Happy Holidays!
This is a short holiday fic I'm posting daily from today until New Year's Eve, and it's my end of year gift to Team Momo.
I gave them all a break for this one, and left the red pen to Midnight Cougar.
But this goes out to Team Momo, and without them my stories wouldn't exist: hats off to Alice's White Rabbit, AGoodWitch, Driving Edward, Mel, Maplestyle, and Eternally Addicted.
This is also a birthday fic for AGoodWitch - happy birthday, Twifey!
How did this come about? Well, funny you should ask.
It all started with a conversation with Midnight Cougar (as it's often the case for a LOT of the stuff I write).
Momo: I've never written a holiday fic.
MC: Well, maybe you could write me just a little one. A tiny one.
Momo: Uhm. With my usual production times, it'll be ready by next Christmas.
MC: It doesn't have to be a huge thing.
Momo: Maybe a BCG future take? It's easier if I don't have to create an entire new world.
MC: That could work. Wonder what CluelessWard is up to these days.
Well, here goes!
A BCG Christmas Story
"How quickly jealous
I become
of the wind
when it,
and not I,
gets the privilege
of properly
messing up
your hair."
Tyler Knott Gregson
Chapter 1
November 15, 2019 – 7 years after BCG epilogue
~~Edward~~
It's the morning of our seventh wedding anniversary, and by some fucking miracle, the calendars aligned. B and I are spending this day—and night—in the same time zone. Bollocks, we're in the same house. It doesn't happen often these days.
I've agonized over her anniversary gift for a while. What do you get for the woman who has it all? But after a lot of thinking and sneaking around, I think I've nailed it. Now I just have to wait for her reaction to it, whenever she wakes up.
We both flew back to L.A. last night—she came from a research trip to London, and I returned from filming in Louisiana. After a heated welcome back in the foyer of our house, we collapsed into bed, too exhausted for anything else.
We've come a long way in these seven years. With a heartfelt fuck you very much, to all the people who kept saying ours was a marriage of convenience, it'd never last, and fame would come between us.
It's not been easy to deal with our shit. Our jobs, fame, traveling, time zones, plus the usual stuff married people bicker over—it all conspires to trip our wires. Sometimes we're still as pathetically in love as the first day, but for a wild minute, we don't like each other that much.
Lately, I've been feeling as though we're drifting apart. Not just physically.
Bella's writing career skyrocketed after her first book. Confidentiality Clause landed on all the major bestsellers lists, and its sequels—Lateral Hire and Unethical Partnership—took the top spots on the NYT Bestseller List when they were still on pre-order. She's won a bunch of awards.
The publication of her first series made her into a household name, and padded the coffers of Fireblaze Publishing in the process. She's become Vic and Ben's prodigy child; they'll publish any works of hers sight unseen now. Bella's in the middle of writing her second series at the moment, and she's dipping her toes into a new genre—a mystery with a dash of romance, as she defines it.
When her work slowed down after the release of Unethical Partnership, mine picked up steam. I've made ten movies in the last seven years, and clocked in appearances in a couple of limited series on premium cable. My contract with Lightsource Productions has netted a string of successes, both blockbusters and arthouse movies. Press tours still irritate the fuck out of me, but now that I have a gorgeous wife to show off on red carpets, they've become less irritating. She doesn't only dissolve my anxiety when I'm about to shatter into pieces; her presence grounds me as nothing else does.
On the third Christmas we spent as a married couple, we decided to give ourselves a gift. We sat down with our calendar for the new year, and made a point of blocking out the weeks we'd be in the same place at the same time. Because our gift to ourselves for that year was that, we'd try for a baby.
The mere thought of a tiny human who shared my name and DNA put my brain into a paranoid tizzy for the ages, but Bella brought me back to earth. She said she had no idea how to be a mom either, and we'd learn parenting together. After discussing it, we felt we were in a good spot to add to our family. So on that Christmas night of 2015, we practiced making a baby. We practiced a lot. We enjoyed it a fucking lot.
But, by the next Christmas, we were exhausted from a year of working and traveling. With no baby to show for it. Nothing. Bella hadn't missed her period once, as best we could tell. That wasn't a merry Christmas at all. I remember holding her in my arms in our house in Venice Beach as she cried, railing against her useless ovaries. After we mourned our lack of success in our baby making efforts, in the same house where we had our first date and bought off Kate and Garrett after we married, we made another vow. We'd both get checked out in the coming year, and find out why we weren't pregnant yet. Meanwhile, we'd keep trying.
That was three years ago. Since then, we've been to doctors, fertility specialists, couples therapists, but as it turns out, there's nothing medically wrong with either of us.
Bella's ovaries work as expected. Her hormone levels are within normal range, and there's nothing wrong with her equipment. They're just lazy ovaries, Bella says, trying to downplay the whole thing. After the fertility specialist examined me, which is another weird rabbit hole I'd like to forget entirely, he declared my swimmers plentiful and motile. Everything is in working order below my belt, thank you very much.
Couples therapy has helped us deal with a marriage lived in the spotlight, and taught us how to communicate better. It's helped us grow even closer … but still no baby.
It's been difficult to accept. I've taken it harder than Bella. As if this is my failure. After all, my swimmers aren't hitting the jackpot. Maybe they are as clueless as I am and can't find the way.
Our doctors have advised against fertility treatments at this point. We agree—the side effects and the toll of the fertility drugs on Bella's body move the needle squarely into "hell, nope" territory for me. I don't want her to bear that kind of burden, to be poked and prodded like that. I've openly questioned our motives during a therapy session. Bella lets me vent about it, and wonders, like me, whether we're being selfish, and if maybe it isn't meant to be for us.
More couples therapy has helped us process the wrench thrown into our plan. After discussing it with our therapist, we've decided to slow down our efforts to avoid tying our intimacy to procreation. We don't want to become one of those couples who have sex only to get pregnant.
We've seen how Em and Rose's fertility struggles have affected their relationship, and we want to learn from their mistakes instead of repeating them. They were on the brink of separation after their third miscarriage two years ago. Eventually, their own dose of counseling helped them work through it. Rose took a step back from her stressful job for a while, and Emmett cut back on his personal trainer clients so they'd have more time together. Within a year, Rose was pregnant again. That time, the pregnancy, though high-risk, ended with the wails of their newborn baby girl—Lillian Isabella McCarty-Swan. We are ecstatic for them, but can't help wonder when it will be our turn.
We are enough—as our therapist taught us.
This has become our mantra for the last four years. We are enough—our love is enough. Our love is the safe haven in the storm of our life.
And my safe haven's eyes just came alive in the early morning light. I love watching her when she's not quite awake yet. Her hands roam blindly around her, seeking me—that's the first thing she always does. It warms my heart and lights a fire in me. After seven years, I'm still completely in thrall to this woman.
"Good morning, Mrs. Cullen," I whisper, running a finger along her jaw.
Her eyes still squeezed shut, she shivers, stretching like a cat, hooking her naked leg around mine. Then she opens her eyes. "Someone's happy this morning."
I grin at her. I'm always happy with her, in more ways than one. "Happy anniversary, my lovely."
"Happy anniversary, Mr. Cullen." She smiles at me.
It's one of her blinding smiles, the ones that make me weak in the knees. It's also her wandering hands, pulling at the tie of my sleep pants.
"These things are in the way," she grumbles, pushing the material past my hips.
"I'm not stopping you." My voice comes out in a tortured hiss, because by now, her hand's gripping my cock, and every other thought I've had this morning has flown out the window. "God, Bella. Don't stop, please."
With a swift move, she straddles me, and her warmth engulfs me while she rubs her mound against me. When she rises and prepares to impale me, I sit up, and strip off the threadbare T-shirt she wears to bed. She plunges onto me, burying me inside her to the hilt, stoking my hunger for her as her nails claw my back.
I thread my fingers through her long, messy hair, and final capture her lips. Fuck, how I've missed these lips. "I've missed you so fucking much, baby."
"Too long," she breathes, nipping at my throat.
In this position, I'm at her mercy, and she's giving me no quarter. Her hips dance up and down on my shaft, and she's chasing her high with that rhythm. I'm happy to be along for the ride, until I feel a hungry coil unleash within me, and with both my arms around her, one cradling her hand, and the other gripping her ass, I flip us. She's under me now, laughing and moaning, as she hooks her heels around my hips, inviting me deeper inside her.
"Oh, yes. Don't stop, Edward. Oh, fuck."
"So good, baby. Always so good to me," I growl. "So close—"
Then she slaps my ass with a thwack, and squeezes my cheek for good measure, pushing me into her, and that does me in.
"Oh, shit. Come with me, baby …"
When she falls over the edge with me, both her hands are on my ass, keeping me anchored to her. I spill inside her, and in my heart of hearts, I can't help the glimmer of hope that blossoms.
Will this be it? Will this be the day that our wish is finally granted?
If you haven't read Business Class Girl this won't make a lot of sense to you so ... maybe catch up? ;-)
Also, for teasers, pics, and shenanigans, my FB Group LaMomo's Lair: just type that in the search bar.
I'm off to cook, see y'all tomorrow, and happy ALL the things, everyone!