“You gotta understand, I have no idea how to do this, Kass,” Stiles muttered under his breath, collar too tight and temperature too high. A light sheen of sweat, nervous and cold, beaded over his upper lip. 

Kass merely rolled her eyes and grabbed his hands to put them where they ought to be instead of hovering awkwardly. 

“I’m not exactly a gold medalist either, Foxy,” Kass retorted, her tone almost acidic at the nickname. Stiles cracked a grin.

“Nah, bro, it’s Uzumaki this week. Geddit? Cuz Naruto is a nine-tailed fo-” His words abruptly caught off as her hand slapped over his mouth.

“I get it. It’s terrible. You are such a nerd, Stiles,” Kass sighed in aggravation, glaring as he only chuckled, muffled behind her palm. He waggled his eyebrows in question and nodded towards the DJ (a technopathic alumni of course). Kass rolled her eyes again and dropped her hand to his shoulder. 

“You know you loooove me, Kass. I’m your biffle and you know it,” Stiles teased. Kass huffed even as her mouth tugged up on one corner. 

“Maybe a little. Whenever you’re not being an irritating jerk,” she allowed with a haughty little sniff. He laughed again.

She pulled him into following her lead, one shuffling footstep after another in a halting little waltz. His grin folded into a concentrated frown, tongue peeking out the corner of his lips, brows contracted low over his nose as he stared down at their feet. Every now and then, a soft “one two three” slipped from his mouth. His hand felt a little damp in hers and he hadn’t made eye contact for most of the song, but Kass couldn’t help but smile, exasperated and fond. 

Life was so much better at the School since this dork of a fox-shifter entered it. She stepped into the space between them to lay her hand on his shoulder- he was so much broader than he first appeared, the perfect shoulder to cuddle on. He huffed and protested a little, their shuffling gait pausing thanks to her cutting of his view of their feet. His grip shifted on her hand and, with an amused scoff, lay his head on hers and swayed them back and forth.

“You really are my best friend, Stiles,” Kass whispered into his stupid t-shirt with the faux-tux design. 

“Yeah, Kass. You made coming here bearable, yanno? Thanks,” he murmured just as softly back. 

“Kass. I love Spiderman, I do, but no one is better than Batman. I will ruin your day, Ginger Spice.”

Aww yisss~

I’mma change it up because it works better this way. And I hate you for it, Emmy. So. Much.

Life was about simplicity. Life was about making goals and reaching them. It was about dragging yourself, kicking and screaming, to where you needed to be, to finish was you start, and do what needed to be done. It was about using the system to your own advantage and not damning the consequences, but instead taking them, and the multitude of variables life handed you, and learning how to either sweep right over them or twist them around your finger. 

Lydia Martin was a master of said techniques. She’d spent most of her life- yes even as a child- perfecting said mastery. Popularity- variable. Supernatural- just another variable. Respect, loss thereof, trust, pack, grief, fear- all just consequences she’d learned to work through or with. Now, at the young age of 23, with a Master’s just a semester away and a doctorate opportunity already on a silver platter and waiting for her, she was faced with a variable. A small, trivial, insignificant variable in the scheme of things. She faced death every single day as a Banshee; she could feel it hovering on the edges of her conscious almost every hour the day. A stranger brushes her shoulder and she could hear the screech of tires and the lick of pain in her mind that would bring their end. The pack on the other side of the country faced down the newest boogey and the scream hovered on her lips as she felt their heartbeats drowning her- always so close to death, her loved ones. One of the biggest reasons why she wasn’t returning home after the end of her scholarship. Why even visiting hurt. The biggest reason, however, was now taunting her. Innocent. Flashy. A temptation.

A wrapper of bright orange with brighter yellow font. There was no punny witticisms or iconic catchphrase. Just a rectangular package with the simple picture of what treat waited inside. 

Her skin prickled with goosebumps and she could feel the heavy awkward weight of ice skates on her feet.

Sometimes there’s other things you wouldn’t think would be a good combination, end up turning out to be a perfect combination- you know?

Her breath caught. Five years. It had been five years. Surely she’d seen these damn candies a million times since. She’d passed plaid on a rack and hadn’t had a conniption, she’d seen Batman paraphernalia and hadn’t had a fit. So why now, on a not more particular than any other day sort of day, did the sight of those damn candies steal her breath and remind her of the young man she’d refused to remember for five years? She was blinking rapidly, the slightly sticky weight of mascara making her blinks slow. Nothing more. The tingle in her nose and the constriction of her throat were not the signs of oncoming tears. Not in a Whole Foods Market. 

She let her eyes close as she drew in a slow, deep breath. Behind her eyelids, she saw him as she remembered him, with his half-cocked slash of a smirk, his hair a mess and his nose too impish to be attractive, his much too big and veiny hands for an eighteen year old wrapped around the grip of a bat and his stupidly doe brown eyes lit up and wickedly mischievous even as they dilated with fear. 

Only two weeks from graduation, he’d told her how excited he was to see her up at the podium and giving her valedictorian speech, already applauded like a moronic loon in the privacy of his room when she’d proofread it aloud to him. Two weeks until the rest of their lives, he’d joked, cliche and guffawing. 

She hadn’t even told him how much she loved him. Secretly planning on being romantic and kissing him in his stupid cap and gown just to feel the surprise and delight stretch his mouth against hers. 

“Ma’am, do you need any assistance?” a polite voice interrupted. She opened her eyes, not caring they were suspiciously bright, and smiled just as politely back at the grocery-worker. 

“No, I’m fine,” she replied briskly, falsely, fiercely. 

Her smile was sharp and brittle as she turned away abruptly and walked towards the produce section. Without a glance back at the candy, the variable, the consequence. Whatever it represented. The taste of chocolate and peanut butter would only bring back more memories, more variables, that’d slow her down, crack at weaknesses that make up couldn’t patch over. She couldn’t wrap it around her finger or bulldoze over it. So like and unlike the boy they reminded her of. The boy who never got to be a man.

He didn’t have a lot of pictures of her, of them. The past couple years had been too fast, one conflict, one life endangering disaster, after another. A few on his phone, a few more on hers, yearbooks, a couple on Scott’s and the rest of the pack’s. 

Grainy, black and white, glossy, high-def, blurred; smiling, laughing, frowning, staring into a coffee cup with her hair a mess and her expression inscrutable. They weren’t enough. They barely covered a fraction of the wealth of memory he had stored. There weren’t any of her crying, of her mocking him, of the purse of her mouth or of the disapproving dimple in her cheek. There weren’t any of her screaming, or of her fighting- her tiny, slender body a whiplash of a weapon. 

There weren’t any of her last moments; lying on the ground, one small hand laid over forest mulch, skin paper white and hair like a flame cascading down her chest and across her throat. There weren’t any of her green eyes staring over at him as he bellycrawled towards her, screaming her name; green eyes that went dark as she gasped and moved her mouth without sound escaping.

The side of his thumb traced the curve of her cheek, though with his trembling couldn’t quite follow the line of her face exactly. She looked so vibrant, so alive, in the that summer between Beserkers and Doctors. The haunting darkness in her eyes finally ebbed enough that her smile didn’t hurt, wasn’t razor sharp and false. The hand not touching the photo so gently was curled into his pants, knuckles white and creaking. The beep of the machines next to him were a repetitive foghorn vibrating through his brain. 

You’re alive. She’s not. You’re alive. She’s not. They mocked, and mocked, and mocked.

With a loud scream he thumped his fist into his thigh, again and again, crying loud and furious, hoping he’d leave bruises he wouldn’t feel all the way down to the bone. Hands grabbed him, wrapped his arms tight to his side, his dad’s voice low, soothing, catching on sobs, in his ear as the photo Scott had searched for in the weeks Stiles was in a coma and then in recovery fluttered to the ground.

All the pictures, taunting and flat and just a sad parody of the real girl that should’ve been there laid all over the bed, over legs that would never feel their weight- heavier than paper should be. 

The next time he opened his eyes, they were gone. But Scott, or maybe Kira, would have them, for the next time he was desperate to see her face. Too desperate to care they cut deep and left him bleeding without ever breaking skin. When the gravestone he’d wheel himself to find one day stopped being enough. When he began to forget the exact shade of strawberry blonde hair and bright green eyes she had, or just how her cheek curved, or how lush her lips when she smiled were. He’d have those frozen memories, too few, too many, to cherish again.