He's not going to kill himself. He just looks, that's all. All he ever does is look down the barrel of the gun.
Paul is not suicidal. He's not going to kill himself. But he keeps the pistol in his underwear drawer all the same - so Rachel doesn't find it. She would never go through his underwear, wrinkling her nose in distaste. Not that he wears it anymore. Too hard to tie around the ankle of a wolf.
Rachel, Rachel floats heavy through his mind. He's looking at the gun again. Just standing there over the open drawer. There's one bullet in the gun. It's not silver. It wouldn't matter if it was. Jacob got half the life squeezed out of him and still recovered. Not even a silver bullet can kill a shifting wolf.
Or could it? Jacob hadn't been human at the time. Man's eye sockets aren't nearly so strong as shifter bones. There's no love at first sight without sight. If only he could go back in time. Hell, there's vampires and fucking werewolves, who's to say there's no time travel?
Rachel, Rachel, Rachel. She's a beautiful woman. 22 years old. They're bound for life, now, technically married. He moved in with the Blacks three weeks ago, crunched in the tiny room that Rachel shared with her sister for eighteen years. The yellow-stained walls and ceiling close in on him, feeling oppressive. Being indoors is always worse. He can't leave the wolf behind.
Paul looks at the gun.
He strokes a finger down the side of the barrel, wonders how it would feel pressed against his tongue, heavy and cold. He's not suicidal and there's no harm in looking. Dad always said there's no harm in looking, son. But he was talking about women, not guns.
That was how his mama died. Gun to the throat, wait till Paulie got home. Pow!
The front door slams shut. Rachel's home; her voice whisper-shouts into her cell phone as she approaches the door of the bedroom. Paul slowly pulls back his hand from the gun, missing the cold weight almost immediately. He shuts the drawer but doesn't turn away.
She didn't even leave a letter, just a scrawled-out note on the back of the electric bill. "Son, don't you ever cheat."
Rachel's voice gets louder but it doesn't matter, Paul could hear her from outside. She wasn't speaking loudly at all, practically hissing into the speaker, but the fucking wolf honed in on his mate. "Oh em gee, Beck, he's like a god." A giggle. "Yes, in bed, what did you think I meant? Gotta go, love you."
Like a god. What a joke. Paul wonders if she mentioned to her sister that her new boyfriend is seventeen.
His stomach rolls as she leans up to kiss him. Mate, the wolf hisses at him, and he moves into the kiss unconciously. Her tongue slips between his lips and he is reminded of blood dripping from the mouth of a vampire, but the wolf will not let him pull away.
As Rachel pulls him to bed, Paul cannot believe that Bella Swan lets the supernatural into her world so flippantly. If he were her, he would have run back to Arizona as soon as Edward Cullen showed his gaunt, undead face. Or Jacob, the monstrous wolf, for that matter. If she had any sense she'd have fled when Paul first attacked her back at the little red house so many months ago.
Paul's heard Kim and Rachel giggling about their wolves, the muscles and heat. It's probably biological, the intense attraction that the imprints have towards them, to create more perfect wolfy pups. But when he overhears them talking about how he and Jared have to do what they say, isn't that the best part?, he feels like an object more than ever. The imprint won't even let him be upset about it.
Jared had been his best friend before Kim turned his sarcastic, funny, intelligent, witty, generous thoughts to mush. The disgust from Jacob and Leah, and to a lesser extent Embry, that seeps through the pack mind when Jared's phased in is palpable. Paul, Sam and Quil are locked in loyalty to the imprint. "It's the best thing that's ever happened to me," thinks Jared adoringly, his mind chewed through with Kim's wide mouth and round face, but Paul knows Jared and he knows that if he could hate Kim, he would. Paul blames Kim for the rot more than he blames Rachel. Part of that is the imprint bias, of course. But he can't help but wonder. Would Kim have chosen this? A man who cannot do anything but adore you, even at the cost of his own life? She's not malicious but Paul thinks that given the choice... she might have.
The slow, cool slide of Rachel's mouth on his chest draws him back to his thoughts. "I would walk into fire for you, Rachel," he says, and she takes it as a romantic vow with a smile. It's not. It's a promise.
Into fire. Through traffic. Off a cliff. Towards a bloodsucking Bella Swan. Whatever she commands, Paul must do, and he must do it with a smile.
After they're finished and she leaves, Paul finds himself in front of the open drawer again. He just looks down at the gun. It's beautiful, just the same color as Jared's eyes.
He hasn't named his wolf. Seth and Quil are the only ones that have, the most childlike of the bunch. He'll snarl and resent but deep down he's a sick sort of happy that they can still be joyful, yip and bounce around with their tongues flopping out of their mouths. Big puppies, the both of them. Paul can't afford to be happy... he hasn't since his mama died.
He gazes at the gun. His super eyesight can pick up the barest reflection of his face, his mouth distorting over the curve of the trigger. It looks like a snarl.
Paul wonders what his mama would think of him now.