Spellbound

Isaac knows he shouldn’t idolize people he doesn’t know, but he can’t help himself.

He feels like Stiles sometimes, pathetic in the way he pines after a girl who does not return his affections. Well, that isn’t entirely true. While Lydia is fully aware of Stiles’ feelings, there is nothing about Sheridan that indicates she knows of Isaac’s. Stupidly, he used to think girls would be less intimidating now that he’s a supernatural being. He is quickly learning the joke is on him. Girls will never be easy.

Still, the more he watches Stiles turn into a bumbling mess whenever Lydia’s around, the more he tries convincing himself he needs to do something. Maybe getting rejected wouldn’t be so bad; maybe it would cure the stupid, persistent crush for good. Or maybe she wouldn’t reject him at all, though he never lets his brain get that far ahead of his heart. Being too optimistic never turns out well for anyone.

Isaac’s frontal lobe — the one part of him that remains logical and reasonable even after so much else of him has changed — tells him his attentions should be focused elsewhere. He has no place to call home. His whole family is dead. So are Boyd and Erica, and he’d watched as they were murdered for no reason whatsoever. The only two friends he’d ever managed to make were gone, and along with them went any attachment he feels to his former self. If it weren’t for his name and appearance, he wouldn’t even know it was the same him. Would anyone? Had anyone ever paid that much attention to Isaac Lahey that they could pick him out of a crowd? Had Sheridan?

No. No, he knows that much, just like he knows his idolization is ill-fated. But there is still that little sliver of hope, the idea that if he just stops being so scared…

A clap on his back pulls him from his thoughts just as the bell rings. Scott stands over him with a questioning stare. Are you okay? Sure, he’s all right, all things considered. He’s been better. Also worse.

“Are you going to practice?” Scott asks, allowing a string of giggling girls to exit the classroom ahead of him. Always the perfect gentleman, Scott is.

Isaac doesn’t answer, just falls in line behind the pack of gigglers and makes his way to his locker. He doesn’t know why he bothers; are werewolves even expected to keep up their grades and graduate high school? Any hope for a normal future is long gone, and once he has his diploma in hand, he has a life reminiscent of Derek’s to look forward to.

Spinning the numbers in the order of his combination, a sense of rage overcomes him. He shouldn’t have chosen this. He wants to do things with his life; help people, save things. Maybe he would become a counselor and dedicate his life to helping kids whose parents were like his father. Maybe he would follow in his brother’s footsteps and join the military. He quickly shakes those thoughts from his head. That stuff doesn’t matter anymore.

He picks up her scent before he hears her, and he hears her before he sees her. Breathtaking in her imperfections she is, that Sheridan Nell, and Isaac mentally scolds himself for thinking such things again. He’s always projecting, always making baseless assumptions about the people he’s surrounded by. While Isaac is cynical and harsh in his judgments, Sheridan has managed to remain unscathed.

Isaac’s father gave him but one good thing: his last name. Lahey isn’t too far off from Nell, but still too far. Isaac once spent an entire night coming up with other four-letter words, ones that remind him of the girl with the four-letter last name that he can’t seem to get over no matter how hard he tries. He remembers Derek’s words clearly: “I can think of a five-letter word: creep.”

She’s always laughing, always vivacious, and always smells of a warm afternoon in spring. She reminds him of the first day of nice weather after a terribly bitter winter, the way the world smells right after a storm, when everything threatening has already passed. Isaac knows it isn’t fair to think these things, but he can’t help himself.

Just as he thinks he catches her eye from across the hall, Scott appears on the other side of his open locker. “Hey, man,” he says. He doesn’t flinch as Isaac slams his locker shut and adorns his signature scowl. “You never answered my question—”

“I’m not going to practice,” Isaac snaps. Scott doesn’t flinch at that, either.

Instead, Scott follows Isaac out of school and to the parking lot. He knows Isaac doesn’t drive and doesn’t have anyone to drive him, so he’s stuck taking the bus most of the time. Sometimes he walks. “Isaac,” Scott calls after he gets a few feet ahead of him. The blond, made up entirely of height, lanky limbs, and a bad attitude, turns around and somehow manages to intensify his scowl. “Do you, uh…” Scott fumbles over his words, feeling like he was telling Allison he loved her for the first time again. “Do you wanna come over for dinner? Since, y’know, you aren’t going to practice or anything?”

Isaac shakes his head. Wordlessly, he hikes his backpack higher on his shoulder, trying to ignore the dread that settles in the pit of his stomach. Even with his father dead and deep in the ground, Isaac still feels the terror of going home, only now there isn’t a home to go to.

The bigger picture hits him all at once. He has no right to be getting hung up on some unrequited crush when everything else has gone to shit. Or, in the case of his dead family, has turned into an even bigger pile of shit than it was when it started. In that moment he almost wishes for rejection. He knows how to deal with the negative. The idea of being happy, of someone enjoying his company and finding something desirable in his person, is terrifying. Isaac doesn’t know how to be anything but miserable.

Approximately three and a half miles from school, a piece of shit green car pulls up alongside him. Scott waves frantically from the driver’s seat, trying to grab Isaac’s attention which is focused on the heat rising from the pavement that stretches on in front of him. Finally, Scott throws the car into park and honks the horn. Isaac nearly jumps out of his skin.

“What the fuck, man?”

Scott climbs out of the car wearing an excited smile. “Hey! My mom wants to know what you’re doing that’s more important than coming over for dinner.”

First, Isaac’s stomach sinks at the mention of the word mom. Then his eyebrows furrow. “What?”

Scott speaks into the phone, though Isaac’s too far away to hear what he’s saying. The alpha nods his head toward the passenger’s side. “Get in. She’s gonna order pizza.”

“I don’t want pizza.”

What Isaac really means is that he doesn’t want to go to Scott’s for dinner — he barely knows Scott and still isn’t sure how he feels about him — but when Scott calls back that his mom is going to order Chinese instead, Isaac knows there’s no point in arguing further.