"You know, this really doesn't seem fair."
Felix had shoved past Prosper, who had his eyes closed and his head back and was unbothered by his assigned spot in the backseat of the car, to lean on the center console. Whether it was childishness or because he sensed an unbalanced dynamic between me and Alec, Felix couldn't let go of the fact that his large body was forced to squeeze into the back of Corin's Tesla.
The larger man was aghast when I'd called shotgun and I was even more surprised when he begrudgingly, but willingly followed the classic claim of the passenger seat. Technically, he was supposed to be the one dropping us off, but he'd rather argue with me than with Alec, who had slyly slipped into the driver's seat behind Felix's back. To add to Felix's disappointment, I hadn't engaged in his banter as enthusiastically as he expected for much of the ride.
Alec's eyes stared intensely at the road ahead, ignoring yet another speed limit sign on the empty road. As aware as he was of his actions, there was more than the road flashing through his mind.
Prosper commenting from the back, his tone uncharacteristically haughty and the vocal equivalent of an eye roll, "would you cut it out? I think we've had quite enough of your antics."
"Saffiya loves my antics, don't you honey bun." He ruffled my hair and even though he now had my full attention, I thought that responding to it would only encourage him. But he knew my general distaste for pointless nicknames, and when he saw a button, he just had to push it until something cool happened.
"What did you call me?"
"Your new nickname!"
I leaned my elbow back on the window, trying to resign from the conversation. "You guys already gave me a nickname."
Felix threw his head back in protest. "But Demetri got to pick that one! I want my own."
"No."
"You let Caius have one!"
He was ridiculous. "I don't think I 'let' Caius do anything."
Prosper scoffed, opening his eyes and joining the conversation. "Caius doesn't have a nickname for her."
"Does too."
"What is it then?"
"Human." Alec spoke up, casting a glance at us. Noticing I was slightly miffed by his contribution, he added, "Jane uses it as well."
I frowned, "That's not—"
I was interrupted and I cast a glare towards the betrayer. Prosper just smiled back at me. "Aro calls her 'dear one'."
Felix teetered on the suggestion. "He only uses that on kids — like the twins."
"I am several hundreds of years older than you." Alec pointed out, no longer as entertained now that he was a side target.
"I think it still counts," Prosper declared. "For Saffiya, I mean."
"See! Even Aro has one." His voice jumped up, the pitch similar to that of a child bragging on a playground or tattle-telling on their playmates. "And Alec has like, five."
Before I could turn around to contest this, because I was sure that if Alec had a nickname for me, I would know, Alec's hand left the wheel and shoved against Felix's chest with the roughness of two boys play wrestling. Felix fell from the center console and landed on the seat with a melodramatic gasp and a cheeky grin on his face.
"You almost crushed my Chopards!"
Prosper delivered a quality parental scolding, "maybe you shouldn't put a pair of thousand dollar sunglasses in your back pocket."
"They're four hundred thousand, I'll have you know." As Felix continued to whine, adding something about pocket sunglasses being an 'in' fashion, my head turned to see Alec's hand return to the wheel. We made eye contact just long enough for the recovering Felix to see all the ammo he needed for the rest of the ride. However, as our car joined a sudden onslaught of other, less impressive vehicles into the train station, I cut him off before he could think of new material.
"No nicknames." I warned him.
"What if it's really good."
"Felix!"
"But sweetums." He whined, not missing the glares both Alec and I sent him through the rearview mirror.
I faked a gag. "Gross."
"Hotstuff." I rolled my eyes. "Shortcake."
I turned my back on him, trying to ignore his voice throwing out random, uncreative, and inappropriate nicknames. Unfortunately, that's not how cars work. So, by the time he got to, "Babydoll" and Alec nearly bumped into the car in front of us because he was so busy shooting death glares in the rearview mirror, I decided to put an end to the shenanigans the only way I knew how.
Flipping around in the seat, I pointed a very unthreatening finger at him. "When I'm a newborn, the first thing I'm gonna do is come after you. Winner picks nickname."
"Challenge accepted!" His eyes flicked over to Alec, who was navigating through the other humans arriving at the station but was twisting his knuckles on the steering wheel. "Although I think the first thing you're gonna DO —"
Prosper stepped in, throwing a sharp jab of his elbow into Felix's side and cutting the man off.
"Damn, what was that for —"
Prosper cut him off again, lowering his voice so that the only word I could make out was, "Jane." Felix frowned, crossing his arms and throwing himself back in his seat. I assumed that Prosper had reminded him that he may be dropping one twin off in public where he was unable to fully retaliate, but that the other would hardly need to hear the whole story from her twin before she reacted accordingly.
Alec pulled over to the curb and set the car to rest. Felix and Prosper wasted no time in climbing out of the car, Felix throwing on his sunglasses as he did so. I went to open my door, but Alec's hand reached over to encompass mine. His thumb slowly traced my palm before he lifted my hand to his lips, placing a light kiss to my knuckles. His eyes closed, cherishing the fact that I wasn't pulling away.
"You asked for time and I have not respected it."
My eyebrows lifted in surprise as he took advantage of the short moment we were alone in the most sincere way possible. I opened my mouth, ready to offer him a way out, because I had asked for time to figure out my own emotions and I did need it. But so far, time apart hadn't made anything any clearer and after his last mission, I'd been away from him enough.
"Saffiya." He stopped me, making a point to stall until I'd refocused on him. "I will wait. For as long as you need me to." His eyes searched mine for answers, his features relaxing as I nodded slowly.
Felix bumped the window twice.
"Come on, I'm the one getting ditched! We need a proper goodbye," the large vampire immaturely declared. Alec rolled his eyes and I had a soft giggle as Felix stepped back from the car and, classy as ever, started commenting to Prosper "I'll bet you 50 they're gonna," Alec briefly winked at me, before disappearing. " — shit! There was a small bang on the car and my door opened a second later. I leaned out to see Felix rubbing his arm and sticking his tongue out at a bemused Prosper. The smug smirk on Alec's lips remained on his face as he helped me out of the car before I could formulate a full idea of the step by step reenactment.
Prosper and Alec stepped off to the back of the car. They began to discuss something in excessively speedy Italian and Felix took advantage of their distracted state. Shoving his sunglasses back in his pocket, he weighted his hands on my shoulders, posed to give me some kind of lecture. "Now, young lady. Don't forget to practice your Italian."
With all the chaos of the last week or so, I'd been able to avoid Felix's I-talian Tuesdays. After I put very little effort into learning Italian, he had declared that every Tuesday the only language that could be spoken within the castle walls was Italian. When I complained — in English, I was promptly ignored. For some reason, many of the guard found it hilarious because even the three kings played along. Although Caius quickly grew bored of the affair and had a few Italian translations of children's books sent to my room to try and hurry the process along. Rather than taking offence to the genre he'd delivered, I applauded the snarkiness. Between his tolerance of pranks and spot-on sarcasm, Caius certainly had some redeemable features.
Anyways, I spent most Tuesdays with frown lines and a dry tongue because I wouldn't comply. I saw no reason to learn a fifth language, seeing as every vampire around me was fluent in at least a dozen languages — including the ones I already knew. Half knew — I wasn't exactly completely fluent in all the four languages I currently had under my belt.
I couldn't help but roll my eyes, a laugh slipping out after as he continued his eccentric speech.
"Don't fall for the Cullen charm, oh, and if Alec tries anything…" he glanced down at my hand. "Maybe stick to words. Understood?"
"Sure, Felix." I grinned at him, trying not to give anything away at his comment. In the corner of my eye, I could see Prosper smirking with his own knowledge. "Whatever you say." Felix wiped a fake tear from his eye and picked me up in a bear hug, my feet leaving the ground as he swung me side to side.
A low drawl from behind us lazily requested, "I'll thank you to release my mate, Felix."
Doing as he was told, Felix otherwise paid no mind to Alec, still focused on saying goodbye to me. "I'm just going to miss my little firecracker." He tried to pinch my cheeks but I swatted his hand away. He raised a hand to his forehead as if he were going to feint. Alec continued to be unamused.
I hugged Felix again at my own height, a more nefarious goal in mind than a goodbye after the additional nickname suggestion. A thought popped into my head as we parted a second later, Felix's forgotten sunglasses casually concealed in my left hand. I tapped his shoulder with my left and declared, "we need a secret handshake!" Felix's face exploded in childish delight at the idea, only for our short-term dream to be dashed.
Alec interrupted, clearly growing more and more irritated with his fellow guard member. "We will hardly be away long enough for such gratuitous sentiments."
Felix pouted and I took advantage of the moment to slip his sunglasses on top of my head as seamlessly as I could. Still, none of the vampires took note of it.
"Fine." Felix fist bumped Prosper and climbed back into the car, rolling down the windows. He gave me a wink.
"Au revoir, babycakes."
I scrunched my nose at the nickname, but quickly realized it wasn't for my benefit as he threw another wink to the testy male beside me.
"Ready, then?" Prosper asked and I nodded as Felix sped off down the street.
As I turned around to join Prosper, I nearly tripped over a fallen luggage pile left haphazardly on the sidewalk. Lucky enough, I quickly found my balance, thanks to my graceful swerve — and Alec's helping hand. I was glaring down at the baggage when a high voice demanded my attention.
A woman was scolding me in Italian and I had no idea what she was saying, but her tone didn't exactly imply any sort of apologetic or gentle acknowledgement of the accident. She pointed at the bags, then at me as a young boy came out from behind her and started loading the luggage back onto a trolly. I scoffed at the woman, ready to shoot back an impulsive retort when Alec tugged me away.
"Scusa signora." Alec flashed a disarming smile to the woman and her glare was replaced with a schoolgirl's giggle before a younger boy ran up to grab her leg. My jaw dropped, flabbergasted and irritated at how positively she backed down from Alec after being so mean to me. I wanted to attribute it to vampire traits, but the thought brought to mind Heidi and Chelsea's comments from ages ago. Right. 'Particularly charming', they'd said. I'd show this lady charm.
My internal rant was interrupted and I didn't hear the lady's response to Mr. 'Particularly Charming's apology as he led me away, Prosper following dutifully behind us. Once inside, I jerked my arm back from Alec, giving him a glare of my own. "Why'd you do that? She's the one who should've apologised."
He wasn't listening though, his head on a deliberate swivel, as if he were trying to account for every traveler and tourist in the building. I gave him a weird look, which he also ignored, and focused on my other, more agreeable travel companion. Although he too held a similar high-strung, serious aura for a very different reason. Prosper's hand was casually scratching under his chin, his eyes scanning the crowd as Alec had been and I briefly wondered what detail I was missing that these two were so keyed into. Prosper's hand returned to his side just before he noticed I was staring at him. He pursed his lips and cleared his throat, giving me a curious lift of his head.
I blinked, before coming up with a solution to the problem I'd discovered. "Err…you night want to borrow these." I took the sunglasses I'd lifted off of Felix earlier and and offered them to Prosper. The contacts he'd put in before we left were being replaced with a colour that was much too dark to go unnoticed by a passerby.
Alec's head abruptly snapped to us and he snatched the sunglasses from me, making himself the unnecessary middle man in delivering the object to Prosper after he'd evaluated the situation. He then opened his mouth to ask Prosper a question the man already had the answer for.
"I'm fine," he promised and to my surprise, Alec took his word without doubt. Alec's nod was as firm as a knight's and I mentally frowned at the moody attitude he'd adopted from our location.
"Put your hair down." Alec told me, leaving no room for sass. Which was fine, because the direction clued me in to their secret sign language.
I let my hair drop over my shoulders, impatiently switching back to Prosper. My curiosity was almost giddy, completely skipping over the fact that I'd just had to change my hairstyle to make it less likely that my friend could attack me at any second. "You're thirsty?" My excitement was a result of connecting the dots between Prosper touching his neck and Alec's conclusion that he was thirsty. It was so simple, and probably too obvious, but I was never around any of the Volturi unless they were clear of such a risk — not even Jane. Alec was the only one with such a privilege, though his level of thirst was never depleted on purpose and somehow we were always a bit too preoccupied to note such minor details when it did happen.
Either way, a new fact to include in my tidbits of vampires knowledge was a successful piece of info and I'd put it together without anyone's commentary on how I relied too much on religious vampire lore over Dracula. Apparently, neither was reliable but, in Demetri's words, 'at least Dracula had some personality.' I wasn't quite sure what he meant — as I'd never read Dracula, but I was grateful just to escape the topic after that.
Prosper glanced at me and then to Alec. "I'm fine," he reassured us, but he gave his throat one more poke before distracting himself. He went to slide the sunglasses on his face before pausing and examining them. "Did you pickpocket Felix?" The words sounded funny coming from his mouth and I couldn't even pretend to hide the proud grin on my face at the implied admiration of my accomplishment. I took the opportunity and attempted to lessen the tension in both men.
Waving away the accusation, I casually explained that "they fell out of his pocket." Prosper snorted and put them on, but Alec raised his eyebrows. One down, one to go. "On to my head."
Alec smirked. "I'm telling Felix."
Prick.
~•~•~•~
A/N: Oh, noooo! My finger slipped ;) Imma just pull a Yoncé and leave this simply fun, unplanned, short little chapter right here
Dedicated to Ariel. I was going to have nicknames in a future chapter with the guys, but I didn't want to forget after you reminded me so we'll see it again for sure ;)
