Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
After gliding through the back door of the house, Bella slides down Edward's rain-slicked back onto the redwood flooring. They're both dripping wet from intermingled sweat and rain when Alice walks in with two plush beach towels.
"Have a nice jog, you two?" Alice is so self satisfied as to be insufferable, but Edward can't quite work up any negative emotion; he's too busy drowning in the memory of a few moments passed.
Then he simply nods, his grin grows wider and he looks expectantly at Bella, who promptly blushes and mumbles, "Uh huh, but I'm pretty gross." She gestures to herself, muddy ankles and soaking clothes. "Could I take a shower?"
Edward pulls the towel snugly around her and stares intently at Bella, "You, beautiful, are the furthest thing from gross, but you're more than welcome to use my shower."
"No, no. I don't want to impose."
"I insist. I've got some high-flow shower heads that I think you'll enjoy."
Bella's eyes are locked with Edward's and all seven vampires in the Cullen home hear the thundering blat of her racing heart. Breathlessly she manages an "Okay."
Alice looks at Edward, her older brother, her maker, and her friend, with a confused grin rendering her face fairly comical and says, "You're... sweet. And like..." Her thoughts are full of surprise at Edward's endearing and heartfelt behavior; so unlike the austere shell he's pulled so tightly around himself over the centuries.
"That will be all, Alice. Thanks for the towels." Edward ushers Bella toward the stairs to his suite, away from the infinite embarrassing possibilities that Alice encompasses. He grasps Bella's hand at the top of the stairs and leads her to his enclave.
Even though the other members of his family share their bedrooms with a mate, Edward's is the largest. Compromise and conciliation are common tactics used to resolve domestic disputes, but the main coping technique the Cullen's use is a simple rotation system. Whether it's divvying up bedrooms, new last names, vacation time, or their next home location, each member of the family gets an equal turn. And this time, Edward had first choice in the domicile. Unapologetically, he took the master suite.
The exterior walls are floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking an unrailed balcony skirting around the corner of the house. In one end of the room there is an enormous leather couch facing an absurdly large flat-screen above a black brick fireplace. The opposite side of the room contains a well-worn wooden desk, which looks to Bella as if it's seen better days, with several computer monitors and a sleek-looking laptop covering most of its surface; the rest is strewn with papers and folders in various shapes, colors, and stack-heights.
Bella giggles, and with unbridled curiosity evident in his expression and voice, Edward asks, "What?"
"You're kinda messy." And she gestures to the desk, and then around the room. Edward has the bizarre sensation of looking at his room for the first time, and he notices the piles of books, records, CD's, and DVD's. There's even a few pairs of shoes and pants littering the lush carpet. He'd be embarrassed, but every one of his family members has teased him about it over the years.
"Yes. Well. Shelving doesn't help me remember where things are," he can always remember, "and I don't spend too much time in here."
"I would. It's so nice and airy." Then she looks back at him with more questions in her eyes, and pauses. She stares at him very intently; Edward is almost nervous and her silent mind is making his stone heart do back flips through broken glass. "Do you have a tattoo?" Relief ripples through his consciousness at her innocent and innocuous inquisition; she's only glimpsed his markings through the thin, damp, now nearly transparent layer of his running shirt.
"Yes, several. You'd like to see them?"
"Well, I mean, you don't have to. Only if you want." Suddenly her eyes are on anything else, but that changes when Edward peels his shirt off. He makes sure to arch his back, and flex his impressive musculature as he does so, feeling implacably smug when he hears her quiet gasp. Then he closes the short distance between them so she can see the remnants of his Caledonian culture. In the center of his chest rests his king's crest. The rounded triangle is about the size of his fist, grids of interlocking, twisting lines make up its shape and texture. In the center is a small circle with no markings inside. Edward knows that the patterns, lines and shape had meaning, denoting his heritage and position among the Caledonii, but that specific knowledge was lost in the fires of the change. Bella's eyes are glued to his chest as she speaks, "Wow. I've never seen anything like that. Does it mean anything?"
Deliberating on how to answer takes only a moment, after which he says, "It's part of my history, who I was."
"What do you mean? And what about those?" Edward cannot bring himself to lie to her, but he can't begin to imagine telling her that each dot adorning his upper arms represents a man dead at his hands. Very few Caledonii had as long a spiraled dotted lines as Aedwaerth, his tally taking space on his right arm from elbow to underarm, and his left from mid-forearm to underarm. At the moment, each little stain is a glaring, glowering reminder that she should not be here, amidst murderers and monsters.
"Do you like them?" He suspects the answer will be no, but it's the best way he can conjure to change the subject.
"They suit you," she says with a sheepish expression. And he's far more pleased than he should be. What's more, he knows he should tell her the about the last, most offensive ones. His hair hides three thin knotted lines that run from temple to temple around the back of his head, a crown he can never remove. With a desperate look on his face, he leans down in front of her and spreads his hair with his fingers to show her.
He sighs with resignation when he feels her hands replace his, but he can't deny the satisfaction and whirlwind of sensation and emotion that he feels at her fingers deftly moving over his scalp. Then it's her lips on his forehead, and she's speaking softly near his ear, "They're beautiful, but you still haven't told me what they mean."
"I can't. Yet. I'll tell you everything, but not right now." He's thinking, You'd run from me. And I can't let you go.
"I know you're different. And scared to let me know how deep that difference goes, but don't be. I here, with my teacher, whom I just made out with," she lets out a nervous laugh and releases her gentle hold on his hair. "Obviously, I don't scare easily." Quiet laughter fills the house.
"I don't frighten you? At all?"
"No. Not in the way you're worried about." More laughter, from all parties. Edward stomps lightly on the floor to give voice to his displeasure.
"What do you mean?"
"No comment."
Edward groans in frustration at her impregnable mind and indecipherable answers. "Please, I have to know what you're thinking."
"I'll tell you if you tell me about the tattoos."
"Sly, Swan, and a valiant attempt, but no. Now go shower before you catch cold." She looks at him with questions brimming in her eyes, but rolls them at his admonishment instead and walks toward the bathroom. "I'll set your clothes outside the door and give you some privacy. See you downstairs?"
"Sure, I'll only be a few minutes."
In those few minutes, Edward spirals into a maelstrom of despair and depression, his thoughts fraught with self-recriminations, the enormity of his potential influence on Bella's life foremost on his mind. It's a level of anguish that he's not let himself sink to since the earliest days of his new life. Looping through his mind are scenarios of endless loneliness, hatred and malcontent, for him and Bella. And though he can hear the pain lancing through Jasper's mind as he soundlessly complains, the attack never relents. Until Bella walks into the room; he sees her, smells her, wants her so much that it eclipses anything his fickle mind could construct to keep them apart.
Clearing twenty feet from a seated position, he leaps in her direction, catching and cradling her against him. When she attempts to ascertain after his inhuman feat, he silences her with the cool assurance of his lips. She responds with her own oaths, searing them into his skin, his heart. She breaks their kiss to breathe but mere moments pass before he spins and settles onto his back on a couch, the fragrant intensity of Bella's body poised above him. With nary a whisper, her pliancy is against him, as if Bella had neither the strength nor inclination to fight gravity anymore. Their bodies shift restlessly against one another, passion inclining them towards some fantastic fusion.
The dichotomy between their chaste, close-mouthed kissing, fervent though it is, and the quick escalation of writhing heat that joins them is enough to remind Edward of their differences. With a sigh signaling so many years of sexual frustration, he rolls Bella off of him, embedding her between the soft leather cushions and his unyielding abdomen. When her frantic breathing has calmed, he twines his legs between and around hers, a physical affirmation juxtaposed by the verbal warning he's about to deliver.
"I've done this all wrong, Bella. And I'm sorry." Then he grabs her hand and places it over his king's crest, and whispers I need you, in Caledonian. Her eyes go wide at his expression and demeanor, as if she's somehow divined the meaning behind his foreign words, but she stays still, seeing if he'll speak more in that seductive tongue. "I am less and more than I seem. I'll tell you anything." With her silence and scent surrounding him, his thoughts are as chaotic as his statements. And then she detects his dormant heart; her brow furrows in concentration and her fingers press insistently against him. She retracts her hand in horror, only to replace it at the pulse point on his neck.
In a strangely calm tone, she asks, "Why can't I feel a heartbeat?"
"Because I have none. But I'm in no danger. Strictly speaking, my body no longer needs a cardiovascular system to function."
She looks at him like he has three heads.
Edward simply raises an eyebrow at her, willing her to fit the pieces together, if only to save himself from the torture of admitting the gulf that yawns between them, but she doesn't come to any conclusions; sh simply stares, bewildered, her hand going between his chest and neck in insistent intervals.
"I'm going to reveal a number of startling things to you, 'm cara, but the first, and perhaps most disturbing, is that I'm not human. Haven't been for quite some time."
"Then what are you?" She sounds desperate, a much better reaction than fear.
"Before I tell you that, let me make you a promise. I will never hurt you. Far from it. I will only ever attempt to make you happy. But I am very dangerous, to you especially. I know you've heard or read stories about my kind, misguided as they are. I am a demon from the night. I am dead so that others may die. My proximity to you leeches the strength from your cells, and the heat from your bones. My teeth are sharp, my skin is cold, and my heart is silent. I am a vampire."
She stares at him with a blank look, but he can tell she's very annoyed when she says, "That is some specious bullshit. Are you messing around with me?" And the entire house, reserved Carlisle and normally indignant Rosalie included, roars with laughter.
"Is that laughing? You are messing with me, you prick!" And then she's trying vainly to remove herself from his embrace. "Let GO!"
"Stop, child." He voice reverberates with authority despite its moderate volume, and Bella's struggling ceases, as well as the laughter with had filled the house. "Isn't it odd that my entire family heard you curse at me, from every distant corner of the house? We have heightened senses, Bella. Feel my skin, look at my eyes..." Her eyebrows arch impossibly high. "At any rate, they weren't really laughing at you. They were amused at my 'newfound melodramatic tendencies,' to quote them. And they may also be laughing at your complete lack of fear. Some people have a tendency to laugh at things they don't understand." Emmet's laughter resumes, booming through the stout walls. "Shut up, you shit," Edward says, though he holds no hope that Emmet will.
When his eyes alight on Bella's, her arms opening a small distance between them, he relaxes his grip and pulls her effortlessly into a sitting position beside him. She's distressed, if Edward can tell anything from her body's inclinations, but she's not running. "You're serious?" He nods, and the silence stretches. "And you won't hurt me?"
"Never."
"Then prove it."
"You're sure?" And she nods.
Aedwaerth rises from the couch and makes his way to the entertainment center under the massive flat screen across the room. Reaching into a shelf, he yanks a well-loved video game console out the low cabinet. Sparks fly, plastic pieces ping against the wood and ricochet across the room.
"Don't electrocute yourself on my account." Edward doesn't say anything, but notes with a glance in her direction a strangely calm and detached look on Bella's face. Taking the roughly rectangular box on diagonally opposite sides, he crushes the machinery until his fingers meet. Plastic ejects around him, showering the floor, the couch and Bella as she gapes at the absurd display his strength. Molding the black sphere, the intense pressure of his hands fuses the materials into a composite cannonball. He hands it to her. Bella examines the seamless surface, seeing the dark colors coalesce; the weight she expected, but it's beyond her how he made the spherical shape so regular. He takes the ball from her hand and replaces his own, and leads her around the corner into the kitchen, silently staring at the ceiling with squinting eyes.
Aedwaerth places his hands on her shoulders, and moves her within the doorframe, ordering, "Stay put." She glares, but it's clear that her rage underwhelms her curiosity. Right before he winds up to throw, he hears a faint but amused, "oh, damn," from Emmet on the floor just above. He launches the missile with a well-aimed overhand and it moves so quickly through the wood, cement, rebar and plaster that his eyes lose track. Staring through the jagged circular hole between the two floors, the first thing he sees is Emmet leaned back against his bed, clutching at the side of his head.
"Not in the ear, old man! What was that?" Pranks between the two of them ran towards the violent side, brotherly camaraderie cemented through laughter and competitive fun. And typically the altercations ended with one of the two gasping in pain and laughter, begging the other to request Carlisle to fix, set, re-locate, or reattach. So it's old hat to the family, but Bella, whose eyes are boring down the tunnel between the kitchen and bedroom, looks genuinely concerned for the insensitive ogre upstairs.
Edward obtains Bella's attention with a gently nudge of his shoulder, and informs her, "He did laugh at you. And he's fine." By the time Bella looks back down the hole, Emmet's face has made the far end darken, and she can hear him through the passage say, "Hey, this is pretty awesome, think Esme will let us keep it like this? And don't think that I don't know that that was my 360, you relic." Then everyone is laughing again, the tension of the moment ebbing away with Jasper's extra influence. Under the empath's super-sensory influence, Bella looks giddy, almost high. Without asking, he lifts her into him, and she grasps him as best she can with her newly realized weakness.
As he breaches the treeline behind the house, Bella ousts her emotional stupor. Then she goes rigid with surprise and adrenaline when she fully experiences their terrible speed. She hears Aedwaerth's censure, "I told you I was a vampire." Then softer he soothes, "I will keep you safe."
"Where are we going?" Bella's voice is steady, despite the fear or flight chemicals in her blood. Her fingers are firmly in his shirt and hair, so he's hoping for her faith, her trust, her continued interest.
"To my favorite place." Where he'll say whatever it takes to make her stay and do whatever he must to gain her favor. Aedwaerth will begin by telling her his story, the journey that sets him apart.
A/N: Stratan and I wanted you to know that no innocent video game systems were harmed while writing this chapter.