Author's Note: Hey guys! So, I'm going to go ahead and up the rating from T to M now, instead of waiting. There isn't any M type stuff in this chapter but I already know where it's going to appear and I'd rather everyone be made aware now rather than later.
Anywho, enjoy wolfie!Stiles learning how to wolf :)
So, it turned out that Scott was a total failwolf and made everything seem so much harder than it really had to be. Stiles took to being a wolf like dogs took to water, like paint took to a canvas and flame took to tinder.
It took him less than two weeks to figure out how to control his heartbeat so that he could force down a shift, and half that time to figure out how to call out the claws on his hands without shredding the hell out every pair of sneakers he owned. Unsheathing them one at a time took a little longer but Stiles mastered it just the same.
Flashing his eyes turned out to be Stiles' favorite pastime and therefore was the easiest to learn control over. He got a kick out of flickering between his normal human shade of honey brown and the burning intensity of Beta Gold, changing them between blinks just to mess with people. Scott elbowed him in the ribs whenever he caught him but the reprimand was lost to the amused upturn of the Alpha's lips.
He and Scott were back to normal after barely any time at all. After Stiles had called his father to say he was staying at Scott's for a few nights and had broken down in tears upon hanging up, realizing that if Scott hadn't done what he did the Sheriff would have lost both his wife and son. Scott giving Stiles the bite, allowing Stiles to stick around, to be there for his father the way he'd tried to do since they lost his mother... That was something that Stiles just couldn't be mad at Scott for.
Stiles managed a perfect shift, nearly painless and flawlessly controlled, nineteen days after he was bitten. It was in the middle of the preserve, surrounded by his pack, and Stiles had never felt more alive in his life. Running with wolves took on a whole other connotation when one could actually run with them.
The wound to Stiles' belly had healed quickly, though a faint silverish sheen tinted the skin where a scar would have been had he stayed human. Assuming he could have survived a wound that fatal, which was impossible. He'd already been half-dead by the time Scott sank his teeth into his hip.
Stiles caught the rest of the story from Lydia, the most reliable source in the pack. According to her, it had indeed been Scott that caught Stiles, stopping him from a rough collision with the ground when he'd slipped free of the Catoblepas' horn. The picture Lydia painted was a grim one, streaked in red and shades of black, Scott bent over a dying Stiles', begging him to hold on while the rest of the pack closed ranks around them. It was Isaac; Sweetly vicious and endlessly loyal Isaac who had been the first to voice the thought the whole pack was trying not to face the reality of.
Stiles could see it painfully clear inside his head, gray soaked images formed from the scene Lydia related to him. He could see Isaac gripping tight to Scott's shoulder, his face morose and grief-stricken as he'd said, "Do it, Scott."
"He doesn't want to be a wolf!" Stiles could hear Scott argue, hear the desperate sob in his friend's voice as though he'd actually been awake to hear it in person.
"He wouldn't want to die, either!" He imagined that he could feel Erica's snarl rumble through him, tears streaking down her face unchecked as Boyd wrapped her up against his chest and held her while she fell apart.
"Do it." He heard Isaac repeat, watched as he pressed his nose into the side of Scott's ashen face while Allison and Jackson held up an emotionally wrecked Lydia, and Malia sank to her knees at Stiles' side, trembling hands hovering over his belly as though she could heal the wound slowly letting his life drain away.
Stiles' eyes stung as he listened to the story, Lydia gripping his hand so hard that his healing kicked in. She choked up when she thanked Stiles for giving his life in exchange for Jackson's. Until she punched him and called him a moron, anyway.
If Deaton could be believed, a werewolf would more than likely have survived being gored the way Stiles had been. He thought it figured that his last heroic act had been totally futile.
Jackson himself never said thank you, not that Stiles wanted to hear it in all honesty. Jackson simply showed up at Stiles' house one night a few days after Stiles had been turned, brandishing two large sausage and onion pizzas and a bottle of wolfsbane laced Jack Daniels. As far as either of them were concerned, nothing else ever had to be said on the subject.
Regardless of the pointlessness of his actions, though, Stiles wouldn't take them back. He'd managed to trap the Catoblepas before it crossed the ash line, its horn dislodging from his abdomen when the barrier tossed it back, and that was reason enough for him.
Chris Argent himself had shaken Stiles' hand and told him how proud he was, how brave Stiles had been to sacrifice so much for the pack. Stiles beamed at Parrish, who stood nearby shaking his head with a small smile playing at his lips. Kira and Liam told him excitedly about the explosion, both of them much more enthused than Stiles thought was strictly appropriate. He couldn't fault them, though. He was kind of upset he'd missed the fireworks himself.
Telling the Sheriff that his only son could now proudly join the ranks of Beacon Hills' very own band of misfits, official fangs and claws included, turned out to be a lot easier than Stiles had anticipated. He dreaded his father's reaction, worried that he wouldn't see his son the same way anymore. To absolutely no one's surprise, John barely blinked at the information, dragging Stiles into a hug that probably would have broken his ribs if he'd still been human, pretending not to cry as he thanked Scott for saving his boy.
Stiles needed to run after that. He drove out to the preserve and left his Jeep near where the Hale house used to stand, letting the wolf take over before his feet even hit the ground. Running while shifted was exhilarating in a way running as a human just wasn't. The air tasted sweeter on his tongue on its way to his lungs, the ground felt more solid beneath his bare feet than it ever had beneath sneakered ones. He felt better by the time he made four full loops of the preserve and decided to mosey through the woods for a while before heading back home.
Tracking critters through the trees and along the forest floor was a simple thing to do while he worked through the swirling thoughts bouncing around the inside of his skull. Scott encouraged him, saying it was good practice for tracking enemies and learning to identify scents. Rabbits were Stiles' favorite animals to track. They were quick and wily, bounding through the trees like fluffy little ninjas, as though they could predict where each one would spring up from the ground. He might have cried the one time he managed to catch a bunny, but no one else ever had to know that.
He most definitely cried when Scott taught him how to draw pain, pulling it as gently as he could manage from a kitten with a broken leg at the animal clinic, but Scott and Deaton both swore they'd take it to their graves. Stiles hadn't learned how to tell a lie from the truth through a heartbeat without error yet but he chose to trust them.
The hardest part of turning surprised him. He always thought learning control would be the hardest, especially during the full moon.
In all fairness, he still hadn't found an anchor by the time his first full moon rolled around and he slept through most of it thanks to Deaton's sedatives. Scott hated the idea, argued with Stiles the entire trip to the bank vault where Derek and Scott had rescued Boyd, Erica, and Cora what seemed like a lifetime ago. It was the only structure they knew for sure could hold an out of control werewolf if the sedatives wore off before the sun came up. Stiles simply wasn't willing to risk shifting and hurting someone. He made Scott promise not to open the vault door, no matter what, until the moon and the sun had traded places in the sky.
The first night was rough, Deaton's estimations off for the proper dosage. Stiles woke up already shifted about halfway through the night. By the time Scott came to let him out he'd already splattered the walls with his own blood and gouged long trails into both the walls and his skin with his claws. After that, Deaton doubled the dose and Stiles slept almost peacefully through the last two nights.
Control was hard, for sure. But, the most difficult part of turning was actually his relationship with Malia. There was something different about them after Stiles got the bite, something he couldn't figure out no matter how hard he tried. It drove him crazy for weeks, the illusive something that he couldn't put his finger on. Being with Malia used to be easy. Sure, teaching her how to be human wasn't the simplest task ever assigned to a teenager with ADHD but, just being together? That part had always been as easy as breathing.
Except that now, with both of them being Weres, it wasn't easy anymore. They snapped at each other for no reason, simply being in one anothers space enough to set them snarling. Scott hated roaring Stiles down, refused to do it after that first time, but he'd had no choice when Malia moved Stiles' laptop and Stiles went for her throat.
"Sometimes personal relationships, especially those between two Weres, don't survive the transition." Deaton had explained pragmatically when Stiles asked him about it. "The power shift is too much for them to handle, in some cases. When one of you starts out human and then takes the bite, the dynamics shift dramatically. It's understandable that you might feel differently about one another now."
At first Stiles thought that was bullshit. Pack dynamics had shifted, too, but you didn't see any of the others dragging Stiles' wolf to the surface over the dumbest things. Even Jackson, douche to rival all douches, didn't get under Stiles' skin the way Malia did. The rest of the pack eagerly accepted Stiles as a werewolf, loved having him finally able to run with them the way he hadn't been able to while human. Nothing changed so dramatically within their ranks the way it did between just Malia and Stiles.
After the laptop incident, Stiles had to concede that maybe Deaton was on to something after all.
"I don't think my wolf likes her." Stiles confided to his father one evening while they sat in the living room, lounging around the television.
"Oh?" the Sheriff asked, brows hiked. "Is that even possible?"
"I honestly have no idea." Stiles sighed, rubbing anxiously at the back of his neck. "But if it is, and he doesn't, what am I supposed to do? How are we supposed to be together?"
John hummed thoughtfully, his eyes sympathetic. "I think you have to face the very real possibility that you won't be able to, Stiles. Your wolf is a part of you now, kiddo. From what I understand, what Chris and Derek have explained to me, there may be two halves but you're still just one whole. You understand?"
Stiles resolutely ignored the D word and focused on the rest of what his father said. "Yeah, I know that part."
John narrowed his eyes exaggeratedly, earning a snort of laughter from Stiles, but smiled as he continued, "My point is, you can't do something just because you want to, not if it makes your wolf rebel. And vice versa. If you keep working against each other you're only going to make things harder for yourself. Then who knows how long it might take you to find your anchor?"
"Deaton said I can't be my own anchor because I don't value my humanity." Stiles admitted grumpily, a fact that he resented but had to admit sounded about right.
"You gave your life for your pack." the Sheriff pointed out, not without a bit of heat. "I think you've already proven as much."
Stiles grimaced but didn't disagree, couldn't if he wanted to.
He made it all of two more weeks before pulling eject on his relationship with Malia. He knew they weren't being fair to one another, fighting to stay together while their animal instincts fought to be apart.
Malia was actually relieved when Stiles told her that he thought they should break-up. She'd thought the same thing for several weeks but hadn't wanted Stiles to lose the control he'd found by losing what they used to be. It was a decently amicable split in the long run. They agreed to stay friends and Stiles was pleased to feel his wolf settle into the role of friend and pack mate more comfortably than he ever had as her boyfriend.
It was three weeks after that when Stiles walked in on Malia kissing Kira in Scott's kitchen during a pack meeting, Kira backed up against the refrigerator while Malia's hands held her tight around the waist, pulling their bodies flush.
"Yep, I'm not touching that." Stiles shook his head, backing out of the room without the chips he'd gone in for.