The names are not mine, the rest - is.
Magnetization Compensation
My heart fell out of me and rolled along the floor to where my best friends were falling in love. A lust I could only feel, not have, not hold.
Now, as we sit beneath the stars, his shiny silver car saving us - saving me - from the cold, I try to fight the sadness.
I should just be happy, but I feel the looming dread of something breaking what we're trying to build, and while he's here, with me, fighting what's against us, I can think of nothing else but physically connecting him to me. Because I can't help but think of him leaving. Boring class after boring class come tomorrow when all I want is more of him, all of him.
"Why did you leave?" Edward said barely two words to me when he abruptly got up and left my room not thirty minutes ago. I followed, the others lost in their own party, stoned out of their minds. The effects have worn off for me and I suspect, Edward too.
"The room began to seem smaller...louder. Louder still." He looks down at my chest.
"Wh-..." Edward is looking at my boobs. Again.
"Your heart beats, calling to me. Your heart beats, pumping you to life and I crave it. I want you, Bella. Make no mistake. But it felt too much. You, are too much for me to take sometimes."
"What are you saying?" He wants out? This is too much trouble? No. I refuse it. There is hope left somewhere, there must be.
"I'm saying I wish I had found you eighty years ago. I'm saying I want to find you in a hundred. I'm saying, I have absolutely no precedent for this."
"For being with a human?"
"You're not the first." A knife. Stabbing at my gut as I think of him with other girls, humans - they can give him what I can't. Other vampires, sexy, confident, and unbridled - they can give him everything. "But you are perfect."
I swallow down nothing, my throat dry from the stabbing, and the silence as his words hung themselves dead between us, and then again as they were brought back to life. "Still, you are maddening. And I am crazed."
"What do you know, Edward; about what we are?" And why we can't just be like any other would be lovers.
"I know you affect my strength. I get stronger as you get weaker."
"Is that it? No reasons. No solutions. At all."
"My father has a friend, Alistair. He's an odd creature. But he knows things. He's very old, informed. Despite his disbelief, he thinks it's all some sort of trick. A trick of the mind or, perhaps even spiritual."
"Spiritual? Like, magic and legends, stuff like that?"
"What do you know about it?" He asks, his serious face in play.
"I..." Don't want to tell him. "Have a friend. He..." Hates me now. Maybe loved me once. "His family has legends. They talk about the spiritual world and what it all means. It's not about God and... It's more...earthy. Like the elements. It's all chemistry really. They believe that a person, or land, reacts to its markers. So maybe that's all it is. Chemistry."
"Chemistry." He repeats.
"What if there was a way to change my chemistry? Or yours."
"How?" He asks. As if I have the answers.
Blood.
The thoughts enter my mind without warning. Images of me drinking his blood, my hand clasped around his wrist as he feeds me. The pictures bury my sadness and bring about something much worse. The hope I was looking for.
"I don't know." I try to calm down. I try to act...normal. Whatever that is on a day when I just got high in order to touch my vampire boyfriend. I don't want to think of things like that. I don't want to let myself dream up nightmarish ways for us to survive this.
"What aren't you saying, Bella?"
"I want to ask you about something but I don't know if it's...silly." I try to change the subject.
"Okay." He waits, never moving, just staring at me, into me, like I'm the only thing in this world. It's encompassing, scary, and makes my heart ache, but like, in the best kind of way.
"Are we...are you and I... Since we...it's been so crazy. You were gonna leave, Edward. And then you, you're a vampire. I'm not, so...what would you say this is exactly?"
"Bella," He chuckles. Actually chuckles. Right in front of my face. And I'm embarrassed. Red faced. Ready to be eaten up by the whole of the town as it breaks open and swallows me up. "Are you asking me if you are my girlfriend?"
"Maybe..." I am suddenly five years old, asking for a second piece of candy.
"Let's be clear on something." He's no longer still, a still vampire sitting in the dark. He's a boy. A sexy smelling vampire boy, hovering over me, face to face, "I want you to be mine. Nobody elses. Mine. Whether I can press my lips to yours or not. Whether I can hold you, as we dance toe to toe. Your breath is my warmth, your words are my story." He leans back, his head resting on the seat, eyes closed. "If you want."
He is crazed. And I am aroused.
"I want." I tell him.
"Good." He says.
-o-
I relieved Bella with the knowledge of my further attempts at a solution. One which would bring her skin to mine on a more permanent basis. I hold out no hope for any real answers, but I have to try. For both of us.
Getting to touch her today took a new kind of strength, one I didn't know I possessed. Cradling that familiarity I feel when I see her, realising it physically as something for me to hold, her rosy skin, pumped full of sweet-scented blood, was like no other I have felt. I held her face in my hands for as long as I possibly could. And as the effects wore off, and the foggy haze lifted, I awoke feeling reinforced; I was powerful. She makes me powerful, injecting me with her potential. Smoking the drugs only stopped me from focusing on the energy she is simply made of, from ripping her soul out with my bare hands and killing her. She is human, and smelling Bella's blood, catching her scent, is like a drug in itself. I am addicted to it, even as it drenches my tongue, and burns my throat, burning me from the inside out, I rage, ravenous for it.
I need to feed, to douse the ever present need for blood as much - or little, as the case may be - as possible when I am near her. Attempting such restraint is dangerous and I should hunt tonight, though no mountain lion or lowly deer could satisfy me after being so close to such a delicacy as Bella.
"Edward." Esme greets me as I enter the study. "Where are your siblings?"
"Canoodling with humans."
"Ah, yes. I have been informed more might be joining us soon. How is Jasper handling such a thing?"
"I wouldn't know." But I should. He feels everything, often suffering in silence as the world attempts to drown him in their emotions. Bringing himself and Alice so close to another human at this point might not be their best idea yet. "You seem incredibly unruffled about the idea of them trying again." After last time, I didn't think she would be so calm and carefree about it.
"Edward, natural life is long enough. Life for us is, eternity."
"Even still..." I offer. As if existing forever is an excuse to change everyone they meet.
"What does Bella think?" Of becoming a vampire?
"I don't think she realises it's even an option. Or could be."
"Isn't it?" She pushes.
"No." I walk away from her, my temper bubbling. The piano sits alone by the window waiting for my anger, or the sadness it's used to. But I won't give in. Not while Esme lingers. Not when I don't deserve it's comfort.
"You've thought about it."
"Stop." Every time she pulls at me, I am reminded how well she knows me. This life, as we so easily call it. Her children.
"It's okay to think about it, Edward. It's a natural progression for us. This selection..."
"Natural! There is nothing natural about this. There is nothing natural about the dead heart that sits rotting inside of me. There is nothing natural about living this long, in sadness, in silence. In hopeless wonder. In despair. There would be nothing natural or easy about taking her life."
My biological mother, Elizabeth, died before me. That wasn't natural either, she was taken by disease, and I should have followed her. Now Esme, my mother for all intents and purposes, moves towards me and places her hand on my back, attempting to still me. "Sit with me."
I sit at the piano with her, the rage rolling through my shoulders. I do not deserve a love. This one I feel bursting out of my chest. It's not right for me, a monster, to be capable of such human things.
"You're angry. But you're also sad."
"Stop it. I won't feel worthy of this." I grit my teeth in agony.
"Edward, you didn't ask for this. I love your father, but he chose this for you. You didn't inject yourself with venom or beg to be changed. You were dying. You were dying and he saw something... Whether or not you like it, he saved you."
I grip the insides of myself, pulling at all that's left of my today. I won't show her this. I won't throw this in her face.
"I am grateful. I am. I am not selfless or pure enough to regret choosing to go on. But it doesn't mean I embrace it either. And it doesn't mean I should take advantage of all that we are."
"All that you are, is my son. And you are drowning in this life you've chosen. Bella is special. She is your reason."
"But what if I destroy her in the process?"
"Only by loving her."
"How can I even contemplate this path for her?" I can't. Though I have. Multiple times, and I won't do it.
"It may be your only choice if you want to keep that love alive."
"What do you know about my love? I don't even know if it's real."
"Yes you do. And you should tell her." What is this love really, if I take away her life? I would be no man if I shackle her to this mess with no way out. I may be a monster, but a man does reside somewhere within me.
"Not if this is hopeless. Not if there isn't a way for us." Professing my love at this point, would only be selfish.
"I just showed you one." My mother's touch is like sleep; I miss it. But I have her comfort to keep me going.
-o-
Rose left with Emmett. Nettie is fast asleep, her head at the foot of the bed. She's still dressed in her clothes from today. I decided not to wake her, but I pulled her boots off and covered her with a spare blanket from the sets that I brought from home with me. Even in sleep, she looks happy, like she continues dancing through to her dreams. If she had it her way, she probably wouldn't sleep. Edward doesn't sleep. I wonder what he's doing right now, if he found something to help us. I pull the comic out of my pocket, crumpled and worn, I smooth out the section with the vampire's face. It's almost funny. This life I've stumbled upon. Or it would be, if it didn't feel so tragic. So full of desperation.
I am stunned by thoughts of Edward taking a life. Hunting girls and taking them off into the woods, kicking and screaming.
I went into the woods with him willingly. For months I willed him to hunt me, like an animal, craving his acknowledgment from just inches away.
Now I have it. Now I'm in it. The chase. Is it only a matter of time before one way or another, the fact that's he's a vampire and I'm not ends what we want so badly?
In some ways, I feel like I loved him before he even spoke to me.
I made up a world in my head of stories and ways in which we would like, hang out, and with each new story, he would fall madly in love with my quick wit, and my effortless charm. Instead it took me an eon to finally do it, pluck up the courage. And now we are nothing like what I imagined.
In some ways we're better, the way he makes me feel, I never imagined that.
But I know it's really just a delusion, we aren't better. How could we be?
All I know is how I feel when he's near. Protected. Excited.
All I know is how I feel when he looks at me. Beautiful. He desires me.
He wants to eat me. Drink my blood. That's all.
I tell myself we could fall in love. I tell myself it would be forever.
But I can't give him what he craves. Not unless...we change our chemistry.
I take out a picture book full of colours, abstract paintings I hope to be even half as good at creating myself one day. I try to get lost in my dreams, the ones I came here for, except every page is covered in blood. Reds. Pinks. Purples. Blue blood. My blood. I trace the thought with my fingers and place my other hand over my heart. He hears this, and the changes occurring when he's near, when he makes me laugh, or makes me nervous. He wants this.
Could I give it up to be with him forever?
I throw the book on the floor, this is ridiculous, we don't even know each other, not really.
Infatuation. That's all it is.
His deep, honey-coloured eyes, the constant surprise of something new as I fall in love with him a little more each time I look into them. The way he says my name, or how he walks, like he invented walking and only he can move in such a way. His messy yet perfect hair with a smattering of red to match my cheeks. He's beautiful.
Could I last tomorrow without him?
If I never saw him again, would I miss him?
Would time stop until I got over him?
I feel like I'm choking. The thought of him not existing to me is hurtful, stinging pain in my head hurtful, heavy weights on my chest hurtful.
I pick up my phone, I have to talk to him. See him. But I realise, I don't have his phone number. I look at my purse, a way to get to his house, but I was unconscious the last time I went there and confused on the way back.
Rose. Rose will know.
I call Rose but she doesn't pick up. I call three more times until I give up.
The meadow. He said he goes there sometimes to get away. Maybe if I go there, he will come. But how will he know I'm there?
Why do I feel like I'm never going to see him again? Every time he leaves, I wonder if it's the last time.
I sigh, feeling deflated.
I feel like maybe I've gone mad. I feel like maybe I'm this close to giving in and begging him to make me his forever.
I feel like, like I'm falling in love.
AN:
The Boy tries to get into my crazy brain when he pre-reads. He wants clues and stuff. I tell him, good luck and then give him kisses instead!
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