"You're kidding," Riley said into the phone, a grin working its way onto her face. Excited by the turn of events, Riley rolled onto her stomach and gave Scott her full attention rather than splitting it between him and the fascinating dots on her ceiling. "How dumb was the look on his face? Wait—helmet, right… how dumb do you think the look on his face was?"

Scott's laugh echoed back to her through the line, though it was slightly muffled—Scott had probably shoved half his sandwich in his mouth while she was talking. She waited patiently for him to swallow, used to this behaviour. "You should have seen it, Riley. It was like I had all the time in the world to catch it."

"Man, I'm so proud of you! I knew all that training would pay off," she said eagerly. "I bet you'll make first line—no! Captain! Jackson can put that in his bottle and suck it." Riley laughed as she got up, heading towards her calendar to mark down the day Jackson Whittmore got shown up. It was important to take joy in the little things.

"I wouldn't go that far. First line, maybe, but that's all I really want anyway." Scott said bashfully, and Riley laughed once more.

"That's all you want, huh? What about that pretty girl in your English class?" She teased, and she could practically feel the heat of Scott's blush through the phone. "What was her name? Addison?"

He took the bait and wasted no time in correcting her. "Allison," he said, and Riley doubted that she was imagining the dreamy lilt to his voice. "Speaking of… something weird happened at practice."

"You being good at lacrosse isn't weird, Scott."

"Not that. I mean… I could hear things. Things I shouldn't have been able to hear. It happened in first period, too." He explained, his voice losing all of its happiness to be replaced with worry. Riley hummed thoughtfully in response, not sure what to say.

"What kind of things?"

"Like when I was in class, I could hear Allison on her phone outside the school. I could hear her like she was right next to me."

Riley's hand, poised with a pen to scribble onto her wall calendar, froze. "Are you messing with me right now?" She asked just to say that she had, because she already knew that Scott wasn't. His confirmation didn't make her believe him any more or less than she already had, and clearly she was too far into this friendship, as she hadn't considered doing anything but believing him for even a second. Thinking he heard a wolf in his panicked state was one thing, but Scott wasn't running through the woods anymore. Classrooms were good for daydreams, sure, but Riley didn't think Scott was dreaming.

"What do you think is happening?" She asked after a long silence. The one that followed was even longer, and the answer at the end of it was exactly what Riley was expecting but dreading.

"I don't know."

Riley tugged her jacket closed as she power walked her way to the field, already a few minutes late to the try-outs. After missing yesterday's and the amazing show that went down at it, the girl knew that she couldn't miss today's. And hopefully she'd get to see Jackson's dumb mug herself when Scott ran him into the ground.

When she reached the field, the bleachers already had students scattered on and around them, and the gaggle of teenage boys hoping to become a team were in the middle of the field in a huddle. Looks like I won't be wishing them luck, she thought to herself as she marched up the bleachers and sat herself down. The metal was cold under her and she shivered, regretting not wearing something thicker than leggings that day.

Not even a moment after she sat down, the boys scattered with a series of shouts, clearly pumping themselves up for what was to come.

Riley found herself more attentively watching the try-outs than ever before—usually her boys were barely scraping by and were admittedly uninteresting… today was much, much different, however. Scott was powering by all the other players, dodging with a grace Riley knew he didn't possess. And as he flipped over two defensemen and scored a goal, she couldn't even stand up and cheer like everyone else was doing.

She was frozen in her seat, her jaw dropped and her eyes wide. She had practiced with Scott until she literally wanted to die at least twice a week all summer, and while he was better, he wasn't… that. That wasn't her Scott. Her Scott tripped over his own feet and could barely make it up two flights of stairs before he needed to make use of his inhaler.

"McCall! Get over here!" Coach Finstock hollered into the celebrating group of boys, and it took Scott no time to break away from the crowd to jog over to the man. Around her, everyone went silent as they waited to hear what the man would say, but Riley was still frozen, staring at the boy wonder.

Suddenly around her, the crowd once again burst into cheers, and Riley could only assume that Scott was being told her made the team. His eyes locked onto her in the crowd, the only person not jumping for joy, and she only just managed to force a smile and a thumbs up.

Riley waited impatiently outside of the change room, her phone squeezed tightly in her hand and her foot tapping the ground without rhythm. She had texted Stiles as soon as Scott had run back out to the field and demanded he come talk to her after he showered, and she knew he would check his phone as soon as he got to his locker. Teenagers were good for that.

When Stiles came out, though, he clearly had not showered. Riley's nose wrinkled up but seeing as Stiles was wasting no time, she wouldn't either. "Something's going on with Scott," she said quickly as she walked towards him, grabbing his arm to begin dragging him down the hall. "He can barely flip on a trampoline, let alone on solid ground."

Stiles tripped as he was dragged but quickly managed to match his pace with Riley's. He was gnawing on his bottom lip, a bad habit they both shared, and looked even more worried than her. "There was wolf hair on the body," he muttered, and Riley found herself freezing for the second time that day.

Stiles walked on only two steps before he realized she wasn't with him, and when he turned back, Riley saw that his eyes mirrored the panic in hers. "What the fuck is going on?"

She saw his hesitance as clearly as the argument he had going on within his head, and it took everything in her not to snap at him to tell her what was going on. After nearly a full twenty seconds, Stiles spoke again. "I had just been joking when I said it to Scott yesterday, but I… I think Scott may actually be a werewolf."

"What the fuck is going on?" She repeated in a choked whisper before powering forward once more, leaving Stiles to scamper after her. "Werewolves don't exist, Stiles. They're fairy tales," she argued to him, but she knew she was really arguing herself. The things happening to Scott weren't natural, she knew that, but she wasn't ready to turn to the idea of supernatural.

"I know that! But it's starting to be the only theory that makes any sense," Stiles claimed as they approached his Jeep, Riley walking around to the passenger seat as Stiles threw his bag into the back. "Unless you've got some better idea?" He challenged as he got into the driver's seat, slamming the door closed after him.

Riley was silent as they pulled out of the parking lot, only speaking up after three minutes to say, "Turn here. We're going to need a lot of coffee."

Knock, knock, knock.

Riley jerked awake, papers scattering as the line of photos Stiles' had placed over her was disturbed by her sitting up. Stiles made a pained noise, clearly upset that his make-shift desk was back to being a person, but Riley was too busy rubbing her eyes and grumbling to pay him any attention.

Seeing as Riley wasn't going to get it, Stiles stood up and crossed the room to pull open his door. On the other side was a smiling Scott, and Stiles quickly beckoned him in. "You gotta see this," he claimed as he closed the door behind him. "We've been reading; websites, books, all this information!" He said as he began frantically picking up the papers dropped to the floor around his bed with Riley.

Meanwhile, Scott sat himself down at the foot of the bed, handing Riley the coffee she had requested he bring over. She took it with a grateful hum and sat up properly, running her free hand through her hair to try to tame what was surely a bird's nest after hours of nearly pulling it out in frustration. "Is this about the body? Did they find out who did it?" Scott asked, turning his attention back to Stiles as the jerky boy scooted his desk chair over to the bed.

"No, they're still questioning people," Riley said with a yawn. Scott looked between her and Stiles for a moment with an odd look on his face, which Stiles quickly stamped out.

"No, no! Look, do you remember the joke from the other day?" He started, looking at Scott with pitying eyes. "Not a joke anymore," he admitted, looking down to the papers in his hands. At Scott's silence his head raised back up, his voice becoming a bit more frenzied as he tried to make Scott understand. "The wolf, the bite in the woods… I started doing all this reading…"

Suddenly he shot up, all the information running through his head making him too itchy to sit still. "Do you even know why a wolf howls?" He asked Scott, who stared up at him in confusion.

"It's a signal," Riley answered from behind Scott, making him turn to look at her. "When a wolf's alone, it howls to signal its location to the rest of the pack," she said slowly—far too slowly for Stiles' liking.

"That means there could have been a whole pack of them around," he picked up, drawing Scott's attention back to him. Though Riley couldn't see his face, she could hear in his voice the awe he felt at this new information.

"A whole pack of wolves?" He asked, causing Stiles to shift his eyes around and swallow down his energy as he delivered the fact of the matter.

"No," he started, and his body finally stopped moving. "Werewolves."

"Are you seriously wasting my time with this?" Scott asked incredulously as he stood up, clearly intending to leave now that he knew his friends didn't want him for anything serious. "You know I'm picking up Allison in an hour."

Stiles jerked forward and placed a hand on Scott's chest, stopping him from leaving. "I saw you on the field, Scott. Okay, w-what you did, it wasn't just amazing, alright? It was impossible." He ended with a breathy laugh, and Riley felt the air in the room change from frantic to tense in less than a second.

"I made a good shot," Scott defended.

"You made an incredible shot," Riley corrected, slowly placing her coffee down onto Stiles' nightstand. "The way you moved… people can't just suddenly do what you did overnight, Scott. And don't think I didn't notice that you don't need your inhaler anymore. And your hearing—"

"Okay!" Scott cut her off, clearly frustrated by the way this conversation was turning. "I can't think about this right now, we'll talk tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?!" Stiles burst. "What?! No! The full moon's tonight, don't you get it?!"

"What are you trying to do?" Scott yelled back. "I-I just made first line, I got a date with a girl who I can't believe wants to go out with me, and everything in my life is somehow perfect, why are you trying to ruin it?"

"We're trying to help," Riley said softly from her place on the bed, ending the shouting match.

"You're cursed, Scott. And the moon doesn't cause you to just physically change, it's also when your blood lust will be at its peak." Stiles explained as he sat back down into his chair, now looking up at Scott who gazed back at him with disbelief.

"Blood lust," Scott repeated blankly.

"Yeah, your urge to kill," Stiles clarified with an almost indifferent shrug, his friend's negative energy drowning him.

"I'm already starting to feel an urge to kill, Stiles," Scott mocked, though the words struck something in Riley's heart.

"You have to cancel that date, Scott." Riley said clearly, reaching out for Scott's bag to get his phone for him. All the attention in the room was immediately drawn to her, and while she already knew Stiles approved of her choice, Scott looked nearly murderous. "I'm gonna call her right now, tell her you're not feeling well—"

He moved before she could react, a hand pressing against the top of her chest to push and pin her against the bed. "No, give it to me!" He shouted in her face, a fist pulled back and ready to strike her.

If she hadn't believed what she and Stiles had discovered before, she would now. Scott had never raised a hand to her, not even to play fight. He had always been careful with her, always aware that she was smaller than him and bruised like a peach. Her Scott would never hurt her. This stranger of a werewolf, however…

Time was frozen as they stared into each other's eyes, Riley's wide with fear and Scott's squinted in anger. She counted ten beats of her frantic heart before he let her go, instead letting out a shout of anger and lashing out at the bed next to her shoulder.

She could hear blood rushing in her ears and Scott's heavy panting, and she didn't want to hear it as Scott finally whispered a shocked apology. "I-I gotta go get ready for the party," he mumbled before grabbing the phone that had fallen from Riley's limp hands as well as his backpack and making a speedy exit. As the door shut behind him Stiles finally burst into action once more, just about throwing himself across the room so that he could pull Riley back up into a sitting position.

He held her up with his hands on her arms, and Riley couldn't bring herself to make a joke about him examining her chest, not when she knew why he was doing it. Once assured that Scott hadn't really hurt her, Stiles pulled Riley to his chest and hugged her tightly, both of them still shaking from fear. Neither said anything for a long while, both consumed by thoughts of what their best friend had become.

It looked like they had a party to crash.