"The Big Sleep"
So I'm on my knees in the living room with James' mate holding me in a vampire headlock. Not the best position I've ever been in, to be perfectly honest. I don't really have a lot of room to negotiate. I know I can fight her, but I'm reluctant to do so with Bella just a few feet away from us. This could be a bit tricky.
Luckily, Victoria is going all Hollywood villain on us – you know, all "let me reveal to you my plan while you twist in fear" – and she pauses for a few moments, giving us a chance to feel horror and helplessness, because it allows for two things to happen.
The first is the most extraordinary. I'm watching Bella's horrified face, and then I see something amazing and wonderful there. I'm actually pretty proud of myself for seeing it, because I'm not always good at reading Bella's face; I've grown so accustomed to hearing peoples thoughts that I've gotten really lazy. I can see the devastation on her face; I can see how the thought of losing me is affecting her. I see that no matter her demurrals, her doubts, her "what if it's just gratitude" comments, that Bella loves me. She's looking at me with this look of absolutely tender and heart-wrenching love, and something that has been missing for a century slips into place for me.
I mean, I was completely sincere when I told her that it was enough for her to let me love her. Loving Bella, and by extension, Thomas, has made me feel something powerful and wonderful for the first time in my endless, tedious-ass life. Just to be allowed to feel something that wasn't boredom and to be allowed to care for them has changed my life irrevocably.
But having Bella love me back? It's as if something has snapped into place inside me, like the other half of one of those crappy plastic Easter eggs, and there's something way better than jelly beans inside. It's the unexpected completion of what I feel, and even if she rips my head off I'm glad that this crazy vampire chick showed up.
The second thing that happens because Victoria has decided to go all sinister villain on us and give us a moment to enjoy how powerfully she has us trapped and how fucked we are, is that the baby monitor crackles on and the sound of Thomas crying comes from over next to the couch.
Which totally startles Victoria and gives me the opportunity to grab her by the arms and throw her as hard as I can through the living room window, in the opposite direction of Bella. Esme's gonna be pissed about the curtains but she'll have to get over it.
I follow after her before she can get back in the house because my major concern is that she'll get to Bella and Thomas. As soon as I'm out the window after her she tries to jump past me and back into the house, but I catch her by the leg and toss her away from me again. Which I then realize is not the smartest thing I can do because remember how evasive I said she is? She shoots off into another direction and when I give chase I realize that she's heading back into the house by another route. I can't catch her before she gets to the front door and she slips in and makes for the kitchen. I can hear Bella in there and I'm terrified by the thought that Victoria will get to her.
I turn the corner to the kitchen and am instantly hit in the chest by a swiftly backtracking vampire. Victoria is scrambling backwards away from Bella, who has Esme's crème brulee torch in her hand, with the flame turned up as high as it goes. It's only about five inches, but that's enough to freak a vampire out. We are seriously flammable.
I grab Victoria, and although I am reluctant to do this kind of thing in front of Bella I don't want to take any chances, so I grab her by the neck and rip her head off. Bella's eyes go a little wider, and I mouth "sorry" to her as I drag both parts of the vampire out of the kitchen and back out of the house. I toss her body out the door ahead of me and carry the head outside by the hair, kind of the way little girls carry decapitated Barbie doll heads.
Then, Alice's yellow Porsche pulls into the driveway at unsafe speeds. Nice timing, Alice. You couldn't have been here during the vampire attack, right?
"Edward, I'm so sorry!" Alice jumps out of the driver's seat, followed by Jasper. "I got everyone out of the house because it looked like…" Alice's head is filled with a vision of Bella and I - Yep, I was right! - making out on the couch. "As soon as I saw it change I turned right around!"
"It's fine," I say, tossing Jasper the vampire head. "Burn this, won't you? I'm going to go see if Bella's OK."
Emmett's Jeep pulls into the driveway at that point and, when he sees what Jasper is doing, he rubs his hands together and says, "Ooh, barbeque again?"
I turn around to see Bella on the deck, still holding the crème brulee torch and breathing hard. Her eyes are wide with terror and she's shaking. I walk back up the stairs and approach her carefully, with my hands out in a non-threatening manner.
"It's OK, Sweetie," I coo at her. At the sound of my voice, her eyes snap up to my face and fill with tears.
"I was so scared she was going to…" Bella bursts into tears and I wrap my arms around her and shush her. She shakes against me, mumbling into my chest. I realize that she's still got the crème brulee torch in her hand and that it would really be my preference if she dropped it. Not that I think she'll hurt me, but accidents happen in the home and I'm a little squeamish about fire. Like I said, seriously flammable.
"Here, honey, give me the torch," I murmur to Bella.
"She used the 'Blazer'?" Emmett asks.
"What are you talking about?" Rosalie asks him. Emmett points excitedly to the crème brulee torch, which I have gotten custody of now.
"That's the 'Blazer GB2001,'" Emmett says proudly. "That's the finest hand-held micro-torch you can buy. Pretty nice, huh Bella?" He tries to get her attention while I glare at him.
"Emmett, she's really scared," I hiss at him. "Can you please fuck off?"
"Why did you buy a crème brulee torch, anyway?" Jasper is finishing up torching the vampire detritus.
"I thought we could make some for Bella," Emmett says, shrugging.
"That thing just looks like over-kill," Rosalie says. "I mean, the ones on the Food Network are little things." She holds her hands a few inches apart. "That thing's a monster."
"Emmett's just compensating for his miniscule little frozen penis," Jasper laughs as he works on raking the vampire ashes up from the backyard. Esme swears that they're not good for the roses.
"Hey, I'm not the one who refused to wear the leather pants last Halloween," Emmett yells from the deck, where he's admiring his torch.
"They were too tight," Jasper mumbles. "Who dresses up as Jim Morrison for Halloween ,anyway?"
"It was my turn to pick!" Emmett hollers. "I went along with your stupid idea the year before."
"The Prisoner is not stupid! It's an amazing allegory for the confusion of modern life and man's search for identity."
"Nobody knew who we were, Jasper. We were running around in blazers and little number badges. It was embarrassing."
"If we lived in England, people would have gotten it," Jasper mumbles, bagging up the last of the ashes.
"Can you guys shut up?" I hiss. Bella has stopped shaking, but her face is still buried in my chest. I nudge her head with my chin, lightly.
"Bella? Sweetie? Let's go see Thomas, OK?" Bella jerks sharply away from me and looks at me with horror.
'Oh my God! Thomas!" She turns to go into the house. "I forgot about him crying!" She starts to run up the stairs and I grab her hand.
"Bella, he's fine. I can hear his heartbeat. He's sleeping. I just think it'd be good for you to lay down with him for a while, OK?" She takes a deep breath and nods.
Thomas is sleeping away soundly, like I said, completely unaware of the vampire-on-vampire action we had going on for a while. Which would sound hot if it was like written on a DVD case or something; but , in this situation, not so much.
Bella lies down next to him and I prop myself up on the pillows on the other side of him. I stroke her hair gently.
"Everything's OK, Bella. I know that was scary, but it's over now," I murmur to her. She looks up at me shyly.
"Edward, about what I said earlier…" I am so stoked that I'm positive I know what she's going to say this time. It's such a rare experience for me with Bella. I can't decide whether to interrupt her and yell "I know. You LOVE me!" or let her say it so I can hear it come out of her mouth. And possibly record it on my iPhone. I think I have an app that does that.
I decide on the latter just in case I'm wrong. I mean, I don't want to make a fool of myself only to have her say that she'd decided that she'd rather watch "Coming to America" than "Double Indemnity."
"When I thought that woman was going to tear your head off, it made me realize how devastated I'd be and that I love you." I high-five myself internally and smile at her, as if it's this huge surprise. I lean over and give her a kiss, whispering, 'I love you too, Bella."
Big ole romantic scene, huh?
So, I guess things are going really smoothly and I have to screw things up.
It's just that Bella never changed clothes, and she's wearing this little sundress that she put on when we got back here and I'm staring down at her breasts and thinking about sex and, of course, I'm one Victorian mother-fucker, so I immediately think about marriage and stuff, because that's what we do. It's like a Victorian-Pavlovian response.
So then I open my big stupid vampire mouth and ask Bella if she's given any thought to my proposal. Again. As if we didn't just talk about this like a few days ago with her mom. Like I've put a "kick me" sign on my own back.
She sighs. Bad sign. "I haven't really given it any more thought since three days ago," she says, smiling sweetly at me.
Then she continues, "You understand that it doesn't have anything to do with you, right? My parents got divorced really young and I just don't have a lot of faith in the institution."
"I know, Bella, but if you think about it, I have like 110 years of experience of thinking marriage is this sacred institution and that if you love someone then you marry them. Is it fair to let your eighteen years of experience override my 110 years of experience?" You can see, gentle reader, that this is exactly where I went off the rails.
Her mouth twitches slightly. I can't tell if she's going to laugh at me or be upset. I'd like to stuff the words back into my mouth because I can't just pretend that her feelings don't matter just because I'm older than fossil fuels.
"I understand that it's important to you," she says, yawning. "I will give it some more thought, but I still think it's too soon." She curls down closer to Thomas and asks me sleepily, "Do you want to wait until we get married to have sex? Is that what's happening?"
"Would that convince you?" I ask, not really thinking about what I'm saying. I totally don't want to wait. But, apparently, I don't want to wait to think before I blurt shit out to her, either.
Her eyes pop back open. "I'm not sure. Do you think you could hold off?" Her eyes narrow at me and she gives me a sultry smile. I just stare. I have no words. She stretches her arm up to me and strokes her hand lightly across my chest.
"No," I blurt out and lunge down and kiss her. I'm pulling her up closer to me, trying not to disturb Thomas. Bella makes a little squeaky-breathy sound in her throat and my hands decide that they are not accountable for their actions or invested in acting like gentlemen and, before I think about the consequences, my hand is making this big stroke from her waist to her breast while the other one pulls on the strap of her dress so I can touch her bare shoulder.
She makes another, louder noise that sounds less squeaky and more moan-y. My hand decides it's going to live on her breast, perhaps forever.
You would think at this point that, with my luck, Thomas would wake up or the house would catch on fire. What actually happens is that I think, with the tiny percentage of my brain that isn't thinking about how to get Bella out of her clothes, about vampire hearing. More specifically, Bella's potential discomfort when she realizes that my family can hear every moan, zipper and thump, even from the third floor.
I think about not telling her about it. But then I start thinking about things that are romantic and things that are not.
Things that are romantic:
Bella's and my first time together
Roses
Being alone with each other
Spending time as a family
Jane Austen novels
Waiting for 100 years for my true love
And…
Things that are not romantic:
Emmett listening to us have our first time together
Dirty diapers
Listening to Alex Trebek because Carlisle is trying to give us some privacy and he's turned "Jeopardy" way up
Waking Thomas up
Proposing on the scoreboard at your favorite sporting event but still painting your entire upper body with your team's colors
Emmett giving Jasper a play-by play of Bella's and my first time together
And all of these things, except perhaps the scoreboard proposal, are likely to happen if I continue to play grabby hands with Bella right now.
So, with the biggest, most reluctant sigh in the world I pull away and whisper to Bella, "We have to stop."
The look she gives me makes me glad I got the crème brulee torch away from her. I shrug my shoulders and gesture to the floor of the bedroom.
"They can all hear us, huh?" she asks, running her fingers through her hair and pulling the strap of her dress back up.
"Yeah, sorry," I say, watching her with regret as she takes a deep breath and then gets up and pulls her pajamas out of a drawer.
"No, I appreciate your telling me. I really don't need Laurent knowing whether I'm a screamer or a moaner." The effect her words have on me is instantaneous and noticeable.
"I have to go, uh, take a walk," I get up, stiffly. (Yeah, I couldn't resist) "I'll be back in a bit."
I do the "I have a boner" walk of shame through the house and ignore my brothers' laughs. Alice is sitting at her laptop at the kitchen table and she holds out a piece of paper over her shoulder as I walk by.
"What's that?" I growl.
"Hotel reservations. Portland. You'll leave tomorrow. Come back a happier vampire."
I take the piece of paper and run out into the woods, thanking my sister for her gift and doing my best to think of Angela Lansbury's performance in "Bedknobs and Broomsticks."
I'm so worked up it almost fails.
a/n: The lovely and talented Betham beta'ed this, all things awkward belong to me. I think I got review replies to everyone who had PM enabled, my apologies if I missed you. The amazing TwiCarol made me this hilarious blinkie: http : / bit (dot) ly / lONlvF (remove my dots and spaces) Pay special attention to Edward's "Angela Lansbury" face and the office supplies. It's awesome! Thanks for reading! xoxo JuJu