'Til your singing eyes

AN: New moon, AU, book world. Prompt 35 from the anon twi fic contest of 2012. The prompts are now stored here

sparklyredpen ?gallery=ficspiration

The picture prompt was of a bar scene; two customers and a band with a girl singer and another guy playing double bass. The title is from the lyrics of 'Song to the siren' by Tim Buckley.

Disclaimer: the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer - this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods.

Thanks to BanSidhe [ruadh sidhe] and Feebes86 for betaing and pre-reading.

For floridagirl who begged.

It wasn't like Rachel Black to lie to her family. Of the twins she had always been the more reliable one. Rebecca was the kind of girl who fell in love with a surfer, ran off to Hawaii and married him. The only part of that sequence of events that surprised Rachel was the marriage part. Maybe the babies that followed were unexpected, as well. Rebecca had never done any babysitting. But it made sense in one way - their father was big on tradition and the old ways and if marriage was one thing it was a remnant of the old ways. He could never disagree with her for doing things in the right order; marriage first and then kids.

Rachel didn't believe in that stuff and she was never going to have children. They sucked the life out of you.

Going to Washington University had exposed her to a whole new world. A world where people didn't think of their tribe first, or their people. A world where people could live for themselves. Do what they wanted to do. Be what they wanted to be. She had become a quasi-revolutionary and a strong feminist. She was front and centre in every protest that the student union organized.

She partied with them when they won a fight. Camped out in front of government offices, held placards and shouted slogans until she lost her voice. She smoked illegal things; she had long discussions about how to fix the world with earnest young men who respected her for her mind. Or so she told herself later, when they wanted her for her body. She read poetry and Jack Kerouac and Sylvia Plath and thought she was the first Uni student to do so. She became immersed in university politics.

The downside of course, was that she failed her classes. There was no time in amongst all of these valuable things that she had to do to complete assignments and study information technology. What was she thinking to select that as her major? How could she possibly sell her soul to a major corporation? A soulless entity interested only in making a profit.

But she had no excuse for staying now, she had failed all her courses and been asked to leave the Uni.

And she never told her father.

She didn't tell anyone.

And she didn't go home.

She didn't want to think about why that was. She had barely been back since her mother had died. She had run away as soon as she could.

So she worked as a checkout chick for money. It wasn't much but it was enough, but she was out of the loop on the Uni side. Because she wasn't on campus she lost track of what was happening and she was no longer one of them. Her friends had never said anything but she knew. Her time was spent working to earn enough to pay her rent, not participating in demonstrations.

So in attempt to relate to them all better, she joined a band. One guy she had been sleeping with told the others that she could sing. She had been singing from the time she could open her mouth and she had never thought about it being a skill that others didn't possess. Everyone in her tribe sang.

But it was extra cash and a bit of fun and sometimes it came with drinks included. So that was how she came to be standing behind a microphone in a dingy bar in the back streets of Seattle. The band had morphed from jazz, as one person left and another one replaced them with a different skill set, and now they were really more of a rockabilly band. It made good use of the double base and they could compete against the proliferation of trad jazz bands; they were something different.

So she was wailing on about her baby leaving her as the song lyrics always seemed to be about, when she noticed a couple of guys come into the bar. They were mouth wateringly well-built and extremely tall and for the final prize, they were Native American. That ticked all her boxes.

She was eyeing off the ass of one wearing a plain white t-shirt and faded jeans that fitted him in all the right places. She stroked her hand down the microphone stand seductively when he turned around. He was looking her way and she let her eyes trail up his body. And then she saw his face. Her voice devolved into a nervous squeak and then she just stared at him, open mouthed. The band carried on for a few bars before she waved frantically for a time out.

"You okay?" the guitarist asked her.

"Yeah… just give me five," she begged.

The body that had caused her nervousness was leaning on one elbow against the bar and eyeing her off.

Paul Lahote.

She hurried over and grabbed him by the arm. She attempted to drag him off somewhere private to talk but he would not move.

"Hey, Rachel," he said to her, looking down at her from a frankly extraordinary height.

"What are you doing here?"

"It's a free country."

"You're Jake's age," she hissed at him. "What are you even doing in a bar? It's… illegal."

"I don't think anyone is going to ask me for ID and the way you just looked at me is illegal." He gave her a smile that promised things he shouldn't know about.

"Ooh," she hissed in frustration. "You are sixteen!" Her voice almost squeaked at the end of the sentence. He didn't look sixteen; he really didn't - more like twenty-five. And she knew what twenty-five looked like.

"Speak for yourself, sunshine," he replied. "I can do math. You are four years older than Jake and that makes you less than twenty one and too young to be in a bar."

"I'm not drinking," she lied.

He sniffed at her. "Yes, you are."

"How…?"

"You deserve better than the cheap house red, Rachel."

"What?" She frowned at him.

"And I'm almost seventeen," he corrected her.

"Almost…?" She put her hands over her face. "You can't be here."

"Why? Because I blew your cover?"

She ignored him. "And who is that with you?" The guy who had come in with him was talking to a woman at the bar.

"Jared Cameron."

She gaped again. "No way."

"Jared?" Paul said it in a whisper but Jared's head turned their way.

"Oh, my God. It is, too." She looked at them both. "What the hell happened to you both?"

"You haven't been home for a while, eh, Rachel?"

"Well… no. And as if that is any of your business." And he hadn't answered her question.

"Struck a nerve, huh?"

"Shut up."

"Make me."

"What?"

There was silence for a beat.

"You should see Jake." He studied her as he said it, as if he was clued in to reactions she didn't know she was giving.

"J-Jake?"

"He's six foot five and still growing."

"Baby Jake?"

"Reckon he'll top out somewhere near the six eight mark. He's huge."

"Jake?" In a sudden rush, she felt a crashing wave of homesickness. "Like Dad," she said in a small voice.

"Yeah. Same wide shoulders."

"Y-you never used to be friends with Jake." That was a big effort to ignore people in a tiny tribe like the Quileute, but Paul had done it.

"Am now."

"Friends?" she checked.

"No, well … more like brothers." He shrugged.

"Brothers?" She was confused.

Jared had got rid of the woman he was talking to by then. "Rachel! How's Uni?"

She just stared at him impotently.

"I don't think Rachel goes to Uni anymore," Paul said.

She glared at him.

"And she hasn't told anyone," he added without taking his eyes off her.

Jared was glancing between them and then his face lit up and he elbowed Paul so hard in the side that she heard it.

Paul didn't blink.

"Dude," said Jared. He managed to sound excited although Rachel could not tell what about.

"Shush," Paul said to his friend.

"What is going on?" Rachel asked them.

"She'll have to come back, now," Jared said as if she hadn't spoken.

"No. She can do whatever she wants to do."

"I don't need your permission," the 'she' in question said.

"No, you don't." Paul smiled at her and her heart stopped.

"Wha-?" She could no longer speak. He was all she could see.

"Rachel?" the guitarist said as he tugged at her arm. "We need to get back to it."

She blinked and tried to remember what she was supposed to be doing here.

"I'll just wait right here," Paul said to her. Oddly, that made up her mind.

"O-okay." She wasn't even sure why she was agreeing with him.

She noticed Jared head off, half way through their next set. But Paul sat, perched on a bar stool and watched her so intently that it almost unnerved her.

At the end of the set, she walked towards him and he rose and stood so close to her that there was barely any space between them. He radiated warmth and she felt an irrational need to touch him.

"Invite me back to your place," he suggested.

"Okay."

So she took him home, and then the next day, sometime after noon, when they finally crawled out of bed, he took her home.

Holding his hand, she felt brave enough to tell her father the truth about her dropping out and she still didn't understand why holding Paul's hand made a difference to her.

Her father said all the usual parent things about he wasn't angry, just disappointed and that somehow made it worse. Then he turned to Paul. "You haven't told her," her father said.

"Free choice." Paul looked calm but she felt that he was worried about something.

She stamped her foot. "That is it! Someone tell me what the Hell is going on!"

They did. She saw the change in Jake and Paul and now recognised it for what it was; their tribal histories come back to life.

But she also saw something else; she saw her future spread out before her and it was not one she would have chosen before. But she could also see that the way she was living was not honest; not to herself or her family, or her people. She also saw that Paul, who had already had so many choices taken away from him, would never force her to accept him.

She turned to face her imprint. "I choose you," she told him. "Even if you are already mine."

"Yeah?" It came out in a throaty whisper. He looked overjoyed.

"Yeah." She nodded. "So that was what Jared was so happy about in the bar?"

He smiled.

"Bar?" Billy asked.

Paul noticed her panicked expression. "Rachel sings in a band. And she's really good."

"She gets that from her mother."

"Mom sang?"

"You don't remember that? She used to sing around the house all the time."

"I-I don't remember that."

Paul rubbed the top of her arms. "I'll make you sing," he whispered in her ear, too low for her father to hear.

She laughed and threw her arms around his neck. "I can't wait."

His hands slid down to her hips and he held her against him.

"Imprinted couples," her father complained as he rolled his eyes. He spun his chair and wheeled away to leave them alone.

"Is he happy?" she asked Paul in a whisper. She was genuinely concerned after Rebecca marrying her surfer dude.

His face twisted. "He would not have chosen me, but the Gods did, so he can't really argue."

She remembered thinking that her father was big on the old ways. She had had no idea. "That's the truth?"

"Yep. Won't lie to you."

"Huh." She thought about it. "So how's your house?" She wasn't entirely sure that she was ready to move back in with her father and little brother.

"Less crowded than yours, bit light on food and it needs a feminine touch."

She smiled. "So we need to shop first?"

"Then cook?" he asked hopefully.

"Then cook," she agreed.

"Do you sing when you cook?"

"Yes, I do."

He beamed at her. "Cool."