Edward, 1954, Canada

[betagainstme]

and if you have a minute,
why don't we talk about it somewhere only we know?

Alice wasn't quite sure if she made the decision or if he did. Or if the vague visions of a future playing out before both of their eyes made the final decision for them. Maybe they had no choice but to accept this as their future. It went against everything Alice knew of her visions.

But, she decided, grinning quietly. She didn't mind.

She hovers outside his room, knowing he knows she's there, but waiting for some sign it's okay for her to come in. They're still testing the boundaries of their relationship, Alice growing bolder and bolder every day...

Today's conversation begs a little restraint though.

Comments

[themidnightson]

It's still very unsettling at the edges. Especially that she doesn't know. That somehow he's upsetting the pattern of her three decades of knowing her powers exactly.



Still that doesn't change that she's there.
Or that she's somehow slipped into being.....

No. There are still words it's better not to even think.



Edward waits listening to her war with waiting, against the strains of Mozart playing in the background and mechanic work in the garage and even the not too far city storm of voices.

Eventually one edge of his lips tugs, more outward than up or down.

"Are you going to stand out there all day pacing back and forth?"

[betagainstme]

She slips in, silently, grinning mischievously.

"I have a question."

[themidnightson]

Edward, with one set of fingers against his knee still following the piano's melody strain in the orchestra piece, raised his eyebrows. He would describe that as more of a request than a question.



But his expression was more humoring than not.

[betagainstme]

"We need a space. For us. Just us. We're...two of a kind." She starts before grinning slyly at him.


"You already know what I'm going to say. And I already know I'll win. So...do I really have to do the spiel?"

[themidnightson]

They're outcasts and different she means, or at least the press of his lips takes it that way. At the total sway of their power -- and even more, at the total sway of what those powers do in culmination with each other.

Even Jasper has control over his power, an offensive thrust that can be managed to directly effect people, regardless of whatever else might be lacking in his will power.



"You want to highlight on the fact."

Children, that weren't children, locked away in a closet.

[betagainstme]

"Only as a joke. Not...an insult." She narrows her eyes at him. "I just...want a place for the days that are harder. When you need more quiet than the rest of the house can afford.


"When I need...you so I'm not the only one seeing things." It sort of pains her to say this, even if it's epically true.

[themidnightson]

That she actually says it out loud, when she could just think it, knows he'll hear it, actually makes the hard edges fall away from his entirely. There a flash of something darkly uncertain and near guilty.

He didn't require naked admissions of weakness from her.




The uncertainty stays in his eyes only for what to do or say or whether he's supposed to say something comforting to that. Whether he can irregardless of whether she might want him to. (Whether he wants to acknowledge how right she is about the lack of quiet.

Yet doesn't feel driven to deny it to her, either.)



He can't do nothing though.

A second later, he stopped tapping the music and patted the couch seat above and to the left of him, from where he sat on the ground. It was as good as invitations got right now.

[betagainstme]

She had crossed her arms in the silence. Unfolding them now, she steps lightly to sit at his side, above him, legs curled under her.

Thank you. It's a soft thought, and she idly reaches out to touch a strand of his hair in casual mussing.

"I didn't mean to actually say the last part." Her voice is so soft, it's barely there. It still hurts to say it. There are some things she cannot face alone even if she thinks she should be strong enough to never falter.

[themidnightson]

He glances overly faintly at the touch, but he doesn't stop her.




"I know." It's equally quiet.

And it's equally about knowing she didn't mean to,

As it is about knowing how much she needs someone (him).

[betagainstme]

She doesn't stay quiet or saddened for long. Happiness is an easy emotion to bring back up, for her, and she can hide behind it even if she's still bothered by the truth.

"So. Closet. Yes?"

[themidnightson]

It makes the point, too, what she does. That she wants somewhere she doesn't have to hide -- somewhere to be seen, that is safe and hers -- no, theirs. To see and be seen and to share seeing.




Edward turned, putting an arm over the cushions so he could lean his cheek against it. Golden eyes studied her, the enigma who evoked so many things he'd sworn had gone with time into the void.

"Tell me more about it."

[betagainstme]

Her fingers comb through her hair as she leans back against the cushions, smiling softly. "Not really a closet, but not a whole room either I'd think. Just enough space for two, with...both of our hobbies filling it. Whatever you want. Whatever I want."



She looks down at him. "We. We want."

[themidnightson]

He's always been allowed to put in a house whatever he wanted. In his own room, and the piano's wherever it is they happened to best suit his mood both when they moved and when he changes where its been because.

Carlisle and Esme see to it that he knows it, for as little as he ever does.



What Alice means is different. The same word. Want. But the difference necessity and comfort in her eyes and her thought, if not her tone. She wants him to continue to give her the things he's given away in endless days that made up passing decades.

It's too damning to ask what do you want?

Instead, "What would you put in it?"

[betagainstme]

"For you? A small piano." She says, knowing there's something going on in his head. Knowing he meant what she would put in there...for her.

But she's thinking about him now. "And plenty of blank sheets for music."

[themidnightson]

She is; thinking of him.

Not entirely free of self-interest, as just pointed out earlier. But if not entirely, possibly half-and-half.

He doesn't know where the urge comes from, but he looks down, and traces half an inch of the edge of the couch cushion she's sitting on, saying, "Catalogs and sketch pads, pencils in every color."

[betagainstme]

A brightening smile gets tucked away into her shoulder as she looks away from him for a moment.

He can always read her jubilant thoughts instead.

"And books in every language. You can teach me languages I've yet to learn."

[themidnightson]

He can feel it. He doesn't say he hasn't agree. Words are window dressings between them. The future, even shifting, is already there. More finite with each word.

She still presents choice when there are none.

She knows it's important, if not why.



"It'll need a music player."

[betagainstme]

"Of course." She nods. "And anything else you think it needs."

There are unspoken, fragments of thought in her head. Thank yous and her excitement and most of all, just her content at being here, near him. He's something else she needed, to create a whole.

[themidnightson]

He glanced up from the cushion to her face. "And you."

[betagainstme]

Her lip gets tugged between her teeth as she watches him. Those two, simple words mean---




Everything.


"And you."

[themidnightson]

Edward's expression stays mostly clear, but it is a removed that is nothing new. That he can even say such things now in the smallest words.


He turned, leaning back against the couch.

"Are we planning a ruthless takeover of one of your closets or preemptively planning for the next house?"

[betagainstme]

"I can spare the extra closet down the hall." She murmurs, looking out over his room. "Next time we'll steal a small room."

[themidnightson]

It's not even a beginning to plan statement in her second sentence.

The room is already there in mind, turning clear and clearer.



"And the others?" He asks without saying what he means. Jasper.

Edward was the least able to avoid where Jasper's moods took him at turns. Even for as much as Alice continued to invest herself to Edward's life at the glacially slowly moving at least arms length away.

[betagainstme]

She knows what he means. She shrugs.

"He has me always. He can give me this room and be okay with it."

[themidnightson]

Edward has little in the way of first response to her words except a peripheral glance toward her.

He seriously doubted it would go easily at all. Especially under the continual stain of Jasper's standing or slipping given the time or year or the wind or random happenstance.


There were almost words, he lingered in the glance long enough, before there was the most minute press of his lips and he just shifted to looking forward. Let himself lean back into the couch and hear the cord change the player had started a beat too late for eternal posterity.




It wasn't his place, and he liked keeping it that way will all three sets of them.

[betagainstme]

She doesn't answer him in regards to his unspoken thoughts. Alice instead chooses to stand and move to look out of his windows. "I'm going to have to move my clothes out of that hall closet."

She sighs. "So many clothes and so little space."

[themidnightson]

He looked up, partially following the course she took.

There's a small tug at the edge of his lips. "You could donate."

[betagainstme]

Her answering snort says as if. But she nods idly. "Maybe. We'll see."

[themidnightson]

The not-quite-pouting at the idea of such loses makes him relax. Somehow.

"Look at it as a convoluted way of getting to shop more."

[betagainstme]

At that, she grins blindingly at him over her shoulder. "I like that."

[themidnightson]

The smirk is almost not there, but it is.

"I knew you would."

[betagainstme]

Her smile softens; a secret one, just for them.

"Thank you."

[themidnightson]

There's a musical rumble that sounds like an affirmative.



And maybe it's about clothes, or it's about closets.
Or simple all the things the wrap and unwrap Alice.
Who continues to both cover and uncover him.