Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mieczysław Stilinski was born on a cold October night in 1994, when the wind rattled the windowpanes of Beacon Hills General and the trees outside bowed like they were whispering gossip. He came into the world howling, red-faced and furious—born with too much energy and a set of lungs that could rival a fire alarm. A spirited baby from the very beginning.

The nurse crinkled her nose, squinting as she tried—and failed—to read the name on the birth certificate.

"Mee... meecha-sloff?"

Claudia Stilinski, tired and glowing with the kind of love only new mothers seem to radiate, gave a faint but firm smile.

"Mieczysław," she said clearly through the fog of exhaustion. "Mee-eh-chee-swahv."

"God bless you," the nurse muttered, making a mental note to call the kid literally anything else.

The baby boy was named after Claudia’s father—Mieczysław Gajos. Old-fashioned and solid, the name seemed forged from the steel of language itself. Rooted in words meaning “sword” and “glory,” it told a story before the bearer had ever lifted a blade. It meant “one who earns glory through the sword”—a name to grow into, etched into legend by the sharp edge of valor and the weight of destiny.

Claudia said it like a lullaby—soft and fluent. And when she cradled her son to her chest for the first time, she whispered it into the tawny hair at the crown of his head like a blessing.

But outside that quiet hospital room, the name didn't land quite as gently.

By the time he was three, no one at daycare even attempted to pronounce it. Teachers raised their eyebrows. Doctors squinted. Children stumbled over it like a tongue-twister.
Even Noah Stilinski—who adored his son but lacked Claudia's ear for foreign vowels—tried only a handful of times to pronounce it.

"Meech... Meech-uh... Sloth?"
"Mee-cheese-slaw?"
"I give up."

Claudia would laugh, sometimes so hard she had to sit down and hold her side. But she never mocked her husband. Her laughter was sunlight—bright and warm, never cruel.

Stiles was easier—short and digestible. Borrowed from the family name. American enough to slip through the cracks unnoticed, but strange enough to raise a few eyebrows.

He had tried once to explain the name situation to a school secretary—only to give up halfway through and scrawl Stiles into the blank.

“He answers to it,” he said with a shrug. “Good enough for me.”

“But it’s not his legal name,” she pointed out.

“Trust me,” Noah muttered. “It’s going to be easier this way. For everyone’s sake.”

But Claudia—Claudia never let it go.
She didn't always call him Mieczysław. But she used it in the quiet moments. At bedtime. When he was sick and curled up beside her with a fever and a blanket.
When she stroked his hair after nightmares and whispered it like a protective spell.

The boy had trouble himself. His tongue tangled around the soft consonants and lilting vowels, trying to wrestle the Slavic syllables into shape.

She taught him to say it piece by piece.

"Mee... chee... swav," he'd sound it out, puffing out his cheeks and narrowing his eyes in concentration.

"Good," she'd say gently. "Again."

He was four the first time he tried to write it.
He scrawled M-E-E-C-H-Y-S-W-A-F in crooked letters across a sheet of yellowed paper and stuck it to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a pancake.

"Close enough, Mischief," she said with a fond grin.

He called himself that first—just once—trying and failing to say the name right.
She was the one who kept calling him that after: Mischief. And it stuck, like all the best names do.
It started as a joke, a nickname murmured as she tousled his hair and tucked him into bed at night, but it grew into something tender. Something true. He was mischief—sparkling in his eyes, stitched into the way he could never sit still, always poking at the edges of the world just to see what would happen.

But to everyone else—friends, teachers, doctors, the dry cleaner, and especially his dad—he was just Stiles.

One night, tucked under a patchwork blanket in his parents' bed during a thunderstorm, he asked her:

"Do names have power?"

Her fingers idly played with the ends of his hair. Rain tapped against the glass like soft applause.

"Of course they do," she said. "Why do you think we keep your real one secret from everyone else?"

"Because it's hard to say?"

"No," she laughed, turning toward him. “Because it’s yours. The world doesn’t get to take everything, sweetheart. You get to keep part of yourself safe—like a flame in a jar.”

"Like magic?"

"Exactly."

Stiles sat up straighter.

"Does that mean I'm magical?"

"Oh, sweetheart," she whispered, drawing the blanket up to his chin and kissing his forehead, "you're the most magical boy I've ever met."

He smiled softly, a proud, sleepy curl of lips, and blinked slowly.

"And one day, when you need it most," she said, "maybe it'll remind you who you really are."

"Mischief?"

She smiled. "More than that. But that too."

It was raining again.

Not the gentle kind—the kind that made stories feel soft and the world feel tucked in. No, this was angry rain. Harsh, stinging sheets driven sideways by a wind that made the house groan like something alive. Each drop struck the windows like a slap. Outside, trees bent low, swaying like dancers caught mid-collapse. A flash of white light split the sky—then thunder followed, cracking the night open like bone.

Mieczysław—Stiles—was six years old.

He lay curled on the living room rug, legs tangled in a blanket. The television flickered behind him in quiet blues and silvers, its sound low. In his lap sat a notebook, half-filled with looping swirls and jagged corners. Not pictures, not really. Lately, he'd been drawing mazes. Puzzles.

From the kitchen, his mother was humming. A low, meandering lullaby. She always hummed when she needed to keep her hands steady. She'd once told him the tune came from her mother—a melody old like a memory. It made the air feel safe.

Then the humming stopped.

It began with the kettle. A slow whine, rising. The sound of boiling water building like a siren. A high, keening pitch that slipped beneath the walls of the house and into the bones. Claudia stood at the stove, unmoving. Her hands shook. One held a teacup that trembled like it weighed a thousand pounds. Her eyes stared into the tiled backsplash like it had shown her something she couldn't look away from.

The kettle screamed. The teacup slipped and ceramic shattered across the floor.

Stiles flinched at the sound, "Mom?"

Her arms jerked suddenly, spasming like tangled puppet strings. Her grip slipped from the counter. Her fingers clawed the air but caught nothing. She turned—no, fell—toward him. Her whole body crumpled. Her mouth opened wide, but no sound came out. Her eyes rolled back, showing too much white. Then she hit the floor.

"Mom!"

He ran, blanket forgotten, his knees smacking the tile. The world had shrunk to the terrible sounds her body made—the stuttering breath, the twitch of her hands, the dull thud of her head hitting the ground.

He dropped beside her, shaking. "Mom?! MOM?!"

No answer. Just the horrible rhythm of her body jerking against the floor, as if she were caught mid-electrocution.

He didn't understand. He was six. Seven in a few weeks. Still small enough to believe everything bad had a reason. Still small enough to believe that if he can't help her it'll be his fault.

He pressed his hands to her chest, panicked. "Get up—please get up—wake up, please—"

His fists pounded, soft and useless. His tears came hot and fast. He didn't hear the thunder anymore. Or the rain. Or the kettle, still screaming.

Only her. Only this.

Her eyes flickered again. For a moment—just a second—he thought she saw him. There was something there. Recognition. Panic. Then nothing. Unseeing. And he broke. Just a quiet, clean snap inside him. Like glass under pressure finally giving way. He didn't feel the cold. Didn't notice the way his body folded in on itself, trembling.

The lightning struck again—closer this time. The windows flashed white. The kettle let out one last shriek and then clicked off. And the boy lay beside his mother, breathing, terrified and in the midst of chaos.

That's when it heard him.

Outside, lightning forked across the sky—and somewhere behind the house, far beyond the backyard fence where the trees curled like broken bones, an ancient being stirred awake.

The Nemeton, the sacred beacon of supernatural power in Beacon Hills—once cut down by foolish, clueless men—was no longer the monument it had once been. It was fractured, stripped of its former strength. Vulnerable. Not to time, but to the world it existed in. On nights like this, it had no protection. The severed trunk, barely a stump now, sat exposed to the storm. A bolt of lightning struck. The wood screamed. Not shattered—but splintered and weakened.

And in the dark beneath the bark, a fox opened its eyes.
The Nogitsune awoke——not from sleep, but from stillness, from decades of imprisonment beneath the tree, locked in stasis.
It did not rise from a grave. It did not crawl from the earth. It was more elemental than that. It had no true shape—only instinct. Purpose. Trickery. Hunger.

The sensation came as a sudden spike of tension in the air, the raw, electric charge of fear. It tasted it. Tracked it. Like a shark tracing blood through the deep.

It found the house. Inside, a woman writhed on the kitchen floor, caught in the grip of a seizure, her mind spiraling, unraveling at the edges. It did not touch her. It fed—not on her life, but on the chaos, on her faltering hold on reality. On the storm of grief rising from the child beside her, the child who shook her, who sobbed and screamed for her.

A child’s grief is not light. It is not simple. It is vast, shapeless thing—depthless and wild, untouched by logic, untempered by reason. It does not know how to regulate pain, only how to feel it in every atom.

The Nogitsune curled its fingers around the child in that moment. Felt the grief. The helplessness. The fear. The opening.

It seeped in like rot into soft fruit.

Stiles sobbed so hard he hiccupped, his small hands trembling as he pressed his forehead to his mother’s chest, begging her heart to beat for both of them, begging her not to die. And then—a stillness between screams. A soft pressure behind his eyes. Not pain. Something… settling. A second presence slid beneath his skin, feather-light and quiet, threading into the cracks of his soul. It did not force its way in. It invited itself gently.

Where there was terror, it offered calm.
Where there was grief, it whispered purpose.
Where there was helplessness, it gave something steady and sharp—control.

It curled there in his chest.

Ancient.
Playful.
Curious.
Cruel.
Hungry.

Let me help us.

The words were not spoken aloud. They rang inside him, echoing against the inside of his head. Stiles blinked, tears hot on his cheeks. And somewhere, deep inside, he realized—he was no longer alone.

When Noah came home, Claudia was already breathing again. The seizure had passed. Her eyes fluttered open in the ambulance, confused, blinking like someone waking from a terrible dream. In the emergency room, Stiles sat in the corner, wrapped in a thermal blanket too big for his frame. Red-rimmed eyes. Blank expression. He didn't cry anymore. He didn't speak. When a nurse brushed a metal tray and sent a glass shattering to the floor, he didn't even flinch.

Later, Claudia would try to explain it. How, when she looked into her son's eyes, something sharp lodged in her chest. A tremor. A sense of wrong.

"M-Mischief?" she whispered, her voice dry, cracked at the edges.

He turned to her. Called her mom. But there was a whisper beneath his voice, like someone breathing through him. His eyes caught the light—not amber, honey-warm, but silver, flickering at the edges like moonlight on oil. His face—his sweet little face—looked strange for a heartbeat. Not monstrous. Not cruel. Just... unfamiliar. Tilted wrong. His smile too soft, too slow. Like something wearing a child's expression gently, like trying it on.

And then—it passed. She blinked, and he was just Stiles again. Small, scared and drenched in tears. The illusion, if it had been one, had vanished. He wrapped his arms around her, sobbing. She held him like she always had. But when her fingers brushed the back of his neck—she flinched. His skin was cold. Not clammy with fear or sweat, but cold like water left sitting in shadow. Cold like the dead.

She would later blame her reaction on the dementia. The illness unraveling her mind, thread by thread. But the moment never left her. Because when her son pulled back and looked up at her—she wasn't sure who was looking back.

(Even in her final lucid moments, before madness took her entirely, Claudia dreamed of foxes with hollow eyes. Of laughter—her son's, but stretched too thin, too high. Of shadows trotting at his heels that didn't walk like anything human.)

Later that night, Stiles sat alone in the living room, perched on the edge of the couch like a doll forgotten mid-play. The house was quiet. Only the clock ticked, and the wind rattled the windows. The television was off. He stared at the blank screen. His reflection hovered there—faint, but visible. Pale face. Wide, tired eyes.

He tilted his head. The reflection tilted too—but not quite in sync.

His breath caught. A cold shiver went through him. He rose quietly—always quietly after bedtime—and walked to the hallway mirror. It had always been there: tall, old, flecked with age. His mom had said it had “character.”

He stood before it and stared. His face was his own. But his eyes… they were not. Darkness pooled in them, like ink bleeding from behind his pupils. Something behind them was watching him watching it. He leaned closer. So did the reflection. A flicker—silver rings coiling at the edge of the pupils.

The thing in the glass smiled. He did not.

"Who are you?" he whispered, so softly even the shadows had to lean in.

That's when the voice came.

"No, no," the voice replied, from everywhere and nowhere. It came from the shadow that pooled unnaturally by the closet door, from the space behind his bookshelf, from inside the whorl of his own ear.
"Not who are you, Stiles. Ask, who are we."

"I- I don't understand."

"You will."
"We're here because you called. You hurt. And hurting opens doors."
"We stepped through."

He felt a strange cold in his chest.

"You're scared." The voice soothed. "That's alright. We're here now. You don't have to be alone anymore."
"Just us. It'll always be just us."
"We can play a game. Do you know any riddles?"

He nodded, hesitantly. "A few."

The voice softened further. "Good. Let's try one."

A face with no eyes, it murmured, hands with no fingers. I move but never walk. What am I?

Stiles blinked. "A clock?"

Laughter—not mean, but low and satisfied—drifted around him. "Clever boy. Another?"

I speak without a mouth. I hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind.

Stiles thought harder. "An echo?"

"Oh, you're a sharp one," the voice said. "So sharp. One more."

A pause.

Everyone has it... but nobody can lose it.

Stiles frowned, confused. "A name?"

"No." the voice hissed, somehow closer now. "Try again."

He chewed the inside of his cheek. "I... I don't know."

"You do," the voice insisted, just a little firmer now.
"You're smart. You want to be smart for us, don't you?"

"I'm trying..."

"You're not trying hard enough, Stiles."

The hallway stretched longer, darker than it should have. He glanced toward the stairs. Thought of calling his dad. But something inside whispered don't.

The closet door at the edge of the room creaked open. Shadows thickened, swallowing the corners, pressing the walls inward until the room felt smaller—like a trap. The air turned sharp and cold. Stiles could see his own breath curling in the dim light, little clouds trembling before his face, but the chill didn’t bother him.

From the darkness came something else. It stepped out of the closet’s shadow, smooth and silent.

It was tall—its limbs were too long, too thin, folding in ways they never should. Its head hung low, craning forward like it weighed more than gravity could bear, yet it glided above the floor without a single sound. The shadows clung to it, curling around its body like it belonged to them—or maybe they belonged to it.

Its eyes were pits of liquid black, glistening like oil beneath a strange silver gleam. Its mouth was a smile without lips, only silver fangs, long and wicked, curling outward in an impossible arc. They caught the weak light of the room, glinting like knives. The grin didn’t just sit on its face—it stretched, waited, and promised something terrible.

“Everyone has it,” the voice said, coming from the thing though its mouth didn’t move. “But nobody can lose it.”

Stiles whimpered, tears streaking his face. “P-please…”

The thing crouched. Limbs cracked as it moved. It inched closer.

“You’re not trying, Stiles. Don’t you want me to stay? Don’t you want to never be scared again?”

It lunged.

Stiles screamed and fell to the floor with a thud, his head barely missing the lowest step. He scrambled backward, but a cold hand—no, not a hand, claws that felt like bone and smoke—snatched at his ankle.

"WHAT IS IT?" the voice roared.

The staircase light flicked on. Footsteps thundered down the stairs.

“Stiles?! What’s happening?!”

He turned his head sharply. His father stood on the stairs, hair messy from sleep, eyes wide with panic.

But the room was empty. Just Stiles, sobbing, and the long, warped shape of his shadow stretching across the floor, twisted by the light.

By morning, he told himself it had been just a bad dream.

The doctors said it was frontotemporal degeneration—a rare, progressive, fatal disease. There was no cure. It would take Claudia's memory first, they told her gently. Then her behavior. Then everything else. And they were right. Within weeks, her speech began to fray. Words tangled on her tongue. Sentences thinned and withered halfway through. Names slipped through her fingers like dust. Gestures lost meaning. She would forget what she was doing even as she did it. Her emotions became jagged things—too sharp to hold without bleeding.

But beneath the confusion, beneath the halting speech and sleepless nights, Claudia knew something else was wrong.
Not with her.
With him.

Stiles was still sweet, still kind. If anything, too patient. He sat by her bedside when she woke screaming from sleep paralysis. He held her hand when her mind refused to untangle dream from memory. He smiled when she lashed out in panic—never angry, never afraid. And that was the problem.

It was the way he stayed utterly still when she shouted, or when lights flickered, or when something broke across the room—like fear had been taken out of him. Like something else had crept in and filled the space it left behind.

She was being watched, she knew it. She could feel it in the base of her spine, cold breath against her skin. The corners of the room seemed darker now. Wider. As if something waited there—just outside of sight.

One night, when the world was quiet and her mind felt mercifully clear, Claudia slipped into her son’s room. Her eyes were softer than they’d been in weeks—focused, present. She smiled the way she used to, with that tired but boundless kind of love that made Stiles feel like he was still the center of her universe. She tucked him in with gentle hands, brushing his hair back from his forehead. The overhead light had been dimmed to amber, shadows softened by her voice. She climbed into bed beside him, wrapping her arms around his small, warm body as if shielding him from everything waiting beyond the walls. As if she were still his mother, and not the fractured version he was learning to navigate.

She began humming—then singing softly in Polish. A lullaby. He didn’t know the words, but he loved them anyway. Once, he’d told her it sounded like magic. And now, even though the melody wavered with exhaustion, it still held that power.

Stiles blinked sleepily. Once. Twice.

And suddenly—
the warmth was gone.

The bed was cold.
The air, thin.
The room felt darker than it should have been.

He sat up, heart pounding, the covers tangled around his legs.

“Have you figured out the riddle yet?”
The voice—calm, curious, far too close—slipped into the room like frost.

Stiles whimpered and curled in on himself, dragging the blanket over his head. “Please… go away.”

The voice didn’t rise.
“If you answer correctly, we might help your mother.”

The blanket muffled his breathing.
“…What’s wrong with her?” he whispered.

“She is dying,” the voice said without hesitation. “Her body is sick. The sickness will win. But we can help. We can make sure she feels no pain. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Stiles’s bottom lip trembled. His voice cracked. “But I don’t want her to go.”

The shadows on the walls stretched, bent—then began to crawl.

“Everyone has it, but no one can lose it,” the voice murmured. Closer now. Too close.

It spoke with an odd, lulling rhythm—like a bedtime story told too slowly, meant to lure you into sleep, not scare you awake.

But the footsteps that followed were sharp, the floorboards creaked under its weight. The bedframe groaned as long, crooked limbs gripped it tight.

Stiles shook violently beneath the blanket.
“Please, I don’t—”

Something shifted. The mattress dipped.
It was on the bed. With him.

Instinct made him look—just a sliver, just enough to see how near the thing was.

“Everyone has it,” it rasped. “But no one can lose it.
What. Is. It?”

Its presence loomed over his small body, cold radiating from it like winter wind, casting a long, dark—

“…a shadow?” Stiles’s voice was barely more than breath.

Everything stopped. The weight lifted and the voice changed.

"Very well," it said.

But it wasn’t the voice anymore. It was his own.

When Stiles dared to raise his eyes, he saw—himself.

Sitting at the foot of the bed. Same face. Same tired eyes. Same scrunched blue pajama set. Only… this version was still, like a shadow given shape. Dry-eyed. Watching him with his head tilted just slightly—like an animal studying something curiously.

And then it grinned, pleased. Because Stiles wasn’t crying anymore.

He was still afraid—but less afraid.
He was confused.

And most importantly, he was listening.

The next day Claudia felt worse then ever in her last few weeks. She was sleeping all day, barely moving from her bed even when awake. One of those moments of wakefulness, she woke to the soft creak of her bedroom door. Her chest tightened and her hands clutched the blanket.

"Mischief?" Her voice cracked. "Sweetheart?"

He stepped inside, silent as a thought. Too quiet. There was no footsteps following him as he came up to her bed with a tray rested in his hands.

"I brought you soup," he said gently. "You didn't eat dinner."

His voice was soft and loving. He walked over and sat beside her on the bed, placing the tray in her lap. The steam rose faintly from the bowl. Chicken broth with herbs.
She stared at it. Then at him. Something twisted in her chest. Guilt. Grief. Revulsion.
Like she wasn't staring at her son anymore. But he looked like him. He acted like him. But something inside her screamed he wasn't.

After that day, the feeling never went away. She could stare at him for hours, and every instinct in her kept screaming the same truth—this wasn’t her boy.

Stiles didn’t flinch anymore. When something startled him, he didn’t jerk or blink. Instead, his head tilted—slow, deliberate—and his eyes locked on the source of the sound with an unsettling stillness. Not afraid. Not cautious. Just… curious.
His laughter had changed, too. It was sharp now, sudden—more bark than joy—and it always came at the wrong times: when someone stumbled, when someone cried, when someone said something cruel. He wasn’t exactly being cruel himself. It was more that he found humor where no one else would think to look. A trickster’s laugh.
He blinked too rarely now. Never broke eye contact unless he decided to. His gaze lingered a beat too long, a shade too deep. It wasn’t hostile. It wasn’t warm either.
He had taken to tapping his fingers in slow, swaying patterns—repetitive, rhythmic. Like the phantom flick of a tail that wasn’t there. Like tension bleeding out through muscle memory.

One therapist called it self-soothing. But Claudia knew better.

And that smile. God, that smile. Too soft and too sharp all at once, like a predator trying to be gentle.
He looked at her the way a child might look at a favorite pet—something beloved, but not equal. Something to feed. To keep. To possess.

"You don't sleep well anymore," he murmured.

He reached up and brushed her hair from her forehead. His hand was freezing cold. Claudia flinched—barely—but he noticed. His fingers stilled mid-motion as he tilted his head, studying her reaction. Then he leaned forward and kissed her cheek. His lips were like ice.

"Don't worry," he whispered.  "I'll take care of you."

It took her a while to notice. Her medication had begun to disappear—not all at once, but in quiet, careful thefts. A few memory pills gone. Anti-seizure tablets that didn’t last the full prescription. A bottle of lithium, nearly full one day, mysteriously half-empty the next.

At first, Claudia blamed herself. Her mind was slipping—wasn’t that what they kept saying? Sometimes she couldn’t remember where she was. Names hovered just out of reach. She’d open the fridge and forget what she was looking for. The nurses were kind. They spoke softly when they said it: progression of illness, cognitive confusion, seizure-related memory erosion. Just part of the decline.

But then came the puzzles.

Mieczysław—her sweet, brilliant Stiles—had taken to riddles again. Not like before. Not the bright-eyed, breathless kind of puzzles he'd always adored. These were different. Bleaker. Morbid even.

You only notice me when it's too late.
I've been growing while you've been forgetting.
What am I?

She begged him to stop.

He'd just smiled. "Don't worry, Mom. It's just a game."

The doctor adjusted her medication. The nurse dimmed the lights. They told Stiles to keep her routine steady. And he was so good to her. He brought her tea without her asking. Brushed her hair gently in the evenings. Held her hand during the worst of the tremors. He was her perfect son again. Her sweet, attentive boy.

Except sometimes... he wasn't. Sometimes he watched her too closely. Studied her as she broke down like he was enjoying it. As if her pain fascinated him. Fed him.

"She's confused," they said. "People near the end start seeing things. It's normal. Just be gentle. Reassure her."

Stiles always nodded. Always smiled that soft, understanding smile.
But Claudia wasn't confused. Not about this.

"I don't think he's my son," she whispered once to the night nurse.

The nurse smiled, pitying. "Of course he is. He's been an angel through all of this."

Claudia's voice cracked. "No... there's something inside him."

She didn't drink the water they gave her. Not when it came with that straw—the twisty blue one Stiles had always picked out for her.
She watched him from across the room. He sat curled on the armchair in the corner of the bedroom, fiddling with a Rubik's cube. And then he looked at her. For a moment, just a flicker—his eyes caught the light and reflected it back white. Not human. Animal. Like a fox in headlights.

He smiled. Not cruel or cold. Soft and loving.Terrifying.

A week later, Claudia called her nurse in a panic.

“I think he’s drugging me. Taking my pills.”

The nurse’s face tensed—but she smoothed it away almost instantly.
“You’ve had a few… confusing moments, Claudia. That’s not unusual.”

“I’m not confused!” Her voice cracked under the strain. “He smiles all wrong. Not like a child. Like—like he’s having fun. Having fun seeing me like this.”

The nurse jotted something in her notes. “He’s under a lot of pressure. He’s just a boy trying to put on a happy face. And he’s doing so much for you.”

Claudia’s hands trembled in her lap.
“Exactly. He’s too calm. A child shouldn’t be that calm. Not about this.”

That night, she locked her bedroom door. She heard him knock. Heard the rattle of the handle. The lights flickered—once, twice.
She pressed herself against the wall, holding her breath. Listening. Then she heard him. Talking to himself.
Not the high, drifting tone of a child at play—low, careful, intentional. Conversational.

He sat cross-legged in front of the hallway mirror, knees tucked to his chest, pajamas rumpled.

“Is she still afraid of me? No. We made her better. She’s not afraid.”

The house creaked as if surprised. Stiles frowned at his own words.

We?

The mirror smiled wider than his face.

“I didn’t mean— No, we’re not— I’m…”

A pause. Eyes narrowing.

“I’m—We are…”

The voice in his head purred, pleased.

After that night, he stopped speaking in singulars when he was alone. A few days later, he spoke in plurals almost exclusively.

We’re hungry, the boy would say. His father always assumed he meant himself and Claudia. But Claudia flinched every time she heard it.

“We don’t like this one,” he whispered to her one night about the new nurse.

Her decline accelerated after that. He toyed with her now, she was sure. Like a cat playing with its food.
She stopped eating. The tremors worsened. Speech came in broken fragments, like her words were falling apart mid-thought.
What disturbed the staff most was how she behaved around him. She flinched when he entered the room. Screamed when he touched her hand. Once, she broke down entirely—sobbing uncontrollably—when she woke to find him sitting quietly at her bedside. They asked her why. She pressed her palms to her ears, shook her head, and wept.

“That’s not my son,” she whispered to the nurse. “It wears my son’s face. But it’s not him anymore.”

Stiles overheard. Curled tighter on the couch. Hurt flickered across his face, but he still smiled at her.

They never harmed her—not outright, anyway. But her fear—the fear of them—was a wine they sipped slowly. Savored. Letting it age alongside her decline.

It did care, in its own way. But it wasn’t love—not like the boy’s.
It was something more primal. Like a predator, possessive of the prey it had claimed.

One night, in a lucid spell, she called him to her room. Her voice trembled, but she steadied it—the way she used to when he had nightmares.

"Stiles, baby. Come here."

He came, he always did when she called. He stood beside her bed, small hands folded neatly on her bedside. Blue pajamas, slightly too short at the wrists now. His hair was messy from sleep. His eyes were wide and sweet. And ancient.

She reached out, brushed his cheek with trembling fingers. "Mischief... baby, I love you. I love you so much."

He blinked. Then smiled. It was a gentle smile—tender, even. He leaned down slowly, kissed her on the forehead, and whispered into her ear with all the softness in the world.

"We love you too, Mom."

She screamed. But no one came.

The next morning, when the nurse checked in, Claudia was silent again. Withdrawn. Her hands curled like claws around the blanket. Her eyes stared forward—unblinking, vacant, hollowed by something no one else could see.

Claudia had taken to pacing the house late at night, curtains always drawn, lights flickering on and off like her mind couldn't decide whether it wanted to be seen or unseen. The silence of the house, once a comfort, had become a cacophony—every creak in the floorboards, every rustle of wind at the windows sounded like breathing.

His breathing.

By the time Stiles turned nine, Claudia had stopped calling him Mischief. Now, she only called him It.

That morning, Noah had already left for the station. Stiles sat at the table with his cereal, legs swinging idly under the chair. He stirred the milk with his spoon, watching it turn a dull gray from crushed chocolate cereal dust.

Claudia stood in the kitchen, unmoving. A cup of tea in her hand, long gone cold. Her eyes were fixed on him.

“Stiles,” she said, her voice brittle as dry leaves.

He didn’t look up. “Yes, Mom?”

“Come here.”

He obeyed, cheerful in that careful way he always was when she seemed like her old self. She crouched to meet him eye to eye and took his hands. Her fingers trembled, but her thumbs stroked over his knuckles with that motherly softness. He smiled back at her, cautious but warm, like someone testing the temperature of water before stepping in.

“You’re not my boy,” she whispered.

His smile faltered. “Yes I am.”

“No.” The word broke in her throat. “No. You’ve been… wearing him. Like a skin.”

“I don’t know what you mean…”

“You think I don’t see it?” Her hands twitched. Her grip began to tighten. “You changed. You watch me. You smile wrong.”

“I just want you to feel better…”

It sounded sweet—gentle, even—and for a moment she almost believed him. But then her fingers squeezed harder, hard enough to grind bone against bone. His smile was gone now, replaced with a pinched, uneasy expression.

“Mom… that hurts.” He tried to pull free.

She didn’t let go. Maybe he was her boy right now. But not always. Not late at night, when she felt the most afraid. The most vulnerable. When she woke up with his eyes already on her.

“Mom, please—let go.” He tugged harder, his voice fraying at the edges.

Her breathing quickened. She searched his face as though hunting for seams in the skin, for something that didn’t belong.

“Mom—!” His wrists twisted under her grip, but she held fast.

“You were in my room last night,” she said suddenly, her voice climbing. “I saw you. Standing there. Smiling.”

“No, I—”

“You don’t sleep anymore! You don’t even blink!”

She shoved him back and staggered to the counter. Her hand closed around the handle of a kitchen knife—not with purpose, but with with sheer, naked terror.

“I won’t let you take me!” she screamed. “I won’t let you eat me alive from the inside!”

He backed into the wall. “Mom—stop! Please—”

“GET OUT OF HIM!”

She lunged.

He screamed.

The knife never struck, but she hit him hard, the blade grazing his arm as they went down. She pinned him with a strength she didn’t know she had, sobbing and shouting the same words over and over:

“Not my boy. Not my boy. NOT MY BOY—”

“Mom, it’s me! It’s Stiles!” he cried, tears streaking his cheeks. But as she stared into his face, something shifted. A narrowing of the eyes. A bloom of cold where fear should have been.

It was him. And also not.
It wasn’t him who caught her wrists so easily, so calmly.
It wasn’t him who, with unnatural steadiness, sat her upright and held her there despite her thrashing.
And yet—it had to be him. He was only nine, but he kept her pinned. Long enough for the storm in her to break. Long enough for her sobs to dissolve into trembling. Long enough for silence to return.

When Noah came home—summoned by a frantic neighbor who’d heard the screaming—he found his son in the kitchen, holding his wife down with shaking hands. The knife lay on the floor, blood smeared across the tile like spilled ink. Stiles was crying. Real tears. And yet… his gaze was flat. Not entirely there.

The doctors said Claudia had suffered a psychotic break—paranoia, hallucinations, delusions.

“She believes her son is some kind of demon,” they murmured, not unkindly. “Classic displacement. She’s not a danger to others—just confused. She’ll get the help she needs.”

Noah didn’t argue. He told himself this was the right call. That this was what a good husband—a good father—was supposed to do. But his hand trembled as he signed the forms. The pen felt heavier than it should have, each loop of his signature dragging like betrayal across the page.

In the corridor outside her hospital room, he sat beside Stiles. The boy was swallowed in his father’s coat, knees drawn up, looking impossibly small.

Through the open doorway, Claudia sat rigid in bed, her skin pale as paper. Her hands were folded in her lap with an unnatural stillness, as if she were holding something invisible and refusing to let go. Her gaze was fixed—not on the window, as Noah first thought—but on Stiles. Her lips moved, forming each word slowly, deliberately: That’s not my son.

Even from the hall, the words seemed to slide over his skin like cold air. But he told himself she wasn’t looking at Stiles—she couldn’t be. She was seeing some figment of her sickness projected onto the boy who had spent the most time with her.

Noah smoothed a hand over his son’s hair, brushing it gently back from his forehead.
“She didn’t mean it,” he whispered. “She’s sick. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

Stiles looked up at him with wide, glassy eyes.
“I know, Dad,” he said softly.

Later, when Noah checked for injuries—expecting a long cut on the boy’s arm—he found nothing. Not even the faintest scar. The skin was whole, as if it had healed in less than an hour.

And in the reflection on the dark hospital window, the boy and his image moved in perfect unison—
for the first time in a very long while.

At first, they were two.

Stiles—the child, the host.
And the Nogitsune—the dark spirit, the shadow.

It was the way you sometimes feel another presence in the room, even when you’re alone. Sometimes, when he sat perfectly still, he could feel it stretch behind his eyes—long and deliberate—brushing against the soft places in his mind like a spider testing its web.

She’s forgetting your name again, it murmured.

You did this. You keep messing with her head.

He argued, back then.

Just leave her alone. She’s sick.

Let me in.

Do you want her to die in pain?

Go away.

It’s our fault. We’ll make her better.

Let. Me. In.

And Stiles did. Every time.
Because part of him believed it was his fault. And part of him wanted to believe they could help her—by taking the pain away.
He tried to be a good boy. A normal boy. He tucked in his shirts neatly. Brushed his teeth without being asked. Smiled for the nurses when they visited on the bad days—the days Claudia screamed at shadows or clawed at the mirror, convinced the reflection staring back belonged to someone else.

The doctors gave it names: progression. Degeneration. Burden of care.
But none of them could name the thing that had slithered into the house when her mind had just begun to fracture.

Claudia wasn’t just dying. She was afraid.
Afraid of the dark. Afraid of mirrors. Afraid of him.
She was afraid in the way her breath caught when he entered a room too quietly. In the way her eyes lingered on his face a beat too long. Like she was waiting for him to shift into something she recognized from a nightmare.

I’m still me.

He repeated it like a spell. Like an anchor line. As if saying it enough times could keep the spirit from devouring him entirely.

I’m still me.

I’m still me.

He loved her.
They loved her.

Made her tea every morning, even after she stopped drinking it. Sat with her in silence. Buttoned her cardigans when her fingers forgot how to grip. Held her hand when she wept without knowing why. But sometimes, when she looked at him… She knew something had rooted itself inside him that shouldn’t be there. And he knew that she knew. It had entered through the crack in the world—when the Nemeton split open and something dark and wrong slipped through. The Nogitsune had already made its den behind his ribs.

A fox did not rage or howl. Not like a wolf would.

It fed on her terror, slow and patient, as her mind unraveled.
On Stiles’s quiet, unspeakable grief as he watched his mother fade.
On the heavy, hopeless way Noah looked away from them both and buried himself in work.

There was so much pain in the house it smelled like incense—thick and cloying, as if mourning had seeped into the walls, soaked into the furniture, and lingered in the air.

A feast.

The Nogitsune should have moved on by now.
Found another host—someone older, fully formed.

It missed the days of real chaos, of its glory. It craved war, disaster, the kind of conflict that split families apart and left hearts in ruin.

But it stayed. It would at least stay until the mother was buried, until the family moved on. Then it could move on, too.
Weakened by the long years it had been sealed away, it stayed hidden in the boy, scavenging from this one broken family.

At first, they lived side by side.

Stiles would cry—shoulders shaking, face buried in his knees—and the spirit would whisper to him.

It wasn’t always cruel.
Sometimes it was curious. Almost fond.

Did you know that grief has a flavor?
You wear it so well, little mischief, it murmured, voice low and warm as old smoke.

Stiles rarely answered. But he heard it.
Like an echo of his own voice, but older, heavier, worn thin by centuries.

Not quite him.
Not quite not.

She mourned you long before she died.
You were already gone from her, piece by piece.
I only kept you company.

“Stop it,” Stiles whispered.

When Claudia finally collapsed—when the last thread in her mind frayed beyond repair—Stiles screamed and begged. But some part of him, some terrible and secret part, had already let go. Had whispered that she was already long gone.

The Nogitsune coiled into that despair like smoke curling into a cracked jar.

You were her boy.
You were her breaking point.
You can’t help her now.

And this time… Stiles didn’t argue.

Because the thing is, a spirit should never stay too long in a mind still growing. A child’s mind is soft—clay still wet. And the Nogitsune began to sink in.

When a spirit takes a child, it doesn’t just use the body. It becomes part of the person.
Stiles kept growing. And it adapted. As did Stiles.
His mind didn’t reject the spirit. It molded around it. Adjusted. Accommodated.

His thoughts began making room for a second voice.
His reasoning twisted to hold contradictions.
His dreams layered into riddles, symbols, and memories from before he was even born.

At night, he lay awake, eyes wide, listening.

The Nogitsune didn’t speak much anymore. It didn’t need to. The line between them had blurred.
Its thoughts hummed beneath his skin, second nature.
Its instincts folded into his own.
It pulsed through him like a second heartbeat.

That was why they tuned so well to each other.

Not because they were opposites.

The fox had nested in a boy who was already a trickster at heart.
And the boy had accepted the spirit that shared his mischief.

They were the same.
So they had stopped being separate.

He never questioned the odd laughter that sometimes slipped from his lips,
or the sly curl of his smile,
or the calm that settled over him when chaos bloomed around him,
or the way he could lie without ever blinking.

He called himself witty.
Others called him a troublemaker.

Sometimes he laughed a little too hard when someone got hurt.
Just a little.

And yet he still helped people.
Still loved.
Still tried.

Only now… goodness had taken on a new shape.

Sometimes he caught a silver flicker in the mirror—
him, watching himself, from somewhere just behind his eyes.

Sometimes, just before sleep, he could still feel it—
the fox, curled along his spine.

But it wasn’t separate anymore.

It had become him.
Or he had become it.

He no longer asked, Was that me or him?
There was no clean split to find.

When Claudia finally passed, the grief and the pain was so deep, so aching—the fox tasted color.

Stiles didn’t cry. Didn’t scream. He sat beside her bed and held her cooling hand,
black veins threading up his arms as he drew the pain out of her body until he took her last breath with it.

Inside him, the fox purred.

She wanted to go.
She was so tired.
She was afraid of me.
I made her tea every morning.
She never drank it.
I know.

So when he asked himself who he was now,
there was only one voice left to answer.

He was the boy who loved his mother as she unraveled.
He was the spirit that fed on her terror as she was dying.
He was the kindness and the hunger.
The trickster fox wearing a grieving son’s face.
The cruelty held in a child’s hand.

There was no we anymore.

Only I.

When people asked how he was doing, Stiles smiled and said,
“I’m doing better.”
And he meant it—because he could no longer pinpoint when they had stopped being two.

Was it the day Claudia died?
The day he stopped crying?
The night he stopped dreaming of the shadow monster?
The morning his body healed faster than it should—
as if it had been meant to be invincible all along?

There was no clean break in the bone.
Only the quiet certainty that the fox had stopped curling around him
and had started growing with him.

His mind became a maze where every echo was his own.
He didn’t feel haunted.
He felt right.

He was clever. Thoughtful.
A little too sharp. A little too tricksy.

Some called him gifted.
Some found him… unsettling.

But no one saw what Claudia had seen.
Not anymore.

There was no boy and spirit.
Only what became of them.

On a windless winter afternoon, a few months after Claudia was buried and silence had settled over the Stilinski house like dust, Stiles stood in the garage and watched a bird.

It had trapped itself inside.
Wings beat in frantic bursts, scattering feathers like snowflakes.
Again and again, it struck the window—ten long minutes of impact and recoil.

Stiles stood still.
Not smiling.
Not crying.

Just watching.
Savoring the panic.
The sharp, dull pain of each collision.
The helplessness of being lost in a place with no way out.

At last, he unlatched the window.
The bird darted into the cold air and vanished.

Merciful, he thought.
It would have died alone in here.

He’d given it another chance.

Noah Stilinski grieved like a man trying not to drown. Slowly. Quietly. All beneath the surface.
He didn’t scream. Didn’t collapse in hallways or sob into his hands like men in the movies. He went to work. Filed reports. Signed forms. Paid the bills. He forgot to eat sometimes. Forgot to sleep. His uniform started hanging off him a little looser. The house grew quieter.

And then—Noah started drinking at night. Not much, at first. Just a glass of whisky. Then two. Eventually, the bottle stopped returning to the cabinet. It lived on the coffee table, half-empty more often than not. The clink of ice against glass became the soundtrack to their evenings—soft, rhythmic. Stiles could hear it from his room upstairs. His ears had grown hypersensitive lately, twitching at the faintest sounds. He counted the clinks like a metronome for grief.

His father never got sloppy. Never stumbled, never slurred. That would have meant admitting something was wrong. No—he drank like a man trying to dull the edge of a scream he refused to let out. The whiskey took the shine off the grief. Blurred the sharpest edges. Made it quieter.

And Stiles—whatever Stiles was now—watched.
He felt the grief more than he saw it. It had a smell and a taste: rich, sweet, and bitter all at once. Soft and dense, like bread pudding soaked in burnt sugar syrup. Noah carried it everywhere—thick and endless, trailing behind him like fog. It clung to his clothes, seeped into the walls. The whole house smelled faintly of smoked vanilla and salt-kissed caramel that wasn’t really there. Sometimes, Stiles would breathe it in as his father passed, eyes closing briefly, tracing the invisible trail like a scent hound.

Noah left it in doorways. In untouched coffee. In the way the chair across from him stayed empty. He was desaturating. As if life had once been painted in color and someone was slowly washing it out to grayscale.

And in contrast—Stiles was thriving.
Not like a grieving boy should.

His thoughts were sharper now. His movements smoother, too-fluid, like something newly oiled. He didn't sleep as much, if at all, didn't need to. Something inside him was always awake. His skin felt tight with energy, with rightness, as if something in the world had finally clicked into place. But the fit was wrong.

He knew it wasn’t right. Knew he shouldn’t feel so alive.
The old Stiles would have cried into his pillow. Would have curled up beside his dad like a lifeline. But now, he could stand in the doorway, watch Noah slumped on the couch with the TV buzzing static, and feel something else.

Pity.
Hunger.
And something dangerously close to curiosity.

What will break him?
How does a man mourn without letting it devour him?

The fox in him found the questions fascinating.

The boy—the one who remembered birthday pancakes, shotgun rides in the patrol car, and falling asleep to the sound of his father’s voice—ached.

That ache kept him tethered.

So every morning, Stiles made tea. Two mugs. One he set on the table beside the cold toast and unopened mail, without a word. The other he drank slowly, fingers curled around the ceramic to keep from fidgeting. To keep from reaching for something he shouldn't.

He didn’t try to talk Noah through the grief. He wasn’t sure he could anymore, now that he became like this. So he simply existed beside him.

But Noah’s pain drew him in like flame draws a moth. His sadness was quiet—but vast. Stiles could feel it pressing against his skin like gravity.
And—God help him—he hungered for it.
Pain was sharp and cold, numbing but sweetly comforting, like citrus and chili sorbet dusted with sugar that cracked between his teeth.
This new, wild self—this fox in his bones—fed on pain. And his father was full of it.

Every night, Stiles paced his room like something caged. Restless. Eyes catching light like mirrors. His too-sharp teeth ached. His fingers twitched. The pit inside him grew wide, and black, and starving. He grew cold and couldn't keep himself warm. It began to hurt.

He tried not to look at Noah too long. Not to sit too close. But every time his father sighed—every time he stared into his glass like it might hold answers—Stiles's insides howled.

He lasted a week. Maybe.

Then, one night, he gave in. Barefoot and silent, he crept into the living room. Noah was where he always was—on the couch, bathed in blue TV light, one hand around a half-empty glass. He didn’t look up. Stiles padded across the carpet, smooth and soundless. Sat beside him. Close. Closer. Without warning, he curled into his father’s side, tucking his legs in, pressing too-long limbs into a space that had once fit him perfectly. He was too big now. Too old.

But Noah didn't say a word. He froze for a moment, glass hovering midair. Then—slowly, carefully—he set it down. One hand lifted to Stiles's hair, the other wrapped around his shoulders. Stiles burrowed deeper, forehead pressed to his father’s chest, listening to his heartbeat, letting it ground him as not to harm his father. The grief radiated from Noah like heat. And God, it called to him. His whole body ached to take it. To sink his teeth into it and drink until there was nothing left. The hunger opened inside him like a mouth. And he fed.

Faint black veins spread under his skin, hidden beneath his hoodie. Warmth bloomed in his core. The sharp edges dulled. The ache softened. He drank the pain like water from a cracked well.

Noah let out a broken breath. For a heartbeat, his eyes went wide. The tears came quiet. He didn’t know why. Didn’t know what his son had taken. Only that something inside him had loosened, and he could breathe—just a little easier.

Stiles curled tighter as his pulse steadied and the gnawing hunger dulled to an ache. He almost whispered an apology. Almost started crying himself. Almost. But he stayed silent. Because Noah needed this too, didn’t he? To feel a little less? Stiles was still his son. He could do this for him. He could take it away.

And yet—beneath that thought—something darker paced inside him, restless. His fingers twitched against his father’s shirt, an animal urge pressing at the edges of his mind. The part of him that wasn’t human anymore wanted to dig deeper, drink more, see how far Noah’s pain could stretch before it tore.
Stiles forced himself to breathe slow. Count heartbeats. Keep his grip loose. He didn’t want to hurt him—he didn’t. The idea made his stomach knot. Noah’s grief ran through him like warmth after frostbite, chasing away the cold in his bones. It felt good. Too good.

So he stayed still, alert. Didn’t move. Didn’t trust himself to. He told himself he was only taking enough to make it lighter, to help. That he could stop whenever he wanted.

Noah cried silently, his tears slipping into his son’s hair. Stiles didn’t speak. Didn’t promise things would get better—because maybe they wouldn’t. Didn’t say he was okay—because he wasn’t. But his arms tightened, just slightly, around his father. Drinking down his father’s pain and sorrow until it left a faint, metallic sweetness on his tongue. Hoping—for both their sakes—that maybe, just maybe, that was enough.

The house was dark, humming. The only light came from the TV screen, its blue flicker painting shadows across the walls, catching on the curve of a cheekbone, glinting along strands of tawny hair. Lighter when the sun hit it, but darker in this strange light. Noah’s hand rested in that hair, tangled loosely. He knew it before he looked. Knew it in the way the spine curved against him, the tilt of the head under his arm, the faint scent of shampoo. Knew it in the wrongness.

Because something was wrong.

Something in his mind tried to surface. Tried to remind him this wasn’t normal—his son didn’t do this anymore. Not since he was seven and too afraid to say why.

He is curled into his side like when he was small—bonier now, too tall at ten years old, knees folding in awkward angles like a paper crane. Too cold to the touch. Always too cold these past few years.

Noah didn’t move. Not because he was paralyzed, but because something in him had come undone. He should have spoken. Should have asked.
There was an ache in his chest—but softer now. Like something was bleeding out of it in slow, steady streams. The house itself felt different. Hollowed out, maybe. Like something heavy was lifted, but too quickly. Like a lung suddenly empty.

The grief. It's—It's quieter. It hasn't left. He didn't feel better. Not exactly. But—lighter. Lighter the way you feel after throwing up.

Noah should have felt relief. Instead he felt the edges of something colder—like a door had been opened in the night. Like a price had been paid while he slept through the transaction.

Stiles didn’t move. Just rested there, small again. Or pretending to be. His hand was curled in the front of Noah’s shirt—an anchor. Or a leash.

Noah glanced down. Stiles’s eyes were closed, but his brows pinched together in a faint frown.

Noah couldn’t remember when the tears had started. He didn’t wipe them away. Didn’t breathe too hard. Afraid to disturb whatever this was.

This was his boy.
Still the kid who fell asleep in patrol cars. Who made jokes at crime scenes to keep the fear at bay. Who used to climb into Noah’s bed after nightmares, lying there stiff and embarrassed, muttering, Just for a minute?

Still the boy who carried too much. Noah saw that now—saw that Stiles had witnessed something, done something, that had changed him. And had never said a word.

Regret settled heavy in his chest. He regretted not being there when Claudia stopped being enough. Not being there with Stiles when she passed away. And now barely being there for Stiles who also lost someone important. He’d left his son alone too long during the hardest seasons of his life. And maybe that’s what had changed him—just enough to survive reality a little differently.

Noah pressed his cheek to the crown of Stiles’s head and stared at the white-noise static until his vision burned and blurred. Because Stiles needed this. Needed him. Or maybe—God help him—Noah needed this too. To hold something still familiar and his. To remember he wasn’t alone in the house. In the world. He let his eyes close again. Didn’t sleep. Just sat there, heart thudding slow and hollow, one hand curved protectively around something he didn’t fully recognize. But loved anyway.

When he finally exhaled—long, tired, wrung out—it fogged the air between them. His chest felt like a field after fire: blackened, but clearing.

And if something else in the room was listening—silent, cold, silver-eyed—he would deal with it in the morning.

Noah locked the whiskey away on a Tuesday. Not because he’d stopped hurting. But because the ache no longer screamed at him from every corner of the house. It still hummed in his chest. Still waited in the quiet moments—shaving before work, pinning on his badge, seeing Claudia’s handwriting on old shopping lists—but it didn’t drown him anymore.

He could breathe again.
Not deeply. Not without weight. But breathe, all the same.

Stiles still made tea every morning. Noah had started drinking it again. He said thank you sometimes—not always out loud, but in the way he rested a hand on Stiles’s shoulder as he passed. In the extra snacks slipped into the lunchbox. In the way he lingered at the table longer than necessary, just so they could share the same space.

There were still bad nights. Sometimes Noah woke in the dark, certain he’d heard Claudia’s voice. Sometimes Stiles vanished into his room and didn’t reappear for a day and a night. But they kept going.

They chose to keep going—for each other’s sake.
And slowly, so slowly, the house stopped feeling like a mausoleum. Not warm, not yet, but less hollow.

Noah threw himself into work again. Cleaned the garage. Fixed the dripping kitchen tap. Rehung the bedroom door that always squeaked. He called Melissa McCall back, finally. Let her hug him and didn’t break down crying.

And Stiles… Stiles tried.

Turns out, for a fox spirit, school was a buffet.

Children were all sharp spikes and screaming hearts—emotions spiking from zero to a hundred in milliseconds. First fears, first fights, first heartbreaks. The teachers weren’t much better—overworked, underpaid, barely holding themselves together. Some days, Stiles swore he could smell the exact moment a teacher’s restraint snapped, like a pencil breaking inside their skull. Some cried in the supply closet when no one was looking.

All of it—all of it—was nourishment.

A smorgasbord of fear, of pain, of small tragedies.

And Stiles feasted.

People started to notice. Wherever chaos erupted, he was never far behind. When a prank went too far—when someone ended up crying, bleeding, humiliated—Stiles was never directly involved. But he was always nearby, lurking, watching. Like some forest cryptid peeking from the treeline—never quite in frame but impossible to ignore.

He got detention. He got suspended once. He spent enough hours in the counselor’s office to memorize the posters on the wall and the sharp scent of dry-erase markers. Everyone said he was acting out because of his mother. That was what Noah told them, too. Everyone knew how close he had been to Claudia. Watching her wither, watching her forget—surely that had broken something in him.

And maybe it had. Maybe it was true, in some long, drawn-out way. But Stiles wasn’t sure anymore. He didn’t think the hunger inside him—the need—was really about Claudia. Not directly. Maybe, when she had stopped being there for him to care for, he had needed to find something else to feed off of.

Because the hunger didn’t go away. Not ever.

Quiet, normal life—it wasn’t enough. Not for a trickster spirit. Not for something that thrived on chaos and strife. Something that soothed itself on negativity, that burned through stillness like wildfire through dry grass.

Once, he made a girl cry just by looking at her too long. He hadn’t meant to, not really. She’d just laughed—a hollow, brittle sound—and he had wanted to know: what kind of sadness turns a smile that shape? What made her eyes dart left before every lie?
He was just watching. But whatever she saw—whatever slipped past the mask in that moment—made her bolt from the room in sobs.

Noah was called in three times that month.

“Your son is… disruptive.”
“Easily distracted.”
“A bit of a—uh—problem.”
“Strange,” one teacher murmured, then caught herself and backpedaled.

Noah nodded. Apologized. Promised to talk to him. And he always did. About behavior. About control. About how Stiles was always a step away from serious trouble. About how his actions might go on his permanent record. About his future.

That was what saved him most days—Stiles thought.

Because the hunger wasn’t fading. It was growing. Scraping behind his ribs. Curling its claws around his spine. Whispering, promising sweet satisfaction if he just let go.

He wanted things he shouldn’t.
He’d sit there, shivering, starving for something no cafeteria could serve, fighting it with chamomile tea and music so loud it rattled his skull. Clinging to the steady beat of his father’s heart—the sound of a man who stayed, who loved him even when Stiles wasn’t sure there was anything left to love.

Sometimes he slipped.
And when he did… people suffered.

Like the older boy who tried to take his lunch in the courtyard. Stiles didn’t scream. Didn’t tattle. He followed him home, found the bike chained by the gate, loosened the handlebars, broke the brakes, scratched the gear shift so it caught. The next morning, the boy collided with a car at full speed. Concussion, a deep scalp laceration, a fractured femur—his leg broken in multiple places.

Like the teacher who delighted in humiliating students. Stiles watched her for a week, noted her thermos decorated with painted sunflowers—Van Gogh. He spiked her tea with just enough rodenticide to make her stomach revolt. Nausea hit first, sharp and relentless. Vomiting followed, sometimes streaked with blood. When she finally reached the hospital, doctors suspected severe food poisoning. She didn’t return for a week.

Like the girl who mocked him in front of her friends, laughing too loudly, calling him the weirdo with dirt under his nails. She found her bag dripping with a corrosive chemical during science lab. Burned her hands so badly she screamed all the way to the nurse’s office. Her hands stung for hours, leaving red, blistered patches, and she was sent home.

Sometimes it was smaller. Sometimes he stirred things just to see what broke.

He whispered rumors into the ears of best friends and watched them explode into screaming matches by the lockers.
Fed a bully the wrong name until he picked a fight with the wrong kid and ended up with a black eye.
Mapped the social food chain like a scientist dissecting prey—then tugged at the threads, just to hear them snap.

He stole keys. Slipped them from desks, pockets, the janitor’s ring. Got into classrooms after hours, flipped through teachers’ drawers, rifled through lockers.

His favorite place was the guidance counselor’s office. All those files—a library of broken things. Vulnerabilities cataloged. Pain alphabetized. He read them like bedtime stories.

Nobody ever caught him.

Eventually, a few teachers pulled him aside.

“Why do you always seem to know everything?”

He’d smile. Tilt his head.
“I pay attention.”

“And how do you always know just the right thing to say?”

“I’m just good with words.”

“And why are you always there when something goes wrong?”

He blinked—wide-eyed, guileless—and answered honestly enough that they left feeling off.
As if they’d asked the wrong question.
As if maybe they were the ones imagining things.

Because Stiles Stilinski—too smart for his own good, too quick with his tongue, too sharp with his eyes—wasn’t doing anything.
No one ever suspected the boy who had just lost his mother and still kept straight A’s.

The Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department always hummed with quiet chaos—phones ringing, radios crackling, footsteps echoing down long hallways. The front desk officer didn’t notice him slip past. His steps were impossibly light, the hem of his hoodie flaring behind him like a tattered cape.

“Deputy Haigh!” Stiles called, slipping through the station like a fox in a henhouse. “Love the new haircut. Going for ‘retired boyband backup dancer,’ or was that just a happy accident?”

Haigh nearly jumped out of his skin. “Stiles! Oh my God—”

But Stiles was already gone, grin sharp and flashing, moving like he was always one heartbeat from sprinting, a stolen pen twirling idly between his fingers. He let himself into his father’s office without knocking, vaulted into the chair across from the desk, spun once. Twice. Three times. Then kicked his feet onto the paperwork.

“Dad,” he said solemnly, as if delivering a state secret, “you need a plant in here. Something hard to kill. Like a succulent.”

“Feet. Down.”

He obeyed, slowly, theatrically. Sheriff Stilinski rubbed his temples, finished scribbling on a form, then finally looked up.

“Thought you had detention.”

“I did,” Stiles said, chair spinning lazily. “Mrs. Cardona let me out early. Said I wasn’t technically interrupting anymore.”

“She called me,” Noah said evenly.

The smile stayed on Stiles’s face, but something flickered in his eyes—a shadow moving just beneath the surface.

“She say something flattering?” he asked lightly. “She does like my handwriting. Calls it… disturbingly elegant.”

“She said you tore apart a classmate in front of the class. That the boy couldn’t speak afterward.”

“He said something stupid, Dad.” The smile remained, but the warmth had vanished from his voice.

Noah leaned back. “So you humiliated him.”

“I corrected him. With flair.” His teeth flashed; his skin was a little too pale under the fluorescent lights. “He won’t say it again.”

“You made a kid cry, Stiles.”

Silence settled between them, thick and viscous, like cold syrup. The fidgeting stopped. Stiles’s mouth flattened into a careful line. The fox inside him snarled once, then coiled low, waiting.

“I’m not a bully,” Stiles said—too sharp, too quick. “I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”

His fingers tapped against the arm of the chair. Rhythmic. Soothing.

“Son,” Noah said gently, “you’re smart. Smarter than people give you credit for. But you can’t treat life like it’s a game. One day, you’re going to go too far.”

“Why?” The word was quiet. “Because you’ll be disappointed?”

Noah leaned back, exhaustion shadowing his eyes, his shoulders never fully relaxing.

“Because you’re better than that.”

Stiles didn’t answer. His gaze drifted to the cold half-mug of coffee on the desk. Because when he looked at his father, he saw the shadows under his eyes, the grief that still hung on him like an extra coat, the strain of holding everything together—including Stiles.

And that’s what killed it.
That’s what quieted the sharp-toothed thing in his ribs.

Stiles finally broke eye contact, letting his gaze drop to the desk between them. His fingers never stopped tapping. A beat passed. He clenched his jaw, swallowed the retort, and looked up again. His expression softened—just enough to pass for sincerity.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Maybe it was true. Maybe. Noah had long since stopped trusting his gut when it came to Stiles.

Because beneath the apology, beneath the sheepish smile, there was something cold and calculating. Something that had learned too quickly, that knew exactly how to sound remorseful without ever being it.

Noah exhaled slowly and rubbed the back of his neck.

“I know this isn’t easy for you,” he said finally. “You’re… going through something. But that doesn’t give you the right to hurt people.”

“I wasn’t trying to,” Stiles said quietly. “I just…”

They sat in silence. Neither spoke because they both knew it wasn’t the truth.

For once, Stiles didn’t fidget. Didn’t crack a joke to fill the space. He just sat, small and pale, with too many thoughts stacked behind his eyes like cards shuffled by something trying to understand kindness.

Noah dropped his gaze. Looked tired again. Older.

Stiles leaned back in the chair, quiet for a moment. Then, softly:

“You should eat something. Your blood sugar’s low.”

“How do you know that?” Noah frowned.

Stiles tapped under his own eye. “You get a line here. Same spot every time.”

Noah blinked. Didn't respond. He stared at his son, but his eyes softened.

Stiles stood, moving toward the door like a whisper. He paused at the threshold.

“I’m trying, Dad,” he said. “Really.”

He meant it. Noah knew he did. And that was the scariest part.

Because he was trying—trying not to become whatever his nature was shaping him into. This thing that whispered the world was meant to be rearranged, manipulated,
torn apart and remade better—with claws, if necessary. For all the chaos coiled inside him, for all the cold logic, and razor-sharp intelligence, it was this—this emotional tether—that kept the monster leashed.

Not for the world.
For his father.

He controlled himself because the man across the desk was the one person he could not bear to break. Disappointing him, making his life harder—that was the only thing that could shame him for what he had become.

He couldn’t say when Noah became his anchor. Maybe he always had. Maybe that was why the fox spirit hadn’t consumed him completely. Beneath the sharp teeth, the flickering eyes, the tricks and cruelty, Stiles loved his father.

Because love—even twisted by instinct—was the line he would never cross.

Chapter Text

He didn't know exactly when they stopped being two.

But he knew that by first grade, they had to be separate. That was the year It scared a substitute teacher so badly she quit and transferred to another school. Stiles couldn't even remember what he had done—only the aftermath, the whispers, the stares.

By second grade, he figured out they had to be both. He remembered saying "we" to the cafeteria lady, casual and instinctive, and walking away with two servings of pudding. She thought he meant himself and some shy friend too timid to ask. Stiles never corrected her.

By third grade, Claudia had been moved into the hospital, and it was just him and Noah in the house.

Only him and Noah.

That was when he truly felt the hunger for the first time. It came with the fox—those strange instincts that merged with him in ways he could no longer untangle. A gnawing emptiness like an ache under the skin, restless and insatiable.

Even back then, he knew one thing for certain: his father kept it at bay. Noah's presence anchored him in ways nothing else could. The steady hand on his shoulder, the firm voice cutting through his storms, the weight of his dad's gaze—it quieted the noise, pressed the ache down.

But Noah was a cop, a man with a job that called him out at odd hours, that stole him away for nights and weekends. When Noah wasn't there, the chaos crept in louder, sharper, with nothing to smother it.

Family was safe—Stiles knew instinctively never to turn the hunger on his father. Never again.
Classmates, though, were another matter.

By fourth grade, school had become the feeding ground. A sharp word here, a jab at the right insecurity there—and suddenly a friend's face would crumble in anger or shame. And every time, that hollow place inside him eased. For a few hours, for a day. Like scratching an itch. But it never lasted.

The kids who braved sitting with him at lunch—the ones who laughed at his strange humor or tagged along with his games—eventually left. Sometimes with hurt feelings, sometimes with shaken trust, sometimes with outright hostility. It didn't matter. He got what he wanted—the spark of discord, the brief satisfaction of watching someone unravel—and when they left, he let them.

But people talked. The Stilinski boy is difficult. Trouble. Antisocial.

And Noah noticed most of all.

He tried to reach Stiles in the quiet, tired moments after long shifts. He'd sit his son down at the kitchen table, voice soft but stern. "You can't keep pushing people like this, kiddo. You're too smart not to see what you're doing. Friends don't work that way."

Stiles would flare up—angry, confused. He couldn’t explain the hunger, couldn’t admit how much he needed the friction, the discord, to quiet the void inside. The words twisted in his mouth, spilling out as defiance instead.

Noah would sigh and try again, gentler. "Then at least watch how other people do it. Learn from them. Blend in, Stiles. Try to understand what normal looks like."

Stiles would grit his teeth and nod, though inside he boiled with questions. What was normal, really? Why did he have to mimic it when everything inside him screamed it would never be enough?

He didn't have an answer. All he knew was that his father wanted him to be something manageable. Something safe. And though Stiles loved his dad—though Noah's approval was the only steady warmth in his world—he couldn't silence the hunger inside him, the one that grew sharper every day.

Recess was a minefield for Stiles—dangerous, noisy, unpredictable—and he loved every second of it. The playground always fractured into packs: kickball on one side, hopscotch near the fence, Pokémon card trades under the bleachers. All that chatter, all those fragile little egos pressing against each other—it was like music to him.

That day, he zeroed in on Ryan Brooks, a loudmouth with a temper.

They scrambled up opposite sides of the jungle gym, metal bars clanging under their sneakers. Stiles moved fast, quicker than he had any right to be, swinging and pulling himself up with foxlike grace. Ryan lagged, red-faced and grunting with the effort.

"You're slow, Ryan," Stiles called down from the top, arms folded smugly. "Thought you said you were good at this."

Laughter rippled from the kids below—sharp and mean. Ryan's jaw tightened. He climbed faster, sweaty palms slipping. Stiles's instincts lit up, urging him to push harder.

"Careful!" he sing-songed, eyes gleaming. "You don't wanna crack your head. Then you'd be even slower than you already are."

The laughter swelled like an orchestra in the background. Ryan's hands trembled on the bars, eyes shining with angry tears. The void inside Stiles purred, filling, filling—this was it, the perfect chord of discord

Then Ryan slipped.

It happened fast, his sneaker missing the rung, his body pitching backward. Stiles lunged with inhuman quickness, catching his arm while hanging upside down, knees hooked on the top bar.

He wasn't laughing anymore. His face was perfectly blank as Ryan kicked and screamed, seconds from falling. His wide, teary eyes locked on Stiles's calm ones.

The fox licked its teeth.

Stiles loosened his grip. Just enough for Ryan to slip lower, just enough to make his scream crack into a higher pitch before Stiles caught him again by the wrist.

Gasps came from below, a chorus of panic and thrill. Ryan was sobbing now, shaking so hard Stiles could feel it in his bones. He glanced at the ground, then back at Stiles—pleading, desperate.

And Stiles smiled. That strange, small, soft smile.

Predator to prey.

He loosened his grip again, fingers sliding, teasing. Then caught him once more by the hand alone. He wasn't struggling. But it looked like he did.
To the crowd below it looked like effort—like heroics—but Stiles was just prolonging the fear, savoring the desperation.

Then, with a flick of his fingers—he let go.

Ryan hit the ground face-first. The thud was sickening.

Shrieks cut through the playground. Blood welled on Ryan's chin, his two front teeth crooked and red-stained. Half the kids screamed and backed away; the other half laughed nervously, giddy with the thrill. The chaos was delicious. Stiles's chest burned with it, his grin stretching wider, feeding on the mix of fear and childish cruelty.

Then his eyes caught on a shape at the fence. His father was there.
Noah was leaning against the chain-link fence, still in uniform, arms crossed, gaze pinned to him with deadly seriousness.

The grin faltered instantly, vanishing as if it had never belonged to him at all.

Teachers rushed in, voices cutting sharp through the playground chaos. They knelt by Ryan, pressing tissues to his mouth, calling for the nurse. Kids scattered—some buzzing with excitement, others pale and shaken.

And the truth—the objective truth—was simple: Ryan slipped all on his own. Stiles even tried to catch him. That’s what the kids would say later if anyone asked. But what small, bony fourth grader could carry the full weight of another?

But the rush in Stiles's chest, the way he'd pushed it to happen, let it happen, the way he'd thrived on it—his dad saw it.

The look Noah gave him wasn't angry—not exactly. It was worse: disappointed, tired. Just a deep, steady frown, like he'd just caught his son doing something he couldn't explain away. Like he'd just confirmed every bad thing other parents whispered about his son.

Stiles scrambled upright, feet clumsy on the bars. Suddenly the laughter, the blood, the panic—all of it soured on his tongue. And for the first time, he wished he could crawl inside himself and disappear.

The cruiser idled in the school pick-up lane, the afternoon heat bleeding through the windows. Neither of them spoke as they slid into their seats. Noah’s hand rested motionless on the wheel. Stiles slouched low in the passenger seat, arms crossed, knee bouncing, eyes fixed on anything but his father. Noah's jaw worked once, twice, like he was chewing over words that wouldn't come out clean. The silence stretched, heavy and pointed.

"So." Noah's voice was even, deceptively casual. "Heard Ryan's gonna need a trip to the dentist. Two front teeth. That true?"

Stiles shrugged without looking at him. "He slipped. Wasn't my fault."

"Didn't say it was."

"Everyone falls off the jungle gym. Happens all the time."

Noah’s tone stayed calm, but there was iron threaded through it. “I know you didn’t push him. I know that.” He turned then, eyes hard, pinning his son in place. “But, Stiles—why were you smiling?”

The word satisfaction bloomed in Stiles's mind.
Despair has a flavor, Dad.
You'd like it if you could taste it.

The thought burned in his chest, unsaid. Instead, he groaned, defensive. "I wasn't—"

"Don't lie to me." Noah's tone sharpened, leaving no space to wriggle. "You were grinning while that boy lay on the ground bleeding. You think that was funny back there? Do you know what that looks like?"

"I—It's not—!" Heat rushed to Stiles's face. "Sometimes it's funny! People fall, it's—it's a reflex! I didn't mean—"

Noah cut him off. "That's not a reflex, Stiles. That's a problem."

The words landed heavy. Stiles snapped his gaze away, muttering, "You don't get it."

"No," Noah said, quieter but sharper for it. "I don't. And that scares the hell out of me."

He rubbed at his temple, voice steady but low. "You want to know what else scares me? You don't have friends. Not one. Kids your age should be figuring out how to be around people. But you? You scare everyone off. And if you keep going like this, Stiles..." His mouth tightened. "...you'll end up alone. Or worse—you'll end up the kind of person I spend my career locking up."

Stiles froze mid-breath. His eyes flew to his father's face, wide and stung. "You think I'm gonna be a bad guy?" His voice cracked.

Noah didn't flinch. "If you don't change course—yeah. That’s what it looks like. That’s what people will think. And once that sticks, you don’t get to shake it off. It follows you your whole life.”

Stiles opened his mouth, but no words came. No joke, no smart remark, nothing. Just the weight of his father's gaze, unforgiving but not unloving, pressing down on him.

The silence stretched, broken only by the low hum of the engine. Finally Noah exhaled, tension easing from his shoulders, though his eyes never left his son. Then, gently but firmly:

"Stiles, you need connections. Healthy ones. People who make you better, not worse."

"I have you," Stiles blurted, sharper than he meant. His chest tightened with the words—because it was true.

He had his dad. His dad anchored him. His dad quieted the hunger. Dad was safe. Family was safe.

But Noah only sighed, shaking his head. "I'm not enough."

The words hit like a slap. Stiles flinched, eyes snapping up. "What do you mean you're not enough? You're—you're my dad. That's supposed to be enough."

"I'm your dad, yeah. And I love you more than anything in this world. But I won't always be here." His voice cracked, just slightly, before he forced it back under control. "Someday, you'll have to stand on your own. And if the only thing you've got is me..." He trailed off, searching for gentler words, but settled on the truth. "I won't be able to protect you from yourself."

The air went brittle between them. Stiles stared at him, throat tight, the sting of betrayal mixing with a creeping ache of fear.

"You need more than just me, son." Noah's gaze didn't waver. “You need people who see you—who want you around for who you are. Because when I’m not here—” His jaw clenched, cutting the sentence short. His eyes went distant for a heartbeat, then back again, clear with fatherly resolve. “I need to know you’ll have someone else to turn to. I need to know you won’t be on your own.”

Stiles's chest heaved once, twice. He wanted to argue—to laugh it off, to say what the hell, Dad, you're not going anywhere. But the look on Noah's face was too raw, too honest. He couldn't joke around it.

He dropped his gaze, nails digging into his palms until they stung. He didn't want to hear this. Didn't want to think about it. The idea of his dad not being there—it was unthinkable, unbearable. Without him...

A shiver crawled up his spine.

The fox inside him stirred. That ancient part of himself that stretched further than his own lifespan whispered cruel truths. Humans were fragile, flickering things—beautiful, yes, but temporary.

His father was family, yes. But Noah was also human.

And that meant Stiles would outlast him.

The instincts inside him whispered of centuries waiting ahead. And when he looked at his father again, for the first time he felt the monstrousness of what he was settle across his shoulders like a shadow.

Noah couldn't have seen it—couldn't have known—and yet he was raising it anyway.

You need people who make you better.

If only Noah knew how Stiles's version of better worked. People did make him better—when they hurt. When their fear and pain fed the ache inside him, quieted it for a little while. But that wasn't what his father meant, was it?

For the next few days, Stiles moved through the world like he was wrapped in something too tight, something that pressed against his ribs and made it hard to breathe. His father’s words kept replaying in his head, cold and sobering, like a bucket of water dumped over him. The emphasis on better. The look on his father's face—so caring, so human, so full of trust.

Stiles knew he couldn’t be that. But he could try. He could keep trying.

Monster.
The word whispered in his head, a verdict he issued against himself again and again. He hated it, but it felt right, felt necessary.

Because the truth of what he was—the fox that lived beneath his skin—couldn't be rewritten by love or good intentions. In that truth, he shamed himself intentionally. For the first time, he understood the wrongness of being a creature—a monster—whose nature no one could ever truly understand, nor fully accept.

One afternoon at recess, Stiles perched on the monkey bars, high above the rest of the playground. Watching.

A group of girls huddled by the swings, giggling over something one of them whispered. A pack of boys chased each other with a half-deflated ball, laughing breathlessly as though the only thing that mattered in the world was who got tagged next.

Stiles narrowed his eyes, studying them like puzzles he couldn't quite solve. Their faces lit up when they saw each other. Their voices softened, or cracked into laughter, without sharp edges. Effortless.

A kid dropped his juice box and another one—one who wasn't even his friend—picked it up, handed it back without thinking twice. They shared snacks, pushed each other on the merry-go-round, sat shoulder to shoulder in the grass.

Stiles couldn't look away. He tried to break it down, dissect it, like he did everything else. What do they get out of this?
It was kindness for the sake of kindness. Friendship for the sake of friendship.

He tried to imagine himself stepping into that circle, handing someone a snack just because, or laughing at a harmless joke. He could mimic it—he'd done it before—but mimicry wasn't the same.

His fists clenched around the rung he was hanging from. Maybe he was missing something essential by design. Maybe no matter how hard he tried, he could never do better.

He was too lost in thought to notice the soft shuffling at the base of the monkey bars. Kids swarmed the playground in every direction, noise all around—he didn't expect anyone to approach him while he dangled upside-down like some feral bat.

"Um." A hesitant voice. Small. Nervous. "You're gonna fall."

Stiles tilted his head, squinting down at the kid. The boy below wouldn’t meet his eyes, fidgeting with the straps of a too-big backpack. His chest hitched with wheezing breaths, already embarrassed, already regretting speaking.

And just like that, the need flared inside Stiles, a whisper that made his skin prickle. The part of him that thrived on all the wrong things twitched, awake at this fragile, breakable prey that walked right into his reach.

"And you're gonna die. Statistically," Stiles said flatly.

The boy blinked. "...What?"

Stiles tilted his head the other way, still hanging. "Asthma kid, right? You wheeze like a haunted accordion. Those things don't last long."

The boy's ears flushed red. "That's... not nice."

"Who said I'm nice?" Stiles replied matter-of-factly, flipping himself down from the bars and landing in a crouch with too much grace for a fourth grader.

Now that he was closer, he caught a smell. Familiar. Sharp. Not the kind of scent you ran into every day. His nose twitched. He leaned in.

"You smell familiar. Have I threatened you before?" Stiles asked, serious as stone. He circled the kid once, gaze locked on his face, waiting for the flinch.

Instead, he got a shy, toothy smile.

"That's from Pirates of the Caribbean," the boy said, chuckling nervously. He broke eye contact, before mustering the nerve to look again. “I just—people break their arms on these.” He gestured weakly at the monkey bars. “My mom says so. She’s a nurse.”

Now the scent made sense. The weirdly bland but strong laundry detergent clinging to the kid's clothes smelled vaguely of hospital scrubs.
Not Stiles’s favorite memories.

But it reminded him of Mom.

Scott McCall was not built for recess. He was built for library corners, inhaler breaks, and trying not to get picked last in dodgeball. When the bell rang, he drifted toward the quieter side of the playground—the jungle gym. He’d always been good at fading into the background. Not on purpose—he wasn't shy exactly, just... quiet, like the world worked better when it didn't have to notice him.

That's when he saw him.

A boy dangling upside down from the monkey bars, knees hooked carelessly over the top rung, shirt hanging halfway over his face. He wasn't even playing—he was watching everyone else, still and sharp-eyed, like some wild animal.

Or maybe—Scott's brain offered nervously—a kid who'd fall and break his neck.

Scott had seen him before, of course. Everyone had. Stiles was one of those kids who didn't walk anywhere—he bounded. Who could be in trouble with a teacher one minute and making them laugh the next. The kind of kid who didn't wait to be included because he already assumed he was. It was... impressive, in a way.

Most kids either ignored Scott, or teased him, or grew tired of him fast. Stiles wasn't even trying to be nice when he approached him. He teased Scott, sharp and a bit grim—in that weird way most kids spoke about when talking about why they stay away from Stiles. He was... strange. But then he dropped a movie quote and Scott found it funny. Not politely—genuinely. That seemed to catch Stiles's interest. His head tilted, curious.

"Cool," Stiles said flatly, then unceremoniously started walking toward the other side of the playground.

Scott's heart sank. He hadn’t realized until that moment how badly he’d hoped Stiles would actually like him.

"You coming, Wheezy?" Stiles tossed over his shoulder, like he'd already decided Scott was coming with him.

Scott bristled, puffing out his chest with all the dignity his ten-year-old lungs could hold. "It's Scott."

"Fine. Scott-Wheezy." Stiles smirked, satisfied. "You can be my sidekick. Name's Stiles."

Scott frowned again. "Why do I have to be the sidekick?"

Stiles stopped, turned, and grinned—a grin too sharp for any child. "Because I'd eat you alive."

For a beat, it didn't sound like a joke. Scott froze, heart pounding in his small chest. But he scowled instead, uneasy yet still trailing after him anyway. "That's so not funny."

Then Stiles laughed, shoved his shoulder lightly, and kept walking. "Relax. You're too scrawny anyway."

Scott didn't know why Stiles had picked him. He only knew that, for the first time, someone had.
And Stiles—strange, intense, too-bright Stiles—seemed perfectly fine letting the boy tag along.

(A fox finding interest in a fragile wolf pup, and a wolf pup deciding that following the fox was the safest, bravest thing he could do.)

When Scott came home that afternoon, Melissa McCall stood at the kitchen counter, her hair pulled back but frizzed loose around her face after a long shift at the hospital. She glanced up as Scott dropped his backpack onto a chair with more energy than usual.

"You look like something good happened," she said, drying her hands on a towel.

Scott ducked his head, though a grin tugged at his mouth. "I, uh... made a friend today."

Melissa's face lit up, warm and proud in that way only mothers could. "Really? That's wonderful, honey. What's his name?"

"Stiles," Scott said, like the name itself was an adventure.

"The Sheriff's son?"

"Yeah. He's... weird. But not in a bad way... I think."

Melissa leaned her chin on her hand, watching him. Scott's voice carried that bright, unsteady lilt he almost never used when talking about other kids. Most days he came home quiet, weighted down by loneliness.

Her throat tightened. She reached out and brushed a stray curl from his forehead. "That sounds like a good friend, sweetheart."

Scott beamed, and for a moment the house felt lighter.

Then the front door opened.
Heavy footsteps crossed the threshold. Keys clattered against the table by the door. Rafael McCall emerged, suit jacket slung over one arm, tie loosened, eyes already tired. He smelled faintly of cologne... and something sharper beneath it.

"Evening," he muttered, gravel in his voice. His gaze flicked to Melissa, then to Scott. "What's with the smiles?"

Scott stilled, brightness dimming. Still, he tried. "I, um—I made a friend today, Dad."

Rafael raised a brow, tossing his jacket over a chair. "That so? Good. About time." The words weren't cruel exactly, but flat—detached, like always. His eyes lingered on Scott a second too long before he moved toward the half-empty pot of coffee on the counter.

Melissa cut in quickly, smile tight. "It's the Stilinski boy. Scott was just telling me about him."

"Heard the kid's a menace," Rafael said, reaching for the pot and pouring himself a mug.

Scott didn't notice the look Melissa shot Rafael—sharp, protective, weary.

"Why don't you go set the table, sweetie?" she offered to distract Scott, her voice gentler.

Scott nodded and slipped away, clutching plates like armor. From the dining room doorway, he listened to the low murmur of their voices. He couldn't catch the words—didn't need to. He could hear the warning edge in his mom's tone, the way his dad's words carried that brittle defensiveness.

Scott never really knew what his dad wanted from him.

When he was little, he thought maybe it was baseball. He remembered standing in the yard, grass too long around his ankles, the mitt heavy and stiff on his hand. His dad tossed the ball easily, like it weighed nothing. But when it smacked into Scott’s chest and tumbled into the dirt, the sting made his eyes water. He hated that he cried so fast, hated the way his breath whistled when he bent down to pick it up.

His dad’s sigh had been louder than the ball hitting the ground.
“It’s just a ball, Scott. Don’t cry over a ball.”

Scott wanted to say, I’m not crying because of the ball. I’m crying because I can’t do it right. Because you look disappointed. But the words never came out.

After that, it always felt like he was failing some test he didn't understand. At dinner his dad would tell stories from work, big gestures, rough humor, the kind of noise that filled up the room. Scott would push peas around his plate, quiet, waiting for the moment he was supposed to laugh. It never came naturally.

Sometimes he caught his dad studying him with a frown—not angry, but not soft either. Like he was trying to read a book written in a language he didn’t know.

Mom made it easier. Mom made everything easier. When Scott’s chest tightened and he couldn't breathe right, she would kneel beside him, rubbing circles on his back until it eased. She never asked him to be louder, braver, tougher. She only asked if he was okay.

His dad never did that. Not because he didn’t care—Scott could feel that, sometimes—but because he didn’t know how. It was like standing on opposite sides of a wall, both pressing their hands against the bricks, neither able to hear the other knock.

And Scott wanted so badly to get it right. To be the kind of boy his dad could understand—the kind who didn’t cry over a ball, who didn’t cough through kickball, who could meet his father’s eyes without shrinking. But no matter how much he tried, he always felt too small, too soft.

So the space between them grew—slow, quiet—until Scott couldn’t tell if his dad had stepped back, or if Scott had simply stopped reaching.

Then Scott met Stiles—a boy loud in all the ways Scott wasn't, certain where Scott hesitated—it felt like stepping into sunlight after a long time in shadow.

At first, being around Stiles was exhausting. He talked too much, too fast, his thoughts looping in wild circles that were nearly impossible to keep up with. He didn't ask if Scott wanted to follow—he just assumed he would. And Scott did.

And sometimes—Scott swore—he said things no kid should say.
It should've been enough to scare Scott off. But weirdly, it wasn't.

Maybe at first it was survival. Following Stiles meant protection. Standing near him meant the meaner kids left him alone. But it quickly became more than that. Because Stiles never looked at him the way the other kids did. Not with pity when his inhaler came out, not with annoyance when he had to sit out of soccer, not with disgust when he coughed too hard.

Stiles looked at him like he was... interesting. Like he was someone worth sticking around.

Sometimes, when Scott was doubled over, gasping for air, he'd glance up and catch Stiles watching him with that curious tilt of his head. It should've been unsettling. Maybe it was. But then Stiles would crack something ridiculous, like, "Don't die yet—you still owe me a juice box," and Scott would end up laughing through the panic.

Because even when Stiles was a little cruel, he stayed. He didn't drift away like Rafael had, didn't retreat into silence or shut the door behind him.
And Scott would take sharp edges over loneliness any day.

That was their rhythm for weeks.

Scott started sitting with him at lunch, even though Stiles had a habit of pushing buttons just to see people twitch. One afternoon, he spent ten whole minutes spinning a grim monologue about the chicken nuggets—how they weren't actually chicken at all, but roadkill scraped off Main Street. It earned him the usual groans and the predictable chorus of “Shut up, Stilinski!” from half the table.

Scott didn’t flinch. He didn’t roll his eyes or edge away like the others. He just nodded, as if he honestly wanted to know how many squirrels had gone into the nuggets.

That was… new. For both of them.

Later, when an older boy shouldered Scott and sent his tray crashing to the floor, green beans scattering across the linoleum, the room erupted in sharp, echoing laughter. Before Scott could even process it, Stiles was on his feet. Small, wiry Stiles—squaring up against a kid twice his size, snapping like he’d bite his head off. His voice cut through the laughter, wild and sharp, his glare enough to make the boy hesitate.

The bully sneered, muttered “freakshows,” but he backed off all the same.

Stiles laughed then—too loud, a little cruel, like he relished the retreat. But Scott, still crouched on the floor gathering spilled food, looked up at him in quiet wonder.

Melissa worked late shifts often enough that most evenings blurred together, but she always noticed the days Scott came home with Stiles in tow.

Her son usually shuffled through the door like he was trying not to take up space, head down, backpack dangling off one shoulder. But when Stiles was with him, Scott’s steps were quicker, his voice louder, his face open in a way that made him look younger—like a kid who’d forgotten, just for a moment, how heavy the world already felt on his shoulders.

The first time Stiles came for dinner, though, he looked like he’d been dared into it. The kitchen smelled of garlic and tomatoes, Melissa’s spaghetti bubbling on the stove. He sat at the table swinging one skinny leg under the chair, picking at the seam of his hoodie sleeve, eyes flicking between Melissa’s careful smile and Scott’s barely contained grin.

“Help yourself,” Melissa said gently as she set the bowl of pasta down.

She knew the boy. Everyone at the hospital did. Claudia Stilinski's battle with dementia was no secret among the nurses, and Stiles’s constant presence at her bedside had left an impression. Seeing him here now—half all elbows, jittery energy wrapped in a hoodie—tugged at her heart.

Stiles twirled spaghetti around his fork, took a bite, and blurted, “You make it better than my Dad.”

Scott nearly choked on his laugh. Melissa shot him a look, but the corner of her own mouth betrayed her. “Well, thank you, Stiles. I’ll take that as a compliment.”

He shrugged, as if compliments were foreign objects. “Don’t get used to it. I don’t usually do…this.” He waved his fork vaguely at the table, like “family dinner” was some rare species he’d stumbled across.

“This?” Melissa teased. “You mean eating? I hope you do that plenty.”

She laughed, and the sound loosened the air in the room. Scott giggled into his napkin. Stiles grinned—sharp, but strangely charming. For all his quirks, he was easy company: quick with words, quick with smiles, pulling people in whether they wanted it or not. That restless energy could wear thin in some kids. Scott, bless him, looked entirely unbothered.

It was only when Melissa, perhaps without thinking, said softly, “I knew your mom. Back at the hospital,” that the spell cracked.

Stiles froze mid-spin of his fork. His grin faltered, just barely, like a candle flame shivering in a draft. For a second his expression was unreadable — not anger, not sadness, but something harder to put in words. A stiffness in his shoulders. A tightening in his jaw.

Melissa’s instinct was to reach across the table, soften the moment—but before she could, Stiles pasted on a crooked smile and leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, well…you probably knew her better than I did.” He said it like a joke, his tone bright and flippant, but the hollow in the middle rang loud enough for anyone listening closely.

Scott didn't fully understand, but he frowned, glancing between them, protective without knowing why.

Melissa caught herself, shifted the subject, and the boy was off again.

“Mrs. McCall, did you know your son is criminally bad at chess?”

“Hey!” Scott yelped, his protest muffled by a mouthful of pasta.

Melissa blinked, then smiled softly. “Well, now I do.”

But every so often, as Stiles chattered and joked, Melissa saw it: that flicker in his eyes, a shadow behind the charm. She remembered Claudia’s decline, the Stilinski family lingering in hospital corridors, and she knew what grief could carve into a child.

Later, when Noah came to pick Stiles up, Melissa lingered at the door longer than she meant to. The boys whispered their goodbyes like they wouldn’t see each other again for weeks instead of in the morning.

Noah caught her eye over Stiles’s head. For once, the perpetually tired deputy didn’t look guarded. He looked…relieved. Like a weight he couldn’t name had shifted, just a little, off his shoulders. Melissa felt something similar stir in her own chest.

When the door closed, she stood listening to Scott shuffle into the living room. He was humming. Actually humming.

Melissa smiled, small but certain. So that’s what it looks like when my kid finds his person, she thought.

Before long, she stopped thinking of Stiles as Scott’s odd little friend. He was just Stiles—the boy who filled their quiet house with noise, and who, in some ways, already felt like hers too.

The Stilinski house was suspiciously quiet. Too quiet.
Usually, Stiles was the kind of background noise Noah had grown used to—constant running commentary on whatever thought sprinted through his brain, the crash of a door he didn’t mean to slam, bad ’80s music blaring, pens clicking until Noah wanted to chuck them out the window.

Tonight, though, the silence pressed in heavy, like the whole house was holding its breath.

Noah had just finished reheating the leftover chow mein when Stiles blurted it out.

"I made a friend."

Noah froze, chopsticks hovering mid-scoop. “…A what now?”

“A friend,” Stiles repeated, as if Noah were a slow one. He leaned back in the chair, pretending casual, but his fingers betrayed him, rat-tat-tatting too fast on the table. "His name's Scott. McCall. He's... you know. Cool." He waved his hand vaguely, like he was describing a magic trick.

“Cool,” Noah echoed, suspicion thick in the word.

"Yeah. Asthmatic, nerdy, terrible at dodgeball. The very definition of cool." Stiles’s grin stretched wide, toothy—but there was something under it. A flicker Noah hadn’t seen in ages. Something genuine.

Noah set the food down, arms folding across his chest. "And this kid... he likes hanging out with you?"

Stiles blinked, affronted. "Wow. Confidence inspiring, Dad. Truly."

“Stiles.” Noah leveled him with the look—the one that cut through every dodge and joke. “I know what I told you about connections. But you’ve had… let’s call them companions, before. Kids you talked into whatever insane plan you cooked up that week. And when the smoke cleared, they usually ran screaming. This isn’t just another one of those?”

Stiles went quiet, his usual defense—sarcasm—failing to show. His shoulders curled in, hands fiddling with the cuff of his hoodie. "...No. It's different."

Noah wanted to believe him. He really did. But believing had burned him before. Claudia had believed in Stiles's brightness. Noah had seen the darker edges: the obsession, the trouble, the way he could twist anything into a dangerous game. A friend sounded like another opportunity for heartbreak—for Stiles, or for the poor kid who got caught in his orbit.

But Noah kept his doubts to himself and muttered, "Good. We'll see."

He didn't see until two weeks later.

Scott McCall showed up on their porch with battered sneakers and a polite smile too big for his face. Stiles hovered behind him, buzzing with energy, words spilling too fast as always. But Noah’s eyes went first to Scott—the shy posture, the steady glance toward Stiles, unshaken by the torrent of chatter.

At dinner, Noah found himself watching more than eating. Stiles tried to dominate the conversation, as always, but Scott didn't mind. He asked questions, listened, laughed in all the right places. When Stiles veered into one of his darker tangents, Scott would gently tug him back with a simple, earnest reply. And Stiles—Noah’s boy, who could cut a peer to pieces with a careless remark—actually let himself be tugged back.

It was subtle, but Noah saw it. A balance.

After Scott left and Stiles retreated upstairs, Noah stood at the window, watching Melissa’s car pull away. For the first time in longer than he wanted to admit, he didn’t feel quite so afraid of where Stiles was heading.

He whispered to himself, not sure if it was a prayer or just a truth: Please, let this kid stick around.

Noah wasn’t the type to warm up easily. And Stiles had given him more than enough reasons to be skeptical. But as the months passed, little things piled up.

Like how when Stiles came home from school alone, he was jittery, words looping half-thoughts until Noah’s head hurt just trying to follow. But when Scott walked him to the door, the chaos still tumbled out—just with a center, a focus. Scott nodded along patiently, interrupting only to keep Stiles from spinning too far off.

Or how Stiles’s detentions—once a weekly tradition—started tapering off. “Scott told me not to,” he’d shrug, as though that explained everything. And somehow… it did.

Noah noticed it most at night, during sleepovers. He’d hear them upstairs, voices muffled, laughing about something dumb. And then, after silence settled, Stiles would sleep. Really sleep. No creaking floorboards at midnight. No restless pacing. Just the sound of steady breathing, untroubled for once.

Noah still worried—that Stiles would ruin it, that the darkness in him would burn this boy out like all the others. But as time passed, and Scott kept showing up…that fear dulled enough to let Noah breathe easier.

Of course, nothing was ever perfect. Just as Scott affected Stiles, Stiles left his fingerprints on Scott. Not always in good ways. Scott wasn’t so much a co-conspirator as a reluctant lookout—the one who tagged along just to make sure nobody got hurt too badly.

One afternoon, when detention finally released its prisoners, and Scott and Stiles shuffled out together, heads ducked but smiles threatening to break. Outside, two figures stood by the curb: Sheriff Stilinski, arms crossed with that practiced cop stance, and Melissa, still in her scrubs from a hospital shift, exhaustion tucked behind a mother's steel.

Scott froze first.
“Oh no,” he muttered under his breath.

“Relax,” Stiles said, voice carrying nonchalant annoyance. “You’re acting like it’s your first time.”

Scott shot him a look. Stiles wilted half a step.
“Because it is!”

Melissa’s eyes found them immediately, narrowing with surgical precision.
“Scott McCall.” Her voice hit like a scalpel. “Detention?”

Scott swallowed. “It’s—it’s not what it looks like.”

“Really? Because it looks like you and Stiles humiliated poor Danny Mahealani in front of half the fifth grade.”

Stiles, trying and failing to hide a grin, piped up. “Technically, it was Greenberg. Danny just laughed.”

Noah’s gaze lingered on Stiles, an angry twitch in his jaw.
“Stiles.” His voice carried a warning every kid knew instinctively. “In the car. Now.”

Scott didn’t need to even be told. He slid into the back seat of his mom’s car, sulking against the window, while Stiles climbed into his dad’s, leg bouncing with the kind of restless energy he could never switch off. Melissa and Noah lingered a moment longer by the cars.

Melissa crossed her arms, exhaustion tugging at her posture now that the adrenaline of “angry mom” had worn off.
“Listen,” she said, lowering her voice, “I know detention isn’t exactly a gold star, but… Scott’s been different since your kid came along.”

Noah raised an eyebrow. "Different how?"

“More open. More… willing to take risks. And for a kid who spends half his life afraid of his own shadow, that’s not a bad thing.” She smiled faintly, though it was tinged with worry. “Stiles has this… way. He pulls Scott out of his shell.”

Noah gave a short laugh, though it sounded closer to a sigh.
“That’s one way to put it. Stiles pulls everyone—whether they want to be or not.” He rubbed the back of his neck, the familiar weight of parenting pressing harder tonight. “Truth is, I’ve been worried about him for years. He’s—” He stopped, the word caught in his throat. “He’s smart. But he doesn’t… connect. Friendship isn’t always… simple with him.”

His gaze drifted toward the car. Stiles was watching them openly now, as if daring them to keep talking. Noah wouldn’t be surprised if he’d heard every word.

“Or,” Melissa countered gently, “Stiles could be the reason Scott finally grows a backbone.” Her eyes softened. “Scott’s timid, but good-natured and loyal. If Stiles is the one person he’s chosen to latch onto… I think that says something. Something good.”

For years, Noah had carried the fear that Stiles was destined to grow up isolated, mistrusted, maybe worse. Now, here was this woman, looking at his boy as though he weren’t a walking disaster—just a kid who needed the right kind of friend.

Melissa smiled, faint but warm.
“Between you and me, Sheriff? I don’t think we could pry those two apart if we tried.”

For once, Noah didn’t argue. He just nodded, letting himself hope—quietly, stubbornly—that she was right.

The first time Rafael noticed, it was nothing—just Sheriff Stilinski at the McCall front door, leaning against the frame while Melissa laughed at something he’d said. Rafael had come up the hall just in time to hear her laugh again, fuller this time. Noah nodded, the corners of his mouth lifting in a way Rafael had never seen during stiff town meetings.

After Claudia died, everyone in town noticed the change in Noah. The slump in his shoulders, the exhaustion carved into his face.
Rafael told himself this new lightness was just a man slowly coming out of grief. Nothing more.

But then it kept happening.

Every other week, Noah’s cruiser pulled into their driveway. Stiles tumbled out, Scott right behind him, both boys flushed and happy from whatever adventure they’d gotten into. Rafael would catch sight of Melissa leaning on the porch rail, trading some easy banter with Noah while the boys said their goodbyes. It was never long—just a few minutes of back-and-forth—but there was a rhythm to it. A comfort.

Melissa didn't laugh like that when she talked to him.

By the third or fourth time, Rafael stopped pretending he wasn't watching. He saw the way Noah relaxed in her presence, how Melissa tilted her head when she listened, how their voices softened around each other in a way that didn't match the usual grind of small-town parent chatter.

(In truth, it was nothing more than two tired parents stealing a rare, easy breath after years of worrying whether their children would turn out all right.
But jealousy wasn’t logical. It brewed quietly in the dark corners of Rafael’s mind, twisting his perception until he saw only what he wanted to see.)

Sometimes he stood in the kitchen, window cracked open just enough to hear them out on the porch, the boys' laughter bubbling underneath their parents' conversation. He’d seen Melissa hand Noah a tupperware of leftovers once, scolding him about eating something green for a change, and Noah had taken it with an easy smile and no protest, like he’d accepted things from her before.

Rafael said nothing. Instead he stood in the doorway later, watching her bustle around the kitchen, and all he could think about was how Noah Stilinski—widower, sheriff, neighbor—had become a fixture in their lives in a way Rafael hadn't meant to allow.

The storm hadn’t broken yet, but he could feel it gathering. Every small moment another flicker of lightning on the horizon.

The first crack of thunder came on an ordinary Friday evening.

Melissa stood in the doorway, laughing again at something Noah said before he drove the boys back to the Stilinski house. Her laugh wasn’t the bright, professional one Rafael knew from her hospital shifts, but the warmer, unguarded one she saved for people she trusted.

Rafael caught the tail end of it from the living room couch, the sound brushing against his nerves like sandpaper. He stayed put, pretending to read the paper while Noah lingered on the porch, Melissa leaning against the doorframe as if she wasn't in a rush to say goodbye.

When she finally closed the door and stepped into the kitchen, she was still smiling faintly, her shoulders loose in a way that only sharpened Rafael’s frown.

“What was that about?” he asked, flipping a page with unnecessary force.

Melissa leaned on the counter, arching a brow. "What was what?"

"Out there. You and Stilinski. Looked like you were having a real good time." His voice was too even, but his jaw was tight.

Melissa blinked, then huffed a quiet laugh. "We were just talking, Rafe. Don't start."

"Just talking," Rafael repeated, a bitter edge slipping through despite himself. "Funny how much 'just talking' you two manage to fit in lately."

Her smile dropped, confusion and irritation flashing in her eyes. "He's a single dad, Rafael. His wife's gone. Our boys are practically glued at the hip. What do you expect me to do, ignore him?"

Rafael set the paper down, finally meeting her gaze. "I expect you to remember you've got a husband sitting right here." The words came out sharper than he intended, but once they were in the air, he didn't try to pull them back.

The kitchen went still.

Melissa stared at him for a long moment, something unreadable tightening in her expression. Then she exhaled through her nose, shaking her head. “Unbelievable.” She turned down the hall, muttering, “You don’t even hear how ridiculous you sound.”

Rafael didn't answer. He sat there with the silence pressing in. He told himself he wasn't jealous. He told himself he was just...watching out for what was his.

That's what he kept saying himself as one night he didn’t come straight home, but lingered at a bar instead.

The front door slammed against the wall, hard enough to make the picture frames on the entryway shelf rattle. Rafael stumbled inside, one shoe untied, the sour smell of whiskey clinging to him. His keys missed the bowl on the table and clattered to the floor.

Melissa was still awake in the living room, sorting a pile of clean laundry she hadn’t folded yet. At the sound of him, she froze—her jaw tightening as she listened to the uneven shuffle of his steps.

“You’re late,” she said evenly, not looking up from the towel in her hands.

Rafael gave a humorless laugh, low and bitter. “Don’t sound so surprised.” He leaned against the doorway, eyes bloodshot and mean in the lamplight. “You weren’t worried anyway. You’ve got Noah to keep you company, right?”

Melissa's hands went still on the laundry. She looked up sharply. "Rafael, for God's sake—"

“You think I don’t see it?” His words slurred but sharp. “The way you smile at him. The way you—” he waved a hand clumsily, searching for words, “—light up when he’s around. Like you’re twenty again.”

Her temper flared hot. “Noah is my friend. His son is Scott’s friend. That’s the beginning and the end of it. You’re paranoid—”

“I’m not paranoid!” Rafael roared, slamming a hand against the wall so hard a frame rattled. “You don’t laugh with me like that anymore.”

Melissa rose from the couch, her voice cutting sharp now, no longer controlled. “Because you don’t give me a reason to! You come home drunk, you pick fights, and you drown yourself in jealousy like it’s my fault you can’t stand your own insecurities—”

“You’re so goddamn righteous,” he spat. “Acting like you’re better than me.” He stepped closer, closing the space between them. “But you’re not. You’re not.”

Melissa’s pulse thudded, but she held her ground. Her voice dropped, quiet but cold. “Lower your voice. Scott’s asleep.”

Rafael sneered. “Oh, I’m so sorry—God forbid he hears what kind of woman his mother really is.”

Her grip on the towel tightened until her knuckles whitened. She wanted to throw it in his face, scream until the house shook—but instead she lifted her chin.

“What kind of woman am I, Rafael? The one keeping this family standing while you drink it into the ground?”

The words landed like a blow. For a flicker of a moment his face broke—raw, ashamed—but then his expression hardened, ugly again.

“You don’t get to talk to me like that,” he growled. “Not in my house.”

Melissa didn’t flinch. “It’s our house, you—”

A floorboard creaked above them. Melissa turned toward the stairs, dread sinking heavy into her stomach. Scott stood at the top of the landing in his pajamas, thin arms wrapped around himself, his inhaler clutched in one hand. His eyes were wide, frightened, his hair sticking up like he’d only just rolled out of bed.

“Mom?” His voice was small, uncertain.

“Go back to bed, honey,” Melissa said quickly, forcing calm into her voice. “Everything’s fine.”

But Rafael’s head snapped up, bloodshot eyes blazing at being caught. “Why the hell is he up?” he demanded, his words slurred.

“Because you’re shouting like a madman,” Melissa shot back, moving toward the stairs with her hand outstretched. “Rafe, please—don’t.”

But he was already moving. He stomped up the steps, looming large in the half-dark, and grabbed Scott’s thin wrist. His grip wasn’t cruel at first, just clumsy and too strong—the rough insistence of a drunk man trying to reassert control.

“Get back in your room,” Rafael growled. “This isn’t for you.”

Scott shrank back, tugging instinctively. “Dad—please—”

“I said go!” Rafael snarled, yanking hard.

It happened in a heartbeat. Scott twisted, trying to pull free. Rafael jerked him back—too hard, too sudden. The boy’s socked foot slipped on the top stair.

Melissa’s scream tore through the house.

Scott tumbled backward, hitting the steps once, twice, before his head struck the landing with a sickening crack that seemed to shake the walls. His head smacked against the wood so hard it left a dent, a dark crescent in the old boards. And then—silence.

"SCOTT!" Melissa bolted towards him, nearly tripping herself in her panic. She dropped to her knees beside him, hands trembling as she cupped his face. His eyes were closed, his body terrifyingly still.

Rafael froze halfway up the steps, staring down at the boy with wide, horrified eyes. The alcohol haze seemed to drain from him in an instant, leaving only shock and guilt.

"Jesus Christ," he whispered. "I—I didn't—"

"Don't touch him!" Melissa snapped, her voice breaking. She bent close, whispering urgently against her son’s temple. “Baby, wake up. Please, wake up…”

For half a minute that stretched into forever, he didn’t move. Then Scott groaned, faint and disoriented, his lashes fluttering. Melissa’s relief hit like a wave, but fury surged in with it. She lifted her head, eyes burning into her husband.

“Get out.”

"Mel—"

“Get out!” Her voice cracked like a whip, sharper than he had ever heard. “You don’t come into this house drunk. You don’t accuse me of a goddamn affair. And you sure as hell don’t put hands on my son.” Her voice wavered, but the rage behind it did not. “Leave. Now.”

She only meant for him to step outside, to sober up somewhere that wasn't her kitchen. But Rafael, staring at the damage, at his wife clutching their boy like a shield, felt the shame like a weight on his chest. He backed away a step, then another, before stumbling down the stairs and out into the night without another word.

So he left. But not just for the night.
The door slammed behind him, and for Scott, everything before that moment became a blur. He would never remember what happened on the stairs.

“Mom?” His voice was groggy, confused.

Melissa pressed her forehead to his, tears sliding down her cheeks. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Don’t worry about it, baby.”

His pupils were uneven, his gaze hazy but steady enough to find hers. “What… what happened? Did I fall?”

Melissa's throat closed. She wanted to tell him the truth—that his father's drunken rage had put him here on the floor, hurt and shaken—but she couldn't force the words out. The thought of cementing that memory into his fragile heart felt unbearable.

"You slipped," she whispered, kissing his temple. "But you're okay. That's all that matters."

He blinked slowly, confusion knitting his small features. "It hurts..."

"I know, baby. I know." She swallowed hard, steadying her voice. "You need rest. I'll keep an eye on you, alright?"

She slid one arm beneath him and coaxed him upright. He leaned heavily against her, his small body limp and trusting. Melissa half-carried him to the couch, tucking a blanket around him. A cold pack pressed against the knot on his head.

Outside, the roar of Rafael’s car engine cut through the night, then faded down the street.

“Dad?” Scott murmured, half-asleep, eyes unfocused.

Melissa stroked his hair, her hand finally steady. “Shh. Rest now, sweetheart. Dad’s gone out. It’s just us tonight.”

He drifted off quickly. Melissa sat in the armchair beside the couch, her body aching, her mind racing. Again and again she checked his breathing, terrified he wouldn’t wake. The house was silent except for the soft rasp of Scott's breathing and the faint tick of the clock on the wall.

Melissa's hands still shook as she pressed the phone to her ear.

The line clicked.

"Melissa?" Noah’s voice came low, wary—late-night calls rarely brought good news.

Melissa’s tears spilled freely as she whispered everything into the phone, eyes never leaving Scott’s sleeping face.

On the other side of the line, Melissa’s voice carried faintly from the kitchen through the Stilinski house—sharp at first, then breaking.

And Stiles heard every word.

As his hearing sharpened, Stiles had developed a habit of eavesdropping on his father’s calls. Most of them bored him, and he’d tune out quickly—but not this one. This one caught him instantly.

"...he was drunk, Noah—Scott fell, hit his head—"

Upstairs, Stiles froze in the hallway, his back pressed hard against his bedroom door.

A pause, then her voice again, low and shaking. "...I told him to leave. And I don't know if he's coming back."

Noah’s slow exhale carried down the line. “Good.”

"You don't mean that."

“I do,” Noah said. His tone softened, but the weight of conviction stayed. “Melissa... when Claudia attacked Stiles during her breakdown, I knew she couldn’t be around him anymore. I still loved her, but I knew she wasn’t safe. You did the right thing.”

"It's different."

“It is. Claudia couldn’t get better. Rafael has a choice. You don’t have to forgive him, but it’s up to him to prove himself—if he wants to be part of Scott’s life again.”

A beat of silence passed. Then Melissa’s voice again, thin as glass:
"...I feel like everything's falling apart."

Noah’s reply was too quiet for Stiles to catch—just the low rumble of his father’s voice grounding her. Melissa’s sigh—a wet, shaky sound, half sob, half relief—cut through the stillness a moment later.

Only then did Stiles move. The door clicked softly behind him, shutting out the muffled voices from downstairs. He leaned against it, chest heaving, the quiet almost suffocating under the weight of Melissa's words. His hands crept up his sides, hugging himself as he backed away from the door, as if distance could dull the pull.

Normally, this is where he thrived. The heartbreak, the fracture, the fear, the pain—he could drink it in like fuel. Broken families. Pained hearts.Whispers of deepest fears. All of it could fill the hollow ache inside him, if he let it.

But tonight, he didn’t.

He sank to the floor beside his bed, arms wrapped tight around his frame. Nails dug through the thin cotton of his shirt, scoring skin. The fox inside him nudged, a faint tug of instinct whispering use it. feed. make it yours. He could almost feel the hunger pulse sharper, a physical ache crawling all over his body, twisting in his bones.

He imagined it anyway. Twisting Melissa’s fear into a weapon. Turning Rafael’s absence into leverage. Drawing out Scott’s sweet, raw grief until it broke him wide open. The ache flared, mouth watering—

But he held back.

He swallowed the urge, teeth grinding against it. The reflex, the instinct, the fox’s gnawing plea. Static pressed at the edges of his skull, and it hurt—worse than usual.

Desperate, he bit down on his own fingers. The sharp sting, the metallic bite of blood, grounded him. And yet, in that restraint—painful as it was—he felt a new level of control he hadn't known he could hold. A fragile mastery over the hunger.

A shaky breath escaped, long and uneven, and he closed his eyes.

The next day, the feelings lingered.
Stiles’s senses were frayed raw from fighting the instincts. Everything was too much—the noises too loud, the lights too bright, the smells too sharp. Even the faint tang of antiseptic from the nurse’s office clung to the air, drifting all the way from the neighboring wing.

That morning, Noah had only given him a vague rundown: be careful around Scott for the next few days, because something had happened at the McCall house yesterday. Stiles didn’t press for details. He decided to play along—to pretend he hadn’t overheard the call, and not to let Scott know he already knew more than he should.

He leaned against the wall, backpack slung lazily over one shoulder, scanning the hall for Scott. He found him by the lockers—hunched over, backpack abandoned on the floor, hair mussed, lips pressed into a thin line. Scott’s eyes flicked up, dull and uncertain, before darting away.

The hunger hit Stiles like a physical blow. Sharp, insistent, tugging at the pit of his stomach. Pain. Fear. Misery. The fox inside him hissed, coiling in anticipation.

He clenched his fists at his sides, pushing it down. The ache in his chest twisted tighter, sharper, like he’d been starving for centuries instead of days. Every instinct screamed to go closer, to use, to take Scott’s despair, his hurt, his panic.

And yet—

He didn't.

Stiles forced a slow breath, turning his eyes away.“Hey,” he said. His voice rough around the edges. “You… you okay?”

Scott flinched at the sound of his voice, uncertain, fragile. He nodded, barely, still dimmed. “Yeah. I… I think so. Just tired.”

Stiles managed a faint, tight smile. He hitched his backpack higher and stepped around Scott, murmuring. “C’mon. What’s with the long face? Nobody died.”

Scott gave him a strange look. Because for him, it almost had felt like someone did. Not literally—but it hurt all the same.

Frustration prickled under Stiles's skin. If Scott would just cheer up, even a little, maybe Stiles wouldn’t have to fight himself so hard. Maybe the hunger wouldn’t ache so badly. Scott’s misery was right there, within arm’s reach, and every second of restraint burned.

“Let’s get to class before someone thinks I did this to you. They’ll say it’s my fault.” The words slipped out sharper than he meant, edged with anger.

Scott’s face fell into a hurt grimace. And Stiles—starved, frustrated—just couldn’t understand.
Why is it so hard for him to just get over it?

And then, impossibly, Scott closed the distance. Before Stiles could react, Scott threw himself into him, arms tight around Stiles's torso. The hug was raw, earnest, unthinking, a desperate claim of faith, of hope, of refusal to let go.

Stiles froze, chest stiffening against the unexpected warmth. Words didn't matter. The hug was louder than the cruel things he had said, louder than the hunger twisting inside him, louder than the anger he couldn't quite place. Nobody had held him like this in years, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, it felt foreign but not unwelcome.

Something inside him cracked—not in surrender, not in fear, but in recognition. The tether snapped taut, pulling the frayed edges of him back from the brink. The fox still clawed at the cage of his mind, but Scott’s presence—unwavering, naive, human—anchored him.

When Scott finally pulled back slightly, cheeks flushed, breathing uneven, Stiles found himself staring at the boy with something he didn't understand. Gratitude? Relief? Fear? Perhaps all three. But more than anything, he felt grounded—pulled back from himself, from the edge he hadn't realized he was teetering on, by this small, ridiculous, human boy who refused to be afraid of him.

“…Okay, yeah. Not funny. I was being a jerk.” The words tasted unfamiliar in his mouth. Apologies weren't something he did often.

Scott blinked again, then ducked his head. "Yeah. You kinda were." His voice was soft, not accusing, just... honest.

And somehow, that was worse. That honesty sank under Stiles's skin in a way that laughter never did. It left him unsettled, rattled. His chest felt tight, like he'd swallowed something sharp. He didn't like that look on Scott's face. Didn't like knowing he'd put it there.

At last, Scott sighed softly.
“You’re still my best friend, you know.”

The words landed heavy, meaningful. Scott said them like they were simple fact—like nothing Stiles said could change that.

"Even when I'm a jerk?"

Scott gave him the faintest smile, but it hit hardest. “Especially then. Somebody’s gotta stop you from getting worse.”

It wasn't forgiveness exactly. Scott wasn't brushing it off, but he wasn't running away either. And for Stiles, somehow, that was disarming in a way claws and teeth could never be. No one stuck like this. Not when they saw the shadows.

He wanted to laugh, to joke, to play it off—but instead he found himself muttering, almost against his will, "You shouldn't say stuff like that."

Scott turned his head. "Why not?"

"Because..." Stiles trailed off, unable to say the truth: Because one day I might hurt you for real. Because I don’t always know how to stop. Because the idea of you hating me feels like the end of the world.

"...Because you'll just regret it."

Scott only shook his head.
"Nope. I don't think I will." And without asking, he bumped his shoulder against Stiles's. "You're better than that."

Better.

Stiles swallowed hard and looked at the floor. “What if I’m not?” The words slipped out quieter than he meant.

“Then I’ll remind you. Every time.”

Stiles blinked at him, startled by the certainty, by the simple loyalty wrapped up in those words. For a boy who fed on chaos, who found energy in watching the cracks in people widen, taking pleasure in watching them bleed or cry, this loyalty was baffling. Irritating, even. But slowly, painfully slowly, Stiles leaned into it.

“…Yeah. You’re my best friend too.” His voice was low, reluctant, but real.

He'd never admit it, but that moment rooted deep inside him. For the first time, the fox felt something it couldn't quite name—something that wasn't hunger, wasn't mischief, but felt familiar. Something that kept him from letting Scott go.

Somewhere deep in his mind, Noah's unquestionable love, Scott's unwavering loyalty—they were anchors, invisible but strong. He could feel them tethering him, keeping him from slipping.

The hunger screamed louder, but the fox obeyed, snarling in frustration but it didn't take over. Not when there were people who mattered, keeping him in check.

Chapter Text

The first time Stiles slammed his bedroom door hard enough to crack the frame, his dad had just laughed.

“Puberty’s hittin’ you like a train wreck, huh, bud?”

And Stiles had forced a weak grin, trying to laugh too.

Puberty was happening, sure — his voice cracked like a dying radio and he’d shot up three inches in the last year — but that wasn’t the problem.

The problem was everything else.

Lately, his amber eyes had begun to darken—not hazel, not brown, but black at the edges, like ink bleeding into water. They started catching the light differently when he looked in the mirror—silver at first, just faint glints around the pupils. They shimmered more when he was angry, or annoyed, or caught off guard — when instinct surged first and thought followed after.

He didn’t smile as wide these days—not because he couldn’t, but because he knew better. The canines had lengthened. They were sharp enough to cut. Sometimes he nicked his own tongue by accident, just running it over the edges like he used to when fidgeting.

Every few nights, he woke tangled in shredded sheets. Threads wound around his fingers; the fabric split down the middle like something had tried to claw its way out. His hands — God, his hands. The claws came in more often now. Big black things, hooked and cruel, like obsidian daggers forcing its way through soft skin.

At least they retracted easily. Sliding back in like blades to a sheath.

That was the fox — the thing he tried to bury deep inside him — slowly crawling its way to the surface.

And that was the price of starving himself. The more he fought the instincts, the more they sank their teeth into him. His mind stayed his own, but his body began to rebel—betraying him one small, terrifying inch at a time.

( Even a being of chaos must bow to balance.
That’s how nature worked — how it treated all of its creatures. )

The first weeks of starvation were agony. The hunger screamed in him like a wound that refused to close. It burned through his veins, twisted his stomach, left him weak and trembling. Nights were the worst — he would lie rigid on his bed, clawing at the mattress as though he could tear off his own skin to silence the need. Sometimes he thought he heard whispers through the walls. Faint echoes of quarrels or grief he could not touch, tantalizing phantoms of the nourishment he denied himself.

His dad started leaving for work with something like peace again — calling, “See you later, kiddo,” instead of hovering in the doorway like a man afraid of what he might find when he came home. In the evenings, Noah would pat his shoulder when they met at the dinner table and tell him he was glad he was keeping out of trouble, his eyes soft in a way that felt undeserved.

He’d catch Scott smiling at him across the cafeteria table, that golden-retriever grin lighting up his whole dumb face, and it would twist something deep inside him. Scott looked proud — like Stiles was better, like the chaos of the past few years had finally leveled out and they were both standing on even ground for once.

They liked him better that way.

And wasn’t that what mattered?
That they were happy with him?
That he was safe?

A gentle monster.

He was still a void, still a fox born of chaos—
But he was also a son. Also a friend.
Someone worth loving.

So he clenched his teeth and held on.

By the time middle school rolled around, Stiles understood the hunger the way someone understands a lifelong illness. A chronic ache in the marrow of his bones, a pulse that pressed harder with every passing day. 

He learned to live with it, though it hollowed him.

He got good at hiding things. Learned when to blink, when to laugh, how to keep his voice pitched just right so no one noticed the faint growl that sometimes crept into his throat when he got pissed. Learned to clench his fists in his pockets. To smile with his mouth closed.

But sometimes, walking down the halls of the school, the whispers slid back in, oily and insistent. Sometimes he caught himself staring too long at people’s faces—at the strain around their eyes, the small flickers of fear or sadness they tried to hide—and his mouth would water.

It would have been so easy to give in — let it out, feed it, watch the world burn in miniature. 

So he told himself he was good.
So he told himself he was doing well.

Better to believe he was healing, that he was becoming something better, something good.

But that was the trickster’s truth — a lie that tells itself.

Everything was going so well.
Until that fucking night.

The first scream split the air like thunder.

Stiles jerked awake — heart slamming against his ribs, breath caught in his throat. For one stunned, sleepless second, he didn’t know why he was awake. 

Then it hit him — it was human terror, pure, raw and unfiltered—and it called to him like blood calls to a starving fox.

He didn’t remember throwing the covers back. Didn’t remember slipping out the window or cutting barefoot through the damp grass. He just moved, drawn by some magnetic, primal thread he couldn’t snap. The pull in his chest dragged him through the dark, through the trees, until the air began to shimmer with color.

At first, it was only a glow on the horizon.
A trembling orange bloom, leaking between the pines.

Then the trees broke open — and he saw it.

The Hale house burned like something holy — like a sun had fallen and found a new place to die. Flames crawling up its walls in gold ribbons, licking through shattered windows like long, hungry tongues. The roof groaned, then shuddered, coughing embers into the night. Each spark rose into the black sky and vanished, swallowed whole. The air trembled with heat and the sound of it — popping wood, shrieking metal, humans screaming — came together in a single symphony of chaos.

Stiles stopped at the edge of the treeline. Couldn’t move forward, couldn’t turn away either.

The screams hit him before the heat did. Raw, jagged things that ripped through the roar of the flames. The kind that weren’t just heard but felt — vibrating deep in the chest, echoing in the bones. Men shouting. Women choking on smoke. Children crying.

Trapped. All of them.

He could taste them. 

Panic, sharp as citrus.
Terror, cold as steel.
Grief, rich and velvety, clinging to his tongue like honey.
Agony — ah, agony — was the sweetest of all, smoky and slow, the flavor of a life collapsing inward.

It rolled through the air in waves, and the moment it reached him—

He breathed it in and the horrid ache stopped. He exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for years. Each breath was thick with ash, but it tasted like nectar on his tongue. 

The fire painted everything in shades of gold and red, flickering against his skin. The light made it look like the world was alive, moving. For a moment, it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. It felt so good.
He closed his eyes. Just for a moment. Letting it in. Thriving.

He had been starving for so long, trying to be good, trying to be a human his father could be proud of. But here it was: the feast he hadn’t known he was waiting for.

He gripped a tree to stay upright, bark biting into his palm. His claws slid out without thought — impressive, curved things that caught the light — and he raked them down the tree’s bark. The wood splintered under his hand, flaying open in long, wet curls. His skin under the claws tore. Blood welled up, dark and vivid, dripping onto the roots.

The firelight flickered across his face, painting gold over the wetness in his eyes. His body shuddered with every inhale, his mouth salivating like he was gorging himself on something forbidden and impossibly sweet. Each wail, each collapsing beam, filled the hollow inside him that had ached for so long.

Some small, human part of him started to scream:
Wrong. This is wrong. You shouldn’t.

But the rest of him — the wild, starving, aching part — was drowning it out.

The flames reached the upper floors now, collapsing rafters one by one. The roof sagged, then folded in, sending up a burst of sparks that painted the night like stars falling.

It was death and destruction, total and absolute — and it was magnificent.
Every second of it, every flicker of agony — tasted like sugar pouring straight down his throat.
He wanted to drink in every last breath of their dying fear and never, ever be empty again.

For the first time in months — years, really — he wasn’t in pain.

And that made it worse.

He pressed his bleeding hand against his chest, desperate to hold it in, to hold himself together.

He’d been doing so well. Holding back. Fooling himself he could survive on scraps — on his own anxiety, on the edge of nightmares, on television dramas and crime scenes he wasn’t supposed to see. That he could cage the thing inside him with human kindness and human guilt.

But here, watching an entire family burn alive, he felt fantastic.

He wanted this.

The chaos, the sweetness, the beautiful, terrible end of things.

Each scream that died was another breath he didn’t need to take.
Each heartbeat that stuttered out made the world taste cleaner.

He was smiling when the roof caved in.
He was crying when the last scream went quiet.

Smoke curled up around him, soft as silk. The fire reflected in his tears. It should have felt wrong — should have burned him alive from the inside out — but instead, it filled him with a serenity that made him sick.

When the sirens began to wail in the distance, the spell broke.

He turned away, stumbling into the treeline. His hand throbbed where the bark had split his skin, black blood drying on his shirt. Smoke clung to his hair, his throat, his tongue.

He wanted to tear his own skin off just because the warmth still lingered, curling in his veins like a drug. Because the memory of that beauty, that destruction, that taste of it still clinging to his tongue wouldn’t fade.

Because this—this was what he truly wanted.

And as he stumbled across the threshold of his house, the words returned—those quiet, accusing whispers in his head.

What would They say?
What would They do, seeing you like this?

The news hit Beacon Hills like a bomb.

The Hale House fire was everywhere—on the news, in the papers, in the hushed conversations that carried through the town like fog. A family gone overnight. The police department called it an accident. News anchors saying words like tragedy and devastating loss. Faces of the dead blinking in and out between commercial breaks, names repeated until they blurred into elegies.

Stiles lay on his bed, blinds pulled shut, staring up at the ceiling, chest heaving like he’d run for miles. Everything inside him buzzed and swirled like static after too much sugar, too much caffeine, too much everything.

The fire had been a banquet laid out just for him. Every bite of their suffering had filled the endless pit inside him, soothed it. For once—for once—the noise in his bones had gone quiet. It was intoxicating and nauseating all at once, like being drunk on something forbidden.

Nothing else in his life had ever come close.
Not food. Not games. Not jokes. Not his Dad nor Scott.

Only this.

He wanted it back.

And that thought made his throat burn, because — wasn’t he supposed to feel bad?
Everyone else did.

The whole town wore grief like a second skin, whispering about the Hale kids, the bodies, the tragedy of it all.

And yet… Stiles felt nothing like that.

Because even now, days later, he carried a high that made him dizzy. His blood sang, his fingers tapped restless rhythms; he couldn’t stop biting back a grin that wanted to surface in moments of silence. He knew better than to show it — but the contrast was unbearable. Everyone else bowed their heads in mourning, while he walked taller, sharper, brighter.

And that was the horror of it.

He liked it.

A burn of adrenaline and satisfaction, like the world’s misery had powered him anew. The fear, the panic, the sheer chaos of that night — it lingered inside him, thick and sweet, curling into his bones, crawling along his spine.

He caught himself imagining it: another fire, another disaster, more blood spilled for him to taste. The thought sickened him even as it thrilled him. It made his stomach twist, made his mouth water.

Why should he carry shame for his nature — when it felt this good? 

And yet, watching the town stagger under sorrow, Stiles knew he was wrong in some fundamental, irreparable way. He saw it in every face around him — the drawn expressions, the wet eyes, the whispers about poor Derek and Laura Hale, the two kids left behind. The whole of Beacon Hills was grieving, and he wasn’t.

He told himself he knew grief—his mother’s death was supposed to have taught him that—but even that memory had curdled inside him, more about the hollow ache of hunger it left behind than any true pain of loss. He understood grief in theory. He’d seen what it looked like on his father. But in practice, he couldn’t understand why something that tasted so soft and honeyed made everyone else so miserable.

The realization that no one — not Scott, not Noah, not anyone — could ever share this feeling with him. That this strange, intoxicating high — the sweetness of agony and fear, the thrill of chaos he had sipped from the Hale fire — was utterly his alone.

Truly alone.

The thought made his pulse quicken, his breath come shallow—made him feel both thrillingly powerful and unbearably small.

He wanted to reach out to someone, anyone, and tell them what it felt like. But even as he imagined it, he recoiled — because who would understand? 

Who would not call him wrong, monstrous?

So instead, he clung to routine like it was a lifeline.

Breakfast at the Stilinski kitchen table — toast untouched, black tea cooling beside his hand. He watched Noah from across the table, eyes flicking over his face like he could map his pulse just by looking.

Noah, for his part, noticed the intensity — the too-long glances.
“You’re… very focused,” he said carefully. “Everything okay?”

Stiles blinked, caught mid-thought, halfway between two worlds.
“Yeah. Just—thinking,” he said after a beat. “We’ve got this big test today.”

The excuse was vague, but the undercurrent was clear. He was tethering himself to normalcy — to the shape of an ordinary life, to the steady warmth sitting across from him.
To Noah.

Because the alternative — the pull toward that dark, gnawing hunger — was still there, waiting for a lapse.

“You’re a smart cookie,” Noah said, smiling gently. “You’ll ace it.”

Stiles smiled back—crooked, fleeting. The kind of smile that never reached his eyes.

At school, he stayed close to Scott, brushing shoulders, crowding his space. People whispered that Stiles must be shaken up by the fire, reminded of his own loss, poor kid. That was why he hovered, why he clung, so close to his best friend.

But Scott, who sensed the shift immediately, knew Stiles better than those people.

He read the faint edge in Stiles’s energy, the tightness in his shoulders, the restless flick of his fingers. It didn’t read as grief.

Stiles was quieter than usual, but not because he was upset or had nothing to say — it was a deliberate choice, calculating which words, which tone would keep Scott from seeing too much, while still keeping him close.

“You okay?” Scott asked one morning as they walked through the hall. His voice was low, careful.
He didn’t know exactly what he was seeing, but he knew something was off.

The boy’s eyes held questions Stiles couldn’t answer. Not truthfully. Not without terrifying him.

“Never better,” Stiles said, voice light, but it felt fake. He leaned on Scott’s shoulder — a casual touch, a friendly gesture. He needed the weight of the other boy beside him to keep from slipping off the edge he couldn’t stop staring at.

The thrill of wanting more.
Of maybe causing more, just to taste it again.

At the station, he lingered in his father’s office long after school, textbooks spread open, eyes darting to Noah like the man’s presence could weigh him down a little bit more. To everyone else, he looked like a boy leaning on his dad in hard times.
But really, he was holding on like a drowning thing clutching driftwood.

Evenings were the hardest.

He’d lie awake, the memory of fire gnawing at his senses. He’d try to focus on the steady hum of the house, the warmth of Noah’s footsteps down the hall, the familiar sound of Scott’s laughter echoing in his head. But the fox inside him twisted and coiled, unsatisfied.

Sometimes he hated the town for mourning, for making him feel alien and wrong.
Sometimes he hated his father, he hated his best friend, for being human in ways he couldn’t mimic.

But mostly, he hated the space growing inside him—the distance between what he should feel and what he did.

Why should he sit here sick with guilt when it had felt — when it had been — so magnificent?

Why should he hate what he was?

And now that the golden afterglow of that night was fading, he felt wrecked — his insides splintered into glass, every breath scraping. His skin ran hot and cold in turns, nerves twitching like live wires.

And beneath the sickness, there it was again—
the hunger.

Sharper than before, meaner than before.
The kind that hurt even worse now that he knew exactly what could fill it.

His lips peeled back from his teeth in a nasty snarl, a low growl rising unbidden from his throat.

For a moment, in the reflection of his darkened window, he thought he saw himself differently—
the boy’s shape bending, blurring like a shadow,
eyes flashing silver where brown should’ve been.

He felt he was slipping.

Every day, he clung harder to the leash, mistaking control for calm. But the truth was uglier.
It wasn’t soothing him.
It was strangling him.

He felt it in the tremor of his hands, in the pulse behind his eyes, in the way every sound hit too sharp, too close.

By third period, Stiles hadn’t said a word.
He sat in his usual seat, head bowed over his notebook, tapping his pencil until the rhythm blurred into a heartbeat. His gaze wasn’t on the board — it was miles away, fixed on something no one else could see. His skin had gone pale—not sickly, but drained, like color itself had abandoned him.

Tap. Tap. Crack.
The pencil tip splintered clean off.

Scott turned toward him, lowering his voice. “Hey… you alright?”

“Fine.”

The word came out too fast, automatic. No pause, no glance, no humor to soften it.

Scott blinked, thrown. He’d seen Stiles wired, frantic, angry — but never outright flat.
“You sure?” he asked quietly. “You, uh… you don’t look fine.”

The bell rang before Stiles could answer. The sound tore through his skull, bright and metallic. Chairs scraped, voices rose, laughter bled into a single, painful noise that made him want to claw at his temples.

Scott lingered as Stiles packed his things. His movements were jerky, mechanical. The zipper on his bag caught; he yanked at it too hard, muttering under his breath. His hands were trembling — barely, but enough for Scott to notice.

“You’re really pale,” Scott said softly. “Maybe you should see the nurse or something. You look—”

That got a reaction.
A flicker of something sharp and wounded crossed Stiles’s face before he turned. His eyes were rimmed with heavier shadows than usual—not from lack of sleep, but from something keeping him restless.

“Doesn’t matter.” Stiles interrupted, voice low but trembling at the edges.

The words felt like a script he’d already rehearsed a hundred times.
Scott waited for more, but nothing came. No grin, no irony — just that flicker of regret that came too late to take the words back.

“Okay,” Scott said quietly. “Sorry.”

The apology hung there, awkward and raw.
Stiles didn’t answer. He just exhaled — long, shaky — dragging a hand down his face. For a heartbeat, the mask slipped. Scott saw it then: the exhaustion, the pressure, the something lurking behind his eyes.

And then it was gone.

“Forget it,” Stiles muttered, slinging his bag over his shoulder. “Just drop it, Scott.”

He brushed past before Scott could respond. Scott watched him go, unease tightening in his chest.
Something was wrong — worse than wrong. He’d never seen Stiles look like that.

What he didn’t see — couldn’t see — was Stiles in the boys’ bathroom minutes later, leaning over the sink, knuckles white against the porcelain.

The lights flickered.

His reflection stared back — pale, hollow-eyed, a shadow of himself. The boy who’d made everyone laugh was buried under something meaner, older, hungrier.

His heartbeat echoed through the pipes, uneven.
The hunger pulsed with it.

It pulsed like another heart layered beneath his own, reminding him of how good it had felt, how calm and at ease he was when the Hales burned.

He had never tasted such tragedy before. Not on such a scale.

And now he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Couldn’t stop craving it.
The memory had its own gravity, its own scent, dragging him closer every time he tried to resist.

Scott had been right.

He was different.
Different — and getting worse.

And Stiles couldn’t even look at him anymore — not when his best friend’s loyalty, his kindness, made the hunger feel like betrayal waiting to happen.

The station was alive with its usual hum — phones ringing, boots on tile, the low chatter of cops over paperwork — but Stiles was a still point in the middle of it all. He sat hunched over the spare desk his dad had given him, his pencil skidding between half-finished math problems that bled into doodles, then into idle scratches. His focus kept drifting across the room.

Derek and Laura Hale sat on the hard plastic chairs by reception, shadows in clothes that didn’t quite fit. Teenagers, barely older than him, their faces carved hollow and pale. They didn’t talk to each other. They didn’t look around, didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. The boy was stiff, jaw set like stone; the girl folded in on herself, arms crossed like she was trying to hold herself together.

And Stiles could feel them.

Not the way other people did. To him, it was a taste, a smell in the air, sweet and thick, almost syrupy. He leaned forward in his chair without realizing it, staring, following the shape of their faces, the slump of their spines. Grief like molasses. Pain that glittered sharp as sugar crystals.
His gaze stuck on them, wide-eyed, curious—

Hungry.

A promised dessert after the feast at the fire.

His jaw slackened, eyes fixed—

“Stiles.”

His dad’s voice cut through. The Sheriff stood over him, file tucked under one arm, eyes following his son’s gaze. When they landed on the Hales, his expression tightened.

Stiles blinked up, caught. “What? I wasn’t—”

“Don’t stare,” Noah said quietly.

“Why not?” Stiles frowned, gesturing loosely with his pencil. ‘They’re just sitting there. I was just…looking.”

“Because it’s rude,” Noah said. His voice stayed soft, but there was a warning under it.

Stiles shifted in his chair, uncomfortable under the weight of that tone. “So what?” he muttered, a little too fast.

The words slipped out sharper than Stiles meant them. And the second it did, he saw the flicker in his dad’s eyes — fear, worry, like something had cut deeper than the words themselves.

Noah crouched beside him, setting the file on his knee so they were eye level.
“Because they lost their family, kid,” he said quietly. “Their parents. Their uncles and aunts. Their cousins. Everyone. You get what that means?”

Stiles’s face barely moved. He chewed on his lip like he was thinking—but not feeling.
“I mean, yeah, but… what do you want me to do about it?”

Noah rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I don’t want you to do anything,” he said. His voice had softened, but it was tight around the edges. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees — the way he always did when he needed Stiles to listen. “I just want you to understand it hurts. Losing someone like that—it’s not just sad. It’s like losing the ground under your feet. Like you don’t know how to stand anymore.”

That was what grief should feel like, wasn’t it?

Stiles went still, caught like a fox in headlights. His dad was watching him closely, waiting.
He frowned, not out of sympathy but focus, like he was trying to find the right answer on a test. He wanted to feel it — really, he did — but the words didn’t reach anywhere inside him. So he nodded anyway, carefully, because it seemed important that he did.

Noah sighed, the sound heavy in his chest. Then he tried again, gentler this time, “When your mom passed away… do you remember how that felt?”

Stiles blinked. The memories felt patchy — hospital corridors, whispers, flowers wilting in vases. He remembered people saying sorry to him, their faces tight and heavy. 

He also remembered his dad breaking down, not eating for days, not sleeping.
He remembered feeling small and bad, because he didn’t cry like that. And only then did the grief feel wrong for how good it tasted.

The pencil stopped spinning between his fingers. Stiles looked down at his notebook, his voice small, uncertain.
“…Not good,” he said at last.

Noah let out a slow breath—half relief, half ache.
“That’s how they feel right now,” he murmured. “That same ‘not good.’”

Stiles nodded, too quickly. He didn’t see it, not really. The Hales’ grief didn’t feel like his had. Theirs smelled rich and golden, like honey over fire. His had been cold and sour, if that even was grief. They weren’t the same at all. But his dad was still watching him, and something in Noah’s face made Stiles feel cornered, like every wrong answer might push them further apart.

Noah gave a small, tired smile, like he wanted to believe his son understood. But his chest ached watching him. His boy wasn’t cruel — he knew that. But he didn’t get it.
He was processing it like an equation, plugging in what his dad said to try and make the numbers add up.

Noah sighed at last. “You don’t just watch people when they hurt, son. You don’t have to fix it. You don’t even have to feel it the same way.” He said, voice gentler now, like he was coaxing him toward something fragile, pleading. “But you do have to be kind. You tell them you’re sorry for their loss. That’s what you say.”

Stiles blinked. “…That’s it?”

“Yes.” Noah’s eyes searched his, almost desperate. “That’s it.”

He rested a hand on Stiles’s shoulder, firm, grounding. “You say it because it matters. Because it tells them they’re not alone. That someone sees them. That’s what it means to be sorry for someone.”

Stiles glanced back at Derek and Laura, then at his father. He nodded again, sharper this time, like he’d filed the lesson away. “Okay.”

His dad’s grip loosened, relief softening his face in the smallest way.

( Because teaching his son empathy shouldn’t feel like teaching him how to be human. )

Noah’s shoulders eased the tiniest bit, but he still looked like a man hanging onto a rope over a cliff. “Good. That’s good.”

Stiles turned back to his homework, pretending to scribble something down. But inside, his skin itched. He didn’t understand why his dad was so worried, why it mattered whether or not he felt the “right” thing.

When Derek and Laura finally stood to leave, Noah gave his son a small, expectant nudge.

Stiles hesitated a beat too long. The moment almost slipped away before he reached out—his hand brushing Derek’s wrist as they passed.

The contact was brief — skin to skin — but Stiles felt all the sweetness the boy was holding in at once.
He almost tripped.

Almost forgot where he was and what he was supposed to do.

His mouth watered at the brief thought of getting out of those two grieving kids what the house fire gave him—

But he held back. He forced the hunger down like bile and spoke on instinct, the words clumsy and stiff.
“I’m… sorry for your loss.”

Laura blinked, startled. Her eyes softened with polite confusion before she gave a small nod. Derek looked at him once — sharp, guarded — and then looked away.

It was over in seconds. Stiles stood there, frozen, the taste already fading. The warmth drained out of him, leaving only the hollow echo of it. He turned toward his father.

Noah was watching him with a fragile sort of relief, pride flickering behind tired eyes.

“See?” he murmured, resting a hand on his son’s shoulder. “That’s all it takes.”

Stiles nodded again, though he didn’t understand. He couldn’t feel what his father wanted him to feel — couldn’t see what difference it made. Why it mattered. Why Noah’s eyes looked brighter now, wet at the edges, as if something sacred had just been restored.

But he could pretend. He could play along.

Because if saying the right words made his father hold him closer instead of pulling away—
if it made the fear in Noah’s gaze soften back into love—

He’d say the words every time.

He was coming apart by inches.

Every hour, every breath, it got worse. The fox inside him was pacing the cage—restless, starving—its claws dragging slow along bone.
For weeks, Stiles had been pulling the leash tighter, convincing himself it was control. Pretending that willpower could drown out instinct.

Now, it was boiling over.

The cafeteria was a low roar of sound—forks clattering, sneakers squeaking, laughter slicing through the air. For most kids, it was background noise. For Stiles, it was deafening. Every voice came in too sharp, every scrape of metal on plastic drilled behind his eyes. His skull buzzed. His head ached. His nerves were wire.

He pressed a hand to his temple, breathing slow through his teeth.

He was fine. He just needed quiet. Just needed—

“The Stilinski freak looks like he’s planning a murder.”

Laughter. Bright, mean, and sharp enough to cut.
A fist hit a table. A tray clattered. Someone whistled.

And then something low and guttural broke out of Stiles’s chest before he could stop it. A growl. Deep, foreign. A sound he didn’t register until the silence spread, rippling through the tables nearest him. Heads turned. Eyes widened.

Prey, every one of them.

The older boy who’d spoken grinned, wide and ugly—the kind of grin that fed on attention. He stepped closer, puffed up on the rush of it, leaning over Stiles.

“What’s the matter, freakshow? Finally going feral?”

Scott was on his feet before he thought about it, slipping between them. “Hey, knock it off—”

The bully didn’t even look at him. The shove came lazy, almost casual. Scott hit the floor hard, cheek glancing off the corner of a table. There was a dull crack, and Scott winced, hand flying to his cheek.

It wasn’t bad, it didn’t even hurt that much.

But when he pulled it back — blood.
A thin smear on his fingertips.

And it had to be that faintest scent of blood that finally did it.

For Stiles, the world tilted sideways.
And then it went red.

His body moved before thought could catch up. He uncoiled like wire snapping under tension, instincts tearing loose. His chair screeched back as he launched himself forward, snarling, actually snarling, the sound in his throat too animal for a thirteen-year-old boy.

He hit the bully hard enough to rattle the tiles. The breath left the other boy’s lungs in a strangled wheeze. And then Stiles’s fists were moving — slamming down, once, twice, again — knuckles cracking skin, blood blooming beneath every blow. At some point, the claws had come out. He didn’t remember willing it. Didn’t care.

Some tiny, rational ember in the back of his mind whispered — thank goodness it wasn’t Scott he had thrown himself at.
Because the moment he cracked it was no longer just about hunger. This was pure predatory blood-lust of a starving animal.

The crack of bone against tile rang out. The taste of fear hit him like a drug—
sharp, metallic, intoxicating. Delicious.

It flooded his veins, set his teeth on edge. The world sharpened into color and sound and heat. Every breath the boy sobbed, every hitch in his chest, spilled pain into the air like perfume, and Stiles drank it.

Blood welled warm and red and sweet, fear curling around it like spice.

He struck again, and again—each blow feeding the black hunger clawing up his ribs.

It was ecstasy.
It was home.

The fox purred, wild and gleeful. He had waited too long, starved too long. And now the meal was here — helpless and trembling beneath his hands. Perfect.

And then — arms.

Thin, trembling arms wrapped around his elbow, clinging with the desperation of a boy trying to leash a lightning storm with a piece of twine. 

Scott.

“Stiles,” he whispered, voice soft and breaking, “Stiles, that’s enough.”

The words barely reached him. They were noise—soft, distant, weak against the thunder in his head.

Stiles’s chest heaved, breath ragged between growl and gasp. Blood dripped from his hands, slick and bright against the pale tile. His lips peeled back over teeth too sharp.

Then his eyes found Scott’s.

And Scott flinched. He flinched.

He didn’t let go, though. His grip was weak, shaking, nothing compared to the force Stiles carried in his arms — but it held. He was terrified, but still there. Still holding on.

And for one awful, electric second, the fox didn’t recognize him. Didn’t see his best friend — the boy who never looked at him with fear. It saw prey.

Scott’s grip on his arm tighten, stubborn, clinging. His face was pale, eyes wide with fear he couldn’t hide.

The fox reveled in it for a beat too long—the fear, the closeness. A fierce, savage pride. Satisfaction curling hot and heavy in his chest. It wanted to bare its teeth and purr, to press that advantage — that this boy shook before him and still didn’t run. That he could be both feared and needed, a monster and a friend.

But then the echo of it hit — the truth of what that meant.
His friend—his anchor—was afraid of him.

Cold spread through his chest, cutting through the warmth of blood and adrenaline. His chest twisted. His breath hitched. He blinked — once, twice — trying to find his way through the red haze.

The sound of the cafeteria rushed in, distant, warped. The boy beneath him was sobbing, blood streaking the tiles. Around them, kids pressed back, wide-eyed, silent. And Scott — sweet, quiet Scott — was the only one still touching him.

Then the spell broke.

A door slammed open. Teachers shouted — “Break it up! Break it up!” — their voices crashing in. Hands grabbed at him, rough and loud and human. The fox thrashed, snarling, its instincts lashing out before reason could form.

“Stilinski! Enough!”

The name barely registered.

Scott’s voice did.
“Stiles—stop! It’s okay!”

And that word — okay — hit like a blow.

Because nothing was okay.
Because Scott’s voice shook when he said it.
Because Stiles could taste his friend’s fear in the air — bittersweet and heartbreakingly familiar.

The growl died in his throat. His body went slack.

And for the first time, Stiles was starting to understand what he’d always been afraid of most.

That one day, the people who loved him most would finally see what he really was—
and not see Stiles at all.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, flickering with that sharp, insect hum that always gave Noah a headache.

He’d been here before — this hallway, this posture, this feeling — except the kid beside him had been smaller then. Easier to reach.

Now Stiles stood slouched against the wall, arms crossed tight over his chest as if to hide the raw, red skin of his knuckles. His split lip glistened under the sterile light. There was blood on his collar that wasn’t his.
Not his first fight — but definitely the worst.

Noah’s pulse wouldn’t settle. He’d just signed the suspension notice. Expulsion was still on the table. He still couldn’t make sense of what the principal had said — what his son had done.

He stood there, frozen for a heartbeat too long.
“Let’s go.” The words came out sharp, clipped — not a father’s voice, but a cop’s order.

They walked down the corridor in silence. The muted chatter of other students drifted from somewhere far away. Noah kept quiet, but it was the wrong kind of silence — charged and seething. Stiles kept two paces ahead, backpack slung over one shoulder, moving fast as if he could outrun the conversation. Their footsteps echoed off tile, too clean a sound for what sat between them.

Only once they stepped outside, into the pale afternoon light beside the cruiser, did Noah stop.

“What the hell was that?” His tone came out harder than he meant — a weapon drawn too fast. “You’ve never done anything like this before. Never. And today you nearly tore into another student like—” He stopped himself, chest heaving. “Like an animal.”

Stiles turned his head slowly, eyes bright under the sickly lights, but his smirk was brittle. “Guess I’m branching out.”

“Don’t get smart with me.” Noah’s voice rose, his hand jabbed through the air, pointing, accusing. “You think this is a joke? You put your hands on that kid. You drew blood. Teachers are saying they don’t even recognize you anymore. And they’re right, because I don’t either. So tell me—” His voice cracked but didn’t stop. “Tell me what the hell is going on with you.”

For a moment, Stiles said nothing. Then he shrugged, slow, shoulders tight, hands buried in his hoodie pocket.

“That’s not an answer,” Noah snapped. He stepped closer, too close, shadow falling over Stiles. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Something flickered in Stiles’s expression — not fear, not guilt, something sharper. A fox caught in the beam of a flashlight, still deciding whether to bolt or bite.

And Noah saw it — saw his own stance, his own tone reflected back at him — interrogation room posture, not father-to-son. He saw his boy’s eyes guarded, shuttered, retreating behind walls so fast they practically slammed in his face.

“You’ve never done anything like this before. You’ve never been violent. Not like this. You put a kid in the hospital, Stiles.”

Stiles pulled tight into himself, shoulders hunched, hoodie drawn close like armor.
“I didn’t—”

“You did!” Noah’s voice cracked with disbelief. “You cut his face! Broke his nose! He was shaken up like he’d been mauled! I had to sit in that office and listen to them talk about my son like he was—like he was a danger to society. Do you know what that sounds like, Stiles? Do you understand what that does to me? Hearing that?”

Stiles shifted, pressed his thumb against his teeth until it hurt. His jaw worked, like he wanted to spit something back, but nothing came.

Noah’s voice softened, finally. The anger was still shimmering, but was slowly replaced with something far worse — fear. “I don’t understand,” he said quietly. “You were doing so well. Keeping your head down. Staying out of trouble. What happened?”

Stiles let out a hard breath through his nose. His shoulders curled in, defensive.
“Guess I wasn’t doing as well as you thought.”

“You’re smarter than that,” Noah said immediately. “Better than that.”

For a second—just a second—his son’s expression wavered. Fragile. Like maybe the wall would crack. A heartbeat of vulnerability.
Then the mask slammed back down.

“Maybe I do have ‘behavioral issues,’ huh?” he said, voice pitching up in a bitter mockery of nonchalance. “Isn’t that what everyone says? Stilinski freak, finally losing it. Your cop buddies probably think I’m one bad day from a psych eval.”

“Don’t—”

“Don’t what? Tell the truth?” Stiles’s grin widened, ugly and sad all at once. “You wanna know what’s wrong with me? Nothing. Nothing's wrong. Maybe I’m just wired this way. Maybe this is who I am.”

“Don’t you joke about that!” Noah’s palm slammed against the hood of the car, the sound like thunder splitting the air.

Stiles jumped.

Noah froze. The anger drained out of him all at once, leaving shame in its wake.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, voice fraying at the edges. “I didn’t— I just…” He drew a shuddering breath, throat tight. “I don’t know what’s happening to you. But you’ve got to let me in, okay? Please. You scare me when you shut me out like this.”

And Stiles saw it — that flash of fear in his father’s eyes. The same look Scott had given him earlier that day.

Like they were both seeing a stranger — someone wearing his skin, someone who’d taken their friend, their son, and left this thing behind.

Something flickered in Stiles’s gaze — a sharp, violent twist of emotion that almost looked like pain. He swallowed, glancing away. 

The drive home was quiet at first.

Rain slicked the windshield, blurring the world into streaks of gray and gold. The wipers kept time — back and forth, back and forth — the only steady sound between them. The hum of the tires filled the silence, low and tired, while the heater wheezed like it was struggling to keep up.

Streetlights slid across the glass, flashing over Noah’s face in staccato bursts — light, shadow, light, shadow — like a metronome ticking toward something inevitable.

Noah’s face was unreadable — not angry, not cold, just… blank. Cop mode. Stiles had grown up learning that face the way some kids learned a second language, watching for the smallest cracks, the almost-words that never made it past his father’s throat. Every so often, Noah’s eyes flicked sideways — like he wanted to speak, but couldn’t find where to begin.

Beside him in the passenger seat, Stiles slouched low, backpack at his feet, one knee bouncing hard enough to rattle the glove box. His reflection ghosted in the window — pale, sharp, tired. His split lip was already gone, healed like it had never happened. His pulse still thrummed with leftover adrenaline, but underneath it, there was something else. Something restless, prowling the edges of his thoughts.

He couldn’t stand the silence anymore.

“Hey, Dad?” His voice came out too soft, threaded with something not quite fear — more like dread trying to sound casual.

A tired grunt. “Yeah?”

Stiles picked at the seam of his sleeve. “What would you do if… you found out someone wasn’t who you thought they were?”

That earned him a quick glance from Noah — the kind parents give when they’re bracing for a confession.
“What do you mean?”

“I mean, like…” He forced a shaky laugh. “Say somebody’s been lying for a while. Not, like, about murder or anything, just… about who they are. Maybe they had a good reason. Because people wouldn’t… understand.”
His fingers twisted harder into the fabric until it tore.
“Would you still love them?”

The question landed like a quiet explosion between them.

Noah finally turned to look at him, really look — his son sitting beside him, shadows bruising his eyes, something in his face stretched too thin to be normal teenage guilt.

“Stiles,” Noah said carefully, “where’s this coming from?”

Stiles forced a crooked grin. “Nowhere. Just hypothetical. You know me — weird questions, random thoughts, the usual.”
His voice wavered, then dropped, smaller. “Just tell me.”

Noah’s grip loosened on the wheel. His voice was softer now, low enough to sound almost like a prayer.
“If someone’s lying, it’s usually because they’re scared. If someone I love lied to me… I’d want the truth. But I’d still love them. You don’t stop loving people because they make mistakes.”

The words hung in the air — heavy, trembling, full of faith Stiles didn’t deserve.

Mistakes.
Like this could still be something fixed.
Like he could still be something fixed.

Stiles knew better. The problem wasn’t what he’d done. Not in the long run. It was him.

Stiles nodded anyway, eyes fixed on the blurred shapes outside. His reflection stared back at him in the window with eyes darker than they should’ve been.

“Even if the truth was…” His voice thinned, cracking halfway through. “Even if it made you look at them differently?”

Noah frowned, but his tone gentled. “Stiles… there’s nothing you could say that would make me stop loving you. Nothing. You hear me?”

The words should have comforted him. They almost did.
But there’s something cruel about hope when you know it’s built on a lie.

He smiled faintly, looking down at his hands — too still, too clean, already healed.
“Yeah,” he said. “I hear you.”

Noah studied him for a long moment. There was a question in his eyes — What aren’t you telling me? — but he didn’t ask. He could feel the fragility in the air, the way one wrong word might send everything crashing through the thin ice between them.

So instead, he said quietly, “You really scared me today.”

Stiles swallowed. His throat burned. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I scared myself too.”

Noah reached out, resting a hand on his shoulder. The touch was warm, human, grounding. Stiles didn’t pull away — but something inside him did, recoiling like a wild animal from comfort it didn’t think it could keep.

The silence returned, still heavy in the air.
Usually, Stiles filled it — rambling, theorizing, nervous chatter spilling over itself. Tonight, he just watched the wipers drag back and forth, back and forth, like he was timing his breathing to their rhythm.

When they pulled into the driveway, Stiles got out before the car had even finished rolling.

Noah sat there for a long time, engine ticking, headlights washing over the wet siding of the house.

The house was too still when they came in.
Even the floorboards seemed to know better than to make a sound.

Noah locked the door behind them, keys clinking too loud in the quiet.
Stiles toed off his shoes by the mat, eyes fixed on the worn carpet pattern like it might tell him what to do next.

The kitchen light was still on, spilling down the hallway in a tired yellow strip.

“Go on up,” Noah said at first, voice low, like he didn’t trust it to hold.
But then, softer: “—Actually, wait.”

Stiles froze halfway up the stairs.

His father stood in the kitchen doorway, one hand braced against the frame. He looked worn to the bone — new lines carved deep into his face, or maybe they’d always been there and Stiles was just noticing now.

“Come here a sec.”

Stiles turned, slow, uncertain. He came back down. The air between them felt fragile — glass-thin, sharp-edged.

Noah gestured toward the table. “Sit.”

For a heartbeat, it felt like the start of another interrogation.

Noah sat across from him, elbows on the table, hands clasped tight. His wedding ring caught the light — a small, steady gleam.

“Stiles,” he said finally. “You’ve been… different lately. I keep telling myself it’s just stress, or hormones, or—” He let out a laugh, low and cracked. “God, anything. But I can’t shake this feeling that something’s wrong. Really wrong.”

He paused, searching his son’s face. “That boy today…” His jaw tightened. “You hurt him, Stiles.”

“I know,” Stiles said quietly.

“Why?”

Stiles opened his mouth — but there was no answer that didn’t sound like a lie. Every time his dad looked at him like that — the worry, the disappointment, the quiet what’s wrong with you, kid? in his eyes — Stiles felt himself shrinking smaller.

He wished he could tell him that he wasn’t bad. That what happened today wasn’t plain cruelty or malice or lack of empathy. That for a moment, when the fear hit the air like perfume, when the pain rolled off the boy’s skin like steam, the ache inside Stiles had finally gone quiet.

That he hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone.
He’d just been hungry.

“I don’t know,” he said at last.
It was almost true.

Noah’s eyes searched him for something — remorse, reason, anything. For a second, Stiles thought he might reach across the table and shake the truth out of him. Then something cracked — his anger folding under the weight of exhaustion.

Noah leaned forward, voice trembling now. “I just— I need you to talk to me, kid. Please. If something’s wrong—if you’re scared, or angry, or… or sick, I don’t care what it is. Just tell me. Don’t shut me out.”

Stiles’s throat closed up. He couldn’t meet his father’s eyes.

He wanted to tell him everything.
God, he wanted to.

But the mere thought of his father’s face — of that kindness, that trust — looking at him with horror instead…
He couldn’t bear to see that look.

So he took a breath, dragged the mask back on, forced the smile into something smaller, sweeter, almost apologetic. “It's nothing. You’re right,” he said softly. “I screwed up. It won’t happen again.”

Noah studied him, eyes shining, torn between trust and suspicion, love and dread. He finally sighed, shoulders sagging. 

“I just… I want my kid back,” he said, barely above a whisper.

The smile on Stiles’s face didn’t reach his eyes. His tone softened, almost gentle now, almost desperate.
“I’m right here, Dad.”

When Stiles finally made it upstairs, he shut the door behind him and just stood there for a long moment, forehead pressed to the wood.

The house breathed around him — the hum of the fridge, the soft groan of old pipes, the shuffle of his dad moving in the kitchen below.

Normal sounds.
Ordinary life.

He swallowed hard. He wanted to hold onto that.

He rubbed his palms together, harder and harder, as if friction alone could burn out the ache twisting in his chest.
It didn’t.

From downstairs came another small sound — ceramic against metal, the sink running. His dad rinsing a mug, maybe. Or just stalling, afraid to go to bed just yet.

That familiar guilt bloomed deep in Stiles’s ribs, slow and poisonous.

He wanted to go back down.
Say something. Anything.

He wanted to tell his dad it wasn’t his fault. That he was just built wrong. That if Noah could see inside him — see the gnawing, endless pain — he’d understand that Stiles wasn’t a monster by choice.

He clenched his hands at his sides until his nails bit deep, crescents of blood welling where skin gave way.
The lamp flickered once—twice—and steadied.

In the window’s reflection, his face blurred and shimmered. For a heartbeat, something sharp flickered beneath the surface.

He shut his eyes. Counted to ten.
You’re fine. You’re fine. Just breathe.

Stiles backed away from the door and sat on the edge of his bed, his hands falling open. The blood had already dried dark, gleaming faintly under the lamplight like lacquered ink. He stared at it until his breathing evened out — but the words from earlier kept circling back, bruising in new places every time they came back around.

You were doing so well.
That’s not you.
What happened to my kid?

He dragged both hands through his hair, a dry laugh breaking out of him.

“What happened?” he muttered to no one. “I did. That’s what happened.”

The streetlight outside cut through the blinds, slicing his reflection in the mirror into pieces. The boy looking back wasn’t quite him — his features too sharp, his eyes too bright, pupils stretched thin and inhuman.

A trick of the light, he told himself. An illusion, but just barely.

A shadow of his thoughts made flesh.

He could almost feel it move in him then, the shadow stretching under his skin like liquid fire.

The faint shimmer of silver rippled under the surface of the glass, and suddenly, Stiles could see what laid beneath his skin…

Monster.

All claws and fangs and tails. Long-limbed, fox-faced. Eyes glowing like molten silver beneath dark water.

It was him. Just stripped of the pretense. The human skin peeled back to reveal what had always been there — a creature built to take and take and take, until nothing was left.

He covered his face with his hands, curling in on himself until his forehead pressed to his knees — like a child hiding from the monster in his closet.

He wasn’t evil. He wasn’t.
Just other.

That’s what he kept whispering to himself, pleading with the air to believe him.

Downstairs, Noah sat at the table with his head in his hands, the cooling mug untouched beside him. His heart ached with a terrible, nameless certainty — that his son was up there breaking. And that whatever was happening to him — it wasn’t something a father could fix.

( If only he knew how wrong he was. )

Scott never thought of himself as strong.
He wasn’t the kid who picked fights or strutted through the halls like he owned the world. He was the one who sat in the back of class, who carried too many comic books, who laughed too easily at Stiles’s dumb jokes. Quiet. Soft-spoken. A background kind of boy.

Melissa never made Scott feel like he was too small for her love. Where Rafael’s sighs left him shrinking, her patience pulled him back up. She was gentle, but never indulgent — never in a way that would leave him brittle.

“The world’s tough, sweetheart,” she’d told him once, sitting on the edge of his bed, brushing his hair back from his forehead. “If you don’t learn to take initiative, it’ll swallow you whole. And I can’t always be right here to keep that from happening.”

Scott hadn’t taken it as a warning. He’d taken it as a promise — that she believed he could grow stronger.

So he tried harder. He learned to refill his own inhalers, to take the bus alone, to handle the little things without her hovering. Not because she demanded it, but because he wanted to meet her halfway — to give something back for all the quiet, endless energy she poured into him.

Melissa let him, even when the worry lines deepened at the corners of her eyes. She liked to think she’d raised him well, even if she sometimes doubted she’d done enough as a mother.

Scott was such a good kid.

He didn’t realize right away how much Stiles leaned on him. How the jokes had gotten quicker, sharper, a little desperate. How the laughter came too easily and ended too fast. How his moods flickered like faulty electricity, all light and no warmth.

He thought at first it was just stress, or sickness, or some invisible weight Stiles didn’t want to talk about. So he stayed close. Tried harder for both of them.

That was Scott’s way of caring — never prying, never demanding. Just being there.
He filled the silences when Stiles couldn’t. Tried to make things lighter — suggesting video games, biking out by the woods, talking about TV shows or basketball practice — anything to pull him back from whatever dark place he kept teetering on the edge of.

He watched him out of the corner of his eye, always quietly vigilant.

Every time Stiles stared too long at nothing.
Every time his hand lingered too tightly on Scott’s shoulder.
Every time the jokes wavered, and the mask slipped — just enough for Scott to glimpse something raw, something unfamiliar, glinting beneath.

Scott told himself it was fine. That this time, it was Stiles who needed him.

Because when the hunger gnawed, Stiles could look at Scott and choose to anchor himself there — to mimic warmth, to pretend.

Scott never saw it for what it was. He thought Stiles was just… complicated.

Stiles was an enigma when it came to emotion. It was like he understood the concept intellectually but could never quite speak it fluently. He could accept affection, sure, but never return it completely. And that was fine with Scott. He was the heart where Stiles was the brain. That balance had always worked between them.

Still, Stiles was hard to read on a good day.
On a bad day, you couldn’t tell if he had a stomach bug—or if he was ready to burn the whole town down with hellfire.

And these past few weeks — after the Hale House fire — were all bad days, one after another.

Stiles was restless, tense, but also exhausted to the bone.
Sometimes glassy-eyed, like something behind his ribs was screaming.

It was like something was bothering him.
Or like he was sick.

Like he was in pain.

Then came the fight.
Stiles had always been weird. He was erratic, sure. A little cruel sometimes, yes. Detached emotionally. But never outright violent.

Scott could still feel the echo of that moment — the weight of Stiles’s eyes, wild and unrecognizable.

And for the first time, Scott had been afraid of him.

He hated himself for it. Hated that Stiles might’ve seen it — the flicker of fear, the flinch. Because he knew what that would do to him. Stiles already carried too much of that—the way people recoiled from him, the way they whispered about him.

Now Stiles was suspended for two weeks. Scott hadn’t seen him since the fight.

In that space of absence, fear and loyalty wrestled inside him like animals with no clear winner.

Some part of him wanted to believe that whatever had surfaced that day wasn’t really Stiles — that it was pain, or grief, or something darker trying to crawl out. But the way Stiles had looked at him afterward — hollow, stricken, like he expected to be left behind — twisted something deep in Scott’s chest.

He couldn’t just leave his best friend.
His only friend.

He’d go to his house.
He’d talk to him.
He’d tell him nothing had changed. That he still had Scott.

But when the last bell rang and the flood of middle schoolers poured out into the cool afternoon, Scott spotted him.

Stiles.
Standing by the front gate, hands buried in his pockets, posture too stiff. Their eyes met — and Stiles straightened, like he’d been waiting for him.

Scott faltered. For just a flash, the memory returned — back to the cafeteria floor, to the blood, to the bared teeth.

The whispers around school were calling him a crazed animal.

But Scott took a breath, squared his shoulders, and started walking.
Because fear didn’t get to win — not if it meant losing Stiles.

He hesitated only once, right before reaching him. He thought Stiles might bolt — that he’d turn sharp, defensive, all angles and half-jokes like armor. Instead, Stiles just gave him that crooked grin — half apology, half defense mechanism.

“Hey,” Stiles said, voice easy in that too-casual way he got when he was bracing for something.

Scott smiled back, small but real. “Hey yourself.”

For a beat, they just stood there, the noise of kids spilling out behind them like static. It should’ve been awkward — it was awkward — but somehow, it also wasn’t. There was a rhythm between them that never really broke, no matter how rough the edges got.

“You walking home?” Stiles asked finally.

“Yeah.”

“Cool. I’ll come with.”

He shrugged, pretending it didn’t mean anything, and started walking.

Scott fell into step beside him.

The autumn air was crisp, clear enough to sting the lungs. Their breath came out in soft clouds, ghosting between them. A strange kind of peace hung over the town that afternoon — the kind of peaceful that comes after something terrible has happened

Scott had been quiet most of the walk. His sneakers scuffed the cracked pavement, his hands hid in the pockets of his jacket.

Stiles filled the silence with his usual chatter, or tried to, but even his voice felt strange in his throat — too loud against the hush that hung between them. Scott hummed at the right places, nodded when he should, but didn’t really look at him.

Neither of them mentioned the fight yet.

“So,” Stiles said finally, forcing a laugh. “You think they’ll let me back in the cafeteria next century, or should I start packing lunches now?”

Scott’s mouth twitched. “Maybe next decade.”

“Cool, cool. Guess I’ll just live off vending machine chips. Die tragically of sodium overdose.”

It earned a small laugh from Scott, faint but genuine. The sound loosened something in Stiles’s chest that had been locked tight for days.

They slipped back into it so easily it almost hurt. The banter, the shorthand, the way Stiles rolled his eyes at Scott’s earnestness. It was like muscle memory — conversation born from years of knowing exactly when to tease, when to joke, when to let silence do the talking.

But every time Scott looked at him — really looked — Stiles felt that fragile illusion splinter. Scott always cared too much. Always reached too far. And Stiles could feel him reaching now, trying to find the friend he thought he knew. Because Scott’s eyes were softer now, careful, the way people looked at something they weren’t sure would break or bite.

Scott wanted to ask. About the fight. About what happened in the cafeteria. About what that sound had been, the one that didn’t belong in a human throat.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t be the one to break this fragile, almost-normal thing they had going.

They passed Mrs. Flannery’s porch, her pumpkins already starting to cave in from rot. A dog barked somewhere down the street. The trees were halfway bare, their leaves dry and brittle underfoot. Stiles kicked through a pile of them, watching the golden pieces scatter.

For a second, it almost felt like it used to. The two of them walking home from school, trading dumb jokes, the world simple and small.

Scott glanced at him, voice low. “You, uh… doing okay?”

Stiles didn’t answer right away. His throat felt too tight. He shrugged instead. “Yeah. Peachy.”

It was such a bad lie it almost hurt to hear.

Scott nodded anyway. “Okay,” he said softly. “Good.”

He didn’t push. Didn’t demand the truth.
He just stayed beside him — steady, warm, unshaken. Bumped Stiles's shoulder once just to remind him of that.

And just like that, the conversation limped back into silence.
Stiles couldn’t bear it.

His voice cut through softly, stripped of its usual edge — quieter now, almost vulnerable in a way Scott wasn’t used to.
“Do you think… you could be friends with a monster?”

Scott blinked, confused. His mouth opened, then closed again. “…What?”

Stiles shrugged, the motion easy and careless — but the words weren’t.
“I mean,” he said quickly, words tumbling out, “if you found out someone wasn’t like you. Not… normal. If they were ugly on the inside, or bad in ways they couldn’t help — could you still…” He hesitated, throat tightening. “Could you still want to be their friend?”

Scott’s chest thudded, heartbeat echoing too loud. Because he knew, in his bones, that the question wasn’t hypothetical.
He knew that tone, that tremor underneath the words. Knew that Stiles was circling something personal, something that scared him enough to hide behind the question.

For a moment, Scott didn’t answer. He just watched him — the way Stiles wouldn’t quite meet his eyes, the way his hoodie strings twisted tight between nervous fingers.
Then he said, carefully,
“I guess it depends. On who the monster is. What kind of person they are. Even if they’re… bad sometimes, or scary — if they still try to be good, even a little. That has to count for something.”

He looked up then, eyes warm, certain.
“Nobody’s perfectly good all the time. What matters is that we try our best.”

The words settled between them — soft as falling ash.

They were honest — brutally so — and Scott meant them. Stiles could appreciate that.
But they weren’t the shield he’d been hoping for. They left room for doubt. For the possibility that if Scott ever saw the truth — the hunger, the high, the joy taken from the wrong things — he might decide Stiles wasn’t the kind of monster worth keeping.

Stiles laughed, too sharp, shoulders hitching like it was all just hypothetical, no big deal.
“God, you’re such a sap, Scott.”

There was a pause, long enough for the wind to slip between them.

Then Scott’s voice came out quieter than he meant. “Is it about the fight?” 

Stiles hesitated. His fingers twitched again on the hoodie strings, and that was all the answer Scott needed.

He straightened, stepping forward until he was right in front of Stiles, blocking his path. The extra inch and a half he’d grown in the past year finally felt useful. For once, he could look Stiles directly in the eye, make him see the worry written all over his face.

“Stiles,” he said slowly, firmly. “You’re not a monster.”

The words weren’t loud, but they landed solid — a steadying hand without touching.

The sky had gone soft and tired-looking, gold slipping into rose. The moment stretched there.

Then Stiles stepped around him, grin pulling taut, sharp at the edges — familiar, vulpine, practiced.
“Who said it was about me?”

Scott didn’t stop him. He didn’t call him out. He just watched him go, jaw tight, the ache of dismissal sitting low in his chest.

Because where Scott was honest, Stiles had always been a beautiful, terrible liar.
It’s good that Scott learned to read between the lines. 

The next day unfolded almost exactly like the one before it.

Scott went through the motions of school — classes, notes, half-listened lectures — his mind only half-present. By the time the final bell rang, he already knew what he’d see when he stepped outside: Stiles, standing by the front gates, hands buried in his jacket pockets, pretending he’d just happened to be there.

Scott couldn’t help but smile. “You waiting for me?”

Stiles shrugged, feigning casual. “Maybe. Or maybe I just enjoy loitering near middle schools. Adds to my rock-bottom reputation.”

That made Scott laugh — an actual, unguarded laugh.

They fell into step like they always did. Stiles talked, like he always did, words tumbling out in that too-fast way that used to make teachers sigh and roll their eyes. But even now, his energy felt thin around the edges — like he was running on fumes and noise alone.

Every time Scott smiled or looked away, Stiles’s gaze would drift back to him, searching his face for something — maybe forgiveness, maybe fear.

When they reached Scott’s house, Stiles stayed awhile. He said he wanted to catch up on schoolwork, get ready for coming back to school. But somewhere along the way, the roles reversed and Stiles started explaining math problems to Scott instead. It made Scott laugh again, those small, surprised giggles that felt too rare lately, because Stiles tutoring him felt like some over-caffeinated middle-aged professor. Yet there was something brittle about it, something that Scott would hold onto dearly.

As the light outside thinned to amber, the edges of the room softened. Stiles leaned back, rubbing his temple, eyes unfocused. He looked older all of a sudden—drained, like something inside him was burning itself out, quietly and completely. Hurting him.

Scott wanted to say something — to ask, to reach — but every time he opened his mouth, the right words fled.
Because what was he supposed to ask?

There was something about Stiles lately that scared him — not in the way the fight did — but in the kind that made Scott afraid to let him out of sight. Like if he blinked too long, Stiles might just dissolve into smoke and never come back.

How do you ask about something like that?

“I promised I’d bring Mom her lunch,” Scott said suddenly, shoving his books aside. “Come with me.”

Stiles hesitated. “Scott, I don’t think—”

“Come on,” Scott interrupted desperately. “Please.”

It wasn’t really a request. It was that quiet, stubborn kind of insistence that Scott rarely used, but when he did, it carried weight. It wasn’t about needing company — it was about keeping Stiles close.

And Stiles saw that. His expression softened, that rare gentle smile breaking through — the one reserved only for Scott and his dad.

He sighed, muttered something about having nothing better to do, and followed.

By the time they reached the hospital, the sun had dipped below the trees, and the building glowed against the dark. The sliding doors caught their reflection as they approached — Scott, solid and anxious, fidgeting with the lunch bag in his hands; and Stiles, thinner in the light, a pale silhouette that looked like it might disappear into shadows if the reflection wavered too hard.

Scott went in first. Stiles followed, ghosting in behind him.

Inside, the air smelled of antiseptic and steel. The halls glowed anemic under fluorescent lights. The murmur of voices and the soft rhythm of shoes on tile filled the space with a kind of sterile calm. Scott kept his head down, moving through the corridor with an easy familiarity, nodding to a few nurses who recognized him. Stiles trailed just behind, his sneakers whispering against the floor.

He hated hospitals — in the same way he hated anything that got under his skin in all the wrong ways.
He could taste the place — the fatigue in the walls, the ache in the air, the soft dread clinging to everything — and it crawled through him like static. It made it harder to focus when he hadn’t fed in days.

They reached the front desk, where the receptionist sat behind the glow of a computer screen, her face softened by routine exhaustion. Scott approached her, voice polite and small, asking for his mother.

Stiles barely heard him. He was watching the quiet choreography of the ward — patients shuffling by, nurses sharing low laughter between stations, a janitor pushing a bucket that reeked of bleach. All those tiny, human rituals.

The woman smiled faintly at Scott, pointed him toward a hallway on the right. He thanked her, then turned back — and that’s when he noticed Stiles again.

The boy stood a step too far back from the counter, hands buried in his pockets, eyes flicking from the receptionist to other staff members scattered around the hall. His gaze was sharp in a way that didn’t belong in a boy his age — studying, dissecting, almost predatory in its focus. The glow from the white lights cast a ghostlight across his face, making the hollows under his eyes look deeper.

Scott felt something uneasy stir in his chest, though he couldn’t say why. He shifted the lunch bag to his other hand, cleared his throat.

“You stay here, okay?” he said quietly. Then, firmer—like he was talking to a particularly unruly pet. “No wandering off. No messing with the vending machines. No… Stiles stuff.”

Stiles arched a brow, leaning back in the nearest chair. “What’s Stiles stuff supposed to mean? I’m offended.”

“It means whatever you’d do if you got bored,” Scott shot back. “So don’t.”

“Scott,” Stiles said, raising a hand in mock solemnity. “I promise. I’ll sit right here, on this very chair, for the entire duration of your heroic lunch-delivery mission.”

Scott squinted. “Five minutes.”

“Ten,” Stiles countered instantly.

“I’m serious.”

“Scout’s honor.” Stiles placed a hand over his heart with all the sincerity of a fox swearing loyalty to the henhouse.

“You’re not even a scout,” Scott muttered, but his voice softened around the edges.

He started down the hallway, then hesitated. He didn’t get more than a few steps before doubling back around the corner, peeking. Sure enough, Stiles was still there, drumming his fingers against his knees, shooting him a boyish grin when their eyes met. Scott rolled his eyes and finally walked off.

Stiles watched him go until he disappeared around the corner, the sound of his sneakers fading down the hall. Then he exhaled — slow and shaky, uneven.

With Scott gone, the silence settled in. Too thick. Too loud.

Tick, tick, tick from the wall clock.
Click, clack, clack from a keyboard at the nurses’ station.
Whispered conversations, footsteps, the murmur of distant laughter. A cough muffled by a sleeve.

And beneath it all, the hum of pain around him — grief and fatigue and sorrow threaded through the air — all of it was a song he couldn’t stop hearing, no matter how hard he tried.

His ears twitched at every sound. His leg bounced. Fingers tapped restlessly against his knee — faster, faster.

Then—

“...burns... Hale house fire...”

The words sliced through the white noise.
Stiles froze. His head turned, tracking the voices drifting from two nurses walking briskly down the hall.

He shouldn’t. He knew he shouldn’t.

But his body moved before his mind could stop it, sliding out of his chair without a sound. He drifted after them, keeping to the edges of the corridor.

He told himself he just wanted to look. Just to know. That was all.

A name on the placard confirmed it.

Peter Hale.

Something inside him shifted — a pulse of animal curiosity, hungry and wrong, crawling up his spine.

His hand found the half-open door, and pushed.
Inside, the room was dark — curtains drawn, blinds shut, only machines filling the air with their artificial heartbeat. And on the bed—

A figure.

Bandaged from head to toe, burned beyond recognition. A corpse that hadn’t finished dying yet. The shape of a man, but only barely. His chest lifted shallowly, dragging a ragged wheeze from his throat.

Stiles hovered at the threshold, fingers digging into the frame until his nails bit wood. His chest rose and fell in sharp bursts, pupils blown wide, every nerve tuned to the hum in the air.

The air in here was thick with it—
Pain — raw, fresh, unending — clung to everything. Fear and rage braided together in the stale hospital air. The man’s mind thrashed beneath the surface, trapped in a nightmare it couldn’t wake from. Agony wound so tightly into the man’s bones it felt like the whole room vibrated with it.

The flavors hung heavy, dripping like ripe fruit waiting to be plucked.

His mouth flooded with saliva. His tongue pressed against the backs of his teeth like it could taste already.

His legs moved him inside. Closer and the air grew sweeter. He sniffed at it like a scent hound.

He could still feel the Hale fire if he let himself remember — smoke clawing the sky, panic screaming from every burning body, the whole family’s agony blooming in him until he thought it would crack his ribs open.

Now this broken husk of a man had been laid out before him. 

If Peter Hale still carried even a fraction of that — just a quarter of what the fire had been — then maybe Stiles would stop feeling like he was rotting from the inside out.

He prowled to the bedside, movements loose, predatory, his sneakers silent against the tile.

The boy in him might have cared — might have been sick at the thought.
Don’t. Don’t do this.
Just turn around.
Scott could come looking any second.

But it was faint now, muffled, like someone yelling underwater.
The beast was louder, clearer, sharp as cold iron.

The machines clicked and hissed, their artificial heartbeats taunting him.

He circled the bed. His fingers flexed open and shut, twitching like claws.

This felt familiar.

Stiles’s hand hovered over the blanket, trembling. His nails scraped fabric. 

Then, slowly — hesitantly — fingers brushed the edge of the blanket before closing around the man’s mummified hand.
His body leaned forward like a starving dog drawn to a carcass. Close enough to feel the heat of suffering bleeding off Peter’s skin.

Then—

Black veins spiderwebbed up his arm, blooming in patterns like ink spilled under his skin. He sucked in a breath, his body shivering as the ache inside him began to ease.

Pain poured out of Peter in waves — sharp and metallic — flooding his tongue like blood.
Rage — there was so much of it — hot, bitter, smoky, burning his chest like a glass of whiskey. He grinned around it, lips curling as he dragged it deeper.
Fear, sharp and acrid, fizzing against his teeth, citrus-sour. Grief was syrup, golden and heavy, sweet enough to rot teeth.
All of this slid down the fox’s chest, pooling low and hot in his belly.

He pressed harder, fingers clutching the ruined man’s hand like he could wring more out of it. His claws bit through the bandages. His black veins thrummed, his skin buzzing like static, his eyes burning silver in the dark.

His human conscience fluttered weakly somewhere deep inside, but it was too faint, too soft.
The fox had its jaws in the meal, and it wasn’t letting go.

A source of pain. Just for him.
Harmless. Almost… good.

His lips curved faintly at the thought.
He told himself it was mercy — that he was helping.
Taking the pain away, leaving only quiet in its wake.

Just like he had for his mother.

( He ignored the memory of her face when she saw the black lines crawling up his skin. Ignored the sounds of her terror, her screams, the way she had pulled away like he was the very monster under her bed. )

Peter’s pain was endless and intoxicating — each ragged breath a new pour of wine.
Every wheeze, every whimper, every shudder beneath the bandages was a fresh course served just for him.

Then — a sound.

Footsteps in the hall.

He went still. The fox in him bristled, hackles rising beneath human skin. His head snapped toward the door, eyes flaring silver. A low growl rumbled from his chest, soft but feral. His muscles tensed, ready to spring.

The heartbeat reached him — pounding, rich, frantic.

He half-rose from Peter’s bedside, shoulders hunched. Every part of him screamed mine.

“Stiles?”

The voice was faint, painfully uncertain, wary and familiar.

Scott.

His chest heaved, hands shaking as he forced them to unclench from Peter’s wrist. His claws dragged across gauze, reluctant, like tearing himself away from something exquisite.

He yanked his sleeve down to cover the black-veined skin. He wiped at his mouth, as though he could erase the grin, the stain of indulgence.

Scott nudged the door open, the hinges groaning. The air inside was heavy, stale, thick with the antiseptic tang of the hospital.

Stiles jerked back from the bed like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Hey, buddy. Took you forever. What’d you do, get lost in the hallway?”

Scott’s brows pinched. “You disappeared,” he said, voice sharp. “I told you to stay put. Ten minutes, Stiles! Ten!”

“Yeah, well.” Stiles flashed a grin that showed too many teeth. “Never been great at listening, have I?”

Scott’s frown deepened — a flicker of hurt passing behind the irritation. He knew he’d never match Stiles’s restless energy, that easy, chaotic charm that filled every room. But still — he thought he deserved at least a little consideration.

Scott’s eyes flicked from his friend to the bed. To what was left of Peter Hale.
His throat tightened. “What are you doing here?”

Stiles waved a hand, casual — too casual. “You know, Stiles’s stuff, being me. Snooping where I shouldn’t. It’s a hobby at this point.”

Scott didn’t buy it. His voice dropped, firmer now. “You’re acting strange again. Let’s go before someone catches us.”

The smile froze on Stiles’s face.
For one awful second, Stiles didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. His eyes caught the low light, something sharp glimmering silver in the dark — quick and cold.

Then it was gone, buried under a new grin. He forced a laugh, pushing forward, clapping a hand down on Scott’s shoulder like it was all just a joke. The grip landed heavy. Scott winced, tried to shift under it.

“C’mon, you big baby. I was curious. You know me.” His voice dipped low, rough for just a heartbeat, before it snapped back up into his usual chatter. “Burn victim. From the Hale House fire. The nurses were whispering—”

“Stop.” Scott cut him off, voice rising. His face paled. “I don’t care. We shouldn’t be here.” His gaze darted back to the bed. “This is messed up.”

Stiles tilted his head, foxlike. “Since when did morbid curiosity become a crime?”

“Since you started being… weird with it. Ever since the fire you’ve been acting—” Scott shook his head. “Different. It’s like you… I don’t know—like you’ve been obsessing over it.”

For a flicker, Stiles’s smile cracked. He blinked too slowly, recalibrating. Inside, something cold writhed — calculating how to play this off.

His grip tightened on Scott’s shoulder until his friend hissed softly. Then, just as quickly, Stiles loosened his grip, fixing his tone.

“I feel bad for him,” he said. The words came out smooth, practiced. That’s what people said, right? Just like his dad told him.

Scott frowned. “You don’t… feel bad.” He hesitated, guilt and worry warring in his eyes. “Not about people.”

The words hit harder than they should have. For an instant, Stiles’s eyes went flat, the fox in him bristling at the accusation. The ache in his chest curdled into something meaner.

Because of course Scott could tell, of all people. The fucking bleeding heart in him.

He reworked it again. His eyes flicked to the ruined figure on the hospital bed, and something in his chest seized.

“I do. He… reminds me of Mom,” he said, quiet now. The words landed with the right weight, and for once they didn’t feel like a lie. Not entirely.

That stopped Scott cold. His breath hitched, the anger dying in his throat. “Oh,” he said, guilt creeping in. “Sorry. I didn’t… I didn’t think about that.”

“It’s fine.” Stiles smiled faintly, and this time it looked almost real.

Inside, though, the honeyed buzz still coiled warmly in his chest. Sweet and thick and alive.

The light in his eyes shimmered — silver, dangerous — but only for a second. Not nearly long enough for Scott to see.

Why was it always fear and pulling away?

Why was it never understanding?

Scott glanced at Peter one last time, at the shallow rise and fall of his chest beneath the bandages. The sight made something inside him twist — pity, discomfort, maybe both. “We should go,” he said finally, voice small again. “Before my mom finds us here.”

Stiles nodded too quickly. “Sure.”

Scott didn’t notice the way his friend’s jaw flexed, or how his fingers twitched once, like he was fighting the urge to reach out again. He just turned toward the door, stepping into the dim hallway and waiting for Stiles to follow.

Stiles took one last breath of the heavy, electric air before crossing the threshold. The hum under his skin — bright, feverish — dimmed with every step they took. The silence between them stretched, thick but familiar, the kind that always came after one of Stiles’s impulsive stunts.

Outside, the night had deepened. The parking lot lights buzzed faintly, halos of yellow bleeding into the mist. They walked side by side through the chill, their breaths fogging the air.

“You scared me back there,” Scott said finally, eyes fixed on the pavement. “When I couldn’t find you.”

Stiles huffed a laugh — low, almost fond. “You worry too much, man.”

“Someone has to.”

That landed softer than it should’ve. Stiles’s smile faltered for just a second, eyes flicking toward the ground. For a heartbeat, something like guilt passed over his face. Then he straightened, the easy mask sliding back into place.

“Guess that’s your job, huh?” he said lightly. “Resident mom friend.”

Scott elbowed him, a ghost of their old rhythm. “Shut up, dude.”

“Make me, McCall.”

Scott barely had time to roll his eyes before Stiles lunged.

“Hey—wait—!”

Too late. Stiles’s arm hooked tight around his neck, dragging him down into a headlock. Scott let out a strangled noise that was half protest, half laughter. Stiles grinned into his hair, knuckles digging mercilessly into his scalp.

“Say it!” he demanded, voice rough with amusement. His eyes glinted—bright, too bright, edged with mischief. “Say you yield!”

Scott was taller, sure, but Stiles was all elbows and restless energy, deceptively strong when he wanted to be. His grip locked tight, a predator’s playfulness hidden under the familiar roughhousing.

“Okay, mercy!” Scott yelped, half-laughing, half-struggling, trying to pry himself loose. “Mercy!”

Stiles only laughed harder, the sound scraping close to something wild before he abruptly released him.

Scott stumbled back, shoving at him, hair sticking up wildly. “You’re such a jerk,” he said, but the smile tugging at his mouth softened the words.

Stiles flashed him that foxish smirk. “Takes one to know one.” 

They fell into step again, their sneakers scraping softly against the pavement. For a few seconds, it almost felt normal again.

And yet Scott couldn’t shake the feeling that something had changed. Stiles moved differently now, lighter, looser, like he’d shed a layer of exhaustion that had been clinging to him for days. His eyes were brighter, the shadows under them thinner. There was energy in his step again — it buzzed a little too sharp, like static before a storm.

Scott glanced sideways, watching him out of the corner of his eye.

Whatever weight Stiles had been carrying when they walked into the hospital—
he hadn’t brought it back out with him.

It had started, innocently enough, as a morbid curiosity.

For the past few nights, he’d been slipping into the hospital after hours — ducking past night nurses and orderlies with the sly ease of a fox. He wasn’t supposed to be here, of course. Visiting hours were long over, and technically — technically — he wasn’t visiting anyone he knew.

Peter Hale lay in his usual place — in a private room at the far end of the hall, tucked away like something the hospital didn’t want anyone to see. The machines around him whispering and sighing in slow mechanical rhythm — a lullaby for the dying.

With Peter’s pain to siphon, his hunger was sated.

For the first time in years, he could sit through class without clenching his jaw until it hurt, could listen to people laugh without wanting to tear something open just to make the noise stop. He wasn’t perfect — he still twitched, still stared too long at the wrong things — but he felt… steady.

Every time he took a little more, he told himself it was kindness. That he was making it easier for Peter to rest, to heal.

But there were nights when he left the hospital with a grin stretched too wide across his face, when his heart thrummed like he’d swallowed lightning, when he could taste sweetness and guilt on his tongue in equal measure. Nights when he told himself he could stop any time he wanted—then immediately wondered why he never tried.

Sometimes, he wondered if Peter could hear him. If, somewhere under the heavy sleep of healing, beneath the gauze and the scars, the man knew.

The room was cold, the way hospitals always were. Too much bleach, too much fake light. But underneath it all was something else, something only Stiles could feel: the heavy, smoldering ache of pain. It radiated from Peter like heat from embers that refused to die out.

Stiles closed the door behind him, quietly every time. His pulse already slowed, the wild static in his veins dulling as he stood there, breathing in that familiar atmosphere.

“Hey,” he said quietly, his voice a half-smile. “Don’t mind me. Just your friendly neighborhood intruder.”

He dragged the chair closer to the bed and sat, elbows resting on the mattress. His hand found Peter’s—cold, limp, unresisting—and held it with a little too much pressure, as though daring the man to flinch away from him.

“You know,” Stiles murmured, “you’re kind of perfect. You don’t talk back. You don’t ask questions. You just… lie there, bleeding feelings into the air like some kind of buffet.” His tongue darted across his lips, quick and foxlike. “Not your fault. Not blaming you. If anything, I should thank you.”

He fell silent for a long moment, studying Peter’s face — the blank stillness of it.

“You ever wonder if this is mercy?” Stiles said at last. “Being stuck between things—between dying and living—maybe it’s not the worst place to be. No one expects anything from you. No one judges you.”

His gaze drifted down to the yellowed bandages wrapped around ruined skin, to the raw edges of scarring that peeked through. Then like a slip of air between his lips, almost wistful: “No one fears you.”

Then he caught himself, a short, shaky laugh breaking through. “Not that I’m jealous. Okay—maybe a little.”

He could feel it now, the anger curled deep inside Peter’s still body. Rage at the fire that had burned him alive and left him caged inside his own mind. Rage at his own helplessness.

Stiles heard their screaming that night.
Peter’s screams had to be among the others.

He leaned forward suddenly, expression brightening with something feverish.

“You’d get it, though, wouldn’t you?” His voice was low and alive, trembling with something close to excitement. “This itch under the skin—you’d understand.” His grin stretched, sharp and wicked. “I bet if you were awake, we’d get along great.”

Peter dreamed of fire every night — the roar, the crackle, the screams cut short.
And always — the pain.

Pain so deep it carved itself into the marrow of his bones, so constant that even in dreams he couldn’t escape it. The flames licked at him endlessly, like he was stuck in his own purgatory. 

He couldn’t escape it. Couldn’t wake.
The blaze never stopped burning.

Each dream looped the same: smoke thick as tar, the roof groaning above, the floor collapsing underfoot. And through it all, the sound of them — his family — screaming until their throats melted and their voices went quiet.

Peter always crawled through the ash, his own skin blistering, nails scraping against ground slick with blood and soot.

Always dying.
Never dead.

Then one night the fire changed. 

It flickered strangely — as if a breeze had passed through hell itself — and something else was there.

A blurry shape stood in the inferno, too still, too quiet.
Nothing more than a shadow.
The fire didn’t consume it — it curved around it.

Peter froze, smoke clawing down his throat. He tried to speak, but his voice came out a shredded rasp. He clawed backward, nails cracking against the floorboards, and the shadowy figure tilted its head like a curious animal, watching him with bright, silver pinpoints for eyes.

Then Peter tried again.

“ARGENT!” he roared, the word tearing raw from his throat. He dragged himself upright, half on scorched legs, reaching out with trembling hands that tried to shape claws and failed. “I’ll rip you apart! I’ll—”

His vision warped with fury. His pulse was a hammer against his ribs.
“Come on, then! Do it! You think fire could kill me? You’ll need more than—”

“Nice temper you’ve got there.”

The voice slid through the crackle of the flames, soft and amused.
“Must be exhausting.”

The fire crackled quieter for a moment, muted by that voice.
Something in Peter stilled — against his will. His rage was caught mid-motion, as if the creature had pressed a hand to it, calming and taunting at once.

Peter swallowed smoke. “Who the hell are you?”

“Me?”
The figure tilted its head the other way.
“No one. I’ve just been… visiting.”

“What?”

The smoke cleared just enough for him to see better. The shadow monster stepped closer into the firelight then, the darkness slid off of the figure revealing just that—

A teenage boy.

The fire curled lovingly around his sneakers but didn’t burn him. His grin was all teeth — young and feral, sly and cruel. He leaned forward until Peter could see the edges of something vulpine behind his eyes.

Peter staggered backward, half in rage, half in disbelief.
“What are you?” he asked, hoarse.

The boy blinked, as if the question was new to him. Then his mouth curled up again — wider this time.
“Lonely,” he said softly. “And you? You look fun.”

Something about how he said it — the tone, the warmth that wasn’t warmth — made him tremble.

The fire never scared him like this did.
Because the fire, at least, was honest and predictable.

This boy wasn’t.

Peter tried to lunge, to protect himself, but his body betrayed him — muscles half-melted, bones splintered. His body was heavy, exhausted, in immense pain, broken in such severity that he wouldn’t heal. He crumpled forward with a strangled sound, gasping through grit and ash.

The boy crouched beside him.
Close enough that Peter could see his eyes clearly now.
Not just bright—glowing. Silver.

A threat. An unknown predator in his territory. And he was powerless.

“What do you want?” Peter rasped. “Why are you here?”

A laugh slipped from the boy—high, sharp, mocking.
“I’m not here, Peter.”

He leaned in, breath cool despite the heat. “You’re in a hospital bed. Hooked to machines. Half-dead. This?” He gestured around at the burning ruin. “This is in your head. I just… found a door.”

While Peter stayed in the fire, for the boy the room flickered.
For a moment it was hospital-white, then flame-black again, the two realities clashing against each other like broken glass. 

Stiles sat on the edge of Peter’s bed — half in dream, half out — watching the man’s face twist and contort as if waking and burning all at once.

He will never forget the night he first slipped into the in-between.

Stiles remembers being particularly bored and restless that afternoon. He sat by Peter’s bed, almost dozing off as he held Peter’s hand — cold and unresponsive like always — but the flow of pain through his blackened veins was warm, cozy, lulling.

And something slipped.

Not his hand — him.

Like catching his own reflection in broken glass, Stiles blinked and the room fractured. The sterile white light bent and shivered; shadows stretching like trees across the walls. The monitor’s steady beeping warped, muffled, as if it were underwater, miles away.

And then — he wasn’t in the hospital at all.

He stood at the edge of a forest, in front of a house on fire.
Flames clawed at the sky. The air stank of smoke and scorched wood. Hot wind raked through his hair.

Déjà vu.

He stumbled forward, heart hammering, and that ancient part of him knew.

This wasn’t his dream.
It was someone else’s.

Then came the sound — a ragged, choking cough.

Peter.

Through the blaze, the man lurched and staggered. His face was blistered, his eyes bloodshot, skin splitting and knitting only to burn again. He didn’t see Stiles at the treeline — just fought the fire, fought the suffocation, fought the endless loop of pain.

And Stiles realized what he had found.

The gap between body and spirit.
The mindscape cloaked in dreaming.

A door opened ajar.

It should have terrified him.
Instead—it thrilled him.

( It's like riding a bike, you never forget. )

The agony pouring off Peter was a constant scream, an endless ocean of blistered nerves and raw emotions. Every time Stiles stepped through that door, it clung around Peter like smoke, choking him.
He only meant to take some of it away.

So he did. A little at a time.
He drank it down like a sommelier, each taste steadied him, sharpened him, made his blood run clearer. In return, Peter’s tremors dulled, the pain thinned.

His body was knitting faster now — cells stitching with unnatural haste, flesh restoring itself in lurches of progress. It was Stiles’s doing; feeding on pain left room for healing to sprint unchecked.

And Peter noticed.

Every time the boy came back, Peter was a little stronger. Every time he pulled more suffering into himself, Peter’s fury burned clearer, hotter, more intense.

Soon, Peter began to need it.

“Come back,” he rasped one night, wild-eyed when he saw him again. “Don’t you dare leave me in this half-life.”

The boy leaned close, shadows pooling at his feet. “Don’t worry,” he said, a small, cutting smile in his voice. “I’ll keep you company.”

And Stiles did.

Because deep down — he liked Peter’s fury better. It was rich and alive — spiked with vengeance, electric with violence.

He told himself he was just helping a man through hard times.
But in truth, the fox was just fanning coals into wildfire.

Peter couldn't tell when the nightmare shifted.
One blink—one tiny, traitorous blink—and the screaming stopped. The fire vanished.

He opened his eyes to a hospital room: dim and sterile, everything painted in that washed-out blue-gray of midnight fluorescents. He was sitting up on a bed he didn't remember climbing into. The sheets smelled faintly of disinfectant and laundry detergent.

For a dizzy second he almost believed he had woken.

Then he saw the boy.

He was sitting at the foot of the bed like he'd always been allowed to do so, legs crossed, elbows on his knees. His eyes gleamed like candlelight trapped in glass — sharp, clever, awake in a way that made Peter feel old and exhausted by comparison. The smile was casual and certain, as though a private joke had already been told and the boy expected Peter to laugh.

“Rough night?” the boy asked, voice clean as a scalpel through the static in Peter's skull.

Peter blinked again. His thoughts pooled and moved slowly, like oil across water. “You could say that,” he managed.

Everything in the room declared itself real — the linoleum floor, the tray table with its sterile instruments, the heart monitor stand. But something about all of it was off.
The corners of the room blurred like watercolor. The curtains didn’t move, even though the air conditioner whispered in the background. His shadow didn’t fall right against the wall.

Something about the door left open ajar was terrifying.

His body didn’t ache — though he remembered it should. So why did it—

“You're healing well,” the boy said, and his smile widened a fraction. “Impressive.”

Peter’s gaze snapped back to him. “Healing?” His voice cracked. “I—”

“—burned,” the boy finished for him. “Yes. You did.”

The boy’s tone wasn’t cruel. It was almost fond.

He could feel the sheets under his palms, the texture of cotton, the metal of the bedframe cool against his skin. His brain screamed that this couldn’t be a dream, and yet… the longer he looked, the less certain he was of what stayed still and what moved around the room. The IV line by his arm blinked out of existence when he glanced away, then returned when he looked again.

Peter’s pulse spiked.

“This isn’t real.”

The boy shrugged, unconcerned at being caught. “Real enough.”

So it was his doing, then.

Peter wanted to move — to run, to wake, to get away from the thing sitting across from him — but his body wouldn’t obey. His muscles locked, his breath held tight in his throat, as if the dream itself had reached out and caught him.

He didn't remember when the chessboard appeared — one instant the sheet was all he had, the next a board sat between them, black and white squares glinting like teeth.

“Do you play chess?” the boy asked, voice the same amiable tune. “Scott won't play anymore. He says I cheat.”

He moved first — a pawn, small and precise.

“Who’s Scott?”

Peter followed out of reflex, body sluggish but his mind sparking alive. Strategy was an anchor; control, his oldest habit. He’d built his whole life on being the smartest man in the room. Even burned and bandaged, he could still win a game of chess against a kid.

Had they played before? It felt like they had.

“No one,” the boy answered, smiling.

The pieces clicked and slid across the board. With every move Peter made, the boy seemed to anticipate him — not guessing, but already knowing.

“Who’s Laura and Derek?” the boy asked suddenly, his eyes never leaving the board.

Peter hesitated. “No one.”

But his voice betrayed him.

“They’re your niece and nephew, right? Funny,” the boy went on, head tilted. “I always wondered why they never visit. I’m here every day — I’d have seen them. Then my dad said they left town.”

Peter looked up sharply, wary. The boy’s chin rested lazily in his palm, but his gaze — wide and dark — never wavered.

Right. There were never flowers on his bedside table, Peter realized, because there were no visitors.

The boy's rook snapped a pawn off the board with a clean, indifferent sound. “They left you,” he said softly. “That sucks.”

His tone was light, but there was something underneath — curiosity sharpened to cruelty. 

Peter stared down at the board. His thoughts dragged like mud.
He couldn’t remember his last move. His defenses were slipping apart, the pattern unraveling faster than he could rebuild it. Pawns became knights. Knights became queens. The black king — his king — seemed to be melting under some nonexistent heat.

It felt like they’d been playing forever.

“Maybe you should stick to checkers,” the boy said, mockingly pleasant.

Peter’s eyes narrowed. “You think you’re clever.”

He was losing, and he didn’t understand why.

The boy's eyes lifted, meeting his glare. “You ever think about that night?” he asked, voice low. “The fire.”

Right. The fire. It felt like centuries ago.

Peter swallowed. His throat suddenly tasted of smoke. “Every day,” he said.
The reply was automatic, a confession he had been forced to give.

“Guilty much?”

Peter's hands tightened on the sheet until his knuckles burned. “They burned us,” he said. “My family—gone. And they breathe free air while we rot in graves.” The words came out rough, raw, then set like stones.

“Argents, right? The hunters?” the boy said, his tone made it sound like small talk.

Peter’s thoughts blurred again. Had he told him that already?

A dangerous shape moved behind Peter's eyes. “They'll pay,” he rasped. “Every one of them. I'll tear them apart piece by piece.”

The boy’s grin widened, flashing sharp under the pale light. “Alone? God, that’s adorable.”

Peter’s pulse jumped, irritation sparking into something darker.
The boy was always baiting, always smiling — cruel and knowing — taunting by finding the small, precise seams where anger could crawl in.
He was gathering Peter's broken pieces and inspecting them like a curious surgeon.

“But it does feel good, doesn't it?” the boy murmured, voice soft. “Thinking about it.”

A hot, animal part of Peter flared. His pulse slammed in his throat, blood roaring in his ears. The careful control that had always defined him fractured under the weight of memory. He could feel the burn again, the chorus of screams that had become a private liturgy. The smell of charred flesh that wouldn’t wash away.

But when Peter looked at him — a dangerous edge in his gaze — the room trembled around the edges, and the smell of ash pressed closer.

The fire still burned somewhere behind these sterile walls. And the boy — the sly little fox — could shove him straight back into it whenever he pleased.

Peter swallowed hard. “Why are you still here?”

The boy didn’t answer right away.
He slid his queen forward with that easy, decisive click and Peter didn't notice the shift until it was too late.

“I’m fond of you,” the boy said finally, and the admission had a tenderness that was almost worse than malice. "That's it."

He looked at Peter the way a child might look at a favorite pet.
Or like a predator, fond of the prey it had claimed.

They played on. The rhythm was steady, hypnotic — each piece moving with a soft click.

Peter stared at the board, then smiled tightly. “You’re a strange little thing, you know.”

“You think so?”

The question came with a tilt of the head, foxlike, sharp-eyed. Peter saw the faint curl of teeth — not fangs, not quite, but too pointed for a human boy’s smile.

It should have been easy. It was just a child. A young pup. Whatever he was.

He leaned forward, trying to meet that gaze head-on.
“I don’t think I ever caught your name,” Peter said. “You know, I make it a rule to remember everyone I’ve met.”

“Oh, I’ve never told you my name.”

And that was all. The boy didn’t elaborate.

Peter sat back, feeling the rhythm of the game slip through his fingers. He’d built his life on reading people, breaking them down, bending them when he needed to.

So why couldn’t he get the upper hand here?

The final move came with a soft click. The white queen took his king, clean and effortless. Checkmate.

The boy smiled like he’d just told a joke no one else understood.

“You do cheat,” Peter said finally.

( They’d been playing for what felt like hours. In truth, it was months. Whole years.
Time didn’t move right in this place — it slipped between seconds like water through fingers.
And only the fox could tell. )

By the time high school rolled around, Stiles had almost managed to fool himself into thinking he was normal.

He’d learned the art of pretending over the years — perfected it, really. Wide grins, quick quips, filling silences with nonsense if necessary before anyone noticed the shadows in his eyes. It came naturally now, this performance. He’d been rehearsing since childhood.

And it made living a life so much easier.

Most of the bad years had faded into the background, filed away as something that had “just happened.”
He kept up his eccentric charm, the restless energy people either found endearing or unnerving. Some teachers liked him, a few classmates even laughed at his casual jokes. Others — the ones who remembered him from middle school, or their high school coach who just decided that Stiles disturbed him on some evolutionary level — still kept their distance.

That was fine.
They didn’t matter.

Most importantly, his dad never heard about another fight again. Stiles hadn’t “lost control” in years.

He could feel Noah slowly — cautiously — beginning to trust him again. His father never stopped leaving a little room for doubt; Noah wasn’t stupid. Stiles, by nature, wasn’t a particularly trustworthy person — and he was a damn good liar on top of that. But still, the fear was gone.

To him, Stiles was... harmless again. Odd, maybe. A little intense. But harmless.

It was around his fifteenth birthday that Noah took him driving.

The road stretched ahead in long, sun-warmed ribbons, and Stiles’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. The vinyl felt slick under his palms.

“Easy,” his dad said from the passenger seat, voice calm. His badge and hat rested on the dash, sleeves rolled up. For once, he looked more like a tired dad than the town sheriff. “No need to strangle the thing. Just guide it. Like holding a bird — firm enough so it doesn’t fly away, gentle enough so it doesn’t break.”

Stiles loosened his grip a fraction, trying not to laugh at the image. “A bird, huh?”

His dad chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, corny. But it’s true. You’ll get the feel.”

The car hummed along the quiet road, sunlight slanting gold through the trees. His dad watched him for a long moment, then nodded, satisfied. “You’re doing good. Better than I expected, honestly. If I’d taken bets two years ago, I wouldn’t have put money on us getting this far without a crash.”

Stiles snorted. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I’m just saying,” his dad said, grinning. “You were a handful. Restless, always pushing at the lines, trying to pick fights with fences. Now look at you. Steady hands. Focused. Feels like you finally got your feet under you.”

Stiles kept his eyes on the road, throat tight.
He wanted to believe that, wanted to stay in this moment forever — his dad beside him, relaxed and proud — and let it all be true.

Noah leaned back, tapping the rhythm of an old song against the doorframe. “Tell you what,” he said. “You keep this up, pass that test, and we’ll take a real trip. Just you and me. I’ll ride shotgun, nap the whole way, you’ll be behind the wheel the whole time. Deal?"

Stiles smiled, wide and bright, because his father deserved to see it. “Deal.”

For a little while, with the sun melting into the horizon and his father humming softly beside him, Stiles almost believed this version of himself—

Normal, safe, good —

Was the real one.
Almost.

The hunger was still there — it always would be — but it was just a quiet pull to do something terrible, cause something to break.
It was humming quietly in the background of his everyday life, muted and manageable.
Peter had made that possible.

Every other day after school, he’d duck down the side streets. His fingers itched as he traced the edge of the familiar courtyard, the smell of Peter’s lingering pain like a faint perfume in his memory. 

The hospice was almost a second home by then. The air there smelled of bleach and withering flowers. The nurses there didn’t even bother asking why Sheriff Stilinski’s kid came by so often. They thought he came out of kindness — a good-hearted boy visiting the poor, half-dead man everyone else had forgotten.

A man who had a faint chance of getting better one day.
Unlike the boy’s late mother.

He started calling him “Uncle Peter”. A joke, at first — something to give to the busybody nurses he knew were listening on the other side of the door.
He rambled for hours about dumb, innocent things—

“Uncle Peter, I think I aced my math test.”
“Uncle Peter, you should’ve seen Scott trip over his own shoelace—kid’s a disaster, I swear.”
“I’ll be back, Uncle Peter. Don’t go anywhere.”

And everyone thought it was the sweetest thing.

So the name stuck.
And it carried into the in-between.

Peter’s pulse spiked with irritation — no, anger — every time he heard it.
The taunting voice of the little fox scraped against his nerves like claws on a chalkboard. He was always there: lounging in the half-light, smiling that know-it-all smile, unaware — or pretending to be unaware — of the beast he kept poking with a stick.

“You’ve done enough,” Peter rasped one time, his voice jagged. “If you can walk me through fire, if you can rewrite this nightmare, then you can wake me up.”

Stiles blinked, lips quirking nervously. “Yeah, about that—no. Not how it works.”

Peter’s head snapped toward him, eyes blazing even in the dim glow. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying,” Stiles shot back, a flash of irritation cutting through his tone. “Your body’s wrecked, okay? You just need a little more time—”

“Don’t tell me what I need!” Peter’s scream sliced through the air like steel.

The air cracked. For the first time, Stiles felt it — a wave of heat, of animal rage rolling off Peter like a tide. His claws itched to surface, but he kept them down, fingers curled into fists.

“I can’t. Don’t you get it?” Stiles said, quieter now. “I’m not your miracle cure, Peter— I’m your freaking babysitter. You burn, I smother the fire. You drown, I pull you to shore. But your body? That’s on you.”

Peter panted, chest heaving with his ragged breaths. Then came the roar — less scream than eruption — raw and feral, like an elderly beast.

The chessboard went flying, pieces scattering like tiny corpses of ivory and onyx.

Stiles stilled.

Then it happened.
Peter’s body — his dream-body, or maybe his real one bleeding through — shifted. He rose from the bed, hands twisting until his nails split open into claws, raking the metal railing. The shift was brutal, ugly — bones warping under blistered flesh, muscles tearing and knotting too fast. His jaw cracked, stretching wide, teeth lengthening into fangs that glinted in the sterile hospital light. His eyes blazed with molten gold, a wolf breaking through sheer rage.

The fox’s grin faltered — just for a breath.

Stiles stumbled back instinctively, nearly falling off the bed, heart hammering. Not from fear exactly, but awe.
Because for the first time, he wasn’t looking at the husk of a man burned alive—
He was looking at a werewolf.

Peter’s half-formed snout curled, saliva hissing.
He growled, voice half-human, half-beast. “You dragged me out of fire, fox. You pulled me into this halfway world. Now pull me the rest of the way.”

For a long moment, Stiles just stared at him. His instincts whispered run, but the other, darker thing leaned forward instead. Fascinated.

His smile came back, sharp and bright, a cruel little sunrise across his face.

“Careful, big bad wolf,” he said, almost endearingly. “I told you. I’m helping you.”

“Helping,” Peter echoed, mocking the word. “You’re parasitic.”

Stiles shrugged lightly. “Semantics.”

And Peter lunged.

The dream rippled, then twisted sideways as Stiles bent it out of reflex, slipping just out of reach.
Peter’s claws sliced smoke—missing his throat by inches.

He roared again.
“Wake. Me. Up!”

The werewolf bared his teeth, but the growl faltered.
Fury bled out of him, unraveling into something raw — aching, human.
Pain thickened the air until it felt like glass in the lungs. Stiles breathed it in.

When the shift finally broke, it was just Peter again — broken, panting, trembling on the cold floor.

And Stiles — small, fox-trickster thing — stood before him, shadows curling around his feet like dark tails. His expression was unreadable.

“One day,” Stiles murmured, eyes narrowing, “you’ll wake up. Maybe you’ll remember me. Maybe you won’t.”
His grin stretched again. “But if you do… we’ll have so much fun.”

Peter’s head hung low. His voice cracked, almost pleading now.
"Wake me up. Please. Get me out of this.”

Stiles watched him for a long, quiet moment. There was pity in his gaze — soft, fleeting — like he was watching his fallen soldier try to rise one last time.
Then something cold and ancient slid behind his eyes, replacing it. The fox had scented an opportunity.

A smile, sharp as a knife’s edge, curved across his lips. His shadow uncoiled toward the hospital room door, shivering through countless shapes.

“Do you know any riddles, Uncle Peter?” he asked suddenly, light and casual, like it was any other afternoon at the chessboard.

Peter’s silence was as good as any answer.

Stiles tilted his head, voice lilting.
“When is a door not a door?”

Peter frowned, dazed and weak. “That… doesn’t make sense.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then.”
The boy stretched lazily, his shadows stretching with him like loyal pets. “Same time tomorrow?”

The plastic card still smelled new when the boy slid it across the diner table. His dad picked it up, squinting at it like a detective studying evidence.

“Look at that mugshot,” the sheriff said with a grin. “I’ve booked guys with better expressions.”

“Yeah, well, the lady told me not to smile. Said I was ‘making it creepy on purpose.’”

“Wouldn’t put it past you.” Noah shook his head, the corners of his mouth twitching.

First try. Stiles hadn’t thought he’d manage it — not with how hard it was sometimes to stay focused, not with the ache that still pulsed, faint but constant, just beneath his ribs. But he’d done it.

“Proud of you, son,” his dad said after a beat, voice softening. “I don’t say that enough. I know. But I mean it.”

Stiles swallowed, suddenly too aware of that warm, heavy gaze on him. Pride wasn’t something he got often. It sat awkwardly in his chest, like a foreign object.

Then Noah pushed back his chair, stood, and disappeared down the hallway. There was the sound of a drawer opening, metal clinking. When he came back, he tossed something toward Stiles.

The boy caught it midair — a flash of silver, a jingle.

Stiles blinked down at a set of keys. “What’s this?”

His dad leaned against the doorframe, studying his face. “Your mom’s Jeep. Been sitting in the garage too long. She always said she wanted it to be yours when the time came.”

The boy’s stomach sank. The keys felt hot in his palm. He set them down carefully, as though they might burn through the table.

“She wanted me to have it?” His voice came out thin. “You sure about that?”

Noah’s brows knit. “Yeah. She said it herself. I know things got… hard, toward the end. But don’t twist that up in your head.”

Stiles’s throat tightened. He saw flashes — his mother’s eyes, wild and glassy with terror; her trembling hands striking out at him; the way her body had wasted away, shrinking into something small and hollow and afraid. Guilt clawed up from the pit of his chest — that old, buried belief planted when he was too young to question it: he’d done that. He was the reason she’d faded away like that.

He thought of Peter, just last week — Peter shaking on the cold dream-floor, staring up at him like Stiles was the thing waiting in the fire to drag him back in.

And he was, wasn’t he?

And he enjoyed every moment of it.

Noah’s voice broke through the noise in his head. “She loved you, Stiles. Deep down, even when her mind wasn’t right. She loved you, son. Don’t ever doubt that.”

“She called me a demon,” The boy whispered, no louder than a breath.

“I remember.” Noah’s eyes softened. “And I also remember sitting by her bed when she cried because she knew she wasn’t herself. That sickness twisted her up. She didn’t mean what she said. She didn’t mean what she did. You know that, right?”

It was such an easy lie — one his father believed with his whole heart. It almost hurt to watch.
Noah was such a kind, loving man.

If only he knew what lived under his roof.

Stiles reached out and brushed his fingers against the keys. He closed his hand around them, metal biting into his palm — cold and grounding.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “I know.”

And for a heartbeat, he almost fooled himself again that everything was all right.

Chapter Text

When is a door not a door?

There was something terrifying about this one.

The fox was messing with him again. Of course he was. He had to be. Right?

When is a door not a door?

It wasn’t just the door itself. It wasn’t the wood, the hinges, the faint smell of old varnish.

It was the way it hung there, half-open, like it was inviting him in.

It waited for him to notice the tiniest sliver, the tiniest chance to step from nothing into something—

When is a door not a door?

When it’s ajar.

There was something off about Peter lately.

He wouldn’t play chess anymore. Wouldn’t even look at Stiles half the time. Their visits—once filled with dry humor and knife-edged banter—had shriveled into reluctant exchanges or long, airless silences broken only by the low hum of the air conditioner and the faint, insect-like buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead.

Most days, Peter just sat there, staring out the window. Watching nothing.
Not that there was anything to see — just that dark, yawning void where the dream stopped bothering to render the world beyond the hospital room’s sterile walls.

It felt deliberate, that refusal to look at him. Like Peter had made some quiet decision deep inside himself and finally concluded Stiles wasn’t real. Just another trick of a deteriorating mind.

The thought unsettled Stiles more than he cared to admit.

Peter looked just as he did in reality — drained of life.

And sometimes the idea clawed at the back of Stiles’s mind, soft and persistent:
Maybe it’s him.
Maybe he’d done this. Broken Peter so thoroughly there was nothing left. Maybe this was what happened when he took too much — when he drained someone of all their pain, all their rage, all the things that kept them human—and left only a shell.

He told himself Peter had been ruined long before he ever came along. But that whisper — that small, poisonous doubt — never fully went quiet.

So Stiles stopped visiting as often.

Because when he did, Peter seemed… tasteless.
Like food gone stale overnight.

He preferred staying home most nights now, even if it meant the itch under his skin went unsatisfied.

He’d taken to midnight studies instead. A mess of topics he had no real reason to research so thoroughly, but they kept him occupied. More often than not he circled true crime. Other nights he dove into mythology or history—subjects he felt drawn to by instinct. Sometimes he found himself correcting articles in his head, remembering details like he’d heard them before. Maybe in documentaries. Maybe somewhere else.

When he was young, he’d developed a nasty habit of listening in on his dad’s calls. His dad never knew. He wasn’t supposed to hear any of it.

But it was interesting.
Because criminals were interesting.

And he could always tell which ones were going to get caught.

He could name a dozen different ways he’d get away with every single one of the overheard offenses if he were the one committing the crime.

Not that he’d ever actually do any of it, of course—
But safe, calculated scenarios kept him sharp. A creative sort of hobby.

Still, his favorite calls—the ones that made something in him flare, maybe even soothed the itch just a little—were the unsolved ones.

The ones that made people desperate. Frustrated. Afraid.
The ones that whispered a rush of chaos into quiet lives.

Recently, though…
Stiles had known something was wrong long before the crime.

It started like a sixth sense — a crawling tension at the base of his skull. A whisper he couldn’t quite hear, urging him to stay away from the woods even as it pulled him toward the treeline, daring him to stare into the shadows long enough for something to stare back.

Something had appeared in Beacon Hills.
Something dangerous.
Something exhilarating.

By the time the call came in that night, he was already restless, pacing his room in tight, compulsive circles he couldn’t break.

He hadn’t heard a code 187 in months. A murder.

His dad’s voice floated up from downstairs — muffled, tense, threaded with urgency. Another deputy on the line, both of them sharp with concern.
Something about the woods.
The Sheriff’s Department.
The State Police.
A body.

Or, well... half of one.

Stiles bit down on his hand just to smother the laughter bubbling up in his throat. Not out of cruelty — though maybe a little — but because the horror of it cracked against his nerves like electricity. 

A moment later, his dad called up the stairs.

“Stiles! I’ve got to go—something’s come up. You okay on your own?”

“Dad, I’m sixteen. I’ll be fine!”

“Good. Don’t touch the stove—I don’t want to come back to a house fire,” the Sheriff muttered, already halfway out the door.

The second he heard the cruiser pull away, Stiles was already reaching for his jacket. His pulse thudded in his ears — too fast, too loud — and his body trembled with energy that had nowhere to go. That pull — forward, toward something terrible — had become almost familiar by now. 

The lure of tragedy.

He needed to see it. To feel it. To stand in the presence of whatever horror had just unfolded.

An apex predator reduced to scavenging for scraps.
What a miserable, humiliating thought.

He shoved the feeling aside, slid behind the wheel of his Jeep, and started the engine. Headlights flared across the quiet street. He didn’t even bother calling Scott first. He just drove — heart pounding, mind already rehearsing what he’d say, how he’d convince him.

Because ever since that fight in middle school, something about Scott’s stubborn loyalty had unspooled something dangerous in him. The realization that Scott — even scared and confused — would never let go. No matter how strange Stiles got. No matter what he asked. No matter what he did.

That kind of devotion had a way of breeding arrogance.

It made him reckless. Too sure of himself. He knew.
Comfortable in the idea that Scott needed him, that Scott would always come when he called. And that comfort had become a dangerous thing. Because deep down, Stiles knew he was starting to enjoy testing that loyalty. 

He wanted to see how far Scott would follow.
How far he himself would go.

Like now. About to drag his best friend into the woods to look for a corpse.

Being both feared and needed—
what an incredible, terrible thing.

When he finally parked outside the McCall house, Stiles sent Scott a text.

"Open your window. I have news."

Then another. And another. 

When those went unanswered, he called. One ring. Two. Three. No reply.
He waited a moment, jaw tight, before trying again.

By now his leg was bouncing uncontrollably, the motion making his keys rattle against the ignition. The sound irritated him — the silence even more. The waiting always did.

Scott’s bedroom light was still on. So Scott was home and awake. He was just ignoring him.

Fine.

Stiles slipped out of the Jeep and circled around to the back of the house, keeping clear of the kitchen windows. If Melissa was home, he didn’t want to explain himself.

The vines along the wall were old, overgrown — the same ones he’d been climbing since he was a kid. He knew every foothold, every gap in the siding, every handhold that used to feel safe. But the vines were brittle now, their stems dry and splitting beneath his fingers. And he wasn’t twelve anymore either. He was all limbs and sharp angles, a body that had outgrown his own memory of it.

A soft splintering sound cracked under his foot.

He froze on the edge of the porch roof, breath shallow in his throat.

Scott’s bedroom light clicked off.

Footsteps followed — slow, careful, moving through the house with that particular tension that meant Scott was trying not to panic. The porch door eased open with a hesitant creak.

A grin tugged at Stiles’s mouth — small, crooked, and entirely misplaced. A spark of mischief that didn’t fit quite the moment and he didn’t care.

He held still, letting the night air settle against his skin, his heartbeat steadying into a patient rhythm.

And then—

“HELLO!”

He dropped down from the roof, hanging upside down, his head and arms dangling inches from Scott’s face.

Scott screamed and swung — pure reflex — the baseball bat slicing through the air in a sharp, panicked arc.

Stiles twisted out of its path at the last second, body folding like a hinge, the wood passing clean beneath his spine. He unfolded half-laughing, breathless, adrenaline fizzing bright behind his eyes.

“Stiles?! What the hell is wrong with you?!” Scott sputtered, clutching the bat like a lifeline, eyes wide and unfocused.

“You weren’t answering your phone!” Stiles shot back, indignant, still half-upside-down like some feral tree-dweller. “Why do you have a bat?”

“Because it’s midnight and you’re climbing my house like a lunatic!”

“Yeah, and you have a bat! What were you planning to do — fight me off like a Final Girl?”

Scott groaned, the tension draining from his shoulders as he lowered the bat.

“I thought you were a predator.”

Stiles flashed a lopsided grin — all teeth, too much energy for the hour.

“Well, I’m not.”

He knew exactly what he was.

Scott exhaled hard, dragging a hand down his face. “Jesus, I nearly had a heart attack.”

“Not so fast,” Stiles said as he finally dropped down beside him, landing soft and low. He moved with that strange, coiled grace — smooth, practiced, animal-like. His sneakers hit the floor in silence. His eyes glimmered, that familiar manic light flickering through them.

“You gotta hear this,” he said, voice pitched low and urgent. “I overheard my dad on the phone. Something’s going down. Big enough they called every deputy and even the state police.”

Scott straightened, already half-nervous. “What happened?”

Stiles’s mouth twitched. A smile tried to crawl onto his face — wrong time, wrong place — and he forced it down.

“A couple of campers found a body,” he said, eyes fixed on Scott’s. “Out in the woods.”

Scott blinked. “A dead body?”

Stiles shot him a look of pure annoyance.
“No, Scott. They found her alive — she just looks that way.”
A beat.
“Yes, idiot. A dead body.”

Scott grimaced at being insulted through cruel sarcasm but let it go. Too easily, someone might think.
Instead, a bit unnerved, he asked, “Was it… murdered?”

“Maybe. They don’t know yet. A girl, early twenties.”

Scott frowned, confusion settling in slowly. “But if they already found the body, what are they still searching for?”

And that’s when it hit — that spark that made Stiles come alive. His whole body lit up like a live wire, tension bleeding into excitement.

“That’s the thing,” he said, the grin finally breaking through. “They only found half the body.”

The words landed heavy.
Scott just stared at him.

For a second, Stiles’s grin held — bright, boyish, too wide. It wavered, and for a fraction of a second the truth showed through: something sharp, something foxlike. The mask snapped back almost instantly, but not fast enough.

Scott had seen it.

That moment. That flicker of something off. The wrong note under the humor. The way Stiles had smiled — actually smiled — while talking about a girl ripped in half. The way his eyes had lit up like it was Christmas morning before he realized they shouldn’t.
And that sideways glance — quick, nervous, measuring. Checking whether Scott had noticed.

Of course he had. They’d known each other too long to miss each other’s vices.

Stiles had always gotten… excited — too excited — when things got dark. Especially when someone got hurt.

Scott’s voice dropped. “You’re smiling again.”

“I’m not smiling,” Stiles said, too quickly. “It was… a grimace. Coping mechanism. You know, gallows humor.”

Scott’s expression didn’t move. “Pretty cheerful gallows.”

A tight silence settled between them. Neither looked away. The wind whispered quietly through the space between their breaths.

Finally, Scott sighed, resigned.

Stiles’s grin returned, quieter this time — the kind of grin that felt both satisfied and dangerous.
“Atta boy,” he said. “Come on. Let’s go.”

He didn’t need to say where.

Because Scott knew: if he didn’t go with him, Stiles would go alone. And if he went alone, something bad would happen. Something worse than being grounded. Worse than running into the Sheriff.

They climbed into the Jeep, the engine’s familiar rumble thrumming under their feet. Stiles reversed out of the driveway with too much enthusiasm, headlights slicing through the sleeping streets.

He veered off the main road and followed the edge of the preserve until the forest swallowed the Jeep whole. The dirt path narrowed, weeds clawing at the tires, half-eaten by undergrowth. Stiles killed the headlights, letting the darkness take them completely.

Scott sighed as they stepped out into the cool night air. “You’re seriously dragging me into this?”

“Oh, definitely,” Stiles said, cheerful, almost singsong. “You’re the one who’s always bitching that nothing ever happens in this town.”

Scott gave him a look, somewhere between concerned and exasperated, but Stiles was already halfway into the woods. He tossed Scott a flashlight without warning. It spun once through the air before Scott fumbled to catch it.

The forest pressed in on every side. Tall pines whispered overhead, their branches shifting against the dark. A low mist crawled along the ground, silvering the undergrowth.

Scott followed a few steps behind, his flashlight beam cutting a shaky path between them.

“I was kind of hoping to get at least six hours of sleep tonight,” he muttered, ducking under a low branch. “We’ve got afternoon practice.”

“Right,” Stiles called back, voice carrying that familiar sharp lilt. “Because warming the bench is such a grueling job.”

“I’m playing this year,” Scott shot back, squinting through the shadows. “I’m going for first line.”

“That’s cute.” Playful—though just carrying too much of that mocking edge. “Everyone should have a dream. Even a pathetically unrealistic one.”

Scott rolled his eyes but let it drop. Stiles could be too much sometimes — like he didn’t know when to stop himself, when the teasing stopped being funny and started being cruel.
But that was just Stiles Stilinski — a hundred miles an hour in a twenty-five zone, all the time.

At least, that’s what Scott told people when they asked why he stuck around him, even if it meant trudging through the woods at midnight searching for body parts.

“Hey,” Scott said after a long pause, quieter now. “Just a thought… which half of the body are we looking for?”

Stiles froze mid-step. Scott nearly collided with him.

“Huh,” Stiles said thoughtfully.

“Huh what?”

“I didn’t even think about that,” he replied, laughing under his breath. Not nervously—almost pleased, like it might even be fun to find out.

Scott’s stomach knotted. “And another thing,” he muttered. “What if whoever—or whatever—did this is still out here?”

“Also something I didn’t think about,” Stiles said with a shrug, lips quirking up. “If I had to choose… I’d go for the upper half.”

Why pressed onto Scott’s tongue, some instinctive protest, and he grimaced. But he didn’t argue. Rarely did.
He just trailed behind Stiles, as he always did.

Not that he had friends to spare.

“It’s so comforting,” Scott said dryly, “to know you’ve planned this out with your usual attention to detail.”

“I know,” Stiles said brightly. He darted ahead, climbing the incline in three long, fluid strides that looked almost graceful in the dim light.

Scott followed, lungs burning, each step heavier than the last. Every rustle of leaves, every snap of a twig made him flinch — and Stiles? He didn’t flinch at all. If anything, he leaned into the sounds—drawn to them with an unsettling, giddy thrill, like someone who’d learned to enjoy walking the dark.

Scott lagged behind, finally bracing himself against a tree as he fumbled for his inhaler. “Maybe the severe asthmatic should be the one leading the way,” he muttered between wheezes.

When he caught up, Stiles was already on the hilltop, body coiled tight, head tilted slightly as he listened.

Scott wiped his nose, breath evening out. “What is it?”

“Search party,” Stiles murmured, eyes fixed on the darkness stretching along the ridge below.

Scott froze. Then—

“Get down,” Stiles hissed and yanked Scott to the forest floor just as flashlight beams swept the ridge.

They hit the ground with a muted thud, leaves and twigs crunching beneath them. Scott fumbled to shut off his flashlight, hands trembling. Beside him, Stiles kept a fistful of Scott’s hoodie, his nose twitching as he breathed slow, steady breaths.

Stiles grinned — wild and unhinged at the edges — and sprang up again, dragging Scott up with him like a ragdoll.

“Come on, come on!” he whispered, electric with excitement.

“Stiles!” Scott whisper-yelled, stumbling after him.

But Stiles was already gone, slipping through the trees like a fox scenting blood. He moved fast, low to the ground, energy surging through him like electricity.

Scott wheezed behind him, struggling to keep up.

Sometimes, he wondered if there was something else in Stiles — something feral that only woke when the world turned just a little too dark.
Tonight felt like one of those nights.

“Stiles!” Scott called again, louder this time. “Dude—seriously, slow down!”

Stiles stopped so abruptly the mud slid under his boots. His head snapped toward the sound. Scott’s heartbeat—fast, uneven—pounded in Stiles’s hypersensitive ears, a frantic rhythm drowned beneath the rustling branches and the low murmur of the search party pushing through the forest.

Voices drifted on the wind — worried adults in crinkling windbreaker jackets, police dogs panting and whining in agitation, and the forest itself reeking of wet fur and human sweat.

The rain, which had started as a light mist minutes ago, thickened into a steady downpour, drumming across the leaves in chaotic, overlapping beats. It smelled of decay — wet bark, decomposing foliage — and the sharp metallic tang of something coppery.

It was too much.

He lost focus.

Tried to breathe through it, to push back the noise and the rain and the static screaming inside his skull.
Scott — he had to get back to Scott.

But the forest wouldn’t let him.

The rain was everywhere now, a constant whisper against the canopy, each droplet exploding into static as it hit his skin. The ground smelled of rot and old bark, the air wet with moss and metal. The coppery scent thickened as he moved, bleeding into something heavier — meat-sweet and cloying.

That pull under his ribs — the one he’d been following all night — dragged harder now, steady as a heartbeat. He moved instinctual, step after step through the slick mud, eyes wide, nostrils flaring like he could smell what he was chasing.

Then his boot caught on something soft.

He stumbled, lost his footing, and went down hard, crashing into mud and bramble. Cold seeped instantly through his jeans, rain washing over his face, down his neck. He blinked it away — and froze.

There it was.

The body.

Half-buried in wet leaves, pale as candle wax under the stormlight.  A girl—what was left of one. Her torso caked in wet earth, her hair plastered to her skull in thick, black ropes. Eyes rolled back to milky whites, mouth open in a soundless gasp. Her skin stretched thin, bloated, mottled purple and gray. Blood had crusted and dried and mixed with rainwater until it was the same color as the ground.

Stiles didn’t look away. Didn’t even blink.
The rain blurred his vision, but he barely felt it. His breath steadied, too slow, too even.

Like a starving animal sniffing a carcass gone sour.

He wasn’t seeing her so much as the ghost of the violence around her — the stillness after the struggle and the dead weight left behind.

And he wasn’t sure what he felt staring at her. There was no fear, no pity, not even disgust.
Just a kind of hollow disappointment.

That’s it? he thought. After all that noise?

The forest had gone quiet.

Then — a low growl.

It rolled through the underbrush, deep and vibrating, crawling up his spine. He turned toward it slowly. Between the trees, something moved. It was huge. Its outline shimmered with rain, blacker than the night itself. Shoulders too high, limbs too long, the wrong shape entirely. Steam coiled from its nostrils. Its eyes glowed red, bright and fixed on him like burning coals.

The creature crept closer, nostrils flaring, each breath slicing through the rain. It was smelling him.

He should’ve run. Every instinct screamed to.
Instead, he ducked his head — not in fear, but in acknowledgment. A gesture he didn’t think through — instinctive, primal — a quiet surrender. His heart hammered, but his gaze stayed steady, almost defiant.

For a moment, they simply watched each other—predator to predator. Something unspoken sparked between them, a wordless understanding in the wet, shadowed silence.

With a grunt that felt almost like concession, the creature turned. One long stride. Then another. And it melted back into the forest.

Just as the beast vanished into the trees, Stiles came back to himself. His pulse still thudded sharp in his throat, but his mind began to clear. The forest filled again with sound — the rain, the branches, the distant echo of search dogs.

He pushed himself up from the mud, careful not to make a sound, eyes locked on the place where the creature had dissapeared.

It looked like a wolf. A massive one.
But that couldn’t be right.

A werewolf, his mind suggested, quick and clinical.

The outline lingered in his memory, overlapping with an older image: Peter, half-shifted, baring his teeth, eyes flashing golden, trying to intimidate him in his own domain.

Peter hadn’t succeeded then.
But this thing had come close.

The red glare still burned in his vision, etched behind his eyelids like an afterimage burned by lightning.

Whatever that thing was — it was the reason he’d been restless all week. The hum under his skin, the sleepless nights, the static tension he couldn’t name — now it made sense.

It was rare for something to unnerve him like that. Rarer still for something to feel... wrong enough that his instincts prickled with caution around glee.

Because this wasn't prey.

This was a competition.

His face was blank, still. His dark eyes caught the faint glint of moonlight — silver, almost metallic — too cold, too ancient for the face of a boy.

It wasn’t easy to kill a kitsune. Harder still to kill a nogitsune.
Human weapons were useless. Time was meaningless.
Pain only made him stronger — he fed on it. Twisted it into power. Wore it like armor.

But there were still things in this world — very few — that could unmake him.

And that thing had felt like one of them.

The realization tightened something in his chest.

Werewolves were still foreign to him. Peter had been a good study — arrogant enough to underestimate him, wounded enough to let details slip — but not open. And rarely honest.

Wolves  — werewolves — were predators.
And predators hunted with purpose.

Whatever it wanted, it wasn’t food.
If hunger had driven it, he’d be dead already — or that half-body at his feet would be gone.
But it hadn’t fed. It had looked him over, weighed him, and decided against it.

The creature hadn’t spared him out of mercy.
It was out of recognition.

It hadn’t seen human when it looked at him.
Not another wolf, either.

Something else.

Hard to say what it felt toward him. Stiles could only hope it had recognized the monster beneath his skin and retreated — out of respect, out of fear — and would stay away. Otherwise, being acknowledged as something other by anyone can prove to be problematic.

Still, the thought of a wild werewolf tearing through town pricked at his darkest instincts. He knew he couldn’t stay completely away. The hunger rose when the world tipped sideways like this, pressing at the edges of his awareness.

When there was so much fear. So much suffering in the whisper of a dying breath. When madness followed behind a sudden act of cruelty.

It was like loving a brutal storm—marveling at the crack of thunder, the split-second blaze of lightning, the thrill of wind slicing through the trees until they broke from sheer force.

He looked down at the corpse at his feet. The werewolf had almost certainly done this.

His dad was going to have a hell of a week with this case.

Curiously, he tilted his head. Looked closer. He could almost convince himself he’d seen the girl before—

A ragged scream cut through the rain like thunder. Far off.

Scott’s.

He didn’t hesitate. Body forgotten, mind narrowing, he ran through the woods as if his own life depended on it — which, in truth, was probably his best friend’s life.

If the werewolf spared him because he wasn’t human, Scott wouldn’t get the same grace.

A growl built in Stiles’s chest as he surged through the preserve.

If this thing even considered killing Scott, it would have the devil at its heels.

It was the howling that stopped him in his tracks. Long. Echoing.

It came from the preserve, but it didn't belong to any coyote, dog, or animal that roamed Beacon Hills. It was unnatural. It sounded like a wolf—but wrong. Bone-hollow and strange.

There were no screams now, no sounds of struggle, no scent of fresh blood.

He knew Scott wasn’t dead. He could still feel the faint, brittle tether wrapped around himself, even if somewhere far away. But it was still there.

Stiles pushed forward again, heart hammering, scanning the paths frantically. Scott wasn’t on any of the routes they’d taken, which had to mean he’d made it out of the forest. Alone, preferably.

It felt like he’d been running in circles for hours before the faint buzz of his phone in his pocket made him stop.

Text messages. From Scott.

“Got home.”
“I hate you.”

Stiles stared at the screen a little too long.
He typed back a clipped “Good” and “See ya tmrw,” like a good boy, but it didn’t slow the racing in his head.

Scott was home. That meant something.
But not everything.

What happened in the woods?

Stiles crept back into the house, careful to keep his wet sneakers from squeaking too loud on the floor, though he knew it was a losing battle.

Damp leaves and mud clung stubbornly to his jacket, the faint scent of forest and rain trailing behind him like a guilty whisper.

A shadow fell over him. A figure in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, expression stormy and unmoving.

His dad. Still awake. Standing there like a living interrogation, eyes sharp and unyielding, burning right through Stiles.

The weight of that gaze made Stiles suddenly hyperaware of everything — the soaked, heavy jacket, the muddied sneakers, the faint smell of forest.

The forest where the search party had been maybe an hour ago.
The search party nobody but the police should know about.

Stiles blinked, brushing a hand absently across his jacket to flick off leaves and dirt.

“Hey, Dad. How you doin’?” His voice forced the casual tone he’d practiced a thousand times before.

Noah exhaled, dragging a hand down his face with a mix of exasperation and disbelief. "So, do you, uh, listen to all my phone calls?"

“No,” Stiles said quickly, and for a second it almost sounded sincere. "Well, not the boring ones, obviously."

Sheriff Stilinski’s eyes narrowed. That same unimpressed glare he reserved for petty criminals — and for his own son when he thought he was being clever.

Stiles shifted his weight, ready to slink past his dad and retreat upstairs.

Then a firm, warm hand clamped around the back of his neck. Not just a hand — a grip that left him no room to argue.

“Oh, no you don’t—”

Noah grabbed his son by the scruff of the neck like he was a stray animal that had followed him home too many times and was about to get locked in the shed for the night. Stiles leaned back instinctively. The pressure only increased, steering him toward the kitchen table.

Noah’d started doing this once Stiles had grown taller and stronger, when parenting by conversation alone no longer worked. It was his dad's way of reminding him who still had authority, and somehow, it almost always worked.

"You and I," his dad continued, voice low and ominous, grip steady, “we’re going to have a very long conversation… about something called invasion of privacy.”

Stiles had arrived earlier than usual. Earlier than anyone, really. He told himself it was just nerves, maybe leftover adrenaline from last night. But the truth itched under his skin like an old scab. He wasn’t subtle about it—his fingers drummed against his thighs, tapping out patterns older than his bones.

He perched on the low brick wall near the bike rack, pretending to scroll through his phone, but every sound—the shuffle of sneakers, the whisper of wind—set his nerves humming. He felt wired, like his body wanted to move. To do something. Stop something. Start something.

And then he sensed him. Long before he saw him.

Scott.

The usual teenage smells like sweat, too-strong cologne, cheap shampoo. But underneath — blood.

Then came the familiar, uneven rattle of bike wheels on pavement.

Stiles's head snapped up, every muscle tense. His body launched upright like a coiled spring.

Scott looked awful. Hoodie loose and wrinkled, sleeves half-pushed up, his face pale under the morning light. Dark shadows cupped his eyes. He hunched slightly, one arm curled protectively around his ribs, as if holding something in.

He smiled when he saw Stiles — a small, tired thing — but Stiles didn't smile back.

The second the wind shifted, his whole body went still, because the scent was stronger up close. Gauze. Blood. And beneath that — something else. Wrong.

Scott stepped off his bike, blinking in confusion. "You're already here?"

“You’re late,” Stiles said, slipping his phone into his pocket. His tone was casual, his face a practiced blank. But he didn’t step forward — he stepped sideways. Slowly circling his best friend like a curious cat.

"Late by, like, five minutes."

“You usually text when you survive an attempted mauling in the woods,” Stiles murmured, voice calm but nose twitching.

Scott stiffened. “How do you—?”

“You stink like wet copper and antiseptic. I’m not an idiot.”

Scott exhaled, setting his bike down. “It’s fine. It’s just—” He glanced around before lifting his hoodie carefully. Rough bandages already darkened, sticking to raw, inflamed skin.

Stiles leaned in slightly, eyes narrowing. Blood still seeped at the edges.

“Something bit me last night,” Scott said quietly. “I think it was a wolf.”

Stiles tilted his head—smooth, fluid, sharp. “A wolf?”

Scott nodded. "At first I thought it was a guy. Then it moved. Fast. Big. Like, huge. It jumped me before I could even scream. Bit me, then ran off."

And in that moment, the not so human part of him — not the boy who'd grown up laughing with Scott in the sheriff's backseat — watched.

A trickster's curiosity.

"You're saying a giant wolf attacked you. In Beacon Hills," Stiles said softly, the mockery just under the surface.

"Yeah."

Stiles's smile curled at the corners, but didn't quite reach his eyes. "Wolves haven't lived in California for sixty years. Humans hunted them out."

Scott looked at him, unsettled. "Then what was it?"

Stiles didn't answer right away, his eyes stayed fix on the wound. The healing was already too fast, too clean. Skin knitting, pink giving way to unnaturally smooth tissue.

He felt it then—a low vibration under his bones, like static before a lightning strike. His instincts were on edge, but not out of fear. Out of anticipation.

The thrill of chaos about to unleashed.

Scott shifted awkwardly. "Dude, you're kinda... hovering."

Stiles blinked. Shook his head like something trying to dislodge a thought too large for the skull it sat in. "I don't know," he said finally, voice low and neutral.

Scott scoffed. "I heard it howling."

And Stiles remembered the sound. That wrong, too-long cry.

The thing in the forest had worn a wolf's shape — but it hadn't been one.
And this bite — this scent — was steeped in that same wrongness. 

Still, Scott looked like Scott. Smelled mostly like Scott. Maybe a little raw at the edges, like cut wood or broken stone.

Stiles circled him once more, eyes sharp, breath shallow.

“Okay,” Scott said, uneasy. “Seriously. You’re freaking me out.”

He stopped in front of him, smiled. “You’re lucky,” Stiles said softly. “Could’ve been dead.”

Scott let out a breath. “Wow. Comforting.”

Stiles clapped him on the shoulder and steered him toward the school doors.

"So… if you’re already freaked out about the bite, you’re definitely gonna freak about this. I found the body."

Scott hesitated. “You’re joking.”

“Nah-ah.” Stiles grinned, “Gnarly. Ripped in half. And it was the top half!”

"You need new hobbies."

“I think I can find it again. What do you say?”

Scott groaned. “Because this turned out amazing last time.”

“We’ll go before dark if it helps your fragile nerves,” Stiles said. “I’ll bring snacks. A baseball bat if you want.”

“I’m not the one obsessed with a dead body.” Scott’s voice carried a tired edge. “Why do you even want to find it?”

Stiles paused, gaze drifting somewhere far away. “Just… wanna take a look,” he muttered. Maybe it was the closeness to death, the way it eased the itch under his skin, even if only a little. “You know. Morbid curiosity.”

A gust of wind swept through the courtyard. The expected scent of blood lingered, but underneath it was something worse — sickness.

He turned to look at Scott, really look. A line of sweat curved down his temple. His brows were pinched, mouth tight.

A twitch in Stiles's hand. He almost reached out.
To touch the wound.
To take the pain or cause it.
He never quite figured out the difference.

Scott flinched, and Stiles hesitated. Instead, he settled for resting a hand on Scott's lower back, guiding them both towards school entrance. The warmth of pain pulsed under his palm. For a second, the urge was there — to push, to probe, to sink fingers into the wound and see what lay beneath.

But he didn't.

“You feel okay?” he asked lightly, masking everything under a veneer of friendly concern.

"Yeah," Scott said, finally breaking a soft smile. "Just tired. A little sore. I'll be fine."

"Uh huh," Stiles muttered, lips twitching. "Famous last words."

He let Scott walk ahead, his gaze never leaving the boy's back. Sensing the way the forest's scent followed after him. Wet pine, damp earth, blood, and something primal. Something that wanted in.

And the dark thing in Stiles's chest grinned.

Because something had been let it.

And that something... was walking right in front of him.

Wearing Scott's face. Bleeding Scott's blood.

And if Stiles was honest with himself — truly honest —
Scott wasn't dying.

But maybe that would've been a mercy.

Their first class of the day was English, though Stiles barely registered it until Mr. Curtis, perpetually undercaffeinated and eternally frazzled, scrawled Metamorphosis on the blackboard in that sharp, squeaky handwriting of his. Kafka. Oh, the irony.

Mr. Curtis launched into his usual ramble about symbolism and alienation, how Gregor Samsa’s transformation wasn’t about the physical change, but what it meant. Stiles sank into his seat, one hand tapping the desk in a familiar rhythm. He didn’t need the lecture. He already knew the story.

( He'd lived pieces of it in different bodies, different centuries.
Waking up one day and finding yourself not who you were — not even what you were. )

The rest of the class looked half-asleep, or maybe dead inside. Stiles wasn’t paying attention to them. He was watching Scott. He told himself it was a good thing, a precaution. A favor, even. Someone had to keep an eye on the guy if he was turning into a walking, growling, howling mess.

And if the instincts that had been whispering in his skull since he was a kid were right—and they always had been—something had already begun shifting.

The classroom smelled of chalk dust and old books, warmed by the late morning sun. Mr. Curtis droned on at the front of the class. "What Kafka was really describing is the sense of being othered—turned into something monstrous in the eyes of the people who are supposed to care about you. It's an allegory for rejection, for fear of—"

Papers rustled. Pens scratched. Groans meandered around the room at the mention of the syllabus. Stiles let his gaze drift back to Scott.

Scott was trying to act normal, failing spectacularly. He was twitchy — hands flexing, back rigid, jaw tight. His eyes kept darting to the window like he could hear every person who walked past. Stiles didn't need to look to know his friend was tracking things no one else in the room could possibly notice. When Mr. Curtis dragged the chalk too hard across the board, Scott actually whimpered, as if the screech had cut straight into his skull.

Stiles recognized all of it. Heightened senses. Unfiltered input. The way every noise came in too loud. Every scent too sharp. The world had gone from soft background static to a full-throttle orchestra, and the mind was scrambling to sort it.

He himself had time to learn how to dull the edges, to breathe through it, to filter. Scott? Scott was getting hit with it like a freight train.

He was probably already smelling the ink on the page and the faint coffee sweat in Mr. Curtis's jacket. The light buzzing from the overhead fluorescents must've sounded like a chainsaw. Every desk scrape. Every breath. Every heartbeat. 

Sensory overload, pure and simple.

Stiles tilted his head, studying Scott more intently.

The boy was distracted again — his head had turned toward the classroom doors. Stiles followed the sound. Footsteps—two pairs. One stiff, measured. Vice Principal. The other lighter, hesitant, unfamiliar.

The door creaked open and the Vice Principal stepped inside, clearing his throat with the usual theatrical grimace. Trailing behind him was a girl, tentative but holding herself with quiet confidence.

"All right, class," the man announced. "We've got a new student joining us today. Please welcome Allison Argent."

Stiles almost laughed. Of course. Of course, the one thing Scott’s scrambled senses had zeroed in on — out of all the stimuli overwhelming him — was the pretty new girl.

The moment Scott saw her, everything in him shifted. Posture loosened, pupils dilated. He stared like she'd walked in lit by a spotlight. When she took the empty seat behind him, he handed her a pen without a word.

Stiles smothered a grin creeping up his face with a yawn and leaned back in his chair. Because despite the fangs probably sprouting any day now, Scott was still a teenage boy. It was almost sweet. Almost.

This might be a problem. Teenage hormones were already dangerous enough. Mix them with newly awakened predator instincts and you had a cocktail that could explode in a hundred messy directions.

Especially when Scott still had no idea what was happening to him. But Stiles did. And he also knew how easy it was to lose yourself when instincts took over. He’d walked that edge. Still did. Every day.

And if Scott didn’t figure out how to control whatever was happening—fast—it wasn’t just him who could get hurt. It was everyone.

Mr. Curtis, oblivious, continued droning. “When Gregor turned into an insect, his family didn’t ask what had happened. They asked how it would inconvenience them. They recoiled. They hid him. Because something other is something feared.”

The bell rang — loud, shrill, like a siren. Scott jerked in his seat, his knee slamming into the underside of the desk with a dull thud. He recovered quickly—maybe too quickly—and shoved his books into his bag with a tension in his shoulders Stiles didn't miss.

They were out the classroom door before Mr. Curtis could even wrap up his lecture.

Stiles was about to launch into a casual rant about Kafka — how turning into a bug really wasn’t the weirdest thing that could happen to a human — when Scott came to a sudden stop by the lockers.

“Can you check if I have a fever?”

Stiles blinked. “What, you feeling sick?”

"I don't know. Not bad, but... not fine either?" Scott's brow creased, like the words didn't quite fit how he felt.

Stiles studied him for a moment. Scott didn't look sick — not in the usual way. The pale, hollow-eyed look he'd been sporting earlier was gone. His skin had a flush now, a healthy color to match the rapid-fire beat of his heart and the heat rolling off his body like pavement on a summer day.

"You know I've got cold hands, Scott. I wouldn't feel a thing," he said lightly.

Scott sighed, dropping his head like he was disappointed in the answer. But the moment someone down the hallway slammed a locker, he snapped upright again. His gaze shot past Stiles's shoulder, alert and tracking.

Stiles turned to see what had caught his attention — Allison Argent was walking down the hall, flanked by Lydia and Jackson, of all people. The smile tugging at Stiles's mouth wasn't one he tried to hide.

"Well," he drawled, "are you sure it's a fever? Or are you just falling for the new girl?"

It was a perfect lie — one that coated the truth like sugar over medicine.

Scott mumbled, “Shut up,” the awkward embarrassment giving him away entirely.

“No need to be shy, Romeo,” Stiles teased. “She’s cute, she’s nice, and she even looked at you in class. You might not be completely out of her league.”

Scott glanced sideways, half-smiling, trying not to give him the satisfaction.

“Not like you and Lydia, huh?” he shot back, sarcasm flickering in his tone.

“Ouch.” Stiles clutched his chest in mock offense. “That’s just cruel. Lydia and I are still… in a complicated phase. Haven’t quite found the connection yet.”

“A connection,” Scott echoed, clearly unconvinced.

“I just haven’t found her frequency, that’s all. Still tuning the dial,” Stiles said with a smirk.

Scott snorted. “Yeah, okay. Whatever you say, man.”

The thing with Lydia was… different. Stiles never felt comfortable calling it a crush. Maybe he hadn’t experienced teenage love yet, but he liked to think he could tell the difference. Today, watching Scott stumble headfirst into Allison’s gravity — that looked like a crush.

What he felt for Lydia pressed too close to the instincts. He was drawn to her — not like a boy to a girl, but like a moth to a flame. He meant what he said about the connection.

He felt it.

But Lydia didn’t feel it back. And that was the shame of it.

Maybe if she did, he’d have a better name for it.

Lacrosse practice rolled around.

Stiles remembered their first year, first practice, as if it had happened yesterday. He’d made first line without breaking a sweat. There had been no competition — no one could match his speed, his reflexes, his agility. He wasn’t showing off; it wasn’t performative. It was just there, in him, effortless, coiled like a spring ready to snap.

Scott tried. God, he tried. But his lungs betrayed him. Every sprint left his chest rattling, every drill ended too soon with the sharp wheeze of his asthma. His stamina kept him trailing behind, red-faced, gasping, fighting for every breath.

That was when he was sentenced to sit on the bench.

Stiles watched him, often, between matches — the way Scott hunched forward, hands braced on his knees, inhaler clutched like a lifeline. He felt the tug in his gut, the ache of the fox urging him closer.

( Scott’s struggle, his embarrassment, it was all there, raw and unguarded, ripe for the taking. )

One day, Stiles simply traded places with another kid from the sidelines and sat down next to Scott. Lacrosse didn’t mean anything to him — but seeing Scott’s face light up at having a friend beside him? That meant everything.

Coach tried, at one point, to force him back into play. Almost desperately. But one Mischief Night later, and Coach Finstock never bothered him again. In fact, for the next three months, he made a point of keeping a ten-foot radius between himself and Stiles.

High school brought something else with Scott. He took the “new school, new chapter” thing way too seriously — trying to reposition himself in the social food chain, constantly trying to prove himself. Mostly to himself, Stiles thought.

“My whole life is sitting on the sidelines. This season, I’m making first line.”

Stiles only let out a short huff.
He didn’t bother pretending Scott would be okay.

He saw them then — Allison and Lydia, lounging casually on the bleachers.

Scott saw them too. Stiles didn’t miss it. The way his best friend straightened like he’d been yanked upright by invisible strings. Shoulders squared. Every inch of his posture screamed: Notice me.

Scott would make a terrible werewolf.

Coach blew the whistle. Stiles had seen it coming and slammed his hands over his ears. Small thing — practice, really.

Scott wasn’t so lucky. The sound hit him like a punch. Stiles watched as he doubled over, one hand flying to the side of his head, like he was trying to stop his brain from splitting open. 

The first shot came seconds later. Scott didn’t even see it. He was still reeling. The ball slammed into his helmet and knocked him back a step, hard enough to get half the team laughing.

Someone muttered something about “catching with his face,” and Scott’s head rolled, cracking his neck as if recalibrating, adjusting his energy to compensate.

In goal, he moved like a machine on instinct. He caught every ball, every shot, with off the charts reflexes. Balls that should've blown past him were snagged mid-air like flies. His body twisted, crouched, pounced like something half-wild. There was no hesitation, no delay between thought and motion — just pure, razor-cut instinct.

Stiles stood on the sideline, every muscle was taut, fox-nerves pulled tight. His eyes tracked Scott like a predator. He wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore.

Then Jackson stepped up — the captain, probably intending nothing more then to end the high Scott was on. And yet Scott caught the ball so fast it might've disappeared.

Allison clapped and Lydia cheered, loud and proud, in a way that challenged Jackson to try harder.

The team was stunned. The coach was eating it up. In a single practice, Scott had become the coach’s new favorite. Good for him, Stiles thought.

But the full moon was coming. He could feel it — a clock ticking in his bones.

“I don’t know how I did any of that stuff,” Scott said, grinning from ear to ear as they moved through the woods, heading toward the site where Stiles had found the body the night before. “I just… knew I could catch them. Beat every other guy out there. Like it was natural. You know?”

“You seem enthusiastic,” Stiles said, raising an eyebrow, tilting his head as he watched his best friend stride ahead. Scott’s steps were fast, fluid, oddly effortless. Not a hint of windedness. His asthma seemed like a distant memory — forgotten, maybe even cured.

“You have no idea,” Scott said, fists clenching and unclenching as if he were literally brimming with voltage. “I have so much energy. I don’t know why, but I do. And it feels… amazing.” He hesitated, glancing at Stiles with something almost like worry. “All of this… started after I got bit.”

“Really?” Stiles said, trying to keep his tone casual. Finally, the conversation was heading where it needed to. “What kind of stuff?”

“Well… the energy, obviously. But my hearing—it’s insane. I can hear things I shouldn’t. Smell things too.”

Stiles hummed thoughtfully. “Interesting. And this all started with the bite?”

Scott frowned. “Maybe it’s… an infection? Like, I’m running on adrenaline or something, and then—boom—I go into shock and die.”

Stiles bit back a sigh. Not exactly how septic shock worked, but he couldn’t blame Scott. Biology wasn’t his strong suit.

“That’s what you think is happening?”

“I don’t know. You’re the smart one,” Scott muttered.

Stiles clicked his tongue. “Well… it does sound like a very specific kind of infection.” He let the words hang, enjoying the flicker of confusion—and maybe fear—on Scott’s face.

"Wait—You're serious?"

“Oh, totally,” Stiles said. “There’s a condition that explains all your symptoms. Rare, but real.” He paused dramatically. "It's called lycanthropy."

Scott paled. “Oh my God. What is it? Is it bad?”

Stiles suppressed a grin. "Oh, it's the worst. No known cure. But thankfully, it only acts up once a month."

“Once a month?” Scott asked, suspicion creeping in.

"Yeah. You know... during the full moon." He could see the gears turning behind Scott's eyes — surely it wasn't that hard to figure out. They'd watched Teen Wolf with Michael J. Fox together just last summer.

To drive the point home, Stiles tilted back his head and gave a crooked, half-assed wolf howl. It came out awkward and warbly — like speaking in a foreign language — but it did the trick. Recognition lit up Scott's face.

He scoffed and shoved Stiles in the chest. “You’re such an idiot.”

“Hey! Don’t shoot the messenger!” Stiles laughed, leaping to keep up.

"You're not being funny. There might be something seriously wrong with me."

"I know! You're a werewolf!" The word dropped from Stiles's lips for the first time that day, and even though he'd been dancing around the idea all day, saying it aloud made it feel more real. And it fit.

“Stop it, Stiles. I’m serious.”

“I am serious,” Stiles said firmly. “Just… it’s not like the movies make it seem.” He was about to launch into one of his lore lectures when Scott picked up his pace, ignoring him—or maybe denying everything outright.

“You’re just making me sound crazy. Yourself too. Werewolves don’t exist.”

“You’re offending my intelligence,” Stiles shot back.

“Stiles—”

He didn’t finish. Stiles shot his arm out, stopping Scott in his tracks before they could go any further. Both of them came to an abrupt halt.

"The body was right here," Stiles said, pointing to the ground. Then his voice dropped. "I’m sure of it."

They both stared at the empty patch of forest.

"Maybe the murderer moved it?" Stiles mused, more to fill the silence than anything else.

“Then maybe we should get out of here,” Scott said, eyes flicking nervously. “Let’s go find my inhaler. I need it back.”

Stiles raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure you still need—"

A sharp crack of leaves behind them cut him off. Both boys spun around.

A man dressed head-to-toe in black stood there, glaring. His eyes locked on Scott, scanning him with a dark, predatory curiosity. Then—oddly—he sniffed the air.

Now he acted like a werewolf too. He smelled like one too. The feral energy clung to him — the wet-dog musk hidden under leather and human skin.

"What are you doing here?" the man asked, voice low, edged like a growl. He stepped forward, confidence radiating from him, a claim on the territory that was almost physical. "This is private property."

Territorial. Very wolf-like.

"Sorry, man. We didn’t know," Stiles said, raising both hands. But he did know. That was Derek Hale. And this was Hale land.

"We were just looking for something, but..." Scott’s voice trailed off as his wide eyes stayed fixed on Derek. His body tensed, senses flaring. Without thinking, he began to back away. "Uh… forget it. We’re just gonna leave—"

Derek reached into his pocket and tossed something. Scott caught it instinctively: his inhaler.

"Now leave," Derek said, already turning away.

"Let's go, Stiles..." Scott mumbled, gripping the inhaler tightly.

As they walked, Stiles stole a glance at him. "Do you have any idea who that was?"

Scott blinked. "No?"

"Derek Hale," Stiles said, his eyes scanning the trees Derek had vanished into. "His whole family died in a fire a few years ago. He left town right after. No one’s seen him since."

Scott was quiet for a moment. "Then why is he back?"

Stiles finally looked at him, measuring him head to toe. He didn’t answer immediately. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the forest, expression sharpening.

"One can only wonder," he said, voice too calm, eyes narrowing.

It was the way Scott had submitted to Derek without thinking that made something stir in Stiles's gut. Derek hadn't given a threat — he'd given an order. And Scott had obeyed. Maybe it was just fear. Or maybe it was something deeper. Instinctual.

Stiles watched his best friend stride ahead, inhaler in hand, lost in his own thoughts.

If Derek Hale was here to rebuild a pack from the ashes, Scott might just be his first recruit.

If Derek was trying to claim Scott — if he wanted to make him part of his pack — he’d have to steal him first. And Stiles didn’t let go of what was his.

Scott was his best friend. His brother in everything but blood. His anchor when the darkness got too loud.
And Stiles wasn’t about to let anyone—especially some brooding, leather-clad werewolf—take that away.

Stiles slipped into the hospital room — into the in-between — like he owned the place, though the fluorescent light stretched his shadow thin across the tile. Peter didn’t turn his head—didn’t move at all. He just kept staring at the wall with that corpse-stillness only he could manage.

“Evening, sunshine,” Stiles chirped, dropping into the chair beside the bed. “You missed one hell of a day.”

Nothing. Not even the courtesy of a glance.

Just that steady, oppressive silence that felt more deliberate than any insult.

Stiles drummed his fingers on his knee. “Wow. Don’t all talk at once.”

Peter exhaled slowly. Half-annoyed, half-tired. Like acknowledging Stiles required energy he had no intention of spending.

Stiles clicked his tongue and leaned back. “So what should we expect from someone freshly turned into a werewolf?”

The slightest scoff escaped Peter — dry, amused, and dismissive all at once. “I wouldn’t know.”

Stiles blinked, incredulous. “You wouldn’t know?”

A faint shrug, barely a shift of muscle. “I was born a wolf, fox. I wouldn’t know.”

The sentence landed between them like a brick, and Peter clearly had no intention of adding anything else.

Stiles exhaled sharply. “You’re a useless case study.”

Peter didn’t rise to the bait.

So Stiles pivoted. “Derek’s in town.”

“I know.”

Stiles frowned. “How come?”

“He came by.” Peter’s voice was flat. “Not much of a chatterbox. Unlike you.”

That earned a brief flicker of a glare from Stiles. “How do you know that?”

Peter’s lips quirked — cold, faintly condescending. “A werewolf always senses another nearby. Especially one from the same pack.”

“Your family,” Stiles said slowly. “You were all pack? All werewolves?”

“Yes and no.”

And that was apparently all Stiles was getting.

Stiles felt irritation scrape down his spine. Talking to Peter was like prodding a lion with a stick — except recently, the lion seemed bored with him.

He tried a different angle. “The Argents are back in town.”

That—finally—got a reaction.

A twitch, almost imperceptible.
A tightening around Peter’s closed eyelids.
The smallest shift in breath—like someone pressing on an old bruise.

“How do you know?” he asked, voice sharpening — not quite threatening, but close.

“There’s this new girl in my English class,” Stiles said. “Last name Argent. Kind of a unique family name to chalk up to coincidence.”
He hesitated, something dim and old flashing behind his eyes. “Means silver in French, right? Argent?”

Peter hummed — noncommittal.

“So,” Stiles pressed, tilting his head, “is the myth true? Silver bullets?”

Peter smirked, eyes still shut, serene in the smugness of keeping his secrets. “Ask an Argent.”

Stiles stepped closer, hands shoved deep in his pockets to keep from throttling a half-comatose man. “Seriously. I drag my ass out here, and you can’t even pretend to be helpful?” He leaned in, words dipping low and bitter. “Wake up already. Maybe you’ll be more fun in the waking world.”

The night was strange — the kind that made your skin feel electric, like the air itself was holding its breath. Nature itself seemed to be counting down to the full moon, ticking silently toward the night o the supernatural.

It was the second night in a row Stiles hadn’t slept. Instead, he sat hunched over glowing screen and stacks of hastily printed research, determined to learn everything he could about lycanthropy and whatever the hell it was doing to Scott.

Around 4 a.m., his dad found him.

Noah didn't say anything at first — just stood there in the doorway, silhouetted against the dim hallway light, quietly surveying the chaos: the mess of open books borrowed from the public library, articles from fringe medical sites, and his teenage son sitting cross-legged on the floor, the flickering blue light of his laptop casting long shadows under his eyes.

He sighed—a father's sigh, familiar and resigned. 
“You could try catching a nap before school,” he said gently. “Might help with the whole raccoon-under-the-eyes situation. You’re starting to freak people out.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Stiles muttered, still typing. “I’ll add it to my to-do list—right above ‘pretend I slept.’”

Noah blinked at him, unimpressed and exhausted, then turned on his heel and left.

He didn’t push. He rarely did anymore. It rarely worked on Stiles anyway.

By the time 6 a.m. rolled around, it was time to get ready for school and Stiles had pieced together enough scraps of myth, theory, and Reddit speculation to at least think he had a working hypothesis. If things went sideways, he had at least a few ideas for keeping Scott from hurting himself—or anyone else. And he’d built a mental checklist of things Scott needed to understand, urgently. Whether Scott liked it or not, he was going to have to listen. Preferably before the full moon. Certainly after.

Maybe fate was feeling generous, because the second Stiles spotted Scott at practice, he knew exactly what he was dealing with.

He looked terrible. Reeked of the woods — of wet bark, decaying autumn leaves, and that sharp earthy scent that only clung to you if you'd spent all night outside. He looked drained, jittery, his eyes half-lidded and glassy with exhaustion. Like he hadn't slept either — but unlike Stiles — it seemed Scott actually needed rest to function.

Stiles jogged over as the team started warming up.

“Dude, you look like you were literally running through the forest all night,” he said, catching up to him. “You feeling okay?”

Scott didn’t look at him. “Restless night,” he muttered, not even acknowledging the comment.

“Oh yeah, no kidding,” Stiles said, watching him closely. "Nice moon last night, y'know. Good weather. You should've looked out the window."

Scott groaned and rubbed his face. “I don’t want to talk about that bullshit again.”

Stiles crossed his arms, irritation slipping into his voice. “You really want to argue with the guy who’s right, like, seven out of ten times?”

Scott growled something under his breath — not even words, just sound. Too low. Too rough. Definitely not normal.

He stalked off toward the field without another word, leaving Stiles behind with his mouth open and a thousand comebacks bubbling on his tongue.

Stiles narrowed his eyes.

Do all werewolves have tempers like that?
Or just the infuriatingly stubborn ones?

As practice began, Stiles watched with a knot of worry coiled under something uncomfortably close to awe. Scott moved like someone had hit fast-forward—fast, fluid, dangerous. No one could touch him. His reflexes were too sharp, his strength too unnatural. Just days ago, he’d been the awkward kid wheezing through warm-ups. Now he was… unstoppable.

And the crowd loved him.

But the crowd wasn’t the problem. Jackson Whittemore was tracking Scott's every move. That was bad. If Jackson suspected anything — and knowing Jackson, his ego wouldn't let it go — then they had a bigger problem than just control. They had exposure.

Scott needed to chill before someone figured it out.

Then Scott made first line due to his performance and he was at his all-time high.
Great. Now it was going to be even harder to haul him back to ground level.

Weirdly, jealousy never entered the equation. Stiles was sure of that. He couldn’t care less about lacrosse. He’d never wanted the spotlight, never dreamed of being the golden boy. Sitting on the bench next to Scott had always been fine by him.

But this new Scott — this overnight miracle with a bite behind it — was something else. Muscle and instinct and moods that rolled in like thunderstorms. Stiles didn’t fully recognize him, but he could still see the familiar outline there.

Because Scott had always, quietly, desperately craved validation. He’d spent years feeling invisible, weak, overlooked. The wolf had shown up right when he needed something — anything — to make him feel important. The strength, the confidence. A place in the world. Scott wasn’t going to miss an opportunity like that.

Stiles didn’t need a bite to awaken something dangerous in himself. He’d grown up alongside his own creature — a fox, not a wolf. Cunning. Subtle. Strategic.

Werewolves weren’t subtle.

From what Stiles could gather, they weren’t noble, tortured souls like pop culture made them out to be. They were primal, physical. Creatures of earth and animal instinct. They didn't ponder spiritual balance. They reacted. They hunted. 

And Scott had no idea what he was capable of yet. He didn't understand it. And if he didn't start learning, fast, he was going to hurt someone.

Stiles knew his own darkness. That was the difference. He lived with it, watched it, bent it into shape.
Tricks, masks, calculated risks — he survived by making people see exactly what he wanted them to see. That’s how you lived among humans even when something inside you itched and gnawed and whispered cruel things.

Some people might call him manipulative. Or a liar.
Or a sociopath, if they were feeling dramatic.

But he wasn’t the one who would go feral in a day, fangs out, claws ripping through whatever got in his way.

That was Scott.

Which meant he didn't have time to ease Scott into this. No gentle breadcrumb trail. No softly worded theories.

So that evening after practice, Stiles planned the confrontation. They wound up at his place — as they often did — slumped on the floor of his room under the flimsy pretense of homework neither of them cared about. Scott still buzzed with residual energy: knee bouncing, pencils twirling, attention ricocheting off every surface.

Stiles felt it building, thickening the air, so he went for it—casual as he could manage.

“So… you gonna tell me what’s going on, or am I supposed to pretend you didn’t go full Peter Parker on the field today?”

Scott let out a weak laugh. “What are you talking about? I was just… in the zone.”

“Right. The zone,” Stiles echoed, stretching the word like it tasted off. “Where you apparently break human reaction time and catch a ball going seventy miles an hour without blinking.”

“I don’t know, man.” Scott shifted, uncomfortable. “I just felt… good. Like really good. Everything was clearer. Faster.”

Stiles nodded slowly. “And the hearing? Smell? Night vision? Clawing urge to chase things and maybe tear out someone’s throat?”

Scott’s expression skewed into confusion, mild annoyance sharpening.
“What?”

Stiles blew out a breath, agitation spiking. “The bite in the woods, Scott. The bite. The wolf.”

Stiles shot to his feet, pacing tight, controlled lines across the carpet.

“Do you even know why a wolf howls?” he asked, not waiting for him to answer.
"It's communication. When a wolf's alone, it howls to signal the rest of the pack."

His voice dropped, rough around the edges.

"If we heard one that night, it means there could've been others nearby. A whole pack, maybe."

“A whole pack of wolves?” Scott said, interest flickering—just not the right kind.

"No, Scott! Werewolves!" Stiles snapped, louder than he meant to. He didn’t want to yell, but he needed Scott to hear him.

Why was it so impossible for him to accept what was right in front of them?

Scott blinked, frowning. “Are you serious? You’re still on that?”

“You think it’s crazy?” Stiles stepped closer. “Because I watched you move today—like a predator, Scott."

He resumed pacing, slow half-circle around Scott, who sat rigid on the edge of the bed, fists clenched so tight the knuckles had gone bone-white.

Scott surged upright, like he couldn’t stand another second. “Stop. Just stop. You sound insane. I’ve got a date with Allison in an hour, and I’m not doing this again.” His voice rose too quickly.

“Scott, listen to me,” Stiles said sharply, standing still to meet his eyes. “This isn’t a joke. I know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh, you know?” Scott rounded on him, something furious sparking behind his eyes. “You know what this is?”

Yes. He knew. Because something inside Stiles had gone taut the moment Scott’s voice dipped into that low, warning snarl. The fox in him rose on instinct—hackles up, attention narrowing to a single instinctive point.

“Yes. Fuck, yes I do.” Stiles snapped, sudden and fluid — snatching the backpack from Scott’s hand and tossing it onto the bed. “All the insane stuff you can do now? The smells, the sounds — humans can’t do that!”

Scott hesitated, then shook his head hard. “I can’t listen to this right now.” His fingers twitched at his sides. “Get some sleep. You clearly need it. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Stiles echoed. “The full moon’s tonight! Don’t you get it?!”

“What is your problem, Stiles?!” Scott barked. “That I made first line? That a girl finally said yes to a date with me? Things are actually going right for once—and you’re trying to ruin it. You know what I think this is? You’re pissed things are finally working out for me.”

His voice shook — not with fear, but pure anger.
“I accepted every weird thing about you—the dark humor, the creepy obsessions, the way you laugh at things normal people don't. I never judged you.”

Stiles froze. Scott would never—

But Scott kept going, voice tipping higher.
“It’s like—you enjoyed it when I was miserable.”

Stiles didn't move, just stood there — motionless, blank, eyes going hollow. What should have hurt instead carved something colder and quieter. A little disappointed maybe. He’d always been honest with Scott because he thought Scott’s good-natured heart would never turn his flaws against him.

He was wrong.

So what if he did take a certain bite of satisfaction out of it sometimes?
What would Scott do if he admitted it?

"I'm trying to help," Stiles said at last. His voice, when it came, was level. Too calm.
"You're cursed, Scott. You're changing. First the senses, the reflexes—and tonight?"

His eyes narrowed, darkening like storm clouds pulled tight.
"Tonight comes the bloodlust."

Scott scoffed. "Bloodlust?"

Stiles shrugged, but the gesture was off — too loose, too detached. Like he'd already stepped sideways, emotionally, into a place where this wasn't his problem anymore.
And daring Scott to prove him wrong.
Like maybe — just maybe — he wanted to see what would happen if he was proven right.

"Your urge to kill," he said, voice flat. The words didn't rise like a warning. They dropped like a fact — cold, clinical.

Scott's sneer curled sharp. "I’m starting to feel that urge right now."

It was sarcastic — bitten off with teeth. A joke, a defense, with an underlying threat. 

And Stiles… smiled. Barely there, teeth just visible. But it wasn’t humor.
Stiles never took well to being mocked, nor threatened lightly.

"So," he murmured, voice lowering to a knife’s edge, "you’re taking Allison on your date. That’s… adorable."

He tilted his head just enough to look thoughtful — a butcher musing over where to make the first cut. 

When Scott didn’t answer, Stiles went on, voice smoothing into something almost hypnotic.
"You’ll smile. She’ll laugh. You’ll hold hands. Maybe she kisses you. Maybe you kiss her."
His tone softened, warm on the surface, cold underneath.
“You'll feel warm and wanted and alive. Your heart'll start to race. And then," his voice dipped to something sharp suddenly. "your pulse will spike. Your temperature will climb. Your instincts will flare. And because it’s your first full moon, Scott—your very first—you won't be able to stop it."

He leaned in, whispering dangerously.
"One second, you’re a teenage boy kissing his crush.
The next… you’re a beast mauling her lifeless body."

The words were cutting and brutal, and they hit like a gunshot in a quiet room. That was the point.

Scott’s jaw tightened, his breath ragged, a growl curling out of his chest. He wasn't shocked—he was livid.

“Cancel the date,” Stiles ordered.

“I’m not canceling the date,” Scott snapped, body taut with fury.

"I will," Stiles said, ice-cold.

He moved before Scott could protest, circling him and digging through his backpack.
"I’ll lie if I have to. Say you bailed. Say you’re sick. Say you died. I’ll say anything to keep you from ripping her apart the second she gets close to you."

Scott's expression twisted, and in an instant, he surged forward, shoving Stiles back with a brute strength that felt foreign in his arms. Stiles slammed into the wall hard enough to knock a poster loose, the breath driven from his lungs.

"Don't," Scott snarled, breath hot and ragged. "You don’t get to control my life!"

Stiles didn't flinch, he didn't even blink. His pulse didn't spike, it slowed.
A cold wave uncoiled, slow and venomous, flooding his nerves like molten silver cooling into a blade.

The sudden act of mindless violence didn't scare him, it soothed him. But the fact that it was aimed at him — that's what made the fox in him rise, refusing the corner he’d been shoved into. 

There was a moment — brief enough to miss — Stiles’s pupils dilated, ringed with a glint of silver that vanished before Scott could see anything through the haze of rage.

What he did notice was the calm.
The unsettling, go-on-then calm.

Scott's fist trembled, inches from his face — but instead of swinging at Stiles — he let out a guttural roar and slammed his hand into the back of the desk chair, knocking it over with a crash. It hit the floor hard, skidded across the wood, and stilled.

But Stiles didn't care about the chair.
Scott hadn't stopped himself, he'd redirected.

And Stiles had no idea if Allison would be granted the same mercy.

What would happen when she touched Scott's arm and whispered his name?
When she leaned in, warm and close, smelling like blood and softness?
Would Scott recognize her then?

The overturned chair—more than the shove, more than the snarl—finally broke through Scott’s rage. He was still panting like a rabid dog but the realization must have finally gotten to his thick head. Rage cracked and confusion seeped in, shame chasing its heels. He blinked like a man half-waking from a nightmare.

Stiles watched him unravel, silent and unblinking. The air around him charged and smelling of ozone like the second before lightning splits the sky.

"I didn’t mean—" Scott stammered. "I just… I gotta get ready for the party."

He stumbled toward the door, nearly tripping over the wrecked chair.

Stiles exhaled sharply through his nose.

Then, like a whipcrack—
"Call me when you need to get rid of the body."

Scott froze. The words didn’t rise above a murmur, but they landed with surgical precision, every syllable razor-sharp.

“But don’t expect me to do it because I care,” Stiles added, voice cold as icewater. “Like you said—I just get off on this shit, right?"

Maybe that was a lie, maybe he did care.
Maybe.

Scott turned back, just slightly. Enough for Stiles to see it — a flicker of shame, yes — but beneath it, something closer to fear.

For a second, Scott looked at him like a stranger. Like he'd just caught a glimpse of something he wasn't supposed to see — a shadow-creature with teeth. And maybe he had.

Scott’s eyes darted away, unable to hold Stiles’s gaze for long. Every line of his body, once coiled with fury, slackened into something reluctant.
A wolf caught between fight and flight — and realizing fight wasn’t an option.

Stiles didn’t move. He simply watched, still as stone, gaze heavy and unblinking.
Scott swallowed hard, eyes flicking up just once — then away again, as if burned.

The room felt colder than it had been a moment ago.

Scott didn't speak again. Just turned and left, too quickly, his shoulders bowed, anger hollowed clean out. He looked smaller going than he had coming in.

The door clicked shut.

Stiles stood alone, staring at the space Scott had occupied moments before. Something in him was still coiled, still listening, still watching—until the fox inside finally eased down.

Scott thought he’d found leverage. That he’d jabbed the right nerve. That he could shame Stiles into silence, then assert control with brute force.

He was wrong.

Because Stiles knew exactly what he was.

And if fear had to be the tool that carved compliance out of someone — he’d wield it without hesitation.

Because Scott might have been afraid of him, but Scott depended on him all the same.

Only when the front door opened, then slammed shut — Scott gone — did Stiles finally move.

He crossed the room with a slow, fluid ease. He crouched beside the fallen chair, hands closing around its sides, and righted it. The legs scraped softly against the floor, a whisper in the hush.

But when the chair settled and its back faced him, he stopped.

Three deep gashes scored the leather — ragged and perfectly spaced, like fingers splayed in a moment of fury.

Scott's hand.
Scott’s claws.

Stiles stared at the slashes. His face didn’t shift, not even slightly.

His own hand landed on the headrest. And then his fingers began to tap.
The same familiar fluid, rolling pattern—a slow swoosh, like a brushstroke curving through still air.

The party was too loud, too hot, too fogged with perfume and beer fumes… but Stiles slipped through it with ease as he was built for chaos. He hadn’t been invited, but that never mattered. All it took was a well-timed smile, a clever compliment dropped into small talk, a joke that made people laugh before they realized they’d never seen him before in their lives.

He didn’t stick close to Scott—better to keep distance tonight.
Scott was probably still mad at him, or scared, or both. No reason to poke at that.

So Stiles drifted instead, a ghost in the periphery, weaving between knots of teenagers like smoke.

The noise pressed against his skull, but he had a sound to focus on: Scott’s heartbeat. It was louder than usual, almost unnaturally strong, pounding in his chest like an animal slamming itself against the cage of his ribs. Stiles tracked it through walls and crowds like sonar, felt it spike the instant the full moon broke through the clouds.

The moon was beautiful.
Romantic even, if you didn’t know better.
If you weren’t listening to your best friend coming apart.

From the terrace, Scott stumbled inside, pale and sweating, looking like he was about to faint or throw up — or shift. His eyes darted wildly, his body thrumming on the edge of something he couldn’t contain. He almost barreled into Stiles but kept moving, pushing through the crowd.

“Scott—” Stiles tried, but his friend was already gone. By the time Stiles reached the front door, Scott was peeling away in his mom’s car, tires screeching down the street.

Stiles swore under his breath and turned toward the Jeep—
—just as Allison nearly ran into him. She was breathless, pupils blown wide, clearly having chased Scott out.

She stared at him with instant recognition.
Scott’s friend.

“What was that?” she demanded.

Stiles slipped into a smile, smooth as any other great liar, and told her the truth — sideways.

“Don’t mind him. He’s dealing with a nasty infection. Nothing contagious.” A little shrug, easy as breathing. “Told him he should’ve stayed home if he was feeling…under the weather.” His gaze flicked past her shoulder to the moon overhead, betraying just a touch too much thought.

Allison’s face pinched with worry. “Is he going to be alright?”

“Surely. Probably.” Stiles softened it a beat later. “Actually, I should go check on him.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Not a good idea.” Stiles shook his head, earnest and unyielding. “Really. Best you stay here, enjoy the party. He’ll call you tomorrow. Apologize, probably with flowers.”

“Allison.”

Another voice cut through the noise.

Derek Hale stepped out of the shadows, moonlight catching the hard line of his face.

“I’m a friend of Scott’s,” he said. His gaze flicked to Stiles, then back to her. “Not very gentlemanly of him to leave you stranded. Would you like a ride home?”

Stiles’s jaw ticked—but his tone stayed pleasantly smooth. “Excuse us, Allison. Scott’s friends need a word.” He grabbed Derek’s arm and steered him a few steps away.

The mask dropped.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Stiles hissed.

“What does it look like?” Derek’s voice was bored, but heat simmered under it. “I’m offering her a ride.”

“You’re not driving her anywhere.” Stiles clicked his tongue, smiling like they were sharing a joke.

Derek’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll drive her. Before Scott comes looking for her.”

“Why do you even care?” Stiles asked.

“I’m willing to help him—because if I don’t, he’s going to die tonight.” Derek’s voice snapped tight.

Stiles’s edge faltered, just for a second. “…Die how?”

“Horribly. It’s the full moon and the hunters are out.” Derek’s jaw tightened. “I need to draw Scott to me—and keep him from going after her.”

“What if I say I don’t want you anywhere near Scott?”

“It’s not my best friend’s life on the line,” Derek shot back.

Stiles went quiet, calculating.
He leaned in, too close, eyes sharpened to a warning.

“Go on your merry way,” he murmured. “But if Scott dies tonight, I’ll come for you. And I’ll make you wish you burned with the rest of your family—”

The words sank in like a blade. Derek’s face cracked—just a fraction—before a growl rumbled in his chest. His hand shot out, claws curling into Stiles’s collar as he yanked him close, fangs bared.

But Stiles didn’t flinch. He smirked, voice dropping to a mock whisper.
“Careful, creep wolf. People are watching.”

Derek flicked his gaze around—saw a few partygoers staring uneasily. With a snarl, he released him. But something in the back of his mind kept scratching, prickling.

This kid wasn’t afraid. Not in the slightest.

Something was wrong with him.
Stiles didn’t feel human enough.
And that fierce, possessive protectiveness—so sharp it bordered on feral—wasn’t a human instinct. That was pack behavior. Werewolf behavior.

And yet…look at him. Skinny, deathly-pale, jittery Stiles? A werewolf?
He looked like he’d snap in a stiff breeze.

Scott barely fit the mold himself, but at least he had some physical power to him.

But then again, the most dangerous things hide best in plain sight.
And Stiles felt dangerous in a way Derek couldn’t name.

He was burning alive from the inside out.

It started deep inside him — something crawling beneath his skin — twisting, fighting, clawing its way up his nerves. Every muscle seized at once. Pain knifed through him, sharp and internal, like his own body was trying to tear itself apart.

By the time he reached his bedroom, he was shaking so hard he could barely turn the doorknob. His vision tunneled. The full moon glared through the window, its light cold and merciless. It shone through the thin curtain like a spotlight, its light too white, too sharp — blinding in a way that made his head pound harder.

Scott’s breath hitched as the light hit him — it felt personal, invasive, as if it was watching him and calling out to him.

Scott stumbled toward the bathroom. He tore off his shirt before he even realized what he was doing and stumbled into the tub, twisting the handle until freezing water burst from the showerhead. It hit his shoulders in heavy streams, ran down his spine, soaked his hair and face.

It helped — a little.
The water cooled his skin, but not the fire underneath. The heat beneath his skin was spreading — rolling through his body like wildfire trapped under flesh. He wasn’t just overheating. He was boiling.

Hands braced against the tub, head bowed, he gasped for breath as the water beat down.

Then something shifted.

A deep crack rolled through his spine — the sensation of bones realigning, muscle fibers pulling too tight, trembling like wires drawn to breaking.

The pressure built behind his ribs — a low, dense thrum that spread outward, crawling up his spine, into his jaw, his skull. His hands clawed at the edge of the tub, fingers cramped and curled. He looked down just as his nails tore through the tips of his fingers — not blood, just rawness — and the claws slid out like they’d always been there.

The mirror fogged over, a hazy reflection staring back at him through the steam.

He caught a glimpse.

Scott stared, too shocked to scream. His breath came in harsh, stuttering bursts. The pain rolled upward — through his shoulders, into his jaw. His teeth eeth ached so hard he thought they’d crack. The ache became pressure. The pressure became tearing. His gums bled hot and metallic as his canines lengthened, pushing through the blood filling his mouth.

Then his eyes—
Gold.
Bright.
Animal.

They glowed faintly against the steam, lit from within.

His reflection wavered in the fog — a boy barely there anymore, caught mid-change between something fragile and something invincible.

His body felt foreign — stronger, faster, unbreakable — and utterly wrong.

He staggered backward to the bedroom. His new claws scraped long grooves into the wooden door. The world sharpened around him — the hiss of water in the pipes, the electric hum in the walls, distant footsteps from the street outside, and his own heartbeat pounding behind his ears.

The room dimmed. Or his vision changed — narrowing, focusing, then blurring again as his pupils stretched and consumed the brown of his irises, gold flaring outward once more.

His mind started to thin, his thoughts slipping between the cracks of instinct and fear.
He tried to remember his name, his mom’s voice, Stiles’s laugh — anything to anchor him —
but the moon was louder.

A knock cut through the air, sharp enough to slice through the static in his skull.

“Scott?”

Stiles.

The voice was muffled through the door, but it might as well have been right in Scott’s ear. He froze, every nerve firing at once.

“Hey, man, you okay? You looked—”
A pause. A soft thud as Stiles leaned his weight against the door.
“You looked bad.”

Scott tried to answer, but his voice caught — too raw, too strange. His tongue felt thick, his teeth no longer fit right in his mouth. He swallowed hard, the taste of iron still fresh.

“I’m fine,” he rasped, the sound splitting on the way out, scraping like metal dragged over stone.

Silence. Then Stiles again, his voice steadier now.
“You don’t sound fine.” The knob rattled gently. “C’mon, open up.”

“Go home, Stiles!”
It ripped out of him, the voice wrong — gravelled, warped, not quite human.

Stiles sighed, that stubborn, weary noise he made whenever he thought Scott was being difficult on purpose.

“Not happening.”

“I said GO!”

The shout hit the door like a shockwave. It was deeper than his voice should go, an animal’s warning rumbling out of his chest. The echo of it startled even him; he stumbled back from the door, horrified by the sound of his own voice.

On the other side, Stiles’s voice softened.
“Scott. Please.”

Scott’s resolve cracked. He crossed the room and unlatched the lock, easing the door open just enough for the hallway light to spill in. He kept himself tucked behind it, shoulder braced against the frame.

Stiles stood there, annoyed, mid-scolding — but the moment he caught a glimpse of Scott’s face, something in his expression faltered.

Scott shook his head quickly and drew the door closer to his body.
“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Too late,” Stiles said quietly. “Now move.”

He pushed. The door gave.

Scott stumbled back into the dim room, one arm half-raised to shield his face. He didn’t want to be seen like this. Not by Stiles. Not by anyone.

“Hey,” Stiles said, slowly, palms lifted. His voice was gentle but his eyes sharp, tracking the tremors running through Scott’s body. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Just — breathe.”

Scott’s eyes — wrong, glowing a faint, feverish gold — flicked to Stiles and then away, like the light itself hurt him. His fingers twitched, claws only half-formed, glinting wet and dark.

He shook his head again, claws digging hard into his hair.

“Get out,” he whispered. “I can’t — I don’t—”

He sounded like a kid again, small and scared.
Scott had always looked small to Stiles. Kind, in that boyish, hesitant way — the kid who smiled too easily, apologized too much, never knew what to do with his hands.
But now his hands were shaking for an entirely different reason. 

Stiles moved forward a step, cautious, as if approaching a wounded animal.
“We’ll figure it out,” he murmured. “Just breathe. You can—”

But Scott couldn’t breathe. His chest heaved like he was drowning, lungs refusing to pull enough air. His body jerked with violent shudders, muscles tightening under the skin until they looked ready to tear.

His back arched. A sound tore out of him — raw, animal. The crack of bone followed, echoing through the room. He took a step back — then his knees buckled, one clawed hand slamming against the wall to keep himself upright.

“Scott!” Stiles lunged, catching him by the shoulders, trying to steady him — but Scott thrashed, gasping, eyes wide and unfocused.

“I can’t—” he choked. “I can’t stop it, I can’t—”

“I know,” Stiles said quickly. “I know, buddy. Just — listen to me. Focus on my voice.”

Scott’s claws raked into Stiles’s shoulder, leaving deep grooves. Not in attack — just grounding himself, clinging to the only thing he recognized. He didn’t know his own strength yet.

But Stiles didn’t flinch. He held on, steady, unwavering, gaze locked on Scott’s.

( If only Scott noticed the shy, pulsing black veins creeping up Stiles’s arms, eager to drink down every shred of pain, fear, and horror through the contact.
If only he knew how easy Stiles could breathe while he was choking on his own blood. )

Scott pressed his forehead to Stiles’s sternum, desperate, focusing on the slow, unreasonably calm heartbeat beneath.

Another crack. Scott’s spine bent sharply; ribs shifted beneath the skin. A feral sound ripped from him — half-scream, half-snarl — and he lurched, knocking Stiles off-balance. Stiles hit the floor, rolled, and pushed himself up just in time to grab Scott’s arm again.

“Hey! Look at me!”

But Scott wasn’t hearing him anymore.

All Stiles could do was watch as Scott’s body betrayed him inch by inch.

The room filled with grotesque music — bones grinding, snapping, resetting. Joints popping free, locking again in alien shapes. His shoulders hunched, fingers digging into the floorboards, spine lengthening until he was half-crouched, half-fallen.

Scott’s face contorted — jaw lengthening, gums splitting as new teeth pushed through.  Muscles along his neck bulged, cords tightening like ropes under skin. His breaths came out as growls, chest expanding unnaturally wide, ribs straining under the change.

Stiles reached toward him — and Scott recoiled like he’d touched fire.

His lips curling back as a snarl replaced words. His gaze snapped to Stiles — sharp, empty, gold swallowing every last trace of brown.

“Scott…”

The thing that had been Scott lifted its head.

For half a second — just half — something human flickered in his gaze. Something terrified and small, a silent apology trembling behind the gold.

Then it was gone and the creature staring back at Stiles wasn’t his friend anymore. Its breath came out in slow, deep huffs, like a predator settling into the hunt. It tilted its head, studying him with inhuman focus, lips peeling back to reveal rows of wet, glistening teeth.

No recognition.
No hesitation.
No trace of the boy who cared too much, who always tried to do the right thing.

The thing dropped to all fours, nostrils flaring. A growl built in the creature’s chest — low, guttural, vibrating through the floorboards.

“Come on, man,” Stiles whispered.

The wolf was stalking toward him — eyes locked on him like prey.

Then — a howl.

It rolled out from deep in the forest, distant but strong, rising and falling in perfect rhythm with the moon.

A call.

The effect was instant.

The werewolf froze, muscles taut. Its head snapped toward the window, ears twitching. The growl in its chest softened into something conflicted, as if something larger was tugging at it — calling it home.

It moved toward the window. In a single fluid motion, it crouched, ready to leap.

Stiles tried to grab him by the arm but the creature shoved him back. The back of its clawed hand caught him across the face, sending him crashing into the wall. The drywall cracked. For a moment Stiles saw nothing but white noise.

It snarled once — a warning — then turned again toward the open night.

By the time Stiles pushed himself upright, lungs heaving, body shaking from adrenaline, the wolf was gone. Only the torn curtains remained, swaying in the cold air from the open window. The echo of claws striking earth was already fading into the distance.

Two slashes carved down the left side of his face, deep enough that he could feel the ridged edges beneath his fingertips. The blood running down his jaw was thick and dark — not red so much as blackened, viscous as tar. Warm only for a second before cooling unnaturally fast against his skin.

His fingers curled around the window frame.

They left dark streaks across the peeling white paint.

He stared into the forest where Scott had vanished, the moonlight throwing silver across his eyes—reflective, inhuman, catching the world like a predator’s gaze. Whatever expression he wore wasn’t something any friend should have to see.

His heartbeat steadied into a colder rhythm, the familiar warmth of panic — or adrenaline, or human concern — draining out of him like color leeching from a photograph.

He tapped the windowsill once. Then again.
Every beat left another dark print behind.

He should go after Scott.
Of course he should.

That was the right thing to do.
Find him before someone else did. Keep him from hurting anyone—keep someone from hurting him.

Scott was his best friend. The quiet kid who carried spiders outside instead of killing them, who believed everyone deserved a second chance. And now he was… that.

A newborn wolf thrown into the world with no warning, no guidance, and too much power coiling beneath his skin.

Scott needed him.

But—

Stiles felt something inside him snap just slightly out of place.
The fox stretched its limbs, tasting the night air like it was a promise.

Stiles pressed a palm against the windowsill, chest rising slowly, too slowly. Cold washed through him — an ancient, quiet cold that dulled his humanity, smothered it under instinct.

People are going to die.

Maybe not tonight.
But soon.

And the thought… the thought didn’t horrify him the way it should have.

Instead of fear, he felt the thin familiar ribbon of excitement, curling delicate in his stomach like frost spreading along glass.

And all because the boy who kept him grounded, who softened the edges of his nature by existing — was now a creature of claws and fangs and primal instinct.

Scott had been his soft gravity.
The gentle voice that made the fox lie down and be still.

But Scott was a wolf now.
Wild. Reactive. Dangerous.

Stiles’s fingers tightened around the frame until the wood cracked.

He inhaled.
Exhaled.
Carefully.

He was losing control — losing the thin, trembling leash he’d kept wrapped around his worst instincts.

His anchor didn’t feel like an anchor anymore. It felt like a weight slipping from his hands, dragging him under instead of grounding him.

Stiles blinked once, slow, his mind sharpening into a cold, perfect point.

He needed to find Scott.

Derek should’ve felt relief when Allison’s door clicked shut behind her. She was safe — that was supposed to be one thing off his list. But the moment he slipped back into the tree line, the night pressed in on him like something alive. The moon hung heavy and predatory over the preserve, its light slick and silver across the undergrowth.

A night like this made even experienced wolves stupid.

And Scott?
A brand-new werewolf.
An easy target.

Derek expected the kid to drift instinctively toward the last familiar scent he’d been clinging to — Allison, soft and warm and full of human comfort. Newly changed wolves always chased whatever memory burned brightest.

But then the night split with a howl.

A low-frequency order that thrummed in the bones of every wolf within miles.

The Alpha calling his Betas.

Derek stopped mid-stride, breath frosting in the air.

“Damn it,” he hissed, veering toward the sound.

The call of an Alpha was the kind of summons even an older wolf had to grit his teeth against. Scott wouldn’t be able to fight it at all.

Derek tore through the woods, lungs burning, dodging trees that rose like black ribs from the earth. The ground stank of damp leaves, cold soil, and Scott’s trail — erratic, panicked, hot with fear-sweat and adrenaline.

He found him near a shallow ravine.

Scott moved like an animal who hadn’t learned his own body yet — too fast, too clumsy, far too loud. His breathing was ragged and wet, the sound of a kid drowning in instincts too big for him. His eyes burned an unstable gold as he tracked the Alpha’s call like a hunting dog.

“Scott,” Derek hissed.

Scott’s head snapped up—eyes blown wide.

He didn’t recognize him.
There wasn’t even hesitation.

Scott lunged.

Derek braced, catching him by the shoulders, spinning and throwing him down the slope. Scott rolled, scrambled to his feet, and charged again with blind ferocity.

Scott tackled him against a tree. Derek slammed an elbow into his ribs, twisted, and pinned him to the ground, but Scott bucked up beneath him with a raw, guttural snarl.

Derek grabbed him by the scruff and threw him back.

Scott staggered upright, panting like a cornered dog, and came again.

Enough.

This time Derek met him head-on — shifted halfway without hesitation.
His bones snapped into sharper angles, muscles thickening. His teeth lengthened until they cut into his lower lip. His eyes kindled into a fierce, unforgiving blue.

He caught Scott mid-charge and overpowered him instantly, slamming him against a pine so hard the bark cracked and splintered. Derek pinned him with one forearm across the collarbone, weight crushing him still.

The young wolf whimpered — frantic, terrified, still trying to obey the Alpha’s call even as he twitched beneath Derek’s hold.

“Easy,” Derek growled. “I said EASY.”

Scott snapped at him once. Derek drove him harder into the trunk until the fight drained from his limbs, leaving only tremors of exhaustion.

And then—

A voice cut through like a knife.

“Get your hands off him.”

Derek’s head snapped up.

Stiles — of all people — stepped out from between the trees, soaked with dew and sweat. A line of dried dark blood streaked along his jaw like rough war paint. His hands hung steady at his sides — not fists, not raised, just still in a way that was deeply wrong for a boy who normally vibrated with so much excess energy.

His eyes—
his eyes were carved from something dark and cruel.

Derek’s grip tightened instinctively on Scott.

“Back off,” Derek barked. “You shouldn’t be here. He’s dangerous. He’ll rip you apart the first chance he gets.”

Stiles stepped closer, utterly unbothered. “He already tried.”

That made Derek hesitate. Really hesitate.

The blood on Stiles’s cheek…
And no wound beneath it.
Faster healing than even most werewolves.

A chill crawled down Derek’s spine.

“This isn’t your fight,” Derek said, quieter now. “Get out of here.”

“This is exactly my fight.” Stiles’s voice didn’t even rise. “He’s mine.”

Derek blinked.
Interesting choice of words.

For a heartbeat — one small, terrifying heartbeat — Derek felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. His wolf took a step back inside him without his permission.

Scott whined under Derek’s arm, shivering hard.
Caught between two threats stronger than him.

“Listen to me—” Derek started, but the words died in his throat.

Derek snapped his head toward the sound the moment the rustling began — measured footfalls, too heavy and deliberate to be animals. Scott froze mid-breath, hackles raised, ears twitching. Stiles went still, like a shadow caught in place.

The woods went still so suddenly it felt unnatural — like the whole forest had forgotten to breathe. 

A distant crunch of leaves.
Leather. Metal. Cold iron.
Human sweat layered over gun oil.

Hunters.

“Too late,” Derek said, jaw locking. “They’re here. Run.”

No more time to argue.

He shoved Scott toward Stiles and broke left, sprinting into the dark — but not away from them. He kept pace alongside, shadowing them like a wolf guarding a flank. Scott staggered toward Stiles, half-human breaths hitching in his chest.

Stiles hauled the wolf deeper into the trees, one hand twisted in Scott’s fur. Scott followed with surprising compliance, trembling with the last threads of feral panic.

They didn’t get ten steps.

Then—

FWUMP.

The flashbang tore the night apart in a burst of white light and shuddering sound.

Scott screamed — raw, animal, a ripping of breath. Clawed hands flew to his ears as his senses overloaded. He dropped to all fours again, panting, snarling, losing the fragile hold on his humanity.

Stiles, however—

Didn’t so much as flinch.
He dropped behind a fallen tree in one smooth motion, swallowed by shadow as if he belonged there. No panic. Just a cold, foxlike stillness.

Scott, on the other hand, launched straight toward the danger.

Straight toward his death.

Derek moved to intercept — but the shot was faster.

THWIP.

The arrow ripped through Scott’s upper arm and buried itself in the tree behind him, pinning him there like an insect on display. He let out a strangled, broken cry. His legs kicked helplessly as he tried to free himself, blood dripping hot and fast down his elbow.

Pain dragged him down, dragged him inward — tearing the monster back inch by inch.

His form shuddered, bones beginning to unwind from the monstrous shape, skin smoothing over warped angles.
Claws retracted halfway. The gold in his eyes flickered.

His chest hitched in frightened, human gasps.

Stiles broke from the shadows and sprinted toward Scott. He appeared at his side — quiet, quick, eyes unreadably dark.

“You back with me?” he asked, breath shallow.

Scott blinked up at him, confusion warping the soft lines of his face. He didn’t speak, but there was recognition in his eyes again.

“Good,” Stiles murmured. “Try to stay that way.”

He gripped the arrow’s shaft and snapped it off cleanly.

Scott hissed, sweat breaking across his forehead, but stayed conscious.

Derek’s attention flicked to the hunters closing in — three of them, moving in tight formation, weapons raised.

They saw Scott and Stiles.

They did not see Derek until he hit them.

He burst from behind like a storm — half-shifted, blue eyes burning. He slammed the first hunter into the dirt so hard the man’s gun skittered into darkness. The second spun with a knife — Derek crashed into him, claws raking across Kevlar and sending him sprawling.

The forest erupted into shouts, snarls, snapping branches, bodies hitting earth.

A perfect distraction.

Stiles pulled Scott’s arm over his shoulder. “On your feet.”

Scott staggered but obeyed, each breath a pained whine he tried to swallow. Stiles dragged him deeper into the dark, glancing back only once — his eyes unreadable — at the chaos Derek was carving through bodies.

One hunter remained upright — the one with the crossbow.

He saw two smaller figures slipping away between the trees.

He never saw their faces.

What a shame.

Scott finally collapsed. Whatever strength he’d been running on bled out in an instant. His knees buckled and he hit the ground hard, breaths tearing in and out of him. Somewhere along the sprint, the shift had fallen apart — Stiles hadn’t even noticed when the claws vanished, when the animal sound in Scott’s throat went silent. Now he was just a boy again: pale, shaking, drenched in sweat.

He curled around his injured arm, fingers pressed to the torn flesh like he could hold himself together.The last hour slammed back into him in jagged flashes — cold water, raised voices, the crack of a crossbow. Almost everything between the shower and getting shot was smudged into shadows and blur.

“You alright?” Stiles asked, voice thin with an attempt at casual.

Scott gritted out, “No. My arm fucking hurts.”

Stiles huffed — too sharp, too tired. Irritation shoved past sympathy. “Yeah, well—shut up. You’ll be fine by morning.”

Branches snapped behind them. Stiles reacted instantly, stepping between Scott and the figure approaching through the trees.

Derek.

The older werewolf slowed as he approached, his eyes scanning Scott’s arm, Scott’s face, and finally Stiles’s defensive posture.

“Who were they?” Scott demanded. He still clutched his arm like pressure alone could contain the pain. “Those guys with the guns—who the hell were they?”

“Hunters,” Derek said simply. “They’ve been hunting us for centuries.”

“Us?” Scott shot back. “You mean you. I don’t want to be part of this!”

Stiles’s voice dropped, quiet but firm, almost apologetic. “I don’t think you have a choice anymore, man.”

“I didn’t want this!” Scott’s eyes darted between Derek and Stiles like they were two strangers who had dragged him into some nightmare conspiracy.

Derek’s jaw tightened. “Didn’t you? You’ve sure liked what you could do on the lacrosse field. The senses. The strength. The speed normal people can only dream of.”

Scott’s mouth clamped shut. Color crept into his cheeks, hot and miserable.

“You don’t get to hold that against him,” Stiles snapped, bristling. “He didn’t even know what was happening to him.”

Derek’s gaze slid to him. “But you did, didn’t you?”

“Yes!” Stiles barked back. “And I’ve been trying to make him understand it since the bite!”

Seemingly out of nowhere, Stiles was more animated, bouncing back to his usual chaotic, cheerful self now that his best friend was back to normal and actually watching him.

Derek’s eyes narrowed, like he was piecing together a puzzle he didn’t like the shape of.

“You did a shit job tonight,” Derek said flatly. “He would’ve killed that girl.”
The words landed like a stone, but Derek didn’t wait to see the reaction.
He turned to Scott. “You’re going to need me if you want to control this.”

“Bull—shit,” Stiles cut in immediately. “We’ll be just fine without you stalking around.”

Derek looked at him again, tilting his head the faintest degree — a predator recognizing something strange.

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Derek said softly.

“Maybe,” Stiles answered. “But at least Scott listens to me.”

There was that same quiet conviction in his voice that Derek had heard before. It wasn’t mere confidence — it was a steadfast certainty that Scott would stand by his friend, no matter what.

He gave a soft, humorless scoff and stepped back into the trees without another word.

Two young werewolves to deal with now.
One far more dangerous than the other.

Dawn bled a washed-out gray across the sky as the two of them emerged from the trees like ghosts. Scott stumbled forward like a man clawing back from death—clothes torn, dirt smeared into his skin, a limp dragging at his gait. Under the rising light he looked hollowed out, face pale, eyes too dull even to hold fear.

Stiles walked ahead without looking back at first, his exhaustion more irritation than physical strain. When he finally glanced over his shoulder to make sure Scott was still following, he scrubbed at the crusted blood on his cheek with the sleeve of his jacket until it disappeared. Scott didn’t need to see it. He had enough to worry about.

“You look like a beat-up mutt,” Stiles called when they reached the Jeep, tone sharp to hide the relief creeping up his throat. “Get in, and maybe I won’t say ‘I told you so.’”

Stiles climbed in on the driver’s side.

Scott didn’t argue. He just opened the passenger door, slid inside, and curled in on himself like something wounded trying to take up less space. Even in his exhaustion there was tension coiled tight in his body. Stiles reached into the backseat, grabbed a spare hoodie, and tossed it at Scott’s head.

Scott pulled the hoodie over his shoulders like armor, the silence between them weighted with things unspoken — his stupidity, Stiles’s unspoken scolding, the night’s events.

For a while, the only sound was the Jeep’s engine as Stiles guided them out of the forest and onto the asphalt road toward town.

Finally, Scott rasped, “You know what actually worries me the most?”

“If you say Allison, I’m turning this car around and dumping your ass back in the woods to live off squirrels,” Stiles snapped, eyes fixed on the road.

Scott gave a breath that was almost a laugh — almost — but didn't quite make it.
"She hates me."

"I covered for you," Stiles said, throwing a quick glance his way. "It's fine. She'll be mad—sure, you ditched her on your first date, not exactly the ideal romantic gesture—but trust me, that’s not your biggest problem right now.” His tone slid lighter, teasing. "Just come up with a killer apology. Or hell, tell her the truth. Maybe she's into the feral forest creature thing."

Scott didn’t rise to it. Didn’t even roll his eyes. He just looked at him, one brow raised, too wrung out to bite back with a comeback.

They both knew Scott was dragging Allison into the conversation only to dodge the real thing clawing at him underneath.

His forehead drifted forward until it pressed against the cool window with a soft thud. He stayed like that — slumped, folded in on himself — like he could press the panic out of his body and leave it smeared on the glass instead.

The worst part wasn’t the pain — though every muscle in his body felt torn apart and clumsily put back together. It wasn’t the flashes of running and snarling, hearing hunters shouting behind him. It wasn’t even the memory of the arrow driving into his arm, the shock of it.

It was the simple fact alone—

He was a werewolf.

He swallowed hard, breath trembling.
He felt dangerously close to crying.

His hands went slack in his lap, then curled slowly — like he was afraid they might change again if he looked at them too long.

“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to feel right now,” he whispered, barely audible. His voice cracked on the last word—a tiny, splintering sound in the quiet car.

“That thing last night… that wasn’t me. I wasn’t… I wasn’t there. I heard myself in my own head, but I wasn’t driving, I wasn’t—” His breath hitched, sharp and unsteady.

“Hey,” Stiles cut in suddenly, voice too light, too soft. His hand landed on Scott’s shoulder. “We’ll get through this. You’re not alone.”

Scott frowned just to keep the tears back. “Stiles…”

But Stiles didn’t let him finish.
He squeezed Scott’s shoulder once, firm. “You didn’t hurt anyone, okay? Not a single person.”

Scott’s throat tightened. “I could have.”

“Yeah,” Stiles said softly, the brittle brightness slipping from his tone. “But you didn’t. Because Derek got there. I was there. And because you—” he hesitated, something unreadable flickering in his expression, “…you stopped before it got that far.”

Scott wasn’t sure about that. His memory was fractured — dark shapes moving, heat flooding his veins, his teeth bared at anything that moved.

A call he’d followed without thought.

He swallowed, staring down at his hands again, at the faint tremor in his fingers.

Even now, with Scott’s world torn apart and something monstrous breathing under his skin, Stiles was still reaching for him. And Scott was grateful—because what would he do if he had to face all of this alone?

When had the roles reversed?

And then it hit him — Stiles had known.
He’d known exactly what Scott was becoming.
He’d stood his ground about it.

A question from long ago rose unbidden, cutting through his thoughts like it had been waiting for this exact moment:

Do you think you could be friends with a monster?

Back then, it had seemed almost meaningless. Scott had thought Stiles was being overly dramatic. But now…

Scott lifted his head, heart thudding too fast, and looked at Stiles out of the corner of his eye — trying to look without making it obvious.

This version of Stiles — erratic, sarcastic, a little unhinged — this was the Stiles Scott knew.
And it clashed violently with the other version, the one Scott had seen the night before in Stiles’s room.

That Stiles hadn't just been angry. He had been cold. Razor-sharp in his quiet. A blade that had never been dull, only ever sheathed.

Scott could still hear him — calm, terrifyingly calm — as he'd faced down a creature with more strength and deadly instinct, as if he was the real apex predator in the room. Like he wasn't afraid, because fear was something that happened to lesser beings.

Scott had known him for years — loved him like a brother — and still, he struggled to believe that side of Stiles existed.

Just a side Scott had never seen in its full glory. Something cruel, veiled, and quietly dangerous had uncoiled behind Stiles’s eyes that night. When Scott had threatened him — unintentionally, instinctively — that thing in Stiles hadn’t answered with claws or fangs, but with something worse: a predator’s patience.

It had looked at him — not as a friend, not as prey, but as a threat to be dismantled if necessary.

And now, sitting in the passenger seat of the battered Jeep, Scott couldn’t unsee any of it.

Stiles’s skin was too pale under daylight, always too cold to the touch since Scott could remember. Dark bruised shadows lived beneath his eyes. His stare — too bright and too dark all at once, changing depending on the light.

And those fingers—drumming a rhythm on the steering wheel with quiet, steady precision. Pacing.

The words slipped out before Scott could stop them.
“…What are you?”

Stiles blinked. His head turned, slowly, like the question had genuinely caught him off guard. He scoffed, rolling his eyes like Scott had asked the stupidest thing in the world.

“What do you mean?”

“The way you acted last night,” Scott murmured, voice cracking around the edges. “You weren’t scared at all.”

Stiles shrugged, casual.

“I knew you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“How?” Scott pressed.

“I trust you,” Stiles said lightly.

“No. You were sure.” Scott’s voice dropped a few notes. “You should’ve run. You should’ve been the first to run.”

Stiles let out a breath—half laugh, half something else.

“Yeah, well… I’m not exactly known for making good decisions.”
He forced a grin, bright and mocking and familiar.
“Or maybe I’m just that smart and brave and an amazing friend. Ever think of that?”

But Scott wasn’t buying it.

“You’re not human,” he said quietly, relentless.

Stiles’s laugh this time had an edge. "So what—werewolves are real, and suddenly you're doing a roll call of cryptids?"

“You knew I was turning,” Scott said, leaning in, pulse hammering. “Nobody’s that sure without a reason.”

“You should really try reading a book sometimes, Scott.”

“You don’t act human,” Scott insisted. “Not always. I never noticed it before, but now—”
He swallowed.
“You don't smell like anyone else. Something's... different about you.”

"I can change my cologne if it bothers you this much," Stiles said, offhand. But the joke rang hollow.

“Stop deflecting!” Scott snapped, nerves frayed thin. “You’re clearly not human. So what are you?”

Silence dropped heavy between them.

Scott hadn’t intended to rile himself up, but he needed an answer. Maybe, on some level, he even hoped it would be true. He was looking for someone — anyone — who might understand what it was like to be in his peculiar situation. And if that someone could be his best friend, all the better.

The air in the car turned heavy — charged and cold, like the pressure before a storm. Again. Stiles looked like a silent fury. Again. The kind that made every hair on Scott's body rise. And Scott was almost afraid of him. Again.

Stiles didn't look at him, didn't smile. Just drove, eyes fixed ahead, face carved from stone. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then, carefully, he tilted his head — not toward Scott, but away from him. Like he was rotating a truth he’d never intended to show Scott, offering it only from the safest possible angle.

"I'm a trickster spirit."

Scott blinked, caught off guard by the plainness of it. "Like a demon or…?"

"No," Stiles said sharply. Too forceful. "Not that."
He hesitated, and then a quieter admission. "Like a fox."

Scott furrowed his brow. "So you're... what? A werefox?"

"No," he said again, softer this time. "No shifting. Nothing like that. I meant what I said. I'm a fox spirit. It's more... spiritual. I'm drawn to mischief. To... chaos. I notice things. I nudge things. That's what tricksters do."

Scott blinked, uncertain whether to take him seriously.
"That sounds like a romanticized way of describing your personality disorder."

"You asked," Stiles muttered. His lips curled into a small, tired smile. “That’s the answer. Sorry if it’s not sexy or dramatic enough.”

Scott wanted to believe him.
He really did.

But that wasn’t all of it. Couldn’t be.

What he’d seen last night — the thing that had spoken through Stiles with cold, serrated precision — wasn’t just some mischievous fox. It was dark.

And Stiles — whatever he was — was holding it in.

Scott eased back in his seat, still watching him.

“A fox,” he repeated, tasting the word.

Stiles didn’t answer.

But he smiled — slow, sharp, with just a hint of teeth.

His fingers resumed their rhythm on the wheel, tapping in controlled intervals.
Like a tail flicking — with quiet, satisfied amusement.