"Do not even think it," punctuated by a tightening of his grip on Edward's jaw before Carlisle's thoughts accelerate and nearly take flight.
"I haven't heard of you in months. All the time you were gone -- " Carlisle snaps his hand back raggedly from Edward, jittery and far too off-balance for such a graceful creature as Carlisle has always been.
Before he can question himself, Carlisle reaches for Edward's left wrist with his right hand. It gives Carlisle enough leverage to launch him from the wall into his arms and oh my sweet Christ I missed you my Edward don't leave again it has been so long I could only hope that you would be safe oh my Edward
The level of Edward's bewilderment-- as he is pulled from the door, and moves with it, like a ship taken and tossed by the sea, only absently registering still being soaked and Carlisle not being, well, not being half a second ago --is not even quantifiable in words. Even when the first assumption is that it all has happened. He'd feared the last. No, not even last. It's been longer.
His hair is the right color. His hands and his height and the way he moves. The tripping changes of his tone. His voice and his thoughts. And Esme. Crying and hugging and talking.
"No, Edward. No, no, no, no," Carlisle repeats endlessly in thought and voice, consoling them both, keeping Edward pressed tightly to him with his arms and he just barely hears Esme pacing in the hallway. "No you haven't gone mad. You're here and I'm here and Esme's here. It's raining and you're alive and safe."
She could have sat still in that chair longer. And it's not as thought there is anything in the house, on their street block even, that could divert her attention from what is happening. This was their conversation, it always had been.
The silences and the sudden words, maddening distances between. The truly up ended variety of reactions that flood her while she did pace quietly.
Fear and joy and jealousy and protectiveness. Fear, and the denial of it, when he'd said no, same as when he'd said he should be here. Joy at the sound of his voice, at Carlisle talking, even when the clatter of force gave birth to some collision she couldn't see.
Jealousy and protectiveness in one. That Edward, even in the state he was in, was answering things Carlisle wasn't even saying out loud. That he was allowed to hear in Carlisle what had not been heard as clearly by her in years. Yet she was somehow grateful that suddenly Carlisle was heard
( ... )
Carlisle's voice in his ears, flooding and filtering with wide birth into the endless cacophony of the extended sloshing of lives in his head. But it's something in Esme that makes the fingers of one hand catch on Carlisle's side -- Though catch is the wrong word.
It's the kind of catch, where cloth and skin and muscle is clutched between fingers, the way drowning people reach out and hold on to something without no thought left for preservation of the object they grasp.
So completely antithesis of his thoughts.) -- when he looks at Carlisle
( ... )
Nothing sensible works. Even when he tries to fight off Carlisle's grasp finally. Suddenly. With less focus and the vast strength inherent in his smallest move.
To cover his mouth with his free hand when he can't get his mouth to even stop moving by the thought of it. I'm sorry and You were right smothers, still escaping into the air, on digging fingertips.
When he doesn't even quite realize until the last second that doing so drops him to his knees.
Carlisle lets out a hushed call for Esme to come into the room, stop pacing. He matches Edward's drop to the floor and reaches for Esme's hand as Carlisle leans in to plant a kiss at Edward's hairline.
"It will be alright."
Carlisle squeezes Esme's hand in his to keep it from shaking, to keep his declaration true.
She'd been only on the other side of the door. Debating opening it for a while, since the last thing Carlisle said was minutes ago, while Edwards voice continued to rattle apologies alone in the space of their house.
Relief surged at his address to her, and the door went.
Opening on the two of them, all but kneeling on the floor facing each other. The hand held out calling for her help more than the positioning of either. Esme walked over, slipping her hand into Carlisle's, squeezing it back as he spoke.
He's back to staring down. Presently at Carlisle's knees, which get the addition of a pair of slow heels. Especially when the pressure on his head sounds, even though he'd nearly pulled away from it happening. Seeing the thought before the action.
Too many words, too few of them, too many sentences he's avoided and now can't see beyond, that mean nothing or are at least trivial in the onslaught of what meaning meant here and now, crowding behind the bars of his teeth.
Someone has to say something. They'll just sit there. Even when it feels like its interrupting, somehow, breaking a silence that tense, that full.
"It will be." She took a step forward, using her hand, gently to try and lift Edward's face by his cheek. "You're home now. If that is what you want." The last part is given to Edward with a glance toward Carlisle, squeezing his hand.
It isn't only her house that's she's talking about.
Which is why she asks with a look, already knowing the answer.
He looks up at them following Esme's gentler prompting.
Them together, intertwined. Trying to find a word that isn't the words he's been requested not to use. The only words he's managed, strung together in long sentences, that weren't even sentences, to find since the door opened.
Beyond them there is the void. A million thoughts and choices and views of other lives. The man's face and the taste of the blood, and the feel of the water still trickling down the side of his neck from his hair, around the circle of his wrists at his long sleeves, sticking the leather.
He doesn't deserve this.
Esme's patience and hope. Carlisle's plea.
They don't know what he's done, the whole shape of it.
But the thought of having to walk out that door is beyond recognizable, beyond terror and emptiness and sanity. He's pretty sure the strength required to take to make that act (again) is outside of his entire being now. His lips shifted, words, too many, still the wrong ones, still the ones he's not supposed to use
( ... )
The dread that sharpened when he'd weighed them with those hollow scalding eyes for the long moment and then just looked away, obliterated completely when he nodded.
Everything shifted. Of what could.
She let out a sound in a breath through her nose,like a relieved not quite laugh or sigh. Her hand in Carlisle's squeezed then and she moved up from Edward's cheek, into his hair when she stepped up to him, drawing his head back, against her side.
"You're home then." Running her fingers down his into his wet, matted, when she said softly, again. "Welcome home, Edward."
Edward with his head bent, was doing his best both not to move, not to talk -- but mostly not to give into the irritation beneath being touched for so long, even in such a time frame. There was something terrible -- terribly, terrifyingly, uncertain? -- about it, especially with her thoughts.
Just that touch, soft and simple, moving through his hair.
Guiding him. Welcoming him where he doesn't belong.
Edward looked at the carpet at Carlisle's words. Then up to Esme's face. The bemused, not shielded enough surprise, at the joke. To Carlisle and the floor, before he pushed up from the floor, and came up rubbing water off his hand.
Apologetically looking over to Esme, and starting to open his mouth --- only to stop just as suddenly, with it open and then closed, shoulders dropping slightly more.
Maybe it's only Edward's special gift that he can suddenly look even more youthfully, woefully, apologetic in being unable to apologize for this, too? He nodded, to nothing in particular.
"I haven't heard of you in months. All the time you were gone -- " Carlisle snaps his hand back raggedly from Edward, jittery and far too off-balance for such a graceful creature as Carlisle has always been.
Before he can question himself, Carlisle reaches for Edward's left wrist with his right hand. It gives Carlisle enough leverage to launch him from the wall into his arms and oh my sweet Christ I missed you my Edward don't leave again it has been so long I could only hope that you would be safe oh my Edward
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And calling him...
The level of Edward's bewilderment-- as he is pulled from the door, and moves with it, like a ship taken and tossed by the sea, only absently registering still being soaked and Carlisle not being, well, not being half a second ago
--is not even quantifiable in words. Even when the first assumption is that it all has happened. He'd feared the last. No, not even last. It's been longer.
His hair is the right color. His hands and his height and the way he moves. The tripping changes of his tone. His voice and his thoughts. And Esme. Crying and hugging and talking.
"I've finally gone mad."
The smallest whisper into that hair.
The finally is almost a sigh of relief. (Almost.)
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-- if anyone is mad here it is I --
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She could have sat still in that chair longer. And it's not as thought there is anything in the house, on their street block even, that could divert her attention from what is happening. This was their conversation, it always had been.
The silences and the sudden words, maddening distances between. The truly up ended variety of reactions that flood her while she did pace quietly.
Fear and joy and jealousy and protectiveness. Fear, and the denial of it, when he'd said no, same as when he'd said he should be here. Joy at the sound of his voice, at Carlisle talking, even when the clatter of force gave birth to some collision she couldn't see.
Jealousy and protectiveness in one. That Edward, even in the state he was in, was answering things Carlisle wasn't even saying out loud. That he was allowed to hear in Carlisle what had not been heard as clearly by her in years. Yet she was somehow grateful that suddenly Carlisle was heard ( ... )
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It's the kind of catch, where cloth and skin and muscle is clutched between fingers, the way drowning people reach out and hold on to something without no thought left for preservation of the object they grasp.
So completely antithesis of his thoughts.)
-- when he looks at Carlisle ( ... )
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He can't even--
Those two--
Nothing sensible works. Even when he tries to fight off Carlisle's grasp finally. Suddenly. With less focus and the vast strength inherent in his smallest move.
To cover his mouth with his free hand when he can't get his mouth to even stop moving by the thought of it. I'm sorry and You were right smothers, still escaping into the air, on digging fingertips.
When he doesn't even quite realize until the last second that doing so drops him to his knees.
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"It will be alright."
Carlisle squeezes Esme's hand in his to keep it from shaking, to keep his declaration true.
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Relief surged at his address to her, and the door went.
Opening on the two of them, all but kneeling on the floor facing each other. The hand held out calling for her help more than the positioning of either. Esme walked over, slipping her hand into Carlisle's, squeezing it back as he spoke.
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Too many words, too few of them, too many sentences he's avoided and now can't see beyond, that mean nothing or are at least trivial in the onslaught of what meaning meant here and now, crowding behind the bars of his teeth.
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Someone has to say something. They'll just sit there. Even when it feels like its interrupting, somehow, breaking a silence that tense, that full.
"It will be." She took a step forward, using her hand, gently to try and lift Edward's face by his cheek. "You're home now. If that is what you want." The last part is given to Edward with a glance toward Carlisle, squeezing his hand.
It isn't only her house that's she's talking about.
Which is why she asks with a look, already knowing the answer.
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Them together, intertwined. Trying to find a word that isn't the words he's been requested not to use. The only words he's managed, strung together in long sentences, that weren't even sentences, to find since the door opened.
Beyond them there is the void. A million thoughts and choices and views of other lives. The man's face and the taste of the blood, and the feel of the water still trickling down the side of his neck from his hair, around the circle of his wrists at his long sleeves, sticking the leather.
He doesn't deserve this.
Esme's patience and hope. Carlisle's plea.
They don't know what he's done, the whole shape of it.
But the thought of having to walk out that door is beyond recognizable, beyond terror and emptiness and sanity. He's pretty sure the strength required to take to make that act (again) is outside of his entire being now. His lips shifted, words, too many, still the wrong ones, still the ones he's not supposed to use ( ... )
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Everything shifted. Of what could.
She let out a sound in a breath through her nose,like a relieved not quite laugh or sigh. Her hand in Carlisle's squeezed then and she moved up from Edward's cheek, into his hair when she stepped up to him, drawing his head back, against her side.
"You're home then." Running her fingers down his into his wet, matted, when she said softly, again. "Welcome home, Edward."
You've been missed more than you can know.
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"You have clothes upstairs so you can stop destroying Esme's floor."
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Just that touch, soft and simple, moving through his hair.
Guiding him. Welcoming him where he doesn't belong.
Edward looked at the carpet at Carlisle's words. Then up to Esme's face. The bemused, not shielded enough surprise, at the joke. To Carlisle and the floor, before he pushed up from the floor, and came up rubbing water off his hand.
Apologetically looking over to Esme, and starting to open his mouth --- only to stop just as suddenly, with it open and then closed, shoulders dropping slightly more.
Maybe it's only Edward's special gift that he can suddenly look even more youthfully, woefully, apologetic in being unable to apologize for this, too? He nodded, to nothing in particular.
"I'll change."
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