A/N: Hello everybody, and welcome to my new fic. Just a note that each scene has an accompanying song which you don't have to listen to, but they do really work with the atmosphere! All songs are on Spotify.

Happy reading!

Persephone xo

/ Kids by MGMT

Summer.

The Beacon Hills air was balmy, and a light breeze rustled through the car, ruffling both Stiles and Scott's hair. Scott was sitting forward in his seat, drumming on the dashboard of the Jeep. MGMT was playing through the slightly crackling speakers, a steady base beat humming through the seats. Stiles felt strangely euphoric; his mind clear after what felt like an eternity.

It was summer break, his first proper break from the FBI academy, and Stiles didn't have a care in the world. No deadlines, no work, no adult problems to deal with now that he was home and, blissfully, nothing supernatural looming over his head. Except for maybe Scott, and he wasn't really a problem. It felt almost unsettling to be so relaxed, so normal. For once he was just a regular teenager, coming home from college and meeting up with his best friends for lunch.

And Lydia, of course.

He saw her a lot, but that didn't change the little flutter he felt thinking about her.

"How's Davis?" Stiles asked, determined not to fall into the trap of fixating about Lydia and turning bright red.

"'Bout the same as it was when you visited me two weeks ago," Scott joked, sitting back in his seat. "Sunny, competitive and my microbiology lecturer still hates me."

"I know, but like…" Stiles narrowed his eyes at the road ahead of him, checking it was clear, before turning to look his best friend in the eyes. "No supernatural shit?"

"Don't you think I would have told you?" replied Scott, looking amused.

Stiles frowned, eyes back on the road. "I know. But I'd understand if you hadn't told me. Seeing as, you know, I wasn't told when the entire town tried to kill you, and I know that was because you didn't want to screw up my chances in training. I'm just saying, now I'm in a good place and if there's anything happening with you then I want to know."

Scott laughed, stretching out on his seat like a cat. "Seriously, dude, nothing is happening. It's kind of weird, to be honest. I got so used to waking up and having to fight for things, you know?"

A knot of tension released that Stiles hadn't even known he was carrying.

"That's good, bro. Sorry, I had to ask."

Scott shrugged. "You want to help your friends. No apology necessary." There was a long pause. "It's a shame about Lydia."

Stiles' face twisted in pain. "Yeah, it is."

They shared a companionable silence for a few moments. Stiles watched the road rushing past the battered blue jeep as he drove slightly above the speed limit (he wasn't really worried about getting a ticket from the Sherriff's department – he knew a guy) down the roads he had driven nearly every day as a high schooler. He had missed Beacon Hills in a twisted way. It had been all he had ever known, no matter how much pain the town also caused him. There was the swimming pool that they had visited every single day during a heatwave – the same pool that a tear-streaked Lydia had called him to when she had found a human sacrifice there. If he took the next left, he knew the winding road would lead him to the Beacon Hills nature preserve, where Melissa had taken him bug hunting while his mom was in hospital. Beyond the trees, a twenty minute walk from the road, was the Nemeton, an innocent looking tree stump that had triggered two years of misery.

"It's never going to go away, is it?" Scott said quietly, eyes fixed on the road ahead. "Not really. And especially not for her. She can't just turn it off. People are going to die. That's just how it is."

The mood had turned suddenly sombre. Stiles knew he was thinking about Allison, and to a lesser extent Erica and Boyd and Aiden, everyone they had lost – and even Kira, and Isaac, and Cora, and everyone else that had been such a dazzling presence in their lives before they had needed to run, from something or to something.

"I hope this is it now, though," Stiles said soberly. "This I can deal with. So, my girlfriend is some kind of supernatural sniffer dog, and every few weeks she calls me from a random location crying because she found a body. I can deal with that. We're getting through it. But that's it, you know? That's the limit. Being at college has been a wake-up call. I can't go back to being scared all the time, Scott."

Scott reached over the console to squeeze his shoulder.

"It's over now, Stiles," he said reassuringly. "Trust me."

/Dance, Dance, Dance by Lykke Li

"Can you turn the engine on so I can roll my window down? Please?" Malia begged, fingering the neckline of her denim shirt.

Lydia ran her ring finger around the edge of her lips, trying to neaten up the edges of her freshly-applied cherry-red lipstick. They were sat in her car in the parking lot of a local diner, waiting for Scott and Stiles to materialise so they could get some food and catch up. Lydia hadn't seen Scott since Christmas, and though they talked pretty regularly she couldn't wait to hug him.

"You realise that rolling down the window won't do a lot, right?" she asked, not taking her eyes off the mirror in the sun visor. "It only works when you're moving, because the speed of the car means the air rushes past you. It's basically pointless now."

Malia slumped back into the seat. "But there mustbe some kind of wind. I forgot how hot it is in California."

"There's a breeze," Lydia conceded, snapping the visor back up. "But still, no bugs in my car, thanks. However…" Lydia turned the key in the ignition, her little red Beetle humming to life. "I did invest in air-con."

Her friend gave a dramatic sigh of relief, turning the air vents towards herself. As Lydia's car awoke, the screen on her dashboard lit up, Dance, Dance, Danceby Lykke Li suddenly playing through the speakers. Lydia turned the volume dial down, letting the song turn into comfortable background music.

"They'll be here soon, anyway," said Lydia, turning one air vent towards her face. She hadn't realised how warm she was until she felt the cool air on her cheeks.

"Speaking of," Malia said, turning to lean over conspiratorially. "Are you excited to see Stiles?"

Lydia was surprised to hear such a juvenile question from Malia, but face didn't change; she continued to stare out expectantly into the parking lot ahead of them, a small smile on her lips and, of course, excellent posture. Somehow, she always seemed to look regal. Or smug. Malia couldn't be sure of the difference – she was still getting the hang of the subtle nuances of human expression.

"I'm always excited to see Stiles," Lydia said primly. "Of course, I do see him every other week. The real question is, are you excited to see Scott?"

Malia scowled. "No fair! You changed the subject."

Lydia shrugged, side-eying her friend. "All is fair in love and war. You don't need to answer. I'm sure it will be plainly obvious to me – and everyone else - when I see you together."

"Stupid wolf boy. Stiles was so much less confusing," huffed Malia, crossing her arms.

"Stiles was barely dating you," Lydia said bluntly, pulling her phone out to see if anyone had deigned to offer an explanation for being eight minutes late. They hadn't.

"You're mean today," Malia grumbled, shooting her a disdainful look.

"I haven't been sleeping well," she said, waving her hand dismissively. "But it's different, isn't it? You and Stiles were having sex. That was about it, nothing complicated there. You and Scott are totally different. You had a real moment."

"And then he went to college and we barely spoke for a year."

"You went to Paris. And Scott told Stiles that you never replied to his messages."

"That's unfair. There was a time difference. And I hate texting! He always uses those stupid faces, and they look nothing like normal facial expressions. How am I supposed to know what he means?" Malia whined, pouting like a petulant child.

Lydia suppressed a snort. "It's fine, Malia. College does that," she said, trying to sound reassuring. "I'm sure he didn't expect you to stay single in Paris for the whole year, either."

"But what are we now? Are we friends? Do I kiss him when I see him?"

"I don't know," Lydia said. "Stop putting pressure on yourselves. Let it happen naturally. Que sera sera."

"I know I lived in France this year, but my French skills really aren't very good," Malia said.

Lydia smiled. "That's not the point. The point is that long distance relationships suck, and we're still young. Nobody expects you to be committed. Just have fun, Malia."

"Have fun. I like that advice," Malia said, relaxing a little. "How did you and Stiles make it work?"

Lydia looked thoughtful, playing with the corner of her phone case.

"In all honestly, we nearly didn't," she admitted. "It was tough. We'd see each other every other weekend, of course, but it was an eight hour trip each way. Even making the journey once a month – we'd alternate who visited who, you see – even then it was stressful. And we'd Skype almost every night, while we cooked dinner. Sometimes while we studied too. We didn't talk much while we studied, of course, but it was nice to feel like he was there. He'd interrupt me to read out funny case studies from his textbooks."

Looking across at her friend, Malia seemed almost sad. "I don't think Scott and I are anything like that," she said in a small voice.

Lydia chewed her lower lip. "Maybe not. But I ignored Stiles for the first ten years I knew him. Relationships evolve. You'll get nowhere by comparing yourself to other people."

"I guess," said Malia. "I hate this. Give me ten kanimas over this adult relationship bullshit. At least you know where you stand with a kanima."

Lydia looked at the glovebox, where even today she knew an innocent-looking door key sat on a chain in a little silver box, and wondered if it was possible to ever knew where you stood, truly.

/Nitesky by Robot Koch and John Lamonica

She was freezing.

Morinna always felt cold; possibly something to do with the extremely slow beating heart and the fact that she was, by some estimations, dead. But in this moment she was even colder than usual. It was something she had been able to take with her, a relic from her former life: every time she was doing something wrong, a chill broke through her.

And by most ethical systems, she was fairly certain that what she was doing right now was very, very wrong.

Morinna tried to tell herself that breaking into a blood bank at 3AM to steal resources from sick people was the lesser of two evils, but she was painfully aware that you don't normally need to hide behind a laundry cart when you're being a morally upstanding citizen.

A trickle of treacly blood ran down her chin from where the teeth had dug in. She wasn't sure when it had happened - probably a few minutes ago, considering how slowly her blood flowed now. Morinna dug her sharp nails into her palm, settling into the familiar scars, and traced the shape of her teeth with her tongue. She began counting the dust particles she could see in the air. The nurse needed to leave, quickly. Morinna liked to consider herself perpetually in control, but she still had limits and within a few minutes her ethically sourced meal would turn into a murder investigation. She could flee the scene with ease, but there was something about the area that Morinna liked and she didn't want ruin it.

After what seemed like an age she heard the click of the door shutting. With what felt like superhuman strength, she made herself count to ten before darting out from her hiding place and straight to the chest refrigerator. It took her less than a second to seize three bags of group A and sink her teeth into one of them, her head feeling light as she began to guzzle it. O negative was her favourite, far less bitter, but it could be used on patients of any blood type and so it was always high in demand. Group A was usually overstocked, so she was careful to double-check the labels and make sure that she was only taking that kind. It made her feel marginally less guilty.

She caught sight of herself then, in the mirror above the sink. Chalky skin, with light caramel hair tumbling in messy waves over her shoulders; wide, scared, eyes with only a narrow rim of grey-blue visible around the iris, the colour returning slowly as she felt the warmth of the blood taking root in her stomach. Stark against her washed out, watery palette was the scarlet stain of the meal on her pale lips.

She looked like she had stepped straight out of a horror movie.