After all the sad stuff I've written lately, it was time for something fun. This is for edwardskhakipants, whose adorable Cullen family scenes never cease to make me smile. Check out her Eclipse fix-it fic in progress, Solar Eclipse, if you want to read along with me!
Also: I've decided to officially make Pomegranate Seeds a part of Tale of Years, since it's all one continuous headcanon anyway. So that title is changing slightly, but I think I'm officially married to the dorky name, I love it lol!
September 1962
Edward POV
"Give it to me straight, doc," I sighed.
Rosalie's golden head peeked out from under the Jaguar. She looked as forlorn as I did. "It's bad."
"Damn it."
I laid a mournful hand on my poor baby. She'd had a good run—thirteen years. But the '48 XK120 had one fatal flaw: chronic brake fade. Especially when driven under performance conditions or by vampires. Especially when driven by a telepathic vampire who frequently slammed on the brakes at speeds over 100 miles per hour.
"Can't you just replace them again?"
Rosalie rolled herself back out and stood up, reaching for her rag. "Edward, there are only 242 of these things in existence. We've already replaced the rotors seven times and planet Earth is running out of original parts. The only other option is to switch everything out for disc brakes."
"We're not changing her," I snapped.
Rosalie held up her hands in perfect imitation of Emmett's "wasn't me" look. "I didn't say I wanted to. Look, if we want to keep her as a classic with fully original parts, I might be able to get one more set if I call in a few favors. But this is the last one."
I let out a long sigh and kicked the nearest tire lovingly. "She was a good one."
"She was." We shared a reverent moment of silence.
"All right, see what you can do about that last set."
"You'll owe me big time," Rosalie warned. "And big money."
"Do whatever it takes."
I shuffled despondently into the living room. Well, I had had my eye on Ferrari's newest performance model…
"Why the long face, Eddie?" Emmett asked as he wandered in too. He cast himself onto the couch, making it skid backwards into the wall, the one Esme had just patched last week.
"Edward," I grumbled under my breath. I poked at the piano keys, trying to decide what a funeral dirge for a beloved car might sound like. "Rose and I are going to have to retire the Jaguar."
"I'll send flowers," Emmett yawned, opening his newspaper.
Unfeeling ignoramus. Where was the respect?
All at once I realized that this was the perfect time to put a certain plan in motion. I'd been tinkering with the idea for years; it only needed a vehicle that I was willing to sacrifice. And it wouldn't hurt the Jaguar, not really. I'd already scoped out the farm in question a couple of years ago; that massive manure pile was surely still there, and it had Emmett's name on it.
This had started back in 1950, when Alice and Jasper were new. We had been spending time out in one of the vacant fields nearest our home over in Vermont that day, practicing our combat skills. Jasper had been determined to give his new family at least a few basic lessons in fighting with what he called "lethal strategy," as opposed to whatever it was we did when we were play-fighting. Emmett and I had been standing on the sidelines, watching a match between Rosalie and Carlisle, and Emmett had been in a fey sort of mood after losing a match to me in front of everyone. Jasper had just given us a lecture about defensive strategy, saying we should be careful not to commit to an attack until we saw a golden opportunity that promised solid results without undue risk. Emmett saw such an opportunity when I was distracted by Rosalie and Carlisle's fight. He took a swing at me without a moment's thought and broke my jaw pretty badly.
There weren't any hard feelings, not really. We'd accumulated all sort of injuries over the years in our play-fighting. But I'd cheerfully sworn my vengeance that day. Emmett was wary during our next fight, but that wasn't my style. You'll know it when you see it, I told him coolly.
It'd been reward enough to give him sly looks now and then, over the months that followed, and watch him squirm. He'd watched his back for quite a while. Somewhere around Christmas that year, I caught him thinking that I must have forgotten my oath. He seemed almost disappointed; he was already cooking up ideas for his own retaliation for whatever stunt I pulled. Well, twelve years was long enough. I began to fiddle with the funeral dirge, wearing an incongruent smirk as I went along.
Jasper joined us a few minutes later, Alice and a book in tow.
"I know a secret," Alice announced to the room at large.
"Better not be about our wager on tonight's game," Emmett muttered from behind his open newspaper. "You promised not to cheat." Jasper and I shared an incredulous look. When was Emmett going to learn never to bet against Alice? Not only was she near-omnipotent; she cheated like a card shark. She was shameless.
"Not at all," Alice told him sweetly. She gave me a wink. I saw my plans playing out in her thoughts.
"Not a word," I warned her.
"It won't work, you know," she said. I frowned as she showed me the proof: Emmett would escape at the last possible second. I tried a few other strategies, but no dice. No matter how I tried it, Emmett never landed in the manure pile, or at least not by much.
Looks like you need a little help, she thought with a mischievous sparkle in her eye.
.
.
.
Jasper was the key. And besides, Alice insisted, Jasper needed cheering up. This was his first time attending school with us, and he was doing fairly well, all things considered. But the tension and the more urgent thirst had been wearing on him. Maybe we all needed a little cheering up; a tense empath made for a tense family. So when Emmett and I made plans to go hunting a few days later, Jasper innocently invited himself along.
He and I spent the whole drive chattering about topics we knew bored Emmett to tears. Local politics, the economy, the petty drama between our human peers at school, speculation about the latest nuclear tests… I was bored myself. Jasper worked steadily with his influence, pulling Emmett's boredom downward into a state of ennui that would have tipped him off in a second, if he'd had the emotional energy to care. His mental state drooped and sagged until he looked like he might actually drop off to sleep. Now that'd be a good trick.
"Aren't we there yet?" he sighed.
"We're taking the long way," I said expansively. "This is my last time before Rosalie puts in the new brakes. I'm not allowed to drive it anymore after that."
Another twenty minutes. Jasper's effort was truly impressive now. Emmett sat beside me in a stupor worthy of a tenth-grader sitting through a second hour of trigonometry.
"Heyyy," he said a minute later. He was almost slurring his words now. "You missed the turn back there."
"Long way around," I reminded him.
Another five minutes. The farm was just now in sight. And there was the gigantic manure pile, steaming in the September heat. What a beautiful sight. I could smell it from here.
Hurry it up, Jasper thought. I can't keep him down much longer—he'll turn the corner into agitation.
I sped up on the final stretch, pushing 100. 110. An elderly farmer whooshed behind us, shaking her fist at our recklessness.
"So Emmett," I said casually. "Remember that time you broke my jaw?"
"Which time?" Emmett said lazily.
"You know which time."
Silence. Jasper gritted his teeth in his battlefield focus. 115…
"Well, that really pissed me off."
"You mean back in—watch out!"
Alice had assured me that the brakes wouldn't fail this time, but I still clenched my teeth as I shifted down and shoved the pedal into the floor. We fishtailed with an angry squeal of tires and Jasper and I jumped free at the last possible second.
We hit the ground running, exchanging a gleeful high-five just as the satisfying squish sounded—along with a muffled cry from our dear brother—and the putrid smell doubled instantly. Ah, the sweet scent of revenge.
.
.
.
"You weren't gone long," Esme said when Jasper and I snuck back into the house like fugitives. She and Rosalie glanced over our pristine clothes and our still-thirsty eyes. "Where's Emmett?"
Jasper and I took one look at each other and collapsed together into as masculine a giggle fit as we could manage. Rosalie just stood there watching us, getting more suspicious with every second.
"Oh, he's just freshening up," I said as soon as I could speak again. I slid down the wall to sit on the floor, laughing all over again.
Alice rushed out of her room and hopped down the stairs in one bound. "That was perfect!" she crowed.
"Let me see, let me see," I said breathlessly, and I lost it again when I saw Emmett in her vision. He was still mucking around in a creek somewhere, trying to get the manure out of his hair, cussing up a storm for everyone in a mile's radius to hear.
"Edward, what is going on?" Esme demanded, but our laughter was contagious. She had a feeling we'd done something atrocious to Emmett, and she was trying so hard to look stern, and it wasn't working. The best part of Alice's vision was that when Emmett did get home, he was going to be the one in trouble with Esme for tracking filth into the basement and stinking up the house like a barn. Rosalie might or might not kill me later once she realized the Jaguar had been involved, but I was in the clear for now. This was the best day of my entire God-forsaken life.
Alice, Jasper, and I calmed down just enough by the time Emmett got home. Rosalie couldn't resist, even though she hadn't gotten anything out of us yet; she stayed too. We staged an utterly ordinary scene in the living room, waiting and reading and watching the evening news as his waterlogged footsteps got closer and came in through the basement. Alice silently counted down in her head until Esme burst out shrieking at him to go back outside and use the outdoor shower.
Rosalie took one whiff and turned to look at us in disbelief. "Manure?! That's disgusting! Which one of you started… Edward," she hissed a second later.
"Why me!"
"To be fair, Rose," Jasper said with that cheeky side-smile of his, "it was a group effort. This took careful planning. Watertight strategy. You're not even mad."
"Nobody asked you," Rosalie said, but she was fine—she'd wait to see how mad Emmett was, at least. It was so unfair that Jasper always got away with everything I didn't where Rosalie was concerned, even without using his cheat of a gift. Still, I'd have to remember—
"Twelve years, huh?"
Emmett was standing behind us, dripping, huge arms crossed menacingly. He smelled revolting.
I turned a page in my book. "I told you I'd get you back. And I told you you'd know it when you saw it." I looked up. "Or should I say smelled it?" Alice laughed so hard she tipped over and landed in Jasper's lap on the floor.
"Twelve YEARS?!" Emmett shouted, taking a step toward me. Let him try; I could be put back together, but Esme loved this furniture. He'd just be in hotter water at the end of it.
I shrugged. "You know what they say. Revenge is a dish best served cold."
"Is that a challenge?!"
I frowned. "What?"
He cracked a few knuckles and imagined me in pieces, but decided against it. "It was manure, dipstick! I hate manure! If you think the score is even, you're even dumber than I thought. You just wait—"
"Alice and Jasper too," Rosalie said smoothly. Emmett looked at Alice, appraising the challenge.
"Good luck," Jasper scoffed. "You've never even won a bet against Alice. What makes you think you can pull off a vampire-level prank when she's on the opposing team?"
"On teams now, are we?" Emmett said. He cracked a few more knuckles. "Now we're talking."
Rosalie tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, giving us a soft-glow smile worthy of the silver screen. Then she grinned, showing her teeth. "You're going down."
"You two against the three gifts?" I laughed. "You've got to be joking."
"It'll make success all the sweeter," Emmett said. He cleared his throat dramatically. "The Cullen Family Prank Wars have officially begun."