Just before we begin (does anyone read these?) - I wanted to defend Carlisle for a second (yes, because I love him *whimper*) - poor, overly compassionate, Carlisle spent two days appealing to Edward before he called Esme and stayed at Carys' again. He told him it was wrong, and he tried to reason with him as he mentions at the start of the chapter and towards the end, but it didn't work, so he called Esme - not just as Edward's vampire mum, but as someone who he hoped could get through to him. He knows that Edward took advantage of his love for him and his belief that he'd do the right thing, but it's Edward rather than his parenting that caused the issue. Carlisle treats them like adults and makes sure each of them has an equal voice with him - Carys simply refused to treat Edward as an adult after what he'd done and reminded him of what he already knew from not only himself but Carlisle as well. It wouldn't have worked if he didn't already know from his conscience and Carlisle that it was wrong - as Carlisle said, she got through to him as he was unable to. (Just to be sure everyone knows, I'm just cuddling my poor sweetheart)
TL;DR: Justice for Carlisle last chapter (haha!) - he treated his children as adults with the power to make their own choices and face the consequences, Edward just took advantage of that.
Thank you to Ghostwriter71, Guest, GuestMG, paninihead, Riley, collegestudent34, obsessedwiffyou, FAWorks, Mixie18, souverian, and Ella for your reviews! I'm overwhelmed!
Chapter 12
Carys woke up on Saturday morning to a now-familiar sight: an empty bed, a cup of coffee, and a note to say that Carlisle had already left for work.
Perhaps it was because she woke up 'late' - though, she thought, early for a Saturday - at ten, that her coffee was cold and she already had a text from Carlisle to say that he missed her, but she chose not to dwell on that fact as she replied to say that she felt the same, rolled herself out of bed, and, after brushing her teeth, having a quick shower, and throwing on some pyjamas to start the day, did the unthinkable...
She took her coffee downstairs and microwaved it rather than waiting for her kettle to boil.
She was just pondering how much respect she'd lose from Findlay, Amy, Sean, Sarah, and/or Monica for her actions when there was a knock at her door.
Carys wrapped her dressing gown tighter around her as she headed across the lounge, checking her hair in the mirror before she opened the door to find Esme standing on the other side.
Esme, who was - as she had been the two times Carys had seen her before, impeccably dressed and made up - looked a little taken aback at Carys' state of undress and swapped the coffee she held to her other hand as she checked her watch.
"I'm sorry...," she said, still alternating exaggeratedly confused glances between Carys and her raised wrist, "I thought it was late morning."
Carys wrinkled her nose and narrowed her eyes playfully, huffing a breath as she turned and waved Esme into the house. She winced slightly as her microwave beeped and Esme turned to stare at the kitchen wall as if she could see through it (Carys had already checked, she couldn't) rather than making any move to cross the threshold.
"Humans need sleep," she grumbled softly, lips twisting as she tucked a stray bit of frizz back into her ponytail and avoided Esme's gaze.
"Oh..." Esme nodded slowly and indicated with the coffee cup. "I thought I'd read that you only needed eight hours, but perhaps that was an old text..."
"You know full well I've slept in," Carys complained self-consciously, wrinkling her nose again as Esme gave in to a smirk and finally handed her the coffee. "Aren't you coming in?" She asked when Esme continued to hover on her doorstep.
The thought she might get to finally spend time with her friend in person rather than over the phone held great appeal, especially as she'd woken up with a feeling of regret that she hadn't properly greeted her the night before.
"No," Esme murmured, leaning to the side and turning her head so that Carys could see the two vampires sitting in the red Ferrari behind her.
One looked as if Christmas had come early, and was in the process of pushing herself over the door of the convertible when she was wrenched back in by her exasperated looking sister who occupied the driver's seat. If Carys heard right, and she thought she did, Rosalie was being very vocal about the risk of handprints to her paintwork.
"Rosalie, Alice, and I are going shopping in Seattle. We wondered if perhaps you'd like to join us? If, of course-"
"I'd love to!" Carys exclaimed, pressing her arms to her chest as she just about resisted the urge to hop. "Can you give me..." She glanced down at herself and grimaced slightly. "Five minutes?"
"I don't see why not," Esme agreed with a pleased smile that made Carys' heart melt.
Carys held up a finger, placed her coffee carefully on the small table by the door, and raced up to her bedroom. She was followed by a peal of affectionate laughter.
Carys knew she wasn't going to be able to spend any money that day owing to the number of dates she'd been on recently, but she still wanted to enjoy herself, so she chose something she could easily get in and out of if she wanted to try anything on. When she returned downstairs around six minutes later, she held her arms out at her sides and raised her shoulders in turn nervously, asking non-verbally for Esme's opinion on her outfit.
Esme's grin was all the acceptance she needed to get over the last of her worries about how she might fit in wearing skinny black jeans and a fitted black jumper, but she appreciated the verbal appreciation which went along with it as she pulled on her long brown boots and peacoat.
Esme's opinion was echoed by Alice when they left the house and made their way to the car, Carys sipping her coffee.
"Oh there's so much I can do with you!" She sighed, bouncing in her seat, her wide eyes softening when Carys blushed and held her coffee behind her to give her a hug without risking the car's interior.
"Hi Rosalie," Carys greeted, receiving a nod from Carlisle's eldest daughter for her efforts before she followed Alice and climbed into the back of the car.
"Do. Not. Spill. That," Rosalie warned her, checking her wing mirror before she pulled out once Esme was settled in the front.
"I promise I won't," Carys assured her quickly, wondering how often Rosalie had had food or drink in her car at all.
"Ignore Rose, it'll be fine," Alice told her happily, turning in her seat to look at Carys' coat more closely, her small hands pulling at the fabric in a way that Carys was far more comfortable with now than she was the first time she'd been examined in such a way.
Carys glanced at Rosalie for a moment, not missing the way she'd tensed slightly at her sister's words. It reminded her too much of how she felt when one or two of her friends back home would sometimes dismiss her worries or concerns to other people - not because they didn't care about them, but because they didn't put quite as much stock in them as Carys sometimes thought they should.
"No, I think Rosalie's right," she commented carefully, smiling at Alice to take the edge out of her words when she looked up in surprise. "It's a beautiful car, and I wouldn't want to risk staining it."
She stilled as Rosalie took her eyes off the road for a moment or two and frowned at Esme, but relief flooded her as she turned back, her lips twitching slightly.
"Besides," Carys added after she looked around her, genuinely amazed she was sitting in the car at all, "I definitely couldn't afford the cleaning fees."
Esme leaned around her headrest to face Carys as she laughed quietly. "Carlisle would take care of it," she told her, raising her voice over the roar of the engine and the wind that whipped around them when Rosalie reached the main road and sped up.
Carys scoffed and took a long sip of her coffee before responding. "And then I'd have to pay him back," she called, far more comfortable with Esme and her gentle teasing than she was with the others just yet, no matter how much she liked them. "I already owe you a couple of dollars for the coffee in the first place!"
Esme threw her a particularly conspiratorial smile before she turned back to face the front, and Carys felt as if she was missing something.
Alice let her in on the joke a few seconds later.
"Carlisle's worth over thirty-four billion dollars," she yelled cheerfully, "I don't think you'd-"
"HE'S WHAT!?" Carys replied, her mouth dropping open in shock as a high pitched sound similar to a squeaky door hinge left her.
Rosalie raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow as she met Carys' eye in the rear-view mirror, and Esme turned in her seat once again.
The three vampires watched in interest, Rosalie glancing at the road regularly, as Carys' expression remained the same for roughly five minutes until her stomach bottomed out when they hit the highway outside Forks and sped up again.
She took a deep breath through her nose and started to nod continuously as she stared at the console, still trying to reconcile Carlisle's wealth. She'd known he was rich before, she'd known he was rich rich after that day when she'd visited his house for the first time, but she'd not really stopped to think about just how rich he really was. Even if she thought of the interest on the interest on the interest he must make each year, it shocked her.
Why had she insisted on going dutch for most of their dates if what wasn't even a drop in the ocean for him was a carefully calculated decision for her? She wondered numbly to herself.
"Okay... So... I'm not paying you back for this coffee, Esme," she informed her lightly, shaking her head as she raised her eyebrows when she finally regained a sense of equilibrium. "And... I think... It's only fair, I... Also don't have to pay for my lunch."
Alice laughed as Carys shrugged her shoulders unapologetically, and wrapped her thin arms around her as Esme turned a grin on Rosalie and faced the road again.
"We're going to have so much fun!" Alice squealed, pulling back excitedly before looking Carys up and down again and asking seriously: "What do you think about getting your hair done? Because I've already made an appointment, and you'll love what I have in mind."
Carys' brow creased as she laughed scoffingly and shook her head, her shoulders rising and falling quickly. She took another long sip of her rapidly cooling coffee before she responded.
"I think I'm not paying for it, is what I think!"
Despite Carys' initial reaction, she felt far more guilty than she'd expected as she sat in the hairdresser's chair three hours later and took a gulp of her complimentary champagne whilst Alice pointed at different parts of her hair and chatted easily with the director of the salon, Michael.
"What do you think, Carys?" Esme asked her, throwing the decision back to her over whether it would look better if they lifted the red highlights to a honey brown and layered it again to add some more body.
Carys turned away from the price list she'd been staring at and fixed her with a mildly fearful look.
Esme smiled understandingly before she reached over and snatched the card from Carys' lax fingers, fixing her with a pointed look as she sighed lightly. "Don't look at that. Now... Honey, or darker? Red or no red? Layers or no?"
Carys caught Alice and Michael's expectant stares in the mirror and took a calming breath as she thought through her answer. "I'm... I mean... I don't want to risk the curls, and I'm not too sure about it being that light...," she explained quietly.
Michael grinned sympathetically as he stepped forward and fanned her hair over her shoulders. "I completely understand, but you don't need to worry, I'm a pro. We'll do a treatment to start, and a really deep condition and protein after the bleach - it'll be fine."
"Do it, do it, do it," Alice chanted quietly over Carys' shoulder, bouncing on her tiptoes as she held her fists up. "Do it, do it, do it, do it, do-"
"Okay!" Carys exclaimed with a laugh, giving in, though she was still a little unsure. "But I really don't want to lose the length," she added seriously to Michael, who shook his head.
"Of course not," he agreed easily. "I'm thinking..." He turned her chair away from the mirror so that she faced him and tilted his head assessingly.
"Lighten the rest a little so it doesn't end up looking streaky, but keep the depth. Don't go all the way down to honey, it wouldn't suit her eyes - you should go with a deep brown palette to blend in with her roots as it grows out," Rosalie supplied from the chair to Carys' right, sounding bored. She didn't look up from her magazine, flipping the page as she spoke, but Carys felt the overwhelming urge to hug her. "And if she loses so much as a single curl, there'll be hell to pay."
Carys' urge to hug grew astronomically, but she resisted as Rosalie finally glanced up to fix her with a faintly aggressive look as if she knew exactly what she'd been thinking.
Michael's audible gulp captured Carys' attention again, and she thought he looked far less at ease than he had done moments before.
"Well... I... Suppose... That might work..." Alice admitted slowly, as she shifted her head from one side to the other. "But she'd look so much better with a-"
"Dark." Rosalie cut in sharply, flipping another page as she dismissed her sister.
Alice sighed heavily before she met Carys' gaze, her eyes growing impossibly large in appeal. "Please...? Just a bit of honey?"
"Dark. Or I'm calling Carlisle," Rosalie murmured tonelessly.
It surprised Carys at how easily Alice gave in, pouting softly as her brow furrowed, but she nodded slowly. "Fine...," she grumbled, her expression brightening as she turned to Michael again. "Do you think you can do it in the next two hours? We have a reservation at Canlis, and then-"
Carys turned away from the conversation again to share a speaking glance with Esme, who squeezed her hand lightly before they looked at Rosalie.
"Stop it," Rosalie muttered, sounding more than faintly annoyed as she snapped the page, refusing to look up again. "Don't think I like you just because I don't want you showing Carlisle up."
Carys' lips twitched as she was turned to face the mirror again by Michael as he explained to his staff in great detail what they were about to do to her.
Exactly two hours later they left the salon, and Carys couldn't get over how glossy her curls were, or how well the darker colour blended in with her untouched roots.
"There's just something... Familiar... About it... The colour, I mean..." Esme pondered, examining Carys' hair as she strolled beside her.
Rosalie walked slightly ahead of them, cutting through the crowd easily as people stopped in their tracks to stare openly at her, or darted out of her way so that they could do so, thinking she wouldn't notice as much.
"I agree," Alice piped up from Carys' other side, utilising her sister's slipstream far more than the taller women needed to. "Something... Rosalie!" She suddenly exclaimed, seemingly impressed as she skipped ahead to her sister's side.
Carys looked at Esme and noticed the woman's frown transform into a grin as she let out something akin to a snort.
She glanced at her as she pressed her lips together, failing to hide her smile. "Curly dark brown hair of that shade was very popular for women in the sixteen-hundreds," she explained, almost proudly.
"Sixteen-hundreds..." Carys echoed slowly, her jaw-dropping. "Oh... That...," she breathed, "Rosalie..."
"I think-" Esme whispered to her later when they left the car with the valet at Canlis, "-your speech last night perhaps went down better than you thought..."
By the time they pulled into the Cullens' garage that evening, Carys wondered if she'd stepped out of her own life and into some sort of dream-world. Considering a new bottle of champagne had been popped everywhere they'd gone and Alice had insisted someone tried it, she was also too tipsy to be entirely sure she hadn't.
Not only had she eaten the most delicious - and most expensive - meal she could remember, but Alice had made sure they'd held their appointments with three high-end designers, so she'd also experienced the strange and amazing phenomenon of a completely private shopping experience.
The only reason she'd not let herself lose her mental battle over paying for her own lunch, despite what she'd said, was that hers was likely the least expensive order of the afternoon, and the only one which had actually been eaten. Still, her guilt over spending too much of Carlisle's family's money had won out against her awe and Esme and Alice's litany of kind but - she thought - exaggerated compliments when she'd modelled various outfits, at least.
She was incredibly pleased with herself that though Alice had had her try on a seemingly endless parade of clothes, she'd held out and not let her buy any of them for her despite how much she loved them, whispering different reasons for each refusal - it didn't fit her shoulders as well as she'd like, it wasn't quite fitted enough at the waist, the arms were a little too short.
Though, she did have to admit that she had helped Esme, Alice, and Rosalie to spend a horrendous amount of money.
She blamed that on the amount of alcohol she'd been pressed into consuming, as she'd become far more vocal about how amazing they made the clothes look as the afternoon went on... She thought she'd even made Rosalie smile a little once or twice as she exclaimed over how unfair it was that some of the most beautiful clothes she'd ever seen paled in comparison to her beauty, but she couldn't be sure, and the thought of the comments later made her wince.
"Carys is corked," Rosalie announced to the room with a roll of her eyes as Carys stepped - rather soberly, she thought - into the lounge. She supposed corked must mean drunk, purely because of the way Rosalie had spoken.
Carys narrowed her eyes a little at Rosalie's retreating back as she flounced away and up the stairs behind Esme, and crossed to the sofa closest to her, shaking her head as she sat down opposite Edward.
"I'm not drunk," she insisted slowly, "I'm just... Tipsy."
She blinked hard as Edward moved suddenly so that Jasper, Alice, and Emmett could sit beside him as they stared at her with marked interest, much like the expression Alice had maintained throughout the drive home.
"She's right," Edward commented quietly after a moment or two, his small frown easing. "She's not exactly spifflicated-"
"That's not even a word! If you're going to say drunk, just say drunk!" Carys moaned in quiet complaint, throwing her hands up.
Edward smirked. "Spifflicated is a word, you'll find. It was rather prevalent in the nineteen twenties-"
"Well there's a reason it's not anymore," she mumbled across him, noting his smirk deepen as she blushed a little in embarrassment and collapsed back against the cushions. "You're just saying things that you know I'm not going to understand because I'm not as old as you..."
Jasper cocked his head to the side as he watched her, his golden eyes twinkling. "Wha' did you do to her, darlin'?" He asked Alice, tucking her against his side as he pressed a kiss to her hair.
Alice bristled slightly at the renewed accusation. "How am I supposed to know how many glasses it takes a human to turn-" she waved a hand in Carys' direction as she burrowed deeper into Jasper's side, hiding her face, "-like that?"
"Like what?" Carys asked her, blinking slowly as she lowered her chin and narrowed her eyes, knowing she'd failed to appear angry even as she did so. She hadn't managed to get the tone right, for one.
Emmett grinned and shook his head wistfully. "Oh, the good old days...," he reminisced. "I can still remember the fun I had - drinking, carousing, gambling with the mere mortals..."
"Wha... What happened?" Carys questioned, dropping her cheek to her shoulder, forgetting who she was talking to for a moment.
The four vampires stared at her in silence, Jasper just about holding his amusement at bay, before Emmett leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.
"Well... You see, Carys, my dear," he explained slowly, his eyes dancing with laughter, "I got a little too friendly with a bear one night, and now I'm a vampire..."
"Oh shit," Carys murmured, triggering not only Emmett's laughter but her own. Jasper and Alice joined in quickly, but Carys' laugh dropped when she noticed Edward's straight face.
"Hi Edward," she whispered needlessly, raising a hand in greeting despite the fact he'd been present throughout the entire conversation so far.
"Hello Carys," he replied quietly, crossing his arms as he smoothly leaned back in his seat.
She knew he was likely listening to her thoughts, and the faint twitch of his lips when she thought that only confirmed it. "Are you angry at me for... For-" her hands flitted around her face, "-having a go at you? I mean... I'm not sorry, but... You know..."
Edward stared at her for a few seconds longer before he responded. "You look different," he informed her, ignoring her comment.
Carys smiled lazily and flipped her hair, the dark corkscrew curls slipping through her fingers to pool over one shoulder. "It's the hair," she explained with a close-eyed grin, "brings out my cheekbones."
"And your eyes," Edward told her thoughtfully. "They look a bit lighter than yesterday."
"Ah," she dismissed with a wave and a toss of her head. "It's all about the hair colour, Edward, and I'm not angry like I was-" she stopped suddenly as Carlisle stepped through the door with a smile, dropping his bag and coat to the side before he began to cross the room towards them.
Her mind slipped in a way that she would have tried harder to hide from Edward had she been sober as she watched Carlisle's fingers twitch his cuffs, catching his cufflinks in his palms before he rolled the fabric and pushed his sleeves slowly to his elbows.
"That's disturbing," Edward murmured as he stood and immediately headed in the direction of the stairs.
Jasper caught Carys' eye as she turned away in confusion and smirked knowingly, though when she lowered her head in embarrassment and a dark blush stained her cheeks, he stiffened a little and clutched Alice tighter to him.
"Sorry Carys," Alice apologised with a small frown and a quirk of her lips as they too stood from the sofa and made their way quickly from the room. "It's not you, just..."
Carlisle sank onto the sofa beside Carys with far more elegance than she'd managed and slid an arm under her back, wrapping it around her waist when she raised up a little to assist him. "Am I to expect this sort of welcome every time I enter a room from now on?" He asked Emmett, faintly bemused, before pressing a kiss to Carys' cheek. "Your hair looks nice," he murmured softly as he pulled away with an admiring smile.
"Probably not," Emmett assured him as he stood, smirking down at the pair, "but you might want to refrain from undress-" He cut off with a booming laugh as Carys launched a cushion in his direction and caught it easily, dropping it on the sofa behind him before he too began to leave the room, with a faintly mocking "sorry Ma."
"You should be," she grumbled with an embarrassed smile, poking her tongue out at him when he glanced back at the foot of the stairs.
When she turned back to Carlisle, he raised an eyebrow.
"You're just very sexy for your age," she explained seriously after a moment, shaking her head as she continued over his shocked chuckle and a couple of shouts of laughter from the floor above, "and after nine glasses of champagne, I'm just about still tipsy enough that I'm not going to lie to you about that fact, my lovely."
Carlisle pressed his face to her neck, his shoulders quaking with laughter.
"What say you we spend the night at yours?" He asked after a minute or two, glancing at her hair before he kissed her gently.
Carys curled in on herself when he pulled away, and grinned.
"Do you like it?" She asked him, holding up a handful of curls. When he nodded, she grinned again and leaned in, whispering, "Thank you, Rosalie got it for me."
The next day, Carys woke up with a pit in her stomach and a feeling of anxiety which refused to leave her no matter how many times Carlisle assured her that: no, she hadn't made a complete fool of herself the day before, and: yes, he was sure his children didn't think she'd been too drunk, that: no, Esme didn't think less of her, and: yes, even though they found her comment about him amusing, they'd said and done far worse in his presence whilst entirely sober.
It was only after she took Carlisle's advice that evening when he left and called her mum to ask whether or not she'd be horrified to hear that Carys had thrown a pillow at her 'friend's' son, that she started to feel a little better about her behaviour - and that was likely only because her mum reminded her how many times she'd thrown cushions and pillows at Carys over the years for her cheekier comments.
Though, when Carys got to work on Monday and remembered that Carlisle was on another 'camping trip' for the next couple of days, her anxiety began to grow anew.
Little did she know that Tuesday would herald a far bigger shock for the Cullens than a slightly tipsy human sitting in their lounge, telling Carlisle that he was sexy.
A/N: We're not going to have a chapter tomorrow because I need to brush up on my Twilight...
Guest: I'm so excited!
GuestMG: That's how I felt writing and editing it - I felt similarly when my mum had a go at my siblings!
Riley: I'm so happy you like it so much!
collegestudent34: It'll definitely be addressed in the future, that's actually a plot point I have already for a much later point in the story, but at the moment Carlisle sees his children for the ages they are, both mentally and literally - but as they mentioned in the books, the younger they start out, the longer they can stay somewhere, and Rosalie and Emmett get married in each town they move to, so it makes me wonder whether it wasn't that we came into their story when they were younger in Twilight? I've always wondered if Carlisle and Esme didn't move on before Emmett and Rosalie for instance, and it's suggested by Edward that they don't always live together as they do in Twilight either, that sometimes they part so that they don't get caught. Carlisle has also had to go back to college a few times, so I've thought that maybe it's just one of the things that was glossed over a bit?
Ella: He tried! He did! But I fully agree with Edward needing a swift kick and being proud that Carys delivered it!
