Chapter Five – Punctuality

Title: Through the Window Came the Wind

Author : lifelesslyndsey

Disclaimer: It might not mah sandbox, but I'm building castles. But I'm not profiting from them.

Pairing: SamxBella

Rating: NC-17

Warning: language, and adult concepts in probably graphic citrusy detail.

Summary: He fought to do what was expected of him and she did the opposite. If love was less about finding that perfect someone, and more about finding that someone who makes you perfect, you never know who you might find. Love might bring out the best in us, but first, it brings out the worst.

"Early birds gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."-

Steven Wright

I'd just finished marching the girls back to my mothers house when Charlie pulled in with the cruiser. "Come back tomorrow if you'd like and I'll take you to see Jake."

"Tha-" she paused mid-word, shoulders falling. "I can't, my truck is still broken. Thanks for the offer, I guess."

"I can pick you up around three-thirty, if you'd like. I have to go head up to the Whitman place in the morning and than I have to pick the girls up from school and drop them off at the baby sitters. I gotta warn you though, Billy will be there."

She bit into her lip, staring past my shoulder in thought. "Do you think I should talk to him? I just...I feel like...I owe it to him. I mean...I don't know. I don't know what I mean."

It was the first adult thing I'd heard come out of her shitty little mouth, and she sounded so confused. "You don't owe any one anything, and I don't know how much good it will do, but I think that you have every right to defend yourself."

"Yeah," she murmured. "Yeah. Um. Thanks, Sam. For picking me up and...and not lying to me. About everything. I...I won't tell any one."

I watched her leave, wondering for all the world what on earth she was thinking.

~000~

Any memory of her somber apology the night prior was washed away in the light of the day. Carla Altera called Billy to tell him Quil must have been coming down with whatever Jacob had, because he was burning up and couldn't get out of bed for all the pain he was in. I left the worst of the news-breaking to Billy, who had a way with handling women. Quil's mom wouldn't be the first to hear the news that her son was a wererwolf, but we could only hope that she'd be the last.

With his fever already at one-hundred and four, I was lucky to get him to Jake's without him phasing in my truck. I packed up the work-site and shut down the Whitman house early, losing an entire days worth of work. I'd need at least two wolves to baby sit Quill, and with Embry in school, Jake on lock-down himself, it only left me Jared and Paul, with me running patrols after taking Red home. With orders for them to call me should any problems arise, I barely made it to pick up my sisters in time.

I should have known by the time I pulled up to the Swan house that I was in no mood to deal with Red's shit. But my skin itched and I knew that I needed to see her. The dependency grated on me, leaving me an even more irritable mess. I was tired, and sore, and sweaty. If doing second-story dry-walling hadn't been enough to wear me out, hauling a two-hundred pound angry, sweating, sick teenager across the rez hadn't helped matters.

"You're late," she said, in way of greeting, yanking open my truck door to scowl ferociously at me without even the benefit of a window between us. "You said three-thirty."

"Yeah, I did," I replied, waiting for her to get in. "Some shit came up. I would have called but I don't have your number." But I wanted it, and wasn't that a bitch?

She shut my door to hard, and ignored my several requests to put her damn seat belt on till I reached across her and strapped her in myself like a recalcitrant three year old. "Woah," she reeled back, putting as much distance, very little, between us as she could in the cab. "You stink."

"The smell of hard days work," I bit out, fingers clenching on the wheel as I pulled out of her driveway. Rain was already beginning to splatter against the windshield before I even hit the pathetic strip of highway between Forks and La Push. "Whats your excuse? When's the last time you ran a fucking brush through your hair?" It was, perhaps, a little more mean than intended, but if the girl could dish it out...

Ignoring me, as always, she continued as if I never spoke. "So you were an hour late and you didn't even manage to shower," she countered with a look that was anything but pleasant. "What the hell were you doing all day?"

"A hell of a lot more then you did, I'm sure," I snapped. "Beside my usual morning patrols of La Push and Forks, I drove all the way to Port Angela's to work on the Whitman house, where I hauled twelve fifty-pound sheets of drywall and a fucking bath-tub up a flight of stairs, built and wired the walling for a second story master bathroom. Then I drove all the way back to Forks, carted a two-hundred pound hostile teenager across La-Push and into Billy Blacks very small third bedroom while doing my best to keep him calm and from phasing. Once I got Quill settled, I wrangled twin six year from school to home, a feat which sounds easy but is anything but. Then, on top of that, when I wanted nothing but a shower, food and a nap, I drove all the way to La Push to pick up the most ungrateful person I have ever met outside of my father, but fuck me if you're not challenging his record."

It wasn't until she laid her hand on my arm, palm cool against the bend of my elbow, that I realized I was shaking, the barest of vibrations beneath my skin. "I'm sorry, I mean...yeah. Sorry. Do you, um. Do you want to take me home? We can do this another time. Billy is letting Jake talk to me on the phone now, so I mean...I could just call him. Really."

"No," I said, sighing. She looked a little bit scared and I didn't a care for it. "It's fine."

"Jake could come to your house, maybe?" She offered, surprisingly timid. "You could clean up and nap. We can be quiet. You shouldn't have to baby sit me anyway but you'd be there just in case."

"Yeah. Yeah, that would work," I agreed, feeling a sudden sense of calm and belonging that had everything to do with her hand still curled over my bicep. I wondered how much of what she was offering was sincerely meant, and what was urged by the imprint. Then I wondered if there was a difference. "But you can't get him all worked up, alright? So just...safe happy topics. He's doing a hell of a lot better than he was, but don't talk about the Cullens."

She flinched at the name, like I knew she would, but nodded anyway before pulling her arm back to herself. "I didn't plan on it."

~000~

"Jake just left," she informed me as I stepped out of the bathroom, toweling off my hair. "He um...he said it was his turn to sit with Quil?"

Glancing at the clock, I confirmed this with a nod, letting the towel fall over my bare shoulders. "We do it in rotation, but I'll have to take him out tomorrow."

"Out?" She asked, noticeably calmer after Jake's visit. She looked no less tired then before, but the fight seemed to have gone out of her, if however temporarily. I wasn't so naive to think that all it took to calm the beast was a visit from Jacob, no matter how cute the kid was.

"To the woods," I explained, dropping onto the bar stool across from her. "His temp is high enough that we can probably force him to phase. It's a lot easier after the first time phasing."

She stared out the little window over my bathroom counter. "Is it really painful? I...Jake wouldn't say."

"Jacob grew seven inches in two months," I said reasonably. "It's extremely painful, before you phase. Between the fever and the growing-pains, well...just believe me when I say it hurts. Jacob had the worst of all of us, save for maybe me."

"Why was his so bad?" She asked, her face morphing with concern. She looked better for it, softer even; considerably less frigid, anyway.

"He took a long time to phase, longer than any of us. We couldn't force it with him, he just isn't the type to get angry. He was mostly worried," I elaborated. "Mostly about you, and his...feelings...for you, they kept him too happy, too determined. It slowed the process."

"That's how you get them to phase? You make them mad?" She asked, and her interest warmed me. I wanted her interested. I wanted her to be part of the pack, not an outsider like so much of the rest of the world. She was the first imprint, if there would be any more, and she was my mate. She might have been a lot of things, but first and foremost to the Pack, she was an Alphas mate. To a wolf, that meant something, even if she never knew.

"We run off our emotions," I confirmed. "We need to be angry to phase, or at least focused on what makes us angry. Generally just thinking about vampires can do it, especially accompanied with the scent. Over time you learn to control it, learn to focus and channel the anger. Quil...is a fairly affable guy. It won't be easy, but his fever is high enough that we should be able to push him into it physically, if necessary."

"You're going to attack him?"

Bluntly, I said, "yes. A physical attack will provoke a need to defend. Once we get him to phase, he'll calm down, and we can teach him how to phase back. From there it can't really get any worse." It never really got any better either, but hey, you had to find that silver lining.

There was a pause, where nothing was said. She stared at the water-stain ring on my counter top, tracing her finger tip around it. "What...why was your change the worst?"

TBC