Garden of Veils

Gray; Thursday, May 17th, 2007

Author's notes:

~This will be an m/m story between Christian Grey and Edward Cullen. I'm quite aware of how straight they both typically are, but that won't change my writing this work. I just wanted to play around with the idea of their two characters being together. ;)

~ Some liberties have (obviously) been taken with canonical events and characters from both series, the largest of which is the timeline. The story takes place 2007--the Cullen children are pretending to be college students, rather than high school students. This makes Grey almost 24 at the story's start, which he'll be for the rest of the book. Edward is (pretending to be) almost 19. Their birth years and backstories are left intact.

~ Story will be told first-person, through Edward's perspective exclusively.

~ Neither Bella nor Ana will be appearing in this work.

Thank you for stopping by! Enjoy!

*~*~*

"Another human was found dead on the roadside," said Emmett, pulling off his rain-soaked jacket as the front door fell shut. He had just returned from eavesdropping on a gathering of ambulances and police cars a mile away from our home.

Perched beside a large window, I pretended to keep looking out it, even though my stomach felt like it'd been twisted into thick knots. I didn't need to turn around to know my entire family had their eyes on me. I didn't even need to hear their thoughts to know what they were thinking.

"You didn't do it, right Edward?" Emmet's words and mental voice were synchronised.

"Would I hide it if I did?" I hissed, sounding less controlled than I'd have liked. I fixed my gaze on my brother, who looked a little surprised.

"Whoa, calm down!" said Emmett, holding his hands up saintly. "I was just asking to help clear the air a bit."

Alice moved from the staircase towards me, likely seeing a future in which I stood up and left, which was exactly what I'd intended to do. Her dainty hand clasped my shoulder and squeezed once.

"It's alright--we just have to make sure of things. The same way we occasionally have to check Jasper, you know?"

Jasper Hale. I didn't want to hear that name right then. It was because I had been asked to monitor Jasper's thirst, that my own was teetering out of control. For months, I've endured the scents, the alluded tastes, the dreams of soft, warm flesh tearing beneath my teeth with a snap. In that time, I felt oddly disembodied. As if I wasn't living my own life.

And recently...I'd come so close.

There had been a girl, standing on a desolate road with her thumb in the air and a dirty old sign. Her scent caught a rising air current just as I had made a turn along the curve...

And there had almost not been a girl.

I'd pressed the gas, hard, and tore down the road, leaving a burst of exhaust fumes and the smell of burning rubber behind. Most importantly, leaving her behind.

I'd driven past the Cullen home and kept on going, out to the nearest of our hunting trails. I didn't return until my body felt like lead with the weight of bear and deer blood. I began leaving on my own every so often since, returning with the scent of death clinging to my clothes. I was more reclusive than usual. Faster to irritate. So I kept to himself, even avoiding Alice when she offered to spend time with me.

Coincidently, it was around that time dead human bodies began turning up in Forks; bodies with traces of vampire venom inside. My family was suspicious of Jasper at first, but it wasn't a few minutes before Rosalie pointed out that he hadn't been the one going off on his own lately. And now, this.