Chapter Text
Aimlessly, Scott clicked around his computer screen, wondering whether Stiles would ever realise that Scott was indeed waiting at his beck and call, prepared for the signal that meant emergency aid was required, and Scott needed to go into the game and save the day.
It had been 47 minutes since their last interaction with him.
Selfish gits, Scott thought, half annoyed and half exasperated, and decided to publicly post that if his 'owners' didn't come and claim him in the next ten minutes, the he would be open for sale to a good home.
After ten minutes - and a lot of pointless tweets read - all he'd received was 3 likes on his status and one message from a friend he'd made earlier called Kira, who was promising a packet of Oreos in return for his services.
Scott McCall wasn't a liar; he was sorely tempted.
Instead of pouring out his lonely, left-for-57-minutes-alone woes, he responded to Kira in a cheerful tone, asking how she was and what her thoughts were on To Kill a Mockingbird (he'd just finished an essay on it for school), and whether she was a fan of Breaking Bad.
Truthfully, it occupied him for longer than he expected; she responded quicker than he thought she would. Interested, he responded with sympathy to the terrible chemistry pop quiz she'd received that day, agreed with her love for Boo Radley, and chatted quite happily with her for almost an hour about the adventures of Walter White.
But her company wasn't quite the same as Stiles'.
He decided to call it quits at 1:03am, and logged off.
--
"Dude, where were you last night?" Stiles asked, as soon as they left homeroom the next morning, practically yelling it across the corridor in his impatience, "Erica got seriously hurt and we had to pull back and wait for her to recover - we needed you to treat her."
"I left at one in the morning, Stiles, I wasn't gonna stay up all night." There was a small snort from the other teen, and a low muttering, but not much else, "Wait, what time did you go to sleep? Aren't you tired?"
"I'm fine, I'm used to it. Look, man, you've got to say something if you're just gonna leave."
"I did - I messaged you, like, ten times, and you didn't reply."
"Oh. I, er, must have been in the game. It got kinda intense. Sorry, dude."
They walked in silence for a few seconds - or as silent as a high school corridor can be - before Stiles said something that threw Scott off completely.
"So, that Kira chick was on our quest, at the Hub. Said she knew you."
Stiles was giving Scott a look - no, not 'a' look, the look.
"Found something to distract you whilst we were busy now, did ya?"
Scott rolled his eyes.
"Yes, I talked to her whilst you were gone, and no, not like that," He cut Stiles off before he could even open his mouth, causing the other teen's smirk to widen, "She offered me Oreos in exchange for my medical services, which I kindly declined - at that point, I still thought I was actually being useful."
The taller of the two at least had the decency to look a little guilty as they headed into Economics class.
"Look, dude, I'm sorry. I'll try and get you more involved tonight, okay?"
Resisting the urge to scoff, Scott simply nodded; no more was said on the subject until the end of the day.
--
4:14pm
Scott still had another 46 minutes to kill until everyone on the team would be ready to play. Already, he'd sent messages off to five different people - Kira included - but all were in different timezones, and wouldn't receive them for another few hours.
After another ten minutes of mindless scrolling, a friend request popped up from TheOtherOne2. Curious, as he did not recognise the name, the teenager clicked on the profile, surprised to see that it was a little sparse. There was only a default icon and a few select words.
Isaac. 17. California. Beginner.
However, Isaac appeared to have a fair few friends - Stiles included, Scott noticed - and so he accepted the request.
And sent him a message, just for good measure.
Upon rereading, it was kind of dorky, but Scott hoped that it would be more endearing than freaky. (It had more or less worked so far).
Tapping his feet impatiently, Scott started moving around the room, kicking clothes into various piles and shuffling papers into brightly coloured folders, trying to feel productive without actually having to do anything.
22 minutes left.
Still no replies.
Sighing, Scott draped himself over the chair, waiting, painfully, for 5 'o' clock to roll around.
This must be how Stiles felt everyday.
Inching, so slowly, five pm finally came, bringing with it a sense of excitement and uncertainty, so much so that Scott forgot all about his sent messages and his eagerness for responses.
Twenty minutes later, he was actively involved in hunting down a werewolf group that had tried to attack a nearby town. The group had split up into two teams so that they could find the Alpha of the pack faster, which would apparently weaken the whole group.
Scott and Erica were edging around a few buildings, but so far hadn't found anything more than a few dead bodies.
"hey, do u kno theotherone2??" Scott dared to ask Erica as they buried the next family, his curiosity finally taking over. Isaac only appeared to have made 11 forum posts and a few statuses, and yet he was friends with quite a lot of the better players of the forums. He must be reasonably good at the game for that to happen, Scott thought, but perhaps not, maybe he was just a really nice guy.
"kinda." Was Erica's first response, as her character shovelled dirt on top of the final family member, "he's not online much, but he's a quite gd. y?"
"no reason rlly." Scott typed, quickly, but they'd finished burying the bodies now, and had to move on. "just wonderin."
Erica's character turned, as if to ask Scott a question, but thankfully, at that moment, a wolf lunged out of the side of the village, and both players were distracted for the rest of the evening, tied up with the attack.
Scott still thought about TheOtherOne2 though, all that night and most of the next morning, although he wasn't quite sure why.
At the time, he presumed it was curiosity.
Looking back, he realised it was something quite different.
--
"I think I'm starting to get the hang of this game now."
The blue stretch of the lockers greeted Scott's eyes rather pleasantly that morning, despite the scratchy sensation in his eyelids and the slight pounding in his head that indicated a late night. He was a little bit high on the sensation, and was starting to understand how Stiles got so hooked on it.
"Scott, you've been playing for literally three days, calm down."
"But I really think I am!" The teenager couldn't help bouncing on the balls of his feet, his grin lighting up his face as he thought back to his successes, "Erica says I'm improving, and she wouldn't say that if she thought I wasn't."
Stiles just sighed and readjusted his backpack, grinning slightly but trying to hide it.
"That's how it always starts, dude. You get sucked in, and then you get screwed over."
"I'm sure I won't get in over my head."
"Ha, that's what they all s-ah-ah-"
Seemingly quite suddenly distracted, Stiles craned his neck back and let out a quiet, muffled whine, his eyebrows raised as he followed a particular student down the corridor.
The other teenager stifled an eye-roll as he pulled a Spanish textbook out of his locker and shut it, ignoring his best friend's odd behaviour.
It must be Lydia Martin 'o' clock.
Of course, the redhead would be outraged if she heard herself being degraded to just an hour on a clock face.
"Dude," Scott tried, but failed, his exasperation thick in his voice, "Stiles."
"Hmm?"
The other teen didn't move, except for his eyes following the ginger glow down the corridor. Scott noticed that she was not alone - well, rarely was she alone - but she was with someone whose company she appeared to be genuinely enjoying; a girl with dark hair and a nervous smile who he'd never seen before.
"Stiles."
"Ye-argh?" Stiles eyes were still slightly widened as he turned his head, and his eyebrows were knotted together in an expression of slight desperation.
"Who's the other girl?"
"Dunno. Maybe she's new."
"New?" Doubt crept into Scott's voice, "In the middle of the semester?"
"I'm only guessing."
"Hm."
As the two of them walked down the corridor towards their next class, the younger of the two entered a dreamlike state of mind as he reviewed his dose of Lydia that morning.
Of course, she'd never even acknowledged his presence, but that didn't stop him from watching her every time she walked past and hoping that maybe, just maybe, she might look at - or even speak to - him. Someday, it might actually happen. Someday.
As they walked into American History, Scott saw her again - the girl that walked with Lydia. It was just his luck that she looked up just as he was observing her, and he quickly ducked his eyes, missing her tentative smile as he did so.
After the teacher began to talk, Scott began to forget about the New Girl, but she didn't forget about him; sneaking looks from beginning to end, despite the fact that this appeared to be one of her first classes, and she should have been concentrating. Whilst this went unnoticed by Scott, it didn't get past his best friend, who - despite being a little envious - saw this as his ticket to Lydia.
"Oh. My. God. Scott!" Stiles hissed as he saw the brunette leave with his mini-crush, and barrelled towards the teen in question, who looked slightly bewildered, "She was watching you all lesson and you didn't notice. At. All."
"Wait, who?" Scott threw his books into his bag and slung it over his shoulder, a little confused but also intrigued.
"The girl you were talking about earlier - the one who's friends with Lydia. She was staring at you all through class. Like, staring. With her eyes."
To his credit, Scott didn't say anything about the 'eyes' thing, but he did dismiss Stiles' previous comment.
"I highly doubt that. Probably just looking at Greenberg."
"No, it was definitely you, man, I swear."
By now, they were almost at the end of the corridor and into the cafeteria, and Scott didn't want any overheard conversations to get out of hand and spread, even if they were pretty unpopular.
"Look, dude, can we just talk about our strategy for finding the Alpha tonight, please?"
"Fine, but this is not over."
"Yeah, yeah."
And so they came up with a foolproof battle plan, which, of course, three hours later, Erica blew off the table completely, despite the fact that Boyd and Miller were both totally up for it (they were still waiting for Sam to get home, who lived a timezone over, and had to get the bus back from school).
Whilst they hovered in the Hub, Scott left Erica and Stiles to bicker about battle tactics and began to check through his messages with a disheartened spirit; despite his previous streak of incoming messages, he'd hit a slow patch.
(Still no response from TheOtherOne2)
(He didn't know why it was bothering him so much)
5pm rolled around, and Scott had basically achieved nothing; it was the beginning of the end.
--
In total, it only took Isaac 40 minutes to research all of his homework and make notes for his next French test, which gave him a good hour to mess about on the forums and maybe a quick quest, if he didn't hang about.
There was still that message from yesterday in his inbox, though, and it was starting to worry him immensely.
How was he supposed to respond? Usually, people just messaged him to ask why he had so many friends (mainly because they were kinda jealous) and then threw a few insults at him (for the same reason). This guy actually wanted to know him.
Taking a deep breath, Isaac looked over his shoulder to check no-one was watching, before he began to type a response, but cringed and deleted it even before he finished his first sentence. After a few attempts, he gave up and just clicked on the guys profile again. Scott.
Even his name sounded just right. From just his recent status updates, Isaac could see he'd made a few acquaintances, despite only having been on the site for around a week, and apparently knew Stiles in real life; lucky bastard.
He also used a lot of emojis.
Uncertainty weighed on Isaac like a grey, static buzz that pushed on him from all sides. If he replied to Scott, there would be no turning back; Scott looked like the sort of person who wouldn't accept being ignored once they established friendship.
Then again, Isaac kinda needed all the friends he could get.
And so he set to work, copying and pasting sentences all over the place, leaving question marks after sentences he thought were particularly dorky and trying to limit his use of exclamation marks, for fear of sounding like a primary school teacher.
It took him an entire hour before he gave up again, picking up on the librarian's hints to go home after the nine millionth hard stare, and selecting the entire message and pressing backspace, not even waiting for the webpage to finish loading before he clicked off it and began to shut down all his open windows.
I will send him the message tomorrow, Isaac vowed to himself, trying not to think about what was waiting for him at the end of his bike journey home. How bad could it be? His was pretty dorky, and it was kinda cute.
Taking a deep breath and rubbing his hands together to stop the cold from getting to him, Isaac unchained his bike and cycled home, taking no time to mess about. If his dad wasn't passed out, drunk, on the sofa and he was late, it would be a painful evening, and he probably wouldn't have much time to study for French.
However, when he finally got home, his dad was passed out on the sofa, bottle of beer in hand as he snored and grunted. Isaac set an alarm for 6pm, so his dad would have an hour to get ready for and drive to work for the night shift, and left the egg timer a few feet away from his sleeping parent before retreating to his room, trying hard to keep his footsteps silent.
He cursed himself a little for not having the courage to send Scott a message; he was just so sincere and kind and genuine. As a general rule, if you got to know someone on the internet, nine times out of 10, they were completely different in real life, but Isaac got the feeling that Scott wasn't like that.
That was probably the part that unnerved him.
After a bit of French study, Isaac threw himself into a Chemistry risk assessment report, knowing that he needed to do well on this homework to get the teacher to stop hating him as much as she did - it wasn't his fault he was so terrible, but she didn't appear to know that. (Also, his father was less likely to interrupt him if he was working, and therefore there would be less chance of angering him before he went to work and risking spending the night in the freezer).
When he heard the egg timer go off a good hour later, every muscle in his body tensed; blood pounded in his ears and his stomach filled with dread, seeping in his bones in a runny substance that caused a chill to freeze his spine. His brain cut off, refusing to concentrate on the work in front of him as his hyper-sensitive ears picked up on the sounds of stumbling and general preparation through his bedroom door, until, 20 agonising minutes later, his father left the house.
Every day, Isaac felt the weight lift from his chest as he heard the tyres-on-tarmac sound fade, and it was the best part of his evening; knowing his father wouldn't be home for almost 12 hours, and he could breathe again.
It only took an hour and a half to finish his chemistry report, which was quicker than he thought, but not as long as he had hoped. Without studying and homework, he had very little to do, since his father rarely bought Isaac things to amuse himself, and he tried to keep electricity bills at a low point, so that money wasn't wasted.
It just left him with very little to do.
Drafting his message to Scott would be kinda sad; studying French for longer than necessary was even sadder. Maybe reading.
Over the past few years, Isaac had gotten into reading obsessively, but tried to tone it down around his father, who thought the majority of education should be physical. Whilst he considered science and math important, all 'girly' subjects, such as english or art, were supposedly a tad useless, and Isaac shouldn't be seen getting himself too involved in them. On the whole, the teenager managed to stick to this rule, but did try to get good grades, for the sake of his grade point average and his records.
Rummaging through his backpack, the male pulled out 1984, by George Orwell, a battered, laminated copy from the school library, and began to read, allowing himself to fully relax, finally (or as close to 'fully relaxed' as he could generally get).
--
At the same time, just over 100 miles away, Scott McCall was taking a break from the game, whilst Erica went to a hospital appointment.
Upon refreshing his forums account page, he realised he had received two new messages since he went into the game: one from Kira, and-
One from TheOtherOne2.
A little flutter took flight in Scott's chest, wriggling it's way into his heart and causing it to speed up astronomically, his easy grin back on his face, but he was unsure as to why the hell he was so excited for this.
Somehow, he managed to click on the message icon without too much difficulty, and began to scroll, eagerly, seeing his message wasn't just a two-liner that was the equivalent of 'leave me the fuck alone'.
However, when he opened it, his curiosity was overcome by confusion; whilst there were many sentences that made sense, there were also certain words that had been spelt with punctuation in them, or sentences that appeared to be cut off in the middle, with question marks after sentences that shouldn't have them, and an abundance of exclamation marks.
It was confusing, and Scott had to have 3 attempts at deciphering it before he got the general gist of the message, but even then he was a little uncertain, and even a tad disappointed.
Maybe TheOtherOne2 really was just another gamer; maybe he wasn't actually some mystery Scott could just 'solve'. It saddened Scott a little when he realised that that was the reason that he'd messaged Isaac in the first place - it was a really shitty reason to want to be someone's friend.
He felt the shame rear its ugly head, but he pushed it down, refusing to allow it to taint him, instead swearing to himself that this would be the last time he did that, and that he would encourage a healthier friendship from then on.
Slowly, he typed out a response, trying to tactfully suggest that maybe Isaac had a virus on his computer, or that something had glitched, without sounding like a total asshole.
It took longer than he expected; long enough, even, that Erica came back from her appointment at the hospital and Scott still hadn't quite finished, and he even put off gameplay another few minutes so that he could spell check and read it over.
(No-one was impressed, calling him a nuisance and a bugger to play with).
(Surprisingly enough, Scott didn't particularly care).
--
The next day, Isaac managed to sneak out of the house whilst his dad was in the shower, making it surprisingly unharmed to the supposedly safe haven of 'school'.
He spent all day rehearsing what he was going to say to Scott in his mind, muttering phrases at times that he thought he might forget, causing the girl who was next to him in Biology to give him a strange look, but he ignored her. French class went the slowest, however, as all the way throughout the exam, Isaac couldn't stop thinking about his message, and he had a horrible feeling his end-of-term grade might suffer for it.
Somehow, he managed to make it to 3pm without forgetting the messages or having any questions asked, although he wasn't quite sure how; he suspected there might have been some kind of supernatural forces at work. When he finally got to the library, the computer was sat there, waiting for him as he approached, its hard plastic looking almost as tempting as he could handle. (He looked back on this moment with slight worry, but tried not to dwell on it, and instead attempted to write it off to nerves).
Sighing happily as he sat down, Isaac barely noticed the librarian's curious looks (slightly harsher than curious, but he wasn't to judge), so intent on sending his message that he was partially zoned out.
Impatiently tapping his fingers on the desk as the loading screen appeared, he felt on edge and anxious, despite the (definitely positive) excitement hovering in his chest. Now wasn't the time for doubt, but he felt it anyway, letting it creep into his body and take a hold on it.
Just write the message.
So he opened the internet, typed in the address for the forums, and-
1 NEW MESSAGE
It was from Scott.
But Isaac hadn't sent back his message yet? Had Scott messaged him again to make sure he wasn't dead/ignoring him? It seemed a bit unorthodox, even for someone as enthusiastic as him.
Nerves set in, and Isaac began to shuffle in his seat, waiting impatiently for his screen to load.
However, when it did, he felt a cold dread seeping into his stomach, and Isaac had to refrain from groaning aloud. On the wrong side of the screen (his side), there was a jumbled message, filled with question marks and stupid phrases.
He had sent the message he had tried to draft the night before.
A stream of curse words ran through Isaac's head, but he kept a lid on it, mainly because of the fear of getting kicked out of the library; that would be the worst case scenario, and Isaac doubted it would happen, but it was still possible. Whilst the librarian didn't technically have the right to exclude Isaac in the first place, it was clear he wanted to. Every night, Isaac was the only one that came here (with the exception of a few students who came, checked out a book, and left two minutes later) - without Isaac, the librarian could probably just pack up and go home.
So, it was probably best not to try his patience.
Biting his lip, possible scenarios ran through Isaac's head that he could plead; dodgy computer, friend beside him sent a goofed up version instead of the real one whilst he went away for some reason, a computer virus, wrong person...
Or he could just tell him the truth. With some exaggerated bits and maybe some tiny white lies peppered all the way through it.
That story would probably be the easiest to stick to.
And so Isaac set to work, formulating an excuse that said he was doing multiple things at once, and must have sent the message by mistake and not realised, in between revising French and writing his Chemistry report. It was weak, and really quite unbelievable, but he doubted that Scott would question him - he seemed too nice to do something as direct as that.
Probably.
When the librarian started up his glaring routine about quarter past four, Isaac ignored him. Normally, he would do whatever it took to stop the glares - he didn't like the idea of displeasing anyone - but this time he didn't give in, and instead focused even harder on his reply, his typing echoing in the quiet room, the books on the shelves absorbing the sound, but still letting the harsh clicks rattle from the elderly keyboard.
His reply was classy and composed, and neatly apologised for the mishap, surprising even Isaac with his calm reply. However, it took some serious drafting and re-drafting, and by the end of it, Isaac was kind of exhausted.
At five minutes to five, a small, pointed cough came from the desk in the corner, and the teenager had to refrain from turning and yelling at the librarian; do you think I can't tell the time or something?
Taking a deep breath, Isaac clicked the send button, and tried not to panic; the worst that could happen is that Scott didn't like him, and didn't bother replying, or maybe Scott turned out to be just like everyone else - wondering why the hell he had so many 'cool' friends on his account, and then being disappointed when he himself wasn't the same level of 'cool'.
Then, he closed all his tabs and pushed himself away from the computer slightly as it logged itself off: he didn't want to try to send anymore messages or want to change anything he'd written, and completely cutting himself off from it might lessen that slightly.
Or so he hoped, anyway.
That evening, he threw himself into his book in an attempt to reach the end, but his father got home from work around the same time he got back from school, and Isaac didn't quite have time to tidy away the dishes he'd left in the sink the previous night, and his dad almost blew up at him over dinner.
Fortunately, he managed to keep it mostly under control, and instead spat out a list of chores he wanted Isaac to do that evening before bed, before civilly asking how his day was, and whether he had any exams coming up.
This abrupt change in tone put Isaac on edge, but he managed to get through the conversation reasonably easily (to his surprise), and put it down to his father being semi-distracted throughout the whole thing. It was a little selfish, but Isaac hoped he would remain that way, no matter what was causing it; it was a nice break.
"I just don't want another fucked-over son with shit grades in the ground, you hear me?" His father scraped his plate and threw his knife and fork down, leaning forward in his seat a little, his tone scarily calm as he began to pile up the dishes on the table, "You're all I've got left, and if you fuck it up, I'll put you next to him myself."
Swallowing, Isaac nodded, and then responded with a "Yes, Dad" when prompted. Usually, the death threats only came when his father was drunk out of his mind, but this time he was scarily sober.
Isaac hoped that this was just a one off.
Just before he slept that night, he couldn't help but think of Scott, and the lovely, friendly persona he'd managed to build up around himself; his status updates were always so cheerful, and he seemed to genuinely care about every reply that he got in any forums posts he made.
That kindness and sincerity was something that Isaac craved, and he hoped he hadn't done something really stupid when he replied to Scott; he hoped it was the start of something more - something bigger; something better than what little he already had, and it was that hope that sparked something that neither participant had even imagined.