BPOV
I woke up with a start, my heart raced along with my breathing while I tried to remember where I was.
In a qualified moment of panic, I sat straight up in bed. The dreams where I died were by far the most entertaining. I was usually swept away by a tornado or tsunami. Natural disasters created by my subconscious were always more cinematically dramatic than reality permitted. I'd worked a double shift for Angela, which decidedly explained why it was a tidal wave of strawberry Daiquiri that washed me into a large crevice in the center of the city.
I felt no hand as I reached for it. The opposite side of the bed was empty, which for the first time, unsettled me. Turning my head and glancing to my left, infinitesimally calmed me, while I got out of the sheets.
It'd been a nominal three days since the wall in Jake's room became somewhat of a shrine to the project. And to mine and Edward's unconventional, conjoining, sorted history. The angel had been not so subtly insinuating the importance of sharing the significance of the emblem he'd helped to create, but in the interest of appeasing the devil, I repeatedly took a message and ducked her calls.
Unless she drafted in the techniques of a unscrupulous bounty hunter and Gerard Butler was going to throw me into a trunk, it was unlikely her causes would actually reach Edward's ears.
The one admission would lead to a greater one, and it wasn't a truth I was ready to part with.
Aro Volturi was still conspicuously silent. I don't know why I half-anticipated him to rebound with larger gloves and a bigger offense, like he'd acquired new information or would doctor the truth further to counter me. I could only assume his silence stemmed from my effort to amend his character and correct his deluded misconceptions.
It stunted me to hear Edward's irritated, loudening voice emanating from the living room. With quick steps, I arrived in the hallway and stood silently aside, watching him intently, unnoticed.
"I can't believe you!" He bounded across the room, speaking into his phone. "That wasn't your call!"
I stopped Jake's speeding steps into the living room. Instead, I pulled him into my perch at the corner of the hallway.
"I thought he was yelling at you," he whispered. "Who's he barking at?"
"Not one-hundred percent sure. " I was only somewhat certain.
"There was nothing...You've got to..."
"Vic..?" The desperation wasn't relayed to anyone, but Jake and I. "Damn it."
When he turned, I saw the weight on his shoulders had scribed lines of upset onto his normally unfazed face. He bowed his head minutely when he realized we were both standing there.
"That was a monologue from my one man show entitled, 'my sister can be a crazy, irrational bitch.'"
Jake shrugged. "Stellar sibling combination. Add three cups of stark raving, a couple more sisters and you'd have the makings for a Kardashian Christmas card."
He proceeded to get get a mug from the cabinet. Family drama wasn't something Jake was unfamiliar with, but it was no longer something he had the arguable displeasure of dealing with.
Edward gave a half-hearted laugh in response, but his mind was clearly still on the conversation which was left unfinished. I was more than concerned by the limited words I managed to hear. The fact that she hung up on him did not bode well. It relit my uneasiness about her being a possible threat to him. Even if Edward believed she wouldn't go out of her way to hurt him, it didn't mean she couldn't hurt him.
I crossed the room to Edward while responding to Jake. "That entire family is the strongest argument against unlicensed reproduction ever."
My fingers moved to stoke his shoulder and made tracks down his bare arm. "Alright?"
'Yeah, that was just...Victoria being Victoria." He shook his head. He was already fully dressed. It seemed odd for the time of morning.
He gave me a kiss on the cheek to affirm his words, but it did nothing to truly comfort me. I still wasn't sure if his sister was more nuisance or detriment to him. I couldn't grapple with wondering any longer. Regardless of whether it was difficult for him to talk about their relationship, I needed to quell any doubts.
"Are you ready to go?"
His sudden question caught me off guard. "Go where?"
He glanced at Jake and then back to me. Judging by Jake's laughter, I was forgetting something fairly large. "You've managed to demolish her priorities in days. I'd be impressed if I wasn't jealous."
Jake's hot water was poured and he began eating his oatmeal while I tried to remember. Another prodding glance for Edward, only assisted in amplifying my anxiety. Deducing I was still in the dark, he abandoned his silence.
"Trash removal duty?"
"Oh, shit!"
I scrambled with my scattered thoughts, while zipping into my bedroom. I threw on the first thing I could find and laced up half my laces before I shoved my feet in. Forgetting I was supposed to be there at seven in the morning was one thing, but forgetting the commitment entirely was upsetting.
My dedication to the project was being tampered with by insane amounts of sex and feelings I had no idea what to do with except internalize. One I liked more than the other, but neither were an acceptable excuse.
The angel was enlivened by one set of feelings the devil enthralled by the other. Neither was relenting without giving it the other a good fight. A taut rope strung between the two and the prize was just beyond reach.
-Etch-
We arrived at the site late, but Mae was still there and was happy for the help. Our sticks posed as swords to dispatch the discarded trash, scattered by the wind and careless sightseers. The adjacent four lane road, split the flat earth with a river of cars and forceful air whipped up the dust and carried it by us. I marveled he was still walking beside me. It made little sense, in all actuality our fusion defied logic. Normally, I took pride in rocking the norm and changing expectations of society, but his constant dedication still surprised me.
The devil was poised as if to do a centerfold spread, assured her sex kitten, nymphomaniac ways spoke for themselves. The angel simply formulated an illuminated effigy of the tattoo and stepped away from her podium.
I wondered briefly if it was simply because returning home held nothing for him, but agitated conversations and constant combative confrontations. Maybe to some extent, I was his oasis.
"Your sister called bright and early." My stab at subtlety was awkward at best.
"I called her." He speared a nearby fast food wrapper, and placed it in the larger bag of trash.
"She seems to put you through a lot of grief."
There was an unsettled lull while he kicked a nearby rock. "She's not putting me through anything I don't deserve."
Nearby dirt flicked up and around my stilled feet from their unscheduled stop. His unrelenting distaste for himself was getting more inexplicably difficult to handle. My kid gloves had become holy and ill-fitting. I wanted to cut to the root of the problem, and give his sister not only piece of my mind, but a good bitch-slap.
The devil was rapidly condoning my deviance from passive resistance to soap opera cattiness.
"Why? What could you have possibly done in order to deserve her making you feel like that?"
His practiced answer placed a solemn mask over his features. "I ruined her life."
"Edward, you're exaggerating." The complacency and brutality in his eyes attempted to best each other. The weight of sanity shifted repeatedly, as to whether he was going to guide me around the familiar living room on the first floor or lead me down to view the buckets of blood and surgical tools in the basement.
"I'm not." His tone added another level of grit to the grating landscape when I realized we'd descended. "I'm not. It is...what it is. I ruined her and there's nothing I can do."
He stalked off a few feet from me, fruitlessly searching for something in the vastness of a greying expanse of sky. A tipping point presented itself. If it permitted me to know him better, and protect him, then pressing on his bruise was necessary. I decided to push him down the last few steps in hopes of preserving him.
"How?"
I didn't want to believe someone I was fated to be with was willingly capable of consciously ruining anyone. He inspired me to forgive God, the least I could do for him was to permit him to forgive himself.
"Because I don't believe for a second you're capable of ruining anyone. If anything, I think she's attempting to ruin you. You're too important to me, Edward. I refuse to let her ruin you for me."
A pointed stare broke me. Atlas had stumbled, and the weight which formally resided on his shoulders was lost, but the burden not forgotten. He smiled, but the off putting, devoid grin was unfamiliar to me.
"I'm already ruined, Bella. You'd have a better chance if you walked under a ladder with an umbrella, inside, over glass from a mirror you broke."
I shook my head. "That's bullshit. "
He digested it and perceived it as a vehement challenge. "I'm the reason Vic's a recovering addict, alright?" His stark tone was stitched with ribbons of insanity. "I'm the reason my mother is off in Europe somewhere with her fucking boyfriend and why my dad...my dad only exists in photographs!"
He wildly, harshly pointed to his face. "All of it is my fucking fault."
His voice flew into the unsettled sky and the unburdening caused his shoulders to slump. Stunned and wrangling with my brain for a way to disengage his self loathing button, I grappled for words. He felt taking his sister's emotional lashings was a step towards atonement. He didn't see himself the way I did. He saw himself the way she saw him. A mirror of his perceived failures, reflected back at him in the form of a sibling. I couldn't continue to let him be a victim of her manipulation, but I feared the self-hatred was more ingrained than I could sand out alone.
"You're not resp..."
He continued, unwavering but wholly defeated. "I was the one who wanted to go to UCLA. Every minute of my existence from that point brought my family closer to the brink of hell, and the creation of that fucking script pushed them over the edge. It brought them into a succubus disguised as a city, and it swallowed them whole."
His hands dropped to his sides. "I destroyed all of them."
My answer was instant, despite not knowing the details. "You're giving yourself too much credit."
He believed the move, and subsequently the film, caused his family to dissolve before his eyes and their destruction was sealed by his hand. A staunch denial adamantly scored itself in the pulse of his eyes, then he glanced at me like he was a helpless puppy I'd kicked while it was drowning. In reality, I was fishing him out from the pool.
"If you'd taken away all their choices and forced them into submission, maybe."
"Don't defend me. Trust me, I'm not worth the effort."
"You couldn't have caused that much destruction singlehandedly." The bag of trash and stick were forgotten, and my literal and figurative gloves came off.
He readied himself to argue with a roll of his eyes, his forearm muscle tensed and his mouth opened. My dedicated hand grasped his taut arm, in and effort to dispel the tension exuding from his body.
"You set out to live your life, not to destroy theirs." He couldn't actually fault himself for arbitrary events. I finally understood all the theoretically unassociated pieces that made up Edward. He put the final piece in place with epoxy glue formulated by his horrid notion of himself.
"If they would have stayed in Chicago..."
"A massive meteor could have fallen and leveled the city." It wasn't a particular insistence which drove him. It was the belief he was a sort of jinx. "There are no certainties."
It saddened me to think something which brought us together, delivered him so much discomfort and guilt. His family continuing to milk those emotions and leave him adrift without a paddle, was far removed of anything I remembered of family. Never mind heaving the burden of his father's death upon his already unsteady shoulders.
"I'm certain you're wrong." The joke was humorless and detached. "Bella, I know what I've caused. My tack record speaks volumes. I have a negative balance in karma points right now."
The noose around his neck was always there, he was just waiting for an excuse to tighten it. I briefly considered I'd gone in over my head, but I refused to back down from this, there was entirely too much at stake.
"According to whose tally?" I decided then, the angel had won the tug of war. He needed to see himself the way I saw him and I only knew one way to do that.
"You helped me more..." I struggled to keep eye contact, a series of live wires throughout my body made them selves known. "more than you could possibly know."
"My few week stint with you doesn't erase my fuck ups." His gloves were thrown by the wayside.
"You're wrong." I barked back, exasperated with myself and his dismissiveness. "The amount of good you've participated in, the things you've inspired, for others...in me." I could only offer him revelation of truths and hope him meaning something to me would mean something to him. I believed it a move towards keeping him safe from the prominent demons perched at his cornerstones. "You're the reason you're standing here."
"My legs do work exceptionally well. All of them." Some of his levity returned, but his guard was up.
I touched his tattoo and swallowed, the feeling of freedom launched my thoughts faster than I could announce them. "I met Pierce on a Tuesday afternoon. We rode the bus to an indie theater...that's when I saw the film."
Edward's curiosity peaked and caution wrangled his attentions. His question was barely audible.
"What?"
"The blog, the project, they didn't have an emblem before the credits rolled." My throat closed a little. "It was only when I forgave God...that this image manifested in my head. It's why I was able to sketch again." I never admitted that allowed to anyone, even to myself, because the truth hadn't occurred to me until then. "It's why I have the tattoo."
He caught on quickly, apparent by his awed, widening eyes. He ran is finger up and over my skin of my shoulder with a dedication preserved for the grail. The seal of salvation beckoned him like a drug. I knew the feeling too well, as I'd recently discovered how addicted I'd become.
"Christ." Edward's breath against my skin blessed the unfolding plan of a gifted architect. "that's...insane."
I was at a precipice. I wondered if I ever had a chance to keep my heart to myself, or if the minute I forgave, it became indentured to him.
"Pierce said he saw us together, there was more to his prediction... he told me that you'd be..."
"It doesn't matter what he told you!" Edward's tone rose sharply and his gutted inflection broke me. Tense hands squeezed my shoulders and teeming eyes pleaded with me not to finish.
"It doesn't matter."
His opposition was severely troubling, the compulsion of his desire rattled my soul and sealed my lips. My swirl of shock was reflected back at me, swaddled in revolving beats of green. His tone softened when he pulled me close. "It doesn't matter."
"But you should know..."
He refused to hear anything more. "Bella, he told you what you needed to know. If it was meant for me, he would have told me."
In the wake of his assertions, I allowed myself a few moments of the strengthening wind to blow my hair against my chapped face to think and arrived at a quick conclusion, Though, it had little to do with the decidedly useless information I'd received after getting inked.
Pierce hadn't told me anything I wasn't going to find out on my own.
"I don't want to be your friend anymore." The heat of the day was being blotted out by a steady influx of clouds. Our formerly dry atmosphere was fortified canopy of moisture. For a split second, my hair fell and the sound of the wind silenced to nothing but a breath and I was reminded of home.
"I never wanted you as a friend."
-Etch-
"Are you sure about this?" Edward was planted awkwardly against the wall. A heavy pelting of rain started hitting the window next to me, but the insistency of the sound, made me think it was the sprinklers rather than a rainstorm. As many times as I tried to fix the one sprinkler head, it repeatedly popped off and caused a water trap to form in the front yard.
"You're just as much a part of this as I am." Peering around the vertical blinds, I confirmed that it was actually a thunderstorm gearing up outside, rather than the renegade sprinkler. I opened the widow just enough to let in the smell of them storm. It wasn't the same as a storm from my childhood, the air was humid and warm, the but the sound between the bursts of thunder, was comforting.
"I inadvertently inspired..." he stopped. "what is that noise?"
"Rain. You know, when water falls from the sky?"
"It rains in the desert?" He came over and pulled back a slat to confirm.
"You're sure you went to college?"
His eyes narrowed into a glare, sans the threat of intent as he sat next to me. "So what do you generally talk about when you're not broadcasting our exploits? "
I returned the same glare, but it cracked almost instantly. "I share what's happened since the last broadcast. What actions I've taken, how I've helped and share whatever I can. It wasn't meant to help anyone, but me originally, but it evolved into something more complex. People started responding with their own deeds. It was like spurring little avalanches of kindness."
Deft fingers tugged against the hemline of my tee shirt. "There are other ways to start avalanches."
I grinned and stilled his hand from redirecting my intentions. "Yeah. Earthquakes."
I clicked the mouse, and used the red recording light as a cue to begin. Though the broadcast wasn't live, it felt that way with the monumental change I was about to make. Random music from the radio played as a soundtrack to the novelty.
"Welcome to Project Etch." I held up mine and Edward's clasped hands. "Admittedly, things have changed. I've not been flying as solo." He appeared miffed at the intrusion of my beginning to speak. I made an attempt to lighten his mood.
"This is my friend," the sarcasm was strung throughout the designator. "he's been helping my cause since..."
Instead of letting me continue on with introductions and talking about anything further, Edward kissed me and I abruptly pulled back. "We're not friends. I don't want to keep pretending we are."
He turned to the screen of the computer before I could stop him. "I've witnessed the most selfless things I've ever seen in my life since I've been with her. I wished I felt...worthy to even have this," he showed the camera is tattoo. "but I don't."
I began to correct him. 'Yes..."
'I don't," he repeated.
He continued. "She does these incredible acts without so much as an expectation of thanks or acknowledgement of really any kind. That's unheard of in my limited world. There's a false sense of modesty and moral standards set so low, they're easy to step on and walk over.'
He turned to me. "I'm just in awe of her."
He turned back to the screen briefly. "She helped me. She keeps helping me and if I didn't think God was a maniacal sadist before... " The sadness that swept through him punctured me. I only realized when he went to take my hand it was resting against my chest. His eyes acquired the untamed upset and pumped it rawly through the facets of his expression while he targeted me. "I would now."
He'd completely commandeered my filming and unseated me with unsettled blast of desperation. Pangs fortitude sprang forward and pooled between us in the seconds that passed.
"Edward?"
"They should know," he pointed at the screen, clearing his throat. "Everyone should know, that for the first time, I've gotten something right."
His dedicated lips enveloped mine again, his adoration trucked in from the reserve he possessed. He wanted to share with my followers that being with me was something which solidified his value. I knew it bordered on dangerous to pin his self worth to our relationship, but I vowed that I would only let him use me as an anchor to explore other wonderful aspects of himself.
"Something?" I held up the provocation, as my bra went airborne. his shirt followed accordingly.
"Being with you, is right." My breathing sped for multiple reasons. "As for things I'm about to get right..."
His hand smoothed over the swell of my ass and squeezed.
I giggled. "The MPAA would have a shit fit. I reached for the mouse to turn off the recording. "I don't think fisting is even red band trailer appropriate." He distracted my hand by kissing it and bitting on my pinky and then resting my hand on his chest.
His eyes darkened popped. "Something to add to the uncut version... "
"Promises, promises." My fingers lazed down his abs. "So how does all this magic happen, Mike?"
"Weight bench, free time and regret." He pulled at my earlobe with his teeth. "Is Jake here?"
"He's working late. Why? Looking for a double dip?"
"No." His delving, lusting eyes flattened my humor. "I want to own every sound you make."
Tender lips passed over my collar bone and traveled south, to persuade the remaining untouched parts of my body to bend to his will. He took no prisoners and rationed nothing by the time he reached my ribs and my scattered my thoughts by taking liberties with breasts and his mouth.
"Every breath." I held mine when he passed his tongue over my hip and only managed to find a breath in the wake of my back hitting my bed.
His lips met the skin of my inner thigh, sucking in a heated, sensitized patch. "Every moan."
Every motion was deliberate, eliciting everything from me he intended. The storm outside intensified, but I could differentiate the sound of thunder and my pounding pulse.
"I don't want to have to share you with another fucking person right now."
The angel ran way to shelter my virtue in her sanctum, certain unadulterated evil was in pursuit. The devil corralled a bolt of lightening with her pitchfork to burn that motherfucker down.
I nodded, having no desire to argue his intentions. Wherever his state of mind delivered him I wanted to be there with him. I didn't want to share him with another fucking person. Ever. My brain didn't have time to grapple with what that meant, as it was already focused on his mouth delivering a divine torture between my thighs.
My body bucked and played on thin twine, before losing all control and bowed off the bed. I was doing much more than moaning.
Although I'm positive "pulverize that pussy" came out of my mouth.
I couldn't be held accountable for lurid commands I barked while his "cunning linguist" skills were in full throttle.
He appeared entirely satisfied with himself as he kissed his way back up my stomach. Then attempted to pull me up onto my unsteady legs. They nearly buckled when I vaguely registered the red light was still glowing.
"Still ... going. The recording...is still going." He turned me around, not so gently pressed me into the wall and scrapped his teeth along my tattoo. Then, penitently licked it over and grasped my hair by twisting the ends around his fingers.
With a motion of his wrist my head was turned our eyes met again. An idea of wicked deliverance puckered his goodness. Simply looking into his eyes at that second was a hell worthy sin. It was a sin I would repeatedly commit without hesitation, it it meant I could feel that way each time.
"Good."
The angel was appalled at the abrasiveness the devil licked her lips and championed the unsung idea. He let go just long enough to pick me up and press me into our wall. My shaky legs wrapped around him when he spoke again.
"Tell them what I'm doing to you."
He thrusted up in inside, my equilibrium shifted to the moment and I was unconcerned with the red light. My attentions were only on him and I, and the way he captivated my body. Thunder clashed, but it only drove his intentions to burn me on his pyre. A sweet humidity traveled indoors and made an attempt to cool us. We could have powered a space shuttle launch with the amount of heat we generated.
"Tell them." His unabashed voice branded the word taken across my skin.
I cinched stands of his hair in my fingers losing control of any articulation. My response was wanton and foreign.
"Bad things. Amazingly bad fucking things.".
He countered by pushing in deeper and speeding his motions. He pressed me the edge of exertion and assured bliss. My high pitched noises and gasps weren't enough of an accolade for him.
He wanted my words.
"Righteous" I mustered, with a groan of satisfaction. Being able to speak anything coherent, with brink of gratification my body was building to was nothing short of impressive.
This spurred him, to taunt me by slowing is action. "That's it?"
"Wicked." I sputtered. "Debauched...shit." I panted. He drove deep, as a reward for my nonsensical babble.
"Seductive."
"Transcendent."
Each one brought us closer to a collective ledge. I couldn't articulate anything more, the walls were beginning to blur into each other, hazed over by pleasure inches away.
"Christen this goddamned wall," I moaned and lost my thoughts as the waves of complexity came to a head and decimated and solidified me. My head fell back from the exertion, swimming from the lack of oxygen and aftermath of screaming incoherent nonsense.
He lost himself in the heat of my instruction, the pounding and guttural noises fused to his efforts. We slid down against our emblem and collapsed into each other. He reverently kissed over my face, and our hand almost instantly rested on the other's tattoo.
"So how did I do as a guest host?"
I laughed. "Brilliantly. I hope you'll take our next attempt seriously, though."
"No you don't." He kissed my temple and pulled me in to him.
"I still have to make the video to actually post." I yawned. He was breathing heavily next to me within minutes. Laying beside him, I listened to the rain falling against the roof. It felt surreal to hear the spattering droplets and not have my mood diminish and desperately try to block it out.
My eyes were about to close when I heard Edward's phone chirp. He didn't wake or move. Despite my better judgement, I removed myself from his arms and crept over to look at the screen.
I'm sorry about this morning.
The weather was still unsettled when I stepped outside some minutes later. I smiled at the scent and the feeling of safety and completeness it perpetuated. Platinum and demanding clouds hovered in the sky, backlighted by neon and city lights. While contemplating the text from Edward's sister, I watched the clouds move in the distance and the haphazard sprawl of rain streak downwards against the mountains. When my eyes broke away, I glanced down and flicked my lighter wheel and pushed the button. The flame quickly came to life and died within the span of a blink to light my cigarette.
It existed for only a second, but within that second, it was valuable. It blazed.
I exhaled a breath of smoke and began to walk around the house in an effort to make sure my legs were still functional.
There was a scuffling in the rocks behind me, but before I could turn and see what made the noise an unfamiliar thick hand clasped over my mouth and I was being pulled. Instinctively I screamed, but the muffled sound was minuscule. I maneuvered my arm an heard him cuss when I managed to burn him with my cigarette.
"Fuck," he spit. "She burned me."
My head rocked back and forth, I just needed to get my mouth loose long enough to bite or yell once. He said "she," and unless he was a complete idiot, it meant he wasn't alone.
"He wasn't lying. She's feisty." I committed his voice to memory, though it was kept to a whisper, while his grip tightened on my mouth. "Keep it cool, Sweetheart. We don't gotta do it like this."
The other had appeared. A cover over his face he helped contain my arms as I tried to get them loose. My hands were bound with what felt like a cable tie as I violently struggled. I managed to kick one of them, but a sharp pain radiated throughout my arm and I realized I'd been injected with something.
Almost immediately, I was struggling to stay awake, my panic choked me as I fought to keep my eyes open against whatever was swimming in my system.
In my daze, I saw the side of black SUV come into view. A set of headlights.
And then nothing.
A/N: Sending in a OS Rom Com piece for Fandom4LLS - pop on over to their website and donate to help an extremely worthy cause - and get the multi-fandom compilation as an added bonus fandom4lls(d)blogspot(d)com