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“Dad - why is Laura Hale in our guest bathroom?”
Laura smirks and continues putting on her eyeliner. After speaking with John, Laura dragged Derek into the guest bedroom. Too tired to do anything but shift boxes out of the way to make a walkway, the two of them collapsed on the bed and passed out.
Stiles spent the night at Scott’s - a common enough event, even on school nights, John said. Melissa dropped them off late this morning, after Laura and Derek retrieved their belongings from the loft. She's currently in the kitchen, out of uniform, drinking coffee and waiting on the eggs cooking on the stove.
“Son, I don’t pretend to understand the nuances of female beauty routines,” John says, and Melissa chuckles into her cup.
Derek snorts, flipping the eggs. He woke up while she was speaking with John last night, heard the whole thing through the windows. She expected a bullet-pointed list on all the reasons staying here was a bad idea. He brushed his thumb against her wrist, said, "Okay," and let her tow him to bed.
He’s standing in bare feet, shoulders down, uncomfortable with underlying notes of… contentment. Something she hasn’t smelled on her brother in a long time.
She made the right choice, staying here.
Laura sneaks up behind Stiles, dropping her hand on his shoulder and watching with glee when he spins around and almost falls over.
“I can teach you sometime, if you want.” She winks at him, sashaying up to the stove and stealing a slice of toast from the plate on the counter. Derek slaps at her hand with the spatula. She grins.
“How do you take your eggs, Melissa?” Laura asks, pouring herself a cup of coffee. Stiles lets out a sound the bastard child of a growl and a whine. He sounds like her baby cousins trying to howl.
The cup almost slips out of her hands. Derek glances over, brow furrowed, but she waves him off, mopping up the spill with a paper towel.
“Why am I the only person who thinks this is weird?!” Stiles asks flailing his arms about. Scott ducks with practiced ease.
“I think it's weird.”
“Thank you, Scotty. When the revolution comes, you will be spared.”
John rolls his eyes, shoving the boys into chairs and tossing a plate of food in front of each of them. “Sit down, shut up, and eat your damn eggs.”
Scott digs in with no preamble. Stiles sniffs at the eggs on his fork. “What’s in this?”
“Cyanide,” Laura says dryly, “with a side of chloroform.” She throws herself into a chair beside Melissa, one leg curled up under her body. Her brow furrows, and she gives a subtle sniff. Lemon Balm. Like the sheriff smelled last night. He has to be spending as much time with Melissa as his kid for her scent to rub off on him like that. Laura grins.
Now that she’s paying attention, the four of them smell almost identical, Stiles with underlying notes of cinnamon and ozone, Scott of wet grass. Like a tiny pack of their own.
“Ha ha ha,” Stiles says, pouring himself a glass of orange juice, “Woman’s got jokes.”
“Call me woman one more time and I’ll poison your juice.”
“Yes ma’am,” Stiles says, shoveling the eggs into his mouth like a starving man. Derek places Melissa’s plate on the table then settles in with his own breakfast of Lucky Charms.
This raises Stiles’ ire even further. “Where the hell did you find those? That’s my secret stash!”
Derek shrugs, digging into the bowl with his spoon.
Stiles glares. “Do you talk?”
“No,” Derek snaps, taking another bite of cereal.
“Derek comes from the caveman school of verbal expression,” Laura says, smirking when Derek growls, low enough so only she can hear.
“You know there are twenty-three ultraconserved words that have survived since the Paleolithic era. They’re the common ancestor to about seven hundred contemporary languages that are the native tongues of more than half the world’s people.” Stiles blinks when Derek stares, incredulous. “What?”
“You did this to yourself, you know,” Melissa says with mirth, and John groans, covering his face with his hands.
Over the next few weeks, Laura and Derek settle into life at the Stilinski home. Melissa and Scott are frequent visitors, and Laura has come to ignore any suspicious noises coming from the general direction of his bedroom.
John apologizes for the insanity, but Laura shrugs, tells him she’s used to it. Living in a house with nine other people meant constantly stepping on someone’s toys, tripping over shoes, and screaming over the television to be heard across the house. She misses this, the comforting familiarity of a full house.
On occasion, Scott brings his girlfriend along, hitching a ride with her from school and inviting her to stay and do homework together. The one time Stiles gives Allison a lift, Chris comes to pick her up. Laura takes no small amount of pleasure in the murderous expression on his face when he sees her car parked in the Stilinski’s driveway.
“Something the matter, Chris?” John asks, hands on his hips near his duty belt in standard cop-pose. He stares Chris down.
Chris’ eyes narrow. “No, sheriff. None whatsoever. Just wondering if you know what you’re doing.” It’s weak, as threats go, but Laura gets to her feet anyway, moving from the window behind the curtains to the open door.
“Oh, trust me. I know exactly what I’m doing.”
Chris' hand closes into a fist at his side. Allison gives Laura a wave, and if he clenches his teeth any harder, he’ll break teeth. He ushers his daughter into the car, burning rubber in his haste to pull away from the curb.
Laura doesn’t expect Allison to show up again, but she does, rolling her eyes at her father for being overprotective without reason. Laura snorts behind her hand. Allison smiles when she shows her face, asking questions like how are you and how are you liking Beacon Hills, which make Laura wonder if she isn’t the only person keeping secrets from the teenagers in her home. She doesn’t stay and socialize, but she doesn’t go out of her way to stay hidden either.
Derek does. There’s an edge of panic riding under his skin when she’s in the house, an uneasiness not even present on the few occasions they run into Chris around town. When Laura makes a joke about him being scared of a little girl, Derek goes out into the yard and doesn’t speak to her for the rest of the day. He point-blank refuses to offer an explanation when Laura asks for one.
John helps Laura with the reams of paperwork she’s acquired since stepping foot back in Beacon Hills. Insurance payouts, Peter’s accounts, transfers of property ownership for the multitude of buildings owned by her family.
Most important of all, the deed to their home and private acres of the preserve. John accompanies them out to the Hale house, wanting to get a good look at the foundation, to let her know if she should knock down the house and start completely from scratch or if something could be salvaged.
Derek freezes the moment he gets out of the car. Laura’s brow furrows, but she turns downwind and inhales sharply. The entire area surrounding the house smells of knife polish, wolfsbane flowers, and sickly-sweet oleander - of Kate. John keeps his hand near his gun as they walk into the house, but Laura can’t hear any heartbeats and tells him so. The floorboards are saturated with Kate’s scent, on the walls through the lines of soot, covering Derek’s fingerprints.
John promises to put his deputies back on a rotating patrol of the area, for all the good it would do. The Argents managed to destroy her family once without retribution. What’s to say they wouldn’t do the same a second time?
There’s no escape at home; the same scent lingers on Allison’s clothing, on the necklace she shows off to Scott with pride, saying, “My aunt gave it to me. Its our family crest.” Derek takes off for the guest bedroom, green around the gills. Laura shoots Allison a small smile and follows.
She crawls into bed behind Derek, folding her arms around his waist.
“At least now we know she’s here,” Laura says, while Derek remains stiff and unresponsive. She cards a hand through his hair. “Everything is going to be okay. I promise.”
Derek doesn’t answer.
--
The problem with getting comfortable with the Stilinskis is Laura lets her guard down.
She and Stiles bicker like an old married couple, joining forces only to indulge in their favorite past-time - ganging up on Derek.
“Do you even know what humor is?” Stiles asks, while Derek buries himself behind a book, covering his flushed face. “Humor - noun. A mood or state of mind.”
“To not have a stick up one’s ass,” Laura adds, meeting Stiles’ grin.
“A stick? Try an entire tree.”
Laura laughs, tossing a pillow at Stiles’ face.
Derek throws his book to the table and storms out of the house.
“What’s his problem?” Stiles asks, thumbing towards the door as it slams.
Laura frowns. Derek normally takes the good-natured ribbing in stride. He bites back with a sarcastic comment that sends him and Stiles down the rabbit-hole of attempting to out-sass each other. Laura makes popcorn and enjoys the show.
This was short-fused, even by his usual standards. “Don’t know. He’s been like this for the past week.” Since they went out to their house and ran point-blank into Kate’s scent.
“Let him blow off some steam,” John says, walking into the kitchen with two boxes of pizza. Stiles gives a cheer, opening the box on top.
“Meat lovers?!” he says, turning to his dad with righteous indignation. “Are you kidding me?!”
“When you can pay for your own food, you can choose what kind of pizza we eat. Until then, sit down and let me eat in peace.” He kicks out a seat for Stiles, pulling out the second seat for Laura. She picks at her food, guilt and unease gnawing at her stomach. Something isn’t right.
Laura glances at the clock, biting her lip when Derek doesn’t reappear after dinner. The full moon tugs at her bones, making her snappish and twitchy.
By the time midnight rolls around, she’s climbing the walls. By three in the morning, she’s close to tearing her hair out, heart pounding in her chest as she struggles to hold back the tide of rising panic.
“Any idea where he might be?” John says, shrugging into his sheriff's jacket. He tugs out his phone, getting ready to call in a missing person’s report. Stiles hovers at the top of the stairs, half asleep and asking what’s going on.
“I do.”
Laura whips around. Allison walks into the house, Scott’s arm wrapped around her shoulders, wearing the scent of terror like a shroud.
“My aunt -” She pauses, shaking; Laura can’t breathe. “Kate. Kate took him.”