Work Text:
You feel like you’re always too warm, overheating in your own skin, being cooked from the inside out. You may have the body of a sixteen year old (for the moment) but your flesh and your hair and your teeth have only been around for a little over six years; you think maybe you’re still raw, tender to the touch and wrapped neatly in new, pink skin.
It only makes it worse when they touch you. Icy fingers by contrast and scalding ones by addition. You start to wince whenever you have to communicate (it’s somehow worse when it’s him). Your voice is raspy from non-use because you only really talk to yourself and Jasper (he’s the only one that gets it). You learn to take care of yourself so that you don’t have to ask. Your parents start to whisper like you’re deaf and not mute, about how you’re not adjusting and maybe you should meet people your own age.
Yeah, nothing like swapping stories with a clan of kindergarteners, you hiss, and your voice is dripping with acid. They glance up in shock and you realize they probably forgot you were there. Not that you blame them.
You flee into the glistening forest and strip off your clothes, lying flat in the snow and watching it slowly melt around you. Even ice shrinks and withers away from you, you think snidely, even though the near frostbite is the only way you start to feel cool.
You stand after the sun sets dark on the Alaskan tundra and it’s no surprise you haven’t left a snow angel, but a snow human, plain and abnormal and wrong.
-
The house echoes even though it’s full. You float along like a shadow, like you haunt it, not live in it. It’s probably better if they consider you a dead plant that someone should have watered a year ago. Everyone still looks at you as if you’re a mechanical contraption with a defect they can’t quite figure out (even your father, though he should be able to fix you in a snap, hypothetically).
It’s Alice this time, trying to convince you to go shopping or see a movie or something else stolen from a brat pack movie. You’re stuggling to explain to her without words why pretending to be something you’re not (normal, carefree, ordinary) cheapens what’s left of you with lies. Your eyes venture out the front window in a panic, but instead of grandmother trees and a truffle of leaves, you’re barraged with sharp and narrow brown instead. You take a breath, relishing in the feel of something other than pity and confusion, before a flash of short brown hair morphs into shaggy fur and she’s gone.
Thankfully there are still some people who hate you.
-
It takes you another year, but you start to revel in the burn. It could have been the time you’d stuck your hand into the fire just to see if it would hurt and realized that it almost felt cold. But suddenly you can’t get enough.
You corner Jacob in the kitchen and he looks scared (like a stray dog, you think with an amused laugh) and a bit confused. You haven’t looked him in the eye since you glanced up from your coloring books and realized he was supposed to be your other half. If you were smart you’d show him the palm of your hand and let him sniff you out, but you’re past being careful and you bear your teeth instead.
You touch your hand to his face hungrily and that’s exactly what you show him (want), clutching his shoulder before bringing your lips to his forehead. His eyes are wide in alarm (but why, you wonder, isn’t this what he’s always wanted?). You’re too busy soaking in his warmth to reassure him. You trace along his temple and down to his chin before your tongue snakes out to touch his lips experimentally. Something in him comes alive then and he meets your lips with his own, crushing your body to his. You shape yourself around the length of him and any place your skin could possibly be meeting his, it is.
He tastes like freezer burn, like the blaze of the sun on exposed skin, a flame caught fire. His tongue finds yours and all you can think is burn, baby, burn and of ways to get him closer.
-
The house is still too quiet but it’s vibrating now, ripe with hormones and temper tantrums when you don’t get what you want. You’re spoiled now after going so long not asking for anything, and suddenly you’re like a cocaine addict in need of a fix. A tumbling, coiling ball of want. take. have.
Your mother seems happy that you’ve finally latched on to Jacob like you were always supposed to, were destined to, but your father is more skeptical and it’s probably because he knows what you’re thinking. Your thoughts aren’t filled with love or ridiculous wedding fantasies or spending forever together. You’ve finally found that sliver that was cut from you and it has nothing to do with soulmates.
-
“Do you even love me?”
You glance over at him without really looking because you know what you’d see and it’s nothing new. The sheets shift and he’s turning to face you. “Well do you?”
You turn as well, the locket slipping against the skin of your bare chest as you roll over. Hand snaking out to touch his shoulder, you try to show him – you want him, isn’t that enough? – but he catches your wrist firmer than normal and his nostrils flare.
“No. I want you to tell me. No more of this magical bullshit. Use your words.” It’s a cheap line from a bad after school special and you laugh at the ridiculousness of it, covering your eyes with your free hand and rolling onto your back.
“What do you want me to say?”
He releases your wrist and he’s choking back something (words, tears, confrontation). But you’re putting on your clothes, out the window and half-way to Canada before you look back.
You may not love him, but you don’t hate him enough to tell him the truth.
-
It’s different after that, but not in a way that makes you pause before slamming him against a tree while you’re supposed to be hunting. It’s not like he ever stops you. His hands circle your waist gingerly in an echo of passion and it’s nowhere near enough; you begin to back away in a perfected feint. He grips you closer and you smile smugly against his lips.
Your heart might only be half there, but you’re not compromising for only half of him.
-
You’re flipping through a psychology reference book on one of your endless searches for enough knowledge to fill you up to the brim, when you pause over a section labeled animal psychology and zero in on a single definition.
imprinting (ĭm'prĭn'tĭng) n. a rapid learning process by which a newborn or very young animal establishes a behavior pattern of recognition and attraction to another animal of its own kind or to a substitute or an object identified as the parent.
Ironic laughter bubbles up in your throat and you’re clutching your sides in an attempt to keep yourself from ripping apart from it.
-
You follow him without really knowing why. Even though you can think of a million reasons why he’d be galloping off into the dead of the woods in his wolf form, there’s still a ripping tug that resonates from somewhere near your gut as you watch him slip off his clothes from your upstairs bedroom window.
You pace the L-shaped path around your bed – two steps, follow, three steps, stay – before flying down the stairs. Your bare feet pad softly on the grass in your backyard, gardens placed carefully by your grandmother in a frazzled state of nesting ten years ago.
The trees whip past you in a geometric pattern of bark and blurred leaves.
You’re no vampire (no anything, really) but you can still trace his smell on all the branches he brushed against, since you know it so well. The woodsy musk leads you across a pebbly river, until you can hear his footfalls and you pause to listen.
“This isn’t right.”
An indignant huff – Leah.
“According to who? Some ancient set of rules laid out by a bunch of guys who were making it up as they went along? Screw that. You’re better than that.”
“I can’t just-“
“Yes. You can.”
You’re watching them through the partition of leaves as they stand facing each other in a small clearing. Your eyes narrow when Leah grabs a hold of Jacob’s arm like a vice, leading him toward her.
“Yes, you can,” she repeats, almost as if she’s trying to prove something, and suddenly it’s her lips on his and rage seething inside you and stop, that’s my toy, give him back.
When he pulls away it’s that wet sound that makes you squirm (you don’t love him but still he belongs to you). Out of everything his hand cupping her cheek is what causes you to dig your fingernails into the dirt beneath your crouch.
“But I love her,” the resignation in his tone is enough to damper the relief that it could bring.
“Just because it’s convenient, it doesn’t make it true.”
You’re lunging forward and across the clearing before Jacob can flinch (he’d probably try to defend her, that bastard) and in that one second before impact you can see her expression and it’s taunting you.
The thought you transfer from your mind to hers is crystal clear as your hand collides roughly with her cheek.
Mine.
-
“I didn’t- it didn’t mean anything, I swear.”
You’re trying to ignore him as you flip through the channels, feigning nonchalance as your mind takes stock of your options. Visions of revenge spin into nauseousness in green thought bubbles above your head.
“If it meant nothing then you don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
You watch his face fall out of the corner of your eye and it’s enough to answer any doubts.
-
Your father passes through the cabin’s living room in a blur, hoping to avoid you no doubt, but your voice rings out and he pauses with one hand on the door knob.
“You knew, didn’t you?”
He turns around slowly in perfect contrast to his hurry two seconds ago and impatience chips away at your calm.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say anything? You’d tell Emmett if Rosalie was banging Seth, wouldn’t you?”
He winces at your crass language and you repress the urge to roll your eyes, wondering if it would be too ironic if you told him to grow up. Probably.
“This isn’t the same thing.”
Your eyebrows crease in the middle like wet construction paper and you make a rushed motion instructing him to explain himself.
“Emmett and Rosalie are soul mates, Renesme.”
“What happened to all that cosmic balance stuff that mom’s always talking about? Huh? How Jacob and I were meant to be? How
the fates smiled and karma paid off and the stars aligned?”
He sighs, weariness fading the edges of his words. You think he’s probably muttering to himself.
“Your mother has always been rather adamant in the faith department.” But then he looks you in the eye and you stop breathing.
“Either love him or let him go. You can’t have both.”
But you glare, your eyes dark, and if you were close enough to reach for him your thoughts would be loud.
You can’t think of an adequate comeback and the seam of the pillow beside you pays the price.
-
“How’s the cheek?”
Jacob tenses up more, if it’s possible. From the cup of his arms and the angle of his neck you know he wants to bury his head in his hands and stay there. But Leah just laughs at you, brushing past you in a way that is unequivocally intentional.
“Never better.”
-
Bella folds the pillow case in half again and again, crisp corners and neat creases, and you resist the urge to groan. You shift your
shoulders against the wall and cross your arms over your chest instead.
“I’m not saying you have to marry him.” Your mother purses her lips in faked concentration (as if a vampire would really have to concentrate on anything as simple as laundry) and you think it’s to prevent herself from making the expression that’s bubbling to the surface.
Disgust in the face of marriage seems to be a genetic trait in Swan women, passed through the generations with your brown hair and a tendency to get into trouble when you aren’t careful.
“But don’t be mean. He doesn’t deserve it and I think you know that.”
Concern for him flashes unrestrained across her face, left over from a love story you’d only heard about in whispers. You wonder how much she knows about what’s really been going on. It would probably kill her (figuratively speaking, of course) to hear that Jacob’s hospital-corner-ending was nothing more than another bout of messiness disguised from the start.
You watch your mother’s profile as she bends over the bed sheet, and for the first concrete time you realize how childlike she really is, how naïve immortality has made her. How desperately she clings to the simplicity of black and white now that it’s not her heart in shades on gray. Your father has had the exact opposite reaction to undeath, and not for the first time you marvel at how they
manage to stay as one.
You leave without saying anything.
-
You breathe, expanding your lungs as far as you can without your chest bursting and you let it out slow, hands resting palm up on your folded knees. You probably look something like a Buddha statue here in the backyard; you’d heard that this was supposed to align something or bring peace from somewhere and you need both of those desperately.
“Nessie.”
You ignore him and take another deep breath. The grass crunches closer to you and, even though he must know there’s no way you didn’t hear him the first time, he says your name again.
“Nessie.” A huff. “You can’t ignore me forever.”
Actually you can, and you might tell him that if punishing him with silence wasn’t so much more fun than punishing yourself.
A swift kick knocks into your thigh and your eyes open in a wild fury. His face is contracted in so many raw emotions it would take a year and an encyclopedia to name them all.
“Leave me the fuck alone.” You don’t have to pretend your some little girl around him, with pigtails and a clean mouth, like you’d never tasted blood or watched life drain from someone’s eyes, and it’s exhilarating to let the pretence fade. You don’t stop to think about that before you shove his foot away roughly. “I can be angry if I want.”
“You know…” He shakes his head; there’s the brief taste of copper in the air before lightening strikes and you know a storm is coming. “There’s only so much I can take. I mean what the hell, Nessie? What are you doing?”
Your legs uncurl from under you, rising to your feet in one motion. There are a thousand excuses poised on your lips, but then you’re thinking about it (which never ends well for you) and your head feels heavy with the weight of it.
“I- I don’t know,” and you manage to sound stubborn, even at the fact of your confusion.
He steps away, the arm’s length rule you both consistently follow widening to a chasm.
“I can’t do this. I know I have to, I know there’s no choice for me. But I just… can’t.”
You fall to the ground with a whimper as soon as he’s out of earshot, before your eyes dart to the garage.
-
You breeze past the boundary line (fault line, flat line, same difference) knowing there’s no way your parents could follow you even if they wanted to – they never got around to renegotiating that treaty. As a child it saddened you that your family couldn’t come along when you rode shotgun in your grandfather’s police cruiser to visit Billy and Jacob. It had made you wonder if your immunity to the rules meant your human half was somehow larger than your vampire one, or if it negated it somehow.
But now it just makes you feel alone.
It should be ironic that you’re running to the very person you want to escape. But even that isn’t true, not really.
You touch your fingertips to the flaking paint of the door, watching in fascination as they curl into a fist and knock once, twice. You extend your hearing into the apartment and listen to the rustle of thighs rubbing together as they walk toward the door. There’s four clicks of a lock snapping back from its holding position and then she’s there. An expanse of russet skin that should be achingly familiar but isn’t; hard, dark eyes; butchered hair tangled by the wind; temperament coiled tight like a cobra ready to strike.
“What are you doing here?” There’s a sneer on her lips but all you see is I need you.
And because it’s become something of a catch-phrase in the past two hours: “I don’t know.”
Because suddenly her shoulders are pressing into the carpet and your leg kicks the door shut and god, she’s so warm. Your hand grips the stretchy fabric of her tank top, and you’re showing her bright flashes of reds and gold, of hatred and heat and passion because you can’t hold it inside any longer. She jerks away, stares you down, and if you weren’t used to the fire in her eyes you might flinch away.
“You know I hate you, right?” Yet even as she speaks her fingers fist the flesh of your hips and a smirk lies embedded in her words.
“That’s what I’m counting on.”
She doesn’t taste or fuck or feel anything like him, and that’s the other thing you had been relying on.
-
Punk rock with the bass turned all the way up, left playing at sunset on the industrial-sized headphones strewn beside the stereo, is your soundtrack as you leave at twilight.
You didn’t tell her that you know she’s only doing this to get back at him for not leaving you. Or that he’s probably better than both of you. Or that not loving him has made you hate him, and this is part revenge, part resuscitation. But it’s implied.
Everyone can smell sex on you when you come back home and their heads turn, confusion and concern souring their perfect faces.
But you don’t look back as you scale the stairs to the bathroom.
The water runs hot over your chest and thighs, and you watch as the skin flushes an angry red.
You’ve started hording all the differences between you and them, all of them. You gather blushes and pain and sparkles in your arms, crushing them to you until they fuse into your chest so you can finally be yourself. Or at least figure out who that is.
-
You spend hours staring at your hands, like you’re holding a grenade that’s balancing precariously on a half-pulled pin.
Visions of shock bounce around in an unidentifiable trajectory inside you skull, knocking memories off shelves as carefully labeled emotions smash to the floor. You have it here; the means to destroy him. One touch— a brush of fingers across his forehead, lips on his cheek, a palm pressed wide against his back – and he’d never forgive either of you. Or expect anything of you.
This could be the end of it, but your hand is resting on the kill switch and you don’t have it in you to infect him with your bitterness with the ridge of your fingerprints.
You’re a curse. Oh you’re a curse.
-
“Hiding won’t help.”
As if to prove him wrong you curl your knees closer to your chest, folding yourself as flat as you can.
Jasper traipses further into your room, his scars catching the sliver of light through the drawn curtains and causing them to glow back like thumb-nail moons. They’re what had first intrigued you about him, what bonded you to him like no other. He was damaged, imperfect, something you shared.
“Talk to me.”
You shake your head stubbornly, but you lips are on the verge of mutiny as they part of their own accord and you whisper; “I can’t be in love with him just because it’ll make everyone happy. And I refuse to try.”
He nods, sliding into the space beside you on the bed, careful not to touch.
“No one in their right mind would expect that from you.”
Your lips curl around an objection, about to tick off names on your fingers (mother, father, Jacob, your grandmother) but he speaks first.
“I said no one in their right mind. If you haven’t noticed, insanity tends to be contagious around these parts.”
If the goal was to make you smile, it works; you duck your head and your lips twist like a ribbon in the wind. But the direction changes and the corners of your mouth dip down.
“I’m tired.” You mean something else, something more, and either by catching the whispers of your emotions in the air or because he knows you so well, he gets it.
“Don’t be something just because you think it’s what everyone expects. But don’t be something you’re not just to do the opposite. Be what you are, and the rest will follow.”
He rises to leave and his body is halfway through to door before-
“What if I don’t know who that is?”
It’s always a mystery, the way his eyes go opaque and his lips perk upwards, but one side of his mouth twitches and he touches your shoulder, all briefly.
“Figure it out.”
You press yourself into the cold spot he’s left on your mattress, inhale the smell of wet wood and wolf on your sheets, then raise you wrist to your nose and sniff.
You’re something different.