a/n: dylan o'brien has an interesting nose. a drabble i wrote some months ago and which i am only now just posting. because i have to seem productive. :p
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(she-wolf who sat under the apple tree)
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i.
She bites into the apple's red skin, her teeth scraping through the white flesh, and she gives him a flirtatious wink as she wheels around in her stiletto heels and click-clacks her way through Beacon Hills' hallways. People stop and stare at her legs, at the way she tosses her blonde hair, at her figure-hugging white top.
He watches this and his heart beats a little faster.
ii.
She pins him against the lockers, his chest is pounding a steady drumbeat, and he struggles to make eye contact-or rather, a lack thereof. Her eyes are magnetic, black hole things, and try as he might, he can't help but find himself gravitating inexorably towards her gold-flecked irises, at the ruby-red of her lips.
She kisses him, long and hard and passionate, and in it, even though he kisses back, he feels a little hollow. Like she's a vampire and she's bleeding him out with her tongue.
iii.
Her lashes flutter like black butterflies at the pack meetings. He's one of them, even though he's not; he's the honorary member, because he's human, and Scott, his buddy, is a werewolf, and so is she. He can't ever forget, the way she looks like she wants to tear into his neck.
Derek Hale glowers at him. The blonde girl grins.
iv.
There's something very hollow about the girl named Erica. He feels it every time they touch; a whimper, a moment of vulnerability that hides underneath that leather jacket and that sun-yellow curtain. She's a Rapunzel, but he's no knight.
Instead, he tries to fill himself up, taking from her as easily as she gives her heart in tentative, poetry-paper fragments, the writing scrawled across the bits and pieces as delicate as spider legs and as wispy as cobwebs. The way her nails shine, they look like red-painted daggers lying on the beach on a Monday morning.
v.
"Hey, Stiles."
"Erica," he breathes.
She grips him, hard, baring her teeth. He gives a little squeal.
The blonde girl puts her head on his shoulder and she cries, and he understands because he saw it happen, saw the betrayal, and all he can do is hold her close, breathe in the spicy-sweet scent of her natural perfume, let her cry her winter tears into his sweatshirt and keep this broken chinadoll from breaking apart any further.
vi.
When they break apart, it's with some sadness on each side, more on hers than on his, surprisingly, because she aches more, needs more, wants to be more.
"I'll be waiting, Stiles."
He leaves. She doesn't come back.
vii.
Then, the blonde girl, the she-wolf, is dead, and he doesn't know what happened, entirely, but he understands part of it is his fault for not understanding, not knowing, and that she's scattered on the winds like dust, and he can still try and feel the warmth of her body against his, remember the way she fits into his arms, but it's all futile.
Because ghosts never return as the people they once were. He should know. He almost-dated a wolfgirl, once, an eternity and a day ago.