I was given this prompt: Jake and Bella find an abandoned kitten and nurse it back to health and keep it

A m i e

I stood in the doorway of my living room, staring ahead as if my eyes were magnets and the couch was formed out of iron.

A warm rush of utter peace and adoration washed over me, causing me to shiver apart from the warmth of the heater and Jacob's body heat that had warmed up the room in the past hour.

Without really understanding what was happening to me, I felt my legs move, felt my feet carry me toward the gravitational pull of the couch. The living room, the lights of the Christmas tree, the slowly falling snow flakes in front of the window and even Jacob on the couch blurred in front of my eyes – a swirl of colours and sounds, emotions and sensations.

And then it was there. Just like that.

I could see it all so very clearly. A run-down house by First Beach, the waves crawling up the sand, leaving behind riffles, two black haired children jumping through the water, laughing every time the foamy cold reached their tiny feet, warm arms wrapped around my stomach as I stood and watched them, my heart beating calm and even, almost as peacefully as during sleep. A warm breath tickling my ear, a husky voice whispering my name. Bells.

Meeow

The high-pitched, yet astonishingly quiet and fragile sound tore me out of my thoughts, leaving me confused and overwhelmed by how real and concrete they had seemed.

As my eyes slowly started to regain focus of my surroundings, I realized in surprise that my feet had carried me all the way to the couch and stopped there.

I looked down – and my heart made a loop in my chest.

There she was, one paw – not even the size of a dime yet – holding on to the half-filled plastic bottle, her tiny pink tongue peeking out, lapping the droplets of the milk-water mix from the bottle, while the other paw was fighting with the string of Jacob's sweater.

My heart still felt like jello, watching the handful of russet and white fur lying on Jacob's chest, fighting for her food and against the evil green string, the whimpering sounds that squeaked through the room, the uncoordinated movements (at one point I nearly leaped forward to catch her because she had rolled dangerously close to the edge before she crawled back into safer zones), the tiny paws, the short tail that was waggling from one side to the other, the teeny nose and tongue.

But what made my heart melt the most was not just my kitten. It was my kitten lying on Jacob's chest. My kitten lying on a sleeping Jacob's chest. His left arm dangled from the couch, the back of his hand pressed into the carpet floor, while his other arm lay strangely angled on his chest – the hand with which he had been holding the bottle only a few minutes ago. I giggled quietly, watching his chest rise and fall with each breath, the little bundle of fur travelling up and down with him. Jacob's head rested on the armrest of the couch, his calves and feet outstretched in the air.

It was always the same. This calm peacefulness that washed over me every time I saw the two together. The bunch of fur about the size of my hand peeking out of Jacob's much larger fist, nuzzling her nose against his fingers, trying to catch a loose strand of his hair.

She loved him.

Did I?

I should probably be mad at Jacob for falling asleep – you could never let the little one out of your eyes. It was miraculous that she was not already busy eating the cookies on the table or destroying the Christmas tree. For what I knew, she might as well be on a suicide squad up the stairs.

But anger was the last thing on my mind. The past days had been hard for Jacob, he had been on patrol almost every night this week, getting nearly no sleep. Around me, he always pretended to be fine, even if I told him he did not have to linger around all the time and should rather use his free hours to catch some sleep. The only response I ever got was a casual wave of his hand and the pretence that he was just fine and not tired at all.

And here he was, deep asleep in only about five minutes it had taken me to go to the bathroom. When I had left, he had been feeding our little adventurer full of devotion, fighting with her paws while she greedily lapped at the bottle – her paws not even the size of his fingernails.

Our adventurer.

I remembered the day so clearly. It had been a month ago, the first day of snow and that had to be the day Jacob decided to take me to Port Angeles for Christmas shopping. I had been more than surprised by this plan, but, as Quil later explained to me, it had been Jacob's intention to analyse my behaviour in the various stores to figure out what I would "approve" of and what not.

We had just left the fifth store, when my shoe lace got untangled and I almost slipped on the snowy sidewalk. It had been a busy day, many people out on the streets, and so, I had carefully made my way into an empty alleyway, Jacob following me with a smug grin on his face.

"What are you grinning at?" I had asked, kneeling down to fix the dangerous mess on my shoe.

"Well, you just dragged me into an empty alleyway – don't you think that's a bit too much of a cliché?"

Jacob would normally have earned himself a slap on his chest, but an almost inaudible whimper stopped me from committing a semi-violent crime.

"What was that?" I had asked, looking around to find the source of the sound.

"Sounded like a cat," Jacob had said, walking past me toward a bunch of garbage cans by the brick wall of what seemed to be a diner. He had leaned over, kneeling down almost immediately.

"No way," he had murmured, just loud enough for me to hear him. I had quickly made my way to his side, kneeling down next to him, hearing the whimpering sound again, just a little louder this time.

I had followed Jacob's gaze and my heart had clenched in a very painful way at what I saw, tears almost immediately burning in my eyes.

There, between two garbage cans, lying between carton boxes stuffed with dirty wrappers and tissues, debris of food and plastic cans, a tiny head had peeked out, two eyes closed, the barely-there fur dirty and sticky, the whimpering sounds tearing at my heart.

"Oh no," I had whispered, holding on to Jacob's arm, a single tear running down my cheek, the wet trail it left vulnerable to the chilly November air. "Who's doing something like this?"

"Maybe its mother died, it doesn't have to mean someone just left it here. Although, that's probably it," Jacob had said dryly, staring down at the almost lifeless, dirty kitten.

"We have to get it out of here," I had said, wiping my cheek with my glove, looking expectantly at Jacob, who had just nodded and reached forward, carefully putting aside the garbage and the pieces of carton.

The more of the kitten had come to the eye, the more anger I had felt inside of me toward the person who could be heartless enough to just leave this tiny, helpless creature out here in the trash. Its fur was sticky with grease, food, oily and just absent on many places of its body, where the skin was obviously sore, blood smears causing the familiar nausea in me. I had been able to see the fragile skeleton beneath the worn out skin and when Jacob had gently cradled the bundle in his big, warm hands, the whimpering sounds grew almost violent.

"It's scared," I had whispered, freeing my hand from my glove and reaching out my finger toward the poor creature, swallowed by Jacob's hands.

"Don't touch it. It probably has all kinds of diseases," Jacob had said. Yeah. Sadly, that was probably true.

We had made our way back to Jacob's car in silence, the crowd drowning out the squeaky whimpers coming from Jacob's fist.

We had taken the kitten straight to a vet down in La Push. Luckily, he had not diagnosed any diseases, "only" extreme deprivation of pretty much everything, The little girl was about two weeks old, and Jacob and I had immediately taken responsibility of her when the vet had suggested to give her to an animal shelter.

I would never forget the priceless expression on Charlie's face that night, when Jacob and me had walked into the living room, a sleeping bundle of unhealthy-looking skin with a bit of hair sleeping soundly against Jacob's chest.

(It had taken one meeow for Charlie to accept the new member in the household.)

From that day on, my house had replaced Jacob's garage as our Taj Mahal, balls of wool took over metal tools, milk and water mixtures became the new warm soda, and squeaky whimpers replacing the clinging of Jacob's car work.

We spent all of our time with our tiny fosterling, trying to nurse her to a normal state for a kitten her age. It melted my heart to see how full of life she really was, how full of joy and lust for adventure. We watched her take her first unsure steps, laughed at her fighting with the laces of Charlie's shoes, who was helplessly standing in the hallway, with the latest addition to his family clinging to him. I would never forget the images of Jacob laying on the floor on his back, feeding the little one with the bottle, tickling her, cradling her against his chest when we did our homework.

Every day when Jacob left, I had to carry her up the stairs and away from the front door, at which she would scratch and whine for minutes after he left.

The nights she spent cradled against me in my bed, waking me sometimes by lapping her tiny tongue against the tip of my nose, or my lips, or my neck or my fingers.

I had been feeling gradually better after starting to spent time with Jacob months ago, but the open secret of his feelings for me had slowly created an invisible barrier between us.

That barrier had been forgotten over the last month, ever since the little fur ball had given me some kind of purpose and much more joy than I had ever known.

I had not realized that somehow, with a detour and many rocky steps along the way, I had – in my heart - crossed that barrier over the last weeks. And I realized this now as I kneeled down next to Jacob's sleeping form, watching his peaceful face.

And then, without really caring that it was absolutely wrong and inappropriate and downright creepy, I leaned over, feeling his even breathing fan over my skin, before feather lightly brushing my chapped lips against his, leaving my eyes open – just in case.

As soon as our skin touched – and not even properly touched for that matter – Jacob's eyelids began to flutter. He mumbled something incomprehensible, his left arm suddenly slapping against my back – he had been instinctively reaching out for the tiny kitten on his chest.

I held my breath and waited for his eyes to open.

For a splint second, he looked me in the eyes sleepily, before his brain seemed to receive the message his eyes were sending.

"Wha-what are you doing, Bells?"

"Trying something," I whispered, my voice shaky and much less brave than I wanted to sound. Before Jacob could say anything else, I brushed my lips against his again, feeling the tips of his finger slightly grab my back.

Meeow

I pulled my lips away from Jacob's once again, looking down to see a bundle of russet-white fur right by my face, paws playing with the curtain of my hair and Jacob's jawline.

"We better move this somewhere else. I won't be the one to give Amie ´the talk`," Jacob said with a laugh, although I could hear that this was the same ease he pretended when he said he was not tired.

I groaned, carefully cradling the kitten in my hands to stop her from pulling our my hair. "Don't call her that. You know I hate the name."

"Well, you don't make a decent suggestion, either. And she needs a name. So, Amie it is," Jacob said, sitting up to watch me nuzzle my nose against the fluffy fur, earning a purr.

Before I could protest in any way, warm fingers lifted my chin, and warm lips pressed urgently against mine, meeow-ing sounds mingling with soft whimpers and a grunt from Jacob as I pushed him into the couch, crawling over him, absent-mindedly setting Amie down on the couch.

My skin tingled as Jacob's warm hands slipped beneath my sweater, his fingers trailing up my bare stomach, while his teeth nibbled lightly against my earlobe, causing me to cling to him like my life depended on it.

Just as I had gathered the courage to trail my fingers against the waistline of Jacob's jeans – which earned me the most rewarding shudder – a clattering sound caused us to jump apart.

"Oh, crap!"