By: nerac

Prompts: birthday, bendy straw, buttsex

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Happiest of birthday's, Nina! I hope your day is wonderful and that you enjoy this... :) ~ Caren

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Smiling to myself, I watched as my husband reached up to help straighten the tie of our son's tuxedo. He had been unsuccessfully trying to bat away his sister's hands, who argued that he was doing it incorrectly. I laughed, remembering the things that had inevitably brought Edward and I together, that had made all of us a family.

It had been my need to give my son everything that started it all. Add in that box full of bendy straws and a rather crass joke from Alice, that now, twenty some odd years later, we still got a good laugh out of whenever it was brought up, and there was no question about the path our lives had taken. We knew that if it hadn't been for those things, we may have never opened up to each other and found true happiness.

Ever since that bitch Esme had taken off on us, my son and I had been alone. In hindsight, I realized how much of a blessing in disguise it truly was for both of us. I had never really allowed myself to feel what I always knew was true. I had denied my own wants and needs and forced myself into a relationship I was never really comfortable with for the sake of appearances.

Women had never been my preference, but because of what I thought was necessary, I had made decisions that only hindered me from being, well... me. When Esme turned up pregnant just after we'd graduated high school, the two of us decided that we would make a go of it. Okay, well, our parents made that decision for us. Little did I know that six months after Alec was born she would bolt on us.

The one good thing that had come out of our coupling had been my son. He brought light into days that were dark, he kept my world from turning itself upside down and kept me grounded on days when I thought I might float away.

Though it had been tough at first, I'd done my best to make sure he never noticed her absence from our lives. To make certain that he never needed anything more than what I could give him. That was part of the reason why I had gone there that day, to the land of little people's play worlds. Alec's sixth birthday had been approaching and the only thing he'd asked for was that his party be held here where screaming kids could tunnel themselves through plastic mazes and race each other through rope jungles. All I could think when he'd made his request was, thank goodness for Elizabeth. My older sister. I knew then that she would be there to help, just as she'd always been there to help when I'd struggled with the hardships of being a single father, or when I just needed a night out to forget about how lonely I was without someone to share my life with.

Coming to terms with what I had denied for so long made me crave companionship, love, and damnit... sex. I felt like a predator fighting his way out of a cage; finally ready to release the 'hot bitch' side of Carlisle Cullen on the world... or at least a few cute men.

Walking through the front door that afternoon, I approached the counter; a tiny woman behind the cash register had been chattering excitedly with someone crouched on the floor. Clearing my throat, she turned her head and looked at me, a large smile on her face. "Hello, sir. How can I help you?" she'd asked.

Looking down, I read the name off of the tag pinned to her shirt. "Alice, I'm trying to schedule a birthday party for my son. Can you help me with that?"

"Oh no, but Edward can." She looked down and my eyes followed to see the man crouched on the floor.

My brow furrowed when I saw that he was meticulously separating a box of colored bendy straws. Moving my eyes from his hands, my breath caught in my throat as I looked further, seeing the most incredible ass and a head full of crazy hair, desperately needing to be cut. When he turned and his eyes met mine, vibrant green shot straight into me and traveled through my body, making me shiver. One side of his mouth curved up into a salacious smile and his eyebrow arched as he looked me over and I did the same, observing the angular slope of his jaw and the rest of his beautiful face.

Alice cleared her throat breaking us from the oglefest we both seemed to have been participating in, and both of our heads turned toward her. Her smile was back and it had a mischievous glow, as if she wanted us to know that we'd been caught. "This is the owner, Edward," she said. "And you are?" she drawled suggestively.

"Carlisle," I responded in her direction before holding my hand out for him to shake. "It's nice to meet you, Edward."

He moved his hand to meet mine, not realizing that he still had a bunch of bendy straws wrapped rather tightly in his grip. When he realized what I was looking at, he quickly dropped them on the counter in front of him. He wiped his hand on the back of his pants and then reached forward, grasping his hand around mine tightly, lingering for longer than had been truly necessary. Years later he admitted that the only reason for his preoccupation with that box of bendy straws was that he'd seen my approach and needed a distraction because he felt the unnecessary need to hide from me.

"Would you like to follow me?" he asked, reaching his hand up and pulling at his ear nervously. "We can go into my office and work out the details for your son's party."

I nodded, following him as he turned and headed toward the hallway to our right. He opened his office door, standing just off to the side with his hand on the knob, and he motioned with his head for me to enter. As I walked in, my right arm brushed against his stomach. Feeling of the smooth material of his button down shirt and the obviously toned muscles beneath had caused my heartbeat to race and my palms to sweat. Our eyes locked and I looked away quickly, trying not to get lost in the depths of green staring back at me.

Continuing inside the small office, I allowed my body to fall heavily into one of the chairs facing his desk, still trying desperately not to let him see what touching him had done to me.

Edward had rounded the desk and sat in his chair, reaching into the drawer on his right and pulling out a stack of papers which I assumed I would be filling out in order to get this party scheduled. "What's the date you're looking for?" he asked, looking down at the calendar in front of him.

"We were hoping for Saturday the 25th?"

While he traced his fingers along the dates of the calendar until he hit the Saturday in question, my mind drifted for a moment to what those long, beautiful fingers would look like wrapped around certain parts of my body. How they would feel gliding across my skin, touching me. I tried, unsuccessfully, to hold in the groan from those thoughts that had flooded my brain, but was unable to stop myself from the embarrassment as it escaped from my lips audibly. Edward's eyes shot to mine and he smiled in earnest, his tongue coming out to trace along his lower lip before he spoke.

"That date is perfect, Carlisle. I just need you to fill out these forms and we'll need a deposit for the party room."

He handed me the stack of forms and stood from his chair.

"I'll be just outside, I need to take care of something. If you have any questions, I can answer them when I come back." I nodded and picked up the pen lying on his desk to begin filling out the necessary forms.

Concentration had been almost non-existent as I ran through the forms, thinking more about whether I could ask him for a date and less about what kind of frosting would be better for the cake they would provide. Mmm, frosting... I wonder if he would let me do a taste test... off of his chest. Thoughts of whether or not I had been imagining the way he looked at me or if it had been wishful thinking that the feelings I'd felt were mutual circled in my head. Would it have been too forward for me to ask him if he was attracted to me too? What would I say if he wasn't and then had to come back here and face him again... with my son in tow? There were so many possibilities and it seemed that I'd managed to talk myself out of every one of them as quickly as they'd come into my head.

As I finished the last of the documents, picking them up and tapping them against the desk to straighten the pile, I looked around and waited. After a few minutes, Edward still had not returned, so I stood up and went to the door, looking left and then right only to catch he and Alice whispering near the front counter. I had been unable to hear anything until Alice grinned, slapping Edward's shoulder and said more than a little loudly, "You and him are so gonna have buttsex!" She giggled and covered her mouth with her hand.

My gasp of surprise had alerted them both to my eavesdropping, causing their heads to turn in my direction, and my mouth hung open as I stared. Edward glared at the tiny girl next to him and cleared his throat, walking in my direction. He called over his shoulder, "Please excuse my sister, she still hasn't learned how to behave in public!" He finished his sentence exasperatedly and watched the floor as he continued toward me. "Are you all finished?"

"Ye- yes, um, I think so," I stuttered nervously, wondering, were they talking about me?

His shoulders had slumped forward in defeat as he walked into his office. I turned to follow behind him, unconsciously reaching up to run my fingers through my blond hair to settle the nervous twirl of my stomach.

"I'm really sorry about that," he commented, anger and embarrassment still evident in his voice as he reached down to grab the stack of papers that I'd left at his desk. He looked through each one before he finally raised his eyes to mine. "These look okay; did you... have any questions?"

Nows your chance... I'd thought. Just do it.

"Would you like to, um... go out some time?" I blurted, slapping my hand over my mouth in shock at what I'd done.

His otherwise tense demeanor softened and he audibly sighed in relief as his face took on that adorable crooked smile once again as he answered. "I'd love to, Carlisle."

That afternoon had been all she wrote, it had opened the door to happiness for all of us. From that first date until today, as we sat next to each other and watched as our only son married the woman of his dreams. We were very much still the lovestruck men who could never get enough of each other and I knew we would remain that way until our last days.