Chapter 10
"You're still a wild one, but what is it you're running from? All scared, like you're staring down the barrel of a gun. No pistol could get you, no rifle could shoot fast enough."
"Why does the water in your shower get so hot?" Isaac asked, walking out of the bathroom and into Carmen's room. He was wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of blue checkered boxers. His hands gripped the ends of the purple towel he had around his neck. "I think I have like third degree burns or something." He gingerly rubbed a red patch of skin on his chest that the neckline of his shirt left exposed. He looked up at her and saw her on the bed, with her knees bent upwards about a foot away from her chest. She had a magazine on her lap, but he could tell that she was only pretending to read it so she didn't have to look up at him.
"I don't know, maybe it's water pressure or something." She didn't really seem all that interested in his question. Like she was thinking about something else. "Go take a cold shower to cancel it out." He wasn't in the mood for her sass.
"Do you wanna tell me what's been up with you lately?" He sat down by her feet and continued to dry his curly hair with the towel in his hands. She peered at him from above the magazine cover then quickly looked back down to what she was reading. "If you feel like you should be telling me something, somehow I feel like now is a more-than-appropriate time for it."
"I'm fine." She replied quietly, shifting her feet away from him. She could take care of the Peter issue by herself. It was something that concerned her and only her. Bringing Isaac into it would have just made everything more difficult.
"I can hear your heartbeat. You're not fine. You haven't been fine." He insisted, gently lifting the magazine from her fingers. He set it down on the bed next to her and put his hands on her kneecaps to straighten her legs out. "Tell me what's going on."
"It's nothing, really. It's not a big deal." She just admitted that there was something wrong. He still continued to stare into her eyes, expecting a more concrete response. "What happened at Deaton's was just high stress, that's all." She shrugged, going to pick the magazine back up. He put his hand on top of hers to make her stop. "Isaac, come on. I told you."
"No you didn't." He shook his head, leaning in closer to her. He put his hand on her face and she sighed deeply, closing her eyes. She reached up and put her hand on his, absentmindedly drumming her fingertips on the back of his palm. "Let me help, for once." Her recent obsessive compulsiveness and quiet demeanor as of late had him worried. She was bottling something up and it seemed like she didn't even want to say it out loud, let alone to him.
She bit down on her lip and thought for a minute or two, then she nodded slowly. She slid over on the bed and cleared a spot for him then once he was leaning up against the pillows she curled up closer to him and rested her face inches away from his own. "Do you...have you..." She was hesitant about what she was about to say and she kept searching for words, but he never grew impatient. Her fingers played with the hem of his shirt while she continued to think. "Have you ever cared about a person you know you should hate?" It sounded like she didn't even want to say it. "Like you know that what they're doing to you is terrible, but...you sort of just hope that they're going to change?"
His hand started to stroke the soft hair on the back of her head. "Yeah, I have." He was just staring up at the ceiling in deep thought while she looked at him. She didn't need him to tell her who he was thinking about. She already knew it was his father. They hadn't talked about it much before, but she could read him like a book. He felt bad about still caring for his dad, even after he had been through all the abuse. He couldn't find it in his heart to hate him. It was like a cloud of guilt followed him around everywhere he walked, constantly showering down on him. "It's Peter, isn't it?" He sighed deeply, shutting his eyes in hopes that he was just dreaming. Derek was right. He shouldn't have let her get that close to Peter in the first place.
"I'm afraid that it's turning me into him." She felt terrible for even letting those words come out of her mouth. "Scott's told me why he's so dangerous and why I shouldn't trust him, and for a while I didn't listen to anything he said. But now it's so difficult not to. Sometimes it's the only thing I can think about." Peter was a killer. A manipulative guilt-tripper. If that was what her fate was then she thought she'd be better off dying.
"He's trying to make you play right into his hands, you know that. You're better than that." She who could manipulate was now the one being manipulated. That's what probably made her so scared in the first place. She needed her gift to be able to do it. Peter did it on natural talent. On his instincts.
"The only reason he brought me to Derek's the day he did the ritual on you was so that I could watch you suffer. So that he could force me into breaking that promise. So that everybody just looked the same to me and so that I wouldn't have a difficult time pushing anybody, no matter what." The only reason he had found Danielle for her was to plant the seed in her mind. She was given the power and now she had to use it. She would be lying if she said that she didn't get a rush by using her ability. It made her feel good. It made her feel important. "It's like he was trying to tell me to get used to not keeping your word or get used to not listening to the people you care about."
"Don't let him influence you into making choices you don't want to make. Do what you want to do. Shut him out." His voice was relatively even, but the way his chest rose and fell made her notice that he was uptight. "Because you're going to want to trust him because you think that he's right. You're going to wait for him to come around or change and it'll make you look stupid. That's all it's going to do to you. It'll just make you look pathetic and trust me, it's not worth it." He wasn't just talking to her now. He was talking to himself.
"But what if he is right?" She replied after a few moments of silence, making him stop moving the palm of his hand against the back of her head. "About me...about how I can't pick favorites? How I have to treat everybody the same otherwise I'm a waste of time?" He looked straight into her eyes and he could see his own reflection.
"You are not a waste of time. Don't you ever say that again. Don't you dare." His voice had suddenly grown hoarse. There were tears forming in his eyes and his nose was stinging. He had been told that so many times. That he was a burden. A waste of time and space. Unlovable. Worthless. Subjecting her to that kind of harm was unthinkable to him. She'd healed those wounds for him and now he was prepared to make sure that she'd never get them herself.
"But Isaac—"
"There are exceptions to every rule, Carmen. Every rule. You can say no and you can say yes. You're allowed to do that. He isn't." His other arm was free so he moved it over to tip her chin up with his index finger. "Don't think that the more you use what you have the more you turn into him. There is a very obvious difference between hurting people and caring about them. He wants you to blur that line, but I know you and I know that you won't do it. You're so much better than that." He didn't want her to make the same mistakes with Peter that he had made with his dad. He didn't want her to feel guilty about making her own decisions. Trusting somebody who did nothing but hurt you was a terrible thing. It was abusive.
"I don't know what I'd do without you." She nestled her forehead into the side of his neck and closed her eyes, wrapping her arm around his torso. When those words had settled into him, his lips spread apart to reveal a wide grin full of nothing but joy. To her, she said what she did because it was appropriate. Because she had needed him and he was there. To him, those words were everything. They were proof to him that everything he had suffered through was worth it because he loved somebody and she loved him back. The tears that had formed in his eyes as a result of sadness were now falling onto his cheeks because of happiness. "Thank you." Those two words came out of her mouth so easily but they carried a lot more weight than usual.
"Any time." His fingers twirled around locks of her hair and he just couldn't get the grin to slip off his face. "So you'll be back to normal, yeah?" She laughed softly and he could feel her nodding her head.
"I think I will be." Her laughter was cut short when her trained ears heard the front door open and close. Troy. "SHIT! Turn the light off, turn the light off!" She scrambled up, smacking Isaac's chin with her forehead. He cringed and inhaled sharply, trying to hold himself together as much as possible because he was so afraid of being found. Her hand found the light switch and the room went dark. He could feel her lips up against his ear and it sent a wave of warmth through his stomach. It really shouldn't have turned him on as much as it did. "I'm sorry about your chin." She whispered, kissing the side of his face.
"It's okay." He said back at an equal volume, trying his best not to laugh. He could hear Troy walking up the stairs, then pausing about five feet away from the door. They both held their breath and she put her hand on his chest to muffle the sound of his heartbeat while her brother listened at the door.
He stood for a couple more seconds then walked back down the stairs. He probably could tell that something was a little sketchy, but he decided that he wasn't in the mood to bust somebody's balls tonight. Once they released the air that they had been holding in their chests, Isaac and Carmen started to laugh so hard that sounds barely came out of their mouths. "Oh my God, that was so close." She buried her mouth into his neck to mask her laughter. "He probably knows you're here."
"Hey, I think he's starting to actually like me." The room was still pitch black but it wasn't difficult for him to find her face. He traced his fingers along the smooth skin of her cheek bones and smiled faintly when his fingers touched her lips. "I'm hot. You can't hate me for very long." He could feel her smile beneath his fingers and he bent his head downward to match his mouth against hers. There were a lot of things she loved about him. She loved how he was so sweet and gentle, and how he was when they were alone together. He was vulnerable.
But she adored how cocky he could be at times. The confidence that came with being a werewolf. The "look at me, I'm beautiful" snide mentality or the sarcastic bite that his words took on sometimes. He didn't have that before he turned, and in the beginning of their relationship she wished he hadn't had it at all. But it had grown on her. "My brother doesn't hate you because of how you look, he hates you because he knows you're the reason I'm not a virgin..." She mumbled against his mouth, moving her hands to grab onto his strong shoulders as she felt him on top of her.
"That's me, Isaac Lahey. The virginity thief." He bit on her bottom lip and moved his hands up and down the sides of her thighs. She laughed and rolled her eyes. "You took mine too...should Derek hate you?" She was sort of sure that was already true, but it definitely wasn't because she was having sex with Isaac. That was a conversation for another night.
"He'll start liking you. Eventually." She felt him squeeze her ass and it took all of her willpower to make herself squirm away. "He's going to do more than kill you if he walks in on us. No." She pulled his hands away but he still kept sucking on her neck. She really wouldn't have minded about all the hickeys he left on her if they'd go away easily, but they never did. She could bite right through his skin and it would heal back within five seconds. Life just wasn't fair.
"The lights are still off," He reasoned, repositioning his hands to pull her shirt up. Again she pushed him away. "Well what about tomorrow night? He's always late on Wednesdays." He had learned to memorize Troy's schedule just because his life necessitated it. He couldn't help himself. "I'm a teenage boy with a beautiful girlfriend. You thinking that I'm not going to have hormones is completely out of whack."
Flattery wasn't going to get him anywhere. "Maybe. If I feel like it." She turned over on her side and he held her close to the front of his body. His height made him an effective big spoon. "You asked to spend the night, and that's what you're going to be doing. No funny business." She mumbled, feeling him start to laugh. "What is it?"
"Nothing." He quieted down, resting his face against her shoulder blade. He closed his eyes and pulled her in closer to him. He could feel her heart beating steadily in a pattern he had come to recognize with ease. "I just love you." He inhaled the scent of her skin, smiling in ecstasy. He promised to himself that he wouldn't let her go near Peter. She'd cared enough for him and he owed it to her to return the favor.
"I love you too."
This chapter's song was "Gun Shy" by Widowspeak.
News on the show if you guys haven't heard yet: this past week Crystal Reed was on the show "Fashion Police" and she said that the first scene she filmed for 3B with Sharman was a makeout scene, which means two things. 1) Alisaac is canon. So we'll see how that plays out in this fic or even if it manages to play out at all haha. 2) ISAAC IS ALIVE IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE SEASON. SO THAT'S GREAT NEWS.