Scott heard the car coming miles away. While he heard hundreds, if not thousands, of cars in a given day, he instinctively knew that this was the one he was listening for. A few minutes later, it pulled up to his house: a gun-metal gray Corvette convertible with the top down, his father at the wheel. A brand new white baseball cap on his head contrasted sharply with his tanned skin and black hair. Scott rolled his eyes. Even without his enhanced senses, he could smell the desperation. The car was too expensive, the person driving it trying too hard to look like he always drove this kind of car. He didn't. When Jamie brought Scott's belongings to the house a week after Scott's midnight flight, he'd done so in a rusted out 25 year old Buick that he had sworn he would drive until the engine fell out.

His father didn't get out of the car, not right away. Nor did he honk the horn. He just … sat, staring straight ahead, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. The car's engine rumbled in a February morning that was cold enough to make the moisture in the exhaust visible. Jamie wore the same shirt and jeans from the other night, no jacket. It was like he thought that sheer obstinance would keep him warm.

After several long minutes, he peered in the rear-view mirror, adjusted his baseball cap, tucked some loosed hair back under it, and stepped out of the car, shutting the door carefully behind him. Now he stared up at the house, eyeing it as if it were a dog he wasn't sure was chained up. It had never really been his house. Melissa had inherited it from her mother when she moved into assisted living, and had themselves only moved in a few months before Jamie packed his bags and left. Scott's brow furrowed as he tried to imagine what his dad saw from the sidewalk. When Scott had moved back in, he hadn't thought one way or the other about the dwelling itself, just the parent who occupied it. He took it for granted that what belonged to his parents also belonged to him. But his dad wasn't welcome here, and everyone knew it. Jamie closed his eyes briefly, drew a deep breath, then shoved his hands in his front pockets as if reaching some kind of decision.

Seeing his dad like this was strange. He looked so … not nervous, exactly, but insecure. Scott tested a few other synonyms, rejected them all. Until that moment, Scott would have scoffed if anyone had suggested insecure as a descriptor for his father. He was loud and volatile and—a memory of that camping trip popped into his head. He had been ten, old enough to follow basic campground rules. The skies had opened up while they were out hiking. They had returned to the campsite to discover that the tent flap hadn't been secured and everything inside was drenched, the ground churned to mud from the power of the rainfall, and the Buick wouldn't turn over. His father had hustled them into the back seat, turned the heater on full, and huddled with Scott until they dried off enough for the boy to fall asleep. The tent was Scott's fault. His father never once yelled, never once blamed or accused Scott, even though he could have. "Our stuff will all dry eventually. As for the car, she'll start after the rain stops," his father promised. "Everything gets quirks when it gets older. She—" he patted the seat, "-doesn't like thunder storms." He had been right, of course. The good parts weren't rare; they were just sometimes hard to remember through the cacophony.

All of a sudden, Scott found it hard to hate him. He wasn't ready to forgive him, but the desire to hate had dissipated.

Scott heard his father pound on the front door and his mother answer, then he stopped listening. He could guess well enough what they would have to say to each other, assuming they had anything to say at all.

The conversation didn't take as long as Scott expected it would. Or maybe it took longer. While waiting, he copied out the formula for a Chemistry problem into his notebook, stared at it blankly. Had Harris covered this material? At all? He couldn't remember. His hand gripped the pencil as if he could squeeze an answer out of it, fingernails turning white from the pressure. He thought about how he'd made them change that morning totally on purpose, and the irony of how something that should be physically impossible made more sense than chemistry. "Werewolf," he said, sounding the word to an empty room. "I'm a werewolf." A blush crawled into his cheeks. He'd only been able to say the word a couple times. He avoided even thinking it, unable to get past its utter ridiculousness. Every time Stiles said it—which seemed to be far more often, and far more enthusiastically, than necessary—he winced. Lycanthropy wasn't supposed to be real; how was it now the most important thing in his life? Stiles and Allison and first line, they'd all be left behind if he moved out of Beacon Hills. He'd attend a new high school and maybe he'd make new friends. There might be a Lacrosse team, though most schools didn't have them. The only thing he could count on is that he'd still be a werewolf.

He jumped at a knock on his door, checked quickly to make sure his hands, teeth, vision were human before opening it.

"You ready, buddy?" his dad asked. His heart was pounding, the reek of nervousness overpowering his usual scent. Scott had to turn his head away to try not to breathe it directly, it was so strong. He'd smelled it the other night at the game, too, though he'd been too caught up in the primary scents to pay it any attention.

"Where are we going?"

Jamie shrugged. "Thought we'd catch some breakfast. Talk over a few things." He peered into the room, eyes sweeping the furniture and wall decorations, pausing on the exercise bar that hung in the bathroom doorway, the muddy jeans discarded on the floor. "Your mom told me you're grounded." He sounded distracted now. Or maybe disinterested.

"Yeah," Scott answered. "Grades." His mom must not have rattled off the list because his dad seemed to accept the short answer as a sufficient one.

Jamie took a breath. "I got you something," he said in a rush of words. From behind his back he produced an object wrapped in a white plastic bag. "It just came out. I know you won't be able to play it for awhile…."

Scott took the package and opened the bag. The expansion pack for Rings of Hell, a video game he had been into all through middle school, fell out. He eyed it quizzically. He couldn't remember the last time he'd played it. Actually, he could: he and Stiles had spent a sleepless weekend with it the previous winter, after talking about the then-current expansion for months on end. Then Lacrosse had started, homework started rolling in, and he'd taken the job at the animal clinic, and the game slipped out of his mind. He hadn't even known that this expansion was being produced.

"Consider it a late birthday present," his dad said, in response to a question that hadn't even crossed Scott's mind.

"Thanks," Scott replied. He tried to sound like he meant it, even as he realized that he would never play the game. Never mind that his birthday had been eight months ago. Violent, bloody video games didn't hold the appeal that they used to. Scott returned the game to the bag and set it on his desk. The idea niggled at him that he was being bought. "I'm not moving back in with you," he said suddenly. He started, looked around to see who else had entered the conversation—figured out that no one had. He ran the sentence back through his mind. Yes, he'd heard himself correctly.

Jamie's eyes widened briefly, his heart skipped. But the smell of his nervousness dimmed. He seemed more surprised by the timing than by the content. "Just breakfast, then?" he asked. "My treat." He stepped to the side in a silent invitation. Scott hesitated, then nodded. "You're gonna love the car I've got. Picked it out just for you—"

"What happened to the Buick?" He followed his father down the stairs and out to the car, flashing a reassuring smile to his mother in the living room. She was sitting on the far end of the couch, clearly trying not to interfere. As he passed, she clasped her hands and looked up, as if shooting a quick prayer into the sky on his behalf.

"I can't believe you remember that old thing," Jamie replied with a dismissive hand wave.

Scott quirked an eyebrow, but this time managed not to say what he really wanted to. He could see his father donning the bluster as if to wear it into battle. "So, new car, new job, new town," Scott summarized, instead. "You've been busy." It would be more impressive if he couldn't smell the diesel and oil, couldn't guess how much truth was being redacted. A new notion bloomed, took root: Everything his father had shown him was part of a contest—

"Wait 'til you see the apartment," Jamie continued, as he slid into the car. Scott caught a whiff of new car spray, and underneath that the residual scent of previous drivers. "It's got a pool and an exercise room and satellite TV with a sports package. You'll really like it."

—one that he wasn't sure he was winning.

END

A/N: Thank you for reading and commenting. If you'd like to discuss this story or any of my others, I have a thread in the Teen Wolf Fanfiction forum. If you'd like to supply a prompt for me (or anyone else) to consider, go to Teen Wolf Prompts forum. Next up: Habit Forming. No, it's not a sequel.