themidnightson | Forks -- March 27, 2010

Everyone knows he's coming before he hits the door.
He isn't making an effort to be quiet as he walks to the house.

And it isn't as though he misses the looks they exchange with each other. Relieved and conflicted, so many different emotions. Hands that end up in other hands. Still, when he does open the door and then close it, quietly, it's like everything pauses. Not exactly. Electronics are still on, screens making noise, but there's a static stillness.

They know where each other are.
All home. All accounted for.

It can only be him.

He walked toward the staircase, making it one step up before he has to look over.

Jasper's gaze was even elusive, already too in tune with everything he was feeling, and Alice smiled, wobbly but bright. Rose looked away, only to elbow Emmett for good measure as if she could read his mind for what he was planning to say, which earned the first sound of theirs to break the silence at a What?.

Edward meant to say something. That was what you did when everyone was waiting on something. His hand lay on the railing and he looked over them. The so many different facets, different reactions and emotions and opinions. How much damage. And the strange, uncomfortable, yet obvious, relief his presence brought them in different way without relaxing them.

There really weren't words.

He met their eyes and then headed up the stairs.
No one was all that surprised or disappointed by it.

As Edward neared the second floor, conversation started back up in the living room with Jasper commenting on vacuousness of the woman rambling about What Not To Wear still. It wasn't an easy starting line, but it worked. Especially when Alice frowned and Rose threw a pillow at his head, which he ducked and Alice had to deflect straight back to them.

The anxious tension was still there, but so was the riotous assortment of voices suddenly. Which left two. Esme was another floor above, paused in the act of sorting something, listening, and Carlisle was ---

"Seriously?" is quiet, right outside the study door.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

themidnightson

He didn't misunderstand.

The offer. The question. The parallel.

"I'd offer to stop talking, but I'm already aware how idiotic and counter to everything you'd find that."

And he doesn't want to.

To hurt Carlisle. Or stop talking to him.

So, Edward kept walking. Toward the small sound.

From:

ofthefamily

Because Edward knows everything.

It's a snap in Carlisle's mind, but stifled by a muted curiosity of the sound.

From:

themidnightson

Which solves saying anything, doesn't it? Even when he tried to point out he knew he was being stupid and was attempting to be honest with it and pushing through it for all of this.

It's nothing all that exciting. A small stream most of a mile away from where they had been. More of a constant trickle of water than anything substantial. But it works.

Edward kneeled down by it and started to wash his hands off.

From:

ofthefamily

It's one of their necessities - he stands and waits.

Carlisle really will have to go out later.

From:

themidnightson

Edward covered his hand. His face and his chin.

Thinking too much of monsters and honesty. Bella, and Carlisle.

Once finished, he sat back, weight settling.

He ran his hands through his hair, now dripping, for whatever might have been left there from messing with it earlier, and considered that the options of one Carlisle's favorite questions only seemed to keep narrowing with each passing set of minutes.

Edited Date: 2010-12-02 06:27 pm (UTC)

From:

ofthefamily

Carlisle actually sits, picking up his pants legs slightly with a hand at each thigh before landing cross-legged on the ground.

It looks incredibly out of place.

From:

themidnightson

Edward glanced over after a quarter of a minute.
Toward his closest knee, then toward his face.

From:

ofthefamily

There's a lot that Carlisle could say.

But he doesn't. The stream is pleasant enough, and it serves to stretch the silence into something not wholly uncomfortable for Carlisle.

Until he notices Edward looking at him, and he feels like he should know. Should be able to do. His avvocation. Heal. But it's not on him anymore. He has to learn now. Not do.

It's all different.

From:

themidnightson

It is, Edward can agree in the least, all different.

Leaving them there, staring at the water, in silence. Again.

From:

ofthefamily

Roll away your stone, I’ll roll away mine
Together we can see what we can find

Carlisle exhales for a moment, untangling his legs as though they ever felt uncomfortable and stretching his feet out in front of him. It's a hard swallow into forced relaxation and his mind stuttersteps--

pale hand in the new grass, waiting for a meeting

and he winces, looking at the water again with an obscured thought.

From:

themidnightson

Edward can do silence. Far too well, after so many months. Like rooms he's used to slipping through, until something confuses him from it. Disjoints everything. The image, that causes his lips to tighten and his eyelashes to touch when his eyes almost close.

Hands. Each. Few. Memorable.
Backwards for seven months.

Bella. Alice. Aro. No one.

There is no breath because he doesn't breathe. Because this is who he was, what he did. Made the step between a thought and a happening real. Because he made it easier. Took away the impetus. Waited later to handle things that were his, as adverse to.

But what if he needs it, too?

And what are his needs now?

Can he be allowed to have them anymore?

Edward shifted off of his knees, putting him closer by another foot, and then reached out and placed his hand down. Palm up. Completely still. Not on the grass. But on Carlisle's thigh.

Edited Date: 2010-12-02 08:02 pm (UTC)

From:

ofthefamily

Oh my

Carlisle's hand falls lightly on top of Edward's knuckles.

From:

themidnightson

Edward stared at their hands.

He could say something, except that worked so well. He could say nothing, except that worked even less well. And really for words, for anything, it's all just fucking

Too much.

There is a single being whom his life or death hinges on, whose life he doesn't approve of the end of. There is another whose life depends on his continuing, in some grand century long conflicted part, dominoing into every other important life touching his.

There are a million mistakes made with what were the best of intentions. Shrapnel from that liters the ground every step he takes, every word he forces himself to form. Because he has to make it better. Clearer. Change it. Somehow.

Because they need him to. He does. She does.
For everyone except himself. Because he lost that right.

But that's impossible, too. Because he lived it. And he's living all of this now. Unable to shove it down or shut it out and not see every new pristine broken piece. And it's just

TOO MUCH

Edward closed his eyes and leaned over, without thinking about it or any of it or its ramifications. Only the soft thunk when his head ended up on Carlisle's shoulder.

From:

ofthefamily

Uh. Come again?

No. Wait. He already did. Towards him. It's not -- weren't they just -- huh?

But Edward's hair is still wet, flopped against Carlisle's collarbone and not appearing as though he's about to bolt away from him.

Not appearing as though he's the one that Edward is angry with.

Don't fuck it up, Carlisle. Just...don't.

The only movement Carlisle actually commits is a minuscule flexing of a couple of fingers against Edward's hand as they sit next to one another.

From:

themidnightson

If Edward realizes in the reactions that he's there, what he's done, how it could be taken wrong, that it's asking for it's own amount of possibly too much he shouldn't ask for or take --

he still doesn't actually move away.

Even if it's irrelevant, he took a breath in (feeling the cavity of his chest expand, and the line of Carlisle's shoulder under his cheek, and mess of reactions spilling across his mind, his and Carlisle's) and let it slowly.

From:

ofthefamily

They cannot stay here for any significant length of time.

(At the very least, if they stay much longer even Carlisle's famed control will snap just a bit, and he'll have to go deeper into the woods for a bit.)

Dumbly: "Your hair is wet."

From:

themidnightson

Edward grimaced. He hadn't thought of that. He m a adesmall shift as though considering sitting up finally, even as he said, "At least it won't stain?"

Edited Date: 2010-12-03 02:14 am (UTC)

From:

ofthefamily

"It doesn't matter, even if it did."

Alice could use the shopping excursion.

Carlisle doesn't give a shit about the damn shirt.

It was just...a thing to say.

From:

themidnightson

Edward stopped moving at the first two words. It isn't exactly comfortable, shoulder to shoulder, hands together, and still leaning over, but it wasn't as though he was quite sure he knew what that was anymore.

He tried for something smart and safe. Four or five different things, came and went. Silence. And other empty things.

"What does?"