Happy New Year, campers! Our special tonight is one of my very favorites...voyeur Edward. I hope he meets with your satisfaction.

Holy shit, it's Pink Panties.

Edward had been trying for the past week to figure out where he'd seen that barmaid before, and now that he knew, he wished he didn't. Because in five minutes, he was going to have to get up in front of all these people – and her – and perform.

"Jazz," he hissed, trying to get the guitar player's attention. Jasper, unfortunately, was engrossed in tuning, and didn't hear him. Shit.

"Uh, good evening, everybody," the owner, Jake, addressed the crowd, a big mofo who looked like he could bench press the Sistine Chapel. "Thanks for coming out tonight. The guys who are going to play for us haven't found themselves a clever handle, so I have the incredibly awkward pleasure of introducing Jasper and Edward. Give 'em a hand."

While he waited for the applause to die down, Edward scanned the crowd, trying to find Pink Panties. She had disappeared into the crowd. Damn. He didn't know what was worse, seeing her there and knowing she was listening or not seeing her there and knowing she was listening.

Unless by some miracle she had slipped out for her break and planned to be gone for the next two hours.

"Edward," Jasper hissed, and Edward blinked.

"Oh. Hey, guys," he spoke into the boom mic positioned over the piano. "Thanks for coming. We're going to start with some covers, and later on we'll get into some original stuff. We'll, ah, yeah." He fumbled and grinned as he heard a gaggle of coeds hooting.

He started playing, and the joint quieted down. Damn good thing that he knew most of these songs frontwards and backwards, otherwise he was liable to get distracted and screw up royally.

He caught sight of a bobbing auburn ponytail weaving through the crowd and nearly choked on the first note of a Lifehouse cover.

Focus, Edward.

He kept his eyes on the keys as he played, but he could still see her turn in his direction out of the corner of his eye. And then some tall guy crossed in front of her and Edward lost sight of her.

It was all just a little too déjà vu.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Edward tried not to relive the night he'd first seen her, over two weeks ago. His stupid brain, however, refused to cooperate.

He would swear in a court of law that he had not been trying to spy on cute girls. The light had been perfect, the sun setting slowly in the west, when he got home from class that day. He immediately shook off his coat and went over to his camera, set up on its tripod at the window. The city spread out before him in all its misty glory, and the historic buildings that marched down the hill glowed in the fading orange light. He fiddled with the zoom on the camera, looking for a good composition, and went too far. The camera focused in on a window of a building several blocks away. A window that was thrown open, revealing the living area and part of the kitchen. And the girl who was unpacking inside.

She was on the phone, talking, as she pulled books out of a cardboard box. She was stacking them on the floor next to an empty bookcase.

In a flash of genius, Edward deduced that she was just moving in.

Her auburn hair had been pulled up in a ponytail, unlike the night a week ago that he'd seen her here at the bar. When he focused his lens, he saw that she was sweating, little tendrils of hair escaping their confines to lie damply against her neck and temples.

She was wearing a black camisole and shorts that looked like lycra or spandex. Her long, long legs were tucked under her until she pushed the empty box away and shifted to face the bookcase, which required that she twist at the waist and stick her cute little butt in the air.

Edward recalled how the sight had made all the blood in his body abandon its assigned duty and head for his groin.

She rocked back and forth, grabbing books from the pile and reaching to slide them onto the shelf. He figured that Girl Filling Bookcase would be a way better porn movie than any of the Girls Gone Wild series.

When all the books were taken care of, she stood up and threw the box into a jumbled pile in one corner. Then she stretched.

One arm above her head, the other still holding the phone, she arched her back and stood up on her toes, then grabbed one foot and pulled it back behind her like a freaking contortionist. His hands sweating, Edward adjusted the zoom for a closer look. Her camisole rode up, exposing a slice of her abdomen.

She said goodbye to whoever was on the phone and threw it on a chair behind her, then grabbed the opposite foot and repeated her mad Gumby routine. This time, she held the foot with both hands and pulled it above her head. He was sure that her freaking femur was going to break.

Then she turned and walked towards a doorway at the far end of the apartment, gathering the hem of her cami and pulling it up as she went.

His throat went dry. A crazy buzzing started in his ears. But that was all she allowed – she passed into the other room before he could get a glimpse of anything more than a generous peek of her back.

Breathing fast, Edward pulled away from the camera. He searched the skyline until he located her building. Using his weak human eyes, he could see that her window was open and the light was on inside, but deduced that he never would have caught sight of her without Mr. Nikon's help.

She was on the fifth floor, the third window from the right.

Swallowing, he put his eye to the viewfinder again. She was still in the other room, presumably. He studied the apartment. It looked like a cardboard bomb had gone off. Boxes, newspaper, random stacks of dishes and other domestic debris were scattered on the floor. An overstuffed chair and couch were arranged around an entertainment center packed with DVDs. A small TV – he wasn't sure, but it looked like one of the pre-flat screen variety – sat inside.

The walls were completely bare, but he thought he could make out the edge of a stack of picture frames propped against the couch.

A small table and two chairs were set up in the dining area, piled high with boxes. One of the boxes had tipped over and a lava flow of clothes had spilled out.

His eyes snapped away from the table when she reentered the living room. And then his jaw dropped.

She had changed into a long-sleeved Henley shirt of soft gray. Her shorts were gone. In their place was a pair of carnation pink panties of the boyshort persuasion. He could see her navel – unpierced. When she approached the table and started rummaging through the contents of the exploded box, he could see in profile one adorable cheek of her tush peeking out from beneath the pink panties.

His soul cried out in mourning when she located a pair of plaid flannel pajama pants and shimmied into them. Though he figured that he would pay money to see that shimmy again.

She stretched again, both hands over her head, and rolled her shoulders. Then she walked straight towards the window.

Instinctively he jerked back, irrationally sure that she'd seen him. However, when he located her window again with his human eyes, he saw that she had pulled the windows shut.

And the goddam glare from the sun setting completely obscured his view of her apartment.

Breathing hard, Edward leaned back against the wall. He was hard as a fucking rock, his blood pounding in his ears. And he was roundly cursing the tilt of the Earth's axis that had cruelly positioned the sunset so inconveniently in the west.

Then he remembered that he was a total ass.

He was using his camera, with its telephoto zoom and manual focus, to spy on a half-naked girl in an apartment three blocks away. A girl who clearly had no clue that Peeping Toms with high tech equipment roamed the streets of Seattle, horny and drooling for fresh meat.

God, kill me now.

He shut his window and pulled the blind, forgetting completely the perfect light outside, and flung himself on the couch. He willed his body to forget, just fucking forget what he had fed into its memory banks.

Yeah. Right.

He turned on the TV in an attempt to distract himself. Jersey Shore and America's Got Talent, however, were not suitably entrancing to make him forget what he'd just seen. He was watching Bobby Flay sauté shrimp with goat cheese or something disgusting like that when he noticed – to his complete shock – this his palm was currently stroking the underside of his wood.

Shit. You cannot jack off while thinking about that girl, asshole. That would just be wrong.

He leapt up from the couch and paced awhile.

He went and looked in the refrigerator and found nothing he felt like eating.

Then he sat down at his piano and began to tinker. And something magical happened.

He and Jasper were wrapping up their kick-ass cover of Hello by Lionel Richie when Edward's hands started to sweat again. God, here comes the end of my life.

"Thanks," Jasper said. "Now, uh, the Prince of the Ivories back there –" he grinned and waited for the hooting to die down , "-is going to play one of his original compositions. It's a pretty new song, and he swears that it's not based on a true story. You judge."

Glaring at Jasper, because he had sworn no such thing and would be lying if he did, Edward cleared his throat and hit a G, then began to sing. A few seconds later he came in on the keys.

If I knew your name

I don't think it would ease this pain

Still, the question remains –

What do I call you?

'Cause I speak to you in the night

I watch you in the hours before daylight

It isn't fair, it isn't right

Still, it's all for you.

As Edward sang the song that he'd written the first night that he saw Pink Panties, he thought back to the night last week that he'd seen her here. He'd been in a bad fucking mood because he hated schmoozing for gigs. The bouncer had told him that Jake wouldn't be back for an hour or so, so he hunkered down in a booth to wait. The girl who was cleaning it off looked up at him. He'd stared at her, trying to figure out how he knew her.

In his own defense, he'd only seen her once before, through a telephoto lens. Her hair was in two braids that just reached her shoulders, which made her look very different than she did with a ponytail. Still, he couldn't believe he hadn't known immediately who she was.

She had been staring right back at him. It had kind of weirded him out at the time – he assumed that she recognized him too and was trying to place him. It made him feel exposed, like he was waiting for a jury to deliver a verdict.

Now, Paranoid Edward was wondering if she really had seen him peeping and was considering screaming bloody murder.

Yeah, because she used her bionic vision and saw you spying on her from three blocks away.

But she hadn't said anything, not even when he gave her his credit card and she looked down at it, reading his name.

He'd watched her surreptitiously for the next two hours – Jake was not the punctual type – and she got progressively cuter the longer he sat there. And he'd only had the one beer. He'd waited for her to come back to his table, but she never had. Instead, he was treated to a tall blonde with breasts like melons and a brain to match. She was too busy to make much of a pest of herself, but he'd seen the look in her eye. He'd have to watch his back next time he was there.

Watching the redhead's back…well, that was another story. He kept his eye on her as she leaned over tables to clear empties and wipe down. She was wearing a pair of jeans that made her ass look hotter than a June day in Memphis. The crewneck tee shirt she wore hugged her gentle curves in a demure yet sexy way that affected him way more than the skimpy tank tops that the other barmaids were wearing.

Why didn't you figure out that she was Pink Panties, you idiot? That butt alone should have clued you in.

In his defense, Pink Panties was strictly fantasy for him. He had never really expected to run into her in real life.

Except for those times that he'd imagined walking by her building and running into her. Accidentally.

I want you here in my arms

I want to know you and taste all your charms

Please, let me keep you safe from harm

I'm falling for you.

As he wrapped up the song that he'd written about her, he peeked up and saw her standing at the bar, holding a round tray to her chest. She was watching him. A shiver ran down his spine, and he thought about all the times in the past week that he'd casually looked through the viewfinder in his camera – which strangely, remained focused on the third window from the right on the fifth floor – only to see that her window was closed and he couldn't see a thing.

She didn't clap when the song ended, but the rest of the crowd seemed to like it a lot. He saw a couple of the sorority girls fan themselves with their hands, giggling, and rolled his eyes.

They launched into a song that Jasper had written about a girl who had cheated on him. It was considerably less sultry than the song he'd written for Pink Panties – he took out his anxiety on the keys, pounding out the notes a little harder than he probably should have. He saw her making the rounds to her tables, collecting empties and taking orders. He also saw the guys checking her out. He narrowed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate on the keys.

"Thanks," Jasper said to the crowd when the song ended. "We're going to take a short break right now, but we'll be back with some more covers in a little while."

Jasper switched his mic off and turned to Edward. "Dude, what is with you? You're playing a little loud. Is your monitor level okay?"

"Yeah, sorry," Edward said. "I know I was fucking up. I got…distracted."

Jasper just looked at him, arching one eyebrow.

"I saw someone I thought I knew."

Jasper's arms crossed over his chest.

"Okay, it's a girl. But that's all I'm saying right now. I don't even know if she's seeing anyone."

"Fine. Buy me a beer."

They wound their way through the crowd towards the bar, stopping and chatting several times along the way. More than one girl gave one or the other – or both – her number. Edward lost sight of Pink Panties.

When they finally made it to the bar, they ordered two drafts and stood talking to the bartender, Garrett. People came and chatted, then drifted away.

Ah, there she is.

He caught sight of her clearing one of the booths. She was talking to Jake.

The gigantic dude was sitting at the booth, leaning with one elbow on the table. They talked earnestly to each other. He made her laugh a couple of times.

And then she took her phone out of her apron pocket and handed it to him. He hit a bunch of keys, then spoke briefly into it. They were both laughing when he handed it back to her.

Shit.

All canon pairings in this story, eventually. Just FYI.

Thanks to the ladies over at PTB. I forgot to mention them in chapters 1 and 2, but they've been a big help with rampant comma usage.

In other news, this story has been nominated for a Twinklings Walk of Fame Award in the Hidden Gem category. Won't you go vote, if you feel the urge? twinklingswfa . blogspot . com/p/story-nominees . html