Disclaimer: Nopeeee

A/N: I AM SO EXCITED FOR BREAKING DAWN OH MY GOD I'M GOING WITH MY FRIENDS THIS WEEKEND AAAAH! MOM MIGHT LET ME GO TO THE MIDNIGHT PREMIERE OH MY GOD /fangirling over Robert Pattinson quite obsessively

oh my god gaiz I can't believe we've reached part three of this glorious series. DON'T FORGET TO VOTE ON THE FINAL PAIRING - POLL IS ON MY PROFILE PAGE, AND IT WILL BE THERE UNTIL AT LEAST THE END OF THE YEAR.

and while you're at it, follow me on tumblr. I'm meggaaaaay. tumblr. com, without the spaces.

major thanks to Lily Winterwood, who is just so beauteous and still helping me even though we now live six hours away instead of in the same city momma whyyyyyyy
and also to Liung Arkeanda, who cared enough to point out some OOC-issues and a bunch of mechanical errors and stuff that I may or may not have fixed completely lol

but without further ado. ;)

Chapter 1: they can't take you out of my thoughts

Three weeks passed quickly, accelerated by the start of my senior year in high school. I had five AP courses - statistics, calculus BC, world history, chemistry, and psychology - and advanced dance, plus two open periods because of the block schedule Forks High ran by. I was pretty surprised to see such an extensive course listing, considering that there were downward of four hundred students there, but the classes were there nonetheless and I had three of them with Antonio. I don't know if that was a blessing or a curse.

A little more depressing than my ex-ex-boyfriend was the escalating crime in Seattle. At least five dozen people vanished between September and October of 2008, and only half of the bodies had been found. They were drained of blood, symbolizing the presence of vampires other than my vegetarian friends in the state, and the crimes were attracting FBI presence.

Most of Antonio's family thought it was the work of a single vampire. Personally, I thought that was insane - newborn or not, what reason would any vampire have for more than a few liters of blood a -week, let alone every day?

Gilbert agreed with me, though. According to him, newborns were indeed violent and volatile, but even a day after changing, a newborn would know how much sustenance they needed to survive. Roderich said that a newborn vampire's emotions would be far too conflicted: most of the time, new vampires couldn't come to term with their hunger, and abstained from drinking blood until they couldn't bear the ache any longer.

"That's what I did," admitted Francis. "It was disgusting, drinking the blood of others like some heathen. That is why I started feeding off animals."

Fuck - ah, I haven't exactly defined a newborn yet. After the three-day agony of turning, God fucks with vampires a bit more and bestows upon them an intolerable thirst and a lack of rationality. For a year or more, newborns are the monsters you read about in books, the ones who ravage entire towns to the ground and leave no survivors, and they're even harder to kill than mature vampires.

(Antonio relished in telling me the gruesome details, of course.)

But yeah. Newborns are crazy mofos, and most of the Kirklands assumed that it was just one on the loose in Seattle. Newborns don't develop any distinct scents until their endless thirst subsides, so there were no trails to follow and therefore no way of counting how many there were. For now, all investigation assumed it was a loner.

Ludwig and the other cops were out most of the time, so Antonio - who had been exiled from the house - came and chilled with me for a while. Most of the time, we worked on our college apps and just talked about stuff. Have I told you how awful college apps are? I had applications for all the good universities in snowy, rainy places, so I could be with Antonio, but that still left me with a load of options. U of Alaska at Anchorage was my number one, both because it would provide Antonio a safe cover and because the shitty weather would cause all sorts of flight problems, preventing me from returning home often. I mean, yeah, it would suck dick not to see Ludwig and Mom and all my friends, but if - when - Antonio changed me, I wouldn't be able to see them much anyway.

I was set on Anchorage, which was one school I knew I'd get accepted into, but Antonio encouraged me to apply to some colleges in places like California, should I choose for some reason that I wanted to expose him to constant sunlight. I complained as he printed out the applications, and he said that people changed and that he wanted to make sure I had a plan B, just in case. Plan B was either Stanford, UC Berkeley, or UCLA. Plan C was mooching off the massive amounts of cash his family had saved.

Plan C was my priority, though, so maybe the proper order is Plan C, Plan A, and then Plan B. Antonio's proposal lingered fresh in my mind, even the better part of one month later; he hadn't told his family members and neither had I, but Liz certainly knew right away, and of course she spilled. The evening after Antonio presented his ultimatum, she picked me up and brought me over to their house, where the other Kirkland-Bonnefoises all wishes us happily. Most of them seemed sure that I'd marry Antonio; Arthur just sat there with this twisty grimace on his face, prominent brows furrowed and fingers drumming restlessly against his knee until Francis grabbed his hand and squeezed it reassuringly. Liz, also, looked vaguely uncertain, and she did wish me the best but made no definite statement about a marriage, or even about changing me. To be honest, I thought they were pretending that they hadn't totally bargained with a sociopathic Korean vampire to spare me because they planned on biting me anyway.

It was a nice little not-quite-dinner. Liz didn't make me wear a dress (hell, bitch dragged me out of bed at a quarter to one to ensure that Ludwig didn't notice me leave. I wore the Optimus Prime PJs I'd taken to bed, plus a v-neck sweater she'd thrown at me when I stood) and I didn't cut my fucking finger opening any fucking packages wrapped in fucking cardboard wrapping paper, which was a definite plus. I wasn't really hungry, but Nat extracted a newly-purchased tub of coffee ice cream from the freezer and handed it to me, and the group of us spent a good few hours laughing and talking.

Kind of. I wasn't letting Antonio off the hook so easily, of course, so every time he said something nice to me I insulted him. Every time he said anything, I insulted him. What'd he expect? Hope he wasn't thinking I'd welcome him with open fucking arms - tch, fuck no. Guy was gonna get as much pain as I thought he deserved, and I thought he deserved a lot. You don't break Lovino Vargas' heart and walk away unscathed.

Uh, metaphorically speaking, anyway, because it's not like I'm girly enough to let someone break my heart in the first place. Duh.

But every time I berated him and mocked him, he'd just look at me with his eyes glimmering happily and brilliantly, like he just couldn't get enough of hearing me talk even though all I did was troll him, and each small, endearing smile that graced his face chipped at my resolve. The fact that he spent each night lying next to me in bed, usually holding me in his arms as I did my homework, didn't help.

Good thing my resolve's made of diamond, right?

...mostly, anyway. If I could boast the same strength of resolve in relation to Ivan, I wouldn't have felt the same miserable loneliness I felt when Antonio left. I mean, yeah, Antonio was my boyfriend, but Ivan was and had been my best friend for months. He'd been there when I needed him, and now I felt lost without him.

...God, that sounds sappy as fuck.

I hadn't spoken to Ivan in weeks - not since the little Mexican standoff at my house the previous month - and his absence in my life was obvious. Despite school and the new homework load, I found myself reaching for my cell to text him every few minutes, and on several occasions I finished writing out a message and selecting his name before I remembered our childish no-speaking policy. Sometimes he texted me, but when he did I wasn't in the mood for his bullshit and I deleted them without reading; when I couldn't bear it any more, I sent him a small message, but he never responded. That was my life for the better part of three weeks.

Also, handwritten notes. That was an integral part of my life, too, because it was the only way Ivan and I communicated. Ludwig and Mr. Winter shuffled our papers around like carrier pigeons.

Ivan sent me a note written on a scrap of binder paper four days after storming off, and it said something like, Lovi, your boyfriend's a fucking moron, to which I replied with something like, Yeah, he is, but at least he didn't lose his baby sister oh snap, to which he responded with another four days' silence. I felt like shit about it, and I actually reached for a piece of good paper with which to write him something, but then Ludwig returned home and gave me a ball of paper and a disparaging look. I ignored it, too intent on replying to Ivan, and sent the paper back with Ludwig the next day.

So yeah. Three weeks of passing notes through our respective guardians like kindergarteners and hoping to God that neither of our aforementioned respective guardians actually read what it was they were carrying.

Ludwig seemed concerned, though, so I have to assume he read at least one of the notes. He hadn't fully forgiven me for vanishing on him, but we were working on that slowly and steadily; his primary focus was on my well-being, as I learned when he instigated a very awkward birds-and-bees conversation with me one night over spaghetti.

But, being Ludwig, he beat around the bush and used several vague explanations for a while, and when he noticed that I had no fucking idea what he was talking about, he tried a different approach. "Lovino, what I'm trying to say is, you've got...urges. And you'll probably be acting on them soon."

"Dude, Dad." My cheeks were probably flaming red, and I averted his piercing stare.

He coughed awkwardly, his own face a little red as he continued, "This is just as awkward for me as it is for you."

"I sincerely doubt that. Just - just drop it, okay? I do not need to learn about how to properly have - uh. Well. You know."

"I just have to make sure that you know about preparation and -"

"OKAY, OKAY, WE ARE NOT HAVING THIS CONVERSATION." I covered my ears with my hands, skin hot under my fingers, and prayed that he wouldn't try and explain gay sex to me. Knowing him, he'd awkwardly fluff everything up and pad it with nice, child-friendly words - no-no areas and what have you. Technically, all any parent would have to say to their teenage child would be that real sex is generally very unlike what you see in porn, but apparently that's never enough.

Anyway, you get how awkward that all was. Let me tell you about Ivan...

One day, shortly after the birds-and-bees fiasco, Ludwig returned with another note from Ivan. It was covered in long, extensive sections of multicolored ink - penned-out words, I assumed from the ferocity of Ivan's scribbling - and ink spatters, like several different pens had exploded in his hand. I imagined him writing something, furrowing his brow, scratching out the sentence, and gripping the pen so hard it snapped in half as he struggled to to articulate his thoughts.

Ignoring the blotches, there were approximately ten words on the page:

Lovino. I miss you too. Doesn't change anything.

Oh, wait, never mind. That's only eight words.

It would've been nice to see Ivan, though - to ask him how his junior year was, how his alcoholism and anger management problems were - but every time I tried, something came up. Usually, it was me hesitating for too long, and allowing Antonio or Liz or one of the others to distract me from Ivan. Once or twice, it was Antonio.

Actually, I suspect that it was Antonio far more than once or twice, but I only have solid evidence for a single time. A few days after receiving Ivan's terribly ox letter, I sat at the kitchen table with Ludwig, perusing my history homework as he ate his way through a giant bowl of pasta salad I'd made earlier. He held a newspaper, but I doubted he was actually reading it.

All of a sudden, he put down his fork and stared at me until I looked up.

"Lovino," he began, but I held up a hand.

"Okay, if you try another sex talk with me, I am marching out of here," I warned him.

Ludwig lifted his hands complacently. "No sex talks here. I simply want to make sure you're okay."

I frowned.

"Of course I'm okay, Dad. Why wouldn't I be?" Apart from the giant Ivan-shaped hole in my heart, I was happier than I'd ever been. Antonio had a giant impact on that, of course.

Shaking his head, Ludwig continued, "You're so...peaceful isn't the right word. I don't know what to call it. But you look like you did earlier this year, when Antonio left." He paused. "Before you and Ivan started hanging."

I didn't answer, and Ludwig sighed but didn't push the matter. I tried to finish my homework, but I couldn't concentrate; all I could think of was Ivan, now, so I slammed my textbook shut and stood, grabbing my car keys and my wallet as I beelined for the door.

"I'll be back in an hour," I called to Ludwig, not even bothering to change out of my jammies. It was cold outside, but I grabbed a parka and trekked toward my truck.

The fucker wouldn't start. I struggled with it for a minute or two, and eventually Ludwig came outside to see what was up.

"Do you want to borrow the cruiser?" he offered.

I stared. Ludwig never offered the cruiser. He must've really wanted me to see Ivan.

"...no thanks," I sighed. "I'll go tomorrow after school, I guess."

He looked disappointed, and waited by the door for a few seconds. "Aren't you coming inside?"

"Yeah. I'll be there in a few minutes."

Ludwig didn't argue. He walked back into the house, closing but not locking the door behind him, and after ten or fifteen seconds of waiting, Antonio jumped down from the tree next to the house. He grinned brightly, but his furrowed brow belied his true thoughts.

I glared at him. "Bitch, what did you do to my car?"

He lifted a hand, and I winced. I had no idea what the mangled piece of metal resting in his palm was, but it looked important.

"It's too dangerous, Lovi," he said by way of explanation.

I clenched my hand into a fist and held it up angrily. He didn't move, and I bemoaned his immortality. My threats didn't exactly work on someone who wouldn't even feel me punch them.

"You," I started, "are such a douchelord. I want you to know that I have never met someone as douchey as you. Not even Ivan is as douchey as you."

His eyes softened. "I'm sorry, Lovi, but it really is dangerous."

"Ivan isn't going to hurt me, you idiot!" I exploded. "I don't understand why you can't see that!"

He reached out, and grasped my chin lightly. I avoided his eyes. "I don't want to take a chance," he mumbled. "You mean too much to me."

"Go away, you fucking tyrant." Crossing my arms, I let him kiss me on the forehead gently. Bitch.

Sighing, Antonio said, "If you don't want me to come tonight, close your window." He watched me go into the house, and waited until I'd locked the door before turning and walking away.

Not like I watched through the window or anything.

I flopped on my bed a little later, history homework spread out on the comforter and window firmly locked.

When I turned off my light two hours later, I stared at the latch for a good few seconds before sticking my tongue out childishly (because wherever Antonio was, he could definitely see me) and rolling over.