This story is a collaboration between TheCatalystX and Hurricane.'97
We henceforth disclaim all rights and ownership to any characters or familiar story elements that might be found in the following chapter. Which is a fancy way to say: Teen Wolf doesn't belong to us. Duh.
Enjoy! :)
"Cuz everybody's got a little piece of someone they hide
It's okay, it's the way we distract until the day that we die
And though our future's gone uncertain, it's gonna be alright
'Cause though I'm leaving longing leaves me ever by your side"
- Pieces of the People We Love, by The Rapture
Chapter Four:
It didn't matter how long or how hard Stiles thought about it last night. She plotted, devised, and started over countless times. There was no solution she could think of, no clear answers at all. The only thing she knew for certain was that no matter what happened she would have Scott's back.
Things were made more complicated by the curfew that her dad apparently implemented this morning—without even mentioning it to her, by the way—and Stiles had thought their hands were well and truly tied.
That is, at least, until Scott told her that he went to Derek's house and happened to catch a whiff of some blood near a freshly buried plot of soil. And suddenly, it was as though the skies opened up and a plan became clear. Talk about a sign pointing them in the right direction.
How curious, she thought. How so very curious that Derek would have freshly dug dirt right beside his house after the second half of the body went missing.
She loved it when Scott was devious and bold. That's what this plan was—devious and bold.
The universe apparently took perverse pleasure in reminding her that she didn't have balls time and time again. Just as Stiles was starting to gain some confidence in their plan as they trekked through the doors of the hospital tonight, she turned the corner of the first hallway and all her courage fell to the ground and shattered to dust.
Scott had just gone into the morgue and Stiles was supposed to be keeping watch. But how could she be expected to focus when Lydia Martin was sitting in a chair waiting nearby?
She supposed Lydia was here for Jackson, because he was injured at practice. But that's not really at the top of her list right now, as she panicked and dove into the nearest seat and tried to remain inconspicuous. Stiles watched Lydia over the top of the brochure she'd picked up.
Scott had grown balls and done something totally out of character tonight. He volunteered to go into a morgue and look at part of a dead body, when just weeks ago Stiles had to drag him out to the woods with only the slightest chance of seeing a dead body. It was either a sign of growth or a sign of stupidity—the answer was yet to be seen—but it was something different from his usual reserved self, and that was good.
And now Stiles had a chance to do something totally new and be bold. Her chance was just around the corner sitting in a seat and talking to someone on the phone. Stiles chewed nervously on her lip.
She could do it. If Scott could do it, she could do it. Bold. Be bold.
Stiles got up from her seat and fiddled with the brochure in her hands, trying to look like the perfect picture of cool, casual confidence as she strolled around the corner. Lydia was grinning at something and flipped a page of the magazine in her hands.
Stiles' heart sputtered in her chest and she almost chickened out.
Bold, she told herself. Be bold. She tapped the brochure in her hand and tiptoed in front of Lydia. When her green eyes trailed up to Stiles' face with an expression of annoyance, Stiles lost some nerve and abruptly pointed to the seat two down from her.
"Is that seat taken?"
It wasn't. Obviously, it wasn't. Lydia's purse rested in the seat immediately beside her but she left the seat next to that deliberately open so that anyone could take it if they wanted. Lydia raised an eyebrow at her and pursed her glossed lips. "Excuse me?"
Stiles' face went red. "That's—" She pointed at the seat again. "It's not—I'm just gonna—" She hurried and plopped down on the seat, staring at Lydia. "Hey," She nodded, trying to be aloof.
Lydia forced a fake polite smile on her face and gave the slightest of nods before turning away again, angling her body in the opposite direction of Stiles. She tried not to take that to heart. It's not like she could blame the girl; honestly, Stiles had just made a complete and total creep of herself. Pathetic, really.
She drummed her fingers on the wooden armrest of her chair, her mind buzzing with what to do next to try and keep the conversation alive. Stiles eyed the magazine in Lydia's lap and leaned over to try again. "Is there another one?" She asked, and Lydia visibly suppressed a grimace as she turned to Stiles impatiently, meeting her gaze dead-on.
And just like that, her courage vanished. Lydia raised her eyebrows. "What?"
Stiles swallowed roughly and tried not to stutter as she broke eye contact. "That magazine, is—is there another one on the table beside you?"
Lydia's eyes moved to the table clearly beside Stiles but she tactfully chose not to point out the obvious stack of magazines that rested untouched on it. And she didn't pilfer through the stack that rested next to her arm, either. Instead, she flipped the one in her lap shut and all but threw it at Stiles.
Stiles wasn't dexterous enough to catch it without fumbling. The magazine slid through her fingers and landed on the tiled floor with a loud slap. Stiles' face burned hot and she forced out an awkward laugh as she made a show of picking it up and laughing it off, and Lydia rolled her eyes at her.
Stiles nodded her thanks and the conversation, if you could even call it that, seemed to finally draw to a close. She looked down and was surprised to see not a fashion or gossip magazine, but the cover of Popular Science in her hands. Stiles ached to comment on the nerdy magazine that Lydia had been enjoying, but the redhead had her fingers pressed into the earpiece and had completely turned her back to Stiles in dismissal. It seemed redundant and maybe just a shade of desperate to try to disturb her at this point, so Stiles sighed and slouched in her seat.
Surprisingly, the magazine kept her attention as she waited for Scott to return. It did, at least, until Jackson came down the hall and Lydia slinked up to him and started petting him.
But as Stiles listened from behind the magazine she realized that Lydia was up to her same old manipulative tricks—using her feminine persuasion to tell Jackson that he needed a second cortisone shot before the game if he had any hope to be successful enough to 'go pro.' Stiles' eyes flicked down to the magazine in her hand, which talked about the theoretical future of sports and athletes, and she wondered if the magazine had inspired Lydia's comments or if she had already plotted it from the moment she learned of Jackson's injury.
Scott scared the shit out of Stiles by snatching the magazine from her hand and discarding it onto the table beside her. Stiles was altogether startled and eager as she practically levitated from the seat to ask Scott what he found in the morgue.
"It was the same," He told her with the ghost of a disturbed expression lingering on his features. Stiles gestured pointedly at his vague explanation and Scott elaborated. "The smell that I caught at Derek's house was the same as the smell of the body in the morgue."
Stiles shuddered. "I knew it," She hissed. "That freak killed her! Scott, he needs to be stopped!"
"I know," Scott grimly agreed as they turned to make a quick and graceful exit from the hospital. "But how?"
"I have a plan, but Scott, listen. This isn't about lacrosse," She told him quietly. "We aren't stopping him so that you can play in some stupid game. This is bigger than that."
"I know," Scott said for the second time, this time more defensive. "You didn't see what he did to that body, Stiles," He told her with a haunted grimace. "You didn't see what I saw."
"Sure," She smartly quipped. "Go ahead, rub it in some more!"
Scott frowned at her macabre sense of reasoning. "I didn't want to see it Stiles," He scolded her. "Trust me, neither do you."
"Yeah, sure," She waved him off. "So this is what we need: a flashlight, a backpack, and two shovels."
The entire plan depended on how fast they could dig. Dig. Dirt, with their bare hands and a shovel. Stiles, not the weakest girl in Beacon Hills, was certainly no werewolf, and for all her planning she didn't think to bring gloves.
What kind of person doesn't bring gloves to a crime scene? There are all sorts of things that could go wrong right now—and don't be fooled—Stiles' mind is racing with all the possibilities and its causing her such crippling anxiety that she's transcended nervous and is now functioning at some higher level of consciousness.
Like, she's totally numb, and even as she is constantly worried about the very real possibility of being caught before they can even find the body or whatever is buried here, she doesn't allow herself to feel anything about what those consequences would mean.
It doesn't matter. She's sweating, her back is aching and her arms are burning from exertion, and she's breathing so hard that she's pretty sure she's on the cusp of a panic attack that she can't take the time to acknowledge or properly work through—but she doesn't stop.
Meanwhile Scott is just as fine as ever. Well, except for his incessant bitching. He points out almost every two shovelfuls that they're running out of time, and Stiles is about three more comments away from knocking him out with her shovel and finishing the job herself.
Except that she needs him right now. For a thousand reasons, too many to get into, but most importantly because his hands are incapable of forming blisters and he hasn't even broken a sweat. He probably wouldn't even be short-breathed if not for the crippling anxiety he's vocalizing every two seconds.
She felt her patience fraying and her nerves were raw. But man, did she feel alive. She had to inwardly admit, this was sort of fun.
"What if he catches us?" Scott asked, his breath steaming in the cold night air.
Stiles pushed her hair out of her face with the back of her wrist and glared at him briefly. "I have a plan for that too." She shoveled more dirt and Scott shrugged at her in question. "If he comes back then we split up and whoever he catches first, too bad."
The fact that she was out of breath and her throat was burning for water even as she said it didn't escape her notice, but she didn't say a word about it. The truth is that if Derek came back and they indeed took off running, there's no doubt which one of them Derek would catch first. It would be her. She resigned herself to that bitter reality the moment Scott was bitten. She's scared, sure, but that's not relevant.
"That's a stupid plan," Scott commented, and Stiles shrugged her shoulder.
"I never said it was good," She told him, returning to digging. "But it's—"
Her shovel struck something dully, and Scott yelled at her to stop. She put her hand up and pulled away briefly with Scott, and for a moment they just stared down at the exact spot in the dirt that she'd hit.
There it is. There's the body.
Another beat passed before Stiles finally crouched down to dig with her fingers through the loose dirt.
"Hurry!" Scott insisted, and she desperately wished for three arms so she could smack the back of his head. She found a rope, tied around a sheet, wrapped around something soft and yet firm, still mostly submerged in dirt. She pulled at the rope but it was all in knots.
"I'm trying," She irritably snapped at Scott. "Did he have to tie like nine hundred knots in this stupid thing?"
He shifted anxiously at his feet beside her and it grated her already tender nerves, and she cursed under her breath, fed up. Finally she just grasped the rope between her fingers and yanked.
Scott fell back with a loud yelp and Stiles felt her face go white and her blood run cold at what the sheet revealed once it was yanked back.
The head of a black wolf, its mouth open and tongue lolled out, and its eyes milky and grey.
The sweet, potent smell of death was impossible to mistake now that she saw the evidence in front of her and her mind was filled with images of the scene from the Godfather where the horse's severed head had been hidden beneath the sheets of Jack Woltz's bed.
For a moment neither of them could speak beyond screaming a string of curses and what the fuck what the fuck what the FUCK, until finally, Stiles broke the cycle. "This doesn't make sense!" She pointed accusingly down at the wolf's head. "That's not—why would he have that buried in a sheet!? Where's the body?"
Scott looked back at her with wide eyes, just as clueless as she was, and shrugged helplessly. "How should I know?"
"You said they smelled the same!" She blamed. He threw his hands out.
"I don't know!"
She finally shook her head. "We have to get out of here," She said, grabbing his arm to pull him along as she stood from her spot on the ground. "Help me cover this up…"
In the frenzy of finally discovering the wolf's head, the flashlight had been kicked. It was now lying between her and Scott, pointing off in the distance and spotlighting something poking out of the ground beside the large hole they'd just dug.
She froze and frowned at the purple and green flower that protruded from the soil. In the midst of all her research about werewolves, there was a lot of lore about poison and ways to defeat or suppress a werewolf's abilities. One of those ways was actually a flower—or more accurately, an herb. Specifically, wolfsbane.
And one of those very flowers stood like a small sign sticking out of the ground with both arms up, like it jumped up and down and screamed Look, Stiles! Look over here at me!
"What?" Scott said, catching the expression on her face. "What is it?" He tried to follower her gaze but he just seemed lost as his eyes flitted straight over the flower.
"See that?" Stiles pointed at the purple petaled vegetation.
"What about it?"
"I think it's wolfsbane…" She murmured.
Scott scrunched his face and shook his head at her. "What's that?"
She glared at him, feeling both unsurprised and exasperated. "Seriously? You are so unprepared for this," She told him. "You're lucky you have me!"
"I know," Scott sounded incredibly annoyed as he agreed, and watched as she went to pull the wolfsbane from the ground like he couldn't understand why she was so interested in picking a flower while they're busy digging up bodies.
She pulled at the flower until the whole thing popped from the ground, roots and all, and was shocked to find that the rope was somehow connected with the roots. Encouraged and thrilled at the feeling of discovering yet another clue—perhaps even a clear answer to the giant question of the wolf's head in the hole in the ground—she dropped the flower to the dirt and yanked at the rope.
Stiles followed it around and around. It circled the hole they'd dug, or she supposed it circled the wolf head that was buried. The circle grew smaller and smaller and the more she revealed the clearer the picture became—a spiral. All leading back to the wolf head. By the time it was all pulled free and Stiles was left with a tangle of rope at her feet, she looked up at the gasp that came from Scott's lips.
The wolf head was gone. Or, not gone, just… not a wolf anymore. The top half of a girl was in its place. She had her arms tucked under her like she was simply lying down in the hole, her head turned slightly, and eerily, she appeared to be glaring straight up at them from her grave.
Stiles stepped back and grabbed Scott's arm in shock. "That's—" She blurted. "That's more like it."
Scott threw her a weird look and she just looked back at him grimly.
"What do we do now?" Scott asked. She looked back down at the girl and set her jaw.
"Now we call my dad."
"And say what?" His eyes went wide and she felt a muscle jump in her jaw.
"We found the other half of the body."
She'd be lying if she said she didn't feel satisfied. Once the shock wore off, smug would be another word that came to mind. Not that she would show it, of course, but there's nothing quite like the pay off of helping her dad solve a crime. If she was too obvious about her glee then her dad would shut her out completely and force her to leave before she had the chance to revel in it just a little.
And frankly, she was feeling bold. That courage that was so hard to muster the night before seemed to ooze out of her pores now, and she didn't even feel sorry when she slid into the passenger seat of the cruiser.
"I'm not scared of you," She declared to Derek Hale, who was handcuffed in the back seat. It felt a bit like traipsing up to a grizzly's cage and teasing it.
Of course she wasn't afraid, he was restrained in broad daylight with a dozen cops roaming around—and besides, it's not like she got in the back seat with him, which she could've done.
Derek lifted his head and holy God. The look in his eyes when he glared at her—it wiped away all of her bravado so fast that it made her head spin, and her heart was racing out of fear now instead of exhilaration.
She swallowed roughly and his lips tightened into a frown so tight they were little more than a thin line on his chin. "Well, fine," She relented. "Maybe I am afraid. But it doesn't matter. I just wanna know something…"
His chin lifted at that and he didn't respond as he fixed her with the totality of his heated glare, holding nothing back. "The girl you killed?" She looked him over to try and make herself seem braver, but she's not sure that it fooled him at all as his glare intensified and his nostrils flared. "She was a werewolf." Stiles watched his reaction closely but he didn't seem to move at all save for his steady, controlled breathing. "Wasn't she? But a different kind, right? She could change into a wolf, and I know Scott can't do that."
Nothing; no reaction. A beat passed and Stiles ignored everything inside that screamed at her not to ask the question that burned in her mind, but she had to. She had to.
"Is that why you killed her?" She poked, and he finally responded.
If anything his expression only darkened and though he didn't entirely take the bait and explode like she'd prepared herself for, he calmly took a breath before responding. "Why are you so worried about me when it's your friend who's the problem?" Derek asked, his voice cool and distant as he threw Scott a glance out the window.
She didn't take her eyes away from him but she frowned and licked her lips, perplexed, withdrawing slightly as he continued.
"When he shifts on the field what do you think they're gonna do?" Derek tilted his head at her almost condescendingly, which raised her ire a notch. "Huh? Just keep cheering him on?" He sneered.
Stiles pressed her lips together and Derek shook his head.
"I can't stop him from playing, but you can," He looked her over and she suddenly wanted to cross her arms and hide, but she also didn't want to give him the satisfaction. He leaned forward and she felt her eyes widen and it took every shred of willpower she had not to flinch or lean away. "And trust me…" He looked her over again. "You want to."
She gaped at him and was trying to think of what to say when suddenly the door was ripped open and a hand plunged into the car to tear her out of it. Her dad slammed the door shut and literally dragged her a good distance away from the car before throwing her down. "There, stand!" He snarled, his blue eyes wild with rage.
She grappled to clear her mind from the conversation she'd just had so that she could try to focus on her dad, but she was struggling.
Her dad's temper appeared to settle once she sighed and he looked her over and seemed to decide she was physically unharmed. "What the hell did you think you were doing?"
She put her hands out defensively. "I'm just trying to help!" She exclaimed.
"How? By trapping yourself in a car with a suspect who buried a body beside his house?"
She paused to scratch an eyebrow thoughtfully. "…If I say I won't do it again, can we forget this ever happened?"
This seemed to aggravate him more and he stiffened before launching into full-on interrogation mode, and she braced for impact. "What the hell were you two doing out here anyways? This is private property!"
"I know—we were—Scott lost his inhaler, okay? I was just trying to help him find it!"
"What?" Sheriff scrunched his face incredulously. "When did he lose his inhaler?"
"A few days ago!" She told him with a sweeping gesture of her arm. "Somewhere out here which is why we were looking and that's when we found the body, okay?"
"He lost it a few days ago," He parroted, his hands on his hips, and she nodded quickly. "That night I found you out here?" She threw her arms up in tired enthusiasm, like she was grateful that he was finally catching on. "When you were out here looking for the first half of the body and you told me Scott wasn't with you?"
"Yes!" She exclaimed and then she froze, her eyes wide. She peered at him from the corner of her eyes. "I mean, no. I mean—crap."
"Crap," Sheriff nodded with a roll of his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, shaking his head. "Well you managed to find the body, did you at least find his inhaler?"
"Well—uhhh," She glanced involuntarily back at Derek, thinking of him tossing it to Scott, and took a breath. "Yep."
"We're going to talk about you lying to me and all of this," He said, gesturing around the property and possibly to the Preserve in general. "Tonight."
Stiles licked her teeth, her hands on her hips as she sniffed roughly and didn't look directly at her dad.
"Get the hell out of here," He told her in almost disgust, and she didn't wait for him to change his mind as she quickly darted around him and towards her jeep.
In all fairness, what she said before the game wasn't the best advice she'd ever given Scott. What had she been thinking? Telling someone who's worried not to worry about it? That's the worst thing to say! But she didn't stop there; oh no… it was like word vomit. As she spoke and listed all the things he shouldn't worry about she couldn't stop. She's got a thing for lists; that's no surprise, and she's used to the panic they usually induce, but for Scott, hearing them aloud had certainly not helped.
In fact she was quite certain that she had only made him feel more pressured. Basically at this moment in her life Stiles felt like she had failed spectacularly at being a best friend on every level. If she was braver, she would have tied him up and thrown him down a dark hole somewhere to keep him from playing. If she was kinder, she would have offered to help him in some way. And if she was smarter, she would have found a way to prove Derek was the one to kill his sister.
But none of those things are true, and she could see them falling closer and closer to ruin. Scott half-shifted on the field, but he didn't attack anyone. He certainly didn't fly under the radar either, literally tearing a hole in the goal at one point from the force of his throw. The other team had been so afraid that they passed him the ball… on purpose. And he managed to get to the locker room and control himself before he shifted completely.
She supposed, if she was being perfectly honest, the only silver linings so far had been his superhuman abilities (she doesn't care what anyone said; his abilities are awesome) and Allison. They kissed after the game. That's probably the best thing that's ever happened to Scott, admittedly even better than the bite.
And even that had possibly been ruined. Scott described the dream he'd had in depth, sparing her no gory details. He described from the moment he and Allison were kissing to the moment that he dragged her through the bus by the ankles with the intent to kill her and the horrifying way he found that he didn't want to stop.
Not a full breath had passed between them when they discovered the bloody crime scene on the bus at school, and her friend snapped.
Stiles was trying to remain calm. Her mind raced with possible explanations. All the psychology she'd ever studied told her that dreams are just … subconscious metaphors! Not literal premonitions or memories.
Why couldn't it have been a normal nightmare that came true, she mused to herself. Why couldn't he have dreamt that he showed up to school naked? Why this? Why so specific? Stiles wished she believed that it was coincidence but—no way.
Not that she was about to admit that to Scott. "Don't panic!" She tried, (there she went again, telling a panicking person not to panic, like she told him not to worry) but Scott turned away and started wandering through the halls in a manic daze, absolutely terrified at the idea that he had actually killed Allison. And Stiles had to admit that her stomach churned with the possibility; and yet she knew in her heart it couldn't be true, that her friend would never do such a thing while unconscious or otherwise.
She was just checking around Lydia's locker when the principal came over the PA system, announcing that even though it appeared that someone was slaughtered on a bus last night, that didn't mean that classes were cancelled. She snorted bitterly, amused.
"Move," A feminine voice ordered.
Stiles blinked out of her thoughts and her eyes focused on Lydia. She sputtered and looked around, immediately scrambling out of the shorter girl's way. "Sorry," She quickly managed.
Lydia didn't acknowledge her apology. She simply opened her locker and began to gather her things for class. Apparently feeling the weight of Stiles' gaze, Lydia turned her head and stared openly at Stiles expectantly. "Do you need something?" She asked a tone that suggested she better say no and leave.
"No, you just…" She looked Lydia's face over, noticing how perfectly she kept the mask on, hiding her true potential from everyone's view. How effortless she made it look. Stiles admired it. She envied it; she wanted to learn how to do it. She wanted to see what Lydia looked like without it on. But she said none of this. "Sorry," she said, and quickly turned around and left when Jackson warily approached them with a sneer on his face meant just for Stiles.
"What did she want?" Jackson wanted to know. Stiles walked slow enough to hear Lydia's response, keeping her gaze glued to the white Adidas on her feet.
"Who?" Lydia innocently asked.
"Stilinski," Jackson explained as though talking to someone that was slow. "The girl that was just here? She's McCall's friend, right? What did she want?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Jackson," Lydia impatiently told him. "She was just standing in front of my locker and then she left. Do you really need a play by play?"
Stiles turned around and caught sight of Jackson's glare as he frowned at her. Quickly, she turned and hurried around the corner down the next hall.
"We don't even know that it was a human," Stiles reasoned, moving her legs around on the stool to face Scott better. She hated Biology and was glad to use their newest drama to ignore the lecture. They weren't at the same table but they were at tables right next to each other, which made it relatively easy to speak to one another, but made whispering a practical impossibility. "It could be something else's blood."
"Something else?" Scott frowned. "Something else, like what?"
"Like a bunny," She suggested with no small degree of sadism as a demented smirk pulled on her lips at Scott's disturbed expression.
"You think I would eat a bunny? Raw?"
Sarcasm dripped from her words. "No, I think you stopped to bake it in your little werewolf oven." She shook her head at him. "I don't know; you're the one who can't remember anything!"
Scott frowned and looked away as he reflected briefly, agonizing as he tried to recall any single detail that might explain what was going on.
"Miss Stilinski," Mr. Harris called from the front of the class, his hands on his hips in front of the green chalkboard. And then he proceeded to both publicly shame them for interrupting, and forcibly separate them from each other, scattering them across the room.
Stiles was forced to sit next to Jackson, who was scowling side-long at her. She frowned at him but did her best to ignore his constant glare stuck on the side of her face, slouching behind the protection of her book.
Another few moments of this passed before Stiles finally broke. "What?"
"You know something," Jackson accused. Stiles waited for him to elaborate and when he just stared at her as if waiting for her to explain herself, she shook her head.
"What?"
"You… know something." Jackson slowly repeated, enunciating each syllable as he leaned in to murmur lowly to her. "Your little friend is cheating, isn't he? I don't know how yet but he's cheating at lacrosse and you two think you've got everyone fooled."
Stiles blinked and Jackson didn't give her the chance to respond.
"Well you don't," He continued, sounding vaguely paranoid, which was weird coming from the boy who was usually so calm and collected. "I see you," He whispered. "You're not as clever as you think you are, and sniffing around my girlfriend isn't exactly helping your case."
She stared at him for another beat before his words finally soaked in, and she couldn't help it. Stiles had to swallow a laugh and she couldn't fully suppress her smirk (after dealing so closely with someone as terrifying as Derek, Jackson was frankly embarrassing himself by trying to intimidate her) and she leaned in to respond just as quietly. "You sound crazy," She informed him.
His eye twitched and he stiffened, not moving from his whispering position. He opened his mouth to respond but the teacher snapped at him to be quiet or else he'd be moved too. Jackson fixed Stiles with a heated glare and finally retreated, and she couldn't help but feel intensely amused that he was so bothered.
For the remainder of the class, Jackson would pause from listening to the lecture so he could brood and study Stiles with an accusing, scrutinizing gaze. She winked at him one time and that only seemed to make him even angrier, which amused her to no end. Unfortunately her amusement was brought to a screeching halt when Jennifer got up from her seat to shout that the police had found something on the bus.
The class collectively abandoned their seats to go glue themselves to the windows. Outside in the parking lot, they watched as paramedics carted a body strapped to a gurney out of the back of the bus and towards an ambulance.
Stiles' stomach felt heavy and any lightness she had gathered from her interactions with Jackson were dashed. Scott was speechless beside her, and they were both undoubtedly realizing the same thing. That's no bunny.
The body suddenly sat up with a scream and it became apparent that the wounded man was traumatized and incoherent. He grabbed at the paramedics for dear life, screaming like he was still being attacked, and she smacked Scott's arm encouragingly. "See?" She whispered. "That's not dead! Dead people can't do that! That's good! He's alive!"
Scott wasn't convinced. He looked shamed as he backed away from the crowd and launched himself into self-imposed exile. "Stiles," He said miserably, pulling her attention. "I did that."
Stiles and Scott sat at their usual spot at lunch. "This doesn't mean anything about going out with Allison tomorrow," Stiles reassured him.
Scott blinked at her. "I wasn't thinking that it did…" He paused. "But now I am!"
"Well," She put her hand up even as he panicked. "Hey, hang on, would you just listen to me?"
His panic, though coming on fast, was put on hold as he gave her his undivided attention and seemed desperate to hear what she had to say that would make him feel better.
Stiles still held her hand out as she thought it over, her nose twitching in thought. She rubbed her thumb and index finger together, her lips parted uselessly as she stared at him. "I got nothin'," She finally admitted, causing Scott to roll his eyes and sigh in exasperation.
"Stiles! This is serious!" He exclaimed.
"I know! What? I'm taking this very seriously! Hey, you have no idea how much sleep I've missed trying to figure this crap out; I'm just as worried about all this as you are. I'm probably more worried because I don't have the distraction of shifting to keep me occupied."
Scott threw her a withering look but she didn't back down or apologize about her words because she honestly believed them to be true. He gets a break from his worrying when his instincts take over—she does not.
"Yeah, and yet neither of us seem to be coming up with any solutions," Scott bitterly noted. Stiles stiffened defensively but Scott ignored her. "Maybe it's time we get some help."
"By doing what, consulting our magical werewolf godmother?" She smartly asked.
"No," Scott shrugged, glancing away. "Not a godmother… but maybe a teacher."
Stiles focused on him with an unimpressed face as she worked through what he was saying, reading between the lines. She reached out to smack his arm. "Scott! Really? You want to go to Derek?"
"He knows more than we do!"
"How do you know he's going to know anything about this though?" She pushed.
"Because," Scott reasoned.
"Oh!" She smartly quipped before he had the chance to elaborate. "Well why didn't you just say so?"
Scott scowled and waved his hand as if to physically clear her words from the air. "During the full moon, he wasn't freaking out! He was in total control, while I was running around in the middle of the night and attacking some totally innocent guy."
"But you don't know that," Stiles countered.
"I don't not know that!" He sat back and sighed, shaking his head. "I can't go out with Allison, I have to cancel."
"No, you're not cancelling your whole life, Scott!" Stiles had changed her tune from the last time they spoke on the matter. "We'll figure it out," She assured him and resisted the urge to emphasize that they would figure it out. Not Derek—them. Alone. Independently.
She raised her bottle of water to her lips. Before Scott could respond someone put their tray down. They looked up and Stiles choked on the swig of water she'd taken when she realized it was Lydia. "Figure what out?" She casually asked, like this was a regular occurrence and she's usually apart of their conversations.
While Stiles continued to choke on her water and started quietly hyperventilating, Scott glanced at Lydia in hesitant confusion as he answered. "Uhh… Just, uh, homework…"
She looked between them with thinly veiled suspicion but apparently decided she didn't actually care, smiling sweetly and humming as though she understood. Scott and Stiles exchanged a wide eyed, confused look of bewilderment as another person from her posse joined the fray, setting their food down beside Stiles this time.
The girl, Stiles thought it might have been Amanda or something, raised an eyebrow at her and Stiles frowned and her eyes went wide as she turned to Scott in silent exclamation.
Suddenly they were surrounded. All at once, their usually secluded, empty table filled with people who haven't spoken to them once this year. Danny took the other seat beside Stiles, barely tossing her a glance. Some dude that Stiles had literally never seen before sat at the head of the table between Lydia and Danny, and she almost passed out when Jackson strolled up and commanded the boy to get up.
"Why do I have to move?" the boy whined, and gestured to Danny. "Why doesn't he ever have to move?"
"Because I don't stare at his girlfriend's coin slot," Danny smugly explained. Stiles cringed at his euphemism for cleavage, having been unaware of the turn-of-phrase until this moment in her life. And what a strange moment it was.
She felt like everything was changing, like they'd somehow slipped into an alternate universe where up was down, fire was cold, and Jackson Whittemore and Lydia Martin voluntarily ate lunch with them.
Danny was huge. He took up every inch of his seat and his arms almost invaded her space as he leaned over his tray and held a bright green apple in his hand. Apparently he adjusted to the change in seating arrangement like it was nothing, gracefully starting the lunch-conversation out running. "I hear they're saying it was some type of animal attack," He said, referring to the bloody crime scene of the bus. "Probably a cougar?"
As soon as she heard this bit of information, Stiles pulled her phone out. Danny had said that 'they were saying', implying that there was a public statement made by the authorities to the press. So she quickly pulled up Beacon Hills' local paper to investigate further.
Jackson kept his eyes down on his tray as he replied, apparently pretending that the rest of the table wasn't there. "I heard mountain lion."
"A cougar is a mountain lion," Lydia instantly corrected. Stiles smirked as Jackson frowned at her and Lydia's eyes widened marginally before she plastered a fake confused look on her face and glanced around self-consciously. "Isn't it?" She added uncertainly.
"Who cares?" Jackson sneered. "The guy is probably some homeless tweaker who was gonna die anyway."
"Actually," Stiles interrupted, drawing a mixture of annoyed and curious gazes. "I just found out who it is…" She held her phone out to play the video of the news coverage, and they all listened intently as the news anchor explained that the victim was named Garrison Myers and had in fact survived the attack. He was currently at the hospital in critical condition.
And then Scott revealed that he knew the man. Apparently Garrison Myers used to drive Scott's bus when he lived with his dad. Stiles sat back in her seat and tried not to let the bit of information damn her best friend, but she couldn't help it. She had really been hoping that this dude turned out to be a no one. At least then they could trick themselves into believing it was pure coincidence.
But now? While knowing that Scott used to ride the victim's bus as a child didn't exactly provide them with a motive, it did create reasonable doubt. And Stiles had to take a moment to process this before she could return her focus to the conversation happening around her.
"—do you… want to hang out, like us and them… together?" Scott was asking Allison, a look of pure panic written across his face. Stiles covered her mouth in horror and squeezed her eyes shut to keep herself from screaming no.
"Yeah," Allison seemed to shrug good naturedly, and shook her head at Scott as if she couldn't see why not. "I guess, I mean… sounds fun."
She smiled at the Lydia and Jackson behind Scott, and Stiles bit her lip to keep from commenting.
"You know what else sounds fun?" Jackson asked. He picked up a fork. "Stabbing myself in the face with this fork."
Sounds fun to me too, Stiles darkly mused. Everyone at the table turned to frown at her and she froze, her eyes going wide. Did she say that out loud?
Jackson's heated glare was evidence enough that she had in fact said that out loud. Stiles smiled fakely at him and shrugged a shoulder. "I mean… not stabbing you with a fork, obviously," She laughed nervously as Lydia watched her with an offended expression, clearing her throat. "I just meant that…" She gripped the table tightly with her fingers, hating every syllable of every word even as she said it. "It would be fun to go out—right Danny?"
She turned her attention on to him and he looked uninterested as he raised his eyebrows at her from where he slouched back in his seat and picked at his apple. He lowered the apple to his lap and glanced around at everyone. "Uh… you mean… like, all of us?"
Stiles kept the neutral expression on her face so tightly she was sure that she looked about to snap. "Yes," she shrilly agreed, causing Danny to frown at her. "Why not?"
Jackson snorted loudly but his girlfriend suddenly gasped and exclaimed over the top of him. "Bowling!" She declared, and Stiles felt her shoulders relax slightly now that the attention was taken off of her. "We could go bowling, Jackson, you love bowling!"
"Yeah, when there's actual competition," Jackson scoffed.
"Dude," Danny put his hands out and Jackson immediately seemed to regret his choice of words, shrugging at his friend apologetically.
"See?" Allison pointed at Danny and grinned triumphantly. "You'll have him for competition. And besides, who says we aren't good at bowling?" She turned back to Scott with her eyebrows raised. "You're good, aren't you Scott?"
Stiles slid a look of amusement over at Danny and Danny caught it, turning his gaze over to Scott in mild interest. "Yes," Scott falsely decreed. "In fact, I'm a great bowler."
Stiles kept her gaze on Danny and grinned discreetly as she gave a subtle shake of her head. Danny snorted and the rest of lunch was spent planning the night out. They would all meet at the bowling alley at seven. Danny and Stiles should feel free to bring a date. And Jackson snorted derisively at the concept of someone wanting to go on a date with Stiles, which made her jaw clench and her temper flare.
"What do we do?" Stiles panicked as they walked down the stairs after school, the first moment they'd had alone since lunch. "What do we do?"
"I don't know! We can't bowl!" Scott twisted his hands in his hair and Stiles put her hand up and came to an abrupt stop, snorting at the suggestion.
"Wait," She smirked. "Yes, I can."
Scott scrunched his eyebrows dubiously.
"Dude, I can bowl! I can kick your ass up and down those lanes!"
Scott rolled his eyes. "Fine, whatever, you can bowl! But that doesn't change the fact that I can't, and that we are now somehow stuck going out in public with Jackson and Lydia!"
"This is a disaster!" She threw her hands in the air. "The only upside to this whole thing is that Danny seems to like me."
Scott mulled this over as Stiles continued, apparently on a roll.
"This is our new priority number one!"
Scott paused and raised an eyebrow. "Well…"
Stiles shook her head. "No, listen to me, we can't both be stuck doing this, okay? If something goes wrong and we decide that you won't be able to handle going out with Jackson without completely freaking out and going all Hulk, we have no bail plan! If it was just you, you could bail; say you got sick. But now we're both going! Who's gonna help you? We can't both bail, Scott, not without being totally obvious about it!"
Scott put his face in his hands and groaned miserably. "What are we gonna do?"
"We'll figure it out," Stiles reassured him. "We'll think of something. We have twenty four hours, we can think of something!"
They couldn't think of anything. Not a damn thing. Stiles couldn't help but think she was more equipped to deal with sneaking into crime scenes and coming out the other side unscathed. As she had just proven to Scott, she made a great get-away driver.
But thinking of socially acceptable excuses to get out of a group outing? Stiles' nearly complete lack of social life up to this point had done very little to prepare her for these situations.
She can lose a police car that was tailing her, no problem. She can cause a really great distraction, in a pinch, and let her best friend escape safely with whatever they might be trying to steal. And for the record, no matter what Scott said, Stiles is pretty damn sure she would make a fan-freaking-tastic Batman.
But she had no idea how to deal with being roped into a group date with Lydia's posse. Crap, she really needed to stop calling it a date. If this is a date, this is the absolute worst date that Stiles had ever been on, and that's saying something.
There's something particularly tragic about this picture. Never in a million years did Stiles ever think this would come to pass. She's sitting on one of the brightly colored seats by their bowling lane. Beside her, Danny took up so much room that she was actually leaning away to avoid brushing arms with him again.
And she was currently doing her best not to watch while Jackson pulled that completely cliché move of 'teaching' Lydia how to bowl by wrapping his arms around her from behind and showing her how to throw the ball. Basically a poorly-disguised excuse to cop-a-feel in public.
She sighed heavily to herself and yanked the laces of her ugly bowling shoes a little too tightly. She sat back and looked at Danny, who was currently typing furiously on his phone and snickering every few seconds at whoever was responding to him. Stiles put her arm across the seat behind him and sniffed casually. "So Danny…" She started, drawing his uninterested gaze. "You bowl much?"
His dark eyes flitted to her arm that was still stretched behind him, and she quickly withdrew it and tried to cover it up by propping her head up on her fist. "Oh yeah," Danny smartly replied in a tone that made Stiles think he was lying. "All the time. My boyfriend is on a competitive bowling team and sometimes I'll travel with them to their competitions."
She couldn't tell if he was being honest or not. "You've got a boyfriend?"
He looked up from his phone to glance at her but didn't respond. She pursed her lips and looked down at her lap, her knee bouncing anxiously.
Lydia and Jackson managed to knock down at least three pins, but that was all. She was up next.
"Wish me luck," she muttered under her breath, and Danny did, but his tone was so flat that she was pretty sure he didn't care one way or the other.
Scott's wish of luck was much more genuine. She looked over her shoulder and saw him smiling enthusiastically, and Allison threw her a thumbs up. Stiles couldn't help but sneak a glance at Lydia before she turned away, but the red head simply raised her eyebrows at her and crossed her arms while Jackson pulled her in closely.
The bowling ball that Stiles picked out was silver. It said it weighed eight pounds, but Stiles was pretty sure it was closer to ten.
She got a spare. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than Lydia who was the only other one to have gone so far. Scott cheered behind her and when she returned to her seat Danny managed to look at least marginally impressed. Jackson and Lydia were completely ignoring her.
When she pulled out the small travel bottle of Germ-X and drenched enough into her hand for it to drip onto the slick wooden floors, she was surprised to see Danny's large palm held out in question.
He saw her expression of surprise and wiggled his fingers. "Please?"
She deposited a coin-sized dollop into his hand and he gave her a real smile as he rubbed the hand sanitizer in.
Feeling somewhat less uncomfortable, Stiles quietly settled back into her seat and she couldn't help but notice that Danny had finally put his phone away.
Danny and Allison both got strikes. When it was Jackson's turn, Danny commented on the weight of Jackson's ball and claimed it was light enough for a toddler to throw. Taking that as a personal challenge, Jackson tried to use Danny's ball, but his friend would hear none of it. So they were forced to wait for Jackson to go choose a heavier ball.
"You did that on purpose," Stiles accused, and Danny hid a smile as he tilted his head at her.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Danny shrugged. "I was just trying to keep the game fair."
"His ball weighed eleven pounds!"
"And mine weighs fifteen," Danny raised his eyebrows. "Trust me, if Jackson made fun of you for how much you could bench, you'd have said something too."
"Jackson benches more than you?" Stiles gaped, looking between the two boys as Jackson strutted back and showed off his sixteen-pound ball. Danny's face was curtained but she thought she could sense a certain amount of smugness as he replied.
"Every week," He confirmed. "And every week, he strains a different muscle, because he's lifting too much."
Stiles' gaze drifted back to Jackson and she looked thoughtfully at his shoulder as he drew his arm back and then launched the bowling ball down the lane. "Won't this be bad for his injury?"
"Probably," Danny casually nodded, and when Stiles gaped at him he simply grinned. "What? Are you going to say something?"
Stiles scowled at the thought and looked away, and after that she kept quiet on the matter. When Scott got two gutter balls and Stiles put her head in her hands, Danny began to snicker beside her. She peeked out from behind her fingers and he had the decency to try and stifle his amusement, but she could still see his dimples poking through as he shook his head at her.
"Scott can't actually bowl, can he?"
Stiles smirked. "Jackson can't actually bench more than you, can he?"
Danny and Stiles grinned at each other, and suddenly an unspoken truce was thrown up like a white flag between them. For the rest of the night they made fun of their respective best friends, pointing out ways that they were idiots.
After Allison gave Scott her mysterious little pep-talk and Scott started killing the rest of them, Lydia asked Scott for some pointers. Of course he declined, since he was on a date with Allison and they all knew Lydia was asking for another one of those cheesy-moves that Jackson had pulled on her earlier.
"Uh—" Stiles choked as she spoke up and lifted her finger to catch Lydia's attention. "I could show you some tricks, Lydia."
Jackson sneered. "Stay in your lane, Stilinski. She doesn't need help from a loser like you."
"Shut up, Jackson," Danny interjected, surprising them all. "Go help your girlfriend."
Jackson masked his surprise and embarrassment with a scowl, and Danny rolled his eyes at his childishness. But when Jackson started to stand up and help her Lydia stopped him with her hand in the air.
"How about I just try this on my own?" Lydia's voice was soured with irritation and Jackson gaped at her. Stiles knew it wasn't true, but she liked to think maybe Lydia was punishing him for being such a prick to her.
Danny didn't say a word to Stiles, or even look at her as she watched him from her seat. She was curious, and confused why Danny stuck up for her. But grateful, and she definitely like this development. Scott was painfully oblivious—too wrapped up in making goo-goo eyes and holding Allison's hand to pay attention.
And when Lydia got a strike, Stiles cheered loudly and almost leaped out of her seat in enthusiasm. Lydia was so smug that she even accepted Stiles' high five as she strut her way back to her seat and dropped next to Jackson. "I… think I'm getting the hang of it," She pursed her lips in satisfaction and wrapped one of her perfectly-coiled ringlets around her finger, watching her score jump on the scoreboard.
Stiles and Danny exchanged an amused glance when Lydia threw Jackson a narrow-eyed grin of cheekiness. Stiles crossed her arms and sat back; content with how the not-date had been going so far.
Allison leaned forward to murmur quietly to Lydia, but when Lydia leaned forward they ended up almost smack in front of Stiles so she caught every word. "Maybe you should stop sucking just for his benefit," Allison whispered.
"Trust me," Lydia snorted. "I do plenty of sucking just for his benefit…"
And just like that, the good-mood was wiped from Stiles' face. She was rooted in her seat, completely gob-smacked and maybe just a touch devastated. Danny's giant arm nudged her shoulder and she blinked rapidly as he spoke to her. "I'm hungry. Are you hungry? Let's get some food."
They were technically finished bowling. Only Allison and Jackson were left to take their respective turns now. At the concession counter, Danny ordered himself a caramel apple. "And whatever she wants," He added, and Stiles muttered that she wanted a soft pretzel with extra cheese.
Once they took their seats at a nearby table, Danny silently observed Stiles as she completely ignored the soft pretzel and picked up the little cup of cheese, dipping her finger straight in and eating it by the scoop. He wrinkled his nose as he munched on the candied apple.
"You're in love with Lydia, aren't you?" Danny bluntly asked, and Stiles choked on her cheese.
"What?" She tried to laugh as she gasped to catch her breath. He was not even remotely convinced, so she dropped the act and gave a shrug. "So?"
"So, it's not good for you," Danny advised her. "Either of you."
"How is it affecting her?" Stiles balked.
"Because you've obviously got her up on some sort of pedestal," Danny explained. "That's pretty selfish, and it's not fair to her."
"Screw off!"
Danny grabbed Stiles' arm to tug her back into the seat and she didn't stand a chance against his strength, almost tipping the thin metal chair over as she fell back into it with an irritable huff. "Listen to me!" Danny commanded. "I'm just trying to help you."
"Why?" Stiles wanted to know, sitting forward with narrowed eyes.
"If you watched a kitten repeatedly hurt itself on purpose, wouldn't you try to stop it?"
Stiles stiffened and started to list all the reasons Danny and his analogies were completely ridiculous, but he barreled over her.
"It's suicide to fall for someone who's straighter than a—"
"Coin slot?" Stiles smirked, and Danny grinned and suppressed a laugh, his eyebrows raised.
"Sure," He agreed before he continued. "Anyways, my point is, you know it's a really bad idea to fall for a straight girl."
"I don't think you understand," Stiles frowned. "It's a little late for all that."
"You think I don't understand what it's like to want someone who's straight?"
Stiles' eyes immediately flashed to Jackson and she looked back at Danny in surprise. "You mean, you and—"
"No!" Danny sneered. "Don't be stupid. Jackson's not my type."
Stiles frowned dubiously but Danny ignored her.
"That doesn't mean there haven't been other guys, though," He added with a knowing glint in his eye, and Stiles felt her shoulders lose some of their tension. "You're just torturing yourself. She's with Jackson. To be honest, I think she loves him."
"But she deserves better!" Stiles finally exclaimed, and Danny shushed her with his hand before he replied just as passionately.
"So do you!"
At that, Stiles' mouth clamped shut and she sat back to blink dumbly at him. Danny frowned at her dumbstruck expression.
"God, you're helpless, aren't you?" Danny sighed.
"Okay, fine. You're probably right about Lydia. But can I ask you a question?"
Danny put a hand up as though he didn't care one way or the other, settling back in his seat to take another bite of his caramel apple.
"Why does Jackson hate me so much? Am I not attractive to straight guys?"
Danny rolled his eyes. "How should I know? Ask your best friend that question."
"Okay, fine, but why is he so mean to me?"
"Who, Jackson? Because he has eyes, Stiles. Anyone who bothers to pay any sort of attention can see that you love his girlfriend."
"He knows?" she gaped.
Danny smirked. "Don't act like you're the first one to ever pant after Lydia. Actually, he's a lot nicer to you about it than he is to anyone else."
She thought she was going to fall out of her seat, her mouth hung open so wide.
"You don't know Jackson and you don't know how their relationship actually works," Danny told her. "She's pretty manipulative. In fact, in a lot of ways she takes advantage of him. But that's not the point. Jackson obviously has his own issues, I won't sit here and deny that, but it works for them." Danny shrugged again. "I don't understand it, but it just works for them. So maybe you should stop wasting your time on her."
"No," Stiles automatically said, crossing her arms stubbornly. "I'll never stop loving her."
Danny sighed and shook his head. "You're an even bigger idiot than I thought you were."