Cracked! chap 13: Blood in My Eyes for You
Title: Cracked
Fandom: Twilight
Genre: Humor/Satire/Drama
Rating: T
Main Pairing: Bella and Edward
LJ Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Also on ff.net
Summary: Welcome to an experiment in dark humor, with alternating emphasis on the "dark" and the "humor." I've got messed up ideas of what's funny. Just roll with it.
Previously: Alice advised Edward to skip Biology
Blood in My Eyes for You
Before she even walked all the way into the classroom, Bella could smell what was coming. The trashcan full of used Band-Aids and stained tissues reeked of dried blood, and the reused Clorox bottle that Mr. Banner was using as a biohazard receptacle was obviously filled with used lancets.
I can get through this, Bella told herself. I am a grown woman, not a five-year-old child. I can do anything I set my mind to. She walked a few feet away from the door, took in some fresh air, and marched herself into the lab.
Alice, who was watching this unfold from a few buildings away, wondered what it meant. Remembering what Edward had said about Forksians being prone to hemophilia, and considering that Bella’s father was native to the area, Alice double-checked that Edward was safely tucked away in his car before she glimpsed into Bella’s near future.
How strange, Alice mused. After a bit more peeking, she smiled and slipped off to her next class. Sometimes it really was better to just let things happen naturally.
Shit, Bella thought as Mr. Banner began passing out supplies and explaining the lab. I really should have prepared myself for this. I would have known about this lab if I’d been paying attention yesterday, but no, I was all heated about stupid Mike Newton trying to ask me out, and then Edward got all weird and talkative on me. God damn all these boys and their distractions. This is why I should have gone to an all-girl boarding school.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t deal with a single needle prick to her own skin. It wasn’t that she couldn’t handle a couple of other people with pricked fingers-a little swoon never killed anybody. The problem was that the entire class would be doing this lab at once, and while she could watch someone hemorrhage buckets on camera without breaking a sweat, the smell of thirty other kids’ blood drops was a big deal. It was also cold and cloudy today, so not only was there no chance of an open window to ventilate the air, the building’s heater was cranked up (the better to marinate everyone and saturate the environment with blood, pheromones, and post-lunch flatulence).
Woman up, Bella! I’m never going to get through forensic biology courses if I don’t learn to deal with this nausea.
Bella was no chicken, nor was she the type to give up easily. She had every intention of completing her own blood typing card, so she did her damnedest to stay upright. But Bob Banner had to come around the classroom and put four water droplets on each individual card, one at a time. For some reason he wouldn’t delegate the task to anyone else in the interest of efficiency-he didn’t trust anyone not to make a mess. But he let everyone pass down their testing packets instead of handing those out with the water. And half the students were stupid, and didn’t wait until he got to them before they started pricking their fingers as they’d been instructed. So while Mr. Banner ran around the entire classroom ineptly facilitating the mass bloodletting, Bella sat in the back of the room trying to breathe through her mouth only once every ninety seconds.
Edward would have found her struggle ironic if he’d been paying attention. But he didn’t want to think about Bella’s flowing blood, knowing it would only torture him (and possibly drive him to burst into the classroom and kill her). So instead of watching her through Mike Newton’s lewd thoughts or Mr. Banner’s condescending ones, he was composing a song in his car and wondering what color brassiere she’d be wearing today. (He still hadn’t allowed himself to look at the front of her chest.) Thus, he was the last to know when Bella finally passed out on her lab table, not from the smell of blood, but from holding her breath for too long and depriving her brain of oxygen.
Bella came to just as Mike Newton of all people was hauling her out the door. Her nausea hadn’t passed yet, though, and it didn’t help that Mike’s finger was still bleeding. He also wasn’t nearly as strong as he thought he was, so it didn’t take much of Bella’s instinctive struggling before he dropped her flat on her ass in the damp earth.
“Oof!”
“Shit! Bella, I’m so sorry!”
Having the wind knocked out of her, Bella just lay in the grass, very still, and closed her eyes. At least he hadn’t dropped her on the concrete sidewalk. Actually, it was nice and cool down here, and the air was clean. Perfect place to recover, if only Mike would go away. He was the only one around to see her fall, which he would never admit because then people would know he was too weak to carry a 110-pound girl twenty feet without dropping her. So really, as long as she got the bracken off her jacket and got up before the next bell, there was no reason to think anyone else would ever know-
“Bella!”
Oh hell.
“What happened?” the familiar, angry voice demanded. “What did you do to her?”
“It wasn’t me!” Mike protested. “She fainted in class. She didn’t even stick her finger, just started turning colors and then passed out.”
“So you threw her in the mud?”
Stop it, Bella wanted to say. Except that between the blood-induced nausea, the fall, and the citric acid in her lemonade from lunch, it was probably better not to open her mouth.
“I didn’t throw her, I was just taking her to the nurse-”
“Shut up and go away,” Edward ordered him, squatting down to check Bella’s breathing. She seemed fine, just very pale, and her pulse was fast but coming back down to normal. “Assclown,” he added when Mike started to object. Let it never be said that Bella never taught me anything, even if it’s just a new swear word. “Bella, can you hear me?”
“Mmmph.”
Before she could quite come to terms with what was happening, Bella felt herself being lifted into the air and swept away. And she knew, without having to open her eyes, without even having to smell him, that it was Edward holding her. The same tenderness was there in his arms, just like the day of Tyler’s van.
Maybe having a stalker wasn’t all bad.
“So you faint at the sight of blood?”
Unless the stalker was also kind of a jerk.
None of this funny, not even a little bit. Edward was just so relieved that Bella wasn’t hurt, he couldn’t help laughing. Sensitivity to blood, of all things-the universe was definitely messing with him. He teased Bella about it a little more on the way to the nurse’s office. Not because he wanted to annoy her, but because he didn’t want to think about the fact that she was in his arms or what it could lead to. It wasn’t very far to the woods, and there was no one around to see them vanish. No one to see him embrace her as a lover. Or to hear her scream. Why does she have to smell so delicious?
A better question was why she looked so content. But there was no use letting himself think about that either. He was expecting her to protest at least a little, since she seemed to protest everything else he ever said or did, but she didn’t this time. (Back in her own classroom, Alice shocked her class once again by yipping for joy for no apparent reason. Her instructor made a note to call Mrs. Cullen and express his concern.) As Edward explained the situation to Nurse Hammond, he wondered if Bella wasn’t struggling because she was sicker than he thought, or worse, injured from her fall. Damn that Mike Newton.
In fact Bella did consider raising a little hell-if it had been any other guy, she’d have been jumping out of their arms the same as she did with Mike, not to mention punching them in the dick. She did not like being manhandled, thank you, especially not by jackass guys who were probably just ogling her or trying to feel her up. However, in spite of Edward’s ribbing and what should have been the unforgiveable fact that he’d invaded her home, she couldn’t bring herself to say anything that would make him let go. Later, Bella would tell herself that her lack of fighting spirit was all because she was still dizzy and already having the strangest day. But when Edward laid her on the nurse’s vinyl bed, and she opened her eyes and stared into his…that was it for Bella Marie Swan. Even if she didn’t particularly understand it, Bella never before felt like she belonged anywhere, or with anyone, more than she did in that stolen moment.
Naturally Edward ruined the moment almost immediately.
“There now,” he said as he moved himself to the opposite side of the room (less out of excited thirst than one might expect and more out of confusion about the look on Bella’s face-why did it make him want to kiss her, like some unconscious chick in a Disney cartoon?), “isn’t that more comfortable than the patch of dirt I found you in?”
“If I have projectile vomit,” she muttered, thinking he wouldn’t hear, “I’m aiming for you.”
“If you do,” he smirked, “at least I’ll know you’re alive. When I saw Mike carrying you, I thought I’d have to avenge your murder.”
He would have, too; he’d been absolutely terrified when he looked out from his windshield and saw Bella crumple onto the ground at Mike’s feet. Mike Newton looked an awful lot like a young Jeffrey Dahmer to Edward’s biased eyes. In fact, when the Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested and his crimes publicized, Edward’s family had to physically restrain him from flying to Wisconsin specifically to kill the man. So it was not even remotely an exaggeration to say Edward would have taken Mike Newton’s life in a fraction of a second if the boy had done anything to Bella.
“How sweet,” Bella murmured, closing her eyes again. Which made Edward wonder if she was using sarcasm or if this was actually the form of flattery that worked on her. (The answer: both.)
“Honestly, I’ve seen corpses with better color,” Edward assured her, thinking she’d assume he was just kidding (even though he wasn’t).
Bella, who assumed no such thing, took a deep, calming breath before responding. With it came Edward’s scent, and this time it didn’t bother her. “Where was all this zeal for vengeance when Tyler almost killed me?”
“Evidently I was repressing it until now,” Edward mused. “Mike gets to reap the benefits.”
“Poor Mike,” Bella clucked.
Edward, who once again could not stop himself from reading minds in front of Bella and telling her all about it, even though he didn’t want her to know he was telepathic, cheerfully announced, “He absolutely loathes me.” When he’s not afraid I’m going to exterminate him.
“Between the two of us,” Bella sighed, unknowingly thrilling Edward just by saying the two of us, “we’ve given him a rough couple of days.”
“This is true,” Edward agreed. “What with you calling him a prick, me calling him an assclown, and the other boys calling him ‘Bella’s bitch-’”
“I can hear you!” Nurse Hammond called from the restroom, where she was making a cold compress the old fashioned way (with a clean washcloth and cold water, rather than a chemical ice pack like a better-funded school nurse’s office). Emerging from the water closet, she added, “Young man, get back to class.”
“I’m supposed to stay with her,” he lied to her face, confident that the old woman would not want to continue looking him in the eye. Very few people ever did.
“I very much doubt it,” she grumbled. Primal fear or not, thirty years as a school nurse had given her enough insight to know when someone was making an excuse to cut class, though she did look away. “But if you must be here, at least shut your trap so my patient can rest.”
“I’m all right,” Bella announced, though she still accepted the cold washcloth. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to go back to that particular class today.” Just as she said this, Mike Newton burst through the door, struggling with Lee Stevens.
Edward noticed the trickle of blood running down Lee’s hand and stopped his breathing immediately, quickly preparing himself to whisk Bella out of the room if necessary. And Alice thought I was exaggerating about the hemophiliacs.
A/N: From here, you can go back to Chapter 1 to see what happens next in the timeline.
A/N 2: No, I don’t mean “Blood in My Eyes” by Godsmack or Disturbed or Dimestore Hoods. I’m referring to “I’ve Got Blood in My Eyes for You” by Mississippi Sheiks (or the Bob Dylan version, if you prefer). Yes, I’m old. No, I’m not THAT old. Shut up.