1. Fine Motor Skills
"Come on, Malia, you must remember how to do this. It's like...it's like riding a bicycle!"
"Stiles, it is riding a bicycle," Malia hissed frustratedly. "And I don't remember. There weren't exactly bike lanes in the wild."
Stiles shrugged, undeterred. "Well," he said, walking over to the werecoyote and taking her hands in his, "it's really quite simple. Just sit on this part," he instructed, leading Malia over to the bike, guiding her to the seat. "Hands on the handlebars, feet on the pedals...there! Simple, really."
He stepped back, satisfied. Malia promptly tipped over.
"Sorry, sorry, my bad," he said as he helped her up. "You okay?" She nodded. "So it's hard to stay balanced on a bicycle when it's stopped. But when it's moving, it's easy. Physics and wind resistance and...all that stuff. I think. The only hard part is starting."
She took the position again, this time with him holding the vehicle upright. "I'm gonna run alongside you, okay? Just keep pedaling."
She nodded and they began, Stiles jogging beside her while her legs slowly rotated the pedals, her unsure actions steadily gaining resolve. She was focused hard on the bicycle - so focused, in fact, that she didn't notice Stiles letting go and stepping to the side until a good ten seconds after it happened.
"Stiles!" she yelled, a little panicked. Her claws flashed out.
But Stiles just waved at her. "Don't worry!" he called out, as the distance between them increased. "This is how they do it in all of the movies!"
Malia somehow, miraculously, managed to stay upright. "I haven't watched any movies like that!" she shouted back. They were too far away now. She inclined the bicycle to the side in a slow, measured, utterly terrifying turn and began to head back towards him. He had stepped out in the middle of the street, triumphant.
"Remind me to show you some later. I've been meaning to make a list of all the classic movies you missed out on while you were cavorting around in the forest." Malia was close enough to him now to see him end the sentence with a wink. In fact, she was very close to him.
"Stiles! I don't know how to st-"
2. Batman Is Better Than Superman (With One Notable Exception)
Malia studied the comic book intently. Stiles had shown them to her as part of his ongoing quest (his "continuing mission," he had said once, with a glint in his eye that meant it was a reference Malia didn't understand) to help her reintegrate back into society. Malia liked comics: they made sense. Good guys fight bad guys and save the world, everyone goes home happy. Stiles had told her it wasn't always like this, and eventually he'd introduce her to heroes with more complicated moralities. But she could worry about that later. She flipped to the last page and looked up at Stiles, who was absentmindedly browsing through a different selection from the immense piles he had brought out.
"I don't understand why you refuse to acknowledge that Superman is the best. There shouldn't even be a debate on it."
Stiles flicked his eyes over to hers. "You don't mean that."
She nudged him with her foot. "I'm serious. He could probably beat the rest of the Justice League by himself. He's invulnerable, he's insanely strong, he's got laser eye vision...what more do you want?" Stiles had begun shaking his head at the beginning over her list and increased the intensity as she progressed.
"You're forgetting one thing...kryptonite. He's powerless against it." Malia rolled her eyes. They'd had this conversation before.
"One weakness doesn't mean he's not the best," she said, with a hint of challenge in her voice. Stiles didn't back down.
"It's still a pretty big weakness. Besides, Superman is too powerful. It's less fun. And the 'leap entire building in a single bound' thing makes no sense. He can fly. Jumping high is superfluous." She raised a questioning eyebrow. "Uh, unnecessary. No point."
She sighed. "Fine then, who's your favorite?"
"Easy. Batman."
"Batman?!" Malia repeated incredulously. "The one guy in the group without any powers?" Stiles just looked at her. "Oh."
He averted his gaze, running a hand through his hair. "I know it's kind of stupid, but I always thought that if Batman could still...be productive, I guess, in a group full of superpowered people, then there's no reason why I couldn't...I mean, I know he's not real. But still." Malia brought her hand to his face, the way he sometimes did when he was trying to comfort her.
"It's not stupid. And you do help, Stiles. You help me a lot." He met her eyes, then. She smirked. "And also, if you're Batman, that means I can be Superman!" She pressed a kiss to his cheek, then made her way up to his ear. "And you know exactly what my kryptonite is," she whispered gleefully.
Stiles scrambled to meet her lips with his own. "God," he said to nobody in particular, after they broke apart (just for a second). "I should not be this turned on right now."
3. Math Is Important
Malia sighed.
"Look, I survived eight years in the wild without even knowing the word algebra. Or calculus. Or whatever this is."
She and Stiles were sitting in his kitchen, looking over her math homework. His bed had been deemed unfit to study on after they'd lost focus a few too many times - she really did need the help, regretfully, and he was determined to provide it. But she was finding it hard to concentrate on the equations here, too, if for a different reason.
"Is math really all that important, like Lydia said? Science, and economics, and...everything?" she asked despairingly. Stiles turned toward her good-naturedly.
"Tipping, remember?" She poked him with the eraser end of her pencil. "Okay, okay, fine. Tipping is not the only thing math is used for. It's pretty simple anyway, compared to the stuff we're doing in class."
"Then when will I have to use the...quadratic formula in life outside of a classroom?"
He leaned back in his chair, resting his hands behind his head. "In truth, probably never. I mean sure, Lydia might go into one of those genius fields and have to do this every day. But for you, me, and the rest of the world? We're pretty much safe from it once we're out of school."
Malia threw up her hands. "So it is pointless. Give me one - just one - good reason why we can't stop studying now and go have sex in your room." She looked around, appraising their surroundings. "Or here. I'm not picky."
Stiles swallowed, hard. "Ahem. Um. That is an...interesting point you bring up." He cleared his throat again. "But sadly, I do have an actual reason. If you fail this course, you'll be moved down to remedial math, or, even worse, a freshman-level course. And you'll have to deal with freshmen. And you won't be in my class. The pack's class, I mean."
She stared at him for a long moment. "Fine," she said, opening her book back up. Stiles breathed a sigh of relief. He wouldn't have been able to hold out much longer.
4. Some Things Are Not Appropriate To Say Or Do In Front Of Someone's Father Who Is Also A Sheriff
They were both staring at her.
Stiles had turned a particularly deep shade of crimson, while his father's eyebrows had almost receded into his hairline. Malia looked back and forth between them. Maybe they had heard her wrong. She hadn't said anything bad.
"I said, thank you for letting me hang out at your house and stay with your son. He is a good friend and makes me feel nice." She looked at Stiles questioningly. "What was wrong with that?"
He blinked. "That was, um, not exactly what you said. The, uh, first time."
"Ohhhhh," she nodded in sudden comprehension. "So it was the part where I said you had given me many-" Stiles brought up his hands, waving them wildly.
"No need to, um, repeat it. We..." he glanced at his father, who had turned to him, arms folded, "...we both heard it."
5. Full Moons Can Be Okay
She thrashes at the chains and she doesn't want anything to happen to Stiles, not to her Stiles, but oh she wants to hurt him, wants to hurt him bad, wants to rip off her restraints and sink her teeth into his neck and bury her claws in his throat until he bleeds, until all the blood in his pale frame pools out on the floor. She warns him to get away but he isn't leaving - why isn't he leaving - and the cuffs are tearing, she can see them tearing, and he's still there and why isn't he leaving.
Malia's memories of the first time she turned were hazy at best, but she could recall enough to be glad she couldn't remember more. The one element that came through as clearly as if it had happened yesterday was the scent of blood.
Well, that and the terrible, crushing truth that she'd killed almost her entire family.
That knowledge courses through her veins like adrenaline and she is wired. She can't control it. She knows she can't do this, knows she can't hurt Stiles, but right now it feels a lot more like she can. She lunges out at him, her teeth an inch away from his neck. He doesn't back away.
The moonlight is only barely visible through the window of the basement, but suddenly it's all around her, in her eyes, her nose, her mouth. She sees smells tastes nothing but blood. She pulls against the cuffs. They can't hold her - nothing can hold her - and one of her arms breaks free. She is lost; she is blindly clawing until she is clawing with a purpose, until she is clawing to rip Stiles' throat from under his head. She can't hear anything. Until...
"Malia, I know you can hear me, just listen to the sound of my voice." The voice is faint in her head but she focuses on it like it is a rope tossed out in a stormy sea. She is overboard; she is nearly drowning; she grabs at the rope madly, desperately.
A moment of clarity. All she can do is shout at Stiles to run and then she is back, pulling at the chain, trying not to face him. The temptation is less when she faces away from him.
Not much less.
But his voice comes through again, and he is talking and Malia blocks the moonlight out, blocks everything out but his voice. Stiles. Focus on Stiles. And he is reaching for the lock and Malia wants to scream at him to stop but she can't, can't lose focus, not now. She is breathing heavily.
He unlocks her and she can't help herself and she lunges toward him and she is going to bite him, claw him, kill him. But then it's Stiles and she can help herself and she is free. The urges, the moonlight - it's still there but it's not there and Stiles is.
"You did it," he says, simply. She stares at him, then rushes into his arms and doesn't leave for a long, long while.
+1
It's well past midnight and they're lying on his bed, legs entwined, one of Malia's arms under Stiles' neck, the other circled protectively around his waist. (He called it "spooning," but that doesn't make any sense to Malia. They look nothing like spoons.) Stiles is usually asleep by now - Malia always waits for him to go first, his steady breathing as much of a lullaby to her as anything - but tonight he's not, and his heartbeat is faster than normal.
"What's wrong with you?" she asked, then corrected, "I mean, what's wrong?" Apparently the extra two words were a little combative, or so she'd been told. She had learned by now that, unless they were in extraordinary circumstances, Stiles would often hold back from voicing his problems until prompted. Malia didn't understand the idea of holding back. What's the point of talking if you weren't going to say what you meant?
He shifted a little closer to her, and Malia tightened her hold on his body in response. He was silent for a few moments, and just when Malia was about to ask him again he spoke up, more quietly than usual, even for night.
"It's just...I get tired of being useless, you know?" He gripped the side of the mattress tightly, his knuckles pure white. "I can't help Scott control Liam, I can't have your back in a fight, I don't have mystical sword powers or an internal compass for dead people...I'm just human. And when I did have power, all I did was hurt people." His voice fell even more. "I'm just useless."
Malia sat up, rolling Stiles over so he was facing her. "You're not useless," she said. "How could you even think that?" He shrugged and refused to meet her eyes.
"I just told you."
She shook her head. "Stiles, just because you're not a werewolf, or a werecoyote, or a kitsune, or whatever, doesn't mean you don't help. You help a lot. You're always figuring things out, and making plans. And besides all that," she said, tilting his head gently so he was forced to look at her, "you help me. More than anything. More than anyone. I don't know how I would have gotten through the last few months without you. I know I couldn't have gotten through the last full moon without you. Anyone else, I would've killed them. You know that." He nodded reluctantly. "Honestly Stiles, you've made everything so much easier - so much better - for me. So you're not useless, okay?"
Stiles nodded, more than a little taken aback. He reached up and brushed her hair behind her ear. "You're incredible, you know that?"
Shifting over so that she was straddling his hips, Malia smirked. "Yes. I do. Do you?"
He went up to kiss her, but she held a finger in front of his lips. "Only if you say it," she said, a feral, playful grin on her face. His few protests were brushed away.
"I'm incredible," he surrendered, grudgingly. Malia leaned down to capture his lips with her own.
"Good boy," she said. Stiles breathing and heartbeat had increased again, but this time, Malia was okay with it.