Chapter Twelve: Forget Me, Forgotten.
Song Inspiration: "Euphor" Novo Amor & Ed Tullett
"In Quiet Rooms" OMN
"Fall Away" Lund
STILES POV:
Red neon lights flare brightly in my dimly lit room from the Darth Vader antique lamp that sits on the bedside table. My dad had found it at a pawn shop when he was around my age. On my thirteenth birthday, he passed it down to me.
Cora sits off to the side in the ugly green chair that slants in the corner of the room, she'd fallen asleep a little while ago reading my criminal justice textbook and helping me study. Exhaustion has seeped into her skin the last few days, dark circles placed underneath like they have nowhere else to go. Her hair is moused and sticking up in odd directions, one piece stuck to her lip that rises and falls as she breaths. In the red neon light she looked like death. She also looked beautiful.
I check my phone and see I have a missed text from an unknown number.
"It's Stiles. Can we meet?"
My eyes bug out at that before I shakily begin typing away.
"Is it really you?"
My phone goes off instantly.
"Yeah it's me, don't cream your pants."
I roll my eyes at that. Someone's been watching way too much Stranger Things.
"How do I know this is really Stiles?"
Another ding goes off.
"Because I know you. You're helplessly clumsy. You probably sleep with a night light. You were possessed by the Nogitsune. And you're in love with Lydia. Basically all the opposites of me."
I can't help but scowl at the last sentence.
"Anyone could of guessed that."
Another ding.
"Then how about coming based on pure curiosity. The inner-cop in you is just itching to know what I want to talk about."
I weighed the pros and cons before responding.
"Yeah, you got me there. Meet me behind the old tennis courts in 5."
I don't wait for his reply before I shuffle around the room to get changed. Throwing on a blue and green cotton flannel and a pair of khaki pants, I attempt to tame my hair with my fingers but it refuses to relent. I write a quick note to Cora letting her know where I'm going just in case this does turn out to be a trap. With one last glance in her direction, I make a move to the door but my hurried steps alert her of my presence.
"Stiles, where are you going?" She asks, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand and reaching over to don a pair of reading glasses.
Her legs hang lazily off the chair as she thumbs through the criminal justice textbook that had been discarded when she passed out. Before had been different. I hadn't had any kind of platonic interaction with a girl just for the hell of it in a long time. Lydia used to come over sometimes but it always took a while for the snarkiness to subside and for her to finally allow herself to be comfortable with me. This was just different. Nice, but different.
Earlier, she'd catch me peek down at her every so often and she always wink at me or smirk that devilish Hale smile before I'd blush and turn away. I didn't mean to outright stare, I guess it's just still hitting me that she's here. In my room, in my head-space, partially in my thoughts. It's kind of cool not being left alone so often.
She picks her head up to look at me with a mouthful of gummy bears I'd bought her at the student union with a quirk of her brow and a small smirk on her lips, "You're staring again."
I sheepishly look away and scratch at the back of my neck self-consciously, "Sorry, I was just thinking how weird it is that you're here."
Her grip on the book falters and her eyes fall from mine.
I quickly backtrack, "I mean like here- alive and well, well not exactly well given the circumstances- not that anything is wrong with you. You're perfect and all-" I pause when I realize what I'd said. Blushing I avert my eyes from hers, "I just meant that I can't believe you're here in front of me, in the flesh, not in South America like we all thought. I didn't mean here in my room like I was wanting you to leave or something. I've actually liked having you here."
She tucks tendrils of her auburn-brown hair into the folds of the loose braid she'd slept in. Freckles splatter her nose in a pattern that resembles poppy seeds. I've never be one to notice things like this about girls who aren't Lydia, but Cora looks soft this morning, a quiet type of beautiful that doesn't make a big deal about itself but is obviously there.
"Well I like being here." She divulges, careful to avoid my eyes, "But that doesn't answer my question. Where were you running off to?"
"E1 Stiles wants to talk."
She nods her head, "You trust him?"
I chuckle, "About as far as I can throw him."
"So not at all." She smirks.
"Hey! I resent that."
She shakes her head and hides her laugh behind her hand but the teasing gleam sparkles in her eyes, "Don't let him intimidate you." She says as she becomes more serious, "There's only room for one Stilinski and my bet is on you."
The moment suddenly feels heavy and serious. She coughs to clear the tension but it seems like there's more she wants to say but she doesn't. Her deep honey eyes meet mine and a ghost of a smile curves on her lips.
My own smile manifests in the heat of the moment. "I'll fill you in later."
"You better."
LIAM POV:
"Liam, I'm so sorry."
Theo has been taking care of me since the news. E1 Kira even stuck around for a bit to keep me company. Hot tears threaten to spill over my eyes. I can feel the heat behind them, the simmering of a gilded storm raging there just waiting to rain terror down my cheeks like water hitting asphalt. Her hand instantly finds my shoulder with a comforting squeeze and her familiar black eyes fall over me. Even if the connection between us isn't of the same authenticity of E1 Liam, she cares and she's here. Any comfort is welcome at this point.
Theo currently dons a pair of oven mitts, a pink apron, and is holding a steaming hot bowl of chicken noodle soup. He approaches me cautiously like nearing a wounded animal, "I made it from scratch." He says proudly.
I laugh through my hiccups and stray tears, "I literally just watched you pour it from the can."
He chuckles, "Well I scratched the top of the can off with my claws, doesn't that count?"
I bite back a laugh, "Not really."
Theo gets snappy, "Well damn, I didn't know I was serving Gordon Ramsey." He sasses, all bark and no bite. The dimple of his right cheek gives him away.
Kira howls with laughter giving him a fist bump.
I crack a grin at his dramatics and Kira's teasing. Theo seems to soften up when he sees me smiling and Kira looks on using the universal choking sign to show her disgust. She's just jealous.
"You think we just love seeing you tongue Lydia?" I direct the question her way, slurping up the chicken noodle soup from the spoon. I moan at the taste and Theo follows the tip of my tongue with his eyes as I lick my lips clean of the hearty liquid.
Kira grins, "Wrong version, twinky, but if my Lydia wasn't like a sister to me I'd give her a lick." She continues cheekily, "If you really want to discuss Lydia and I, we can. But I'm about to lose all my home training." She says with a wag of her eyebrows. Her silliness helps a bit. All the joking takes my mind off the things I can't change, what I don't want to see or acknowledge. Unfortunately, Malia isn't one to make light of a situation as a coping mechanism.
She sits off to the side not saying anything. Her eyes drift aimlessly until they fall on the window, being physically here but her mind a million miles away. Maybe even a whole world away.
Her gaze falls to the ground and a muffled sigh leaves her lips as tears spring to her eyes. I haven't known her long but it's easy to see that she doesn't let things get to her easily. The fact that she's upset about Hayden says a lot. She didn't even know her and yet she's crying. Whether it's more for my first girlfriend or for me, I'm not sure. Maybe it has nothing to do with our current situation and more to do with Scott. Whichever one occupies her mind right now, however, is a coin toss.
My fists tighten around the quilt that lays across my lap, tears drying in patchy stains down my red cheeks.
Why her, why Hayden?
We hadn't been on the best of terms lately and I think that's what makes this all worse. There was still so much left unsaid between us, so much history and memories. She'd been accepting of me when she'd found out about me and the other guy from school. Hurt, but still accepting.
Through the mess of tears that seem like an endless pursuit down my cheeks, my focus zeros in on Theo and for some reason it's like it's my first time seeing him.
Mom once told me that I'd find my person. She said how it may be confusing at first, maybe even feel exhilarating like a rush of air through my lungs. But she said I'd know who they are because they'd stand out. Whether closed off and hung in black leather or a flash of devilish, gleaming white teeth, I'd know. Maybe it's not the sexuality he brings out in me or the adventure or wonder, but the calm after a storm that grounds me. Somewhere along the way, he figured me out. And now I think he may know me better than anyone else.
I think that's why I'm so afraid of giving into him, falling deep into my greatest fear. I think that loving Theo would be like going to war, I'd never come back the same and I'm afraid that maybe I wouldn't want to.
His eyes drift to mine as if the words caught in my throat were tattooed across my forehead. The stormy grey I find there lessens to a gentle whisper, the kind that reminds me of rain pelting my window. He is the smell before rain; petrichor.
A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth despite the tears that leak freely down my face. The corner of his lips upturn a fraction before he turns back to what he's doing.
If this is all just a terrible nightmare, he's the euphoric relief after a terrible dream. I really want to close my eyes and sink down further.
My lip trembles and he motions for me with a flash of protectiveness, most likely witnessing raw devastation on my face. He meets me half way and I crumble into his arms, the wayward James Dean breaking down his walls for the fallen pup and letting me crumble around him like a fallen catacomb. He doesn't have to do this- doesn't have to be here for me but he is. He supports me and takes my feelings into account- even when I don't always do the same for him.
The warmth of Theo's chest bleeds through his sweater and comforts me with my hand pressed against him and my head in the crook of his neck as he holds me, all broad chest and burly arms encasing me with the sound of his voice soothing me. Everything is changing, someone is always dying. First Emery, than another girl I hadn't known and now Hayden.
Malia gives me a comforting squeeze and a lukewarm smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes, "We're going to find these guys, I promise."
My skin feels weak underneath her comfort. I have this need, this desire to shed my skin and ease the tension on my weary bones. I'd reach inside myself and try to find something, anything, any other feeling then the scraping of dull razor blades against my rib cage.
Another tear falls from my cheek and I wipe it with my sleeve, "You shouldn't make promises that you can't keep."
"Who says I can't keep them?" She inquires with an eyebrow raise.
"We can't do this, Malia. We're just a bunch of kids, we can't save anyone."
Her hard brown eyes lose a bit of their edge and she pulls me into a side hug, "But we have to keep trying anyways."
MALIA POV:
I'd just left Theo's place. I'm tired… I'm so tired.
The smell of Scott fills my nose and my eyes turn to the hallway near our room where he leans against the wall. "You're home," I say nervously, "I mean, you're here." I backtrack with a blush, biting my bottom lip in embarrassment at my slip up.
His warm eyes make me feel some type of way. With a confident quirk of his brow, he presses his back further into the wall, "We haven't really called this place home since that encounter with Greg on the lacrosse field." His smile widens, "I like it; playing house with you and being all domestic sounds kind of nice."
He pushes himself off the wall and his smell grows stronger as he invades my personal space, "You punched him if I remember correctly."
I bite my lip to hold in a chuckle, "I did, I punched him."
His dimples crease, "For me"
My hands come to rest on his chest, raising on my toes to give him a chaste kiss while my lips linger on the corner of his mouth, "For you."
He smiles and tries to deepen the kiss but I pull away before we can get carried away.
"I haven't stopped thinking about before- in the elevator." He reveals, his raspy voice and scent swimming around in my head. His heavy brown eyes wash over me and I feel my pussy clench on command. Now is definitely not the time but my wet thong says otherwise.
"We can't do this right now, not with everything going on." I say, reluctantly pulling away. I tap my fingers against my jean-short clad thighs trying to look anywhere but the man in front of me who looks like he'd love to have his face between my legs. And I'd love to let him.
The thought makes me clench harder.
"I know," He sighs, raking his hands through his tousled curls, "I just can't get you out of my head." He grabs my hand between his rough ones and lays it back on his chest, "I just feel you… buzzing around in my body… everywhere," He moves my hand over his heart and I can feel it bounding against my palm, "I feel you everywhere."
His fingers dance down my spine like the index of a book, filling in the gaps of who I am with what he doesn't already know. He reads me intently like his favorite book, taking his time to unravel me with each swipe of a page with caressing touches, reading through each one of my chapters and folding corners at the good and the bad.
I once heard that true love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen. I wonder if this is what E1 Scott and Malia have experienced. From the sound of it, they have. And living in the ghost of their memories makes me a little envious, a little weirded out, but strangely hopeful. Scott and I may not be in love yet and maybe things won't work out and we never will be, but I'd like to entertain the idea that it could happen and what it would feel like to be loved by a man as warm and magnetic as him.
He runs his nose down the slope of my neck and he groans, "You smell like vanilla and cinnamon. You're trying to kill me, woman."
My lips find his shoulder and I can't help but grin against him, "It's these oils I got from a friend. Dad was in the army when I was little so we moved around a lot at first. I made a friend in Charolettesville. Deniqua and I still keep in touch through letters every once in a while." I share.
He smirks against my skin, "Remind me to send her a thank you card."
I side step his lips with a coy smile, "Remind me to never let my guard down around you." I chastise lightly, "That last thing I need to be doing is flirting with you when we should really be out there catching the killers. Liam's really hurting. Hayden meant a lot to him."
Scott scratches the back of his neck, "I know," He sighs, his deep brown eyes conflicted, "I just feel like I failed him. Like I'm failing everyone."
"Not everyone."
His heavy gaze holds me in place. Hooking his thumb under the crook of my jaw, he runs his fingers over my chin with a soft smile that makes me weak in the knees. He suddenly stops stroking my skin and the moment feels so much deeper. So much more.
Courage pulls me forward, "You could never let me down," I start off, realizing how intimate these kind of moments with him have become with his deplorably dark brown eyes boring into me. My eyes raise to meet his through my lashes, "You're Scott McCall. You care too much, except not enough about yourself. You're frustratingly selfless to a fault and sometimes it irritates me but it's also what I like about you." My thumb makes a lazy path over the small slit-shaped scar in his eyebrow. How had I never noticed that?
"You come running to pick up the pieces for everyone but you can't fix everything," Both my hands come to rest on his face, cupping his warm skin between them, "But that doesn't make you a failure. It makes you human."
I can feel the electric shift in the air at my words like their echoing in my ears, the catalyst of something beautiful that's been manifesting for a while now between Scott and I rumbling in the spaces between us. The buzzing beneath my clothes singes me with each lick of his fingers traveling down my arm like flames erupting from a match, testingly… slowly.
His eyes turn a misty brown, "For them, my pack- I'd be ready to give it all up- everything. Most of the time I'm half out of my mind worrying about them. I never think twice about what could happen to me. Some may call that selfless, but that's giving me too much credit. I'm guilty of being selfish in my own way, it's just not as black and white."
"Scott, no you're not-"
His heavy hand falls from my waist, "I love every single one of my pack, fiercely- maybe even a little irrationally. Mom always tells me I love too hard and fall too fast. I go hard for them because I'm half a man without them but I also do it because I fear who I would become if they were gone."
Silence falls at our feet.
This time his hand finds mine, interlocking our fingers as he gingerly rubs his thumb over the back of my hand.
It's this moment that makes me realize that I was doomed from the start. The instant Scott walked into my life, I was screwed. Mentally. Physically. Gravitationally. And weirdly enough, every thing feels like it's exactly the way it's suppose to be.
He runs his fingers through my hair while tucking a loose wave behind my ear, "Tell me what's going on in your head, I hate guessing."
The words get lost on my tongue. His touch left a warm feeling that I can't seem to shake. I'm starting to wonder if I'm about to start my period because there's no way I'm this damn emotional without some sort of biological explanation. Papa didn't raise no bitch.
I clear my throat through my nerves, "I was just thinking how losing you would be awful."
A small teasing smile slants across his lips, "How sad would you be, Lia?"
I place a dainty hand over my heart with a semi-straight face, "Devastated."
He chuckles at my attempt at seriousness, "I think I want a do-over on our first kiss."
My eyes widen in surprise, "You couldn't afford me, McCall." I joke but a bigger part of me wonders what brought this on.
"I could think of a couple different ways to repay you." He challenges in a husky voice dripping in sex while staring down at my mouth, "Dealer's choice."
I feel the familiar gush between my thighs. I lean up and my blunt teeth scrap his earlobe, "How generous of you." I whisper.
"I'd hardly call it generosity. I can solemnly swear that I am up to no good." He smirks against my neck.
I graze my fingers through his chocolate curls, "I'm kind of an adrenaline junkie. I think I can handle you."
His dimples disarm me with that stupid perfect smile and stupidly cute laugh, "Are you flirting with me, Lia?"
"Maybe"
He finally lets me breathe, taking a step back. "I wish you were."
There's that stupid crooked smile again.
The anxious feeling in my bones rattles me, the gentle hum of my body groaning for just a little more closure of the gap between us. Just a little but closer. Closer. Closer. I just want to be closer to him. I can only describe it as that influx of liquid sunset happiness you feel in the pit of your stomach when someone tells you that they miss you. Or that heart stopping feeling when you look up at someone's lips only for them to already be looking at you. Or that panic attack that mimics the feeling of your heart beating so fast you think it's going to shoot right through your chest.
Cut out my soul and give it to my lover
Those words use to ring through my ears as an angst-ridden adolescent. I have notebooks and diaries back home scribbled with my lazy scrawl, those exact words written over and over and over. I use to think I would be the next upcoming poet. Sometimes I would flip flop between that and embodying my inner-Stevie Nicks. I thought I'd start a girl-band and take the world by storm. Turns out the world got to me first.
Scott reaches for my waist. His hands feel so familiar as if I've known the shape of them for a long time. Like he's touched me a million different times. In this exact way. With his eyes on me like this.
I wanted to talk about it, damn it. I wanted to scream. To yell. To shout about it. I wanted to come undone at the seams and tell Scott about all the things I felt. How I felt so much. So deeply. So fast. I wanted him to know that even when he's gone I still feel him tugging at my chest like a tether forcing me to pay attention. It's crazy how he's already become a part of me. I wanted to say all these things in this moment but all I could whisper is-
"You're such a dork, Scott." I say with fondness creeping into my voice until it drifts off with a pause that doesn't quite feel like an ending.
His lips part as if he wants to say something but closes them, possibly thinking better of it. As if he knew what I really wanted to say. But he doesn't push me and I think I've never appreciated him more than I do in this moment. I'm not used to someone being so attentive to me until I met Scott. I'm not sure what to do with it most of the time.
He nudges me playfully, "Each time we don't say what we want to say we're dying. Make a list of how many time you died this week."
I chuckle, "Who are you, Yoko Ono?"
"Finally, someone with some culture. I'm glad you picked up on that."
I roll my eyes, subtly avoiding his statement. "We should probably go check on the others."
"Yeah," He sighs, grabbing his jean jacket off the futon, "I"m going to catch up with Allison for a bit. Call if you need anything, anything at all."
"You'll be the first." I murmur, giving him one last look before I walk out.
Author's Note: ... I know, I'm the worst. My only real explanation is that school has been tough as hell this semester and I'm finally beginning to wind down. I also had a bad case of writer's block and I'm still not quite there yet but I wanted to give you guys something for sticking with me this long. I'll hopefully have a second part to add to this sometime soon. Love you guys so much.