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He knows this isn’t how it’s supposed to work. They’re meant to be bros and everything being a bro entails. Which is not this. Joking about this, sometimes, when 'absolutely secure in one’s cushy heteronormative lifestyle.' But not this.
They were practically raised together. Lived in one another's houses more than their own, which was genius and awesome. Westermarck, Stiles tells himself, should be well in effect. They were five when they met, when Scott arrived in Beacon Hills and somehow, someway decided he wanted to be friends with the kindergarten clown (which is not nearly as creepy in his head as it sounds out loud, and why is he saying this out loud?) There’s, like, two years there where they should have reverse imprinted on one another.
It doesn’t even seem to matter how many times Stiles has told himself that Scott is oblivious to so many things. That there are plenty of other, available, potentially interested parties --- he knows he’s not repulsive, and if he tried, if he actually tried, he’d be able to get one of them to go out with him. He doesn’t care that, realistically, he has more chance with Lydia.
He wants Scott, in all these tiny, impossible ways he’ll never have him. Because he is as inoculated to the lustworthiness of Stiles as it is possible to be. There is no attraction on his side, not even the smallest amount. Scott has more sexual vibes toward cheesecake. Which. Cheesecake is good, Stiles understands. His cheesecake, the raspberry and white chocolate one that his mom used to make, is some kind of perfection. But there couldn’t be any transference there? No, Scott’s more inclined to obscenely lick his fork and stare at the cheesecake with bedroom eyes than to look like he wants to obscenely lick into Stiles’ mouth and follow him to said bedroom.
Stiles just… he’s started thinking about this a lot. He keeps imagining them wrapping themselves up in each other, forgetting about the world. Dragging his fingers down Scott’s torso, nuzzling into his neck. Wonders what it’d be like if Scott bit softly into his lower lip --- hell, how it would be having him lightly drag his claws down his back. He’s thought about having all that lean, restrained power beneath him, on top of him, beside him, pressed skin-tight.
There’s so much he wants to explore, to learn, and even though he knows he shouldn’t think it is, it feels natural he’d want to do so with his best friend, the person he knows almost everything about, who knows almost everything about him. Taking it another step doesn’t strike him as wrong.
It shouldn’t hurt like this, should not be any kind of problem. He is content with Scott’s friendship. It’s just that, lately, he hasn’t even felt like he’s had that. So maybe he freaks out this time, when Scott chooses to go for another round of moaning about Allison to Isaac instead of coming over for movie night (which he claims is because he doesn’t want to burden Stiles anymore, but that isn’t it, he can tell.) Perhaps, on this one occasion, he snaps. But he can’t help it. He needed this. He’d wanted to be alone with Scott for the first time in forever. He’d pictured waking up next to him on the couch so he could pretend, for a second or more, that their shoulders were slumped together because they’d fallen asleep after an epic make-out session.
“Sorry, dude, I’ll make it up to you,” Scott says, voice crackling due to terrible reception, and Stiles knows he’s being unfair, he’s one letter away from being a Nice Guy, he’s punishing Scott for something he can’t help.
But, “No. You’re not,” he replies, “and no, you won’t,” he adds, and turns off his cell. He was tempted to ditch it against the wall, but it’s a second new one since the swimming pool fiasco and he can’t afford that again. Not monetarily, not if it’s going to disappoint his dad.
He occupies his mind with research --- everything other than wolf-related lore (he’s beginning to suspect Mr Katz at number 4 is a bona fide zombie and wants the cold, hard, potentially skin-peeling, dead facts) --- ignores the churning in his stomach, the pressure headache behind his eyes. He tries not to think about the reasoning behind the shitty quality of Scott’s call. Except that maybe Scott’s in danger and is doing that stupid, noble self-sacrifice thing again, attempting to ensure Stiles is out of harm’s way. Ever since Stiles accidentally revealed the bruising he received from Grandpapa Argent, Scott’s been overly protective. Or maybe adequately protective. But Stiles made a decision, dammit, and doesn’t like his life-choices to be overridden.
Sometimes he thinks maybe that’s why something that had only ever been an awareness before has become a full time obsession. Ever-present impending doom. His hyper vigilance has him all keyed up, with nowhere to go. His subconscious is all ‘seize the day’, and his body is all, ‘you’ve always noticed your best friend is over-the-top attractive’, and his heart is all ‘Lydia loves Jackson’, but, frustratingly not ‘Scott’s one hundred percent straight and even if he wasn’t sees you as a brother’, so he’s left remembering Scott’s many and varied goofy grins and wishing they were for him, not just at him. Stiles has never really hated himself, but he hates this.
Three hours later Stiles is immersed in WoW when there’s a tap at his window and Scott appears. There’s no physical scarring or discoloration to be seen, but Scott still gives the impression of being battered and bruised. His hair is flattened, damp, over his forehead and ears, his eyes are halfway to haunted. Stiles’ heart immediately jumps, rabbit-quick, and he’s stepping closer before he remembers he’s meant to be cross.
“What’s the crisis now?”
“I’m not trying to replace you,” Scott blurts out, not even attempting to answer coherently. It’s still the right thing to say. “If that’s what you think is going on, it’s not. It’s not that. I can’t lose you too, Stiles. I can’t do it.”
Stiles sighs, drags Scott into a hug, and oh, subconscious, body and heart are all in accordance that this is the way things should be. He’s never been able to hate Scott, not since he laughed for eleven minutes straight that first day they met and Stiles turned his carrot sticks into tusks, and what with guilt and the constant threat of danger, that feeling’s only gotten stronger.
“I know you’re not trying to replace me, you’re trying to replace Allison,” Stiles says, and he can hear the bitterness, but can’t care right now. He has Scott in his arms, solid and real and just hot enough to warm him body and soul. Scott shakes his head like the puppy he is, water flicking everywhere, and Stiles knew that wasn’t true either, but. It had to be said. He needed to remind himself.
“There’s another pack in town,” Scott says, muffled. “They’re bad news.”
“And you didn’t think to give the brains of this little operation that intel?”
Scott pulls away, still bracing Stiles’ forearms, which feels… it feels in ways that have Stiles’ tongue going large and unwieldy in his mouth, his toes curling and uncurling reflexively.
“Mostly I was trying to keep the brains of this little operation from splattering against the wall.”
“I’m not yours to protect.” It’s clunky and false and Stiles is sure Scott will be able to sense the lie.
Sure enough, Scott’s voice goes as soft as his expression. “You are, though. In all the ways that count.”
Stiles is painfully aware Scott’s fingers are still curled around his arms, just under the sensitive skin of his elbows. He extricates himself from his grip and waves to his door.
“You want a drink? I have cherry cola, even though it’s an abomination on par with Jackson. It’s been chilling just for you.”
Scott’s goofy grin is very definitely for Stiles.
*
Scott tells him everything, way too much, and by the end of it, Stiles’ pressure headache has escalated to a full-bodied soreness he feels right down to his mitochondria. Stiles is frankly appalled and shocked he hadn’t figured all of this out on his own, but he’s been distracted, and though Scott’s a terrible liar, it turns out he’s got skills in omission.
They’re pressed up together on Stiles' bed and it should be weird, Stiles thinks it should make him twitchy, but he’s the stillest he’s been in a long time and listening to Scott breathe is soothing though his words are the opposite.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Stiles says, slowly. His face is so scrunched up he feels like someone’s been practicing origami with it. “A pack. Of Alphas. Wouldn’t there be a constant power struggle? It’s like that episode of Doctor Who where the Master turns all humans into the Master. Just. Cognitive dissonance. Part of you is railing against the danger, but another is thinking you’ll surely win, because the danger for them must be more serious? They’re bound to tear themselves apart.”
“I didn’t watch that one,” Scott says, sounding sleepy. “You never made me.”
He burrows down deeper into the bed, rests his face on Stiles’ chest. Stiles wants to stroke a hand through his now thankfully dry hair. It looks soft. He knows it would be comforting. It would probably push the typical werewolf cuddling into far-too-intimate territory. It’s awful how much he wants to push.
A while later Stiles wakes up to Scott sitting on his computer chair, staring at him intently. It’s a very wolfish look, and Stiles laughs at his own thoughts, before realizing that doing so must make him look like a crazy person. Then again, Scott’s had years of his randomness, and it hasn’t fazed him once. Stiles raises himself up on his elbows and quirks an eyebrow. There’s something akin to possessiveness in Scott’s gaze and Stiles’ spine goes molten. It’s sickening how quickly his pulse speeds up.
“Okay,” he murmurs. “This isn’t strange at all.”
“Sorry,” Scott says. “It’s just --- it’s been a while since we’ve hung out like this and I forgot.”
Stiles feels like he’s in an Indie film where the characters all talk at cross-purposes and chat for twenty minutes, with zero actual communication. “Forgot?”
“That you always confuse me.”
“Buddy, not to be, like, the worst friend in the world --- but a lot of things confuse you.”
“See, that,” Scott says, flailing in imitation of Stiles. “That proves my point.”
“Which you haven’t yet made.”
He senses they’re on the verge, here. A high-up terrifying verge that overhangs a bottomless abyss. He’s two parts terrified and three parts anticipation. There’s another part there ready for turned on. He doesn’t know the denominator.
“This is going to make you uncomfortable,” Scott begins. “But I’m going to talk about feelings.”
There’s the barest hint of a smirk in the set of his lips that suggests he’s trying to mock him and Stiles has a moment devoted to being indignant, before it registers what Scott’s actually saying. His throat is dry and scratchy when he finally works up the courage to ask, “why do we need to do that?”
“Because it’s been a long time coming and I have to let this out or I’ll explode.”
Scott takes a deep breath, leans forward in the chair.
“I know that the last few months have been insane. That in some ways we’ve drifted apart and in others we’ve gotten closer. But you need to know that you’ll always have me. I can sense you’re going through some stuff, have been for a while, and you don’t want to share, but if you ever need to, I’ll do everything I can to be here for you.”
Stiles blinks, twice. This disappointment is the wrong emotion to be having. Scott’s smelled it, or heard it in his heart-beat, or can taste it in the air or something, because he suddenly looks so dejected. Stiles is meant to be good with words, but he cannot think of a single helpful thing to say. He opens his mouth, then snaps it shut again, aware he’d babble nonsense. Scott deserves better than that.
“You don’t want me?” Scott asks, voice tiny in the stillness of Stiles’ room.
“I do. I really do. That’s the problem,” Stiles says, and he’s always been too honest for his own good. It’s an admission too far. But Scott did say he’d always be there, so. It’s an admission he has to make.
Scott tilts his head to the side. Endearing, always endearing. “Oh.”
It’s agonizingly obvious that this is something Scott hasn’t sensed in Stiles.
“Ahuh. I’m just gonna crawl into the hole in the wall now and die.”
“Would you haunt me forever afterwards? Because I’d like that.”
Stiles attempts to bring levity to his pity party of one. “That’s already a TV show. A ghost and a werewolf living together. But we’d need to find a vampire to successfully imitate it, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but worry they’d be worse than Derek when it comes to brooding and creeping. Or maybe I should say better than.”
Scott rises, steps over to the bed. It takes everything within Stiles not to shuffle back. “You completely missed what I was actually saying, but okay, I’m the stupid one.” He settles next to Stiles, laces their hands together. He’s sweetness and warmth as he says, “I’m still messed up over Allison, but you’re the one person I could imagine untangling me.”
In that moment, it doesn’t matter how or why he feels the way he does about Scott. Those are unimportant details, best left for the universe to take its time uncovering. But he does want to know the exact nature of Scott’s feelings for him.
“You don’t think of me as a brother?”
“Uh, no. Did you want me to? Because I know I’m a werewolf and all, but that seems like another step to the left in social deviancy.”
Stiles throws his head back, barks out a laugh.
“No, no, I just thought you did,” Stiles says, smiling down at their entwined fingers.
Scott shrugs. “I’ve always enjoyed being an only child. And, to be honest, last year, I was one sleep-over away from suggesting we practice our moves on each other, because I wanted to know what it would be like to kiss you.”
This is a surprise and a revelation. But he knows Scott, knows he wouldn’t lie about this, that there is nothing like pity in the way he’s holding his hand, pushing his thigh up close.
“Why didn’t you?”
“You’d been in love with Lydia forever. I didn’t think you’d be interested in your nerdy, asthmatic best friend.”
“But now that you’re a hot werewolf I’m practically obligated to lust after you, preconceived sexuality be damned,” Stiles says with a nod. He bumps their hands on top of his knee and wonders how Scott would react if he simply leaned in and kissed him right now.
He knows this isn’t how it’s supposed to work. He knows and he doesn’t care. Stiles draws Scott close, breathes him in, presses their lips together, soft, tentative. Scott tastes like promises and hope and peppermint. He tries not to whimper when Scott cradles his jaw and deepens the kiss, is careful not to get overly enthusiastic and land them on the floor. He wants Scott, in all these tiny, implausible but suddenly possible ways. He wants him, and he’s getting him, and he’s not letting go.