skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

“Exactly!” She sits forward so hard she’s almost off the edge of the chair, and excitement makes her gesture madly to emphasise her words. “The movies, well the Lord of the Rings movies anyway, only really have one flaw. I will never forgive Peter Jackson for what he did to Faramir but everything else was pretty much perfect. Did you read the Silmarillion yet, or the Unfinished Tales? It’s so cool; Tolkien is my reminder that it’s okay to take my time and figure things out before I put them down in words.”

It takes her a while to remember that he’s worried about damaging her book. “It’s okay, if you mess it up I can buy another one. It’s the story that matters, not the physical container of it.” Besides, a) he did go to all that effort to find her and restore Helios, which says good things, and b) she’s cheating and it’s not hard to tell that while he is twitchy and as excitable as she is, he’s a good person. So she’s not worried about the book. And if he borrows it, and then maybe some others, and they talk about them, those are excuses to see him again.

And she kind of wants that more than she’s willing to admit.

The teenager shrugs, looking down at the book in his hands. He doesn’t seem like he’s going to be rough with it, but then again he also didn’t seem to realize he’s got biceps, so all bets might be off with the young Mr. Stilinski. “I never really got into the extended stuff, unless you count the Hobbit. I don’t, uh—” Stiles gestures briefly to his temple, there, as if to indicate something is wrong with his head. “—don’t have the best attention span.”

He nods as if to accept that Summer’s comfortable with lending him the book, lapsing instead into what appears to be a somewhat awkward silence from Stiles’ perspective. He doesn’t seem to know quite what to say.

“So, um … is your knee feeling better?” Without the book in her hands, Summer doesn’t know what to do with them. She doesn’t want this unexpected encounter to end, but she’s not sure how to prolong it any farther, either.

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