Hi! If you're interested, I also have an A/M/C/OC fic called "Alethiology in Volterra." Please give it a read when you have time. Let me know what you think after! Reveri x

Part Two

The following day, Aro introduced the new tenant to his partners in the living room. Bella's things were in two duffel bags on the floor next to her feet and she had a potted cactus in one hand.

To say they were delighted to meet her was utter bullcrap. Bella was ashamed to think she once considered herself aloof. Or maybe she was, and her new housemates were just on a completely other level of unsociable.

The brown-haired one, Marcus, took one passing look at her and, well, never again. As far as Bella was concerned, Marcus was a ghost, an apparition of a man, always brooding and haunting the air of the apartment wherever he could be found. Always lost in the pages of a book.

The other one—Caius, with silver-blond hair and sharp eyes—was different. He'd snarled at her. Snarled!

Who even did that anymore?

"Perhaps I should have informed them I was renting out the room." Aro muttered, staring thoughtfully at the empty spot his partners had angrily marched off from.

"You think?" Bella asked dryly.

»»—- ❈ —-««

A week later, Alice and Bella walked side by side from the graduate school building to the campus courtyard. Since Bella had moved into the boarding house, Alice had been bubbling with questions about her new housemates.

"So? Aren't you glad I told you about the place? I didn't exactly know your type—" Her grin was mischievous. "—but I'm guessing you like?"

Bella rolled her eyes but laughed when Alice started wiggling her brows.

"It's not as bad as Aro made it out to be," she started to say. "He and Marcus are okay. Mostly. Aro's just real picky with food. Marcus doesn't talk much… at all. Caius is the one that's really just," she tried to think of a word that described the eternally-scowling man. "Bad," she finished lamely.

"Try terrible. He doesn't like me either." Alice giggled. "Dunno how Carlisle put up with him."

Bella mm-hmmed. "Let me tell you how it went when they found out I was majoring Philo."

The four of them were having dinner that night.

"What do you do for a living, Miss Swan?" Aro had asked as she washed her dishes.

"Hmm? Oh, I'm a singer," she said off-handedly, not missing the scoffing sound that no doubt came from Caius. "I mean, I'm not good enough to be a regular. But I sing and host for lavish couples' nights and all that. If I need more funds, I tutor some students at uni."

"Really," Aro's tone was curious. "I imagine that would pay enough."

"With tuition fees increasing each year, and funding my own thesis, then having to send a bit of money back home…" She sighed as she put her plates away. "Don't even get me started on the budget cuts after the new dean was appointed. We used to have a dedicated library area where we could read in peace, but now we can't even use the air conditioning and we have to outbid the Finance majors if we want to use any of the study halls. So now I have to pay for that, too."

Bella paused. That was actually how she'd met Alice — the five-foot-two pixie-haired Finance student was more ruthless than she looked, and it took her completely off-guard when their program demanded use of Bella's beloved — and hers no longer — study room.

"Ah," Marcus intoned, surprising her that he was even talking. "You're from that department."

"Oh yes. You'd know wouldn't you." Bella narrowed her eyes at him. "You sit right next to me in class. Not that you've ever noticed, by the way."

Aro looked positively scandalized. "Marcus! You didn't tell me."

"About sharing classes with the new tenant?" he snorted. Bella found she really, really liked the way Marcus sounded. "I hardly knew. And it sounds like dreadful news to me."

"No," Aro pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "About the department."

"What would I have said," Marcus drawled, picking up a book (a required reading for one of their classes) stowed next to his empty plate and left the dining area before promptly disappearing into their bedroom. Aro followed right after him, and arguing voices carried through the walls.

She sighed. Bickering. Again.

"Condolences," Caius' baritone voice drifted from the couch. "on the rest of your inevitably impoverished life."

"Well," Bella laughed under her breath. "I certainly haven't heard it phrased like that before."

"Clearly you do not belong to the correct crowd."

For a moment, she considered whether he meant she was poor or dumb. Either way, he was a jerk. "You realize," she deadpanned. "that Marcus is studying the same major as me, right?"

"So? You won't have the same prospects in two years. Marcus is at the top of his class and can afford to pay his own rent," Caius smirked at her. "Let's not forget connections. How many of your lovers are millionaires?"

Bella smiled bitterly at him and retreated to her room.

"That's absolutely—" Alice was wheezing with laughter by the time they reached the gates. "—horrible!"

"And yet here you laugh."

"I mean, it's still loads better than sleeping in the same space as Jessica Stanley," her companion threw a pointed glance and she nodded resolutely in response. "Remember The Mike Newton Incident? They had to have burnt the carpets after that. If not, I'm calling pest control."

"For the love of god, Alice, don't remind me."

"And maybe you can learn a thing or two from them," Alice winked. "Aro's plenty open-minded and approachable. Ask him for advice. I'm sure he has the, ah, experience."

Bella pretended to vomit before she went on her merry way.

»»—- ❈ —-««

Work was okay, and Bella had enough time to drop by the library to borrow a selection of Nietzsche's works. Although, she did forget to bring her bookbag, so she had to carry the thick volumes to her chest the entire trip home. When she got to the boarding house, she struggled with her keys and nearly dropped her things until arms shot out from nowhere and held the doors open for her.

"I'll hold the elevator, too," the stranger said.

"Thanks," she said appreciatively. Blowing her fringes away from her eyes to get a proper look at the person who had helped her, "Don't know how I would have managed without you, Mr…?"

"Psh. No need to be so formal. I'm Demetri. I live on the second floor with Heidi. That's Heidi." The man pointed to her left and Bella startled to find a blonde next to her. The blonde didn't look as kind as Demetri (she looked at Bella like a lint on the plush cashmere she wore) but Bella offered a smile just the same. "It's weird that I'm seeing you just now, though. I think Aro mentioned a new tenant weeks ago."

They stepped into the elevator. "I leave early and get back late. Working grad student," she explained to him. "My name's Bella."

"Yeah, we figured." The Philo major could literally feel Heidi's eyes assessing her net worth. "How are you liking it here so far?"

"Well," she thought about it for a second. "The apartment's lovely."

That had them snickering. "Yeah. It really is." Demetri waved a hand when they stepped out to the second floor. "Nice meeting you, Bella."

"Yeah, see you. Thanks again."

With great difficulty, she made it to her apartment door and managed to use her keycard without dropping anything. Her arms felt like spaghetti afterward (and by the time she placed the books down onto the apartment floor, she'd literally been carrying around the weight of Nietzsche's words through the night).

As she caught her breath next to the door, heaving sounds seeped into her senses. Brows furrowed, she peered down the hallway and found light at the end of the hall. The bathroom's door was open, and she rose from her place to follow the mumbling voice and heaving sounds. What greeted her was no pretty sight.

Bella recognized a panic attack when she saw one. Marcus was sitting on the bathroom floor, leaning most of his weight against the tub as he dryheaved. He wasn't entirely nude—there was a towel wrapped around his lower half—but the way his hands were clutched on the porcelain tub, frozen, and his wavy hair clung to the sides of his face in sweaty disarray as he racked violent breaths…

"Marcus," she called to him softly, slowly walking into the bath so as not to alarm him. She rummaged through her brain to find the article she'd read once about situations like these. Crouched on the cold tiles next to him, she coached Marcus through proper breathing exercises, making sure he held her gaze as he copied her deep breaths, held it for some seconds, and out again. And again and again, until he was no longer hyperventilating.

She asked him quietly when he struggled a little less, "Do you want me to call Aro?"

"Out," Marcus took another shuddering breath. "Board meeting."

"At so late in the night?" Bella shook her head and offered, "I'll call Caius then. Can you wait here?"

"Not. Here—" Marcus clenched his jaw and exhaled deeply through his nose. "Work."

"Oh," she replied, feeling dumb. That explained the lack of parked Bentleys outside. "What can I do?"

Marcus shrugged and focused on his breathing. Bella kept coaching him through it.

Bella decided to distract him. She could do that. "I'll tell you a story then. Umm… how about how I managed to get these scars on my left knee?"

She sat fully on the floor beside him now, not really minding the wetness seeping into her skirt as she bent a leg to show him her pitiful knee. She smiled when his attention shifted to peer at it. "Do you want to hear it?"

Marcus shrugged again.

"Okay, so, I was never blessed with limb-eye coordination," she began with a nervous laugh as she traced the thickened white bands on the skin of her joint. "And every year of high school my dad would come to school to warn my P.E. teacher about it. But come senior year, there was this substitute that didn't believe me."

His eyes were locked on her scars. "And?"

"She told me to put my book down, get down from the bleachers, and play volleyball."

"Volleyball." Marcus said flatly. "Those scars are too thick to be from volleyball."

"I'm not done yet," she told him. "So I play volleyball, right, because I don't want to fail the class. I'm trying hard not to get in the way. I was managing fine until the varsity team walked in." A little curve teased at the edge of his lip. "When they started playing on the court right next to ours, I automatically went from sidestepping just one ball, to a lot of stray varsity-level balls and my teammates. The types that go splat when they hit the floor." She made a show of slapping her hands together sideways. "Splat! Like that."

Marcus' mouth was twitching. "Mm-hmm."

"Inevitably, one of the girls bump into me, and of course the next second all of us are falling like dominoes. I'm pushing myself up by the bleacher railings, feeling lucky to get away with just a scrape. That's when one of those splat-type serves hit the back of left leg." She sighed woefully. "I fell. My knee hit the bleachers."

Marcus shuddered. "Ouch."

"Ouch indeed." Bella nodded. "Now you know why I'm stuck with books."

Bella figured that Marcus was breathing normally again and his gaze wasn't as distraught anymore. He looked calm. She peered at him and asked carefully, "Are you okay now?"

She followed his gaze when he smirked and reached out a hand to point at her right knee instead. "But this one looks different."

"Oh, that." She bent her opposite leg, showing him her right knee with the callous of a curve-shaped scar on it. "That one's from prom night…"

"Prom night," he repeated disbelievingly, tracing the thick scar with the tip of his nail. "How could prom possibly give you that?"

"Well that's—" Bella started to say when she heard the apartment door open. She pushed herself off from the tiled flooring and called out, "Aro? Is that you?"

"Next time," Marcus said, grabbing her wrist before she went. "Next time you'll tell me."

She grinned at him, "I'll think about it."

»»—- ❈ —-««

The day after was a Saturday, and Bella was up at six-thirty because of a strong, brewed scent wafting from the dining area.

She found Caius at the kitchen counter making his coffee. The good kind. The kind he kept in the glossy, airtight metal canister. The kind she definitely couldn't afford.

"If you could keep your wretched things in your own space," Caius glared at her when she started to make pancakes next to him. "That would be great."

"Huh?" He stared her before gesturing to the heap of thick books scattered on the floor next to the entryway. "Ah. Sorry. Forgot."

Marcus walked into the dining area. Sans shirt. "It's too early for this shit. Give me coffee."

"You're not allowed to drink coffee," Caius reminded him with a glare.

Marcus sighed before turning to Bella. "Give me pancakes."

"Um. Sure," she added one more cup of flour to the batter and whisked.

A beat of quiet. "Have you finished the assigned readings yet?"

Was Marcus speaking to her? At six in the morning? Bella made a face. "No, I just borrowed them from the library last night. Didn't get to read any of it yet."

"Just borrow mine next time," he said casually. "When you're done tell me what you think."

Bella froze, and she was sure Caius nearly dropped his delicious-smelling, dark, brewed, expensive coffee. She was comforted to know that this scene was, indeed peculiar, and she hadn't been the only one possibly transported to an alternate dimension.

Marcus was making conversation. This guy hadn't even said a word to her in the two years she sat next to him in class.

Marcus looked up from the table when he noticed that both of them were gaping at him. "What?"

With a scowl, Caius narrowed his eyes at her. "What did you do?"

She schooled her expression before turning back to the stove. "Pancakes."

»»—- ❈ —-««

She's putting on her work heels when Aro meets her at the doorway. "You have work?"

"Yup. Saturday is couples' night out. Big tipsies."

"I see. I wanted to thank you for taking care of Marcus last night," he told her. "And the housework. And the cooking. Everything, really."

"What else are roommates for?" Bella beamed at him before mellowing her tone. "Maybe you could keep some of his meds at the coffee table. For easy access."

"Oh. Yes, I'll do that."

"Mm. Kay then." She slung her workbag over a shoulder and turned to the door, only to stop when Aro cleared his throat.

"He doesn't have them often," Aro said, and she faced him again. "Only when we're gone for too long."

"You don't have to tell me."

Aro shook his head. "He had someone before us, but she's gone now. He doesn't trust easily. He dissociates. It's bad when his thoughts get the better of him and he doesn't have a book to anchor him down."

"Okay," she responded slowly. "Well, he has you and Caius."

"And you." Aro had a strange look in his eyes when he stared at her. She nodded once. And her too. "I don't know what happened between you two last night, but Marcus seems… comfortable. So I'd like it if you stayed. Whatever you saw last night, don't hold it against him. He's… important."

To me was left unsaid.

"Aro, the only time you'll manage to kick me out is when I'm off to get married." Bella pulled the door open and snickered. "That'll be years and years from now. See ya."

»»—- ❈ —-««

Work is horrible and life is horrible and waitresses need to be paid more.

Why did she have to fill in for Emily that day?

»»—- ❈ —-««

She'd been at the apartment for exactly thirty days when Caius finally succeeded in pissing her off. He was so naturally unpleasant, and despite being attractive (seriously, what was going on in the boarding house water system? All the tenants looked like models), many of his remarks were really truly unacceptable for public speech. No matter how well he coated them in euphemistic eloquence.

She shuddered to think of what field the man worked in.

Usually, she settled for letting his words pass through one ear and out the other. And by now, she was completely used his jibes at her program. You know, being a philosophy major.

And then he caught her completely off-guard one night when she had just gotten off a phone call with her father.

"Yeah, dad… Don't worry about it." She was drying her hair in bathroom with the door open. "I can cut a few bus rides this week. And there's always some kids who need help with math. How much will you need?" She turned off the hairdryer and hooked it back on the shelf. Switching her phone off loudspeaker and holding it to her ear, "Alright. I'll wire it to you Monday. Love you dad."

She hadn't noticed Caius leaning outside the doorframe until he spoke.

"I feel sorry for you."

She rolled her eyes and headed for her room, intent on going to bed. "Good night, Caius."

"Does your father know you're close to whoring yourself just so he can spend your money on god knows what?"

She turned on her heel sharply. "What did you just say?"

Her unusually shrill tone had Aro and Marcus poking their heads out of their quarters.

"Your manager dropped by when you were in there," Caius continued haughtily. "Said to tell you that they're very, truly sorry about the creep that groped you at work earlier this week and he's rightfully where he belongs. Whatever that means." He shrugged. "And that you should answer her calls," he added. "So. Unless you have the funds to quit hosting at that bar, which you don't, I assume you understand why I used the word," he paused. "whoring."

She stepped back and said the only thing she could to the complete assholery he'd achieved with dry amazement. "Wow."

"Caius," Aro began in a warning tone as he approached them in the hallway.

"No," she pointed an index finger at Aro to stop him from taking one more step. "I'm giving him a reaction this time."

Caius raised a sculpted brow at her.

"You can go ahead and mock my wallet, and my program, and the fact that I can't afford your dumb, imported, a-cat-shit-this-out coffee," she laughed hollowly. "But if you're doing this to drive me out, you're going to have to do way better than, ah, what's the word again, whoring, and you're going to have to drag me out of this place kicking and screaming by the skin of your teeth."

She held a hand up when Marcus tried to intervene.

"And you don't have to feel sorry for me at all. Because I can tolerate being groped at work, and not taking the bus so I can send more money home for my mom's cancer treatment, and then come home to deal with an asshole like you. Child's play, really."

Bella let the air hang between them for a minute. When he opened his mouth, possibly to act contrite, she patted his shoulder twice and said, "Good talk. Tomorrow's breakfast is corned beef. The kind that you said that was disgusting. The cheap kind." Right before going into her room and slamming the door shut behind her.

"You're such a fucking asshole," she heard Marcus say.

Bella went to bed. Thinking of the ways she could mess with the coffee-obsessed sociopath, Bella had never slept so blissfully her whole life.

»»—- ❈ —-««

"I'm not asking for much," Aro huffed. "Just that you don't make it harder than it already is. And what exactly about her do you disapprove of?"

Caius ignored him.

"Surely it's not her looks."

"It's not her intellect, is it?" Marcus yawned from his place on the bed as he turned another page. "I feel obligated to point out she is working two jobs and is second to me in class."

Aro chuckled, pulling the comforter over them. "I didn't know we were looking for a fourth?"

"Nobody is looking for nothing," Caius snapped and switched the lights off.

»»—- ❈ —-««

The next two months were decidedly easier. Bella pretended Caius didn't exist and Caius pretended he wasn't an asshole. Bella went to her classes, worked odd shifts, tutored undergrads, and even let Alice pull her into spontaneous shopping trips. The main difference now was that she had a kitchen to cook meals for four and a bathtub to soak in on Sunday nights.

But then for some unfathomable reason, Bella's life started going in a direction she never predicted it to.

It started when one of the senior professors called her over to the faculty room. Expecting a full reprimand because of her most recent submission to the department journal — "why Nietzsche is undeserving of the feminist narrative" — she gaped dumbly at him when she was offered a TA position instead.

Overseeing undergrad exams, grading term papers, Amun told her. Encoding grades. Basic stuff.

She had to ask. "Will I get paid?"

Amun squinted at her. Silence hung between them for a few seconds before a nearly toothless grin broke out on the old man's face. With crinkly eyes and a teasing demeanor reserved only for his best students, Amun grumbled, "State your price, she-demon."

She resigned from hosting that very night. Sometimes, though, Bella still took singing gigs at fancy restaurants and weddings. An extra $600 in her pocket never hurt.

And then two weeks after that incident, Bella had just gotten through the foyer of the boarding house when Charlie called, saying a foundation reached out to him and offered a fund to cover Renee's chemotherapy, along with five other recipients in Forks.

She dropped to her knees and wept.

In the succeeding weeks, she was so happy—the happiest she'd been in five years—that her housemates were treated to an assortment of homecooked meals and red wine. Even Caius. (Because Bella figured it wasn't his fault that he came home to an unwelcome stranger in his house one day, one that couldn't even pay rent. Even she'd be upset at that. So. Caius was just Caius.)

But when she arrived at a departmental lecture one night and heard Dean Denali give a big speech, announcing the new wing for the liberal arts programs, a sinking, suspicious feeling settled in her gut.

Skeptic, she squinted her eyes at Marcus. "Was this...?"

Was this Aro's doing?

Marcus merely snorted and returned to his book.

When the end of the third month came, she pooled her savings and stocked the fridge. Each evening was a showcase of Greek and Italian culinary selections, and she discovered that Caius was Grecian and that he thought her cooking was "perfectly tolerable."

Same old, same old.

"Alright. I'll bite. This is the fifth night in a row," Aro had a perplexed look on his face when she placed a wine bottle in the middle of the table. Barbaresco. Vintage. "What exactly are we celebrating?"

She levelled him with a stare. He blinked innocently at her.

"I don't know how you did it. And I don't even want to think about how much it cost," Bella whispered quietly. "Aro… thank you."

Aro laughed under his breath and pretended not to know. When Bella turned to the kitchen counter to fetch the souvlaki, she missed the meaningful glance that both Aro and Caius shared.

Notes:

Souvlaki is Greek pork skewers. Has this dip that is just soooooo good. My mouth's watering just thinking about it

Kopi luwak is expensive coffee that has been, ah, internally processed by palm civet cats

I'm thinking next chapter, maybe I'll introduce with the twins. And maybe try my hand at some sexual scenes. Yes? Yes. See ya

A/N: For Twilight fanfiction readers, writers, and artists alike: I've made a discord server where we can meet each other and hang around. Everyone in the fandom is welcome. Get to know the people behind your favorite fics, the readers cheering you on, or even the artists who breathe life into your characters. The discord server link is discord .gg/qKjcTRb and we're waiting for you to join us!