When Isaac's alarm goes off the next morning, he wakes in Stiles' arms, and has absolutely no desire to be anywhere else. He's comfortable, he feels safe, and he's tired. He's always tired. Not sleeping through the night really puts a damper on his ability to really get proper rest. Still, the alarm is blaring, and his aunt is...somewhere. He doesn't really have a choice.

"Turn it off," Stiles groans, eyes squeezed shut, arms still wrapped around Isaac. "Devil hell noise," he grumbles.

Isaac reaches over, turning off the alarm.

"Better. Come back to bed," he mutters, still very much mostly asleep.

"Can't," Isaac says, though god, the offer is so tempting. "We have to get up and go to school."

"School sucks. Sleep is awesome."

Stiles voice is gravelly with sleep, and Isaac can't help but smile.

"I know, but if we don't get out of bed ourselves, I'm pretty sure Clara will come to check on us and…" he trails off. He's not sure how to explain to his aunt what's going on here, because he had a nightmare, and Stiles made it better, but he's sure that it looks like maybe more than that, and he's not sure what his aunt would think about that.

Hell, he's not sure what he thinks about it - he hasn't thought about it, not really. He just knows that when he's with Stiles, his heart rate is normal, his breathing is steady, and he feels safe.

"Fine." Stiles groans, finally opening his eyes as he sits up, stretching, yawning.

The boys don't say much of anything as they take turns in the bathroom, getting ready for their school day, but just as they're about to go downstairs, Isaac stops Stiles.

"Thank you," he says, casting his eyes down at the ground. "For last night, I...it really helped, so...thanks."

"Hey, no problem." Stiles claps his shoulder with a bright smile - seeming to have woken quickly after his shower. "Let's go see if there's coffee."

As it turns out, there is. Clara is up and a fresh pot of coffee is waiting for them.

"You boys are on your own for breakfast, I'm afraid," she says as she pours her coffee in a to go mug. "I have an early meeting, but I'll be home before dinner," she smiles. "Isaac, can I talk to you for a second in the other room before I go?"

"Uh, yeah, sure," Isaac nods.

"Stiles, help yourself to whatever," Clara says as she leads Isaac into the living room.

"What's...what's up?" Isaac asks, rubbing the back of his neck because, well, he's got a pretty good idea of exactly what is up.

"Is there something you should tell me about you and Stiles?" She asks. "The guest room door was wide open this morning, and he wasn't in there."

"No, no, we just...I had a nightmare, and he came in to soothe me, and we just fell asleep, that's all."

"Okay." She nods. "Well, if that changes…that's okay, Isaac, whoever you are, and whoever you wind up...caring for," she says, clearly choosing her words as carefully as possible. "I'll support you, but we would need to set up on some ground rules. I'm pretty sure with parenting, it's different when you're more than friends."

"Nope, just friends!" Isaac says quickly, though he can feel the heat in his cheeks, and he's sure that his aunt can see it.

"Alright," she says, casting a suspicious eye on him. "Just...talk to me, if things change, because you've been through alot, Isaac, and deciding if you're ready for a relationship...just talk to me first."

"Yup, will do." Isaac nods, and as they walk back into the kitchen, his aunt grabbing her things and heading out the door, Isaac can't quite make eye contact with Stiles.

He hasn't thought about Stiles like that before, and now that his aunt has brought it up, well, it's not something he can just ignore. At least not right away. He has been through so much, and there are still a lot of feelings inside of him. He's pretty sure that he's not ready to think about anyone like that.

But as Stiles looks up at him and says "everything okay?" Through a mouthful of cheerios, Isaac is pretty sure that if he were going to think about anyone like that, it would probably be Stiles.

And that realization is pretty jarring.

"Seriously, buddy, you okay?" Stiles asks again, this time after he has swallowed and washed the cereal down with a swig of coffee.

"What?" Isaac looks up at him. "Oh, yeah, just tired." He moves automatically for the coffee pot, pouring himself a mug.

Isaac sits down with his coffee, and Stiles doesn't push, but Isaac can tell that he wants to. Stiles gets this look on his face when he wants to know something. Isaac doesn't tell him, though. The conversation that he had was with his aunt, and he's afraid that if he talks about it to Stiles, it will make everything weird and he doesn't want things to be weird. He's just fallen into a decent rhythm. He has friends at school, he has a good relationship with his aunt, therapy is actually helping, and when it's overwhelming, he can go running with Jackson, and of course, he's got Stiles, who seems to be the cornerstone of it all. If he lost that, he's pretty sure things would get bad again, and he doesn't want that.

"Man, I really do not want to go to school today," Stiles says with a laugh as he takes another gulp of coffee, changing the subject completely, something Isaac is immensely glad for. "Then again, I never want to go to school, so today really isn't different from any other day."

"No, I guess not," Isaac says with a slight laugh. "At least we don't have any tests or anything."

"True, but still." Stiles shrugs. "Some days, I just don't feel like learning. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love learning, but sometimes I just want to take a few days, let everything sort of sink in."

"Isn't that what the weekend is for?" Isaac asks.

"Hell no!" Stiles shakes his head. "The weekend is for having fun and pretending school and homework don't exist until Sunday night."

"Can't really argue with that," Isaac says with a small smile, though he's never left his homework to Sunday night - well, not in a long time. His father wouldn't stand for such things, and now it's just been, well, literally beaten into him, that that's not what you do.

"Ugh, I can't believe it's only Monday."

"I don't think I've ever seen anyone as smart as you complain as much about school," Isaac says.

"Yeah, well let me be the first to tell you, my friend, that there is a huge difference between smart and academically inclined. I'm the former, but certainly not the latter."

And yeah, sometimes, just sometimes, the way Stiles speaks makes Isaac think that Stiles is wasting his time hanging out with him. He's clearly intelligent, he could be doing a lot better things, Isaac is sure, than hanging out with some fucked up kid, but here they are.

"We should probably get going," Stiles says, taking his dishes to the sink to start washing them. "There's a 14% chance the Jeep will break down between here and school, and I'm honestly not sure that they would give me an acceptable late slip for "my piece of shit car broke down. Again," even if you're with me," he punctuates his thought with a grin, and Isaac just nods, moving to wash his own coffee cup.

He heads towards the door, locking up behind himself and Stiles, completely unaware that through the thin walls of the house, Stiles heard everything that Clara and Isaac had said. If nothing else, Stiles is an excellent eavesdropper.