Archive of Our Own

The acceptance letter from NYU Kira initially filled out just for funsies is so attractive. She hadn’t realized how attractive until she got it in the mail earlier that week.

And maybe she should’ve had an official sit down conversation about it with Scott, the pros and cons between NYU and UC Davis, but that’s hindsight. There was just too much draw for her not to accept them. The east coast, the city, she’s homesick. For all her mother is connected to Beacon Hills and the Nemeton, this was never home to her.

Her parents even say their business in Beacon Hills is done. The Nogitsune has been contained somewhere it could never get out of again, the Nemeton is quiet. There’s no real reason for them to stick around too. Kira’s dad still has family back in New York; they’ll all move back together.

She knows she’ll miss Scott and her friends, but she doesn’t think it’ll hurt as bad as she initially thought it would. She’s certain it was never their intentions, but even now she still tends to feel like an outsider to them. Everyone’s already partnered up with someone else to be best friends with, it seems like.

At least, everyone but Malia, who she supposes has become her closest friend by default of being the other semi-outsider. When Lydia issued girls only get togethers, and her and Allison ended up magnetized to each other’s sides, it’s Malia Kira usually ended up with.

And she likes Malia, even if she can be a little brash at times. Besides Scott, Kira will probably miss Malia the most.

Allison jokes with her, that long distance so rarely works out. It’s why Isaac’s going to France with her for a gap year. But Kira also thinks about Malia and Stiles, and Malia saying things like, “he told me to stop being around him,” and, “he said he would block my number, but I can’t believe he actually fucking did,” and Stiles going AWOL from the group most of senior year, electing to eat in the library at almost every lunch. She thinks maybe it’s up to the people if it works out, long distance or not.

And she has faith in her and Scott lasting. She tells him as much before she leaves.

.

But sometimes in New York, the distance acts like a spotlight on all her feelings for Scott. How, now so far from him, she notices what she once thought were fluttery, happy feelings were just churning dread. When he texts her, and it becomes an isolated event in her day to interact with him, she can signal it out and recognize, oh, this hasn’t been a good feeling after all.

She starts ignoring calls, texts, because they only foster that no good feeling again. But then she only feels worse for ignoring him so she forces herself to answer. You shouldn’t be forcing yourself to answer your boyfriend, she wallows in.

And sometimes, staring up at her ceiling, she thinks about telling Scott, I think we should end it. She thinks about those words so much, they sing to her like a lullaby as she falls asleep. I think we should end it.

Oh no, she thinks other nights, and does her best to shut it down. This is probably just her getting nervous with her first long-term, long distance relationship. She’s never been with a guy this long before. She shouldn’t start self-sabotaging now.

.

Kira’s parents ask her if she wants to visit Beacon Hills for the holidays when winter break rolls around. They say money’s tight, but not that tight that they couldn’t afford a trip for her to see her friends and boyfriend. She still declines. She’d rather save up and spend Christmas with her grandparents instead. It’s been so long since she had a family holiday, and she’s putting that first.

She sends Malia a happy holidays, and an I miss you text, though. And while on her phone, a notification from Scott pops up, asking to facetime after their Christmas dinners. Her pulse loud in her ears, over the out of tune karaoke singing from her cousins, she sends back that she’ll stay up for it and everything.

But then she doesn’t. Her stomach’s full of her grandma’s bulgogi, and the time zone differences get to her, and next thing she knows she’s waking in the morning to two missed calls and one text from Scott reading, you still up?

In her just woken up daze, she freaks. He probably thinks she blew him off. He probably thinks she wants to end it and is avoiding him.

She calls him back, panicked, and he answers with a sleep-thick, “hey.”

She apologizes for missing his calls and she explains herself. Falling asleep, the time zones, dinner… And he chuckles soft and warm in her ear and tells her it’s all good. He had figured it was something like that.

“I swear I wasn’t blowing you off,” she says, words dipped in desperation.

And he says back, “I didn’t think you did.”

Right. She rubs her face. He doesn’t think those things, no. Those thoughts and wishes are all her’s.

.

Sometimes Kira wonders which would be kinder: Saying it to his face, or letting it end on its own. More often these days it feels like the relationship is on train tracks she can’t derail and it’s headed right for a cliff edge. There’s no stopping the inevitable. She can either warn him and tell him she thinks they should end it, or she can watch it happen in silence and let it fade with the distance.

Sometimes she decides the ignorance would be kinder for him. Other times, she just feels like a coward.

.

New Year’s she facetimes Malia from Times Square to show her the ball drop three hours early. Malia says she’s going over to Scott’s place later tonight for a party. They count down together and Kira makes a face when she catches her parents kiss. It’s sweet, but it’s still her parents.

Instead she asks Malia if she thinks she’ll be kissing anyone tonight. She’s just joking, but Malia asks why, so Kira jogs her memory with the whole there’s this tradition to kiss a loved one at midnight thing. Oh right, Malia goes, she remembers that from when she was a kid. Malia then also shrugs and says probably not, and Kira says, “Me neither.”

Malia promises to facetime back at her midnight. Kira goes home and gets herself huddled up in blankets with a hot chocolate to get the feeling back into her fingers. Three hours could not pass more slowly, but Kira stays awake for every one of them, easily.

Malia’s caller ID flashes on her screen and Kira pounces on her phone to answer. Malia’s stood alone in Scott’s kitchen. She smirks and says she already watched the ball drop, so she doesn’t need to see the TV.

Instead, at midnight, Malia kisses the camera on her phone. When she pulls back, smiling, she says, “That midnight kiss was for you.”

Immediately, Kira laughs. Short, loud, embarrassed, and now her blanket fort is all too warm for her. She wiggles out of it. “No Malia, those kisses are saved for like a romantic loved one.”

Malia cocks her head. That shouldn’t do things to Kira’s gut. Not fluttery things. “And that couldn’t be you?”

Kira places her palm against her cheek. She swears it sizzles at contact. “Not when I’m dating Scott, no.”

“Oh,” Malia goes, like she hadn’t thought of that at all. She shrugs. “Well, then it was just a friendship one.” Her eyebrow quirks up. “For now.”

Kira laughs and Malia laughs and it’s treated as a joke. It’s all a joke.

Except it’s not when Kira can’t sleep later that night with the look on Malia’s face and her, “For now,” playing on repeat in her head. Her stomach is still feeling all kinds of fluttery things, and not at all with dread. Oh, she thinks. If this is what it’s actually supposed to feel like… It feels impossibly bubbly, warm, alive.

And completely off limits.

.

It remains off limits, but not out of mind. To the point it clogs her thoughts up for months with fantastical daydreams that make her cheeks hurt from smiling so much and her pulse soar until any lightbulbs near her explode, unlike they ever have with Scott.

It’s not fair to him, she thinks as she peers down at the cobwebbed texts sent between them. The last is from Scott, asking if she wants to facetime for lunch. It was left on read a week ago. She’s thinking of it again. Of sending him those words, I think we should end it.

She doesn’t do it. She’s still a coward, she doesn’t want to hurt him. So instead she texts him and suggests they start calling more. There’s an overlap of free time from the end of her afternoon class to Scott’s morning one. Maybe that’ll revive them, and shut out the off limits for good.

.

Kira gets a text from Malia. That’s not very surprising, since they call and text multiple times a day. So she taps on the notification to see the message, and her heart lodges itself right into her throat.

I think I’m in love with you, Malia says. When Kira does nothing but stare at it, another pops up. And I think you’re in love with me too.

Fingers moving on impulse, she replies, don’t.

Don’t what? Say the truth?

I’m with Scott, so don’t

Yeah and anytime you’ve mentioned him this summer you’ve sounded miserable

How often do you even talk to him still?

A couple times a week. We talk all the time

Yeah but like ACTUALLY talking, not just surface level bs

Kira catches her lip between her teeth, pulse thrumming loudly in her ears. Because Malia’s absolutely right. They call every Tuesday and Thursday, and yet Kira still knows next to nothing about what’s going on with him besides classes are busy and his mom is doing well. They don’t actually talk about anything deeper than skin.

All that talk she saves for Malia. Malia’s the number she reaches for to have deep discussions about everything from their insecurities to the tv shows they’re addicted to these days. Her and Scott don’t even say they miss each other, but she says it with Malia. More to the point, what she really wants to say to her like burning on her tongue, you should come move to New York with me.

Deep down, she knows what this means. She knows she’s in love with Malia too. More than she is with Scott.

She sends back, it’s messy, I still need time to think and I don’t want to make you wait for me.

Malia sends back, I’m fine with messy, and I’m fine with waiting for you too.

Kira thinks about sending back an I love you, but she refrains. That might be just a step too soon.

.

Kira is on campus when the realization hits her.

It comes about because a guy in her poli-sci class who’s been overly friendly for the past few weeks finally asks her out. She predicted this was coming and responds politely, “I’m flattered, but I’m actually into girls.”

You know, instead of just saying she has a boyfriend already.

He says, “My bad. Lucky girls,” and makes his awkward departure. Meanwhile Kira stands there, blinking, realizing how naturally that came out of her mouth. Like, yes, she’s come to accept she’s maybe in love with Malia a little bit, and yes she’s aware Malia is a girl. But for some reason she hasn’t slotted the connecting piece in between. That maybe she’s attracted to women.

Too, she tacks onto her epiphany. That she’s attracted to women, too. Since she’s dating a guy right now and all.

.

Kira is, in fact, not falling asleep but merely resting her eyes while she lays in bed on the phone with Malia. There is no real reason behind the call, Kira just sees Malia on her caller ID and she answers. Malia is reading a novel for her English class, the sound of the pages turning through the phone speaker.

Then, out of the blue, Malia says, “I’d kiss you if you were here right now.”

Kira’s eyes are open in an instant. She sits up, taking her phone with her, jamming the corner of it into her temple. “Don’t say stuff like that to me.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not cheating on Scott.”

Malia scoffs at this. “You’re not even attracted to Scott.”

She thinks, I thought I was, but says, “I am.”

Malia somehow hears the former all the same. “I know you. No you aren’t, at least not anymore.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kira says with finality. “I’m still with him.”

“Yeah, actually, why are you? Still with him, that is. You hardly talk about him, or to him. You don’t even seem to like him all that much anymore, so why don’t you just break up with him?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Then explain it to me.”

Kira stares at her night lamp. She is ultra aware of the thrum of electricity in the bulb, pulsing. “Over a year I’ve thought about doing it, and my only excuse is that I’m a coward. I’m scared of causing conflict with him, so I haven’t.”

Malia sighs heavy over the phone. “I think I need to give you some tough love.”

“Yeah,” Kira laughs, humorlessly, “I had a feeling you would.”

“You gotta call it quits with Scott.”

“Because I’m stringing him along?” Deep down in her core, she knows she is. She knows it’s not good.

“Oh, that too,” Malia goes, like it’s a footnote she just noticed at the bottom of the page. “But you’re wasting your life with someone you don’t even like, let alone love anymore. What’s the point of that? Why don’t you just move on to someone you do love?”

Kira presses her palm to her forehead in a desperate attempt to cool herself down. “Someone like you?”

Malia doesn’t respond immediately. Those words linger in the air, across the cell towers, across the country. And then, Malia says, “Yeah, someone like me.”

Kira closes her eyes. She whispers, because it’s fundamentally wrong to speak this any louder, “What am I supposed to do?”

“Break up with Scott,” Malia whispers back, like a siren song in her ear. “You have to end it.”

.

Kira doubts herself like second nature. It’s a trait of her’s she’s vehemently been working on correcting, but bad habits like that die hard. She agrees to come to Beacon Hills with Malia like a coach in her corner rubbing her shoulders and telling her what she has to do.

It’s strange to hear in someone else’s voice and not just her own, you need to end it with Scott. It’s empowering.

All the same, Kira’s second nature sparks up the moment she sees Scott in person. Maybe it’s the jet lag, maybe it’s something else, but she sees him that night for dinner and he smiles. It melts her resolve.

She can’t. They have dinner. They have sex. This is her eleventh hour attempt. Backpedal, don’t jump into the scary realities, stay safe nestled in Scott’s bed, in Scott’s arms.

But she wakes up sometime around six in the morning, according to Scott’s digital clock, groping his sheets for him and he’s… not there. She blinks and rolls over in bed, looking around the room, and spots the ajar bathroom door with the light on, illuminating a crack across the floor to the bed.

He’s talking to someone on the phone. She hears him. “We’ll think of something. Don’t- hey, don’t worry about it. We’ll work it out. Okay? Okay. See you tomorrow, Babe.”

The crack of light expands, Scott opening the door. He stops in his tracks when he catches Kira’s eyes blinking back at him.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Kira says back. “Who’s Babe?”

“Hmm?” Scott goes, flipping the light off and coming back to bed, crawling under the covers and looping an arm around her waist.

“You were on the phone with someone,” Kira says, like maybe saying it out loud will remind him of what he was just doing. “You said Babe. Who’s Babe?”

“Oh,” and he laughs, sort of soft and, to Kira’s ear, practiced. Her still sleep thick brain is too tired to think too much about it. “That was a joke. I was talking to Stiles. Babe’s just a joke we have.”

“Oh,” Kira goes. “How is he? I haven’t talked to him in ages.” She remembers him like a ghost in the last year of high school. Barely on the edges of the group, haunting the library, apparently uncharacteristically withdrawn, according to Lydia who’s known him longer than Kira has. But this is the Stiles she almost exclusively knows. The one post-possession.

“He’s… you know,” Scott says with a half shrug, lying down.

No, Kira thinks. She doesn’t know. Is he better than he was in high school? Worse?

“You’ll see him at the pack gathering later today,” Scott concludes with, kissing her face. “Let’s go back to sleep for now.”

.

It’s small things that stick in Kira’s brain. Things that make her go hmm, from time to time. Scott’s good morning kisses that feel fleeting until they just stop, all in the course of her first week back. They don’t have sex again. Scott is too engrossed by his phone in the evenings.

All these things that make her wonder and question, and most of all, act as the cold water bucket drenching her to the bone. There is no more eleventh hour. There is no more going back. You prefer when he doesn’t touch you, the dread is back, you see that now, you have to end it.

She goes to see Malia in the evenings, sometimes. Scott’s on the phone, he doesn’t even notice. The first time seeing Malia, Kira ran right for her. Malia scooped her up in her arms and spun her around. She kissed her cheek and everything suddenly felt alive. Electric. Full color.

Malia tells her, yet again, “Girlie, you have to give up the charade,” and she knows she’s right. She’s right.

She’ll do it tonight. She already spent the day packing her suitcase back up and bringing it into Scott’s living room. He didn’t notice. She’s ready to go. Malia said she could stay with her.

She’s out getting gas for her rental car (her getaway car) when she sees at the pump on the other side of her and ahead, Derek Hale and his black Camaro. The passenger door is open towards the pump and Derek is standing in the open V of it, hands in his jacket pockets.

Dang, Kira thinks, she’s always thought he was so cool—with his leather jacket and sports car and take no shit kind of attitude—even if Scott’s always made a sour face whenever he was brought up. He’s the kind of guy she would’ve wanted to be friends with in her New York high school, if only she weren’t so intimidated by them.

She kind of wants to say hi, but also wonders if that would be unwelcomed. She can count on one hand how often they’ve interacted, does he even remember her?

And then she notices not only is the passenger door just open, someone’s sitting in it. She sees legs, and then she sees Stiles, leaning forward to press his temple against Derek’s hip. Derek drops his hand down, gently, to card his fingers through Stiles’ hair. And Kira, in her brain, goes oh.

Maybe she shouldn’t assume, but she’s going to assume. She’s never seen Derek so soft with someone before. She never expected to see him so soft with someone before. With Stiles.

Stiles who she knows a little better than Derek, although only marginally. She’s heard more about him than she’s actually seen him. He seems to be doing better, she thinks when she compares this Stiles to the frayed one she has in her memory. Even though Scott said Stiles would be at the reunion the other day, she doesn’t recall seeing him at all. She didn’t get a chance to say hi then, and she takes the initiative to do it now.

She squeezes between the pumps and approaches them, waving a hand. “Hi, guys. Funny seeing you here.”

Both of them look at her, Stiles lifting his head off of Derek. Stiles says, “Hey there,” and Derek doesn’t really smile, but she thinks he kind of does.

“I don’t think I saw either of you at Scott’s reunion party.”

“I didn’t go,” Derek says, and Kira thinks, fair. Scott curled his lip in a grimace when she asked if he would be coming that day.

“I was only there for a second,” Stiles admits. “It was kinda awkward.”

“Oh, it wasn’t that bad,” Kira says with a flap of her hand.

Stiles shrugs. He clasps his hands together between his knees. “Scott and I aren’t really friends anymore, so… it kinda was.”

This here is one of those small things that sticks right in Kira’s brain the second she hears it. She furrows her brow. This doesn’t track. “But…” she wrings her hands together. “Scott calls you almost every night, Babe.” Babe, she throws on, like maybe that’ll jog his memory.

“I haven’t talked to Scott in weeks.” Stiles narrows his eyes at her, confused. “And… Babe?”

It feels like she’s swallowed lead. It’s sinking, slowly, down into her stomach. Weighing her down, heavy, heavy, wondering, questioning. “He said you two had an inside joke. He calls you Babe.”

He blinks at her, and she sees it in his eyes. Recognition. But it’s tinted, tinged slightly off-white. He turns away from her, looking up at Derek. Kira, now, looks at him too.

Derek’s got his arms crossed, shaking his head.

“So, I’m trying to friend break up with him,” Stiles then says. There’s a waver in his voice. It’s not right. “It’s hard to do because he’s been my best friend since we were kids. I don’t wanna be associated with him anymore, I don’t, but he keeps leaving his shit out. I have to keep cleaning it up and I wanted to be done with that, but…” He inhales, deep, sighing on exhale. He looks her in the eye. “I think you should break up with him too. He’s cheating on you.”

He may as well have just stuck a knife in her stomach and twisted. She’s breathless from the strike. “What?”

“He’s been cheating on you with Allison,” he says, strained, like she’s forcefully pulling the words out of his throat. “I’m sorry.”

He’s sorry, he says. Inside of it, she hears how much he must want to say this hurts me to say just as much as it hurts you to hear, and he’s wrong. He’s fucking wrong. She’s standing here, bleeding out at a gas station, and nothing could hurt more.

.

She doesn’t remember the drive to Scott’s from the gas station at all. She’s blacked out, unable to see behind the hurt tears that have turned red with anger by the time she’s parked, a wheel in his front lawn. And when she walks inside, it’s like there’s been a minor earthquake. Nothing’s notably out of place, but everything’s been shifted, shaken up. It’s not right.

Her suitcase is still by the couch closest to the front door. She barks a laugh at it now, miserable, upset, wet.

There’s noises from upstairs. The incriminating kind, most definitely being made with the real Babe. And for a moment, standing there in the foyer, she closes her eyes. She lets the tears fall. She feels, deep in her gut, there is no love here anymore. Not between her and Scott.

So she breathes out. She opens her eyes, she wipes her cheeks of the tears. Scott’s made her enough of a fool. He doesn’t get her tears too.

She takes the steps, her boots heavy against the wood. She didn’t take her shoes off like she typically does. If Scott’s going to muddy them, she’ll muddy his house.

At the end of the hall is his room. His bedroom door is shut. There’s giggles. Giggles. They’re enjoying themselves. They’re enjoying their ruse, thinking they’ve gotten away with it. Thinking they’ll continue to get away with it. She doesn’t rush it, she doesn’t stall it. She just walks down the hall, puts her hand on the doorknob, and twists it open.

Scott’s door always squeaked on the hinge about two thirds into its swing. She’s memorized it, and it does it now. And Scott, apparently completely tuned out of his werewolf senses, does not notice someone is here until he too is hearing the squeak. And there they are, naked, Allison scrambling to cover herself with the sheets, Scott throwing himself off of her, both with shell-shocked expressions, like, surprise, the fucking girlfriend exists. She’s not an illusion of thrill for their enjoyment.

“It’s kind of poetic,” her tongue is saying all on its own, “that the day I find out I come here to find you two together. It’s almost like you’re sleeping together every second I’m gone.”

“Kira,” Scott goes, and she doesn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t even want to hear his fucking voice. It makes her think vicious thoughts, like drawing on her still in training kitsune powers to smite them into the ground. Maybe running her katana through the both of them, since they seem so inseparable. Maybe just shooting them with Allison’s crossbow. It’d be tragic irony.

The edges of her eyes crackle with static charge fury but she shuts them, pushes that back. No. She says, “Scott, cheating or not, do you know what I planned to do today? Do you even know? Did you even notice my suitcase downstairs?”

He opens and closes his mouth. Useless. He didn’t notice.

“I was breaking up with you,” she spits like she has poison in her teeth. “I was ending it. I’ve wanted to end it for over a year, Scott. I thought I was crazy to want that. I thought I was the bad guy for realizing I’m a lesbian,” she says the word, wielding it with all the power it gives her. “But now I just realize it wasn’t crazy at all. You weren’t faithful to someone you swore you loved. You complete and utter shitbag. The both of you, fuck you.”

Scott continues to gape. Allison’s the one to call her name when Kira turns to leave. She doesn’t stop. She doesn’t care about the girl who told her to her face she was seeing another guy and neglected to mention that guy was her boyfriend. Fuck the both of them.

She’s angry but she’s not a vengeful person, she thinks as she clomps down the stairs, purposefully loud this time. She doesn’t desire revenge by her own hand. They’ll reap what they sow, and they sow themselves destruction. Kira doesn’t even have to swing. They’ll take themselves out in due time.

.

“Did you know too?” Kira asks in Malia’s bedroom. Her tears mercifully didn’t fall for Scott. They held out for her just long enough to reach Malia’s, where now she sobs horribly while Malia runs her fingers through her hair.

“Know what?” Malia asks, still playing catch up from when Kira arrived at her house ten minutes ago.

“Scott’s been cheating on me,” she says into Malia’s shoulder. “Stiles told me. I caught them.”

Malia’s hand freezes in her hair. She then pulls it away. “He what?”

Kira doesn’t say it again. She listens to Malia’s increasingly haggard breaths against her chest.

“I’ll tear him apart, alpha be damned,” she says, followed with an audible flick of her claws. Kira pulls back enough to see them, sharp and long.

“Don’t,” Kira says, grabbing her wrist. “I don’t want to waste any more energy on him. You were right, I should’ve ended it so long ago.”

“He hurt you,” Malia says, hissing between her teeth.

“I want to be done with him,” Kira says, in a whisper. She presses her mouth to Malia’s. It’s better than she ever could’ve imagined it being. “I want you to start with me.”

Malia pushes her down onto the bed, Kira’s arms looped around her neck dragging her down with her. Malia’s claws are still sharp and they tear up her duvet, but they’re retracted by the time she gets her hands on Kira’s skin.

.

She spots Stiles across the street at the mechanic’s garage. She remembers hearing one a many story about his rundown Jeep, so figures. Except, upon approaching, she sees in the garage no blue Jeep. The only car in there is a black Camaro, similar to the one she saw at the gas station before. Similar enough, she bets it’s the same. He doesn’t notice her until she’s in front of him, saying, “How long did you know?”

He’s sat on the front steps of the mechanic office and he looks up at her. He pushes his sunglasses up on top of his head to look her in the eye. “Too long.”

She fists her hands up at her sides, and then lets them go. She repeats this, over, over. “Why didn’t you tell me when you first found out?”

“I didn’t have your phone number.”

She scoffs, throwing her head back to squint angrily at the sun. “Excuses.”

“Yeah,” he concedes. “Honestly, I just wanted Scott to be accountable for his own shitty actions for once. I used to be the one to run around and clean up after him for years, and I’m tired of it. Why can’t he do it for once?”

“But you knew,” she says, frowning back down at him. He’s not looking at her anymore. He’s staring at his feet, the asphalt. “You gotta be the bigger person. You should’ve told me, you’re my friend.”

“We’re not really friends,” he has the gall to say. It makes her jaw drop open.

“I helped save your life from the Nogitsune,” she says, narrowing eyes, jamming her finger in his direction. “You better damn believe we’re friends after that, Stiles. You better.”

He lifts his head back up to look at her. The reprimand strong enough to shut him up.

She changes out her schooling finger for an open hand, extended. “So, friends?”

Stiles looks from her, to her hand, and back. “I didn’t tell you your boyfriend was cheating on you, why do you still want to be my friend?”

Kira plasters a smile onto her face, no matter how manufactured it is. “Because I’m the bigger person, and fuck Scott McCall.”

.

It’s both intimidating and beyond cool when Derek approaches Kira all on his own and invites her over for dinner. Stiles is cooking.

“So you two…” She wiggles her index fingers next to each other, blinking to him expectantly.

“Yeah,” Derek says, and that’s definitely a smile this time. Small, but there.

So she goes to dinner at Derek’s loft. It’s fascinatingly domestic to watch them in the kitchen. Derek sticking his face in everything Stiles is doing. Stiles shooing him away, calling him a distraction, and setting him up with a minor cooking task like cutting a vegetable, or cleaning a bowl. Whenever Stiles catches Kira watching, he coughs all awkward and looks everywhere in the kitchen except where Derek is.

And dinner is amazing. Stiles is great in the kitchen. He’s had plenty of practice, he says, growing up and cooking for his dad. Except Derek is allowed red meat and all the unhealthy things, because his werewolf metabolism lets him get away with that.

Kira tells them, “You guys are too cute.”

Stiles blinks at her. “Hmm?”

“You two just mesh so well.” She intertwines her fingers and looks down at them. “I hope to have that some day.”

This, Stiles grimaces at. “Right, sorry, too soon, or-”

“No, it’s okay, I’m doing fine,” she says, catching Derek’s eye while he’s certainly catching her lie. She clears her throat and powers forward. “I’m sort of seeing someone else right now.”

“Oh,” Stiles goes, leaning forward in his seat, all ears.

She smiles. “A girl, actually.”

“Oh,” he goes again. “Does she have a name?”

“Yeah.” She pauses, huffing an awkward laugh because she only now is realizing what she’s going to say and who she’s talking to. She cringes at her brain fart and just admits it. “It’s Malia.”

She should’ve anticipated the frown, the disapproval. Maybe even the hesitant, “Like… Tate, Malia?”

“Yeah,” she says again, rubbing her arm. “I know she’s your ex, but we just kind of… happened. We talked a lot while I was in New York. And now we’re… together.”

Stiles doesn’t say a single thing. Nothing. She glances over at Derek who’s looking at Stiles, mouth all twisted up.

“Um,” Stiles finally goes, sliding his hands off the table, into his lap. “So, first off, I feel like I should clarify. She’s not my ex because she was never my girlfriend in the first place.”

“Huh?” This is news.

“She…” and over that word, she hears the first wobble in his voice. When he tries it again, she hears the wobble more. He huffs a sharp, frustrated breath, scooching back his chair and running an erratic hand through his hair. “Oh holy shit I didn’t think I’d be…”

“Hey,” and it’s Derek’s voice, piping up for nearly the first time all evening, grabbing Stiles by the hand still in his lap. “Breathe. Hey, focus on me.”

Kira sits with wide eyes blinking at the both of them, all kinds of apologetic alarms going off in her head for causing this. Stiles seems to be having a breakdown because she said Malia’s name and she’s kicking herself for being so callous about it. “I didn’t realize… I’m so sorry to…”

“What he’s trying to say is she’s not a good person,” Derek says over her garbled apologies. She shuts herself right up for that, stunned by the intensity in the tone of his claim. “It’d be a good idea if you stopped seeing her.”

Maybe it’s the shock talking but she goes, “I thought she was your cousin…”

Derek curls his lip, everything but audibly snarling at her. She suppresses a meep and looks back to Stiles, rubbing both of his hands over his face, Derek’s hand attached to one of his wrists as he does so. She swallows.

“What… happened…? I remember you in senior year, Stiles. You were so…” Distant. Isolated. A ghost.  “I thought that was all because of the Nogitsune.”

He pulls his hands from his face. He doesn’t look at her at all. “I mean… that was certainly part of it.”

“But,” she chews her lip nervously, “she was another part?”

For just a second, he meets her eyes. Just a second. “Yeah. She… hurt me. A lot. In a lot of ways. I thought I was healing from it, but I guess not.” He stares down at his palms. He balls them up. “Is she hurting you too?”

Kira blinks at this, her mouth opening and closing and playing catch up for a moment before she can find the words to respond. “No, no she doesn’t. I don’t really know what kind of hurt you mean, but she’s not doing any of that.”

“She used to. I don’t know what she’s like these days, but abusers are always abusers. Kira,” she’s already started at the word abuser, but she even more does at her own name. It’s like he’s forcing himself to look back at her. “Please don’t be with her.”

“But…” and she says but again, even with his plead that desperate. The Malia she knows on text, on call, now in person. She doesn’t think abuser. “She’s not abusive these days. She’s changed.”

“Okay, good for her,” Stiles says in a tone that suggests very, very much not good for her. “I’ve got scars on my back and shitty nightmares from her, but glad to hear she’s changed.”

These are awful things to say and they make Kira’s eyes sting because they’re not right. They’re not right. The Malia who she’d fall asleep to in her ear over the phone in New York. The Malia she wakes up to by her side now. She would never do terrible things like what he’s implying, and it’s just not right.

“I know she was a little… feral, back in the day. Do you think maybe it was all just misunderstandings?” She’s trying to say it to be a peacekeeper, but he recoils like she’s spit in his face. She presses her nails into her palms. “Like… like, I mean, maybe she was aggressive with you because she didn’t understand the human things? And maybe it seemed like she was being abusive, but she really just didn’t know any better?”

Stiles barks a laugh. Dark, spiteful. She clamps her mouth shut. “Right. Because ignorance makes it all fine now.”

“Well, I mean-”

“I don’t think this friendship thing is going to work after all, sorry,” he then goes, twisting himself out of Derek’s hand and leaving the table. There’s a door slam down the hall and Kira deflates in her seat.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” she blabbers, feeling all wet and tight in her chest.

Derek sighs, putting a hand flat on the table, placating. “He’s still raw with a lot of it.”

“Was it really that bad?”

He frowns. “I don’t exactly offer up private information about him.”

“Right.” She feels chastised. Stupid. She gets out of her chair, shuffling towards the door. “So I’m just gonna…”

Derek doesn’t stop her. She gets her shoes on and looks back across the loft, landing on Derek still sat at the table.

“Can you tell him I’m sorry? I mean it. I didn’t mean to make him upset,” she says, fingers nervous in the hem of her shirt.

Derek nods. He also says, “Think about what he said, though. She really isn’t the kind of person you should be with.”

Kira croaks a thank you for dinner before she makes her way out. She doesn’t think she’s getting invited back for any more dinners.

.

“Can I ask you something?” Kira asks, hugging her legs while sitting on Malia’s bed. “Something kinda personal?”

“Of course, Girlie. Shoot.” Malia’s at her desk painting her nails with the shade of deep purple Lydia lent her.

Kira curls her toes. “Can you tell me what really happened between you and Stiles?”

Malia’s painting hand stills. She lifts her head to blink at Kira. She laughs, showing her teeth. “What’s this about?”

“I talked to him the other day and…” She still sees his face, upset at her. They exchanged numbers the other day, before, but he hasn’t answered any of her texts. “He made it seem really… bad. I just wanted to hear your side of the story.”

Malia sighs, settling into her chair. “What’s there to tell? I liked him, he repeatedly ignored me no matter what I did, and then he shut me out of everything. He stopped talking to me, he started avoiding me, he blocked my number.”

“He kind of said you were never his girlfriend.”

Malia laughs again at this. Sharp. “Why would he say that? I did all the girlfriend things with him, you know. I kissed him, I spooned him, I had sex with him. And you know what he said? He said he didn’t like it, like, how was I supposed to know how to? I was a coyote for years.” She’s huffy. She’s huffy like how Kira remembers her being back in the day, fresh after all this went down. “He was so infuriating because he wouldn’t just… show me. He wanted me to leave him alone, but I didn’t know how to deal with all these complicated feelings on my own.”

She clenches and unclenches her fists. She’s messing up her nail polish. The dark purple splotches against her skin remind Kira of Stiles one day back in high school with a black eye, purple and marred. She thinks of scars, of purple, of Malia’s fists, and she swallows past a lump. “Did you ever hit him?”

“Maybe.” Malia sniffs. She looks down at her hands and snags a tissue to clean it up. “Maybe a couple of times. He could take it.”

.

Kira’s sitting by herself in the diner nursing a coffee when Stiles comes up to her table. She glances up at him.

“Hey,” he says. He has a to-go plastic bag hooked on his fingers.

“Hey,” she says back. She sits up straighter.

“Do you mind if I…” He gestures to the opposite side of the booth.

“No, of course.” She swoops a hand out to it like, be her guest. He takes it. He puts the bag on the table and pushes it out of the way so they can look at each other.

“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” he says. “I was a total dick to you the other day.”

She peers down into her coffee. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have… I didn’t know…”

He waves a hand at this. Like water under a bridge. “I didn’t tell anyone. You couldn’t have known.”

Even though it’s late morning the diner isn’t as busy as it usually is. Most of the white noise comes from the kitchen.

Stiles glances out the window. “I heard you’re in a hotel now until you go back to New York.”

She presses her lips into a firm line. She can still feel the tight grip on her arm. The claws. “I left her.”

“Did she hurt you?”

“Not badly.” She rubs a hand over her arm. She’s no werewolf, but her skin is still stronger than human. She tries not to think about Stiles being human. “I’m… My mom says I’ve progressed a lot in my kitsune training.”

Scorched flesh doesn’t smell very good.

He sighs. Relieved.

Kira drinks her coffee. “She’s kinda scary, when you’re the person she’s upset at.”

“Yeah.” He drags the bag back closer to himself and fiddles with the tie. “She used to hit me if I didn’t sleep with her.”

There’s a steadily growing itch in the back of her throat. “I can’t believe we never knew about this.”

“Well, I tried telling Scott,” he says. “He was under the impression it was hot this girl would break into my room every night and do unwanted shit to me.”

It’s an immediate wave of fury that hits Kira and makes her mouth downturn in disgust. “Fuck Scott McCall.”

“Yeah, fuck him,” Stiles agrees, admittedly with less fire.

“Hey,” she says, reaching out across the table to tap her fingers on the side of the bag, against the outline of a to-go box. “It’s hard to let him go after so long. I get it. Malia’s an awful person, and I’m still here mourning what we had when it was good. But we can get through it, right? We can move on?”

He looks at her warily. Like maybe he wants to tell her it’s too hard to. She doesn’t break her gaze, even though the itch in her throat is now an ache.

Finally, he nods. He looks down at her hand. “Right. Yeah, we can move on. If we’re still friends after all this.”

“Of course.” Her face blossoms with a big smile. “I’m gonna friend you up so hard, you don’t even know it yet. Oh boy.”

He laughs at this, his eyes going all crinkled in the corners.

She finishes her coffee and she walks out with him, their arms looped. She tells him a new best friend just dropped, her. She tells him she only just recently came to terms with her sexuality, so maybe it’d be nice to be single for a while to figure herself out better.

It’ll get better.