"It's about time."
Edward's greeting that afternoon makes Esme laugh.
Carlisle isn't sure which of their minds he has managed to snatch hold of, extricate the knowledge from, but he finds as he catches his son's eye, the genuine smile, that he doesn't truly care.
Carlisle ushers her inside, grinning as she ruffles Edward's hair with a motherly kind of affection. There were many things he was not counting on when he stole Esme away from death's waiting hands; he never would have expected to end up in a bed with her one morning, he never would have expected her to become his best friend, but almost more astounding to him than those things… he never expected that she and Edward would form a bond he cannot fully comprehend.
His son is so closed off at times, so unreachable, but put Esme in the room and Edward's resolve crumbles. It has Carlisle wondering if all the boy ever really needed was a mother.
Edward cuts his eyes to his father from across the room. "Carlisle, stop psychoanalyzing me."
Esme mimics the look from over her shoulder, offering Carlisle a soft glare.
"Hey, quit that," he chuckles, dropping her bag on the sofa. It's the end of the week and she plans to spend the weekend here with them, working on lesson plans and gardening. He also placed some paint and canvas in her room after Edward hinted at her longing for the old hobby. "You're only reinforcing my theory."
"Edward." She turns on her heel, stares up at the boy who towers over her. "What theory?"
Edward groans, scrapes a hand through his hair. "It's not necessarily about you. It's about me."
"What theory?" she echoes as if he hasn't spoken.
He shoots her a long withering glance. "Carlisle is just musing over how you are like a mother figure to me and your presence improves my disposition."
Esme's lips crack into a lovely smile.
"Oh, come on, that's not so bad," she teases, reaching up to pat his cheek.
Edward huffs, scuttles away from the touch. "Both of you stop. We aren't playing house."
"Who's playing?" Esme grins, only furthering Edward's discomfort and taking an amusing joy in it.
Just like a mother.
"Okay, fine," Edward decides, crossing his arms over his chest. "We really will be a household at some point, seeing as how Carlisle has been daydreaming about marrying you for weeks now."
"Edward," Carlisle hisses, nearly reaching for the antique lamp on the coffee table to hurl at his son's smirking face.
"Carlisle," Esme chuckles, crossing the room once more to stand in front of him, placing placating hands on his chest. When he glances down to her, the smile is still on her lips - still amused but soft. "There's nothing wrong with daydreams, darling. I have them all the time."
Carlisle cups the thin bones of her shoulders in his palms. He loves this woman.
"Glad you finally admitted that one to yourself too," Edward smirks, eyes flitting between the two of them.
Esme's brow furrows, her smile turning puzzled. "Admitted what?"
Edward's mouth opens, but Carlisle lifts a hand to stop him.
Not this time. I haven't told her this yet.
Edward shoots him the equivalent of a pout, but there is understanding alive in his eyes.
"I'll give you two a moment," he replies, vanishing from the room and into the backyard from the sounds of it.
Esme tilts her head in question, her attention returning fully to Carlisle. "Something you need to confess, Doctor?"
He grins and sweeps his hands from her shoulder to her jaw, cradling the angles of her face, feeling the warmth of her skin permeate his.
"Just how much I love you."
Her lips part for a moment, breath stuttering and her heartbeat falling out of sync. But it's her eyes that tell him it's a good surprise of words, the rich brown of her irises growing lighter, the tiny flecks of gold surrounding her pupils sparkling back at him.
"Good," she hums, lacing her arms around his neck while she rises on the tips of her toes. "Because I've loved you back for a while now."
He smiles like a fool into her kiss, lifting her off her feet and spinning her around just to feel the giddiness of her laughter against his lips.
She remains at the house when Carlisle departs for work. Edward returned shortly after their brief interlude, their quiet declarations of love, and she had sent him a thought of gratitude upon his initial arrival.
That was very sweet of you.
He scowled at her, but the expression was playful, practiced between the two of them.
After, once it is just the two of them, Edward takes his usual place at the piano while Esme delightedly drags the paintbrushes and canvas she found in her room out to the gardens.
She's in the middle of attempting to recreate the photograph in her mind, the view of the landscape from the highest of trees, when she hears a new song coming from the house, one that has her humming along.
Once it has concluded, she hears the quiet whoosh of air, the sound of Edward joining her.
"That was beautiful," she compliments, pausing in her brushstrokes of the greying sky to give him her attention. "It might be my favorite you've composed in my time here."
"I would hope so, I composed it for you," Edward grins, plopping down in the grass beside her.
It catches her off guard, a pleasant eruption of adoration rioting within her ribcage.
The ways in which Carlisle and Edward care for her are foreign, so incredibly kind and thoughtful that her heart often feels ready to burst with it.
"Don't cry, Esme," he chuckles, but she merely huffs at him, wipes at the moisture on her cheek. "It makes me angry, that you weren't treated better before you came here."
Esme shifts to see him, sitting next to her half-finished painting with his legs crossed and his elbows digging into his knees, chin atop his fisted hands.
"The past doesn't matter," she murmurs, biting her lip even as she says it.
She believes it, she does. For the most part.
"Your parents treated you poorly, your husband worse," Edward mutters, the corners of his mouth pulling downwards. "It's hard to understand."
Esme's brow knits. "What do you mean?"
"You and Carlisle…" Edward shrugs. "You're both these innately kind people, but in both of your lives, you were simply forsaken by those who were supposed to care for you. It makes me question humanity when if the best of us are disgraced, what hope is there for the others?"
"You mustn't think of it that way," Esme sighs, setting down her tools and reaching for his shoulder. She is always more careful with her touch for Edward, aware his resolve is not quite as concrete as Carlisle's, but he doesn't flinch or shove her off. "I am certainly not the best, but what I have been through… there is only one part I would really alter."
The image of her child's slack face flashes through her mind and she squeezes her eyes shut, takes a deep breath.
"It is not what happens to us that defines us," she continues with a steadying exhale. "If anything, Edward, it has all made me even more appreciative of this life that I have now. I never thought anyone would love me, that I would ever have anyone to love in return. Now I have the two of you."
Edward sneaks a quick glance at her, quirks his lips at the gentle squeeze of her hand to his shoulder before she draws it away.
"A future husband and a son," she quips, earning his scoff of disapproval and laughing along with him.
Esme is lying on a blanket in the backyard when he slips through the house, following her scent to the garden. Edward is with her, his hand moving furiously over a sketch pad.
His son looks up at his approach.
"Have you two been out here all night?" Carlisle inquires, noting the sun rising in the distance, the hints of pink and lavender in the sky. He left for the hospital in the early evening and has been gone for over twelve hours.
Esme's eyes are closed, her breathing even. Paint stains a spot on her cheek, speckles her fingers. The honey brown locks of her hair are fanned out around her, just a shift away from dipping into a puddle of blue paint.
Carlisle chuckles, glancing from her completed artwork - a recreation of their outing to the woods yesterday, the view of the world from the top of the trees - to Edward's sketch of a child.
A little boy with Esme's nose, her brow.
"One day she will forget his face," Edward explains rather hastily. "He is still so clear in her mind now. I thought she would want to remember him."
Carlisle's throat feels dry, thick with an emotion he can't name.
"That is a wonderful thought, Edward. I can only imagine how much she will treasure it," Carlisle says softly, wanting nothing more than to reach for the boy, embrace him.
Edward returns the thought with a nod, a private smile.
"I'll go put it with her things upstairs," Edward decides, gathering her paints and tools in a flash, disappearing immediately.
Esme stirs ever so slightly, rolling onto her side and curling in on herself, shivering once.
Carlisle bends to sweep her up, scooping the blanket from the ground and bundling it around her slim frame.
"Carlisle," she slurs, his name a soft sound in her throat. Her eyes flutter open to see him, her fingers escaping the cover of the throw to reach for his face. "Beautiful man."
He turns his face into the hand at his cheek, kisses the center of her palm.
"I didn't realize you and Edward had an art class planned for the night," Carlisle murmurs, grinning down at her as she hums, maneuvers her body in his arms to be closer.
"I wanted to stay under the stars," she mumbles, hooking her arms around his neck, absentmindedly twisting her fingers in the hair at the base of his skull. "Edward stayed while I painted. Then I fell asleep."
"Yes, love, I see that."
Those hazy brown eyes blink up at him, the rosy line of her lips in a content half smile.
"It's the weekend, I can sleep in," she muses, nuzzling her nose to his throat. Carlisle's own eyes flutter closed and he dips his chin, dusts his lips along her hairline. "Will you lay in bed with me upstairs?"
"I couldn't think of a better way to spend a Saturday morning," he concurs, brushing his thumb to the swatch of dried green on her cheek.
Carlisle carries her across the yard and into the house, up the stairs - all in a matter of seconds. When he lowers her to the bed, he drapes the blanket over her frame before joining her. The gravitation of her body into his is immediate, her legs sliding between his, arms snaking around his torso, face burrowing into his chest - completely entwining herself with him.
It's almost unnerving. He's spent the last two hundred years without a single touch. Upon Edward's arrival in his life, they have shared a brief embrace, a clap of a hand onto a shoulder, but no substantial form of contact. But Esme... she has assaulted his senses with the onslaught of her touch, with her constant affections; she brought to life the desire to hold and be held, the ridiculous urges to grasp her hand or kiss her skin.
Her breathing steadies again quickly, the soft puffs of air pooling in the hollow of his throat. While she sleeps, he spends the hours memorizing the pattern of her spine, the detailed structure of each and every bone and piece of vertebrae. He is quickly able to identify the slight indentations in certain areas, the barely noticeable signs of broken bones that have healed.
Three ribs, her left ulna and radius, her right wrist, her clavicle. Soft scarring lines her scalp, her jaw has a slight hitch to its hinge, telling of having been set right after a mandibular fracture.
He takes note of her lungs, ensuring there is no single abnormality in their abilities, that the breaks in her ribs have not affected their function. But her inner workings still sound good, resilient.
Carlisle has to close his eyes, resort to a prayer for peace before the visions of ripping to shreds the man who did this to her can take hold. Esme is so delicate, every bone so slim, her skin fair with a warm flush of freckles across her shoulders, a natural pink to her cheeks, her hair like silk.
He's biased, he knows, but he just can't fathom it. He cannot imagine how anyone could treat her with such brutality.
But it doesn't matter, not anymore. What matters is that it will never happen again.