I'm putting up two sections I cut from this chapter (I edited things, so they no longer fit), and the lemon that follows "Ave, Caesar"; "Ave, Cleopatra" in Outtakes.
Eclipse, Chapter 2
Once she had parked in the garage on Tuesday evening, Carys popped her headphones in and hummed along to the song blasting through them. She had considered waiting in the car until the song ended, but she knew they could all hear her when she did so, and it seemed more forthright to simply be open about it. She'd spent a couple of hours after work with Sarah and Monica - who continued to apologise for her drunken calculations over how many friends she'd arrived at the club with on her birthday, and how many she'd left with - and so reckoned she'd only beaten Carlisle home by a matter of minutes.
Carys, distracted as she was, was surprised to find both Edward and Bella sitting in the middle of the living room when she arrived, along with Alice, Jasper and Esme. Bella and Jasper were either towards the beginning or middle of a game of chess - Bella was losing so spectacularly from what Carys could see that she couldn't be entirely sure how long they'd been playing. She could tell, however, that the only way it would last much longer would be if Bella took her time deliberating moves.
The majority of those present had looked up and smiled their greetings at Carys, who now couldn't help but think that her choice of music could appear a little passive-aggressive with Edward present. His smile tightened, and she was sure of it. Likely, her having had the thought at all swayed his opinion.
Sorry, didn't mean it like that. Carys snatched the headphones from her ears and yanked the cord from her MP3.
"Gangsta's Paradise again?" Esme asked when everyone had returned to the watching or playing the disastrous match.
Carys smiled a little awkwardly. "I guess I just... I dunno, I love me that song," she chirped, divesting herself of her bag and coat - which she deposited on the small table by the door and dropped over the bannister, respectively.
They, of course, almost to a person, knew that her recent obsession was not simply because she liked the overall song - which she did, she loved it - but in particular the line about being twenty-three and the question of living to see twenty-four.
"Hi, Carys!" Bella called, finally looking up from the chessboard with what could have been a genuine smile if not for the strain of concentration marring the expression.
"Hi, Bella," Carys echoed, sounding far more tired than the guest. "Charlie's given up, has he?" As she hadn't seen Charlie since the week before, she was forced to rely on Edward and Alice in that regard.
Bella's smile grew, and she nodded enthusiastically. "He let me out last night," she informed her. "Did he tell you the good news?"
"The good news isn't your freedom?" Carys asked, settling on the arm of the sofa Esme was sitting on.
"It is, but..." Bella paused, trying to ramp up the anticipation. "I got my acceptance to the University of Alaska yesterday."
Floundering for a split second, Carys realised Bella might have changed her mind about her plans.
"Oh my goodness! Congratulations!" she said as excitedly as she could manage after such a long day, searching Bella's face for the answer. "Are you accepting, or waiting for other unis? I'm not sure how it works here... I should, to be honest. You guys don't start off with a particular course, do you? Or, its just that you can switch majors until you declare?" she asked, grimacing and squinting, her voice lifting towards the end.
"I'm not actually planning on going," Bella explained.
Carys thought her tone was a little condescending, and Edward bristled in her peripheral vision. Unfortunately, whilst Bella was attempting to temper her behaviour to seem more appealing to Carys (on the incredibly rare occasion they saw each other these days), she hadn't quite managed to get the hang of it. Now that her boyfriend was firmly back in her life, Bella was more than happy to limit her sphere to him and Alice once again, save a couple of friends from school who Charlie had said never visited the house. Bella's treatment of both her father, Carys, and the wider world continued to irk the older woman.
Charlie's lifting of the restrictions was his attempt at making Bella spend more time with anyone else. It seemed not to have worked - if their present occupation was anything to go by, at least.
"Bella doesn't plan on attending for long," Edward corrected.
Jasper, impatient to continue the chess match, coughed lightly. Bella didn't take the hint implicit in a vampire coughing and glared at Edward a little.
"I don't plan on going at all," she reminded him indignantly. Turning to Carys - with whom she had gained a couple of points for standing up to her boyfriend - she added, "Edward got in too, so it's the perfect cover for Charlie."
"Ah." Carys nodded and Bella returned to her game, apparently satisfied with the monosyllabic response. Looking around, Carys feigned intrigue. Her smile rivalled Edward's in its insincerity. "Is Carlisle not home yet?"
"No," said Alice from her position behind Jasper. Bella was playing so badly that she didn't need to bother funnelling him the moves. "He'll be here sometime within the hour."
That long? Carys' face fell. She needed a hug. Instead of admitting it in front of the others, she rolled her shoulders and gave in to a genuine yawn as she stood.
"I've...," she began, drawing out her gravel-laden words, "basically..., had a bit of a naff day all in all, so I might have to love you and leave you all for a bit. Did Emmett keep an eye on the slow cooker?"
They all nodded, sharing glances with each other as they did so. Carys, therefore, doubted their honesty.
Sluggishly making her way into the kitchen, she was more than pleasantly surprised to find that whilst the slow cooker was nowhere to be found - and definitely not plugged in where she'd left it that morning - there was a lamb roast waiting for her, still steaming as if the meat had just been carved and the vegetables had just come out of the oven. There was even a small jug of mint sauce.
Embarrassingly, tears sprang to her eyes.
"Emmett?" she called out, knowing if he was in the house or surrounding land he'd be able to hear her, "Was this you?"
"IT WAS," Emmett shouted from high above her.
"IT WAS!" echoed Alice, Jasper, and Edward from the living room - in case she hadn't heard him.
"I love you!" Carys called, "I love you more than anyone else in the entire world. You, sir, will go down in history. This day will be marked as the day vampires and humans came together to create something truly wonderful."
"What am I?" Carlisle asked, lounging against the doorjamb, his arms and ankles crossed. "Chopped liver?"
Carys reassessed. The day Carlisle decided spring trench coats went with jumpers, t-shirts, black trousers and smart shoes was the day truly wonderful things were created. She looked him up and down. She was suddenly uncomfortably full as butterflies attacked her stomach. And hot. Had someone cranked the heating? Carlisle grinned, and she caught herself midway through a besotted giggle.
Somewhere in the background, Emmett yelled, "I HEARD YOU WEREN'T HAVING A GREAT DAY," which was, as before, echoed by three of his siblings, also shouting at the top of their lungs.
Carys called up another round of thanks - far more distractedly this time - cleared her throat and turned back to the counter, grabbing her plate and knife and fork, which she carried across to the table while studiously avoiding looking in Carlisle's direction again. "I'm not very happy with you," she told him as she scooched her chair in, adopting a distinctly unimpressed expression.
He slid into the chair at the head of the table, having rid himself of his coat, and stretched out his legs, propping the sole of one foot up on the leg of the chair beside her.
"What am I supposed to have done?"
Between mouthfuls, Carys pressed her lips together and said, "It's not what you've done, it's what you've not done."
"Alright." Carlisle resettled himself and slid down a little. "What haven't I done?"
Carys, halfway through a particularly large mouthful of perfectly crisp roast potato, lifted her hand and swirled it around her head and shoulders.
Carlisle roared with laughter.
"It's not funny," she argued, stabbing a piece of lamb, adding the rest of the potato before coating both liberally with mint sauce. Popping it all into her mouth, she let her amusement show as she chewed, then, after swallowing, said, "It's actually about what's missing here."
She dropped her fork and held left hand aloft, wagging the third finger, which, at present, was empty.
Still chuckling, Carlisle apologised and held up his index finger, shoving his other hand into his trouser pocket. Retrieving the ring Carys had given him for safekeeping that morning, he looked it over, blew on it, rubbed the stones on his sleeve, and returned it to her. She didn't have the energy to complain about just how little regard he had for the care of it sometimes.
"There," he announced, "just where it's supposed it be..." He stared, a little dissatisfied, at her hand when she picked up her fork again. "You're absolutely sure it's not too big? I worry, after what your coworker said."
One of Carys' admin office coworkers had made one comment within earshot of Carlisle - who was three corridors away and really shouldn't have been listening in the first place - about how it deserved its own zip code, and it had worried him ever since. The "ringcident" as she called it had been nearly three weeks before, and was, additionally, the reason Carys now took to leaving it with him whenever Alice foresaw someone making a similar good-natured quip. Carlisle, of course, did not know this - otherwise, he would never have let her make the sacrifice.
Instead, she'd made a passing comment one evening that sometimes with all the typing she did at work, her fingers occasionally got tired and ached by the time she got home. She had a feeling she only got away with it because he was a vampire and she was a human, and he didn't want to appear insensitive to her mortal plights.
In fact, Carys rather missed the ring in the office, even if she did share the space with Sandra every day, who had taken to glancing over and primly muttering under her breath about how she thought smaller rings were far less ostentatious.
While Carys agreed that smaller rings were lovely and she'd always thought she would prefer one, and hers didn't so much sparkle or twinkle as provide an alternative light source in a tricky situation, it was also the first piece of jewellery Carlisle had given her that he'd bought specifically for her, rather than in preparation to give to his mate when he found them. A ten-carat, radiant cut, deep blue, sapphire sat flanked by diamonds on either side which tapered almost to a point, atop a platinum band.
The ring did take up a sizeable chunk of the top of her finger, but she wasn't sure she minded. Rather, she knew she didn't. She loved the thing almost as much as she loved letting it catch the light when she was alone and could lose time to studying it.
"If anything," she teased him, abandoning her utensils completely to hold the ring up and fiddle with it, "I think it's a little small. No - I know it's a little small. It's like my mother always said: If your hand doesn't need a wheelbarrow to get around-" she broke off when Carlisle swooped across to steal a kiss.
"I love you, you know that don't you?" he asked softly, his gaze alternating between her eyes as lips as he stole a few more pecks between words.
Carys grinned. "I do as it happens," she told him, finding nothing wrong with continuing his generous kiss to word ratio, "so I know I love you more."
"Not possible."
"Very possible," Carys told him, lingering over one last kiss before she pushed lightly at his chest. "Call it a draw?"
He moved back, allowing her space to eat, and didn't correct her again. She rather thought she did love him more, and she thought he might be forced to agree if it came to it; he wasn't giving anything up to be with her, whereas she was giving everything up. In a genuine debate, she would win hands down. She thought it a good job it would never come to that. On the occasions he refused to give up, they eventually came to a draw just as they had now.
"When Bella's gone, I need to talk to you," Carlisle told her after a while, and Carys nodded. "There's something important coming up."
He looked grim, tired, a little too serious. She hoped it wasn't something too terrible. He didn't bother to cover his expression, even when she asked him about work and he gave her a rundown of his day.
Carys had polished off her food, then returned for seconds and finished those off too, and was just drying her plate and cutlery after Carlisle washed them up when Edward and Bella slipped into the kitchen.
Edward was smart about it, making sure to loudly invite Bella into the room before they turned the corner, in case Carys were to turn around and jump. It had unfortunately happened before.
"Carys?" Edward began, his eyes following her as she reached up and put back the plate she'd used.
"Yeah?" she replied, pulling at the hem of her work dress as she returned to fetch the cutlery.
"I wondered if I might be allowed to accompany Bella to Florida this weekend?" Edward appealed. "To visit her mother."
Carys stopped dead, halfway to Carlisle. "Florida?" That was suspicious.
Edward nodded curtly. "Florida," he said again.
"In May...?"
"The sun won't be an issue."
"Why exactly d'you want to go to Florida - a place you dislike, in May - when the sun's on blaze mode, which for obvious reasons would leave you stuck inside all day?" To say Carys' tone matched her level of suspicion would be a gross understatement.
"To visit Bella's mother, Renée. The tickets you and Carlisle bought for Bella's birthday expire soon, and as Bella wouldn't like to attend prom this year, I thought it would be a nice graduation trip."
I'm asking why you want to go, not the bloody life story of your lie, Edward, Carys quipped with a mental smile. Quit being so polite, it's weird.
"Right. So what did Charlie say about it?" she asked aloud.
Bella answered, her hip against the corner of the table as she pressed her hands to its surface. "He said it would be alright."
"Just like that?" Carys narrowed her eyes at them both and slung the dishcloth over Carlisle's shoulder, turning back and crossing her arms. "The day after he let you out, he's alright with you travelling halfway across the country with your boyfriend?"
That didn't sound like the Charlie she knew.
"I wouldn't say he's okay with it, no. But he didn't really have a choice. And it's to see my mom, after all," Bella said. "And it-well, it would be this weekend..."
Carys continued to look between them. Bella sounded a little bitter when she mentioned the weekend aspect again, though she covered the look she gave Edward well.
"I'll think about it," Carys said.
"Not for long, I hope," Alice piped up, skipping into the room. "They'll need to book the flight in the next day or so."
"Of course not. You'll have your answer soon."
Just as soon as you stop lying to me and tell me the truth.
Edward nodded but Carlisle stepped up behind Carys, hugging her back to his chest. "Let them go," he whispered against her hair, the lower part of his face covered by her ponytail. "It's what I needed to talk to you about."
Alright..., I guess if Carlisle is vouching for you, you can go, Carys told Edward, who half-smiled, the corner of his lips furthest from Bella's eyeline lifting. But I'm not officially caving just yet.
"That's all I can hope for, thank you Carys," Edward said, making it sound as if he was thanking her for considering it.
Carys nodded.
Bella looked between them, biting her bottom lip. She released it when Edward's brow furrowed.
"Carys..."
Carys didn't like the tone Bella used - far more cajoling than appealing. She didn't need Alice or Edward's powers to guess where this was going, but she leaned back into Carlisle's embrace, hugging his arms tighter, and waited until she was proved correct.
"Yes, Bella?" she said.
"I was wondering... When Edward's allowed to go to Florida-"
"If."
"Yes, of course, if," Bella agreed, tapping two of her fingers against the table, "if he's allowed to do, go you think maybe... He might be allowed to spend more time with me at..." she trailed off, nibbling at her lower lip again, but Carys stared her through until she had no other choice but to continue her thought. The silence in the room was palpable. "At other times," she finished lamely.
"Other times?" asked Carys dryly. She couldn't see him, but she would bet anything that Carlisle was smirking against her hair. To the rest of the world, he would likely look as if he were simply smiling serenely. "Which other times were you thinking of, Bella?"
"Er, Bella, maybe this isn't the time? You don't want to push it too far," Alice suggested, her eyes darting around the faces in the room. She looked as if she wanted to remind her friend about just how tired Carys appeared, but it warred with her instinct not to get on the wrong side of the older human again.
Bella took note of Alice's words but spoke anyway. "I thought maybe, as graduation is so close, he could start spending more time at mine."
"Is that so?"
"Yes, I mean, right now we have school, and then he's allowed to visit until nine-thirty-"
"Is he...?" Carys whispered under her breath, too low for Bella to hear.
"-but Saturdays and one night a week... Only, you see, Charlie's let me out now. And when graduation comes, we won't have school anymore. So, shouldn't Edward be allowed out now too? Can he stay over, I don't know, three? Nights a week?"
Biting the inside of her cheek, Carys looked Bella up and down. Far from fiery or hostile, her gaze bordered on emotionless. There was far more warning involved. Her gaze flickered across to Edward's face as she kept her thoughts as blank as she could.
"Is this what you think, Edward?" she asked. "Do you think your time is done?"
Carlisle remained stoically silent behind her, a bastion of sorts. She knew she had his support - he'd given the punishment into her hands as far as the end date, save the caveat that it last until graduation at the earliest - it was now her decision, and from the way his children's eyes flickered nervously between the two of them, he wasn't making it easy.
Edward stared at her, the marble skin at the corners of his eyes tightening as he concentrated. Carys took to listing all the descriptive words she could think of for his hair and skin - bronze, red-head, marble, granite, stone, alabaster, pale, snow-white - and he all but grimaced after a few moments. He was on his own. She hadn't made a conscious decision either way, and so Alice was as blind as he was.
"I don't think it is," he accepted, "but I wonder if it might be relaxed under special circumstances."
"And what might those special circumstances, be, I wonder?"
"Situations... Beyond our control?"
Carys bit down harder and fought a wince. She'd not drawn blood, but she had pinched the skin rather painfully. "Right," she said softly. "You have the choice. Would you like to remain as you are, or would you like me to lift your restrictions completely?"
Edward shook his head and held his hand out towards Bella when she gasped and smiled excitedly. Confused, she took his hand and edged closer to him, abandoning the table. Carlisle lifted his head, continuing to watch them above Carys' head. Even Alice appeared a little pained, uneasy with the declaration.
"I think maybe... I think maybe you should speak to Carlisle?" Edward offered, verging on desperately. Carys shook her head and told him that he had the choice now and not to bring Carlisle into it, and he hung his head for a few seconds. Looking up, he asked, "I understand why I'm being punished the way I am, however... I think Carlisle really will be able to explain why my answer is what it is."
"You're taking freedom, then?" Carys queried. He nodded. "Fine. Freedom it is. Carlisle? It's up to you whether you hold your son to the graduation date or not."
With that, Carys ignored Bella's happy exclamations and Edward and Alice's attempts at shushing her. Carlisle let her go when she pushed his hands away. "I promise, there is a reason," Edward all but whined as she passed him by. She ignored that too. Making her way upstairs, she went to Carlisle's office and sank down into her favourite armchair, curling herself up as she grabbed her book from the small table beside.
She quickly abandoned the attempt at reading. It was no use - she couldn't focus on the words. Carlisle found her very soon after, staring out through the windows into the darkness beyond. Instead of engaging her verbally when her anger was at its peak, he switched on the stereo and held his hand out. At first, Carys ignored him, but he soon proved too insistent; he had far more patience than her - he could stay like that, unmoving as he was, for days on end. She couldn't.
Placing her hand over his, she let him draw her to her feet and directly into his embrace.
The song changed to a slow and familiar tune in which the artist sang about the joys of true love. Carys laid her cheek against Carlisle's chest as he swayed them slowly from side to side, one hand clasping hers, the other stroking smooth circles against her back.
The tension of anger slowly left her, replaced with a sense of calm she attributed to being in his arms. He knew her so well - he knew how to calm her down, when she needed space, when she just needed him to dance her around the room.
"What's going on?" she questioned, resettling her cheek against his shoulder when five songs had passed in otherwise total silence. "If you can tell me Edward's somehow earned his penance, I'll believe you."
"He hasn't," Carlisle conceded quickly and easily. "If it were up to me, he wouldn't be going anywhere for a long, long time."
"Then why?" she asked, leaning back against his arm to stare up at him. "Why does he think-" she was forced to end the sentence abruptly when a lump constricted her throat.
Carlisle's arms shifted. When he lifted her from the ground, she instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms locking behind his neck. She closed her moisture-filled eyes and burrowed her face into the crook of his neck as best she could.
"Edward doesn't want Bella to know yet - he wants to protect her from what's going on - but I shouldn't have waited until she was gone. I only did so because I know how much you hate to lie all the time." Carlisle, his hands supporting her from below, jogged her lightly until she drew back to look down at him, such as their positions were. "Alice met me on my way into the house. It seems Victoria is becoming bolder. She's no longer hiding her intent to return to the area. Alice had a vision at school today - she believes Victoria will come here this weekend for another attempt at scouting the area."
"So it's to protect her?" Carys asked.
Carlisle was indignant. "If the thought so much as crosses your mind-"
Carys grinned - a tired but amused expression - and said, "I fully expect you've made plans for my safety already, my lovely."
Relief crossed his face so quickly before it was replaced by a serene expression that she almost missed it. He nodded and gently kissed her cheek.
"I have," he said, regaining eye contact, "I was going to suggest we went to California, but I remembered your parents will be away this weekend... I wonder if, if we were to leave on Thursday immediately after work, you'd like to go home for a few days."
Carys' eyes stung anew. The lump constricted her throat again, turning painful. She let her body relax completely and sank quickly against him, burying her face in his collar. "Home home?"
"London," he confirmed. "It's about as far away as we can manage. If that doesn't seem like a good choice, we could always sta-"
"No!" she cried, pulling back and shaking her head. "London! Please!"
Carlisle's smile grew, taking her breath away. Just as she sank against him once again with the full intention of neither of them speaking for a while, a thought occurred, clearing through the fog.
"You can't come with me," she said - not so much an accusation as a realisation that she guessed had occurred to him and he'd put out of his mind. "You've got a full day on Thursday, not to mention Friday, and you said you'll cover Dr Snow on Sunday."
"I can get out of it," Carlisle said, shaking his head slowly. "Don't worry."
"What if you can't?" she asked, worrying her lip between her teeth. "Besides... If Victoria's going to be here, and Edward's not going to be here to listen out for her, you really need to stay - you're the main authority, lovely..."
Sighing heavily as if it were the exact realisation he'd come to a while ago and had hoped to ignore for the time being, Carlisle said, "If something stops Alice from seeing... I can't let you go alone, darling. Perhaps we could ask Esme to go with you?"
He had his answer in less than a moment. Carys' eyes lit up a fraction, and he took it as the yes it was.
"You should give Leah a call, I think," he then suggested. "It's important the shapeshifters are forewarned - she may well stray onto their land."
If on reflection, either of them was a little too quiet as they got ready for an early night and lay in each other's arms for hours before sleep carried Carys away, she felt they were justified in their worries.
Is Carlisle dressed like Henry Golding in Last Christmas? Yes. Am I ashamed? No. It's a tad early, but Merry Christmas everyone - have a lovely day tomorrow! If you don't celebrate the holiday at all, I'll say I hope you have a lovely day and simply dispense with the Christmas part!
If you remove the spaces, this is approximately the style of Carys' ring - i. pinimg. com / originals/d8/16/02/ d816022507b49be83a5ded9f36ee82fe. jpg
Thank you to: BMBMDooDooDoo- Doo- Doo (I love them so much), derniermom, souverian, jhaenox, chellekathrynnn, DxGRAYxMAN, Ella (I agree - I think it comes from the way Alice looks at Carys - less of a friend and more a mother figure if that makes sense?), YourFan (I love him - he's amazing - absolutely incredible!), StarlightShivers (x3), GhostWriter71, and LizzyB (thank you! I'm just over here waving!)
