Do you ever wonder what the characters do between books? Do you ever wonder what everybody really thought of each other? Do you ever wonder whatever happened to those random, one-dimensional characters thrown in?

What? You don't?

Oh, just shut up and read on.

--

Edward and Bella were arguing. Again.

Jacob stared into his latte and groaned, trying to block out the intermittent screeching taking place not five yards away from him. What the hell that woman was thinking putting them together? He thought, twitching slightly. It's like trying to get a hamster to swallow a cat. It just doesn't work.

Today, the spat was something about…

Hmm. That was odd. He couldn't even remember anymore.

"You are completely insufferable!" Bella shrieked, momentarily forgetting that she was supposed to be spineless.

"Yeah, well, at least I have discernible flaws, you Mary Sue," her alleged boyfriend retorted.

"You? Mr. Sparklepants calling me a Sue? Uh huh, that's not hypocritical at all."

"And who's the one always babbling about that, hmm?"

"That woman made me! I didn't want to! I would never have signed up for this thing if I'd known I had to pretend to fall in love with you!" Bella spat. Jacob rolled his eyes. And five guys were supposed to worship her?

"Bitch."

"Douchebag."

At this point, Jacob decided that stopping a headache before it came was more important than downing as much caffeine as humanely possible.

"Hey, Edward, Tanya's at the door!" he called.

"What? Tanya? Where!?" Edward asked, immediately forgetting Bella, and that if Tanya was there he would have known it. Works like a charm, every time…

With that problem settled, Jacob returned to his latte, mentally chuckling as Edward ran out the room, nearly tripping over some of the minor characters. But nobody cares about them, so let's move on.

Yes, this was life in the break room. Edward and Bella arguing, Jacob making Folgers Coffee Company extremely rich, and occasionally some random character the mindless fans don't care about doing something actually worth writing a book about. Migraines tended to be extremely common.

Yet they had no choice. The whole lot of them had signed up for a "vampire romance saga" back in '05, and three books later they were thoroughly sick of each other. Well, except Rosalie and Emmett, they were far from sick of each other.

And now, they were mostly sitting around waiting for the Breaking Dawn script.

Luckily, because this Authoress dislikes filler and does not feel like describing several days of tedious bickering, it was available today. Alice had gotten the shortest straw and was being forced to go pick up copies for all of them.

And since 'waiting for Alice' falls under the filler heading, let's just push this Fast Forward button here…

Ahem. At this point, Alice walked in with her apparently tiny arms full of scripts. She was grumbling mightily.

"If you're going to send one of your own into that pool of piranhas, then can't you at least send…I don't know, Emmett or something?" she muttered, dropping the books on the table.

"Because Emmett is a little busy right now!" Rosalie yelled from behind a locked door. Nobody knew exactly what they were doing back there, and nobody particularly wanted to, either. For the record, they were playing Mario Kart. Not that this was particularly evident from the periodic shaking of the walls.

"I thought Meyer said that you were super strong," Bella pointed out.

Alice rolled her eyes. "Meyer also said that vampires sparkle and that Zombie Mode is an acceptable reaction to a break up. Haven't you noticed by now that what Meyer says is rarely true?"

"Whatever. Let's just get this stupid thing over with."

An insane amount of time later (Rosalie and Emmett emerged a half hour after the script arrived)…

"Um…"

"Well…"

"That was really…"

There was a long pause. And then…

"WHAT?"

Jacob looked steamed. Literally. There was heat rising from the top of his head in a rather cartoonish fashion. "I imprint on a three minute old child? What the hell, man?"

"Hey, shut up. I had to deal with a killer pregnancy, two solid days of pure pain, and my own kid beating the shit out of me from inside out," Bella said, collapsing on the couch.

Edward shrugged. "Well, there was a lot of sex, so I'm reasonably happy."

Bella glared at him suspiciously. "Since when do you like sex with me?"

"I was referring to Tanya," he said matter-of-factly. Bella threw a pillow at him. Usually, this wouldn't have hurt at all, but this particular pillow for some reason turned into a ball of spiked concrete on its way to Edward's head. This seems odd, yes, but in fics by Dem this is a common occurrence. Nobody paid much attention to it, except Edward, whose head had recently absorbed the aforementioned ball of spiked concrete.

Renesmee, who was suddenly in the room because she was suddenly a character, sighed unhappily. "Renesmee, mother? You had to name me Renesmee? Did you ever consider that I just might eventually have a social life? Do you secretly hate me or something?"

"Well, you did kind of kill me…and anyway, it wasn't my idea."

"I hate you!" Renesmee sobbed and ran out of the room. A few of the minor characters that the fans don't care about stared after her.

"Why did she…?"

"According to Meyer, she grows abnormally fast, so by now she's an overly emotional teenager."

"What? That doesn't make any sense."

"Are you forgetting which book series we're in?"

Jacob was shaking. "You have GOT to be kidding me." He was twitching a bit. "First…I have to be in love with that shrew of a protagonist—"

"I feel your pain."

"Hey!"

"Then…I have to spend several months frolicking about in the woods in uber-depression. And now…my girlfriend is two months old. Leah going to kill me!" he moaned.

At which point Leah was suddenly there and looked about ready to kill Jacob.

"I thought you said that you were glad to be rid of her," she hissed.

"Y-yes, I was, but—" Jacob stammered.

"I thought you said that we would be the best couple in the book."

"We were, honey, but Meyer—"

"I thought you said that there was no way you were going to get stuck with somebody stupid."

"It's not my fault! It's not! Please don't hurt me!"

At which point Leah kicked him in a very…sensitive area and stalked off.

"Leah! Come on, baby, don't be like that!"

And thus, this was life in the Break Room for the next several weeks. Everybody was bitching about something, except for Esme and Phil who were actually spending most of their time snogging and talking about how great it was to be virtually excluded from the books.

Until, at one point, somebody finally pointed out that, while the book may have been made out of seven kinds of stupid, the series was in fact, over, and they could all go back to having nice, realistic lives.

A moment of silence.

Then…

"Don't even think about it," Stephenie Meyer announced, walking in and carrying a few bags of cash. "I'm not done riding this cash cow yet, so until my fans wake up and realize what they're reading, you're all stuck here until I say so."

In the midst of an outraged silence, Edward stood up solemnly. He turned to face Meyer with steel in his eyes. "Fuck this shit," he said clearly, and walked briskly past her out the door.

Meyer blinked. "Edward, wait! Come back! I'm planning on rewriting the books from your point of view, it'll make me millions! I need you!"

Heartened by his display of Not Taking Any Bullshit, the other characters slowly filed out of the room as well, eventually leaving only one left.

Leah lounged lazily on the futon, filing her nails. She glanced up. "Hmm?"

"Leah? How about you? I'm sure I could at least get a couple thousand out of you."

The girl grinned slowly, exposing surprisingly sharp, pointy teeth. "Oh, hello Mrs. Meyer. It's a good thing you're here, 'cause I've been meaning to talk to you about this whole 'imprinting' subplot you had in your last book…"

FIN