high school is kind of boring really

[self_composed]

School plods along. Bella is native-quality fluent in Spanish, professor-level at math, well and thoroughly versed in the workings of the United States government, capable of doing actual independent research projects in biology, and she's been speaking English since she was one. Alas, these skills only make classes easier for a short time. After the novelty wears off they're just tedious. Bella winds up squaring her homework done more often than not so she can work out the kinks in her design for telekinesis, or play music, or attend soccer practice, or write little computer games, or read, or just fly around. This works out fine. Magic is pretty good at homework.

She winds up not attending most of the dances, but she does want to go to the end of year one, as she will be leaving Forks High School forever and it has some good points. Alice promised her a dress...

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[edgeofyourseat]

...Alice really, really likes that idea.

Also, if she thinks telling him her plan will either make him fall in love with her all over again or hate her forever, he thinks it will definitely be the first one. But he doesn't expect that to change her mind, so he won't bug her about it, or dwell on it any longer.

[self_composed]

[You really wouldn't like it. Whether you're enough of a Möbius strip of twistedness to like it because you don't like it the way you are about many other things, I am unsure,] she muses.

[Are you going to make a new lair near Stanford or just a door to your current one?]

[edgeofyourseat]

...What the hell is she planning to do? No, not dwelling, not dwelling. Although 'Möbius strip of twistedness' is a beautiful phrase for which he definitely loves her some more.

[Dunno,] he says, and considers the question. [Depends if I find a really good place to put a lair that's close enough to wherever you'll be. It's probably way easier to stick a magic door somewhere.]

And by the way, just how hypothetical was that offhand reference to testing out incapacitating him with a pain power? Because he is all for that. Anytime she wants. Yes please.

[self_composed]

[Just wondering about how challenging it would be to slip off to your lair once I'm at school. Probably best to conduct the test this week, though. Charlie's still working most of the days I'm home. Tomorrow morning?] she suggests.

Pause.

And then because he has such entertaining reactions: [Gosh, I wonder if a hex-made Cruciatus Curse power will even come with a ceiling, if I don't install one on purpose. I think maybe I won't.]

[edgeofyourseat]

It turns out that it is possible to transmit incoherent vocal sounds over brainphone! This one goes something like: [Mllrrrrrrrrgh.]

Yes. Tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning is good.

Also, he is heading upstairs right now to go take a shower, and if Bella doesn't want to witness the aftermath of her obvious and very successful attempt to gratuitously turn him on, she might want to quit reading him before he gets there. Or not. Her call.

[self_composed]

Hmmmm. She decides she may as well go on reading him.

'Cause why not?

Charlie drops her off and goes to work for his afternoon of paper-pushing.

Bella lounges on the sofa.

(sexual content)

[edgeofyourseat]

He hasn't really had the chance to put his pyrokinesis through its paces yet. He's toyed with it, but he hasn't tried to reach its full potential.

Alice decides that is going to change.

He closes and locks the bathroom door behind him with a triangle and gets in the shower with all his clothes on, because he doesn't care enough about them to save them and doesn't want to waste any time taking them off. Another triangle turns on the shower to a not-quite-scalding temperature, and as the spray hits his face he closes his eyes and sets himself on fire.

His clothes are ash swirling down the drain. If his flight power didn't default to hover, he'd fall down. He pours hexagons; the chain looped around him lengthens noticeably. Alice stands under the water and burns. And as he bites through his lip trying not to scream, he imagines it's Bella doing this to him, Bella making him hurt more than he has ever hurt in his life. Fuck, he loves her so much.

He runs burning hands down his burning chest and pulls the fire deeper, closer, hotter. Keeping it burning while the shower continually tries to put it out is hardly even an effort. He's not sure he has any skin left. He's not sure he cares. It hurts incredibly.

And then, finally, he puts out the fire and wraps his hand around his dick while they are both still healing. That, and the shower spray hitting his burned-raw chest without any of it boiling off first, is a whole new universe of pain. The rest of his skin growing back is almost anticlimactic in comparison, although under other circumstances that alone would probably be enough to give him a spontaneous orgasm.

Healing is over in a flat second, and so is Alice. He drops to his knees and takes a deep breath just to feel it in his lungs, presses his hands against the (now somewhat filthy) shower floor, as he slowly regains awareness of his body through senses other than pain. Water running down his back. The taste of blood and char. The smell of smoke and steam.

When he hauls the new loop of his necklace up from where it dangles insubstantially through the floor, he is not surprised at all to see that the parade of hexagons ends in three glimmering black stars.

[self_composed]

[You're gonna set off the smoke alarm,] Bella says faintly.

[edgeofyourseat]

Laughing, he expends a triangle. [Am not.] Another one cleans up the mess on the shower floor; he sits back and wraps his arms around his knees.

While he was doing it, he wasn't at all thinking about being observed; now that it's over, he kind of wonders what she thought.

[self_composed]

[Tomorrow morning,] Bella says. Still vaguely faint. [Mmm-hm.]

[edgeofyourseat]

Oh, so she liked it, didn't she. Alice grins.

[Okay,] he says happily. He reaches up to run his hands through his hair, only to discover that he no longer has any. A square fixes that. He also, running his hands over his back and sides, discovers that all his scars are gone—burned away and healed back clean.

He is not sure how he feels about that part.

[self_composed]

[You could wish those back too, if you want,] Bella points out.

[edgeofyourseat]

[Yeah, that's the thing,] he says. [I don't know if I want.]

He likes his scars, but partly as a record of intense experience. And not having them anymore is a record of a more intense experience than (almost) any of them.

[self_composed]

[Interesting. Well, you can always change your mind, whatever you decide now - since magic is awesome.]

[edgeofyourseat]

[It is,] he agrees, leaning against the shower wall and humming to himself.

[self_composed]

[So you can make stars. Even without... help. I should start thinking of ways to learn about what the matter with them is supposed to be,] muses Bella.

[edgeofyourseat]

[I wouldn't wanna to do it like that all the time,] he says, [but yeah, I can make stars.]

He runs his hand along the line of new hexagons, clicking them together, and then counts the points of the stars with his fingertips. It's really something, having these physical manifestations of pain.

(She meant something else with that pause, he's sure, but—she did help, in a way. She was absolutely a part of that experience, and not just because she was watching. It was for her and about her even if it wasn't with her.)

[self_composed]

[If there's a level of pain that makes you say you wouldn't wanna do it all the time, should I install a ceiling after all?] Bella asks. [I haven't wished up the power yet.]

[edgeofyourseat]

[Nope,] he says happily. [It's like—you liked that maple-caramel-coconut-butter cake we made, but you wouldn't wanna live on it, right?]

[self_composed]

[Fair enough, but if that's all you meant I'm not sure why you mentioned it. Seems to go without saying.]

[edgeofyourseat]

[Maybe it doesn't mean the same thing to you, then.]

What he meant by it was: there are things that are intense, and glorious because they're so intense, but by the same token too intense to make a casual part of your daily routine. Cutting a half-dozen hexagons out of himself is a casual part of his daily routine by now; this never will be. But it's still something he likes and wants and would hate to miss out on.

[self_composed]

[Oh. I wouldn't mind having desserts as nice as that cake on a daily basis.]

[edgeofyourseat]

[So I guess it was a bad example,] he says, amused.

[self_composed]

[Apparently. I'd get bored of Disneyland if I went too often?] Bella suggests instead.

She pauses, then says, [You realize that a primary benefit of the pain power will be the ability to jack up volume for when I can start doing big obvious things like curing malaria, so ideally that wouldn't bother you. But you already pour out way more coins than I could reasonably ask of anyone, so if it does I'll see about getting creative. It's possible that I could just render mosquitoes extinct without damaging the ecology too much, if not with a direct kill-the-bugs wish then with a designer virus or something.]

[edgeofyourseat]

Awww. Alice loves her. He loves her because she wants more coins out of him and he loves her because she doesn't just want to take them; he loves her because she's going to cure malaria and he loves her because she has no experience that relates sensibly to what it's like to set yourself on fire and burn through skin into flesh.

He suspects, though, that he's going to like it even more when she does it. And he already liked it a lot.

Humming to himself, he gets up and turns off the shower.