Carlisle-Esme, Pittsburgh.

[ofthefamily]

Vampires don't sleep.

They do, however, sometimes find it relaxing to sit in a chair with a gramophone record playing in the background -- instrumental; an orchestra. Beyond that, there's no label on the record to dictate where or when the performance was recorded.

Carlisle's eyes are closed, his feet are propped up on a chair.

Comments

[ofthefamily]

"Now I have to ask why you can't see me as a priest."

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

Esme ducks her head. "Probably because all the priests I knew in Ohio were stodgy old men."

And stodgy and old are not words she would ever use to describe Carlisle, no matter how many years he had been on earth.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle catches the inference.

"Good to know I am not stuck in my ways."

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

"I would imagine that with all the moving you do, it would be difficult to get stuck in your ways."

Though there are moments when she wonders what his life was like before Edward when he was alone.

[ofthefamily]

"You'd be surprised. One city can sort of...blend into another, if you don't pay attention too carefully."

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

"How do you keep it all straight?" Esme asks.

[ofthefamily]

"Journals and logs. I find myself inscribing a lot of my materials with places and dates so that I can at least tear through my office and figure out more or less in which cities I have lived the past two decades or so.

"Living with others has...made me pay more attention, of late."

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

Esme nods, looking thoughtful.

"You've never lived with others before Edward and myself?"

[ofthefamily]

"Not in the same situation, no."

It's not...really an answer.

And Esme deserves one. Carlisle responded to Edward when he asked, after all.

"I lived with the Volturi for a time." Esme has heard the name mentioned and explained after the messenger came to Pittsburgh, but not...truly the scope of Carlisle's involvement.

She probably still won't get it here.

"They did not exactly approve of my choice of diet, so I moved on."

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

That... confuses her.

"They didn't approve of you not wanting to eat people?"

[ofthefamily]

"Why should I go against the natural state of our kind, as they would say?"

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

"Because it makes it easier to blend in and live as part of society?" Esme says.

[ofthefamily]

Carlisle actually laughs aloud.

"I am afraid I have given you quite the skewed vision of vampires in the world, my dear. I am very much the exception, not the rule."

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

He has a nice laugh. Esme hopes that she gets to hear more of it.

"Why? That is to say, what makes you want to be different?"

[ofthefamily]

The Joplin record has skidded politely to a stop before Carlisle has a chance to answer.

Very, very quietly: "Maybe I was simply fated to be different, Esme. I just knew I could be more than what I had been turned into if I wanted to be."

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

"I'm glad that it was you I met then," she says, her voice matching his pitch.

[ofthefamily]

"Are you?"

He surprises himself with the question.

"I took the choice you made away from you. You aren't angry with me for that?"

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

Esme frowns at his words, realizing that Edward has told him she chose to jump off of that cliff.

"I was never angry," she says. "I was very confused about your motivations."

She pauses.

"I still am, to be honest."

[ofthefamily]

"Because you think I don't like you."

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

"I never said that."

She's thought it. But never said it.

[ofthefamily]

"At one point you wished to never speak to me again," Carlisle retorts. "I may be slow but I am not entirely knuckleheaded."

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

Esme has the decency to look embarrassed.

"I don't understand you," she says after a moment. "You're not like..." my husband... "the other men I've known."

[ofthefamily]

"Is that such a bad thing?"

[mamavamp.livejournal.com]

"I suppose not."

She offers him a tentative smile.

"But it means that I'm not sure what my place is in your life."

[ofthefamily]

"And it would be unfair of me to say something along the lines of 'whatever place you wish to make for yourself', I imagine."

Carlisle's hand reaches towards his face, rubbing at one eye as though a speck of dust had ingratiated itself there. He stops so that the heel of his hand can support his chin, elbow against the armrest.

"There is nothing I wouldn't make sure you had if it was in my power to give you," he starts haltingly. He's never had to explain this aloud before. Edward always knew.