A/N: Many thanks to my group for helping me out as usual when I'm in a bind. I like to think we have fun in there. Join us! Ya know. If you're into that kind of thing. Hehe.
~Then- Inexplicable Season 1 Filming~
"Hey." Edward's voice was a little sharper than he wanted it to be, but he'd been calling Bella's name for some time now.
His tone did the trick. She looked over at him, blinking sporadically. "Are you all right?" he asked more gently.
"Oh, sure," she muttered. "I'm fine. Just hanging around."
His lip twitched. They were both, in fact, hanging from the ceiling, hands bound at the wrist above their heads. The B unit director had called "Cut!" not because he had all the shots he needed, but because there was a problem with the equipment. To his credit, he had asked if Edward and Bella wanted to be released from their binds, but the whole thing was a pain in the ass to set up. They'd both opted to hang in there—literally—while the crew fixed the issue.
"Better than hanging out, I suppose," he said.
She smirked. "Depends on who and what is hanging out, doesn't it?"
A tingle went through him—the typical thrill of hearing something just a little bit naughty. He snickered. But just as quickly as her smirk appeared, it faded again. She bowed her head, her eyes closed as she breathed steadily.
Edward studied Bella carefully, debating whether he should push the issue. There was tension in the set of her shoulders and the lines of her face. They weren't actually hanging from the ceiling. There was a solid bench beneath them both, but she was hobbit-short after all. "Are you uncomfortable? We can get the grips over here with a higher stool or—"
"It's fine. I'm fine." She blew out a breath and, though it seemed to take some effort, looked him in the eyes again. "Being out of control makes me a little twitchy, that's all."
Twitchy.
Edward knew very little of what Bella had gone through that had led her down the road of addiction. Rosalie had paved a path of destruction and pain through their family; it had taken him unforgivably long to grasp that the wrecking ball of trauma had shattered his twin's psyche long before any of that had ever happened. He hadn't understood what was so difficult about it. Just say no, and don't be an asshole to the people who love you. But addicts were dealing with brains whose wiring had been frayed by trauma and then re-rewired by addiction. Their triggers were many and at a full range of intensity.
Or… some people just didn't like being tied up. It could be as simple as that.
"Hell of a job, right?" Edward said, keeping his tone easy. "I did a four-episode arc on a sci-fi show once where I got tortured at one point." He shuddered. "They did this thing where they stretched my cheeks out. It was…not fun."
Bella gave a small snort and looked at him again, amusement in her eyes. "I love how you're so casual about the show that almost got you an Emmy nod."
"There's no 'almost' with awards. You either get the nod, or you don't."
"Hah. You were on every short list in that category. Every entertainment writer had you pegged at 'fairly safe bet.'"
"Which was dumb. Shows like that and shows like this, for that matter, don't get Emmys."
"Chyeah, which is why it was so impressive that there was so much buzz around you. And honestly, you were robbed. It was an incredible performance. You made everyone fall in love with you in such a short time, and the scene where you died? Surprise sword to the gut just when the main character realized she was in love with you. Gah. That scene was all you."
Edward was stunned and touched, but his tone was teasing when he spoke. "Are you having a fangirl moment? I didn't even know you'd watched any of my stuff."
"Oh, please." She rolled her eyes. "You know who my best friend is." She offered him an almost shy smile. "But I'll admit, it's not like it's a chore to watch everything you've ever been in. You're good, Cullen. It's no shock you ended up with your own show."
Warmth bloomed at the center of his chest. "We ended up with our own show." He shook his wrists, making the chains above him clank. "And look at us now."
"Now that I think about it… at least it's not alien bondage, which isn't out of the question with a show like ours," Bella muttered. "One time, on Sara and Sam, I spent an entire hour stuffed into a locker. That sucked worse than this."
"And people think our jobs are easy." He shifted, arching his back slightly. He wasn't bothered, but this position sure as hell wasn't comfortable either. "You ever think about doing anything else?"
She scoffed. "I thought about doing anything else besides this after…" She shook her head. "Nothing else feels like this. Not…you know…this." She tilted her head upward at her binds. "But in general. It's so weird, because it's nothing I ever intended. One of my mother's whims after we moved to LA." She laughed, her smile turning wistful. "I was shy. I hated attention. But I walked into that audition because it made my mother happy and…" She shook her head.
"It just clicked," he said softly. He smiled when she looked over at him. "I don't know that I ever enjoyed being myself back then, but being someone else?"
"It was comfortable," she finished. "And when you're comfortable, you can be confident. Not shy anymore."
"Not so aware of your own faults, because they don't exist for the person you become."
They smiled at each other.
~Now~
Listening to Bella recount part of the same story to a fan, Edward smiled to himself. When he was a teenager, most people would have noted that he was just a touch arrogant. He was handsome, and he knew it. He was smarter than most, and he knew it. Not many could have guessed he was also riddled with self-doubt and even a little self-loathing.
No one had ever understood how freeing it was to step into someone else's shoes, to bring someone else to life. It wasn't that the characters he played were perfect. He liked playing nuanced characters with their own issues. But that was just it—if they weren't his flaws, they carried no weight on his shoulders.
They were at their second convention of the season—a panel that was just Edward and Bella. A fan had asked Bella how she got into acting.
"So, how's that for a cliched storyline?" Bella said, grinning at the audience. "I was trying to be who my mom wanted me to be." She shrugged. "But then, if you knew my mom, she has a new dream every week. This one turned out pretty good for me. More or less."
"Thanks," the fan chirped. "And Edward?"
Edward straightened in his seat, bringing himself reluctantly out of his memories. "How did I get into acting?" He gave a soft laugh. "It's my sister's fault, actually. You're going to laugh at me, but in my family, it's my sister who likes attention."
As predicted, a collective chuckle went through the crowd. Edward smirked and continued. "Eventually, she found her calling. She's big on the mountain biking scene. She's got groupies and everything—a star of the extreme sports world. But for a while, our freshman year of college, she thought about acting. You want to talk about clichés?"
He looked to Bella then, and he lost his train of thought when he found her looking back. Her face was soft, a small smile playing at her lips as though she was enjoying his story, maybe even thinking back, as he had been minutes before, to when they'd been new co-stars having the getting-to-know-you conversation years later than they should have.
At these conventions the last three weeks, Bella looked at him when she needed to; when it was necessary to project the image they were going for. It was like she'd told Aro—she was a professional, and she could act like it was her pleasure to work with him.
But Edward could tell the difference between the actress and his Bella. His friend.
The woman who helped you plan your dream wedding…to someone else?
Right.
Bella ducked her head, but not before he saw the softness of her features harden. He cleared his throat, reorienting his thoughts.
"I went with my sister to an audition," he said, finishing his story. "I learned all the lines because I'd been helping her practice. I was there, so…" He shrugged.
"That is such bullshit," a voice called from the audience.
Edward blinked, and then laughed.
"You shouldn't lie to your fans, little brother," Rosalie said, coming up the aisle toward the stage.
"It's okay," Edward said to the convention workers managing the audience. "That's my sister."
The audience was loud with applause and exclamations as Edward helped Rosalie on stage. "I didn't know you were in town. I thought you had a race."
"Weather," she said and rolled her eyes. Rosalie tended to think she could ride in any condition. She shot him a devilish grin and snatched his mic. "Gimmie that."
"See what I mean about attention?" Edward featured at his sister who only grinned back.
"So you want to know the real story?" she asked, addressing the audience. Edward threw up his hands as they whistled and whooped their affirmative.
Another worker dragged out a stool for Rosalie. She thanked them and sat as she began to speak. "So senior year of high school, this teacher of ours noticed this one was a melodramatic asshole." She paused while her audience tittered. "He suggested Edward go out for the school play that year, which I think was Camelot. Of course, he gets the lead role.
"He liked it. Acting, I mean. But he refused to get into it in college because 'I have more important things to do than play pretend, Rose,'" she said in a mocking tone. "But he kept trying to put it on me, telling me all the time I should audition because it was what I wanted."
"You did want it."
She shook her head at him. "Bull roar. You wanted to keep acting, but you thought you were above it. You're transparent as a wet white t-shirt." She turned back to the audience. "There was this guy he used to hang around with back then."
"Emmett," Edward supplied. "Football jock. He liked hanging out with the cheerleaders." He rolled his eyes.
Rosalie's features tightened as though in anger but smoothed out just as quickly. "Right. But he was a sweetheart. Like I said, Edward was ridiculously transparent if even a guy like Emmett could see through him. So, we drummed up this plan. I'd play along that I was interested in acting. When we got to the audition, Emmett bet him he'd get kicked out in the first minute. He didn't, of course, so here we are."
"You are a lying liar who lies, little sister," Edward said.
"I believe her," Bella said. "She had me at 'melodramatic asshole.'"
Edward chanced a glance at her. Her eyes, as their gaze again met briefly, told him she meant the words the same way Rosalie did—as a tease. A sense of elation went through him. His heartbeat sped, and his lips turned up of their own volition. He lived for those tiny moments when she looked at him like they were still friends.
And that was a problem. Around her, his emotions came in extremes. Her cold stares may as well have been daggers. They left him eviscerated, bleeding out on the floor. Those warmer, softer moments sent a rush through him—the pure glee was enough to lift him off his feet and into the air.
Love.
Someone had once said pain demanded to be felt. Well, new love demanded to consume. It was total awareness. It was a person occupying every thought in his head even when they weren't in the room. And when they were…
Edward jumped, coming back to reality when Rosalie's hand landed with a little more force than was necessary on his back. He blinked.
Right. It wasn't the time or the place. In fact, when it came to Bella, there was no appropriate time or place. He needed to get that through his love-addled brain.
At the very least, he needed to remember Bella wasn't the only employed actor in the room. He too knew how to do his job. He knew how to act.
~0~
Edward walked down the hallway in the relatively quiet back end of the convention hall. He as dazed—a buzz between his ears and a haze over his thoughts. He hummed a tunelessly, cycling through random lyrics without settling on one particular song. There were thousands, millions of love songs. Millions of words trying to capture the intensity of it; the pure insanity and irrationality.
Heart beats fast, my eyes adored you, the sight of you leaves me weak, heart's on fire, life makes love look hard. And living a dream, walking on sunshine, this feeling's coming on way too fast, I'd live for your smile, how you got me blind is still a mystery. Bittersweet and strange, spinning on that dizzy edge, almost more than I can take, where eagles fly, pull me out from inside, a beautiful oblivion.
Killing me softly.
Edward paused at the exit door, rubbing his neck, trying to get his head back in the game. His sister had driven her car around to pick him up. She wasn't the type to let him get away with anything, and she wouldn't be amused at his inability to concentrate on anything that wasn't Bella.
But really, could he be blamed? It was another convention specifically for their show. The whole point was to drown in all things Inexplicable, including the show's star. It wasn't his fault that he was her costar and couldn't go anywhere without running into a life-sized stand up of her if not the woman herself.
And those photo sessions… Those photo sessions were going to be the death of him. Having to touch her over and over again; to have to perform—smile for the camera—in not risqué but nonetheless intimate poses. Today, a young mother had put her baby into his arms, and they'd taken a picture, both of them cradling the child and thus pressed against each other.
He smiled at the next memory. A feisty fan had asked if Bella could lift Edward. He'd been prepared to laugh it off, but Bella had surprised him by taking him into a fireman's hold. When she'd put him down some seconds later after they took the picture, he'd held onto her shoulders to steady himself. She was still laughing as he got his bearings; a genuine laugh.
The picture would be on the internet soon if it wasn't already. Edward already knew he was going to hunt it down if only to see if he, with his rose-colored glasses, had exaggerated the genuine connection he'd felt between them in that moment.
It was okay to want that, he thought. The look on her face was proof their friendship still existed. His feelings were his own problem, but life in general would be easier if she wasn't so angry at him.
"Head in the game," he muttered to himself, and then went out to face his sister.
Thankfully, Rosalie filled most of the silence as they made the five-minute drive to his hotel. She was supposed to be in Big Bear for an event, but an unexpected stormfront had made the usually dry California trails too dangerous—slick with mud—for the kind of biking Rosalie did. Since the Inexplicable convention that weekend had been in Seattle—an easy drive from their home in Vancouver—Rosalie had decided to drop in.
"I'm sorry, twin," Edward said as they made their way to his hotel suite. He slid the keycard in the slot and let them in. "Usually, I'm better at keeping up with your meets."
"No. You never were. Angela was the one who kept up with my schedule." She sat on the room's sofa, arms crossed as she gave him a look.
He grimaced. "Oh, yeah. I guess...yeah."
She snorted, but her teasing expression faded into something more serious. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about, actually. Why I'm really here." She smirked. "Not that watching you with all the swooning fangirls isn't entertaining…"
"I'm sure you can find plenty of videos online." He sat on the opposite end of the sofa. "So?"
"So." She blew out a breath and rolled her eyes. "You know I'm not good at segues, so I'm just going to get right down to it. What do you want from Angela at this point?"
"Angela." Edward started. He'd been braced for Rosalie to start in about Bella and all the things he should be doing—in her opinion—that he wasn't. "What do you mean?"
"Exactly what I asked. What do you want from her?"
"I... I mean, she doesn't answer my calls. I tried—"
"That's not what I asked. Forget about what she is or isn't doing. What do you want?" She crossed her arms. "You've been in a holding pattern since the wedding. Not moving. So, do you want to move forward with her, if possible, or do you want to move on?"
It wasn't that he hadn't thought about Angela. Quite the opposite, actually. He'd called her at least once a day. It had been weeks since he'd left a message, but he always called. She never sent him to voicemail. He had a mental image of her watching his name light up on the phone as it rang and rang.
"I want… I want not to have been the one who hurt her." Edward banged his head on the back of the couch. "She was so anxious when we first got together. She thought she must be doing the wrong thing because we have such different views on religion. I don't put God above my loved ones, but I'm a good man. I honor and protect my loved ones to the best of my ability. I give back, because I've been given so much." He swallowed hard. "I promised her I wouldn't be the one to hurt her. It was never my intention."
"Hah, well, I'd imagine Angela of all people has something to say about intentions and the road to hell." Rosalie shook her head. "But that wasn't what I asked. You hurt her. You didn't mean to or want to, but it happened. You want to give her the 'it's not you, it's me' speech. I get that. But that doesn't answer what you want from her. Let me rephrase. Do you want to close the book on your relationship, or do you want another chance?"
Edward opened his mouth, closed it. He shook his head and stood, pacing a few steps back and forth. The question was so wrapped up in the devastation of their wedding day. His entire world had imploded, and he didn't know which way was up. He couldn't even imagine what it was like for her. What he felt for Bella—and the fact he'd been drowning in it for weeks now that the veil had been ripped from over his eyes—had him discombobulated.
"Nothing has changed about the way I feel about Angela. The life we planned, the life I worked hard to build with her, is still beautiful to me. I don't feel less for her."
"And if you thought you had a snowball's chance in hell with Bella?" Rosalie said.
Edward stopped short.
It wasn't something he'd allowed himself to think at all. He hadn't so much as mused about working toward the possibility of something; hadn't daydreamed about it. So far, what he felt for Bella was something that merely existed. He had no desire to act on it. This thing he felt had destroyed his life. He didn't have any positive feelings about it.
"That's like asking if I want to hop in my time machine and go back for a do-over." He shook his head. "I don't think about that because it's fiction. Why think about fictional things when there's all this reality to deal with?"
"Uh huh. You still haven't answered whether or not you want Angela and the life you planned. It's beautiful. It would be nice. A lot of things would be nice, but a lot of relationships end for smaller reasons."
Edward sighed and sat down again. "The timing… If I'd realized it before this bomb went off…" He closed his eyes. "It's hard to know what to want. It's hard to feel like wanting her back is anything but fiction."
"And there's all this reality to contend with," Rosalie finished for him, teasing just a little.
"Right." He tilted his head and opened his eyes to look at her. "So, you came here to have this conversation in person?"
She grimaced. "Like I said. Angela was the one who always kept up with my race schedule. She called me because she figured I'd be upset over the canceled race." She scowled. "Which does suck, by the way, but regardless. We talked. A little."
Edward sat up straight. "Did you? Is she… How is she? Did she—"
"Of course she asked about you, numbskull." Rosalie shook her head. "She's never been that comfortable around me, so it was an awkward as hell conversation. I didn't tell her much. The basics, of course. That you were a wreck. That you weren't exactly out here living your best life. Etc. Etc. No details because, and really, you need to hear this, there is nothing good that can come of her knowing it's Bella. Really. Not given the reality of your situation one way or another." Rosalie's frown deepened. "Did you think about visiting while you were here in Seattle?"
"I'd been considering it," Edward said. "I wanted to, but I didn't know if it was the right thing. If she wanted to see me at all, wouldn't she pick up the phone? If anything, I was planning to try tomorrow since the convention ends in the afternoon."
Rosalie nodded. "I came here to encourage you to decide what you want and to be honest with yourself. You can't be honest with her unless you're honest with yourself. Brutally honest."
"Does that mean she said something about wanting to see me?"
"She gave me the impression that she might—"
Her words cut out as a knock sounded—a soft knock.
Rosalie pressed her lips together and nodded. "That she might come to see you," she finished, taking away any doubt Edward had about who was at the door.
A/N: As my two-year-old would say…
Uh oh.
