Golden: 1819.

[ofthefamily]

An old face. Calmer, older, and yet all the same unchanged.

At least he's not running for his life, now. And he knows where he is.

For Carlisle Cullen, this is always a good start.

Comments

[ofthefamily]

i don't want to belong to anyone else you may have me.

It's permission and longing and he's free to do what he wants, right? So there he is, being bitten of all things and liking it, even after Volterra and everything there.

Edward seems to want to consume him.

Carlisle has no place else better to be.

[themidnightson]

The groan against Carlisle's skin is as frustrated as moved.
He's not positive he want to be either. But no one is asking.




And he shouldn't. His eye close, eyelashes light, burying his face against Carlisle's throat. He can't. A small nip. It'd be wrong. A very, very light brush of his lips. It could be worse.

The smallest whisper, lost in the crowning dawn's wind. "Tell me what you want of me?"

[ofthefamily]

"Stay with me. Please, please stay with me. This me here."

It's immediate and pleading and Carlisle's hands fly to Edward's shoulders.

[themidnightson]

It has to have been half a century since he last felt so suddenly terrified.
He squeezed his eyes against those words and the ones that echoed.


I want to make you promise me
that you'll never leave like that again.

I am happy with you.
So I manage

Does nothing change, because the time outside
each door never moves, and then a lifetime
here still takes nothing from there?

What would you have of me?
How complicated is it to say, everything?

Very.

Edward nodded, his nose brushing up and down at Carlisle's shoulder, while his chin bumped against a collar bone and his hands had become something like a vice. He can feel this one, in every part of who he has left in him to be, when he mumbles against Carlisle's shirt, uncertain if he means Milliways or Lyon or the nineteenth century; or the coming of his insanity, booked and brooked by only one man.

Who was now two. "For now."

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle really wasn't expecting anything resembling an answer in the positive.

"Do you mean that?"

[themidnightson]

Edward is not yet left the first emotion reawakened.

The dawn of blasphemy, of disgust...of things too bright to believe in even coming with the scent of stirring warmth and morning. Light is soaking through the sky, pale purples and pinks and oranges. Everywhere but where it should be.

"Don't..." But he doesn't deserve to ask that one.

[ofthefamily]

Don't what?

[themidnightson]

He pulls away from Carlisle's shoulder, from hiding from something so large there would be no hiding from it. Away enough that then his chest isn't touching, but without taking any steps away. It's. There can't be.

This could be worse. He makes himself look at that face. Same face. Heaven. Hell. It's wrong. He's already said it. I can manage. He'll take what he can get. He knows how it broke everything. Last time.

When he didn't know even himself. When Carlisle was...

(I don't want to wait another ten years to see you.

I promise it won't ever be like that again.)

It's almost desperate: "Don't make me promise...anything."


He doesn't....

He can't.

Can.

Would.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle feels something of Edward's loss for him, even if it's just because of the tone of the other man's voice and he can't do anything to stop it --

He can't even be sorry for causing it.

It's his first act of selfishness.

[themidnightson]

He can't. There's. Edward won't even let it be called a loss. Cringes, very extraordinarily minutely at the idea. That he - they -- He can't -- won't -- doesn't let go. Of Carlisle. Both. The concept is beyond insanity.

This is only the beginning.

[ofthefamily]

"Do you -- "

Hell if Carlisle knows what to do now.

" -- want to keep walking?"

[themidnightson]

Edward nodded. Aware he might be, also, answering a question not in that one. It's fine. It's only a small, short nod, clipped, perhaps passes two or three times only as his hands fell from Carlisle.



"Almost light." Is not a full sentence.

It's aware though. There's water in the distance still?

[ofthefamily]

"True. We could go inside."

[themidnightson]

"I don't mind." Is a better sentence, at least?

[ofthefamily]

"Alright."

Then they're staying outside. It's at least quieter out here, and Carlisle's feeling a little bit brave.

[themidnightson]

"Librettos."

Edward says toward Carlisle's clavicle.

[ofthefamily]

"What about them?"

[themidnightson]

"You'll never give them up."

That is where this started, right?

"Ascots, too."

[ofthefamily]

"Wow. I become terribly predictable then."

[themidnightson]

His lips tugged faintly at one side, more of twitch, really.

"It's makes Christmas easy." When they remember, at least.

[ofthefamily]

Christmas.

How foreign.

[themidnightson]

"We forget as much as we remember."

And it's not yet a national holiday in Carlisle's New World across the ocean.

[ofthefamily]

"Still."

They are walking without a real goal in mind beyond inside, but now that it's settled into Carlisle's head that Edward said yes, he -- there's no map here.

[themidnightson]

"There are birthdays, too. Wedding's occasionally. No one's ever been all that fond of July 4th ever, though there were rounds of fights on of the Boxing Day's a long time ago. Holiday's really aren't our suit."

He's rambling. Edward doesn't ramble. Ever. And he is.

"But they use it as an excuse to redecorate the house regardless."

[ofthefamily]

Holidays and houses and redecorating?

It's almost bordering on the absurd.

"Sounds lovely," he offers quietly, and he holds the door open for Edward to walk in ahead of him.