Official Description: Bella comes home for Christmas break from her freshman year away at university to be unexpectedly all shaken up. Snideward. Spitefulward. Slightly Darkward. Rated M for lemons and fluffiness in future chapters.
Word Count: 52,741

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The day after that… argument we’d had in my bedroom, the next morning we were all in the kitchen. I’d brewed coffee, set out the sugar and the soymilk. And when I’d turned my back to the pot to pour my cup, Edward “accidentally” knocked the opened carton of milk onto the floor. White liquid pooled around my feet, there was none left for my coffee, which meant I would forfeit having coffee altogether, which meant an awful start to any day.
And all he said was “Oops…”
As if vampires ever “accidentally” did anything.
He was just plain mean, like a rotten, snot nosed little brat of a kid whose only intention was to hurt and to be hurtful.

Ha ha ha, did that get your attention?

It certainly should.

YellowGlue’s complete, lusty, lethal, AU fanfiction, The Worst of Weather, grabbed me by my brain and my heart and my…well, libido, and never once begged me to go wandering for something more interesting or sexy or more entertaining to read (yes, y’all, that’s quite a feat).

This crystalline ice folly of a story begins with an unrepentant Bella (also a petulant, pissed-off, fast going off-the-rails, hard-drinking Bella) returning home to the Cullens. This vampire family became her surrogates when she moved to Forks during high school. She finds herself immediately unanchored by Edward’s surprise presence. He was meant to be on study in Prague; instead it seems he’s come back simply to torture Bella, with the miasmic quagmire of his ‘Want you’, ‘Own you’, ‘Detest what you’ve done to yourself’, and ‘Don’t fucking speak his name’ ways.

And she hasn’t seen him since the previous spring, when a certain crackbreak sent her in a full self-preservation sail to college, away from the vampire she loves.

I was Jean of Arc, burning alive and confessing to any man that would listen.
I was Tina Turner, giving everything to man who beat me to pulpy bruises. All of it. No trial for alimony necessary, because I had loved him, and I didn’t want any of that material shit without him.
I was Kate Moss before a fashion show, purging out every revolting part of myself.

Through sexy lyricism and intentionally poking/stabbing/probing/prodding/arousing encounters, we discover Edward is the only vampire of his family–which consists of Esme, Carlisle, Alice and himself–with abilities, and that it’s Isabella only he can read through touch of skin-on-skin (and that means lots of USTY stroking, of course. Yay!).

The glaciers are always dangerously cracking beneath their feet as their relationship, stormy, gray and dark, meets squall after squall of internal battle. In the most beautiful poeticism I’ve read, YellowGlue combines her own legend with a decadent wordplay to underline the paradox of Edward and Bella: Ask, take. Have, negate. Fuck, run. Make me, break me. Love, sing, suck, belong, cherish.

The imagery is awe-inspiring, but the pure erotic chemistry combined with YellowGlue’s pistol-precise words? To Die For (yeah, be prepared to flatline right here):

There Edward was, shirtless in the snow. Dark denim was fitted and hung low, so low on his hips. No other man could chop wood shirtless in December. But he could. What the fuck would Edward Cullen need a shirt for? To get in the way of his beautiful arms that were carved right from stone, while they wielded a who-knows-how-many-pound axe, straight into oak, splitting it with such ease and force and grace. No, there was no shirt required here. At all. For any reason. Whatsoever.
But, a funny, furry, floppy-eared, Canadian lumberjack style hat? Yes. That apparently was required here. Yes, a black and grey, floppy, furry hat. And I wanted so much to laugh.
I wanted to giggle at the sight of him.
And I wanted to run up and tackle him in the snow and trace that perfect line of hair from his perfect sternum down to his perfect…
…And so, I let myself giggle at his furry hat for the moment, and I took another sip of the orange juice. I watched him split the wood with the blade, all of his muscles and movements equally hard and swift and smooth. And I felt myself aching to be split.

Splicing himself, addicted to her scent, Edward is inebriated by Bella.

Edward was smelling me up and down and all around, making his 100-something year old self feel like a teenager again, sneaking sloe gin and getting too drunk to see or walk or talk. His nose tickled mine and the ever-present-stubble on his chin and cheek tickled my own chin and cheeks and throat and ears. He was stiff all over, having made himself a fortress wrought of iron, fighting and only barely winning every single second to not tear me open and bleed me dry. And he could go on for hours if I let him. If I didn’t beg.

Meanwhile, she herself is fermenting on him. No one can touch her like him, not even her boyfriend back at school. Her thoughts are wry with the subtlest glints of feisty humor… and damn, she likes her rye…and wine, and pot. Anything to ‘set sail to her own ship’. To stop from being wrecked by Edward’s eternal chain, upon his rocky shores.

Then, through the entrapment of her words, the frozen, crackling icy filigree on windowpanes…this story unfolds quickly, at a drowning man’s pace…fighting hypothermia, struggling against combustion…running amuck and coming back.

Amidst the compacted yet spreading hoarfrost of The Worst of Weather, the most delicious Darkward runs rampant: both man and beast, savagely wanting what he cannot want. Tempting fate, tempered by his fate, puncturing lifetimes.

Wicked, naughty, sinister and all suede black, he’s watching Bella strangling herself because he won’t do it for her.

The fine filaments of YellowGlue’s prose gather pace like rounds sung aloud, rebounding, incautiously burning, melting, and always yearning.

He pushed my already parted legs open wider too and pressed his hips flush against my own in the boldest display of dominance yet. All ownership, all unbending tyranny.
His jeans concealed nothing, I could feel him unbreakable and unrelentingly hard as marble up against my heat. I heard my voice cry out feebly into his shoulder without my meaning for it to.
Anything. Pleasegodfuckgivemeanything.
I’ll do anything.
I felt his hands rifle through my hair and wrench my neck left and right with seemingly little care for all my breakable bones. He breathed in deep and began to alternate between deep, greedy breaths and even greedier kisses.
Ravenous. Salacious.
He pressed his tongue flat against the flesh on my throat, shoulders, and chest and he closed his lips and sucked hungry, famished kisses along my tingling nerve endings. I felt my skin give, turn purple, bruise.
I felt his teeth – not his fangs, not deep enough to draw any blood, not even anywhere close to anything like that – but I felt them, skimming along my skin and I thought I’d lose all grip on reality and sanity forever.
I bucked up against him, aching to move, to communicate somehow. But he kept me shackled in his hands and he moved his impatient, hell-bent nose and lips down, over my naked chest.

The Worst of Weather blizzards out the ultimate unrequited love–aching, breaking and wanting to hate, but it’s all the flipside of the coin…it’s love that is too much to control.
And the ending, the final chapter, just gives me goosebumps and chills, and heart-stopping moments. It’s all so glacially hot, so decadently stripped bare, so beautifully, sensually, lethally, cunningly wrought: refined and edgy…obviously I could go on, I could give it all away! But I won’t, you’ll need to read it yourselves. Perhaps though, just one more quote from the last part:

I felt his lips, his tongue; felt the cool-cream-tingle of his venom, felt his teeth pinch a tiny moon-shaped bit of the skin there. I took in a deep breath, felt him do the same, and I took in another and felt his teeth, felt him sucking softly, so softly it almost tickled.
I half giggled half whimpered. His hips pushed forward instinctively, he drove deeper, filled me with his cock. But his lips, his mouth moved so tenderly. He was being so soft with me, so sweet, so careful it was more than enough to bring me off again.
He licked at the teeny cut, hit tongue all cool and velvety comfort.
More.
I want more.
Edward please more…
Love me.
Love me this way…
Show me love…

Please, go read, now! Then breath deeply and check out Edward’s story in Rose Like Thunder.

The Worst of Weather has resided on my list of favorite completed fics for a while now. YellowGlue’s Edward is so… compelling. He’s exactly what I would expect of a vampire who has to stand by while his singer tries to hate him – caustic and sarcastic, pissed off. And in this version of things, Edward can read Bella’s mind, he won’t give her what she wants, and she’s chosen Jake as her consolation prize, although not the Jake we know. Edward’s pain is palpable, but so is Bella’s, and there’s this high tension push and pull that goes on between the two of them that makes my heart hurt and my stomach clench. It’s just so… good.

He continued to pick up my things and drop them, some of them he even tossed to the side. “I mean – that’s all you want?” his voice was bristled, prickled and sharp and he looked me up and down and up again; judge, jury, and executioner all in the same glance. “He’s spineless.” He looked away then so effortlessly. Like I was weightless, completely frivolous. “And so are you.”

I felt struck, bayonet-stuck. And it hurt.

And my reaction was so familiar and yet still so far out of my control it was laughable (not to me of course, but it did cause him a slight momentary grin). My throat swelled around an unreal lump, my nose and that dark, heavy space behind my eyes started to burn and my hands went all clammy and I couldn’t sit or stand still. And so I started to fidget little by little in my pockets, at my seams. I didn’t want to cry. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to cry.

This isn’t a retelling of Twilight. It’s different… better. Much better. Edward tortures Bella relentlessly for not being content with what he can provide, and Bella’s just so screwed up because of the entire situation. Edward is by turns sweet, bitter, sexy, angry, alluring, and cruel.

This entire fic just scorches you with how sexy it is. The lemony goodness is, well… spectacular. I could read the hot-talking Edward over and over again (and I have). The last two chapters kill me dead – not that the rest of it is any less good.

Yes, I’m a total gushing fangirl for this fic, but I can’t help it. It’s rare to run into anything quite like this in the fandom, particularly when it comes to AU fic. Give it a read if you already haven’t.

This fic is amazing, and I don’t know what else I could add to what GoldenMeadow and Mac said. If you don’t read this fic, you’re seriously missing out.