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Stiles and Scott find out Isaac Lahey is a Sentinel by chance.
Stiles bribes Danny, later, to check if Isaac is registered - he’s not - and Scott swears he never had him in any of his training classes.
“Isaac Lahey?” Danny asks, skeptical.
“Yeah. We have Chemistry with him, remember? Usually pairs with Boyd, I think.”
“I remember him,” Danny snaps, like he thinks Stiles was insulting his intelligence. “Tall, but otherwise unremarkable.”
“Aw Danny, you don’t like those angelic curls?”
“Mousy curls,” he mutters, and ouch, that’s not a word guys get most of the time, though it fits Isaac.
Which is kind of brilliant, Stiles realizes. Isaac Lahey. Sad, quiet, loner Isaac Lahey - if he Zoned out in the middle of class, who was going to notice?
The funny thing is, Stiles isn’t even that great of a Guide. Like, that’s cool with him, don’t get him wrong, because being a Guide had never been part of his life goals. Even as a kid he realized empathy and unceasing support weren’t exactly his wheelhouse. He’d only bothered to learn the basics for Scott, who’d come online when he was eleven.
Scott was a Three Sense Sentinel - respectable, certainly, but caught in between the rock of ‘not powerless enough to hardly ever Zone’ like a One or Two, and the hard place of “not powerful enough to automatically qualify for a Guide’. There were always more Sentinels than Guides, for reasons everyone always tried to explain but never quite could. Stiles’s mom used to say it was because a Guide was something just about anyone could choose to be - something the Hyperacute Abilities Agency would vehemently disagree with - but there was no shutting off a Sentinel’s senses. You don't choose to be a Sentinel.
So when Scott came online and was remanded to Sentinel Training classes, Stiles started taking Guide lessons at the community center. He figured ‘best friends forever’ was supposed to be pretty unconditional.
“I don’t want your help,” Isaac hissed.
Stiles couldn’t hold back his snort. “The fact that you’re currently clutching me to you chest like a kindergartner with a favorite Barbie isn’t helping your case.”
“Shut up,” Isaac said, but his ironclad hold on Stiles didn’t lessen up any, so. Point proven.
“Look, Isaac- “ Fuck. Isaac was panting heavily, eyes darting toward the corners of the room. Probably about an inch from a full-on Zone, and Stiles had no idea how to pull him out of one of those. Scott’s senses had been mostly under control for years, and Stiles didn’t know Isaac the way he knew Scott. Talking about lacrosse practice and how he thought his dad was sneaking cheeseburgers again wasn’t going to cut it.
“You probably don’t know this, but my mom was a Guide,” Stiles said after a minute. “I never wanted to be one. Kinda always seemed like a raw deal to me.” Go where your Sentinel went, do what your Sentinel did. More of a calling than a job, and Stiles knew he wasn’t the sort of person who was that selfless. That much of a doormat, he thought sometimes, uncharitably. You had to believe in something important or in nothing at all to give that much. “I took the basic training in Junior High, but that was for Scott, you know? I don’t know what I’m doing. So you gotta stay with me here, buddy, because if you Zone out I don’t know how to snap you out of it, and everyone is going to know, and you are fucked.”
“Stiles,” Scott hissed, but Isaac was already letting Stiles go, bit by infinitesimal bit.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, okay."
“I have hearing, seeing, and smelling,” Scott said casually. “You?”
Isaac shrugged. “Smell, taste, and touch.”
“Three senses!” Scott crowed, and held one hand out for a high five. After a moment, Isaac hesitantly returned the gesture.
That Isaac had hidden away for so long with three senses was actually pretty impressive. Freaky Sentinel science generally dictated that the more enhanced senses you had, the better those senses were. One was, frankly, nothing. One meant you had a future in sharpshooting or being a sommelier or doing really great needlework. There were even a few one sense Sentinels who played in major sports leagues. Three senses were pretty strong, and considering Isaac’s combo --
“Well shit,” Stiles realized after a moment. “No wonder you’re so skinny.”
The way Scott and Isaac both tilted their heads like puppies was simultaneously adorable and alarming.
“Remember when the grocery store started getting their milk from another dairy?” Stiles said. “And you said it tasted funny, and wouldn’t drink it?
Scott’s nose wrinkled. “Well it did.”
“That’s cause smell is, like, half of taste. Throw in texture issues, and I bet you don’t even eat half the time.” Stiles poked Isaac in the side. “Do you, dude.”
Isaac’s face basically needs a caption that says ‘excuse you?’ underneath it.
“When did you come online, anyway?” Stiles asks.
“Eight.”
Eight. Jesus. Eight is early. Eight is trauma early. Eight means something bad happened, and the fact that a doctor or psychiatrist or social worker didn’t immediately pick up on a budding Sentinel means something really bad happened. Something hidden.
“That sucks,” he says, finally, and Isaac slowly relaxes.
Jumpstarting before adolescence isn’t unheard of. It’s part of why Scott’s dad left, the fucker - and makes him the shithead, not Scott, but guilt doesn’t go away in the face of logic because that’s not how a sneakfuck emotion like guilt works. Half of helping Scott snap out of his Zones meant helping him snap out of his guilt.
Stiles has a sinking feeling Isaac needs, like, cuddling.