For You ↠ Alice Cullen ✓

06 ; mary and theodore

[ so sorry for the long, long wait on this story - thanks for 4.8k followers ]

"Just how smart are you?"

Tate glanced upwards at Emmett Cullen, taking in the innocence in the male's face. He was generally curious, though Tate felt like a science experiment underneath his gaze.

"I'm-"

"Emmett," Alice chided, walking into the room. "Leave us alone. We're doing a school project."

Emmett frowned slightly, but otherwise left the living room to go wonder around his house. Which, was fairly large in Tate's opinion. Despite only seeing the living room, Tate could tell that the house was richly decorated.

Alice's tiny dancer body slid beside his behind the coffee table they were working on, her dainty hand placing a glass of water in between their papers on the table. Her knee gently ghosting alongside Tate's larger thigh. Tate pretended that he didn't notice that Alice had sat closer to him than what society would deem appropriate for just acquaintances.

"Theodore?"

Surprised by Alice's inquisitive voice, Tate glanced upwards from the second question on his page and caught her eyes. Following Alice's line of sight, he noticed that the girl was focusing her attention on the space where he'd placed his name.

"My full name is Theodore," Tate replied, a gentle blush forming on his cheeks. He hated talking about his full name. Theodore sounded like a name that belonged to someone twice his age.

Humming softly, Alice lifted her eyes from where they had been resting on Tate's pink cheeks, and looked into his sapphire eyes. "How come you go by Tate and not something more common like Theo?"

"Theo is my dad," Tate replied, drawing his lanky legs up to his chest and wrapping a loose arm around them. His other arm resting on the table as his hand wrote down the answer to the third question on his paper. "My mom named me after my father. She was the one who came up with the nickname Tate, because she said it was too confusing calling me by her husbands name."

Again, Alice just hummed in reply. Almost cautiously, she stated, "My first name is actually Mary,"

This startled Tate slightly, because imagining Alice with a name other than 'Alice' seemed wrong. Mary didn't really fit the petite brunette, just like Theodore really didn't fit Tate either.

"Mary is a good name," Tate said, not knowing what else to say. "But I like Alice better. Fits you more."

In reply, Alice just gave Tate a smile before writing on the paper in front of herself. They both worked in relative silence, only mumbling to each other when they had a doubt about what the question was asking.

Halfway through the sixth question that asked for Tate to compared and contrast two novels, an ache formed above Tate's right eyebrow. Wincing slightly at the incoming migraine, he placed his pencil down in order to rub at the spot.

"Are you alright?" Alice asked, wind chime toned voice floating in the air.

"Yeah, just a migraine," Tate said shortly, biting the inside of his cheek with his teeth. The migraine was lessoning slightly, fading to a dull thump. "I get them sometimes."

"Is it because of the-"

"Yeah," Tate replied shortly, not wanting to hear Alice say the name of what was actually causing him to be in pain. "The-uh- it stresses out my brain. Normally I can go a whole day without having a migraine but working and thinking hard only accelerates the problem."

"Should we take a break?" Was Alice's next question.

"Maybe," Tate conceded, cheeks slightly flaming with another round of sheepishness. He turned to lean against the couch that was at their backs when he caught his reflection in the water glass nearby. "Can I have a drink of that?"