(no subject)

[themidnightson]

The Back Door opens and closes.

Two people leave, one dressed for the weather and one decidedly not.

The snow is still covering the ground except for well worn paths that have turned slushy and gray-brown. But it isn't falling right now. And Edward paused, while the door swung closed, to look across the expanse. Would anything feel far enough here to him? Was it just another distraction from?


Except he could not chance these things;
And he did not trust the Front Door after all the things it had thrown at them.

Comments

[noteful]

Of course it did.

And if it never got spelled out at the time, they both knew what they weren't talking about when they met, right?

"I like your family," she says.

"And Dr. Cullen did me a favor by agreeing to manage one of the teams."

[themidnightson]

Edward's lips pressed together, barely, between her thoughts and words.
His words collecting and slipping away in the same second.

He didn't have to say it if she already understood.
Even if she was only mostly sure on the accountable reason.


"It piqued my interest, to know why you'd done as you had." And he doesn't clarify here if it's baseball or his family or angels or everyone. Not even quite finitely in his head.

Beat. "Originally."

To clarify it wasn't so now.

[noteful]

They're all kind of interconnected, anyway.

And, anyway, it wouldn't change the answer. Meg did what she thought was the right thing to do.

"And now?"

[themidnightson]

"Now." There's something very quiet, bemused, rhetorically questioning.

"I enjoy discussing things with you." Is almost too blanketly polite put for the inference it's supposed to convey. In part because he is distracted with it's follow-up before he even gets to it.

"And you were--" It's harder to addresses the things she both doesn't know or barely knows of at all.

[noteful]

Hard to know what to make of?

[themidnightson]

"--kind." Is even more decided for her question.

"Especially when you didn't understand what was going on."


That day, when he came in, and couldn't even ask her to go or stay.

Or the one that had lead to this, as well.

[noteful]

"Thank you."

It's one of the things she tries to be.

[themidnightson]

Most humans do not react to knowing just enough to have no specific answers with kindness. He's seen enough of them living out their lives, in all ages, it isn't a generalization.


Edward nodded.

Even though he's not certain these are compliments.
They are simply the facts as they've laid down on his life.
The reasons why he didn't want to never return after this point.

[noteful]

There are people Meg knows well enough to expect specific answers from.

At the time, Edward wasn't one of them.

(Whether he is now . . . will remain to be seen.)

"You give me things to think about."

She likes discussing things with him, too.

[themidnightson]

There's a very, very vague almost-smirk.

"And now I wonder if I should apologize."

[noteful]

"Only if you feel it is necessary," Meg says, serenely.

(She doesn't. For what it's worth.)

[themidnightson]

She'll learn in time it's one of four phrases he rarely says in decades.
It's the second most likely of the four, too. But fewer people know that.



"If it becomes detrimental, perhaps."

[noteful]

"Of course."

A slight smile.

"I'll let you know."

Not that I'd need to.

[themidnightson]

The very edge of his one side of his lips tugged outward and outward.

[noteful]

Meg rests her chin on her gloved hands and looks over at him.

"Well, I wouldn't."

[themidnightson]

"Maybe next time you'll sit down the first time you're invited to, too."

[noteful]

"Maybe.

"Depending on the invitation."

[themidnightson]

"If won't be overt if we're in public and you aren't addressing me yet. "

[noteful]

Because he's been so excessively overt in his actions till now.

Meg nods.

"I know.

"I meant more . . . if you ask nicely, I'll probably say yes."

But it's a woman's prerogative to refuse invitations.

[themidnightson]

It's Meg's prerogative.

"I could attempt to be on my best behavior."

The one he carried about in a box in his head.

[noteful]

"Oh, that might be excessive."

Best behavior is the stuff of formal events and people you don't know well.

[themidnightson]

"Hypothetically, that would be how I spend five days out of every seven already," Edward followed up on her last five words. He means it more wryly than she might take it though.

[noteful]

"Being on your best behavior?

"And not smacking your classmates for making you listen to them read V.C. Andrews books?"

[themidnightson]

Edward snorted with a half roll of his eyes.

They actually read worse things.
And thought monotonously.


"That, as well."


Besides it was being on his best behavior not to snap Mike Newton in half pretty much daily since January, no matter how many times or ways he had pictured doing so.

[noteful]

"Thank you, for telling me," she says.