Chapter Text
January 9th, 2011
Headlights illuminated the thick fog that rolled over the backroads of Beacon Hills. Wisping through the trees, fingers of smoky, silvery phantasma stretched towards a pair of high beams before dissipating with a whoosh under the tyres of the navy blue Ford T-bird that roared around the sharp, almost invisible bends and corners framed by the surrounding woods, only to cross into oncoming traffic.
“Jesus Christ – watch it!” The T-bird’s driver shrieked, jerking a hard right to avoid the head-on collision. The steering wheel groaned in protest, and the tyres ground against the asphalt, leaving gravel sputtering in its wake, but the T-bird righted itself and continued at a breakneck speed.
The driver threw her hand out the window, her middle finger raised in righteous fury. “Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you! Honestly – where did you people get your licenses from, a cereal box?!”
She didn’t know Rice Bubbles had been doing a mass giveaway. If she had, she wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of negotiating for her permit. She was two months into her shiny new license, and the special conditions attached accompanied her everywhere she went, sitting pretty in her glovebox, haunting her at every turn. Literally.
Let’s count them down, shall we?
First condition: prescription glasses. A vital requirement for anyone who couldn’t see five feet ahead of them without the world going all blurry. That little rule had been put on the back burner as of late to stop her nose from peeling under the weight of the thick, unflattering black frames that threatened to rub her skin red-raw.
It’s funny how much power vanity held over the everyday life of a teenage girl.
Or, in this driver’s case, life and death.
Second condition: she had to inform someone of her intent to hop behind the wheel of any moving vehicle - hers or anyone else’s.
Which felt a tad excessive.
That was until she cheerfully hopped into the front seat of her best friend’s jeep to try reversing out of his driveway and ended up getting benched on the curb as she received the scolding of her life.
Safe to say, chipping the navy blue paint job of Stiles’s beloved Roscoe on his neighbour’s mailbox left her with a bit of a bad reputation amongst those who knew her best.
Nobody was dumb enough to hand their car keys to Vanessa O’Connor anymore.
Not unless they had a death wish.
“Just my night!” Vanessa muttered, tossing her hand at the windshield as if the mere gesture could cleave a path through the fog ahead.
For some ungodly reason, every man and his horse chose the inconvenient hour of 10:55 p.m. to drive home.
The result? A five-block traffic jam cut through downtown and across the bridge, thus forcing her to go this hellish and, quite frankly, creepy route. Not that her destination was any less creepy.
The Beacon Hills Preserve could give Amityville a run for its money.
Yet here she was, speeding down the backroads alongside a few other intelligent assholes, all of whom were in such a rush to get home that they would chance a swerve around lil’ ole’ Vanessa O’Connor.
Death. Wish.
Vanessa growled, pressing down onto the accelerator until the hell of her boot grazed the floor. The T-Bird’s engine whirred into overdrive, and the sudden surge of horsepower forced her shoulders back into her seat.
Manic laughter danced into the night as Vanessa’s hair whipped wildly around her. Drunk on power and the crisp, clean air far from the pollution and noise of the cities, Vanessa pumped her fist with a severely misplaced sense of victory just as a shadow streaked out from the surrounding woods.
Like a gunshot in the night or a thunderous crack in the cosmos of fate and time, the shadow collided with the T-Bird’s hood with a BANG!
The front windshield crunched inward under the weight of the colliding force, and the car spun, turning Vanessa’s world into a sickening blur of reflected headlights and ear-piercing screams that rebounded through the small metallic space around her.
The glass shattered into millions of glittering pieces of her life before her eyes, simultaneously freezing as the car suddenly stopped in the middle of the now-empty road. Time flew into fast-forward, flinging Vanessa’s torso against the tight resistance of the seatbelt wrapped across her torso.
Unfortunately, because her seat was folded so close to the wheel, the seatbelt could not save her face from slamming into the steering wheel. Hard.
Her forehead butted against the horn, and her body slumped against the dashboard.
For one blessed moment, the world went quiet.
And then Vanessa groaned.
“Waugh…” Her tongue felt heavy against the bottom of her mouth. Stars and black dots blinked in and out of existence as she slowly tilted her head from where it rested on a crooked angle against the centre, her chin brushing against the matte surface of the wheel.
As the high-pitched static died in her ears, she realised the car horn had been blaring for a few seconds now, alerting all the cars she passed and the surrounding forest animals of her epic failure.
Well…this’s a bit awkward.
“Fuck,” she croaked, dragging her chin up and over to hook around the curved top of the wheel for support. Vanessa squinted out of what used to be her windshield, willing her world into focus, only to grimace at the damage that greeted her.
Headlight flickered erratically, illuminating the silver teeth of a rectangular-jawed monster – a.k.a. the remnant of her windshield. Now, it was a hole the size of a small coffee table that gaped mockingly back at her.
Some morbid, masochistic need forced her to lift her head further to inspect the hood, but that was immediately put in its place by a sharp burst of pain between her eyes.
“Ugh!” Vanessa cried out, gripping the bridge of her nose as a steady ache shoved against the hollow of her eye sockets, pressing back and forth between her cranium and occipital lobe.
The pain centred around her fingertips, causing tears to sting in the back of her eyes. But as her fingers tentatively brushed up towards her brows, they came back warm and slick. Something wet slid down her cheek, sliding into the dip of her lip. Metal coated her tongue, dread aching in her lower stomach as she realised that the taste in her mouth, the slick on her fingers, the steady stream on her face was blood.
“Fuck,” Vanessa hissed, fumbling to unclip her seatbelt. “Shit, fuck, fuckity, fuck, fuck!”
Her desperation spiked as she struggled against the seatbelt. It didn’t abate when she heard the click of the seatbelt’s release button, nor when she threw the strap to the side. Freed from the useless polyester, Vanessa sagged back against the headrest of her seat, hoping to ease the eye-watering ache in her skull.
She strained her eyes, searching for the random bits of clothing she usually had lying around. Bits and pieces were tossed aside in the heat of summer or emergency coats in case she was forced to join the boys’ spontaneous hiking trips during the winter months in preparation for another lacrosse season where they would warm the bench.
A flash of dark red cloth peeked out from underneath the passenger seat to her right and had her considering her school-issued sweatshirt, the white block ‘GO CYCLONES!’ printed cheerily on the front.
That’ll do.
Gritting her teeth, Vanessa slowly leaned forward and snatched the sweatshirt off the floor. Scrunched into a ball, she raised it to her forehead, gently dabbing around the area of the suspected injury. She bit down on her lip, whimpering when the fabric stuck to the wound, only to be lifted a second later with a soft, squeamish sound that left the epicentre of the wound stinging in its wake.
Peering over the glass-littered dashboard, Vanessa took in the absolute carnage of her car hood for the first time.
The bundled-up sweatshirt slipped from her slackened hands.
If head trauma doesn’t kill me, Mom totally will.
Before she had the chance to panic further over her impending doom, a deep groan that definitely did not belong to her emerged from beyond the carnage.
Vanessa’s head stuttered to a stop in her chest as she began to panic over an entirely different problem because, Oh shit, did I hit someone?
The damning bang of a judge’s gavel echoed in the back of her mind. An indistinguishable number of a hundred-dollar bill bail fluttered in a nauseating shade of green. A jail cell door slammed with finality because Vanessa was looking at prison time. Staring it dead in the eye, and, Oh God, prison? I can’t do prison! I’m barely surviving high school!
Full-blown hyperventilating at this point, Vanessa grappled with the door handle, shoving her shoulder into the window when it didn’t budge and continuing the assault until the lock shot up and the door clicked open.
“Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Or maybe just a little amnesiac so you don’t sue the hell out of me!”
Vanessa crumpled onto the road in a heap, hands fist and knees last. Like a baby fawn delivered onto the soft grass of a meadow. Except if the meadow was the scene of a car crash and the soft grass was gravel shimmering with glass.
Thank God for jeans and California winters because it was fucking everywhere. She held her hands to her chest protectively, air hissing between her teeth. She grimaced, having dodged a bullet.
Because glass in hands? Big yikes!
Blinking around at the glass-glittered street, Vanessa fell against the side of her car, pawing her way up to the open window. The heels of her black ankle boots skated loudly against the gravel as she hauled herself off the ground, her hands sliding over the edge for purchase.
Her hands slid over the ridged indentations of the blue metal, her lips turning down sorrowfully.
Oh baby, what did I do to you?
Another groan sounded from the front of her car.
Her head whipped in the direction of the sound, but vertigo swept through her at the quickest motion. Vanessa swayed, cheeks puffed out in regret as nausea knocked her over, her torso bending in half.
Arms wrapped around her stomach as bile poured from her mouth. She retched, coughing and sputtering, the scent overwhelmingly bitter and smelling like corn gone bad and butter left out in the sun for too long.
“Ah, shit,” Vanessa rasped, wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her long-sleeve shirt.
Slowly, she lifted her head towards the front of her car.
Angry tears welled in her eyes as she glared at whatever or whoever lay beyond her hood.
“You’re gonna wish you were dead, you son of a bitch - ”
Using the hood for balance, she limped around to the front of the car, clocking in the colossal dent with a moan. I am so dead, it’s not funny. She stumbled past, her heart beating hard in her chest.
When she caught a glimpse of the first casualty of her cursed driving, the first thought in her presumably concussed brain was, Woah! What a hottie!
The second was, Too bad he’s got a bloody gash the size of San Fran across his forehead. He’d make a great model for GQ or something.
Now, Vanessa had never read GQ in her life. Her limited experience of men’s magazines consisted of that one time she sat behind Jackson Whittemore in Economics class and glimpsed a handsome man staring back at her from his backpack.
So, yeah, she had a concussion. That’s the only rational explanation for why her teeth felt like gummy bears and words spilled like jelly from her loose-filtered lips, taking her to lows Stiles had never even hit before.
“Well, hell-oh, good-looking!”
Splayed across the ground like some Greek god, a stranger glared up at her from under his lashes. Vanessa, a hot-blooded teenage girl, immediately clocked in his profile. He was in his early twenties, with dark hair and hazel eyes with stubble shadowing the ridged angles of his jawline.
She lingered on the olive-tanned skin of his abdomen where his shirt had ridden up, trailing the sprinkle of dark hair from his belly button to where it disappeared beneath his belt.
Details, man. Have to get them details.
The stranger groaned again, low and rough. He lifted his head, hazel eyes narrowing on where she lingered a few feet away. “What the hell happened?”
Vanessa leaned her hip against the wreckage, holding her sweatshirt to her forehead as she glared down at him. “What happened, buddy, is you jumped in front of my car – and FYI, you’re paying for damages!”
“More like your car came out of nowhere. What the hell happened to the speeding laws around here?” the stranger grunted, hefting himself up using the hood. The front of her car dipped under his weight, the metal groaning in protest.
Vanessa’s eyes widened. Either this man is heavier than he looks, or I just ran over Bruce Banner.
“Eh,” She shrugged it off, nonchalantly taking a step backwards as she studied him. His clothes were basic, his shoes were boots, but his watch gave him away. Stainless steel glinted in the flickering headlights, and she did not like the number of dollar signs attached to the hypothetical medical bill she’d be paying off. “You’re all right, though…right? Like, no broken bones or anything?”
“Why?” He turned towards her, lips curling as he taunted, “Worried I’m going to sue you?”
She blabbered, hands flailing as she laughed it off nervously, “Just a little post-crash humor! Totally wasn’t serious or anything…”
The stranger scoffed and straightened his back, rolling his shoulders experimentally. The fluid motion startled Vanessa into stumbling forward with a hand outstretched to stop him. “Hey, hey, hey! You just got hit by a car, buddy. Maybe take it easy for a bit, yeah?”
“I’m fine,” he muttered gruffly, wrinkling his nose at her as if she were some diseased animal poking too close to his trashcan.
He inhaled reflexively and stilled, hazel eyes focusing on her with an eerie intensity. With the headlights revealing his profile, Vanessa could see the pupils of his eyes constricting until they were almost overwhelmed by the iris.
Glass crunched underneath his boots as he stepped forward, stopping when he noticed her lean back warily. He frowned, gesturing towards her brow as he pointed out gruffly, “You’re hurt.”
Ding, ding, ding! A hundred dollars for the strange Adonis-like man with eyes!
The Jeopardy theme began to play in her head. She pressed her sweatshirt firmly onto her wound in retaliation.
“Yeah, well, I kinda frenched my car horn back there,” Vanessa said sarcastically, scrunching her nose when the inside of her nostrils started stinging. She waved her free hand at her forehead and tried for a winning smirk. “She, uh, gave me this little love tap when I refused to go to second base.”
The stranger’s brows furrowed deeply as he struggled with the internal conflict laid out before him; help the clearly deranged teenage girl who ran him over or be the asshole who let her bleed out on the side of the road.
A vein protruded from his forehead menacingly, causing Vanessa to pray fervently for him to go for the second option when he sighed in resignation. He rubbed a tired hand across his jaw before gesturing to her wrecked vehicle. “Get in the car. I’m taking you to the hospital.”
Now, that was arguably way worse than leaving her for dead on the side of the road because a hospital signified her prolonged torture, followed by prompt healing, followed by more prolonged torture.
So, in her defence, her reaction was totally valid.
“No fucking way!” Vanessa screeched, lunging forward with a vehemence that caused the stranger to flinch back. His arms were half-raised as if to fend off an attack from a wild animal or something. Vanessa was too anxious to puzzle over whether she should be insulted or flattered by his reaction. “If anything, you should be the one getting checked out. I hit you, remember?”
“Vividly,” He bit out, eyes hardening at her defiance. He pointed to her poor, ruined T-Bird. “Get in the car.”
“Ah-no!” Vanessa repeated, stubbornly shaking her head. She lowered her sweatshirt from her forehead, crossed her arms over her head, and explained, “Look, my mom’s a nurse at Beacon Hills Memorial. If I come in bleeding, car wrecked, accompanied by a strange man – all at the same time – she will certifiably flip her shit!”
She shuddered at the thought. It was a rare sight for Lisa O’Connor to lose her cool. The last instance firmly fixed itself a place in Vanessa’s special edition of the Top Ten Hellish Wonders of the World list, right up there with pineapple on pizza and the Chuck E. Cheese mascot.
“Look,” The stranger growled back, matching her exasperation, “If your mother is a nurse, then you should know that an injury to the head is usually bad. You need to get checked out.”
“Thanks, but I’d literally rather risk brain damage,” Vanessa told him saccharinely.
“You’re an actual child, you know that?”
Vanessa's lips curved into a crooked grin, and the stranger’s scowling mouth twitched slightly as if fighting off a reluctant smile of his own. The smile lost the war, and his handsome features smoothed back into their sullen default setting.
He glanced at the car and then back at her, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but there. “How about a compromise?”
Vanessa’s ears pricked up, standing to attention for her all-time favorite word. Well, second all-time favorite. It ranked somewhere under ‘blackmail’ and ahead of ‘discombobulated’.
She hummed with poorly contained curiosity. “I’m listening.”
“I won’t take you to the hospital, but your head needs to be bandaged,” he insisted, nostrils flaring as if he were about to do something he really didn’t want to do. “I live just a few minutes down the road. We can drive there, get you cleaned up, and I’ll drive you home afterwards. How does that sound?”
It sounded fucking amazing, actually. Except for a couple of disturbing facts that quickly became apparent.
Let’s do another countdown, shall we?
Fact number one: she found herself alone on a darkened, empty road with a strange man offering to take her to his home in the most reclusive part of Beacon Hills.
Now, Vanessa watched the news. She listened to the true crime podcasts that Stiles liked to listen to on the radio to school in the mornings. She had even snuck into the living room to watch ‘The Hitcher’ behind her parent’s backs that one night when she was ten years old (Would not recommend).
Safe to say, this was a plotline she knew like the back of her hand.
On the other hand, Vanessa was willing to risk actual brain damage rather than face her mother at the hospital… So, by true Vanessa's logic, she could also risk going to a strange man’s house in the middle of the night.
If push came to shove, she could always run him over with her car again. See if he got up a second time.
As for disturbing fact number two…well, that surely had to be the concussion talking.
“Ugh, fine!” Vanessa folded, self-preservation instincts momentarily fried. She gave him the stink-eye, wagging her finger warningly at him. “But if you try to murder me, I’ll make you wish I had killed you!”
“Too late for that,” He muttered as she stomped past him. Vanessa shot him a withering glare over the roof of her car before she opened the passenger side door and ducked inside.
Using the bloody sweatshirt to sweep the glass off her seat, Vanessa gingerly sat down and faced forward with a wince. The open windshield gaped back at her. Her eyes flicked over to the man settling into the driver’s seat.
“Um, should we be driving like this?” she asked warily.
“No,” he sighed, ignoring her blanch. “But I live just up the road, so we should be fine.”
“That’s what they all say,” Vanessa muttered snarkily, shaking out the glass on her sweatshirt so she could press it against her head wound again. Cringing as the cloth settled onto the split skin, Vanessa cocked her head to the side to ask the man, “What’s your name, anyway?”
She thought he would ignore her, her question half-drowned out by T-Bird’s sweet, sweet purr.
The crash scene was lost in the fog in the rear-view mirror before he replied quietly, almost as if to himself, “It’s Derek. Derek Hale.”
🌕
“Please, please tell me this is not where you actually live,” Vanessa begged, her wide eyes trained on the burnt-down ruins of the old Hale House. She should’ve listened to her brain when it screamed at her that this was a bad idea because look at her now – stranded at the tender mercies of a strange man who brought her to the most haunted building in Beacon Hills.
A town tragedy for the ages, everyone remembered the Hale Fire. The sixth anniversary had passed last week, splashed across the Wednesday paper with all the gory details on page 4.
The PTA moms had a fucking field day with it, their saccharine sympathies going above and beyond to draw attention to an event that the town rather let quietly pass by with the sorrowful headshaking and low-muttered tutting best suited for the occasion.
But nooo, they wanted a memorial. Candlelight vigil, plaques of honor loudly displaying the dead for all to see (as if it were a privilege to have been burnt to death by faulty wiring), all the while offering a stage for anyone to present fond memories of the wealthy family that lingered on the outskirts of their small town.
Plucked from the abyss only to be shoved back into the box where it would stay until next year’s sideshow.
Fond memories of the Hale family were like Christmas lights, Vanessa had thought to herself, remembering how one of her moms, Sarah, had sat in the back row of that one PTA meeting from hell. Vintage Ray-Bans sitting low on her nose with a paper cup of dark roast coffee held at the lid by loose fingers, Sarah O’Connor only had to mutter menacingly about memorialising them all ‘shutting the hell up’ for all talks to cease, and that was that.
Until now.
Suddenly, the puzzle pieces of the strange, Hulk-like, Adonis-looking man beside her started coming together, creating quite an alarming picture.
God, how she wished he had just left her on the side of the road because she felt like her heartbeat was about to jump out of her throat, and she knew he knew that she knew, just like how he knew her hand was inching its way towards the door handle -
“Relax,” Derek bit out roughly, rolling his eyes at where her hand had disappeared from view. He grabbed her car keys from the ignition and tossed them into her lap as he explained gruffly, “It’s only temporary. I just got back into town tonight, so it’ll have to do for now.”
“Riiight,” Vanessa nodded, cheeks flushed at being called out. She resisted the urge to blabber on about how there were several fine, fully structured, slightly less creepy establishments downtown that would have loved to cater to a man wearing the kind of watch he wore, but only just.
Derek shook his head and opened the driver’s side door. “Come on. I’m sure your parents want you home before midnight.”
Puzzled, Vanessa whipped out her phone from her jean pocket and came face to face with ten notifications from Stiles, wondering where she was and when she would appear at the preserve's rendezvous point.
However, what caught her attention were big block numbers at the top-centre of her screen displaying the time – 11:00 PM.
One hour before the biggest lecture of her life.
The driver-side door slammed shut, startling Vanessa into action. She hurriedly fell out of her car, jogging up the long, winding dirt driveway to catch up with Derek, who marched ahead. She slowed when she reached him, panting slightly.
Hugging her ribs, which were a little sore from the seatbelt preventing her from flying through her windshield, Vanessa tried to match Derek’s long, purposeful strides towards the front porch as she called after him, “So, you’re a Hale?”
“Yes,” the answer was short and curt and all but shouting at her to leave well enough alone.
Unfortunately, social cues were a hit-or-miss thing with Vanessa. “And your family were the ones who–"
“Yes,” the last response came out a growl, causing Vanessa’s mouth to click shut.
Ah, it's probably a touchy subject, his dead family and all. Figures he wouldn’t want to give her the dirty deets.
Vanessa mentally slapped herself.
Face burning in mortification, Vanessa took in the looming shadow of the broken, burnt old house in front of her and tried to imagine it before the fire.
The wooden floorboards of the front porch ended abruptly before reaching what remained of the side of the house. At one point, it might have been stretched longer into an elegantly carved banister. The floorboards might have been mopped down and decorated with a worn but well-loved welcome mat greeting visitors and extended family on holidays.
The house towered two stories high with an attic that once looked big enough to consider a third floor. Vanessa wondered if they were the kind of family who would have cluttered it with old relics and heirlooms, broken things that they kept around for sentimentality.
She didn’t think so.
Eight lives were taken in that fire. Three survivors.
Eleven people once called this condemned ruin home. Of course, they wouldn't waste space on useless junk. Not with a family as large as theirs. The local paper had stated that the Hales were some of the oldest residents of Beacon Hills.
They were born and raised here, lived here their entire lives, only to die here. All together. All at once.
Her stomach churned with the likelihood that their ashes might lie between the termite-eaten floorboards.
The rotten planks groaned underneath her boots as if in confirmation.
Vanessa swayed on her feet and braced herself on a piece of wood she refused to acknowledge as a railing. She lowered herself to sit on the only step that seemed like it could support her weight and shoved her head between her knees, breathing shallowly.
The screen door creaked open, and she heard Derek sigh behind her, “What are you doing?”
Vanessa breathed in through her nose and breathed out. She repeated the exercise once more before she rasped back, “Look, man, I know you probably want me out of your hair, so I’mma just wait out here.”
He didn’t respond. The screen door crashed to a close.
Vanessa lifted her head, leaning her cheek against the top of her knees, and stared into the night. The breeze howled low in her ear, tickling the back of her neck. She had prepared for a cold night out. In Cali, that usually meant a standard t-shirt and jeans combo.
She straightened out her sweatshirt and slid it over her head, screwing up her nose when she noticed the dark stains along the hem.
Blegh! Don’t think about it, or you’ll throw up again. That’s the last time we’re eating buttery popcorn. From now on, it's ice water and dry crackers at the movies.
Seeking distraction, Vanessa squinted out at the woods surrounding the house. They had taken one of the old residential roads off the backroads and had driven about five minutes into the preserve before reaching what used to be a driveway at the bottom of a small hill.
Throughout the drive, Vanessa tried vainly to remember the way back by identifying the murky shapes of suspected landmarks. Surprisingly, she had more luck now sitting on the front porch with the only light being the full moon than in a car with two very bright headlights.
Now, the harder she focused, the more she noticed. Like the sound of twigs snapping, trampled underneath padded paws, or the flap of birds and batwings overhead. How living shadows danced in and out of her peripheral vision.
And glowing red eyes peering from the surrounding trees, glaring into her soul.
“Holy fuck -!” Vanessa’s startled gasp was cut off by her hand slapping over her mouth, her scream cutting off in her throat as she scrambled back up the stairs.
She fell onto the porch in a trembling heap of limp legs, unable to tear her eyes away from the woods. Those blazing red eyes flared at her retreat. Like a predator fixated on its prey’s flailing, they crept closer and closer and closer until the red eyes perched at the tree line.
Just a few feet away from her parked car.
The front door crashed open behind her, sending Vanessa lurching to the side with a shrill shriek, barely avoiding the rough, wooden edges of the doorframe. Clambering back on her hands, she gaped up at Derek, his shadow towering over her. His gaze trained on the trees.
But when she shakily glanced toward the woods, she found the eyes had disappeared.
Goosebumps erupted along the back of her neck, and shivers ran down her spine as the intensity of that red-eyed glare lingered on her.
Someone or something had been watching them. A trembling, terrified part of her thought they still were.
Derek’s gaze moved from the trees to Vanessa, sprawled at his feet. Dark brows furrowed low over hazel eyes as they swept across her face, scrutinising. “I heard you scream. What happened?”
Vanessa ran a shaky hand through her mussed-up curls, her back sagging against the wall behind her. “I – I was seeing things. Scared myself.”
The muscles in Derek’s jaw ticked. “What exactly did you see?”
“Red eyes. Like glowing red eyes,” Vanessa’s laughter came out strained, almost manic.
It was absurd. Almost as ridiculous as the humungous dent in her car hood or the agile roll of Derek’s shoulders after surviving a head-on collision with a speeding vehicle.
“Like I said, I must be seeing things.”
Derek leaned forward, bringing attention to the white case held tightly in his grasp by his side. Vanessa’s eyes darted over the red cross sticker on the side facing her.
Perking up, she plastered on an eager smile and sprang up from the floor, dusting the ash and wood rot from the back of her jeans. “All right! Time to patch me up, yeah?”
She ignored the ash smeared across her palms. Didn’t let herself think too deeply about what that ash used to be. Whether it was simply a piece of burnt wood or something other…
Vanessa shuddered, hobbled over to the rotting wooden banister by the equally rooting stairs, and hopped up, wobbling slightly. It was a bit of a touch-and-go situation, with Derek watching from the sidelines, brows raised high in disbelief when she didn’t end up falling on her ass.
Feeling smug, Vanessa threw her hands out on either side of her as if to say, Ta-da!
Derek wasn’t impressed. Vanessa shrugged, accepting that some people were just born without a sense of humor. She waited patiently for Derek to set the case down and find what he needed, wincing at the sight of the gnarly gash splashed across his left brow.
Bloody being the key descriptor here because strangely, she could no longer call it a gash, or an open wound or anything at all, really.
It was gone. No thick streaking cut. No skin peeling away to reveal the protective ashen bone of his skull. Nothing. Na-da. As if it were never there. It was as if Derek had merely started Halloween early and spilt face paint over his head, the skin shallow and faux with the smooth, watery look of someone playing pretend.
So, either Vanessa was severely concussed (likely), or again, Bruce Banner had an even more tragic backstory than the one Stan Lee created for him (less likely).
The scent of rubbing alcohol wafted her senses, and Vanessa looked away before Derek noticed her studying him like he was a science experiment (because the jury’s still out on that one)
See, the thing with Vanessa O’Connor was that she wasn’t stupid. Reckless as all hell, yes, but not stupid. Having parents in the medical and law enforcement field would smarten up any kid.
So, if she were to make wild guesses and unmethodical leaps here, she would start with the string of animal attacks their town was famous for. They had quietened down a fair bit over the years, but they had started up again since the Christmas holidays, effectively dampening the holiday spirit.
Stiles had sent her and Scott a text an hour ago, a lovely little notification buzzing across her phone in the middle of her and Erica’s little movie date, informing her that his dad had received a report of another animal attack in the preserve.
Which meant another dead body.
Her best friend, Stiles, was a sucker for a good mystery. Growing up, the habit of looking too deeply into every little thing had rubbed off on her, which eventually moulded her into quite the conspiracy theorist when the conversation turned toward the weird and controversial.
They usually dragged along their other best friend, Scott, on their little tangents, both physical and verbal, because, let’s face it, there really wasn’t much to do in a small town like Beacon Hills.
In her opinion, traipsing through the woods searching for dead bodies was the equivalent of surfing or whatever coastal Californians did for fun.
“Hey,” Derek’s gruff voice snapped her out of her thoughts, drawing her attention away from the now-silent trees. He leaned down to get a better look at her head, bringing them to eye level. His gaze fixed on hers, narrowed and searching. “You’re not going to pass out on me, are you?”
“Pft, no!” Vanessa scoffed, traitorous eyes drifting back to the woods again. “I’m made of stronger…stuff.”
She trailed off, a poorly developed idea beginning to take root inside (again) her severely concussed head. An inner punched-out light bulb started letting off sparks in a box of other punched-out light bulbs that wanted nothing more than for her to shut up.
They began to glow warningly, Don’t pull on that string, Vanessa, or I swear to God -
“Did you know a girl was found dead in the preserve tonight?” Vanessa asked him conversationally.
Aaaand she pulled the string. No surprise there.
The box of light bulbs groaned simultaneously.
The hand Derek used to brush her hair away from her forehead hovered over her wound, her dark strands still curled over the tops of slightly crooked finger joints.
She heard his sharp intake of breath before his voice dipped an octave lower than his usual gruff as he questioned tensely, “How did you know that?”
Interesting.
He barely twitched an eyebrow. Didn’t sound even a tad weirded out by the obviously weird question.
Vanessa narrowed her eyes. Suspicious.
After a long pause, Derek started to wipe gently at the blood around her wound. His features remained stilted, forcibly focused on the task before him as she eyed him under her lashes.
She grinned through the sting of the rubbing alcohol against her skin.
“My best friend’s the Sheriff’s son. He texted me.”
“Hm, is that what teenagers talk about these days?”
Vanessa resisted the urge to snort.
‘These days’, he grunted like he wasn’t three to five years older than her. Tops.
“No, just us. We’re fun like that,” Vanessa winked, witnessing Derek’s ghost smile fight for its life and promptly lose for the second time that night.
“All right,” Derek sighed, leaning back. He gave her wound another scrutinising once-over before nodding his satisfaction. "It’s cleaned now, but I need to put a patch over it. Your parents will see it, but it’s the best I can do…unless you want that trip to the hospital?”
At that point, the lightbulb string started to swing temptingly, and the box of broken light bulbs screamed at her, Don’t say it. Please don’t say it. Don’t fucking say it.
But it was simple maths!
Animal attacks + No surprise + Super-healing gash + Survived a car crash + House in the woods =
Stan Lee owned the rights to Bruce Banner. So, if the Hulk was out and it wasn’t the concussion whispering madness to her, the only logical explanation left was…
“Yeah, no hospital for me, thanks,” Vanessa’s smile widened, her eyes following up the spine of his hunched-over back as he turned to rifle through the First Aid box. “If anything, it’s the werewolf I’m worried about.”
Derek flinched before going eerily still. Slowly, his spine uncurled until he stood to his full height. His shoulders pulled back, and his head tilted to the side, concealing his expression in shadow. His voice lowered back to that dangerous octave and then lowered again to something almost inhuman.
“What did you just say?”
Vanessa gaped at him in disbelief.
Holy crap – I’m not concussed! I mean, I obviously am, but oh my God! Oh, my fucking God! Take that, lightbulbs! Bruce Banner’s integrity is restored. My childhood is safe and – uh oh, he’s turning around -
“I mean, whoever it is, they’re gonna need a serious stitch-up when the Sheriff tracks them down and fires off a couple of rounds,” Vanessa blabbered, her hands awkwardly miming the hold of an invisible shotgun.
Pow-pow, she mouthed to herself, screaming on the inside. “Yeaaah, I hear shotgun slugs hurt like a bitch.”
Derek’s jaw tightened, lips curling back to reveal the harsh grind of his teeth as he growled, “Who are you?”
“Okay, you’re seriously not gonna believe this, but – I’m no one! I guessed!” Vanessa cackled, legs swinging manically. She leaned too far back and had to grab the post to stop her from falling off the banister.
Now, if only I could stop my halfway fall to Crazytown…
She quickly hopped down before she could test her luck further, throwing her hands up in amazement as she ranted, “This is so cool! Like, sixteen, sophomore year, and I guessed you were a supernatural creature that turned furry and howled at the moon! Like, what are the fucking odds of that?”
“Guessed? Odds?” Derek cocked his head to the side, frowning. “How did you figure it out?”
Realising that Derek was content to stand and glower at her, Vanessa huffed and marched over to snatch the packet of medical patches from his hand, raising a brow when it slid loosely from his grip.
The window closest to her was surprisingly intact, and she used the murky reflection to slap the patch over the mess of blood staining her brow, sticking out her tongue in concentration as she smoothed down the sticky corners.
“Well, let’s do a countdown, shall we?”
Oh, here we fucking go again.
Vanessa held up a single finger. “One, you survived a collision with a speeding car with only a cut on the forehead to show for it.”
A second finger joined it. “Two, I literally spent the entire car ride here watching your forehead slowly knit itself back together, so I knew you were, like, something.”
She neglected to mention her Bruce Banner theory for the moment. She didn’t think he would appreciate the compliment.
Dancing around him, she propped her hip against the banister and raised fingers three and four as she explained, “Add on the animal attacks and the whole, ‘recluse in the woods’ vibe you give off, I took a wild guess and came up with werewolf. So…how did I do?”
Silence greeted her, and she realised Derek had lifted his head sometime during her gloating. Shifting her eyes away from her own reflection, Vanessa found cold, cobalt-blue eyes glowing menacingly at her from the opaque glass.
Derek’s lips curled into an animalistic sneer, his gritted teeth now sharpened and glinting in the moonlight spilling onto the porch behind her. Vanessa froze, her heart leaping into the back of her throat.
“Hunter,” Derek growled. A soft, snicking sound drew her attention to his hands, flexing at the finger joints at his sides. His previously blunt nails had grown about an inch longer and ended in sharp points. Claws.
Vanessa’s eyes widened. Not in, like, horror or some completely sane reaction. No, her eyes widened in excitement as she gushed, “There are hunters, too? Wait - shit, I have to write this down. Or wait – “
She blinked up at him with hope of all things. “Do you think you can send me a list?”
Derek blinked, the chilling glow in his eyes faltering. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Too engulfed in her ramblings to notice the confusion on his face, Vanessa ignored his question in favor of shooting off some of her own questions, barely taking a breath in between, “So, what was up with your face? Can you turn into an actual wolf? Do all wolves have pretty eyes, or are yours unique? Were you born or bitten? Because I’ve always wondered if werewolves could be born, like, if they even existed at all and – “
“STOP!” Derek barked, nostrils flaring in frustration.
Vanessa’s jaw clicked shut.
Derek took a deep, grounding breath before he bit out, “Are you telling me…that you know… nothing?”
Whoa-ho-ho! Hold the fuck up!
Vanessa gasped. “Um – rude! Imagine if I said that about you, like, ‘Wow, Derek, you know nothing?’ Like, no, I’m clearly a genius! How many people have gone up to you and figured out you’re a werewolf after only interacting with you for half an hour? Not a lot, I bet!”
“Then how – “
“- do I know about werewolves? Fun fact: I just found out. That’s on you, buddy,” Vanessa tutted in faux disappointment. “But, in all seriousness, I’m not arrogant enough to assume humans are the only intelligent life form. Science is not the answer to everything. So, of course, I’ve always believed something was out there. Like, it’s Beacon Hills, man. You’ve got to believe in something if you’re gonna live here. But wow, like, no, dude, I don’t think you get it - I guessed! Like, come on! I deserve recognition. I deserve, like, a medal or a parade or something!”
“You’re…serious?” Derek’s face slackened at the realisation.
Vanessa nodded empathetically and tapped the side of her nose with a conspiratorial wink. “Don’t worry, though. I know the drill. Tell anyone, and I’m dead. I’m not stupid. Like, I know there are scientists out there who would love to have someone like you in their lab. Lucky for you, I’m the type that would rather free imprisoned test subjects rather than benefit from them. I do not support animal testing.”
Patting the patch firmly to her head, Vanessa strolled past the stunned werewolf, and yeah, that’s gonna take some getting used to.
Skipping down the stairs towards her car, she stopped, remembering what she had glimpsed in the trees earlier, and called over her shoulder nervously, “Hey, Derek? Was there something in the woods earlier? Are they with you? Because if not, I would feel really safe if you could stand beside me right now…”
She shot him a pleading look from over her shoulder. He stared blankly at her, and she could see the cogs in his imagination, painting her out to be an escapee from that old mental institution just a little outside of town. Or something like that.
Still, Derek walked towards her until he stood at her shoulder. Together, they stared at the woods.
Vanessa gestured to the tree line with her chin. “So, who was it? Friend or foe?”
Derek didn’t answer her questions. She noticed he did that a lot.
Instead, he jerked his head to her car. “Let’s get you home.”
Ah, home. Where she had a nice warm bed waiting for her and a nice hot shower. Vanessa sighed dreamily. “Yesh, please! It’s cold, and I’m covered in bruises and blood and grime and glass. I hate glass. But, hey! On the bright side, what a night, am I right? Hit a guy with my car; the guy turns out to be a werewolf, and the werewolf’s now driving me home!”
She tugged open the passenger side door and slid inside. Fishing her phone out of her sweatshirt pocket, she squinted at the time and cursed at how late it was, “Shit, it’s almost 12! And I forgot to tell my friends I won’t make it tonight.”
Vanessa clicked on Stiles’s contact photo, a stand-still image of his beloved jeep, and paused. She mentally prepared herself for the onslaught of questions about why she failed to show up. Tomorrow would surely bring pain-filled accusations of how she betrayed the Fellowship or something like that.
Ugh, something else to look forward to.
But before she could press down on the keyboard, Derek snatched her phone out of her hands.
“Hey!" Vanessa twisted in her seat, making grabby motions with her hands. She pouted, "What gives?”
Derek glared at her suspiciously, nostrils flaring. “You can't tell your friends what you’ve discovered here tonight. Not about me. Not about any of it.”
Vanessa rolled her eyes. “Uh, duh, I’m not an idiot. I already told you I wouldn’t. I’m not the type of girl who’d do that.”
“No, you're just the type of girl who would speed down the street like a maniac, hit someone with their car, go to a stranger’s house in the middle of the night and accuse him of being a werewolf.”
Vanessa held her hand up, offended by his accusations. “Woah-ho-ho! Um, first off, it was your idea to bring me back to your house. You can’t give me shit about that when you practically forced me into the car. Secondly, I was right about you being a werewolf, so don’t act like I falsely accused you of lycanthropy. And thirdly - are you seriously upset that I ran you over? Because it takes two to participate in a car accident, and that’s the person driving the car and the person that walked into the car.”
Okay, that wasn’t how people ‘participated’ in car accidents. But Vanessa was a woman scorned - logic had no place in this argument. She watched as it dawned on Derek that she couldn’t be reasoned with. Vindication intoxicated her senses. That, or the blood leaking from her brain.
Either way, Derek reverted to his default setting instead of responding. How anyone could broodingly turn the key to a car ignition was beyond her, but Derek accomplished it effortlessly. He faced forward, glowering as he clutched her phone with one hand and the steering wheel with the other.
Vanessa stared at him expectantly.
“You’re not getting your phone back.”
“What! Why?”
“Because that way, I have leverage if you try to tell anyone anything.”
Vanessa outwardly sighed as if this was only a mild inconvenience to her, but inwardly, her heart sped up, and she knew now that with his enhanced hearing, Derek could tell his threat had landed.
“Fine. But I was telling the truth when I told you I wouldn’t tell anyone. Who would I tell anyway? Like, who would believe me? Everyone would think I’m a lunatic!”
“Almost everyone,” Derek grumbled quietly enough that she thought he might have been talking to himself. The grimace that soured his already sour features confirmed the words had been pulled from him like pulling teeth.
Vanessa’s eyes grew big and round. “What do you mean? Are there people in town who know about you?”
She recalled their earlier conversation on the porch where he almost bit her head off (yeah – still lowkey concerned for my life) and remembered what he had accused her of being.
“Hunters?” she murmured slowly, glancing at him to see if she was correct. “Are those the people you're talking about?”
Derek didn’t reply. Again. He kept his eyes on the road like any responsible driver would. Vanessa wrinkled her nose at him and his law-abiding ways. Road safety was so not the priority here. That meant Derek had to be ignoring her on purpose, right? There was no other (valid) reason.
See, silence was an illusion. Vanessa didn’t let it stop her from throwing around her theories and kept a keen eye out for his body language as she did so. With answers on her horizons, Vanessa refused to give up.
After all, ‘Hot or Cold’ had been one of her favorite games to play as a child. A champion ten years in the running, Vanessa would get an answer from this surly stranger even if she had to pry it from his cold, dead lips.
“So, hunters? From the name, I can assume they’re your typical ‘track you down and kill you’ kind of people. If I had to assume, they’re…human?” Vanessa wondered out loud.
Derek’s jaw clenched in the affirmative.
She bit back a smile. “They’ve probably been a long-time enemy of your kind. However, I haven’t sussed out if they’re an organisation, family or random individuals who take the name when they want revenge. Those are the usual tropes, anyway….”
“Tropes?” Derek mouthed to himself, screwing his face up incredulously.
“Uh-huh,” Vanessa nodded. She stole another glance at him. He stared at the road blankly. “You know, tropes? Like, cliches?”
His eyes flicked over to her; his brows furrowed further in confusion.
“Take me, for example,” Vanessa shifted around until she sat sideways in her seat. She waved a hand at herself. “I’d be that girl in a sci-fi movie that just discovered a whole new world. Now, two tropes come to mind: the ‘she stumbled into the world without meaning to’ trope or the ‘she went out looking for something she’s always believed was out there’ trope.”
Tossing back her hair with a barely concealed wince at the dull throbbing in her head, Vanessa smiled charmingly at Derek as she explained, “Now, I'm super cool, so I’m a messy combination of both. My trope would be ‘she literally crashes into her gateway to the new world and takes wild guesses until she is clued in with a dramatic introduction’ or, I don't know, something along those lines.”
She was still working out the kinks. She looked up to find Derek glowering at her.
He glared at her. “I am not a gateway.”
Vanessa huffed, crossing her arms over her chest as she mumbled, “It’s a metaphor...”
🌕
While the strange girl muttered gibberish about lists and metaphors, Derek attempted to process just what the hell he had gotten himself into. He mainly beat himself up on how careless he had been, healing in front of a human and not even realising.
He was half grateful Laura wasn’t here to witness his colossal mistake. His sister had attempted to knock that arrogance out of him, training him relentlessly until his control was up to par. She had drilled it into him over the years, ‘Derek, if you’re not careful, it’s gonna come back to bite you in the ass.’
Derek never figured out how to tell his older sister about everything he was already paying for, sure as shit that she would murder him on the spot if he did. History tended to repeat itself, and what do you know?
Here he was, once again letting down his guard for a strangely enigmatic girl, and he was already paying for it.
True, the migraine throbbing against his temple was a bit less severe than the consequences he’d faced in the past. Still, it wasn’t exactly a picnic either.
The girl had not shut up since she ran him over. The only quiet had come when she had been too busy staring out into the woods as he cleaned her wound, contemplating the trees as if she knew something or someone had been lurking out there. Watching. Listening.
Half his senses were now focused on the road ahead while he studied the strange girl, who pouted and huffed at the window like a toddler deprived of attention. The resemblance was uncanny, the girl a slight thing whose head barely brushed against his shoulders when they stood side by side earlier, peering warily into the darkness of the woods surrounding his old house.
Derek was also ninety per cent sure she was insane, with her dark, unruly hair adding to the crazed, borderline manic way she moved and spoke.
The most earnest thing about her, though, were those bright, blue eyes. They had blinked up at him from a face as naïve as a newborn doe trying to persuade the circle of life to spare her from the jaws of death with nothing but a childlike charm that, damn him, he was close to buying into.
Except, she was no doe, and she was not naïve.
A wild guess? A wild guess?
He had to admit, he’d never heard a hunter use that excuse. Then again, a hunter probably wouldn’t stoop to such idiotic lows. So, maybe she wasn’t a hunter. She still knew too much. Either that or Eichen House was missing one of their patients. Perhaps he would give them a call later.
One thing was for sure, though; she wasn’t lying. Her heartbeat, while hummingbird fast in what the slight fizz of her citrus-tinged scent revealed to be excitement of all things, did not falter when she promised she wouldn’t tell anyone his secret.
Derek’s shoulders slumped back against the driver’s seat, his hands strangling the steering wheel in frustration. He shook his head at himself, shoving down the latent curiosity of a teenage boy who wanted to question this strange girl further and focus on the bigger problems he had to deal with than a short, eccentric teenager.
Like what she saw in the woods and why he was back in Beacon Hills in the first place.
🌕
“We’re here.”
Vanessa blinked out of her trance-like state and noticed the familiar driveway for the first time, framed by the grey rock wall and the old white wooden mailbox with the name O’Connor splashed on the side in chipped baby-blue paint.
Vanessa slowly turned to Derek; her eyes narrowed warily. “Um, how do you know where I live?”
Derek released a long-suffering sigh, snatching a piece of paper from her glove box and shoving it into her hands. “It’s on your registration.”
Idiot, the word echoed silently between them. Vanessa gasped in outrage. “You went snooping in my car?! Better yet, when did you have time to peek at my registration?”
“At a stoplight,” Derek’s brows pinched in frustration as he reminded her gruffly, “You’re a strange girl who figured out what I was. I had to make sure you weren’t a hunter – “
“And you’d be able to tell that from my registration? Jesus, Derek!” Vanessa threw herself against her seat, cringing when her injured head smacked against it. “I didn’t even know werewolves existed before I asked you! I was concussed, and you didn’t deny it. You sold yourself out, buddy!”
Her eyes flickered down to her phone in his hand. She pointed to it. “I want my phone back. Now!”
Derek glanced down at her phone, then back to her.
Vanessa whined, “Oh, come on! Look, if I don’t answer, they’ll think something terrible happened to me. Stiles will call his dad, who will call my mom, and we will have the entire Sheriff’s department on our asses all because you have ‘trust issues’. So, just - give me my phone, or everyone will find you. Not you, ‘Mr Werewolf’, but you, Mr ‘Strange Man With An Injured Girl Whose Phone You’ve Held Hostage’ - “
Derek tossed her phone into her lap, grumbling, “You’re really something. You know that, right?”
“I know,” Vanessa clicked her tongue with a heavy sigh. Being an icon was such a drag. She really didn’t get paid enough for it.
Scrolling through her texts, she typed out a quick message to reassure her friends that she was alive, to call off the ‘Taken Protocol’ and that she couldn’t make it due to a minor accident on the backroads, “... because I saw a cute baby squirrel and didn’t want to run it over. That’s you, FYI.”
She winked at Derek, clicking send on the message. She watched it whoosh away in a little digital envelope and slid her phone back into her sweatshirt pocket.
Swivelling around in her seat, she met Derek's unamused glare and threw her hands up in defeat. “Oh, come on, where's your sense of humor?”
His brows lifted incredulously as if to say, Does this face look like it gets a lot of laughs?
Vanessa grimaced at him in pity. “Yeah, we’re gonna have to fix that. Give me your phone.”
“What? No – why?”
“Um, in case I need to contact you? Duh! And just in case you want to call me to threaten me some more, you can have mine.”
“But why would you need my number?”
“Look,” Vanessa sighed, leaning forward. For once, she was perfectly serious when she said, “I know you’re looking for something. Something related to those attacks. I got connections to the Sheriff’s office. Information you don’t have access to...unless you want to become a part of Beacon Hill’s finest?"
Derek brought his face menacingly close. “How do you know I wasn’t responsible for the body found in the woods tonight?"
It was a sub-par scare tactic, especially when she could smell the stale coffee on his breath.
Vanessa lifted her chin and bravely whispered, “Because you’ve only just returned to town…and this isn’t the first body found in those woods.”
Derek glowered at her. Vanessa widened her eyes in retaliation, ignoring how her sockets burned from the strain. Neither of them looked away for a full minute.
Naturally, she came out victorious when Derek drew back, scrunching up his nose as he sagged wearily against the driver seat’s headrest. He lifted his hips to tug his phone out of his jean pocket and shoved it into her hand as he muttered, “That trusting nature of yours is going to be the death of you.”
For a moment, Vanessa faltered. Bright eyes dulled as she turned to level him with an equally tired look. Her lips curled into a humorless smile, unlike anything he had glimpsed of her since they met. “That’s where you're wrong about me, Derek Hale. It isn’t trust. It’s a bluff. And I’m sitting here hoping no one calls it.”
The haunting stopped, and she returned to her usual sunny broadcast, flashing a charming smile that probably freaked him out even more. Vanessa typed her number into his phone and sent a text to hers, saving his contact as ‘The Gateway’ - which she thought could become a great inside joke if he loosened up and discovered humor one day.
Throwing her seatbelt to the side, Vanessa clambered out of her car and walked around to the driver’s side door. Leaning down, she braced her arms on the open window and waved her hand at the missing windshield and banged-up hood. “You’ll handle all this, right? Get my baby back to me by the end of the week, good as new - you hear me?”
Murderous intent glittered in Derek’s eyes as he watched her walk safely over to the sidewalk. He shook his head at her before he started the car and pulled out onto the road.
Vanessa kept an eye on her ruined T-Bird until it disappeared down the street, smiling victoriously.
She mulled over the night’s discoveries in her head. Counted them off like she had the entire night. Invited the universe to count alongside her, like she was a guest appearance on Elmo or something.
Number one: werewolves existed.
Number two: So did Derek’s smile (but that was more like a brief, ghostly possession of his upper lip). However, it was accompanied by a small glimmer of something almost indistinguishable behind those brooding hazel eyes of his. What was it called again?
Ah, yes – human emotion.
I wonder what his real smile looks like, Vanessa thought as she strolled up her driveway, attempting to whistle a pathetic rendition of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’. She shuddered as her brain conjured an image of Derek flashing a wide, too-sharp-to-be-human smile and decided it would probably scare the living shit out of her.
Vanessa braced herself as she walked up to her front door, drawing up the pros and cons of what she might face beyond the straw welcome mat at her feet. On the plus side, it wouldn’t be as bad as if she had driven to the hospital with a stranger covered in blood. No, she’d only be walking in with a bloody patch on her forehead, ash on her jeans and no car.
A million excuses came to mind, and Vanessa had about thirty seconds to craft one so airtight that not even a Sheriff’s detective could poke holes into it. Reminded herself to breathe in. She sucked in a deep breath. Breathe out. She exhaled, the air in her lungs leaving her a dramatic whoosh.
She threw her curls over both shoulders, hoping the sheer volume would distract whoever was waiting inside from the square-shaped, red-stained patch sitting obnoxiously above her brow. Armed with a fake happy smile and a half-passable feel-good attitude, she kicked open the front door.
“Favorite daughter has entered the building!” Vanessa announced dramatically, strutting inside. She slammed the door behind her.
When no one came out with guns aimed, and questions fired, Vanessa mimed holding a police radio, lowering her chin to her shoulder. “Psh. I repeat: favorite daughter has entered the building!”
Pots and pans clashed from deeper inside the house, and Vanessa deflated like a New Year's Eve balloon on January 1st. Ah, that explained it. Dinner was almost ready. The mouth-watering aroma of store-bought roast and microwaved potatoes wafted through the house. Her stomach grumbled, the comatose beast awakening as if reminded of the bile of buttery popcorn she left on the side of the backroads.
“Again with the door!”
Another pan clattered loudly, and Vanessa shook her head fondly. Sarah shouldn’t be allowed to cook.
Microwaves were an exception, but store-bought roasts involved a stove, didn’t they?
“And really, you’re our only daughter. The theatrics aren't necessary. You’ve already won!”
Vanessa walked up the first few stairs until she could see into the kitchen, but anyone in the kitchen could only see from the waist down. She leaned over the wooden banister to peek inside, her legs kicking in the air for a few seconds before her heels clopped loudly on the staircase.
Sarah was bent over the stove inside the kitchen with a frying pan clutched in her oven-mitt-covered hands. Her curly brown hair was tied back into a knot at the nape of her neck, and her light brown skin shined with sweat.
Vanessa snorted, drawing her mother’s attention away from the oh-so-difficult task of turning off the stovetop. Laugh lines creased around Sarah’s soft brown eyes. Or maybe that was stress.
“Don’t laugh at me! I’m starving, and someone forgot to drop dinner off at the hospital, so you can bet your cute butt that Lisa’s gonna be ravenous when she gets home too.”
Vanessa squeezed her eyes shut with a groan. “How many times do I have to apologise for that? I forgot Erica’s birthday was today and had to go over the top to make it up for her. Do you know what her parents gave her? Her Christmas present! Movies and dinner were a must, Mom!”
Sarah hummed, unconvinced. She untied the apron around her waist, revealing her uniform underneath.
So, she must’ve just gotten off work. Hence, the midnight dinner.
Midnight dinners had a history of getting…a little unhinged. Sarah usually burned something that shouldn’t be burnt, Lisa usually tugged them into a huge puppy pile on the living room couch as she tearfully declared her undying love and devotion to her wife and child, and Vanessa usually walked them back to their bedroom at 3 am while they slurred some tired rendition of ‘Piano Man’.
Think Practical Magic, except with two lesbians and no jumping off rooves.
In short, Vanessa loved Midnight Dinners and would’ve totally been on board for having a mini-dance party in the living room until the early hours of the morning, but as it stands, she wanted nothing more than to wash off the grime and glass of the car accident—a car accident that Sarah could under no circumstances find out about.
Sarah’s hips swayed to whatever song was on a loop in her head, and Vanessa turned to make her escape, about to take the stairs two at a time when Sarah’s strong voice summoned her back, “What did the boys want?”
Vanessa stopped in her tracks. “Uh, what do - what do you mean?”
The humming paused. “You texted me saying you would be home later because the boys wanted to hang out.”
Riiight. ‘Hang out’. Read: Meet in the woods to search for a dead body.
Vanessa took a deep breath. Time to unleash the bullshit artist.
“Ha, ha, about that,” she laughed nervously, waltzing back down the stairs. She peered between the banister poles and lied her ass off, “Funny story. I maybe sorta kinda…. popped a tyre on the way over and…. might’ve called a tow truck?”
The pan clattered on top of the stovetop, and Sarah leapt back, cursing her head off at the inanimate object. Vanessa winced at the kitchen version of road rage and wondered absentmindedly when Gordan Ramsay had time to adopt a kid in between traumatising wannabe chefs.
“Goddammit!” Sarah sighed. Before Vanessa could yell out a warning, her mother had yanked off her oven mitts and fully grabbed the hot pan. Gritting her teeth through the searing pain, she power walked to the other side of the kitchen and dropped the pan onto the cutting board with a hiss.
“Jesus, kid, didn’t I already go through this with you? Don’t waste money on a tow truck! Just change the tyre!”
“I know, I know - but I forgot how!”
“You forgot? After I’ve sat you down and gone through it three times?”
“Well, see, here’s the thing - I got the tyre out, but then the walls started caving in, and I – I panicked!”
“Stop, stop, stop,” Sarah held up a hand, her palms flushed an angry red.
Vanessa screwed her face up in a grimace. Ugh, that’s gonna turn into a nasty blister by morning.
Sarah hardly seemed to care, too busy shaking her head, unsurprised yet disappointed. “Next time, just call me. Or one of your friends. I don’t care if Stiles teases you about it until you’re in a shared nursing home; it's better than the alternative.”
Vanessa briefly debated informing her mother that the worst had happened and that instead of a popped tyre, she had shattered the entire windshield of the T-Bird.
Then she remembered that she genuinely liked breathing and quickly disregarded that.
“Debatable, but I see where you’re coming from,” Vanessa nodded, genuinely contrite. Well, mostly contrite. As contrite as someone could be when they weren’t contrite at all. “I’ll catch a ride with Stiles until I get the car back, so you don’t have to worry about dropping me off at school tomorrow.”
“Glad that’s sorted,” Sarah nodded. “Oh, but you’re paying for it, right?”
Up the stairs and out of view, Vanessa grinned wickedly.
She wasn’t paying a single cent.
That was on Derek Hale.