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He’d left the pack at eighteen, gone to university and never looked back. Of course, he came back to Beacon Hills regularly after all his Dad was still the Sheriff. And he still had friends there, several who were members of Scott’s pack even. He just wasn’t a member of it any more.
And that was the way he liked it.
The disconnect between himself and Scott hadn’t just started to happen after Peter had bitten Scott, and it hadn’t finished with the Nogitsune mess either. It had been there long before that. Long before Scott decided that black was black, white was white and grey didn’t exist.
No, that had started at the age of eight, when Stiles mom had died. Just that tiny, tiny sliver coming between them. Scott too young to really help him deal with his grief and Stiles not being old enough himself to not be hurt by that. It was something that neither of them had even realised was there but something that couldn’t help but deepen as the supernatural became a part of their lives.
He liked that he could come and go, could even consult on something things if the pack needed him to. After all he’d left MIT with a couple of degrees in hand and was doing his PhD in Behavioural Sciences at GWU and already had a number of the ABC agencies sniffing around. His background in the supernatural no hindrance at all.
Being in the know but not being part of any pack seemed to have more pros than cons currently too. Yes, he’d been on the receiving end of several not so nice offers to join packs and had run into hunters who believed that anyone who had associations with Weres were fair game.
But more often than not, not being a member of a pack meant more friendships and other things with a lot of very interesting people. The things you learned about how other supernaturals lived their lives through a little pillow talk had been astounding.
All in all, the disconnect between him and Scott hadn’t been a bad thing at all. Even if Scott thought so. Which was Scott’s problem and not his, and it wasn’t as though Scott wasn’t his friend.
He just wasn’t his brother.