wolfs lichen

                                          He's twenty, and really, he's not sure                                          how to deal with this. He was so used                                          to that ticker on his wrist counting down.                                          But today is different. He's so close to                                          zero. And he's not sure how to deal.              Scott, his best friend, his buddy, since              they had both been in kindergarten found              his soul mate a couple years ago. A               girl with pale skin and dark hair, and they              had been happy for all of two years.              But Allison had died. And his best friend              had been left all alone.                             He's seen it before, people whose other                             half died young, and even, rarely, some                             people whose counter had just stopped                             because their other half had died before                             they met.                   And that was what frightened him most.                   He was going to find whoever it was to-                   day, and there was a chance that that                    person would die one day, way before                    their time.Like his best friend's soul mate had, andlike his own mother had, far too young.                                       Lost in thought, he almost missed it, as                                       he got in line at the coffee shop. The blonde                                       in front of him dropped something, and                                       he reached to hand her the dropped folder.                                              00:00:00

                            Okay, usually Stiles was already antsy. It was a thing with him.                            Antsy was his thing. He was always antsy. But the last weeks,                             he'd only become more and more antsy. It was the counter.                             He'd had his entire life, everyone had it. And everyone knew that                             when the counter runs out, that's when you meet your soulmate. He knew people whose counters had ended in kindergarten,other whose counters translated to them being at least fifty by the time the counter ran out. And his counter had beencounting down to today. Seventeen, and anxious.                            Sometimes he figured it was all super unfair. He'd had crushes,                            everybody got crushes, he was pretty sure of that. But if your                             counters didn't reach zero at the moment you met, that was that.                            You could crush all you want, but that meant like, absolutely                             nothing.And now the counter was almost at zero. This was the momenteverybody told you you were supposed to wait for, from the timeyou're old enough to understand what the numbers on your wristmean. That the moment your counter hits zero, you've found theone. And if you didn't like each other, t o u g h l u c k.                           There were people who ignored the counter, tried to find love                            without the counter. But those people were kind of pariahs,                            and he was weird enough without going against that stupid                           line of numbers on his wrist.                                                                      Ten seconds.                                           Five seconds.Don't be terrible, don't be terrible, don't be terrible has becomea chant inside his head. Somebody sits down at the study table.A boy with jawline that could cut glass, high cheekbones, and a certain haughty look on his face, like he feels better than everyone else.                                   00:00:00

           { Stiles is a giant little shit, but that doesn't stop him }                                      "Don't judge me, lizard boy. I just so happen                                       to enjoy the classics. Classic Pokémon,                                       that is."

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