forty-five
Aldric Benston was still adjusting with the modern times; people still thought him to be the innocent, posh-spoken boy who is not at all familiar with the day-to-day way of talking and internet language. So, when his 'strictly acquaintance' , Deputy Sydney Dawson had recommended him a series to binge-watch, he didn't pass the opportunity to fit among his office-friends.
He was sitting in front of the tv in the living room, digging through the third packet of chips for the night.
It was a Saturday night and though Vampires don’t get sick, he had a sick leave, and he was determined to only get up from this couch when he had to go to the bathroom or to the kitchen or to his bedroom to sleep.
His attention broke from the series when Elyna’s footsteps descended down the stairs.
The girl was dressed in her comfy red night suit and Captain America flippers. Her hair was tied up in a bun and face free of makeup. If she didn’t have that grey tote bag on her shoulder, Aldric would have thought that her sister was about to go to sleep.
“Are you going somewhere?” Aldric asked, pausing the show.
The Hybrid nodded with a large innocent looking smile and Aldric knew that it meant that she was upto no good.
“Where?” He eyed Elyna wearily, putting away the packet of chips and dusting his hands off.
“To the lookout point with Stiles.” She shrugged and picked up her purse from the kitchen counter.
“This late? Why? Does his dad know?”
“Relax, old man. It’s just an astronomical thing. The sky is gonna be clear enough for everyone to see the constellations without the telescope...”
“And is it just you and Stiles?” Aldrich looked at her sister in disbelief. “Lydia’s not coming?”
Aldrich having a hard time to believe that the prodigy Lydia Martin wasn’t joining them for something educational.
Elyna rolled her eyes. “No, she’s not. It’s her last week with Jackson. She wants to spend a lot of time together with him before he leaves for London.”
“You’re spending way too much time with this Stiles boy, you know?” The older Vampire raised his eyebrows, looking at his sister from the sofa where he was still sprawled on.
“Its been just two weeks since the summer, for the love of god, we don’t get homework during the vacation.” Elyna exclaimed.
“I really don’t like you spending time with that boy, Muffin. Who knows what goes through his head? Last week, he was hyped up seeing a dead body and then he physically deflated when he got to know that it was just a murder and nothing related to supernatural.”
Elyna smiled hiked up her tote on her shoulder, “That sounds like Stiles. So..”
Elyna walked to the door and opened it. “You continue being a sloth here, worrying your non-existent hair grey and I’m gonna go.”
“What the hell? Didn’t you listen to a word I said? I just asked you to stay away from the boy.”
“I did hear you, brother. I’m just keeping it in the ‘Gotta keep this in mind’ part of my brain.”
“You are the worst, Muffin. I swear, I would have died of an heart attack, if I could.” Aldrich rolled his eyes.
“How can you die like that? You are my legal guardian and you have to support my sexy ass off forever.” Elyna blew a flying kiss to her brother.
Aldrich smiled seeing her sister in such a cheerful mood, which was definitely seldom after Basil. He was proud of his decision to shift back to Beacon Hills. He was grateful for her new group of friends for changing her sister, though he will never admit it aloud.
“When will you come back?” the brother yelled but got no response. “Elyna!”
Aldric leaned over the couch to get a better look of Elyna before she shut the door with a loud slam.
Elyna and Stiles sat on the grass. Elyna looked up the starry night sky, the cool air caressing her face. The glow of the moon was faint, yet still predominantly illuminated the sky.
Beside her Stiles tore open the seal on the paper bag and pulled out takeaway boxes of curly fries and chicken nuggets. He grabbed a handful of fries and shoved them in his mouth, causing Elyna to fake gag in disgust.
“You do know that we are actually here to watch the sky, don’t you?” she deadpanned, looking at the buzz cut boy, who actually was more invested with the French fries, other than the fact that the sky was covered with transparent clouds, which would make the stargazing activity more than difficult.
Stiles rolled his eyes. “It’s French fries.” He said as if that answered every single question.
Elyna had been slowly opening about herself and being more comfortable sharing to Stiles about her ‘hybrid life’ as Stiles called. Stiles would randomly shoot different questions to her whenever they were together and she answered all of them, truthfully.
“So, Aldrich killed that vampire hunter?” Stiles asked and Elyna nodded.
“And because there was a murder and the half of the town was already suspicious of us, we decided to leave and come here.”
“You know, it still baffles me that you have dated Irvin Keshner.” Stiles said after sometime, with his mouth full as Elyna picked up a French fry from the take-away box.
“We didn’t exactly date.” Elyna sat swung her both legs over Stiles’ thigh and leaned back on her palms.
“We went out for a couple of times and we’re seen holding hands so people assumed that we were dating and Irvin needed a lot of publicity back then, so we thought that maybe it wasn’t a bad thing. So we continued go out and be seen by the paparazzi.”
“So...when did you decide to stop been seen with him?”
“When it was time for us to go. People would have noticed that Aldric and I didn’t age even after staying there for more than ten years, so we left.”
“Did Irvin give you any privileges? Like frat parties or anything Star War related?”
Elyna nodded. “I often used to be on the set of star war movies.”
Stiles’ eyes widened. “Y-you were there? You saw the making of the greatest movie ever made in the history of filmmaking?”
Elyna chuckled and nodded. “Did you know that I got a lot of inside information about the movie which even the cast didn’t know? Like no one knew about Darth Vader being Luke’s father. The only people who knew about the twist were Lucas and Irvin and Hamill. Uh- David Prowse who was the on-set actor for Darth Vader, said, "No, Obi-Wan killed your father," during filming. And ,um, everyone thought that this to be the big plot twist until the film's premiere.”
The whiskey eyed boy’s jaw dropped as he stared at the girl.
This was something about Star Wars that even he didn’t know but Elyna did and she was actually one of the only people who knew about the twist.
“Oh. My. God.” Stiles put his greasy hand to his cheek, his eyes stiles widened with shock. “This is so awesome. You’re so awesome. You’re so freaking lucky.”
Stiles looked as if his whole world had turned upside down and Elyna almost couldn’t control the urge to grab the boy and kiss the hell out of him.
He is so impossibly adorable, she thought.
“Tell me something else.” Stiles looked at Elyna, and his eyes softened.
He just kept looking at the brunette while she kept talking about her experiences in the most rebellious period of time- the 1970s.
The whiskey eyed boy just loved to hear her talk, which only happened when she was telling him about herself or when she was full-on geeking out over some movie or fandom.
He loved to see her loose herself when she was talking passionately, her hands moving animatedly to emphasize her points.
Stiles noticed that Elyna always twisted her amethyst ring around her finger whenever she was anxious and tuck her hair back her ears when she was blushing.
He noticed the way she crinkled her nose when she laughed and also the way her tongue poked out between her lips when she was drawing with concentration.
Stiles usually asked Elyna something which would make her ramble on and on and then he would continue observing the small things about the girl- things that made Elyna very different from other girls.
The younger Stilinski knew that Elyna was more than one of her best friends now.
Though at first, he was attracted to her by her physical beauty but then he despised her and then once, they were forced to work together, he liked her loyalty towards those she cared about.
He was also impressed by her intelligence and the same mystery-solving interests that he had.
He had started to respect Elyna Benston, then. When he came to know that she was a Siren-Human, he again was gravitated towards her.
“You know, you can keep daydreaming, it’s good for me.” Elyna smirked mischievously at the boy. Stiles found small crumbs of food around her lips. He was confused until his eyes fell on the take-away box to see that more than half of the chicken nuggets were gone.
“What the hell! You ate most of my share.” Stiles snatched the box away from her.
“Your fault. You were being too absent-minded. It’s chicken nuggets, dude. What do you expect?” the brunette shrugged innocently, licking the grease from her fingers.
“I expect you to ear your share only. Not mine.” He snapped and shoved the remaining chicken nuggets into his mouth as much as he could before Elyna snatched them too.
“Uh.. have chu eber met aunother Siren?” Stiles asked, his mouth full of food, making Elyna grimace but somehow she could understand what he was trying to say.
“Oh no, I never want to meet them, if I can help it. If I had it in my way, I would have gladly given up all my Siren powers.” Elyna said but then she started to think something. “Then I remember that it’s not actually my fault that my parents loved each other and it’s certainly not my fault that my maternal side are such assholes. Why should I give up what’s actually mine by birthright?”
Stiles opened to ask another question but Elyna looked up to the sky and gave a short laugh of surprise, making him halt.
The sky was slowly clearing up, the transparent clouds rolled by to reveal distant stars. Stiles looked back to Elyna to see the brunette grinning excitedly at him, her ocean blue eyes shining even in the darkness.
They both laid down on the grass to get comfortable and get a better look.
Stiles out his hands behind his head, his eyes closing in the light fruity fragrance of the perfume that Elyna always wears.
The two of them could easily spot each beautiful constellation, seeming to waltz throughout the sky.
Vega was shining bright in the sky between a mess of trees and clouds. Little by little, more and more stars started peeking out from behind their transparent barriers.
As the Hybrid laid there with the human, the stars started to form constellations. Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Pisces, Aquarius–they all danced throughout the sky.
They could see the planets amidst the stars.
Stiles mouths a silent wow and Elyna grins, her eyes quickly moving to take it all in.
It’s so.... breath-taking. Stiles thought to Elyna.
She whipped her head to see him already looking at her, something that the brunette noticed him doing often nowadays.
“Stiles, we are not supposed to do this telepathy thing. We don’t know if it is a good thing or not.”
Why would it be bad? We’re just talking. Stiles thought to her.
It’s dangerous to play with things that we don’t understand. Elyna thought back to Stiles. The boy nodded once and didn’t say anything. Elyna guessed that he was getting angry with her.
Ever since they both have discovered the telepathic abilities between them, Stiles had wanted to use them whenever they could, while Elyna didn’t want to.
She was persistent on not tampering with something that was even beyond the understanding of Aldric and his besitaries, that had been handed down to him from generations.
Siren did talk telepathically, but Elyna was not an average Siren and her telepathic connection with Stiles-a human wasn’t something that Aldrich seemed to know about.
The wavy brunette took Stiles’ larger, calloused hand into her deathly cold, smaller ones and they both interlocked their fingers.
She saw the faint pink hue that appeared on the boy’s cheeks, who kept his eyes trained to the sky but was unable to stop the smile from breaking out on his face.
Elyna placed their hands on top of her stomach as they both looked at the brilliant night sky, but neither of their attention was on the sky and stars actually.