stiles+sasuke, enabler

[eyeforaneye]

[ The cool, summer, Beacon Hills breeze through the open window, one that's scented like cut grass and charcoal, is pleasant.

The thought comes to him unexpectedly as he stands in the kitchen, one dark sleeve tied into a loose knot as usual while the other is rolled up to his elbow, revealing a toned forearm nicked with various scars. It's pleasant... His eyes settle on the enamel pot before him as he measures out rice bran with a practiced flourish, gaze half-lidded as his thoughts wander. He needs more salt. The water on the stove has yet to boil.

... pleasant.

It's not just the breeze; this moment as a whole is pleasant, and it's with a sharp lift of his head (like he's heard a distant voice) that he realizes he also doesn't feel he should be doing anything else. It's quiet without Stiles having returned yet, but even that brings with it a certain peace. Quiet. Pleasant. Guiltless.

He needs more salt.

A door opens in the distance and he exhales a spot of tension, trainless train of thought mercifully broken. ]

Shoes off, [ he commands first and foremost in that quiet yet stern voice of his, all while dried shiitake mushrooms are scraped onto the bran in a rushed heap. He's... uneasy. ]

Comments

[mensrea]

[Frozen halfway through the threshold, Stiles rolls honey-brown eyes skyward only to ultimately acquiesce with the disembodied demand. Worn trainers are toed off, then nudged carefully into place beside the newer pair by the front door. He pauses there, gazing down at their shoes existing in peaceful cohabitation. Something dangerous swells within his chest, somehow simultaneously weightless and too heavy. It’s the same sensation he endures every morning when he wakes up, comes downstairs, and sees Sasuke for the first time that day. Swallowing, Stiles reaches into the back pocket of his jeans to retrieve his cell phone. A quick snapshot of the shoes joins a busy album featuring countless pictures of Sasuke. Sasuke arguing with the TV. Sasuke quietly looking at a child’s stuffed dinosaur at the mall. Sasuke brushing his teeth and staring with flat annoyance at Stiles in the mirror. The album is months in the making, a catalog of precious little moments that Stiles never wants to forget.

Because he’s afraid. So fucking afraid. Everyone eventually wakes from dreams, after all.

Are you happy here? Are you okay with being happy here?

The sight awaiting him in the kitchen similarly unmoors him, though Stiles only allows himself a second to drink it in. Maintaining an air of normalcy is important to him. And so he forcefully tears away a hungry gaze to approach the cheap, rickety table in the center of the cramped room. There, he dumps a handful of letters. Most are addressed to him—not that that stops him from opening the few addressed to Sasuke. As he shreds the junk mail, a flyer that he hadn’t previously noticed slips loose from between envelopes. The garish colors are so obnoxious that he’s instantly endeared.]

Hey, [he says belatedly, tone distracted.] Let’s go to a club tonight.

[Club FREEFALL, announces the flyer, has just opened for business. Stiles knows better than to ask Sasuke if the shinobi wants to go; that won’t get them anywhere. That said, he fully expects needing to wheedle and coax his roommate to even consider the idea. So, before he can be shot down straight out of the gate, Stiles launches into his rationale.]

I haven’t been to a club in ages. And I seriously doubt you’ve ever been to one. It’ll be a good experience. You can people-watch and judge everyone silently while I indulge in some fruity cocktails. If we’re lucky, we might even see some action. [The specific kind of action that Stiles means becomes obvious as he continues.] Supernaturals love clubs. It’s like they can’t help themselves. Young adults being hormonal and getting drunk and making bad decisions? They eat that shit up. You might get to knock some heads together.

how can you expect me to just leave all THIS

[eyeforaneye]

[ There's no response. Furthermore, Stiles is lingering in the entryway longer than he should be, leaving Sasuke to guess at his intentions. It's no one else, after all, even with the lack of characteristic grousing as a response to Sasuke's nagging reminders. He knows the sound of his every footfall and, even absent the gifts of true chakra sensory types, he can feel his presence in the air. True ease or comfort isn't something he's known in his relatively few years, but that feeling of recognition when he diagnoses Stiles's presence in place of a stranger's comes close.

Stiles enters and Sasuke's curiosity is sated in the same moment; he's distracting himself with their shared mail, something over which he still confuses his possessive pronouns. Their mail. Not his, not just Stiles's. How long had it been before his settling here that he'd actually received something as simple as a letter? ]

Stiles. [ An acknowledgement before his roommate is launching into a wholly unexpected plan, one only punctuated by the "shing" of an unsheathed knife that's whacked unceremoniously against a clove of garlic to loosen its skin. His name sounds different in Sasuke's mouth now, different than it had when they had been in Aefenglom. Here there's no gift of a common tongue or magical translations to smooth out his accent and it touches his pronunciation ever-so-slightly still. ]

What are you talking about? [ A brow quirks as he flips that knife once, expertly catching it before using it to gesture to the salt, bran, and mushroom mixture. ]

I am clearly preparing a pickling bed. We've talked about this before. [ Have we. ]

i have no idea what you could possibly mean

[mensrea]

[He withholds a longsuffering sigh. Have they discussed this? Not verbally. That said, Sasuke’s done an impressive job of conveying displeasure (while utterly deadpan) whenever Stiles has had the audacity to beg off dinner. Honestly, it isn’t as if he takes for granted the meals that they can share together. Sometimes, Stiles needs to stay late at the local library—a situation that arises either due to the unforgiving FBI program he’s virtually enrolled in at George Washington University or because he’s begrudgingly deigned to assist Scott McCall’s pack with whatever supernatural baddie is harassing Beacon Hills.

There’s no contest about where he’d rather be. After his mother died, family dinners became a thing of the past—what with the Sheriff’s taxing work hours rarely allowing him to be home at night. Now, the opportunity for Stiles to sit down with his own makeshift family, small though it may be, is a gift he’ll always look forward to. And it’s even better when his dad is able to drop by and join them.

Right now, however?]

Would it kill you to be more flexible? A little spontaneity is healthy. Just as healthy as…a pickling bed.

[No, Stiles has no fucking idea what a pickling bed is.

He peers over Sasuke’s shoulder, nods to himself, and then begins pulling out plastic tupperware from the upper cabinets. ]

C’mon. The water isn’t even boiling yet! We can save what you’ve started for tomorrow night.

[In his preoccupation, a mountain of tupperware rains down from the heavens. One container tumbles in slow motion toward the salt, bran, and mushroom mixture—destined for crash collision.]

[eyeforaneye]

[ In one of her more euphemistic speeches, his mother had once called his father "a willful man". A willful man who had two willful sons, and now one of those willful sons has landed himself a willful roommate who thinks he has every right to make a unilateral decision on the future of his pickling bed. In reality, he doesn't ask for much, or so his uncompromising mind has convinced itself.

He asks for the freedom to redecorate their shared space whenever he desires, with or without prior consultation. He asks for the ability to return to his world for brief, necessary check-ins (though after the last one had ended particularly violently, he knows to discuss these with Stiles beforehand). He asks for space to disappear into the surrounding forests for a day or two at a time, and is always dutiful enough to leave a note.

And now he asks for the opportunity to finish preparing his pickling bed without compromising on its quality by interrupting an ancient, revered, well-tested process.

His hand lifts far faster than Stiles would be able to see, that dangerously sharpened blade piercing neatly through the bottom of the tupperware container that remains impaled on steel and safely out of his current dish. ]

Spontaneity is agreeing to your proposal. It doesn't mean I have to abandon what I've started here. If you'd taken the time to ask, you'd have known this will take less than half an hour's effort for me still. [ Calmly he turns, a whip of that knife flinging the ruined plastic into the bag of recycling hung haphazardly from the back door's doorknob. ]

Why do you want to go to a club? Is this for dancing?

[mensrea]

[Frantically swatting at the air in an effort to bat away the descending containers, Stiles fails to register that Sasuke has even moved. Once the chaos has stilled, he glances askance with a sheepish grin—only to visibly balk at the tragic, untimely demise of the impaled tupperware. “Dude!” Really, the loss is hardly significant; they practically stole the tupperware set from Walmart, what with the stack of coupons Sasuke had wordlessly provided. But that’s the thing: It was part of a set. One of the middle sizes, that specific container was meant to nestle comfortably in a stack when unused. Now, the stack will be irrevocably ruined. His aggravated OCD mutinies.]

If you’d taken the time to say so from the start, I wouldn’t have assumed you were immediately shooting my idea down, [comes his pointed response as Stiles begins the process of collecting the fallen containers spilled across the floor and counters. He stacks them first according to color, then by size. Because of course he does.] And I wanna go because…

[An ineffective shrug. Stiles is quiet a moment, expression thoughtful as he actually considers how to answer. The assigned recycling bag hanging from the back door’s handle continues merrily swinging back and forth, motions gradually slowing.]

I dunno. It’s something we… [Something unhappy darkens his countenance, brief. He doesn’t often ruminate on the bridges he deliberately burned upon returning home from the other dimension.] Something I used to do. Before Aefenglom. It’s fun.

[It was fun—back when Stiles knew the other people in attendance. But his social circle has shrunk dramatically in the last year. Beyond some of the casual acquaintances he’s made through school, Stiles’ world is literally just his dad and Sasuke. Lydia too, though their friendship remains strained by the bad blood between him and Scott. Reflecting on all this, Stiles can’t help wondering if he’s just trying to recapture a certain feeling from when he was still a willing member of the pack. He frowns, tapping a frenetic beat on the plastic container he’s holding.]

It'll be something different. That alone makes it worthwhile. Even if we just try it once. [Now it sounds as if he’s trying to convince himself.] You don’t have to dance. We can hang out at the bar.

[eyeforaneye]

[ Mentally he makes a note to throw out the container's matching lid later. It'll be an unnecessary annoyance if there's one extra lid, and in this, he knows Stiles will agree. They've come to understand one another on a new level as of late. Where before they'd gotten to know one another's pasts, their sorrows, their accomplishments, and their lives, they hadn't gotten to know how each other lived. It was Jonas who shared space with Stiles, not Sasuke, and there's so much more he says in his quiet adjustment of a rug here or his postponed chore there.

How domestic.

The look on Stiles's face is, of course, seen, and just as predictably he says nothing. He looks away to afford Stiles privacy instead as he does so often, that knife slicing next at scraps of lettuce. ]

I see. [ He sees parts of it, most of them in that expression. In reality there's not much more he needs to know, since his decision has already been made for him. For some people perhaps he's too easily swayed. ]

I wasn't going to dance even if you said it was mandatory. [ SLICE ] I can be prepared for violence if I need to be, that's not something I need to plan. But if I'm expected to wear something other than this, you'll need to tell me.

[mensrea]

[The implicit acceptance of his impromptu plan draws him from melancholic stewing. Grinning with incorrigible glee, he redoubles all efforts to tidy up the kitchen in a timely manner.]

You look fine the way you’re dressed.

[Granted, he doesn’t so much as spare Sasuke a cursory glance before deeming it so. God knows it isn’t as if he needs a new reason to check his roommate out. But, in all honesty—Sasuke could wear a damn garbage bag to the club and would still draw looks of lust and envy from everyone in the room. Stiles pauses in his mad scramble to stack containers, considering this fact. It was like that when he was with Scott too, he recalls. Kind of pathetic, in a way; so much time has passed, yet Stiles continues playing the same old roles over and over. He’d call himself a coward if he hadn’t already put his heart out on the line. Second verse, same as the first, he thinks, mouth quirked upward in wry amusement, just different mistakes this time.]

Alright. I gotta shower real quick. Don’t change your mind in the next fifteen minutes.

[And then he’s gone, container cabinet door left wide open in his haste. The sound of offkey singing fades in his wake: “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me—”]

[eyeforaneye]

[ Lips purse together momentarily in a rare show of muted emotion when he exhales, in no way genuinely annoyed by the comfortable whirlwind that is Stiles, but his plans... The adaptability his roommate expects from him is, on occasion, still enough to push his boundaries. Living alone for as much of his life as he has makes that an inevitability. ]

You didn't look at me, [ he retorts calmly without even lifting his head from his task, allowing Stiles to escape without any further criticism. Would it make a difference? If he wanted him to look a certain way he'd make that known, and Sasuke won't be dressing himself for anyone else in attendance. He could attempt to integrate into the culture more, of course, but what would be the point of the exercise when it's somewhere he'd never go without Stiles's influence?

By the time Stiles returns the kitchen is newly cleaned, pickling bed covered and tucked into a far corner, cabinets shut and lid discarded, and countertops smelling vaguely of citrus. And Sasuke? Is exactly where he should be expected to be, bare feet affixed to the ceiling so he can more easily wipe away the smoke residue from their last few meals that's accumulated in a barely noticeable shadow above the stove. ]

You're ready?

[mensrea]

[Though the shower proves to be a brief affair, he’s grateful for the chance to wash off a day’s accumulation of dust and ink stains. The bulk of his fifteen minutes is spent meticulously shaving the five o’clock shadow creeping across his face. When the time arrives to decide on an outfit, Stiles surprises himself by not dithering for once. He gravitates toward a soft, rust-red Henley and fitted, dark denim jeans, opting for comfort over glamour. Chances are, they won’t venture beyond the bar. And that’s fine, honestly. Stiles isn’t interested in cruising for potential hookups. Dancing, admittedly, is an activity he’d love to get back into—but not at the cost of abandoning a friend. So, an outfit suited to just hanging out and drinking works well.

Once he returns downstairs to the kitchen, hair still damp, Stiles doesn’t comment on Sasuke’s spiderman impression. Instead, he sidles over to the open window, eyeing the half-drawn shade to determine if the shinobi can be seen from outside. They have the dubious blessing of living beside a retired marine, one Rudolf Snyder, who spends his days obsessively watching conspiracy theorists on YouTube. Rudolf seems to approve of them in general as neighbors—though Stiles has caught the man surveilling their property with a drone more than once. Sometimes, he swears Sasuke deliberately defies the laws of physics when Rudolf is around just to fuck with the vet.]

Ready.

[Wallet, phone, keys. Check. The window is closed and locked (an unnecessary precaution, yet Stiles’ paranoia demands no less). After doublechecking the back door, Stiles grabs the flier on the table, notes the address it lists, then folds and pockets it. He cranes his neck, looking expectantly up at Sasuke. And if his mouth helplessly quirks upward in a tellingly fond smile, the other man would be good not to mention it.]

You?