Archive of Our Own ^beta

Scott is facedown in his bed, breathing shallowly.  Mostly he’s wondering if he can stop breathing at all.

Allison’s got a hand in his hair.  She’s close by his right shoulder, sitting on the bed.  Isaac is loitering in the doorway, has been for a while, but when Allison gestures him over he finally comes in to settle on the bed near Scott’s legs.

A moment later, Stiles comes back to the room carrying four mugs of tea that nobody is going to drink.  He’s dry-faced and red-eyed, which is about as good as expected.  He puts the tea down on the nightstand and gets onto the bed on Scott’s other side.  Scott’s shoulders are shaking when Stiles puts his hand on one of them, when Stiles cuddles in close.

There isn’t a sound in the room except for four people’s ragged breathing, the heartbeats only werewolves can hear.  It’s too close, too much, until Stiles raises his head.  His voice is scratchy, with a wry, cruel edge to it.

"I hearby call the first meeting of the Beacon Hills dead mothers club to order," he says.

“Stiles," Allison snaps, and Scott…the sound Scott makes could be a laugh, or a sob, or a moan.  It’s muffled by the pillow.  Scott probably doesn’t know himself.

Stiles’ hand on Scott’s shoulder grabs, tight, solid.  "We all know, Scott," Stiles says, fierce and low and close to his ear.

"We’re here," Allison says.  "We’ve got you."

Isaac doesn’t say anything, just curls in between Scott and Allison, makes himself small.  They probably shouldn’t all be able to fit on the bed.  It’s probably enough weight to damage the frame, in the long run.

Scott keeps breathing.

…

Two days before the funeral, Scott’s dad calls from San Francisco.  Stiles picks up the phone.  Scott isn’t picking up his phone right now.

Scott’s dad wants to come up the morning of the funeral, have dinner with Scott that night to talk about ‘what happens next’.  Stiles makes little ‘hmm’ing noises on the phone and promises to take a message.

They’ve gotten Scott all the way to the couch in the living room, and when Isaac made pancakes this morning, Scott actually ate a whole one, which is an improvement.  Stiles still isn’t expecting much of a reaction.

Scott surprises him by looking up, eyes piercing and sure, more solid than he’s been in days.  "I’m not going anywhere," Scott says.  "I’m not leaving this town.  I’m not leaving this house."

"Okay, Scott," Allison says quietly.  Stiles catches Isaac’s eye.  He’s pretty sure Melissa left Scott the house, but there’s paperwork to think about, and taxes, not to mention the mortgage—does the place even have a mortgage?—which can all wait for Stiles to figure them out later.  First things first, he needs a plan and a co-conspirator who’s even less fond of asshole dads than Stiles is.

…

Isaac doesn’t move more than a foot from Scott’s side for the entire funeral, while Allison and Stiles circle out and back, running interference for well-wishers and uninvited guests alike.

Allison spots Peter Hale first, coming in at the back with Boyd and Cora, and stalks down the aisle of the church like a guided missile.

"Leave," she says.

"We’re here to pay our respects," says Peter, and Allison fixes him with a glare, all the rage she possesses.

"They can stay," she says.  "But there’s not a single thing holding me back from killing you right now before Scott sees you here.  Get out."

He doesn’t even bother to argue.  Peter and Cora both go.  Boyd stays.

…

When Scott’s dad comes to find them at the gravesite, every muscle Scott had begun to forget he had goes tight.  His dad steps in for a hug and Scott takes half a step back without even thinking about it.

"Now Scott, come on," his dad says, the way he always used to try and cajole Scott into ice cream or trips to the toy store after a really nasty argument.  He always used to get mad all over again if Scott said no.

"I don’t have anything to say to you," says Scott.  He isn’t up for an argument.  He could kill somebody, Scott thinks, he’s never felt this numb or this fully capable of killing somebody before.  But in the space between flat calm and bloody murder where all of Scott’s other emotions are supposed to be, the ability to get angry or irritated or anything at all, there’s just a numb void.

"Scott," says his dad, a little sterner now.  Isaac’s hand closes over Scott’s shoulder.  A second later, Sheriff Stilinski’s hand closes around Scott’s dad’s arm.

"Let’s go have a talk, okay?" asks the sheriff.  He herds Scott’s dad in one direction, but not out of the range of werewolf hearing.

"I want to talk to my own son," Scott’s dad says, and the sheriff nods, Scott can see it from here.

"I know," he says, soothing.  "But I know how close Scott and Melissa were, and the last thing Scott needs right now is to be ripped away from the support network he has.  Give him a little time.  Try talking to him in a couple of days."

"Can we go?" Scott asks before he can hear any more, surprising himself.  Stiles looks surprised, too, but Allison just takes his hand and moves in close to his side.

"Yeah," she says.  "Let’s go home."

…

Lydia goes home from the funeral, hangs up her black dress, takes a long shower, and goes to bed.  She wakes up at 3 in the morning, eight miles from her house, next to another dead body.

There’s only a moment of shock and horror before she finds herself sitting down, hard, on the cement of the library steps, and then she starts sobbing, unexpectedly, uncontrollably.  She’s so tired.

It had seemed so paranoid to start sleeping with her cell phone in the pocket of her nightgown, but Lydia’s good at pattern recognition, and Lydia just couldn’t take the chance.  Stiles drives out to pick her up.  Lydia doesn’t even bother calling the police this time at all.

She’s too tired to pay attention to where they’re going until they pull up in front of the McCall house.  She looks up.  Stiles’ jaw is set like he’s ready for an argument.

"Just stay where we can keep an eye on you for the rest of the night," Stiles says.  He sounds even more exhausted than her.

"If they’ve already killed once tonight, there’s not going to be another," Lydia says.

"Patterns escalate," says Stiles, and, “Do you even have your housekey?"

She should have thought to add that to her nightgown.  "I know where the spare key is, I can break in," Lydia says, if the gardeners hadn’t used it and forgotten to replace it again.

"In the middle of the night?"

"I don’t have any of my things," says Lydia.

“Then borrow Allison’s," Stiles snaps, and she doesn’t want to be in a car with him any more, and she’s too tired to have this argument tonight.

Everybody is awake in the McCall house when she goes in, Scott and Isaac and Allison all sitting with mugs of half-drunk tea in the living room.  Allison hugs her, and shows Lydia the guest room.

"I don’t want to be alone," Lydia admits, and Allison glances out at the hall.

"Stiles and Isaac have Scott," she says.  "Do you want me to stay?"

…

Scott isn’t on suicide watch, exactly, except that he’s never alone any more.  He’s not on suicide watch, except that after Derek he came inches from dying entirely because he believed he deserved to, and this is a hundred times worse.

Scott’s not on suicide watch, but he’s gotten clumsy all of the sudden, bumping into stairs and stubbing his toe on doorframes, dropping a glass and then fumbling the pieces.  None of it’s on purpose, but the bruises all last longer than even a human’s would be supposed to.

…

When Scott’s dad comes around the house, Isaac is there to meet him on the porch.

"You should probably go," Isaac says.  He’s leaning against the post at the top of the stairs, so Scott’s dad can’t get all the way up.  It gives Isaac more than a foot of height on him.

Isaac still doesn’t actually know Scott’s dad’s name.  Isaac doesn’t care.

Scott’s dad glares at him.  "I think you should get out of the way and let me see my son."

"I’m thinking that’s not going to happen," Stiles says.  There’s a second pair of footsteps and a heartbeat behind him—Lydia.   She brought everybody’s missed homework over this morning.  She and Stiles had been taking turns doing Scott’s and talking about serial killers all morning.

"I don’t know who you kids think you are—"  Isaac smiles, the one he knows absolutely terrifies people sometimes.

"We’re his pack," Isaac says.

"Nobody here particularly cares enough to be subtle, so we’re going to be blunt," Lydia says.  "You’re going to turn around, walk away, and drive right back to San Francisco where you belong.  You will continue to act as Scott’s legal guardian on paper, sign all forms and permission slips that get faxed to you, and stand in for official purposes until Scott turns 18, and in return, we won’t kill you."

Scott’s dad gapes for a moment—and then freezes.  Slowly, he turns his head to look over his shoulder.  Allison smiles.

"Hi," she says.

"Are you holding a knife on me?" he demands.  "And who the hell are you?"

"I’m Scott’s ex-girlfriend," Allison says.  "And technically it’s a Chinese ring dagger, right, Isaac?"

Isaac has come to really appreciate Allison over the past few weeks.  He nods.

"Isaac and Stiles are just great at coming up with places to hide bodies," Allison says.

"And nobody is going to believe that we actually threatened you like this," Stiles adds.  "Since the cops in this town are my dad, and not only does he like me a whole lot better than you, he liked Melissa.  A whole lot.  They used to sit together at lacrosse games.  She’d tell him all sorts of things.  He’d probably be just as happy as we are to see you rot in hell."

"You should probably leave now," Isaac adds calmly.  "Those ring daggers really are sharp."

…

Isaac is suspended for the rest of the week for the fight with Ethan.  Scott’s on a leave of absence.

Stiles goes home often enough to make sure he sees his dad’s face, to make sure that his dad’s still breathing, still standing, still not a victim of the thousand and one things there are to be a victim of in this town.  Allison checks in with her father by phone once a day.

At school, they watch Ethan, watch Aiden, watch Danny.  They watch Lydia.  They watch Boyd, and now Cora.

They pick up Scott and Isaac’s homework, take the teachers’ well-wishes, and avoid Ms. Blake’s sad, haunted look.  She’s probably better off with Derek dead, anyway.

Somebody should be.

…

Lydia keeps sleepwalking.  Scott wants her to start staying at the house all the time, so somebody can keep an eye on her.

Allison wants to arm her.  Isaac wants to ignore her.  Stiles wants to let her go and then follow her.

She hates, she really hates, that this is another time when Stiles is probably right.

Scott never sleeps alone any more, and Scott sleeps a lot.  There’s plenty of room at the house for one more.

…

A week after the funeral, Scott gets out of bed and takes a shower without being led into it.  He puts on clothes and eats a whole bowl of cereal, and then another, and then a banana, and then two slices of leftover pizza.  At some point, he wonders who thought to buy milk.

Then he announces he’s going to work.  Everybody looks surprised, and a little relieved; Stiles looks most relieved at all, and then guilty about it.  It takes Scott a minute to think about why, before he realizes that somebody must have been dealing with the mail and looking at all the bills.

Nobody is okay with Scott driving his bike all the way to Deaton’s, but the car…well, the car is his now.  Lydia comes with him, because Scott isn’t on suicide watch, but Scott still isn’t getting left alone.  Everybody else has something to do.  It’s the first time in a week that Scott’s really thought about asking what.

The inside of the car smells like his mom.  Scott stops, frozen, holding the door open, before Lydia comes up to his shoulder.

"Why don’t you let me drive?" she suggests, and Scott nods dumbly.

Deaton and Lydia nod to each other like they know each other, and then Lydia sits down in one corner of the office with a book that Scott doesn’t think she brought with her, and then Scott is back in the exam room, just like every time he comes into work, just like normal.

"Scott," Dr. Deaton says, careful and sad and worried.  "How are you?"

Scott opens his mouth to say something and then freezes.  The lump in his throat came out of nowhere, and it’s too much, too big to even breathe through.  He can’t.  He can’t breathe.

"Scott?" Dr. Deaton asks, taking another step forward and laying a hand on Scott’s shoulder.

Scott crumples, pitches forward and hardly even notices his boss’s arms coming out to catch him.  He’s crying again—he’s sobbing this time, soaking the collar of Deaton’s white lab coat, gasping for air and drowning in his own tears, while Deaton rubs circles over his back.

"It’s all my fault," Scott gasps, and Deaton says, “no, no, it isn’t," over and over again.

…

When Isaac’s suspension is up, Scott goes back to school too.

Danny is still dating Ethan, and Lydia dropped Aiden but she refuses to skip school for any reason, and Stiles and Allison have been there without backup for days, and days, and then there’s Boyd, and Cora, and—

and everybody, not just the people they like but people like Coach, not just people they know but every random freshman, every teacher and departmental secretary and janitor, everybody, they all need watching, and Scott can’t sit on his ass and wait any more.

There are too many people Deucalion can kill to get to Scott, because Scott cares about everybody, and so everybody has to live.

…

Stiles is in charge of the bills.  Stiles was the first one to remember the bills, so they’re his job now, because Stiles has too much anxiety in his life to handle the chance that somebody else might forget that Scott owes a mortgage payment.  He has access to all of Melissa’s old bank account information, now, not to mention all of Scott’s.  There’s paperwork and old assessor’s reports and a list of real estate comps, just in case they need to sell, spread out all over the little office downstairs.  

He goes in and stares at it when he needs a break from staring at the wall in the guest room, the one that’s covered in pictures and notes and maps and string, the one that has to lead them to the darach because nothing else will.  Compared to tracking a supernatural serial killer, a little family accounting is easy.

Somebody other than Scott is going to have to get a job in order to pay next year’s property taxes, but that’s not until next year.  When the alpha pack is gone, when the darach is dead, Stiles will personally apply to every shitty fast-food place and retail chain in Beacon Hills.

…

Allison spars with Isaac in the back yard, usually late at night or early in the morning when the neighbors are all still asleep.  It’s dark enough to put her at more of a disadvantage, but she’s not always going to get the chance to fight werewolves in the light.

They go until they’re both exhausted and sweaty, until Isaac is covered in his own blood and Allison is bleeding herself, more often than not.  They’re better than they were when they started, both of them, faster and sharper and better at keeping watch.

Somebody has to keep watch.  This is Scott’s pack, and he should be the one marshaling them for any fight, but Scott has his grief and they all love him too much to let the pack get vulnerable.

Everybody sleeps here, with mountain ash circled around the house that keeps the alphas out and cuts Lydia’s dreams.  Nobody ever sleeps alone.  Lydia still sleepwalks; Scott still cries in his sleep.  Allison’s not even sure he knows.

Some mornings, when she and Isaac finish up and she can see him, shirtless and done in, Isaac will look over and flash her his laziest grin.  Some mornings, Allison thinks that instead of trading who gets first shower, they should just share.

She won’t offer and he won’t ask, not with Scott right there.  Allison is in Scott’s bed almost every night now, even though they still haven’t so much as kissed.  It’s where she belongs.

…

Isaac’s mother died when he was five.

"I don’t remember her much," he says, when Scott asks.  "It’s been a long time."

What he remembers about the weeks after her death is the dark inside of the linen closet in the upstairs hallway, and making a nest for himself out of towels while he waited to be let out again.  He can’t believe he’d tried that more than once.  Things had been different back then.

What Isaac remembers about his mother’s death is how sad and closed-off and angry Cam got.  He remembers his father, his father’s impatience and rage.  He remembers the linen closet that came long before the freezer.  It must have been the first solution to dealing with an undisciplined five-year-old that came to hand.

But Isaac doesn’t remember very much about his mother at all, except that he liked her bedtime stories.  None of the other stuff is what Scott’s looking for.

…

Allison and Stiles seem to have this deal where they switch off between dealing with Scott, and dealing with everything else in the world.  The world doesn’t stop because somebody is dead.

Lydia is better at finding patterns and serial killers and psychically tracking dead bodies she doesn’t want to see than she is at comforting people, anyway.  Her biggest contribution to the ‘keep Scott sane’ movement seems to involve sitting next to him and quietly explaining everything he didn’t pay attention to during school that day while they do his homework.  Scott seems to care, actually, about getting the answers right, enough that he doesn’t ask where Stiles and Allison and Isaac have gotten off to.

Later on, Allison or Stiles will fill Lydia in on whatever council of war they decided to have.  The only thing Lydia knows about alpha werewolves is how it feels to be haunted by one, but somebody  in this group has to be able to plan.

There are two enemies out there, and their alpha is still only at 50% for getting dressed in the morning if somebody doesn’t pick his clothes out for him.  Allison and Stiles seem bent on dealing with the problem one way or another.  Lydia might as well help.

…

Five more people die in the month after the funeral.  None of them look like they’ve been killed by a werewolf.

The twins aren’t causing trouble at school.  Danny is still talking to Lydia, and he watches Scott just like everybody else, sad and worried and quiet, but he won’t speak to Stiles or Isaac in the locker room.

Ms. Morrell has to know things about the alpha pack, but Scott hangs back, watches her with dark, angry eyes, and for now, Allison follows his lead.  They already know where to find Deucalion if they want him.  Allison hasn’t been back to her apartment building in weeks.

Her father shows up to pick her up after school, and Allison stands out in the sunlight, five feet away from the car, looking at him through the open driver’s-side window.  "I have plans tonight," she says.

"Allison," he starts, tired and angry, but he doesn’t get out.

"You were wrong," she says.  "They are my family."

Allison knows this is true, because as much as she loves her father, when she tries to picture Deucalion grabbing him and slashing out his throat she can do it.  She can think what comes next.  There would be a plan.  Stiles would help her.  Isaac’s been dodging the foster care system for months.  There would be a next step.

If any of the others were killed, Lydia or Stiles or even Isaac, if Scott died…in that case, there’s only a blank space where a future would be.

"You should think about moving." Allison says, because she loves her father, and he needs to be able to take care of himself if she can’t.  "Find some safer ground."

…

It’s 3 AM.  Lydia is yawning more than she’s talking, and if Stiles has to look at the dead body photos up on their serial killer wall any more tonight, he’s going to crack.

Scott’s bed can sleep five, but it takes a hell of a lot more effort than Stiles wants to put everyone through tonight.  He nods towards the door.  “Come on, let’s go to bed.”  The non-creepy guest room, the one they haven’t converted into their own personal FBI profiler’s office, is right across the hall.

“I’m fine,” says Lydia, then covers another yawn.  “I’m just going to stay up.”

“I realize I’m a hypocrite for saying this, but we need you functional, Lydia,” says Stiles.  “What is it, nightmares?  The sleepwalking thing?  I’m no Scott, but I’m pretty sure I can pin you down so you don’t walk off in the middle of the night, just in terms of sheer body mass.”

“I said I’m fine, Stiles,” she snaps.  Stiles rolls his eyes.

“Are you this difficult when you and Allison take the guest room together?  Come on, you’re exhausted, I’m exhausted, we’re not getting anywhere tonight, can we just go to bed?”

“Go, then,” says Lydia.  “I have homework to get ahead on.”

“Are you kidding me?” Stiles demands, and then, “Oh my god,” he says.  “This isn’t about not wanting to sleep, you just don’t want to go to bed with me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lydia says, but Stiles knows her now.  He knows how to tell when she’s lying.

“Oh my god,” he says.  “Are you kidding me?  After literally everything that’s happened, you don’t trust me for four hours in a bedroom down the hall from two werewolves?  What could I possibly do?”

“Nothing!” says Lydia.  “Nothing at all!  You’re right.  Let’s go to bed.”

“Not if you don’t want to!” says Stiles.  “Do you seriously think I don’t understand the word no?”

“I am too tired,” says Lydia tightly, “to have to tell you no tonight, Stiles Stilinski.”  

“Well, okay, then I can make it easy for you!”  Stiles doesn’t slam the door behind him because Scott doesn’t need to be woken up that way.

In the hallway, Stiles slumps back with his head against the wall.  She’s tired.  He’s tired.  Everybody’s too tired for this shit.  Nobody should have to deal with being epically friendzoned by somebody they’re living and occasionally sharing a communal bed with in the middle of a giant supernatural war.  Seriously, what about this seems fair?

Of course, Stiles isn’t the one with the sleepwalking issues and the head-invading nightmares.  He sighs, pushes himself off the wall, and knocks on the door to the second-biggest guest room before he goes in.

Lydia’s on the bed.  She’s been crying.  Stiles does not have the energy to figure out how he fucked this up, he seriously doesn’t.  It’s three in the morning and everybody’s mom is dead.

“If I swear not to even think that we’re doing anything more than the whole nightly pack puppy pile, would you rather have me than be alone?” Stiles offers.  “I can stay up with you, too, if you want.”

“Thank you,” Lydia says.

There’s not enough coffee in the house to handle 7 AM the next morning, but then four hours of sleep will do that to you no matter who you’re with.

"Enough caffeine intake to make our lives manageable would probably kill us all," says Lydia, with the spot-on accuracy Stiles so admires.

He gets everybody in his car to school without causing a fiery crash, though.  In his life, that’s about as much of a win as he’s actually hoping for.

…

About a month after the funeral, Scott’s dad calls and asks if he can take Scott to lunch.

"I don’t know what you want from me," Scott says.  He’d picked his phone up on old reflex.  He guesses the pack has stopped taking it from him now.

"I want to spend time with my son," says his dad.  "I want to know how you’re doing."

"You never cared before," Scott says.

His dad sputters and argues, but all Scott can think is, it would have taken a hell of a lot more than a couple of threats and Allison’s knives to keep his mom away if she’d thought he needed her.

…

"She would have liked you," Stiles says, when Scott asks.  He’s been asking all of them.

It hasn’t even been a full five years.  November.  Stiles was in sixth grade.  He hadn’t even met Scott until seventh.

It’s Scott, so it all feels like a million years and a lifetime ago; it’s his mom, and it feels like yesterday.  "She liked puzzles," Stiles says.  "Jigsaw puzzles, crosswords, all kinds.  And she was super-competitive.  Bigger into sports than me and my dad put together."

"You never talk about her," Scott says, and Stiles stands up from the couch abruptly.

"Yeah, well now you know why," he says, and wishes right away that he could take it back.  But he can’t, it’s too much.

It’s October and it’s closing in on Halloween, on Samhain, and there’s a darach on the loose and it’s too much.  It’s October which means that it’s almost November, and November looks like it’s going to hurt even ore this time around than the very first year afterwards.

It was different, with Stiles’ mom.  It wasn’t sudden.  There were fourteen months of standing around and waiting and helplessness and not doing anything.  Scott keeps thinking about Melissa, keeps grasping at straws, but it was too fast.  It wasn’t Scott’s fault.  He couldn’t have done anything.

What Stiles remembers about his mother’s death is Thanksgiving at the only Chinese restaurant in Beacon Hills, because they had a freezer full of casseroles from his dad’s co-workers that they couldn’t stand to look at any more.  He remembers eating too much and throwing up orange chicken all over the bathroom, puking and sobbing until he was tasting snot and bile and could barely see, and his dad hovering in the doorway like he didn’t have any idea what to do.

"I’m ordering a pizza," says Stiles, and walks off towards the pile of delivery menus in the kitchen, leaving Scott behind him.

…

On Halloween night, there are three deaths.  Three.  All of them kids.  Strangled, throat slashed, heads bashed in.

Lydia spends the whole night in and out of fugue state, and the rest of them spend the whole night running around keeping track of her, but nothing is good enough, nothing is fast enough.  The police find all three bodies an hour after dawn, still in their Halloween costumes.

Nobody sleeps.  Not even Scott, which just makes everything harder, because Scott has started noticing things again, which means he’s going to notice if his whole pack decides to go commit murder.  Scott won’t like it, but Isaac honestly doesn’t think that’s enough to stop them this time.  Scott’s their leader, but Scott’s not up to making plans right now.

Scott hasn’t raised his voice or flashed his eyes since his mother died.  Isaac’s pretty sure that if he got angry, Scott could still put enough force behind a command to pull Isaac back or send him to the floor, but Stiles, Lydia, and Allison aren’t werewolves.  Isaac likes violence more than he should, but Stiles and Allison are bloodthirsty sometimes.

The only thing that’s going to stop this pack from committing murder before this is all through is if somebody kills them all first.

…

Boyd shows up at the door three days later.

"This is bigger than the alpha pack," he says.  "I want in."

"Spare bedroom’s down the hall," says Allison.  "It’s your turn on dishes tonight."

It has to be better than sharing a pack with Peter, Cora, and Derek’s ghost.

…

Stiles’ dad knows that he hasn’t been home for more than a few minutes in more than a month.  He gets it.  He’s been too busy to worry, anyway.  As far as Stiles knows, he thinks Stiles has been over as Scott’s to act like a buffer between Scott and his dad until everybody can get living arrangements sorted out.  It’s an easier cover story when Stiles never has to see his dad to give it.

He shows up on the front porch at 7 AM on a Wednesday, just a few days after Halloween, while Stiles is packing lunches and Lydia is fixing her makeup and Boyd is making sure that everybody’s books and homework are in the right bag and Allison is making sure that she’s got all of her knives in the right place.  Isaac gets the door.

"Stiles?" he calls from the front.  Stiles leaves the knife in the peanut butter and heads out to the porch.

"Should I finish the—?" Isaac asks quietly.

"Yeah," Stiles nods, still looking at his dad.  "Yeah, that’d be good.  Don’t forget the grapes."

His dad waits until Stiles steps outside and closes the door behind him to nod at the house.  "Just how many people are living here right now?"

"Uh," says Stiles, because it’s a week after Halloween and he hasn’t slept more than an hour since.  His dad looks just as tired.

"Funny thing," says his dad.  "I recognize Allison Argent’s car, and I’m pretty sure that one’s Lydia Martin’s, but nobody I talk to has seen Harold McCall anywhere around this town in a month."

"Don’t, Dad," Stiles says, and rubs at his eyes.  "Scott’s fine, okay.  He’s got what he needs.  It’s hard, he’s got his support network—"

"What were you doing at the crime scene the other day?" his father asks.

"Nothing," says Stiles.  "Nothing, okay.  Now, we’ve kind of got to get ready for school—"

"What is going on with you, Stiles?" his dad demands.  "What the hell is all this?  You moved out—"

"To help Scott," Stiles snaps.

"You’re not even trying to come up with lies any more.  Now what did you and Scott get yourselves into?"

“Nothing, Dad, okay, nothing, there is nothing wrong, now go home, get some sleep, and let me go to school like a normal kid, okay?"

"Don’t think I won’t put a tail on you," his dad says.  Stiles gapes.

"You can’t," he says.  "You’ve got an enormous ongoing serial killer investigation, you don’t have the manpower."

"Oh, I will damn well derail this entire investigation if I have to!" he says, and Stiles snaps.

"No," he says.  "No, you won’t, and do you know why?  Because if you actually get involved in this, if you get yourself killed just like all of those people, then everybody  in this house is going to end up dead."

"Stiles," his dad says, but he’s on a roll now.  He hasn’t slept in a week.  He hasn’t slept without nightmares in what seems like a year.

"If you get into this, they’re going to kill you, just like they killed Melissa," Stiles says.  "And I’m going to snap.  I’m going to completely lose it, and right now, in the middle of two complete fucking wars that we didn’t even start, losing it sounds a whole lot like going after Allison’s dad’s weapons collection and making her rampage last spring look like a day at the carnival.  Right, and after I do that, and end up with my throat finally ripped out, you’ve got to figure that everybody here is only going to have about another week to live, because Scott can barely tie his shoes any more let alone lead a pack, Lydia’s a goddamn literal sleeper agent, and Isaac and Allison are both about as close to the edge as I am."  He’s saying too much.  He’s saying way too much, but his mouth keeps moving and he can’t stop it.  "So you can’t die, because if I die, or screw up, or go to sleep for longer than two hours, something else goes wrong and everybody ends up completely fucked, and I can’t, I can’t be the reason we go down, which means that you can’t, you—"

"Stiles!" Scott snaps from behind him.

…

They bring Stiles’ dad into the living room, because after that little breakdown, they’re sort of out of options.

"You don’t have to get involved," Stiles hisses at him.

"Your heartbeat was going so fast I could hear it from upstairs," says Scott.

"I had it under control, Scott, you didn’t have to—" says Stiles, which is an obvious lie.

"I can take care of my own pack!"  Scott’s sick of being coddled.  It’s not right, and it’s not fair.  "He’s safer if he knows what’s going on," he says.

“Your mom knew what was going on," snaps Stiles.

In the empty pause that follows, as Scott realizes that everybody in the room has been watching them, Allison says, “When we’re done here, you should go talk to my dad.  He’ll be able to help."

"Help with what, exactly?" asks the sheriff.

"Bullets," Allison says.  "And intel.  He’ll try to say he’s retired, but you can blackmail him by threatening to reopen the investigation into any of my family members’ deaths.  Ask him what happened to my grandfather.”

Lydia and Boyd are the only ones who actually make it to school that morning.

…

Scott drops a plate cleaning up from lunch.  He cuts his finger picking up the pieces.  He’s still doing that, still forgetting that he hasn’t been healing right.  Allison crouches down next to him and watches the blood well up.  She offers him a paper napkin.

"Thanks," Scott says.  "Sorry.  I shouldn’t…"

"It’s okay," Allison says quietly.  "Nobody blames you."

"Maybe you should," says Scott.  He’s angry.  Allison takes him by the wrists to draw him up to his feet, keeps her hands and her voice gentle.

"Scott," she says.  "It’s okay.  Nobody expects you to be a hundred percent."  She smiles a little.  "At least you’re not me.  When my mother died, I tried to kill a dozen people."

"Well, maybe I should," says Scott.  "Maybe it’s time to stop just sitting here and do something."

"It’s okay," Allison says again, and Scott shakes his head.

"No, it’s not," he says.  "I know you guys have been making plans about the darach, and I know you have to have a plan about the alpha pack."

Allison bites her lip.  "We have a few," she admits.  "But nothing’s done."

"Then let’s finish it," Scott says.  "I know you all think I’m supposed to be the alpha here, so let me do what I’m supposed to."

Scott says, “Let’s kill them and be done with it."  He sounds like he means it, as forceful as he’s been in a while.  He doesn’t sound like Scott at all, but she thinks he’s right.

…

What Allison most remembers about her mother’s death is how it made simple things complicated, and complicated things very, very simple.

Breathing was hard.  Blame was easy.

What Allison remembers about her mother’s life is that everything she ever pushed herself hard enough to get good at, came from her mother.  Pain is a fact of life.  Can’t always be avoided, so it has to be worked through.  That’s Allison’s mother.

She would have been proud of Allison for taking revenge into her own hands.  Ashamed of her for failing at it.  Ashamed at her for falling for Gerard’s manipulation.  Ashamed at her for not seeing it all the way through after all.

Proud of her for how vicious and cold Allison was willing to be in the middle of things.  Proud of her for being willing to kill.

Melissa wouldn’t be proud of Scott for that.  Scott wouldn’t be proud of Scott for that.

When Scott asks Allison about her mother’s life, Allison makes herself smile and says, “We’ve moved my whole life.  Nothing was ever the same, things changed all the time, but she always kept us together and running just like clockwork."

When Scott asks Allison how she dealt with her mother’s death, Allison makes herself smile and says, “We went to France for three months."

Anyway, Scott was there for all of that.  He doesn’t need a reminder.

…

The leads they have on the darach are all on the wall of the second-biggest guest bedroom.  Nobody ever sleeps there unless Stiles or Lydia doze off in the middle of trying to make sense of the pattern.  Lydia hates it: hates the room and the staring eyes of all the photos of dead bodies, hates the way that she only ever wakes up on that bed when she can’t remember dozing off.

They have sets of three, mistletoe and the mountain ash tree Lydia keeps finding herself drawing. and they have Lydia.  Out of every avenue they’ve exhausted, they have Lydia.

Last night Lydia fell asleep in Scott’s bed with three other people around her, hemming her in and making sure she wouldn’t wander off alone.  Lydia is exhausted.  Lydia is what they have.

"I can’t," she says, running her fingers over the map.  "I can’t control it if I don’t know when it’s going to happen, and I can’t stop it I can’t ever feel it coming."

"What if it’s like falling asleep?" Allison asks.  "You never remember falling asleep when you wake up in the morning, but you can still jerk yourself back awake."

…

The kitchen is Boyd’s now.  He didn’t mean to take over dinner and dishes duties any more than he really meant to move in, but he’s a better cook than just about everybody here except maybe Isaac.  Boyd’s not good at hanging around useless.

He doesn’t mind.  It’s a good place to keep an eye on people coming and going.

Isaac lurks in the laundry room when he wants to be somewhere quiet.  It’s set off from the rest of the house, he’s pretty good at getting the blood out, and Boyd hasn’t heard Lydia shrieking about her dry-clean-onlies yet.  The downstairs study belongs to Stiles, and most of the second-biggest spare bedroom when Lydia’s not up there with him.  When Lydia wants somewhere quiet to be, she retreats into the tiny back sitting room behind the dining room with a pile of books.  Allison’s got the back yard.  She has an archery target set up, shaded by trees where the neighbors can’t see it, but yesterday Boyd watched her pulling weeds from one of the flowerbeds.

He’d expect it from Isaac.  Isaac lives here, just like McCall.  Everyone else here has somewhere else to go, even Boyd.  They’ve all got other places to go, homes to sleep in, parents to check on.  But somehow everybody all piles together into two beds at night, whichever of them can sleep, even though there are other places to be and four perfectly good beds in this house they could be in.  Nobody sleeps alone.

Nobody really wants to sleep in the second-biggest spare bedroom, not with Stiles and Lydia’s wall hanging right there.  There’s a futon in the very smallest spare room, the one Mrs. McCall used mostly for storage, if anybody needs it.  Nobody goes into the last room except for McCall.

Boyd doesn’t even think about making a thing out of it, the first time he passes by and sees McCall through the crack of the door, curled up in the middle of the bed in the master bedroom.  If his bodyguards are leaving him alone, then it’s fine.  Anyway, if Boyd could curl up somewhere soft that still smelled like Erica, he might never leave.

Instead,  he goes down to start on dinner.

…

"Do you even know what it’s like to be betrayed by your own brain?" Lydia demands.  "To not even have control over your own actions?"

Scott glances around.  "I’m pretty sure Boyd, Isaac, and I know exactly what that’s like," he says.

"Well then," says Lydia.  "That’s great.  But that’s still you.  You can still take control.  You’ve never had to deal with somebody else taking you over, or waking up not knowing what somebody else made you do—"

"Yes I have," says Scott, and Lydia stops.  "The same person as you."

"It’s not the same," says Lydia.

"I know," says Scott.  "But you’re stronger than he is, and you’re stronger than the darach.  You can remember, even if they don’t want you to."

Isaac says, “Well—" and then stops, but it’s too late.

"What?" Allison presses, and Isaac shrugs.

"Nothing," he says.  "Just a really bad idea."

"How bad is bad?" asks Stiles.  Isaac glances at the wall clock.

"Pretty bad.  Anybody else want to order a pizza?"

"Isaac," Scott commands.

"We know somebody who knows how to retrieve lost memories, that’s all," Isaac says.

Stiles gets it right away, Boyd a second later.  Lydia looks sick.  He shouldn’t have said anything.

Scott frowns.  "I thought she tried working with Deaton on trances and it didn’t work.  She’s human, we can’t do the ice—"

"No," says Lydia.  "No, absolutely not."

"Not Deaton," says Stiles.

…

Every time Scott puts one foot in front of another, it’s one more second of not sitting down, laying down, leaving the world to die.

Allison swears his eyes flashed red before Derek died.  He’s afraid to ask her to check if they still do.  Isaac and Boyd are both calling him their alpha now.  It’s got to be enough to face down Peter.

Boyd knows where Peter’s apartment is.  Scott puts one foot in front of the other right up to the front door.

Knocking is less dramatic, which must be why Derek always just loomed up out of the shadows.  Something to think about in the future.

"Scott," says Peter.  "What a pleasant surprise.  Won’t you come in?"  Scott is already past him, into the apartment’s front hallway.

It’s nice.  Hardwood floors, granite countertops in the kitchen.  Very normal, veryPeter, and not Derek at all.

"We need to get at Lydia’s memories of whatever’s happening to her when the darach takes its sacrifices," Scott says.  "You know how to do that."

Peter looks surprised, then gratified.  "Well, I have stuck my claws into a human or two in my time.  There was that one, your friend Jackson—of course, Derek got to him first, he was really just for fun—"

"Not you," Scott interrupts his musings.  "You’re going to teach me."

…

The alpha pack’s been quiet.  The only people who are dumb enough to trust quiet are either already dead, or too busy with other things to think about it.

Isaac doesn’t have a whole lot to contribute to the darach hunt, so he spends his spare time watching the alphas.  He doesn’t mention it to Scott.

Allison knows, which means that whenever Isaac pays a little too much attention to the twins at school, she’s right at his shoulder.  She’d be better than Isaac at tracking the darach, but Stiles and Lydia are about a hundred times better than either of them.  She likes Isaac’s hunts better.

They never get too close, they always watch each other’s backs, and sometimes they invite Boyd along.

The alpha werewolves buy groceries and go to the dry cleaners and don’t appear to do much at all, their little family of four.  Aiden’s stopped even trying to catch Lydia’s attention.  His brother is sleeping with Danny, possibly every time they can find so much as a quiet corner or supply closet by the smell of things.

Neither of them seem very fond of Deucalion, and Kali doesn’t seem to like anyone very much at all.  It’s worth noting.

When they follow Kali to the grocery store, Isaac always remembers to pick up bread and milk.

…

Nobody’s having sex at the McCall house.

Allison is clearly Scott’s, and Isaac just as clearly is too, and Scott hasn’t made so much as an unchaste hand gesture towards anyone in months.  Decreased libido is frequently a symptom of depression, situational or otherwise.  It’s not Lydia’s job to care what Scott McCall is or is not interested in doing with his penis so long as it doesn’t involve her hip or leg while they’re curled up in bed for the night.  If it goes on for longer than the current crisis, maybe she’ll start thinking about the fact that everybody in this house clearly needs intensive therapy once again.

Boyd is obviously still grieving for his girlfriend, which can’t possibly be going well for him given that he refuses to talk about it.  He doesn’t blink twice when Lydia walks through the hall to the bathroom in a towel, and it’s not enough to work with.

There’s nobody outside this household, nobody Lydia can trust, and in here there’s Stiles.  Stiles, who figured out she had even more brains than beauty before almost anybody else Lydia knew.  Stiles who once almost gave her a flat-screen TV for her birthday.  Stiles who she’d still rather stay up with all night, talking about serial killers or history homework or nothing at all, than go to bed with alone.  He’s always a perfect gentleman, of course.  It might be the only part of his life where Stiles is actually nice.

He’d have sex with her if she asked.  He’d break something tripping over his own feet trying to get undressed fast enough, probably, if she asked.

They’re friends, they’re good friends, but Lydia could make Stiles fall in love with her so easily that it makes her skin crawl.  She’s already had one too-epic romance in her life.  She doesn’t want another.  She doesn’t want any romance at all, any boyfriend.  She wants to be fucked through the mattress already, and Stiles would, but he’d expect everything and the world afterwards.  Even if Lydia had it to give, it wouldn’t be to him.

She misses Jackson.  She goes back to her mother’s house to show her face and change out her wardrobe, and spends half an hour on her old bed, enjoying the privacy of no werewolf hearing and a vibrator set on high.

Then she goes home, because there’s work to be done, and tonight Boyd is making tacos.

…

Peter tells Scott he should probably practice on a werewolf before he moves onto Lydia.  Just in case.

The idea of going anywhere near Peter’s thoughts makes Scott sick to his stomach.  It also won’t work.

"You’re going to need me to talk you through this the first time," Peter says.  "Probably the second and the third, the first dozen times.  A little hard for me to do that if your claws are already in my neck."

"How do I know you won’t deliberately guide me wrong?" Scott asks.  Peter gives him a level look.

"Scott, when you first met me, what did I want more than anything else in the universe?" he asks.  It almost feels like a trick question.

"Revenge," says Scott, and Peter nods.

"The alphas killed Derek," he says.  "He wasn’t much, but then, I don’t have much any more, do I.  Somehow, I don’t see vengeance as much of a viable option if I don’t have the backing of some kind of pack or alpha."

"I’m not your alpha," Scott says.

"Of course not."  Peter smiles.

Isaac volunteers as a test subject.  When Scott lets the claws slide clean out of his fingertips, he can feel his eyes flash red.

…

They don’t find the darach.

They find a single ancient mountain ash tree, deep in the preserve, branches almost choked with parasitic mistletoe.  Scott, Isaac, and Boyd can barely get near it.

Allison stays with them to help guard it in case the darach returns while Stiles and Lydia go for help.  They come back in Stiles’ jeep with Dr. Deaton, and a chainsaw.

It’s harder to cut down an ancient, magical tree of protection than you’d think, but Dr. Deaton says there’s no cleansing it now.  The werewolves have to stand back by the length of a football field when the thing finally topples.

It’s four days before Thanksgiving.

…

Nightmares can be contagious.

Lydia and Boyd both go back to their parents’ houses the night before Thanksgiving.  Stiles can’t begin to think about facing an empty bed tonight.  Allison doesn’t even consider it.

The Beacon Hills Dead Mothers Society piles into Scott’s bed like they’ve been doing it forever and not barely two months: Stiles spooned around Scott’s back, Scott and Allison curving towards each other with their heads on one pillow, Isaac curled tiny between Scott and Allison’s legs, head on Allison’s hip and feet tucked behind Scott’s ankles.

"Maybe we don’t need this any more," Stiles says.

"You don’t have to," Allison says instantly.  "We’re not—nobody’s making you—"

"No, I know, it’s okay," says Stiles.  "It’s fine, I’m staying."

"Are you sure?" asks Scott.  Stiles pinches him just under the ribs.

"It’s fine," he says.

That night they all fall asleep together.  It’s impossible to say what starts first.  Everybody knows by now that Stiles kicks when he’s having a nightmare, and hits anybody who tries to wake him up, that some nights Isaac whimpers out loud and clenches himself so tightly into a ball that his muscles are sore the next morning, and sometimes Allison shifts and shakes and moans.  Scott still wakes up to a pillow soaked with tears more nights than not.

So maybe Stiles kicks Scott at some point during the night and sets him off, or Isaac shifts into Allison, or hears her heartbeat in his sleep.  Hell, maybe it’s a pack thing, half psychic, maybe Stiles just hates Thanksgiving so much that it bleeds over into everybody else’s dreams.

Thanksgiving morning sucks.

…

Scott has spent Thanksgiving with his dad’s family while his mom worked for years.  He hasn’t seen his Aunt Sara and Uncle Bill since the funeral.  He hasn’t seen his dad since the funeral.

With Boyd gone for the day, Isaac’s in charge of the turkey.  It gets going two hours early because Isaac handles nightmares by getting up, like he can prove to himself that he’s still moving and nobody can touch him.

Stiles is the one who insisted on turkey, even though he hates Thanksgiving, and has for as long as Scott’s known him.  "It’ll be leftovers for a week," he said.  "Do you know how much you guys cost to feed?"

Allison’s dad comes over just before the start of the football game, because Allison refuses to even think of leaving.  The sheriff is supposed to get off shift some time after five and come over then.  Scott can’t remember the last time either one looked him in the eye.

At 5:00, right around the time Allison’s biscuits are done, Scott answers the door.  His dad has two bottles of wine and half a pan of Aunt Eleanor’s apple cobbler.

"Your grandmother says hello," he says.  They always eat super-early at his grandmother’s house.

Stiles would probably kick him out.  "The game’s on," Scott says.  "Don’t fight with Allison’s dad."

…

They’re sitting down when Isaac muses, in that sly, dry way that might or might not be sarcastic, “We should’ve invited Peter and Cora over."

"I don’t think that’s a very good idea," Chris Argent says, and, “Who are they?" says Scott’s dad, all at the same time.  Stiles rolls his eyes.

"Well, now you’ve freaked the grown-ups out," he says.

"Why not?" asks Scott.  He’s got the head of the table, not Chris Argent. Stiles made sure of it.  "I  mean, they’re part of the club too, right?"

"Club?" asks Scott’s dad.

"The Beacon Hills Dead Mothers’ Association," says Allison, in the cheerful voice that means she’s furiously angry with somebody.  Automatically, Scott, Stiles, and Isaac all raise their glasses to hers.  Hell, Scott’s dad bought the wine, they might as well drink it.

"Hear, hear," says Isaac.

"That’s not exactly appropriate," Chris Argent says, and “What the hell is going on in this house?" says Scott’s dad, all at the same time.

"Sure," says Stiles.  "That’s going to make this dinner less likely to end in bloodshed.  Invite the Hales."

"Bloodshed’s what we’re good at," murmurs Allison.  Her dad glares at her.

"Boy," says Isaac, when Scott actually goes for his cell phone.  "Lydia’s going to be sad that she missed this."

Peter and Cora show up ten minutes after Stiles’ dad gets there.  They bring a pie.

…

Lydia gets home around nine without any doubt in her mind as to why she started considering the McCall house ‘home’.

Peter disappears in the middle of a conversation ten minutes later and takes the car with him, and doesn’t answer his phone when Cora calls three times.  She could get home just fine on her own, to Peter’s apartment or Derek’s still-empty loft or anywhere she wants to go.  They offer her a choice between the second-biggest guest room under the darach wall that’s still hanging there, and the couch.

Boyd lets himself in at about one in the morning.  There’s not enough room to add himself to the pile on Scott’s bed, even if he would lay down uninvited, but he and Cora have huddled together for warmth before.

…

In December, Lydia doesn’t stop sleepwalking, but people stop dying.

In December, Allison and Isaac go out to stalk the alpha pack and discover that when they turn around, one of the other alphas is watching them.

Boyd starts putting a handful of money towards utilities and rent, quietly slipping it in Stiles’ direction every week or two.  Scott wouldn’t like it, but Scott’s not the one doing the bills.  If he doesn’t find out he can’t complain.

Lydia’s covering the internet and cable bill out of her mom’s checking account.  Stiles has started weighing the benefits of selling term papers online vs selling his extra Adderal at school.  Isaac doesn’t bring home receipts for half the grocery shopping he pays for.  Everybody puts in what they can.

Scott passes every class, fall semester, which is more than anybody really expected or hoped.

His mom would have wanted it.

…

Peter sets them up.  They should have been watching.  Cora should have been watching.

There’s mountain ash everywhere around Scott McCall’s house now.  All three of the humans carry pockets full of the stuff, constantly ready to break and redraw the lines whenever the werewolves need to get in or out.  They got sloppy, though.  At Thanksgiving, Peter noticed.  Peter always notices.

She’d wondered why he’d been so interested in lying low.  Everything she’d heard, from Derek and the McCall pack, said that Peter liked to go all out with his revenge.  It sounded like him. 

If Scott asks Cora to kill him, after they get out of here alive, she will.  Peter’s the reason they’re all trapped inside this house, with Allison stuck upstairs and Stiles and Lydia on the other side of town, while Scott and Deucalion try to kill each other outside.  He has a plan, of course.  Cora’s sure he has a plan.

She’s almost sure that he expects Scott to be the one who survives this fight.  That would be like him.  Cora really does understand.

She understands almost everything Peter’s done, really.  The world is full of pack, who are everything, and everybody else, who mean nothing at all.  It isn’t hard to grasp.

The difference is that with Derek and Laura dead, Scott McCall is the last alpha Cora would consider following, really.  And you don’t betray pack like this.

…

The situation is this: Allison is not going to die today.  Allison’s pack is not going to die today.

Kali and Aiden can handle Boyd, Isaac, and Cora between them easily, and Ethan is between Allison and her daggers.  He’s left her alone in the second-largest guest room so far.  The window is painted shut, and even if Allison could get outside, he’s between Allison and her daggers.

It’s pretty simple, really.  Deucalion swears that if he kills Scott, he and his pack will leave.  If Scott kills him, then Kali and the twins will leave.  Nobody else is supposed to get involved.  Straight one-on-one fight.

Scott is the one who taught Allison that a wolf’s strength comes from the pack, and with Cora on the futon again this house slept seven last night. Scott is stronger than he knows.  He’s stronger than he lets himself know.

Allison notices the split second’s hesitation at the same time Deucalion does, and winces as Scott gets thrown into a tree for it.

The problem with Scott is that he’s never killed anybody before.  He’s never even tried to.  The problem with Scott is that he won’t kill, even to save his own life.

He’s Scott, though, which means he’ll forgive her if she does it, eventually.

Deucalion tosses Scott down in the narrow, shaded part of the yard that none of the neighbors’ houses can see, where Allison set up her archery targets.  The crossbow is a familiar, steady weight in her hand.  It’s not her favorite, but it’ll do.  It would go through the window easily enough, but there’s no telling how that might affect her aim, so she goes into the bathroom.  She wouldn’t be able to fit her whole head through that window, let alone the rest of her body, but it opens just fine.

The thing Allison has figured out about the alpha pack is, each one of them took all of that werewolf-pack strength completely for themselves, but they forget some of the more mundane definitions of ‘strength in numbers’.  Not one of them bothered to check whether this room had a bow and arrows under the bed.

The bolt takes Deucalion straight through the eye, powerful enough to pierce right through the skull on the other side.  Scott stumbles back in shock.  Downstairs, Kali howls with rage, which means that Allison needs to prepare before they try to take revenge.

…

There is not a whole lot that prepares you for coming home from five hours of Christmas shopping to find Peter Hale gashed and bleeding on the living room floor and a dead body in the back yard with an arrow still sticking out of its head.

They pause in the hallway and look at Peter for a while.  Stiles says, “If we’re going to put him out of his misery, I motion that we cut him in half this time."

"Scott says we have to keep him until he heals up and then we can run him out of town," says Isaac, and Lydia sniffs.

"Not far enough out for my liking," she says, and then, “can you help carry in the bags?  It took Stiles three trips to get everything in the car in the first place."

Allison’s dad has promised to help them deal with Deucalion’s body.  According to Scott, once Kali found out just who had killed Ennis, she agreed to take off after all.  One more problem down.

There’s not a whole lot that prepares you for that kind of an evening’s surprise, but if anything would, it’s the life they’ve all been living for the past year.

…

Scott tries to spend the next couple of days in bed, after Deucalion dies practically in his arms.  It’s been a pretty good coping mechanism for the past couple of months.

He can’t lay there any more, though.  He gets up and finds Stiles, Isaac, and Boyd.

"Hey," Scott says.  "It’s a month until lacrosse tryouts and I’m way out of practice.  Wanna go down to the field?"

Stiles tends goal, mostly, and Boyd and Isaac run Scott around until he’s exhausted from moving, instead of from sitting around all day.

It’s a start.  Afterwards, Stiles drags them all for curly fries.  Scott makes them bring the girls an entire bucket.

…

"So now that this whole werewolf business is dealt with, are you going to start sleeping in your own bed again?" Stiles’ dad asks.  He’s been living alone for months, and Stiles so gets how much that would suck.  He just doesn’t think that Scott—or anyone else—is ready for a fully-blown adult to move into Casa Pack McCall any time soon.

"I have been," Stiles says honestly.  "Dad, that’s where I belong.  The pack needs me, and I need them too, okay?"  His dad sighs.

"You know, Scott and Isaac Lahey should both be reported to social services," he says.  "Maybe the rest of them, too.  I can’t believe Chris Argent is allowing this, let alone Lydia Martin’s parents, or the Boyds after what happened last summer."

"They don’t care," Stiles says.  "I don’t mean Allison and her dad, they have their own thing, but Lydia’s parents, Boyd’s, Scott’s dad—they don’t give a crap what their kids do.  Everybody in that house is better off with us than without us."  His dad looks torn, so Stiles plays his trump card: “Melissa would want Scott to be with family that actually cares about him."

"We’ve got space here," his dad says cautiously.  "There’s always been room for Scott in this house, and we could find somewhere to put Isaac, too…"

Stiles actually thinks about it for a minute.  Really thinks about it.

It’s been three months of constant family togetherness, of never sleeping alone in bed, of privacy being a thing that just plain doesn’t exist any more.  Three months of, somebody has to remember to do the grocery shopping or nobody eats, somebody has to figure out how to fix the leaky faucet or the dripping won’t ever stop.  Three months of Scott-isn’t-on-suicide-watch-but.  Three months of bills.

They could all just back off and call it done.  A three month wartime stint in teenage insanity.  Youthful experimentation in what being a real adult means, shit they won’t actually have to get back to until after college, or later.

The pack could still stay close.  They could hang out, see each other at school, go to their own separate homes at the end of the day and live their own separate lives, like actual teenagers do.  That’s what his dad’s offering.  It’s an option.

"We can’t," Stiles says.  "But I can spend more nights here, and maybe Scott or one of the others can come with me once in a while."

His dad’s hugs are one thing Stiles could never see really giving up.

…

Boyd asks, “What was your mom like?" and everybody at the dinner table holds their breath.  Scott waits for the question to land like a blow, but it’s softer than he expected.  Maybe he can handle this.

"She was great," Scott says.  "She was…she was always there for me."

There are too many memories, no wonder Allison and Stiles and Isaac acted like the question was so hard.  God, Scott misses her.

"She came after me with a baseball bat once," Stiles offers.  "Actually, you and your mom both came after me with baseball bats."

"You were really alike," Isaac agrees quietly.  Scott has to close his eyes.

"She put herself through college for two years before I was born," he says.  "And then she married my dad and they had me, and she still went to college, even though I was just a baby and my dad never stopped giving her crap about it.  She was awesome, she was brave…she helped us smuggle Jackson’s body out of the morgue that time, remember?"  He looks at Stiles.  Stiles grins.

"Yeah, she was kind of a badass," Stiles says.  "And she always kept your ass in line.  It took like five of us to manage that without her.  God only knows how she managed you on her own all those years."

"Yeah," says Scott.  This house used to seem so big when it was only the two of them living here.  His mom had always talked about selling when he left for college, but now…

"Well, then," Lydia says.  "A toast.  To Melissa McCall."

Scott has to hold his breath when everybody raises their glasses—clunky old plastic cups full of water, because Stiles has been crossing juice and pop off the grocery list again, and the humans save the booze for special occasions.

She always thought the house was too empty, too.  She’d like this.  She’d like it a lot.

…

Sleeping arrangements keep changing around, now that Boyd and Cora are both here.  Stiles made a promise to his dad to stay at their house twice a week.  Sometimes he even drags the other guys with him to sack out and play video games, and they let the girls have the house to themselves for the night.  It’s nice.  Allison and Lydia have started tag-teaming Cora into girly movies and seriously cutthroat games of Cards Against Humanity.

Lydia’s going home more often now that the sleepwalking is tapering off, and Boyd likes to check on his parents.  Cora lives here all the time now, just like Scott and Isaac do, but she doesn’t always want to sleep in the same bed as somebody else.  The second-largest guest bedroom is an actual bedroom now, and not Stiles and Lydia’s miniature FBI department.

Allison has dinner with her father a couple of times a week.  He asks polite, stilted questions about the pack, and then they talk about her classes and her grades instead for the rest of the meal.

She always comes home for bed.  She doesn’t always wind up curled together with Scott and Isaac, but something about the McCall house feels safer than anywhere she’s ever lived before.

…

A week and a half before Christmas, Stiles stomps from the kitchen into the weird little office he’s using as his own personal filing cabinet.  Boyd, Allison, and Cora silently watch him go, then go back to debating over the moral of The Grapes Of Wrath.

Ten minutes later, Stiles stomps back out again.  He gives the three of them a judging look that Boyd would find kind of offensive if he weren’t mostly used to Stilinski by now, and then sags.

“I need help,” he says.  “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“What’s wrong?” Allison asks.

“Taxes,” says Stiles.  “And this letter from one of Melissa’s credit card companies that I can’t even begin to read.  And I have no idea where I’ve been putting Scott’s pay stubs.  He’s been going to work, I’ve been cashing his checks, but the paperwork?  Poof.  Gone the way of the Stiles Organizational System.  There’s a ninety percent chance it ended up on the FBI wall covered in notes about the darach.”

“Oh, joy,” Cora sighs.  They all push off the carpet to their feet.

“Show us what you’ve got, Stilinski,” Boyd orders.  God only knows why they didn’t have anybody with half a stick of common sense in charge of the bills in the first place.

They’re going to be okay, it turns out.  Cora’s got access to all Derek’s bank accounts, and Derek was totally rolling in it.  Boyd tries not to resent the abandoned subway car a little.  Derek’s dead.  It’s not worth resenting.

Stiles isn’t giving up day-to-day control of the house finances without a fight, because he’s a little control freak, but Scott makes Boyd promise to look over everything once or twice a month anyway.  Just because Boyd’s been working and dealing with money since he was fourteen, now he’s the pack expert.

It’s not actually that bad, being the pack expert on something.

…

Lydia is a practical girl.  After this year, she’d like to consider herself an adaptable one.

“I’d like to make you a proposition,” she says to Cora.  Lydia’s old list still stands, but there’s a new pack member.  Boyd trusts Cora, and Boyd would know best.  It’s better than Lydia could say for the rest of the junior class.

“I’m listening,” Cora says.

“In the classic sense of the term,” says Lydia.  “I’m propositioning you.  Should I come back and try it in a dress that shows a little more cleavage?”

Cora raises her eyebrows and takes a slow, measured step forward.  Lydia raises hers right back and tilts her head, waiting.

“What’s the catch?” Cora asks.

“No strings,” says Lydia.  Cora rolls her eyes.

“You don’t make an offer like this without a catch,” she says.

“That is the catch,” says Lydia.  “No strings attached.”  Cora’s eyes flicker down to Lydia’s lips, because Lydia is never wrong when she makes an advance like this.  Never.  “Pure stress relief and personal enjoyment.”

Cora’s just like the rest of them, really, another lost little orphan with nowhere else to go.  Lydia can trust that.  That’s all she’s really looking for, when it comes down to it.

She doesn’t need a deep romantic connection here.  She has a pack.  She has an email from Jackson that’s been sitting unopened for days.  That’s all the emotional connection Lydia has space for in one life right now.  What she needs is a little trust and a few orgasms.

Cora does just fine.

…

Scott thinks he might be in love twice.  It all sort of happened while he wasn’t looking, in between murderous druids and reminding himself that he has to eat no matter how much he doesn’t feel like it.

When none of the others are in bed with them, Isaac usually uncurls from his place near the foot of the bed and ends up sandwiched between Scott and Allison.  It’s Scott’s favorite way to sleep.  He and Allison hold hands over Isaac’s hip all night.

He loves them both a lot.  He might even want them both, Scott thinks.  It’s not like when he was first dating Allison, when every other thought about her was about sex.  He’s had too many other things on his mind.  Scott’s pretty sure that at seventeen, he’s not supposed to be able to feel too tired for sex, but, well, he’s not supposed to be a lot of things he is.

“You two would be really good together,” he says as they all get ready for bed.  Allison and Isaac both freeze.  “I mean it,” says Scott, and that’s the thing, he really does.  “It’s okay.”

“We’re not dating,” Isaac says immediately.  He looks trapped.  “I swear, I wasn’t—”

“Isaac,” says Allison, just like Scott would have.  “Do you want to kiss me?”

Isaac looks even more trapped, but he lets Allison take the two steps over to him and tug him down for a kiss.  Scott makes himself watch.  They look good.  They look like they mean it.

They break apart.  “Scott,” Allison says.  “Can you do something for me?  Just one thing?”

“Anything,” Scott promises.  That will always be true.

“Kiss Isaac?” Allison says.  “Just once.”

Scott meets Isaac’s eyes.  The ‘just once’ part is going to be hard, but he can do that.  “Sure,” Scott says, and Isaac swallows.  “If Isaac wants to.”

“Um, yeah,” says Isaac, before he swallows.  “I’d like that.”

It’s more tentative than Scott would like.  He hasn’t kissed anybody in…well, in a long time.  He’s never kissed anybody taller than him before, but the side of Isaac’s face fits against the palm of his hand.

When he pulls back, Allison is smiling.  “Scott, it’s the three of us,” she says.  “It’s supposed to be all three.”

“Are you sure?” Scott asks.  He loves them both, but… “I’m not really boyfriend material right now.”

Isaac snorts.  “As if you’re even close to being the most screwed-up person in this room,” he says.

“It’s okay,” says Allison.  She reaches out to take one of Scott’s hands in hers, then Isaac’s with the other hand.  “We already might as well be dating.  We’ll go slow.”

…

Scott wakes up first.  He’s careful when he disentangles himself from his boyfriend and girlfriend.  He can hear the rest of his pack snoring down the hall.

He turns on the coffee pot for the humans, and because he still likes the flavor, even after this long.

Technically, tomorrow will be a year that Scott’s been a werewolf.  The day after that will be a year since he met Allison, and since he met Derek.  A lot can happen in one year.

Scott pulls out bacon, chocolate chips, pancake mix.  It’s the first day of school for the new semester.  Breakfast should be good.  This is his pack now.  He has to take care of them.

Stiles stumbles downstairs first, just in time for the first cup of coffee.  Upstairs, the shower goes off.  Lydia’s going to spend the next hour on her hair and makeup.  She always does when it’s a big day.  Cora makes a sarcastic remark about saving some hot water, and Lydia says something that Scott’s probably not supposed to hear.

There’s not a second of quiet in this house.  There never is any more.

Boyd tosses the newspaper onto the kitchen table and slumps into a seat with an enormous mug of black coffee that won’t do anything for him.  Scott eyes his frying pan, and then flips two pancakes at once with a deft flick of the wrist.

First day of school.  Start of a brand new year.  Anything could happen.

It might not be good—Scott’s still not quite ready to trust that just yet—but they can still start it with pancakes.