fanmx storytime?
I made a mix. A Jacob/Bella mix. And then well. I wanted to just write a few little drabbles to go along with it, right? Some little guys to spice up the songs, feel a little creative about it, give it some nice words or something. Right. That didn't really go like I planned. This is. Well. It's a lot longer than I imagined it would be, okay?
I won't go south.
Bella's POV. Songs and story, both.
1. Some Devil - Dave Matthews
I’m broken, don’t break me/when I hit the ground/some devil, some angel/has got me to the bones/you said always and forever/now I believe you baby/you said always and forever/is such a long and lonely time
In the week after Edward leaves, Bella moves as little as possible. Shallow breaths, light slow steps throughout the house. She thinks strange things like, “if I stare at that doorway long enough without blinking, none of this will be real because I know he’ll walk through it.” And so she starts to stare and doesn’t blink until her eyes can’t stand it anymore. She doesn’t let it mean that he’s not coming back. Instead, she looks for the next thing that means he’ll be back, if she can just prove it to him. Everything she does means come back. She won’t let her movements mean he’s gone.
To anyone looking in on her, it might appear as if she‘s given in to his absence. To Charlie, it might look like she’s barren and used up by some boy that up and left her on some random Tuesday. But Bella knows better. She’s only puts her movements on hold as best as she can. The less she moves, the less they have to make up for when he comes back. He’ll come back. So she stays still.
2. World Spins Madly On - The Weepies
and everything that I said I’d do/like make the world brand new/and take the time for you/just got lost/and slept right through the dawn/and the world spins madly on
It goes on like this, and nothing changes. She wakes up, she moves through her day, doing what she has to, and she falls asleep. Nothing changes, and he doesn’t come back, no matter how long she stares.
3. December, December - Said the Whale
wasn’t just any winter/it was the kind/that makes you want to slip down the stairs
It’s not that Bella wants to die, exactly. It’s just she’s acutely aware of how she’s stopped living. She barely moves for months. Hardly breathes. Charlie walks by her door, without stepping in to check on her. He’s started to avoid looking at the damage. It tugs at his chest. He knows it too well. Like father, like daughter.
She looks at the calendar. December. December already. Christmas is a week away and Charlie surprises her with a tree in the living room. The tree is shabby and missing branches in strange places. The lights wrapped around it are the large colored lights most people string up on their homes. Still, he’s about to burst with pride. It’s perfect. Bella smiles, maybe, but she’s not sure she remembers what it feels like to smile. Panicked, she grabs for her wrist and checks for her pulse, waits a fraction of a second less than it takes for her to actually feel it before realizing her pulse is not anything like the anchor she’s looking for, and pulls her fists down at her sides. Charlie is still talking.
“I just thought, well. You know it’s that time of year,” he tries. “You really used to like trees when you were a kid.” He sounds more defeated by the second.
“Dad - it’s great.”
She means it. She swears she means it, and she hopes that maybe because he’s her father, he’ll understand that she’s giving him her very best. Which isn’t much at all, but she’s giving it to him, anyway.
He looks at his feet for a minute before shrugging and walking into the kitchen. Bella goes back to her room, trying to ignore his hurt.
She sits down in front of her mirror and tries to smile. It looks strange. Her skin feels tight. She tries to smile with her teeth, but it looks like she’s about to bite. She only thinks of the word strange. Smiling. Laughing. She remembers laughing, but can’t remember the last time she laughed. This, for some reason, snaps through her insides like a rubber band stretched too tight, leaving welts through muscle and down to her bone, and suddenly she’s angry. She gets up, frantic, paces until her eyes land on the cactus on her window sill. She grabs for it and pitches it across her room, hitting her mirror dead center. Phil would be proud.
“Bella, what the -”
She hadn’t heard Charlie come up the stairs, and she feels childish. Stupid, even, and mumbles, oh, sorry at him before rushing through the doorway to get the broom and dustpan to clean up the mess.
4. Rise - Azure Ray
today I’ll crawl out of bed/I can’t stand your shadow is too heavy to lift/maybe we’ll go for a ride/you said you’d take me no where, that suits me just fine
Bella finds Jacob for ridiculous, selfish reasons, but she can’t bring herself to care. She doesn’t know what to expect, and isn’t expecting much from him, other than a way back to Edward. She needs the rush, she needs to hear him care, needs him to try and stop her. Jacob is younger than she is, sweet and he gives in easily when she smiles at him.
They don’t talk about it. They fall into a pattern that revolves distinctly around them not talking about it, and Bella is surprised at how quickly that lets her forget, even for small periods of time.
When she gets home at night, she gets upset at herself for forgetting. For thinking anything will fix itself with this boy she’s half know all her life. She can’t help but go back, and so every night is the same thing, and mostly she wishes Edward were at her side, next to her on her bed, even if he would have to be gone again by the morning. If he would give her nights, she’d know how to fill her days with this new friend she’s made, and reality could come to a sort of stand still.
What she wants, really, is for time to just stop moving.
But it doesn’t, and suddenly, Jacob Black and Bella Swan are best friends.
5. Hurt - Johnny Cash
what have I become/my sweetest friend?/Everyone I know goes away in the end/you can have it all/my empire of dirt/I will let you down/I will make you hurt
Jacob promises to stay on the phone with her until she falls asleep, and so she falls asleep easier. But she wakes up screaming, and by some Jacob like miracle, he’s still there, on the line. She grabs the phone, catching herself mid scream, pulls it to her ear and hears him whispering, Bella, Bella, Bella. Shhh. And because it’s the middle of the night and because it’s him, it’s her Jacob and he’s still there on the phone, she starts to cry. It’s the kind of crying that comes from her whole body, hurts her head and breaks her heart. The kind that is helpless and wounded and swollen, and she won’t let herself stop.
“Bella, honey, it was just a dream. It was just a dream, that’s all. You’re okay, everything is okay. You’re safe.”
She wishes she could reach out and pull him to her, wrap herself inside of his arms and chest and legs. “Jacob, I know. I’m safe and everything is just the same and I know, but I’m not here,” she whispers. “I’m not here and I don’t know where I went, but I’m just not here.”
“I know, honey.” His voice comes out, breaking and tight. “I’ll get you back.”
The thing about Jacob Black is that when it’s the middle of the night and she’s crying and she’s so lost she couldn’t find her bedroom door and he says something like, “I’ll get you back,” she knows he’s saying it because he‘s her best friend, and not because he thinks he has some claim on any part of her. He’s recognizing the need and holding out his hand without denying her any small part of herself, whether she feels real or not. She knows she’s no where near where she should be, and she’s too aware of every time she hurts him. Maybe her tears are her offering to him, giving him something back in return for all he’s laid out in front of her.
There is no vampire she’s searching for in the darkness for the first night in over a year. She is crying for her best friend. And she is crying for herself. Just for tonight.
6. Point of Disgust - Low
once I was lost/to the point of disgust/I had in my sight/lack of vision/lack of light/I fell hard/I fell fast/mercy me/it’ll never last
Bella wakes up to Spring, and the sun is shining in through her window. A cloudless day, and she knows what that means. For a second. And then she remembers what everyday means, now. It doesn’t matter if the sun is shining, because he’s just not around. She is still mourning her loss, and the way everything she had grown to love about the Cullen family was torn away from her, without answers. She was left alone, when she thought she was full, and maybe now that is the hardest part. She was left alone. She’s taken on the word mourning, now, though, as some kind of truce. An agreement with the great forces of the world to allow these things to pass, someday, maybe.
But today the sun is shining and she remembers those days in the courtyard at school, without Edward. Bella and her friends. But mostly just Bella, not doing much of anything but soaking up the little warmth Forks provides in a year and feeling somehow whole.
Now, though, there are werewolves instead of vampires. She spends most of her time alone while the pack goes hunting for the last haunting piece of evidence that vampires are real and were ever a part of her life at all. She can’t think of Victoria without remembering the ballet studio, and dying for her mother, Edward, his family. Not for herself, but at the time, she thought dying for someone else was the greatest sacrifice. She didn’t understand, then, the absence that comes with loss. The benefit of staying alive for the people she loves.
She feels the loss of herself, without thinking it. She can’t think about it, yet. It’s easier, still, to remember the abandonment in the woods, and not everything leading up to it as the abandonment of herself. The feeling stays, though, and she is measuring the loss of who she was by the distance she’s crossed to feel it again. Getting out of bed feels heavy, but she is not unable. This is important.
She leaves her winter coat at home.
7. Easy Silence - Dixie Chicks
I come to find a refuge in/the easy silence that you make for me/it’s okay when there’s nothing more to say to me/in the peaceful quiet you create for me/and the way you keep the world at bay for me
Out in the garage, hours pass without saying anything. Bella makes herself comfortable while Jake gets to work, and they settle in easily to the routine. If one of them has something to say, they say it, and if they don’t, they don’t.
With Victoria gone, Jacob and the pack are trying to continue to live their lives as normally as possible. Bella watches them, wishes she could make it easier, give them back all of the humanity that was take from them, and feels, constantly, the stinging guilt. It’s not rational, and she knows it’s not, to blame herself for what’s happened to these boys - and Leah. Especially Leah. But she does anyway, feeling the same pull of affection she has for the Cullens the whole time. She doesn’t think it will ever be something she grows out of, and it makes her head swim a little, to try and piece together what she had then and her love for all of that, and what she has now, and the very different love she has for this.
But Jacob doesn’t push at it, leaves the wound to heal. He doesn’t blame her for her love, understands even though it hurts him, grates against him in ways Bella doesn’t like to think of. She doesn’t like to think of how she keeps Jacob hostage, either, by needing him.
In the silence, though, there is something other than need. Maybe, she realizes, she needed him. She needed him when she couldn’t get a grip on herself. Now they are just two kids sitting in a garage with a strange thread weaved between them, keeping them together, because neither one wants to undo the binding.
8. How My Heart Behaves - Feist
what grew/what grew, and inside who?/first so simple was the vow/then the chorus sang about/your shoulder/the mooring for me/like water lost in the sea
Bella is laying on the floor in Jacob’s bedroom, jeans and a t-shirt, absorbing the summer sunlight coming in through his window. He’s down in the kitchen, eating everything he can find, she’s sure. This is comfortable. The walls could be alive, she thinks, and they’d be grinning if they were. She’s also very tired. She breathes deep, and it’s him everywhere. The smell of him almost makes her light headed and suddenly she’s too sleepy. She pulls his blanket from his bed to the floor, to cover herself up. She can hear Jake rummaging around his fridge, and Bella lets herself float into a half sleep full of vivid dreaming.
Jake is his long haired self, watching from the doorway as Bella drives up to the house. It’s been so long since she’s seen him in her strange dream time, and without caution, she bolts from her truck and into his arms, tackling him to the floor, feeling him all around her, and she kisses his neck, his jawline, playful kisses, I’ve missed you too much kisses, and she kisses his mouth, almost.
“Uh. Bells?”
Her eyes snap open, but she doesn’t move. Her heart is racing, for a lot of reasons, but she’s too tired to push the dream away and get back to claiming she’s a walking, talking damaged thing. She’s just Bella on Jacob’s floor, a girl dreaming about kissing a sweet boy.
“I didn’t mean to scare you, honey,” he says, noticing her heart. “But why are you on the - “
Bella lifts her arm straight up into the air, her index finger extended from her fist, waiting for him to hush. She holds it that way for a moment before wiggling her finger at him, motioning for him to come to her. He steps to where her body is curled up on the floor with his hands hanging at his sides, and if Bella cared to adjust her line of vision, she knows the look he’d be giving her. That crazy girl look. She grabs the hand nearest to hers and starts tugging. He laughs and awkwardly makes his way onto the floor next to her. She covers him up with the blanket and scoots her way into his body, adjusting his arms so they’re around her back, her head burrowed comfortably and warmly into his chest. She snakes her arm around him, her cold hand slipping under his shirt, looking for the heat of his skin. Jake breathes in at the contact.
“Bella, what - “ he whispers.
“Shhhh,” she cuts him off. “I’m Bella and you’re Jacob and we are not bringing the outside world into this room so shhhh.”
“You’re acting like you haven’t slept in a year,” he laughs.
“Hmph. I haven’t. And I was doing so well with getting back to sleep before you came in here and interrupted the whole process and so now we are taking a nap. You and me. Jake and Bells are sleeping. Shh, shh, shh.”
“The bed -”
“Floor is fine! Shhh, nowww!” She’s not sure if it’s possible to whine while shushing another person, but she was coming pretty close.
He laughs again. “Okay, okay, okay. C’mere.” He pulls her closer. She makes sounds of contentment, like a child would. He starts running his hand through her hair, and before long, she’s asleep.
9. Let it Rain - Tilly and the Wall
and I never thought that with you and I this could be possible/I can feel the world coming apart/and I need you by my side with your delicate heart/so please don’t leave, no don’t you run/don’t be frightened by the storm, oh so bold and brave/just let it rain
When she wakes up, she is still comfortable and warm. She breathes Jacob in, their skin pressed together. His evergreen and her desert sends a jolt to her heart. She listens to it settle, get back to beating regularly, her blood flowing softly through her veins. It reminds her of sighing.
And there is Jacob, still sleeping, and none of it is wrong.
Until it is.
Bella wiggles her way out of his grasp too quickly, pushes herself back against the edge of Jacob’s bed, pulling her knees up to her chest and holding herself that way, contained and waiting for the pain. But it doesn’t come. She wakes Jacob in the process of getting away from him and cringes as he mumbles sounds of protest, reaching around for her with his eyes still closed. She knows when he doesn’t find her, he’ll open them, and see her sitting this way, and it’ll be too late. He will see her this way, first, and never know what she looked like waking up. He won’t have seen her face as she thought, none of this is wrong.
He opens his eyes, slowly. “Bella?”
Jacob sees her sitting, wrapped around herself and looking like a frightened bird in a cage, and his reaction is exactly the way she imagined it would be seconds before. He hides his hurt as fast as he can, and Bella wishes she would have stayed put, right exactly where she woke up, in his arms where nothing hurt and they were both protecting each other from this. Reality.
He props himself up on his side. “Bells, what’s wrong?”
She knows him well enough now to recognize when he’s preparing himself for the next blow.
“He’s not here,” she says.
He closes his eyes, brings his eyebrows together, sighs. He takes it in stride.
“He’s not,” he says, and she hears in his voice the inch he’s removed himself from her. Self preservation. She panics.
“Oh God, Jake, no. I mean. He’s not here. I can’t feel him here, you know…around me.”
Jake doesn’t move. She hates herself more and more every time she opens her mouth, but she keeps going. She has to.
“I mean, he’s always been around me, through all of this. This weird ghost feeling like he’s gone but he never leaves me, even when I think I’m maybe having a good time. A good moment. I still feel him pressing down on it, making it less than it is, still taking from me. But I mean, right now, today, he’s not here. I don’t feel him. At all.”
“Bella, what are you talking about?”
“Jake, he’s not here. Unless I choose to think of him, he isn’t here. He isn’t taking from any of this,” she throws her arms out and around her, at every part of his room. “Nothing about today is his. Does that…does that make sense?”
He runs his free hand through his hair. “I think so? Is this…I mean, is this a bad thing?”
She’s quiet, thinking about it for a minute, processing his absence as something that’s become more removed with time.
“Well. I think it’s both. It’s bad, because I loved him and he’s gone now. But that’s always been bad, so maybe this makes it less bad. It’s a memory more, I think, and not so much my reality.” Each word comes out slowly, almost unsure, but she nods her head with a sort of resolve to let it be okay that this is true, today.
“Jake, today was so good. Wasn’t it? Being here, you and me, like this. It’s like I feel like myself in my skin, again.” Bella smiles, and remembers her dream.
She looks at Jacob, and sees him warm as ever and grinning back at her. She’s so surprised by it her eyes shoot down by the ground at her feet in, skirting away from him, embarrassed.
There’s a pause.
“Uh, can I..I mean, would it be okay if I got back under the blanket…with you?” She asks, fidgeting with her hands resting on her knees, looking carefully at him behind a curtain of hair.
“Bells, honey, you really are insane,” he says, and grabs at her wrist, pulling her toward him. She’s half crawling, half dragged back to him, slipping back into her place against his body. She smiles up at him, shyly. Their eyes come together, and it’s a soft meeting, like a curious hello to a stranger you’ve recognized.
“Close your eyes. I’m going to try something.”
He looks at her, suspicious, before his eyes are shut.
Bella lifts herself up, starts at the base of his neck. Slowly, unfamiliar but sure, she kisses him there, and he breathes in sharply, swallows. She feels his nerves coming undone. She kisses him again, slightly higher this time, and a little more comfortable. This is Jacob, she thinks, and almost laughs at how much sense his skin makes. More kisses, but not like the dream. Not playful. Each one has a purpose, light and unique in its own meaning and specific in its placement. Jacob’s breathing gets heavy and he pulls her body closer to his, stretching his head back to give her more of his skin to claim as her own. Her mouth makes its way to the place just below his ear where his jaw begins. She breathes out, lightly, and his body shakes. She’s mildly alarmed at the freedom she has and the power he’s allowing her over his body, but she keeps kissing him. His skin tastes exactly like she imagined it would, and her body is cold air meeting warm, and the spin that causes down her spine.
She stops when she gets to his mouth, and he opens his eyes. They’re full of hunger and forest and sea salt and heat, and she lets him close the distance between them, mouth swallowing mouth slowly at first, and then with force, each one trying to pour everything that remains unsaid into the other. And in that kiss, there is so much.
10. Passenger Seat - Death Cab for Cutie
“do they collide?”/I ask, and you smile/with my feet on the dash/the world doesn’t matter/when you feel embarrassed/I’ll be your pride/when you need directions/then I’ll be the guide/for all time
“What do you think it’ll be like?”
Jacob is driving Bella home, and it’s been silent except for the noise of the truck on the pavement, rumbling along through the evergreens and sunset.
“What’ll what be like?”
Bella takes her time, turning her body across the cab until she’s lying on her back with her head on Jacob’s lap. She pulls his hand across her chest and traces its curves, smiling, small and secret, even though she knows he sees it. It’s a secret meant just for him.
“When all of this is over. When I’m not always insane and you don’t have to save me from myself. When you’re just a werewolf kid wonder and there’s no life threatening situations anywhere in our near future and we don’t have anything to worry about. Except you bringing home fleas.”
“We took care of the life threatening situation, Bells.”
“Oh, right. I guess I mean the residual vampire mess left up here,” she says, tapping her hear.
Jacob raises and eyebrow and laughs, pausing.
“Fleas, huh?”
Bella looks up at him, smiling with her teeth, as endearing as possible.
He gives it a beat or two.
“Well, you’ll be in the kitchen all day, making my meal,” he says matter-of-factly. “And as for me, well, I’ll be sitting around watching the game with dad and Charlie.”
“I’ll be your little woman, huh?” She asks, raising her own eyebrow, mocking him. “Slaving away over a hot stove, serving you hand and foot?”
“Sounds good to me. I think you‘d look cute in an apron.”
He laughs. “I think I better rethink that cliff.” She laughs with him. His laugh gets nervous for a second, but when he looks down at her, there’s nothing but lighthearted I‘m-only-joking-Jake-eyes looking up at him.
When Jacob talks again, it’s quiet, and Bella looks at his lips to make sure she isn’t imagining it.
“I think the worst of it is over,” he says, half shrugging his shoulders. “It’ll just be like this. Maybe we’ll be older and wiser and all of that, sure, sure. But it‘ll still be like this.”
She brings his hand to her cheek, holds it there.
“Best friends that fell in love,” she says, just as quietly, still smiling, and something comes alive in her eyes for the first time in a long time. That place where the truth meets change meets acceptance meets too many feelings, and where it‘s all okay to say out loud.
They come to a stop sign. He looks down at her, first searching, then wide eyed and grinning the best Jacob grin she‘s ever seen.
He looks back up, eyes on the road and hitting the gas easy, still smiling and shaking his head.
“Took you long enough,” he says.
A/N: Now look, there wasn't even supposed to be a need for any author notage because it wasn't supposed to be that big a deal. But then this beast took on a life of it's own, it kept me up for too many nights even, and I really couldn't tell you the last time I wrote something that even felt complete, let alone with characters, even though they're not mine, and a point to get to and a story to tell. Have mercy? I haven't written fic that was long enough for me to want to comment on it, explain it or anything like that. It's un beta-ed, but i went through it a lot. I'm sorry if it's messed up. I just. I'm. IDEK.
*IS EXHAUSTED. SHIT.*
EDIT. you know what, no. it's 5:45 in the morning. i'm proud of this shit. please enjoy it :D
I won't go south.
Bella's POV. Songs and story, both.
1. Some Devil - Dave Matthews
I’m broken, don’t break me/when I hit the ground/some devil, some angel/has got me to the bones/you said always and forever/now I believe you baby/you said always and forever/is such a long and lonely time
In the week after Edward leaves, Bella moves as little as possible. Shallow breaths, light slow steps throughout the house. She thinks strange things like, “if I stare at that doorway long enough without blinking, none of this will be real because I know he’ll walk through it.” And so she starts to stare and doesn’t blink until her eyes can’t stand it anymore. She doesn’t let it mean that he’s not coming back. Instead, she looks for the next thing that means he’ll be back, if she can just prove it to him. Everything she does means come back. She won’t let her movements mean he’s gone.
To anyone looking in on her, it might appear as if she‘s given in to his absence. To Charlie, it might look like she’s barren and used up by some boy that up and left her on some random Tuesday. But Bella knows better. She’s only puts her movements on hold as best as she can. The less she moves, the less they have to make up for when he comes back. He’ll come back. So she stays still.
2. World Spins Madly On - The Weepies
and everything that I said I’d do/like make the world brand new/and take the time for you/just got lost/and slept right through the dawn/and the world spins madly on
It goes on like this, and nothing changes. She wakes up, she moves through her day, doing what she has to, and she falls asleep. Nothing changes, and he doesn’t come back, no matter how long she stares.
3. December, December - Said the Whale
wasn’t just any winter/it was the kind/that makes you want to slip down the stairs
It’s not that Bella wants to die, exactly. It’s just she’s acutely aware of how she’s stopped living. She barely moves for months. Hardly breathes. Charlie walks by her door, without stepping in to check on her. He’s started to avoid looking at the damage. It tugs at his chest. He knows it too well. Like father, like daughter.
She looks at the calendar. December. December already. Christmas is a week away and Charlie surprises her with a tree in the living room. The tree is shabby and missing branches in strange places. The lights wrapped around it are the large colored lights most people string up on their homes. Still, he’s about to burst with pride. It’s perfect. Bella smiles, maybe, but she’s not sure she remembers what it feels like to smile. Panicked, she grabs for her wrist and checks for her pulse, waits a fraction of a second less than it takes for her to actually feel it before realizing her pulse is not anything like the anchor she’s looking for, and pulls her fists down at her sides. Charlie is still talking.
“I just thought, well. You know it’s that time of year,” he tries. “You really used to like trees when you were a kid.” He sounds more defeated by the second.
“Dad - it’s great.”
She means it. She swears she means it, and she hopes that maybe because he’s her father, he’ll understand that she’s giving him her very best. Which isn’t much at all, but she’s giving it to him, anyway.
He looks at his feet for a minute before shrugging and walking into the kitchen. Bella goes back to her room, trying to ignore his hurt.
She sits down in front of her mirror and tries to smile. It looks strange. Her skin feels tight. She tries to smile with her teeth, but it looks like she’s about to bite. She only thinks of the word strange. Smiling. Laughing. She remembers laughing, but can’t remember the last time she laughed. This, for some reason, snaps through her insides like a rubber band stretched too tight, leaving welts through muscle and down to her bone, and suddenly she’s angry. She gets up, frantic, paces until her eyes land on the cactus on her window sill. She grabs for it and pitches it across her room, hitting her mirror dead center. Phil would be proud.
“Bella, what the -”
She hadn’t heard Charlie come up the stairs, and she feels childish. Stupid, even, and mumbles, oh, sorry at him before rushing through the doorway to get the broom and dustpan to clean up the mess.
4. Rise - Azure Ray
today I’ll crawl out of bed/I can’t stand your shadow is too heavy to lift/maybe we’ll go for a ride/you said you’d take me no where, that suits me just fine
Bella finds Jacob for ridiculous, selfish reasons, but she can’t bring herself to care. She doesn’t know what to expect, and isn’t expecting much from him, other than a way back to Edward. She needs the rush, she needs to hear him care, needs him to try and stop her. Jacob is younger than she is, sweet and he gives in easily when she smiles at him.
They don’t talk about it. They fall into a pattern that revolves distinctly around them not talking about it, and Bella is surprised at how quickly that lets her forget, even for small periods of time.
When she gets home at night, she gets upset at herself for forgetting. For thinking anything will fix itself with this boy she’s half know all her life. She can’t help but go back, and so every night is the same thing, and mostly she wishes Edward were at her side, next to her on her bed, even if he would have to be gone again by the morning. If he would give her nights, she’d know how to fill her days with this new friend she’s made, and reality could come to a sort of stand still.
What she wants, really, is for time to just stop moving.
But it doesn’t, and suddenly, Jacob Black and Bella Swan are best friends.
5. Hurt - Johnny Cash
what have I become/my sweetest friend?/Everyone I know goes away in the end/you can have it all/my empire of dirt/I will let you down/I will make you hurt
Jacob promises to stay on the phone with her until she falls asleep, and so she falls asleep easier. But she wakes up screaming, and by some Jacob like miracle, he’s still there, on the line. She grabs the phone, catching herself mid scream, pulls it to her ear and hears him whispering, Bella, Bella, Bella. Shhh. And because it’s the middle of the night and because it’s him, it’s her Jacob and he’s still there on the phone, she starts to cry. It’s the kind of crying that comes from her whole body, hurts her head and breaks her heart. The kind that is helpless and wounded and swollen, and she won’t let herself stop.
“Bella, honey, it was just a dream. It was just a dream, that’s all. You’re okay, everything is okay. You’re safe.”
She wishes she could reach out and pull him to her, wrap herself inside of his arms and chest and legs. “Jacob, I know. I’m safe and everything is just the same and I know, but I’m not here,” she whispers. “I’m not here and I don’t know where I went, but I’m just not here.”
“I know, honey.” His voice comes out, breaking and tight. “I’ll get you back.”
The thing about Jacob Black is that when it’s the middle of the night and she’s crying and she’s so lost she couldn’t find her bedroom door and he says something like, “I’ll get you back,” she knows he’s saying it because he‘s her best friend, and not because he thinks he has some claim on any part of her. He’s recognizing the need and holding out his hand without denying her any small part of herself, whether she feels real or not. She knows she’s no where near where she should be, and she’s too aware of every time she hurts him. Maybe her tears are her offering to him, giving him something back in return for all he’s laid out in front of her.
There is no vampire she’s searching for in the darkness for the first night in over a year. She is crying for her best friend. And she is crying for herself. Just for tonight.
6. Point of Disgust - Low
once I was lost/to the point of disgust/I had in my sight/lack of vision/lack of light/I fell hard/I fell fast/mercy me/it’ll never last
Bella wakes up to Spring, and the sun is shining in through her window. A cloudless day, and she knows what that means. For a second. And then she remembers what everyday means, now. It doesn’t matter if the sun is shining, because he’s just not around. She is still mourning her loss, and the way everything she had grown to love about the Cullen family was torn away from her, without answers. She was left alone, when she thought she was full, and maybe now that is the hardest part. She was left alone. She’s taken on the word mourning, now, though, as some kind of truce. An agreement with the great forces of the world to allow these things to pass, someday, maybe.
But today the sun is shining and she remembers those days in the courtyard at school, without Edward. Bella and her friends. But mostly just Bella, not doing much of anything but soaking up the little warmth Forks provides in a year and feeling somehow whole.
Now, though, there are werewolves instead of vampires. She spends most of her time alone while the pack goes hunting for the last haunting piece of evidence that vampires are real and were ever a part of her life at all. She can’t think of Victoria without remembering the ballet studio, and dying for her mother, Edward, his family. Not for herself, but at the time, she thought dying for someone else was the greatest sacrifice. She didn’t understand, then, the absence that comes with loss. The benefit of staying alive for the people she loves.
She feels the loss of herself, without thinking it. She can’t think about it, yet. It’s easier, still, to remember the abandonment in the woods, and not everything leading up to it as the abandonment of herself. The feeling stays, though, and she is measuring the loss of who she was by the distance she’s crossed to feel it again. Getting out of bed feels heavy, but she is not unable. This is important.
She leaves her winter coat at home.
7. Easy Silence - Dixie Chicks
I come to find a refuge in/the easy silence that you make for me/it’s okay when there’s nothing more to say to me/in the peaceful quiet you create for me/and the way you keep the world at bay for me
Out in the garage, hours pass without saying anything. Bella makes herself comfortable while Jake gets to work, and they settle in easily to the routine. If one of them has something to say, they say it, and if they don’t, they don’t.
With Victoria gone, Jacob and the pack are trying to continue to live their lives as normally as possible. Bella watches them, wishes she could make it easier, give them back all of the humanity that was take from them, and feels, constantly, the stinging guilt. It’s not rational, and she knows it’s not, to blame herself for what’s happened to these boys - and Leah. Especially Leah. But she does anyway, feeling the same pull of affection she has for the Cullens the whole time. She doesn’t think it will ever be something she grows out of, and it makes her head swim a little, to try and piece together what she had then and her love for all of that, and what she has now, and the very different love she has for this.
But Jacob doesn’t push at it, leaves the wound to heal. He doesn’t blame her for her love, understands even though it hurts him, grates against him in ways Bella doesn’t like to think of. She doesn’t like to think of how she keeps Jacob hostage, either, by needing him.
In the silence, though, there is something other than need. Maybe, she realizes, she needed him. She needed him when she couldn’t get a grip on herself. Now they are just two kids sitting in a garage with a strange thread weaved between them, keeping them together, because neither one wants to undo the binding.
8. How My Heart Behaves - Feist
what grew/what grew, and inside who?/first so simple was the vow/then the chorus sang about/your shoulder/the mooring for me/like water lost in the sea
Bella is laying on the floor in Jacob’s bedroom, jeans and a t-shirt, absorbing the summer sunlight coming in through his window. He’s down in the kitchen, eating everything he can find, she’s sure. This is comfortable. The walls could be alive, she thinks, and they’d be grinning if they were. She’s also very tired. She breathes deep, and it’s him everywhere. The smell of him almost makes her light headed and suddenly she’s too sleepy. She pulls his blanket from his bed to the floor, to cover herself up. She can hear Jake rummaging around his fridge, and Bella lets herself float into a half sleep full of vivid dreaming.
Jake is his long haired self, watching from the doorway as Bella drives up to the house. It’s been so long since she’s seen him in her strange dream time, and without caution, she bolts from her truck and into his arms, tackling him to the floor, feeling him all around her, and she kisses his neck, his jawline, playful kisses, I’ve missed you too much kisses, and she kisses his mouth, almost.
“Uh. Bells?”
Her eyes snap open, but she doesn’t move. Her heart is racing, for a lot of reasons, but she’s too tired to push the dream away and get back to claiming she’s a walking, talking damaged thing. She’s just Bella on Jacob’s floor, a girl dreaming about kissing a sweet boy.
“I didn’t mean to scare you, honey,” he says, noticing her heart. “But why are you on the - “
Bella lifts her arm straight up into the air, her index finger extended from her fist, waiting for him to hush. She holds it that way for a moment before wiggling her finger at him, motioning for him to come to her. He steps to where her body is curled up on the floor with his hands hanging at his sides, and if Bella cared to adjust her line of vision, she knows the look he’d be giving her. That crazy girl look. She grabs the hand nearest to hers and starts tugging. He laughs and awkwardly makes his way onto the floor next to her. She covers him up with the blanket and scoots her way into his body, adjusting his arms so they’re around her back, her head burrowed comfortably and warmly into his chest. She snakes her arm around him, her cold hand slipping under his shirt, looking for the heat of his skin. Jake breathes in at the contact.
“Bella, what - “ he whispers.
“Shhhh,” she cuts him off. “I’m Bella and you’re Jacob and we are not bringing the outside world into this room so shhhh.”
“You’re acting like you haven’t slept in a year,” he laughs.
“Hmph. I haven’t. And I was doing so well with getting back to sleep before you came in here and interrupted the whole process and so now we are taking a nap. You and me. Jake and Bells are sleeping. Shh, shh, shh.”
“The bed -”
“Floor is fine! Shhh, nowww!” She’s not sure if it’s possible to whine while shushing another person, but she was coming pretty close.
He laughs again. “Okay, okay, okay. C’mere.” He pulls her closer. She makes sounds of contentment, like a child would. He starts running his hand through her hair, and before long, she’s asleep.
9. Let it Rain - Tilly and the Wall
and I never thought that with you and I this could be possible/I can feel the world coming apart/and I need you by my side with your delicate heart/so please don’t leave, no don’t you run/don’t be frightened by the storm, oh so bold and brave/just let it rain
When she wakes up, she is still comfortable and warm. She breathes Jacob in, their skin pressed together. His evergreen and her desert sends a jolt to her heart. She listens to it settle, get back to beating regularly, her blood flowing softly through her veins. It reminds her of sighing.
And there is Jacob, still sleeping, and none of it is wrong.
Until it is.
Bella wiggles her way out of his grasp too quickly, pushes herself back against the edge of Jacob’s bed, pulling her knees up to her chest and holding herself that way, contained and waiting for the pain. But it doesn’t come. She wakes Jacob in the process of getting away from him and cringes as he mumbles sounds of protest, reaching around for her with his eyes still closed. She knows when he doesn’t find her, he’ll open them, and see her sitting this way, and it’ll be too late. He will see her this way, first, and never know what she looked like waking up. He won’t have seen her face as she thought, none of this is wrong.
He opens his eyes, slowly. “Bella?”
Jacob sees her sitting, wrapped around herself and looking like a frightened bird in a cage, and his reaction is exactly the way she imagined it would be seconds before. He hides his hurt as fast as he can, and Bella wishes she would have stayed put, right exactly where she woke up, in his arms where nothing hurt and they were both protecting each other from this. Reality.
He props himself up on his side. “Bells, what’s wrong?”
She knows him well enough now to recognize when he’s preparing himself for the next blow.
“He’s not here,” she says.
He closes his eyes, brings his eyebrows together, sighs. He takes it in stride.
“He’s not,” he says, and she hears in his voice the inch he’s removed himself from her. Self preservation. She panics.
“Oh God, Jake, no. I mean. He’s not here. I can’t feel him here, you know…around me.”
Jake doesn’t move. She hates herself more and more every time she opens her mouth, but she keeps going. She has to.
“I mean, he’s always been around me, through all of this. This weird ghost feeling like he’s gone but he never leaves me, even when I think I’m maybe having a good time. A good moment. I still feel him pressing down on it, making it less than it is, still taking from me. But I mean, right now, today, he’s not here. I don’t feel him. At all.”
“Bella, what are you talking about?”
“Jake, he’s not here. Unless I choose to think of him, he isn’t here. He isn’t taking from any of this,” she throws her arms out and around her, at every part of his room. “Nothing about today is his. Does that…does that make sense?”
He runs his free hand through his hair. “I think so? Is this…I mean, is this a bad thing?”
She’s quiet, thinking about it for a minute, processing his absence as something that’s become more removed with time.
“Well. I think it’s both. It’s bad, because I loved him and he’s gone now. But that’s always been bad, so maybe this makes it less bad. It’s a memory more, I think, and not so much my reality.” Each word comes out slowly, almost unsure, but she nods her head with a sort of resolve to let it be okay that this is true, today.
“Jake, today was so good. Wasn’t it? Being here, you and me, like this. It’s like I feel like myself in my skin, again.” Bella smiles, and remembers her dream.
She looks at Jacob, and sees him warm as ever and grinning back at her. She’s so surprised by it her eyes shoot down by the ground at her feet in, skirting away from him, embarrassed.
There’s a pause.
“Uh, can I..I mean, would it be okay if I got back under the blanket…with you?” She asks, fidgeting with her hands resting on her knees, looking carefully at him behind a curtain of hair.
“Bells, honey, you really are insane,” he says, and grabs at her wrist, pulling her toward him. She’s half crawling, half dragged back to him, slipping back into her place against his body. She smiles up at him, shyly. Their eyes come together, and it’s a soft meeting, like a curious hello to a stranger you’ve recognized.
“Close your eyes. I’m going to try something.”
He looks at her, suspicious, before his eyes are shut.
Bella lifts herself up, starts at the base of his neck. Slowly, unfamiliar but sure, she kisses him there, and he breathes in sharply, swallows. She feels his nerves coming undone. She kisses him again, slightly higher this time, and a little more comfortable. This is Jacob, she thinks, and almost laughs at how much sense his skin makes. More kisses, but not like the dream. Not playful. Each one has a purpose, light and unique in its own meaning and specific in its placement. Jacob’s breathing gets heavy and he pulls her body closer to his, stretching his head back to give her more of his skin to claim as her own. Her mouth makes its way to the place just below his ear where his jaw begins. She breathes out, lightly, and his body shakes. She’s mildly alarmed at the freedom she has and the power he’s allowing her over his body, but she keeps kissing him. His skin tastes exactly like she imagined it would, and her body is cold air meeting warm, and the spin that causes down her spine.
She stops when she gets to his mouth, and he opens his eyes. They’re full of hunger and forest and sea salt and heat, and she lets him close the distance between them, mouth swallowing mouth slowly at first, and then with force, each one trying to pour everything that remains unsaid into the other. And in that kiss, there is so much.
10. Passenger Seat - Death Cab for Cutie
“do they collide?”/I ask, and you smile/with my feet on the dash/the world doesn’t matter/when you feel embarrassed/I’ll be your pride/when you need directions/then I’ll be the guide/for all time
“What do you think it’ll be like?”
Jacob is driving Bella home, and it’s been silent except for the noise of the truck on the pavement, rumbling along through the evergreens and sunset.
“What’ll what be like?”
Bella takes her time, turning her body across the cab until she’s lying on her back with her head on Jacob’s lap. She pulls his hand across her chest and traces its curves, smiling, small and secret, even though she knows he sees it. It’s a secret meant just for him.
“When all of this is over. When I’m not always insane and you don’t have to save me from myself. When you’re just a werewolf kid wonder and there’s no life threatening situations anywhere in our near future and we don’t have anything to worry about. Except you bringing home fleas.”
“We took care of the life threatening situation, Bells.”
“Oh, right. I guess I mean the residual vampire mess left up here,” she says, tapping her hear.
Jacob raises and eyebrow and laughs, pausing.
“Fleas, huh?”
Bella looks up at him, smiling with her teeth, as endearing as possible.
He gives it a beat or two.
“Well, you’ll be in the kitchen all day, making my meal,” he says matter-of-factly. “And as for me, well, I’ll be sitting around watching the game with dad and Charlie.”
“I’ll be your little woman, huh?” She asks, raising her own eyebrow, mocking him. “Slaving away over a hot stove, serving you hand and foot?”
“Sounds good to me. I think you‘d look cute in an apron.”
He laughs. “I think I better rethink that cliff.” She laughs with him. His laugh gets nervous for a second, but when he looks down at her, there’s nothing but lighthearted I‘m-only-joking-Jake-eyes looking up at him.
When Jacob talks again, it’s quiet, and Bella looks at his lips to make sure she isn’t imagining it.
“I think the worst of it is over,” he says, half shrugging his shoulders. “It’ll just be like this. Maybe we’ll be older and wiser and all of that, sure, sure. But it‘ll still be like this.”
She brings his hand to her cheek, holds it there.
“Best friends that fell in love,” she says, just as quietly, still smiling, and something comes alive in her eyes for the first time in a long time. That place where the truth meets change meets acceptance meets too many feelings, and where it‘s all okay to say out loud.
They come to a stop sign. He looks down at her, first searching, then wide eyed and grinning the best Jacob grin she‘s ever seen.
He looks back up, eyes on the road and hitting the gas easy, still smiling and shaking his head.
“Took you long enough,” he says.
A/N: Now look, there wasn't even supposed to be a need for any author notage because it wasn't supposed to be that big a deal. But then this beast took on a life of it's own, it kept me up for too many nights even, and I really couldn't tell you the last time I wrote something that even felt complete, let alone with characters, even though they're not mine, and a point to get to and a story to tell. Have mercy? I haven't written fic that was long enough for me to want to comment on it, explain it or anything like that. It's un beta-ed, but i went through it a lot. I'm sorry if it's messed up. I just. I'm. IDEK.
*IS EXHAUSTED. SHIT.*
EDIT. you know what, no. it's 5:45 in the morning. i'm proud of this shit. please enjoy it :D