Confessions
Edward sits in an armchair for the second time tonight, but this time he’s not locked in his own thoughts. This time, he’s eyeing the room and enjoying an ‘Erumpent blood pop’. It’s existence altering. He’s not sure how he ever survived without such a flavor. To be able to feed on something that is not liquid is so novel that Edward can’t help shoving his fangs deep into the lollipop until it cracks and shatters in his mouth.
The room is just like in Alice’s visions. Although more detailed, with numerous things he has never noticed before, because he’s always been so focused on James laying on the chaise, drunk or drinking. It’s larger than Edward expected it to be, with two large, almost floor-to-ceiling windows with diamond panelling across them. Dark wooden wainscoting borders the lower half of the room, matching the dark floorboards. The walls are a soft cream and dark red curtains fall in thick folds around the windows, with lace sheers beneath.
A rug sprawls between the chaise James relaxes on and the arm chair Edward sits in. It looks similar to the one in Carlisle’s office from the 18th century, with tan and deep green designs looping through the tapestry. Somehow it’s different, too, with unusual sharp-winged, horse-like creatures stitched into the design.
Next to Edward is a fireplace, cracking with low embers of a fire that was lit hours earlier. On either side of it, carved into the marble mantle is a crest. Edward assumes it’s a family crest—much like the one he wears on the leather band on his wrist. It looks like two dogs on either side of a shield. There is no motto, only a place where one should have been that is now blank, as though it were erased from the marble without a trace. Above the fireplace is a rather creepy painting of a forest. Edward stares at, positive he can see something move between the trees.
“You can go look at it, you know,” James says, arm slung casually behind his head. Edward wonders how long James has been watching him as he crunches on the few remains of the blood pop in his mouth. The act of chewing is oddly entertaining.
He darts over to the painting and inspects it closer. Between the trees of the painting, a deer shuffles, wandering between the branches and poking its head up when Edward leans closer.
“It’s magic?” He asks James, not bothering to turn around.
“Yep.”
Edward moves from the painting and flits over to the opposite side of the room where bookshelves line the wall. Some of the shelves have books with odd names like ‘The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self Protection and Magical Hieroglyphics and Logograms’. Several of them on one bookshelf even have tabs and notes poking from their pages in handwriting Edward identifies as definitively not James’s, based on the curling loops of the few letters he can see, so different from the structured lines of James’s own handwriting in class. Those books all have even more odd titles, like ‘A Study Into the Possibility of Reversing the Actual and Metaphysical Effects of Natural Death with Particular Regard to the Reintegration of Essence and Matter’.
Interspersed between books are odd artefacts that can only be magical in origin—a jar that is empty but echoes with the laughs of a child; an hourglass that flows backwards; a bowl terrarium that seems to phase through withering and growing in a matter of minutes; and an odd compass that doesn’t seem to point north, but directly at wherever Edward stands. There are more still, odd things he can’t quite wrap his head around, like small figurines of dragons that hiss at him and breathe fire and jump from their pedestals to hide behind books when he gets too close.
And finally, there are photo frames. Moving pictures of James with people Edward wants to know more about. James with two young children, one with the same dark hair as James and the other with a flash of red. They’re smiling and laughing, the dark-haired child climbing over James’s head. James looks the same, as if the photo could have been taken yesterday. It’s the only more recent photo. There’s a photo of two people Edward can only assume are James’s parents. One of James with a red-haired boy and a curly-haired girl sitting before a fireplace, each wearing a bright red sweater. Christmas wrapping paper litters the floor around them. James looks younger in it, perhaps only by a few years. He’s different, too. He isn’t just younger, but he’s happier, less burdened.
“These are your friends?” Edward asks. It seems the least intrusive question he could ask, the most innocuous of the three photos.
“Yes,” James replies, but there is something more in his tone, something Edward can’t decipher even when he looks back over his shoulder at James, who resolutely stares at the ceiling.
Edward turns back to the shelves and spots another he’s yet to look at. He’s not sure how he missed it, right in the middle of the bookshelves and with only three items lined across it. One he recognises from earlier—the wand, perched on a holder of some sorts, resting there as if it hadn’t been in James’s hand less than thirty minutes earlier, casting a cruel slew of slices his direction. A shimmery object of what almost seems to be folded material sits on the left and a stone on the right, with indefinable colours shining from it. Edward reaches for the wand slowly, just wanting to graze it with the edge of his finger. Instead, he hits an invisible wall.
“Sorry,” James says suddenly from beside him. “No touching.” He waves his hand and the shelf disappears, replacing itself with a range of rather boring, normal books Edward has read before.
Edward has to swallow the urge to ask what the other two items are, hidden on the shelf with James’s rarely used wand. Why those items only are hidden by magic. James sends him a look that he interprets as ‘ask and you’ll have overstayed your welcome’.
“Why don’t you want to be called James?” Edwards asks instead, turning to face him.
They’re close enough for Edward to feel the heat radiating from James’s body, and he wonders if James can feel the chill from his. James’s heart picks up at the question. He looks away, avoiding Edward’s eyes, a finger playing with one of the books on the shelf. It’s one that’s worn down, the spine cracked from use and hundreds of tabs sticking from it, with the same curly writing that Edward knows isn’t James’s. ‘Whispers of the Veil: Death and The Hallows’, it reads.
“Why not?” Edward presses.
“I don’t like the name.” James pulls the book from the shelf and flips through the pages in an effort to seem absent-minded.
“But it’s your name.”
“I don’t—”
“Tell me the truth,” Edward says, cutting James off. “Please.”
“It is the truth.” He shoves the book back roughly. “I. Don’t. Like. It.”
Edward lets out an uncharacteristic groan and turns away from James, running his hands through his hair.
“You’re so frustrating!” He exclaims, spinning back. “I can tell that you’re lying!”
“It’s not a lie!” James yells back, throwing his arms up.
“But it’s not the truth,” Edward seethes, stepping closer. “I can hear it, smell it, taste it—there’s something more that you won’t say.”
“And what gives you the right to know?” James laughs harshly, pushing back at Edward’s chest. He doesn’t move with the pressure. That seems to irritate James more, because he stomps away and throws himself onto the chaise in a huff, one leg splayed out over the back of it. “You don’t just get to know everything because you want to.”
“Contrary to what I want, I know nothing about you,” Edward hisses back with more than a little malice. He sits himself in his own chair and decides to reign in on his temper.
James is correct, even if it makes him mad. He doesn’t have a right to any information James decides to withhold. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating. James has been in Forks for almost a month, and Edward feels in many ways that he knows the teenager less than he did before James arrived. Vision-James seemed easier to understand. Real-life-James is too convoluted and mysterious, hiding too much and too scared to share.
“Are you really in witness protection?” Edward asks.
“What?” James furrows his brows.
“I thought maybe that was a lie for the humans. Is there a wizard equivalent of witness protection?” He explains.
James pauses for a couple of seconds then bursts out laughing. The previous anger leeches from his body and his muscles relax as he laughs into a cushion he pulls up to his face.
“Oh god,” he says between chuckles. “You’re really too much.”
“What?” It’s Edward’s turn to be confused. “That’s what all the humans think at school.”
“Well, sure. Let’s go with that,” James agrees with a grin, his eyes shining over the edge of the cushion. “And do you believe that?”
Not any more, he doesn’t. He might have entertained the thought for a bit. It isn’t the most unreasonable idea for someone so evasive and cagey as James.
“Why do you care so much?” James asks suddenly. “About me?”
Edward can tell he needs to answer carefully here, even without Alice around to show him all the future possibilities. He shouldn’t outright talk about any visions of them together—because he’s rather certain that’ll just leave James pissed off and maybe get him kicked out. He opts for being honest instead, in the only way he can without mentioning Alice.
“I find you interesting.” James frowns at that answer. “I’m interested in you, I should say,” Edward clarifies, feeling somewhat awkward.
He’s never confessed his own interest in someone before. He’s always been confessed to, and he’s never accepted those advances. Now he realises how much bravery it costs to admit your interest in another, and he feels like an ass for the way he’s treated those interested in him before. Rosalie, Tanya, Kate, the innumerable human girls over his last century of existence. It’s a humbling experience.
“You’re…interested…in…me?” James asks slowly, scrunching the cushion in his hands and not looking in Edward’s direction.
“Yes.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“What do you think it means?” Edward replies. James’s eyes flash to him and his heart rate picks up. Edward can taste James on his tongue, the shock of magic curling across it as a slight tinge of red burns across James’s cheeks. James looks away quickly. “It means that,” Edward says confidently.
“Er, you. That is—so,” James stutters. “Right.” He clears his throat. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Edward cocks his head to the side.
“What were you expecting?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. You seem like the old school type. Wasn’t sure you’d be, you know.”
Edward waits. James sighs loudly.
“Gay.”
“I considered whether I was gay or not after meeting you,” Edward says. “I’m unsure if I’m gay or if it’s simply you. I don’t think it matters.”
“It doesn’t matter?”
“I like you, so it doesn’t matter.”
The appealing blush on James’s face deepens and Edward closes his mouth. The longer he spends here, the more aware he is of James’s blood. Of his scent. Of the way it fills the room around them and blooms from James when his heart races. Even his magic is there, buzzing in the background, electrifying Edward’s taste buds.
“Like you said, you don’t even know me,” James mutters into the cushion that he’s now using as a barrier between them, keeping his head and body turned away so he faces the back of the chaise, and not Edward.
“That’s why I’m trying to. You make it difficult.”
“Occupational hazard,” James replies, sitting up and shoving the cushion on his lap, his hands patting it down and tapping out a rough pattern. Edward isn’t sure whether James is nervous or agitated.
“What occupation is that?” Edward pries. James’s only answer is a sly smirk in Edward’s direction as if to acknowledge his poor attempt to glean any information.
“I don’t like the name James because it’s not my real name,” James—or not James—responds.
Edward thinks he could leap from his chair in excitement. Instead, he holds it together, and just slightly leans forward in interest.
“Why are you using a fake name?” He doesn’t want to ask this. No, really he wants to know what James’s real name is. But he’s trying to not push James too much, trying to not freak him out if he can.
“Because I’m trying to avoid being found.”
“By who?”
“By everyone.”
Edward doesn’t know why James is being so forthcoming, even if he’s still managing to make Edward have more questions than before. But he decides to use it to his advantage. To push a little more. To risk freaking James—not James—out.
“What is your real name?”
James takes a long time to reply. Edward waits patiently. He doesn’t push again, but also doesn’t retreat. Eventually, James stands up and stalks to a corner of the room where a drink cart seems to magically appear. He pours himself a shot of what smells like extra-strong whiskey and downs it. Edward bites back a comment on his underage drinking habits. Maybe wizards are allowed to drink from a younger age.
“My name is Harry,” he says softly, looking down into his empty glass, his back to Edward.
Edward clenches his hands over his knees so tightly that they crack beneath his trousers, and he tries to hide the goofy smile on his face. Persistence really is the key to life. Harry, he thinks to himself. Harry, Harry, Harry.
God, how he adores that name.
“Harry,” Edward says and he knows the smile can be heard in his tone as Harry turns around and looks at him with a complicated expression. He pours himself another shot and downs it.
Edward has another question he wants to ask. In fact, he’s been dying to ask it since he first arrived in Harry’s sitting room. But he won’t ask it. Can’t. Partly because he’s afraid of the answer he might get, and partly because he is afraid of what Harry might do instead of answer.
But he knows he didn’t imagine that scent. The weight of death in the air. The stagnancy of a life snuffed out. Edward knows that smell intimately, understands the feeling deep in his soul. But he cannot ask—and he doesn’t want to ruin such a nice moment, either.
“Harry,” he says again. He stands up and appears next to Harry, holding out his hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Harry.” Edward wants to say his name forever.
Harry puts his glass down and looks at Edward’s hand. He takes it gently and they shake hands. Edward takes the moment to memorise those calloused fingers, to etch them into his mind until he is sure he can pick Harry’s hand out from a line up blindfolded. Edward’s hand feels as if it’s defrosting, slowly warming up in the furnace-like grip of Harry’s.
“This is weird,” Harry says after a second, pulling his hand from Edward’s grip.
He pours himself another whiskey, the bottle clattering on the glass rim. Edward wants to reach out and steady his hand, to stop the shakiness. Instead, he simply watches, wonders if Harry’s shakes are from stress or anxiety. If he regrets telling Edward his name.
Harry. Harry. Harry.
His name settles in Edward’s chest comfortably with a feeling of complete right. This is how he wants to be with Harry—honest and open, to share things they keep hidden. To explore what it is that makes them, both inside and out, to know who each other is behind their secrets. And his name—Harry—is the start.
“Thank you,” Edward says.
“For what?” Harry asks, his nose scrunched up and eyes wary, as though the answer could hurt him.
“For coming to Forks.” Edward loves the way Harry’s face heats up and his eyes become shifty.
“Don’t thank me for that,” Harry snaps, the moment gone and his face scowling.
He slams his glass on the drink cart and pushes Edward’s chest again. This time, Edward steps back with the pressure, even though Harry’s fingers on his chest make him want to step forward, to feel them trace along his abdomen and burn his skin with their fiery touch.
“I think it’s time you leave.”
Edward nods his consent. Of course, he doesn’t want to leave. He’s only seen one room in this formidable mansion disguised as a cabin. If it were up to Edward, he’d stay here all night and pick his way through the rooms, collecting information on Harry and his secrets until Edward can solve him. He would explore the house in the way he wishes he could explore Harry’s mind.
“Alright, Harry. Thank you for having me.”
Harry laughs sarcastically. “You rather invited yourself, mate,” Harry scoffs, stomping from the room with a glare over his shoulder that Edward interprets as an order to follow.
Edward smiles behind his back at the pure Britishness of Harry. He walks slowly, taking the chance to eye off whatever he can see in the hallway from the sitting room to the front door. There isn’t much he can see—a flight of stairs with a long run of ancient carpet; a doorway that leads off into a dining and kitchen area with similar colouring to the sitting room they had been in; and a long hallway beside the stairs that lead off to a number of odd doors, each different in design. Edward’s desire to know more consumes him.
Harry opens the front door and kicks Edward out with a very brusque goodbye, leaving him to ruminate over all that he learned tonight while he walks home slowly, enjoying his chance to be within the detestable magical border around Harry’s home. There are a number of things he learned tonight that are important—like the fact James is actually called Harry, and that he uses a wand only on special occasions, and that he can teleport himself and someone else, even if it’s unpleasant. But the most important thing that Edward learned is that Harry doesn’t just consider killing himself, but he does. Edward isn’t sure how, only that he knows with every fibre of his being that Harry was dead in that room.
And that he came back.