Fic: The Edge (Twilight, Alice/Bella 17/?)

[fembuck]

Title: The Edge
Author: Janine
Fandom: Twilight
Pairing: Alice/Bella
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: All characters are owned by Stephanie Meyer. I’m just borrowing them.
Summary: Alice comes over to sweep Bella away for a romantic weekend.

Prologue: Golden Slumber
Part 1: Skating the Edge
Part 2: My Favorite Mistake
Part 3: The Rules of Attraction
Part 4: Shattered
Part 5: Breakin' All The Rules
Part 6: Good World Gone Bad
Part 7: 'Splaining
Part 8: Sway My Way
Part 9: Fuzzy Wuzzy Wonderland
Part 10a: The Honeymooners
Part 10b:The Honeymooners
Part 11: Complications
Part 12: Uh Oh
Part 13: All Falls Down
Part 14 - A Fortunate Confluence of Events
Part 15 - A Little More Conversation
Part 16 - Song of the Siren

---

Three Weeks Later

Charlie watched as Bella paced back and forth in front of the entrance way to the living room, lifting her watch one more time and looking down at it before frowning and continuing with her pacing.

Shaking his head he turned his attention back to the television set. She had been acting similarly jittery since he had returned from work. He was actually quite surprised that she had managed to keep moving for so long without collapsing in exhaustion. The pacing wasn’t making the time go by any faster, she could as well have just sat down and waited, but when he had suggested that to her, he had received such a withering glare in return that he knew not to bring it up again.

He would never, even if he lived to two hundred years of age, understand teenage girls.

“What time do you have?” Bella asked suddenly, speaking for the first time in nearly half an hour. She was looking down at her watch again. She shook the watch by her ear and then frowned at it once more. “I think there’s something wrong with mine.”

Charlie looked down at his watch. He knew there was absolutely nothing wrong with Bella’s, but it would be less troublesome to just confirm the time for her, than to try and convince her of that.

“It’s, 7:05,” Charlie responded lowering his hand, shaking his head again as Bella sighed deeply and continued to pace. “Bells,” Charlie sighed, unable to take it anymore. “She’s probably tired after her trip. She might not even be coming. You should probably let her rest up. Kiddo doesn’t look like she gets enough sleep as it is,” Charlie continued frowning as he thought about the perpetual dark circles under Alice’s eyes.

“Oh, she’s coming,” Bella said in response, “if she knows what’s good for her,” she added under her breath a moment later as she glanced at her watch again.

“If you say so,” Charlie responded giving up. He was just going to have to put up with her insane pacing until Alice arrived … which he hoped was soon.

A few minutes later, the sound of a car pulling up to the driveway could be heard, and Charlie turned his head towards the door in time to see Bella dancing back and forth, taking a step forward and then back, as if she couldn’t decide whether to run to the door and fling it open, or play it cool and wait until the door bell rang. Deeply mystified, he watched her continue her dance of indecision until the door bell rang and she darted forward, disappearing from sight.

---

Alice laughed delightedly as Bella flew into her arms, her arms wrapping around Bella as she kicked the door shut with her foot.

Bella breathed in deeply, taking in Alice’s scent and then pulled back, pressing her lips against the vampire’s, drinking in Alice’s surprised gasp. A moment later, she felt Alice’s arms wrap around her more securely, and she sighed into her mouth as Alice began to kiss her back, her hand moving up and down Bella’s back.

“It’s good to see you too,” Alice murmured, smiling softly as she cupped Bella’s cheek.

Bella blushed a little knowing that her greeting had perhaps been a bit too enthusiastic, but she didn’t much care.

“I missed you,” Bella breathed out, leaning forward to brush her lips against Alice’s again, more softly this time, just savoring her closeness.

“I missed you too,” Alice responded, hugging Bella once more before she looked past her into the hallway. “I should probably say hi to Charlie before he wanders out here to see what’s taking so long,” she could hear him shifting in his old arm chair, and knew that he was on his way to see what was holding up the show.

“Ugh,” Bella moaned, molding herself against Alice’s side. “Can’t we just go?” she asked, only half joking.

Alice laughed; the sound music to Bella’s ears. “It’ll only take a minute Bugs, calm down.”

Bella groaned, at the interruption and the nickname. Days before Alice had left for a short vacation with Jasper, she had dubbed Bella ‘Bugs’, because she was always finding a way to get herself into trouble, but like the rascally rabbit, always seemed to emerge relatively unscathed.

“Fine, whatever Tink,” Bella replied morosely, using her own nickname for Alice. Alice laughed again and wrapped her arm around Bella and giving her a squeeze. Alice actually liked her nickname, and seemed to get a kick out of it whenever Bella used it (which meant that Bella tried to use it as much as possible).

“Don’t be grouchy,” Alice said, pressing her lips to Bella’s forehead. “We’ll be alone soon, so just be a brave little engine for a few minutes longer,” she continued, and then she took Bella’s hand and began to lead them into the living room.

---

An Hour Later

“That was longer than a few minutes,” Bella grumbled as Alice carried her bags towards the car.

Charlie, always charmed by Alice, had been in one of his talkative moods and had begun to ask her all sorts of questions about how what she planning on doing after graduation, and if she had looked into any Universities, and many other passive aggressive questions that were being asked for Bella’s benefit.

And Alice, being a talker herself had been more than happy to indulge him, and went so far as to sit down on the arm of his recliner as she told him about some funny incident she had observed during a campus tour she had taken, while Bella tapped her foot impatiently and looked at her watch.

Truthfully, she should have been happy they got on so well. She was technically still grounded, and if Charlie didn’t love Alice so much he never would have agreed to let her stay in Port Angeles overnight with her.

Alice laughed as she gracefully tossed Bella’s luggage into the back seat of the Porsche.

“Stop laughing at me,” Bella complained good-naturedly, swatting Alice’s ass.

Alice laughed again.

“I’m laughing with you,” she said, leaning against the side of the car as she stared at Bella.

“Keep it up and you’re going to be sleeping with the couch,” Bella replied holding Alice’s gaze seriously, though she wasn’t quite able to keep herself from smiling.

Alice looked at her smugly. “I doubt that,” she responded, biting on her bottom lip, shooting Bella the coquettish look she knew drove Bella wild.

Bella glared at her, though her eyes roamed over Alice’s body. “I have will power,” Bella grumbled, knowing that when it came to Alice she had very, very little will power … especially now, having gone almost a week without Alice’s hands on her.

“You haven’t seen what I’ve got on under here,” Alice responded, smiling prettily at Bella. Bella took a step towards her. “Uh uh,” Alice said holding up a delicate finger. “As much as I’d like to be ravaged against the side of my car, Charlie’s watching through the window,” she continued, smiling as Bella let out one of the most exasperated sounds she’d ever heard.

“He’s so nosy,” Bella muttered, running a hand through her hair as she tried to get her hormones under control.

“He’s concerned,” Alice said gently, moving around the car to open the passenger side door for Bella. “He loves you.”

“I know, I know,” Bella sighed, her voice kinder. She knew that Charlie was just looking out of her, and that he wanted to protect her. It was just hard to remember that, when he got in the way of her feeling Alice up.

Bella slipped into the passenger side of the car, and Alice closed the door, moving around to the driver’s seat, quickly closing the door and strapping herself in before she rolled down the window. Sticking her arm out of it, she waved at Charlie, and then slowly backed out of the driveway, maintaining the painfully slow speed until they were out of sight of the house.

“Feel better?” Bella asked smiling as Alice stepped on the gas peddle, sending the speedometer flying. She was almost used to the ridiculous speeds the Cullen’s drove at now.

“Yes,” Alice said, sighing in a way that Bella usually only heard when her face was between Alice’s legs.

“Do you two need a moment?” Bella asked grinning over at Alice. “I could crawl into the back, leave you the gas peddle alone for a while,” she continued.

“Would you?” Alice asked without missing a beat. “That’s a dear. I think there’s a magazine or something back there,” she continued turning to look at Bella, her golden eyes dancing.

Bella bit her bottom lip, her eyes crinkling as she smiled. God, she had missed Alice.

“I don’t have anything witty to say in response to that, so I’m going to cross my arms and stare out of the windshield,” she said finally, her smile growing when Alice laughed airily and reached out for her hand, holding it firmly in her own.

---

Bella sighed contentedly as Alice lifted their joined hands up to her lips, pressing a soft kiss to Bella’s palm.

“You’re tense,” Alice said softly, her speaking voice almost as melodious as Nat King Cole’s as he sang about Mona Lisa smiles through the Porsche’s stereo system.

“Not tense really,” Bella breathed out, knowing that there was an energy thrumming through her body, and that Alice wasn’t likely to have missed with her enhanced senses. “More anxious,” she continued, smiling a little self-consciously over at the raven-haired beauty. “I just … want to be alone with you.”

Alice was quite for a few moments, her eyes focused on the road ahead of her, though Bella knew she wasn’t really concentrating on it. With Alice’s vampire abilities she could have driven the car with her eyes closed and they would have been perfectly safe.

“I thought … when I was gone that … you and Edward,” she began, biting down on her lip before turning her head to glance at Bella questioningly.

Bella had said ‘anxious’, but Alice knew she meant horny. The moment Bella had enveloped her in the foyer she had had a vision of what Bella was planning on doing to her when she got her alone, and it was … spirited to say the least.

She knew that Edward had been trying to protect Bella’s virtue and hadn’t wanted to take her virginity before they were married, but she had changed the scenario, and she had been certain that they would have used the opportunity to be together.

It was actually one of the reasons she and Jasper had taken a short vacation together. They needed some time alone, and they had been planning on going away for a few days for a while, but it was the visions she’d had the week preceding the trip that had convinced her to take the trip sooner rather than later.

The week before she and Jasper had left, Edward had taken to staring at her contemplatively when he thought she wasn’t paying attention, and occasionally when she and Bella were standing together in the hallways at school, she had spotted Edward watching them studiously from a distance.

She had been preparing herself for an increase in hostility from him, but it had never come. Instead, for the first time in almost a month, she had begun to have visions about him.

After returning from Italy, Edward had seemed to be coasting. It was almost as if he was consciously trying not to make decisions because he didn’t feel like he had any power to enforce them. But finally, the ennui that he had cloaked him since returning to Forks slowly began to slip away, and Edward seemed ready to finally take some action.

Unfortunately for Alice, the decision he was contemplating was whether or not to abandon is gentleman’s code, and attempt to have sex with Bella.

For days he waffled back and forth on the issue. On the days when he was against it, she saw nothing. But on the days when he was in favor of it she was assaulted with images of candlelight, and bubble baths, and walks along the beach and dozens of other scenarios that he imagined leading to the actual act.

When she first realized what decision he was struggling with, she had begun to live in fear about what her next vision would show her, but mercifully, Edward and Bella were always clothed, and the visions never took her beyond the stage where took Bella’s hand and told her that he wanted to ‘know all of her’.

She knew Edward hadn’t been spared the details of her physical relationship with Bella, but she wasn’t going to make herself suffer unnecessarily and had wanted to spare herself the details of theirs, so when Edward seemed to be mostly in favor of breaking the code, she had suggested to Jasper that they go away for a few days.

After they left for New York she’d had no more visions on the subject, and she had thought for certain that Edward had made up his mind and that he and Bella had taken their relationship to the next stage.

“I thought you two … you know,” Alice finished, waving her hand vaguely in the air as she glanced over at Bella again.

Bella sighed and shook her head, turning away from Alice to look out the window.

Truthfully, she had thought that they would have as well. In fact, the night that Alice had left she had actually been certain that Edward was planning on broaching the subject. He had been uncharacteristically nervous, and fidgety, and he had kept on looking at her with a speculative glint to his eyes, like he was trying to make his mind up about something. When he had returned to her room later that night after Charlie had kicked him out, he had kissed her without his usual hesitance and Bella had been convinced that it was going to happen.

But then he stopped. In the past, before she and Alice had become lovers, when she and Edward would get too heavy for his liking, he used to say that it was too dangerous, or that they should wait and do it the right way, but that night he didn’t say any of those things. She knew it was because while it may have been dangerous, it wasn’t impossible. Alice had been managing to control herself for over a month. And, waiting, preserving her virginity could no longer be held up as a reason to abstain because she no longer had it.

Instead, he had just wrapped his arms around her, and whispered that she should go to sleep. He offered her no explanation or insight into why he had stopped, and she thought that she should have been irritated with him, frustrated that he had put the breaks on again for no reason in particular, but she wasn’t either of those things. To her immense confusion, she found that she was actually relieved that he had stopped.

The next night, when they were curled up on her bed after Edward had returned for the night, he had softly said, “Charlie’s still awake,” and she had nodded. She had then turned over onto her side, and Edward situated himself behind her, and she had gone to sleep.

The subject was never addressed again for the rest of the time Alice was away.

“Charlie,” Bella murmured, her eyes still trained outside of the window, even though it had nothing to do with Charlie.

Alice said nothing, knowing that it had nothing to do with Charlie. The majority of the time Edward spent in Bella’s room was at night, when Charlie had no idea he was there. As well, she and Bella had been together when Charlie was in the house, awake and asleep, and he had never come close to discovering them. Even one night when Bella had come particularly hard and cried out much louder than usual, Charlie hadn’t come to investigate. Alice had been listening carefully, and she knew that Bella’s orgasm hadn’t even woken him up.

There was no reason Charlie should have really been a factor in whether or not Bella and Edward were intimate.

Bella was quiet for a moment after murmuring her weak explanation and Alice knew that she was aware of how unconvincingly it sounded.

“Something started to happen,” Bella said finally. “But then he just stopped … like he couldn’t force himself to continue,” she went on, looking steadfastly out of the windshield. “I think we ruined it … for him,” Bella said thoughtfully.

Alice sighed and nodded, understanding what Bella meant. “He waited a long time to find someone he … to find you, and I’m sure it’s difficult … knowing … being aware that … well, because I …”

“Beat him to the punch,” Bella offered sparing Alice the effort of trying to find a delicate way to say that she had popped his girlfriends cherry.

“So to speak,” Alice responded, smiling a little. “Edward’s a gentleman,” she continued, her tone more somber. “I think,” she sighed, knowing that was true. “I know that before your birthday and our leaving, that he planned on waiting until you were married.”

Bella gaped at her.

“Married?!?” she asked incredulously, her tone rising so high that Alice winced a little. “Married!?!” Bella repeated, though Alice had gotten her point the first time. “That’s … that’s stupid,” she declared helplessly, grasping for a word to describe the sentiment.

It was 2006 not 1906 and she had never planned on waiting until she was married to become sexually active. She had standards of course. She hadn’t planned on just giving her virginity up to anyone. She had planned on waiting for love, and she had. But waiting for marriage was insane.

“It’s not stupid,” Alice said, frowning a little. “It’s … how he was raised,” she continued softly.

“Yeah, but I’m eighteen,” Bella sputtered. “He might have had enough control to go another decade without … consummating the relationship, but that’s a long time for a human,” she continued.

Alice sighed again. “He wasn’t planning on waiting quite that long, Bella,” she said, glancing over at her lover. “Edward’s from a different era, and even though he’s lived through many decades, the time when he was human played a big part in shaping his personality and beliefs. People got married a lot younger back then,” she continued, glancing over at Bella.

Bella looked at her, searching her impossibly beautiful face, suddenly very, very afraid of the words that were coming to come out of Alice’s mouth.

“How young?” Bella asked with trepidation.

“Eighteen wouldn’t have been unusual,” Alice responded.

“Eighteen,” Bella breathed out disbelievingly. “Now?” she chocked out wondering if Edward was really planning on asking her to marry him. “But,” she sputtered looking over at Alice again. “Oh,” she sighed, dropping her head into her hands.

She had registered Alice’s use of the past tense, and realized that Edward must not have been planning to ask her after what had happened between herself and Alice, but she wasn’t as relieved as she should have been at the realization that he’d changed his mind.

The fact that he had even planned on it, that he had really thought she would get married before she’d even had a chance to vote in an election made her extremely uneasy. After what she had told him about Charlie and Renee’s ill-fated marriage, how he could think that she would want to walk in the same footsteps was unfathomable to her.

“He just needs some time … to adjust his vision,” Alice said softly, not quite sure what to make of Bella’s disjointed response.

“Why …” Bella began before trailing off.

“What?” Alice asked gently, squeezing Bella’s hand.

“You were born the same year as Edward,” Bella started once more. “Why didn’t you … I mean why …” Bella continued, frowning before trailing off again.

Alice smiled. “Bella,” she said softly, drawing Bella’s eyes over to her. “Are you trying to ask me why I’m such a whore?” she asked still grinning.

“No!” Bella exclaimed immediately, before Alice’s teasing expression registered with her. “Well, kinda,” she admitted.

“I’d already been sexually active,” Alice said stroking the back of Bella’s hand.

“Were you married to Jasper when you and he …?” Bella asked.

Alice shook her head. “No,” she said softly, smiling over at Bella again. “I had a vision,” she said glancing back out of the windshield. “I knew it was going to happen, and that we’d be together for a long time, so I just let it happen naturally,” she continued. “And Jazz was a soldier so …” she let the sentence hang. Needless to say she hadn’t been his first.

“Did it bother you that he had … before?” Bella asked curiously.

Alice looked over at her, knowing where Bella was going with that line of questioning. “No,” she said honestly. “It’s probably better that one of you knows what you’re doing,” she continued, smirking a little. Bella smiled back, it had certainly worked out well for them that way. Things could have been terribly awkward if Alice hadn’t been so calm, and patient. “This situation is quite different though,” Alice went on, becoming serious once more. “Those other women were long gone. We’re still together. And I live in the same house as Edward.”

“That makes things a bit trickier, doesn’t it?” Bella asked, looking down at her lap.

“Yeah,” Alice breathed out. “It’s going to be rough for a while, and we’re going to have to work hard if it’s going to last,” she continued. “But it’s not impossible Bella,” she went on squeezing Bella’s hand, “not at all. I’ve seen arrangements like this work in the past. We just have to want it to.”

“I do,” Bella said squeezing her hand, leaning to the side so that she could rest her head on Alice’s shoulder.

“So do I,” Alice said softly, flashing Bella a little smile. “See, we’re already halfway there.”

Bella looked up, studying Alice’s profile.

“Kiss me?”

Alice kept her eyes on the road for a second, making sure everything was okay and then lowered her head, meeting Bella’s lips.

“Don’t worry, Bugs,” Alice said softly, resting her head against Bella’s. “We’ll be okay.”

Bella smiled and allowed her eyes to close, Alice’s scent and closeness relaxing her. If Alice said it would be okay, then it would.

She would always bet on Alice.

To be continued…

Comments

Thank you thank you!

[wyccad.livejournal.com]

For not letting Edward touch Bella "intimately". I could totally see him telling her (with pie charts) why he wants to...but it must never, ever happen!
And seriously, I don't know why SMeyer thinks it's gentlemanly to wait...because I think it's meeeeeeean to keep a girl hot and bothered. Well...I do get the morman thing, but still! Meeeeean!
Thank goodness Alice isn't such a gorram prude! Yay for sexin' on the way!
*blows Janine kisses*