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As per usual, there are a lot of things about werewolves that Stiles doesn’t really get.
Unfortunately, there are a lot more things he doesn’t get about humans than there are about werewolves. If anything, werewolves seem to just click in that weird, mentally ill part of his brain.
One thing he’s noticed is that the wolves in his pack (his? when did he start calling it his pack? he’s just the human. He’s the only human now. Fuck.) is that they have a new, slightly weird way of communicating. One that Stiles understands somehow.
The way they stand, the various ways they flare their powers with claws, pointed ears, fangs, glowing eyes, etc. The way they growl, howl, all of the above, it all has different, specific meanings. Like back off, or my territory. Things like concern and panic, all have their own little flavor of wolf communication.
What Stiles continues to not understand is how he understands it.
When Scott looks like he’s pissed, like he’s about to rip someone's head off and he growls and all Stiles can hear is that he’s scared, that he’s absolutely terrified, even when every human social cue he knows should be screaming anger, he’s not sure how he knows that’s wrong.
So he knows about that. He knows that he recognizes the wolves’ body language. He knows he can understand their growls and howls and what English equivalent they’re meant to portray.
What he doesn’t know is that he started mirroring it.
-=-
I.
With the benefit of the school temporarily shutting down due to some repairs and cleaning needing to be done, the pack spent a lot of the next week after the Nogitsune together.
A lot of the time they’d spend the night at each other's, occasionally Allison’s, houses. At Derek’s loft, all piled up across Scott or Stiles’s room. Sometimes they’d conk out at a park on accident because none of them wanted to face the nightmares they see when they sleep.
It’s a night like that, where they’re all asleep on top of one another. Stiles has Scott draped over his chest, using him as a pillow. Isaac and Kira are both using Scott like their own pillows, Kira on his stomach and Issac practically cuddling his lower legs.
Ethan is off to the side, legs over Isaac’s and snoring loud enough to rival Stiles’s panicked breathing.
Still, it wakes Scott. His eyes blinking open when his pillow starts bouncing him up and down and connecting the breathing to his best friend. He’s up and moving the parts of him not held down by a soundly sleeping Kira and a slowly waking Isaac before he can even process the growling.
Because Stiles is… growling, in his sleep. His face is pinched in sweaty, panic, and he’s growling. Scott’s wolf brain translates it on its own, and all he can smell and hear and see is, Help me. Scared. Panicked.
It scares Scott. How does Stiles know how to growl like that? Growl like a wolf? How does he know that the way his face is scrunched reads like a werewolf baring its teeth when it's backed into a corner, even in his sleep?
“Scott? Is that you?” Isaac’s voice is tired, but he still sounds concerned for his alpha. Concerned about the growling he’s hearing because it sounds like a wolf.
Scott turns back, eyes wide, “It’s Stiles,” he says, borderline breathless in his own confused, slight panic because what if something is wrong with Stiles, what if he’s turning into a wolf? How is he growling like that?!
And then Stiles starts screaming, and everybody is awake within a few minutes while Scott and Isaac work together to restrain a screaming, crying, Stiles. Growls are slipping out between his words, between his yells for help, yelling Hatred, Fear, Anger, Confused in a not-really language he shouldn’t be able to understand.
“What’s going on?” Ethan’s asking once he’s woken up by screaming and being kicked in the face off of Isaac, while Kira is trying her best not to pile the same question on after being essentially thrown onto the grass.
“He had a nightmare,” Scott replies, looking at Isaac and expressing for him to let go, leaving him to sit there with a panting, growling, terrified Stiles in his lap. His best friend is shaking and sweating and panting as he sprawls his legs out and buries his face in Scott’s chest.
“Who’s growling?” Kira, who doesn’t understand the growls for what they are but recognizes that they mean something different to the wolves than they do to her, finds herself looking around at all three of them in search of who it is that sounds like they’re about to go to war.
“Stiles,” Isaac sounds just as breathless as Scott did, if a bit more confused than panicked, “He’s…”
“Terrified,” Ethan finishes.
Stiles doesn’t remember waking up from his nightmare the next morning, and Scott helps him count his fingers until he calms down.
II.
None of the wolves bring it up to Stiles.
Ethan tries, and he almost does, he starts the conversation but then the bell rings for class and Stiles doesn’t care enough to try and figure out what he was so concerned about.
Scott and Isaac can pretend that it was a one-time thing. It’s not some new supernatural terrifying thing where maybe the bite to Void transferred to Stiles somehow. It’s not.
(It isn’t. Stiles has been able to understand the wolves from day one. His running theory is it’s either something to do with being around them so much (No. Because Allison couldn’t. Why can he?), or it’s because of his autism or something that means an alternative form of communication is easier to read.)
It happens again during class. Not in such a similar way, but still noteworthy nonetheless.
There’s a surprise fire drill happening that day. Scott knew Stiles was already having a bad sensory day, even if neither of them brought it up. Knew in the way he jerked away from touch, in the way he flinched at every loud noise and covered his ears when Coach started yelling.
When the alarm rings, the noise that Stiles makes from his seat right beside Scott sounds like a wounded wolf, and it means that he zeroes in on his friend instead of the fact he should be standing and leaving the classroom in a line.
It means that he doesn’t listen to the teacher as he does a head count, because he’s too busy rushing toward Stiles and pulling him down onto the floor where he knows he’ll be more comfortable.
It means he barely hears the way the class shuffles out without them after the teacher yelled at them and neither so much as looked at him, because Scott was too busy helping cover Stiles’s ears and listening to the tiny, wolf-like whimpers that he shouldn’t be able to make so cleanly.
Those whimpers turn into growls of Hurts, Help, Stop, Pain when his hands get free thanks to Scott, flapping so hard he occasionally hits himself or the werewolf covering his ears from the alarms. A pained growl always comes after he hits, something closer to Sorry, Hurts, Scared than anything else, like he’s directing it at Scott.
They sit like that for a while, somewhere down the line Scott started growling back, trying to communicate Helping, Love you, Calm down, on the off chance that Stiles can somehow understand it.
When the alarms finally shut off and the lights stop flashing, Stiles slumps down, and then slowly falls forward against Scott. His head hits the alpha’s chest with a thump, and it’s followed by a quiet Sorry, Thank you, Good now growl.
Scott doesn’t stop himself from answering with a You’re Welcome, Happy, Safe, and pretends it doesn’t terrify him when it makes Stiles relax.
III.
Derek Hale has seen a lot of things.
He’s experienced a lot of things.
A human that can understand and mimic werewolf not-language, though?
He hasn’t seen that.
And yet here’s Stiles, holding a full conversation with him without him saying so much as a word.
It’s been twenty minutes. Sure, Stiles is talking a lot, but when he pauses he turns and he looks at Derek, and if he doesn’t get what he’s looking for his brows will scrunch up until Derek makes some sort of noise.
And then he’ll just respond, like those noises were words!
It’s… weird.
It’s a good weird?
Derek doesn’t know how to feel. He’s never seen this before, but it’s nice to not have to talk when he doesn’t want to. When he can just communicate in the way that actually comes naturally to him as a born werewolf.
Even if it’s nice, he still wants to know how. How does this completely human teenager understand werewolf not-language like it’s a verbal conversation?
IV.
Isaac doesn’t get it.
But it sure is helpful, when he’s waking up from a nightmare and straight into a flashback and Stiles is the only other person awake to calm him down. When he only comes out of it because suddenly Stiles is mimicking a growl he’s only ever heard Scott make that means Stop! Calm down!
It drags him mentally kicking and screaming back to the dark room that is Stiles’s bedroom (Sue him for being nervous about leaving the previously void-possessed human in their pack friend group alone again. Especially knowing he still has night terrors.)
“How did you do that?” is the first thing he says, breathless and confused but slightly calmed down.
Stiles, from where he’s in front of Isaac now that they’ve both more-or-less fallen to the floor, gives him a confused look, “What? What’d I do? I just kinda panicked because you weren’t really responding other than trying to hit me and screaming, so.”
He shrugs like it’s no big deal. Isaac assumes it’s because he does the same thing.
“You growled at me,” Isaac breathes, “And it sounded like Scott.”
V.
“Hey, Deaton?”
Scott figured that today might as well be the day he asks somebody else.
Well, he did ask Derek a week or so ago, but he had no idea and clearly didn’t care all that much. So, Deaton it was.
“Yes, Scott?”
“Is it possible for a human to learn and mimic werewolf, uh, language?”
Deaton paused in the injection he was giving the dog on their table, looking up at him with scrunched brows, “Is this about Stiles?”
“Uh, Sorta?”
“No, as far as I know, a human cannot learn nor mimic werewolves,” Deaton allows, turning his attention back to the dog, “It is one of the many downsides to letting a human be part of your pack.”
“But he’s doing it, Deaton,” Scott sighs, running a hand through his hair, “Isaac said he copied one of my growls to calm Isaac down, he keeps growling when he’s stressed or scared and I don’t know how he’s doing it.”
“Perhaps, the bite to the Nogitsune?” Deaton offers, “That was a situation unlike any I’ve seen before, it could’ve had unforeseen consequences.”
“How would that make him able to growl like an alpha?”
“...It wouldn’t.”
“Great, so you can’t help either.”
VI. (+1)
Over the last while, Stiles has realized what he’s been doing. Mostly through Isaac and his dad, who seemed very confused when a nonverbal Stiles started growling at him to tell him Fine, Tired because werewolf is easier than human.
(Werewolf shouldn’t be easier than human. He’s a human, he’s content being a human, so why is it easier to act like a werewolf?)
It’s another nonverbal day, actually, where it all really comes to head. One day where Stiles wakes up and it feels like his joints had been bathed in a concrete mixture while he slept, and like speaking will mean he gets his vocal cords ripped out.
(It’s anxiety-inducing, to even think of talking. To think of making any human-like noise, which is why it’s still weird that he’s making wolf-like noises instead. Whenever everything else feels like too much, he turns into a perfect mimic of his best friend.)
But he still has to go to school, even if he can’t talk and he’ll probably shut down at the first sign of relief. He’s missed too much with all the supernatural problems that he’ll get held back if he misses too much more.
So he drags himself out of bed and out of the house, into his jeep, and through the school doors. Scott’s at their lockers when he shows up, borderline dressed in pajamas. (Jeans were too much and he couldn’t find a shirt that felt right, only the t-shirt he slept in that was soft and overworn would work. He threw on sweatpants and pretended it wasn’t sleepwear.)
He greets his friend, bag half hanging from his locker so he can pick out what he needs for class. Stiles growls in response, Hello, Tired, Happy, it says, even when Scott turns at him with those wide, confused eyes he always gets when Stiles does things like this.
Stiles can’t bring himself to care today. He’s just so tired.
Sick? Worried, Scott responds, shutting his locker quieter than he usually does like he’s expecting it to throw Stiles into a loop.
He stares at his bag for a long minute, trying to think of how to respond. He doesn’t think there’s a werewolf not-language equivalent to what he wants to say, but he tries anyways, Tired, Healthy, Sleepy, and then shuts his locker.
“Are you guys growling at each other?” Lydia’s seemingly always judging voice greets, appearing behind Stiles, “Did you get into a fight or something?”
“Or something,” Scott replies, still staring at his painfully human best friend, who’s holding himself like he did when he was having night terrors every night. His shoulders hunched, head hung low, there are bags under his eyes and he looks like there isn’t a single thought in his head beyond tired.
(Scott and Lydia both pretend it doesn’t scare them to see his face so blank. Only the Nogitsune held his face like that, Stiles always has some sort of expression. A hint of anything emotional. But instead, he’s staring right through Scott’s boots with his lips in a straight line.)
Go, Home, Work, he growls, and Scott can’t help but laugh at the mishmash of English logic applied to Werewolf not-language.
“Seriously, how is he doing that?” Lydia points at the now-leaving Stiles, but Scott just shrugs.
“We haven’t figured it out, Deaton thought it might’ve been the bite I gave the Nogitsune but he mimicked one of my growls at Isaac, so,” he sighs, “No idea. I’ll see you in class, Lydia.”
…
Stiles agreed when Scott asked him to come along to a ‘pack meeting’. He looked confused, if only for a moment before the tired, autistic emotionless appearance returned, but followed the werewolf anyways.
He still wasn’t talking. At least he hasn’t shut down yet.
The park is where they end up, the park that has trash all over it and is too overgrown for anybody except the weird kids to go to. Most of them steer clear when their pack is there, some still-human instinct to avoid matter they don’t belong in.
Stiles hasn’t ever experienced that feeling. Maybe it’s because this is his pack, even if he is human.
When they’re all sat on that stupid picnic blanket Isaac bought as a joke because Stiles complained about the grass one too many times, Scott addresses them all.
Stiles didn’t realize this meeting was going to be about him. If he had, he wouldn’t have come. He’s cutting Scott off to say Upset, Tired, Stop, before he can get more than five words out.
He’s still too tired to care about the way they all turn and look at him.
“That’s what I wanted to talk about,” Scott says, gesturing toward him, “Stiles is still human, but he’s… somehow figured out how to understand and communicate like a wolf.”
“Yeah, but I thought we already knew this?” Isaac raises a hand, glancing between his alpha and Stiles.
(Stiles isn’t really listening, eyes trained on a random spot on the blanket, one knee pulled up to his chest with his hands tapping out a rhythm onto the knee.)
“Yes, but apparently Stiles didn’t know until recently, so I thought I’d make sure we were all on the same page. This is also an official way of saying that he’s part of the pack.”
Ethan is the only one to double-check this. To feel for the pack bond. To look for that connection he’s lucky to feel with Scott and Isaac.
He finds it.
Pack, Ethan growls.
Pack, Stiles responds, even though he doesn’t look up. He’s starting to shut down, but growling is still easier than words, Tired.
Home.
Scott lets Ethan be the one to take him home on the back of his bike, and if the werewolf stays with his human pack member to make sure he’s okay, then that’s his business.