Complete Summary: "This is the true story of seven strangers, picked to live in a house, work together and have their lives taped, to find out what happens when people stop being polite... and start getting real." Canon Pairings. OOC moments, because this is fanfiction, and I'm not Stephenie Meyer. Rated for language and later chapters.

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters belong to Stephenie Meyer. The Real World television concept and set up belongs to MTV.

Edward waited patiently on the pier for his roommate. He had just flown in a half hour ago and had been wandering around for the last ten minutes taking in the monotonous sunny skies, soaking in the heat provided in his dark snowboarding jacket. Why the hell did I wear this, he thought to himself.

It was quite literally his safety jacket, and he underestimated the heat he would soon endure from the sun. Guess I'm not in Kansas anymore, he mused sarcastically as he took in the people before him. The women were all tan and pretty, the men all in shape and by the looks of it… metro. So many different fashions, all packed into four feet of about sixteen people. He thought the people looked quite ridiculous in their UGG boots and short-shorts, gladiator sandals and tight, Hollister shirts.

Los Angeles, California.

…where every stereotype is correct.

Edward scolded himself for judging too quickly. He really should just be happy and let loose… after all that is what he came here for.

Letting loose.

Edward Cullen had just completed his pre-med education at the University of Washington. A young man with high hopes of becoming an ENT Doctor one day, Edward focused on his studies quite religiously, and was never one for an exorbitant social life. Silly, really, because isn't that what college was about? Here you were, supposed to finally be in control of your responsibilities, meaning: partying on weeknights when it would otherwise be frowned upon at home.

It made sense, really. In high school they drilled upon him all the requirements that would set him apart from the rest when applying to college and medical school. Start early.

Edward was taking all honors' courses his freshmen year, and the load never let up, rather, it increased exponentially.

So when college finally came around, you'd think he had accomplished enough of the prerequisites to just relax and enjoy college for what it really was.

Quite the contrary actually, Edward exceeded his limits, and pushed himself past what he thought he'd accomplish in a year, hell, two years. He juggled two majors and still managed to maintain at least a 3.9 cumulative GPA. The thought of staying on the same boat as everyone else with his aspirations made him anxious. The thought of getting ahead made him downright edgy… edgy to get there. And once he had exceeded one limit, he just couldn't stop. It became quite obsessive compulsive for him as the months grew on, and he knew it.

But he couldn't resist.

So he pushed and pushed himself until pretty soon he had no real friends at all, just acquaintances in classes, previous roommates.

Don't even get started on girls.

Sure, he got the attention but it never lasted. Girls preyed on his looks, but they weren't going to waste their time fighting for a guy that wouldn't even look up from a textbook long enough to say a two syllable word. Hello.

His parents worried about him, but what could they possibly do? Scold him for studying too hard? The thought seemed downright preposterous.

They understood that Edward had always been serious about what he wanted, but they never really grasped just how much until he started his collegiate education. So… they let him be. As long as he maintained a healthy weight and called on a weekly basis, they would leave him to his own responsibilities.

They never had to worry about his grades.

Edward didn't want to seem pathetic, but he had graduated a few months ago and that was all he could feel. Of course, he wasn't pathetic. He had graduated with honors and gotten acceptance to a select few of the nation's top medical schools, including the one his father went to. This was the polar opposite of pathetic. Edward was extremely accomplished, and he had that thing on his applications that set him apart from the rest. The thing that flashed like a neon sign among the rest of the cluttered papers on the dean of admissions desk.

He had it. And he worked hard for it.

But four years of his college life, the ones with all the douche bags drinking and not having a care in the world, were gone. They wouldn't be joining him next semester in medical school. Next time he'd open a syllabus, he'd been in a different state, surrounded by a bunch of stuck up know-it-all snobs like him.

The competition would be fierce but Edward was thoroughly prepared, even though he'd be missing the first semester of classes.

Because he was in Los Angeles.

And he was on The Real World.

The proof was right there, really. His jumbo suitcase was a constant reminder. Oh, and his shadows - cameraman, Jack, soundman who's name Edward couldn't bring himself to remember, and an assistant monitoring his every move. Yep, Edward thought, the gangs all here.

It was this small inkling of missing out that provoked Edward to join The Real World. Now, it wasn't, "Oh, I feel pathetic for being a social recluse. I think I'll join a reality TV show!"

Not at all.

In any case, Edward was extremely serious about his studies. Making the decision to skip out on his first semester of medical school wasn't as easy as flipping a coin. In fact, he had planned on going right away in the fall… like all the other, eager-to-be-doctors.

It was the planned thing to do.

It was the logical thing to do.

It was the expected thing to do.

He didn't do it, obviously.

It was the summer after graduation, and he was just a serious about his decision to join medical school in the fall. It was inevitable to him. Being hit by a bus couldn't stop him.

But a change of heart could.

A visit to his parent's house, which seemed inconsequential at the time, ended up changing the current course of his life.

Edward had finally seen the effect his father's career had on his home life. Always running in and out, always tired and out of breath, usually crabby after a particularly trying shift. The days were never long enough.

His mother was always faithful, quiet and understanding. She had been with him since his residency after all, and had grown used to the sporadic schedule and evenings alone.

Of course it wasn't all cloudy days at home. Being a doctor was highly rewarding and some days Carlisle's mood reflected that fact.

But as Edward's stay lengthened, he saw that those days were few and far between, especially with Carlisle's line of practice.

The job was wearing on him and Edward could see that clearly.

Of course Carlisle still had the American dream, successful career, beautiful wife and prodigy child. Edward saw this and understood it clearly.

But this pathetic feeling that was just a stirring before, quickly molded into something else entirely.

Edward had slaved away for eight years, had become an adult much sooner than was required. He lost those years where it was acceptable for him to screw up and get blind drunk and have a one night stand. Sure, people still did that well into their late twenties, but that's just the real definition of pathetic.

In the coming fall, he would lose the "acceptable" factor of committing such acts. This was the time to really grow up, to say goodbye to letting loose. Now was when he had to focus the most.

And Edward felt… scared.

He was so ready to grow up before, so ready to have responsibilities and goals like an adult. He never wasted any time doing things that people his age did.

He missed out on it entirely.

Did it pay off though? All those long nights of studying, torturous afternoons in lectures, missed opportunities, forgotten phone numbers, disappointed faces met with an indifferent one, countless trips to the eye doctor for a new prescription, missed phone calls, lost chances…

Yes.

Edward was one hundred percent positive that it was indeed, all worth it.

He had gotten what he had been fighting for since the second he stepped foot into Biology honors, freshmen year, all those years ago.

Now all he had to do was fight some more, just a little more, compared to all he had done before. Then pull through his first year as an intern, followed by a five year residency…

None of the whole "meeting the standards" thing mattered now. He had made it. He had enough cred in the medical schooling world to make it anywhere he wanted, whenever he wanted. Sure, his true dream was still years away… but he could see it.

This all got him thinking though, as he spent his last few days in the comfort of home, which was quickly becoming an unfamiliar universe.

Edward had always used a simple method, one that was commonly seen in most workouts. "Just one more." "Just one more crunch" "Just one more lap."

And after that "one more" was completed, he'd repeat the mantra in his head again. He was always, in his mind, working towards one goal. "Just re-read the section one more time." "Just repeat the inner ear cochlea subparts one more time."

He found that this method worked.

He used it all the way to where he was now.

But there was a mild flaw to his golden mantra.

Although he always had his true goal in the back of his mind, focusing on the smaller ones until the eventual bigger ones were completed blinded him from some very important things.

The obvious one being he was missing out on a lot of things, no matter how insignificant they seemed to him at the time.

Then there was the fact of the entire career itself. Sure, if he used this mantra through the rest of his medical education, it would surly work just as well as it did for him before.

But what happens when he finally gets to his true dream?

All his life whenever he was set with something, and there was no way he could get any better at his level, he climbed up again, exceeding everyone's limits and racing to the top.

So what would happen when Edward finally became an ENT Doctor - years of residency and internships and schooling in the past - what would he do?

Would he strive to get higher?

Would he get his MBA?

Would he accept that this was his fate, and that all his hard work really, truly, finally paid off?

Or, would he become so drained and tired after his first few years of work that he would come to… come to regret his decision of studying so hard and growing up so fast before he had to?

Even though Edward didn't want to think to hard about the topic, after all, it was a long way in the future, he still became scared of it.

And out of all the other certainties in Edward's life that he had come to accept, there was one that he just couldn't quite come to terms with yet.

His years of letting loose were running out.

Hell, they might be gone already.

For the remainder of Edward's stay with his parents, he had a number of epiphanies.

And these epiphanies sort of all tumbled together into a huge snowball that hit him with the full force of realization.

His time wasn't out yet. No matter how he liked to once think otherwise.

Sure, logically, it was. Medical school was just around the corner, there shouldn't be any backing out now.

But back out he did…

Edward saw his father, and he was never happy for longer than three hours, he had timed it.

And Edward had accepted that this would one day, most likely, become his fate.

But Carlisle had his younger years to look back on, and often he would bore Edward with the details.

Edward realized that this was the only way for him to stay sane as he grew older. He needed to have memories of a time when life wasn't always like this. Edward didn't want to regret not being young while he could.

He knew all along that his parents were worried that he was missing out, so for once, he humored them… with pleasure.

They looked at him with uneasy smiles and furrows of brows in confusion when he announced he wanted to join The Real World. This wasn't exactly the way they had planned on watching him enjoy being young.

But, again, Edward was set on something. And there was no stopping him, especially once he got accepted.

It sounded insane, out of character, preposterous!

And it was insane.

It was highly out of character.

But Edward was still going on the high of all his epiphanies that he really couldn't bring himself to care.

How preposterous!

He had watched The Real World shamelessly as he grew up. It was a silly little obsession he had. Edward couldn't understand why he liked the show so much. TV wasn't quite his forte. But sometimes, when he wasn't busy studying or making a poster, he'd watch a few episode reruns.

There were things Edward liked and disliked about the show. He didn't always like the characters, but that was always a given. He didn't like how some episodes were blown out of proportion. But, he also knew that there was more sometimes than what met the eye.

So sometimes the drama wouldn't always be "real", Edward knew that. Sometimes fights were purposely provoked by producers.

But once the camera's stopped rolling, and the roommates went back to the actual "real world", Edward could sense that there were genuine friendships between the cast members, no matter what happened in the past.

There were bound to be disagreements. Throw a group of people in a cage for a year and Edward could bet they all wouldn't come out alive. That's just human nature though, the kind Edward understood. Someone's always bound to go mad.

But along with that, he believed that some bonds were genuine. And sometimes, he longed to have friendships like that. Sometimes. For the most part, he could get by with the small group he sat with at lunch.

Edward just wanted to try something different.

And he couldn't think of a better way at the time.

He just hoped that this didn't blow up in his face as time wore on.

That would be the last thing he needed. Missing out on a semester of medical school for nothing but a bad taste in his mouth.

No… he wanted this trip to be worth it.

The sound of hurried footsteps broke him out of his musing.

Golden sandals came into view below him, with small, perfectly pedicured feet inside.

He looked up and was met with an excited, perhaps disbelieving, smile.

Alice.

She clapped her hands together as he smiled in greeting.

"I'm Alice! You must be Edward!" She grabbed his hand with both of hers and shook excitedly.

Edward smiled. "Nice to meet you, Alice,"

Her whole face lit up.

Edward stepped back a little bit and pulled his hand away. Reflex reaction. He was a bit taken aback by the energy she radiated. Well, that and he was shy.

"Oh, I'm so excited!" she exclaimed, grabbing her luggage and leading them towards the parking lot… where there was a magical vehicle waiting.

Edward nodded. "It is pretty cool."

"So where are you from?" Alice asked curiously.

"Chicago," he sighed.

She smiled and her eyes grew wide. "Really? That's so cool. The windy city!"

Alice always did this. Ask a question. Make a comment in response, then… explode in some story or another, whether in relation or not.

"I'm from Greenwich, Connecticut, most boring stuck up city you could ever possibly grow up in." She giggled to herself at the memories.

Alice was a lot of things. A rollercoaster of traits, a monument of personalities, a vault of stories. Sure, she grew up in a boring town but she had quite the rebellious childhood. What else is there to do in a town like Greenwich?

She went to private school for the vast majority of her education, where the girls were anything but nice. Alice didn't let it get to her though. She held her chin high, mostly so she could just smell trouble easier.

Ah, yes, trouble.

Alice loved it. All kinds of it.

She didn't know why, she didn't know who, what, where or when, she just knew that she woke up one morning – in her crib at the age of two, most likely – and decided to rebel.

She purposely provoked her parents as a child, drawing on the walls, drawing over the drawings on the walls, taking her father's diplomas down from the walls and hiding them, getting dirt under her nails, emptying the pantry on binges.

All innocent, yes.

As she grew older and had more options in school, well, she found that it was just too easy to make teachers flustered. They didn't have any real authority over her, just an allusion of fear. It didn't faze her at all and to make the days go quicker she was the class clown. And even though this made teachers hate her for disrupting class, it made other students like her - enjoy her company, invite her to parties.

Alice didn't like this attention.

She didn't want her friends to be snobs after all.

And that was all that private school offered.

So almost as soon as the wise cracks began, they ended. She lost the humor and gained an attitude, one that involved knowing smirks and a decrease in verbal response.

Alice had this method in school. She only did homework for the teachers she liked. And since she either hated or really hated her teachers, she really didn't participate much in that field.

Her parents grew angry instead of worried about her, and insisted they tell her what was going on. Of course, nothing was going on. Alice was just the way she was… because.

Although, her parents could take a majority of the blame, now that Alice thought about it. They didn't love her, they didn't ignore her, they didn't treat her like a child, they didn't neglect her. They just raised her in a very distant way. What every kid wants right? A break from the suppression?

Ha, Alice thought.

She didn't hate them, but after her rebellious years in private middle school, she got the itch that they hated her.

So, they enrolled her into public school. She wouldn't tell them what was wrong, so they used their logic and thought maybe public school would be better.

When is public school ever better?

Alice loved it.

Of course she did.

The snobs were still there, but the monotony was not. There were the scene kids, the jocks, the drama club, the weird ones with a vast knowledge of pop culture, the pretty virgins, the sluts, the science club… tons of groups to choose from. And not everyone had money.

And she actually liked a few of her teachers. Not all of them, because that wouldn't be cool, but just enough to maintain a 3.0 GPA her freshmen year.

Her freshmen year, first ever in a public school.

A lot of things happened.

Alice didn't hate that time period in her life, she just had had her better days…

So, when Alice thought about those things, because she was young she could just write them off as that… "I was young and silly and I didn't know any better." Yeah, right. When she did think about them, it was kind of like taking off a bandage, quick and easy reminiscence, then back to the present.

Alice became bisexual, got a lower back tattoo and pierced her nose.

By the time she was a sophomore she had a steady girlfriend.

Just before her junior year started, she got wasted… and for the first time… busted.

She didn't go back to public school after that.

No, after that, her parents had had enough and enrolled her back into private school. Alice just laughed and hoped they learned her lesson. She didn't care about switching schools again; she could always have a good time if she tried. Taunting pretty rich girls and making them think they had flaws could be so much fun.

It was an all girls private school.

One morning at a bus stop, Alice met a guy, an older guy. He was nineteen years old.

She became straight that day, and decided to never go back to girls. They could be so fricken' annoying, she finally realized.

So, Alice totally dated an older guy for two years. And after her high school graduation, she lost her virginity to that guy… the day of her eighteenth birthday.

The day after that, she dumped him. She couldn't really say she loved him, after two years together though, how could she not?

But, she wasn't ready to settle down yet.

He was.

Alice never found out she broke his heart. At the time, she thought the feeling was mutual.

She was wrong.

But, she moved on obliviously. Not a lot happened that could go down in true Alice Adventure history.

She enrolled into a local college with hopes of one day becoming a hair dresser. To pay for her lifestyle of buying from Sephora, she got a job at Urban Outfitters.

She made a few friends, but never dated again.

She mooched off her parents and stayed in the guesthouse across the pool.

And then she got bored and did something that wasn't out of character.

In fact, if she had her own television show where she did something that would seem ridiculous all the time, but normal to her, it would be called: That's so Alice. And it would be the exact phrase used at least fifty times in an episode, especially the one where she chose to be on The Real World.

Her friends weren't at all shocked.

And neither was she when she got accepted. Hello, she winked and said at the end "I cause drama."

Of course, the producers thought that the drama would be with the housemates.

Alice wasn't at all interested in budding heads with her roommates, no.

She was interested in seeing how far she could go in breaking rules that would get the producers to threaten her.

Why?

Because even though she had been a rebel all her life from the time she was two, and had many crazy conquests under her belt, she still had that bug.

She loved trouble.

Alice had to constantly remind herself not to look at the camera, thought it was so tempting. And it would probably get her in trouble, but that would be a silly way to enforce her plan. She couldn't possibly think of rebelling on the first day. Immature. Being a true rebel takes wits, Alice thought.

Once inside the car Alice was having trouble containing her enthusiasm, clapping at the sunroof above them and asking the driver to open it. When Alice felt like it, she could be a very overly happy person.

And right now, there was absolutely no reason not to be happy. She had three months ahead of herself, virtually responsible free, and she could party! She sighed as she rested her head against the head rest. This is what I need, she thought.

Alice may not know what she was looking for at the moment, but being here, she found out what she needed.

Tired of the silence Alice dove right into a story that she had been dying to share.

She turned to Edward, who looked pleasantly content. She smiled; he seemed like a shy guy. She liked those ones. But he was a borderline ginger, and that was a turn off for Alice. She knew immediately that they'd just be friends.

"Okay, so I was at the airport and there was this guy who was standing in front of this carpeted support beam and he was waiting for his wife and—"

Edward looked on with subtle amusement at Alice. The first of his roommates for him to meet. And he liked her personality, however flamboyant and eccentric it was, he liked it. She seemed like a tell-it-like-it-is kind of girl, and he liked those ones better than the fake ones who didn't reveal their true personality until you were stuck with them.

And as Alice continued on with her story - and the car continued down the busy streets, reaching closer and closer to their destination, to his home for the next three months - Edward got his first feel of adrenaline. The first in a long time.

Thanks so much! First few chapters are characterizations, then lust and love and lemons and drama and the odd man out. Please review!