𝕀'𝕞 𝕓𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕣𝕦𝕝𝕖𝕤 𝕟𝕠𝕨.

[OOM:

[OOM:

"I, um... I don't believe we've been introduced."

Edward doesn't have to be told by either of them the myriad reasons why they need to turn themselves out a few weeks after they arrive in Rochester. They're always going to attract attention, but they need to at least appear normal and comfort the sensibilities of those who shouldn't be left wondering.

The rhymes and reasons are always the same, only the trivial details change. That Senior King decides to throw a late Winter ball, to honor his nieces’ engagement, and makes the charitable donation of tickets for all the doctors and their families is simply convenient more than celebrated.


_________________________


The rich and affluent, and the hanger's on to the rich and affluent, of Rochester waltzed each other around the floor. They talk at tables pressed to the edge of the floor, starting with the weather and the season moving into the topics in vogue and on to the city events to come, circling always the edge of polite business.

Anything but the world outside their doors. All the while back stabbing and conniving at each other with each thought matching their syrupy words.



_________________________


Just because he understands it all (and hears it all) does not mean he has to embrace it.

Edward does what's required of him (introductions to the Senior, to so many others he smiles at without caring; middling chit chat about the weather and seasons, his sister and brother-in-law, Eastman's seasonal concert, about King's boycotting heir apparent) until it isn't, and he can slip the crowds.

2005;
Lessons exquisitely crafted, Painstakingly drafted


He watches her sleep, paying attention to keeping her warm enough, to the tangle of her hair on her pillow, and the way her eye lashes flutter. The hours bring all his words back to him. They replay like lines in a play he's read a hundred times. The words that he knows, and the ones that are so well known by time they've lost sound and shape entirely.

There are admissions he wishes he could make, things that have never fallen from his lips in decades. Words she has no warning or preparation for, no frame of reference. That don't invalidate his statements, so much as sit by them. He knows what love is, and he can claim to having been loved and being loved, to having loved and to loving, but not in the way she would assume he meant if he said it.

His traces the apple of her cheek with a finger tip, slipping across her cheek bone, the shell of her ear, and then down along her jaw, stopping only when she frets and mumbles something about cold. Holding still even when she chooses to rub her face against his chest rather than her blanket. And in that act of unconscious faith and comfort, she can silence his fears, his past.

That he has been offered this precious impossible gift, when all he has known of love was that which left him, when all six of them retreated to their special, singular worlds, alone and adrift. Elusively, swiftly, pulled into and pushed away, aware with beyond all intimate borders of what he was offered, what he had, and what was forbidden to him -- until now.

[OOM:

[ OOM: It's been an eventful two days in Forks:

But I'm not the only guy, I know that,
I'm not the only guy I know that
You never notice

And that's not the only lie I told you
That's not the only lie I told you
You never noticed

And I know I don't want this,
oh, I swear I don't want this.
There's a reason not to want this




Tiny sparkle!party: Alice Cullen, Carlisle Cullen, Esme Cullen, Jasper Cullen, Rosalie Cullen

Edward has a penchant for being irritably snappish and ruefully quieter given the month.

Which means, when he isn't attempting to hold face he's usually alone in his room or Carlisle's study.

On the rare occasions when he needs quieter companionship, for better or worse come the discussion time (or the sharing of "opinions"), he finds himself in the Freaks Only closet with Alice. Today is one of those days. School that day was maddening and his near constant struggle over Bella had him fed up with thinking before he'd finished the days classes, leading him to snap at his siblings before even getting home.

Edward shifted his hands under his head, fingers plaited in his hair, and continued to study the ceiling beam as though his gaze might burn it. The only sound for the better part of the evening was of Alice's sketching, but Edward hadn't looked at it (except through her eyes). It usually didn't bother him -- today it did. Today everything did.

He had considering a number of semi-reckless things. Watching certain ones dance into and out of her thoughts. While she hadn't commented, it didn't stop her from making faces or glancing at him. He stopped the more outlandish ones after she gave a forced sigh and poked him hard in the shoulder with her pencil.

Now he was thinking about Milliways and whether he should simply escape to there for a few hours. He had been meaning to go explore certain areas there. Perhaps, Emmett would like that.

Edward glanced, peripherally. Or maybe...