Dark Haired Children, Chapter 3.

[channings]

title: Dark Haired Children, Chapter 3.
author: channings.
rating: T.
type: multi-chapter.
status: work in progress.
description: Jacob Black is haunted by vivid dreams of the girl he loves - pale, furious, deadly. But she knows her feelings now and despite her approaching nuptials, Jacob is convinced he can save her. 'Until your heart stops beating' was a promise.



A/N: Wow. This is just really late. I'm aiming to post the next chapter sometime this week and all subsequent chapters on Tuesdays again.

anything other than yes is no
anything other than stay is go
anything less than "i love you" is lying

Morning arrived, and though the blinds were drawn, pale light seeped through. The sky was colored a dreary gray - they'd escaped Forks but they hadn't escaped that yet - and the weather had cooled overnight. Jacob peered down at Bella and wondered if perhaps that was it, perhaps that was why she clung to him so desperately. Her legs were wound tightly around his waist, and her fingers were clasped behind his neck, pulling his head gently downward; Jacob decided that she had to be suffering from chills so severe, lying under him was the only solution. But then she smiled up at him, said “Jake,” in an unfamiliar, coquettish voice, and he wasn't worried about 'why's anymore.

He glanced at Bella's shirt where it lay forgotten on the carpet. It seemed that she'd shed her inhibitions the minute she'd taken it off and now, this strange, sexual Bella lay where his best friend once had. Jacob had imagined the moment so many times but never like this. For one thing, he had expected to do a lot more begging first. For another, he'd figured she would be a bit more apprehensive. Somehow, she was more sure about things than he was.

Bella looked so serene with her hair spilled against his pillow like silk, her eyelids heavy and beguiling. He had expected to tear off her t-shirt and find a plain cotton bra in white or baby blue but instead, found himself looking at one of black lace and tan trimming that pushed her up and pressed her in. He looked into her eyes, wondering if this was the same Bella who tripped and broke things more often than she visited the dentist. But then he could feel her wriggling awkwardly out of her pants, noticed her hand slam into the bedside table by accident, smiled at the confirmation.

“Are you sure?” He had to ask. Because she was offering him everything he'd ever wanted. Because he didn't want her to regret it later. Because this was Bella Swan, and she was naked beneath him, in a motel room she'd been against getting, and he didn't want sorrow to be attached to what he would do to her so lovingly, what he wanted to do with her for always.

“Yes,” she breathed, pressing kisses into his neck. “Please.” Jake had always been the one pleading, looking at her with desperate eyes. He found that he liked the situation far better in reverse. With three fingers, he pulled her chin up, her face to his, and their lips met - again, at last.

These were no ordinary kisses. These were kisses that had been struggling to come out for months, kisses that had been held back for too long. They were kisses that spoke hopefully of a halted engagement, of retained humanity. They would have Cullen to deal with but - no, Jacob shook his head to clear it; vampires had no place in their $75-a-night closet of a shared bedroom.

Jake removed his shirt, and Bella giggled beneath him.
“What?” he asked, frowning and tossing the shirt to join hers.
“I was just thinking how weird it is,” Bella said, stifling another chuckle, “that the one time we actually need your clothes off, you're the most dressed I've seen you in years.”

She stuck out her tongue, and Jacob scowled. “No more talking, Bells,” he instructed, but the devilish gleam in her eyes suggested that she would be the one giving commands.

She wrapped her arms around him, rotated their bodies so that she was straddling him. “Bells, wha -” he started to ask - this was still so strange to him, despite its wonderfulness - but then she was kissing her way down his body, tugging his pants down, lowering the waist of his boxers...“God, Bella.”

She paused, her confidence suddenly muted. “You want me, right?” She said carefully, quietly. He nodded so enthusiastically he was certain he resembled a bobblehead, and she smiled, satisfied. “Good.”

Then she reared back, and suddenly her face was shades paler. Fangs extended past her lips, and though he'd never known Cullen to have a set, it seemed realistic that Bella did. When she leaned towards him they sank into the skin on his neck, her lips unyielding and cold against him.

“No!” he protested, struggling to free himself. “No, this isn't right!”
She laughed, and it was like glass breaking. “God, would you wake up?” she asked.

“What?” Her face was blurring in front of him. He blinked, and then the world jerked, and he was clothed, Bella standing at the side of his bed with a worried expression on her face. She was her usual blushing self again.

“That's some nightmare you're having,” she said. She sat down at the edge of his bed. “Wanna talk about it?”

“No!” Jacob said too quickly, “No way.”

She smirked. “You said my name, and then you screamed. I never knew I was so scary.”

“It wasn't you,” he muttered.

“What?”

Louder, then, he said, “It wasn't you. He'd changed you, already.” He turned to look at the wall. “So, it wasn't you.”

Bella cleared her throat. “When I change I'll still be me, Jake. That's what you have to understand. This doesn't have to be our last week together.”

He thought about the cold smirk she so often gave him in his nightmares, about her blood red eyes, and shook his head dismissively.

“I'm sorry, Bella. It is.” And then he kicked the covers off, headed for the bathroom, and shut the door.

An hour passed. And then another. He knew he'd have to leave eventually, and yet he stood poised with his hand on the doorknob for a half hour before realizing he wasn't man enough and took a seat on the toilet. Bella came and knocked every so often, but he didn't respond, and she, knowing he just needed time, never tried to coax him. Instead, he would listen to her footsteps as she returned to bed and waited. He sniffed. Good, he thought viciously, let her wait.

He had a week before she turned and somehow, he'd managed to accompany her alone on a road trip. This should have been cause for celebration, but so far Bella had cried, they'd slept, and then he'd had a nightmare and locked himself in the bathroom. He held his face in his palms. They were off to a terrible start.

She was going to get married and change herself all to be with a permanent teenager who lived on a diet of animal blood. At the same time, she thought the transformation would suddenly make her adequate, as if she wasn't more than that already. The situation seemed irreparable. She would give up her life, and Jacob would lose her. The end.

When he was done crying and beating himself up for doing so, he pushed the door open and found Bella sitting on the floor across from him, fast asleep against the wall. The second she heard the door, she jumped up. “Jake!” She got to her feet. “Y - were you crying in there?”

Jacob wiped at his eyes self-consciously. “No,” he lied. Bella crossed her arms, frowning.

“Sure, sure.” She grabbed him by the arm, pulled him over to his bed, and pointed at it to indicate he should sit. “We don't have to talk about that little temper tantrum you just threw. But when I change, I refuse to let you give up on me. Couldn't you at least try to talk to me?”

“What part of it won't be you are you not getting, Bella?”

“The part where you actually believe that!” she snapped. “I don't want to lose you.”

His heart skipped a beat, and even though she'd said it before, told him how much he meant, how hurt she would be if he were no longer in her life, it hit him the same way it first had. “Then don't change. Think of Charlie, think of Renee, think of me! Think of the future you should have that you never will: kids, a real college experience, a career instead of a job. And please, please Bella, reconsider.”

She sighed. “I'd be lying if I said I wasn't thinking of those things.”

“And?”

“And,” she said, “I don't know any other way to be with him but to give all that up. Relationships are about sacrifice.”

He was begging again, and he hated how whiny he sounded, how weak. “Bella, that's too much of yourself to give up. Please! If he loves you, he'll be with you no matter what.”

Bella held up a hand. “Stop Jake,” she said. “This is the only way. Please...understand.”

He stared as if watching a car crash. Then, “I have to call Sam.”

***

you are calm and reposed, let your beauty unfold
pale white, like the skin stretched over your bones
spring keeps you ever close, you are second hand smoke

Jacob wished he existed in a place where underage werewolves had more than just a few choices. Better yet, he wished he existed where there were no Quileute legends, no cold ones, and most of all, no alphas to report to. He looked at the sky hopefully, but the need to call Sam still tugged at him until he was removing twenty-five cents from his pocket and sliding it into the slot of a motel payphone.

It rang once, twice - “Hello?”

“Hey, Sam,” Jacob said cheerfully. “It's me, what's up?”

There were a few angry exhales on the other end. “Jacob Black, where are you?” Sam said evenly.

“No pleasantries then?” This time Sam growled, and Jacob had the sense to quit making jokes. “I'm in Vancouver for now.”

“With Bella Swan?” Jacob could hear Paul and Embry hooting and hollering in the background. Even Leah's silent scowl came through, somehow.

“Maybe.”

Sam sighed. “I swear, when Bella Swan is involved, all sense jumps out the window.”

Jacob was trying not to be sarcastic but his mouth wasn't within his control anymore. “Not all.”

“What are you doing, Jacob?” Sam finally asked, though Jake was sure he'd been thinking it since he answered the phone.

“Changing her mind. You don't see her. When she's with him, she's this delicate flower who won't even breathe if he doesn't agree with it, but when she's here with me, she's different. She's strong.”

“She,” Sam said soberly, “has made her choice.”

Jake crossed his arms and frowned. To him, Bella hadn't made her choice until she was standing at an altar dressed in bridal silk. “She really hasn't.”

“She's already leaving us with the uncomfortable task of deciding to honor the treaty or not. I'm tired of seeing her hurt you. And she's not your imprint.” Jacob was nearly snarling at the words. Imprinting was just one more thing that robbed him of the luxury of choice. At the very least, he had thought that the person he loved wouldn't be dictated by legend and folklore.

“Maybe that's because I already got it right.” Jacob always had to be the defiant one. Perhaps it was because the alpha job was meant to be his. Perhaps two alphas - one named officially, one resisting the pull of his birthright - couldn't exist in one pack.

“I'm not going to order you to come home,” - good, Jacob thought viciously, because I would've found a way around it - “but I hope you figure out what a lost cause is.”

When Jacob returned to the room, his expression was severe. He looked appraisingly at Bella - the girl who could soon be the thing from his nightmares - and wondered how she could wish for immortality, wish to be frozen as her adolescence was finally coming to a close. She would never look like a thirty-year old businesswoman or a forty-year old soccer mom. How did she not have the same dreams Jacob did? Couldn't she see the minivan, the lunchboxes, the dark-haired children tugging at their arms?

“I love you,” he told her, simply and without any expectations this time. He didn't say it to give her an option - she already knew she had one. “If I thought you'd be happy with him for the rest of forever, I wouldn't be fighting so hard.”

“I will be, Jacob.”

“A teenager forever?” He verified, “Your choice in careers limited? No children?”

“I wanted those, yes. But Edward -”

Jacob shook his head. “Forget Edward. What do you want Bella? What things will you miss?”

“Your friendship,” she started, causing Jacob to scowl darkly, “My parents. I'll miss the feeling of falling asleep after a long day. Maybe, I'll wish I had figured out what I was good at and pursued a career in it. Or maybe even, I'll figure it out and wish it could have been done. I wish children were possible. I always wanted a little girl to have piano recitals and dance ballet - and hopefully she’d be better at it than I was when I was little. But these are mostly maybes. What I know is that I can't live without him. That's what's important.”

“Your life is important,” said Jacob, but he knew there was no reason he could make her see. Her love for Edward had blinded her, and neither this trip, nor any other, would show her the mistake she was making until it was too late. His watch beeped to alert him that check-out was in ten minutes. He breathed deeply to steel himself, but sadness leaked out of him no matter how many times he inhaled. Defeated, he turned to leave. “You only live once, Bells. And forever is a long time to have regrets.”

Next: Chapter Four