#7 I wonder if my life wouldn't be better if I had let Liam fall.

The argument had been going on for twenty minutes, slowly building in intensity and volume. Scott had to stretch to call it an argument, as only one person was doing all of the talking.

"Liam." Scott broke in as gently as possible. He started to stand up from the couch but the answering shift in his beta's posture made him abort the action.

"Don't 'Liam' me. God, I hate it when you do that."

"Hate it when I do what?"

"I'm not a baby." Liam snapped. "You don't have to humor me to keep me quiet."

"Well, you're obviously upset, so I think I should be doing something. You're yelling at me." "Maybe I want to fucking yell at you!"

"You can't." Scott let a sharp edge creep into his voice. "You might not have noticed, but I don't live in a house anymore. This is an apartment, which means there are other people who live in the same building, so you need to keep your bitching down to a reasonable level."

Liam's face did that weird twisting thing when new information got in the way of one of his rants. He glanced around, as if only now realizing what Scott said was true, before looking down at his feet. When he finally looked up again, his jaw clenched but at least his volume had dropped by a few decibels. "Why didn't you move into Derek's loft? He wouldn't charge you rent."

"He sold the building." Derek kept in close touch with the pack, but he now lived with Braeden and Cora in Mineral County, Nevada on an enormous cattle ranch. He didn't need an industrial building in a town filled with bad memories. He always came when Scott asked him, however, even if it was for the holidays.

"What about—"

"We're not talking about this. I'm living here. This is where I can afford, and since I want to keep this place, I need you to keep your voice down."

Liam wouldn't be able to understand that Scott had to settle for what he could get, since unlike his beta, Scott didn't have a lacrosse scholarship and a surgeon for a stepfather. Scott hadn't received any athletics scholarships because he had had to take two years off to fight Monroe, and he certainly hadn't won any academic scholarships. Mr. Argent was paying for his college, for the cost of commuting, and for this apartment, because Scott was too busy to even get a part-time job. As the war against Monroe continued with no seeming end in sight, the packs of the American West had started to look to him for leadership, so he had to be ready to go at any time. There was no way he could explain to his shift boss at Subway that he couldn't work because he had to prevent genocide.

"I wouldn't have to yell if you'd just help me." "Liam—"

"I told you not to do that!"

"What, say your name?"

"Talk to me like I'm a naughty pit bull you're getting ready to neuter!"

Scott bit his lip. "Fine. I'm not going to help you convince Theo to go with you on this trip, because I happen to agree with Theo."

This brought the younger boy up short. "You ... do?"

"Yes, I do. I would never tell you that you can't go, but I'm not going to help you persuade him to go with you. I'm definitely not going to ask him myself. Theo doesn't want to go, and he doesn't want you to go, because you'll both be too far away from the pack if Monroe comes after you."

"That's ridiculous. I go to school five and a half hours from here."

"Going to Humboldt is different. This trip would take you all across the Southwest and Mexico."

"And that wouldn't matter, if I'd have Theo with me." For his part, Liam was making a sincere effort not to get angry. "Just like he was with me every day this last semester."

"You two weren't alone ..." Scott closed his eyes, wishing he could take the words back. They had slipped out. Damn it.

"What?"

"It wasn't ... you and Theo weren't alone in Arcata."

Liam's jaw dropped open and he studied Scott, putting two and two together. Eventually, his eyes started glowing. "You had people spying on me?"

"No. No one was spying on you." Scott rolled his shoulders, wishing this conversation would end. "I simply asked some people to help keep an eye on you."

"Who?"

"Does it matter?"

"Who?" Liam's voice started to creep back towards yelling.

"There's a pack up in Big Lagoon. I simply asked them to check in once in a while." "They checked in with you?"

"Uhh, no." Scott shook his head a little too hard.

"So they were checking in with someone else. Did they talk to Theo behind my back?" "No."

"Then who were they talking to?"

"Mr. Argent knows—"

"A hunter!" All restraint vanished. Liam was furious again and it carried right into his voice. "You had a hunter watching me!"

Immediately there was pounding on the floor from the apartment below. Both of them grimaced at the noise. Scott would go apologize later.

"She's someone Mr. Argent worked with in the past. So yeah, she used to be a hunter."

Liam clenched his fists. "I don't believe you."

"I'm not lying."

"No, not that way." The beta took deep breath. "I don't believe you trust me so little."

Wheeling on his heel, Liam made to storm for the exit, but Scott, exasperated, shot out a hand and grabbed him by the wrist.

"Let me go."

"Not until you listen to me. It's not about trusting you or not trusting you. It's about how vulnerable you are." At Liam's scoff, Scott went. "Theo lives with you and you're still vulnerable."

"So it's about not trusting Theo? You—!"

Liam tried to shake his hand off, but Scott just held on tighter. Liam was strong but Scott was an alpha.

"No." Scott pulled Liam down onto the couch. Liam could have put up more of a fight, but perhaps it was the fact that he could get Scott in trouble if he did so he relented. "Do you remember me telling you about how after the Anuk-Ite was defeated and the hunters had fled, my father sat down and interviewed every one of Monroe's lieutenants that we caught?"

A grunt was the only answer he got.

"I read all of them. One of them had a very interesting story. He overheard Gerard and Monroe talking what they were going to do when they came for you at the zoo. Remember that? Gerard told her that his plan was to kill you and drop your corpse at my feet. He believed that killing you would break me."

"Scott—"

"He was right, Liam. If I had to watch ... I'd have given up. I'd give up now if you died, because I got you into this. I got all of you into this."

"I don't think ..." The other man started to protest and then trailed off. He quickly moved to another line of attack. "You don't do this for Hayden."

"Actually, I do." Scott shot back. "Sheriff Stilinski talks to Valerie every other day at least. You stay right there." Scott got up and went over to his jacket, where he pulled out a pager. "Both of them carry panic buttons. They press it, I know on this thing."

Liam blinked. "You didn't give me one of those."

"Because you'd take it as an insult. Just as you are taking it as an insult now that I don't want you to spend two weeks touring indigenous sites of New Spain!" Scott put the pager back into his jacket pocket. "I know it sucks, Liam, but facts are facts. Did Theo ever talk about his plan back when he was working for the Doctors?"

"Yeah."

"To get what he wanted, he would have had to kill you. Only you or Hayden can take my power, and it turns out there's a lot of supernatural creatures out there who would want to do exactly that. You know who the first one was, don't you?"

"Peter."

"You know what he tried to do. If you hadn't been able to reach me, he would have come for you next. It's not that I doubt that you're strong enough. It's not that I don't trust you. It's people like him I don't trust."

Liam opened his mouth to answer, but Scott's computer beeped. He glanced at the clock. That would be Stiles in D.C. signing for their weekly chat. When Scott turned back, Liam's face had shut down.

"You were going to say something."

"I want to go. Not everyone gets an opportunity to do this. I don't want my life ... defined by Monroe. I asked Theo to go with me, because I thought he might enjoy it, but also because I knew you wouldn't want me to go alone. But I'm going to go anyway. You're just going to have to deal."

"Okay. But we both know that if I asked Theo to go with you, he'd do it. So I'm not going to. If you want to convince him, you'll have to do it yourself."

The computed beeped again.

"I should go."

"You don't have to. Stiles can call back later."

"No," Liam stood up and Scott didn't stop him this time. "You made your position clear. See you around."

Scott watched the door close behind Liam. He put his head in his hands, until the computer dinged again. He moved to the desk and sat down in front of it.

Stiles appeared on the screen. "Hel-l-l-lo." His best friend was in a great mood. "Hey."

"Uh-oh. Uh. Oh. Who was it this time?"

"What are you talking about?" Scott offered him a wincing smile.

"I know the Alpha-Had-A-Fight-With-Someone-And-Is-Feeling-Bad-About-It Face. So, spill. Who was it?"

The smile turned into a real one. No matter how things might sometimes become strained between them, no one knew him better than Stiles, even thousands of miles away. "It was Liam."

"What's the Terror Tot up to now?"

"Nothing bad. Not really." Scott sighed. "He got an offer to go on a special trip at the end of the school year with one of his professors. It's a tour of the cultures and places important to the history of colonization in the southwest United States and Northern Mexico."

"And you told him he couldn't go."

"No! I would never do that. You know I wouldn't do that."

Stiles's image rolled his eyes. "Okay, let me rephrase. You wanted to tell him that he couldn't go because it would be super dangerous."

"It is super dangerous, but it doesn't matter what I want. I know what it's like to have an alpha try to run your life, even the parts that have nothing to do with being a werewolf. That's not the problem; that's not why he's angry. Liam wanted Theo to go with him."

"Oh, because that's safer."

Now it was Scott's turn to roll his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, Scott, you keep telling me that Mata Hari has turned over a new leaf. Go on, I'm listening."

"Theo not only told him no, he read Liam the riot act about how the trip was a stupid idea with Monroe still out there. So Liam came to me to try to get Theo to change his mind."

Stiles pursed his lips. "Oh, I know how this story ends. You told him that you wouldn't do it." "Right."

"Because you agree with Theo."

"Right."

"And Liam blew a gasket on his I.E.D. motor."

"I wish you wouldn't put it that way, but he got very angry." Scott sighed. "I don't know what to say to him to make him understand."

"Scott, listen to me. There are two things you have to accept. First, he does understand, but he doesn't want to accept what that means. He's been there right next to you all along; he's seen what people like Monroe can do. I've been away for a while so I can't be sure, but I'll bet you he still has nightmares about Brett."

Scott nodded; Dr. Geyer had talked to him about it.

"It would mean that he'd have to face the truth that he doesn't have the same freedom to do things other people his age do. That's a feeling you know quite well, right?"

"Yeah." He had to admit that Stiles was right about that. "What's the second thing?" "Isn't it obvious? He blames you for ruining his life."

The hurt must have shown on Scott's face, so Stiles went on quickly.

"Of course it's bullshit, and he gets that, too, but every time he can't do what other people take for granted, he remembers how he became a werewolf. After all, you were like that toward Derek and Peter."

"This isn't the same thing!" Scott protested. "I'm not telling him he can't go! I'm not telling him who he can be in a relationship with or not."

"Of course it's not, and he knows that."

It stung the longer he thought about it. It wasn't the same as with Peter or Derek. He never never insisted that Liam fight for him or obey him. He had only tried to protect Liam. "This isn't fair. I've been very careful not to ... Why does ..."

"Because he's a pouty child?"

"He's only two years younger than me!"

"It's not about age; it's about responsibility. Liam isn't you. Few people are." At Scott's scoff, Stiles blew a raspberry at him. "You don't get to be a True Alpha otherwise, and you managed to do that, so suck it up, buddy. Take it from me, sometimes it's not easy for us mere mortals to be your friend."

"I'm not as mature as everyone seems to think I am."

Stiles laughed at him, and there was a maniacal edge to it. "Sure, dude." "What?"

"Think about it. Have you met any other alpha who would have kept Liam around as his beta once he came within seconds of beating you to death? Would any other alpha you met have kept me around after I got possessed and tortured you with a katana?"

"That wasn't you."

"I'd argue that you recognizing that it wasn't me is the definition of maturity but fair enough, I'll withdraw the example. How about senior year? Yeah, Theo manipulated us, but you didn't have to do all that hard work to get me back. You could have made new human friends. You had other friends."

"You were my best friend."

"Theo was a prick, but he had a point when he asked me if you were still my best friend. I wasn't acting like it."

"If you weren't, neither was I."

Stiles rubbed his hands vigorously over his face in frustration. "Moving on, dumbass, before I get mad at you. You were mature enough to see the value in giving the villains second chances: Peter, Chris, Deucalion, Meredith, and even Theo. Theo murdered you and you held it against him for ten minutes at the most. Who does that? You do that. All I'm saying is that it's intimidating."

Scott stared at the screen. His friends, his pack, were intimidated by him? Did they not understand how tough it was to do the right thing? Did Stiles not understand?

If he didn't, that too was Scott's fault. He could have told Stiles about all the times that he had relived the fight with his beta in the library during the Supermoon. He could have shared how many times Liam had yelled at him since then and Scott's pulse had shot through the roof. When that happened, he had to force himself to be calm; he couldn't -- he absolutely couldn't -- let the fear show on his face. He could have told Stiles about how many times he had looked back at all this responsibility he hadn't asked for and wondered what his life would be like if he had let Liam fall from the roof.

But he couldn't. How could he ask them to fight for others if they thought he didn't care about their lives? It wouldn't matter if the feeling only happened once in a while.

"I see your point. So how do I fix it?"

"Scott?" Stiles smirked at him. "You don't. It's really what he needs from you; someone on which he can safely focus that anger. You Bit it, you bought it. Now can we talk about something fun?"

"Yeah." Scott rubbed his hands on his jeans. "We can do that."