Long time no speak! So this story is a response to a prompt at the Spice Up Your Life ficathon on LiveJournal, which is basically a Teen Wolf rarepair ficathon (and by rarepairs I mean not Sterek). The original prompt was Scott/Isaac + being werewolves doesn't absolve them from summer jobs OR the one where Isaac works at a record store and Scott bugs him a lot when he's on break and so I wrote it.
This is set in a weird, ambiguous AU where there are no bad Alphas in Beacon Hills and everyone is happy. I guess this is maybe presumably after season three? But also kind of not, lol. Title is from Shania Twain's song/album of the same name cause she was on the record chart thing that I was looking at today and because I love her. Not betaed so any and all mistakes are my own. Cheers.
The Black Penny is hardly a work place to brag about, but it beats the graveyard by a mile and Isaac is glad to take the job. It means he's not working odd hours and he doesn't have to rely on Derek to drive him to and from work because busses actually run while the sun is up and it means that Isaac sees a lot more of his friends because he's not sleeping the days away to dig graves in the middle of the night.
"Do you have a lot of customer service experience?" his boss asks the first day Isaac shows up at the record shop.
"Er, not really," Isaac admits. There's not a lot of people to talk to when digging graves at three in the morning.
His boss, a short woman in her twenties with dyed hair and too many piercings, looks him over once and shrugs. "It's alright," she admits at last. "You're pretty enough that middle school girls will be falling all over themselves to talk to you."
Much to Isaac's dismay, Boss Lady is correct.
xx
He spends most of his first week fending off thirteen and fourteen-year-olds who spend more time ogling at him than browsing the actual records and drinking more coffee than should be legally healthy for most people. Isaac's lucky though; he's not like most people.
The inherent lack of werewolf-related activities around Beacon Hills is a little unnerving, if Isaac will be honest with himself, but it's nice too. He spends his full moons with Derek and Boyd at the loft and sometimes Scott comes and sometimes Peter and Cora are there and mostly, it's just really nice to feel like a pack. To feel like a family.
It's thoughts of the full moon that keep Isaac sane during his job. That and how after the tenth day Scott shows up with a milkshake and a slice of pie from Sally's Diner where Danny's employed himself for the summer.
"Shouldn't you be at work?" Isaac asks, gulping down half the milkshake as soon as Scott hands it over. There's a brief flash of pain behind his eyes as a brain freeze takes hold, but just as quickly his wolf side soothes the burn of it. Isaac sighs happily into the straw and glances at Scott from under his lashes.
"I'm on my break," Scott replies with a smile, and that's good enough for Isaac.
They talk for ages, for so long that Isaac has to write a note for the person coming in the next day apologizing for not calling the suppliers and ordering all the records that Boss Lady had wanted. He feels bad, really, but having Scott around for most of the day was better than hiding behind the counter for the last four hours of his shift from the pre-pubescent girls that still won't leave him alone.
Scott notices this, of course, the next time he comes around when Isaac's working and thinks it's hilarious.
"They're really into you," he notes, handing Isaac another milkshake.
"Shut up," Isaac retorts. "You're just jealous."
He means that Scott should be jealous of all the attention Isaac's getting from the ladies –whether they're fourteen or twenty-four- but Scott just quirks his head to the side, a small frown on his face and says, "Yeah, maybe," and Isaac can't help but feel like maybe he's missing something.
xx
Two weeks later, when Isaac comes in to work, there's a note waiting for him on the cash register:
Hey asshole. Next time Marcy asks you to clean the staffroom why don't you actually do it instead of leaving it for me?
Isaac balls up the message and tosses it in the recycling bin behind the counter. He thinks back to what he was doing at work the day before yesterday and recalls that Scott came in at around two with a strawberry milkshake and they'd spent the rest of the afternoon discussing whether or not Isaac buying Derek vinyl for his birthday would seem too cheap.
It makes Isaac think back to all the other days he's worked over the summer and all of them, minus the first ten, have all had Scott in them. And that's how Isaac determines that maybe he's a little bit gone for Scott.
xx
"So, you know if you're having guy problems you can talk to me, right?"
Isaac tips his head back on the sofa, catching Cora's eye from where she's leaning against the door frame into the kitchen. It's something she copied off Isaac, and when both of them are slouching against the walls and tilting their heads just slightly it drives Derek crazy; it's easily one of Cora's favourite ways to bug her brother.
"Why would I talk to you about guy problems?" Isaac asks, rolling his neck slightly and listening as the bones pop along the column of his spine.
"I don't mean erectile dysfunction or shit like that," Cora replies breezily. She saunters over to the couch and places her hands on Isaac's shoulders, looming over him with a grin on her face; she's got the upper hand but Isaac knows he could easily flip her over the sofa and onto the coffee table. He stares up into her light brown eyes and watches as the words form on her lips: "I mean troubles with your boyfriend."
Isaac frowns and sits up on the couch, letting Cora's hands fall off his shoulders. "I don't know what you're talking about, Cora," he says, but he knows she can tell it's a lie just by the way his heartbeat ratchets up in his chest.
Behind him, Cora sighs. "Whatever," she says. "Just, you and Scott, you know? If you ever want to talk about it, I'm way more into listening to your problems than Derek or Peter."
A slight shudder runs down Isaac's back and he turns to glare at Cora, who's grinning back at him. She shoots him a finger gun and climbs her way up the spiral staircase, no doubt to peruse the Internet or whatever it is that girls like to do in their free time.
xx
Boss Lady comes in to talk to Isaac at the end of July.
"So, Adam has been telling me that there's lots of business on Wednesdays and Thursdays," she says.
"Um, cool," Isaac replies; Wednesdays and Thursdays are his days off.
"And he says that the middle schoolers talk about how they don't like to ogle at you anymore because you're taken," Boss Lady continues.
"I'm single."
Boss Lady is about to comment back when the bell over the door chimes and Scott comes in, already talking and brandishing Isaac's milkshake around like it will help him explain how he fails so miserably at Call of Duty.
"Not single, eh?" Boss Lady asks, arching an eyebrow menacingly.
"I don't know him," is all Isaac says in response. He watches as Scott freezes, glancing at Isaac before his eyes fall on Boss Lady. Then, his eyes travel around the store.
"This isn't the bookstore," he says, after careful consideration.
"No," Boss Lady replies. "This is The Black Penny. We sell records."
Scott's eyes widen comically and Isaac thinks about suggesting Scott sign up for drama next year. "Sorry," Scott says, backtracking his way out of the store. "Definitely was not paying attention to where I was going, but at least I know where to buy vinyl in this town now!" He waves the milkshake again in farewell and bumbles his way out the door. Isaac watches sullenly as Scott tosses the drink in the trash.
"So, I can count on you to get work done this coming month?" Boss Lady asks, and Isaac nods in reply.
xx
"Dude, sorry about yesterday," Scott says the next day. He's come in to The Black Penny but there's no milkshake and he's talking to Isaac as he actually browses through the collection of records near the back of the store. Isaac is hovering nearby, restocking another bin.
"It's nothing," Isaac replies, but he doesn't turn to meet Scott's gaze. "You threw out my milkshake though."
Scott's laugh comes out as a bit of a bark. "I hate strawberry. How do you even drink that stuff?"
"I don't like vanilla," Isaac replies, and when he glances up, Scott looks like he's about to laugh right in his face. Isaac's mouth quirks up into a smirk and Scott does laugh, and things go back to normal.
xx
Except for how they sort of don't because Scott doesn't come in to The Black Penny when Isaac's working anymore.
"I have a summer job too, Isaac," Scott says over the phone while Isaac sits behind the counter and eats the sad looking ham and cheese sandwich Derek had made him that morning. "Can't spend all my time at the Penny."
Except for how you can, Isaac wants to say, because you already spent all of July here.
Their conversation is cut short by customers that come in to the vet clinic and Scott has to hang up. Isaac continues to eat his sandwich in silence before he caves and throws Pink Floyd onto the player behind the counter.
xx
"Trouble in paradise?" Cora asks, stepping into the shop at the beginning of August. She's not really supposed to go out much considering she's supposed to be dead, but Isaac knows that whenever Derek's out she sneaks out of the house. It's not like Peter's going to stop her either.
"What makes you ask?" Isaac retorts. He's scribbling down orders onto a piece of paper and was about two minutes away from calling their supplier before Cora had walked in.
"I just stopped by the vet clinic and Scott seemed pretty miserable."
Isaac tilts his head to the side, the question between them unasked.
"I think he feels bad," Cora continues, venturing further into the store, her fingers trailing over the tops of records before flicking through the nearest bin. Her voice carries through the store, but Isaac's a werewolf and could hear her if she were whispering to herself in the back room.
"About?"
"Almost getting you fired. He wants you to be happy, Isaac."
"Scott makes me happy," Isaac says before he can think it through, and he can practically hear Cora's mouth twitch up in a smirk.
"Why don't you tell him that then?" Cora asks.
"Um, I have a store to run," Isaac says, gesturing to the Penny at large. There's no one else there and it's an hour till closing.
"Right," Cora replies lightly. "Listen, I'll make your orders and close up shop. You shouldn't leave that boy hanging."
"You're the worst," Isaac says, but he's already grabbing his cardigan and backpack off of the back of his chair.
"I know." Cora's standing by the front door, her eyes flickering in the afternoon sunlight. "But you'll thank me for it later."
Isaac resists the urge to roll his eyes and bustles out of the shop, the bell tinkering over his head and Cora's eyes watching him as he jumps on his bike and pedals off towards Deaton's.
xx
Isaac pulls in to the clinic ten minutes before it's about to close. He can see Scott inside sweeping the floor, but he looks up when he hears Isaac's bike slide into the rack outside the door.
"I brought you a milkshake," Isaac offers, handing one of the Styrofoam cups to Scott once he steps inside.
Scott takes a tentative sip, his eyes tracking Isaac's expression carefully. "Vanilla," he says after a moment, a smile tugging at his lips.
Isaac shrugs. "I didn't know what you liked. You only ever brought strawberry ones for me."
Scott smiles, full and bright, and Isaac has to lean himself against the counter to stabilize himself, dropping his own milkshake down next to where he's braced himself. "Vanilla's fine," Scott says. He mirrors Isaac, leaning against the counter, the broom between them. "Shouldn't you be at work?"
"I'm on my break," Isaac replies with a smirk, and Scott's eyes light up.
"Is this a thing now?" he asks, sidestepping around the broom so that he's standing in front of Isaac. "We just show up at each other's places of work on our breaks?"
Isaac shrugs, a full body movement that Scott watches with amusement. "I don't know," Isaac replies. "You never come to The Black Penny anymore."
Scott's eyes slide away from Isaac's face and he sucks on his milkshake for a moment before saying, "I didn't want to get you fired. Your boss seemed pretty angry at you when I came in that one time and you seem happy at the Penny. I didn't want you to have to go back to digging graves at night."
Isaac laughs. "Don't worry about Marcy," he says, tugging the milkshake out of Scott's hands and setting it on the counter behind them. "I was looking at our sales the other day and they're always up when you're around. They dropped in the couple of weeks that you haven't shown up."
"But I never buy anything!" Scott exclaims, glancing up at Isaac again.
"It's not you," Isaac replies, smirking at the scowl that shows up on Scott's face. "It's those middle-schoolers. I think they're really invested in our relationship or something because they always ask me to play Shania Twain and Fleetwood Mac when they realize you're not coming in to the store."
It's Scott's turn to laugh and he presses his body to Isaac's as he does so. Isaac can feel it reverberating through the two of them, losing feeling of where he and Scott are separate.
"I guess I better come back and save you then," Scott murmurs, his face pressed into the side of Isaac's neck. He tilts his head back then, his eyes sweeping up to meet Isaac's before dropping down to his lips.
And so Isaac leans down and seals their lips together.
