Archive of Our Own

He can barely see over the boxes in his arms as he ascends the stairs in the Swan house. Somehow, Isabella’s managed to bring back twice as much shit as she took to her dorm in the fall, even though the dorm room was half the size of her bedroom at home and she shared it with her friend Angela. Paul doesn’t mind carrying it all—in fact he likes doing this sort of thing for her—but the odd ways in which his imprint turns out to be a stereotypical girl makes him shake his head sometimes.

“Where the hell is Jacob? I thought you said he was going to be down here.” He misses his brothers, even though he doesn’t like to say so.

“He met some girl at the Makah reservation and I think they spent the night together.” She doesn’t bother hiding the delight she feels with this development.

As he sets the last pile of boxes down in the corner of her bedroom, accidentally closing the door with the corner of the biggest box, she looks around with a frown. “This is a ton of stuff. I don’t know what I’m going to do in the fall.”

He shrugs. “Truck it all back up to Seattle. I’ll help.”

She smiles as she crosses the room and wraps her arms around his waist. He sighs in relief as he rubs her sides. Imprinting’s the best thing that ever happened to him, though he’d rather die than admit it to anyone, but the overwhelming contentment that accompanies any physical contact (everything’s-right-and-good-now, the wolf growls) might be the most awesome part of it. I love you, he thinks, tracing the outlines of her ribs through her shirt, but he doesn’t bother trying to say it. He already knows the imprint won’t let him. It’s been years and she still can’t hear it. If that fucking leech hadn’t—but if he hadn’t, they wouldn’t be here now, so it’s no use wanting to rip his marble head off his shoulders. (He can’t help but think, though, that if it had been Jacob who imprinted on her, she’d be doing a hell of a lot better by this point. Better enough that Jacob would be able to tell her he loved her, with words, and not just with everything he did, like Paul does now.)

“I know you’ll help.” She kisses his chest. It sends a jolt of pure happiness straight through him. “You always help. But I was thinking… maybe there’s another option?”

“Like what?” he asks blankly. There’s no way in hell she’s leaving any of her things behind. He knows his Isabella, and once something is hers she’ll find a use for it, whether or not it fits. It’s a good thing she’s also neurotically careful about what she decides to make her own. Now.

“Like finding a place for it up there, near U-Dub.” She tilts her head back to smile at him.

“Renting a storage unit isn’t a bad idea.” He considers it, absentmindedly running his hands up and down her back. (He always has to touch, as much as possible, as much as she’ll let him, and she always lets him.) “Then we wouldn’t have to make two trips or ask my mom to bring stuff up when she visits.”

Isabella’s laughing at him, but she looks a little nervous too. In fact—he’s just now noticing—she feels nervous, way more than she’s showing on her face. “I didn’t mean a storage unit.”

“Well, what then? Did you and Angela talk about getting an apartment again?”

The nervousness gnaws through her and into him. He wants to be pissed about it but fights down the anger as she bites her lip, then replies. “We talked about it. I told her I didn’t want to, though, because…”

He’s starting to get scared—what the hell could she be so agitated about telling him when she tells him everything, it’s got to be something bad—so he snaps out, “Isabella, just tell me whatever the fuck you want to get off your chest.”

She rolls her eyes but holds him more tightly. “Fine. Don’t freak out. I just, um, I just wanted to know if you wanted to…” She presses her face against his chest and mumbles into his shirt, so quietly and quickly he can’t catch a word even with the werewolf ears.

The fear vanishes with the reassurance her embrace provides. Goddamn, she’s so fucking cute. “Babe, I can’t tell you whether or not I want to if I don’t hear the question.”

She pulls her head away to half-scowl at him, face flushed. “I said, whatdoyouthinkaboutmovingintogether?”

Paul can’t move. Every atom in his body has paused its activity as his brain struggles to catch up with reality, to convince his ears that, yes, they did actually hear his Isabella ask him to live with her. Each step in their relationship has been due to him pushing her; urging (except for the first day, when he begged without knowing why), and then waiting for her to adjust to the notion, every time. But here he is, standing in Chief Swan’s house, and the girl who lets him love her (even though he can’t say so out loud) just asked if he would move into their own place with her. Like she really wants to be with him.

“You really want to be with me.” He hears the words’ echoes before he knows he said them out loud.

The half-scowl moves into a frown. “Of course I do. I love you, Paul.” She slides her arms around his neck, standing on tiptoe, and keeps explaining herself. “I was just thinking… I hate when you have to leave. I hate it so much. And if you and I live together, then even if I only get to see you a few more minutes a day, that’s still a few more minutes than I would’ve had otherwise, and that sounds so good, plus we’ll get to sleep together way more, actually sleep, in the same bed, and it would be big enough, which sounds even better, and we can use our student loans to put down the deposit when fall term starts… Say something. You’re so quiet. If you don’t want to yet, it’s okay, I promise. My feelings won’t be hurt, I mean, we have forever...”

He still can’t move. And then he realizes he stopped breathing and tries to start up again, but it turns into a gasp. And another. And another after that. Any second now, he’s going to start crying and then he’ll have to find a way to kill himself, so instead he sort of collapses on the bed and pulls her with him, burying his face in her neck.

She’s worried, not able to figure out what’s going on, which is unusual but then again he can’t imagine what she’s feeling from him so it’s no surprise. “Hey, Paul. Hey,” she murmurs, stroking his hair as she kisses his head. “It’s okay.” One little hand works its way under his shirt to rest against his back. (They both know by now that skin-to-skin contact is the easiest way to settle themselves.) “You’re all right.”

“I want to,” he tells her collarbone.

“You want to move in together?” He makes a wordless noise of assent. She kisses his head again and wraps her legs around his waist. “That’s a good thing, right?”

He nods, trying to steady himself and not really succeeding, so he slides his hands under her shirt, splaying them across her back.

“Then what’s wrong?”

He shrugs. Her heartbeat pounding against his chest restores his equilibrium enough to allow him to raise his head and look down at her face. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

The concern in her expression doesn’t fade. “You weren’t fine a second ago. Tell me what happened?”

Paul kisses the tip of her nose, trying to find the right words to explain, but he can’t, so instead he just tells her what caused it. “You asked me.”

She’s silent, thinking it over while her eyes search his face. Finally, she lays one hand against his cheek. “I love you. I wanted to ask you two quarters ago, but I wasn’t sure if it would be selfish or not since it would mean more money for housing. I’m sorry I suck at this so bad. I wish I was better at it.”

He knows her ineptitude at relationships, particularly their relationship, is a near-constant source of guilt for her. “You don’t suck at a lot of it.” The imprint gives him the right words. “You make me really happy.” Fuck. His voice went shaky like a girl’s on “really.” Fucking imprinting, making him say shit like that out loud.

It made her face light up in a smile, though, so it’s worth it. “I’m glad. You make me so happy. I love you.” She pulls him down to kiss his chin as he smiles.

“I love you, too.”

They stare at each other.

After a moment, she swallows so loudly that he’d be able to hear it even if he weren’t a mutant. “Say that again.”

Paul slowly repeats himself. “I love you, too.” The words taste sweet on his tongue.

She starts to cry. No sobs, but a steady trickle of tears spilling from the corners of her eyes while she beams up at him. “Paul.”

He can’t stop smiling until she presses her lips to his, and then all his attention goes to getting her naked. She laughs when his fingers start working on her shirt, but she lets him unbutton it while she kicks off her jeans. She tugs off his shirt, but when he tries to pull off her underwear she pushes his hand away and rolls with him so that she’s on top, straddling his stomach while he looks up at her.

“Do you know what this means?” she demands, grinning down at him.

She’s so gorgeous, the perfect girl, the sum of all his fantasies and then some. It’s hard to look away from her bare skin and blue bra and panties set long enough to ask, “What?”

“I’m getting better!” She leans forward to lick his ear, and then whisper into it while he clutches at her shoulders, “Because of you. I know you wonder if I’d be better off without you sometimes.”

How the fuck did she know that? But he already knows the answer. She knows him, as well as he knows her, as well as he knows the exact way her breath will catch when he runs his tongue along her jaw. He does it, and smiles at her response. Just that way.

“But,” she continues, in between kisses on his neck that make his eyes want to roll back in his head, “You’re wrong. If it weren’t—for you—I’d be—so much worse off now—if I wasn’t dead…” She presses herself to him, working her way down to his chest, but pauses to lift her head and look him in the eye. “You’re everything I want, Paul. You’re the best thing.”

When he looks at her, she’s glowing like she did the day he imprinted. He’s never been able to figure out whether she actually was shining, and he can’t tell now either, but it looks like she’s lit from within, illumination in every pore. Perfect so right all mine all mine all mine mine mine, the wolf growls with fierce satisfaction, and he can’t help but agree as he runs his hands up her sides, then down again to rest on her hips. He clenches his teeth together to keep the words inside—it’s embarrassing as hell when he can’t keep them quiet and blurts them out.

But then she kisses down his stomach and draws off his shorts, nipping at the tops of his thighs before she whispers, “Mine,” and licks his erection, bottom to top and back down again, and he forgets to stay silent. A string of unintelligible words flies out of his mouth as she fastens her lips around him and flicks a doe-eyed look up from beneath her lashes, unmoving except for her tongue. That tongue is going to make him lose his mind. It traces the underside of his cock, swirls around the tip, and reduces him to incoherent pleading and cursing within minutes, especially when she finally begins to slide up and down. She’s gotten way more skilled at this since the first time she attempted it, but the truth of the matter is it’s always been unbelievably good because it’s Isabella’s mouth. She’s moaning against him and the vibrations feel like they hit the base of his skull. If she keeps this up, he’ll come first and he doesn’t want that, so he gently tugs her hair till she releases him.

“Why not?” she pouts.

He pulls her up until he can bite the protruding lower lip. “Wanna be inside you.” His fingers work the hooks on her bra, and then draw off her underwear.

She trails her fingers up and down his stomach, then over his length. “It’s not like you can’t get it up again in ten minutes flat.”

He snorts. “Yeah, but I don’t want to wait.” He sits up on the edge of the bed and spins her so that she’s sitting on his lap, facing away. While his mouth nips and tugs at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, he cups her breasts in both hands. “So soft.”

Isabella leans her head back against his shoulder, moaning as she wraps her arms around his neck behind her. When he dips one hand between her legs, she whimpers and twists to bite his earlobe. “You’re mean.”

“Just making sure you’re ready.” She’s so wet, always ready; it’s one of the best things about what they have together. He slides a finger inside her. She jerks against his hand, and he tells her, “Look. Isabella, look.”

She can barely make her eyelids flutter open, but when she does she groans, because there they are, reflected in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. When Paul works his thumb around her clit, her thighs clamp on his hand as she digs her nails into his shoulders. Her eyes meet his in their reflection. “Paul, I’m gonna—oh God—”

He wraps the arm not between her legs around her waist. “Go ahead. I’ve got you.” Almost before he finishes speaking, she cries out and starts shaking uncontrollably as she comes. He can’t look away, can’t believe how amazing she is, and can’t understand how he got to be the lucky bastard who cradles her in his arms when she does this. “You’re so goddamn beautiful.”

“Now, now, need you now,” she mumbles, pushing his hand away and turning to straddle him. “God, Paul, please.”

He’s so hard his cock literally aches when he lowers her down on it. She sobs a little in the back of her throat and drops her head to his shoulder.

“I love you,” he tells her, and shivers with fresh shock at the ease with which he can do so.

Her lips curve against his skin as she moves up and down. “I love you—too—” She’s getting close again. He can feel it in the tiny pants of breath and the clenching of her pussy and most of all through the rising excitement in the empathy that flows between them, each one’s arousal reflected back and amplified by the other’s until it reaches a crescendo far more quickly than it would without the imprint. When he moves his hand between them, pressing against the right spot, she sinks her teeth into his shoulder and convulses.

Seeing it in the mirror and feeling it through their bond and where they’re joined together combines to send him over the edge too. He comes so hard it leaves him shaking, which is some pussified shit but he can’t bring himself to care too much. Not with Isabella soft and loose-limbed in his embrace, planting tiny kisses across his chest as her legs cross behind him and her hands rub soothing circles on his back.

“My Paul,” she whispers contentedly.

“All yours,” he agrees. It’s the fact that governs his existence.

When he pulls her back onto the bed and lies down with her, she burrows into his arms. “I’m all yours, too.”

“I know,” he replies, and for the first time, he really believes it.