wasn't running.
When I was finished, I sat up a little straighter, letting my shirt fall down my arms. For a moment I was about to leave my camisole on, but it felt like a lie, knowing I would never have done so were I changing in the safe confines of my bathroom. So I pulled it away, too, feeling my hair gather as I blissfully lost my vision for a moment, my eyes closing, everything fading to darkness amidst the stilted sounds of my terrified breathing and the hitching of my Edward's as he watched me across the length of the room.
I was probably exposed for less than a minute, tossing my clothes into a pile on the seat before me and fumbling for my nightgown, pulling it over my head just as quickly and clumsily. With my eyes still averted, I wrestled with the rest of my clothes, baring my legs as I let the long skirt of the nightgown fall, covering all but a sliver of wasted flesh at my ankles.
And then I sat there in my chair, feeling alone and old and still unable to look at my Edward. Unable to raise my eyes to see the disappointment in his beautiful green ones. Unable to bear the way I was sure he must be looking at me.
His cane clattered to the floor then, and before I knew it he was on his knees, pushing my hair away from me, begging me to look at him. Begging me to see. Whispering my name and begging me.
"Please, Bella. Please. Please look at me."
I did, finally, almost crying with nerves and with relief, feeling more naked than I had with all my imperfect flesh exposed. Because my Edward was holding my head between his hands. And he was smiling.
"Bella, you're beautiful," he whispered, kissing me. "You are so, so beautiful to me."
#--#--#
There was no fiddling with chairs that night. No shy withdrawals to another room or tender, sad goodbyes. After he'd kissed me to the point where I could barely breathe, he stood, his knees groaning, placing his arms around me. With his cane still discarded at the bedside, we leaned into each other, making slow progress to the bed he'd always left me in.
But tonight he got into it with me.
For once, he laid down beside me, pulling me into the warmth of his embrace, our mouths twisting in the dark as I felt the full expanse of his body, mine crackling to life in its wake. We kissed in a way I hadn't kissed in years, his mouth warm and soft and inviting and his hands suddenly bold. They moved over me, over the silky gown I'd picked out just for him, even though I knew it didn't matter now.
Even though I knew now that he would love me in anything.
Each touch, each kiss, thrilled and terrified me, awakening parts of me that I'd never dreamed would stir again, enveloping me in an intimacy I'd thought was lost to me. But even though I was scared, I was smiling.
Because I knew that my Edward saw much deeper than most ever would or could.
Because I knew that my Edward could see me.
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A/N: Oh my. Our first foray into the possibility of physical intimacy between these two. I'll be hiding in the bathroom while you make up your mind about flouncing.
Have a great weekend. Hopefully, I'll see you on Monday ;)
