The next day, Stiles resolves to resume life as it was before, because he has to. Magical baby or not, there's still a Nemeton drawing unfriendly supernatural beings onto the town, and there's still a darkness around his heart, encroaching and awaiting to jump on him with the same intensity every time whenever he dares to forget it.
He's still got responsibilities.
Hell, he's still got at least two books in his summer reading list to go through.
So when Lydia calls him to remind him they are supposed to be going through some old books that Peter had been hoarding before he left town that day, Stiles looks down at the baby he's holding and says yeah, sure, I'll be there in an hour and starts putting Laura's diaper bag together as soon as Lydia hangs up on him.
"You should feel lucky, little miss, you are going to meet the Lydia Martin today," he tells Laura, and she blinks sleepily up at him in reply.
Lydia opens the door and smiles at him with crinkled eyes, only to stop in her tracks when she takes in on him, bag and baby and all. Then she widens her eyes, taken aback, only to immediately compose herself and place a deceitfully charming smile on her face as she leans on the door frame and crosses her arms over her chest, small and dainty fingers of one hand wiggling a little before settling on place.
"Stiles, I'm assuming that you're neither misogynistic enough nor enough of a fool to expect me to take care of this baby, right?" Her smile promises chaos and pain and Stiles just nods at her, holding Laura tighter to himself. Fearing a little for his life.
"Great!" She chirps then, smile getting warmer. "Come on in, then, we've got some reading to do."
"Great!" He mirrors, nodding along like a puppet being jerked around by its strings.
Lydia doesn't ask about Laura, about what she's doing in Stiles' care, or where she came from, but she looks at her like she's a Rubik cube waiting to be solved. One more equation in the chalkboard that's life for her, an enigma she will solve sooner or later.
Until Laura makes this utterly recognizable face that means she's pooping.
Then she's wrinkling her nose and gesturing him towards the bathroom.
"Stiles, if you stain anything-"
And that's when Laura starts bawling.
"We can do this, Stiles," Lydia tells him a few hours later while Stiles feeds Laura a bottle, and even she sounds awed as her eyes roam the pages. "We need time, but we can do this. If we can harness my power, if you can help with your spark, we can do this."
She looks at him with eyes full of wonder, and Stiles is swept away, completely taken over, by the intensity of his love for her. By how real it is, by how different it is from before, from when he thought he was the town's expert on Lydia Martin, but didn't actually know her at all.
He's also intensely aware of how different in nature that love is. It feels almost distressingly platonic. Its presence real and warm and dizzying, but platonic.
His chest feels a sudden hollowness, a heartburn he wants to chase away with his fingers, but he just smiles back at Lydia's radiant face and says, "Hell yeah, we're doing this."
One of Laura's tiny fists leaves the bottle to wrap around the fabric of his shirt then, bunching it up, and when Stiles looks down at her, it's almost as if she was focusing on him with her big eyes.
Scott comes back a few days later.
"I thought you were gonna be gone for another week, dude?" Stiles says as he lets Scott in, punching him on the shoulder.
Scott shrugs at him, a warm and unassuming smile lighting up his face. Stiles is pretty much overcome with the need to playfully loop his arm around his neck and noogie him, or at least ruffle his hair a little.
Stiles is willing to admit he's a little codependent, and he's missed Scott like hell.
"Mom was getting restless."
It's not a lie, Stiles can tell it's not by the curl of Scott's lips, the fond, adoring look he gets whenever he talks about his mom (which is very much warranted, since Mrs. McCall is basically a goddess amongst women), but there's more.
"And?" he asks, opening the fridge to take two Coke cans out.
Scott sighs. Stiles hands him one of the cans over and he fiddles with the tab after opening it.
"And I wanted to check everything was okay with the- with Laura."
Stiles nods at one of the baby monitors Derek had bought, resting on top of the living room's table, next to some books Lydia had given Stiles to read over before their next meeting.
"Everything's fine, man. You shouldn't have come earlier for this. We're doing fine."
Scott looks at the baby monitor and Stiles has a sip of his Coke.
"I trust you," Scott says, looking at him, earnest, "but I still worry. It's- I don't know if it's the pack thing, or just a me thing, or-"
"Scotty," Stiles interrupts him, putting a hand on his shoulder, "I get it. I know you trust me. I know. I trust in you too, you know?"
Scott smiles at him, ample and blindingly bright, and Stiles has a hard time figuring out how there can be people out there who can get mad at Scott for long.
"So," Scott says, looking around, "where is she?"
Stiles roll his eyes at Scott and punches him on the shoulder again.
"You know where she is, dude."
Scott smiles coyly at him.
"I'm trying to give you privacy?" he tries.
"It's not like I'm trying to hide a hot, naked hook up from you, man. C'mon, let's go get her. It's about time for her bottle, anyway."
Laura is still sleeping when they get to his room, her cradle rocking almost imperceptibly with the momentum from the last soft push Stiles had given it the last time he'd come up to check on her.
He lifts her up and bundles her with one of her fleece blankets.
"Here," he says, turning around and thrusting her a little at Scott, who's already sporting a nearly reverent look in his face.
And that's when things get weird.
When Scott's eyes land on Laura's face, he gasps, and his hands rise as if of their own volition until they're resting on the side of Laura's face. And that's when he flashes his eyes at Laura, lets them bleed Alpha red at her, as if unable to control himself; the weirdest part of it all, though, is the way Laura responds, blinking her eyes open and making a tiny sound that's similar to a gurgle, as if she were overjoyed by the acknowledgment, and she starts to suck on one of her fists intently as her other hand wraps around Scott's fingers.
Stiles is stunned.
Scott frowns in bewilderment, and Stiles is right there with him because he hasn't lost control since- he hasn't lost control in a while, but this is, it's as if Laura had just brought it out of him, ripped it from deep inside of him.
"Can I," Scott chokes out, and his voice sounds tiny and unsure as his eyes go over Laura's face, "can I hold her?"
"Yeah, man, of course," Stiles tells him, softly, and hands her over to him, making sure Scott holds her properly.
Which isn't something Stiles should've worried at all, because Scott is a natural, and looks like a natural too, tiny baby in his arms and against his chest, eyes glued to her in wonder, and her tiny hand gripping him tight like a lifeline.
"She feels familiar," Scott tells Stiles, sounding faintly wounded as he takes a few slow steps to sit down on Stiles' bed, face pinched and lips quivering as he looks down at her. "It's such a strong feeling, Stiles."
Stiles sits next to him, shoulders bumping and legs touching.
"Is it a pack thing? Maybe a scent thing?"
Scott nods, then frowns and shakes his head, then bites his lip and shrugs. "I don't know."
"Okay." Stiles tells him. "It's okay."
A few minutes go by as they sit next to each other, looking at Laura tugging at Scott's fingers to try to suck on them.
"She's so tiny," Scott says, and he sounds calmer, "and so cute."
Stiles snorts.
"Wait until she gets hungry."
After that, the weirdness seems to evaporate, leaving just good ol' Scott in its wake, who helps Stiles feed Laura, and is eager to learn how to burp her and is even enough of a trooper to offer to change her diapers (Stiles is tempted to take him up on the offer but he isn't that much of a dick).
If Stiles notices how tactile Scott gets, how he's all hands rubbing down Stiles' arms, and getting him into one armed hugs whenever he can, and carrying Laura around, even when she's soundly sleep, and stroking Laura's cheeks, and tracing her tiny nose, well, it's not like it's a bad thing for either of them.
Stiles has a long standing commitment with Kira; they meet up every other weekend to practice lacrosse, since she's recently made the team, and he's recently been promoted to an actual player who doesn't spend most of the season warming the bench.
It's a mutually beneficial agreement.
He doesn't really know how that's gonna work with Laura in tow. Just, he could call up Derek and have him take her for a few hours? But he's been oddly silent since that awkward dinner with his dad a few days ago, and he doesn't want to-
He doesn't even know what he doesn't want to, honestly. He just feels itchy and strange, and the faintest bit pissed off that Derek hasn't come by to check on them, but his skin feels tight and uncomfortable at the thought of doing something about it.
The thing is, he doesn't know how lacrosse practice with Kira is gonna work with a tiny baby who needs him nearby most of the time, so he lies on his bed with Laura sleeping on him (and mouthing absently at his chest through his shirt, which had been awkward as hell at first, but he's since grown accustomed to) and calls Kira to cancel on her.
Only when Kira picks up she's all excited, blurting out a little breathless hi! That has Stiles cracking a smile without actively meaning to, and then she's all words stumbling upon words about a baby, and Stiles, you have to bring her over, and unless you can't, of course! And I come come over to yours if that's the case? And Oh God, is she cute? And how old is she?
And then just a tangled mess of indecipherable things that at one point or another might contain the words tiny tiny baby.
And of course, of course Scott would tell her. Stiles should've figured that one out on his own because he does know his best bud.
"I can still come over, if you want?" he offers, bouncing an uneasy Laura in his arms until she settles down in her sleep, lips parted and limbs sort of everywhere. "We can work on strategies? Theory and that stuff. It's boring shit but it could always help."
"Yeah, of course!" Kira replies, still upbeat, and Stiles can almost see her in his mind's eye, nodding enthusiastically, the way she does everything.
Kira opens up the door in a rush, hair up in a messy bun and wearing her lacrosse jersey, and she takes the diaper bag from Stiles pretty much instantaneously, fixing her eyes in Laura as she ushers him inside and to the living room, not even wasting time on a hey there or even a disinterested wassup.
It's pretty obvious soon that she thinks Laura is the cutest thing to ever happen to the world. She coos, and downright gushes at her and kisses the soft pink skin of her cheeks a lot, drags her fingers through her peach fuzz until it's sticking up in complete disarray.
"She's so tiny and so cute," she whispers at Stiles, eyes bright and filled with wonder, and Stiles can see why Scott feels about her the way he does, because her sheer happiness is contagious in that moment and he can't help but smile back at her.
"Yeah, I guess when she's not screeching like a banshee, she's pretty darn cute."
Kira rolls her eyes at him good-naturedly, smile big and showing dimples, all I can see right through you, don't even try with me.
When her eyes go back to Laura her eyebrows furrow and she squints at her and then looks up to Stiles, and her eyebrows furrow even more.
"Don't you think she kind of has your nose?"
Stiles... Draws a blank. He looks at Laura, who's now got a little spit dribbling down the lower half of her face, and... Huh. He gapes for a moment, and then utters a strangled, "she kind of does, yeah."
Kira grins at him, bright and giddy, and then takes out a few binders out of her backpack and starts talking to him, ignoring how momentous everything feels for Stiles right now, and how bizarre, and how it seems like a blow will shake him apart because God, what is going on?
"So I was looking for lacrosse strategies on the Internet and-"
Kira's words fade into background noise as Stiles just stares at Laura, heart beating wildly.
When he convinces himself that they're probably just seeing things, that there's no way the baby can resemble him, it's been maybe an hour since he got to Kira's, and Laura's been awake for at least the last ten minutes, and she's starting to wave around her fists in what Stiles has started to recognize as both hunger and impatience, like her own way of telling Stiles what are you doing and why aren't you feeding me right now?
He rolls his eyes at her, and a traitorous voice in him whispers if it's anyone you resemble, it's Derek at her.
"Hey, Kira," he cuts her short, and she blinks up at him, pen perched behind her ear.
"Yeah?" She asks.
"Can I use your kitchen to warm up Laura's bottle?"
She smiles at him and nods emphatically, little strands of hair falling from her bun with the motion.
"Sure," she says, standing up and accidentally throwing to the floor a binder that had been resting on her legs. Stiles winces at it as all the printed pages scatter around, and she says, "oops?"
Mrs. Yukimura is having tea in the kitchen, reading glasses perched on her nose as she reads a book that looks old and dusty and about as interesting as Greenberg's life.
She looks up at them with a polite smile when they come in, and Stiles watches it vanish from her face as her eyes lock on Laura's tiny frame.
"Hi, Mrs. Yukimura," greets her Stiles, feeling suddenly protective of the tiny human being he's carrying.
"Stiles," she greets back, eyes never leaving Laura.
Kira, most likely sensing the tension in the air, claps her hands.
"Okay!" She chirps. "I can hold Laura for you while you warm her bottle up, okay?"
Only she doesn't let him reply in any way, just hurrying over to him, and putting her soft hands where Stiles' are, underneath Laura's body, and on the back of her head, and Stiles just hands her over to avoid hurting her.
Mrs. Yukimura keeps looking at Laura like she's not entirely sure she won't explode in their hands at any given moment all the while Stiles is warming up the bottle (hurrying himself up, feet jiggly, and the back of his neck sweaty), but when Stiles is done and about to take Laura from Kira, she just gives a gentle smile to him and puts the baby in her mom's arms with determination and care, making sure to make eye contact with her and grin, telling her to not drop her.
Then Mrs. Yukimura is left with a handful of tiny, hungry, squirming baby, and Stiles' heart has relocated to his throat, but when he's stepping forward to take her back, Kira grabs at his arm and he stills, watching as Kira's mom frowns for a few seconds before her expression softens, melts like butter under the direct heat of the sun.
"Huh," she whispers, shoulders losing their tension, back resting against her chair, as her hands come over to try and tame Laura's standing tufts of fuzz. "So it's like that."
Stiles wants to ask her what she's talking about, but Laura's cheeks start going flushed and her fists go up to her face and she's scrunching her nose, and oh.
"Here." Stiles says, handing Mrs. Yukimura the bottle. "She's really demanding when she's hungry."
And then Mrs. Yukimura is feeding Laura, face smooth and relaxed, and Stiles can't shake the feeling that something's happening here that's eluding him.
"Okay," Kira says, "let's go back to lacrosse?"
Stiles nods, distracted, and follows her to the living room.