AN: For those of you who guessed Led Zeppelin's 'In the Evening', hell yeah. I love that song. Funnily enough, I did not even know that Ozzie had a song called 'Fire in the Sky', but that chapter was actually taken from a lyric in Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water': Smoke on the water, fire in the sky…

And now, chapter six, where we find ourselves back in Adam's shoes. Soundtracks for this chapter are music by Al Lethbridge, which can be found on YouTube and SoundCloud: 'Arctic', 'The Yearning', 'Old Men Remember' and 'Conflicted'. Enjoy.

Chapter Six – Shivering Flame

In the Milligan's living room, Adam sat curled up with his mother, watching the second round of wet snow come down and clot up their driveway. Kate had fallen asleep half an hour ago, exhausted by things it hurt Adam to think of.

"I can't lose you too," she'd whispered, eyes closed and on the brink of dreaming. "Sweetheart, I can't lose you…"

"You won't, Mom," he'd whispered back. "You won't, promise."

He wondered if it was a promise he could keep. Wondered if anyone was ever capable of it, his father's face flashing across his mind's eye. The only reason Adam was even able to make this promise now was…

A spiralling light storm consuming them.

The sound of screaming metal beyond the twisting torrent of sparks, blue and gold and white where they touched.

Bella's breath against his throat, her skin singing under his hands, against his mouth.

The smell of ozone, of melting metal, of heat without smoke, of sunlight, of burning sugar.

Bella found his eyes with hers. The world stopped…

Adam closed his eyes, hard, and took a deep breath.

"Mom," he murmured, gently shaking her shoulder. "Mom, I have to go see Bella, okay?"

She stirred slowly, blinking at him. "…what?"

"I have to see Bella."

Kate's lips parted, expression anxious. "Baby…"

"I…I have to see her," Adam said, helplessly. "Mom, I have to."

She watched him, searching his face, and understanding flickered there. "Okay…okay, just be careful."

"I will," he said, grateful, and pressed a kiss to her cheek. "Love you."

"Love you too. Call me when you get there."

It was still snowing when he pulled up at the Swan house. Chief Swan's patrol car was parked in the drive, and Adam could see him sitting at their dining room table through the front window. Even from here, the dark circles under his eyes and the down turn of his mouth was visible. He looked like he'd aged a decade in a day.

Adam felt his chest seize all over again – thinking about what Charlie must have gone through; getting that call about the accident, learning who was involved. It hurt, because his mother had gone through the same thing.

When Charlie spotted Adam coming up the steps, he opened the window, calling out, "she's round back, Adam."

"Thanks, Chief Swan."

"Yeah…"

He felt the older man's eyes on him as he made his way around the side porch to the back of the house. Bella was here; pacing up and down the boards, arms wrapped around herself and pausing occasionally to look out into the snowy wreak of the backyard, her breath fogging round her in a silver halo.

Adam felt his chest tighten, his fingertips tingling. It had been a kind of hell, saying goodbye at the hospital this afternoon; like they could be separated, but it was too soon, like a set of electronic magnets being drawn apart when the power hadn't been wound all the way down.

"Bells?"

She whipped around to look at him, dark eyes softening and filling with something warm and earnest. Then she was striding towards him and almost tackling him in a hug.

"Hey," he murmured putting his arms around her, "hey, I'm right here. We're okay. We're okay, I promise."

"You can't go 'round promising stuff like that," she breathed back against his collarbones. He smiled; shoulda known she'd be the one to call him on his impossible promises. "Adam, what is going on…?"

He shook his head slowly, kissing her temple. "I don't know."

"That wasn't normal. Angie said…Angie said that it looked like a kind of nuclear explosion, but without the heat blast, or sound, or radiation…" She pulled back to meet his eyes. "How does something like that happen?"

He could only shake his head. Reach up and cup her cheek…

She reached up too, putting her hand over his and –

Sparks danced there. Only for a moment, but half a dozen of them fell from their fingertips, like tiny glowing snowflakes.

Adam gasped and drew his hand back, taking Bella's with it.

"Adam, what…?"

"Look," he breathed, and gathered her hands in his, holding their laced fingers up.

Nothing happened. Adam frowned. Bella raised both eyebrows.

"Adam…"

He shook his head. "No, I – okay, just let me try something."

"Okay…"

Adam took her right hand, held it up at shoulder height – "hold it there." – and then lifted his own. Their palms were no more than six inches apart. The tension was like a tightening coil, drawing the air thick and close and cold.

"Move your hand slowly towards mine," he said softly. "Think about…think about what happened today, when you saw the truck coming towards us. Towards me."

Bella's eyes tightened with remembered fear, remembered pain, and her gaze never wavered from his until…

Sparks. Blue in his palm, gold in hers, but turning white the closer their hands got to each other, as they combined in the now two inch space between them.

Bella gasped abruptly, as though she'd been holding her breath (maybe she had) and Adam leant forward, putting his forehead against hers and closing his eyes for a second as they stood roughly breathing the same air.

He pressed his hand forward and the sparks flashed once, silent, magnesium-bright, before dying as their palms met.

"What are we?" Bella breathed, her face anxious, her voice shaking ever so slightly.

"Something else," Adam murmured, squeezing her hand once and then wrapping his arm around her again. "Something… something different."

"Different doesn't mean better," she whispered.

Adam met her eyes, held them, and reached up again to touch her face. "It doesn't mean wrong, either."

Bella swallowed hard. "God, I hope you're right."

(Neither of them saw the figure watching them from the shadows under the wet trees at the back of the Swan property. Neither of them saw him clench his jaw, curl his fists, before silently darting away.)

Edward and Alice Cullen were conspicuously absent the next day. Their siblings settled at their usual table, Jasper and Rosalie looking perpetually out of sorts while Emmett eyed them warily. He caught Adam's eyes once, over Angie's shoulder, and Adam was startled to see Emmett tightened his jaw and look away first.

When he glanced at Bella beside him, he found she was still watching Emmett.

"What was that all about?" she murmured.

"I can guess," he murmured back, and then elaborated at Bella's questioning look: "They kinda strike you as people who have things under control, right?"

"Right…"

"They don't know what happened yesterday any more than we do. And that bugs them."

"Because if they don't understand it they can't figure out how to control it."

"Exactly."

Bella shook her head faintly. "Well, they need to suck it up and deal." Her mouth thinned. "They're not the ones whose lives have been upended."

Adam took her hand under the table and squeezed her fingers gently. She immediately squeezed back.

"So!" Jess said briskly across the table from them, startling Angie, (who looked a little tired, actually…) "Since the snow has started melting out, it looks like the beach trip is still on." She paused, looking annoyed. "Providing we can find another ride."

She was right; Bella's truck and Tyler's van were hopelessly ruined. If they wanted to get out to First Beach next Saturday they would need to take more cars in order to fit everyone.

"Mom's working that day," Adam remembered, "so our car is out."

"I can use the Suburban," Mike put in, grinning, "and we know that can take up to nine without having to tie someone to the roof rack."

Jess rolled her eyes. "Great. Well, that leaves at least four people…"

"Um, I'd borrow my mom's minivan," Tyler said, and then cast an anguished look at Adam and Bella. "…but she doesn't really want me driving at the moment."

"Fair enough," Jess said. "Anyone else?"

"I can," Angie answered. "Dad'll spend the day writing for Sunday, so I can use his car. That's me plus four others, so the Suburban won't be too squashed. We should have one more car though, just in case."

"If no one minds the dog hair I can bring mine," Ben volunteered.

"Great!" Mike enthused, grinning. "We have a plan."

The rest of the day passed in relative quiet, with the exception of everyone and his dog coming up to Adam and Bella to exclaim over how they were alive and apparently unscathed and God, weren't you just so lucky!

He and Bella would agree, exchange sidelong looks and if no on particularly observant was looking, surreptitiously link hands, feeling the now familiar spike of sensation when their palms met.

Apparently not surreptitiously enough.

"So," Jess said, as she and a long-suffering Angie cornered him during study period, "you and Bella, huh?"

"It's not like that," Adam tried (although he totally wished it was).

"Whatever!" Jess crowed. "You totally wanna hit that."

Oh, godly God have mercy.

"I know where you live," Adam threatened, only to get laughed at again. "I can't get no respect," he muttered, then scowled at Angie when she patted his back and murmured, 'there, there.' "Not helping, Angie."

Angie simply smiled in her kind-and-serene Angie way and said reasonably, "You went through a very stressful experience together – it's only natural that your feeling would blossom because of it."

Angie was so nice and sane. He could've gone without the whole 'blossom' reference though.

"Anyway," Jess put in, still grinning because she wasn't raised right and seemed determined to live vicariously through her friends since evidentially Newton wasn't putting out like she planned. "Have you kissed her?"

"Jesus, Jessica, no!"

"Why nooooooooot?" she whined at him.

"Look, just because you can't find the keys to Newton's chastity belt and have the sexual frustration of a nun or something does not mean the rest of us are panting after our significant others. And Bella and I aren't even together!" he added, just to be clear.

Jess rolled her eyes, entirely unimpressed with his tirade, though Angie had a hand clamped over her mouth to stifle a serious case of the giggles.

"Don't be such a priss," Jess said. "If you want to date her just ask her out – she likes you, she'll say yes. And then Mike will stop saving himself and I'll finally get to shimmy him out of his prom dress!" she added brightly. "Everybody gets laid! Yays!"

Angie had her head down on one folded arm and was laughing weakly into her elbow.

"You're terrible," Adam told Jess. "Look, you broke Angie."

Angie hiccupped and raised her head. "You're both awful." She laughed again, shaking her head. "Oh, I almost forgot…"

"Oh yeah!" Jess exchanged a grin with her friend and then turned to Adam. "We heard a rumour!"

"About?" Adam asked, cautious. All the rumours seemed to be about him lately, whether it be about how totally gay Edward Cullen was for him or how he had latent superpowers and Bella was the Wonder Woman to his Superman (which he didn't mind so much, actually, except that the superpowers were weren't exactly latent anymore)…

"We were in the office getting equipment for Mr Banner," Angie explained, "and overheard Ms Cope talking to Mr Greene. Apparently Mr Mason's finally taking a sabbatical to work on his book and we're getting a sub for the rest of the year."

"Seriously?" Adam had to smile. This wasn't as big a deal to him as the new guy – all the teachers here were still new to him anyway. But if there was one he could do without it was the endlessly superior Mr Mason. "Awesome. Maybe the sub won't have the stick jammed so far up his a–"

"Do you mind," Lauren demanded, turning around in her seat to glare at the three of them. "Some of us actually use this time to work."

"Sorry, Laurie," Angie demurred, "we'll keep it down, okay?"

Lauren sneered and went back to her math text book. Jess made a few choice faces at her back. They did quieten down though, and while Jess struggled through her English essay and doodled pictures of her boyfriend in his underwear with rather exaggerated, uh, attributes, Adam had the following written conversation with Angie:

So, you heard from Cullen?

Which one?

The one that's totally gay for me.

LOL. Not really, though. I texted him this morning and just got a reply after lunch. Alice is really sick so he's staying home with her. Something about that bug they had coming back and Dr Cullen wanting them home for observation.

You believe him?

I don't know. He seemed pretty freaked out by what happened. And Alice always looks really delicate, maybe she's one of those girls who gets sick after stressful situations.

Adam cast her an incredulous look and Angie gave him the 'what?' face back.

"I don't buy it," Adam whispered. "There is something up with that family. Bella thinks so too."

Angie gave him a helpless look. "I…I know but…"

"It's okay, Ange, I know. I get it. I don't know what it is either." He smiled reassuringly. "We just need to ask the right person the right questions."

The rest of the week was a blur of school, moments of panic, moments of frustration and Adam and Bella clinging to each other both literally and figuratively like two pieces of flotsam spinning at the centre of a firestorm.

Dreams of sparks haunted them. They discovered that when they dreamed like that, they dreamed in sync. Adam found himself flushing in the middle of an English class when he realized that Bella would have dreamt of the kiss as well (oh yes, he remembered that now, and so would she…)

Alice and Edward Cullen had yet to show at school, or in town at all.

On Friday, both he and Bella were called out of class to the office. Chief Swan was there, along with Adam's mom and an unfamiliar guy in a suit – tall, black, fifties but still with all his hair and hardly any grey. There was…something about him that seemed almost familiar. Not in his features, Adam mused, but in the way he carried himself, the watchful nature of his gaze.

They were ushered into an unoccupied teacher's office and introduced.

"Adam, Bella, this is Agent Rufus Bartlett," Chief Swan said. "He's a crash scene expert from the FBI."

AN: Everybody say 'Hello Rufus!'