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Edward is around 150 years old when he decides he is officially done with life. Who would've thought that a vampire stuck in a semi-teenager's mindset for a hundred years yould lead to him making some questionable decisions? Being a vampire is a lot more complicated than the advertised free imortality and occasional bloodlust. He's driving. Driving like his life depends on it. Probably going way too fast for the deserted highway, but he can hear the thoughts of anyone who might actually cross his path, so he doesn't see why he shouldn't speed at 200 miles per hour.
Damn, he's had a hundred years to perfect his driving, so really, if he would cause an accident, it was nowhere near his fault!
His thoughts continue to spiral, it's calming to be so far out, where he can't hear the ramblings of anxious teens in the stores or the middleaged ladies that see him and immediately get their panties in a twist. Not that he judges them, noone really has a choice but to think him irresistable. Maybe he should've thought about that before mating with a human and impregnating her with a demon baby. He immediately scolds himself. No matter what happens to him and Bella, his daughter Renesme is still the best thing he's ever managed to make in life. His little miracle. If only a child would fix an eternal marriage.
He passes through a town and then another, lights blinding his golden eyes after the long road through darkness. The next evening he has to stop for fuel and see's a neon sign calling for cheap shots and hot barmaids, completed by a luminescent pride flag in the window.
It takes paying for the gasoline and buying his least favourite candy bar to coax him to park his car on the other side of the road, where he can already hear the blaring of music and the overlapping thoughts of a bunch of drunk and horny humans spill through the door.
But he decides to say fuck it! He only lives forever once, what better age to have an idenitiy crisis than 150, right? And he pushes open the door.
Worst mistake of his life. The smell of sweat and sex is so overbearing he has to hold his nose for a second, trying desperately to singe his senses with cheap shots of wodka. His vampire attractiveness comes in handy when the barkeep-- previously flirting shamelessly with a girl or two-- strides over to him and takes his order. She raises her eyebrows when he orders 12 shots of vodka and starts nibbling on his candybar, knowing full well it's gonna sit in his stomache like a stone until his next hunt.
As soon as the shots are lined up infront of him, he downs them one after the other, relishing in the numb burn it leaves on his tongue and ordering another round for good measure.
Who cares if he gets weird looks? It's not like any of the patrons are sober enough to care. Once he is finished with those, his blood is saturated enough that he feels a slight buzz tingling in his fingertips.
"Rough night?" A voice says beside him suddenly, and Edward gets hit with the smell of a wolf's coat. He looks to the side, where a handsome young man, physically probably a cpuple years older than him, shoves a drink between his cold fingers.
"I'm Jake, fancy seeing a bloodsucker this far south." Jake takes a sip from his drink and hisses in contented discontent, "Try it out. Swear you'll like it better than that human crap."
Edward sniffs at the drink suspiciously, flinching back at the way it burns up his nose.
"Told you," There's an easy smile on Jake's soft features and his thoughts hint at no betrayal, so Edward takes a sip.
It's a cacophony of of sweet and bitter, burning down his throat and spreading warmth through his entire body.
"You're not smoking me out from the inside, right?" he asks, coughing slightly, to which the wolf just cackles.
"If that had been my plan I woudl've seduced you to the back of the bar." Then he's suddenly grabbing Edward's hand, pulling him further into the bar, to a small table in a dimply lit corner.
"So, what brings a vampire as powerful as you here?" Jake asks, eyes flitting through the big room, the blue and violet of neon lights echoing in his dark eyes.
"Powerful?" Edward asks, daring another sip from the unknown wolf concoction.
Jake looks at him quizzically for a moment, then laughs near maniacal. He seems to like laughing, does it so wholeheartedly, none the wiser that Edward knows his mind is a lot more dumb to the sensation of his happiness.
"The more powerful a vampire, the more penetrative his scent. It's like you're constantly trying to prove you could take anyone in any room you're in. It's really annoying sometimes, but shouldn't you know that? Like, as a vampire yourself." Jake leans back against the wood paneling of the barwall, eyes now cast in darkness, though Edward can still see them looking right at him.
"I was aware that there were differences, but I only noticed in powerful vampires like our monarchs." Edward hisses as he took another sip. Jake lets his head pumb against the wall loudly, smile stretching over his canines. Even in human form they are sharp and pointy. Edward realises sudeenly he is making casual conversation with the only thing in the world that could kill him in less than three seconds. But Jacob's thoughts were unsensibly calm, filled with nothing but pictures of Edward as he sat there in front of him, and the occasional howl of a strangely warped wolf. Actual thoughts only formed in Jake's mind as he was saying them out loud.
"Of course you wouldn't notice. Are probably one of the most powerful in your coven. Now that I think of it, you haven't answered my question yet. Why are you here of all places, in the sunniest spot the States have to offer?"
The drink losens his tongue, so Edward answers truthfully: "Married at 120, had a kid, realised 30 years later that marrying a human when i wasn't really mentally fully developed might not have been the brightest of my ideas, had a midlife crisis and, honestly? Ran away."
"Wait a minute- You have a child?? Like an actual baby that you made?! Since when can you do that?!" Jake's head spontaneously fills with Edward in many much too lewd positions, but what has Edward laughing is that for some reason every scenario featured Jake. He didn't understand the implications of it, biological males of no species known to him could actually conceive children.
"Yes. It can happen, but only rather rarely, which is probably why you don't know of it." Edward downs all of his drink in one go, trying to ignore that Jake still hasn't stopped thinking about sex with him.
The wolf shakes himself, and the images vapour into his subconscious mind.
"That's the craziest thing I've heard since the day I was told I could turn into a big brown wolf." Jake says, suddenly charging over the table and crowding into Edwards space, "Do you have pictures??? I want to see the vampire-human baby! Do you think Wolves and vampires could have babies too? That'd be a freak of nature, don't you think? I think so. It's funny. Now show me pictures!!"
Edward indulged him, because the wolf was kind and his scent drew away the smell of vomit wafting over from the bathroom.
He pulls his wallet from his backpocket, having to shift Jake who leans on him with one arm on his shoulder, the other bracing his weight on Edward's thigh. The place where his hand grabs the material of his jeans is slowly warming up.
"This is Renesmee. Her mother nearly died when we had her so I let her pick whatever name she wanted. I call her Ren, she's an angel." He flips through the the small photoalbum he always carries in his wallet and Jake follows his movments with his own body, slowly shifting back and forth with every new page Edward turns.
"She's adorable." he mumbles, and he's so close Edward can see his blood pulsing through the vein on his neck. It's weird, but he has no desire to have a taste. Probably the wolf, he reasons.
"She really is," he turns anther page, "This is her mother."
Bella smiles at him from the small rectangle, eyes a fiery red from her recent transformation.
"You made her immortal, huh?"
"Yeah. Caused a whole lot of trouble with the local wolfpack, but I had no choice." he doesn't regret it either. Just what became of them in their thirty years of marriage.
"Does she know you're here tonight?" Jake asks, his head tilting to look Edward into his golden eyes, like it's in any way normal for a wolf to look at a vampire with so much kindness.
"I left after a pretty bad fight. She'll always be the love of my life, but I told her in pretty clear terms that I don't believe eternity is meant to be spent with one person and one person alone. Only took me 150 years to realise that about myself, but when you're immortal, time kinda looses relevance." he sighs, cringing to himself about the whole affair. They'd been in their family house next to the Cullen Estate, and he knew from his family's thoughts that their shouts had been heard far into the mansion. He was glad Renee hadn't been home.
"I gather she wasn't of the same opinion?" Jake's voice is soft, breath fanning Edward's cold face.
"She said that this isn't how she imagined eternity with me to be, that I should break up if I didn't want her anymore, instead of making up something about loving more than one person. I think our relationship wasn't really built on a good foundation? I did a lot of shit I regret now and she was a little, well, very pushy about the immoortality aspect of the relationship." He confesses, wiping his eyes with his hand before putting his wallet away again. He wants Jake to get out of his space, can't think straight anymore, scared he'll do something stupid that will get him into deeper shit than he's already in.
But the wolf looks at him so honestly, his thoughts nothing but waves against rock and he finds himself captivated by his dark gaze.
"What is it you think you'll find here, vampire?" Jake's voice is like velvet, like the everchanging winds of the sea. It's dangerous and it's intriguing and Edward starts feeling addicted.
So he flees, in a hustle of mumbled words and gentle pushes he stands up and flees into the bathroom.
It stinks violetly like puke and other bodily fluids Edward is far from used to anymore and if he could puke he would but instead he just spits excess venom into the sink that had dripped from his teeth when he started feeling cornered by his own emotions. He looks at himself in the dirty mirror, the young man looking back is staring back a lot more determined than he feels. His hands bury in his hair, the same bronze color that it's been since 1918 and suddenly he has to laugh about himself. He's a mess. A marble statue made sentient by the marvelous hands of the most gifted artist and here he is standing in a dingy bathroom of a bar in the middle of the desert, eyes scanning the insults and love declarations scrawled onto the bathroom walls by hasty human hands and he isn't allowing himself to live.
He must be really drunk, because he straightens his back and walks back out, taking a superficial breath that has him choking on horny pheromones and alcohol stained sweat.
Jake waits for him at teh same small table that he left him in and relief washes over his face when he sees Edward's return.
"I really thought I scared you off. I'm always too pushy-"
"What are you doing here?" Edward cuts him off, and a whole bunch of questionmarks fill Jake's head.
"What do you mean by that?" he swallows heavily, but Edward already has his answer.
"The whole point of wolves is that they run with a pack. But you're all alone. And I don't smell any wolf but you in here. You ask me why I am here, but the real question is what you are doing here."
There's a long stretch of silence between them, filled with the sounds of upbeat music and partying humans.
Jake just stares at him,a thousand thoughts running through his head and none of them truly taking hold, until one image repeats in his head a dozen times, and the his hands are knotted into Edwards hair and he's kissing him as if his life depends on it, pushing him until his back hits the wall and his hands instinctively grab hold of Jake's waist and he leans into the kiss, has to lean down to allow Jake to stand on his feet again, and everything feels so warm and so full and so alive and Edward remembers what it meant to be a human for a moment, remembers how it feels to run with his coven, chasing after their prey with a hivemind-like accuracy and he he does feel like a predator, attacking Jake's hot lips with his own and even though his hands are icy cold Jake doesn't complain when they slip under his shirt, feeling the strong coils of muscle and the thick bulges of scartissue that runs over his back.
And equally Edward doesn't mind when Jake migrates one hand over his cold chest and lets it run over his flat belly, fingertips leaving hot trails whereever they touch.
It's magical. Hysterically forbidden and yet it feels like breathing, like hunting, uncomplicated and clear.
He's drunk. He's so drunk. But he doesn't care as they stumble out of the bar together, hand sstill raking across bodies, lips finding each other at any occasion they get. He doesn't care as he grabs at Jake's ass, stealing a nibble from his neck as Jake is stumbling along the sidewalk. He doesn't care when they play catch while running up the stairs of the hotel. He doesn't care that Jake gets so distracted kissing him he forgets he was supposed to open the door. He doesn't care when his back hits the bedspread, shirt running up and exposing his belly just enough for Jake to lean down and sink his teeth into. He doesn't care that it burns, burns in a way that he knows it will leave a permanent scar. Doesn't care when he can taste his blood on Jake's tongue, doesn't care when they slowly, passionately loose more and more clothes. Doesn't care that that he is falling. Falling so deeply that he knows he will never be able to come up for air. Doesn't care that he fucks up big time by dragging his nails over Jake's hipbone and watches as the skin knits itself together again, scarring over rosy red. Doesn't care that he probably just broke a rule worse than exposing himself to humans. Doesn't care because all of it feels like breathing again. Like being alive.
He wakes up the next morning in a mound of covers and cushions, on the bedside table lies a little wooden wolf charm and a hastily written note,
Find me if you want. You won't ever forget my scent now. And neither will I yours.
He covers his eyes with his hands, staring at the darkness behind his lids for a while, trying to rationalise the giddy ache of the scar next to his bellybutton, tries to scold himself for whatever he did. But he can't. Because he fell in love with a stranger. And like his first taste of blood he knows there is no going back now.