FANFIC POST: "5 Times Bella Swan Did Not Kiss Jacob Black" (Twilight)
Title: 5 Times Bella Swan Did Not Kiss Jacob Black (And One Time She Did)
Author: Sara (flowrs4ophelia)
Characters & Pairings: Jacob/Bella
Rating: R
Summary: He will always remember how on the night she came back to him, he saw a shooting star.
Beta reader: ninety6tears
Notes: Starts in New Moon time, ends post-Eclipse. Is definitely not the way SM will end this thing (unfortunately). Might be the raciest fic I've ever written, but that's really not saying much. LOL.
Dedication: Birthday fic for anythingbutgrey, a talented writer, fantastic mod, and general bamf. Happy birthday, Elyssa! ♥♥♥
five times bella swan did not kiss jacob black
(and one time she did)
I.
As they idly walk on the beach one deceptively quiet day, rain starts to pour down on them so hard they can barely keep their eyes open and see anything. Jacob takes Bella's hand so they won't lose each other in the runny liquid world and they run back to his house, laughing a little and yelling to each other over the thunder.
The garage door is still open and they run right into it for cover, not needing anything more than to be out of the rain. There is nowhere they need to be soon. They just stay there sitting on the hood of the Rabbit and watching the storm outside. Bella leans forward with her elbows on her knees and he can see the pale color of her skin right through her thin powder-blue shirt that is soaked and clinging close to her whole back like a shedding skin. He sees the delicate shapes of her shoulder blades protruding like little wings while she is slumped over a little and looking so small, and the very different texture of her bra strap crossing over and dividing the ivory smoothness.
He does not mean to stare, but he also notices she keeps trembling a little bit and his eyes keep getting drawn back to her as they talk in soft voices that blend with the sandpaper drumming of the rain. He remembers the feeling of her hand in his just before as they were running back to the house, and how she seems to feel cold all the time, at every rare moment he touches her.
He is more than comfortable now, even with his own shirt also sticking to him with rain and his hair heavy and soaked. He almost feels warm to the point of discomfort, hot inside and out, like someone who is riled up and ready for something that is not yet to come, not coming for a while still. These days he feels that way all the time. He isn't sure what is happening anymore, what it is his body seems to be so ready for. This can't just be all people are talking about when they joke about teenagers and raging hormones. Sometimes it is like he's carrying way too much heat for one person and he is going to combust or just explode if he doesn't let it out somehow. He feels like some day someone is going to say something to him or do something that should only be mildly irritating and it is going to be what lets it out, makes him uncontrollably snap.
Bella scoots back so her feet are dangling just a little off the end of the car, lying back against the windshield. Though she isn't so cold she feels the need to wrap her arms around herself, he can still see them shivering a little as they lie relaxed at her sides. All he wants is to share all his heat with her somehow, but he doesn't yet feel quite right doing anything more than holding her hand when it is seemingly practical to. And she is not in any position that would make it easy to try to casually put his arm around her either. He wonders if she has any idea how careful and calculated so many of his actions around her are. For every time he decides it won't be too much to hug her or teasingly pat her on the head there are a hundred other times he stops himself from doing something.
Instead he just lies back against the window with her, their shoulders barely touching. She is looking away at something in the distance outside the garage while he tells her some funny story about his sisters, and he sees while he is able to uninhibitedly look how a wet lock of her hair is sticking against her neck, unknown to her while he is unavoidably aware of all the remaining beads of moisture clinging to her skin like something blessed to have that kind of contact with what is so far unreachable to him. He feels like he could almost reach out and brush away that damp lock of hair as he is so close to her, but at the same time she is so far away.
Bella has a quiet kind of beauty that somehow calls attention to itself by not being the kind that usually calls attention to itself. She has the body of a ballerina rather than a swimsuit model, with a thin and elongated neck; delicate arms; and tiny, round shoulders. She would laugh at the comparison because of her tragic lack of grace. But even her awkward, self-contained movements are a part of everything that draws his eyes to her. He doesn't know any other girls like her, ones who can get someone's attention without wearing make-up or walking and posing themselves in a way that almost seems for the conscious purpose of flaunting their bodies. Ones who don't jabber breathlessly into their cell phones in loud voices like radio commercials but speak in a low and quiet voice like still, deep water. He doesn't think Quil and Embry, impressed as they might have been when they first found him hanging out with some pretty Senior girl, can even see quite what he does.
If he allows himself to stare at her for just a moment now, it is not just because he is imagining touching her again and can't help it, but because his gaze can rest at home finding her. She is familiar and safe, his friend, Bells, someone who cares about him and who he cares about, and seeing her right beside him he actually feels like he can cool down a little. As strangely agitated as he feels so much of the time lately, her presence is always so calming it's impossible to see himself losing any kind of composure around her.
When the rain starts to let up, it is getting late and time for Bella to head back home. He takes her hand again as she slides down from the car back onto her feet, and she lands standing very close to him. This doesn't seem to bother her, or else she doesn't even notice it, as they say goodbye before she gets ready to run back out to her truck. When they stop talking and just stand there a strange moment, he thinks maybe her eyes even just glanced down at his lips for the briefest split second, as if she is thinking of the same thing he is. His thoughts run away with him freely and he could, he could kiss her.
But no. It is much too soon. He knows it is.
He buries his hands in his pockets as he says, "See you later, Bella" with a casual smile, as if to restrain himself from touching her at all again before she is gone. Then he watches her go with a darkening, somewhat lost expression as his hands are already starting to sweat just a little from being in his pockets. He has grown more inches in the past few months than he is even keeping track of anymore. The heat is boiling in his veins, fogging his head. But he can control it with her. He has to.
II.
If only he did not bother to answer the goddamn phone. Just minutes ago she was so close, so within reach, their breath meeting in the so small space between their faces and now in such a short, disorienting time she has slipped right through his fingers. And she might not come back.
There is nothing he can do.
When she leaves with the Cullen girl, he cannot even watch. He cannot stay for another second. He is burning up inside, everything he feels for her which has been a throbbing but contained heat for months and months now igniting into an explosion and he is gone. All the sudden he is off and running. This other body is such a familiar part of himself now, almost like the part of him screaming in pain now that is Bella, that he does not realize for a second that the wolf came out and he just phased. He and the wolf have never been so much the same.
Even as the giant monster he can only feel devastatingly vulnerable now. He loves her so much it could almost make him sick if he were still in his other form now. He wishes it was something his body could just reject because it can't handle it, but it is just going to stay in there like poison and burn.
It is the first time he has ever wished he did not love her. It won't be the last.
Weeks later he is trying to get rid of it even though he knows it's not just going to be that easy. When he hears she is back and safe it is like he can finally breathe again for the first time in days and all of his senses besides the pain and fear screaming like a constant, high-pitched dial tone in his ears return, cool colors coming back into his vision, and all he wants is to see her and wrap her up in his arms. But Edward Cullen is back, too, and there is still a panging ache left of her inside him, a tumor that can only get worse. She calls. She calls and calls and calls and he says please, mouthing it to himself when he hears the phone ring. He doesn't call her back.
But before long that will all have to be over because she'll say with shock, "That's none of your business" and he'll know this is going to hurt, oh it could hurt really bad, but he has more to lose by staying away than by trying. She needs him, he'll realize, and he's the only one who can do this, who can try to save her from this. He will fight in a fight that he is almost absolutely sure to lose and come out of bruised beyond recognition, and he will do it smiling and never showing how much it hurts as long as he can help it. For her.
So after fighting with himself for way too much wasted time, he will finally let it show how much he misses her and say, "Come and see me." Smile and wink.
(To the surprise of both of them, the risk will pay off.)
III.
Bella sits in a taxi in New York, shivering violently as she freezes in a short evening dress. She now wears an engagement ring that is much more modest than the ring Edward gave her once, and she has been sitting outside in this car with heat on that isn't doing much for so long that the silver band feels like ice around her finger.
She and Jacob came here to celebrate Christmas with Phil and Renée, who felt like having a Christmas somewhere there would be snow for once, and now Phil is treating everyone to dinner at a very fancy restaurant of the kind where Bella is sure they'll feel a little out of place. Jacob did not think to bring anything but jeans and T-shirts to wear, and after she has been waiting for him to quickly change into an outfit she just ran out and bought him he finally makes it out of their hotel and gets into the back seat of the taxi with her.
"What took you so long?" Bella demands as the driver starts going, hugging her arms around herself. She is shaking so much her voice comes out sounding jagged and forced.
"I'm sorry," he says, shaking his head and putting his arm around her. "I couldn't find my wallet."
"I could have told you where it was!"
"That figures," he laughs.
Bella sighs heavily as she thinks she spots the driver shaking just a little with a soft laugh as if he is amused by what he can't help but overhear from his back seat. "Do you know how cold it is?" she says, lowering her voice a little now. "No, of course you don't. I've just been freezing here for ten minutes when I could have been inside if you hadn't told me you'd be right down. We're going to be so late..."
"I said I'm sorry," he says sincerely, leaning in to kiss her. With her nose turned up a little and her arms crossing she turns her head away.
"Oh, come on," he says with a deep laugh. He pulls her close against him to try to let his warmth spread to her, reaching down and rubbing one of her legs that have barely anything covering them.
"You look really nice," he says, regarding her smooth curled hair and the rhinestones around her neck glimmering over her skin like ice against snow.
She just stubbornly keeps looking forward and says nothing. But it seems hard for her to resist how much better it feels to get closer to him and she turns toward him, curling her legs in toward herself and then lifting them over his lap to keep them close against his warm chest. He grins down at her, starting to move his hand up and down her leg farther from him to warm her faster.
"This doesn't mean I'm not still mad at you," she mumbles with her head leaning in close to his neck; he laughs at her more than ever.
It isn't long before she feels perfectly comfortable again; he can tell from how much more relaxed her whole body becomes. When she feels his hand move from her outer thigh and reach down between her legs, quietly creeping inside her skirt, the quiet and high-pitched noise of surprise she makes in her throat almost makes him laugh again.
"Jacob," she whispers as she grabs his shoulder, hissing right into his ear and tensing all over. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing," he murmurs, his face almost staying completely casual as he keeps looking forward, but with the corners of his lips tightening in an uncontrollable grin. "Just trying to warm you up."
"Cut it out!" she whispers with her teeth gritted tight together, but she very nearly smiles herself at his words.
Only a moment later he hears her breath catch, and along with it her body tenses again, but in a different way. Her hand on his shoulder moves to grab hold of his new shirt as she clings tightly to him with a sudden desperation.
"Damn you," she whispers in a soft gasp, and he shakes a little with a contained laugh. He feels her every breath hot against his neck as she never quite completely relaxes again, staying stiff all over and digging her nails into his shoulder with the effort it takes to not make a sound.
IV.
Jacob and Billy have been out of town for three days visiting Rachel and her husband while Bella was too sick to feel like going. Over three hours after Jacob was supposed to be back, the phone rings and she runs half-dressed from the bedroom where she was in the middle of changing clothes to grab it. Her husband's voice, sounding strained and shell-shocked, says quickly some words that later she cannot quite remember clearly.
"I'm sorry, I know I'm late - No, don't...worry. Well. I'm kind of okay. It's fucked up. Something...happened. I don't have time to - I'm using somebody's phone and it's going to die - but I'll be back today. I don't know whe-"
He never gets an "I love you" or "I miss you" in there before his voice cuts off and leaves her alone with a dead silence. She remembers that well as she stays alone in the house all afternoon trying to dissect and pull apart this half-conversation she had with him on the phone. Something happened something happened. While he has been out there. Going to see where his sister lives now for the first time since she knew him.
It is the way he sounded more than anything he said that makes the fear poison her like slowing, digested black tar. The words he said mean nothing next to what he didn't say.
It doesn't mean anything, she tries to tell herself. He barely had the chance to get anything out before the phone died. He didn't get to explain.
But still there is a cold conviction taking over her gut the longer she waits and he still isn't back and still hasn't tried to call again. She cannot think about anything else or occupy herself with anything until she knows for sure, but all the while she thinks she is sure, like she can feel it. He is going to come home today, but he has something to tell her. It seems like there can be no other explanation, nothing else so serious that he wouldn't be able to just tell her about it over the phone. He isn't hers anymore.
And there is nothing she can do. Nothing he can do, and that is almost worse than anything because she knows he will never forgive himself for having to abandon her. There is nothing to be done, and she does not even cry as she sits paralyzed with the fear. She just tries to prepare herself to have to keep herself together when he tells her in order to make it not so hard for him. She just waits.
She is sitting at the kitchen table completely still when she finally hears him come in. Colors and shapes swirl around her and she becomes dimly aware of the shadow of his figure standing above her.
"Hey," he says, sounding exhausted and lightly running his hand through her hair to get her attention; she is staring vacantly into the air as if she doesn't hear him there. She lifts her eyes up to him and sees some kind of dark hopelessness in his face that just makes the fear clutch painfully in her stomach more than ever. "Sorry I didn't get the chance to say much when I called. Are you feeling better?"
There is something in his voice that makes the question sound merely polite, like it is really the last thing he can spare much thought to worry about at this time.
But she nods. "Yeah," she answers, her tone blank. "I've been a lot better."
"Good," he sighs. He puts his hand to the back of her neck and leans over to kiss her. But she is awkward, suddenly acting as if she is with a stranger, and starts saying something softly once his face is inches from hers, stopping him.
"Muffler got out again." She crosses her arms over her chest, looking oddly nervous.
He stands back upright, looking out the back window as if he'll be able to see him. "How?"
"He slipped past me while I was answering the door. You know I'd be hopeless trying to run after him."
"Well, he'll come back. He always comes back. If not, I can go find him later tonight."
He looks down at her with worried eyes, taking out a chair to sit next to her at the table. Maybe he is intentionally avoiding getting to the point. Maybe she is very willing to help him do that.
"How are Rachel and Jeff?" she asks, still sounding blank.
Instead of answering, he keeps staring at her face with obvious concern. "What is it? Honey, you know Muffler's a smart dog. Nothing's going to happen to him."
"I haven't been worried about the damn dog," she says in a hard voice. "At one point I was pretty sure he was going to come back before you did."
He sighs. "I'm really sorry if I worried you. And that I took so long to call. It was insane. Some crazy asshole hit us while they were driving us to the airport. Jeff got hurt really bad, and for a while it looked like he might not be okay..."
A little bit of color slowly comes back into her face, life and expression returning to her. She can barely process it properly and it takes her a moment in her disorientation to realize the magnitude of what he said. "But...is everybody okay?"
"Yeah. He's going to be fine. Nobody else in our car was hurt much. I was just fine shortly afterwards, of course, and I got some weird looks from doctors for it. My dad just broke an arm and his collarbone. He's going to stay there for now...Bell?"
She has started breathing loudly as if going into panic. He looks at her questioningly and puts his hand on her shoulder, and as he touches her she collapses, her head falling into her hands and her back shaking suddenly with light sobs she has been keeping in for hours.
"Bella?" Now he is the one panicking, frantically trying to move her hands away from her face to look at her. When she shows her face he starts quickly brushing her tears away. "My God, are you okay? What's wrong?"
"It wouldn't have taken you a minute to tell me that much!" she says, stopping him when she grabs his wrists tightly. "Why didn't you just call me again once you had the chance?"
"I was going to," he says, "but I was worried about waking you up if you'd gone to sleep."
"You - you -!" Her breath heaves, the last of the pent-up emotion breaking loose and finally subsiding. She wipes her eyes with shaking hands as she finally gains control of herself again. "Didn't you realize what I might assume had happened?"
He just gapes at her, wide-eyed and shocked to see her reacting like this, and shakes his head. "What...what did you-?"
"You've been gone traveling somewhere you've never gone before!" she says. "Probably meeting a lot of people you've never seen before! Think about it."
His mouth falls open the moment he realizes it. "Oh, fuck me."
"Yes, fuck you!" It would sound very unusual for Bella to be using this kind of language if she actually sounded angry, but instead it comes out sounding miserable as she falls against his chest and he immediately takes her into his arms.
"Oh, Bella," he whispers sadly, holding her tight against him and smoothing his warm hands up and down her back. "I've told you. I know there's no way I can prove that it'll never happen, but I can't explain to you how I'm so sure...I just know. I can't imagine anything being strong enough to make me hurt you like that."
She is just silent pressed against him for a while, grabbing onto his shirt on his back as she holds onto him as tightly as possible, finally able to calm down as she breathes him in deeply again.
"I love you so much," she says quietly. Somehow it sounds like a completely new revelation; perhaps she never knew just how much before.
It seems like he could hear this in her voice as he lets out a contented, low sort of sigh and pulls back to take her face in his hands, peering right down into her eyes. "I'll love you until I die, Bella. I mean it."
She reaches her hands up into his hair and kisses him like they have been apart for months instead of a few days, hands grabbing his hair almost with a kind of anger, mine. They don't make it all the way to the bedroom when he carries her out of the kitchen, falling together onto the couch. He slowly, indulgingly takes off her shirt, leaving a trail of soft and warm kisses down her bare skin he unveils following every button undone. Then when she pulls his shirt off of him and starts kissing him along his collar bone, he stops her whispering, "Bella."
"Hm?"
He leans his head down against hers, neither of them able to see each other's eyes when he asks the question. "Earlier today...did you regret that you chose me?"
She lifts her head up to look at him with her eyes full of alarm.
Before she can say anything yet he adds, "He probably would have found out somehow, you know. If he figured out that I imprinted, he could have come back..."
"Listen to me," she says with a steady, certain tone. "I've hardly thought of him at all today."
He looks vaguely surprised and even a little in awe as he gazes down at her. As inconclusive as the words might be, it is the only answer he seems to need. As they make love that night, both of them have never been more sure before that they belong completely to each other.
Somewhere still out there is a seventeen-year-old boy whose beautiful face still comes up in her mind like an unclear, smeared painting of unattainable perfection. She is twenty-six.
V.
He will always remember how on the night she came back to him, he saw a shooting star. He knew it was the night she was supposed to be changed, but he did not tell his friends this, and they did not say anything if they noticed him being a little quiet while they were at the beach sitting around a fire they built. The reality completely set in only after they had to go home and he stayed there by himself sitting against one of the logs on the ground, feeling everything getting colder as it got dark and the fire started dying down in front of him. He sat back staring up at the sky and saw the brief, bright flash of the star falling, and he felt like maybe it signified something dying.
Suddenly it felt horrible to be alone, but at the same time he did not exactly want to go talk to anybody. The huge black ocean was making him feel small and isolated, but he did not see any good reason to move. In this moment, it was like his own life had stopped in a way, had any kind of direction and meaning taken away from it. It made him feel strangely scared.
Then she came, and when he did not hear her soft footsteps in the sand before noticing her approaching it seized his heart with fear. This was irrational, of course, because the transformation could not have been so quick and he should have realized. But everything seemed like a dream all the sudden and what he saw of her through the smoke rising from the fire looked like a distorted mirage of her former self that moved differently, her skin pale white against the dark of the night. But as she came closer the soft, flickering light from the fire made her skin appear a warmer color, and that gold in her eyes he thought he might have seen for a second was just the flames reflected in them. Those eyes looked down at him, still that deep chocolate brown that his own gaze so easily sinks into like quicksand, trapped. The same as before. Her. Bella. Still human. And not wearing a wedding ring anymore.
She looked almost like she was lost and had just been wandering to eventually find herself here. As everything was still so surreal and neither of them seemed able to find any words to say, she sat next to him against the log. He automatically put his arm around her and she settled herself comfortably against him, resting her head into his chest.
Jacob leaned his head down against the top of hers and asked softly, "How are you doing?"
She gave a slight shake of her head as if she could barely think of a way to answer. Then her voice broke as she managed only to get out, "Not good."
He held her close to him, as tightly as if she were already collapsing into a complete wreck, but she never quite cried then. He knew the reality had probably not yet settled in for her. And maybe even this right now felt as much to her like it was a dream as it did to him.
That night they did not talk about what this meant for them or even say much at all. They did not kiss each other. He knew it might be too soon for that. She needed to finish processing the past before she could look toward the future. But there would be plenty of time for that. And he had never needed to kiss her or hear anything in words to know what she felt. It had always been that way.
Fin.
Author: Sara (flowrs4ophelia)
Characters & Pairings: Jacob/Bella
Rating: R
Summary: He will always remember how on the night she came back to him, he saw a shooting star.
Beta reader: ninety6tears
Notes: Starts in New Moon time, ends post-Eclipse. Is definitely not the way SM will end this thing (unfortunately). Might be the raciest fic I've ever written, but that's really not saying much. LOL.
Dedication: Birthday fic for anythingbutgrey, a talented writer, fantastic mod, and general bamf. Happy birthday, Elyssa! ♥♥♥
five times bella swan did not kiss jacob black
(and one time she did)
I.
As they idly walk on the beach one deceptively quiet day, rain starts to pour down on them so hard they can barely keep their eyes open and see anything. Jacob takes Bella's hand so they won't lose each other in the runny liquid world and they run back to his house, laughing a little and yelling to each other over the thunder.
The garage door is still open and they run right into it for cover, not needing anything more than to be out of the rain. There is nowhere they need to be soon. They just stay there sitting on the hood of the Rabbit and watching the storm outside. Bella leans forward with her elbows on her knees and he can see the pale color of her skin right through her thin powder-blue shirt that is soaked and clinging close to her whole back like a shedding skin. He sees the delicate shapes of her shoulder blades protruding like little wings while she is slumped over a little and looking so small, and the very different texture of her bra strap crossing over and dividing the ivory smoothness.
He does not mean to stare, but he also notices she keeps trembling a little bit and his eyes keep getting drawn back to her as they talk in soft voices that blend with the sandpaper drumming of the rain. He remembers the feeling of her hand in his just before as they were running back to the house, and how she seems to feel cold all the time, at every rare moment he touches her.
He is more than comfortable now, even with his own shirt also sticking to him with rain and his hair heavy and soaked. He almost feels warm to the point of discomfort, hot inside and out, like someone who is riled up and ready for something that is not yet to come, not coming for a while still. These days he feels that way all the time. He isn't sure what is happening anymore, what it is his body seems to be so ready for. This can't just be all people are talking about when they joke about teenagers and raging hormones. Sometimes it is like he's carrying way too much heat for one person and he is going to combust or just explode if he doesn't let it out somehow. He feels like some day someone is going to say something to him or do something that should only be mildly irritating and it is going to be what lets it out, makes him uncontrollably snap.
Bella scoots back so her feet are dangling just a little off the end of the car, lying back against the windshield. Though she isn't so cold she feels the need to wrap her arms around herself, he can still see them shivering a little as they lie relaxed at her sides. All he wants is to share all his heat with her somehow, but he doesn't yet feel quite right doing anything more than holding her hand when it is seemingly practical to. And she is not in any position that would make it easy to try to casually put his arm around her either. He wonders if she has any idea how careful and calculated so many of his actions around her are. For every time he decides it won't be too much to hug her or teasingly pat her on the head there are a hundred other times he stops himself from doing something.
Instead he just lies back against the window with her, their shoulders barely touching. She is looking away at something in the distance outside the garage while he tells her some funny story about his sisters, and he sees while he is able to uninhibitedly look how a wet lock of her hair is sticking against her neck, unknown to her while he is unavoidably aware of all the remaining beads of moisture clinging to her skin like something blessed to have that kind of contact with what is so far unreachable to him. He feels like he could almost reach out and brush away that damp lock of hair as he is so close to her, but at the same time she is so far away.
Bella has a quiet kind of beauty that somehow calls attention to itself by not being the kind that usually calls attention to itself. She has the body of a ballerina rather than a swimsuit model, with a thin and elongated neck; delicate arms; and tiny, round shoulders. She would laugh at the comparison because of her tragic lack of grace. But even her awkward, self-contained movements are a part of everything that draws his eyes to her. He doesn't know any other girls like her, ones who can get someone's attention without wearing make-up or walking and posing themselves in a way that almost seems for the conscious purpose of flaunting their bodies. Ones who don't jabber breathlessly into their cell phones in loud voices like radio commercials but speak in a low and quiet voice like still, deep water. He doesn't think Quil and Embry, impressed as they might have been when they first found him hanging out with some pretty Senior girl, can even see quite what he does.
If he allows himself to stare at her for just a moment now, it is not just because he is imagining touching her again and can't help it, but because his gaze can rest at home finding her. She is familiar and safe, his friend, Bells, someone who cares about him and who he cares about, and seeing her right beside him he actually feels like he can cool down a little. As strangely agitated as he feels so much of the time lately, her presence is always so calming it's impossible to see himself losing any kind of composure around her.
When the rain starts to let up, it is getting late and time for Bella to head back home. He takes her hand again as she slides down from the car back onto her feet, and she lands standing very close to him. This doesn't seem to bother her, or else she doesn't even notice it, as they say goodbye before she gets ready to run back out to her truck. When they stop talking and just stand there a strange moment, he thinks maybe her eyes even just glanced down at his lips for the briefest split second, as if she is thinking of the same thing he is. His thoughts run away with him freely and he could, he could kiss her.
But no. It is much too soon. He knows it is.
He buries his hands in his pockets as he says, "See you later, Bella" with a casual smile, as if to restrain himself from touching her at all again before she is gone. Then he watches her go with a darkening, somewhat lost expression as his hands are already starting to sweat just a little from being in his pockets. He has grown more inches in the past few months than he is even keeping track of anymore. The heat is boiling in his veins, fogging his head. But he can control it with her. He has to.
II.
If only he did not bother to answer the goddamn phone. Just minutes ago she was so close, so within reach, their breath meeting in the so small space between their faces and now in such a short, disorienting time she has slipped right through his fingers. And she might not come back.
There is nothing he can do.
When she leaves with the Cullen girl, he cannot even watch. He cannot stay for another second. He is burning up inside, everything he feels for her which has been a throbbing but contained heat for months and months now igniting into an explosion and he is gone. All the sudden he is off and running. This other body is such a familiar part of himself now, almost like the part of him screaming in pain now that is Bella, that he does not realize for a second that the wolf came out and he just phased. He and the wolf have never been so much the same.
Even as the giant monster he can only feel devastatingly vulnerable now. He loves her so much it could almost make him sick if he were still in his other form now. He wishes it was something his body could just reject because it can't handle it, but it is just going to stay in there like poison and burn.
It is the first time he has ever wished he did not love her. It won't be the last.
Weeks later he is trying to get rid of it even though he knows it's not just going to be that easy. When he hears she is back and safe it is like he can finally breathe again for the first time in days and all of his senses besides the pain and fear screaming like a constant, high-pitched dial tone in his ears return, cool colors coming back into his vision, and all he wants is to see her and wrap her up in his arms. But Edward Cullen is back, too, and there is still a panging ache left of her inside him, a tumor that can only get worse. She calls. She calls and calls and calls and he says please, mouthing it to himself when he hears the phone ring. He doesn't call her back.
But before long that will all have to be over because she'll say with shock, "That's none of your business" and he'll know this is going to hurt, oh it could hurt really bad, but he has more to lose by staying away than by trying. She needs him, he'll realize, and he's the only one who can do this, who can try to save her from this. He will fight in a fight that he is almost absolutely sure to lose and come out of bruised beyond recognition, and he will do it smiling and never showing how much it hurts as long as he can help it. For her.
So after fighting with himself for way too much wasted time, he will finally let it show how much he misses her and say, "Come and see me." Smile and wink.
(To the surprise of both of them, the risk will pay off.)
III.
Bella sits in a taxi in New York, shivering violently as she freezes in a short evening dress. She now wears an engagement ring that is much more modest than the ring Edward gave her once, and she has been sitting outside in this car with heat on that isn't doing much for so long that the silver band feels like ice around her finger.
She and Jacob came here to celebrate Christmas with Phil and Renée, who felt like having a Christmas somewhere there would be snow for once, and now Phil is treating everyone to dinner at a very fancy restaurant of the kind where Bella is sure they'll feel a little out of place. Jacob did not think to bring anything but jeans and T-shirts to wear, and after she has been waiting for him to quickly change into an outfit she just ran out and bought him he finally makes it out of their hotel and gets into the back seat of the taxi with her.
"What took you so long?" Bella demands as the driver starts going, hugging her arms around herself. She is shaking so much her voice comes out sounding jagged and forced.
"I'm sorry," he says, shaking his head and putting his arm around her. "I couldn't find my wallet."
"I could have told you where it was!"
"That figures," he laughs.
Bella sighs heavily as she thinks she spots the driver shaking just a little with a soft laugh as if he is amused by what he can't help but overhear from his back seat. "Do you know how cold it is?" she says, lowering her voice a little now. "No, of course you don't. I've just been freezing here for ten minutes when I could have been inside if you hadn't told me you'd be right down. We're going to be so late..."
"I said I'm sorry," he says sincerely, leaning in to kiss her. With her nose turned up a little and her arms crossing she turns her head away.
"Oh, come on," he says with a deep laugh. He pulls her close against him to try to let his warmth spread to her, reaching down and rubbing one of her legs that have barely anything covering them.
"You look really nice," he says, regarding her smooth curled hair and the rhinestones around her neck glimmering over her skin like ice against snow.
She just stubbornly keeps looking forward and says nothing. But it seems hard for her to resist how much better it feels to get closer to him and she turns toward him, curling her legs in toward herself and then lifting them over his lap to keep them close against his warm chest. He grins down at her, starting to move his hand up and down her leg farther from him to warm her faster.
"This doesn't mean I'm not still mad at you," she mumbles with her head leaning in close to his neck; he laughs at her more than ever.
It isn't long before she feels perfectly comfortable again; he can tell from how much more relaxed her whole body becomes. When she feels his hand move from her outer thigh and reach down between her legs, quietly creeping inside her skirt, the quiet and high-pitched noise of surprise she makes in her throat almost makes him laugh again.
"Jacob," she whispers as she grabs his shoulder, hissing right into his ear and tensing all over. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing," he murmurs, his face almost staying completely casual as he keeps looking forward, but with the corners of his lips tightening in an uncontrollable grin. "Just trying to warm you up."
"Cut it out!" she whispers with her teeth gritted tight together, but she very nearly smiles herself at his words.
Only a moment later he hears her breath catch, and along with it her body tenses again, but in a different way. Her hand on his shoulder moves to grab hold of his new shirt as she clings tightly to him with a sudden desperation.
"Damn you," she whispers in a soft gasp, and he shakes a little with a contained laugh. He feels her every breath hot against his neck as she never quite completely relaxes again, staying stiff all over and digging her nails into his shoulder with the effort it takes to not make a sound.
IV.
Jacob and Billy have been out of town for three days visiting Rachel and her husband while Bella was too sick to feel like going. Over three hours after Jacob was supposed to be back, the phone rings and she runs half-dressed from the bedroom where she was in the middle of changing clothes to grab it. Her husband's voice, sounding strained and shell-shocked, says quickly some words that later she cannot quite remember clearly.
"I'm sorry, I know I'm late - No, don't...worry. Well. I'm kind of okay. It's fucked up. Something...happened. I don't have time to - I'm using somebody's phone and it's going to die - but I'll be back today. I don't know whe-"
He never gets an "I love you" or "I miss you" in there before his voice cuts off and leaves her alone with a dead silence. She remembers that well as she stays alone in the house all afternoon trying to dissect and pull apart this half-conversation she had with him on the phone. Something happened something happened. While he has been out there. Going to see where his sister lives now for the first time since she knew him.
It is the way he sounded more than anything he said that makes the fear poison her like slowing, digested black tar. The words he said mean nothing next to what he didn't say.
It doesn't mean anything, she tries to tell herself. He barely had the chance to get anything out before the phone died. He didn't get to explain.
But still there is a cold conviction taking over her gut the longer she waits and he still isn't back and still hasn't tried to call again. She cannot think about anything else or occupy herself with anything until she knows for sure, but all the while she thinks she is sure, like she can feel it. He is going to come home today, but he has something to tell her. It seems like there can be no other explanation, nothing else so serious that he wouldn't be able to just tell her about it over the phone. He isn't hers anymore.
And there is nothing she can do. Nothing he can do, and that is almost worse than anything because she knows he will never forgive himself for having to abandon her. There is nothing to be done, and she does not even cry as she sits paralyzed with the fear. She just tries to prepare herself to have to keep herself together when he tells her in order to make it not so hard for him. She just waits.
She is sitting at the kitchen table completely still when she finally hears him come in. Colors and shapes swirl around her and she becomes dimly aware of the shadow of his figure standing above her.
"Hey," he says, sounding exhausted and lightly running his hand through her hair to get her attention; she is staring vacantly into the air as if she doesn't hear him there. She lifts her eyes up to him and sees some kind of dark hopelessness in his face that just makes the fear clutch painfully in her stomach more than ever. "Sorry I didn't get the chance to say much when I called. Are you feeling better?"
There is something in his voice that makes the question sound merely polite, like it is really the last thing he can spare much thought to worry about at this time.
But she nods. "Yeah," she answers, her tone blank. "I've been a lot better."
"Good," he sighs. He puts his hand to the back of her neck and leans over to kiss her. But she is awkward, suddenly acting as if she is with a stranger, and starts saying something softly once his face is inches from hers, stopping him.
"Muffler got out again." She crosses her arms over her chest, looking oddly nervous.
He stands back upright, looking out the back window as if he'll be able to see him. "How?"
"He slipped past me while I was answering the door. You know I'd be hopeless trying to run after him."
"Well, he'll come back. He always comes back. If not, I can go find him later tonight."
He looks down at her with worried eyes, taking out a chair to sit next to her at the table. Maybe he is intentionally avoiding getting to the point. Maybe she is very willing to help him do that.
"How are Rachel and Jeff?" she asks, still sounding blank.
Instead of answering, he keeps staring at her face with obvious concern. "What is it? Honey, you know Muffler's a smart dog. Nothing's going to happen to him."
"I haven't been worried about the damn dog," she says in a hard voice. "At one point I was pretty sure he was going to come back before you did."
He sighs. "I'm really sorry if I worried you. And that I took so long to call. It was insane. Some crazy asshole hit us while they were driving us to the airport. Jeff got hurt really bad, and for a while it looked like he might not be okay..."
A little bit of color slowly comes back into her face, life and expression returning to her. She can barely process it properly and it takes her a moment in her disorientation to realize the magnitude of what he said. "But...is everybody okay?"
"Yeah. He's going to be fine. Nobody else in our car was hurt much. I was just fine shortly afterwards, of course, and I got some weird looks from doctors for it. My dad just broke an arm and his collarbone. He's going to stay there for now...Bell?"
She has started breathing loudly as if going into panic. He looks at her questioningly and puts his hand on her shoulder, and as he touches her she collapses, her head falling into her hands and her back shaking suddenly with light sobs she has been keeping in for hours.
"Bella?" Now he is the one panicking, frantically trying to move her hands away from her face to look at her. When she shows her face he starts quickly brushing her tears away. "My God, are you okay? What's wrong?"
"It wouldn't have taken you a minute to tell me that much!" she says, stopping him when she grabs his wrists tightly. "Why didn't you just call me again once you had the chance?"
"I was going to," he says, "but I was worried about waking you up if you'd gone to sleep."
"You - you -!" Her breath heaves, the last of the pent-up emotion breaking loose and finally subsiding. She wipes her eyes with shaking hands as she finally gains control of herself again. "Didn't you realize what I might assume had happened?"
He just gapes at her, wide-eyed and shocked to see her reacting like this, and shakes his head. "What...what did you-?"
"You've been gone traveling somewhere you've never gone before!" she says. "Probably meeting a lot of people you've never seen before! Think about it."
His mouth falls open the moment he realizes it. "Oh, fuck me."
"Yes, fuck you!" It would sound very unusual for Bella to be using this kind of language if she actually sounded angry, but instead it comes out sounding miserable as she falls against his chest and he immediately takes her into his arms.
"Oh, Bella," he whispers sadly, holding her tight against him and smoothing his warm hands up and down her back. "I've told you. I know there's no way I can prove that it'll never happen, but I can't explain to you how I'm so sure...I just know. I can't imagine anything being strong enough to make me hurt you like that."
She is just silent pressed against him for a while, grabbing onto his shirt on his back as she holds onto him as tightly as possible, finally able to calm down as she breathes him in deeply again.
"I love you so much," she says quietly. Somehow it sounds like a completely new revelation; perhaps she never knew just how much before.
It seems like he could hear this in her voice as he lets out a contented, low sort of sigh and pulls back to take her face in his hands, peering right down into her eyes. "I'll love you until I die, Bella. I mean it."
She reaches her hands up into his hair and kisses him like they have been apart for months instead of a few days, hands grabbing his hair almost with a kind of anger, mine. They don't make it all the way to the bedroom when he carries her out of the kitchen, falling together onto the couch. He slowly, indulgingly takes off her shirt, leaving a trail of soft and warm kisses down her bare skin he unveils following every button undone. Then when she pulls his shirt off of him and starts kissing him along his collar bone, he stops her whispering, "Bella."
"Hm?"
He leans his head down against hers, neither of them able to see each other's eyes when he asks the question. "Earlier today...did you regret that you chose me?"
She lifts her head up to look at him with her eyes full of alarm.
Before she can say anything yet he adds, "He probably would have found out somehow, you know. If he figured out that I imprinted, he could have come back..."
"Listen to me," she says with a steady, certain tone. "I've hardly thought of him at all today."
He looks vaguely surprised and even a little in awe as he gazes down at her. As inconclusive as the words might be, it is the only answer he seems to need. As they make love that night, both of them have never been more sure before that they belong completely to each other.
Somewhere still out there is a seventeen-year-old boy whose beautiful face still comes up in her mind like an unclear, smeared painting of unattainable perfection. She is twenty-six.
V.
He will always remember how on the night she came back to him, he saw a shooting star. He knew it was the night she was supposed to be changed, but he did not tell his friends this, and they did not say anything if they noticed him being a little quiet while they were at the beach sitting around a fire they built. The reality completely set in only after they had to go home and he stayed there by himself sitting against one of the logs on the ground, feeling everything getting colder as it got dark and the fire started dying down in front of him. He sat back staring up at the sky and saw the brief, bright flash of the star falling, and he felt like maybe it signified something dying.
Suddenly it felt horrible to be alone, but at the same time he did not exactly want to go talk to anybody. The huge black ocean was making him feel small and isolated, but he did not see any good reason to move. In this moment, it was like his own life had stopped in a way, had any kind of direction and meaning taken away from it. It made him feel strangely scared.
Then she came, and when he did not hear her soft footsteps in the sand before noticing her approaching it seized his heart with fear. This was irrational, of course, because the transformation could not have been so quick and he should have realized. But everything seemed like a dream all the sudden and what he saw of her through the smoke rising from the fire looked like a distorted mirage of her former self that moved differently, her skin pale white against the dark of the night. But as she came closer the soft, flickering light from the fire made her skin appear a warmer color, and that gold in her eyes he thought he might have seen for a second was just the flames reflected in them. Those eyes looked down at him, still that deep chocolate brown that his own gaze so easily sinks into like quicksand, trapped. The same as before. Her. Bella. Still human. And not wearing a wedding ring anymore.
She looked almost like she was lost and had just been wandering to eventually find herself here. As everything was still so surreal and neither of them seemed able to find any words to say, she sat next to him against the log. He automatically put his arm around her and she settled herself comfortably against him, resting her head into his chest.
Jacob leaned his head down against the top of hers and asked softly, "How are you doing?"
She gave a slight shake of her head as if she could barely think of a way to answer. Then her voice broke as she managed only to get out, "Not good."
He held her close to him, as tightly as if she were already collapsing into a complete wreck, but she never quite cried then. He knew the reality had probably not yet settled in for her. And maybe even this right now felt as much to her like it was a dream as it did to him.
That night they did not talk about what this meant for them or even say much at all. They did not kiss each other. He knew it might be too soon for that. She needed to finish processing the past before she could look toward the future. But there would be plenty of time for that. And he had never needed to kiss her or hear anything in words to know what she felt. It had always been that way.
Fin.