He woke, put on a pot of coffee, and started scrolling through his messages. Immediately he tapped to open the one from Scott, hey Jacks, we got some pack business to take care of tonight, will call later, but wanted to wish you a happy birthday now!

He smiled. Scott was about as sentimental as sentimental gets, convinced that if he didn't wish his family & friends happy birthday (or any other holiday celebration, really) the minute they woke up it would be the start of a crappy day for them.

This year his birthday fell on a Friday. His friends had plans to take him out for dinner and drinks. Some were keen on turning it into a long weekend trip, but he'd politely declined. Last year his birthday was a massive blowout. This year he was going for something a bit more simple and easy. His plans included spending the day tomorrow with a book he'd been meaning for ages (Isaac got it for him last year and it still remained untouched), and then maybe doing a hike on Sunday with some friends with whom he hadn't confirmed yet.

He just had one class today in the afternoon, plenty of time to just chill beforehand, maybe get a head start on that book...

It was a little more than a head start, as it turned out. Jackson skipped lunch reading, Isaac was right, the book was intensely captivating. He almost debated skipping class to get in a few more chapters, but it wouldn't do to start skimping academically, not after the call that had come through just after coffee anyway (no matter how long he spent in London, he would never say, tea).

He sadly put the book aside and started packing his things where a hint of a smell wafted through his apartment. He frowned, it smelled like something familiar but doused under a very very heavy layer of artificial scents. He moved to open the door and investigate. Part of his subconscious mind figured it out and was just in the process of alerting his conscious mind as he turned the knob, but it was too late.

The minute the knob was turned, he was forcefully shoved back by the door being swung wide open and a bounding Scott jumping to hug him.

"Happy birthday!" Scott beamed excitedly as everyone else filed in behind him.

"What-"

"Surprise!" Aiden and Ethan shouted in chorus, marching in with silly hats and throwing streamers at him.

In a matter of moments they were all crowded around his living room, the ones who hadn't seen the flat before whistling at the view.

"Guys, wow, thanks!" Jackson said, a hand on his neck and unsure how to respond. Surprise parties always made him a bit nervous.

"Um... I actually have class," he finished lamely.

Danny rolled his eyes and simply said, "no."

And that was the end of that discussion. They spent the entire afternoon catching up and chatting. One long non-virtual pack meeting. Jackson was impressed that his flat fit them all comfortably.

As the sun started to set, Jackson mentioned that he had dinner and drinks planned with some friends and so of course they all went. All of Jackson's friends from school were immensely impressed, to say the least. It was a ridiculous moment of pride for him because, hey, his pack is undeniably hot.

In the words of his friend Amy, who told him this in a not-so-subtle-way at the club, several drinks in and clinging to Derek's arm, "oh my god Jackson, your high school clique is like... like someone wanted to make a TV show about your friends and cast the hottest people everrrr" she said with a slur and hiccup. Causing Derek to frown down at her as she giggled madly.

Jackson simply raised a drink to her, and to Derek, muttered, "you taking this one back home?"

Derek chuckled under his breath, "as if, it's definitely gonna be a pack night tonight."

Needless to say, she was sorely disappointed when Derek eventually detached himself and bid her a good night. She then tried to latch onto Aiden, who did the only thing he could think of in the moment-clung to Danny and pretended to be Ethan. She pouted but, having been witness to the real Ethan and Danny making out in a corner all night, acquiesced. Last he saw her as they were leaving after bidding his friends good night, she was disappearing back into the throng of people.

By the time they all made it back to his flat, the bottles of alcohol had worn off whatever little effect they had. "Pack night!" Liam hollered as he made his way into Jackson's bedroom to drag out whatever sheets and comforters he could find and spread on the living room floor.

Everyone else alternated between moving furniture around, brushing their teeth, and all that. When the space was cleared, everyone stood to the side while Scott nudged Jackson forward. "All you man, your birthday."

Since it'd been so long since they were all physically together for a pack night, Jackson found himself actually nervous as he slowly removed his clothing and stepped into the center of the room. Scott was first. The Alpha walked up to him and nuzzled the right side of his neck. Jackson breathed in Scott's grassy scent. Derek joined him on the left and Jackson smelled rain and storms from the other Alpha. He closed his eyes and listened to the rustling sounds of clothes being shed and breathed in as they closed around him and moved to scent him. Isaac's soil, Ethan's pine and Aiden's cedar, the scent of all of them individually lulled him until they were was indistinguishable from the scent of family and pack that wrapped around him like a cocoon. He felt hands, noses, stroking, scenting, everywhere until he fell back and the many hands caught him and lowered him gently to the ground. They shifted and moved and nuzzled and cuddled with the full moon gleaming bright in the sky.

He woke much more lazily than he had the previous morning. The sun streamed through the window that no one had bothered to close the night before and illuminated his pack in various states of shifting and dressing. Liam and Theo were still curled together as wolves and sleeping.

"Are these pants mine or yours?" Ethan asked, holding up a pair of dark jeans.

"They're mine!" Scott scowled as he just shifted back, eyes gleaming red as he snatched the pants back.

Ethan frowned, "then where are mine?"

Aiden said, "Danny probably took them and folded them up somewhere nice because he knows you never keep track of your stuff," as he pulled on his own pair of jeans.

"To be fair, he's right," Jackson said as he pulled on his own pants. One way the twins were different-Ethan was always losing things.

Ethan stuck a tongue out and went off stark naked to look for Danny, who was in the bathroom brushing his teeth.

Derek, still in wolf form, trotted back into the room from the balcony where Jackson noted a trickle of liquid dripping from the side of one of his planters.

"Oh, real nice Derek, way to kill my plants." Jackson said as he picked Derek up and mock spanked the wolf. Derek barked, eyes gleaming red.

"He's got the right idea," Isaac said, yawning as he finished shifting back. "One bathroom isn't nearly enough for all of us." He held out a hand for Derek to lick, then scratched behind the wolf's ears.

"Don't encourage him!" Scott said, "you know how much he likes to pee like a wolf."

Jackson yelped as Derek shifted while still in his arms, causing him to ungratefully drop the Alpha in mid-shift. With grace that only comes from a lifetime of such transitions, Derek landed on a foot and knee, and glared at Scott with red eyes.

"Say that again?"

"You heard me," Scott said, growling as his eyes turned red as well and the two Alphas stared at each other.

Ethan came back, hopping up and down to get his other pant leg on, eager to watch a showdown.

Derek reached out and pulled Scott to his chest unexpectedly before giving the younger man a noogie. "No roughhousing in Jackon's nice apartment."

Scott sighed, "you're right," while Aiden, just as eager as his brother, groaned from the other side of the room, "when did you two become so lame."

"Tame," Isaac corrected. "That's the word you're looking for."

They were lounging around a brunch spread when Jackson cleared his throat and said, "so, I'm glad you're all here actually, I've got some news."

Liam and Theo, who had opted to skip brunch, and were chasing each other around the flat still as wolves, crashing into furniture, stepping on toes, and generally being a nuisance, now padded over to hear it. Theo jumped up onto Jackson's lap, and he absentmindedly started to stroke the golden wolf's fur while Liam huffed and crawled over to Isaac instead.

"I got the job."

They all whooped and hollered; Jackson had spent the last month recruiting hard for a few high end consulting firms.

"Wait, the one in Los Angeles?" Scott asked eagerly.

"Yup," Jackson smiled.

Scott jumped out of his chair and, "Ok champagne toast! Jacks is coming home!"

Derek rolled his eyes as he clinked his glass with Jackson's, "we're already drinking."

Scott scowled at him, looking around for someone to share his excitement. His eyes landed on Danny who he pulled into a hug while Danny awkwardly wrapped his arm around the brunette as well.

"Finally, someone will be able to provide for this pack," Aiden said.

"Hey!" Scott exclaimed, "I provide for this pack!"

Derek frowned and said, "not financially, you don't."

Jackson rolled his eyes, he missed this easy banter. "You don't because being Alpha is a full time job." He finished, glancing at Derek, who had the decency to look somewhat ashamed and followed up with, "I don't really provide for the pack either."

The twins snickered and Jackson swore he heard Theo laughing low in his chest. An interesting sound for a wolf to make.

Scott graduated, took a few years to focus fully on pack management and training with Derek, and then to the great dismay of most of the faculty, started as a substitute teacher at Beacon Hills. Given the city's penchant for supernatural activity, he felt it was the best way to keep tabs on things and monitor the incoming classes for any wayward students that might need help, pack help.

Derek worked with Deacon as a veterinarian's assistant (though Deacon promised with his natural talent, he could get by with timing the clinic even if he didn't have formal schooling). It was ironic because that had been Scott's job, but when the two of them sat down to think about dividing pack responsibility, Derek had to about his personality wasn't as... Well it didn't put people at ease as easily as Scott's did. On the other hand, with his experience growing up in a wolf family, he had more than enough experience with all kinds of wild animals that made him a natural on the job.

"You know who provides for the pack already? Danny," Ethan said, looking over at his partner and licking his yogurt spoon.

Danny blushed. After graduating from Caltech, he now worked for Google as a software engineer. Ethan was less interested in the overly academic environment there so instead he and Aiden enrolled in UCLA. There, they were discovered by a talent scout their senior year and so had been trying to make it in Hollywood. "Twin porn is popular," Aiden once said, looking past Ethan at Danny, eliciting a color of red from Danny that no one had ever seen before.

"We all do our part right guys?" Danny said, shrugging as he bit into a bagel.

Liam hopped over to him and licked his cheek.

"He's saying he appreciates the diplomacy," Isaac offered.

Theo howled and they all heard the message as if he'd said it, "that's because he was held back a year."

Liam growled low and aimed for Theo. Jackson leaned back and quickly shoved the other wolf off him so he wouldn't have to get in the middle of anything. Liam got his teeth around Theo's hind leg and Theo snapped back, catching an ear.

"Guys, enough!" Derek said, eyes gleaming red. "Stop trying to be the center of attention."

Both wolves whined but obeyed nonetheless. Theo, already healing, moved to cuddle with Scott while Aiden picked up Liam and sat down on a couch with him.

Liam barked.

"That's right that's right, you weren't held back a year, everybody knows that." Aiden cooed.

Between freshman and sophomore year, Liam started an internship with a travel agency that spilled over so much of the actual academic year, he decided to take the year off. Or... it was never clear whether he decided it or the school simply said he should since he'd missed so much class anyway. In any case, it was a double wound for him because, in addition to being the youngest in their pack, he was now going to be graduating 2 years later than even Theo, who planned to graduate a year early.

Jackson looked over warmly at all of them. It was a good decision to go to school abroad. It helped him find himself, and accept himself. Now that he had, he was ready to be back with the pack, in the same place.

He remembered once asking Derek about it, about a year after the kanima thing, after he'd finally started acclimating to life with a pack, the year he started calling Scott by his first name.

"What happens to wolf packs when people start to actually grow up, get lives and stuff?" He had asked, stuffing his hands into his pocket on a cold winter day.

Derek looked over at him, understanding the implicit question in his beta's mind. "You know what the hardest thing about being a turned wolf is?"

"Yeah," Jackson replied, remember it as one of the first lessons Derek taught them when they all started meeting as a pack. "Balancing the wolf with the human."

Derek nodded. "My family, we were born wolves. We had been born wolves for generations. And even marriages were often with other born-wolf families. So for us, what the wolf wanted was what the human wanted. There was always the expectation that we would stay together forever. It's part of what made... things so difficult."

Jackson squeezed his Alpha's shoulder instinctively, offering forgiveness. He knew Derek blamed himself endlessly for the kanima incident and for, in Scott's words, generally being a dick the first few years they were all together. It was hard for him to start creating a new pack, and he'd interact with so few humans that hadn't been part-wolf or deeply immersed in the wolf way of living that his way of doing things were often abrasive and jarring. They all knew by now he was only trying to do his best.

"That's one way of doing it, we can stay together forever, we don't have to physically live together, but be in the same physical proximity. Do pack meetings and all that."

Jackson nodded, knowing the sentence about physically living together was thrown in for his benefit. "Some packs lean a little more toward the human side. So they live apart, sometimes even in different countries, and just come together once or twice a year. It's a little harder on pack dynamics, but a little easier on people who want to lead their own lives, have their own families."

Derek had looked at him intensely then, "the choice is with each individual pack member, Jackson, I would never force anything on any of you."

Still, as well as Derek could read him, the same went two ways, and Jackson saw how much Derek hoped that, when he graduated, he would choose to stay. By that point, Scott had basically already committed to staying (because at the time he was actually in danger of being held back for senior year), and Danny was already thinking of staying (he was already in talks with Caltech), which meant Ethan and Aiden would've stayed as well. He hadn't asked Isaac, but knew the brunette would stay as well, since he was basically alternating living with Scott and Derek anyway.

"I want to come back," Jackson had said, slowly with measured words, "but I think I need to be on my own a bit. Just... do some thinking."

Derek had smiled, stepped over in front of the other, and put both hands in his shoulders, "I know you do Jackson, I know you need a break from this... supernatural cesspool, from your parents, just to figure out yourself."

There wasn't a lie to those words and Jackson felt eternally grateful. It was the first time an authority figure in his life had chosen to focus on his needs. It was a momentous occasion for Derek as well, a huge step on his road to being an Alpha worthy of his pack.

Four years abroad for school were exactly what he needed. He had become infinitely more attuned with himself. Both as a human and a wolf. And thanks to Skype and vacations, he never felt that far away from the pack anyway. Even Liam and Theo, who had joined after he'd left, felt familiar to him (but he supposed going with them and Scott on vacation to China, where basically he and Theo kept Scott and Liam alive would forge such bonds).

He was thrilled to be going home again. He didn't tell them all yet because it was so uncertain, but he'd already been looking at places to live in the city, spaces big enough to accommodate the entire pack if they all decided to come over. He even thought about asking if Danny wanted to be roommates, but then realized, after talking to a long-suffering Aiden about it, that that would mean listening to him and Ethan have marathon sex every weekend. Aiden basically spent 20% of the time living with the two of them (the apartment was actually in the twin's name), and 80% at the pack house they'd all built.

He thought it was a good happy medium for all of them. To be living all within 20 miles of each other, but have spaces big enough to accommodate everyone for regular pack nights. Certainly the arrangement even made Derek happy (the marathon sex a contributing argument as well to his essentially banning Ethan and Danny from spending the night at the main pack house).

"Jackson!" he snapped out of his reverie, looking at Liam who was now fully dressed. "Come on man, we're going sightseeing and you're going to cancel all of your plans and be our tour guide."

Jackson smiled and let the younger wolf pull him to his feet.

Notes:

This could easily be the seed of a longer piece, since it's too long to be a drabble… you'll notice that a lot of familiar faces are left out, because the idea came to me in a hurry and not everyone could be squeezed in, but I think I left it open ended so that you could imagine how some other folks may fit in relatively easily =)