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“Do you think he did it?” Erica giggles. She’s tucked around Boyd, gently caressing his face. Her other arm is stretched out underneath him, pillowing his head. “Because I’m trying to imagine Derek talking about feelings and—” She stops to giggle more.
Isaac hates this part.
“He said he did,” Boyd says, his grin bright and vicious.
Yep. It’s terrible.
In theory, dating—is it dating or strictly banging?—Boyd and Erica was supposed to be nice, just hot and easy . And it is sexy and wonderful, except after the sex, when Erica and Boyd do the whole...pillow talk thing.
It’s not that pillow talk itself makes him uncomfortable. He can chat with the two of them all day. But something about it being post-sex makes him question whether he should even be here, or if he should have left after they all finished.
From the beginning, Isaac has felt...out of his depth. Part of it is inexperience, probably. Dating Allison was easy. He’d known she liked him and that he liked her and that they were comfortably together.
He feels like an unnecessary attachment in this relationship. They don’t really need him here for this part. It’s these times, post-sex, during-pillow-talk, when he doesn’t know why they’re dating—banging?—him at all.
(Even the way they cuddle feels alienating. True, he’s spooned around Erica, but she and Boyd are practically intertwined and—well.)
“I wish I could have seen that,” Erica sighs, wiggling a little until she’s more comfortable.
Isaac adjusts her hips. “Watch it,” he mutters, shifting around himself.
She reaches down and pats his leg, resting her hand there for a minute. “I bet his ears turned red.”
“Probably,” Boyd agrees. His are shut now, which is usually a signal that he wants to sleep, but sometimes means he wants a blow job. Isaac still hasn’t figured out how to definitively tell.
Erica’s fingers start tracing patterns on his thigh.
He pushes his face into her hair, ignoring the way it gets stuck on his lips.
After a few minutes of quiet, Boyd starts to snore (sleep, then, not a blow job) and Erica turns her head to look at Isaac over her shoulder. “You okay, Grumpy Gus?” She’s whispering, careful to be quiet enough for Boyd to sleep.
“Don’t call me that.”
“You feel angry. Or, like, sullen?”
He grunts in response.
“Are you trying to mimic Derek? Trying to be like him? Should I not gossip about his embarrassing failed attempts to propose to Braeden?”
“Shut up,” he mutters. And he can’t help it when he says, “Anyway, you know she’ll say yes once he can finally get the words out.”
“It’s true,” she agrees. Then she sighs and turns back to face Boyd. “Sorry. I forgot you don’t like to talk after sex.”
That’s not right. But he doesn’t know how to explain it, so he keeps quiet.
Erica doesn’t say anything for a while, either, and he thinks she might have fallen asleep. He thinks about leaving. They’re the ones who want each other. He’s just a pretty face and a nice body that they get to have fun with.
(He wants to be more than that, though, he wants…what he can’t have.)
“Do you even want to be here?” Erica whispers. Her hand is still resting on his leg, almost stiff. Her nails (human, very human) gently press into his thigh.
He can’t answer her question, can’t even think the answer without feeling a well of panic swell up inside of him.
“You don’t...if we’re making you uncomfortable or moving this too fast—I know it’s hard to be in this kind of relationship—I mean, if you need space, we can give it.” She can’t seem to get the words out, and he realizes he can sense her own panic, now, too.
“No,” he chokes out, finally, and curls around her tighter. If she can reveal this nervousness, maybe he can reveal his, too. Just—carefully.
She relaxes a little, then, and starts tracing patterns on his thigh again. “Can I make you feel better?” she wonders.
“Dunno,” he mutters in response, feeling stupid and weak and fucking useless. She deserves better than this. Boyd does, too.
She keeps tracing patterns, and when he glances down at her hand, he catches a glimpse of her drawing a heart.
“I like you more than I thought I could,” she says, soft. It’s weird for her to sound this way. Erica is a lot of things—feminine, strong, crafty, witty. She’s not smart like Lydia or sweet like Allison or earnest like Kira. She’s not as tactless as Cora, which honestly isn’t hard to accomplish. None of them are soft . Not like this .
“I thought you were a dick, honestly,” she says, and there’s the lack of tact. “But so am I. I like that we can be dicks together. I just can’t figure out...if you just really like sex with us or if you actually like being with us.”
The answer is yes, both, all of the above, please .
He cannot open his mouth.
“Why are you talking?” Boyd mumbles, apparently not quite as asleep as they’d thought. He blinks a few times, processing their expressions, and then says. “Oh.” He crawls over both of them to lie on Isaac’s other side. The three of them have to move around on the bed to make it work, but after a moment they’re all comfortably situated with Isaac in the middle of their cuddles. “Maybe if we cuddle you, you’ll feel better.” He slots himself into place, lining up their legs and wrapping one long arm around his chest.
His heart flutters, which is stupid, but it’s so nice to be held like this, pressed warm and safe against Boyd.
Erica rolls over so she can cuddle him, too, apparently agreeing with Sleepy Boyd’s logic.
Isaac himself finds that it’s working to ground him, being held by the two of them. He’s still nervous, but not as much.
“Why’re you so tense?” Boyd mumbles.
Isaac shrugs.
“Can give you a massage in the morning,” he offers. “‘M too tired now.”
“Why?” Isaac asks. He squeezes his eyes shut, scared to see whatever look is going to cross their faces.
“Because I don’t like when you’re sad,” Boyd says. One of his hands goes to cover Erica’s on Isaac’s leg. “Dumbass.”
“Yeah, sad Isaac means sad Boyd and sad Erica,” Erica adds. She links her pinky with Boyd’s, but keeps running her other fingers over his leg. It’s almost too much sensation, but when he focuses on it, it pulls him back into their embrace, mentally, helps him to quiet the panic, just a little more.
None of this makes sense. Because he’s not the same as them, not as good, not as worthy.
“I don’t think we negotiated this very well,” Erica says conversationally. “That’s fine with me and Boyd. We can tell you like us, at least a little more than friendly. And I know that Boyd loves me. But maybe we weren’t very clear with what we wanted from you.”
He can remember the day they approached him very clearly. Erica had grabbed his hand, pulled him to the dance floor and pressed herself between him and Boyd. It had mirrored their dance all those years ago with Jackson at the rave, just as charged, but somehow...more. After, when they’d taken him home, he hadn’t even been surprised when they kissed him. They’d hooked up a lot after that, and gone out as a group normally.
This is the moment, he thinks, where the two of them will tell him that it’s always been a friends with benefits situation, and he’s making them uncomfortable with his desire for more .
He inhales slowly, counts to six. Boyd is hugging Isaac like he never wants to let go.
He exhales slowly, counts to four. Erica is lifting her hand from his leg, bringing Boyd’s hand with it, and adding Isaac’s hand to their hold.
“This isn’t about sex,” Boyd picks up, having woken up enough to follow Erica’s lead. “It might have been, initially, but you’re our friend, and we hope, more. We want you for cuddles, and dates, and making fun of Derek. Especially for making fun of Derek, so jump in any time with that.”
“Yeah,” Erica says, squeezing their hands together. “We want to get werewolf married to you.”
“Scott said that’s not a thing,” Isaac points out. “He said Mason and Lydia couldn’t find anything about it in the bestiary.”
“Yeah, Derek was fucking with you, babe,” Boyd agrees.
“We’re werewolves and we’re gonna get married. It’s the same thing.”
“You’re so weird,” Isaac says, but affectionately. This is comfortable territory, just verging on something new. He feels settled again, nestled between them and their confessions of more . “Tell her she’s weird.”
“You’re weird,” Boyd deadpans, and nuzzles into Isaac’s neck.
Isaac feels light—or maybe just light-headed. He’s never been good at dealing with feelings.
“I’m not, though,” she argues.
“Well, you’re nineteen and talking about marriage. That’s kind of weird,” Isaac points out. It’s not weird at all, though, and he aches for it.
Like she can hear his thoughts, she says, “When you know, you know .” She rolls over again so Isaac can spoon her and curls an arm over her shoulder to pat the arm he has curled around her.
He could lean down and kiss her hand. He has to spend several seconds convincing himself that kissing it would be a weird thing to do.
Boyd laughs softly. “We really do like you, though. And if we have to cuddle you every night just to remind you, we don’t mind.”
“Nope,” Erica agrees. She wiggles in closer to him. “But we should sleep now. I’m pretty sure Scott knows when we’ve been sexing you up and it’s only a matter of time before he tells Stiles, and you know he’s a dick who won’t stop bothering us about it.”
Isaac just groans in response, but he falls asleep smiling anyway.