Chapter Text
You know Bruce Banner, right?
I cut to this (and cut out any initial mention of the Winter Formal and its events) to really emphasize how disconnected Steve is from the goings-on of Beacon Hills, and remind the reader how all the supernatural shenanigans “look” to the outside world. That huge first season finale that changed the Teen Wolf characters' lives so much, almost no one else really knows about.
Steve stared at the text in bewilderment, actually pausing mid-step in the hallway between SHIELD combat training rooms. He talked about his friends to Stiles all the time, and made no attempt to hide who they were. Stiles knew who his friends were – so why was he actually asking?
Stiles is not subtle. Like, at all. :P
Yes, he texted back. Why?
Can I ask you a favor?
Steve couldn't help the shiver down his spine that had nothing to do with SHIELD skimping on heating and everything to do with how much Stiles hated asking for things.
The 'SHIELD skimping on heating' line was a tiny detail meant to slightly hint at SHIELD as an official institution, not the comical 'superhero agency' that you see in, well, the comics, and how it's often written in fanfic by people who've never had to work in an professional or institutional environment, before.
Steve poked through several conference rooms, offices, and breakrooms, until finally he gave up and went into one of the remote bathrooms that no one used because it was so far out of everyone's way. After checking that no one was in there right now, he dialed.
I also made a point of Steve having to look for an isolated place because, well, SHIELD is an institution, so it's probably not going to be easy for even Steve to find a quiet spot.
"Steve?" Stiles answered.
"Is everything okay?" Steve asked immediately.
"...not exactly," Stiles said. That alone made Steve grip the sink counter hard as he remembered Stiles' futile attempts to convince Steve that his panic attacks were okay.
Steve is simultaneously so very right and so very wrong.
"What's going on?" Steve asked. "And what does it have to do with Bruce?"
"There was-" Stiles paused, took a deep breath, and said, "Lydia was attacked at our Winter Formal. She's recovering, now, but...it's going to be hard on her. And she's kind of a Bruce Banner fan, so I guess I just..." Steve could hear Stiles swallowing nervously from three thousand miles away. "Maybe you could get an autograph or something? Not for me, but just to cheer her up."
Stiles is the kind of person who isn't above abusing any and all connections he has – he just won't necessarily do so for personal gain. So he won't try to use a relationship with the leader of the Avengers for himself, but he will for someone else (such as Scott, then Lydia, then Allison).
Steve stared into the mirror, his own struggle with relief and worry staring back at him – relief that Stiles wasn't hurt, but worry that someone Stiles cared about was. The girl he was pining over, no less – and genuinely cared about outside of his crush on her. "I'll ask him," Steve said. In all honesty, he doubted Bruce would mind signing something for a hurt kid, but Steve didn't want to make promises on someone else's behalf. "Is she okay?"
"She will be," Stiles said. Then under his breath, he added, "Hopefully."
Still slipping in the subtle reminders of what's really going on in Beacon Hills outside of Steve's view. >:)
Steve sighed, then looked up when someone else came into the bathroom.
"I've gotta go," he said quietly. "But I'm sure she'll be fine, okay? I've seen people recover from some pretty terrible things."
"Doesn't make it suck any less," Stiles pointed out.
Steve huffed in saddened humor. After a few more meaningless reassurances, he ended the call. He stared at the screen of his phone, wondering how best to ask Bruce to sign something for an injured Hulk fan.
Steve is very awkward. Luckily, so's Bruce.
He texted Stiles back, in the end, while walking out and towards his next training session.
Any particular reason she likes the Hulk? Steve asked him. It would be easier to ask Bruce to autograph something if he can give the man a good idea of what to say. Or at least if there was a certain kind of merchandise she liked.
The response was almost immediate. Steve had to smile when Stiles described in detail how his friend wasn't a fan of the Hulk, but of Dr. Banner and his scientific work (and, apparently, his work against a particular scientist).
You'd be amazed at how snarky and petty esteemed researchers can get in peer-reviewed work.
Bruce had a lot of issues about the Hulk – namely the dichotomy of how the world viewed the Hulk against what the Hulk actually was, at least in Bruce's mind. He would love to hear someone – especially a kid – value him for his intellectual side, something all too few people did.
After he got home, he had another phone call with another Stilinski.
"We caught the serial killer," John said. "And it was a woman."
As of now, most serial killers caught or identified thus far have been men. While partially a case of gender bias – anything particularly brutal or active getting attributed to men unless noted otherwise – there is also a genuine reason for the Sheriff to assume that a serial killer is a man (and thus need to disabuse someone he's talking to about it from the get go once he knows otherwise).
Steve swallowed. "Does it have anything to do with whatever the hell happened at the dance last night?"
"Possibly, but we don't know for sure," John said. Steve heard some noise in the background, and recognized the sounds of a bustling police station. John must be calling Steve on his break. "Just – did Stiles ever tell you about Scott's girlfriend?"
"Allison?" Steve asked, trying to remember the name.
Just because someone is a huge part of Stiles' life, doesn't mean they're a huge part of Steve's.
"The serial killer was her aunt," John said. "And she murdered people several years ago, and now came back to kill off all the loose ends. Most likely, if she was using some kind of rabid dog or whatever to kill them, it turned on her, if the clawmarks on her throat are anything to go by."
Steve breathed out slow and long. "Jesus fucking Christ," he muttered.
"Yeah," John said. "And-" There was the sound of another phone ringing, and what sounded like some people arguing.
"Go," Steve said. "We can talk later, and I can talk to Stiles. He already told me about his friend."
Completely benign and not at all noteworthy workplace interruption: a convenient way to end a conversation when I can't think of a natural way to end it, myself. :P
"Keep an ear on him for me?" John asked.
"Roger," Steve said, and with a distracted 'thank you', John ended the call.
The next day, Steve video-called Bruce over lunch while trying some delicious noodle soup from a new Vietanmese place down the street whose name he always tried to avoid saying in public. They spent an enjoyable half-hour catching up, not having talked much in a few weeks. Bruce recounted his latest day baby-sitting Clint's kids at the tower – Tony apparently got into a very heated debate with the eight-year-old about some cartoon – and Steve returned that with the story of how Natasha went "undercover" at a SHIELD combat lesson for new agents. Veteran marines learned a hard lesson about how decieving appearances could be when they all got beaten up by a "little girl".
That place Steve was talking about was Pho King, by the way. He doesn't like saying its name out loud because the correct pronunciation of phở is “fuh”, not “foe”. ;)
"Hey, Bruce?" Steve added at the end of their video chat and remembering Stiles' request. "Any chance I could get you to autograph something?"
"Sure," Bruce said with amicable surprise. "For a Hulk fan?"
Unless it was someone Bruce particularly disliked or hated, Bruce wouldn't really refuse someone an autograph – and at this point, he and Steve are close enough that Bruce trusts Steve wouldn't ask for an autograph for someone like that.
"A Dr. Banner fan," Steve said. "A friend of my nephew's, actually. Something about liking some article of yours that smacked down a sexist who-" Steve checked the text message on his phone. "'Can't tell apart a reticulum from his rectum'."
Bruce burst out laughing, just as Tony's voice cut into the conversation with a gleeful, "I remember that one!"
A moment later, the man himself popped up, hooking his chin over Bruce's shoulder and waving at Steve. "Your nephew's friend has good taste."
Tony tends to butt into conversations whether I want him to or not. :P
"Well, she was attacked at their school dance," Steve said, smiling as Bruce drank some tea and Tony cringed at the smell of it. "She's recovering now, and Stiles wants to give her something to cheer her up."
"Beacon Hills, right?" Tony asked, cocking his head with a look of speculation on his face.
"Yeah," Steve confirmed.
Tony pulled away from Bruce, but Steve could still see half his body in the shot of Bruce's camera as he appeared to start poking away at a tablet.
It's a mish-mash of comic book canon, post-Avengers 1 movie fanon, and Tony's canonical tendency to over-plan, but I tried to give a more laidback background to it. A lot of his unexpected foresight just comes from looking into something as soon as he hears about them.
"I wouldn't normally ask for something like this, Bruce," Steve said. "But he wouldn't, either, so-"
"No problem," Bruce cut in, smiling reassuringly. He took a sip of his tea. "We've got some spare merchandise somewhere around here I can sign. Maybe one of those limited edition-"
"Oh, shit."
Tony's quiet, heartbroken invective had Steve's gaze snapping towards the side of the screen Tony was on. Bruce looked over to Tony's tablet, only for his tea-mug to freeze halfway to his mouth in a white-knuckled grip.
This was a slightly experimental section for me. Basically, I wanted to convey the horror not (just) through Steve's own reaction, but also through the others' reactions. Personally, as much as I love Teen Wolf, I feel like that's something the show's lost over time (though maybe they're doing better now, I wouldn't know, I'm super far behind on 6B). The first few seasons really conveyed horror very well because they spent just as much time on the characters' reactions to dead bodies and such as the actual horrifying elements themselves, but that's been fading away over the latter half of the show. I'm trying to bring it back and maintain it in this series.
"Oh my god," he breathed out in horror.
"What?" Steve demanded.
"I was looking up the attack," Tony said. "And-"
Tony brought up his tablet to Bruce's camera, and Steve's gut fell right through the floor at the picture on the screen.
But of course, the POV character's own feelings and reaction are still important, too.
Lydia Martin was probably a beautiful young lady – but covered in so much blood, it was impossible to tell. She was strapped into a gurney being lifted into an ambulance. The low quality of the picture did nothing to hide the tears in her dress, the blood all over her body, and the paleness of her skin.
She looked a fraying thread away from death.
Oh, if only you knew, Steve.
Behind her was a boy, his tuxedo also covered in blood. His handsome features were lost to the terror on his face as two police officers held him back from running to her side.
Jackson is a very complicated character, and it's really a shame that not only did the show have to cut his arc so short, but that the fandom didn't pick up on him, either.
Cell-phone photo taken by a fellow student and shared online, the caption read. Of Lydia Martin being loaded into the ambulance. Also pictured is classmate Jackson Whittemore, who found her and called 911.
Both names were achingly familiar to him.
"That's Jackson?!" Steve blurted out.
The tablet disappeared from view as Tony pulled it away, leaning his head back towards Bruce's shoulders. The two ashen men looked at Steve in askance.
"The girl is the one Stiles has a crush on," Steve said, leaning forward over the table as latent shock coursed through his veins. "And the boy, Jackson – he's the fella the boys never get along with." Steve shook his head as the enormity of Stiles' understatements started to hit him. "Holy shit."
Yet another instance of the dichotomy of what Steve hears about Beacon Hills and its residents, versus what's actually happening. In many ways, that was the primary point of this scene. After a few scenes of the two sides of the Winter Wolves universe kinda stewing on their own and chugging along, this was the beginning of the two sides – the superheroic and the supernatural – slowly starting to come together.
"I don't think 'holy' is right word, here," Tony said, frowning at the tablet. Bruce set down his tea, looking deep in the mug as he tried to avoid looking at Tony's screen. "They weren't the only ones with a rough night."
"I know," Steve said, rubbing at his head. He looked to Tony. "Remember when I mentioned a fan of yours does archery? Allison Argent?"
Tony pursed his lips, and gestured towards his screen. "Would I be safe in assuming she's related to Kate Argent?"
"Kate Argent is her aunt," Steve said.
"Who's Kate Argent?" Bruce asked, despite looking like he didn't want to know the answer.
"The serial killer my nephew's father has been trying to hunt down for months," Steve said.
This word-choice – “my nephew's father” – was intentional. Steve and the Sheriff are friends, but Steve still considers Stiles as family slightly moreso than the Sheriff. His primary relation is Stiles, and everything else is through Stiles. He's still working on developing his own relationships, so to speak.
Tony elaborated, "She's been found responsible for a recent string of murders, most likely committed to..." He swallowed, like he couldn't believe what he was reading – which was saying a lot, given their line of work. "To cover up the fact she murdered almost an entire family and their close friends, several years ago, by burning down their house."
This was done just to highlight that it was never specified whether the Hale pack were a single family, or just acting like one. After all, the packs basically consider themselves a family even if they aren't legally or genetically related.
Bruce shut his eyes. "Does...does it say why she...?"
"Doesn't look like there's a reason," Tony said. "Just pure psychopathy."
"Pure evil," Bruce growled. Tony's head snapped up, looking as alarmed as Steve felt. But when Bruce opened his eyes, they were brown, not green. He was the kind of upset that made your heart skip beats, not double them.
It was strange, sometimes, having a friend whose eye color could change on the spot.
;)
"Yeah," Tony said, reaching out to wrap an arm around Bruce's shoulders, anchoring him and keeping the monster inside at bay. While Steve could empathize with what might very well be the Hulk's desire to destroy a rare embodiment of evil in the world, the target of his anger was already dead and he was three-thousand miles away from what was left of her.
Bruce took several deep, Hulk-controlling breaths, and looked at Steve.
"If it makes the girl feel better, I'll autograph every piece of Hulk merchandise we have," Bruce said.
"Forget the Hulk merch," Tony said. "I have a better idea."
Tony is actually quite similar to Lydia in being a genius at the apex of the petty social pyramid. So he can sympathize with her a little bit in ways that wouldn't occur to most people – such as a gift that is very class, but also intellectually challenging or engaging for her.
Steve and Bruce both looked at him in surprise.
"Let's print out that article," Tony said. "Get it bound up nice and pretty and everything."
Bruce smiled at the thought. "I remember a lot of the stuff we ultimately left out of it. I can make some marginal commentary-"
"Like a director's cut!" Tony said.
Steve's shoulders fell in relief, trying to get the bloody pictures out of his head. At this point, it wasn't about Stiles, anymore, but for the girl's own sake.
While Steve primarily cares about Stiles, that doesn't mean he doesn't care or have sympathy for Stiles' friends, and is incapable of caring about others in their own right.
"Thanks, fellas," Steve said, smiling gratefully at them.
They responded with smiles full of determination.
The shared investment in the gift was probably what made Steve's heart freeze over in genuine fear when he got a message from Stiles saying Lydia was missing. It didn't help that the message came less than an hour after Tony texted him a picture of the article. He'd ordered one of those fancy leather portfolios for it.
In retrospect, the wording wasn't the clearest in this paragraph – even with context, “the article” is a little vague and it takes the next sentence to clear up what it's about.
Steve's gut grew heavier with every day she wasn't found. But just as he was considering taking some leave to go over there and help look for her, she was found, safe and sound. Well, 'sound' might be a bit strong a word for wandering around naked in the woods for three days straight. But she wasn't hurt anymore than what put her in the hospital in the first place.
Small mercies.
The gift, thankfully, turned out to be a success.
And thus a more concrete connection between a Frost Bite scene/event and a Talking Cure one.
It was hard to miss. Stiles texted him a picture of Lydia Martin, looking healthy and like she was never attacked, as she stood in front of a locker at school, paging through the article. She was grinning down at whatever she was reading, all but glowing in the picture.
Thank you.
That was supposed to be italicized. Whoops.
That simple text message somehow said so much more than any amount of creative punctuation or strings of emoticons ever could.
Steve made sure to forward the picture to Bruce during their next video-call. He watched Bruce open the picture on the little video screen.
The Hulk left so much destruction in his wake that Bruce rarely saw anything positive about himself, any worth in his life. Even little Hulk fans left him reeling, feeling like they loved a lie, a fairy-tale version of the Hulk that belied what the green rage monster was actually capable of.
Getting in the fluff even with all the hints of angst underneath.
Bringing some joy into someone's life, free of the baggage of the Hulk...
Steve wondered if Bruce got more than he gave, and said as much to Stiles.
We could all use some more smiles, Stiles texted back wisely. Steve glanced at look of disbelief on Bruce's face, how hard it was for him to understand that his words alone could make a kid happy.
He could do nothing but agree.
Heh, this was kind of amusing, now that I've written the corresponding scene in Talking Cure. What Steve interpreted as wisdom on Stiles' part, was something Stiles texted back in distraction and was pretty hollow of meaning to him.