Chapter Text
When Lydia had suggested the pack celebrate the start of the new year up at her lake-house, Corey had agreed quite happily along with everyone else. He might have been slightly less thrilled with the prospect if somebody had warned him to expect more lake than house. He’d imagined alcohol, music, cosy fires and making out with Mason on a sofa in front of that fire, windows closed tight and draught-stoppers tucked along the doors.
Nope.
Nobody’s suggested they go swimming in the lake yet, but Corey knows it’s just a matter of time before one of the drunken supernaturals strips down to their underwear and gallops into the murky water, denouncing the dark and the strong waves as no match for their enhanced senses. For now, everyone is crowded around a bonfire on the shore. There are a few mismatched camping chairs scattered around it haphazardly as an afterthought when Malia’s suggestion of carrying the house’s sofas out was shot down, and a small Bluetooth speaker has been perilously daisy-chained from the house to a few feet away.
It may be winter, and the middle of the night, but it’s still California. The pack, Corey and his stupid chameleon genes excluded, seem to be happy and warm from the combination of the fire and inadvisable amounts of alcohol. Not that he wants to be a downer, but he’s seen a lot of campy horror films and they all start with drunken teenagers around a bonfire at a lake, and at some point there’s skinny dipping and making out.
That probably won’t happen for a while. Liam and Mason, forgoing the chairs in favour of sprawling over the bare ground because why be comfortable, are having a good-natured debate about...something, they’re both too drunk to be understood by anyone close to sober. Scott and Theo are talking about something intently and lowly, their chairs pushed close together and at least half a bottle of vodka gone between them. It looks pretty serious, but Corey is pretty sure he heard one of them say “Yoda would kick BB-8's ass,” not five minutes ago. Stiles, Lydia and Malia are dancing, in the loosest sense of the word, but they look like they’re having fun. Either that, or they’re experiencing eerily similar full-body seizures.
Carefully portioned out by Lydia with Deaton’s help, half of the drinks had been spiked with wolfsbane – apparently just as effective on coyotes as wolves, if Malia was any kind of metric. Bottles not Sharpied with a spiky red W (“I am not ending up in the hospital with wolfsbane poisoning,” Lydia had snapped when Stiles tried to make fun of her caution) are in a cooler to themselves, the humans and banshee among them steadily draining their contents. They haven’t figured out a chameleon equivalent to wolfsbane just yet so Corey is the only one left sober, and that’s not fun under any circumstances.
He eyes the bonfire warily – he’s in no hurry to become a human candle again, but the lake is vindictively chilling the light breeze the forecast predicted and it feels like it’s coating his bones in a layer of ice. After some consideration, and a quick plea in his mind that goes ‘hey, please don’t burn me, I really would hate to go through that whole shebang again,’ he shifts another inch or so closer.
Alright, maybe he’s not totally miserable. It’s nice seeing his friends so uninhibited and relaxed for once; even a fifteen-minute drive outside of Beacon Hills has allowed them to lower their guards in a way they just can’t afford to at home. Mason isn’t much of a drinker, preferring tipsy to drunk most of the time, but after a drinking game orchestrated by Malia (the rules of which are still shrouded in mystery; it mostly consisted of Malia pointing at people and yelling at them to take a shot) he’s spent the past hour giggling pretty much non-top. Corey’s heart does this strange little involuntary squirm whenever he hears the noise, so it’s been beating more irregularly than not for a while, but Mason’s happiness is worth it.
He’s still cold, though.
He doubts anyone has their cognitive faculties in good enough working order to notice him slipping away to the house, but he melts into the background just in case. He’ll be okay (probably) with another coat or two, and if any of the good-hearted idiots noticed what he was doing they’d torture the truth out of him with concerned, genuine questions and then insist on moving the party inside just for his benefit, despite them all clearly having such a great time outside.
He’s nearly tripped by one of the numerous extension cords they used for the stereo, and then he forgets how doors work for a brief spell and tries to pull for an entire minute before remembering that sometimes you have to push. Obstacle course defeated, he shakes off the shift and fades back into sight, and navigates the maze of corridors to what Lydia had described as the “sitting room”, as opposed to the living room, games room, and casual room that had also been on the tour. Corey isn’t sure what the differences between those rooms are except for the economic standing of whoever’s living in them. His house has exactly five distinct rooms: two bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. There’s also a tiny back yard, and a driveway that fits one car. Lydia has two houses, and each of them is easily three times the size of his, so he thinks he can be excused for getting lost three times in as many minutes.
He eventually stumbles into the right room, all of their overnight bags tossed carelessly onto what is probably a priceless antique rug. His duffel is instantly recognisable for the bulge at one end where he’d shoved his spare coats in and then wrestled the zip closed over their bulk, and they burst out as soon as he opens it.
There’s a full-length mirror on the wall opposite. Corey discovers this because he accidentally catches sight of himself in it, now with two additional coats on, and realizes that he vaguely resembles the Michelin Man. He’s fairly confident in his assumption that Mason doesn’t look at a tire mascot and pop a boner, so he’ll just have to hope that this doesn’t ruin their sex life forever.
Resigned to his fate as either perpetually cold or ridiculously dressed, he shuffles back to the bonfire. The route takes him down a corridor, through the main living room, past the dining room, and into the kitchen, where the back door is swung wide open. Corey frowns at it. He’s sure he closed it after him, but after the whole fiasco he had opening it he doesn’t trust himself.
Before he can waddle back out like an obese penguin there’s an odd, muted scuffling somewhere to his left. He’s experienced enough supernatural attacks in the past year alone to automatically tense, expecting some horrific creature to come scuttling towards him, but there’s nothing. Just some more scuffling, then a muffled fuck , then a scrape of metal on concrete.
Probably not a mythical beast hankering after his flesh, unless it’s managed to trap itself in the pantry. Still a possibility. Mason took out a werewolf hunter with a partially filled bedpan last year and Corey got resurrected with magical green goo; nothing’s off the table anymore.
He’s not a massive fan of pantries, on account of being locked in one for a lot of his formative years whenever his parents decided that he was becoming too hard to ignore, so the realization that the voice coming from inside the small room is Stiles doesn’t fill him with the relief that one might expect. Also, he’s pretty sure wendigos can mimic people’s voices. Could be a Stilesdigo.
But probably not.
He nudges the door open to find Stiles in the middle of an intense wrestling match with a standing shelf. The shelf is rapidly becoming the apparent victor. Part of Corey thinks it would be funny to get his phone out and film the struggle, but his conscience pokes its nose in and tells him to help instead. He listens, mostly because Mason will be disappointed if he doesn’t.
His enhanced strength means the shelf weighs next to nothing as he grapples with it, its bulk and shape the real challenges. In defiance of the natural order of the world, drunken Stiles seems to have even less coordination than he does in his sober state, and has wedged his limbs in between parts of the framing, a feat as impressive as it is baffling. Extracting him is really a three-person job – one to manipulate Stiles’ flailing limbs to freedom, one to steady the shelf back against the wall, and one to supervise and provide moral support – but somehow Corey manages it alone.
“It’s my alternate-dimension-train-station-buddy!” Stiles declares when he’s no longer locked in a passionate embrace with the shelving unit. “I always knew you’d save me from mortal danger one day.”
“You did?” Corey is distracted, assessing the damage the short-lived battle had caused. Packs of dry pasta and cans of soup are strewn over the floor, dented and broken. It’s always the innocents that suffer in times of war.
“We’re bonded,” Stiles asserts, dropping to a crouch to retrieve two bottles of tequila. It’s not a leap to assume they’re the cause of the disaster. “Our souls were in jeopardy together. Now they call to each other in times of need.” He unscrews one of the bottles and pauses to take several gulps. “Did you feel my distress resonating through you?”
“Yeah, sure,” Corey says uncertainly, because Stiles looks really excited at the thought and he doesn’t want to rain on his parade. They might have been trapped by the Ghost Riders at the same time but they never actually saw each other; from what Corey has gathered, Stiles spent most of his occupancy being annoyed by Peter and trying to plan his escape, whereas Corey was whisked straight to his own private room to become a tannoy system. “I, uh, couldn’t bear the feeling so I had to come rescue you.”
Stiles beams at him sloppily. “One day, I will repay the favour,” he says seriously, and takes another swig from the tequila. “Ah, what the hell, dude!” and then he suddenly yanks Corey into a bear hug, bottles clinking together behind his back as he squeezes.
Drunk Stiles is a hugger. Good to know.
And a mother hen. “Why are you so cold?” he asks suspiciously, pulling back and studying Corey intently. “Are you sick? Do you have pneumonia? Typhoid? The plague? Oh my God, are you dying? You need to tell me if you’re dying!”
“I’m not dying!” Stiles doesn’t look convinced. Corey goes in for the kill. “If I was dying, your soul would feel it, right? Because they’re bonded?”
Stiles looks down at his abdomen uncertainly. “Everything feels normal,” he whispers to himself. “Okay, you-” he points a bottle at Corey, ignoring the fact that there’s nobody else around to confuse matters - “stay right here. Hold these, I’ll be back.” He shoves the bottles into Corey’s chest and marches out of the pantry muttering to himself.
Corey bites his lip, considering the consequences of not staying right here. He’s not sure what Stiles is planning, but the chance of it being murderous is low. The pantry’s freezing, though, and also forces flashes of old memories out of the banks he’d repressed them to. After a minute of uncertainty, he retreats into the kitchen, closing the pantry door behind him and assuming the same stance and position he’d been in.
Stiles is either fooled or just doesn’t care when he barges back into the room a few minutes later. “I’ve repaid my debt!” he announces grandly, brandishing a scarf in one hand and a pair of gloves in the other. “You saved my life, now I’ll save yours.” He wraps the scarf around Corey’s neck for him, making small triumphant noises all the while, and then reclaims his alcohol so Corey can tug the gloves on.
They don’t head back outside just yet. Stiles assesses him like he’s a fashion critic, one hip cocked out and arms crossed. “Something’s not right,” he mumbles. “Something - oh! You idiot!” He smacks himself on the forehead with the heel of his hand. Corey jerks back automatically at the sudden motion, his body accustomed to the consequences of sudden mood changes. “God, I’m a moron!” He sprints out of the room, sprints back in to place the tequila bottles on a counter, and then sprints back out, yelling over his shoulder that he’ll be right back.
Corey has no clue what’s going on, other than Stiles has finally lost his goddamn mind. They all knew it was coming. It could probably be argued that it had already happened, really, but Corey’s curious about what plans this bout of insanity will dredge from the darkness corners of Stiles’ mind.
“The pièce de résistance,” echoes into the room before Stiles appears again, clutching a grey blob in his hands. He waves it in circles, too fast for Corey to discern what it is. “Your head, Corey, is so precious. And left uncovered, it can lose so much body heat. Respect your head.”
Almost reverently, he holds up a hat for Corey’s inspection. It has a bobble. It’s a bobble hat.
The bobble is almost as big as the hat itself.
Oh, he’s going to look so fucking stupid.
“Thanks, Stiles,” he chokes. Stiles takes that as permission to plonk the hat on his head. He adjusts it until it’s right down over his eyebrows and covering his ears, then messes with the scarf (which Corey hadn’t really paid much attention to before, but it’s a shockingly bright pink tartan, which he’s sure is clashing very nicely with his green coat) until that’s over the bottom half of his face. He’s basically wearing a balaclava, but looking ten times more ridiculous.
“You’ll never be cold again, my child,” Stiles promises, and hustles them both out of the house before Corey has too much time to ponder the implications of ‘my child’. Stiles has a similar struggle with the door, and Corey feels briefly vindicated before he remembers that Stiles is at least twelve shots in, and he is stone-cold sober.
Stiles’ anti-hypothermia measures don’t stop at bobble hats and attempted suffocation by scarf; once they reach the others, he unceremoniously drops the tequila into the cooler and then wrangles one of the chairs hazardously close to the bonfire. “Come sit,” he orders.
Corey wriggles into the chair, his aforementioned Michelin Man appearance making it a genuine challenge to fit between the armrests. He also can’t see very well, thanks to the scarf and the hat blocking his peripheral vision – and some of his normal vision, too, the bobble on that hat is heavy and now it’s off-kilter on the left side of his face, leaving him half-blind in that eye. He uses his nose to check he hasn’t caught on fire instead, but none of his senses are at a hundred-percent efficiency considering his nose, ears, mouth and hands have all been imbibed by winter accessories.
Mason is exactly where he left him, now debating the trainability of different breeds on Nintendogs with Liam. Apparently the dalmatians are either fantastic or terrible and it’s a lottery, and the pugs are great at agility competitions. His intensity over defending the corgis saves him from seeing Corey in his new role as Giant Marshmallow, which is a small mercy.
Once he’s settled, Stiles produces a blanket from absolutely nowhere and heaps that on top of him, too, and as much as Corey hates to admit it, he is actually nice and warm now. All it takes is a dangerous proximity to open flames and a bunch of highly combustible clothes.
Corey recognises Lydia’s approach from the long-suffering sigh behind him before she actually appears in his narrowed field of vision. “Honey,” she says to Stiles, in a tone that suggests she’s five seconds away from calling him an idiot, “what are you doing?”
“Keeping Corey warm.” Stiles’ tone is very duh, couldn’t you work that out for yourself , and Lydia’s eyebrows threaten to reach the stratosphere. “He’s my soulmate .” With that, Stiles wanders to the other side of the fire, to join Malia in happily throwing their limbs in all directions as an approximation of dancing.
Lydia’s eyes hold no small amount of judgement when she turns to him, but they soften as soon as she takes in the rather pathetic state of affairs that is his clothing and general life. “Try not to set yourself on fire,” she instructs, “I’m going to go and actually fix this problem.” Before he can protest that he’s quite toasty and it’s all sorted, she struts off towards the house, impressively steady on the loamy ground in her heels and a not-inconsiderable amount of tequila.