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[themidnightson]

He walks for a long time, in what might as well just be a very large circle. He stops places, but mostly he walks. It's been ages (almost two weeks) since he was running an extended distance. There is nowhere to go. There is nothing to find. This is home.

It's making him stir crazy, along with the symphony of voices and memories.









Eventually, he returns to the house.

Comments

[ofthefamily]

"And there is in my world?"

Or is Edward here because he didn't have a third option?

And why doesn't Carlisle care more about the answer to that?

[themidnightson]

Edward's expression shifted. Subtly this time, something waged between red and white. His jaw faintly almost tightening to open and speak before stopping.


A good few seconds passed before his lips firmed. "You asked me to stop."

And somehow -- somehow -- that's the point of complaint, its the point of warning, because he doesn't stop. He shook his head, not looking away, keeping his words so very careful. "Of course, there is."

[ofthefamily]

He is simultaneously hopeful at the 'of course, there is' and questioning at Edward's earlier comment.

"Stop what? Apologizing? I just couldn't listen to it that night. It was too much with you back out of nowhere -- "

[themidnightson]

And now it was only words. Now he knew the damage he'd done here, too.




"Not nowhere. I couldn't--" Should he even be admitting these things? Should he just keep it all locked away and tamped down? How did he even. It was stupidly selfish to admit. "--bring myself to walk away again that night."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle's breathing hitches when he processes Edward's response.







"You'd been...here. For longer than that day."

[themidnightson]

Edward nodded, slowly, specifically.

"I wanted--" because needed is too true, too deep to understand. "--to hear your voices. Not your thoughts. Not just a sound in my head. Mixed into all the others. I thought if--"

He frowned.

"With the rain, and then I couldn't bring myself to be big enough, to just vanish. I couldn't move." That's the breath of an apology already starting. Just for staying.

For being too weak to do other.

He knows he's a monster. He knows more now, here, than he did that night. He may not understand why they keep extending everything to him, but he knows that part entirely.

[ofthefamily]

...Is he serious?

Carlisle rushes forward and lands his palms on either of Edward's cheeks, pulling his face to Carlisle's own and mouths crashing into each other. What a decade or so earlier might have been romance between them has become a need to communicate, convey what they are two mindless to deal with in words.

(Marcus would call it omertà.)

"I have ever wanted just to hear you again, my Edward." Carlisle pulls back, nearly shaking Edward's head in his hands. "Do not doubt this."

[themidnightson]

He could ignore this--

not breathe
(stay perfectly still
let in the tide of insanity
fade and fold beneath it like a ghost)

--but the force of that thought, possibly the blackest lie he's whispered to himself in this year (and there have been a few), slams him as though he'd ripped up the very center of himself. He never could ignore this.

Edward's mouth folding beneath the onslaught before his will and thoughts can even decide to do so, the same as its ending. The same as Carlisle talking -- still talking, always talking -- and it washing over him in words he can't even hear. So close.

His hands found lapels. It was always lapels, or a shirt, or something. The same things, no matter the style. Fingers digging into palms, that strained the fabric between the two as he used the strength of his sins to push Carlisle back a few inches with his curled fingers on clothing, against his chest, alone.

"I don't understand."

And yet just as suddenly the only thing that made any sense, that he understood, through the sheer insanity of it all, was that suddenly Carlisle was too far away.

And he pulled him back with the same force. Letting out a shaking breath out only when his forehead brushed Carlisle's and his nose a cheek. "Any of this. I don't understand any of this."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle is shaking his head as soon as Edward starts speaking.

"There is nothing to understand. You will never be unwelcome with me. Sun rises, sun sets. You. Stay."

It's called forgiveness, Edward.

Or love. Or family.

Whichever you need to call it.

[themidnightson]

His hands tightened on the cloth, his forehead pressing harder against Carlisle, even as he shook his head and swallowed. Almost as though he might try to merge into him with the smallest shift.

"I've done terrible things."

He can't comprehend what he's hearing. It's all over Carlisle's thoughts and it's everything he doesn't deserve on any level. After everything he's done.

After everything he's done to Carlisle, especially.

But he can't make his hands to release or himself move now.

And he looked up, tilting his head only the very minutest, with how close there faces are, adding, far quieter. "To you."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle wants to say it doesn't matter. He does.

It never comes out of his mouth into reality, though. There will be too many days in the future where Carlisle will worry when Edward comes home late or isn't home when Carlisle finishes a shift. When hunters veer too close to them while out feeding Carlisle will for a good while intentionally steer them away as he hasn't needed to do with either for some time.

We will learn. We are not short on time.

[themidnightson]

"All of the words are too small. They don't mean enough." Edward closed his eyes, not even looking down through lashes at anything. Not looking at anything anywhere. Trying to push off all of the other noise everywhere.

"I never meant to do that to you." Which is not the same as having never meant to hurt Carlisle. But the greater difference was monumental.

He looked up again, shifting. His hands flattened, moving up, to catch the sides of Carlisle's head, against his hair, too look at him with the same still pristine clarity of less than an inch. The same red eyes he can not divest himself of -- the same can be said as to his thirst, and Carlisle.

"It's a reprehensible wrong I can't undo. I can't use words enough to even tell you. They don't exist. But I am--then, now, will be--" Edward shook his head, errant almost erratic, "But I am still sorry."

[ofthefamily]

That's alright.

Carlisle almost adds Remorse is human but it's clamped down and away before Edward picks it up.

The two men stand there, hands against one another in the closest they've been for the better part of a decade.

Edward?

[themidnightson]

It's soft; but Edward still lets out a thin forced breath. He's not sure he wants to hear being asked to stop again. He'd managed to keep those useless words all inside until he was shocked by Carlisle's sudden....gesture.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle's hands drop from Edward's face and he takes another half-step inward, wrapping his arms around Edward's shoulders to hold him there.

"Thank you for your apology, and for coming back."

It can only get easier from here.

[themidnightson]

It still doesn't make sense. It doesn't. Any of it.

But a little bit more doesn't have to, doesn't matter about not being coherently consistent, when Carlisle is surrounding him. When he can lower his hands and rest his chin on Carlisle's shoulders, before rolling his face down against it, while nodding to his words, so as not to be staring at the wall behind him.

Nowhere close to free from the heavy weight of all his choices, but able to see a glimmer of that fact he has time and a place and Carlisle regardless of deserving. Here, and hearing him, hearing each other, for better or worse.

[ofthefamily]

At some point Esme comes home, saying something to the house at large about a concert that night.

Carlisle will probably say no unless Esme presses.

Stepping back, Carlisle's smile actually succeeds in looking firm and well-placed. "Ready to get back to it?"

[themidnightson]

Edward straightened the cuffs of his shirt, only lingering a briefly longer second on the right, before his hands ended up in his pockets and he was looking at the room around them.

He hasn't tried sitting through anything since that piano recital. But if Esme really did want to go, and she seemed interested enough...

"I'll go get more boxes."