Deaton is horrible.
Seriously - terrible, terrible human being.
Although Stiles isn't completely sold on that last part.
The vet's a pain in the ass from the get-go, talking Stiles around in circles just like Laura had warned him he would. To be fair Stiles kind of does the same thing, unwilling to tell him about his soulmark and his bond with Peter Hale of all werewolves. There's an awkward ten minutes there where they both just stare each other down, tossing euphemisms left and right, but Stiles eventually gets fed up, declares himself the new Hale Emissary, and demands all of Deaton's stuff be turned over.
He's pretty sure the only reason he gets it is that the guy is too stunned to protest.
He ends up with two heavy footlockers stuffed into the back of his Jeep, a canvas bag full of books, and a plastic trash bag of... something. He wishes he had the time to go through it all, to investigate each item and read each page, but by the time he gets back to his house and gets it all hauled up to his room he doesn't have the time. He's sure his curiosity will kill him but he powers through it, tucking everything away and heading back downstairs.
When he hits the base of the stairs he's struck with the strange thought that perhaps he should have taken all those things to the Preserve, to the Hales. It's theirs really, he's theirs, and he isn't sure how to handle that thought so he pushes it away, decides to deal with it another time. He absolutely is not distracted by the thought of the loft in Calvin and Nicky's house all emptied out for him, of Peter's house being occupied by someone who doesn't belong there.
"Oh, stuff it Stilinski," he mutters to himself, scowling as he moves into the kitchen. "Don't think about it."
Cookies.
Cookies make everything better right?
He doesn't use a recipe. That would kind of go against the point of the exercise. Engaging his brain in thought - two and a half cups of flour, three-quarters cup each white sugar and brown, peanut butter, two eggs - does a decent job distracting him from the thought of what that little bastard Luca might be up to out in the Preserve. He bares his teeth as he pours chocolate chips and pretzel pieces into the batter, makes a rumbling sound that actually startles him into spilling.
Focus.
He starts scooping dough onto sheet pans with single-minded determination, putting his iPhone into the dock and turning up Katie Perry. It works for a while, until the first set goes into the oven and he realizes he's got about fifteen minutes to kill until he needs to switch them out. Running upstairs, he grabs his new Bestiary and his pens and compulsively changes his Green Lantern t-shirt out for a black button-up. He feels scattered, all over the place, and he huffs because once again he doesn't know if it's him or Peter.
His phone chimes with a text from Laura just before timer on the oven goes off.
It takes a stupid amount of willpower not to jump at either sound, and a stupid amount more to ignore the text in favor of cookies that might burn.
I'll be there in twenty.
It'll be ok.
It'll be ok.
He tells himself that twice, texts it back to Laura once.
He hopes it's enough.
In the end it takes her thirty, but he's not surprised. He's got all the cookies baked and the dishes washed, and he's considering writing the new recipe down in the back of his Bestiary when she pulls in. He leaves the notebook open on the coffee table – he should probably have the werewolves taste-test before he sticks it in there, if a cookie recipe even belongs – but no knock ever comes.
"What the..."
The Camaro sits in the driveway, and Laura sits in the driver's seat, hands gripping the wheel tight. She's staring straight ahead, and he doesn't think she even notices him creeping on her through the front window. He can practically feel her heart pounding, is pretty sure his kicks up in response, but he's her emissary now isn't he? This is his job?
"Laura."
She jumps when he taps on her window, hadn't even seen him come out of the house and approach the car. She doesn't even really seem to see him when she looks at him. Blinking, she sucks in a deep breath, tucks her hair behind her ears and grabs her purse from the passenger seat before climbing out, immediately wrapping him up in a rib-bruising hug.
"Need...air..." he gasps dramatically, because it makes her giggle and bury her face in the curve of his neck, breathe him in.
"You smell good," she mumbles before letting him go, stepping back. "Stiles..."
"It'll be ok," he says.
Taking her hand, Stiles tugs her gently inside, where she pauses in the doorway and breathes deep, her eyes flaring gold and a smile just barely touching the corners of her mouth. She kicks off her boots beside his and follows him into the kitchen, accepting the plate of cookies with a grin that makes her look a lot younger than she is. Stiles carries the glasses and the pitcher of lemonade into the living room with Laura on his heels, and when he turns around from arranging everything on the sidetable he finds her on her knees next to the couch, tracing her fingers over the first page of his book.
Bestiarum Vocabulum of Emissary Stiles Stilinski-Hale
"Is that right?" he asks, his fingers twisted in the hem of his shirt. "I wasn't sure..."
Laura looks up at him and her eyes gleam.
"It's perfect."
Stiles just nods.
The rock in his throat is too big to talk around.
They hang out in silence for a bit, Laura leaning against his side as he talks about some of the things he wants to put into the bestiary, some of the things he has questions about. She tells him that the bestiary will be his, as her emissary and as a pack member, and that he's meant to put in any and all of the things that will matter to him in fulfilling those roles. If recipes matter, they should go in, if stories matter, they should go in. She tells him about her great, great grandfather's emissary, who had filled the back pages of his bestiary with lame jokes because the pack Alpha at that time had been an angry, quarrelsome man in his later years who'd needed lightening up.
They're both cackling over the best one – which concerns itself with an elephant and a rhino – when a car pulls into the drive and Laura goes as stiff as a board beside him, like she's been struck by lightning.
"Hey," he says quietly, grabbing her hand from her lap and giving it a squeeze, only a little nervous when he feels the tips of her claws prickling the back of his hand. "Laura. It's ok. I promise."
She blinks, looks at him like she'd been a hundred miles away a moment ago, then nods her head fervently and lets his hand go to tuck her hair behind her ear.
"No, I know," she agrees, with a smile that's too big and wide and sharp. "I'm fine!"
He wants to ask if she's sure. If she wants to call this whole thing off. But he thinks it needs to be done and that Laure would be less than appreciative if he were to offer her an out. Instead he gets to his feet, squeezing her shoulder as he passes and heading for the front door.
Allison Argent waits and she looks even more nervous than Laura.
"Hey Allison," Stiles says, and he offers her his hand for a shake, overwhelmed with a sudden sense of needing to do this right, of somehow knowing the proper formality.
"Stiles," she says, and there's a gentleness in her that shines through more than he thinks it should.
"Come in," he says, standing back, then, when she's hung her jacket and taken off her shoes, gesturing her toward the living room.
Laura's stood from her seat on the couch and moved toward the front windows, and Stiles would put money on the fact that she'd chosen the spot instinctively, easy access to the stairs and the back door. She's got her arms crossed over her chest and he can see her tensing up, can practically feel the echo of her heart thundering in her chest.
"Laura Hale, Allison Argent," he says quietly, and the two girls nod at each other, standing stiffly on opposite sides of the room, and his own gut tells him to move between them, to take his seat and ignore the stalemate until it goes away.
It doesn't take but a minute – eventually both of them drift toward a seat, the two arm chairs on either side of the couch with Stiles in the middle. As weird as it feels to do it, Stiles putters around serving lemonade and cookies while the hunter and the werewolf adjust. He can't imagine what this must be like for Laura, to sit across from someone who belongs to the family that massacred her own, but to her credit she's given no sign of it but for her wariness.
"As emissary to the Hale pack," he begins, the words flowing off his tongue like he'd planned and practiced them, "I'd like to thank you both for coming. I'll remind all parties that this is a neutral space and no violence will be tolerated here."
As he speaks, Stiles feels a strange warmth swelling in his chest, pressing against his breastbone, and his hands try to shake. Something thick and heavy fills up his head, a dull roar humming in his ears before it dissolves, leaving him with a hyperawareness of the room, and he finds himself subconsciously sliding closer to Laura, even though he's told himself again and again to stay objective.
The bite on his shoulder burns, reminding him that there is no objective anymore.
"Thank you, Stiles," Allison says before turning a bit to fully face Laura, her face open and somber. "Miss Hale, I'd like to offer you my personal apologies for the devastation my family has caused you and your pack. I know it can't possibly come close to being meaningful at this time, but you have it none the less."
Laura looks stunned, young and terrified.
"I can't..."
"And I don't expect you to," Allison murmurs when she cannot finish the sentence. "Not ever. You don't owe me anything Miss Hale, and you never will. But I hope that I can prove myself an ally now."
Sitting up, she turns her smile on Stiles and suddenly she's all business, a look he recognizes from the time she took over student council.
"So," she says, and for a moment her grin is just as sharp as Laura's had been. "Where do we start?"
XXX
Two and a half hours later, Allison and Laura are talking to each other in full sentences and they have a decent plan sketched out.
Laura, backed by her mother, will appear at the press release as the future alpha of the Hale pack. Stiles will be there as her emissary, and together they will announce the pack's adoption of Isaac in conjunction with Stiles' father. This will be their lead-in to the dissolution of the old treaty and the start of the new one, re-integrating the Hale Pack with Beacon Hills.
The Sheriff has planned the press junket to be held panel-style, so that he can answer any legal questions the crowd might have. His deputies will be providing heavy security as well as controlling the doors – only those who were invited will be allowed inside, but the whole thing will be broadcast live to the county. Allison will be there too to lend her support as the head of the Argent family, and she's asked Laura's permission to publicly apologize on behalf of her family to the Hales.
If it all goes the way Stiles suspects it will, the right questions will be asked to lead the conversation in the direction it needs to go.
If the resistance isn't too great, too vehement, they'll eventually be able to introduce the pack's plan to take in more people, to offer them the bite after a trial period, just like with Isaac.
If they can help more people, more kids who need help, not only with they strengthen their relationship with the community, but they'll be on their way to rebuilding the pack.
Neither Stiles nor Laura bring that part up in front of Allison.
By the time she leaves, most of the animosity has faded to a low, underlying discomfort, due in no small part to Stiles' unrelenting cheerfulness and humor. He's exhausted by the time he sees Allison out, possibly even more than Laura, and when he's closed the door and thrown the latch he can't stop himself from slumping against it, energy drained. He feels clammy and a little nauseas, and he's got a migraine coming on.
Then suddenly Laura is behind him, pressing in close and nuzzling his cheek, and he feels just a little bit better.
"Thank you Emissary," she says, quiet but formal, that same warm, tingly energy rushing beneath Stiles' skin. "I couldn't have done that without you."
"It was my genuine pleasure Alpha," he replies, and they both freeze when the words hit the air, when they realize what he's said. He can feel Laura's breath stick in her throat for all of a minute before she relaxes, and then they're both huffing a relieved, anxious sort of laugh and getting their feet back under them.
They don't talk about what happens next.
It's by unspoken agreement that they box up the remaining batches of cookies and all the ingredients for the pot roast dinner Stiles had planned, climb into Laura's car and ride across town to the Preserve. Stiles has never actually come in by the front entrance, and he's got to admit there's an eerie sort of surrealism to it as they enter the valley. The main house rises up large and looming before them, the massive garage swallowing the Camaro into dim cool, and then suddenly Stiles is standing in the middle of an entirely different kitchen, washing his hands and throwing a dish towel over his shoulder.
His headache has faded.
Laura hops up onto the counter and swings her feet as Stiles heats the oven, and directs him to the cabinet holding the biggest casserole dish he's ever seen. She chatters quietly about her legal studies, about how she only has about three and a half classes left before she graduates. Stiles asks questions over his shoulder that should be easy as he peels potatoes and carrots, seasons the massive side of beef, but the way she answers makes him think they're harder than that.
She's spoken to her professors about taking sabbatical, and decided to finish her last few credits online.
She'll stay home, and finish her studies here.
The more she talks the more it sounds like she's giving up the future she wanted for the future she thinks she has to follow, but when Stiles tiptoes around the idea she laughs.
"It was never about the degree, the career," she admits with a grin, before growing quiet and somber. "It was about... getting away, I guess. From all of it."
Shrugging, she puts a smile back on that doesn't quite reach her eyes and Stiles takes her hand from the counter, gives it a squeeze.
"I always knew I'd be Alpha one day," she said as Stiles lifted the immensely heavy casserole dish and slid it into the oven. "I just... never knew what that would look like."
Stiles glances over at her and she's got her head tilted, like she's listening, and this time the smile she wears is small and genuine and content. When she opens her eyes to meet his gaze they glint golden, but he thinks there's a tiny bit of red there, the thinnest ring of darker color around her pupils.
"I think I'm starting to."
