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ghostsighstitle. who were you after you were mine?
rating. pg
fandom/pairing. twilight / edward/jacob with mentions of jacob/bella
summary. everything that jacob is feeling and wanting and hating and loving is in edward’s head without a second’s breath. he is thinking of the koran, the exact key changes in beethoven, the way he hates how dickens writes dialogue and nothing will push it out. he never wanted this, he never likes to snoop in jacob’s head, but the thoughts were like knives in his heart, carving out their destruction in words.
notes. A sequel to Lonelily and a companion to I Hold My Breath to Forget. Title from Metric's Soft Rock Star. Originally posted here.
As soon as Edward’s cab was stopped out front, Rosalie’s arms were wrenching the car door open, throwing them around his shoulders and whispering thank yous into his smooth neck.
“Let me get out of the car, Rose. Rose, let go. Rose!” She backed up, almost jumping up and down with excitement. This made coming home harder, seeing how happy she was to see him and knowing that she was the last person he wanted to be around right now.
The trunk of the cab popped open and he reached inside to grab his two suitcases. Mostly full of books and CDs, anything to keep the white noise of Jacob’s voice of his head, the images of betrayal, the stinging pain of loving too hard but not enough.
“Edward! Where did you go? Anywhere exotic? Or just up north? Tell me!” He could sense the forced smiles and enthusiasm in Rosalie’s voice. She was like his favorite book, so familiar but heartbreaking. He saw all her attempts to make his homecoming a joyous one.
Truth is that being away only made it worse. He saw them everywhere, Jacob’s eyes and smile, Bella’s laugh, everywhere he went. They were haunting him like a ghost unable to rest, invading his thoughts and corrupting his sanity.
Carlisle leaned against the doorway of the house, his smile trying to invite conversation, but talking to him would be like bloodletting. He couldn’t do it, not now, maybe not ever. His heart was too tangled in teenage emotions and piteous envy.
---
Edward found that his throat would catch, the breath he didn’t need would get stuck somewhere and he’d be gasping and coughing. He didn’t understand this until Rosalie put her hand on his shoulder and said so matter-of-factly, “It’ll be hard to really breathe for a while, Edward.”
Edward’s arms are like an envelope for his pain, surrounding and concealing it. They were always around his middle, hands on his elbows or around his back, always holding much tighter than anyone should. He uncrossed them the first day he was back and nearly fell to the ground. He didn’t grasp until then just how broke he was.
Emmett’s eyes were never on Edward, always just to the left or right of his slender form in common rooms. He knew what Emmett was thinking, and he also was sure that Emmett made sure of it: putting images of Rosalie smiling without Edward, and her face when she was screaming Emmett’s name. This was Emmett’s way of shoving Edward out of his head, and Edward wished he wasn’t such a glutton for punishment.
---
Edward was relaxing in the living room, an old hardcover resting on his knees and that same arm wrapped around his middle, clinging to the pieces that still needed repair. He kept himself busy like this, never able to stay in one place. Everywhere he smelt like Jacob, and cried out to his heartache.
A loud bang hit his head like the force of a steam engine. It wasn’t that loud, but the sudden volume of it broke the silence with too much force. The reverb of the doorbell was echoing off the high ceilings of the living room, sending chills to his spine. A familiar scent, a voice in his head, a boy at his door with their life together in a small box.
Rosalie hurried down the stairs and Edward put a hand up to stop her. She slumped against the wall of the stairwell, her arms crossed, one hand in her mouth gingerly chewing on a fingernail. Her breath hitched when Edward opened the door and she knew she’d have to hold him while he tried to cry again.
Everything that Jacob is feeling and wanting and hating and loving is in Edward’s head without a second’s breath. He is thinking of the Koran, the exact key changes in Beethoven, the way he hates how Dickens writes dialogue and nothing will push it out. He never wanted this, he never likes to snoop in Jacob’s head, but the thoughts were like knives in his heart, carving out their destruction in words.
“Jacob? What are you doing here?” His voice is cold and completely unfeeling; he’s barking his words instead of saying them.
Part of him wants it to hurt, wants it to burn like fire; but he never could willingly wish anything but happiness and smiles for Jacob. It’s the catch-22 of loving someone so much and knowing them entirely too well.
“I wanted to give these back to you,” Jacob says, his eyes falling on the box that Edward had seen before he’d reached the door.
Edward isn’t aware that he’s not breathing and staring completely blankly and Jacob until Jacob’s voice cuts through the turmoil in both of their heads, “Just some things you left at my house. I, uh, well, they're yours. You should have them.”
Jacob is handing him this box and the smell is overwhelming. It smells like Jacob, like them. And he can’t take the blood curdling screams in his own head, his own emotions beating on his heart and his voice, chopping him into pieces and putting him back together and forcing him, forcing him to be polite to someone that completely slaughtered him.
The box is in his hands, heavy with all the memories, mostly good but now entirely bad. He tries to look down at the contents, but he stops himself, just grazing the surface with his mind’s eye.
He senses Jacob’s uncomfortable stance and his words are like a foreign language, “Do you... would you like to come inside?”
Edward’s stabbing himself internally for even suggesting. Jacobs’s smell was finally out of his things and he was inviting him back in for more days of avoiding anything that could soak in scent.
“I can't. She's waiting for me,” Jacob finally breathes out. Edward feels himself wince and can’t believe he didn’t pick up on her before. She’s all over him, in his hair and on his lips. Her scent is attached to Jacob like Edward’s used to be, leaking out of his pores like perfume.
His voice is an echo, a dead dying memory of his own, “Is she here?”
“Waiting in the car, actually.” With this Jacob’s hand is through his hair, stirring up his scent and her scent and what is now their scent in the air. Edward wishes he could stop breathing, but he’s taking in what he can of Jacob before he forbids himself to ever see him again. Edward hears himself give an answer, but it’s lost to him. Words don’t even make sense anymore.
There is a silence and Jacob’s mind is wandering to the stairs, wondering who fixed them, seeing the two of him standing together and complete against them. Edward is screaming at himself to stop, he can’t stand the images and they are punching him in the chest with iron fists
He’s shaken awake from Jacob’s spoken voice, the one that’s even harder to hear than the one in his head, “It was nice to see you, Edward.” And he knows that Jacob is lying. How can he not be? It’s not nice to see him, it’s devastating and like a horror film. Only instead of frankensteins and zombies, there are two former lovers with heavy hearts and broken spirits.
Jacob’s face is so shattered, his eyes knitting into each other and the corners of his mouth look like they haven’t broken into that classic Jacob grin in days. He knows this can’t be true, knows that he’s only fooling himself thinking that Jacob’s pain is as enormous as his.
Edward is asking him, begging for the right answer, “Are you all right, Jake?”
Jacob’s turned around, his perfect back away from Edward once again. His eyes are nearly closed, his mouth formed into the most downtrodden expression Edward thinks he’s ever seen. He knows at this moment that their pain is equal, and that just because Bella is at Jacob’s side, doesn’t make his pain any less real.
Jacob’s voice is almost a whisper, but it feels like he’s trying to scream. Maybe that’s his head, Edward can’t tell the difference anymore. “Some days I am. You want to know the hardest part?”
Edward lets the question hang in the air, his head nodding without his approval.
“Breathing.”
Edward holds out his hand, this is the first real time he’s left his arms uncrossed in so long. He isn’t falling apart because Jacob’s hand is on top of his, squeezing slightly. The spark, the pressure, the desire is all still there. This is just the simplest of touches, the smallest of physical gestures and Edward thinks this is harder than anything else has been.
“Goodbye, Jake,” he mouths, the words leaking from his mouth like a prayer. He hearts Jake reciprocate but can’t hear his final words to him.
Edward’s listening to his head, trying to decipher his emotions but pulls out. That’s not his Jake, that’s someone else. The one that lives inside him is someone he’d never known and couldn’t. That part of Jacob was too heartbreaking to embrace.
The door is shut and the box of discarded memories is thrown across the room. It hits the wall opposite the door with a loud thud, cds and shirts and letters and tree leaves and pieces of wood (the smallest piece from their night on the stairs) are scattered across the foyer. Rosalie gasps, her hand drawing around her mouth.
“Leave me.” Edward spits at her, his words slicing into her like a surgeon’s knife.
Edward crashes into the floor, picking up mix cds and borrowed ones, books that he knew Jacob had never cracked open, lyrics on wadded pieces of paper and poetry Edward had put under Jacob’s pillows when he watched him sleep.
Then there was the shirt. Edward sucked in the smell, letting it burn him, like so much fire, an emotional one that was wringing his neck. He breathed Jacob’s name into the fabric, holding it like an infant.
Edward shoved everything back into the box and threw it into a corner. When he climbed the stairs Rosalie’s quiet eyes were on him and trying to decide what to say. Edward pushed past her, knocking her into the wall. She didn’t protest but sighed sadly.
“Throw it all out. I don’t want it around me,” Edward said. Rosalie nodded when he looked to see her answer..
--
Edward's door didn't open again for three days, the deadly silence gave the whole house the unshakable feeling that something had died. It was a funeral, a wake, it was quiet suffering. When he emerged, he didn't speak of any of it. Jacob and Bella's names were not uttered again in the household by an unspoken law.
Inside Edward's head, everything played like an old movie, the film damaged, stuck rewinding. Sometimes when he caught Rosalie looking at him, it felt as if she could see it.
The canceled television drama, and Edward was watching reruns for eternity.
rating. pg
fandom/pairing. twilight / edward/jacob with mentions of jacob/bella
summary. everything that jacob is feeling and wanting and hating and loving is in edward’s head without a second’s breath. he is thinking of the koran, the exact key changes in beethoven, the way he hates how dickens writes dialogue and nothing will push it out. he never wanted this, he never likes to snoop in jacob’s head, but the thoughts were like knives in his heart, carving out their destruction in words.
notes. A sequel to Lonelily and a companion to I Hold My Breath to Forget. Title from Metric's Soft Rock Star. Originally posted here.
As soon as Edward’s cab was stopped out front, Rosalie’s arms were wrenching the car door open, throwing them around his shoulders and whispering thank yous into his smooth neck.
“Let me get out of the car, Rose. Rose, let go. Rose!” She backed up, almost jumping up and down with excitement. This made coming home harder, seeing how happy she was to see him and knowing that she was the last person he wanted to be around right now.
The trunk of the cab popped open and he reached inside to grab his two suitcases. Mostly full of books and CDs, anything to keep the white noise of Jacob’s voice of his head, the images of betrayal, the stinging pain of loving too hard but not enough.
“Edward! Where did you go? Anywhere exotic? Or just up north? Tell me!” He could sense the forced smiles and enthusiasm in Rosalie’s voice. She was like his favorite book, so familiar but heartbreaking. He saw all her attempts to make his homecoming a joyous one.
Truth is that being away only made it worse. He saw them everywhere, Jacob’s eyes and smile, Bella’s laugh, everywhere he went. They were haunting him like a ghost unable to rest, invading his thoughts and corrupting his sanity.
Carlisle leaned against the doorway of the house, his smile trying to invite conversation, but talking to him would be like bloodletting. He couldn’t do it, not now, maybe not ever. His heart was too tangled in teenage emotions and piteous envy.
---
Edward found that his throat would catch, the breath he didn’t need would get stuck somewhere and he’d be gasping and coughing. He didn’t understand this until Rosalie put her hand on his shoulder and said so matter-of-factly, “It’ll be hard to really breathe for a while, Edward.”
Edward’s arms are like an envelope for his pain, surrounding and concealing it. They were always around his middle, hands on his elbows or around his back, always holding much tighter than anyone should. He uncrossed them the first day he was back and nearly fell to the ground. He didn’t grasp until then just how broke he was.
Emmett’s eyes were never on Edward, always just to the left or right of his slender form in common rooms. He knew what Emmett was thinking, and he also was sure that Emmett made sure of it: putting images of Rosalie smiling without Edward, and her face when she was screaming Emmett’s name. This was Emmett’s way of shoving Edward out of his head, and Edward wished he wasn’t such a glutton for punishment.
---
Edward was relaxing in the living room, an old hardcover resting on his knees and that same arm wrapped around his middle, clinging to the pieces that still needed repair. He kept himself busy like this, never able to stay in one place. Everywhere he smelt like Jacob, and cried out to his heartache.
A loud bang hit his head like the force of a steam engine. It wasn’t that loud, but the sudden volume of it broke the silence with too much force. The reverb of the doorbell was echoing off the high ceilings of the living room, sending chills to his spine. A familiar scent, a voice in his head, a boy at his door with their life together in a small box.
Rosalie hurried down the stairs and Edward put a hand up to stop her. She slumped against the wall of the stairwell, her arms crossed, one hand in her mouth gingerly chewing on a fingernail. Her breath hitched when Edward opened the door and she knew she’d have to hold him while he tried to cry again.
Everything that Jacob is feeling and wanting and hating and loving is in Edward’s head without a second’s breath. He is thinking of the Koran, the exact key changes in Beethoven, the way he hates how Dickens writes dialogue and nothing will push it out. He never wanted this, he never likes to snoop in Jacob’s head, but the thoughts were like knives in his heart, carving out their destruction in words.
“Jacob? What are you doing here?” His voice is cold and completely unfeeling; he’s barking his words instead of saying them.
Part of him wants it to hurt, wants it to burn like fire; but he never could willingly wish anything but happiness and smiles for Jacob. It’s the catch-22 of loving someone so much and knowing them entirely too well.
“I wanted to give these back to you,” Jacob says, his eyes falling on the box that Edward had seen before he’d reached the door.
Edward isn’t aware that he’s not breathing and staring completely blankly and Jacob until Jacob’s voice cuts through the turmoil in both of their heads, “Just some things you left at my house. I, uh, well, they're yours. You should have them.”
Jacob is handing him this box and the smell is overwhelming. It smells like Jacob, like them. And he can’t take the blood curdling screams in his own head, his own emotions beating on his heart and his voice, chopping him into pieces and putting him back together and forcing him, forcing him to be polite to someone that completely slaughtered him.
The box is in his hands, heavy with all the memories, mostly good but now entirely bad. He tries to look down at the contents, but he stops himself, just grazing the surface with his mind’s eye.
He senses Jacob’s uncomfortable stance and his words are like a foreign language, “Do you... would you like to come inside?”
Edward’s stabbing himself internally for even suggesting. Jacobs’s smell was finally out of his things and he was inviting him back in for more days of avoiding anything that could soak in scent.
“I can't. She's waiting for me,” Jacob finally breathes out. Edward feels himself wince and can’t believe he didn’t pick up on her before. She’s all over him, in his hair and on his lips. Her scent is attached to Jacob like Edward’s used to be, leaking out of his pores like perfume.
His voice is an echo, a dead dying memory of his own, “Is she here?”
“Waiting in the car, actually.” With this Jacob’s hand is through his hair, stirring up his scent and her scent and what is now their scent in the air. Edward wishes he could stop breathing, but he’s taking in what he can of Jacob before he forbids himself to ever see him again. Edward hears himself give an answer, but it’s lost to him. Words don’t even make sense anymore.
There is a silence and Jacob’s mind is wandering to the stairs, wondering who fixed them, seeing the two of him standing together and complete against them. Edward is screaming at himself to stop, he can’t stand the images and they are punching him in the chest with iron fists
He’s shaken awake from Jacob’s spoken voice, the one that’s even harder to hear than the one in his head, “It was nice to see you, Edward.” And he knows that Jacob is lying. How can he not be? It’s not nice to see him, it’s devastating and like a horror film. Only instead of frankensteins and zombies, there are two former lovers with heavy hearts and broken spirits.
Jacob’s face is so shattered, his eyes knitting into each other and the corners of his mouth look like they haven’t broken into that classic Jacob grin in days. He knows this can’t be true, knows that he’s only fooling himself thinking that Jacob’s pain is as enormous as his.
Edward is asking him, begging for the right answer, “Are you all right, Jake?”
Jacob’s turned around, his perfect back away from Edward once again. His eyes are nearly closed, his mouth formed into the most downtrodden expression Edward thinks he’s ever seen. He knows at this moment that their pain is equal, and that just because Bella is at Jacob’s side, doesn’t make his pain any less real.
Jacob’s voice is almost a whisper, but it feels like he’s trying to scream. Maybe that’s his head, Edward can’t tell the difference anymore. “Some days I am. You want to know the hardest part?”
Edward lets the question hang in the air, his head nodding without his approval.
“Breathing.”
Edward holds out his hand, this is the first real time he’s left his arms uncrossed in so long. He isn’t falling apart because Jacob’s hand is on top of his, squeezing slightly. The spark, the pressure, the desire is all still there. This is just the simplest of touches, the smallest of physical gestures and Edward thinks this is harder than anything else has been.
“Goodbye, Jake,” he mouths, the words leaking from his mouth like a prayer. He hearts Jake reciprocate but can’t hear his final words to him.
Edward’s listening to his head, trying to decipher his emotions but pulls out. That’s not his Jake, that’s someone else. The one that lives inside him is someone he’d never known and couldn’t. That part of Jacob was too heartbreaking to embrace.
The door is shut and the box of discarded memories is thrown across the room. It hits the wall opposite the door with a loud thud, cds and shirts and letters and tree leaves and pieces of wood (the smallest piece from their night on the stairs) are scattered across the foyer. Rosalie gasps, her hand drawing around her mouth.
“Leave me.” Edward spits at her, his words slicing into her like a surgeon’s knife.
Edward crashes into the floor, picking up mix cds and borrowed ones, books that he knew Jacob had never cracked open, lyrics on wadded pieces of paper and poetry Edward had put under Jacob’s pillows when he watched him sleep.
Then there was the shirt. Edward sucked in the smell, letting it burn him, like so much fire, an emotional one that was wringing his neck. He breathed Jacob’s name into the fabric, holding it like an infant.
Edward shoved everything back into the box and threw it into a corner. When he climbed the stairs Rosalie’s quiet eyes were on him and trying to decide what to say. Edward pushed past her, knocking her into the wall. She didn’t protest but sighed sadly.
“Throw it all out. I don’t want it around me,” Edward said. Rosalie nodded when he looked to see her answer..
--
Edward's door didn't open again for three days, the deadly silence gave the whole house the unshakable feeling that something had died. It was a funeral, a wake, it was quiet suffering. When he emerged, he didn't speak of any of it. Jacob and Bella's names were not uttered again in the household by an unspoken law.
Inside Edward's head, everything played like an old movie, the film damaged, stuck rewinding. Sometimes when he caught Rosalie looking at him, it felt as if she could see it.
The canceled television drama, and Edward was watching reruns for eternity.
Be an 
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