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goldeneyedgirl · 1 month ago

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I'm sooo curious about Tattoo Verse please tell me more about it

Anon, I thought I had inflicted so many posts about Tattoo verse on y'all over the years. I was going to link to all of the posts and pontificate about the inspiration. And then I discovered I only posted a snippet once in March 2020, which is wild.

This is Tattoo-verse

It was basically the result of reading two of my very favourite human AUs over and over again, with a bunch of spite from reading a fic that annoyed the fuck out of me. I channel my frustrations into fics, as is healthy and correct.

Basically, it's an all-human AU where Jasper is kind of drifting through life as a divorced lawyer and then meets Alice while helping Bella set up her bookstore. It's a very low-stakes love story where Jasper is just sort of stunned that he's met his soulmate and she's just as into him? That all of the stuff that he thought made him unlikable was in his head or unresolved trauma?

Alice has her own history that she's trying to move on from, and she's taking a chance on Jasper. She's 'failing upwards', and is a whirlwind of chaos in Jasper's life.

There's a lot about the original draft I'm not a fan of, and needs changing - I think I started in it 2019, so I've changed how I write a lot of the characters, had more thoughts about who the characters are in this universe - but it's a fic I'd like to finish. Something a little bit cosy and uplifting. It needs a whole lot of work, though, so it's kind of just sitting there until I either hyperfixate on it and finish it in a day, or until other things are done.

And because it's such a small post above, have some more of it that kind of sets the tone I'm aiming for.

Her art covers every surface, stacks of canvases against every ledge. A bunch of old tables are pushed together and covered in jars and brushes and paper, right in the middle of the room. In one corner, an ancient porcelain sink and wooden planks nailed to the wall masquerade as a kitchen; an old recliner and a television balanced on a broken chair are close enough to the fridge you could grab a drink without turning around. A futon was jammed against the far wall, covered with beat-up cushions and an old blanket, a heavy flashlight jammed underneath a lampshade balanced on a pile of magazines.

She lets him fuck her on her futon, one of her legs propped up, her tiny skirt hiked up over her thighs, her tank top straps fallen off her shoulders, and her hair tumbling around her face. Afterwards, she pulls down her skirt and gets up to retrieve a box of cookies, curling against him and offering him one.

It’s their fourth or fifth… ‘interlude’ when he starts asking questions and… confessing.

“I’m divorced,” he tells her, like it’s a dark secret or a sin. She stretches like a cat and laughs.

“I’d be positively scandalized if you weren’t,” she smirks, curling half on top of him. “He? She?”

Before he and Rose were entrusted to the Cullens, they were raised in Texas, on a family property. His mother was a wispy, gentle woman whose entire heart were her babies; she has faded in his memory to a shadowy figure in floral dresses who ran her fingers through his curls and called him ‘sweetheart’. His father, though, was a true-born Texan; he wanted a man’s man of a son, a football player and a rancher, who would have died on the spot at anyone speculating his son being involved with another male.

Well, he would have killed Jasper with his bare hands and then died.

The idea Alice can suggest something so calmly is a novelty, that she sees something in him that is like complex origami, that in her eyes, he’s is more.

“A woman. Maria,” her name is sour on his lips, and he wants to tell Alice everything - about meeting in law school, about the engagement, the wedding, the penthouse apartment and shiny cars, and how fucking alone he was by her side. How she was a viper when she wasn’t pleased, and he was an asshole most of the time and…

“Three questions,” she holds up three fingers. “One - did your marriage end in infidelity?”

“Not officially. I suspected but never pursued,” he answers, reaching out to fold down one of her fingers.

“Two - are you officially divorced?” she asked, and some of the good humour faded from her face. “I do not fuck married guys.”

“It’s been… five years, I think?” he said thoughtfully, “Since we were legally and formally divorced.”

“Outstanding,” her face relaxed back into the usual playful expression. “And three - is she a bunny-boiler? Do I need to watch my back?”

He laughs, loudly. “In law school, yeah. Now? I’m below her notice. I doubt she’d look at me if she walked past me on the street. I haven’t spoken to her since the day the divorce was finalized.”

Maria got more than he had in the settlement, but only because he wanted his parents’ things in the divorce and was willing to bargain for them. And he hadn’t really thought about the penthouse or the Lexus or the fucking wine collection in years. None of those things would have bought him comfort or fulfillment. And he was a fucking lawyer; he’d bought himself a new apartment, a new car, a new bottle of wine.

Renesmee’s first birthday party was turning into a three-ring circus that a baby wouldn’t comprehend or enjoy. There were two birthday cakes – a two-tiered confection in pink for the guests, and an identical miniature for Renesmee to destroy; the house and garden were decorated in pink and white balloons, garlands and streamers. A table was piled with food, and nearly forty people were invited, most of them adults. Renesmee herself was in a pink silk party dress with tiny satin slippers.

Alice arrives half an hour after the invited time, in a borrowed sports-car. She’s wearing jeans artfully splattered with silver paint and a silky black camisole with her boots, her hair tipped in silver for the event. She was like an oil slick amongst the pastel dresses and rainbow skinny jeans of the guests. She adds a small present to the pile, and greets him with a deep kiss that all of Bella’s mommy friends find totally inappropriate for the setting, and he nearly punches one of Edward’s co-workers for eyeing the outline of her nipple piercing a little too closely.

It takes less than an hour for her smile to dull, though, surrounded by pregnant women and babies. He wonders how old her child would be, and realizes what a terrible person he is for inviting her today. When he murmurs an apology in her ear, she smiles again and tells him it’s okay, she’s okay. And if she isn’t, Esme’s vanilla-raspberry cupcakes will make up for it.

// He finds her in the kitchen, with Esme, and a glass of wine. Esme smiles at him as he walks in, dropping a kiss to Alice’s head.

“We were just talking about one of my clients - they want a mural in their entry way - they have insisted upon it - instead of hanging artwork, and Alice has just given me the names of two artists I think would be perfect,” Esme says cheerily, before looking back at Alice.

“Jasper was so into architecture when he first moved in with us; he would sit for hours looking at the models. I always thought you’d go into design or architecture - you had such an eye for it. His old apartment was nice, but he insisted on customizing it - you should show Alice the photos.”

“I should,” he agrees. It’s Maria’s apartment now, and everything he associates with his divorce is kept in a separate mental box pushed to the back of his brain.

“Hot and multi-talented,” Alice grins up at him, the wine softening her. “I hit the jackpot.”

Esme could not be smiling more as he pulls up a seat, and insists Alice tell Esme all about her new work as the party continues outside without them.

Esme and Carlisle invite them to stay the night – Bella and Edward are returning to the cottage, but Rosalie and Emmett were staying, and it’s a long drive home. Alice is reluctant, but agrees.

His old room has long since been redecorated from his teenage and college years, but Esme has always kept it as ‘his’, just as Rosalie’s room down the hall is still ‘hers’.

He finds Alice clad in one of his old high school sweatshirts, examining the photos Esme has hung on the wall - from when he was eight, right up until law school graduation. The ones with Maria have been replaced, and he’s glad of that.

“You were such a cutie,” she says, inspecting one of him and Rose on their first day of kindergarten. “That face!”

They curl together in the bed, and he loves how she acts when she’s sleepy; she rubs her eyes like a little kid, and burrows into him. How many nights has he woken up with her clinging to his arm, or sprawled across his chest?

She’s apologized a few times but he loves it. He loves seeing her in his old hoodie as well; wonders if they should bring it back to the city, get her to pair it with some knee socks and heels. She’d laugh and indulge him, tease him about not getting laid in high school.

He takes her to New York in the winter, after Thanksgiving; she doesn’t suspect anything, and he is curious – trips to New York with Maria had been common, and Maria had spent a small fortune each time. Only the best hotels, spas, restaurants, entertainment and shops would do for Maria.

Alice was more interested in spending time with him. She was nervous in the fancy restaurant for dinner, continually fussing with her necklace and sleeves to cover her tattoos. She dragged him to galleries and museums, and wanted his opinion when she tried on dresses and shoes.

She takes him to Brooklyn for burgers and ice cream, to a photography exhibition, and then fucks him roughly in the back of a dark club; he’ll remember her like that until he’s dead; bare under her skirt, her cleavage pressed tightly against the neckline of her top; her knee-high boots.

And then, on their last night, he takes her to the park at twilight and he proposes on the Bow Bridge in Central Park.

Her eyes are huge, and god, he forgets how young she is. Her cheeks are pink from the cold, her hair spilling out of her hat, and she shakes her head and looks at him incredulously, and asks him, “Me?”

“You; only and always you,” he says. His tough, funny, crazy artist is crying as she accepts, and she takes off her gloves to put on the ring.

A few onlookers cheer and applaud, and he dips her into a movie-star kiss.

“I didn’t think you loved me that much,” she whispers to him later, beaming. Her hand is pink from the cold, but she refuses to put her gloves back on, staring at the ring he spent days picking out.

It shakes him to the core, and he stops her in the middle of the street.

“Alice Brandon, there are no words to say how much I fucking love you,” he says in a low voice. “And I am going to spend the rest of our lives making sure you know that every single day.”

#asks #my fic: tattoo-verse #alice cullen #jasper hale #little bit of AH romance for shits and giggles #jasper discovers tattoos are insanely hot and falls head over heels in love #alice has abandonment issues and is kind of just going with the flow with no expectations til he decides to marry her #there's like a little cluster of human AU fics i never did anything with - the ballerina one deserves its moment as well #i also spent today working on jar of hearts AND stl au AND a weird little multiverse fic that i'm gonna blame on arcane #it has 0 links or allusions to arcane but i was watching arcane when i started it #more asks tomorrow i have no thoughts left in my brain it is simply smooth like pudding

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