baked goods.

[better]

Who: Erica & Isaac
Where: Their house.
What: Stress eating. First stress baking.
When: Post Derek Discussions.

For the most part, Erica hasn't had to rely on bad habits. Before she was a werewolf she had to watch everything she ate. The medicine caused weight gain and her mother thought she needed to not add to the problem. Except the medicine caused weight gain and the seizures were just the symptom for her disease. Binging on junk food didn't help, but it made her feel better. At least, temporarily. Until she realized what she was doing and then she just felt sick.

In Asgard she's curbed most of her bad habits. She has friends, she has a boyfriend -- she has a good life and she doesn't need those binge eating moments.

Except right now. Right now, because she really just wants to eat a whole pan of brownies. Except she can't. She can't because there aren't brownies for her to eat and she doesn't feel like having the ones that are in the diners. Cold and sitting on small plates.

She hasn't stress baked in months, so maybe she's due. Either way, she's in the kitchen, a pan of brownies and a fork. It's easy to say that she hasn't had the best few days.

Comments

[freezerburned]

Isaac can smell the brownies cooking when he walks in through the door, lifting an eyebrow at the scent. As far as he knows, Erica has never really been the baking sort of person unless something is bothering her, so this is... a little alarming, to say the least. Nevertheless, the smell of chocolate temporarily overrides any burgeoning concern that he might have, and Isaac follows his nose into the kitchen with a silly little smile.

"Brownies? Really?"

[better]

The fact that she's treating the pan of brownies as though it is a tray of cake is probably more alarming, but she's past the point of caring about how this looks. She's ridiculously attractive, so by that right she should be able to eat whatever she wants in whatever method she chooses. If it wasn't for the risk of food poisoning she might have just ate the batter out of the bowl for a while.

When Isaac questions her, she shrugs, "I talked to Derek. I wanted donuts, but I don't know how to make those and this just seemed better."

Leaning back in the chair, she opens the drawer and pulls out a fork offering it to him, "You can have some."

[freezerburned]

"Brownies are always better than donuts."

Isaac moves, hefting himself up to sit on the counter next to where she's working and peering into the pan, curiously. He takes the offered fork with a little nod and reaches over to spear himself a piece.

"That makes two of us. Talking to Derek, I mean." Isaac shrugs, popping the first bite in his mouth. "I guess he went home for a bit."

[better]

Her hand goes up to cover her mouth as she finishes chewing and swallowing a piece that was not small at all. It doesn't stop her from talking around it, though, "He said you're on better terms."

Erica doesn't know what that really means, but she listened to what Derek had to say and she said she'd think it over. Thinking it over requires brownies, but it's all she thought to do. "I talked to Stiles, too, but that was on a different topic." Not that it matters, because every conversation with Stiles ends up talking about the same things.

[freezerburned]

Isaac sort of shrugs when Erica speaks, not quite sure what it means either, but he can't exactly deny it. After a little bit of clarification, he feels more... ambivalent toward Derek now, calm, but not entirely sure if it's because the anger has burned out, or if Derek was really undeserving of it in the first place.

"Derek and Stiles, huh..." Isaac swallows another bite of the brownie, kicking his feet in the air off the counter.

"Well, let's start with Derek. What'd he say?"

[better]

Erica shifts on the counter, turning more toward Isaac as she shrugs. "He cornered me outside work. I went in to tell them I'd be late, thinking he'd leave while I was inside. I mean, I'm pretty sure most of the times he's actually come to talk to me were when other people made him. And usually he spends all of his time avoiding talking to me."

Her fork stabs at the hard corner of the brownie still stuck in the pan, "He wanted to explain his side of things. More of what happens back home. More of his usual attempts at half-apologies that end up sounding worse than he means them to be."

[freezerburned]

Isaac listens to her, watching her struggle with the pan of brownies with pursed lips. It's not unlike when he came to Isaac earlier, he supposes- but she still sounds so bitter about it that it almost makes him wince. Isaac doesn't quite know how to phrase what he wants to say, but he knows that it's not going to win him any favors.

"...do you ever- I dunno. Do you ever feel like you're being too hard on him?"

[better]

"No." Her response is nearly snapped out at Isaac and she doesn't even take it back. There's no instant apology that falls from her lips about how she didn't mean to snap at him. She might be okay with listening to Derek, of hearing him try to explain his side of things, but it feels like too little... too late.

All she has are stacks of incidents that add up in her head to a fuller picture of who Derek is. Back home she didn't have that. Back home she had him making her promises and there's a level of seduction that she dismisses immediately now that she's here, but back home -- she believed him. There's that level of knowing more about everything that gives her that different perspective. That flash impression of him telling Scott that she was useless. Telling her that he'd have picked someone else if he had known she died. Not answering any of her questions when she'd ask.

He avoided her and maybe that was because she made it hard on him, but she thought she should have been worth the fight. Not just easily replaced.

She sits there in silence for a bit, stewing in her own anger, "Maybe." The frustration in her tone is clear, but she doesn't really have any more answers.

[freezerburned]

Isaac shrugs, not sure if he really wants to touch this with a ten foot pole. Derek isn't their alpha anymore, and even if Erica is basically his best friend and Derek is... another sort of ally, Isaac doesn't really want to get involved in their issues. It's Erica's business and not his.

But, if she's talking to him about it...

"It's fine. Sorry I asked."

He hops off the counter then, reaching for another brownie with all the hunger of a teenage boy. "I'm just saying, I'm pretty sure the last few months at home weren't exactly good months for any of us. We made a lot of messed up decisions- Derek and I, at least. I dunno."

There's a pause as he tries to think about it, brownie in hand, before he just sighs. Don't get involved, Lahey. He shouldn't act like he knows everything that went on between Erica and Derek, but if it's anything like what Derek had put him through...

"I was mad at him for months here, but not really anymore. I guess I was just so used to seeing him as my alpha that I never realized he didn't have all the answers." Pause. "I don't think he realized that either- not until he went home, anyway."

[better]

Erica knows that she's doing to herself the exact thing that she accuses everyone else of doing, but she doesn't know how else to make people grasp what she feels. She hates that so many of them look at her and see the death that's yet to come for her, but whenever someone tries to explain how things are back home she wants to bring up the fact that at some point she won't get to go back home.

It's just difficult for her, because her experience here is so different from everyone else. She got to know everyone before she became a werewolf. She made friends and had the life that she wanted to have without the bite. Then she still has to go through the things at home that she knows won't make her happy. That she has a clock that's ticking down her final moments just waiting for her. To have Derek, someone she's supposed to look up to, wanting to just rush back there - to have his focus be solely on wanting to go home, it didn't make anything here easy on her.

"I shouldn't have snapped." Erica picks at a piece of brownie.

[freezerburned]

"It's fine."

Isaac shrugs, munching away, slouching his shoulders like it's just a casual conversation, trying to diffuse the tension in the room as much as he can. He doesn't know how to really mend broken things, doesn't know how to put the pieces of Erica's past and her future back together, and he doesn't particularly think it's his place to negotiate between her and Derek.

He can't really do anything, so he stops trying. She's right.

"Shouldn't have pushed. These are really good though."

[better]

"I know pack is important and I want that, I do, I just don't understand why it has to come with all of these stipulations." She shrugs, "It'll get better, it's just going to take time."

She wants to say that it's time she doesn't get back home to understand how it all works, but instead she just shifts to his remark on the brownies. "I have frosting for them in the fridge, but I started to pick at them and now..." Erica shrugs. Now it's pointless, she figures.

[freezerburned]

Isaac shrugs his shoulders once, his eyes lowered slightly as he mulls over her words- but he doesn't have to respond because Erica changes the subject a moment later. He looks back up at her then, slipping off the counter to go and grab the frosting.

"That's what spoons are for."

[better]

"This better not be a lead up to you saying that you're the smart one," she teases.