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It felt dirty to hate Isaac Lahey.
Despite the fact that he had, on numerous occasions, attempted to murder Lydia Martin in some brutal fashion and had generally wreaked havoc on Beacon Hills High School after his Bite, it was hard to look at those doey blue eyes and admit that you absolutely despised a kid like him. Plus, he had that whole “abusive father” backstory going for him, and no one would ever respect a person who said that they wholeheartedly abhorred a kid who went through that kind of hell. So Stiles never said he hated Isaac Lahey.
If I was given three bullets and a license to kill, I’d shoot Hitler once and then Isaac Lahey twice is how he actually put it.
If it wasn’t the goddamn scarves that he wore in ninety degree weather, it was his unwavering pessimistic and unhelpful attitude in every and any occasion. Stiles never considered himself someone who pissed rainbows, but he knew enough of the human psyche to know that constant negativity dragged most people from a -4 to a -15 in productivity. When they were trying to save the world from the monsters that lurked in the dark, productivity was key.
In all honesty, Stiles could be sensitive. He couldn’t walk around in someone else’s shoes, but he could admire the condition of them from afar. He just hated when people sent out personal invitations for the Pity Party.
“I think you should give him another chance,” his father once said placidly, hardly lifting his eyes from his morning paper.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be in the same room as him even if Beyoncé was there. Naked.”
So naturally, Scott tried everything he could to get them to be best friends.
He saw potential in them. Isaac didn’t not see it, but he didn’t exactly embrace it either. He would much rather tiptoe around the rather explosive and stubborn Stiles Stilinski than approach him with any sort of olive branch. It made lunch time uncomfortably quiet at times, and even Allison could admit that the tension between the two was irritating and unfounded. Everyone insisted they had no reason to hate each other.
And they didn’t hate each other. Out loud.
Stiles was just eternally grateful that in the litany of superpowers granted to werewolves, one of them wasn’t telepathy, because they would have heard some pretty awful things that his wired brain spewed out in the other boy’s presence. It wasn’t that Stiles had a personal vendetta against him; Isaac had never lifted a finger to harm Stiles with any focused attention. It was just that Stiles wasn’t ready to pal up with a kid whose lifetime goal had once been to murder one of his only love interests in this static little town.
Isaac didn’t like being shafted before he was given a chance, but he grappled with his social skills with thick, fumbling fingers. Having spent a majority of his childhood locked in an old freezer, making friends wasn’t something he gave his free time to; he had been too absorbed in staying alive to learn the ins and outs of how to be a teenager in the 21st century. And Stiles Stilinski was not the right person to practice on.
After weeks of forced interactions that typically ended with Scott barking something about stop getting at each other’s throats and he’s only trying to be helpful, most of the pack started dissolving into separate groups where socializing was concerned. Allison followed Isaac, and Lydia followed Allison, leaving Scott and Stiles to live up to their once former glory of the Invisible Nobodies of Beacon Hills High School. But now that they had tasted the sweetness of friendship, it was hard to fall back into that routine. Their bond was just as strong, but that didn’t mean they weren’t longing, sometimes, to see their other friends.
“This is ridiculous,” Stiles said suddenly at lunch one day. Isaac, Lydia, and Allison were crowded around a small stone bench in the court yard, eating their lunches and laughing with reckless abandon. And all the while, he and Scott were in some sort of prison-less solitary confinement, watching jealously from afar. “We aren’t in grade school. They don’t have to give us the cold shoulder.”
“They aren’t giving us the cold shoulder,” Scott pointed out as his phone buzzed in his pocket. He picked it up and smiled at a text from Allison. “They’re giving you the cold shoulder.”
Stiles was baffled. “Wh-why the hell are they giving me the cold shoulder? What did I do?”
“Oh, come on, dude, you know it gets so awkward with you and Isaac fighting all the time,” Scott said. “No one wants to be around it anymore. The only reason we deal with it when we have pack business is because, if we didn’t, the town would probably go up in flames.”
“Well, what the hell? Fix it!” Stiles exclaimed, scrambling across the table in attempt to steal Scott’s phone and remedy the situation through subterfuge. Scott was too fast for even the spastic Stiles and pulled the device out of his reach.
“I’m trying.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Scott just grinned and poked his fork into a pile of mushy green beans. “Scottie, what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Apparently, what it meant was corralling Stiles and Isaac, under the impression that they were to finally introduce Scott to the greatness of the Star Wars series, into Scott’s bedroom and locking the door securely behind them. When the door clicked shut, there was a pop as a jar’s lid was pried off, and Stiles watched dark ash pour under the crack in the door. All the color drained from his face.
He jimmied the handle. “Scott, this isn’t funny.”
“It isn’t supposed to be.”
“Open the door!”
“You know I can’t do that, Stiles,” Scott answered solemnly. Stiles could hear the regret and the hope lilting the edges of his words. “You two aren’t going to do anything unless I make you. So here I am, Alpha of the Year, making you guys make up.”
“Well, ha ha, Alpha of the Year, you’re not my Alpha, so open the damn door!” Stiles demanded, throwing his shoulder into the wood and damn, was it even wood, because it felt more like iron.
“I’m not your Alpha, but I am your best friend.” The way Scott said it was so honestly vulnerable that it made Stiles stop shoving at the door. There was a pause. “Just give him a chance. Thirty minutes.”
Then he disappeared.
Stiles turned around, mouth open to make some witty remark, when he caught a look at Isaac, huddled up against Scott’s desk, knees pulled to his chest and eyes dangerously golden yellow.
“Yo, Scottie, I think you need to come let us out for real!” Stiles yelled over his shoulder, trying to maintain his sight of Isaac at the same time. “And I’m not saying this to be stubborn. I’m saying this because I think Isaac is gonna rip my limbs off!”
“Open the window,” Isaac demanded.
“What?”
“Open the window. Please.”
“What are you going to do? Jump out of it?”
“Stiles, open the fucking window, or I’m gonna rip your throat out with my teeth!” Isaac growled, locking his fingers together behind his head and burying his face into his knees. Stiles, without needing more prompting that the threat of his life, scrambled across the room, clambering over Scott’s mattress, and throwing the window open wide. He slunk back, as far from Isaac as the room’s dimensions would allow, and waited, brown eyes careful.
It took only a few minutes for Isaac to look up with his typical, round blue eyes. Stiles breathed a sigh of relief and sunk to the floor. “You know, for a minute there, I thought you were really going to kill me.”
“I wouldn’t rule it out at this point.”
“Jesus, it’s not my fault that Scott came up with this plan without thinking it through,” Stiles said crossly. He meditated on the thought. Scott was so smart when it came to people and keeping everyone alive. It seemed as though he missed a few details when coming up with this plan: the least important being Isaac Lahey’s hatred of confined spaces and the most important being Isaac Lahey’s ability to murder Stiles Stilinski when he was panicking. “Hey, I thought it was just small spaces that you hated.”
Isaac shook his head and swallowed. “Being locked in,” he said. “And small spaces. I especially hate being locked into small spaces.”
“Is there anything you aren’t afraid of?”
“You.”
“Comforting.”
The silence that followed was thick with tension. Stiles stayed in his corner; Isaac stayed pressed against the desk. They looked at each other awkwardly, waiting for someone to break the quiet.
“The Mountain Ash was smart,” Isaac mused, nodding his head towards the door.
“Yeah, Scott’s a lot smarter than people give him credit for. Except,” he amended, pointing his finger between the two of them, “This plan was pretty stupid.”
Stiles was 99% certain that the thirty minutes was actually fourteen hours. He was hungry and dehydrated, and Jesus, he had to pee. He got up, bouncing on the balls of his feet, pacing over discarded Scott-clothes and poorly kept books. He wrung his wrists, groaned. “How long have we been in here?”
“Six minutes.”
He collapsed onto the mattress with a moan.
“You should try being locked in a freezer for six hours,” Isaac mumbled.
Stiles just rolled his eyes at the ceiling, not choosing to dignify the reply with any response. Why waste his wit on someone like that? Isaac clearly wouldn’t appreciate it. He sat up, glanced around the bright room and smiled when he felt the breeze from the open window kiss his cheek. “How far of a jump do you think it is to the ground?” He stuck his head out and looked down.
“Far enough to kill you if you try.”
A flare of annoyance lit under his sternum, Stiles wheeled around, flailing his hands ecstatically as he spoke. “What’s your problem, man? I mean, seriously. I’m trying to make conversation here, and all you’re doing is throwing me back these depressing one-liners—”
“You aren’t trying to make conversation. You’re trying to escape.” Isaac always spoke in such a measured way, like each word was a careful decision. Stiles hated that, hated that he treated verbal communication like an illness to be avoided. As someone who harbored a massive lexicon in his brain and a quick tongue, Stiles appreciated dialogue to be more free than Isaac allowed it to be.
“Well, why wouldn’t I try to escape? My best friend trapped me in here with the dude living in his guest room, and there’s no way out, and I’m starving.” To prove a point, Stiles’ stomach growled. He pointed to it, almost proud of the timing.
Isaac leaned and rummaged around in a desk drawer above his head. He produced a number of protein bars and tossed one at Stiles who caught it with ungraceful hands, staring like it was an alien artifact. “I can’t guarantee it’s edible anymore.”
Stiles peeled back the wrapper and nibbled on a corner, deeming it somewhat edible and consuming it greedily. He sat back on the edge of Scott’s bed, shoving an empty Gatorade bottle onto the floor and chewing quickly in the silence. “How’d he lure you in here anyway?” He swallowed his mouthful of food. “Scott. What’d he say to get you in here?”
"He said that he wanted to start watching Star Wars, and I was dumb enough to believe him.”
Stiles suddenly saw Isaac in a whole new light. “You like Star Wars?” he asked tentatively.
“The only person in the world who doesn’t like Star Wars is Scott.”
Stiles’ brow knit skeptically, but the lightness that only the Star Wars series could bring to his heart filled his chest like helium in a balloon. “What’s your favorite? I mean obviously the answer is—”
“The Empire Strikes Back,” they said simultaneously.
Overwhelmed by his desire to talk about Star Wars with someone who wasn’t in an online chat room, Stiles scrambled across the room and sat across from Isaac in Scott’s desk chair, leaning forward and seriously asking all of the boy’s personal preferences. They differed in favorite character (Stiles was Team Skywalker, and Isaac was Team Han Solo), but for the most part, their opinions aligned.
"Wow,” Stiles said in awed finality. “Wow. I just never thought that you and I could have so much in common.”
Isaac’s brow knit. “What makes you think we don’t have anything in common?”
“You’re quiet,” Stiles said matter-of-factly. “Not just in the shy kind of way, but you don’t contribute much to conversation but questions and negativity. And you’re careful about the words you use, even when you’re talking about something you’re passionate about.” Their conversation about C3PO versus R2D2 enlightened Stiles to this infuriating personal point. “And you care about other people more than you care about himself.”
"You’re like that.”
“Yeah, but you’re different about it. You’re the kind of guy who would be led out of a hostage situation and would be upset about the other hostages left behind,” Stiles rambled. “I’d act upset, but I’d honestly be grossly relieved, you know? Because what the hell do I care if Bank Teller #7 lives? Who’s gonna take care of my dad if I get shot?”
“I don’t believe that.”
“No, trust me. He seems like a nice dude when he’s playing Sheriff, but my dad is a total dick when he doesn’t have his coffee. No one’s gonna want to—”
“I mean, I don’t believe that you wouldn’t care about Bank Teller #7.” Isaac shook his head. “You just won’t see yourself as a Good Guy because you’ve always been compared to Scott.”
Stiles felt an electric shock run through him, like Isaac had just sparked some deep-rooted childhood issue within his chest. Being compared to Scott was not something that Stiles particularly cared about, but it did affect the way people saw him. He was good, but he was not Good. Scott was Good, and there was a difference.
“How about this for similarities?” Isaac sat up straighter and started ticking items off on his fingers. “We both like Star Wars and Scott McCall. We both layer up our clothes, even when it’s ninety-five degrees outside. We’re impulsive. And blunt. We’ve both got panic that would give a mental institution a scare, and we both lost a parent as kids.”
The boy contemplated the list and sat in a somewhat contented silence.
“Listen, Stiles. I’m not… I’m not trying to take your place,” Isaac said. “Scott and I have gotten close, but that’s because we share a bathroom, and I’ve heard him jerking off from my bedroom more times than I can count.” Stiles snorted. “I could never replace you, and I know it feels like I’ve been taking up all of Scott’s time, but every single time you aren’t there, he spends every bit of it saying how he wishes you were.” Stiles basked in the sudden knowledge. “So… so can we… stop? Stop hating each other for no reason? Because I think… I think we could be friends if we actually tried.”
Stiles was about to answer when the door swung open wide, and Scott, panting and red-faced, appeared in the doorway. The line of Mountain Ash had been broken, and he looked flustered. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize what time it was! I hope— oh.” He stopped, relaxed and stood up straight. “You’re both still alive.”
“Looks like it,” Isaac said, getting to his feet as Stiles rose to his own.
“Do you guys hate each other still?” Scott asked, hopefulness in his eyes.
Stiles and Isaac exchanged a look.
“Nah.”