Archive of Our Own

It was warm being with Bella. That’s all Leah could think about and feel as the torrential rain drowned down and pattered ricocheted drops on the flat panel of Bella’s nearby windowsill as they both laid in the girl’s too familiar bed, cohered skin blending with one another, and naked bodies entwined with each other like a tight knot on a string that couldn’t be undone even if you tried. That despite Leah being unnaturally warm, like a vivid campfire that never went out in the strongest of turbulent winds, Bella held a different type of warmth that sunk into her in a way that made Leah never want to let go. 

So she didn’t. Fuck that, she didn’t even want to think of it as a mere possibility in the bowl of her mind. She held Bella tighter, firmer with a pair of sinewy lithe arms that were wrapped and bound securely around the middle of Bella’s bare torso, like an anchor that kept Leah upright from drowning into the depths of dark waters, she held onto her until Bella was all there was. Until the world became theirs only, a place that pillared two young girls that solely thought and acted with the thing that beat lively inside their avidly wild chests, Leah’s being pressed up against Bella’s back that faced her comfortably. 

Everything about Bella was warm; her fair skin, her smile that changed courses with which emotion it mirrored, her flow of voice and her unrestrained heart that made Leah open up her own and hand it over to pale little fingers that she trusted with every particle of her soul, that she once thought of as bitter and unlucky, but was now wiped clean with being in love, even if it was done so blindly. Because at least there’s someone who could look past the visual rancor she had hardened herself with. Something that was now a lot more softer when regarding her current position. She skated the pads of her harmless fingers along the pearl-shaded sides of Bella’s skin’s surface to remind herself of that, to feel the soft silk that surrounded her embrace and dug into the corners of her neck when Leah leaned in closer into a balmy space of brunette hair that radiated cinnamon, awhile accompanied with skin that smelled of sweet lilac. 

And soon it was harder to easily decipher what was reality’s oxygen going into Leah’s lungs and fluctuating, or if it was the lucid dream that was Bella’s air that Leah wanted to wholly suspire into until there was none left to devour. With warm and blazing hibiscus-shaped lips, Leah kissed the source of it all. First, in the back of Bella’s lax head that softly muffled Leah’s face with curtains of dark and sugared tresses, the tail-end of her pale shoulder that peaked out from underneath the purple duvet, and then one gently on her neck when Leah swiftly moved those brown strands away with the point of her purposeful nose.

The subtle desire seemed to leave glowing prints everywhere they were placed, like a trade mark leaving evident proof of Leah’s existence here. And in grateful return, Bella combined her hands over Leah’s that covered her body frame, like she was really feeling Leah for the first time ever. Bella ran her own fingertips over the patch of tan skin that clung on to her with loving arms until she paused after a fleeting minute, one overly short-lived to be considerably met with pastime fairness, of enduring the assuaging warm bubble they had created with timelessly exploring each other’s everything. And like when feeling anything entitled to the word good, it got impetuously taken away from Leah. Because the feeling didn’t always last forever when it came down to unshielded lovers. 

"He asked me to marry him." Feeling happy may have not lasted forever, but Bella’s words sure did.

For someone who hated surprises and tried to ignore them like the very sun, Bella sure brought hell and fire in the room when she let her thoughts be crucially known to Leah outwardly, who blinked rapidly and strenuously at what was in front of her. And what was in front of her was no longer warm and mollifying to the hot touch, but deadly fucking cold. Frigid. Rigidly algid. Whatever form it took, it settled into the air around them that turned thick with heavy awareness, stiff to the exposed eye, the simple sentence being held up with the kind of unwieldy weight that eventually made Leah untangle her arms and body away from Bella, who stayed agonizingly still the second she let the moment drop and break beneath them. Both of their breaths were held until their lungs expired with dread and staying spaciously quiet was no longer an option for Leah. 

"And what did you say?" She questioned, the momentum of her voice sounding out of reach and out of touch, raw throat clenched and unnerving and soon Bella went suspiciously silent, almost frozen from her spot on the bed as a visible response that made Leah’s nerves shrill and shake with soaring waves of smoldering heat.

But Leah needed to hear Bella say it and fucking see it. She needed to look into similar brown eyes that only differed with softness and sharpness, and watched as Bella shattered her heart in her own hands— Leah helping her squeeze it into idle dust when she tugged at Bella’s woodenly solid skin to turn around. It took a moment, a ceaselessly despondent moment that was unmoving for more of a broad time then what Leah’s content with, but Bella slowly obliged with a heavy heart, a heavy body that now laid stiff on the bed and shifted until she faced Leah entirely with everything hurtful and possibly betrayed if she just answered her fucking question. She only had one, Bella could at least give her that.

"Bella, what did you say?" Leah demandingly repeated with despairing words that stung and had the awful urge to scream out into a void of nothingness that hit and bounced back when Bella remained distant and tight-lipped.

Leah stared, stared and fucking glared until Bella’s head that was bend down in clear shame, looked up with regained strength and had a harder time towards openly staring back with eyes that glossed over like darkened crystals and shined underneath the outdoor moonlight that gathered her whole from the bedroom window. And it was when Leah finally blinked, that she realized she was crying too. A wet trail of old but fresh pain fell and traced down her frightened cheeks, a mixture of exigency to bail filled her countenance, her soul burned and withered when Bella ultimately parted her quivering mouth to say—  

"Yes. I said yes," Bella confessed with a voice that wrongfully cracked and plundered under Leah’s towering stare that went big in size and even more misty-eyed.

Yes, yes, yes...

She said what?

She said yes.

Yes to someone who didn’t possess the last name Clearwater, but instead the fake-tasting reign of the label Cullen. It echoed in and out of Leah’s head, like detonated fireworks inside a tight box, that it exploded when her head held down the spiking words lined with thorns. Leah didn’t want to just lay there and drown in the loathsome truth until it nearly suffocated her, drowned her because there was no stable anchor anymore, became her, killed her, until it killed the both of them with iron grips of seeping misery. So she didn’t. Fuck that she didn’t, she got up from her place on Bella’s belatedly uncomfortable bed and rushed to get away from the crestfallen girl, who now laid shocked and silently trembling with cries that took over her perplexed frame that Leah felt she didn’t have the heart to be able to lovingly sooth, nor the right.  

"Wh—what are you doing?" The fatuous question ringed in and out of Leah’s ears that were repressing any form of dutifully staying just to prolong having to listen to unspoken promises that would only tear and break her down even more. In ruthlessly sudden retrospect, she refused and relented being dumped on the curb like yesterday’s trash, awhile expected to accept and bear it like it was okay. Nothing about this was near fine and normal enough to go home with a relaxed face on her definitely not calm face and proudly say with her chest that it was an immaculate night spent. Still, she couldn’t help a lot of things when feeling the moronic obligation it came when speaking to the Swan girl, even if it was less than kind.

"What am I doing? What the fuck are you doing, Bella?" Leah bit back in return, her tone of voice loud and strict so that this time Bella couldn’t pretend to hear nothing but the air shifting around them and whispering useless sentences, pretend what she conceded wasn’t faultless or stomach-churning for anyone that wasn’t her, pretend that she wasn’t breaking Leah’s heart.

"I.. I don’t know," Bella cracked out, marginally winded with a frowning heart, eyes shut tightly before she sat herself up with a numb tug at crumbled sheets, hauntingly watching as Leah scrambled around her room in search of her way out like she was at a lost for herself, for them.

Leah’s hands that vibrated with pressured rage, reached for bundled pieces of clothing that were splattered and dotted on various corners of the groaning wood floor beside a nightstand that upheld a distant ongoing clock that read in bold and neon-colored numbers—2:00 am. It didn’t set into either of their cramped minds as they seemed to ignore everything and nothing outside of their rashly encased panic room. The harsh outside rain that turned into sonorous thunder, simultaneously washed away the alluring peace Leah had sincerely felt swirl in the tomb of her body, and was now replaced with striking accusations. Accusations that shouldn’t even have been made, mind you.

"What do you mean, you don’t know? Weren’t you paying attention?" Leah asked ruefully underneath a rough scoff with no light humor, like she just knocked out the playing cards Bella was holding in her elusive hands, shoving a tank top over her chest with rough fingers and not dwelling on how strong of a front she put up.

In due time, Bella opened her mouth, a fruitless effort as she ended up conflictingly gaping with widespread eyes that seemingly pled for forgiveness before closing her obscure lips that ghosted dying words when Leah held up a declining hand, head shaking with a fearful laugh ripping through that caused Bella’s face to wince and bow with a hurtfully rattling expression that threatened to look up and harm the upset girl even more. 

"Hell, what am I even doing here? You don’t want me, you never wanted me!" Leah disputed with Bella like it’s all her boundless energy was good for, argued with herself, with the very earth that shattered beneath them until the cracks reached both of their voices and minds that reacted just as aurally boisterous as the pounding weather outside.

"That’s— that’s not true, it isn’t! I never said I didn’t want you, nor will I ever! You’re allowed to hate me, I can handle that, but Leah, please just let me—"

"This is all a fucking joke. Sleeping with the wife of a pale fucking jackass just to have my own heart handed to me like the other women!" Leah interrupted the things she didn’t want to hear coming from Bella, being half of rueful strictly out of the question. 

The room that once held a different type of breath taking scenes, now held weightless frustration that took a ghostly form of invisible smoke that filled the turmoil area like a clogged up chimney, fog turning up on both of their defensively obdurate eyes. Leah did regret however, internally regretted ever making the choice to even risk a glance at the trembling Bella while she screamed out bleeding words, a mirror of what her heart felt and looked like at that moment. Leah slammed her yelling arms to her sides before quickly putting on her underwear and disregarded pants, useless to even keep trying to understand the situation of her words, of Bella’s words. And Bella’s face switched from guilt, to ambivalent, to eventually self-establishing with being shouted at with lies that sounded wrong coming from the one person who saw her as anything but a defenseless human girl.

"I’m not his wife and you’re not the other women!" Bella screamed in response, her relentless tears never stopping to scratch at her throbbing throat that begged for Leah to listen. But it was as if the line between her and Leah was sound-proof, a line she didn’t want to acknowledge because it would mean it was undeniably real. She surmises that it’s never real, until it is.

"Yet! You’re not his wife yet, because you said yes to his fucking proposal! Holy fuck, don’t you get that, Bella? It’s not just something you agree to do because you thought it was fucking fun." And Leah did listen, but with a palpable wall up to protect and save what was left of her glass heart that dug a thousands thorny cuts inside her paper chest.

"I know! Fuck, I know and I can’t even fully understand myself why I did it in the first place, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about us! I’m not asking you to think it’s fair because I know it’s not. Not to you and not to Edward!" Bella unthinkingly added a thousand more when she mentioned the conniving corps’s name as she fought back with equal amounts of agonizing judgment.

At that very fragile point, Bella started following Leah in her baseless footsteps, coming toward her headstrong, having had enough of restrainedly watching Leah depict their relationship as just as a mindless after thought when that was far from what the emotionally warring brunette girl mutually felt. But Leah didn’t know that, didn’t have the privileges of reading Bella’s stolidly reserved mind, she only knew the difference between being wanted and being notoriously unwanted. And right now she felt fucking unwanted. 

"Well clearly you think it’s fair enough to be able to run off with the weirdo clan and become one of them! Be married to one of them." Leah spat out the blatant words right over Bella’s nose that ducked and steamed out hot air when she dispassionately shook her head at Leah’s piercing offense, like she could vanquish them away without ado.

"Be serious about this, did you really think I would take it with a congratulations and ask to be a dumb fucking bridesmaid? Because if you did then maybe you didn’t even know me at all!" Leah laid the argument down flat and simple and big, enlarging and overwhelmingly burgeoning until it made Bella’s head react and snap up with week metal eyes, forming a difficult guise of utter chaos that unleashed on her responsive tongue. 

"Of course not! I wanted to be honest with you because I do know you enough to know that it’s important!" Bella stood across and sufficiently close so that she could really see Leah’s defined, intimidatingly thick-skinned features more clearly in the dark embedded room trapping in their painful drivel.

And soon that view flashed, flared and recoiled into more complicated lines of aggravated anger that was sharply directed at her when five minutes ago, it was never directed at her.

"No, please, go ahead and justify this bullshit with honesty. Thank you so much Bella, for being straightforward with me, or else I wouldn’t have known how much of an idiot I was to believe that you actually loved me!" If Leah sounded egregiously insane then so be it, but Bella acted just as much with how blind she was being about this.

It was enough that Bella had basically deceived them both, but she was now choosing to hide behind the truth that was a statue of literal stone, rock-textured ice, an illusion encapsulated by beauty and lurid-painted death. Something that she was also choosing to recklessly follow and abide under if she really wanted the exceptional benefits and promises of what it truly meant to voluntarily slide a marvelous diamond ring on her demanding finger by the lifeless hands of the devil himself. Even the most gruesome demons couldn’t get Leah to back down and forget about the girl who was trying to rewind time with her caring words and touches of unfulfilled potential. 

"You’re not an idiot! I am— I’m the one to blame for all of this because I don’t know what I want! But I do love you Leah, I do! That was never a lie becuase this—" she determinedly placed a cold hand on Leah’s cheek that held down still, the lament girl now unstirred and raggedly heaving through her nose in skipped breaths, frightened that if she moved she would break the brittle moment and everything in between. 

"Is just as real as anything else that can fuck off," she conceded like it was the only form of veracity she couldn’t hide behind, and the hand on Leah’s hot-plated skin melted into placating warmth.  

Their soundlessly swimming eyes searched, searched until it seemed that whatever they were mindlessly looking for was also forgotten when Bella used her one hand on Leah’s cheek to pull her in closer after wiping at unneeded tears that only harmed them both, the other being secured and curled around the cotton sheet mostly covering her still exposed body. Bella pointed her nose up and sure, so sure that she wanted to pull Leah in and then seal her sweetly budding words with her saccharine lips that held unspoken meaning of action, then softly enclosed them around Leah’s own to trap anything else retaliating in suctioning tongues and careless jaws.

And Leah hated herself for returning the affection and sentiment back. She can affirm she actually resented herself for it, like she was stooping in places that were too low to be called self-respecting, but she would be lying because then she would be leaving out the almost part. Regardless, Leah willingly kissed Bella to feel what she feverishly felt before the abhorrent news lingered at the back of her muddled head, desperately kissed her back because she felt that Bella legitimately wanted her, kissed her back to somehow understand what any of this even meant, kissed and soundly held her in order to recollect and restore her picked up heart and place it back into the smaller girl’s persuasive hands, and erratically kissed her back because Leah would always return Bella’s love when provoked. 

Gradually, when they tenderly pulled away with their hearts in each other’s own right of what passion and sanctuary meant, so did the thin, shielding veil that Bella held but expressively dropped like it was now inessential in value, when she looked up into down-casted steel eyes that gleamed a sharp and cynical brown gaze. Leah preciously grasped her breath as Bella opened up her’s fully to make an early vow of their own faith, inclination and love that was now questionable and rare in seeing what happened with it in the end. 

"I won’t go through with it," Bella promised, gravely with her entire being, and Leah got back that compulsive warmth when she let Bella freely lead her back into the abandoned bed and out of the clothes she had worked so hard with putting back on. 

Bella went through with it. Or at least, was in the uncoiling process of going through with it. Leah had held the printed evidence of that when she ended up requiring a wedding invitation in the mail, a special, significant one that was specifically made for her, and carefully picked others, because ironically and almost terribly haunting as it was to see her curved name stuck in the middle of two fiancés like a badly rotten joke, Bella deliberately chose Leah to be one of the bridesmaids for the bride’s big day that seemed important and crucial to everybody except the person who actually mattered.

One of them because unfortunately for Leah and in terms of dreaming big with fingers tightly crossed, the exclusive role of being Bella’s maid of honor was proudly taken by the overly hyper Alice, who was now taking countless measures in getting everything down and settled for the enchanting event that started in less than half an hour away under her intriguing cold thumb. But not even thirty mundane minutes could really prepare Leah for the amount of time she still had in a sinking evanescent sand clock, to stop Bella from making a tremendous mistake that would end their chances and plausibility together but never their durable love, end her very life just to be selfishly apart of something that wasn’t close to being worth it. 

What was worth it though, was having to wear a tightly fitting and similar vibrant purple dress when it meant getting a free back stage pass in amusingly watching Bella internally panic and freak out as Leah stayed on the entertaining sidelines. She didn’t need to get into Bella’s headspace and thoughts, like Leah usually did with the pack, to be able to figure out and decode what was going on in Bella's restrained head that was all caked up with a suffocating grey rope wrapped around her body, along with thin layers of light toned makeup that covered her cavernous and bottomless shadow-tinted eye circles that Leah knew for a fact, were hidden when she had discreetly heard of the girl failing to get any proper beauty sleep the night before. 

And it wasn’t hard to ascertain and accurately pin-point why Bella couldn’t sleep. It was the same reason as to why Leah had spent the night out in the caliginous woods during the time that Bella was awake like a careworn owl, phased and lurking in the nighttime’s shadow with nothing but the thick, gunmetal gray fur on her back to keep her warm. It was because they both knew she was choosing the wrong fate, the wrong decision as if there was no more than one option, the wrong person who wasn’t even a person to end your life for just to create a more fake and bendable one right after.

Leah never wanted that for her. She’s seen Bella and all the things that affectingly bring her to life, Leah being one of them. She needed to get the girl to understand and see it. And right now, Bella was trying to understand how to put on a modishly old and cobalt blue hair clip while trying not to completely botch her pinned and nicely done hair in advance. Watching with a light, risible wince as Bella managed to painfully prick the back of her head with the sharp silver edges, Leah leaned off the hallway wall and slipped herself into the room where Bella was roughly playing dress up because it’s exactly what Alice had originally said only a few minutes prior— weddings bring everybody together. 

And seeing as there was no said maid of honor or any other willing guest sauntering around to happily help at the opening moment— Leah stole the spot right before it could close on her. She then landed a too eager and excessively sneaky hand, literally. 

"Here, let me." Leah’s subtle offer came out so suddenly and firm into the strangled space, that the air practically got taken out of Bella's lungs when she shockingly stumbled to get out of her vanity chair, stumbled to get a clear picture of Leah. 

"You came. I.. I didn’t think you would, not that I wouldn’t understand, but you did—are," Bella breathed out like she was just figuring it out for the first time, like it was a pure wonder to share those words out loud, frazzled and wide-eyed and Leah’s heightened ears got a good listening in on the girl’s rapid heart beat that almost relinquished to the bottom of the floor like a gaping fish out of water.

But all Leah did in return was smile. Smiled like it wasn't hurting the bones of her cheeks from the forced endeavor, smiled like she wasn't about to gather up her heart’s dire dust with a broom, and smiled as if to silently tusk at Bella in mocking reminder that she was the one that sent out the invitation, the one to care enough to remember Leah's address but forget about the placement of her feelings in all of this, the one too choose a side. Leah was there to make sure it was the right one. She started off with gallantly filling in the distance between them, hands reaching out to pull at Bella’s frozen shoulders to sit back down like before Leah interrupted Bella’s stupor of uncoordinated troubles. Bella did so with wondering eyes that got stuck on Leah until they locked legible gazes through the looking glass. Leah’s smile turned cat-like and causally razor-edged, and Bella’s throat bobbed up and down when she thickly swallowed her tongue to prevent from turning Leah's appealing petition down. 

"And you’re about to fuck up your own hair after two seconds of being alone," Leah pointed out and Bella sheepishly ducked and hid her hallow cheeks that turned a dusty coral-pink, eye contact being wistfully broken and Leah’s eyes stared at nothing but empty space.

Bella aimlessly fiddled and turned the gleaming clip in her hands that were nervously placed in her lap and Leah noticed how glamorous the accessory was, more shiny and new than the one Leah was currently wearing on the side of her cascading raven and thick medium hair. She slowly and tenaciously slid her gentle hand down the length of Bella’s arm that was fully covered in smooth grey cotton that the robe was made of, the girl tensing and shivering under Leah's trailing fingertips until Leah assiduously grabbed at the jewel that now laid inelastic above pale fingers. Bella dutifully let her take the hair clip before coughing out a dazed grumble that tried it's best with corresponding out a validated reply. 

"I, uh, didn’t want to bother anybody. Everything is going smoothly without me messing it up with accident after accident. Besides, Alice seems so.. busy with—"

"Running your very own wedding? Yeah, I think I got that." Leah finished the sentence for Bella in a mild gist of perception, shoulder pushing up and down nonchalantly and her fingers tingled and pleasantly burned with the brief cordial touch before she adjusted the clip in her hands to fit accordingly.

Bella gave her a slim smile across pretty pink lips shaded with the color blush, almost unnecessarily apologetic with herself as she wordlessly lifted her head up and backwards to give Leah permission to get to work on putting her back together, lifted her head up to speak frank words that came out faint and pulled until they filled the room with something else that wasn’t just a gigantic elephant that Leah deeply craved to kill with her own two vigorous hands driven by mere impulse.

"She’s happy to be in charge, I couldn’t say no," Bella admitted thoughtlessly, but Leah thought of it as anything but. 



Bella’s head minimally swayed a few inches as Leah dug deep into using delicate fingers that gathered and collected thin strands of fallen frenzied hair, smoothing out balls of pure rough patches that turned less noticeable and messy, while she began to fix the mess Bella had previously destroyed with blind fingers that wasn’t entirely free of innocent and blameless intentions.

"But are you?" Leah asked, like it was as simple as producing the question mark on the tip of her bold tongue, because as much as she wanted to, desired to, she couldn’t answer Bella’s opaque future for her. 

And no one falsely pretended the words don’t get deserted and intentionally strayed in the small space between, pretend it wasn’t the air just asking silly questions while it had the insincere impression it had an actual say in anything prominent. Bella nictated a cloud of brought up confusion, like she was trying to keep up with where Leah was going with this, their binding eyes rigorously staying on each other through the same clear view and soon, all Leah could see was a scared girl about to get up and leave everything unanswered. Like a real breaker of foolish hearts. Leah turned secretly thankful with being scarcely wrong when Bella pushed back and stayed, words rolling of her tongue in a lost trance.

"Am I what?" Bella answered with another simple fabricated question, but Leah knew exactly what she was trying to ask, trying to gain and receive like a magical card with her own ever-changing future written all over it, theirs and everything else that turned to ungraspable background noise meant for people who weren’t really listening. Leah’s eyes adhesively locked and lingered onto the stiff girl’s head once again, tucking and replacing the detangled spots until their was nothing but picture ready hair and looked as if it were always untouched and perfectly done up, placing in the silver clip of burnished rhinestones that slid and stayed on with no cringing stings of self-inflicted agony.

Yes, Bella knew exactly why Leah chose to help, chose to come to a white veil occasion without so much as dynamically trailing fire with every decisive step she took upstairs and into her planned out company that Leah knew would be lonely the second she informed Alice that the cake hadn’t arrived yet, knowing full well she had just passed by said tall cake on the way inside. And Leah factually knew that Bella knew when she caught the sight of Bella’s hands shake from the tip to wrist, before placing her hands on Bella’s cold shoulders that turned instinctively warm, like no time had passed and they were in her bedroom again, just them and what they had to give that was enough every single time. That still seemed like a possibility for Leah, who needed to know if it was one for Bella, too. Her hands stopped it’s continuous vibrations and Leah took it as a beautiful sign to see the moment through when Bella couldn’t. 

"Happy," Leah supplied, more than simple and easygoing to commit into saying, and her fingers sunk into the girl’s covered skin as if pushing her to look away and lie.

The body underneath Leah went limp and feeble when Bella emitted out a silent breath into the awfully predicted languor air that shattered the inside of her bones the same time that she blinked and a plump tear followed, flying off her cheekbone and into the slipping cracks of the hard-hitting reality that was just below her roseate nose. Leah objectively watched Bella turn completely dismantled right in front of her when Bella’s burning eyes became big globes of swirling emotion and altogether, precariously threatened to ruin and pick apart her face’s carefully made canvas with black smeared cries. Bella’s painted lips that trembled over a conflicted weight of promises, broke out into a short trail of words that placed the both of them in bonded trouble. 

"I.. I can’t answer that."

And the look that Bella gave Leah, the only thing she had to give this time around that may not be enough, was disturbingly jarring because she looked as if she already died and turned into the very thing that Leah hated; the cold. But Leah could never hate Bella, not now especially, even if it did happen to be the day she could least tolerate because that’s all she had to do to make it through, tolerate it until she couldn’t and when that comes, she’ll push through this day of fairy tale after false fairy tale where she’ll ultimately explode. Bella couldn’t answer that and it was fine, because Leah knew the best way she could help with that, help Bella find a way out while Leah devotedly waited at the back door that got abruptly walked through when Alice came into the room in a white flash. 

"There you are, I was chasing dust and air trying to look for you!" Alice, who Leah had heard prior but sensibly used those closing seconds to get what she came for, stressed out in minimal relief, the pixie girl’s inner boss being just as annoying and colossally head-throbbing as Leah’s own insufferable team leader. She disliked both just as much, bar none.

Bella moved to dry out her sorrowful tears before they had the chance to spill even more and leave a perceptible trace and ugly mark of Leah’s existing emotional destruction. But as the Cullen girl sprinted her way into their unbalanced world of admissions that weren’t really full said confessions depending on who’s viewpoint you were looking through, Leah only stiffened and clutched onto her recoiled breath as to not permanently swallow the atrocious scent of a thousand grave yards and not the sweet cinnamon that Bella gracefully carried like a continuous shadow of addictive novacane. 

"Curtains on in twenty and I need all of the girls front and center before the bride walks down the aisle— speaking of, we need to get Bella into her wedding dress like, yesterday!" Alice’s ebulliently high-pitched voice only made the stoked nerves in Leah’s head bubble and pop with a hard scowl that Bella captured through the mirror they never stopped looking through. 

But even that connection got taken from her when Bella timorously looked away, finally, to quickly recollect herself and practically count to ten in her complex head while Leah tried not to frantically lose her’s. Instead, she breathed through the gap of her mouth, lowly so she couldn’t trap unwarranted stink bombs on the way to her nostrils that she wanted to keep clean and unruffled, and didn’t bother to imitate a polite smile as she slid an agitated tongue over her bottom lip in one slow sloop, shoulders fixing into themselves like a fortified demeanor.

"Where do you want me?" Leah spoke to Alice swiftly and unwaveringly, but her smoky eyes stayed strictly on Bella and her expression of worried wrinkles. The issue of whose addressing who got blurred and commingled as the anxious girl ignored the ever so warm glare, ignored the easy-said questions being quipped in her presence, ignored Leah because it was more than just having little to no desire to wield the inspiration, but it was more about not having the strength. 

"I need you exactly in a ninety degree angle from where the audience will be, right next to Rosalie," Alice answered instead of who Leah wished it was. However, that turned into nothing but a futilely disappointing daydream when she reluctantly let go of Bella’s fragile shoulders with a numb and loitered haul, and was almost automatically bombarded with an expensively curated bouquet of white and purple flowers when she turned to face the intruding caricature. 

"Please," Alice added more formally. Leah did nothing but dryly look down at the handful of floral decorations near her chest, reeking of a endless field of deadly pollen that overflowed and consumed Leah’s nostrils so much that she got the red and green urge to sneeze in the working girl’s optimistic face. 

And it wasn’t because Leah felt particularly bad about leading Alice on a mindless chase to fucking nowhere— twice, because she felt far from something as useless as regret right now, but it was because of the way Bella breathlessly moved away from the two girls with a heaving chest under her consoling hands that checked her thunderous pulse to get it to slow down instead of sharpening her worsening air supply— that Leah indifferently took the stemless ends of the flowers and left. She left and she didn’t watch as Alice confidentially closed the door to get Bella into her gown, her wedding gown that Leah confidently knew she’ll look assuredly gorgeous in when she walked down that aisle the next time they’ll see each other, again.  

Leah knew that because she’ll decidedly stay and be there to see and watch it happen, because she also couldn’t seem to leave well enough alone. She’ll be there when Bella finally figured out what she wanted. Because if Bella was blunt enough to dismiss and crumble Leah and the boundless love she knew she could restlessly give that wasn’t just immortality and grandeur riches, than Leah was sure as hell blunt enough to sit and witness it break her. And like the time before Edward had suddenly came back from whatever corner of world he crawled into until it was safe, Leah would be there again to pick up the fixable pieces. It’s what she did best— so fuck that blood craving asswipe if he thought she’ll hide like he did and cower into a hole away from her heart’s ache.

Leah would be in the middle of it all, front and fucking center— literally. 

"Lee!"

Leah heard her sacred nickname be whispered and softly sneered as she made her way up the aisle and through the seas of patient guests that synchronously waited for the ceremony to begin, halting on her tall feet that were covered in black heels so that she could set her eyes out and seek where the voice came from. She promptly scanned over the various crowd before her usual sharp eyes landed on familiar brown ones, quickly going over to the suit and tie wearing Seth who now waved a discrete hand to signal her his way. It’s only when she stood close enough that she realized how ecstatic he strongly appeared to be, more than normal, overpowering smile big and radiant as he raised a private suspecting eyebrow. 

"What?" Leah responded through gritted teeth, lightly thudding her hand and flowers to the sides of her hips with being annoyingly lost, as if her time was being wasted and dealt with by giving her younger brother a fragment of her valued attention and endurance. 

But Seth only huffed at her, rolling his eyes as if to shove off her bland and unnecessary question. "So, how’d it go?"

"How’d what go?" Leah distantly pushed in a toneless voice, features bothered and inattentively going over Seth’s figure in search of the groom, in search of the type of diamond-skinned life Bella would be treacherously walking towards when this bullshit event got started and running. 

"You know, with stopping Bella from marrying the pale psycho!" Seth leaned his shoulders forward while whistling an unimpressed noise, eyes up and low like he couldn’t be anymore apparent. Leah snapped her head at him so fast her neck almost gained broken muscle, flashing eyes broadened with a locked jaw that rolled and grind as she placed a hand over the boy’s loquaciously opened mouth. Seth’s eyes popped out of it’s sockets and shifted with edge before Leah pushed him to the side with a harsh tug— away from any prying ears that have the ability to hear a pin drop and clamor with clear listening. 

"Will you shut up! People can hear you, idiot!" Leah shushed him quick and fast because she really didn’t need an unresolved fight. What she needed was the honest truth, and only one person could provide that, no matter how much porcelain skin she ripped with her knife-sharp teeth and long claws to get to that end point.

"Shit, sorry! Sorry..." Seth’s apologetic voice went from being pitched and kick started, to being casually level-headed when Leah eventually let go of his loose mouth to be able to correctly speak, both of them letting out heavy massed breaths of tranquility when no else had seemed to even take notice of the two sneaky siblings and their on edge body language. 

"But seriously, did she take? Or is she going to pretend that one of the bridesmaids isn't her secret lover?" Seth quirked a candid brow with a small-shaped frown that cringed and revolted when Leah stepped on his foot with the end of her stabbing heel, like dropping a cement block down on ones unsuspected body. 

"Dude! What the hell? It’s like you have no social cues!" Leah contended with dilated cheeks that got unbearably redder with frustration when Seth shoved her high heel off his agonizing limb with his own violent hands in response and reflex. 

"Stop that!" The whining boy wailed out, rugged hands attempting to approximately fight off Leah’s when she belabored him back with equal vast force. 

"No, you!" Leah roughly smacked the back of Seth’s clueless head that had been carelessly jabbering nothing but her own personal business— her own meaning nosey brothers had no right in getting into what’s understandably a nonpublic and conscientiously wrapped predicament. 

"You hit me first!" Seth indignantly defended with the kind of attitude that showed just how young he was for his age, his physical brawny characteristics doing little to put out of sight the childish bickering that passed back and forth between the stubborn Clearwater siblings until it’s cause— effects them to both brutally stop. 

"How about I’ll go second if you both don’t behave yourselves! Please!" Their mother Sue chastised, critically in alarm, brows threaded together and stern as she stared down Leah and Seth with a unyielding frown after catching two clawing cats by her fist before they could robustly tear and pluck out any eyeballs with other consequential injuries following. 

They both stepped back from one another so that they wouldn’t accidentally break each other’s noses, lips spilling out different forms of fast-moving apologies, Seth’s being remorsefully said with a down-forward gaze and skittish hands that kept to themselves, while Leah’s were faintly said with a deadpanned undertone and face lines that turned inflexibly compressed with held back irritation. But it was all enough for Sue to forgive and indisputably forget, jumping into giving them both shared bear hugs of caring approval.

"Look at you guys! Ugh, I should have brought a camera, this is too memorable!" Sue positively gushed and pressed her pleased smile up against the shoulders of her jazzed up children, before tenderly pulling back from the embrace with eyes that started forming up balls of effervescent tears.

At this, Seth lightly rolled his eyes at the parental affection like he was too old to receive a compliment, embarrassed. However, for Leah it was different and poles apart. Because not to sound broodingly dark and down about things that were all lustrous and thrilling but— there was nothing exceptionally memorable about anything surrounding this scene. Only a eminently big and transparent reminder of who exactly this event honored for the too bright and scintillating afternoon that was shielded by a place of beanstalk trees and generous cotton ball clouds. But so far, Leah hadn’t sincerely honored a thing but the dress code and in her defense, well, she didn’t really have any. 

"And how’s the wife to be? Did you check on her?" Sue’s question was solely positioned at her daughter, but it was instead answered by her vacuously oblivious son who Leah didn’t have a reasonable clue as to why they kept him around. 

"Oh yeah, Leah checked up on her alright, such a caring little sweetheart. Real loving, too," Seth snickered with a comically cocky timbre that didn’t settle well with Leah, who grumbled out a daring noise that almost launched itself at the boy with nil shame. But before Leah could even act and give into violent and hot-headed urges— she heard two key things that steered her consciousness away in a accelerated second. 

"Is she ready? Because I’ve been ready for an hour now and I’m starting to get bored, and when I get bored things don’t go well for others," Rosalie’s faint but concurrently close by ennui-filled voice came up dragged and unabatedly demanding, to which was returned with a similar stance of being perturbed.

"I just managed to put the dress and veil on her. I had to do some extra work on her appearance, physically and mentally," Alice explained with a strong pout and non-verbal frown.

Leah’s persistent ears effortlessly picked up what was being put down as she pressed a silent finger to her lips to keep her family from asking what’s wrong, Seth instantly putting an invisible mic in the air to get into his sister’s business once again while Sue curiously eyed her attentive children in response.

"Mentally? What are you talking about, is she ill or something?" And if Rosalie still had a functioning health system that made her heart actually pump and her blood naturally flow through working veins, Leah would take a hard guess that the blonde girl wouldn’t go anywhere near Bella if that was the case, which Leah knew it wasn’t. 

"No, though it would be a lot easier if she was. She wouldn’t stop hyperventilating the words ‘am I’. It was all too confusing and I’m just thankful Charlie stepped in to help calm her down." Alice feigned a long, theatrically exasperated sigh to show and reflect how much the situation was getting slightly cumbersome over her stone-strong shoulders, shaking her fancied up head as if to shake off the problem that only lasted a short time.

But a short time was enough for Leah’s smirking heart to roll and exuberantly howl because it meant Bella was thinking about her, was thinking about why exactly she needed to be calmed down in the first place, was consciously thinking about Leah’s simple question that was anything but and overall, was thinking about what she wanted. 

"So the bride is now officially possessed? That’s exactly what this wedding needed, amazing. What even happened? Swear she was only alone for like, ten minutes," Rosalie mumbled with a cogitating poise that matched Alice’s bemusedly crumbled up guise with linked uncertainty that Leah unobtrusively looked at when she shifted her gaze over the plane of her shoulder, rolling her eyes. 

Meanwhile, Leah knew exactly what had happened in those ten mundane minutes. Minutes that were enough to set off a Pandora’s box and watched what happened when you unleashed all the world’s looming troubles. But she didn’t have the pleasure in being proud of it when the two walking corpses, who started debating with each other in secret, turned their heads in the same direction with a ping of hesitation. Leah’s eyes scornfully shut and peeled away when she abruptly realized that Alice was no longer confused and Rosalie was no longer wondering because two pairs of weirdly loud gilded eyes, were now staring at Leah with undoubtable discernment.

"Fuck, I have to go. But um, you look great mom," Leah used her cleared up voice to hurriedly dismiss herself because she really did have to go— go and pretend that she gave a shit about being here for the main couple when in reality, she only cared about one of them in particular. 

Sue nor Seth got to even blankly respond back with stammering lips and draining sentences, before Leah placed a good-natured kiss on her mother’s cheek that went downwards when a frown hanged on her lips and Leah left just as fast as her heels allowed her to, the tall stems hitting the soft embellished nature below her as she decisively made her way pass the two glaring pair, that didn’t care much about being discreet, and upfront on the makeshift stage. Leah took in the derisive scenery of it all when she adjusted into her lousy position like another stick figure, the image coming up as a perfect example of a fraudulent fantasy that was filled with all things vividly green and white and there was practically more flowers than there were people.

It was ridiculously hilarious to Leah how much organization, work and motivation was being put into an event that was supposed to be traditional and like anybody else’s ordinarily fascinating wedding, but to her secret knowledge— Edward wouldn’t be marrying a completely innocent Bella dressed in white modesty. An honest mistake on his part because truly; how pure could Bella really be when she wasn’t even your typical untouched bride? Not that pure, in Leah’s burning memory that obtained various colorful encounters of taking the girl home personally and appreciatively, only to depart from her in the morning, both deficiently satisfied and nursed burned out energy that ached their bones with raw soreness that didn’t last long once their bodies got use to it like everyday walking. But what Edward didn’t know wouldn’t kill him, right? He was already dead.

And maybe if Leah narrowed the viewfinder of her eyes, tilted her head just the right amount of depth, stepped back to create some distance so that it could all fit into her line of great vision, and maybe forgot about the curved truth for a diminutive second— she could vaguely see an actual ceremony, in place of a hoax, that didn’t cover up the pathetic fact that a human girl was about to get married off to a dead boy, vaguely see that this dress to the fucking nines occasion wasn’t somebody’s literal death bed. No hesitation, Leah chose the latter and didn’t bother with turning the other cheek while whistling and sticking to a nicely powdered fake picture of love and matrimony and how it would survive for an eternity, like the rest of the idiotic guest list that should have been marked off as uninvited. And some may argue that Leah should have been one of them.

But she wasn’t, because Bella wanted her there for a genuine, impenetrable reason and Leah wasn’t going to make her regret ever coming up with that conclusion. So she smoothed out the fabric of her purple dress that vexed her comfort level, briefly fiddled with the ends of her straight glossy hair before trailing, and then tightly gripping, the bouquet of flowers in her hands that went inwardly hot when Rosalie and Alice followed beside her in their own prepared roles, the same yellow eyes shifting onto brown ones as if really seeing Leah for the first time, analyzing her like a living thing placed under a bright microscope. Leah accusingly sneered with the corners of her glowering lips, hands turning solid as she put in some form of an effort in trying not to break the base of the peddles after only taking her place as a bridesmaid for five seconds.

The smaller one gave Leah a not so subtle once over with a fault-finding gawkish look, as if trying to figure out and calculate how she fit into all of this, all of this possibly meaning why exactly Bella was so upset and inconsolably untangling only a few seconds after Leah left the room with nothing but a tense jaw and untamed fire occupying the way her body maneuvered. And on the other side of her stance, the more serious one, looked at Leah as if she thoroughly entertained her past boredom by simply breathing. Leah held her air like she was trying to protect it from the charismatic blonde girl who just voluptuously smirked in response, because it only exhorted her like some vigilant freak. But all Leah did in a retrained reaction, was trenchantly glare so that it reflected her quiet intensity and almost distastefully huffed before she placed her main focus where it wasn’t offendedly directed at the two passionate observers. Leah didn’t care about what was going on inside their frozen heads. She only cared about the dying time that had immensely went down and slipped the moment a far away clock ticked and cracked with each step that was taken into getting this wedding, well, become a wedding.

Joined by the dear musing Esme, the four polished women stood upright with the same matching flowers and color coordinated dresses, all of their pretty faces painted with glimmering smiles that proved their support and adoration before the hosts could even see, with the small exception of one. To say Leah looked nervous and out of place, would be almost dramatically emphasized because she never really felt discouraged or unnerved with the way she carried herself. Yet, Bella somehow brought out the most surprising of kaleidoscopic emotions that Leah never knew she held, never knew she could feel so much and so real even when she was with Sam. But that part of her faded a long time ago, a time where buzzed brown hair and big muscular hands were then replaced with the opposite and Leah then knew nothing but being unboundedly wanted. But now, that cold-hearted bitterness was seeking it’s way into her bones and settling down like it wasn’t going to leave— at least not without a push.

Like an on cue bell, it ringed and showed up in everybody’s view and sight, when the guests all equally stood up and turned their bodies to the starting point, and Leah looked up with a mouth that felt terribly cotton dry and was missing the ability to breathe, make noise, or even swallow down the moment because the bell that stole her attention, her sharp focus, her consciousness and her entire sensibility away was quiet literally a bell, her Bells, if Leah could even still call her that— was draped in blinding, satiny white and patterned lace that took the beautiful form of the approaching bride. Leah exhaled and it was like she was about to pass out with how lightheaded she felt, how fast her heart was moving without her, how breakable her heels seem to stand alongside her chest crevice and the oxygen still fluxing in her lungs, as if she was the one that should be excessively nervous for this part of the story. 

And when the melodious music that was playing in the background, that sounded more like a death march to Leah, filled up her unwilling ears— it was clear as day that both Leah and Charlie now shared something in common other than her late father’s linked companionship, (may he always be in their hearts) they now radiated wary nerves and shattering eyes that turned melancholy and seeped a dark blue when taking a good look at the girl, who now resembled something different and like she was more than that, and the undeniable beauty she carried when graciously flowing her way down the aisle as she clung onto the near safety of her dad, who looked just as emotional as Leah. But like pushing her way to the top without having to be extreme, Leah beat Charlie’s haunting feelings with a heavy score of a thousand out of whatever the fuck a high number was, when Bella looked up, she looked up and she didn’t look at what awaited her, she didn’t look at where everybody wanted and anticipated her to look when she knew she should, she didn’t look at the enormous beacon of vows and promises, she didn’t look at Edward, the loving groom ready to give her forever— she looked at Leah, the loyal bridesmaid ready to shove her way into Bella’s heart.

Bella smiled at her, the kind of exclusively serene smile that drew Leah in because it was tugged by muscle reflex whenever their eyes were habitually making room to see the other, and it was like a daydream formed up in Leah’s mystified head where there was everything accurately right about this happening, that Bella was looking at Leah because she wanted to, and Leah was doing the same because she needed to otherwise they’d get lost wondering about what would happen if they didn’t find each other in the outdoor space. And for a second, one missed by others but was caught by Leah who felt she had miles on the clock in that moment, she looked through those dark shades of midnight brown and found a tinge of regret, regret that she was probably wishing it was Leah at the end of the aisle, at the end of her life, and solemn regret that she didn’t answer Leah’s question when she first asked.

Deep down where her emotions were being felt looping into tight knots, Leah knew that Bella would find the same thing through her bottomless eyes along with a lethal dose of loathing hatred for not being able to give Bella a solid enough reason to not go through with it and instead stay, stay with her and live. But they’re both reminded of actions having bullshit consequences when Bella broke away from Leah’s requited gaze and walked right pass her towards the main intention of Bella’s destination— pausing— swallowing— then slowly letting go of Charlie’s unfailing arm that didn’t drop her throughout the treacherous path to her new glamorous purpose, as if she also regretted being given away. All the brittle while, Leah settled in a akin misery of what it meant to blindly love Bella Swan, Cullen now that the bride had officially faced the groom.

Leah wanted that warmth back, again.

What she got instead was a lot more colder and less reassuring, a signal, a sideways whoosh of ceremonial hands that came from the cheeky priest, who kindly signaled everybody present to sit down in order to begin what Leah wanted to desperately end already. But she didn’t kick and whine like a complete fucking train wreck she knew she was going to be if she went there. She collected herself and her alarming emotions that threatened to claw themselves out of her skin that turned softer, fragile like butter, and then solidified like a brick wall Leah couldn’t see over when she forced the mercurial wolf back into a cramped and iron splitting cage and just breathed, breathed in dull air that missed a certain point of even bothering to inhale it at all.

Ignoring the loose, rattling bolts of that locked in cell, she sat down on the fancy carved up wood with the rest of the excited bridesmaids, who coordinately met their dates while she met her mom and Seth, the two sharing a wordless piece of encouragement to not cry over spilled blood. Leah only managed to contain an eye roll because similar to Charlie, they only cared about where their loved one’s minds lay and where it’ll drive them to. Leah took ahold of that stubborn wheel when she sunk into her stiff spot and lifted a heavy head towards her heart’s location, crashing into a clutter of being mind-fucked with what she chose to die in. 

"Ladies and gentleman, we are gathered here on this glorious day—"

Leah shouted and cursed in her coiled, warring mind what kind of day it really was as a liable audience; shitty and too bright, too joyful, too impressive that it almost seemed forged, too suffocating, too enamoring to look at at first glance and too much, white flowers ominously hanging over her head like a sunless cloud of bleak thunder and funereal rain that heavily soaked and drenched her with the added weight to make sure that she was unshakably stuck and glued to her front row seat of second-hand embarrassment. 

"—to witness the union, of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan."

Oh Leah was witnessing it alright, but it wasn’t a union she saw— but an already shamed marriage that forced the girl’s pale hand with a stone one. She was witnessing it and it was making her want to throw her bouquet of grotesque flowers to the overly decorated ground and stamp on it with her over the top heel until it was garden mush. But she settled for another alternative, one that didn’t attract a crowd of eyes so soon from the real goal, and instead civilly put them away because even though the priest was one sentence in, Leah was two fucks out with giving any and was officially done witnessing and going through the undulating ripples and harsh waves of ice-cold heartbreak, she was done waiting for Bella to be brave enough to actually show it. 

"Hold my flowers," Leah whispered the demand to Seth with a light shove of her wrist, the flowers crumbling and piling as they landed on his surprised embrace. And before her brother could even stutter out a delicate inquiry of why and really make her expression shine with misplaced anger, Alice beat him to it with a more honed mode of voice quality and action.

"What do you think you’re doing, dog?" Alice accused haughtily under her nonexistent breath, balefully grabbing at Leah’s wrist in a tight, pinched circle because even though she couldn’t get a clear-headed picture into Leah’s choices that have yet unfolded, she could still sense and pick apart a good-old sign of body language that shook like a tambourine, and then settled over with a heated huff that flattened her edged posture. 

"I’m going to the little poodle’s room to freshen up my paws. What the fuck do you think I’m doing?" Leah didn’t ask, only verbally applied the unsaid with a harsher accusation that lapped and ironically bit Alice with an offended faked gasp.

But before that heated pant could change into outright quarreling and squabbling that disturbed and ruined both their fun and peace, Rosalie caught Alice’s icy shoulder with a brick and held back hand, devilishly smiling with enigmatic lips as she stepped a graceful heel into the smoking buildup of a possible abstracted cat and dog fight.

"It’s fine Alice, let her go. I want to see if this wolf can land," Rosalie claimed to everyone’s sudden confusion, her captivated features intrigued and seemingly winking with her golden eyes that found interest outside of her brother’s rolling wedding.

Alice turned ultimately tongue-tied, powerful aureate eyes oscillating between the faces of Leah and Rosalie as if speechlessly asking why should she? But even though Leah craved to go at it and irrationally answer it for her like an absolute genius at solving her own problems, the girl’s burning lifeless hand abided and hesitantly dropped off of Leah’s twisting wrist and they both did nothing but give a restraint frown in the middle of their mutual distrust, impulses of rashly ripping out eyes and clawing the surface of flesh momentarily fading into silent aversion when an opportunity squeezed itself in and the impatient fight in Leah was put into something else more prominent.

"Should anyone present know any reason that this couple should not be joined in holy matrimony— speak now or forever hold your peace," The priest continually announced like a idle after thought that shouldn’t even have been bothered to be spoken because no ones ever stood up before, no ones given a second glance at a dead involvement. 

But Leah was all about significant life lessons, as of now, and went against traditional gazing and staying silent in the love tying moment when the words were asked to be mockingly answered. Leah answered her own because they’re not dead yet, there was still a last chance of living through it and making it a life of actual unions that weren’t being upheld with self-taught lies and a blurry cloud of judgment. Bella may have thought of this whole entire façade to be it’s faithful twin of the defended truth, but Leah went after impossible when she stood up on numb ankles and proved to the women that she ineffably loved— was beautifully wrong. 

"I don’t!" Leah abnegated and unabashedly spoke up with abnormally strong hands that didn’t shake in fear, but went up in proclamation and then dropped and said the opposite of I do because she had many sensible reasons as to why they shouldn’t be joined in ugly and selfish matrimony. But Leah wasn’t going to deny that she wasn’t being selfish herself at that moment because maybe she was, being completely and blindly selfish, selfish for depriving people of a laced and destined ceremony that was only near seconds away from being entwined in eternity, selfish for wanting Bella to be selfish as well and say no, selfish for standing up and happily be the one to speak now. 

"— I don’t see this through! I fucking object!" Leah declared with everything lovable in her that the other women could easily have if she just let herself, lets herself get what she wanted whether it was too late or not and be happy with it and she wouldn’t be lying when she claimed it either.

And if Leah cared enough to turn and look around the suddenly distant-minded room, she’d see that every single one of the guests that were still alive, have held their dismayed breaths with wide and dropped lips while being horrified at the abrupt scene. And the ones that were lesser than alive, were throwing shrewd screams through hidden red eyes that all uncomfortably pointed and stabbed at Leah’s obtrusive frame. But she didn’t see it, she could only feel it because she was only looking at Bella like the distance between them was a finger-length away and she mattered more than a dumb fucking event fit for the overly formal.

Bella, who now rigidly stood in her place of commitment that was being put on a hard tricky line with hands that apprehensively gripped on Edward’s and didn’t fall when Leah successfully managed to make a scene of things. And Bella, Leah witnessed, was almost overawed at it happening under her pale nose. And she said almost because the other half of Bella, the part that let her thoughts be visually known to Leah, was completely terrified and Leah had never seen so much fear storm on the girl’s usual impassive features, but she easily guessed that she wasn’t the only one that had been astonished of the things that they could feel— thanks to a girl who was alluring enough to make it happen and known. 

“Bella, hear me out.. hear me out and if you listen to what I have to say then I’ll let you go. No bullshit," Leah chocked out the pleading words, like it weighed nothing on her audacious tongue, before a single vow could be said in return, and it wasn’t a moment of weakness if she was being strongly brave, for the both of them and she really only had one reason to be shattering the lawful peace; Bella wasn’t stupid enough to fall into a trap of sharp teeth and a porcelain death. 

Instead, with no doubt or second guesses that could turn into a fretful third, Bella was smart enough to do as Leah practically begged in disguise of a willful offer, she was listening enough to know that dropping Edward’s numb icicle touch wouldn’t possibly mean the end of everything, and she was sure as hell clever enough to know a tiny escape when she saw it, saw it open up just a little so that it could make room for the timid bride that tested that label, and the witty bridesmaid who watched her step closer with white dazzling heels while Leah did the same in her own taller ones— both that didn’t clamor but instead dug into the soft earth until they were inches apart and the wide space counted it’s last steps to the point of a slipping cliff. Leah held them both up steady and firm from that ledge when she landed a candescent palm on Bella’s still-shocked cheek, like she was feeling Bella for what felt like the first time in a while.

It was when she smoothly sailed an allaying thumb over the pale creamy skin that what’s underneath came alive, it awakened and Bella uttered out a deep breath of unbelieving relief that also slipped up a spattered tear that leaked out what Bella was deeply feeling— then a second— and soon Leah dried them up with her consolable hands that got that warmth back once again, the vulnerable girl holding onto it with claws that softened when Bella feelingly brought her own comforting hand up to the one that seemed to always be holding her together, firm fingers melting into strong ones. Leah dotingly looked into Bella’s drowning eyes like she didn’t want to look at anything else, looked until she could spot a very limited and unforeseen picture of what the girl envisioned at that raw moment, Leah swam in it and didn’t have the desire to want to come back up. Bella nodded her head with everything sure of dedicatedly harkening to which Leah only had one question to ask— as if she only wished to ask one dying need of getting the truth and breathing it in like it’ll either kill her, or save her.

"Are you happy?"

She simply asked the earlier question of what it meant to blindly love Leah Clearwater and watch as she burned everything dead or alive in her path to get what she needed to restore order. Bella heedfully swallowed the question down and helped Leah put her heart back into one piece and held it like a diamond that she didn’t let fall, Leah ardently denying that Bella let go of her heart in the first place and actually chose to without at least some threats. But she didn’t blame anyone or held bitter grudges that would potentially outlive her petty mulishness, and she didn’t blame Bella because Leah loved her like she had a single clue how to and that hasn’t changed even with Bella wearing a waterfall lengthened veil and what exactly it said about Leah as a moral person. In return for that trust— Bella answered what she couldn’t before.

"No. No, I’m not happy. Will you help me fix that?" Bella confessed and questioned all at once because Leah already helped her see it, helped her see that she wasn’t the type of women that should be marrying the wrong person, helped her see everything wrong with looking into a dead guy’s motionless eyes instead of a women’s gratifying warm ones, she knew things needed to be different. And there was a guileless reason Leah spoke up and declared hell, there was a reason why she vehemently loved Bella enough to do it and there was graspable reason why she wholeheartedly nodded her head with a buoyant smile smothering her lips that was only reserved for the clumsy girl’s presence— Leah managed to achieve impossible and it was the most proudest she’s ever been. 

"You got yourself a deal, Swan," Leah accepted with satisfaction and contentment crowding the mood of her voice, and she fixed the key issue when she grabbed Bella’s pointed chin with a caring thumb and finger to pull and enclose the pesky gap until their lips slavishly crashed into one another to seal that already fulfilled deal— Bella was imminently happy and so was Leah.

Leah could feel it when Bella blessed her with a desirously delectable kiss back instead of it being Edward to complete a bond in front of stunned family members and a confused priest. Leah intrinsically kissed back and this time she didn’t hate or resent herself for it, kissed back because everything turned black and white until there was only pure golden in front of her, she kissed back and she held on to the the sides of Bella’s waist because she could sense Bella getting tenuous in balance at the knees, she kissed back because Bella said no and didn’t go through with it, and kissed her over and over on repeat because she’ll invariably return Bella’s unforgettable kisses when given the chance that she successfully took and got awarded. 

And like adding to that stage of saved love, the guests that the two women had faded and blocked out, do one of two things— they erupt into slamming clasps of felicitating ovation that were supposed to be reserved for the end of the wedding, where the bride and groom would become husband and wife, but was now used for the officially ex-bride and the uninvited bridesmaid who were both shit at filling those roles and being content with it for the afternoon anyways, and they let out gasps of either new found reactions of being sensational, or just being plainly fucking dumbfounded at what they got invited to and witnessed the complete opposite. They were all expecting something big and life changing to happen, and they got exactly that when Bella and Leah pulled away to begin again.

"I fucking love you," Bella vowed from deep within her soul, and it was like she was sorry about loosing sight of it. Leah didn’t mind anymore because she was glad she got to bathe and sleep in nothing but a warm Bella for however long she desired, wanted, inspired, needed, and dreamed.

"I can live with that." Leah nodded with a charmingly cocky grin that shook into a wide, placidly glowing smile when Bella knocked her shoulder in a light chortle that coated her cheeks in splashed neon colors, a laugh that became enough to cause Leah to fall back and go a similar cherry-red. 

“Fine. I fucking love you too,” Leah vowed in return, the only gift she gave and could afford on short notice. They kept that promise when their lips met in a sensually limpid osculate, heads tilted side to side, eyes squeezed with copious emotion taking over dazed features that were trapped in the inflaming feeling of each other’s mouths that fell into a flow of sliding tongues that attempted to outmaneuver and outflow the other, scraping against the edges of teeth and searching through the familiarity of pleasure, until they eventually settled on dissolving the delicious taste and inescapable flavor of intoxicating want and sweet-like desire, they’re lips being pushed as they dauntlessly danced and the balls of their hands clenched with passion— then unclenched when they broke away and concomitantly breathed in the smoke of reality with pressed up foreheads. 

Bella smiled and it was only natural that Leah did the same. 

"Lets go be happy together," Bella whispered with moist fluttering lips that turned and got bitten down when Leah eagerly nodded, because she was never strong enough to deny Bella much, no matter how much her body functioned with everything intensely red and hot.

"I have to do one thing, can you wait a little bit more?" Bella hoped and pondered like she was asking for the world, but she had no real reason to be worried anymore when observing who’s palliative arms her body was safely stationed in between. 

"Always," Leah alleviated, and it held nothing but the truth and snarky peace. 

Bella gave her a grateful kiss on the cheek, a warm smile pressing up against warm skin before departing herself from Leah, who basked in lilac and cinnamon scented glory. She watched with a drowsy gaze as Bella valiantly faced Edward, who stood there staring with agonizing and excruciating pain and if it were entirely possible, looking even more dead than he already was after experiencing his purpose for living, zealously kissing one of her bridesmaids. Bella could only generally apologize in a severe whisper that Leah caught against her efforts not to, before the brave girl whose heart wasn’t breaking— gave back her glistening ring into opened rock palms. Edward took the last piece of Bella with an accepting nod that weighted heavy over a rejection that was made after he proposed and she said yes, now she was saying no.

And the poor guy was now dressed for the wrong occasion, he was now suited up and ready for his own funeral that he should have had 104 years ago. Leah though he should’ve been thanking her for setting up his long awaited wake without asking. After all, rotting didn’t mean being deprived of being properly sent away down under. Leah was nothing but a sweetheart for good deeds and Edward got the message loud and clear in that hallow head of his that got filled with her unraveled thoughts that slammed through witty and self-aware. 

Should have chosen a prettier ring, Eddie.

But all he did in return was grip at the jewel with tight fingers and a forced down jaw like it meant world destruction, two sharp gazes meeting each other before Bella stepped in between the two to hold on to Leah’s hand, the girl being pulled away towards her own family who watched with looks of bouncing smirks and hiking eyebrows that knew too well what just happened wasn’t some sort of insane pipe dream they put in the bubbly champagne.

"Lee, you are the only reason I enjoy weddings," Seth commented with nothing short of amusement for his older sister. But before Leah could jump in and do it with more than just a cruel laugh, Sue pushed Seth’s shoulder to the side to shut him up, her mother giving Leah a teary-eyed smile that said all she needed to know to feel cared for and that even if she didn’t have a camera to capture this point of her daughter’s life, this was still just as cherishingly memorable.  

Bella giggled under her radiant smile before settling her focus onto Alice with a nervous lip bite that teethed away at her anxiety, her fine legs lifting up behind her back to peel and pick her luxurious heels off with a half-worn frown. 

"I couldn’t pull these off after all," Bella elaborated with a simple tone before handing her shimmering white and grey heels that were too expensive for her taste and into the accepting arms of Alice, who’s excessive brightness only lessened with a small shrug falling from her shoulder. 

"Should have gone with flats," Alice replied like it was no harm no foul on her part while taking the shoes with hands that don’t disagree to hold and collect them. 

The entire encounter didn’t really make much sense to Leah, but it made perfect sense for Bella to give Alice a thankful hug that got effortlessly returned with a still-joyful energy that only dimmed the slightest for her mournful brother. Bella stepped back from the amiable embrace only to be met with a lurking Rosalie, who courteously stepped out of the invisible shadows to encouragingly judge Bella one more time. 

"When the hell did you get so smart?" Rosalie pressed with lips that thoughtfully curled up because to Bella’s surprise, the Hale girl looked discerningly proud, proud that the human girl would stay exactly that and not enduringly fall asleep for a forever life that she was so against having.

"I always was, just needed a push, a very beautiful push." Bella stood up for herself with a lifted brow and coruscating eyes that smirked at an enticing Leah and then Rosalie who nodded, shook her blonde wavy head that seemed fond towards her for once, and approved of Bella’s choice of love instead of being offended by it. 

"Sick." And it was said more impressed than snobby. 

Leah tightened her hand around Bella’s, the ridges of knuckles being soothed over with the gentle digits of thumbs, and they looked into what they both wanted, to live and to love like a lame fucking couple that made it abundantly known to everyone in the room. Leah was alright with that, funnily enough she actually enjoyed it because it got her the girl and in return Bella got what she finally wanted. 

"Bella, don’t do this."

Both Leah and Bella turned and it was evident that the bromidic voice came from Renée, who stood up only to demand Bella of something she simply just couldn’t give this time. Bella wasn’t a child and Leah doubtlessly knew it when Bella gave her mother the bouquet of flowers in her other hand, gave her an ornament of what she couldn’t finish and hold onto like Renee would unfalteringly do in a heartbeat if she were in Bella’s place, differing with how Bella was leaving Edward because she needed to, not because it was no longer fun or fit into her long-winded schedule.  

"I’m already doing it mom. I’m not going to wait around anymore trying to get a fantasy. What I have now is more real than that," Bella reasoned cogently with control and an unchanging compass, and it was more clearer and upfront than she’s ever been with her courageous mother who only expected to be given what she pleaded for with a free please and thank you. 

Leah couldn’t be anymore proud. She showed it when she gave Bella’s humidly firm hand that she compassionately held onto, a honeyed kiss on the small hills of her knuckles that said she was with her and she was never not going to be. Renée looked between the two infatuatedly smitten women with a sagged frown that overtook her puzzled and beleaguered countenance and stepped back, she stepped back and she let Charlie take over the parental responsibilities of what to do when your daughter leaves her own wedding. But even in that department she got surprised and received more than what she greedily asked for, when Charlie kindly handed Bella the clinging keys to her busted up but cherished Chevrolet.

"Don’t forget, I’m still your father and I love you. And I know that Leah does too," Charlie consented and wished them well to Leah’s amazement and gratitude, because she knew he had some form of evolvement in Bella’s denial when he managed to do the same as Leah and squeeze himself in to talk to her right before the wedding bells could ring. His fuzzy mustache got pushed up and indistinctly muted a jubilant chuckle when Bella gave him a bear hug like he just saved her with a favor in form of a benediction, pouring lost embraces all into one moment before pulling away and placing an impassioned kiss on his temple with a flying head and said—

"I know." And Leah did too when Bella looked at her and assuringly nodded, a warm signal that set off both of their decided futures.

Leah took it as a giant elated sign to give into cosmical destiny and consequences, that turned into the good kind of bullshit, and ran away with her and Bella, Bella looked like she’d follow Leah as long as she didn’t let go. 

So Leah didn’t, fuck all of this she didn’t, she extracted herself and Bella away from the rudely failed wedding with giggles that filled the sunlit air and all the way out of the ceremony and towards the getaway car that was Bella’s truck, which still stood and didn’t fail to help them on their runaway bride mission. Giggles that turned into skimming chokes of ricocheting laughter when Leah securely picked up a shoeless Bella bridal style, before running the rest of the way to their open exist, because being fast was what Leah did best and being clumsy was Bella’s forte; Leah made sure one outweighed the other when she actively adhered onto Bella with over-trusting arms and the platform of her stable heels until it wasn’t needed anymore. Leah placed Bella into the passenger seat and kissed her raw and essentially and incautiously. Bella immediately followed to catch up with the heated momentum Leah impatiently set up for them— bruised lips and raspy voice boxes being muffled with confessions of incessant love that rose and lived on for however long infinity was for the two insane girls and their shared hearts that stayed together in solidarity and peace.

Bella was happy Leah was around when they said speak now.