"And, oddly enough, he needs me, too. That part worked out better than I could have hoped." - Rosalie, Eclipse, p. 165 (Stephenie Meyer)

Quick note: Thanks for your kind, insightful words! As promised, here's a second part to the chapter. I appreciate your patience as I get back into a routine with school and mental health care. I really value your kindness and your reviews! Thank you for investing in me and this story!

In this chapter, I get to some action that isn't entirely character driven, but it definitely is a big chapter for character development. I still touch on some struggles that Rosalie has with her sexuality, and I lightly reference Emmett's own relationship to sex as escapism here, but will unpack that further in future chapters. With some references to angst, and some long awaited fluff, there's some light humor also sprinkled into this chapter.

ALSO IMPORTANT INFO: This song at the top of the chapter is the one that I relate to the most in my own life, but also I find the most relevant to this story and to Rosalie's experience in particular. "The loneliness never left me. I always took it with me, but I can put it down in the pleasure of your company." Since the first time I read Twilight I always felt a deep understanding of Rosalie and maybe I projected myself onto her... But I just really appreciate having this outlet to cope with the darkness in my life and to create on a character by Stephenie Meyer that I have such a strong love and perceived understanding of.

Please consider leaving a review! Every word means the world to me! Thank you immensely for your words thus far.

TW/CW: language, sexual themes

No Choir

And it's hard to write about being happy

'Cause the older I get

I find that happiness is an extremely uneventful subject

And there would be no grand choirs to sing

No chorus could come in

About two people sitting doing nothing

But I must confess

I did it all for myself

I gathered you here to hide from some vast unnameable fear

But the loneliness never left me

I always took it with me

But I can put it down in the pleasure of your company

And there will be no grand choirs to sing

No chorus will come in

No ballad will be written

It will be entirely forgotten

And if tomorrow it's all over

At least we had it for a moment

Oh, darling, things seem so unstable

But for a moment we were able to be still

Emmett

The water parted around us, like a curtain opening for a performance - a new act, one never seen before.

I'd thought Rosalie was beautiful before, but now, with my eyes closed, she was exquisite.

I inhaled at the weight of her arms around my neck, sensing her close to me in a way that made me shiver.

I imagined the look on her face in this moment, the way her eyes would examine my face in a way that gathered data for her own private analysis.

I imagined the way she'd pout her bottom lip, the way her perfect brow would furrow the way she'd privately decide something I couldn't understand.

Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next as she traced her fingers through my hair. I felt her take a deep breath, her hands interlacing at the base of my neck.

"Rosalie." I said her name just to say it, in a reverent worship of it.

"You can open your eyes." She said softly, her voice sounding like a chorus of bells.

I was in awe as she said these simple words, letting me see her…

Rosalie's perfect, beautiful form was trembling so it displaced the water around our physical forms even before I opened my eyes.

I knew just how important it was to keep my eyes locked into hers. I half wondered if it was some sort of test, to see if I would be up to the challenge of keeping my gaze off of her in her underwear.

Just the thought made my knees weak, and as I opened my eyes something in my gaze locking immediately into her eyes made her sharply inhale and smile a little at me.

I was still as in awe of her now as I was the day she'd saved me in the woods.

At the meeting of our eyes, Rosalie tensed up in my arms and I worried this was the beginning stages of her pulling away from me.

I touched her face with tenderness, as if asking her to stay close.

And, so she did, her eyes analyzing my gaze as if she was looking for something.

My eyes danced over her mouth, wondering…

She parted her lips lightly and I closed the gap between us, satisfying the desire to know her body by putting a hand at her waist.

Something filled her gaze I didn't understand, and her eyes darted down, but she didn't pull away.

Just like that jump, I couldn't hold back anymore, and I knew that's what she saw in my eyes.

Something was still holding back in her eyes though, still hanging in the air, refusing to believe that at some point… She'd crash into the water below.

"That was fun." I grinned excitedly. "Tell me you had fun."

Rosalie giggled, biting her perfect bottom lip.

I wondered…

"I had fun." She appeased me.

"Let's do it a thousand more times." I insisted, looking over her face wanting to believe there was something genuine in it.

"You won't get tired of it?" She raised an eyebrow, a sparkle in her eye that suggested she wasn't talking about the jump.

She was talking about herself.

"No." I smiled. "I could never."

Rosalie seemed lightly happy that she and I floated in this sort of bliss, recounted by the icy water around us and between us. We played effortlessly with one another, laughing and splashing through the water. She was confident in a way that she wasn't out of this lake.

My dead heart raced in my chest and I thought briefly about what it was like to be afraid… How it felt radiating through my fingers and through every fiber of my limbs. How it climbed up my throat and tightened all my muscles.

I thought about the first early summer storm I could remember. I thought about the rain, how hard it came down - the way the wind howled…

I thought about babies crying and how I'd climbed under the sheets, imagining they were some sort of fortress.

Someone might say I never grew out of climbing under the sheets whenever there was something I didn't want to face outside of them…

But right now, I couldn't think about being afraid and I wasn't immediately thinking about climbing under the sheets, not as I floated in this lake and in Rosalie's beautiful golden eyes.

I tethered myself to the present reality by tightening my arm around her waist.

"I can see every color in your eyes." I exhaled.

There were colors I didn't have names for sparkling through her irises, and as she looked at me, I thought about the calm before the storm, the way the air thickened.

Right now, the air was so thick it stretched through my throat and inflated my lungs.

I had to touch her.

So I did.

I reached out and traced my thumb across her cheekbone.

My eyes darted to her mouth, tempted by the curve of it as I was shot straight through with Cupid's arrow.

I wanted to kiss her.

I touched her face, trying to keep my fingers light and easy on her skin as I looked desperately into her eyes, wanting to see that she wanted me to kiss her.

My nerves were live wires and every sensory point on my fingers felt her.

However, I still wanted her closer. I still wanted to feel her.

More of her.

It felt like thirst, unquenchable thirst the way it burned through my entire body.

"Rosalie…" I started again, but this time my voice shook with undeniable nervousness like I was just thirteen and unsure again.

But now… I was twenty and unsure.

"Yes?" I watched her eyes dart to my mouth.

I noticed.

She stepped backward, shifting her weight.

Something in her golden eyes was wary, almost afraid and they darted down as she bit her lip.

She crossed her arm over her shoulder as if she was going to hide herself from me.

I desperately hoped she wouldn't.

"I was thinking about what you said." I began again, my head spinning.

"What about?" She looked back up at me, and I saw the weight of her thoughts on her face.

I took a deep breath, her scent of roses and honey braiding through my senses so I stepped forward, putting my hands on her again.

She inhaled, her eyes darting over my face, looking for something I hoped she'd find.

Still though, she trembled under my gaze.

"There's some things you'll miss out on not being human… But, not all of it." I said, worshipping the glory of her with my gaze.

I touched her like some sort of religious sacrament of devotion.

She looked up into my eyes, receiving my exaltation.

She knew I was sincere.

And now, I tried to say what I wanted to earlier, but I was too nervous to.

I was chicken before, but I was still nervous now.

"Because… well…" I willed my voice to stop shaking.

Then, she exhaled, melting into my hand on her face and that was all the confidence I needed.

"What you said, about your friend Vera… How… you were jealous of her…"

Rosalie's eyes darted over mine swiftly, searching and a little defensive.

"I… I can kiss you like that…" I traced my thumb over her perfect bottom lip, tingling at the thought of touching my lips to hers.

"Like you wanted." I promised, seeing something shoot across her eyes like a shooting star.

Time moved so slowly that I drank in every detail with pristine meticulousness.

The way she looked at me, the open vastness of her eyes, the thickening Alaskan air, the snow falling in a whisper and collecting in sparkling dust on her skin and in her wet golden hair against the pink, rising sun.

Her eyes were like the universe then, and I was just a small speck of dust within it.

She was everything, and I was nothing.

Then, everything changed.

"Emmett?" She began, her voice around my name such a beautiful sound.

I inhaled her, wanting to taste every word coming out of her mouth.

"I will still want it… All of it." Her voice trembled, like a hummingbird's wings through the air. "And I won't ever not want more than what this life can give me…"

"I know." I exhaled, hearing what she didn't say.

She won't ever not want more than what I could give her.

Tragically, she looked at me, desperation in her eyes and vulnerability painting her skin.

"But, I still want you to give you everything I can." I told her plainly letting her know I read between the lines.

I trailed off, sounding much more confident than I felt. That's when a door opened in her eyes.

I saw exactly who I was like her irises were mirrors.

And, I wasn't a small speck of dust.

I was a universe too.

I felt the weight of this information in her eyes, the truth of it.

I saw thousands of years in her. I felt millions of stories on her skin, just waiting to be made.

That's when she reached to kiss me on the cheek just as she had before, but it was all different now.

Because we were different.

Everything was different.

I tilted my chin down and closed my eyes, feeling her sigh.

Her breath was sweet in the air between us.

Her lips left a trail of fire from my cheek as they skimmed over my skin and finally to the corner of my mouth.

I turned, pausing over her lips as I inhaled in anticipation, hanging on the moment.

In this second, I knew once we kissed, the world as I knew it would cease to exist. The planets would realign. The stars would reorganize. The sun would shine differently. I would be tethered, mind, body, and soul to her.

And, she would be mine.

Without a grand choir or fanfare, the world rearranged.

At the softest touch of her lips to mine, the universe began.

It was soft as summer rain, and warm like afternoon sunshine so I melted into the kiss that restarted my dead heart.

Desperate need overtook my body like a deeper instinct than hunting.

She felt it and she braided her fingers through my hair, holding my lips to hers in a new kind of kiss, less reserved, more wanting.

I smiled against her mouth and tightened my hand at her waist ever so slightly, pulling her closer.

I was absolutely magnetized to her.

A sensation shot through my body, energizing me, as she parted her lips to ask me to deepen the kiss.

Every sensory point in my body was on fire.

I breathed her in.

The way she kissed me…

Both my hands came to her face as we deepened the kiss. I extended my fingers through her hair and down the back of her long beautiful neck.

I longed to keep her close like I'd never longed for anything.

She sighed into my mouth, allowing a more intimate kiss and a chill to run down my spine.

I was overcome then, feeling her give in to me and I thought for a moment I was imagining the whole thing.

We both pulled away only to look at each other for a brief moment, both of us checking that impossibly - this was all real and that we were still each other.

The stars in her eyes darted over mine, creating a thousand new constellations.

I'd lost myself in a lot of women before. I'd felt a lot of women try to lose themselves in me, but this… right now… with Rosalie was different.

We weren't trying to lose anything.

Rosalie kissed me with the desire to experience me, to know me, to discover me… And, she touched me with the desire to be discovered herself. Rosalie wanted me to know her, and she wanted to know herself.

We were found.

Then, she smiled, a girlish, happy grin as she lifted her chin to kiss me again, this time both of us approaching more confidently as my hands traced down her shoulders and my fingers spread over her back.

Her skin was silk and her body was perfect.

She felt… Oh, she felt…

Damn.

Instinct took over as I touched her and she responded by drawing closer and closer to me.

The most natural thing was to touch her.

With a light press of my left hand at the curve of her spine, she arched her back into me under the water.

God. In. Heaven.

She curved her arms around my neck so I was acutely aware of her body on the front surface of mine.

She kissed me in a way that was all at once a fireworks display and a silent snowfall.

Then, in a smooth, seamless motion we were entangled; I'd almost forgotten we were undressed, the water making our clothes cling to our bodies to the point that very little was left to the imagination as it was.

I felt her. The hourglass of her waist. The shape of her hips.

I felt her bare back, the clasp of her bra…

Fuck.

I tilted my chin down and away.

I couldn't.

"Don't." Rosalie whispered, but in her voice was pleading and it set me on fire.

I searched through her eyes, seeing something in them that was like a fire starting from smoldering embers. A vulnerability and softness filled her gaze that she invited me into and as she parted her lips, her eyes darted to my mouth again.

"Are you sure?" I asked her.

I knew Rosalie was raised proper so she had to understand…

This wasn't just kissing. We'd passed that.

She didn't respond, but she reached to guide my chin back that so my lips were claimed by hers once again.

I wanted her.

It felt like the only thing I ever wanted.

My mind twisted around the idea that she impossibly wanted me too.

The way she kissed me proved it.

I was going to spontaneously combust. I felt my want for her transforming into need in my center.

Our kiss gained speed, a sort of desperation to it as our hands grasped at each other.

The heat of it made me feel like I was impossibly sweating.

I pushed forward so that her back came in contact with the rocks of the cliff and my hands came to either side of her shoulders.

She gasped at the contact, but pulled me closer, hungry.

I kissed down her neck, and she exhaled dreamily into the autumn air.

My lips found her collarbone and I began to think about the strap of her light pink bra as it sat on her otherwise bare shoulder.

She shivered against my lips and wound her arms under my shoulders, pulling me closer.

Her fingers spread across the planes of my back.

Shit.

I returned to her lips, kissing her as she should've been kissed.

Rosalie's left leg rose ever so slightly, but it was enough to send things over a new edge as I pulled on her thigh to latch it at my hip.

I could please her. I knew I could.

I couldn't control my mind then and I imagined the way she'd sound when she'd purr…

That's when I caught her eyes for a moment, and if I'd been thinking clearly I might've recognized that look in her eyes. I'd seen it before.

In all the women who wanted to lose themselves in me.

I was thirsty for her, but underneath it all I knew this in my subconscious and it made me uneasy.

I didn't want her to be lost. I'd just found her.

Rosalie pulled me closer, and my weight settled between her legs. At this shift, she gasped, pushing me off of her in a panic.

I froze, taking stock of her abruptness, having felt the change in her tangibly.

Her eyes went down and away as she crossed her arms over her chest, holding her shoulders shyly as if it was so I couldn't look at her.

I felt her cross her legs against me under the water, fidgeting

"Is everything okay?" I asked, concern filling my tone evidently.

"We should go." She suggested, keeping her beautiful eyes away from me.

She denied my gaze, stiffening in a way that I didn't understand.

"Yeah, gimme a second." I cleared my throat and turned my back trying to think of anything in this world but her as I attempted to manage the incredibly obvious signal of how much I desired her in the front of my pants.

Undoubtedly… She'd felt it.

I took a deep breath, but nothing could come to mind but the perfection that had been those moments tangled up with her, so there was no hope for letting it die.

I couldn't help but watch her as she awkwardly and impossibly tried to put on her wet purple dress again without getting out of the water so I'd see her body…

Rosalie wrung out her hair in a puddle beside her on the water's edge once she'd managed to shimmy back into her dress.

Her perfect lips were pursed and there was the slightest furrow to her brow.

I tried unsuccessfully to keep my eyes off of her so I could focus, but it was no use.

I wondered how long I'd have to wait in this lake before it'd be suitable to go get my clothes, and I got nervous and impatient as she began the walk back home without even a glance in my direction.

That was finally enough to kill it, and I practically jumped into my clothes, what was left of them anyway to catch her stride.

She kept her gaze low and her arms crossed over her chest as she walked home removed from me.

"I…" I started but I didn't know what I was going to say.

She clenched her jaw, uncomfortableness radiating off of her in an aura.

Damn it all to hell.

I had to be bold and take a chance.

"Well, um… that was sure some kiss." I finally said, running my hand through my hair nervously.

She didn't say anything, but her fingers traced across her lips absent-mindedly.

"Right?" I tried to hide my pathetic need for validation in this, but it was obvious I needed her to tell me she felt the same way.

Rosalie looked like a totally different person in this moment than she had just moments ago telling me not to pull away from her.

Not to deny her…

I didn't understand her now…

I wanted to, but I couldn't.

She'd been unrestrained just minutes ago… Now, she'd retreated.

Rosalie kept one of her hands at her mouth like she did when she was nervous, tracing over her bottom lip again and again.

She didn't answer and I sighed, reverting to joking when dealing with something difficult of course.

"I guess it's a good thing my confidence isn't that fragile." I jabbed at her teasingly, watching her eyes for clues. "Or my masculinity."

The corner of her mouth turned up, but it didn't touch her eyes.

Every stupid insecurity I never even dreamed of having before crept in then.

I ran a hand through my hair.

Her eyes were widened then in what looked like… fear.

I hoped I was misreading her.

She sighed, crossing her arms and keeping her gaze down.

"What's wrong?"

I tried not to sound panicked.

"Nothing." She mumbled in a way that was obvious she didn't mean that.

I waited then, wondering if it'd be too much to take her hand.

The way she gripped her arms told me she definitely didn't entertain the thought of touching as we walked back to the others.

Her shoulders hunched forward like she wanted to be invisible.

I worried irrationally about all the stupid things I could be insecure about like what if she didn't like kissing me, what if I'd done something she didn't like, what if I'd been too forward, what if she didn't really think about me romantically, what if I disgusted her, but then my mind settled on the worst thing I could entertain at the time.

What if she'd felt me, hard against her, and thought I was over eager or inexperienced since I'd gotten turned on by just a little passionate necking. What if she didn't find it appropriate. What if… she found the thought of me disgusting.

Holy fucking shit.

I ran a hand through my hair, nervous like an early teenager, for the first time totally speechless around her.

It was too much of a coincidence that the moment she could feel me between her legs, she pushed me away.

As an early teenager, I got hard at just about anything. I'd smell perfume. I'd watch Dolly Reed washing clothes in the river. I'd hear Edie Green's laugh. I got too excited about a rainstorm. I won a fight. I could look at a tree the wrong way, and I'd hunker over, embarrassed.

I'd thought something was wrong with me, something was broken because I was so easily aroused. Obviously, I didn't understand that I was just a teenaged boy.

The first time I'd ever kissed a girl, really kissed a girl I was thirteen. I remembered the discomfort, the awkwardness, the way I'd squirmed to try to adjust myself so she wouldn't notice my premature erection. I remembered the mortification I felt when she noticed, but because she was older and more experienced, she let me know she noticed by diving her hand down the front of my pants.

I didn't stand a chance.

I'd been inexperienced and easily turned on before. It'd been awkward and inconvenient and God…. I couldn't imagine being that stupidly insecure again.

I wasn't that stupidly insecure anymore.

I knew what I was doing. I was assured. But, every bit of my assuredness went out the window in Rosalie's presence.

She was… everything.

Her back, arched against those rocks and her leg snaking around my waist…

God fucking damn it, just thinking about it was making me hard again and I looked away taking a deep breath, but it was a terrible idea because her glorious fragrance of roses and honey was still in the air, especially as she was still all wet…

Shit shit shit shit shit.

I was hopeless.

I thought I was starting to get a hang of this whole vampire thing, and I was able to focus a lot more easily on one subject instead of letting all the information and external stimuli come in at once, but with Rosalie…

With Rosalie, it was like I'd woken anew. Every sense was heightened every emotional experience was on overdrive. Every bit of information my senses took in raced through my veins.

I took an awkward step out of my usual stride using this as a way to adjust myself inconspicuously.

Then, as if on cue Rosalie giggled nervously and my eyes darted over toward her. It'd bubbled up her throat as she looked away from me, avoiding my eyes.

I looked over at her, unable to imagine being more mortified than I was in this moment.

Any trace of a hard on was long gone now.

Then, she laughed again, a little less restrained.

I was flooded with unshakeable awkwardness and I clenched my jaw too afraid to ask.

This time, her laugh was far less restrained and she fully tossed her head back in one of the most glorious sounds I'd ever heard.

Even if I did imagine it was at my expense.

"What?" I prompted, nervous.

"What were you just thinking?" She turned toward me, a flicker of amusement in her gaze.

"Nothing. I wasn't thinking about anything. Nothing." I cleared my throat defensively, unable to imagine telling her.

"Because whatever it was sent Edward running." The corner of her mouth turned up, and my eyes darted toward the horizon where the house was beginning to come into focus.

I saw a copy of Paradise Lost lying open in the snow, the pages still fluttering like bird's wings in the wind. It'd just been left freshly and Edward's shoes barely made a print in the snow he'd run so fast from what he'd imagined was some peace and quiet to read in the sunrise.

Whoops.

"Well, shit." I laughed throatily as I imagined subjecting Edward to my inner monologue about erections.

Rosalie exhaled, but wasn't full of humor. She still remained heavy.

"You sure it wasn't what you were thinking?" I teased lightly, my nature allowing me to easily depart from overthinking.

"I'm sure." Rosalie was as icy as the air around us, staying distant.

"Would you tell me what's on your mind then?" I pushed, wanting to know how she felt, but not wanting to be too pathetic.

It was too late though. I was already a crumb.

I was brought back to reality then in a harsh, crashing lurch.

"What happened?" Esme's eyes were the first to find us, full of worry, full of desperate anxiousness as she stood on the back porch.

I took a deep breath, about to speak, then I noticed her eyes were on Rosalie, taking her in with motherly protectiveness.

Esme was visibly distraught and she reached out as if Rosalie would actually go to her.

But, as I'd anticipated, Rosalie remained.

However… the way she remained was different. She wasn't denying Esme's affection and love. She remained by me.

As a sort of signal that… we stood together.

"Everything's fine." Rosalie assured her with a little smile.

Esme communicated her worry with the way her eyes darted over our disheveled clothes and our soaking hair.

"You've been gone for three days." Esme said, reminding us of the passage of time.

It had felt like years, but also mere seconds.

This information tethered us to the present.

"I'm sorry." Rosalie mumbled.

"It was my fault." I tried to absolve her.

Esme's eyes darted to me, her brow slightly furrowed.

"You've hunted." Esme exhaled.

I nodded.

"It was my idea." Rosalie stood up for me in a reverse of how I'd stood up for her.

"That was extremely dangerous, Rosalie, he could've…" Esme argued with concern.

"But, he didn't." Rosalie retorted.

Esme exhaled, genuinely seeming emotional about our extended absence.

I didn't understand it.

The look in her eye was desperately worried.

"I'm sorry." I said and I think I meant it.

I definitely wasn't sorry for being with Rosalie, but I think I was sorry for how it had worried Esme.

"We're just glad you're home safely." Carlisle's voice came from behind Esme as he stepped forward from the house.

He put his hand on Esme's shoulder in quiet, loving confidence, but he kept his eyes on me.

I swallowed nervously feeling my stomach drop in a way I hated.

Carlisle's gaze held me captive and his power radiated from his being like an aura.

His authority was different than any I'd experienced before, but it was authority nonetheless and made me uneasy. I retreated back into myself, looking down and away from him.

"Emmett." Carlisle began. "I'd like to talk with you."