Work Text:
July 1921
Carlisle inhaled deeply, eyes slipping closed and counting to three as he did so. It was an exercise he typically used to organize his thoughts, reground himself. This time, however, all he got was a mouthful of the lavender and honeysuckle, it sunk deep into his lungs, her being rooting itself inside of him. He opened his eyes and despite the flutter in his stomach and the lighter than air feeling . stemming from the tips of his toes to the hair on his head he was still sitting on the loveseat in his office. Esme was sitting next to him, caramel hair pinned up in a complicated braided style, wearing a light blue chiffon sundress with large sunflowers that made him confident she truly was spring personified. Nothing had changed.
They were in the exact same places they had been minutes prior, the exact same people they had been minutes prior. She wasn’t looking at him. He couldn’t tell what she was looking at, if anything, but she looked shocked or disturbed, he was unsure which.
“You kissed me,” he said, the taste of flowers and spring lingered on his lips. .
“I kissed you,” she repeated, as if she hadn’t processed it despite being the one fully in control of the situation.
“You kissed me?” He asked, hoping she might elaborate on her reasoning. Not that he wished she hadn’t; but so he could make sure to do whatever triggered her to kiss him again and again and again.
“I kissed you,” she said once more, her eyes widened as she turned to him. “I kissed you! Oh dear God! I kissed you I am so sorr-”
“Will you do it again?” Carlisle interrupted. It was uncouth but if she wouldn’t let him know how he could convince her to kiss him again he was forced to ask outright. He surely wouldn’t let her apologize for making his undead dreams come true.
“What?” Esme frowned.
“You didn’t intend that to be a one time occurrence did you?” He mumbled. Would she be so cruel to offer him a taste of salvation and then deny him for eternity? Would God?
“You want me to kiss you?” She stammered. Why was she confused? Yes, he wanted her to kiss him again, that’s why he stayed completely still with his eyes open, hands completely to himself. Was that not how he was supposed to react? Was that why she had pulled away so quickly? Or did she not want to kiss him again? He hadn’t considered that possibility; she seemed pretty keen on the idea a minute earlier.
“Very much so. Unless you object, of cou-” He was interrupted by her lips once again meeting his. This time he allowed his eyes to close, he leaned into her touch as her hands cradled his jaw. This must have been closer to the right reaction because she leaned closer. His hand tentatively found its place on her bicep.
“I take it you don’t object,” he said when she pulled away, her hands remaining on his face for a beat before she pulled them close to her body. She once again looked disturbed, as if she didn’t want to kiss him. Perhaps she did object.
“I’m the one who kissed you. If anyone objects it would be you. Do yo-” it was his turn to interrupt her. He mimicked her and gently pulled her by the jaw. A swell of nerves in his stomach he’d only felt when he pressed a scalpel to skin for the first time. This time he didn’t have decades of higher education and studying, he was quite simply clueless. But, it was asinine to think he would ever object to that and he couldn’t let her think, even for a second, he would. Plus, this new method of interruption was quite fun.
“You kissed me,” she whispered when he reluctantly pulled away.
“I kissed you,” he beamed. “That wasn’t how I expected it. You’re quite good at that. Not that I didn’t think you would be good. I didn’t expect you to be so good. Although I have no other experience to judge my assertion off. Still… wow.” He was rambling and he hoped she’d stop him, preferably with another kiss.
“You’ve never done that before?” Esme asked quietly, ignoring the onslaught of compliments as she always did.
“No.”
“Two hundred and eighty years and no one?”
“It never interested me much,” Carlisle shrugged. He thought they had been over this, he had been alone for a very long time.
“But you said you’ve thought about it with me?”
“Many, many, many times,” he confessed. She trusted him with her body, a trust he would rather die than have misplaced. She deserved to know just how monumental his affections were, she deserved a quick and accessible escape. He glanced at her through his peripheral vision, prepared to see disgust, contempt, revulsion. He did not, however, anticipate, seeing a grin decking her face. He frowned, “you’re not offended?”
“Would you be offended if I told you I’ve thought about it many, many, many times?” She asked quietly, looking up to him quickly, eyes the deep orange of a heavenly sunset.
“Have you?”
She smiled, that coy smile which highlighted only one of her dimples, this time it was the left one. “Once or twice,” she laughed, and he laughed and he didn’t know why they were laughing but he hoped they’d never stop.
Eventually the giggles subsided, leaving as they came, unexpected. “Let me make sure I have this correct. I want to kiss you,” he said, his tone still light from the genuine but unprovoked laughter.
“So you say,” Esme grinned.
“And you want to kiss me?”
“Yes,” Esme said. She wasn’t laughing anymore, she sounded completely sincere.
“Fascinating,” he breathed.. All the late nights and the worries and the self hatred for what? Her to feel precisely the same way.
He watched Esme slightly wrinkle then smooth her dress a few times, an anxious tick he’d become well acquainted with. She wasn’t looking at him, she seemed to look at everything but him. She eventually quietly asked, staring at her hands folded in her lap, “what does this change?” A hint of worry in the slight furrow of her brow.
Carlisle nodded at the question. Wasn’t that the entire reason he had been a silent parishioner? Adoring silently in the shadow of the night? He didn’t want to violate her and take advantage of the precarious position he’d put her in, yes. But it was more than that. He couldn’t have things change. He’d rather be strangled by the admissions of adoration, starve from the yearning for touch, be burned alive by the flames of desire, than ever be alone again. He could not lose her, he would not jeopardize the beautiful friendship they had, even for the possibility of a providential union. He was a coward who clung to the scraps of her he got, if it was left to his hands nothing would change. Thankfully, it wasn’t his choice, for she was the one who kissed him. Now she was the one asking what she had changed.
“Nothing and everything, I suppose.”
“Are we still friends?” She asked timidly.
“Of course,” Carlisle said instinctively. She could walk out the door that precise second and never look back and she’d still be his closest friend. The one person he believed wanted to know him, and for some odd reason, he’d come to realize was love, he let her. And once he let her he never wanted to be rid of her.
“We could be more than friends,” he offered casually.
“How so?”
“Some people get married.” It wasn’t what he planned to say but he also hadn’t planned to kiss Esme three times that evening, he might as well test his luck.
Her head whipped to look at him, her eyebrows raised halfway up her forehead, her bottom lip dropped ever so slightly. She must have seen the confirmation she was seeking, he was one hundred percent genuine. She looked back to her lap and fiddled with her fingers for a little while as he sat watching her. She finally turned back to him, a smile that showed her teeth and crinkled her eyes, “why don’t we try courting first?”
It was his turn to smile. She hadn’t laughed him out of the room, she hadn’t told him he was crazy and overstepping, she told him not just yet, ‘let’s try courting first.’
“That’s a good middle ground,” he beamed. It was a possibility! No, it was more than a possibility, it was down the line. An event he could see on the horizon. Esme Platt was open to marrying him and suddenly the entire world was full of possibilities. He laughed at the sheer giddiness that realization made him feel. “Smart. Very smart middle ground. You’re very smart.”
He couldn’t stop laughing and now she was laughing. There had never been a diviner sound. She was leaning towards him as she laughed, her hand landing on his bicep. His free hand covered hers and they were still laughing and he’d never felt so warm.
Her head tilted as she studied his face, a grin still decking hers. “I’ve never seen you smile so big.”
“I don’t believe I ever have,” he beamed. She scrunched her nose at the compliment, and oh how grateful he was she had decided to do something, had unwittingly lifted his death sentence. He longed to thank her, to read her the hundreds of letters he’d written her over the months, the pure poetry she’d been the muse of. He could. He could shout it from the rooftops and tell every person he ever met. He was a free man, and he knew how he wanted to spend his salvation.“May I kiss you again?”
“Hm… let me think.” She looked up to the ceiling, pursuing her lips as if she was in deep thought. “I suppose,” she finally sighed, laughing at her own horrendous joke.
A half hour later they found themselves still on the antique loveseat, fairly entwined. Laughing at stories of ‘unrequited’ yearning, saying the ardent confessions that had stung like a ripe lemon for seven months, peppering sweet nothings between peppering kisses,.Turns out he was a quick study or just an enthusiastic student. Either way she didn’t seem to mind. His fingers played with the small strands of hair that had fallen from the updo. She drew lazy shapes on the nape of his neck, on his bicep, intertwined his fingers with her own.
“Edward,” she gasped against his lips, one of her arms slung around his neck.
“No, I’m Carlisle.” Then he heard the rumble of the automobile down the drive. It then occurred to him that Earth was still moving and he couldn’t spend the rest of his life in her arms. He had other responsibilities, and one of them was- “Edward!”
“Think about something else,” Esme said panicked, pushing his hands off her. She smoothed her dress and he smoothed his hair.
“Baseball. Baseball. Baseball,” Carlisle quietly said to himself.
“Silently, darling,” Esme said, her hand lightly squeezing his knee. Darling. She called him darling. He was her darling, and her face was in his hands and his lips were against hers again. She reciprocated just for a moment before gently pulling away.
“I apologize. You called me darling and I got overwhelmed.”
“Think of baseball,” she smiled.
“Thinking of baseball… darling.” He kissed her cheek with the term of endearment.
They sat apart, both desperately trying to think about anything but what they wanted to think about. What they wanted to be doing. They listened as Edward parked the car, flung open the front door, and shed his sport coat.
“Welcome home,” Esme called.
“Ugh, glad to be back,” Edward groaned, loudly making his way down the hall towards Carlisle’s office.
“School didn’t go well?” Carlisle asked. Edward was attempting a few summer courses at the local university but found the close proximity to hundreds of thoughts at once a little… grating. Although it seemed he found many things a little… grating.
“Didn’t go well,” Edward scoffed, appearing in the office doorway. “Didn’t go well,” he slumped into the armchair. “Didn’t go well. Understatement of the century.”
“I’m sorry to hear you had a rough day,” Esme said delicately.
Edward rolled his eyes, kicking off his shoes with his toes. “You two do anything exciting today?”
“Uhm…” Esme hummed.
“Nope,” Carlisle lied. “Very boring day.”
“I saw the squirrel in the tree out back,” Esme said.
“Gregory or Eloise?” Carlisle asked.
“Gregory.”
“Riveting,” Edward quipped, blowing the hair off his forehead. “You want to catch dinner up North tonight?” With this question he glanced at Esme and Carlisle for the first time. Catching sight of them his brow raised, eyes darting from Esme to Carlisle to Esme to Carlisle to Esme to Carlisle. Perhaps it was an innocent gesture; or perhaps he noted the peculiar wrinkle of Carlisle’s shirt sleeve, the disintegration of Esme’s typically pristine plaits, the mere proximity of the two on the couch. Although the more Carlisle thought of the peculiarities of the situation the more Edward’s eyes danced.
“Carlisle,” Edward said, drawing out the word.
“Edward,” Carlisle gave a slight nod.
“Esme,” Edward said.
“Edward,” Esme said.
“No?” Edward gasped. He smiled as his eyes kept darting between the two, as if he was able to dart between their minds as he glanced at them. Although Carlisle made a point not to confirm any suspicions Edward may have had, he glanced at Esme. Her eyes were intently focused on the hem of the curtain, barely brushing against the floor, and knew she was trying her best to do the same.
Edward’s voice cut Carlisle’s character study. “No? No. No!” A bark of a laugh as he grinned. “Certainly took you two long enough.”
“You’re not mad?” Carlisle asked cautiously, Edward’s moods were unpredictable at best and this development was bound to be a big change. Edward hadn’t reacted exactly well to Esme’s introduction to the land of the undead, paranoid Esme would somehow push him to the sidelines of Carlisle's priorities.
“Mad!” He scoffed, waving away the mere thought. “I orchestrated this.”
“You did not orchestrate this. You attempted to blackmail me,” Esme said, with the passion caused only by a well worn argument.
“He blackmailed you too?” Carlisle smiled. Esme looked up at, nodding and grinning. He laughed and she laughed and they were once again laughing for no apparent reason. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Edward get up, grabbing his shoes as he did so.
“Where are you going?” Carlisle asked.
“I think I’m going to hunt up North tonight, take a long run,” Edward shrugged with a scheming smile. “Have fun, not too much though. She hasn’t agreed to marry you, yet,” he winked and in three seconds the front door clicked closed.
Esme rolled her eyes at Edward’s last comment but Carlisle didn’t fully understand the implication. Was fun reserved only for matrimony- oh. Oh.
Yes, there certainly was a world of possibilities, he supposed in her arms seemed a pretty good place to start.