kira yukimura is electric. (electrocutie) wrote in blackpoint, @ 2014-03-03 00:33:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | isaac lahey (au), kira yukimura |
who RTW! Isaac Lahey and Kira Yukimura
what Rachael offered me writing for my birthday last week, and this is the result. :') Kira and Isaac have an almost kiss.
when Friday afternoon, backdated
where the beach
rating adorably awkward
Tuesday afternoons weren’t meant for studying - they were meant for activities that would take Isaac’s mind off what was going on with the show. He had been working for a few weeks with Kira on getting better at doing his homework, and while he was making progress, there were some days where he couldn’t find the attention in him to focus on completing worksheets and picking apart assigned readings. Normally he would go with Scott out for a run when he needed to clear his head, but today he had waved off his friend.
Before being a part of the pack, Isaac had spent the majority of his time alone. His brother had left for war, leaving him alone with his father at home, and he hadn’t had a group of friends to gravitate towards at school. Here he had more friends and versions of his friends than he could count, but every now and then it was hard to shake the social claustrophobia and all he needed was a chance to get out and clear his head. Back home the shifts at the graveyard had helped do that, but here it was a run through the well-worn paths in the community that gave him a chance to reset.
Isaac stuck to one of the paths near the beach. With each step he could feel thoughts about how to help Stiles, theories about what would happen next on the show, confusion over how he felt about seeing Kira get thrown last night, and exasperation over his science homework slip away. He focused on the music and getting into a steady rhythm, allowing his body to go on autopilot as he slipped into a familiar routine.
While the episode from the night before had disgusted her on a few varying levels, mostly to do with the insensitivity and outright ridiculousness of the decisions made by the show’s writers, those feelings had been almost a relief because they’d help to remind her that it was just a show. After the previous week and the way she’d been suddenly very impacted by what was happening on a personal level, she knew she’d needed to separate herself again to keep calm and collected. Being so disgusted and generally dissatisfied rather than just the usual level of anxious worry had helped with that. Still, she’d ended up with Isaac at her doorstep soon after, and she’d known without him needing to ask to let him look her over to make sure that she was safe and unscathed. She’d done exactly the same to him the week before, checking his skin for those nasty burns. They’d curled up in her bed instead of his, which wasn’t nearly as large as his, and passed the night that way.
It’d been a majority of the week that had been spent in such a way, sharing a bed like that. Kira justified it still as platonic, because she was doing it to help him sleep. Isaac had said that he slept better when he had someone around. Sleeping better meant that he could be more alert and helpful with their research for Stiles. It also meant more focus in class. It was totally a good thing, therefore, and she hadn’t allowed herself to think anything else of it. Sure, it usually ended up with them fairly impossibly tangled together. And being teenagers with hormones meant the occasional bit of discomfort in the morning, but they’d figured out a way to work around everything. They’d welcomed Scott in when he needed it, too, effectively building a sort of ‘zen den.’
But still, Kira was that same fiercely independent girl with a tendency to wander, and she certainly didn’t spend every waking moment with Isaac. She’d changed at school into something more suited for running, and had left off immediately from there, the weight of her backpack an added challenge to her run from the school to the beach. She was caught up in her own thoughts and music to the point that she missed the oncoming person until they were nearly upon each other, something that brought her to a sudden stop, hands out to catch against the person’s chest.
Isaac rounded the bend that lead towards the school, putting the water at his back. He hadn’t thought about going for a swim in a while, but the tightness between his shoulders begged for him to put some time in the water. It had been a while since he had swam in anything larger than the pool in their backyard, and while he knew that his strong swimming skills were one of the few good things his father had impressed upon him, he didn’t want to do anything that brought his face to mind. He was content to stay on dry land for now. There were stretches that could help ease both his tight muscles and active mind. Right now was about forgetting.
He didn’t see the flash of dark hair coming towards him until it was too late, and he had just enough time to reign in his stride before mowing over the smaller runner. He felt her hands brace against his chest as she slammed into him, causing him to take a step back out of instinct instead of necessity. He reached one hand out to steady the other person as he tugged his earbuds out with the other. Even though he had good enough hearing to clearly know what song was playing in the other person’s earbuds, he didn’t exactly want to give away that he had super hearing abilities.
“Are you o-Kira?” he faltered, dropping his hand from her back and taking a bigger step back so he could get a better look at who he had stumbled on. Even without seeing her there was no denying who he had encountered - her unique blend of sensual amber and a scent that was distinctively Kira gave her away - but coming across her was a surprise nonetheless. “I thought you were finished sneaking up on me.”
Kira was usually one who was always on high alert, something her training with Allison and Lydia had helped hone even more. She didn’t let much get past her, even if she wasn’t perhaps as quick to actually comment on what she observed. It took a great deal to really catch her by surprise, though it had been known the happen at times, of course. She prided herself on her focus, though, and so these sorts of run-ins didn’t actually happen all that often.
One of her objectives for taking this run alone was to give a bit of separation to herself and to those around her, just so that she could clear her head so that when she went back to them she could be as helpful as possible in whatever it was that was next on their list of research topics. Of course, she wasn’t really surprised in the least when she immediately recognized the muscular chest and shoulders she’d come face-to-face with even before she looked up at Isaac.
She laughed, pulling earbuds from her ears and letting them drape over her shoulders. “I should say the same for you, Lahey,” she said, amused that she’d just happen to run into him out of anyone else on the island.
Isaac placed his hands on his hips and squinted down at her. There was no denying that things kept throwing them together - homework sessions, unsettling events on tv, seating arrangements in school - and he wasn’t complaining that of all people he could have come across on the island on his run was Kira. However, being around her didn’t cause his mind to calm down; in fact, it caused just the opposite.
“I’m pretty sure it was all you this time,” he said, taking a deep breath and turning back towards the community as if he was taking in the view behind him. He mentally sketched out the route they were on, but his teasing comment about how he had covered more ground died on his lips when he realized they were more or less in the middle between the school and Blackpoint. It made more sense judging from the direction that she had come from, and no matter how long his strides were it wouldn't make up for him going home first to change.
Realizing that he had fallen silent for a bit, he turned back and waved at her earbuds as he started backpedaling the way he had come from. “What was your attack song this time?”
Kira was still a bit close to him, given the way they’d run into one another, so she had to look up at him to meet his eyes. She crossed her arms over her chest, squinting right back at him. There had been a part of her that had set out on this run alone because she knew that she was spending so much time with Isaac and didn’t want to let it get out of their control simply because of proximity and that tension she knew existed between them even if she was choosing not to acknowledge it for the time being.
“Not even,” she responded. “I take this run every other day, thank you very much.” They were evenly matched in terms of distance, she knew, and she grinned at the fact that there was really no way to argue either way, not that it particularly mattered.
She looked at him curiously as he fell silent, then smiled at his question. “Old school Destiny’s Child. I can’t escape Beyonce,” she responded. “What about you.”
“I’m worried that one of you is actually going to turn into her one day,” Isaac teased once she mentioned who she was listening to on her run. He admitted that her songs were catchy enough and better than most things on the radio these days, but he himself normally preferred something a bit more vintage than the early 2000s.
“AC/DC’s Back in Black. It was a bit of an anthem right after the bite,” he shared, turning around so he wasn’t in any danger of tripping. “Pandora has a way of playing what you need to hear.” The song had a darker meaning to it because of why it was written, but he couldn’t help but draw some parallels between his life and the lyrics. He had been under his dad’s control for too long, and the bite (and, if he wanted to acknowledge it, Deucalion’s involvement) had helped him escape that. It had placed him on a new track, one with a future and a chance at a comeback with his newfound swagger, and, when you got to the heart of the matter, how could you say no to AC/DC?
“My fingers are so, so crossed,” she responded, grinning. Kira had a fairly eclectic taste in music, so her chosen selections for the day tended to vary rather dramatically. However, she had a penchant for strong female vocalists singing about empowerment, and it was hard not to feel energized when listening to ‘Survivor.’
“That makes so much sense,” she said, laughing and adjusting her position so that he could walk beside her. “I’m sure its creators would be glad to know that it’s doing the job intended for it.” She kept up the pace as they walked, if only to keep her heart rate from falling too much from the pace she’d had before. “How was the rest of your day?” She had a few classes with him back-to-back before lunch, but they didn’t see each other much the rest of the day.
“It was fine,” Isaac shrugged. “No one wolfed out or fell asleep, so I count that as a success.” While Kira had issued him the challenge of taking a page of notes per class per day in exchange for brownies, he didn’t have much interest in how he was actually passing the time. He didn’t know when he’d ever use what he learned in class again, so he didn’t put a lot of effort into learning things for that reason. He knew that Kira, and to some extent Scott, believed in him and wanted him to do his best, but he hadn’t found anything to identify with yet. Sure, building balsa wood towers in physics to see how much force they could hold was interesting, but when would he ever need that? He didn’t have the brains for architecture; that’s why they had Boyd.
He stepped off the path when they came to the beach and picked up the pace. The soft, loose sand was a bit difficult to run in, but he was headed towards the packed sand by the surf. “Come on, sparky. I feel like putting my SPF 7000 to the test today,” he said, moving towards the water so her shoes wouldn’t get wet.
“Hey, that sounds like success to me,” Kira said, grinning. “How did your note-taking go?” She knew that her request for a page per class per day was a challenge for Isaac, but she also knew that a bit of a push helped a person succeed. Isaac had been alone to fend for himself for much too long, and she wouldn’t let that continue to happen if she could help it. He didn’t really have to like everything he was doing, but she wanted him to have options for his future when he was ready to really think about it. She believed in him.
Kira quickened her pace when he did. “You ready to get your ass-kicked, lankmonster?” she responded, pushing his shoulder gently as they moved. “Think you can keep up?”
“It went,” Isaac shared, falling quiet for a moment. “I probably got enough to answer a few questions on the homework.” Most of his notes didn’t have to do with the subject he was supposed to be learning - it had to do with what he had seen on the show on Monday night. He knew that Stiles had been having some trouble here with the trickster spirit, but seeing the trickster confined in the asylum had started him trying to puzzle out how much of a hold it would have on its human host if the physical “body” was in another world. However, like the show’s tagline hinted out, who knew if that was just all in Stiles’ head? There were ten million theories about what was going on and each sounded as legitimate as the next, but so far none of them had come to fruition.
The second thing that had captured his attention had been the new deputy. There were bits and pieces that didn’t quite line up properly, and he didn’t want to give any thought into the theories that he was actually Camden - at least not yet. He didn’t want to pin any hopes on his brother actually having survived deployment overseas because the show was cruel about teasing and then going in another direction without anything becoming resolved. In addition, he couldn’t say for certain that he was Camden just by looking at him. It had been years since they had heard of his death, and war changed people. So Isaac held back from talking about it and kept the hope buried deep down.
Isaac glanced over at Kira when she pushed him and laughed, hoping she didn’t notice his momentary retreat into his thoughts. “If that’s any indication of your ass-kicking,” he grinned, reaching over and pulling on her backpack, “then I’m 100% positive that you’ll be eating my dust in a few seconds.” He tipped a wink in her direction and pushed the pace faster, not quite ready to pull ahead.
“Progress is progress,” she conceded. As long as he paid a little more attention than he was paying before, Kira was pleased. She knew that there were definitely some subjects that wouldn’t work for him, and that was okay. She had some she didn’t enjoy as well, even if she still got good grades. She still hoped he’d find something he loved, though. Maybe it would be a fruitless cause and he’d figure out what he wanted to do once he graduated. If that were the case, she still needed to get him to that point.
Kira had seen those rumors about the new deputy as well, and she hadn’t mentioned anything about it just yet because she didn’t want to give him any false hope. There were definitely some connections, and she really hoped that the rumors were true. The idea of Isaac still having family was such a lovely one.
“Ooooh, you are messing with fire, Isaac Lahey,” she said, grinning. “Messing. With. Fire.” She pulled away from him a bit, offering a wink in response.
Isaac felt an answering smile of his own appear as she pulled ahead, accepting the challenge. “I already told you,” he said, easily catching up with her with his longer legs, “I put my SPF 7000 on today so there’s little chance that I’ll get burned.”
They had been running before. He had used it as an excuse to get out of homework at the time, but now he was curious how fast she could actually go. On the show it appeared that she could go almost as fast as a wolf, and he knew that just because it happened there didn’t necessarily mean that it would give the same results when it came to them due to the differences in Kira’s powers. The electricity manipulation that both versions had was was pretty cool, but he had a feeling that if he took a picture with her there wouldn’t be a glowing fox trying to photobomb them. So he pushed harder, opening up his stride.
“Do we need to recharge your batteries, sparky?” he teased, nodding towards the cluster of buildings in the distance.
Kira grinned when he caught up, lifting an eyebrow. “That’s good. I wouldn’t want there to be any lasting damage to your pretty porcelain skin when I totally burn you.”
Seeing the show version of herself slowly start to come into various skills had actually been a bit amusing. For her own part, Kira already knew that she was an excellent martial artist and had great talent with a blade. Years and years of various classes had seen to that, and then she’d honed it into fighting ability through training with the girls. She also knew that she was quite fast, though she figured the show version of herself had a bit of an edge with the Kitsune thing. He’d still have to pull back some if it was to be an even race. Still, she pushed harder when he did.
“Nope. Do you need a nap, pup?”
“I slept well last night, thank you very much,” Isaac scoffed, shaking his head. It had been cramped and he had drifted to awareness a few times during the night when his arm had gone to sleep tangled up underneath Kira, but the nightmares had held back as dreamless sleep took over. The dark circles under his eyes would probably always be there no matter how much rest he got, but with Scott and Kira’s tag teaming they were starting to fade to a slightly less glaring color.
He could hear Kira’s heartbeat accelerate if he zeroed in on the girl next to him, being careful not to run too hard. Supernatural or not, it was too nice of an afternoon to not test healing abilities and she had the extra weight of her backpack thumping against her. “Need me to take that so you aren’t weighed down?”
“I know you did. You drooled all over me,” Kira scoffed right back. She could tell herself that the reason she spent so many nights at Isaac and Scott’s was for Isaac’s sake, that him sleeping well was a priority for her and that sleeping in his bed was easy enough. The truth was that she was sleeping better as well. It seemed a little counter-intuitive from an outside perspective to think that sleeping in the same bed as a werewolf (or two, when Scott joined them) made her feel safe, but it was the truth. The fact of the matter was that there were more people at stake than just Stiles, even if his situation was the focus of the season and definitely a dire one. She just wanted to make sure everyone else was alright as well, especially if the Nogitsune did start jumping bodies.
She might’ve refused, but the weight did keep her from being quite as evenly matched to him. “Sure,” she said, pulling it off of her shoulders as she ran and handing it over. Of course, as soon as it was out of her hands, she shot him a mischievous look and (futilely, she knew) pulled ahead of him.
“What all do you have in here?” Isaac asked, grunting for effect as he took a hold of the backpack. “A dead body?” He watched as Kira shot forward, free from the extra weight, and caught the look she threw him. He allowed the little minx to get ahead of him as he looped his arms through the straps before taking off, grinning again as his feet kicked up sand in his effort to catch up with her.
No one would ever say that Isaac was an extremely graceful runner. He had too many sharp angles to move fluidly, his long limbs cutting through the air instead of smoothly moving by his side, but what he lacked in grace he made up for in speed. It didn’t take him long to reach her, and things were going relatively smoothly until he reached out to catch her arm. He had paid enough attention in physics to remember that objects in motion stayed in motion until an outside force acted on them, but instead of the wall stopping the car it was a large piece of driftwood felling the werewolf. He tried to twist as he fell, pulling Kira down with him, and made quite the impact as his body hit the hard-packed sand beneath him and knocked the air from his lungs in a bone-jarring breath when the books pushed into his back.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” Kira said, looking back over her shoulder and drawing a finger over her lips in saucy playfulness. Or, that was the attempt, anyway. Running as she was, it was a bit heavier on the playfulness than on the sauciness. “You need plausible deniability, Mr. Lahey. For when they come for me. Wouldn’t want to have to shove you into a backpack.”
Kira, on the other hand, was actually very graceful. It came from the gymnastics and ballet classes as a child. She knew he’d catch up to her, so getting away from him wasn’t actually the goal. Her heart skipped a beat when he grabbed her arm and she felt herself start to tumble, and she adjusted as she needed to with him in the air so that she landed on top of him. The impact stole her breath as well and jostled her brain, a soft oof escaping her.
Isaac blinked up at the sky, his disorientated brain at a loss as to why black stripes filled his line of vision as his lungs sucked in a few much needed breaths of air. The scent of sensual amber and saltwater flooded his senses as he laid there, and when he tried to reach up and brush her hair out of his face he found that they were a tangle of limbs on the beach where they had landed, impossibly twisted together. They had spent nights tangled together, unaware of how they were cuddled together, but this was different. The books digging into his back faded into the background as he became attuned to each place her body came in contact with his, sending a current that didn’t have to do with her electric powers through him.
“Hi,” he sheepishly said, tilting his head up so he could see her better. His arm automatically tightened around her as she shifted, holding her in place as he realized just how close they actually were.
They’d managed to fall just enough into the surf that there was a few inches of water around Isaac. Each little surge of waves got her a little more damp where she was settled on top of him, and she lifted her head a bit to look down at him shifting her hair over her shoulder a bit. While she knew that they tangled this way when they slept and often woke up wrapped around each other, it was much different to be completely awake and in this position.
She was gradually becoming acutely aware of where their bodies met as well, the water making their clothes stick to their bodies which made it even more obvious. “Hi,” she breathed, smiling down at him, a blush on her cheeks.
Isaac barely registered the warm water lapping against him as they stayed down in the surf. He was too focused on the blush on her cheek and the way her hip lightly pinned him to the ground. It would be so easy to pick her up and stand, but his traitor limbs weren’t listening to the metaphorical angel sitting on his shoulder. He should have heeded its advice not to smile up at her and not to keep his hold on her back, but instead he listened to the louder part of his brain spurring him to do something about the blush on her cheek that he had some part in putting there.
“You okay?” he asked, his eyes darting down to her smiling lips. He would be lying if he said that he hadn’t thought about kissing her before, and now it would be very easy for him to reach up and meet her halfway.
Kira was still breathing heavily anyway from the run, and their heaving bodies really didn’t do much to make any of this any less tense and stirring. Kira tried really hard to keep them from getting into these moments, because she knew it wasn’t the right time yet, but they weren’t very good at avoiding contact. And when she was actually in this position, pulling away seemed like the worst thing to do. She knew she ought to, but her body was betraying her.
She saw him glance at her lips, and it sent a little shiver down her spine. Maybe she ought to just kiss him and be done with it. They could get it out of their system. “Mhmm,” she said, in response to his question, and subconsciously leaned her face a little closer to his, their noses almost brushing. It was the closest they’d come yet, and her heart was racing (she knew he’d hear it), and she was going to just do it. And then they were suddenly struck by a wave of seawater that drenched them both the rest of the way and she lifted her head, surprise on her face before sheepish amusement filled her expression instead.
Isaac stilled as Kira leaned closer, hoping that she suddenly gain the ability to read minds. His had been clamoring at him to man up and give in to his desire to kiss her, but it went quiet as soon as she started leaning her face closer to his. They had been dancing around each other for a while, unsure of what was actually going on between them, and now they were too close to prevent anything from happening.
His heart was racing just as fast as hers, and he had just prepared himself for the inevitable when a wave, not Kira’s lips, crashed over him. He sputtered slightly as the water receded, taking with it the moment and making it that he wasn’t sure if it had been all in his head. He caught her expression as his vision cleared and new it mirrored his from earlier, and he couldn’t contain the laugh that escaped due to the pent up adrenaline in his system.
“I - ah -,” he stammered between laughs, “guess that’s our cue that it’s time to hit the showers.”
Kira didn’t know whether she ought to curse Mother Nature or thank her for the gentle nudge to cool off. She knew it was probably a good thing that they were holding off, because of all of the reasons she’d been sitting on for so long now. Still, she’d really wanted to kiss him, and now they would have the mutual thought that the other wasn’t opposed to such contact, which could make everything even more complicated and full of unresolved tension.
For now, though, she couldn’t help but laugh with him, feeling that same surge of awkward and flushed adrenaline as she did so. “I think you’re right. Now that we’re both properly drenched and covered in sticky saltwater and sand,” she said, grinning and blushing still. She untangled herself and moved to her feet, digging her heels into the sand and reaching down with both hands to help him up.
Isaac could have punched himself for the comment about the showers. Even after the cue to calm down it didn’t send his thoughts to a very platonic place regarding Kira. They hadn’t been completely platonic for a while if he was being honest with himself, but he hadn’t acted on them like he would have back home with one of the other girls from the high school. After everything they had done since they arrived in Hawaii he didn’t want to lose her as a friend if had been reading the signals incorrectly, so perhaps it was for the best that that hadn’t happened.
“Each time you say I’m right,” he said, letting his limbs flop to the side as Kira crawled off of him, “I wish I had some way of recording it.” He grinned up at her, putting a bit of extra cheek in the gesture, and took her hand. He didn’t need her help, but it was a good excuse to keep touching her in some form.
The comment about the showers hadn’t gone unnoticed by Kira as well, but she was already blushing too hard for the continued flustering to make much of an obvious outward change. She really, really couldn’t get away with thinking about showers and Isaac and still consider her thoughts platonic. And they really hadn’t been in awhile either. Back home, Kira wasn’t much for relationships. She did her fair share of hooking up, sure, but it’d never really been a priority to try to take something slow and figure out feelings. This was different, though. There was more at stake.
She made a face at him, rolling her eyes at his cheekiness, and helped him to his feet. “You look a hot mess, Lahey,” she said, grinning at the disheveled, water-soaked, and sand-covered werewolf before her.
“I heard the effortless beach look is always acceptable in Hawaii,” Isaac glanced down at the sand clinging to his legs and grimaced. His was more along the lines of someone who had face planted into the ocean and had almost been kissed until Mother Nature mom’d them, but that was too long to print in the editorials. The sudden shifting on his back reminded him that he had Kira's backpack, and his grimace widened as he let go of her hand and shrugged his arms out of the straps.
“Hopefully ‘the ocean watered my homework’ will be a good excuse for you tomorrow,” he said, holding out the worse for wear bag and watching as water steadily dripped from the bottom. He wasn’t sure a hair dryer could fix it this time, but perhaps one of the wizards running around Blackpoint could lend a helping hand.
“Oh, I think it is,” Kira responded. “But you’re pulling the waterlogged puppy thing instead.” She looked him over as well (and that was really a mistake in terms of keeping her mind clean) and figured she probably didn’t look too much better. Of course, she hadn’t been the one on her back in the sand, which helped. “There’s a shower outside of my place that you can use to clean off.” Annnd that really didn’t help her thoughts either.
She frowned at the sight of her backpack, sighing as she took it from him. “Luckily, my homework wasn’t in it. I finished it already,” she said, shrugging. “But there were some library books that I’ll have to figure out how to dry out.” She sighed. “Ah well. No worries.”