1920, Ohio

[themidnightson]

The sun has set all but it's last few rays, which coat a golden sliver of light far away across the horizon. The twilight softness, softly grayish silver that is heralding the dark of night and the birth of bright stars, spreads vast across Columbus. The city isn't quiet in the early evening, but it is quieter than the day time.

Quiet enough that two men, roughly the same age in appearance, can stroll down a just this side of the main streets area, dressed nicely without catching too much attention or notice. The occasional tipping of a head from a passerby or a smile from a porter or door watchman who's seen them pass before on earlier nights.

Comments

[ofthefamily]

"True."

Their destination -- another patient of Carlisle's, dropping off medication and checking in -- is in another couple of blocks. Carlisle has the most stereotypical medical bag, chosen on purpose. Black leather and a heavy clasped handle. He feels official.

[themidnightson]

It's not a very long few blocks even, and convenient in his practice that they can do evenings. A good variety of his patients are even used to Edward's polite position of standing in the background watching quietly.

[ofthefamily]

Edward stands behind Carlisle when he goes to knock on the nondescript door. It's a modest home, but single-family in contrast to the townhomes that are common in that neighborhood.

"Oh, Doctor Cullen. Edward," an older woman greets them both at the door. "Lucas is upstairs; the usual place."

[themidnightson]

They all exchange sentence bit pleasantry before she waves them toward the previous mentioned location. Edward listened to the sound of their feet as they shuffled of the stairs, when they walk across the carpet. All the most minute efforts they make to appear human when silent stealth is their first nature.

He stops in the doorway watching Carlisle once they enter the teenage boy's bedroom. He's propped up on a bed with a long white leg cast (a broken bone from rough housing in a back yard tree with his much younger cousin) and rather bored, even for the winning smile.

"You missed me already?" He called out jovially after spotting Carlisle.

[ofthefamily]

"Ha. Not hardly, young man. I heard you were giving your mother trouble so I've come to make you as uncomfortable as possible."

Carlisle nods at Edward before approaching the boy, using the nearby chair as a stand for his bag rather than to sit himself.

The bag in and of itself has nothing overly scary inside it. There is a bottle of pain medication he leaves at the boy's night table in case he needs it, followed by a cursory examination to make sure that the bone is resetting and stabilizing the way Carlisle needs it to.

[themidnightson]

Edward can't help but marvel at the ease of Carlisle's thoughts. Even watching it for weeks now, they never wander in the direction Edward's have far enough to leave his mouth half filled with venom. And yet for Carlisle, not once has the thought or urge struck.

He's so focused and light that it's contagious (and almost brightly accusative to Edward's pride). The laugh is real and his concern is real, and he's content in carrying it out.

"I think you've already done that," Lucas laughed, crossing his gangly arms over his head, against one of his many prop pillows, each end of his leg cast free of obstacles.

His concern and anxiety are more in his thoughts, but they do touch his face a few minutes into the exam. After he's watched Carlisle's face shifting only in small ways while checking him over. "Will it be soon?"

[ofthefamily]

"Oh, most definitely. Only three more months to go!"

Beat.

"Weeks. I meant weeks."

[themidnightson]

The look of shocked terror turned horrified amusement on the boys face rivals the look of patient blankness of Edward's. That Carlisle was able to joke with them. Cater to each of them, each with a different face, fulfilling their needs-- the ones beyond just being physically fixed.

"That's not funny," Lucas laughed.

[ofthefamily]

"That's why you're laughing, I see."

Carlisle closes up his bag again, reaches for a book off the shelf that Lucas requests, heading back downstairs.

To Lucas' mother: "I did leave some medication upstairs, but he shouldn't need much of it if any. He's getting to the point where he will feel well enough to try and walk about. Tie him down if you have to."

Lucas' mother laughs; it nearly matches the boy's upstairs. "Don't worry, I can handle him. Until next time, gentlemen."

[themidnightson]

Edward managed a smile and a polite nod, a pale shadow of Carlisle's boisterous good night's. The fresh air is far better. Edward still rubs his face, heel of his hand grinding against his cheek and chin as he swallows venom. He's not thirsty but the impulse never leaves him near them.

"Another? Or is he the last for tonight?"

[ofthefamily]

"The last, I promise." A chagrined smile. "You didn't have to come in with me."

[themidnightson]

"No," Edward agrees, wryly. "I didn't."

He comes anyway. There's more to learn at Carlisle's side than there is in all his daytime text books and teachers. They can only teach him about medicine.

[ofthefamily]

You most certainly are the kind of man who would give himself stitches.

Carlisle gives Edward an appraising glance from head to toe. And they really would have been more neat. Where to now?

[themidnightson]

It's not the best compliment but it will do for now. Carlisle doesn't stop him from continuing to push his own limits, to set his own boundaries, to try his hardest to match a companion who has over two and half centuries practice on him.


"It's good then that I'll never need them." Edward dropped his hand to his neck, walking casually away. "Home."

[ofthefamily]

Home it is.

And has become, much more than it ever was when Carlisle was living a solitary life. It can be seen in the sheer space they've consumed for themselves - a house was much more appropriate than an apartment, eventually - but also the novelty that Carlisle still has to appreciate isn't going anywhere. That there is someone else around.

Hard to argue with that.

[themidnightson]

The cities sounds roll outward around them, and Carlisle's thoughts are a small ocean in themselves. Constant and comforting, mooring his concentration as the night air soothes the earlier stops' stirred longings.

They're half way back when the sound of an unaccompanied piano being played in a small cafe causes Edward's steps to falter. He looked toward the door taking first one step and then another toward its doorway.

[ofthefamily]

Edward rarely goes searching for things on his own, especially since having returned to the U.S.

Carlisle doesn't follow his shifting steps just yet, waiting to see what drew Edward's attention to the cafe.

[themidnightson]

It's positioned on the far left side of a medium sized smokey room only dotted with a handful people he ignores instantly when his feet find the threshold. A parlor Steinway instead of the normal uprights. He hardly holds that thought longer than it registers.

An early Schubert sonata in it's last twelve measures.

[ofthefamily]

He never told me he played --

It's the only reason Carlisle can imagine that Edward would be staring at the piano as he is.

[themidnightson]

When the piece finishes the people clapped as the man bowed his head while standing and aiming himself toward the bar on the opposite side.

Edward, without missing the movement, doesn't realize he's made the decision, until he's suddenly right next to the Steinway. Reaching up with gentle, as though it were the wind, to touch the edge of the raised back lid, to trail his fingers downward toward the front part.

He can feel the cracks in the vanish and see the dust on the strings, but his fingers lead him onward.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle's finally meandered through the doorway and decides to prop up the closest wall, eyes never leaving Edward.




Will you play something? Carlisle asks to himself and to his forever-audience.

[themidnightson]

Edward's hand ran along the front. Fingers grazing its length before his gaze dropped to the keys as Carlisle's words wrapped around his thoughts and actions. His body naturally followed the drop, gracefully certain in the way it settled in the center of the bench more balanced on the front portion, as though he'd made that movement every single day.

Finger tips ghosted above the keys, hesitating at the simple act of touching them, before they touched as his lips pressed even as the keys remained remotely still beneath his fingers. His memories were greyed and faded, full of grit and imperfections, even the ones of this, but they were still memories and pushed against the barrier between now and then.

But there were so many of these even that way.

Had he forgotten how many there were?

What would, no should be first? Where to st--

Edward fingers pressed into the keys, a momentary warble the only sign of uncertainty, before the first few notes of Debussy's Arabesque No. 1 the strained yet tiny pauses between the first notes probably more notable to Carlisle than the people across the room who looked up in surprise at the new player.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle can read music. It took him two weeks one hundred fifty years ago; he doesn't think about it much.

Maybe he should.

Edward remembers this from the life he led before dying. He tries to not think anything directly at Edward for fear of disrupting him. The music itself is from a time Carlisle remembers well and his thoughts drift as the song crescendos and pulls back again; arpeggios held to the light with staccato accents an octave higher.

[themidnightson]

Something is wrong.

It is the only thought Edward can keep, his eyes not leaving his fingers. He doesn't remember the last time he had to watch them, while barely remembering why he didn't have to. Fingers that are so different, but both times they were still his. The minute pauses between notes, as he struggles inside himself to pull them from his pristine memory and push them together with the greyed one, are shatteringly loud to his awareness. Dissonant.

When he thinks for a moment that he can just close his eyes, just let go, the pieces fall away and for a moment, even just the briefest millisecond, he can't remember where his fingers are supposed to go next. It's just a suddenly glaring absence of knowledge. The music is clear in his mind, but the application of it lost on his hands. Hands that had spent over a decade in such work.

Somewhere people are stirring, pleased, Carlisle is one of them, and Edward is only frowning very faintly. It's not right. In fact what supposed to be most right about it, what he knows was once upon a time the best part of playing, is so completely missing the act of trying feels a hollow sham.

It makes him welcome the man quickly pacing forward to stop him.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle stands up straight at the sight of the original player -- the hired hand for the evening, apparently -- walks towards Edward.

Carlisle gets to the piano a half-step before.

"We were just leaving," Carlisle starts with a forced smile before the player can open his mouth to say something Carlisle won't like.

[themidnightson]

"It's fine," Edward said, standing, to the thoughts of both of them. Reluctant to bring his hands away, grateful that Carlisle has said the words that will make him, bitterly confused in a blank expression when he doesn't even acknowledge his human savior.

An even softer whisper, one of them will hear. "It's gone anyway."

[ofthefamily]

The whisper hits Carlisle in the gut, but they leave the cafe without another word to each other.

They are nearly home when the questioning Would you like to learn again -- starts.

[themidnightson]

Edward hadn't looked up for most of the rest of the walk. He'd glanced at his hands once or twice as though they might be the culprits themselves -- long, pale, fingers like stone, the planes of a palm; fingers that would never break a nail, never sweat or cramp over keys played too long -- before they'd been shoved into pockets and not brought back out.

What he's thinking at the moment Carlisle intrudes is of a quote he'd so lightly used not too many years ago. A quote, by Fredrick Delius, one of the most distinctive revivalist figures in 19th century English music while he'd been learning;

Music is an outburst of the soul.

If he hasn't the one, perhaps--


Edward shook his head, absently. "I don't think I need to. I hadn't even remembered it."

[ofthefamily]

There were some missteps, surely, but the fact that he remembered any of it is astonishing.

Maybe if you'd had someone watching you, you wouldn't've lost so much of yourself, Carlisle --

Carlisle doesn't think in Edward's direction again for a minute.

[themidnightson]

It's not a misstep when something so pervasive is gone, gone in a fashion where you actually had to be reminded to remember it existed. But what does he known of pervasive and this other side? He thought he couldn't live without air once upon a time, too.

Edward glanced over as though Carlisle had spoken, without turning to face him. "It's not as if I'm lacking in fields of study."

Or someone who was watching out over him. Constantly.

[ofthefamily]

I know, but --

There's no point in pursuing it.

You don't have to put yourself in such difficult positions just because of me.

Carlisle leans over in a blur, giving Edward a kiss on the cheek as they walk.

[themidnightson]

If he's at all surprised, it doesn't show more than in the lessening severity of how he had been holding himself. He doesn't want to worry Carlisle (even as he wonders what else he's potentially forgotten). He never does (and Carlisle still worries).

"It'll be fine. Trust me," Edward said, trying for a wry smile, even as he chose the words specifically. "I'd rather just be home now." It's a question, with a small glance to see if anyone is watching.

[ofthefamily]

I always do.

Carlisle walks home with a song stuck in his head. He hopes Edward will forgive him it being now stuck in his.