Samael POV
Since I didn't exactly keep a spare wardrobe for my girlfriend at home, our next stop was the Cullens' house.
The flight back was uneventful at first. Halfway there, however, the familiar Forks weather reminded everyone why the town had its reputation. Rain began falling from the clouds, but I picked up speed and managed to keep us nearly dry by the time the roof came into view. I landed on the balcony of her room, and we slipped inside quickly.
Alice went straight to the bathroom. The lake, she had decided, did not count as a proper wash, and she had been very clear about that on the flight over.
Left alone, I settled into her reading armchair. The room was quiet, save for the steady rhythm of rain against the glass. My eyes drifted towards one of the books stacked nearby. I had barely opened one when my phone buzzed with a message.
Samy, could you bring me the white blouse, please? It's on the bed.
I raised an eyebrow, then set the phone down, and found the blouse exactly where she'd said it would be. Carrying it over, I stopped outside the bathroom and gave the door two light knocks.
The door opened.
It did not stop at the narrow gap I had expected, arm's-length distance appropriate for passing a piece of clothing through a doorway. It kept slowly going until she came fully into view.
She stood in nothing but her underwear: black, and utterly unexpected at that particular moment. My eyes widened involuntarily, and whatever calm, unhurried thought I had been having simply ceased to exist.
She was breathtaking. Perfectly proportioned, her pale skin almost luminous in the bathroom light. The black lace bra cupped her breasts with precision. The matching knickers sat low on her hips, a thin band of elastic cutting across her stomach, the triangle of fabric between her thighs taut and revealing. She stood with one hand resting lightly on the doorframe, highlighting the curve of her waist and the gentle flare of her hips. I was acutely aware that I was staring, and equally aware that I had absolutely no control over that fact.
She smiled sweetly, closed the distance between us, rose onto her tiptoes, took my face in both hands, and kissed me.
Then she pulled back, said, "Now we're even," gave me the gentlest possible push back into the room, and closed the door.
I stood in the hallway, staring at the closed door. I was fairly certain I hadn't moved. My eyes were likely still wide. I glanced down at my left hand.
The blouse was still in it.
I looked back at the door.
Then I closed my eyes, exhaled slowly, and said, very quietly, "May the Force be with me."
A soft giggle drifted through the door.
She appeared about fifteen minutes later, perfectly composed and dressed, as though none of it had happened. We went to school.
…
General POV
Bella walked out of biology holding the golden onion, falling into step beside Edward as the corridor filled with students moving in both directions around them.
"Why didn't you just move with your mom and Phil?" Edward asked.
He was curious and confused in equal measure, which still caught Bella slightly off guard - this focused, direct attention coming from someone who had seemed to actively dislike her not long ago. She took a moment before answering.
"Well - Phil's a minor-league baseball player. He travels a lot." She sighed. "And my mom stayed home with me, but I knew it made her unhappy, so-" They reached her locker and she turned to it. "I figured I'd stay with my dad for a while."
Edward listened without interrupting. When she finished, he asked, "And now you're unhappy?"
"No," Bella said. There wasn't much conviction in it, though not because she was hiding anything, she simply hadn't worked the answer out for herself yet.
"I'm sorry," Edward said. "I'm just trying to figure you out…you're very difficult for me to read."
The words carried a slight stiffness that Bella didn't pick up on. She was too captivated by his eyes and by the sudden and bewildering fact of his interest in her to notice his particular phrasing. But the stiffness was there. For someone who had spent nearly a century reading thoughts rather than expressions, having to rely solely on words and body language felt strangely unfamiliar. He hadn't actually needed to ask questions in a very long time.
Bella wasn't following any of that. Her attention had snagged on something else entirely.
"Hey, did you get contacts?" she asked.
"No," he said.
"Your eyes were black the last time I saw you," she said, explaining the question. "And now they're like - golden brown."
"Yeah, I know." He said it quickly, and whatever had been meant to follow it didn't come. He closed his eyes briefly, as though pushing the words out required some effort. "It's the fluorescence, um-" He stopped, turned, and walked away toward the exit.
Bella stood at her locker and watched him go. The half-formed explanation dissolved into the noise of the corridor behind him.
She didn't understand him. She hadn't understood him from the beginning. But something about that, rather than putting her off, only made her more interested in him than before.
…
Samael POV
Alice's small act of retaliation in the morning had left its mark on the rest of the day. The glances we exchanged carried even more weight than usual. Certain words resonated differently, and every contact felt more intimate. At one point, I found myself genuinely tempted to disregard every boundary I had set for myself, and only the arrival of someone new pulled my attention away from that particular thought.
The brooding vampire had returned.
At first, I had been too preoccupied with Alice to notice him, but the 'golden onion' scene in the corridor made him impossible to miss. Fluorescence. He had actually said fluorescence. An excuse that fell apart the moment anyone thought about it for more than a second. He'd had a century to come up with something better than that.
In the end, my presence in this world clearly wasn't enough to change everything. There were some events — like this particular awkward, half-finished exchange between Bella and Edward, apparently — that a mere overpowered winged lion couldn't easily derail. Sigh. Whatever. I wondered whether the rest of the day would unfold exactly as it had in the film.
Now the school day was over, and the three of us stood near the parking lot. Alice rested comfortably against my side, our arms linked together, while Peter stood opposite us, hands buried in his pockets.
Which brought me to the second thing that had caught my attention today. Peter had been acting strangely since morning.
At first, I assumed he had simply got out of bed on the wrong side. Everyone had days when they weren't quite themselves.
By lunchtime, however, it had become harder to ignore.
Every time Alice joined the conversation, Peter seemed to retreat slightly further into himself. He wasn't avoiding her, exactly. He still answered when spoken to and never acted rudely. Yet, each sentence she spoke seemed to make him even quieter, as though her voice was draining his energy.
After watching him behave strangely for most of the day, I finally decided to ask.
"Are you alright?" I said. "You don't look like yourself today."
Alice turned her attention to him as well.
He looked at me and shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I'm coming down with something."
It wasn't impossible.
I focused for a moment, directing my senses towards him. They were capable of detecting even small changes in body temperature from several metres away, although it took concentration to do so.
His temperature was indeed slightly higher than normal. The difference was small, barely half a degree, but it was present.
Still...
Something didn't quite fit.
I was still pondering it when the sound of tyres cut through the parking lot - the sharp, wet scream of rubber on rain-slicked asphalt that made several heads turn almost in unison.
You have to be kidding me, I already knew what was happening before I even turned my head.
Tyler Crowley, proving once again that common sense and teenage boys rarely travelled together, had apparently entered the school's rain-soaked parking lot considerably faster than he should have. Another student pulled out from a parking space directly into his path. Tyler panicked, slammed the brakes, and the van began sliding helplessly across the wet asphalt.
Straight towards Bella Swan and her orange truck.
Thankfully, human eyes and reaction times were nowhere near fast enough to properly comprehend what unfolded next.
Edward, who had been on the opposite side of the parking lot, crossed it in well under a second. The van obstructed the rest even from eyes that could track such rapid motion, leaving only imagination to fill in the gap. Fortunately, I didn't need to imagine very hard - I already knew how this scene had supposedly ended. Edward stopped the van with his palm, saving Bella Swan from what would otherwise have been a deeply unpleasant afternoon.
For perhaps two full seconds, the entire parking lot fell silent.
Then, reality caught up.
Shouts erupted from every direction. Students rushed towards Bella, calling her name and trying to understand what had happened. Even Peter, despite his strange mood throughout the day, immediately moved towards the crowd.
Edward disappeared almost as quickly as he had arrived, vaulting over Bella's truck before anyone could properly register where he had gone.
Beside me, Alice's fingers tightened around my hand. I looked down at her. The playful smile she'd worn for most of the day was gone.
"We have to leave," she said quietly.
I nodded, and we moved to the car.
Less than a minute later, we were already leaving the school parking lot. Through the windscreen, I could see the other Cullens pulling out of their spaces.
Alice was already typing rapidly on her phone as I pulled onto the road.
"Where?" I asked.
She looked up. "Home. Bella will most likely be taken to the hospital, but there's no reason for us to be there - it would only draw attention. Rosalie and Edythe are going to follow Edward. With Carlisle, they will monitor the situation from there, in case..."
"In case Bella talks," I finished.
Alice gave a small nod.
She set the phone down and gazed out at the road for a moment. Silence settled over the car for several minutes, broken only by passing cars. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter.
"Do you think she will?"
I kept my eyes on the road.
Canon assured me she wouldn't.
Unfortunately, "because that's what happens in the film" wasn't an argument I could exactly present. So I reached for the other one instead, which happened to be equally true.
"I've only spoken to her once," I said instead. "That's hardly enough to judge someone's character. But you saw a future where the two of them ended up together."
"I did," she said slowly, "But visions can change, darling. What if this changes everything?"
"It might."
She looked at me.
"But tell me this." I glanced at her briefly before returning my attention to the road. "Can you imagine them having that kind of relationship without Bella eventually discovering who he is?"
Alice frowned thoughtfully.
I continued before she could answer.
"You and your family are exceptionally good at blending in, better than anyone could reasonably expect. But that only works because you keep humans at arm's length."
She nodded slowly.
"A romantic relationship is different. She'd immediately notice something: his skin, his strength, the fact that he doesn't actually breathe or eat."
The conclusion slowly formed in her expression.
"So," she said slowly, "if they're together, she must already know…and might even have accepted it!"
Alice's eyes brightened.
"She might," I said with a quiet laugh. "I just wouldn't count on it yet. But I struggle to imagine her deciding to expose anything. Especially if she's genuinely his mate."
"I agree!" The smile returned to her face in full force.
A moment later, though, another thought occurred to her.
"I'm certain they're mates," Alice said, "But what if I'm wrong about her? What if she still says something?"
I shrugged lightly and glanced at her.
"Then we deal with it. Whatever happens, we handle it." I moved my hand from the gear stick to her thigh. "I'm with you, Alice. Whatever it turns out to be."
Her eyes went slightly glassy for a moment, not quite the look of tears, because that wasn't something her body allowed anymore, but the vampire equivalent of it.
She leaned across the centre console and kissed my cheek before settling back into her seat, wrapping both hands around my arm.
"I'm with you too," she whispered. "Wherever you go, I go."
I felt that more than I expected to. It wasn't that it needed to be said, even though everything between us had implied it for a while now, but hearing it said mattered in a way that was difficult to explain. The knowledge that regardless of what came next, she would be beside me.
I squeezed her thigh gently. "I love you."
"I love you too," she said, and squeezed my arm in return.
We drove the rest of the way in comfortable silence.
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[Posting a bit late tonight. I was watching the Cup while doing the final polishing of the chapter.
There was a part of the chapter taken directly from the movie. I did that to give a bit more context and a clearer picture of the scene for those who remember it.
However, for anyone worried that I won't be changing the plot, I assure you: the further the story goes, the more different it will become.]