here’s my piece for the @sterekzine. still can’t believe they thought i was cool enough to participate! proved them wrong about that, heh heh.
The blood sticks. Not so bad as the guilt, but more visibly.
“He’ll live,” Cora says again. She’s restless, pacing, can’t fathom why they’ve stopped.
Derek couldn’t keep running with literal blood on his hands, though. The warehouse is drafty, leaking, and Derek holds his hands under the run-off where insulation and wood has been torn away. He cuts himself on his own claws in his vigor.
Cora sniffs, watches, accuses, “You said it was getting better.”
Derek’s lip raises, pointed teeth dragging against soft inner tissue.
Cora attempts to wait him out, gets impatient, huffs. Her feet thud across the floor, tread heavy and defiant. A few boards rattle near the corner, then: “Here’s a radical suggestion, we could talk about it.”
“No.” He’s not Dr. Phil-ing himself into a solution for losing his anchor, that’s not the way this works. Even if it were, Cora’s touch is about as light as her stomp.
“You’re not angry enough to use it as a totem any longer; that’s cause for celebration not—” she jabs a hand at him, “this. Whatever this is.” She smirks, perks an eyebrow. “Aside from the first step on a staircase towards forming an emo band. Third, actually. You’re already white and suburban.”
The animosity rankles, but it’s not entirely undeserved. Cora’s the one who struggles with moderation, the one who leaves shady supernaturals half-dead, not Derek.
Not until recently, that is.
If only it were as simple as that. His claws dig deep into his own palms as he balls his fists—if the blood’s sticking with him, he’ll be damned if it’s anyone else’s. “Anger isn’t the problem.”
“If that’s your anchor then—” She stops, backing up a step in her two-step solution to any potential roadblock: identify the problem, demolish the problem. “That isn’t your anchor.”
Derek clenches his jaw, muscle ticking.
It’s confirmation enough.
“And your anchor now is?”
—The last thing he wants to discuss. “Slipping.”
