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goldeneyedgirl · 4 months

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12 Kisses: january: lingering, korean alice.

So I decided I'm going to try to fill one of these kiss prompts each month this year, each with a different one of my fic verses. They'll just be little warm up fics, and hopefully get me over this fic-writing block I've got. Of course, January's is late because I didn't decide to tackle this until three days ago. So you get two kiss fics this month.

Today, Korean Alice and her first meeting with Jasper. A little more world-building, and that first date from her point of view. I missed this verse, it's so different to what I normally write. I hope you enjoy!

twelve kisses. january: korean alice [ lingering ] a long, slow kiss filled with emotion & desire

Alice doesn’t know what she’s thinking, truly.

It started simply - most of her visions, she ignores. They leave her with the memory of a headache and information she can rarely use. And she’s almost always so tired that they can’t get through properly. Ratana and her people always forget that she needs food, water, and rest.

So when she sees it, just a glimpse, she has to grab it.

(How many days and how many nights had she wondered what it would be like to fall in love? For that one person to appear and just… love her. Like her. Care about her. A person who was hers. It was all she had wanted for such a very long time.)

Jasper Cullen is perfect. And the minute she sees him in person, she loves him. Everything about him. It’s worth everything she had to negotiate with Ratana in that moment. And when she sees him smile? Well, she’d pay double.

It takes almost nothing to get him to approach her. He studies her carefully, and for once she feels pretty and desirable and special. She tries to take care of her clothing, to tailor the things she finds and sew new things, but she also knows that no manner of clever sewing or embroidery can cover up how well-loved her clothing is. No tailoring can fix that she’s too thin, too small, for her age.

And he still approached her, his gaze unwavering. He’s so tall, and he moves like all the leading men in the black-and-white films she watches. Like he might be coming to sweep her off her feet.

She’s being ridiculous.

(Maybe she understands all those girls who fell for American soldiers during the war a little bit better right now. He’s perfect.)

It happens just the way she saw, the way he comes over and helps her down and starts speaking in English before attempting some stilted, formal Korean. She’s trying very hard not to blush, but she does giggle at his visceral relief when she answers him in English.

“Jasper Hale, ma’am,” he says. Jasper. It fits him perfectly.

And this is the moment. The one she saw.

“I’m Alice,” she says, a little breathlessly. “You call me Alice.”

“Alice,” he breathes, and it’s beautiful when he says it.

(She has a name. A name he gave her. It’s been eighty years, being known as ‘Child’ or ‘Girl’. Ratana has given her I.Ds and papers in the past with placeholder names that were never hers. The name her grandparents called her before they cast her out was that of the mother she killed, never her own. Not an affectionate memory, but a reminder of the pain and horror she caused. And maybe she should be sad or frustrated that it’s not a Korean name, that it’s an English name. But she cannot make herself care when it’s been bestowed upon her by the one that will love her best.)

“You’re not…” he begins and then stops, ducking his head before she can stop him. She’s not surprised that he’s already picked up that she’s not like him; the hummingbird heartbeat always gives her away - her eyes are dark enough that they pass as black; she works hard enough in the night hours that she has both the pale skin and the dark circles under her eyes. But the heartbeat always gives her away.

“Apologies, that was rude,” Jasper says and she smiles at him, looping her arm around his.

“How about I answer your questions somewhere else?” She offers, more confident than she feels and almost flirtatious. She’s rather impressed with herself; she thought she’d be a stammering mess.

“If they can spare you, I’d be obliged,” he manages.

“For one night, they can.”

It’s the same rigmarole to get out of the market as it is to get in - Hala wiping his memories as they make the trek back to the centre of the city. She knows the deal that Alice made with Ratana, that this will not be the last mind-wipe that Jasper Hale has today.

But she doesn’t want to think about that yet, and lets Jasper escort her deeper into Busan.

There is no food in the market - the girls for sale are fed before it opens, and very few other attendees require human food. Sometimes Ratana will bring her food - she prefers Alice not dine on blood, though she’s never said why. So she’s oddly touched when Jasper takes her straight to the human night markets, to stands piled high with food, with smoke and heat filling the air. Somehow, she manages to find her appetite, and she’s amused at how closely he watches her as she eats.

He’s easy to talk to, and a gentleman - he guides her though the crowds protectively, his hand gently on her lower back. She knows more than one male in the markets that would take the opportunity to slip their hand underneath her shirt or down the back of her skirt, and she’s oddly proud Jasper hasn’t.

(She’s not sure that she’d be upset if he did…)

But the questions fly between them and she’s fascinated that he’s one of the vampires that fought of territory - it seems like a horrific way to spend decades, and she’s been manning a market stall since the 30s. Even more impressive is that he left it all and started anew, with a family that he speaks of with affection and a diet that has left his eyes a captivating, murky gold. He talks of travel and schooling and adventures that she’s only ever seen in film, and it sounds wonderful. He sounds wonderful.

And she talks about the markets and about what, who she is - she tries to gloss over her childhood, before Ratana found her, but he squeezes her hand as she rushes through that story as if he knows the pain that it causes her. She tells him about some of the wilder clients, the funnier moments in the market, to make him laugh. He has a wonderful laugh.

They end up in a park; too dark for humans, but perfect for them. He’s still holding her hand, as they weave between the trees and flower beds. She pauses for a second, to pluck a white flower from the ground - growing out of bounds of the garden bed, it will be cut away when the park maintenance staff spot it so she figures it’s okay to pick it.

She tucks it behind her ear and looks over at Jasper, who is looking at her with an expression she cannot decipher.

And then he kisses her.

Oh.

It’s heartbreakingly slow, his hand cupping her face as he rubs circles on her cheek with his thumb. She’s standing on her tip toes and it’s still not close enough. She’s pressing against him, her hands flat against his chest. His mouth moves against hers impossibly slowly, drawing her in and making her head swim. Maybe she sighs against him. It's the kind of kiss that feels like it belongs in a movie; but better, because watching it on the screen doesn't even come close to how it feels, how he feels.

(She doesn’t count any of the rough hands, faces mashes against hers in a moment of opportunity on rowdy nights at the market as experience. This singular perfect kiss is her first and only. It’s her life, her story, and she can write it exactly as she pleases.)

She feels so warm, even with the cool of his hands against her. She wishes that they were somewhere else, not in the middle of a park, wishes she had the perfect words to explain that she was already falling in love with him the moment she saw him walk towards her. Now she's done, she's fallen head over heals, and her heart is firmly and forever his.

(That she would not at all be upset if he slid one of his hands around her waist and pulled her closer.)

He only pulls away when she needs to breathe; as he steps backwards, her knees quiver and he’s quick to steady her.

She doesn't know what to say to him in that moment, at the way he's staring at her reverentially; the way he runs his thumb over her lips and bends down to kiss her again - softer, fast, just a graze against her that somehow feels impossibly intimate.

And for some reason, that's when she remembers her agreement. That she's Cinderella on the clock and as beautiful and perfect as this moment is, it cannot last forever.

“Let’s get out of here,” she says breathlessly as she makes up her mind, and he grins at her, a proper movie-star grin that makes her melt a little more. He tucks her in at his side, and they leave the park together, back into the streets of Busan towards her apartment.

(She wishes she could stay in the moment. Ratana gave her until four in the morning; and then he’ll forget and she’ll be alone again. But it’s only midnight - barely midnight - and there’s still four hours left of her own love story, of this perfect moment, and she’s going to savour every single one. If this is how her love story goes, well, she's going to make it everything she ever hoped for.)

#alice cullen #jasper hale #twilight fic #jalice #my fic: korean alice #my fic: 12 kisses #my fic: 2024 #alice has been raised on black and white films and determined optimism #this is basically as happy as it gets #everyone gets to suffer after this #if it wasn't for memory wiping jasper would have taken her back to america the next day #and the cullens would have been mildly horrified that jasper bought home a fiancee that he's known for 24 hours who isn't a vampire #that would be full rom-com vibes

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