⋆˚꩜｡, which brings y/n to the present moment. third period chemistry, the kind of class that feels personally designed to test human endurance. the room smells like expired chemicals and lingering teenage desperation. mr. harris is at the front of the room, droning about something that might be molarity or might be the sound of hell itself, and honestly the distinction stopped mattering about twenty minutes ago.

⋆˚꩜｡, y/n’s been staring at the same paragraph in the textbook for so long the words have stopped making sense as language and started existing as abstract shapes. her lab partner has been silently vaping into his backpack for the last ten minutes. nobody is paying attention. nobody ever pays attention. it’s chemistry.

⋆˚꩜｡, except for him.

⋆˚꩜｡, across the room and two rows ahead, stiles stilinski is having the worst time of his life and he hasn’t even moved. he’s sitting perfectly still for once, which is alarming enough on its own, but his pen is frozen mid-notation, hovering above his notebook like he forgot what he was writing. his jaw is doing this thing—this tiny clench thing—like he’s physically holding back words he desperately wants to say. his eyes are fixed somewhere between mr. harris and the periodic table and they haven’t blinked in what feels like a medically concerning amount of time.

⋆˚꩜｡, it’s the kind of expression that usually means something terrible has happened. a new monster. a new dead body. a new reason to explain why beacon hills really needs to be investigated by like. the cdc. or the fbi. or someone with more authority than a seventeen-year-old with access to wikipedia.

⋆˚꩜｡, his hand twitches. his knee starts bouncing under the desk. the pen finally clicks against the paper—once, twice, three times in a nervous rhythm that nobody else in the room notices because nobody else in this room pays enough attention to stiles stilinski to notice the difference between his normal chaos and his i’ve-just-found-something-terrible chaos.

⋆˚꩜｡, except y/n’s paying attention. obviously. for completely neutral reasons. because he’s interesting. in a trainwreck way. like you can’t look away because something is about to happen.

⋆˚꩜｡, stiles shifts in his seat. leans forward. glances sideways for exactly half a second before snapping his gaze back to the front of the room like he never moved. his hand comes up to rub the back of his neck—fake casual, totally normal, not-at-all evidence that he’s absolutely spiraling right now.

⋆˚꩜｡, his mouth opens. closes. opens again.

⋆˚꩜｡, “harris,” he says, and the name comes out ragged, like he had to push it past something stuck in his throat. “question. theoretical.”

⋆˚꩜｡, mr. harris turns with the slowness of a predator who’s already decided the answer is no.