AN: So. Ahem. This is the heavily edited (T) version of this chapter, and I'm not entirely happy with it. Honestly, I worked on it as much as I'm willing to and we'll all just have to live with its flaws together (kumbaya)…Thank you again so much to the readers and writers that make this fun and communal—y'all are awesome.

*****

The moment lengthened and grew between us, pushing the sweetness in to the past, and I decided it was time for bed.

"The Hunter, huh," I said softly, and stood up. "Can we take this inside, oh legendary wolf one?"

He didn't move for a second, and I worried that my joke hadn't told him what I'd intended—that I accepted what he'd said--and instead felt like a dismissal. I reached to touch him but in that split second he stood and scooped me in his arms in one fluid movement. I laughed and his massive chest bumped along in jagged breaths as he joined me, ducking under the doorway and stomping back to our little nest on the floor. We landed softly, his agile body bending around me, and his arms supporting my weight until the last second. Suddenly, we were alone, lying together in the candlelight. My laugh caught in my throat as I saw his face; his black eyes glistened warmly, and his lips were slightly parted, but a serious undertone frosted his expression. "You know," he whispered after a brief pause, "in some cultures we'd be married now."

"What do you mean?" I thought again about being distracted from important things, but curiosity prevented me from returning to the previous discussion.

"I carried you across the threshold of my family home," he said. His eyes watched me; the emotion behind them was unfamiliar, indiscernible. We breathed in tandem for a moment.

"If you think half proposing to me is going to make me forget that you were an idiot earlier," I whispered back, a smile on my lips, "you are only half right." I moved a hand to his face; I cradled his jaw, sweeping my thumb across his cheek. A shy smile appeared there.

"It was worth a try, anyway." He grinned openly now, but still refrained from anything more intimate, instead just allowing the gentle brush of my thumb on his hot cheek. Something kept his own hands at bay. "There are other steps, of course."

"To making me forget that you're an idiot?" This time we both laughed a little bit, and when I withdrew my hand I could swear I saw a tiny frown form on his broad mouth before he hid it again.

"No…to the marriage ceremony," he whispered. We were both very still.

"Like what?" I couldn't help myself. I found I was holding my breath while I waited for his answer.

"Consummation of the union," he whispered. His long lashes dipped and skittered across his cheeks as he took in my racing pulse and frozen chest. "And falling in love, but that's supposed to happen before you even get to the door."

"This is sounding dangerous Jake." The candlelight cast his shoulders in deep copper, the smooth scars shining, the long shadows on the walls conspiring to highlight his beauty. I wanted to touch his face again, search the hollows there, and somehow keep things light between us, but at the same time I felt hypnotized by the tension in his eyes. "I'm definitely in love with you, and you definitely carried me over here." That unfamiliar look gleamed behind his eyes again when I said I was in love with him, but he hurried past it.

"Exactly," he said, and his shy smile came back, stealing across his mouth before it reached his eyes. "Now you're on to my plan, Bells."

"Jacob Black, the man with the plan," I whispered, teasing. I realized that his hand had breached the divide between us, slipping towards me across the blanket. I reached out and laid mine on top of it before I continued, but all the teasing was gone from my voice. "What kind of plan could that be, Jake?"

"Bells…" He breathed, and then, as swiftly as he'd scooped me from the porch, he was right next to me, his arms coiling around my body and bringing my face inches from his own. "I am sorry I haven't gotten control of myself yet." I felt the heat radiating from him on my face like sunlight. "I lose it when I get too scared that something—anything—might take you away from me again, even if that something is just you or me. Being dumb. Being human. But I'm trying—I'm trying to be with you, Bells. I'm trying to be good at being human again."

"I know," I whispered, then paused, soaking in his words, his heat, his scent. My eyes closed, overwhelmed; I hadn't felt this way…since I was a child, standing in the woods, knowing the truth didn't matter. Deciding, but not knowing, to pursue something that would change my life forever—and it had lead me here, to this moment. Totally unforeseen, a different love than the one I sought then…a different person, and myself, different also…but with that same familiar tenderness from so long ago. I opened my eyes and looked at him. "I'm in love with you," I told him again, and I saw the unfamiliar mist in his eyes and knew, suddenly, that we were feeling the same thing. The mystery in him was the same as mine.

"Please let me touch you," he said in the softest voice, and as he did his hands began to move over mine, along my arms, finally spreading across my back like wings. I slid my body closer to his, finding his mouth with mine—the lingering taste of salt and the smells in his hair, dirt, blood, and the rich, sickly sweet smoke from the fires—surrounded me, pulling my mind through rich, terrifying memories and making my heart pound. His long forearms ran parallel to my spine, pulling me closer and closer; I tried to hitch my left leg over his and found he was too big, and settled instead for wedging it in between his. My hands began to run over his bare shoulders and chest, dwelling in the ridges between his muscles, the gaps where his bones met, the skin tantalizingly soft beneath my palms. The heat from his body was intoxicating. Very slowly, very gently, Jacob moved his strong hands down my body, sliding along my shirt and shorts until they met the skin on the backs of my thighs, and then he rolled over, pulling me on top of him. I laughed, nervously, and used my arms to push myself into a sitting position. His breaths came deep and slow as I looked down at him.

He was twenty three now; he looked twenty three, underneath the scars and the years of lean living on his face. His pensive expression didn't match the surety of his strong body, the way his hands felt when they lightly rested on my stomach, his hot fingertips stirring the violent waves dormant in my body from last night. He was heart breaking; everything that had hurt him was plain on his body before me. He was so starkly beautiful I felt my eyes water, and when that happened, the anxiety in his eyes changed to outright fear. In one of his startlingly fast movements he sat up and our faces were inches apart.

"Bells, don't be sad—we don't have to do anything, we can just sleep—"

"No, its not that," I said, my own voice so deep I didn't recognize it. "Jacob, it's hard to look at you, and see how much you've suffered, it's all over your body…" One of his hands wrapped around my waist, supporting me, as the other one stroked my cheek. His eyes moved rapidly over my face, taking in my words and the smell of my sadness absorbed by his delicate nose. His hand was shaking. "I want you," I said. "And I want you to be happy about it. I can see you—underneath everything that's happened, underneath these scars, I can see you—"

And his mouth was on mine.

*****

Push your breath in to me, while I rest here, my weight on my knees, all these goosebumps on my chest, my shoulder is bare—don't put your teeth there, not yet. Push your breath in to me, show me how your hands are really wings, the breadth and width of them, we will fly away from ourselves, strapped and bound by these wings, your hands, as they search me for twins of you—I don't have them, your scars, I don't have the same ones, my skin is so untouched and lonely and unused, please help change that. Let me show you where I love you—there is a path I travel on your body, long low mountains where rapids cut across as smooth blank scars, erasing the memories your skin held there, but here again I find the path, smooth until a deep valley leads me back to the forest, follow the valley down, all of your smooth skin interrupted by these fine brittle trees, and then I see you there, waiting. Your people were fisherman, warriors, battling the sea. I see you there, waiting, and we will wade across this infinite water together, I carry some of the sea inside of me, it will know us, and we will come to no harm. Hold my hand. Push your breath inside of me.

*****

We were quiet for a long time, feeling our bodies stick together in places, feeling raw, reassembled, tracking visions in the candlelight. Jacob's back was against the wall, his arms holding me tight to him as I sat, curled against his chest. I listened to his heart, felt him inhale and exhale rapidly; the scent of our evening was everywhere. He only spoke when his hand lightly ran over the raised flesh on my back, and when he did, the horror in his tone was evident even before he saw my bitten shoulder. I looked up at him, unabashed.

"Bells…"

"Don't," I said again. I kissed his chin, slid my hands up to hold either side of his face, his cheekbones under my thumbs as my fingers ran in his hair. "Don't try to tell me this wasn't perfect, it'll just make you a liar, Jake." I smiled into his mouth, and felt him give a little, his hands careful on my body. He sighed heavily, knowing the battle was already lost.

"It was just as advertised, Bells…just two people who don't know what they're doing, trying to love each other." Not all of the fear was gone from him, but he'd been happy until he'd seen the consequences written on my body. I moved my thumbs higher, stroked the line of his brow out to his temples, saw his eyes close. I slid one hand behind his head and pulled his mouth down towards mine.

"I don't think I'm ever going to feel whole again," I whispered, and then kissed him. I moved my lips across his jaw line, teasing his throat, his ear, and felt him begin to respond in spite of himself.
"What do you mean, Bells?" His tone was worried, and I could tell that he was prepared to put a stop to everything, what was happening, how his body betrayed him, even if he felt just like I did.

"I mean, I can't do this with you every minute of every day…I can't have you like this all the time…and whenever we're apart, I'm going to miss it." He froze momentarily, and then I could tell that I'd finally found them. The right words. Finally. It was almost as if I'd put the fire out, as if I'd found something that could complete him too…just the idea, I supposed. Just the idea of that kind of love could make life worth it.

Then it began again, the sliding skin between us full of the smell of salt, dreams….his long hair draped over my face as he looked at me and we were both dreaming together, the ocean large before our staring eyes, everything entangled on this journey across our waking dream, slow and fast and raw and smooth and everything, everything, everything.