Author's Note:

So I'd just like to thank everyone who has been following this story. Your reviews mean the world to me and really keep me writing. I'm sorry that the chapters have been coming in a bit slowly. Work and grad school have just started up again and I'm doing my best. This is my writing project right now, though, and I'm excited to keep it up on the side. Keep those reviews coming and I'll keep posting chapters. :)


"You told Allison?!" Scott yelled as he slammed his locker shut and glared angrily at Stiles.

"Well, she asked, and you've been avoiding her all day, so I figured maybe if I explained what was going on she'd be a little less, I don't know, distraught?" It was the Monday after, the past week a blur of Scott's dimmed hospital room, endless games of Halo, and what seemed like a million breathing treatments to Stiles. He was exhausted but grateful, the fact that Scott was standing right in front of him at school, breathing, enough to make his own breathing a little easier.

"It wasn't your information to give! How much did you tell her?"

"I don't know, some of it?" Stiles shrugged.

"What do you define as 'some of it'?"

"That you've been asthmatic your whole life and that even though you were cured of it by the Bite that it's suddenly back again? With some kind of wolfy vengeance?"

"And that's it?"

"Well, I had to tell her that you were in the hosp-"

"Jesus, Stiles! Why do always have to be in the middle of my fucking business! She's probably worried sick now!"

"I'm not going to apologize for doing what I thought was right, Scott. She cares about you and you can't just lie to someone who-"

"I'm so angry with you right now that I…I…argh, I can't believe you!" Scott yelled, whisking his backpack from the floor and throwing a strap over his shoulder.

"Scott," Stiles tried, but his friend just bumped into his left shoulder as he passed, pace quick enough for him to beat around the hallway traffic to the curve in the hallway. And then he was gone, Stiles the only one left when the bell rang a minute later.

The thought of putting his backpack on and trudging to class was the last thing on his mind. He'd never skipped before, but then again Scott had never seemed so furious with him. Maybe it was Allison, or the tightness in his chest that he refused to acknowledge but Stiles knew was there. Maybe it was the way it was lingering, waiting to worsen. Or maybe it was the fact that Scott had only been able to breathe on his own for six days now, and he was finding it hard to manage without help. Stiles wasn't sure, but he was starting to get the feeling that Scott was distancing himself, and he knew that wasn't a good thing. Because Stiles cared and Scott was too blinded at the moment to realize, which meant that either Stiles waited for everything to fall and went running to fix things or walked away before everything began to deteriorate and didn't look back.

It was the first time that he wondered if it would be better for him to step away, let Scott fend for himself and figure things out on his own. And even though Stiles' heart ached at the thought, his mind repeated let it be, let it be, words forming on his lips and following him to his car, the Beatles song on his iPod blaring through the canvas roof as he drove away.


Scott and Stiles walked through the parking lot after lacrosse practice, the silence between them since sixth period enough to pique Coach's interest that afternoon when he yelled, "Bilinski! McCall! Stop acting like you guys just had some horrible breakup in the locker room and start running! Run! Run! Faster! There ya go!"

"I guess I'll speak first, since you're being stubborn and we pretty much know how this is going to end." Stiles' attempt at sarcasm was met with bored eyes, his hand around the keys in his pocket the only thing keeping him from exploding.

"You ready to apologize?" Scott asked, attitude apparent in the way his head was tilted.

"No, I'm not going to write you an apology." Stiles put his hands on his hips and pulled his lips inward as a means of stalling so that he could figure out the best mix of words to get his point across to Scott. "I know I'm usually a fan of avoiding a situation until it goes away and all, but I don't know, not this time. I mean, never mind the fact that Derek had a shit fit when I had to call him and explain that you stopped breathing. Do you know how long it took me to make that phone call without sounding like a three year old in the middle of a temper tantrum?" He left Scott with a few seconds of silence to answer, but he didn't take the invitation, instead looked away, annoyed that Stiles wasn't mumbling some form of apology. "I bet you didn't even think about how any of this has been affecting me, by the way. Or about how I've been racking my brain, staying up all hours of the night trying to figure out why any of this is even happening in the first place."

"Look, I just want to forget about everything and go on doing exactly what I was doing before. I don't want to talk or think about it. And I don't want a million people knowing, which is why I'm still angry at you for upsetting Allison earlier." Stiles had to take a deep breath to handle that one. She'd been upset long before Stiles had shown up next to her locker after third period, but Scott was too lost in his own emotions to see that.

"I don't know what you're trying to do here Scott, but you're hurting the people closest to you by ignoring what's happening and keeping things from them. And you're hurting yourself, too, because if you haven't noticed, you're not really getting better. Maybe you can breathe right now, but that's only because you're on a million medications. I know it's going to happen again. I can feel it."

"Oh, you can feel it? I'm the one with the heightened senses here, and I don't feel anything. In fact, I feel the best I've felt in a week. So please, tell me how I'm being ridiculously selfish."

"I just have a really bad feeling about all of this, and if you would just give me a chance to figure it-"

"Would you stop being jealous for one minute? You had your chance to get the Bite and you blew it, so don't try and make me feel guilty for being faster or smarter or getting the girl," Scott practically screamed. Stiles tried to swallow, lump that had been growing in his throat all day thickening. He wasn't sure how Scott could think that all of this was jealousy. Had he not picked up on his best friend's bout of silence the entire week before? The way he kept track of time between his medications or calmed Derek down enough over the phone time after time to keep him from knocking the front door of the McCall house?

"You really think I'm jealous of you?" He hadn't wanted to ask, but it had slipped out, the words spilling from him instead of the tears threatening to form. "You think I liked holding your hand in the nurses office while you went into anaphylactic shock? That I enjoyed spending hour upon hour waiting to hear whether or not you woke up?" A this is unbelievable chuckle escaped and Stiles shifted his weight as he pulled his keys from his pocket. "I've been jealous of you before, Scott, but not over this. Not over the Bite and everything that came with it, or the attention you've been getting this past week and a half." Unlocking the driver's side door, Stiles licked his lips and lifted his head up, adding, "I've been too busy worrying myself sick over you to be jealous. I thought you of all people would know that." before pulling the door shut and driving away.