Who: Atton Rand and Alice Cullen When: Circa August 15 Where: Deli What: Lunch! To catch up after the body swap Rating/Warning: Low/None Status: Complete
Alice got the text from Atton and broke into a smile. She was looking forward to checking in with him, to catch up on how his bodyswap week went, and pester him a little more with questions about his Dreams. How the powers came, how he learned to control them. She was wondering if he’d experienced anything weird while in her body, too.
She showed up to the diner a few minutes early, and headed to a booth to sit and take a look at the menu while she waited for Atton to show up.
Atton was glad to be back in his own body. To celebrate, he was wearing his favorite leather jacket, the one that had come from the dreams. The deli that Alice had picked was one he hadn’t heard of, and was excited to visit. When he saw her, he waved and sat down opposite her. “Hey, kiddo.”
Alice sat up a little and brightened when Atton plopped down across from her. “Man, it’s like looking into a mirror,” she kidded, giving him a grin. “How are you? Gosh, what do I call you? Mr. Rand? Atton?”
He laughed at that. “I take good care of my skin,” he faux preened. “Atton. Mr. Rand was my dad,” he beamed, sprawling out.
That brought out a laugh in Alice, too. He had a great sense of humor. Something she didn’t get to know before the two of them were swapped so suddenly in the Energy Drink section of the supermarket. “All right, Atton. And I’m Alice.” Beat. “Obviously. Mrs. Cullen is my mother.”
She set the menu aside and focused on her water. “How did everything... turn out for you?”
“Oh, fine. Isabela is kind of ... happy to have me back.” He chuckled, waggling his brows, trying not to say anything too scandalous.
Alice went slightly pink--a stark contrast to how pale her skin was. “That’s good. I mean, that you two are back to... normal. I think I may have made a little mess at my house.”
“What did you do?” Atton blinked.
"Well, my--" she cut off. What was she supposed to call him? Her brother? Her husband? Her adopted brother in real life who was her husband in her Dreams? "...Jasper can into my bedroom when I was getting ready for a shower, and thought I was some strange man. Before I could correct him... Well, I guess I was wondering how he would react if I had a man in my room. You almost ended up with a black eye." Possibly worse.
“Oh, that wouldn’t be the first time, no problem.” Atton smiled, wondering who her Jasper was to her. “But you’re legal. Might want to explain to your Jasper that you might want to touch someone at some point.”
Alice smirked a little. “Well... yeah. Maybe. I don’t... I don’t know.” She shook her head, gave a deep sigh, and lifted the ice water to her lips for a quick sip. “I think I wanted to make him jealous. I didn’t know if he would get jealous. It’s a really fucked up situation, to tell you the honest truth.”
“Oh? You can talk about it, if you want it.” Atton was a nice guy, he didn’t mind being a sounding board.
Alice raised both eyebrows. “...it’s really fucked up. You sure you wanna hear?”
“Go for it. What good is being your older, engaged friend if you can’t tell me about your life?” Atton leaned back. “I might get a beer, though.”
Alice gave a chuckle. “Okay, here goes. I’m adopted. I’ve got four siblings, all adopted like I am. One of them, my older brother, Jasper, is... recently back from deployment... and I’ve started to Dream. About him.” It made her blush a little and shift. The Dreams were... intimate.
“Okay?” That wasn’t that weird. “Wait, do you mean inappropriate dreams? Like, R rated ones?” That was weirder. “Well, you two aren’t blood related, right? I mean, it could be worse.”
“Well, they’re not inappropriate until I wake up,” Alice countered. Her cheeks, which were normally blank printer paper white, were blushing a deep pink. It made her look like a porcelain doll. “In the Dreams we’re married. We’re... we’ve been together for a long, long time. Supernaturally long, actually.”
“Do you want to date him? I don’t think that’s illegal, but I can see where it would be odd if you see him as a sibling.” Wow, and he thought he had it bad with the redeemed bad guy schtick.
“I don’t know if I want to date him, I just...” Want to love him. “Wish that he knew about the Dreams. I wish he knew what I knew.” Alice said, giving a little sigh.
“I’m sure he will eventually, right?” Atton reached out to put a hand over hers, gently squeezing it. “Then you guys can chat about it.”
“I hope so.” Alice gave him a sad, but slightly hopeful smile at his hand on hers. “I just... I don’t know how long I can last without telling him everything.”
“Well, has he been here long? Does he know people dream? If you want, I can float stuff with my mind to sort of prove that hinky stuff happens all the time.” Atton floated the salt shaker to demonstrate.
“I don’t know if he knows. I don’t know if he believes, really. Just because people talk about it, doesn’t make it real, right?” She laughed and reached forward to take the salt shaker out of the air. “Why couldn’t I do that when I was in your body?”
“Well, you probably didn’t know how to do it. It’s kind of like ... how to focus it, how to channel it.” Atton shrugged. “I’ve had training.”
“Yeah, that’s true. I haven’t had any training with your powers, but... if mine come from my dreams...” She gave a pause. “You didn’t have any visions while you were in my body, did you?”
Atton shook his head. “You get portents? I think Obi does - the guy who trains me. I can read people’s minds if I try hard enough, but I actually don’t like that ability.” He wrinkled his nose.
“Portents? I don’t know what that means. In the Dreams I have visions of the future. Or, what might come to pass. The future’s not set in stone, so sometimes we’re able to change the outcome of things, but... yes. I get prophecies.” Alice said. She shook her head. “I don’t think I’d want to know what other people are thinking.” Well, except for Jasper.
“Yeah, portents are future visiony dream things. I can’t see the future, but I can do the levitatey thing, I can hear thoughts, and random swordfighting too.” It was kind of weird, but he’d come to embrace it. “It’s not so bad, really. Maybe you’ll be able to help keep the people you love safe. That’s what I figure. Isabela? I’d do anything for her, and if that means I know how to cut people’s arms off, so be it.”
Alice nodded. “In my dreams, I’m nearly indestructible. Comes with the whole Vampire thing. There’s only a couple of things that can kill a vampire, and I’m fast… faster than the rest of my family for the most part.” She wasn’t really sure what to think about. It almost made her feel crazy talking like this. “The weirdest part is the memory of killing people, drinking blood, going vegetarian and only hunting mountain lions…”
“Less vegetarian and more animaltarian?” He chuckled. “In my dreams, I’m amazing and fast and good at what I do, defending people and smuggling, but I don’t know about indestructible. I get beat up a lot.” It was kind of a thing; he just ended up getting punched most days in his dreams.
“Animaltarian works.” Alice said with a nod and a smile. “Smuggling? That sounds like an interesting occupation?”
“In my dreams I have a ship and I hide stuff in it. So I deliver from point A to point B.” Atton shrugged. “It paid the bills, kept me in juma.”
“What’s juma?” Alice asked, wondering what kind of a ship it was.
“Far as I can tell in the dreams, it’s like space Everclear.” Atton’s eyes wrinkled as he smiled. “I’m kind of a drunk in my dreams, mostly because I’m a depressing asshole.”
“Wow.” Alice said, unable to stop the grin from spreading across her features. “You’ve got some interesting dreams. I mean… I just drink blood in mine.” As if that wasn’t enough to make them interesting. “Oh, and I have to pretend that my husband is my adopted brother, because people start to question it when we all live together in the same house, and we both look like teenagers?”
He chuckled. “Oh, is - oh, so the guy that’s your adopted brother here, even in the dreams you think that?” That had to suck for her.
“No. Well. See.” Alice frowned. “We’re both vampires in the Dreams. Well, all of us are. And I had a vision of Jasper and myself. We were married, living with the Cullens. So I met up with him in this little deli in New York, and the two of us went to live with the Cullens. He’s my soul mate in the Dreams. Here he’s just my adopted brother.”
Atton didn’t say anything. Here, he could be her soul mate too. But he didn’t want to scare her. “No matter where you go or what you do, you’re your own person. You have that.”
He could be. He might be. Alice was terrified that he was, and terrified that he wasn’t. She wasn’t sure what to do, what to say. She didn’t want to scare him off. Perhaps that was the better option, though. Ugh. So many choices.
“I think she’s a part of me now.” Alice said, nodding a little. She was her own person, sure. But she was feeling heavily influenced by the Alice in her dreams.
“But you don’t have to do anything she did that you don’t want to do.” Atton shook his head. “The dream me does things that are pretty terrible. I haven’t murdered anyone here. So yeah, I think they influence us as much as we let them.”
Alice nodded. So far she--the Dream Alice--hadn’t done anything that she--the Real Alice--wouldn’t want to do. It was a little weird that Jasper was different there from here, but she loved him. She both wanted to and didn’t want to at the same time. But love was something she felt, not something she did. So long as Jasper didn’t know, she’d be fine. “You murdered people in your dreams?” She asked. She’d done it, too. In fits of vampire hunger and rage.
Atton nodded. “In my dreams, there’s this big civil war. I ended up on the side that was more willing to be cutthroat, and so they sent me to kill some of the more high profile people on the other side.” He sighed, looking down at his hands. “I hate those dreams.”
“Wow.” Alice said, blinking at him. Sure, she’d heard some pretty terrible things from Jasper in the dreams, but… nothing like that here in this world. “I’m really sorry.” She added, reaching forward to put her hand on his on the table. It was a sign of support, but not really affection. She wasn’t attracted to him in the slightest. But now they’d been in each other’s skin, she felt like they had some sort of connection.
He smiled and squeezed her hand. He felt more of a need to be protective than an attraction toward her. “Well. I was an assassin with great hair?”
“Hey, the great hair part bled over, so.” She gave him a bright grin. “Now… let’s have some lunch.”
That made him chuckle. “My fiancé seems to like my hair. And yeah, food’s good. Being a hero is hungry work.” He winked.
She grinned. “It’s good hair.” Then she lifted a hand to flag down the waitress.
“Well, it seemed to work out to my benefit in the dreams,” Atton smiled. He was excited for food, and he leaned back, watching Alice. “I hope stuff works out with your boyfriend,” he smiled.
“Oh. Not my boyfriend.” Alice said, shaking her head. She was blushing though. “...But yes. I hope it does, too.”