He drifted, under the the soft tones of fleeting music. Allowed it to lap at his feet, swell and pour over him, like a scented haze. His heart sighed and tightened under the pressure of nostalgia so overwhelming, like lilacs and watercolors of a much better time. He drowned, and for the moment, he was happy. The music caressed him gently, warmly, but the voice was empty and longing. Grey and sombre, as if speaking words he feared to say. Alone, he hated it. He needed people, yet they never stayed. So, he just gave up. Kept to himself. Let songs like this fill his heart to the point where he suffocated, to the point where it might burst out of his being. Floating and drowning all at once.
And it's the last time you'll ever hear from me.
"Lahey!" the coach's demanding voice pierces his reverie. He looks up, wide-eyed, from his thoughts.
"Yes, coach?"
"Get your head out of your ass and focus!" he yells, pointing his clipboard at the player, irritation evident in his features. He had been spacing out frequently recently and it was beginning to grate on Finstock's nerves. Even Stilinski was making better plays, god knows what goes through that kid's head at any given point. He was getting thrashed.
"You know what? Just get off the field. All of that grass is getting to your brain," he said in his loud, naturally angry voice, his fingers pointing to his temple emphasizing his sarcasm.
Isaac rolls his eyes, tucking his helmet under his arm as he sat on the bleachers. He didn't care about Lacrosse anymore, often wondering why he even bothered to show up. There was no purpose. What skill he did have was just the result of this stupid curse, and it's not like their team didn't have enough wolves anyway. What was one less?
His everything, if he was honest with himself.
It wasn't any single moment, but the cascades of events that simply overtook him.
He looked at everything and nothing, his gaze falling on the practice, the field, the sway of grass blades in the slight wind, yet registered none of it. The tension in his muscles and apprehension was automatic as his teammate settled into the bleachers beside him. The other breathed noticeably, chest heaving and shoulders rising - then the exhale. Gazes went unmatched.
"I'm sorry."
Isaac stared at the space previously occupied vacantly. The words didn't fill him, not like the watercolors and lilac. He was an upturned bowl, and the reality of consequence seemed to just run over him without taking hold. Words just streamed in rivulets across his smooth exterior.
Isaac went home. He kept Ms. McCall company, one of the few endeavors he took seriously. She was his mom, he couldn't leave her to herself no more than she could him. They shared in the same suffering. It was easier to suffer together. Sometimes it felt as if they weren't suffering at all. It was a nice reprieve, and usually the only times a trace of a smile drew his face, yet Isaac found solitude in the midnight moon. He snuck out quietly. Wondered the silver lined streets with earbuds plugged in. Every time, he ended in a familiar place. Still empty. Chill with the night air, still in lifelessness. He'd paint the ghost of his past with sweet memories. The old, smiling faces whose outlines blurred against white spaces. He was small again. Innocent once more, playing eagerly with toys against the hardwood. The coming of dawn poured him empty, awaiting to be filled once more.
His only options for lab partners were Stiles and Ethan, neither of which he was particularly ecstatic about. Isaac tended to forgive people rather easily. At least he used to, now he was much more cautious. He wasn't about to simply ignore Ethan's involvement in everything. He didn't want anything to do with Ethan or his brother. Stiles was generally obnoxious, overly talkative, and irritatingly inquisitive. Sarcastic as all hell too. Besides being a general nuisance, there was something else Isaac found disconcerting. Stiles was his best friend's best friend. Isaac didn't necessarily have a direct relationship with they guy, nor did he particularly want to, especially now.
Yet here he was sitting next to him at the lab table exchanging numbers. This, the guy, the human who had threatened him in a similar setting prior. The circumstances and feelings had long been rinsed, however.
"You know, you can't run from it forever," he begins as the bell rings and classmates file out for lunch.
"I'm not running," he says, and he really looks at Stiles. He rakes over the young detective's features, all rounded angles, long, set eyebrows, and flat unsmiling lips. Brown eyes meet blues. Isaac averts, glancing at the door wide open.
"Yeah, well, it sur -"
"I'm just… completely still," he interrupts, returning his gaze to the brunette. Stiles visibly shivers at the steely hollow edge to his voice. Isaac leans back in the chair, pushing it out so he can get up. Gathering his belongings, he leaves his lab partner at the desk.
"Your eyes. They're blue," Stiles says as Isaac passes the door frame. Isaac turns back, rolling his eyes.
"And grass is green. So what?"
"No. I mean, they're blue," Stiles' face contorts in confusion and worry.
"Yeah… so?" Isaac's voice is the most distant and forlorn Stiles has ever heard, and his eyes flash from a brilliant cerulean like the midday sky to an otherworldly, mesmerizing azure shining like dark magic. All at once, Stiles feels it all in that instant. Isaac left, yet it rooted him in his thoughts.
