skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

“Leo. Leo sun, Scorpio moon. Why?” She tries to think if she wants to explain her theory about astrology to Stiles. He would probably poke all kind of holes in it, and some of them would even make sense. Summer pushes up on one elbow to frown slightly at him.

“Wondering if it was in the sky,” Stiles answers with a shrug, looking back at the burgeoning starfield after a moment of blinking at Summer. “I actually have no clue what my, uh. My moon sign? Is? I’m Aries. But he isn’t here yet, so, uh. Nevermind on that, I guess.”

“When you find the Dog Star, look up and to the left. That will be Leo.” She gets up on her knees and crawls over to him, sitting back on her heels at his feet. “If you tell me your birthday and where you were born I can do your whole birth chart. They’re usually pretty interesting. I just find mine particularly funny, since I have such an affinity with fire and my sun sign is Leo. Scorpio is the exact opposite of Leo in some ways.”

skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

Summer is content to wait until the stars come out before setting up the telescope, but Stiles seems to feel differently. She watches him, eyes adjusting to the shadows. When he’s not thinking about it so hard, there’s much less twitch to his motions. He knows what he’s doing with the telescope, and it’s very pleasant to watch him in his competence.

She’s so absorbed in watching him, long limbs and elegant fingers and lithe motions, it surprises her a little when she glances up through the trees and sees the first stars. Pulling out her phone, she finds the sky map app and orients herself. “There. Polaris.”

He’s focused.

This is remarkable in and of itself; focus is rarely a thing for Stiles, even with his medication. Every once in a while he hits a bubble of it, though, almost extreme focus, and he kind of wishes he could bottle those moments up and put them aside for sometime useful. He can’t, so he takes advantage of them when they come, even when it’s setting up a telescope in the woods and seemingly inconsequential.

“Huh?” Stiles looks up from his task when she speaks, and he frowns briefly, looking up. He squints at the North Star and then pivots, muttering to himself about the star placement. “Then…Ursa Major, and Ursa Minor, and..Canis…means that…Oh, no, not visible yet, darn—hey. What’s your zodiac?”

“Leo. Leo sun, Scorpio moon. Why?” She tries to think if she wants to explain her theory about astrology to Stiles. He would probably poke all kind of holes in it, and some of them would even make sense. Summer pushes up on one elbow to frown slightly at him.

skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

She stares at him for a second, shocked that he would even consider going over there enough to rule it out. “I don’t want to be anywhere near that thing. I don’t know what it might do to me.” She climbs out, gazing around, then turns west to look at the fading glow of the sunset behind the trees. The last golden light turns her hair flaming red and makes her skin seem almost luminescent. “This is perfect.”

Whirling back around, she flashes a smile at Stiles and opens the back of the Jeep, hauling out the telescope, blanket, and snacks cheerfully. Darkness closes in quickly, and she ensconces herself on the blanket to wait for the stars to come out.

“In my experience, crazy ladies use it to literally kill you.” Stiles says, so cavalier about the statement regardless of how ridiculous is. “Luckily, like being transformed into a newt, I got better.”

There’s a bit of flailing he does when Summer takes everything out of the oft-cramped back of his Jeep, but he doesn’t insist, because Stiles often finds himself caught in a terrible place between chivalry and feminism. Does he offer to help because he wants to be gentlemanly or does he let it do it herself to express his awareness of her agency as an individual?

Well, shortly it doesn’t matter at all, and instead he finds himself fussing around the edge of the blanket, taking it upon himself to at least set the telescope up because, after all, it’s his telescope and one might presume a certain amount of familiarity with it.

Summer is content to wait until the stars come out before setting up the telescope, but Stiles seems to feel differently. She watches him, eyes adjusting to the shadows. When he’s not thinking about it so hard, there’s much less twitch to his motions. He knows what he’s doing with the telescope, and it’s very pleasant to watch him in his competence.

She’s so absorbed in watching him, long limbs and elegant fingers and lithe motions, it surprises her a little when she glances up through the trees and sees the first stars. Pulling out her phone, she finds the sky map app and orients herself. “There. Polaris.”

skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

Summer just waits, one hand lightly on the door handle in case she needs to grab for something to hang on to. After a few minutes of his quiet enouragements, she offers, diffidently, “We could walk from here, couldn’t we? I don’t want you to rip out the bottom of your car.”

“Neh, he can handle it.” Stiles concludes after a few seconds and one possibly nail-biting moment where it seems like he’s going to send his poor Jeep fishtailing sideways down a small embankment. “He’s seen worse. I just gotta encourage him sometimes. Here. This is the best clearing I know, so if this isn’t good, we’re kinda out of luck. Not driving to the Nemeton. I try to avoid that thing when at all humanly possible.” It creeps him out.

She stares at him for a second, shocked that he would even consider going over there enough to rule it out. “I don’t want to be anywhere near that thing. I don’t know what it might do to me.” She climbs out, gazing around, then turns west to look at the fading glow of the sunset behind the trees. The last golden light turns her hair flaming red and makes her skin seem almost luminescent. “This is perfect.”

Whirling back around, she flashes a smile at Stiles and opens the back of the Jeep, hauling out the telescope, blanket, and snacks cheerfully. Darkness closes in quickly, and she ensconces herself on the blanket to wait for the stars to come out.

skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

After a long moment where she’s trying to put her thoughts together, she says, “That’s exactly what I meant — I couldn’t even make clear to /you/ what I was really trying to say. I said it wrong, I didn’t put the words around it right, because the only words I can use are the simple ones. Even if I’m in a situation where ‘absquatulate’ is the word I need, the /right/ word, with the right shading and implication and precise meaning — I have to use ‘ran away’ because nobody knows the other word, and half of what I’m trying to express is lost in that.” She balls up her fists and stares at them in the growing dusk.

“Almost nobody thinks like I do,” she adds softly. “I think maybe I’m not human. Nobody else seems to — to /care/, to be able to see through someone else’s eyes, to understand and listen and feel but not let that feeling control what they choose — /inform/ it, yes.” She trails off, convinced she’s not making herself clear, certain she’s just making herself sound ever more arrogant when what she wants is to be humble, to understand and be understanding. Clarity /matters/.

Stiles is uncharacteristically still for a few moments, eyes on the road. “So, what, you think because I misunderstood you that I’m stupid?” His voice is quiet, but there’s an edge to it, sharp as if it’s been honed for the purpose of cutting.

He lets that hang in the air briefly before he continues on, head shaking. “Everybody thinks differently than everyone else, that’s the thing about us being individuals. That doesn’t make you not human, it makes you human. Some people don’t step out of their own skin. Some do. That’s just kind of a thing about humans. We sort of throw ideas at each other best we can and hope at least part of what we wanted to say gets through.”

“No!” she bursts out, starting to interrupt, but he goes on, and she knows she’s still saying it wrong. Incipient tears make her nose burn and her throat hurt, but she swallows them down, takes what he says.

He’s right, after all. She’s not special.

All she ever wanted was an excuse to be different. So she closes her hands in her lap tighter, until her nails burn painfully in her skin and she knows there will be marks. Very carefully, hating the higher pitch of her voice, she says, “It’s not you. I didn’t say it right. I never say it right. I — you’re not — it’s not you.”

Then she falls silent, locking up all the other words that want to spill out.

skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

Summer laments, “If everybody thinks in concepts, why are there so many stupid people who can’t keep up with me? Even when I manage to get words around them, simple words, people don’t /get/ me. It’s enough to make a girl become a hermit. What’s the point of /knowing/ so much, so many words, if I’m just reduced to using the simple ones, the broad brushstrokes, just so people understand me?” She heaves a sigh, and leans her head against the window.

There’s a sound, then, that comes from Stiles, which is not terribly unlike the sound of a cat trying to bring up a hairball. It’s incredulous at its very core, at its very best, and he glances at Summer with an equally incredulous look on his face. “Seriously, did you seriously just tell me that you don’t think other people are capable of abstract thought or conceptualizing because they don’t always understand what’s coming out of your mouth? Wow. I mean—no. Wow.”

His eyes flick back to the road, and he leans up briefly to peer at a stoplight as it changes and he’s obliged to slow down for it. “Everybody thinks in concepts. That doesn’t mean the concepts they think in are the same ones you think in. That also doesn’t really mean they’re dumb, although I’ll give you there are plenty of dumb people in the world. It just means they don’t think like you do. Which, you know, not actually a crime. The point of knowing is knowing, not trying to one-up other people with your vocabulary. I mean…the point of talking is to communicate, right? Just because you know what absquatulate means, or whatever, doesn’t mean you should say that instead of ran away, or judge people if they didn’t run into that word before. Like—making sure your meaning is being understood is like eighty to ninety percent your responsibility, not the listener’s.”

After a long moment where she’s trying to put her thoughts together, she says, “That’s exactly what I meant — I couldn’t even make clear to /you/ what I was really trying to say. I said it wrong, I didn’t put the words around it right, because the only words I can use are the simple ones. Even if I’m in a situation where ‘absquatulate’ is the word I need, the /right/ word, with the right shading and implication and precise meaning — I have to use ‘ran away’ because nobody knows the other word, and half of what I’m trying to express is lost in that.” She balls up her fists and stares at them in the growing dusk.

“Almost nobody thinks like I do,” she adds softly. “I think maybe I’m not human. Nobody else seems to — to /care/, to be able to see through someone else’s eyes, to understand and listen and feel but not let that feeling control what they choose — /inform/ it, yes.” She trails off, convinced she’s not making herself clear, certain she’s just making herself sound ever more arrogant when what she wants is to be humble, to understand and be understanding. Clarity /matters/.

skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

“I just think so fast the words come out sideways, I want to get them all out before I lose them or someone talks over me. Plus,” she gestures with one hand, “I kind of think in concepts, so getting the words around what I’m seeing is hard. I kind of wish I was a telepath, it would be so much easier.” She settles back in the seat, watching the world slide by outside the window. The last time she’d been occupied with Helios, but this time she could pay attention to Stiles, to his driving and car and all. It smelled … like Stiles, actually; a little like the outdoors and mostly faintly like his aftershave.

“I think everybody thinks in concepts,” Stiles offers, his mouth pursing thoughtfully. The drive to the preserve seems like something he’s done thousands of times lately, requiring very little in the way of active engagement when it comes to his brain. He can drive on autopilot even in the dusk and get them there safely. “As for being a telepath—nah, I don’t think I’d be down. For a lot of reasons, but the first of which being I’m not sure really anyone should be trusting me with that kind of ethical burden. Unwise. Plus my head’s crowded enough as it is, I can’t even organize my thoughts, screw trying to do it for somebody else.”

Summer laments, “If everybody thinks in concepts, why are there so many stupid people who can’t keep up with me? Even when I manage to get words around them, simple words, people don’t /get/ me. It’s enough to make a girl become a hermit. What’s the point of /knowing/ so much, so many words, if I’m just reduced to using the simple ones, the broad brushstrokes, just so people understand me?” She heaves a sigh, and leans her head against the window.

skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

After a minute, Summer starts poking at her phone. After five, she gives up and sits down on his front stoop, pulling an ereader out of her shoulder bag. When Stiles finally comes back, she makes him wait for her answer until she finishes the page. She looks … sceptical? Suspicious? Amused, certainly, up at him.

“If there’s anything you haven’t got we’re going without it. I’m sure we’ll be fine.” She gets up and picks up the telescope again, easily hefting it and marching toward the Jeep. “I hope we have enough light to set up the telescope when we get there.”

“If there isn’t enough light, Roscoe has headlights.” Stiles says, with a sort of casual confidence, something that doesn’t actually translate often or well into his body. He does bound down the steps, however, with the air of someone who frequently takes the stairs to his house in an order other than exactly one at a time. He gallops ungainly up to the passenger side of the Jeep, opening that door, before he comes around to the back to throw the bag he’s carrying in. He leaves the hatch open most likely so that Summer can put the telescope there while he moves to the driver’s seat instead. “Is there supposed to be like, a meteor shower or anything like that tonight or is this just conveniently there’s no moon in the way?”

“The latter.” She puts the telescope in the back, trying not to set it on top of anything that looks fragile, and stretches until her back crackles. Deliberately, she walks around to the front of the Jeep and peers at the headlights, poking at them with a fingertip. “Why, what do you know? These /are/ actually headlights! That’s /amazing/. I never would have believed,” and she starts giggling, catching a glimpse of his face and swinging herself into the passenger seat. “Find a place in the Preserve that’s up high and not overhanging with trees. Was that English? I’m not sure that was English.”