By now, lying to Stiles' father was something of a regular occurrence for Stiles as well as most of his friends, and Melissa McCall joined in with little difficulty. After opening her door to find four werewolves- two of whom had been murder suspects and all four of whom with injuries of varying severity, the woman had reacted with commendable professionalism and had snapped into action. While Scott grabbed the first aid kit and Stiles cleared the kitchen table, she called the Sheriff telling him about a celebratory sleepover at her house.
Even if Melissa wasn't the greatest impromptu liar in the world, it wasn't as though Sheriff Stilinski needed much convincing. The man was in the middle of trying to explain to the Whittmores why their supposedly dead son was not in fact in the morgue but in the emergency room wearing nothing but a grey cotton shirt, his girlfriend in tow. Julian did not envy him.
After a fifteen minute long argument and a phone call to Deaton, Derek had dropped Jackson and Lydia off at the hospital and gunned it. None of them wanted to be hanging around when people started asking questions.
From the intermittent texts Lydia was sending Scott, it seemed things were going alright, and that everyone seemed more concerned about how the hospital had mistaken Jackson for dead in the first place than they were in questioning a half-naked teenager. When the questions finally did come up, Julian suspected Jackson could probably get away with saying something vague about memory loss or shock. Not as though anyone could blame him, and with the police short-handed and desperate to replace their numbers, it wasn't as though they'd be looking too deeply into the situation. Besides, it seemed someone had made a call about Gerard Argent and the sword hanging in his office. A sword that bore striking similarities to one that had been used to chop a homeless man in half. No doubt the remaining hunters in town would be making themselves scarce.
Good fucking riddance, Julian thought bitterly, wincing as Melissa prodded at his leg.
As for the hospital... Well, if Jackson was anything like his parents, then Beacon Hills Memorial probably had a lawsuit in its future.
Melissa McCall clearly had similar suspicions, ignoring the call on her home phone with a simple, "The paramedics were the ones who pronounced him dead," before she carefully put on a pair of bright blue gloves. For someone who'd been dealing with the supernatural for about a week, she was remarkably cool headed. Nurses had to be, and Julian suspected that she was probably compartmentalizing.
In addition to her steady nerves, Melissa was also incredibly good at stitching up wounds quickly and with minimum pain. Not that Julian had really been able to feel anything. His entire body felt buzzed, and even after the endorphins faded to exhaustion, the pain from being poked with a thin needle was nothing compared to being stabbed with Allison's wolfsbane-coated knife. Or her grandfather's massive broadsword. Too tired to feel any revulsion at the thread being pulled through his skin, Julian simply watched with dulled eyes until the woman finished and readied herself for the next patient.
Julian had gotten patched up first both because he was the worst healer out of the four of them as well as the fact that he had a knife sticking out of his leg. That had lent the injury a sense of urgency, he thought numbly as he pulled the clothes out of the backpack in front of him.
It turned out Laura wasn't the only one incapable of letting things go. Derek had pressed the bag into Julian's hands and guided him to the bathroom. He was waiting outside; Julian could hear his brother's breathing just outside the door and smell the pain in the air when Derek moved his dislocated arm.
Gingerly, Julian tugged on the pants. They were an old pair he'd used for painting, and he was grateful that they were a little to large and thus didn't rub on his newly bandaged thigh. After pulling on the shirt, a worn cotton thing that he'd thought he'd lost, with Def Leppard written across it, Julian risked a glance in the mirror and watched his reflection stare him down with a humourless, bloody smile.
He looked like a vampire.
A possibly high vampire.
The dark circles under his eyes combined with some mild blood loss and the inky black of his hair made him look much paler than he actually was, and Gerard's blood was still crusted against his chin and throat, cracking and flaking when he moved his head. His reflection winced, and Julian turned on the tap, scrubbing harshly at the stain until he was certain he'd gotten all of traces of the blood off.
Leaning heavily against the sink, Julian took a few deep breaths and forced his muscles to relax one by one.
It's over, he told himself over and over again, trying to get the words to sink in. It's over, he repeated as he watched the last of Gerard's blood swirl away down the drain.
Jackson was the kanima no more, and even with the long road ahead of him, he wasn't the threat he had been.
Gerard wouldn't last long. He was a wily old bastard, certainly, but he was also sick, spewing black blood, and being tracked by both his son and soon the police. Gerard had used that damn sword to kill more people than Julian wanted to know, and it wouldn't be long before the police started to put the pieces together and realised that where the old man showed up, so did bodies. Lots of them.
Splashing a last bit of water over his face in an effort to calm himself, Julian looked back up, blinking water droplets out of his eyes and listening to the quiet thud of his heartbeat. Then, tentatively, he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the world was red and his eyes were made up of a cluster of burning lights, staring back at him like some kind of demon. Even without a true sense of colour, some part of his brain seemed to be telling him that the warm golden glow had been replaced by the unsettling pale yellow of his childhood.
Shifting was like drinking a cup of coffee; a jolt of adrenaline that got his heart rate up further and made his muscles tense all over again, the exhaustion abandoning him for a brief moment.
Reluctantly, Julian closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Blinking them open, he was greeted by the familiar murky colour of his eyes, though they looked greener than normal thanks to how bloodshot they were. The adrenaline was still there, hovering at the edges like the hum of static electricity, and part of him wanted to embrace that rush again. Fully. Dive deep into the pit and not come up for a long time.
The sensible part of him told him not to be an idiot and that not only was Scott's bathroom to small, but that he was going to rip his stitches and his new clothes. He wanted to remind himself that he had a lot to work on, and that what had happened at the warehouse may have been a fluke. That it might not happen again. Still though, he couldn't quite stop the thin, half mad smile that broke out across his face, unable to entirely contain he bubbling sense of accomplishment.
Swallowing down a laugh, Julian bit the inside of his cheek until his body stopped trembling and his heart rate slowed. Only then did he open the door and offer the bag and bloodied shirt back to Derek.
If Derek had noticed anything odd about Julian's scent or heart rate, he didn't show it. His older brother just shoved the shirt in the bag, awkwardly shuffling his grip around until he managed to swing it over his uninjured shoulder so he could offer Julian his good arm. For once Julian didn't bother protesting, and allowed his brother to take some of his weight as they wordlessly made their way back into the kitchen where Melissa had set up her makeshift nurse's station.
After helping Julian back into a chair, Derek returned to leaning heavily against the wall with his body curved to take the weight off of his injured shoulder. His green eyes surveyed the scene before him with a mix of apprehension at everyone's wounds, pain due to his own, and relief as it dawned on him as well that this was a moment of quiet. Not the calm before the storm that the other dips in action had been, but true calm. A chance to rest and recuperate without threat of being ripped to pieces. A chance to finally catch their breath.
Letting out a sigh, Julian leaned forwards and rested his forearms on his legs, careful to avoid the knife wound, and watched as Melissa continued her work. Having finished patching up Julian, she had moved onto Isaac. The latter of whom was sitting at the kitchen table trying and failing to keep a stoic expression as the nurse carefully cleaned the wounds in his chest. Allison had really done a number on him; there were multiple slash marks mirrored alarmingly neatly on both sides of his body and two shorter but wider wounds where she'd driven the daggers in deep, black blood slowly leaking out of them.
Julian had worked at a summer camp the year before, working both as a counsellor in training and as the lone nurse's unofficial assistant. The campers were more accident prone than he himself was, and he along with his co-workers soon found themselves acting as Nurse Miller's second pair of hands. Julian didn't mind it the same way Cal and the others did. Blood hadn't ever grossed him out like it did Stiles, and, if anything, it was simply interesting to watch the woman work. They'd covered some of the stuff in first aid training, but it was different to see it in practice, and there was a sense of accomplishment that came with the job that pretending to patch up your terrible actor of a partner didn't. That usually came with boredom, annoyance, and Alex getting offended about Julian's opinion of his acting prowess.
Should Skype him tomorrow, Julian thought distractedly. Let him know that I didn't get murdered.
Isaac's hiss of pain cut through the quiet of the kitchen and Julian's thoughts and the dark haired teen realised that he'd unconsciously flinched at the sound, the movement pulling at his leg. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Derek stiffen and straighten up while Melissa offered a quiet apology to her patient. Grabbing a strip of medical tape, she glanced over to Derek uncertainly. "And this is normal?" she asked for the second time that night.
"It means his body is fighting the wolfsbane," Derek responded, echoing Deaton's earlier words. To someone who didn't know him, Derek was coming off as unnecessarily gruff and standoffish, and the lack of overt concern was probably doing little for Melissa's opinion of him. To be fair, the nurse's experience with the Hales was mostly limited to Derek being accused of being a serial killer that had attacked her son, and Peter threatening to kill her because he had attacked her son. While Julian didn't think the woman disliked him, she didn't know him, and the fact that he'd entered her house covered in blood from biting someone probably hadn't been a great second impression.
"But this is more than just a little…" She trailed off, not wanting to worry her patient. For whatever reason, an accused murderer telling her such wasn't entirely satisfactory, and given the spiderweb of raised black veins on Isaac's torso, Julian couldn't exactly blame her for being concerned.
"Mom, remember the bullet?" Scott prompted gently. His mother flinched and levelled him a look that told her son that yes, she did remember him getting shot while being held hostage by a maniac in control of an unstoppable killer lizard. "I healed," Scott continued seriously, meeting her gaze easily and openly. "So will Isaac." He gave the blonde a reassuring smile.
"You say that like I should be relieved," Melissa commented quietly, taking a deep breath to calm herself before continuing her work with her brows creasing her face.
"I'll be fine," Isaac repeated, though the pain and tightness in his voice told another story.
"I'll be the judge of that," the nurse told him, prodding at the skin around the wound with worried fingers. Whereas Julian's leg simply had a few darkened veins, Isaac's chest was a mess of them, most of the wolfsbane having entered his system in the first few slashes. It made his skin look so pale it seemed grey, almost zombified, and the thin sheen of sweat wasn't helping matters. If Julian hadn't known better, he'd have thought Isaac was running a fever. A high one at that.
Still, Isaac tried to shrug off the others' concerns. "I've been worse," he protested, breaking off mid-sentence with a hiss of pain as Melissa hit a sensitive spot.
Melissa paused for a moment when Isaac's words sunk in, her face crinkling up with worried confusion and motherly concern, while a few feet away Derek slumped with something unspeakably sad in his eyes. Stiles, seated next to Scott attempting to avoid looking at the blood and failing, didn't seem to register the words, while Scott's eyes widened and he faltered, nearly dropping the bandage he was getting ready.
Julian just sat, unsure of what the appropriate response was. His general response to a threat was to either run or punch it, and if neither of those worked, to find out as much as he could until a viable option presented itself. Usually a modified version of the first two. This was one of those cases where he was trying to think of a third option and failing.
Drawing both of his hands into fists, Derek took a deep breath and straightened up. When he did, there was a sense of purpose in his tired voice. "I haven't had time to get any new furniture for the apartment but we can move the mattresses in from the depot until we get it in," he offered. There was a question in the words. Derek was asking for a second chance. A chance to be the Alpha he'd promised when he'd bitten three lonely teenagers with nowhere to go.
Except it was over a month later, and after being arrested, turning into an uncontrollable monster once a month, almost being bisected by the principal, and being attacked by a lizard monster, no one was going to blame Isaac for wanting out. Or at the very least, not wanting to be within fifty feet of any Hales or Argents alike.
Isaac hadn't run before the game though, and Julian got the sense that he was going to be running after it.
A pained smile quirked at Isaac's lips. "So what, we're going to Ikea this weekend?"
Unable to entirely hide the relief that flashed over his face or the grateful look in his eyes, Derek shifted and pushed himself up off of the wall to stretch up to his full height. "Sure," he said gruffly, going to cross his arms over his chest only to get a painful reminder that one of his shoulders was not in its socket.
"The loft is nice," Julian said after a moment of quiet, the words directed at Isaac and Melissa. "The building's family owned, and the guy taking care of the place knows what he's doing. You might want to paint the bedrooms though," he added, reminded of the ghastly shade of pink his aunt had covered the walls in.
Derek nodded in agreement, his lip curled in disgust at the memory. "Should do that first."
"Wait, so you're moving into an empty apartment, and priority numero uno is painting?" Stiles asked. He was already pale, and had grown even paler after catching sight of the injuries before him, making the stale bruises and cuts on his skin look darker.
Julian and Derek exchanged a quick glance. "Yes," they said in unison.
Cocking his head to the side, "Better than the wallpaper in the dining room," Julian commented wryly.
Derek shut his eyes and shook his head, a smile stirring beneath his stern demeanour. "That's a low bar, Jules," he murmured.
Julian actually grinned at that, a short laugh escaping his lips while Isaac simply raised an eyebrow, a bit of apprehension fading away from his scent.
Slowly, Julian became conscious of Melissa studying the two of them, eyes darting back and forth as she tried to size them up. A faint frown crossed her face, and she seemed to have made some kind of a decision. "Do you have somewhere to sleep until you get this furniture?" There was some hidden intention behind the words, but Julian was too tired to pick it out.
"We've got mattresses we can use until then," Derek assured her. Glancing at the clock on the wall, he did a mental calculation. "Might as well stay at the depot tonight though. Move everything tomorrow."
Melissa stood slowly, placing her hands flat on the table in front of her before she spoke. "No, you're not. I've got two teenage boys with knife wounds, another who was beaten by his principal, and my son..." She trailed off briefly, going on after a moment's pause with fire in her eyes. "I want to keep an eye on them, observe any changes, and none of them are in any state to be running around across town in the middle of town. You've all been through enough as it is."
It felt odd to hear someone say that. Sure, it was true, but it was still odd. Julian had grown up with the supernatural. It was normal for him. And after the fire, running from hunters was just as normal. Looking over his shoulder was a reflex, as was shoving away anyone who tried to get too close. And now he was sitting around a table with a brother he had barely spoken to in six years, two people he actually considered friends and one who could eventually get there, and a woman who, even after learning that monsters were real, was patching them up and acting genuinely concerned.
Even after lizard monsters, somehow Scott's mother was the one who was the most surprising.
It occurred to Julian that probably wasn't a positive reflection on his upbringing in Beacon Hills.
"Tonight, you're resting and you're healing," Melissa stated in a tone that left no room for argument. "Scott, go grab the extra blankets from upstairs, Stiles you set up the DVD player," she ordered. "And grab Isaac a clean shirt while you're at it. As for you," she said, turning to Derek. "You can take a seat and let me pop your shoulder back in or you can go off to your depot. Your choice."
Derek knew better than to argue with that tone. So did Julian. On the surface, Melissa McCall didn't have much in common with Talia Hale, but they both had the 'parenting voice' down pat. Julian frowned to himself for a brief moment, trying to recall his mother's voice, searching for her words but coming up blank, and he couldn't quite blame it on the fog of exhaustion creeping in.
He was still searching blearily when Derek gently tapped his shoulder, not saying a word. Simply offering his uninjured arm out.
Julian stood hesitantly, wincing as he put the weight on his leg and pain flared through it. Shifting back to human form with the knife embedded in his leg had been a bad idea. Not that it had been an idea so much as an event. Either way, all he'd done was twist the blade and shred the muscle. It was going to be a while before he'd be able to walk properly, and the prospect of being trapped was beginning to hit him.
"Fucking Argents and their stupid fucking wolfsbane." Any real bite in the words was lacking, replaced by exhaustion. Julian mumbled a few more curses, gripping onto Derek's arm and trying to experiment with how much weight his leg would take before it buckled.
Not much, he found out quickly, another bout of cursing accompanying the discovery.
"You could try resting for at least an hour," Derek said tiredly as his younger brother regained his balance, digging his thankfully short nails into the man's arm.
"Or you could…" Unable to find an insult, Julian simply huffed and fell silent, allowing Derek to guide him down the hallway into the front room where Stiles was already waiting next to a growing pile of DVD cases.
"Should've brought Revenge of the Sith," Stiles was murmuring, not having heard Julian enter. "Have to watch it if you can't leave."
A frown creased Julian's face as he eased himself against the wall, leaning back to take the weight off his leg and waving Derek off towards the kitchen to get patched up. Upon ensuring Derek was going, Julian turned his attention back to Stiles.
"Has Scott not seen Star Wars?" he asked, honestly surprised. Scott wasn't exactly a sci-fi aficionado. He was, however, best friends with Stiles, and it seemed odd that the latter hadn't played it for him.
"Nope. Every time I try and set it up, something happens. Last time the power went out, time before that he had an asthma attack and had to go to the hospital. I think he's cursed." Catching the sarcastic look on Julian's face, Stiles narrowed his eyes and began gesturing pointedly with a copy of The Italian Job. "Hey, after Jackson turned into a poisonous lizard and Gerard turned into a fountain, that is not exactly unreasonable."
"Guess not," Julian agreed, screwing his eyes shut as his blood rushed to his head. It passed quickly, but it was enough to remind him that he'd been through a lot in the past twelve hours. The past month. He needed to sleep, and at this point he doubted even his insomnia would be able to keep him up much later. Fighting a yawn in addition to an oncoming headache, Julian completely missed whatever Stiles was arguing with Isaac about, the words blurry and distant in his head.
Deaton was out at the clinic and would be for hours. While Julian didn't want to spend the night on Scott's couch, if he could grab at least a couple hours or even twenty minutes of sleep... Deaton would be back then, and Julian could collapse into his bed and sleep for the next week.
He didn't notice he'd been swaying, half-asleep on his feet, until Scott suddenly appeared in front of him with a faded blue blanket and a pillow. "You look like you're gonna pass out," the taller teen commented, reaching a hand out to steady Julian but knowing the shorter beta well enough to know better than to actually grab him.
Lacking the energy to argue, Julian took the proffered pillow and limped over to the couch, pain burning with every step until he finally reached his destination. He had just enough willpower left to stop himself from just sinking down, and managed to take time to arrange himself before he sat down so he didn't injure his leg further. Some cautious adjustments later and he'd settled down when Scott slid into the seat next to him.
The couch was meant for two people. There were two cushions after all. But in an effort to take his weight off his leg, Julian was spread out somewhat, putting him closer to Scott than he'd have usually intended. They weren't crammed in by any means, but Julian liked his personal space, and to use a term Cal was overly fond of, Scott was definitely in his 'bubble space'.
The wave of annoyance and displeasure Julian was expecting didn't come.
Instead, a sense of mild embarrassment came, and he sincerely hoped that Scott was too preoccupied with picking the movie to pick up the scent of Julian's initial discomfort.
"What about The Princess Bride?" Stiles asked loudly, breaking Julian's train of thought.
Scott said something, but Julian missed it, though from context it seemed it was a negative
"Inconceivable!" There was real pride in Stiles' bruised eye, and Julian found himself reminded of his cousin. The joke was something that Vince would've pulled, albeit Vince would've done it while standing on the table and waving around a pair of barbecue tongs in place of a sword.
Scott got to the real point that time. "I don't really want to watch a romance right now."
For a moment, Julian's tired brain didn't really comprehend the words. They only really sunk in when Stiles started talking.
"Hey, look I know things with Allison have been… complicated, but that doesn't mean…" Stiles trailed off, as aware as everyone else that he was just offering a meaningless platitude to try and make Scott feel better.
"No, it does. I- I think that..." Scott hesitated then abruptly cleared his throat and jabbed a finger at the cabinet. "What about Indiana Jones?"
Stiles couldn't smell Scott's regret or distress, but he could pick up on the clear subject change. "That has a romance in it," he reminded his friend apologetically.
There was a pregnant silence that Isaac finally broke, kneeling down to pick up a movie Stiles had put in the discard pile. "What about Scream?"
"That's got romance in it too."
"Yeah, but it's also got people getting stabbed," Isaac argued, looking to Scott and Julian for support.
Too tired to care, Julian gave an unenthusiastic nod. He did actually like the movie; Cal had screened it at her Halloween gathering a year ago, and it turned out she was entirely right about it being a decent horror movie without being unnecessarily graphic. Alex had initially been joking about the film being an excuse to cuddle, going so far to pull the lamest arm-around-shoulder move he could, but had ended up hiding behind his hands in an incredibly dignified manner about five minutes in.
"You know what," Scott said, sitting up straighter and giving Isaac a nod of approval. "Let's watch it. Haven't seen it in a while. Besides," he joked weakly, "It's not like it's a particularly romantic movie."
Realising that he wasn't going to win this fight, Stiles shoved the DVD into the VCR with a petulant expression. "Fine, but if anyone has nightmares, that's on them."
"I'd rather go up against Ghost Face than Gerard," Isaac stated, lazily taking a seat on the floor with his back against the couch Julian and Scott were seated on. "Clumsier."
"Wouldn't mind watching Gerard get killed by a garage door," Julian mused, initially not realising that he'd spoken aloud until he noticed Scott's vaguely exasperated yet still amused expression.
"Nah," Isaac argued, leaning back against the couch and stretching out his legs underneath the coffee table in front of him. "Rather see him hung from the football goal post."
Julian cocked his head to the side and considered it. "Guess he was the principal."
Scott stared at them both. "You guys are taking this really personally."
"He just tried to kill my brother," Julian stated flatly, unwilling to add the 'And use me as bait to bring my serial killer of a father in town', deciding to simply end with, "And I could use some good dreams tonight."
Giving up, Scott returned his gaze to the television while Stiles, having finished fiddling with Scott's temperamental DVD player, flopped lazily into an armchair.
The movie started up and before long Drew Barrymore was being violently murdered by a man in a ghost face mask.
The first time Julian had watched the movie, he'd been unnerved, somewhat surprised, and in pain from Alex digging his fingernails into his arm. Now though, everything was sort of foggy, and her screams sounded far away. Like they were coming from underwater.
Within five minutes, Julian was fast asleep.