Chapter 5

Turned out, Stiles didn't have that much to worry about on the whole not-knowing-who-the-fairy-was front because, just two short days later, the answer hit him like the McCall's favorite baseball bat to the face. New kid.

Stiles literally threw himself into the nearest classroom when he saw him in the hall because their was no way in hell Stiles was going to give the guy a chance to identify him.

The kid just oozed fairy. He even looked like a fairy, all sharp features and (Stiles swore) pointed ears ("His ears aren't pointed, Stiles," Scott had said when Stiles later announced his astute observation. Scott was wrong.), but even without the obvious, Stiles could just feel it.

As he had revealed in his fit of panic, the only fairies Stiles had ever known were his mother and Dain, and they'd both been around before Stiles was born. He was desensitized to their presences, but this kid.

If only the werewolves in his life weren't so oblivious.

"Have you seen him yet?" Stiles hissed at Scott, plunking down across from him at lunch, casting furtive glances around the cafeteria to avoid being shanghaied.

Scott gave him a typical Scott McCall face of incomprehension. "Who?"

Stiles almost face-palmed because seriously? Even if the guy didn't exude fairy (which he did, so no other argument needed to be said), he was a new kid who suddenly appeared in Bean fucking Hills right after a new fairy left a weird-ass note for Stiles to find. Clueless, thy name is Scott.

"The new kid. Doesn't he seem a little-" Stiles raised his eyebrows, implication heavy in his eyes "-to you."

"A little what?" It was an honest question, given so honestly because Scott honestly didn't have any idea what Stiles was talking about.

Stiles raised and lowered his eyes a couple more times and even added some jazz hands, but Scott still wasn't clicking. "We need codewords, dude. Badly."

Scott got it eventually. If you define "eventually" as "after Stiles told him explicitly what was going on." Three times (technically four, but Allison sashayed by in a particularly low cut top during one of them, so Stiles gave him that one). But, you know, that was Scott, and Stiles loved him for it. Usually.

They were all gathered together at the Hale house. ("Again. In less than a week," Jackson had unhelpfully supplied.) Allison was still wearing that particularly low cut top, and Stiles felt for the way Scott was valiantly not looking, he really did. Allison was a cruel woman, and she didn't even know it (although Allison could also impale him at 30 paces, so maybe she did).

Someone scoffed a rude side comment about what they were even doing there, but Stiles hadn't seen who. It was possibly Jackson. Actually, it was probably Jackson. Yep, it was definitely Jackson. "Seriously?" Stiles was offended that all of his friends were this dumb. "Come on, someone, anyone. Lydia? Allison?"

Allison smiled at him and gave him gracious-apology eyes, but it didn't soothe the burn in his heart. Stiles had always known Scott was oblivious, but they didn't mean the rest of them had to be.

"It's about the new kid," Lydia said, and Stiles was reminded for one horrible moment why he'd pined over her for over a decade, but Jackson's arm was around her and her hand was in his back pocket and, Christ, all of his friends were going to marry their high school sweethearts. He could just feel it.

"What about the new kid?" Erica sneered because, as a general rule, Erica was completely unhelpful (but also kind of cool, sometimes, when she talked to Stiles about Batman).

"Stiles thinks he's a fairy," Scott said, trying really hard to be helpful, but Scott was also, as a general rule, completely unhelpful, so it fell a little short.

"Stiles does not think he's a fairy. Stiles knows he's a fairy."

"Does Stiles also know that he's talking in third person?" Erica snarked because, once again, unhelpful.

Derek growled a little, and everyone turned to look at him because even if he wasn't their Alpha, he was still the Alpha, and "their" and "the" have three of the same letters. But then Derek just looked pointedly at Stiles, so suddenly all those stares were focused on him.

"Right." Stiles cleared his throat. "The new kid is a fairy, and, since no other fairy has strolled through town in near-about two decades, I think we can assume that he's the fairy."