Chapter Text
Doing his evening workout routine has hardly taken any effort since he became a werewolf, so he tries to push it, push himself, and take it further, until he can actually feel the effort. It fills the evenings when Allison’s out with her new boyfriend and Stiles is too busy with his shiny new pack to spend time with his best friend. Scott tries not to feel too overwhelmingly bitter about it, but it’s hard. It’s hard, because Stiles said he’d always be there, and then he joined another pack.
And now his pack has fucking Jackson in it, and Stiles’ dad is dealing with his return even more seamlessly than he dealt with Peter’s, and Jackson’s spending days in the counselor’s office as they look at where his absence puts his schedule.
Scott stops riding his bike to work, because it’s more work to run, and then it’s easier to take off right after for the far side of town, away from the Hale house, and run through the Preserve there. It conveniently gets him out of the way of Derek’s pack as well as where Allison used to run. He doesn’t even know if she runs anymore, because they don’t talk anymore.
Scott runs harder. He said he’d wait for her, and he meant it, but he just wants to fast-forward through all the waiting.
Maybe on the other side Stiles won’t be a douche, too. Scott sees more of Isaac than Stiles lately, even though Isaac smells like Derek. Scott still hates Derek for taking away his chance to be normal. He hates who he turns into around Derek, too, because he’s colder and meaner. The werewolf business is turning him into a monster, and he has no idea how to stop it.
It’s changing all of them, and he’s never going to get over watching Stiles draw a knife down his arm, perfectly calm and practical, and then writhe in pain a few hours later. That was worse than when Allison tried to kill him, because getting rid of monsters is kind of the sane response.
He really hopes her dad doesn’t convince her of that long-term, though. He doesn’t want to be alone. Even being in this waiting place is eating at him, the longing for a pack gnawing beneath his skin. He clenches his fists as he runs, so that he can ignore the way his claws slip out, the way they slide into his skin.
He’s healing slower now that he’s alone. Isaac had noticed a bruise after lacrosse practice, once, had commented too low for humans to hear that the pack - like they’re the only one, like Scott has no one - has been healing even faster since Stiles joined, a side effect of his stolen magic. Because that’ll make him feel better about it, knowing that Stiles’ abandonment improved the lives of others.
Well, it would, actually, if said others didn’t include Derek. Derek’s been the harbinger of everything awful in his life for nearly a year, now.
“Hey, wanna come out to the Hale house with me?”
Scott looks disbelievingly at Stiles. “No.”
Stiles tightens his mouth and nods. “Okay, let me put it this way, then: you’re coming with me to the Hale house after school. No one will be there but us, but you’re definitely coming.”
“What don’t you understand about no?”
He shrugs, the kind of agitated tense move that Scott is used to getting him into trouble. Scott rolls his head back, cracking his neck, because he’s already halfway to giving in. Stiles has been getting him in trouble for years, and if it means Scott’ll get his bro back, it might actually be almost worth it. Stiles says, “Okay, yeah, you totally don’t have to go. It’s only like a sixty percent chance of me passing out and dying of exposure if I go on my own.”
Scott sighs gustily. “Fine. I’ll meet you in the parking lot after the bell.”
Stiles nods and pushes off his locker, heading off to his class just as the bell rings. Scott’s probably going to be late now, because he’s all the way over in the Physics room for first period. Fuck his life.
He makes it through the day, through the grind of class and the worse grind of lunch, with Allison smelling gorgeous and sitting with Lydia and her friends, talking about - something, honestly, he’s not paying attention to anything over there except Allison’s smell - and Derek’s pack shooting him significant looks, even Isaac who hasn’t sat with anyone but them since Jackson came back, and Stiles and Danny talking about magic quietly like this is something either of them should be involved with at all.
When he gets to the parking lot after school, Stiles is already there, twirling his keys on his finger. “Glad you decided to show, Scott.”
It’s faintly accusatory, and Scott does not deserve that. Not all the times he’s been trying to handle way too many things and saved Stiles’ ass anyway. “Screw you, dude.”
Stiles winces. “Yeah, I - just get in the car. We’re - well, me, actually - I’m doing a thing. You’re going to watch, because I don’t think you really understand.”
“What’s to understand? You have a pack now.” He can’t help but say it resentfully. It’s been getting harder to bite back telling Stiles exactly how he feels about being left alone. Stiles had said it was vital, but he could have found a better way, if he really wanted to.
Revving the Jeep, Stiles flexes a muscle in his jaw. He doesn’t say anything, though, which is how Scott knows this is important to him. Stiles only ever shuts up when he has feelings, which is basically the most annoying thing in the world. Scott doesn’t want to poke at him to get him to talk, and shouldn’t have to, so he just stares out the window and they drive in silence.
The leaves in the woods are mostly changed, the trees starting to look as bare and skeletal as they were when Scott was bitten. It’s only been eleven months since he was bitten and everything changed, and nothing shows any signs of improving, let alone going back to normal.
Stiles takes the Jeep up the Hale house’s long dirt driveway, and Scott can smell it already. It smells like burned wood and pain, and he doesn’t understand how Derek can spend any time there at all, even if he apparently doesn’t live there anymore. Combined with the gas and the fast food wrappers and Stiles’ new ozone smell, everything is kind of gross. Stiles pulls to a stop about thirty feet out and yanks the brake on, but leaves the keys in the ignition. “Okay, stay back. Don’t come more than like five feet past the Jeep.”
Scott raises his eyebrows, because Stiles isn’t usually this ridiculous. “Uh.”
“Seriously, just watch.” Stiles toes off his sneakers and tugs off his socks, then undoes his belt.
Scott’s seen Stiles naked before, but he doesn’t really want to watch some kind of impromptu strip show in the woods. “Dude?”
Stiles looks down at where he’s slipping his belt free, and looks confused for a minute before it breaks into a smirk. “Don’t worry, I just need to not be wearing metal.” He finishes taking off his belt, and puts it and his cell phone and his ring carefully next to his shoes. He takes a deep breath and shakes out his arms. “And, uh, don’t touch me until it’s over. There might be side effects.”
Scott raises his eyebrows as high as they can go. “Side effects? What are you doing?”
“I’m showing you why we couldn’t be pack anymore.” He steps barefoot over the dirt, then crouches down and digs his hands into the soil. The ozone smell intensifies, and there’s a smell of rotting wood.
Scott almost takes a step forward, because this all smells dangerous, but then realizes: Stiles knew this would happen. Stiles is actually causing it, or participating in it, and that’s creepy. If this is what magic’s done to him, made him smell gross and frightening as well as ditch his best friend, it wasn’t worth it and they should have found another way.
The rotting smell doesn’t abate, and the Hale house starts making noises. Quiet, at first, like he knows Stiles can’t hear, but then there are boards shifting against each other and one of the walls collapses. It smells like lightning and death, and the destruction of the Hale house accelerates, the remains of the top floor collapsing down. It’s a domino effect, the second floor falling to the first, sinking to the basement in a cloud of dust and magic.
The porch is still standing, disturbingly whole. Stiles is still clutching dirt, and the dry dead grass around him looks - well, less dead. It’s like spring has come early to this section of the Preserve. The smell of rot is mixing with the smell of grass growing, the same as his yard had smelled in February last year when the new growth was just starting. The grass greens around him, then the green runs in a straight shot towards the Hale house. It stops there, sinking down into the depths of the old wood.
The line of green widens a little, gets a little greener, but nothing else happens.
Scott shifts his weight, bored and uncomfortable. He doesn’t know what Stiles wanted him to see. Yes, he knows Stiles has magic. He hears him talk about it enough. The Hale house has been falling down for years anyway: it can’t have taken that much effort. The whole Disney princess making grass grow thing is neat, but it looks like it’s petered out. Scott could have handled it. Stiles was a little magic before, and Scott’s a werewolf. They could have done it. They’re, like, superhero bros, or they were until Stiles decided Scott still needed to be protected from everything like they were back in second grade or something.
The smell of rot turns into more of a compost-y smell, like it’s all decomposing very fast, and then Scott sees a flash of green. He takes a full step forward, because he wants to see, and catches a whiff of pain and sweat. It’s coming from Stiles on a waft of that ozone smell, but Stiles is still looking straight forward, so everything’s probably still okay. The green stuff is still moving, distinguishable now as a sapling, rising swiftly into being as a real tree. Scott can tell it’s an oak, now, even though it’s still growing like a time-lapse video spanning years. It shoots up and up, and branches out and gets thicker, and the smell of it is heavy in the air. Scott lived through Stiles first few mythology kicks, so he’s half-expecting gods and thunder just from the smell alone. The tree grows and grows, bigger than it should, and the porch finally collapses, a raised and rising root knocking out key supports. That seems to be some kind of trigger, or the first sign of overflow, because green grass rushes out now in a perfect circle from the house.
It floods towards them, and Stiles doesn’t move, but apparently he’s doing this - holy shit, Stiles is doing this. Scott steps back to press himself against the Jeep and watches his best friend make the forest grow; decades of growth in just a few minutes. This isn’t just closing a circle or nudging a falling thing to give in to gravity. This is purple flowers blooming now where they dug up half a body nearly a year ago, lupine and bleeding hearts and lavender, and the oak bursting into leaf as it gets taller than the Hale house used to stand and dropping acorns that sound like hail as they hit the ground. It smells like summer, with a high wild edge to it that has to be Stiles’ magic. The wave of grass hits Stiles and slows, stops just a couple feet beyond him.
The flowers keep blooming aggressively for another minute, two minutes, and then they stop, too. The oak is the last to stop, the rustling of the leaves calming from explosive growth to gentle movement in the breeze.
A black bird lights on one of the branches.
Stiles sags, but there’s only so far he can drop with his hands planted firmly in the grass. Effortfully, he straightens enough to flop to lie flat on his back. “Give me a minute,” he says, “and I’ll explain some magical theory to you.”
Scott finds his voice, finally. “Holy shit, dude.”
Scott stays pressed against the Jeep even as Stiles just lays there for a few minutes, because Stiles is still touching the ground and who the hell knows what could happen?
Stiles, when he speaks, sounds exhausted. “Deaton says that most practitioners’ capacity for magic grows as they use magic, and they collect energy from the world around them enough to fill their capacity. Having a pack is like extra capacity, because you guys are all magic anyway. But I grabbed way more energy from what’s-her-face than I had the capacity to hold, and even Derek’s pack wasn’t really enough extra capacity. And then I was also apparently still drawing energy from the world around me, because the training I was doing with Deaton is designed to help improve capacity along with my control and, like, basic knowledge of what I can do. Deaton didn’t want me doing anything big with it to try and bleed off the extra energy because I still basically have no control, but it was getting pretty bad. So I figured, can’t really hurt something that’s already this broken, so this was me dumping all the magic I could into this. Do you get it yet?”
“Yeah,” Scott says on a slow exhalation. “If it was just two of us, we’d have, like, blown up the school.”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Stiles says, showing no inclination to move. “Plus even doing this, I still have way more capacity than I should - like, for years, if ever, if I’d done this the quote-unquote right way. So I probably need to find something to do magic on regularly for the rest of my life, or at least until I learn control. So basically the rest of my life.”
Scott slides down the side of the Jeep until his shoulders are against the door and he can prop his forearms on his knees. “Still, just because you have a pack, and you have to have a pack, does that mean you have to ditch me?”
“Scott,” Stiles says tiredly, “in the last two and a half months I’ve had mandatory range time with my dad every Saturday, I’ve had to try and take a crash course in magic from your boss - half of which you’ve been in the building for - help Lydia track down what species she is, including two attempts at intimidation and following her to dinner to be backup, come up with a plan to drive off that omega and keep other omegas away while keeping my dad his job, explain everything to Danny, get Danny into the pack, and deal with Jackson now being pack - which, sadly, is also my fault. I’ve been busy. Plus you never return my calls even when I am free.”
Scott watches the oak, watches more birds come to rest on it. It’s vividly green against the faded browns of the rest of the Preserve in winter. He listens to Stiles breathe as it slows in relaxation. “I don’t want to have to join them just to keep you.”
“Dude, you’ll always have me,” Stiles says, quiet like they’re somewhere private and not out here in the woods.
There’s no blip in his heartbeat, but Scott has a hard time believing him anyway. So much has changed: if even his mom can completely freak out and avoid him for a week, Stiles can go, too. Scott draws his knees closer and crosses his arms and rests his chin on his forearm. “Wanna play C.O.D. on Monday?”
There’s a car turning on to the dirt driveway, but Stiles can’t hear it yet. He slurs, “Yeah, sure, kick off break the right way.”
The breeze is going the wrong way to smell who’s in the car, but there are only so many people who’d come out this way. Scott stands, and puts himself between the road and Stiles. Stiles cranes his head to look at him. “‘S just Derek,” he says, then resettles his head comfortably and closes his eyes.
Sure enough, the Camaro roars into view, and it’s unsettling how Stiles knew that. Derek stops in a spray of gravel, and sits there staring at the Hale - at what used to be the remains of the Hale house. He looks confused, devastated, like someone’s lopped off a limb and he’s just noticing. He looks anguished and unsteady, and then he looks at Scott and his face shutters to its usual blank and faintly angry.
Scott looks away. Obviously Derek doesn’t like him any more than he likes Derek, and even if - well, there’s no way he and Derek will ever end up in the same pack. Derek gets out of the car and slams the door and stalks angrily towards Stiles. “What did you do?”
Stiles lifts a hand in a wave, then drops it again. “Hey, big guy. You’re obviously right on point for observation skills today. I’m having a picnic.”
“Why?” Derek’s voice cracks.
It feels really private, in a kind of gross way that Scott doesn’t want to see between Stiles and Derek. Derek’s old, and the source of, not evil, okay, probably not actual evil, but he causes all sorts of pain and misery and he totally sucks. It feels private like the times when they’d been kids and running in and out of the Stilinski house and they’d caught the Sheriff and Mrs. Stilinski when they hadn’t thought there’d been anyone else around. It wasn’t even kissing, because at that age everybody’s parents kissed and it was gross but it was what parents did: it was the way they’d hug, or just look at each other, like no one else was real at all. Scott knows he got that way about Allison, but Stiles has never been that way about anyone, and this isn’t even - this is just wordless staring, and nothing’s romantic, but Scott feels like he’s intruding anyway.
He doesn’t want to be here anymore, and shifts from foot to foot.
That snaps Derek out of it, and he frowns more. The cessation of Derek’s stare seems to be Stiles’ cue to talk again. “You know it needed to happen, for a lot of reasons.”
Derek’s face twists, and Scott could totally be gone right now: he’s seen what Stiles wanted to show him and he’s as sure as he can be that Derek won’t actually hurt Stiles even though Stiles kind of broke his creepy Batcave. But Stiles is his ride, and he could run back to his house, and he probably should. Scott narrows his eyes at the two of them. “Can you two do this later? Stiles was going to drive me home.”
Stiles sighs. “Yeah, sure, buddy.” He starts to haul himself to his feet, and Scott can hear his heart kick up. Stiles sways, and Derek shoves past Scott to drag Stiles to his feet.
“You completely drained yourself, you idiot.”
Stiles pats Derek on the chest, either reassuring or groping. “And I’ll need to keep doing stuff to keep it down to near where my capacity should be, so maybe you should be the one to talk Deaton into letting me try the fun spells.”
“Um,” says Scott, partly to make them stop ignoring him. “Are you even good to drive?”
Stiles waves one hand, the one not clutching Derek’s henley. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Only thing that’s not up to scratch is kicking werewolf ass, and that’ll be back to normal real soon.”
He steps free of Derek and grabs his stuff, and seems unsteady on his feet but not in imminent danger of collapse. He shoves his socks in his pocket, though, and just shoves his feet bare into his shoes. When he puts his ring on, it flares gold then red and holds on red a minute before it fades. “C’mon, Scott. Derek, come by later. Use the door.”
Scott gets into the Jeep, and looks at Derek as he closes the door. Derek looks lost, but then he meets Scott’s gaze and sets his jaw and turns away. “How’d he know to come running, anyway?”
“Pack link,” Stiles says. “It’s how we knew when Jackson was going to get back, and how we knew when he got attacked on the way. You’d like it, I think, or at least the assurance of backup. Plus you can always feel that you’re not alone.”
It’s heavy-handed, even for Stiles, so Scott rolls his eyes.
“I’m still not joining Derek’s pack, Stiles.”
Stiles sighs. “Yeah, I know. Just, think about it, yeah?”
They’ve had this conversation too many times, and variations of it. “I have, Stiles. Can we - can we just not right now? Tell me about your magic.”
Stiles is usually pretty distractible, but he makes a face. “I told you about it. At least with having done this, it’s taken a huge chunk of what I had readily available. It’ll take time for it to build back up, and it’s a lot easier, with Danny and Jackson now. But it was still more than we could all handle, and I’ve been working - I’ve been trying, but it’s not enough. It’ll still stress them out when I let it build up too much. Enough that something weird might happen with Danny, enough that we’d have to keep more of an eye on Jackson because his control is still shit. I didn’t pick them because I wanted to, but you saw, right, you saw why I couldn’t pick you?”
“Yeah, I saw. And I don’t blame you - Stiles, my control still sucks, we’d probably have ended up exploding the water tower like we always said we would if we were supervillains. But you’re always with them.”
“That’s why we’re doing C.O.D., though, right?”
Scott sighs. He’s having trouble articulating how alone he feels without shouting at Stiles for abandoning him. And he gets it, he does, that was a really very impressive demonstration. But understanding and feeling are not the same thing. “Yeah. Just need to survive tomorrow and then it’s glorious freedom until next year.”
“Oh, yeah, speaking of next year. The election’s in March. Want to help out with my dad’s campaign again?”
Scott thumps his head back against the headrest. “Wow. Do you think he even has a shot with all the crap that’s happened?”
Stiles juts out his chin. “Well, that’s why we’re going to work on it. And make sure there aren’t any other big incidents.”
“Can we do posters again?” Scott grins at the memory of the last election, when they were thirteen and thought that papering the entire outside of the Sheriff’s department was the best possible idea.
Some of the tension in Stiles eases, and he snorts in amusement. “Any more public defacement and he may actually throw us in jail, knowledge of werewolves or not.”
Stiles pulls to a stop outside Scott’s house, and doesn’t turn off the Jeep.
“You’re not coming in?”
“No, I’m gonna go home and pass out.” Stiles speeds away, and Scott watches him go. It feels like a good metaphor, watching Stiles drive away from him.
Scott goes in, and his mom is still at work, but she’s brought down a box of Christmas decorations. They always decorate together, but it’s a good reminder anyway, and he brings down the rest of the boxes. By the time he’s grabbed all of them, including the big awkward box with the tree in it, he’s covered in dust and weirdly sweaty from exertion. It’s not like anything was particularly heavy. But since he’s sweaty already, he starts his workout, the series of push-ups and pull-ups and sit-ups and stuff that keep him - well, actually, he’s not sure if he’d stop being buff if he stopped working out, but it at least fills time.
When he’s done and showered and has grabbed leftover meatloaf from the fridge, he does his homework. He’s diligent about it now, partly to make up for the hell that was the second semester of his sophomore year, partly because he can be. It’s not like any of his friends spend time with him, not since he made it clear to Isaac that he wasn’t interested in any pack, especially not in joining Derek’s.
He studies for the SATs, too, because he’s taking those in January and the vocabulary list they gave him is long, and not all stuff he’s encountered before. He’s not even taking English this year until next semester. He’s given himself plenty of time to take the SATs twice, if he needs to. He doesn’t want to. All of the weird and crazy stuff that started last winter doesn’t give you second chances unless you’re evil and get them at the cost of someone else: Peter’s life, Gerard’s foiled attempt at longer life, Deucalion’s sight, the necromancer’s safety. The SATs are normal, and they do have second chances, but he doesn’t want to let himself fall into a pattern of needing them.