plot ── immortality gave you everything you never wanted and took everything you couldn’t bear to lose. when one impulsive decision leaves nineteen-year-old rafe cameron sharing your eternity, the two of you spend years growing from strangers into something neither of you ever believed in.
warnings ── chapter one, twilight au, vampire!rafe x vampire!reader, making rafe overly nicer than we know his character to be lowkey whoops, just setting before we get into the events of twilight idk .. read da author’s note at the end!
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you can only remember so many faces. that realization creeps up on you slowly over the course of a century. nobody sits you down and warns you that immortality has limits of its own, because immortals rarely spend much time discussing the things they’ve lost.
humans worry constantly about forgetting people they love, but eventually you learn that memory becomes crowded when there are decades piled on top of decades, and entire lifetimes squeezed into the space where one should have been. after enough years, names begin slipping away first, then birthdays, especially some voices.
some memories survive anyway.
you still remember the color of your mother’s hands after long days of work. you remember the tiny apartment your family shared when you were young and the way every available surface somehow ended up covered in something drying, whether it was laundry, flowers, bread dough, or somebody’s school papers - maybe your brother’s.
you remember being terrified of death long before you had any reason to be, because even as a child you hated the idea that everything beautiful eventually ended. sometimes you think immortality is cruel specifically because it gives you enough time to discover that the ending was never the part you were afraid of.
there have been countless faces over the years.
there were classmates in chicago whose names have long since disappeared from your memory, and neighbors in montana who spent entire summers chatting with you over fences before you quietly vanished from their lives forever.
there were teachers, coworkers, cashiers, waitresses, mechanics, doctors, and strangers whose lives briefly brushed against yours before continuing down separate roads. some of them died before you ever left town. others are probably buried beneath headstones you have unknowingly driven past.
yet somehow, you always remembered him. you remember it before the golden eyes or the impossible speed, way before the strength or the cold skin. you remember it before he became part of the cullen family, before he learned how to live amongst vampires, and before he learned how to survive as one. more importantly, you remember it before he ever belonged to you.
you had always been picky about people. esme called it caution because esme liked giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, while rosalie called it stubbornness because rosalie preferred honesty over politeness whenever possible. despite the opinions of everyone around you, you simply liked your peace and guarded it carefully.
texas stretched endlessly beneath blue skies and blistering heat during the years you and the cullens lived there. jasper occasionally pointed out towns he’d known during his human life, though those stories usually stayed brief. alice seemed to have a talent for knowing exactly which memories were worth revisiting and which ones deserved to actually stay buried.
meanwhile, carlisle worked at a hospital on the edge of town, while esme spent her time transforming temporary houses into homes. you actually liked it there.
there were churches on corners, family-owned stores, old pickup trucks that somehow refused to die. no matter how many decades passed, you never quite lost your habit of watching the humans, and that was how you first noticed him.
there was a construction crew working near the hospital where carlisle spent most of his days, and you occasionally passed them whenever errands dragged you into town. they blended together at first, just another group of workers, then you began noticing one particular face appearing more often than the others. you could tell he didn’t demand attention though.
you saw him helping older workers lift equipment that should have required just two people. you saw him one time giving away half his lunch without a second thought and then pretending he hadn’t done it when somebody thanked him. he always ducked under the radar after every time like he didn’t want to draw attention.
once, you watched him spend nearly an hour helping a stranded family change a tire despite clearly being exhausted himself. none of those moments mattered at the time.
the day everything changed began with something embarrassingly ordinary. carlisle needed supplies from another city several hours away, and you volunteered before anybody else could. alice immediately perked up at the idea of a road trip before remembering she and jasper had already promised esme they’d finish helping with one of her renovation projects that weekend.
edward was busy at the hospital, and rosalie had transformed the garage into a literal crime scene with car parts. you didn’t even know where emmett was at that point, but by the time carlisle finished explaining what he needed, the responsibility somehow belonged entirely to you, which suited you just fine.
carlisle hesitated before asking you to go because he disliked separating the coven in single travels whenever possible. eventually he relented because you’re perfectly capable of handling yourself.
the drive itself was uneventful. you spent most of it watching miles of highway while old songs played through the speakers. humans passed by in both directions, unaware of what you were, and the simplicity of that fact had always brought a weird sense of comfort.
the scent reached you before you knew it. everything changed so quickly. the smell crashed into your senses from miles away, overwhelming and unmistakably human. it made the inside of your throat burn instantly. the truck swerved slightly before you regained control. in years of existence, you had never tasted human blood.
you abandoned the truck less than a minute later, just out of pure curiosity. someone had clearly been bleeding out.
the forest blurred around you as you ran, moving faster than any human eye could follow while the scent grew stronger with every passing second. sirens screamed somewhere in the distance, accompanied by shouting voices and twisted metal.
by the time you reached the construction site, you could see the machinery charred near one side of the clearing, fumes from put-out fires hanging in the air. some ambulances were parked near the entrance while others were already pulling away toward the highway.
your boots crunched against loose gravel as you walked toward the perimeter of the site, hands tucked into your jacket pockets while you observed the aftermath from a distance.
your entire body went still when you smelled it again. for over a century, human blood had existed as little more than background noise. you noticed it, certainly, but years of discipline had reduced it to something manageable. carlisle often joked that you and rosalie were two of the easiest vegetarians he’d ever trained because you two genuinely hated the idea of some person’s blood in your body. most days, that was enough.
this scent was different - it was strong. your eyes slowly lifted toward the far side of the construction site. the blood should’ve been concentrated near the emergency crews. instead, the scent seemed to be pulling you in the opposite direction entirely. before you realized it, you were walking, and the scent strengthened with every step.
soon the sounds of workers and medics began fading behind you. if not for your enhanced hearing, you might have believed you were completely alone. then you heard it - a heartbeat. the blood was someone bleeding out near you.
for a moment you simply listened, until another beat followed, and then another. each one was weaker than the last. your stomach dropped.
“no,” you whispered.
the sound came from beneath a collapsed section of the site. you reached it moments later. concrete slabs had fallen atop one another at awkward angles, surrounded by metal and shattered supports. from a human perspective, the debris field probably looked impossible to search thoroughly without heavy equipment. but it would be easy for you.
the heartbeat sounded again, so you moved immediately. pieces of concrete were lifted and discarded one after another. steel beams scraped across dirt as you dragged them aside. eventually even you found yourself muttering under your breath in annoyance as larger sections resisted being moved.
then you saw him. at first all you noticed was blood. there was so much of it. his body was half buried beneath debris, covered in dust and dirt and injuries severe enough that you immediately understood why his heartbeat sounded the way it did. his chest rose unevenly while one arm was trapped beneath concrete. blood stained nearly everything around him.
your hands froze. you knew that face. you had to look twice just to make sure. it’s someone from town.
the realization struck you harder than expected. you didn’t technically know him personally, and you’d never spoken more than a handful of words to him, yet you knew who he was, maybe not his name, but you knew he lived in town and worked construction.
he helped support his family, maybe two younger siblings you remembered seeing a few times. but you’d seen him enough times over the years to recognize him immediately.
slowly, you looked back toward the rest of the site. those injured here were part of the crew that left town a couple days ago, you remembered seeing it. carlisle was acquaintances with their foreman so you ended up waving them off alongside esme when it was their time to go.
but now, nobody was coming ‘cause the ambulances were leaving. they didn’t know he was here, probably couldn’t find him. or worse - they thought they’d already searched this section thoroughly enough.
your gaze returned to him. his heartbeat stumbled. you immediately reached for the small radio in your back pocket. carlisle answered as soon as he heard you.
for several minutes you explained everything while continuing to monitor the heartbeat. carlisle listened carefully. he asked questions, calculated distances, and remained calm throughout the entire conversation. the answer never changed. he couldn’t reach you in time. neither could edward, as even edward’s speed just not being enough.
by the time anyone arrived, he would already be dead. when the conversation ended, you sat in silence beside him for a few moments.
death happened every day; of course you knew that. every member of the coven knew that. your eyes remained fixed on the young man beside you.
he was nineteen, and he had family waiting for him. he had plans, probably an entire future. and somehow, against all logic, you knew he wasn’t ready to leave it behind. not this way.
his heartbeat weakened again. your decision was made before you consciously acknowledged it. perhaps it wasn’t your choice, and it never should have been, yet there was nobody else here but you.
slowly, carefully, you leaned forward. “i’m gonna save you,” you whispered. then you gave him the only chance you had left to offer.
three days later, after retrieving the supplies carlisle had originally sent you for, sleeping nowhere because neither of you required it, and listening to him scream his way through every burning second of the transformation, you finally drove back toward the cullen house with a newborn vampire sitting beside you.
the drive home was quiet. you mostly had expected screaming and questions, definitely accusations. maybe even panic. you had prepared yourself for the possibility that he would wake up furious. but instead, he listened, and sat in silence for most of the journey, staring through the passenger-side window with crimson red eyes that seemed incapable of settling on any one thing for very long.
you spent most of the journey wondering how exactly you were going to explain yourself to the others. the answer, unfortunately, never arrived.
every now and then his jaw tightened. you would catch him staring at his reflection in the glass before immediately looking away again. he hadn’t spoken a single word since waking up.
carlisle met you in the driveway. esme stood beside him while rosalie lingered near the porch railings with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. alice had already seen enough fragments of the future to know you were returning with someone, though even she seemed unsure of what exactly that future looked like now.
the newborn stepped out of the truck slowly, the movement alone drawing everyone’s attention. newborn vampires were dangerous, everyone knew that.
their strength was unpredictable. their instincts were overwhelming and their thirst was unlike anything older vampires could remember clearly after enough decades had passed. yet despite all of that, the young man standing before them seemed less interested in attacking someone and more interested in figuring out what exactly to do with himself now.
his eyes swept across the gathered coven and he said nothing.
carlisle approached first, “hello, son.”
you winced, understanding carlisle’s means to welcome him into the family, but even you could tell it was too soon and not the greeting this guy probably wanted to hear.
his expression immediately hardened. “i’m not your son.” his voice was rough from disuse. it was also the first thing he’d said all day.
carlisle smiled anyway, “fair enough. come on in, we’ll show you inside.”
the following weeks were difficult, and the following months were worse.
it nearly convinced rosalie that she should be allowed to throw him into a river and leave him there until he developed a better attitude. emmett disagreed, though mostly because he found the newborn’s stubbornness entertaining. the two of them ended up wrestling often enough that furniture occasionally needed replacing afterward. nobody was entirely sure whether those fights were hostile or recreational.
the newborn never explained much. he answered questions when he felt like answering them, then ignored them when he didn’t. for almost three months, nobody even knew his name.
every attempt at conversation ended exactly the same way: either he walked away halfway through it or stared at whoever was speaking until they became uncomfortable enough to leave first. eventually emmett started inventing names simply to annoy him. none of them worked.
then one afternoon, while rosalie was threatening bodily harm over something involving a stolen wrench and emmett was insisting he had done nothing wrong, somebody referred to him as “the blue collar kid” for perhaps the hundredth time.
he looked up.
“rafe.”
the room went quiet.
esme blinked, “what?”
“my name.” there was another pause. “it’s rafe. rafe cameron.” then he stood up and left. for reasons nobody could adequately explain, that counted as progress.
the move came sooner than expected. newborns attracted attention, but rafe attracted even more.
there was only so long an entire coven could remain hidden when one of its members occasionally forgot he could launch himself through walls if he wanted to. eventually the family packed their belongings, gathered their vehicles, and relocated once more. it wasn’t unusual. every member of the coven had left pieces of themselves scattered across dozens of towns already.
rafe hated it, and you understood why. everyone else had experienced that loss decades earlier. for him, it was fresh. his family was still alive, his siblings were still growing older.
his parents were still sitting at the same dinner table each night grieving their son never came home. the news confirmed rafe’s body to be gone from the accident, everyone but him was found, and human.
you caught him driving back more than once, but not all the way. he never got close enough to be recognized, just close enough to see, and he always came back afterward. carlisle never stopped him. neither did you.
“he’ll get himself killed.” rosalie said it often, usually while watching him disappear into the woods again. “or someone else.”
carlisle never seemed particularly concerned. “we trust him. he’ll come back.”
and he always did.
years passed very slowly. the anger never disappeared entirely, though it changed shape over time. the distrust became less obvious. eventually conversations lasted longer than five minutes, and he even started helping around the house without being asked.
you noticed those changes long before he realized they were happening. carlisle noticed too.
one evening, after rafe had vanished into the garage to work on one of the cars for the third consecutive night, carlisle glanced toward the open doorway and smiled faintly.
“he trusts you.”
you looked up from your sketchbook. “that’s a generous interpretation.”
“i don’t think so.” his attention remained fixed on the garage. “i think you’re the reason he’s still here.”
you didn’t answer immediately. across the property, metal clinked softly against metal. rafe was working - again. he seemed happiest when his hands were busy.
carlisle’s smile widened slightly. “you know, some vampires form bonds that are stronger than most.”
your eyes narrowed immediately. “don’t.”
“i didn’t say anything.”
“you were about to. i’m not gonna force him to see me as his mate.”
from somewhere outside, a wrench hit the concrete floor. it alerted you both to turn toward the garage.
rafe had heard every word. a moment later the garage door opened. he emerged carrying a toolbox beneath one arm, his expression completely unreadable.
“i’m going for a drive,” then he got into his truck and left.
you and carlisle watched him disappear down the road. after several moments passed, carlisle finally sighed. “perhaps i should have chosen a different topic.”
“yeah, perhaps.”
there’s another pause before carlisle speaks again, “he’ll come back.”
you stared toward the empty road.
despite everything, with the distance he tried maintaining between himself and everyone else, and with every argument and every slammed door, you already knew carlisle was right. he always came back, so nobody chased after him.
by then, everyone had grown familiar with his habits, even if nobody claimed to understand them completely. whenever something frustrated him, confused him, or simply became too much, he left. you didn’t know what he would do every time he left, was what worried you when he was a younger vampire, but years of watching him eventually taught you the same lesson carlisle had learned long ago.
still, you found yourself glancing toward the driveway more often than usual during those three days he was gone after he overheard you two. every vehicle that passed in the distance caught your attention for a moment before disappearing again. alice noticed, though she was polite enough not to mention it.
by the time rafe finally returned, pulling into the driveway as though he’d only been gone for an afternoon, you were irritated enough to immediately decide you weren’t going to tell him that you’d missed him. he didn’t mention carlisle’s comment, and you didn’t either.
a few years later you had to move again. carlisle always had the seven of you in college every time you moved, though as the years passed he started talking to you guys with ideas of starting out in high school instead from now on, so you could stay in a place longer. you weren’t opposed - you just didn’t think any of you actually looked like high schoolers. it was just an idea for now.
anyway, alaska forests swallowed entire landscapes, snow blanketed everything for months at a time, and the sunlight itself was different. esme fell in love with the scenery almost immediately, while emmett spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to convince everyone that wrestling a grizzly bear in alaska somehow differed from wrestling one anywhere else.
the denali coven quickly became part of your lives after that. carlisle and esme already knew them well, of course. edward had spent enough time with them over the decades that their home felt familiar to him, but for the rest of you, those first introductions carried the awkwardness of meeting relatives you technically weren’t related to.
tanya welcomed everyone warmly, irina watched you guys with cautious curiosity, and eleazar immediately became fascinated by rafe. that last part didn’t go particularly well.
eleazar had always possessed an interest in gifts and abilities, especially unusual ones, and rafe’s power caught his attention almost immediately. unfortunately, rafe already disliked being the center of attention, and being examined by an ancient vampire who could identify supernatural talents within minutes did absolutely nothing to improve his mood.
you remembered standing nearby while eleazar politely asked questions about his experiences and his instincts during combat, only to watch rafe respond with increasingly shorter answers until he finally excused himself and disappeared altogether.
“did i say something wrong?” eleazar had asked afterward.
“probably not,” you replied.
despite his tendency to disappear whenever too much attention landed on him, rafe gradually settled into life with the coven. he remained quieter than emmett, less openly affectionate than jasper, and nowhere near as social as alice, though that wasn’t a particularly difficult achievement considering alice could become friends with a complete stranger in under ten minutes.
he participated in conversations when he felt like it, offered opinions when he thought they mattered, and otherwise preferred observing the room before deciding whether anything needed his attention.
somehow, without either of you planning for it, he spent most of that time around you. at first it happened for practical reasons, ‘cause you were the person he knew best.
every other member of the family had entered his life after his transformation began. they met him as a newborn, and the only reasoning that made sense to him was that you had known him briefly before any of that, even if your interactions had been limited. you had at least seen the human version of him first, and perhaps that mattered more than either of you realized.
the habit started small. sometimes you would find him sitting nearby while you sketched. he never asked what you were drawing, though every now and then you’d notice him glancing over your shoulder.
sometimes you would wander into the garage and discover him rebuilding something that had worked perfectly fine before he’d decided to take it apart. those evenings usually ended with you sitting nearby while he worked, occasionally handing him tools and listening to him explain things you barely understood.
neither of you spoke constantly, and that was part of what made it easy. silence never felt uncomfortable around him.
you never felt responsible for filling every quiet moment, and he never seemed to expect you to. entire afternoons passed with little conversation beyond a few casual remarks here and there. if another person had walked into the room, they might have assumed neither of you particularly enjoyed the other’s company. the reality was that both of you kept choosing the same rooms over and over again.
years passed. somewhere along the way, rafe stopped disappearing for days without warning, and you would stop wondering whether he would return every time he left. his presence became such a normal part of your routine that you didn’t notice how much space he occupied in your life until he wasn’t there.
the possibility of becoming mates never crossed your mind during those years, and it wasn’t because you disliked him. it was quite the opposite.
you simply couldn’t imagine your life revolving around another person in the way you had watched it happen with rosalie and emmett or alice and jasper. more than a century of independence had taught you how to exist on your own.
you’d built hobbies, friendships, routines, and entire identities without needing a mate to complete them. whenever the topic came up, you genuinely believed you would spend eternity perfectly content without one.
rafe seemed even less interested. for a long time, you were pretty sure he was still grieving his human life, which was valid.
he spoke about his family occasionally, usually late at night, and those conversations reminded you that some losses didn’t disappear simply because enough time had passed.
eventually, however, the grief became something softer. it stopped controlling every decision he made, and as the years continued, the two of you developed countless little habits that neither of you consciously acknowledged.
he started looking for you first whenever he entered a room. you automatically set aside books you thought he’d enjoy reading. he learned which songs would make you stop everything to listen, and you learned that he focused better whenever his hands were occupied with some kind of project.
none of those moments felt significant at the time, that was the funny part.
people always imagined love as something dramatic. they imagined grand confessions, impossible coincidences, or life-changing realizations. if someone had asked either of you when things began changing, neither of you would have known how to answer. there was no single moment where everything suddenly became different.
instead, it happened the way mountains formed, just slowly enough that nobody noticed until one day the landscape looked completely different than it had before, and by the time either of you realized what was happening, the foundation had already been there for years.
the trail had gone cold three separate times over the last week, which was becoming irritating. carlisle wanted answers from the rogue vampire before somebody else found him first, which meant killing him was out of the question and losing him was somehow even worse.
every time you thought you were getting close, the scent would vanish again, leaving you and rafe staring at each other from opposite sides of the truck with matching expressions of annoyance. if nothing else, the trip was proving that frustration apparently survived death.
rafe had wandered deeper into a clearing after deciding he was tired of sitting in the truck, and you followed. he was standing near a fallen tree now, rolling his shoulders as though he were preparing for a fight already. the sight earned a smile despite yourself.
his blond hair was a mess from the wind, and there was still dried dirt on the sleeve of his jacket from earlier when he’d climbed beneath the truck to fix something.
he picked up a rock from the ground and tossed it absentmindedly between his hands while you watched the forest around you, listening to sounds.
“come here for a second,” you eventually said.
the suspicion appeared immediately. “why?”
“because i’m asking. just walk over here, please.”
rafe hesitated for a moment before pushing himself away from the fallen tree. the instant he started moving toward you, you bent to grab a rock from the forest floor. rafe immediately narrowed his eyes, which was usually a sign that he was about to regret whatever came next.
“what’re you doing?”
“science.”
“that is not science—”
you launched the rock without warning. the stone crossed the clearing faster than any human eye could follow, cutting through the air with enough force to split a tree trunk if you had wanted it to.
rafe moved before it even reached him. the reaction happened instantly, his body shifting sideways at the exact moment necessary for the rock to miss. there was no hesitation and no visible thought process behind it. the rock disappeared into the woods behind him.
you tilted your head thoughtfully. “see, that’s interesting. you moved before you even saw it.”
“no, i did see it.”
“you absolutely did not.”
rafe opened his mouth to argue before stopping. “okay,” he admitted reluctantly. “maybe i didn’t.”
the conversation shifted after that, becoming less about your gift and more about his. that part was always harder because his ability remained frustratingly vague even after years of experimentation.
your power had announced itself immediately after your transformation. his had hidden beneath layers of instinct and reaction.
you spent the next hour throwing things at him, just using branches, stones, chunks of bark, and eventually an entire fallen log became unwilling participants in the training exercise. every impact met resistance somewhere in front of him.
even with vampire eyesight, you couldn’t fully see it. there were moments when the air distorted faintly, bending light for a fraction of a second before returning to normal.
“how’s it looking?” you asked eventually, folding your arms across your chest.
rafe’s eyes shifted toward you briefly before returning to whatever shape he’d managed to create. “exactly the same as yesterday, and the day before,” he replied. there was a pause before he added, “which is probably disappointing for you, considering you’ve spent the last month acting like i’m secretly capable of something crazy.”
a smile tugged at the corner of your mouth. “i don't think you’re secretly capable of anything. i think you’re obviously capable of it and too stubborn to admit it.” you stepped closer, circling him once. “every time i ask you to expand your shield, you stop the second it becomes uncomfortable. if rosalie did that with cars, half the garage would still be sitting in boxes.”
“okay, but that’s because rosalie enjoys making herself miserable,” he said immediately.
“and you don’t?”
that earned a look. you laughed before bending to pick up another rock from the forest floor. you turned the stone over thoughtfully between your fingers, seeing the look on his face. “you know, for someone whose entire gift revolves around sensing danger, you’re really dramatic whenever i help you practice.”
“help isn’t the word i’d use.”
“stop being ungrateful, rafe.”
before he could respond, you flicked the rock toward him. his shield appeared instantly. even after years of watching him use it, the speed still surprised you. there was enough invisible resistance between him and the stone to shatter it completely. fragments scattered across the clearing before either of them could hit the ground.
you pointed toward the broken pieces with a look of satisfaction. “see? perfect.”
rafe stared at the debris for a moment before looking back at you. “you threw a rock at my head.”
“i threw a rock at your shield.”
“those are not the same thing.”
“your power seems to disagree.”
later, after several more attempts at expanding the shield and an increasingly ridiculous debate about whether he could eventually create multiple barriers at once, both of you ended up sitting beneath one of the larger trees near the edge of the clearing.
“did yours happen right away?”
the question arrived so casually that it took you a second to realize what he meant. you glanced toward him and found him looking back now.
“my gift?”
when he nodded once, you considered it for a moment before letting out a small breath. “sort of.”
one of his eyebrows lifted slightly. “sort of?”
“i didn’t know it was a gift at first.”
the answer seemed to surprise him.
“for months after i was turned, people kept second-guessing themselves around me. they’d stop in the middle of conversations, change their minds halfway through decisions, or just stare at me like i’d interrupted a thought.” you brushed a loose pine needle from your sleeve before shaking your head. “i genuinely thought i was just awkward to be around.”
that earned an actual laugh from him. “you?”
“believe it or not, yeah. but then eventually i realized it kept happening too often to be coincidence. i started paying attention and figured out people hesitated whenever i focused on them.” your gaze drifted toward the trees again. “at first i thought i was making people nervous, then i thought maybe i was scaring them or something. i didn’t really understand what was happening.”
you paused, remembering how confusing those first months had been. “the truth ended up being much less dramatic . . ‘cause all i do is create a pause.”
he tilted his head slightly.
“sometimes it’s enough to stop a fight before it starts. sometimes it’s enough to make somebody reconsider something stupid. if i’m lucky, they redirect completely ‘n choose a different course of action.” you shrugged lightly. “if they’re determined enough though, they keep going anyway. i can’t control people. i can only give them a second to think.”
“honestly,” you continued, “i think we’re two of the luckier ones.”
that drew a look from him. “lucky how?”
“compared to other gifts.” you leaned back against the tree. the memory of old conversations surfaced almost immediately.
“alice told me once that her visions terrified her when she first woke up. she didn’t understand why she kept seeing things that hadn’t happened yet. she thought she was losing her mind for a while.” your expression softened slightly. “edward wasn’t much better. carlisle told me his gift overwhelmed him from the second he opened his eyes.”
rafe’s attention remained fixed on you, “he could hear everybody.”
“exactly,” you nodded. “every thought. i doubt he knew how to block any of it out. i can’t imagine what that would’ve felt like.” after a moment, you glanced toward him. “but anyway, that’s why i think getting control of a gift matters. when you’re a newborn, i don’t know . . jasper knows more about this than me, but you can kinda assume we don’t wake up immediately understanding how to fully control them until later.”
“carlisle said something about how one out of every fifty vampires develops something, or maybe less,” you recalled. “when it happens, the gift usually grows from whatever trait defined them most as a human. that’s probably why you can sense danger before it happens.”
his expression shifted. “because i was protective?”
“in a sense, but i think it was because you were always paying attention to what could go wrong.”
for a while, he looked away again, and you assumed the conversation was finished until he spoke. “what about you?”
you frowned slightly. “what about me?”
“like what was your most dominant human trait?”
the question caught you off guard more than it should have. for a second, you genuinely didn’t know how to word it.
your eyes wandered toward the treeline while you thought about it - about california, your family, just your human life in general. eventually, you laughed quietly to yourself.
“i think i was just curious.”
rafe glanced over. “curious?”
“about people.” you smiled faintly. “i don’t know. i paid attention to them, probably more than i should’ve. ‘cause most people move through life on instinct. they react before they think, or they decide things quickly, or they act on emotion.” your fingers traced absent patterns against the bark beside you. “i always found that interesting, i guess. i didn’t think it was a huge part of me but maybe it was bigger than i thought.”
you paused. “carlisle explained it better than i ever could. he told me i spent my whole human life noticing things other people missed. i thought my gift made people afraid of me, and he told me that wasn’t what was happening at all, but that my gift makes people consider. he said i’ve always given myself a moment to think before acting, and now i accidentally force everyone else to do the same. ‘n that, i guess, my gift gives people the same pause i’d always given myself.”
for a moment he stayed silent, which prompted you to also, but then rafe huffed a quiet laugh and shook his head. “that is the most carlisle explanation i’ve ever heard.”
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