#The paintball stuff is too big to put in tease form unfortunately | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jessicanjpa · 7 months

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the hair

(An excerpt from this chapter of 2003, in which Edward invents the hairstyle he has when he meets Bella two years later. The Cullens and Peter/Charlotte are playing vampire-level paintball here.)

By the third hour, we were almost out of bullets, but it really didn't matter. It turned out paintball was one of the sports where we should have split up the couples between the teams, because all the scattering and hiding meant the couples kept finding little love nests throughout the playing field and ignoring their teammates. Rosalie and Emmett's rendezvous in the treetops was especially treasonous, what with their being on different teams, but it ended with a spectacular marital shootout that left them both more orange and purple than not.

Still, it was annoying... until I suddenly realized the strategic value of being single and promptly abandoned the field to get myself the first shower back home. I even had to use shampoo for once, what with all the paint in my hair, and even then, it took nearly half an hour to get it all out. It was a grand thing, having a long, hot shower all to myself without anyone shouting for me to hurry up.

My hair was so fuzzy after its torture that I decided to forage around in Alice's bathroom closet and borrow some hair gel. I usually didn't bother; my hair did what it liked. Esme liked to tease me that I was still recovering from her ruthless habit of making me use pomade back in the '30s, and she wasn't wrong. The '80s had been a rather cathartic decade in particular when it came to letting my haystack hair live free and wild. In any case, we teenage vampires couldn't be beaten for our dogmatic refusal to pick up the personal habits our mothers insisted on instilling in us.

But I really did look like something had built a nest on my head. It was as good a time as any to try a new look. I wrestled a comb through my hair and slicked everything back like in the old days. The smell was much better, I had to admit. Then I swept everything forward the wrong way, jammed whole fistfuls of hair out of formation, and gave the mirror a defiant grin. A few extra streaks of gel and tweaks to the ends, and I had an anime-inspired style guaranteed to shock Esme to the rafters.

-----(later in the chapter)-----

Esme didn't disappoint. The minute she walked in the door, she stopped in her tracks and let out a little gasp. I turned on the piano bench and gave her a cheeky grin.

"What on earth have you done to your hair?" she demanded.

"Don't you like it?" I asked innocently.

"No, it looks terrible! Tell him, Carlisle!"

Carlisle put up his hands in surrender and continued on up the stairs. Esme darted over, determined to smooth my hair back down. I dodged and batted her hand away, snickering. The new hairstyle was a keeper, all right.

#Edward #Tale of Years teasers #Hair #2003 stuff #Vampire-level sports #The paintball stuff is too big to put in tease form unfortunately #It's the first half of chapter 3 plus this chapter of anyone just wants to read that #Fanfiction #Twilight saga #Twilight fanfiction

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