She's worn lipstick every day since she became what she is now, which is a person in charge of herself. If she's turning her back on the old days, she's doing it all the way. Today, her body is hers.
Erica kisses Derek because she wants to feel it. She hits people and breaks things and revels in her own strength, relentlessly physical, and she'll never need to climb the wall a second time again.
She wears low-cut shirts and leather jackets because she sees the hot girl in the mirror, even if that hot girl doesn't look like her to her. When her claws break the surface of her skin, when her face crushes forward and eyes glow gold, it's foreign and it's right.
During the full moon, her body is not hers to control, but she hates it casually, without any effort to change. Even when she has a seizure, it's not like before, because she can live inside her skin now, feels it differently.
It's better with Stiles.
Kissing Stiles, she can forget that her body betrayed her for sixteen years. When he touches her, it's like her skin glows. She knows she's beautiful. She loves the things her body can do.
With Stiles watching her in disbelief, she listens to her muscles and feels every twitch of her toes, and the pressure of his lips on hers makes her want to fight.
"I like this," she sighs. Growls. Something.
Stiles' mouth twitches, and he says, "Yeah?" and tries to calm his heartbeat.
"Yeah," she says. "I do. But I meant this." She gestures to herself. To all of herself. "Being this."
He frowns, and she asks, "How come you don't want to be?"
"I like being this," he says, fingers drumming on her ribs. It makes a hard kind of thrum go through to her bones. "I like being clumsy and generally hopeless. I don't think turning could solve any of my problems."
He leans in again to kiss her, and it almost tickles, it's so soft.
I could have felt that before, she thinks. If he'd noticed her, if she'd made him notice, she could have had a glimpse of this without the bite.
Her lipstick rubs off on the boy who held her through a seizure, and Erica likes being whatever she is today.