water's getting harder to tread / with these waves crashing over my head

lifehouse, "storm"

chapter 10.

if it makes you happy

The tiny store on the tiny street is decorated black and orange and green and purple, with oddly-shaped ghosts stuck on the glass panes and a badly carved pumpkin sitting on the front desk. The only employee around is wearing a black pointy hat, and she's watching them with careful eyes which are smudged with heavy kohl. It's the look they usually get when it's all-too obvious they're from out of town, and when they're in danger of upsetting the balance of quiet lives. That, and they're probably the only people she's seen all day who haven't made an effort to dress up.

(Truth be told, neither he or Leah noticed it was Halloween until he'd parked the car, and if somebody were to ask him, he would say that they were doing a damn fine job of ignoring the whole thing. Halloween reminds him of how long they have been gone, and the bonfires they will be missing on First Beach.)

"So much for road trip music." Leah pulls a face and sets Eric Clapton back on the poorly stocked shelf, and goes back to humming that damned Sheryl Crow song which haunted him from Yuma to Tucson, and now all the way to the edge of Louisiana where it is warm and dry even in October.

They've taken nearly two weeks to crawl across the state line. Everything's been a little slow since Rockport, slow like his body has become now that he's doing his best not to phase — he hurts way more than usual because of it, which is really fucking saying something — and slow like Leah, who has begun her hunt for the most annoying albums in the history of The Worst Music Ever. The collection is growing on the backseats of the poor Guardian.

She turns her nose up at his choice of The Black Keys, even though he's allowed her four discs of Journey and turned a blind eye to Genesis. Country pop music that's also a little bit folk-ish, however, is enough to make him disown her and the whole reason he's vetoed Shania Twain in every store. God forbid she finds the specific CD of Sheryl Crow's Greatest Hits she's been painstakingly searching for.

(She doesn't know that he finally found it a few minutes ago. He quickly managed to hide it behind Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley a few rows down. He'd rather sing Disney.)

Sometimes, down by the river, if he and Leah turned their heads the right way, they could hear a faint song playing from the grand piano. It's soothing tones were meant for the baby, of course, but Jacob knew that Cullen likely also meant it for the wolf who had abandoned his daughter. A reminder, of sorts. An accusation.

A bunch of vamps who like to kick a man when he's down, Leah's echo reminded him.

Cullen was usually at the piano still when Jacob was dragging his feet up the white porch. Whatever piece he was playing to try and calm Renesmee would then morph into something a little more jubilant, and very quickly the tears would stop and the tension in the bloodsuckers' eyes would fade, just as Jacob's will would begin to crumble as he hovered in the doorway.

Bella always greeted him first. Her face would split in the same way that the baby's did behind her, and everything about it was just so fucking unfair that Jacob had a hard time remembering why he was doing what he was doing. As his whole body betrayed him, he struggled with remembering why he hadn't yet given in completely, and why exactly it was that he so often felt as if he wanted to run back into the forest with Leah for the rest of their lives.

I need you to stop letting them kick you.

He knew what they wanted. And he knew what Leah wanted. His wolf wanted what they wanted, while he needed what Leah wanted. Cullen knew it, too; Jacob didn't have to be the one who read minds to know why they kept pulling him back to the house. They hoped that his wolf would win the fight if he came back enough and saw what he could do. Who he could be. How he was so spectacularly failing at everything else.

But then the sickening, icy sweetness would overwhelm him, momentarily shocking his senses no matter how many times it had happened before, and he would remember. Then Bella would recall a faint human memory, or Fang would thank him, or The Wife would offer clothes, and Jacob would remember that these people — these bloodsuckers — were not his family. They were not Pack. He would remember exactly why he wanted to run back into the forest with Leah for the rest of their lives, and why he had sent Seth and Embry away.

So Cullen would hit the ivory keys harder, as Fang asked after Leah and The Wife would offer food on top of clothes. Not even Bella, who he'd taught to ride motorbikes and had pulled out of the ocean, who was the reason he would lock himself in the garage for days on end, could coerce him into leaving the doorway, while the rest of them kept quiet (Blondie hadn't taken a crack at him for a week), and every single one of them warily waited for him to snap.

It would happen. One day. He'd either run a thousand miles, or he'd take a step inside.

You're gonna have to decide if we stick around.

Leah finds Sheryl Crow. Jacob picks up Radiohead, and swears that he'll have her butchering Creep instead of If It Makes You Happy before Alabama.