Good Things Come to Those Who Sparkle.

"Dr Cullen?" asked Bella in a tone of voice that somehow struck deep fear into the centuries-old vampire. She was seated at the expensive black marble worktop in his kitchen, and they were the only two people in the house that day as she'd called at a bad time. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course, though I can't guarantee a straight answer." Only a man with major long-term issues would habitually reply like that. Bella picked at something on the counter as she chose her next words carefully. He couldn't think what. The room was spotless. Ok, they may have made a tremendous mess the first and last time they used it, but there had been plenty of weeks since then to tidy it up. Oh wait, she was speaking.

"There's a few questions that've been bugging me for a while…I tried asking Edward a few times but you know what he's like." She shrugged and flashed that quiet grin of hers for a millisecond. "Mysterious."

"Doesn't that annoy you?"

"Nah, it's sexy," she said flippantly. He did a double-take. It's what?!

Forgoing the fact that he didn't eat or drink or nurture unhealthy habits, Dr Cullen was suddenly aware that he needed a beer. Badly. Best to get this whole conversation over with quickly. "Well, fire away," he urged.

"First off," her nothingy-bored-misunderstood-teenage-face gave way to a moment of pure WTF? before resuming its natural expression. "What's with the – for want of a better word – sparkling? Seriously. Vampires that sparkle? Huh? Did you guys just totally forget the most basic fundamental characteristic of being-a-vampire-iness?"

Dr Cullen sighed. "I get asked that a lot. Or I would if it was public knowledge that we are, as you so 'charmingly' put it, sparkly vampires." He steepled his fingers, leaning towards her over the table and dropping into doctor-student/patient mode. "Bella, when you saw Edward glistening under the morning sun, did you notice him bursting into flames at all? Skin charring? Any writhing in horrendous pain?"

The teenaged girl gazed dreamily at the ceiling. "He was so pretty…" she cooed. "I mean, no, I didn't. But that's because you all suck at being vampires."

The man had pulled out a pad of paper and a pen from his white coat and was now sketching a hideously complicated diagram of the homo vampireans epidermal tissue layers. "Look," he said, waving it in front of her eyes. She tried not to.

"The scintillation effect witnessed upon a modern vampire in direct sunlight is in fact a natural defence mechanism resulting from the crystallization of dying skin cells in order to create a protective reflective barrier that rejects all of the sun's most harmful rays and prevents said vampire from experiencing the extremely horrible phenomenon known as spontaneous combustion. You see?"

"…No…"

He blinked at her. Perhaps he should dumb it down.

"Sparkly sunblock."