concerning

With all the grace of an olympic ballerina - there's no time to wonder if that's actually a thing, Alice plants a hand on her hip and points at Bella with the box. "This is a sleepover, Bella! Humans play games during sleepovers."

"For someone trying to blend in, you sure put a barrier between yourself and humanity," Bella grumbles as she takes the box and starts reading the back of it. Stupid game. Stupid beautiful, kind, vexatious vampire. "I mean in the way you speak, we could use a little more barrier between us, physically."

Too busy reading, she doesn't notice the mischievous glint in Alice's golden eyes, nor the way she slides right up beside Bella. "You puzzle me," she says almost gently.

Which doesn't entirely matter, Bella still stumbles sideways while throwing the box into the air in her surprise. "Jesusfuck!" Her arms wobble, backpack caught around her ankle, and grabs roughly at the nearest thing she can reach.

"Oh dear!" Alice says far too casually as she takes Bella's searching hands and allows herself to be dragged down atop the human. When she lifts her head, the ends of her black hair tickle Bella's face, and she has her smirk caught by a fang. "Clumsy human."

"How very dare you," Bella wheezes as she catches her breath. Her fingers dig into Alice's lower back and she watches the molten gold of those eyes fade to a burnt honey. "You did that on purpose."

"I did not."

"You could punch me through a wall but I pulled you down?"

"You caught me off guard."

"You're psychic!"

"You know I have trouble seeing you," she counters. "Am I really such a burden to lay beneath?"

Bella squeezes her eyes shut just before she gets the full frontal force of The Pout. Her heart takes off like a goddamn hummingbird and when she cracks an eye open, Alice looks utterly pleased. "If you know what you do to me, why do you keep doing it?"

"I like it," Alice says, as if the answer were obvious.

The human stares harder at her, brows pinching together in frustration. "I doubt Jasper does."

"I think he's starting to understand." There's a quiet moment between them, where guilt tries to claw its way into Alice's eyes. Ultimately, it's burned away by the ever growing hope. "Has Edward explained mates to you yet?" At Bella's confused face, Alice sighs heavily and finally sits up. She gets to her feet, easily pulling Bella upright. "You win this time. I suppose we should have a few conversations before we get to... the games."

It takes Rosalie a second to register exactly what she says, expecting a nod, maybe some soft spoken affirmation or even compliment. Not that Bella compliments her often - they've said a handful of sentences to one another at this point, nothing that would constitute a conversation, certainly.

So she turns to look at Bella again, leaning back against the railing of the porch. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I'm not fucking blind," Bella says and jabs her hands between them as if to showcase her point. "You're always glaring at me, you leave the room as soon as I enter it, this is the kindest conversation we've ever had-"

"This is not a conversation."

"-see? What's that, what is that, if not hate?" Bella huffs. She looks incredulous, fired up, maybe a bit surprised at herself... and Rosalie has to bite the inside of her cheek. "I'm not a moron. You either hate me or you're into me."

Rosalie's jaw clenches tighter, her teeth start cracking through the inside of her cheek.

Almost at once, Bella blinks and her shoulders slump into something far more loose as the lightbulb above her head goes off. "Oh."

"Don't."

"I am a moron," she says quietly, almost to herself. Then tilts her head, eyes squinting at the vampire. "Me? Really? Is it my blood again?"

Rosalie lifts her chin and looks away, out into the yard. "I do not confuse wanting to kill you with my affection for you."

"Woah, hey, who wants to kill me?"

"Everyone."

"Oh, right. So it's me, you just... like me."

"I was also surprised," Rosalie rumbles sarcastically. "I know you're dating Edward-"

"Nope, nuh uh, absolutely not!" Bella gasps and jolts forward half a step. "Shit, that was kinda mean. I just meant that we're friends and everybody does keep insisting that he's into me, but we've never talked about it." She pauses and glances to the side, genuine wonder on her face. "I don't think, at least. I kinda suck at this, wow."

"This, I am not surprised by."

A lopsided grin hooks onto Bella's face and she rocks back on the heels of her feet. "Alright, so let me be really blunt then. Wanna go on a date with me?"

She doesn't understand and you need her to understand because this? This is forever. Literally, in your own case thus far, and there are so many things you need Bella to understand, to truly and really understand because it's more than she thinks it is. She looks at you and sees perfection, success, excellence. Because you have worked so hard to keep the rest from her. The darkness, the hunger, the cold pit of nothing that threatens to suck away all the good things in your life, to lose it all to the void so many of your kind have fallen into. The addiction that drives through your mind fantasies and visions of tearing out her throat just to drown the thirst.

She doesn't understand that you are all family because of the decades upon decades of learned restraint, and the burden Jasper carries to keep them all more person than beast.

Bella is a charming, brilliant, compassionate teenager who has barely lived, and now she's asking you to end that. End something she's barely gotten a taste of. Something that she won't understand how to miss until it is long, long gone.

shadowheart <3

she’s so tired

Shadowheart 🖤