Title: The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Rating: M (17+)

Summary: Amanda Stilinski only had one sister. Naomi's son has always doted on Stiles. Stiles loves Blair just as much as the older man loves him, and you know what they say about imitation. A 5+1 fic.
Prompt: (dotcom) ?thread=477578#t477578

Warnings: Teen Wolf/The Sentinel fusion, 5+1 fic format, minor character death, minor depression (as a result of the former), Blair is not fond of Deaton, mentions of magic!Stiles, Blair/Jim, Stiles/Derek, Sentinel/Guide, werewolf/human, temporary character death, reference to off-screen sexual encounter/relationship, unBeta'd, spoilers for S1-3 of TW and S4 of TS, language

-Stiles' First Imitation-

It's barely spring of '95 when Amanda Stilinski is contacted for the first time in two years by her flighty sister.

"'Manda," Naomi Sandburg starts off, and it takes Amanda a moment to place her voice. "Little sister, I need a bit of a favor."

"Oh my God, Naomi! How've you been? Of course; what can I do for you? I haven't heard from you in years!" Amanda finds herself yelping, a grin stretching her face. Naomi is certainly a soul you have to learn to love – but she's ultimately family, and Amanda does love her. Even if she does try to drown her older sister with too many words on occasion, just so she can at least have a half conversation that makes sense.

"I've been in this retreat for a few months, and the head guru has told me that the chakra's connected to Blair are out of whack because he's not in a good place. What he needs – instead of that stressful, structured university environment – is family. But I've still got a couple of weeks left here, and then pre-arranged reservations for a nature commune over in India. If I arranged the plane tickets, could you and John take him in for a couple of days? Just so he can purge himself of all that negative energy?"

Amanda finds herself a bit speechless, before she can reacclimatize herself to the whims and wills of her sister. But the next thing she knows, she's nodding, and saying into the phone, "Sure, Naomi, John and I'd love to have Blair over! Can it wait until the weekend, though? John's got a couple of files from the last big case at the precinct to finish up, and then our weekend's completely free. Plus, Blair will be done with classes for the holiday by Friday."

While she doesn't agree with the eccentricities of her sister, Amanda has seen enough to know: if you believe strongly enough in something for its own sake, it can affect you whether it's real or not. And Blair subscribes just enough to his mother's ways that, if Naomi calls him up with the news of the tickets, and the feeling that his 'aura's off' or something like that, he'll start feeling just a little off. It'll be better just to take the poor dear in for Easter break; even if he isn't as 'spiritually ill' as Naomi believes, it might be good for the graduate student to get out.

"Wonderful! Thank you, hun!" And Naomi hangs up.

It does take some getting used to – even as someone who grew up with the woman. Well… now she'll have something interesting to tell John over dinner. And maybe little Genim will profit from another face in the house for a bit; only three, and his vocabulary is already huge!

-TSFF-

Amanda is gratified to be right: Stiles warms right up to Blair, babbling happily away at the twenty-six-year old with a short halo of bronze curls and unusually bright blue eyes. And Blair, too, warms to her tiny son and his brunet buzz and equally unusual yellow-gold eyes, the stress of schooling falling off his shoulders in minutes.

For the next week, she and John entertain Blair in only the loosest sense – they feed him, give him a bed and a roof, offer him a place in their family outings – but it's really their vivacious, hyperactive child who captures Blair.

Neither can be seen without the other, and more-often-than-not, Blair is the one talking.

"Peas, c'sin B'air!" Stiles begs when Blair goes silent, his toddler eyes wide and imploring. "Mo'e 'tories! Mo'e 'ndians!"

John would have stepped in and relieved the young man of babysitting duty, but he seemed to absolutely love having someone to teach. He was a natural, and for once during that week, the parents knew exactly where their wild child was at any given moment. It was as much a blessing for them as it appeared to be for Blair.

The Stilinski home was filled with hours and hours of the warmly rising and falling cadences of a man invested in his subject, glittering tales of mythologies spun in the air and the mind. Genim ate them all up, and Blair just kept more coming. Shaman magic; elemental spirits; werewolves; Sentinels and Guides; Fae; ghosts; vampires; chakra powers – if there was something that had roots in an ancient culture, Blair had taken it and made it real.

By the time Blair left, the house felt just a little bit empty. Just a little bit quiet…

Until Blair called of his own violation a few days later. He'd made a connection with little Genim, and wanted to talk to the boy, even if it was just over the phone. Before John and Amanda knew it, their three year old was taking weekly – and sometimes bi-weekly – phone calls from the cousin he had, before that Easter week, not even known about. They became the highlight of his life.

And, of course, Genim took it upon himself to take up the cause. Suddenly, not only was their tiny little toddler hyper and active and going-going-gone, but intense. He grabbed everything he could that spoke of more-than-human. For a long time that meant, at his age, comic books, but the older he got the more complex his interests grew. By the time he was seven, posters of all kinds of genre – all about the maybes of the world – books, comic books, mythology encyclopedias, and VHS's of taped television specials littered his room.

And Blair just laughed, delightedly flattered.

-Stiles' Second Imitation-

It was cancer that took her down, when Genim was nine.

He was in her room when she flat-lined, and her final whisper – hoarse and weak and too loving – had been his name, and her adoration. 'L-love y'… G'nim…'

John was away (it wasn't his fault; a seven-car pile-up happened, and there was no pointer that had ever said 'this is the day your wife will die'). Scott was Genim's age, and still a little too raw over his dad's abandonment. There was only one person Genim could think to call.

"B-Blair! Blair, oh God, Blair, it hurts!"

He couldn't bring himself to care how raw he sounded, how broken. All he knew was that his mother was dead, and he needed someone to be there. Blair had always been there, just a phone call away (at four, when he was so scared to go to pre-school, sure something would steal him away if his parents left, like the Inuit Qallupilluk; at five, when he first met Scott, and wanted to assure Blair that he wasn't replacing him, no matter what; at six, bursting with too much excitement, and needing to share his new Batman obsession with someone; at seven, when he was pretty sure his family was being followed by an Old Norse hamingja, because good things kept happening one after another; at nine, when he needed someone to yell at, because Mr. McCall was a meanie and hurting Scott, but Dad wouldn't listen) and now would be no different.

"What the—? Genim, sweetheart, what's wrong?! Where are you?! Talk to me, kiddo!"

Blair was frantic. And he was there. Genim only sobbed harder, sucking in breath so fast he was nearly hyperventilating.

"Genim!" Blair's voice was hard and controlled; he hardly ever used that voice on his little cousin. It was a voice that demanded attention and obedience. "Focus. Now, can you tell me where you are? What hurts?"

"Hospital. C-can't breathe, Blair!"

Blair made a small kind of whimpering noise that Genim was dimly sure he wasn't supposed to hear. It smacked of panic. But when he spoke, his voice was like it always had been: low, soothing, and in control. "Take a deep breath—that's it. In and out. Okay. You can do it, just breathe. Slowly. Follow me: in, and, out. In, and, out. That's it. Just listen to me breathe, buddy."

Shakily, Genim listened as the call extended into double-digit territory, full of the sounds of Blair coaxing him through his first panic attack. The tears wouldn't stop, but at least he could breathe again.

"You good, sweetheart?"

"I—She—Blair, we can't—She can't be—!" he was starting to panic again, as he inadvertently reminded himself of his father. He wasn't stupid; he'd seen how his dad began to collapse as his mother wasted away.

"Hey now," Blair soothed, "You've been doing so good; don't back-track on me. I'm here, Gen—"

A white-hot rage filled Genim and he screeched trough the phone, insensible, "Don't call me that!"

He ignored Blair's hurt, confused stutter, barreling right over him. "Don't call me that! She's dead, and she called me that! You don't have the right when she's—She's dead and all I can think of—All that word means is that she's not here to call me that anymore!"

The steam ran out of him, and the next sentence came out in a broken breath of air, tired and horrified and alone, "It hurt so much, Blair. What am I gonna do? Me 'n' Dad still… still need her. She can't be g-gone…"

"… Oh, God, Ge—sweetheart," Blair moaned as he caught up to Genim's thought processes, self-correcting almost too late. His voice was just as devastated as Genim's – he had come to love Amanda and John as the family they were (as often as he called their son over the years, it was only natural that he'd spoken to them pretty regularly, too). "I—oh God. Honey. I'm here, I'm here."

"Help me, Blair. Please, make it stop."

"I—You can't just… stop hurt like this, kiddo. Someone you loved very much—When someone like that leaves your life… it leaves a big hole. All you can do is grieve, and learn to bear the loss. It will always be there, and that just means that… the person you lost… meant a whole lot to you." Blair always treated Genim like an adult, and this time was no different. A small part of Genim clung to that, desperate to find a way in which his whole world wasn't being turned inside out, even as what Blair was saying made the pain worse in its own way.

Blair sighed heavily on the other end of the phone, and Genim could almost see the older man running his fingers through his long curls – he'd gotten a picture when Blair started growing it out. The caption on the back – Surprise! What'd you think, Gen? You've seen the new look before Naomi, even. Does it suit me? – had made him giggle at the time. Now the memory of it was just a tiny calm in the middle of the storm.

"I don't know if it'll work for you; everybody has their preferred coping mechanisms - things that people do to try and overcome sadness or anger issues or addiction," his cousin clarified the big word before Genim could ask, and the younger boy committed it to memory, another word in his mental dictionary (a distraction). "But sometimes having something else to focus on – other people to concentrate your energies towards – can help. Do you want some suggestions?"

Blair's voice was calm and centered now, in spite of what Genim figured was still rolling beneath the surface. He'd been like that for a while now, ever since he found the man he roomed with – Jim Ellison. He said Jim had trouble keeping an even keel – whatever that meant, because Blair's voice was always just a little 'I know something you don't know' when he talked like that – and Blair was his guiding influence (the phrasing of which had originally been Genim's, and which he'd laughed hysterically over, before quoting all the time, in the same secretive tone).

"Y-yeah. Please, Blair," Genim begged miserably.

"Alright. Let's focus on what set you off first and foremost – if your name is too much, for whatever reason, then let's change it."

"Uh, what?"

"Let's change it. There's no reason to go digging up bad memories every time someone calls your name. And there are plenty of people all over who go by preferred nicknames; it's not a big deal." Blair was strange sometimes, but right then, Genim was beyond grateful for his odd ways of thinking. Locking his mother's last words away, so they were hers and hers alone and special and not sullied by this grief and other people's insensitivity, sounded perfect. "Alright! Something meaningful, I think, hm?"

Genim grunted in a vaguely acquiescent tone, beginning to feel worn out.

"How do you feel about 'Navin'? It's Hindi, and means 'new, novel' – like a new beginnings sort of thing."

Genim wrinkled his nose and shook his head, only to release a vocal raspberry when he belatedly remembered that Blair couldn't see him. Blair laughed (and if it was just a little strained, neither mentioned it), and responded, "Alrighty then! That's a resounding 'no'! How about 'Amias' – means 'loved'."

Genim's brow crumpled, and his breath hitched sharply in a sob. If they were giving him a new name so his old one didn't remind him of the bad time while his Mama had been sick, that one… didn't cut it. At all. It would just remind him that she had loved him, and now she wasn't around to keep showing that.

"Easy, easy now, buddy. Okay – that's a no-go. How about some non-traditional names, then? 'Noh', for the masks worn in Nogaku performance plays in Japan that look like they change expression just based on how you look at the mask?"

Genim blinked, and then snorted in derision. Blair was a fount of knowledge, and that was usually entertaining, but why was he choosing names like these? Genim really didn't want to look too deeply into that.

"Not that one either? Fine. Umm… hang on kiddo," he excused himself, and Genim could hear the rustle as he pressed the phone to his chest, and the muffled murmur of speech that had started off by a louder call for Jim. Wow, Blair was pulling out all the stops. "Alight, we've got the Big Guy's opinion on this now. What do you think of 'Stiles'? It means 'a structure which provides people a passage through or over a fence or boundary via steps, ladders, or narrow gaps'. What do you think?"

Genim blinked again, mulled it over carefully (like climbing over the gaping hole still far too recent in his mind, the one this name was meant to patch up), and sighed with a throat still too tight with tears, "Yeah. I like it."

He could almost hear Blair's pleased grin, and the man charged on, glad to at least appear to be helping. He was glad to be doing something – focusing on someone else. This was his coping mechanism, Ge—no, Stiles realized. And that… was strangely okay.

"Now that we've dealt with the biggest issue that we can do anything about…" Blair built up, "It wouldn't hurt to try and focus on other people. Making others happy, safe, healthy – that can keep you from drowning in your own hurts, and even go so far as to make you happy in the long run, too."

"… How?"

"Well, I do my best to make sure my poor roommate keeps himself in top shape. Jim's a cop, and his job can be dangerous on the best of days. If he's not doing so great, he could mess up in the field and—"

The way that Blair stopped so abruptly was actually what brought Stiles' attention to it. Jim was a cop – like Dad. And Jim needed Blair to remember to stay healthy – like… like Mama had done for Dad. And without—Without her, Dad might forget! Might get into trouble that he can't get out of, just because he's not fit! And—And Dad would leave too!

Blair fumbled his way out of that too-close-for-comfort suggestion, Jim's deep rumble accompanying him in the background of the phone. Stiles hummed and hawed at all the right moments, glad enough just of another voice talking to him, when there was nobody else, but half of his mind was already making plans. Plans for his dad. Because didn't his mom always complain how his cholesterol was high or something…?

And thus began the Stilinski household health-kick. The first time Stiles berated his father for his eating habits was the very same night he approached both John and Scott, and told them about his decision to change his name (though not why; neither of them needed a 'why', anyway, they just accepted Stiles' strangeness). The walls of their house would soon become privy to too-common arguments about food over the years.

And Blair was just a little heart-brokenly flattered.

-Stiles' Third Imitation-

Stiles couldn't bring himself to tell John about Scott's new status as a mythological creature. For one, the Sheriff would be far too likely to laugh it off before actually paying attention to what Stiles was saying. And for another, Stiles could see his father running himself into the ground hard and fast if he actually believed Stiles, in trying to keep his town safe from not only mundane crime, but supernatural crime, too. And he couldn't lose his dad like that – to the job, to stress, to fear, to being too close to the problem to get away with his life in-tact.

So he called the one person who he knew would believe him (and, based on the infamous press-conference of '99, also be able to keep a secret… even if he fumbled just a little once).

"Hello?" came Blair's cheerful answer.

"Cousin Blair?" Stiles answered, his nervousness coming out in a rapid tattoo of finger-tapping against an equally, counterpoint-jiggling leg. "I, ah, may have a problem. Or two. Maybe three, even, if you count the creepy Hale in all of this. Well, wait, I mean—"

"Whoa, slow down Stiles, and try again. Start from the beginning. Do I need to call Jim down? Does your father know? Are you in trouble with someone important?" Blair demanded.

"Ah! No, no! Or… Well, I don't think so…" he trailed off, considering the logistics of an unknown Alpha who wanted his best friend, the creepy lone wolf with a dead sister, and the way that Stiles knew he would be caught up in this, if only because he wasn't ever going to leave his best friend hanging if he could help it.

"Stiles." And Stiles really hated how Blair could do that 'tell me now, I'm older and more important than you, young man' voice even better than his dad. It was a tone that had to be answered.

"Right: the beginning. Well. Huh. Here goes: Werewolves are real, Scott was bit by a rogue one a couple of days ago, and I think – as the token human best friend – I'm going to be dragged into some serious supernatural shit real soon."

For a long minute, there was silence on the line. And then Blair sighed heavily, pulled the phone away to call out, "Jim, I think I need you," in a voice that Stiles was almost sure was too low to be heard from the detective's upstairs bedroom. A muffled conversation later, Blair was back on, and he said clearly, concisely, "Stiles, I think you might benefit from a story of my own – also true, thank you very much. How much time do you have on your hands? It's kind of a long tale."

Stiles sat back in his rolling chair contemplatively. Blair sounded grave. Blair was always serious when he needed to be, and always did his best to give Stiles all the information that he could to handle any given situation. If he was going to be telling a long story after hearing Stiles admit the existence of werewolves, Stiles figured that meant that he'd finally proven (and gotten similarly tangled up in) his own supernatural mess.

"I've got all night; Dad's asleep, and it's a Friday night."

Blair cleared his throat, and sounded like he was settling in for the long haul as he began, "It all started with my graduate thesis—"

"The one on the cultural importance of hallucinogens in shamanic rituals world-wide?" Stiles interrupted, momentarily skeptic.

"No, Stiles," Blair groaned, amused and annoyed in equal measures, as many people often were in the face of the brilliance that was Stiles Stilinski, "My doctorate thesis, not my masters. Now hush and listen before you decide you know it all."

"Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm listening now; seriously."

"As I said, it started with my thesis work. I was trying to prove the recessive traits in some modern-day people, that harkened back to the Native American example of the tribe Sentinel, of multiple enhanced senses…"

-TSFF-

"… so with the thesis unpublished, my reputation firmly self-defamed, and Jim's reputation more-or-less safe, Simon tried to offer me a working position on the force. I declined – I've had enough of guns being shot at me to last a lifetime, let alone the one they would have wanted to permanently put in my hand, and I was partial to my lovely locks. As a professional consultant for the force, though… I only had to go through arms training – I'm not required to carry – and I got to keep my hair.

"So that's what the public thinks I did: consult. And as for the MCU, they all knew the open secret: I was Jim's partner because I never lied. They accepted it, and they helped us keep it under wraps." Blair finished up a couple of hours later, his voice faintly hoarse from talking non-stop.

For his part, Stiles was surprised at the depth of his cousin's involvement, but not the trouble. Blair was as much of a trouble-magnet as Stiles was finding himself to be.

Stiles thanked Blair for his input – much of the werewolf lore that Blair had managed to sneak into his story was bouncing around Stiles' head, connecting with and refuting pieces he'd read on the internet and personal experiences with the two wolves openly in his life right now. They chatted more glibly for a while, blowing off the steam and seriousness of their earlier conversation, and then hung up.

A couple of weeks later, Stiles once more updated Blair on his supernatural status: like Blair had gained himself a Sentinel for life, it seemed as though (after the kanima-pool incident, the way he was growing more and more aware of Alpha-Derek's movements) he'd gained his own kind of for-life supernatural entourage. And like Blair was a human-plus-a-little-more, with his Guide empathy and abilities, Stiles was the same with his Spark potential.

And once more, Blair was worriedly flattered.

-Stiles' Fourth Imitation-

It was only as he was settling into his own bed, scratching at the itchy square of gauze Mrs. McCall had taped to his forehead (of all the things to injure him when he was constantly surrounded by supernatural threats, it just had to be a car crash… into an inanimate, unmoving object), that Stiles realized he'd once more copied Blair.

Doctor Deaton had said that after 'dying' in the tub of ice water, a darkness would forever surround his heart. After actually dying in the fountain, Blair had said he was forever bound to Jim, who had merged the anthropomorphic representations of their hearts.

Stiles brain would not shut up; he called Blair.

"'llo?" came the groggy mumble. Oops. He'd forgotten that, between getting rescued from the collapsed root cellar of the nemeton, dropping by Scott's house to get medically checked over with the rest of the Pack, and getting home, it was nearly one in the morning. Blair's voice grew more concerned, as he fought the sleep from his tone. "S'iles? Wha's wrong?"

"Blair…" the seriousness of his voice probably got to Blair even worse, and Stiles winced. But he couldn't help broadcasting his concern. "I think… I might be a shaman…?"

For a long, tense moment, nothing was said. And then Blair groaned softly, before entreating pathetically, a man grasping at straws, "Stiles, why in the name of all that is holy was that a question? After all I taught you, did you still indenture yourself to nature somehow?"

"… May…be? I don't know."

"Tell me from the beginning."

"Doctor Deaton said—" Stiles began.

Blair ran over him quickly enough, "You listened to the vet? Again? Stiles!"

"What?! He's an emissary!"

"One who, as far as I can tell from your reports, is unattached. And if he's dabbling Shamanic magics, he shouldn't be; he has his own training, and that is not it. What did he convince you and your idiot pups to do this time?"

"… Die? And then get pulled back?" Stiles hazarded meekly, already berating himself for coming to Blair, even if he was really, really worried that he was now somehow indebted to someone or something to be a shaman (or similar) now. An emissary for a Pack (the Hale Pack) he wouldn't mind, but those were two separate things! And in a rush of breath, before Blair could say something, he completed, "By, maybe, possibly… purposefully-drowning-ourselves-in-tubs-of-ice-wat er?"

After another drawn out moment, Blair moaned, with the air of someone who didn't realize they were speaking, "Fuck. Damn it… Aw, Jim, I've got an impulsive idiot for a cousin. Sorry I woke you, just… shit! Their mentor had them drown!"

Stiles lay silently on his end of the call, silently impressed and intimidated, all at once.

"Stiles?"

"… Yeah? You're not gonna bite my head off, are you?"

"No. I think your Alpha would object, quite thoroughly. Just… Tell me, what did he say this was for? What was it supposed to do?"

"There was a nemeton a resident darach was using to try and kill of an Alpha Pack that was trying to recruit Derek by making him want to kill all of us." He could almost feel Blair's eyes widening (he could hear the older man's forehead falling into his palm). "The only way to negate her use of the ritual sacrifices to power the nemeton, and keep our parents from being killed, was to put ourselves – me, Scott, and Allison – in our parents' place. We drowned, and then were pulled back by our link to Lydia, Deaton, and Isaac. Deaton said we'd forever have a darkness around our hearts for it. That was it."

Blair groaned, long and put-upon. "Okay, Stiles. Here's the deal: your vet was alright – that was a druid spell. There was nothing Shamanic about that ritual, put in that context. So he does know where at least those boundaries lay. But his choices still make me kind of nervous; next time you're stuck, try coming to me for advice, first?"

"Yeah, I can do that. Deaton likes Scott more than me, anyway. But… So I'm not a Shaman?"

"No Stiles. But I will take a wild guess here – and considering my track record for 'wild guesses' tend to be really accurate, I'll let you take this as you will – and say that the ritual, in spite of the darkness, probably woke up the potential in your Spark. Your vet will probably be approaching you soon about learning to control new power growth, and dropping hints here and there about being the Hale Pack's emissary. You might just want to gear up for that conversation."

"I—Well, I guess. Okay. Thanks, Blair; sorry for waking you."

"No, no, I'm glad you did – like I said, I'd prefer it if my little cousin came to the expert on worldrituals, based on the nature of my Shamanic walk and my almost-doctorate, than to this very-specialized, too-secretive vet. Thank you. Please do so again… Preferably not at ass-o'clock in the morning, but I understand that sometimes these things can get a little out of control. Be safe. Love you."

"Yeah, I'll try. Love you too, Blair." They hung up.

So, yeah… If Blair was his Sentinel's Guide and Shaman (by accident and drowning), it would appear that Stiles was his Pack's Spark emissary (also by accident and drowning). He was glad that Blair had more experience than Deaton ever fessed-up to owning, and that he was so comfortable with the hippie-wanna-be where he wasn't with the veterinarian. It would make things – like finally informing Derek about his outside source – maybe a little easier to understand.

And Blair was resignedly flattered.

-Stiles' Fifth Imitation-

Between the first wolfsbane bullet; getting kidnapped by Peter; the kanima; getting kidnapped by Gerard; watching Derek settle into his role as Alpha; meeting Cora; thinking Derek dead; loosing Boyd; facing down the bad decision that was Jennifer Blake; overcoming the Alpha Pack; outrunning the pixie infestation; Derek regaining the Alpha position when Scott decided he didn't like the pressure; teaching that herd of centaurs just whose land they were hunting on; dealing with that coven of witches; and finally, finally killing Peter for good, Derek and Stiles had grown close.

With Derek the Alpha again, in spite of Scott's natural Alpha-ness, somebody had to be his Beta, his second, his right hand. It had been Boyd, but, well… And then the mess with the Alpha Pack and the Darach got everything all messed up by the time Stiles realized that he had taken the position at Derek's right unconsciously, it was too late. The centaurs were attacking, Derek was out of commission, and the wolves were all instinctively looking to him to lead them.

Under the knowledge that he was part of the two-person package that supported the integrity of the Pack, and the knowledge that he couldn't in good consciousness leave his dad to just Derek to protect him while Stiles was away at college, Stiles decided not to go.

Instead, at eighteen, when he and everyone else graduated, Stiles signed up for online courses at the closest community college, in the next town over. As a legal adult, he'd moved out of his dad's house, and as Derek's Beta, he'd moved into the finally re-renovated Hale House (nobody had known that Derek actually had a degree, especially in architecture, until – as a distraction from the colossal diplomatic mess that had been the pixies – he began renovating).

The way he and Derek fit together – as Beta and Alpha, human Spark and born werewolf, emissary and Pack head, young man with a born wild streak and young man with a circumstantial cautious nature, ADHD victim and PTSD victim, and a whole slew of other things – was natural. They were moving easily around one another in the we-live-together kitchen dance by day two; making communal shopping lists by week three; sharing meals by day four; splitting chores by month two; and swapping phone duties for the latest I'm-a-wolf-away-from-Pack-and-thus-freaking-out calls by week one.

As time passed, and Blair was given the weekly updates to the situation, he laughed delightedly and smiled indulgently in turns. Along the way, he shared his own anecdotes about learning to live in the same space as his Sentinel (and how easy it seemed, how out-of-the-ordinary, how perfect).

So – like Blair had moved in with his co-dependent case eventually, and meshed like cheese and macaroni – Stiles had finally given into fate's pull, and moved in with his co-dependent, to mesh as well as cereal and milk.

And Blair was amusedly flattered.

-And Blair's One Contribution-

For all that Stiles was forever surprising Blair (read: giving him grey hairs, though Jim constantly denied it), this one was a real shock.

Most people from an outside perspective would look at the way that Derek and Stiles (and by extension, Jim and Blair) had arranged their lives around one another, and assume a domestic partnership was in play. Now, Blair had never made his bisexuality a secret, but his occasional attraction to his roommate, Blessed Protector, and Sentinel? Yeah, no – that stayed buried deep in the closet. Because Jim was straight, and the last thing Blair wanted to do was ruin that.

If asked, Blair would have said that their partnerships were a natural extension of their roles in each other's lives – that the attraction he felt for Jim was not part of the normal equation. That he was attracted because he happened to be bisexual, not attracted because he was a Guide. And the same, in his opinion, would have been said of his cousin and the Hale Alpha: they worked so well together because they were inherently made for it, not because there was a boiling attraction at the base of it all.

And it made sense that way.

But Stiles proved to him that, while the attraction and the ability to mesh so well might have been two separate things, that didn't mean they couldn't exist in the same sphere. The news came to Blair that Stiles had kissed his Alpha on a whim (a nervous, long-planned, long-fretted, dream-bolstered, teenage-libido-enhanced whim)… and that the apparently straight Alpha had kissed back, fervently. Stiles had missed all of Derek's more subtle signs, but had taken the jump and been rewarded anyway. The entire Pack, Blair had been gleefully informed, was all coming down to celebrate the union of their Alpha and Beta (and to probably exchange some betting money, but Stiles just expected that among their age group).

As Blair became the ear for Stiles' blossoming relationship – and upcoming Mating/wedding combo, because each wanted a piece of their werewolf/human heritage to be able to say they were bound together – he grew jealous. Why should his younger cousin, who constantly imitated him over the years, be able to get the man of his dreams out of his supernatural partner, and Blair not? What was stopping Blair from taking a plunge like that, now that he had proof that it could succeed. There was no time to waste (after all the extra years he and Jim had platonically been together, as comported to Stiles and Derek, anyway)!

That night, as he was making dinner, when Jim approached him to exchange their ritual after-work hellos over the stove, Blair struck. Instead of nodding, and leaning faintly into Jim's one-armed hug, he licked his lips and stared a concerned Jim in the face, cursing his rabbit-heart for giving him away. And then he stood on tip-toe and pressed a kiss to the corner of Jim's mouth.

He'd been gratified (terrified) to hear Jim squeak… and then he'd been swept up by strong arms and crushed into Jim's chest. They'd licked frantically into one another's mouths for an endless second, before Jim had pulled back for air, gasping roughly, "God, Chief! I thought you just didn't swing that way for my type or something!"

Breathless with euphoria, he'd barely had the brain cells to rub together to croak out his own, "What?"

"When you first moved it, I made all kinds of passes; you never took me up, and I chalked it up to you being uninterested. I let it be because you're my Guide, but I didn't realize until just now how much this almost-two-decades had cost me! Fuck it, Chief!" Jim snarled, and snapped the stove off, scooping Blair up bridal-style. "Bed, now!"

"Oh, yes, please!" Blair distantly heard himself agree, in a high and needy voice.

-TSFF-

Later (much, much later), the retired members of their time in the MCU got together to celebrate hauling their relationship to the next level. Much to Blair's embarrassed amusement, money changed hands at this get together as well; the MCU had been holding a steady pool about various milestones (holding hands, eating off one another's plates, finishing each other's sentences, getting shot for one another) as stop-gaps for when it seemed like neither of them would ever get a clue. The finale raised a whole bunch of green as a result.

This time, for once, it was Blair who got to call Stiles up, and reveal just how he'd taken a leaf from the Spark's book. Years and years of platonic companionship – not wasted, never wasted, because there's something to be said for getting to know a person as closely as one does a housemate, without the complications of sex – but stalled. And now, now he and Jim were finally finishing what was meant to be their whole connection… And they owed it to a pair of boys, one young enough to still be a teenager, and the other who started off as an inexperienced Alpha.

And everyone knew that Stiles was (quite loudly, a little lewdly, but mostly lovingly) flattered.