fanficition cove

Originally written/posted: January 2013
Fandom: Teen Wolf (2011)
Pairing: one-sided Erica/Stiles, Erica-centric character study
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,304 words
Notes: I have not reread this, but funnily enough, this is one of the only Teen Wolf fanfics still tagged on my Tumblr, so it feels fitting for it be one of the first I posted here. I do remember this being one I was real proud of, too. I loved Erica and Boyd and I’ll forever be gutted we never got more with them.

The thing is, Erica knows, okay, she knows her crush on Stiles isn’t exactly as hidden as she’d like to think it is.

It’s just, it’s not like she can help it.

She spent years with it under-wraps, just out of reach of the knowledge of everyone because it was just one more thing the students could make fun of her for, the fact that she had a crush on the only other person besides herself that was on the bottom of the social ladder (Stiles, at one point, was even below Erica, but then she then she got slapped in the face with Epilepsy and seizures and medication bottles)–she could picture what they’d call them too, all of the hideous names their peers would shout at them as they walked down the hallway together.

And that wasn’t something she wanted to happen.

Erica had never been a selfish person. Even before her diagnosis, she’d never been someone who could take for herself and not give something to other people in return. She’s always been that sickly sweet girl, the one that everyone would take advantage of and walk all over because Erica wouldn’t fight back, because they’d realize quick that she would do anything in the face of approval.

The only thing Erica had ever wanted more than Stiles was approval, actually.

But, then she got diagnosed. With Epilepsy. And Erica–

She just gave up, okay?

She gave up on everything.

*

So, she kept the secret hidden. Didn’t let anyone know, tried to keep it as locked away as she could.

Even from Stiles.

Especially from Stiles, really.

And okay, Stiles has always been that guy, the ridiculously nice guy you want to punch in the face sometimes, because he just…does everything without a single sense of self-entitlement or thread of selfishness. He does everything that you’d never ask him to, and underneath the warped ball of guilt you feel when he’s finally finished, there’s this fondness that you can’t shake. Even after he’s left the room, only leaving the barest notes of his cologne clinging to the stale air, you don’t feel anything but unadulterated adoration.

He’s the most infuriating person Erica’s ever met–even more infuriating than Scott, which is a feat of it’s own, okay, it truly is–he’s also sort of secretly wonderful.

He’s the one person Erica could never bring herself to stay angry at.

Not because he doesn’t have the power to anger her–because he does, and he has, plenty of damn times, so many damn times that Erica wants to claw off his face with her blunt, human fingernails, but it’s never something that lasts. It fades with the simple, gentle touches he places on her leg, on her arms, on the side of her waist. The passing, fleeting touches that he probably doesn’t even realize he’s laying on her, but resonates deep within her all of the same.

The anger disappears the moment his fingers touch her skin, and after they’re gone, Erica doesn’t even remember the reason why she was mad at him in the first place.

*

Everything changed with Derek’s bite.

*

Erica spends her first couple of nights screaming without any sound, because she can do that without feeling like she’s about to shake out of her skin, without losing any ounce of control.

It’s freeing.

Erica gives herself the freedom to be selfish, because she fucking deserves it, okay, she deserves it so hard that she can taste it.

She can taste what it feels like to take without being terrified.

What it feels like to feel the push and ebb of skin below her fingernails if she cuts too deep.

It’s all an addicting rush that she rides on, too high and too prideful to admit she’s wrong.

Buried deep inside, she knows she shouldn’t have knocked Stiles over the head with a part she tore from his car–hell, Erica knows she shouldn’t have destroyed his car in the first place, but it’s a little too late for sentiments, now.

She knows she shouldn’t have done a lot of things, but she did them anyway. And maybe some people would call that psyhotic or crazy or insane, but that’s alright, Erica thinks; she doesn’t have to care what people think about her anymore–even though she does, oh god, how she does, there will always be some fucked up part of her that cares about how she’s seen by other people because as a human being, that’s something you care about. No matter how much she’s tried to ignore it or push it away, there’s this voice at the back of her head screaming, “what would they think?” 

It’s not healthy.

But Erica doesn’t care.

Because she’s young and stupid and impulsive, but mostly because for the first time in years, she feels like she can finally breathe again.

*

When Stiles lays her down in the middle of the abandoned traincar, Erica doesn’t deserve it.

She’s been rough with him. She’s been cruel and callous and horrible and Stiles of all people doesn’t deserve it. He’s been nothing but kind to her, even when she was Epileptic. He never once laughed at her or made jokes with his friends, and she’s never been able to decide if that’s because he was just too nice or because he knew what it was like; to be judged and ridiculed on a daily basis.

Of course, he never had it as bad as she did, but she could hear the whispered insults other kids threw at him when they thought he wasn’t listening.

She knows he heard them, too, because they always hear them.

They just get better at pretending they haven’t.

She doesn’t tell him this, though, about how she doesn’t deserve the way his fingers tenderly caress her arm, the way he puts her head on his chest like it matters, like she matters.

Feeling the wolf course through her veins, feeling the power that she didn’t have before–

It’s destroyed her.

It’s made her selfish.

*

When it comes to Stiles though, there and then, lying on him, helpless, she doesn’t feel guilty for taking.

She doesn’t feel a damn ounce of guilt and she doesn’t know why.

*

So, she’s not in the best state of mind when she tilts her head up to stare into Stiles’ stupidly pretty amber eyes, and says, “You’d make a good batman, Stiles.”

But she doesn’t have to be in the best state of mind to hear the way his heart skips a beat, to feel the way his breath stutters into the tendrils of her hair, to feel the way his fingers tighten against her arm, only to soften almost instantly when he realizes the very real possibility that he could be hurting her.

(He wasn’t, and even if he was, it’s not like she even felt it in that particular moment, anyway.)

She doesn’t have to be in the best state of mind for any of that, because she can hear her Alpha’s heartbeat rising at Stiles’ reaction, can smell the anger and the resentment and the jealousy wafting off of him in thick, broody waves.

Ercia can’t help but feel a swell of pride in that, really.

*

Erica’s and Stiles’ friendship isn’t easy after that.

Erica is still bitchy and controlling and wants too much. Stiles still only cares for his father and for Scott and the pack as a whole, and maybe that’s not entirely what Erica wants. But it’s enough for now. Erica isn’t completely sure they’ll ever get to the point where he’ll care for her on a level that’s separate from the pack, anyway, but that’s okay.

She’s done being selfish.

And she’s not going to rush anything.

She owes Stiles that much, at least.