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Danny sits next to Lydia in English Lit, because being near her gives shape to the nagging empty place that Jackson left when he took off. It’s also one of the few times he can talk to her, because sitting with her at lunch gets awkward when her new collection of leather-clad hotties plus Stiles stops all conversation when he joins them. He’s tried, a couple times, and still joins them when it’s just Lydia and Allison and Stiles, but it’s easier for the most part to sit with the rest of the student council or with some of the other guys from lacrosse. He’s pretty sure they’re all still involved in something weird, anyway.
That’s pretty much confirmed after he spots all of them at Jungle the night there’s an electrical issue, and then again the next night when there are electrical issues and an arrest. Scott being supportive of his best friend while he explores his bi side, he can see. Isaac and Boyd hovering like either bodyguards or the biggest cock-blocks in the world? No. They’re not subtle.
Danny doesn’t sit with Lydia at lunch for a while, because she can look after herself and he does not need trouble. He’s got Student Council and he’s captain of the lacrosse team and his boyfriend went to university, with all the attendant long-distance issues.
She sits with him, once, and wants the name of some bouncer at Jungle. It’s supposedly for Stiles, who has a huge crush or something, but Stiles describes the guy way too clinically. He says he’ll do it, of course, because it’s not that big a thing. When he goes on Thursday, he asks Victoria, because Victoria knows everyone and everything. She cocks a painted eyebrow demanding why he wants to know, because the bouncer’s a bit old for him and Victoria’s a very judgemental matchmaker.
Danny rolls his eyes. “Friend of mine having his first big gay crush, I guess.”
She tells him the bouncer’s name and cautions him to make sure his friend is careful, because older men are all sharks. Then she grabs his ass and finds him someone to dance with who won’t expect anything but dancing.
He makes a big mysterious deal of how he acquired the name the next day, because it’s funny as hell and doesn’t hurt anyone, just makes Stiles a little wider-eyed than usual.
He gets a phone call from Jackson, once, in the middle of October. He stares at the phone incredulously for a moment before he picks up. “Where the hell are you? Your dad’s still riding the Sheriff to find you like the whole department are his personal ponies.”
“Tell him to stop looking. I’m fine.”
Danny spins in his computer chair, because this is serious bullshit and he doesn’t want to be typing on his baby when he’s this annoyed. “Tell him yourself.”
“I - stuff got complicated. If I called he’d just want explanations.”
“Are you going to explain anything to me?”
There’s a long pause.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t hang up on you and run a trace before you turn your phone off and then turn your ass in.” He doesn’t start the trace, not yet, because this is Jackson and he’s never violated his electronic privacy before.
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’ve always believed you.”
There’s a voice in the background on Jackson’s end, and then Jackson snarls, a full-out inhuman sound, and Danny tenses. What the fuck is going on?
“I have to go. The douchenozzles I’m with think you were actually serious about the trace, and it’d be a problem if we were caught. Tell my dad I went to Mexico, and talk to - ah, fuck, talk to Stilinski if you want explanations.”
“Stiles? Really?” He hasn’t spoken to Stiles a whole lot since school started, because, while he’s always thought he was decent enough and they were on the same team, he’d kidnapped Jackson last spring. Jackson had complained loudly, in addition to the restraining order, and it had made Danny wary.
“Yeah, he’s safest.”
“Safest? Jackson -”
“Gotta go.”
Jackson hangs up, and Danny seriously considers tracing the call. He does not like being kept in the dark, not at all. But there’s an instinct there, the same one that he’s listened to since he was arrested, saying that the trace is a course of action that leads to trouble. ‘Safest’ is the word that raised the warning bells, because it’s not one he’s heard Jackson use often. Danny wants to know what the hell Jackson’s gotten himself wrapped up in.
Before he can think more about it, Danny calls Jackson’s dad.
He sounds confused when he answers. “Danny?”
“Jackson just called me.”
“Oh my God. Where is he? Is he hurt? Was he kidnapped? Is -”
Danny interrupts him, “He said he’s fine, that he’s in Mexico. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but he said he was safe. I wanted to let you know as soon as he hung up.”
There’s a pause. Danny takes a deep breath and adds, “He said to tell you to stop looking.”
There’s another pause, heavier. “Thank you, Danny.”
Mister Whittemore hangs up, and Danny spares a thought for how none of the Whittemores ever say goodbye. He’s kind of amazed at himself, too, that it hadn’t occurred to him that Jackson could be hurt or dead or held against his will. Those are the standard reasons for someone to be gone almost four months, and Danny knows Jackson, knows that Jackson gets in over his head, and it still hadn’t occurred to him that Jackson’s absence could be anything but voluntary.
He sighs, because this really means no more ignoring the weird shit, and it’s probably going to send his life straight to hell.
He doesn’t talk to Stiles the next day, or even the one after that. Then there’s a lacrosse game, and something goes wrong with the fundraising the Student Council is doing for senior trip scholarships and he needs to deal with that, then there’s the Physics test he really needs to study for.
He doesn’t talk to Stiles, and gradually it becomes a more unreal possibility. Yeah, Stiles is hyperactive and gets himself into as much trouble as he can, but nothing weird has happened since his appearance at Jungle.
Then there’s a grave robbery, and the school is buzzing, because what if it’s the same as the corpse desecrations earlier this fall, and didn’t they arrest that person? Danny ignores it, because it’s gross and macabre and that’s what the police are for.
He sees Lydia having intense conversations with Stiles in the hallway, and wonders what’s up with that. One crisp morning in November, he asks if they’re dating.
“God, no,” she says. “He’s helping me with a project. Don’t ask, you don’t want to know.”
And, well, fuck. That brings it back around to what Jackson said, and Danny apparently can’t stay in the dark without really losing people.
It’s Monday, so there’s no practice. Danny’s pretty sure Stiles isn’t in anything else, so he stakes out Stiles’ Jeep after school. He’ll miss his bus, but Stiles can drive him home. He leans against the side of the Jeep and pulls out his phone to keep himself occupied.
His phone keeps him occupied long enough that he figures Stiles has detention or something, so he goes back inside to look for him. The school’s quiet but not dead silent, so he can’t find him by noise alone. He checks the Chemistry room first, because Harris hates him and would totally find a reason to give Stiles detention even though he’s not in his class anymore. It’s a dead end, as is the library. The locker room’s his next stop, because, as unlikely as it is that Stiles would put in any extra practice with how often he skips regular practice, anywhere else he can think of is more unlikely. As he approaches the room, he can hear people inside, the slam of a locker, and shakes his head, because Stiles would be way better off if he actually showed up to practice rather than goofing around with probably-Scott.
It doesn’t occur to him that it’ll be anyone but Stiles and Scott in there until he opens the door. It’s . . . an interesting tableau. There’s Stiles, sitting on a bench and twirling his lacrosse stick. There are also three sets of eyes trained on him: Boyd, hulking behind Stiles with his arms crossed; an older stranger, terrified and desperate; and Isaac, pinning the stranger to the lockers right in front of Stiles.
“-territory,” Stiles is saying. He apparently notices he’s lost everyone’s attention, and flails around to look at Danny. “Hey,” he says, drawing out the vowels.
Part of Danny wants to just back out and hope that they can all agree that he was never here. Part of him wants to keep watching, because Jackson had called Stiles safe, and this right here looks for all the world like Stiles has henchmen and no one with henchmen is ever safe.
Also: Stiles with henchmen.
Stiles licks his lips and says, “Yeah, okay,” like there’s been some kind of discussion going on and he’s agreeing to something. “Danny, take a seat. James and I won’t be long.” He turns back to the guy Isaac has pinned, and twirls the lacrosse stick, and his voice goes hard. “Will we, James?”
James stops looking at Danny, trains his eyes on Stiles. “I didn’t violate the code! I didn’t want to cause trouble, I was just looking for a pack and heard the Hales were expanding.”
“So you thought the best way to announce your presence was a grave robbery?”
If Stiles knows, absolutely, that this is the guy, why aren’t the police here? Danny doesn’t like this. Doesn’t like any of this, not at all. And Hale? Like Derek Hale, previous murder suspect?
Danny wonders if this is a gang thing, and, if so, how he’s going to get out of it.
“Yes! To show you I could follow the code, that nothing living -”
Isaac snarls, and shoves James harder against the lockers. Danny could swear it looks like they bend a little, and he sinks down onto the end of the bench.
“You’ve been here three days. We knew. We didn’t approach you because we thought you were just passing through, and didn’t want to delay you. You know why we didn’t want to delay you? Because we’re not expanding. There is no Rush Week for the Hale pack. You’re not welcome, and, as soon as you can guarantee that you won’t come back, you’ll be escorted to the territory line.”
Boyd is still watching him, and it’s disconcerting. Danny hadn’t even really been aware of Boyd before he became one of the leather triplets.
James is wide-eyed, panicking, and it makes Danny feel sick to his stomach. This is bullying and gross, and normally he’d say something, but this is also weird as hell. Danny’s not sure he’s allowed to leave.
James swallows hard and squeaks out, “I want to talk to your alpha. I can’t be turned away just that casually.”
Isaac grins disturbingly.
Stiles barks out a laugh. “No, you really don’t. Right now he’s at the Sheriff’s office, planning the best evidence to plant so that you don’t get arrested until Sacramento but this department still gets all the credit.”
“What?” James scrabbles at the lockers, to get away or keep himself upright.
“We’re big fans of law enforcement here in Beacon Hills, especially with elections only a few months away.”
Wow, what the shit. What the actual shit. Danny should never have gotten out of bed today. Concern is spiking to panic, and Boyd makes an abortive move towards him that makes it worse. Stiles glances over, then back to James, like Danny is just something he’s going to deal with later. “Plus, the whole letting you go thing was my idea. Our alpha wanted to kill you and spread your entrails at the boundary, but I told him it’d be more effective if you could tell people to stay away from Beacon Hills with your words.”
James’ eyes light up - actually light up, like something in him is on fire - and his face twists, and keeps twisting. He lunges forward, desperate, but he’s stopped short by Isaac’s hand going into his chest, fingertips first.
Blood blooms on the shirt.
Isaac withdraws his hand, and he has freaky claws where his nails should be.
“Yeah, Boyd and Isaac will take you to the highway now. Don’t resist arrest and don’t shift. We don’t give a shit what you do to get out of jail, if you even do, as long as you don’t come back.” Stiles sits up, sits back, a signal that the conversation’s over that Danny is more used to seeing from his dad.
James clutches his chest and looks down, then up at Stiles like Stiles is going to personally rip his face off. Which, given the last ten minutes, Danny wouldn’t be all that surprised by.
Stiles jerks his chin at Isaac, who darts a glance at Danny. Danny holds his hands up in the air in the universal position of ‘I’m unarmed please don’t kill me.’ Boyd’s still looking at him, too.
“Go,” Stiles says, sounding exasperated.
Isaac grabs James by the back of the neck and drags him out of the room, and Boyd follows, casting one last look back at the two of them, like he’s worried about Stiles. Danny doesn’t quite get that, because henchmen and threatening people don’t go along with vulnerable in his head, but Boyd finally leaves.
The silence in their wake stretches out. “So,” says Stiles.
“What the hell was that?” Danny demands. “I know you got into some weird stuff, but that was way more illegal than tracing a text. And Jackson said you were safe.”
Absurdly, Stiles perks up at that. “He said that? Wait, you heard from him? When? Where is he? Did he say anything about coming back?”
Okay, this is the hyperactive kid he knows. He knows how to respond to this. “I’m not answering anything until you tell me what the hell is going on.”
Stiles is still fiddling with the lacrosse stick, but in the same way he fiddles with everything, not with deliberate menace. “Ah, werewolves. Lots of werewolves. Basically everything is werewolves except for the stuff when Jackson was a murdering lizard vengeance-creature, and that was all Matt anyway. I should really just make a pamphlet, since I always end up doing the explaining. Do you think I should make a pamphlet? Or maybe a PowerPoint or something so I can have more pictures. Or just a poster, like one of the motivational ones, with Derek doing the red eyes thing and the caption would just be Werewolves: the source of all your problems. If I could get Derek to do it shirtless, everyone would buy one and not even care that they thought we were crazy, right?”
“Werewolves,” Danny finds himself repeating. He mentally revisits the last few minutes, inserting capital letters. That really makes a lot of sense, and when exactly did he lose control of his life that werewolves make sense? “So Isaac and Boyd and Derek Hale, really? And you? And Jackson’s a what?”
Stiles winces visibly. “Yeah and no and a werewolf, now. He died and when he came back Lydia saved him and then he died again and now he’s a werewolf and last any of us had heard of him he was off finding himself or something with a bunch of people who tried to kill us all over the summer.”
“You should definitely make a pamphlet, because you are awful at this.” Danny takes a deep breath and flops over backwards, because he feels shaky now that his body is realizing that no one is actively trying to kill him right now and it really doesn’t need all that adrenaline. He starts prioritizing his questions as he stares at the ceiling. Miraculously, Stiles stays silent. “Is this something where you tell me and then have to kill me?”
“No! God, no. We just need you to not tell anyone else.”
Danny nods, because that’s a way bigger relief than he expected it to be. “Okay. Do I have to become a werewolf now that I know?”
It’s not a question of whether people become werewolves or just are: he’s pretty sure Erica’s one, too, from the company she keeps, and her sudden transformation last year seems like just that, rather than a natural growth.
“No. Allison and I aren’t, and Derek says packs usually have humans in them - though you don’t have to join the pack, not at all, Allison hasn’t, and my dad hasn’t, not really, though he’s getting more okay with the whole thing. Oh, and my dad’s human, too. And Lydia’s not a werewolf.”
Danny turns his head to take a look at Stiles, because he sounds way more subdued than usual. When he sees Danny looking at him, his mouth twists, and Danny can’t tell if that’s a good or bad expression. “Oh my god, that time in Jungle with the paralysis -”
“Yeah, that was freaky werewolf shenanigans. Well, mostly it was Jackson, but everything’s kind of werewolf shenanigans, even the witch thing and the thing with Lydia’s family.”
Stiles is really awful at explanations. Danny wonders again why on Earth Jackson suggested coming to him: he’s obviously not all that safe, and he’s not all that coherent.
“McCall’s one, too, isn’t he?” That was the only thing that made sense, given the way the two of them were joined at the hip, and the way Scott had suddenly gotten competent at lacrosse where he hadn’t been before.
“Yeah, just - wow, basically this whole thing is like a solid year of drama and craziness, and I wanted to tell you after Jackson took off, because we really need someone else who’s sensible to help with research, but the whole secrecy thing is kind of important, especially since the Argents would rather we just not exist, let alone tell people we exist.”
Danny blinks slowly and contemplates how well it will go if he tells Stiles that he’s done and never wants to think about any of this ever again or talk to anyone involved, and then remembers that the reason he’s here is Jackson. “Why did Jackson take off?”
Stiles shakes his head. “Some douchey finding himself thing. We’re just hoping he doesn’t actually kill anyone.”
Danny finds himself opening his mouth to defend Jackson, then shuts it. The rules, apparently, are different here. Then he asks, “Is that an actual possibility?”
Stiles huffs out a breath. “Yeah.” He doesn’t tack more words on, and so the statement is just stark and awful.
“Look, if I promise not to tell anyone, can I just go home now? This is - a lot.”
Stiles dips his head, and Danny wonders why he’s so deep in this and not just supporting Scott with Scooby snacks or something. “Of course. Look, I’ll text you the access stuff to a database, okay? I know it’s a lot to take in, but the database is - it makes it normal, and it can probably answer any questions you have.”
He takes out his phone and looks at it and says, “Sorry, I have to run, we still have some stuff to take care of.”
He’s gone before Danny can say anything. It takes Danny a moment to pull himself together, but when he does, he swings to his feet and runs after Stiles, because he doesn’t have a ride.
The Jeep is pulling out of the parking lot as he hits the doors, so Danny resigns himself to the long walk home. His sister looks up from her homework when he comes in and frowns at him. “You’re late.”
“Missed the bus.” He tromps to his room and sets down his bag and kicks off his shoes and boots up his computer. There’s no email in his inbox, which only makes sense if Stiles was dealing with something, but Danny’s over being shell-shocked, and he wants data. He sends an email to the address that Jackson’s hopefully too smart to be checking anymore, just a quick why didn’t you tell me? yourself?? months ago??? to vent his frustration and opens an incognito window and starts googling.
Two hours later, when he’s called to dinner, he’s made zero progress on his homework and probably too much progress on a couple of sketchy fiction sites.
Dinner takes too long, but luckily his sister is excited about something for her English class, so he doesn’t have to talk much. When he’s finished helping with the dishes, he checks his email again, and there it is, finally, an email from Stiles with a website and a login and password.
He logs in and immediately changes his password, and it’s surprisingly normal: a cloud-based database site, with notations and categories and fields to enter notes. Danny looks up werewolves first. The article’s long, and fairly detailed, and there are notes as to contributors and sources. It covers abilities, which sound frankly awesome, and the influence of the moon, which sounds unnerving, and how one becomes one, and that paragraph has a link to a thing called a kanima, and Danny opens that in another tab. Lower down, there’s a section on packs, and a little subheader that links to witches of all things. Danny opens that in a new tab, too, and then reads about alpha packs. It doesn’t say how someone becomes an alpha, which is annoying, but of course Stiles wouldn’t have an actual complete database. Maybe he just doesn’t know..
Then there’s a bit about how aconite poisoning is best treated with the exact variety of wolfsbane that was used in the first place, and mountain ash can be used for containment.
He reaches the end, and sits back in his chair. Werewolves. He’s going to need to have a long talk with someone about the animal attacks from last year, and see how many of his friends are murderers. The thought is strange and surreal and makes the distance to the desk suddenly seem like miles and angled. He closes that tab and looks at the witches tab instead so he can resubmerge himself in information. It’s shorter, just saying that witches can be born or can acquire power later, that they can use a variety of magical objects, which are required to focus power, with a link to an article on mountain ash that he opens in another tab, that they typically work in covens, and that to avoid the ghost issue, Stiles can just take their power.
Which, what?
He clicks the link to the ghost article, and it’s barely a paragraph.
Ghosts come into being either upon the murder of a magic-user or at being called into existence by a magic user. Rituals for calling ghosts include chalk, and are painful for a living creature. The fresher the corpse, the stronger the ghost, with murdered magic users being the strongest and often keeping their powers in death.
Murder.
The witch article had talked around murder - actually, had completely lacked that information. If they’re using this to keep track of things that go bump in the night, knowing how to kill them seems like pretty basic info. Information that had been missing completely from the werewolf article, too, and even if that made sense since apparently most of them were werewolves and wouldn’t want to kill each other, the source notes included the word Argent as well as Hale, and Stiles had said Allison wasn’t a werewolf. Danny narrows his eyes at the screen and right clicks and clicks ‘view page source.’
It takes a moment or two of scrolling before he finds the permissions section. The code’s simple, and kind of a mess, but that’s to be expected from a free hosting site and Stiles’ customization. Danny runs his hand up and down his forearm as he stares at it. The section on fighting is turned off. The section on experience is turned off. The section on stiles_spec is turned off. The section on pack is set to min.
That’s interesting.
What initially lead to his arrest was an abject refusal to be denied information he wanted. He’s tried to curb those impulses since then, and has mostly succeeded, because stark interrogation rooms are goddamn terrifying. He’s made himself be cool with not prying into people’s business, and that’s actually lead to people telling him things of their own volition. That makes the scope of what Jackson - everyone else, but mostly Jackson, because Jackson knows - has been lying to him about completely unacceptable.
It’s not even a conscious decision when he opens up a sandbox to start working in. Half-truths are dangling in front of him, and he needs to fix it, needs it like burning. His need for information has always been more pressing than any boner.
He clicks around the website to find the user list, and the vet's interesting, but not what he's looking for. Except maybe it is, or part of it. He extracts all the information he can from that page, and then starts cracking his way into the admin side.
It takes time to get in, and it’s tempting to just take away Stiles’ admin privileges, but he takes another look at the werewolf page before he does it, because he finally has access to the information, and then he can’t.
He’s looking at a whole long list of ways to hurt or kill his best friend, and it’s a list of the same things that will kill Stiles’ best friend, and he can’t really blame Stiles for not wanting to share that. So he just sets his permissions to maximum on everything and reads until his eyes start burning.
He has nightmares about glowing eyes hunting him from behind lines of code, and wakes up wanting to punch Jackson in the face.
While he showers, he wonders how much time getting involved with them will take, if he can afford it on top of his other extracurriculars. Scott and Stiles and Jackson hadn’t missed that many lacrosse practices, even when Jackson was apparently a brainwashed were-lizard. Stiles looks perpetually sleep-deprived, though, and Lydia had the whole disappearing thing going on, and three quarters of Allison’s family is dead and she looks like a wraith herself. Preventing grave robberies and assaults and assorted evil is a good thing to do, unquestionably so, but Danny is just human, only human, and not sure he wants to change that.
But he can move their database to a secure server, and make his skills available. It’s more defensible - to himself, if not to Homeland Security - to crack in the name of fighting evil than in the name of fun. He should probably restrict himself to that, if they even want him involved at all. Stiles had said they could use help with research, but he is way too busy for that. Besides, it looks like there’s nothing in town now, nothing on the horizon, no reason to put himself through the wringer for more data, not if their only problems can be solved with Stiles menacing someone.
They waited until everything was over to tell him, until his best friend was dead and risen again and run off with murderers. He doesn’t need to help them at all. Danny turns off the water with an unnecessarily vicious twist.
He catches the bus to school, and sees Stiles and Isaac loitering with intent near the door. He nods at them, acknowledgement without putting anything friendly in it. He hasn’t decided whether he wants anything to do with their group, not yet. There are too many factors, not least among them the apparently very real possibility of death and inevitability of trauma. He doesn’t really pay attention in his first class, doodling idly as he considers.
By lunch he knows there was never really any choice, now that he knows. He’s kind of cranky about it. He sits with Stiles and the wolves, and it makes sense, now, why Stiles and Scott don’t sit together anymore, because Stiles joining a pack without Scott was kind of a douche move, even if there was no other choice. They look at him with assorted bad poker faces, Isaac looking on the verge of fear, as if Danny’s any match for someone superpowered. “Is it okay with Derek that you told me?” he starts off.
“It’s fine,” Stiles says.
Erica snorts derisively, and Danny looks at her. “What he means is that our fearless leader doesn’t argue with him, because he’s afraid that if he does Stiles will find an excuse to kiss him again.”
“Hey!”
Danny raises his eyebrows at them. He’d thought that Stiles’ repeatedly asking if he was attractive to gay guys had been purely to be an annoying shit, not in a serious spirit of inquiry.
Stiles shrugs. “Anyway, yeah, it’s fine, as long as you’re not planning to tell people or try to join up with Chris Argent for a murder spree.”
“I was thinking I’d join up with you guys instead.”
Everyone stills, and Danny wonders if he’s misstepped, if this was going to end in rejection for him.
“You want the bite?” Stiles asks carefully.
Oh. “No - or I mean, not yet, not for a long time, but I was thinking: Stiles, you said you could use help with research. I don’t have time for in-depth projects, nothing like what you do, but I can move your hosting somewhere more secure if you want, and I can help you find particular pieces of information that you might not normally have access to.” He holds Stiles gaze until he’s sure that Stiles knows what’s on offer.
Stiles smiles slow. “That sounds great.”
“Also,” Danny says, and then takes a slow bite of his lunch, savoring the build-up, “the security on your database is shit. I’m going to fix it tonight, keep all your secrets safe.” He watches Stiles’ eyes go wide, the panicked look he sends at the rest of the pack, and repeats, firm, “All of them. Though would you mind giving me a ride home after practice? I have a couple questions.”
Stiles relaxes infinitesimally. “Yeah, okay. Erica, you can drive Boyd and Isaac home, right?”
Erica says, “Fine.”
That’s all of them, now, that he’s seen defer to Stiles easily. It’s interesting. Danny wants to see how the whole of them interact, wants to see the pack in action.
Isaac grins at him. “It’ll be cool to have another person who knows. Especially one who’s not trying to kill us.”
“Yeah, your lives sound kind of awful. I want it known that I am not down for being kidnapped and I’m not going out in the woods after dark for either love or money. I am strictly your computer guy.”
“Can I have his terms?” Boyd asks.
Stiles claps him on the shoulder. “No way,” he says cheerfully.
*
At practice, McCall looks at Danny like he’s murdered a puppy or something, and he tackles too hard. When he goes down for the second time, Danny stares at the blue overhead and contemplates his life choices. Boyd offers him a hand up, glaring at McCall over him. It’s Stiles who smacks McCall on the back of his helmet, though.
“Chill, dude.”
“I can’t believe you’d let him get involved!” Scott hisses, the volume control broken enough that Danny can hear him clearly. “It’s dangerous!”
“His choice, Scott.”
Scott juts out his chin, and it’s really not an attractive look on him. “You’re a hypocrite if you’re going to turn him when you don’t want the bite yourself. You know it’s a curse!”
Stiles looks impossibly sad and tired and far away. “Danny, do you want to just go home?”
“Yeah, let me talk to Coach.” He glances at Boyd, still hulking next to him, then starts off slowly for Finstock. Showing any kind of ability to move quickly will make it that much harder to beg off on the premise of not feeling well.
Finstock looks up from his clipboard when Danny’s a conversational distance from him. “Mahealani, go home. I’m going to just have McCall run suicides if he can’t keep it in his pants. He’s as bad as Lahey.”
“Thanks, Coach. Is it okay if Stiles drives me? I don’t have a car.”
“Bilinski? Yeah, sure, take him.” Finstock flaps his clipboard at him. “Get lost, and don’t you dare be concussed tomorrow.”
“Yes, Coach.” Vaguely pleased with being let go so easily, he waves Stiles over and starts walking to the locker room to grab his stuff.
Stiles jogs it, so they hit the door at the same time, and it’s weird to be here with him when he’s just being himself, not terrorizing werewolves. “Sorry about Scott,” he says. “He just -”
“He never wanted to be a werewolf. Yeah, it’s in your notes - I got myself access. If you’re telling me things, you’re telling me all the way.”
Stiles stumbles on his own feet, but stays upright. “I - okay, yeah, we can do that. But full disclosure to everyone, even everyone who already has access, isn’t a good idea. And we shouldn’t talk yet.”
“Werewolf hearing?”
Stiles nods. Danny looks at him, at the way his face has gone leaner and unexpectedly fierce, and is glad he didn’t think Stiles was all that attractive before, because then he wouldn’t be able to appreciate this transition. It’s just appreciation, though, and he’s happy for it, because he doesn’t want any more werewolf drama than what he’s chosen for himself, and Stiles seems to be ass-deep in it.
Danny doesn’t bother showering, just grabs his stuff, and Stiles follows suit. Stiles walks quickly through the school and out to his Jeep, and Danny follows him. If Stiles moved with this kind of hustle on the field, he’d be a much more reliable player. He climbs into the passenger seat as Stiles says, “So where are we going?”
“925 Rowan street.”
Stiles snorts, and Danny wants to know why, but he still interrupts when Stiles starts to talk. “Not until we’re at my house. I don’t want to shout over your Jeep.”
Stiles nods, and drives, and it’s only a few minutes later that he pulls to a stop on Danny’s street and kills the engine and pulls the brake.
They go in, and Stiles is perfectly polite to his parents, somehow knows that his mom kept her own name, and Danny somehow shepherds him upstairs without incident. Danny takes his desk chair, and Stiles perches on the side of the bed.
“So how’d you get to be in the pack?” There’s no question that Stiles is, but he hadn’t recorded how he got that way, hadn’t really recorded any of his personal experiences, just the conclusions he drew from them.
“How much did you read?” Stiles is still in a way Danny hasn’t seen before, though to be honest he hasn’t paid that much attention. It’s just very counter to his image of the constantly-flailing spaz who somehow managed to be a half-decent lab partner for most of last year.
“Everything on werewolves and witches and the kanima. Do you really think that the magic you took is hurting everyone?”
His mouth twists. “They’d all been getting pretty controlled on the full moon. It’s mostly because it was a lot of power and, like, I’m a moped with suddenly a fuckton of jet fuel on my hands. They’re getting the rest of it, but it’s really not a big pack, and we’ve had - incidents.”
“The girls bathroom?”
“Erica heard a couple people talking shit about her.”
Danny raises an eyebrow. “But Lydia’s awful to her all the time.”
Holding up both hands, Stiles says, “I don’t even ask about that. Somehow it makes them friends. Anyway, yeah, Derek made me pack by just kind of declaring it, but that was only kind of working, so then we kissed - you read the thing on body fluids, right?”
“Yeah. So if I wanted to be pack, all I’d have to do is make out with you?”
Stiles makes a complicated face. “Not that I am not super down for experimenting with that, at length, and aiming for statistical rigor, but I’m pretty sure that’s an alpha thing.”
They sit in silence a moment, and Danny is just not going anywhere near that. “So that leaves blood, right? Does it have to be like a blood relative thing, which I think’d be difficult to pull off, or can it be -”
“Peter’s notes say blood brothers are pack, too.”
“Peter’s the psycho killer zombie?”
“Yeah. But we’ve got him and werewolf hunters and shit I find on the internet.” He stops, twitches, and seems to go back a couple steps. “You want to be pack?”
“I definitely don’t want to be a werewolf, at least not yet. But it seems like it would maybe be helpful to the pack, and it’d also give me a distress signal in case of kanima attack or whatever the next thing is.” Danny also just wants to belong again, in the way he hasn’t since Jackson left and Finstock made him team captain and he had to make decisions that affected other people. The groups he’s in, the friends he has, they’re great, but they’re not the same. If he can do this without changing species, that’s even better. “So, blood brothers?”
“Okay, yeah, we can do that.” Stiles nods..
There’s no point in delaying, not really. “Do you want to do it now?”
“I - yeah, okay. Just - this isn’t reversible. And I don’t know if it’ll give you access to magic. It might just hurt a lot, and I really don’t want that to happen to you, because it was fucking awful.”
“You said in your notes that it spread out when you connected to the pack, that it stopped hurting.”
Stiles ducks his head. “Yeah. I just don’t want - this is a big thing. I don’t want you to regret it.”
It is a big thing, big and faintly monstrous and probably not all that revocable. Danny nods his head sharply. “Yeah. I’m going to get a knife.”
He leaves Stiles in his room, which is a little uncomfortable. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Stiles, it’s just that Stiles isn’t someone he’s used to having in his personal space. And, well, he doesn’t trust Stiles. His arrest record was supposed to be private, law enforcement only, sealed in just two years and hidden from everyone.
He gets a plate and crackers from the cupboards and some summer sausage from the fridge, because his parents are in the living room on the way to the stairs. He gets two steak knives from the block, because that’s excusable as one for each of them, and also means that if they want a snack after they don’t have to use a knife covered in blood. Danny thumps his head against the cupboard door. He’s really going to do this. Twenty-five hours ago he had no idea werewolves existed, and now he’s going to join a pack.
He’s not having second thoughts: it’s just insane, so he should be. He sighs, and heads back upstairs.
Stiles doesn’t look like he’s moved: he’s sitting there looking at his phone and jiggling his knee. He looks up a little wild-eyed when Danny comes into the room, and exhales shakily. “Okay, let’s do this. Just so you know, I don’t have any blood-borne pathogens or anything, so you’re not going to die horribly from coming in contact with my blood.”
Danny raises his eyebrows. “Er, same?”
“Shut up,” Stiles says. “My mom and Ms. McCall tag-teamed me and Scott and got us thoroughly indoctrinated.”
“That’s actually kind of adorable,” Danny says, and puts down the plate. He hands Stiles one of the knives. “Let’s get this over with.”
Stiles takes a deep breath, and then draws the knife firm over his hand. He doesn’t wince, but blood wells in his palm as he hands the knife to Danny.
Anywhere he cuts is going to be awkward as it heals, so Danny just swipes the knife quickly over his heartline. It hurts, and he hisses, and it’s not as deep as Stiles’, but the blood’s still there, and he holds his hand out to Stiles. Stiles laces their fingers together and presses hard, smearing their bloody hands against each other.
It’s electric, and hums blue and acid as it races through him and out, out, tracing the edges of some new boundary of him that touches on other people. In the first breathless moment of it, he thinks he can tell them apart, too, the dense dark of Stiles in front of him and a note of loyal red and metallic blue tangled in each other at a distance and elusive green and bruised purple and startled fire starting to move towards them and, far away, brittle water. Danny blinks at Stiles, and says, half questioning, “Jackson.”
Stiles rubs his non-bloody hand over his mouth. “That was not what I expected.”
“Wow, so reassuring.”
Both of their phones go off, Stiles’ a little earlier than Danny’s. Jackson snarls at him, “What did you do?”
“Welcome to the Hale pack,” he bitches, still shaken, as he stares at the healed line on his palm that was bleeding just a moment ago.
“What the Hell, Danny?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Danny gears up for argument as Stiles sighs and puts away his phone and opens the window.
“Oh, like you would have believed me when I’m not even there to show you. What did you do?” There’s an inhuman edge to Jackson’s voice, almost a growl.
“I can’t believe you ran off without even telling me what was here. Did you know that since you left there’s been a necromancer who decided to invade Jungle, actual fucking fairies, and an omega werewolf in the boys locker room? I could have died without even knowing how to start protecting myself.” Danny tracks how Stiles flops back on his bed and starts drumming on his own ribs, like he’s waiting for something, and gets back to yelling at Jackson. It’s been a long time coming. “You abandoned me completely even before you left, but I didn’t say anything because I knew you needed space, and I was respecting your goddamn boundaries while you were going to let me die.” He says it viciously, because he knows it’ll wreck Jackson, and because it’s true.
“Nothing was going to happen to you!”
“In. The. Boys. Locker room,” he bites out, and then loses his train of thought, because someone’s coming through his window. There’s a person coming through his second-floor bedroom window. “I have to go,” he says, and hangs up.
“Derek, I’m sorry, I didn’t know he’d be a package deal with Jackson,” Stiles says.
Danny really has the worst taste in guys. Barry, who ended up being on the wrong side of thirty. Matt, who ended up being a serial killer. ‘Miguel,’ who is apparently Derek Hale, murder suspect, alpha werewolf, and watching Stiles like he’s the predator in the room. “You shouldn’t be adding people to my pack at all. I’m the alpha. You’re just human, the pack witch, you shouldn’t - you don’t get to decide.”
Stiles waves his hands sharply. “You’re the one who said no to that omega -”
“Because he was breaking the rules!”
“And you know it’s getting worse, you know it is, and this wasn’t even completely about that - Danny helps! You should remember that Danny helps, he’s going to help us again, he just doesn’t want the bite yet, and I didn’t think it would even be a big deal who added him, because it just needed to happen -”
Derek’s posture is tight and defensive as he prowls forward. He interrupts again, “You’re not the alpha, Stiles. You should have come to me and asked, sent him to me.”
Danny is not used to being sidelined in his own bedroom. The two of them are orienting to each other like they’re spoiling for a fight, and they seem to have forgotten about him despite the fact that he’s the topic of conversation. It’s more than a little insulting. He cuts in, “According to Stiles’ notes, the natural evolution of a witch is to draw in more energy from their surroundings to go with their expanded capacity. So the work he’s done since he caved and went to Deaton? He’s pretty sure that’s why everyone’s been on edge, and that adding members to the pack or big works of magic are going to be the only way to get it under control. Of course, he’s got boatloads of trust issues, which is why he hasn’t told anyone and was totally on board with driving away that other werewolf.”
Derek looks at him, then back at Stiles, and his eyebrows make some kind of accusatory speech.
Stiles throws his hands up. “Secrets! I told you they were important.”
“Yeah, well, this one was stupid. No side effects, by the way. I’m not suddenly consumed by the need to get a bunch of cats and kidnap children to eat.” He waits a beat, and it’s only quiet because they’re still surprised. “Just in case you were concerned at all.”
“Shit, Danny -”
“Jackson’s on his way here.”
“Oh,” Stiles says, eyes going distant. “Yeah.”
“He’s coming home?” Danny feels hope spring up hard in him. He just really wants to see Jackson again and either hug him or punch him in his stupid smug face, wants to make sure Mrs. Whittemore gets some goddamn closure. Lydia might even stop looking so sad when she thinks no one is looking.
“You think they’ll let him go just like that?”
Derek raises his eyebrows and makes a sharp sort of bitch-face.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Stiles says. “Who knows why they let him stick around in the first place? At least we’ll be able to keep tabs on him now in case they don’t - in case he runs into trouble.”
“If something comes after him, will you help?”
Derek looks at Danny, finally, and he stops looking quite so angry. “He’s pack now. And so are you.”
Stiles grins triumphantly. “He means of course.”