Another chapter done, and hopefully not too badly. I tried to make the presentation as interesting as I could without belabouring points the reader already knows ... too much. Hopefully it's still entertaining, but if not don't hesitate to tell me. Writing fanfiction isn't just about getting a story out, but also about stretching my wings as a writer. It might be hit and miss sometimes, so sorry if (when) I miss occasionally.


Chapter 52

"So this is it?" Jackson asked, looking down his nose at Stiles' made-up living room. "We couldn't have met somewhere nicer, with better snacks?"

"No," Stiles sniped back. "Until you've proven not to be a total douche-"

"Unlike the regular douche you're being right now," Isaac interjected with a smirk. He was leaning against the door jamb, loose and fit looking enough to make Jackson eye him warily every few seconds and enjoying it immensely.

"-you won't be allowed anywhere 'nice', and also, if meeting lowly me is beneath you, maybe you'd be better off not know anything at all, because I'm neck deep in it," Stiles finished. "Plus, those snacks are Erica-friendly because she can't have sugar. If you don't like 'em, don't eat 'em. It's really simple."

"I can't speak for Jackson, but I don't mind," Lydia declared and demonstratively sat down on the couch. She wore make-up, but her hair was up in a messy bun and her clothes were loose and comfy. "Your lemonade looks good, Stiles. May I please have a glass?"

"Of course," Stiles replied and graciously poured her some. If she was pretending that nothing had happened between them, he was only too happy to follow along. She was still beautiful to him - she probably always would be - but it was a detached awareness, not something that grabbed his insides and twisted them around mercilessly until he was little more than a bumbling idiot in her presence. "Help yourself to anything else you like."

The doorbell rang, Isaac telling them that Erica and Boyd had arrived, and leaving to let them into the house.

"Reyes and Boyd, really?" Jackson asked, grudgingly accepting a bottle of bionade from Stiles. "You're friendly, but I thought it's all so hush-hush?"

"It is, but as you said, they're Isaac and my friends and earned it." Stiles inclined his head towards Derek, who was finishing checking the beamer Stiles had begged off Peter. "Unlike you, dude. Mostly."

"What did you expect? I ditched Danny and a party at the Jungle for this," Jackson sniped.

"I feel so honoured." Stiles rolled his eyes briefly. "Derek will make sure you behave, so no mouthing off. If you don't interrupt too often you can still make the party."

Jackson narrowed his eyes at Derek, quite obviously calculating his chances of taking him on and winning if he began a tussle with Stiles. Deciding that the odds weren't in his favour, he crossed his arms in front of his chest and scowled sulkily.

"Hey Stiles!" Erica greeted, engulfing Stiles in a big hug. A little less friendly she then greeted the other teens. "There won't be more people coming? Not even your dad?"

"Nah, it's just us tonight. My dad's at work, trying to catch more of those Locust Wolf guys while the going's good. Anyway, depending on how well everyone's taking it, we'll have more meetings, but let's get through this one first." Stiles exchanged a firm hand clasp with Boyd, grateful for his staunch presence. "Have a seat, I'll get you drinks, and when everyone's ready, we'll get started."

Erica and Boyd unceremoniously sat next to Lydia on the couch while Isaac chose the armchair, which left no room for Derek and Jackson. And while Jackson was a little huffy for a minute before Lydia allowed him to serve as her pillow, Derek retreated from the room to put the finishing touches on their dinner.

Stiles licked his bottom lip, now getting a little nervous. "Okay guys, the windows are all covered, we have our drinks and something to stress-munch on … I guess this is it." He pressed a button on his remote and the first page of his Powerpoint presentation appeared on the empty wall above the TV. "Welcome to 'Beacon Hills, Hellmouth', your guided tour of supernatural shenanigans."

"Are you fucking serious," Jackson demanded after taking in the comic style bookcover design.

"You'll find out," Stiles replied, clicking for the next page. "It all started this year in January, when I decided to drag Scott into the woods to look for half of a dead body …"

oOo

"Oh my god, you're a werewolf, Isaac!" Erica shrieked, nearly bursting everyone's eardrums. She jumped up and accosted the shifted teen for a tight hug. "You're amazing! Boyd, look! He's got claws! And sideburns!"

"Derek is one, too, but he asks to excuse him from the show and tell because he doesn't want to be stared at like he were a zoo exhibit," Stiles grinned. Isaac's long-suffering eye roll at Erica's enthusiasm while transformed was the stuff of legends.

"Not a big surprise, after he took out those gang members," Boyd said with a nod. He turned to Isaac. "Can I have your video of his throw?"

Isaac agreed, showing a mouthful of sharp fangs as he grinned, and Stiles gave kudos to Jackson for looking supremely calm and collected while Lydia was having a minor freak-out. Of course he'd known about werewolves in a more or less abstract manner for almost as long as Stiles had, but it was still different seeing one in the flesh.

...

"Peter Hale is the fucking alpha?" Jackson shouted, all coolness blown away. "My dad's working for him! Hell, Hale was over for dinner last week! At my house! What the fuck, Stiles?"

"Yes, Stiles, what the fuck," Lydia echoed, blanching with fury. "How can you stand there, calm as you please, and just tell us that you joined his little cult when he nearly murdered me!"

"First of all, he nearly killed all of us at one point so you're not anyone special," Stiles retorted. In fact, he did it so he'd have my attention … I probably shouldn't feel smug about that. Bad Stiles!

"Except for me," Isaac threw in unhelpfully and annoyingly smug.

"Which wasn't great for any of us," Stiles continued, showing Isaac the finger even as he felt a little guilty for feeling so possessive of Peter's attention, "but we got through it. Yay us, we're badass survivors."

"Do you think that's funny, Stiles?" Lydia cried a little shrilly. "Because it wasn't funny for me! Why hasn't your father arrested him? Or better yet, shot him dead!"

"Peter was feral," Stiles told her, good mood vanishing at once. Underneath his shirt, Lou was crawling restlessly over his skin, a faint growl echoing inside of Stiles' mind at Lydia's cold demand. "He was literally out of his mind through no fault of his own. That he hurt you was bad, no one's gonna tell you it wasn't, but he has changed since then. He's healed, and he wants to lead a healthy pack and protect his territory so there won't be happening any more supernatural bullshit. Just look at Isaac, Peter's done great by him so far, and he wasn't even playing with a full deck when he rescued Isaac from his dad."

"By the way, thanks for never stepping in, Whittemore," Isaac drawled, staring with glowing eyes at the flushing Jackson. "It's nice to know that after everything I went through my give-a-fuck still isn't half as broken as yours."

Before Jackson could say anything, Erica rounded on him. "You knew that his dad abused him and never even called someone? Why the fuck not, you asshole? What's wrong with you!"

Even Lydia was staring at Jackson and her voice was crisp when she ordered, "Explain."

"I … I don't know," Jackson ground out. "It wasn't my business. Besides, Mr. Lahey was creepy, and I heard how he was with the guys in the swim team, okay. I wasn't interested in getting half drowned like that Daehler dude."

"Next time you notice shit like that going on, you're gonna call me if you can't bring yourself to call the police," Stiles said with an air of finality that had Jackson nod jerkily, once. Satisfied, Stiles pulled up the next page of his presentation. "Good, then let's move on. You all know Gerard Argent, deceased principal of our high school …"

...

"Well, I knew that something strange was going on with Allison after her mom began working at school," Lydia told them all when Stiles was done with the Argent part of the revelation. "But I never knew that she was a hunter … that she shot at people with the intent to kill." She turned to Jackson and smacked his shoulder. "Why the hell didn't you tell me about it? Any of it?"

"When was I supposed to do that? When you were comatose in the hospital? Or when you were completely spaced out after they finally let you go home?" Jackson countered, pissed off. "I wanted to forget what I saw, Lydia, not discuss it to death!"

"That's true, Lydia," Stiles said, deciding to throw Jackson a bone after the guy had promised to do better after his huge fuck-up with Isaac. "He even caught wind of Scott's transformation and wanted it for himself, but backed off pronto after seeing what had happened to you."

"Can we know why the bite didn't take?" Boyd asked into the charged silence. "I thought you said it either does, or it kills. But Lydia's still here."

"We'll get to that later," Stiles promised, "if you can wait that long. Or even want to. I've talked for an hour already and you've all had some shocks."

"Doesn't matter," Boyd said. "I want to know everything."

"Me too," Erica proclaimed. Instead of shocked she actually looked intrigued, almost gleeful, like she couldn't believe that this was her life and loving it.

"What about my privacy?" Lydia asked with a raised eyebrow. She didn't truly sound upset so much as weary, but she was definitely judging Stiles for that promise.

"Sweetheart, you just learned that the supernatural exists, and that I'm a werewolf. You'll deal if you want to learn the whole of it," Isaac retorted, earning himself a thumbs-up from Erica.

"What he said. But it's not all a huge pile of crap," Stiles assured her. "Really."

"Prove it," Lydia replied, eyes hard and shoulders tense.

...

"Stilinski can do magic," Jackson breathed, eyes wide and fixed on the mountain ash Stiles was manipulating in physics-defying ways. "How?"

"I just can," Stiles answered with a little shrug. "But it's awesome. Even better, Peter believes that Lydia will be able to do some of that as well."

Lydia, who was sitting right on the edge of her seat now, raised her eyebrows. "Is that so?"

"Yep. That's where your strange reaction to the werewolf bite comes in," Stiles said. He clicked his remote yet again and pulled up the page of his presentation simply titled 'The Banshee'. "The bite couldn't turn you because you already carried the potential of awakening as other in you. Instead of turning you into a werewolf, the bite instead forced you to come online, so to speak. Peter believes that you're a banshee, a 'wailing woman'."

"Wait, what?" Jackson turned to stare at his girlfriend. "A banshee?"

Erica scooted a little closer to Lydia, staring. "What's that? Some sort of demon? I gotta say that she doesn't look like an ugly hellspawn."

"Banshees are omens of death," Lydia whispered. Her face paled and she slumped a little against Jackson, who gruffly caught her weight. "Oh my god. My party … the guy who nearly drowned in the pool. Was that me warning of his imminent death?" Stricken, she looked up at Stiles. "I don't remember clearly, but people told me that I screamed really loudly right by the pool instead of getting in and dragging him out."

"Peter thinks so," Stiles said, compassionate in the face of her obvious distress. "The evidence seems sound, if you ask me, but of course you should do your own tests and stuff."

"I could help," Erica offered, surprising the whole room. "What? I'm curious! I wanna know more about all of this!"

Lydia bit her lip, dithering for a moment, but then she murmured, "I'd like that. Thank you."

"I'm in as well if you need me," Boyd said, "but I have to ask: how can we do those tests? We don't know anything about real live banshees."

"Right." Stiles wiped his suddenly sweaty palms on his pant legs. "Uh … so this is the difficult part, okay. Hear me out, even if it's difficult."

"Somehow I don't like the sound of that," Jackson grumbled.

Stiles sighed. "None of you probably will, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Peter knows that he did you wrong, Lydia, and he wants to make amends as well as he can. He can't turn you back into a human, obviously, but he's willing and ready to support you with everything you'll need to explore and master your new circumstances."

Lydia's shocked face turned frosty. "Now he wants to make amends?"

Stiles winced a little in sympathy. "Yes, absolutely. He's responsible for your emergence, so he's responsible for your education. I told you, he takes that seriously. It'll serve no one to have lingering resentment between us when we have to defend ourselves against a real enemy. Every bit of help is welcome, and that's no joke."

"What enemy now?" Jackson demanded. "What more can be going on in this shitty town?"

Boyd looked a little constipated as he said, "I'm with him on that, Stiles. If it's not that loco wolf gang, we need to know."

"I wanted to spare you for a bit longer, but I can tell you if you really feel you have to know," Stiles replied. At the four bitchy stares boring into him, he relented. "Fine, but on your head be it. If you're having nightmares, don't call me to whine about it."

"I can't believe it," Lydia hissed. "Wasn't one feral alpha enough? Now there's a whole pack of them skulking around and trying to harass you and the werewolves?"

Derek, who'd finally come out of the kitchen, looked calmly at her. "They aren't feral, which is even worse. But yes, a pack of them has set its sight on Beacon Hills, and that's where Peter comes in. It's his job to protect us all from them. To that effect he's training with Isaac and I, stocking up on weapons and other useful stuff, and throwing money at Stiles to advance his magical education."

"How can magic help against them?" Lydia asked in clipped tones. "And how can I make it work for me as well?"

"Right now I'm mainly using runes for protection," Stiles explained. "We're working on ward stones to place around Peter's territory so invaders will have a fucking hard time crossing the border. It's a lot of work though, so any help is very welcome."

"Why should we do that? Those alpha douchenozzles don't know us yet, and I'd like to keep it that way. I don't want anything to do with those crazy bastards," Jackson snapped. "How often do I have to repeat myself?"

"You're shitty at art anyway," Erica huffed.

"Says the woman who paints dicks on our ward stones," Boyd countered dryly, which made Jackson twitch in astonishment.

Lydia, ignoring the byplay right next to her, pursed her lips, her eyes flinty. "I'll help. But I want what Peter Hale promises. If he tries to get back on his word, I'll skin him alive. And you'll help me, Stiles."

"I'll kick his ass, but no more than that," Stiles answered. "I didn't keep him alive just so you can kill him. I'd say sorry, but I'm really very much not sorry that the pack comes first."

Eyes narrowing even further, Lydia studied him intently. "You're that invested in Hale? Interesting. How much haven't you told us?"

"A lot," Stiles admitted without even a little bit of shame or regret. "You guys are gonna have to earn that privilege. Right now you could run and tell people what I told you, but if you do that, things with us aren't ever gonna go further than what you have right now and it won't hurt us that much. Mostly you'll just come across as crazy, so I wouldn't recommend it. It's your choice whether you want to learn more and be involved, but if you're in, you're gonna have to play by some very important rules."

"Well, I'm in," Erica said, affronted. "Why are you lumping us in with that jock doofus and his banshee of a girlfriend?"

"Low blow, babe," Boyd admonished her. He raised his eyebrow at Stiles. "But I'm with her. I definitely want to know everything."

"That's great, you guys," Stiles said, relieved. "I just had to say it because all of this stuff is real. And it's no picnic, most of the time."

"Hah, I noticed that alright," Erica sniped.

Stiles nodded at her. "So you did. It's worse than a few dumb human criminals, though. Because it is so dangerous there'll be honest to god contracts if you decide to stick with us."

"Contracts," Boyd echoed.

"Yupp, more than one per person even, if we're unlucky. Peter was a lawyer before Kate Argent ruined his family, he'll insist on it."

"Do we sign those by ourselves, or do we need our parents?" Erica asked, her brash enthusiasm giving way to worry.

"Well, I haven't signed anything yet for me personally, but my dad knows and would probably be on board," Stiles replied. "But Isaac signed for himself because his dad is an asshole and never again gets a say in what he does. So, whatever you want, I guess. But please don't run and tell your folks everything right away, okay? We need to get through Scott's trial first, I don't wanna have to split my focus like that."

"What he really means is that he doesn't want to hunt you down and spell you for silence," Isaac said, a little menacingly.

"Could he do that?" Jackson asked dubiously.

"He could try," Derek said flatly. "Knowing him, he'd make it work."

"Maybe even a little too well," Isaac added, smirking.

Jackson's jaw worked as he swallowed a sarcastic remark. "Fine. Who'd believe me anyway. If Lydia wants to join your weird cult, she's welcome to it, but leave me out of it."

"You sure? I thought you'd at least be curious," Stiles asked.

Jackson looked at everyone, taking his time to compose his answer. "Yeah, very sure. As I said, I'm not interested in taking on a bunch of jumped up monsters. It's bad enough that my dad's working for that Hale dude, but if they're friends he won't drop the case no matter what I say."

"That's decent of you," Stiles offered. "Thanks."

"Yeah, well, I hate McCall and can't wait to see him behind bars. Also, I gotta believe that your alpha dude will protect my family if shit goes down, so I can sorta live with it for now. I think." Jackson scowled at Stiles. "Anyway, is your presentation over yet? You promised damn good food and I'm hungry."

"It is, actually, although I'll answer some more questions if you've got any." Stiles turned off the beamer and stretched himself. "I hope tacos are okay; Derek makes the best fillings."

Eager to get out of the dark living room, Jackson practically threw Lydia off his lap and vanished in the direction of the kitchen. Isaac and Derek shadowed him, their shared little glance enough to convince Stiles that they wanted to menace him some more as punishment for not being a decent human being in the face of Stiles' reveal.

"That one's a basket case," Erica muttered as she steadied Lydia. "What's his problem?"

Stiles shrugged. "It's not my business, but I know that he's kinda working on it. Leave him alone, he's just freaked out. God knows I was too when all this began."

"You've adapted rather well," Lydia remarked, eyeing him critically, but not in that judgy way she had about her. "Not just mentally. The way you look now, and carry yourself. You're different from before."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Stiles said, a little uncomfortable under her unapologetic scrutiny.

Lydia continued to look at him without blinking. "It is meant as one. That's one reason why I'll give Hale a chance. Whatever your faults may be, being a poor judge of character is not one of them … but I'm warning you. If he disappoints me, he will feel my wrath."

"He won't," Stiles replied evenly. He stepped a little closer so he towered over the petite girl. From his arm, a black streak of mountain ash dripped onto the floor and formed a thin circle around Lydia. "Just another word of warning, and please believe that I'm serious: do not try to get back on your word. If you formally accept the offer, we'll assume that you have forgiven Peter's lapse of judgement. If you decide to harm him after that, we won't react kindly."

Lydia's mouth opened a little in shock. "You can't be serious."

"I'm very serious." Stiles looked back calmly. "Accept or not, that's your choice, but don't expect him to tolerate a betrayal. And don't expect me to stand idly by, or worse, support you. Because I will help him survive. Always."

Lydia pressed her lips together and tried to step away, only to find that she couldn't. "What the hell are you doing to me?" she demanded.

"Just demonstrating how easy it would be for me to apprehend you," Stiles said. With a little wave he opened the circle again. "Be honest with us and yourself, Lyds, that's all we ask."

Lydia scorched him with her furious stare before stalking off silently, leaving Stiles with just Erica and Boyd.

"Wow, I didn't know Batman had claws," Erica said, impressed. "Me-ow!"

Raking a hand through his hair, Stiles deflated a little. "She needed to know just how serious I am. I chose Peter as my future alpha back then, and I'll see it through. It's not official yet, but one day it will be."

"Is he really a good guy now?" Erica asked, leaning against Boyd's shoulder. "He killed a lot of people, two in front of you … I'm a bit worried now because he seemed so … not nice, but you get what I mean. Charming."

"He's a creep, alright," Stiles snorted, "but yeah, he's loads better now, compared to January. Maybe he still has some more healing to do, and he definitely needs to see a shrink, but for a werewolf, he's pretty alright, all things considered."

"Does he really care that much about his family?" Boyd asked. "I remember you telling us that he and Derek were having issues."

"Because of Laura, yeah." Stiles stuffed his hands into his pant pockets and hunched his shoulders a little. "It's complicated and maybe they'll tell you sometime. They're still family, though, and working on it, which is the point. They're not giving up on each other."

"I wouldn't be able to give up on my folks either," Erica said. She was silent for a moment and then she suddenly exhaled sharply and boxed Stiles in the shoulder. "Man, werewolves!"

"And magic," Boyd added. He shook his head slightly. "Even after witnessing it I still can hardly believe it."

Grinning tentatively, Stiles said, "Welcome to the club, guys."


End of chapter 52