smoke screen
"You love me?" Stiles' quiet voice shook.
"Yes, but you don't feel the same and thats fine, let's just forget this ever happened, okay?"
"I don't want to forget." he objected."I've always loved you, Aspen, the whole time!" Stiles confessed, striding towards the brunette. "You've always loved me, and I've always loved you."
"But... but what about Lydia?" Aspen gasped as her stomach fluttered.
"What about her? I only said all those things because I never thought you'd feel the same. I was preserving my own dignity, Asp. But now I know how you feel about me, I can finally tell you I feel the same." Stiles replied with an elated expression.
"You do?"
"I do." He whispered. He took his hand and held her cheek, gazing into her emerald eyes. "I love you, Aspen. I'm in love with you."
Stiles didn't wait for a response before crashing his lips onto hers. Her whole body tingled, his tall frame leaning on hers as his hands intertwined in her hair. He pulled her in, claiming her mouth, hungry and intense, full of the purest passion. By the time Aspen became aware of her fingers, they had already slipped under his shirt. As if time had sopped right there, they stood in the middle of the teenage boy's bedroom, glued to one another. As if no one else existed. She came up for air as her pulse raced.
"Is this real? Is this really happening?" she whispered as she wore the purest smile imaginable.
Stiles hesitated at the question as his eyes locked with hers. The sincere, pure, and love-filled expression soon fell to a devious smirk.
And then he laughed.
"Of course not." he said, his voice taunting. "Like any of this would ever be real."
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Aspen gasped herself awake at the sound of her alarm. Her heart was still racing from the dream she had awoken from. She was suddenly overwhelmed with crushing sadness when she realised it wasn't real.
Of course it wasn't real.
Her subconscious had been toying with her for a week now, giving her torturing dreams every night since her fight with Stiles. Each dream would be a different version of how it went down. Some of them good, some of them bad, but the good ones would always end the same. Aspen would always say "is this really happening?" followed by Stiles answering with "Of course not."
The last week had been hard on her, that's for sure. She'd walk past the boy she loved in the hallway and act like he was a stranger. She avoided his eyes because she knew his were always on her, and she hadn't looked him in the eye since their last conversation.
As for Scott, he completely understood. The two of them would talk on the phone every night and Scott would fill her in on all of the werewolf updates. But Stiles' name never came up. Aspen wanted to ask about him, she wanted to ask if he missed her, how he was doing, but she kept the questions to herself. Scott had questions too, he wanted to know she was holding up, how much space she was going to need, but again, he kept them to himself. Their discussions only ever consisted of supernatural updates and complaints about Harris' chemistry homework.
It was sad really, almost like Stiles didn't exist.
...
"So Derek isn't the alpha." Stiles said to Scott as he grabbed his chemistry textbook from his locker.
"No, he's not the one that bit me either." Scott explained.
"So did he kill his sister?" Stiles asked.
"No, that was the Alpha as well." Scott replied, but the Stilinski boy's attention had trailed off to something else.
A brunette strutting through the halls solo. She was wearing black jeans that hugged her figure in all the right places. Her long locks cascaded down her shoulders, resting on her crimson red v-neck sweater that continued to flatter her figure. She walked with a sense of confidence that no one had truly seen on her before.
The brunette was Aspen Carter.
Aspen and Stiles' lockers were located right next to eachother, so he held out the smallest flicker of hope that maybe she was walking in their direction.
But to his dismay, she stopped by Jackson Whittemore's locker and greeted him, not Stiles. Stiles frowned.
"Hello? Earth to Stiles?" Scott teased, clicking his fingers in front of his eyes.
"Right, sorry, you were saying?"
Scott wasn't an idiot, he could see exactly what was going on. Aspen needed to create distance between herself and Stiles, now she hangs out with Jackson most of the time. Whenever Allison's not with Scott, she's with her, but wherever Scott was, Stiles tended to be close by.
Scott knew what had taken Stiles' attention away, he too had noticed the subtle changes in Aspen over the past week. From what they saw, she seemed more confident, independent, and she surprisingly always held a smile on her face.
Of course, what they couldn't see is that all of that was a smoke screen the brunette had created.
"She looks happy." Stiles muttered. "She looks... different, even."
"Yeah." Scott sighed in agreement. "Yeah, she does."
"Have you, umm... been filling her in? On all your werewolf business?" Stiles tried to say light heartedly, but Scott could see through him. What he was really asking was a simple 'have you spoken to her?'
"Yeah..." Scott answered, tucking his hands into his jean pockets. "I gave her a call last night about all the Derek slash Alpha stuff."
"And the hunters?" Stiles added.
"And the hunters."
"Anything else?" Stiles pressed, not being subtle at all.
"You want to know if we've talked about you?" Scott reiterated. Stiles went quiet and just shrugged. "No, we haven't."
Stiles' eyes were fixated on the brunette as she talked to the one guy in this school he couldn't stand. And he definitely didn't miss the way she seemed to laugh at everything he said and continuously twirled her perfectly curled hair around her dainty fingers.
She was one-hundred percent flirting with him.
...
In order to keep herself preoccupied and limit the amount of time she spent moping around in her bedroom, Aspen had decided to get herself a job. It was nothing special, but it was enough to make a good bit of pocket money.
But honestly, money wasn't the reason she was doing it. She needed as many distractions as she could get.
She was now a part-time worker at the video-store, just on the border of town. She took four shifts a week, most of which were late afternoon after school, but her shift today was more late-evening, early-night.
It was a boring job, but it kept her busy. Tonight, she was going bored out of her damn mind, seeing as it was the time of day where no one really comes in. So when the double doors opened and she was greeted with a friendly face, she was relieved.
"Can somebody please help me find the Notebook?" Jackson called out. The brunette audibly chuckled, catching his attention. "Aspen? You work here?"
"Yeah, picked up the job a couple days ago. What's this about the Notebook?" she teased, coming out from behind the counter.
"Lydia's forcing me to watch it again. She won't even try anything I like." Jackson whined.
"You know, I really envy that."
"What?"
"That healthy relationship you've got there." Aspen teased sarcastically, because Jackson and Lydia's relationship was anything but healthy.
"You gonna help me find it or what?"
The Carter girl guided him to the 'Romance' section of the store, and successfully found the movie he had requested. The pair of them walked through the store back to the check-out counter, when they saw a pair of feet poking out from one of the isles.
"What the..." Aspen whispered. They slowly and curiously approached them, only to find a dead body attached to them.
"Oh my God!" Aspen screeched, she almost fell backwards but Jackson caught her. They knocked down a ladder in the process, causing the lights to flicker before turning off completely.
"We need to get the fuck out of here." Jackson muttered in her ear. She frantically nodded in response.
The pair turned around to run the hell out of there when they came face to face with what looked like a pair of demonic, red eyes. As Aspen got a better look, she knew exactly what it was, or at least she had a good guess.
It was the alpha.
She hadn't noticed it at first, but Aspen looked down to see Jackson grabbing onto her hand. They knelt behind a shelf stocked with DVD's, neither one of them saying a word as they stared at each other with fear.
Then the shelves began to fall like dominos.
"Go." Aspen whispered as they both tried to get up. Jackson was able to pick himself up, but the brunette didn't stand up in time. The shelf had completely toppled on top of her and her legs were stuck. But Jackson wasn't.
"Jackson, please, you need to go!" she screamed.
"Are you fucking insane? You think I'm leaving you in here?!"
"Go!" she argued, not listening to him. She had every idea what the alpha was capable of and she didn't want him getting hurt.
"No way!" he objected. He refused to just leave her there, so he got back down on his stomach and remained still right next to her. No way in hell was he just going to bail and leave her for dead.
The alpha approached them, held up his claws over Aspen's face. Jackson's neck was turned the other direction, so he couldn't see the werewolves talons.
The alpha's claws brushed delicately over Aspen's face as she shook of fear, trying desperately to calm her breathing and remain deadly still. She thought she was going to die, then and there.
She opened her eyes ever so slowly, and came face to face with the demonic pair of eyes staring right back at her. He was hesitating to hurt her. She had no idea why. It almost looked like he recognised her.
Then the alpha shifted his attention to the Whittemore boy, and traced it's claws over the back of his neck.
And then it was gone.
...
"Why the hell can't I just go home? I'm fine." Aspen heard Jackson yell. She understood his anger, the boy had just experienced quite the traumatic event, but she didn't approve of who he was taking it out on.
She couldn't object though, she was so shaken up she could barely speak. She sat on the the edge of the ambulance wrapped up in a blanket that Sheriff Stilinski had given her.
"I hear ya, but the EMT says you hit your head pretty hard. They just wanna make sure you don't have a concussion." said the sheriff.
"What part of "I'm fine" are you having a problem grasping? Okay, I want to go home." Jackson objected and continued to argue with the Sheriff.
Stiles, who was sat impatiently inside his dad's cop car, felt his heart drop when his eyes landed on the Carter girl. She was shivering and no one was attending to her. He didn't think twice before doing the job himself.
"Aspen!" He shouted, getting out of the car and slamming the door shut. Aspen didn't even cock her head up when she heard his voice.
"Aspen!" he repeated, running to her. He knew she wanted space and he'd been respecting it as well as he could, but he couldn't just idly sit by in his dad's car when for all he knew, she could've nearly died. He had no idea what had happened, but the sight of her shivering on the edge of an ambulance was enough to scare the shit out of him.
"Aspen, are-are you okay?" he gasped frantically, crouching in front of her. She nodded ever so slightly. "Can... can I hug you?" he asked. He would never usually ask, he wouldn't hesitate before comforting her. But things were very much different now and he didn't know what the new protocol was.
Again, she just nodded.
He wrapped his flannel-clad arms around her and engulfed the brunette into a hug. Aspen sunk into his chest. She wanted desperately to say something, but she was so shaken up she didn't know what she could say.
"I think it recognised me." she surprised herself by blurting it out as a whisper.
"What? What are you talking about?" Stiles asked, confused.
"I think it recognised me." she repeated, like they were the only words she could say.
...
bit of a shorter chapter this time but oh boy do I have SO many ideas for the plot guys, in particular Aspen and her own storyline.
also protective jaspen>>>>