skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

Summer doesn’t notice the momentary change in his body language; she’s fallen too far inside herself and all she sees right now is the need to run away.

Hell is other people; hell is herself.

“You’re welcome.” Somehow, /somehow/, in spite of all that, the words, the smile are still genuine. “Thank you again for bringing my rapscallion home. I’ll see you tomorrow night, okay? Please let me know if you aren’t going to be able to make it.” And then he’s out the door, snd she closes it and slides down to sit on the floor with her knees to her chest and her head on her knees. Running away from herself just as hard as she can.

—

Even though there hadn’t been a message, Summer still doesn’t expect to see Stiles at the bowling alley. That’s not how her life works. Jesse is there; of course he is there, three lanes over and she can’t keep herself from glancing over too often. She’s never been one for the razor blade, but then again why cut your skin when you can make yourself bleed so much more on the inside?

It’s a little after midnight, and she’s canvassing the racks for the perfect weight ball, light enough she can throw it but with finger holes she can actually use. Beth and Zenobia are basically just waiting on her, and she’s loitering at the racks nearest the doors, hoping she might be wrong this one time.

On some level, Stiles isn’t even sure why he showed up. It isn’t often—ever, if he’s being honest with himself, that people who aren’t Scott, basically, ask him to go do things. He usually has to shoe-horn himself in. Being invited to anything, Still, he’s decided maybe this time he shouldn’t talk himself out of the idea of socializing with new people. He reminds himself several times before he arrives that Summer seemed adamant that it isn’t a date. That’s fine.

He creeps in the door of the bowling alley, hoping it’s the right bowling alley. He very much hasn’t dressed up, which for Stiles means jeans and a screen t-shirt (this one showing the schematics of the Millenium Falcon—and a contrasting plaid shirt over top. He looks completely out of his depth somehow.

Summer practically pounces on him. “You came, I didn’t think you were going to come, oh my god!” She grabs his arm and tows him over to the desk. “There’s just a couple of my other friends here.” While they wait for the guy manning the desk to get back from wherever he’s wandered off to, she pulls Stiles around so she can stare unabashedly at his shirt, smoothing out wrinkles and peering at the tiny writing.

“That,” she says at last, “is a good shirt. I need to finish the Lego Falcon some day.” The guy /still/ hasn’t come back yet, and she turns to point to the lane at the far end of the alley. “We’re down there. That’s Beth, she’s an artist, and Zenobia.”

“And I’m Jesse.” The deep voice comes from behind them, and Summer spins around with a muffled shriek. “What are you doing here? With a guy? Suckering someone else into your little web, witch?”

skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

“Like a da — No! Nononono — ” Summer waves her hands frantically in negation, then rethinks it. Does he /want/ it to be a date? He’s so confused, so hyperactive emotionally, it’s hard to tell. “I mean, if you want it to be like … a date … I just mean, to come and hang out. Like friends?” God, she hasn’t been on a date in — well, in years. Since she was his age, in fact; there’s a disturbing thought.

“Oh, okay…?” Stiles says it almost like it’s a question, his face condensing almost into something passingly unhappy at what seems like an initially incredibly negative response to the idea of a date. He blinks, owlishly, in an erratic pattern, and eventually, Stiles just sort of nods, accepting of something, at least. “Yeah, yeah, I should…make sure Dad doesn’t need me for something first, it’s just him and me, but…I could…maybe…should I be bringing other friends, or…?”

Now that Stiles has put the idea in her head, Summer can’t make it go away; it’s /annoying/. She’s not dating; she’s not going to be interested in someone right now.

Not as long as /he/’s still looming over her life, anyway. Figuratively speaking.

A moment ago she didn’t want Stiles to leave; now, reminded of things she doesn’t want to be thinking about, she can’t wait for him to go, so she can hate herself in private, for trying again, for not just accepting the truth, /his/ truth that he stabbed her with. But she still doesn’t like the idea of Stiles bringing other people to the bowling alley. Which is why Summer says, of course, “It’s fine if you do. I don’t mind. One can never have too many friends.”

skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

“Oh, yeah, yeah probably. Dads freaking out is definitely bad.” It’s like his pattern of speech is contagious. Reflexively Summer glances at her bag, where the phone is, as if she might need to check to be sure the smartphone saved the number. “I won’t — I mean, I won’t need the book back. I might call you, though?” A thought strikes her, and she carries on with it before she can wind herself up about it. “I’m going midnight bowling with some of my buddies tomorrow night, if you want to come?”

Stiles is in the middle of pushing himself standing when Summer extends her offer. It results in him sort of jerking the rest of the way upwards, frowning faintly when he does. It isn’t a refusal, exactly, but he does look awfully confused. “…I…is…is that like…a date?” He doesn’t seem to have any worldly idea of what to do with the idea of the concept alone.

“Like a da — No! Nononono — ” Summer waves her hands frantically in negation, then rethinks it. Does he /want/ it to be a date? He’s so confused, so hyperactive emotionally it’s hard to tell. “I mean, if you want it to be like … a date … I just mean, to come and hang out. Like friends?” God, she hasn’t been on a date in — well, in years. Since she was his age, in fact. there’s a disturbing thought.

skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

How do you even respond to that? The silence is awkward and uncomfortable, and she has no idea what to say now. She’s always been bad at light conversation — mostly because she knows she sounds awkward and she hates that. She’d rather be quiet than draw disapproval. She fidgets with her hands for a minute before forcing them to lie still in her lap.

The silence stretches, thins, distorts, until Stiles thinks it’s going to break. Finally, when he can’t take it any more, when he’s done fidgeting with the damp spot on his jeans, he says, “Hey, so—uh. I should probably get home before my Dad freaks out again, the last thing you need is your Dad to freak out looking for you when he’s the Sheriff, right? My number should be in your phone now, cause I called you? In case…I dunno, in case you need the book back before I finish it.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah probably. Dads freaking out is definitely bad.” It’s like his pattern of speech is contagious. Reflexively Summer glances at her bag, where the phone is, as if she might need to check to be sure the smartphone saved the number. “I won’t — I mean, I won’t need the book back. I might call you, though?” A thought strikes her, and she carries on with it before she can wind herself up about it. “I’m going midnight bowling with some of my buddies tomorrow night, if you want to come?”

skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

“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.

“Uh…yeah. It’s…much better, thanks for the ice. Like I said, I bruise all the time. Not a huge deal.” Stiles tries to give Summer a reassuring smile, but it comes off as looking like he isn’t quite sure what to do with himself either. Granted, he always looks like that.

How do you even respond to that? The silence is awkward and uncomfortable, and she has no idea what to say now. She’s always been bad at light conversation — mostly because she knows she sounds awkward and she hates that. She’d rather be quiet than draw disapproval. She fidgets with her hands for a minute before forcing them to lie still in her lap.

skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

“It does get better, even before Brandon took over,” she comments. “But he never was able to get away from that idea that he had to tell you what everyone was doing. Like, I’ve heard people complain that Tolkien is boring because he’s so descriptive, but I never thought that, and I definitely find parts of the Wheel of Time boring. The Stormlight Archive is so much better. Here,” she added, holding out the thick book, “you can borrow this one and when you get done tell me what you think. He does the most amazing magic systems.”

Stiles laughs a little, reaching out to accept the book carefully with long fingers. “Tolkien’s strength wasn’t story telling, it was world building and language. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the story’s awesome too, but I kind of like the movies better because there’s something about seeing it all visualized without having to claw through the dry writing. I mostly gave up on Wheel of Time after Jordan left my favorite character buried in rocks for a whole novel. Are—are you sure about this, I feel like you barely know me, I could be some kind of terrible book-sitter.” 

“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.

skinnydefenselessheroism:

iamthefirechild:

“The freckles are cute,” she says without really thinking about it, because they are. She’s discovering an annoying desire to inspect those at close range, too. “Why would it be rude for you to assume I’m in high school? I know I look like I’m about fifteen.” She sounds faintly disgusted with that. “Anyway. I write mostly science fiction, fantasy, stuff like that. I want to be like Tolkien, or maybe Brandon Sanderson.”

Stiles winces a little, although his mouth is trying to pull upwards into a smile, which makes the whole expression look somewhat more theatric than necessary. “I don’t know, it felt rude, like I don’t know any woman who likes to be mistaken for a high school student but, hey, not gonna pretend I understand girls in the least, so…yeah. Glad you didn’t think it was rude. Uh—Sanderson, like…the guy who made the Wheel of Time series actually stop sucking for five seconds?”

Summer waggles her eyebrows at him a little, just to let him know that it really doesn’t bother her all that much, she’s used to it. “Yex, exactly, him. Have you read his epic fantasy series? Oh my god. It is so amazing. He takes everything Jordan was trying to do and kinda failed at and makes it work, and his cosmology is fucking /huge/, and it’s just /amazing/.” She bounces up out of the chair, and vanishes around the half-wall dividing the bedroom from the rest of the apartment, which turns out to be lined with bookshelves, because she comes back with a giant paperback. Like, the thing has a two-inch spine. “I haven’t bought the second one yet.”