Work Text:
“Isaac! Stiles!”
Isaac was jolted awake by the sheriff’s booming voice ringing out in the room. It took him a couple of seconds to wake up, but he knew right away that Stiles’ dad was angry and he was certain he knew why he was too.
“Dad…” he heard Stiles start.
Isaac burrowed his head down under the blanket, a sudden wave of nausea overtaking him. He hadn’t felt this scared in over a year, but it was like riding a bicycle; he could feel the anxiety and terror crawl underneath his skin and up his throat like it had only been yesterday.
Stiles was talking, but Isaac didn’t understand the words he said, so it was good that he wasn’t addressing Isaac right now. “We fell asleep, Dad, calm down. We were just talking and we fell asleep, we didn’t do it on purpose, just - don’t yell at him, okay?”
A few moments later, Isaac heard the sheriff step out of the room without saying another word, leaving the two alone. No more yelling, no pain blooming across his face or cracked ribs like he had been preparing himself for while he lay there, his body limp (because tensing up just made it hurt so much more).
“Isaac?” Stiles’ voice came softly and he lifted the blanket up from Isaac’s face and kissed the back of his neck. “Are you okay? I’m sorry, I should’ve gotten you in the other room last night. It’s my fault.”
Isaac heard Stiles’ voice through a fog that steadily became clearer. He turned onto his back and looked up at the brunette, blinking away the fear he’d filled himself with for no reason. This wasn’t his house, this was Stiles’ and that wasn’t his dad, that was Stiles’ dad. Stiles’ dad didn’t hurt him, Stiles’ dad was a good man. ‘My dad was a good man too, at one point.’ “I’m - I’m fine. It’s - I’m fine, I just… had a flashback, I guess. I’m sorry.”
Stiles’ eyes widened and he cuddled back down into the bed with Isaac, wrapping his arm around the werewolf’s waist and resting his chin on his shoulder so he could look at him. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
Isaac chewed his lip, arm slipping underneath Stiles to pull him close to his own body. “Do you want to hear about it?” He shook his head. “I’m not trying to be a dick, I just mean… it’s not exactly an easy thing to think about.”
“Well, I do wanna know, but maybe right now I just try to make you forget for a few minutes?” Stiles offered. “If that’s okay, I mean. I’m not trying to make it seem unimportant or… it’s just… I know sometimes it just helps to get my mind off of stuff so I just thought that might work for you too, but if that’s not the case you can-”
“Stiles. Holy shit, calm down. I understand what you mean and I’d be more than grateful, okay? Just don’t over-think everything.” He leaned in and kissed the human softly, sighing against his mouth.
“Yeah, okay. I’m sorry, baby.” Stiles kissed Isaac’s neck sweetly once, twice, and then started to suck a mark at the base of it, pulling a soft sigh from him. “It was my fault for not getting you to the guest room, Isaac, and I’m sorry,” he mumbled intermittently.
“It’s not your fault… Stiles… Stiles, your dad hasn’t left the house yet…” Isaac protested weakly.
“Mmm it is my fault and I know; it’s okay, baby. I just wanna show you how sorry I am for getting us into trouble…” Isaac shivered when he felt Stiles’ hand slide underneath his shirt, over his chest, their bodies curling in closer to one another. “You feel so good, Isaac…”
“God, Stiles…” Isaac made a strangled little growling noise and in seconds he had the other teen flipped on his back beneath him, nosing into his neck, breathing him in before he started to lick and suck against his skin. “Your dad’s leaving,” he mumbled.
“Mmm... oh yeah? Guess that’s good, since you’re trying to eat my neck now, huh? Shit, Isaac…” Stiles tilted his head to the side.
“Stiles!” The window burst open a few moments later and someone came flying through it, crouched on all fours. Before he had time to react, Isaac was being yanked off of Stiles and shoved down into the floor, his face rubbing painfully into the carpet while something sharp pierced the back of his neck. “Stiles, are you alright?”
“Oh my - jesus, Scott, let him up! That’s Isaac!”
Isaac could feel the hesitation in Scott’s hold, but he didn’t let go. “That’s a werewolf…” Scott said warily.
“I fucking know that, idiot, now - let - him - up!” Stiles jumped off the bed and Scott’s arm was yanked free of Isaac’s neck. He pushed Scott completely off the top of Isaac and helped the blond sit up. “Shit, are you okay?” Stiles cupped his face, brushing delicate fingers down the back of his head and neck, feeling the traces of blood that Scott had pricked. The wound was slow to heal regardless of how shallow it actually was; Scott was still an alpha.
“I’m fine, Stiles, it’s - it’s fine, honestly,” Isaac said, though he was grateful for the attention, he couldn’t lie.
Scott flung his hands up in frustration. “Isaac’s a werewolf? What the fuck, Stiles? You never told me that! I thought you were getting mauled in here, you asshole!”
“I didn’t know until he got here, Scott, or I would’ve told you,” Stiles hissed back, rubbing a hand on Isaac’s thigh slowly, most likely a comforting gesture that, more than anything, made him feel like the most important person to Stiles at the moment.
“Sorry, dude. I-I smelled werewolf and then I saw him on you and I just-” Scott’s gaze flicked to Stiles’ hand on Isaac’s thigh and his eyes flashed red. Apparently Isaac wasn’t the only one who thought that.
Stiles had noticed Scott’s change in both demeanor and eye color and raised his eyebrows, but by that point Scott had started to stand so Isaac was up on his feet as well, staying completely level with him the whole time. The one nice thing about not having an alpha was not having to act like a cowering dog toward anyone, especially not a guy who seemed to think that he had a claim on the person Isaac cared most about in the world. Scott might be Stiles’ alpha, but he wasn’t his lover and he didn’t get to act like he was.
Stiles stood up too, looking between them in confusion.
“That’s okay. You’re his alpha, you were just protecting him,” Isaac said, his voice low and not at all understanding. He was more than willing to challenge Scott for Stiles if it came down to it; Stiles was important enough that he’d fight through just about anything.
Isaac and Scott circled one another slowly, their shoulders squared, eyes gold or red but no fangs and claws visible. Scott didn’t seem to be making any moves toward him so Isaac hung back, but he was on guard, ready for anything, ready to defend himself.
Suddenly Stiles groaned loudly. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? Are you two having some kinda showdown? What. The. Fucking. Hell. Scott! What even?”
“I’m your alpha, Stiles,” Scott growled, never looking away from Isaac’s face.
“Uh, yeah, Scott, he knows that. He specifically just told you that…” Stiles replied with annoyance.
“He wants to claim you,” Scott said, “but you’re mine.”
Stiles raised his hands up toward both of them. “Whoa whoa whoa. Hold up. I don’t belong to anybody here. Scott, just because I’m in your pack doesn’t mean I fucking belong to you, dude, what the hell? We aren’t fucking dating, dumbass, what is your problem?”
Isaac finally spoke up. “His problem is that he’s had you scent-marked for a while and now I’m marking you and he doesn’t like it.”
“Wha… he’s never kissed me before!” Stiles protested.
“No, he doesn’t have to kiss you to do it, Stiles, that’s just one way. You borrow his clothes and touch him and he touches you and you sleep in his bed and vice versa and there’s enough contact that you’ve been marked by him. And he’s your alpha so that makes sense, even if you aren’t dating. You’re pack and the pack is marked by the alpha,” Isaac explained, speaking to Stiles though never actually taking his eyes from Scott just in case he tried to jump him.
“Exactly. Marked by the alpha, not by the random omega who blows into town from Seattle and starts gnawing on your neck,” Scott growled.
“Alright, you know what? This is… we’re not doing this. This is not happening. We’re not having a fucking werewolf brawl over how I fucking smell! Scott, get the fuck out. I’m gonna make out with Isaac if I damn well please and I’ll fuck Isaac if I damn well please and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you don’t like it, then… then… well I don’t know what, but get the fuck over it, because he’s not going anywhere!”
Stiles turned and faced Isaac. “And you. You’re not going to mark me up and down just so that it’ll piss off Scott either. If that’s all you’re trying to do then you can forget it.”
Isaac frowned a little, but backed off, sitting down on the bed, running a hand through his hair. “That wasn’t why I was doing it; I just wanted you to smell like me. It’s hard though… his scent is all over you,” Isaac said, crinkling his nose.
Scott looked smug. “Yeah it is; I protect my pack... from other werewolves. That’s the whole point.” Stiles and Isaac both rolled their eyes. “Alright, fine, whatever. He can keep his throat.” Scott leaned against the wall. “Stiles, why couldn’t you find a normal boyfriend online?” Scott complained.
“Yeah, Scott, because I went to sniff-my-butt-singles-dot-com looking for a date. Fuck you! I didn’t know he was a werewolf, alright? What’d you come over here for anyway?”
Scott glanced over at Isaac and then back at Stiles, doing the ‘follow me’ gesture with his head, very obviously not wanting to talk in front of Isaac. Even more-so with him being a werewolf - which didn’t make a whole lot of sense. “He’ll just hear you, you know that, right?” Stiles asked, eying his friend skeptically.
“Stiles. We gotta go, okay? We have to… there are things we have to take care of…” Scott eyed Isaac warily again, being so obvious he might as well just invite Isaac along at that point.
Stiles groaned, rubbing his face. “Let me get dressed, I’ll be down in five, okay?” he replied and Scott jumped back out of the window.
Isaac stayed where he was, eyes downcast, fingers picking at his jeans he’d never changed out of last night while Stiles started pulling clothes from his dresser. He considered not saying a damned word, just letting Stiles run out on him, but he said he wouldn’t be that person anymore, that he wouldn’t let people steamroll over him, even if it was Stiles doing it. “So you’re leaving then?” he asked quietly.
It was like Stiles just noticed he was in the room. He jumped and stilled his movements, fingers twining in a shirt he’d been turning right-side-out. He eased himself down onto the bed far away from Isaac, unable to meet his eyes when he started to speak. That said more to Isaac than he was willing to admit to himself right now. “It’s… it’s important. It’s pack-pack stuff that we have to take care of. Lydia, y’know, Lydia needs help with something and we can’t just…”
Isaac almost couldn’t hear his words over his heartbeat thumping wildly inside his chest. That tell-tale sign he’d never expected - never even fathomed - would be directed toward him from Stiles. “Am I just supposed to pretend like I don’t know you’re lying to me?” Isaac asked him, still just as quietly, watching the wall just above Stiles’ shoulder even though the other teen wasn’t looking at him anyway.
“Look. Isaac, I know. I know that you know I’m lying, I know it’s easy to tell, even without werewolf powers,” Stiles said, standing up so he could continue to get dressed in a hurry. “But you have to believe me when I say that this is important, you can hear it in my heart if you don’t believe me, and just trust me that I have to do this, that our pack has to do this, now and-”
“And you don’t want me involved,” Isaac finished for him, looking down again.
“No, no, that’s not it,” he said, heart jumping up his throat again. “Well, I mean, yes, it is, but not like that. It’s not because you aren’t pack or something like that, it’s just because you don’t have to be involved and that’s why you don’t need to be involved. Does uh… does that make sense?”
Isaac couldn’t have asked for a worse explanation. “Not really,” he said truthfully, but he shrugged. “It’s fine though. I can’t expect you to spend every waking moment with me just because I’m here.”
Stiles finished lacing his shoes and stopped in front of Isaac, leaning down on the bed in front of him on his hands, forcing Isaac to look into his face. “I can promise you, that’s all I’d rather be doing; I want to spend all my time with you, Isaac.” He kissed Isaac warmly, a bit deeply, but too briefly for the werewolf’s liking. If he’d realized then how long Stiles would actually be gone, he’d have gone for far more than that.
Minutes later he was left alone in Stiles’ room with no idea what to do with himself, so he did the only thing that would really comfort him and take his mind off things - he started playing Stiles’ 360. He flipped through Stiles’ digital games and picked one almost at random (he’d played them all anyway).
“Wow, I’d almost forgotten just how whiney you are, Jason,” Isaac said a few minutes into the game, snorting at the narrator’s plight as he groaned and complained about being thrown amongst an island war between pirates, natives, and privateers when all he’d wanted to do was have fun. Maybe it only seemed ridiculous to Isaac now because he’d actually seen real carnage in his lifetime at this point - dead bodies, people hunting him, out for his blood, hoping to tear him limb from limb while others feared him as the most gruesome monster on the planet. If it were between him and one of these factions on the island, they would run from Isaac first every time. The thing from their nightmares, the thing that goes bump in the night…
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there playing, just that there was a knock on the door some time later while he was hang gliding over the scenic view of the island and Stiles’ dad came in looking at him with confusion. “Hey, Isaac, where’s Stiles? His jeep isn’t out front.”
“Hi, Mr. Stilinski. Uh… he left with Scott. A little while after you went to work? Said it was important,” Isaac answered quickly, game paused and controller limp in his fingers as he addressed the sheriff. He sat up straighter on Stiles’ bed, looking suddenly guilty. “Sorry, am I not supposed to be…” he waved at Stiles’ console vaguely.
“No, no! It’s fine, son, really,” the sheriff smiled. He looked around the room a bit and then asked, “Have you eaten anything?”
“Um…” Isaac worked his hand through his hair, “no sir, I guess I forgot.”
“Well, let’s go downstairs and see what we can scrounge up. Stiles usually cooks, though, so don’t get your hopes up, kiddo. I don’t have many skills in the kitchen,” the sheriff joked.
Isaac jumped up quickly. “You don’t have to do that! I, um, I can make something if you want me to.”
“That’s alright, we can order pizza if all else fails. I can’t ask our guest to cook for us, that wouldn't be fair.” The sheriff looked oddly excited about ordering pizza anyway.
“Oh, okay. I promise I don’t mind though…”
Forty minutes later they were sitting at the table eating supreme pizza together and it was nearly 2pm. Stiles had been gone more than half the day, but since the sheriff had come home, Isaac hadn’t felt quite as claustrophobic as before. He’d expected it to be the opposite, but like Stiles had told him, his dad was actually very friendly and companionable, joking with Isaac about work and school and even about his relationship with Stiles.
So when Stiles didn’t walk through the door until 6pm looking like he’d been rolling in the mud with scratches and bruises all over his arms, the unhappiness that had filled Isaac earlier in the day had already left him and he just went to work tending to Stiles’ scrapes, taking away his pain, then folded him into his arms and held him close while he worked a hickey into his neck and eased the tension from his friend’s shoulders. When they fell asleep in Stiles’ bed for the second night in a row, Stiles’ dad didn’t say anything to them the next morning and they ate pancakes and bacon together at the table, almost like they were a normal family.