Notes: This probably feels a lot like Her Own Happily Ever After, because this is the rough idea that that story was based on. This, however, is Leah/Embry and not Leah/Quil AND is a lot better, IMHO. Furthermore, it is different. It’s also a very different P.O.V. As in, you know, Embry talking to Leah. Yeah. Review and tell me what you think?

Disclaimer: Is not mine.

Warnings: Leah and Embry have dirty mouths.

You are shattered into a million tiny pieces, like a skirt of shattered glass that sparkles and throws rainbows in the sunlight streaming in through the window. You’re beautiful in all your glittering glory but that particular metaphor has been ruined for me, for us. (Thank you, bloodsuckers.)

You’re quiet tonight, in the still midnight that paints my bedroom in shades of blue and black and grey and white. You are black hair and skin that’s grey in the moonlight and your eyes reflect the moon (it’s full tonight) back at me.

I shiver because you’re so breathtakingly beautiful in your brokenness.

My hand brushes your cheek and you sigh, turning your face so that my fingers trace over your lips.

“Leah—” I begin, because I want to tell you how beautiful you are, how I lo—like you. A lot. How you made your brokenness your own, and how it makes you nine kinds of irresistible.

“Don’t speak,” you say softly, bringing your fingers to my lips to stop my sentence. “Don’t break this silence. Don’t ruin this, Embry.” You lean up to press your lips to mine. “Don’t fucking ruin this,” you whisper against them, your breath hot and sweet and beautiful my mouth.

Don’t fucking ruin this, you say and I swear to you, I won’t. I won’t ruin whatever it is we have because, god, I’m helpless against you in all your broken beauty and tarnished pride.

It’s twilight. You’re watching me as I write a letter to Sam.

I’m sorry—I promised I wouldn’t even think his name, but—

The pain in your eyes take my breath away and all of a sudden, the pen—already too small in my too big hands—is so fragile and it’s shaking against the paper and Sa—he probably won’t be able to read it anyway and then you’re up and moving to the window, hiding your eyes and your pain from me.

“I’m sorry.”

Your laugh is cold and humorless and heartless and bitter and it sends shivers up my spine.

“Leah—”

“I thought I was over it.”

Your voice is too quiet against the too loud silence. I am at a loss for words.

“I swore I was, Embry,” you say and your voice is calm. Disturbingly so, like a viper getting ready to strike, or the smooth surface over hysteria. So close to the breaking point but not quite there yet.

Scream, I want to say. Cry. Do something, for fuck’s sake, because this calm apathy is making me crazy.

“I swore I’d never be mad at him. He can’t help it. He can’t fucking help it, Embry, and I swore I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t…”

You trail off, lost in your broken beauty.

“Leah—” I start again but your harsh laughter—cutting against the silence, cold and heartless and achingly beautiful—it cuts off the clichéd condolences that rest against the back of my throat.

(Don’t kiss me—you’d taste them there, lurking in the dark.)

“I’m sorry,” you whisper and I’m shocked.

“The hell for?”

“How do you stand me, Embry?” you ask and you look so sad and broken, your voice muted and dreary.

There are a million things I could say to that. They bubble up like bile against the back of my throat, but I opt instead for no words, because it was words that brought you here. There are already too many words swirling in the air around us—you don’t need any more words, so I press warm lips against the hot skin of your neck that smells like sin.

It’s musky and woodsy and has vestiges of the lavender shampoo you use and maybe a trace of the perfume you wore last. It’s heaven and hell and temptation and the hallelujah chorus, all in one.

My hands rest on your shoulders and your hands—delicate and feminine against my clumsy ones—rest on top of mine.

“Embry,” you whisper to the panes of glass and your breath fogs the window.

And I still don’t say anything. I want to say three words that will change everything—I want to so much it hurts—but I seal my lips against your neck and keep them at bay.

There’s no moon tonight and we are nothing but shadows in the dark, moving against each other, hardly two people, instead just one big muddled mess of feeling. And your lips against my neck (godyesEmbryplease) and my fingers in your hair and our love that sprouts between us and grows in the pit of my stomach. And it’s an accident—the three words that I breathe into your hair somewhere between pleaseyesmore and ohgodohgodohgod are an accident, but you freeze against me.

“What?”

“I—I—”

And then your lips are against mine. “Those are ugly words, Embry, for both of us. The world broke them for me, for you…don’t use them.”

I exhale against your ear. “I’m so, so sorry. God, Leah, I—”

“But the sentiment,” you continue, running your fingers through my bristly hair, “is returned, I assure you.”

And then you smile and in the complete darkness, it is a light and it shines brilliantly.

“What are we?” you ask, sitting cross legged on my bed, looking up at the crescent moon, a pale scar that mars the black night.

I run my fingers through you hair and it’s inky black and soft against my palm. I shrug, my shoulders lifting and relaxing.

“I don’t’ know,” I tell you and it’s the truth.

You trace my eyebrow and kiss the corner of my eye. “I think we’re puzzle pieces.”

I make a face at you, because that’s so cliché, so…unlike you. You broke all the clichés when he broke your heart.

“Not like that,” you assure me. “Like… like the old ones. Like the ones that are…missing their puzzle. I mean, we’re surrounded by that cookie-cutter, soul-mate, magical, beautiful, picket fence, puzzle piece love and we don’t fit. I didn’t imprint and you didn’t imprint and we’re surrounded by that shit all the time. Jake and Nessie, Quil and Claire, Jared and Kim…All the bloodsuckers have a mate…we’re the odd ones out.”

I smile at you. You’re absolutely right, of course. “You’re my almost-puzzle piece, you know,” you add. “Like the two pieces you can force together and even though it’s not perfect and even though there are holes and gaps and jagged edges… it works.”

And you’re right again. I kiss you and it goes without saying that I love you.

“Let’s go to Seattle. No. Portland. Portland’s farther.”

I frown. “Why Portland?”

Your face is tearstained; you’re broken. “I can’t stay here anymore. I can’t do this. Please, Embry, please, let’s just go.”

And because you’re my almost-puzzle piece, I’ll agree.

Portland is cold and wet and far, far away from La Push, but we create our own little nook and we get to dream. We give up the phasing, we give up our friends and our family (you still email Seth sometimes) we give up La Push and the Quileutes, We give it all up and bury it in the ground and leave it in the dust. We plant new dreams and start again.

We get jobs—normal jobs—and we dream.

We dream about a marriage license and I find sketches of you in white-and I don’t’ say anything, not yet. We dream about babies—a boy and a girl and a puppy named Spot or Rover. We dream about our own little picket fence.

Our wedding is impromptu. You wear a white dress with little pink flowers and I wear a white Oxford with jeans. Our rings are pieces of red yarn.

We’ll send pictures to your mom and Seth and Quil and Claire and everyone back in La Push, but we’ll leave the return address blank.

They can’t find us here.

It’s our own little nook and we want to keep it that way. We’re selfish, but we’re broken and this is our protection.

I love you.

I know I swore up, down, and sideways that I’d never say it again, but I can’t help it.

IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou.

I love the ivory that streaks your ebony, I love the web of wrinkles that frame your smile and your eyes. And I’d love to think that they’re all laugh lines—all my lines, all ones I put there, but they’re not. Our three beautiful children’s births are there and, before them, Sam is there. Emily is there. Jacob is there. Hell, Bella is there. You have lived enough pain and heartbreak to last five lifetimes.

And I love you for it.

Stop making that face—it’s been twenty-five years since the night I first said it and time has allowed our wounds to scar.

I love our three children—love our two beautiful daughters, love that one of them is named Sue for your mother and the other one is named Isabella. I love our son, named for Seth, love our German Shepherd you named Jacob, love your sense of humor and how you keep our past a part of our present. I love that I can come home and you and the girls are braiding each others’ hair. I love our picket fence, even though it’s warped in some places and the paint is chipping a little bit. I love that the boards don’t quite fit perfectly, love the rough edges and the splinters.

I love you.

And our love… it’s not the cookie cutter kind of love we grew up hearing in fairytales. It’s not Mr. and Mrs. Charming and their boy and girl. And it’s not passion and lust and sex that makes us want to scream the roof down.

It’s so much sweeter than that, so much more beautiful. It’s puzzle pieces.

Not ones that match, mind. No—it’s two pieces of different puzzles that have been lost or thrown away or shoved under the coach somewhere, two pieces that almost-not-quite fit.

And we can squint to make them look like they fit like a glove, but if we squint, we miss the gaps and the jagged and the rough edges. We miss its broken beauty.

You and I, my love (don’t make that face at me), we are almost-puzzle pieces, beautiful in our brokenness and imperfections.

I love you.