Chapter Text
Stiles hasn’t been on the West Coast since his parents moved to get his mother to a specialist in Boston, so when he and his childhood best buddy Scott McCall reconnect thanks to the miracle of Facebook, its photo-tagging tool, and a very long, convoluted story of revenge involving unrelated third parties and baby photos that should’ve been burned, he thinks northern California sounds like the perfect post-graduation trip spot. He’s got a super-nice guy offering him free housing, tons of personal back-story to dig through, and it’s about as big of a change of scenery from Massachusetts as you can get.
That had been the idea, anyway.
“If I’d known, I would’ve packed my waterproof flannels,” Stiles mutters as he, Scott, and Scott’s girlfriend Allison shlep his bags up the stairs of Scott’s apartment building, dribbling small oceans behind them. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I did know, or at least Google knew, because I distinctly remember checking while the plane was heading to the gate, and it said sunny weather for this zip code.”
“Yeah, it blew up really fast,” Allison says. She’s got the least number of bags, but she’s still carrying a pretty impressive load for somebody who wouldn’t look out of place on a fashion blog. She huffs up ahead of them to get the hall door, then wheezes into Scott’s sodden backpack as they hustle through the doorway. “I’m sure it’ll go just as quick, and you and Scott should have plenty of sun while you’re here. Usually this is the prettiest time of the year in Beacon Hills.”
Stiles glances at the window at the end of the hall, which is still indicating torrential downpour. Then he looks at Allison’s sympathetically hopeful smile. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Anyway, we can get out the space heater and get your stuff dry, and for now I can lend you something,” Scott says, walking down the hall. He stops at one door and frowns at the keyhole, then shifts all of the bags he’s carrying to one arm. All of them. Wet weight, teetering above his head, all of them casually balanced on that arm as he rummages in his jeans pocket with his free hand.
Allison makes a hissy noise through her teeth, then scurries up just as Scott lifts his head, looking puzzled. She momentarily blocks Stiles’ view, and when she’s moved back again so Scott can open the door, Scott has both arms under the bags and is awkwardly trying to peer around the pile as he fumbles to get the key back out of the lock.
“This way!” Scott calls to Stiles, with just a little too much nervousness to be please let him like it.
Stiles is wet and cold and he has what feels like a fetid swamp oozing primordial organisms in his left sneaker. He shrugs and waddles into the apartment, sets his armload down on the nearest piece of furniture, and then takes a look around as Allison switches on the lights.
“Roomy,” Stiles says, and for all the hustle, there’s no way Scott is faking those relieved puppy-eyes.
“Great! Okay, so your room’s over there—but I think things will dry faster if we keep your stuff out here, because then we’ll have the space heater and the best vents, so let me get that and something for you to wear…” Scott says, immediately springing into action. He is literally bouncing, an eager shake in his hands as he runs around and in and out of rooms, his eyes lighting up as he grabs things like the joy of retrieving something alone is enough.
Allison’s a lot calmer, throwing Stiles an apologetic look as she cranks up the wall thermostat. Then she heads for the kitchen, but has to pull up as an oblivious Scott bounds across her path; she just shakes her head, a fond look on her face, and calls out that she’s going to start up the coffee machine.
“Thanks!” Stiles calls back. He spreads out his bags so they form a single layer, then starts thinking triage about what needs to come out for drying and what doesn’t.
It is a huge two-bedroom by East Coast standards, but it’s still an apartment and space is limited. Open-floor plan so the kitchen is really more of a kitchenette, with one of those rolling carts and a stack of boxes forming a makeshift divider. Lacrosse gear is sticking out of the boxes, along with these thin sticks that Stiles at first takes for those cross-country walking rods, but then he notices the sharp points on them.
“I’m into archery,” Allison says, jamming a cup into Stiles’ chest. When he ‘oofs’ and looks up, she’s smiling at him, but it’s the kind of smile you give somebody when you’re completely ready to slap them out of your spot in line. Then, as he takes a step back, she moderates the smile so that you’d never guess she’s anything but a sweet, helpful person. “Here, let me help you get your stuff hanging up. Scott’s mom said she wanted us over to the house at six, so—”
The cup’s empty. Stiles almost tosses it back onto the counter, and in fact has his arm swinging out to do that when he realizes which bag Allison’s going for. So he lets that arm-swing swoop back around so when the cup slips out of his hands, it’s right down on the top of the bag. Allison grabs at it, catching it before it hits the floor, and Stiles grabs the bag and pulls it towards him.
“Well, I definitely do not want to be late for Melissa McCall,” Stiles says. He shakes his head, smiling, and then looks up at Allison as he unzips the bag. Keeps looking at her as he pulls open the bag’s sides, revealing a bunch of damp clothes, and then pushes them around till he can take out a plastic-wrapped tin covered in lighthouse-based Americana. “She took absolutely no bullshit when I kept Scott out too late, back in the day. I’m not gonna pretend that some novelty cookies are going to make up for it, but I figure I can at least prove I’ve grown up and learned the value of advance bribery.”
Allison had been looking a little strangely at Stiles, but she relaxes into a thoroughly charmed smile now. “Oh, are those shortbread?” she says, craning to read the label on the tin. “She loves that.”
“Yep, and this at least stayed dry.” Stiles hands the tin to her and she turns around to put it on the coffee table. “The rest…”
When she turns back, he hands her some of his shirts, sighing at the trickles running off them, and then plops another stack on his knee while he pulls up the zipper. Then he gets up and the two of them start draping clothes over all of the available furniture.
Scott takes a couple minutes to get the space heater, long enough that Allison starts glancing towards that bedroom, and when he comes out again, he’s got his phone to his ear and is telling somebody that he can’t come just now, but he’ll definitely come later tonight. He doesn’t look happy about it, and when he realizes he’s gotten all the way into the living room, he blanches for a second. Then plasters a sheepish smile on his face as he sticks his phone in his pocket.
“My boss,” he says. “Work emergency.”
“Oh, man, are they gonna live?” Stiles says.
Both Scott and Allison look oddly at him.
“I mean, uh, well, maybe I shouldn’t assume that vet emergencies are like ER,” Stiles says. Then he makes a face at himself. “Not that I think actual ERs are like ER, I just—binge-watch nineties’ dramas when I’m cramming for finals and…and I am just convincing you even more that I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Actually, he appears to be convincing Scott that he’s really worried, judging from the way Scott rushes to reassure him. “Oh, no, it’s okay, it’s not a—we’re not worried about any specific animal, thankfully,” Scott says. “No, it’s just, um—”
“Did that jerk ditch his shift again?” Allison says, with maybe a pointed look at Scott.
Scott blinks at her. Then his face shifts to comprehending, and then he sighs and just squats down to start unwinding the space heater power cord. “Yeah, unfortunately. So my boss was asking whether I could come in—he forgot I told him you were coming today and it’s no big deal, dinner’s still on, I just need to stop in afterwards and check on the animals.”
“Or I can drive Stiles home and you can take your bike,” Allison says. She shakes out a shirt and lays it over an armchair arm, looking at Stiles. “I’m sure you’re really tired after your flight.”
“I’m actually pretty good—got my post-graduation coma over with and everything. But hey, I’m not that guy who keeps you away from the cute suffering animals,” Stiles says. “I was figuring today would be just about hi, so that’s how tall you really are, and also, you really, really aren’t mad about the time I got us locked in the cemetery, right?”
Scott blinks rapidly, like that’s maybe the equivalent of a loading bar for him, and then a smile slowly stretches across his face. He absently twists the power cord between his hands, then flicks it out towards the nearest outlet, chuckling and shaking his head. “Honestly, I’d forgotten all about that.”
“You forgot about getting locked in a cemetery?” Allison says incredulously.
“It was only the, oh, fifth- or sixth-scariest place Stiles got us trapped,” Scott says, still chuckling. He gets up and plugs in the space heater, then nudges it towards the center of the room with his foot. “You know what was really scary, was the evidence room at the police station.”
“The evidence room?” Stiles says. “What was scary about that? The light worked and everything.”
“Well, the room wasn’t scary, but your dad afterward,” Scott says. He holds one hand over the heater as he fiddles with the dial. “Speaking of, you need to give him a call or anything?”
“No, he’s fine, I texted him when the plane landed,” Stiles says. “I may have also promised him pics of your mom’s roasted pork, though I told him I wasn’t sure what we were having.”
Scott grins again. “Are you kidding? The moment I told Mom you were coming back, she called up my grandma in Mexico to ship her the spices.”
* * *
Once Stiles’ things are out to dry and he’s changed into a spare set of Scott’s clothes, he stuffs his bags in the guest bedroom and he and Scott and Allison head over to the McCall house. Since it’s stopped raining, they take the long way through town so Scott can play tour guide and point out all the changes—Allison moved in during high school, so a lot of the stuff Scott talks about is new to her, too—and Stiles can think about how stuff looks so different to a little child. Even when he remembers something, he can’t really say he remembers it accurately: dimensions are off, things don’t look as cool or scary or boring, buildings are way closer together.
They’re going by a block of shops, Scott and Stiles reminiscing about the candy store that used to be at one end, when Allison suddenly lets out a—it’s kind of a yelp, but it’s just as much of an order as a signal of surprise. And the moment she does it, Scott slams on the brakes, even though he and she are looking in different directions.
Allison grabs Scott’s shoulder and jabs her finger at the windshield, then goes for the door like she’s going to just climb out into the middle of the street. Her one hand goes back up under her jacket and Stiles can almost see some kind of leather harness on her when Scott grabs her arm and yanks her back down.
“Sorry about that,” Scott says. In the same motion, he’s twisted around to look into the backseat where Stiles is. “Stray dog. We’ve got this, uh, the clinic has a drive to try and trap them and get them off the street.”
“Yeah, look, I’m going to text Deaton so he has the coordinates for later,” Allison mutters. She’d shot Scott an annoyed look, and now she shrugs off his hand and bends over something, Stiles is guessing her phone.
“Good idea. When I go help him check on the clinic, we can just come out and do a sweep,” Scott says. He smiles reassuringly at Stiles. “Anyway, sorry, that was kind of rough. But dogs usually come back to the same places so we can just go on to Mom’s place and have dinner.”
Stiles shrugs. “Okay.”
Scott looks relieved and settles back into the wheel. He starts talking about what they’ll be having for dinner, and Stiles plays along, but when they get up to the spot where Allison had been pointing, Stiles takes a good look.
It’s the mouth of an alleyway running between a gardening store’s main building and a greenhouse attached to it. Nobody is in it, and the crates and pots in it look pretty standard, except for a long, sticky-looking slick that crosses the alley a little in from the street. The slick is about a foot wide and curls around a stack of plots before hitting the mulch-strewn ground in front of the greenhouse, where it gets too dispersed to make out. Both the concrete of the alley and the mulch are still thoroughly soaked, but that doesn’t seem to affect the slick on the concrete—at one point the trail is clearly visible at the bottom of a big puddle—and Stiles thinks some of the gleam on the mulch might be slick instead of just plain water.
There’s a smell too. They’re driving a little over the speed limit but they’d have to be going a lot faster to avoid that smell, and even then—it’s just that kind of stench that hangs around like it’s glued there. This stomach-curdling, deep reek, like centuries of rot piled up on each other till it makes your mind wonder just what might have grown up in the bottommost layers.
“I know manure’s supposed to be great for your garden and all, and I’m glad they’re supporting the local farms, but I wish you could deodorize that,” Allison says loudly, over the sharply-increased whisk of the A/C.
“Yep, yeah, that was pretty bad,” Stiles says. “But looks like we’re past it.”
Scott’s already dropped back to precisely the speed limit, which has been how he’s been driving the whole rest of the time, even though next to nobody’s on the roads. Even so, Stiles gets the impression that he’s cut short their scenic detour, and in only a few more minutes, they’ve arrived at the McCall house.
“Stiles, you’re just as handsome as your father,” Melissa says, pulling him into a rib-cracking hug. “Enormous too, God, I remember when you were running around hitting your head on everybody’s knees.”
“You look great too,” Stiles croaks. He’s very sincere about that, and not just because he is massively impressed with what going to night school and getting a forensics degree and becoming the county coroner’s done to Melissa’s upper body strength. “Dad says hi. He’s sorry he couldn’t make it out too, but he says he’ll ground me for anything of yours I mess up. And these are for whatever trouble I’ll get Scott into.”
He hands her the cookies, and sure, they’re gourmet shortbread packed into the best nostalgia that Boston has to offer, but they’re still cookies in a novelty tin. They really don’t merit the wetness that comes into her eyes, or how she squeezes her arm around his waist, going on about how it’s all right, Scott kept right on getting into messes after the Stilinskis moved away so she can’t chalk that all up to Stiles.
“Oh, Allison, your father called,” Melissa says as she shoos them into the dining room. “Something about curfew.”
Stiles raises his brows. “You weren’t kidding when you said the guy’s strict,” he says to Scott.
Who makes a face and glances towards Allison, even though she’s already wandered into the other room to call her father back. “No, Chris and I are fine now,” Scott mutters. Then he seems to realize that’s not really what Stiles was saying and he looks a little nervous for a second. “It’s not her curfew. I told you he’s in charge of preserve security, right? Allison helps him out with that—commencement was just two weeks ago, there’s always a lot of trouble with high school kids going in there and getting drunk and forgetting to put out their bonfires, that kind of thing.”
“Yep, I’ve been there,” Stiles says. “Been there, done that, had to hire the lawyer to expunge the record.”
Scott looks oddly at Stiles again. There’s not a speck of disbelief in his face, but there’s not any alarm or discomfort either. If anything, Scott looks like he’s about to ask for tips, and he’s never been the lawbreaking type.
But then his mom calls them over, asking what they want to drink and then offering them each a beer. She’s got one herself, and has just asked Stiles what his degree is in when Scott suddenly raises his head.
“Mom,” he says.
Melissa looks attentively at him, but Scott’s frozen up, his eyes darting between her and Stiles. He stammers a little and then the doorbell rings.
“That had better not be who I think it is. I told him the morgue isn’t twenty-four-seven,” Melissa mutters, before excusing herself to answer it.
As she walks out, Allison walks in. Allison takes one look at Scott and then cheerfully, with a lot of bustling around, starts to forcibly seat them at the table. “So, Miskatonic University,” Allison says. “I’m going to be honest, I’ve never heard of it, and their website is very…barebones.”
“They don’t believe in marketing themselves, so they put pretty much everything behind a login,” Stiles says. He does take a seat, but makes sure that it’s one where when he leans back, he can see straight down the hallway to the front door. Mostly by attaching himself to the platter of Rice Krispie treat bars near that chair—Melissa really does remember his weak points—and looking so touched by it that Allison can’t have him move down the table. “Really small private college, super-elitist. Super-inbred, to be honest. Most of the students get in with alumni connections, but I lucked out because Dad did a favor for one of the professors and then got a job as the head of campus security…”
He can’t see that much of the visitor past Melissa, who he can tell is annoyed just from how she’s holding her head, but what he does see is thirty-something man, dark wavy hair, handsome face. Smiling a lot, which just seems to tick Melissa off even more. Also, for the first couple seconds, Stiles is wondering whether the guy is going shirtless because there’s neck and neck and collarbone and chest, and then Melissa moves enough for Stiles to finally see where that extremely deep v-neck finally starts.
“Does that mean you went tuition-free?” Allison asks loudly.
Stiles doesn’t even pretend to look back at her. “Yeah, though honestly, I think I kicked back enough in commissions and grants so that they got their money’s worth…that her boyfriend?”
The man on the porch suddenly looks past Melissa’s shoulder, right at Stiles. It’d be creepy except that Stiles is distracted because Scott has just spewed beer across the table. All the way across the table. As in, sprinkled Stiles’ cheek across the table, and when Stiles checks the other man, Scott’s drooped over the table and is coughing furiously while Allison thumps his back and looks alarmed.
“No,” Scott gasps. He shakes his head, rattling the bottom of the beer he’s still clutching against the table, and then levers up his arm under himself for some support. “No. Just—no.”
“Well, I’m…uh, sorry, I was just curious,” Stiles says. He’s a little worried with how long it seems to take Scott to get his breath back. “Because, and I do not mean to imply in any way that I am perving on your mom because I am not like that and my respect for her is deeply-rooted in our childhood, but I was just thinking good on her with the candy, after your jackass dad. I’m really glad you guys dumped him while I was over on the East Coast, by the way.”
Allison doesn’t really look like she approves of this line of conversation, and in fact, is gearing up to tell Stiles so to his face, but a still-coughing Scott stops her. Scott nods a couple times, tries to say something, can’t and just settles for giving Stiles a thumbs-up instead. Stiles grins and drinks some beer, and can’t help being a little amazed that even after all this time, he and Scott just have that immediate wavelength coherence.
“But, no, they’re not,” Scott mutters, as his mom comes back in.
“Who’s not?” Melissa says, eyeing the beer spray on the table.
“You and the guy out there who I thought was your boo,” Stiles explains, since yeah, this one’s on his head.
Melissa cocks her head, then snorts as she pulls out a chair for herself. “Well, I can understand why you’d think that, but I’m not really Peter’s type and thank God but I’ve grown out of looking in those kinds of places.”
“Peter?” Stiles says.
“Otherwise known as the work I wish I didn’t have to be responsible for,” Melissa says. She starts to sit down, then pushes back up again. “Oh, God, and I’m forgetting the oven. Hang on, dinner’s right up. No, don’t help, just sit right there. I want to see your face when you smell it. You were so adorable, Stiles, and I’ve been waiting almost a decade for this.”
* * *
Dinner is fantastic. The roast pork is just the way that Stiles remembers it, and if anything, the beans are even better than his memory.
Stiles doesn’t enjoy it that much. He loves the way it tastes, sure, and catching up with what Melissa’s been doing is both interesting and potentially useful, since the likelihood that Stiles will at one point need to understand California coroner standards is high. But the thing is, Scott keeps checking the time.
Scott does it and his mom catches him and he apologizes. He does it and Allison inflicts under-the-table injuries on him and he smiles apologetically through the pain. He does it and Stiles swallows the urge to ask whether this is what a transcontinental ticket instead of, say, a transatlantic one to certain libraries in Budapest or Prague or Krakow gets him, and instead mentions that if Scott needs to leave early, it’s totally cool. Allison’s going to drive Stiles back and anyway, they have a whole two weeks to get to know each other and all.
“Oh, no, no, it’s okay, my boss said I can wait,” Scott says, while his body language screams like a little kid with a rest area sign coming up on the highway. “It’s just checking in on some puppies. They’re really young, they need feeding every couple of hours, that’s all.”
Allison does a decent job of ducking her wince into a loud slurp at her water glass. Then she yelps and drops her fork. “Sorry,” she says, looking around the table. “Just spilled some on myself. I’m going to go dry myself off, does anybody want anything from the kitchen? Stiles? You want another beer?”
“No, I’m good. I got all that post-commencement partying done before I flew out,” Stiles says. He pokes at the lone bean still on his plate, then gives up with a highly-satisfied groan as Allison disappears into the kitchen. “That was epic. I can feel my dad’s envy all the way from here.”
Melissa laughs and accepts the flattery, and then mentions that she’s got dessert flan waiting. Stiles makes like he’s dying of joy, even sliding down in his seat a few inches, and she laughs and reaches over as she rises to tousle his hair.
“So,” Stiles says, turning to Scott. “I thought you had to go in because the other guy ditched?”
Allison’s too far to hear, but Stiles mistimes his moment because Melissa turns on the kitchen threshold, a look on her face that interestingly crosses confusion and worry—worry for Scott, as if somehow, not knowing what her kid is up to is not the major alarm bell here.
“Um, yeah—yeah! That’s what I mean,” Scott mumbles. He hastily chews through the mouthful of pork, then gulps the last of his beer to wash it down. “Since he’s not showing up, I have to feed the puppies. Bottle-feed. They’re, um, not weaned yet.”
“Everyday heroics for the win,” Stiles says, and Scott relaxes. “You got pics? What kind of puppies are they?”
Scott’s eyes bloom in panic like mandrakes under a worm moon. Fortunately for him, Melissa swoops in to save the day with her phone, and the photos are even from the camera’s photo roll, with the correct date-stamp and everything. Of course, that doesn’t mean she didn’t just download and save a bunch of photos from the Internet, but if she did, she covered her tracks well.
“I’m sorry, I’m probably coming off kind of spastic right now,” Scott says as his mother returns to finding the dessert. He glances at Stiles, fidgeting with his fork, and then starts up and winces as the fork clangs loudly against the rim of his plate. Once he’s slapped the fork down, he winces again, and then he slumps in his chair and sighs. “I’m just—I am really, really glad to see you again, Stiles. And I know it was a long flight for you to get here, and I’m sorry it’s not been too great.”
“I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours,” Stiles says, a little surprised at how forlorn the guy sounds. “I’ll admit to the occasional ADD diagnosis in the past, but even I can’t have gotten bored already.”
“Really?” Scott says, and his face lights up. Real, soft-glow backlighting, like his soul is honestly thrilled and you cannot fake that, and that does not make sense. Neither does the earnest whisper he uses. “Because I was worrying—I know we’re not anything like the East Coast, and you’ve been to all these cool places, I was actually just looking at your latest photos on Facebook right before you landed and Beacon Hills is—I like it here, but even I wouldn’t call it cool.”
“Oh, the Jakarta trip? Yeah, that was awesome, I got to check out this temple they built over a thousand years ago after a mysterious plague—that is. Sure, that stuff is fun, but I mean, they’re kind of business trips too,” Stiles says, hastily changing to a more dismissive tone as Scott starts looking wistful again. “I spend a lot of time catalogizing stuff and finding out I’m allergic to rare strains of library mold.”
“Well, I just want you to enjoy this,” Scott says. “I’m hoping you’ll, um, want to come back.”
It suddenly occurs to Stiles, looking at Scott’s hopeful smile, that his former and maybe-again friend is really paddling hard here, and not just because the water is deep and dark and could swallow a couple antediluvian civilizations without breaking a wave. Scott really is putting out the red carpet, as best he can, and…Stiles is curious as hell about it, but like his dad keeps telling him, sometimes switching off is a good idea. And hey, Stiles did just graduate college and all. He should be off the hook for at least a few months.
Of course, Stiles decides he’ll ease off on the probing and right then is when a loud smashing sound and then a gunshot come from the kitchen.
Scott jumps over the table. Legit jumps it from a sitting position, and clears it without rattling a single plate. That’s left to Stiles, who takes a table corner hard to the thigh and then limps after Scott, cursing under his breath, to find Melissa pointing a huge, nonstandard-issue gun at the shattered kitchen window while Allison, who’s magically armed herself with a small arsenal, is about to knock open the back door to the porch with a souped-up crossbow.
“Please tell me you’re not just going to say it was a raccoon,” Stiles says.
Melissa doesn’t even bother looking back at him. “Stiles, I want you to go back and sit down. You’ll be safe there and we won’t have to worry about you. We’ve got it—”
“That smells like one of the Thousand Young,” Stiles says, as a horrid, gut-wrenching, fetid stench comes in through the window. The kind of stench that picks at your most primal instincts, setting up red flags that stretch all the way back to the misty beginnings of civilization, when mankind still knew with visceral immediacy the strange and terrible dangers that lay in the hidden corners of the earth. Or so said his Intro to Cthulhic Chemistry I professor, and it’s such a good line that Stiles happily deploys it himself. “Mountain ash totally isn’t going to work on that, you’re just gonna have a pain vacuuming it all up later so Scott can actually use the backyard.”
Scott, Allison and Melissa, who are all gasping and gagging at the smell, turn and stare at him. Scott actually manages to lift his head the highest, which is pretty impressive considering Stiles can literally see the muscles in his throat trying to reverse their way out of his skin. Then he throws out an arm, blocking Allison as she swings around like she’s going to aim that explosive-tipped crossbow bolt at Stiles.
“What?” Scott chokes.
Melissa is not telegraphing nearly as much as Allison, with her gun still trained on whatever’s outside, but Stiles knows that glint in her eye very well, seeing as it’s the same look his dad gets whenever somebody threatens repercussions on Stiles if his dad doesn’t give out access to the University’s copy of the Necronomicon. He’s careful to slowly put up his empty hands.
“Scott, you’re a werewolf,” Stiles says. He pauses, both so they can have a nice good think about accidental trigger fingers and he can finish surreptitiously scrawling protective sigils on the linoleum with the toe of his sneaker. He’s usually a fantastic no-look multi-tasker but that double-backwards curlicue, man, it’s a doozy. “Now, this might come as a surprise to you, but I really hope not, seeing as by your Instagram feed, you’ve been that way for a good six, seven years. I’m still debating whether it was sophomore year or junior, since conjunctivitis plus the wrong contact lenses prescription can produce the same squinty sideways eyes of fire look, and your Facebook timeline doesn’t show any long breaks, like maybe you went for a couple weeks to hang with an uncle who just happens to have a conveniently isolated cabin—”
“What do you know about werewolves?” Allison snaps. “Who told you about them, and whose side are you on?”
“Whoa, whoa, hey,” Scott says, sliding his head in the way just as she lifts her crossbow bolt to clear his shoulder. He glances frantically between her and his mom, and then turns to Stiles. “Wait, wait, you—you know?”
“Confirmation, thank you,” Stiles says. Then it occurs to him that sounding self-congratulatory—which wasn’t actually what he meant, but he has a known issue with intent and actual tone mismatching—is not a good thing right now. “I mean, good. Werewolf. Yeah, werewolf, you, okay. That’s cool. It was either that or you’re a rare Valusian serpent-man variant and I hate those guys. I mean, I try not to be speciesist, but yeah. Screw you and your pre-meal chowdown pod-person mindscrews.”
Scott blinks rapidly, clearly attempting to follow that, and then manages to better the majority of Stiles’ fellow scholarship recipients by just junking his attempt and concentrating on what’s important to him. “How does my Instagram tell you that I’m a werewolf?”
“Sudden switch to profile-only or other poses where you’re not making eye-contact with the camera, no night-time selfies whatsoever, followed by gradual reintegration of cloudy-night selfies, increased emphasis on meat in food photos, and following several accounts dedicated to live updates of moon phases and moon-related weather phenomenon,” Stiles rattles off. “Also, duck.”
Stiles is completely prepared for them to not listen to him, so it’s honestly a mindblower when all three of them do. He stares at them staring at him and then recalls himself and throws up his hands in a warding gesture from the Armitage Correspondence, just as something long and thin and unnecessarily slimy tries to spear through the window.
The tentacular whatever sizzles and disappears and is replaced by a disgusting burned smell so strong that they all end up taking a second. Even Stiles, who likes to think his nose has an impenetrable layer of cynicism at this point, stuffs his face into the collar of his shirt and takes refuge in the fresh-breeze scent of whatever detergent Scott uses.
When he pulls his head back out, the back door is open and Allison is standing halfway out on the back porch, crossbow angled at something on the porch in front of her, with an expression of determination crossed with a very much still-live struggle to not throw up on herself. Scott’s sort of bouncing between her and attempting to call somebody on his phone, which is how Melissa manages to come out of nowhere to grab Stiles up by the front of his shirt. She is really strong for a petite woman, and also, she still has that gun.
“Stiles,” she says, looking hard into Stiles’ face. “Do you, in any way, shape, or form, want to hurt my son?”
“What? No, werewolves are fine, they’re chaotic neutral and domestic on top of that,” Stiles says.
Melissa blinks once, then does the Scott thing and gives up on trying to understand him in favor of getting actual information. She’s a lot quicker and more intimidating than her son is about it. “Okay, then do you want to change my son into anything? I don’t care what it is, human again, a better werewolf, whatever you think that means—”
“Wow, look, let’s just—I literally just met the guy after years of separation and obviously, a lot of personal growth in the meantime,” Stiles yelps. “What kind of lunatic agenda-imposers do you have running around here anyway?”
Unsmiling, Melissa continues to stare down into Stiles’ soul, leaving several serious burns on its pride. Then she nods tightly, releases him, and points at the broken window. “Good, you always were a handful, but I also could always count on you to look after Scott. Now, what the hell was that, what did you do, and how fast can the rest of us learn how to do that?”
Stiles still feels a little yelpy, and he’s not too sure it’s the tendency towards instability and panic that close proximity to a Great Old One tends to bring. “Um, again, let’s just…back this up a little. First, do we need corpse-dispos—”
“There’s a slime trail but no body,” Allison calls back.
“Right, well, second, just how long have you been having encounters?” Stiles asks.
“Okay,” Scott says just then. “Deaton says he’s ready when you are.”
“Great,” Melissa mutters. She glances off to the counter, where a truly magnificent-looking flan is waiting, and then she sighs and puts the safety back on her gun. And in an amazing power move, scoops up the flan platter before jerking her chin at Stiles. “Scott, you and him figure out how to get samples for Deaton. Allison, get back in, I need you to call your dad and Laura. Everyone, we’re in the car in ten tops.”