NESS         »         warmbloodcd‌.

                    the energy this boy has is  —  astonishing. renesmee remembers the lectures her family had given her four years ago, before her FIRST trip through high school, in an attempt to train her to be more human. auntie alice had said to fidget. renesmee is perfectly comfortable sitting still for much longer than humans were  —  not as long as her family, but for hours longer than humans. she’d been told that, if possible, to hum to herself, to look DISTRACTED, because humans found it endlessly boring to stare at the same thing for too long. renesmee isn’t thrilled to stare at the board for hours  —  she’s learned this material at least twice now  —  but bouncing or groaning or anything of the like does not call to her. most, if not all, of her movements have propose. 

                    she learned, during her first freshman year of high school, that humans are not the same. some tap their foot, or chew their pencils, or gnaw their lips  —  in boredom, anxiousness, or merely absentmindedness. this second time around, sitting besides stiles for the greater part of the year, she’s learned that sometimes humans move because they must  —  because sitting still for any length of time is excruciating, because they MUST do something with their energy or they are likely to combust.

                    renesmee pulls the shawl tighter towards her body, covering as much skin as feasible. the discomfort on her face isn’t out of character. someone in the administrator’s office had let it SLIP that she and her “brother”  —  that she and daddy  —  had supposedly seen some terrible things. the school populace knows she is not to be touched, and gossip here, as in every other school, spreads like wildfire. carefully, renesmee pulls the lab report closer to herself, and quickly scribbles some notes along his. she doesn’t correct everything; renesmee is striving only for a three point six gpa this year. ( she was almost valedictorian at the last school, and that must be avoided this year. )

                    maybe you overheard them, renesmee writes down, pointing at the lab partners across the aisle. she hates the lying. it doesn’t feel so terrible when she reminds herself that it is for her family’s own good, and yet the  —  the GASLIGHTING still bothers her. he heard her; she knows that he did. but who would come to the conclusion that he’d seen into her mind, however briefly? unlikely, and yet  —  stiles smells like WOLF. someone he knows is bound to discover the truth. renesmee takes the scrap sheet back and scribbles, you should get some more sleep.

              there’s a din that settles over them. it’s silent, apart from the soft rustle of paper as their classmates shift through their work. a quietude that’s just barely broken by his rubber soles as they steadily beat against ceramic tiles. she moves & it draws his eye. pulls his attention until he’s inadvertently watching her move. —— sink further into that jacket thing of hers with a certain kind of urgency. as if she was using it more to hide than anything else. everything seems to come screeching to a halt ——- his mind helpfully tossing up a few of the missing pieces he’d been looking for all at that one tiny action. 

              now that he’s thinking about it, isn’t it odd that aside from ness reaching back to grab her twisty jacket thing, & then burrowing into it like it offered some kind of salvation, he hadn’t seen her move? sure, she moved to write, she even shifted here & there as the teacher spoke, but the moments in-between? it almost felt forced. cognitive. as if she had to remind herself —–

              maybe you overhead them. it takes him off guard, but not nearly enough to distract him from the thoughts & theories bubbling up beneath the surface. his hand TWITCHES, & his gaze swivels out on the coattails of her suggestion. absently he tracks over his classmate’s faces.  catalogs their frustrated expressions as they work. even drinks in the way malia’s brow furrowed & it does nothing to lessen the tight coil of anxiety & paranoia that’s slowly cresting through him. no. he hadn’t overheard anyone. at least no one within the immediate room. he knew their voices. could probably place them with his eyes closed —— but the one he’d heard couldn’t hold a light to any of them. it was too warm. nice. ——- something he could comfortably fall into. 

              still, stiles hikes his shoulders up an inch & all but force his chaotic thoughts to settle. —— push the whispering what-ifs & you don’t know anything about them’s to the back of his mind. or at the very least he tries too, but all he can honestly focus on in that moment. is the gentle scritch of her glitter-pen & the distant dredges of scott’s worried voice from earlier in the day from when he literally had pulled stiles aside after lunch & WARNED him about how wrong these people smelled. a groan elicits from his throat & stiles drags a hand through his hair because he just can’t seem rid himself of that chasing feeling that there’s something here. a bigger picture he just can’t see yet. 

              “yeah.”  stiles retorts after realizing that he’d been emptily staring at her note a little longer than what was deemed necessary or acceptable. “yeah, i’ll do just that.” a lie, one he knows his friends can hear from across the room, & wow, there’s that urge to turn & glower at them because he’s absolutely positive that someone’s going to be confronting him about the whole ordeal after class. “some sleep will do me good. ah — class is ending. are we still meeting up in the library after school to work on —- “ there’s a pause as he gestures down at the labwork between them with a wide pass of his arm. “—–this?”